Co-Optimus

Conan PS3

Sun, 12 May 2013 16:20:07 +0000

While on a quest for a treasure Conan unknowingly sets loose an evil that would go on to terrorize the land. The sorcerer by the name of Graven whom Conan releases unleashes a Black Plague on the populace. Conan sets off to kill the man and save the land. -summary

Conan is a video game I put off for a very long time. Normally games that are based on either comics, novels, or movies, are some of the worst titles you can come across. Developed by Nihilistic Software, published by THQ and released in 2007, Conan is among the better licensed games. While it can be fun running around killing waves of enemies, I just couldn't help notice that even for a next gen game on the PS3, there are PS2, X-Box, and even Gamecube titles out there that could visually blow this game away. That's pretty bad if you think about it. I would have been mad had I bought this on its original release date for the full price.

Game Play:

Conan attempts to use the God of War and Ninja Gaiden style of play as its foundation. It's a third person hack and slash adventure title, that follows Conan across Hyboria as he tackles plenty of pirates, warriors, giant apes, and other manner of beasts. The game is based on Robert E. Howard's Conan novels, and it's loosely based on Queen of the Black Coast. The game feels quite ambitious as Conan is capable of unlocking a plethora of very cool moves. The combat engine, as sluggish as it may be at times, is the game's strongest point and there are moments it can be real fun to play.

Through killing your enemies, Conan earns red rubies that helps him purchase new moves for each weapon style he can use. He can battle with a regular sword, equip either a shield, extra sword for double handed combat, or drop them all for a large broad sword; and there are moves to purchase for each of these styles. One of the coolest features here is just learning what Conan can do next. He can use the broad sword to cleave enemies into two pieces, use the shield to decapitate, or pull off a combo ending with a devastating suplex. He can even perform grabs such as pile-drivers and single knee back-breakers. Make no mistake, once you develop your moves list and master the very easy button prompts, Conan will be one serious badass. When the enemies attempt to gang up and overwhelm you, it's possible to go into a defensive strategy with blocking, and parry the enemies attacks into something vicious that results in a single blow kill, such as chopping enemies in half while they're airborne or tearing the guts out of their stomachs. Parrying is very important in this game, because here the enemies can become quite annoying as they block with shields that can sometimes injure you, or spam their own devastating combos. You can also toss boulders and crates in their direction for damage.

The game tries its best to just be something else. There's even a segment where you must protect your partner's ship from enemy ships, by using what appears to be a giant crossbow. You wind it up and unleash a projectile towards the enemy ship. The game features plenty of checkpoints too which can be a life saver. Only in the final stage do they seem to be placed in the weirdest of sections.

Conan is very linear and on-rails, yet it tries to be more by allowing you to search areas for additional rubies and even captive women for more rubies. It also attempts to enhance the experience with some very easy to solve puzzles and plat forming segments. While the latter can be a good change of pace, there are moments in the game it can be quite annoying, more on that later.

Now on to the mixed and even bad stuff which keeps Conan average at best. The boss battles are mixed themselves, yet they lean more towards being annoying and not fun. Many of them are difficult for the wrong reasons. They rely on hit and run tactics. This isn't exactly the problem, it's just that these fights are multi-level and your strategy really doesn't change. These fights are pretty much long for nothing. One fight besides the unbelievably annoying final battle, is one fight late in the game against a barbarian. He begins the battle with a sword, you must rely on a quick hit and run strategy. He loses the sword, health bar refills, and now he has a spiked ball and chain which requires the exact same strategy. What kind of fun is that? And there are several battles like these. However, some are cleverly done though, such as the fight with a rampaging dragon that finds you moving from point A to B for higher ground, and even a giant squid that attempts to sink your ship, plus infects your crew members turning them against you. I didn't completely dread the boss battles, but I wasn't glad to come across them either.

At times the plat forming can feel quite out of place, because Conan doesn't seem physically equipped for it. There are some jumps that appear easy to pull off, but I found myself dying during them, or falling to a lower level, thus repeating the same steps again. The weapons play a crucial role in developing the combat, however, they are quite under-developed themselves. They possess attributes unique to them like the double weapons being quicker and weaker, while larger ones being slower and more powerful; but there aren't any major differences between them. For example, a long spear uses the same combos and has the same function as the broad sword; and wielding two axes in each hand carries the same effect as two swords, or even if you mix them up with each other. There's no exploration or true variety with the weapons. You can grab whatever is there and run through the stages, and I'm sure most people are going to stick with a sword and shield for very easy parries.

The narrative isn't too bland, as it follows Conan gathering the pieces for his armor plus there is a back story and an attempt towards character development. Conan is a womanizer in the books, and although he doesn't lay every chick here, he gets a couple in bed. Now one thing that I did no notice is that Conan has access to magic attacks, when in the original source material he hates magic. So I find it a little unbelievable that he would use it here, and since the magic attacks do not effect bosses. I see even little purpose in having it in the game. I would have preferred a rage meter you can access at will, instead of the power boost you gain only after stringing together a certain amount of attacks.

Conan really does try to ape off God of War and Ninja Gaiden; it feels dated when compared to both of them though, visually and game play wise. It lacks the depth in its setting and enemies when compared to the former, and it completely lacks the flash and depth in weaponry in the latter. It's not exactly a watered down hack and slash game, but it feels seven years too late. It could have been a classic adding more of a foundation for these type of games had it ran on the PS2 during the system's very early days.

Controls:

The best thing going on for this game here is in the button prompts. It's true the game can function as a button masher, however you'll be robbing yourself of some really cool moves that are so easy to do. The level of strictness when pressing the same button for additional functions is quite forgiving. I never saw myself pulling off a move I didn't want to do. There's a feeling of lag in some of the moves; I think it just has everything to do with Conan's sluggish movements being an over-sized brute. Now the part of the controls I can't stand plays into my issues with the platforming I mentioned earlier. It seems as if Conan can be way too sensitive at the wrong times, and it makes traversing across narrow pathways, which quite frankly aren't that narrow to begin with feel like hell crossing. This may have something to do with another element I'll address later. In any case, I don't feel his movements at all and this part assisted me in some easy deaths. Accessing magic attacks are very easy since they can be chosen with the directional pad, and every other button does something from blocking to picking items up.

Graphics/Sound/Music:

It's crazy that for a next gen game Conan could have ran smoothly on the PS2 visually, and it still would have been lacking a little. The character designs are lacking plenty of detail which is real noticeable during the cut scenes. They can be very bland with a low amount of polygons, textures, and their movements feel robotic. The game looks ugly in several areas with the backgrounds being the only good thing. Despite the bland and gloom feel of the setting, the mythological atmosphere is intact. It does feel like a fantasy world so it earns points for this. The ruins, very dark caves, and pirate ships fits perfectly in the world of Conan.

The gore can look cool on some occasions, with enemies being sliced in half right down the middle standing out the most. The animation has its moments as well, since you can see each of the movements during combos. You see that quick headbutt from Conan, and then the quick follow up with the shield to the throat. Now my major problem here which also plays into my controls complaint is the lack of control concerning the camera. The camera is fixed, and sometimes the positioning of it makes judging distance and position very difficult. There's one part late in the game, where you move down a circular path on a collapsing plat form, and there were times I slipped right off, and it was clearly because of the controls sensitivity and ill placement of the camera. It's not impossible to get through but I found myself concentrating more than what I should have. I definitely would have preferred being able to position the camera right behind the character.

The sound effects are best through the voice overs making everyone easy to hear and understand. The narrative during the cut scenes is clear and understandable mainly due to the medium pace it's delivered. I never felt lost in what was going on story wise. The soundtrack if anything, blends well with the style of the game, and adds the intimidation factor to the boss bottles; other than that nothing stood out to me.

Final Thoughts:

Conan does not have an online multiplayer feature, and there really isn't much here to pull one back. The game is between 6-8 hours and you will be able to unlock nearly all of the moves in your first play through. This is not a game anyone needs to play, or should pay more than ten bucks for. There are plenty of better games of this type to choose from.

Pros:
-Action and combat system are easy to get into

Cons:
-Visually ugly and just not much else to it

Far better than the DS version.

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 12:40:26 +0000

The Mushroom Kingdom are celebrating Princess Peach's birthday in the castle. They bring her a giant cake, but the surprise inside is less than appealing when Bowser Jr. and the Koopalings spring their trap and abduct her. Mario, Luigi, and two Toad servants pursue them. -summary

After probably more than a decade, old school Nintendo fans were dying for the chance to see Super Mario make it to modern consoles in the gaming form that originally made him so popular, and that was in solid 2D plat forming. In 2006 Nintendo introduced New Super Mario Bros DS, which was said to be the little mushroom eating plumber's return to form. Although the game was well received earning mostly high ratings for its game play and new look. I on the other hand wasn't the least bit impressed. I did not care for the short length made even shorter due to being forced into finding two more levels in the main game, to include the insanely easy difficulty. Mario games were never really known for being cakewalks; they were wire tight, sweaty palmed plat formers that tested your memory and reflexes. That game gave me none of that, which is why I had put New Super Mario Bros Wii on hold for a very long time. That was a mistake... The Wii version is what Nintendo should have originally released; this is a totally different game. You get that wire tight, sweaty palm, damn near controller hurling difficulty.

Game Play:

New Super Mario Bros Wii (NSMBW) is a single player plat former that can be played with up to four players, plus it features additional modes. I'm pretty sure by now most people know not to come into Mario games of this type looking for some type of story; it's the game play why you get into these, and I believe Nintendo nailed it here. Mario will venture through eight themed worlds in his mission to rescue Peach. Along the way he will face familiar enemies such as the Goombas and Koopa Troopers, plus the Koopalings make their return in style. Make no mistake, this game is just oozing with fan service and it's done the right way for the most part. Nintendo attempts to mash on those nostalgic buttons, yet at the same time introduce new twist keeping the game feeling very fresh.

First off you get some new items to go along with the usual suspects such as the Fire plant and Starman; there's an Ice Plant that allows Mario to freeze enemies and use them as makeshift platforms to reach higher areas, or even use them as projectiles in the same manner as the Koopa Trooper shells. There's a Penguin suit which seems to be a different take on the Frog suit used in Super Mario Bros. 3. This allows him to slide on his belly into enemies, swim much better than normal, and again, use ice balls to freeze enemies. The mini-mushroom introduced in the DS version returns, but the winner to a certain degree is the Propeller suit that allows Mario to ascend great heights and slowly make his way to the ground. It's definitely influenced by the Tanooki suit found in SMB3, but it's far more difficult to master. In fact, although the game itself is easy to get into, it is very difficult to master; from wall kicking to spring from one wall to the next on to Mario's various abilities. I mentioned Super Mario 3 a few times already, and it's because this game uses it as a pool source. The influence is all in your face, yet it doesn't in the least bit feel like a lazy copy and paste. It's very innovative and incredibly fun to play.

Mario can also collect up to three Star coins per stage. While some of these things are in your face, some are very difficult to obtain and will result in some deaths trying to grab them. They will sometimes be in the oddest places, which forces you to almost become a ninja with your plat forming skills along with using the suits; such as leaping towards a pit and propelling your way out of there. Plus the stages can just be so hazardous to your health. Speaking of the stages though, they are no doubt this games best feature, and I mean by far. Some may believe running and jumping from plat form to plat form would generate some type of redundancy, but you have to peep how Nintendo keeps the stages feeling unique. Nothing really feels the same, and this is across about 80 stages. There are rotating plat forms in some of the weirdest ways, and many devices to kill Mario on his journey, from falling molten rock shooting out of volcanoes, to crushing devices, and even Bullet Bills and other cannons aiming in his direction. I must also point out how the game uses its environment against you. There are stages where you must weave through the dark, and your only illumination is either your Fire plant or some type of light provided by the enemies. The Ghost Houses return bringing their own spooky flavor into the fray. The game also features alternating routes that can some times lead to a warp zone or an additional stage. These things are not in plain view and they demand some type of investigation.

One thing about the Mario games I have come to be quite annoyed by is the lack of challenging bosses. Well, that is far from a complaint this go around. The stages feature two battles with a Koopaling; they face you as a sub-boss and a final stage boss which sees them fighting you two different ways. Later in the game around the fourth world I would say, these battles get really tough, and landing those three hits on the head can some times feel out of reach. One of them uses a vehicle with a Chain-Chomp guiding his direction towards you and his speed picks up as you hit him; at least one of these fights also takes place on small plat forms increasing the danger for Mario. There's one that takes place with the Koopa Wizard, and that fight is just too cool to play and it's among my favorites. And Bowser, I really liked this confrontation. He is obviously trying to kill Mario this time, as it truly feels like the final battle. Even the world map looks nice and is pretty engaging using the mini-games from SMB3, and you can also travel back to beaten worlds and stages, plus there are some surprises to be found through various Toad houses granting more items and 1-ups. And that's another thing too. This game really isn't that forgiving with the extra lives, which makes coin collecting very important. You're going to need every life you can muster, especially for the difficulty spike later on in the game. I even have to mention that the spike feels done right. Instead of only adding more instant death pits, there are tidal waves of flowing lava playing a role towards your possible demise. It's as if Nintendo took to heart the criticism of the last game in regards to fans complaints on just how easy it was.

The game uses the Wii remote, and through the motion sensor you will be able to manually move certain plat forms to guide Mario across lava pits and many falls. There's one stage deep into the game where you're on one of these plat forms, and you will have to multi-task your way across the lava, by paying attention to sweeping birds in the air along with pillars of lava shooting so high in the air that jumping over them is impossible. There are times where it appears this feature is merely added on just because, but for the most part though, it is cleverly placed adding a certain amount of flair to the game.

One thing for sure is that this game gets more right than wrong, but there are flaws that kind of snatches this game away from being perfect. For one thing, there's actually too much fan service to the point where it can feel scatter shot; a few things come to mind here. It's great to see Yoshi in the game, but while he played a prominent role in Super Mario World, he was clearly added here just to have him. The few segments he is used feels forced and quite frankly, I felt those stages should have focused more on using the Propeller suit. You need all the possible practice with that thing and I'll just leave it at that.

Mario has too many moves, he just might have everything he learned here and this could be a problem. You could find yourself in a tight spot where there's no room for mistakes, and you can die a death because you forgot that one particular skill you haven't used much. And yes, I know we don't play these games for story. But does it really have to be that way? The Koopalings are using the same magic wands from SMB3. Why? Did they steal them again? I would have liked some type of story for this. You remember those color corresponding power blocks in Super Mario World? When you hit those switches they created more blocks and alternate paths? In this game, there's only a red one in one world, and it only effects two stages. Why? I see no point digging so deep into history and not even giving these things a reason for being in the game. I understand it's a Mario game, but there's going to be a time when the lack of story is going to catch up with this fat plumber. And finally, if you die enough times, an icon will appear that releases Luigi to complete the stage for you. Up to this day, the gamer's pride in me has never activated this thing. I hate this type of loser handholding and I'll never touch that icon no matter what.

Controls:

One of my gripes is definitely here. Now Mario performs very well and his maneuverability is very tight here. I will go so far to say that if you're slipping off plat forms and missing jumps it's more your fault than the controls. His running is even slowed down a bit, and it just needs getting use to. The Wii remote can be used as a control pad, and I recommend playing it like this for that old school feel. Now my problem with the remote is the motion sensor. Mario has a spin move that can be activated by wiggling the controller up and down. This is also how the Propeller suit works. The problem here is that the motion sensor is way too sensitive. I'm sure most of us gamers have this habit where we physically move around with our controllers during tense moments, well here it can actually kill you. There were times I activated the Propeller suit and went right into the lava, and all I tried to do was scratch my nose. So you can imagine how mad that made me, and still makes me even now when I just want to run through some cool stages. Other than that, the controls are very good, they just needed more thought put into them.

Graphics/Sound/Music:

The game looks like a more polished version of the DS. It's obviously prettier looking with some decent backgrounds. The themed worlds made up of Ice, Clouds, and even Fire look good enough. There's quite a bit of variety here with lava falls in the backgrounds and vines wrapped around trees, but I also have to mention that they feel quite vanilla too, even some times a little lifeless. The animation has a fluid feel from the characters movements to descending pipes and moving plat forms. When Mario is being covered by clouds, he can execute his spin to move the clouds and they have a nice dissipating effect. There are times when certain plat forms pick up speed and I never noticed a frame rate drop. This can also be said about the multi-player with four players on the screen at once. It can be chaos some times and the frame rate was still smooth. The character designs are in full 3D with Bowser looking the greatest here in the end. The usual sound effects are present such as the block shattering and coin sounds. Nothing really stands out here and dialog is very close to non existent. The music is mainly remixed tracks from Super Mario 3 and reused stuff from the DS version. I still enjoy the militaristic BGM of the airships, and the menacing Castle themes. The boss tracks are still great and add to the fun.

Replay:

Unlike that garbage sequel for the 3DS. There's actually reason to collect the Star coins as it opens up world 9, plus I believe most people aren't going to get the coins on their first try. The multi-player has two modes being a Coin rush and Free For All across stages that were already completed. This is basically a competition between the players and nothing more. The main game can be played with four players. This game was made with only one in mind, because all of these players will get in the way a lot. I only play this for some mindless fun. The players can pick each other up and use each other to reach plat forms. The best part is killing your teammates though. I never get tired of hitting them with turtle shells, or just picking them up and throwing them into lava and spikes. The best way to enjoy this part is to not take it serious. This portion isn't online and I won't complain about that either. It's hard to imagine this effectively working without lag.

Final Thoughts:

NSMBW is a short game some where around maybe 5 hours or so if you blast through it; but the entertainment value is pretty high though. Nintendo outdid themselves with the stage design, and the ample amount of fan service works overall. Visually the backgrounds could have been better as well as the motion control. If you were like me and you put this game off because you were disappointed with the DS version; I recommend giving this a try. It's old school 2D and I still look at this as Mario's true return to 2D form. However, if you found yourself stuck on playing this or the Super Mario Galaxy series, then I recommend that instead.

Pros:
Highly entertaining, moderate challenge, some type of replay

Cons:
Some fan service was pointless, minor issues with motion sensor, graphics could've been better

Seemed worth the wait when it first dropped.

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 14:09:37 +0000

Doctor Doom of the Marvel Universe joins forces with Albert Wesker of the Capcom Universe, in an attempt to take over both worlds. The heroes representing both of these realities unite to stop them. But there's a greater menace approaching that threatens the very existence of these worlds.-summary

Marvel vs. Capcom 3 is a sequel that was long over-due. It has been over ten years since the last game was released, and this long awaited sequel has been on the imaginary, as well as real life wish list for quite possibly every hardcore fighting game fan alive. The question on many folks minds most definitely would be, "was it worth the wait?" The short answer in my view is yes, because it gave Capcom time to think and not produce a very lazy effort.

It's always a wise decision to add but never take away, or never try fixing what isn't broken. Capcom kept things the same in some ways, while there has been significant changes and I don't think any of them were for the worst. For me, Marvel vs. Capcom 3 is much better than the last game in all areas. I'll lightly cover the key areas as usual.

Game Play:

Marvel Vs. Capcom 3 is a fighting game that features 3 vs. 3 battles, and the player can swap out characters at any time during the fight. Like its predecessors, the battles aren't decided in rounds. The fight ends when one team has been completely eliminated. The game does have a time limit, but it can be turned off during the vs mode, as well as with the arcade mode. The difficulty can be adjusted from very easy to much harder settings, and this is great for beginners, since the game can be pretty difficult even on the normal setting. This also includes the cheap AI at times.

What's still the same?

The game still features a story mode which takes place in the arcade mode. Here, the player will engage in a series of battles until they reach the end boss. The vs. mode is self explanatory and this is where two players can have it out at. Training Mode is still intact, and it's a great place to learn how the new fighting engine handles(more on that part later). The command list can be accessed during this mode, and in arcade mode to view the moves list at any time.

The characters still possess their own health bars, but once again share their hyper combo bar. For those who are new to the series. Hyper moves are very large and damaging combo's that can turn a fight around, or turn possible defeat into a guarantee. The bar can be charged up to five times, and it can still be used to perform team hyper combo attacks.

There are also some returning techniques such as the "snap back", which is a hit that sends your opponents character out of the battle, and brings in another, or the last character they swapped out. The guard parry is also back, and this move pushes your opponent away when you're blocking. Air blocking, ground, and air combos are present as well.

The game features two play modes; normal play and simple play. Normal is when a player chooses to pull off moves manually. Simple play is more newbie friendly, and gives them a hope in hell at winning.

Now what's new?

The fighting engine has been reworked. Air combos can still be performed by popping characters into the air. The added twist is that they can now be done on a team level. It's very possible to extend the combos by bringing in each character one at a time, to prolong the combo and add very big damage. However, Capcom also took a page out of Killer Instinct in a way. The air combos can also be broken up by performing an air counter. This sends the aggressor crashing to the other side of the screen, and gives the victim of the attacks some breathing space. There is also a technique called the X-Factor, and this beefs up your characters strength and mobility. But the overall effect all depends on how many characters you have left. The character will emit a red aura around their body when this move is activated. For an idea on what this may look like, just think of a constantly powered up Akuma.

Now even though the fighting engine went through a slight change. The game really doesn't have that much depth, and like the previous two games in the series, it's very possible for button mashers to pull off wins. There is a certain amount of skill necessary to beat more advanced players, but the fighting engine just isn't as intricate as let's say; Tekken 6, Soul Calibur 4, or even Super SF 4. Those are more like playing chess, while this is like, well... something else.

The updated game play doesn't exactly make it a must to be familiar with the older games in the series. However, more experienced players will still have an overwhelming advantage, since at the very least, they already have an idea on how to make big combos work. Dedicated players will spend a lot of time in the training modes.

Capcom also borrows from Super Street Fighter 4. There's now a mission mode, where a character must be selected, and there's a list of moves that must be performed to advance to the next mission. I think of this mode as another training mode, and it's extremely helpful, because it features a bunch of combos that are very possible to pull off. And these attacks will prepare you for the harder AI settings and online battle. There's a gallery mode to view endings, character profiles, artwork, and listen to the soundtrack.

Controls:

The control set up is completely new, yet very familiar, and it also happens to be my favorite feature of the game. For Marvel vs. Capcom 2, Capcom had combined the weaker buttons; jab and strong punches, low and forward kicks into one button, leaving the fierce punch and round house kick intact, thus, creating quicker and easier controls. This time around, the six actions are removed, and now there's four buttons taking their place; light, medium, heavy, and special. It may sound strange to a veteran of the series, and I even thought it to be very awkard while trying them out. However, after starting in the training mode first, the set up became very clear and after 2 hours of practicing, I was pulling off 34 hit air combos very easy against the normal AI. The classic Street Fighter two-in-ones are incredibly easy to pull off, as well as linking hyper's into regular combos. The instruction booklet happens to be great help when explaining how to perform these chain and air combos.

The controls are very responsive when dishing out these combos. They're also very smooth when performing the hyper and team hyper combos. Everything is performed with ease, and Capcom did not complicate the hyper move combos either with wild directional pad functions. They're all delivered with half circle motions, basically, a Street Fighter fan will have no problem understanding how these moves work. Newbies who spend time in the training modes will find them easy to pull off also. As a fighting game fan, I will say these are the most perfect controls for a fighting game I ever came across. SNK should take notes here, and realize not everyone wants to go to hell and back to pull off devastating moves.

Graphics/Sound/Music:

Visually, the game is on point and I am impressed with it. Capcom went with the comic book style. The characters are featured in 3D models and their designs have a shiny look with some good attention to detail. The Marvel characters look splendid and they're carbon copies of their comic book counterparts. I'm also happy that Capcom didn't take the lazy route by using the exact same designs from previous games. The animation for some of the older characters looks familiar, but it definitely looks more up to date to me. I also think the animation concerning the moves have a nice fluid flow to them. The action can be very fast at times, but the movements can still be spotted.

The game is a 2D fighter but it blends in the 3D elements nicely. I think the camera work displays the 3D elements well, and it's used best during some of the more powerful hyper combos; Magneto's Gravity Squeeze stands out to me with its perspective range and use of the background animation. The character on the receiving end disappears in the middle of the void without a trace and the segment is kind of eerie to me. The final battle also does a great job displaying the 3D qualities and I think it's one of the cooler stages (won't spoil exactly what it is). Now speaking of the stages, there are some very good backgrounds with the Shield Helicarrier being another big standout. In the background of the battlefield, there's an obvious air battle taking place, with turret guns firing and missiles hitting the carrier. This stage is just awesome all around with the dark setting and the well use of lighting.

I think the sound effects are very good to a certain degree. Akuma's fireballs for example, sound completely different from Magneto's projectile move. I also noticed the slight sound of electricity when Magneto takes off, as well as the small gust of wind when Storm dashes. There are plenty of different sound effects to look for. The only issue that I have is with the sound of the blows. They really don't sound like punches or kicks landing.

The voice acting is very good to me, and the characters personalities are well captured. Deadpool's wisecracking and comedic side is very well intact, and he dishes out a few funny lines. Captain America sounds like the hero you have to follow, and Thor sounds.. well... way too blond and manly.

The music is a gigantic step up from Marvel vs. Capcom 2. That ridiculolus jazz track is gone and the themes are character specific. Shades of the original Marvel vs. Capcom, the characters have versions of their songs playing, and when that character is defeated, the song will shift to the next character entering the fray. There are some easily recognizable tracks; like different variations of Ryu's and Akuma's themes, along with Arthur's theme from Ghouls and Ghost creating that nostalgia trip.

Character Roster:

Some fans may be disappointed with this roster, but I'm glad Capcom slashed down the numbers. The total roster is 20 characters less with 36 this time around. This was one of the problems I had with the previous game, because there were so many throw away characters who were copy and paste. Now, it seems like a little bit more of a balance. My only gripe here is that there are too many obscure characters. And I'm talking characters who aren't really that popular in the Marvel or Capcom universes. Here's the roster:

Captain America, Deadpool, Spider-Man, Thor, Storm, Ryu, Chun-Li, Dante, Trish, Wolverine, Magneto, Ironman, Chris Redfield, Albert Wesker, Zero, Tron, Phoenix, X-23, Hulk, She-Hulk, Morrigan, Felicia, Arthur, Haggar, Akuma, Sentinel, Spencer, Hsien-Ko, M.O.D.O.K. Doctor Doom, Amaterasu, Crimson Viper, Super Skrull, Taskmaster, Viewtiful Joe, Dormammu

Not all of these characters are playable from the start, and I think there was only four to unlock. All I know is that I beat the game twice, lost once, and spent some time in training, and the next thing I know, the notification came up that characters were being unlocked. It didn't take long to unlock them at all and I was amazed at how easy it was. But I think fighting games really should do away with that. Supposedly, there will be more characters as down loadable content. Personally, I'm satisfied with this right here but I will search for it later.

