seniorDK's GameSpot Friend's Reviews seniorDK's GameSpot Friend's Reviews seniorDK's GameSpot Friend's Reviews en-us Copyright (c)1995-2013 CBS Interactive. All rights reserved. http://www.gamespot.com 20 Mon, 20 May 2013 00:47:50 -0700 GameSpot seniorDK's GameSpot Friend's Reviews http://img.gamespot.com/gamespot/shared/promos/misc/gs_logo.gif http://www.gamespot.com 135 40 Fri, 10 May 2013 18:51:40 -0700 Pierst179 reviewed Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed for the Wii U... http://www.gamespot.com/sonic-and-all-stars-racing-transformed/user-reviews/811188/platform/wii-u/ ...and gave it a 8.5.

In all of the gaming industry, there is no niche where there is a domination as huge as the one that exists on the kart racing one. All games and teams that venture into the realm know exactly what needs to be done, which is to produce a game that draws positive comparisons to Mario Kart. After all, not only was it Nintendo that created the often-copied formula, but Mario and his crew have been executing it masterfully for over two decades. During that period of time, only a very restricted number of titles – out of which Diddy Kong Racing and Crash Team Racing stand out - were able to break the monopoly, each for their own reasons and pronenesses. Sonic Racing Transformed manages to enter that select group, and it does so by fixing the flaws of its predecessor, and offering a fantastic mix of challenge, content and outstanding track design.

The first noticeable feature that makes Sonic Racing Transformed stay away from being just another kart game is exposed right on its title. The game does not focus solely on wacky automobile competitions. Instead, the races take place on the water, in the sky and on the land. It would not have been such a refreshing concept but for one detail: tracks are not based on a single vehicle; each one of them presents segments that demand different racing approaches, forcing characters to magically go from one vehicle to the other on the fly. With the exception of a few rare instances when the vehicles behave oddly in the milliseconds following a transformation, the transitions are mostly smoothly done and add a lot of excitement to the race. Aside from the fantastic visual value of, for instance, going up a ramp with a boat and watching as it turns into an airplane in the midst of a battle for a position, the transformations also have strategic value, because as flying is considerably faster than the other two options of movement, the racing tracks will offer opportunities to transform into a plane earlier, rewarding those who find ramps and taking off spots.

Speaking of the tracks, they are yet another point that heavily benefits from the blending of vehicles, and are the clear highlights of the game. Courses take advantage of that opportunity in two distinct ways: they are either built so that three vehicles are used during the same lap, or they present environmental elements that alter the path in between laps. Therefore, even though the game contains sixteen original tracks, plus four extracted for its predecessor - all of which are kart-only – it feels like much more, because as they mutate, tracks often become different to the point of not being recognizable. As if all that work was not enough, the game's tracks are also packed with alternative paths and shortcuts, which add a lot to both their already high replayability and to the element of surprise waiting within each race.

In a genre usually dominated by multiplayer-focused games, Sonic Racing Transformed brings forth a whole lot of single-player value. There are two main modes where the solo fun resides: Grand Prix and Career. The first one is nearly self-explanatory, players compete against nine other characters in four-race cups to see who ends up with the biggest amount of points. In total, there are ten cups, equally divided between regular and mirrored ones, and the difficulty of each can be chosen among four distinct options. Meanwhile, in the Career mode, through which most of the characters are unlocked, presents individual challenges that include regular races where players must finish in a certain position, time trials, boost challenges and racing duels against a series of characters. According to the difficulty chosen for each challenge, players will earn stars, which can then be used to unlock gates that are either protecting new characters or more challenges.

For a game as colorful and seemingly kid-friendly as this one, it packs an immensely surprising amount of challenge. While the high level of difficulty is extremely welcome, for it considerably boosts the time that can be spent playing solo, some of its implementation is questionable. Facing at least a portion of the game in the hard difficulty is key if players want to unlock certain characters, and open a few gates hiding some of the more advanced challenges. It is all fine and good if the player in question is experienced; youngsters, however, will most likely be overwhelmed by the many hours of practice one must go through if he wants to clear a good part of the game.

The core problem here is that practice is not the only thing required to go through the entirety of the game; patience is also extremely important. Like all games of its kind, Sonic Transformed presents an assortment of items that can be used during the race. Unlike Mario Kart, however, the items you get are not heavily dependent on the position you find yourself in. Meaning that while leaders are boosting their way through the tracks with powerful items, people in the middle of the pack might be struggling with simple powers. As a consequence, a big part of the game's result, especially on the hardest levels, relies on luck. Though those occurrences are annoying on Career mode, they can be even more frustrating during a Grand Prix, where three straight good races can be destroyed by a bad race where players - which always start at the back of the grid - are unable to reach the leaders because they are too busy being hit by an army of items. Regardless of how good a player is at speeding through the tracks, finishing 1st will usually demand many tries, and an eventual victory is most likely to come due to sheer luck of getting the right item at the right time.

In general, though, Sonic Racing Transformed is a very pleasant game to play. Not only is the game bursting with the personality extracted directly from fantastic Sega properties - including a vast selection of characters, each with very a very unique trio of vehicles - it is also a software that can be enjoyed with friends. The multiplayer gameplay is not restricted to especially designed modes. It is, instead, available in any mode of choice - with the exception of Time Trials - and, by taking advantage of the Wii U gamepad, the game allows for up to five players to battle each other on any of game's many Grand Prix tournaments, Career Mode challenges, or online matches. Whoever holds the Wii U gamepad - which on single-player works as a map display and a rear view mirror - will play on the controller's screen, which despite its average size produces very nice visuals, while those who hold the Wiimotes will share the TV. Though it is not used in any asymmetric and creative way, which is totally understandable given the nature of a racing title, it is nice to be able to avoid split-screen when playing in pairs.

While its predecessor suffered from constant frame rate problems, this is a game mostly free from that issue, and that is no small feat. The tracks are full of activity. Aside from ten racers throwing items and shoving each other, there are plenty of traps going around, scenario details to be processed at the game's relatively fast speed, and that all goes without mentioning how some of the courses suffer mutations in-between laps as a result of explosions, and other kinds of physical destruction. Throw into the bag the fact that the game looks really great, and holding it all together through the entirety of the race becomes quite a technical achievement. Besides being exciting by their fast and frantic nature, races are boosted by a nice soundtrack which is highlighted by some tunes that have been selected from games that present a very powerful soundtrack.

Often, when a good game of the kart racing genre hits a Nintendo platform early on, it tends to be labeled as a title that exists for the purpose of temporarily satisfying any racing needs that players might have until Mario Kart comes around. This time, though, the Nintendo Wii U has received a game that will not simply be thrown away once Nintendo unleashes a new installment on its longstanding racing series, but one that will be able to compete side-by-side with it regardless of how great the next Mario Kart will be. Sonic and All-Stars Racing Transformed has tons of content, which aside from simply racing include over 100 collectible stickers that serve as awards for the completion of achievements, a nice degree of vehicle customization, and a huge load of the undeniable charm of the Sega franchises. Put some good level of challenge in there, which is sometimes unfortunately done cheaply, and you have a lasting, fun and rewarding title.

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"Pierst179 reviewed Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed for the Wii U..." was posted by Pierst179 on Fri, 10 May 2013 18:51:40 -0700
]]> http://www.gamespot.com/sonic-and-all-stars-racing-transformed/user-reviews/811188/platform/wii-u/ Wed, 01 May 2013 17:40:30 -0700 Pierst179 reviewed Nintendo Land for the Wii U... http://www.gamespot.com/nintendo-land/user-reviews/810919/platform/wii-u/ ...and gave it a 8.0.

It is undeniable that Wii Sports is one of the most successful games of all time. That statement may sound outrageously exaggerated - especially when the fact that its sales were inflated by the fact the title came packed with the Nintendo Wii is considered - but it becomes rather reasonable when we look at it as the doorway the gaming world, and those outside it, used as their entry point to motion-controlled games. In fact, the whole introductory experiment went so well that Nintendo once again attempts to capture lightning in a bottle with Nintendo Land. There is no better way to put it: Nintendo Land is this generation's Wii Sports; the first note on a brand new control scheme, and a game that offers twelve experiments and blueprints which display the system's capabilities. However, it is a game that is far more neatly produced, offers much more in terms of content and value, and has the irresistibly charming quality of being centered around the Nintendo Universe.

In the midst of all the great manners on which the system's controller is used, one of Nintendo Land's key components, perhaps its most original one, is its art style. Set in a fictional Nintendo theme park, the game features a central hub surrounded by twelve extravagant gates that lead into the attractions. Taking advantage of this make-believe scenario, Nintendo made sure to design everything as it were part of a nicely put together attempt to recreate the "real" worlds within their games. On The Legend of Zelda's attraction, the whole world is made of plush; Donkey Kong's ride uses a chalkboard as its background; and the recreation of the world of Pikmin is done with Mushroom Kingdom blocks, and robots that recreate the game's insects. Absolutely everything is exploding either from Nintendo self-references, or bits of detail that tell players nothing is what it seems.

Nintendo Land was built by giving designers the power to act as mad scientists working with a new potion, and such is the case with any experiment in creativity and insanity, some results are far better than others, but the twelve-game package is so varied that every single gamer will, at least, find four attractions he will greatly enjoy. While a player's most liked attractions will be the cause for many hours of gameplay, the least beloved ones will also warrant a visit, because Nintendo Land is packed with collectibles and achievements that are more effectively unlocked when all attractions are played. Every attraction features a number of stamps that can be acquired through the clearing of certain goals, and each one of them will also grant players a star or master rank according to the level of completion achieved.

As if that was not enough, the more levels are cleared, attractions are played, and stamps are acquired, players will gain a few coins, which can be spent in an arcade-like mini-game to unlock gift boxes hiding items featuring Nintendo icons that will decorate the central hub. There is an overwhelmingly great satisfaction in watching as your personal version of the park is populated by statues of Kraid, Ganon, Koopas and others. The quality of the games, the sensational multiplayer value that some of them possess, and the daunting challenges and levels that nearly all of them have would already be a valuable enough incentive to play the game for countless hours, but Nintendo added plenty of extras to keep players going, which goes to show that Nintendo Land is not simply a pack-in, it is a full fledged game that could be worth the full price.

The game offers three attractions focused exclusively on multiplayer. All of which take advantage from the asymmetrical gameplay allowed by the fact the Wii U uses two completely different controllers. In Mario Chase, while one player flees through a small arena others go after him. The twist here is that the player who controls Mario can see the whole map through the gamepad's screen, while the chasers have to explore the place looking for him without many visual clues. Both Animal Crossing: Sweet Day and Luigi's Ghost Mansion are slight variations of that theme: in the first, one player gathers candy around the village while the other controls, through the gamepad, two guards that move independently according to the movement of both control sticks; in the latter, one player acts as a ghost, being invisible to those who look at the TV screen, while the others must use flashlights to capture him. The three experiences are nicely balanced, and the couple of different approaches with which each of them can be experienced doubles the value of the whole thing. Playing them will surely guarantee plenty of laughter, exciting close calls.

On the other end of the spectrum, there is a group of six games whose focus is solo play, four of which are probably the weakest of the bunch: Captain Falcon's Twister Race, Balloon Trip Breeze, Takamaru's Ninja Castle and Octopus Dance. On Twister Race o, players must tilt the gamepad to control the Blue Falcon through a course divided in 16 distinct segments, all of which are times. Balloon Trip has players drawing air currents on the screen to move the character across a sky that is plagued by tons of enemies. On Ninja Castle, players must slide their fingers across the gamepad's screen while aiming at the TV to launch stars against deadly enemies. And in Octopus Dance, both of the pad's control sticks must be used independently to move the arms of your character in order to replicate the dance moves of a robot. Although those games are a lot of fun, they become the game's weakest link because their content is thin, since their value comes from the fact their arcade-like structure will have players going back to the very beginning whenever they lose their lives.

The other two single-player attractions also feature the same sort of game over system, but they have a highly addictive nature that severely diminishes any frustration caused by having to restart from scratch. DK'S Crash Course offers a ten-section obstacle course inspired in the original arcade Donkey Kong title. During this attraction, players must carefully tilt the gamepad to move a little wheeled cart across many slopes, platforms and traps that are just waiting to crush your poor Mii. Meanwhile, on Yoshi's Fruit Cart players must draw a path for Yoshi to follow and eat all the fruits in a given stage. The twist, though, is that obstacles and fruit only appear on the TV, leaving players to utilize tiny visual cues to determine where exactly in the gamepad's screen are the objects located. Like every other attraction in the game, those two keep track of best scores achieved, which makes trying to outdo yourself a very compelling experience.

As a coincidence, or maybe not, the three greatest attractions found in the game are those that allow all three kinds of gameplay: competitive and cooperative multiplayer, and single-player. Metroid Blast, the finest one in the bunch, places up to five players in one arena (where one controls a ship through the gamepad and others play as Samus on the ground) to either blast each other to death or defeat hordes of different enemies in varied challenges. The Legend of Zelda: Battle Quest offers nine familiar scenarios with temples, forests and volcanoes where a group of Link-dressed Miis must down many challenging foes and bosses with swords, or with the arrow and bow. Finally, Pikmin Adventure has one player lead the way as Olimar, while the other four control large and very powerful Pikmin to aid Olimar and the regular sized ones.

What is most impressive about those titles, other than the fact that they are fun - a quality that is shared among all attractions of the game - is that they have a load of content. Aside from the regular levels that must be cleared either alone or cooperatively, they also feature extra and very challenging stages (some of which are nearly impossible to clear by yourself), and a whole bunch of different modes to be explored. Another positive point, which is equally spread across the entirety of Nintendo Land, is how well the controls work, especially the gamepad. Moving Samus' ship by working with the control sticks and tilting the controller as if it were a window with which you can better glimpse what is on TV is absolutely fantastic, and the same can be said for moving the cart in DK's Crash Course, using the bow in Zelda: Battle Quest, or getting a totally different perspective through the controller's screen in the chase-centered attractions.

The cherry on top of this glorious pile of content is the game's integration with Mii Verse. Aside from seamlessly allowing players to share comments in-between stages and matches, and showing what other people around the world are saying about the attractions, Nintendo Land will populate the central plaza of the park with hundreds of real Miis from other players. Aside from serving as a visual prop, it is possible to select any Mii that is walking around the place in order to check where that person is from, what attractions they have been playing, how many coins and prizes they have collected, and how is their level of completion in all of the attractions. It's something so naturally done, and it is executed with such an incredible charm, that spending time around the plaza looking at other people's comments and records is a very valid activity. Although the game does not feature any kind of online gameplay, which is a shame as some games could have benefited from it, there is still a whole lot of connectivity.

