Mirror’s Edge follows the story of a Free-Runner that lives life on the edge. With some new ideas and a different take on first-person games, is Mirror’s a leap into a new territory?

When I first saw the trailer for Mirror’s Edge, I was immediately hooked. I loved the concept of fusing games like Prince of Persia into the First-Person world, making it seem like you were really pulling off all these awesome moves. Its style was unique and fresh. It wasn’t the gritty, destructive worlds we’re used to now with games like Gears of War 2 and Resistance 2, it was smooth, clean and relaxing. I downloaded the Mirror’s Edge demo the moment it was released and played it for hours, so far it had lived up to my expectations. As much as I loved the demo, I was worried that you could pull off all these leaps and risky moves only for so long until it got old, but did it?

First off, this game will create a love-or-hate relationship for many people. We are at a point in video games where almost every title out there has hundreds of guns, explosions happening left and right and at least two bad guys in every area are on the juice. Mirror’s Edge replaces all of that with a clean and simple environment. Enemies are simple, characters portray a more realistic human and the world feels life-like although life-less. Life-less because although buildings and other areas resemble well… buildings, etc. 99.5% of the time they are completely empty. It’s almost as if the whole world was created for Faith (the character you play as) and all the enemies that get trigger happy around you. It’s like you start the game after Aliens destroyed all humans, and you just happen to be one of the few survivors.

Faith is a free-runner, and the most badass delivery person since Paper Boy. She can climb almost any building and clearly has no fear of heights. Now what brings us to Faith’s little adventure? Her sister has been framed for a murder she didn’t commit, and after being arrested, it’s up to Faith to clear her name. That’s the story throughout the entire game. Simple? Yes. Been done before? Well… yes… anyway.

The team behind the game, DICE, did a good job making sure you felt like you really were Faith. Every time you make that huge leap you didn’t think you could make feels awesome, but you also get that nice tingly feeling after you fail a jump and end up plunging down 200+ feet straight to the ground. The latter is something you’ll be experiencing a lot during the game. You have to be very precise when jumping towards a pipe or a ledge, one inch off and it’s time to respawn. The game has plenty of checkpoints during all nine chapters, but it does get very frustrating falling to your death time after time, when you knew you almost had that jump. You’ll end up dying in this game by falls more than you will by enemies… although don’t get me wrong, you will get killed by enemies.

This isn’t Call of Duty where you can take a few shots from a Sub-machine gun, only to be back up and running moments later. Faith can only take two to three gunshots before it’s lights out. This leads me to the game’s most broken feature, the combat system. To be quite honest, I would have enjoyed this game a heck of a lot more if it didn’t have any enemies to fight against. Why? Because it’s just not fun. There are certain parts in where you have to fight them, or at least knock them down temporarily to progress. You fight by only pressing one shoulder button, although you can also flying and sliding kicks with other button combinations. There’s no actual difficulty in fighting the enemy, you just press the button until either you or they go down, then rinse wash and repeat. It’s like a current-generation game mixed with a NES game’s fighting mechanics. You’re encouraged to progress without any use of firearms, and for good reason. You can disarm enemies which is mildly fun, but actually using their weapons is useless and just shouldn’t be allowed period. They don’t feel responsive, not to mention that you can’t do your standard maneuvers with them. Once again, I understand that they wanted to do the “Avoid Guns” approach and I really like that, but if you are GIVEN the option to use one, make sure it’s at least half decent to use.

The game’s core, the actual free-running, is great. Leaping from building to building, mixing combinations of jumping, rolling, sliding and then hopping over a fence is very, very satisfying. This is where the First-Person Prince of Persia effect really kicks in, and it’s great fun. Even though combat might not be very fun, being shot at gives you that extra adrenaline rush that makes you think fast on your feet and looking for the next red marker. The game tries to avoid having you be lost by providing a guideline in the form of red obstacles. Ramps, pipes, bags, whatever you have to go through will usually be in the color red. While this does help, you will find yourself to be lost every now and then. You can also use an auto-look, which will have Faith look at the area you need to go, but it doesn’t work all the time. If you’re far from your objective, she will just look at the wall right in front of you which certainly won’t be of much help. You will have to depend on it sometimes, depending on your patience level. All in all the red markers and the auto-look do a decent job of letting you know where to go, but it could have used some more polish.

