Super Mario world

Ahh… the good old days when it was cool to ram your head into bricks then wonder “is his head that hard?” This game has been considered by many as one of the greatest platformers of all time and I’m one of those people. The story is well… one paragraph; “Bowser has kipnapped Princess Peach you much save her” but we all know why Mario does it. Thegraphics and sound are the SNES norm and the gameplay is the Mario norm, but overall if you havn’t played it find a ROM or go buy it.

Super mario sunshine

Mario’s back again… can’t he ever catch a break. At least there is more in this game than just jumping, becuase now you can jump and squirt!… that didn’t sound right… but anyways in the story you finally get an vacation (Yeah right), but end up deing confused with some graffiti spraying fake Mario who kidnaps Princess Peach and gets Mario thrown in jail, but once Mario gets his court sentence he gets and spray gun thingy backpack which lets him clean up the streets of Isle Delfino and rescue the princess. The graphics are average, the music is tropical marioey, and the gameplay is very similar to Super Mario 64 except now you have an gun, but overall the game still isn’t as good as Super Mario 64.

Starfox: assualt

Yay… more Starfox… at least we get guns instead of magical sticks this time around. This game is pretty good all around, but the storyline is painfully short,for example I beat the game in about 4 hours, but at least there’s about 3 hours of cinematics to make it seem longer. The graphics are good and the worlds are expansive, but not so big you can’t find anything. The multiplayer was pretty good, but it still should’ve been online, but at least you have a ton of characters and worlds too unlock. The sound is nice with accurate voices and explosions. Overall it’s a pretty good buy if you have people too play with or if you like shooting giant bugs.

SSX: on tour

Remember the days of snowboarding through pinball tables, sewers, and over giant mountains on islands in the Pacific? Well, those days are long gone, but at least you can now ski, do uber tricks, and (somewhat) customize your character. Before this game I had only played the SSX series on the PS2, but I think it translates quite well except for the *sniff* online mode. An few things about this game that differs from SSX3 are there are civilians who are over-obsessed with llamas and gravy skiing and snowboarding down the slopes with you, you aren’t set with an certain group of charaters with a few customization options, and there’s mythical creature to find like unicorns, yeti/bigfoot, and (…) llamas. The game is somewhat long which is good for the online-lacking Gaecube , but at the end it starts to get painfully hard. The graphics are awesome, the gameplay is nice ,and the music is an hard rock lover’s dream. I still think SSX3 is slightly better.

Sonic adventure 2: battle

I’ve never really been much of an Sonic the Hedgehog fan even when it was on the Sega Genesis, but this game really “Wowed” me in many ways. The first time I played this game I was like “Yay fast stuff…” and then entered the Chao garden, an little area where you can raise little creatures called Chao, I was like “Okay…” but once I figured it out it was fun. The story is Grade A cheese or in other words I skipped through most of the cinematics, but if you want to see decent voice acting and an extremely stupid looking Dr. Eggman go ahead and watch them. And not to forget the awful, cruel, and inhumane camera system, that thing drove me to insanity and back a few times. The music is decent with an few annoying ones in the bunch. The graphics are average for 2002 and the gameplay is flippin’ sweet, but I’ve never played the multiplayer so i don’t know about that. So overall it’s an decent game to pick up used.

Ratchet: Deadlocked

I was seriously dissapointed when I first played this game and I still am because I just had to compare it to the almighty Ratchet and Clank: Up Your Arsenal *smacks head*. The game starts right after RAC:UYA; You are floating through space minding your own business when out of nowhere some guys come kidnap you and take you to the DreadZone, where you’ll fight arena deathmatchs to save your life, hmmm…. that sounds like Unreal Tournament. You then get some pathetic armor *hugs carbonox armor from RAC:GC* and two mostly worthless robots except for solving some OH MY CHEESE puzzles, which seem alot like the swingshot from 1, 2, and 3. Then you only get *sigh* 10 weapons and the only ones to note of are the scorpion flail and the harbinger, think BFG on barry bonds’ steroids, then after that the only other thing to note of is the spider tank. You know that bad taste you get when you swallow a bad orange, well, that’s about what the online is like. So overall RAC:UYA is way better in all aspects period.

