Sunday, April 28, 2013

Battlefield 2: Modern Combat, first impressions

Battlefield 2: Modern combat was made for the PS2 and Xbox, I got ahold of the Xbox version myself

It's okay, I really like the hotswapping technique that lets you swap between soldiers and places on the battlefield, but there's no run feature, the ADS system is tedious to enter and exit (And sometime not there for certain guns), the weapon switching is overly complicated, and the health system makes no sense. Aside from those little issues I actually think that the game could be good if the hacking mission made any modicum of sense. In that very same mission you have access to vehicles, and although they control pretty well, they don't let you defend it in any way if you're driving it, how hard would hood-mounted machine-guns have been to implement? Also, if you're gonna have an FPS of any kind you try to make to controls as EASY to use as possible. The "Crouch" button isn't the "Stand Up" button, and even though it would stand to reason that the "Stand Up" button would be the "Run" button to pretty much anyone who's played a shooter before. Stuff like this isn't an issue in Perfect Dark, because the weapons system lets you change quickly and your movement is manageable, although it's been so long since I played it that I don't know if you could run. Another thing I need to address is the loading times, they happen whenever you start a mission, so on top of being mildly confusing to someone who isn't already intimately familiar with the Battlefield series it's poorly optimized, although I might need to read the Xbox manual to see how to install data on the drive. Referring back to the second mission, you're supposed to be protecting this hacker while he installs viruses in the mainframe of the enemy or whatever. Personally I don't care about the story, it's just sort of there. Funny thing is that instead of protecting the hacker, it'll arbitrarily say "Upload compromised" at times, and stop.... I've got no clue how it's supposed to work, and until I figure it out I won't get back to the game. The reason I wanted to get into the Battlefield series was because I thought it looked cool, but if this game is any indication of the rest of the games.... Well suffice to say I'm not too impressed so far, I might not even get back to it, although I WILL publish what I shot of it.

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Final Fantasy X, first impressions

This wasn't planned to be close to news about Final Fantasy X-X2 HD but it sure was convenient that it happened that way.....
I really like this, have I said that enough? Final Fantasy X is a pretty good game, the gameplay is good, the story is intriguing, and the controls are perfectly adequate. I can't really say much about it, other than that it's a good game. The Voice-acting isn't terrible, it typically fits, and I can overlook it if I want to.
The only thing I have to complain about is the cut-scenes, some of them are FMV, some aren't. I never thought I'd actually say this, but this game was in bad need of an HD remastering since the CGI cutscenes are fairly bad. I might actually get ahold of the HD version just so that I don't have to watch the CGI cutscenes. I wouldn't complain if they'd made all the cutscenes CGI, it might have wound up on two DVDs, but that's still better than having all those low-res textures that show stark contrast to the photo-realism of the FMVs, especially when in one scene it keeps swapping from FMV to CGI.
All in all, I still like the game, but was in bad need of HD texturing. Funny thing, Metal gear Solid 2 was also released early in the PS2's lifetime and it didn't have these kind of cutscene issues.
By the way, I might update on Wednesdays if I feel like it.

Sunday, April 21, 2013

Sonic Colors

Since I'm essentially finished shooting and uploading my Sonic Colors LP I might as well review it, not like there's gonna be any more gameplay that happens after the credits right?

