[weasel]

Dead Man's Hand
Finally, gambling has a purpose - to aid in the killing of millions of evil cowboys.

Year: 2003
Genre: FPS
Developer: Human Head Studios
Publisher: Atari/TryMedia/Fileplanet Direct2Drive
Platform: PC/XBox

If you look at the majority of first-person shooting games on the market today, a vast majority of them will fall into either the Modern Combat (Raven Shield, Battlefield 2), World War 2 (Call of Duty, Medal of Honor) or Sci-Fi (Doom) categories. Thus far, there have been very, VERY few shooters that take place in the Old West. You know, Cowboys vs. Indians, that whole Civil War thing goin' down, women and whiskey. Well, Kemosabe, this is the game for you.

GAMEPLAY

Dead Man's Hand casts you as El Tejon, a former member of The Nine - a group of gunslingin', bank-robbin' varmints that just want to kill stuff. You don't quite agree with their moral decisions (they shoot women and children), so you try to leave. Tennessee Vic, the leader, thinks ill of your attempts, and imprisons you. You escape, and vow revenge on The Nine.

So once you escape from your cell, with the aid of Iago (a Mexican revolutionary), he gives you your first weapons - a crappy knife, a Colt .45 Peacemaker, a Westerner carbine, and a Martin pump-action shotgun. He tells you to find some targets and practice for a bit, and here you discover the first thing that sets this apart from other shooters (well, aside from the fact that it takes place in the West) - the scoring system.

See, DMH rewards you points, arcade style, for not only capping outlaws, but also for destroying parts of the environment. Shooting pots and pans, bottles of whiskey, barrels of gunpowder, and pretty much anything that will break will give you points. The more targets you successfully hit it rapid succession, the higher your Combo Meter gets, and the more points you'll get for hitting those targets. So if you go on a wild rampage and just shoot everything, you'll be vastly rewarded for it.

In addition to the Combo Gauge, hitting targets will give you Legend to a second bar on the screen. Legend Points allow you to use Trick Shots (essentially, just a fancy term for alternate fire). The Trick Shots differ for each weapon, and some weapons don't have trick shots (Dynamite has an alt-fire, but doesn't require Legend Points). You can "fan" the hammer on your Peacemaker, make more accurate shots with your Westerner, blow all four barrels on the Kansas Pepperbox, or stun your enemies with the Martin shotgun.

But why should you care about shooting the environment, if you can get Legend with just shooting enemies? Does the environment hurt enemies? Yes, it does. You can blow up wagons, crush enemies with big rocks, or destroy them with barrels of gunpowder (which has larger splash damage than you'd think). Use of the environment nets you more points than merely shooting enemies, so you'd best be on the lookout for creative ways to dispatch your foes (like dropping wooden awnings on them). (Fun thing #1: Shooting the hats off your enemies, crushing them, blowing them up, or shooting them while they're in mid air will net you extra points.)

Some points in the game will have you riding your faithful steed. These are usually the most fun - you no longer have to concentrate on moving, so you can aim your shots carefully. (Fun thing #2: if you shoot a fellow rider instead of his horse, the horse drags him across the ground for a while.)

When you reach one of The Nine (or other bounties), you fight him/her in a boss battle. They usually have lots of health, but this is usually great for your score (pull out something with fast fire like the Lewis Revolving Rifle and just let loose on 'em - high combo points). They're rarely much of a threat, unless you're playing on Hard.

The real innovation in this game, however, is what makes the game live up to its title. You play a round of Poker before (almost) every mission. If you get a winning hand, you gain bonuses to your initial loadout (more ammo, more Legend points - yes, you too can be a Maverick and be legendary just because of your gambling skills) and get the option to play again for more benefits. But if you lose, ALL of your bonuses are gone and you don't get to play again. (Not to worry - restarting the mission will let you play more Poker.) Scoring the Dead Man's Hand (both black Aces and Eights) gives you maximum Legend and full ammo for all your weapons - in just one draw.

You'd think that multiplayer would be awesome, taking all the same things that made singleplayer so great and applying them to deathmatch. But no. There are no physics in multiplayer, aside from those that control ragdolls and dynamite. There are no mounted machine guns and cannons to use. There are no barrels of gunpowder. It's just straight deathmatch with the DMH weapons. Your player moves just as slowly as he does in singleplayer, unless you turn on the Fast movement mutator, in which case you move fast enough for deathmatch (but your footsteps now sound incredibly fast and your player models spaz out when they run). You only start with a Peacemaker and must find all your weapons. There are also team-based matches like CTF, but nothing that would be very fun with DMH's slow weapons (which in SP mode are made up for with the physics).

Score Tally:
Direct2Drive/Retail/Xbox version: 8/10 - Fun in SP, but after that, multiplayer really sucks - leaving the only replay value to be beating the game on a higher difficulty and getting high scores.
TryMedia version: 7/10 - Still fun, but movies are entirely cut out, which makes plot harder to understand.

GRAPHICS

The game looks good using its technology (Unreal Tech 2.0). It doesn't have that much in the way of technology frills, compared to other games released close to it (like FarCry), but it does look nice. The models and textures are well done and quite nicely used, the level design is pretty darn good, and the characters are realistic and believable. The only problem is the occasional texture glitch (where textures will appear to change when you move the mouse or shoot). I must also add that the developers "cheated" with their reloading animations - the gun usually just goes off screen when you reload (exceptions being the sawed-off shotgun and the alt-fire on the Kansas Pepperbox).

9/10 - Could have used a heat haze or something, but looks cool already. TryMedia's version didn't change the graphics.

SOUNDS

The game sounds pretty good (aside from the voice acting, which usually sounds like the programmers just distorted their voices to sound "tough"). Guns have the appropriate boom to them, and it's incredibly satisfying to destroy wagons and such with gunpowder (especially using the SBS Coach Gun). The music, whenever it plays, is also quite good and fitting for the period.

One thing I noted was missing: the theme from The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly when you beat a level. I wish that were in here.

Score Tally:
Direct2Drive/Retail/XBox version: 9/10 - Voice acting could be better
TryMedia version: 7/10 - Music entirely cut out.

CONTROLS

Weapon numbering is initially screwed up (3 for pistol, 7 for knife, nothing on 1 or 2 for some reason), but can be easily changed. Mouse sensitivity is hard to adjust properly. Otherwise, though, nice and responsive, with easily changed controls. I have not played the XBox version, but I have reason to believe that their controls would be about as good as Halo's.

BUGS

Retail: Texture glitches, movies sometimes play video too fast (while catching up with sound after resolution switches).
TryMedia version: Fatal crashes on some occasions, cannot be patched to the latest version (1.1).

Verdict: Buy the game. Don't even BOTHER with TryMedia's version. I had to get a refund on that one.

OVERALL

This is a fun shooter that finally lets you relive your favorite moments from The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (or whatever Western you like).

8.5/10

[Goshi]

Star Fox: Assault

"What is he? Some kind of Andross wannabe!?"

Genere: Action
System: GameCube
Developer and Publisher: Namco, Nintendo (Hey look they both start and N and end with O!)
ERSB: E (With use movies ratings for where I'm from and this G8+ hmm...)

Supposedly the true Star Fox action game we've been all waiting for, well lets see then...

Plot:
Actually sorta more orginal than the Star Fox games. Andrew Oikany has threatened the Corneria army is currently at war with them soon Star Fox comes to stop the crazyed nephew of Andross. Soon however a strange creature appears after Adrews defeat, these creatures are called Aprioids and they have the ability to control machines and people (Kinda like something of Star Trek) they seem to be a threat of the universe and Star Fox tries to stop them. Their ideals are sorta interesting but it huge spoiler so I'll leave that to you to work out.
7/10

Gameplay:
There are two types of gameplay, All-Range and Limited Range. When I mean by limited range I mean the classic Star fox sort of action you know flying through levels and blasting enemies before they blast you, fun stuff. Sadly most of the levels are All-Range and mostly on foot. I mean it is nice there's on foot missions but I really wanted to see a lot more classic Star Fox action. And when they give you the classic Star Fox action it is pretty easy. But then again I am absolute freak, I LOVE Star Fox games so you wouldn't be surprised. There is also some points when you ride on an Arwinds wing and blast enemies with a Plasma Rifle, while it sounds cool and all but why doesn't the Arwing help you shoot enemies!? Come on guys what harm is in that anyway? The game is also considerbly shorter but I'll get to that soon.
8/10

Graphics:
They are awesome, they're just as good as they were in Star Fox Adventures, it is gorgeus although it is little toned down from it it is still awesome. The game never slowed down for me and everything is so well detailed. Defintly some of the best graphics for the GameCube.
10/10

Music and Sound:
The music is really hard to hear but otherwise its mostly remixes of Star Fox 64 tunes although Star Fox 64 still has better music go figure. The sound effects are far too loud that most of the time you will be unable to hear the music. Also most of the voice acting is terrible. Not as bad as the voice acting in other games but still pretty poor. I was hoping they would use the same voice actors from Star Fox Adventures or at least Star Fox 64 but sadly it was not ment to be.
6/10

Multiplayer:
A+, the mutiplayer is tons of fun to do. You have about 4 characters to select from (2 being secret ones.) and HUGE slew of weapons like the Sniper rifle or the Blaster and you can also ride Tanks and Arwings, also another fun thing to do is ride on top of an Arwing! The multiplayer is verty well done, the graphics aren't even toned down which really helps it as well (Something they should've done in F-Zero GX). One of the best multiplayer modes the GameCube can provide, only beaten by Smash Bros Melee (Of course!)
10/10

Replay Value:
The game is far too short. It has less levels to play from as Star fox 64, it also does not have mutiple paths like in Star Fox 64 which greatly harms the replay value. The multiplayer however boosts its replay value and there are MANY unlockbles so if you have friends wirtth you all the time you'd be playing this non-stop.
6/10

Difficulty: Easy - Medium
Meh, I found the game quite easy but then again the Arwing levels are far too easy and the bosses to provide little difficulty although a lot of the on foot levels are dangerous sinmce a fair amount of the enemies are immune to the bustyer which makes it quite difficult, although Fox is like a tank, it takes a LONG amount of hits kill him and if your in vechicle you can easily escape it when its about to explode to keep Fox's health making him sorta immortal go figure, also the extra lives are in blindingly obvious spits meaning it will be hard to lose all your lives. Pretty easy game I guess.

Overall:
8.8/10

Goshi says: "A MUST have. Too bad it's short."

[weasel]

No, this cannot be! I have lost my monopoly over the review threads! Not to worry...

Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes
"God's got a sense of humor, alright."

The original MGS returns with all the moves and souped-up graphics from MGS2, plus completely redirected cinema sequences and a few extra easter eggs.

Platform: Gamecube
ESRB: M (violence, blood, gore, suggestive themes)
Company: Nintendo, Silicon Knights, Konami

GAMEPLAY
The game retains many of the same things that made MGS1 so great - the engaging (if not incredibly confusing) plot, the intense stealth-action gameplay, and all the ways they try to get you involved in the game.

The core sneaking mode of MGS1 feels about the same, aside from the addition of several things that made MGS2 so much better. Snake can already run, shoot, crawl, and lean against walls. But what's been added is shooting around corners, hold-ups, tranquilizer guns (which almost make the game too easy in parts), hanging from ledges, first-person aiming, and rolling (which can serve as excellent transportation when attempting to break through guards).

With all this cool stuff, you'd think that gameplay would be the master. Unforunately, that's not the case - about 3/4 of the game is spent listening to CODEC calls and watching cinemas. That's fine and dandy if you haven't played the game already, but for returning veterans of the original game, the only real drawing point to watching these old cinema scenes again is to see how things have changed with the new director in place (he also directed Versus, which I've heard is a good action flick). You get to see Snake do all kinds of things that you could only wish you could do in the real game (just watch the stunts at the end of every boss battle). I found myself skipping everything near the end of the game because the cinemas are just too long.

Several things were ripped out, though. The most obvious is the VR Missions - I hoped that they would bring those back after how awesome they were in MGS2:Substance, but it was not to be.

For newbies to the MGS series that really need to play the original game, this is the ultimate edition - but veterans may not be justified in a purchase with so much that's exactly the same.

Veterans: 6/10 - The same game you've played before with new graphical fluff and the moves that you've been spoiled by in the sequel.
Newbies: 10/10 - Play it already.

GRAPHICS

The Gamecube stands up to its competitors here. Everything looks absolutely fantastic with the exception of the thermal goggles - while they do function realistically, it's very difficult to see what you're supposed to see (e.g. mines, lasers, etc.). The characters display real emotions and nearly rival those of Half-Life 2. If only they hadn't cheaped out on the CODEC stuff - I'd prefer the 3D models, MGS2 style, over the anime portraits.

9/10 - A few minor nitpicks. Regarding the thermal goggles: there are alternatives (mine detector and cigarettes).

SOUNDS

The music has been remixed all over, with new themes that play for each boss, and unique music for the different areas of the game. Sound effects also work quite well, with each weapon sounding like it looks. The explosions tend to be a little understated though, and Konami took the liberty of re-recording all the character voices - which, while it wouldn't be so bad normally, they changed all the female characters drastically. They're all the same actors (except for the Ninja, who is now voiced by Rob Paulsen), but they removed their accents. I prefer the original voices from MGS1 - why couldn't they just reuse all the old lines and record new ones as they saw fit? They might as well have removed Snake's "smoker voice" while they were at it.

