djchallis gaming

REVIEW - Tales of Monkey Island

2009-07-11T18:55:00.005Z

---INFO---
Made by Telltale Games, 2009, 1-player, for Windows & WiiWare.
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Tales of Monkey Island is not only the grand rebirth of the long dormant, legendary Monkey Island series, but it's the herald of the return of the entire Point & Click genre. Point & Click, a genre that focuses on story-telling and puzzle-solving instead of reaction times, started to die out around the mid/late 90s. It's started to come back on the DS, Wii and PC, but now the genre's biggest name is back. People worry when games from a decade ago are remade. Some franchises don't survive decades (Sonic the Hedgehog is a good example). But you can rest assured that Tales of Monkey Island deserves the name it proudly bears. This is the new Monkey Island.
Back in the golden era of Point & Click games, Lucasarts was the grand master of the genre. But when the genre started to die not even Grim Fandango and Escape from Monkey Island could help. Lucasarts decided to give up after those two last games, push the genre under the rug and focus on their other products (largely Star Wars). However Point & Clicks are returning thanks largely to the DS and a developer called Telltale. Telltale work mostly on Windows games, but their games have found homes on the Wii and Xbox 360 as well. They secured the rights to Sam & Max and have been happily bringing them to modern gamers. Whilst they were busy doing that, Lucasarts had a change of president. The new guy in charge is a huge fan of these old Point & Click games, and specificaly Monkey Island, arguably the funniest and most famous of all Point & Click games.
So here we are. Lucasarts handed Telltale the rights for Monkey Island and now (after nine years) we finally have a brand-new Monkey Island game. The industry's changed a little bit since Escape from Monkey Island. Telltale know what they're doing. One of their main ideas is to make Point & Click games episodically. They don't spend a few years working on a single epic game. Instead they release episodes, rather like a TV series. Tales of Monkey Island is made up of five episodes that will be coming out from July to November in 2009, one per month (with the WiiWare releases coming about a month later). This is a very different experience to buying a game from a shop for your PC. Telltale aren't out to make a huge, epic game with triple-A qualities. They're out to make a series of episodes that add up to a full game.
So far only the first two episodes have been released, so this review will be based on those. As more episodes come out, I plan on updating this review to reflect that.
So let's talk Monkey Island. It's a series that began in 1990. If you haven't played the four previous games, I recommend you play them first, in order. Tales of Monkey Island is designed so that anybody can pick it up and enjoy it, so it's not essential to play the previous games in the same way that it is in Metal Gear Solid for example. However you'll miss out on a lot of in-jokes, and it's more epic if you've followed the characters through the last four games. As it happens, Lucasarts have just released a remake of the original game with pretty graphics and nice voice-acting. Assuming they do the same for the second game sometime soon, you should be able to play all five games in the series with nice graphics and voice-acting. No need to worry about retroness (if that frustrates you, although the remakes lets you play the original version too).
The other issue with it being a series that's 19 years old is that the fans have every right to be sceptical about a new game coming out. As I mentioned earlier, not every game survives an series lasting decades, especially when the developers change. There's also the fact that the fourth game in the series, Escape from Monkey Island, split fans. It had a number of flaws, including cheesy self-referential plot bits, nasty controls and one of the worst mini-games ever. If I get round to reviewing it, I plan on ending the review with this statement: Escape from Monkey Island is a good (if flawed) game. It's issues are forgivable. The problem is, the game before it (Curse of Monkey Island) got everything so perfectly right. Escape is good, it's just not the true sequel to Curse. Tales of Monkey Island is. Tales feels right again.
However Telltale have done a fantastic job of collecting people who've worked on Monkey Island before. We have the same voice-actors from the last two games, many programmers and artists who've worked on lots of the other games, the composer who's done the entire series and the lead designer worked on the first two Monkey Island games, as well as Day of the Tentacle. These guys know how to make Monkey Island. They also know how to make good Point & Clicks, as is proven by their work on Sam & Max. I've finished the first episode and I can guarantee that these guys really know what they're doing.
Tales of Monkey Island's story clears a blank slate after the previous games (which were each more-or-less following on from the end of the previous game) and starts a brand new story. As the game starts, we find our favourite hopeless pirate Guybrush Threepwood at the end of an epic quest to find a way to finally defeat LeChuck, his arch-nemesis, and rescue his wife. As you try to pull off Guybrush's master plan, a few things go wrong. Instead of destroying LeChuck, Guybrush accidentally transform him from his demon-zombie state into a regular human. In the process Guybrush's hand is infected with a part of LeChuck's evil, and Guybrush is blown miles out to sea and washes up on Flotsam Island. From there an epic tale commences. I won't spoil any more plot than that. It's safe to say that the story so far has quite a few twists and turns. Each episode so far has ended on an unexpected twist, which really makes you want to play the next one! I can't wait to see how the rest of the plot unfolds. I've heard episode four (of five) will be a particularly exciting one. It's titled "The Trial and Execution of Guybrush Threepwood". I wonder what happens...
So Guybrush is stuck on a pirate island and as per normal it's his job to talk to the people he meets and solve various puzzles in order to complete his goals. Monkey Island has always focused on funny conversations with people, and this is still true. You'll spend a lot of time talking with the many interesting and comedic characters you'll meet. This is always enjoyable thanks to a fantastic script and extremely good voice-acting. Dominic Armato, who voices Guybrush, is just as funny as ever. I particularly enjoyed talking to the Voodoo lady, who's been given some more interesting dialogue this time around. The characters are just the kind you'd expect to find in a Monkey Island game, and they're all voiced very well.
Puzzle-solving is a good example of how Telltale have changed their style to fit Monkey Island. It seems the guys at Telltale don't just take any game license and make it into an episodic series in exactly the same way. There's plenty of differences between this and their version of Sam & Max. Telltale have taken time to make this truly Monkey Island. Unlike their other games, in this one you can combine inventory items like in classic Monkey Island games. The same game structure as previously has been restored, with often several different goals open to you at once to complete. It all feels very Monkey Island in what you have to do and how the game communicates that to you. There's also some great puzzles. In episode one I thought the section inside the Doctor's house was very funny, classic Monkey Island and actually really clever! The entire opening scene of episode two was incredible, and so funny! I love it.
So this is very much Monkey Island. But what's different about it this time around? Plenty! For a start, the graphics are in full 3D for the first time ever. Escape from Monkey Island had 3D characters, but they walked around on a 2D background. This is more like the new Sam & Max. Everything is 3D, which means the camera can move as you walk around, and frame general gameplay and conversations from different angles. Sometimes the 3D camera can be quite cinematic. The start and end cut-scenes of episode one are very cinematic, but they also use it in loads of other places in the middle of the game. The camera manages to give you angles that please aesthetically whilst also remaining functional.
The graphics themselves are very good. They're not up to the latest Xbox 360 release (the game has to run on WiiWare after all), but they're very good. The PC version allows for much higher resolution and detail, although I can't comment on it because my poor laptop was struggling on the lowest settings. What I can say is that the style is fantastic. All the locales look as you'd expect from previous games in the series: a slightly cartoony take on a pirate world. In particular they've done wonders with the characters. The facial expressions and body animations are superb. The highlight is of course Guybrush, who's crazy eyebrows and over the top movements give him more character than he's had in any game yet. There's also some really nice graphic effects. Just like in all Monkey Island games there's a bird's-eye view of whatever Island you're on so you can navigate the various locations. Tales of Monkey Island starts you in one of the areas on the Island so you don't see the map. Then you leave the area and suddenly WHOOSH. The camera zooms up, whips past some fluffy clouds and suddenly you're looking down at the map. It's obvious where they cut the footage together. They zoom out, send a cloud across and change the footage to the map. But I promise you, it's done so fast and with such style that it looks incredible. What a great reveal for the Island's map, and they continue a similar effect in the other episodes.
The difficulty has been tweaked too. The original Monkey Island games came from an era where (in the words of the game designer) they would "try to defeat the player" with their tricks. Of course, Monkey Island fans expect hard puzzles. What we have in Tales is some genius and clever puzzles, but a clever hint system. You can set the hints on a 1-5 scale. The higher the setting, the more Guybrush will drop hints into his lines of dialogue. It's very subtle, and I only once realised I was being given a direct hint. This is a fantastic plan, and allows the hardcore to think the hardest, and the rest of us can relax at whatever hint level we think is most helpful. You can adjust it mid-game too, which is really helpful. Having said that, I didn't find for a large section near the end of episode two the hint system repeatedly gave me the same line (that had nothing to do with what I needed to do) whilst my hints were set to max. It's not perfect, but there have been times when Guybrush has mentioned something that subtley connects stuff in your mind. The other problem is you won't know where to start it at. I found myself leaving it on the default and then knocking it up or down a little whenever I was finding things too easy or too hard. I might settle on a fixed number for the next episode though.
The biggest change is of course the episodic thing. I think it's a fantastic idea, personally. The lifespan is actually pretty good! The first episode took me a few hours (1-4 probably) over the course of four days, which I thought was great. You can easily finish an episode in a single sitting, but it's also possible to do it over a number of days (like I've been doing). Between the five episodes, it should add up to the length you'd expect from a full Monkey Island game, easily. The other advantages of the episodes are things like the cliff-hanger at the end of each episode. In the Sam & Max seasons each episode is a self-contained story, with a few links between them that add up to the climax at the end. In Monkey Island it's much more like a regular Monkey Island game split into five. You couldn't just jump in at episode three and get a good story. You'd be half-way through the game. Those of us who are playing the game as it comes you get a unique experience of having each episode delivered every month, and the cliff-hangers have full effect. Somebody playing the game altogether at the end will get a slightly shallower experience, but a great one nevertheless.
TellTale have implemented a system of free gifts to those who are playing the series as it comes out. No matter if you're playing on PC or WiiWare, you can do some simple challenges to win prizes from desktop wallpapers to 50% off certain purchases from the TellTale store. These gifts aren't very well advertised, but it's a great idea, and they'll all vanish after a while once the series is over.
Curiously, the controls have changed as well. The Sam & Max seasons used a classic mous interface like the old Point & Clicks (Sam walks where you click and interacts with things etc.). For some reason they ditched that idea for Tales of Monkey Island. You have two control options. The first is a mouse-only method, which is horrendous (click and drag in the direction you want to walk). Alternatively you can walk around with WASD or the arrow keys on the keyboard and click on things to interact with with the mouse. This system actually works really well. Controlling Gubrush's movements with the keyboard isn't as infuriating as it was in Escape from Monkey Island thanks to much nicer collision detection. Being able to click on what you want to interact with is also much nicer than Escape's version where you face it and use the keyboard to scroll through a list of interaction options. When you interact with things, Tales doesn't use the old-style verb list. You just click on it. If it's a person you'll talk to them, if you can pick it up you will, if Guybrush just wants to comment on it, he will. This simplicity eliminates fuss, and also prevents you from missing something by not trying the right verb on it. It also makes the puzzles slightly easier, but not so much to ruin the fun. Overall, the controls are quite good, although I'd have liked to have the option of the system used in Sam & Max. By the end of the episode I honestly wasn't thinking about it though.
The game's audio is fantastic. As I mentioned earlier, the voice-acting and music is incredible. The same guys who did the last two games on both counts there. It's got a really high drop-in factor thanks to the ability to save at any point. It even presents you with a summary of what happened last time you played to help you remember. It's replayability is about the same as any other Point & Click game. You won't want to play it again for a little while, but later when the puzzles and story aren't fresh in your mind any more you can replay it to enjoy those two aspects again. The game's innovation is confusing. The game is largely a combination of Telltale's methods with Monkey Island's style, so in that sense there's very little that's new here. On the other hand, this combination is completely new and has never been done before, so you could say it's very innovative.
The build-quality of Tales is generally very high. I found very little in the way of glitches or technical issues (asside from my laptop failing to cope with the game). There was one major glitch where the game completely froze and I had to reload an earlier save, but it only happened the once. Overall, this game is of the highest quality in all respects. The WiiWare version isn't quite as good. The textures are extremely low resolution (as is the rest of the game for that matter) and the audio is very compressed. Many people have been complaining on the forum. Combine that with the fact that the game is a lot cheaper on PC than WiiWare ($35 vs £35 respetively, as it happens) I recommend buying the PC version if your PC will run it.
The big question of course is "Is it better or worse than the old Monkey Island games?" I think this question is unhelpful. It's mostly asked by fans of the originals who are sceptical of anything new. I beg you, put your scepticism away. This game is everything you've been hoping for. Even if I were to compare stories, puzzles and add up every joke, that wouldn't give you a real answer. All you need to know is this: I love this game. I had so much fun with it, and I've only played a few hours of it. This is not Escape from Monkey Island, the game that divides fans on whether it's good or not. Tales doesn't make the same mistakes. Tales is funny, clever, imaginative, atmospheric, cinematic, accessible, interesting and perplexing. Tales is full of charm and great humour. Tales is made by people who really know what they're doing. Tales is Monkey Island.

---SUMMARY---
The Good: +Very funny, +Great dialogue, +Clever puzzles, +3D cinematic take on the series, +Relaxing story/puzzle-driven experience, +Fantastic quality, +Amazing voice-acting, +Great music, +Superb animations and facial expressions, +Great hint system, +The in-jokes for all the fans, +The camera whoosh when you go to the map, +The Doctor's house scene, +The opening to episode two, +It's Monkey Island!
The Bad: -No option for classic mouse controls, -The voice of LeChuck is different (but stil great!), -One big game-killing bug I found, -WiiWare version's low-res & compressed, -WiiWare version's more expensive.
Overall feeling: Good
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---COMPARISON---
Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition - The remake of the original game. HD graphics and the same voice-acting cast as Tales, plus a hint system to help it's evil puzzles. Plus the option to go back to the original version of the game at any point mid-gameplay. Oh, and did I mention this is one of the greatest Point & Click games ever? A true classic. Start your Monkey Island experience here.
Curse of Monkey Island - The third game in the series, Curse updated the series with incredible 2D art and the voice-acting we continue to enjoy in Tales. Ron Gilbert (the series creator) may have stopped working on the series here, but this was a big step forward for the series and is an incredible game.
Escape from Monkey Island - The fourth game. It failed to live up the expectations from after Curse by having a slightly odd sense of humour (focusing too much on in-jokes), weird plot twists, worse graphics and horrid controls. Oh, and did I mention the apalling mini-game? Escape is a good game, it's just the weakest in the series.
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GUIDE - Majora's Mask: Getting Started

2009-04-05T16:24:00.003Z

Majora's Mask rates as one of my favourite single-player experiences in the whole of gaming, and yet it's confusing start, high difficulty and comparatively dull first dungeon put many gamers off carrying on, and they miss out on what Majora's Mask is all about. I get the impression this game was designed for people who'd finished Ocarina of Time and wanted more, because the difficulty is much higher and there's a lot less tutorial. I don't recommend playing this as your first Zelda, but you know yourself better than I do.
This guide's goal is to get you through the opening stages of the game and to poke you in the right direction to get the most out of Majora's Mask.

Dawn of the First Day
You should arrive in Clock Town as a lowly Deku Scrub with a grumpy fairy to help you. Your main objective at this point is to locate Skull Kid and get your Ocarina back so you can be turned back into a human. Tatl suggests a visit to the Great Fairy in North Clock Town. As well as that, poking around and talking to people is a good idea at this stage. You've got three days to complete a very small number of tasks, so relax and explore. I won't tell you information you can find out by talking to people.

Where's the lost fairy?
If it's daytime, check out the Laundry Pool up the steps in the corner of South Clock Town. If it's nighttime then head to East Clock Town.

What do I do with my new power?
Have you tried using it on any large balloons you might find?

Where are the Bombers?
There's one in South Clock Town, one in West, two in East and two in North.

Where's the Observatory?
The entrance is guarded by a hatless Bomber (little kid) in East Clock Town, next to the Mayor's residence.

What do I do with the Moon's Tear?
Have you really spoken to everyone in South Clock Town?

How do I get to the top of the Clock Tower?
Wait until the night of the third day. If you've done all of the above tasks then you should now have access to the Clock Tower.

I've got the Ocarina back and I'm a human again - what now?
Now your options open up to you. You can head straight for the first dungeon (following the main story) if you like. For that, leave Clock Town via the gate in the south and head straight across the field until you reach the swamp. Alternatively you can start doing side-quests now your a human again. I highly recommend doing the Bomber's hide-and-seek again very soon, because that gets you their notebook, which is invaluable. Feel free to talk to anyone else in Clock Town now you're human. A lot of people will talk to you differently now and side-quests will open up. Remember that more than half of this game is about the side-quests and story, not just the dungeons. Enjoy the characters and the story, and strive to solve everybody's problems; you'll be well rewarded. Don't be too hasty to finish the dungeons.Besides, you want to get every single mask in the game to get the best ending (and to make the final boss a lot easier), so certainly don't try to finish the game before you've got them all! Want somewhere to start? How about the Mayor's residence?

How do I save my game?
You can't save your game until you're a human again. It's a pain, but hopefully the above challenges shouldn't take too long. You can save in two ways. One way is to play the song of time on your ocarina to travel back to the dawn of the first day. This saves all your quest items (for example, it would save your ocarina but not your cash, your bow but not your arrows). If you ever quit without saving, you'll be returned to the last dawn of the first day.
The other way of saving is to find an owl statue. There's one of these at the foot of the Clock Tower. Hit it with a sword to activate it, then talk to it. It lets you save and quit the game, remembering the exact time and place you're at, as well as keeping all your items and cash. However if you load that save but then quit without saving then it will still return you to the last time you saved by playing the song of time. Remember to go find another owl statue if you don't want to do that.

How do I keep my money?
Have you found the bank in West Clock Town?

What do I do in the swamp?
This section should be fairly straight forward if you enter the first building you see, which is the ferry service. That'll point you in the direction you need to go and simply follow what people say until you reach the Deku Palace.

What do I do in the Deku Palace?
Dekus are allowed inside, but not humans. First go to the King's chamber and talk to the monkey. After that if you're still not sure what to do, go to one of the side areas you were told not to go to. Avoid the guards and reach the end. If you went in the correct one you'll find a hole in the ground. Inside there is a man who sells beans. Grab some beans and bottle some water from the pond in the corner.

Where to I plant the beans?
From outside the Palace walls, follow the lilly pads to the right. Then follow the trail of Deku flowers.

I've got the song, what now?
From outside the Palace walls there's a Deku flower that flies you up to a hole in the wall on the right. Follow that trail. Play the song as a Deku when you get to the place of worship.

I'm stuck in the temple!
My guide ends here, but I have several tips for you. First, make sure you have enough time. If you've spent ages doing the rest of the swamp section you may not have enough time to finish the temple. There's some time tips below, but a good idea is to go back to the dawn of the first day if you're not sure. You can warp straight back to the owl statue anyway.
General Zelda strategies include killing enemies and lighting torches with fire. If you're struggling to light torches, use Deku sticks. You can also fire arrows through fire to do it long range. Shoot an arrow at the yellow diamond with an eye on it.

I can't finish the temple in three days!
It is possible, but I agree it's hard. If you need more time, there's a few things you can do. The most straight-forward is to play the song of time backwards, which slows down time hugely. If you're still struggling, a side quest will help. Talk to the music man in the Laundry Pool at night time. Then on the third day head to the ranch (the path from Termina field just to the right of the path to the swamp). On the far wall you'll find a door to a small area with a grumpy man and a load of tiny chicks. Use the music man's gift here.

HANDS-ON - Alien Hominid

2009-02-02T18:52:00.002Z

---INFO---
Made by The Behemoth, 2004, 1-2 players, for the Gamecube, Playstation 2, Xbox, Gameboy Advance and Xbox Live Arcade.
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Alien Hominid is made by the guys who created Newgrounds, which will likely either make you interested or put you off. It's true that it has the look and feel of a Flash game all over it. However, whilst Alien Hominid did start off as a Flash game (that you can still play for free here), all the console versions have had large redesigns, addressing graphics, level design and even gameplay. Having played the console versions first, the Flash version isn't anywhere near as good, and that's what stops me telling you not to waste money and play it online for free. The consoles releases took a good Flash game and turned it into a great game. Whether you'll want to buy it yourself is a different matter of course.
Alien Hominid is a Run-and-Gun game very similar to the Metal Slug series. You play a small yellow alien who crash lands on planet earth, has his UFO stolen by the FBI and has to fight his way through hundreds of them to get it back. Gameplay has you walking from left to right and enemies appear, often from the sides but occasionally from helecopters above or a number of other places. A single shot from your gun will take down an FBI agent. If you're up close to them you'll attack them with your knife, also killing them in one hit. Occasionally a downed enemy will give you a power-up, which is usually a temporary weapon upgrade (giving you limited ammo before reverting back to your default gun with infinite-ammo) but can occasionally be a shield. You fight your way through hoardes of FBI agents, ducking and jumping their shots (since you die after a single shot too) and shooting them back. As you progress the level changes by giving you different enemies and bosses.
Metal Slug fans will recognise the formula. In fact, almost everything is the same. Metal Slug has the same duck and jump mechanic, the same temporary limited-ammo weapons, the same grenade button, the same close-quarters combat knife, the same optional occasional vehicles and the same principle of big bosses. So with the gameplay playing very similarly to Metal Slug, what's actually different? There's a few small gameplay differences for a start. You jump a lot higher and a lot faster, and can drop down from ledges, both of which increase the game's speed. The biggest difference though is the graphical style. Whilst both Metal Slug and Alien Hominid are comedic, Alien Hominid uses a very Newgrounds-ish style. The art is a hand-drawn cartoon style, and is admittedly very funny. Your knife attack litteraly cuts an enemy in half in quite a Looney Tunes manner. Enemies move and appear in a way that's funny. The entire style is extremely well done, very slick and really quite funny to watch. It's this charm that's Alien Hominid's main advantage.
In terms of gameplay, one of the biggest differences between this and Metal Slug is that here you die after a single hit. This makes the whole game a lot harder, and you'll be loosing lives a lot faster than in Metal Slug (and lives go quite quick in that). Overall my largest concern is that there might be a lack of variety. Admittedly I only played the first level, but Metal Slug's always thrives on a continuous stream of new locals and ideas, whereas Alien Hominid did little to mix things up throughout the level. I can't say for sure, but that might be one of the game's main weaknesses. There's also the unshakable feeling that this is something low budget. I can't explain it, because N+ is similarly a convert from Flash but I didn't get the feeling about that, and I can see how much has been improved since the actual Flash version of Alien Hominid, but the feeling's still there.
Don't misunderstand me, I really enjoyed my time with Alien Hominid, and it definitely looked like a good game. The issue is that it's too similar to Metal Slug, which is a far better series. If you've already got all the Metal Slug games and still want more, this will please you, and if the artistic style particularly works with you then you may want to find a copy of this/buy it from the Xbox shop. Be aware that the various non-Xbox Live Arcade versions each came out in different regions, so it'll be worth looking at the wikipedia article quickly to determine which you can get in your country. Overall this is a good game, but my suspisions are that a lack of variety and depth will be this game's downfall. I enjoyed playing it, but with Metal Slug on all the same consoles as it, there's no real reason to buy this first. But Alien Hominid is still a good game and an impressive achievement for its developers, and though I don't think it's amazing, I really enjoyed the game and it's fun style.

REVIEW - Braid

2009-02-01T14:12:00.003Z

---INFO---
Made by Jonathan Blow, 2008, 1-player, for Xbox Live Arcade & Windows.
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It's not unreasonable to say that Braid is one of the most original games and one of the biggest Indie games to get such critical acclaim. Because Indie games are made by small teams with more imagination than money, they tend to be more exciting and innovative, if not as high-budget as the latest Halo game. The issue is that Indie games don't get as well-known as mainstream games. The market's changing and it's a lot easier to get Indie games into the public eye (the three current-gen console's shops being very helpful), but it's still surprising that Braid's had the public reaction it has. And for good reason. Braid is a very unique game, from its development process to its gameplay mechanics to its arty style. It's definitely worth a look if you've got a mind for puzzles and want to try out one of the most beautiful and innovative games to hit the public eye.
Braid is a puzzle-platformer that deals with time manipulation. The opening levels have you do very basic platforming, but if you hit an enemy and die you can hold a button to rewind time until you're alive again. You can choose your rewind speed and you can use it for a load of things. As well preventing your death, if you try to jump on something and miss, instead of spending potentially ages in getting back to the position you were in, you can just rewind and try again. It's not a new mechanic by any means (the Prince of Persia: Sands of Time trilogy used it for a start) but the game builds from there. Each level onwards uses a different time mechanic, but always keeping the rewind feature. In the second level you find some objects are glowing green, which means they're immune to any of your time powers. So when you rewind they'll continue to go forward in time. This of course leads to some cool puzzles. On the third level time moves forward when you move forward and backward when you move backward, and the other three levels have equally cool premises.
As a puzzle-platformer, the jumping and timing is never all that hard (and can be retried instantly with the rewind button in any case). The difficulty comes from the puzzles. Getting through the levels is often not that hard, but to complete them (and get to the final level) you need to collect 12 jigsaw pieces throughout the level. Each of these requires thought and manipulation of your time powers to get. Since each level has a theme and a new power, the game eases you in gently, but isn't afraid to make you think. But the hard part is always coming up with the solution and never executing it. Once you've worked out how to get a jigsaw piece, actually getting it will be really easy. And however hard the puzzles get, the solution is always really clever and satisfying. Jonathan Blow did a fantastic job of balancing the levels so you never feel you're re-using the same puzzle, but always exploring new and exciting techniques.
Jonathan Blow has recently become a famous man in the gaming community because of his work on Braid. Whilst a game like Halo has a development team of about 120 people, Braid was made by Jonathan, one artist and three composers. Whilst I disagree with Jonathan on most of his philosophical views about games and making them, I can't deny his creativity. It helps that the rest of his team is also fantastic. David Hellman managed to come up with some of the prettiest graphics I've ever seen in a game, from the stunning backgrounds to the little effects like space-warping and the wrinkles in the rewind process. The composers have done a fantastic job of creating a beautiful and memorable soundtrack for the game, which even plays backwards when you rewind and sounds fantastic both forwards and backwards. Whilst I'm mentioning sound, the sound effects are limited but well chosen, especially the time-related ones. Overall, the build-quality of the entire game is extremely high.
Asside from his strange philosphical views, the other unusual thing about Jonathan's perception of games is his artistic approach, and this can be seen most clearly in the story. The entire game is artistic and beautifully put together, but mainstream gamers will find the story the most alien part of the game. Just like art films like 2001: A Space Odysee, you get elements of plot but the game's "story" is harder to pin down. If you're not looking hard you'll get a simple story about a guy hunting for a princess, but if you examine more closely you'll find some larger over-arching themes. The story's told partly through passages of text between levels, partly through the final level and partly (as with all art games/films) by the game as a whole. There's emotional themes to find in the gameplay mechanics, art style, prop choices and even level structure. In the end how much you like the story will come down to personal choice. Those who just want to be told the story and be happy with that will find the text passages boring, but will probably engage with the clever final level. Those who want to analyse and interpret everything will have fun hunting down the clues and discussing on forums what they think the story really means. I fall slightly in the middle and I think it's slightly too ambiguous for my liking.
It doesn't help that to get all the story you have to embark on one of the most ridiculous side-quests in the whole of gaming. Braid has a bit of a replayability issue. It's lifespan is only a few hours from start to finish, which works (particularly for casual gamers) but if you really enjoy it you'll want something more. There's a speed-run option, but it's hardly a follow up to the logical mind-bending puzzles you played the game for. I'm convinced Jonathan didn't add his infamous stars quest to extend lifespan; he'll have done it for the art, but it's still a little silly. The entire quest is never hinted at and sits as a little easter egg you'll never find it unless you're very lucky/bored or look online. It comprises of finding eight stars across the whole game, hidden in ridiculous places. Whilst some of the tricks used to solve the puzzles are genuinely fun advanced versions of what you've done the whole game (and are therefore fun), some are not. Many of them require perfect timing on jumps and comboing together many jumps and enemies in frustratingly difficult ways. One star requires you to sit still in a certain location for an hour and a half, and another you can only get early in the game if you know it's there. If you miss it, you'll have to erase your save file and start again to get them all. Only then do you get a little extra text for the story and some more written and visual metaphors to think over. I recommend the average gamer doesn't bother. But whilst the game can feel a bit full of itself at times, it is genuinely genius. The puzzles will never cease to amaze you, even when they get harder, and the final level is amazing to watch it unfold.
Braid's difficulty is worth mentioning now I've explained the whole game. As I've said, unless you're going for the stars the actual platforming difficulty is really low. What's going to get you stumped is the puzzles. Whilst the difficulty overall works, the game breaks it without realising. The puzzles range from extremely easy to complex and excitingly hard. You can skip puzzle pieces and come back to them, so you can get better at the game at your own pace. The issue is that you need every single puzzle piece to get to the final level (which you will want to do), you'll have to solve all the puzzles to get the awesome ending, so you'll likely resign yourself to looking up the solutions online just to get to the end. If you didn't need to get every puzzle pieces you could enjoy the ending and then come back for some of the harder puzzles. There's always the stars to come back and get, but the difficulty shoots straight up to extremely hard. Also, the fact that almost all of the stars are hidden off-screen means that you need a guide to point you in the right direction in the first place, which both makes it more likely you'll give in altogether and use the walkthrough and also ranks slightly too high on the unfair-scale to be considered a legitimate part of the game in my books.
Overall, Braid is a fantastic game. It's combination of beautiful presentation, clever puzzles and cool effects makes it a unique and excellent game. I'd recommend it to anybody who likes thinking in games and/or likes time-based puzzles. It's got a fantastic drop-in factor for the casual gamers, since you can jump straight to any point in any level almost instantly. I definitely recommend everyone takes a look. However it might be worth just playing it at a friend's house. It's only a few hours of gameplay with next to nothing else to do afterwards and it comes at a steep price (for a download game). Whether you "get" the story or not is down to personal preference, but I think most people will appreciate the thought and care that's been put into this world. Braid's high quality in some areas only highlights its flaws in some of the other areas, but overall it deserves the high praise it's been getting.

---SUMMARY---
The Good: +Really clever puzzles, +The time powers are awesome, +Amazing graphics, +Beautiful soundtrack, +Amazing last level, +Ambiguous artistic story (if that's your thing), +Smooth difficulty curve until the end, +Innovative, +Easy to jump in and out of, +Makes you smile when you solve a puzzle.
The Bad: -A bit full of itself, -Dull arty story (if it's not your thing), -The difficulty breaks at the end, -Lack of replayability, -Over too quickly.
Overall feeling: Good
-------------

---COMPARISON---
Prince of Persia: Sands of Time - A 3D puzzle-platformer with a focus on using acrobatics and combat to solve puzzles, but with the same rewind idea.
Portal - A first-person-puzzler and one of the best games ever made. Braid uses time manipulation whilst Portal uses space manipulation.
----------------

HANDS-ON - Age of Booty

2009-01-28T18:20:00.008Z

---INFO---
Made by Certain Affinity, 2008, 1-8 players, for the Playstation Network and Xbox Live Arcade.
----------

It's hard to say much about Age of Booty because it's not bad but it just fails to engage me. It does what it wants to do very well, but it doesn't stand up in my mind against similar games. But then I have a niggling feeling that if I had a chance to play this multi-player then it would suddenly come alive, so I don't want to write it off just yet.
Age of Booty is a real-time strategy game involving pirates. The two teams have one or more pirate ships with the capability to sail around, shoot at things and capture settlements. The game plays out on a hexagonal grid. You move your ship by choosing a hexagon on the grid. If your ship moves into a hexagon next to an enemy ship or an enemy or neutral settlement, your ship will open fire. Defeating a settlement makes it yours (after a short capturing time). The first team to capture all the settlements or the team with the most settlements at the end of the time limit wins.
So you send your little ship round shooting things. There's certain tiny settlements that you can raid and destroy for resources. You can also get resources by destroying enemy or neutral ships. Captured settlements produce resources at a steady rate. With your resources you can get upgrades to your ship and upgrades to captured settlements. You can make your ship faster, give it better guns or more health. Each category allows up to three upgrades. With settlements you don't choose which aspect to upgrade but just upgrade the whole settlement. You can see how the whole thing fits together.
The issue is there's not much more than that. You sail around shooting up things and bringing in upgrades. Each team can have more than one ship, so tactics include choosing when to strike on which location. Since settlements can heal your ship, strategic placement is useful. If you die you lose some resources and respawn back at your base, which is usually far away from where you want to be. But where else does the game go? The only difference in levels in the single-player campaign seems to be overall difficulty. There's no mission variation. One of the other issues is the AI on friendly ships. Since each team can have up to four ships, you can have some fun four-on-four battles. But you only get control of one ship. The rest of your team is controller by the computer AI. Whilst they're not bad, it prevents you from making strategically timed strikes.
So my thought is whether the game comes alive more in online multi-player. With eight players in two teams of four and voice-chat among team members, there's the chance for more tactics. But then there's not all that much strategy in the game in the first place. I'd much rather play Advance Wars, a game with multiple units and attacking frontlines. Put simply, I fail to recognise the strategy and longevity of this game. On the other hand, I might be missing something about the multi-player. Still, I recommend Advance Wars, or a full real-time strategy instead of this good but shallow game.

