I recently picked up South Park: The Stick of Truth (SoT), and I’ve been having an absolute blast with it. It’s a fun, funny, and fantastic game complete with decent mechanics and enjoyable gameplay. SoT is a turn-based combat game, and it’s been awhile since I’ve played one of them. Thinking back…the last one had to be…gosh…Final Fantasy IV on the DS, maybe? What’s interesting about combat in SoT is that your party consists only of two people – you and another character. Going in I expected to start out small and grow my party into the standard three- to four-person crew. In SoT, while I’ve unlocked other members of my party, only one stays with you on screen and in battle. As they all have different abilities, you can switch team members at any given time, but more often than not, I’ve found myself a long-term companion in just one character. The sweet, and at times vicious Butters.
Today is the last day of my series of posts on what I like and dislike about the last generation of consoles, the Wii, the 360, and the PS3. While I loved the PlayStation 2, I actually didn’t have any intention of getting the PS3 because Naughty Dog was still refusing to make any more “Jak and Daxter” games, the “Kingdom Hearts 3” release date was nowhere in sight, and because I could just keep up with the “Final Fantasy” games on the 360. And then, because of a sale on used games at GameStop, I bought myself a few PS2 “Ratchet and Clank” games, causing me to really get into the series. And that’s when I found myself with an unstoppable need to buy the PS3 and catch up on all the “R&C” games I had missed. Nevertheless, at first, my PS3 didn’t have much to motivate me to play it aside from a few short “R&C” games, and I wondered if I may have wasted my money. The console did become much better, however, when I added to my collection “Portal 2”, “Rayman Legends”, and the Final Mix version of “Kingdom Hearts”, and now I’m starting to really love it. Not as much as my PS2, but it still turned out to be a pretty grand console. And now, I present you with my pros and cons for the PS3! (With the focus, again, on gaming, and information found on Wikipedia.) Continue reading →
The world of Donkey Kong 64 was an odd place wasn’t it? It had jungles, fungi forests, crystal caves, a haunted castle…and that’s not even all of them. Most of these regions found in DK Isles made some sort of sense, but what about the ones found on the mechanized K. Rool Island? The haunted castle and gloomy bay areas are weird enough, but it’s Frantic Factory that really stick out here. Really, what was up with that place? Continue reading →
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I really like Super Metroid. It’s one of my most favorite games of all time and one that I can’t separate from my video game life. The game celebrates its 20th anniversary this year, and I can still see myself, all those years ago, glued to my parents’ television set as I guided Samus on a path to victory.
The very first time I played Super Metroid, it didn’t go so well. It wasn’t awful enough that I never wanted to play it again, but it was difficult. I hadn’t played either Metroid or Metroid II, but the mechanics of the game weren’t completely foreign; it was more my silly impatience that got in the way. I died…a lot…mainly because I didn’t take time to plan my jumps and I was terrible at timing my shots during boss battles. But the more I played, the easier it became. Soon enough, I had had the entire game memorized, secrets and all, and I eventually became almost speed-run good at it. Super Metroid marked a singular moment in my experiences with video games, one where I felt at ease with the games that I enjoyed. Super Metroid became a good friend, one to which I could return over and over again with open arms and without judgment.
Not long ago, I published a post discussing what I like and dislike about the Wii, and seeing as the next console of this particular generation that I bought was the XBox 360, it makes sense for Microsoft’s console to be the subject of the second post in this series. It’s a funny thing, though, how I got this console in the first place, because I am more of a PlayStation fan than an XBox fan, so it would stand to reason that I would have been much more inclined to purchase a console made by Sony over one made by Microsoft. Unfortunately, at the time, the PS3 was much too expensive, and it didn’t have any games I really cared for yet that weren’t already on the 360 (this was obviously before I became a “Ratchet and Clank” fan…). Since the games I wanted at that time were all on the 360, plus that console would also allow me to play any new “Halo” games, this became the next console I added to my gaming family.