Where a lot of people might be disappointed in is the game’s length. You can actually finish it in about five hours. Coupled with the fact that there is no form of multiplayer, a purchase might seem out of the question. There is a Time-Trial mode with online Leaderboards and upcoming Downloadable Content for some extra juice, but it’s still a downer. If the game’s focus would have been in a modified Time-Trial mode, where it’s just more about Free-Running than it is a mediocre story, the outcome would have been a much better game with more replay value. There’s no real reason to go back to the story mode other than to try out the Hard Difficulty and unlock some extra Achievements or Trophies.

In the end, Mirror’s Edge could have been a great game and a strong Game of the Year candidate, but it isn’t. A different perspective in platforming and unique art-style made it stand out from other titles out in the market. The base for something different and special is there, but it just doesn’t come across well and might not appeal to a larger audience. While it is a great rental, I can’t see this being a purchase other than for collecting purposes. Sad that this had to be the result of such a great concept.

Well out of nowhere we happened to get a PC demo of the questionably anticipated game “James Bond: Quantum of Solace”,  which is scheduled for a November 4, 2008 release.

The game uses the Call of Duty 4 engine and is being made by Treyarch, who are currently working on Call of Duty: World at War, which shares the same game engine.

Will the use of the COD4 engine lead to great success? Let’s see what this demo tells us.

First of all, the demo is short. Like short short. You can easilly finish this in around 4 minutes, which makes the near 700mb download rather dissapointing. That being said, what’s there is actually pretty good.

The game is played from a First Person perspective, with a Third Person camera while taking cover. If you’ve played any other FPS out there, you should feel right at home with the control layout.

From a graphical aspect, it looked decent. James looks like himself, the areas look nice, but nothing really makes you want to stand there and stare. I was playing on High settings on my PC, just for the record.

Anyway, let’s get to the gameplay:

The demo puts you in the middle of the action pretty quickly. You’re in a safe house, and your objective is to go after a bad guy that is on the run. You chase him through some underground cave areas and ruins, until he manages to escape (?) and the demo ends. In the middle of all that, some other enemies are taking cover while trying to kill good ole James.

Now, there’s not really much to talk about here. The cover system so far seems solid, although I’m not sure it’s necesary. The shooting feels responsive and engaging. There was nothing particually interesting about the demo, but all I can say is that it felt right. Will that transition over to the full version? Who knows.

Overall it was a decent demo, with some fun action and I’m looking forward to the full retail game this November.

Sad Fact: Writing this took longer than playing the demo.

If you are looking for a classic puzzle game to show off to someone from back in the day, look no further then Adventures of Lolo. The Lolo character may ring a bell when you see him because him and his girlfriend Princess Lala are two characters that now appear as bosses in the Kirby series.

The story of this game (I know, a puzzle game from back then with a story is quite shocking) will sound very familiar. Lala is kidnapped by some king named King Egger and now Lolo, being the brave little blue man that he is, storms into the fortress where the princess is kidnapped to rescue her. (Hmm, Mario and Zelda anyone?)

Now onto the actual game, it features fifty levels which is a very good amount of puzzles but even better was that there was a password feature (Which was only 4 letters long! Why couldn’t all passwords be this way?!). As you progressed further, it became A LOT more difficult and really made you use your head to figure out what to do. The controls were simple, you could move around and throw eggs when you found them (Be careful as you had a limit to these eggs) but that is just a part of the game that made you think. When would be a right time to use these eggs to freeze the enemies?

Now if there is one thing that annoyed me like no tomorrow, it would be the music. There is only ONE music track, and it loops throughout every level. Hearing this track over and over again just started to irritate you and make you hit the mute button. Why couldn’t each section have its own track?