HANDS-ON - A Kingdom for Keflings

2009-01-28T01:24:00.003Z

---INFO---
Made by NinjaBee, 2008, 1-4 players, for Xbox Live Arcade.
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Coinciding with the launch of the new Xbox 360 dashboard and their Mii rip-offs comes this Microsoft published game. They clearly wanted a game to show what could be done with their new community ideas, and put NinjaBee on the job. What we have as a result is Sim City meets Black & White. Whilst it's clearly never going to be as good as either of those in their respective fields, its mixing of ideas and unique style distinguish Kingdom for Keflings from those games, and prohibit immediate comparison and rejection in favour of those games. Kingdom for Keflings is its own little game, and despite being similar to something you've played before, it looks like it has enough promise to stand by its own.
Your goal is to look after a small group of Keflings (tiny people) and help them develop into a huge medieval civilization. The visual style is very cartoony, with the Keflings being tiny little medieval peasants waving their arms at you and wandering about being cute. You are in fact you. Unlike Sim City where you play as a giant, invisible cursor, here you play as a giant, who is by default your Xbox 360 avatar. You can see why Microsoft wanted this made now. You can choose a generic, cartoon medieval giant but with the new Xbox 360 Dashboard there's no good reason for not being yourself. There's something endearing about seeing yourself wandering about a tiny Kefling settlement, picking them up and hearing the comical screams and putting them down elsewhere to do work.
In order to advance your civilisation you need to build things. First you build a town square. To do this you use materials stored in your starting building and a blueprint. You select your blueprint and you have enough materials so you choose where to build it and it appears. You're awarded a second blueprint: a house. But you need more materials. You can teach your Keflings to work by taking them to forests, where they suddenly get the idea to chop down trees, complete with a light bulb above their head. Then you can carry them back to your storehouse, where they'll get the idea that they can take their logs to the storehouse. You can do the same for rocks. It's devastatingly cute.
Once you have enough materials you can start building the house. Buildings aren't just selected and built though. They're built out of parts. A house, for example, is a bedroom, a hearth and a storage area. Each of these have their own wood and rock costs, and are built and positioned individually, and when all three pieces are next to each other the house appears. When placing parts of a building there's a handy guide to show you where you should put them to become part of the building, so you don't have to guess. My house then needed "love", which was a heart I was awarded for a certain task. Once the love had been added, two brand-new Keflings moved in and joined my workforce.
Later in the demo I made a workshop to let me build new things and a lumber mill to convert logs into planks, which my workshop required. I wasn't allowed to do any more in the demo unfortunately. From what I gather your quest of building and expanding continues until you've built a castle, your ultimate goal. Curiously, the game doesn't seem to stop there, which many people have interpreted as a hint of downloadable content to come. It's hard to say from the demo where the game goes and what happens next. I hear you can make buildings like a hospital, school and jousting arena. The purpose of these aren't entirely obvious but I'm sure, like in Sim City, they serve a useful purpose.
The game comes with a nice multi-player mode. Whilst it doesn't have split-screen (a huge mistake), it has online and LAN. The multi-player is essentially co-op, with up to four players building the same kingdom. There's some nice features, such as the drop-in nature. As a host, the other three players can drop in and out at will. If you decide to kick someone out, they'll leave your kingdom. But the game is extremely nice to the kicked out player though. They keep a clone of the same kingdom. From their perspective, everyone else left and they became the host. It's a really nice touch that will prevent disappointment and annoyance.
As I've said, it's hard to tell where the rest of the game comes from. What I saw seemed high quality. The graphics are nice and the artistic direction kept me smiling. The audio is lovely, from cute sound effects to lovely music. The controls are simple enough to get your head round whilst still being functional. Whilst this hands-on is a long way short of a full review, I got to the end of the demo and wanted to play some more, and that's a fairly strong recommendation even if it is based on optimistic speculation.

HANDS-ON - 1942: Joint Strike

2009-01-26T00:02:00.006Z

---INFO---
Made by Backbone Entertainment, 2008, 1-2 players, for the Playstation Network & Xbox Live Arcade.
----------

In an age where Xbox Live Arcade remakes of classic games is popular, 1942: Joint Strike may sound like a remake of the original classic, 1942, first game in the 19XX series. However as well as being an all new game, it uses elements from all the games in the series, making it essentially the sixth game in the series. It's a series that's been getting progressively less popular, but it's hard to determine whether that's because of the decline of the scrolling shooter genre or because of the changes that have been made in the series over the years. The introduction of the health bar in the second game instantly made all follow-ups significantly different from the wildly popular original that made the 1942 name known. What worries me most though is that Backbone Entertainment developed it; not because of my opinion of them, but simply because any developer trying to make a sequel to a high-rating Capcom franchise is going to have a hard task. Backbone seem to get give titles from Sega and Capcom a lot nowadays, suggesting that they're either good or cheap. Since their latest release was Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix, I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt and have a look at their take on the 19XX franchise.
Each game in the series added more to it, which means Joint Strike is very different from the original 1942. The second game, 1943 added the health meter and health-draining special attacks. Joint Strike seems to be based mostly on the fourth game, 19XX, which added three planes to choose from (the same three that are in Joint Strike). It also added the three main weapons and the scoring system that are the same in Joint Strike. But enough about the history, how does it play?
Joint Strike is a vertically scrolling shooter, like the rest of the series. You pilot a lone World War 2 plane fighting against reams of fictional enemies. Enemies fly on screen, shooting at you and you've got to take them down and avoid being killed. Joint Strike gives you a few power-ups that'll appear after taking down certain enemies. Strangely, these power-ups cycle between the various upgrades as they float around the screen, allowing you to decide which you like. I'm not sure if that works or not. Since there's only three powers, you just choose the one you like or the one that suits the level the best and stick with that one. Choosing the same power-up multiple times will upgrade it, but choosing one of the other two will bring you down to the base level. You have a charge shot by holding down the shoot button, but it's exactly the same for each weapon, which is disappointing.
As usual, you score at the end of each level is totaled up, including bonuses picked up mid-level and how close you were to each enemy when you killed him. Various multipliers are compared and you're given a score, which roughly equates to how good you were. You can play single-player or co-op, and you can perform some joint special moves in co-op mode, which are kinda cool. You can play co-op with someone online, which is a really nice feature. Frustratingly, the only difference between the difficulties is the number of lives you start with, which is really annoying since I enjoy the actual game getting harder with the enemies and their firing waves. Joint Strike is reasonably easy, or at least the first level was. The enemies flew on and off without too much difficulty. The health bar lets you make a lot of mistakes and get away with it, which somewhat diminishes the sense of risk. If you do die you get a power-up back, so that's only an inconvenience if you'd upgraded it. It's an altogether more relaxed game than the one-hit-kill scrolling shooters, which will please some people but not me. The lack of unlockables and other game modes isn't that impressive either. You don't get much for your money, especially considering the difficulties are all the same really.
The end of the first level is worth mentioning. After taking an a genuinely enormous plane, shooting at me from all angles (which was much more fun than the rest of the dead-easy level), it proceeded to disable my weapons and chase me downwards through most of the level. Regular planes formed unmoving angled obstacles that you have to avoid at short notice whilst the enormous plane continues to creep towards you. It's fun for a good 30 seconds, but the lack of difficulty's still really dissappointing.
Maybe I'm just used to impossible scrolling shooters like Ikaruga, but good as the basic gameplay may be, the lack of difficulty variety and complete lack of other modes makes me not all that inclined to get the full game. With so many changes to simplify the gameplay, it may be great fun to play through once, but after experiencing the fun levels themselves, there'll be no good reason to come back. There's no hard-to-get weapon combo to reach for and no way of making the simple bosses more impressive and harder to dodge. If you can't make it to the end of the game on the easiest difficulty, you'll enjoy this game because it'll give you something to reach for. I won't insult you for not being skilled enough, because every gamer is of a different skill level. I just think this game is ill-suited to most gamers looking for something other than a single play-through of a short, yet entertaining game.

REVIEW - N+

2009-01-21T16:48:00.005Z

---INFO---
Made by Metanet Software & Slick Entertainment, 2008, 1-4 players, for Xbox Live Arcade.
----------

Once again Xbox Live Arcade has provided a cheap and welcome home for an innovative game. N+'s greatest flaw is that you can get its predecessor, N, for the PC absolutely free, and naysayers ask why you'd spend £6.80 on a port of what is literally a free flash game. But I feel that's missing the point. Just because a game's made in flash doesn't make it bad, it just makes it cheap. But it's often the developers with more imagination than brains who impressive me most. I'll happily pay that tiny price to play N+ on my Xbox 360, in the same way that I might donate to the free version. In the end, you get an awful lot for your money.
Put simply, N+ is a 2D platformer that gives you ninja-like jumping abilities and asks you to traverse increasingly dangerous rooms as you progress through the game. The only story is a self-parodying comedy introduction and the game sports largely black & white graphics, with levels being made up of grey walls drawn together into mazes and platforms, then littered with enemies and obstacles. Your little stick-man can jump really quite high, and his greatest asset is his wall jump. By pressing the control stick towards a wall, you stick to it and slowly slide down. Jumping whilst like this will propel you away from the wall at the angle of your choice. With this power you can wall-jump between walls, or even up a single wall. The controls take a little getting used to, but after not too long you'll be able to pull off masterful stunts. By gauging your speed and angles you traverse the levels like a crazed insect, avoiding insurmountable odds. Your stick-man becomes a physical extension of your mind. He does precisely what you want him to.
That's not to say N+ is easy. Whilst most players will get to grips with the controls, and experience will turn a press of the jump button into a precisely judged leap, the level design will continue to make you sure the game is impossible to finish. With such accurate controls must come challenging levels. Each level is completely unique (a feat not to go without credit) and might require you to jump along a series of small platforms, or go through a maze avoiding moving enemies, or outwit homing rockets by leading them into walls, or time breaks between cover whilst avoiding lasers, or make your way to switches to open doors. The list is endless.
Each level appears to you and you instantly devise a rough strategy. Pulling it off is more of an issue. As you play you realise which jumps will work and which need to be changed. The game's habit of littering bombs around their stages often restricts where you can jump to and from. When you die, you need only press A twice and you're retrying the level. This ability to move from having failed to "one more go" in less than a second gives the game a huge level of addiction. Completing a level moves you straight onto the next level without asking you, tempting you to keep playing with the sight of yet another ingeniously designed level. But failing levels will always be frustrating for a number of reasons.
Levels come in sets of five, and completing the set unlocks the next set. Your main objective in each level is to get to a button, which opens the exit. Occasionally they're together, but more often you're sent across the map for the button and then back again to get to the goal. There's a constantly decreasing timer on-screen. Little gold squares (called gold) are all over the level. Collecting one of these boosts your timer by 2 seconds or so. They're often positioned nicely to keep your time up, such as on platforms you have to jump over, or huddled together in groups. But sometimes they're off the beaten path and require a little extra skill to get to. Your time bar covers the whole set of 5, so you have to keep it up. It also doubles as your score once you've finished the set, so the more advanced players will go for the harder to reach groups of gold.
The frustration comes from levels being in a set of five. The levels themselves are designed to try require multiple tries to complete. That wouldn't be so bad, but if you've struggled through three or four levels, giving up on the last one(s) feels very depressing. Most levels take only a minute or two to do, but you need to multiply that by the number of times you fail (plus one). A set of 5 can take anywhere from 5 minutes to a couple of hours, depending on how obsessive you are. Levels that once took you an hour of practise eventually take 5 minutes, so it is still possible to advance through the game by playing it in 10-minute segments, making the drop-in factor vary from person to person. But the indisputable fact is that the endless supply of punishing levels, frequent dying, increasing difficulty and the ability to end up with not enough time to do the later levels by doing the early ones too slowly, means that you will get frustrated by N+. Whilst I'd like to recommend that everyone play this game, it does get very hard quite quickly. However, a less skilled gamer can still beat the game by sheer persistence. It's not a gameplay style for everyone, but there's something undeniably fun about the game.
Watching your ninja bound round the room is always fun, but Metanet, in anticipation of the frustration to follow, made sure that dying was entertaining too. If you explode then your little stick-man limbs fly off in different directions, often hitting more bombs and causing a chain reaction. If you get electrocuted or die some other death that leaves you in one piece, your body will flail about rag-doll style. It's a really nice touch to incorporate a decent 2D physics engine into when you die, and frequently makes you chuckle, even when it's the thousandth time you've died level. The main enjoyment comes from the level design though. Each level is cleverly built, either in terms of aesthetics or gameplay. Looking at a new level is likely to make you smile or laugh at how impossible to complete it looks.
As well as the single-player mode there's a bunch of other things to do. There's three multi-player modes that push the gameplay. All three modes can be played with up to four players both online and on a single console. The race mode plays as first to the goal wins. They play on their own specially designed levels. You can't interact with each other, but it's funny to watch your friends blow up and die. After dying you respawn after a pause, so you don't instantly lose but it's a huge time delay. The survival mode gives each player a time bar and the challenge is to stay alive the longest. The issue is that the respawn idea is still active, so whilst there is a time penalty of five seconds each time you die, the winner is usually the person who picked up the most gold at the start of the level.
The co-op mode is extraordinary though. Like the other two multi-player modes, co-op plays on specially designed stages, each encouraging team work. For example, you could spawn in the middle with the goal at the top of the map and the button at the bottom. Levels often have each player spawning in separate sections and requires them to use switches to open doors for their friends. If you find someone reasonably good at the game you can have a lot of fun pulling off levels flawlessly or cleverly. There's no respawn in this mode, like single-player, so dying is often a mistake, unless your job was to clear some bombs for your friend to pass through. The only frustrating part is on the occasions one of you is given a much tougher challenge than the other. It's still a frustrating game!
One of the game's strengths is its lifespan. The game comes with 250 single-player levels, 50 co-op levels and loads of race and survival levels as well. You can also get three add-on packs (two of them cost £1.70 each and one for free) each with about 150 single-player levels, 50 co-op and some extra race and survival levels. In terms of value for money, you're getting a lot. As if that wasn't enough, there's a full level editor, allowing you to create your own levels for use in any of the four gameplay mode. It's really easy to use and is quite flexible. It doesn't take long to make a reasonably clever level, and you'd be surprised how easy the creative part is too. Try making some survival levels without gold to have a real test or surviving. The game has endless replayability, assuming you don't get so frustrated you give up on it. Disappointingly, there's no way of sharing your levels online, which is a serious missed opportunity. You do get leaderboards (and you can watch other people's replays, even if you can't save your own, grrr) and achievements, so there's plenty to do.
The graphics are simplistic but extremely smooth and stylised. Everything looks slick, from the curves or angles on the various enemies to the smooth arc of the homing rocket's trail to the stylistic explosions to the puffs of smoke when you land or jump. The simplistic but slick presentation adds a lot to the game's charm, from the gameplay graphics to the menus and animations. The game comes with a techno soundtrack. It's ok but it'll get annoying in long play sessions since it loops quickly, and will only add to the frustration. I recommend you rip a CD to the 360's hard drive and play that instead. Something soothing might help. The sound effects are spot on, if limited and repeated.
The game's build-quality is near perfect, but with a few flaws. There's some glitches, but they're almost exclusively limited to during the dying animations, so they're more humourous than annoying. What is annoying though is the game periodically fails to save, completely randomly, often forcing you to replay sets of levels you've already completed. I've heard other people all round the web complaining as well, so it's not just me. It doesn't happen often, but when it does it's extremely annoying. But then you give in and do them again anyway 'cos it's fun and addictive. Lastly, the online modes have a little lag as well, which is a shame.
N+ isn't going to change your life and it didn't get everything right, but despite it's frustration, it's a really fun and satisfying game. I haven't seen many games with controls so perfect and consistent. Once you know the ins and outs of the system it's a real joy to see your crazed ninja pull off the most ridiculous stunts whilst obeying your every command. Despite the frustration, there's something special about this game. If you can take the punishment and don't mind spending £6.80 for the upgrades in the console version then this is really, really worth the money, especially in terms of the size of the content. Sure, I may hate it, but I love it at the same time.

---SUMMARY---
The Good: +The ninja wall-jumping, +Perfect controls, +Fun deaths, +So many levels, +Every level's different, +The simplicity and style, +The co-op, +Level editor, +So many levels and modes, +Downloadable levels too, +Really addictive and somehow always fun, +The homing rockets, +You can dress your ninja up in different skins that you can unlock, including Gordon Freeman and Phoenix Wright!
The Bad: -Very frustrating, -Gets hard quickly, -You'll end up doing some levels hundreds of times, -The saving bug, -No way of sharing custom maps, -Online lag, -Getting to the fifth level in a set of five having spend an hour on the fourth level and discovering you haven't got enough time to complete it and having to do the whole set again.
Overall feeling: Good
-------------

---COMPARISON---
N - N+'s predecessor for the PC. Works in Mac and Linux too (though I haven't got the Linux release to work yet). It lets users submit their own levels (including the fun "Don't Do Anything" catagory, where the game throws the ninja round without you having to do a thing), and is constantly being updated. Graphics aren't anywhere near as pretty though and you don't get the 360's levels and multi-player will be different. Also I don't think the physics and controls are quite as perfect as N+, which is one of the game's true strengths. On the other hand, it's free!
N+ for DS or PSP - Not as pretty, but essentially the same game. Two new multi-player modes, Tag and Domination. And of course, it's portable, which may work better for this type of tiny-level gameplay.
----------------

HANDS-ON - Sonic Unleashed

2008-12-18T13:49:00.003Z

---INFO---
Made by Sonic Team/Dimps, 2008, 1 player, for the Xbox 360, Playstation 3, Wii and Playstation 2.
----------

Sonic hasn't been doing too well for quite some time now. Since the series joined the third dimension it's yet to produce a game of the quality of the original five classics. Sega are well aware of this, and now routinely attempt to re-introduce the series. "Sonic the Hedgehog", 2006's title with the same name as the original game, completely failed to reach any sort of quality. Taking the formula from the average-but-occasionally-fun Sonic Adventure series, Sega made it even more glitchy to play and took all the fun away. Meanwhile, Sonic's been a hit since he moved onto Nintendo's handheld platforms, with highly rated games for the Gameboy Advance and DS. After years of fans screaming for a Sonic game that feels like the original classics, Sega did their best to comply.
The result is Sonic unleashed, an unfortunate game that shows so much promise and then falls flat on it's face. The game is split into two sections: playing as Sonic in levels inspired by his classics, and playing as his werehog alter-ego. Reviewers have almost universally detested the werehog levels. They seem to play like a hack-&-slasher with platforming, a concept that's never really inspired me. Don't even get me started on moaning about the concept of Sonic as a werehog. Truth be told though, I've only had a chance to play the regular Sonic levels (the daytime levels, since he's only a werehog at night), so trust the universal agreement on the night levels being rubbish and join me at a look at what's easily the best Sonic gameplay on a console since the megadrive.
The daytime levels mix classic 2D Sonic gameplay with gameplay more in line with the Sonic Adventure series, though thankfully heavily modified. For these sections the camera sits behind Sonic as he races forward. Your job is to avoid various obstacles and traverse the level successfully. The controls are simple and straightforward, which is a great idea. You can jump, duck (or skid if you're running fast), dodge side to side or use a homing attack. The dodging is done on the 360 with the left and right bumpers, which is lovely and simple. The Wii version's done less well by asking you to hold the trigger and then move the normal movement thumbstick, but oh well. The homing attack of Sonic Adventure infame has been seriously improved. Pressing it does roughly the same thing: it sends Sonic shooting into the nearest enemy or point of interest (such as a spring). Sega quite rightly decided back with Sonic Adventure that Sonic's traditional attacking method of jumping on enemies heads is harder to do in 3D at sonic's speed. Whilst it's still an option here, it's really not worth thinking about. Here you can simply jump towards the enemy and press X to fly into them and destroy them. The improvements are largely that it's an awful lot easier to use. A target appears on an enemy or object when you can use it, and the range and angles from which you can use it are greatly increased, and yet it never homes in on the wrong thing. This is such a blessing after Sonic Adventure's haphazard sometimes-working attack that would frequently throw you off cliffs or into the wrong enemy.
The 2D sections use exactly the same control scheme except without the sidestepping. Similar to Mario Galaxy's method, Sonic Unleashed shifts you into 2D here and there throughout the level seamlessly. The camera switches perspective and you find yourself running to the right. You're actually locked into two dimensions, you can't move forward or backward. Yet the fact that you're now running in a different direction never becomes an issue, even at high speed. The thumbstick accepts that most people will keep holding up on the thumbstick, despite now running to the right. The whole thing feels completely natural, and the camera shifts at high speed are never an issue. It's quite impressive really. The gameplay here is very reminiscent of the classic Sonics, but the use of the same objects and the homing attack mean you don't have to rethink anything in these sections.
What we have here is the basis for an extremely good Sonic game. The 2D sections are not just like the old Sonics, but the daytime levels as a whole are in the spirit of them perfectly. The 2D controls aren't quite as tight when you slow down (but for good reason) and you'll never be jumping on enemies heads, but it's so much more in the spirit than other recent Sonic games. The levels focus heavily on speed. Sonic builds momentum the longer he runs for, rewarding fluid runs through the level similar to the Mirror's Edge mechanic. The levels mix impressive looking sections that almost play themselves with regular gameplay, just like the classics. There's plenty of routes, with many requiring fast reactions. Sometimes a button combination is shown on the screen, but more often it's a boost ring in mid-air or something else you'll miss if you're not extremely sharp. The harder to reach paths often reward the player with more impressive or more interesting sections of the level, though they quickly converge back onto the main path, again similar to the classics. There's even sections that slow you down on purpose for more precise platforming, such as traversing moving platforms, like in the classics. These rare sections are always in 2D and are reasonably easy, despite Sonic's difficulty at moving precisely at slow speeds.
The graphics on the 360 and PS3 are absolutely stunning and make the levels really pleasing to play. If you do slow down to a halt in the 3D sections, you can explore the environments will full camera control. It's often pointless, but it's a nice touch. Despite discovering that the environments are corridors with invisible walls all over the scenery (makes sense with Sonic's high jump), you can see how detailed the graphics really are. The Wii version will still impress you with what it can push out of the little white box. The classic sound effects are still there, along with some new ones. Whilst Sonic may annoy you during the cut-scenes (I'll talk about this in a minute), he thankfully leaves his "personality" out of the main daytime levels. For the music, Sonic Team have clearly tried to rip-off Mario Galaxy's impressive orchestral score. It's not exactly a conventional style of music for a platformer. But regardless of who came up with the idea first, it makes for some beautiful music.
There are some issues though. The camera, despite it's usual impressiveness, can occasionally get too close. When you're behind Sonic's back you can sometimes be shown far too much wall or floor and not enough of where you're going, and you end up sliding along the walls instead of running through the level properly. It's rare though. The 2D sections also have a camera that's slightly too close and doesn't show enough of where you're going. They've gone for a slightly at-angles camera to help this, but it's still true that taking a blind leap off a high ledge in 2D will likely end up worse than if you'd done it in the classic Sonics. If you know the level well or follow the beaten path then you'll have no problems though. The 360 version has received small criticism for having slightly unresponsive controls, and I can kinda see where they're coming from. Sonic doesn't turn very fast and doesn't handle so well at slow speeds. The Wii version is significantly better in this area, and includes a new powerslide mechanic. This is thanks to developer Dimps, who helped with the Wii and PS2 versions. They worked on the GBA and DS Sonic games, so they know what they're doing.
On the whole the daytime levels are a joy to play, it's just a shame Sega ruined their potential by making three times as many werehog levels. They're nothing to do with Sonic and I'm told (and can easily imagine) that they break the flow completely. You'll end up just waiting to get to the next daytime level. As well as the below-average reviews for the werehog sections, common criticisms of the game included the lengthy and childish cut-scenes, general story and text-based conversation sections between levels. The main issue is that with three times as many werehog levels, they're going to ruin the game however fantastic the daytime levels are. The game has received overall low scores despite almost universal praise of the daytime levels.
So why did Sega feel the need to add the werehog levels? To appeal to a new audience, they said. One reviewer pointed out that in the 90s we didn't need crummy gimmick levels to get our attention and neither do kids today. The classic Sonic games may be old but these daytime levels feel fresh enough. I think Sega have had a hard time because of Mario. When Mario made the jump to 3D Shigsy correctly realised that he couldn't just make Super Mario World in 3D. Gameplay changes had to be made to completely change the game into something that would work in 3D. He ended up making Super Mario 64 and redefining the platform genre. Sega missed this and tried to reproduce the same Sonic gameplay in 3D with Sonic Adventure, and it didn't work. But they know it doesn't quite work and in most 3D Sonic games you'll find some sort of alternate gameplay style to really work in 3D. The issue is, these sections are almost always rubbish and boring. If they made the werehog sections good then I wouldn't object to their inclusion, but as it happens they still haven't worked out how to put Sonic into a slower-paced 3D platformer. Meanwhile they've finally made the real Sonic platformer we all want and refused to give it to us properly. Playing as Sonic during the daylight and racing through ridiculous levels hasn't been this fun since Sonic 3 & Knuckles. It's just a pity 75% of this game is rubbish.

REVIEW - Portal

2008-08-31T22:56:00.007Z

---INFO---
Made by Valve, 2007, 1-player, for Windows, Playstation 3, Xbox 360 & Xbox Live Arcade.
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Despite quietly hiding quietly between Half-Life 2 and Team Fortress 2 in Valve's "Orange Box" collection, Portal received critical acclaim and got a huge fan-base thanks to it's huge innovation, well-built game design an awful lot of style. If you haven't had a chance to play it yet, what you need to know most is that Portal is one of the best games ever made, and one that almost everyone can enjoy.
The idea was originally used in a freeware game called Narbacular Drop, but Valve got hold of the team who made it and turned it into something really special using their Source engine (used in the other games in the Orange Box. The principle of Portal is really simple, but hard to explain with words alone, so instead I'm going to direct you to this video of the game's debut trailer. Once you've watched it, come back to the review.
There, that was a lot better than me explaining all that. The idea is genius, and if that's the first time you've watched that trailer, you're probably already filled with imagination and a smile on your face. If you found it boring, this might not be the game for you. But bear in mind that Portal doesn't just make a game of this simple concept, it adds to it with such quality and love that it becomes a masterpiece.
As you can see, the principle goal is to reach the exit using your portals. The two portals connect and both you and objects can pass through. It can take a while to get your head round the idea of the portals, so the game eases you into the idea really slowly and nicely, with simple puzzles to start with and then ramps you up slowly. You start off with control of just one portal, and after a while you get a second. The puzzles can include walls you can't place portals on, the gun turrets you saw, the cubes, moving platforms and plenty of other puzzle elements. The basics can feel a little hard to get a grip on at the start, but eventually the solution to the puzzle will come to you. Slowly your way of thinking changes and soon you'll be pulling off advanced tricks like shooting portals in mid-air and using the "momentum in equals momentum out" theory to pull of awesome stunts, like at the end of the trailer.
But like I said, Portal isn't just a clever puzzle concept. Valve knew how to make the most of it. For a start there's the presentation. The artistic design is superb. It looks very clean and clinical, which both helps accentuate the puzzle elements, but also works well with the game's story (which I'll talk more about soon). The graphics themselves aren't ground-breaking, but are pretty. There's some pretty reflections and plenty of nice effects to do with the portals themselves. The audio is fantastic. The music's so subtle yet really effective, and the sound effects are perfect, from the bass-pump as you shoot a portal and the whoosh as you fly through it. What works the most is the voice-acting, and this leads me into the game's story.
Despite looking like a simple puzzle level-by-level game, Portal has a surprisingly good story. The genius is how subtle it is. It's kind of like Myst, where at the start you think it's a straight-forward puzzleathon, and bit by bit your own research helps you discover a deeper plot until eventually you know everything. I won't spoil for you what the plot is, because half of the fun is discovering it yourself. When you discover certain things it can be quite atmospheric. The biggest helping hand is the voice-acting. Of who, you ask? The protagonist (character you play as) is silent, and there's nobody else around. The voice-acting actually comes from the computer AI system "GLaDOS" that talks to you frequently throughout the game. Since the premise of the game is that it's a test of some sort, GLaDOS guides you through the basics. The voice is exactly the same as the one in the trailer, so you can already see the appeal. The voice is incredible, and the lines are both humourous and add to the story. GLaDOS develops a character of it's own, as does a few other things you meet, including one or two inanimate objects. It's a tribute to Valve that such a simple and short puzzle game can have such an engaging story and some of the most lovable characters you'll meet in a video game. Indeed, the game goes from being an obscure puzzle game to being a part of Half-Life's larger story (although the story is stand-alone and doesn't require any other Half-Life knowledge).
Yes, Portal has a very short lifespan. You can finish it in about four hours easily. However, it's easily one of the best four hours of gaming you can find. Once you've finished it, you'll find the game has huge replayability. For a start you'll want to play it a load more just to sit there and have fun playing with the portals. It really is addictive and fun to see what you can do with them. Also, there's several things you can do after you've finished. There's a mode where you can play through six of the later levels with altered puzzle elements to make it harder. These basically extend the difficulty of the single-player mode and present you with some real challenges. Or you can complete those levels in their original forms with one of three challenges: least number of portals used, least steps taken and shortest time possible. These challenges start looking like a fun little addition, but quickly become a true test of your skill. If you play through a level using common sense and the standard method you're likely to get a bronze medal for whichever of the three challenges you're doing. The game will tell you what the target is for the next medal. The least portals challenges will have you staring in disbelief as the game tells you that to get gold you need to cut out another five portals of what you thought was a really clever run.

As well as all this there's the achievements, which will push you further and give you more to do. If you're playing it on Windows you can download fan-made level-packs to play, or even play through Half-Life 2 with the portal gun. If you're still bored, how about playing the game again with the director's commentary?
The game's main story mode is fairly easy. Whilst at times reactions are required, the hardest part is the thinking, and even the final level of the game is fairly easy to do. However, once you've finished the main game it gets more challenging. The least-something runs and the advanced maps start where the game ends in terms of difficulty and get progressively harder both in terms of puzzles and reactions. A less experienced player can still have a go at the extra modes and have fun, since the difficulty is largely linked to which medal you want to get. The build-quality is of course exceptional, because the game uses the same engine as Half-Life 2. The physics and portal mechanics work really well and are very consistent, which is useful since they're the basis for the entire game.
All versions of Portal come as part of the Orange Box except for the Xbox Live Arcade version. The Orange Box gets you Half-Life 2, it's two episodic expansions, Team Fortress 2 and Portal. Any one of those is worth paying for by themselves, but getting them all on one disc is amazing. The Xbox Live Arcade version costs a little under a tenner and gets you the full Portal game as well as 14 brand-new levels (which you can of course download free for the PC) as well as different achievements and the ability to do least-something runs on advanced maps as well. If you don't like regular shooting games then get the Xbox Live Arcade version, but if you do then you've got a problem. I'd say the Orange Box is worth so much more than the extra levels on Portal, but if you're really into Portal you can always get them both, like I did!
Portal has become a huge fan-favourite and critical success for good reasons. Not only is it a genius new concept, but it's been pulled off with such perfection. The game develops real character through it's unique story-telling, and both the puzzles and atmosphere & story are fresh, innovative and entertaining. Whether you get hold of Portal as a standalone Windows or Xbox Live Arcade product or get it as part of the Orange Box for Windows, 360 or PS3, Portal is one of gaming's finest experiences. Forget all you think and know about games. Portal is different. If either this review or the initial trailer made an impression on you, go with that, because I promise that feeling of innovation, intrigue and excitement is true to the final product, and only increases as you play.

---SUMMARY---
The Good: +Such an innovative idea, +Always a joy to play, +Wonderfully presented, +Brilliant voice-acting, +Great story-telling, +Addictive, +Loads to do, +So much character to be discovered, +Cheap to get hold of (or part of the great Orange Box pack), +Really challenging extra levels, +Just plain fun.
The Bad: -Main story mode is quite short.
Overall feeling: Good
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---COMPARISON---
Half-Life 2 - The single-player first-person-shooter that uses the engine (and fictional world) as Portal. More of a real game than a puzzler, but one of the best out there. Showing innovation in it's own field and with plenty of multi and single-player add-ons available, this is an amazing game.
The Orange Box - Contains Half-Life 2, Episode 1 & 2 (the single-player add-ons), Team Fortress 2 (multi-player mayhem) and Portal. Worth it.
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HANDS-ON - Worms Open Warfare 2

2008-08-31T17:36:00.003Z

---INFO---
Made by Two Tribes, 2007, 1-4 players, for the Nintendo DS.
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The principle of Worms is extremely simple and addictive. You take a team of worms to annihilate the opposing team(s). It's turn-based so on your turn you move your worm around the 2D landscape, choose a wepaon and aim and shoot. It's easy to get into but has a lot of depth as you choose which weapons to use when, and use experience to judge the angles and wind to get the perfect shot. Worms has been one of the greatest multi-player games in gaming history.
But the legendary franchise hasn't been doing too well recently. After the fantastic older games, the series tried and failed to shift into 3D, and then after a while shifted back to their 2D roots. The game to bring about this change was Worms Open Warfare. Whilst I can't speak for the PSP version, the DS version was developed by some guys called Gamesauce, who got it all wrong. Lack of options, cramped feel and extremely buggy & glitchy. This was a shame, because not only were all the fans waiting for a 2D Worms game again, but the DS seemed like the perfect platform for it. Handheld Worms action sounded perfect, but it didn't work out. That is, until Open Warfare 2 came along.
Again denying the DS version Team 17's expertise, Open Warfare 2 was made by Two Tribes, who have recently won my allegiance with this and Toki Tori. Open Warfare 2 feels a lot more like the classic Worms games from the old day. The first crucial thing to get right is the physics engine and the balancing. Whilst the original Open Warfare felt clunky and glitchy, whilst the recent Space Oddity for the Wii was over-powered for a more mini-game feel, Open Warfare 2 feels just like the old Worms games. It's not exactly like the second generation games (Worms 2, Armageddon & World Party), because it's a different engine, so it'll take a short while to get used to, but it feels fairly consistent and nowhere near as glitchy as the first Open Warfare. I had a number of matches and enjoyed them all. The low resolution DS screen may lead to a little confusion of where the ground is, and most weapons have been slightly powered up, but on the whole you can expect the same fluid, fun action as you got from the second generation.
The second thing to get right is the multi-player. Obviously since Worms is a turn-based games, you can have the full four players by using just one DS and passing it round your friends. This is of course one of the major bonuses with the game, and makes it an instant multi-player classic with anyone. If you want to use more than one DS, it allows for download play, multi-cart or online play for up to four players. I haven't tried either, but I've heard single-cart play can be very laggy. Wi-fi play seems to be void of players, but works better than single-cart. My cousin said it was great when it worked though. In terms of options, the game has all the basics. You can choose your game settings, including time, crate frequency, artillary mode and more. Weapon settings are limited to the number in stock and the turn delay before being allowed to use them. This will come as a huge disappointment to the hardcore Worms 2 audience who love to customize their entire setup and can get endless fun tweaking the settings. On the other hand, it's a lot better than the old console ports of Worms games, which gave you next to no options. You can save all these settings in up to 10ish slots, which at least means you can have some different styles of play saved for some variety.
Mode-wise, the DS version is also kitted out nicely. The training mode takes you through the game step-by-step, so people who are new to the franchise don't have to feel scared. Once you know the basics the puzzle mode is extremely helpful at teaching you tactics. In puzzle mode it's always your turn (so enemies can't fight back) and they throw you a certain task, such as defeating every enemy without moving or making it to the other side of the map. They limit weapons and force you to use them creatively, which really helps you move from a beginner to an expert faster. This is an advantage over older Worms games where you either know the tricks or you don't. The actual campaign mode is similar to campaign mode in previous Worms games. They set up a map with certain weapons and enemies and tell you to beat them. More do-it-your-own-way than puzzle mode, and they fight back too. To summarise, having all the modes in the game means there's something for everyone, and it's a superb way for someone who's never played Worms before to quickly become very good at it.
There's also laboratory mode, which has some mini-games unique to the DS. Thankfully, these mini-games aren't as bad as they are in most games where they tack it on afterwards. These are all based on the main Worms games, just with interesting challenges. For example, a parachute maze where you use the parachute like normal, but blowing into the mic makes you fly up high. It uses the same parachute mechanics and physics as the main game, but with the twist. The other two I played were one where you had to reach a goal by causing explosions to blast your worm along (infinite health) and one where you draw ground and then start the map to guide your worm to the goal.
Overall the game seems like a really nice package. The graphics are cute, and there's some nice FMV cut-scenes here & there. The sounds are classic Worms sounds, including many of the old voice-sets. The music's actually good this time, which is a bonus. There's all the single-player modes, a "quick-match" option, the multi-player (single, multi and online), the option to draw your own flag and even a shop to buy new skins, voices, victory dances, gravestones, map styles, weapons and single-player levels. In short, this is a great Worms package. The hardcore Worms gamers (like myself) will always adore Worms 2 for the ability to customize absolutely everything about the game, and at £5 new, it's hard to refuse. Open Warfare wins over Worms 2 on the single-player modes, the easy learning curve and tutorials for new players, and the ability to play wherever you want. It may not be as good a game as Worms 2, but it's one of the best Worms games ever in terms of features.