Nintendo Land, therefore, serves three core purposes. Firstly, it is an extremely well-produced game that packs a whole lot of value; secondly, it serves as a blueprint so that gamers can know what their newly acquired system is capable of, and developers can use its concepts as a source of inspiration; finally, it is a great display of how Nintendo's MiiVerse can be integrated into a game in very meaningful ways. More than a bonus that comes with the system, Nintendo Land is a game that offers plenty of challenge for lonely moments, and a huge quantity of fun when two or more friends are gathered.

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"Pierst179 reviewed Nintendo Land for the Wii U..." was posted by Pierst179 on Wed, 01 May 2013 17:40:30 -0700
]]> http://www.gamespot.com/nintendo-land/user-reviews/810919/platform/wii-u/ Wed, 01 May 2013 11:04:52 -0700 Pierst179 reviewed Assassin's Creed III for the Wii U... http://www.gamespot.com/assassins-creed-iii/user-reviews/810901/platform/wii-u/ ...and gave it a 8.5.

The Assassin's Creed franchise is known for its size and ambitions. In fact, the franchise is so remarkably big that it took Ubisoft two games to get all of its details down, and the result was one unforgeable masterpiece in Assassin's Creed II. Coming at the heels of a series of minor releases derived from the franchise's Italian endeavor, the third major installment of the franchise feels a little bit like a step back; not because it is humbler or plays it safer than its predecessors, but because - much like the original title - while it is a triumphant success in some areas, it feels awkward and dull in others, as if the team behind the game suddenly forgot some of the lessons so effectively learned from the first game's reception. For that, while being frequently greatly enjoyable and invariably impressive, Assassin's Creed III never succeeds in rising to the stellar level of its mesmerizing predecessor.

It all starts when Desmond and his crew locate the temple that holds the secret that will save mankind from destruction. Upon finding the door, though, they discover that they are missing not only the key to open it, but the power sources to activate it. The solution, as expected, involves having Desmond relive the life of one of his ancestors in order to discover the key's location. Connor, our brave new assassin, is the fruit of the quick relationship between a British templar sent on a mission in the United States and a native woman, and he grows up to be an assassin whose targets are deeply involved in the American Revolution. Therefore, players will explore key locations of that conflict, such as Boston, New York and the little towns in its outskirts; meet historic figures; and aid the rebels in their quest for freedom. As it has become a standard for the series, the story is wonderfully told through impressive cutscenes made very believable by the game's great visuals and the good actors employed in its voice acting.

Though undeniably interesting and very exciting, the game's plot is indirectly responsible for the two biggest issues found in the game. First of all, Assassin's Creed III features, by a good margin, the most ambitious story development the series has seen so far. The game is not satisfied with simply focusing on Connor's life as an assassin; instead, it chooses to start from a point way before it all began: Connor's father, a man named Kenway, departure from Britain. Through a sequence of small hops to advance through time, we see and play as Kenway meets Connor's mother; the boy is born and plays with his friends as a child; grows up to be a leader in his tribe; and, finally, decides to train to become an assassin after he goes through a life-changing incident. The fact is that nearly half of the game's missions are spent getting things started. Before Connor is truly free to roam the expanse of the game's world, five of the game's twelve sequences will be finished. In Assassin's Creed III, gameplay serves its story; and not the other way around. As a consequence, the first five sequences are often dull and extremely restricted.

The second issue comes from its setting. As compelling as it may be to watch the revolution be born and then be a part of it, the large scale war is not exactly a scenario that is favorable to the style of gameplay the series thrives on. Assassin's Creed II shined, among other reasons, for the design of its missions, which often involved sneaking around, finding different ways to hide, and managing to kill a target silently. While Assassin's Creed III does offer a few missions like that, there are too many where Connor must either simply lead a battalion, fight out in the open or warn troops of incoming attacks. The game ends up being more about a huge conflict, than back-alley tactics that would usually be performed by a silent assassin. The war-related missions are fun and thrilling, but they do not capture the series' essence as well as the stealth ones do. It is a change of philosophy that will please some, but make others wonder why exactly such a shift occurred.

It's a shame, because in its gameplay, Assassin's Creed III - as expected - offers a wide range of alternatives that can be employed to remain anonymous. If players choose to avoid combat, Connor can rip posts off of the walls, bribe street preachers to talk about something other than his recent exploits, pay the presses that are printing the posters to stop doing so, start riots against the British, hide amongst the crowd, or use his uncannily impressive skills for climbing. Examining enemy patterns and the environment surrounding them in order to find a way to perform silent kills has always been one of the most engaging actions in Assassin's Creed games, and here they remain a clear prowess of the titles, even if those skills are not as frequently used as they should have been.

When the alternative chosen to handle some of the missions is direct combat, or if Connor's stealth skills are not sharp enough to make him invisible; then players will be treated to a fine combat system. Connor can defend opponents' attacks, break their defense, and attack. The game offers a wide variety of weapons that can be equipped - even some fire weapons - and though enemy variety isn't exactly a highlight, the battles remain entertaining and challenging all the way through the whole game.

If the fifteen-hour main quest has not remained solid in its quality during the transition between installments, the sidequests that populate the title remain quite engaging, and it feels like they have grown in numbers too. In fact, there are so many of them that according to the game's counter for percentage of completion, only about 30% of it is done once the main quest is wrapped up. Many quests that appeared in previous games of the series make a return. Connor will have to deliver letters, free prisoners, find high viewpoints in order to clear areas of the map, collect page's of Benjamin's Franklin almanac, recruit other assassins, engage in combats, find treasure, and find and break into heavily guarded forts that are hidden throughout the game's enormous world map.

In the end, more than twenty hours can be pleasantly spent simply exploring the world and finding its secrets. What is most fascinating about this sort of experience, though, is that sometimes the secrets are neither collectibles nor anything that contributes to the game's completion percentage, but small nuggets of details that show how much care was put into this ridiculously big world, which is on a level that cannot be compared to any other game out there. Boston and New York hide the old buildings and locations that are now known worldwide, or at least in the United States; while the Frontier, a forest-covered area with many hidden small towns, hides nice little places, creeks, waterfalls, mountains and people that add many layers of content to a game that is already swimming in impressive depths. Though the distance between goals might often been long, it is punctuated by little encounters that give it a lot of meaning.

Out of the numerous side missions the game presents, three are brand new and clear highlights. First of all, there is Connor's homestead. A big peaceful piece of land amidst all the chaos where Connor decides to build a small community under his protection. At first, it is an abandoned location, but little by little Connor will come across people in need of a home, and by helping them out players will get them to move to the homestead, and aid in its development and quality of life, which makes it the game's most satisfying quest. Secondly, as a native, Connor has developed the ability to hunt, and there is no better place for that than the Frontier. There, Connor can locate and kill many kinds of prey, such as hares, bears, wolves, foxes, and others. The capture of each animal requires a different approach, either direct or using traps, and capturing animals either in large numbers or by using unique techniques will fill up huntsmen challenges, which are both numerous and entertaining to perform.

Lastly, halfway through the game, Connor acquires one mighty ship, allowing him to perform naval quests behind the wheel. Those missions usually vary from navigating troubled rocky waters without taking much damage, to fighting a number of British vessels either through fire and cannonballs, or by boarding them. The ship's controls are easy to learn, and the ability to upgrade many of the ship's parts in order to be able to tackle tougher challenges makes those quests a real test of skill. In addition, they also happen to be extremely thrilling and exciting, serving as a great break from the game's regular missions.

Overall, Assassin's Creed III has more content than the average gamer is able to handle. It has a good, but irregular, central quest which is supported by an even more time-consuming set of sidequests that give plenty of life to this impressive world. Any game can claim to having one ridiculously gigantic overworld, but it takes a lot of creativity and care to fill it up with enough detail and life to give it some purpose other than padding the game to boring lengths. In spite of its flaws and the fact that it does not live up to its predecessor, Assassin's Creed III is a rare display of a game that big for a reason other than a shallow showcase of megalomania. It is a game filled to the brim with well-done characters, cutscenes, missions and great visual design; and though its sheer scope is cause for a few technical issues here and there, it is a more-than-welcome feature, because no amount of hours is enough to explore all of its fascinating corners.

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"Pierst179 reviewed Assassin's Creed III for the Wii U..." was posted by Pierst179 on Wed, 01 May 2013 11:04:52 -0700
]]> http://www.gamespot.com/assassins-creed-iii/user-reviews/810901/platform/wii-u/ Fri, 26 Apr 2013 21:25:46 -0700 Pierst179 reviewed New Super Mario Bros. U for the Wii U... http://www.gamespot.com/new-super-mario-bros-u/user-reviews/810720/platform/wii-u/ ...and gave it a 9.0!

After a lull of two generations, Nintendo has decided to go back to its roots and release, alongside a brand new system, a fresh Mario game. Differently from what other Mario games that kicked off a new Nintendo generation did, though, New Super Mario Bros. U is by no means a glorious display of what more powerful hardware can do. Instead, it safely bets on the gold mine that the sidescrolling franchise has become, and decides not to shake things up in any significant way or form. For most companies and studios, that would be a recipe for disaster, especially considering the fact that this is the fourth New Super Mario Bros. game to come out during the past few years. However, what surfaces from this new Mario adventure is a game that, through all its more than sixty stages, pulls of exciting and unexpected tricks using the same old mechanics. A game that is certainly worthy of being the opening note for a new console.

First, it is important to get the bad stuff out of the way: there is nothing incredibly mind-blowing or impressive about the bricks with which this game is built. The art has not received any tweaks, neither significant nor minor; the songs and sound effects remain as unchanged as they can be; the enemies and bosses are all incredibly familiar in their behavior, looks and weak spots; princess Peach is once again kidnapped by Bowser and his offspring; and even the themes used for the worlds are commonplace, not only in their nature, but also in their order, as Mario will start his adventure on some calm plains, move on to a desert, to a snow-covered land, and a few worlds later, wrap it all up among waves of magma. Nintendo is so aware of the repetition, that they do not even attempt to conceal it; they choose to thrive on it instead, and it is easily arguable that the mundane nature of pretty much everything about the game works in favor of the stage design, highlighting its sheer glorious brilliancy.

In its core, that is what New Super Mario Bros. U is all about: stage design. It is, once more, astounding what Nintendo is able to do with a limited set of power-ups, among which the return of the raccoon suit is the only real difference to its predecessor; and Mario's equally restricted array of moves. As usual, things start slowly and simple in the first world, but as the plumber moves on to the desert, New Super Mario Bros. U starts picking up speed, and - before you realize it - the game becomes a train of fun going downhill in full-speed with nothing in sight that can stop it. Within the same world, or even inside the boundaries of the entire game, Nintendo barely re-utilizes or recycles any tricks, making every single stage a different creature.

If there is a noteworthy change in the game's structure, that is its overworld. While not being a new concept, as it has been previously used in Super Mario World, the game features a single overworld map that presents the individual worlds in a fully connected manner; players can literally walk from stage one to Bowser's place continuously. Though equal to what Super Mario World brought to the table, it is plain to see that - in New Super Mario Bros. U - the map is far better designed. As players clear stages, especially the secret ones, the scenario will creatively shift its shape to open the way to stages and locations that are truly hidden, often opening up paths that will leave one world, go through a nearby one, only to end in some remote location in a third distinct place. It is even possible to argue that a big part of the joy of finding a secret stage is seeing how the world map will transform to accommodate it.

For those who have been rightfully complaining about the ever diminishing difficulty of Mario games, New Super Mario Bros. U is an oasis. Though simply finishing the stages isn't exactly painfully hard, going after the star coins will almost invariably lead to the need to perform complicated maneuvers that require both skill and timing. And, in a good sign that the game stays on the right side of the line separating frustration from difficulty, it does not matter how many times Mario falls to his death, players will always feel the urge to try once more. If looking for full completion, newcomers to the series will find one daunting task, and veterans will encounter a great deal of challenge, especially on the secret and special stages, which are worthy of their fame for being brutally tough.

New Super Mario Bros. U might not be an impressive technical display of the Wii U's capabilities, but it is a stellar showcase of how games can interact with Nintendo's Miiverse in an effective and game-improving way. Whenever players clear a stage while performing any significant achievement such as collecting all star coins, not taking any damage, or getting to the flag really fast, the game will automatically prompt players for comments on the stage so that they can be posted on the game's community on Miiverse so that the whole world can see them. The same will happen in frustrating situations, like when Mario loses way too many lives on a stage. In cases like this, though, the game will humorously ask players so send out warnings or angry letters to Bowser on how tough the stage is. Not only are those interruptions brief and seamless, therefore not disturbing the game's pace, but the manner with which comments are integrated into the game (either being shown in the overworld or while the stage loads in-between attempts) adds a lot to the experience.

And that ends up being New Super Mario Bros. U greatest victory. While the stages are astonishing, the graphics are smoother than ever, the multiplayer can range between cooperative (with two players) to maddeningly chaotic (with four players), and the game is packed to the brim with extras such as time trials, coin-collecting, and enemy-defeating challenges that extend the game's twenty-five hours of adventure into a package that can last for over forty hours of fun; all of those aspects are trumped by the novelty of the game's social factor. Sharing our achievements, failures and angry outbursts is a lot of fun, and the constant reminder that there are tons of people around the globe going through the same ordeals that you are experiencing somehow makes the whole game a lot more fun, and it will certainly motivate players to look into every corner of the game for every secret or achievement that is possible to find or accomplish.

At first glance, New Super Mario Bros. U does not seem to do justice to the past Mario games that debuted alongside a new Nintendo system, because it is devoid of any visual leaps or visible gameplay improvements, but in the end it is certainly worthy of carrying that legacy forward, as even though it is not completely built around Miiverse like Nintendo Land, it manages to integrate it very nicely to a genre where, initially, such connection would be hard to develop. As it is usual for a Mario sidescroller, New Super Mario Bros. U shows gaming at one of its purest and funnest forms, where everything exists for the sake of gameplay, but this time it comes packed with a delightfully fresh new component. It feels like a new generation has indeed started.