9/10

CONTROLS

Kinda difficult to imagine how the game would play on a Gamecube controller after you've done the PS2 games. The button layout is almost completely changed. The A button fires your weapon, B punches, X crouches, and Y is your action button. The analog button stuff was almost entirely compensated for, as is the fact that the Z button is so far out of the way (there is now an option to toggle first-person mode as opposed to having to hold the button). To safety your pistol and put it away without shooting (or aim the FAMAS properly), you hold the Y button and A button together, then release A to put the gun away. It sounds confusing, and it was at first for me. A recurring problem is the fact that the L and R buttons lean while in first person - if you need to use your items, you'll have to exit first person mode to do it (which leads to some headaches about not getting to your Rations in time).

8/10 - Some annoyances. Lack of a proper tutorial might leave some newbies in the water.

BUGS

I didn't find much to speak of aside from model clipping errors in cinemas (Ocelot's hair floats in the air, Sniper Wolf's hair tends to go through her shoulders, etc).

OVERALL

A nice update of a classic game, but veterans might be put off.

9.5/10

[weasel]

Katamari Damashii
I refuse to use Namco's crappy romanization - because Damacy doesn't even mean anything.

Platform: PS2 Exclusive (with no plans for a port)
Developer: Namco
ESRB: E

The King of All Cosmos has "accidentally" destroyed all the stars in the sky, and it's up to you (The Prince) to make them again. But since matter cannot be created nor destroyed, you improvise by rolling up little katamari (literally: heap, lump) and turning them into stars.

So you start small. Your katamari is only about 5 centimeters (2 inches for those who stand by their beloved Imperial measures). What you do is you roll around various places on Earth (the House, the Town, and the World) and run over as many relatively small objects as you can to attach them to your ball and ultimately make it bigger. As your katamari gets bigger, you can pick up bigger things (instead of just bouncing off of them).

The progression in Katamari is not completely obvious. Sure, the game informs you whenever you reach certain sizes in your stage, and even goes so far as to split the game into several different levels (10 regular "Make A Star" levels, and several bonus constellation challenges), but it won't force-feed you all this information. It's all in experimentation - you figure out for yourself whether or not you can pick up that milk bottle on the table.

The things you pick up are usually typical objects, but with that wacky Japanese twist. You'll not only find regular stuff like screws, Lego bricks, postcards, golf balls, and action figures, but eventually you'll find grizzly bears wandering around town, mermaids, giant squids, office buildings, and The Amazing Jumboman (an obvious UltraMan ripoff that comes in about 4 varieties). It's especially funny whenever you start picking up the living things - the people's reactions when you roll them up in your katamari are pretty funny (like the policeman's stupified "Heeey!").

It sounds pretty easy from the description, but you have to make your katamari pretty big within a strict time limit. While a time limit is about the worst way to balance a game, in this case it's really the only way.

If you don't like time limits, you can unlock three Eternal stages that just let you goof around.

The Constellation stages give you a few minutes to do themed tasks based on which constellation you make. For example, for Virgo, the King asks you to roll up as many females as you can. For Corona Borealis, you need to pick up a bunch of crowns ("We cannot open our eyes, it is so dazzling!"). For Ursa Major, the King tried to make it himself, but lost just one bear from his own katamari, and he asks you to find another for him. But you can only get one - and size matters.

For those catch-em-all enthusiasts out there, Katamari keeps track of what objects you've picked up before (including alternate versions of several objects, and objects with special names). There's probably over 1,000 unique objects to pick up in this game, some of which can only be found in one place in the entire game, so it'll keep you occupied through quite a while trying to find everything.

While the game itself is very short (once you make the Moon, it's over), unlocking stuff takes quite an an effort (and it's also quite addicting, so you'll be playing stages over again to beat your records).

Multiplayer is somewhat fun, but there is only one stage, and the splitscreen is sometimes difficult to deal with. Picking up your opponent with your katamari is always a hoot, though.

Graphically, this looks like an N64 game in high res - but that's not a bad thing. This is actually because the game uses a minimalistic style that, while lacking in fancy schmancy effects, manages to represent everything realistically (to some extent). The King's face made me laugh out loud because of how crazy it is.

On the audio front, this game has one of the most unique soundtracks out there, almost rivaling that of The Neverhood. You have songs made out of text-to-speech samples (Wanda-Wanda), a Frank Sinatra-esque love song (Que Sera Sera), a Nintendo style chip song with lyrics in Japanese (Lonely Rolling Star), and a calm acoustic guitar tune (Roll Me In) among others. The sound effects in game tend to get a little loud at times, and sometimes even annoying (like the timer), but if your TV's volume is kept in moderation, it's enjoyable and even funny at times (the strange touches they throw in are just weird - when the King is talking, his voice is a repeated record-scratch sound).

Gameplay: 8.5/10 - Kinda short, and multiplayer is highly limited. Here's hopeing it's fixed for the sequel, We Love Katamari.
Graphics: 7/10 - 30 frames a second, low-poly models, but the world is HUGE and to near-perfect scale, so it's forgiveable.
Sound: 9/10 - Annoying at some points, but very pleasing to the ear on the whole, with a very good soundtrack.
Controls: The game uses a simplistic setup where you only have to use the two analog sticks. While this requires you to have the Dual Shock controller, that shouldn't be a problem if you already have a PS2.

Overall: 8.5/10
This is a very enjoyable game that nearly anybody can get into. Easy to pick up, and very fun to play for a long time. There are flaws, but not enough to kill it.

[Goshi]

Okay I know this game would be onsidered obscure and all but lately Klonoa has been a lot more well known so this game can't hide anymore...

Klonoa: The Door to Phantomile

"Get him Rongo Longo! And watch for attacks from behind!"

System: PSOne
Genere: Platformer
Designer: Namco
ERSB: E

A platformer game for the Playstation, does it match up to the others or does it do better? Or maybe it fails miserbly read and find out!

Plot:
Its the typical good vs. evil plot really, Klonoa sets and to explore and soon comes upon a villian named Ghadius and Joka, the two kidnap someone from the Kingdom of the Moon in search for a pendant to travel to that kingdom, Klonoa being the hero has to stop them, gee how orginal. Although they are some interesting parts in the end the plot is pretty poor either way. Quite a shame, if it was an RPG it would lose a lot of points but it isn't so...
4/10

Gameplay:
Plays a lot like those classic Mario games and such but considering its system is simular to Kirby 64 it plays more like that than classic Mario games. You also have a magic ring which shoots a rather short ranged bullet which can grab and enemies in which you can throw at other enemies (WOW!) or do a second jump which can also defeat enemies below you. Also the levels are not completely linear as you would expect some levels require you to find keys to continue, usally the'yre in obvious spots although in some cases not really, one level was pretty much a large maze in which you navigate to find keys which was a lot of fun to do. The gameplay gets quite a nice score of...
9/10

Graphics:
Its a mix of 2D and 3D, the 2D sprites are quite well done although sometimes they look blurry when you see them close up and 3D work is superb the bosses aren't really that blocky and they're made well, the graphics are vety nicely done really I have no complaints except the fact that sprites sometimes look blurry.
9.5/10

Music and Sound:
The sound effects aren't annoying thank goodness. The music is the same story the music is quite impressive actually although it doesn't match the greatness of Casltevania SOTN's music; the music is still awesome. Although don't expect to be humming the tunes all the time. However some of the boss themes sound bad and get on your nerves but the level songs we're always good I really loved the theme for level 6-1's theme.
9/10

Multiplayer:
There is no multiplayer.
--/--

Difficulty: Medium
The game was pretty easy for me although there were some frustrating parts throughout and the bosses are very challenging at times as well so the difficulty is quite a balanced bag I guess.

Overall:
9/10

Goshi says: "If you don't mind colourful and kiddy graphics, pick this up. I pormise you won't be dissapointed."

[Goshi]

Its not obscure because it's Gradius

Gradius Gaiden

System: PSOne
Genere: Platformer
Designer: Konami
ERSB: E

A game that sadly never was released in English as far as I know but its still an awesome game and you don't really need to understand Japanese to play it (The weapons and voices are all english) anyway onto the review.

Plot:
4 ships set off to defeat the evil Bacterians... again. There isn't really much of a plot in this game. It is one of those games that don't require a plot to have fun in anyway...
1/10

Gameplay:
Its the Gradius games we've all come to love. No different at all still kept somelevel ideas, added a few new ones. One of the levels where a level of Gradius 3 gets sucked into a black hole was cool. The boss battles are frustrating but fun. Its still Gradius we all love. Unlike in other Gradius games however no custom ship mode. Instead you must select one of 4 ships and then a type of barrier you wish to use. Kinda limits the replay value but still nice neverless.
9.8/10

Graphics:
Whilst it doesn't use the full power of the mighty PSOne the graphics are still awesome. Having its very Casltevania SOTN styled effects it does look really nice. It just doesn't have much 3D polygons but then again PSOne 3D graphics usally look bad.
9/10

Music and Sound:
AWESOME. It even beats Gradius 3's soundtrack which is amazing really, the music is awesome, the sound effects are fine too nothing annoying there. I only had one complaint and that was the annoying "song" that plays near the final boss. But otherwise awesome music.
9.5/10

Multiplayer:
I actually haven't tried out the Multiplayer but I assume its the same from the other Gradius games. You take turns trying to complete the level you are currently up to. Not the best multiplayer ever but then again I never tried it on this game so I can't really give it a score.
--/--

Difficulty: Hard
Even on the easiest difficulty setting this game can be very difficult, sometimes the levels are rather tame but other times they can be murdersome. Although I am a freak at these sort of games (That's why Galaxy Slime was hard. I played through it finding it fairly easy.) so others might be in a nightmare for the whole game.

Overall:
9/10

Goshi says: "Shame it wassn't released in English, it is an awesome game and you'll probably have to resort to emulation to actually play it."

[Goshi]

Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones

"You can't be serious. You want to keep going?"

System: Gameboy Advance
Genere: Strategy/RPG
Designer: Nintendo
ERSB: E

The third of the GBA Fire Emblem games, can this one matxh up to FE7, well we shall see.

Plot:
Its the typical evil army trying to do evil and destroy sacred rocks for evil. Its far from orginal and is nothing at all that exciting, so don't be impressed. This is bad because the game has RPG elements which really harm the game with its poor plot.
1/10

Gameplay:
Its just like FE7 only now you have two classes to choose from which makes things more interesting and now certain classes have new abikities. Biships now have the Slayer ability which makes monsters take extra damage from their attacks for example. The Items are derectly importanted from FE7 only with a fair new slew of weapons and spells to boot so this game is not much different from FE7 although this game has a World Map, shops that can acessed outside battle and optional dungeons to boot so thie gameplay in this is somewhat better than FE7 in my opinion.
9.8/10

Graphics:
Exactly like FE7, the animations are very smooth and levels are well made I see very little flaws here. It doesn't use the full power of the GBA graphics from they still look quite nice.
9/10

Music and Sound:
Eh, the music is okay. Although heavily improved from FE7 the music there's a huge lack of variety in the songs. The songs will play over and over which is enough to dirve you mad. One of the flaws from FE7 as well. Otherwise the music is okay nothing at all that fantastic.
7/10

Multiplayer:
The Link Arena simply imvolves making a team of five of your characters and then having the fight each other to earn points. Whoever earns the most points wins. Although it would much nicer if you actually had multiplayer maps to play really. And also certain characters cannot be used even if they have weapons so this deducts its score a fair bit.
5/10

Difficulty: Medium
I never found many difficult moments although once a character dies you can never used it again which adds to its difficulty and trust its really easy for that to happen so the difficulty is a mixed bag. I found the game easy but some do find it hard so I guess it gets medium.

Glitches:
Theres one harmful glitch I should warn you about, when a Wervyn Knight uses a distant weapon like a Javelin ad the piercing effect is triggered the game will usually freeze. One of the bosses does it too which is very bad. The way to avoid this is simply turn animations for Wervyn Knights off.

Overall:
8/10

Goshi says: "A good game but it has a fair amount of flaws."

[weasel]

TimeSplitters: Future Perfect
"Don't let them eat my brains!"
"Do you think anyone would notice?"

System: PS2, Gamecube, XBox
Developer: Free Radical
Publisher: Electronic Arts (NOOOOOooooooo!)
ESRB: M (Violence, blood and gore. They neglected to mention "mild language." Game experience may change during online play)

I'm just going to jump straight in to this one, so as to show the Halo fanboys what they're missing without making them have to read too much.

GAMEPLAY

You are Sgt. Cortez (that bald guy with the weird goggles that's been on the game cover since TS2). Your mission is to travel back and forth through time to stop the war against the alien TimeSplitters from ever happening. And unlike the first two games, the story actually focuses on you and you alone, not a whole bunch of characters.

It's standard FPS affair, brought forward from the days of Goldeneye on the N64. Plow through missions, killing any bad guys you see, and accomplish your objectives. Rarely is there any semblance of stealth in this game (the only time I can think of is in "You Genius, U-Genix" at the beginning), though strategic thinking and a sharp eye do come in handy to avoid large conflicts.

Story Mode has you going through missions, occasionally stopping to watch a cinema sequence (these are often very humorous, especially when Cortez tries to adopt a catch phrase that nobody seems to like). You have guns, enemies, sometimes driveable vehicles, turret scenes, sniper scenes, and (as if the FPS cliche's haven't gone far enough) a gravity gun attached to your wrist. The game tries to emulate HL2's use of the gravity gun by creating puzzles (usually, though, these are just manipulating levers from a distance with it), but that's about where its use ends. You can still use it for a one-shot kill weapon if you're out of ammo, but it's no match for a good pistol at your side.

