Posted by Ryan at Sunday, March 30, 2008 | 0 comments read on

More Dreamcast Goodness

I opened my mailbox today and saw a package I had been expecting. My new dreamcast VMU (memory card). For those that are not familiar, dreamcast memory cards have little screens on them where you can view certain items during gameplay. My girlfriend called it a Giga Pet. The only game I played so far was Soul Calibur, a fighting game, during the battle you can see a little 2D sprite of your character jumping around, and it also notifies you when the game is saving. Not that useful for that game, but for another game on the way, Shenmue, I think it will be more of a help. I'm not positive but I think you can view your health and other inventory items on the VMU during gameplay, we'll see.

On another note, I spent some time playing Super Paper Mario on the Wii tonight. It was the first Wii game I had bought that was not a party game (Wii Play, Wario Ware Smooth Moves). I bought it back when I first got the system. My girlfriend had already beaten it, and I was a good ways into it before I put it down for Mario Galaxy, Zelda, Metroid, Zack and Wiki, Medal of Honor, Resident Evil 4, Guitar Hero 3, and now Smash Brothers Brawl. After playing nothing but Smash bros for a while I decided to throw that back in, I was missing some 2D platforming. I love the way the game looks, it's almost like an updated HD version of a classic Mario game, only with RPG elements added in. Your health is your HP and each enemies HP decreases as you jump on them. There are certain Items you can use to attack with and certain powerups (pixels) you get along your journey. It's a very fun game especially if you like the classic Mario games. It's also pretty long, my girlfriend beat it in about 25 hours. I'm going to try and play some more Wii games in general, besides Brawl, I have a ton I still have to beat (1 more puzzle in Zack and Wiki, 1 more world in Metroid, 40 more stars in Mario Galaxy (to get to 120), a ton more missions in Medal of Honor), and I have been playing lots of PSP anyway and could use the Nintendo time.



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Posted by Ryan at Friday, March 28, 2008 | 0 comments read on

Sonic Unleashed


A trailer has been leaked for an upcoming Sonic game, rumored to be on the XBOX 360 and PS3 based on the quality of the graphics, lets hope for a Wii port too. The only sonic games I've played have been Sonic 1, 2, and 3 for Genesis and Sonic Adventure 1 and 2 for Dreamcast. This is good because the only Sonic games I've played happen to be the only GOOD sonic games ever made, or so I'm told. Sonic Team has really loosened it's standards on our blue friend for the majority of his outings. This trailer looks like they're sending him back to his roots and having him run around a 2D playground of loops, springs, and coins. The game looks like it plays just like an old school Sonic game, with enhanced graphics and 3D backdrops. Hopefully this is what we have all been waiting for.

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Posted by Ryan at Friday, March 28, 2008 | 0 comments read on

The Old School



Well, not that old. I recently got a Dreamcast from a friend and have waiting on buying some games for it until now. He gave me a few good ones but not some of the ones I remember playing the most. Yesterday I ordered Shenmue and Marvel vs Capcom 2. I never owned Marvel vs Capcom, but always wanted to. I would play it in the arcades but was never able to track down a console copy, until now. Shenmue is more of an action RPG that I remember playing for a while, it is one of the first games I beat that was over 6 hours long. I remember the world in that game just feeling alive and everyone you spoke to had something interesting to say, well most peopel. There were supposed to be 16 chapters to the Shenmue story, 8 years later and we only have 2. I haven't played the second one yet, which came out for XBOX, but a 3'rd has rumored and crushed about three times now.

After I ordered these games it made me crave some more retro goodness, which led me to this site: http://www.nintendo8.com/all/. There you can play tons of classic NES games right in your browser. The controls are a little wonky with a keyboard, but it suffices. It gave me the chance to play the classic games I never got a chance to play when I was younger, like Kid Icarus, Metroid, Bionic Commando, 1942, and tons of others. Another site also has a great bunch of Flash remakes of classic games from: http://game-oldies.com/.