REVIEW - Hotel Dusk: Room 215

2008-08-16T22:40:00.007Z

---INFO---
Made by Cing, 2007, 1-player, for the Nintendo DS.
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Cing's previous attempt at breaking into the point-and-click genre was in the form of a near-launch DS game called Another Code. It showed how well the DS suited the genre, and gave a reasonably interesting plot. Problem was it wasn't anything too special, and was soon eclipsed by the DS remakes and subsequent continuation of the Phoenix Wright franchise, which is truly outstanding. Cing boldly continued their goal of bringing high quality point-and-clicks to the DS, and this time got an awful lot of things right. Comparisons to the Phoenix games are hard because the style is so different, but Hotel Dusk not only improves upon Another Code, but is also a fantastic game to play.
Perhaps I should say it's a fantastic game to read. Those not used to the point-and-click genre are often put off by the style. Hotel Dusk is more an interactive book than a game. The vast majority of your time spent playing it will be reading character dialogue. This isn't a bad thing though, because the story and dialogue is so fantastically written. The game is set in 1979, and the story is of an ex-cop named Kyle Hyde, and his search for his missing ex-partner. Hyde now works as a salesman, but helps his boss out with a little unlicensed detective work when clients turn up. He's been sent to Hotel Dusk to do a job, but soon finds things aren't quite what they seem. Not only does he start finding clues to help him on his goal to find his ex-partner, but he also discovers a whole host of complex mysteries and stories relating to the various other guests in the hotel that night. As the night progresses, Hyde ends up doing more and more detective work, looking for clues and asking questions in order to unravel the quickly thickening mystery.
The story is extremely compelling, and hooked me easily. This is helped hugely by the character of Hyde himself. Most of the time, video game heroes are fairly straight-forward do-gooders (Phoenix Wright is a good example), but Hyde is a different person altogether. Despite your best attempts to be nice to everyone when you first enter the hotel, you'll eventually give up and let Hyde have his way. He's very cynical and fairly grumpy, and yet despite your probably bad first impressions, you'll love him by the end of the game. The other characters are similarly interesting. Critics back me up in my thoughts that the characters are extremely well written and are deeper than most of game characters out there. They're helped by some fantastic dialogue. Each character sounds the part, and it's easy to slip into the 70s lingo and become one with the atmosphere. It's never cheesy, but it's certainly different to modern times, and refreshingly so.
The whole game takes place in just one night at the hotel, and as you meet the various interesting guests in the hotel, Hyde forms varying relationships with them. As the game progresses they'll help and hinder you but eventually become crucial to your goal. The game is split up into chapters, each one spanning a certain length of time. The clock ticks on in segments mid-chapter whenever you've completed the present goal. People move around and as they interact with you and each other, the story moves fast. One of the game's innovations is in the conversations themselves. Often characters will say things that sparks Hyde's interest, and you're given the option of popping a question in at that point. If you hold back, the conversation will run on, but choosing to interject gives you the option of two things you can say. Sometimes it's better not to say anything, but it's usually worth speaking up. The issue is which thing to say. Whilst you can't shift the way the story plays out, there are many choices you can make that result in an immediate gameover. Asking the right questions to the right people, and choosing your words carefully can help you avoid getting chucked out of the hotel. Most of the time it's common sense, or a little bit of thinking will see you through, and rarely is it trial and error.
One of the notable points about Hotel Dusk is that of its relative ease compared to most point-and-click games. This is largely because you spend much more time reading than you do making choices. Most of the conversation choices are straight forward (and a gameover never puts you back too far anyway), and when you're doing actual gameplay, most of the time you're being lead through the game by the hand. You're often told exactly what to do and where to go, although not always directly. The game's great at telling you exactly what to do when you're clueless, but it's also great at dropping clues in front of you in a way that's straight-forward to work out, but it's still you who did it. On the occasion the game throws you a real puzzle or leaves you lost for a bit you're likely to find it really hard simply because you're used to things being straight-forward. I think the difficulty's ok overall. I enjoy the story enough that I don't mind the focus being on that, and it rarely felt that the game was treating me like a child, more that I was with the characters as they discovered things.
The gameplay itself is slicky presented. You hold the DS sideways a la Brain Training. During gameplay the right-hand side (the touch screen) displays a top-down map of the location, and the right-hand side displays a 3D view of what Hyde can see. As you press the touch screen in the direction you want to walk, the 3D view shows you what you can see. The game could be done entirely using the top-down map, but it's a really nice touch and adds to the atmosphere immensely. You can examine certain areas of the room, which brings a 3D image of that section to the touch screen, where you can rotate your view and examine anything you can see. The other cool gameplay feature is your notebook, which not only keeps track of characters and other details, but allows you to jot down notes whenever something important comes up that you think you might forget.
Truth be told, it's tempting in retrospect to advise you get a pad of paper and make notes about the plot as you go, because as the game moves on it becomes really hard to keep everything in your head. The silly "quiz to help you remember" at the end of every chapter returns from Another Code, but this time it's actually helpful to help you get things straight in your head. Thankfully, Hyde remembers everything for you, and when something references back to an earlier event, he'll point out the connection to you. Also, due to the way the characters relate to each other in a very realistic, human way, they often fill each other in on things that have been going on. Whilst it's occasionally annoying to repeat the same pieces of information again and again, it's often really helpful for you, the player, and it really does add to the engrossing, realistic characters and story.
Graphically the game is very artistic. The 3D environments are great for the DS, but it's the characters that give the game a real flavour. They're all 2D black & white hand-drawn animations that look wonderful. Take a look at this screenshot. The animations that come as the text moves on are simple but extremely effective at conveying their deep characters. The art adds a lot to the game. The audio consists of very pleasant background music and a good selection of sound effects. The game's lifespan is fairly big actually. You won't feel disappointed. When it comes to replayability, the game demands you play it a second time to get the best ending, though it never tells you there's another ending itself. The frustrating thing about this (and one of the game's few annoyances) is that there's no way to speed up the text. Admittedly if you've got a gameover, any text you've already seen can be printed at double speed, but you really want a "skip conversation" button. Have said that it's annoying, most of the time I found that the slow text actually helped. The text forces you to read it at the speed people would actually talk at, and coupling this with the correctly timed animations means that you get a lot more of a feel to how the character would have said the line, as opposed to speed reading. Quick readers will be frustrated, particularly at first, but I'm tempted to say that the slow text speed was a good move.
The build-quality is really quite high, with everything running smoothly and with no technical issues. Hotel Dusk also uses the DS Rumble Pak. Some might ask why, since there's next to no action in a point-and-click game, but it's used well and it's nice when it happens, so I say well done for a nice touch. The drop-in factor is good as well. Most of the time you can save anywhere, so dropping into the game for five minutes is something you can do easily. On the other hand, if you're half way through an important conversation, there's nothing you can do but close the DS's lid and put it on charge until you get back.
It's not a perfect game. I've already mentioned a couple of annoyances, including the way you have to replay the game to get the best ending (or look on youtube). The only real problem I have with the game is that on some occasions the game won't let you do something until you've completed a different task, despite the fact that nothing's changed. I can cope with not being able to pick up some objects until they're needed, because it doesn't happen often and it's usually obvious that you need them, but sometimes you need to talk to one character before another will talk to you, despite being given both objectives at once. There's very few of them, but on the occasions the game fails to convey what you need to do, or drops in a really hard puzzle, you can get a bit annoyed. Luckily it's usually not long before you've figured it out or looked at a walkthrough. I recommend the spoiler-free on I found on gamefaqs.com.
On the whole, Hotel Dusk is a joy to experience. If you're into reading and want a good story, this is one of the best places to come. The characters are so well-written, the dialogue's addictive and the whole atmosphere is just wonderful. The game shines with quality, thought and care. Despite needing a youtube trip for the final bit of closure, there's great satisfaction to be had in finally working out what really happened when you piece together everything you've discovered. But you'll be sad to leave Hotel Dusk when the game's finally over.

---SUMMARY---
The Good: +Deep characters, +Interesting story, +Great character art & animation, +Keeps moving, +Is usually straight-forward, +Very well thought out, +Kyle Hyde himself.
The Bad: -Occasional frustrations when it wasn't quite as well thought out, -Play it again for a slightly happier ending.
Overall feeling: Good
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---COMPARISON---
Another Code - Very similar in style but lacking the charm of Hotel Dusk. No cool animations, no amazing character depth or atmoshpere, and a more teenage-fiction story. Still worth playing through, just don't expect it to be as good as this.
Phoenix Wright - A slightly comedic lawyer/detective series now 4 games strong. With extremely high quality and having nailed the "sudden-revelation" and "I'm-so-clever" emotions, the Phoenix games are well worth playing through.
----------------

HANDS-ON - Professor Kageyama's Maths Training

2008-06-17T13:56:00.002Z

---INFO---
Made by Jupiter, 2008, 1-16 players, for the Nintendo DS.
----------

Following the flow of Brain Training rip-offs comes Maths Training from Jupiter, who also did the lovely Picross DS. Unfortunately Maths Training isn't so lovely.
The premise is to train your maths skills using something called "the hundred cell method", which Prof Kageyama devised himself. You get a 10x10 grid with numbers lining the top and bottom and you're asked to fill in the number that's the answer to the column & row title added together. Hope that makes sense. It also works with subtraction, multiplication and division. It throws them at you quick-fire, one after the other (so the grid's only really there for show, and the division doesn't even use the grid to make things easier). You hold the DS sideways and write the answer on the touchscreen. Your score is simply how many you got right.
Apart from 16-player races, that's about it. It's not that it's a badly made game or anything, it's just boring and there's nothing to do. Do some maths on the internet if you really want to.

HANDS-ON - Picross DS

2008-06-17T13:11:00.003Z

---INFO---
Made by Jupiter, 2007, 1-2 players, for the Nintendo DS.
----------

Like most people reading this (I assume), I didn't know how to play Picross when I downloaded this demo. Now I do and I love it. What better advert for a game can there be?
After Mario's Picross for the SNES/Gameboy was a commercial failure outside of Japan, Jupiter and Nintendo hid their talent from the world until the market was right again: the Nintendo DS. The DS is full of casual games like this. If you can get Sudoku onto a DS cart, you can do Picross.
Picross is in fact very similar to Sudoku. You play it with a square grid and numbers at the edge that give you hints at where to fill in squares and where to leave them blank (or put crosses in them so you don't forget to leave them blank). Like Sudoku the puzzle set up so that filling in some square allows you to fill in others until at last the entire gird is filled correctly and you can see a picture in it! Basically, if you like Sudoku you'll like this.
Clearly Jupiter's continued work in Japan has done them favours, because Picross DS has a fantastic amount of charm. The graphics and controls have a really pleasant, clean feel to them, and the music is relaxing. There's a tutorial that explains how to play the game in a really easy-to-follow way. It also says "Well Done!" every time you do anything right, which just makes me happy. :-)
Once you've completed a puzzle it shows a picture, so the DS colours it in and animates it for you, which is really cute as well. It's just very fun and relaxing to play, which is perfect for the type of game it is.
In addition there's a number of different modes and difficulties. There's also the option to make your own puzzle and send it to your friends, and there's also the option of downloading more puzzles via Wi-fi (although annoyingly there's only two packs available in europe, compared to twelve in America). Lastly, there's multi-player and Wi-fi multi-player support, where making mistakes freezes your board for a few seconds whilst your opponenet carries on the race to the finish.
This is a really lovely, simple package. If you want an electronic version of Picross I can think of no better game.

HANDS-ON - 42 All-Time Classics

2008-06-17T12:44:00.003Z

---INFO---
Made by Agenda, 2006, 1-8 players (online), for the Nintendo DS.
----------

Handhelds and mobiles have always been a good market for classic board games. Whether it's Monopoly or Chess, games like these are fun to play in short bursts on the go, and developers know this. So surely 42 of them all crammed into one tightly made package should be a winner, right?
Yeah, actually, right. The game has been praised for the diverse selection of games, simple interface and the tweakable rules as well as the portable pick-up-and-play mentality and the offline and online multi-player modes. There's chat functions (very similar to pictochat) and all sorts of little extras. There's unlockable games (as in some of the 42 require unlocking) and 30 missions to play as well. There's plenty to do.
I got to play checkers (draughts), which is hardly a great way to do a hands-on, but I can say I certainly enjoyed the interface, controls, graphics and simplicity of the whole thing. The pictochat clone was nice as well, and I can imagine the game working very well as a complete package, especially the multi-player.
This is a really short hands-on. All that's left is to write out the list of games.

Card Games: Old Maid, Spit, I Doubt It, Sevens, Memory, Pig, Blackjack, Hearts, President, Rummy, Seven Bridge, Last Card, Last Card Plus, 5-Card Draw Poker, Texas Hold 'em Poker, Nap, Spades & Contract Bridge.
Board Games: Chinese Checkers, Checkers, Dots & Boxes, Hasami shogi, Turncoat, Connect Five, Grid Attack, Backgammon, Chess, Shogi, Field Tactics & Ludo.
Variety Games: Soda Shake, Dominoes, Koi-Koi & Word Balloon.
Action Games: Bowling, Darts, Billiards, Balance & Takeover.
Single-player Games: Solitaire, Escape & Mahjongg Solitaire (as in the match-the-tiles tower game).

HANDS-ON - Big Brain Academy

2008-06-17T12:15:00.003Z

---INFO---
Made by Nintendo, 2006, 1-8 players, for the Nintendo DS.
----------

From what I can see, Big Brain Academy is very similar to Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree. There are some important changes, so it's worth reading this short hands-on article, but it's worth reading the Wii Degree review as well to get a good idea of how this game works.
Big Brain Academy has been described as Brain Training for children, which is fairly accurate. This idea of playing mini-games to keep your brain fast seems to be quite new (in video games at least) and has seemed to give developers an excuse to churn out mini-game titles (which certainly aren't new in video games) and label them as educational. Regardless of how you see it, Nintendo wisely recognised that little children wouldn't find Brain Training all that fun, so they made a more children orientated version. It's still very similar, in that you play minigames and then take a test, which chooses some games for you to do and gives you an overall score, telling you what to work on. The line between brain improvement and "beating your high score" is a very hard one to judge, but let it never be said that it's not fun.
Big Brain Academy presents you with 15 games, split into five catagories, much like the Wii Degree. Thankfully the games are different on the DS (though since the Wii version came second, it'd be the one to take the blame if they were the same). The games are suited to the touch screen. Each game asks you to work out something quickly, and then presents you with a harder one. For example, one game requires you to memorise numbers that appear on the screen. It flashes a two digit number for a fraction of a second, then you type it in. Then it flashes a longer number and so forth until the time runs out. You're measured in the end in the arbitary units "grams" (don't ask) and are given a grade and a label. On my go at the demo I got 1206 grams, a B- and was an investor. Strange. Still, it's addictive fun.
All the games are made well and are pleasing both to watch and listen to. Whilst this may be little more than a mini-game package, it does at least have that quality Nintendo presentation. One of the draws has got to be the multi-player mode, which I've given a whirl. Up to eight players can play using just one cart, which is impressive. Everybody goes through the games simultaneously with the highest score winning. It's simple, but oh so fun, especially in large groups.
You should know by now what to expect from this game. Whether you buy it is up to you. There doesn't seem to be an awful lot to do, but then there wasn't in Brain Training either, and that was a runaway success. If you feel like a handheld version of the Wii Degree, a less clinical version of Brain Training or just a silly multi-player game, this'll be a laugh.

HANDS-ON - Tetris DS

2008-06-17T11:44:00.003Z

---INFO---
Made by Nintendo, 2006, 1-10 players, for the Nintendo DS.
----------

Most people tend to have two reactions to Tetris coming to their latest console. The first is "woo Tetris!" and the second is "how have they ruined it this time?" Both these views are justified. Tetris is, and always will be amazing, but almost every new version of it tries to do something to the formula to expand upon it and they almost invariably fail. Luckily Tetris DS is one of the better Tetris games for a while for a number of reasons.
The first is simple: Ten players with one copy of the game! If you get enough people together, this is frankly awesome. The game also has online Wi-fi support, though I haven't had a chance to test it yet.
But most of the fun comes from simpler additions. They've added a new feature to Tetris that actually makes things better! This alone makes the game worthy of praise. The idea is the hold box. At any time you can press the shoulder button and the current falling block will move to the hold box. Next time you use the shoulder button you'll swap the current falling block for the one in the hold box. You can't just swap indefinitely, so you can't cheat with it, but it's a huge strategic advantage. Ever found yourself with a block you really don't want to put anywhere? Swap it out! Want to save one of the long blocks for when you really need it? Keep it in the hold box! It works well and helps speed up the game through less frustration.
There's the usual host of new and innovative tetris variations, most of which are rubbish but a few of which are fun. A few of them are multi-player as well. In multi-player regular tetris they use the now standard idea of pushing blocks onto your opponent's screen from the bottom whenever you score multiple rows at once. Also on multi-player tetris they've added the option (thankfully) of items. These are actually quite fun to use. They're regular Mario-style items (I'll come to the Marioization soon) and are collected as you go. Using an item can have a good effect like clearing part of your board or giving you only the long blocks for a while, or the item can attack your opponent, such as by speeding them up really fast. The items can be turned off, but it's a credit to Nintendo that they're fun to play with.
As I mentioned, since Nintendo made this version of tetris, they've injected Mario everywhere. They've given the game a distinctly NES flavour (to go with the retroness of Tetris itself) and have Mario and other NES themes (Zelda, Metroid, Ice Climber, Balloon Fight etc.) all over the place. You frequently get NES backgrounds, as well as Nintendo music. Not only is it remixes of Nintendo music, but it's really good remixes as well!
From what I've seen, Tetris DS is a really good package. 10-players with one copy, online support, regular unaltered Tetris, some really good additions to standard Tetris, the usual selection of wacky variations and Nintendo plastered all over it. What more could you ask for? If you have a DS and like Tetris, get this game.

REVIEW - Ratchet & Clank

2008-06-17T09:36:00.005Z

---INFO---
Made by Insomniac Games, 2002, 1-player, for Playstation 2.
----------

With bad platformers being common as mud, it takes a little convincing to make the proposition of another platformer featuring anthropomorphic animals and robots sound like a good idea. What's particularly strange is that Ratchet & Clank doesn't manage to convince you until you're quite a way through the game. A lot changes as you play it, which makes it an interesting game to review, but overall it gets good marks, don't worry.
First impressions are poor though. All cut-scenes (but noticably the one when you start the game) are slightly rushed, giving the plot a half-baked feel. The introduction cut-scene inparticular does very little to convince you that these characters are ones you'll like. The cut-scenes also threaten to try to be "cool", which worried me. Also the initial gameplay is quite bland, with you killing hoards of the same one-hit-kill enemy with a melee weapon (a ratchet of course). The controls are reasonable, although Ratchet's turning circle leaves a lot to be desired. You collect bolts (which become your currency) from enemies and from breaking wooden boxes (which appear all over the galaxy, stacked in corners and containing nothing but bolts). It's all fairly uninspiring stuff.
Thankfully, despite average first impressions, the game changes. One of the game's key features is weapons, which you either collect or buy with bolts. There's a vast array of different weapons to play with. At the beginning of the game they feel a bit pointless, and it's much more effective to stick with the ammo-less melee weapon. But a the game goes on the need to use weapons increases, and so your enjoyment of them does too. Your favourites may include the simple-but-effective ones (like the blaster, bombs and mines), the devastatingly powerful (like the rocket launcher) or the just-plain-cool (like the lightning zapper). I spent most of the game using the second melee weapon and the rocket launcher, but you can use the weapons however you like to create your own play style.
The complaints about repeatedly fighting the same, stupid enemies doesn't go away, but they get more interesting and require slightly more thought to take out as the game goes on. The levels themselves become better designed as well. Even the controls are improved via modifications to Clank (the robot) who sits on your back. The extra control abilities are nothing new, but help the controls become more useful and more fun. The cut-scenes don't slow down like they should, but after a few things make you laugh you start to admit that the game has a good sense of humour, even if it is underused. And whilst Ratchet tries to be "cooler" than Mario, he's never cringe-worthy.
The gameplay consists of going between planets and completing objectives as the plot sees fit. Each planet has it's own unique feel to it. There tends to be multiple objectives and several routes from the landing point, although each route becomes a linear path. The gameplay (and enemies) are often repetitive, but as the game goes on they throw more into the mix. Hoverboard racing, rail-grinding, magnetic boots for wall-walking, spaceship-flying, giant-robot destruction and gun-turret firing. It's nothing you haven't seen in a hundred other platformers, but it's all pulled off reasonably smoothly. The level design moves from average to good as the game progresses, but again it's never anything to shout about.
This is unfortunately the story of Ratchet & Clank. The vast majority of the game is good but nothing you haven't seen before. It's lacking in innovation, but pulls off most of the ideas well, and rarely ceasing to be fun. It's extra uspetting that it takes half the game for it to really prove it's stuff, by which point the painful difficulty has started to kick in. You have infinite lives, but when you die you're taken back to the last checkpoint, which can be a good 10 minutes away. To make things worse, all the enemies respawn but the ammo and bolts you collected and used remain the same as when you die, which lead to the last level almost requiring you to do it in one life or retry the whole level. It's frustrating that by the time Ratchet & Clank proves it's a good game, you start getting annoyed at it for being hard.
The one thing which you haven't seen before is the creative use of weapons and gadgets. Your armoury grows to be quite big, and choosing the right weapon for the right moment can be fun. You can choose them from the menu or customize your own quick-select menu, but since the game doesn't pause when you use the quick-select menu, it's actually more practical to use the pause menu if you're changing weapon mid-fight. Your gadgets are also high in number, including health upgrades, bolt-magnetism, a metal detector, a robot disguise and more. The gadget to unlock doors uses a fun puzzle to do it, which is nice. In fact, the varied selection of challenges is one of Ratchet & Clank's real strengths. With all the gameplay features I listed two paragraphs above, you never get tired with the gameplay because there's always something new around the corner.
Two of my favourites are the disguise levels and the levels where you play as Clank. The disguise levels are simple: you can disguise yourself as a robot at any time and by waving to robot guards you can get them to shut off security fields. On the other hand, if they see you then they set off the alarm and you might as well give up. During these levels you're forced to either hide (turning back to Ratchet when they're not looking so you can jump over obstacles) or destroy them all before they reach the alarm. They're hard, but a wonderful break from the gameplay. The Clank levels are under-used but brilliant. Despite on one occasion giving a very poor excuse for why Ratchet can't go with you, Clank ends up by himself for one reason or another. Whilst at first it looks like it plays exactly the same as with Ratchet (minus the weapons) you soon find mini robots and it all goes a bit Oddworld. Instead of using weapons you can give commands to the mini robots, which are: Follow me, Stay, Attack and Enter (the goal). You collect them round the level, use them to attack enemies (they respawn where you found them if they die) and get them all to the goal and you can move on to the next section. Great!
The graphics are quite good for the PS2. They sacrafice detail in some areas to put more into others. They also have a impressive background engine, whereby you can see the rest of the level going off into the distance, which is particularly good in the city level. They also populate the sky with all manner of background things, often vehicles. It looks lovely and helps you to feel the latest planet you've landed on is more than just a small level. The audio is good too. The music is pleasant but forgettable but the sound effects are done well.
The build-quality is really good, with almost no glitches and a consistant control scheme, although the fiddly advanced controls can occasionally kill you by accident when you're trying to be clever. If you get your head round them though you can really enjoy the game more. The lifespan is good as well, and the replayability doubley so. As well as all the mission objectives (some of which aren't required to finish the game) there's the golden bolts to find (hidden collectables). Once you complete the game you have the option of restarting with your current selection of weapons and bolts. This is not only good fun, but also allows you to collect the rest of the weapons and unlock/buy the gold versions of them all. There's also the brilliant idea of skill points, which are mini challenges that you can complete as you go. These are things like getting a certain time in the hoverboard races, beating a boss with the ratchet only or doing certain sections without losing any health. Once you finish the game it shows you the complete list of them and where to go to do them, but refuses to tell you exactly what you have to do until you've done it. There's plenty to do and it's all good fun.
Lastly, the drop-in factor is poor due to reasonably long levels and when you save & quit you return to the start of the level next time you load. Thankfully once you've reached certain points in the level you open shortcuts to and from the start of the level to minimize walking distances.
Overall, Ratchet & Clank is a good game with flaws. It does almost nothing new, takes ages to get to the really fun bits and get annoys you with it's difficulty and bad game design for when you die. On the other hand the game does an awful lot of things really well. The weapons are great, the game is funny, the gameplay is varied and the vast majority of the game is both fun and executed well. If you're looking for a fun platformer with guns, then this is probably the place to come. It has it's flaws, but overall it's a great game.

---SUMMARY---
The Good: +Solidly built, +Fun weapons, +Good controls (after upgrades), +Loads to do, +Varied gameplay, +Clank levels, +Quite funny, +Pretty graphics.
The Bad: -Very little you haven't seen before, -First half of the game is too basic, -Second half of the game is too hard, -Occasionally fiddly controls.
Overall feeling: Good
-------------

---COMPARISON---
Ratchet & Clank: Locked & Loaded - The sequel fixes almost every complaint I had with this game, and finally shows the designer's true talents. Not the best platformer ever, but definitely worth picking up.
Ratchet & Clank 3 - With a few new, pleasant additions, this continues the high quality of the second game.
Super Mario Galaxy - A near perfect game with incredible imagination and which anybody can enjoy.
----------------

HANDS-ON - Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword

2008-06-16T16:34:00.004Z

---INFO---
Made by Team Ninja, 2008, 1 player, for the Nintendo DS.
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The "hack-n-slash" genre is populated with crumby games, and for good reason. Running through levels using extremely basic fighting game combos on repetitive enemies again and again just isn't fun. As a general rule, no fun or energy is put into hack-n-slashers. Of course this isn't a fixed rule, because Lego Star Wars would be summed up by the word "fun", but I have a certain amount of skepticism when coming to a new hack-n-slasher. However, Team Ninja weren't going to be happy with just producing another average hack-n-slasher. They decided to take advantage of the DS's hardware, and ultimately that's what wins them the points.
When you play Ninja Gaiden you hold the DS sideways, aka Brain Training. The top screen (on your left if you're right handed and vice versa) contains little more than a map, whilst the touch screen contains the action. Curiously, this means the main reason for using the DS sideways is to get a screen that's taller than it is wide. On the whole this works well, but you'll occasionally want to see further on either side. It's hard to tell since the Nintendo Channel demo only had two screens of gameplay plus a boss. Both the rooms worked well with the up-right screen, and the boss doubly so, but I'll come back to that. The graphics are one of the highlights. Since the game's presented from a fixed camera, the backgrounds are all pre-rendered drawings, leaving the processor free to allow for some impressive 3D models on the ninja and the enemies, making great use of the DS's limited power.
The controls also make great use of the hardware. Moving is doen by pressing the stylus in the direction you want to move in (aka Phantom Hourglass). Swiping the stylus up makes you jump, slashing enemies makes you attack and tapping enemies lets you attack with throwing stars. Combos are used as well, such as jumping and swiping down for a slam, jumping and swiping sideways for a dive, and the down-down-up combo for knocking them into the air then slaming them down. You can also hold down any button (the d-pad sits nicely under your thumb as you hold the DS) to block, and tapping the screen lets you roll whilst blocking. It's all very intuitive and good fun. You occasionally forget what you're doing as the fight gets hectic, but with a little practise you'd be able to use the system extremely effectively. My only concern (which I can neither confirm nor unconfirm) is whether or not the game could degrade into the stylus equivalent of button mashing.
The gameplay (from what I saw) was just fighting hoards of enemies, though it would surprise me to find some other distractions in the full game. The boss was particularly fun. The game moves from the fixed-camera 2D top-downish gameplay to 3D, with the camera always focusing on the boss. The controls are exactly the same though and it takes no adjustment. The boss was fun thanks to the impressive graphics and more skill being needed to dodge it's attacks.
Reviewers have praised the game highly, so I'm sure my positive impressions are just. Common comments include praising the graphics and controls but complaining at the short lifespan and low difficulty though unlocking the harder difficulties solves both these problems apparently. I found the game fun to play and a refreshing take on a bland genre. If it sounds like you're kinda thing, find someone with a Wii to test it out or just pick up a copy somewhere.

REVIEW - Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge

2008-05-07T15:16:00.005Z

---INFO---
Made by Lucasarts, 1991, 1-player, for Windows, Mac OS, Linux, FM-Towns, Amiga & a large list of SCUMMVM ports.
----------

Following from the success of the original, Monkey Island 2 improves upon The Secret of Monkey Island in every way. Everything from the graphics to the humour, the atmophere to the puzzles, is bigger and better in this sequel. Despite being slightly too old to be graced with voice-acting, this is still regarded as one of the best and funniest point-and-click games ever made.
The gameplay works similarly to the first Monkey Island game. You control Guybrush Threepwood, directing him around various locations and solving puzzles. You click where you want him to walk and click to interact with objects. Right-clicking on an object/people performs the most obvious action (usually examining it, whereby Guybrush tells you something about it), and on the bar at the bottom is the full list of commands, including open, use, pick up and talk to. By clicking on commands and objects/people you construct Interactive Fiction-style sentances (like "open door", "talk to pirate" and "use hammer with nails"). There's no real-time gameplay, it's all exploring and thinking.
Whilst Interactive Fiction games were basically interactive novels, point-and-click games are interactive cartoons. You watch the story play out in front of you and solve puzzles to forward it on. You spend a lot of time talking to characters or fiddling with strange items you find around. It's a slow-paced gameplay style but a very relaxing and rewarding one. Monkey Island's rewards come largely from the humour, which I'll come to shortly.
The story itself is largely straight forward but very funny. You play as Guybrush Threepwood, who became a pirate in the first game. It's not nessecary to play the first game first, but you'll pick up on some long-running jokes if you do. Your goal is to find the legendary treasure of Big Whoop, which proves more difficult than you imagined. For a start, you begin trapped on a single island thanks to a bully who refuses to let any pirate off the island. You soon realise though, that despite defeating the ghost pirate LeChuck in the first game, he's been revived as the zombie pirate LeChuck, and is out for revenge. The plot is presented with much humour and little seriousness. Every character you meet is unique and loveable. Despite their lack of voice-acting, their over-the-top personality comes through well, and is helped by some fantastic animation. It's worth noting that some Christians may find objections to the use of voodoo in the game, but it's presented in a comedic and non-serious way so hopefully most Christians will be able to get past that issue.
The conversations you have with the various people you'll meet form a large part of the humour. The Monkey Island series does a good job of giving you funny conversations. When you begin to talk to someone you'll be presented with a list of options of what to say. Most of these start their own little conversations going between you and the other character. You'll often be asked for more input in choosing what to say, but you'll eventually return to the original choice of topics. The Lucasarts mantra says that you can't get the game into an unwinnable situation, so you can feel free to say whatever you want to the characters. Responses are often funny, witty and just downright silly. You're frequently presented with a point in conversation where you're asked a question and have a number of different responses, all of which can be quite funny. You end up choosing the one you think will make you laugh the most.
The humour is brilliant and addictive and you'll be laughing lots. You'll also find the puzzles funny, both in what you're required to do and in the result of your actions. The puzzles themselves can be quite hard. You'll often be able to make lots of progress at the start by taking every item you see and using them in obvious ways (a stick becomes an oar in a makeshift boat for example). As you progress the puzzles will begin to get harder and less obviously (and sometimes less logical). However, on the whole this game's fairly easy, with just a few difficult bits. If you want to make things much easier you have the option when you start a new game to play on easy mode, which basically removes some of the harder puzzles. The downside with this of course is that you miss out on a few comedy scenes, but none of the major ones. It's up to you which you choose.
The graphics are hugely better than the original, but not as good as Day of the Tentacle, and nowhere near as good as The Curse of Monkey Island (which is the third game in the series). Still, it's enough to give a much more "full" look to the game than the original, and to give a comedic edge to the animations. The animations are brilliant and are very funny, though obviously not as good as the other games listed above. It's a similar story with the audio. Whilst we're lacking voice-acting (which is often the highlight of the Lucasarts games), there's now music in all locations (instead of just a few locations in the original Monkey Island) and sound effects everywhere too. It's also a credit to the writers that the dialogue is so funny without voice-acting.
The game's lifespan is decent, and you won't feel short-changed when it finally ends. Though having said that, the game's anti-climactic ending is a little off-putting. The game has plenty of replayability in the same way that you'll watch a movie multiple times because you like it, and the longer you leave it the more you'll forget about the puzzles. The ability to save anywhere is useful and gives the game a great drop-in factor. The game has little in the way of major innovation, but should be congratulated for improving so much upon the original. It also simplified the command list, which makes things easier. Lastly, the build-quality is fantastic, with no glitches that I found.
If you take my advice and buy this game, you'll probably run into a problem, depending on which version you find, although it's easily solved. Most point-and-click games of that era, when played on a modern computer, have no audio at all. It's appalling because it takes away the best part of the game, rendering it useless. However, the problem is easily solved, as I said. You need to take this link to the SCUMMVM website. SCUMMVM is essentially a virtual console. It reads your game data and plays it perfectly, audio and all. This means that you do have to own a copy of the game, SCUMMVM simply plays it. One of the many advantages of SCUMMVM is the ability to pause and save at any point during the game simply by bringing up the menu. This makes the drop-in factor very high. SCUMMVM is also available officially for a number of other platforms.
Monkey Island 2 is a joy to play thanks to its amazing sense of humour, huge personality, engaging plot-line, loveable characters and clever puzzles. You'll likely get stuck and frustrated at times but on the whole this is an extremely positive experience. If you like the slow-paced thinking style of point-and-clicks and want a laugh, get yourself a copy of this.