Outside of the story mode, we have Arcade mode (multiplayer deathmatch, team modes, and some other modes like BagTag and Monkey Assistant), and the Challenges, which I'll elaborate on in a moment.

The multiplayer aspect of this seems to cater to everybody. You have traditional, fast-paced deathmatch (in Goldeneye-styled "find a gun first" or with the option to start with a weapon by default), team deathmatch, capture the flag, and Assault mode (which also contains the driveable vehicles). These guys are obviously trying to out-do Halo, and I believe they succeed at this. Not only does this let you customize every bit of the game (from the map, to the kill and time limits, to one-shot kills, the full weapon set, even bots), but it also works on System Link and through Sony's broadband adapter (I was unable to test either of those, so I can't vouch for how smooth it is).

The Challenge modes are much like those in TS2, though the environments are somewhat more creative (and a few other modes that are of interest). You have the old classic "Behead the Undead" mode, where you must fight off the endless hordes of zombies. Then you have Timesplitters Story Classic, which is much like the first game (in that it lacks a real story, and is just getting the Time Crystal and leaving). But where it gets really interesting is the Miscellaneous stages (which include a basketball game with the gravity gun) and the Cat Driving mode (a mechanical cat on wheels races laps around three tracks). You'll have your work cut out for you if you want to get gold medals (or heck, platinum medals) on all of them.

Oh, and the best part about TS:FP? Unlike a certain other four-lettered game that begins with H, it doesn't end in a disappointing cliffhanger. It starts in a comprehensive manner, it ends without any kind of loose plot threads.

9/10 - I wish there were more unlockable cheats. And I also wish there were more environments from TS2 (I miss Jake Fenton).

GRAPHICS

TS:FP is represented in a rather cartoony style, which more than fits the game's sense of humor. Each environment looks as you'd expect it to, and the characters have the exaggerated movements to go along with it. Of course, the detail in the models is a bit lacking in places (hands are not fully articulated - especially noted in any cutscenes that show a close-up of Cortez's hand).

But all in all, this is much improved from TS2 - you have actual hands on all the weapons, as well as detailed reloading animations.

8.5/10 - Well, it isn't perfect, but it's certainly not an eyesore.

SOUNDS

Mostly, the sound effects are recycled from other entries in the series, but they still sound quite wonderful. Voice acting is surprisingly well done (though Jo-Beth Casey did get a little annoying), and the delivery is once again very funny. And hey, you really haven't heard anything until you play the game with "Human Gun Sounds" enabled.

Music is also well done, though it's hard to hear over the gunfire. A lot of music has been recycled from TS1 and 2, but at least the story mode music is all new. (It's a shame they struck all of the 1930's Chicago stuff from the record...I liked the music there.)

9/10

OVERALL

Lost amidst the hype of Halo 2, this one really deserved a better reception. Seek this one out.

9/10

[weasel]

Shenmue Chapter 1: Yokosuka
Warning: long article - no individual category scores

Developer: CRI/Sega AM2
Publisher: SEGA
ESRB: T (Animated Violence, Strong Language, use of Tobacco and Alcohol)
System: Dreamcast

Shenmue was Sega's ace in the hole - the one killer app for the Dreamcast that was supposed to boost sales for the console. The one game that was delayed so long that it skipped an entire console generation from the Sega Saturn. The game with so much stuff to do that it could last for ages.

Well, not quite.

Shenmue is the magnum opus of one Yu Suzuki, who has been with Sega since the early 80's and has worked on such major titles as Hang-On and Virtua Fighter. Originally slated to be a Virtua Fighter RPG of sorts (that honor now belongs to Virtua Quest), this ambitious project is still in the works - and it's jumped past two console systems now.

The original Shenmue on Dreamcast waited so long to arrive in the States that people began to believe that it was vaporware. But Sega finally came through - unfortunately for them, rather close to the end of the Dreamcast's US lifecycle (by the time Shenmue 2's localization was nearing completion, the Dreamcast finally died, and the project was sent to the XBox instead).

Shenmue takes place in the small, quiet town of Yokosuka, Japan, where everybody knows your name (well, because you've been living there for eighteen years, and having a famous martial artist for a father helps too) - you are Ryo Hazuki. High school student, martial artist in training, private detective (though not officially).

December 4th, 1986. You're on your way home from...somewhere (the game never explains where you came from). It's snowing, which is a surprise this early in the season. You arrive at your house to see a sinister-looking black car, the gate to the Hazuki Residence hanging wide open, and the signpost smashed up on the floor.

And the guys that did this are still in your house.

You look into the dojo to see your best friend and sparring partner, Fukuhara, tossed clear out the door. And inside is your father, and a Chinese man you've never seen before. The man kills your father right in front of you, and steals one of his prized possessions - a stone mirror with a dragon design on it.

You set off to avenge the death of your father, reclaim the mirror, and - what else? - settle a personal vendetta with the Chinese guy.

Now, you can explore the story at your own pace. If you look around you instead of just blindly following the path that is given to you, you'll find a whole wealth of things to do (ahem...not so much as advertised). There are capsule toy dispensers that you can collect things from (many of which containing some element from Sega's history - Virtua Fighter, Fantasy Zone, Sonic, Nights, Phantasy Star...), soda machines you can buy from, a little slot machine parlor (which, sadly, doesn't let you gamble your hard-earned Yen - it only lets you buy tokens which aren't worth anything), an arcade (with arcade-perfect emulations of Space Harrier and Hang-On), and the general populace of the town (which you can bug endlessly about the latest leg in your journey - "I'm looking for a guy named Charlie!")

The story mostly involves you walking around town (and eventually the harbor) asking questions in efforts to work your way up to finding the aforementioned Chinese killer dude (Lan Di). On occasion, you'll encounter places where you participate in a Quick Time Event (watch what happens on screen and hit buttons when it tells you to so Ryo doesn't get hurt), or where you're in an all-out brawl (with as many as 70 people at a time!).

Now, the story doesn't start to really get interesting until at least the second or third discs, when you start getting yourself into even more hot water than before. Lan Di's men start catching wind of you on their trail, and you get into even more fights and tough spots than in the first disc. If you're one of an impatient mind, Shenmue is not for you.

Graphically, the game is absolutely astounding for its time. Characters can have many different facial expressions, most have articulated hands and detailed faces, and the environments serve as more than a backdrop - lots of care and detail was put into these areas to make sure that you feel that you are Ryo Hazuki. On occasion, though, the game shows just how taxing the game's engine is on the Dreamcast hardware - especially in Dobuita and the Harbor areas, you'll notice people fading in and out to preserve resources. There is also plenty of slowdown in the harbor, because it's a very busy place (though I feel the poor framerates are owed mainly to the vast amount of pigeons).

Might I add that the detail placed into the little things is pretty good as well - a search through Ryo's dresser reveals about the coolest looking sock drawer to ever be shown in a video game. (I know it's just a texture, but man, that's photo-realism right there.)

The game's audio department is where things start to lose their luster - sure, the soundtrack is awesome (provided by Yuzo Koshiro, no less) but where the game really loses it is the voice acting.

Ryo Hazuki - high school student, martial artist in training, private detective...robot?

Ryo rarely shows any emotion in his voice acting (unless he's interrogating somebody that he's particularly angry with). The rest of the cast isn't much better, either, and I wonder where the localization team was when they began to record the English voices. The dialog lacks cohesion, and people tend to spout things that just don't seem natural. I cite an example from the raffle ticket contest at the Tomato Convenience Store:

Quote

RYO: No prize...
CLERK: Especially since you bought merchandise.

The regular old sound effects are fine (though Ryo's footsteps on pavement sound kinda cheesy); it's just the voice acting that needs work.

The game's controls are very touchy as well - the interface is okay for the most part (barring a bit of confusion when Ryo must unlock a locked chest with a key), using the A button to interact with nearly everything. Moving around town is difficult - the control pad (not the stick) is used to maneuver Ryo through the various environments, using semi-relative motion (in other words, tapping Left or Right will cause Ryo to turn in either direction while also walking forward). The control stick is used to look around, the L button makes Ryo run straight forward (which you'll be doing a lot since he walks really slowly, though not to a Parasite Eve level of slowness), and you can turn in place by holding the B button (I almost never used this because it was just too much trouble). The combat system is well-designed and easy to pick up, but I found it difficult on occasion to deal with multiple enemies at a time (Ryo usually seemed to go the wrong way, or hit the wrong person).

Upon completing the game, you are also allowed to replay the game with a different weather system based on actual weather data from Yokosuka in 1986, but this is hardly worth going through the game again for. You can also replay the last major battle scene (the 70-man free-for-all) and try and beat your best time on it, but again, not a lot for replay value.

The game's replay value comes from experiencing all the cutscenes that you might have missed (I certainly missed a lot - on my third playthrough, I found a few flashback scenes that I missed, as well as a few emotional moments between Ryo and his girlfriend Nozomi, who he doesn't seem to care much about), collecting all the little trinkets (which is more or less a waste of money, since the real reason for doing that is so you could sell them to pawnshops in Shenmue 2 - and since there is no US Dreamcast version of it, there's no way you can carry those over from the first game), and beating those darn arcade games (to win more little trinkets). If you're a completist, go on ahead.

If you don't care about all the extra side stuff, you'll probably be saddened that the main story is actually quite short if you know what you're doing (my first playthrough took me almost an entire game month, and about forty hours of gameplay - my latest play was probably only 15 hours, with minimal side-stuff).

The last major thing about the game is that it comes with a fourth disc called the Passport - using this disc, you can replay old cinema scenes that you've seen before, watch old promotional videos, listen to the music, and trade in winning soda cans for (what else?) more little trinkets (which requires an Internet connection to your DC, I believe...I never got to try this).

The bottom line about Shenmue: the plot is engaging if you're patient, the game has plenty of replay values if you're a completist, the game takes a long while if you stray from the main path, and the game sounds great if you turn off the speech. In other words, Shenmue is not for everyone - it takes a certain person to fully appreciate what the game has to offer.

TOTAL SCORE: 8/10

[Goshi]

Einhander

System: PSOne
Genere: Action
Designer: Squaresoft
ERSB: Well it should be E although I think it gave it a T or something, weird.

Yes thats right, Squaresoft actuallty made a shmup game, how unlike them. Although this game is quite obscure its not obscure enough to go in the obscure review thread, okay?

Plot:
Wow a Shmup that attepts to have a decent plot, whilst the main plot deals with a war against the Moon and the Earth and it doeshave a typical RPG plot twsit style thing eventually, whilst this is typical cliche to most games considering this is the shmup genere it is quite a suprise so I guess it gets bonus marks for attempting a good plot for it.

6.5/10 (Its cliched man!)

Gameplay:
Plays like most horizontal action shmups pretty much although it has fancy camera angles and such. The camera angles are nice but they make the somewhat annyoing espically when your trying to avoid a hoarde of bullets coming your direction, otherwise it is like most shmups. Like Gradius, Aerowings or Salamander anything will pretty much kill you in one hit which does increrase its difficulty by quite a large amount. The level layouts are pretty simular to each other, each level has 1 mid boss and 1 major boss. Each level also has you dealing with the typical swarms of enemies although Stage 6 adds quite some variety into the mix. You also have gunpods which enable you use secondary weapons these can be either Vulcan cannons, grenades or even a saber however you'll be relying on thiese for your survival rather than your built-in weapon when it comes to boss fights mainly because of the increased firepower and range if oyu didn't have them during a boss fight things can get quite messy. Lastly you have a fews ships to choose at the start of each game, nothing fancy there although they can help suit your style,if you lkove using secondary weapons than simply choose the ship with more gunpods and if you prefer the built-in weapon simply choose the one with doubled firepower on it, simple. Lastly you either have the gunpood above or below your ship this effects its range or simply how the weapon attacks otherwise it adds nothing fancy except maybe addtional defense seeing as how the gunpod itself has its own health too. The gameplay is actually quite good.
9.5/10

Graphics:
The 3D models are incredible, its kinda hard to beleive that Square put so much effort in making them even though this is nothing but a side project. Although the 3D models are quite impressive the backgrounds aren't, well they're okay but look like something you can expect from the SNES but toherwise the visuals are quite amazing and probably one of the best Square has done.
9/10

Music and Sound:
The sound effects are okay, the music is mostly techno tracks, well I don't mind techno when its done well although the music is not the best done from Square, it is good but not memorial, you won't start humming to the tunes or anything but at least its done well. Otherwsie its just average in the section.
7/10

Multiplayer:
As far as I know there's none whatsoever, first shmup I've seen without multiplayer. O_o

If you want a shmup for multiplayer than Gradius Gaiden is your best bet.
-/-

Difficulty: Hard
To me it would more medium but like I said I am a absoulte freak at this genere I LOVE shmups, get used to it. Anyway this game is quite possibly one of hardest ones I played, the difficulty is rather unbalanced too. The first two levels (In my opinion at least) are pathetically easy however the difficulty then takes a huge leap once you reach the mid-boss of Stage 3, quite a pain the difficulty then continues to increase and increase until the Final Stage which is rather easy. In order actually have a grasp at this game you'll need to be able to memorize the levels and the bosses' attack patterns, not the best game for a newbie of the genere to start.

Overall:
8/10

Goshi says: "This game is very ignored, although I highly suggest you get this. Besides its better than a lot of Square's other projects @_@"

[Goshi]

I am invading the review thread MWAHAHAHAHAH! Now I'm going to review one of my favourite games of all time.

