Archive for the 'Game Review' Category

20
Nov

Friday Rewind VI – Super Mario Bros. Wii

Okay, okay… It’s not a record, nor is it 10 year old, but the mustachioed plumber’s latest adventure is ridiculously nostalgic. It’s like Nintendo took the best parts of Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario World, updated the graphics, and added 4-player simultaneous play. No fancy new game mechanics, just a classic side-scroller that’ll instantly put you back in your parents’ living room.

It’s a simple, easy-to-play game that the whole family can enjoy… And on that note, I’ll let a gameplay video do the rest of the talking while I go back to stomping Goombas.

23
Sep

The Beatles Rockband.

So at work the other day I decided to call up the local video store and ask if they had the Beatles Rock Band. Of course they do, it’s brand new and it a massively anticipated game. At least by myself.

They set one aside for me and I spent the rest of the day hoping that the night would go by fast.

It didn’t.

Once work was finished I rushed over to the video store, and had to spend an extra ten minutes creating an account, and listening to the clerks banter back and forth. I finally had the game in my hands once they were done commenting on the customers. I walked home as fast as I could. Ducking between fences to find shortcuts, listening to the Beatles to get myself pumped up.

Finally I was in the apartment. Crap! House is on. I’ll try anyway. I walk to the living room and state “You should stop what you’re doing and play Beatles Rockband!” IT WORKED. Plug it in, and more obsticals! Setting up the guitar, and the mic. An extra fifteen minutes I didn’t need to waste.

Then… oh then, finally, I got to play. This is where my story ends, and the review begins.

The story line of the game follows, you guessed it, the Beatles from their days playing in The Cavern, to the Ed Sullivan show, on to the Stadium, and their days at Abbey Road, leading to their final profomance on the rooftop of Apple Studios. The visuals are amazing, and you get to see the band change, and grow from the four, matching suit, moptop boys to Sgt. Peppers band, and onward. The music ranges from their most popular, to songs that even the biggest fans probably don’t listen to often.

The difficulty of the game play isn’t changed much, in fact since it’s old rock and roll, some of the songs are a lot easier than any other song from other rock band games. Even on expert. That being said, there are a lot of songs, hard, easy, or otherwise, that are just fun to play.

The guitar, bass, and drums are all pretty standard, the singing however is where the game takes a turn. Since all four of the band members sang, and harmonized, the game gives you a solo, or Harmony option, so all four players have the chance to sing. When we tried, we only had one mic, and we weren’t sure if you needed only one, or if more were required for the three. There were only two of us playing at the time, and the mic was sitting on a stool while we sat on the floor with the guitars playing I Wanna Hold Your Hand. It didn’t turn out well.

As you play through the storyline, you can unlock rare photos of the Beatles on tour, or recording, the better you do on the songs. If you’re a huge Beatles fan, it’s an added little bonus to see the fab four in their younger days.

The Beatles Rockband, like other rockband games, is fairly short. Having played through the entire story setlist in three hours, with several water breaks between songs. I think though that the replayability curves the fact that it’s not that long, along with the upcoming downloadable packs, including songs like, All You Need is Love, Maxwell’s Silver Hammer, Girl, and Oh! Darlin’. These are going to be worth looking into, so buying the game is a definite possibility down the road. If you like The Beatles, Rockband, or both, I shouldn’t even have to finish this sentence, so I wont.

Either way, later.

16
Sep

NHL 10

NHL 10

Yes, I know my printing sucks.

21
Apr

DSi.

So today I got the completely random notion to go out and buy myself a DS. I’d been wanting one for a long time, ever since my room mate in Halifax got one four years ago, and there was a Mega mushroom that made Mario take up the whole screen.

When I got to the video game store there was a line up of high school students on their lunch hour, so I decided to look around for a bit before asking the man behind the counter if he had any used DS lites available. As I was looking around, I noticed the new DSi boxes, and decided to take a look at those. After some consideration (do i really need to be able to take pictures? I have an mp3 player, does my game system have to play music too?) I decided I’d ask how much they were. It was about fourty dollars cheaper than I thought it was going to be, so I said to myself, Why the hell not? I have the money, and I wanted a DS anyway.

I crammed the DSi box, and a game I bought with it (Harvest Moon DS) into my bag and walked home through the rain. I thought about stopping for some lunch, but Wendys was pretty full, and I wanted to start my new game experience as soon as possible. So I skipped it and booked it to the apartment.

Once home I carefully opened the box, and was immediatley surprized by the size of it. It’s been quite a while since I’d seen a DS, so it just looked tiny. The instruction manual was bigger than the machine. My first dissapointment was that the colour blue they chose for it could have been a bit darker, and not so… pastel. I immediatly thought I should have gotten the black version.

I booted it up, and customized the system. The next thing I noticed was that I have no idea how to connect to the internet with it. Apperently it’s possible, it’s one of the selling points, but I couldn’t get it to work. I plan on working on that later on.

The OS is really nice. Very empty when you first start up, but I’m assuming you can get new applications to add to it once the internet gets up and running. It’s pretty simple to figure out. You click on what you want, and start it. It starts. Simple.

I played around with the duel camera for a while. The inside camera made me realize my hair needed to be washed, so I switched to the outside camera and took a few pictures of the living room. To move them to your computer you need an SDcard, which is not included. I hear they’re fairly cheap though, so I plan on picking one up eventually.