Pikmin 2

It’s the return of the Pikmin wait…actually it’s the return of Captain Olimar to the Pikmin planet ,but you get the point. Anyways the gamep;ay has barely changed from the last Pikmin game ,except for the two new Pikmin ,two characters to explore the worlds with at once (which is extremely handy) ,and no (yes,no) day limit so you can grow Pikmin for years if you want to. The two new Pikmin are purple and white; the purple ones are extremely heavy (like sumos) and extremely strong (like umm…you get the point) and the white ones are just resistant to poison (tries to act excited) but they should’ve made it so the white Pikmin could fly just as high as the yellow ones because they are smaller and lighter (Pikmin ignores Physics 101!); the two charatcers are really handy for getting alot done in one day like breaking an fence and carrying back food at once; and the day limit explains itself because now there’s no 30 day limit before poisonous suffocation (Gasp!). Another thing they added was the caves which are kinda like RPG dungeons where you just keep descending the cave system till eventually you find an way out or run out of Pikmin. The multiplayer mode is an nice change ,but there is only one game ,collect the marbles. The graphics are barely changed (and I mean barely), the sound/music is just different that’s all, but the annoying singing Pikmin sound will drive you insane! So overall this is a pretty fun game.

Pikmin

What is better than having a army of bone-marrow-sucking zombies? Pikmin of course! No drool!, no gore!, and no communist takeover!, well, not the last one but you get the point. The storyline is very straightforward you crash into an asteroid, fall to the planet, find the planet toxic, discover Pikmin, command the Pikmin like egyptian slaves till you rebuild your spaceship. The graphics are very good for the GameCube in that year and the sound is worth not muting your TV. The gameplay is very unique mixture of platformer and role-playing but other than the story mode all there is is challenge mode,a mode for growing as many Pikmin as possible in one day,but overall this is a really good game.

Metroid prime

Finally an 3D Metroid game! So now we have life-suckers from left ,right ,up ,and down instead of just up and down. The gameplay is somewhat average when you think about it ,because the only thing that seperates this game from something like Medal of Honor or Halo are the enemies ,morph balls ,and a few other things ,but this game is still good. The gameplay tries to keep its 2D platformer feel ,but it is hard to keep the feel forever. All kinds of different power-ups are available ,but some are kinda worthless (such as the super ice beam blob thingy). The worlds are huge and it takes seemingly forever to get from one place to another ,which is Extremely annoying ,but at least they are well detailed and look beautiful. The enemies are very well detailed and each one has it’s own unique attributes ,like one can get creamed by missles but another is completely immune to those same missles. The storyline is normal old Metroid storyline ,so you’ll figure it out quick whether you’ve played an Metroid game or not. This is a very nice game with an few annoyances here and there which are normal for 2D games going 3D.

Kinetica

Kinetica is a very unheard of game in the battle/racing genre, with futuristic themes, nice character designs, and large tracks, it sadly was ovelooked. The graphics are standard,early PS2 graphics, and that isn’t good, using the SoundMax sound engine the sound is very accurate, but the music gets repetitive, the controls aren’t that clunky but they could’ve been better, and the art style is pretty unique. The storyline is very amatuerish and non-existant but people who want to go really fast don’t ofetnly read storylines or listen to cinematics, so if you like racing games with substance you will be like “yay…another racing game… oh look a bean…”. The actual racing part of it is very good with lots of characters and tracks and this is coming from someone who hates racing games. There are items in the game ranging from extra boost to OH MY GOODNESS! more extra boost! The game altogether isn’t that bad. It’s a good choice if you are looking for used games.