Sonic Colors is a 2D platforming Wii game by SEGA, and a good one too. First positive mark is that it lets you choose between WiiMote, WiiMote+Nunchuk, Classic Controller, and GameCube controller schemes. I played all the way through with the GC controller for numerous reasons. I can't criticize the plot, it's simple: Eggman has made an outer-space amusement-park, is attempting to take over the world as usual etc, etc. The level-design is pretty good, there's enough margin for error that you can succeed or fail depending on what you've done up until that point. What am I saying? It's a Sonic game, you know how it plays if you've played others in the series and even if you haven't it's pretty self-explanatory, although hard to describe in text.
One thing I need to call foul on is the live system, it's completely unneeded, and causes you to restart levels (and bosses) from the beginning if you screw up too many times. That might sound like a complaint about the difficulty if I didn't follow up with the fact that the star-posts are far enough apart that it can be fixed with starting the clock from where it was when you died, sort of like how Sonic and The Black Knight did. I know a lot of people didn't like that game (Myself not included) but that doesn't mean that you can't learn from it.
Another thing is the "online", if you're not going to include and kind of versus multiplayer then don't have any online rankings, Mkay? I don't want to not be able to move my save to an SD card and back them up on my PC for the simple reason that SEGA didn't want to have competitive multiplayer in the game, and that's more a gripe with Nintendo than with SEGA, but SEGA shouldn't include pointless features like that in the game. An unfortunate thing is that lack of actual multiplayer seems to be a standard, Black Knight didn't have it, AFAIK Unleashed didn't, and although Generations: Blue Adventure had something resembling multiplayer, it was barely a step up from rankings. Another thing I need to address is that without the lives system the game would be much shorter on the first playthrough, I'm pretty sure the constant setbacks added an hour or so to my play time. Fortunately they implemented autosave, so if you get fed up and decide to take a break you don't have to deal with save-points. The level-selection is pretty good, it's a step up from the Unleashed method, it's better than the Black Knight one (Although it's just a re-tooled version of that one). One gripe I have is that sometimes you have to time your usage of wisps perfectly. Now, since I skipped over describing the gameplay I need to specifically cover the wisp system. Most wisps you collect will fill the boost meter, which allows you to move faster and insta-kill enemies if you run into them (A good idea, since any other implementation of it would have been fairly broken), but others manipulate the world around you, allow you to break things you wouldn't normally be able to, drill through water (Doesn't make sense, but it works) or other things to be able to travel faster, get out of the water before your air runs out, or take shortcuts or find secrets, fly up into the air and collect bonuses, move along walls and break certain blocks, or move along a line of rings to get somewhere. The last wisp I had issues with in one stage, since it required perfect timing to be able to move along the rings and then recharge your wisps, and keep going. Now, even with lives-system padding and annoying wisp-mechanics, the game is still good. Cash-Cash did a good job on the music and although the boss-fights are repeated, (They should have had six unique bosses instead of setting the circumstances up differently and ramping up the difficulty, but in the end it's still entertaining) it's still a good game. The graphics are beautifully done and it never ceases to be fun. Now, to address the big issue, voice-acting.
I grew up watching Sonic X, to me there can be no other, no better Sonic The Hedgehog than Jason Griffith, so for numerous reasons I wasn't happy with Roger Craig Smith being the new voice of The Blue Blur. Were my opinions obscured by nostalgia like they were with my opinions of The Amazing Spider-Man before it came out? In a word: No. Long answer: No, they were completely right, Roger Craig Smith couldn't voice-act Sonic in any decent manner if he had a village of Spanish peasants after him and he'd run out of pistol-ammo and green herbs, so Capcom made the right choice for the new voice of Chris Redfield if they were going for a more "Root" approach to Resident Evil, as long as those roots are buried in Resident Evil for the PSX.
Okay, I'm being too harsh, RE4 didn't have too much overacting, and they pretty much managed to up the quality of voice-acting with every subsequent sequel to Resident Evil 1. Back on the subject of other voice-actors, the only holdover from the 4Kids cast was Mike Pollock, the voice of Doctor Robotnik. The new Tails voicer is the best there's been, although they should have just dumped the Tails voicer from 4Kids and kept everyone else since there really wasn't any reason for recasting anyone BUT Tails.
All in all, I liked the game, but it could have been a whole lot longer, and could have not had Roger Craig Smith in it.
I'm gonna give it a 9.5* rating, it's good all around and has decent replay value, as well as the arcade where you can play actual multiplayer, grated only LOCAL multiplayer, but still.
Image credit Wikipedia.
By the way, Sunday's are the day I shall be sticking to for postings from now until whenever I need to reschedule it.

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Post scheduling update

Well, I've found that updating once a day is not feasible for me since to meet the midnight deadline every day I've not been getting enough sleep. I think I'll try to update at least once a week, maybe more if there's breaking news to be had. I apologize to those of you who enjoyed new content every day, but I'm starting to run out of DS games I'm interested in reviewing.