With fifty levels that put your mind to the test. Adventures of Lolo would become a classic on the good ol NES system. If you’re looking to buy it today, your best bet would be on the Wii Virtual Console, just have some music to listen to unless you can withstand hearing the same thing throughout the game.

Here’s a basic rundown of the game

Graphics: 7 – Nothing that is special, but the scrolling backgrounds and sprites are nice.

Sound: 4 – Only one track of music but it’s not game breaking. Just be sure to have something else to listen to around you because you will most likely get irritated quickly.

Presentation: 6 – Nothing that we’ve never seen before. Princess kidnapped by a King, you could just make this a Mario game easily by replacing the characters.

Gameplay: 9 – No problem at all with the Gameplay. Simple controls for a great classic puzzle game.

Lasting Appeal: 6 – With fifty levels, it will keep you busy for a good amount of time. The only problem being is that once you complete it, you probably won’t find yourself replaying it.

Final Score: 7.5/10 – A classic puzzle game that every fan of the puzzle genre should play.

After about a five year absence due to running his WarioWare Corporation. Wario finally returns to his treasure hunting ways with this smash hit. This title was something that was announced out of no where, as it was announced four months before it was to be released in Japan. Many people were worried because of this, but rest assured, this game does deliver just like all the other Wario Land games.

The first thing I want to point out is how beautiful the graphics are. I was actually shocked with how good they looked. When I first turned the game on I had actually thought I was still in a cut scene and then realized that this is the game. The game feels like you’re actually playing through some sort of anime and that‘s a great feeling. This is one of the best looking Wii games out there so far and I hope to see more titles that look as good as this one. My only complaint that I have with the graphics would be that some of the sprites seem to stick out more than others.

The music is game does have it’s memorable tracks, especially the Egyptian like ones. The voice work for Wario is humorous to hear, especially when he is doing his power rush. The only thing I wish would be for there to be some voice overs during the cut scenes, but then again Nintendo seems to have something against putting voice overs in their games. At least if they aren’t going to do that, put something to identify who is speaking during the cut scenes this way you wouldn’t have to guess who is talking.

The Gameplay is similar to all the other Wario Land games. Wario has his classic shoulder charge and BUTT SMASH, as well as a few other new tricks up his sleeves. One of these being the “Shake” feature. This is one of the few features that require the use of motion control in the game (Which is kept to a minimum in the game, but that’s a good thing since this is a platform game). What this feature allows you to do is to grab treasure bags that you see and shake all the treasure out, a typical thing someone greedy like Wario would do and it‘s a cool little feature. Another thing you can do with this is shake the enemies that you have stunned to get health items (They give the Zelda series a nod with the health bar by having it as hearts).

There is one thing about the Gameplay that does hurt my experience however, and that is how you throw enemies in this game. Maybe it’s just me but I just have such a hard time trying to target my throws in this game because of how unresponsive the motion control for throwing is. You angle the controller one way and the game is reading you angling another way. This is especially annoying when you have to target a throw to hit a switch but you keep missing the switch because you can’t control the damn motion right due to how bad it is. It’s not a game breaking experience at all, but it is something that I wish was fixed due to how annoying it can be.

The Boss fights can also provide a challenge in the game if you don’t know what you are doing. The Level design is also well done. I’ve heard that some people have said the game is too easy, this may be if you are just playing with the game without doing any extras. But if you are trying to complete the game completely, then you’ll be in for some tough challenges ahead. Trying to complete the game completely by doing all the missions and collecting all the treasure in the game could easily put another ten hours of Gameplay into the game due to how well some of the treasure is hidden and how hard some of the missions may be.

It’s great to see that Wario is finally back to his old greedy ways after a long absence from them. I’m hoping to see more Wario Land games in the future and as well as more games that look as great as this one.

Here is the rundown of the game:

Visuals: 9.5 – Like I said, the graphics are just wonderful and I’m hoping to see more games to follow this graphical style. The only thing that actually stops me from giving it the perfect ten is due to the little problem with some of the sprites sticking out more than others.