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"Pierst179 reviewed New Super Mario Bros. U for the Wii U..." was posted by Pierst179 on Fri, 26 Apr 2013 21:25:46 -0700
]]> http://www.gamespot.com/new-super-mario-bros-u/user-reviews/810720/platform/wii-u/ Sat, 06 Apr 2013 13:48:12 -0700 Pierst179 reviewed Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon for the 3DS... http://www.gamespot.com/luigis-mansion-dark-moon/user-reviews/809947/platform/3ds/ ...and gave it a 9.5!

Differently from every single home console released by Nintendo up to that point, the Nintendo Gamecube did not feature a major Mario adventure among its starting lineup of games. Coincidentally, the system that usually stands as the black sheep of Nintendo's hardware collection - if you exclude the virtual boy - kicked things off with an often overlooked character: Luigi. Appreciation for Luigi's Mansion would steadily grow over the years, and for a game that originally appeared as an average launch title, the franchise ended up with a surprising and deserving amount of voices supporting an eventual return. More than a decade later, Dark Moon comes around to expand on the concept of the first game and give it a heavy infusion of the clumsy personality that Luigi has gained during the past few years on his RPG incursions. The result of it all is the very best game the Nintendo 3DS has to offer up to this point in its lifespan.

The game, seemingly eager to display its glorious blend of eerie environments and slapstick humor, shows its nature from the get go. Luigi sits at home watching TV when, suddenly, Professor E. Gadd interrupts the signal to summon Luigi to yet another creepy quest. The ghosts of Evershade Valley had been exhibiting a very peaceful behavior in recent years. Unfortunately, during one apparently normal night, the spirits begin to act up; destroying everything in their surroundings and haunting the abandoned locations of the valley. An awfully frightened Luigi tries to hilariously deny the invitation for an adventure, but the Professor promptly transports Nintendo's second plumber to the valley and - thankfully, for us - sends him ghost-hunting around the valley.

Instead of featuring one large mansion where the whole adventure takes place, Next Level Games cleverly decided to split the game in five distinct manors. The geographical separation of the houses allowed the developers to create one overall theme for each one of them, and that wider potential for creation was very well explored. While the first location is your average haunted house, the others go on to explore themes like ice, plants and clockwork; the last of which strays away from the regular assortment of Mario themes and ventures into a theme that is fantastically adequate for a haunted universe. The mansions are throughly impressive in both their visual and structural design and they never cease to amaze: every turn and corner hides the possibility of a surprise and the rooms are packed to the brim with objects and contraptions that Luigi can interact with, which often generate some truly funny results.

The amount of stuff that can be pushed, pulled, sucked, and moved is enough for the mansions to receive many accolades for stellar attention to detail, but while Next Level Games was clearly worried about the finer grains of the mansions' environments, they also took excellent care of how they were built. Set up in ways that tend to remember some Zelda dungeons, moving around the mansions becomes a puzzle in its self. Invariably, during the game's missions, the location that serves as Luigi's current destination will be neatly highlighted in the map. Getting there, though, is usually not as straightforward as the map will let on, as it will involve deep exploration of the surrounding rooms, puzzle solving, the finding of keys, ghost encounters and other events. Once they are cleared, the mansions will not seem like they are enormous, but the game is so densely filled up with mystery and riddles that at least three hours are required to clear each one of them.

In respect to the game's handheld nature, Next Level Games took a decision that certainly causes diverging effects. The game is completely structured around missions, usually featuring six for each house plus a boss battle and a mindless ghost hunt against the clock. The benefits of such an approach is that, besides making it possible to play the game in short bursts, the game gains a lot of replayability because players are awarded a rank for each missions based on money acquired, ghosts captured, time spent and health lost; and the mansions go through some significant changes between missions. However, as Luigi has to return to E. Gadd's lab every twenty minutes, the game loses a bit of its haunting immersion - slightly harming the company's environmental work - and occasionally does not allow players to go into certain areas of the mansion during the course of some missions, which goes against the natural urge players will get to explore the very well-done locations. Also negatively affecting the game's sense of isolation is the fact that E. Gadd is often calling up Luigi in order to give him details of where to go and what to do. While the interruptions do diminish as the game advances, they remain an issue through the adventure.

Those flaws, though noticeable, are ridiculously tiny compared to the game's flooring qualities. Everything in Dark Moon is nicely done. The controls are tightly done and make battling ghosts a huge thrill; a positive factor that is multiplied by the nice variety of ghosts that the game throws at Luigi. The simple controls and Luigi's limited set of instruments - he only packs his trustworthy glorified vacuum cleaner and a flashlight that either makes environments brighter or reveals hidden objects - are used to an incredible degree, and the quantity of different puzzles that the developers were able to come up with having only a few tools at the character's command is beyond remarkable. Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon is one of those games that amaze every step of the way, and whatever issues individual players may encounter during the adventure will be easily overshadowed by everything else.

If on the creative front Dark Moon is spectacular, its technical departments shine equally bright and set new high standards for the system. The game's visuals are absolutely astounding. The fact that the game takes place in tiny rooms instead of open environments allowed Next Level Games to go all out with textures, effects and details without fear that the game's rendering performance would suffer. Few Nintendo games have ever offered such detailed scenes, and delicate precision with each lights and shadows have been implemented - a key factor for a generally dark game - is quite a sight. The music and sound design are also very well done. Taking advantage of low-key compositions and punctual sound effects, the game crafts one tense environment which has its darkness balanced by the cartoonish sounds emitted by ghosts, Luigi's always amusing voice tonality and the fact that he often likes to hum along with the tune that is playing on the background.

Where Luigi's Mansion is most impressive, though, is in its animation. Anyone who stops to pay attention to the way Luigi moves will certainly burst out laughing at how he walks, runs and looks around in ridiculous fright. The highlight comes around in the small custscenes that punctuate the exploration. The mansions are full of holes in the wall through which Luigi can check out what ghosts are doing when they think he is not looking. Those little peeks into their behavior tend to be accompanied by comical cutscenes of their wild interactions with each other and it is easy to lose a few minutes looking at what they are doing while taking in the cleverness of it all.

If an adventure that can stretch out for over fifteen hours - especially if players decide to go after the collectible gems and boos - is not enough to satisfy the needs created by more than one decade of waiting, then the game packs a very solid multiplayer mode. In it, four players explore mansions that can range from five floors to twenty-five in three different modes that share the same goal: finding a way to get to the top of the mansion by unlocking doors, capturing ghosts and enduring the many challenges of working as a team. The mansions in the multiplayer mode are randomly generated, which adds a good deal of value to the whole experience even if there is a limited set of rooms from which mansions are created. However, as the fun comes from working together with other Luigis, capturing ghosts and defeating a boss every five floors, the multiplayer remains a strong and alluring option either as a break from the main adventure or as a source of fresh fun after the game is done.

Two years into the 3DS' life, Luigi's Mansion is, by one considerable margin, the best and most complete game to show up on the system. If more than a decade ago the lack of a Mario game on the Gamecube's launch lineup was a reason to delay the purchase of the system, this time around Luigi trumps his brother and becomes the ultimate reason why owning a 3DS is worth it.

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"Pierst179 reviewed Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon for the 3DS..." was posted by Pierst179 on Sat, 06 Apr 2013 13:48:12 -0700
]]> http://www.gamespot.com/luigis-mansion-dark-moon/user-reviews/809947/platform/3ds/ Tue, 25 Dec 2012 16:00:24 -0800 Pierst179 reviewed Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask for the 3DS... http://www.gamespot.com/professor-layton-and-the-miracle-mask/user-reviews/805158/platform/3ds/ ...and gave it a 9.0!

The Professor Layton series reaches its fifth installment in as many years, and - differently from many other famous franchises of this day and age - the professor has somehow manage to stumble upon a weird formula which combines constant releases, and little to no gameplay changes, and mixes those two ingredients to form games that are seemingly immune to criticism. It might be awfully easy to negatively point out how Layton has offered us over a hundred hours of eerily similar gameplay, but - as a contrast - it is just impossibly hard to ignore the glorious strides that the folks at Level-5 are able to take in creating settings and stories that turn everyone of the Layton games into odd mysteries that delicately float in the border of the realms of the plausible and the outlandish. Miracle Mask follows the tradition and delivers the finest gaming adventure of the Nintendo 3DS' early life.

Two elements are key in pushing the Professor Layton games beyond the label of a glorified puzzle package: setting and plot, and in Miracle Mask, specially aided by the 3DS' powers and capabilities, they are more impressive than ever. This time around, the picturesque location of choice is Monte d'Or: an entertainment oasis located in the middle of a bare desert. Mostly populated by the marveled tourists who stay in the city's many luxurious hotels, the city is a delightful clash of the European vibe and architecture that is so vividly present in the Layton series, the lights and colors of Las Vegas and the French-influenced carnival celebrations that take place in New Orleans. The combination turns Monte d'Or into a believable confluence of styles, and, in the meantime, places the city into an inexistent earthly geographic location. A match of tendencies that plays right into the hands of the Laytonesque plots that so often combine the possible with the far fetched.

Monte d'Or is not just bizarrely interesting, it is also gloriously beautiful. Visually, the Layton series has went through an incredible overhaul, and the result are scenarios and characters that pop out of the screen in full life, and not solely because of the game's wonderful use of 3-D effects. More purist players may be disappointed to learn that the pure cartoonish sprites have been replaced by cell-shaded 3-D models, but truth is that at no point the game loses its charm. On the contrary, the visual leap forward is extremely beneficial to the game both in its storytelling, and - even more strongly - in the development and growth of its setting. No other location ever explored by Layton offered so many details, people and life, and for that reason players are instantaneously drawn into the many wonders of this paradise in the middle of the dunes. While the fully hand-drawn past of the series has provided very remarkable locations to explore, this new blend of drawing and polygons is a welcome change that makes Miracle Mask stand out from the get go.

As alluring as the usual Layton locations might be, one thing is always certain: if the professor is on site, it means that something wrong is going on, and thankfully this is no exception. Built by a childhood friend of his, Monte d'Or has been under attack. A masked man in an impeccable white suit has been making public appearances in crowded places and making dark miracles happen right in front of the tourists' eyes. A town that thrives under flashy shows and casinos is suddenly being threatened by a twisted man who enjoys putting on shows himself, such as turning passers-by into animals. Watching as the economic health of this tourist wonderland is in danger of turning into dust, Angela summons the professor to investigate the happenings.

The story is as well-told as expected. The game alternates silent dialogues, voiced exchanges and full-blown drawn cutscenes, depending on how crucial the moment is to the plot as a whole. Comparatively, this game's plot offers as many twists and unexpected turns as all the other Layton games do, which brings a great balance between the puzzle-solving and the story development; something that makes the two factors complementary to one another, instead of turning one of them into a little accessory, and hence highlighting the brilliance of both the storyline script and the puzzle design. However, differently from the most recent Layton game - The Last Specter, Miracle Mask as a whole has developments that are more grounded in feasible reality, even if it is some sort extravagant view of what is real and what isn't, which makes the whole quest for truth much more satisfying for players.

From that point on, the game is Professor Layton as we know it. In point-and-click fashion, the professor must wander around the streets of the city, talk to its residents to gather either random information or new important leads and solve a handful of puzzles along the way. As usual, the city is populated by quite an assortment of curious and unforgettable characters that start being missed by players as soon as the game's credits begin to roll. The game's dialogue remains as sharp as ever, turning every little character interaction into one enjoyable experience that further adds layers to the remarkable Professor Layton universe. Though 3-D models are used in place of straight cartoons, the designers were still able to pull off some likable but bizarre designs that seem to have come out of a Saturday morning cartoon.

The puzzles remain very solid. For those who are familiar with the series, the first few riddles will certainly be quite a breeze to figure out, as more experienced players are already quite high in the scale of true gentlemanliness, but as the game progresses, puzzles grow truly challenging and some of the adventure's many hidden puzzles can take quite a while to figure out. Though most of the puzzles follow the traditional static structure displayed in the previous Layton games - where static text and a charming little goofy image are all that is shown to players, some of the puzzles here offer brand new more interactive interfaces, such as a few occasions where a little sprite of the professor must be moved around in order for him to defeat threatening enemies in a very logical way.

All in all, the game comes packed with 150 puzzles, with an additional will be made daily available by the Nintendo Network. If players just want to blast through the story and get to the bottom of the Masked Gentleman mystery, the game will last for about fifteen hours, but anybody who wants to become a true gentleman and solve all puzzles will find a game that will deliver over thirty hours of very satisfying gameplay. Once the case is solved, after many mind-blowing happenings, there isn't much reason to replay Miracle Mask, such is the nature of a story-centered game, but its gigantic collection of puzzles and the already traditional extra mini-games, that contain dozens of puzzles within themselves, will certainly make this one game worth at least another a hundred, due to how rewarding they are.

In the end, the Miracle Mask undoubtedly stands out among the Layton series due to its visuals, while its gameplay and plot remain true to the series' traditions, which is not bad at all. Five games, and one handheld system later, it comes off as a huge statement to the tight quality of the Layton series that the professor still amazes as strongly as he did when he ventured into one curious village with a equally curious secret. As veteran gentlemen, we have come to expect and nearly foresee all the amazing turns that the plot and puzzles will take, but even in the face of our trained brains Level-5 simply never fails in pulling off surprising tricks. We have grown mentally addicted to asking our favorite gaming franchises to change and transform, but, after playing Miracle Mask, we become even more certain that, when it comes to Layton, all we should ask for is: keep coming, and stay the same.

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"Pierst179 reviewed Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask for the 3DS..." was posted by Pierst179 on Tue, 25 Dec 2012 16:00:24 -0800
]]> http://www.gamespot.com/professor-layton-and-the-miracle-mask/user-reviews/805158/platform/3ds/ Sun, 09 Dec 2012 08:02:07 -0800 Pierst179 reviewed Paper Mario: Sticker Star for the 3DS... http://www.gamespot.com/paper-mario-sticker-star/user-reviews/804449/platform/3ds/ ...and gave it a 7.0.

They say you don't change a winning team, and it is incredibly hard to find a team more successful than the first two Paper Mario games. Born in the shadow of the doubt that surrounded Nintendo's ability to produce a worthy sequence to Super Mario RPG, the two initial installments in the Paper Mario saga were nothing short of stellar; featuring great combat mechanics, fantastic plots, undeniable and irresistible charm, and very sharply written dialogues. Super Paper Mario abandoned the amazing combat mechanics in exchange for the simplicity of a 2-D platformer, but kept the other qualities nearly intact. Paper Mario: Sticker Star takes Super Paper Mario's stripped down level progression as its starting point, and from there it proceeds to change the series to its core, making both good and very bad decisions along the way, and leaving us with a title that is easily dwarfed by all of its better predecessors. Paper Mario: Sticker Star is neither boring nor without charm, but it lacks two core things that made the series so fantastic: a heart, and a purpose.