Sunday, April 14, 2013

Resident Evil Revelations demo

This is the demo that made me change my mind about the Resident Evil series as a whole, it made me go back and play RE2, RE3, and Survivor, and that led to me playing RE4 for my channel and start looking into getting more Resident Evil games. The camera position, the control, the gameplay, everything about it blew me away. Unlike Resident Evil PSX (And all subsequent ports) the voice-acting seems fairly professionally done and almost every bit of the controller is used for something. Unfortunately I haven't gotten ahold of a Circle-pad pro yet so I don't know how it's used. If you've played Resident Evil 4 and liked it you'll probably like this. One thing I need to cite is the atmosphere, it's absolutely perfect. Of course I first played it in bed, in the dark, sometime around midnight so that helped enhance the atmosphere. Most of the "Scares" actually startled me, compared to the ones in RE1 which just barely held my interest for a few minutes before going back to boring corridors and dull graphics. This demo shows enough about the game to make me want to buy it. Unfortunately my local GameStop never has it when I'm there so I'm probably going to have to order it.

Saturday, April 13, 2013

Update

Sorry about the lack of a post yesterday, I was swamped with stuff to do. Today I'm gonna try to finish Resident Evil 4 ad hopefully get two more posts out to make up for the lack of one yesterday. On top of that, April 23rd is my birthday, so if you feel like sending me a present mail it to: 1801 Dolphin DR, Gautier Mississippi, 39553 USA. My list of stuff I've been meaning to pick up but haven't been able to find (Because a "wish list" is a dumb phrase) is as follows:
Resident Evil 0, GameCube or Wii
Resident Evil, GameCube or Wii
Resident Evil 2, GameCube
Resident Evil 3, GameCube or PSX
Resident Evil 5, Xbox 360
Resident Evil 6, Xbox 360
Resident Evil: Revelations for 3DS
Fire Emblem Awakening, 3DS
a PSP 2000 or 3000
a model 0 Dreamcast
Sonic Adventure 2, Dreamcast or GameCube
Pandora's Tower, Wii
That's it. I won't feel especially hurt if I don't get anything on the list in the mail, I just figured I'd throw this out there.

Thursday, April 11, 2013

Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars DS version, first impressions

GTA Chinatown Wars is the first game in the GTA series I've played, let's delve into it
You play as the son of a dead drug-lord making his way into the New York parody that about four other GTA games have been set in and working his way up from the bottom of the underworld to the top. From what I understand that's what the rest of the GTA games are about, and here we come to the first glaring issue with the "Open world"
You can't just do whatever, there's a specific line of missions you have to take on to proceed, and what if you don't WANT to run around town doing your uncles bidding? Then you can run around the city jacking cars until you run out of health, and then go do your uncles bidding. There's something wrong with the "Busted" mechanics as well, quite similar to the ones in Need for Speed: Undercover, because for every time I was able to get away from a cop by bailing out of the car and jacking his cruiser there were three more times where I got busted by him because nobody in Liberty City has the common-sense to LOCK THEIR DOORS. Also, I have a feeling that the cops only appear during missions when you don't want them around, and when you're running around the city committing crimes left and right, jacking every car that comes along hoping to get a wanted-level so you can run around exploring the city and hoping that they have police-boats that'll chase you if you go into the water while they're on your tail they're nowhere to be seen! One time I was on the drugs mission for the uncle (About the third mission in the game, and if I remember correctly, I might have just been messing around) when I swapped out the slow-moving cargo truck for a speedy sports-car in front of about twenty cops and wound up losing them by taking a few detours around buildings. Unfortunately I wasn't looking where I was going and flew off a dock into the water. After smashing the rear-windshield out I noticed the first boat I had access to a ways to my left and jacked it. After finding out that it was lodged between some barges and the sea-wall I exited it to fine myself trapped in the corner between the boat and three walls. I got back into the boat to see if I could dislodge it to no avail and exited the boat, hoping to squeeze through the tiny gap to the far right, but to no avail. So I started swimming back to the boat for one more try before resetting my DS and by pure accident I swam through the sea-wall and began swimming UNDERNEATH THE CITY! This went on for a long time, swimming around trying to find similar holes that would lead to freedom, but despite swimming all the way to the bridge connecting the main part of Liberty City to wherever I had wound up and found a wall there. Fortunately I stumbled upon a boat-ramp that wasn't blocked off and I jacked the speedboat that was right next to it to run around the ocean a little while before getting bored and shutting it off.
Before I wrap this up I need to address the fact that it is INSANELY hard to keep pace with the other cars since the DS has digital buttons, and I have a feeling this is the case for all the GTA games made prior to the standardization of analog triggers. If you're trying not to draw attention to yourself it's hard to keep on one side of the road and sometimes it's hard to steer, that gained me a wanted level on numerous occasions when I was trying to avoid being caught.
All in all GTA:Chinatown Wars has only dampened my enthusiasm for Metal Gear Solid 5 and along with Spider-Man 3 hasn't sold me on open-world games. It's both buggy and a little bit broken, and I got pretty bored in under four hours of gameplay. It might get better later on but I probably won't finish it to find out.
Image credit Wikipedia

