Spirit Tracks Impressions: Feelings Mixed

At E3 this past week, Spirit Tracks was available in a three part demo

on the show floor to show off the key elements that the game had to

offer. So, was the feeling coming out that Spirit Tracks is a

masterpiece? Do people think the game is garbage? Well folks, based

purely off a demo, the feelings seem be riding both sides of the fence.

Nintendo World Report, who is famous lately for leaking the Wii Zelda Art that sort of inadvertently forced Nintendo to release the high resolution version publicly, did not like the demo at all. Grant it, they were not huge fans of Phantom Hourglass, but the demo seems to not have done the game justice. Mike of Gametrailers.com even mentioned how the demo played less then smooth in all three phases. Of course, as Mike mentions towards the end, it is usually safe to assume that the concerns of certain gameplay features not functioning properly would be cleaned up before release.

Still, there are others out there that found the demo to be simply outstanding. Take Chad from Destructoid for instance. A fanboy by his own admission, he finds the demo to be brilliant, and possibly a step above what Phantom Hourglass had to offer. I mention Phantom Hourglass, because by all accounts of the demo, the game plays, and feels, exactly like PH… with a train. Of course, this person feels the controls were spot on, while others felt they were not as responsive as they could of been. Still, this shows that overall, the jury is still out.

P.S. – I had a good laugh reading Nintendo World Reports impressions then reading Mike’s. The portion of the game that leads up to the boss fight apparently frustrated the crap out of NWR so much they stopped playing, while Mike thought it was neat that you had to go back and find a item to progress. Whats funny about it? That is was a very simple and very easy mistake to make, but it actually frustrated someone. What, a puzzle that makes you think? What will Nintendo come up with next?