I also liked the attention to detail when considering character rivalries, because it adds a little bit to the story. During some pre-battle match ups, Wesker acknowledges his feud with Chris, along with Akuma and Ryu sparking their rivalry. I thought it was real cool beating Iron Man with Captain America, and Cap mentioning their Civil War feud. There's other good segments like these that will only be familiar to fans of both universes. Overall, despite the play mechanics pretty much being the same. There's a nice mix of slow and fast characters, and the slower characters can perform their combos just about as well as the quicker ones.

Final Thoughts:

The training modes have soaked up almost all of my time with this game so far. The single player is good, but the two player and multi-player are very good. I haven't spent too much time on-line, but I didn't have a problem finding a match. In the long run, this will prove most valuable for die-hard fighting fans. But once I get my fill, I will have to go for some long adventure game.

I highly recommend this to those who loved the first two games in the series, and for serious fighting fans in general.

Super Mario Bros. Quick Tip by RabidChihuahua

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 01:03:58 +0000

Super Mario Bros. has been considered a classic in the world of videogames, and rightfully so. Despite its 8 bit limitations, this game brought about a lot of fun, replayability, decent graphics (for its time), a catchy soundtrack, and challenge that's all balanced perfectly.

I think Super Mario Bros. 3 is the best of all the Mario games, but this is still a superb game that's just as fun to play as it was back in the 80's.

Thank you, world.

Mon, 25 Feb 2013 22:58:35 +0000

Four words: I LOVE VIDEO GAMES!!!!! I thank you, world for having video games in our lives, because that is the greatest invention ever. I hope you all reading this feel the same and agree with me. :)

Assissin's Creed

Fri, 22 Feb 2013 22:18:04 +0000

I've heard that people don't really like this game and that it was like a "prototype". I, personally, think that it's a really good game. I haven't tried the other AC game's, but I soon hope to get AC2.

A weak collection containing the most unfairly bashed fighting game ever.

Tue, 5 Feb 2013 04:33:49 +0000

19 fighters enter a martial arts tournament for different reasons. Ryu and Ken hope to settle their rivalry, the demonic warrior Akuma, whom completely mastered their style wants nothing more then a death match with anyone worthy enough to face him. And Interpol agent Chun-Li who helped bring down M. Bison's Shadowloo organization finds herself up against a new one; each of the fighters have reasons for participating, but many seem to hold a grudge against the sponsor of the tournament, a god-like being by the name of Gill. -summary

Although Capcom may have developed a reputation for being a lazy company that loves to add small updates to old franchises in their attempt to drain that last dollar. They do deserve some credit for attempting to give back to their loyal fan base over the years. Some time in 2004, two of their best selling franchises being Megaman and Street Fighter II had been around for about 15 years. They decided to celebrate the anniversaries with compilation sets, which brings me to the Street Fighter Anniversary Collection. This compilation collects Street Fighter III: Third Strike, Hyper Street Fighter II, & Street Fighter: The Animated Movie. Back in 2004, this was one of the games I had on my list because I loved Third Strike for the Sega Dreamcast. However, my interest was piqued a little more when I saw Hyper Fighting was a blend of the complete SF II series. How on Earth was Capcom going to pull off mashing 5 games into one? Well read on to find out.

Game Play:

For those who may not know, Street Fighter II, III, any form of it at all, is a two player fighter that pits a single character against various opponents in one on one, two out of three rounds fighting. You will fight your way to the boss whom is usually M. Bison; this isn't the case in this sequel though as he was defeated in SFII. The game also has a vs. mode and the matches can be increased to four out of seven. Plus there's a training mode and the movie can be found in the options category of Hyper Fighting Street Fighter.

OK to begin with, I'm cool with Capcom making an attempt to give the fans something, and this is actually a cool collection because you get Third Strike, which I believe is worth the price of admission all by itself. Capcom really did put a lot of effort into making this a completely different Street Fighter, as it combines elements from the previous games in the series along with the Street Fighter Alpha series. The characters possess their usual amount of special moves, ie, Ryu and Ken tossing their fireballs, dragon punches, etc. Plus the frighteningly damaging Super Special Combos appears here, but they're quite toned down in quantity from the Alpha series. SF Alpha gave the characters between 2 to 4 Super Specials at their disposal that can be used when the Super Meter had been powered up. This game gives the characters three, but the catch is that only one can be selected for battle. Originally I did have a problem with this because it does lighten your arsenal, since your opponent already knows which big move to look out for; over time though, with plenty and plenty of time to practice. This is something that grew on me, I'll explain why later.

The game doesn't only provide characters with Super Specials and Specials, but the Meter can also be used to perform EX-Specials. These are lightly beefed up special moves that consume a little bit of the meter bar. An example of what these moves are; Ryu's original single hit fireball will land two hits as an ex-move, with the second setting the enemy on fire. This may seem like nothing at first, but in the heat of battle, this can be a great weapon to consume your enemies single projectile while leaving you with a second fireball heading their path, they may not be able to block it if it isn't expected. All of Ryu's special attacks can be powered in this way creating an ex-move. Each of the characters have their own beefed up ex-moves that add a great deal of variety to the offense. They can be used as desperation defensive attacks to get out of corners, by-pass projectiles, set up juggle opportunities for increased damage, or just plain add insult to injury. Part of the fun is playing with all the characters and learning what cool things they can do to turn the battle in your favor.

Unfortunately, Third Strike is probably the only game in the franchise that isn't the least bit beginner friendly. New players, to include even well rounded Street Fighter players will be at a complete disadvantage against someone who has been playing this for awhile, and this is all because of one new feature added to the franchise, and sadly for some never to return again in the later sequel; the ability to parry attacks. Real talk here, this is the one defensive feature that is very difficult to master, and quite frankly, all the people who do not like the game is because they can't pull it off at will. In other words folks, they just suck at the game and they're mad about it.

The parry works almost like performing a forward dash, but you tap the directional pad forward twice quickly right before you're hit, this results in slapping away the attack. When pressing down twice, it does the same for lower attacks. This technique adds a brand new dimension to Street Fighter; it completely eliminates jumping as the preferred method of attack. The parry can be used offensively to slap away a move, or give yourself breathing space against Shoto-spammers who love to throw fireballs. It gives you a split second to unleash a solid offensive, which brings me into my reason on why only one Super Special grew on me. After the parry, and if you should have a full Super Special bar, you can actually link two-in-one combos into specials, and then into Super Specials for amazing damage. Therefore, if you become very well at performing the parry, plus already mastered pass strategies then you have a better chance at landing those Super Specials. People well versed in playing SF only in the traditional way of zoning and spacing just don't stand a chance against people who mastered this. In addition, they will also be taken apart by the AI, who has this down to a science. Third Strike is by far the deepest version of Street Fighter to date and I know plenty of people who hail it as the best. This is one of those games that rewards you for your effort, by allowing you to mercilessly brutalize and humiliate your opponents. There is nothing like thrashing someone and then throwing out your character's taunt. Slower characters against quicker ones have more than a hope in hell at winning, which is great for me, because the slower non projectile characters are by far my favorite to use in the series; with Alex and Hugo being my favorites here and E.Honda, T-Hawk, and Zangief in all other versions.

One of the bonus stages helps you develop your parry move, but that is not going to be enough. There's a training mode where you select two characters. Let's say you choose Alex to learn with, you pick Ken as your aggressor. You attack Alex for a certain amount of time, then you play with Alex to parry whatever crazy combo you just pulled out of nowhere. This mode helped me out a lot against the AI and great human players.

Ryu, Ken, Chun-LI, and Akuma are the only familiar faces in this game from the SF Universe.The rest are new faces that feel like fused versions of the older line up. One character by the name of Necro feels like a cross between Dhalsim and Blanka with the stretching limbs and elastic body along with the electro-shock move. Alex is among my faves, as he's just a gritty, unorthodox grappler with a variety of cool moves, such as a leaping power bomb, dashing elbow, and some really nice grabs. Hugo, who happens to be one of the over-sized grunts straight out of Final Fight is the new Zangief. I really like using him with those devastating throw moves along with his melee attacks. Personally, I think this is the deepest SF roster with capoeira, boxing, kung-fu, and other styles rounding it out.

Third Strike really isn't for the less patient. The game is difficult to master and at times pretty frustrating. The final boss named Gill is very, very, hard if you're not at least decent with the parry. He battles with fire and ice elemental abilities, plus he has Super Specials that can inflict up to 90% damage. I can deal with this because Gill is a tough boss that can be beaten with skill. He's not one of those overly cheap bosses found in SNK fighting games.

Now Hyper Fighting Street Fighter II.... It's a great idea in theory, sadly it doesn't live up to its full potential. This is the rundown of it; the game features all 5 of the part II games in Arcade form: World Warrior, Champion Edition, Hyper Fighting, Super, and Super Turbo crammed into one. You select one of the games and from there select your character. Let's say you select Ken from World Warrior which is the first game in the SF line up. This is Ken at his most basic. He does not have the super special move found in Turbo, but he can inflict more damage than the later versions. He takes on the roster of Super SF Turbo. He can battle his future self who is at the peak of his power armed with a super special, additional rush in attacks, overhead attacks, etc. The problem with this mode is despite the fact you can choose any character you want, you can only face the default line up which is Super Turbo; therefore, forget about any match ups with the other versions as this throws the many possibilities such as Champion Edition Ken vs. Hyper Fighting Ryu out the window. You can only pull this off in two player vs. mode, and honestly, it never really appealed to me. Up to this day, I still can't put my finger on it, but something about it just bothers me. If Capcom wanted to make this a real anniversary, it should have been a multiple disk set with each of the games on it, plus the earlier versions of SF III being the Next Generation and 2nd Impact. I would've really liked to see how the game evolved, because I don't even remember those first two games.

Controls:

I very recently replayed the earlier SF II's right before coming back into Hyper Fighting, and I don't believe the controls are just as fine tuned at all. I found myself on certain occasions having to mildly exaggerate half circle motions, etc., just to get out moves. It was a problem for me on some occasions, and the AI plays kind of cheap. This lead to some frustrating loses. In the case of Third Strike the controls are perfect. There's no move I cannot perform at all, parry's are simple enough and if they don't work for you, then practice is the key. I can easily move from two-in-one combos into more damaging moves. For this game, there's nothing negative I can say about it.

Graphics/Music/Sound:

SF II series shows its age in many ways. The character designs are still pretty good while on the other hand the animations do feel dated. They look a little stiff if anything. The only real winner here to me is still the backgrounds as they capture the characters personalities very well, like Ken's stage where he needs that attention from the public. The game features three different soundtracks that can be chosen in the options. You can choose the original music found in World Warrior up to Hyper Fighting, the updated version found in Super and Super Turbo, or completely remixed versions. I normally avoid the remixes, not because they're bad but I just didn't grow up with those. The sound effects in regards to the voice overs are arcade perfect. They're exactly how I remember them from the "Hadoken" chant to Blanka's yell.

Now Third Strike still looks very good despite being over a decade old. I really don't care how I come off here, but anyone who tells me that the graphics in this game are terrible either need a new set of eyes, or they simply need to let go of their hatred towards the fighting engine. There are so many small details displaying how visually amazing this game is. The character designs are very good as the older cast appears to have aged a few years. Chun-Li looks more like a woman as opposed to her Alpha prequel counterpart. The newer cast have some very interesting designs, like the hermit Oro who battles with only one arm looking like some little demon. The females showing off some skin look great, but Capcom does resort to the Shoto-fighter design swaps, with Ryu, Ken, Sean, and Akuma using the same design. They do have a few animations that sets them apart though thankfully.

I have to point out the animations which look really good. The bikini wearing African princess Elena has one of the best ready stance movements. She battles using capoeira and during her stance she is constantly moving as if she's dancing in place. I love watching her in action with her break dance style of fighting. The way she spins around it seems as if she has no bones in her body. Makoto's fighting stance appears as if her body is in constant harmony when she slowly moves forward slightly waving her arms in front of her. Ryu's fireball clearly comes from within, as the inner chi burst causes his outfit to expand from the inside. There are many details to look for in the characters movements. The graphics have some truly outstanding backgrounds consisting of dark eerie forests, secluded streets, in front of a Gothic nightclub, another forest area where the fight is taking place at dawn and snakes fall from the trees every time someone hits the ground hard. The only flaw I can think of is how lifeless the spectators are. They look like a window full of mannequins. The BGM compliments the settings with one being a jazz/hip hop hybrid, and at least one trance score that would probably make Paul Oakenfold proud. Some of the characters like Alex, Gill, and Urien have small lines of dialog, while others have their classic move chants. I have no issues with the voices or even the bone crushing sound effects. The blows to the face stand out the most sounding very painful.

Replay:

Of course the vs. mode is going to see many replay sessions, but for me, the training mode refining my skills kept me playing this game. Recently I got back into it because now this game can be played online through the PSN. I found it to be a pretty good experience. I was amazed to see how many people are still playing this game. Now, of course I'm reviewing the PS2 version, however since I did play this online I'll give a heads up on that as well. I gave this several tries after being out of practice for awhile, and I found myself up against high ranked players and got waxed. I'm not sure if I can blame the match set up, it was probably more my fault just diving in. I know how to play the game, so I can imagine the hell newbies are going to experience. It just may turn them off completely. I did notice a little bit of lag which felt like it delayed moves. The matches still turned out well though. I would really love to dedicate more time to this game, unfortunately there are just so many other things on my list to play or replay.

SF II Movie:

For those who saw the movie already, I'll let you know this is the edited version. The blood splatter when Ryu tore open Sagat's chest with the Shoryuken is gone, along with various things in the Chun-Li scene, etc. You're better off putting in your copy of the movie. To others who never saw this; it's the animated version and not that Van Damme garbage. The movie has a bare bones plot that tries to fit in each of the characters for the sake of fighting each other. The animation is definitely a high point, as you will be treated to some really well done fights. The choreography has moments of brilliance, as you will see some nice take-downs and actual martial arts moves.

Final Thoughts:

I would love to give this collection a higher rating, too bad though Hyper Fighting and the butchered movie keeps me from doing this. Third Strike is a great fighting game and it's moving closer towards being my favorite in the franchise; with that said, I really have to mention that over the last several years I began skipping all negative reviews of this game, in which this is just unlike me. It's not because I don't want to hear anything negative about the game. It's just that the negative criticism comes from people not knowing how to play it, which leads them to rip the character roster and visuals only to pad their complaints. I believe if this game was more beginner friendly then the graphics would be great, fighting roster deep and creative, etc. I feel Third Strike is among the most unfairly bashed fighting games out there. If you have a very low level of patience then this game is not for you.

Pros:
-SF III Third Strike

Cons:
-Everything else, Learning curve for Third Strike

Will probably help in sprouting some early gray hairs.

Sat, 5 Jan 2013 23:46:49 +0000

Ryu Hayabasa receives a message from a woman by the name of Sonia, that the Black Spider Clan are attempting to awaken the four Greater Fiends of legend in an attempt to destroy his clan. He encounters a woman by the name of Elizabet, and this later leads him back to his village which is soon under attack; Ryu pursues Elizabet and learns exactly what she's planning.-summary

While I was re-playing Ninja Gaiden 3, I felt the need to go back in time and replay the first two games for the sake of noting whatever steps it may have taken forward or backwards. When I came across Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 for the PS3 in my collection, I remembered never playing Ninja Gaiden II for the X-Box 360, which actually came out first with Sigma 2 being the update for it. After finishing it over the weekend, I can see why the game received an update in the first place. It was indeed a step down from the original, and there were several things I found about it to be quite annoying. In short, I'm glad that I decided to give the game a play, but after finishing it on the normal difficulty, this is a game I can't see myself coming back to ever again.

Game Play:

Released in 2008, Ninja Gaiden II is a single player action/adventure game that once again follows Ryu as he crushes all in his path. The story finds him chasing after a woman named Elizabet, whom steals the Demon Statue from his village during a battle with a ninja master by the name of Genshin. She uses the statue to reawaken the Greater Fiends lurking on the planet. Her ultimate goal is to reawaken the Archfiend. Ryu will traverse through 17 chapters battling many powerful Fiends as well as members of the Black Spider Clan, whom have joined forces with them.

The story is once again delivered through various tablets and memos, and this provides some type of back story on the Fiends. The story won't win any points for excitement, but at least it gives Ryu a reason for running around slicing people and creatures into ribbons, as if he plans on serving them on the side together with a bowl of Ramen. And since I'm on the subject of slicing and dicing, wow, this game deserves a hell of a load of cool points for making gratuitous violence look so damn awesome. I mean seriously, when Ryu gets open on his enemies, he leaves a serious blood trail of bodily destruction. If you need to back track an area for any reason, well, follow the trail of body parts and blood and you will be good. If you unleash his full powered Ultimate Attack on a single enemy, the poor bastard will be in at least a half dozen pieces.

The game's combat engine still operates in the same manner, with the player being forced to master Ryu's offensive and defensive capabilities; blocking, dodging, counter attacks, and combos will see to it that Ryu will survive most of his encounters. The fighting engine is still very deep with a plethora of weapons to master along with combos. Many of the melee weapons from the original game return, such as the Vigorian Flail and Lunar Staff. New weapons such as the chain-sickle Kusari-Gama, and bladed gloves called the Falcon's Talons will have you forgetting all about the Dragon Sword. These weapons are fun to play with as they have some very exciting and hellish moves, in order to kill and dismember opponents in a fashion that never becomes boring. You can grab enemies with the chain part of the weapon and hack off a leg. The bladed gloves will have Ryu stabbing them so deep and hacking them into pieces afterwards, you will probably feel sorry for some of them even though they just slashed you a few times. Ryu can also finish off wounded enemies with a technique called the Obliteration. This is a series of strikes or even fatal single strikes that violently finishes off enemies. The Obliteration is something that must be done immediately, because wounded enemies become suicidal by stabbing you very deep, and then blowing themselves up on top of you with explosive weapons. The combat is indeed the highlight because the weapons present so many different strategies, plus it's amazingly fast paced and blood pumping. The ability to upgrade weapons and magic is still intact, by collecting Essence from fallen opponents which acts as currency; the Essence still allows Ryu to use his Ultimate Attack, and it can also work towards healing him as well as replenishing magic.

This game is more linear than its predecessor. Every chapter is straight forward with maybe one occasion requiring you to back track, but that's mainly because that particular chapter takes place in a set environment and not because there's something you have to find. For the most part though, the action takes priority over everything which is actually quite different from the first game. There are no real moments to pull off your acrobatics or test your wall running skills against difficult odds to reach higher ground. This is actually something that I miss from the original, since there were times you felt like you were playing with a ninja, while in this game Ryu feels like just another action hero. Unfortunately, this is a very small gripe when compared to the game's other problems.

Ninja Gaiden II feels as if the developers at Team Ninja all came in to work on this game drunk everyday. Now I'm not saying that the game is terrible, at least for me as a hardcore gamer I welcomed the challenge; I came, I saw, I sliced ass. Casual gamers on the other hand... More than likely are quitting by the third stage boss battle because the game is way too difficult. Perhaps that may sound like a bit of a contradiction on my part since many people know I prefer tough games, but this game is hard for the wrong reasons.

The difficulty curve mainly comes from bad programming as opposed to working on your skills. OK, I will give it this; there are plenty of moments such as the second boss battle, which is against Genshin that relies more on skill. However, there's a very small batch of boss battles that are very cheap. They will spam highly destructive and difficult to dodge moves, thus, forcing you to really take your time which lengthens the battles. For example, leading towards the very end there are three boss battles. One of these fights are against a sorcerer named Dagra Dai. His lightening attacks are difficult to avoid anyway, but he heavily relies on these attacks which can make the battle really long, and the fact he's flying most of the time doesn't help. This fight probably wouldn't be as bad if not for the very poor automatic aiming with the arrow. I have seen some people claim that the arrow is very accurate at all times. Maybe they're talking about Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2, or perhaps they should send me their copy of the game. Ryu seems to have a very hard time hitting his targets on different occasions. I would be able to nail Dagra Dai with about 4 arrows, then all of a sudden the arrows would just start missing despite him not even moving. The targeting interface has a few moments like these; there's another boss battle against two flying dragons. Forget about the automatic aiming hitting when it wants too, the other problem is trying to hit them manually. Ryu will automatically aim at the wall completely out of the area of the targets, because I'm guessing there's some type of glitch here that makes it impossible for him to decide which target to fire at. He's probably thinking, "when in doubt, shoot at nothing".

The enemy ninjas late in the game constantly unleashed explosive shurikens so damn much, that I thought an actual nuke was heading my way. I mean everybody is throwing these things at a very high volume. Many times I saw two of those things stuck in Ryu's back to the point where I thought he was growing them. On one occasion I was turning a corner and Blaow!, an explosive arrow and I had no idea where it came from. Team Ninja at some point obviously forgot the difference between challenging and cheapness. I also noticed another problem and this was during the combat. There's one stage close to the end where Ryu is attacked by something like 50 ninjas at once. Now I am aware that there are weapons for every situation, and during a moment like this, the Dragon Sword for example, would be a poor choice of weapon since Ryu mainly focuses on one opponent with this. The thing that caught my attention, despite whatever weapon I used, if Ryu hacks off a leg or an arm, instead of finishing the opponent right then, he would change focus to enemies who aren't wounded. This created a problem for me, because when he turned around from the injured warrior, the amputee would then attempt his suicide move. I fell victim to this a few times, and this is the fault of the game. There are also some glitches that people tend to ignore; enemies would some times be stuck in the environment running like mad in place, or not programmed to hop onto tables or over rocks to come after you. In this generation of games there is no excuse for hiccups like that.

The game has a lower difficulty called Acolyte; I tried out this mode and the enemies are still just as tough, which means newbies and casual gamers may not find much of a reason to continue playing. When looking at this game, I just can't help but notice how so much better Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 is. There's one stage in this game that did not make it to Sigma 2, and it involves Ryu heading underground into a cavern where he battles some bug-like creatures. This area is very annoying, because you spend what feels like eternity running through the place hacking things, and then out of nowhere a boss battle will trigger. For my bad luck, I dodged the boss out by going into another area. It passed me by and I was forced to spend another life time or so trying to find it, just to engage in like a 3 minute battle if that. I found this segment to be no fun at all.

Ninja Gaiden II feels a long ways from the high standard set by the original. The game play in the original is top notch, while this game feels almost carelessly put together.

Controls:

Thankfully this area is spot on. The controller uses all of the buttons for various actions such as, quick and strong attacks, jumping, projectiles, and directing the camera. At one point I thought the button responses where kind of off for specific combos, but once I focused on the presses I realized it was me and not the game. It was more than likely due to the constant pressure from the enemies. The magic attacks are still performed by pressing two buttons simultaneously.

Graphics, Music, Sound:

Even though the game reuses the character designs from the original game, I think they still look great, and the game appears more glossy than its PS3 update. Personally I think it looks better. Now for me, the backgrounds and stage designs are what clearly stands out. Future Tokyo looks awesome with some good detail in the buildings. The place really does feel like the future. Some of the other settings like Volf's castle captures the epic feel of a high profile game, and this also goes for the later chapters that take place in the Fiend's underworld. The animation for the most part is still very fluid during the action. Ryu moves gracefully during his combos, as he strikes high, then strikes low taking off a leg with his Dragon Sword. The Obliteration's look really cool, as Ryu hacks off both legs, then when the body falls on its stumps, he takes off their heads with the finesse of a guillotine. Ryu's Izuna Drop defines cool. For those who don't know, Ryu launches his enemy into the air, then grabs them performing a dive driving them head first into the ground. The first game he obviously broke their necks, here nothing is left to the imagination as he explodes their entire heads.

On the negative side, along with the glitches in animation, the frame rate slows down to a crawl when there's a large amount of enemies. On one occasion it actually looked cool fighting in Matrix-like slow-mo, but this is obviously a glitch that shouldn't have happened. Plus the camera can work against you. I remember on one occasion during the quick combat, the environment itself blocked the action completely and I was fighting blind. The camera was also a problem during the two dragons boss battle, and I was some times killed by what I believe to be the dragons tail while jumping, simply because I just couldn't see it.

The music doesn't feel as well directed as the previous game. It's not really an issue when I think about it. The focus of the game is on the action, and the techno-rock scores carry the mood well enough. There are plenty of moments during the game where it feels like a big release and this is something I like. I enjoyed the voice acting with the English voice actor for Volf still delivering an awesome hammy performance. The sound effects are good, with the sword clashes during the blocks feeling genuine. The explosions are nice, loud, and painful to hear some times.

Replay:

I think with the exception of playing this game on the higher difficulties, there really isn't much here to offer. The single campaign can be around 6 - 8 hours, maybe longer considering the many deaths you'll suffer from cheap boss battles. There are leaderboards and DLC, but this is nothing when compared to the online multi-player found in Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 for the PS3. If you dig the online scene a great deal, then Sigma 2 should no doubt be your buying choice. In fact, Sigma 2 is so well put together that game should be in your possession way before this.

Final Thoughts:

Ninja Gaiden II is not difficult the likes of Demon Souls, Dark Souls, or even its predecessor. It's difficult only because of cheapness, and I really didn't feel like I accomplished anything beating this game. The only people I can imagine arguing that it takes pure skill to rock it, are 360 fanboys who only want to praise their system as hands-down the greatest. I recommend this game only if you already played Sigma 2 and you're curious, but there are far better action games than this on the 360.

Pros:
-Visually nice, gory and deep combat system

Cons:
-Glitchy and very cheap AI

Crash Bandicoot 3: WARPED Quick Tip by Pine_Bluff_Variant

Fri, 7 Dec 2012 22:00:04 +0000

While I admit nostalgia may colour my perception of this game, to me this is one of the best platformers ever released, while nowadays it might be a bit easy for some gamers, the music, the artstyle, the 'wacky' level design, it all came together to form one amazing experience. Platformer fans owe themselves to try this game, or any of the previous titles. A shame the franchise went downhill rapidly when Naughty Dog stopped development of Crash titles.

Still a blast, even if it shows its age [May contain spoilers]

Tue, 27 Nov 2012 21:16:12 +0000

Overview

In this groundbreaking 1996 title you play as adventurer Lara Croft who is on the hunt for an ancient artifact called the Scion, which requires her to travel across the globe for it's pieces. but she will have to face off against deadly creatures and traps alike to acquire them.

