Nathan Vs. Video Games

Pokemon Puzzle League

2012-03-03T19:35:00.002-08:00

The Short

Pros
- Apes the Tetris Attack formula perfectly, creating an addicting experience
- Lots of options, people to battle, and puzzles to...puzzle.
- Basically this is Tetris Attack with a Pokemon skin. Hard to say much else about it.

Cons
- Only two players (instead of four)
- Voices of characters from the anime are extremely obnoxious
- Not much here that hadn't already been brought out in Tetris Attack back on the SNES

Get ready for some puzzles in a league of their own!

The Long

Tetris Attack is a pretty good game. I first played it on its Japanese iteration Panel de Pon, on a Virgin Atlantic flight to and from London. They had SNES's installed in the seats (yeah!) and for some reason had this Japanese game on it. It was a 12 hour flight, and I'm pretty sure I played it almost the entire duration. It was that addicting.

The US version (Tetris Attack) replaced the underaged fairy girls (oh, Japan) from Panel de Pon with Yoshi and other Mario characters, which isn't too surprising. Then, when 2000 rolled around and the N64 and Pokemon where hot topics, they released a skinned version of the game for the N64. Thus, Pokemon Puzzle League came into existence.

Ash has that expression every time he earns a badge. I first thought it was stupid, now it's weirdly hilarious.

I should probably have reviewed Tetris Attack before this one, but it's too late now, so whatever. Tetris Attack...er...Pokemon Puzzle League is a fairly simple puzzle game. You are given a grid filled with colored blocks, and you can switch two at a time horizontally (as many times as you want). Your goal is to get sets of three (or more) to clear out space. If your blocks reach the top, you are done. Pretty easy.

One of the big differences between Tetris Attack and Pokemon Puzzle League is that in Tetris Attack's main single player mode your goal was to simply clear down to a line. As you progressed the blocks would keep coming up, and after a while a line would appear and if you got rid of all the blocks above that line you won.

Not so in Pokemon Puzzle League. Here you are battling your way through the original gym leaders of Pokemon Red/Blue in an attempt to be the pokemon master. Which makes sense I guess, but I'm sad to see that other mode isn't the main attraction this time, as having a single player that's primarily competitive in a puzzle game is a bit...weird.

This isn't the Pokemon I'm used to.

So how do you battle? Well first you pick a pokemon (and which one you pick seems to have no effect on how the game goes, elemental weaknesses or otherwise) and then you start swapping blocks. If you get four or more in a row or make combos, you'll drop big blocks on your enemies. They then have to make matches near these big solid blocks (something like 2x4 or bigger, etc.) and then they'll turn into regular colored blocks and can be erased by puzzling. That's it. It's pretty simple, and all that really changes is the speed increases until the end. Failing can be based both on skill and luck, with luck being the key factor in the end levels.

It also has two player multiplayer, but for some reason they didn't add four player multiplayer (which, honestly, was the reason I got this game even though I already owned Tetris Attack. I should wiki these games before I buy them for very specific feature inclusions). Dr. Mario 64 added four player multiplayer just fine; what gives? Without it, there isn't any fundamental improvement over Tetris Attack, because Tetris Attack had a VS mode too. There are no bonus features here at all, aside from the Pokemon skin.

Oh, and speaking of that...

There's that face again.

Every time anybody talks in the game I want to punch them. Tetris Attack had a few voice clips, but most were just "Stop!" if you stopped the timer or a "Yeah!" when you won. In this game, people won't shut up. It's like they realized the N64 had more space on the cartridge, so they crammed all the voices from the anime. If you or an enemy make any match, expect them to shout one of three canned phrases. And since you only play as Ash, you'll hear all his lines after about the second battle. Considering their voice acting isn't exactly...good, this is really, really, really annoying.

"RAWR I'M ASH RAWR LOOK AT THAT HEART RAWR"

The graphics also haven't seen much of an upgrade. Honestly I think it looks worse, and I like Pokemon. It's muddy (like all N64 games) but they don't use any of the power to add new effects or change things up or anything. Even the backgrounds are more soulless, mostly just showing the same generic Pokemon arena, while in Tetris Attack the backgrounds were bright and colorful. It's a step down, to be sure.

"RRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWRRRRRRR"

It still works as a game, because the core formula is so extremely strong. There's a reason I played it for 12 hours nonstop (and not just because I was trapped in a plane and my GBA SP's battery died). It's a puzzle game that's extremely easy to pick up but gets difficult very quickly, making it perfect for when you have a few hours to burn.

However, if you really want to play this type of game, I'd suggest any version aside from this one. Or you could turn the volume off on your TV, which would fix 90% of the problems. Yeah, you should just do that.

I still like this game, but since this N64 version has literally no improvements over Tetris Attack on the SNES (and only takes things away in terms of awful Ash Ketchum voice screeching at me constantly), I'll probably just always play Tetris Attack instead. AS SHOULD YOU.

Three out of five screaming Ash faces.

"I WILL EAT YOUR SOULS."

RAWR

Pokemon Black/White

2012-03-03T16:14:00.003-08:00

Pokemon Black/White

The Short

Pros

- All new adventure with 152 new pokemon

- You won't see any pokemon from previous generations during your initial adventure through the game world; all new pokemon

- Battles are presented in pseudo 3D for the first time, with the pokemon being fully animated throughout

- Excellent graphics and music

- Day/Night cycle as well as a monthly seasonal cycle

- TMs can now be used repeatedly

- Story plays a much bigger role, with more characters and variations on the theme than any other Pokemon game

- Excellent music

- Marked as a "new" Pokemon game, it certainly feels much different than its predecessors, mostly for the better

Cons

- Despite having "new" pokemon, they are all still very similar to previous generation's

- Still 2D sprites, which means when they zoom in on the new 3D plane they look kind of...bad

- Bottom screen is replaced by the C-Gear, which uses wireless features that the causal player will probably never use

- No new region to visit after the game, though it does have a lot of post game content

We are coming to the (current) end of our Pokemon journey

The Long

It's been a long time since Pokemon Red/Blue started this whole mad craze. The obsession has died down a little, though the series still pulls both the dedicated fans and newcomers with every release. Game Freak and Nintendo have managed to do well keeping with the same formula, despite calls to change it over the years. After rereleasing HeartGold/SoulSilver, fans had been wanting something new from their Pokemon. Seeing the remake really made people (myself included) see how much has stayed the same, and we were ready for not just another rerelease (like Pokemon Diamond/Pearl)

So here we are, with Pokemon White/Black, the latest in the Pokemon franchise. Nintendo made a big deal saying this was a brand new take on the Pokemon series, with more changes than you can shake a stick at. Does it live up to fan expectations?

Battles look quite good.

Well, there are certainly the laundry list of changes and improvements here. Let's blitz through them, shall we?

Improved Graphics - Probably one of the biggest pushes, the battlefields are now in actual 3D, meaning you can zoom in and out, pan, and do all sorts of other crazy things to keep the action fast. While it looks good, the battles still take place in Gradiantland, and the characters are still pixelated sprites (albeit animated ones). this means when it zooms and pans around them, when you get close they look kind of...bad. High resolution pokemon probably would have helped them look less bad. But I still think it's a good start, and the ability for the game to provide camera control spices up the battles in ways that we haven't seen before.

Other improved graphics are the overworld, which has again seen an overhaul. There's much more 3D in the world this time (though again: you are still a 2D sprite). Cities can be spun around, and you aren't locked to a simple "overhead" view in every situation. It looks really good, so kudos to them for that. As it stands, this is probably the best looking Pokemon game yet, if you can get over the pixelated battle graphics.

City graphics look loads better, and give a better sense of scope

Day/Night and Seasonal Cycles - The Day/Night thing is back, though it's even better in this one (the cities at night, as you can see above, is really cool), but as an added bonus there are seasons now. They don't follow the actual seasons, but change on a monthly (real time) basis. This is really cool, because it also switches up which pokemon are available when, as well as changing the way the entire game world looks.

Musical Changes - The music in this game is really good, but they've done some tweaks that make it better. In battles, if your pokemon run low on health the battle song will fade into a more intense, stressful song until you put out one with more life. And when battling bosses (Gym leaders), when they are on their final pokemon the song also changes to a more victorious one. It's a little thing, but a good one.

Team Plasma's song is caaaatchy.

Better Story - The Pokemon games have always been very sparse when it comes to story, and for good reason. It works because you are meant to carve your own path and use your own imagination. Diamond/Pearl tried to do a balance of both telling you a story and making you "choose your own adventure," and it worked ok but not great. Pokemon Black/White, however, actually has a really well crafted story that provides the perfect balance between player investment and the game telling you what is going on. The "Team" (aka the bad guys) this round are Team Plasma, who aren't trying to conquer the world or blow anything up but rather are fighting for pokemon rights. It's a really interesting setup (considering the moral ramification of capturing animals for the sole purpose of making them fight forever for you), but they never get very deep with it, probably because it's still a kid's game. The lack of depth is a little unfortunate, but it is still the strongest and most interesting story in the series.

You also have two "rivals" in this game, who leave with you and both take very unique paths on both pokemon training and careers. It's neat to see how other people in this world aren't all just wanted to be pokemon battlers.

This game has a unique story, which is a good step forward for this series

All new pokemon - Unlike the previous games, where it was sort of a mis-mash of every pokemon from every single game, Black/White only has the brand new 152 pokemon until you've beaten the entire game, meaning you won't see any repeats your first run. While this is actually really cool, the "new" pokemon are almost carbon copies of the old ones. Geodudes are replaced with Roggenrollas, which are the exact same type, level at almost the same level, and evolve the same way. So they are new pokemon, I guess, though the promise of the experience being wholly unique isn't entire accurate.

Some battle changes - Now there are triple battles (which are exactly what they sound like), and rotation battles (where you can switch between three to fight one-at-a-time). It's a fairly basic change, but a decent one.

Pokemon Musical - This isn't a pro, though it did replace the awful contests. Now they can be in a musical! That sucks too. Done.

The new pokemon are some of the best

Those are the basic improvements, and they are complimented by an improved UI, a faster-paced battle system, and some of the best looking new pokemon since Gold/Silver's batch. I'm pretty picky and jaded against my pokemon, so seeing new ones that actually look good and have that needed mix of "unique" and "kind of insane" that first the series well.

People complain about Vanillish, but I think it's awesome, in a sort of stupid way

The music in this game is also a return to form, with some of the best songs in the series. The boss/Gym songs are all excellent, the Team Plasma battles (as you can hear above) are great, and it even has a remix version of that kickin Cynthia song from Pearl/Diamond/Platinum that's even faster and more intense. I'm glad that song finally got a good game.

The new final boss song is also excellent.

While I still stand by the fact that Pokemon HeartGold/SoulSilver are my favorite on the DS (and perhaps favorite ever), I will openly admit that Black/White is technically a superior Pokemon game. While it isn't exactly the alleged revolution to the formula that Nintendo claimed, it still makes enough major improvements and refinements to help this game feel more modern than ever before. It's a hard call whether to recommend this game or SoulSilver, so I'll just tell you that you should buy both, and play SoulSilver first. Because for all my nostalgia, it's hard to go back to any other Pokemon game after playing White/Black. It's a large step in a right direction, and here's hoping Black/White Version 2 continues with the improvements.

So you should go get this game. Right now. Five out of five stars.

Hooray for new battle graphics.

Pokemon Dash

2012-03-02T14:17:00.002-08:00

The Short

Pros
- Has 25 tracks, and you can import tracks based off your pokemon from Ruby/Sapphire or FireRed/LeafGreen
- Has a fair number of pokemon in it

Cons
- Is a full price, glorified, branded tech demo for the Nintendo DS
- "Gameplay" is nonexistent, and they didn't even bother to try and mix up their awful formula
- Graphics look awful, even for an early NDS title.
- It also sounds awful. Bonus.
- Why does this game exist? It's nothing but a trick for mothers or little children who want Pokemon, but then they get it for Christmas and after playing it for five minutes realize it's a trick and swear revenge against this world that has so betrayed them, and next thing you know they are committing arson and knocking down mailboxes. So basically this game is the cause of school shootings.

They really are trying to get me to hate Pokemon, aren't they.

The Long

So listen: I like the DS, and I like Pokemon. I don't mind spin-off games if they are still ok games (even though I bagged on Hey You, Pikachu! it isn't offensive to me, just poor). This game, Pokemon Dash, offends me. It offends me as a Pokemon fan, it offends me as somebody who has to earn his own money to buy games, and most importantly it offends me as a gamer. Pokemon Dash is utter garbage that shouldn't exist, and the fact they pawned it off at full price as an early Nintendo DS game (when the system was in dire need of some games) just makes this whole thing worse.

Now that that is out of the way, here is my completely unbiased, objective review of Pokemon Dash.

Oh my gosh this game is so horrible.

So the point of this game is to race Pikachu against every other pokemon in existence, and by every other I mean like a few dozen at most. Pikachu runs in a stright line and you have next to no control over him, besides motivating him to go faster. How do you do this? By scratching the bottom of the screen as fast as you can with the DS stylus. Yes. That is literally the entire game. You quickly swipe in a direction, Pikachu goes that way (faster if you swipe Fast) and then you either win or you lose. Most of it is automated. This is the whole game.

The whole top screen is completely useless. There's a "radar" which is useless, a current ranking (which could have been done on the bottom screen) and nothing else. The bottom screen is filled with ugly, awful graphics as you watch Pikachu from your observation chopper, ordering his every move. There are a few mixups, like certain terrain requires you to pick up an item before crossing them or else you'll slow to a crawl, but other than that you just...swipe. That's it.

This is one ugly-ass game.

You have 25 courses, and you can import your pokemon from the GBA games and it'll make races out of them, which makes me wonder why they didn't just include them in the game, since there aren't a lot of tracks here anyway. Instead you have to own both games, and if you own a GBA pokemon game and have it in your DS you should probably just be playing it instead of this crap.

The pokemon sounds are all annoying. They aren't as bad in an actual Pokemon game because you don't hear them all that often, but you hear them all the time in this monstrosity. The graphics, as I said before, look completely awful. I'd rather play Hey You, Pikachu! from start to finish than boot this awful thing up again.

Wow, Pikachu, I never realized you were such a Warrior Poet.

I don't want to talk about this game anymore. There is nothing redeemable about it. It's essentially just a DS tech demo, and they should have given it away for free. Or better yet, just not released it. Instead they put it out with the Pokemon logo, inspiring false hopes that it might actually have something good inside of its plastic box.

It doesn't.

Zero out of five stars.

"Mewoth, that's right!"

Hey You, Pikachu!

2012-03-02T10:58:00.003-08:00

The Short

Pros
- Can talk to Pikachu and make him do things
- Actually has a lot of stuff to do
- Looks ok for an N64 game
- Is probably good if you are a kid. And live in 2000.

Cons
- Pikachu is either an idiot or hates me because he never does anything I say
- Required microphone only works for this game and another game released in Japan. Useful!
- Lots of games, but most aren't particularly fun
- The definition of "crappy cash-grab spinoff"

This is going to be awesome.

The Long

So Nintendo has this thing for releasing crap to go along with their consoles. I think this probably stems from back in the NES days, where they marketed it more as a "toy" than a "video game console" due to the stigma following the great video game market crash. In an attempt to make the NES appear more like a "toy," they unloaded a massive amount of garbage for it (or allowed third party people to do it) such as the R.O.B. robot, the Power Glove, etc. Most of these crappy add-ons were expensive, annoying, and only worked with one or two games before they were swiftly abandoned.

Nintendo has continued this practice to this day, though it took a slight break during the SNES period (Super Scope, anyone?). The N64 was graced with a memory card, a rumble pak, an actual RAM expansion (that became required to play some games), a CD-Drive (that never made it out of Japan), and this microphone. In fact, now that I think about it, they had a microphone on the Gamecube too, for that one game...Odama. I think that's the only game that used it there, too.

Oh, and Wii Speak, for the Wii! That worked in...uh...Animal Crossing? Was that it? I guess you could voice chat in like The Conduit, but who would want to; it was a thing that sat on your TV (like my Kinect, only somehow dumber). The DS and 3DS also have microphones, but they only use them on early DS games to blow on things (usually for minigames or in Zelda: Phantom Hourglass) and...that's it.

In a world where Siri is actually pretty brilliant, and Microsoft is making their Kinect toy more and more powerful, it's weird to look back and see that Nintendo had a piece of that pie, but instead of eating it or selling it they sort of left it in the fridge to get moldy. But this isn't a post about Nintendo's pie aversion, it's a post about Hey You, Pikachu! a game that aspires nothing more than to be mediocre, and succeeds heartily.

Yeup, there he is.

Hey You, Pikachu! is essentially a collection of minigames on the Nintendo 64 which are all Pokemon themed. There are about seven actual activities in all, ranging from keeping a bunch of Caterpie's awake so they can evolve, searching for treasures, and so on. The gimmick here is that you don't directly control Pikachu (your proxy into this mad world) but have to issue him voice commands instead. And this works exactly as well as you'd think based on year 2000 voice recognition technology.

Yeah, you suck.

I would yell, whisper, articulate, and try everything in my power to get Pikachu to understand what I was telling him, but it only worked maybe 25% of the time. The rest of the time he either completely misinterpreted or just ignored me. Which, if this were real Pokemon, would be about the time I forced him back into his Pokeball and replaced him with another one who can understand me.

The biggest problem might be the microphone itself. That warning on the box that says "For Ages 12 and under" isn't a coincidence; the microphone is made to better detect higher-pitched voices rather than all of us who've passed puberty. So even if you have a high voice for an adult male (which my tenor-singing self will begrudgingly admit) odds are your words just aren't making it through the mic, much less into Pikachu's tiny brain. Why would you limit your technology like this? Was it too hard for actual voice recognition?

The game looks decent for an N64 game. Too bad it isn't fun at all.

This might be ok if the minigames themselves were fun, but most are just boring endeavors that focus heavily on yelling at Pikachu to do things for you. I won't elaborate further than that, though I will give it a bit of the benefit of the doubt by saying they'd probably be ok for kids, though kids these days are much more video-game adept than I was as a kid and can recognize a bad game on sight (usually. Angry Birds still sells for some reason.) so maybe it won't even be good for kids either.

Why is Pikachu on my bed? Giving me a "come hither" look?

Graphically it actually looks pretty good. It's polygonal and blurry but that's all N64 games, so we can't fault it for that. The music is just a bunch of poppy, boring songs made to be background noise, and you probably won't hear them over your repeated yelling at the screen trying to get Pikachu do to one simple task, which he will then ignore you and just play around by himself. Hey, it's like having a real pet!

I imagined the Zelda "Got Item" sound when I saw this picture.

I'm more than willing to forgive a spin-off game if it still is a decent game (see Pokemon Pinball). I'm even willing to forgive a movie game if it is still a decent game (see Saw). But this game, either by the limit of its tech or being just plain rushed, falls flat in nearly every aspect. When it does work it's actually pretty fun, as fun as ordering an electric rodent around in minigames is. But the fact that it only works half the time (if that) kills it, especially since the people playing it in this day and age will probably be in their twenties and have too low of voices for the microphone to even work.

So, you get one out of five stars, Hey You, Pikachu! You might have been more forgivable back in 2000, but since I remember seeing you as a kid in the height of my Pokemon obsession and still thinking you looked idiotic, I'm guessing no.

Pokemon HeartGold/SoulSilver

2012-03-02T08:40:00.001-08:00

Pokemon SoulSilver/HeartGold Version

Note: I will not be going over the basic mechanics of the Pokemon games in this review, as I have covered these mechanics extensively in my Pokemon Blue/Red review. Instead, all subsequent reviews will instead focus on the changes made to the formula in any particular iteration.

The Short

Pros

- Remake of the best Pokemon generation

- First pokemon will follow you around like in Pokemon Yellow

- Has all the pokemon from the previous games

- Complete experience is retained, including the whole second region (Kanto) you can return to after beating Johto, as well as more bonus areas.

- Lets you import your GBA pokemon, just like in Pokemon Diamond/Pearl

- "Pokewalker" pedometer included for free, lets you walk your pokemon around and level them

- Modernized with better uses of the touch screen

- Most graphics (menues, effects, walkaround, etc.) have seen a minor upgrade since Diamond/Pearl

- Insane amounts of content, customizability, and with the improvements the game is more accessible and fun than ever

Cons

- Battle graphics still look like something off the GBA

- Doesn't add anything particularly substantial

- Does add another minigame collection, which thankfully you can completely ignore

- Pokewalker only works with this generation; doesn't work for older ones or Black/White

Time to replay the best Pokemon game

The Long

I'm really trying to not bias this review with my nostalgia goggles. After getting annoyed at Pokemon Diamond/Pearl, when I heard the next DS release would be a remake of Gold/Silver (much like FireRed/LeafGreen on the GBA) I freaked out. They were remaking my favorite Pokemon generation? With better graphics, controls, and updated with all the new pokemon? Sign me up!

So there is obviously a bit of bias here. I make no qualms in saying that Gold/Silver is the best Pokemon generation, in terms of improvement, controls, gameplay, and the pokemon themselves. So I'll try my best to not just gush like crazy over this game, but it'll be hard.

Because this game is really good.

The return of Totodile!

Ok, let's just get the first bit over with: this is a very faithful remake of Gold/Silver. Like FireRed/LeafGreen, Nintendo has taken great reverence in making sure this version is faithful to the original formula (and considering they haven't changed the Pokemon formula much since then, it isn't that hard). So if you go read my Gold/Silver review, you can get the general gist of why that game is so fantastic.

So what is different, or better? Well, quite a few things, actually.

First off, the touch screen controls are finally excellent. While you still have to hit a button to get to the menu, it's all on the bottom screen now, be it pokemon selection, items, or whatever. It all has touchscreen controls now (finally) which works really well. It streamlines the interface (an opportunity that Diamond/Pearl completely neglected) and makes the often tedious menu-interactions of the Pokemon games a lot better.

The bottom screen is much more useful. Except when its in Japanese.

This game also employs the same great art style of Diamond/Pearl with it's overworld map, though I think it's been tweaked a little. Colors are much more vibrant in this version, and new additions to the world (like windmills outside Route 14 and New Bark Town) make it really feel like you are off on a great adventure, seeing new things and having new experiences. Unlike many remakes of games, everything changed in this one aesthetically is for the better, with one small exception.

Battle graphics still look like the GBA

The pokemon animate a bit in battle again (like they did in Crystal and the updated Platinum) which is nice, and the art design seems better this time around than in Pearl/Diamond, but the game still looks dated. I get that it's easier to just make sprites than 3D models, and I actually prefer pixelated sprites over bad 3D (which is why I never got too into the N64). But you could at least make the backdrops interesting! Gradients are all you could use? Really? And you could probably also shrink down the "WHAT WILL MEGANIUM DO" up there and put it on the bottom screen, so that the battle screen doesn't look so freaking cluttered. I mean, all the menu options are on the bottom, why not have the top just be an aesthetic representation of the fight with all the words, hpts, etc. on the bottom? Would be nice.

Making the Pokedex touchscreen was a huge boost.