Tales of Phantasia

System: PSOne, GBA, SNES
Genere: RPG
Designer: Namco, Tri-Ace
ERSB: E, I guess. Although the bathing scene and the Harpies might not make E suitable >_>

Well I guess I'll be reviewing all three versions, at once. Whilst they are all completely different in their own ways I guess I can mage... right?

Plot:
Fairly cliche, the game starts off with 4 heroes off defeating a villian. Then the scene shifts to our hero Cless, and his sidekick Chester off hunting, during that time Cless invisions a girl telling him to protect the tree Yggdrasill. Afterwards the village is attacked soldiers seeking the pendant Cless holds. Soon Cless relises their trying to revive the villian the 4 heroes once defeated and goes off to stop them. I won't go any fuurther although later on a lot of the plot involves quite a bit of time travel, and a lot to do with that tree as well. The plot is cliched a fair few times but toherwise its done quite well. I found the PSOne version went a little deeper with the plot but toherwise that's just me.
7/10

Gameplay:
Typical RPG, wonder around buy stuff, explore, defeat bosses, blah blah. However the battle system is quite original. Rather than being Turn Based and such you fight in a real time side view battle system, sorta like a Street Fighter game in a lot of ways. In SNES the system is heavily flawed having yourself being automatically retreated all the time and made it feel so restricted, the PSOne version has that as well although like in ToD there's technical rings will allow the character to be controlled manually (Duh.) this makes the movement much smoother and easier to use and helps make the controls in battle a lot easier. Also there's and item for Cless that he equip that allows him to use his ougis with Street Fighter styled button combinations, added with the Technical Ring you can pretty much turn this game completely into a Street Fighter stlyed game very cool. Although you cannot get the Technical Ring in the SNES you can get that special item. Obviously the PSOne version is more superior. Also the game has the infamous random encounters, in the SNES version it quickly gets frustrating, its like every 5 steps you take your instantly warped into a battle, very annoying. This was cured in the PSOne version, thank goodness. And like I said, the PSOne version is obviously superior. Anyway the gameplay is good although in the SNES version it does quickly get on your nerves.
9/10

Graphics:
SNES standards, quite possibly one of the best you'll ever seen, its simply stunning all the effects, too hard to describe! PSOne version well the graphics are nice and all but they are below PSOne standards but the game still looks beutiful and not hideous. My only complaint with the SNES version is that none of the characters follow their artwork.
9/10

Music and Sound:
In both versions the music sounds lovely, although the boss theme and final battle song are pretty repetitive. The GBA music is okay but it just isn't as good as the other two. The main theme song is one my favourites in the game.
9/10

Multiplayer:
Only appearent in the PSOne version to my knowledge (I'm not sure about the GBA one) anyway who said RPG games cannot be good multiplayer games. Anyway the only problem is most characters are mages, and being a magic user is kinda boring.
7/10

Difficulty: Medium
Its not too hard at times although some parts can be quite frustrating (CURSE YOU FANGBEAST!) also the random encounters will get on your nerves otherwise the difficulty is okay, although playing Mania mode is a bit overkill on your poor party.

Overall:
9/10

Goshi says: "The PSOne version is much better although the SNES version is translated, however the only way you'd beable to play this is through emulation."

[weasel]

Indigo Prophecy known in Europe as "Fahrenheit"

Developer: Quantic Dream
Publisher: Atari
Platform: PC, Playstation 2, XBox (no Gamecube version)
ESRB: M (Blood,Partial Nudity,Sexual Themes,Strong Language,Use of Drugs and Alcohol,Violence)
US Release Date: September 28th (omg that's today!)

I managed to score a copy of Fahrenheit from a friend the other day, so I got a chance to play through it and get enough data to write a review - before the game even hit shelves. Now I know what it feels like to work at Gamespy or something. Of course, having a non-domestic copy of the game means a few things are different, but I'll get to those in due time.

Many of you who owned a Dreamcast back in 2000 are familiar with Sega/AM2's adventure game, Shenmue. The game involved a mystery, several different interfaces, and the occasional fight scene (whether scripted or free-battle). Indigo Prophecy is sure to remind a whole lot of Shenmue, except without all the extra time-wasting crap in the background to distract you from the plot.

Upon selecting the tutorial mode (which explains how to play the game fairly well), the game's writer/director David Cage appears on screen to guide you through all the different things you'll have to do in the game. It's a bit difficult to make out what he's saying because of his accent, making me wish there were subtitles in the game, but once the game started, I didn't really need them.

The game casts you as not one, but three different characters who you can occasionally switch between at will. You can walk around the different environments as those characters, performing actions by making the corresponding motion with the right analog stick (the motions are helpfully displayed on screen for you). You can also look around in first person, but you can't move while in first person (except in a few scenes).

The game also features quite a number of action sequences, which play out like Shenmue's Quick-Time Events - you watch the action unfold on screen, and make movements with your analog sticks when the screen prompts you to (with a pair of Simon-like pads - except in this case, it's not a game of memory; you just have to push the buttons as they light up). Then there are some "stress" scenes, that involve your character doing something difficult - you have to tap the shoulder buttons back and forth as fast as you can to take care of the action.

The interface is pretty intuitive, and makes for little distraction in uncovering each individual thread of the plot.

And oh, what a plot it is. It's like playing a James Patterson novel. If you're unfamiliar with James Patterson, his writing style usually involves many different viewpoints - often alternating between that of a criminal, and the man that pursues him.

The game begins at Doc's Diner in New York City. A man gets up to go to the bathroom, and is attacked from behind by a man holding a knife.

That man is you. You have no control over this scene - it's as if you've been possessed. When you come to, you're standing over the man's corpse, and you have to figure out how to get out of there without being suspected. Then it's a merry chase between you and a pair of crack police detectives. Each character you play has their own purposes and obligations - while Lucas Kane is busy trying to figure out what happened to him in that bathroom that made him kill that man, the police - detectives Carla Valenti and Tyler Myles - are trying to track him down. You get involved in the lives of each one of them during the course of the game.

The real beauty of this game is the replay value - nearly everything you can do in this game is almost completely optional. For instance, in the initial scene in the diner restroom, you can choose to pick up after yourself and clear out the evidence, or rush out and spook everyone. This doesn't actually change the plot, but it'll modify little details about the way it plays out - you could make it easier on the cops by not hiding the murder weapon, but later on it'll be more difficult to evade suspicion. There are so many different ways you can change things, it's worth playing the game again.

The game is actually very good looking. I've seen other reviewers absolutely destroy this game in the graphical department, but honestly, I think it looks fine. It has just the right amount of graphical splendor needed to convey a story of this type. Characters have many facial expressions, and near-perfect lip syncing. Their animations are all motion-captured, making things look pretty real. There are a few very minor clipping issues with the models but you'll barely notice them if you're busy with the plot.

The audio aspect of the game is pretty good as well. Voice-acting is Hollywood quality, delivering the right amount of emotion and realism to the lines given. Sound effects and music are also very well done, lending toward the game's atmosphere as well as any other game. Of course, there does come a point where the greatness isn't so much - sometimes lines can get repetitive after hearing them so many times (like hearing a soldier shout "Don't move or I'll shoot!"), and there just isn't a whole lot of music in the game, meaning that many scenes in the game feature the same track. Thankfully, though, the music is fairly non-intrusive, so it's not like you'd get particularly annoyed at a given track. And the plus side is that you can always turn it off.

Overall, Indigo Prophecy is about the finest adventure game to ever grace the shelves of a computer store since LucasArts stopped making them. If you're into adventure games, or games with a good plot, you owe it to yourself to check this one out.

9.5/10

Extra Note: There is also a demo out for the PC version of the game (and, from what I've heard, the XBox version).

Censorship Notice: The American release of Indigo Prophecy had a scene cut out that still exists in the European release. The scene was cut because of fear about repercussions from the Hot Coffee case (a sex scene was cut for the final American release). The ESRB rating (which I pulled off of EBGames) should still accurately reflect the content of the game.



edit: hey, I'm dominating the review threads again.

[Goshi]

I've beaten it like 100 times today so I guess it legiment for review.

Gunstar Super Heroes

"My name is Green.... SEVEN FORCE!!!"

System: GBA
Genere: Action
Designer: Treasure
ERSB: E

Many of us have long awaited it, so is it worth the wait or isa it just Treasure trying to show of the technology skillz? Read and find out!

Plot:
Exactly the same from the first, evil Genral Grey is trying to resurrect the "Destructor" and try and take over the world. Although they're are a few extra twists and such to it if you play on higher difficulties. A huge improvment from the first, whilst the idea is pretty much the same it is expressed much better. Although it is still pretty cliche.
6.5/10

Gameplay:
You can no longer combine weapons (OHHH DEAR), although the game is still pretty fun. You have 3 weapons to choose from at anytime (Like in Gunner's Heaven) with each character, Red gets the uh... rapid fire bullety thingy like from Gunstar Heroes, Blue gets that Lightning weapon from Gunstar Heroes, both characters gets the Fire weapon and the Chaser which is pretty much the same as Chaster + Lightning from Gunstar Heroes only it doesn't stick to a target and the homing effect isn't as effective either. You can also do the Gunstar Action which is a powered up version of the currect weapon your using, to do this you need to have certain amount of the gauge on the top of the screen filled. This can be done by collect the Green Star power ups or by attacking enemies. Now the bosses, whilst rather cool looking and very well animated are quite dissapointing compared to Treasure's other titles. Seven Force and Minon Soldier still keep their glory although a lot of bosses like Pink Walker or Orange have been dumbed down majorly and are not really that fun to fight... unless you like seeig Pink's hurt animation or something O_o. Also in some levels you ride on top of Yellow's Jet thing and shoot enemies whilst riding on top of it. Whilst the idea sounds cool and all it is pretty repetive. Also we have the shoot em't styled level reappearing however the movement feels somewhat restrictive, although the fact you can rotate the view is pretty cool. Lastly we have the new Helicopter part that appears the start of Orange's stage. You can move around in any direction and rotate the helicopter although the difficulty for that part is quite high (Unless your playing Easy) and rather frustrating. Anyway, otherwise this game plays exactly like the first, the levels are pretty much the same only some of them have been shortened but its fun.
9/10

Graphics:
One word.
AWESOME.

Seriously the graphics are gorgeous to look at, the bosses are so well animated, the scenery is nice to see, the Mode 7 effects are used well, the graphics are lovely. There is also very little slowdown as well, which also gives it a plus. Seriosuly the graphics are probably some of the best you'll see for the GBA.
9.8/10 (Because it can never be perfect )

Music and Sound:
I have'nt played the English version yet although I don't plan to when I heard they ruined the voices. Anyway, the voices in the Jap version are done pretty well, they suit the characters well, although the voice you hear during the title screen gets on your nerves pretty quickly. The music is really good even though its just remixes from of the music from the first. However they are really good. The sound is seriously a HUGE improvment from the ifrst. (Honestly the music and osund from the first made my ears scream). Anyway considering that from what I heard the English voices are crap I might tone down the score a little. Until I play the english version yeah... I'll just assume the English voices are crap anyway.
9/10

Multiplayer:
Sadly this was one of the things removed in the game, the multiplayer was actually fairly fun in the original but now its long gone.
-/-

Difficulty: Medium - Hard
Easy is really easy. Medium is actually pretty hard in comparsion to easy, actually VERY hard in comparsion but otherwise pretty easy once you get the ghist of it. Hard... to be honest I've never completed it (CURSE YOU ORANGE'S STAGE!!!) but otherwise the difficulty is nicely balanced and each difficulty (Except Hard, curse you Orange!) can be beaten quite easily with enough practise. Although I have never survived against the "File Crasher boss" >.< Otherwise yes, it is a lot harder than the first so come preapred with your old skool skillz

Overall:
9/10

Goshi says: "While in ways disapointing comapared, this is one of the best GBA games ever. I highly recommend."

[weasel]

Doom 3
Because nobody else has done it yet on this forum.

Genre: First-Person Shooter
Developer: id Software
Publisher: Activision
ESRB: M
Platform: PC (XBox version exists, but it's rather different from the PC version)

One of id's most anticipated games to date. Of course, hype can sometimes blow the final product out of proportion.

See, Doom 3 was hyped up enough that a lot of people thought it'd be the Best Game Ever. But when they finally picked it up, they discovered that it was really no different from the first Doom game - non-stop action in a horror setting. No real mission objectives to worry about (outside of using computers and just going through the levels), plot is mostly optional, just lots of shooting.

But I don't let that get me down - in fact, that's why I liked the original Doom so much.

The game starts off rather like Half-Life - you've just arrived at Mars City and you go through the registration process. Bio-scanning, picking up a PDA, reporting for duty. You can also goof around like in HL - playing Super Turbo Turkey Puncher 3 in the Mars City cafe, or punching soda cans around.

When you report for duty, you get your first task - find a missing scientist. It's when you find him that the crap hits the proverbial fan.

Zombies are everywhere. Lights are going out, machines are malfunctioning, doors being bashed to the point of inoperation. And while you find an alternate route back to the City, you can hear the screams of terror from fellow Marines as they get slaughtered by all manner of unearthly beings.

You get some decent firepower eventually. While you don't start with anything to speak of outside of your fists, you pick up a Pistol and Flashlight from the locker when you're reporting for your first task. Yes, a flashlight - the subject of much controversy in more than a few reviews. The game depends so much on this flashlight, because the rooms are so poorly lit. Yet it's treated as a seperate weapon - why couldn't the Marine Command issue a clip-on flashlight, or better yet, a tactical flashlight? Yes, it bugs me. It does help the atmosphere, but it gets pretty annoying when you're fighting larger monsters like Revenants and you can't see them. To make matters worse, weapons like Plasma Guns and BFG's don't light the place up as well as they ought to.

