Reviews

Deus Ex: The Conspiracy review (PS2)

Posted by The Gameanater on January 15, 2013
Posted in: Reviews. Tagged: , , . 1 comment

Deusexps2

I’m just going to say it now, THIS GAME IS AWESOME!

I thought about leaving the review at that, but I decided against it, I figured you would want to know why I love the game, so here’s an actual review.

Deus Ex: The Conspiracy is a port of the 1999 PC game Deus Ex, a story-driven first person shooter and RPG hybrid set in the 2050s, and if the future portrayed in this game is accurate, we’re going to be in big trouble 47 years from now. A virus known as “The Gray Death” is spreading across the planet, and the only known vaccine “Ambrosia” is restricted to those with money, power or both. Terrorism is also rather high, rioting fills the streets of the worlds cities. As JC Denton, the new Nano-Augmented addition to the UNATCO (United Nations Anti Terrorist COalition)  team, you track down various members of terrorist organizations, such as the NSF, to stop their plans, but as the story progresses, the NSF becomes the least of your problems, and an ancient conspiracy is unfolded. Believe me, this game contains an extremely interesting and deep plot that you’ll always want to know more about. And the game play is simply fantastic.

ESRB rating: M.

Perfect hybrid of the FPS and RPG genres

This game manages to achieve near-perfect hybrid of the two genres so well, you have an inventory system, that is not unlimited, you can mod your weapons to increase accuracy and firepower, and you can even add skills to further fit your play style, all of this can help you become from an invisible assassin, a walking tank, a master hacker, or an unstoppable berserker.

1Masterfully designed levels, for the most part

The levels in this game are designed for every kind of player, just like the PC version. You could simply go in guns blazing, or you could slip past every enemy with few kills, you could stun everyone unconscious, or assassinate everyone. There is one problem, the PS2 had less memory than the computers in 1999 did, so the levels designs are changed significantly, and the big levels of the original had to be chopped-up into several tiny maps, so expect to get quite familiar with the word “loading”, and looong load times don’t exactly help. Besides the smaller map sizes, the levels also aren’t as well designed as the PC versions, many maps have items removed or the design has to be changed to fit the characters in the same general area. And maps that are flat and meant to be ominous, come out as looking uninteresting.

The game is simply fun

With the upgrades and the choices you have, the game play is quite fun, never losing it’s appeal.

Glitches, glitches, glitches, and more glitches

The PC version was rather buggy, and while a few of the bugs have been fixed in this version,  many of them still remain. You can still do the “Shannon fights everyone with her pepper spray inside UNATCO” glitch, you can still bump right into an enemy and won’t even notice, some allies still don’t care if you get attacked but will react when another ally gets attacked, and unlike the PC version, you can actually throw a dead body on someone’s head and kill them with it! However, with the abundance of glitches, you could end up having so much fun messing-up the game without making any progress.

Dumb AI

The developers did nothing to improve the AI in this port, possibly due to the PS2 limited memory. The NPCS can still get 3bunched up in corners and unable to escape, you can kill someone’s parter who’s standing right next to them and they won’t care, one of the enemies might see you in the middle of a conversation and the person he or she is talking with will just stand there. Needless to say, the AI isn’t exactly the best in gaming history.

Poor graphics and animation

Yes, this version has a CGI intro and CGI endings, but otherwise, the graphics are quite poor, especially for a PS2. In fact, the graphics are actually inferior to the PC version, many effects, such as the beam forming on the Dragon’s Tooth Sword, are missing, and the animation of characters is even stiffer, the characters’ mouths now move only up and down, and JC doesn’t even have a breathing animation!

Overall

This is game simply great, sure the AI is dumb, the animation of characters is even worse then the PC version, and it’s inferior to the its PC big brother, but this is still a worthy investment if you can find it.

Goodbye Nintendo Power

Posted by The Gameanater on December 31, 2012
Posted in: Reviews. Tagged: , , . Leave a Comment

npissuefinalI just got the final issue of Nintendo Power today, it’s sad the magazine has gone out of business, I’ve enjoyed reading all the articles, reviews and news they’ve written about ever since my subscription started 2008. As a tribute to the magazine, I decided to write a review of their final issue.

