Prince of Persia: Sands of Time reviewed...the video game....the one before the movie

There are some times when I just feel like playing a damn series for some reason.  For this urge, it was the Prince of Persia Sands of Time trilogy...well, before Forgotten Sands came along but I don't think people are counting that one.  Anyways, the point is that I didn't really know what to expect.  I know you controlled time and you ran across walls.  Those things are enough for me to buy it though so here we are now diving into Prince of Perisa: The Sands of Time.

Now obviously you play as the Prince, who's just starting his warrior ways when he and his father invade some kingdom.  The Prince goes into the city for some glory and a war souvenir in which he finds the Sands of Time dagger...and some big ass hourglass.  Those things get taken back to the palace and the Prince gets to keep the dagger but with a treacherous, evil Vizier and some WACKY HIJINKS, the Sands of Time from the hourglass gets unleashed and turns almost everyone into horrible Sand Monsters.  The only "survivors" is the Prince, the evil Vizier and the conquered Princess Farrah.  And now the Prince and Farrah must navigate the palace to find the Vizier, kill him and set things right.


The big draw of this was all the fun acrobatics you could do.  You, obviously, can run across the walls.  You can do the wall jump just like in Super Mario 64.  You can swing on stuff and then hang on ledges.  And the best part of all that fun stuff is that it's all smooth and fast-paced.  There's very little slow-down when you doing these things, which is great since one moment you have to run down a wall and then the next you have to wall-jump to the next platform.  This is the part of playing this game, just doing all these stunts just brings out the MAN in me.  And then on top of that, The Prince is a very endearing character so we care about him and want him to make those jumps.  The Prince is very sardonic and has some great, funny lines.  I won't say he's one of my favorite video game characters but he's a guy I would love to see more of.

And then we come to the big flaw in this game.  A flaw so massive that it splintered into many tiny flaws.  That is the combat system which is the worst one I've played since the first Devil May Cry.  A system so frustrating that I threw my controller at the wall once or twice....or five times in utter rage.  Why this over-the-top anger?  First off, there is no auto-targeting so while you want to finish one monster, the game decides you want to attack another monster.  Then you get trapped and the monster you wanted to finish off gets back up and you have to fight him all over again.  What else....OH, the camera system is horrible.  It's not the best during the acrobatics but it gets the job done.  In combat, the camera wants to go behind barriers so you don't get to see what's going on half the time so you get combed to death by the monsters.  Which leads to my next point, the monsters catch you in a combo, kiss your ass goodbye since that's going to be the end of you.  You can't block it and if you get knocked down, they still hit you which really sucks.  But wait, you can use the Sands of Time to reverse, get this, time and get away from the onslaught right?  You can but it's so finicky that, while not useless, is a pain to get right since you have to go back to the moment of your downfall and then a little before since it takes a couple seconds for time to catch up to the player.  And you really have to hold the L button to reverse time since a light hold will have you wasting an ungodly amount of sand tanks necessary to back in time.  The there's Farrah who makes this game an escort mission half the time.  Granted, she can attack and does so with competently...she's too stupid to move.  So you can't go off picking monsters off one-by-one.  No, you have to be attached to Farrah's hips and protect her from the monsters.  Also granted, they come after you but when a few gang up on you, one goes after Farrah.  It's almost always going to be a horrible time fighting with her.

Like Devil May Cry, this game is overrated, thanks solely to the horrible combat system.  Unlike, Devil May Cry the rest of the gameplay is pretty good.  Running around and jumping is all great fun.  The Prince is a great character.  The script is great with many funny lines.  The puzzles are decent enough.  I want to like this game but the horrible combat won't let me....sorry.

6/10

Resident Evil 4 reviewed

I remember the first time I gave a Resident Evil game a shot.  It was Resident Evil 2 and me & my brother rented it.  I think my brother made it until the crowes and I didn't make it off the first screen.  My flaw was that I wanted to kill everything and that the controls were horrible. And as I grew up I realized the point wasn't to kill everything but to survive and make careful use of resources.  I decided that was stupid and never thought about Resident Evil again.  But then, something caught my eye about Resident Evil 4 for some reason.  It could be the fact that it promised to be totally different that it would be awesome and the fact that it was much confirmed that it was totally different.  Then I found out you CAN kill everything and this game was bought so let's get on with the review.