Paper Mario: Sticker Star begins during an annual Mushroom Kingdom holiday when its inhabitants gather in a square in order to celebrate a festival to witness the coming of the Sticker Comet, which is said to grant wishes. Naturally, Bowser promptly shows up to take control of the comet, and since the Mushroom Kingdom is plagued by poor security planning, the big beast obviously overpowers the three Toads protecting the piece and crashes into the thing. The comet then splits into six pieces: five that end up falling all over the kingdom, and one that lands right on top of Bowser's head, making him ridiculously powerful in the process. As it has been the case with all Paper Mario games until this point, the silly simple central plot is supposed to serve as a trampoline to an underlying number of storylines and mysteries that Mario will have to unwrap in order to reach each of the pieces he is after. Sticker Star, however, in a mind-boggling poor design choice, is extremely thin in the plot development department, as each of its chapters feature no storylines whatsoever.

Both story and dialogue have always been a central element to the success of the series, as they worked as masterful supports to the great gameplay of Paper Mario. Their sudden removal leaves players solely with one heartless central tale, and branching chapters that play more like a New Super Mario Bros. game than another entry in the Paper Mario series, due to their one-dimensional nature born from the sole exclusive focus on gameplay. Encounters with weird and well-developed supporting characters are so rare they border on being null. As a consequence, dialogues become infrequent and stripped down, and the locations players will visit are neither curious nor surprising, as they are simply paperized versions of settings found in all other Mario games, such as a desert, a jungle, icy mountains, a beach and a volcano. As it turns out, a Paper Mario without its plots becomes as hollow as a book that exclusively contains scenario descriptions, and forgets that those scenarios would gain a lot if they had been populated with easy-to-love beings.

Without the plot, the game's spotlight ends up falling solely on the shoulders of its gameplay. Sadly, though, in spite of the fact that its gameplay utilizes concepts that, more than any other game in the series, embrace and make use of the paper-nature of its setting; Sticker Star's playing style presents way too many holes in it, which stop it from fully rescuing the game. The game features chapters which are divided in a series of levels which can be navigated through an overworld of Super Mario World qualities. All of the levels are relatively short, and some of them even provide secret exits that are either optional, opening up paths to hidden locations, or mandatory, blocking the way to proceeding stages. It's an approach that neither does the game any good nor harms it in any considerable way, but that aligns itself quite well with the underlying gameplay.

The biggest conceptual change in Sticker Star, as its title points out, is the presence of stickers, which adds a lot to the great charm of the game and provides a whole new level of thematic cohesion. Mario no longer will battle foes with a predetermined set of attacks. Instead, it is imperative that players collect stickers in order for them to be used in battles. The nature of those consumable attacks is nothing new, as they include different kinds of jumps, hammers, fire and ice flowers, POW blocks, Koopa shells and etc, and the ways on which they must be used keep the battles very engaging, as players need to interact with the usage of those stickers by pressing the action buttons in a timely manner to increase the power of the stickers or protect Mario from enemies' attacks. Collecting and using stickers is undeniably a lot of fun, and in addition they provide an extra strategic element, as players must do some inventory management in order not to be without more powerful stickers once the time to face stronger enemies comes.

However, Nintendo's choice to make stickers more powerful as the game progresses has completely nullified the need for a level system, and - as a consequence - it was naturally removed. Unfortunately, that removal causes a bit of a conceptual problem to the game. As level points are no longer acquired or necessary, the sole reward for battling comes in the form of coins, which in turn are used to buy more stickers. This create the odd situation where players are battling to defeat enemies, to get coins, which are then used to buy the very same stickers that were just used to defeat those enemies. Once players notice that futile cycle, and they most certainly will, one thing becomes quite clear: in Paper Mario Sticker star, battles have no purpose. And when an activity comes with either no reward or a pointless one, which is the case here, performing it becomes one extremely dull affair. As fun as using stickers and pounding enemies is, it will lose its charm after a few goes, as players will just be overwhelmed by the pointless nature of it all.

In addition, the battle system features yet another problem: it has no difficulty balance. When it comes to regular enemies, given how stickers are everywhere just waiting to be plucked from the walls, Mario will more often than not be completely overpower those foes, blowing them away in a few turns. Things become even easier given that Mario can increase the number of stickers he can use in a single turn by spending a few dozen coins, which are also very commonly found in the game, in order to spin a roulette that can grant him the power to use up to three stickers in a single round. In the end, the equation is quite simple: add the unshakable feeling that battles are blatantly pointless with the fact that most of them are a piece of cake, and you got a great engaging battle system that was not very well executed by the folks at Intelligent Systems. While the attempt to change the series is certainly commendable for both how addictive it is to pluck and collect stickers, and how the concept falls right into place with the game's paper world, it is impossible not to see that it was not perfectly implemented.

Boss battles do not suffer from the same lack of challenge, yet they present a different flaw. Bosses are ridiculously powerful, possessing HP bars that are invariably in the hundreds, and defense stats that make most stickers have their power of attack reduced to one, which means that defeating a boos through traditional methods would require almost as many stickers as Mario can carry, incredible defensive abilities by players and a lot of luck. In other words, it is almost impossible, but doable. The alternative is figuring out what is the boss' weakness, which means finding a "Thing Sticker" that will harm it in a significant way. "Things" can be found all throughout the game's stages, either in plain sight or very well-hidden, and their nature is completely random, ranging from objects like a fridge, a radiator, a lucky cat to a goat. When used in battle each will cause a curious, sometimes easy-to-deduct, effect - for example, the fridge will freeze enemies in place - so players must find out which "Thing" will properly work with the boss and cause him huge amounts of damage, turning the battle into a winnable affair.

The problem is: sometimes it is not quite clear which sticker must be used, and - in addition – there is always the chance that, upon coming across a boss battle, you haven't found the right "thing" yet, which will mean Mario will have to face him taking tiny chunks of HP little by little and extending the battle for over twenty minutes, or backtrack and aimlessly look for the "thing" that is just right. The same problem occurs in certain parts of the game's stages, where Mario must use a "thing" sticker to overcome an apparently impossible obstacle. Sometimes the usage of those sticker is obvious, like using a heat-based sticker to melt ice, but on other occasions it is random and nearly impossible to figure out.

Needless to say, in Sticker Star, flaws and issues are as aplenty as stickers. However, the game still manages to be enjoyable to a certain level, and that is mostly due to its level design. The game, when outside battle, offers a nice mix of the traditional Paper Mario exploration and puzzle-solving with interesting platforming sections. Mario will interact with the world in a quite unique way, going into paperize mode, which will allow him to either slap stickers onto scenario elements, allowing him to proceed with his exploration, or plucking pieces of the scenario and scraps in other to glue them in another angle or place. Those puzzles are smartly designed, and quite rewarding to figure out, providing players some truly impressive moments. Other than that, Mario's ability to stick and pluck builds an interesting bridge that connects scenario and gameplay into one cohesive package where gameplay elements walk side-by-side with the game's very charming paper world, which here is presented as gorgeously as ever, especially given the addition of the system's 3D effects, which fall perfectly into place in a world consisting of paper pieces.

Paper Mario: Sticker Star is by no means comparable to its predecessors in terms of quality. Not only are some of its gameplay elements flawed to the point where the game feels underdeveloped, such as in the poor difficulty balance and the lack of purpose on the battles, but it is also lacking tremendously in the storyline category, as none of the characters, settings or mysteries that made the previous Paper Mario games can be found in this installment. Its world, as a consequence, ends up being extremely paper-thin, featuring no sidequests - aside from a museum where a collection of all of the world's stickers can be displayed - and barely no characters that can be interacted with. The game is, however, still worth a try due to its full embracing of its paper-made world and because a few of its newly found gimmicks are interesting, even if it is for a little while, and its technical aspects are absolutely stellar. As part of a series that has been nothing short of spectacular, Sticker Star is still quite a disappointment, though.

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"Pierst179 reviewed Paper Mario: Sticker Star for the 3DS..." was posted by Pierst179 on Sun, 09 Dec 2012 08:02:07 -0800
]]> http://www.gamespot.com/paper-mario-sticker-star/user-reviews/804449/platform/3ds/ Sat, 24 Nov 2012 10:38:43 -0800 Pierst179 reviewed Disney Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two for the Wii... http://www.gamespot.com/disney-epic-mickey-2-the-power-of-two/user-reviews/803688/platform/wii/ ...and gave it a 6.0.

Sequels always carry some degree of intrigue. If they are the continuation of a memorable title, they present a remarkable challenging of not only achieving, but trying to find a way to surpass the game that preceded it. However, if they come on the heels of a underwhelming, or even bad, gaming experience, they provide an unusual positive situation. After all, with the reading of the many reviews across the press, and the listening to fans' complaints and suggestions, the developers are faced with a clear drawn path right in front of their eyes, and, if they follow the suggested recipe, the outcome will most likely be a clear improvement over what came before. The original Epic Mickey had to live up to high hopes, and rightfully so, since it was the work of the devotion of one of the greatest game designers of our time, and featured Mickey Mouse and other Disney icons trying to reclaim the high level of praise directed towards Disney platformers of the 90s. The game, however, ended up suffering from a few punctual mistakes that stopped all of its pieces from coming together nicely.

Epic Mickey 2, then, sets out to fix those issues and finally deliver the game we all have been waiting for, and, initially, it starts off quite nicely. If Mickey and Oswald were, during the biggest part of the last game, clear antagonists, this time around the mouse and the rabbit join forces to find out the truth about mysterious earthquakes that have been plaguing and destroying the recently recovered wasteland. Watching Mickey and Oswald interact with each other, and with other famous Disney figures, on the game's very well-done stylish cutscenes is quite a sight, and the fact that Junction Point decided to turn the game into an occasional musical fits right in with the overall goofy humor the game successfully conveys. Even if the game's plot is less inspired and more predictable than the great tale told in the original, it is still a very good story considering the average standard of the platforming genre.

The fact that Oswald and Mickey are now working as a team obviously expands the gameplay possibilities, as the two of them need to frequently combine their powers in order to surpass the many platforming and combat obstacles. While Mickey uses his paint and thinner to either restore or destroy the world around him, Oswald carries a remote controller with which he can unleash electrical attacks or hack devices. The stages are packed with opportunities for both of them to work together, whether it is by using Oswald as a tool to powering Mickey's jump or activating switches simultaneously. In fact, cooperation is so vital that even the sidescrolling stages that are based on Mickey's old cartoons and that server as a link between major locations have been designed to give both players the opportunity to simultaneously traverse the same stage following different routes, something that often produces some quite amusing results.

However, the whole concept of a team is sadly undermined by both bad AI and questionable design choices when it comes to combat. Oswald is not as smart as a partner should be, and while he does not get stuck on any objects, Mickey will frequently have to wait for him to arrive at his current location if the two of them are to activate an object at the same time to follow. Some players might even fail to notice that shortcoming, but if there is one thing that cannot, by any chance, be missed, is how ridiculously annoying combat is. Most of the enemies in the game are big armored beasts, meaning that Mickey and his brush is not able to beat them by himself. Therefore, when adventuring alone, players must wait for Oswald to attack the bad guys before Mickey can go in and do the real damage. Unfortunately, Oswald occasionally misses his chances to attack, which turns simple battles against regular minions into something that extends for a little bit too long.

While the last game suffered from poor camera implementation, Epic Mickey 2 is clearly free from that issue, which means that full-blown glorious platforming can be enjoyed without any technical issues. The problem is that Epic Mickey 2 never quite succeeds in producing great stages or environments, and its level design is clearly worse than that of its predecessor, failing to produce any truly engaging moments, with a few clear exceptions. It is hard to point out what exactly it is that stops Epic Mickey 2 from featuring locations as good as those on the original, but a good guess would be the game's setting. On Epic Mickey players had to explore a dark sinister place that had been torn apart by some bizarre corruption of ink, but on Epic Mickey 2 a huge part of the gloom and mystery is gone, replacing artistic darkness that put a great twist on familiar Disney-happy environments with places that have been devastated by earthquakes. If Epic Mickey looked like a steampunk Disney painting, The Power of Two features levels that almost invariably look like a cluttered mess of Disney references and memorabilia, being closer to an unorganized dirty bedroom than something that is tarnished, but, at the same time, intriguing to look at.

Sad to say, aside from story, overall good use of Disney licenses, fun little sidescrolling levels and solid controls, the only things left to admire on The Power of Two are concept and ambition. Once again, but this time around in a much more pronounced way, Mickey stars in a game that does not live up to everything that it could be. When looking at the great number of sidequests, something that is very unusual for a platformer, it is plain to see that Junction Point was determined to build something big and significant. The goals of those sidequests range from taking pictures of locations and "hidden Mickeys" - regular objects in the scenario that are arranged to form the silhouette of Mickey's head to collecting treasures in certain locations, and most of them hold good value, whether it is by providing players with significant rewards either in the form of a nice reference that will make Disney fans very excited, or a valuable a collectible; or by pushing gamers to find some of the secrets hidden in the game's environments.

Even if the game's artistic direction pales in comparison to what appeared on the last game, The Power of Two is a game with nice visuals, especially when it comes to character models and animations. And its visuals even come to the aid of gameplay every once in a while, because - much like in the original title – using the paint to slowly reconstruct the pieces of the scenario that have been damaged by the earthquakes brings some degree of reward. In addition, and rightfully living up to the very high standards established by Disney's cartoons in the musical department, it showcases a few great tunes that are either newly composed or reinterpretations of classic Disney songs that are imprinted on the minds of anyone who has watched one of the company's animations.

When it is all said and done, The Power of Two does what not a whole lot of people expected it to do: it fails to surpass the original and, in a bad turn of events, it winds up being considerably worse. Gone is the darkness that made Epic Mickey so remarkable, and in come messy environments whose elements are not cleverly used to produce noteworthy levels. Disney fans might get some moments of rush either by seeing their favorite characters interacting with each other in the development of a nice story, or by sinking their teeth into the Disney collectibles available that include old Silly Symphonies or Mickey Mouse cartoons that become available to be watched. However, those who have a lesser degree of admiration for the company will find a game that is uninspired and that feels rushed due to the fact that it falls so far away from its predecessor. The eight hours of adventure are, sadly, neither intense nor unforgettable. They are, though, an awfully sad sight, because as far as being a gamer goes, there is nothing sadder than watching a game with good heart, intentions and ambitions fall flat on its face.