Hopefully the games I ordered will ship soon, I can't wait to play them. Some more great Dreamcast games I eventually want to hunt down are Jet Grind Radio, Chu Chu Rocket, Sonic Adventure 2, and Fatal Fury. Sega's last system was one of the companies best. A lot of people don't realize that the Dreamcast came out in the same generation as the Playstation 2, XBOX, and Gamecube. The graphics for the system are pretty good compared to its rivals, and because it was first to launch there are few crossover titles and a lot of original and unique games. I wish you could still buy these games in stores, but oh well, Ebay for the win.

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Posted by Ryan at Wednesday, March 26, 2008 | 0 comments read on

Wii Ware


Wii Ware launched in Japan yesterday. It is a service similar to XBOX Live Arcade (XBLA) and the Playstation Network (PSN) where users can download new and original games for their systems. This is great news for Wii owners who have been waiting for something to rival XBLA for quite some time. Maybe now we can start getting remakes of Street Fighter II and Bionic Commando, instead of just getting the original games on the Virtual Console. Capcom is one company that has recently been spending a lot of their money to remake their older games for these types of services, and I'm all for it. Graphical updates to classic games are always welcome, I just hope now that they will start to come to the Wii. There are many games that have been announced such as Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as King (a kind of town building simulation RPG of sorts), Lost Winds (a platformer where you control the wind) and Star Soldier R (a classic side scrolling shoot em up).

Wii Ware launches in May for North America. As much as I love the virtual console, I really can't wait for downloadble, original, games that are up to the Wii's graphical standards. The capcom remakes can easily be done on the Wii, lets hope they bring them over. Below is a trailer for Bionic Commando Rearmed, the remake of the original game by Capcom that is coming to XBLA and PSN. You can see why I'd want this on Wii, it looks so awesome.

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Posted by Ryan at Monday, March 24, 2008 | 0 comments read on

The yearning to play Final Fantasy


Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII comes out tomorrow for the PSP. It is an Action RPG prequel to the original coveted RPG Final Fantasy VII. I have always wanted to play a Final Fantasy game and have yet to do so. I purchased FFX when I bought my PS2 but played it once, grew bored, and sold back the PS2 entirely. Now that I am into RPGs of all types, especially on the PSP, I have been dying to give this classic franchise a try.

The PSP offers two FF games, I and II. I will probably start there as they are the most accessible to me. The Nintendo DS has a remake of FF III, now in 3-D, and the Game Boy Advance (GBA) has ports of FF I-VI. This is all great, and I plan to try most of those out, however it does not solve my main problem. The FF game I want to play the most, and the one that really stands out in the series, is FF VII. It is set in a futuristic sci-fi world instead of the classic fantasy world, and is one of the first games to be renowned for its cinematic quality. The PSP game Crisis Core will be a great sequel, but I still want to play a classic FF game, especially FF VII. All of the hype for Crisis Core is bringing out rumors of a remake of FF VII. This would be right down my alley. I'll take it for PSP, or even an epic PS3 version. Another great option, which they just did in japan with the original metal gear solid game in preparation for the MGS4 launch, would be to release the original FF VII on the playstation network as a PS1 classic. This way I can download the original FFVII and still get to play it on my PSP. Come Square Enix, do something awesome, again.

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Posted by Ryan at Monday, March 24, 2008 | 0 comments read on

God of War: Chains of Olympus Review



Wow. Where do I start. Well first let me say that this is my first ever God of War game, my introduction to the series. I had always been interested in playing them but had gotten rid of my PS2 before they game out. I went into this knowing that it was the prequel to two of the best PS2 games ever made, one of which only came out a year ago, when the 360, PS3, and Wii were already out. That's a lot to live up to.

Developer Ready at Dawn nailed it. I've never seen a prettier came on the PSP. While I was playing I swore I was staring at a game from the early life of the PS2, it looked that good. The backgrounds, lighting, blood effects, animations, everything was crisp and perfect. Even the camera angles were fantastic, it was very cinematic and at some moments would scale back as you were still running forward to show the epic scale and architecture of the structure you were running towards. It was truly impressive. The weapons and magic attacks were very fun to use and felt awesome when you connected a hit. The sound and music in the game is also some of the best I've heard on the PSP, or any console for that matter. The production levels were through the roof for this game, it is one of the most polished games I've ever played.