Anyway all this is a moot point because not updating the battle graphics is really my only complaint about Pokemon HeartGold/SoulSilver (well, and the fact they didn't remake Crystal). Yeah, all they added (minus all the improvements since Gold/Silver originally came out) was a stupid minigame collection, but I'm actually fine with that. "But Nathan," you'll say, "you dissed Diamond/Pearl because they only added a minigame collection and had GBA sprites, but you clearly are infatuated with this stupid remake! What gives?" To which I say, "Shut up, you silly sod. Yeah, if you looked at HeartGold/SoulSilver with that same critical eye you'd notice similar flaws, but the point is you don't notice the flaws if the game underneath is good enough." That's always been Pokemon's thing: they refine the system a little, but if they can keep the whole "I'm going on an adventure!" aspect and make it work, a player will overlook the GBA graphics and lack of innovation. Gold/Silver is the best adventure the series has to offer, and I don't mean in terms of story, I mean in terms of immersion and just straight up content. These games have tons of stuff to do. You have two entire worlds to burn through (Johto and then Kanto from the first generation) and bonus stuff beyond that. And since this bonus content isn't just minigame garbage (like in Diamond/Pearl) I'm willing to forgive it.

I think I put 140 hours into this game, and I never did a single minigame. I beat the gym leaders of Johto, crushed the Elite Four and the Champion Drake, went to Kanto and smashed everybody there, too (including Blue, Red's original rival from the very first game), went back and fought the improved Elite Four, hunted down legendary dogs, caught the lv. 80 Ho-Oh (you can catch both legendaries in this game, just one is a lot easier than the other), and entered the hardest dungeon in an attempt to beat Red, the baddest mother-effer in the Pokemon universe. Except maybe Cynthia in Black. But we aren't going there yet.

Oh man, that song is awesome.

This is after hours and hours, all of which I never got bored. I get bored in Pearl/Diamond after like three or four hours. Yeah, maybe it's my rose-tinted goggles, or maybe it's because HeartGold/SoulSilver is really good.

There are a few other cool additions. One of my favorites, having your pokemon follow you around, has returned. Unlike Yellow, though, you aren't limited to just Pikachu; whomever you have first in your party lineup tags along. And you can talk to them and get some interesting...feedback. It's cool and again does what it did in Yellow: immerses you in the adventure.

Let's go kick some butt!

Another new thing is the Pokewalker, a pedometer with infrared capabilities. On the back of these DS carts (and these carts only; the Pokewalker doesn't work with any other set of games) there's an infrared transmitter, which you can then send any pokemon in the game (and every generation before this one, since all are available) to the walker to...walk around with you, I guess. On the Pokewalker it has some games that you can play in exchange for spending your "steps" you've earned for walking around with it. It sounds dumb, but you can actually get some really rare pokemon really early if you get off your couch (where you are presumably playing Pokemon) and walk around for a bit.

I wore this thing around college for the month or so I was playing this game, with no shame. Maybe I'm just a lunatic, but I certainly spotted a few other people with them, so I'm not the only one. It has an item finding minigame on it, as well as a pokemon catching game. I just wish it had more of a Tamugachi thing as well; it would make it more interactive and fun. But whatever.

The fact this actually works is kind of nuts.

The music (as evidenced by the song above) is all remakes of the original tunes, but unlike FireRed/LeafGreen where I felt the remakes were "just ok," I found these remade songs in HeartGold/SoulSilver to actually be better than the originals. Yeah, I just punched nostalgia in the face and said remade music was better. Mark it down, because this'll probably be the only time I'll ever say that about any game ever.

And yes, the day/night cycle is back. And the horde of Hoothoots to accompany it.

As I've stated multiple times throughout this review, you could probably just shrug this off as me remembering Gold/Silver/Crystal fondly and applying it to this game, but it's worth noting that I'm a lot older now. Older and jaded and angry at the world (and JRPGs in general, but that's a whole other can of worms). I'm not going to give a Pokemon game a pass just because it reminds me of one I really liked, especially since it had been almost a decade since I'd last played Crystal, so I had no idea if it was good or just me being a child.

Pokemon HeartGold/SoulSilver is my favorite DS iteration of Pokemon, and by a very long shot. Yeah, Black/White is great (and expect a review shortly), but something about HeartGold/SoulSilver stuck with me. I've never wanted to replay a Pokemon game shortly after considering it "finished" (I usually just play until I'm so sick of pocket monsters I don't want to even look at another one for a year, which is conveniently when the next game tends to come out), but with HeartGold/SoulSilver I really want to replay it (and can't, because it still only has one save file. Lame!) and have wanted too ever since I beat the upgraded Champion.

This is Pokemon at its finest: loaded with content, tons of pokemon, a fun story, great graphics, amazing music, and just an overall grand adventure. If you have a DS I really recommend picking this up, even if you aren't a Pokemon fan. It might just make a believer out of you.

Five out of five stars.

Pokemon Trading Card Game

2012-03-01T18:57:00.001-08:00

The Short

Pros
- Successfully emulates both the trading card game and the regular Pokemon formula
- Lots of bosses/Gym leaders to fight, cards to unlock, and decks to make and manage
- The inclusion of RPG elements and unlocks help the game retain some replayability

Cons
- Looks kind of ugly
- If you don't like the Pokemon Card Game, you'll pretty much hate this
- No cards from Gold/Silver, despite coming out the same year
- Is basically just a bunch of boss fights you can repeat for more cards, until you get to the last boss

We are really getting in deep now

The Long

So...trading card games. Something I've always had a fascination with, but never got too deep into. Oh, I've had several decks of Magic: The Gathering cards. I also had two decks of Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, and that Vs. Battle thing that had Marvel heroes or whatever in it (I've also played Killer Bunnies with all the expansions, which is nuts). For some reason these games fascinate me, but I don't get invested because it's too expensive, and eventually you'll hit that rich kid who bought all the best cards with his parents' money and then your life is over because you'll never, ever beat him (or her).

Anyway, I'm exactly the kind of person who things like Pokemon Trading Card Game...the game appeals to. There are no boosters to buy, no rich punks to outwit, and if you hit an enemy who is too hard you can usually just keep fighting the weak guys until you unlock better cards, then get the sweet satisfaction of crushing him. All without having to spend $4-$5 on the chance you'll maybe get a rare card you need.

This is also why I played Yu-Gi-Oh on the GBC, and am currently addicted to Magic 2012 on the Xbox 360/PS3, but I digress.

But he didn't have to buy it, and that's what matters.

Pokemon Trading Card Game (yes, that's the title, no colon or dash or anything) is exactly what it says it is: its the Pokemon trading card game that was all the rage in the late 90s/early 2000s. If you are unfamiliar with it you might just think this game is Magic: The Gathering, but it's actually its own beast (or pocket monster, right guys? Guys?). You draw creature cards (aka Pokemon cards), energy cards (aka mana or lands for the Magic: The Gathering crowd) and abilities (like spells or traps in Yu-Gi-Oh). Unlike Magic, however, where you tap from a pool, Pokemon's emphasis is on (not surprisingly) the Pokemon themselves. Instead of assigning mana to an overal group, you attach it to your pokemon (you get a team of six, as usual). You can also evolve your pokemon or use items to swap them in and out. Pokemon battle one at a time (again, like the actual game) until you've fainted six of your enemies, and then you win. It's essentially like Magic: The Gathering light, since the items are all free (don't cost energy), and you put energy directly on the pokemon themselves. Still, like the real game there's strategy to be had here (as well as the usual weaknesses), and while it isn't the best TCG, it's certainly a competent one.

For some reason, the main character reminds me of somebody from a Dragon Quest game.

The plot is simple: you are on Trading Card Game Island (really. That's the name of the place. I'm not making this up). Here they have multiple Clubs (not gyms!), each devoted to a specific type of pokemon. You basically go and boss-battle your way through these idiots, getting more cards and building a better and better deck. After a while you get to fight the Grand Masters (not the Elite Four! Even though there are four Grand Masters!) and then the Champion (not the Champ - wait.). And then you are free to go fight against them again with upgraded cards until you own every card in the world and are KING OF THE PLAYGROUND HA HA HA.

I WILL RULE TRADING CARD GAME ISLAND WITH AN IRON FIST

It's a pretty shallow premise, but if you think about the actual Pokemon games they don't have much depth either. What's somewhat disappointing is that all you do is battle cards. There's no exploration, no feeling like you are on a quest, nothing. And while I'm all for stripping down the crap (see my hate-filled reviews of Ruby and Diamond generations with their awful pokemon dance parties and whatnot) it seems like they went too far.

They also didn't include any cards from Gold/Silver, which is too bad. I know Gold/Silver wasn't out for another four months, but then maybe you should have waited since everybody who bought this game felt dumb because they were missing both 1. New pokemon and 2. The two new element types (dark and steel). Thanks, Nintendo.

"It's time to duel!" Wait...wrong franchise.

So...is the game fun? Well, if you like the card game then...sort of? I think the card game is fine, except the part where I have to buy cards and find someone to play with me (especially now that I'm 26 and all old), so hey...sign me up for Pokemon Trading Card Game the game! The "sort of" comes from two key things: the graphics are fugly (look up at that! It's like a giant brown turd!) and the UI itself is weak. They couldn't have like...put cards in front of you? They just show whichever one is battling, hiding the rest of your team. I guess that works because it's more like the real Pokemon games, but if you are going to alter your UI so it shows these giant images of the Pokemon, why the crap would you use such ugly ones? And what was wrong with the pictures from the original games? Those at least looked good!

Oh look, secret plot.

The graphics outside of battle are ok. They look decent on the Game Boy Color, but this is no Pokemon Gold/Silver. It's clear they only put the minimal amount of effort into these things. The music is also just ok, lacking any real Pokemon flare but still being ok background noise.

Fat Pikachu returns. And wtf...GNAW? Gnaw isn't a Pokemon move!

So...my final thoughts. Well...if you like the Pokemon card game, this is really your own choice for a game version. A sequel came out in Japan, but I guess we were already over it so it didn't make it over here. As it stands it's an ok game, successfully emulating the card game, and the progression system is nice. But on the flip side it's ugly, simple, and not particularly enthralling if you don't like card games.

So it really boils down to this question: Do you like trading card games? And specifically, do you like the Pokemon card game? If so, pack your bags for Trading Card Game Island, because we've got a vacation for you. If not, don't bother.

I think the Pokemon card game is alright (though I haven't played it in probably a decade), and I like Pokemon a lot anyway, so we'll give this a two out of five for me. As a representation of a card game it's ok, but it could (and should) have been way better. If you like Magic but are on the fence, feel free to knock a star off. If you hate Pokemon, card games, or both, just take all the stars away and toss them aside. This isn't for you.

Trading Card Game Island...good grief. And I thought some of the pokemon's names were dumb.

Pokemon Diamond/Pearl/Platinum

2012-03-01T18:11:00.000-08:00

Pokemon Diamond/Pearl/Platinum Version

The Short

Pros

- 107 new Pokemon, bringing the total at that point to 493

- Day/Night cycle is finally back

- Ability to import your pokemon from either of the GBA games if you have a DS with a GBA slot (DS or DS Lite; no DSi support)

- New world graphics are a mix between 2D and 3D and look pretty good

- Storyline is surprisingly epic for a Pokemon game

- The first female champion in the history of the series, which is good; finally some progression here

- Battle uses the touchscreen well, and color-codes the moves based on their elements, which is nice

- Wireless trading, thanks to the DS's wireless abilities, is great
- Also allows for battling over the internet, though the UI for this stuff isn't great

- One of the starters is f***ing Turtwig, which is the most adorable pokemon of all time

Cons

- Of all the Generations, this one provided the least number of changes, with the only notable inclusion being the awful "Super Contest."

- Menus, despite being on the DS, don't use the bottom touchscreen primarily. Why?

- While walkaround graphics are better, battle graphics are just as bland as the GBA versions

- New pokemon aren't as stupid as the Ruby/Sapphire generation, but they are certainly close

- Doesn't let you go to any new regions after you beat the game (why weren't we allowed back to the Ruby/Sapphire region?), though it still has stuff to do

- Music isn't particularly great, though there is one song that is surprisingly epic
- With the lack of new features, this version of Pokemon is noticeably stale

Generation IV, fools.

The Long

So it's been almost thirteen years since Pokemon Red/Blue came out in the US. We've gone from the original Game Boy to the Game Boy color to the Game Boy Advance, and now Nintendo's latest handheld is kicking up a storm: The Nintendo DS. After a somewhat weak start the system picked up some serious steam, and before you knew it people were talking: what would the DS Pokemon game be like? Would it follow the same formula, or mix it up? Will the starters finally be swapped to a Dark/Psychic/Fighting trio, rather than the traditional Fire/Water/Grass? We hadn't seen any really radical changes to the series' mechanics or overall game structure since Pokemon Gold/Silver (though Ruby/Sapphire did add a little bit), so when Pokemon Diamand/Pearl finally showed up in 2007 we were all pumped. I actually pre-ordered this game, believe it or not, making it the only game in the history of games that I've actually pre-ordered from a physical outlet (I usually just pre-order games from Amazon now).

Well, I got my limited edition massive and ugly Pokemon stylus for my DS for pre-ordering, and then I busted this bad-boy out. I'd actually been off the Pokemon scene for a while; remember I completely skipped the Ruby/Sapphire generation until long after the fact. So truth be told, Diamond/Pearl was my first Pokemon games since freaking Crystal, so it had a lot to live up to.

And I can safely say it did not even come close to meeting my expectations.

Despite the DS having been out for a while, the touch screen gets little use

Pokemon Diamond/Pearl is the first in the main series I actually felt like they were just cashing it in. Yeah, sure, they'd been cashing it in with the brand constantly - the card game, awful spinoffs like Hey You, Pikachu!, enough toys to populate a small city - but I'd always felt they were at least trying with the games. Pokemon Diamond/Pearl isn't a bad Pokemon game. After all, the formula is still solid, there are a bunch of new Pokemon to catch, and all the same addictive systems are still in play. It's just a completely uninspired game.

This is most clearly seen when you realize the only thing they really "added" in this game was the Pokemon Super Contest, which is like the stupid pageant from Ruby/Sapphire except mandatory. Yes, that is literally the only real new thing. A bunch of crappy minigames, some of which use the touchscreen poorly. Joy.

They did slightly tweak how special attacks and regular attacks work, but that is so insignificant a casual Pokemon player won't even notice.

That is the only actual gameplay change in the entirety of this generation (minus the usual balancing and new pokemon). So...what other things are new? This game is on a more powerful piece of hardware, and has two screens (one of them being a touchscreen). What did they use that for?

The touch screen battles are appreciated, but the graphics look like a GBA game

Well, let's start with the touch screen, since that is the DS's most unique feature. When it comes to this, I'm split: it does battles very well, and it does the rest of the game poorly. In battles (as you can see above), the bottom screen is now your command screen, with large, easy to touch buttons down there for you to navigate. Since you'll be using the d-pad and face buttons to play the game normally, I didn't actually use the touch screen much, but I'm glad it's there. The attacks are also now colored to their respective element (making it easier to know which to use against who), which is also very handy. The entire thing has been made to work with fingers rather than the stylus, which is also appreciated, because getting the stylus back out every two seconds is a pain.

But then they don't use it for anything after that. You get a sort of "Pokegear" thing on the bottom, which consists of that one huge red button on the side. You can swap between a clock, your current team (which shows health, but touching them does nothing but make their noise), and a few other useless features. You still have to hit a button to get to the menu, and when you do it starts on the top screen. Why? Why can't I just touch to get to the menu on bottom, and cycle through my pokemon there? Granted, after you pick a menu item it goes all touch screen, replacing it with unintuitive buttons with no text. This is bad UI design, guys.

I can only imagine that, for a newcomer, this would be completely overwhelming

Ok, so the touchscreen controls are implemented poorly, but so what? The old games didn't have the touchscreen, and they were fine? And here is where I have to sullenly give a hint of a nod, because I actually sort of agree. It doesn't really hurt the game to have crappy touchscreen use, it just doesn't help it any, either. This is a new generation of games. Why couldn't you have made it work better?

The graphics also have that polarizing effect for me, though my reactions are opposite. Out in the field, the graphics look really good. It has a sort of combination of a 3D rendered world with 2D sprites set on it, but fresh and crisp. It actually looks really good and, while not a powerhouse, fits the art style of the previous games very well.

And then you get into a battle.

I'm glad the buttons are colored, but those graphics...ugh.

Well, the art looks better than Ruby/Sapphire, I guess. And it's clear there's a higher pixel count. But why are the backgrounds still so...boring? That seriously looks almost exactly like a screenshot from LeafGreen/FireRed. Seriously, look at it and tell me if Pearl/Diamond looks like it's on a system 2-3x as powerful, if not more.

Yeah I am.

Again, yeah, there's a slightly higher pixel density. That's it. Why aren't they rendered in 3D? Or at least animated? Or anything? I'd be willing to forgive if you'd done more things right with the rest of the game, but seriously? How is this next-gen Pokemon?

Aside from me griping about that stuff, there really isn't much more to say about Pokemon Diamond/Pearl besides that it's the exact same Pokemon game you played on the GBA, which was in turn a marginally improved Pokemon game from the original GB ones. Which is fine, since the originals were so fantastic they keep holding the rest of this house of cards in place, but when you put one bad card up the rest of it starts crumbling. Many of those nagging issues from Blue/Red (insane level grinding, similar story, similar pokemon between generations) persist here, and they'd be easy to overlook if the game brought something new to the table. Hell, to be completely honest all LeafGreen/FireRed brought was updated visuals and mechanics and all my childhood nostalgia, and that was enough to carry it! Diamond/Pearl is unabashedly lazy, and because of that the whole game just leaves a sour taste. Sure, if you've never played Pokemon before you probably are fine with it, but if you have than this game seems bland and unoriginal.

But it does have one high point.

FREAKING TURTWIG

Nobody ever picks grass types as starters, mostly because they're abundant and sort of underpowered. However, when I play these games I always pick Turtwig as my starter. Why? Because he's awesome. Look how freaking cute he is! He's like...a turtle (which is awesome) with a sick grin (which is awesome) and a little leaf...sprout thingy on his head (AWESOME). The rest of the pokemon this generation kind of suck, like the ones from Ruby/Sapphire, but Turtwig rules. I get him and never evolve him. I don't care if he sucks, he's cool.

Anyway, now that we've gotten off on that tangent...um...I'm kind of out of things to say, but for reals this time. Oh yeah, it has WiFi stuff now, which is great (makes trading way easier), but playing over the internet can kind of be a pain unless you have your friend's Friend Code and you both perfectly synchronize when you want to hang out. Also all the trades up for grabs online are horrible, so make sure you trade with someone you know.

You can also import all your pokemon in your pokemon storage from either Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald or LeafGreen/FireRed, but only if you have one of the DSes that is GBA backwards compatible, and only after you beat the game. Which is a cool touch.

There are a few nice touches, like reflections and weather changes

The day/night cycle is also back (finally!) using the DS's internal clock to determine what time it is in the game world. Also the story in this game (despite starting off exactly the same as all other Pokemon games) is actually pretty interesting and ends in an epic clash between two god pokemon. I guess that's cool, even if it's still just "kill these evil guys, catch the best pokemon."

The music is mediocre. I can't think of any track that stands out, except one. But man...that song...is so good. So (tangent) the champion of this game (aka the final boss) is actually a girl this time, which is great because this world seems to be predominantly male when it comes to good trainers, and all the girls catch "cute" crap like Marills or Togapis and get crushed in battle. Cynthia (the champion) is one of the hardest in the series, and her final boss song is incredible. Seriously, it's probably my favorite battle song (maybe even my favorite song) in the entire series. Really good stuff.

Seriously, this song deserved a better game.

I'll say it again: this isn't a bad game. It's still fundamentally Pokemon, which means it's still addicting and very solid at its core. While the new pokemon look stupid there are a few unique type combinations among them, and the whole "Gotta Catch 'Em All" thing kicks in pretty quick despite me wanting to hate this game. It's just a disappointment because it could have been so much better. It's been thirteen years, Nintendo. It's time to do something crazy with this series.

I was going to give it two out of five stars, but after listening to Cynthia's song and looking at that picture of the ADORABLE Turtwig my hate-filled heart of darkness was filled with light and I decided three out of five was ok, I guess. But I will stil recommend any other Pokemon game in existence (except maybe Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald) over this one. It just...isn't the best.

And yes, I own a plush Turtwig. Awww.

Pokemon FireRed/LeafGreen

2012-02-29T09:33:00.001-08:00

Pokemon FireRed/LeafGreen Versions

The Short

Pros
- Completely remakes the first Pokemon generation with added features
- Includes all features introduced in Generation II and III, such as abilities, breeding, held items, etc.
- Streamlined interface improves over both original and Ruby/Sapphire
- Can catch pokemon from all other generations after beating the game
- Included (when new) a wireless transmitter to trade/battle wirelessly on your GBA
- Improved music and graphics look and sound fantastic
- Tweaks in the story make Team Rocket more integrated into the overall plot

Cons
- Essentially the same game as Blue/Red, just refined
- Doesn't introduce any new pokemon
- No day/night cycle
- Unlike Yellow (which they didn't remake; boo!) you can't get every starter
- Doesn't change the formula at all, which can be good or bad depending on your opinion of the series

I ain't gonna stop.

The Long

We've made it to 2004. It's been a while since that original pokemon game came out in the US in 1998 (1996 in Japan), nearly a whole decade in fact. So what better way to celebrate than by remaking and re-releasing the original generation on GBA hardware? Dude, why not? After how much I was disappointed by Ruby/Sapphire, I was more than ready for a new Pokemon game. And guess what? Nostalgia be damned, I really liked Pokemon LeafGreen/FireRed.

Ah, Professor Oak. It's been a while.

It's hard to say why this game was made. Part of me wants to think its for the fans, who had been playing Pokemon for ten years and were clamoring to see their original love done modern. Part of me thinks it's to make a cash-grab by releasing another Pokemon game without having to do much additional work. And part of me thinks they are trying to ensnare a new generation of kids to play Pokemon, and figured the best way was to go back to the original magic and let it do its thing.

In truth, it's probably some combination of all three of these things. But hey, as long as I know I'm being pandered to, it's ok for me to like it, right? The Scott Pilgrim philosophy? Guys?

SQUIRTLE I MISSED YOU.

The concept behind FireRed/LeafGreen is simple: it's the original Blue/Red (and Green in Japan) games remade with improved graphics, all the new features that have been added to Pokemon, and some extra bonus content. Because of this, there isn't much I can say about it that hasn't already been said in other reviews. If you like Pokemon, this game is a dream come true. You get to pal around with old favorites like Pidgy, Ratatta, Pikachu, Caterpie, and all the rest of 'em as you still try to "Catch 'em All" with the original 150 pokemon. Yes, I'd like to do that very much, thanks.

It's running on the same Ruby/Sapphire engine, though the Pokemon themselves have a better art design

There are a few minor changes aside from backwards-implementing everything new into the original games' frameworks. Team Rocket, the original antagonists, have been given a slightly bigger role on the game's story. After you beat the game there's much more stuff to do, like travel to different islands and catch the legendary birds (which I guess you could do before), and the Elite Four will get "upgraded" with pokemon from newer generations after you do enough side missions. Double battles from Ruby/Sapphire are back, and as a whole it just feels...better. I mentioned the original game hasn't aged well (and it hasn't), but this goes a long way to fixing that. With the addition of all the new features, FireRed/LeafGreen plays more like a modern game (see the EXP bar in the screenshot? That's right.), but it also shows how well the formula had held up. Pokemon doesn't need gimmicks like a stupid fashion show or any crap like that. We just need to battle, catch, and level pokemon until we are the pokemon master. And breed. Lots of breeding.

That sounds really bad, in retrospect.

There are a few noticeable absences from FireRed/LeafGreen though, specifically the fact that the day/night cycle still hasn't made its return since Gold/Silver. What the crap, Nintendo? That was like...my favorite feature! How the crap will I ever get an Umbreon if I can't level up my Eevee at night ever since night doesn't exist here for some reason? Your whole GBA lineup sucked in terms of realism.

Yes, I'm again arguing for realism in a Pokemon game. Shut up.