Sound: 8 - There are some memorable tracks as I have mentioned and Wario’s little sounds are always quite humorous to hear. This would be higher had there been complete voice overs in the game rather than reading dialogue.

Presentation: 9 - The game just looks amazing and what’s there will keep you playing for a long time. The Levels look nice and Boss fights actually provide a challenge.

Gameplay: 8.5 – It’s just like the classic Wario Land games and those controls were perfect. I would honestly give this a perfect score had the motion control for throwing not been so damn difficult to deal with.

Lasting Appeal: 9 – The story isn‘t so long, but if you are going to complete every mission in the game and collect all the treasure that is in the game, then the length of the game is boosted about a good ten hours I would say

Final Score: 9/10 – Wario is back to his greedy ways, and he’s better than ever!

At around last year’s E3, LucasArts showed some footage of a game called ‘Fracture’ and they captured my attention. The concept of altering the ground’s levels seemed interesting, so I kept this game under my radar. Now with the release of a demo, is it what I hoped for?

Well the first thing I couldn’t help but notice as soon as I got in the game is how compressed the menu and cut-scenes looked. They looked like a bad .wmv file was used for the game’s visuals. The actual game looked decent from a graphical aspect, but that just looked bad. I can’t say I know much about the story yet, so I’ll skip that and just move onto the actual game.

The demo starts with your main character in a ship, with a rather familiar looking outfit, but maybe that’s just me. The demo itself is mostly a tutorial, so you spend 90% of it learning how to do stuff. The first thing you learn? Altering the ground. It’s just as simple as pressing L1 for lowering it, and R1 for raising it. Simple eh? The D-Pad is used to switch around grenade types, the R2 is your main weapon, the triangle button makes you sprint exactly like Gears of War would, and the rest of the buttons are mapped out like your usual third-person shooter.

I have to say the demo was a rather dull presentation of what the full game might be like. It’s just one long tutorial for the most part, and to be quite honest, the whole raising/lowering the ground thing got old rather quickly and seemed like more of a gimmick to me. The actual gun-play is what really made me realize that. Aside from the interesting concept, everything else about the game is either borrowed from a more popular franchise, or is just taken from the Third-Person Shooter stock.

Too much of the demo was “lower the ground to get through!” or “raise the ground to get over that!” it was all too obvious. Some things were destructible and some weren’t. Whatever they told you to blow up was nice an explosive-y, but everything else just stood its ground. The enemy isn’t much to talk about. They just shot at you and… shot some more. The demo ended with you getting on a support ship after the guy you were supposed to catch got away, and that’s it.

Overall I can’t say I’m super excited about the full game anymore, but I will still check it out once it hits store shelves this October.

—Impressions: Poor—

In the world of wrestling videogames, the WWE Smackdown vs RAW series has been the only wrestler out in the ring, but TNA Wrestling over at Orlando, Florida partnered up with Midway games to come out with their own game titled… TNA iMPACT! After over 2 years of development, is this game a knockout or a jobber? Let’s find out.

Don’t know who/what TNA is? Well here’s a quick little background. TNA was founded back in 2002 by a former WCW/WWF wrestler Jeff Jarrett. He gathered some former wrestlers from WCW, WWF and some independent talent to join the company, and that’s when TNA started. They just had Pay-Per-Views at first, then they got a TV deal to be on Fox Sports Net, but their biggest accomplishment was getting a prime-time slot on SpikeTV. They managed to get some recent WWE talent to join the team in the recent years including Booker T, Christian ‘Cage’ & Kurt Angle. Along the way they made some big stars out of guys like AJ Styles, Samoa Joe and Jay Lethal, who were just small-time wrestlers until they got a job at the company. TNA’s wrestlers are often smaller than standard WWE wrestlers which makes them look different (and considered weak-looking by some) and that is why most of the action is much faster paced than that of WWE’s. There’s a little background for you, now onto the game.

TNA iMPACT (as stated previously) has been in the works for over 2 years over at Midway games. They managed to get some of TNA’s top talent to do motion-capture work, voice-overs, the works. While all of this makes the game look like a pretty authentic TNA product, what you see is not always what you get in this game.