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

The Amazing Spider-Man: A retrospective

Time for a retrospective on one of my articles, the movie review of The Amazing Spider-Man:
I recently made a few changes to the article to make meanings clearer and capitalization issues have been corrected, since it was a midnight showing and I was trying to get my point across as fast as possible I didn't fix a few issues with it, nor did I cover as much of the plot as I had wanted. The cinematography issues I stated were exclusive to the showing I went to, and didn't carry over to the DVD version, which presented it in a crisper, albeit several yards smaller form. The movie was paced well and the characters were all believable, they never acted in a way that didn't fit who they were, and nothing was left untouched.
The leadup to the climactic scene was heartwarming and the climax itself was both expected, and gut-wrenching (If you've read the comics), considering the characters. With the "Superior Spider-Man" stupidity coming out of Marvel and the Rami trilogy ending with a resounding "meh" this is the definitive Spider-Man saga. Sony, don't let it get screwed up again.

Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Batman: Arkham Origins announcement


Just in from GameStop's Google+ page, Batman: Arkham Origins has been announced, scheduled for October 25th, 2013 and will be released for the Wii U, PS3, Xbox 360, PSVita, and 3DS. Here's hoping the portable versions are as good as the console ones and hoping this game is good PERIOD. Since it's got "Origins" on it I presume it's a prequel to the first two Arkham games, which I haven't played but have heard are good. No other information at this time since the only thing shown is the logo above on the various boxes, although a quote from the Wikipedia page reads:

The story takes place several years before Batman: Arkham Asylum and revolves around eight of the world's deadliest assassins that have gathered in Gotham City on Christmas Eve for one purpose: to kill Batman.
Sounds like a good game, let's hope this works out.

Monday, April 8, 2013

Need for Speed: Undercover, PS3: First Impressions

Another PS3 game review, thanks to my local library for having a PS3 and games.
The game is pretty good, but I had to play it in POV mode to keep from over-steering. You play as an undercover cop (Which is where the name comes from) trying to infiltrate a criminal organisation. There's not much to say about it, it's a driving game and it's pretty good (For something by EA), but the police mechanics are pretty badly done, I was in the middle of a mission to do a certain dollar amount of damage, and got a whole bunch of cops on my tail. As I was in the middle of destroying the cars I lost control for long enough for them to surround me. "No problem" I thought, and backed up to get some room to gain speed, and smashed the R2 trigger with all my might, but just as I was about to ram through the barrier I got caught and the arrest sequence ensued. That by itself isn't the main complaint, the main complaint is that I couldn't resume the mission when the game resumed. Although the game is pretty good, there's a few missions that require a good deal of memory to complete them, which requires that you to play them over several times, which gets starts to feel a bit grinding. Not that I'm saying the game is too hard, it's just a little bit annoying at times.
All in all I like it, it's pretty good. Best racing game I've played all year (Only reason I say that is because F-Zero X's been collecting dust), impressive graphics, the FMVs might as well be actual people (And come to think of it might be) for all the realism and detail. The cars show realistic damage effects and the lack of pedestrians is a step up from Grand Theft Auto since you don't have to worry about avoiding them if you stray off the road (Which will happen all the time). One problem I have is that the PS3's trigger buttons make it hard to keep my index finger on them, so if you're gonna get the PS3 version I hope you have an aftermarket controller with better triggers or else just get the Xbox 360, Wii, or PS2 versions (Although I find analog triggers a must for driving games). Cya tomorrow!

