Little Mac is Back!!

Well, this is a very belated review, but Imma do it anyway!  I actually picked up "Punch Out!!" for Wii on it's release date and played it pretty heavily.  However, as you can tell, I have never gotten around to reviewing it.  The reason for this is because I have not played through the entire game all the way through, so keep that in mind as you read this short review.  Punch Out!! is a boxing game that is played nothing like a boxing game.  The camera is fixed just behind Little Macs head, looking directly at your opponent.  Little Mac cannot withstand many hits, as he is the smallest boxer in the game.  A couple good whacks from your opponent knocks you out, just like in the original games on the NES and SNES.  Because of this, the game play involves learning how to predict an opponents movements via predetermined animations that lead up to you getting smacked.  For example, an opponent may twitch his eyebrow before delivering a punch.  After you read these "tells" you must block, duck, or dodge the attack, and follow up with a series of attacks of your own.  Time your counter just right, and you earn a star which allows you to preform a star punch, Little Mac's strongest move.  The game progresses by beating boxers and moving on to the next one.  

Punch Out!! transitioned into 3-D beautifully and the art is as much fun as it could possible be.  The quirky art style works wonderfully with the quirky characters.  This splendid presentation is perhaps Punch Outs strongest point.  Aside from that, the game is brutally hard, thus I never finished it!  (^_^)  After beating the main "campaign" you enter "defend your title" mode, in which you must participate in a re-match with every opponent.  This second time around though, they are insanely tough, and I never could beat the final contender.  Either way, if you like a challenge, than give this game a go, cuz it is one tough cookie.  Think Ninja Gaiden or Trauma Center.  The downside to this difficulty, however, is where Punch Outs biggest flaw is found.  The gameplay is not all  that fun, and winning feels very un-rewarded, making it difficult to convince yourself to sit down and play a game you know is going to rape you.

Lastly, I would like to mention the size of the game.  There are so many extras, secrets, and easter eggs in this game it's unbelievable.  I must give credit to the game in that aspect, as I simply love bonus content and uncovering little secrets and such.

I know this review seems sorta rushed and gimped, but still, I did not finish defend your title mode, so I feel a little funny about writing one in the first place...

Regardless, Punch Out!! for the Nintendo's Wii earns a:

6.5/10

Leave it out on the Street...

Street Fighter 4 is a pretty popular fighter for the PC, XBox 360, and PS3.  As a semi-ashamed owner of a PS3, I figured I would finally give the game a shot.  Now granted, I devoted very little time to the fighter.  Roughly 4 hours total...  Regardless, in that 4 hour time period, I came to realize something, or rather, something that I had once believed was re-confirmed for me.  I hate fighting games.  I simply never liked traditional, 2-D fighting games, they just don't cut my mustard, or something like that...  As you may know or assume, I love Super Smash Bros. Brawl, which is technically a fighter, though the term is used loosely.  In Brawl, your character has a specific move set, but what you do with that is left to your imagination.  Brawl is about creating your own combos, and there are thus an almost infinite amount of them to be discovered.  I felt with SF4 I was limited to what the game offered me.  Combos were essentially mapped out for you: Down, right, square, repeat.  Granted, there is nothing particularly wrong with this formula of two opponents trading blows via predetermined combos, however, I find the fact that many people play it competitively a little odd.  I don't see how you can take your "game" past a certain point in Street Fighter, or other fighters like it, where as with Brawl, I find myself and others constantly finding new ways to advance our play style.  Eh, either way, once again, this is all simply opinion, and not in anyway a review for the game.  

Just letting you know that as far as I am concerned, I shall not be buying Street Fighter 5 when it inevitably is released.

Lightning Challenge!!!

