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The Conduit Game Review–It’s Like Red Bull, The Game

That headline, of course, will require some explanation.  If you’ve ever drank a Red Bull before, especially if you don’t do it often, what you get is kind of a sweetish, cloying taste (that for me put me vaguely in mind of chewable vitamins) followed by an incredibly twitchy sensation as the sugar and caffeine goes burning its way merrily through your endocrine system.  And, either ironically or by design, this is EXACTLY how I’d describe The Conduit, the newest first person shooter for the Wii.

Basically, The Conduit asks you to believe that all those things you scoffed at as merely tinfoil-hat lunacy, stuff like chemtrails and 9/11 being an inside job and aliens and whatever it is they’re doing out at the Denver International Airport, are all in fact very real.  This is already tough enough, but then they’ll follow that up by asking you to believe that the shadowy figures behind all of them actually brought a tinfoil-hat type INTO the conspiracy, and said tinfoil hatter actually accepted his new role.  From there, he’ll be heavily armed with all the latest government hardware and whatever he can manage to pick up along the way from the race of alien marauders who’s looking to set up shop on Earth.  Their technology tends to focus on things that are grown rather than built–their weapons use biomass as propellant and their locks are organic–and the centerpiece of their tech tree is the Conduit, a kind of interdimensional warp generator that seems to be similar to the old Stargate design.  But, as you’ll discover as you go through the game, there’s plenty of sneaky shadowy stuff going on here, and you may not be able to trust your own handlers as much as you’d want to…or even as much as you hope.

I give them all the credit in the world for assembling a sharp, sweet storyline.  Seriously, they clearly put a lot into it and it really is a fantastic story that uses plenty of the things we might find roaming around the internet at this very second.  They’ve got the plot on lockdown, and even the graphics and sound weigh in nicely for a Wii title.  Though everyone TALKS about the so-called Wii Syndrome, in which a game is automatically docked by virtue of being on the Wii, let’s face one indisputable fact–graphically, no game for the Wii has yet been produced that can compete with an Xbox 360 or PS3 title.  This isn’t bias, this is sheer fact, and if someone actually CAN point out a Wii game that CAN compete graphically with, say, Prototype or Haze or Killzone 2 or Fallout 3, then I will cheerfully and publicly retract this statement in the comments section below.

There’s only one other problem with The Conduit, and that’s the twitchy control scheme.  A first person shooter depends heavily on the ability to get the firepower where it needs to go, whether it be into a tank or an enemy’s sternum.  And when I’m trying to line up a shot, it really doesn’t help that the Wiimote will periodically jerk halfway across the screen from one small twitch of the wrist.  This will take getting used to.

But the fact remains–The Conduit just might be, all things considered, the Wii’s best first person shooter.  And if you love a good first person shooter with plenty of action, then you’re going to be all over this game.

Call of Juarez: Bound In Blood Game Review–Good But Only In Isolation

I’ll admit up front today, folks, that I actually enjoyed Call of Juarez: Bound In Blood on the Xbox 360 for what it was–a surprisingly well-done, a surprisingly intuitive, first person shooter that brought plenty of action right from the word go, and a story that actually held my interest.  But there are still problems to be had here, and we’ll get into those directly.

First, the plot itself.  A prequel to the original Call of Juarez, this time we’re with the McCall brothers as they fight their way through Georgia at about the same time William Tecumseh Sherman began his infamous March to the Sea.  With Georgia in slowly burning ruins, the McCalls, despite their spectacular valiance, aren’t able to repulse the invasion.  It even gets personal when Sherman’s March takes the McCall family farm with it.  Thus, two out of the three brothers McCall turn outlaw and go off to find the legendary gold of Juarez.  Along the way, they’ll tackle a variety of enemies–an Apache connected to the gold, a Mexican bandit and his lovely concubine, and even the Confederate army they went AWOL from in otder to turn outlaw.  The McCall brothers will thus launch a swath of lawlessness and destruction that will in turn leave its mark on the entirety of the old West forever.

I know, it sounds like an awesome story.  And watching it unfold, it really IS an awesome story.  But this is not where the aforementioned problems come into play.  The problems themselves come in on the actual gameplay end of things.

The controls are solid enough–no real problem there–but the biggest problem is that Call of Juarez: Bound In Blood is so very limited.  For instance, in the first level, you’re mostly crawling around in some trenches, trying to piece together where exactly you’re supposed to go.  Sure, you’ve got a marker giving you some idea where to go, but it’s still tough to tell if you need to take this corner or that corner back there and go around the long way, if you get my drift.

I’m convinced that I’ve become somewhat spoiled by Fallout 3 as I wind up comparing every first person shooter I play to it.  And sure enough, stacked up against an opening act like that, pretty much everything else will have to pale in comparison.  There’s just no two ways about it–you can’t eat a porterhouse steak then go chow down on meatloaf and say it’s on par with the best beef ever.  So what you have to do in response is take everything in isolation.  By itself, Call of Juarez has a decent multiplayer mode with lots of options, plenty of wild action, lots of gunplay and explosivesplay and all the things that make a shooter game solidly entertaining.  The graphics are at least fair, and the sound is solidly done.