You are Leon Scott Kennedy, one of the few survivors of the events of Resident Evil 2.  After the events, somehow he gets to join The Secret Service.  His job is to protect The President's daughter, Ashley, or it would if she wasn't kidnapped by some crazy religious cult called Los Illuminados which are also called Ganados.  So now Leon has to go some place in Europe that isn't Spain even though it's obviously is and get her back.  Along the way, you find out the evil plan and the evil parasites called Las Plagas which control Los Illuminados.  So there's only way to solve this problem....killing everything that moves and then killing it again!

Now for all the people who said things were going to change we not lying one bit.  No more do we have to suffer through horrible pre-determined angles which necessitated the horrible idea of the tank-controls.  Now, it's more of a shooter where the camera is always behind you as you walk with a moving and fluid camera that is never predetermined!  You won't believe how a fundamental change actual made me like this even despite my horrible memories of 2.  Also, you can kill everything now!  I won't say there's no management of inventory for there is and if you waste too much ammo then you're stuck with crappy weapons but as long as you're careful then it's not a big problem.  But this was a great kick to the ass to the franchise in terms of controls.


Of course, the bread and butter of Resident Evil is the atmosphere.  Without a nice scary atmosphere waiting to lull the player into a false sense of security before it scares the living crap out of you.  The voices of the evil Ganados are bone-chilling, especially if they come up from behind you and you're low on health.  There's even the background details that are chilling like the full extent of Los Illuminados plan and some background violence like a woman with a pitchfork in her face.  But the thing that really scares me the most...well two things, the first is the sounds of the Ganados in the castle.  The other guys have high-pitch threats that are fear-inspiring they are nothing compared to the Castle Ganados.  They have low-pitch voices and they chant repeatedly in a way that will crawl into your very soul.  The other thing that scares me in this game are the Las Plagas who hide in some of the Ganados.  That means when you kill them the head explodes and these things pop out waiting to kill you!  You never know which one will have them and they are deadly plus hard to kill, unless you have flash grenades.


And what review of Resident Evil 4 would be complete without mentioning the script.  I have to mention that is so fulled with Fridge Logic it isn't funny but the plot is pretty much an excuse for Leon to kill everything and everyone.  But then there's the dialogue and do you want to know what it reminds me of?  Wrestling promos from the WWF/E.  There's some scenes where you talk through a video-communicator and it's done with such gusto while they scream such lines as "DIE YOU WORM!", "Saddler, you're small-time!" and "I got more important things to do than solving riddles!" that I get a kick out of them.

This is a great gateway installment for the Resident Evil series.  The action is both ridiculous and awesome.  The atmosphere is intense and at times, unsettling.  The enemies are scary.  The Las Plagas is horrifying.  The dialogue works in a over-the-top way.  It may be flawed when you think about it but when you're playing, it is utter perfection.

10/10

Bomberman Jetters reviewed

So I mentioned in my Bomberman Generation may or may not been based off of a Bomberman anime. I can now say that, without a shadow of a doubt, that Bomberman Jetters is based off of a Bomberman anime. I can also say that this game is a horrible slap-to-the-face to the Bomberman franchise, to the fans of the Bomberman franchise and to good old-fashioned video-game conventions. So let's dig in with the atrocity that is called Bomberman Jetters.

Some time after you whooped the HIGE HIGE Bandits from Bomberman Generation, they have come back for revenge! And this time, the HIGE HIGE Bandits will leave no prisoners or survivors because they have gotten this built this huge comet/ship that will crash into Planet Bomber, Bomberman's home planet, and destroy it! So it's up to Bomberman to fly up to this comet/ship and blow up the hell out of it. And this time, Max is going to get off his butt and help you this time.

Does the plot make you want to play this game to entertain you bomb lust? Well let's see what the game play has to say about that. This game may be one of the worst offenders of Guide Dang It, a case where you have to go to a guide of some kind to figure out what to do. I mentioned this happening in Bomberman 64 but that was only to get all the gold cards, not to advance the plot or kill bosses. That's what Jetters makes you do cause most of the time you're stuck, there's a non-intuitive solution to it all. Being stuck for half-an-hour at a level is not fun! Trying to kill the final boss because you have to wait for it to do a specific attack and then attack it in a specific way is not fun!

Then there's Max, you remember him from Generation where he just helped you whenever he felt like it? You wish he helped you whenever he felt like it cause he actually does something. Alright, you can switch between Bomberman and Max at will which is good. Max also has a pretty awesome Spirit Bomb which wipes out all enemies on the screen. So what's the problem? He's not given anything to do besides destroying some steel wall that shows up once a world. So you ask why can't you be Max all the time...well that's cause you can't use the Charaboms, those animals that make traversing the world possible. There's no incentive to use Max all the time and, by all accounts, he's pretty useless besides destroying steel walls.