  A few posts back you may remember me talking about my Mario Kart Mission.  You know, the one where I set out to get the max amount of points in Mario Kart DS versus mode.  As you may remember, I discovered that the counter maxed out at 999.  It took around three to four thankless hours to uncover this useless bit of knowledge, but the enjoyable time I had working my way to that number encouraged me to ask you all a question: "Do any of you have any other pointlessly long video game tasks you would like me to carry out?" A received one reply from one "Inazuma" who asked if I could essentially, 100% complete the game "Fall Out 3." After this request, I noticed a sense of regret grow inside of me.  Maybe I shouldn't have asked that question, haha!  Still, I have decided that I am going to go for it!  I am currently occupied with a game named "Cross Edge" for the PS3, but as soon as I beat it ( you will see a review for it here I am sure) I shall embark on a quest to explore every nook and cranny of Fall Out 3, to earn every single trophy, to complete every single side quest!!  Throughout this challenge, I will post periodic updates here to let you know how I am faring.  Also, I will let you know when I have officially started the challenge, as, like I mentioned before, I must first complete Cross Edge.  Anyway, get ready for me to waste a good chunk of my life that I will never earn back!  Send me food or something to help me get through it!

Gamestop and the Rooster Hats

Gamestop sucks.  We all know that, we all think that, and some of us choose to boycott the game giant because our passionate hate for them is so strong.  Me?  I dislike them greatly, enough so that I would rather not shop with them, but generally do anyway simply for convenience.  Plus, lets face it, they give away some pretty awesome stuff with video game releases if you pre-order the game through them.  An example of this awesome stuff is the "Rooster Hat" that customers could get for pre-ordering the video game "Scribblenauts."  In case you had not heard, Scribblenauts is going to be the greatest game of all time.  (^_-)  That being said, I was going to reserve it no matter what, but when I saw that they were giving out a replica of the main characters hat WITH THE GAME if you reserved it, man did I get excited.  Awesome game, awesome collectible, what more could a guy want?!  So as Scribblenauts drew closer and closer to its launch date, I became more and more excited for the game that would be AWESOME and my hat.  Oh how I longed for that beautiful hat.  Jumping forward to today.  Today, September 15th, Scribblenauts was released!  I awoke from my slumber as if it were Christmas!  I leapt out of bed with much glee!  After getting ready for the day, I hopped down the stairs and out the door with joy in each step!  I went to all my classes, endured the boring lectures, with a massive grin on my face!  I didn't mind the lectures, for I was going to be playing Scribblenauts with my lovely Rooster Hat in just mere hours!  My final class let out, and I sprung out of my chair like a kangaroo!  Hopping all the way to my car, I bobbed my head back and forth with happiness!  I jumped right into my car and began the five minute drive to Gamestop!  Just a few more minutes and OH WHAT JOY I WOULD HAVE!!!  Arriving at the mall, my stomach got tense as the excitement grew!  No longer could I walk!  I RAN into the store faster than humanly possible!  As I slid into the gamestop, I cried out with all my heart, "I am HEEEEEERE FOR SCRIBBLENAUTS AND MY WONDERFUL HAT!!!!!!!"  The employee greeted me with a smile, understanding the importance of today.  He joyfully handed me my game and bid me good day. I chuckled and said, "Why thank you good sir, but I believe you forgot my Rooster Hat!"  An understandable mistake, I did not mind!  Nothing could break my euphoria!  

"UP YOURS DIRT BAG!" Was the reply of the Gamestop employee.  

"B..but sir..  M..my rooster hat?" I stammered.

"I SAID UP YOURS!  NOW GET OUT!" He repeated with anger.

"B...b...but...  Sir...  I was promised...  Promised a hat...  Promised sir..." I said as tears began to well up in my eyes.

"How many more times must I tell you?  Get the heck out of my store you naive fool!!!!" 

This man was clearly serious.  He intended on ruining my perfect day.  I slowly walked out of the store, defeated.  With my hat-less head bowed low, I tried to remember that I at least had the greatest game ever, hat or no hat...  This did little to comfort me on my tear filled ride home.  Christmas was ruined...

BUT WAIT!  What if another gamestop had some hats they were willing to give me?!?!  I called the store I had just visited and pretend to be another gleeful kid, looking forward to picking up his copy of the game.  When the store owner said they had no hats, I would ask for another stores phone number.  He answered the phone,

"Gamestop, where we crush childrens dreams, how can I help you?"