Story Introduction and Premise

The game starts off with a CGI cutscene detailing how Lara comes to know of the Scion. one of the things that have not aged well at all are these cutscenes, with it's compressed video quality and awkward 90's low-budget animation. Thankfully the plot of the game is interesting enough, even if it lacks in intricacy. Lara isn't one of the most detailed characters in the world: she likes adventure, she owns a mansion, and she has a hilariously proportioned body and that's about it. But the fact that a woman was headlining what became a massive gaming franchise was a big deal at the time. Shame they didn't make her a more detailed character.

Gameplay

Here is where the games major strengths and flaws lie. A little over a decade after first playing this game I still enjoy the exploration, the puzzle solving and fighting the strange beasts. A big problem is the game doesn't exactly have fantastic controls (as in, trying to move Lara feels like moving a tank) but I was surprised how quickly I adapted to it's 'unique' control scheme. I played this game on the Playstation, and that system had (and the PS3 still has) a notoriously bad D-PAD. I feel that being able to use an Analog stick to control Lara would have improved the feel of the game (I also had a better experience playing the later games on the PC)

Platforming and puzzle-solving make up the majority of this game, and thankfully it is not incredibly frustrating as one might expect. In fact, solving the puzzles and successfully landing a massive leap give a nice feeling of satisfaction (and the puzzles aren't stupid hard), combat is slightly hampered by the controls but the game features an auto-lock on system so you don't need to worry about aiming, just maneuvering. If combat took up the majority of this game I imagine it would get frustrating quickly.

The level design is a combination of odd and actually quite impressive set-pieces. There are still moments in this game that made me go 'wow' (the camera zooming out and showing you standing on top of a Sphinx) and there are moments that just make you go 'wat' (A lever underwater opens up a door above ground. Why?) a nice thing about the stage design is that navigating the levels isn't a massive hassle, you will very rarely get completely lost. But they also aren't a cakewalk, and the difficulty curve feels fair.

Graphics and Sound--Production Values

I think it's fair to describe the graphics at this point as 'pretty bad', at the time it was one of the best looking 3D games out there (especially in an era with such abominations as 'Bubsy 3D') but now time has caught up with this game: the animation looks stiff, the textures blurry and the level design uses a lot of 90 degree angles. the sound work sounds a lot better, the guns are loud, Lara makes a sickening crunch noise if she falls to far and the large beasts make some pretty good roars. The voice acting does not hold up however, it ranges to mediocre to hilariously bad. Thankfully talking also isn't a major component of this game.

To summarize: while this game is clearly showing its age, and you might take issue with one or two things in this game, I'd say it's still worth checking out, due to its value in gaming history and the fact that at its core it's still a fun game.

Sony steals a winner from Nintendo...and runs with it!

Mon, 26 Nov 2012 08:36:14 +0000

Ah...the Sony PlayStation! One of the few things my dad actually did for me was introduce me to this console growing up. I have been playing video games since I could ever walk and talk. I have always been a Nintendo kid before, my first console was a NES. Atari was before my time so the only Atari I knew was at the arcade. After a while I got my SNES. When it was time for the N64 to come out, I already knew about it because of things like the Nintendo Power magazine. However I did not get neither the N64 nor the PSone until years later (2003-2004), because we were always tight on money. I still got to play the N64 at a friend's house, but that is another story for another review.

Anyways, one weekend that I got to spend with my dad, he brought me over my uncle's house to spend time with that side of my family. I didn't know what to think when they busted out the grey box that looked like a toilet. I thought at the time that it was just a funky looking CD-player thing. That was of course without knowing about the controllers and mem' cards. They plugged it up and I played my first PlayStation games like Siphon Filter, Crash Bandicoot, Spyro the Dragon, and Jet Moto among a few others. Note that this was maybe a year after launch. After me and my cousin had our fun with the console, my uncle and dad played games like Resident Evil, Evil Dead, and Martian Gothic Unification. I thought the polygons were astounding and me being around eight and never seeing anything like it, my first experience with what is now one of my favorite genres (Survival Horror) gave me many restless nights and literally made me piss myself. It is hard to think nowadays for me to be scared of polygons vs today's crisp HD (granted I haven't seen much HD because tv's are expensive as all hell.)

The point of the story is that while CD's and DVD's are practically useless when scratched and are hard to manage, the system still revolutionized how games are controlled and saved. While it is true that Microsoft perfected saving with the Xbox's internal memory, almost every controller since the original PlayStation has two analog sticks, a D-pad, four face buttons, select (back), start, four shoulder buttons, and a vibrating feature. It also gave new life to the RPG genre, further expanding what the SNES did with it, and with Resident Evil and Silent Hill, invented the new survival-horror genre that screwed with our minds. While the system has it's flaws and Sony stole the plans they had with Nintendo and made something of it, Microsoft and even Nintendo brought elements from the console in their own like the controller design and the use of disk formats for games. Sony may have had trouble with hacking but even with all the innovations at Nintendo, I believe that only Sony shows us how to truly play beyond.

Legend of Zelda Quick Tip by YodaSan2

Sat, 10 Nov 2012 02:48:47 +0000

Note: I will try to post more often but not so much in this community at the moment. I have roms on the Wii that I can use to review some older Nintendo games and can buy them on the virtual console, but as is the definite case for the Genesis, I don't have the older consoles, so I can honestly review a game until I have played it recently. I'm sure you can understand that I can't review what I don't have. I'm nineteen and until I'm on my own after university, my plans of being an avid reviewer will be at a slowdown. So be patient and while your waiting, check out my other communities.

CCG 2: The Next Generation
The Big 3
Anime101

I had only stumbled across the original Legend of Zelda in recent years. E ven though I had I NES growing up with all three Mario Bros. (Well excluding the real SMB 2, stupid Doki Doki), I had never heard of Zelda until I got my SNES. I believe it was a used unofficial bundle that included both Super Mario World and A Link to the Past, ALTTP instead of a second controller. At the time, medieval based stuff like toys and stories were my thing. Now, I still love the whole knights, princesses, and dragons thing. I really didn't have an opinion on graphics, but it was Zelda and for a NES game it was huge and over the top. To this day, I have not seen nor heard of a NES cart that has had a save feature, maybe excluding Final Fantasy? (Don't quote me on that). It was awesome in all its 8-bit glory and I felt privileged to play the game that started it all. My only complaint was that the dungeons were non-linear in the sense you could go anywhere and do anything you chose (for the most part). It was one of those where the hell do I go games. It had me stunned a little because ALTTP onward, you had a set path for the dungeons and you were always pointed in the right direction if not sometimes subtle. Besides that gripe, the original Legend of Zelda was epic and if you haven't played it, I recommend to go check it out!

Tetris Quick Tip by Madpenguin

Fri, 28 Sep 2012 13:08:58 +0000

Probably the greatest pack in video game of all time. It still gives me chills to think when the Game Boy was first released I was ready to blow this off because it came with the handheld system instead of Super Mario Land which I ended up buying together with it. In the end, this puzzler took up far more of my time and went on to be my favorite for the Game Boy for a very long time. A true gaming classic.

Does what a sequel is suppose to do. Be awesome.

Tue, 25 Sep 2012 03:27:18 +0000

Ryu Hayabasa receives a message from a woman by the name of Sonia, that the Black Spider Clan are attempting to awaken the four Greater Fiends of legend in an attempt to destroy his clan. He encounters a woman by the name of Elizabet, and this later leads him back to his village which is soon under attack; Ryu pursues Elizabet and learns exactly what she's planning. -summary

Ninja Gaiden has proven to be a success since its release on the X-Box back in 2004. Since then, the game had been updated for the same system as Ninja Gaiden Black, and later ported to the PS3 as Ninja Gaiden Sigma, which turned out to be another enjoyable update. Of course, a sequel would soon be in the works and Ninja Gaiden II would make it to the X-Box 360 in 2008, with an updated port Ninja Gaiden Sigma II for the PS3 in 2009. I never played the 360 version, but word around the campfire is that the PS3 got the better end of the deal. Although not as great as the original; Team Ninja still delivered what I believe to be a very solid sequel.

Game Play:

Ninja Gaiden Sigma II is a single player game that follows Ryu through 17 chapters as he battles the Black Spider Clan and powerful monsters named Greater Fiends. Along the way, you will be able to pick up items that increase your health bar, various weapons that can be upgraded when you visit the Blacksmith, as well as magic attacks called Ninpo. One of the coolest features to the game that veterans of the original will notice, is that Ryu possesses his moves from the original game at the start, such as the Guillotine Throw and Izuna Drop. This is some spot on attention to story detail and Team Ninja deserves props for this, because it's unlikely a ninja master will forget what he knows only a year later for the sake of a sequel.

The game forces you to master his blocking, evasion, counter attacking techniques, and long linking combos. It's very important that these basic tactics become second nature, because the cannon fodder will overwhelm you quickly using the numbers game, various projectiles, and vicious combos of their own. Novices will die a lot in this game against the grunts, since more than likely they will rely on button mashing which is highly not recommended. Team Ninja appeared to do their best in making this sequel quite different from the original with deeper game play.

Along with what appears to be Ryu's endless combo list, he can perform Obliteration Techniques on most enemies. These are finishing moves against severely injured enemies whom have lost limbs in battle. The finishers can either be graphic decapitations or the removal of more limbs, by the time you're done with your foes they will probably only have an arm left. Quickly finishing opponents is very important, because despite missing an arm or a leg, they can be extremely dangerous by performing suicide moves against you that can heavily damage your health bar.

The boss battles have moments where they can be very intense, even during the first two chapters. The battles deeply rely on constant evasion and counter attacking; this is basically the core strategy in these fights. Now some of the battles such as one against a Giant statue requires a little bit more than that. The point is, gamers with very little patience and no skill are going to have the worse time even on the normal difficulty.

Some of the boss battles are really cool to fight, such as one against a giant Lycan named Volf, whom battles with an over-sized scythe, with some punishing throw moves along with melee attacks. And the leader of the Black Spider Clan, Genshin; whom puts your evasion and counter attacking to the test. This boss can counter and parry most of your attacks, plus he uses a Ninpo spell attack similar to what you can do.

In regards to Ryu's weapons, almost everything from the previous game returns, such as the double katana blades, which are so cool to use along with the Vigorian Flail, which are pretty much bladed Nunchuks. The new weapons such as the dual sticks called Tonfu are very fun to play especially after being upgraded, and Volf's scythe is cool also, but the Kusari-Gama which happens to be a chain-sickle is by far my favorite; with this weapon, it is very possible to pull off very large combos, plus it has one of the coolest Obliterations. I made sure to master every possible combo with this weapon.

Ninja Gaiden Sigma II is also quite different from its predecessor in design, as it's completely linear and doesn't allow the player to revisit areas and search for items that may have been left behind. This time around, if you missed something, then it's gone and that's all there is to it; which makes searching for items located in treasure chest very important. On the plus side though nothing is remotely difficult to find, and since Ryu is a man of action, the game focuses solely on that leaving out mind boggling puzzles and even traps. In addition, there are three stages which can be played by the three female characters from the previous game and the spin off Ninja Gaiden - Dragon Sword; they are Rachel the Fiend Hunter, Momiji the Shrine Maiden, and Ayane the Kunoichi. Although they possess their own weapons and magic, for example Rachel toting a mini-gun along with her over-sized hammer, they really add nothing to the story and their appearances really aren't that fresh, since they're used in the same areas Ryu already ventured through with little variation. The game does a good enough job hiding how meaningless these characters are by delivering over the top action along with some decent boss battles.

The game is your basic good and evil story, yet it tries to be more than that though. There are some cut scenes with dialog, but some of the story is delivered through scrolls and books found on dead ninjas and various places. The plot mainly follows Ryu as he battles the Greater Fiends, whom are being awaken by Elizabet with the Demon Statue she took from Ryu's village. This all leads to the final showdown with the Archfiend.

Now besides the female characters pretty much just being pretty faces that are used to slaughter waves of creatures. Another problem I have is that the gameplay doesn't reach its full potential. Ryu is a ninja, but his athletic abilities such as wall jumping and running along multiple walls are never tested. I'm not asking for instant cheap deaths like God of War. However, there should have been some way to truly exercise his ninja skills. The final stage in the original game is a perfect example, as it followed Ryu trying to escape the area of the final battle alive, by traversing through the collapsing landscape. In that game, there were a few moments where he felt like a ninja, while here it feels as if other characters can probably make it through his game. The characterization is indeed weaker here, and this is also felt down to the bosses and side characters. And speaking of the bosses, there are rehashed bosses with a couple of lame ones; the giant fire-breathing armadillo makes me cringe thinking about it, and fighting the Statue of Liberty ventures into the realm of completely stupid.

Controls:

I found this area to be very sharp. The controller uses the left stick to move, while the directional pad scrolls through weapons, etc, and along with button inputs everything controls very well. This is very important in regards to the combos, because some of them require precise presses. Counter attacking simply requires practice and this also goes for evading. If you're being thrashed, the solution is practice and nothing more.

Graphics/Music/Sound:

I think the game has a very smooth frame rate, and the cut scenes have some really nice moments. The animation is very fluid and you can see all of the smaller details, such as Ryu parrying a sword attack and then responding with a quick dashing slice to the leg, taking it off completely and watching his enemy fall to the ground. And speaking of legs, the Kusari-Gama ropes an enemy with the chain and Ryu grabs him by the leg and hacks it off. There are some brutal animated sequences during the Obliteration's. There are some memorable backgrounds for me with Chapter 13 being one of them. This stage has a very eerie setting with a backdrop that features a rain storm of bright red blood soaking everything; the stage is beautiful yet very creepy with an other worldly feel. The best backgrounds are found late in the game while Ryu's descending into the Underworld. The visuals are outstanding with nice camera work providing a nice view deep into the background and they seem to expand quite nicely the closer you approach them. It's better to see it for yourself to get what I'm saying here.

As much as I don't mind seeing jiggly breast on female characters; the monsters must get the nod for the best character designs. You can see the shuriken belts by the hind legs on the ninja dogs. Plus the Centaurs and robotic like creatures called the Marionettes look awesome, as the latter creatures appear to be a splice between mannequins and spiders. Most of the bosses look really nice with Alexi Master of the Storm and Elizabet being among them. The BGM is strange in a way; there are moments where it gets the blood pumping with its mix of techno and orchestra, while at times it feels strange in combination with the setting. Overall I enjoy it and it fits well with the grand feel of the bosses. The sound effects I think stand out more with the voice actors, I think they get into their roles pretty well with the actor for Volf clearly having fun hamming it up. Some of the sound effects do stick out, with the splattering of characters bodies when Ryu slams them against the wall breaking their arms and legs, or burning them to death with his Inferno Ninpo. The negative issues in these areas are pretty small from where I see it though.

Replay:

The game does have a two player online mode that can only be done during team missions. I don't really care much for online play, but I had fun here a few times. I bumped into this one player who felt as if they were a kindred soul or something, because they thought like I did and we conquered some hard ass missions despite dying a lot to do it. The missions are in arena like combat, and for the most part it performed well, but I did notice some lag here where things would move in slow motion. In any case, I found it to be pretty good. You can go it solo or with the AI, but playing with another person is the way to go since it can virtually be impossible to do it any other way. The higher difficulty settings definitely add to the replay; you will notice one hell of a difference especially on Master Ninja, since the bosses grabs are instant death.

Final Thoughts:

Ninja Gaiden Sigma II is excellent for gamers searching for highly intense fast paced action. The moderate difficulty along with harder modes and online missions are a plus. The main campaign is around 10 hours, which is a pretty good length I think. There are also various checkpoints through out the stages for people who prefer to take those short breaks. If you enjoy games shades of Devil May Cry, Dante's Inferno, or God of War, then give this a try. It's also not really necessary to play the first game, but I highly recommend doing so since it's better than this one.

Pros:
-Moderate challenge, nice visuals, deep game play, online play

Cons:
-Weak characterization, some rehashing, not for everyone

A Short Tribute to a Trail Blazer

Sun, 9 Sep 2012 18:56:10 +0000

Ah, I remember the good old days, sitting in front of the TV, playing the old Sega Genesis, awesome games like Sonic the Hedgehog, Shining Force 2, and the NHL series, spectacularly losing my battle against video game addiction.

The Sega Genesis broke new ground when it was released in 1989 with it's 16-bit engine, and it killed it's only 16-bit competition, a popular Japanese system called the Turbo Grafx 16 (which, coincidentally, was my first home gaming system. My parents were too cheap to get me a Nintendo.). But sales for the Genesis didn't really begin to take off until 1991, with the release of their new mascot, Sonic the Hedgehog. With the introduction of Sonic, the Genesis began to overtake the Nintendo Entertainment System, and Nintendo was forced to launch their own 16-bit system, the Super NES. The two systems then engaged in a legendary neck and neck race for 16-bit supremecy which lasted until the very end of the 16-bit era.

Alright, enough history. Let's get right down to the core of what made the Genesis a great system. I would like to start with the hardware, but I don't know anything about that, except that it had significantly more power in it than it's 1989 16-bit competitor, the Turbo Grafx 16, which was not much more powerful than an 8-bit system (this is not to degrade the Turbo, as it was a good system in it's own right. I'll try to write about it sometime soon.). It's 1993 16-bit competitor, the Super NES, packed more of a punch in that area, but the Genesis still prevailed. But all I really know is that it displayed a lot of great graphics onscreen, and played some catchy music. We didn't hear a lot of voices, though. The boys at Nintendo claimed that the Genesis didn't have the capability, but I think it was just laziness on the part of the programmers. As for the controllers, they were nice, simple things that fit comfortably and snugly in your hands and didn't have l and r buttons on the top. They had a directional button, a start button, and three action buttons. A great layout for most games, but if you were into fighting games, it downright sucked. Fortunately, there were 6 button controllers available, and no, they didn't have l and r buttons, either. The Genesis also had a lot of add ons, but these hurt it more than they helped it. It was the second system to realize the potential of cd technology, and therefore the second system to have a cd attachment (betcha can't guess what the first system to have a cd player was... yep, the Turbo!! The Genesis, however, was the first system to make good games for their cd player. Just a piece of useless trivia from the Baron.). Later, they introduced another add on, the 32X, which was supposed to increase the power of the Genesis to 32-bit, but that turned out to be the biggest mistake Sega ever made. Even Sega admitted they screwed up with that one. Said one representative, "We promised but we didn't deliver". The 32X broke no new ground, and was being sold cheaply (read: from $150 to $19.99 in a year) in flea markets only a year after it was introduced, if that. It did have a few redeeming games, though, like Doom and an outstanding translation of Virtua Fighter.

Now we get to the good stuff. The stuff that makes or breaks the system: The games! And the Genesis had lots of 'em! You name the genre, Sega delivered the goods. The Genesis was the reigning king in the sports arena, with games like the NFL, NHL, and NBA live series from EA Sports. I can't name all the other companies that produced sports games for the Genesis, but among the non-EA Sports titles are Prime Time NFL Starring Deion Sanders, a great translation of the 2 on 2 arcade basketball classic NBA Jam, and the Mutant League games, which featured bloodthirsty mutant players and nasty plays-throw a bomb in football, it's the real thing! Strategy or puzzle games? You'll love Columns and Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine. As for the action games, there are plenty of those. To begin with, you have the Sonic the Hedgehog series, starring Sega's plucky blue mascot, who runs through levels at high speed, freeing the animals of Mobius from the evil Dr. Robotnik. Earthworm Jim stars an earthworm who gains super powers from a space suit and uses them against the evil Psy-Crow. You also have Aladdin, the best movie to game ever, and the best Contra game, called Contra: Hard Corps. And I dare not forget the Shinobi series, which started the whole ninja craze back in the day. Shooting games included Forgotten Worlds and Space Harrier. RPGs on the Genesis were few and far between, but when one came out, it was remembered forever. The Phantasy Star and Shining Force games are among the most influential in RPG history. There were no original fighting games, but the Genesis does have the better version of the original Mortal Kombat. If you're like me and consider the beat-em-up genre and the fighting genre to be the same, then you can include Golden Axe and Streets of Rage.

If there is one downside of the Genesis, it is that the games Sega rushed out for it at the end of the 16-bit era reek of the fact that they were rushed out. I can't tell you anything about them, as I never played any of them, but from what I heard, I'm not missing anything.

But those without a Genesis are missing something. This is a gaming system that no household should be without. If you happen to find one these days, buy it. You won't regret it.

Farewell, Sega Genesis, you'll be missed!

Punch-Out!! Featuring Mr. Dream [Wii] Quick Tip by Madpenguin

Mon, 3 Sep 2012 03:11:06 +0000

Excellent addition to the franchise. Nintendo brought their A game with this fifth installment, which maintains the wacky and energetic style of the previous games; with its pretty high difficulty and additional modes, this is definitely a title I recommend for the dying console if you missed it. Full review coming soon.

Bring more souls, Slayer of Demons! and so I did, for hours...

Sun, 19 Aug 2012 22:26:03 +0000

With Dark Souls releasing on the PC next week and that versions bonus content hitting consoles later this year, I thought I'd talk about Demon's Souls, the game which Dark Souls is the spiritual successor to.

The kingdom of Boletaria is engulfed in a colourless fog after the current ruler, King Allant uses souls to perform dark arts, raising the eldritch abomination the "Old One" from it's slumber. your character is one of many adventurers that enters the fog to save Boletaria, or to harness the souls for your own ends.

The prominent feature of this game and it's successor is the difficulty level. Not paying attention during the game can be fatal, simple enemies can be devastating in packs and stronger enemies will pose a challenge. this is not however fake difficulty that you find in games like "I Wanna be The Guy" as combat is simple to learn but deep, enemies can be defeated with simple strategy and different equipment sets can provide you an advantage over certain foes.

The game world is separated into different areas linked via a hub, all the levels following a dark fantasy theme: a ruined castle, a prison filled with deranged prisoners and stocked with torture devices, a swamp occupied with crazed lost souls... The areas perfectly depict a ruined, besieged world. In-game actions can affect the "tendency" of an area, allowing access to new sections of a level and affecting the toughness of enemies and their drop rate.

Like Dark Souls, the levelling-up system is flexible and you can create a multitude of character builds, along with them using different styles of play: you can have a character utilizing sheer brute force, a magic heavy user that kills from a difference, etc.

The online component will be familiar to players of Dark Souls. players can leave helpful or deceitful notes for other players to read, and they can be recommended.

A few things I disliked compared to Dark Souls: the character animation has very little weight to it, the weapon upgrading system is more complicated compared to the other game, and I thought the boss battles were not as good compared to the Dark Souls bosses.

I would heartily recommend this PS3 exclusive to fans of Action-RPG's and those seeking a challenge.

Links third adventure still holds up over 20 years later.

Fri, 17 Aug 2012 01:42:22 +0000

The kingdom of Hyrule is in danger of being taken over; a young boy named Link follows his uncle who receives a telepathic call from Princess Zelda begging for help. Link comes across his uncle wounded in the castle where she's held; he takes his shield and sword, and continues the mission to find Zelda in the castle. -summary

Up to this day, I know many fans of the Zelda franchise who pretty much hail Ocarina of Time as the definitive Legend of Zelda game, and rightfully so I will add. The game carried the tradition and expanded on what made the franchise great in the first place, and it has become the game that all future Zelda games have been and will probably always be compared to, but those seeds to greatness were planted somewhere, and it was here back in 1991 in The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. This game far surpassed the previous two games in every possible way and has went on to being hailed as one of the Super Nintendo's greatest achievements. After replaying it over the weekend; I think it still holds up pretty well 21 years later.

Now for those who may be unaware, although this is the third game of the franchise. It's not a sequel to the first two and it's very much a stand alone story. It's not necessary at all to play the first two games; I will say though that the first game should at least be given a try to familiarize yourself with the world of Zelda, and to see where it all began.

Game Play:

A Link to the Past is a single player, open world action/adventure game with RPG elements. The game doesn't feature any story-related cut scenes during play, but it is pretty much story driven. The player begins on a quest to retrieve three pendants in order to unlock a weapon called the Master Sword, which will help defeat a mad wizard by the name of Agahnim. The pendants are located inside of three dungeons and are guarded by powerful monsters. Once the pendants have been collected the story shifts into its second phase. Link is transported to the Dark World, and here he must free seven maidens trapped inside of dungeons. The maidens collective power is needed to shatter the barrier around the final castle, where the main villain behind everything named Ganon is present.

This games strongest attribute is the game play without a doubt. There is so much to do in this open world, you will spend hours searching for items that may not be completely necessary, but they will definitely help in your quest. In the beginning you're armed with only a sword, shield, and a lamp. As you progress you will be able to upgrade your shield, sword, and pick up many weapons such as fire and ice wands, arrows, bombs, a boomerang, and even a glove which is use to pick up large rocks. The awesome thing about all of these items is that you WILL have to use them all, and some of them are very necessary to move forward. There are areas that cannot be accessed if you don't have some of these things.

Some of the fun is searching around as well as buying things with your currency in the form of rubies, which can be picked up by defeating enemies or cutting your way through bushes; rubies can also be obtained by opening up treasure chest or some characters you meet will just give them to you. There's also something to gain in mini side quest that sees you helping out some of the populace; such as helping a lost blacksmith find his partner, and in return, they turn your sword into a more powerful weapon. The enemies are also vast consisting of spear hurlers, bomb throwers, vanishing ghost, and even a couple of thieves who knock your money on the ground and take it. They become even more aggressive as you progress and some of them will smash your health bar down viciously.

When I first came into this game I quickly noticed how much it expanded on the original, and it felt so much more than just a sequel. It was a full-fledge upgrade. The player begins with a life bar made up of only three hearts. These can be increased by picking up more heart containers. The original granted you these after defeating bosses, plus some were in hidden locations. It's pretty much the same idea here as bosses provide you with these heart increases. However, in the open world, these hearts come in pieces, and you will need to find four to create a whole heart; which makes it very important to literally search under every rock, investigate every cave, play every mini game etc. The game does reward you in different ways for your hard work. It may seem tedious to some at times, and this is when the game provides you with a bird for transportation to different areas.

The other areas this game improved on were the puzzles, dungeons, and boss battles. The puzzles aren't anything too tricky and they really shouldn't leave folks scratching their heads for long; the dungeons though aren't only dangerous but they can be considered puzzles themselves. I hadn't played this game in many years, and I found myself stuck wondering on which door should I take, or should I really use a key for this particular door. The game has its ways to play with your mind. The boss battles range from very easy to moderately difficult. For example, one boss battle requires you to blow the mask off its face with your limited bomb supply before you can attack and do damage. While another one forces you to switch between your ice and fire wands which depletes your magic gauge. These twist in the boss battles is definitely welcomed since it adds some variety to the conflicts, which keeps them from being one dimensional hack and slashes to the finish.