So, if this game is pretty much just a remake of Blue/Red but set in the Ruby/Sapphire era of the game, why do I like it when I didn't like Ruby/Sapphire nearly as much? Well, first it's that nostalgia thing, which Nintendo knew full well and is why they made this. I have great memories of playing Pokemon on the GBC, murderin' dudes with my Bulbasaur (and later Squirtle, when I realized Bulbasaur sucks), and because of that I'm willing to overlook the stupid things Ruby/Sapphire did in lieu of playing my first Pokemon experience over again.

Second is because this game is better. A lot better. Graphics look better (battle backgrounds are greatly improved), the world itself is more vibrant and clean, sprites (which were stupid tiny in Ruby/Sapphire) are bigger and better, the pokemon themselves are cooler-looking and not stupid, the list goes on.

The music has also seen a boost up from the original tinny Game Boy sounds, though I'll admit the originals have a certain flavor that these remakes can't seem to quite recreate. They kind of go crazy on the "wah wah" horns for this remake for whatever reason, which sounds...weird. But hey, the original songs were all killer, so it's all good.

WELCOME TO A WORLD OF POCKET MONSTERS

As it stands, if you liked Red/Blue, you'll love this. If you've never played Pokemon before and only own a GBA and not a DS, this is probably your best jumping-off point available (rather than Ruby/Sapphire). It manages to capture that same adventurous magic that made the first game great, while updating it with modern game design to keep things fun.

It doesn't do much to add anything to the pre-existing Pokemon formula, but I still think it works. Since Ruby/Sapphire didn't really live up to the full potential of the changes it made, FireRed/LeafGreen stepped up and filled in just nicely. It would have been nice to see a few more upgrades or changes, but I guess we'll have to wait until entering the DS generation to see if Nintendo finally switches up the formula on us.

An excellent remake (though it was dwarfed completely and utterly by another remake on the DS, but we'll get to that) and a competent Pokemon game. Four out of five.

Except you jerks should have made ElectricYellow too.

I'm sorry, Pikachu. It was not to be.

Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald

2012-02-29T08:29:00.003-08:00

Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald Versions

The Short

Pros
- New, improved graphics on the Game Boy Advance
- Adds 135 new pokemon to catch and train
- Introduces pokemon Abilities and Natures, which dramatically changed the game for vets.
- Also added a host of small things, like double battle, tweaks to the IV/EV system, and contests
- Each version now has a different story: In Sapphire Team Aqua wants to flood the world, in Ruby Team Magma wants to cover it with lava
- Same addictive formula
- Has METAGROSS, which is my favorite pokemon

Cons
- When compared to Gold/Silver, this game doesn't add all that much
- Removes the day/night cycle. Why?
- Adventure doesn't seem particularly compelling in this iteration
- Improved graphics are nice but not substantial
- Loses the animations that were in Crystal
- E-Reader compatibility. Woo.
- Pokemon "ribbons" and "events" start what is easily my least favorite part of the Pokemon series
- Music is just ok, instead of the series' usual memorable tunes
- Pokemon in this generation really started to look stupid, like Game Freak was running out of ideas
- Grinding seems especially bad in this generation
- Can't go back to an old region for more post-game gameplay like you can in Gold/Silver/Crystal

Here we go again.

The Long

I'll make no attempt at hiding this: Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire was the game that caused me to get off the Pokemon train for a few years. After playing Pokemon Crystal and Pokemon Blue rather religiously, I was super pumped for a new Pokemon game on the super-modern handheld, the Game Boy Advance. Touting better graphics, music, and gameplay, it looked like it might be the best Pokemon game yet. But minimal improvements, the exact same gameplay, and design ideas that seem a step back rather than forward, and I put Pokemon Sapphire away and didn't pick it back up until nearly a decade later. This could also be since 2003 was when I was a junior in High School (I'm age-dating myself here...) and it was no longer "cool" to play Pokemon anymore (vs now, where I'm an adult and just do whatever the crap I want). We may never know, but Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire left enough of a sour taste in my mouth that it took a great deal for me to pick it back up in 2009.

It does have Mudkip, though. Mudkip is awesome.

Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire has a slightly different "plot" than the two Pokemon games before it. Rather than being a kid forged by destiny to be a pokemon master, instead you are some kid who moves into a new town, where your dad is a gym leader...in a different town. Huh. So why didn't you move to that town? Are your parents secretly separated? Well, whatever.

Anyway, your "rival" in this game is the other gender character choice (if you picked boy, it's the girl, and vice versa) and he/she is more of a friendly competitor than a douchebag (like in Red/Blue) or outright criminal (like in Gold/Silver). After that, you get to pick your starting pokemon from the usual selection of fire/water/grass, and off you go.

This generation has tons of pokemon who stand around with their arms in the air

The only one out of this crew worth picking is Mudkip, because he becomes a Water/Ground and has massively fat stats. Torchic is funny because it's a fire bird that turns into a kung-fu fire chicken, but he's somewhat subpar, and Treecho always has his hands in the air like he's Gandalf going "You shall not pass!" to every enemy. Plus he's grass, and nobody picks a grass starter (well, except in Black/White, but that's for another review).

Can I just say right here that I think 90% of the pokemon of this generation look really stupid? I know most aren't just horridly designed (like the infamous Ice Cream Cone or Goth Girl pokemon from Black/White), but there are really very few this generation that are visually appealing to me. When you no longer think the pocket monsters you catch look cool but instead look really stupid, you've sort of lost a good chunk of why you play Pokemon.

Why is your guy's hair white? I thought he was a kid?

There are a few changes made to this version that continue to increase the complexity of the series. First off you have Pokemon Abilities. These are passive traits that each pokemon has. Some are useless, some are extremely useful (like "grounded," which makes flying pokemon negate their electricity weakness). Each wild pokemon had one of usually two-three options, meaning if you really want to catch them all, you'll have to also get the ones with the unique abilities. These passive abilities really switch up the game, because some of them are pretty wild (like summoning a sandstorm that buffets both foes and allies the duration of the battle, even if the pokemon is swapped out), so picking both the right pokemon and getting the one with the ability you want is important.

Abilities also play a key role in breeding, but I won't get into that. Suffice to say baby pokemon can inherit abilities, which opens a whole new can of worms for those that like getting really deep into the pokemon breeding system.

Double battles are a fun diversion, but there's only a few and they don't radically change anything

The second big stat is Natures. Natures change stats (aside from HPs) by both 10% in the positive for one and 10% in the negative for another. Meaning that, again, the same pokemon you catch in the wild can have radically different stats than another. Following a pokemon's nature, and getting one with the right nature can be a pain (I never cared too much, even though I probably should have), but if you are just playing through the game and don't plan on fighting any actual people you'll be fine not worrying too much about it. Still, a nice new layer of depth.

Third we have double battles, which are like regular battles except...two at a time. These are slightly more tactical but not by much; some abilities now hit multiple enemies and others hit just one, but overall these are never more challenging than a regular trainer (except the secret double-boss battles after you beat the Elite Four).

Lastly, changes have been made to EVs and IVs, the secret exp stats that you gain over the course of the game on each pokemon that unlocks bonus stats at lv 100. This is really just for the hardcore, so I'm not going to go into it, just know it's been better balanced. If you can balance something as crazy as that.

"YOU SHALL NOT PASS!"

These are all decent changes, but hardly as radical as anything in Gold/Silver, which introduced breeding, two new elemental types, held items, and more. But hey, it's still Pokemon, right? Even if the new monsters are dumb and it doesn't add that much, there's something sweet new in here, right?

Well...no. Not really. The game is the same as the past ones, to a fault. While this worked in Gold/Silver because technically it was just the second game, by the third you'll expect something switched up. While Gold/Silver was a solid sequel, this one feels like a meandering one. It just sort of wanders in, offers a few changes, and then stumbles around drunkenly before its friends have to order it a taxi home.

The worst part is it actually changes things for the worse. The most noticeable difference is the fact that the night/day cycle from Gold/Silver has been removed. What? Why? That added so much, from both an immersion and gameplay perspective, and axing it seems like a huge step back.

Those bugs just look so...stupid.

The other new "feature" from Ruby/Sapphire is one I hesitate to talk about, because I believe it was the beginning of the end for a lot of pokemon players. The "Pokemon Contests," which basically consist of just parading your pokemon with other pokemon in a selection of awful minigames (many of which you don't even play) make up a good part of the side-stuff in this game. Each pokemon now has five more stats (Beauty, Cool, Cute, Smart, and Tough) which are all completely useless except in these pokemon beauty contests. Later versions expanded on this stupid mechanic (why?) and it's...it's just stupid. Yeah, I get that this is a kids game, and I get that this is technically supposed to be "immersing" me in the world of pokemon, but parading my killer death machine in some beauty pageant just seems...dumb. Urk.

Oh boy.

From a presentation standpoint, Ruby/Sapphire is just...ok. Yeah, the graphics look lots better because they are on the GBA, but battle backgrounds, rather than being solid white, are now solid green with some circles where your pokemon are. Nice. The animations from Crystal are gone for some inexplicable reason, meaning the pokemon are just as static and immobile as before. It looks as good as pushing cardboard cutouts around. The art style in this version is also weird (you'll notice if you put it up against any other pokemon game, before or after, it seems inconsistent), and the actual world you tromp around in looks dull. There is a cool town that lives in treehouses, though. So that's cool I guess. I just wish they'd put a little more time in their graphical presentation.

Music is...ok. The songs in Pokemon have always been a staple of the game, and switching over to the improved GBA soundboard meant it should sound better (like an SNES game vs an NES one). But to be honest, I can't think of one song from Ruby/Sapphire that I'd want to listen to again, while from every other generation (even Pearl/Diamond, which I also wasn't that fond of) there is at least one song I'll listen to on youtube from now and again. It just seems like a mediocre effort all around.

The final boss song is still cool though. I guess.

As it stands, I think Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire was a few steps forward, a few back, and it ended up close to around where it left off in Gold/Silver. It added a few decent improvements, changed up a few things that would help shape how Pokemon is played today, and added a bunch more pocket monsters to nab, but there was no denying the formula was going stale. You still caught the same crappy pokemon at the beginning, still got to the place with the bug pokemon after that, the first two pokemon were a rodent of some kind and a bird of some kind, etc. Game Freak and Nintendo were so comfortable in their formula they were terrified to change it, something that (unfortunately) continued into the next generation of Pokemon as well.

As it stands, there's a better Pokemon game on the GBA worth looking into if you really need one (more on that later), but for now I'd honestly suggest picking up Crystal before Ruby/Sapphire. It just doesn't bring enough new to the table, and the stupid-looking new pokemon don't help.

Also: I will not be reviewing Pokemon Emerald. Needless to say it's like Crystal only with less: there are a few more bonus missions at the end, you can catch both legendaries instead of just one, and it mixes up a few of the final bosses. That's it. I guess it's the "definitive" edition, but it wouldn't get any different of a score.

For its extreme lack of innovation, I give Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald a three out of five.

But hey, at least you have a boatload of pokemon to choose from.

Pokemon Pinball

2012-02-28T09:49:00.002-08:00

The Short

Pros

- Unique combination of Pokemon catching and a pinball game

- Can actually catch all original 150 pokemon in this game

- Lots of unique side tables and games

- Had a built in rumble pack!

- Music is pretty good

- Graphics look vibrant and really colorful on the GBC

Cons

- Only two actual tables, Red and Blue

- Lack of analog controls for the flippers makes precise shots hard

- Tables are simple but the game can be quite difficult, as the controls make aiming rough

It's Pinball, BUT WITH POKEMON!

The Long

Pokemon Pinball might come off as simply a cash-in on the pokemon phenomenon, and you might be right. Coming out between Red/Blue and Yellow, Pokemon Pinball is exactly what it sounds like: it's pinball, but with pokemon. If this sounds stupid to you, than you might be surprised to learn that Pokemon Pinball is actually...a pretty good game? Well, it has a lot of good ideas, but it certainly isn't without its flaws.

Here's the top half of the Red table.

Pokemon Pinball's goals are simple: catch all 150 original pokemon using pinball. Which makes perfect sense because the ball is a pokeball. I mean, come on...this game is practically Pokemon canon now!

To catch these little buggers you simply have to play pinball. Both stages have the usual "three lights to turn on" in the upper half of the screen (for some reason the screenshot above doesn't have it, but that area right above the Voltorbs/bumpers normally has three buttons to press). Once you have all three a pokemon appears, and it's your goal to bash it with the pinball - er, pokeball until you "catch" it. Then you are given a boatload of points, a chance at a bonus, and you do it over again.

Catch that Spearow!

You have two tables to blast your way through, and neither of which are particularly complex aside from the Pokemon aesthetic. Red table (the one above) is the most "pinball like," with bumpers and the usual layout. Blue is totally bananas, with the bottom half being normal but something weird going on in the upper half.

What the crap is going on up there?

It's actually a decent game, with the catching element (while a bit silly) actually working with the whole pinball thing. It gives you distinct, simple goals that can be relatively difficult to obtain, and it saves all the pokemon you've captured so you can progress over days or weeks towards the goal of "catching them all." Not bad for a Game Boy Color game!

A big problem, though, is the flippers. In most pinball games you have at least a slight amount of analog control, meaning you can control how hard you hit the ball. The Game Boy Color doesn't have that feature with the buttons, so you basically just hit it and it goes flying. Sometimes the physics can be a little weird, leaving me scratching my head as to why an exact same shot went in a completely different direction, but it isn't bad enough to ruin the experience.

The game also has "boss battle" minigames, which are a nice break from the two tables

Another issue is the tables have a distinct lack of...stuff on them. The best pinball tables combine a mix of bumpers, loops, and buttons/lights to keep you interested, usually having four or five things going on at once that you can work on. These tables really only have one goal to shoot for (light up the three on top, catch the pokemon) with a minimal amount of bumpers or buttons to hit in the meantime. It isn't bad, and considering how small the GBC screen is (and it's low pixel density) I'm guessing they did well enough with their limited screen real estate, but it still makes the game feel a bit shallow as a pinball game.

Pokemon Pinball also has a built in rumble feature, that is awesome because it requires it's own battery. Yeah, you have to plug an AAA battery into the cart itself, and then it'll rumble while you play it. It makes the cartridge freaking huge but is actually pretty cool, with the vibration going off whenever you hit the flipper or bounce against bumpers or basically do anything remotely cool.

Look at that thing. It's huge!

The bonus stages are pretty fun, if just "keep hitting the guy and don't let the ball fall down." They mix it up by dropping coins or what not, but as it stands most of them are exactly the same: hit the pokemon, win. There are fine bonus tables (including one centered around Mewtwo), which is good considering this game only has two full tables.

Graphically, the game looks great. The shift between screens is actually not as jarring as you'd think, since the game moves a little slower than a normal pinball table to make up for it. Everything is well colored and looks crisp (these screenshots aren't the best at showing that; sorry). The game plays sort of happy, light versions of classic Pokemon songs, and I was surprised by exactly how much music was in the game, and how it was playing almost all the time. I'm sure it would drive somebody insane after a while, but I thought it was cheerful and worked great with the look and feel the game was trying to express.

There just isn't much to do on the tables.

Pokemon Pinball is not a bad game. In fact, it's a pretty decent one. Despite it's simplicity it can be quite addicting (much like the main Pokemon games), with the flow of the game moving very well and it never feeling either too difficult or too easy. It's a big underwhelming and the lack of tables (and features on those tables) is a bummer, but considering it was probably made to just tide people over until Pokemon Yellow, it's a good diversion.

Plus, that rumble. So awesome.

You can get copies for pretty cheap, so if you have a GBC or GBA and love Pokemon, you should check it out! It apparently was good enough to merit a sequel (which I haven't played), so get on that!

Three out of five stars.

PINBALL.

Pokemon Crystal

2012-02-28T09:11:00.003-08:00

The Short

Pros
- Improved version of Pokemon Gold/Silver
- Can finally play as a girl for the first time in a Pokemon game
- Can catch both legendaries from Gold/Silver
- Pokemon now animate when entering battle, which is a nice touch
- Several small aesthetic changes and the phone calls people give you are less stupid
- Has the best batch of available pokemon between the three games of this generation

Cons
- Essentially the exact same game as Gold/Silver

Yep, we're doing this again.

The Long

Pokemon Crystal has a lot of fond memories for me. It actually was my brother's game that I essentially stole (since you can only have one save) since he had Silver anyway and I needed a pokemon game to play. I started playing it when my family went on a trip to London a considerable number of years ago, and I remember setting the internal clock (which changes the in-game night/day cycle) to London time because...I was in London.

I then came home a week later and couldn't figure out how to change it, so my Pokemon Crystal game was always on London time. I'll just say the main character is a perpetual night owl and call it good, I guess. I certainly killed a lot of Hoothoots.

Anyway, ever since the start there's been a sort of tradition with the Pokemon games, established by Pokemon Yellow. They'll release a pair of games (Red/Blue, Gold/Silver, Ruby/Sapphire, etc.), and then a year later they'll release the "definitive" version of these games (Yellow, Crystal, Emerald, etc.). These usually offer a few extras (like being able to get both of the legendary or starter pokemon as well as a few bonuses) and perform very minor balance and story changes to keep the games consistent.

This is the only "improved" game that I'll be reviewing (aside from Pokemon Yellow) seeing as most versions aside from Pokemon Yellow don't really offer much new that is worth noting. But I am reviewing Pokemon Crystal simply because of the time I spent with it and how significant it was in my personal history of Pokemon.

You can finally play as a girl!

The improvements between Gold/Silver and Crystal are minimum, but still make Crystal the better version. The biggest change is you can finally play as a girl for the first time in the series (a trend that continued ever since). This doesn't change anything but aesthetics, but it's a nice touch, and the girl doesn't look like a complete fashion failure like she does in all future Pokemon installments.

Not much different, but still cool.

Another noticeable change is aesthetic: when pokemon enter a battle they have a little animation now rather than just standing there. Again, this was a nice touch, which they promptly axed for almost all future generations (why?). Yeah, they weren't great animations, but they were better than the guys just standing there, which apparently is what Nintendo liked better.

There were a few balance changes (you can get fire pokemon earlier, which makes the game easier), but what really blew my mind was the fact you could get both legendary pokemon from Gold/Silver (Ho-Oh and Lugia) as well as all three of the legendary dogs in the same game. Much like Pokemon Yellow let you get every starter pokemon, Crystal breaks the rules and gives you all the best. You still can't get all the starters (and haven't been able to since Yellow), but hey...I'll take Ho-Oh over Cyndaquil any day.

But in truth, this game isn't much different from Gold/Silver

Aside from that, not much is different. The story is changed a little, but since nobody ever cared about a story in a Pokemon game that probably doesn't matter. The phone calls people make to you are a little less stupid, but still have about a 50/50 split between useful/useless. They adjusted a few bosses and maps to make things better paced, but again...it's all simply very minor changes. The fact of the matter is, aside from cosmetic differences, Crystal is essentially a slightly better Gold/Silver, and that's only if you are interested in "catching them all."

Music is still great, though.

This review might be redundant, but I really liked Pokemon Crystal, and was kind of bummed when they rereleased Gold and Silver as HeartGold and SoulSilver that they totally neglected to rerelease Crystal. I suppose even Nintendo knew it was redundant by that point, and they could only milk so much out of this franchise, but man...I really like Crystal.

Anyway, it gets the same five out of five stars, yada yada yada. If you are looking to pick these games up and not as the DS re-releases, you should totally go for Pokemon Crystal. It's the best out of the three, and plus the cart is a cool light blue crystally color.

Speaking of Super Nerds...yeah, I am one. Sigh.

Pokemon Gold/Silver

2012-02-28T08:36:00.001-08:00

Pokemon Gold/Silver Versions

The Short

Pros
- Adds 100 new pokemon to the mix, and an entire new region to explore
- Adds a day/night cycle that advances in real time, and changes which pokemon are available
- You can now breed pokemon. The implications of this are nuts.
- Can re-visit the entire region from the first game, three years later, and battle all the same gym leaders
- Ability to map items (such as the bicycle) to a button greatly speed up the game
- Two new elements, Dark and Steel, further mix up this elemental-based battler
- Finally adds an XP bar to the battle screen. HALLELUJAH.
- Pokemon now have individual "happiness," which can change how they evolve, react, etc.
- Split Special into Special Attack and Special Defense, which changes a lot of things up
- Improved graphics and the best soundtrack in the series
- Probably had the most significant changes out of any Pokemon generation

Cons
- Still has several of the same core gameplay niggles as the previous games
- Pokemon no longer follow you around like in Yellow
- Batteries on these karts usually only last 7 years, meaning if you get one now your odds of being able to save aren't great
- I can't think of anything else. This really might be a perfect game.

Back to Pokeland. And yes, Silver is the better version, you Gold tards.

The Long

Pokemon Gold/Silver is my favorite Pokemon generation. It's the generation where I really started to get into the games, the obsession of "catching them all" hitting full force. I sunk hours and hours into this game on my quest to become a Pokemon Master, and I can honestly say I'd do it again (if I still had a cartridge). Pokemon Silver is nostalgia city for me, so bear with me as I try to not gush too much about how much I freaking love this game.

Pokemon Gold/Silver is technically the second "generation" of Pokemon games (Pokemon Yellow doesn't count because it was a spinoff of Blue/Red), and Nintendo knew they needed to up the ante. Pokemon was a massive phenomenon by this point, so something had to be done to keep fans intrigued while still keeping things relatively familiar. So what they did was essentially genius: added a ton of new stuff, all of which could both be either really simple or extremely complex based on how seriously you took it. It grabbed that idea from Pokemon Red/Blue that these games could be played by both kids and more serious gamers and blew it out of control. Seriously, pokemon breeding was just...well, I'll tell you.

Totodile. The greatest starter ever.

First off they revamped the entire adventure. Unlike Yellow, which was the same as Red/Blue but with Pikachu, Gold/Silver was a new quest set in a different land of Johto rather than the Kanto from the first games. It starts out relatively similar, with you being tasked to go off on an adventure to "Catch 'Em All!" for a Pokemon Professor, and he lets you pick from a set of three Pokemon of the fire, water, and grass variety (Cyndaquil, Totodile, or Chikorita). You again have a rival, though this time he's more like a punk red-headed thief rather than the professor's grandson.

As a red-head, I'm offended.

The adventure plays out pretty much exactly the same. You still have eight Gym leaders to beat up before taking on the Elite Four and finally the Champion, finally proving yourself as the Pokemon king. The crazy part is that after you beat the Champion (which is no easy thing; Drake's a powerhouse) the game actually lets you go back to Kanto from the first game and replay all their Gym leaders, a few of which have been replaced and all their pokemon buffed. You can then re-fight the Elite Four and Champion, who have also upgraded their pokemon, and even go battle Red, your main character from the Red/Blue games. Protip: He's a badass.

Kid's game? The battle with Red is nuts.

So you are essentially getting two games for the price of one here, which is awesome. But enough about that; that are the real changes? What is different between this and Red/Blue/Yellow that makes it worth your time?

Well, the first big thing is the Day/Night cycle. Now when you load up the game it asks for the current time, and the game will adjust accordingly. As you travel, as it becomes night in the real world, it'll become night in the game. The crazy part is that some Pokemon only come out at night, and many pokemon have different encounter rates based on whether you are hunting them in morning, evening, afternoon, night, etc. It also knows what day of the week it is, with certain events happening only on certain days. As you battle across the land you'll also add people to your phone book (another new feature), and sometimes trainers you've defeated will call you on certain days for a rematch.