"Yes, I was wondering if I could come pick up my copy of Scribblenauts today?" I said with false happiness in my voice.

"Yeah sure, come on in." Satans helper replied.

"Great, I cant wait!  You guys got those totally awesome hats too, right?!" I asked, already knowing the dreadful answer.

"Yeah sure, we got one left, did you reserve the game early?" He said.

I could not believe my ears!  The employee lied to me!  He said they had none, and now that he thought I was someone else, he said they had ONE!  I told him the truth and said,

"I reserved the game in August!"

The employee said that I had reserved it early enough, and that I could get my hat!  I rushed back to the store, infuriated!  Boy would they be surprised when I walked in again!  

I made my grand re-entrance and looked the criminal in the eye.  He seemed to be expecting me as he immediately said 

"We must see your receipt as proof if you are to obtain our final Rooster Hat!!!  MWAHAHAHAHAHAA!!!!!" 

I told the man with much confidence that I would return a third time, receipt in hand, and than he would be forced to hand over my beloved hat!!!!  I sped home as fast as I could, angry, and saddened.  I had not admitted it to the jerk, but I had thrown my receipt away.  Still, I would not give up!  I would search through all the trash in the world for that hat!!!  I arrived home and began shuffling through all the trash I could find!  The sheer nastyness of this situation was unbearable.  I dug through feces, urine, dead kittens, and more!  But alas, I found the filthy receipt!  I had won!  I rushed back to the store, handed the man the gross receipt and demanded my hat!  He obliged, with a look of defeat on his face.  As I walked out of the store, Rooster Hat upon my head, I grinned, turned back slightly, shadows across my face and whispered, "There is poop on that receipt..." And walked out of sight, leaving the employee to mull over the fact that he just touched a poo covered piece of paper.  

Today, joy and happiness has triumphed and evil has lost!  I received the Rooster Hat that was PROMISED to me after an arduous battle.  Though I still think I should have gotten it from the start.

Now, granted, a lot of that epic tale of sadness and victory written above is a little... exaggerated.  However, the basic plot remains the same.  I did go to gamestop, they did tell me there were no Rooster Hats, and they did NOTHING to compensate for my lack of said hat!  They basically told me to shove off and enjoy my game, and the employee did get upset with me when I got aggressive about wanting my hat.  I DID return to the store three different time for the reasons listed above.  Today Gamestop treated me not as a customer, but as a piece of trash, and I shall never shop with them again.  However, I can say with much much much much MUCH joy that I did get my game, and it is just as amazing as we had hoped, and that I DID get my hat, and it is just as awesome as I had hoped.  Check out my victory pictures below!

 

Review on the Edge

That's a wrap!  Just beat Mirror's Edge on the PS3 today, and wow, I must say that I am shocked that I am doing two PS3 game reviews in a row!  For those of you who do not know, I did not take my Wii down to college with me this semester as I get far too distracted with it, and thus my grades were slipping...  So I am borrowing a bunch of PS3 games from my friend Slater to help relieve some boredom!  I'm still Nintendo, don't worry!  (^_-)  Anyway, onto the review:

