So stuff happened, by computer got flattened, and I got distracted form posting (that never happens). But I’m going to finish this list damn it.

Number 5 is Puzzle Quest for the DS. I’m sure this game is great on the computer and console too, but I got it for the DS for $1, so that’s why I’m reviewing it for the DS.

This game is a puzzle game, and an RPG. I really like puzzle games, and really like RPGs. Therefore, I’m liking this game. The puzzle element is that when you enter battle it goes into a Bejeweled like battle, where you match same color runes, coins, purple stars (exp), or skulls (damage). Depending on your class, and your mount, you can cast spells, or other effects based on the color runes. Damage your opponent to 0 HP and you win. Simple enough.

The RPG element is you level up getting new spells based on your class. You also purchase/find different equipment to increase stats or give you new spells, as well as find mounts which increase your ability, as well as a party which can add a bonus based on certain conditions. Finally you can have forts where you collect gold after a period of time.

There are a wide variety of enemies and strategies. I didn’t find the game hard, but you may die a few times because of the randomness of drops. You’ll also win battles because of this randomness. The enemies have different abilities, that make a spider fight different then an elf, then a two-headed ogre, then a harpy, then a lich. There is not one universal strategy, and classes will have their bad match-ups, but this can be overcome with different equipment.

As for other game play, the text and story is kept short. I found this a good thing, because I wasn’t looking for a traditional RPG when playing this game, and the story element would have hurt the game. You get to explore a world map, and fight random battles based on creatures on the road and missions. This is the one gripe of the game I had. Sometimes I needed to simply get from Point A to Point B, but there were so many small enemies in my way. They were not going to offer any challenge, but you still had to face them.

This game also had several other good RPG elements. You could make your own weapons by combining material. And the best ability of them all was you could lean enemy spells. All enemy spells. You got to be a blue mage for free. After defeating an enemy five time you could go solve a puzzle to capture it, and then in your fort (guess what) go solve a puzzle to get the spell. I know not much variety, but it’s a puzzle game.

Finally I have to comment on the controls and DS. This game works great on the DS. The touch screen is wonderful. I noticed the graphics when sketchy sometimes, but it was only for a few seconds, and always corrected itself. I would guess the controls on the computer is just a good (mouse) and the console versions might be hurting a bit less because of having a control stick. I doubt either of them would hurt the game play.

Overall Puzzle Quest is a good puzzle game that add in the right RPG elements to make it a good game. You have a reason to push forward to the end. It’s more customizable then most RPG, which is a good statement for Puzzle Quest but bad for RPG. What it lacks in the story line it more then makes up for in everything else. It was really worth my $1, and much more.

This game was a Mario game. Great platforming, cools powerups, variety of worlds, and BOWSER, messing your shit up.

This game is a solid edition to Nintendo’s titles on it’s counsel. The story is the same as every other Mario platforming game. Bowser’s kidnapped the princess again (silly bitch), and you have to rescue her. You’re off in space thanks to some convenient plot device (I don’t remember) and away you go.

Everything about this game artistically works. There worlds are colorful, cartoon, and vibrant. Goombas squish properly to make you satisfied, surfing on shells are cool, and flying around is just neat. The level well varied, are short.

This is one of the few 3d platformers that camera does a good job. The controls are also great, allowing you to use the Nunchuck for movement and buttons for auctions. There is some gimmick thrown in there, but nothing that ruines the game. I’ll mention another platformer that isn’t on the Top 10 (Nights: A Journy of Dreams) for good controls, which confuses me because a certain blue hedgehog can’t see to get the controls right (I can’t even blame Sonic Team as they made Nights).

They make the levels repayable due to Luigi and having to find hidden stars. Every time you visit a level it is different enough you don’t feel stuck doing the same things over (ie getting to the top of the hill again).

I didn’t bother playing the collect all the purple whateverthefucktheywere levels, because that isn’t why I purchased a Mario game. Luckily (or possibly by design) they are not ‘necessary’ until after the game. Nintendo, making 8 red coins to give you a star, fun. Redo a level so you need to collect 100 purple things, not fun.

My biggest issue with the game is that Bowser was too easy. I just destroyed him 1st go. I never destroy Bowser 1st go. It was sad. I mean the buildup was good, and his different ‘froms’ for lack of a better term, were all unique and good, but it was so ‘meh’ in difficulty.