But the game does a pretty good job of providing non-stop action. This is perhaps one of the most atmospheric action-shooters I've played since the original Quake. The usage of ambient sound, combined with the conspicuous lack of music (outside of the title screen) just has a way of pulling you in.

Graphically, the game is pretty nice, supporting per-pixel lighting in such a stunningly realistic way that it's possible to actually be scared by shadows. Everything casts a shadow. It's awesome.

But on the other end of the spectrum of graphics, while the game supports fancy things like bump-mapping, sometimes they are used to excess - making many things look like plastic. Turning the bump-map effects off makes things look flat and unnatural, almost worse than leaving them on.

And it'll take a good video card to make this stuff run very well at all. My computer had serious difficulties running the game at 640x480 in low quality with the effects off (P4 3.0 GHz, 512 meg RAM, Geforce FX 5200 128MB). I'd get a steady 25 FPS with no monsters around, but when a battle situation arises, things slow down. Way down.

Multiplayer? Pssh. This is about the most simplistic multiplayer around, supporting Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch for up to four players out of the box. All the weapons from the single-player game (except the BFG and Soul Cube) are used in the multi-player game, and a few extra powerups are scattered around as well. I thought deathmatch was supposed to be a bit slower-paced this time around, but it still moves lightning fast - the "slow" part is because there are only 4 players max in a level without mods.

So if you're interested in a good single-player bloodbath, and don't care much about multi-player capabilities, pick this one up.

And if the flashlight thing bugs you that much, go look up the Duct Tape Mod.

8/10

[Goshi]

Rhapsody: A musical adventure

"Aye aye! Captain Crunch!"

System:
Genere: Tactical RPG
Designer: Nippon Ichi
ERSB: E

Its seriously hard to tell if this game is obscire or not, but chances are it isn't. Anyway the game has a unique ida of implementing musical scenes kinda like from a Disney movie. Although is this game actually worth it?

Plot:
Rather cliche, an evil witch named Marjoly is doing dirty deeds and finds that Myao has been harassed so goes off to find the culprit soon she relises its a hansome prince and decides to seduce however she used the wrong spell and can no longer free him or have any of her... pleasures... with him. Cornet (The heroine) however is annoyed decides to go on a journey to free the prince and defeat her. It is cliche, it has some interesting twists near the end and the cast is really good however like I said it is rather cliche although the dialogue is good for a laugh if you enjoy anime styled humour.
6.5/10

Gameplay:
The battle system is generic tatical like system like in Tactics Ogre, nothing special except maybe the Horn and Reward commands, but they's basic and are hardly needed. The dungeons... are hell to go thorugh. They're maze like and all the rooms look EXACTLY the same. Not only is it easy to get lost but its nowhere near fun to do too, the dungeons also lack variety too, and are mostly either caves or ruins. PLus added with random encounters and the battle systems nature, this game is no good. Also Auto-Battle is reatarded, it never lets your character actually use their skills. The gameplay is very poor and the dungeons are evil to explore, the gameplay ruins the whole fun of the game.
3/10

Graphics:
Heavily below standard, nothing fancy or anything, the areas look fairly impressive but the appearances are often reused. The graphics are rather more a SNES type standard. Although graphics aren't important or anything and at least its not ugly like one game I can think of... (*cough* SaGa Frontier *cough*) Anyway graphics have always been NI's weakness though but they could at least jazzed it up a little extra. I mean all the battle animations look exactly the same is really stupid.
5/10

Music and Sound:
Considering the english title is called "Rhapsody: A MUSICAL ADVENTURE, you'd expect the music to be actually good right? It is, the music is done very well, the songs are done nicely and its nice that you get an option to switch to the Japanese ones if you don't fancy the english ones, the music is good. However a lot of the songs are often reused and the battle themes suck... welll the final boss theme is actually super cool, but the rest all stink. The battle system that plays after the main plot is revealed is annoying to listen too. But otherwise the music is good, it just lacks variety like the battle animations...
8/10

Multiplayer:
None to speak of.
-/-

Difficulty: SUPER Easy
The game is seriously easy, you pretty much level up after every single battle and the enemies have little health. It is fairly moderate in hard difficulty but even so its still easy. Easy difficulty is waaaaay too easy though. Unlioke NI's other games like Disgaea, extreme levelling isn't really needed, the game is sooo easy. The only difficult things you'll be doing is exploring those hell holes of dungeons.

Overall:
4.5/10

Goshi says: "Yes, this game sucks, they're very few good things about. You should avoid this."

[weasel]

Kingdom Hearts
Hey, it's like that old goat says: Rule 11: It's all just a game, so let loose and have fun with it! I mean, a casualty or two along the way is no big deal, right?

Genre: Action RPG
Developer: Squaresoft and Disney Interactive
Platform: PS2
ESRB: E (Violence)

The ultimate Disney fanservice, with parts of Squaresoft games thrown in for the heck of it. There's a few other games mixed in here as well...keep reading!

You play as the prerequisite pre-teen boy hero, Sora, who has a pretty cool outfit outside of his clown boots. After a cool intro cinematic, and a really creepy tutorial scene in which you fight monsters atop various stained glass windows, you find yourself in the Real World.

It was almost painful to plod through the introduction of the game on the Destiny Islands - there was barely anything to fight outside of Riku (Sora's friend, not related to Rikku of FF10 fame), Selphie, Tidus and Wakka; and the entirety of the quest on the Islands was fetching items. Not a promising start, after the cool/creepy tutorial scene.

But once all that's over with...the game really kicks it into gear.

The Destiny Islands are absorbed into the darkness, and you find yourself in an unknown place - Traverse Town, the home of those whose worlds were destroyed.

You get this crazy weapon called the Keyblade and you get to beat the crap out of enemies with it. Eventually you learn magic and get party members.

I suppose I ought to elaborate - the battle system is mostly reminiscent of Zelda 64, with the lock-on targeting and button-mashing combat. But you also get a little mini-menu in the lower-left side of the screen that you can pick items and magic with (it's controlled with the pad or the right analog stick). And for those of you that like using magic, you have three quick-slots you can assign magic to.

Combat usually pits you and your party (typically consisting of Donald and Goofy) against the unrelenting hordes of the Heartless (more often than not, a single room will send about 15 guys at you, depending on the size of said room). To assist you in dealing with these things, Donald and Goofy are controlled by AI. If they're not attacking the right guy, you can always lock on to the target yourself and hit a button to send them in.

Magic consists of your typical Final Fantasy affair - fire, blizzard, thunder, cure, aero, gravity. But where it gets interesting is the Summons.

Rather than throw in the tired Shiva/Ifrit/Ramuh/Bahamut roster that we've been seeing for years, Square opted to let Disney handle the summons. You control such powerful beings as Simba from Lion King and the Genie from Aladdin, and the effects for all of the summons are varied enough that there's something for everybody (I like the Genie's Showtime attack, just because I'm a man of style).

The Disney fanservice involves plenty of different worlds from Disney movies ranging from the 1940's to present day. You go to such locales as Wonderland, Atlantica, Neverland, the Deep Jungle, Halloween Town, even Monstro the Whale. Some places offer Sora and company a visual makeover (like Halloween Town) or even a completely different control set (Atlantica offers three-dimensional movement underwater).

Getting between worlds isn't like most RPG's - rather than just walking, riding an airship, or taking a chocobo (sadly, chocobos aren't in the game - but Moogles are), you get to ride the Gummi Ship.

The Gummi Ship is a fully customizable spaceship that is composed of gummi blocks - assembled much like Lego bricks. When your ship is put together, you can fly it between worlds Panzer Dragoon style (you even get homing lasers at some point). It's not exactly the ultimate shooter, but it provides a nice diversion between worlds (and if you really want to, later on you get a warp drive that lets you skip these parts if you've already gone between two worlds).

The game's graphics are awesome. The framerate keeps to a constant 30 FPS (I think there might have been slowdown on occasion, but I don't remember too well so it must not have been that bad). The character models are perfect representations of Disney's characters (though some have odd flaws here and there - Aladdin appears crosseyed from certain angles). Animations are another story - for the most part, they're pretty good, but in certain cutscenes, the lipsyncing was not implemented, so instead of seeing the lips move realistically, you see simple texture changes that don't look that good at all (and they're typically taken with the mouth in a "happy" expression, so Captain Hook will look downright dorky when he's going through his tirades).

The game's soundtrack is generally pretty good - some songs just got on my nerves though (Under The Sea? This Is Halloween? ARGH! Thank God they didn't put in the lyrics!). The voices were done in English (I've heard that the Japanese voices are just hilarious, if for no other reason than that you can hear Donald Duck shouting "Ohayo gozaimasu!" in the beginning) by their original actors, with certain exceptions - because naturally, they wouldn't be able to get names like Robin Williams on the cast, though the existing actors do pretty good likenesses. Surprisingly, they managed to get pretty much the entire original casts from all the films, including Hercules.

There are only a few things I wish could have been done to the game though - like, for example, the Pixar movies, and The Emperor's New Groove (though it'd probably be butchered without David Spade and John Goodman on the cast). Supposedly the sequel will be touching on other aspects of Disney's history, including an entire world based on the original Steamboat Willy cartoon.

Overall, this is a highly worthy purchase. Just ignore the Disney stuff, for underneath it all lies a very good (and sometimes very dark) game. It's kid-friendly, yes, but it tends to be kind of creepy (the intro is a case in point). Only the occasional camera issue really hurts the gameplay.

9/10

[GetDizzy]

Quote

And it'll take a good video card to make this stuff run very well at all. My computer had serious difficulties running the game at 640x480 in low quality with the effects off (P4 3.0 GHz, 512 meg RAM, Geforce FX 5200 128MB). I'd get a steady 25 FPS with no monsters around, but when a battle situation arises, things slow down. Way down.

YEEEP
Uhh
nevermind then!

I was going to possibly get it because although I didnt like the XBOX version I could probably cheat my way through this version or at least be able to see, but... well, if your 3GHz P3 and 512MB of RAM and 128MB GeForce 5 cant do it, then I dont see how my 1.2GHz AthXP, 640MB of RAM and 64MB GeForce 2 GTS can...

Of course then again I also dont see how a 733MHz machine with a 64MB GeForce 3 and 32MB of RAM ran it either... (xbox)

I guess these minimum specs are optimistic at best?

Pentium III, 1Ghz
256Mb RAM

3D card:
NV10 or R200 minimum hardware
OpenGL hardware acceleration
64 MB VRAM

This post has been edited by Insidious: 07 November 2005 - 01:51 PM

[weasel]

I won't bother getting into an argument over how the XBox has specific optimizations. The fact is, my computer's video card is just incapable of rendering at a decent speed, as are other video cards of the same class. If your card outclasses mine, and the rest of your specs are similar, then you should have no problem playing Doom 3.

As for the official minimum requirements...I'd expect those to at least play the game, but don't expect it to run particularly well unless you install the unofficial Voodoo 2 patch (which is pretty much not worth it because it turns off every effect, including shaders and lighting).

[Spectere]

Hm? Doom3 is very playable on my system -- Pentium 4 2.0GHz, 512MB RAM, GeForce 3 64MB (640x480, low quality, of course).

Make sure your video card drivers are updated. The older drivers that came with the FX cards yielded horrible performance with DX9's pixel shaders.

[Torte]

[[Well, they did lower a lot of the details and removed some stuff. It's probably also got to do with the fact that it doesn't need to run any OS in the background or anything else power consuming.]]

[weasel]

Spectere, on Nov 7 2005, 11:48 AM, said:

Make sure your video card drivers are updated. The older drivers that came with the FX cards yielded horrible performance with DX9's pixel shaders.

At the time of the review, I was running the Forceware 78.01 drivers for Windows XP. 640x480 at low quality, most effects (except High Quality Shaders) turned on.

My computer just sucks. I know.

[weasel]

Front Mission 4
"I think it's time you stopped pampering the new recruit, Father One!"

Platform: PS2
Genre: Strategy RPG
Developer: Squaresoft
ESRB: T (violence, mild language)

The Front Mission series seems to be the underdog in strategy RPG's. It's good solid fun with a relatively simple interface, but sadly overshadowed by other games like Tactics Ogre and the Nippon Ichi games.

Timeline-wise, I'd venture a guess that this takes place sometime close to Front Mission 1 on SNES. As the game begins, you take control of an ex-French Army soldier named Elsa, who is undergoing training for the Durandal (a group of specialists). After a brief training exercise, things get interesting when a German research base is attacked.

On the other side of the plot (the game switches back and forth between two sets of characters) you have a bunch of Venezuelan soldiers on patrol, that discover a crashed cargo transport that contains millions of dollars worth of gold owned by the country's corrupt governor. So they take it and defect.

Both plots have their share of conspiracies and twists. They're pretty decent - nothing Tom Clancy would have written, but interesting enough to motivate the player to advance.

Gameplay wise, this game is all about customization. You can buy and assemble your Wanzer (giant robot) either by buying a pre-assembled blueprint, or the individual parts that you can mix and match. You can mount weapons in the Wanzer's hands or shoulders, add backpacks, and select from different types of legs (bipeds, reverse-jointed legs, spider-legs, treads). Individual parts may also contain built-in weapons (like the Vapor machine gun - because it's built-in, it's very accurate, but you can't mount shoulder weapons like rockets on it).