And yet I still find myself somewhat let down, because I’ve seen what first person shooters actually can be. I’ve seen the kind of fun that can be had when you put someone behind the gun and let them roam wild and free over a huge map.  Every maze-crawler, every railroad run, every point-a-to-point-b game that follows is just a sad, sorry imitation.  Call of Juarez: Bound In Blood may be good enough for a play, but it’s definitely not as good as it could be.

Kororinpa Marble Mania Game Review–What Won’t They Make A Game Of?

It seems like most every time I pick up a Wii game these days I wind up getting slightly freaked out about the whole thing and trying desperately to pin down where the hell the logic is in these things any more.  I’ve seen them make some truly baffling games so far, and frankly, the weirdness only continues.

Today I venture into the depths of Kororinpa Marble Mania for the Nintendo Wii, a game that left me asking the question, is anything so simple and mundane that they WON’T translate it into a Wii game?  I’ve played Wii games around cooking and cleaning and washing things…it’s like there’s no activity so pedestrian that Nintendo or one of its many tentacles (Hudson, I’m looking RIGHT AT YOU) won’t convert it to a game.  I’m eagerly awaiting Super Mario Scratch Your Own Ass, or perhaps Donkey Kong’s Throw Your Feces At Passersby.

Kororinpa Marble Mania, for example, is a game that revolves around rolling a marble down a series of passageways until you manage to roll the ball into a hole marking the end of the course.  Along the way, you’ll be required to roll your marble over red crystals and challenged to roll your marble over green crystals, thus adding a bit of admittedly rather tedious and pointless challenge to your marble rolling agenda.  You’ll roll over a variety of different courses, including courses with walls, courses without walls, courses with slopes and steps and even some traps.  You don’t want to try rolling your marble through honey.  It’s just not pleasant.

I admit that, on certain levels, Kororinpa Marble Mania is actually a mildly fun sort of puzzle chill game that doesn’t require you to do a whole lot, nor does it ratchet your adrenaline levels through the roof.  The best word, for example, to describe the background music is “soothing”.  Indeed, when it’s just you and your marble and rails on the track, the game is downright relaxing.  Take off the rails, however, and things can get a little dicey.  This is really only a problem, of course, because the Wii controls are not well suited to this one.  See, rather than, for example, holding your Wiimote in the eight-bit-game format, or using the nunchuk’s joystick, you’re going to do your track manipulation by pointing your Wiimote straight at the screen, remote control style, and then twisting it from side to side.  Setting up the controls in this way requires you to twist your wrist left and right to twist the controls, and any kind of fine movement in that fashion is pretty much impossible.  This means that you’ll essentially be rolling your marble around by sheer brute force, which is all fine and well if rails are in place, otherwise, it’s an open invitation to repeated failure.

I admit that I liked the idea behind Kororinpa Marble Mania, and enjoyed the game to a certain extent.  However, some very serious flaws in execution kept this game from being all that it truly could have been.  A few minor tweaks would’ve served this one well, and hopefully, the next installment will learn from its mistakes.

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time Game Review–Better Than You’d Expect

‘ll be honest with you, folks–you know I always am, but this time I have to be particularly blunt about what I’m saying.  I always get a little freaked out whenever I hear about an RPG for Nintendo’s Wii.  There’s just something so very…not right…about the idea.  See, an RPG, in the commonly meant sense of the term, involves a huge production and graphical overload and a story that goes on and on for days or even weeks.  And when you think of the kind of systems that can handle such a venture, “the Wii” is generally about as far down the list as, say, “Colecovision”.

But even I can be wrong–savor the flavor, kids, because this doesn’t happen very often.  I tried Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time and got a pretty good surprise out of it.

As for the plot…wow.  On RPG Cliche Day–okay, on a young man’s sixteenth birthday, he oversleeps, gets up late and dashes off to his Coming Of Age Ceremony.  Yes, they even CALL it the Coming Of Age Ceremony.  I’m both amazed and horrified.  Anyway, after completing said ceremony, he returns to the village to discover that his best friend’s little sister has contracted some kind of mysterious illness that resembles nothing so much as radiation sickness.  No, really.  And it gets better.  So now, on his sixteenth birthday, the boy has to violate the laws of his village and actually LEAVE to go find medicine to heal the “crystal sickness”.

Yeah, you heard all of that right.  An opening jam packed with cliches leads to a little girl getting radiation sickness that, if she survives it, will actually mutate her into being a super-strong entity with rapid healing powers, which turns out to be the exact same disease the hero had, and then the hero will actually break the law to go fetch medicine but no one seems to care about the legal issues here at ALL.

This may well be the most predictable and yet the most ridiculous game plotline I’ve ever heard.  I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen so many tropes in one place, only to be followed up by a ridiculous series of plot holes sufficiently large to drive a herd of chocobo through.

And yet, the game play isn’t half bad.  You’ll get some mini-games in the middle of this full-blown series of adventures, and there’s plenty of variety to be had here.  Sure, it’s all a bit cookie-cutter and plain vanilla, but there’s nothing necessarily wrong with it.  It’s a fairly fun game, and with a little bit of excitement.

