26th November 2007

Mario Party DS (DS) - Review

mp-ds-cover Hudson Soft’s Mario Party series has had several poor outings in the last few releases. Mario Party 7 on the Gamecube was rather uninspired and while the microphone use was new, didn’t add much. Mario Party 8 for the Wii used the Wii remote fine, but the minigames were uninspired, and for a next-gen title, it really didn’t look like next-gen that much. Fortunately, Mario Party DS does attempt to correct those poor titles – the gameplay has a bit more strategy to it despite still being based on a lot of luck, and the minigames are enjoyable, and having multiplayer over local wireless is a nice feature. However, it is still a Mario Party game, and will not change your opinion about the series if you dislike it already.

Review Helpfulness: 1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (2 votes, average: 5 out of 5)
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25th November 2007

Raymen Raving Rabbids 2 (Wii) - Review

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Rayman Raving Rabbids 2 by Ubisoft follows up on their party hit from last year, and does a good job of introducing new games and fixing a few problems that were present in the first game. While the overall game experience isn’t much from the single player standpoint, it’s a good game to have in your virtual backpocket to have available should you be hanging around with friends.

Review Helpfulness: 1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (2 votes, average: 3.5 out of 5)
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25th November 2007

Heavenly Sword (PS3) - Review

heavenlysword.jpgHeavenly Sword, produced by Ninja Theoy and distributed by Sony, has been called by many “God of War Lite” for the PlayStation 3; I certainly can’t disagree with this assessment as while the game has many of the combat elements or ideas from that title, it lacks the puzzles or power building aspect that are present in God of War. That doesn’t necessarily make this a bad game, but after button mashing through the rather short title, there’s not much memorable about this game, though does give promise of what God of War III could offer should it be made on the PS3.

Review Helpfulness: 1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (2 votes, average: 4.5 out of 5)
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25th November 2007

Blacksite: Area 51 (360) - Review

blacksite-cover.jpgFor me, when I first played the demo of Blacksite: Area 51 from Midway on Xbox Live, it felt like it would be a good game: you didn’t have the full story, but you knew enough that it appeared to be about an alien invasion among more suburban settings. However, the demo’s shortness didn’t give much more of an impression of what the rest of the game would be like. Unfortunately, the full game is woefully sub-par compared to that brief demo section - it suffers from being way too short, lacking any significant challenge, and includes a host of technical problems that should have been caught before this went gold. This is definitely not a title I’d recommend.

Review Helpfulness: 1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (3 votes, average: 4.67 out of 5)
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24th November 2007

Rock Band (360) - Review

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After the various shakeups with the Guitar Hero franchise, with Activision now using Neversoft for their development, Harmonix seemed to be left without a port in the storm. However, doing what they do best, Harmonix has gone off with help from MTV and EA Games to produce a natural extension of the Guitar Hero games, one where you can play not only guitar but drums and vocals. Rock Band, despite having a high price tag for the additional equipment, successfully replicates and enhances Guitar Hero’s gameplay to all instruments, making it a great game for both solo and group play save for a few annoyances in the hardware and online limitations.

Review Helpfulness: 1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (2 votes, average: 4.5 out of 5)
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24th November 2007

Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune (PS3) - Review

uncharted-cover.jpgWhile Naughty Dog’s more recent Jak and Daxter series was generally met with good reviews, the last few games in Naughty Dog’s series have been rather lackluster. While certainly I’d love to see PS3 version of the franchise, it is understood that, just like Insomniac Games before them, Naughty Dog has attempted to bring new IP to the PS3 in the form of Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune. Naughty Dog did not miss with this one: the game is a strong contender for being one of the top PS3 games, doing an excellent job of mixing strong gameplay elements among plot development to give one of the more entertaining titles I’ve played this year.

Review Helpfulness: 1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (3 votes, average: 5 out of 5)
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22nd November 2007

Kane And Lynch: Dead Men (360) - Review

kane-cover.jpgKane and Lynch: Dead Men, developed by IO-Interactive and distributed by Eidos, attempts to take those movies where the criminals are the protagonists such as Heat, Crank, and The Usual Suspects, and make a video game based off a highly cinematic experience. Unfortunately, the game falls flat in several areas: the story itself is too fast-paced and never stopped to help us gain insight into the characters, the gameplay itself is subpar save for a couple of interesting features, and while the game has an interesting multiplayer mode based on psychological experiments, there’s several implimentation problems that makes it much less exciting than it is on paper.

Review Helpfulness: 1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (No Ratings Yet)
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22nd November 2007

Super Mario Galaxy (Wii) - Review

smg-cover2.jpgAfter the rather disappointing Super Mario Sunshine, word of a new true Mario title for the Wii got a lot of people excited about it, particularly once the theme of Mario-in-space was established. Now that that game is here as Super Mario Galaxy, its amazing how much this game has exceeded expectations – not only making up for what felt lacking in Sunshine, but perhaps even going beyond some of the best Mario titles already out there like Super Mario 64 or Super Mario Bros. 3. It is amazing how well all the elements of the game, not only in gameplay but in presentation and difficulty, are pulled together to make one of the best video game titles to date.

Review Helpfulness: 1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (1 votes, average: 5 out of 5)
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22nd November 2007

Assassin’s Creed (360) - Review

assassincreed-coverAssassin’s Creed, developed by Ubisoft Montreal and published by Ubisoft, definitely has some of its roots in the previous Prince of Persia series also created by Ubisoft Montreal. But rather than continue to focus more on the challenges of using acrobats to move around obstacles, Assassin’s Creed uses those moves as part of routine needs to be an assassin at the latter end of the 12th century during the Crusades. Combining several interesting aspects of gameplay related to that, without turning this completely into a stealth-based title like Thief, makes the game extremely well done, despite the fact that the story itself has a significant blemish on the game.

Note that I do go into some spoilers (ones you learn 5 or so minutes into the game) as its necessary to describe them to talk about some of the features of the game.

Review Helpfulness: 1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (1 votes, average: 5 out of 5)
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16th November 2007

Assassin’s Creed (360) - Initial Impressions

I’ve gotten through the “tutorial” sections of the game (about 2-3 hrs of gameplay), and so far finding this interesting.  It’s definitely got the feel of the new Prince of Persia games (and I have to admit I didn’t make the connection until I noted that both this and the POP games were done by Ubisoft Montreal, which would explain why they’re so similar) when considering the acrobats of climbs up and around buildings.  I do like that the game, while using stealth, seems more “active” about it compared to the “wait and wait and wait” stealth in games like Thief or Metal Gear Solid - I would almost say its closer to an arcade feel of stealth as in Sly Cooper.  Basically, it’s not so much standing in the shadows that will hide you, it’s either the blending in with the crowd while still moving, or getting to higher ground to ditch attention.  The story is a bit interesting, I’ve got an idea where it’s going, but its good to see that they push the key twist of the game early (as to review that game without talking about the twist would be near impossible).

Not so sure I’m great with the size of the world yet - I’m still early enough in the game that there might be things to do or find in the rather large cities or the landscape between them, but traversing the game world without bringing up alarm levels is someone on the tedious size.

posted in action, assassins-creed, initial-impressions, third-person-shooter, xbox-360 | 0 Comments

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