---SUMMARY---
The Good: +Improved visuals, +Great music, +So funny, +Great characters, +Well put together, +Optional easy mode, +High build-quality, +The satisfaction of solving puzzles, +The bones song!
The Bad: -Occasionally you'll get completely stuck on an illogical puzzle, -The anti-climactic ending, -Lack of voice-acting, -The occasional puzzle that makes no sense.
Overall feeling: Good
-------------

---COMPARISON---
The Secret of Monkey Island - The first game in the legendary series. Not as good as this one but definitely worth a play. Check out the Special Edition version, which has HD graphics, voice-acting and a hint system!
The Curse of Monkey Island - The third game in the series. Incredible cartoon-style graphics, brilliant voice-acting, great plot and the return of sword-fighting. This is amazing.
Escape from Monkey Island - The fourth game. Review coming soon.
Day of the Tentacle - Made by most of the same team who made this game. Voice-acting but similar graphics. This is a fantasticly funny game.
----------------

REVIEW - Riven: The Sequel to Myst

2008-05-01T12:01:00.003Z

---INFO---
Made by Cyan, 1997, 1-player, for Windows, Mac OS, Saturn, Playstation & Windows Mobile.
----------

I thought for ages and just couldn't decide how to open this review. There's so many things I could say about this game. I could say how it's one of the most beautiful games ever made, one of the most artistic, one of the cleverest, one of the most engaging or just one of the best gaming experiences ever made. I could say how it is the perfect sequel, or even just that it is the sequel to Myst, because that alone should be enough to make you take a look. Riven goes above and beyond the foundation laid by Myst and has created a gaming world you'll wish you never have to leave. This is Riven.
It's worth noting immediately that you need to play Myst before Riven. Riven starts in the exact place that Myst ended, and whilst the plot-lines don't seem directly connected at first, it soon becomes that way. Riven answers many of the questions you probably had after the end of Myst, and a fair number you didn't realise you had. But even if that wasn't the case, playing Riven would ruin the entire atmosphere of Myst. A large part of Myst's brilliance is the way you're thrown into a fantasy world with special rules but you're not explained any of it. The Myst series universe is extremely interesting and you'll love discovering it piece by piece during Myst. Now that you know the basics, Riven expands upon it in all sorts of interesting directions and exploits the ideas for the potential they have. The issue is that if you play Riven first, the basics will already be known for you, which will cut a lot of Myst's atmosphere. Just trust me and play Myst first.
As I said, Riven expands upon the rules of Myst universe in extremely clever ways. You really engage with the world thanks to some imaginative ideas and incredible story-telling. It's been said by some naive reviewers that Riven's story is non-existant after the first 5-minutes, but this is entirely missing the point. Riven does what Myst did, but makes it work perfectly. It doesn't just feed you the story, it makes you discover it. You're given a short (but epic) introduction movie and then you're left to explore the world completely alone. You already know part of the plot from the into sequence, and you've been given a diary, which should help. Like in Myst, the various diaries you'll find in Riven will provide you with useful pieces of knowledge. But they're not obvious written hints like in most games, they're written as full diaries, so they contain information where the author decided to write it, not where it would most benefit you. Plot-twisting facts are included as off-hand statements (because the author knew them already), codes are noted down for remembering, diagrams of constructions can be analyzed for tips on how they work, and everything written can be taken into account to flesh out the character, background and story.
In Riven everything is important. The world is full of strange things you'll find. When you first see something you'll investigate it but be totally confused about what it's for. Later the realisation will hit you, which is an incredible feeling. Whether part of a puzzle or just there for background, everything in Riven contributes towards the story. The thing about Riven is that it's a fully-functioning world that you happened to drop into, not a series of puzzles built for the player. Sure, many puzzles turn up, but they're all there for logical reasons and not just because this is a video game. Every single thing you see carries implications. Why is it there? What's it's purpose. Even if it doesn't help you with a puzzle, it will show you how the world of Riven fits together, which in turn can fill in the blanks in the plot. Riven is a world that would keep on turning year after year if you weren't there to change the course of history.
This sense of the world being so real is helped by a major change from Myst. In Myst the world was split up into several areas, each with their own story (which contributed towards the main one) and each with their own puzzles. Riven is one huge world, and Myst fans will know what this means in terms of the Myst universe. The advantage is that everything fits together perfectly. It really does spark your curiosity, and you can make endless tiny deductions from things you see, just to flesh out the world that little bit more.
The other major advantage of Riven's one-area design is the puzzles get bigger. Just as the area is bigger (much bigger than all of Myst put together), the puzzles stretch through the entire area, not just small sections like in Myst. This does tend to make them harder, but also a lot cleverer and a lot more epic. Puzzles in Riven range from simple pull-lever-to-activate-machine puzzles to map-wide puzzles, linking in loads of things you've seen along the way. You really do have to take note of everything, and in fact I recommend you have a pen and paper with you at all time, taking note of anything that looks useful. Due to the higher difficulty, it's possible to be stuck for weeks on end (creating a huge lifespan), but if you can put up with this you'll discover immense satisfaction when the answer finally hits you.
I'm asuming you know how the gameplay itself works. Like Myst it's a simple first-person point-and-click affair. The advantage of having still frames that you move between (as opposed to a full 3D environment) is that the frames can be made to an incredibly high quality. In fact, despite being over ten years old, Riven's backgrounds still make you go "wow". The art design is incredible as well, with some really beautiful scenes and animals, as well as some atmospheric areas. Adding to the graphical prowess is the inclusion of even more full-motion video of the other characters in the story (meaning real actors) with some excellect acting skill, and also an awful lot of full-motion object moving, instead of Myst's frame-by-frame clicking feel. Doors swing open, levers are pulled realistically etc. So much of the world moves at your touch that you feel a lot more involved than in Myst. And the full-motion rides between islands are breath-taking.
The audio is equally as impressive. The music is rare (though much more common than in Myst) but it adds so much. Check out this video for a sample of the music, even if the video itself has nothing to do with Riven. The sound effects are also incredible. Not only are they subtle, realistic, atmospheric and often fantasy-ish, but sound effects also play major roles in a few puzzles. Keeping your ears open will help a lot.
Replayability is limited because so much of Riven is puzzles that you'll then know the answer to, but you'll almost certainly want to return to Riven at some point because of the attachment you'll form with the world itself. The ability to save anywhere gives you a high drop-in factor. You'll likely want to spend time wandering around looking at everything again and then take a break and just think about things as you go through the rest of life until an idea hits you.
It could be said that Riven's lacking in innovation, but again that's missing the point. Riven filled the idea of the word "sequel" perfectly. It took the basics of Myst and expanded and improved upon them in all areas (graphics, puzzles, story, audio, presentation, atmosphere etc.) whilst retaining the same style as the original. It's the perfect sequel.
Before I close, it's worth mentioning that, like with Myst, the Mac and PC versions are the only worthwhile ones. The Playstation and Saturn don't have a mouse or a touch-screen and both of those and the Windows Mobile version have severely reduced graphical quality. It's not hard to find for a computer though, so it's no real issue.
The game's success is down to the atmosphere, coupled with the plot and puzzles, but it can all be put down simply to the world of Riven itself. It feels so complete and so incredibly designed. Everything has a purpose, everything fits together and you'll find yourself relating to it as if it were real. It's a true place to explore, and your curiosity will drive you on. Add to that the extremely high build-quality and all other factors and you have an incredible game. The gameplay style's not for everyone, but it's hard to deny that Riven is anything other than an artistic masterpiece.

---SUMMARY---
The Good: +Stunning visuals and great use of full-motion video, +Atmospheric music, +Intelligent use of sound effects, +Beautiful art direction, +Engaging and interesting story, +True exploration, +Discover the world's plot and history for yourself, +Incredibly clever and huge puzzles, +One of the most detailed and impressively designed worlds in gaming.
The Bad: -Can be extremely hard at times, -Sometimes the lack of people/clues can get boring, -It's eventually over.
Overall feeling: Good
-------------

---COMPARISON---
Myst - The original classic. The best-selling PC game before The Sims. It's dated and a little clunky, but essentially the same style as Riven. Besides, you have to play it first anyway. Just remember Riven fixes all it's faults.
Myst III: Exile - Sightly underwhelming compared to Riven, but just as brilliant as the Myst series demands. A new 360-degree viewing system helps you appreciate the even-more-hypnotic scenery a lot more.
Starship Titanic - Myst meets Douglas Adams.
----------------

REVIEW - Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree

2008-04-30T14:57:00.003Z

---INFO---
Made by Nintendo, 2007, 1-8 players, for the Wii.
----------

One of Nintendo's strengths as a game developer is being able to see the effect of a game on the people who play it and not just look at the game itself. Whilst they do very frequently produce games of a high technical standard, they recognise that the important part of the game is the player's enjoyment. Therefore Wii Sports had it's graphics toned down a bit, because it was designed to be playable and accessible, and nothing else. The Brain Training series and the Big Brain Academy series share the same realisation on Nintendo's part, which is the knowledge of what happens when you give those games to groups of people instead of just one person. Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree could be described as short, simplistic, un-challenging, limited & a bit silly. Yet if you play it with a group of friends you're almost certain to have a good time. Why is this?
The game opens with your condom-shaped presenter (there will be further condom references in this review, don't worry) talking you through the basics of the game. He announces that the remote will guide you through the game, and the remote promptly says: "Hi, how are you?". If you were playing the game alone I'm fairly certain you'd just shake your head at the childish game (children will of course love it no matter what - and in fact this game overall is perfect for children who like this kind of game) but when you're with friends suddenly you're laughing at it! Whether you're laughing at it or with it is unclear, but the game suddenly seems a lot funnier. I think it's this that's critical to the game's success. It's not trying to be a comedy game, and it doesn't do a good job of being serious, but it's the attitude of "we're having a laugh" that makes the game fun. It's the same reason you inexplicably find Wii Sports hilarious to play when every other sports game is a serious affair, and it's not like Nintendo added any comedy features to the game. Whatever these feelings are, Nintendo has captured them and squeezed them into another mini-game collection.
The premise of the actual game is simple: you play mini-games and the game tells you how clever you are. The games are split into 5 catagories: Identify, Memorize, Analyze, Compute & Visualize. In the main single-player mode (which plays like the daily brain-age check from Brain Training), you go through each catagory one-by-one. You play some mini-games that last about 5 seconds each and you are scored on your ratio of correct and wrong answers, and also on your speed. You're not told your score until the end whereby it's then converted into a score in grams (for reasons none of us have worked out). Mr. Presenter gives you a chat and then you get a grade. Because of the speed of doing the whole test and the having-a-laugh atmosphere you and your friends will have, you can quite easily sit through each of you having a go, laughing at each other when you go wrong and generally being unhelpful.
The multi-player's where you'll be spending your time once everybody's got to grips with the mini-games. There's three modes to choose from. The first is a head-to-head race, featuring up to four players on each side passing the remote between themselves every few games. Wrong games are repeated and the first team to clear them all wins. You can also play against your friend's data by sending your test score over wi-fi, and the game then works out how well they'd do in the race. This also means you can do this single-player. The second game is a team (or single-player) game trying to score the most points in a time limit, but getting one wrong ends the game.
The last game is easily the best. A grid of twenty cards are put on the screen, each showing a catagory. On your turn you choose the card, which then turns round to show you the difficulty you'll be playing. See how many you can get right and then get your score. The person with the most points at the end wins. It's made more interesting by the single-player-unlockable expert difficulty making an appearance, as well as the possibility of getting a double-score difficulty, and also by various new mini-game cards not seen in other modes. These new games are just as good as the rest, but obviously didn't fit anywhere else. The highlight is definitely the order-taking game where you hold the remote like a phone, take an order from the speaker and then tick it off on your on-screen menu.
Speaking of which, the games ought to be described. All of them (bar the order-taking one) require you to point at the screen and press the A-button. There's no fancy motion-sensing like Warioware, just plain old select-the-answer games. You can tell this is the sequel to a DS game. The games are hardly challenging, asking you to do simple puzzles like basic maths or quick memory games. The five catagories speak for themselves. As the difficulty goes up it does get slightly harder, but most of the difficulty is going to come from the fact that you're panicing because you're actually "into" the game with all your friends. You could easily do all the games, but because you're competing you'll rush yourself to get them done quicker and get a higher score, and so you'll make mistakes. It's the best way to play the game, because exposing it for it's true difficulty isn't going to help anyone. Obviously, children will find things different, again.
What might come as a surprise is the tiny amount of things to do (i.e. non-existant lifespan). You can do the single-player test, earn medals on the individual games and compete in the three multi-player modes, but that's it. The only unlockable is the fourth difficulty in the medals section. On top of that, there's only actually three mini-games per catagory. It's an outrageously small number considering their lack of challenge and 5-second duration. Yet somehow you won't notice. Like Warioware, they mix up elements of the games enough to keep you interested.
The graphics follow Wii Sport's simplicity but give everything a slightly cell-shaded look to increase the cuteness even further. The games are pretty and colourful and the Mii integration works the same magic it does in Wii Sports and Warioware. The sounds are good, with suitably bouncy-but-relaxing music and a good selection of sound effects. There's also the remote yelling advise at you every other second, which is quite funny. There is no story, although your Miis are wandering around the academy corridors that make up the game menu as if they were students, which is nice. You can poke them as well!
The only innovation is the talking remote, unfortunately, because everything else has been done on the DS version. The build-quality is of Nintendo's high standard though, with everything running smoothly and no technical faults at all.
I think my opening statement is beginning to make sense. It would be easy to say the game was short, simplistic, un-challenging, limited & a bit silly. But play it with your friends and you'll discover it's actually replayable, accessible and just plain fun, as well as being perfect to drop-in in a short time period, either by yourself or with friends, especially given the simple, casual nature of the game. Sure, sometimes you laugh at the game, but like Wii Sports there's an undeniable air of fun when playing this, and for that reason this game will remain a positive experience for me. The only issue is whether it's worth buying. You can easily reproduce that same atmosphere with Wii Sports (which you'll have for free) and Warioware, both of which are much more long-lasting (more replayable) and of a higher quality. There's plenty of other games as well, not just those two. Yes, if somebody gave me Big Brain Academy: Wii Edition for free, I'd certainly take it, but is it really worth buying, even cheaply, when it's out-classed in almost every respect? Unless you have children of course.

---SUMMARY---
The Good: +Funny, +Simple, +Accessible, +Good use of Miis, +Addictive, +Great with friends, +Perfect to drop-in, +Perfect for children, +High build-quality, +Wi-fi score-sharing, +The talking remote.
The Bad: -Almost no single-player worth, -Not much multi-player options either, -Or many mini-games, -Too easy at times, -A bit too kiddy at times, -Scores lower than most similar games.
Overall feeling: Good
-------------

---COMPARISON---
Big Brain Academy - The original DS game. Rated higher by the critics, and it has single-cart download play, so you can still have fun with friends.
Warioware Smooth Moves - A little crazy and a little more difficult , but infinitely better. Hilarious for the right reasons, multi-player mayhem and a work of art all round.
Brain Training - For the DS. The adult's version of Big Brain Academy. A better overall package and also better when shared with the family, but for different reasons.
----------------

HANDS-ON - Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games

2008-03-28T02:16:00.002Z

---INFO---
Made by Sega, 2007, 1-4 players, for the Wii.
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I admit I'm slightly too young to fully appreciate the impact that the announcement of this game made. Before Sony's Playstation came along and Sega's series of hardware failures wiped them off the market, there was one big competition. It wasn't as vague as Playstation vs. N64. It was Mario vs. Sonic. Dungaree-wearing plumber vs. super-fast hedgehog. The two were rival mascots and were equally loved. Whilst I'd argue Mario was in more good games during the era of their conflict, it's true that both turned out some stunning performances. However, their battle was never fought, since Sega messed up and vanished from the hardware competition, relegating Sonic to appearing on other consoles, even Mario's, in distinctly average games with bad voice-acting. So when it was announced that Mario and Sonic would appear in the same game, the conflict burst forth once again. People wanted to see their favourite win, and those of us non-fanboy enough to like both characters just wanted to see the clash. But the Olympics? Hardly the perfect arena to settle the decade-old battle. Thankfully, they can have a proper fight in the up-coming Super Smash Bros. Brawl. This game is considerably less competitive and a bit more family-oriented. Mario and Sonic are, in a sense, teaming up to make the Olympics something special. But we're not in an Olympics mood yet, because it hasn't started yet. Oh well, such is the way the world works. I'll stop ranting and tell you how the game works.
It's essentially a collection of Olympic-themed mini-games aimed at motion-sensing, multi-player fun. For example, the 110m hurdles involves you rapidly pumping your arms to move the remote and nunchuck up and down rapidly and pressing B every time a hurdle comes by. The 400m race involves the same (now over-used) running motion but requires you to find a rhythm and not go all out or your character will lose their stamina. In both running events you can get a boost start off the line by holding B and pointing the remote down, then letting go and flicking up as the race begins. It's very tempting to lean forward into the race-beginning crouch before flicking up into running position. This is already showing the positive effect the game can have on you.
Each of the events I tried during my play-test had unique controls and had variable results. The running ones were undeniably fun, but repetitive and tiring. Fencing allowed movement and three moves to perform, but I couldn't get the strategy entirely right and relied on moving and the lunge move to win (or lose, as it turned out). The trampolining was excellent. Flick the remote up just as you hit the trampoline to send yourself higher. Once you've exceeded 5m you're asked to do tricks, which basically means inputting a button combination between jumps. Combinations of A, B and twisting the remote sideways appear in a line and you have to do them in the correct order before you land. Success bounces you higher and gives you a longer combo, whereas failure does the opposite. Somehow addictive fun, despite not being entirely accurate to the real event.
The hammer throw was executed as well as expected. Swing the remote like a lasso and press a button when the timing's right. The swing determines the power and the button-press determines the angle, based on where you were in your swing. It took me a while to master, but it was great fun. I was less convinced by rowing, which seemed to involve ambiguous pulling motion and button presses that seemed unrelated to the real motions involved in rowing. Oh well. Archery was my favourite, as I'd expected. To prepare you hold the nunchuck like the bow and the remote like the arrow, grab it with A and B and pull back as if preparing to fire. You shift a target round the screen by tilting the nunchuck. It's not a natural movement at all, but it's not all that hard to work out how to do it properly. You also need to aim the remote though, making sure it's pointing inside the target you've positioned. Then you just let go of A and B to fire. Wind changes make the gameplay less repetitive, but the joy is simply for the fun motion controls.
The last event I tried was a Dream Race. This was based on the racing events from earlier but had combined it with Mario Kart. The running motion was only required until you got to full speed, though you'd be required to do it again every time you slowed down. You could move from side to side using the analogue stick and you were asked to avoid sand pits and robots, jump hurdles and hit zippers and item boxes. The items were very Mario Kart in style. The event shares other elements with Mario Kart, such as they way the race can (and often is) turned round completely because of unfair and lucky use of power-ups (either by humans or the computers). It was an interesting addition never-the-less.
All the events let you choose who to play as. You have a choice of sixteen characters from the Mario & Sonic universes (no unlockables unfortunately), split into four catagories: Speed, Power, Stamina and Skill. Being four of each, multi-player battles needn't be across catagories. Each character does have slightly different attributes but it's hard to notice. If you do object you can always go with the option of using your Miis instead. The game gives them loads of animations and enormous hands, making it even more fun than seeing yourself in Wii Sports.
In total there are 20 different events and four Dream Events. There's a sort of a single player mode, but from what I've seen it seems to be just excuses to get you to compete in the various events. The "circuits" take you through pre-decided events and award you a medal based on your points. Medals unlock more circuits. The mission mode gives each character specific challenges such as beating certain records or fulfilling certain requirements. There's also Gallery mode, which lets you play non-Olympics related simplistic mini-games (and I mean simplistic) to unlock trivia.
Besides that and Wi-Fi leaderboards, that's about all there is to the game. Most of the events need to be unlocked but unlocking them all and completing the various challenges shouldn't take long at all, and the lack of unlockable content is a real downside. So why have I been positive throughout this hands-on report? Because frankly it's just fun. Mario & Sonic is by no means an amazing game. It does very little new (Olympics mini-game collections have been around for decades) and it's not of the same quality as the Wii's top games (Super Mario Galaxy, for instance) in terms of graphics, gameplay, content, motion-controls or anything really, but if you get together some friends you're guaranteed to have a laugh. Don't expect a huge game and don't expect to enjoy every one of the events, but just get some friends over, play it once and a while and you'll have a good time. Despite not being the world's best game, Mario & Sonic is hardly a bad game, and I can almost guarantee you'll get some fun out of this. I'll leave it up to you to decide whether you need to buy it yourself though.

REVIEW - Myst

2008-02-17T21:44:00.010Z

---INFO---
Made by Cyan, 1993, 1-player, for Windows, Mac OS, 3DO, Atari Jaguar CD, Saturn, Playstation, Amiga, CD-i, Windows Mobile, Nintendo DS & PSP.
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The Myst series is one of the truly unique gaming series' out there. The original Myst was the best-selling PC game until The Sims came around after all. Despite being mimmicked several times, there's just nothing else like it. Whilst age has crippled the game and the atmosphere style has been repeated a little, those who can look past these issues (and the oddness of the game's other qualities) will discover a master-piece of gaming, as well as being the neseccary step to the incredible sequel: Riven.
Myst is essentially a point-and-click game, but it was the first to be done from a first-person perspective. Clicking near the edge of the screen turns your character and clicking on pathways moves you along. Some versions of the game have fade transitions between screens but it's still a fairly jerky system. The premise is where much of the atmosphere comes from. After a particularly atmospheric intro sequence you find yourself opening a book and being sucked inside. You find the Island of Myst and are free to explore as much as you like. You're not told who you are or why you're here. There's no other characters, no obvious goal, no inventory and no hints to get you started. You just have an island. But curiosity takes over immediately. You find so many things that seem odd or out-of-place, from buildings to objects. You find things you can click on that don't seem to do anything, things that look mysterious and the questions about what it all means begin to build up in your mind. You can't help but feel that everything has a meaning.
Your curiosity is increased further when you find the spooky blue and red books, which contain small screens each with a person inside, attempting to talk to you through the haze of irregular static. You discover a note on the floor, which doesn't seem to make much more sense. But slowly you begin to work things out. You understand the point of the note, then how to do what it asks. You find a new message, which is similarly cryptic, and from there you discover a greater find. One of Myst's strengths is that at no point does it hand the answer to you. It drops you in this abandoned world that was clearly not prepared for a curious, knowledgeless arrival such as yourself. Clues are vague but realistic, the people in the books only get out half their sentances and objects refer to other locations without giving away how they're connected until the genius hits you. You will struggle and fail on many occasions, but when you succeed you will jump for joy. You learn to expect the kind of puzzles Myst might throw at you, yet they're never easy.
The mystery of the story is one of the game's best elements, so I'm avoiding spoiling it here. As you discover Myst's secrets you discover more places to visit and slowly piece together the story. It's not fed to you either though. It requires a lot of lengthy reading up in the library and an understanding of the implication of the "red-herring" objects you'll find (by which I mean an object not needed for a puzzle). There are times where characters will tell you bits of the story (in full-motion video with real actors no less!) but more often you work it out by reading and deduction. You find seveal diaries that are full, realistic diaries, not just pages of the clues you'd need. There's also the red-herring objects. Anything you find that isn't needed for the puzzle fills in bits of the story. What is it? Why is it there? What does it mean in connection with everything else you know? You slowly piece it together, and it's so much more satisfying than being fed the story by cut-scenes. By the end you'll understand everything and will be quite satisfied, save for the small anti-climax of having no ending screen/credits. The game simply tells you you've won (rather vaguely) and lets you continue to roam the island alone. It's odd, but fine (provided you don't walk away at the wrong moment and miss the final cut-scene like I did).
The point of the game was to completely absorb you in it. At the time the graphics were brilliant for the time, with pre-rednered scenery, full-motion video and hypnotic scenery in the strange world you're in. The sound effects and music are rare due to the game's age, but add plenty when they're there. Played with no distractions, you can be completely absorbed in your curiosity, and somehow the lack of action and obvious goals don't frustrate you. It is a game that takes time and effort from your mind, rather than your reactions. The majority of your time playing it will involve you sitting and thinking rather than doing anything. Nothing is made easy, but it's never made hard on purpose. It's just designed sensibly, logically and realistically. The lifespan is reasonable, and grows based on how stupid you are. The replayability is interesting though. Once you know the game's final secrets it becomes possible to complete the entire game in under three and a half minutes, so you're unlikely to go back for anything other than enjoying the exploration and atmosphere, as well as seeing the other three endings (which could be done with a save point near the end and save you the hassle).
The difficulty is hard, but not impossible. The Masterpiece Edition for Windows comes with a hints system, which is frighteningly easy to resort to once you've used it once. I managed to resist for most of the game. It's fairly buggy in any case, and isn't always that much help. The drop-in factor is potentially excellent since you can save anywhere, but you'll likely want to spend ages in it, pondering over the puzzle you're stuck on. The innovation for it's time was incredible, and unless you've played a "Myst clone" (any other first-person point-and-click game) you'll likely appreciate it's complete originality. Even though I had played a Myst clone first, I knew there was something different about Myst though. It's all in the carefully held secrets.
The build-quality varies from version to version, which brings you to the important choice of how to buy it. The original Mac OS version is the best quality. The Windows port comes next. You shouldn't really consider buying it anything without a mouse. The Playstation, Saturn and DS ports are particularly bad-quality. The PSP and DS remakes contian an extra "level" first seen in realMyst (check out the comparison box for information on that). The Masterpiece Edition enhances the colour from the original Windows version and includes the dodgy hint system, maps (which can also be found in the DS port and spoil some of the fun) and some minor changes, most of which are downgrades. In the end though, any mouse-based version will suffice, provided you can get it to run on your computer, which is easier said than done.
Despite technical issues and limitations, a severe lack of anything conventional (from people to meet to an aim for the game) and a requirement for effort and enthusiasm from the start, Myst is something special. Ignore it's "faults" and you'll soon be captivated and what you thought were issues are now a part of what makes the game so mind-bogglingly addictive (asside from the technical problems). Your curiosity won't let you go and you'll relish every second of your love-hate relationship with one of the weirdest, most atmospheric, most artistic and best games ever to be released.

---SUMMARY---
The Good: +Great atmosphere, +The game never leads you, +You have to put the pieces together yourself, +Sense of isolation, +Clever puzzles, +The feeling when something suddenly makes sense, +The slowly-revealing interesting story-line, +The uniqueness, +The fact that you could finish the game in less than four minutes if you knew what was going on, +The way it ignites your curiosity like nothing else!
The Bad: -Hard to run on computers nowadays, -No drive at the start, -Slow game progression, -Occasionally a puzzle's too hard, -The lack of a goal can really put you off.
Overall feeling: Good
-------------

---COMPARISON---
Riven: The Sequel to Myst - An absolute master-piece of gaming. Takes all the good parts of Myst and makes them how they were meant to be, adding incredible graphics, an immensely deep story and the cleverest puzzles I've seen in years. But you must play Myst first!!
Myst III: Exile - Sightly underwhelming compared to Riven, but just as brilliant as the Myst series demands. A new 360-degree viewing system helps you appreciate the even-more-hypnotic scenery a lot more.
realMyst - A remake that replaces the screen-by-screen slideshow interface with a full 3D world to move around in. Obviously worse graphics though.
Starship Titanic - Myst meets Douglas Adams.
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REVIEW - Barbie Groovy Games

2008-01-25T15:06:00.001Z

---INFO---
Made by Digital Illusions, 2002, 1-2 players, for the Gameboy Advance.
----------

I must admit I enjoy populating my list of games I've reviewed, and so any game that I can play for 15 minutes and feel I've seen everything there is to see is in my good books. It's a free review. I can't see anybody seriously considering buying this now. When it came out I'm sure the pretty Barbie logo conned many unsuspecting parents into buying this for their poor children, but now you'd have to find it in a bargain bin or on Amazon. It's not going to happen. We can enjoy slagging off this game safe in the knowledge that it will never hurt anyone again.
The game itself is a brilliant money-making con artist. It sits on the shelf of a games shop in 2002 with pink all over its box. The child walks in and demands to have that one. The parent shells out £35 and everybody's happy. The people who made the game are especially happy, because this game can't have cost much more than the cartridge it comes on. It contains seven stolen games (and two new abominations), all of which you can play on the internet for free. We have Match the Pairs, Noughts & Crosses, Connect Four, Bust-a-Move, Draughts, Hang-man, Snake and then the two new ones. However, they're all cleverly disguised as new games. Match the Pairs comes with a lengthy "How to Play" section describing a story where you have to help a DJ put his CDs back in his CD case, and after sitting there being confused for a while you actually start the game and suddenly realise what it is. It's similar with the other games. I don't want to be told to put scoops of ice cream on cones, I want to be told I'm about to play Connect Four!
The two new games are of variable quality. The first seems to be some sort of dance-mat-style game at first, but then reminds you more of that old memory game where it flashed buttons and then asked you to repeat them correctly. Only in this game you have to press the buttons whilst they're being flashed the first time, and you're scored based on how quickly you reacted. So your little Barbie dances around to an out-of-time drum beat whilst you follow on-screen cues to press buttons. "Fun". The other game is slightly better. It seems to be a clever re-working of Noughts & Crosses, and will keep you occupied for just as long.
Most of the games are ruined by extremely low difficulty settings, which are still too easy when set to "hard". They're also occasionally ruined by bad design. The needless "Your turn, Barbie" sign pops up for an unpredictable amount of time, frequently vanishing again just before you press A, causing you to put your Connect Four ice cream scoop on the wrong cone and lose. Noughts & Crosses shouldn't be on there to start with since it's impossible to lose if you know what you're doing. Hang-man doesn't even let you hang a man. You race ponies instead, and fill in the gaps of challenging words like: "spoon" (or on hard mode: "computer"). The best games are clearly Bust-a-Move and Snake, because they're ripping off real arcade video games, rather than ancient board games. However these two haven't escaped being ruined either. Bust-a-Move isn't entirely accurate and is far too easy, even on hard mode. Snake is the best game simply because it's been re-designed as a "conga" game, where you lead Barbie around a disco to pick up randomly appearing people to join your conga. It's a brilliant idea, no sarcasm! It made me chuckle, because it's the one disguise that actually suits the game perfectly. But they still ruined it. "How can you ruin snake?" you ask. Easy. By having the play area so big you need to scroll at the edges to reach the rest, and having it scroll so close to the edge that the you often hit the wall before you knew you'd reached it.
Not satisfied with stealing and ruining games you could play for free, they make no attempt to beef up the package at all. There's nothing to unlock and no incentive to keep playing. There's not even any high score tables. There's just nine rubbish games. You choose a character to play with but it makes no difference at all. Even on the dancing game it's always Barbie dancing, no matter who you choose. Since most of the games are turn-based, there is a two-player mode available (and the one-player games make you take it in turns), which means you can share the boredom with a friend.
The graphics are basic, the audio is tedious, the lifespan doesn't exist and the replayability is measured in minutes. The drop-in factor is admittedly high, but the innovation is less than nothing. The build-quality is high in the sense that there were no glitches, but low in the sense that the game's just plain rubbish. Impressively, the game never uses the shoulder buttons once.
I have to admit I was impressed with how little effort you could actually put into a game and still sell some copies. Gaming has hit a new low, and I dread to imagine the number of households with a copy of this in the corner somewhere. Parents, I emplore you, stop buying games based on movies, TV shows and kids toys. Your children may be tiny, but they deserve good games!

---SUMMARY---
The Good: +Bust-a-Move's ok, +The Snake conga-line idea's pretty funny.
The Bad: -Everything in this game you could play for free on the internet, -It'd be better on the internet too.
Overall feeling: Bad
-------------

---COMPARISON---
Just about any other game - Is better than this one.
----------------

VIDEOS - Simpsons Hit & Run

2008-01-13T16:06:00.000Z

Read the review here.

Mission Gameplay (4:06)
This is one of the missions (no.2) but I guess you can work out what random exploring would be like from this.

Game Intro (2:23)
This gives you an idea of how the cut-scenes work. Please ignore the 30 seconds of the loading screen at the start, it doesn't actually take that long. Also ignore the video compiler's logo across the middle of the screen. This was the best video I could find for this.