All in all in was a short game, taking me about 6.5 hours to beat. However I cannot wait to jump back in and play it again on Hard, then on God mode. I found some of the boss battles to be pretty easy, and I'm terrible at games, so Hard mode should be fun. I can't wait to go back and play the earlier God of War games now, and am greatly looking forward to God of War 3 on the PS3, which was teased at on the back of the PSP manual for the game. I'd like to see Ready at Dawn do some more work on the PSP, but they said they're moving on to home consoles now, including the Okami port for the Wii. After putting Daxter down for a while, another Ready at Dawn game for PSP, I think I might start playing it again just because they blew me away with God of War.

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Posted by Ryan at Monday, March 24, 2008 | 0 comments read on

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess Review



This is more of my history with Zelda games than it is a review.

I only got my Wii last summer, so I missed it when Zelda came out back in 2006. I didn't get Twilight Princess until Christmas of 2007. Now there's something you should know about my history with Zelda games, the only one I have beaten is Phantom Hourglass for the DS, and even this gave me problems. This is something I'd like to call "The Curse of the Water Temple." I know this sounds like an awesome new Indiana Jones movie, but it isn't, sorry.

I played the Zelda games on the NES and SNES in little snippets and only at friends houses, I never really got into them, but didn't deny that they were fun. The first Zelda game I got was Ocarina of Time for the N64. I played and played it and played it. Then something started to happen around the Water Temple. I had never played any game this long, and was growing sort of bored with it, and found the game play redundant. I honestly don't remember how far into the game the Water Temple was, but that's where I stopped. I put the game down thinking I'd pick it back up again some other time, that never happened. Ocarina of Time went
unfinished.

When the Wind Waker came out I was so excited, I loved the visuals and couldn't wait to get back into another Zelda game. I felt bad for not beating Ocarina of Time, and I thought I could make it up by beating this. As you can see, this didn't happen. I accidentally deleted my save file. Now there was no "Water Temple" per say in this game, but the whole game was based off of sailing around to different islands, so my theory still holds up, water was involved somehow. I was right at the part were you navigate your boat into the "Tower of the Gods" so it pretty much was the water temple anyway. I did not want to have to do all of that over again, so I never played it again. Now after beating Twilight Princess I do want to go back to it, but thats another story.

I picked up Phantom Hourglass simply because I loved the Wind Waker's visuals, and this was a direct sequel. I played it for a while and loved how the controls were working on the DS. Then came the Ocean temple, or what I like the call the "Water Temple" for the DS. The game makes you go back and do the Ocean temple after each major boss fight. There is only one checkpoint about halfway through it. I got so frustrated with having to purposely re do this temple multiple times, that I thought I was going to break my DS. It's not an easy task, although you do start to remember where things are after doing it 4 times. I didn't think I was going to beat it, the curse remained. I wanted to smash everything that had to do with the Ocean temple. But I pulled through, somehow I got past it each time and managed to beat the game. My first Zelda game finished! The curse had been lifted. I was thrilled.

When I got Twilight Princess I thought I could definitely complete it, no problem, it would just take a while. 44 hours later and I finished it. I loved it, some parts did get repetitive and frustrating but if you just stick with it you will be rewarded. This game had some of the most epic battles I've ever seen in a video game. The weapons were great, and the conrtols worked pretty well with the Wii remote. The graphics looked outstanding at times, and gamecuby at other times, which wasn't really a bad thing. The music in the game was also pretty great, it wasn't fully orchestrated like Smash Bro's or Mario Galaxy, but the compositions sounded awesome. It was by far the longest amount of time I've ever spent playing a single game. I'm surprised myself that I managed to stick with it and not give up. I can't wait for the next Zelda game, and in between Smash Bro's sessions I plan to pick up a copy of the Wind Waker and give that another whirl.