Mirror's Edge is one of those unique titles, one of the ones that stands out from the crowd if not for any other reason than the fact that it is different than it competitors.  If you have ever seen a trailer for the game, you know what I am talking about.  Mirror's Edge is unique in that it is a FPR, or a "First Person Runner" game.  You play as main character "Faith" (which I found to be a highly entertaining name.  Faith, as in a Leap of Faith, brilliant) who is a "Runner" in a semi-futuristic city.  Runners are rebels of sorts in this city.  It is difficult to explain their position any further without spoiling elements of the stories rather dry plot.  Regardless, Runners, um, run across the roof tops of the city in which the game takes place.  Highly acrobatic, these Runners leap from building to building, sliding down wires, jumping over air conditioning ducts, etc.  All of this is done in first person view.  The city is GORGEOUS.  Not in the sense that is is highly realistic, but in that it is like a piece of art.  The graphical style is cartoonish, yet realistic, very strange indeed.  The beauty of the environment makes running around that much more fun; and that is an accomplishment considering it is already REALLY fun.  It is hard to imagine running in a virtual world as entertainment, but believe me, when you get some speed going, the game does such an impressive job at simulating running, you feel as if you ARE in danger as you leap from building to building.  At one point, I was in a subway station, and a train came rushing towards me.  As it neared, I froze, not able to react.  The train hit and killed my character, and as it did, I jolted as if awoken from one of those dreams you have where you fall from a cliff.  It felt so real, and that fact impresses me greatly.  Lastly I would like to mention that there is no HUD.  This helps tremendously at immersing you in the experience.

While running, you see certain objects in a very vibrant red.  While you can jump and climb on almost all the object in the game, the ones that shine red are object that are particularly useful, and usually advance the current objective.  For example, a metal bar hanging above you highlighted in red would allow you to jump up, grab, and swing off of it.  This, "Runners Vision" as its called is really useful, and while it acts as a hint system, it actually acts as a contributing factor to the games super bright environments.  Rarely are hint systems implemented so well.  And if you still don't like the idea of it, you can play without it in "Hard Mode." Nice.

As the game progresses, combat elements are added to the game, and while you are supposed to try to avoid confrontation as much as possible, sometimes you simply have to fight enemies.  Faith dies after only taking a few shots from most guns, so you must be careful when engaging in combat.  You can fight using melee attacks, or disarm enemies and use their guns against others, effectively adding an FPS element to the game.  This is where the game loses a bit of its value.  Later in the game, the story forces you to fight more and more.  This really sucks, because it is almost impossible to stay alive, and thus you are constantly being forced back to a checkpoint from a billion hours ago.  When a game is about overcoming obstacles, running, jumping, swinging, I found it very annoying to have to fight so often later in the game.  

The games story was incredibly dull, and I felt no emotion what so ever when certain important characters died.  This made me very sad...  I like it when games make me love characters so much that I cry at their deaths or hardships!  The fact that I had no desire to see the end of the story, and that the fun part of the game (the running and climbing) was replaced with a lame combat system halfway through the game made it very difficult for me to complete Mirror's Edge.  I almost gave up numerous times at a few very frustrating points.  

Overall, Mirror's Edge is a very unique game, that delivers it's strange game play very effectively.  It is extremley fun when you first pick it up, but that fire quickly dies out as the game goes on.  I think positively with my experience with the game though, simply because it was so different, and it was so fun.  It shows that games still can stray from the norm and be fun.  Good news.  (Though this is proven time and time again on the Wii...)  

PLEASE take the time to watch the short trailer below!  It shows off the pretty graphics and game play.  The entire trailer that is shown in first person is actually playable, exactly how you see it!!

Mirror's Edge - 7/10

Mario Kart Mission Part 2

Well, I finally hit the Mario Kart DS point limit after what I believe to be about five hours.  Ugh.  Anyway, the counter does NOT roll over, nor does it go to a fourth digit.  Instead, as you can see in the blurry picture below, it stops at 999.  Anyway, that was a nice waste of time, lemme know if there is any other time wasting video game fact you were wondering about, I just may test it!

Mario Kart Mission!

This past weekend, my friend Jake, and my lovely girlfriend Nicole played quite a few rounds of Mario Kart DS.  Man was that game fun.  Am I the only one who remembers how fun that was?!  Anyway, after playing for a long time, one of the DS's battery died, and thus we ceased racing.  By the time we had finished, however, my point total had breached 200!  You get 10 points for every race you place first in, and this high score led me to remember that the highest I had ever gotten was back in High School with a friend of mine.  I got all the way to 312 points.  Now, here is where the story comes in.  All of this gave me a burning itch to see how many points I could get before I would become totally bored.  Once I hit 400 points, I realized that I just couldn't stop!  What a waste of time!  