Sunday, April 7, 2013

General update

I've started back shooting on my Resident Evil 4 LP, as well as uploading it, let me know if you find out what the problem with the footage is since I couldn't figure out where that extra thirty-some minutes of footage is. I've also begun playing Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars for the DS, and unfortunately I don't have time type up a first impressions review just yet. I also played Need For Speed: Undercover for the PS3 recently so expect that sometime soon. Adios!

Saturday, April 6, 2013

The World Ends With You: Final Thoughts

Well done Square-Enix, another beautiful masterpiece. The World Ends With You is the best game I've beaten for modern handhelds, the story it tells is perfect and the game never gets boring. The boss-fights are intense, even on Easy mode, and although there are MINOR issues with the touch-screen controls that can be the difference between winning and losing, that may have just been me not adapting to the way it works properly. In battle your partner controls with either A, B, X, and Y or the directional-pad. Being right-handed I chose the d-pad, which over the course of the playthrough developed a rough-patch thanks to the fast-paced action and quick movements required to complete combo-attacks. Since I couldn't beat most of the bosses on normal difficulty I would up switching to easy at about the third or fourth try depending on the boss (And it's still challenging, the only difference I noticed was that their HP drains quicker), and the final-boss took me FOUR tries even on EASY, so that shows you how hard the game is. If you've only got a 3DS and no DSi, DSi XL or original DS I'd suggest getting one of the aformentioned DS systems since fighting requires quick movements with the D-pad on the DS and I'd be afraid that I'd break the joystick, and the 3DS is so small that using the D-pad would be even more cramp-inducing, so just play it on an original-run DS. Since the use of the touch-screen is REQUIRED I'd suggest getting the official scree-protectors before you play TWEWY. I went into this knowing nothing about the game despite having thoroughly researched it on Amazon prior to purchase, and I've come out of it with most of my questions answered. There are gut-punch plot-twists, not too many (Otherwise they wouldn't be gut-punch), just enough to keep you guessing, and I'm not sure if it has multiple endings. I chose what I myself in real life would choose when a moral-choice came up, and I kept doing that until the end, I'll have to check out the time-select feature later to see if there are multiple endings. As for endgame rewards you can select something and play through an alternate version of the game, but I think that the ending-theme is reward enough personally. Like I said before, the game is awesome, the soundtrack is awesome, and the game-play is awesome, 10.1*. Just know this, you'll want to play this game on a 3DS XL, DSi XL, or an original DS because the DS lite and 3DS are too small. Alternatively you could get a gaming-grip for the 3DS or DS.

Friday, April 5, 2013

The World Ends With You: mid-point thoughts

Well, I'm about finished with The World Ends with you it seems, time for a mid-point retrospective.
So far the game is mainly action-based with a few moral choices along the way, mainly having to do with either leaving your enemies (Or alternately your friends) to the resident monsters, Noise. Fortunately the encounters are at-will with the scanning feature instead of random encounters, which are fine if put into practice right, but since it's typically abused instead of just having monsters roaming the world and dungeons I'm glad to see this new mechanic that allows you to roam Shibuya, shop for clothes, new ability pins, food, or just run around and listen to the sweet soundtrack without the worry of running into a surprise fight with a particularly fearsome monster when you're health is low. The World Ends With You is essentially an instance based action-RPG, which is a diversion from normal action-RPGs in the sense that it takes place inside a pocket-dimensional version of the main world like most turn-based RPGs do, but the combat takes place in real-time, and where you stand actually DOES matter. Plus you can dash to avoid damage which helps if your combat pins are on cool-down. You can also run from battles just by pressing start, then tapping "Gotta Bounce!" which apparently does something to your partner, since they will apparently say something, but the only times I ever did it were in part 2, and I didn't notice any difference in later gameplay. Despite the lack of cutscene involvement the game actually delivers on gut-punch moments, and in the end of part 2 I was thinking "Holy crap, what have I done?"
Now, to address the major boss-fights. At the end of every part so far there's a majorly hard boss-fight to be had, and even on EASY difficulty they're still tough as Adamantium nails. It took me about ten tries to get past the boss of part 2 on easy, and each time I gradually learnt what to do, and on top of that they give you an option to either retry, retry on easy, escape (Not for bosses) or return to the title if you die, unlike SOME games that just dump you at the title-screen instead of letting you "Continue"
All in all this game is good, and I'd say it's worth picking up. One thing I need to address is that instead of changing the soundtrack from part to part they just add more songs to the existing mix. That's fine, but why can't we have more songs? DS cards can hold up to 256MBs, I think that's MORE than enough for a varied soundtrack.
Here's the final part: http://blogdudesvariousreviews.blogspot.com/2013/04/the-world-ends-with-you-final-thoughts.html

