I’ve been very hesitant on reviewing this game since I beat it nearly a couple weeks ago. I always tend to feel as if I’m a little biased towards this series, so I normally need to wait a little bit after I finish a new Zelda title for the first time so I can allow it to sink in logically versus anything else.

Before I talk about anything relating to the story of the game, I want to point out control issues first. The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword took me nearly 66 hours to complete on my first playthrough, but the first 10 hours is how long it took me to get to the first temple in the game; Skyview Temple. Before playing Skyward Sword I had never played a game that used the Wii Motion+, but I was almost about to rage quit the game around the 7th hour, and then I almost rage quit again when it took me 5 deaths before I could kill the first Skulltula! Despite the controls starting off feeling absolutely horrid to me, by the time of the second temple I had gotten a general feel for the controls, and then as if like magic this game started feeling like it could have the best controls in the entire series… At least that was what I was beginning to think until the Whip item severely hurt my wrist trying to use it, and then the controls started inverting themselves whenever I had to re-calibrate the controller after the batteries would die. Also, that frustrating flying test towards the end of the game as well.

However, something that the game excels really well at doing is bringing the characters to life and developing them over the course of the game. Characters I despised at the beginning of the adventure ended up becoming some of my favorites by the time that the story was done; and even I became attached to the robotic Fi even though her personality didn’t change much. Even in the NPC characters, it felt as if everyone was exploding with a personality of some kind. Not only did the characters seem to be brimming with emotions, but these things were also shown well on the character’s bodies too; as the facial and body expressions were animated extremely well!

Another aspect of the game I enjoyed were the dungeons and environments. You backtrack quite often in The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, but regardless of that, it did not always feel like you were going through the same areas over and over again; even if the Faron Province had to play double duty of acting as both the Forest and Water locations. The dungeon designs were refreshing and new as well. The Pirate Ship was a fun new take on what places could be described as a dungeon, and the art direction of the Ancient Cistern almost brought a tear to my eye the first time I played the dungeon. Speaking of dungeons, the Goddess walls were a nice addition for helping players out, but it seemed like nothing I could draw would be recognized by the wall, and instead I was just always given hearts.

Getting to the story of the game, it feels like it starts as a typical “You and your childhood best friend are happy, friend gets kidnapped, you become a hero and save them”-kind-of-story-line. However, while it still somewhat feels like this by the end of the game, the story grows beyond that, and actually connects with instances in other titles in The Legend of Zelda series; feeling like it brings everything together of the constant Good vs. Evil battle. However, this game does use a bit of Time Traveling, and time traveling tends to be a sticky subject sometimes. This being an issue of at the end of the game, you defeat imprisoned form of Demise in the present… However, you have to go back in the past, and defeat Demise there as well; after he is resurrected by Ghirahim. Though, if he is defeated in the past, then what about instances that happen in the future, and I don’t think there are two of him around, but people still have the memory of you fighting his present self, despite him technically not being there after you defeated him in the past…?

Graphically, Skyward Sword garnered a lot of mixed opinions early on, most of which were rather hateful; as it seems to follow in the footsteps of one of it’s predecessors, The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker. However, upon playing Skyward Sword, I was blown away by the graphics. Yes, The Legend of Zelda is not “HD” yet, but that still doesn’t stop it from being beautiful. As a friend of mine pointed out, upon first look the backgrounds in The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword appear to be blurry… However, the backgrounds are meant to mimic impressionistic watercolor paintings from a distance. Combining that with how well the game transitions from that to the normal graphic style once you move towards what is in the background is astounding.

However, there were times that the graphics began to grate on my nerves, but sadly, this was a problem that is found in quite a few games, spanning many consoles and developers, when the game tries to push the limits of the system it is played on. In Skyward Sword, this nuisance boiled down to constant white pixel flickers across the screen from time to time. At first, I thought this was a system issue, so I did the logical thing and began testing other games I own for the Wii; as well as looking up the issue online. Upon research, it was just an issue with the game itself, as nothing else I owned caused it to reappear; except for Skyward Sword.

Last but not least with this game, the music is absolutely fantastic. From the first moments of taking to the sky on Link’s crimson loftwing to battling the demon lord Ghirahim to even playing the handful of mini-games, there was not a track that felt out of place. Even on it’s own, I can listen to the songs from the game, and instantly be brought back to the moments played in the game. Each track on it’s own is wonderfully and beautifully composed, but brought together for the game as a whole, and it just made the experience of Skyward Sword even more incredible. Aside from the new songs made for the game, there are also quite a few nostalgic songs from older Zelda titles hidden among the game as well.

Overall, the game, the story, the characters, the music, everything of Skyward Sword astounded me… except for the gameplay sometimes; since normally when I sit down to play a game I do it to relax, not to throw out my shoulder.

I wrote this a couple months ago, but I always forgot to upload it here.

I found out about the game about a month before it came out due to some marketing stuff I was fixing up at work. The storyline is amazing (and the side stories/memory items you can obtain have amazing stories as well), however the ending felt a little rushed (apparently just like with TriCresendo’s previous project, Eternal Sonata, according to some sources). The company tends to run out of budgeting for projects, so I’m going to blame it on that.