Possibly the best part of the game play is being able to switch at any time between the Dark World and Light World (Hyrule) after you obtain the Magic Mirror. The two worlds are mirror reflections of each other, yet there are small differences between the two. For example, if you come across an inhabited house in the Light World, it will be shattered and abandoned in the Dark World. Traversing between the two worlds also helps in solving puzzles to reach specific points in your travel. This was pretty amazing back then and it's still interesting now.

The game play does have one flaw that I believe can be found in all games like these. It can be frustrating after awhile navigating through the same terrain because either you're lost for some reason or you're grinding for money and items. The game does hold your hand a little, by marking certain points on your world map. So even though you may be stuck because of something, you will still know where to go next without a doubt.

Controls:

The game uses all of the buttons and everything performs very well. New to the game is being able to walk diagonally. This may seem like something small, but if you played the original then you will see it makes a difference. Selecting weapons can only be done by opening up the menu, and this is something I actually like, since there isn't a chance to accidentally use a health item when you're looking for something else. Being able to equip an additional weapon with the sword is still a plus and it performs well.

Graphics/Music/Sound:

Taking under consideration this is a first generation SNES game, like Super Mario World it's still pretty impressive in some areas. There are some nice backgrounds with the dark rainy beginning being the most memorable to me. The best area is definitely the blue fogged Lost Woods which looks so good and even somewhat creepy. The Dark World does live up to its name, being a rather dreary and even dull world as opposed to the lively and vibrant Hyrule. There are several different rock and green bush patterns along with a cemetery tossed in to dampen that repetitive feel, and when you add in the mountain and desert landscapes, it does give off that big world feel. The animation for some of the bosses movements are done well, and some of them have some nice character designs. One thing that stands out to me is Link though, as others have mentioned, it does appear as if he's walking on air.

The music fits well with the look of the game. It uses an updated version of the original song for the main quest. The BGM for the Lost Woods stands out for me the most, and I wish this theme was used more in the game. While the boss themes are good, the dungeon theme is repetitive and bland. The sound effects have their moments too with the rattling chain link sound for the Hookshot being hard to over look, as well as the smashing with the hammer when you turn enemies into ice and crush them.

Replay:

I'm usually not all about replaying long games like these which is probably over 12 hours. I can imagine completest coming back to collect all of the heart pieces, because you don't need them all to beat the game. But with the lack of a multi-player or even an alternate quest. I would say it's best to finish it then move on to something else.

Final Thoughts:

A Link to the Past is definitely among Nintendo's finest. The game was so well received that it saw a re-release for the Game Boy Advance and that should tell you something. If you can down load this or even buy it used then I recommend doing so; with its vast world, many weapons, items, interesting boss encounters, style, and of course save system, this is a Super Nintendo classic that should be played by all gamers. It could have had a more engrossing story though, but this is 1991 we're talking about here; story really wasn't much of a factor back then.

Pros:
-Deep game play, vast world to explore, moderate challenge

Cons:
-Backtracking can be a little irritating

My favorite of all the Mario games. 94%

Thu, 2 Aug 2012 16:58:22 +0000

Many gamers consider this the best game in the NES library, and while I won't say that since I don't think I've played a wide enough array of games for that console to come up with such a conclusion, I'll say that this is my favorite game with the Mario title on it. This is my favorite of all the Mario games since I think among Mario's "classic" games, this one is the toughest while still being fun and unlike the two previous Mario games, starts to include features that would be essential to future Mario games.

STORY

Bowser is back to unleash terror, but this time, he's brought his seven children, known as the Koopalings, to wreak havoc in seven kingdoms, and to steal the magic wands from those kingdoms for Bowser's nefarious plans. Mario and Luigi have to go stop the Koopalings' invasion through their airships, retrieve the stolen magic wands and turn the transformed kings back to normal, and eventually, fight Bowser himself...again.

What I find most interesting with this storyline is that unlike most other Mario games, Princess Peach isn't immediately the "damsel in distress," but rather in the beginning of most worlds you enter in the game, she supplies you with a power-up. It's not until near the end of the game that she gets kidnapped by Bowser.

GAMEPLAY

SMB3's gameplay is a vast improvement over the previous two games. If you're familiar with the gameplay mechanics of the first Super Mario Bros. (the American Super Mario Bros. 2 is pretty different, considering that it's merely Doki Doki Panic with Mario characters, and therefore has some pretty different gameplay mechanics, and I don't consider it a true sequel to SMB), then you know around 90% of Super Mario Bros. 3's mechanics. The right and left buttons on the d-pad make you walk right and left (respectively), Start pauses the game, B launches an attack (if you have a power-up that dishes out attacks), A makes you jump, and the Select button is restricted to the title screen to toggle between 1 and 2-player modes.

Throughout the game, you navigate through eight different worlds and have to complete a number of levels until you reach the end of the overworld map (usually you have to beat each level in order to get to the end of the map, but you can sometimes skip a level if there's an alternate, unblocked route), which features a castle with a transformed king and a Toad in distress, asking you to retrieve the magic wand from the Koopaling you have to fight.

The eight lands in the order of progression in the game are Grass Land, Desert Land, Water Land, Giant Land, Sky Land, Ice Land, Pipe Land, and Dark Land. The respective Koopalings you have to fight in these kingdoms are Larry Koopa, Morton Koopa Jr. Wendy O. Koopa, Iggy Koopa, Roy Koopa, Lemmy Koopa, and Ludwig von Koopa (you fight Bowser in Dark Land). With the exception of Bowser, you fight each of them on giant airships, that are often bristling with cannons and flamethrowers.

In the individual levels within the eight worlds you travel, they're quite varied. There's "regular" levels where you travel through a level on the world's surface while jumping over obstacles and defeating enemies. There's "sky" levels where you have to traverse through platforms above a giant bottomless pit, and these are often "auto-scrolling," so make sure you're staying ahead of the screen's movement towards the right. There's levels where you have to go down a pipe and swim through water, and there's levels where you have to go down a pipe and traverse through an underground level. Aside from that, there' also smaller castles within each world that you have to beat. These castles often have lava pools and jumping fireballs much like the castles in the first Mario game, and in the end of each, you have to fight a reptilian creature known as a Boom Boom, though these guys are often easy to defeat.

There's also optional places in each world you can visit. These include "mushroom houses" that when you visit them, you choose from one of three chests to pick up a power-up and a location where you try to align three images to win a power-up (the power-ups you can win are a mushroom, leaf, or fireflower). Sometimes, a moving card will appear on the map and you can play cards to win things like coins, extra lives, and power-ups by flipping cards and matching two of a kind to win something. Once in a blue moon, a ship will appear on the map and when you get on it, you just collect a ton of coins and you go down a pipe in the end to fight two Hammer Bros..

In each map, you'll bump into the Hammer Bros., and when you beat the two of them, you'll get a power-up.

There's a smorgasbord of enemies you fight in this game. As usual, you got the Goombas, Koopa Troopas, Piranha Plants, and Buzzy Beetles, but there's some more this time around. Some of the new enemies are the Chain Chomp (when I was a little kid, I thought these were spastic football helmets that hurt you), Boo, Dry Bones (the Koopa Troopa skeletons in the fortresses), baby Piranha Plants (these are capable of jumping), Thwomps (the blocks in the fortresses that try to crush you), and Buster Beetles (the beetles that can throw Ice Blocks at you).

There's a bunch of new power-ups as well. Along with the fireflower, there's the leaf, which allows you to fly after attaining a high-enough speed. There's also the Tanooki suit, which like the leaf, allows you to fly, but also allows you to turn into a statue for protection against enemies (and can defeat otherwise invincible adversaries like the rotating lights and fireballs in the fortresses). There's a frog suit that allows you to swim better in underwater levels. Among the "best" power-ups are the P-wing, which is similar to the leaf, but allows you to constantly fly without having to run and fill up the P-meter (and flight ability doesn't run out unless if you get hit by an enemy). My favorite power-up is the Hammer suit, since this makes you throw hammers that can defeat nearly all enemies (such as the Boos and smashing blocks, which are invincible to tailspin attacks and fireballs), and when you crouch, the shell on the back of your suit protects you from fireball attacks. Because of how potent the Hammer suit it, it's only natural for it to be the rarest power-up in the game.

GRAPHICS

SMB3 is a step up in graphics compared to its two predecessors. Because of the more diverse environments, each world has a distinct visual style. With the graphical improvements, Mario and Luigi look better than in the previous two games, and the same can be said for all of the creatures in the game. Also, there's a much wider array of colors used in this game, and this game helped set the stage for what is now Mario's signature polychromatic worlds and creatures (while the first two SMB games had color, the color range wasn't very large). I think some of the best-looking environments in this game are for Ice Land and Dark Land. The former for the fact that it really does look and invoke the feeling of a chilly world (and to be humorous, I bet this is what Mario and Luigi would imagine what countries like Russia and Finland are like) and the latter for its really ominous, bleak atmosphere. Thanks to the wider array of colors, it helps flesh out each world as very distinctive from the other, which is a great thing considering how varied each of the eight worlds are.

SOUND/SOUNDTRACK

A lot of the sound effects from the first two Mario games have been carried over into SMB3, such as the coin sounds, enemy-smashing sounds, and the fireball sounds. These sounds are quite effective, given the NES's hardware limitations.

The soundtrack for SMB3 is some of Koji Kondo's best work yet. There's more Overworld themes instead of just one, and the well-known Underworld theme has been "spiced up" in this game (and it sounds better). Two of my favorite themes in this game are the Fortress and Air Ship themes. The former makes you feel like you're in a hideous dungeon where hundreds of innocents are met with horrible fates and the latter has a percussive, militaristic aesthetic. In one of the levels in Dark Land, you have to traverse through a squad of tanks, and with the ominous black background and Air Ship theme in the background, it feels like a squad of German heavy tanks is pouring into the Soviet Union circa 1941.

COMPLAINTS

I only have a few complaints with Super Mario Bros. 3. My chief complaint with this game is that for how challenging and lengthy it is, there's no saving feature in the game. So this means you gotta devote a huge chunk of your day to beat this thing since you gotta do it all in one sitting.

The difficulty curve among the last three Koopalings is a little off. Fighting Roy Koopa is pretty difficult since he can shake up the ground, temporarily immobilizing you if you're on the ground. However, Lemmy is after him, and fighting him is almost as easy as fighting Larry and Morton, but with Ludwig coming after Lemmy, the difficulty spikes up drastically.

The other is more minor, but it does irk me a little. Why are the Boos invincible to fireballs but not so to hammers? Theoretically, ghosts are supposed to be gaseous entities, so wouldn't fire be a more logical element in defeating them rather than metal projectiles?

FINAL WORD

This is surely a classic in the NES library, and easily among the best of all Mario games. This game is available on the Wii's virtual console (and has been re-issued on various handhelds over the last decade or so), so you can play it on there. However, if you're more of an old-school gamer, you may find yourself dusting off your NES and SMB3 cartridge to play this one again. Regardless of what method you like to play this game on, give it another whirl.

Steam: A PC gamer's best friend. 94%

Fri, 13 Jul 2012 19:36:16 +0000

When I became a PC gamer after acquiring an Alienware Aurora gaming desktop in the summer of 2010, I've been hearing good and bad things about this game-playing application called Steam. In December of that year, I finally started using the Steam app that was built into my machine and since December is a part of the year where Steam has tons of sales for games, I went crazy buying heavily-discounted game bundles, and after playing the games, I have to conclude that Steam is an essential component to a PC gamer's life.

REGISTRATION/INSTALLATION

One of the best aspects to Steam is that registration and installation of Steam is free. The only things you pay for on this website are the games you want to get.

VARIETY/QUANTITY

There's literally something for every type of gamer on Steam, since the app has around 1,100 games to choose from with just about every genre you can think of. Steam has FPS, RPG, strategy, puzzle, casual, platformer, point-and-click adventure, fighter/brawler, MMORPG, and free-to-play multiplayer games, just to name a few of the genres available. Even better is that aside from the smörgåsbord of genres, you get plenty of old and new games to choose from, which is great if you either missed out on classic PC games from the 90's, lost copies of them, or if the games aren't compatible with your current gaming machine.

Here's just some of the games available on Steam:

Deus Ex: Human Revolution (FPS/RPG)
Q.U.B.E. (puzzle)
Dark Messiah of Might and Magic (RPG)
Doom 3 (FPS)
Alice: Madness Returns (action/platformer)
Sam and Max series (point-and-click adventure)
Amnesia: The Dark Descent (survival horror)
Super Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition (fighter)
Streets of Rage 2 (side-scroller/brawler)
Wolfenstein 3D (FPS)
Columns (puzzle)
Portal 1 and 2 (puzzle)
Half-Life series (FPS)
Splinter Cell: Conviction (action/stealth)
Mass Effect 1 and 2 (action/RPG)
EDGE (indie/action)
Critical Mass (puzzle)
Mirror's Edge (first person runner)
Gunstar Heroes (side-scrolling shooter)
Digital Combat Simulator: Black Shark (aircraft simulator)
Railworks 3: Train Simulator 2012 (train simulator)
NBA 2K12 (sports)
Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit (racing)

That's just the tip of the iceburg.

SALES/PROMOTIONS

Every week, there's sales for select games on Steam. Especially during the summer and Christmastime, there will be giant sales for individual games and game bundles. Just an example of some of the great deals I got on Steam were that I managed to get Bioshock for only $5, the Doom complete package for only around $8.74, and Batman: Arkham Asylum GOTY edition for only around $7.49. So if you're short on cash and have some patience, you can strike some great steals on certain games. There's some great promotions as well. For example, when I pre-ordered Red Faction: Armageddon last year, I got Red Faction, Red Faction II, and Red Faction: Guerilla for free.

GIFTING

Aside from buying games for yourself, if you have any friends with Steam accounts, you can buy and send games to your friends on Steam. For example, I bought a game package on sale called Games with Cubes (this contained, Q.U.B.E., EDGE, Blocks that Matter, Bit Trip Runner, Critical Mass, and RUSH) recently, and wound up with extra copies of Q.U.B.E. and EDGE, so I gave the extra copies to a good friend of mine on Steam.

DOWNLOADS

The only real bad thing I can say about Steam is that you can only get the games through downloading them on the internet, which can be a hassle for those who don't have rocket-fast internet connections. Downloading older games like the original Doom and Altered Beast won't take long, but newer games like Bioshock and Batman: Arkham Asylum can take many hours, even days, to download. However, this is only a minor setback considering all the good that comes with it.

COLLECTION AND PROGRESS SAFETY

Once you buy these games, you never have to buy them again. This is especially great if you've had some bad luck with your computer and wind up losing the games on your hard drive. In recent months, I had to combat a nasty computer virus and had to wrestle with computer bugs, and after having to erase my C drive a few times, I was delighted to see that all the games I bought were still in my ownership library. Even better, with some games, your gameplay progress will be saved on Steam's servers. After I had to re-install Deus Ex: Human Revolution recently, I was happy to see that when I turned the game on again, that the game resumed on the last save I earned. Unfortunately, some games like Super Meat Boy and Sonic the Hedgehog 4 Episode 2 don't have the gameplay progress saved, but I think that's more of an issue with the games in question rather than Steam itself.

CONTROVERSY

Some PC gamers hate having Steam on their computers for the fact that they'll need an internet connection and separate application to run the games on it, but I don't think these are big issues in today's computer world since so many people have high-speed internet now and having an extra application on my computer to play the game shouldn't be an issue. The benefits that Steam has, especially with the fact that you don't have to re-purchase lost games, makes it very well worth having on your machine.

FINAL WORD

If you're a PC gamer, old and new, Steam is an application you should register to and install, since the smörgåsbord of games, frequent sales, gifting options, and buy-once necessary purchase of games will make your gaming life so much better.

Turbo Zelda

Wed, 11 Jul 2012 01:04:42 +0000

Here's something fun to try next time you're in Seattle: When you run into Bill Gates on the streets, bet him a couple billion dollars that he can't talk about the old TurboGrafx-16 game Neutopia without ever saying the word "Zelda." Don't worry about a thing if you're not a multi-billionaire. Once Gates is finished stumbling through his not-so-Zelda-free explanation, you will be. Enjoy your retirement, and please think of Netjak - and myself in particular - if you decide to give some away to a charity.

A quick look through video game history finds an ocean of more technologically advanced ripoffs of older games following the release of any new console. In no game is an "I want money from your formula too!" mentality more blatantly obvious than it is in Neutopia. Neutopia simply reeks of Zelda, everything from the gameplay to the plot and everything else in between. This isn't just taking too much inspiration from a single game here; if Neutopia isn't illegal, then it's performing a delicate balancing act on the line. No, that's an understatement. Neutopia is more like that little kid who's crossed the line entirely, except for one foot which he keeps firmly planted in safe territory so he can taunt his sibling: "I didn't cross the line! I didn't cross the line! You can't say anything because I didn't cross the line! Nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah!" The game's designers better be thanking their lucky stars Neutopia was on such an unpopular console. If more people had heard of it, Nintendo's legal eagles surely would have swooped in and torn them to shreds.

Ask any veteran of both games to explain Neutopia without referencing Zelda, and you'll quickly learn why I opened this review the way I did. It's just not possible. The person in question doesn't necessarily have to be Bill Gates; he could be the world's greatest rocket scientist or the world's most eloquent speaker, or both. Ask about Neutopia, Zelda's gonna get mentioned. Therefore I'm not even going to try to explain this game on its own merits. However, I will list the number of Zelda references I've used at the end of the review.

This action-RPG begins with the obligatory RHC (really hot chick) being gracefully stolen from her residence by the obligatory DEV (dark evil villain). The RHC and DEV of Neutopia are respectively named Aurora and Dirth. The very morning after Aurora's kidnapping, our hero Jazeta shows up in the once-peaceful land of Neutopia (yes, the game is named after the kingdom it takes place in) with a sense of high adventure on his mind and a sword and shield in his hands. His mission: To go forth into the now-hostile land of Neutopia. To seek out new forms of life - and slaughter them like the lowly, evil scum they are. To boldly go where many have gone before - across the four spheres of Neutopia in search of eight legendary medallions which will open the gateway to Dirth's hideout at the North Pole. Let's see now... One hero setting out in search of eight relics which will enable him to fight off one evil villain in the name of one kidnapped princess. Gee, do we spot a certain resemblance to another video game in that objective?

Yeah, that could be the objective description of any other video game. But I'll describe just how Jazeta goes about accomplishing this objective: He wanders through a massive overworld, one screen at a time. In this overworld, he burns trees, crystals, spires, and pillars, and blows up weird-looking spots on walls in search of secret passages. In these secret passages, he picks up information, weapons, and items needed in the search for the medallions, which are hidden in dungeons that are also tackled in a screen-by-screen manner. The dungeons contain puzzles like locked doors and hidden rooms, which Jazeta has to solve by doing things like bombing walls and pushing rocks. To get the medallions out of the dungeons, Jazeta must defeat a boss (well, duh). Wash, lather, rinse, repeat until the kingdom is free of evil. He also does it all with the aid of a compass which points him in a general direction. In dungeons, he also has the aid of a map and a crystal ball when he finds them.

Among the items Jazeta picks up to help in in his mighty quest are a fire wand (one of the primary weapons) bombs, the Moonbeam Moss (Neutopia's candle) the Rainbow Drop (Neutopia's ladder) and various swords, shields, and armor. Are we beginning to see the Zelda-tribute picture now?

Okay, so Neutopia is a dumbed-down version of The Legend of Zelda for the kiddies. But aside from the stunning lack of originality, I'm not going to complain about much else - because, really, there isn't all that much to complain about. A novel could be written on the parallels between Neutopia and Zelda, but none of it will change the fact that Zelda was not a bad game. Therefore, a game which rips off Zelda in every way, shape, and form will not necessarily be a bad game. It may fade back in the shadows while the original version of it basks in the glory of being one of the all-time classic gaming breakthroughs, but that won't mean it isn't worth playing.

In a couple of ways, Neutopia is even superior to Zelda. While Zelda had one overworld for you to lose yourself in, the world of Neutopia is comprised of four of the biggest overworlds you've ever seen, with each one emphasizing a different theme. You start off in the Land Sphere, and finding the medallions will yield access to the Subterranean Sphere, Sea Sphere, and Sky Sphere. While the themes the four spheres are named after could have done a better job playing up their gimmicks, they all perform the function of getting you very lost quite well. The Subterranean Sphere in particular is a tricky world to navigate, but even if you completely lose yourself, there's an item in the game that allows you to return to the last place you saved. (Just don't save if you don't know where you are.) The dungeons aren't quite the fierce mindbenders seen in Zelda, but they're still filled with fun little surprises. I'm certain there are critics of Neutopia who cite the simplicity of necessary items in contrast to Zelda, but I don't consider that much of a complaint. There were times in Zelda when the game went over the top in its complexity. In Zelda, there were two different candles to light rooms with. In Neutopia, however, there's just one Moonbeam Moss which always performs when necessary for as long as needed.

While the overall simplicity is generally a good thing, there are times when Neutopia's lack of complication works against it. The most dangerous enemies in Neutopia are teleporting ghosts which aimlessly float from one end of a room to the other - a nuisance, but not exactly a threat. Granted the enemies in Zelda weren't exactly programmed to hunt you down either, but there were certain tricks and twists to some bad guys which complicated your battle approach. Neutopia's set of foes, while very diverse, can be entirely dealt with using the good old kamikaze approach - just walk up and start hitting. Things get more interesting when you meet bosses, but even those guys are still pretty hit-or-miss in the complication department. The game will give you a really easy boss like the dragon in the Land Sphere, then give you a more difficult boss like the gargoyles in the Subterranean Sphere. An action/RPG vet will have no trouble blowing through the game until the Sky Sphere, but even there the only existing challenge comes in enemies who can stand up to more punishment before going down. I'll even go as far as to say there are only four things about Neutopia which will really challenge anyone: Locating the necessary items, the crystal robot boss, the fake Dirth boss, and Dirth himself. You can include a fifth if you decide to neglect the Moonbeam Moss. Even opening the dungeon doors is no trouble. The door puzzle solutions are a select handful: Push the rock, kill the enemies, or kill the enemies THEN push a rock. Once you reach a certain point, those won't even matter because there's an item, the Bell of Heaven, which can open doors for you once you find it.

Someone got lazy while writing, or while translating for the English-speaking masses, or something. There's something weird about having almost every reference to Jazeta preceded by the words "our hero." "Our hero Jazeta has obtained the medallion!" "Our hero Jazeta has obtained the Boom Bombs!" As if we needed to be reassured that Jazeta has not joined the dark side or is a spy for them. Also, the strongest sword, shield, and armor in the game are called exactly what they are: The Strongest Sword, Strongest Shield, and Strongest Armor. (As Dave Barry would say, I am not making this up.) It is almost like the names of the items were rushed and tacked on at the last minute before press time. Those are the only qualms with the dialogue, though. The rest isn't what would be called well-written, but it's easy to read so your little kids won't have any trouble understanding. Again, simplicity is the advantage.

Neutopia's graphics are what they're supposed to be: A gussied-up version of Zelda's. While Zelda looked two-dimensional, Neutopia's graphics pull off a pseudo-3d effect. That's about all they do. On their own merits, the graphics have color splashed all around, but are otherwise neither here nor there. Zelda, however, still gets the nod in sound. Neutopia has an excellent title theme and good background music in the Subterranean Sphere, but the soundtracks just can't be compared. Zelda's soundtrack has endured over the ages for a reason. No matter how many times you hear it, it's always synonymous with a big adventure. Neutopia's soundtrack, if remembered at all, will be so only for its mediocre simplicity. And there's nothing to say about the gameplay - both games use EXACTLY the same control interface, so if you've played one, you've played them both.

See my rating. I would not give that rating to a bad game. Neutopia is excellent for little kids who don't have the dexterous minds needed to enjoy Zelda, or for people who are new to action/RPG's. It's a justifiable purchase over Zelda with more variety in the worlds, enemies, and simplicity. But for those who have played Zelda, the difference between the two games is like the difference between George W. Bush and John Kerry: One panders to voters by pretending to be a Republican; the other is a real Republican. And when one pretends to be something the other one really is, the voters feel better just putting the real thing back into office for another four years. Therefore, this voter has spoken. Zelda for President!

I have used 24 Zelda references in this review, give or take a few.

Bluestreak Returns

Sat, 23 Jun 2012 14:32:22 +0000

You know what I hate about trendsetting games? The fact that they set trends. When the new hip character cashes in, everyone begins copying the formula with the hopes of cashing in themselves. So while the original game goes on to gaming superstardom and possibly gaming classicdom, the shelves almost collapse under the weight of wannabes, which almost always get overlooked in favor of sequels anyway. This review isn't about any of them.

Particular case in point: Sonic the Hedgehog. I'm almost certain Sonic wasn't the first animal to wear clothes (his power sneakers). He was just yet another animal to wear them and have ATTITUDE! He would TAP HIS FOOT when he got impatient! So now, designers figure, the hot new trend is clothing-wearing animals with ATTITUDE! So now store shelves are creaking under the weight of creatures like Bubsy, Zero the Kamikaze Squirrel, Conker, and all those other faceless entities.

Meanwhile, the boys back at Sega HQ are working their butts off trying to come up with a sequel to the original animal with ATTITUDE! One which would hopefully top the original. It was during this turbulent and chaotic time that Sonic the Hedgehog 2 would emerge and lead Sega to the promised land (the bank) once again.

As many of us already know, Sonic is the only marsupial on the planet who could outrun The Flash, Superman, Speedy Gonzales, and the Road Runner. When we last saw him, he was running free amongst the animals he had just freed. His nemesis, Dr. Robotnik, is still a mad scientist, and mad scientists, quite ironically, almost never learn. So Sonic has barely begun to bask in the glory of his newfound stardom when the good doctor sweeps back into town with a new death machine called the Death Egg. The rest of Sonic's vacation time is postponed, and Sonic is called back into action to save the friendly forest creatures from being turned into beings of unimaginable destructive power.

So what's different this time around? Well, to be heartbreakingly honest, practically nothing. Sonic still blazes from the left side of the screen to an exit on the far, far, FAR right. Along the way, he still collects oodles of rings and power-ups while avoiding Robotnik's cleverly designed methods of killing hedgehogs. He still gets an extra life for every 100 rings he collects, still has them all knocked off him when he gets nailed. Rings still won't insure him should he end up on the bottom of a bottomless pit or between two objects which would turn him into a pancake. He can still grab a shield, a pair of speed sneakers, super rings and temporary invincibility. He is still hunting down a handful of mysterious gems, which he finds in bonus stages.