Thursday, April 4, 2013

Trauma Center: Under the Knife, first impressions

Keeping with the visual novels on the DS, I started the first Trauma Center last night:
After just coming off of the first Ace Attorney game, this is fairly disappointing. There's practically no characterization of the "people" in this game, nothing I've done so far feels like it has an impact on anything, the characters don't feel human, and so far the only thing that feels intense are the operations.
There's not much of a story so far, there's only one intense operation so far, and there's not much impact to what I do, and there's not enough choices to be had. You can touch the screen (Or press A) to make the dialogue finish loading, but it's too easy to skip it if you accidentally touch it again. Sometimes the touchscreen controls are a bit off as well, and in an operation that could lead to a critical mistake. For instance, your patients have a vitality meter that drops the longer you take. You can increase it by touching the syringe and drawing upwards, then holding it down somewhere to inject it. That's fine IN THEORY, but in a pinch you can lose a patient because the controls are so wonky, this also applies to suctioning blood and other obscuring liquid from the screen, it takes too long because the controls are fairly messed up, if they just let you hold the stylus on the bottle of liquid to prepare for an injection or hold it down when you're suctioning. This carries over to the suturing, it takes quite a while to suture an incision or wound until it will mend, and now I address the tape:
When you're closing up you're required to tape it, unfortunately that's easier said than done since the hit-zone for the tape is quite small, if you go over by a tiny bit then you lose a miss chance and have to restart the taping. Also for some reason you have a limited use of syringes, antibiotic gel, and a few other things (Which I can't remember at the moment) which recharge over time, who at Atlus approved that? I get that they want to keep you from spamming vitality injections, but since they take up time and you've got a five-minute time-limit isn't that enough? Believe it or not the time-limit adds intensity to the operations, but I have a feeling it'll get in the way later on.
So far I'm pretty meh about the game, hope it gets better later or I'll have wasted my time.

Wednesday, April 3, 2013

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, Final thoughts

After a grueling week on the final case I'm finally ready to post the final part of my Ace Attorney review.