Like having Pikachu following you around in Yellow, this adds a ton of immersion points for me. Yeah, nothing anybody says when they call is particularly interesting (though I thought my mom calling me was funny) and usually it's either straight business or total uselessness (I don't care that you just failed at catching a Caterpie! I have like ten of those already!) but it's still a good touch. The Day/Night thing is also totally awesome, because then I had to plan when I was playing the game. If I wanted a Hoothoot (an Owl pokemon, obviously) I'd have to stay up later and run though the forest at night to grab one. It was a really cool feature and helped make the game feel more "real."

I'm coming for ya, you stupid Hoothoot!

To compliment this new spin on pokemon hunting, they added 100 new pokemon, and two new elemental types: Dark and Steel. Dark and Steel were made for two balancing purposes: to make Psychic less totally invincible, and make Fighting actually useful. They also readjusted elemental weaknesses and strengths from the original fourteen, and it's been the same in every game ever since. The new pokemon were just as well designed as the first 150, if not more so. The 100 in this game are probably my favorites in the series in terms of design and just general awesomeness. As a bonus you could still catch all of the 150 from the first games, assuming you had both versions (Gold and Silver).

Adding these new elements bumped up the complexity even more. This is a lot to memorize!

Strategy in battles was also mixed up. Pokemon could now hold items, such as berries, that they would auto-use in times of danger without costing them a turn. They were all essentially single use if they were consumables, while items like the Exp Share, which helps with leveling up lower-level pokemon, weren't. You could give them items that powered up specific moves, but then you'd have to decide if that was better than having a healing item equipped. It added a ton of strategy, though it also mostly just made me pissed off when I thought I was about to win and my stupid opponent heals half his health back with a berry.

But all these pale in comparison to what is probably the deepest addition to the game, and the one that makes some people go totally nuts about Pokemon: the new breeding system.

Don't fall asleep, I'll be quick.

I'm going to be brief. On the surface level this meant you could produce more pokemon, simple enough. The perk was that you could essentially get more of the rare ones (such as your starters) by breeding them and then hatching the produced egg (and since Dittos can breed with anything they suddenly became one of the most prized pokemon in the game). Legendaries couldn't breed, but since every pokemon had a gender if you got one of each (or one and a Ditto) you could finally replicate those rare pokemon.

And that isn't even the half of it.

Pokemon inherit moves and stats based on who their parents are. If you just breed with a Ditto you don't get anything interesting, but many pokemon will breed with different pokemon than themselves, meaning you can mix element types. In a game that so heavily focuses on elemental moves, having an electric type that knows a water move can be game-changing. This is all stupidly complicated and I never got too deep into it, but just know that it's there, and it's nuts.

Penny Arcade knows.

Lots of little changes also make the game better. You finally have an XP bar that fills on the right for each pokemon after each battle, so you can follow as they level (yay!). You can map items to a button (like the bicycle) for instant use rather than having to dig through a menu to get to them. Menus are very similar to Red/Blue but seem to be streamlined in ways I can't put my finger on. It's all running in the same engine but looks cleaner overall, which is appreciated.

Battle backdrops are still just white, but the Pokemon themselves look real good

Pokemon Gold/Silver was the first Pokemon game designed for a color system, and boy...they did a really good job. The first thing you get when you boot the game up is a full-color intro sequence that was totally awesome. In-game the graphics are excellent for a Game Boy Color game, with areas being vibrant and using the limited color pallet of the GBC to a full extent. The stars of the show are certainly the Pokemon, which all look unique and well colored, though the lack of any background in battles is a bit of a downer (though I have no idea how they would have pulled it off). They do well with using the limited real estate space of the GBC screen to pack everything on while still looking good, so there you go.

The music of Gold/Silver is my favorite in the entire series. Yeah, some songs in later versions might be up there, but nearly every song in this game is great. Like the graphics, they do well with using very little to do a whole lot. The battle songs are especially great, but the songs for the towns and routes also shine.

Plus, the final boss song is nuts.

There's probably more that could be said about the changes in Pokemon Gold/Silver, but I think I've said enough already. The point is: if you like deep, turn-based JRPG battles and you haven't jumped on the Pokemon train, you are missing out in some of the best the business has to offer. Easy to pick up, almost impossible to master, Pokemon Gold/Silver was really where the series took off. I can't think of a better place to start (though the re-releases - SoulSilver and HeartGold on the DS - are very faithful representations with all the improvements that have been made since), and as it stands this is easily the best Game Boy Color game ever released.

If you have a GBA or GBC you are missing out if you don't have one of these games in your collection. Five out of five stars.

Pokemon Yellow

2012-02-27T19:07:00.000-08:00

The Short

Pros
- Keeps the same, addicting gameplay found in its siblings, Pokemon Blue/Red
- Graphical improvements over its predecessor
- Follows the anime series by giving you a Pikachu to start, unlike any other game in the series
- Is the only game in the series where it is capable of getting all three starters of the generation without trades (Charmander, Squirtle, Bulbasaur)
- Pikachu follows you around and can be talked to, and his mood influences certain aspects of the game
- Improved compatibility with the Game Boy Color
- Starting with an electric Pokemon makes the first portion of the game much harder, which I am totally fine with
- Some very small gameplay tweaks refine certain aspects from Blue/Red

Cons
- At its core, this is still Pokemon Blue/Red, with all the same problems as the first games
- Still no damned XP bar
- You can't catch any Pikachus or evolve the one you have into a Raichu
- Has a Pikachu's Beach minigame which is...just there
- Doesn't add any new pokemon at all
- Might be seen as just a money-maker, cashing in on the popularity of the anime at the time

The face that booted a franchise

The Long

It's 1999. Year of The Matrix. Year approaching Y2K. And absolutely the year of the Pokemon. Pokemon Red/Blue are selling like crazy, a start of a blockbuster franchise that can only be compared these days with something like the boom of the Angry Birds games. Nintendo still has a year before the next generation of Pokemon, Gold/Silver, will come out, and it needs to keep its fans happy. The Pokemon anime has taken off big in both the US and Japan, and so Nintendo hatches a plan.

Pokemon: Yellow Version (also known as Pokemon: Special Pikachu Version) is that plan. Taking Pokemon Red/Blue and retooling it so that it better fits with the plot of the anime, Nintendo pushes Pikachu to the forefront of the franchise as its now-easily recognizable mascot, and dedicates an entire game to him. So is this game - which is basically just Red/Blue reskinned - just a cheap cash-in on the anime?

No. In fact, I'd go so far to say it was superior to Red/Blue by a longshot.

Pikachu, catching some sick waves.

The main difference between Yellow and Red/Blue happens at the very beginning. In Red/Blue, you get to choose which Pokemon you start with, a tradition that carries on into every other Pokemon game to date. You get a fire, water, or grass type pokemon, and your rival (whom you battle throughout the game) will pick whatever your weakness is. In Pokemon Yellow, however, you always start with a Pikachu, and your Rival always starts with an Eevee. It's worth noting that Eevee's are a unique pokemon in that they start with the Normal (aka neutral) type and can evolve into many different types depending on how you go about it (an electric, water, or fire type in Generation I). So your rival pretty much got a way better deal than you, getting a bum Pikachu.

Choices are for tools, anyway.

This actually makes the game a bit harder, if only because the first gym is a Rock type, which is completely immune to electricity. Sure, electric pokemon and fire pokemon can be hard to find in the wild, but that doesn't mean you have to start with them. The bump in difficulty is actually greatly appreciated; I always thought the Pokemon games were too easy because they start you off with such accessible types. Start me off with something weird, like Psychic or Bug or Ghost or something. But they never do, except this game. So that's unique.

Suck it, stupid Eevee.

What is really cool about this version, though, is the fact that (like the anime), your Pikachu won't stay in a pokeball. Instead it'll follow you around so long as its in your available roster, journeying with you to the ends of the earth if necessary. You can also talk to your Pikachu at any time and gauge his happiness, which can be used a specific locations to earn rewards or for specific plot...things.

I'd like to say how I think this is a really good idea for a second. The whole idea about Pokemon is you setting out on a journey of discovery and personal growth in an attempt to be the very best, like no one every was. Having a companion with you (who also fights for you) who has feelings and tags along is really neat. It helps sell the adventure more, because these monsters are no longer just guys that pop up in menus or in battle, they are actually there with you. I felt much more immersed in this game than I did with Red/Blue because it felt more real (if battling tons of Japanese monsters is "real"). It was an aesthetic changes that I totally agreed with.

They brought it back on HeartGold/SoulSilver (the DS remakes of Gold/Silver) and I really liked it there, too. Then they took it out for Black/White because Nintendo hates me.

Sad Pikachu is sad

There are a few other changes to keep the game more in line with the anime, and almost all of them are for the better. Specific gym leaders (Brock and Misty) have been changed to look like their anime counterparts. The regular Team Rocket grunts have been changed to Jessie and James from the show, including their full pokemon roster. But probably the best part is the fact that, like Ash from the series, you can get all three starter pokemon in this game without needing to trade. For those who don't know: another reason why picking your first pokemon is such a big deal is you can never get any of the others without trading; they just don't show up anywhere in the game. Pokemon Yellow has all three from Red/Blue, and most are fairly easy to get. So if you wanted a dream team of Charizard, Blastoise, and Venusaur, this is the game for you.

Misty looks a little more like her anime counterpart, sans suspenders

The graphics have seen a slight improvement, and there has been one sound change. Pikachu, instead of making some random noise, instead does a very staticy "PIKA!" sound everytime he goes into battle. I can't decided if this is a good or a bad thing, but it's consistant with the source material, so I'll give it that I guess. The graphics, as stated, are generally the same, though it does look a lot better on a Game Boy Color than Red/Blue. Since it wasn't designed for the color system, the Game Boy Color has to sort of guess which colors go where, and it seems to do better on this game than the others. It still looks pretty bad, but at least Pikachu is consistently yellow.

There are also a few minor changes made to the gameplay that aren't worth mentioning (like you can finally teach Charizard "Fly"), because as a whole it's still the same game as Red/Blue. No new pokemon have been added (though this one has probably the best mix of optional pokemon out of the trio), which is a bummer, and there has been no UI improvements. Yep, still have to go all the way into the menu to see your XP. How obnoxious.

Here's some more Pikachu surfing because, why not?

As it stands, Pokemon Yellow is probably the best out of the original Generation I Pokemon games. While it is obviously pandering to fans of the anime, the changes are all welcome ones, and all improve upon the original's solid formula. I still think having a Pikachu that actually follows you around was the main reason I liked this game so much, because I really felt like I was a Pokemon adventurer, much more than I had with Red/Blue. It might be stupid, I know, but this is one of my favorite versions of Pokemon, and if you are looking to revisit the first Generation on its original hardware, this is probably the one to do it with.

It still has the same issues as Blue/Red, but...come on. It's Pikachu. How could you say no?

Four out of five stars.

Come, trusty Pikachu! Let us go forth and...wait, is that old guy dead?!

Pokemon Blue/Red

2012-02-27T15:45:00.002-08:00

Pokemon Red/Blue Versions

The Short

Pros
- 150 Pokemon to capture and battle (no, not 151. You can't catch Mew without cheating. Trust me.)
- Surprisingly deep JRPG with a heavy emphasis on elemental weaknesses and attacks
- Hella tight music, even for the tinny GB speakers
- Hunting down and trading for every last Pokemon is addicting and fits that obsessive-compulsive need
- Idea of creating your own journey to become a Pokemon master is compelling, enough so that they reuse it for every future game in the franchise
- Creating the "perfect team" with the right combination of types and moves can consume your life

Cons
- Lack of an XP bar means you have to go to the menu to check levels every time
- Catching them all means having a friend with a GB and a link cable to trade, since the monsters are limited based on version
- HM moves can't be deleted except through a rather tedious process
- Lacks the depth of future games since it doesn't have breeding, day/night cycle, etc.
- A few cumbersome UI choices
- Game Boy Color doesn't really color it well
- Game really isn't that difficult until the very end
- Status effects are always stacked against you
- In the original version, Psychic Pokemon were virtually invincible
- Like all the games, Pokemon is a serious test to your level-grinding patience

The intro that started it all

The Long

You know what Pokemon is. Even if you've ever played it, even if you can't tell a Zubat from a Pidgy, and even if these new-fangled "pokemans" are clearly inferior to the original 150 you caught as a kid, everybody knows what Pokemon is. I'm pretty sure most people in this country can recognize a Pikachu on sight, have heard the phrase "Gotta Catch 'Em All," and know that in the Pokeworld a Gym is not a place you go to work out. Yu-Gi-Oh came and went, Digimon had a run and sort of faded, but Pokemon persists. And you can laugh or scoff all you want at this "kid's game," but there is clearly something here that has compelled literal generations of kids to play it. Think of it this way: Pokemon Red/Blue came out in 1998. That's fourteen years ago. That's long enough for someone to grow up, get married, have their own kid, and start teaching them to be a Pokemon master. That's insane.

As someone who experienced Pokemon from start to finish (I was 12 when the phenomenon came crashing over to U.S. shores), I have no shame in saying I think these are all fantastic games. I never got so deep as to the whole breeding/secret stats thing of the later versions, but I did "Catch 'Em All" with the first two generations (never to happen again), have played every single generation and several spinoff games, and even watched the first two seasons of the anime. Yeah. I can sing the entire first-season Pokemon anime theme song by heart, even now. I'll admit that aspect of all this is a little sad.

TO CATCH THEM IS MY REAL TEST, TO TRAIN THEM IS MY CAUSE

Anyway, the point is that I love the crap out of Pokemon, even though I'm twenty-six and married and should probably be doing something better with my time. If you've ever been on the fence or just thought they were stupid kids games (the franchising of it and marketing it as such probably didn't help that interpretation much), then guess what. I'm here to convince you otherwise.

So enough of me rambling and let's get on with this review.

Let the battle begin

Pokemon starts off simple. You are a young boy living in Pallet Town, and whenever boys (and I assume girls) reach a certain age they are set off on an adventure to become a Pokemon trainer. It's a sort of "rite of passage" thing into adulthood, I'm assuming, because after that they either become a Pokemon master, or just a normal like...shopkeeper. It's actually an interesting analogy about pursuing your dreams, because everybody leaves Pallet Town thinking they'll be champion, while your journey is filled with people who have essentially given up. Since it's an open world, you can technically give up at any time and just wander around normally, but if you want to be the best it's a lot of work and a lot of failure. I'm probably digging to deep into this, since there's really no actual story to speak of, but since the goal of it is to allow a player to write their own Pokemon journey, that's mine.

The essential goal is to beat a set of eight Gym leaders (bosses) along the way, then go kill the Elite Four and the Champion in one final blow. The first eight can poise a slight problem if your team isn't great, but the game gets mad hard once you hit the Elite Four, which adds a chunk of gameplay. That's basically the goal of Pokemon. Simple, but I'm fine with that.

JRK is well on his way to being a Pokemon Master

You are given a choice between three starters: a fire-elemental type (Charmander), a water-elemental type (Squirtle) and a grass-elemental type (Bulbasaur). They might as well had called them "Hard, Medium, Easy" respectively, since that's essentially how it works, though once you get in the second half of the game it becomes kind of a moot point.

So you pick your Pokemon, grab your balls (Pokeballs) and your journey begins. There's a bit where you have to overthrow a corrupt Pokemon gang called Team Rocket, but the story is pretty much 1. Get stronger and 2. Beat up everybody who so much as glances in your direction. Simple stuff.

Charmander, bringing 'da heat

How to accomplish both 1 and 2 above requires you to catch more Pokemon. You can have as many as you want total, but you are limited to only having six on your team. Pokemon are also assigned a unique element, which each has their own specific weaknesses. Simple ones are that fire is weak to water (meaning the Charmander above is screwed if the Squirtle knows Water Gun), while others get more complex (Psychic is weak to Bug, Strength is weak to Psychic, etc.). The basic elements of this first version are Normal, Fire, Fighting, Water, Flying, Grass, Poison, Electric, Ground, Psychic, Ice, Bug, Ghost, and Dragon. Knowing and mastering these strengths and weaknesses is probably the biggest key point in the game, and being able to actively attack and defend against any of these types requires you to have a perfect team. Pokemon can also have hybrid types (for example, Charizard is a Fire/Flying), with a main type and a side type. These weaknesses can stack and so can strengths (so since both fire and rock take 2x damage from water, a fire/rock Pokemon would take 4x), meaning you have to be very careful in who you pick and who you send out.

You also aren't limited to just your own elemental powers, since moves themselves are assigned elements as well. Your Pokemon often stay reasonably within their assigned class type when they learn moves via leveling up, but you can acquire special items (TMs) that teach moves that can mix things up. Some of the most valuable Pokemon (the dragons), are awesome because you can teach them from a massive pool of elemental type moves. Unlike the Pokemon, however, moves can't have multiple types.

Seriously, it's a lot to remember.

And then the clincher: you can only have four moves at a time, and if you forget a move it's gone forever (except if you fulfil a very specific set of requirements and for just one Pokemon). So when you are making your team of awesome, you have to be careful to not screw it up. This can be a big pain because of the UI; you don't know what moves do or even what element they are (though you can guess what "Fire Blast"'s element is) until after you either actually learn it or look it up online. This can mean you could seriously mess up your Pokemon if you forgot an essential move. You can fix this most of the time by catching another one (if it is a catchable type) and fixing it later, but it still is an annoyance.

You also have to choose whether to evolve your Pokemon (which makes them tougher but they learn moves slower), or leave him where he is (where he stays weaker but can learn better moves at a faster rate)

So how do you form this Poke-team? You gotta go out there and catch them! While the battle mechanics of Pokemon can be extremely complex, the actual system themselves is traditional turn-based JRPG. You wander around in tall grass (or get spotted by another trainer) to start a battle. Once in it, you take turns attacking based on the various Pokemon's speed stat (and there are, of course, moves that buff or debuff). You can also spend a turn to take a Pokemon back and send another one out, earning the newcomer a free hit from the enemy. After you've beat the everloving crap out of the other guy (but not enough to kill him, just barely), you can throw a Pokeball and pray (holding Down+B also helps). If you are lucky, you catch the wild Pokemon and he becomes yours FOREVER. If you fail, you can keep throwing with the hope that you'll get it, while the wild Pokemon gets a free hit on your guy every time you fail.

Somebody actually figured out the math for this. Freaking insane.

Which brings me to a big complaint (and one that continue throughout the series): catching Pokemon is both exciting and immensely frustrating. Yes, you can buy better Pokeballs that have a better chance of catching. Yes, there are moves that drop an enemy HP to 1 (though False Swipe wasn't introduced until Generation II, so it isn't in this game) and not 0, which is ideal for catching. But missing ten Pokeballs in a row or accidentally hitting an rare Pokemon down to 0 so the battle ends instead of giving you a chance to catch it is infuriating. Considering it's trying to take regular RPG mechanics of "dealing damage" and applying a requirement of precision from them is really obnoxious.

If you win the battle, every Pokemon who participated gets an equal cut of the XP (which makes a viable strategy to put your low-level Pokemon first, swap him out at the start of the battle for a good one, and then the two share the final XP). Another pain in the butt for the Red/Blue generation is the lack of an XP bar in battle. It gives you the numbers, sure, but in order to actually see how much XP you need to a next level you have to go through the menu to the specific Pokemon to check. It's an annoyance that was fixed in Gold/Silver, but it still really hurts replaying this game again now, in 2012.

Choose wisely.

The level grinding also gets pretty insane. Since each Pokemon has to level individually, and Pokemon you catch are usually weaker than your current party of six, every time you get a new Pokemon you are signing up for another 10-20 minute grindfest to get him up to par. Again, this can be done via the swap trick (or the Exp Share item in later versions), but it's still tedious. There are also Pokemon that become completely obsolete by the end of the game (read: all Bug Pokemon), so if you heavily invested in them once they hit level ~30 you'll realize they...kind of suck now. Time to catch a new one, I guess.

Luckily the Pokemon get stronger as you go along, meaning it isn't that bad, but expect to spend a lot of time running back and forth in tall grass as you level grind your Squirtle up to a Wartortle.

Pikachu has lost some weight since this first game

Another major annoyance is the HMs. Now, in order to make sure you don't just run out and get mutilated by some Lv 40 Ponyta from the start of the game, Pokemon gates your progress with the Gyms. After you beat the Gyms you are given a move (for example, "Cut"), which you can teach any number of Pokemon an unlimited amount of times, and it lets you interact with it in the real world (in this case, cutting specific trees that block your path). I wish they'd do more with having your Pokemon interact with the real world other than just doing these prescribed things, but that isn't my complaint.

My complaint is once you learn an HM you are stuck with it forever. You can't delete or replace it from your four-move roster. So if you learn Cut (which is a pretty crappy move later on) with your main guy, you just have a wasted slot for every battle forever. Why couldn't they have gated it with, I dunno, an item? They could have given me an ax and I wouldn't have had to ruin my Pokemon. There are ways around it (getting a junk Pokemon to learn all the HM moves), but that's wasting a whole slot from your party of Six to just get around the damn world. As a bonus, these things come back after you leave the screen, meaning you can't just run to every rock, tree, etc. in the world and blow it up once, you still have to haul your crappy HM Mule/Slave around. It's stupid and extremely annoying, and they still haven't changed it.

Get spotted by a trainer and you'll be locked into a fight.

Graphically, Pokemon is a mixed bag. The Pokemon themselves look great, well drawn and their moves also look decent. The world itself is a bit bland, but it's a Game Boy game so I'm willing to cut it some slack. The menus are pretty much just tons of text to navigate, which isn't aesthetically pleasing at all, and they can be extremely cumbersome to navigate (especially since you have to go them to to check your XP GAH).

The music is awesome, even coming out of tinny Game Boy speakers. You'll learn to loathe the battle song, but each city and route sports their own catchy tunes, and they all provide both good background noise and an excellent, memorable tune.

The start of a journey

How does one actually rate the game that started a massive phenomenon that is (more or less) still going fourteen years later? Well, when I started reviewing games I decided to review them based on how I fell now, not on how I felt at the time. At the time this game was freaking incredible, a JRPG introduction for kids that had an insane amount of depth hidden beneath it's simple exterior. Nintendo has improved on (or made slight improvements on, anyway) this formula over the years, and after burning through every Generation I can safely say that this game hasn't aged particularly well. The cumbersome gameplay and UI issues really hold it back, and while those of us with nostalgia will be willing to overlook these flaws, the rose-tinted glasses can only go so far.

This game was also remade on the GBA with the improvements that had been implemented in the years since its original release, and that version is easily the superior one. Pokemon Blue (my version, screw you Red people) will always hold a special place in my heart for what it is, but considering just how many Pokemon games you have to choose from currently, I can't recommend the original Game Boy game as a jumping off point for this generation of gamers.

Three out of five stars. Though if we were going off my rose-tinted memories, there wouldn't be enough stars in the world.

Week in Review: 2/19/2012

2012-02-26T22:02:00.002-08:00

Welcome back, dear reader, and hopefully you survived the horror that was "horror week." We got 10 creepy games reviewed, bumping our game total up to 77 overall. Of course I still have more to review, but we'll see if they pop up during later events.

I'm enjoying sticking to a theme every week, and in celebration to the announcement of the direct sequels to Pokemon Black/White coming out on the DS later this year, I'm going to declare this Pokemon week! I'm going to review every Pokemon generation, and even a few of the odd-balls (such as Crystal or Platinum). But that's not all! I'm also planning on doing all the spin-off games I've played (Pokemon Pinball, anyone?) which should provide some quality content. And before you ask: yes, I've played Hey You, Pikachu! So just keep that in mind.

If by some miracle I run out of Pokemon games before the year ends, I have a few more up my sleeve. Mario 2 (NES) has been in the backburner of requests, as well as Saints Row the Third (which I played religiously this last week), so those might pop up.