Overall still a great game, you need to play it if you have a Wii, and it is one for the family. Nintendo knows how to deal with it’s plumber.

This is actually the game that locked in my purchase of the 360. This game didn’t disappoint. Anyone who knows me knows I hold he Tales Studio in high regard, as well as Tales of Symphoina. This was made by team Symphonia and it does not disappoint.

Everything about this game is above average: sound, music, artistic style, story, and combat system. Characters are all believable, different, well made in both design and personally. I adore Tales Studio for being able to make children actually act like children. In this game Carol was an excellent character. Like most children put into a hard situation he was scared, but always tried to hide it. And as the game progresses and event happen he eventually grows up and overcomes his fear. Very depthful (yes that’s a word now) character especially given the time they had to put on each one.

They also have believable relationships between character, even if some of them feel like wacky transplants form Symphonia. Rita and Carol act brother and sister, much like Genis and Rein. Still everything is well done, different form Symphonia, and still familiar enough so fans of the franchise will enjoy it. I didn’t expect them to deviate form the money train too much.

The combat system is really good. The AI is probably the best in the Tales series, with only a few battles where they go stupid and you have to tell them to back off. AI is very customizable, and they do a good job of keeping everyone healthy. The combat system is once again a 3D free roaming style like their other games. It handles very well.

All the different cities and designs are above average for the genre. There are many of your standard cities but a few stand out as exceptionally cool, the city protected by the Tree, Technology, Magic hybrid, and the floating city in the Jellyfish come to mind. Of course you have the usual arena, castle city, etc. but Tales studio does a good job of keeping these fresh.

The music is excellent. Always there and noticeable but not overpowering. The villains seem vile, and suspenseful events are kept perfect. I didn’t find any track annoying or too repetitive for the length of time you were in an area.

This game was also very large. There was need to go back over areas for harder boss battles, better items etc. The map wasn’t that large, but there was always just one more place on the map you could go. The boss battles were good, and the final boss battle was outright hard. I consider this RPG harder then most because I actually had to use items. And I don’t mean had to because of a quest, I mean had to or I would die. It is still a good curve and possible to beat. I did beat the end boss on my 1st try, but I did have to take my time and use the proper items and stragities.

Above average in all ways, and excellent in some. With 60 to 80 hours of game play on a 1st run, diffcult achievements, and bosses. Plenty of side quests, and secrets galore, if you liked RPGs and have a 360, you should get Tales of Vispeira.

This is originally posted by me for my blog on screwattack.com in response to the sidescroller pod cast. This is just a copy/paste.

I was just listening to Side Scrollers at work today (I usually listen on Wedbesdays) and on hard news there was a quote form Sony's VP of Marketing. It was talking about how everyone “…would love for the PS3 to be free, so they could just sell razorblades.” Craig, Dustin, and Cory sound confused about the term. Craig questioned if it is a marketing term.

Yes, razor blades are an actual team. Or rather Razors and razorblades is a strategy of marketing was (simplified version) you see something at a loss, with the intention of selling units to go with that produce at a higher profit. This was originally used with, surprise…surprise, razors. Using my local EB of even the ads that appeared as the background of screwattack.com with Gillette trying to get gamers to buy a razor blade form them, so we have to purchase their razorblades. All the razorblades have a large markup so the company makes a lot of profit.

The Senior VP of Marketing of Sony is saying he is worried about the long term stability of Sony and therefore doesn’t want to take a large loss on the sale of a PS3. Fair enough, he has shareholders that he has to answer to. The only problem with the comparison is that it is a false one.

When you purchase a razor, your final decision isn’t going to be based on color, or tight grip, or whatever. Those are all nice to have, and you may make a choice based on what you prefer, but it’s unlikely you would pay $10 form a green one with mega-ultra grip, rather then a blue one with triple grip. After you have the razor you just continue to purchase blades for it until the razor breaks. Repeat process. All the razors are the same, so as soon as you have your razor blade you should be happy until your razor’s life ends.

So with this comparison we are going to say when the speaker for Sony was speaking he was comparing the games for the PS3 as razorblades and the PS3 as the razor. And this is where the comparison fails. Were in all razors are more or less the game, games are different. The whole reason we purchase a consol is to play games on it. I really couldn’t care less which company makes a box to play games I enjoy, so long as they play it.