For those of you that don’t know, Nintendo Power is a magazine  that started in 1988 became very poplar among Nintendo fans for simply being a great magazine filled with information that the writers got directly from Nintendo, lots of extra stuff like comics that sadly are not in the for recent issues. For almost 25 years, Nintendo Power thrived with its head raised high.  Sadly, it had to shut down for various reasons.

npissue1When you first take a look at the cover of this issue (pictured above), a big smile will come across your face, the cover looks beautiful and is very similar to the cover of the first issue (pictured left). Open the magazine, and that smile become even bigger, as you’re greeted with an extra long Pulse section (the spot where they show letters sent in) where fans and even some game developers wrote about their favorite moments in the magazine. Turn past those pages and it becomes apparent that Nintendo Power obviously knows how to throw a party in text and picture format, as you see an article where the staff counts down their top 285 (!)games of all time as well as the top 5 heroes and villains (although I did not agree with the lists, where’s Bowser on top 5 villains?!), followed by a 26-page history of Nintendo Power. It doesn’t stop there, after that you get five pages where  Nintendo Power staff, both current and former, (well, I guess they are all technically former now) reminisce about their favorite moments during their jobs. After that is a huge reviews section featuring,uh, reviews of all the Wii-U games out there. Yes, every Wii-U game. The next part, which is also my favorite, is a beautiful 2-page comic that is a throwback to the very early issues that featured comics every month. And finally, the last page, which is pictured below. This last issue is also the best one that I have read, I highly encourage you to find it, but it will be rather hard, as it’s sold out in most bookstores and rather expensive anywhere else.

Picture from nonexist.net

Nintendo Power is gone, but will be remembered by all its readers for ages to come…

Shinobi review (NES)

Posted by The Gameanater on September 16, 2012
Posted in: Reviews. Tagged: , , , . Leave a Comment

What you need to know:

Shinobi for the NES is a port of SEGA’s 1985 arcade classic where you play as a master ninja named “Joe Mashugini” ( hope I spelled that right) who must save fellow kidnapped ninjas  from 4 evil ninja masters that serve a criminal organization called “Zeed” wich is run by a mysterious masked ninja. (Did I just say “ninja” four times?)

ESRB Rating: Not rated.

Developer and publisher: Tengen

Genre: Side-Scrolling Platformer

Unlicensed

Review:

Bad graphics

Pink skies, pink buildings, pink ships, and weird-looking pillars with mixed colors. Just look at the slide show below and you’ll see what I mean.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Only one music track is played throughout the whole game.

That’s right. Only one music track is played throughout the whole game. Every stage, and even the boss fights use the same music (even the final boss is a repeat!). Well, technically that’s not true, the bonus stages have a different music played, but even that is just one part looped over and over.

Uneven difficulty

At several points in the game, I found instances where one stage would be cakewalk easy, but then the next one would be brutally hard, unlike the arcade game wich for the most part, had a gradually increasing difficulty.

Full of cheap deaths

My biggest problem with this game is all of the cheap deaths. For example, when you start some stages, enemies will literally be right on top of you and you have almost no time at all to react, and thus, you get killed. It’s made even worse because there is no invincibility buffer at all (An invincibility buffer is the few moments of invincibility you get after you get hit by an enemy), and because of this, enemies can easily “juggle” you to death and you’ll have no way to fight back.

New health bar, but it’s almost useless.

As you might have guess from the last paragraph, this version of the game adds a new life bar (no more one hit kills!), but unfortunately, it’s rendered almost useless because of the “juggling” thing and the cheap deaths.

Judgment

This is just not a good game. It’s full of cheap deaths, there is no invincibility buffer, wich renders the new health bar nearly useless, the graphics are just messed-up,  uneven difficulty, and top it off with only one music track, and you have one very bad game. Don’t bother with this game at all.

Rating: 2/5 -really bad

Sonic Generations Review (3DS)

Posted by The Gameanater on July 12, 2012
Posted in: Reviews. Tagged: , , , . Leave a Comment

What you need to know:

Released last year to celebrate Sonic’s 20th anniversary, Sonic Generations is, quite literally, a trip down memory lane of Sonic’s past 20 years. From the very first game, all the way to Sonic Colors.