Differences are mostly little, nitpicky things. Instead of running through six zones with three acts each with a one-act zone at the end to face down Robotnik, Sonic now runs through ten zones. The first seven zones all have two acts each. The eighth zone, the Metropolis zone, has three. The next two, the Sky Chase Zone and the Wing Fortress Zone, both have one. Then comes the Death Egg zone, in which Sonic faces down a robotic version of himself before taking on the doc, who's wearing a giant, robotic version of himself for the big showdown now. One level up on the original game may not sound like a whole lot, but wait until you see the SIZE of these places! Most of the zones are quite large, and creative to boot. The Casino Night Zone has slots which Sonic can play to win rings, or possibly lose them. The Oil Ocean Zone has oil slides which Sonic slides down. The giant Metropolis Zone, an insanely difficult world of mechanics, simply has to be seen for you to grasp its enormosity.

Graphics too. Graphics are also different. They're still top-notch, but they're different. Sonic, for example, looks darker and thinner. Rings and power-ups have slightly different animations. The original Sonic theme sounds a bit different, too.

So what's new this time around? Lots of things! First, the game's plot actually gives Sonic a reason to hunt down the Chaos Emeralds. Since these gems are believed to hold exceptional powers, Robotnik wants them to power his Death Egg. There is also a new Chaos Emerald lurking somewhere in the game, since there are forevermore seven of them to hunt down, instead of six like in the original.

While I'm on the subject of Chaos Emerald hunting, I might as well mention the way of getting to the bonus stage, which is also new. Instead of jumping through a giant ring when you have 50 rings at the end of an act, all you have to do is grab 50 rings, hit a star post, and jump through the little ring of stars which forms when you do that. This is a welcome change from the first game, as it gives you several chances at an emerald during every stage. If you blow a shot at one, collects 50 more rings, find another star post, and do it all over again! Whenever you leave the special stage, all of the current act's rings and power-ups will be back where you first found them, so finding more rings to take you back to the special stage won't be a problem unless you're an amnesiac.

The special stage itself is also new, not to mention REALLY FREAKIN' HARD! Instead of simply floating through a rotating maze to the emerald room, Sonic now runs through a giant half pipe. As he runs, he collects rings, trying to meet a goal of a certain number of rings by the time he reaches various checkpoints. If he can't nab the rings, the star post spews him back out into the real world, emerald-less. And the designers decided not to make collecting the required number of rings easy for you. There are bombs bumrushing at you in the special stage too, and for every bomb you collect, you lose a number of rings - which you can't retrieve. This is probably the best special stage Sega has introduced in the Sonic series, but it's also the most frustrating.

Part of the frustration comes from Sonic's gamelong new partner, Miles "Tails" Prower. Tails is a two-tailed little fox who trails behind Sonic every step of the way. He's good to dispose of a few enemies and reel in some rings, but he's generally useless unless you have a second player controlling him. If you're trying to clear the game with all seven emeralds, you should at least have a second player man the controls during the special stages, in which Tails always manages to find the bombs. In the game itself, Tails' help doesn't really matter a whole lot. The player who winds up controlling him will get the royal screwjob, since Tails will spend half the time offscreen, having lagged too far behind Sonic. Although he can fly, you can't control when he flies. Fortunately, you have the option of going through the game with just Sonic or just Tails.

Tails may not lag too far behind in the new TWO-PLAYER GAME! Since there's a second good guy, the designers decided they might as well throw in a few two-player levels to up the replay value. Unfortunately, when I said throw in, I meant throw in. The two-player game, while a lot of fun, reeks of afterthought obviousness. Instead of creating some inventive new levels for you and player two to blast through, the designers just smushed down the Emerald Hill, Casino Night, and Mystic Cave Zones, tossed in teleporter and Robotnik moniters, and said "Go." The result is a two-player mode which is plagued with slowdown. The special stage is there for competition, but it's a bit too basic.

Tired of backtracking to get Sonic up that one too-steep hill? Then build up his speed without ever moving with the new SPIN DASH ATTACK! This move allows Sonic to do just what Mr. Voice said - build up his speed without having to leave his current location. Just duck and press the jump button, Sonic revs right up, and when you take your thumb off the down button, off he goes, leaving his foes in the dust. Very useful for those times when you have to go forward but can't go back.

The graphics, as I've already stated, have changed. For better or worse is in the eye of the beholder, but Sonic remains the fluid sprite he always was. Tails is a bit less detailed in his movements, but his two tails and the fact he uses them to fly are nice touches. The cute little forest animals still jump off when Sonic bashes the machines they command, but the enemies actually seem to have a bit more detail now. There are also a lot more of them, many of which are far more creative than they were in the first game. The backgrounds are also better looking. And wait until you see the Casino Night Zone!

Except for the opening theme - which doubles as the invincibility music - the music of Sonic Sr. has been scrapped for a new soundtrack. It's just as well. The new score is a definite keeper, with tracks which evoke different elements and influences. The score to the Oil Ocean Zone has an oriental flavor. The Casino Night Zone has a wonderful hot jazz track, and the Hill Top Zone's music sounds like a combination of the good aspects of country and bluegrass music. The music in the two-player zones was changed, but the general essence of the single-player tracks is kept, at least in the bouncy Emerald Hill and jazzy Casino Night scores. The music in the Mystic Cave zone turns from low-rent horror fare to low-rent techno fare. The sounds are generally unchanged from the first game.

The controls are also unchanged from the first game. Sonic still takes time to build up to his full sprint, and he still has trouble conquering hills if he doesn't have a running start. The game can still be played with a single action button.

Some call Sonic the Hedgehog 2 the series' finest hour, but I'm a bit hard-pressed to agree. I love this game, but trying to pick out the best Sonic game out of such a great series is agonizing, and not something I'm going to attempt right now. I'll tell you this right now: Sonic 2 was my first Genesis game, and I very often found myself crawling back to it. It's bigger than the first game and contains a lot of little secrets, and the two-player mode only adds to the replay value. If you own this game, hold onto it for awhile. Gamecube owners, go out and buy the Sonic compilation disk right now. For 50 bucks, you Gamecube owners get most of the 16-bit Sonic games (I'm not sure if it includes Sonic Spinball and Sonic 3d Blast.).

The Blue Blur is back in his best game. 94%

Thu, 14 Jun 2012 21:24:31 +0000

Before I get on with the review, I have to share some nostalgia with you. I believe my first encounter with Sonic the Hedgehog 2 was at the nearest Wal-Mart back in the late summer/early fall of 1992 and I remember seeing the game on display in the videogame section, and I played the Emerald Hill Zone, and I couldn't wait for the game to come out. Fast forward several months later, and it's Christmas Day, and I got Sonic 2. I spent most of the day playing this and even back then, I felt it was better than the first game (which is still a classic). Over the years, I've given some deeper thought about which of the classic Sonic games is the best, I think Sonic 2 is the best of all because it retains a good challenge and fixes the flaws in Sonic 1.

STORY

After defeating Dr. Robotnik in the last game, Robotnik gets back to work with his usual scheme of taking over the world. Like in the last game, he's captured a bunch of animals and is turning them into malicious robots, and is building a devastation space weapon called the Death Egg. You take control of Sonic again to thwart Robotnik's plans, and this time, a two-tailed fox by the name of Miles “Tails” Prower tags along and helps you.

GAMEPLAY IMPROVEMENTS

If you're familiar with the way Sonic 1 plays, then you know how to complete 99% of the controls in this game. However, they added a critical improvement in Sonic 2, which is the spindash attack. All you do is crouch down (holding the bottom d-pad) and hit the jump button to start spinning, and when you release both buttons to go much faster than without the spindash. With the spindash, you can also plow into most Badniks and they'll get destroyed.

All the power ups like the Ring monitor, Invincibility monitor, Shield monitor, and Extra Life monitor are in this game. The rules about collecting rings in Sonic 1 carry over into Sonic 2.

Also, there's a point in getting points this time around. At the end of each act, if you get 10,000 points in that act, you'll get a continue. Whenever your cumulative score hits 50,000 and numbers with a divisor of 50,000 (such as 100,000 and 150,000), you get an extra life.

There's also a point to getting Chaos Emeralds. If you collect all the Chaos Emeralds (now its seven emeralds instead of six) and get 50 rings, you turn into Super Sonic. Super Sonic is a yellow juggernaut. Other than drowning, bottomless pits, and getting crushed, nothing can hurt Super Sonic, as he's not only invincible, but he can run extremely fast and jump over really long distances. The only drawback to Super Sonic is that your ring count gets deducted at one ring per second, and once you run out of rings, you turn back into regular Sonic.

The Special Stage is different from that in Sonic 1. Instead of collecting 50 rings and jumping into a giant ring at the end of an act, you collect 50 rings and jump into a bunch of rotating stars that pop up when you hit a lamp post. You also race through a half-pipe and need to collect a certain number of rings before each checkpoint. When you clear all the checkpoints with the required amounts of rings, you get a Chaos Emerald. These Special Stages are significantly more difficult than the ones in Sonic 1 because aside from needed to collect the required rings, you have to dodge a bunch of bombs, and these can be hard to dodge. It also doesn't help that usually, Tails will get hit by bombs, making you loose some of your rings.

You also have the option to switch between Sonic + Tails, Sonic solo, and Tails solo when playing the one-player mode.

2-PLAYER MODE

There's also a 2-player mode for this game. Basically, it's a split-screen racing game where you and a second player choose as Sonic or Tails and race each other until the end of the acts. The acts to choose from in the 2-Player mode are Emerald Hill, Casino Night, Mystic Cave, and the Special Stage.

GRAPHICS

While the graphics in Sonic 1 are impressive, Sonic 2 manages to improve upon this area as well. There's better color arrangements to improve visual depth on the levels and backgrounds. The finest example of this would be the Casino Night Zone. The background in that level is absolutely beautiful and colorful, and makes you feel like you're in a “sanitized” version of Las Vegas. The “industrial” themed levels like the Chemical Plant, Oil Ocean, Metropolis, and Death Egg Zones have improved from industrial-themed levels in Sonic 1 as well. The architecture and atmospheres in these levels are much more serious-looking than in Sonic 1, and particularly with the Chemical Plant and Death Egg Zones, I think they perfectly exemplify the way a high-tech, industrial setting should look like.

SOUND/SOUNDTRACK

All the sound effects from the first game are carried over into this one, so I can't really say much more than what I already said in my Sonic 1 review.

The soundtrack is even better than that in the first game, and Masato Nakamura returns to create music in this game as well. Aside from having more levels and therefore more music tracks, a good deal of the music on here is better than in the first game (which still has great music). Standout tracks on here are for Chemical Plant, Aquatic Ruin, Casino Night, Mystic Cave, Metropolis, Sky Chase, Wing Fortress, and Death Egg (though for Death Egg, you only hear about four seconds of the music since you immediately go into one of the last boss battles). Death Egg is the perfect music to hear when you're in a high-tech spacecraft. Mystic Cave is worth mentioning because the opening melody is really reminiscent of the Inspector Gadget theme, and that the music itself is pretty creepy. Casino Night and Sky Chase have really relaxed, upbeat feelings to them.

The 2-player levels even have their own versions of the music. The 2-player version of Casino Night has a peppier beat to it, and reminds me a bit of the Last Resort club music featured in Total Recall. I personally think the 2-player version of the Emerald Hill Zone sounds better than the single player version.

There's also a track called Hidden Palace for an unreleased level of the same name in the game. Despite not being in any levels, I think this is one of the most elegant videogame tunes I've ever heard.

MINOR COMPLAINTS

My only real complaint with this game is that in the Special Stage, Tails can make it more difficult for the fact that he's prone to getting hit by bombs, so you have to be extra careful with how you play in the stages.

FINAL WORD

Of all the “classic” Sonic games and with the entire Sonic game library, this one is the best. Like Sonic 1, it's been re-issued countless times and is available with other Sonic games like Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection (Xbox 360, PS3) and available as individual game downloads on Steam.

This game is nearly 20 years-old and I still think it's totally awesome.

The Blue Blur makes his rather remarkable debut. 90%

Wed, 6 Jun 2012 02:35:19 +0000

I'll admit that whenever I think of this game, I do get pretty nostalgic over it since this was really the first videogame I ever got heavily engrossed in, since I got this at the age of four on Christmas Day of 1991 (I honestly don't remember much of my life before then). However, the nostalgia factor does NOT influence the rating I have for this game, I'm strictly rating this game on how much quality I think it has. Anyway, on to the review.

STORY

In this game, an evil scientist named Dr. Robotnik is turning animals into malicious robots and is searching for the six Chaos Emeralds, which he thinks will make him rule Mobius. You play Sonic, a blue hedgehog who's really fast and is determined to stop Robotnik from getting the emeralds all while saving his furry and feathered friends.

Admittedly, the story and characters aren't works of art, but the brilliance of this game lies in its innovative style of platforming, lush graphics, and excellent sound.

INNOVATION

While it's been said millions of times before, Sonic really set itself apart from the other platformers out there for its fast speed. While this game series isn't Ninja Gaiden-level difficult, Sonic's speed really makes a gamer refine his or her motor skills and hand-eye coordination to make precise jumps and to jump or run all at the right times. Despite the fact that this game is famed for being fast, there are some spots in the game where you have to slow down to properly avoid certain obstacles, which I don't really have a problem with since I think it's these little “breaks” that add just the right amounts of variation in gameplay to keep from getting monotinous.

GAMEPLAY

The gamplay behind this is simple in concept, as the only buttons you really use are the d-pad and the jump button (and the Start button just in case you need a snack or bathroom break). The physics in Sonic's jumps are well-done, since the movement-arcs feel natural and there's no “sudden stops” when you stop moving, which like the jumps, feels more natural.

Throughout the game, you race through 2D levels with plenty of platforms you jump on and pits and other obstacles you have to avoid by usually jumping over. You also have malicious robots known as “Badniks” throughout the levels where you can either avoid them or you can attack them by jumping on them to set the animals inside the machines free. Some of the most annoying Badniks in the game are Catterkiller in the Marble and Scrap Brain Zones, Roller in the Spring Yard Zone, Orbinaut in the Labyrinth and Starlight Zones, and Ball Hog in the Scrap Brain Zone.

The levels in this game are nicely-varied. You run through six levels consisting each of three acts, and at the end of the third acts (except for Scrap Brain, the last level), you have a boss fight with Dr. Robotnik. Each level has its own theme. The first and iconic level, Green Hill Zone is a level full of greenery and some tropical trees, while there's levels like the Spring Yard Zone that are almost like giant, colorful pinball machines without the flippers, and there's even a beautiful, star-lit level called the Starlight Zone. One of the most hated levels in the series is the Labyrinth Zone, mainly because out of all the water-based zones in the Sonic games, this one is where you were most likely to drown.

You have to collect rings throughout the level to stay alive. If you get hit while you have rings, you lose all your rings, but if you get hit without any rings, you die. If you collect 100 rings, you get an extra life. If you have at least 50 rings by the end of a level, you can jump into a giant ring that takes you to the Special Stage.

In the Special Stage, you go through a rotating maze where you have to reach the end of the maze, in which where you find the Chaos Emerald, and you reach the emerald by breaking through jewels encircling the emerald. You have to keep yourself distanced from the “Goal” areas, which take you out of the Special Stage.

Throughout the levels, there's various TV monitors that provide various power-ups for you. There's a Shield monitor, which gives you a protective shield that's lost once you hit a dangerous obstacle or get hit by a Badnik. There's a Ring monitor, which gives you 10 rings. There's a Shoes monitor, which makes you run fast temporarily (and has faster music when you're in this mode). There's an Invincibility monitor, which gives you temporary invincibility from enemies and certain obstacles (though you can still drown, fall from a bottomless pit, and get crushed). Finally, there's a Sonic monitor, which gives you an extra life.

GRAPHICS

Despite the fact that this game is 21 years-old as of writing this, the graphics in Sonic the Hedgehog still look really good. This game, along with Sonic's sequels in for the Sega Genesis, would take full advantage of the Genesis's processing capabilities to generate beautiful, eye-catching graphics that do an excellent job of creating visual depth by adding many shades and highlights to various objects. I think the levels with the best imagery in this game are the Green Hill Zone, Starlight Zone, and Scrap Brain Zone. Even Sonic and other characters in the game, which are smaller than the beautiful environments, have a good deal of visual depth to them thanks to the proper use of colors within the game platform's hardware limitations.

SOUND/SOUNDTRACK

The sound effects and music for this game are marvelous (especially the latter). The sounds like the explosions, jumping noises, and spring noises despite having obvious limitations from the gaming hardware of its time, still sound fresh today.

The soundtrack is where the game's sounds really shine. The music was created by Masato Nakamura, who's the main composer for J-pop group Dreams Come True. I watched some videos about the development of the early Sonic games, and in an interview with Nakamura, he said that he imagined the Sonic game as a movie and composed music that would fit the caliber of a film, along with matching the moods evoked by the images of the levels. Out of all the tracks on here, the Green Hill music is probably the most iconic track on here, and while I really like it, my favorites here are the music tracks for Spring Yard and Starlight. The former for its really bouncy, joyous feeling, and the latter for its relaxed, beautiful nature. All in all, the music in this videogame is so great, I regularly listen to these tracks by themselves, thanks to websites like YouTube where people have uploaded the music for our listening pleasure.

MINOR COMPLAINTS

My only complaints with this game lie in with the scoring system and Chaos Emeralds. The scoring system for the fact that unlike the sequels to this game, you didn't get any rewards for reaching certain numbers of points.

The Chaos Emeralds for the fact that all you get when you collect them is a “good” ending (which admittedly, is a pretty lame ending). The sequels fixed this problem for the fact that you become Super Sonic when you get all the emeralds.

FINAL WORD

Despite the two shortcomings I just mentioned, Sonic the Hedgehog has earned its place as a classic in the videogame world. It's been re-issued countless times over the years, so you can get it bundled with other Sonic/Sega Genesis games or for you PC gamers out there, downloadable purchases on Steam (or you may dust off your Genesis and Sonic cartridge to play this one again).

I've loved this game for nearly 21 years, and I'll probably still love it by the time I'm 95 years-old.

Decent gameplay cannot overcome glaring flaws [Review may contain spoilers]

Thu, 31 May 2012 23:19:05 +0000

Overview

You play as Samus Aran, famous intergalactic bounty hunter. After returning from her mission to wipe out the Metroids and Mother Brain on the planet Zebes, she picks up a distress signal from the "Bottle Ship" and sets off to investigate. Within the ship she discovers a group of Galactic Federation troops and a wide range of menacing creatures on the loose, the kind of situation Samus knows all too well.

Story Introduction and Premise

Okay, first off I would like to apologize if this comes off more like an angry rant, now on to the review.

Metroid: Other M is the first game in the series to feature heavy usage of cutscenes. and it DOES NOT WORK.

If I had to describe the writing in this game with one phrase, I would use "Really bad anime", the cutscenes are long, and they WILL start to irritate you very quickly. The game relies heavily on Samus to deliver exposition, and I do not think good writing involves having the protagonist repeat to the player what just happened on the screen moments before.

The most complained about aspect of the writing in this game is how the character of Samus Aran was handled. Having the distinction of being one of the first, if not the first female protagonist in gaming history, her character is regarded as a certifiable badass, smashing through hordes of enemies intent on saving the galaxy from hostile forces, even if it ends with her death. And what does she become in this game? Dull, childish and blindly following orders from her former commander. Also she repeats the word "Baby" a million times during the course of the game (A fun drinking game if you liked alcohol poisoning is taking a shot everytime she says baby)

In this game, Samus only activates powerups when Adam (the leader of the Galactic Federation unit) tells her to, which leads to several stupid events during the course of the game. Being forced to run through a lava room without the Varia Suit until Adam decides to finally let her use it while Samus loses health at a steady pace is just stupid. Also, when Samus inevitably meets Ridley, she just loses it and has to be snapped out of it by one of the soldiers. At this point, Samus has met and defeated Ridley twice already, and she just breaks down when meeting him in this game? why?

Other games in the series like Super Metroid and Metroid Prime immersed you in their game worlds, and they did not have to rely on cutscenes to do so. I didn't care about any of the characters in the game or what was happening, while Metroid Prime gave you scannable objects that detailed a far more interesting story than the plot of this game and did not feature ANY supporting characters except for perhaps the boss creatures. Such a shame the writing is so bad, because I am not against the idea of Samus having a larger talking role and I think it would be a good idea for future titles, I just think the depiction of her in this game is awful.

Gameplay

The game plays like a 3D sidescroller with moments where you can swap to a first-person view to fire missiles or observe the environment. Samus has a few new moves in this game, she can dodge or perform finishing moves. The finishing moves are a nice addition, but you will come to rely on them heavily while taking down tough enemies. The staple Metroid gameplay element of hunting for items is still here, but your ability to explore where you please is severely limited, this game forces you down a linear path (even more so than Metroid Fusion did) which is quite disappointing as exploration is such a crucial element to the gameplay of the other titles in the series. The overall gameplay just doesn't hit the mark that Super Metroid and the first Prime game hit.

Graphics and Sound--Production Values

One of the things that Other M nailed was the graphics, this game is one of the best looking titles on the Wii. the sound design and soundtrack are also satisfying (the soundtrack containing remixes of classic Metroid music tracks) but the voice acting falls short. Samus sounds monotone and the other characters don't sound any better, as if the voice actors resented having to read their dialogue (I can't really blame them)

In conclusion, unless you seriously love the franchise and want to play every Metroid game out there, it's probably best you spend your money elsewhere. You could also watch this 2 hour video compiling all of the cutscenes, with added commentary: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMI1-DDklqE&list=PLC63A602826B0DADA

A very good follow up, and some hail it as the best.

Tue, 29 May 2012 02:47:18 +0000

A sorcerer by the name of Shang Tsung , along with a four-armed half-man, half-dragon beast named Goro, seized and conquered a tournament called Mortal Kombat, by defeating the champion Kung Lao. Tsung hosts another tournament, and 7 fighters with their own goals enter the tournament.

Previous Game:

Mortal Kombat

Mortal Kombat II:

In the final match of the tournament, Liu Kang faced off against Shang Tsung and defeated him in Mortal Kombat. By accomplishing this feet, Liu Kang saved the world from being over-ran by another dimension called Outworld. Tsung's soul journey's back to Outworld were he faces final execution by the Emperor Shao Khan. Tsung convinces Khan to spare him, and they bait Liu Kang as well as the surviving competitors into participating in a second tournament hosted by Khan himself in Outworld. -summary

Back in 1992, Mortal Kombat raised a bloody uproar from overly touchy parents and politician types, who scoffed at the brutal, bloody violence of the game. As a result, the ESRB (Entertainment Software Rating Board) rating was born. This was meant to assign ages and content ratings to games. Thankfully, this was the only measure taken, since things could have really gotten out of hand, and Midway could have been forced to either scrap their sequel Mortal Kombat II, or create a kinder and gentler version of it. When looking at the fact the first Mortal Kombat was ported over to the SNES with altered fatalities, plus replacing the blood with sweat; a softer version of the game could have very easily been a reality.

Fortunately, Midway was able to keep the identity of the game intact, and Mortal Kombat II made it to the arcades in 1993. The sequel proved to be bigger and badder than its predecessor, and such a smash hit it was ported over to the SNES and Sega Genesis in full bloody glory. The developers enhanced the game play a great deal, thus making this sequel completely better all around. Unfortunately, Mortal Kombat II was such a vast step forward, it would also be the measuring stick for future games in the series, in which some fans felt the later games would never reach the same level of greatness. Personally, I think it took nearly 20 years to pull it off, so I'm sure that says a lot about this game.

Game Play:

One of my biggest pet peeves ever for home consoles were video games being translated over to them vastly different from their arcade counter-parts. Mortal Kombat II was and still is one of the better translations to the SNES. It really did feel like I was playing it in the arcade, since to the best of my memory everything was left well intact.

The game is still a two player fighter, and the first thing one would notice is the extended character roster. Returning to the fight are Liu Kang, Johnny Cage, Sub-Zero, Scorpion, and Raiden. Reptile who was a secret character in the original is now playable with his own moves list, and is no longer using the combined special offense of Sub-Zero and Scorpion. New to the fight are Kitana, Milenna, Jax, Baraka, Kung Lao, and now Shang Tsung as a playable fighter with his youth restored.

For those who may not know, Mortal Kombat II is a game where you can kill your opponent in the most grisly of ways. The previous game featured some vicious finishers, and this game carries on the tradition with several moments of pure barbarism. Take the character of Baraka, who wields two blades in his forearms that can be extended at will like Wolverine from the X-Men. He kills his opponents by impaling, and hanging them high in the air until they completely bleed out and slide down his blades. Jax is a muscle-bound black man who rips the arms off his enemies leaving them to bleed to death, and their are several others out there sicker than this.

Midway upped the ante by giving the characters two Fatality moves each, with Shang Tsung being the only character with a third one. They also possess a stage Fatality, where the characters can kill each other using the environment. For example, during a stage called The Dead Pool, a character can be knocked into the acid, and their skeleton will be seen floating at the top. The Pit also returns and is now referred to as The Pit II. Here, an opponent is knocked off the bridge, and the camera changes perspective providing a view where the victim lands back first on concrete from hundreds of feet and dying instantly. This is actually the best of the stage deaths, as it feels a lot more on the realistic side. Later on in the series you will see how ridiculous these stage deaths can be. And speaking of ridiculous, the developers decided to add in two techniques for comedic effect, and they are Friendships and Babalities. These moves are friendlier alternatives to killing the opponents. For example, instead of Baraka hacking someone's head off, he will present them a gift-wrapped box as his Friendship. Each of the characters would do something crazy like this, and with the second move they can turn their opponent into a baby. I'm not exactly sure anymore, but this may have been a middle finger to the parents and christian groups, whom were still doing a lot of complaining despite the ESRB taking place. I see where the developers were coming from, still, the tonal shift for such a dark game always bothered me.

The game play is tighter this time with some very interesting special moves for the characters; such as Shang Tsung being able to morph into any of the main characters and using their arsenal against them, one of the females Kitana being able to use sound waves from her bladed fans, to lift enemies into the air and damage them. Along with Sub-Zero being able to freeze a section of the ground under his enemies causing them to slip into his vicious punishment. Each of the characters have something very unique to them, and I remember spending so many hours learning how to play them all. Blocking constantly still comes with a penalty, since regular attacks chip away at health. The juggle system is a little better here, allowing players to pull off some interesting, hard hitting, air combos.