Outside of building Wanzers, you can also customize the pilots. Each person has a certain specialty, but if you really want to, you can purchase new computer software for them so they can learn new skills for weapons they don't specialize in (for example, Zead specializes in rockets and melee combat, but with a computer upgrade you can turn him into a two-fisted machine gunner capable of attacking multiple enemies at once).

Yet another element of customization is the ability to Link your characters together. Allocating Link points between characters enables linked combat, which means that when one person attacks, the Link is initiated and any linked characters within range will attack as well. If more Link points are allocated, your link partner will be able to counter-attack when one character is attacked, and even use weapon skills. It's just incredible to see a Link battle with up to eight Wanzers at a time.

The game's flow is actually pretty linear - just fight the battles and watch the story. But the variety of tactics you can employ makes it worth playing through again.

Some things are sorely missed from Front Mission 3, however - like the Network mode, which allowed one to shop for parts from anywhere and even browse the "Internet." You can still shop for parts almost everywhere in the game, but the Network mode had many things that helped expand on the game's background.

The game's graphics are pretty well done. They lack some special effects, but the models are very well done, the textures are nice and crisp, and it runs at a constant 30 FPS with no slowdown (not even when eight Wanzers are duking it out).

The game's sounds are also quite satisfying. There is voice acting in cinemas, which fits pretty well on the whole (complete with realistic accents), the gunfire in game is powerful and has a good kick behind it, and the sounds of Wanzers stomping about is just cool. The music is pretty neat too, and I wish I could listen to it outside of the game.

Overall, if you're a strategy gamer and want something new and interesting, look up Front Mission 4. Because who doesn't like to see robots blowing the ever-lovin' crap out of each other?

8.5/10

[duvel]

Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow
System: Nintendo DS
Developer: Konami
ESRB Rating: T. There's blood effects similar to those from Symphony of the Night (red globs, ooh) and some risque monsters and statues (Alura Une and Lilith/Succubus come to mind) but it should be fine for anyone with the thought capacity of a 12 year old or older.

Dawn of Sorrow is the sequel to the highly popular GBA title Aria of Sorrow. It is very similar to the previous game, but better in just about every way.

Plot: Rather mediocre compared to the last games, actually, but one point near the middle-endish of the game (I won't spoil the surprise) certainly was entertaining. You follow Soma Cruz again, this time as he is infiltrating the headquarters of a cult dedicated to bringing about the dark lord's return. Much of the dialogue consists of miscelaneous people telling other miscelaneous people not to go somewhere or to leave somewhere. The other part involves a slightly interesting story about a clever dude and a hothead who somehow got a demon grafted to him. I suggest reading the dialogue, however, as it happens to be very interesting as well as informative at some points. 7/10 for providing some interesting, if not repetitive dialogue, as well as a story that picks up cleanly from where the last one left off.

Gameplay: Meat and pototoes of any game. With Dawn of Sorrow, this is no exception. Soma travels around the castle (that strangely enough reminds me of the Symphony of the Night castle; or maybe it's just the "Wizardy Lab" and "Condemned Tower" sections) fighting a varied assortment of monsters. The addictive soul system has returned, with a new soul level system to get you to go after souls more than once to power them up. The equipment system is also back, in a very similar fashion, except now you can switch between two equipment settings (and soul settings) at the touch of a button. This turns out to be one of the handiest new features to the game. Another new addition is the special attack you can use with many weapons, often increasing the attack power of an already powerful weapon for a single, mp-consuming attack. There are also the magic seals, which can seem annoying once you get to the 3rd or 4th one, but are easy to get the hang of after a while. You need magic seals to defeat bosses or they will keep regenerating, and never die..Getting powerful weapons is a lot easier than before, as well. Instead of searching for them in hidden places throughout the castle, you can take weak weapons and sacrifice an enemy soul to make it into a stronger weapon. This is the only way to get the best weapons in the game. New Game +, which allows you to start a new game using your old equipment and souls, is once again your reward for getting the best ending in the game. Julius Mode also makes a return, but instead of using just the Belmont descendant, you also get to control Yoko Belnades and the powerful Alucard. Other than these, and a few more minor changes (bosses giving ability souls instead of soul containers, you start with the backdash, etc.), if you've played Aria of Sorrow, or really any of the more recent Castlevanias, you will be at home. Sadly, this game is slightly shorter than Aria (or at least it seems like it), but I still give gameplay 10/10.

Graphics: And I thought Aria of Sorrow looked good. The sequel makes it's predecessor look like a cheap SNES game by comparison. There was serious work placed into the new character designs, new monster designs, backgrounds, weapon animations, death animations, 3d effects, hell, just anything graphical. It's a great example of the two-dimensional capabilities of the DS. The only qualm I have is that they could have made more good looking cinematics like the one you see if you sit at the title screen for a while. Ah, well, it's still very impressive. 10/10.

Sound: The soundtrack is a soothing mixture of new tunes and remixed golden oldies. The familiar Vampire Killer theme makes an appearance, as well as a couple of others from the original game. Sound effects are also as pleasing, with satisfying explosions and crashes for the most part, altough certain sounds, like pistol fire, could have been refined. 9/10.

Controls: For a DS game, it doesn't use the stylus very much at all. You can use it for menus, but for the most part you'll be using it solely for the magic seals. The more traditional controls are still smooth and responsive, although I'll occasionally accidently cast a bullet soul whenever I meant to use a regular attack thanks to the wobbly d-pad on the DS. That's a fairly rare occurance, however, so control gets 9/10.

Multiplayer Capabilities: Dawn of Sorrow introduced a much more fun multiplayer activity for people with 2 DS's and 2 copies of the game on hand. The Enemy Set mode lets you set up enemy encounters in 5 different rooms that your opponent will have to go through, killing all enemies before he can pass. I am not able to fiddle around with that too much, however, as I don't even know anyone who owns another DS, let alone another copy of the game. The Soul Trade activity also returns, but that was a given. I cannot rate this due to lack of experience.

Replayability: First, you have to complete it and get all three endings (the first one probably should be ignored, though, as it's super lame). Then, you have to go through with New Game + to get all the extra goodies on Hard mode, as well as pick up your Chaos Ring for getting 100% of the souls. After that, you need to play through Hard mode on a new game, getting all goodies and 100% souls. Then, you have to go through JULIUS mode. after all is said and done, you should have a good 40+ hours in this game. Still, after you've done everything (which I haven't yet ) I would imagine there is a sense of having nothing left to do, like there was with Aria of Sorrow. 9/10 for having lots of time before you run out of things to do.

Conclusion: If you're looking for a reason to pick up a DS that ISN'T Nintendogs, here it is. This should also please any diehard Castlevania fans looking for a new portable fix now that they've completed Harmony of Dissonance blindfolded (something tells me this has actually been done). This should remove any doubt from people's minds that there will not be good games for the DS. I dub this game a 9/10.

[weasel]

Because every game reviewer eventually has to put up with some crap once in a while, I figured it was about time to make a review of a pretty awful game. I had decent expectations of this one, but you'll see soon enough why I didn't like it.

007: Everything or Nothing
"Congratulations, 007 - you've saved the girl, and destroyed all of my equipment."

Developer: EA GAMES
Platform: PS2 (XBox?)
ESRB: T (Violence, suggestive themes?)

EA Games continues their fine tradition of bastardizing the Bond franchise with 2003's "Everything or Nothing" - their valiant (cough) attempt at capitalizing on the Splinter Cell third-person stealth craze. So naturally, you play James Bond.

The first thing you see (after sitting through the intro logos) is the game's intro movie that can't be skipped the first time. Once that's over...you're playing the game already. That's right - it thrusts you straight into the action without so much as a training mission, an opportunity to change game settings, or even the courtesy of telling you that you are, in fact, playing Everything or Nothing and not some other Bond game. All they give you is "Press R2 to get into cover. Press L1 to target enemy. Press R1 to fire." and they expect you to stumble through the first mission from then on.

After the (admittedly short) mission is complete, they give you a short cutscene of Bond boarding his transport chopper, followed by the game's theme song (a crappy techno-vocal thing, bearing movie-style credits amidst sillouhettes of naked girls holding guns and cheesy computer-animated Russian tanks). You still can't skip it (not the first time through anyway).

Then - perhaps the moment that made me throw the controller down in disgust - it gives you the option of going through the training mission.

I just escaped the first mission with barely any health because I wasn't allowed to play through this before going into action; yet they have the nerve to give it to me after that? Why the hell not before?! And also, why didn't I get to pick my difficulty level the first time through?

EA Games, this decision has already alienated much of your audience. Congratulations.

Once you get into the game though - and pass the second frustrating mission - it gets slightly more fun for every mission you go on after that. That's not to say that this is exactly how the game plays out, though. There are some other absurdly frustrating moments late in the game as well (like the mission "Death of an Agent" in which you have to dive off a cliff to save a girl - I must have died there about fifty times on the easiest difficulty because Bond can't take a single scratch from a tree branch without dying).

You have pretty much everything in the game that makes your typical James Bond flick. You have Bond, some random hot girls (though not quite as hot as real girls), some nasty evil villain, lots o' killing, and of course, gadgets.

EA certainly tried their best to make this as good a Bond film as possible (er, game, rather). They got only the original actors where required (Pierce Brosnan as Bond, Judi Dench as M, and John Cleese as Q), digitizing them into characters that actually look and behave like the people they're supposed to represent.

Though it's a real shame that this is the best part about the game.

Control-wise, the game's control scheme is actually a little illogical on occasion (despite the fact that there is a lock-on system in place, you still have to aim your gun manually to make the shot connect), and often times refuses to respond properly (especially when making quick motions from left to right on the stick). Getting Bond into cover is never an easy task, and even when you're in cover, enemies can still shoot you with impunity by walking around the corner; forcing Bond to struggle with his controller again to get out of cover again so he can shoot this one guard. And by that point, since he's out of cover, several other guards are shooting at him as well. To make matters worse, you can't take cover while crouching (nor can you crouch in cover at all).

The gadgets are a decent attempt, but they're nothing we haven't seen before in other games. You have a cloaking device, grenades disguised as coins (which doesn't make an ounce of difference), a grapple gun, and a remote controlled spider bot for hitting switches and generally blowing crap up.

Oh, before I forget, you do get to drive Bond's cars in this game as well. Though the execution of these scenes is like a poor mix of Spy Hunter and Grand Theft Auto 3 (particularly in the awkward GPS map system and the weaponry, which never feels as powerful as it should). You also get to ride a motorbike, be the gunner in a tank, and fly a chopper. The scenes are pretty neat the first time, but only if you don't screw up and forget to blow out the fence that you're about to drive into.

The game does have multiplayer options in the form of a deathmatch game and a co-op game, though I was unable to test these features since I don't have a second Dual Shock 2 controller (why it needs one is beyond me, as the only thing it really uses is the analog X button for driving; and even that can be substituted for the right analog stick in the game).

The game's graphical effects are of decent quality. The game often times lacks any serious beauty factor, with a minimum of fancy-schmancy effects (outside of explosions and electromagnet stuff). So it's beyond me why the game is constantly slowing down to almost Perfect Dark-esque lows. It's never slow enough to seriously affect gameplay, but it does get distracting.

Finally, there's the audio side of things. Music in this game is pretty forgettable. Even the James Bond theme was completely bastardized with that modern techno-ish remix. To the focus-groups of MGM Interactive and EA Games: I much preferred the old version, thank you, but if you're so intent on making Bond appeal to a new audience like this, you can count me out. I'd rather go back to my Splinter Cell and TimeSplitters games.

Sound effects in the game are decent, though - car motors, explosions, gunfire. It's all very beefy and powerful. The voice acting is quality stuff too, especially John Cleese's role as Q (he even chimes in on occasion in the earlier difficulty levels to give you hints - and thank goodness, he's not as annoying as some other voices-in-your-ear from games like Halo and Serious Sam 2).

But overall, 007:EoN is a failed attempt from EA Games to claim the trophy for Best James Bond Game Ever (a title that is still held by Rare's Goldeneye, almost ten years after its release in 1996). I suppose they're going to keep trying though - and that's what worries me. It's obvious that they have failed time and time again (Agent Under Fire, anybody? How about 007 Racing? Or Rogue Agent?), so it puzzles me as to why they continue to throw their money away when they could easily be pumping their manpower (read: legions of slaves) into the next Sims game.

I'd recommend avoiding this unless you are an absolute die-hard Bond fan.

5.5/10

[CJA]

Double Review. OH DEAR.
------------
Pikmin
"Why does everyone hate this game? ... oh."

Genre: Action/Strategy
Publisher: Nintendo of course!

Introduction

Your name is Olimar. You're cruising through space in your ship, the Dolphin...and all of a sudden, a hurtling asteroid collides with your ship, knocking it off course into a strange planet! As the ship plummets through the planet's atmosphere, it catches fire and begins breaking up. Awakening from a stupor, you gaze at your ship...it's totaled! Analyzing the air of this planet returns that this planet's environment contains a poisonous gas: oxygen. You realize your life support system only runs for 30 days. This is when Olimar's control is returned to you.

For some reason, I had trouble finding the "object" at this point... the camera is so darn close to Olimar, it isn't funny.

You encounter a strange, red object. It suddenly brightens, jumps out of the ground, and stands from three legs, like a tripod. It's shaped like an onion embellished with a flower...so you name it an Onion. Then, this Onion spins its flower which ejects a seed. The seed quickly sprouts into a plant, which strangely sways back and forth... After plucking it you discover it's a living creature, and you name it a Pikmin after your favorite brand of carrots.