To have it his closer to home when this generation started I believed I was going to get a Nintendo and Sony. I’ve had Nintendo since the NES and loved RPG so PS1 and PS2 played a large role in what I played. On the contrast I don’t care for FPS or online gaming, so the Xbox didn’t appeal to me.

Then the grit dropped and Sony came out close to a year after the 360, and at a large price tag. Of course this was discouraging, but I was still waiting to see what was coming out for the PS3. Then lots of RPG came out for the 360. Eternal Sonata came out for the 360. I wanted that game, but I wasn’t going to purchase the 360 for one game. Sony got it a bit later. But there was a lack of RPG for the Sony. Then FF13 was announced to be coming out for the 360. Then finally Tales of Visperia was announced as a 360 exclusive. Then Sony had officially lost any chance of me purchasing a consol. There was not enough games I liked, let alone exclusives, for a warrant to purchase a PS3. All the razors I wanted to buy were on another razorblade. Because it wasn’t about the best razor, it was about the best razorblades.

And Sony this Razor and Razorblades issue is hurting you in the long run. Your consul is known to be problematic to program for. So if I’m a developer not only is your system a higher cost to make a game for, it has less resale potential, because less people have it. Since I’m looking at cost of items as well, I need to make my games available to 360 users as well, so I can make a profit. This in turn leads to people like me, who are late adapters jumping ship to the 360 because they have most of your games, and a much larger exclusive library. This in turn leads to less sales of your system, because I’m not owning both, and more sales of 360. This in turn makes it easier for a 360 exclusive, because of a larger market share.

Note: I in the article I could have said Wii and 360, but chose not to, as the Wii is not really a substitute to a 360 or PS3. More business terms (thought you can probably figure this one out yourself).

Now Sony has been saying they are going for a longer term strategy, saying they are going to outlast the 360. Now this will be true if for two reasons:
1 – The PS3 capabilities are far beyond the current generation of consul. This was discussed more in detail on a G1 Sunday Submission, who knows more about the technical aspects of it so I’ll just provide the link.http://screwattack.com/g1Submission/020809 (believe cannot url in a blog.)
2 – Sony’s been losing money. Not just the PS3, but the company hasn’t been doing that great. They can’t (reasonably) afford to develop another consol.

IF that is the strategy they are going by that’s fine, but with the exclusive cycle stated a couple of paragraph above, you’re burying yourself more then not. I have a friend who likes Sony and owns a PS3. Whenever he says “This system is going to last a while” it sounds like a compilation prize, rather then a selling point. Two of my other friends are “just waiting for that price drop” before they purchase it.

Sony, you do have an impressive piece of equipment there, but consumers are not buying a consol, they are buying games. Now maybe when the PS3 becomes “it” I’ll be happy to pay the money for it. And it has managed to have a few games I would like to play. Folklore, despite all the bad reviews I’ve heard, still looks good to me, and I’d like to try it. I loved playing Little Big Planet at my friend’s house, and KillZone 2 looks great. But with only 3 blades that I’m truly inserted in, as opposed to Nintendo’s 30 and Microsoft’s 50, I’m going elsewhere for my razor.

Final Notes: Sorry if the explanation was somewhere else on the forms. I did some lurking but didn’t see anything. If anything was confusing, or I lost anyone with the business terms I threw in there please post a comment or drop me a message and I’ll clarify for you.

Hope you liked my 1st post.

Finally looking at the best graphical artistic style we have the consoles. This means I’m looking at Wii and 360, as I don’t have a PS3 (yet). Now let’s take a quick run down.

Boom Blocks (Wii) – Simple paper cut out creatures to go with a simple game. Nothing ground breaking, but nothing wrong either.

Eternal Sonata (360) – Uses an anime/cartoon style of charactors and combat. Everything is bounch which lends itself to the soft humor of the game. The settings are very pretty, and even the final part manages to be dark, but not too dark (it is a bright and cherry game after all).

Guilty Gear XX (Wii) – A fighter with a unique range of characters and stages. Everything looks good and you can really see the graphical differences between characters. Charctors like May and Bridget really don’t look threatening, where characters like Sol and Testament look badass. Character stages match them to a tea.

No More Heros (Wii) – A great auction game done in the style of anime. Over the top bloods and slicing people in half fill this game. Everything looks good enough and consistant enough you never find a flaw that would drag you out of the game, but still cartoon enough that for people like me you don’t get sick form the blood.