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Posted by Ryan at Monday, March 24, 2008 | 0 comments read on

Super Smash Bros is awesome...Online, not so much



Not yet at least.

So Super Smash Brothers Brawl came out this weekend, and it's awesome. I played it all day yesterday (after beating Zelda Twilight Princess in 44 hours on Saturday) and finally unlocked Solid Snake, the character I wanted to play with the most. He's pretty good and powerful, has a missile launcher with missiles you can guide, he can plant mines, and throw grenades, all in all he's a great addition and pretty powerful from a distance. I find myself using Ike, Meta Knight, and Samus the most. I'm a big fan of Ike just because he's a character I never thought I'd get into and has a pretty solid move set.

But what I really want to talk about is the online mode. You have two options "With a Friend" or "With Anyone." With a friend requires that you have the persons friend code, since none of my "wii-friends" have the game yet I'll have to wait for that. I tired "With Anyone" yesterday and got it to work twice, out of 50 attempts. You select your character and stage and the game puts you into a practice lobby where you can fight a punching bag while you're waiting for other players to join, the only problem is you get a different error each time and end up getting disconnected. I'm thinking there are just too many people trying to play, causing the servers to flood. Hopefully after some time has passed this will get fixed. I can't wait to do some more online Brawling. The two matches I've done so far were pretty fun.

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Posted by Ryan at Monday, March 24, 2008 | 0 comments read on

The Adventures of Last Gen Consoles

Story time:

I do stupid things. Let's face it, we all do. One of the stupider things I have done, on more than one occasion, is get rid of/sell my consoles sometimes before they are even near the end of their life cycle. I have also been known to do the less damaging practice of selling back games when I'm done with them. Yes you lose money, but let's be honest, am I really going to play Phantom Hourglass again after doing the god damned ocean temple 5 times in a row. No, I'm not. But let's not get too far off topic and keep this post about consoles.

I have always been a Nintendo fan so it may come as no surprise that the first console I bought with my own, hard earned money was a Gamecube. I bought it for the new Mario, Zelda, and Metroid games. I brought it to college and had a blast with it there playing through Super Mario Sunshine, Metroid Prime, and Zelda: Wind Waker (still one of the best looking games, in my opinion). One of my roommates, having no other choice as it was the only console in the room, also had a great time playing with the Gamecube. Somewhere down the line probably around my junior year of school a little game called Halo 2 came out. I had always played shooters, just not much on the Gamecube, so I hadn't played one in a while. Let's just say that I have never played past the first level of single player in Halo 2, but managed to log over 100 hours in multi player in a very short period of time. One of my roommates was obsessed with the game and would request we play with him every instance possible, which we easily complied to.

As time passed I got bored with the XBOX not being able to see any other game I wanted to play on it besides Halo 2, and I had been bored with the Gamecube for a while as nothing good came out for it after the Metal Gear Twin Snakes, which is a great game, but technically a remake. So I decided to buy a PS2, seemed like a great idea at the time. Best selling system in the history of games with an epic library of great games. You can only guess what I did. I got Metal Gear Solid 3, beat it, and sold the PS2 back for half the price. I know, dumb move. I make very quick and very dumb decisions very often. I never bothered to look into other games, even older ones for it. I saw that there was nothing on the horizon and got rid of it. I never bothered to play games like ICO, Final Fantasy X, Metal Gear 2 even, and again was left with just my Gamecube and XBOX.