See from a graphical aspect, this game looks good. The wrestlers look very realistic, and don’t have that juiced-up look that the Smackdown vs RAW models have. The moves are ultra-slick, and at 60 frames per second you can certainly feel a big difference between this and the Smackdown games. But not everything is always good in happy town. TNA iMPACT is a very fun game… for the first 30 minutes.

When you first see a hurracanrana in this game you will go O_O, the counters are just plain awesome, and AJ Styles and Kurt Angle have some pretty sick DDTs and Headscissors… Kurt and AJ? Here’s the game’s biggest flaw, move-sets. When we first heard about the game, TNA wrestlers and Midway themselves said that they mo-capped over 2,000 animations total which gave people a lot to look forward to. What they promised and what’s in the final release of the game is not the same. Almost every single wrestler in the game uses shared moves. There are no powerbomb variations, different clotheslines, nothing. A wrestling game is nothing without its moves, and this one has very little of them. Little to the extent that basically every wrestler is missing one of his signature moves. Kurt Angle doesn’t have his Ankle Lock, AJ Styles doesn’t have the Pele Kick, even STING doesn’t have the Scorpion Death Lock. I can understand leaving out moves that WWE wrestlers use – Side note: During interviews, several TNA wrestlers admitted that they motion capture moves used outside of TNA including the Jackhammer and the Sweet Chin Music – but the fact not even TNA’s big boys have an accurate move set is just unacceptable. Each wrestler only has around 8 grapples total. Most of them consist of very standard moves just as a Hip Toss, Vertical Suplex, Arm Drags, etc. One of the game’s commercials talk about the game having “All the moves” of the TNA wrestlers, that’s just completely false.

You might think that’s the only real big issue with the game, but it doesn’t end there.

When Midway was talking about the game, they said that it was going to include more TNA-friendly matches such as the King of The Mountain match, Six-sides of Steel and Monsters Ball. None of that made the final cut. It’s one thing to talk about the features you want in the game, and it’s another to get people’s hopes up and just smash them down come game release.

The roster only features around 25 wrestlers (and Afro Thunder). AJ, Kurt, Abyss, Sting, most of the guys are there, but it has an outdated feel to it. Midway promised roster updates via DLC in the near future, but did not mention if there will be an additional fee for the content.

The online scene isn’t what they said it would be either. There are only two online match types… kinda. Regular 1 vs 1… and ranked 1 vs 1. That’s it. Even the game’s own website talked about having online Tag-Team matches & Tournaments, but all of that faded away too.

Midway also talked about having alternate attires for each individual wrestler… none of that either. The game actually only has 1 weapon, a steel chair. That might be fine for TNA iMPACT! 1, but given the fact that Team 3D (Brother Ray & Brother Devon), who just happen to be known for table spots are in the game, that’s just… stupid.

Aside from the Exhibition matches and online mode, there’s also a story mode. It’s about a (fictional) TNA wrestler that made it to the top, but once he got there LAX (Homicide and Hernandez) decided to go all gangsta on him and left him beat-up in Mexico. The nameless wrestler was left disfigured and he lost his memory, so he was left in the blank. The first thing you do is design the look of your wrestler, because apparently the plastic surgeon in Mexico can turn you into whatever you want. The “Create a Player” creation mode that you fool around with here is about the equivalent of WWF Attitude… for Nintendo 64. You don’t really get to choose much here. Pick between some different shirts and pants, a couple of different hairstyles, etc. and you’re about done. You can’t even really adjust the body, just choose between a buff guy 01, buff guy 02 and a fat man with a six-pack. There’s no room for making anyone interesting in here really. You don’t even get to choose your own moveset. You’re given a default one with a default finisher as well (Chris Sabin’s Cradle Shock). Throughout the game mode you unlock more moves, but there’s honestly not much to choose from.