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"Pierst179 reviewed Disney Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two for the Wii..." was posted by Pierst179 on Sat, 24 Nov 2012 10:38:43 -0800
]]> http://www.gamespot.com/disney-epic-mickey-2-the-power-of-two/user-reviews/803688/platform/wii/ Tue, 20 Nov 2012 08:32:14 -0800 Pierst179 reviewed New Super Mario Bros. 2 for the 3DS... http://www.gamespot.com/new-super-mario-bros-2/user-reviews/803465/platform/3ds/ ...and gave it a 8.5.

What started, in the Nintendo DS, as a nice little homage to Mario's glories of the past, has suddenly developed into a best-selling series of games that proves the strength and relevance that sidescrollers still posses. The New Super Mario Bros. series is a nostalgic look into the past adventures of the famous fat Italian plumber, but it refuses to sit lazily on the name of its brand, which by itself would guarantee a few million copies sold. Instead, it keeps pushing the boundaries of Mario's 2-D stages, offering elements and gimmicks that provide a refreshing approach to a gameplay style that has been explored by dozens of games. Whether or not Nintendo has been milking this new-found cash cow a little bit too excessively is certainly debatable, but one thing is for sure: New Super Mario Bros. 2, the latest entry in the series, may not be up to par to the very best platformers of the franchise, but it certainly does a great job in entertaining and surprising with stages that are very creative and nicely designed.

It would be no exaggeration to say that this is the same old Mario you have come to know over the years. After all, the game starts with Princess Peach being kidnapped by Bowser and his army of charming Koopalings; Mario, as usual, proceeds in chasing the hoodlums through stages featuring already familiar themes, such as forest, snow, desert and others; and elements like power-ups and the three star coins that can to be found nicely hidden in every stage are all here. However, New Super Mario Bros. 2 attempts to shake things up by putting a never-seen-before emphasis on the collection of coins. If during the 80s those coins were relatively rare and signified the difference between life and death, here they are everywhere. They show up in hundreds when Mario hits switches, they drop out of enemies who are eliminated by the plumber and there are seas of coins in secret locations all throughout the stages.

What that addition means is that now, more than ever, lives are not a matter of concern. Instead, collecting a hundred coins - which, results in an extra life – happens so often, that the game encourages players to climb their way to obtaining 999 lives. Some people may see that as a huge offense to what Mario platformers originally stood for. However, the truth is modern game has long abolished the concept of lives, and turning them into some sort of collectible ends up actually being a nice little twist that provides extra incentive to collect even more coins. In addition, it is important to note that, even if lives are plentiful, the game remains nicely changing at some points, because, when it is all said and done, the difficulty of Mario games does not come from the fact lives are short, but because the stages are occasionally devilish designed, and star coins are deviously hidden, to make players pay for poorly performed jumps, and New Super Mario Bros. 2 manages to do those two things quite well.

The game's stage design remains its strongest prowess. Even though it starts slowly, like always, the game starts to pick up speed by the second world, and by the time the title reaches its halfway point it soars very high above its predecessor and somehow close to the Wii version in terms of stage brilliancy. However, it is worthy noting that the game offers some sort of strange contradiction. In spite of the fact that the game announces coin collecting as some sort of huge shift in gameplay, that dramatic change is never really felt in a consistent manner. It is true that the stages have a large amount of coins waiting to be picked up and that a few elements here and there provide significant gameplay additions aided by coin-collecting. However, there are only a few remarkable stages that truly embrace the disclosed idea of turning the game into one insane treasure hunt where the loot is pretty much everywhere. Those few stages clearly stand out from the crowd, and while they are neither better nor worse than the great more traditional stages, they are more aligned with the game's overall intention.

The result is an absolutely great Mario game that still managed to be very engaging, but that offers a weird bland of well-designed stages that have tons of coins and incredible stages that put a huge focus on acquiring them. It is a characteristic that, at no time, harms the game in any significant manner. What it does is occasionally giving players the feeling that some levels are not as bold and crazy as they could have been, which makes it visible that the title and the stage designers could have used an extra push to go completely wild in order to be able to turn New Super Mario Bros. 2 into a game that completely fulfilled its marketed purpose. Some people will be affected by that trait in a negative way, while others will just be a tad disappointed in concluding that it could have been much better and fresher.

After being done with the adventure, players still have quite a bit to get out of New Super Mario Bros. 2. The game comes packed with a Coin Rush mode where three stages are randomly selected and players must them attempt to clear all of them collecting as many coins as possible. For each stage Mario will be given a Golden Flower power-up, which also shows up on the single-player mode in a few occasions, with which he will gain the ability to shoot golden fireballs and turn every single block into a nice shiny coin. It is a fun little mode, and it offers nice incentive to those who want to play the game's fantastic stages a bit more, it, however, ends up having its value somehow diminished because Nintendo simply failed to implement any kind of online leaderboards where players could compare their scores to those of other people around the globe. The same can be said about the single-player mode's coin counter, which sums up all coins you have ever collected. Both Coin Rush and the counter could have gained a lot if Nintendo were more keen in promoting competition among its fans.

In the end, New Super Mario Bros. 2 is undeniably a great title and a worthy purchase to all Nintendo 3DS owners. It has great visuals and music, despite the fact that Nintendo could have chosen to add new visual and musical artifacts instead of simply reusing the same old ones, and - most importantly – absolutely fantastic stages that are constantly surprising and often challenging. Had it truly embraced its coin-collecting antics, it would have a great chance at being a very remarkable Mario title, but in its overly safe approach it winds up as yet another solid entry in the franchise.

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"Pierst179 reviewed New Super Mario Bros. 2 for the 3DS..." was posted by Pierst179 on Tue, 20 Nov 2012 08:32:14 -0800
]]> http://www.gamespot.com/new-super-mario-bros-2/user-reviews/803465/platform/3ds/ Fri, 16 Nov 2012 16:43:31 -0800 Pierst179 reviewed No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle for the Wii... http://www.gamespot.com/no-more-heroes-2-desperate-struggle/user-reviews/803281/platform/wii/ ...and gave it a 8.5.

In a way, designing a game, like building pretty much anything from the ground up, comes down to doing a lot of little things right - or wrong - and then finding a way to integrate them nicely - or poorly - to form a single glorious - or disastrous - package. That is why, more often than not, the difference between a great game and a poor one is in the tiny details that in conjunction rescue the game from the bargain bin and lift it straight into the list of critically acclaimed best-sellers. No More Heroes 2 is a classic example of that concept. Though its bare bones reveal a game that could have ended up being labeled as generic or monotonous, the items and decorations added to that structure end up catapulting the game into much higher grounds. Suda 51 has found a way to craft one of the most outrageous, dirty, provoking games to ever make its way to a home console and, ironically, it landed on the family-friendly Wii.

At its core, No More Heroes 2 is annoying straightforward. Aimed with a laser sword, your character seems to have an ability to make enemies a little bit too easily. Hence, the game is nothing but a 3-D version of the old-school beat 'em up games that populated arcades in the early 90s. You walk into a room, a large horde of enemies comes, you beat them senseless, or headless, with your sword while producing very gory results (including water fountain-like torrents of blood coming out of decapitated bodies) and then you are either attacked by more enemies or receive the green light to move onto the next room to face the next group of bad guys. Sure, the character has a few varied moves to be used during battle, but they are not enough to break the game's mold at any times, meaning that No More Heroes 2 could be a game blindly walking into a dark pit of rinse-and-repeat gameplay.

However, long before the game falls to its doom, it is readily rescued by the many layers of personality added on top of the formula. Travis Touchdown, a former assassin and inhabitant of Santa Destroy, suddenly sees himself in a situation where he must go back to his former bloody life when one of his closest friends is murdered by the top-ranked assassin in the city. Since confrontation with the killer, and sweet revenge, can only be achieved by climbing up the ranks, Travis rejoins the assassin guild with a strong urge to fight and slice his way to the top of the list. However, his way up the ranks will demand a lot of work as, since the guild has become increasingly popular and Travis is re-entering it from the bottom, he ranks in the meager 99th spot.

Although he does not fight 98 assassins, Travis' journey up the ranks will put him in confrontation with some absolutely ridiculous - in the good sense of the word, of course - figures. The game's many stages take place in different locations across town such as a stadium, a university and etc. and in each of these locations Travis will come across assassins that not only fit the theme of the place perfectly, but also often work as exaggerated caricatures of the people that would inhabit those places. What is truly great about No More Heroes 2 is that you simply do not know what to expect next, and due to that the game constantly keeps players on their toes and wondering what maddening insanity they will find at the next location they have to visit. There is only one certainty; whatever is there to be found, it will most likely be either offensive to a part of the population or simply disgusting.

The game's personality obviously extends beyond the assassins. It overflows Santa Destroy and contaminates everything Travis does or says, and all the people he interacts with. Santa Destroy reveals itself, either through the development of its story or through the minor side-encounters, to be a true concrete jungle where people are selfish, reckless and have no regard whatsoever towards common sense or public opinion. Travis himself is the very extreme portray of a geek that loves games, wrestling and mangas, and has politically incorrect thoughts of woman as frequently as he slashes somebody's throat open. He is a man that sits on the toilet in order to save the game, undertakes any kind of job in order to collect some money, uses foul language in every sentence and only shows true affection towards his overweight cat.

Speaking of the jobs Travis takes, they are possibly one of the highlights of the game. No More Heroes 2 is a game filled with old-school gaming references, to the design of some of the game's graphics to the beeps that occasionally appear among its sound effects, and that 8-bit-gaming homage becomes full-blown in those jobs. Whether he is removing giant bugs from a house, cooking a steak to the requested point, making deliveries in his motorcycle or collecting coconuts, player will be accompanying Travis on those activities through 8-bit mini-games divided in many levels that could very well have been full-fledged NES titles since they are so fun and addicting. There are about ten of those mini-games, including the ones Travis must perform in the local gym to increase his stamina and attack power, and even though money is not an extreme necessity on the game, at least on its easiest levels of difficulty, players will most likely be spending many hours - literally - performing those activities while they take a break from the constant killing.

Outside the 8-bit realm, the game's visuals are perfectly suited for the world the software tries to convey. No More Heroes 2 features a highly-stylized cell-shaded art direction, giving the characters the ability to broadcast their over-the-top emotions and ideas with great precision and allowing developers to take some rather extreme and ideal steps when it comes to the violence shown in battles. Most importantly, though, the visuals nicely go along with Travis' love for HQs, making the whole No More Heroes 2 feel like it lives inside a very bizarre nearly-apocalyptic comic-book setting where humans are about to destroy themselves due to sheer insanity.

No More Heroes 2, though, does have a good number of flaws that work against its many qualities. The game's sound effects, more specifically the words uttered by characters during battle, is so limited that players will be hearing the same exact cries for mercy or help once every five seconds. Another considerable issue is the game's camera, which often fails to show the best angle that the action demands, creating some rather frustrating situations. Finally, the repetitive nature of the battles could have been solved by bigger enemy variety, but that is not the case as even though the groups of enemies differ in their composition and number, they are usually formed by less than ten different sorts of enemies that can, pretty much, be all defeated in the same way.

Overall, No More Heroes 2 is a great title. It could have gone wrong in a number of ways, but through its sheer disregard for all things naturally human it manages to find a many ways to succeed. The adventure lasts for about eight hours, discounting the time spent on the mini-games, and there are nice extras - such as a few challenging difficulty levels – that serve as good incentive for players to come back. No More Heroes 2 shows that videogames are at their very best when they are set free from the constraints and rules that make hour real world so dull and mundane.

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"Pierst179 reviewed No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle for the Wii..." was posted by Pierst179 on Fri, 16 Nov 2012 16:43:31 -0800
]]> http://www.gamespot.com/no-more-heroes-2-desperate-struggle/user-reviews/803281/platform/wii/ Wed, 14 Nov 2012 21:28:43 -0800 jim_shorts reviewed Halo: Reach for the Xbox 360... http://www.gamespot.com/halo-reach/user-reviews/803174/platform/xbox360/ ...and gave it a 9.0!

I may be a little late to the party, but I'd like to give my honest opinion either way.

Halo Reach is a surprising return to form for Bungie and the Halo franchise. Bungie knew it would be their last entry and it shows. The campaign is the best since the original Halo and the set pieces are impressive. Many slight improvements were made that I enjoyed in particular, such as giving the Elites and Grunts their alien languages back. I felt that this makes them much more menacing and alien in their presentation. The game is polished to a high level both graphically and aesthetically. The game just looks really good. As for the gameplay itself, I'll divide that between campaign and multiplayer.

The campaign was surprisingly good, save for a few weak segments. You know the ending from the beginning, but it's very well executed. A constant theme of the game is sacrifice, and one sees this play out among their squadmates and the planet as a whole. Fighting the Covenant across the planet is immensely satisfying and the game has a bit of a Combat Evolved feel to it. Most players will miss the Battle Rifle, but for me the DMR is just as serviceable. The reticule bloom is a bit of an annoyance at times, but it's not overly crippling. In truth the new Needle Rifle is a better all around weapon. The vehicle segments leave something to be desired, especially the space battle. It seemed unnecessary and shoe horned in. Probably because it was unnecessary and shoe horned in. Overall the campaign is quite good however.

Everyone seems to play these games for the multiplayer though, so let's look at that. Competitively speaking, this game is a step down from Halo 3. The reticule bloom adds an element of randomness that rewards spamming as often as it punishes it. Couple that with the much maligned armor lock and jetpack and you have yourself a pretty broken multiplayer from a competitive standpoint. Later playlists would fix a lot of these issues, but those playlists are always less populated. If you aren't a competitive sort, there's plenty of fun to be had here. All the beloved playlists make a return. Snipers, SWAT, and even Zombies are all as fun as ever. The new maps aren't the best though. The best maps in the game are remakes of the Halo 2 maps. Countdown is among the worst the franchise has to offer, along with The Cage.

All in all, Halo: Reach is a very satisfying addition to the Halo franchise and a fine last entry for Bungie. It's not without its flaws or infuriating moments like every Halo has, but it's good enough to be one of my favorites in the series.