After graduating college I stopped playing games for a while. The Gamecube was done with the official announcement of the Wii, which I was very excited about, and the XBOX was done with the release of the 360. I had no money saved up after college and video games are very expensive, so you can see why I stopped. It wasn't until I got my first real job and first couple of paychecks that I started getting back into gaming, around the Fall of 2006. I sold my Gamecube (which I didn't regret because I knew I'd get a Wii at somepoint), sold all my games for it (which I'm regretting now as I'd love play me some Wind Waker and Luigi's Mansion) and bought an XBOX 360. I loved it, although I loved my Gamecube and everything Nintendo, I realized that I was missing out on some great games and gaming genres, specifically shooters. I picked up Gears of War when it came out, and loved it, played me some Halo 2 again, Rainbow Six Vegas, it was great. Then I began to realize something. I missed Nintendo. The games for 360 started to seem generic and rehashed concepts from the original XBOX, sure they looked great, but the game play mechanics were all the same. I missed the cartoony and unique style of Wind Waker, the classic platforming from Mario Sunshine, and the amazing recreation of the Metroid franchise. I hit a wall. I stopped playing the 360 altogether and cried myself to sleep every night in lament over my sold Gamecube. I had betrayed it, it was gone, someone else was having the fun I could only dream of.

You can only guess what I did next. I sold my 360 on ebay, I did manage to make a good sum on it though, still ended up losing money, but a lot more than selling it back to Gamestop. I had nothing, no games for me. I was a goner. I went with no consoles from March of 2007 until the end of August 2007 when my girlfriend bought me a Wii. I was back! It was fantastic, all the games and characters I loved were all mine once again. I started getting some Gamecube games again and playing through those. Ahhh, it felt damn good.

I am now two years older than my college self and have come to appreciate gaming for the gameplay, and more stylized and unique games, over the graphical powerhouse games. This led me to think about the games I had passed up on the XBOX and PS2. There were tons of classics I had completely bypassed. By this time my brother had gotten his own 360 and had managed not to get rid of the original XBOX. He mailed it to me and I began to get some, very very cheap, games for it. Games I had never known even existed for the XBOX like Halflife 2, and games I had only heard of but never played like Fable, Max Payne 2, Metal Gear Solid 2, and Black. I can't imagine myself enjoying any 360 games more than I'm enjoying regular XBOX or Wii games. I recently finished Black and man, what a fun game. I know it's not 360 graphics but I really can't believe how they got some of the visuals and effects in there on the original XBOX, pretty impressive stuff.

Now I don't doubt for a second that there are fantastic games for the 360 but when you have limited funding, and want to play some great games, older systems are the way to go. In this gaming rebirth, if you will, that I have gone through I've been playing some great games on the virtual console, Dreamcast, and XBOX. Every system has it's share of great games, and if you don't mind dated visuals, you can have a really great time for not that much money. So the moral of the story is to really think hard about selling your old consoles and even games, because if you're like me, you'll eventually get to the point where you just want to play that one level from Metroid real quick, have one more go at Ninja Gaiden Black, or actually play through the single player of Halo 2. The virtual console has been a godsend for this because you can get a lot of the games you (or at least me) grew up on for a very small price, all bundled nicely into your Wii.

So play older games, they're fun.

The end.

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Posted by Ryan at Monday, March 24, 2008 | 0 comments read on

Develop a Following

There are many people who play a game from a certain developer/publisher, like it a lot, and go find out what else that developer has done to play their other games. There are the obvious developers that a lot of people follow like Nintendo, Sony, or Microsoft. People are always going to play and probably get the most enjoyment out of the first party titles for each system, thats what I usually do. I've always followed those bigger studios, but recently I have been playing some games by lesser known developers and it's made me look more carefully at who is developing or publishing the games I'm playing.

I've always done this to an extent with companies like Rockstar (GTA, Max Payne, Manhunt, Red Dead Revolver) and Capcom (Street Fighter, Mega Man, Zack and Wiki, Resident Evil), but every once in a while I'll play a game that I enjoy so much only to come to the realization that I have no idea who made it. The first instance of this came with the EA game Black. EA is the publisher of Black and it was developed by an in-house studio called Criterion. Criterion is responsible for the Burnout games. I've always loved those games, they have fantastic production value and are completely polished, and that's the same way I felt about Black. Once I found out it was developed by Criterion it just made sense, and I thought hmm I'll pretty much play any game they put out if they are all this good. You can tell the games a developer has worked on, they all have the same feel.