The actual story mode is rather… unique. You start by wrestling in Mexico until you get to the U.S. and win a match that gives you a TNA try out. From there one you form a tag team with one Eric Young, and a bunch of other crazy nonsense happens. Chris Daniels and some other familiar faces pop up during the story mode, but almost none of them represent their actual TNA persona. The ones that do are just way too over the top. Since there really aren’t many match types in the game, all of the story mode consists of Tag Team matches with horrible AI team matches that MIGHT break up pins, to random 1 vs 1 matches against TNA wrestlers and random creations.

Look, I understand that the latest batch of SvR games have been less than stellar, SvR08 was just terrible. That is no excuse to release such a dull and repetitive game out to store shelves. Midway said that they couldn’t meet the final goal for the game and that they will try to add more wrestlers to the game by the way of downloadable content over PSN and Xbox Live. They couldn’t get all the moves that were mo-capped in the game, and they couldn’t add all of the match types they wanted in either. They said to look for all of that in TNA iMPACT 2, and that’s what annoys me. Good or bad, the game is still a full retail game with a nice $59.99 + tax price tag on it. It’s not like we’re getting a discount because they couldn’t get everything they wanted done on time. As a big wrestling videogame fan, I can’t say this game is worth a purchase, but might be a decent rental just so you can try out the game yourself.

With a small 25 man roster, lack of moves, variety, personality, accuracy, promise or value, TNA iMPACT for the PS3 is sadly a dud.

Score: 5/10

]]> http://theepictimes.wordpress.com/2008/09/19/ps3-tna-impact-review/feed/ 1 EpicJC tnabox http://theepictimes.wordpress.com/2008/09/09/justintv-games-list-per-console/ http://theepictimes.wordpress.com/2008/09/09/justintv-games-list-per-console/#comments Tue, 09 Sep 2008 02:20:06 +0000 EpicJC http://theepictimes.wordpress.com/?p=213 ]]> You can find here all the game that we’re currently playing or will be playing in the future over at our Justin.TV channel (http://justin.tv/theepictimes)

The list of all the game we’re going to be playing over the time is after the jump!

Marvel vs Capcom 2
Power Stone 2
Sonic Adventures

Eternal Darkness
Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes
Resident Evil 4

Banjo-Kazooie
Blast Corps
Pokémon Snap
Starfox 64
Quest 64

Super Smash Bros. Brawl
Wario Land: Shake It!

Breath of Fire III
Breath of Fire IV
Clock Tower
Dino Crisis 2
Final Fantasy Tactics
Final Fantasy IX
Legend of Dragoon
Metal Gear Solid
Metal Gear Solid: VR Missions
PaRappa the Rapper
Parasite Eve
Resident Evil: Director’s Cut
Resident Evil 2
Resident Evil 3: Nemesis
Valkyrie Profile

Kingdom Hearts 2

Lego Batman
Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe
WWE Smackdown vs RAW 2009

Indigo Prophecy

Being a broke geek, I have taken it upon myself to go out and find the cheapest things possible (by that I mean anything under $25) which will give you the oh so respected “Geek Cred”. Whether it is online, in-store, or something I found in the garbage. I’ll bring it back to you (slightly used, but sanitized of course).

This week I bring you a Muti-Platform classic. Beyond Good & Evil.

I found it in the “Previously Owned” bin at EBGames for $7.99 for the PS2. I had heard some minor rumblings about the game but never “YOU MUST PLAY THIS GAME!” Well now that it has been said. “YOU MUST PLAY THIS GAME!” The storyline to this game is an amazingly joyous ride. It takes you on an epic journey with Jade and her Uncle Pey’j as they try to find the truth about the Gestapo-like Alpha Sections and there connection to the Domz , an alien race attacking there planet. The game has its serious and emotional moments but it also throws lots of humor into the mix as well. Some parts had me literally laughing out loud. For being a game that came out in late 2003, the graphics are a thing of beauty. They really help tell the story and you can see the emotion on the characters faces. The gameplay is simple enough as the game does most of it for you (ex: Jumps, Hanging etc.) It’s a platform style game with lots of puzzle solving and sneaking around. During the sneaking portions of the game, you sneak around the environments and take pictures of evil doings by the Domz and Alpha Sections.There are some fighting elements as well, which mostly involve button mashing. There are boss fights and like most games there is a specific strategy used in taking him or it down.