Sonic and co. have been zapped back in time by a giant thing that wanders around “eating time” and sucking the life out of anything that comes it’s way. Today’s Sonic and Tails meet their past selves and team-up with them, and for some reason, when the Sonics run , they restore color and life to the area. I know, it doesn’t make much sense to me, either.

ESRB Rating: E

Review:

Graphics are pretty good. Same with the 3D effects.

Although the graphics do look kinda edgy, they’re still decent. Turn the 3D on, and the 3D will give a real good sense of depth, especially in the bonus stages where you run down a tunnel and have to collect the Chaos Emeralds. Nice, SEGA! Great into-the-screen 3D!

Lack of control

But here’s something bad I noticed right when I started the game. You don’t have a whole lot of control over the Sonics (see what I did there?). Just hold the D-Pad for less than 1 second, and they’ll  immediately go into a full sprint that can send you off a platform and into a bottomless pit. True, you can use the Circle Pad for better control, but whenever I play a 2D side-scrolling game I just prefer to use the D-Pad.

Controlling classic Sonic is the worst, however. Moving him around feels like you’re trying to walk on ice, which makes the (notably slow) platforming difficult. It’s not to much of a problem in the early stages where the platforms you have to jump on give you enough space to walk around some, but in later stages like Radical Highway, you’ll end up sliding off a tiny platform and into your doom

 Ridiculously fast!

Sonic is mostly known for his speed, and Modern Sonic is definitely speedy. His stages are basically roller-coaster rides with some platforming mixed in now and then. They are the perfect mix of speed and platforming, and it’s never just a “hold right to win”, you still need some skill to beat them.

Several games missing references

What that means is that there are many games that didn’t get a stage made after them. There is no Sonic Heroes stage, no Shadow the Hedgehog stage, no Sonic 06 stage, no Sonic Unleashed stage, and more. And all of these games (with the bizarre exception of Shadow the Hedgehog) got a stage modeled after them in the other versions of this game. I found it very odd to jump from the Sonic Adventure 2 stage to a Sonic Rush stage and then to a Sonic Colors stage.

Judgement

Overall this is a good game, but with slippery control using the D-Pad, and several games not getting references, it feels somewhat unfinished. Add mixed music (classic remix of Radical Highway is super-awesome, but modern remix is lackluster), and this game falls into the category of “good but not great”.

Final rating: 3.5/5

OVGE 2012

Posted by The Gameanater on June 23, 2012
Posted in: News, Reviews. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a Comment

Yes, I used MS Paint to change around the color.

I case you didn’t know, OVGE (short for Oklahoma Video Game Exhibition) is a  once-a-year event where people can come get together, play some old games, buy some awesome stuff, and just have loads of fun.

This year’s OVGE was just as good, if not better than, last year’s.

We had the usual Classic Gaming Tournament hosted by Jesse (the creator of OVGE), Retro Gamer T-Shirts (the best shirts ever made!), lots and lots of salesmen, Nintendo Okie asking trivia and giving away games (I won a copy of Dream Trigger 3D, and they even let me be on their podcast), another Bad Game Beat Down hosted by Greg Little, arcade machines, three Pinball machines and a lot more.

The three Pinball machine that were brought this year were; Star Trek Next Gen Pinball, the Super Mario Pinball machine and The Addam’s Family. The poor Addam’s Family machine broke before the show even started, its problem was that it couldn’t get enough power, so pushing all for flippers would break it. Unlike last year, the Mario Pinball machine was not the only one working by the end of the show, the Star Trek Pinball machine worked fine the whole show.

For the Bad Game Beat Down 2 (a tournament where you have to play… bad games), Greg had us playing “Rise of the Robots”, and gosh it was awful (in a good way), even worse then Shaq-Fu. Sadly, I couldn’t make it past the second round.

There was a lot of other great stuff, too. I got an awesome Luigi’s Manson painting by Meg, Sonic Generations (XBOX 360), a Pac-Man energy drink (right when I needed it), a Shadow The Hedgehog action figure, and a TON  of Streetpasses on my 3DS.

OVGE 2012 was great overall.  If I had to it sum up in 3 words, it would undoubtingly be “heaven on Earth”. I can’t wait untill next year. :D

Ovge 2012 photo slideshow!