The graphics attempt to be cel-shaded like Generation but combined with the anime sensibilities of the....well, anime. It's not that it's a bad idea, it's just poorly executed. All the colors are washed-out, the details are flat and nothing really pops out. The worst thing is that the game decides to give Bomberman eyes, I mean real eyes that includes the white in the eyes! This is kinda creepy especially after the standard look of Bomberman eyes was always two vertical lines! The real eyes just makes things a bit too real and goes way into Uncanny Valley. Just way too creepy for my tastes.

Simply put, this game is garbage. The cameras are garbage. The voice work is garbage. The graphics are garbage. The game play is garbage. The characters are garbage. The music is garbage. That mini game that's a throw back to the old days of Bomberman is garbage. The Charaboms are garbage. The use of Max in the game is garbage. I'm pretty sure once you get past the fact that there's a Bomberman anime, the anime itself is garbage. The dubbing work on the anime scenes is garbage. Any people who like this game are garbage. This, without a doubt, the worst game I've played in recent memory, besides Bebe's Kids. The only reason I gave it a 2 instead of a 1 is that I didn't wish I was dead while playing it.

2/10

Bomberman Generation Reviewed

I have a tiny confession to make...I am not that a big fan of the Bomberman games. The NES game was bland, repetitive and very boring. The SNES games are a bit better, they have color and brightness to it...just not the fun. Now Bomberman 64 was a decent game even though getting a 100% completion was a horrible, horrible case of Guide Dang It. But Bomberman Hero, the second game for the Nintendo 64 was pretty awesome...even though I just rented it and never beat it, the memories still remain. Now how does Bomberman Generation, the first game for the Gamecube, stack up? Let's find out.

So the game's stories begins with some Bomb Elements that are the source of GREAT POWER that could be used for great good.....or great EVIL. But the spaceship that old Professor Ein used to transport the Bomb Elements was shot down and the Elements scattered all around the Planet Tentacalls waiting to be gathered by Bomberman's arch enemies, the Hige Hige Bandits. So Professor Ein has Bomberman go to the Tentacalls, bomb the living hell out of the Hige Hige Bandits and get those Bomb Elements back. And then there's this guy called Max who helps you whenever he feels like it....he's useless and a waste in the game.

The game plays like any other 3-D Bomberman game. You run around, bomb things and get power ups to increase your speed, bombs you can drop and the power of your bomb blasts. There is a little twist that you can get these Pokemon things called Charaboms that help you out by many things...like remote-detonated bombs, increased distance or remote-controlled bombs among other things. The main problem with the game is that it takes FAR too long for it too actually be fun and that's only when you get the remote-detonated bombs. Until then you're at the mercy of the bomb's natural life span and just stunning the enemies doesn't work cause they're only out of it for a couple seconds and the bombs take at least five seconds to explode which is unacceptable. Thankfully, when you the remote-detonated bombs things get fun real fast.

Bomberman Generation's graphics were the first Gamecube game to use cel-shaded graphics similar to Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. The result for Bomberman is that it looks like a hyper-anime and considering that there is or was, whatever the case may be, a Bomberman anime out there so this may be based off of it. I know that Bomberman Jetters(which will be the next Bomberman game I'll review) was based off the anime. But the graphics here are fun in a nice over-the-top way that compliment the world of Bomberman.

A small but noticeable flaw in this is that most of the voice-acting is weak. The voice you hear most of the time is Professor Ein's and he's painfully average. Of course the things he has to say painfully obvious things like telling to go forward, destroy something or did you get these things yet. And he just won't shut up about it...you will come to dread when your communicator watch comes on. Most of the other voices are bland and forgettable but a couple of bosses are over-the-top enough to match the look of the game which is nice. Then there's the biggest waste of the game, Max. He has a cool voice, his musical cue sounds like the music I hear whenever I see Antonio Banderas(What? Can't I hear sexy latino music when I see Antonio Banderas without being gay?) but all he does is help you out on major boss battles whenever he feels like it and that's it...sigh.

So all in all, this game isn't so bad even if it doesn't reach the heights of Bomberman 64 or Bomberman: Hero. It looks great and more often than not it is pretty fun to play with little details that are pleasing to the eye. It's just takes unforgivably long to get going, they waste a potentially awesome character with Max and the voice-acting is weak. You can give this one a go, you might like it.