I only have one really minor complaint about the game and that is the run-time. It’s about a 5-6 hour game (that’s being generous). I was having so much fun with the game that I didn’t want it to end. I guess if you want it to run longer you can play all the side missions which include anything from racing to taking pictures of all the species on the planet (which have never been my cup of tea). These side quests help you collect “credits” to purchase items through out the game. The game also has another way for you to purchase rarer items. You collect pearls while you make your way through the game and they can be used for buying all the important items which progress the story along. You can get them through killing bosses, completing puzzles, races or even taking enough pictures of the species on the planet.

So if you are looking for a grand adventure, have a free weekend and have $8 to spare. This is definitely a must have. You won’t regret it. Also, with the just announced sequel coming out now is the perfect time to find it on the cheap. You will have a blast.

Verdict: Buy

-The Pennyless Geek

Ah, the PS1. It was the home of many great games like Final Fantasy VII, Metal Gear Solid and so much more. While most games got their much deserved spot-light, some games were left in a little corner gathering dust… when they should have been in people’s consoles. This is the story… of Star Ocean… Second Story.

The first Star Ocean game was released well over a decade ago on the SNES, but only came out in Japan so U.S. gamers never got an official chance to play it. Luckily, we ended up getting the second one, which was released for the Playstation (or PSX) in 1999.

The Second Story tells the tale of one named Claude Kenni (or Rena Landford, depending on who you choose as your main character). Kenni is traveling through space alongside his hero of a father and his crew, until they stumble upon a discovery which beams Kenni to an unknown planet (later known as Expel), and there begins the story. Soon after he is beamed to the other planet, he sees a girl (Rena) in danger as she is about to be attacked by an ape, so here comes Claude, pulls out a blaster gun and rids of the ape. Sometime later, we find out Rena thought Claude was a “Hero of Light”, a legendary warrior that would come and save Expel from its demise. Claude denies being such hero, but decides to go on a quest to help save Expel, and find his way home.

During the adventure, you get to make a lot of different decisions and plot turns depending on who you choose as the main character. See, if you start the game as Claude, you get what I just talked about. If you choose to have Rena be your main character, you will begin with a slightly different scene (no Claude in space for you!) but will still follow the main story of the game. Depending on who you choose, you will have different people join your party, while some others will remain optional.

Throughout the entire game, you’ll get to do different things like the usual RPG dungeon exploring, boss fighting, cooking (yes), dueling in colisseums and even bidding on races! There’s just so much to do in this game it’s almost overwhelming. You can even go as far as making your own weapons, armor and items. Each character has a skill tree (think World of Warcraft) that you can customize to your liking as you level up. Things in the tree include damage boosts, agility, blacksmithing, bonuses, I can go on and on. To make it even a little more interesting, each character has his own specialty (listed under their profiles) which sort of let you know what they might be best at. These change every time you start a new game, so it’s little things like that which make this game stand out.

Switching to gameplay, you’re looking at a mix of RPG and Action-Adventure. To compare it to today’s games, think of a random-battle version of Final Fantasy XII. It’s not turn based, it just puts you in a battle ground and things get hectic. For the most part, you will play as the battle leader (whoever you choose), while your team-mates will be AI-driven. You can give them guidelines to which they will try to follow, much like FFXII. All the characters have – along side the standard X attack – 2 special abilities that you can assign them to use. What’s really cool is that all of them evolve overtime the more you use them. So an attack that might be weak at first, might actually become very powerful once you’ve used it over 300 times. You get tons of special abilities for each character as they level up. You can switch throughout the characters as the battle is going on, so if your main was paralyzed, you can switch to another character to give him the cure. The gameplay seriously holds up well, even by todays standards. I’ll go as fars as saying most RPG games that are currently out there still don’t have this amount of depth in and out of battle.