Once again, the game boasts two highly unbalanced bosses in the forms of another four-armed beast named Kintaro, whose uppercuts with both fist will send the player flying off the screen. And Shao Kahn himself, who can easily dominate an entire match with his rush attack. Even up to this day, I still sometimes lose to him depending who I have against him.

The AI is my only gripe with the game play, and this is something that will be a problem in the next MK game. The AI plays too defensively and it will counter most of your attacks. You will also never win a grab situation, since it will always throw you first. Your only option is to bait it into offense mode, so you can play defensively and as a result the game will become much easier. This is also a problem, because then the game will become a little boring. Around this time, Street Fighter II: Champion Edition would be the only fighting game with the perfect balance in its AI. The AI in that game was challenging, far from cheap, and you had to possess a certain amount of skill. MK II relied more on a pattern, and this was something that always bothered me. However, outside of this gripe I can't really say anything else negative about it.

I always enjoyed that even as a fighting game, Mortal Kombat II was very story driven. The characters have some very nice back-stories as well as endings. I always found this game to be far more interesting than all of the fighting games out there. This was the only fighting game I remember having to unlock the endings right away. Plus the depth in the characters made the two player mode even more enjoyable. The main game can be ran through in about 15 minutes or less if you're good. If not, then it can take a lot longer.

Controls:

The control scheme from the original returned, with High Punch, Hick Kick, Low Punch, Low Kick, and Block buttons. For the most part these controls are just as responsive, and they once again rely on directional pad movements and button presses to pull out different sets of moves. The cool thing here is, certain characters like Baraka and Kitana, will slice an enemy with their weapon, when holding back on the pad while pressing high punch. While a character like Jax will hammer on an opponent's head with his fist for an instant dizzy. The controls are just too good here, and pulling off specials and finishers performed just as easy as the arcade.

Graphics/Sound/Music:

The game uses a mystical-fantasy setting, and the stages really look that way, as they feature floating monks, and one battle takes place next to a dark portal separating the two dimensions. The Living Forest is one of the cooler stages, with huge trees having very large mouths. The gore is really sick, as you can see the insides of Kung Lao' victims as he slices them into two pieces. The developers let their imagination fly by injecting one of the Outworld natives into the fight, with one being Baraka, and he indeed looks like something from another world, with those big ugly teeth and demonic looking face. The character designs are really good, with Kintaro looking the best with his overly large arms. The digitized rendering on the characters is an obvious improvement as everyone looks sharper and smoother.

I mentioned in my previous review that the original utilized the music a little better when enhancing the atmosphere. I kind of take that back after the recent replay. The setting in this game dictated another approach, and the sound track fits perfectly for what the game was aiming for, at the same time, still maintaining a dark and gritty feel to it. The sound effects are still very good, with the crowd roaring in Kahn's stage, when Kintaro lands a big blow. The sound effect of the characters hitting the concrete in the Pit II indeed sounds bonebreaking. The production values were well used.

Final Thoughts:

Mortal Kombat II only suffers from a shaky AI. If only the AI played more like SF II: Championship Edition, then I believe it would have been the perfect fighter. Still, with its solid two player mode, all around depth, and successful translation from Arcade to SNES, it's definitely among if not the best fighter for the SNES.

Pros:
- Near perfect translation

Cons:
- AI could have been better

Portal 2 Quick Tip by RabidChihuahua

Thu, 24 May 2012 07:23:35 +0000

I just beat Portal 2 and this is one of the best videogame sequels I've ever played, along with Dead Space 2, Streets of Rage 2, and Sonic the Hedgehog 2.

The fine developers at Valve improved upon the first game my making more complex puzzles and a longer single-player mode. Along with these improvements, they also added a new character, which is a computerized personality core named Wheatley, whose loyalty to you is ambiguous. To make the gameplay more interesting, there's also "bouncing gel" and "speed gel," in which you coat certain parts of your environment with these things, the gelled areas can make you bounce or run really fast.

If you're looking for a game that's really fun that'll also make you think a lot, then this is a must-have game.

Diehard Turtle fans see greatness. Others see an average brawler.

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 14:42:58 +0000

While on a news story, reporter April O'Neil witnesses the Statue of Liberty being stolen by Dimension-X ruler Krang. The Shredder wastes no time claiming the theft on TV. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles also witness the event and immediately spring to action with intentions on breaking into the Technodrome. The Shredder is obviously ready; but what exactly is his plan? -summary

There was a time when I thought that the mindless fun, two player co-op, side scrolling arcade beat'em up would never go the way of disco. Which is why I still find it strange in the here and now that particular genre is still M.I.A. for the most part. It's sad too because this genre of games can be great fun when done right. This is a genre I terribly miss. Released in 1991 for the arcades, and later in 1992 for the console systems, in this case Super Nintendo, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TMNT) IV: Turtles in Time, is a two player side scrolling beat em-up, and it's a good port of the arcade version. Now in regards to the arcade, this game is the direct sequel to TMNT. However for the consoles, it's the fourth after TMNT III: The Manhattan Project.

I have to be truthful and just say that I was never really impressed with this game, console or otherwise. When comparing it to the very best of its type, I would say its average and nothing more. It's ironic in a way, after the craze for the original Double Dragon died down, it was Konami to raise the bar in this genre with Vendetta, by adding various elements to the game play not seen before in games like these. They straight out did themselves with that game in terms of character variety, weapon use, and challenge. So when TMNT: Turtles in Time came out, yeah, I thought it was lacking in innovation, and I thought it was strange that Konami would take a backwards like that, because it clearly wasn't their style. I don't believe this was among the best games of its type back then, and age hasn't really helped it either.

Game Play:

Turtles in Time features all four of the turtle brothers: Donatello, Michelangelo, Raphael, and Leonardo, but the game is only two player co-op instead of four like its arcade counterpart. Either solo or with a partner, you traverse through ten stages of beat downs taking on Shredder's Foot Clan as well as Krang's Stone Warriors. The four turtles remain faithful to their origins as they each use their trademark weapons, and they are also distinguished by their usual headband colors. They each possess a single combo string that instantly kills weaker opponents, a move that strikes enemies approaching from behind, a dashing bum rush, a sliding kick, and jumping kick. They also have two special grabs, with the first being a single armed body slam, in which they bash an opponent back and forth into anyone approaching, and the second one tosses weaker enemies off the stage towards the camera. Their final attack is a special strike that drains the health gauge, so this should only be used in tight situations. The turtles excel in different areas, such as Donatello's weapon the Bo possessing the most reach, and he appears to be the most resistant to enemies attacks. While Raphael has the shortest reach, suffers big damage very easily, but is a speed demon on foot and even when dealing out his combo string.

After completing the first four stages, the game begins to live up to its namesake, when Shredder banishes the turtles into time, and they find themselves fighting from like 25 million BC to 2105 in the far future. As many games from that time period, the game isn't really driven by its story at all, and the time trap is used only as a vehicle to drive the brothers from one setting to another. So there really isn't much to speak of here concerning story development. The first two stages especially, are pretty generic and more than likely made simple enough to get a feel for the game, and by the end of the second stage you should have everything down. The stages are relatively short, with Konami adding in two bonus stages, that follows the turtles on some type of jet-ski's, as they demolish Foot Soldiers with a single blow.

The enemies consist of different types of Foot Soldiers with different abilities and are distinguishable through different color palettes. For example, purple Foot Soldiers are the melee grunts who engage in hand to hand, while white and red are more weapon based attacking with nunchuks or shurikens. The AI does its best to work with the numbers game, and at times, it will definitely overwhelm you. Adding to the players struggles, are the stage hazards consisting of wrecking balls dropping on you, electric beams giving the turtles a big shock and even falling stalactites. I also think it's pretty cool how the zany feel of the animated series is also present, with one stage taking place on a pirate ship, and the turtles are slapped dead in the face with a piece of weak wood when stepping on the wrong spot. There are various moments of fan service present to give serious fans what they more than likely will be looking for. This also rings true in regards to the boss characters, with many fan favorites making appearances, such as the always silly Bebop and Rocksteady, to the irrational evil turtle Slash. I see the reason why fans of the franchise cherish the game so much.

Turtles in Time can be fun at times, and the short length of the stages is kind of a plus, because redundancy will begin to set in and one of my issues among plenty, is the limited moves list and abilities. There's only one power up they can pick up, and it's some type of pizza that sends them spinning around leveling everyone with one blow. But there's nothing in the game they can use that makes them the least bit ninja-ish; no type of throwing stars, boomerangs, nothing. Instead, taking their place are exploding oil drums and even barrels to knock towards the enemy. The game never really tries to be more than just a mere beat'em up, nor does it take any real advantage of its "Turtles in Time" concept. For example, Shredder must prefer to kill his employees instead of simply laying them off, because every stage is extremely Foot Soldier heavy. The prehistoric stage could have been much better, had the turtles been taking on club-wielding cavemen or dinosaurs. The only thing you will see in regards to overgrown lizards will be bomb dropping pteradactyls, or rampaging smaller dinos that pass by trying to run you over only to never try and fight you. The western stage suffers from this same crippling flaw. It would have been cool to feature lasso-wielding Foot Soldiers, instead of the same old guys jumping off of the back of horses. This is one aspect of the game that was terribly underutilized. I also have to point out something that I'm not quite sure if it was added in for comedy effect. The turtles live in the sewer, but when you fall inside of a manhole cover leading to the sewer, their thought bubble appears mentioning "this cave is creepy", and I'm not sure if I'm mistaken, but you may also lose health. So, if the turtles happen to fall into their own home, they're not only creeped out, but they may also suffer injuries too.... Interesting.

You begin with a set number of lives, and you can increase them in the options. Also, in accordance with the difficulty you select, it dictates how many continues you will be given. When you die, you appear right where you were beaten. When it's game over, then you begin the entire stage from scratch, which really isn't a problem and this brings me too......

......My number one complaint about this game, and it's definitely the difficulty. This game is just way too easy on the Normal mode, and the hard mode really isn't much tougher. You can breeze through normal in about 35 minutes at the most, and hard maybe in about 50 minutes. The boss battles really aren't much either. The toughest boss is Slash, who appears around the 5th stage or so because he actually blocks all frontal attacks. After him, it's a cake walk all over again with Super Shredder being a super chump.

In addition, there are two more modes in the forms of Time Trial and Vs. The former pits one of the four turtles of your choice in different segments of the game, where they will battle enemies with a time limit. This portion of the game never held my attention, and it's been so long since I played through it, I don't even remember what it offers. Vs. is equally disposable, as you compete in two out of three rounds combat using only the turtles in a two player fighter. It was lame then and it's even worse now.

Controls:

The control scheme uses two buttons, attack and jump, and when pressed at the same time, you can perform the health draining special attack. Throws can be performed when the enemies are stunned, and this takes little practice to master. The controls are pick up and play, and they perform great for a game like this.

Graphics/Music/Sound:

In the options, you can select Comic or Animated. The former features the turtles in their comic book form, with each of them being a different shade of green from each other. While the latter carries over the form of the TV series. The game uses different sprites from the original game, and the turtles have different ready poses. I like the character designs here for many of the characters. Rock Steady and Bebop who appear in the pirate ship stage, are as comical as ever dressed up in pirate garments with a fencing sword and whip. Some of the characters like the Roadkill Rodney's, Mousers, and even the alligator Leatherhead resemble their animated series styles, while Slash maintains the look of his toy specs. Super Shredder heavily resembles the version from the second live action movie Secret of the Ooze.

The character animations stand out a great deal, with some fluid fighting combinations from both the Turtles as well as the Foot Clan. And it's pretty funny watching the turtles literally flatten by giant balls or electrocuted by beams of electricity. The stage backgrounds are a mixed bag but lean more towards the positive though. The scenery is basically the same throughout the stage and only scrolls on by while you move from point A to B. However, the stage designs are pretty cool capturing the different periods, and the game maintains that sci-fi feel canon with the franchise when the turtles head into the future as well as in the Technodrome. The BGM also captures the feel of the stage, the animated series, and the fighting, plus there are songs that have stuck with me to the point where I've replayed the game only to hear them. As for the sound effects, Konami managed to keep the more important stuff around, like the 'Pizza Time" and "Cowabunga" phrases. Other wise a few of the effects are rather generic, while a small number manage to stick out.

Replay:

Personally, when I'm in the mood for this type of game, I would rather replay Streets of Rage 2 or Super Double Dragon, because of the extended moves list and various weapons. Turtles in Time is too average of a fighter with very little to offer.

In closing:

Fans of TMNT will tell you this is the best side scrolling beat'em up ever made. Fans of side scrolling beat'em ups will tell you something drastically different. TMNT: Turtles in Time is among the weaker games of this type from the 16-Bit universe, and it doesn't really take any steps to expand on the original TMNT, or even two and three of the original NES series.

The very weak difficulty will find you blowing through this game in no time, which doesn't at all make it an essential purchase or download if you're not a fan of the franchise. I've seen this game being sold for nearly $200. Do not be suckered. Nobody should be paying that kind of cash for this, fan or not.

Pros:
Loads of fan oriented material, two player co-op can be some fun

Cons:
-Way too easy, wasted concept

GameStop Quick Tip by KingreX32

Sun, 8 Apr 2012 21:28:42 +0000

Goodness I cant stand these guys anymore. Am I the only one who feels like they are being robbed at gun point whenever they shop there? Some things that really annoy me with them is that the prices for some games here are ridiculous and their trade policies for games is just downright theft.

You could go there and buy a game new just as its released, you spend 70 dollars on this game and play it. Two weeks when later you come back to trade it in they tell you its only worth 30 dollars and put it back on the shelf for 50. I cant stand being stolen from, and that's what these guys do.

Its sucks though because Gamestop is the only Gaming Specialty store around, there are somethings you can get at Gamestop that you just cant find at Walmart or Zellars. So its almost like I'm forced to go there. Yes I know Best Buy and Futureshop have their own Gaming sections but the prices are just as bad.

Turtles in Time is a Blast from the Past!

Fri, 6 Apr 2012 04:53:18 +0000

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles in Time is not only the best TMNT game out there, it is SO much more! The 90's through the very early 2000's were the best years in gaming, and It definitely goes to show. The turtles were "da' bomb" back then and playing this as a kid blew my freaking socks off. I remember playing the original TMNT on the NES. Oh, how I remember that craptastic failure. There were very few good turtles games, but this struck green gold. First thing you will notice when you play the game, other than the improvement of graphics and audio, is you can play as all four turtles, AND its TWO-PLAYER! The controls are smooth and all turtles are on an even playing level. You don't have to reach distances with Don anymore to just barely survive. There is a good variety on levels and characters as well. You see April for only a split second here and there. Enemies include foot soldiers, roadkill rodneys, mousers, Krang, Slash, the Rat King, Tokka and Rahzar, and of course, Shredder. The stages go from modern day New York, the technodrome, a sewer, a train, boat, and volcanic mountain--all set in the past, riding on hoverboards in a bright technologic future, and finally in the alternate present, back in the technodrome to face Super Shredder. See in this installment, Shredder takes the Statue of Liberty and the turtles trail him to the technodrome to discover that he wants to take over the world by using the Statue of Liberty and time travel. He sends the turtles through time and at the end, the turtles stop Shredder and take the Statue of Liberty back. This is a weak and senseless plot, but kicking butt doesn't really need it. I have never played the arcade version, but apparently there are minor differences between it and the SNES version like different music, and the SNES version includes minor variations on stages and bosses. There is absolutely nothing bad I can say about Turtles IV. So lets hit the ole' recap!

Pros:
-Awesome music fans of the franchise know and love, plus new ones
-Plethera of locales and enemies to keep you busy and far from bored
-This is a Two player Co-op game, very high replay value!
-Superb graphics, hail to the sixteen bits
-All four turtles are fully playable, and smooth controls help.
-Super Shredder!

Cons:
For plot driven gamers, you will be disheartened by the story. It seems that they added it at the last second, either that or I'm just slow or blind. Either way, this is a minor flaw, if one at all. Cowabunga!

TMNT IV is not the best but when consoles are concerned, the game is nearly perfect. Whether or not you like the SNES or Genesis port better, that is all up to you. I grew up with the SNES so that is the version I personally recommend.

Now that I'm finished, Im a little hungry. ITS PIZZA TIME!!!

The little Nintendo racer that always misses from being perfect.

Wed, 4 Apr 2012 00:56:52 +0000

When it comes down to the constant releases of one sequel after the other to a successful franchise, the only way one should go is up, in theory at least. As some of us know, this isn't always the case, since some sequels fail to live up to the standard set by their predecessor. Mario Kart, which was originally released in 1992 for the Super Nintendo is one of those rare exceptions. The series has enjoyed a great deal of success, and with every sequel there has been some type of improvement. Which brings us to the fifth game in the Mario Kart line up for the Nintendo DS, Mario Kart DS.

Mario Kart DS lives up to its legacy by delivering a fantastic, fantasy racing experience. It sticks to everything that made Mario Kart fun in the first place and turns it up a bit. The game contains various features from the earlier games that old fans will quickly recognize. It's also an upgrade visually and in its multi-player. Without wasting anymore time I'll just get right down to business.

Game Play:

Mario Kart DS is a single and multi player game that follows the characters of the Super Mario Bros. universe, as they try to win the first place golden trophy across all cups. The game begins with only 4 playable cups, that are made up of 4 tracks in each cup in the Grand Prix. The Prix is broken into two categories. The first one is Nitro Grand Prix, here, exists 2 cups with the new tracks to the series. The second one is Retro Grand Prix, and this features 2 more cups and many different tracks from the first four games. Both Grand Prix's have a total of 4 cups with 4 tracks each making it 32 tracks total.

The game has three engine classes that not only act as the speed but also the difficulty; 50, 100, and 150, with 50 being the easiest and 150 being the toughest. There are 8 characters that can be selected; Mario, Luigi, Wario, Bowser, Princess Peach, Toad, Yoshi, and Donkey Kong. Each of the characters have their own attributes to suit the player's driver preference. For example, some characters may excel in speed and acceleration, but are lacking in handling and drifting, or the other way around. I mainly like to deal with characters who are far superior in both handling and drifting, because this makes turning those very sharp turns a lot easier.

The game still features the special items that you can pick up to use as turbo power ups such as mushrooms, or other items that can be used as weapons, such as red turtle shells that resemble heat seeking missiles or banana peels to slip up drivers. An extra ability which was introduced in Mario Kart 64 called the turbo slide, is a sliding move that can be used when the kart is drifting on sharp turns. When this technique is performed correctly, the kart will receive a quick boost. This is a technique that must be mastered, because the AI and even human players have it down to a science. Personally, I abuse the hell out of this move and I pull it off on every single turn I make, because you have to if you want a chance at winning first place consistently.

As usual, the race tracks aren't very easy to get through. They contain many hazards for you to completely avoid, such as piranha plants shooting fireballs, and in Waluigi's Pinball track, giant pinballs rolling into the race track that will knock you for a serious loop. The cool thing about this is that the AI players are not immune to the hazards, they also suffer a similar fate whenever they collide with these things.

When the first two cups of both Prix's are completed, then 2 more cups will be unlocked along with extra characters, with my favorite character in the whole game being Dry Bones, who happens to be the skeletal remains of a dead turtle. When the the Special Cup is completed on 150 a second time I think, then another engine difficulty appears called Mirror 150. This turns the tracks around and has the characters racing them the opposite way adding to the replay.

There are up to five modes to try out. Grand Prix is the main game. Time Trial has you racing your ghost, which happens to be whatever character you achieved the best time with on a certain track. Vs. Pits you against the other racers on any track you choose. This is great for practice, especially if you're having trouble with performing the turbo slide at will. Missions is pretty cool, here, you perform certain objectives such as pulling off the turbo slide a few times or hitting objects with turtle shells to pass the mission. Once the missions are completed for that particular stage, you will face an end boss. Some of the missions help you into becoming a better player while some are just annoying, like trying to hit a bunch of moles with green turtle shells as they jump out of their holes.

My personal favorite is Battle, which features two different games: Balloon Battle and Shine Runners. The former, which I love to play, pits you against the other characters in an all out Kart war on a designated track, with the goal to pop each others balloons with items. Shine Runners I really don't like as much. You have to try and collect as many shine coins as possible in a limited time, you can take other players shines by hitting them with objects. These can be played during Wireless Connection only. The most fun in the game is no doubt in the Wi-Fi multi-player for the main Prix, which can only be done with four players. This mode you will play against some really tough people and some really sucky ones too.

Mario Kart DS can be great and very addictive fun, but it's not without flaws though, and I find them to all be in the game play. There's a difference between being either tough or cheap, and the AI can be very cheap to the point of being downright annoying and frustrating. Like the rest of the series, the individual attributes for the drivers is rendered meaningless, because once the game starts everyone is faster than you with better handling. You have to rely on well honed skills, and more importantly, the items you are randomly given and here lies the problem. Most of the time it will feel like you're never getting what you need. When a red shell is all you need to get into first place, most of the time, you will receive something completely useless, while if the AI is in second place, it will almost always receive everything it needs to nail you multiple times over. Many times I began a race in first place, I would be hit up to four times with the super purple shell, which can find you at any time and get to you at any speed, or shrunken down to size only to be robbed of first place. Another thing that bothers me, is how quickly the characters can recover from weapon attacks. On some occasions they seem to have little effect, and the racer is either right back on your tail, or you just couldn't gain enough ground on them.

The AI's advantages only continues; every time a race begins, at the right time during the countdown you can perform a rocket start, which gives you a big burst of speed at the very beginning. This is a move you must have down, because the AI will pull this off with up to six characters every race, and you will find yourself in a big hole really quick, plus getting worthless items to fight back. And if this isn't bad enough, characters that aren't fast enough according to their attributes will become speed demons out of nowhere. I know the Mario Kart series has its die hard fans and I'm one of them, but how people can ignore these annoying disadvantages is beyond me. I usually come in first place most of the time, but it still bothers me to the point where I could just turn it off some times.

Controls:

This is one area that the series has always been top notch at. The controls are very responsive, and if it feels like a kart may be too sensitive or too rough, then it's more than likely the kart's features. All of the buttons are used in some way, with acceleration and brake buttons on the main face, plus the shoulder buttons performing different functions such as using your item or performing a small hop. The turbo slide is performed by holding the R button down, while at the same time moving the directional pad left from right during sharp turns. This performs very well in nearly any situation. If it feels like you can never get it out, it's not at all due to the lack of control responsiveness. It boils down to only one thing, practice, and lots of it too.

Graphics/Music/Sound:

Everything looks very well to me from character designs to backgrounds. The characters have finer looking 3D sprites with well animated motions, from steering the karts to taking wild tumbles. I really like some of the stage designs. Waluigi's Pinball is a very cool stage, with one segment featuring a complete pinball set up with ball-bouncers, plus a hyper speed moment that resembles those old bonus point areas from the pinball games, where the ball shoots in and fires out pretty quick. Tick-Tock Clock is another favorite for me, it has a moment where the kart's race across moving clock gears, and a third favorite I can think of is Airship Fortress that has a nostalgic feel to it. This is a race track that takes place on the battleships first introduced in Super Mario Bros. 3. This stage has a battleship in the background firing off gigantic Bullet Bills in the racers direction. Many of the stages have something that stands out. I love many of the stage set ups, full of bumpy roads and even very big hills where you can feel the increase in speed, the pinball stage stands out here for me in this.

I like the updated look for the retro stages, Bowser's Castle feels a lot larger than what it was before. One of the things I think brings out the best in a lot of stages is the camera work, which is definitely worked brilliantly with a fixed camera that follows your driver even through the sharpest turns. Plus close ups on many of the stages hazards, such as the huge pinballs and fire balls from piranha plants looking a whole lot cooler.

Some folks I heard from mention that the music is rather average. I'm probably 50/50 here, since some stages uses the music better than others. Tick-Tock Clock has a personality all on its own. The BGM may some kind of dull, yet it reflects that stage very well. Waluigi's Pinball has this game show like, and even casino like theme that just gives off this feel of a big gamble. The BGM for Bowser's Castle is a disappointment for me though. Although the stage is pretty good, it doesn't have that menacing like feel reminiscent of earlier entries. The sound effects has some decent moments with good voice overs. Princess Daisy sounds completely different from Peach and far more energetic to boot. Dry Bones I some times find to be hilarious, because he forever sounds like cracking bones.

Replay:

The multi-player is basically where serious fans will spend the most time. But the single player has a lot to offer. Mario Kart DS Wi-Fi play only allows 4 players, and at the time it never bothered me. I had fun during this on several occasions. Unlocking all of the tracks on 150 is a challenge all by itself, and having to do it again during the Mirror mode only adds more to it.

In closing:

It's a Mario game, so of course it's great for kids of all ages. Grown ups and casual gamers will probably get a kick out of this too, but I can imagine the AI playing a negative role in their enjoyment though. Fortunately, the different difficulty settings actually make a difference, so this can make a nice icebreaker for someone who doesn't normally play games.

Now, although Mario Kart 7 for the 3DS may feel like a rehash of this game to some, personally, I think it renders this one outdated in a way with its better online play and updated graphics. And because of this, it's a little difficult to recommend this game in this day and age. I think this will only be valuable to serious Mario Kart fans. If you don't have a 3DS then pick this up, if you do, I highly recommend dropping this in favor of its sequel.

Pros:
-Maintains the greatness found in the series, fun multi-player

Cons:
-Frustrating AI holds it back quite a bit

Console Wars Quick Tip by KingreX32

Sun, 1 Apr 2012 17:00:18 +0000

With every new Console generation comes The Console Wars. An epic battle Between the biggest gaming companies (Sony , Nintendo Microsoft and at one point Sega and Atari) for domination. Although many console cycles have passed no clear winner of any console war has been announced. Lets just say they all ended in a stalemate.

Cant wait to see what happens when Nintendo releases thier new Console The Nintendo WiiU to do battle against th Forces of Xbox 360 and PS3. Its gonna be one for the ages.

Good game, but time doesn't help it.

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 15:34:07 +0000

It's really not hard to believe that the Mario Kart series has lasted as long as it did. When I first played the original Super Mario Kart for the SNES back in 1992, I knew the game was going to be a smash for two reasons; 1) It had Super Mario in it, that's almost a guarantee for success, and 2) the game was fun as all hell. Mario Kart in some form has made it to almost every single Nintendo system to date, with the Game Boy Advance (GBA) being the third one in the line up. Mario Kart Super Circuit which was released in 2001 for the GBA combines elements from the first two games of the series; Super Mario Kart and Super Mario Kart 64. And surprisingly, it's actually better than the first one, but it's not on par with the second game.