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"jim_shorts reviewed Halo: Reach for the Xbox 360..." was posted by jim_shorts on Wed, 14 Nov 2012 21:28:43 -0800
]]> http://www.gamespot.com/halo-reach/user-reviews/803174/platform/xbox360/ Sun, 04 Nov 2012 11:07:31 -0800 jim_shorts reviewed NCAA Football 13 for the Xbox 360... http://www.gamespot.com/ncaa-football-13/user-reviews/802541/platform/xbox360/ ...and gave it a 4.0.

Where do I begin with NCAA 13? This game fails on just about every level. The game is essentially the same as the previous installment, but with a few "improvements" that are primarily cosmetic and don't address the fundamental flaws in the gameplay. What are these flaws you ask? Well, pretty much every aspect of the actual football.

The AI defense is psychic and knows what play you audible to. If you start out with a run play, the safeties will come in to stop it. Audible to a pass play and they drop back to stop the pass. It's this kind of cheap difficulty that defines this game. Furthermore, turnovers are extremely prevalent to a point where it gets ridiculous. I've fumbled numerous times even when holding the "cradle the ball" button. AI Linebackers are still superhuman demigods who can sense where the ball is being passed without looking, leap 43 inches into the air, spin 180 degrees and make an interception.

Conversely, Your offense's AI is abysmal in every aspect. Don't even try to run a screen pass, because your blockers will just run past the people they're supposed to block. Your offensive line can't pick up blitzes either. Often two or three linemen will be occupied by a single pass rusher, letting two or three have their way with your quarterback. Punt coverage is similarly broken. Receivers barely even make a play for the ball. They prefer to stand still and let the ball come to them. Couple this with the superhuman linebackers and that leads to lots of interceptions. The game isn't difficult though, it's easy to overcome these flaws even on harder difficulties. Players should not have to deal with these glaring flaws however.

There are many sequences that cut from the game and break your rhythm and concentration. Periodically the screen will cut to the score of another game with some contrived dribble from Kirk Herbstreit. It is incredibly annoying and it grows tiresome after the 57th time. It baffles me that anyone thought this would be a good idea.

If the game has one thing going for it, it's the recruiting system in Dynasty mode. It's a fun thing to recruit players to build a great team, even if it does get a little tedious at times. I would even argue that the only legitimately fun part of the game can be found in the recruiting.

NCAA 13 adds to the recent drop in quality of the franchise. It saddens me that the franchise hasn't produced a good game since Mark Ingram was on the cover.

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"jim_shorts reviewed NCAA Football 13 for the Xbox 360..." was posted by jim_shorts on Sun, 04 Nov 2012 11:07:31 -0800
]]> http://www.gamespot.com/ncaa-football-13/user-reviews/802541/platform/xbox360/ Mon, 29 Oct 2012 18:06:24 -0700 Pierst179 reviewed de Blob 2 for the Wii... http://www.gamespot.com/de-blob-2/user-reviews/802214/platform/wii/ ...and gave it a 8.5.

There are many kinds of dictatorship: there is the kind that tries to control the press and stop any criticism towards the government from being published; there are the ones neatly disguised as a democracy that supposedly fights for the well-fare of its people and allows their voice to be heard and considered; and there are the ones that are blatant, brutal and oppressive. Regardless of how they are implemented, they have one thing in common: they all take away something that is of vital importance for its population. In the case of De Blob 2, that item of key importance is color. What was once a colorful world full of life is put under a black-and-white dictatorship that turns once lively beings into colorless soldiers, workers or zombies; and what were pulsing suburbs and districts into ugly concentration camps. Their only hope is a group of fearless astute rebels led by a blob that is full of attitude.

Not many games present such a sensible marriage of theme and gameplay as De Blob 2, and its predecessor do. The game takes place in a city that has had its personality completely robbed by an authoritarian figure that has managed to reach power, and being put in the middle of those landscapes, in a rather exciting fashion shown through cutscenes, with a character that has the ability to color everything he touches makes players feel like a toddler that has just been put inside a completely white room with a handful of buckets of paint. It is virtually impossible not to be at least a little bit pumped by the fact that you are about to be the one responsible for turning boredom and blandness into a huge riot that looks more like a street party.

The game's positive value of progressive restoration is further increased by an absolutely glorious sound design. When players first go into a stage, De Blob's world will be a music-less place, but as the first buildings are painted, the game's songs will slowly go in a crescendo until they reach their full blasting capabilities when the area you are is completely transformed. It all starts with a few shy horns and out of place beats, but before you know it - given how naturally the transition is done – you will be listening to a fantastic jazzy tune that, much like your colors, seems to give life back to a once dead city. If De Blob's sense of rebellion is somehow not enough to get you thrilled, its music will certainly get the job promptly done.

De Blob's gameplay is rather simple. Players need to find sources of paint, which are more than plentiful, and fill the character up with as much ink as possible. After that, it is all a matter of mixing up colors as you go and painting signs, trees, buildings, monochromatic citizens and pretty much everything else while dealing with the armies of oppression. The character's movements are restricted to rolling around town, jumping - which, thankfully, this time around is mapped to the A-button - and ground pounding enemies into oblivion, but the game does offer a few extra mechanisms that increase the number of ways on which De Blob can move around, including jumping pads, which provide Spider-Man-like moments of swinging from one building to another; gravity buttons; and electromagnetic walls that allow him to climb up a few buildings seamlessly.

The game offers a dozen absolutely huge stages that feature no loading time whatsoever. Fans of the first game will certainly remember how frustrating the lack of checkpoints was. However, that problem has been wisely solved. Therefore, players can stop playing stages, that usually last from forty minutes to one full hour, and be able to keep all of their progress up to the last checkpoint they walked by. Another nice little addition is the fact that, when De Blob goes inside an important building to transform it, the game takes a sidescrolling perspective. While there is nothing mind-blowing or new about it - as it is pretty much the same game, only in a different perspective - the sidescrolling areas offer a few interesting design choices that the wide-open outside world does not, such as the ability to build mini-dungeons or puzzle situations where the players need to find certain colors and combine them in order to open a locked door and rescue citizens.

De Blob also offers a good amount of value for those who feel like spending a few extra hours with the game. Clearing each of the levels is simply a matter of fulfilling a few key objectives, like painting a few buildings in a certain color, defeating a horde of powerful enemies and eventually restoring a signature structure to its former glory. However, each stage packs much more than that, and gives incentives for players to keep exploring even after they are finished with the area's main goal. There are literally dozens of collectibles on each stage, and there are nice rewards for restoring all the trees, saving all the citizens, painting all the signs, coloring all the buildings, clearing all the missions and destroying all objects belonging to the government. In fact, De Blob is such an engaging experience that, chances are, players will feel like doing all that stuff in a single playthrough, as there is a great feel-good reward associated with fully restoring the part of the city you are in.

The game is not without its flaws, though. Some stages, despite the good scenario variety, are a little bit too long for their own good, and by the final sections of a few of them it is possible that some players will be burned out over the whole coloring affair. There is also a big amount of handholding going on through the adventure, as all mission objectives are clearly pointed out to players and all items - trees, signs, citizens and others, with the exception of the collectible items – can be tracked down a little bit too easily by using an in-game compass that guides De Blob to the location of what is missing. It might be a welcome addition to some, as the stages are huge and tracking down those minimal objects would be a pain without any instructions, but the feeling that directions could have been given in another, less specific, manner just cannot be helped.

In the end, De Blob 2 is yet another great platformer for the Nintendo Wii. The game does the punctual adjustments that are expected of a sequel, and offers more of the same gameplay with a few twists and turns here and there. The game's strengths have been preserved and further polished, including the game's vibrant visuals and its hilarious slapstick cutscenes, and even though some flaws have been inherited from its predecessor, De Blob 2 is definitely the best out of the two. For those who have played the original and feel a sudden urge to paint some more, it is a more than welcome game; and for those who are naturally intrigued by its premise and concept, De Blob 2 will be a fresh and very rewarding experience.

Get the full article at GameSpot

"Pierst179 reviewed de Blob 2 for the Wii..." was posted by Pierst179 on Mon, 29 Oct 2012 18:06:24 -0700
]]> http://www.gamespot.com/de-blob-2/user-reviews/802214/platform/wii/ Sun, 07 Oct 2012 06:49:18 -0700 Minishdriveby reviewed Kid Icarus: Uprising for the 3DS... http://www.gamespot.com/kid-icarus-uprising/user-reviews/801054/platform/3ds/ ...and gave it a 6.5.

Kid Icarus: Uprising is a mixed bag. The controls are fairly bad, and although they become manageable in time, I never was able to master them during my 8 hour playthrough. I'm talking specifically about the ground missions when I say they were bad. The on-rail flight sections were truly a joy, but the ground system and some of the vehicles you can hop into, the bike specifically, are horrid. The camera is moved around by flicking the stylus across the bottom screen, not moving the stylus toward the side, but flicking the stylus. With a little bit of trouble you get use to this system; however, Pit also has a problem with moving. There's a dash/run system that speeds Pit up quite a bit, and this is done by flicking the control nub in the direction you want pit to dash. The only problem is sometimes you'll go to just walk and you'll end up dashing off a ledge. This is what caused the majority of deaths in my game. It wasn't enemy difficulty that caused deaths; it was the clunky platforming if you can even call it platforming (Pit can't jump), really it was just falling off platforms that were floating above bottomless pits.

Because I tallied up quite a bit of deaths due to this horrible control method, I realized another system that is rather odd in Kid Icarus, the difficulty system. You can change the difficulty in Kid Icarus at the start of every level. All you need is the games currency to bet that you can finish the level. You bet more and more hearts as you increase the difficulty level scale which has absurdly minute increments (Really what's the difference between a difficulty level of 3.0 and 3.1?!). If you don't have enough hearts, in game currency, you cannot raise the difficulty. Then if you die in the level, say do to falling off platforms to many times which will likely happen, the difficulty will be lowered by a whole point and a half in some cases. I didn't enjoy this system because enemies are fairly easy to beat and the boss at the end of every level only takes 2 minutes to beat. I started countless boss battles that were finished in under a minute which is a shame because the boss designs were pretty cool.

Another complaint is that the checkpoints are not save points in the levels. You have to play the whole level to save.

So those were the major faults I had with the game. What were the positives?

Well the game had an awesome musical score. It really was a cool playing through the on-rail flying sections and listening to this game with headphones on. Even the ground segments had good music. The voice acting is non-stop and although you may miss a couple quips here and there do to focusing on the screen and not listening, there are some good one liners, 4th wall breaks, and references in the game to make a couple mental laughs happen. I found it really funny when Pit came across a boss and had a littleRocky Horror Picture show moment.

The atmosphere and level design/diversity were also awesome. There are 25 chapters and each one is unique and is a joy to look at. Once again the most credit has to be given to the flying sections as they are more controlled and give you a bunch of cool cinematics and awesome background and foreground scenes as you swoop and dodge enemies and environmental objects. Ground levels still look nice, but they are a little more generic. Each levels plays as a mini-chapter, and once finished you return to the main menu, which is reminiscent of Super Smash Bros Brawl main menu, to buy/sell weapons, combine weapons, and select the next level to play. The story has quite a bit of twists and turns to enjoy as well, so you'll always be seeing something new.

There is also a cool weapon system where you can synthesis weapons and redeem hearts to buy more weapons. To be honest I didn't dig too deep into this system, but I did find it to be a nice feature that added more depth to the game.

Kid Icarus could have been a great revival of a character. It has all the right pieces to make an amazing game, but the controls become the biggest factor in causing the game to slip from the pedestal. If you can find it on sale, I'd say get it, but I cannot recommend this game at full price.

+ Amazing Music/non-stop voice acting
+ Varied Atmosphere
+ Weapon Customization
- Fairly Bad Controls that cause most of the deaths in the game
- Weird difficulty system that will lower difficulty if you die
- Checkpoints are not Savepoints

Total time: 8 hours
Price: $15
Score: 6.5

*Note: I don't play video games online, so I cannot comment on the online portion of the game.

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"Minishdriveby reviewed Kid Icarus: Uprising for the 3DS..." was posted by Minishdriveby on Sun, 07 Oct 2012 06:49:18 -0700
]]> http://www.gamespot.com/kid-icarus-uprising/user-reviews/801054/platform/3ds/ Fri, 28 Sep 2012 15:42:23 -0700 Pierst179 reviewed Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon for the Wii... http://www.gamespot.com/fragile-dreams-farewell-ruins-of-the-moon/user-reviews/800597/platform/wii/ ...and gave it a 7.0.

Seto is a young boy living in a post-apocalyptic world where pretty much the entire world population has vanished for unexplained reasons. Living with an old man Seto refers to as his grandfather, the boy ends up finding himself alone in the world when his elder dies. After burying his body, Seto comes across a message where the man tells him he believes there might be survivors on a nearby red tower, and pleads that the boy go there in order to, hopefully, find someone. And so, a young boy sets off into an uncharted devastated world on a desperate quest to find someone just like him. Carrying a flashlight and a stick to fight off his enemies, he tackles a lonely journey where, while glancing at the destruction surrounding him and coming across the ghostly remnants and memories of those who vanished, he needs to confront his own traumas.

Fragile, undeniably, packs quite a concept, which is made unique by a very distinct presentation. The game's blend of cell-shaded graphics, interesting color palette and character design obviously inspired by Japanese cartoons gives birth to a very appealing visual, and one that - while cheerfully contradicting the game's dark premise - ends up creating quite an impressive conflicted marriage between theme and image. The game is very successful in broadcasting a desolate sense of destruction. Throughout the adventure Seto will explore a number of different scenarios like a mall, a theme park, a train station, a hotel and more, and each one of those is tied together in their ability to portray the wreckage of a destroyed world. What is perhaps the most amazing component of that presentation is how even the tiniest objects in a room are both designed and placed carefully in order to further emphasize the feeling of abandonment.

Sadly, the game's brilliant presentation is not matched by an excellent gameplay. When dealing with exploration, Fragile absolutely soars, because it is such a big pleasure to take a good look at its world or find objects that tell stories about the people who were there at the time of the apocalypse, but more often than not the game engages in gameplay scenarios that are obviously designed to pad the adventure. At one point, for example, the game forces the character to move around a theme park chasing a character that has stolen Seto's belongings. Instead of betting in straightforward exploration, which would be far more compelling, but much shorter, the developers decided to make Seto repeatedly visit all the areas of the scenario. It is something that, along with backtracking, happens often and works against the game's sense of immersion, because it reminds people they not only are playing a game, but a game that is artificially trying to inflate its size.