Despite the sheer amount of pure ridiculousness that the game exudes it can handle a serious tone to the point of it being believable. In a world where corruption has shaped the law to its will, defendants are guilty until proven innocent, and murder has a statute of limitations, we find ourselves in the shoes of rookie lawyer Phoenix Wright, and in the final episode of the game he faces his greatest challenge. By the end of Episode 5 the amount of evidence I collected filled nearly four pages. I won't spoil anything, but the case is so long and so intense that the amount of relief I felt was completely un-matched by anything else I've done in a game. Stepping away from the final case for a minute, the game does a good job of throwing you ringers, in episode 4 I had constructed a perfectly reasonable and totally viable hypothesis, with what happened  what led to what happened, what was going on, why they did it, and who did it all linked together in an irrefutable bundle. Aside from the "Who" and the "Why", I was wrong, although I'm pretty sure it could have worked, and after all that was deconstructed I came up with a different hypothesis as to something else that was related as to why something wasn't found, and I was wrong. Capcom did a good job of putting this game together, leaving subtle clues that let you come up with an idea of how it happened and why things happened and then coming up with another solution that's equally reasonable and subtle, yet could be completely overlooked. As for the ending it either hinted at a sequel-hook or it was just clearing up the plot of Episode 5. I'm not sure what improvements were made from the GBA version since I haven't played it and I don't know Japanese, but I can say that the voice-recognition is a little wonky and the fingerprint-dusting mechanics are QUITE annoying since they require you to keep tapping the screen rather than just letting you run the stylus over the screen until the powder is covering the area. Fortunately they don't make you go out and buy more luminol and finger-print powder, you're pretty much got an infinite supply. The last episode is DS exclusive since it brings in a bunch of new mechanics that require use of the touch-screen. One of which is an examination tool that lets you rotate the item and zoom in and out, although there's no Z2 axis to the camera controls that would allow you to move the items up and down, and if you want to read text you're out of luck since it's so blurry, and you can't rotate certain items, just examine them. And it'd make sense if they allowed you to look through a cell-phones call-logs instead of just hitting "Redial", but NOPE!
Also, the game is set in 2016, but was originally made in 2001, so it features some dated tech and reasoning. One more thing I need to address is that there are certain areas with misspellings or grammatical errors, but those are actually few and far between. The setting varies, in Japan it's obviously set in Japan, but in the US it's set in California, as stated by one of the characters. Bringing this into account a discussion about the wild west was had in one of the cases, but one of the characters says "This is neither wild, nor west", even though you can't get much further west in continental US. That aside it's a game that makes you think a lot, and a game that likes to trick you. Pick it up if you've got a DS system (Although who doesn't by now?) it's a great game. For its few flaws I give it a 7.9*, it's good, and it's probably one of my favorite DS games, but it's got no replay value, and is sometimes a bit linear.

*EDIT*
Completely forgot to mention this, the game has perfect atmosphere, two of the songs from the soundtrack actually made me cry for what they reminded me of in the game, and one piece of evidence...... I looked for a way to present it that wouldn't have the inevitable outcome, but there wasn't one. I had to force myself to press the "Present" button....... The characterization for everyone makes them feel human, and that's what a lot of games fail to do, present the characters to the player in a way that says "They have feelings, lives, hopes, and dreams". I'm looking forward to the next game in the series, I'm debating getting back to The World Ends With You until I work my way through my DS back catalog.

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Business as usual

Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith is a standard beat 'em up for the Nintendo DS, and a pretty good one at that. In the beginning you only have one force-power, the push, but you can learn more. The game starts off where the movie began, Anakin and Obi-Wan rescuing Palpatine from his crashing ship. The sprites and art for the characters look just BARELY like the actors in the movie, but the sprites for the enemies resemble their movie counterparts a lot better. The first boss is pretty grindy, you face a fighter-droid and since you only have three chances before you have to start the fight over if you don't have much experience with the controls you may end up repeating the fight a few times. After a while the game starts to get a little grindy, but since this is a first impressions section it may get better as it goes on. The controls are simple, but X should have been jump instead of A and Y on its own should have been force-push, instead you have to hold R and then press B to force-push, and your buildup attack, Vaders Fury requires you to hold B down, but B is also your main attack, so if you're surrounded by enemies and want to clear them out with a single hit you'll take a lot of damage before they're done, and Vaders Fury doesn't always work right. So far aside from that I like the game, which is more than I can say for the movie.

BTW, yesterday's post was an April Fools joke, for those of you without access to a Binary converter

Monday, April 1, 2013

Closing down (April Fools)

It's been a good long run, but I'm getting tired of setting my own schedule and being my own boss, I'll no longer be posting to this blog or updating my Youtube channel. Thanks for all the support and pageviews. I hope I inspire someone to be just like me.
As my last message, I leave you this!
01001001 01101110 00100000 01100011 01100001 01110011 01100101 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01110111 01100101 01110010 01100101 00100000 01110111 01101111 01101110 01100100 01100101 01110010 01101001 01101110 01100111 00101100 00100000 01110100 01101000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01100001 01101110 00100000 01000001 01110000 01110010 01101001 01101100 00100000 01000110 01101111 01101111 01101100 01110011 00100000 01100100 01100001 01111001 00100000 01101010 01101111 01101011 01100101 00101110

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