Metroid Prime: Hunters

Time for some more Metroid madness! (Wait… there’s no Metroids in the game?)

Today I feel like reviewing Metroid Prime: Hunters for the DS. No, this isn’t yet another side-scrolling Metroid game, but it’s actually 3D (Gasp!).

Let’s start out with the story line since it’s pretty much non-existent. You received a telepathic message and you decide to investigate it; that’s it; no deep intriguing background to the message; just one boring message floating through space, which just HAPPENED to come to Samus. Well, Metroid games have never really been big on story lines, so I shouldn’t be surprised.

But now let’s go to what really matters in the Metroid series, game play. This game pretty much plays just like Metroid Prime 1 and 2 for the GameCube, except for the usage of the touch screen. The touch screen allows you to change weapons and roll into your morph ball and can even be the way you aim. The touch screen works surprisingly well with this game, so that makes me wonder on how MP:3 will be on the Wii. You have your missles, your morph ball, your charge beam, and your scan visor. And yes, you will get more weapons than that, but those are just to start you off. There’s hunters that appear throughout the game (As the name implies) and each of them have their own special weapons, alt-forms, and special attributes, which makes each of them completely unique from the others. All of their weapons are also completely unique ranging from rapid-firing green balls (Battle Hammer) to a sniper beam (Imperialist). There’s five worlds to explore, but the fifth one is pretty small. And all the worlds are almost the size combined as the entire Metroid Prime worlds, which was a surprise since it’s on a hand held. But the one annoying thing is the enemies. There are not that many enemies in the game and most of them that are there are just copies of other ones (Such as a Psycho Bit V1, 2, 3, and yes, 4). Also the bosses follow the same pattern, because there’s only three different bosses, and you battle two of them FOUR times and the third one twice (That’s very lazy if you ask me). Also, did I mention the Scan Visor was in here; must I say more? (If you don’t know, the Scan Visor is some thingy in your helmet that allows you to scan enemies and items to put into a database and it contributes to the complete percentage in the game.)

But enough rambling on about the game play and let’s look at it’s multi-player. Nintendo’s WiFi didn’t really impress me that much up to this point, but this game is perfect for the WiFi. It’s real simple; just log on and search for people to play. But the problem is is that you can’t create your own games, unless you’re on wireless with a buddy about ten feet away from you. Yes, you can set up games on the WiFi, but for them to join they first have to be on you friend or rival list, then you have to make a game and HOPE they decide to look into their rival/friend list for no reason. But anyways, apart from that utter annoyance the online is pretty good, and no, you don’t play as a bunch of Samus-es (If that can be plural), but you could if you absolutely wanted to. All the hunters from the story are here and so are their weapons, also including a few new power-ups such as double damage and invisibility. Also, each hunter has it’s own special attribute whether it’s the ability to turn invisible of that some weapons act differently on different hunters.

Now the graphics are GREAT on this game, apart from the few texture repetitions throughout the game which is perfectly normal. The enemygraphics aren’t the greatest looking, but they’re way better than anything else I’ve seen on the DS so far. The hunters are well detailed and each one has it’s own uniqueness about their design. The weapons also all look completely different and they all have nice detail.

The sound is decent, but it can become repetitive sometimes. The music is pretty much non-existent and through the majority of the game you’ll never hear it.

Overall, this is a great game with great game play and great graphics with just a slight lacking of multi-player features. I give Metroid Prime: Hunters a eight out of ten.

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.

Star Wars: Jedi Starfighter

Yay… more Star Wars…

 Ever wondered how the Jedis fought in the sky? That’s what this game answers.

I have no idea where the story for this game came from, because I don’t remember any of these characters in the movies, except battle droids (Roger, roger). The story isn’t that great but at least it makes sense every once in a while.

The worlds are fairly expansive and allows you to explore to a extent and some worlds even have Easter eggs (Woot!). You get special Jedi powers in the game to use like zapping ships out of the sky and whatnot. You can also unlock a nice array of ships including the clone transport and the Slave.

The main problem with this game is it’s too short, because just progressing through the story line will just take about maybe ten hours and with all the special, hidden secondary objectives, it might take fifteen hours.