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time isn’t exactly the greatest game ever, but it’s a far cry from the worst, too.  There’s reason enough to give it a try that it’ll make at least a decent rental, even if it won’t wind up taking over your life.  If you’ve got a yen for RPGs and a decent tolerance for half-baked plotlines, you’ll probably have a good time with this one.

Resident Evil Archives Game Review–Time For A Sleazy Cash Grab!

Wow, Nintendo–this might be a new low, even for you.  First you had the nerve to release the original Resident Evil on the Gamecube with basically just enhanced difficulty and call it Resident Evil Zero.  And now, you step it up a tick by releasing the original Resident Evil on the Wii with basically just enhanced graphics and calling it Resident Evil Archives.

Seriously, this is the second time you’ve rereleased a game from 1996 and called it good enough.  Is there no limit?

But okay, you’ve done it, and now we have to live with it, so off I go, to review Resident Evil.  Again.  Thanks, Big N. Thanks ever so.

Resident Evil Archives is about a group of special forces types, the S.T.A.R.S (Special Tactics And Rescue Service) team, who’s gone off to investigate a rash of murders out in the wilds of the Arklay Mountains area just outside of Raccoon City.  And when the S.T.A.R.S team doesn’t report in, Alpha Team is sent in to track them down.  What they find is nothing short of horrifying, as genetically altered mutations now rule the Arklay Mountains region.  When Alpha Team takes cover in a sprawling mansion after being chased by a pack of mutant dogs, they discover that their night of horror has only just begun.  Now missing nearly half the team, the remnants of Alpha Team have to find out what happened to everyone else and get out alive, in the process discovering the truth behind what’s going on in the Arklay Mountains.

It’s no secret that the original Resident Evil was the start of something amazing.  It’s no secret that Resident Evil was a spectacularly fun game and if you’ve never had the pleasure of trying it out then you definitely should.  And I’ll even go so far as to admit that the Wii version really does have loads better graphics.  I only WISH the original Resident Evil looked this good.  But I’ve got serious problems with Resident Evil Archives.

One, there’s the obvious.  i really question the value of this game’s existence to begin with.  Considering that the PS2 is fully backward compatible with the PS1, and the PS2 is still selling like hotcakes, why would you need the Wii to play it in the first place?  This just reeks of massive sleazy cash grab.

Two, holy hell, the CONTROLS.  I don’t know where the nunchuk’s major malfunction was, but when it’s taking me a good three minutes to try to push the bureau into position in that damn sculpture room so I can snag the first floor map, I’ve got a serious problem here, and I don’t think it’s an issue of my own fine motor skills.

Three, there’s something very seriously wrong with the difficulty here.  I run into that first zombie, just off the dining room?  My first response has always been to back into the hall so I can line up my shot.  And I’m firing into this thing in as rapid a fashion as possible, but it just shambles up and starts chewing on me.  Next thing I know, I’m down two-thirds of my starting ammo capacity and my EKG’s blinking at me that I need a health powerup and bad.  Since when do these zombies absorb fire like that?  Oh, and you can forget about trying to take head shots.  That’s all apparently randomized now, even if you could get it to aim solidly.

So all things considered, this is a great game for anyone who hasn’t yet had the sweet joy of Resident Evil and longs to see it in brilliant clarity but not necessarily with the greatest control scheme.  If you’ve got a Playstation, or a PS2, or you’ve already played Resident Evil, there’s no reason at all to crawl through the Archives.

Fallout 3 Point Lookout Game Review–They Really Mean It, Folks

I know, it’s something of a non sequitur and a pun all at the same time, but basically, when they say Point Lookout, they mean, look out.  Because for some reason, they’ve stuffed some serious baddies in that swampy ground, and it’s not going to be easy to get through.

This time in the greatest first person shooter that man has ever known, you’ll board a riverboat bound for Point Lookout, Maryland (which is, apparently, an actual place, unless I’m being hoaxed.  This is possible as I’ve never been to Maryland, but a cursory net search suggests that there really is a Point Lookout) with a goal in mind before you even get off the boat–to find a young woman’s missing daughter.  Of course, once you’re actually in Point Lookout, you’ll discover that there’s an incredible opportunity to be had here, as there’s virtually no one in sight when you actually get off the boat.  You can loot as you please!  And there’s PLENTY of loot to be had here–you’ll walk into a mostly abandoned seaside town / amusement park complex where there’s only one person, and she’s tending a shop.  But right away, you’ll notice there’s something very wrong with Point Lookout, and it’s not just the psuedonuclear shambles that every other place in the Capitol Wasteland is.  The Point Lookout motel contains scenes of horror even a raider would shrink from.  The Pint-Sized Slasher even makes a bit of a reappearance (he’s not just a newspaper blurb any more!) and the secrets, lies, and mysteries contained in that swamp are more than you could ever imagine.

There’s all manner of new equipment to be had here, but most of it is a little on the mundane side.  An axe, a shovel, a lever-action rifle that fires 10mm rounds and a double-barrelled shotgun will all make appearances, as will simpler things like workman’s coveralls and a Confederate cap, which is somewhat ironic as Maryland was a border state that leaned heavily toward the Union with only a few dissenters.  In fact, a whole LOT of Point Lookout seems to be done in that antebellum style of the Civil War-era South.  The huge manor houses, the relentless bayous…a lot of it just screams Louisiana.

