Review: Rainbow Islands: Towering Adventure
Posted by Brittany "Molotov Cupcake" Vincent on January 8th, 2010
The Rainbow Islands series spun off from Bubble Bobble as a sequel, opening the door to a brand new franchise. Following the “true ending” of the original Bubble Bobble game, the game was an adventure involving human forms of the iconic dragons Bub and Bob, escaping from rapidly sinking land masses via rainbow. It might sound silly, but it garnered mostly positive critical reception and received several sequels. The latest of which, Rainbow Islands: Towering Adventure, was recently released via WiiWare and the Xbox Live Arcade. While it manages to capture most of the magic that made its predecessors memorable, much of the whimsy is dwindling with this next-gen update.
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Those of you who have been following my reviews of the episodic adventure Tales of Monkey Island by TellTale will know I’ve had very little bad to say about the game, overall. After playing through dozens of ho-hum point-and-clicks, many that suffer from poor writing, irritating, uncreative puzzles, and frustrating bugs, the latest romp through the Caribbean with Guybrush Threepwood has been a breath of fresh air. But how does the momentous finale, Rise of the Pirate God, stack up against the other four episodes? As Guybrush would probably snicker and say, “Does it sink or swim?”
Recently, Nintendo’s CEO, Satoru Iwata, announced that WiiWare will be offering downloadable demos before the end of this month. This will include the online stores for both the Wii and DSi platforms.
Japanese Wii owners will be getting another new WiiWare title on October 27: Game Arts’ Shadow Walker: The Boy of Shadow and the Fairy of Light. In the game, you must use your ability to manipulate light in order to create a path of shadows to lead the tree fairy to the special location at each level. Once at that location, and when exposed to light, she will transform into a tree, which is apparently the goal of the game. Although details are sparse, a North American release is in the works, although no date has yet been set.
I feel like I should start this review off with a “Do You Remember Kid Icarus?” because in many ways, Nyx Quest is the spiritual successor to that hallowed and now ancient mythological platformer. In many ways though, it’s not. Nyx Quest stars female deity-like being Nyx who happens to be the one true love of Icarus himself. The game isn’t made by Nintendo, and the game’s name change from Icarian to Nyx Quest might have something to do with that. In truth, the two games are nothing alike in anything but mythology references and the fact that they’re both platformers. I think people just crave (for some reason) a Kid Icarus reinvention so much that anything with Icarus in it at all seems to get attention. I find this odd as Kid Icarus’ protagonist is named Pit.
Players of the first chapter of Tales of Monkey Island can continue their adventure with the second chapter, titled Siege of Spinner City, on August 20 for the PC. The WiiWare release will follow soon thereafter, although on an unknown date.
Recently, Amazon.com launched its own Xbox Live store where gamers could purchase codes for various digital games. One huge bonus to this new system is that gamers were offered nice discounts on most games.
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