Game Play:

For those who may not know, Mario Kart Super Circuit is a multi-player, fantasy racer starring the Super Mario Bros. Mario and Luigi. Flanking them are Princess Peach, Toad, King Bowser, Yoshi, Donkey Kong, and Wario. The object is to complete three laps on your way towards winning the Golden Cup. It's possible to win Silver and Bronze by coming in 2nd and 3rd place respectively. However, the goal is to come in first, because this is one of the two ways to unlock something special, more on that later.

The race tracks are heavily influenced by the Super Mario universe, with stages representing many walks of life from the various games; for example, a few tracks takes place inside of Bowers's lava-pool filled castle, along with the Ghost House of Super Mario World full of little spirits floating around. I still think it was a clever move to use the main series as the playing pool. Playing these games usually gives me the feel to go back to the Super Mario games. Anyway, the race tracks are full of traps to slow you down from making it to the goal; such as drop offs into water, or giant Thwomps trying to crush you flat. The stages have quite a bit of imagination and they are fun to race through. Adding to the depth of the game, are the items that the cars can pick up to use as weapons or power ups, such as banana peels to slip the cars, turtle shells to hit them for a nice tumble, or mushrooms for a turbo boost. To fans of the series, most of the really cool stuff from Mario Kart 64 such as the three green and red shells are well intact.

Now in all honesty, I'm not exactly a fan of racers but I'm getting there. I'm a fan of Mario Kart. I enjoy the wild and wacky antics of trying to make it to the goal line. It's never ending fun when knocking your opponents for a loop, or grabbing that mushroom at the last second and robbing them at the finish line by inches. The multi player is by far the most fun, and when using the Game Boy Advance Link, everyone has their own screen to play on, as opposed to the split screen. This way, you can't see what your opponent is up to, and vice versa. This brings out the most fun in the races. Another mode that can be enjoyed, mainly on the single player tip, is racing your ghost on the Time Trial. This pits you against your best time on a specific track that took place in the main game. I actually gave up on this a long time ago, because I can never catch my Toad ghost no matter who I use. I didn't realize that I played that particular round so perfectly. There are other game modes, unfortunately, they really don't have much to offer.

The game has three different engine leagues to race in; 50, 100, 150, and these act as the three difficulties. The first one the AI is pretty weak and it's very easy to ace the game. 150 is where the challenge is, and the AI plays to win, to include, the game likes to play around too much with the items, and it would feel like it's never giving you what you need. Trying to win first place, along with the highest ranking is not easy on this setting at all.

Now I mentioned that this was better than the SNES version, and for me there's only one reason, and it's the characters. In the original, the characters you faced all possessed special abilities, for example, Mario and Luigi could use the Starman at will and become invincible. While all the other characters had never ending projectiles which really wasn't fair at all, especially in the case of Peach and Toad. They threw mushrooms all day, and one hit would shrink you to be quickly flatten, which leaves you at a big disadvantage to catch up. They were also able to jump much higher than you to avoid your projectiles. Here, they're better balanced and they can only use the items you can. Those big advantages they had over the player for the SNES annoyed me to no end.

This version isn't exactly perfect though. Each of the characters possess a certain racing attribute, such as the Princess and Toad being the fastest characters in the game. But this is just your basic window dressing to pretend that the game has more depth than what it really does. When the race begins, you can have Toad and you will be outran by let's say Mario, all depending where he began at the starting line. If he began positioned at 7, then he'll be the slowest in the race. If he's positioned at 1, then he'll be the fastest and hardest to catch. The only ones who play somewhat different are the bigger characters, Wario, DK, and Bowser, but playing against them results in the same thing. I never used them for competition against human players.

Controls:

No real issues here as everything performs quite well. You have buttons for your acceleration, brake, and shoulder buttons to either use your item or do a small hop. The control pad gets rougher to use on the faster engine settings to create that realistic feel with the handling. Some characters here are better than others, and when using the Starman for that extra speed boost, the car is much more difficult to handle on turns, but this has nothing to do with the lack of control responsiveness. This is just how the game is played.

Graphics/Music/Sound:

Visually, I think this game is a small step up from the SNES in some ways, yet still not something I would say is great. The backgrounds have some good details such as statues and trees, but there really isn't any variety, and you will see the same objects no matter how many turns you make on the course. Plus the levels are all flat with maybe a couple of bumps. It feels more like a rehashing of the original game. The character designs reuse the sprites of the N64, only on a smaller scale with less animation. The music reflects the personality of the stages, and it maintains that playful like atmosphere canon with the Super Mario Bros. It gets the job done. The sound effects also feel lifted from the N64, with Luigi having a different voice from Mario. I still dig Wario's voice the most here.

Replay:

Now back to what I mentioned earlier about coming in first place. I'm still pretty unsure on how exactly it works, but I believe you have to come in first place, plus pick up at least 100 coins that are scattered around on the race tracks, in order to open up another 20 race tracks. These stages are the ones found in the SNES, which is another reason why I think this version is better. The challenge mainly comes trying to win in the 150 league. Unlocking all these stages is obviously great for the additional playing fields.

In Closing:

Mario Kart Super Circuit is fun. Unfortunately, with the release of Mario Kart 7 late last year, and even Mario Kart DS some years back, it feels waaaaaay outdated, especially when you factor in the online multi-player that completely does away with the GBA link. And because of this, I see no reason to recommend this game at all. The sequels are far superior in every way you can possibly think of, that's how much progress there has been over the years. Unless you're a true to the core Super Mario fan, I advise to avoid this game and pick up one of those sequels. Your money and time will be far better spent.

Pros:
-Unlocking the extras and multi-player

Cons:
-Insanely outdated, minor game play issues

The little blue bomber got another make over here.

Sun, 25 Mar 2012 18:52:25 +0000

In the future 20XX, humanity are living with the services of industrial humanoid robots. One mad scientist by the name of Dr. Wily steals 8 robots from Dr. Light with his plan to rule the world. One of Light's robots, Mega, volunteers to be changed into a fighting robot to stop Wily. Now named Mega Man and given abilities to take the powers away from defeated robots, he sets out on his mission to stop Wily. -summary

Capcom is one company with the notorious reputation to constantly milk the hell out of their more popular franchises through re-releases and sequels. In the case of Mega Man, they churned out another sequel in what sometimes seemed like every month, as well as a new variation which seemed like every year. Now they have the remakes down to a science. In the case of remakes and reboots; it's all good as far as I'm concerned though, as long as they're actually making some type of improvement on the original, which brings me to their 2006 title for the PSP Mega Man Powered Up.

Following up Mega Man Maverick Hunter X ( a remake of Mega Man X) which was released the previous year. Powered Up is a remake of the original NES classic, and just like Capcom's remake of Resident Evil, it improves on the original a great deal. Mega Man Powered Up remains completely faithful to its predecessor maintaining that hard as nails difficulty with an updated look, loads of extras, plus the original NES version with the same visual look of this game. Capcom got ill with this release from top to bottom, and in my mind, this is one game that belongs in your PSP collection.

Game Play:

Nothing has changed in the initial game play. Powered Up is a side scroller that follows the little Blue Bomber as he shoots and jumps through 8 stages containing various obstacles and enemies, with a boss battle at the end of each stage. When these stages are finished, next you have additional stages to complete on your way to the final boss battle. Of course, this has been standard practice in the world of gaming for decades. The thing that always set Mega Man apart from everything else, is that the player can choose which stages to attack first, as well as gain the bosses abilities after defeating them in each of these stages. Mega Man will be able to perform the bosses attacks, and unlike many games out there that bombards the character with a vast assortment of weapons, where some of them will even be forgotten since there's no real use for them; this game forces every weapon to find some type of use. The coolest feature for these weapons is being able to use them against the bosses. The weapons damage all the bosses in some way, but there's one specific weapon that causes serious damage to specific characters, which makes the fights with them so much easier. For example, after defeating one of the robots by the name of Ice Man, his ice weapon causes great damage when used on Fire Man resulting in an easy win, while against Guts Man, the damage isn't so great. It's possible to beat the bosses with Mega Man's standard firearm, but learning which weapon heavily effects the bosses can give you an edge in these battles. It's similar to a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors. Plus some of the weapons make getting through stages a little less difficult.

The stages themselves can be very difficult at times. There are plenty of opportunities to fall to your death due to moving and disappearing platforms, along with taking small to heavy damage trying to overcome the various obstacles; such as geysers of lava shooting into the air and falling victim to enemy fire as well as their rush attacks. The AI keeps you on your toes for sure, and you will suffer plenty of defeats learning these stages.

Mega Man Powered Up features two modes; New Style and Old Style. New Style is the actual remake of the original that features different variations of the original stages along with two new robot bosses, Oil Man and Time Man, with the latter being heavily influenced by Flash Man of Mega Man 2. The stages are still based on the robots personalities; Fireman and Iceman's stages clearly resemble their namesakes. There are also changes made to the main game as well, for example, Cut Man's blade weapon no longer destroys Elec Man in two hits, in fact, it barely has an effect on him. Therefore, fans of the original will have to rethink their strategy all over again, and this adds to the already challenging game play, and believe me, this game is hard.

The bosses can actually be unlocked and become playable, but only if you beat them with your regular weapon; fighting Elec Man and Fireman like that can be very tough. Playing as the bosses delivers an interesting gaming experience. Some of them can be very fun to play, while others like Bomb Man for example is just frustrating. They also retain their level of balance in the main game as well. In the case of Fire Man, you can own Oil Man in record time plus crash through his stage with relative ease, and when going through his own stage, Fire Man is pretty much invulnerable as most fire attacks have no effect on him at all. While it's the opposite in going after Ice Man. During his stage, should Fire Man fall in water at anytime then he loses his flame plus his projectile attack. You will need to find a fire source to re-ignite his flame. On top of this, he's no match for Ice Man at all, and he will be killed very quickly. This becomes an issue with all of the bosses should you use them. In addition to choosing the bosses, Mega Man takes their place as a villain and he battles you with his X-Buster Cannon and slide move, which can make him very difficult to fight, in the case of using Cut Man, nearly impossible to beat.

Old Style features the original NES game only with the Mega Man Powered Up visual make over on a smaller scale, to present that old school feel for the nostalgic gamer. Every thing is basically the way a hardcore fan remembered it all the way to the bosses weaknesses. Therefore, you can use that same strategy you already have down to a science. Now I'm not sure if it's just me, but this game feels harder than the NES version and that says a lot right there, because that game was hard as hell.

Mega Man Powered Up will definitely appeal to the hardcore gamers as well as even beginners. Before selecting the stages you can choose the difficulty setting: Easy, Normal, and Hard. Easy is well, way too easy and presents like no challenge. There are actually blocks which can prevent you from falling to your death. To include, the boss battles are much easier because they stun very easily. I actually recommend using this mode to unlock them. Normal is a different story and it's everything the way it should be with no blocks to prevent your death, and bosses only stun to the weapons their weak too. Make no mistake, Normal mode is no cake walk at all and you will get beat up quite often. Hard takes things to the next level and the bosses can't be stunned at all. This setting is clearly for masters. The difficulty is probably one of the biggest flaws though. People who aren't into hard games will grow frustrated here, especially in the later stages after the robots have been beaten. Outside of this, I can't think of any issues with the game play that bothered me. The story mode features very small cut scenes but nothing that is really relevant to the overall plot. Your only mission is to beat the robots and Dr. Wily, which can probably take about 2 hours if you have everything down.

Controls:

I think there's been a huge improvement since the NES version here. Mega Man and the bosses perform very well and all of the functions are responsive. It was pretty easy to make those razor thin jumps, and the only time I died was either due to mis-timing or a lack of patience. You can select the weapons in the heat of battle with the two shoulder buttons, which eliminates having to hit the select button to visit the weapons screen.

Graphics/Sound/Music:

I'm about 90% satisfied with the visual make over. The backgrounds are vibrant with some nice detail in some stages. Fire Man's stage has this red background with lava-filled boilers, and lava-geysers in the foreground. The stage does a good job describing the bosses character, Guts Man Construction stage looks pretty cool too, with a big crane in the background appearing to be clearing out debris. I think the 3D look is very nice and it works well for the animated characters. The character designs are animated with some fluid movements. Mega Man flinches in pain when hit with an attack, and he becomes visually fatigued when low on life. Now, I didn't play this game during its initial release and this is where 5% of my dislike comes from. Even as an anime fan, there are two art styles I really don't like, and they are Nekomimi and Chibi, this game uses the latter which displays this child-like appearance for the game creating this all too cute look. I know this is the way Akira Kitamura originally wanted to portray the character, but this just isn't to my taste. The other 5% comes in the slow down when there's too much taking place on the screen. I find this problem to be quite weird, because it's not like this game uses a very complex design. I'm sure there's a technical explanation for it though that goes completely over my head.

The near cutesy soundtrack is a revamped version of the of the original that fits with the look of the game. Some of these music scores I enjoy a lot, with Elec Man, Guts Man, and Fire Man's stages coming to mind. The BGM has a light hearted and fun feel to them. Capcom also decided to add voice overs, in this new generation of games I'll always find that to be a welcomed addition, but I really don't care for Mega Man's innocent, child like voice, and Fire Man's wild cowboy accent grates on my nerves. While on the other hand, I actually like Elec Man's arrogance. The sound effects are good with a clear distinction between the weapon blasts; the ice attacks sounds totally different from fire attacks. And when Mega Man is hit by electrical blast from various obstacles, it definitely sounds like it hurts.

Replay/Extras:

This is the area where the game really shines. During some areas you will see items that are impossible to get for Mega Man. Don't even waste your time trying to get them, because they're for the bosses when you play through with them. Cut Man has a double jump to reach some of them, while Bomb Man, etc, will have to blast through a wall or something. There are also 100 missions in the challenge mode made up of either boss rushes or just getting from point A to B. This unlocks other things in the game, most notably, another playable character named Proto Man, who is very fun to play with. Also, through out the game you will be able to pick up pieces for the "Construction" mode. This mode allows you to create your own stages and play other folks stages using the MMweb through the PSP's Wi-Fi. I haven't played this part in years. I do remember there being some creative stages out there at one point. Not too sure what it could be like in the here and now.

Closing:

I don't know how true this is, but I heard that all of these things can just be downloaded now. I got mine by playing through so I could get my cash worth. In any case, like Mega Man Maverick Hunter X, Mega Man Powered Up, albeit somewhat unnecessary, was a remake done right. It improved over the original in all possible areas and the only problem I can think of is the difficulty. Personally, the choice in art style bothers me, still, it's among the better games for the PSP. Of course, if you're a Mega Man fan who missed it then you should give it a try. I also recommend it to gamers seeking a good challenge, you will find it here.

Pros:
- Fantastic update, lots of replay value

Cons:
-Difficulty for some, Art style still hasn't grown on me

Super PMS Peach

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 01:00:39 +0000

King Koopa's servant brings to his notice the Vibe Scepter. It's a magical ornament that effects the feelings of ones target. King Koopa sends his minions to Princess Peach's castle and uses the scepter to kidnap Mario, Luigi, and many of her Toad servants. Peach takes it upon herself to rescue Mario and company with a magical umbrella named Perry. -summary

Talk about being late to the party. Nintendo pretty much opened up a can of worms back in 1988 with Super Mario Bros. 2, when they introduced the then Princess Toadstool, now Princess Peach as a playable character with an ability that set her slightly apart from Super Mario. I remember fans craving a Princess Peach game where she was no longer the damsel in distress, instead, the heroine who must embark on her own quest to save the hero, who has constantly put his life on the line for her. Nintendo finally gave fans what they wanted back in 2005 with Super Princess Peach. Now the game at times feels as if it caters more towards young female gamers, but there's a decent amount of gaming going on here that was able to somewhat hold my attention. It's far away from the gaming masterpiece some folks would try to force you to believe, and it's not better than New Super Mario Bros. either, in fact, I think it makes New Super Mario look even better. At the very least, I can say it's playable and die hard fans of the characters will get the most out of it.

Game Play:

Super Princess Peach is a platformer that feels very different from the usual Super Mario romp, and my feelings are rather mixed here. The story follows Peach as she travels through 8 worlds rescuing her servants, plus Luigi and Mario. There are three Toads in each stage that must be found, and each world is made up of several stages that can be re-entered after completing them.

Princess Peach can't exactly rely on only jumping on her enemies to defeat them, because this only immobilizes some of them for a short while. Her abilities lies in the magical umbrella named Perry, whose power effects her emotions called Vibes; when she's cheery, she's able to fly and create a tornado by spinning, when angry, she's engulfed in a pillar of flame that is used to melt ice, burn bridges, and defeat enemies that normally can't be beaten, when she's calm, her health bar slowly replenishes, and sadness causes her to move at great speeds crying waterfalls of tears. These abilities aren't only used for battle against enemies but they also help solve the pseudo puzzles found in the game. Her umbrella also causes her to float in the air for a very short while after a jump, and other abilities such as a ground stomp, charge shot, etc, must be purchased from the Toad shop with coins scattered through out the levels.

Similar to the Legend of Zelda, Peach has a health gauge made up of three hearts, and she loses half when hit by anything. She can also purchase more hearts increasing the count. There's also another gauge displaying the use of power she has for her vibes which can also be increased by purchasing items. Along the way as the bar is being used, Peach can replenish her vibes by using the umbrella to pick up foes and devour them. Super Princess Peach really did have the potential to be something special and quite possibly one of the better games in the Super Mario universe. Unfortunately, these abilities handed down to her dampens the difficulty in the game play resulting in a platformer that can be beaten with ridiculous ease. First of all, her Calm Vibe can be spammed all day in just about any given situation, this goes for during boss battles as well. Forget about the classic cheap deaths, because whenever you fall off a cliff, you begin at the starting point of that particular level only losing half a heart in the process. I do understand not every single platformer should be NES Ninja Gaiden hard, but come on, this seems like Nintendo is once again taking pity on very bad gamers. What's the point in working to get better at a game, when you barely pay for your mistakes? The game also resorts to way too much hand holding. There are tips galore for everything; boss battles, finding secrets, as well as finding the three Toads in the stages. This game requires little to no skill at all.

Many of the stages feel like wasted ideas due to the very weak difficulty. If it wasn't for the unique boss battles I would probably hate this game. I enjoyed several of the boss fights since they require different approaches and tactics to be beaten. For example, the first boss encounter is with a giant piranha plant. Peach must use her tears to grow an over-sized plant in order to gain higher ground by using the leaves. This allows her to cry waterfalls of tears down the plants throat filling up its belly to leap on it and try to pop him. Unfortunately, this area isn't as great as it could have been though, since once again the game spoon feeds you on how to win, to include, there's a mini-game that must be completed before every boss fight, and these games suffer from serious redundancy since they are rehashed over and over.

I also have issues with the story and overall plot. Despite Peach being the main character, it's the talking umbrella Perry who steals all of her thunder. There's a cut scene at the conclusion of every boss battle, which focuses on Perry going through flashbacks in his dreams on how he ended up in that position in the first place, thus, making him the central character in Peach's own solo debut. This was a stupid decision from the jump, only made much worse since Perry's story is dropped and forgotten at the very end. Bad enough a stupid umbrella is the only character developed through out the whole game, much worse his story isn't even concluded. This is among the biggest troll endings I seen in a game. The entire story was wasted potential because those cut scenes could have been used building Peach into a hero and developing her relationship with her friends.

Controls:

This area is also hit and miss. All of Peach's moves and movements are easy to execute and I found the controls to perform very well. However, my problem is with the touch screen and stylus interface. It's impossible to utilize the control pad and buttons as well as the stylus for the touch screen on the bottom. Which results in using your thumbs to activate the Vibes on the touch screen, and this leaves the screen full of finger prints. I also wasn't very thrilled with having to tap the screen with the stylus during mini games. It just feels as if the screen can eventually be damaged and I just don't like that thought.

Graphics/Music/Sound:

Visually, I think the game is pretty nice and some of the backgrounds seem to have been reused for New Super Mario Bros., which was released only a few months later. The lava stages have some very pretty lava-falls, and I thought some of the dark, lightening filled cloud stages were nice too. The character designs have some good moments, with some good details in the over-sized boss battles. Peach on the other hand felt a little bland though. The worlds have a vivid feel to them and they fit well with the personality of the game. This also goes for the soundtrack which mainly caters towards children. It gets the job down without sounding overly saccharine. There's actually one song I did enjoy and it was the flute ridden Fury Volcano #1. And as usual, the sound effects are nothing more than average. You will hear the classic coin pick up sounds but Nintendo simply can't find the time to work in some actual voice overs.

Extras:

Through out the game you will be able to unlock some mini-games that can be pretty fun for a kid, and be able to access them later in the menu. There's one called Toad Tote, where you guide Toad through a maze of flames to the goal point, avoiding pillars of flames and attempting not to touch the walls. And another one called Toad Jump, where Toad automatically runs and you have to blow into the mic to jump over obstacles. Honestly, I could never see myself playing this in public. There's a Music Room that allows you to listen to the stage music you pick up in various stages throughout the game. These things are decent add ons but they were meant for a specific audience. And after completing the game, several more supposedly difficult stages are opened as well as harder boss battles. They still felt just as easy to me, and they didn't really hold my attention for long.

Closing:

Super Princess Peach had the potential to be far better than this; it's a shame it feels so held back though with its weak difficulty, control set up and other things. This is a game I feel more comfortable recommending to casual gamers who hate to lose and die hard fans of Super Mario. I don't regret playing it, but I don't see myself coming back to it ever again either.

Pros:
- Pick up and play, Fantastic for children

Cons:
-Too easy, unnecessary padding, annoying control set up, bad story conclusion

CAPCOM Quick Tip by Madpenguin

Tue, 28 Feb 2012 03:40:15 +0000

Capcom has been around for years and at one point they were my favorite video game company. Over time, I developed this love hate relationship with them because of how they like to jerk the fans around. I mean, hell, they repackaged Street Fighter II like 6 times or something before they kicked out a sequel, and then they milked the hell out of each of them. Not too long ago they repackaged Super Street Fighter IV and Marvel vs Capcom 3 with new characters when all they had to do was add them as DLC.

Despite them being crooks, they do know how to kick out quality games from time to time. Looking forward to Resident Evil 6, and I'll be playing Asura's Wrath really soon.

GOD OF WAR Light In the World of Norse

Sat, 25 Feb 2012 18:37:23 +0000

In VIKING: THE BATTLE FOR ASGARD you play a legendary warrior named Skarin. A war between the Norse gods Freya and Hel has spilt over into Midgard (Earth). Hel is upset about being kicked out of Asgard and raises an army of resurrected warriors. She is determined to conquer Midgard and use it as her launching platform against Asgard. In opposition to Hel is Freya who has selected Skarin as her chosen warrior. She gifts him with a few special abilities and sets him out on a path to free Midgard from Hel's threat.

The overall gameplay is fairly easy as VIKING: THE BATTLE FOR ASGARD is basically a hack-n-slash game with some elements similar to GOD OF WAR and FABLE. You just keep fighting your way through one Legion warrior after each other. There is some strategy involved as you can gain new abilities and upgrade old ones and certain moves work better on different types of Legions. Also, you are able to upgrade the magical ability of your sword, though you're stuck with that sword and an axe for the entire game.

The things I liked most about the game were the visuals and the ease of achievements. The visuals are gorgeous and there are some really scenic shots in different places in the game. Also, when killing Legion, the action turns to slow-motion which shows the hacking of limbs and beheading of Legion soldiers in graphic, gory detail. Visuals aside, what I liked most about VIKING: THE BATTLE FOR ASGARD was the ease of attaining achievements. Most people will be able to unlock about 700-800 Achievement points while playing the game.

At the end of each level, there is a massive battle that involves tens-of-thousands of soldiers as well as dragons. The battles themselves aren't all that impressive because Skarin doesn't really get to fight and instead has to go around killing Legion shamans and giants. What makes these large scale conflicts impressive are the cutscenes.

There's been some criticism that the game doesn't have a lot of sound. Games with a constant soundtrack and a plethora of sound effects can be enjoyable, but it gets tiring after a while. It's nice to play a game that doesn't have a full-fledged musical score during the entire game every once in awhile.
The biggest issue I had with VIKING was the repetition. There are basically five major battles and you go about reaching each battle in pretty much exactly the same way: you kill a bunch of Legion, you free the correct locations, you rescue the correct amount of Viking captives, you collect the proper items, and you call for a dragon. There are only three dragons, but there are some levels where you don't have to call forth another dragon. The consistent repetition makes VIKING easier to play for inexperienced gamers, but also makes it less enjoyable for those who have played more than a handful of video games.

I enjoyed VIKING: THE BATTLE FOR ASGARD. I like hack-n-slash games and it was kind of nice playing one that connects with Norse mythology. I found the repetition a little annoying, but it wasn't enough to infringe upon my overall enjoyment.

Tomb Raider II: Starring Lara Croft Quick Tip by Madpenguin

Fri, 3 Feb 2012 12:03:03 +0000

I wasn't too fond of the original Tomb Raider, but I was still heavily interested in this sequel when it was first released. This was a huge improvement as it not only expanded on the world, but it focused a little more on the action and it had a better story. Tomb Raider II is by far my favorite of the original series.

Metal Gear Solid Quick Tip by Madpenguin

Thu, 2 Feb 2012 16:15:35 +0000

Metal Gear Solid was one of those rare games to completely blow my mind. The opening act unfolds just like a movie and I remember how awesome I thought that was. The story is very good and the game features some of the coolest boss battles in gaming, such as the sniper battle with Sniper Wolf. This is another game I wish I could play again for the first time.

Resident Evil Quick Tip by Madpenguin

Thu, 2 Feb 2012 16:02:49 +0000

An instant classic. Resident Evil brought the horror to video games and this is one game I really wish I could play again for the first time. There were several of memorable moments; such as the first encounter with the zombie. And who can forget that cut scene featuring the first appearance of the vicious hunters? Classic material here and the remake was even better.

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night Quick Tip by Madpenguin

Thu, 2 Feb 2012 03:07:53 +0000

The pinnacle in the Castlevania series and a masterpiece in gaming; from the beautiful well orchestrated soundtrack, to the amazing visuals, stage designs, story, plot, game play, boss encounters. This is a gaming classic that belongs in every serious gamers collection.

Capcom created a monster when they created VJ.