REVIEW - Metroid Zero Mission

2008-01-09T12:05:00.000Z

---INFO---
Made by Nintendo, 2004, 1-player, for the Gameboy Advance.
----------

Having revived the Metroid series with Metroid Fusion, Nintendo decided another 2D Metroid was needed. Whilst Fusion was a fresh, new master-piece, Zero Mission is simply a remake of the original 1986 Metroid game. It's not just a remake for the sake of it though. The original Metroid is easily the weakest in the series, and with the success of Fusion it made a lot of sense to re-do the original Metroid in that style. There have been several large changes to the control system, items, abilities and levels, but on the other hand much of it remains exactly the same. It's a marriage that seems to work surprisingly well, whilst perhaps lacking some of the freshness that made Fusion so enjoyable.
Obviously the game retains the same atmosphere and strange combination of genres that made the series so unique. You control Samus through a maze of corridors and rooms, collecting items and shooting enemies using both platforming and eight-way shooting skills. As well as the interesting gameplay, Metroid has it's own unique atmosphere, which is now made all the better thanks to stunning GBA graphics (which include detailed backgrounds and enemies, smooth animations, special techniques and well drawn cut-scenes). The story goes that the bounty hunter Samus Aran is being sent to the planet Zebes to exterminate all the Metroids. Since the original Metroid game it's been made clear that Samus was actually raised on Zebes, which is now referenced in parts of the plot, but frankly the plot is little more than a mission brief and a small extra section added on to the end of the game (which I'll talk more about later).
Despite the simple story-line, the atmosphere works just the same. Samus is alone on a massive planet, slogging through endless corridors and killing enemies. It's not tedious because the gameplay's so fun, but the lack of any sort of "home" or anything on your side (bar the save rooms) gives the game a sense of isolation, which works well. You're often a long way from one of the safe-rooms that give you your health back or save your game, and when you're lost in the maze of rooms you need a good mind and the extremely useful map to get you anywhere. During the harder difficulty settings, this creates a feeling on tension, made better by the re-written music and good sound effects.
The gameplay itself has been updated with the Fusion control scheme and so holds up pretty well, despite level and enemy design from the mid-80s. One of the key additions from Fusion is the ability to shoot in eight directions instead of three (up, left and right). You can also crouch to shoot lower. These changes completely reshape the game by themselves by adding much more attack flexibility. New abilities have been added from Fusion and Super Metroid and re-worked into the structure of the original Metroid. It's been done so well that nothing looks like it was just pasted in, it all fits well. The other changes to the original include obviously updated graphics and effects. Many areas have been re-styled to fit the look of Super Metroid, and a lot of them have actually been changed ever so slightly to fit better with the updated control scheme and abilities. A few other gameplay elements have been changed too. The red doors only take one missile to open instead of five, which eliminates my original confusion of firing missiles at it to no effect.
One of the biggest differences is the inclusion of the map. Metroid games have always had maze-like maps to explore, and the endless corridors have added to the isolation. However it's incredibly easy to get lost, and so most Metroid games come complete with a brilliantly designed map, which can guide you through the game and around its world. The map is brilliantly designed and infinitely helpful. In the original Metroid there was no map and nothing to tell you where you need to go now (which there also is in Zero Mission now), and so this upgrade is particularly critical.
The other major difference is the inclusion of an extra gameplay section after the end of the original game. Instead of Samus escaping, her ship is shot down and she crashes, losing her suit in the process. This section has you playing as Zero Suit Samus (as seen in the upcoming Smash Bros. Brawl), and is a brilliantly done change of gameplay, even if it feels a little odd right at the end. All your suit's upgraded abilities are gone and you're left with a simple pistol that can only stun enemies, and it needs to charge before it can do that as well. You infiltrate a space pirate base in a stealth-game fashion, crawling though small passages, hiding in shadows and avoiding spot-lights. If you get seen then the room gets filled with space pirates and you have to escape to a hiding place as quickly as you can, since you can't hurt them. Eventually you get your suit back, along with three new upgrades that make you insanely powerful, which is a good feeling after spending the last section hiding. There's also a new final boss. The whole added section works very well, even if it does feel a little obviously added on.
On the whole the newer features have been integrated surprisingly well, and enough of the game has been updated to make it feel new and exciting. The advanced controls, graphics and the map make it feel like a modern game, and not the shamble that was the original. The original was a ground-breaking shamble, don't get me wrong, but like the original Legend of Zelda game it ahead of its time in the way that meant it lacked several features critical to its success, such as story and direction. Zero Mission isn't perfectly modern. The bosses, though upgraded, are still few and feel old. Some of the level design feels repetitive and aging and there's a severe lack of diversion and set-pieces for the most part. It's no Metroid Fusion, but it's still a seriously good game.
The game's difficulty is set well, with a number of difficulty settings to accomodate for both newcomers and veterans. Whilst the difficulty setting affects the gameplay and battles, there's still the puzzles to be warned about. There are still occasions here and there where you get completely stuck and can't figure out how to progress in the game until at last you find the solution (or look in the internet). These moments can be crushing and make you want to put down the game, but provided you do get past them, they won't matter much once you're back into the game. Having a good knowledge of Metroid's unique puzzle logic is helpful though.
The game's lifespan is pretty decent, as is the replayability. Multiple difficulties give insentive to return but there's also eight different ending screens to collect. As well as that there's the fun fact that the final boss gets super hard if you've collected 100% of the items. Then you can also unlock a time attack mode (which requires completing the game and then a button combination) that records your fastest time. Lastly, you can actually unlock the original Metroid to play, which also saves your last used password so you don't have to write it down every time you save. There's a lot to do if you're a fan, not to mention you'll likely only have 50% of the items when you finish the first time.
The drop-in factor is surprisingly high. With save points being few and far between (which is, as you should remember, a good thing), the developers made the sensible choice of adding a sleep mode. If you need to stop playing just hit pause and then the left shoulder button. The screen will turn off and the GBA will hibernate, using minimal battery power until you hit the button combination to bring it back to life again. Perfect for when you're caught mid-play session by an important event. As far as innovation goes there's not a lot since it's entirely the original game done up with features from newer games. For build-quality though it's Nintendo's usual stunning standard.
Metroid Zero Mission is an excellent game. It joins the ranks of Super Metroid and Fusion in a severely underplayed series. Not many people nowadays have played these games, which is a great pity because they're unique, incredibly well made and brilliant fun. Sure, Zero Mission ranks as the worst of those three because parts of it feel 22 years old, but this is still another gaming experience that's well worth the cash; and it certainly did a good job of turning the now aged classic into a good game once again.

---SUMMARY---
The Good: +Brilliant graphics, +Great music, +Superb atmosphere, +Good controls, +Well-tuned difficulty, +Very well updated, +Brilliant new section with Zero Suit Samus, +Still a unique gaming genre, +Good, fun, proper gaming.
The Bad: -The controls take a little getting used to, -The occasional evil puzzle, -Sometimes it feels its age.
Overall feeling: Good
-------------

---COMPARISON---
Super Metroid - Now out for the Virtual Console. The best Metroid ever: buy it now.
Metroid Fusion - Reviving the series with a new 2D metroid in the style of Super Metroid, Fusion introduced some cool new elements and proved that Nintendo can still do it.
Metroid - The original NES game. No clue on what you should be doing and basic presentation means that you should give this a miss and get Zero Mission.
Metroid Prime - An excellent 3D re-imagining of the Metroid series. Remember this is a platforming-adventure-shooter and not a Halo-style shoot-'em-up and you'll love this.
Metroid Prime 3 Corruption - Mixed opinions on this Wii 3D shooter. Some say perfect controls, some say frustrating. Some say the best of the Primes, others say the worst. It's always rated quite highly but it's exact quality is disputed.
----------------

REVIEW - Metroid Fusion

2008-01-08T14:38:00.000Z

---INFO---
Made by Nintendo, 2002, 1-player, for the Gameboy Advance.
----------

The Metroid series is one of those games series that doesn't fit neatly into any particular genre. It's unique. It feels at times like it's a bit of an acquired taste, but the games themselves are undeniably brilliant. Fusion is no exception. Largely ignored (like most Gameboy Advance classics, it was lost in the handheld's immense poor-quality library ), Fusion single-handedly revived the series by giving us stunning presentation, top-notch gameplay and some brilliantly innovative new features as well as the welcome return of some old ones. This is not a game to be missed.
So why exactly is the series unique? It's a blend of platforming, running & shooting (a rather ambiguous genre containing games like Gunstar Heroes and Metal Slug) and several unique genre-free features. You play as Samus Aran, a space-suited bounty hunter who turns out to be a woman at the end of the first game. She can run and jump, cling onto ledges and pull off a few cool platforming moves. She can also shoot in any of eight directions, and has various weapon abilities too. It's an interesting, if rather fiddly control system. A lot of Samus' now key abilities were designed on the SNES, which had two more buttons than the GBA. The first two Metroid games only allowed you to shoot up, down, left or right. Super Metroid introduced diagonal fire via the shoulder buttons. Holding the right shoulder button angled your gun up and the left on angled it down. Nintendo did a good job of re-mapping this to the GBA despite the lack of buttons. The controls give you A to jump and B to shoot. The left shoulder button locks you in diagonal fire mode and you press up or down to choose which to aim at (otherwise you have to hold the diagonal direction to shoot that way, which also makes you run that way) and the right shoulder button makes you fire missiles with the B button. To save buttons, most of the new abilities you gain throughout the game simply replace old abilities instead of becoming swappable options. That said, you have a very versatile range of abilities, and you'll have even more by the end of the game. Samus can cling onto the edge of ledges and still aim in any direction and also perform a kick-jump diagonally away from the cliff she's holding onto. Later in the game you gain the ability to turn into your morph-ball, a tiny ball that you can roll around and lay bombs as. This comes in handy for going through tiny tunnels.
One of the game's strengths is the trademarked feeling of isolation that you get in the game, which links nicely with the story. You get a well animated cut-scene of Samus slowly crashing her spaceship into an asteroid when you turn on the game, which does look a little silly until you see the cut-scene when you start a new game. As it turns out, Samus was researching a nearby planet and got attacked by a floating parasite they call X. It absorbed itself into Samus and when she tried to fly her ship back to the space station she lost control and it drifted into an asteroid. Fair enough, though why they show that particular clip upon boot-up is still beyond me. The story continues that Samus is automatically jettisoned in an escape pod, is rescued and then operated on, whereby it's discovered that the X has multiplied within her body and actually merged her body with her suit. They surgically removed as much of the suit as they could and then created an anti-X vaccine from the baby Metroid from the SNES game Super Metroid. The only remaining issue was that Samus now seems to wear a combination of skin, suit and rubber, all meshed together to create a weird new look. It's not entirely novelty, as I'll mention soon.
Samus is sent to investigate why the space station orbiting the X-infested planet hasn't reported back in ages. As is traditional, Samus will be the only human you ever see in the game. She explores the massive space station largely alone. She has a talking computer on her spaceship that can connect to certain computers around the space station and give her tasks of what to do next. Despite it seeming like a simple technique to let you know what your mission is, the computer does become part of the plot. The plot won't keep you on the edge of your seat, but it does a good job of stringing together mission objectives and works well with set-pieces to create some atmospheric and distinct enemies. The loneliness is part of Metroid's unique atmosphere. You go through endless man-built or cave-like rooms and corridors with nobody but the enemies to keep you company. Sure, you have a talking computer, but you can only talk to him from the navigation rooms. The map is really quite big and getting from any point to any other point will take both a bit of time and a bit of planning before hand. Thankfully the map on the pause screen is quite good, only occasionally annoying for not pointing out things like doors blocked by rubble. There are several special (or safe) rooms, which also appear on the map. The navigation rooms are one of these, as are the save rooms (the only way to save your game), the recharge rooms (a quick way to get back to full health) and the occasional other special room. I'm sure the save rooms were brought into the game in Super Metroid because it was the easiest way of saving. The GBA could easily have a save-anywhere feature, but something about being cut-off from these three useful rooms makes you slightly nervous. It's a truly unique atmosphere, helped by the brilliantly composed music (the sound effects are ok) and some top GBA graphics. It really does look good.
The game is basically a case of going where the navigation roomss tell you and then back to the nearest one to learn where to go next. After a while the game starts to mix it up a bit with more story-orientated objectives, more set-pieces and things you have to conquer at short notice, like the obligatory escape-before-this-part-of-the-map-blows-up section that happens in all Metroid games. Don't knock it though, it's great.
The bosses are very well presented and are often shown to you here and there before you finally meet them. They're also brilliant fun, if a little hard. They're easily the hardest parts in the game, but it's fun to empty your entire stock of missiles onto them. Metroid Fusion's difficulty is interesting. The game takes a little while to get used to because of the fiddly controls, but the game eases you into combat at it won't be too long before you're an expert at it. The game's difficulty then resides in two areas: puzzles and fighting. Since the distances between recharge rooms are long and health pick-ups are small, surviving the game in terms of not dying is a case of efficiency. You need to be able to traverse multiple rooms packed with swarms of easy-to-kill enemies without losing more health than you gain. Or at least you need to not lose so much that you'll die before you reach the next recharge room/unusually large health pick-up. This is a case of practice and mastering the control system. The game gets progressively harder, but at a such a perfect rate that the game always hovers just at the top edge of your ability. The exception is the bosses, which usually seem impossible at first but then turn out to be reasonably simple once you've worked out a good strategy. The difficulty is also variable based on how many health and missile upgrades you pick up, similar to Zelda's heart-containers. As in Zelda, Metroid fans try to complete the game with as few upgrades as possible to ramp the difficulty right up. Conversely, a good sense of Metroid's puzzles can get you a lot of upgrades and a significant advantage over the bosses.
The puzzles vary in difficulty. Like most of Nintendo's retro franchises, Metroid has it's own unique logic when it comes to puzzles (ever thought more carefully about shooting arrows at eyes on a wall to open a door in Zelda?). When you're stuck it's usually because you can't get to the place you're meant to be going. Occasionally it's a plant/natural hazard in your way, which requires some thinking, but usually it's a problem with the scenery. Often there are hidden passages that are just hard to spot (so jumping into every wall is useful) but more often than not part of the wall/floor/ceiling is made out of a special, destructible block. Some blocks can be killed by shooting, some by morph-ball-bombing, some by missiles, some by your speed boost and so on, covering Samus' entire range of abilities. Since you can't tell what attack might be needed and where the passage might be, standard procedure has you morph-ball-bombing every inch of wall/floor/ceiling you can reach, because when the special block is hit by the bomb it'll turn into the logo of the weapon required to get through. This helpfully shows you what kind of puzzle you're up against and within seconds you'll be through. Whilst this unique logic is fun, there will be a few times when you swear you've morph-ball-bombed every last inch of the room and still can't get through. You will get extremely frustrated, but when you realise the solution (or look it up on the web) you'll instantly return to loving this awesome game.
So what are these brilliant new features I mentioned earlier? Some are just new weapon upgrades or innovative bosses, but the biggest addition is related to the X and the new suit. Every time you kill an enemy it releases the X parasite that was controlling it, instead of releasing typical health and missile power-ups like in previous games. However, since Samus is now immune to the X she simply absorbs them upon contact, and they replenish health and missiles. Whilst this may seem like a cheap re-imagining of the pick-up system, it actually plays host to a number of decent puzzles, some brilliant boss fights and generally helps give the game it's own unique flavour. Not to mention, you have to catch your pick-ups now before they fly away or merge together to form bigger monsters. Somehow this simple change really makes the game that little bit more unique.
It's a fairly big game with a decent lifespan. Unlike Metroid Zero Mission (the GBA re-imagining of the original Metroid), Fusion only has one difficulty setting to play through, so replayability is limited. There's the usual challenge of finding every last hidden room and collecting 100%, which is a length mission. There's also multiple ending screens based on how quickly you finished the game, as is the Metroid tradition, so the enthusiast should find plenty to do, even if the rest of us might not. The drop-in factor is surprisingly high. With save points being few and far between (which is, as you should remember, a good thing), the developers made the sensible choice of adding a sleep mode. If you need to stop playing just hit pause and then the left shoulder button. The screen will turn off and the GBA will hibernate, using minimal battery power until you hit the button combination to bring it back to life again. Perfect for when you're caught mid-play session by an important event.
As previously mentioned, there's a fair bit in innovation in the game, although there'll be significantly less for those who've played Super Metroid. The Metroid genre itself is innovative, but Fusion also has a few decent new touches. The build-quality is of course at Nintendo's best. Fusion is quite simply a stunning game. The Metroid series is now mostly known for it's 3D games and Samus' appearances in the Smash Bros games. Whilst these are good things, most of us haven't played any of the 2D Metroids and in 2002 Nintendo proved that 8 years on they can still do it, and that it's a unique genre that's worth experiencing. This is a game of such magnificent gameplay and quality that any GBA-player who is reasonable at games should try.

---SUMMARY---
The Good: +Brilliant graphics, +Great music, +Superb atmosphere, +Good controls, +Well-tuned difficulty, +Awesome Boss-fights, +Still a unique gaming genre, +Good, fun, proper gaming.
The Bad: -The controls take a little getting used to, -A little harder than the average game, -Initially tough bosses, -The occasional evil puzzle.
Overall feeling: Good
-------------

---COMPARISON---
Super Metroid - Now out for the Virtual Console. The best Metroid ever: buy it now.
Metroid Zero Mission - The original Metroid re-done with the graphics and style of Fusion.
Metroid - The original NES game. No clue on what you should be doing and basic presentation means that you should give this a miss and get the remake.
Metroid Prime - An excellent 3D re-imagining of the Metroid series. Remember this is a platforming-adventure-shooter and not a Halo-style shoot-'em-up and you'll love this.
Metroid Prime 3 Corruption - Mixed opinions on this Wii 3D shooter. Some say perfect controls, some say frustrating. Some say the best of the Primes, others say the worst. It's always rated quite highly but it's exact quality is disputed.
----------------

HANDS-ON - MySims

2008-01-03T16:32:00.000Z

---INFO---
Made by EA, 2007, 1-player, for the Wii.
----------

I only played my copy for a few hours before I traded it away so a full review is out of the question. A hands-on might give you some useful info. It's true that my verdict is fairly obvious considering I traded it away, but I accept that it's probably not my style of game. In any case, here's what I thought.
MySims isn't very similar to the main Sims games littering the PCs. It's more like Animal Crossing meets The Sims. In theory it should work, and to a certain extent it does, but unfortunately it fails to be as good as either in the things it nicked. The game gives you a cute little introduction telling you how the town (which I named 'Green Hill') had fallen apart and they needed somebody who could magically build things to make the town great again. It's a concept that seems to work better in practice than it sounds as a story.
My initial impressions were worse than poor because when I booted it up for the first time the character creation screen didn't work. It just didn't respond to any buttons I clicked. I reset the Wii and it was fine but seriously, what was that? When I did get to make my character I had a bit of fun. There was a reasonable selection of haircuts to choose from and I gave myself glasses. On the other hand, once I started choosing my clothes it became obvious that there was no option to choose your gender, you just dressed accordingly. This immediately rules out any Harvest Moon-style relationships happening in the game, or even any Sims-style relationships for that matter. The character creation tool was limited but enjoyable. They have a cute, chibi look and you can change their voice style and pitch (their voice being their meaningless babble sound effects), which is quite nice. Once I'd made myself I was ready to start.
Cue the loading screen. Actually, I'd seen this already. It had needed to load before letting me make my character, but now it let me load again. I came out of my train carriage and the mayor showed me around a little bit. She took me to the town hall. Load. She talked to me, then we went back outside. Load. Yes, the game has to load every time you go into or out of a house and also any time you open any sort of menu. It's not an apalling loading time, it's just slightly longer than your patience, and it has to load far too often. It gets on your nerves quickly.
When the mayor finally took me to my house it turned out that the house wasn't even built yet, so my first job was to build it. It's here you can begin to see the mid-way point between The Sims and Animal Crossing. You can't build your house anywhere near as complexly as you can in The Sims. In fact the outside of your house doesn't even affect the inside at all. For the outside you get some basic blocks that you can mix and match to create a house of your choice. The system initially feels very limiting, but once you've got your head round some of the re-sizing controls you get a little more freedom. You get a lot of freedom in how you build your house, just not as much as in The Sims. Inside, your house is pretty bare, and it's frustrating when you realise the outside design didn't make it look any different inside.
Soon afterwards you're asked to build a workshop (load, build house, load) and it's inside here that most of the creativity takes place. Your first task is to build yourself a chair. You're given a 3D outline of a chair and a vast selection of dull, Lego-like blocks to build it from. You can colour them and re-size them however you like and build a chair like you would from Lego. There are a few points you must place pieces at (the seat) but for the rest of the chair you're free to design it how you please. It's initially quite an intimidating prospect for someone who's only been able to play with Lego once in the last few years. Some blocks are coloured green (they won't look green in the final product) and you realise that with these you can perfectly build the outlined chair. But that's boring. It takes you to build a few objects before you really start to get creative. You can build an armchair, a spiked throne, a sofa or even a chair with a monument on top. You can go outside the lines as much as you like, as long as you build the seat at the right height and don't put blocks where the player sits (it complains if you do). The building mechanism is pretty solid. You can spin your creation round and zoom in and out to get the right view. There's an odd grid system that tries to snap your piece into place. It can occasionally get frustrating but it can be disabled by holding B. But it's a decent system, and even allows you to lift off the top half of your object, put it down to on side and work on the bottom before replacing the top at the end. Once you get into the swing of the odd controls, creating objects is really fun, and it's one of the key successes of the game.
Once you've created your chair you can place it anywhere you want in your house. It's purely cosmetic because whilst you can sit on it if you like, it serves no practical function. From what I saw, neither do any of the other objects you can create. When you control your Sim you make him/her/it walk around using the thumbstick. You actually play as the character like in Animal Crossing, instead of giving them commands like in The Sims. They don't have any needs or any character details either, they're just a shell you walk around with. I wandered the town for a bit and bumped into the residents that were still here. There was a goth girl, a fairly standard guy, a flower-shop owner girl and a bellboy at the hotel. Talking to them is limited to a few options, usually just 'talk', 'be nice to' and 'be mean to'. Talking to them essentially gives you a hint ("I hear Poppy wants to talk to you"). Being nice or mean activates a short animation (complete with the cute nonsense-talk) that's nice or mean respectively. The nice ones include telling jokes, giving hugs and showering confetti over them (which I find quite creepy). Being mean includes insulting them and stamping on their foot, and will likely result in them starting a fight with you, animated with a Looney-Tunes-style cloud of smoke and fists coming out at the corners. Being nice or mean raises or lowers your relationship with that Sim, although they'll quite happily forget that you've just punched them and give you a hug seconds later. The only practical effect of repeated attention was that being nice to someone incessantly eventually earned you the status of their best friend, and they gave you a design for a new object to build. A bit of an odd gift, but it was welcome.
Being nice and mean also gained me 'essences'. These come in many, many different forms and are used in colouring houses and objects (strangely). Interacting with people got me some 'happy' essences and some 'sad' essences. The goth gave me some 'sad' and 'scary' essences, the random guy gave me some 'bacon' essences and the bellboy gave me some 'action figure' essences. There's loads of them and plenty of other ways to collect them. Some are fruits and come from trees, others are rocks and minerals to be found and others come from more obscure places, like fridges. You can use them as paints when you build objects. Slap an essence on one of your lego blocks and it gives you a choice of 3 or 4 colours or patterns to colour it with. The problem comes that to make the object look remotely good you need to paint a fair bit of it the same, which means using up a lot of essences, and not all of them are as easy to find as each other.
You progress through the game essentially by making people objects. Everybody will give you the hint to go to a certain person who will say they want a specific object with specific essences on it. You go away and have some fun being creative and then you bring it back. Success! After a while you'll find that a new character has moved in and you get to build them a house. I'm told that later in the game you get more areas for the town, choice of residents and mini-games, but that's the basic principle of the game layed out.
It sounds all very good and fun, but it's plagued by many small problems that prevent it from being a great game. There's numerous technical faults, including the long and frequent loading time, the unhelpfully zoomed in camera that makes you get lost in the town easily, the annoying snap-to system when building and frequent minor glitches (and the occasional not-so-minor glitch as with my initial character creation test). There's also just a severe lack of depth. The characters are distinctive, charming and funny but from what I can see there's no decent goal from the interaction at all. Just as the character-interaction isn't as good as Animal Crossing (a far from perfect product as well), the house-building isn't as fun as The Sims.
MySims has a lot of charm and a brilliant object-building system that gives the potential to create your own beautifully crafted town, but with simplified elements pasted together from different games and no real interaction with the characters, there's not a lot to keep you from just running away from the loading time and other bad production values and not looking back.

REVIEW - Pac-Man Vs.

2008-01-03T01:36:00.000Z

---INFO---
Made by Nintendo, 2003, 2-4 players, for the Gamecube.
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Shigeru Miyamoto is surely one of the kings of game creators. From his imagination and acute sense of fun has been born many of the most famous names in gaming and many of the greatest experiences in gaming. It continues to be true that if he works on a game it ends up being great. Unfortunately not all his ideas are perfectly matched to the industry when it's launched. He's frequently ahead of his time, but it means that some ideas become more good ideas than well executed ones. The games themselves are always brilliant, but sometimes there's a hitch. Pac-Man Vs. is one of those genius inventions of Miyamoto that just never became the hit it deserved to be.
The principle is simple. A multi-player version of Pac-Man. Those who don't know how Pac-Man works should read its own review here. One player plays as Pac-Man and the other three play as ghosts and try to catch Pac-Man. The player playing as Pac-Man uses a Gameboy Advance as their controller, and on that screen they can see the entire map. The ghosts look at the TV screen and can only see a small bubble around their character. They must use their three small vision ranges to catch Pac-Man. Pac-Man gains points as per usual until he is caught. 1600 points is transfered from Pac-Man to the player who caught him and that player then becomes Pac-Man and so the game continues. That's pretty much all there is to it.
There's a few extra rules to take into account, but mostly you just need to get your head round what this idea means in practice. Pac-Man needs to get as many points as he can from the pellets and from eating the ghosts after eating a power pellet. The ghosts want to catch him so they need to work out where he is and try to get him. The problem is once Pac-Man has one of the four power pellets, the ghosts can be eaten so they need to run away as quickly as possible. It's possible to force Pac-Man away from the power pellets through team work, or an alternative strategy is to force him to use them all up quickly and then get him when there's none left. When you're at risk of being eaten by Pac-Man your strategy can vary as well. Running away from him is obviously a good move. You can lose him in the tunnel by just hiding in the middle, since if he turns down you'll have a reasonable head-start to escape. Also you can judge the length of time since Pac-Man ate the power pellet and turn round to try to converge on him just as you return to normal. When you're chasing Pac-Man you can see a trail from him, meaning you can hunt him from a distance. The problem is that you move at the same speed as him, so chasing him directly from behind won't help; you have to work as a team. The issue with working as a team is that you want to catch Pac-Man yourself so that you get all the points and the chance to be him next.
Playing as Pac-Man introduces more new strategies. The ghosts are massively more intelligent than the computer ghosts of the original arcade game, but you can rely on them not knowing where you are if they're not really close. They often guess pretty well based on which direction you were heading last and where your remaining power pellets are, but if you're at the opposite end to the three of them you can likely spend some time grabbing the hard-to-reach pellets without worrying too much. The use of your power pellets is key if you want to get the best score. Eating all three ghosts with a single power pellet is incredibly hard, partly because they're rarely all next to each other and partly because as soon as you grab a power pellet they all scarper. If you use up the power pellets too early then they'll close in on you and catch you. It's best to avoid using them until you have to. Psychology also plays a large role. I frequently sit next to the power pellet if a ghost is passing by. If they try to catch me, I'll eat them. If they try to run away (assuming I'm about to eat the power pellet) I'll head off in a different direction and eat more regular pellets for points. If you can clear an entire board you get 1600 and another turn as Pac-Man! With some clever feints you can lure the ghosts in the right direction and escape from some pretty crazy situations. If worst comes to worst, get eaten by the ghost with the lowest score.
The level of strategy is slightly frightening for what seems like a basic game. Then add in the four-player multi-player and it gets chaotic and entertaining quickly. You each develop your own strategy and by mixing it all up you can have a lot of fun. Somehow Miyamoto has inexplicably turned an arcade classic into a hugely fun party game. It's impossible to describe exactly how much fun the concept creates. If you have a good mind for game analysis you might be able to imagine it, but everyone else is just going to have to trust me: something about this is awesomely fun.
Playing with less than four players isn't as fun because part of the strategy is ruined. The one or two non-player ghosts begin grey and roam around the map by themselves, posing no threat to Pac-Man (as in they can't catch him). Once a human-controller ghost tags it, it becomes the same colour as that human and homes in on Pac-Man. If a computer ghost catches Pac-Man the points (and GBA control) go the player who tagged the ghost. This can be unfair in three-player games when one ghost-player has a distinct advantage and in either two or three player it seriously messes up the otherwise deep strategies by having a dumb computer rolling around the maze. Put simply, the game is so much better with four people.
The graphics aren't much but are basic on purpose. The GBA displays the original Pac-Man's graphics and the Gamecube displays a 3D version of it. The other maps contain other visual styles to make things different, although the GBA always looks the same. The audio is generally good. The sound effects are the retro classic ones, which is nice. Whilst the classic arcade course has no music (as per tradition) the other courses have pleasant, addictive tunes. Mario himself stars as the humourous commentator, though I'm not sure whether he was meant to be funny on purpose.. The lifespan is really the replayability since there's no single-player mode. It's surprisingly large thanks to the depth of strategy and the multiple maps. It can easily be both an easily accessible party game to show to three random friends or a hardcore game that you play regularly with three close friends. There aren't a huge amount of options (maps and score limit is about it), but you'll be surprised how much you can get out of it.
The drop-in factor is reasonable. You can set the score limit down to 7000 or as high as 15000. The build-quality is excellent, though not much could go wrong with such a simple concept. Regardless, it still feels like a high quality game. Lastly, the innovation is frankly stunning. It's not an idea that'll blow your mind away, but it's a logical piece of genius.
I mentioned at the start of the review that there was a hitch in the game, and there is. Pac-Man Vs. is not a game you'd pay full-price for, and Nintendo quite rightly decided not to charge that for it. However, in 2003 there was no downloadable service for Nintendo's consoles. Miyamoto was ahead of his time with a bitesize game really. So how did they distribute it? By bundling it with rubbish games (Pac-Man World 2, I-Ninja and R:Racing Evolution). To get my copy I had to find R:Racing Evolution on eBay. The other issue is that you need both a GBA and a Gamecube-to-GBA cable. Some of us have these, but frankly why would you want a GBA anymore when the DS is around? Frustratingly, the cables don't work with the Gameboy Micro either. If you do have one then this game will be more convenient, but for a regular gamer it was a pain to get hold of a cable then, never mind now.
Pac-Man Vs. is a game that is incredible in simplicity and genius, but which is limited by simple issues with the market. Miyamoto was ahead of this time. If this was re-released as a Wii downloadable and connecting with a DS it would be a massive hit. As it stands it's a pain to get hold of everything you need to enjoy it. If you manage to get everything together in one place though, you're in for a seriously surprising amount of fun. I tip my hat to Miyamoto once again for a masterpiece of imagination.

---SUMMARY---
The Good: +So simple, +Very addictive, +Surprising levels of strategy, +A brilliant idea, +Somehow incredible fun to play!
The Bad: -Getting hold of a copy is hard, -As is finding a GBA, -Or a GC-GBA cable, -No extra modes, -Just the same thing again and again, -No fun without four players.
Overall feeling: Good
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---COMPARISON---
Four Swords Adventures - Another multi-player game making use of the Gamecube-GBA connectivity. It's a multi-player Zelda with GC-GBA funkiness. A GBA and cable per player? You've got to be kidding!
Pac-Man - The original arcade classic.
----------------

REVIEW - Super Scope

2007-12-29T20:18:00.000Z

---INFO---
Made by Nintendo, 1992, 1-2 players, for the SNES.
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Light guns are always fun on consoles. Over the years they've gone through a variety of designs, both in terms of look & feel and in how they actually functioned. The Super Scope (or “Nintendo Scope” originally) was probably unique in both aspects. It looked like a bazooka and it sat on your shoulder. Extremely cool, yes, but it does lack some of the fun of holding a pistol, or a shotgun. Either way, it was an innovative product. It was designed to be used with many light gun titles, but the final catalogue wasn't too big, and most of them were fairly poor. Luckily the Super Scope comes with a game in the box, so you don't have to worry about hunting down a game. This is the review of both the game and the gun itself.
The gun is reasonably large and chunky. You hold it as show in the photo, with one hand holding the front of the gun (and aiming) and the other hand on the fire button on the top. The sight consists of a circle to look through (keeping your head straight) and a smaller circle which becomes your aiming reticule. The sight can be put on either side of the gun, allowing you to rest it on either shoulder. The gun uses blasts of infra-red bouncing off the screen to work out where it's aiming, and then connects wirelessly back to the connector you plug into the SNES. Whilst the wireless functionality is nice (and surely excellent back in the day), it's largely unnecessary and uses up six AA batteries. Yes, you heard. Six. It doesn't eat through them too fast considering its age, but it's no great piece of technology.
The method of aiming means that the gun needs to be recalibrated if you change seat. This isn't really a problem, and the game copes with it very well. The only issue is that because your aiming reticule is to the side of the light gun itself you essentially calibrate it to the left/right of the actual infra-red gun, meaning that there will be a small area on one side of the screen where you're aiming at the screen but the infra-red gun is aiming off the edge and so doesn't fire. This dead zone is rarely a nuisance since most games feature gameplay based around the centre of the screen, but on some games it can make you decide which shoulder to put the Scope on (a decision that's otherwise down to personal preference). It's reasonably comfortable to hold, and somehow the bazooka-like feel makes even boring light-gun games feel a lot of fun. Strangely, playing for extended periods of time tends to make you a bit hot and sweaty, but that's not really an issue.
The game itself contains six very simple mini-games that make use of the light-gun; which are split into two categories. The Blastrix games are mostly puzzle games with light-gun support and the Laser Blaster games consist of shooting spaceships or missiles. The Laser Blaster ones are the simplest to explain. The first has you shooting missiles that travel across the screen, the second has you shooting spaceships and missiles traveling towards you, and the third has you manning a cannon shooting spaceships trying to land on a planet. Shooting missiles is a simple case of firing the right distance ahead of the missiles so your shots collide when they reach them. Shooting spaceships flying towards you is the most fun because it can get quite fast, and you occasionally get very fast missiles that flutter across the screen threatening to hurt you and you need to act fast to take them down. The ground-based level is just shooting fast-moving targets.
The Blastrix games offer a little more depth, but mostly don't work well. They're the kind of games you'd expect as a tiny mini-game on the side of a DS game. In fact, most of them scream for a touch screen instead of a light-gun. The first game has tetris blocks falling from the left to the right. You can shoot any of the squares that make up the tetris block. By splitting apart the joins you can turn it into separate blocks. You have no control over where the tetris blocks come and you just have to shoot the correct blocks to make five lines. You can't just shoot away everything annoying because you only get two shots every time a new tetris block appears. However complicated it sounds, it's actually really simple and very boring. There's absolutely no depth, you just need to think a tiny bit and cope with the slow pace.
The second blastrix game is a little Dr. Mario style. A pile of special blocks lie at the bottom of the screen and are each one of three colours. Blocks fall from the sky (you can't move them again) and shooting them changes their colour. Make lines of three in any direction (including diagonals) and get rid of all the original blocks and you win. It's mixed up occasionally by blocks that refuse to change colour but again there's no control, no depth and it's too slow.
The final Blastrix game is basically whack-a-mole and although it comes with two scoring options, it's little more than a reaction test.
Each of the six games with three different difficulties, and four of them (the first four in my order) come with two-player modes. These modes are just taking it in turns, although the game cleverly makes you calibrate when you change players, meaning you don't have to sit in the same place. One of the game's nice features is that the pause button is basically a recalibration screen, letting you reconfigure any time you need to. The downside is that there's no proper menu, and with no back button on the main menus, you have to hit reset on the console any time you want to play a different game or hit the wrong button.
The graphics are low for the SNES, and the sounds aren't brilliant either. There's no lifespan because there's nothing to achieve in the game. The replayability isn't great either because it's little more than novelty. The games aren't fun to play again and it doesn't even save your high scores so there's no coming back to improve unless you write them all down. You will come back from time to time for the excellent novelty, but not for real gaming. The drop-in factor and build-quality are high, the difficulty ranges from too easy to too hard and the innovation is poor, aside from the gun design itself.
The summary is fairly simple. It's a cool piece of kit, especially now that it's a retro item, but neither the gun nor the game provide anything more than novelty value. The games are all poor and most of them would be better suited to a touch-screen, and even then you'd expect a lot more from a full game. Even treating the game as a couple of mini-games coming free with the gun itself, it's nothing to leap at. The gun may be cool, but it's impractical for most light-gun games, and the catalogue is extremely weak anyway. This is a purchase for novelty value only, although if that's your goal then this is a must.