6/10

Starfox Assault reviewed

So this ends my Gamecube Starfox themes and this kinda reinforces the belief that Starfox 64 seemed to be a fluke....well, I think Starfox: Command is well-liked but I haven't played it and I was never that big of a fan of the SNES Starfox, I mean controlling with the D-Pad! I remember the first time I played this and I flat-out hated it. I was like "That's it! I beat the game already!", "If I had emotionally connected with this, why are they undoing it!" and "Dammit Fox on foot and Landmaster, turn around in a quick and efficient manner!" But after a second playthough for the purpose of this review has made me kinder to it. Don't get me wrong, this is still heavily flawed but I do have some nice things to say.

So you remember Andross right? Well he's not in it, which is good since his appearance in Starfox Adventures was Wallbangingly illogical. So now Andrew, you remember him from Starfox 64 right, has gathered up the remains of Andross's army and is attacking the Lylat System. So you go up to stop him but then he gets shot down by the real enemy, The aparoids! They're like The Borg from Star Trek...exactly like The Borg, right down to the Queen who is not a humanoid so there is nothing disturbingly sexy about her. And then you realize how much of Star Trek this is, Krystal(yes the one from Adventures and no, the death of her parents is still unreferenced) is like Deanna Troi. I guess Star Wolf would be Klingons that you team up with due to intense respect. Oh, and Great Fox is the Enterprise and what not.

Assault does shine when it does what Starfox does best, on-the-rails flying missions. They're fast, they're intense and they are fun with all the things you can blast and the shoutouts to the game. When Slippy got bogies on his tail for the first time I had a tear in my eye. But that's only three missions out of ten. Most of them you are on foot and have the Landmaster though sometimes you have the Arwing but it's in All-Range Mode. Anyways the ground controls are a bit sloppy, and by a bit I mean really sloppy. It uses the tank-scheme controls where up is forward, down is moonwalk and the rest are turning without going anywhere. And worse, there's a free-roaming camera so that makes the tank controls even more clunky cause they one work with close non-roaming cameras. Then I have real problems with the ending. Without spoilers, it undoes all the attempted emotional backbone of the story in fell swoop.

Also, it's a bit short. First-timers can finish this in about two-and-a-half hours. Now I know what you're thinking, can't somebody good at Starfox 64 finish it in less than 90 minutes using the hard path? Yes you can but that had alternate paths you can go to, awesome voice-acting, even more awesome music and it made you want to play again just for fun than for 100% completion. Now Assault does try to have replay value in it, there's flags, medals and stuff for multiplayer that you can unlock but there's no desire for me to actually do these things. It completely misses the biggest part of replayment, alternate paths are absent. You play one playthrough and you played it, now you can play it again but harder...or easier whatever you choose.

Now my biggest complaint about Adventures was the horrible voice acting but I did admit there was some fun in seeing how the next voice was going sound like. Here, the voice acting is much improved. Slippy is just as annoying as he was in 64, which is much less annoying than Adventures. Peppy sounds old and wise instead of "Get off my space-lawn you space-punks!". Fox sounds like a leader once again instead of a whiny brat. But every once in a while the script does fail it with some heavy-handed lines and that detour back to Dinosaur Planet...or Sauria as it's been renamed is just horribly written when Prince Tricky makes his cameo, granted he sounds better than Adventures. But more importantly, the direction is kinda poor especially in Fox, he sounds flat. There's no fault in the writing or the voice itself but this is something a deaf and competent voice-over director could do better.

This is a type of game that you kinda have to play at least twice. The first time to be angry and disappointed on how things to turned out. Then the second one to know that this isn't so bad once you don't expect much out of it. The on-the-rails flying missions are fun, the rest get the job done in a jerky manner. But I will say while this is better made than Adventures, Assault doesn't have that So Bad It's Good quality that Adventures had.

5/10

Starfox Adventures reviewed

I'm embarking on another mini-arc, I'll be reviewing the Gamecube Starfox titles, this and Starfox Assault. Now both games have less than stellar reputations, especially Adventures but is the hate warranted? Well in Adventures case it was the horrible end-product of Executive Meddling, it was slated to be a stand-alone game with no connections to Starfox and it was supposed to be for the N64. Of course, things didn't work that way and so we have a Starfox game for better or worse.

Anyways the plot may take too long to actually get going. You start off as some blue fox chick Krystal, who's off avenging her parents(remember this, it won't get referenced again) helping out Dinosaur Planet for some reason, well because she's kind but for no real reason. She gets captured by General Scales and finally, you're playing as Fox. It's been years since the events of Starfox 64 and it shows, Great Fox is rusted and Falco left out of extreme boredom. You then get a mission to repair Dinosaur Planet cause it broke apart(it makes sense in context) and you do, being forced to ally with the annoying Prince Tricky and then having to rescue Krystal with only Krystal's staff, that you find, as a weapon.