Now, just so you know, I didn’t go in there cold.  I had recently reset my character to get the full experience back when Broken Steel came out, so I was a bit behind, but I took the riverboat at level fourteen, with the full loadout from the Project Anchorage vault.  I had my Chinese stealth armor, I had my Gauss rifle and a laser rifle with plenty of microfusion cells, I even had a Gatling laser, and I was getting chewed up at virtually every turn.  I don’t know how these “swamp people” who seem to have no more armor than their overalls are managing to absorb metal pellets fired at near-relativistic speeds when I’m blowing away Enclave troops in powered armor within three hits with the same hardware.

That’s about my only real gripe here–Point Lookout is some amazing fun, even if I do need to bring the equivalent of a light armored division or maybe Liberty Prime itself just to pacify the populace.  I love the darker tone and the subtle infusion of horror gameplay, something that game companies should definitely take note of.  Imagine this game with ZOMBIES.  And I’m not talking ghouls, but actual zombies.

One thing, however, remains crystal clear–Fallout 3, and by extension Point Lookout, is still the best action RPG I’ve ever played.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen Game Review–Better Than Its Predecessor

The punchline on that headline is, better than its predecessor, but not by much.

I had to admit, after the sludgy wreck that was the original Transformers game, I wasn’t expecting much of anything out of its sequel.  It’s a general rule, at least in movie circles, that the sequel is almost never better than its predecessor.  In fact, a lot of games behave that way too–how many people played Resident Evil 2, for example, and were disappointed to discover that the house would have nothing to do with what they were playing?  I was, and I doubt I was alone.  Not that it wasn’t fun, it just wasn’t the same.

However, in the case of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, the fact that it isn’t the same actually works in its favor.

This time, you’re once again put in the role of either the Autobots or the Decepticons (you’ll get to choose when you start a new game).  Megatron’s been long since blasted and the Allspark is just plain old out of the picture, but the Decepticons aren’t exactly curling up and dying since losing their leader.  In fact, if Michael Bay was actually paying attention for twenty seconds to the source material for a change he’d have realized that everybody’s favorite obsequious toady Air Commander Starscream was probably waiting for a moment like this with baited breath.  Anyway, old Megatron may not be as dead as everyone thought, and this is all badly timed for the Autobots, who now find themselves not only taking on the still very active Decepticons but also trying to protect Spike Witwicky and dealing with the arrival of a mysterious object from space that looks like it might tip the rather fragile balance of power squarely into the hands of the Decepticons.

So this time, you’ll be launching back into a full-on action title just like the last one, only this time you’ll also get RPG elements on the side.  You’ll run and jump and blast things and even occasionally fly, all in the name of pounding Decepticon chassis and protecting humanity.  When you do break open a Decepticon, you’ll collect actual Energon cubes that can be collected and used to buy options and expansions between stages.  Those would be the RPG elements, an interesting way to shake up otherwise predictible gameplay (do you add on to your maximum health first, or do you focus on your gunnery?) and a downright welcome addition.  Oh, and those rare times you’re allowed to fly?  Great fun.

This time around, however, there are some new problems.  For instance, battling in Singapore I found it rather difficult to keep track of where my enemies were at any given time.  They had a tendency to blend in with the many buildings, and, despite the radar, it was tough to tell if they were at ground level or running along rooftops. And if so, WHICH rooftops were they on?  Also, I definitely didn’t like the new transform mode, where now you hold down a button to remain in your vehicle form and release it to come out.  The problem is, the button you have to hold down is your throttle button.  Thus, in order to slow and go around corners you MUST use the brake.  There’s no other option.

So yes, it’s true–Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is a vastly better experience than its predecessor, with a deeper storyline and deeper gameplay and some really fun flight scenes.  However, it’s far from perfect, and thus should only be intended for those who really enjoy Transformer games or clearly action-based games.

Wario Ware: Smooth Moves Game Review–Defies Any Easy Description

Sometimes there’s a real downside to writing about Wii games.  Like I said in the headline, they defy any real or simple description.  It’s hard to tell what exactly is going on sometimes.  They can even be downright confusing.  That’s definitely the case with Wario Ware: Smooth Moves.

Long, long ago, civilization was infested with these things called “form batons”, mystical objects that contained vast power and ostensibly controlled a race of tiny humanoids if the hieroglyphs are to be believed.  Anyway, one day, Nintendo’s biggest anti-hero and treasure hunter extraordinaire Wario was sitting in his chair at home, sucking down cake and donuts and suchlike when one of those tiny humanoids from the hieroglyphs abducts Wario’s snacks.  Naturally, Wario can’t stand for such nonsense, and thus he chases after the tiny humanoid to recover his snacks.  What he finds instead is one of the legendary form batons.  Thus, Wario will join a whole cast of motley characters, including a dog and cat taxi driving team, two inveterate gamers, a cheerleader, an inventor and a witch with her pet demon familiar in a series of slice of life-style vignettes as they go about their lives.