Sound is great and horrible at the same time. Where the music is epic and fitting… voice acting (yes, there is voice acting)… how do I put this… sucks. If there is one thing that people remember about this game, is how bad the voice acting is. It’s as if they just got their friends together and did voiceover with no actual effort put into it. That being said, it doesn’t really take much away from the game since you only hear that during battle, and there is enough hacking and slashing going on there to drown that out. Going back to the positive side, the soundtrack is seriously good. If it weren’t for it, sound… would probably get a 1 in the ratings department.

The actual presentation of the game is pretty good too. It follow the old-school way of town, overworld and then town again. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. The art direction in the game is unique yet follows the same style of most other RPG games which isn’t a bad thing, just something you’ll probably notice.

The game is – for the most part – in 2D. That includes both the towns, enemies, characters and just about eveything that isn’t the overworld or special effects. It might be a turn-off for some people but personally, I love 2D sprites so I digg it. The character sprites are kinda blurry which is dissapointing, but I got over it. In the end, the graphical aspect of the game is solid, but that’s about it.

Between the customization and the game’s main plot, you still have a ton more to do including finding secret locations. The game even has an ultra-difficult dungeon for expert players that are up to the challenge. If you save the game before the door to the last boss and go back to a certain location, stuffthatiwon’tspoil will happen and you have an opportunity to go to an ultra-super-secret dungeon which early enemies inside are harder than the last boss himself! Crazy stuff.

Final Score: 8.5/10

(Wii, Buying)

After a seven year hiatus due to his multi billion dollar company, Wario finally returns to his roots with this new adventure! Now I’m really looking forward to this one as I’ve always enjoyed the Wario Land games. Based on all the previews and hands-on, this seems to be a game that I do not want to miss out on. Wario finally returns to his good ol’ greedy ways.

(DS, Buying)

Remember Kirby Super Star on the Super Nintendo? Well take that game, enhance the graphics a bit and add more content to it and you get an instant classic. I remember playing Kirby Super Star back on the Super Nintendo a lot, so seeing as this is just a remake with more content to it just makes this almost an instant buy. I really do hope we see more games like this in the near future.

(Multi-Platform, Buying PS3 Version)

Wait a second… Sub-Zero, Scorpion, Batman, Superman, and many others in the same game?! This one was a curveball out of no where when it was first announced. Who would of ever thought we would see these two franchises together. Aside from that, It seems as though they are going back to the roots of the 2D games which is a step in the right direction to me.

(Multi-Platform, Buying PS3 Version)

We’ve seen it with Star Wars and Indiana Jones, and now it’s time for Batman to be Lego-Fied. If you enjoyed the other Lego games or are a fan of Batman then you will no doubt be interested in this one. The game features around twenty characters and thirty levels with some secret levels. There is a lot of content offered in this game and I’ve been looking forward to it since it was announced.

(Miles Edgeworth: Perfect Prosecutor)

(DS, Buying)

If there’s one new series that I love on DS (well, in Japan it all started on the GBA but never made it here then) it is the Phoenix Wright/Apollo Justice Series. If you really get into the game, you could actually sit there for hours playing without even realizing it. The games really are a virtual story so there isn’t really much Gameplay going on but the story is just really addicting. Gyakuten Kenji would actually be a spin-off to the series starring Phoenix Wright’s rival (and my favorite character in the series) Miles Edgeworth. I’ve enjoyed every installment in the series and I doubt this one would be any different.

(Wii Virtual Console, Instant Buy)

Okay, so I lied when I said I would only pick five games by adding this one. But I’ve just been dying for this classic to be re-released via the Wii Virtual Console. Super Mario RPG is perhaps my favorite game of all time and when I heard it was rated on ESRB I’ve waited for it to be released ever since. Japan and just recently Europe are enjoying this game at the moment. Here’s to hoping that in the upcoming weeks that it finally makes it way over here to America. If you never played this game, PLAY IT NOW!

There are my top five…six games that I am looking forward to in no particular order. While there are other games that I do have my eye on, these six are the ones that I am most looking forward too.

- Exodecai