Wed, 1 Feb 2012 20:30:41 +0000

While sitting back watching a flick on his favorite superhero Captain Blue, Joe watches as a hand makes its way out of the TV screen and snatches his girlfriend Silvia. Joe is soon drawn in and learns that Captain Blue has been defeated and someone must carry on the battle with his enemies the Jadow. Given superhero abilities and transformed into an action hero, Joe ventures into Movie-land to save Silvia. Little does he know there's a lot more to this movie. -summary

Capcom had built up a reputation long before this time as a lazy company, who would milk the hell out of whatever video game title they would strike gold with, by kicking out a horde of sequels and spin-offs. The Street Fighter and Megaman series had spawned I don't remember how many sequels and side series by this point. Resident Evil, Onimusha, and Devil May Cry were receiving new releases with very little changes. It appeared as if Capcom had just lost their creative spark, and we would probably be doomed to their lazy pattern. That is until Viewtiful Joe arrived. I think this was the game that revived Capcom for a brief moment and showed us they still had it in them to create new and original quality games. Viewtiful Joe indeed lived up to the hype, and being able to dominate the 3D world being a 2D game was a damn impressive feet. In any case, I'll go on and speak about one of my favorite games for the PS2 and Gamecube.

Game Play:

The plot follows Joe as he battles through 7 worlds in side scrolling beat'em up style. The worlds are made up of several stages and sometimes they would have a mini-boss to do battle with. Joe begins with no powers at all, but as he ventures through the stages he will encounter Captain Blue, who would challenge him to a quick duel, and when Joe wins, he would earn some new powers.

Joe's abilities are by far the games strongest feature, and I have to say there aren't too many games out there where the game play is so greatly enhanced due to a characters powers. Joe soon learns the ability to slow down time, and battle enemies during slow motion. After dodging an attack, Joe would be able to level opponents with single blows, with various attacks which increases his V-bonus earning him points to purchase items and even new attacks. The second power he obtains is Mach Speed; this allows him to move at super speed and pummel enemies quickly, setting himself on fire in the process. This ability also sends shadows of Joe around the screen to either pummel more enemies or find hidden objects. The final one is Zoom In; this ability allows the camera to move in on a close up, and from here Joe can deliver some very powerful punches and even a kick that hits everything around him. There are different ways to combine these abilities, and even implement larger attacks in combination with the special moves you purchase. None of this is possible without the VFX bar, which is a power gauge that slowly depletes as you use these powers, and when the gauge is empty Joe will return to normal. In this form, Joe is highly vulnerable and attacks do double the damage. The gauge quickly refills over time, and the player can also pick up items to increase the bar or even get unlimited VFX gauge, to extend slow-mo combos for a good while racking up major V-points.

At first, it may seem like a whole lot to learn, fortunately, the game takes you through a short tutorial as soon as you learn these abilities. It teaches you at a snails pace, and after awhile you should have an idea on how everything works. I remember having it all down before the second stage was over, but I didn't truly master Joe's powers and various combinations until after several play throughs. It sometimes felt like I was learning something new on each new game.

The stages are pretty straight forward, with lots of enemies to battle and hazards that can chip away at your life. Thankfully, there aren't any instant death moments where you fall off cliffs or something. If you happen to drop, then you'll always land in something such as lava or even spikes, but you will have to jump right out. Capcom put some effort into the stages though; one stage takes place with Joe flying in his small aircraft in space shooter style destroying enemies, while another one puts you in a position where you have to flip the entire stage upside down to access areas. There's also a few puzzles tossed out there, that will require you to use your powers in different ways to progress. I've heard many gripes on how difficult the puzzles are, but I could never figure out all the fuss because I was never stuck in this game. I thought the puzzles were very easy, but nice additions to expand on the game play.

The game does have a pretty high difficulty, and the boss battles play a huge role in this. If you never played this game before then expect to die a lot during these confrontations. Some of these fights will seem like they can never be won, but after enough practice it's possible to breeze through the entire game without ever being hit once.

At its core, Viewtiful Joe is all about the fighting. It's completely action packed from beginning to end, and it will no doubt give your fingers a workout. Capcom brought their A game putting this one together, and they even added a stage heavily influenced by Megaman. The story is rather basic with saving the girl and everything, but the characters personalities make it fun to go through, and Joe was just one of the coolest video game characters to come around at the time.

Controls:

The D-Pad performs extremely well, and the moves are very simple to pull off. They either use long button presses in regards to the VFX powers, or single directional pad presses along with a single button tap, such as the Red Hot Kick or the slide. There are no classic Capcom half circle rotations to be found which is a good thing. I never had any problems in this area.

Graphics/Music/Sound:

Viewtiful Joe ranges from 2D to 2.5D. The stages have plenty of depth in the backgrounds and the cameras are fixed, but they're never a problem. They seem to move very fluid with little to no slow down. Viewtiful Joe has plenty of style, and I like the comic book look, with dark outlines for the characters that feels manga influenced. The cell shaded 2D sprites are still impressive to me, and the fluid animation, wacky character designs, only adds to what I can think of to be a truly engrossing experience.

The soundtrack is another strong point, with some good pieces of techno music that set the mood properly. However, it's the boss themes that many die hard fans walked away humming to themselves the absolute most. The battle with Alastor is a huge stand out, as it fits with the boss character's style and personality perfectly. The sound effects are worth a mention; the powerful blows leaves a nice little echo going on after they land, and the voice acting appears to be spot on.

Replay:

Normally, I like to beat games on at least the normal mode and be done with them, but for some reason I couldn't put VJ down though. After completing the game on the Adults level, V-Rated becomes accessible and this is just a harder mode. The thing that makes it so awesome though, is that you begin the new game at full power, keeping all the moves and power ups you purchased plus all the abilities you learned. This doesn't at all make the game that much easier, because there's stronger enemies now blocking your path and the bosses are a little more aggressive. And if this isn't enough, there are also unlockable characters, such as being able to play with Silvia in her superhero form, Captain Blue, and even Dante of Devil May Cry, which I was never too crazy about because the Gamecube version featured Alastor instead, and I prefer him over Dante. In any case, VJ really isn't an easy game to put down no matter how many times it hands you your ass.

Closing:

Despite the fact these newer systems are running the gaming world; Viewtiful Joe is a PS2 and Gamecube classic that shouldn't be missed. It's made it on to greatest video game list for good reasons, and in 2003 it was regarded as the best action game. This receives my highest recommendation for the action gamer.

Pros:
-Cool lead character, game play, visuals, replay value, and difficulty

Cons:
-heh, difficulty for some

Kung Fu Gets a Graphic Update

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 00:02:27 +0000

China Warrior occupies a unique place in the annals of video game history: In performing some research prior to writing this review, I learned China Warrior was the featured game in a television ad making a side-by-side comparison between the TurboGrafx-16, China Warrior's console, and an NES which was showing Kung Fu. It was an appropriate comparison, as the two games were very similar to each other. I don't remember ever seeing those commercials – find me someone who does – but I assume they showed the large, colorful characters in the Turbo game making Kung Fu look like a game designed for the kiddies. Who won the comparison contest? In the technical sense, Nintendo won because NEC's machine never caught on. But in the gaming sense, your favorite metaphorical bad guys of choice won. I've played both China Warrior and Kung Fu and they both sucked. If you're a Kung Fu fan who has never played China Warrior, I envy you. You're about to learn why you didn't miss anything.

In China Warrior, you play China Warrior. You really do, because that's all your character is called. A villain has taken over China, and it's your job to rescue your fellow countrymen from his tyranny by beating him down in a contest of good, old-fashioned, man-to-man fisticuffs.

I love it when a video game story tells me that a whole society hinges on my heroic journey because it makes me feel important. It makes the main character into a legendary hero if he makes it or a martyr who had the courage to stand alone against an impossibly powerful foe if he gets killed along the way. China, with the world's largest population and second or third largest land mass, would certainly seem like a society worth saving. (I mean this only in theory. I'm not making a political statement here, so I'll appreciate it if you keep your own political statements to yourself.) Unfortunately, my elation at the thought of having such a big country depend on me quickly went down when I saw what my fierce opponents were packing: Sticks, stones, and really not much else. I have to wonder what kind of country would have allowed itself to be taken over by an army of thirteen martial artists who could be promptly whipped by a group of white-belted kids from Downer's Grove, Illinois.

Thirteen is the number of bosses in this game. Oh, the game has levels and enemies all right, but they're filler material. The layout of the game is like this: You, the large dude at the left of the screen who holds a copyright-infringing resemblance to Bruce Lee, walk to the right. Along the way to far right of the level, you fight "enemies." Your non-boss enemies include things like rocks, snakes, nunchukus, and fireballs all flying at you from the right side of the screen with no apparent purpose or even an explanation of how they're being launched at you. I like to think the level bosses are standing there with some kind of cannon which they're just loading up with whatever is lying around. When the game really feels like giving you a jolt, it sends monks after you. Monks are generally regarded as peaceful people, and they hold to tradition in China Warrior because their method of attacking is to walk right into you. The green monks actually duck when they come onto the screen! One wonders if they're praying to you. The gray and green monks are easily dispatched in one shot. The orange monks are tougher by merit of the fact they can take three shots before going down. None of them go out of their way to engage you in formal combat.

Anyway, you punch, kick, and dodge your way to the very end of the level in which China Warrior tries to turn into a one-on-one fighter by presenting you with boss characters who actually look like they took some effort to create. You beat the boss and go on to the next level. You wash, lather, rinse, and repeat until the end of the game.

Oh, the problems, the problems….. This HAS to be the only time I've ever had trouble writing a negative review because I have too much to say. First of all, China Warrior freaking SCROLLS. You have a game in which you control a martial artist and the game impersonates a common shooter. When you try to move China Warrior around, all you're doing is controlling which side of the screen he's on. The only way to stop the scrolling is to duck. And since every attack or obstacle in the game comes at you from the right, the game becomes a rare game in which an entire button on the d-pad is rendered almost useless. The only time the right button comes into play is during boss fights. Other than that, just keep the main character about one-fourth of the way across the screen and you should be just fine.

China Warrior looks like Bruce Lee. The legendary Dragon would be insulted if he ever saw this game. China Warrior's arsenal consists of all of five moves, which is poor even though the controller only has two action buttons. You have a standard punch and kick, plus a ducking punch and two types of jumping kicks. Unless you're playing China Warrior specifically to amass a high score – in which case you would utilize every one of those moves to hit the targets which would have otherwise no chance of hitting you – you can get through the game safely on just the punch and kick, with the occasional diagonal jumping kick to knock off the orange monks in one shot. The ducking punch is useless at all times and the jumping kicks aren't the most necessary moves in the world, especially seeing as how they become useless during boss battles. The bosses knock you right out of the air and take no damage for doing it. For some reason, our brilliant designers neglected a sweep kick. A lot of enemies who attack you on the ground can't be hit even though the manual inexplicably says they can be defeated. But your sucking punch doesn't hit that low! A sweep kick would be the only attack which could hit those foes, but since you don't have one, those snakes in the grass are invincible.

It's the boss fights one would play China Warrior hoping to see. Once you've gotten through the fillers known as "levels," you get to take on the boss in a one-on-one sparring match. The boss fights increase in difficulty as you get further into the game, and the increase in difficulty is very well done. Each of the thirteen bosses is harder than the last. This doesn't excuse the fact that only the punch and kick are useful against the bosses. While the game is nice enough to give you a supply of special moves for the boss fights, those special moves are executed at random and so you have no control over them. And the frequency with which they show up leaves something to be desired. If the game grants you the privilege of using a special move during later boss fights, pray it hits because it may be the last one you see for awhile.

Well, I think that sums up the game. I can't figure out whether I want to give the graphics a high or low score. China Warrior and the bosses he faces are all very detailed and well-designed despite the palette swap here and there. The enemies are well-designed for the most part. It's just they're poorly imagined. How hard is it to design a fan or a boulder? Now that I think of it, I may be giving the artists too much credit. The boulders look more like tumbleweeds, the nunchukus remain straight like sticks while flying at you, and the whole game is bogged down by a serious lack of animation. China Warrior has ONE frame of jumping animation and about three frames on the basic punch and kick. Both flying kicks have two frames of animation. It's sad when a ducking punch is the most spectacular-looking move in a video game.

The sounds aren't much better. The music is extremely bland and many of your enemies make interesting sounds when they get hit. You could make a fun game of guessing how the next enemy will sound when it meets China Warrior's punch or kick! When you pick up the sounds of each enemy, you could turn it into a drinking game! (I'm being sarcastic here. I don't want this review to be used as a prime suspect in a DWI arrest.) Most of the hitting sounds don't sound anything like you would imagine them to.

China Warrior's controls are standard. I find it stupid that you have to jump kick the game's only power-up, a health-replenishing teabag, in order to collect it. The teabag floats up and down and since you scroll right past it, you have to time your kick in order to grab it because the kick will miss if the teabag is too high. As mentioned before, you have to duck to stop moving. The diagonal jump kick is almost impossible if you're using the standard Turbo controller. I only got it to consistently work using the TurboStick, a joystick controller.

China Warrior is not only bad, it is lazy and thoughtless. Only a masochist could enjoy it.

Newly Rooted Mario

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 01:19:24 +0000

Hey, you know what we haven't seen in a very long time? That old, classic Super Mario Bros. 2D gameplay. Well, Nintendo has brought Mario back to his old-school roots, and it's as good as ever.

Yes, New Super Mario Bros. is a throwback to the old, OLD days. There's no FLUDD pack for this game, no interstellar travel, and there's not even a third dimension for Mario to traipse around in. The layout, fortunately, means that there won't be any of those scavenger hunt quests which can be such a pain in the 3D editions of the Mario series, and instead of trying to repeatedly go into a level to collect a star or a shine sprite, Mario is once again going from the extreme left side of the level to the extreme right. And in a feature which is an eternal delight to me, he ends every level by taking a flag down a flagpole and entering a castle.

The beginning cinema of the game finds us watching Mario out for a walk with his longtime squeeze, Princess Peach. Lightning stikes Peach's castle over in the background, and as Mario dashes off to make sure everything is all hunky dory there, Bowser Jr. leaps out from behind a large nearby bush to kidnap Peach. Really now, what did you think it was going to be? Princess Peach has spent her career defining the typical damsel in distress. Anyway, off Mario goes to chase Bowser Jr. across eight worlds, chasing him into every fortress and catching up to him just to have him run into a nearby castle. Bowser Jr. does this what seems like a million times.

Being of such vintage gameplay, New Super Mario Bros. is not afraid to lampshade its heritage every now and again. In one castle, you fight Bowser Sr. on a bridge, which is suspending them over a pit filled with lava. It's hard to believe the original Super Mario Bros. which defined the side-scrolling action/adventure game genre for all time is now 26 years old, and that many people like me who grew up playing the original will have to explain that reference to the original Super Mario Bros. to kids of their own. While the scene is slightly altered, the reference is unmistakeable. And many of Mario's iconic power-ups like the super mushroom, fire flower, and starman are dished out for the functions they were originally used for. Hell, when you play as Luigi in this game, there's no difference between the way him and Mario handle.

New Super Mario Bros. does manage to recognize and acknowledge its 3D series, though, and it's the first time the wall jump - a staple of the 3D games - makes an appearance in the 2D Mario canon. It's an improvement to the technique, as you now don't have to compete with a camera to angle the wall jump the right way. The ground pound also has a place in New Super Mario Bros. New are a blue koopa shell which lets Mario travel like a kicked koopa shell, as well as mushrooms which turn Mario into mini-Mario or Giant Mario.

I thought the Mini-Mario and Giant Mario were both underutilized. Mini-Mario is the more creative idea because it allows Mario access to paths he otherwise wouldn't get to, but Mini-Mario is a real pain to control because his jumps are more float than jump. Giant Mario is invincible, and I love how he can crush everything in his immediate path - and I do mean EVERYTHING, enemies, drainpipes, bricks, all of it - but he doesn't show up often enough. The most common newer power-up is the koopa shell, which doesn't do a whole lot even when it's charging because there's a very real chance Mario could bounce off a block and fall into a pit.

There are eight levels, but you only have to go through six of them to finish the game. Trying to get to the others does add to the replay value, though. Like in other Mario games, you reveal the path by completing certain challenges or finding alternate exits. The levels are reminiscent of previous 2D Mario levels, and seem especially deferential to Super Mario Bros. 3 in particular. A jungle and mountain world are in the game, but the rest include grasslands, desert, ocean, ice, sky, and enemy base. In the levels themselves, you can collect special coins which open alternate paths.

You've heard the major problem with this game screamed through to the rafters, and I agree with it: New Super Mario Bros. is extremely short. This isn't short like the 16-bit Mario games; New Super Mario Bros. can easily be completed in one sitting, secrets and all. Good thing for the level designs, which keep things from getting boring.

The graphics of New Super Mario Bros. are rendered like the graphics of Donkey Kong Country. The animation is complete, although not as smooth as I would like. Mario was always a cartoonish character, and I couldn't help but get the feeling this game should be animated when watching him get smushed or get off to a running start. The scenery is gorgeous and bright, and although the character designs do absolutely nothing we haven't seen before, it's tough to mind because it's such an intentional throwback. The rendering only helps.

Considering the love and care going into the throwback feeling, it's extremely disappointing that the original Super Mario Bros. theme was somehow missed out on. The underground music is the same, and that makes no sense whatsoever. The original theme is a ubiquitous piece now - its been over 25 years, and everyone knows it, and it's becoming like a famous bit of classical music or art or a movie scene - we may actually be starting to forget where the original came from. The sounds, though, are spot on.

The controls are the same, classic Mario. It feels a bit different, though, because Mario seems to feel more real when he moves now. The swimming is a real pain, and you have less control over it than ever. It's the only aspect of 2D Mario that wasn't improved in New Super Mario Bros., and it's possible that being deprived of flying may have been best because I don't want to think about the ways it could have been screwed up.

If you want to play old school Mario with your kids, this may be the perfect game to start with. It's new, but it's totally old school in every way, shape, and form.

Killzone 3 Quick Tip by RabidChihuahua

Sat, 14 Jan 2012 01:38:58 +0000

Personally, I think this is the best game in the Killzone series thus far. Unlike Killzone 2, you have three weapon slots as opposed to two, so you can easily dish out more pain against the Helghast. The graphics are top-notch and the "Brutal Melee" system is a blast. If you can disorient the Helghast after shooting them, you can kill them off in such savage ways like stabbing their eyes out and cutting their throats. If you have a PS3 and love the FPS genre, you have to get this game.

Earthworm Jim Quick Tip by RabidChihuahua

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 04:56:40 +0000

Earthworm Jim is a classic moment of 90's gaming, with it's addictve run-and-gun gameplay, precision platforming, varied soundtrack, surreal humor, and weird-as-hell imagery. If you love challenging 2D action games, this is one you gotta play if you haven't already (for those of us who don't have working SNES or Genesis consoles, you can get this on Steam, the PlayStation Network, Xbox Live Arcade, or the Wii Virtual Console).

Its the sequel to an awesome game. They cant screw this up?....................can they?

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 18:24:00 +0000

Star Wars The force unleashed 2 is the latest game in the Star Wars franchise, it was developed by Red Fly Studious and published by Lucas Arts. It was released on October 26th 2010.

Taking place Six months after the last game (but one year before A new hope), the Force unleashed 2 tells the story of one of Starkillers Clones as he embarks on a quest to figure out who he is while searching for Juno Eclipse.

The Force Unleashed 2 improves upon some aspects of the first game, the load times are faster, the environments are more destructible, and the game is a little better looking and runs a little smoother, the developers have included support for the Wii’s pointer functionality, also this time around enemies don’t drop health canisters or force refills when defeated. Once again force powers and light sabers are customizable and upgradeable (this time you can do it on the fly instead of having to return to the Rouge Shadow). Unlockable Concept Art and Multiplayer also make a return.

Force Unleashed 2 also features new and improved Force Powers. Exclusive to the Wii version is Force Rage, when activated players will enter a bullet time mode were Starkiller is able to take out multiple enemies. Force rage isn’t always available; you have to wait for a meter to fill before you can use it. Another new Force Power is Force Sight, this allows players to see through objects like doors or bosses to find weak areas or solve puzzles. Lastly although found in the first game (through a cut scene) Mind Trick has now become part of the gameplay, when used on an enemy the targeted enemy will attack other enemy AI in the area which comes in handy when surrounded by lots of bad guys with little health.

Graphics Wise the game looks a little more polished than the last game, the cut scene graphics have also been improved but still look kind of bad. Gameplay Wise Force Unleashed 2 is more of the same its primarily hack and Slash but this time with puzzle solving elements thrown into the mix. The Controls have been completely reworked they are very different from the first game so reading the tutorials is a must. Despite this the controls seem abit simpler and easier to learn.

Some problems I had with the game were the campaign was really short about 4-5 hours long, unlike the last game there isn’t really much replayability, the pointer function while added to make the game easier did more harm than good (at times Force Attacks would go opposite to were you wanted it to go), although simpler the boss fight finishers are still a pain. Lastly the Story was the biggest disappointment for me, as a Star Wars fan I felt this game should not even exist in the first place (based on how the last game ended) and on top of that The Story feels thrown together and not very well thought out.

Despite the crappy story the game does a few things right, the new force powers make the game fun to play, and the multiplayer now supports four players on screen at the same time (like Smash bros) instead of just two.

Overall Force Unleashed 2 is not as good as the first game, unless you’re a hardcore Star Wars fan I’d recommend renting this one before you invest 30 bucks. Star Wars the force unleashed 2 gets 6.7 out of 10.

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The Kind of game you want to cherish, but at the same time give it the birdie!

Wed, 4 Jan 2012 23:34:14 +0000

First off, to shake of the confusion, I overall still think this a great Zelda game, if not one of the best in the series. Let me say however, I was a little disappointed in the final product. It wasn't so much as it was the gameplay, as it was the other elements of the game. I did have a few problems with the motion plus (my tv is large and the sensor bar is on top of it, it could also be a faulty controller, etc.). Anyway, it was the storyline (I know it doesn't really make a difference because it doesn't have one anyway, but hear me out), and the fact that Zelda is now 25 years old, but the game loves to explain things to us like we are five. At this point nintendo should be more lenient on their tutorials. I know Nintendo wants to be family friendly, but they really need to quit dumbing down their games. There needs to be tutorials for swordplay and stamina yes, but not how to make Link walk, we all should know that by now because it is quite obvious. When I fired up the game I spent approximately an hour and thirty minutes in tutorials before anything worth noticing happened.

Now to the story. If you aren't aware yet, The Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword is the first in the series chronologically. Before I give my synopsis, I just want to say how far back can they go!? This game tells the story of how Hyrule and the master sword came to be, as well as giving the full explanation about Farore, Din, and Nayru. They are instilling religion into the series by all of a sudden telling it in biblical proportions. Now I actually like this perspective, but if they are going to do this, why not paint the full picture and explain how the other games tie in? Leaving my timeline nitpicking aside, this game was beautifully crafted with a watercolor painting scheme, as well as a wonderfully fully orchestrated soundtrack. The only other complaint I can offer is how the upgrading works. You can upgrade your weapons and items in the town's bazaar. You have to find the tools mostly from enemies, and there is an extremely low drop rate. It isn't horrible, but very time consuming. Finally there is only four small areas to explore. Their is the sky and the town of Skyloft, the wooded Faron province, the fiery Eldin province, and the dry desert of Lanayru province. These three provinces are smaller and completely different from the ones with the same name in Twilight Princess. The game's story forces you to trudge through these places and their dungeons multiple times. Now lets review both the positives and negatives of this game before I giver her a score.

Pros

Great Orchestrated soundtrack
Beautifully crafted "watercolor" landscapes
Mostly solid gameplay featuring "Wii Motion Plus"
Great, detailed storyline for long fans of the series
Plenty of sidequests to keep you occupied
Replay value: Moderate

Cons

Lengthy baby-ish tutorials
Timeline confusion for fans of the series, the games individual storyline may be too difficult to grasp for younger gamers
Upgrading gear and potions might be repetitive and time consuming for some gamers
Small map and repetitive backtracking to previously explored areas

Overall, there are some annoying things about the game, but the game within itself is a real treat and outweighs these small shortcomings. My final verdict: The Legend of Zelda: Skyward sword, gets a 4 out of 5

Disgaea 4 Quick Tip by Draparde

Sun, 1 Jan 2012 21:34:39 +0000

Much like any Disgaea game, the best Grinding spot in Disgaea 4 is the last the final Cave of ordeals stage. (Dual Giant magichange can have you leveling 5 characters at once here.)

Interesting premise, but like many other post-Genesis Sonic games, lame. 17%

Wed, 28 Dec 2011 22:25:36 +0000

Note that for this review, I played the Xbox 360 port of the game.

First of all, I'd like to say that I've been a fan of Sonic since Christmas of 1991 and have been a fan of the franchise throughout the 90's. Sonic Unleashed, like the other Sonic games that have broken into the "3D" generation of game consoles, is really unpleasant.

The graphics are pretty nice and the whole thing with Sonic becoming a "Werehog" and going around slashing and punching bad guys is pretty fun, but that's all there is to say that's positive about this game.

While it may seem unfair to target this particular Sonic game for this upcoming flaw, I feel it's legit. The biggest problem with this game is the 3D environment. Sorry, but I truly feel that Sonic wasn't meant for a 3D environment since it's extremely difficult to move really fast while collecting as much rings as possible in this type of environment since it's much easier to die and since it's easy to veer off your desired path, it's much harder to collect rings. While most video games in the last 8-10 years have done away with the "limited life" system so ubiquitous in the first three game console generations, it's still in this game and it gets on your nerves because you're gonna die A LOT.

The tallying system at the end of each level really gets on my nerves because in the "classic" Sonic games, the tallying system just tallied your numeric score and if you got a high score, you'd get a continue. However, the tallying system in Sonic Unleashed is atrocious because the game expects you to accomplish much more difficult levels in a timely manner and has the nerve to actually grade you (using letters A through F) at the end. Isn't it good enough that I came out alive? Just give me a numeric score, don't grade me like a strict university professor.

Aside from the 3D layout and harsh tallying system, I was stuck on one level where you're on top of the Tornado (piloted by Tails, of course) and Eggman has launched a giant robot thingy firing guided bombs at you. I DETEST this level because in order to shoot down the incoming bombs, each projectile is targeted with an icon of either the A, B, X, or Y buttons above them and you have to press the right button in a really short time in order to fire the missiles. This is horrendous because you're in such a panic, you're just mashing buttons, hoping that you hit the right ones since you don't have any time to think. Wouldn't it be more convenient if there was just one button to fire missiles or just have a machine gun and point it at the projectiles? At that point, I quit playing and returned the copy to Family Video.

After playing this and the 2006 Sonic the Hedgehog games, it's no surprise to me as to why the newer Sonic games aren't so popular among gamers and critics alike. Sonic Team should really take their cue from Nintendo concerning the New Super Mario Bros. Wii game and make a game that's essentially a "throwback" of the Genesis Sonic games because those are the Sonic games people tend to remember in a positive way. Just get Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection instead.