You, meanwhile, will have to accomplish a series of tasks in rapid succession, accomplished by doing various things with your Wiimote.  You’ll hold it like a waiter holding a tray, like a remote control, up in front of your nose like an elephant with its trunk, and on top of your head like a mohawk to do any of a number of things, including driving a car, picking up trash with a remote controlled robot, picking your nose, and scrubbing a cow’s ass.  No, seriously.  You’re going to do all that and even less savory tasks.  Frankly, I was amazed enough to find myself working my Wiimote into a position where I could ram a finger up a polygonal nose on a polygonal face, but when I started running a scrub brush over a cow’s rump roast, well, that just did it for me.  I had nothing to say.

The graphics are, of course, last generation weak, but the biggest problem with Wario Ware: Smooth Moves is also the biggest joy–the controls.  Several times I found myself about to start a game and I was left totally unaware of what to actually DO.  Oh, sure, I knew how to HOLD the Wiimote–they make that perfectly clear from the second you start a game–but I didn’t always know what to do from there.  Did I swing to the left?  The right?  When do I pick up?  And most unaccountably of all, why won’t the Wiimote acknowledge ANYTHING I do, no matter what direction I move?  This didn’t happen often, but when it did, it really spoiled the game.

I have to admit that I enjoyed this game.  I liked the rapid switching of games, and how at higher speeds it could be tough to keep up.  There was some challenge involved here–it was no walkover.  It took me two, even three times to get through some stages.

All things considered, this is definitely a game to get your hands on and wrap some smooth moves around.

Ghostbusters the Video Game Game Review–Just What Atari Needed

One thing’s pretty clear–some of the oldest game companies out there are getting pounded by the modern game business environment.  Midway’s been getting shellacked, which you can read about right here, and Atari has been in the dumps for quite some time.  This is why we all–Atari included–have reason to be intensely, almost perversely, happy about the recent release of Ghostbusters: The Video Game.

Set as a third person shooter, you’ll charge through the various landmarks of New York as “the new guy” (Venkman insists on not using names as he doesn’t “want to get attached”), the guy (or gal, that’s a possibility) who tests the experimental equipment and is thus most likely to be blown into New Jersey by a malfunctioning proton pack or something similar, which won’t actually happen but considering you’re working with the Ghostbusters, the chances of it happening are fairly likely.  Anyway, the environment has changed, and the city is a lot more tolerant–even downright friendly–of Ghostbusters and their ghostbusting.  The city’s insurance policy has actually been extended to cover the Ghostbusters and the concomitant property damage they incur, so you’ll be able to do whatever needs to be done to clear the city of ghosts. But it’s not just ghosts you’ll have to worry about; there’s a much deeper plot at work here that you’ll also have to break through.

There will be plenty of ghosts, too–you’ll be taking on construction workers and angry sous chefs from beyond the grave and even the Stay-Puft Marshmellow Man within the first six levels.  You’ll get to work the PKE meter and the proton pack and plenty of nifty new gadgets like the highly destructive boson dart system.  You’ll pick up pages of Tobin’s Spirit Guide, the single greatest resource a Ghostbuster can have, and supplement them with actual PKE scans.

I firmly believe that this may be the single best simulation of what it’s like to be a Ghostbuster ever released to date.

Of course, it may well be the ONLY actual simulation of what it’s like to be a Ghostbuster ever released to date, but that’s somewhat beside the point.  In fact, I’m somewhat surprised to see it took as long as it did to get one out.  Some of that, naturally, is to latch onto the resurgence of Ghostbusters with the emergence of the third movie on the horizon but still, they could’ve been pumping these out for YEARS between two and the still upcoming three.

Not that I’m not, on a limited level, happy about this development, of course–if they HAD flooded the market with Ghostbusters games it would’ve seriously tarnished the brand, but this is largely beside the point.  The point is that this is an intensely fun game that packs in plenty of action.  Sure, the controls can be a little hard to grapple with, especially in the Wii version, but it’s still plenty fun to lash out with the proton pack and roll out the trap.  One downside, however, is that the game stops short of giving you the ultimate experience of driving the Ecto-1, the Ghostbusters’ converted ambulance.  That might well have made for the best part of the game, but no–they patently refuse to allow you drive the Ecto-1.  They’ll even MOCK you for not being ALLOWED to drive it.  I’m sorry, but sacrificing a fantastic experience for a cheap joke just isn’t right.

These minor points aside, well, there’s plenty of fun to be had here, and getting your hands on this game should be well worth your time.

The Munchables Game Review–OM NOM NOM NOM…

If you ever wondered what a hybrid of Pac-Man and Katamari Damacy might look like, then you need look no farther than Bandai-Namco’s newest bizarre action title for the WIi, The Munchables.

In The Munchables, you’re part of a race of fuzzy little critters that inhabits the planet Star Ving, in which said critters do nothing but eat on a series of peaceful islands interconnected by rainbows.  You may wonder how critters that do nothing but eat can actually survive in their ecosystem–that’s thanks to the Legendary Orbs, gigantic stone structures that vaguely resemble…pudding?  I think that’s pudding.  But I’m terrified that it might be something much, much more disgusting.  Anyway, the Legendary Orbs generate a nonstop supply of food for the critters on the islands, and all is high-calorie heaven until a race of aliens shows up and steals the Legendary Orbs so that they too can become superpowerful monstrousities. All would be lost until one of the critters notices that, hey…these aliens, these “space pirates” as they’re called…look an awful lot like food.  And so, in what may be the single lowest point in interstellar diplomacy since Douglas Adams’ microscopic space fleet was inadvertently swallowed by a small dog, the Star Vingians proceed to eat their invaders.