And when I first started playing the 360, I was immediately impressed with the graphics, which were way ahead of the Wii, and even though the first two games I played were not as good as I was expecting (“Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts” and “Sonic the Hedgehog”, the 2006 version, shudder, gag, shiver), I did have a good time playing “Halo 3” (even though it was short) and “Final Fantasy XIII” (despite its flaws), the latter of which came with my console. (I even got this little waste of time thing on one end of the console that says “Final Fantasy XIII” on it. Jealous?) Plus, I was just pretty thrilled that this new XBox had “Final Fantasy” games as part of its library now, as during the last generation, only the PS2 had such an honor. My game collection was further improved with the addition of “Halo: Reach” and “Halo 4”, which were awesome, and I even had the pleasure of expanding my game library with over 40 Sega Genesis games on “Sonic’s Ultimate Genesis Collection”. In the end, I ended up really enjoying my 360, and I loved it way more than the original XBox. And now, anymore of my thoughts on this console will be listed below. (As usual, my main focus is on gaming, not the other features the 360 has to offer, and extra info was found on Wikipedia.) Continue reading →
Banjo-Kazooie is a bright and sunny game, we all know that, we all accept that. However, upon closer inspection I’ve realized the game could (maybe should) have been terrifying to those of us who played it as young children. It’s all there, and out of the game’s sunny context, all so very creepy! Continue reading →
There’s just something great about games that empower the player to be something more than ordinary. Sucker Punch’s inFAMOUS franchise is at it’s best when giving players the tools to go and do what they want in a big open city. With the highly anticipated Second Son now on store shelves, the franchise finally moves into next generation territory and with it comes a brand new game engine, character, abilities and setting for players to play around with. Even with all this new tech powering the title, morality and story have always been a major focus and Second Son is no different, introducing these elements through a more realistic tone and topics centered around the freedom vs security debate.
Is Second Son a worth successor to Cole’s legacy or should it be purged? Full review after the jump.
Last month, United We Game got together with the creative minds behind @1hour1sketch and offered up the topic “Mario Party,” which was hosted for one week on the art-directed Twitter site. During that week, response to the topic was fast and furious…and utterly AMAZING! Seriously, it was incredible to see so many different interpretations on a single idea, and we really appreciate everyone who contributed to the effort. If you’re not doing so already, please to follow @1hour1sketch on Twitter to keep up with all the great artwork that’s being submitted there. And while you’re at it, say hello to A4man (@AdsTra) and Fredrik Skarstedt (@Fredrik_S), the proprietors of the 1hour1sketch project.
(If you missed out on this initially or are wondering what the heck is going on, check out our posts here and here about this group effort.)
You all remember how, when this blog first got started, I wrote a series about the pros and cons about the GameCube/XBox/PlayStation2 generation, don’t you? Well, actually, you may not because that was a while ago. But, believe me, I did. And now that I have had a good amount of experience with the last generation of consoles (the Wii, XBox 360, and PlayStation 3, of course), I decided it was time to write a series of posts on what I find good and bad about these three awesome consoles. To start, the console I’ve had the longest, the Wii.
I had a thought recently; Just a passing notion as I was trying to decide which game to spend some time in that day. I had been enjoying Infamous: Second Son quite a bit and still needed to finish it, but it didn’t really feel like an Infamous sort of day. While looking over the ol’ replay stack, I remembered that I had gotten my hands on Titanfall a couple weeks ago. I’d sunk some time into it before and had found it to be a fun game, very fun actually. Even so, the idea was dismissed almost as quickly as it came and I settled on starting up good ol’ BioShock. It wasn’t until later that this struck me as odd; normally new always trumps old, so why BioShock instead of Titanfall? An answer sprung up immediately but was dismissed, and I settled on thinking that I simply a matter of just not feeling like playing it. The thing is though, I never feel like playing it, which has led to the first notion being the most valid. That though being that Titanfall simply wasn’t worth the time. More than that: that online multiplayer itself wasn’t worth the time. Continue reading →