---SUMMARY---
The Good: +Feels cool to use, +Missiles flying towards you, +Great collector's item.
The Bad: -The six games suck, -As do most of the other games that use the Super Scope, -No depth, -Uses up six AA batteries.
Overall feeling: Bad
-------------

---COMPARISON---
NES Zapper – A weird little light gun used in a few classics, but nothing extraordinary.
Wii remote – Perfectly suited for light gun games, this works a treat.
Wii Zapper – A piece of plastic that turns your Wii remote into a sub-machine gun.
PS2 Light-gun – Great for Time Crisis and the many other light-gun games for the PS2.
Xbox Sniper Scope - A full-size sniper rifle toy aides this game, but is frankly much worse than the arcade one and the game isn't all that good.
----------------

REVIEW - Star Wars: Rebel Strike

2007-12-29T20:10:00.001Z

---INFO---
Made by Factor 5, 2003, 1-2 players, for the Gamecube.
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Film tie-in games are, as a rule, almost always rubbish. This is because of two reasons. Firstly, the game is rushed because it needs to be out at the same time as the film in order for it to make the most money. The second reason is that people know it'll make loads of money anyway, so they don't bother getting a good developer to make the game. Star Wars games have (mostly) been exceptions to this because the films were out ages ago, and the game is simply set in the same universe. It needn't be rushed and it's being made by people who want to make an awesome Star Wars game. Having said that though, they're not always amazing. The Rogue Squadron series has been unfortunate in that each game has had just a few critical mistakes that threatened to spoil the otherwise brilliant games. Whilst Rebel Strike, the third in the series, fixes the two biggest complaints of the previous game, Rogue Leader, it introduces a whole new world of issues and doesn't fare too well because of it.
The main Rogue Squadron gameplay is flying in spaceships. I should note that everything is set in the original trilogy section of the Star Wars world, so this is the rebels vs. the empire. The old PC X-Wing games had you sitting inside the cockpit of an X-Wing with hundreds of controls, allowing you to fine-tune your ship and reroute power to the rear shields etc. Whilst this was all very cool and the games all very good, some players found it rather difficult, and found the endless space rather dull. Rogue Squadron changed that by having the game in a third-person perspective (though a first-person view is possible) and having massively simplified controls. You can speed up, slow down and shoot. That's about it really. That's not to say the game is too simple, it's a detailed game and a wonderful control system, it just doesn't take too long to get used to. The game makes good use of the Gamecube's shoulder button click whereby pressing the shoulder button all the way in can act as a separate button. Pressing either shoulder button makes you speed up or slow down, but if you click the speed up shoulder button then your X-Wing folds its wings and gains a huge speed boost. In this mode though it can't shoot, so clicking the brake button will bring you back to attack mode. This goes for a few other ships with foldable wings, and a couple of ships use the speed click for a rechargeable boost. There's a neat targeting computer as well, which paints the level orange and shows enemies in bright colours, which is a life-saver when you're trying to find grey Tie Fighters in the blackness of space. Shooting has interesting small touches as well. Your first shot with the X-Wing fires all four cannons, but then it reverts to firing them one by-one, as they charge. There's a minuscule charge bar hidden as an animation inside another picture on-screen. Thus, pausing shooting and just tapping A can do four times as much damage, if you're sure you can get a clear shot. The controls are simple to pick up yet hide a lot of depth to be discovered, and this is always a good thing in games.
The ships also vary massively. They each have different speeds, fire rates, shields & secondary weapons. Most of the secondary weapons are useless except against large, slow enemies. The Y-Wing's bombs are handy, although rarely used (I'll come back to this point later) and a few ships have a chargeable Ion beam, which disables whatever it hits. You're often forced to use this in missions when the requirements don't allow you to kill your target, but the game is perfectly flexible and when you finally landed an Ion beam on a Tie Fighter you'll enjoyed the reward of watching it drift hopelessly off into space, spinning slowly as it does.
The mission objectives are also well done and varied, although defending hopeless transport units becomes a bit of a pain after a while. I could list many more highlights, including much of the graphics and audio, as well as the lifespan and replayability. The presentation is generally good as well, and many missions are strung together with scenes from the films themselves now that Factor 5 have finally got the rights to do so. So with all these great features, what is there to complain about? Well, Factor 5's brand-new idea for the third game in their series was to have on-foot levels; and they're apalling. The principle sounds great, since many of the scenes from the films have characters on-foot shooting at each other. Unfortunately these sections aren't anything like a decent third-person shooter. It's no Max Payne, no Splinter Cell. It's more like a very badly done Lego Star Wars. Your little character runs through the level and you tap shoot whenever enemies pop up and the auto-aim takes care of the rest. Except unlike Lego Star Wars, the auto-aim's pretty dodgy here. There's also the camera, which refuses to turn around from its fixed on-rails path, meaning that if a Stormtrooper gets behind you then you're pretty screwed. For some reason I can't remember that being an issue in Lego Star Wars... You can jump and roll, though both are useless actions. All you do is run an shoot at little white men with appalling AI. They just stand next to you and shoot until either you or they die. There's no interactive scenery either, you just run and shoot and nothing else. These sections are already really boring, but then you have to take into account the fact that the graphics have suddenly gone from superb Gamecube graphics to superb N64 graphics. I admit that's a little exaggerated, but only a little. The graphics are seriously somewhere between the two consoles in terms of polygons. Facial expressions are just a dream for these characters. Then you realise why. The people models are actually built to scale with the rest of the polygons. If you put a person next to an X-Wing it'd be the right proportions. That's why in the on-foot sections your person looks like they're a few inches high, because they really are. They've been made tiny to fit to scale, and so the polygon count is miniature. Why they did it like this is beyond me, since you almost never meet a proper vehicle whilst you're playing a human. It's just useless.
The other gameplay modes fair better. The AT-ST (chicken-walker) sections have suitably awkward controls that feel so like the machine itself that you don't complain. Their levels tend to involve walking along set paths shooting anything that moves, which is sometimes fun and sometimes monotonous. The speeder-bike sections are good in theory, but don't really work. You need to be in first-person to feel the speed (and not make it look like you're on ice), but even then you're plagued by poor responsiveness, incredibly easy deaths and bad graphics. Anything on the planets themselves look awful, from trees to rocks to buildings, which makes any ground-based level rubbish to look at. However, all the vehicles are stunning thanks to high polygon counts and some amazing (for the Gamecube) special effects. The lighting is seriously impressive, with the light source being whatever the nearby star is and the shadows falling realistically on your spaceship based on what angle you're flying at. You get shadows from your own wings. You can even see these shadows move properly inside the cockpit, and you get to look around your cockpit using the C-stick in a nice touch. The light-scattering effects are stunning and there's bits of bump-mapping here and there too. It's all based around light. In conclusion, the graphics are a bit of a mixed bag.
To best illustrate the awful side of the game you need to play the Degobah level. After a cut-together section from the film (which doesn't even explain why you're there) you start the level. It is a platforming level, but the likes of which you'd expect from a poor Disney film tie-in. It's atrociously boring and completely unrealistic (in an obvious attempt to turn an interesting scene into an action level). After some more film clips that make no sense if you haven't seen the films already, Yoda teaches you to double jump and block lasers (a boring skill used only once again in the game). Thus continues your platforming disaster. Most of it is jumping along hovering rocks (presumably some obstacle course Yoda has set up for you). It requires the kind of pixel-perfect jumps you thought had died out decades ago. Not only that, if you miss by a few pixels then the game glitches and can't decide whether you're on the rock or not, and so you hover there until it decides to slide you off into the depths. If you can make it through the whole level with some enthusiasm left then you'll be crushed by the bit at the end where you're asked by Yoda to lift your X-Wing out of the swamp with the force. Yoda tells you to press B to use the force, like when you held B to deflect laser bolts. You will most likely want to snap the game disc in half when it turns out you were meant to tap B but had no warning and you ran out of time and lost the entire level and have to start again from the start because of that one scene. Didn't Luke fail to lift it out anyway?
On the other hand you need to see the Battle of Hoth level to see what the game does good. This level seems to have been the basis for the entire game and for the only time in the whole game everything works perfectly. Factor 5 decided that, having done the whole Snowspeeder vs. AT-AT thing in the past two games, they'd try something new. This time you follow Luke as his X-Wing crashes and he heads along the ground. Finally the whole models-to-scale thing pays off as you run alongside a massive AT-AT in the first section, rappel up its underside, slash open the hatch and chuck a grenade in. As you run through the snow back towards your bass, killing AT-ATs and riding those snow camels along the way, the battle rages on around you and you find dogfights happening above your head and various walkers falling over and exploding around you in a jigsaw of beautiful set-pieces. It's exhilarating to say the least. When you make it to your X-Wing you then get the best flying section in the game. You have to defend three transports from Ties. You fly up into the sky with them and you can see this cloud of Ties coming towards you, but it's not until you it that cloud that you realise what it means. There are so many Ties it's unbelievable. In full surround sound they cascade around you, lasers flying everywhere and explosions left-right and centre. It's glorious, and I've played that level so many times because it's the one that works. It shows what this game should have been.
Unfortunately the rest of the levels don't do it so well. Over the half the levels are on-foot and the flying levels are often (though not always) uninspired. There's an attempt at a story to string the levels together, but it's acted poorly and you only realise it was there at the end when a character with a bad voice-actor who you met once or twice turns evil and gets shot by Han Solo. Factor 5 also said that Rebel Strike was to be a supplement to Rogue Leader (the previous game) and so none of the Rogue Leader scenes were re-done (except for Hoth). What this means though is that all the best scenes are gone. There's no Death Star trench run and no battle of Endor. There's also not a single mission involving destroying a Star Destroyer, which was Rogue Leader's awe-inspiring highlight, since the Gamecube was in its early days and nothing the size of that Star Destroyer had ever been seen in video gaming before. Frankly, Rebel Strike is a bit underwhelming.
There's a multi-player mode, which is just as mixed as the single-player mode. The dogfights fail completely because you can never find each other (especially not on such a small screen). The speeder-bike races are boring because you die too quickly. The “who can kill the most enemies” levels work quite well though. There's also a complete co-op version of Rogue Leader. You heard. Then entire of the previous game re-done as a co-op game. That's incredible value for money, and also incredible fun! The issue is that Rogue Leader's main problem was that it was incredibly difficult, and the difficulty has been doubled since there's two players. I dare you to find someone else as good at it as you are/need to be. In consequence it never gets played and there's no singe-player option so you can't have both games on one disc.
So what of the review criteria? The graphics have been covered in great depth. The audio is classic Star Wars stuff and some excellent new compositions, so it gets a thumbs up from me. The lifespan is excellent, with plenty of missions to do. The replayability is also excellent, since there's medals to collect. At the end of every mission you get a medal based on your performance. You're ranked in how fast you finished the levels, how many enemies you killed, how little you died, how few of your friends died, how accurate your shooting was and how often you used the targeting computer. On your first try of each level you'll likely get nothing. Next time you might get a bronze, and after a lot of practice maybe a silver. A gold takes a serious amount of practice (or one of the really easy levels) and a platinum's almost out of the question. It's hard because you have to weight up the time spent vs. the enemies killed, whilst also defending transports and getting pin-point accuracy. The difficulty is well done though, since getting to the end of the game shouldn't take too much out of you, whilst there's plenty of rock-hard bits for the hardcore. There's plenty of rewards as well, including new spaceships (though not too many), some retro arcade games, a documentary on how they made the game and an audio commentary that plays while you play the levels, which is something all games should have.
The drop-in factor is reasonable, since levels don't last that long, but trying for medals will require loads of time. Lastly, the innovation is poor since all the good things were already there in Rogue Leader, almost all the new bits are rubbish.
Rebel Strike is an unfortunate game. There are plenty of moments that rank among the great moments of gaming, but twice as many again that rank among the worst. Flying into a swarm of hundreds of Ties is fantastic, as is finally being in control of an AT-AT walker. Nipping through the city-like surface of a Super Star Destroyer in an A-Wing is tense because not only are you going so fast you could crash at any second, but you also know it'll only take a couple of lasers to take down your shield-less craft. Some parts of the game are fantastic, but the rest of the game is distinctly average, if not below-average. The thing is, if you agree with Factor 5 that this game really makes one big game along with Rogue Leader then you have to admit that all the best bits are in Rogue Leader...

---SUMMARY---
The Good: +Superb lighting effects, +Great space controls, +Lots of nice little touches, +Some amazing scenes, +The Battle of Hoth!
The Bad: -The on-foot levels, -The on-foot rubbish graphics, -The missed-opportunity multi-player and co-op modes, -Too hard at the end, -Too many rubbish/standard levels, -The on-foot levels...again.
Overall feeling: Average
-------------

---COMPARISON---
Rogue Leader - How the space levels ought to have been. Not quite as many Ties, but you get the Star Destroyer and both Death Stars instead. Very hard and quite short, but otherwise awesome.
Lego Star Wars - How the on-foot levels ought to have been. Despite being a weird concept and basically a kids game, anybody can enjoy this relaxing, simple, hilarious family game.
Rogue Squadron - The original game. Much bigger than either but with N64 graphics and not-quite-perfected level design. Interesting stuff though.
X-Wing Alliance - Think this crossed with Flight Simulator.
----------------

VIDEOS - Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy

2007-12-20T13:01:00.000Z

Read the review here.

Game Trailer (2:01)
This shows you a good mix of cut-scenes and gameplay to demonstrate the game.

I am your Father (1:16)
My favourite scene in the whole game!

Star Wars Music (1:02)
I'm not even sure whether this was made by the guys who made the game or not, but I think it's hilarious!

VIDEOS - Abe's Exoddus

2007-12-20T12:20:00.000Z

Read the review here.

Game Intro (3:43)
The intro movie to the game, which both lays out the plot and should give you a vague idea of the style, although the humour ramps up later.

Gameplay (2:24)
This shows you some gameplay following straight from the intro movie. It's not technically the first section, it's actually a secret area accessed from the first room, so the introductory areas are a lot simpler. This puzzle is fairly simple anyway, just involving some talking to Mudokons and avoiding a flying slig. By the way, the reason he goes back to the flying slig and then straight back to the valves again is to reset the bird portal, which had flown off because of the explosion when he first got there.

VIDEOS - Abe's Oddysee

2007-12-20T11:51:00.000Z

Read the review here.

Game Intro (4:00)
The legendary intro to the game.

TV Advert (0:30)
A bit strange...

Story Summary (1:47)
This video appeared on the sequel, Abe's Exoddus, as a backstory to what you missed. It shows a little bit of gameplay as well.

Filmed Gameplay (1:05)
Sorry I couldn't get any better quality footage. This is taken from right at the start of the game, and doesn't show you all that much.

REVIEW - pac-man

2007-12-19T14:47:00.000Z

---INFO---
made by namco, 1979, 1-player, for the NES, gameboy, gameboy colour, gameboy advance, game gear, neo geo pocket colour, intellivision, ipod, virtual console, xbox live arcade, atari 2600, atari 5200, commodore 64, MSX, ZX spectrum, NEC PC-8801 & NEC PC-9801.
----------

everybody knows pac-man by now, this is pretty much a fact. if you don't here's a brief description. you play a yellow ball with a mouth. you charge through a maze with a top-down view-point eating little yellow dots. when you've eaten all the dots, you win the level. there are also enemies, called ghosts. they are released from a box in the center one by one as time passes, and will kill you upon contact. the only way to defeat a ghost is to eat a "power pellet", one of which is found in each of the four identical corners of the maze, and which temporarily gives you the power to eat ghosts (although they will respawn before long). upon collecting a power pellet the ghosts will begin to run away from you as best they can. the only other gameplay features are related to the score. when you complete a level you are taken to the next level, which has the same maze, layout, ghost-timings etc. the only things to change are the speed of the game, which increases, and the length of time the power pellet lasts for, which decreases. because of the repetition, you'll soon learn that the only meaningful goal you can have is to get as high a score as possible. aside from simply eating dots, the main way to gain score is by eating ghosts. when you've eaten a power pellet the first ghost you eat gets you 200 points, the second gets you double that, the third double that and the fourth double that. as soon as the pellet wears off, the combo system resets. there's also two pieces of fruit that appear in a set location in the maze at a certain point during each level, both of which gain you more points. because there is only two pieces of fruit per level, four power pellets, four ghosts and 256 levels, this makes the maximum possible score 3,333,360 points, a score which geeks have obtained in the past. the reason there are only 256 levels is because at that point the game glitches to an extent that it is debatable and controversial as to whether you can continue playing, but let's not get into that. a nice feature worth noting is that every few levels you get a small intermission, whereby the game displays a "cut-scene" with various sprites from the game, which adds a lot to the charm of the game actually, despite looking so old and basic.
so what of the game? obviously pac-man is a classic, and this is because of it's simple, addictive gameplay, innovation and high build-quality. the graphics and sound are good for it's day as well. the lifespan is as much as you want to play it, as is the replayability if you do ever achieve the perfect score. obviously the drop-in factor is dependant on how far throug the game you can get (a perfect score takes around six hours) and the difficulty is no harder than the average arcade game. oh, and in case you didn't know, there is no story.
closing comments? it's a classic. it spawned a whole series of games and clones (most of which were unofficial, and the only two of note are listed at the bottom). it's a game you could easily play for hours on end if you had it on a portable machine (stick the gameboy advance's NES classics version in your micro, or simply get one of the many clones for your phone or something), and is worth seeing every once in a while for the history. if it's not a game you could see yourself getting addicted to, don't bother paying cash for it.

---SUMMARY---
the good: +simple, +addictive, +well-made, +the intermissions, +a classic.
the bad: -incredibly repetitive, -hard, -only one mode.
overall feeling: good
-------------

---COMPARISON---
ms. pac-man - the equally famous sequel, and the maze changes every few intermissions to make things more interesting.
pac-man championship edition - an xbox live arcade sequel (as opposed to the xbox live arcade port) from the original creator, including pretty graphics, many more and larger mazes, leaderboard functions, multiple game modes and time limits to prevent high-scores from taking hours.
pac-man vs. - somehow miyamoto turned the arcade classic into an incredibly fun multi-player game. prepare to be surprised, if you ever find a copy and the equipment needed.
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VIDEOS - Yoshi Touch & Go

2007-12-18T14:21:00.000Z

Read the review here.
Find its secrets here.

Baby Mario gameplay (2:04)
Baby Mario's section on Marathon mode. I apologise for the squished screens, it's the best youtube had.

Yoshi gameplay (1:27)
Yoshi's section in Marathon mode. This guy's a bit rubbish. I apologise for the squished screens, it's the best youtube had.

Filmed gameplay (7:47)
It's not the best quality so it's occasionally hard to see what's going on, and the fact that this guy's doing cool tricks doesn't make it much easier, but seeing it on a real DS with the stylus movements should make the game make a lot more sense. Again, this is Marathon mode, clearly the best one. Oh, and when he goes really fast suddenly, that's the Super Baby.

Gameplay trailer (0:47)
Some guy playing the game. No sound. Hopefully this'll add to what you've seen so far though and help you understand the game more.

SECRETS - Yoshi Touch & Go

2007-12-18T14:09:00.001Z

Read the review here.
Watch some videos of it here.

Unlockable Modes
Time Attack Mode - Score more than 300 on Score Attack mode.
Challenge Mode - Score more than 3000 on Marathon mode.
Balloon Popping Mini-game - Get the top score for all four single-player modes.

Yoshi Colours
These depend on how many points you get during Baby Mario's falling sections.
Green Yoshi: 0-59 points, extremely slow, 20 eggs.
Light Blue Yoshi: 60-79 points, very slow 25 eggs.
Pink Yoshi: 80-99 points, slow, 30 eggs.
Blue Yoshi: 100-119 points, medium, 35 eggs.
Yellow Yoshi: 120-139 points, fast, 40 eggs.
Red Yoshi: 140-159 points, very fast, 45 eggs.
Black Yoshi: 160+ points, extremely fast, 50 eggs +1 for every point over 160.

Special Yoshis
Bronze Yoshi in Marathon mode: Reach 10,000 yards, extremely fast, 50 eggs.
Purple Yoshi in Marathon mode: Reach 20,000 yeards, ultra fast, 50 eggs.
Purple Yoshi in Challenge mode: 0 points in the Baby Mario section, ultra fast, 50 eggs.
White Yoshi in Marathon mode: Performance related, fast, unlimited eggs.
White Yoshi in Time Attack mode: 0 points in the Baby Mario section, fast, unlimited eggs.

* At the end of Baby Mario's section, tap the trees to produce more coins!
* At the end of Baby Mario's section, when he comes down to the bottom screen you can tickle him!

REVIEW - Yoshi Touch & Go

2007-12-18T14:01:00.000Z

---INFO---
Made by Nintendo, 2005, 1-2 players, for the Nintendo DS.
Watch some videos of it here.
Find its secrets here.
----------

Touch & Go is one of those under-appreciated gems of gaming. It has one simple flaw, which is that it's too short. It's little more than the tech demo it began as. I had done everything there was to do in the game in less than three hours, and yet I still recommend picking this up if you find it cheap somewhere. Why? Because it's a beautiful, addictive, charming game. You need to play this.
The premise is simple: it's basically a simplified version of Yoshi's Island with touch controls. Everything immediately feels very Yoshi's Island, from the gorgeous hand-drawn graphics to the superb, relaxing music. The story (which is implied rather than explained) goes that Baby Mario falls from the stork carrying him (to his mother?) and Yoshi finds him and helps him reach home. Or rather that was the plot of Yoshi's Island and Touch & Go nicks it and hopes nobody will notice that there's not really an ending as such.
The gameplay takes part in two sections. The first has Baby Mario falling from the sky, slowed by three balloons attached to his nappy. It's displayed as a tall, vertical display, and as Baby Mario slowly drifts downwards on the top screen, you use the stylus on the bottom screen to guide him. Drawing on the screen creates clouds, which Baby Mario rides downwards. You can curve him around enemies and through paths of coins. Drawing a circle creates a bubble. Drawing bubbles around coins or enemies transforms them into coins (if they're not already) and you can drag the bubble around and throw it up to Baby Mario for him to collect. Collecting coins gets you points, and on the basic mode points are what you're collecting, so getting coins is good.
Once Baby Mario reaches the ground he falls onto Yoshi, who begins to carry him. The Yoshi sections usually last a lot longer. They're pretty similar in terms of controls. Yoshi walks from left to right (though that can be reversed for left-handed players) on the bottom screen, whilst the top screen shows the sky above. Your basic skills are still there, so you can draw clouds to lead Yoshi over pits, and you can draw bubbles around enemies and coins still. Tapping the screen fires an egg from Yoshi at the point that you tapped. Eggs can kill enemies and collect coins, which is especially helpful for reaching those on the top screen. When you run out of eggs just get some fruit (bubble it if it's out of reach) and Yoshi will eat it and produce more eggs. Tapping Yoshi lets him jump, and tapping him in mid-air lets him hover briefly. Lastly, blowing into the mic rids the screen of any clouds, which is handy if you've got Yoshi stuck.
You keep going until you reach the end of the stage and then your score is totalled. Although the controls sound simple, there's more to getting a good score. There's a simple combo system where the more coins you get in succession the more points you get, and if you can net more than one enemy in a single bubble you get more points. The game also likes to mix things up and include things like enemies with spikes that can't be bubbled, or out of reach coins you have to bounce eggs off walls to collect.
The beauty of the game is surely it's mix of accessibility and depth. The controls are simply enough that anybody can pick it up, and it's plenty of fun to play, with all the drawing on the screen. Getting high scores though suddenly becomes a lot more challenging. You end up using every second to get more points. Enemies that fly fast across the sky? Bubble them quickly. Whilst Baby Mario falls not only do you need to guide him, but also bubble anything you can reach for extra points. As Yoshi you can heard together enemies for combos and shoot eggs along lines of coins for more points. It seems like Yoshi moves slowly when you start playing, but when you're trying to get every point you can it seems like he's moving too fast!
The four modes are very similar in design. Score Attack is the basic mode, where you need to get as many points as you can before you reach the end. Marathon mode goes on forever and you need to get as far as you can before you die. Score isn't kept track of, but every 100 points you get bags you a star, which turns you into Super Baby, a super-fast invincible version of Baby Mario with infinite stars (doing the same job as eggs; to be fired). Time Attack requires you to do a level as fast as you can. When you're falling from the sky you'll find Super Baby stars to speed up your fall, so you guide Baby Mario into them. On the ground you'll discover that your clouds are orange, and in this mode Yoshi is faster on the clouds than on the ground. You also discover that your aim is not to reach the end but to rescue Baby Luigi from four Toadies (baddies, not like the cute Toads from the Mario games). You have to hit the group of Toadies with eggs a few times and then one drops behind and you need to hit him once to kill him before he rejoins the others. Attacking them whilst still drawing your clouds and also getting yourself more eggs is a hectic job, making this the hardest mode in my opinion. The fourth mode is Challenge, and is frankly easy. It measures distance, like Marathon, but you also have a time limit. Instead of having a score counter, your points are added to the time remaining. You lose when you die or the time limit runs out.
Dying can occasionally be very frustrating because whilst Baby Mario has three lives in his sections, Yoshi dies after just one hit. It can be very annoying if you're almost at the score you need to beat when you make a single mistake and have to start again. The game mercifully gives you the option of starting from the Yoshi section (instead of doing Baby Mario's falling section again), which is nice, but it's still annoying.
There are more neat features in the game too. The amount of points you get during the Baby Mario section determines what colour Yoshi you'll get for the next section. It's not just cosmetic either; the more points you get the faster your Yoshi will be and the more eggs he'll be able to carry. Interestingly, this works with the “Attack” modes quite well. In score attack you want a big score so you naturally get a speedy Yoshi, which actually makes the rest of the level harder. On Time Attack you want a speedy Yoshi, but getting loads of points as Baby Mario uses up time. What to do?
There's a surprising amount of strategy involved, but with only four modes (that are pretty much the same) it's not long before you've seen it all, and then even the strategy feels not all that deep. Of course you won't see it all if you're not any good. The first two modes are open from the start, but the other two need to be unlocked by beating the high score on the previous two, which is not easy task. Whilst the game is easy to pick up and play, getting decent high scores will take real skill (admittedly skill that can be perfected in under three hours). As mentioned, the lifespan is pretty poor. On the other hand it's very addictive and the idea of beating your high scores gives it a reasonable replayability. When the game displays the high score screen it lets you know whether you restarted the Yoshi section or not, so a perfect run is something to aim for (however frustrating it may be). Still, it's just four modes, it can't be that replayable? It's not as bad as you might think, thanks largely to the game's immense charm. There's also a lovely feature where the Marathon and Challenge levels are generated as you play. There seems to be a large database of small areas and they're pieced together to form the level. Whilst you will eventually see them all, it does mean that the level is different every time you play it. On the other hand, you might get a harder piece in the level and ruin your perfect score, adding to the frustration. There is a nice single-cart multi-player mode to keep you playing it, which is essentially a race to the finish line with combos adding enemies to your opponent's screen (and their screen displayed on the top-screen).
The build-quality is at Nintendo's usual best, and the drop-in factor is excellent, since none of the modes takes very long at all. Lastly, in terms of innovation, the game excels. The use of the touch screen in this way was a brand-new concept when the game came out, although now it's been done once or twice again (notably by the excellent Kirby's Power Paintbrush). It's a genius idea and it's executed well.
Touch & Go retains all of the charm we've come to expect from the Yoshi series, and not just because it has a baby and a cute coloured dinosaur. The art, music, sound effects and leisurely pace and a joy to experience. Add to that the innovative and fun controls and the addictiveness of high score-based gameplay and it shouldn't be hard to see why this game's so fun. It's not perfect by a long way. It's insanely short and at times very frustrating as the difficulty ramps up. But then that's why I say buy it cheap. Or just play your friend's copy. One thing is certain though: you have to play it at some point.

---SUMMARY---
The Good: +Graphical and musical charm overload, +Innovative and intuitive controls, +Neat combo system, +Both accessible and challenging, +Addictive score-based gameplay, +Generated levels.
The Bad: -Over the day you bought it either because you finish it or give up, -Very frustrating to beat the built-in high score, -Very little reward after unlocking the four modes, -It's so short!
Overall feeling: Average
-------------

---COMPARISON---
Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island - The classic platformer this is based on. Basically the same thing but massive, with button control and probably a lot more depth.
Yoshi's Story - The N64 flop. Don't be deceived by the charm, this is a seriously average platformer.
Yoshi's Universal Gravitation - Wario did the motion-sensing GBA thing and Yoshi copied but failed by only having three settings: left, right and centred.
Kirby Power Paintbrush - Very similar to this but with some slight differences. Use lines to guide your ball round a stage in all directions and interact with the scenery in odd ways. Just as brilliant, but unlike Yoshi's version, this is massive!
----------------

VIDEOS - Super Mario Bros. Deluxe

2007-12-18T13:52:00.000Z

Read the review here.
Find its secrets here.

Basic gameplay (1:00)
The first level of the game played in a normal way. Compare it to the first level being played on the original game.

SECRETS - Super Mario Bros. Deluxe

2007-12-18T13:20:00.000Z

Read the review here.
Watch some videos of it here.
For more secrets, find the secrets of the original Super Mario Bros. here.

Unlockable Modes
You vs. Boo - Get 100,000 points in the main game.
Super Mario Bros. for Super Players - aka the Lost Levels, get 300,000 points in the main game.

Album Medals/Stickers
Toad Award - Fill the Challenge mode bar right to the end.
Bowser Award - Beat level 8-4 on the main game.
Mario Award - Beat level 8-4 on the main game.
Peach Award - Get all medals in Challenge mode.
Yoshi Award - Beat level 8-4 in Super Mario Bros. for Super Players.
Fireworks Sticker - Get fireworks when you finish a level.
Vs. Sticker - Play Vs. mode with a friend.
Red Coin Sticker - Get every red coin medal in Challenge mode.
1-up Mushroom Sticker - Get a 1-up Mushroom.
Peach & Mario Sticker - Beat level 8-4 on the main game.
High Score Sticker - Get every high score medal in Challenge mode.
Vine Sticker - Climb a vine.
Trading Sticker - Trade high scores with a friend.
Yoshi Sticker - Get all the Yoshi eggs in Challenge mode.
Goomba Sticker - Kill a Goomba.
Cheep Cheep Sticker - Kill a Cheep Cheep.
Koopa Troopa Sticker - Kill a Koopa Troopa.
Bloober Sticker - Kill a Bloober.
Hammer Bro. Sticker - Kill a Hammer Bro.
Spiny Sticker - Kill a Spiny.
Lakitu Sticker - Kill a Lakitu.
Bullet Bill Sticker - Kill a Bullet Bill.
Buzzy Beetle Sticker - Kill a Buzzy Beetle.
Giant Bowser Sticker - Get one quarter for each of the first four worlds completed.
Giant Mario & Luigi Sticker - Get one quarter for each of the second four worlds completed.

More Unlockables
The ? Hole - Beat any world (defeat any bowser) and the Toad/Princess you saved will appear in this room in the Toy Box.
Yoshi Egg Generator - Once you've got your first Yoshi egg in Challenge mode, this feature will show you where a random egg is.
Play as Luigi - Just press select when you're on the map view.

REVIEW - Super Mario Bros. Deluxe

2007-12-18T13:12:00.000Z

---INFO---
Made by Nintendo, 1999, 1-2 players, for the Gameboy Colour.
Watch some videos of it here.
Find its secrets here.
----------

We all know that Nintendo like to re-release their older games. Whilst this can get out of hand at times (the GBA enjoyed four fantastic ports of previous Mario platformers but never got a new one), on the whole this is brilliant news, because Nintendo's older games are just as fantastic as their newer ones. Super Mario Bros. Deluxe sounds like a perfect game on paper. For a start it's a port of the original Super Mario Bros., one of the greatest games of all time. Secondly, it's packed full of extras, to an extent unheard of in any Nintendo port before or after. Unfortunately in practice it's not as good as it sounds. Before reading this review I suggest you read the review of the original game first, because I've going to assume you know it well.
So what's wrong? The gameplay, the most important bit. The biggest problem is that the Gameboy Colour's screen just isn't big enough. The game hasn't been scaled down in the slightest, so all the sprites and the whole world are the same size. Yet you only ever see a small amount of it, the miniature box that Mario's in. The screen has to move up and down as Mario climbs higher in the level, and you can barely see what's coming next because the sides need to be much, much wider. This problem isn't helped by the fact that the game has been sped up way past a sensible speed. It's true that all versions of Super Mario Bros. since the original release have been sped up slightly to make the gameplay feel less clunky and dated, but Super Mario Bros. Deluxe is even faster than that. Frankly it was a mistake. The game moves at such a speed that most of the sprites get blurred beyond recognition (thanks to the Gameboy Colour's poor display) when you're moving at top speed, and the tiny screen means it's impossible to react quick enough to changes in the level. It's also just difficult to play since every jump has to be timed that much better because of the speed. The other problem is just that the Gameboy Colour makes the game really awkward to play, although a Gameboy Advance should solve that problem.
It's disappointing to see such a brilliant game be ruined by some very basic problems. It's similar in some aspects to Sega's port of the original Sonic the Hedgehog game to the Gameboy Advance. But unlike that, Nintendo's port had love heaped upon it. The Virtual Console and Gameboy Advance version of Super Mario Bros. (covered in the main review) are straight ports. The Mario Advance series updated four Mario platformers with better graphics, a few extra challenges and a multi-player version of Mario Bros., but Super Mario Bros. Deluxe goes above and beyond the call of duty.
Just like in the original, once you've completed the main single player game you're given the challenge of playing it again on “hard mode”, which has a few enemies replaced and some other things swapped around. However they get more out of the original game than that, with the utterly brilliant challenge mode. It lets you play any level from the game with the goal of getting three medals in each. The first medal is earned by collecting five red coins that are hidden throughout the level, either in blocks or floating in the air. The third is earned by finding the hidden Yoshi's egg, which is in an invisible block somewhere in each level, which is a hard task. The second medal is the most interesting to earn. You have to have beaten a certain score by the end of the level. As you play the level the timer ticks down. The more time left at the end of the level, the more points you get (so speed is of the essence here), but the timer alone won't get you enough points. The challenge is to find the balance between picking up points from coins, mushrooms, enemies etc. and racing through the level at mach speed. You don't have to earn all three medals on the same run, thankfully, but none of them are particularly easy, and it's a worthy challenge for those who think they know the original game back-to-front.
If you're looking for more challenge, there's a complete version of Super Mario Bros: The Lost Levels to be unlocked, which goes under the title “Super Mario Bros. for Super Players” in this game. This is a lot easier than the original (and Virtual Console) version(s) because of the added save feature (also present in the main game, making that easier too). If you finish all that there's the Boo Races. You can race a ghost through eight specially-built levels as a challenge. These often involve new obstacles, such as walls that disappear briefly when you hit a certain block (usually situated just before the wall). Boo simply flies through the whole level, and so is more of a time limit than an opponent, although the more you beat him, the harder he gets until the challenge is very difficult. If you find someone with another copy of the game you can actually race them at this, which sounds like a highly enjoyable mode, and surely a precursor to the amazing multi-player mode in New Super Mario Bros.
There's more to unlock as well. Completing certain tasks in the main game unlocks collectable medals and Mario-themed stickers, all of which can be printed out via the Gameboy Printer. On some of these you can use a rudimentary music writer to write music to play when you start up the game. I wrote 'The Entertainer' into it when I got bored. You can also print off your high score sheets (both the high scores from the main game and challenge mode) and you can send you high scores from the main game to your friends via infra-red, something you surely forgot the Gameboy Colour even had.
Time for some review criteria. The graphics haven't been improved since the original at all, which doesn't mean they're bad, just that you shouldn't expect anything exciting. The sounds are similar, though the new tunes are thankfully just as brilliant as the original soundtrack. The difficulty of the game is a key issue. The main single-player mode, hard mode and the Lost Levels are way less hard than the original versions because of the save ability implemented. When you get a gameover you just start from the level you died at. That's not to say they're easy. The game is still quite hard anyway, and it's not helped by the extra difficulty forced on you by the cramped camera and fast speed, as explained earlier. The challenge mode and Boo Races are seriously challenging though, and will really push your gaming skill. The lifespan is much shorter than the original version thanks to the save mechanism, but the replayability is now massive because of the number and quality of the extras. The innovations are nothing more than the multi-player mode and unique challenge mode. The gameplay itself is old. The drop-in factor is brilliant thanks to the save feature and one-level-at-a-time approach in all the modes, but specifically the challenge mode. Lastly, the story? If you need to know, you shouldn't be reading this review.
So what can I say? This game has its good parts (and plenty of them!) but unfortunately is ruined by a few very basic problems. It's quite unplayable at times. Despite the high build-quality of the actual game, the problems of the tiny screen, stupidly fast speed and bad screen refresh-rate really harm your game experience, and create a poor overall build quality. Yet despite all that, there's some brilliant game modes, plenty to keep you playing for ages and a real challenge for those who know the game well already. I guess my conclusion is that if you already own Super Mario Bros. and you just want to get more out of, try this. Once you've worked your way past the issues you'll find an incredibly satisfying package. The rest of you, get yourself a decent copy of it and please avoid this. Your first experience of this legendary game should be done properly.