Now the controls are introduced quickly... a bit too quickly. Since there's no time limit right now, you've got a lot of time to experiment. After you've adjusted and moved the camera to a breathable zoom level, you can get the Pikmin to carry small pellets back to the Onion. These pellets contain nutrients which are used to create more Pikmin. You have to raise enough Pikmin to push a box(however, I had to look around a while to find enough pellets). Pushing the box opens a new area.

You're filled with great hope...it's the engine for your ship! But, how will you get it back to the Dolphin...

Now you can grow more Pikmin, then have them carry the engine back. This ends the day, and you can now access the Forest of Hope. Your goal is to collect the other 29 missing parts.


Controls

Prior to playing, I thought the controls would be rather complex. But they turned out to be real simple.

Control Stick - Moves the cursor/walk. If you move the cursor out of a certain radius, you'll walk in that direction. It sounds complex but it's really not.
A - Throws the Pikmin at the cursor. They disband from your group.
B - Calls disbanded Pikmin back.
X - Disbands and sorts all Pikmin by color.
Y - Information screen
C - Make your Pikmin move in that direction. They'll form a "line." They don't go very far from your group.
L/R/Z - Adjust camera.


Gameplay

Pikmin come in three colors: red, blue and yellow, and have obvious elemental resistances.

You can only have 100 Pikmin (including sprouts) at an area at once. Sprouts slowly mature from leaf to bud to flower. Flower Pikmin are much faster than the others. Another way of getting Flower Pikmin is to give some Pikmin some nectar found in certain grasses. But enemies can eat or blow away the flowers!

There's a time limit each day. At night, the nocturnal creatures come out so the Pikmin and you fly into the atmosphere at night, where Pikmin are calculated and a journal entry is displayed.

When you get enough parts, another area becomes accessible. If you don't get enough parts in 30 days, you may not be able to fly. A few parts aren't required.

Sometimes there are annoying rock barriers that you must blow up by getting the yellow Pikmin to carry bomb-rocks. It's total disaster if your Pikmin get in a bomb-rock accident.


Overall, it's a very fun game, but if your Pikmin become low in numbers it's easy to just give up. There could have been a better ending, too.
9/10.

-------------
Pikmin 2
"You dirty grub-dog."

Genre: Strategy, a bit of action.
Publisher: Nintendo

As Olimar returns to his home, Planet Hocotate, he has discovered that his employer has run into financial difficulties. Olimar must return to the planed to salvage its "treasures," and repay the debt: 10,000 Pokos.

There's a few kicks added to Pikmin 2. First of all there are over 200 treasures in Pikmin 2. Also, there are two new types of Pikmin. One is immune to Poison (a new element), and one can lift heavy loads, but is slow. You now have a partner, Louie, which you can switch with by pressing Y. Gameplay is similiar, though.

There's also more environmental objects... Mold that suffocates plants, and plants with berries that can be transformed into special sprays(Ultra Spicy Spray, which speeds up and strengthens the Pikmin; and Ultra Bitter Spray, which freezes enemies).

However, Pikmin 2 simply copies and modifies the levels from Pikmin 1...Forest of Hope is now Awakening Wood, and Distant Spring is now Perplexing Pool. They play a lot different now, however.

The thing I loved about this game is the way the ship names treasures. Like, lipstick becomes "Lip Service," and a fried egg becomes "Hideous Victual."

Just when you think the game has ended, your boss, Mr. Hocotate, decides to become rich and go salvage more treasures! But you forgot to bring your partner Louie back. So, Hocotate joins you on your return to the planet, and a new area is opened.


As I've rented it, I've only got to the "first ending." I think I'll look into owning this game...it's great.
10/10!

[Goshi]

Hey look me and Wildweasel are no longer whoring up this thread... for now.

Anyway onto the review of a game I've completed a million times.

Astro Boy: Omega Factor

Platform: GBA
Genere: Beat em' up
Devloper: Treasure and Hitmaker
ERSB: E

Treasure and Hitmaker decided to crew up together to make a game based on Tezuka's creations. Did work? Or is it as bad as most games based off movies or cartoons?

Plot:
The plot is pretty simular to the show itself. Although the main villian who does the typical villian styled plot is different from the show although the main plot is bland, the side plot however is an exception. The side plot goes through in a simular way the show's side plot went (Although with the new anime the side plot in this game becomes the main plot) anyway the plot is good although the main plot is rather cliche compared to the side plot.
8/10

Gameplay:
Astro runs around punching the crap out of robots or fires lasers at them. He can also dash to avoid attacks and go behind enemies. For those who liked River City Ransom (Like me) you mike this game actually. You beat the crap out of robots, how fun is that!? The boss fights are a lot of fun too. Although some bosses have the most lamest attack patterns ever. (A boss who is simply only a lstronger version of a normal enemy, gee how creative) some of the other bosses are mcuh more interesting and a lot of fun to fight. The controls are pretty good although performing the EX Dash is an ass to do (A + B) which is bad for me when it is required OHH DEAR. Otherwise they're simple and helps the task of beating the crap out of robots easier. Next you have a shoot em' up styled areas, for those who don't know what I mean, go play games like R-Type or Gradius and you'll understand. Anyway these parts are pretty difficult but not that bad, there is nothing special about them really, but it does give an extra variation on the gameplay. The gameplay is done pretty well overall, although there is some slowdown but I'll cover that in graphics
9/10

Graphics:
The graphics are done pretty well, although the secenry sometimes look \s repetitive its done well that it doesn't seem like it. Astro's animations are nice and smooth as are the enemies and bosses. However Hitmaker decided it'd be cool of rthey make enemies larger and smaller to add variation. Its a stupid idea of course because it makes the enemies look ugly and pixalated. And is obviously a lame way to add variation to the enemies. Next up te game suffer A LOT of slowdown. This is bad really, because it just makes seem easy objectives so much like a chore. It doesn't happen in the 1st stage but once you reach 2-2, you'll see what I mean. Maybe its because I'm playing the PAL version but chances are the other versions will suffer the same problem too. The graphics are good but the pixalated enemies and the slowdown seriously ruin it.
7/10

Music and Sound:
The music is done really well. Fans of Gunster Heroes and Gunster Super Heroes might recognise some of the tunes. The other songs are done well, although there is a destinct lack of variety within the songs they aren't boring to listen at anyway, and fit the situation in the game quite well. The sound is good too, whilst you may get sick of the robot noises that come from the enemies you'll eventually get used to it, the sound effects are done pretty well. All in all, the music and sound is good, despite the lack of variety within the music.
9/10

Multiplayer
Once again, none of a sort.
-/-

Difficulty: Medium
Easy is seriously easy. You get like 99 EX Attacks. Medium is the same as easy except you only get 10 EX Attacks which is a huge step up from Easy. Then comes hard where you only get 5 EX Attacks, and you take more damage. Enemy and levelwise though they're mostly the same although some of the enemies get new attack patterns in the higher difficulties. Hence why medium is relavent because the game isn't that much of a pushover, even in easy mode.

Overall:
9/10

Goshi says: "If you like River City Ransom or other games in which you mostly beat up stuff, then this game is for you."

[weasel]

Deus Ex 2: Invisible War
"Sorry mate, just talkin' chuff, no offense."
For those of you who haven't played the first game: be warned of spoilers.

Genre: First Person Shooter/pseudo-RPG
Developer: Ion Storm
Publisher: EIDOS
Platform: PC, XBox (PC version reviewed)
ESRB: M (Blood, Violence)

2003's sequel to the original Deus Ex had a lot of fans hyped up - but they were subsequently disappointed. A lot of what made the original Deus Ex so fun has been axed, but what remains is still an enjoyable play despite its shortcomings.

Those of you that played the original Deus Ex may be wondering which of the three endings are being followed in the sequel. The answer: all of them. Bob Page is dead. The world shifted into a Collapse, and JC Denton (supposedly) merged with the Helios AI construct. That is, if you believe all the books and post-incidental newspaper articles scattered about.

After selecting an appearance for your character (two genders and three skintones for each), a difficulty level, and a color for your HUD graphics (hue only; can't change saturation or lightness), you're shown the intro movie which details a terrorist attack on Chicago. Once that's over, you find yourself in Seattle, at the Tarsus Academy.

Things aren't what you think they are. Rather, they're what they want you to think they are. Pay no mind to the fact that the entire building is shaking, and explosions and gunfire can be heard from a distance. Ignore the man dying in the corridor; the situation is under control. It's just another day at the Academy. Who cares about explosions and dead people and earthquakes?

Of course, it's entirely obvious that your "instructor" is hiding things from you (once the alarm starts going off and a bunch of soldiers start shooting crap). And then your friend cuts the power, the ceiling disappears, and...whoa, I probably shouldn't go any further than that.

The plot is immediately pulling you in from the start, unlike the slower start of Deus Ex 1. It adds the intensity factor.

But how does one make their way through the story? The game's interface is kinda clunky and difficult to manipulate, and just reeks of consolized simplicity. Your inventory is limited to 12 spaces - six in your pack, and six on your toolbelt. Most objects that can be stacked will stack up to 20 before a new stack is created. The size of the weapon doesn't matter in terms of how it fits in your inventory - so you could fill up your inventory with 12 Mag Rails if you could find that many.

Weapon modifications were also changed - you can only install two mods on a weapon, and with a few exceptions, any mod can be applied to any weapon. Glass destablizers (which make glass melt instead of shatter, avoiding setting off alarms), silencers, fire rate, etc. It's very customizable, giving you quite a bit of choice as to how you go about things.

The one simplification that really gets me though - all your weapons use the same ammo. There is no reloading, there are no alternative ammo types, and weapons can fire indefinitely until the ammo runs out. It removes quite a lot of the strategy and generally is a severe throwback to Wolfenstein. The major problem with this system is that when you run out of ammo for one weapon, you either have to engage in melee combat (which is kinda risky unless you get an energy blade from somewhere), use grenades (there's like 7 types of grenades you can throw), or run and hide.

The way the game makes up for it is awesome though. See, DX2 allows you to do things however the heck you want. They only give you the basic objectives - how you do them is up to you. You can sneak through, taking to the vents and hiding in the shadows; you can bust in and blow crap up, using your grenades to blast out laser grids and proceeding to shotgun everybody; you can hack your way in with a Neural Interface and kill things with the gun turrets, then proceed to take out the keypads; or you can make a clever mixture of them.

Since DX2 actually ditched the statistics and skill points systems from its predecessor, there's another point against replayability - because you can feel free to do absolutely anything without restriction. Want to hack a keypad? Just break out the multitool and you're set. Want to snipe that guy across the yard? No problem, just zoom and shoot. No need to worry about your hands trembling or your gun not doing enough damage - you're already the Master at everything you do. It's actually kinda frustrating.

Lastly, we have the Biomods. No longer do you need to find a medical bot to install them - you can just install them on the spot. Pick which mod you want to install, then go for it. You can use any biomod-can to install any mod, even go so far as to remove a biomod in favor of a different one (melee strength versus microfibral muscle? feel free to switch anytime). The sole exception: In each category, there is one Biomod that requires a black market biomod-can to install. The black market cans can't install conventional mods, and conventional cans can't do black market mods.

Graphically, this game could have been a little nicer-looking - while it has some nice lighting effects and pixel shaders applied, the character models sometimes look unnatural. And you'll need a very powerful system to run it - roughly Doom 3 level. My system (3.0 Ghz with Geforce FX 5200 and 512 MB RAM) had serious performance problems on occasion, at absolute lowest detail and screen res, no bloom effects. I wish the engine were more scalable - can't I eschew the fancy per-pixel lighting in favor of a more traditional lightmap system, and save my system the headache?

The audio in this game is pretty nice as well, though you have to turn the speakers up to experience it. The game is intentionally quiet. I suppose it's to make the gunfire louder in comparison to speech, but in the interests of playability (not to mention my freaking ears) this is a questionable decision on Ion Storm's part. Imagine trying to listen to a conversation from a distance, and suddenly a Templar soldier behind you lets loose with a shotgun. OW MY EARS.

Overall though - this is a good game to purchase if you just want some freeform action, though don't go in expecting a real successor to DX1. And besides - it's like $20 now (that's how much I bought it for).

7.5/10

[weasel]

Fable: The Lost Chapters

Genre: Action RPG
Platform: PC
Developer: Lionhead
Publisher: Microsoft
ESRB: M

A PC port of a console game. If you've been involved in PC gaming for at least the last seven years, you can be sure that this phrase can only describe the absolute cream of the crap. Such bug-filled, unstable, and just plain awful ports of games like Final Fantasy VII, Metal Gear Solid 2, Wetrix, and Die Hard Trilogy.

Fable, having been ported to the PC with an added subtitle and some new content, does manage to outdo these lesser offerings - but not by much.

The game casts you as the nameless, silent protagonist. You start off as a kid (only about 12 years old), performing Good Deeds around town and earning gold with which to buy your older sister a birthday present. Then some bandits torch your town, and presumably kill your whole family.

Some guy named Maze saves you and takes you to the Guild of Heroes, where you learn the trades of combat - melee, archery, and Will - and learn about the game in general.

Once you've graduated from the Guild, the freedom kicks in. You can take quests, look around the world for secret stuff, buy houses and junk, or attempt to woo the various women around the world (even if they're married, nobody really cares how in love they are with you).

Taking quests isn't quite like usual. In addition to taking a quest, you can also take several Boasts to go with it, in which you wager a certain amount of your gold to complete a quest while meeting certain conditions (complete the quest naked, without weapons or attack spells, kill everybody, spare everybody, don't let a single ally die, don't get hurt, etc). Meet these conditions, and you'll earn even more gold, and a bonus to your Renown (which enables you to learn more skills and expressions to use).