RPG week after Pokemon week? Maybe. Mass Effect 3 comes out soon, and that's technically an RPG. We'll see.

Here are these weeks' games, with scores!

Alan Wake - 3 / 5 Stars
Saw - 2 / 5 Stars
Clock Tower: The First Fear - 4 / 5 Stars
Dead Space 2 - 5 / 5 Stars
Plants vs Zombies - 5 / 5 Stars
Silent Hill 2 - 5 / 5 Stars
Silent Hill 3 - 5 / 5 Stars
Silent Hill Homecoming - 2 / 5 Stars
Condemned: Criminal Origins - 3 / 5 Stars
The Darkness II - 3 / 5 Stars

Expect some pocket monster mayhem this week! See you there!

The Darkness II

2012-02-26T21:42:00.000-08:00

The Short

Pros
- Same violent, dark, comic book adventure of the original
- New cell-shaded graphics look very good overall
- "Quad wielding" the tentacles and guns is much more responsive than The Darkness
- The world between life and death is better realized/less weird than the first game
- Upgrade tree allows for tons of customization
- Darkling management has been improved to have just one "always on" Darkling
- Four-player co-op multiplayer in the vein of Left 4 Dead
- One of the most fast paced, responsive, visceral shooter I've ever played

Cons
- Takes much of what made the first game great and abandons it for a corredor shooter
- Completely linear; all the open, breathing world elements have been removed
- Default setting to show "score" after killing enemies is annoying, but it can be turned off
- Swearing is gratuitous to the point of absurd
- Bosses are uninspired
- Brian Bloom is not Italian, and his fake accent as Jackie slips frequently
- Story's ending is unsatisfying, corny, and doesn't offer much closure
- Probably one of the most violent, gory games I've ever played, which can turn a lot of people off
- While The Darkness in spirit, it loses the core of what made the first game such a cult classic

The Darkness is back, and more violent than ever.

The Long

The Darkness was a game that came out of left field, and saw most of its success in the years post-release. A bizarre mixture of comic book supernatural powers, the Italian mob, shooters, and an open-world game, The Darkness didn't do any of these things particularly exceptional, but ended up being much more than the sum of its parts. It is rare that games like these see any sort of sequel at all, considering how it only sold moderately well despite both critical and fan acclaim. When I heard The Darkness II was coming out I was super excited, despite the game being made by a new developer. We were getting more Jackie and Mike Patton as The Darkness, which I was certainly ready for. The graphical shift and improved controls looked fantastic, the game violent and still heavily story-driven.

Now, five years later, we finally can continue Jackie Estacado's dark adventure. So is it a worthy successor?

I guess somebody watched Alien a few time before designing these executions

The Darkness II sees a massive improvement over The Darkness in terms of both controls and what you are able to do with the Darkness powers. In the first game, you only had essentially four Darkness powers, and only one could be equipped at a time. They were all cool but sometimes felt like you were limited considering you were supposed to be essentially a demi-god. Well, The Darkness II addresses this head on.

They coined it "quad-wielding," which might be a little much but is fairly accurate. You can duel-wield guns, with the usual left trigger firing the left gun and right trigger the right. Then you have your Darkness powers. To put it poetically, "I've got mah left one for grabbin' and my right one for slashin'." Left-shoulder does everything with grabs and tosses (be it objects in the environment, doors that need to be ripped out, or even people to be grabbed and executed), and right-shoulder does a slash (defaults to left-right, but can be done up-down with a flick of the right stick).

And sometimes they work together to brutally murder people.

It's a system that quickly becomes second nature, and also frees up the control pad. You then have a standard reload and jump button (X and A), and the last two face buttons are set to rechargable powers (a gun-boost and an area stun). It might be tricky at first, but before long you'll be grabbing people while shooting another one, and slashing at a third before executing the guy you picked up a while ago. The game also has a clear indicator for what and who can be grabbed, which is nice.

You are considerably more powerful in this game, to the point of absurdity. In the first game you still took out tons of dudes (mostly thanks to Black Hole, which has been changed to a random pick-up during the standard heart-eating affair) but felt at least a little vulnerable. In this game you really really feel like a god. If you stagger an enemy you'll get a grab, and if you grab them you can always insta-kill them. Insta kills also can net you health, ammo, or a shield, as an added bonus. Two or three hits with the right slash can knock enemies into the air and completely obliterate them, and be upgraded to do area smashes. It's insane how quickly you burn through standard grunts, grabbing everything from chairs to car doors to long poles to tear people to pieces.

Multitasking quickly becomes second nature, and the versatility makes nearly every encounter a blast.

These improvements are paired with an new upgrade system. Killing enemies, eating hearts, shooting out lights, or pretty much anything productive earns you dark essence, which you can spend on upgrading your Darkness powers, guns, and just about everything else. Many of these abilities are quite cool, such as eating a heart temporarily putting blades on your tentacles, to full body armor for when you are standing in the dark.

There is a downside, though. By default, killing enemies pops out the "name" of how you killed them, paired with a "score" (the soul essence you burned). It reminds me a lot of Bulletstorm, but in that game it made sense in the context of the story. In The Darkness II it just seems stupid, like a bunch of words and numbers just showing up to accompany every kill. Luckily you can turn this off, which I highly suggest doing before you even start up the game.

The new batch of enemies do well to counter your newfound prowess

The game isn't a cakewalk, though it is easier than the first one, even on the hardest difficulty. The enemies you are fighting in this game are aware of your Darkness powers and weakness to light, and they plan accordingly. You have characters carrying around high-beam lights to cause your Darkness powers to wane, flash-bang grenades, enemies with shields, and teleporting enemies that can't be grabbed as easily as others. The teleporting enemies are super-obnoxious and can take a while to kill, but the rest provide a good foil to your powers and keep you from just ripping through everything without difficulty.

I also really dig the new, improved graphics. A lot of people complained because the new graphics were "comic booky" cell-shaded rather than the plastic, "realistic" look of the first game. I think it looks fantastic, especially the use of vibrant colors frequently. It is a sharp contrast with flash effects, and I think it looks fantastic. Aside from some small niggles (what happend to Jackie's hair? It looks like a plastic wig!), the graphics are game.

The same can't be said for the voice acting. Jackie was replaced with Brian Bloom. Now, Brian Bloom is a great voice actor, one of the best. But he isn't Italian, and this sort of gruff, dark, world-weary character isn't his usual gig. His accent sounds fake at best, slips frequently, and just doesn't match the caliber of the original actor. It's fine, but inconsistant. The rest of the voice cast is very good, so as a whole I can't complain too much.

Bladed-tentacle looks awesome.

Despite this being a very solid game, there is one major problem I had with it: it's a linear, corredor shooter. You simply go from point A to point B, killing everybody along the way, and then often fight a lame boss after a few chapters. Sometimes you are dropped off at your mansion for a bit of "open worldly" elements that essentially boil down to walking around and talking to people before going to the next mission. There are also no such thing as side-missions, no side jobs to complete, no side-stories, nothing of that sort. You have a single goal, and you move forward to accomplish it. While the open-world elements from The Darkness were hardly the best open-world bits from any game, they made it unique and cool. Cutting them makes this feel less like the first game and more like a Call of Duty with tentacles.

The story is also considerably weaker this time around. It tries its damndest to invoke the emotional resonance that stuck with fans of the first game (the "Jenny" scene from the first game is probably one of the most shocking in any game I can think of), and the new enemies are technically more imposing than Uncle Paulie from the first game, but as a whole it hardly stuck with me nearly as much as The Darkness had. Perhaps the linearity made my investment in the world less, or perhaps the fact that we are no longer dealing with the origins of the Darkness makes it less interesting, or perhaps because the ending is so completely stupid and predicable but still lame I'm just left thinking that something went wrong here. I'm not looking for a particularly deep experience, but it seems like the creators of this sequel played The Darkness, figured out most of what made it good, but missed the part where it was all the little things that resonated. Picking and choosing these bits (story and gameplay) works to a point, but it makes it less special and more generic.

The loading screen monologue segments are back, and they fit in better with the story chronologically

The game also has a new multiplayer mode which is neat in concept, but a little bland in execution. Essentially a ton of co-op missions, you can get up to four friends ala Left 4 Dead style and blast your way through a bunch of dudes and shoot out some lights to win. You play as four characters that apparently have been touched by the Darkness but don't have its full power, meaning it isn't nearly as fun as the main game but I suppose they had to do that for balance. The missions themselves tend to be of the "clear out this area of bad guys" variety, over and over again, which is fun for the first bit but gets boring quite quickly. The four characters are unique and have their own skill trees, which is nice, but this diversion probably won't last you very long before you get bored of it.

Which is actually pretty bad, because the single-player story is short. I beat it in a single afternoon, from 1:00 - 5:00 pm. You do get a New Game + mode, which is awesome, so I started it over again on the hardest difficulty for a second run, which will probably add me another five odd hours, counting what I spend in the multiplayer. But considering you can beat this game and be done with it in four hours, as a value proposition this is pretty bad. The Darkness was 10-20 hours long and the majority of those hours were fun. The Darkness II is four, and it's a total thrill-ride the entire time, but it still seems to end just when the momentum is picking up.

The Darkness II isn't a bad sequel, just an uninspired one.

The Darkness II is not a bad game. It just isn't a real sequel to 2007's The Darkness. Most of what made the first game unique and special has been stripped away, and while what it has been replaced with is excellent, it lacks a soul. The four to five hours you'll spend slicing, grabbing, ripping, and shooting your way through hundreds of enemies is an absolute blast, and I couldn't recommend it more. But it's over too soon, the multiplayer offering is mediocre at best, and for those invested in the characters and the world won't find much here to grab a hold of. The Darkness II is an insane, awesome game. It just couldn't live up to the magic of its predecessor.

I still really suggest picking it up if you liked the first game and enjoy shooters, or if you simply like extremely fast paced, visceral shooters that try something new while still being familiar. It's certainly some of the funnest four hours I've spent in the past several months, I just wish there was more to it (both content-wise and design-wise). If you can grab it for $20-30 and like the first game, you should grab this for sure. However, I really think everybody should rent it. I got it for free for one day from a Redbox promotion, and got my fill of it in a single weekend.

When weighing both its flaws and improvements, I'm thinking a three out of five is a fair rating for The Darkness II. I don't like it as much as the first game, but it's a different kind of like, regardless. If you are a shooter fan or a Darkness fan, this should be a no brainer.

Besides, Mike Patton's voice acting is still awesome as The Darkness, so you could get it just for that.

"Jackie..."

Condemned: Criminal Origins

2012-02-25T22:38:00.003-08:00

The Short

Pros
- Gritty, violent fusion of horror and criminal investigation
- Strikes a decent balance between fighting and investigating
- Combat is first-person melee, something unique for a modern setting
- Story is genuinely creepy and compelling
- Areas are dark, tense, and scary
- Wide variety of weapons with varying stats at your disposal

Cons
- Areas can get a little repetitive, especially at the beginning
- Graphics haven't dated particularly well
- Some parts of the game are so dark you can't see anything
- Certain barriers require specific weapons to get through, which can be annoying
- You kill a lot of hobos without repercussion. Does the city just not care?

Get ready to beat down some homeless

The Long

Condemned: Criminal Origins is an interesting game. Created by Monolith, the dudes who made Alien vs Predator 2, Blood, and F.E.A.R., you could say these guys know there way around first-person shooters. But Condemned isn't a shooter, not really. While it does have guns, Condemned is a first-person melee horror game with some extra CSI-esque detective work. It's a brutal, gritty, and often disturbing game that sinks its claws into you and doesn't let go.

Crime investigation is fun, though at times knowing what to look for can be frustrating

Detective Ethan Thomas is having a crap day. Hot on the trail of a serial killer called the "Match-Maker," another serial killer (creatively titled "Serial Killer X") shows up to the party. After Serial Killer X kills two cops and Ethan is framed for it, he finds himself both running from the cops and hunting down the Serial Killer X in an attempt to clear his name and stop the murders. It's a crazy game that starts fast and just gets wilder, with plenty of creepy-weird things to keep the story moving forward.

Also, clearing his name apparently involves killing lots and lots of homeless people.

With crowbars. Or anything else he can find that causes blunt-force trauma.

While the game tries to give some justifiable reasoning for Ethan murdering what must be hundreds of hobos (they are on some sort of drug that makes them super aggressive or something), it just didn't fly with me. It's like the whole Nathan Drake thing in Uncharted: how am I supposed to root for this "good guy" when he's a psychopath? Other games usually give me at least a little justification (it's during a war, your character is actually a psychopath, you are killing wild animals instead of people), but Ethan's bloodlust and total lack of diplomacy is unnerving. Which also makes the "finishing moves" he can perform all the more weird. Ethan is supposed to be a straight cop who got framed, but I have my doubts.

The gameplay is a mix of two things: first-person melee weapon combat and CSI investigations. The first-person combat is actually pretty good, if difficult. Ethan has a block ability, but unlike in most games you can't just hold the block button and magically become immune to all hits. Holding the block only makes him hold his weapon up for a second before pulling it down again (and you can use this to "fake out" enemies, and they'll do it to you too). In order to block you have to have some dang precise timing, or else you'll be taking a hit. Same goes for hitting people. You can power-attack through blocks (and the enemies can do it in return), but during the wind-up you are exposed for a moment. It makes fights a sort of delicate dance, with both you and your enemy being on very level ground. Every fight is difficult and requires your full attention, even when you have full health, which makes the game a challenge from start to finish.

It can, however, get unfair when you have multiple enemies ganging up on you, since you are ill-equipped to fight more than one at a time. Luring them away actually works pretty well, but it did lead to several very frustrating deaths.

You also get to play detective.

The investigation portions are a good break from the continuous, never-ending waves of hobos that want your blood. Essentially you are put in an area and are tasked with finding evidence that will eventually help you prove your innocence. You are given a handfull of tools, and it's up to you to figure out which ones are best for the job. It's sort of a puzzle game during these segments, which is kind of cool since they mix well with the horror element. What isn't cool is the lack of direction. Some you'll figure out quickly, others can actually be obscure stumpers. I'd like to think I'm pretty smart, but I got stuck a couple of times not being certain what I was looking for, and without any hints that was straight up frustrating. They streamlined this in the second game (which worked out better), but for now these are either easy enough that you enjoy them, or obscure and lead to frustration.

You start going sort of crazy, too, and seeing all sorts of messed up stuff.

But what about the horror? This was branded as a horror game from the start, is there anything truly scary about this game? Well, I'm going to say "sort of," and offer an explanation.

Condemned is tense. Not since Resident Evil 4 have I been so worried about what might be around a corner or hiding in the darkness. The game is really dark (in terms of lighting and tone), which means often you'll go to an area only to have a crazed hobo come screaming out at you from pitch darkness. The game's lack of music and adherence to total darkness and silence make these encounters nerve-wracking, and since the enemies can be so difficult you are constantly afraid of what might be around the corner.

So it's tense. But is it scary? Well...a little. I guess. It does do a lot with its environments (though these scary encounters are bordered by a lot of "same" looking places), and the visions help with the weirdness and creepiness. But if I had to be completely honest I'd say it's more a suspenseful game than a scary one. Scary games get under your skin, give you nightmares, make you wish you weren't seeing the things you were seeing. Suspenseful games have you worried for what might kill you or come next, but once you turn the game off you aren't still thinking about it. Condemned has suspense in spades, but it isn't really very scary. Which is fine if that's what you want (I'm all for it), but just keep in mind this is no Silent Hill.

There are a few guns, but they have very limited ammo. You can flip them around and use them as clubs, though.

A few other problems drag the experience down. Often you'll find barriers, be they doors or boards or something like it, that require specific melee weapons to break down. This feels particularly "gamey" to me and really breaks the immersion. Having to backtrack (slowly, because Ethan would lose a footrace with a turtle) across an area to find the required item that you know is around somewhere because this is a game and it wouldn't let you get stuck isn't fun, it's tedious. Why can't he just use the metal pipe to force the door open? Whey does he have to get a crowbar?

The environments also tend to get very repetitive very fast. They do well with darkness to keep the suspense up, as well as throwing a few unique creepy touches along the way, but as a whole a lot of this game just looks the same. It's very gray, very dark, and very similar. It does mix up a little near the end, but for the most part I didn't really feel like I was making much progress because every room and stairway looked so similar.

The graphics have also not aged very well. This game was a showcase for the Xbox 360 as a release title, but all these years later we see time hasn't been kind to it. Character models look a little weird and "plasticy," effects like fire are weak, the flashlight and lighting isn't all that great, but the biggest offender is (again) the environments. Monolith tries and does alright for the time I suppose, but most of the walls look like the same uniform texture, and since it's that bland "stone gray" for 80% of the game I got really tired of looking at Condemned's ugly face.

For the time, though, this game looked pretty good.

Condemned: Criminal Origins is still totally worth playing, as is its sequel. It does something very few games have tried: make a modern-setting melee-based first-person horror game with detective elements and a billion hobos. For that alone (and the fact it's extremely intense) you should check it out. Just be sure and sort of squint a little; those graphics aren't going to upgrade themselves.

If you can grab it for $10-$15 I'd say you got a decent deal. It's still a fun horror game despite its age, and the sequel Condemned 2 is also pretty good.

Three out of five stars.

Silent Hill Homecoming

2012-02-24T11:06:00.001-08:00

The Short

Pros
- Controls are vastly improved; tank controls are gone
- Combat is improved, which is good in a way (more on that later)
- Soundtrack is fantastic, as usual
- Many monsters, especially bosses, are horrific and disgusting
- Story actually sort of makes sense
- Graphics are pretty good
- Transformation to "Nightmare World" are some of the best looking in the series

Cons
- Much more of an action game than any other game in the series
- Flashlight sucks; swear they did this to make it "scarier"
- While the story makes sense, that doesn't stop it from being stupid
- Abundance of gore and disgusting kills makes this feel more like Saw than Silent Hill
- While it tries to emulate the original feel of the Japanese-made Silent Hill games, it feels more like they only understood it on a rudimentary level
- Recycles monsters from previous Silent Hill games, completely missing the point of some (read: why is Pyramid Head in this game?)
- Not scary, actually gets boring, and all the scares are corny "jump" scares
- Ending is determined by completely unrelated binary decisions which can accidentally get you the UFO ending on your first playthrough (added by Paul)

We are again taking a trip to Silent Hill

The Long

Silent Hill Homecoming is the second Silent Hill game made by an American designer rather than a Japanese one, and the first not on a handheld to completely drop the numbers from the title. I remember the team Konami hired to make this game frequently pointed out how they "got" the Silent Hill franchise, as sort of a comfort to fans who were worried about the direction the series has been taking over the past few years. And while it's true that some of the more superficial elements of the Silent Hill series remain intact here (foggy cities, nightmare world, nasty-weird monsters), at it's core Silent Hill Homecoming fails on nearly every level at being a Silent Hill game.

The story actually makes sense this time around. You play as Alex Shepherd (no relation to Commander Shepherd of the Mass Effect series), a soldier who is discharged and sent back home to Shephard's Glen. He goes back to find his brother and father are missing, his mom has gone kind of crazy, and the town is covered in a mysterious fog. Of course nasty monsters are involved, and eventually he ends up in the titular Silent Hill, where he discovers some pretty crazy (if somewhat predictable) things about his past and who he actually is.

Like I said, the story makes sense, and isn't marred by bad translation or anything like that, but that doesn't make it particularly interesting or exciting. The twists are dull, the deaths of main characters have no impact, and I swear you spend a good chunk of your time at the beginning running around and talking to people with nothing scary happening at all. Again, Silent Hill 2 did a lot of this, but Silent Hill 2 also invoked a sense of dread from the very beginning. Homecoming doesn't pull it off, so rather than being "quiet yet tense" moments, most of them are just "silent but boring" moments.

The monster design is a bit "paint-by-numbers" from previous games, but I thought most of them were fine anyway

That actually brings me to the biggest problem with Silent Hill Homecoming, right up front: it isn't scary. At all. It isn't even intense (like Resident Evil 4 was; that game wasn't scary, but it was certainly a tense rush), it's just...dull. Environments, which have always been the biggest cause of scares in Silent Hill games, are boring and unfrightening. If you compared the way the Nightmare world looked in Silent Hill 3 and then at the one in Silent Hill Homecoming (the above screenshot is in Nightmare world), the difference is stark. Gone are the oddly placed wheelchairs, the nasty barbed-wire wrapped around random objects, the strange, twitching monsters in the walls. Instead we get a boring, different-hued version of the regular world. Bland. Considering they now have the power of a more advance generation of consoles, the high-def Silent Hill games could have had some of the most grotesque, twisted, and horrifyingly gritty backgrounds out of the entire series. Instead they go the lazy route, like the developers sort of understood what made the past games good and copied it in the laziest way possible.

They also ripped a lot of stuff (like this enemy) from the Silent Hill movie, which isn't a good thing to draw inspiration from, guys.

This idea of this being an outsider's interpretation of a Silent Hill game is another massive pitfall. As stated before, it does the Silent Hill 2 thing where there are massive bouts of silence and darkness, with only a few creepy scenes to keep you on edge. This worked in the older games because it successfully combined several primal human fears: being alone, the dark, and being helpless. In Homecoming, you are only rarely alone (it always seems people are tagging along with you for stuff), you never feel helpless because of the new combat (more on that in a second), and...I guess it's dark. But it's a cheap dark. The flashlight in this game is the worst flashlight ever made. In some attempt to bump up scares, they made it so it hardly illuminates everything. Ok, listen, let me tell you what is scary. Having a high-beam flashlight (like in Silent Hill 2 and Silent Hill 3) but at the cost of not seeing anything or hardly anything outside it's beam. That means you are frantically, constantly having to turn to check corners, behind you, and anything else you might have missed. It's that contrast between seeing everything and seeing nothing that freaks you out, because what you are seeing you are paying for with a massive amount of darkness everywhere else.

Having everything be dark isn't scary. The effect is lost. You don't feel like you are actually in the dark, and if you can't see anything it isn't scary. So yeah, you fail Homecoming. Bring a good light back.

The "nurse" design is also ripped from the film, and it made no sense there either. They were a representation of James' suppressed sexuality, a mockery of it. Why are they sporting cleavage and leg for Alex?

But the biggest kill of tension or any form of fear is the combat. Let me get one thing clear: the combat in the Silent Hill games has always been awful. Your characters have no idea how to fight, handle a gun or a weapon, and it shows. Having to fight down enemies is cumbersome and difficult (which, when combined with Tank controls, makes it even harder). HOWEVER, you may note that while I've complained about bad Tank controls, I never complained about the previous games' combat. This is because it was supposed to be difficult. In all those games, it was a more viable solution to run away (which the excellent Silent Hill: Frozen Memories actually got by eliminating combat entirely) from these monsters, which again added to that helpless feel. When you were really down to the wire you'd have to try and kill the enemies, but I usually spent most time trying to not be noticed and fleeing from the monstrosities. It was really scary knowing there was stuff out there I couldn't kill (which is also why bosses in Silent Hill 3 made no sense).

Alex is an ex-soldier, which means he is well equipped and well versed in combat. The system emulates a Zelda-esque formula of locking on and dodging to fight enemies. He can even block attacks. So, basically, they made this an action game (much like Resident Evil 4 did), only without making the enemies harder. Alex has very steady aim (and the game lets you actually aim with a target, unlike previous entries where your character auto-aims and you pray) and ammo is surprisingly plentiful. So I'm never scared of enemies (even nasty bosses) because my guy is a walking badass. Way to kill the mood.