The graphics for this game are surprisingly good and not much is random. The sound is pretty good but the constant sound of the blasters is enough to drive one insane. The music is the Star Wars norm so I guess it’s good. This game is a good difficulty level with it not too hard but not too easy.

This is a pretty good game if you like flying, Jedi powers, and Star Wars.

I give Star Wars: Jedi Starfighter a six out of ten.

Pokemon Pinball

Pinball time!

Pokemon Pinball is what started off all of the Pokemon spin-offs that have come and gone but never stayed long. This game is pretty much pinball meets Pokemon so you’ll spend the majority of your time trying to catch all one-hundred fifty-one (This is correct for when this game came out but not anymore) Pokemon by battling and training them by well… hitting a ball around.

There’s two different tables to play on but everyone I know who has every played this game always plays the blue table (It’s much easier…), but at least there’s another one to mix it up every once in a while. You travel through different parts of Kanto as you go through a pinball round and each contains it’s own unique Pokemon. There’s a few boss battles along the way ranging from a Meowth to a Mewtwo.

The graphics aren’t anything special so I’m not going to mention anymore about them. The sound is the norm for pinball games and the music is catchy but not annoying.

This is a decent game for younger kids if you haven’t upgraded to the DS yet.

I give Pokemon Pinball a four out of ten.

Battlefield 2: Modern Combat

Time for the modern battlefield.

 Battlefield 2: Modern Combat is somewhat similar to Battalion Wars I reviewed a little while ago except it’s more realistic, the story is longer, and it has a great multi-player. This game runs as a first-person shooter with some real-time strategy thrown into the story mode. Like all army games the story takes place during war, but not in the same wars that games like Medal of Honor and Call of Duty have SEVERELY overused. Instead, this game invents its own war. The war is that China gets a little warmongering and Mongolia is the closest thing at the time. As the game progresses you’ll play as the Mongols, the Americans and I think the Chinese (Can’t remember exactly), so that gives you several views of the war and how it impacts the countries.

The game play almost reminds me of Star Wars: Battlefront with the way you spawn onto the battlefield with a choice of certain weapons but it seems to only do that in multi-player. There’s quite a few of missions to go through with all kinds of units ranging from infantry to helicopters. The sound is nearly perfect and very fitting with almost no repetitive lines or sounds. The music is covered up throughout much of the game due to the gun-fire but when you do find a quiet hiding-hole, you’ll find that the music is almost soothing (That’s good for snipers). The story mode is very difficult and it will take a lot of time to get through but it’s so rewarding when you do.

The multi-player is great for the PS2 online because of it’s small amount of lag in forty people rooms, which is great compared to some games that lag in one-on-one rooms. And there’s a lot of online worlds, but everyone seems to end up playing the exact same two worlds.

This game is pretty good if you don’t plan on upgrading to the newer consoles any time soon, but if you’ve already upgraded, there’s better games to choose from.

I give Battlefield 2: Modern Combat a seven out of ten.

Bomberman Max Blue Hero

A man who likes to blow stuff up with bombs… hmm… that reminds me of someone…

 Today I’m reviewing Bomberman Max Blue Hero which also has a counter-part Red Hero which at the core the exact same games except that each has it’s own levels and collectible monsters. This game stays true to its Bomberman roots with the same view and idea except instead of destroying other people, you’re destroying a bunch of monsters on your way to saving the universe from “Brain”.

There’s plenty of levels and all of them are pretty much the same but still somewhat different. As you go through the game you’ll come across some little creatures that you can level up and battle almost Pokemon style if you and your friend have GameBoy Colors with working sensory thingys on top. Also, when you go through the worlds you’ll find special warps that can only be activated by a TV remote pointing at that sensor which unlocks certain games depending on which button you push (Push the big, red, shiny button?). And that sensor is also how the multi player takes place. The multi player consists of two things mixing your monsters and battling them, which I’ve only done once and can barely remember, but I do remember owning that guy…

The graphics are decent for the GBC but not great. The sound is nice but repetitive and the music is VERY repetitive at times. This game is very easy till you get to the last battle and then it is RIDICULOUSLY hard [Stabs Brain and his infinite forms].

This is very good game for younger kids but most hardcore gamers will probably hate it.

I give Bomberman Max Blue Champion a four out of ten.