The main gameplay looks familiar, real damn familiar. Yeah, it's pretty much the same system that any of the 3-D Zelda's use. I'm not knocking the system cause it's an awesome and easy-to-use system but is it really Fox's system? This leads to people's biggest complaint about this game, Fox doesn't belong here. He belongs in space blowing things up saving Slippy's butt, being told to do a barrel roll by Peppy and nurturing his rivalry with Falco, not on the ground. But, I will be the first to admit that Fox solving a problem on the ground is a good one. It does show a new side to Fox but it's so whiny that we almost wished we didn't know what he can do on the ground. Then the flying missions are horrible, yes the missions that are Starfox's bread and butter are too short and not fun. Then you also have to collect gold rings for some stupid, illogical reason about opening a force-field but you never know how it works and it's not good enough for you to accept on good faith.

None of that matters in regard to game's biggest flaw, the voice-acting is almost uniformally awful. All the characters are either Irish or Scottish or retarded or just sounds like jerks. The only halfway-decent voice acting is with General Scales and Krystal, and I have spot for that cause she says General like how Dee-Jay said General in the Street Fighter movie. And then there's Star Fox itself. Fox sounds like a whiny brat even though every so often he has some good moments. Peppy now sounds like he should be chasing punk kids off his space lawn. Slippy is even MORE annoying than he was on Starfox 64, which is shocking cause he doesn't fly with you so he never begs for you to get guys off of him.

So are there anything good about this. Well the graphics are bright, colorful and pretty. It does have a little problem with fur, it sticks out like selective static cling. Then there's Fox's teeth, all of them are so pointy it makes him look demonic, especially when he does his "Item found" animation. And like I said about the gameplay, it is pretty fun even though it's highly derivative. The puzzles successfully ride the line between being too easy and being too hard for a nice middle ground.

So with all the flaws in the game, there is some entertainment to be found. It's pretty to look at and there is a So Bad It's Good quality to it. You do want to know what ridiculous voice the next dinosaur is going to use and what illogical turn will the story go next. So this isn't really a bad game, it's just not a good Starfox game.

6/10

Metroid Prime 2 reviewed

In 2002, Metroid took a radical direction with Metroid Prime. It was in the first-person breaking away from the third-person views of the previous games and people were up-in-arms. Thankfully, the people shut up when Metroid Prime proved to be awesome and people were eagerly awaiting the next chapter. Instead we get Metroid Prime 2: Echoes where it starts off fine but then gets more and more frustrating.

Like the first game, Echoes has one hell of a first chapter. Samus is looking for Marines and finds the crash site on planet Aether. During landing her ship gets damaged and now she has no choice but to investigate. The site paints a horrible bleak picture of the Marines last days....and then a few of them turn into ZOMBIES THAT YOU HAVE TO KILL! Then you meet yourself but DARK! Then you find out there's another dimension to Aether called dark AETHER! Then all you gear gets STOLEN! Then this thing that isn't a Chozo tells you the plot and now you have to go save AETHER! But the main thing is that there's actually a story to this and most of the items have logical reasons for you to get them. You have to kill a lot of things to get your stuff back instead of stealing from Chozo statues or just being lucky which is a nice change of pace.

The gameplay is pretty much the same as the first Metroid Prime. You have the same systems, the same HUD and the same graphical tricks on the visor like the last one. But considering how well it worked in the first game, why break it? But there is something that they did break, the logbook/pause menu. It may have been a good idea to make it more organized but the spider-system it uses is not the way to do it. It's too cluttered and moving it is a pain cause then it just clutters it up some more before you just give up and start selecting whatever hoping that it's the entry you want to read. And another thing, in a couple places in the Torvus Bog area, you have to fight a couple Space Pirate Commandos which pretty much takes a lot of your ammo. And you have to fight them cause the doors are locked. But then if you wait a few minutes they leave, leaving you with less health and less ammo but hey, you can leave the room now. I mean come on!

But it's fatal flaw is that it's way to laborous to go from place-to-place and dimension-to-dimension. You will be back-tracking a lot and unlike the first Metroid Prime, it's not fun. It's boring, it's monotous and if you're at Torvus Bog, be prepared to cry when you meet the Space Pirate Commandos cause you will meet them...a lot. This game just wants to frustrate you and there's little you can do cause you just want to finish it. Sure the game starts off incredibly well but the more you play the worse it gets. But even at it's worst, it's still competent and you will keep playing even if you are cursing at the game while you do.

7/10