I actually think the bosses look pretty creepy, and are some of the best designs in the game.

As a final "they thought they got it but they didn't" example: this game is loaded with depraved, gory moments. Now let me get something clear: the previous Silent Hill games had plenty of disturbing imagery and bloody...blood. But it never resorted to having a dude literally cut in half right in front of you when you were strung up, a woman stretched until she snapped on a Saw-esque trap, or having enemies spray blood when you killed them (though the fact that your weapons leave damaging cuts is cool, I guess, but it sort of doesn't fit with the series' past). While the other games were extremely subtle, Homecoming is a punch in the face. While the other games never glorified in their gore and violence (in fact almost all the main characters abhorred what they had to do to survive), the very nature and design of Homecoming is set up so that you cheer with every bloody smack. The feel is completely wrong, for both a Silent Hill game and a survival horror game in general, and it, again, completely kills any tension or mood that might be had.

Silent Hill 3's mirror room is probably one of the scariest, creepiest, nightmare-fueled scenes I have ever seen in a video game. It's done in almost complete silence, with no combat, and as an extremely slow burn. Comparing that to Homecoming is almost impossible; Homecoming's scenes are extremely amateurish in comparison.

And no, I won't link to Silent Hill 3's mirror scene on video, and you shouldn't go looking for it on YouTube, because finding it on accident in the game itself is by far and large the best way to experience it.

What is this, a Silent Hill high school reunion? Why the crap is he here?

As an aside, Pyramid Head is in this game. I shouldn't have to explain why this makes no sense if you read my Silent Hill 2 review, but maybe I will anyway. The enemies in these games have always been twisted to fit the protagonists. More so in Silent Hill 2 than any others, but it still applies for the rest of the games. It also drops a lot of hints that these monsters might be more in their minds than real (Silent Hill 3 does a good job with this) which means each game needs its own unique monsters.

Homecoming apes enemies from almost every other game in the series, including freaking Pyramid Head, whose sole existence in the Silent Hill mythos was to be a representation of everything James in Silent Hill 2 was not. So him being in this game makes no sense at all. The fact that he plays key roles in the story of Homecoming only further accents the fact that the people making this game have no idea how Silent Hill works.

And look, skinless dogs. That totally fits the Silent Hill world, and hasn't been in any other horror anything ever.

As a positive point, the graphics are decent (again, especially the boss monsters), though the poor lighting is another knock off its score. The music is excellent as usual, and is probably the only thing really loyal to the source material. While it's a technically competent game, however, high polygon count and bumpmapping doesn't count when your art design sucks, and this is where Silent Hill Homecoming fails. It's just...so boring to look at. And I swear the enemies don't even twitch right.

There's the mandatory wheelchair. I guess this is a real Silent Hill game now.

Here's the thing: if Silent Hill Homecoming had just marketed itself as an action/horror game and not a Silent Hill game, it might have actually worked. I'm always willing to cut some slack for new horror IPs (there aren't nearly enough), and even ones that are broken I still tend to enjoy playing (see the Saw video game, which is actually pretty good). The controls are fine, the combat plays well, and even though the game isn't very scary they could have made up for it with the action. The problem here is that they had a pedigree to live up to, and they couldn't even begin to approach it.

As it stands it's more like a Chinese bootlegged version of the Silent Hill series rather than an actual entry. If you like horror action games you still will probably enjoy it, just don't think of it as a Silent Hill game. If you want another game in the same vein as the older Silent Hill games, however, you should probably avoid this. It tries its hardest, but in the end it just can't pull it off. If you must have a modern Silent Hill game, try Silent Hill Frozen Memories instead.

If you read the above paragraph and still want to try it, I'd say $10-15 is a fair enough price. Again, there isn't anything particularly broken here fundamentally, it just isn't a great Silent Hill game.

But since it did put "Silent Hill" in its title, it gets judged as one. So it earns two out of five stars.

Silent Hill 3

2012-02-23T09:48:00.001-08:00

The Short

Pros
- Another excellently atmospheric, dark game adhering to the Silent Hill formula
- Direct sequel to the first Silent Hill game
- Heather, a young woman, fits well as a new protagonist for the series
- Improved graphics (particularly the backgrounds/environments) serve to make the game scarier
- "Nightmare" world seems better realized, at least for the first 2/3rds of the game
- The theme park area is my favorite area out of every Silent Hill game
- Voice acting is much improved over Silent Hill 2, and the story actually sort of makes sense...sort of
- Has both a difficulty selector for combat as well as puzzles, if you like your combat light but puzzles difficult
- Perhaps the best soundtrack in the series to date

Cons
- Story loses all the depth that came from Silent Hill 2 in an attempt to be a sequel to Silent Hill
- Can go overboard in its use of blood to try and make things "scarier"
- Ending area is either super dark or super bloody, making the game both hard to see and eliminating most scares
- Controls and combat are still poor
- Bosses are stupid and unnecessary
- While most enemies are excellent, some are stupid, and others are so convoluted you have no idea what they even are

Welcome back to Silent Hill

The Long

I'm not going to hide this: Silent Hill 3 is my favorite Silent Hill game. It was the first one I played to through completion, the first one I played on PC instead of a console, and the first to genuinely be so unnerving I had to put the game down and go to a well-lit location for a few hours. I don't know why this game got under my skin so well (and better so than Silent Hill 2, even), but something about it really freaks me out (even to this day, where I've played through the game at least a half-dozen times), and because of that it's my favorite.

I can't look at screenshots of the merry-go-round boss/nightmare version because it freaked me out so much when I first played it (and keep in mind, I was like 19 at the time, not a child) that I still have an involuntary reaction of paranoia and fear by just seeing a static picture. The soundtrack disc unnerves me and gives me chills. Seriously, this game messed me up. And that's why I absolutely love it.

This game gets in your head and won't let you go.

Silent Hill 3 doesn't stray too far from the Silent Hill formula, aside from one major difference: it doesn't start by putting you in Silent Hill. You actually start in a (surprisingly barren) shopping mall in a different town, moving from it to other various locations (including an office building that is under construction) before finally landing in the town of Silent Hill. Unlike Silent Hill and Silent Hill 2, town exploration is not a major part of this game, Silent Hill 3 instead focusing on keeping you in enclosed, tight locations where it can determine when and what you see and keeping the experience tighter overall. Part of me misses the helplessness and feeling of being completely alone that you get from wandering through the fog of Silent Hill, listening intently on your radio for static (a Silent Hill staple that indicates enemies are nearby), but another part of me welcomes this design choice. By streamlining the experience by making it more linear, it allowed the developers to plan for you in every instance, rather than having you wander off. I think Silent Hill 3 struck a good balance between set areas and city exploration, which means the pace never feels tired (like a few parts in Silent Hill 2 where I had no idea where the heck I was supposed to go).

This game wins the award for having disturbing imagery that is never too "in your face" to lose its impact

The story of Silent Hill 3 isn't worth the analysis it's predecessor's did. While Silent Hill 2 did a masterful job combining enemies and environments into the overarching theme of James' story, Silent Hill 3 is just straight horror, back to the roots. It's never really explained what nightmare world is (the altered version of the normal areas you explore) as relevant to Heather, the main character of Silent Hill 3. The enemies don't follow any particular theme (though you could argue most of them have a phallic look about them, which is the opposite of James mostly fighting enemies with feminine traits) or tie in with the story. It's pretty much just that Silent Hill is a f***ed up up place, and so expect to see awful things.

Heather is drawn into this because she's...actually that's a spoiler. Let's just say a religious cult working out of Silent Hill needs her for something, and a private investigator is helping them in trying to get her to Silent Hill. Heather needs to find out exactly what is going on and why she's being drawn into this mess, which of course means she ends up back at the foggy, demon-filled town.

Unlike Silent Hill 2, I thought the voice acting in Silent Hill 3 was actually pretty good, and the script was decent as well. Heather in particular is believable as a teenage girl, and while it certainly isn't Oscar worthy or anything, I didn't cringe or roll my eyes nearly as much. It works in service to the game and nothing further, which is all it needed.

The improved lighting and environments make even the tamest rooms seem sinister

What I think is Silent Hill 3's biggest asset is the improved environments. The places you explored in Silent Hill 2 were creepy and dark, but they weren't as densely stocked as they are in Silent Hill 3. I'm going to assume this was more of a perceived graphical limitation rather than an intended design choice, because the environments were still quite good in Silent Hill 2, but they certainly weren't detailed to the same extent. Silent Hill 3 goes overboard, being one of the best looking PS2 games I've played, with the dynamic shadows being as good as anything that's come out in the recent generation of games. I feel the art direction has also improved (for most of the game, more on that in a minute) for environments, making wandering around feel a lot creepier than it did in Silent Hill 2. The tension is elevated to near-intolerable levels in this game, even just running around the regular world, with its signature combination of "weird" and "unnatural" tipping the scales.

The places you visit are also the best in the series. An amusement park (with an entertaining "haunted house" sequence), the tried-and-true hospital, office building, church, and others. While there were a few from Silent Hill 2 I wish had made a return. I really enjoyed the locations Silent Hill 3 ushered you into. They fit a good balance between "normal" and "creepy," which is what these games work best with.

The way Silent Hill's brand of enemies twitch and convulse...it's just...urrrrrrggghhh....

If there is any major complaints to be had, it's the developer's overuse of blood. Yeah, I get it, seeing the red stuff sprayed all over can be scary, causing some sort of primal, gut reaction to our bodily fluids being splattered across walls. But in Silent Hill 3 they go completely overboard. Nightmare world this time around has a more "red" aesthetic overall (vs the more "rust/dirty" look of Silent Hill 2), maintaining the "grimy" feeling to a point, but slapping a good coat of blood over it. It actually isn't that bad at first, but by the time you reach the final stage the walls are pulsating with the stuff, and while it's still gross and mortifying, the subtle punch it packed earlier in the game is lost. I think if they could find a happy medium between Silent Hill 2 and Silent Hill 3's uses of blood, we'd have the perfect mix. As it stands, it makes what would have been shocking reveals lessened, and even makes some events comical (blood coming from the bathtub...something right out of a slasher film, not a Silent Hill game).

Yep, they like their blood.

The bad controls are still here, though I thought they were a little better, but for some inexplicable reason somebody thought the Silent Hill franchise needed more bosses. Let me tell you right now, Konami: these games would probably work better with no bosses at all. Fighting a big enemy at the end of a stage is so trite anyway; it's like he was just waiting there the whole time? And once you are finished you move on? Other games can sort of let it sneak by because they are "gamey" already, but Silent Hill is all about atmosphere and aesthetic, drawing you in and sinking its claws into you. Having stage-end bosses is just stupid. The fact that most of them look dumb doesn't help this, either.

Sorry, worm-boss, but you really don't belong in this game.

I think the soundtrack to this game is the best horror game soundtrack ever. Yeah, Silent Hill 2's is second best, but seriously...the music is amazing. Horror usually falls into two categories: random creepy noises or over-the-top orchestrations for high tensity scenes. The Silent Hill games have always done a great job somehow merging these two elements and adding a touch of weirdness that works both as music and as background sounds. Granted, most of the game is played in absolute musical silence (another strength of this series), but when the music does kick in it almost always fits. I wish other games (and movies!) could do horror this well.

Incredible.

Complaints aside, you already know I love Silent Hill 3. Everything comes together into an amazing package. I'll be more than willing to admit that Silent Hill 2 is actually a superior game from a critical standpoint, but from a personal one Silent Hill 3 is miles above all other horror games for me in terms of personal preference. It's part of the previously mentioned Silent Hill HD Collection, which is starting at $40. Absolutely worth it at that price. I'd also like to say that the PC version is vastly superior in terms of graphics over all other versions (though it does come on seven cd-roms), running at massively high resolutions that really make this game look incredible. I'm hoping the HD collection will retain that same look (having played it on PC first, replaying it on PS2 makes the game appear...kind of crappy), so if you can't decide between the old or new version, go with the new. Assuming they don't somehow botch up the port.

I love the crap out of this game. Writing this review made me want to go play it again. Seriously, go get it, and play it alone in the dark. It'll grab you tight and leave an unforgettable impression.

Five out of five stars.

OH SWEET BABY MOSES WHY DID I LOOK THIS UP.

Silent Hill 2

2012-02-23T08:06:00.001-08:00

The Long

Pros
- Gritty and horrifying
- Excellent aesthetic
- Adheres to the "less is more" Silent Hill rule
- Story is surprisingly deep and harbors many interesting psychological elements
- Graphics still look good even to this day
- Music is excellent and horrifying
- Enemies are both creepy and tie into the psychological points of the story

Cons
- Clunky combat and controls
- Voice acting works on one level, but ultimately brings the game down
- Story takes some unexplained, crazy turns and can be very convoluted
- Some puzzles are obscure
- Has some really dark moments

Welcome back to Silent Hill

The Long

James Sunderland has a problem. He recently received a message from his wife, Mary, tell him to meet her in their "special place" in the town of Silent Hill. The problem is that Mary has been dead for years. Another problem is that apparently Silent Hill is full of crazy monsters. But we'll get to that.

The Silent Hill series of games are unique in the horror genre as they aim for more subtle, quiet creeping horror rather than being in your face about it. The Resident Evil games are clearly catering for the B-Movie crowd, and the Dead Space game are more a combination of action and gore. Silent Hill has long bouts of silence, lots of dark rooms and corridors, and a gritty camera lens over the whole thing. It isn't really the monsters that freak you out in the Silent Hill games, it's the time between monster encounters.

Silent Hill 1, 2, and 3 are some of the scariest games I've ever played

It's a Japanese style of horror vs an American one, and I think it works on a more base level. Rather than blood and guts we have enemies that lurch about and twist in unnatural, unnerving ways. You aren't really afraid because your life (or your character's life, rather) is in danger, you are scared because the game sets up an atmosphere of dread. This is, in my opinion, very difficult to do in a video games (Super Metroid is another game that I felt did this very well) making the fact that Silent Hill 2 does it so well a breath of fresh air. Or maybe a breath of metallic, bloody air set alongside a rusted chain-link fence. Something like that.

Silent Hill 2 follows a similar formula as Silent Hill. You are essentially given the entire town of Silent Hill to explore, with its secrets, monsters, and more scattered about the town. After wandering for a bit you explore various buildings (an apartment complex, underground basement, hospital, etc.) in an attempt to find your wife Mary. Again, it's a slow burn. You don't see your first enemy or get your first weapon for at least 15-30 minutes. You don't get the flashlight until probably and hour or so in. The game wants you to soak up it's grimy, fog-filled streets, and its these moments of calm in a horror game that really leave you unstrung. Silent Hill 2 knows the fine balance between the tensions of waiting for something to happen and drawing it out for too long, and it manages to pull it off perfectly.

I have had legitimate nightmares after playing this game.

But I'm speaking in generals here, so let's get back to specifics. Silent Hill 2 follows James as he makes his way through the town of Silent Hill, and on the way he encounters a handful of odd people who either want to help or hurt him. James is overwhelmed with guilt about the death of his wife, but he seem to recall exactly why he feels bad about it, and hopes that Silent Hill will hold the answers. He also meets a woman, Maria, who looks surprisingly like his wife, and what happens with her is analogous to what...actually that might be a spoiler. Forget I said anything.

The brilliant part about Silent Hill 2's story (and it's going to be hard to say this without spoiling the ending) is how well everything in this game fits into what happened to James with his wife. The city of Silent Hill in Silent Hill 2 is a representation of everything bad and worrysome about James as a person. After his wife died James felt sexually repressed, unable to be with another woman. Because of this, many enemies in the game are extremely disturbing but highly sexualized. One of the enemies (as seen in the background above) is just two lower halves of women put together. The nurses in the hospital, while being horrid abominations, also sports a lot of leg and cleavage despite being hideous. James is worried about no longer being a man, and also worried about betraying the memory of his wife, which means he's extremely insecure.

Which brings us to Pyramid Head.

The now-iconic bad guy of the Silent Hill franchise

Pyramid Head is the only male enemy in the entire game [Correction: there are another batch of particularly nasty ones later on, but my comments as follows still stand]. He has (as you can guess) a head of a pyramid, which could make his shape distinctly phallic. He also carries a massive cleaver (phallic) and is completely invulnerable, essentially everything James wishes he was. In one of the most shocking, horrific scenes I've ever seen in a video game (minor spoilers here, but everybody's probably heard of this scene already), the introduction to Pyramid Head is you stumbling upon him raping two of those leg creatures I mentioned before. Yes, in a video game. And nobody apparently complained about it. Huh.

Anyway, after talking about James' sexual frustration, I think it's pretty clear where that analogy was going. The point is that there is an insane amount of depth to Silent Hill 2's imagery, and it is never particularly in your face about it (except maybe the mentioned rape scene), meaning you could play through the entire game and not get it. The game holds up either way, but its great to see video game developers trying something actually make their games have a level of depth beyond the initial layers.

You can just...stay over there, ok?

It's unfortunate, therefore, that Silent Hill 2 has a myriad of problems to accompany its excellent batch of psychological horror. First off is the voice acting and script. While it's serviceable, I guess, and the disjointed weirdness fits the game in a sort of "it's bad on purpose" way, I found it pulling me out from the story. There are people who will defend it to death and people who agree with me, so we'll just leave it as "If you like it, fine. If not, it's kind of a massive mess." You can still get the story well enough even if you think the script is awful, it's just a notch off.

The other, perhaps bigger issue is the archaic control schemes. Silent Hill 2 was in the era of horror games where "tank" controls were in full effect. Pressing forward on the stick moves your character forward in whatever direction he is facing, not "up" on screen relative to the camera (which is how most modern games do it). In order to turn you have to have James spin left or right and then move him forward (or find the sweet spot between forward and your direction, which makes him turn like an SUV). It's cumbersome and annoying, though I can understand this early level of hindering your controls to ramp up the tension. But even if that was the intentional point, it's still annoying .

That can't be good.

The combat is also bland. You get both melee weapons and firearms, but neither work particularly well. James' strategy for killing things either involves auto-aiming at the nearest one and shooting, or swinging wildly in an attempt to hit it (and kicking/stomping the writhing enemy after it goes down). Again, it works in the way that you realize James is not a good fighter, so his cumbersome attacks fit the character. But it also makes certain parts of the game extremely frustrating. Since this game is more about the story and atmosphere rather than combat anyway, I suggest playing through the game on Easy.

Combat is not a high point of this game.

As stated already, the music and graphics in Silent Hill 2 are excellent, the soundtrack being especially creepy. The graphics are excellent looking for the PS2 era (still holding up well today), and the grainy filters only make the whole thing appear grittier and darker. The music is haunting and chilling, setting the standard for the Silent Hill games having excellent sound design.

This song gives me the chills.

Despite all the problems, however, if you have any inclination towards horror I heartily suggest getting a copy of Silent Hill 2. There's a reason many people have said it's their favorite game of all time (yes, a horror game with poor gameplay is their favorite game of all time), and that's because it does what matters exceptionally well. It's a beautiful game and a journey into the macabre and terrifying, and it is a trip absolutely worth taking.

It can be hard to get a copy on PS2 or Xbox without paying a fair amount for it, but if you have one of those dang-fangled next-gen consoles you can get the Silent Hill HD Collection coming out on March 20th (which has both this game and the also excellent Silent Hill 3) for only $40 release price. Since that puts each game at about $20 (and gives the graphics a much needed HD boost with widescreen support), that's a very good price for what is easily one of the best horror games ever made. Just be aware that you might not sleep easily after playing it.

Were I to give it a star rating, it would be five out of five stars. And remember...

Pyramid Head knows where you sleep.

Plants vs Zombies

2012-02-22T22:34:00.002-08:00

The Short

Pros
- Addicting twist on the tower defense genre
- Easy to learn but very difficult to master
- Dozens of plants to choose from
- Charming aesthetic, from the zombies to the plants to the kickin' soundtrack
- A metric butt-ton of game modes including survival, minigames, puzzles, zen garden, and more
- Seriously, this game has more content than three $60 retail games
- Crazy Dave is awesome. The ending song is awesome.
- Horrendously addicting

Cons
- Those damned bungee zombies.
- Unlocking stuff costs lots of money, which lead to some awful microtransactions on the iOS version
- Co-op / Vs modes only available on the PSN and XBLA version
- "Create a Zombie" only available on the PC Game of the Year version
- WHERE THE CRAP IS PLANTS VS ZOMBIES 2?!

If' there's anything zombies hate, it's photosynthesis

The Long

Let's just get this out of the way up front: Plants vs Zombies is pretty much my wife's most favorite video game ever. She's beaten it all the way through at least six times, maybe more since she has it on her iPod touch now. We own this game on every system known to man (except PSN, because we have it on PC, Mac, iPhone, iPod Touch, Android, and XBLA) and for some reason neither of us have gotten bored of it yet. Yes, I'm talking about a tower defense game that's grid-based, where plants battle zombies. Really.

Though it shouldn't come as much of a surprise. PopCap is pretty much rolling in fat cash (and is still an independent developer...so wild) at this point. These are the guys who invented Bejeweled, ok? They also made the Zuma, Bookworm, and tons of other simple, addicting games. Which is why when I first heard of Plants vs Zombies I shrugged it off. Bejeweled? You mean that game my mom plays? Please.

Zombies also hate chlorophyll.

It wasn't until we booted it up during a boring evening on vacation that we realized the truth: Plants vs Zombies is freaking amazing. I remember Destructoid gave it a 10/10 and I thought they'd lost their freaking minds. Well guess what, it was totally justified. Plants vs Zombies is an addicting, content rich tower defense game that is both extremely accessible and immensely deep. And here you thought it was just a simple, casual game.

Plants vs Zombies doesn't do anything particularly new (aside from being freaking incredible) to the tower defense genre. You are given a 9x7 grid (your lawn, though eventually you go to the backyard pool and even on the roof) which you can plant anything on. All plants (except one "super" plant) only take one spot, so you can essentially have a maximum of 63 plants. Zombies come in from the right to individual lanes, never swapping unless (again) you use a particular plant to force them to bounce around like that. You plant your attacking plants on the left and try to kill the zombies before they reach your brains on the left (safely hidden inside the house). It's extremely simple; even my mother could figure it out.

Don't tell my mother I bad-mouthed her in my review. I love you mom!

To plant stuff you need "suns," which you gather by either planting sunflowers (with their adorable grins) or picking them up during daytime levels (which means they were literally dropped from the sun). Having to click on suns keeps it interactive, even during the boring beginning stages of the levels, where you are trying to gain a steady income as fast as possible. After that you have basic pea shooters which will slowly fire on advancing zombies, wall-nuts (which also have adorable grins, just look at them!) that block the zombie's paths, and more. The game keeps introducing a new plant nearly every level, which in turn adds a new strategy to attempt. The pacing is exactly perfect, and by the end you'll be juggling nine different plants, fighting off tons of zombies, and it'll all be completely intuitive. IT may look overwhelming at first, but Plants vs Zombies hits the sweet spot: it's never too hard, and it's never boring. And it rewards you just enough to make you keep on playing for hours and hours on end.

You go from "single, shuffling idiot" to "28 Days Later" pretty quickly

PopCap's other games had the benefit of being straight puzzlers with no determinable goal other than to waste time, meaning they only got old when you were finished with them. Plants vs Zombies, on the other hand, has a definite "end" to it (after maybe 4-5 hours of zombie-pruning mayhem) which would have slowed other developers. They might have just called it good (4-5 hours for a $10-$15 is still a good deal), or maybe have thrown in some junk side content or tacked on competitive multiplayer just for kicks. But this is freaking PopCap, so they go nuts. (or dare I say...Wall-nuts?)

