Pokemon Ranger

It’s Friday again, so you know what time it is.

This week I’ll be reviewing Pokemon Ranger for the DS.

Pokemon Ranger is just another one of those Pokemon spin-offs, but it plays nothing like any other Pokemon game I’ve ever played (And trust me I’ve played a lot of Pokemon games.)  The first main difference you’ll see is that instead of catching the Pokemon and keeping them forever, you get to ‘borrow’ them to help you out on your journey such as burn logs, ram trees, and yes, water plants. Not all of the Pokemon are in this game, which in many ways is a great thing since 386 Pokemon can be ridiculous fo a spin-off game (*cough* Mystery Dungeon *cough*.)  The game uses the styler very well and it dosn’t get the slightest bit annoying, which surprises me since all you do is circle the Pokemon in battle. Also, each Pokemon while in battle move and act differently so that every Pokemon is a new challenge. There’s plenty of land to explore and it all looks a little bit different so you won’t be looking like you’re walking in circles.

 The storyline is pretty decent, especially since the main Pokemon games have absolutely no storyline. The main problem is the game is not long enough (I beat it in under 20 hours), but other than that it is a really good game.

The graphics aren’t top of the line, but they’re all it needs, and all the Pokemon have different animations (Thank goodness!)

The music is pretty good with a lack of repitition and the sound is quite smooth, except the Pokemon have a tendency to constantly repeat their calls.

This is a great game for Pokemon fans and it’s pretty decent for people who aren’t into Pokemon. I’m giving Pokemon Ranger for the DS a seven

Lego Star Wars 2: The Original Trilogy

If I see another Star Wars Lego, I’m going to go insane

Do you remember a while back I reviewed Lego Star Wars 2: The Original Trilogy. Well, it’s back but this time it’s all the DS. After playing Lego Star Wars 2 for the PS2, I didn’t have very high hopes for this game and trust me it doesn’t deserve any.

The first bad point is the story; the story doesn’t make the slightest bit of sense for about eighty percent of the game. First of all, the cut-scenes make little or no sense (It isn’t like there’s any voices to help you along) and the worlds you play in try to follow the movie story but they just make absolutely no sense at all.

The game play is supposed to be the best aspect of the game (which it is, in a bad way), but with the DS’s touch screen they could’ve made it slightly more interactive, but that’s what happens when you get a scaled-down version of the game (scaled-down from the console). The enemies are mindless and killing them is also very mindless. There’s a lot of unlockables but most of them are just there and nothing more. There’s a decent amount of levels, but all of them are either too short or too glitched. This game is very glitchy; walls will appear and disappear, sometimes it allows you to exit the game and other times it doesn’t, and a lot of stuff will disappear for no apparent reason so that you’ll have to restart the level, again. I think I’ve gotten rid of enough of the frustration this game gave me on game play so let’s save some for everything else.

The graphics are bottom of their barrel especially when competing with heavy hitters like Metroid Prime: Hunters and the New Super Mario Bros. The music is cutesy and acceptable for about twenty minutes and then you’ll want to take an AK-47 and shove the game cartridge inside of it and shoot the game to Mars so you’ll never see it again, because, yes, it contains the music from the movies, but it’s been chopped, cut and shortened to a VERY annoying soundtrack. And all that was just for the music; now it’s time to try to describe the sound effects. The sounds will drive you insane, whether it’s the constant bleeping of the guns or R2-D2 bleeping the same overly annoying thing over and over again (if you get this game, play it on mute).

You would have to be really desperate for multi-player if you actually think this game’s multi-player is worth you time, because it isn’t (Pong has a better multi-player, if you ask me).

This is NOT a good game for the DS and this game is a NOT worth anything more than five dollars.

I give Lego Star Wars 2: The Original Trilogy a two out of ten (This is the worst score I’ve ever given out and the only reason it isn’t lower is because there might be a game that is worse out there somewhere.)

Need for Speed: Carbon

This is how illegal street racing is supposed to be.

Need for Speed: Carbon is the fifth in the series of NFS games on the PS2 and this one by far is the best in everything but a few little aspects here and there.

The story line starts you where you left off in Most Wanted and, like normal, people are mad at you for stealing some money. I won’t tell you that much more of the story line because there’s not to much more than that. Also the story dosn’t finish itself off very well either because there’s quite a few plot holes. But enough about the story; let’s talk game play.