And that is where you come in.  You’ll steer one of two Star Vingians around, eating anything that even vaguely looks edible and occasionally jumping.  If you find a food monster that is bigger than your mouth (you can tell by noting the “level” of both your character and the character you’re about to chow down on) you’ll have to attack it first to break it into smallish, bite-sized pieces.  Attacking boss characters is slightly more complex than this, however, and requires attacking weak points that will be clearly labelled for you.

As you grow in level, you’ll also PHYSICALLY grow–picture Katamari Damacy in which you don’t push the Katamari, but rather, you ARE the Katamari.  The control scheme is very simple, requiring the nunchuk to move your character around and a couple buttons on the Wiimote to perform the rest of your functions.  It’s also a fairly fun title.  Chowing down on the various enemies and swelling in size is an admittedly visceral thrill, but sometimes, the fun gets a little…strange.  See, at the end of every round, all that food you’ve eaten has to go somewhere…and where it goes…well, this is actually really creepy.  Your character will execute a one hundred eighty degree turn, visibly strain, and…spew a pile of sparkly multicolored orbs from its lower rear quadrant DIRECTLY onto an elderly onion.  Who will in turn seem very happy about this development, and assign you a letter grade based on how deep a pile of sparkly orbs you’ve landed him in.

I thought it was some kind of weird caffeine hallucination the first time I saw it, but then sure enough, the next round I’m burying an elderly onion in a pile of spherical dookie all over again.  And he’s happy about it.

This aside, The Munchables is a surprisingly fun title with some decent humor, graphics and gameplay.  it may not be a great long-term value but in the short term it almost certainly won’t disappoint.  A terrific rental, and possibly even a good buy, The Munchables is plenty tasty.

Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo’s Dungeon Game Review–A Warking Disappointment

Yes, I know that kind of punnage in a headline should probably get me shot by the pun police (whom as we all know are only permitted to carry chocolate guns for irony’s sake), but I do it because I CAN.  Now, that having been thoroughly exhausted, let’s wade into just WHY this game disappointed me so deeply.

But first, the incredibly confusion Square-Enix brand plotline.  A long, long time ago, before Cid got old and showed up with his airship in every Final Fantasy game EVER, Cid was just a young treasure hunter looking for a power source so he could build that airship.  And he, along with his partner, the titular little yellow bird, thinks he’s found it in the form of Timeless Power, a fist-sized jewel that seems to have a small galaxy inside it.  Anyway, just as he’s about to collect his airship battery, it’s stolen from him by a rival treasure hunter and he, his rival, and their pets are transported to an alternate dimension in which the ringing of a clock tower bell causes a vortex to open up behind a person’s head and steals their memories.

Still with me?  Good.  Because this hasn’t even gone off the rails yet.

That’s going to happen when the star baby named Raffaello falls out of the sky and lands in front of the clock tower.  He’s contained inside a rather large egg, and when it hatches, he emerges.  Raffaello has the power to open the memory-stealing vortexes, enter them, and start sobbing uncontrollably while clinging to a rainbow-colored floating puzzle piece (representing lost memory), thus forcing you (playing as the Chocobo) to follow him into the abyss and rescue him from what looks like nothing at all.  Repeatedly.

I’m only slightly kidding on that last part–you’re going to have to fight your way through a series of enemies to reach Raffaello on each level, but somehow floating star baby just wandered right through the horde of monsters you’ll have to fight.  Ah well, it wouldn’t be much of a game without the fighting, now would it?

I admit, that when I started playing this, I was pretty enthusiastic about it.  An action-driven RPG for the Wii? Sign me up!  And indeed, the gameplay was pretty solid and fun, and there was plenty of humor to be had in the dialogue, and the stories were pretty solid and compelling (except for the overarching one featuring green-haired star babies that hatch from eggs that are capable of surviving planetary entry but can be broken from the inside by a baby), but I rapidly found a flaw in the game.

Specifically, the sheer repetition.  I found myself dragging my Chocobo through dungeon after vaguely similar dungeon with only new monster types and new items to break up the monotony.  And sadly, the story wasn’t THAT compelling to keep me that interested.  I’m still trying to get my head around Raffaello.

I admit, this particular review is going to be highly subjective.  I was basically disappointed in how much of the game seemed similar to the rest of it.  I tired of doing the same thing over and over again.  And I’ll admit, the rest of the game was solidly done enough to make it a really good game.  So if you can stomach repetition, and don’t mind when things repeat themselves, and have a fair tolerance for redundancy (not to mention repetition and repetition), then you and Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo’s Dungeon should get along together nicely.