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Super Mario 3D Land Review! (3DS)

Posted by The Gameanater on March 14, 2012
Posted in: Reviews. Tagged: , , , , , . Leave a Comment

At first, my review was simply going to say “BUY. THIS. GAME. NOW!” But I figured you’d want to know why you must have this game. Here we go.

What you need to know:

Guess what? princess Peach has been kidnapped by Bowser, and Mario has to rescue her. Yes, the story is that deep and thought-provoking.

ESRB Rating: E

Platformer, 1 Player

Review:

The 3D effects

The 3D effects in this game are truly outstanding. Well, it may not be as “IN-YOUR-FACE!” as Star Fox 64 3D, but it still has an excellent sense of depth. Just look at it. You’ll know what I mean.

The level design

Levels are very well designed, to. About 98% of my deaths have not been because of poorly designed levels (or because of glitches), they have been my own fault. There are some pretty cleverly designed levels, to, for example; in one level several platforms appear and disappear in time with the music. Though I’ve always hated the auto-scrolling levels and this game has some of them. Thankfully, those ones are few and far between.

What?! No multiplayer?

One of the most surprising things in this game is that there is no multiplayer of any type. Which is a huge step down from New Super Mario bros. Wii. There isn’t even a local competitive multiplayer mode! It would have been very enjoyable if you where able to play through the game with a friend.

Streetpass is used well, but could have been a little better

The Streetpass in this game is used pretty well, you can play through these little “Mystery Boxes” things and beat them to earn Star Coins (the form of currency in the game) ,shere them through Streetpass with others (and also share your best level clear times)… and that’s it. It’s not bad, it just leaves a little to be desired.

The Tanooki Suit returns!

Though the suit no longer provides the ability to fly, and it now only lets you flutter down to the ground and spin-attack enemies, I’m sure everyone’s happy to have it back. :)

Judgement

This is an outstanding game overall. My main problem was the complete lack of multiplayer, and that cannot be forgiven. And I do wish there was some more suits to use (as Nintendo Power once said, “The goofier Mario looks, the more deadly he becomes”), but still, except for the no-multiplayer thing, they’re all minor complaints. This game is why you must own a 3DS.

Rating: 5/5 stars -Fantastic

Shadow The Hedgehog Review (Gamecube)

Posted by The Gameanater on November 28, 2011
Posted in: Reviews. Tagged: , , , , . 1 comment

ESRB rating: E10+

what you need to know:

Released in 2005 for the Gamecube, PS2 and Xbox, Shadow The Hedgehog puts you in control of, uh, Shadow The Hedgehog, who is suffering from amnesia and must collect the 7 Chaos Emeralds to regain his memory of his past. The way you play (completing dark, normal or hero missions) determines the games ending.

This review is to also help celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Sonic series. :D

It’s Shadow in his own game!

The first time I saw him in Sonic Adventure 2: Battle, he quickly became one of my favorite characters in the Sonic series. I like that he gets his own game.

Graphics are really good

The cinematics in particular are really good. You can really see a lot of detail on the characters. Like the fur on Shadow or Dr. Eggman’s mustache or shine on the aliens. The in-game graphics, well not AS good, are still pretty good.

Swearing

This is the first and only sonic game that I know of where some of the characters actually swear. It’s also the only really big problem I had with the game. Thankfully, the swear words are kept only to the “d” word and “h” word, but it still kind of irks me…

Nothing gets in the way of Shadow!

Great action and speed

Whats a Sonic game without speed? Not much, really. Shadow The Hedgehog does a good job of keeping the speed the games are known for. It’s really cool to watch Shadow run massive loop-de-loops, go flying above huge pits and grind across thin steel beams over bottomless pits.

The action is also great. In this game the developers finally let Shadow pick up and use the guns that fall off of the enemies, so you give them a taste of their own medecine. Shadow can also drive cars now, instead of only being able to destroy them. And if you don’t like that, most of the time the guns and cars are optional.

Minor complaints

First off is that most of the stages that take place on the A.R.K. are way to slow and maze-like, the camera can sometimes take a bad position. And although it’s neat that you can decide whether to play as a hero or villain there are some problems with this. Let’s say for example you decide in the middle of the stage to change from playing the hero mission to playing the dark mission, when you do though, the guys on the dark side will still attack you. It’s rather annoying to have to navigate past your so-called “allies” to stay alive. These aren’t very big complaints, though.