An RPG ain't an RPG unless there's some actual gameplay to it, and this one offers up a combat system with some decent fun to be had. Your melee combat is handled Zelda style (in which you lock on to an enemy and hammer the attack button until the enemy is dead, block attacks on occasion, and use special attacks whenever you can to break through enemy blocks). You can also use a bow (with infinite ammo) to attack from a distance, or even lop the heads off your foes with a well-placed shot. Finally, there's the Will specials, which are just a fancy name for magic attacks. Fireballs, lightning, homing arrows, battle charges, slowing time...you have just about everything here.

As you fight enemies, depending on how you kill them (with your melee weapon, your bow, or your Will) you gain experience in those traits - Strength, Skill, and Will. Enemies also drop green Experience Orbs which give you general experience. Returning to the Heroes' Guild allows you to spend these experience points on the different traits. Strength will give you increased attack, defense, and hitpoints. Skill allows you to be faster, more accurate, and more stealthy (which comes in handy to steal stuff from the shopkeepers and sell it back to them at inflated prices). Finally, the Will experience will let you learn new spells and gain more maximum energy to cast them with.

While your character remains nameless throughout the game, there is a Title Vendor that you can talk to, who (for a small fee) will change what characters refer to you as. Once you graduate from the guild, people refer to you as Chicken Chaser. Other titles you can pick up range from the demeaning (Arseface) to neutral types (Sabre) to those of high status and profile (Maleficus and Avatar). You can do other things to customize your character as well, ranging from different clothes, to new haircuts and facial hair (including such oddly-named styles as the Power Moustache), to tattoos (which can be customized with your favorite paint program).

The game's story doesn't seem like anything terribly interesting, unfortunately. I suppose it only feels that way because they spent more time making all that freedom than giving you a good plot to go through. Overall it seems hackneyed and cliche'd, and doesn't really set itself apart from other games.

Graphically, this game looks marvelous. Supporting screen resolutions from 640x480 up to as far as your video hardware can handle, the game's environments are absolutely stunning, and the graphical effects are also quite nice (providing that you have the hardware to handle turning them up). However, this all comes at a cost, and weaker systems need not apply (my 3.0 GHz, 512 MB RAM, Geforce FX 5200 has to run at 640x480 with all details turned down - and even then, it doesn't break 25 FPS). Amazingly though, it does still look good with the details down.

The game's soundtrack is also quite good. Orchestrated music, superb voice acting (done entirely by British people, it seems) and some nice sword-chopping noises. The lines spoken by the average townspeople do tend to get repetitive though (especially when you have an insulting title like Arseface). Hot tip: Don't try and talk to anybody that's glowing blue - they never have anything good to say. Instead, attempt to entertain them with your Russian Squat Dance (or else rob them blind by breaking into their house and looting their bookshelves).

Finally, there's the issues that came from porting the game to Windows. I constantly had issues with the video, where subtitles and text would occasionally disappear (on several different revisions of my video drivers). There were also some nasty crashes, resulting mainly from the game attempting to play videos. I triple-checked my system configuration, and the crashes and glitches still came about. My advice to whoever buys this game: SAVE OFTEN. VERY OFTEN.

Fable isn't going to be the next Morrowind, or Zelda. It makes a valiant attempt, but doesn't quite measure up, thanks to its bugs, lack of depth in the combat system, and lackluster plot. But it's good fun for a while.

7/10

[weasel]

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
"As long as we have opposable thumbs, we will fight you!"

Genre: Action/Adventure/Racing/RPG/Flight Simulator/Dating Simulator/Strategy
Developer/Publisher: Rockstar Games
ESRB: M (last time I checked...)
WSRS (Weasel's Software Rating System): It stays an M, personally. Even taking into account all the blood, gore, F-words, and sexual themes, the game is actually no worse than Sin City or Reservoir Dogs (which are both R-rated - which is 17 or older, just like M). Just be warned - the game much deserves this M rating!
Platform: PS2, XBox, PC (PC version reviewed)

Grand Theft Auto. I've played every single one of 'em, and they get better every time - to a point. While it's nice that there's a lot of freedom in the game, it's not perfect in everything it tries to do.

The first thing I noted when I played the game - it is incredibly vulgar. The game swears like a drunken sailor. This alone almost made me quit playing it because I didn't want to put up with so much swearing.

After shuffling through my desk drawer trying to find a pair of headphones, I continued.

It takes a while for the Freedom to kick in - because rather than overwhelm you with all the options at first, the game insists on feeding it to you slowly. You don't get to leave town for a while (because the cops will shoot on sight), and you can't go on dates until after about twenty missions.

You're certainly free to do everything else though. Grab a taxi and pick up some fares. Grab a fire truck and put out some fires. Grab a cop car and try and do a better job than the cops do.

You can still buy properties in this game, but it's not for a very long time (about halfway through San Fierro) that they become profitable. It's like you're buying a new save point/closet to change clothes in.

The freedom to customize is here as well. You can change plenty of things about your character. Hair, clothing, build, skills, etc.

Really though, this game thrives on freedom. While you're free to take on missions (this goes towards unlocking more areas and features), it's always possible for you to go do other crap. Like scaling buildings. Target-practicing on gas tanks. Or doing some freestyle stuntage.

There's just too darn much that you can do in this game to be able to cover it in a simple review - I'm bound to forget something if I tried.

The game's graphics are sufficiently detailed, but it takes a pretty hefty system to really get the most of them (with real-time shadows, weather effects, environment mapping, etc). Thankfully though, the game also scales down well to a point - you can turn down the details, the draw distance, screen resolution, and a couple other things. But after doing that, it doesn't look much better than Vice City did. And I wish I could turn off the screen shader effects (like the "high speed" motion blur) because they're kinda distracting.

Aurally, the game would sound good - except for a couple of major flaws. First is the gunshots - they sound like fun-snaps. A little echo might be nice! Maybe a down-pitch! Something that makes this shotgun I'm holding have a little boom to it!

The second flaw - the fact that they're putting their sound engine to waste on a game full of such intense swearing that it puts Reservoir Dogs to shame. F-words, F-words everywhere. If I wanted something with this much swearing in it, I'd go to a bar and watch the sailors get drunk.

You can supply your own music to play on the in-game car radios, thank goodness. Most of their music selections are rather lackluster. Though they do have channels for most tastes (including a rather humorous talk radio station, though it pales in comparison to Chatterbox from GTA3 or VCPR in Vice City) it's not a particularly good selection on any of them. I prefer to add my own tracks - because no GTA game is ever going to play some good Pink Floyd.

The game's controls is where it falls on its face. It's obvious that this used to be a console game. It took me a good hour to find a key configuration that really worked for me. And even then, I was putting up with console-style mechanics like "hold a button to enable aiming mode" or buttons that did so many different things that it was difficult to switch "gears" (for example, getting out of a car and proceeding into melee combat with a gangster). In an average play session, I was moving my right hand back and forth between the mouse and keyboard just to adapt to the different vehicles (because the mouse just doesn't cut it for motorcycles and planes). While it's also possible to switch the game to the original gamepad control scheme (providing that you actually have a gamepad) it does still take a while to find a control scheme that works. The game's key binding interface isn't much help either. And if you want to play with the gamepad, be warned that precision aiming is a bit more difficult.

It's a good game, don't get me wrong - but it takes plenty of training, and patience, and a good computer, and a high tolerance for poor controls.

8/10

[duvel]

The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
System: Gamecube (and Game Boy Advance if you want to use those features but I don't recommend them)
ESRB Rating: E (Violence)

Oh joy. The first gamecube Zelda game that came out. It was quite a shocker at the time, too.

Story: I must point out that while the entire fucking world is completely different they ripped the story pretty much from most of the other games. Yadda yadda yadda SAVE SOMEONE yadda yadda yadda MASTER SWORD yadda yadda yadda OH NOZ SAGES AND TRIFORCE yadda yadda yadda YAY GANON BATTLE AND WE WINZ!!!!!!! I would have thought that after changing the entirety of Hyrule into a giant sea they would have come up with a bit more creativity in the basic storyline.

The story goes like this: you are a young boy (who I named Link) living on an island in a giant sea in a world where continents are nonexistant and to get around anywhere you have to sail a boat or fly. Your younger sister gets kidnapped by a bird on your birthday, when you're supposed to just run around in some green tunic the entire time and eat amazing soup; so instead of relaxing you rush out to save her, despite the fact that it's a fucking huge bird and you're a twelve year old boy with an old shield and a tiny sword. Hitching a ride from pirates you head to the bird's nesting grounds, an evil fortress type area, only to discover that YOU CAN'T KILL THE BIRD YET. Quite helplessly you are flung from the fortress and discovered by a talking boat, and brought to the only town in the entire game to buy a sail.

And thus begins one of the most irritating sequel plots I've ever seen. Can't they pull a Link's Awakening and NOT make the final boss Gannondorf? Hell, they had to dance around a bunch of stuff to just make it fit somewhere in the Zelda universe. 5/10 Nintendo. Stop trying to fool us with plot rehashes when you SAY there's new stuff to it.

Gameplay: Well, back to the good stuff. If you've played either of the 64 Zeldas, and liked them, then you won't be disappointed. There's still dungeon crawling (although sadly there are only 5-6 (depends on how you look at it) proper dungeons, and a bunch of little mini puzzles scattered around the islands of the game), and plenty of side quest action, and heart piece gathering, and rupee hoarding, and the like. You also have a very large game world, similar to the 64 Zeldas, which can take a while to travel (in fact a lot longer, as your mode of travel does not ever truly gain more speed).

The sailing portion of the game is something you MUST get used to, as you will do it a lot. And I do mean a lot. Even AFTER you get a way to travel instantly across distances, you can only travel to certain points this way, and must STILL go long distances using a tiny red boat that happens to have a beard and tell you what you should be doing at the moment. At least you don't ever have to worry about what direction the wind is blowing, since that can be changed at will.

The title of the game comes from the magical Wind Waker baton you conduct songs for invisible choirs with. Using it is pretty much like using the ocarinas in the 64 Zeldas, such as songs not doing anything until you learn them from somewhere in-game, and that it's pretty much a requirement to use them. The first song you learn is probably the only one you'll be consistantly using, as it can change wind direction, as well as function as the multipurpose song of the game similar to the way the Song of Time did in Ocarina of Time. The other songs you most likely will only use a couple of times, sometimes only for a single dungeon.

Speaking of dungeons, the dungeon crafters seem to have gone a little slack. It may be just accomadating the art style of the game, but I never could find anywhere where I was truly stuck at. Options were always readily apparant, and puzzles were usually never more complex than knowing what items to use where.

Combat has certainly gotten a makeover, however. It's quite a bit more fun with lots of multiple enemy encounters, and the new counterattack system making for a much more animated battle. You get to fight hoardes and hoardes of monsters, more than I've ever seen thrown at you in the other two games. It's clear where the focus of gameplay is.

Boss combat is still the same beat the dungeon, kill the boss by figuring out where to hit him, and so on. The odd part I see is that many of the bosses are very similar to ones from Ocarina of Time (the Tower of the Gods boss is an almost carbon copy of Bongo Bongo from the Shadow Temple in Ocarina, and the Forbidden Forest boss is very similar to the tentacle fiend you fought in Jabu's Stomach in the same game). This concerns me, as it means Nintendo is starting to run dry in the ideas department. Maybe they should start a new series to help keep it fresh?

Side quests are available in the bundles. Heart pieces and treasure charts are hidden in every little nook of all 49 islands, and special optional items are even around. The Nintendo gallery should appeal to complete freaks, for sure.

Overall, it's a very similar game to Ocarina as far as playing it goes. It still retains a general polished feel, but sometimes I wonder if the designers tried to snake in some unoriginality in an effort to lighten the workload. 7/10

Graphics: Oh my oh my oh my! The wonderful cartoony art style is probably the single best aspect of this game. It was unique at the time, and still is for keeping the character faces very well animated and interesting to look at. You can actually tell how a person feels at the moment by LOOKING AT THEIR FACE. Why other games can't accomplish this I don't know, but for those that do it we praise you. The pallette is very bright and vibrant, sure to keep you in a cheery mood even in those dark dank corridors of the dungeons. The lighting is a superb compliment to the cell shading of the rest of the game. Menus and such are beautiful, models are detailed, and the design of characters and locations is very unique, and it even gives a sort of light hearted feel to the architecture. 10/10, nice job.

Sound: Here's the second greatest piece of the game. You have your standard link yells, your sword bonks and slashes, and your explosions, which all sound like they should: exaggerated and cartoony. The soundtrack is actually a contrast to the rest of the game's style, incorporating lots of Irish fiddle and flute stuff in their originals and remixes, making for a very beautiful set of music that almost seems out of place with the art style (although the actual setting of the game links well with it). 9/10.

Replayability: You have heart pieces (30 something) side quests (lots of them) treasure charts (49) and a fuckload of pictures of characters to take, not to mention an entire second version of the game that you may or may not want to play which features your main character in his blue crawfish shirt instead of the green Kokiri tunic that has the accompanying dialogue changed. Should keep you busy for a while, and the main game itself is nice and long. 8/10 for not providing enough new content in the second quest.

Overall I feel there were better Zeldas, especially in the storyline department when the whole "OMG MASTERSWORD" thing was actually kind of NEW, but this one wins my heart anyway for having such a great soundtrack and graphical style. 8/10

This post has been edited by ler: 20 January 2006 - 05:58 AM