Battalion Wars 2 Game Review–A Third Person Shooter With Bells And Whistles

I had heard vague stirrings of goodness about the Battalion Wars series for some time, so when I found a copy of Battalion Wars 2 on the Wii, I thought I’d found a real winner.  See, when I first took a whack at this I thought I was going to play an actual RTS on the Wii.  That really perked my interest–for crying out loud, TELL me the Wiimote and nunchuk aren’t just perfectly suited to a point-and-click style interface.  Seriously, try and tell me that.

But anyway, you can just about imagine my surprise when I didn’t get a map-driven point-and-click strategy simulation game, but rather a third-person shooter.

We start our little affair in the midst of a battle between the Iron Legion and the Solar Empire.  The Iron Legion is about to literally hand the entire world its own ass by knocking out the last functioning army left on the field.  Only a last-ditch effort by a single brave soldier can save the entire planet from being ground under the Iron Legion’s massive, heavy boot heel.  Fast forward a few years–the Solar Empire has been living in relative peace, but all that is about to change when the Anglo Isles, another area power, gets word that the Solar Empire was working on a new kind of superweapon.  The Anglo Isles forces launch an all-out assault, which you must repel.  And this is only the beginning of a massive and world-sweeping plot…but who’s behind it?  Only by playing through a series of battles all over the planet will you manage to find out.

Yes, this is a third-person shooter.  You will, however, have access to a pretty nice variety of units, making this almost a strategy game at the third-person shooter level, forcing you to make decisions about which units to use in which situations.  You may need to use flamethrowers against infantry, bazookas against armor, anti-air units against aircraft, and so on.  I admit, I haven’t seen that many third person shooters involve quite so much strategy, but that’s still like saying it’s the least painful hammer to hit yourself with.

Perhaps another interesting issue with this game is that it’s uniquely well suited for the younger set.  For all the gunplay in this game, I don’t remember seeing any blood.  There are explosions, but these are really little more than bursts of color.  Enemies set on fire with your flamethrower simply fade out after a while.  I’ve heard about parents buying this game for children as young as seven despite the fact that it’s rated for teenagers.  Frankly, I’m not sure why this game rated a T myself–asides from the popgun-like effects of the gunfire there’s not much in the way of truly objectionable content here.  But that’s neither here nor there–I’d honestly say that T might be an overreaction on the ESRB’s part.

The game itself, meanwhile, is fun in a cartoony sort of way, with fairly decent sound and graphics, plus quite possibly one of the better third-person shooters I’ve played thanks to its heavy dollops of strategy and occasional humor.  You might want to take a run at Battalion Wars 2, if for no other reason than they try harder than most of the rest.

Mario Party 8 Game Review–Take Their Hint

Seeing as how me and the Big N parted company back around the Gamecube era (as in, I had one, but after a couple weeks I took it to the local Gamestop and traded the sucker in on an Xbox because, as far as I could tell, Nintendo would not put out a game for anyone over the age of twelve), I never really got the opportunity to take a stab at the Mario Party line.  Thusly, my first exposure to the Mario Party series was this one right here, Mario Party 8 for the Wii.

Yes, it’s true–the game that amounts to little more than a board game wherein mini-games are played to decide who wins and who loses has reached its eighth iteration with this one.  And, plotwise, that’s really all you do.  You’ll play, generally in a four player environment with computer players to make up the slack as needed when humans aren’t on hand (if it’s just you, you’ll play against a trio of computer players), a series of board games.  You’ll punch a dice cube above your head when it’s your turn, then you’ll proceed the correct number of spaces along the board, at which point you’ll receive rewards or punishments based on the rules and then proceed onto the next mini-game, and you’ll repeat for a certain number of turns.

Yes, it’s a little bit monotonous. No one ever said this sucker was going to be the kind of thing you’d ever mistake for high art.  Or low art.  Or any other kind of art, come to think of it.  There’s nothing really resembling a storyline here–in fact, the only thing that keeps Mario Party 8 from being nothing more than a second-rate collection of mini-games is that it’s actually a FIRST-rate collection of mini-games.  I admit that, when I played this, I had more than my share of fun, for about the first half-hour or so.  After that first half-hour, however, that’s when the boredom settled in.  It only started grating, though, and every time a new mini-game came up, the boredom lessened significantly.

Now, there’s a lot of appeal in a game like this.  Indeed, with three or more friends around this sucker’s probably incredible fun.  Even with one extra buddy in tow, Mario Party 8 could easily be a great time.  But if you’re playing this one by yourself, the limits of the fun are sorely strained.  In fact, the appeal in playing this one in single player mode is fairly well limited to the number of new mini-game experiences you can have.  Once you’ve played through all the different games, and all the different boards, and won all the various prizes you’re able to win, you might as well just unplug your Wiimote and take that sucker back to the store, because you’ve just done everything you could ever possibly do with this game.

Mario Party 8 isn’t the kind of game you can give a simple yea-or-nay review to.  It has a series of very specific applications that, if your intended use doesn’t fit them, will limit your enjoyment of this game by limiting its usefulness.  If you need a game to play with friends or as a short-term rental, then yes, absolutely, Mario Party 8 will do the job nicely.  The game is called Mario Party for a reason–take the hint.