Mario Galaxy (Wii) – A graphical upgrade from Mario 64. Looks like a Mario game, works for a Mario game.

Nights:AJoD (Wii) – This game looked a bit old, like it should have been a late 64 game, or an early GC game.

Smash, Brawl (Wii) – This game graphically didn’t get the attention I thought it diserved. The sprites did very well, but I though the levels could have been crisper. Still also suffers from the seeing through your character problem occasionally. That however seems to add to its charm.

Tales of Symphonia: A New Dawn (Wii) – Following form the highly successful Tales of Symphonia its graphics have only changed slightly. One really issue I had with it was the drawings of the character on the menu screen. The two new ones got Wii graphical details, well everyone else kept their GC ones. Looked really inconstant and really stood out. Just wish they would have redone the old character, or made the newer ones look the same.

Tales of Visperia (360) – A very smooth nice anime/cartoon style game. Looks really polished graphically. The style works well for the Tales series. Each character looks different enough and matches their backstory. Not pushing the 360 graphical capability, but goes well with the game.

Comments – ToS: A New Dawn, and Nights:AJoD are not in contention. They are not graphically where they need to be. I just found flaws where it really bothered me, making sure I stepped out of the game play expierence.

Smash, Brawl and Boom Box and the next two out. Boom Box can have the wired camera, and was not graphically good at all. I know you wanted to make things simple and everything, but you should have had more faces and different backgrounds for the levels. Brawl is out because it’s not where it needs to be for a high caliber game.

Mario Galaxy, Tales of Visperia, and Eternal Sonata are the next three out. They are all games where graphics are on the high end of their genre. All the levels look great, they all have a variety of settings, and they all do everything they do well. But they didn’t push the envelope graphically or for the style of their genre. I don’t feel they need to, as they have a profit making formula, but for this award they get the boot.

This leaves No More Heros, and Guilty Gear XX.

And the winner is….

Looks like Guilty Gear XX get the shaft again, as I put No More Heros as the winner of this category.

Guilty Gear XX is really good, different, and pulls everything off well. It probably is artistically one of the most different fighting games out there (besides Killer Instinct), but it just can’t beat No More Heroes.

This game’s art style is off beat. Yes I know there were other games like it before, but it is hardly status quo by today’s standards. It manages to be an anime/a cartoon, but not remind me of that. Even when the screen froze and I needed to swing the Wiimote it seemed natural. All your different power up really change how you look at everything as well.

Going into darkmode was very cool. It was done well slowing you down like a moment of insight. Finally everything matched their characters (which is a feat as they have screwed up characters). They got all the cell shaded personalities down well.

This game is really good artistically. If you have a Wii (and are appropriate age) I would recommend this one.

Form the number of times you’ve seen this game on lists it’s obvious it was going to be on my Top 10. I really don’t know what I can say about the game I haven’t said already.

PacMan CE is an extremely well done remake. The facelifts were perfect, making everything brighter and clearer well still maintaining the old school fill. The music is still stupidly catchy addicting. The game starts off slow and becomes fast paced. Everything is done correctly about this game.

The new modes are good to. The dark level was a good and original way to add depth to the game. It still has the tone and setting right. The feature where you can eat the ghost 32 times and get lots of power up is fun, and since it is long and they speed up at the end also remains exciting. Some of the modes are just hard. 5:00 minutes and the ghost are auto fast, yikes!

I would highly recommend downloading this game. The final game for the Xbox Live on my list (yes, we finally move to consuls/computers/handheld). If you liked PacMan style games at all, this is a solid investment.

I just opened up a DS game made by THQ today called Lock’s Quest. It’s made by the same people who made Draw to Life. I though I’d give a first impressions article about it.

This game is suppose to be a cross between an RPG and a Strategy game like Gemcraft. Clockwork monsters are attacking a target. You need to both build walls and torrents to defend against the invasion, as well as engage the enemy yourself. I really liked the concept, which made me purchase the game.

From the 1st missions the concept seems to be pulled off very well. Its not very difficult, but the difficulty should kick in until later in the series, so I’m unworried. There appears to be 8 different torrents, and 8 different traps as well. Right now I have the basie shoot stuff torrent, as well as a torrent that slows enemies down when it hits them. No traps, which is a shame because I wanted to see what they were like.