While Seto explores the world, he will stumble upon a good number of varied enemies, and, as it happens in most games, combat becomes a welcome item to break the game's pace every once in a while. However, in Fragile it is not that welcome, because the game ignores something that - twelve years before its release - was established as vital for combat in a 3-D environment: a lock system. That means players will be left to manage the camera during battles, which in turn causes Seto to miss a few of his blows or even get hit unfairly simply because the camera angle did not shift fast enough or because players did not move it accurately. It is archaic and frustrating, and the only thing that makes it better is the fact that combats are really not that challenging.

To make matters worse, the game's item management is a chore. Seto has a briefcase with a few open slots where he can store weapons, healing items or mystery items - objects that can either be valuable belongings with memories attached to them, or precious metals that can be sold. In addition, he can carry extra items in his inventory. Unfortunately, switching items between the inventory and the briefcase, and discovering what exactly the found mystery item is can only be done at save points - present in the form of fires. That design leads to many situations where, for example, your character's weapon loses stamina and breaks and you have to fight with a broken weapon until you locate a save point, or where your briefcase gets so full of mystery items you have to stop, sit by the fire and examine them before moving on. While the fires are numerous, sitting by them involves watching a five-second cutscene where Seto warms himself up and mutters some pointless comment. Five seconds might not be a lot, but when summed up over the course of many hours of gameplay, it quickly becomes annoying.

Fortunately, the game is partially saved by its technical aspects. The controls work well for the most part, and the use of the flashlight is intuitive and precise. The only issues show up when Seto moves around very tight spots and the camera responds a little awkwardly, moving by jumping from one position to the other, instead of performing a smooth transition. Those situations, though, are very rare. The game also has a fantastic moody soundtrack that goes along nicely with its theme, and the cutscenes that reveal details of Seto's journey and of the game's good storyline are quite an achievement, especially in their art design, as they look like very well-produced Japanese cartoons with a greatly sensible artistic direction.

In the end, Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon is a game that is very appealing in its concept and story, but that due to odd design choices and boring padding - which fails to extend the game's duration for more than six hours or so, ends up not delivering the promised product. Some gamers will find themselves so engaged by the game's world, story, graphics and soundtrack that they will find it in themselves to love the game in one way or another, but others will be too bothered by the game's conspicuous issues to get too much enjoyment out of it.

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]]> http://www.gamespot.com/fragile-dreams-farewell-ruins-of-the-moon/user-reviews/800597/platform/wii/ Sat, 15 Sep 2012 11:21:36 -0700 Pierst179 reviewed Klonoa for the Wii... http://www.gamespot.com/klonoa/user-reviews/800043/platform/wii/ ...and gave it a 9.0!

Cuddly characters that could star on any Saturday morning cartoons, ridiculously silly plots that are there to just serve as an excuse to do some jumping around and enemy-whacking, and stages that are so bright and colorful that young children can only look at them through prescription sunglasses: platformers are gaming's sacred Wonderland. However, even with the simple premise and straightforward design, those games fail more often than not, as they constantly try to emulate successes from the past and end up forgetting to look into the future and build any exclusive character to distinguish themselves from the average platforming mold. But not Klonoa, originally released for the Playstation in 1998, the game was rightfully showered with praise, and, eleven years later, it landed on the Nintendo Wii to prove that, like any great masterpiece, the years have not washed away its greatness.

What Klonoa does to mark its own territory in the platforming realm is progressing in quite a unique way for a sidescroller, producing an interesting blend of 2-D gameplay with stage design and story development that would be most commonly seen on a 3-D platformer. Klonoa tells the tale of a rabbit-like boy who has constant dreams of witnessing a ship crashing into a nearby hill until, one day, while wondering about what is it that makes dreams so hard to remember, he does see the ship colliding with the mountain. He then decides to go out and investigate, and from that moment on it is time to beat down enemies, perform tricky jumps and explore beautiful new worlds.

What is so special about Klonoa's story development is that it does not follow the usual mold of clearing one uniquely-themed world only to, then, head onto the next land. Instead, the stages taking place in different areas are intercalated, but that is not done in random fashion. At one point, for example, Klonoa wanders into a forest where he must find the chief of a tribe. Unfortunately, when he reaches the end of the stage he finds out, during a cutscene, that the water flow that would allow him to continue his travel has been interrupted. Therefore, before proceeding further into the forest, Klonoa finds the need to travel to the game's watery world to discover what exactly is going on at the land's water source. Little happenings like this occur all throughout the story, and while it might seem like a little detail, it does wonders to stitch together the game in a cohesive manner and allow developers to jump from one world to the other seamlessly.

When it comes to the stages, and that is the area where the game truly shines, they reflect the story's tendency to join aspects of 2-D with 3-D platforming. Klonoa takes place in a 2-D perspective, with the character only being able to move from the left to right. However, its environments provide beautiful 3-D depth, and that depth is not there simply for the value of looks, as it frequently comes into play, interfering with the gameplay. Sometimes Klonoa must use his enemy-grabbing abilities to throw a creature as a projectile onto an item container that is located away in the horizon and, on other occasions, the horizontal extension of the scenarios will end up revealing alternate paths and secret locations that players can reach.

While a few of the game's stages are absolutely linear, some of them are set up like dungeons or explorable environments that are simply set up in a sidescrolling axis. That curious configuration leads to some very impressive stage design along the way, and – for the very short time that it lasts – Klonoa is a game that is always pulling off a few surprises that keep the game very engaging and enchanting all the way through. The character may not have a very vast arsenal of moves - his actions are limited to jumping, picking up enemies with his wind gun, throwing them at other foes, using grabbed enemies to perform tricky double jumps and floating in midair for a little time – but they are very well-used to create interesting platforming situations.

It is certainly a disappointment that the game only features twelve different stages across four different worlds, but a few of those stages are long enough to warrant at least six hours of gameplay for beating the game. For those who are looking for something extra to do once the main action is over, the game does offer some options. On each stage players can encounter six friends who have been locked up by enemy forces, and while some will be naturally found, others require nice investigation of the game's occasionally complex stage setup. In addition, it is a challenge of its own to get the perfect gem count of 150 on each stage. If all creatures are rescued, the game will open up new character costumes, the ability to reverse the stages – greatly increasing the challenge – and even a fun little time trials that will delight speed runners.

Technically, Klonoa is nothing short of impressive. The graphics as bright and colorful as it gets and some of the visual effects, like the wonderful water, are some of the best on the system. The character models are extremely smooth and beautifully animated, and the reworked cutscenes add a lot to the game. Some may be bothered by how frequent they are, as Klonoa puts some focus on storytelling, or how childish they may often be, as they were clearly written with children in mind. However, the fact that the plot does have some quality to it, including some surprisingly dramatic moments, and the ability to skip the scenes right away make them much more bearable. Musically, Klonoa offers very nice tunes and the added voice acting is a nice plus, even if the traditional – and optional - gibberish is preferable and suits the game better.

In the end, the remake of Klonoa: Door to Phantomile reaffirms that game's status as one of the best platformers of its generation – a generation that included Super Mario 64, Banjo-Kazooie, Banjo-Tooie and Rayman 2 – and shows that the game's structure is as timeless as that of any great classic, because even many years after its release, it still manages to be quite impressive.

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"Pierst179 reviewed Klonoa for the Wii..." was posted by Pierst179 on Sat, 15 Sep 2012 11:21:36 -0700
]]> http://www.gamespot.com/klonoa/user-reviews/800043/platform/wii/ Tue, 11 Sep 2012 16:41:05 -0700 Pierst179 reviewed Silent Hill: Shattered Memories for the Wii... http://www.gamespot.com/silent-hill-shattered-memories/user-reviews/799892/platform/wii/ ...and gave it a 8.5.

Harry Mason, a somewhat unsuccessful writer, drives through a snowy night when, suddenly, he loses control, skids off the road and hits the metal fence of an old warehouse. A few moments later, he wakes up and struggles out of the car, only to notice that his daughter has gone missing. Still a little bit shaken up by the accident, he looks everywhere in the vicinity, but cannot find her. Finally, he decides to pick up the flashlight he keeps in his car and wander into the cold night in a desperate search for the seven-year-old girl. With the dim light as his only company, he ventures into Silent Hill, opening doors to dark rooms, walking around the deserted streets and interacting with a few strangers he encounters on his way, while discovering secrets and memories that the town keeps of its vanished inhabitants, like a big keeper of emotions made of concrete.

That is the haunting premise of Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, and, truth be told, it could not have been better suited for the Nintendo Wii. The very well-constructed environments, and the darkness and numerous objects that fill them up are extremely immersive, and helped by the game's excellent exploration pacing, it is a very tense experience from the get go. Harry's flashlight is not only one of the finest and most precise uses of the Wiimote ever, but it is also hauntingly suitable for the game. The fact that most environments are very detailed and blindingly dark means that things are slowly revealed to the player as his flashlight aims at the spot, turning the process of journeying into schools, stores, houses and other places a very thrilling one, because it is awfully hard to know exactly what lies in the next corner.

The game reaches onto a whole extra level of immersion by allowing Mason to interact with a big number of objects around him. In order to open some doors, for example, players will have to use the Wiimote's pointer to remove the locks; or, to find a key hidden inside a soda can, gamers will be required to twist their arm as if they were turning the can upside down. The movements are all very responsive, and drastically enhance the experience, making the whole town a lot more involving than it already is by nature.

Speaking of the town, in Shattered Memories it becomes a character of its own. As Harry explores the city, he will be able to occasionally detect creepy static sounds that indicate the proximity of objects that have high emotional value attached to them. Once those objects are properly identified, Harry will – through his phone receive either text or voice messages that retell stories somehow related to those objects. It is a welcome extra layer of detail, and it is also something that gives more meaning and reward to a well-planned exploration of the city's environments. It is as if, in addition to the game's core tale, the city itself was telling gamers stories that serve as nice companions to the main affair.

Shattered Memories is not all about walking through Silent Hill, though. Every once in a while the gameplay will be halted and players will interact with a psychiatrist that will ask generic questions about life, death, high school, marriage, relationships and other important matters. Those seemingly innocent tests will have a big impact on how the game will play out, changing the characters you will interact with during the adventure, the development of the story, the ending itself and even the design of the bizarre-looking creatures that will eventually chase after Harry. This considerable amount of possibilities makes the game awfully replayable, which is very welcome news, since the main story is a little bit too short, clocking in at about six hours.

The creatures that will haunt Harry's journey will provide downright thrilling chase sequences, where players will have to navigate through altered scenarios while being hunted down by shrieking beings that will come out of unexpected places and throw themselves onto the character's body. Since Harry packs no weapons, those moments are very nerve-wracking, and also physically intense, since that, in order to get rid of the creatures, harsh throwing motions need to be performed with the Wiimote. The downside of these chases is how frustrating they can become at times. To be safe from the beings, Harry needs to reach a specific location, but since the map can only be accessed through the cellphone – which in turn can only be brought out if Harry slows down – checking the map will most certainly mean the creatures will find you and might bring you down. As a consequence, the chases sometimes transform into a desperate and aimless search for the safe spot, something that gets frustrating after a few failed attempts.

Aside from that issue, and its relative short run, Shattered Memories has one more – more aggravating – flaw, and that is its predictability. After a while, the game's structure will become clear to players, and the moment when enemies show up, and threat actually exists, will be obvious, meaning that a considerable part of the exploration will be done without any feeling of threat. For a game that uses darkness, a flashlight and detailed environments on its behalf, that shortcoming works heavily against the software's nature. Thrillers often thrive on producing frights when they are not expected, but as time passes, Shattered Memories will only try to terrify its players when they expect to be terrified, and that is a big waste.

Yet, overall, Shattered Memories is more than worthy of one's time. As far as frightening games go, it might be one of the scariest titles of the generation, but a few key flaws get on its way to rise to sheer greatness. Even if it is not haunting all the way through, Shattered Memories remains as one of the best uses of the Wiimote, including an incredible sound design that uses the Wiimote speaker as a disturbingly realistic cell phone sound outlet, some of the greatest realistic scenarios to ever show up on a Wii game and a handful of clever puzzles that will require logical thinking and deep analysis of the environment. Its overwhelming tension wears out as the game progresses, but when it thrills, it does so in remarkable fashion.

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"Pierst179 reviewed Silent Hill: Shattered Memories for the Wii..." was posted by Pierst179 on Tue, 11 Sep 2012 16:41:05 -0700
]]> http://www.gamespot.com/silent-hill-shattered-memories/user-reviews/799892/platform/wii/ Mon, 10 Sep 2012 14:03:28 -0700 Pierst179 reviewed Muramasa: The Demon Blade for the Wii... http://www.gamespot.com/muramasa-the-demon-blade/user-reviews/799838/platform/wii/ ...and gave it a 7.5.

It is no secret that, when compared to other systems of its generation, the Nintendo Wii tremendously lacks power. Still, even with the limited hardware, a number of developers have been able to show that the machine can pull off absolutely stunning visuals. It is often said that it is in the hardest and most challenging times that man is able to show its true creative prowess, and so, Nintendo's system became the harsh grounds where daring developers had to turn talent into a major resource to overcome the restrictions of hardware. Many companies accomplished that by crafting downright ingenious gameplay mechanics, while others decided to invest in the artistic value of their games, making the Wii home to some of the best art directions ever seen in the history of gaming.

In a place where resources are limited, the very best games have been the ones to thrive on their art style and excel in creative game design. Muramasa: The Demon Blade surpasses pretty much the entire library of the console when it comes to art and visual glory, but while its gameplay is undeniably good, it falters in some vital elements that prevent the experience to reach the greatness level it could have so easily achieved. It is by no means a bad game, it is a very good one, but the fact that its length is unusually big for a game of its genre – which features very limited gameplay options for developers to explore - ends up revealing some repetitive wrinkles that end up taking a way a little bit of the brilliancy of the package.

In the game, players will either take the control of Momohime or Kisuke. Momohime is a princess whose body is accidentally possessed by the spirit of an evil swordsman – Jinkuro - and, as a consequence, has to run from her castle in order to save her life, which can only be done by aiding the evil spirit on his quest. Kisuke, meanwhile, is an amnesiac ninja who is granted a powerful sword by a deceased swordsman who had a rivalry with Jinkuro. The two plots follow distinct paths through the same big overworld and show some interesting overlapping at some points. Sadly, the plot's decent quality is occasionally marred by translation issues, which sometimes have the characters mouthing sentences that are a little bit too poorly worded for comprehension. Fortunately, though, Muramasa is not exactly a story-driven game, and so the eventual story confusion does not take away from the whole experience.