Super Paper Mario Game Review–A Really Surprising Epic

I have to admit that it’s nice–downright nice!–to be able to play a Wii game that doesn’t rack my arms or shoulder all to ruination, and I got my chance with one such game today, Super Paper Mario.  And while I’d set out to play this one with little more than a hope of rest, what I found instead was a surprisingly decent RPG built around action elements and a whole searing load of nostalgia.  Big N seems to love to pound my nostalgia button and usually to good effect.

Super Paper Mario may be the most surprising epic I’ve ever found, featuring Mario and Luigi hanging around their house and wishing that something would for crying out loud happen already.  Naturally, they get their wish and Princess Peach has been kidnapped once again.  Suspecting Bowser, King of the Koopa, the brothers rush to his palace only to discover that, for once, he had absolutely nothing to do with it and the plumbers had landed on him while he was planning to do what had already been done.  The discovery is made that a new evil, in the form of Count Bleck, was the one behind the kidnapping.  Count Bleck has a plan that easily trumps anything Bowser ever came up with for terms of sheer catastrophic evil, namely, the summoning of a massive void that will destroy all reality everywhere as the inhabitants know it.  It’s up to Mario to go forth and tangle with Bleck and his numerous minions to rescue the princess and save all reality.

While the game itself controls much like the original Super Mario Brothers, with the Wiimote held like an original two button NES controller, you’ll occasionally use the Wiimote in its newest form to analyze monsters and locations for added effect.  This is a fairly interesting new twist on an old classic, which lends a note of credibility to the proceedings.  But the new twists don’t stop there–early on, Mario is given the ability to “flip” between dimensions, allowing him to go from 2-D to 3-D and back again.  But spending too much time in 3-D is clearly taxing on the normally flat plumber, as spending too long “flipped” causes Mario to take damage.  You’ll be able to collect and use a whole host of items for attack and defense, and you’ll also run into different fairies called Pixls that give Mario various special abilities.

It’s downright surprising to see Mario adapted into RPG status, though it’s happened before with the Paper Mario series, and even farther back with Super Mario RPG.  This time, Super Paper Mario gives us an entire large and sprawling storyline to go with your standard action elements.  Even many of the stages you’ll troop through bear a striking resemblance to those from the original Super Mario Brothers.  I found bonus level pipes in Super Paper Mario through vague half-remembrances of the original game, and this was a development that made me doubly happy.  Sure, the graphics are Wii-standard and lag way behind the next gen, but this is a truly minor point as there are so many good points to this game.  It’s a lot of fun and the control schemes are pretty nicely adapted to the Wii.  I have to admit, I liked this game, and there’s plenty of reason to believe that you’ll like it too.

Castlevania: Judgment Game Review–An Enormous Disappointment

When I first saw a copy of Castlevania: Judgment on the shelves, I had a brief interlude of wistful memories of my boyhood, playing eight-bit Simon Belmont, taking on legions of ghouls and other assorted monsters in a flurry of whip-cracking, heart-finding action and adventure. I even began to wonder if maybe, just maybe, the Wii would manage to do something commonly regarded as impossible and give me a taste of my childhood back.

Imagine my shock when all they managed to deliver was a cheesy fighting game.

The plot is downright baffling in its over-complexity, and requires that you have a basic understanding of pretty much the entire series in order to fully grasp it.  I’ll do my best to sum up here:  Galamoth, a recurring character from earlier Castlevania installments as well as something called “Kid Dracula”, is out to destroy his rival Dracula (oh, that makes sense, kind of) by sending something called the Time Reaper ten thousand years into the past to take care of Dracula while he was still just Kid Dracula.  Anyway, this doesn’t sit well with a time traveler from earlier games named Aeon, who uses his time travel capacities to gather up a whole legion of possible “heroes” to defeat the Time Reaper and keep the timeline as it is.  Thus, you’ll pick one of Aeon’s possibilities and start beating the hell out of everybody you come across to prove that you are sufficiently The Ham What Am enough to go and take out the Time Reaper.

Basically, this is Soul Calibur with a completely different set of licensed characters, and for the Wii.  I’ll tell you straight out, this is not the best kind of game for the Wii to actually put out.  Why?  Because my arm hurt like crazy after just one fight.  You walk in as Simon Belmont himself, and you KNOW what weapon Simon Belmont has.

Yeah, a WHIP; thus, you know exactly what you’re doing in order to fight your opponents—you’re pulling your arm back and snapping it forward almost relentlessly.  And your opponents aren’t shy about blocking, either—it might take you a few dozen hits in order to actually win a fight.  Oh, sure, you can use different controllers to take down some of the strain on your arm and shoulder, but then all you’re left with is just another fighter game with some different licensed characters and not a whole lot in the way of good storytelling.  Sure, there are some unlockables to be had here, and that’s always a plus, but considering the river of crap you have to Shawshank your way through in order to GET to that Zihuataneho of unlockable glee, you may well not be that interested.  And if you’re not sufficiently interested to play for the unlockables then there’s really not that much point to the entire game.

I give them due kudos for taking chances, and don’t want to discourage anyone from doing likewise.  Sadly, this time around, it just didn’t work.  So the verdict on Castlevania: Judgment is to stay at least one hundred feet away from it at all times unless you’re an absolute Castlevania addict who can’t get enough of these characters and is prepared to slog through a nightmare of a game to enjoy them fully.