It controls very well with the stylus. I have no problems placing buildings. You sometimes get dumb stuck on walls but if you are paying attention it’s not an issue. Even the combat/repairs make good use of the stylus. There is a simple punch the number in numerical order mini-game in combat so you deal more damage. For repairing you move a leaver back and forth. I’m sure the latter will get annoying later, but I’m hoping it is a good way to balance off the game, and still give the player something to do when they are running around madly repairing the walls and torrents.

Overall the game made a very good 1st impression. If the difficulty curve ramps up properly, and the torrents and traps are all different form each other, this looks to be a very good game.

Posting Early Saturday morning with a check list of shit to do when I go to Truro tomorrow. I shall see if anything was accomplished:

1 – Sleeves for M:TG cards.
2 – Cases form M:TG cards.
3 – Look for Gauntlet for the Game Cube (not for me)
4 – Look for Starwars Rouge Squadron for the GC (not for me)
5 – Go to Fair Trade café.
6 – Go to EB games for good deal.
7 – RKO Blair ‘out of nowhere’
8 – RKO Random Person ‘out of nowhere’
9 – Go to far!
10 – Profit!

I’ll let you know how it all goes.

This award goes to a game that I heard everyone else say was going to be the best since blah, blah, blah, but I figure it would be O.k. to garbage. This year there is a clear winner

Super Smash Bros Brawl

Yes the ‘this is gonna be the best game evar LOL.’ It was suppose to be leaps and bounds above Melee in every way, with all these new characters, and a brand new mode. I thought it was going to be Melee 2

It would have been better if it was Melee 2.

The problem was for everything you added in you took something out. You got rid of charactors for no reason. And don’t you even try to use the excuse you got rid of clones, Young Link, sorry, Toon Link is still there. Sure Manindorf is different, but still basically a Captain Falcon clone. People liked using Roy, Dr Mario, Pichu etc. Mew is gone for no reason.

Charactors were also alterted for no reason. The game isn’t balanced, the creater admitted that himself. He didn’t want it to be a tournament fighter, but that doesn’t stop people form trying. Let Marth keep his amazing tip of his sword, let Mario keep his broken cape, whatever it doesn’t matter. Anyone who plays this game without items is silly. EVERYONE IS EQUAL WHEN I HAVE A BO-BOMB!

Now the new characters were good. Everyone was happy to see Meta Knight and Pit. Ike is amazing good. If found wolf was another unnecessary Fox clone. I personally like King Dee Dee D, but I play Jiggly Puff so what do I know (not my fault the rest of the internet doesn’t know how to use the Puff).

Finally, I loved the Sub Space Emissary. It actually gave you something new to do. Yes it did read like many poorly written fan fics, but it was a new and interesting idea for the game. It worked very well.

Overall Brawl was fine, but not what it was suppose to be. I wasn’t surprised. If they just would have added instead of replacing the game would have been fine. It’s a party game, not a fighter, it doesn’t need to be balanced, just lots of shit, cluster fuck of characters go!

Oh except don’t add stickers, stickers suck!

Coming in at number 9 on my top games is Ikagura, a shoot’em up ported to the Game Cube then the Xbox through live. This was actually a game I have been waiting to play for a long time, but could never find a copy for the cube. This game was everything I expected it to be.

The concept is a really good one for a shoot’em up. You have two different color shields, and your enemy shoots the same color bullets. Absorb them correct ones with the shield to get a bomb effect, as well as more points. To get more points and a better rank you need to kill enemies in strings of three. If you kill two white enemies and then one black enemy the chain breaks.

The levels are very well designed, varied, and different form each other. My one issue is that there are not very many of them. The bosses are great, all different, and challenging. There are some really original ones for the shoot’em up genre.

The only thing I wish was different about the game was the difficulty. You see, this game is easy to beat, as even someone like me, who lacks reflexes made for these games can be it. To beat every level all you need is patter recognition and time. You’ll find everything’s pattern and beat it.
It is a hard game to get good at. Because of the chains needed it is hard to get a good grade. I have not managed to unlock any of the grade achievements yet.

Multiplayer is also available. The best part is you can absorb bullets for your allies. Besides that is is standard 2 player play for it’s genre.

Ikagura was one of the few games I heard praise for and wanted to get because of that praise. I still play it occasionally today. If you haven’t downloaded it and like the genre or are looking for a semi challenging game of the genre I would recommend Ikagura. It has hard game play that you will eventually overcome, and new graphics so you won’t be turned away like some of the older games.