---SUMMARY---
The Good: +Superb Challenge mode, +Absolutely loads to unlock and do, +Fun multi-player mode, +Some neat new features, +A great challenge for veterans, +The Lost Levels is here too!
The Bad: -Tiny screen means you can't see what's coming, -Ridiculous speed means you can't see what's coming, -The game blurs too mcuh when you're moving fast, -Physically awkward to play on the Gameboy Colour, -Often unfairly difficult because of the aforementioned problems.
Overall feeling: Average
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---COMPARISON---
Super Mario Bros. - The original version. Buy this first.
Super Mario Bros. The Lost Levels - The Japanese sequel to the original. The same but impossibly hard.
Super Mario Land 2 - Superior (and original) Gameboy Pocket Mario platformer.
Super Mario World - The best 2D Mario platformer.
New Super Mario Bros. - If you have a DS, get this! A brilliant fusion of 3D graphics with 2D gameplay and loads of new ideas and features.
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VIDEOS - Pokémon Red/Blue/Yellow

2007-12-04T14:14:00.003Z

Read the review here.
Pokémon series catch-them-all guide.

Red & Blue Gameplay (3:39)
This shows you the second boss (or "Gym Leader") in the game, along with a little bit of walking about to show you how the game works.

Yellow Gameplay (3:32)
This the same piece of footage as above but done on Pokémon Yellow, so you can see the difference. The player doesn't do any walking around, but that dodgy Pikachu sprite would follow him everywhere and smile occasionally.

Fire Red Gameplay (2:03)
Once again this is the same piece of footage but played on the GBA Pokémon Fire Red. When it gets a review of its own I'll move this video over there.

How to Catch Mew (6:28)
It's true. After years of rumours people eventually worked out how to catch Mew without needing to go to a Nintendo event or use a cheat cartridge. They simply use a glitch. This video demonstrates one of the ways of getting Mew. It's not necessary to have Pokémon of that high a level, though I suppose it would help. You can also skip Abra altogether and just use a Pokémon with "fly". Lastly, don't forget to leave a one-block gap between you and the Slowpoké trainer, like he did in the video. Otherwise the game crashes. For more information (and info on what other trainers you can use this glitch with) follow this link.

VIDEOS - Kirby's Adventure

2007-11-26T15:30:00.001Z

Read the review here.

Basic Gameplay (3:35)
The first two levels played for you, admittedly at a fast pace.

TV Advert (0:30)
This is hilarious! I'm glad they don't make video game adverts like this any more!

VIDEOS - Day of the Tentacle

2007-11-26T15:00:00.000Z

Read the review here.

Game Intro (9:52)
This shows the game's animation, humour and voice-acting quite well, though obviously the further you get into the game the better it gets. It shows a small amount of gameplay too, but there's not much to see really, it's quite straight-forward. On this person's version the voice-acting only comes in on cut-scenes, but most versions have voice-acting the whole way through. Also the quality of the voice-acting recordings on this version are also worse than most versions. I presume he's set up SCUMMVM badly. After a short while the credits start, if you want to skip them they end at 3:27.

VIDEOS - Sam & Max Hit the Road

2007-11-26T12:52:00.000Z

Read the review here.

Game Intro (7:20)
This shows the game's animation, humour and voice-acting quite well, though obviously the further you get into the game the better it gets. It shows a small amount of gameplay too, but there's not much to see really, it's quite straight-forward. After a short while the credits start, if you want to skip them they end at 4:10.

REVIEW - Super Mario Galaxy

2007-11-26T08:46:00.001Z

---INFO---
Made by Nintendo, 2007, 1-2 players, 6 save slots, for the Wii.
----------

With a new Nintendo console comes a new Mario platformer. Well aware of the mistakes made in Super Mario Sunshine (a flawed but otherwise exceptional game), Nintendo set about to make the ultimate Mario platformer. They thought long and hard about the very concept of platforming, mixed it with something new and created this: a near perfect game that's both completely original and wonderfully familiar at the same time. Welcome to one of the most magical gaming experiences you'll ever have.
The concept is really quite original and very innovative. It's the principle of working gravity into a platformer. A large amount of the game takes place travelling between miniature planets small enough to run all the way round them in a few seconds. But that's just it, you can run all the way round them! Sometimes they're spherical planets and sometimes they're just ledges in space, but it's a joy to run right round them and upside down. Try doing a long-jump, you can easily catapult yourself into orbit round some of the smaller planets. There's plenty of other fun tricks you can do, running up walls, jumping from one planet to the next or even jumping to one side of another planet and using it's gravity to slingshot you round it to a third planet. The gravity isn't realistic (it works more on a "you can walk on anything flat" rather than working out the correct centres of gravitry i.e. you can run along a pipe planet) but it's not meant to be and it's incredibly consistent with itself and never glitchy. You have to play it to understand the joy you get from it.
It's the level of consistency that adds the incredible build-quality we've come to expect from Nintendo's games. I saw barely any glitches and only one or two drops in frame-rate, despite some very impressive visuals. Mario's moveset is as brilliant as ever. He can run and jump but also has a collection of other jumps to make use of, including the long jump, side jump, wall jump and triple jump. After a short amount of practice, these become very easy to perform and their simplicity and usefulness can be used in any situation. Each and every challenge can be done a number of different ways depending on how you use Mario's brilliant jumping abilities. This element is what made Mario 64 & Sunshine so brilliant, and it's not gone from Galaxy. Becoming familiar with Mario's moveset allows you to show off some seriously cool stunts and make cool use of the gravity effects.
But another great thing about Galaxy is that you don't have to. Most stars are reasonably easy if you don't try anything too stupid and stick to the path. The difficulty curve is brilliant. To complete the game you need 60 stars (a star being awarded for each level completed) and I think most players should be able to reach that goal. It's a fairly average lifespan, but it definitely suits the newcomers. However there are 120 stars in total and any Mario fan considers the game's task automatically to be collecting every last star. Some of them become very hard, giving challenge to the hardcore players. It's got something for everyone. One of the things I like about Galaxy is that it makes a point of there being 120 stars to collect. Mario 64 & Sunshine had 120 but barely gave you anything for it. In Galaxy once you've beaten the final boss you're told straight out that there are 60 more to collect and you're promised a reward for getting them all; and what a reward it is...
The replayability is fairly big just because of how long it'll take you to unlock absolutely everything, but you'll also find you'll want to come back and play it again just because it was so fun!
The character who promises you the aforementioned reward is a new character called Rosalina. To be honest, Galaxy's story is a little... odd. The basic Mario story is still there (Bowser kidnaps Princess Peach) but then there's more. Bowser steals Peach's castle as well and takes it into space. Mario follows but gets knocked out and wakes up on a small planet in space. He soon meets Rosalina, a Peach lookalike with a creepy voice-actress saying the first word of every sentance she says. Rosalina tells you some nonsense about stars and lumas. Lumas are admittedly cute little creatures that hang around the main hub and you'll grow to love them. You're given one as a partner but you won't grow to love that one because the only time you ever see them is when you get a star, and it only bounces round a little bit. A wasted side-character if you ask me. Rosalina's story continues with short chapters of information done in the style of a picture book. These story segments are actually quite sad, yet they feel completely out of place in the otherwise colourful and cheerful world of Galaxy, and so you completely fail to appreciate the character. These scenes just break the atmosphere completely, though thankfully (and oddly) they're completely optional. New chapters appear every now and then in the library. If you don't want the story you just stay out of the library, it's as simple as that. The final cut-scene of the game is also just plain weird and not particularly good. I'm not a fan of the story here, though I do love most of the cut-scenes and the epic battles with Bowser are still great - they feel part of the overall story of the Mario series rather than this strange little side-story.
As mentioned, Mario's world is very colourful and cheerful. The word I most often use to describe it is magical. It brings back childhood feelings that I relate to Disney, though others may relate to other things. From the start of the game the graphics and art are just beautiful. Once you're into space things become even better. Because you're travelling through unknown galaxies the level designers have taken it as a cue to go wild with their creativity. Anything goes. You get the standard large-scale elemental levels (desert, lava, ice etc.) but then you get some completely crazy levels that look beautifully surreal. Apples floating in the sky? A surfing track made of just a ring of water floating in the sky. Donut shaped planets where you can go through the hole? Being inside a spherical planet with the gravity on the walls? A giant toy Bowser?
Super Mario Galaxy simply never runs out of amazing new ideas. At every turn you discover something new and crazy. It's not just the planets that get new ideas, it's also what you have to do. Gravity isn't just limited to sticking to spherical planets. The team have worked the principle of "gravity" for every last drop. Some of the once-used ideas are absolutely amazing. Each and every star presents a clever new idea and location that, in the words of Nintendo's Japanese president, "will make you say wow". I won't spoil anything for you, but you've got a lot to look forward to. Try not to watch too many videos of the game or you'll give away its best surprises.
Helping this principle of amazing new ideas is the amazing graphics. The graphics on Galaxy are incredible. Let it never again be said that the Wii can't produce good graphics! I'm not going to go over-the-top like some people have and claim they're better than 360 graphics because that's technically impossible, the Wii isn't HD and there's way less polygons per object. However, I have to say I have never expressed a wish for the game to be prettier. Think about that statement, because it's a big one. Most Wii games live on the principle that they don't "need" to be any prettier. Wii Sports doesn't need to be any prettier, though I often wish it was. Twilight Princess didn't need to be any prettier, but if it had the 360's graphics it'd look incredible. But with Galaxy I don't even think about it because it's just so good to look at. It's got the greatest graphics ever seen on a Nintendo console, and there's two main reasons for it.
The first is that the art in Galaxy is beautiful. It's a long-known fact that art often triumphs over polygons in video games. Mario Galaxy's art is extraordinary, as I've described to great length in the above paragraphs. The mere principles of these objects in space are beautiful, and the use of colour, sky, stars and lighting just make things look even better. It's a magical world that's just beautiful to look at. The other reason Galaxy looks so good is sheer brute force by the Wii itself. There are so many graphical effects exploding round the screen, including gorgeous furr shading, heat wave effects, mirrors & reflections, water refractions, bending light in glass and some of the most beautiful character lighting effects I've ever seen. It's simply stunning.
Suplementing the graphics is of course the audio, which is also superb. The majority of the soundtrack is played by a full orchestra and it sounds beautiful. The music ranges from new tunes (wonderfully composed) to remixes or retro tunes. There's plenty of special effects on the music as well, including the battles with Bowser where the music changes pace based on what's going on in the battle. The whole score really helps engage you.
What's next? Let's have a go at the motion controls. This is a game that gets the motion controls right. Many games on the Wii overuse the motion controls because they're there. Galaxy doesn't use them as much as some great games but I'm not saying less is more, just that Galaxy uses them perfectly for the genre and the game itself. The two main motion controls are the spin attack and the pointer. The pointer is dead handy, as it allows you to pick up star bits, a kind of currency in the game that litters the levels everywhere you look. Picking up star bits is horribly addictive and it's easy to do it whilst you're going along. The spin attack is a more obvious use and is brilliant. You simply flick the wii-remote to spin. It sounds just like in Twilight Princess, but here it's pulled off flawlessly. The spin itself is Mario's new main attack. You can still jump on most enemies (and doing so bags you coin instead of star bits) but it's a lot easier (so helping the low difficulty) to run up to an enemy and flick the remote. It also acts as a kind of mid-air jump and allows for some more advanced techniques needed in the later levels, and the spin also works with other enemies or items to produce new effects. The game is surprisingly good at telling whether you're waving the remote to move your pointer quickly across the screen or to spin. I don't know how it does it but it almost never confuses the two actions. The main reason the spin works so well as a motion control is just because it's more fun. In the Bowser fights one stage has him sliding towards you and it's immensely satisfying to run towards him and smack the remote in his direction to send him flying. You have to play it to believe it, but it's just plain satisfying.
There are also plenty of other motion controls in there that you use just every now and then. These range from using the remote as a joystick to roll a ball, tilting it to steer a surfing ray or using the pointer to activate pull stars (acting as mini gravity sucking things), flick Mario on a catapult or blow him in a balloon. They're only there occasoinally but they're implemented perfectly and you'll enjoy the change of pace.
What else is in Galaxy? How about the new suits. In Super Mario Bros. 3 Nintendo introduced Mario wearing suits to gain new powers. They're back in Galaxy to a certain extent. The widely publisized two are the bee suit and the boo suit. The bee suit turns Mario into a bee. You hold jump to fly and you can go a reasonable distance before your fly meter runs out and you plummet to the ground. You can also walk along some things normal Mario can't, like clouds. The boo suit turns Mario into a boo (a kind of spherical ghost). As a boo he can hover upwards indefinitely and also go through some walls. Of course both suits have their weaknesses. Get hit by an enemy or even touch water and it's back to normal Mario. If you're a boo you also have to stay out of the light. There are a few other suits that I won't spoil for you (red luma has a secret, oh yes he does...), but those two are the main ones. Frustratingly, they're also the worst. The other suits on the whole just give Mario and extra abiltiy or two (that are often used in genius ways) but the bee and boo suit actually seem to make Mario worse. You can't pull off half his cool moves with them on and you'll actually enjoy it more when you don't have to wear them. A bit of a missed opportunity I think.
But it doesn't matter because the rest of the game is so brilliant. As I've said already they milk the gravity principle for every last drop, including some very cool 2D sections. The game moves fluidly into 2D and gives Mario his complete moveset whilst eliminating the third dimension, making it incredibly playable. When collecting stars there's lots to do. There's plenty of single-star small galaxies, but each main galaxy has three story stars (each with new locations, ideas and challenges), a hidden star (usually a side track off the main route of a story star) and two comet stars. After a while of being in the game the comets start to move around the galaxies. If a comet is over a galaxy then playing it will activate the comet challenge (which, if beaten, is replayable at any time). The colour of the comet dictates what the challenge will be. There's speed runs, boss battles with only one piece of health, sped up enemies, races against cosmic Mario (a standard mario clone) and purple coin challenges (don't knock it, collecting 100 purple coins often makes for the hardest stages). Despite essentially re-using areas and routes, these challenges feel completely fresh and are often great fun to play. They make up most of the harder challenges in the game as well. Unforunately their placement in the galaxies aren't random. Each galaxy has two comet stars and which colour comets those are is pre-determined (i.e. you can't speed run every level) but that doesn't matter.
What else is there to say? The drop-in factor depends on which star you're trying to get, but it's easy to grab a star in a quick break. I think I've covered everything now, except the bad points. Mario Galaxy is not a perfect game, as I mentioned at the start. Some bad points I've already mentioned (weird story, dodgy suits) but there's one or two more. There comes a point where you stop saying wow every time you meet a level. Every time you meet a new level you always say wow but when replaying them the novelty eventually wears off. This isn't really a bad point as such because it actually means it's becoming more familiar to you. The game begins to feel completely natural in terms of control. The knock-on effect is of course that walking round a planet fails to amuse you as it first did. You never get completely bored with it. Every now and then I just launch myself into orbit for the fun of it, and there's some levels that are so pretty I always say wow at them. It's just something to take into account. I don't know, maybe it happens with all games, I haven't played Portal long enough to find out. Once it does become familiar though you start to get the sense that you've been here before. 120 stars, a hub to choose the levels from etc. But this is really nit-picking because it's a great system and we all know it. Galaxy is far from lacking innovation so it's not just re-using an old game concept. Sometimes you'll love the familiarity though and sometimes you'll get annoyed by it.
Not many bad points then, huh? It's true, Galaxy is near perfect. It's slightly too familar to revolutionize the whole of gaming like other genius innovations have done (Resident Evil 4, Portal, Pokemon, Warioware) but it's very easily revolutionized the platforming genre, and it's the best platformer since Super Mario 64. You'll enjoy this if you're a new gamer or a hardcore fan. It's beautiful, magical and so much fun. Buy this now or miss out.

---SUMMARY---
The Good: +The gravity principle, +Beautiful graphics, +Awesome soundtrack, +Great use of motion controls, +So many awesome ideas, +Surreal levels, +Easy bits for newcomers, +Impossible bits for hardcore players, +Perfectly playable, +So many incredibly clever ideas!
The Bad: -Weird story, -A few dodgy suits, -Occasionally feels too familiar.
Overall feeling: Good
-------------

---COMPARISON---
Super Mario 64 - The original 3D Mario game. Just like galaxy but set firmly on the ground. A little too slow and hard for some people but definitely worth buying on the Virtual Console.
Super Mario Sunshine - This one has loads of flaws but despite them all it was the best platformer of the Gamecube's generation. Worth a look when you've finished 64 & Galaxy.
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VIDEOS - Motorstorm

2007-11-23T21:22:00.000Z

Read the hands-on preview here.

Trailer (1:17)
This shows the principle of the game quite well.

Gameplay (6:25)
This is the same level I played for the hands-on preview.

SECRETS - Super Mario World

2007-11-23T20:24:00.000Z

Read the review here.
Watch some videos of it here.

SNES/Virtual Console Version
* If you're replaying a level you've already completed you can exit it at any point by pressing start then select.
* If you want to revisit a castle or fortress level simply press L+R to re-enter it.
* If you complete the eight "special" levels (the ones with the weird names) then you unlock the alternate world. It's exactly the same as the normal world except the map colours are different and a few enemies change their look. Annoyingly, you can't change back.

GBA Version
* Once you've beaten bowser you can revisit any castle or fortress.
* By completing all 96 exits you can unlock the "alternate world" described above in the SNES section. You also get the ability to warp to any level via the stats screen.
* The GBA version records how many Yoshi coins (or "dragon coins") you've collected in each level instead of simply replacing them, so by collecting them in every level you unlock a small movie, after which the coins are replaced with Princess Peach coins that do just regenerate.
* At the first Ghost house use a cape to fly to the left instead of to the right and you'll find a secret passageway that opens up a new level with infinite Yoshis and power-ups.
* For every million points you gain in a single-player file you get a star on the choose-a-game screen (maximum of five). For every 150,000 points you get in Mario Bros. you get a star for that too (maximum of five again).

SECRETS - Super Mario Bros.

2007-11-23T16:08:00.000Z

Read the review here.
Watch some videos of it here.

Hidden warp pipes can help you cheat by skipping whole worlds.
* In world 1-2 get on top of the blocks that make up the ceiling (easiest when there's platforms moving to the ceiling) and run over the end of the level to find the hidden warp zone to worlds 2, 3 or 4.
* In world 4-2 get on top of the blocks that make up the ceiling and run over the end of the level to find the hidden warp zone to world 5.
* In world 4-2 after the elevators going down you should find a high up three-block ledge just before a pipe. The far left block will create a vine going to the warp zone when hit, and to help you reach it underneath each of the three blocks are three invisible blocks (that appear when hit). Be careful though, the invisble block under the vine block is too close to it to allow you to hit the vine block, so avoiding hitting this invisible block til last. Once you follow the vine you must complete a short level before you find the warp zone to worlds 6, 7 or 8.

To continue after a gameover, wait until you're back on the player select screen and hold down the A button when you press start. You'll return to the beginning of the world you died on.

If you finish a level with a 1, 3 or 6 on the end of the level timer you'll get some fireworks and some extra points. The higher the number, the more fireworks you get.

If you're good enough to complete the whole game you get the option of playing the second quest. The second quest is exactly the same game but with a few differences, including harder, faster, for frequent enemies, smaller ledges and less checkpoints in levels (if any).

SECRETS - Warioware Smooth Moves

2007-11-23T14:53:00.000Z

Read the review here.
Watch some videos of it here.

The Multi-player mode is unlocked by finishing the single-player mode, and then games are unlocked one by one, as described below:
Multi-player mode - Complete Tiny Wario's stage.
Multi-player 'Bomb' mode - Play one game of Survival mode.
Multi-player 'Lifeline' mode - Play one game of Bomb mode.
Multi-player 'Balloon' mode - Play one game of Lifeline mode.
Multi-player 'Star Nose' mode - Play one game of Darts.
Multi-player 'Bungie Buddies' mode - Play one game of Star Nose.

The Elephant Buildings are more challenging than the original single-player stages and are unlocked one by one after the main single-player mode is over, as described below:
All Mixed Up Building - Complete Tiny Wario's stage.
Super Hard Building - Score 30 or more on All Mixed Up.
Sudden Death Building - Score 20 or more on Super Hard.
Thrilling Building - Score 10 or more on Sudden Death.
Sound Studio - Score 20 or more on Thrilling.

Single-player Mini-games can also be unlocked, including the legendary Pyoro:
Balloon Trip - Complete Dr. Crygor's stage.
Block Star - Complete Young Cricket's stage.
Can Shooter - Ashley's Stage.
Pyoro S - Play every microgame in the whole game.
Tortoise & Hare - Complete Orbulon's stage.
Tower Tennis - Complete Kat & Ana's stage.

Some extra secrets are listed below:
* Try pointing the Wiimote at the screen during the credits for a neat game...
* Try pressing the + button on the single-player map and having a look around for hidden signs...

REVIEW - dr. mario

2007-11-15T18:46:00.000Z

---INFO---
made by nintendo, 1990, 1-2 players, for the NES, gameboy & gameboy advance.
----------

when the gameboy launched way back in 1990 tetris came bundled with it. this was the era when tetris was the hottest thing on the streets. people were buying the gameboy just to play tetris. at that time people realised the power of the puzzle game genre. they're simple, easy to understand, attractive to non-gamers and horribly addictive. during that era probably hundreds of bad puzzle games were made, and things haven't exactly changed now with our thousands of online flash games. of course i'm against flash games in general because of their (usual) low quality; it takes so long to find the good ones that it's not really worth the effort. being a proffessional puzzle game boosts the quality a little but it's still hard nowadays to find a good puzzle game. dr. mario was one of the ones from the tetris era that wasn't a complete waste of money. i've played it loads over the years and i now get to let you know whether it's still worth the cash today.
the first thing i need to point out is the three platforms you can get this game on. the original version appeared on the NES. shortly afterwards they released a near identical version on the gameboy, and later the original NES version was ported to the GBA in the "classic NES" series. there are a few more versions available (covered in the comparison version) but they all differ much more than these three near identical versions covered in this review.
so what's dr. mario about? it's a simple puzzle game involving things falling from the ceiling, like in tetris. the premise is that mario is a doctor and is taking out "viruses". mario stands in a bubble in the top-right corner and throws pills into an over-sized jar that covers most of the screen. inside the jar are a few virus blocks. each pill is two blocks long and each end can be one of three colours (making a total of six different blocks, including same-coloured ones) and they can be twisted round to be vertical or horizontal (and twisted so the colours are on different sides); they can also be sped up once alligned, which helps you work faster in the time-based multi-player battles. any row of four blocks of the same colour vanish (vertical or horizontal), but the goal is specifically to eliminate the viruses. when the row disappears the blocks supported by it fall down. the dissappearing line can also cut pills in half, allowing the spare single-block to fall on it's own, whereas previously it was wedged into another structure. it's a remarkably simple idea, but as you might see there's already more to think about. lining up three same-coloured blocks on top of each pill is easy, but as the levels increase you'll be forced to create horizontal lines as well as working out how to position blocks so that when you create a line they fall into place to take out another virus. seeing how many viruses you can take out in a single shot is a fun challenge.
the game also becomes hard quickly. as the levels increase the number of viruses goes up dramatically. whilst there may have been just four at the beginning, there's getting on for a hundred by the last level. with such a packed screen every pill counts. sure, you can turn it so that the red side lands on a red pill, but if that means there's a yellow block hanging wedged above a blue virus then it's gonna cause trouble when the red ones vanish. having the wrong colours sitting on top of viruses can be a pain, and whilst it's easily remedied in the early levels when you have masses of room, in the later levels it gets cramped quickly. to survive the later levels you need to make every pill count and be working to knock out multiple viruses at all times and even knock out viruses during the process of clearing up a blockage you made by accident. you don't have the time or space to clear the level one virus at a time, you need to be able to focus on the whole jar together as a whole.
as a tetris-style puzzle game it does of course share similar qualities. it's very addictive and you can be playing it for ages. it's easy to pick up and play at any time. it also induces the same emotions as tetris via similar techniques. it utilizes (by sheer chance) tetris' most annoying feature of witholding the most useful block when you need it most. it's very similar to tetris, yet different enough not to be thought of as a simple clone.
it's quite robust as well, for it's age. the game contains 21 levels in total (starting on level 0), which increase in difficulty to the near impossible (i can't make it past level 18). you can also set the speed to one of three options and choose one of the two addicitve midi backing tracks to play along to. all three versions of the game have a multi-player as well. the NES version simply uses two controllers and a split-screen. the gameboy version obviously requires a link cable and someone else with the same game and only displays your screen. the GBA version still needs two copies and a cable (or wireless GBA link) but, being a direct port of the NES version, interestingly still displays both screens on each gameboy. the multi-player itself is very basic, simply having both players play a level at the same time and the first to finish wins. matches are first to three and you can choose what level to start each player on, giving an interesting handicap to more experienced players. trying to take down 30 viruses before your opponenet clears 15 is certainly a challenge worthy of the hardcore players, and it levels the playing field well. you can affect each other's game slightly. every time you clear more than one virus in one move drops two single, random blocks in separate, random locations on your opponent's screen. this can sometimes help, but more often hinder as they block off viruses with the wrong colours (you're also unable to speed up their fall, which acts as a time penalty as well, giving your opponent a further advantage). despite this very minimal interaction (compared to most puzzle games' multi-players) the multi-player battles can still get very tense, and the handicap levels the playing field perfectly for matched battles.
it is of course the tension and stress that makes the game, much like tetris. as the field gets littered with more of your unused blocks and the rate of pill-falling increases you begin to panic. if something goes wrong or if your opponent drops some blocks in unhelpful places you have to adapt your strategy on the fly and solve the problems whilst still attacking the viruses that are there. it's this sudden panic and tension that we puzzle fans thrive on, and with the matched mutli-player battles it's very easy to waste hours with a friend (or sister in my case) on this brilliant game.
review criteria? the graphics are very basic, with minimal animations and basic colours (or black & white on the gameboy), and yet you rarely wish it was prettier because it's so engrossing. the music may be midi and very retro, but it's also well composed and equally as addictive as the game. the sound effects are limited but well used. the lifespan technically means how long it'll take before you defeat level 20 on the fastest speed, which could be forever. replayability is the section most suited to puzzle games, and it depends entirely on how addicted you get to it. you could play this game for five minutes or a whole lifetime, although of course finding someone who's equally as addicted as you are increases the replayability massively. there's not much innovation and certainly no story (if you find one in the manual, please don't tell me). the difficulty is perfect, since it ranges from stupidly easy to impossibly hard. the drop-in factor is very good since you can pick any level to try, although you'll want to play it from an earlier level and progress upwards to have the most fun. lastly the build-quality is excellent, though admittedly there's not much that could have gone wrong with it.
the last question is whether it's worth your cash nowadays? to be honest most modern puzzle games are infinitely more advanced and complex than this respectively stripped-down game. i don't keep track of which puzzle games are the most popular because frankly different people like different things, but i'm a great fan of meteos, which has untold depth and multi-player chaos. given a choice between them i'd go with meteos, but i do still love dr. mario. frankly it doesn't have the production values you'd expect for the money you'd end up paying for it. try it out if you can and relate it to tetris. would you pay for tetris? i'm tempted to reccommend the wiiware (non-retro wii shop) version coming out soon, which should include wi-fi battles, but it depends on the price. the handheld versions also have the disadvantage that doing multi-player is difficult thanks to two copies (and link cables) being required; and maybe wi-fi battles will take all the fun away by having the other player in a different room. maybe you'd be better off waiting for a virtual console release for the ultimate experience, but then you've got to go back to thinking if it's worth £3.50. the final decision i'm afraid is up to you, but i look forward to finding myself a copy sometime because, bare as it may seen, dr. mario is an absolute classic.

---SUMMARY---
the good: +simple premise, +quite addictive, +has reasonably depth, +good set of options for it's day, +frantic multi-player, +awesome handicap options, +well made and simply great fun.
the bad: -very basic compared to your modern puzzle game, -not getting much for your money, -multi-player can be difficult on the handhelds.
overall feeling: good
-------------

---COMPARISON---
dr. mario 64 - N64 games were priced at £45 in the day. for this? no wonder nobody bought it.
dr. mario & bacteria extermination - the wiiware version with wi-fi battles promised. will it work with the people in the other room? i assume local multi-player is still an option, but the price will need to be researched.
tetris - the classic game. it's lack of options frustrates me but it's the most popular puzzle game in the world. if you actually haven't played it, please find a copy!
----------------

REVIEW - yoshi's story

2007-11-15T18:01:00.000Z

---INFO---
made by nintendo, 1998, 1 player, for the nintendo 64, virtual console & nintendo iQue.
----------

yoshi's story is a deceptive game. when it came out for the nintendo 64 it was a flop, and it doesn't seem to be doing that much better on the virtual console. i missed out on this one when it came out on the N64 so i figured i'd give it a go and i did enjoy the game for a while, but there are a few key features that ruin the game. most importantly there's one major issue with the game, but i'll leave that to last. lets start out with the positives because, despite very bad reviews, yoshi's story does do a few things right.
the first thing you'll notice when playing it is it's charm. the plot of yoshi's story includes their world being turned into a story book, which allows for all sorts of pretty graphics, from the pop-up-book level select menu to the levels themselves that can be made from cardboard, stitched together or anything in between. the game itself is 2D and techniques similar to those used in donkey kong country have been used to make the character sprites look lovely. yoshi him/herself is very well animated, as is much of the scenery and many of the enemies. on the other hand, there's a lot of badly animated sprites as well. adding to the charm is the principle of the game. each level looks like a straight-forward platforming level (run from left to right) but your aim here is not to reach the end of the level, and the levels actually loop. your goal is to eat 30 pieces of fruit. fruit comes in six varieties and is dotted all around the level. there's four ordinary fruits, then the melons (worth more points but harder to find) and the peppers (hurts you to eat). there's way more than 30 in each level so you've just gotta find 30 and the level automatically ends. they can be sitting around with the scenery, being carried by enemies, trapped in balloons that need popping etc. your main attack is your ability to eat enemies as well as the fruit. once you've eaten an enemy they become an egg that trails behind you. you can have a maximum of six eggs. each can be thrown as a projectile weapon by aiming a cursor on the screen.
there's more charm to be had though! each level is fun to meet for the first time because they're all set in different places and have odd graphic designs. your health is represented as a flower in the top-left corner and the more petals it has, the more health you have. the fruit you've eaten lines the edge of the screen and having 30 pieces will make it round the screen once. this odd display method gives a surreal feel to the game. instead of having lives you have six yoshis to use. each has slightly different fruit tastes but are essentially the same. if one of them runs out of life during play (or more likely falls in a bottomless pit) your yoshi is carried off to baby bowser's castle. you can either resume from where you were with a different yoshi or choose another level and use a different yoshi. if you can find the friendly white shy-guy you can use him to rescue one of your yoshi's though (so he acts like an extra life). the option to choose which colour yoshi you want is very charming, despite having little effect on gameplay. another high point is the music. most of the pieces of music are derrivations of two or three theme tunes, but each time they're played they're remixed brilliantly. each remix feels completely different in mood and atmosphere and the overall quality of the music is excellent. it's a joy to listen to.
the structure of the game has you going through six 'pages' to complete the game. each page gives you an option of up to four levels to choose from (depending on how many 'super hearts' you collected in the previous level. this choose-your-path mechanic is reminicent of lylat wars, though i think lylat wars was released later. completing the game itself won't take you more than an hour, and you'll likely complete it after a few tries thanks to a low difficulty. unlike lylat wars though, yoshi's story retains a good drop-in factor because it auto-saves after every level, allowing you to play the game a level at a time. despite the low lifespan, the replayability is fairly high. obviously you'll want to unlock each level, which will take several play-throughs. you can also replay any level you've finished and go for a high score, which is recorded. your score is based on a number of factors from your performance, including a combo system, which is related to which fruits you eat and which yoshi you choose. "brilliant" you think, "another addictive combo system like jungle beat" (an excellent, under-rated gamecube game). unfortunately not, and this is where yoshi's story starts to fall down.
the combo system works on the principle of eating the same fruit in a row. eating one apple and a bunch of bananas gets you points but eating two apples gets you more points. your combo continues to rise with each apple you eat until you eat something else. whilst you can match up yoshi's tastes to certain fruits (and there's a randomly generated "lucky" fruit as well) you soon remember that the melons are worth more points than any other fruit. there just so happens to be exactly 30 melons in each stage and since the other points you gain are largely inconcequential you find that what looked like a neat combo system has actually degraded into a hunt round the level for all 30 melons. this is where you begin to see the rest of the game for what it is too. it has decieved you! it has no depth! searching round a mostly empty level for the last melon highlights the poor level design. they may look pretty but they're actually pretty boring to play. you also notice that the game is aimed at kids rather a lot. the story is about saving the yoshi's "super happy tree" from baby bowser, and the between-level story sections are told like a children's book. the difficulty is also very low. pretty much everything you eat gives you health back, from fruit to enemies to extras. there's even a source of infinite health and invincibility in the final boss encounter. yoshi's story is exposed as a kiddy, shallow, averagely-designed 2D platformer, and none of us want another one of them to go with the hundreds of awful disney platformers out there. so why did we like it for so long? innovation. "it's quite clever to have those pretty graphics", we think to ourselves. the idea of eating fruit to complete the level's quite clever isn't it? turning enemies into projectiles is quite innovative, right? yoshi's charm must be unique! wrong; and those of you who know your gaming history will have guessed what this final 'major issue' with yoshi's story is. a brilliant SNES game by the name of "yoshi's island". yoshi's island beats yoshi's story in every conceivable way. story may have a high build-quality, but island's was higher. yoshi was better to control. the animation and graphic style was a hand-drawn look that out-does story's look in every aspect. the music was equally as awesome. the level design was incredible, the gameplay was excellent and the game itself was huge, challenging and worth your money. you can now understand why yoshi's story gets such bad reviews. it's like a stripped down kids version of yoshi's island, whilst everybody was expecting an amazing sequel. it's very true that the high expections of a sequel to yoshi's island pushed review scores down lower, which is why i decided to review it from the perspective of not knowing yoshi's island, but even then we uncovered the truth. yoshi's story is a short, easy, kiddy, shallow game. see through the layers of charm and even the gameplay seems nonsensical and boring. it does a fair number of things right and it's got loads of nice touches and plenty of charm. a child will love it and you'll enjoy it for a short time, but it's not yoshi's island 2 and it's not all that good after a while. get yoshi's island and see what can really be done with these innovative ideas and charm.