Another company I just discovered is Level-5. They are the developers of a game I'm playing right now on the PSP called Jeanne d'Arc. It is a Strategy RPG, the first one I've every played, and I'm completely loving it. It seems like a breath of fresh air after only playing shooters and platformers (which I will always love). This made me look at Level 5's track record and realize that they are the developers for another game I'm pretty interested in for the Nintendo DS: Professor Layton, a word puzzle type game. That is a game I probably would have picked up anyway because it just looked fun. I also noticed that they are working on a PS3 project called White Knight Chronicles, a game I probably would have bypassed, but now that I know it's Level-5 I might check it out.

I've been playing a lot of PSP lately which is how I found Level-5, and this next developer: Ready at Dawn. I bought the PSP slim pack that came with a copy of the game Daxter. It is a really fun platformer with some great graphics for the PSP. Being more interested in developers I decided to again look up what else they have worked on. Sure enough they are the developers behind another great game I have been waiting for on the PSP: God of War. This is a game I probably would have bought no matter what, it will be a system seller for a lot of people. Seeing now that it was developed by Ready at Dawn, who have already proven themselves with Daxter, made it a no brainer. But wait, there's more, not only are they behind God of War for PSP, but they are also behind another game for my other favorite system: Okami for Wii. Okami is a game I missed on the PS2 and have been looking forward to on the Wii, specifically using the Wii remote as the brush. Once more, seeing that a really great developer is behind it only heightened my excitement.

If I hadn't looked up who developed certain games I would have missed some other really good ones. It's also good to know that if you really liked a game, you have another one by the same team that you can get excited about. It's the same way with music. You always look forward to a new album by your favorite band. Even with movies, you look forward to a new film by your favorite director or actor. Now I can look forward to a new game by my favorite developer, I can follow them and support them, and hopefully it will lead to more great games in the future.

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Posted by Ryan at Monday, March 24, 2008 | 0 comments read on

Manhunt 2 Review


Manhunt 2 is a game that I figured I would eventually play sometime, it wasn't at the top of my list. I had recently gotten a PSP and a Wii and wasn't sure which one to get it for, if I was going to get it at all. My brother then surprised me for Christmas and got it for me on the PSP, not knowing that I was interested in it at all. I just completed it the other day and have some things to say about it.

Now let me preface this by stating that one of my favorite game franchises of all time is the Metal Gear Solid Series (MGS). The best part about those games are the stealth elements. You hide in a corner, tap the wall, the guard patrolling the area walks over to investigate, you grab him from behind as he walks away and choke him out. You can then either stuff him in a locker, carry him around with you, or leave him there for his buddies to see and wonder "I don't remember leaving this here" It's all real fun but can be very frustrating sometimes. If you fail to choke him out then you end up in mediocre hand to hand combat where all you have have is a stun gun and you're aiming frantically for his head, which never works.

Manhunt works the same way, where you hide in a dark corner, wait for the enemy to come find you, and choke him out. Where the games differ though is that if you miss the execution, either he walks away too fast, or you don't time it correctly, the melee combat actually works pretty well. Unlike the MGS games you usually have more than a stun gun with you. In a lot of the levels you're given a shotgun, or machine gun, and you can just gun fools down. On the psp it locks on for you, so all you have to do is run though, push a button to lock on, and fire away. It was a little easy, but it was very satisfying. The levels were very long too so it didn't feel like I was blowing through the game too quickly.

The executions, if you do pull them off, are awesome. They're extremely violent and brutal, and even though they are filtered due to controversy from the ratings board, you can still tell what's going on with no problem. I have always loved Rockstar's games, from the obvious GTA games, to the lesser known Max Payne or Table Tennis games. I am new the the Manhunt franchise and will probably go pick up the original game for the xbox sometime. The story may not have been as engrossing or cinematic as the MGS games, but I found the game play to be just as tight, if not better. The graphics also looked fantastic on the PSP, I was impressed at how well some of the levels looked, probably just as good as the PS2 version. Manhunt 2 is out for the PSP, PS2, and Wii (probably will take the cake as the most violent game to ever come out on Wii). If you're in to violent stealthy games, I'd pick this one up.

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