This game has more bonus content than any game ever made in the existence of video games. This is not even an exaggeration. Right after you beat the main game, you can go back and play through it again, but this time with Crazy Dave (your lunatic neighbor) picking your first three plants for you (and often picking garbage, which adds to the challenge). You can collect pots of plants in the single player mode now that you've beaten the game, which are put in your zen garden and are raised to either sell or collect. You have more seed slots to unlock for levels, tons more plants and plant upgrades, and more areas for your zen garden. You have somewhere around 25-30 minigames, all of which are excellent and unique (Zombie Bejeweled is one of my favorites). You have wave based survival modes on all the different landscapes. You have a puzzle mode where you play as the zombies trying to get through the plants. You have a vase-smashing puzzle game that can be quite the challenge (both the puzzles and urn levels have a bunch of pre-set levels as well as infinite modes, and the survival mode can be infinite too).

All this in a game that started life at a $15 price tag. Normal $60 games don't give this much crap out!

Hecks yes, Beghouled is rad.

I'll say it again: this game is extremely addicting. The gameplay is tight, has tons of variety, and the tons of modes are just icing on the cake. All this content would be useless if the underlying game sucked, and it most certainly doesn't. You thought a 9x7 grid would mean the game was gimped and stupid? Well you are gimped and stupid, valued reader! Because this game is better than any other tower defense game ever made. Yes, I just brought that to the table. Prove me wrong, dear reader (in the comments, please :P)!

There are a few nitpicks I have. PopCap keeps releasing this dang thing on any platform that can even remotely support it, often adding stuff each time. For example, the XBLA Version, while suffering from not having mouse controls (which it still works quite well on a controller, by the way) does add full co-op support for every part of the game, which is really cool because I could finally play alongside my wife. It also adds a vs mode that's more like a competitive puzzle game, where one person plays as the plants and the other the zombies. It's pretty fun too, but neither of these modes are on any other versions besides the PSN and XBLA version.

The same goes for "Create a Zombie" mode, which is admittedly just a gimmick bonus, but that's only in the Game of the Year version on the PC. Sad times.

The flavor text for the plants and zombies is hilarious too (screenshot from iOS version)

The iOS and Android versions also have an annoyance: in-game microtransactions. Unlike the PC/XBLA/PSN versions, the minigames on iOS and Android require in-game currency to buy. Which you can earn pretty quickly if you know how to manipulate the Zen Garden, but the amount of cash required is still astronomical. It gives you the offer to buy in game coins for $1 increments, which I suppose is fair since the game is $10 on XBLA/PSN/PC and the iOS version is $3 (except I was an early adapter and paid $6), but the whole microtransaction thing still bugs me. I really hate it, in case you were wondering, but in this instance it doesn't do enough to damage the experience. It does mean most of the content is locked by a money-gate, though, so keep that in mind.

Lastly, the DS version looks way the crap worse than the other versions. Even the iOS/Android versions look way better (they technically run at a higher resolution than the XBLA/PSN versions, though they are scrunched down a little to fit on the screen). I suppose I should finally finally note that I consider the iPad/Android Tablet version of this game to be, by far, the best way to play the game. Picking up suns with touch is intuitive and excellent, the touch controls flawless in every way, which makes this easily a killer app for both iPhones and iPads (and Android phones and Android Tablets).

There is seriously so much crap to unlock (screenshot from iOS version)

I'm pretty sure you can guess what my closing remarks are going to be. Let me put it this way: this game was selling for $2 on sale on Steam the other day. TWO DOLLARS. It's on portable devices for freaking $3. You can buy it anywhere else for $10. You can even play a rather extensive demo for free in your web browser right now on PopCap's website. This game is insanely cheap and straight up amazing. I'm pretty sure you can afford it, so what are you waiting for? Go out there and buy it! And if you are thinking to yourself, "hmm, I wonder if this game is worth $10 or if I should wait for another Steam sale?" then you need to get your life in order and freaking go buy it this very second. I give you my personal Nathan guarantee that this game is worth every penny. I have yet to see someone I've recommended this game to come back disappointed. Plus, your kids can play it! And it's a way better game to have them play than that crappy Angry Birds game, let me tell you that much.

Make Plants vs Zombies 2 PopCap. You can have all my money. But while I'm waiting, I'm going to go beat Plants vs Zombies on my iPhone again.

Five out of five starflowers.

More like a billion out of five starflowers.

Dead Space 2

2012-02-22T21:45:00.000-08:00

The Short

Pros
- Fast paced, visceral bloody violence like the first game
- Controls are tightened and improved from the last game
- More weapons and upgrades
- Set on a massive space station, its environments are far more varied than the first game
- Crazy story that expands on the original
- Isaac finally talks
- Same integrated UI, "strategic dismemberment," and general polish from the first game
- Great graphics, horrifying enemies, and everything else combines to make quite the thrill ride

Cons
- Despite Isaac finally taking, he doesn't really say anything meaningful
- Game is very much more "action" than "horror."
- Some of the enemies and gory events are borderline crass
- Has a multiplayer mode that nobody plays, even though it isn't particularly awful
- Gets so over the top and unrealistic at times you'll swear you are playing a Call of Duty game
- Only a handful of new enemies, with the basic staples being recycles from the first game
- Why are there so many closets for enemies to jump out of? And why would they wait in a boring closet, anyway, when they could just be running up and eating my face?

Isaac's back and ready to slice-n-dice.

Warning: Like the first review, this one contains screenshots that are both violent and disturbing

The Long

It's been often stated that if Dead Space is Ridley Scott's Alien, than Dead Space 2 is James Cameron's Aliens. It's an adept analogy, as the Aliens movies are perhaps the best horror movies set in space, and the Dead Space games are the best horror games set in space. Like Alien, the first Dead Space was somewhat slow, put you on a single ship, and eased you into the horror elements before blowing you away. Dead Space 2 is Aliens, which was released with the tagline "This Time It's War." It is war, and Isaac is ready to blow some Necromorph scum's arms, legs, and whatever other nasty things pop out of them off on his quest to get rid of the bastards once and for all.

Dead Space 2 is much more an action game than Dead Space, and is certainly less subtle. While Dead Space started with a slow build, where you crash-land on the spaceship and walk around in the dark for a while, Dead Space 2 starts with a dude's head exploding about two inches from your face before he turns into a bloodthirsty, violent Necromorph.

I wasn't kidding with that content warning

From that point the game turns "on" and does not turn "off" again until the credits are rolling. Dead Space 2 is a good deal more an action game than the first Dead Space, and because of it a lot of the "horror" elements are gone. Dead Space was scary in the same ways the Silent Hill games are scary: during the quiet moments in the dark, as you collect your thoughts about what might be lurking out there in the dark, scared to continue forward. Dead Space 2 says "screw that, cut 'em up!" and sends you forward with a boatload of weapons to blast zombies to pieces. Which I'm totally fine with. Unlike Resident Evil 5, which tried to blend action and horror and failed (mostly on the "action" side), Dead Space 2 accepts the fact that it's action first, horror second and rolls with it. Which makes it work.

That isn't to say there aren't some tense, shocking scenes in this game. And yes, screwing this up does exactly what you think it does.

This is evidenced by the fact that the controls are much improved over the last game. While Dead Space's gameplay was far from bad, it could be clunky at time. Isaac was wearing a heavy suit, which made him less versatile and speedy than say, Master Chief. In Dead Space 2 Isaac has a newer, lighter suit, and the gameplay changes respectively. Melee and stomping is better and faster. Isaac seems to move at a slightly better clip (though I still have to hold a button to run. Why? We have analog controls now, people.), the shooting seems tighter, and overall it just plays great. I'd say after Gears of War, Dead Space 2 is probably the best controlled third-person shooter out there. Which is good, since you still have to be shooting with the precision of a surgeon in order to blast the limbs off the numerous types of Necromorphs that want to make you lunch. The zero-g controls have also been dramatically improved, letting you float around rather than leaping like a crazy person from platform to platform.

Most everything good has carried over from the first game. The "Hudless UI," where everything is displayed on Isaac's suit, is back in full force with a few subtle improvements that make reading his various meters easier. The graphics still look fantastic, with the enemies being horrible monstrosities, the environments being extremely detailed down to every splatter of crimson blood, and the effects being flashy and satisfying. Guns handle well (with a few newcomers like one that shoots javalins), though your original Plasma Cutter is still the best weapon in the game.

So what's new? Well, zombie kids for starters

Visceral Games pretty much took everything about Dead Space and improved it. People complained because you spent the whole game on one ship, so they gave you a whole space station to explore. You go to various districts ranging from a residential area, a space-church, an elementary school, a biological lab, a computer mainframe, and more. You also spend a good deal of time back out in space, and these are some of the most awesome, gorgeous moments of the game. People complained because there wasn't enough enemies. So they added tons more: packs of zombie kids, a new type of zombie baby, a zombie that charges you like a velociraptor from Jurassic Park, a zombie that barfs acidic goo on you that slows you down, and more. People complained that most of the game was Isaac being bossed around, so they...actually that didn't change too much. But it does lead into another big change: Isaac actually talks in this game!

Silent protagonist no longer.

Yep. Despite being mute in the first game, Isaac is chatty in this one (which makes it seem, in retrospect, that he was just giving everybody the silent treatment in game numero uno). This means he can decide things for himself and tell these things to other people, as well as have a deeper interaction with other characters and be more involved in the story. I think it's an improvement story-wise, but character-wise Isaac just isn't very interesting. He switches between moping about his dead girlfriend to yelling cuss words at people he doesn't get along with, and there really isn't much variance. He's also a cold-hard killer, doing some nasty things and making some tough decisions, but never really having a sort of personal reconciliation about it. Come on, dude. You can't get over your dead girlfriend, but you kill both zombies and people in this game, but you hardly bat an eye? It's like they gave you a voice just to push the story further, not develop your character...oh yeah, that's exactly why they did it. Hmm.

That's fine, though, because I liked Dead Space 2's story. I mean, it's not going to win a pulitzer or something, but like Mass Effect, Dead Space has a relatively deep mythology that has plenty of resources for mining. Think I'm actually part of a bigger, living universe is a big step in immersing me in the game (and it's clear they want me immersed, based on the HUDless UI and the fact that it's a creepy horror game), and the story does that well enough. There's also a rather sad moment (which the screenshot above depicts) that actually made me feel some genuine emotion, so kudos to you Dead Space 2. You did alright.

Now back to murderin'

There is very little about Dead Space 2 I didn't like. The graphics, sound, and voice acting are all exceptional. The shooting is fun and provides a great mix of tension and adrenaline pumping zombie blasting. The minimal puzzles are easy and non-frustrating, and the story wasn't world-shattering but it was still worth a run-through if you liked the first game. Dead Space 2 also had a rather crazy nod back to the first game about 2/3 of the way through, which is probably my single most favorite moment in the entire game. If you played the first game and loved it, prepare yourself for a treat.

Again, there isn't much I didn't like, but there were a few things. A few parts, especially the beginning, feel a lot like the first Dead Space. Your first weapon in the Plasma Cutter, everybody won't shut up about cutting off the baddies' limbs, etc. Another problem was there never seemed to be enough stores. I kept filling up on health and ammo and wanting to dump it off, and in the first game the stores seemed well paced so that I wasn't throwing items away. In Dead Space 2, I kept having to leave presents behind, which made me sad. The infant baby enemies (a new enemy type) seemed really crass. I won't say they crossed a line or anything (I mean, come on, it's a Dead Space game), but it seemed more like they were being tasteless to try and prove how "hardcore" they were, rather than actually provide genuine scares. The last thing is kind of a silly one: enemies seem to pop out of closets from everywhere. Yeah, it's a genre staple but come on. I began to predict when enemies would pop out of walls or from the ceilings just because they use the exact same time-lull between incidents. Mix it up, guys.

Nothing bad happened here. Nope.

The game also has a multiplayer mode that I'm certain nobody played. I booted it up for about two matches: it's essentially Left 4 Dead's multiplayer mode but with Dead Space enemies instead of Left 4 Dead enemies. Which sounds fine in theory, sure, but again...nobody is playing it. It seemed like kind of a tacked on addition, and there is certainly a large disconnect between it and the single player story. Maybe next time a co-op mode would be a better idea? Just don't, for the love of all that is good, make your main game mandatory co-op. We all saw what happened to that other action-horror franchise when they did that.

Dead Space 2 is just a really, really solid game

You really should try Dead Space 2 out if you are a fan of horror or action games in the slightest. Though you should play it after the first one; unlike many "second" games (like Gears of War 2) that make the first game look kind of pale in comparison, Dead Space was already on a platform so freaking high that Dead Space 2 just sort of stands alongside it rather than knocking it off. Both games are absolutely fantastic, and with a third one for sure on the way I really can't way to see how this all ends.

Steam sells this game frequently during sales for only $5 on computer, which also has better graphics. On a console you are looking anywhere from $20-30, which is still a very fair price. Even though this game is much more about action than horror than the first one, it's still a kick-ass game, so grab your Plasma Cutter and slice up a few more Necromorphs.

Five out of five stars.

Clock Tower: The First Fear

2012-02-21T22:29:00.006-08:00

The Short

Pros
- Horrifying, genuinely scary
- Conveys a sense of helplessness rarely found on any game
- Pixelated graphics still do a great job in bringing the horror
- Multiple endings, most of which do not end well for your main character
- Good mix of genuine chills and jump scares
- Very unique experience on the SNES

Cons
- Never came out in the US; you'll have to find a fan translation ROM if you want to play it
- Uses a point and click interface but doesn't support the mouse, making controls cumbersome
- Puzzles and areas can have convoluted and difficult solutions, making a guide almost a necessity
- While playing as a frightened, helpless girl is great from a horror perspective, but from a gameplay one it can become tiresome
- Story gets really weird, especially near the end

Believe it or not, this game is pretty dang creepy

The Long

First off, it is worth nothing that Clock Tower: The First Fear was never released in the United States. I was given a fan-translated ROM by a friend back in my game-making days, when I was using an DOS-based RPG making engine to make everything but RPGs with it. Having made two horror games already, my friend thought it would be interesting material, considering the engine we used was essentially limited to 16 bit graphics. What I found was a surprisingly creepy SNES experience, that rivals even modern horror games with how downright scary it is.

Clock Tower: The First Fear follows a story of several orphan girls who are brought to a house by a mysterious old woman who wants to adopt them. After the old lady leaves for a spell, the power in the house seems to go off, and as the girls go out and explore they are murdered one by one by a little man wielding a pair of giant scissors. ...Ok, that sounds really goofy now that I typed it, but trust me: it gets creepy.

He either makes really big scrapbooks, or she should climb faster.

Thus begins your quest as the last (?) surviving girl to rescue whomever is left, find those responsible, and get out alive. Or you can just take the car and leave, if you want the bad ending. Clock Tower offers you lots of options (and I think about 7-8 different endings), so if you want to be a jerk and run off you can. Just don't think it'll end well.

Hint: It won't.

The story in Clock Tower is relatively basic and has a few bizarre twists, as one would expect from a Japanese horror game. Something worth noting is the deaths of the other girls: there are several for each, many depending on what order you visit certain areas, and some of them are horrific. None of them are particularly gory (the game would probably get a "T" rating today) or even violent, but the game does an excellent job using its limited hardware power to produce some shocking kills. The first time you walk into a new area and find one of the girls in trouble, and despite all you do you can't save her, you'll get why this game freaks me out.

It's a real accomplishment, to say the least. Often when you are wandering around the mansion the only sounds are your footsteps. You'll go into rooms that require you to look at things you don't want to (hint: don't look behind the shower curtain. Nightmare fuel, that) all for the sake of puzzles, and the ambiant silence combined with the fact that any moment you or your friend might die is nerve-wracking. It's a seriously intense experience, even though the game would be considered extremely slow by today's gaming standards.

This probably won't end well.

Another aspect that keeps the horror going is the gameplay, for both good or bad. The general gist of the game is that your character's tension rises as scary things happen, like jump scares or seeing her friends murdered without being able to help them. If she's relatively calm you can control her decently, able to run from Scissorman whenever he pops out (and he does so randomly...or sometimes not at all...talk about tension). However, if her "panic" meter caps out, she starts making mistakes. Like fumbling with doors, or tripping when she's running, or being unable to stave off a direct attack. This means you have to be extremely careful to not scare the crap out of her (and her face reacts in the corner when you see particularly horrific things, which is a nice touch). If you lose your cool, you're done.

Seriously, do not click the shower curtain. Do not do it.

Another thing that ramps up the tension (more for bad than good) is the controls. The game uses a "point and click" interface, which also is utilized for your main character's movement. This might have worked if Clock Tower supported that goofy mouse that came with Mario Paint, but it doesn't. So you have to use the SNES controller with a pointer, which just...sucks. Especially in high intensity scenes, where you are frantically looking for hiding places or escape routes from Scissorman, all the while trying to not get cornered, the controls can really mess you up. Item selection and use is also difficult, making actually playing this game almost a chore.

Despite the simple style, I would argue this game looks really good.

This is an adventure game, a Japanese game, and a horror game. All three of these genres are known to be difficult not because of actual gameplay difficulty, but because of convoluted goals and just general hardness. Clock Tower is very convoluted. It'll take you several runs, inching your way along as you progress, probably finding several bad endings before finally making some headway. I'd personally say give it two or three goes just to experience it on a "naked" run, then use a guide. The game it still pretty intense and scary, even when you know what you are doing, but it is just so damned difficult to know what to do it's almost impossible to get a good ending without cheating. It doesn't ruin the experience, though, which is what matters.

The fan translation is a good one, though the story can still be convoluted.

As stated, the sound design in this game is fantastic, and the graphics are good as well. There's something unnerving about seeing such horrific scenes playing out with retro SNES graphics, which works to the games advantage. As I've also said, there is next to no blood and gore in this game, but it still manges to be completely horrifying and unsettling. It just goes to show you don't have to pull a Saw and make your movies/games a gorefest all in the name of "horror." That is assuming you do it well, which Alan Wake tried and got really close, but unfortunately didn't quite make it.

I really, really like Clock Tower: The First Fear. I liked it so much it inspired me in my sequel to my first horror game (Pitch Black) to incorporate a lot of Clock Tower's elements into the sequel (Pitch Black 2)

See any similarities? I drew that background in MSPaint, by the way. Be impressed.

It has a few problems, but if you like horror games and want to see what the SNES offered, you really should check this game out. It's completely free, you'll just have to search for a ROM that's translated, so you really don't have anything to lose.

Despite issues, I feel good giving this game four out of five stars. I could seriously argue that it is the scariest game I've ever played (though Silent Hill 2 & 3 put up an excellent fight), or at least it was scary and impactful when I played it almost ten years ago. I can see why they didn't import it over here (it isn't something the SNES audience would have boughten back in the day), but thanks to the interent you can still experience it. So go for it!

Saw

2012-02-20T23:45:00.000-08:00

The Short

Pros
- Captures the gritty, dirty, horrifying world of the Saw movies
- A fair number of the infamous traps make an appearance
- Voice acting is decent and the game has a good atmosphere to it
- Puzzles can be very difficult and brain-teasing, which is great
- Captures the essence of the Saw movie franchise perfectly, which will please fans
- Really easy 1000/1000 G for Achievement hunters

Cons
- Combat, while not broken, is really, really poor
- While it has traps, it doesn't have nearly enough
- Puzzles are good but really repetitive
- Graphics look bland, even for an Unreal 3 engine game
- You spend 90% of the game indoors in the same gray corridors
- Endings are stupid
- While it has a strong start, it quickly burns out and runs out of ideas

"Hello, reader. I'd like to play a game..."

The Long

I have a confession to make, and one that'll probably lose me a lot of respect points from my readers: I actually really like the first Saw movie. I'm a huge horror fan, and something that is often missing from the genre is (at least an attempt at) a clever story with lots of interweaving elements. Usually it's just monsters or murderers killing lots of people, and even if they try to put a story in at the beginning it degenerates. Saw managed to keep its interesting premise (two guys are locked in an unknown room together, both chained to the wall, and one is ordered to kill the other one with whatever he can find) all the way to the end, with a shocking twist that completely caught me off guard.

The movies got awful pretty quick (I saw all the way to the fifth one for some unexplainable reason) and the franchise puttered out with the final iteration, not making much money and finally dying out (after seven movies). During it's heyday, however, Konami (yes, the guys that brought us Silent Hill) thought to produce a horror game based on the movie. Set between Saw and Saw II, you play as Danny Glover's character from the first game as Jigsaw tries to convince him to overcome his obsession with finding him by forcing Danny Glover to go through a bunch of traps and kill a lot of people. So yeah, it's like the movies.

A lot of the areas in Saw remind me quite a bit of the Silent Hill games

What might amaze you, however, is that for a movie-tie in game based on progressively awful movies, Saw the game is actually...pretty good. It isn't going to blow you away or anything, but for those who like old-school style horror games (read: the ones that aren't secretly third person shooters like what Resident Evil has become and Dead Space) this is really worth looking into.

The game is a linear path forward, with many obstacles put in the environment to kill you. In fact, aside from the crazed enemies, the environments themselves are your biggest chance for death. Opening doors has a random chance a shotgun trap will be attached (which means you have to quickly press a button or else your head gets blown off). You have bare feet, so if you run blindly into darkness you might step on glass and lose health. Keys are often convenient placed in toilets full of dirty syringes, and so on. Again, if you are familiar with the Saw movies this is all old-hat, but even if you are the game keeps you on your toes with the constant danger that lurks around every corner.

Let's talk about the enemies and combat first, since it's easily the worst part of the game.

Something really bad will happen to this guy if you don't solve the puzzle fast enough

The combat reminds me a good bit of old survival horror games. Unlike those games, the main character in Saw is controlled with normal third-person controls (meaning he doesn't move like a tank). Like those old games, however, combat is a horrid affair. Basically all you can do is swing whatever weapon you have and hope for the best. Enemies can easily get you stuck staggered and keep hitting you until you are dead without you having much hope for retaliation. You can often do this to them as well, but considering they like to gang up on you (and your weapons break)...it usually can end poorly. As a bonus, you have a shotgun collar on your neck (as do most enemies), so if you don't kill the person fast enough it'll go off and blow your head away. Awesome.

Combat is clunky and generally awful, regardless of difficulty. It honestly feels more like luck than actual skill. This sense of helplessness in the face of bad controls I guess ramps up the tension and makes you feel weak and vulnerable, but I don't think that was actually part of the plan. Luckily this game only has a moderate amount of combat, with most of your time spent exploring, dodging traps, and solving puzzles.

Hope you like puzzles that involve rotating things, because there's a lot of them

Saw only has a few different puzzle types, which is my biggest complaint against the puzzles. Most involve rotating stuff to line up other stuff...actually that might be all of the puzzles. Lockpicking is also rotating stuff to line up other stuff now that I think about it...hey! Konami, you tricked me! I was going to say that the puzzles were actually pretty good, but now I don't know if I can!

Well, they are alright, then. Wait, there's a puzzle that involves sliding stuff, so they aren't all rotating. Um, wait, where was I? Oh yes, the puzzles. They are actually difficult, which is great, and since most of them will involve somebody dying if you screw up (either yourself or a person in a rather grotesque contraption) it ramps up the tension immensely. As far as puzzles go, they are basic but brain-teasy, though one of the last ones is literally just "Memory" done on tv monitors. I guess they ran out of ideas at that point (or got tired of recycling the same ones over and over).

Point: Saw has puzzles. They are good, but lack in variety. Luckily the game is short so you only get sick of them about an hour before the end.