---SUMMARY---
the good: +cute graphics, +excellent music, +a little weird, +as charming as yoshi himself!
the bad: -too short, -too easy, -annoying kiddy story, -dull gameplay goal, -shallow points system, -that annoying tune after you finish each level with the really horrible discord that grates through your skull every time you hear it, -we wanted yoshi's island 2.
overall feeling: average
-------------

---COMPARISON---
super mario world 2: yoshi's island - the legendary game itself. combine yoshi's story's quirky ideas and the brilliance of a high-quality nintendo title and you've got it. simply brilliant. we want this on virtual console please! you buy it on the gameboy advance as well as the SNES though.
yoshi's island DS - marketed as the true sequel, this DS game is surprisingly good.
yoshi's topsy turvy - don't buy it. it's a motion-sensing gameboy advance game but unlike the incredible warioware twisted, yoshi only allows for three motion positions. left, right and neutral. not all that good.
yoshi's touch & go - a brilliant stripped-down version of yoshi's story controlled entirely with the DS touch screen. great fun but unfortunately it's little more than a tech demo and is incredibly short.
super mario 64 - same platform as yoshi's story but instead of being a soulless sequel it's a perfectly made, revolutionise-the-gaming-industry sequel! go buy it now! or better yet, buy super mario galaxy!
----------------

REVIEW - The Legend of Zelda Phantom Hourglass

2007-10-22T15:18:00.002Z

---INFO---
Made by Nintendo, 2007, 1-2 players, for the Nintendo DS.
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In this era of cinematic gaming, handheld games suffer because they can't live up to the graphics, atmosphere and scale of a modern console game. It's always been that way with the Zelda games. The console Zeldas have the epic plots and huge feel, whilst the handheld ones have been smaller and quieter. Despite this, they continue to impress me. Link's Awakening was fantastic, and Minish Cap had huge vision for a Gameboy Advance game. But still I was skeptical of Phantom Hourglass. The DS's catalogue of games includes so many diverse and unique games, so seeing a "normal" game on an underpowered handheld didn't fill me with excitement. But Phantom Hourglass seriously impressed me. It got a lot of things dreadfully wrong, but it also got so many things right, and I really enjoyed it.
There are two things that strike you about Phantom Hourglass when you first load it up. The first is the graphics. We all know that graphics don't make a game and we all know that the DS doesn't have the greatest graphics, but prepare to be impressed. It's true that the polygon count is low and the textures are often bland, but somehow nintendo have managed to recreate Wind Waker's acclaimed art style on the DS, and the cel-shading looks amazing. The characters look gorgeous, the special effects are pretty and the water's not all that bad either. The cut-scenes are brilliant as well; the game reminds you it's using 3D graphics by using different camera angles and surprisingly good direction. During the gameplay segments Link is this tiny, delightfully pretty green-clad boy running about after your stylus. Don't find screenshots, it looks rubbish in them. It doesn't look all that great in movies either, it comes alive when every graphical flair is under your control, which brings me onto the next thing you notice: the controls.
When touch-screen controls were announced, many complained that they wanted D-pad controls as well. I admit I was cautious, but once you've been playing with it for a little while you'll never want to go back. That's not to say there's a learning curve, because there really isn't, it's all perfectly intuitive and dead easy, but there's a moment an hour or two into the game when you realize you stopped thinking about the weird controls ages ago.
Whilst the graphics are all full 3D, the gameplay is essentially 2D (birds-eye camera), with the camera at a slight angle to make things look cooler. To control link you simply hold the stylus down on the direction you want link to move in. The further from Link the stylus is, the faster he runs. This initially sounds inaccurate and fiddly, but it becomes second nature extremely quickly. To attack with his sword you simply tap the enemy and Link will slash at him (and even run over to him if you're too far away). Want to read a signpost? Just tap on it. Talk to a person? Just tap on them. All the controls are simple and intuitive. Of course, a fancy control scheme wouldn't mean a thing if there weren't times when these controls helped in a way that normal controls can't, and these moments largely come from the items. Boomerang? Draw the path you want it to follow, allowing you to throw it round corners or past obstacles with ease. Bombs? Tap exactly where you want Link to throw it, no more of this trial-and-error bomb throwing. The other items are just as good, but I won't spoil for you what they are. Technically speaking, in combat you don't have as much control as you would do with the d-pad and sword buttons, but the game makes sure this is never an issue due to clever level and AI design. You wouldn't want these controls to play Link to the Past with, but Nintendo designed the game so that they work perfectly, and you'll likely fall in love with them.
My only complaint with the controls is with the item selection. You have to hit a button to turn your selected item on and off, since you use the touch-screen for sword as well as items. You also have to select your item off a touch-screen mini-menu at the bottom. It's a good system, but because you have to do it all in real-time gameplay (even selecting which weapon to use) you won't want to be using items much in combat, because it all gets a bit fiddly when they're trying to hack you up whilst you poke around the mini-menus.
Before I continue, a description of the story is needed. Phantom Hourglass is a sequel to Wind Waker. It features the same Link and his pirate friend "Tetra" and picks up exactly where Wind Waker finished (annoyingly spoiling Wind Waker's best twist in the intro cut-scene). They're sailing along when they find the ghost ship. Tetra boards it but Link hears her scream. He tries to go after her but plummets into the sea instead. He washes up on a shore much later and an old man and a fairy (yay - the fairies return! Don't worry, this one is so much less annoying than the old ones) give Link a hand finding Tetra. Zelda games (with the exception of Majora's Mask) have never excelled in the story. It's always link saving some girl, as it is now. However, in recent years Nintendo have developed a technique to breathe new life into that old story, and this comes from having a strong supporting character. Link himself doesn't talk for the same reason that Gordon Freeman doesn't talk: because it makes you that character. You can be your own hero. It's not necessarily better than having a real character as the lead, but it's an artistic device nevertheless. But if Link isn't a real character then there needs to be a strong supporting one, and Nintendo has worked this out. They pioneered the idea in Wind Waker with Tetra and the King of Red Lions, perfected it in twilight princess with Midna and repeated it with Phantom Hourglass and the sailor Linebeck. Linebeck isn't the same as Midna; far from it. I won't ruin for you how his character pans out, but you'll learn to love him just as you learned to love Midna, even if you're more often laughing at him than siding with him.
Those new to the Zelda series (or indeed those who've never played a Zelda game) won't be aware that most Zelda games feature a new Link each time. The theory goes that Ganon (Link's arch-nemesis) survives forever and every now and then escapes his latest prison to wreck havoc on the world.A t that point a boy will end up becoming the latest Link and will find himself some green clothes and a sword. Similarly, a new Princess Zelda will appear. Whilst this was originally designed as handy plot excuse to explain why Link had a different character background in each Zelda game, Nintendo have lately started making references between Zelda games. Phantom Hourlgass is a direct sequel to Wind Waker, which is set many hundreds of years after most of the Zelda games and the land of hyrule that we've come to know and love has been flooded. Instead of having a massive field as the central area, you have the great sea, and instead of a horse, you have a boat.
Wind Waker's sailing sections, despite being gorgeous to look at and very relaxing, were criticized massively. The sea was too big and too empty, and journeys were too long and there was little to do. On the occasion you met an enemy worth fighting, you had to stop sailing in order to fire the cannon at them. Phantom Hourglass helps, but doesn't solve these issues. First you draw the route you want your boat to take on the map. Then the map retreats to the top screen, leaving your boat self-propelling itself along your track and your stylus is free to move the camera around. The ocean is much smaller and traveling distances are similarly shorter. There's also a lot more going on. Enemies turn up left, right and center, but they're dead easy to take out, since your cannon fires wherever you tap the screen, and you boat keeps moving. You can also meet passing ships, go fishing or search for sunken treasure. It's still occasionally annoying to have to sit and watch your boat sail when you want to be fighting, and it's not as pretty as it was on Wind Waker, but the sailing sections are much improved.
Drawing on maps has been mentioned, and I have to say this is one of the neatest features in the game. Gameplay takes place on the bottom screen, as already described, whilst the top screen has a map. It's a DS cliche, but it's been used well this time. Unlike most DS games with maps, the one in Phantom Hourglass is genuinely useful. You'll be referring to it all the time for directions. The handy thing is that at any time you can bring the map down to the bottom screen and write on it. You can write anything at all on it. This sounds like a gimmick, but actually a large number of puzzles have been designed to make note-taking a useful and frequently used hobby. You might be asked to dig a whole where two lines (that you must draw) cross, or maybe you need to jot down the order in which you should pull four levers. Sure, this means there's a lot of extra note-taking puzzles, but you start to enjoy doodling notes about the place.You frequently pick up clues about secrets on other islands and the awesome map lets you find the map for that island and write it down so when you next visit the island you'll see the note you left for yourself. Once you've solved the puzzle you can erase the note to make more room. Some notes you might want to leave though; you can give each island a little name so you don't forget which one has the character you need to talk to. The map is used in increasingly brilliant ways throughout the game, and after a while it stops telling you to write stuff on the map and it becomes an automatic reaction to gaining new information, and those who continue to note down everything find the game a lot easier. You develop your own little code for map notes, it's really quite fun. I found myself using the whole screen to work out one logic puzzle once, and I left my notes detailing my quickest route through the massive timed maze for future reference.
The most crucial thing of all with Phantom Hourglass is that despite it's massive innovation, it still retains the Zelda feel. The game feels like a massive adventure. The 3D cut-scenes really help that, and they're also really quite funny at times, since the cel-shaded Zeldas tend to be more light-hearted than the realistic, more serious ones. Also to aid the sense of adventure is the joy of exploration. Everywhere's a new location with plenty to look for and discover, whether it's a new area you hadn't seen before or another colourful, funny character to talk to. Lastly of course there's the undeniable Zelda-ness of the dungeons. The dungeons are packed full of innovative puzzles and battles. In normal 2D zelda games the dungeons are split into small rooms (originally one screen big, but later games made them larger) and going to the edge of the screen moves you to the next room. Phantom Hourglass has each entire floor as one room (as in without loading or walking off the edge of the screen), and has created smaller rooms with walls. This gives the dungeons a much bigger feel to them, and it means it's much more obvious how all the rooms connect together. Phantom Hourglass also follows Zelda's tradition of having incredibly complex dungeons, with rooms, routes and puzzles all linked together but somehow the game design still leads you through the dungeon in a way that never makes you feel lost or stuck for long.
But Phantom Hourglass never sticks with tradition for long. I've already described how it innovates with the control system, with the sailing, with the map, with the items and so on. It continues to surprise you though. No dungeon map as a pickup? That's 'cos there's a permanent map. Boss key as an item you must carry to the boss door? Clever idea. Bosses involving both screens? Wonderful to play. Another nifty feature is the menu system. Despite my complaints at the fiddliness of trying to get an item out in the middle of combat, the mini-menus that slide out and the non-touch screen shortcuts are a really nice feature.
One of the more controversial new ideas is the Temple of the Ocean King. There are seven normal dungeons (I think) and then the Temple of the Ocean King. You're asked to visit this temple between each normal dungeon, so you'll be there a lot. It's filled with a gas that lowers your health by the second, which makes it difficult to stay in. Thankfully you find the Phantom Hourglass, which stops the gas for as long as the sands have power. You begin with 10 minutes on the clock, allowing you 10 minutes inside the dungeon before you have to return to the surface to restore the Hourglass' power. Unfortunately, returning to the surface resets all the puzzles and enemies. It's a challenge to see if you can make it as far as you need to go before you run out of time. There are "safe zones", small glowing areas where the gas can't touch you. The hourglass doesn't count down when you're in these, so they can be really helpful when you want to sit and plan your route through the next section. There's also occasional jars that either give you more time in the hourglass or allow you to create your own safe zones where you throw the jar. To add danger to the mix there's the Phantoms. They are knights in armour and are invincible. They patrol the dungeon and have a metal-gear-solid-style cone of vision that helpfully appears on your map. If they see you all the phantoms will be alerted to your presence and they'll chase after you. If they catch you then you lose not only health but over thirty seconds from the hourglass. Once you've made it to a safe zone though, they give up.
I can see Nintendo's intentions when they designed the Temple of the Ocean King, but it mostly comes across as frustrating. The idea is that you have to see if you can complete all the floors in the time limit. Next time you come to the temple you'll unlock an extra floor (making it harder) but you'll be able to use your new item (from the rest of the game) to do the old floors quicker. If you make notes on your map letting you know where to go and what to do then you can cut out all the faffing around in later play-throughs. On each visit you can scribble new notes for the new routes you can take. Unfortunately in practise, the repetition of the dungeon and the time constraints end up being as frustrating as they sound, and I've met several people for whom this dungeon was the reason they gave up playing.
But the Temple of the Ocean King is Phantom Hourglass' only huge flaw. The rest of the game is really fun, and of Nintendo's usual high quality. The audio is fantastic, with masterful Wind Waker style music and some great sound effects. I advise playing the whole game with a decent set of headphones to get the most out of the soundtrack. The lifespan is pretty big, about average for a Zelda game. The replayability is reasonably good as well, with plenty of side-quests and collectable items, including the ability to collect parts for your ship and customize it's appearance, which is a lovely addition. Another nice thing about Phantom Hourglass is it's quite easy. It's not the bad kind of easy though; it's the accessible kind of easy. Anyone can pick it up and enjoy a fair amount of it thanks to the intuitive controls and slow difficulty curve. There'll always be those who complain that it's too easy, but they should try playing the game with just three hearts then! The drop-in factor isn't all that great, you do need to actually sit down with the game for a while to enjoy it. O course you can save anywhere, and if you shut the DS' lid it enters sleep mode and uses almost no battery, so you can play it for as long or as short a time as you like. Lastly, the build-quality is of Nintendo's usual high quality.
There's also a multi-player mode to keep you occupied. One player controls Link and the other controls three phantoms, directing them by drawing on the map and having limited vision capabilities. The idea is that Link has to collect as many golden triangles as he can (he has to pick them up and take them to his base, though they slow him down when he carries them) before either his time runs out or a phantom catches him, at which point the two players switch roles. There's safe zones, special items and bonuses unlocked in the main game as rewards for good multi-player achievements so there's plenty to do. It's not the best multi-player ever, but it's good for now and then. It's a bit more skills-based than the main game. It runs with only one copy of the game, which is really nice. If you can't find anyone, you can try it over the internet too.
Phantom Hourglass isn't a perfect game. The controls dictate that the gameplay be 2D. You can't (easily) draw a boomerang path in 3D or ask link to follow your stylus in 3D, so the camera remains top-down like the previous zelda games. This is lovely, but it does occasionally look weird when you're in a dungeon and the camera swings down for a cut-scene. There's no ceiling, it's just black. Outside things look fine, but in the dungeons it's a little dull. The walls breaking up the "rooms" are square and bland. You'd be forgiven for mistaking dungeons for each other because (with a few exceptions) they look pretty much exactly the same. Whilst the 3D graphics look awesome, these block walls look uninspiring and you start to realise that a bland polygon isn't as great as a hand-drawn, beautiful sprite. There's plenty of other things to pick on, such as the difficulty in collecting every single ship part (since you're given them randomly), but the Temple of the Ocean King and the sailing sections are the only real negative points about the game, and even those can be really enjoyable if you go with them.
Phantom Hourglass doesn't do enough for me to rate it amongst the greatest games in history. In a few years time it'll fade away into the list of Zelda games. There are far more innovative, clever and unique games on the DS. But Phantom Hourglass does an awful lot perfectly as well. It's a friendly game with a fun atmosphere. It's accessible to everyone, and I recommend it to everyone. Even if you're not a Zelda fan, I recommend trying this. It's different and fun. There's a lot of nice touch-screen use, graphics and use of the DS' features and power that's not exactly ground-breakingly different, but just pulled off to a high standard not often seen. If you've got a DS and feel like a fun adventure with plenty that'll put a smile on your face, this is certainly a good choice. It falls short of perfection, but passing up a chance to play it would definitely be a mistake.

---SUMMARY---
The Good: +Awesome graphics for the DS, +Great looking cel-shaded characters, +Oozes the Wind Waker's charm (both in terms of look and feel), +Amazingly effective and simply controls, +Lots of innovative ideas, +Doodling on the map, +Exploration, +Brilliant puzzles & gameplay built around the controls and innovation, +Customizing your ship, +Linebeck, +Online multi-player, +It feels like zelda, +The Temple of the Ocean King (if you like it), +No tingle!!
The Bad: -The Temple of the Ocean King (if you don't like it), -Similar dungeons, -Occasionally feels a bit small, -Can't get all the ship parts easily, -Sometimes feels like it could be something more.
Overall Feeling: Good
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---COMPARISON---
Wind Waker - For the Gamecube, the game before this chronologically. Full 3D gameplay. Looks incredible and has plenty of charm. Makes plenty of mistakes here and there with love/hate sailing and a slow-paced fourth quarter, but a classic nevertheless and some amazing moments.
The Minish Cap - The only new Zelda title for the Gameboy Advance. It's one of those games that's bigger than anything its console has seen. Absolutely huge, aims high, oozes charm and creativity and engages your curiosity.
Twilight Princess - The Gamecube/Wii more serious 3D zelda. A brilliant game with a large scale. An epic fantasy, even if it does feel a bit old at times.
Majora's Mask - The N64/Virtual Console Zelda with an incredibly well told, emotional story thanks to serious theme and some clever story-telling ideas. Unfortunately, it's also very hard and slow to start, so I recommend Twilight Princess or Ocarina of Time first.
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REVIEW - donkey konga

2007-10-19T14:11:00.000Z

---INFO---
made by namco, 2004, 1-4 players, for the gamecube.
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for most of us, our only experience of a rhythm game has been dance mats. dance mats always put me off the genre. whilst i found the rhythm aspect fun, the dancing was nothing like real dancing, the music was apalling and the rhythms had little to do with the actual music (though i may have been blinded to that by my hatred of the music itself). i love dance mats, i just never got on with them all that well. donkey konga on the other hand, i did.
the principle is straight forward and is extremely similar. you have a plastic set of drums in front of you, consisting of two small drums. you have four input options: left drum, right drum, both drums and clapping, which is handily picked up by the microphone between the drums. on the screen, symbols roll from right to left and as they pass a marker on the screen you make the corresponding input. that's essentially the same as a dance mat. one of the differences is that unlike dance mats, where all four inputs have separate lines, donkey konga throws all four on the same line at you, with different symbols representing the different inputs. obviously this is because dance mats allow for two inputs at the same time, whilst donkey konga doesn't. this does make donkey konga a little easier, and hardcore dance mat fans may be dissapointed by the difficulty. luckily most of us aren't hardcore dance mat fans, and we'll enjoy the game as it is.
obviously the song list is vitalling important, and so it is printed at the bottom of the review. i think the song list is fairly good. not brilliant, but quite good. i've linked all the songs in the list to youtube videos of them so you can hear the ones you don't know. bear in mind that the youtube videos are of the original songs and the ones used in donkey konga are average covers.
the rest of the game is pretty straight forward. it requires a great sense of rhythm to play, since staring at the target cicle (you hit the drum when the symbol reaches the circle) won't help you much. you devlop a method of doing it after a while where you simply look at the symbols coming along and gauge how far apart they are, and then put it into the rhythm of the song. it becomes a very in-the-zone experience. once you get one wrong, however, you get thrown and it takes you a while to get back in. the difficulty varies from quite low to insanely hard, although the lowest difficulty is still quite hard for most people i've played the game with. still, practice makes perfect. the problem is that practice also gives you very sore hands and quite often neck pains because of the position you need to sit in. this means you can't play it for long periods of time. this is ok at large parties because you alternate, but it means single-player needs to be done in small sessions. this is ok though, since the main multi-player modes are completely unlocked from the start, so no single-player campaigning need be done unless you want to.
the modes are limited. the main single-player mode has you playing through individual songs of your choosing. each note you hit gets you points and each note you miss loses you points. you get a medal based on your points at the end. there are three difficulties, though each song must be bought individually for the third difficulty from the shop. you buy the songs with coins, another kind of points that you pick up in the single-player mode. if you're feeling daring you can try a mode where you can play any of the songs on the three difficulties but without the symbols. blank symbols replace them, so you know the timing, but not which drum to hit. this is obviously for enthusiasts with amazing memories and too much spare time. another mode has you playing through every song in a random order until you lose (or win). you can do this co-operatively with a partner as well, though either way you'll probably want to stop long before you can. there's a two-player battle mode which has a few bonus-point things mid-song and decides a winner at the end. there's also the jam session mode, which allows 1-4 players. in this mode there is no winner, you just enjoy the music. lastly, there's the crummy mini-games that can be bought from the shop (you can also buy crummy bongo sounds from the shop, which make your drums sound like barnyard animals and the like).
it has to be mentioned that in all the multi-player modes, the rhythms are split between the 2 or 4 players (a computer fills in when you only have three people). one of the joys of donkey konga is where they choose to place the drum breats to fit with the song. it's musical magic, and having four players all play their lines perfectly is as amazing to hear as it is rare. it's a pity, because for a music-lover like myself it's that musical perfection that makes the game so enjoyable, but it's hard to find three other people that good. oh well.
the other problem with finding three other players is of course finding three other bongos. this is quite an expensive game to get the most out of. you can use ordinary gamecube controllers, but it's really not fun in the slightest. one set of bongos comes free with the game, but each extra set must be bought (for the price of a normal gamecube controller). luckily extra bongos come free with donkey konga 2 and jungle beat (both of which are described in the comparison section at the bottom). your best bet is to find a friend who also wants donkey konga and get two bongos each.
so how does it hold up as a game? the graphics are poor, frankly. the music is of course brilliant. although the songs are all dodgy covers, they are on the whole good songs (except for the nintendo remixes, which ruined wonderful songs). the sound effects do the job, though they're nothing extraordinary. the game doesn't really have a lifespan, since there's very little to complete. buying everything from the shop is too boring to be considered a real goal. replayability is measured simply on how often it'll come out at a party, which isn't as much as you'd think considering how much harder it is to play for newcomers than wii sports.
the drop-in factor is quite high, since you only have to play one song to have fun. it has story explaining how donkey kong found two drums that looked like bongos, but you'll really wish they hadn't tried. in terms of innovation though, the game's quite high, and it's buld-quality is also high. oh, and just for the record, one of my pet peeves about this game is how it always fades out and ends the game before the track's finished. oh well.
to summarise, donkey konga does well everything that it sets out to do. it's a competent rhythm game with a unique twist and some quite good songs. the issues with it are simply down to the nature of the game (cost, initial difficulty, sore hands etc.) so you'll have to forgive it. i love the game because i love the feeling of four drum-beats becoming one awesome soundtrack. was it worth all the money for the amount i play it though? i'm not really sure...

the song list:
99 red balloons by nena
all the small things by blink 182
alright by supergrass
back for good by take that
busy child by the crystal method
canned heat by jamiroquai
cosmic girl by jamiroquai
dancing in the street by martha & the vandellas
don't stop me now by queen
hungarian dance no.5 in G minor by brahms
i want you back by jackon 5
lady marmalade by labelle
louie louie by richard berry
oye como va by santana
para los rumberos by tito puente
richard III by supergrass
september by earth, wind and fire
sing, sing, sing (with a swing) by louis prima
the impression that i get by the mighty mighty bosstones
the loco-motion by little eva
tubthumping by chumbawamba
turkish march by mozart
wild thing by jimi hendrix
you can't hurry love by phil collins
DK rap by rareware, james w. norwood jr.
donkey kong country theme by rareware, e.fischer & r.beanland
donkey konga theme by namco
rainbow cruise by nintendo, koji kondo
super mario bros. theme by nintendo, koji kondo
super smash bros. melee opening by HAL laboratory
the legend of zelda theme by nintendo, koji kondo

---SUMMARY---
the good: +good songs, +fun & innovative drums, +four-player awesomeness, +good drum-beats, +great fun when you get four people of similar skill, +a reaonable party game, +the amazing in-the-zone feeling of completing a song on the hardest difficulty.
the bad: -expensive to play, -not often you'll get four bongos together, -even less often will everybody be playing in time, -harder than it looks, -finishing each level before the track's ended, -not all that much to do, -gives you sore hands so must be playing in intervals, -doesn't last as long as you might think, -limited other uses for the bongos.
overall feeling: good
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---COMPARISON---
donkey konga 2 - exactly the same but with different songs. i'm not sure what the european song list is though, sorry.
donkey kong jungle beat - a platformer that uses the bongos. left and right drums make you run left and right, hitting both makes you jump and clapping affects certain nearby enemies or objects. wonderfully innovative, beautiful graphics (for gamecube), satisfying gameplay and a brilliant combo system that'll have you playing levels again and again to pull off cool stunts.
dancing stage mario mix - the classic DDR dance mat series comes to the gamecube.
elite beat agents - a crazy rhythm game for the DS that beats anything else i've seen. a little weird but mind-bendingly good fun.
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REVIEW - phoenix wright justice for all

2007-10-16T14:08:00.001Z

---INFO---
made by capcom, 2007, 1 player, for the Nintendo DS.
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i admitt that i was slightly sceptical when i began playing this, but the phoenix team have done it again and created one of the greatest gaming experiences you'll ever have. half novel and half video game, the phoenix series mixes gripping story-writing with clever thinking on your half. of course it's not that simple. read on to discover why this is a game you must own.
briefly before i begin the review i'll mention a small christian objection. a fair amount of the plot revolves around one character who is able to contact dead spirits. i personally have no objection to this in fiction, but i'm aware than some of my fellow christians will object, and so i respect their beliefs and issue this warning before commencing the review. however, it is used in a very light-hearted way, simply to enable you to talk normally to a previously dead character, without going into any of the reality of the subject. i would say most people would find little objection, and that is a good thing, because i want as few people as possible to miss out on this game!
phoenix wright justice for all is the sequel to the original phoenix wright ace attorney (although confusingly it seems that capcom are using the "ace attorney" part as the series' title, giving this game three titles). both of the games originated on the gameboy advance but were japanese-only releases. eventually capcom decided to update them to DS games and in doing so allowed us nice english-speaking folk to play it. justice for all plays very similarly to the original phoenix wright, although several key additions help the atmosphere hugely.
the principle of the game is that you are phoenix wright, a defence attorney. it is your job to defend your clients in court, all of whom have been accused of murder. the prosecution present their case against you and call their witnesses. the witnesses testify to what they saw/know, which incriminates your client. on the basis that your client is innocent, the witnesses must be lying (or must be mistaken) it is your job to discover the flaws in their testimonies and find the real culprit. that's a bit of a simplification, but it gives you the general idea.
gameplay is split between two sections. in the first section you move around several locations (the scene of the crime, the nearby areas etc.) doing detective work to discover all you can to help you in court. in these sections you question characters you meet and search for clues. knowledge and evidence are both extremely useful in court. when you are in court gameplay procedes as i have mentioned.
but the majority of the game is not spent doing things, but is spent reading. phoenix wright is an interactive novel. luckily, the story-writing is extremely high quality. the game manages to be both very funny and very serious, all the characters are distinct and loveable (or hateable), the situations are unique and interesting and (crucially) the speech is not cringe-worthy (except occasionally on purpose). you get to know the characters pretty well over the course of the game, and the game has a definite feel of story and scripted events, instead of feeling like a methodical logic game. as you search for clues often finding something will cause an event to happen. plot twists occur frequently (and are always surprising). put simply, it's not a case of being presented with the facts and working it out, it's a case of going on the journey with your character and working out what's going on.
at the start of each case the game likes to present you with what seems to be a water-tight case against your client. there's no way they couldn't have done it! phoenix himself is a great character in that he almost always feels exactly how you do. at the start he groans inwardly every time you discover the prosecution has another piece of evidence or another witness. everything seems a little hopeless and you often end up bluffing your way through the opening stage (which is phoenix's trademark tactic). you've no idea how your client can be innocent but you pick up on a tiny detail and somehow convince the court that it shows someone else could be the murderer. of course the prosecution won't be pleased with this. in phoenix wright's world the prosecution lawyers are on the whole horrible people who care more about "winning" than finding justice. all through the game the court sessions are depicted as a battle between the two lawyers, which is an interesting story dynamic.
as the case progresses twists occur, more details come to light and characters make strange choices. it's somehow incredibly gripping as you slowly discover that what you thought was certain proof that your client did it can actually be explained by a complex series of events. it's amazing how you slowly begin to see the bigger picture. often you're lead to believe one thing with such a passion, only to find that an extra piece of evidence changes it all. it's a testament to how well created the puzzles are that such a thing is possible. when you do discover a new fact you will often gasp out loud as revalation dawns.
it's this level of involvement that makes phoenix such an amazing game. like any novel, it needs to suck you in to succeed. you really get into the game and become the role of phoenix himself. as you meet a new character you have your suspiscions of them, you question them and gain an opinion. you slowly think through the facts and come up with your own theories, completely unaware that the game is leading you down a fixed path. as you come up with your new theory you believe you're being extremely clever and have just worked out something magical, when actually the game wants you to think that. because the game chooses what you do and don't think, it means it can script the events to shock you the most. you are still being extremely clever, since great concentration is needed to get through the game, but the great freedom that you feel is actually a lie (but it is amazing that the game creates the impression of freedom for you, and it's crucial to the experience).
enough ranting: what are these new features for phoenix 2? one of the key features is the ability to present character profiles to people and in court (instead of just being able to present evidence). this means guessing is a lot harder to get away with, but it also means you can question characters about other characters. the detective sections have much more focus on questioning characters about certain characters and pieces of evidence than in the last game, where you simply read the pre-set speech and moved on. secondly, a health bar has been implemented instead of phoenix 1's five-mistakes-and-you-lose strategy. the advantage of the health bar is that the game can decide how much health you lose depending on how big the mistake is. by mistake i mean presenting evidence in court that doesn't make sense, aka it stops you guessing. also, you must survive with your health bar for the whole case.
finally, the best new addition is the "psyche-locks". in the second case you're given a magical item that allows you to visually see a lock when someone is avoiding telling you something (or is lying). once you see this lock you use the item to start a conversation on the subject. they refuse to tell you unless you can force it out of them using evidence. bigger secrets have more locks and require more evidence. you can quit the "conversation" part at any time, if you don't feel like losing more health; but breaking all the locks on a person gains you health back. but the great thing about this isn't the gameplay of breaking the lock, but it's the story-related aspect. you meet a character and ask them a question only to see a lock appear. suddenly you know that they're lying. this affects your suspiscions greatly and creates a sense of curiosity. later you'll be able to come back and unlock them to find out what it is they know. it's a strage effect, but it enhances the atmosphere massively. these new features seem small, but they add enough for me to award the game a large amount of innovation, and the new story-lines are certainly very innovative.
so what of the game criteria? the graphics are good, with wonderful anime character art and well-drawn backgrounds. technically all the character animations could be pulled of on a GBA, but the animations are still large in number, and the character art is so brilliant at aiding the story that it's a success of art over power. the sounds are brilliant, with great music and some very well-used sound effects. the lifespan is surprisingly large, although it's not the biggest game around. the replayability is an interesting aspect. you'll enjoy the game the most on your first play-through, because you don't know what's going to happen and the game can work it's magic on you. however the story is still good to read and if you wait a long time you'll eventually forget enough about the cases to have a good second play-though. admittedly, this is one of the game's flaws, but it's the same as in any book.
the drop-in factor is extremely high, since you can save at almost any moment. the difficulty is perfect. the game starts off reasonably easy, guiding you along (by giving phoenix amnesia and explaining everything to him like he's a new lawyer). the first case is tiny and has just a small number of characters and pieces of evidence to think about. slowly the game gets more difficult as you go along though. i really advice playing the game without a walkthrough. i never got stuck for more than 5 minutes, and those 5 minutes of hard-thinking only added to the satisfaction of working it out (or getting lucky :P). there is the issue of the new health bar making things much more difficult, but this can easily be countered by (very) frequent saving. finally the build-quality is superb, but then there's not much that could go wrong with it anyway.
are you convinced yet? if not, why not? this game is a master-piece of interactive fiction. the game absorbs you so completely with it's amazing and carefully thought out graphics, music, characters and twists. you get completely involved both emotionally and in terms of your thought processes. the game's master design is showed off even more when you think of how it can present what seems to be a perfect theory and then explain it away. but best of all is the curiosity and detective work that goes on in your mind. unlike a TV or novel murder mystery, you must actually figure it out to move on, instead of just absorbing the facts. the cases in phoenix are also far more interesting than most TV or novel murder mysteries. you'll be coming up with theories all the way through to the end of each case, when the shocking truth is revealed. and of course the fourth (and final) case, like in the first game, somehow combines story events from all through the game and makes the most stunning case seen to date. all through this game you will gasp out loud at it's genius.
this leaves us one final question: which do you get, phoenix wright 1 or 2? the answer is simple: play the first one before the second one. justice for all does a fantastic job of explaining what's happened to so far to the player in case they haven't played the first game, whilst not actually giving away anything from the first game (which is impressive), but to be honest you'll get more out of the story if you've had all the character investment from the first game, so play them in order. as for which game is better? i'd be hesitant, but i think i'd say the second one.
so to summarise, buy this game. you don't have to be a gamer, you just have to own a DS. unless you have an issue with reading, please go and buy this game. it is a work of art not to be missed.

---SUMMARY---
the good: +brilliant characters, +slickly presented, +save anywhere, +instantly accessible, +complete absorbtion into the game, +so insanely clever, +masterful plot twists, +the feeling in the pit of your stomach when you suddenly realise what really happened!
the bad: -once it's over you won't want to come back for a while...
overall feeling: good
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---COMPARISON---
phoenix wright ace attorney - the original game. play this first, then play justice for all.

another code - rubbish compared to phoenix wright, but judged on it's own it's a competent, emotional point-and-click.

hotel dusk - not as funny as phoenix, but packed with a great story, deep characters and a fantastic atmosphere. who needs a book when you can read through this?
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