The way the cars handle hasn’t changed much from Most Wanted but there are a few little changes here and there but nothing huge. You still have your gigantic city to roam around, but once you get to learn it, it becomes really small really fast. There’s a ton of tracks and each of them is different in their own way, so evn though you’ll be racing the same parts over and over, there will be some difference. Now it’s the fun part, the cars. There’s a lot of cars ranging from the old Camaro to the Ford GT with everything you could imagine in between. There’s also three classes of cars including muscles, tuners, and exotics with three tiers for with certain performance parts for each. Each class of car handles differently with tuners made for the turns, muscles made for the acceleration, and the exotics made for the long straights. Also with each car class handling differently each car themselves handle differently and with the ability to tune your performance parts much easier than in past games, there’s an infinite amount of posibilities. I’ve already told you about the performance parts, so let’s now talk about the visuals. All the visuals from the old games are back with even more new ones and with the new Autosculpt ability You can customize any part to your liking.

Through the game you’ll get team members to help you out during races like blockers, drafters, and scouts, but there’s not enough teammates to be hired so you’ll end up with about the same three every time. The A.I. really should’ve been a little tougher in a lot of the races through career mode because there’s no satisfaction in beating a computer player by twenty-five seconds. But this is not talking about the A.I. of the police, because the police are very smart compared to the rest of the A.I. because they’ve actually pushed me into a spike strip with no escape. But if you’re like me and think the A.I. is a little lazy then you’ll probably have a lot of fun with the challenge series.

The challenge series consists of about seventy-five races that you have to have pure skill to complete, but if you do at least they reward you with nice upgrades like new spoilers, cars, and other random little things that you can’t get any other way. Also there’s the reward cards which consist of about twenty-five cards with four cards in each, so you have one-hundred rewards to win as you go through the game. Now let’s hop over to the multi-player.

The one biggest problem with the multi-player of Most Wanted and Carbon is the lack of online play, because they spoiled you with NFS: Underground 2 but they never brought it back, but at least the multi-player that is there is pretty nice.

The graphics are sharp especially when you’re breaking two-hundred miles per hour on a highway and the cut-scenes are beautiful but there’s just not enough of them. The music is somewhat decent but not great. They could only seem to get a few known bands, but the only song it ever seems to play is the most annoying song in the game. The police chases don’t feature these bands but it has it’s own one track soundtrack which in a fifteen minute pursuit becomes very, very, very annoying. The voices are really well done but they can get very repetitive if you race with the same teammate all the time. Each car has it’s own unique engine sound which is probably the best part of the sound in this game.

Overall, this game is a must have for a PS2 and maybe a PS3 owner.

I give Need fo Speed: Carbon a eight out of ten.

Rumble Racing

Let’s get ready to rumble race!

Rumble Racing is a destructive racing game that spent more time on cheat code only unlockables that aren’t that great anyways.

There’s no story here which is pretty standard for racing games, but still… This game features a lot of cars and tracks, but most of the cars are so similar in driving that you’ll probably only use one or two cars. The tracks for the most part all look different and have different shapes and sizes, but they all are just a bunch of mindless turning (You don’t even have to take your finger off the gas). The power-ups in the game aren’t exactly unique because all of them are just knock-offs of other games (Can’t anybody come up with unique weapons nowadays?).

The graphics aren’t exactly great… but I guess they might be better than the option. The cars all sound the same except for a few and all the weapons have inappropriate sounds. The music is quite random on some of the tracks and most of it is just plain annoying. This game isn’t very difficult and there’s not much of a sense of accomplishment if you do somehow sit there long enough to beat it.

This game is a low-grade game and there are much better alternatives out there.

I give Rumble Racing a two out of ten.

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Red Rescue Team

Time to poke around some mysterious dungeons with Pokemon.

 Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Red Rescue Team is pretty much you would have expected Pokemon to for quite a while. Instead of the turn-based strategy of the main Pokemon games this uses a real-time strategy combined with turn-based. For example, instead of running around in grass looking for Pokemon, The Pokemon are already on the map and they come to you, because every step you take is a step they take. This game quite simply is Dungeons and Dragons meet Pokemon.

The story is very random; you wake up one day as a Pokemon and whoever you choose as a partner sucks you into the rescuing business. All 360+ Pokemon are here and awaiting you to spend half of your life trying to catch them. Since there aren’t any of those abusive trainers in this world to play as, you’ll have to be friends with them and not treat them like expendable slaves (Darn…). So the process of getting all the Pokemon seems nearly impossible. You can use all of the Pokemon’s moves from the normal games but most of the time you’ll end up just using the same basic move over and over again since it doesn’t cost and power points (PP). There’s a lot of dungeons to go into but they are all randomly generated and seem exactly the same except for the items and Pokemon appearing in them.

The graphics seem like a scaled-down version of the DS version (Blue Rescue Team), but they’re still pretty decent. The sound is fairly annoying but at least the music is diversified. This game can get very difficult if you don’t spend forever trying to level up and the dungeons are so random and similar that this game isn’t as good as it could have been.

I give Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Red Rescue Team a four out of ten.