Well how better to counter a waste of time then to waste MORE time?!  With this, I have set out on a mission.  A mission to see if I can get the max number of points which I assume to be 999.  Or is it higher?  Will a fourth digit come into play?  Will the counter roll over?  Who knows!?  Only time will tell, and when it does, I shall post pictures here!  Keep an eye out for em!

Well, off to keep playing Mario Kart DS!  

As Mario says on the title screen; "Vroom vroom!  Here we go!"

This train is starting to pick up speed!

In the interest of keeping busy (I need something to do down here in Pueblo or I'll lose my mind) I have decided to pick up the post count for this blog.  You should start to see at least one post a day from here on out, regarding SOMETHING video game related.  If there is nothing of interest to write about, no reviews to publish, than I shall MAKE something to write about!  As Haruhi Suzumiya once said "We need to make life more interesting!" ...Or something along those lines.  Anyway, thanks again to everyone who keeps up with me!

Here's To You... Snake.

My first review on Blogger!  Finally, lets get this started!

Just finished playing Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots for the PS3.  You know, every so often you come across a game that dwarfs everything else.  A game that is so spectacular, that you begin to wonder if a video game can be perfected any more.  MGS4 is one of those games, without a doubt.  The game has been called more of a movie than a video game, and this criticism is deserved.  Some of the longer cut scenes carry on for longer than half an hour, and I believe the last one ate up a good hour and a half of my time!  Is this a bad thing though?  I think not.  In my humble opinion, the cut scenes bring a level of importance and epicness to the game.  By the time you finish watching one, you are so hyped up and ready to play, you are so emotionally drawn into the game, that you are Snake, or at least you feel what he does.  

On that topic, Snake is a wonderful character.  It is hard not to love the guy.  I found myself so engrossed in him, in the game, that every bullet I took, every rumble in that Sixaxis controller sent chills through my body.  Hideo Kojima, the games director, did a splendid job at immersing you in the story, in the characters, and in the Metal Gear world.  

The plot is intense, as it concludes the Metal Gear series, however, it can be a tad confusing as there are so many elements to keep track of.  Regardless, this minor confusion is usually cleared up by following cut scenes, and can be forgiven by the sheer emotion the plot regularly provides.  I have never gotten and adrenaline rush from a video game before Metal Gear Solid 4...

An area that seems to be lacking a little in my opinion is the game play itself.  While the sneaking system MGS fans are familiar with is still there, I found a lot of focus on combat as well.  This is all well and good until you discover that the combat is a little... slow.  In a largely populated area, I found myself under impossible odds to defeat enemies with my slow moving aiming reticule.  This coupled with the long cut scene- short level- long cut scene system made for some minor flawed game play.  Regardless, the game is still insanely fun, and these are just minor quirks.  

The last issue I will mention is the games content.  It is loaded with it.  Similar to how I talk about Super Smash Bros. Brawl, I noticed that the more I played MGS4, the more I discovered I could do!  No expenses were spared in making MGS4.  The developers set out to give players a very large, robust experience, and they succeeded.  

From the opening cinematic, to the tear jerking, never-forgettable ending, Metal Gear Solid 4 is, what I would consider, a perfect game.  I am a Nintendo fan.  Always have been, always will be.  Most of you know this, and thus it might come as a surprise that for the first time ever, I will be awarding a non Nintendo game a perfect score.

Metal Gear Solid 4: 10/10

One final note: I spoke with a few of you upon beating the game and mentioned that MGS4 had potential to be my favorite game of all time.  That feeling has passed.  While the game was amazing, and flawless in almost every way, the lack of game play drops it from being a contender of my favorite game.  Not that the game play was bad, it just was not AMAZING.  MGS4 excels in story telling, not game playing.  Brawl and Prime 3 will remain on top for now.  The fact that I considered allowing a Sony game to be my favorite though is testament to it's greatness.  Please world, if you have not played this game, give it the chance it deserves.  It is one of the most amazing, one of the most beautiful games of our time.