Judgment:

Shadow The Hedgehog is a pretty good game. There are flaws present, and I don’t like how some of the characters swear, and that’s the main thing that prevents this game from getting a five-star rating, but you should definitely get this game if you’re a Sonic fan. Prehaps the flaws in this game could be fixed in a 3D Classics version or, better yet, a long over-due sequel.

final rating: Four and a half stars; pretty good.

Played though the entire game over several years.

Review Ratings And What They Mean.

Posted by The Gameanater on November 7, 2011
Posted in: Reviews. Tagged: , . Leave a Comment

Here are what my review ratings mean.

ONE STAR: TERRIBLE. Avoid this game at all costs. A game rated this is NOT worth buying.

TWO STARS: BELOW AVERAGE. This Game is so-so. It may or may not be worth buying.

THREE STARS: AVERAGE. This game is worth buying. There are some bad parts, but they are made-up for with the good stuff.

FOUR STARS: ABOVE AVERAGE. This is a pretty good game. It’s worth buying.

FIVE STARS: EXCELLENT. A must-have. Definitely worth the money.

HALF-A-STAR: HORRIBLE. Buying this is equivalent to burning your money.

:)

Half-Life 2 Review (PC)

Posted by The Gameanater on November 6, 2011
Posted in: Reviews. Tagged: , , . 2 comments

What you need to know:

HL2 is the sequel to Half-Life. And also one of the BEST PC games ever made. Taking place 5 years after the first game, the world has become a very different place (the bad kind of different). Did I mention it’s one of the best PC games ever made?

Review:

Story telling is good

The first game didn’t have much of a story. I’m not going to tell you the story of either game. (Hey! You have to play the games!)  But I’m glad there’s more of a story this time. I’m also glad it’s deeper and more thought-provoking.

Action is good, too

Better than the first game in fact. It’s paced better, and the AI (artificial intelligence) is smarter than the first game. There are very few not-well-thought-out spots. (Most of these are in the chapter Ravenholm where you fight nothing but zombies.)

Puzzles…not so much

This is a problem found in all the Half-Life games.  They feel unnecessary and are mostly frustrating. The worst of them is the first one you encounter, the valve puzzle.  You have to find a valve and turn it to make the water rise so you can get through a hole in the wall. Sounds simple, right? Well, the valve is placed in worst spot ever (on top of a hard to reach pipe). Who was the bonehead who made that building? Thankfully, most of the puzzles are short.

The Combine recruited some stupid humans

Although the AI is generally better then the first game, there’s one enemy that is dumb compared to the rest. The Civil “Protection” Unit, AKA the Metro Cop. (In case you don’t know, Metro Cops are normal humans working for the Combine. And the Combine are cyberneticly enhanced humans and humanoid aliens, most of which are the latter.) The Cops just seem to refuse to take cover that’s right in front of them. And sometimes they’ll run in to each others’ bullets killing themselves. Or sometimes they’ll take cover behind a barrel that’s about to explode, causing their own death.

No friendly fire this time

In the first game you could kill your own buddies by mistake (or on purpose) or vice versa. This time, you can’t. This is good because sometimes your buddies will run into your bullets, or you’ll accidently fire your weapon, or you will accidently run into your buddies’ line of fire.

Difficulty is more consistent

In the first game the difficulty was a bit uneven sometimes. It’s much better in this game.

I would of liked to fight more aliens

In the first game you got to fight a lot of aliens, which I thought was pretty cool. This time, sadly, you only get to fight Headcrabs, Zombies, Barnacles, Antloins, and Combine. There are no gargantuan Gargantuas, no armored, hulking, hornet-shooting Grunts, no massive Headcrab Queens, no gigantic Tentacles, no poison-spitting Bullsquids (speaking of that, it’s rude and gross, which is why they deserved to be defeated), no Houndeyes and no flying Xen Masters.

Judgment:

HL2 is a great game. It has a few flaws, but the good stuff make-up for them.

RATING: FIVE STARS

EXCELLENT