The music programs can only play .AAC or something foolish like that, off the SD card of course. Too bad all my music is in mp3 format, otherwise this would be a nice little addition.

The next thing I noticed is that there is no slot for GBA games. This is the one thing I’m dissapointed in the most. I have several GBA games, but no way to play them! I can get past this though because if I really wanted to play them, I’d download the roms, or go and buy a second hand GBA for 40 bucks from some kid trying to save up and buy one of the DSis.

All in all I am glad I bought it, even though I am going through a bit of the whole ‘did I really spend that much money just now?’ I wanted a DS like I said for quite some time now, and I picked up the game I wanted most for it. So all is good.

If you’re looking at the DSi, I can see it being a lot of fun if you want to play around with pictures of your friends, or listen to music on the bus when video games have gotten boring. If you’re looking for something just to play the games though, spend less and pick up a second hand DS lite.

I am satisfied with the purchase, I just have to get back into playing video games again, which shouldn’t take too long once I get Harvest Moon going, and I pick up the new Pokemon game.

If only it were a different colour…

21
Apr

GRID

While geeking it up with a few fellow gamers at a LAN last weekend, I had the opportunity to play Codemasters’ latest racer, GRID. It falls somewhere between arcade and simulation, providing simple and accessible racing. There’s no complicated car setup options, the damage model is forgiving, and the physics won’t snap your car around if you get into a turn a little too hot, but it’s still difficult enough to require some driving ability to do well. If you’re looking for a true sim, you should look elsewhere, but if you want something you can still talk your friends into playing that’s a little more realistic than the Need For Speed games, GRID is it.

As a long-time sim racer, it’s definitely too arcade-y to spend a lot of time playing by myself, but the accessibility of it makes the multiplayer portion a blast. Of the 14 of us playing at the LAN, even the ones using their keyboard to drive were competitive, though I wouldn’t recommend playing without at least a gamepad.

Visually, the game is stunning… On a rig that can handle it, it’s quite possibly the best looking racing game I’ve ever played, and the crash physics are gloriously entertaining. There’s a decent replay feature too, so you can review the carnage, and the flashback feature allows you to rewind the race after you’ve wrecked so you can have a second chance. The video at the bottom goes into a little more detail on that.

I haven’t played much of the story mode, so I can’t comment on that side of it, but the multiplayer has ensured that I’ll at least give a shot to a game I rejected when I first tried the Xbox demo.

24
Nov

Life on the Mirror’s Edge

I’ve been spending a lot of quality time with my Xbox lately, most of which has been sunk into Mirror’s Edge. I pulled the demo off Live about a week before the game released, and it wasted no time digging it’s claws into me.

The first thing you notice when you load up the game is the unique visual style. When you’re outdoors, it look like they took a real city and rotoscoped it into a pristine environment. There’s a lot of white and primary colors, and while it’s not always realistic it doesn’t seem cartoony either. It’s refreshing to see a game actually go for artistic style instead of just trying to overwhelm you with details.

The interior spaces are a little more detailed, but still not distracting. Inside and out the whole city reeks of utopianism, and if you’ve seen Equilibrium it’s very easy to imagine that you’re flinging yourself across the skyline of Libria.

The cutscenes are animated, and I find myself on the fence as to whether or not I like them. The plot itself is very basic, in a softcore porn kind of way: It provides just enough story to explain why we’re there and keep things moving. It’s a typical “lone wolf has to prove their sibling’s innocence” story, but with anti-utopian undertones. In the near future, data and communication are heavily monitored, forcing people who need to move illicit information to go old school. You control Faith, a Runner that spends most of her time in the world of the chimney sweeps, transporting information by foot stories above prying eyes.

The controls are mostly solid, though using the occasionally-unresponsive Left Bumper of the 360 controller for jumping resulted in running straight off the side of a building a few times. The combat is simple enough that you can fight if you have to, but difficult enough to encourage fleeing if at all possible. You have the option of picking up the weapons of fallen opponents, but you can’t move nearly as quickly, and you get an achievement (Test of Faith – 80 Points) for beating the game without firing a shot at an enemy. I went for it on my first playthrough, and I’m glad I did… Taking down one “Blue” then shooting up a room isn’t nearly as exciting as trying to weave your way through at top speed.

Speaking of achievements, there’s a hilariously-named secret one… I, uh, dropped in on an unsuspecting Blue, saw the achievement pop up, and promptly laughed my balls off. I’ll leave you all to find that one yourselves, though.

The story isn’t very long, and that’s a mark against it, but it’s still got a fair bit of replay value thanks to the Time Trial mode… Find your way through the levels of the game, through a series of checkpoints, as fast as you can, and see how you stack up against the rest of the world on the Leaderboards! This is one area where the new ability to “install” games comes in handy, as it eliminates the pesky “loading areas” like elevators that can sink you time trial runs in a hurry.

I’ve always said my favorite thing about the Xbox is being able to download demos, and this game is one you’ll either love or hate. I highly suggest getting the demo. If you enjoy it, the story mode is definitely worth the cost of a rental. If you got the demo and then spent three days trying to find shortcuts through the two levels it offered like I did, go out and buy it.

Here’s a taste of the game’s first chapter… Enjoy!