In case you're wondering "What is this? An endgame review? But there was no review to begin with!" I suppose you're right, though I did mention it on the review for the console. I decided it to do an endgame review now because I did beat the game, I have nothing else to do, and because I felt like I owed you a follow up on that article I wrote about Nintendo's pack-in games. On that post, I mentioned the possibility of these games being killer apps, thus justifying the poor launch line up.
By definition, a killer app is a piece of software that is so good or essential it justifies the purchase of its required hardware, a console seller, if you will.
When you first launch Face Raiders, it'll ask you to take your own picture, aligning it to two dots and a line for the eyes and mouth. When you're done, the face pops away from the picture, laughs at you, and goes on a rampage. The following level has you shooting tennis balls at your own face. If you beat the level the face is added to your collection.
Gameplay-wise it's overly simplistic and at times reminiscent of an old-school space shooter. You see a target and you shoot it. You see a power-up and you shoot it. You see a projectile hurling towards you and you shoot it (or try to dodge it). Then you meet a boss, you figure out its movement patterns, invulnerable spots and weak spots, and hit it repeatedly until it's gone. Eventually targets become harder to hit, either by speed, shields, trickery or sheer multiplicity. There is a total of 6 levels, all played slightly differently. While fun, these facts alone do not sell games, let alone consoles.
What sets this game apart from the rest is the console-specific gimmickry. Once you scan your face (with the internal 2-d camera), it'll try to guess your age and gender, draw a polygonal 3D face, and animate it in a range of expressions. It is really nifty! You will find yourself laughing out loud and even yelling at the little faces trying to smooch you. As you keep playing the game will ask you to take more pictures, and it'll find more clever ways to obtain faces for your collection (I won't spoil these for you). You may at any point curate your face collection by fine-tuning the settings for any face (age, gender, alignment) or just deleting the ones you don't like. Eventually you'll start experimenting with capturing faces from pictures in magazines and even your computer monitor of celebrities, fictitious characters, animals and inanimate objects. By the way, did you recognize the guy in the screenshot?
Then there's the fact that the aiming is controlled entirely through the system's accelerometers and gyroscopes. You stand still and become a turret of sorts, warding off the onslaught of floating faces coming from all directions. Unless you're in perfect shape, like me, you will find yourself tired halfway through a level, and you may find keeping the screen straight for the 3D visuals to work to be a bit of a hassle until you get enough practice. Swinging your 3DS around in a train station might not be a good idea, so you can only play this game in private or with friends – the main reason it took me so long to beat. The aiming is very responsive, intuitive and lots of fun; just not very convenient at times.
So, is Face Raiders a killer app? I don't think so, at least not in the conventional way. This game definitely showcases the console's capabilities, and even features a "show a friend" mode. But at most it may have people thinking "hey, that 3DS sure can do nifty things, I might want to buy one" rather than "OMFG FACERAIDERS IS SO AWESOIME I NEED A 3DS IN ORDER OT PLAY IT RITE NAO!!1"
If you don't own a 3DS but know someone who has and you want to see what nifty tricks the system can do, have him or her show you this game. If you get a 3DS, you get this game for free and it's definitely worth at least one play-around. If you want a killer app to justify blowing $250 on a cosmo black 3DS, stand by for Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D.
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