It does a good job staying true to the creepy aesthetics set by the movies

That's about it for how Saw works. Basically your goal is often to get into a room where Jigsaw has imprisoned an innocent person on a horrible, body-shredding trap (your guy never seems to mind the fact that he's killing a bunch of people just to get in and save one, but whatever). Then you solve a puzzle to free them, get shuffled down to the next area and repeat. It's all very liner and while there is a little variety to the areas (you go to a boiler room, a crematorium, etc.) it's all still indoors in the same place so everything starts looking identical after a while. Which again pushes the fact that Saw starts strong and then putters down quickly.

One of my favorite bits, however, is you can sometimes see rooms with the aftermath of other Saw victims after they've failed their traps, with the grisly results. It's super creepy and horrifying and helps set the mood. Again (I'm saying this a lot in this review), this game is really loyal to it's creepy and often horrific source material, and I can get behind that.

The game looks good but not great

The sound design in this game is top notch, with the original voice actor for Jigsaw coming back to record the numerous television recordings that pop up to taunt you frequently. The sound design is also excellent, using lots of silence (like the Silent Hill games) to set the mood and make it so any sudden noise is jarring and startling. During specific scenes music from the movies play, and I've always felt the Saw movies had excellent, creepy soundtracks so we'll take it.

It's a pity the graphics don't match up. All the screenshots you are seeing here are from the PC version, which has better textures and higher resolution (and it still looks just "ok"). The Xbox 360 and PS3 versions look a fair amount worse, running at lower resolutions and sporting muddy textures and bad texture popin. I think the problem really lies in the art design, which succeeds when you are in an area that's been "Jigsawed" (with the green TVs, traps, etc). But during most of the game where you are running down the same bland hallways, everything just sort of meshes together. It's uninspired, and hurts the game a lot.

It also has some really good audio logs ala Bioshock, which up the creepiness factor

As it stands, Saw is...surprisingly unoffensive. It doesn't pioneer any ground but it doesn't make any massive mistakes either. And while a lot of it is both repetitive and frustrating, I genuinely wanted to see it through til the end, and enjoyed playing it while I was at it. If you are a fan of the movies, go get some taste. But before you do that, you should probably check this game out anyway. It's short, so a weekend rent is probably your best bet, but if you can get it for under $10 you probably won't turn away unsatisfied.

So as it stands, two out of five stars. If you love the Saw movies, tack another two stars on there. If you hate them, subtract two. But if you are neutral but enjoy horror games, you might want to consider this overlooked game. At least until the next Silent Hill game comes out.

Alan Wake

2012-02-20T15:29:00.000-08:00

The Short

Pros
- Action/horror in the vein of Resident Evil 4
- Stars Alan Wake, a horror writer, which is an original protagonist for a video game
- Alan Wake provides story-like narration throughout that helps set the tone and mood
- Excellent fog and lighting effects, dark forests look creepy and foreboding
- Has some genuinely interesting and weird twists in the story
- Controls are smooth and easy to pick up and play
- Voice acting is excellent
- Serious "Twin Peaks" or "Twilight Zone" vibe from this
- Breaks it up into "episodes" (like Alone in the Dark) which further pushes the "TV Show" aesthetic

Cons
- Graphics are serviceable but character models (especially faces) look pretty bad
- Insane amounts of product placements: expect to take calls on your Verizon phone and keep picking up Energizer batteries for your flashlight
- "Manuscript pages" that you find have some pretty dense, awful writing it it
- For all the gushing Alan Wake does over Stephen King, they do a poor job emulating his excellent writing style
- Meaning: the dialogue between characters is good, the narration/manuscripts/etc. is very thick. Alan needed an editor because this was obviously a rough draft
- Battles start out fun but quickly get repetitive
- Doesn't offer much in terms of varying vistas: you get mostly shadowy forests and...more shadowy forests
- Ending is a horrid cliffhanger designed to sell their DLC
- For being touted as a horror/thriller game, there is nothing scary in the entire game of Alan Wake

Welcome to Bright Falls. Alan's tweed jacket and under-hoodie aren't ready for this

The Long

Alan Wake is a compelling game with a massive development time. Like Too Human or Duke Nukem Forever, this game has been in limbo for an eternity, shifting iterations and believed to be long-dead many a time. Created by Remedy, the guys who did the first two Max Payne games, Alan Wake is (as it says on the box) a "psychological thriller." But is this love-letter to horror writers (specifically Stephen King) mixed with a weird homage to shows like Twin Peaks and The Twilight Zone really worth looking into? Well...you'd better stay "A-Wake" for this review. Get it? Ha!

Alan Wake's premise is actually pretty cool. Alan is an international bestseller of horror novels (though based on the box and his actual writing he's less Stephen King and more James Patterson) who has had a serious wave of writer's block for the past two years. In an attempt to get the creative juices flowing, Alan takes a trip to the town of Bright Falls, a rural, densely forested town on an island. Unfortunately for Alan, stuff is about to get weird as he awakens to find his wife gone, half the town turned into weird beasties, and pages for an apparently unpublished manuscript that he doesn't remember writing floating around town, describing exactly what is going on. When did Alan write this? Will he be able to survive his own horror story?

If this sounds like a cool premise, it is, but the downer is that it isn't executed with much care. The story itself is pretty generic for about 90% of the game (evil dark creature lived in the lake-house Alan rented from some gypsy women, its turning the townsfolk and other inanimate objects into black darkness creatures, shoot stuff until the game ends) until it gets to the end, where it goes completely bananas and tries to pull off about six plot twists at once while failing, and then tries to also leave an open-ending (which also doesn't work). Apparently the DLC (which you have to buy, of course) that takes place immediately after the ending of Alan Wake explains a little of it, but I got one of them and it just made more unanswered questions rather than tell me what the crap was going on. For a game that so heavily pushes the "Alan is a great writer, this is his story" throughout, you'd think they'd have maybe hired an actual writer or maybe some editors to fix their own, crappy story. Or maybe it was just a rough draft.

"'About three things I was absolutely positive. First, Edward was a vampire...' Hey! I didn't write this!"

The actual game of Alan Wake is a standard third-person shooter affair with a slight twist. See, most of the good-natured, salt-of-the-earth people of Bright Falls have turned into crazy dark zombie people, and the darkness doesn't discriminate between living creatures and, say, tractors, so those are after Alan too. In order to defeat these monstrosities you have to first focus your flashlight on them with a high powered beam (which apparently drains the batteries like crazy; you have to constantly be pumping Energizers into them in order to stay alive) until the darkness pops off them, and then you blast them with bullets. Alan, aside from being a mediocre writer, also apparently knows how to handle any firearm with excellent proficiency, meaning the shooting controls are tight and he can also walk and shoot at the same time (take that, Resident Evil 5! Your zombie-killing specialist was just outdone by John Grisham!). He also has a nifty dodge that can be used if melee enemies get too close, resulting in a rad but oddly out-of-place slow-motion duck that looks more goofy than realistic. As it stands the controls are serviceable, the shooting is tight, and enemies seem to take just the right amount of time to go down.

The problem is that there is next to no enemy variety. Aside from the few random teleporting inanimate objects (which can be killed by just using the light, no bullets required) you basically just shoot tons of similarly looking darkness dudes for the entire course of the game. It never mixes up this formula, and while it's fun and sort of intense for the first dozen, when I was gunning down darkness lumberjack #496 I started wondering why these jerks kept blocking me from the rest of the story. Alan gets a better flashlight, better guns, etc. but it all seems redundant because all that means is the game will just throw more guys at you at once. He also gets flash-bang grenades that apparently only affect zombies and not people (since Alan doesn't get stunned by them) which are good "nukes" but seem unnecessary. You are always just fighting little people-beasties, and they never get particularly difficult.

Despite the graphics not being exceptional, they do good with the little things. It's just too bad they use the same little things over and over again.

This is probably Alan Wake's biggest flaw: it's repetitive. Which also shows in its locals: you spend about 80% of the game wandering through a dark, foggy forest path, glancing around you to make sure Taken (aka the zombies) aren't coming at you from behind some trees, shining your light all about frantically, etc. There are so many freaking foggy forests in this game. Yeah, I get that he's in forest-land USA based on the setting, but couldn't we have mixed it up a bit? You visit a sort-of trailer park at the beginning; why couldn't we go through there after it's been dark? Or more farms? (though it does have a lot of farms, too) Or...anything?

There are a few unique places, like a mental health hospital and a sort of "cabin" district, and you do get to walk through the town after it's been made "evil," but most of the game is shooting the same Taken people in the same-looking forest. Dull.

Running to safe points while being ambushed is pretty intense, and they use light well in this game

Graphically, Alan Wake does some things really well and others just ok. The aforementioned foggy forests do look quite good, and what Alan Wake lacks in technical prowess it makes up in setting and sticking to a theme. Light looks especially great, with the red/orange flares from the flare gun that billow up illuminated smoke looking damned impressive, even after the tenth one. Everything with the light looks exceptional (as would be expected, since light plays such a key role in this game), from how your beam darts across the tops of cornfields or sticks on some fog close to you. That part of the game is great.

The not so great part is when you start looking close. Textures are generally bland, with side objects such as rocks and walls looking pretty crappy if you get up close to them (though usually they are layered by both darkness and fog, so I guess it's sort of forgivable). Characters are modeled ok but their faces look horrid, with the lips hardly ever matching the voices and the whole thing looking stilted. Again, it wouldn't have been such a problem if they hadn't been banking so much on their story, but when your script isn't very great, your story's ending makes no sense, and your means of presenting it (the graphics) are choppy at best, you have a problem.

The flares still look cool, and look cooler after they've hit

The game has lots of little things that are close to being great but just barely don't make it. Alan's narration over the whole thing is a great touch and is very well voiced, but I really wish they'd actually read the ham-fisted dialogue that he's spouting off. Similarly, the manuscript pages you find blowing in the eternal forests read equally thick and bloated. It's like somebody thought a bunch of similes and over-description was all one needed to write a good book, while completely missing how to apply these tools to actually write something good. The fact you have to constantly reload your flashlight is annoying but makes sense gameplay-wise, but why the heck are all the batteries Energizer branded, and lying all over a forest? The collectables, the coffee thermoses, are also just lying in the woods. Does Alan drink those when he picks them up? No wonder he's seeing zombies; he's on some sort of weird trip. The Verizon phone placement is also obnoxious, but it anything on disc is easily trumped by one of the first lines in the DLC (where a character calls you and literally asks "Can you hear me now?"). Rampant product placement is annoying but forgivable if it makes sense. Here, it's just stupid.

Which sort of brings me to my last point: Alan Wake is a "thriller" game that isn't particularly thrilling, scary, horrific, or otherwise. You might have guessed that with it's "T for Teen" rating they couldn't exactly get away with gore-based horror, but plenty of games and movies have been classified in the "teen" rating and still pulled off some pretty serious scares (The Ring comes to mind). Because Alan is such an excellent shot and everything is layered with that corny narration, the game comes off more as silly rather than scary. And yeah, there are lots of dudes coming at you at times, but I never had that white-knuckle, nail-biting mixture of dread and tension that was so persistent in games like Resident Evil 4 and Dead Space, which Alan Wake clearly is trying to emulate. You come for the story, wade through the quagmire-ific gameplay to the next plot point, and then the game ends. There is no horror here.

I've also never seen an author have cardboard cutouts made of himself to push his books. Vain much, Alan?

As it stands, Alan Wake does well on its aesthetic, even if it misses the mark of being a "psychological thriller." The story is compelling despite it's stupid, obnoxious ending, and while the shooting is good there is just far too much of it. It's hard to take a polarizing stance in either direction with Alan Wake: I can't hate it because it still is a very solid game at its core, and I can't love it because it does so many little things wrong. If you are into third-person shooters and love foggy woods and want to see a rather unique take on familiar genre trappings, you could do a lot worse than Alan Wake. But if you were expecting a "psychological thriller" several years in the making, you might want to wait for the paperback. I mean the sequel. Or something. That joke didn't work.

You can grab the game pretty easily for $10-15, which if you are interested is a decent enough price to jump right in. Just know what you are and aren't getting, lower your expectations a bit, and you'll probably do fine. This game also recently came out on PC, which includes all the DLC, and considering the graphics are a bit better (and it supports 3D cards) I'd consider that the optimum way to play, if you can get a controller hooked up.

Three out of five stars, Alan. You didn't write a bestseller, but at least you pulled out of the midlist.

Week in Review: 2/12/2012

2012-02-19T23:02:00.000-08:00

It's time for another week in review! This last week I burned through 10 terrible games, shoving the total up to 67. I didn't get through all my terrible games, though (I still have 9 up for grabs on the Xbox 360 alone) but I think I covered most of them. I have enough left for another terrible games week should I feel so inclined, but for now it's back to business as usual.

And business as usual is that this week will (probably) be Horror Games Week! Yes, I'm going to burn through all the horror (not horrible) games I can think of, including every Silent Hill game (except Origins, which I never played), the Saw game, Clock Tower, The Suffering, and more. I love horror games, so I have plenty to choose from, including ones that are just sort of horror (Left 4 Dead, Dead Island) but still could technically count.

I'm currently playing Saint's Row The Third pretty seriously on the modern gaming side, and I'm deciding what game I want to play through on the retro side. I'm considering doing yet another Super Mario RPG playthrough, but it's also been a very long time since I've beaten Final Fantasy II/IV, so maybe that will be worth some time. I also need to finish Final Fantasy XIII, where on the Xbox I got to the exact same spot I gave up on the PS3 version and then gave up again. I'm going to really try to push forward, though. It's starting to turn into a game, finally.

Anyway, here's this week's horrible games with their respective reviews.

Fable III - 1 / 5 Stars
CastleQuest - 1 / 5 Stars
Too Human - 1 / 5 Stars
Bad Dudes - 1 / 5 Stars
Crackdown 2 - 1 / 5 Stars
TMNT: Turtles in Time Reshelled - 0 / 5 Stars
Comic Jumper: The Adventures of Captain Smiley - 2 / 5 Stars
Dead Space Ignition - 0 / 5 Stars
Ninety-Nine Nights - 1 / 5 Stars
Uncharted: Drake's Fortune - 2 / 5 Stars

That's it from me this week! Have a killer week!

Uncharted: Drake's Fortune

2012-02-19T15:59:00.000-08:00

The Short

Pros
- Fantastic voice acting and script
- Game is a hybrid of third person shooting and Prince of Persia/Tomb Raider platforming
- For a 2007 game, it looks pretty decent
- Swashbuckling adventure in the vein of Indiana Jones
- Vistas and landscapes are impressive and have a tremendous amount of scope

Cons
- Shooting is tedious, with bullet-sponge enemies and weird controls killing the pacing
- Forced Six-Axis controller moments (tipping controller to stay balanced) are awful
- While I like Drake, the fact that he kills so many people in cold-blood kind of...disturbs me
- Story takes a stupid supernatural twist at the end
- Platforming is decent but far from difficult or even slightly challenging
- "Puzzles" are extremely easy

The game looks great in stills, but in action plants look really "plasticy"

The Long

The Uncharted games, made by blockbuster developer Naughty Dog (who also made the fantastic Jak series on the PS2) are easily Sony's biggest franchise. The only game series I can even think that comes close to moving similar numbers is the God of War games, a series that gained momentum by being one of the last great PS2 games. The first Uncharted: Drake's Fortune came out back in 2007, when the PS3 was struggling to gain a foothold against the momentum-hogging Xbox 360. Advertised as a sort of "Tomb Raider" meets "Indiana Jones" meets "Gears of War," Uncharted was one of the games that pushed the PS3's popularity, providing a "killer-app" for many who wanted to embark on Nathan Drake's first adventure into the jungle to find Sir. Francis Drake's hidden stash of treasure.

I didn't play this game until 2010, and it was one of the first games I got on my PS3. I also had already played a bit of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves first, but I abandoned it because I wanted to play through this (the first game) just in case I missed some story elements or something of the sort. Note this was also after the absolutely killer third-person cover-based shooter Gears of War 2 had curb-stomped its way onto the market, a game I'd spent hours upon hours of time with. I also absolutely love the modern Prince of Persia games, so I figured this would be a match made in heaven.

Was it? Well...no. Not this first iteration of the Uncharted series, anyway.

Despite having that "early HD" look with its textures, the shadows and backdrops were top notch, if a bit repetitive

First off, let me cover what Uncharted does right. It would be safe to say that Naughty Dog probably has some of the best script writers in the business (even if their stories aren't that great to back them up), paired up with some absolutely incredible voice talent. Nolan North (now video game famous for providing his voice in every game ever made) voices our star Nathan Drake, a literal descendent of Sir Francis Drake, who find out his great-great-whatever-grandfather left a stash of buried treasure way off on some hidden island. After crash landing the plane and getting separated from the reporter slash love interest he brought along, Nathan embarks on a quest to outrace the bad guys in order to make sweet, sweet cash.

Sounds a lost like an Indian Jones movie, doesn't it? Well, it's close.

Nathan Drake is a very charismatic character, as is Elena, the girl he brought along. Drake's old mentor, Sully, is also an extremely interesting and well-realized character. Drake has a nasty habit of talking to himself constantly (as well as as saying "oh crap" every single time something goes wrong, which is often), but the dialogue is so well written I'm willing to forgive it. I'm reminded of the Prince's narration in The Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, which is what I consider to be one of the best written scripts in any video game ever, so that's a lofty comparison. When the characters are together and playing off each other the banter is entertaining and realistic, making their witty exchanges an absolute joy to listen to. While it's true the story is a bit...weak (get money before other guy does) I'm willing to forgive because the ride it took me on (at least with the dialogue) was so great.

The architecture in this game is astounding. Bonus points since you can climb it.

Another big perk is the fact that the game looks incredible. If you put it alongside most modern games you would notice that some things look a little...off. The whole thing has that "shiny plastic" element going about it that you saw in a lot of first and second generation games this round of consoles, and they tend to like to overlight everything in an attempt to show everything off. The areas also get really repetitive, with 90% of the game you switching between being outside in a jungle, climbing across ruins, or exploring ruins in the jungle. You do get some bits where you are underground at the end, which is a decent change of pace (though not as pretty). All these complants are really minor, though, especially considering this game came out in 2007. They wanted something that showed the power of the PS3, and boy did they get it. This pedigree of incredible-looking-ness carried over to both Uncharted 2 & 3, which are easily some of the prettiest games I've ever played.

So far this review has been very positive, which is good. The aesthetics of Uncharted (both this game and the whole series) have always been their biggest selling point, with Naughty Dog and Sony sparing no expense with production values. The problem with Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, however, comes when you start playing the game.

Drake is mad because it takes a full clip from an AK-47 just to kill one dude

As stated, Uncharted: Drake's Fortune is a hybrid between the cover-based shooting of Gears of War and the platforming puzzles of Tomb Raider or Prince of Persia. The problem is that Uncharted (like it's main character) is a jack-of-all-trades it is a master of few. Shooting in Uncharted feels really clunky, with aiming never clicking with me and cover controls annoying. Simple commands like swapping weapons or picking up ammo also seemed weirdly disconnected, like I'd be standing over a gun a certain way and the prompt wouldn't appear, or I'd press the Triangle button to swap guns and nothing would happen. These poor controls are only exacerbated by the fact that Uncharted apparently really wanted to be a third person shooter: there are tons of enemies in this game. Normally I'd be fine with this, but another massive issue is all enemies are bullet-sponges. It can take literally minutes to take down just one or two guys, waiting for them to come out of cover and then taking a few daring pot-shots as they relocate. Skirmishes drag on and on, with the game rarely giving you a break between them. This tedium made me put the game down several times out of sheer frustration and bordom, because whenever I saw another fight coming up I really, really didn't want to do it. Perhaps one of these two things (bad controls and immortal/hordes of enemies) broken on its own wouldn't be that big of a deal, but the pairing of them make Uncharted: Drake's Fortune unbearably frustrating.

Your adventure takes some weird, swashbuckling turns throughout

The other issue is the climbing and puzzles. While interesting, Uncharted is very clear on where you need to go, mostly. Let me backtrack a second and explain why I think this is. In Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time they introduce a ton of really difficult platforming puzzles that challenge your response time and button dexterity. In any other game, these feats of platforming would be infuriating: you'd die constantly and have to start over. But PoP introduced a new mechanic: time reversal. Basically a "rewind" that you can activate and deactivate at your leisure (though you have a limited number of charges), this meant the developers could make their insanely difficult platforming segments, because it was less of "dying a lot" and more of "learning it through easily-fixed mistakes." It was brilliant and I wish more games stole it.

Skip forward to Uncharted. There is no time-reversal mechanic; it relies on normal checkpointing systems. This means every platforming segment is one of two things: really easy because Naughty Dog didn't want you pulling your hair out in frustration all the time, or designed to make you pull your hair out in frustration every time. Granted, there's lots more of the former than the latter (thankfully) but if I knew I was just getting vanilla "easy" platforming I'd have gone back to Prince of Persia. Again, it's that whole "jack of all trades but master of none" problem: Uncharted wanted to marry two genres together, but didn't do it particularly well. Which would have been fine if I hadn't already played both Gears of War 2 and Prince of Persia before. Because I had, Uncharted: Drake's Fortune felt clunky, cheap, unfun, and boring in comparison.

The animations are great, but the melee attack is total garbage

It's worth noting that the sequels to Uncharted do a much better job at being both a shooter and a platformer. While still not on par with the previously-mentioned greats, they also bumped up the formula by increasing the number of places you visit, the set-pieces you encounter, and just knocking the "crazy" out of the park. You don't care if climbing is boring or simple if you are climbing up a train that's dangling off the edge of a cliff in a blizzard and slowly falling apart as you try to get to the top (Uncharted 2 starts with a bang, we'll just leave it at that). But if it's just around some ruines that looked exactly like the last batch...might start to notice that the game really isn't doing much for you.

I also have to get this off my chest: as much as I think Nathan Drake is a charming, witty, roguish protagonist, I can't also help but think he's a huge psychopath. You kill hundreds of guys in this game, probably more in the first couple hours than every person Indian Jones killed across all four of his movies. And at least in Indiana Jones he was killing Nazies (or at least people we knew were totally evil); in Uncharted Drake offs guys that were just hired by another guy to recover the treasure before Drake. I see no reason to believe the antagonists in these games are particularly evil, or if they are they certainly don't deserve to die for it, and their poor, underpaid henchmen with no health insurance really don't deserve to have their heads popped just because Drake wanted some gold before them. Which reminds me of another thing: he's making snarky remarks constantly, even when killing dudes. How sadistic is that? He's killing just some regular guys, and joking about it? This guy should have post-traumatic stress disorder in spades! He's killed more people across these games than probably the total death count in Operation: Desert Storm!

At least I'm not the only one who thought this; Penny Arcade knows.

As it stands, Uncharted: Drake's Fortune is just...not fun. I didn't enjoy it. Yeah I loved looking at it and hearing it, but anything that involved ducking into cover or shooting (and a good 80% of the game seemed to be that) was just a tedious, obnoxious drag. As I've said: the later games fix a lot of this one's problems, and this was the first in a series and the first attempt to merge these genres by Naughty Dog. But just because a game is pretty or tries hard doesn't mean it's worth playing, and I only really suggest playing Uncharted: Drake's Fortune if you really don't mind some awful shooting.

Then again, everybody else gave this game insane amounts of praise (as evidenced by its metacritic) so I'm pretty sure I'm the minority here. I finished it mostly to see if there was anything I needed to know before playing Uncharted 2. There wasn't really, so you could probably just start on the second game and it would work out just fine.

If you still want to attempt it, I'd say it's worth $5-10. It's pretty and well-written (minus a weird supernatural thing at the end that is mega-lame) and tries really hard. But know you might throw your controller against the wall in frustration at times.

Two out of five stars.