The two separate adventures clock in at about ten hours each, totaling twenty hours of gameplay if players focus solely on finishing the central story. Even though the characters are different in their sprite, combat works pretty much the same way for both, as they do not possess any significant distinction in their fighting styles. At all times, the characters can equip three different swords, each one having their own special power – triggered by the press of the B-button- and attack stats. During combat, as battle progresses and your blows are blocked, the stamina of the swords will diminish until they break, forcing the character to switch to another sword while the broken automatically heals itself after some time.

Combat is relatively straightforward, with the A-button being responsible for pretty much all actions, from slicing to blocking, the control stick guiding the attacks and the digital directional to the use of items. There are three different difficulty sets that can be switched at any time – the last of which is unlocked upon completion. On the first level, the combat will restrict itself to mindless hack and slash, as the enemies will barely be able to inflict damage on the players, and so will the bosses, but on the hardest levels blocking and dodging becomes vital to survive and battles get much more interesting and skill-demanding. At the end of the battles, players earn experience points depending on what they did during the melees, as extra experience can be acquired by not being damaged or performing other achievements.

When players are not fighting, they will be going through the game's absolutely gorgeous scenarios. The game's meticulously hand-drawn visuals are downright breathtaking. The scenarios are made up of around five layers of incredible colors and art that move independently as the characters walk through the land, giving an incredible sense of depth and grandeur. The whole game looks as if a Japanese painting had suddenly come to life and started moving like a very well-animated and frantic cartoon, and the game's great soundtrack just nicely enhances that feeling.

Still, in the joining of both its fast-paced combats and marvelous art, Muramasa can have its negative aspects summarized in one word: superficial. Sometimes, the game makes it feel like the developers were so set on the combination of fighting and progressing through the environments that they simply decided not to give the game substance. Sure, there might be hundreds of blades to collect, some of which involve forging swords with both Momohime and Kisuke, since their sword trees overlap at some points; and there are even a handful of extra locations to visit, like the challenging monster lairs, where hordes of creatures require players to be at very high levels in order to survive, but the game is still very one-dimensional.

During the journey players will go through a few villages and populated locations that seem to have no purpose of backstory at all, being there to simply change the environment a little bit. Even though the characters level up, there is no such thing as the ability to improve their stats manually, choosing what kind of character you want to control. The slots of equipment that can be attached to the character are also not enough to give any considerable value of customization to your character. And the constant backtracking is an excuse to increase the length of the game in a few hours and gets awfully tiresome as – like all games of the beat'em up genre – the world design itself is not exactly filled with creativity and unexpected moments.

Muramasa: The Demon Blade is a good title, and it is mostly fun for the twenty hours or so that it lasts. However, Vanillaware's interesting attempt to merge the simplicity of a hack and slash affair with the scope of an adventure title and the value of an RPG game ends up being negatively affected by the fact that those elements are not tied together with enough content or value to justify the merger. Muramasa ends up being one of those games that, while very good, has to forever live under the shadow of what it could have been.

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"Pierst179 reviewed Muramasa: The Demon Blade for the Wii..." was posted by Pierst179 on Mon, 10 Sep 2012 14:03:28 -0700
]]> http://www.gamespot.com/muramasa-the-demon-blade/user-reviews/799838/platform/wii/ Thu, 06 Sep 2012 19:35:31 -0700 Pierst179 reviewed Dead Space: Extraction for the Wii... http://www.gamespot.com/dead-space-extraction/user-reviews/799687/platform/wii/ ...and gave it a 7.5.

On-rails shooters have always been considered as more of an arcade experience than a domestic one. Whether it is the fact that those games thrive when they are played through short bursts of time, or how much more engaging it is to hold a plastic gun and physically aim at the enemies rather than just move some sticks and press some buttons, the thing is: they were always seem as a mindless pastime. With Nintendo's decision to create a controller designed around a pointer, and their system's lesser hardware power, the Wii became the ideal ground for the transition of the genre from malls and arcade places to homes. And of all good on-rails shooters that hit the Nintendo Wii, Dead Space: Extraction easily ranks as the very best one.

The core component that makes Dead Space: Extraction rise above the competition is its acknowledgement that it is a game made to be played at home. While some on-rails titles embraced their simplistic nature, Extraction tries to take advantage of the environment where it is meant to be played, without leaving behind the genre's most important characteristics. The main point where it becomes clear that the game has gained in quality and value due to its migration is the emphasis on story. If on an arcade environment characters and plot fall victims to the overwhelming importance of scoring and shooting ridiculous waves of enemies, at home players can take their time, sit back and enjoy the plot underlying all the shooting.

Serving as a prequel to the original Dead Space, Extraction begins when a group of miners are extracting a mysterious artifact from a human colony in the planet Aegis VII. Things go awry when the members of the crew begin suffering from hallucinations caused by the object, and start behaving wildly and violently. Later, the bizarre infection has spread through the entire colony, causing most of the population to turn into a creepy blend of zombies and aliens, and the few who have survived start planning a desperate escape. Through the ten missions and six-to-eight hours of gameplay, the story is slowly developed and characters are built into respectable levels, giving Extraction a whole new dimension in addition to the shooting and wandering through dark, silent and eerie corridors.

The second area on which the game is obviously influenced by its console nature is production. By locking players into a fixed path and allowing them to only move the reticule, the game producers gained the power equivalent to that of movie directors, and they fully take advantage of it. During the game, players will not feel like they are hostages to a brainless camera that follows a pre-determined path. Instead, they will truly feel like they are seeing the game through the character's eyes. The camera will occasionally move to the side when sudden noises are heard, it will look at a partner's direction when they say something or give an instruction and will move, shake and twist in impressive accordance to what goes on in the game.

That sole characteristic makes the whole experience extremely engaging, turning players into characters rather than viewers, and allowing developers to meticulously arrange the game so that it produced the desired effects and emotions on whoever is playing it. The emotional roller-coaster is nicely accentuated by the fact that, in doing away with freedom, the game gained a lot in graphical quality, hence making enemies, visual effects, character models and dark environments much more believable than they would have been in a free-roaming game that whose visuals were chained by the Wii's hardware. Producing games that attempt to be realistic on the Nintendo Wii has always been tricky, but Visceral Games came pretty close to nailing it perfectly.

The game presents great pacing throughout the adventure, alternating a few moments of straight action with slower tense segments, and punctuating them with the occasional cutscene or character development. The reasonably short duration of each of the ten episodes – every one of them lasts for about 40 minutes or so – makes the individual bits of the game very replayable, which goes along nicely with the game's long range of difficulties that go from Normal to the boldly titled Impossible. For those who are willing to dedicate themselves to the game more intensely, there are ten challenge mode levels, which focus on shooting and brutal combat instead and exclude any mention of the story, and the ability to play through the game cooperatively.

All in all, Dead Space: Extraction is definitely worth playing. It is rare to see a game that has the potential to change negative views on the genre that it belongs to, but Extraction is a game that deserves such a distinction. People who admire on-rails shooters will fall in love with how Visceral Games has taken advantage of the chance to expand the genre due to its transition to a home console, and those who have never really had much admiration for games of this kind will find, in the tense Extraction, the opportunity to learn to love them. Extraction pairs the simplicity of the on-rails gameplay with ambitious movie-like direction, thrills and a good deal of nice storytelling.

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"Pierst179 reviewed Dead Space: Extraction for the Wii..." was posted by Pierst179 on Thu, 06 Sep 2012 19:35:31 -0700
]]> http://www.gamespot.com/dead-space-extraction/user-reviews/799687/platform/wii/ Fri, 06 Jul 2012 15:31:36 -0700 Pierst179 reviewed Viva Pinata for the PC... http://www.gamespot.com/viva-pinata/user-reviews/796984/platform/pc/ ...and gave it a 8.5.

Winning and losing is part of what makes games so blindingly exciting. Dealing with the constant threat of failure, and the looming possibility that any slip up will force players to start a stage from scratch, keeps us on our toes and, by nurturing to our competitive instincts, manages to engage us for endless hours. However, somebody somewhere discovered that in the midst of fierce competition, an unfulfilled necessity of relaxation was born, and that sometimes simply building and creating, without the concepts of victory or failure, can be as appealing as a more traditional gaming experience. Games like Sim City, Roller Coaster Tycoon, Minecraft, Animal Crossing and The Sims came to life to address those needs, and Viva Pi–ata is, while far cuter than any of those titles, their rightful peer in quality. Like those titles, it feels like a welcome needed vacation from the world of winning or losing; living or dying.

In Viva Pi–ata players are put in charge of an abandoned garden that needs to be brought back to life. Things start pretty easy, as the new gardeners have to do away with the trash that is clogging the place, before planting green patches of soft grass in order attract the curious creatures that give the game its title. By the time the garden reaches its peak in population and crops, though, players will be completely busy, having to handle a vast array of different duties in order to keep things going orderly. Still, despite the hidden complexity, Viva Pi–ata differs from most open-ended games in the fact that it can be enjoyed by pretty much anyone out there, regardless of age and previous gaming experience. That quality, though, is not solely created by the game's colorful visuals. It is, instead, made possible by the fact that a garden will flourish with life even if it is handled by an unskilled player. Sure, the difference between an awe-inspiring piece of land and one handled by a toddler will be evident, but while a game like Sim City loses its appeal when the city fails to get into a good financial rhythm, Viva Pi–ata remains rather amusing even if the garden does not fully prosper.

In addition, Viva Pi–ata can be either enjoyed in short bursts or long continuous stretches of gameplay. While the former is a natural characteristic of the genre, the latter is achieved by giving players a constant stream of duties to perform. As small as your garden may be when things get started, there will always be a new Pi–ata visiting, a new seed to plant or a curious behavior to be observed in your garden. The title's main allure, obviously, are the creatively designed Pi–atas that inhabit its world. There are sixty species total, and anyone with a heart will feel automatically compelled to try to attract them all into their garden and, as shallow as it may sound, the main reasons for players to feel compelled to do so is how adorable they look, which leads to a very intense curiosity towards seeing and watching the little beings that the folks back at Rare were able to create. The task, though, is far from being simple; and before reaching the possible goal of interacting with all Pi–atas in the game, chances are players will have spent many dozen hours engaged in their gardening.

Attracting Pi–atas requires certain items to be fulfilled. Some goals are as simple as planting a certain vegetable, but other rare beings have objectives that branch into far more complicated requirements, like having a certain Pi–ata in your garden, or allowing that wild Pi–ata to eat one or two of your beloved creatures. After a Pi–ata has finally chosen your place as their residence, it is possible to build them a nice-looking house, attract another Pi–ata of the very same species and fulfill another set of goals that will make that couple fall in love, hence starting a breeding process. As you can see, Viva Pi–ata is built in vicious cycle where achieving a goal leads into even more goals to be conquered, and that smart background structure is absolutely addicting, because the more Pi–atas players have wandering around their garden, the more new Pi–atas they will feel like attracting, and each new Pi–ata that appears brings along a series of tasks that will start by making that species a new resident and culminate with breeding. It manages to bring the same irrational need that the Pok–mon series have its fans; it is hard to tell why exactly you want to keep drawing Pi–atas, but you certainly know you want to.

The game's core draw might be the Pi–atas, but as a title that looks wonderfully good and gives players a certain amount of control over the landscape on which they play, Viva Pi–ata naturally compels everybody into making their garden as beautiful as possible. Players can manage certain elements of the paysage at will, like choosing where to create lakes and rivers or plant tall or low grass, but it is also possible to plant trees, flowers, vegetables or bushes to make your slice of land look like true paradise. Some players will only look at those items like sources of income for their garden, since everything from the Pi–atas themselves to the bloomed flowers can be sold to make some money, but it is hard not to be at least inclined to try to pick the best location possible to plant an apple tree or some sunflowers so that your garden can look as nice as possible. Besides, there are also decorative items for sale in some of the game's stores, so players can truly get creative in the beautification of their gardens.

As peaceful as Viva Pi–ata might feel to those who play it, the game still manages to offer great a degree of challenge. If attracting some of the rarer animals is by no means an easy task, so is planting any kind of tree or crop. Not only do they require to be watered constantly and in proper doses, some trees will only produce as many fruits as possible if fertilized by the correct product at the correct time, and discovering when exactly is that moment and product is up to players in their constant experience as gardeners. All gardens also level up as time goes by, experience points are acquired by managing to grow new crops or getting new achievements related to the Pi–atas – such as making them breed or discovering a new color variety – and as the garden levels up, its area will expand so that players can plant even more and house a bigger quantity of Pi–atas; and new more efficient tools, items and crops will become available for purchase.

It is worth noting that, as good as it is, the game is not without its minor annoyances. The first one comes in the shape of the breeding mini-games that take place whenever players successfully mate two Pi–atas. The mini-game consists of carrying one Pi–ata to its partner through an enemy filled maze by clicking on the screen with the mouse to lead the creature's movement. The mini-games are interesting at first, but by the time you are breeding the same species for the third time it will become extremely bothersome to perform the same bland mini-game over and over again. Plus, some gamers, especially those who are overprotective of their own creations, will find it awfully annoying that, from time to time, a Pi–ata might be torn apart in an explosion of candy by either a wild "sour" Pi–ata or even one of your own creatures, since – as it is to be expected – Pi–atas themselves have a food chain. While it is a natural part of the gameplay, it can be a little frustrating to helplessly watch as a hard-to-attract being you fought so hard to get is eaten by creature that suddenly walked into your garden. Thankfully, after a Pi–ata makes residence, it is possible to buy a new creature from that same species from a hunter in one of the game's many stores.

Overall, Viva Pi–ata is certainly a very unique open-ended game. It has a charm of its own, and there is a lot of pleasure to be found here, either by finding a new species that you become especially found of, or by looking at your carefully taken care of garden and watching as the different species you have manage to gather interact with one another and sit by and relax in the beautiful landscapes. It is an absolute pleasure to both mind and soul, and in an area of entertainment where we are always so worried about results, points, victory and success, it is very pleasant to, occasionally, just sit around and have fun with a game that allows you to, once more, feel like a kid that is simply having fun with a very colorful and beautiful kind of sandbox.

Get the full article at GameSpot

"Pierst179 reviewed Viva Pinata for the PC..." was posted by Pierst179 on Fri, 06 Jul 2012 15:31:36 -0700
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