Aside from that, the combat was not that good. Sometimes you could find an amazing weapon that would NEVER break throughout the entire game, or you’d find a weapon that would break on every other enemy (which I always question since most of the enemies are ghosts).

However, I would recommend it for the story alone. It is by far one of the saddest games I have ever played. Also, while the English voicing was good half of the time (and just sounded weird the other half), the game comes with the option for either English voicing or Japanese voicing, depending on what you prefer. The music in the game is simply amazing as well, and sits rather high on my list of favorite Video Game soundtracks. Depending on if you get all of the memory items or not, the game can last about 10 - 14 hours.

Animal Crossing: City Folk (Wii)

I’ve been a long-time fan of the Animal Crossing series. I remember when an old friend of mine showed me Animal Crossing on the Gamecube. I was so used to games with action, and racing, and deep storylines that when I started playing Animal Crossing (GCN) I was so confused about what to do, but I felt intrigued and compelled to continue playing it. Now years later, I was excited to hear the announcement of City Folk. It seemed like it was going to open up all new kinds of possibilities to the game… 

The story (YOUR story) of Animal Crossing: City Folk starts out similar to the other titles in the series: You are moving to a new city (via a bus driven by Kapp’n this time). Before anything big happens, you are greeted by Rover the Cat. He asks you a couple of questions which determine how your character’s face looks and the gender of your character. Rover also asks the name of the town (which is when you name it) and makes small talk about the town before arriving in town. You exit the bus and are greeted by Tom Nook (the resident raccoon shop owner) who points you towards 4 different houses (where you can decide where in town you’ll live). Once you decide on a house, you’ll realize that you have no money and to pay for the house you will have to work for Tom Nook at his store doing menial tasks; like planting flowers, delivering items, mailing letters, et cetera. Tom Nook will let you go meet your neighbors during your work time, so you can get acquainted with everyone early on in the game. After a couple requests, the raccoon will let you go and he tells you that he expects you to pay him back on your own time and hard work later. You are then free to do practically anything you want.

The gameplay of Animal Crossing: City Folk is very calm. You can buy items, and furniture at Tom Nook’s store and the Able Sister’s store. Also, you can now go to the city now and buy clothing and furniture from GracieGrace’s expensive tastes and items from the game’s own black market fox, Redd. Aside from items in the city, you can also pay to have your hair style and color changed (and after buying all the styles of one gender, you can get styles of the opposite gender), your shoes shined into a different style and/or color, your fortune read, you can pay to view shows and gain emotions (but you can only have 4 emotions at once), and you can visit the Auction House to bid on items that your friends put up. Once you’ve purchased the corresponding equipment from Tom Nook, you can also go fishing, bug-catching, digging up flowers and weird statues (gyroids) planting flowers and trees, chopping down trees, and shooting down presents that occasionally float through the air. Another thing you can do is make your own clothing designs at the Able Sister’s store and wear them (or display them in the store so your neighbors can wear them too!) Aside from being able to make your own outfits, you can also decorate the inside of your house too.

Another big part of the gameplay in Animal Crossing comes from the interactions between you and the NPCs (Non-Player Characters). In City Folk, you can have up to 10 neighbors in your town (compared to the 8 in Wild World and 15 in Animal Crossing GCN). Sometimes there are special characters that arrive during holidays and reward you with special items if you participate in the related event. However, thanks to random generation for the neighbors (and the town landscape), sometimes you will wind up having a bunch of annoying characters. Certain special characters require you to get items from your neighbors, and for some reason you neighbors never seem to have the needed items. Other times your neighbors will ask you to get certain items for them such as a “green” item, and then won’t accept the item you get them, even if it has the word “green” in the name of the item.

Following the tradition from Wild World, Animal Crossing: City Folk also allows you to visit other people’s towns via the town gate, a wireless internet connection, and of course, Nintendo’s friendcode feature. For people who prefer to play a game by themselves, some of the bonuses of going to other people’s towns include getting new fruits, selling turnips, getting more points for Tom Nook’s new TPS system, potentially participating in the Auction House, and a side quest involving a lost kitten and her mother. Though, sometimes the online has issues, and because of this, it has given birth to a variety of glitches in the game.

The music in City Folk is pretty (and there is a new background song for each hour of everyday). However, sometimes I sat playing the game and wondering to myself if I had heard the tune in a previous Animal Crossing title. The music just perfectly blends together for the hour it represents. The beginning of the day (6am) starts with a little bit of an upbeat tune. As you progress through the day and into the night, the music gets slower and more calm like an almost sleep-inducing tune. Aside from background music, there is also music you can play on stereos in your or your neighbors’ houses. This music can be obtained by a guitar wielding dog named K.K. Slider, and he preforms his music each Saturday night after 8pm in the basement of the town museum. These tunes I definitely recognize from earlier entries in the Animal Crossing series. However, they are still cool for their purpose.

The main new additions for City Folk include the city (and the shops), the change of the locations of the player houses (instead of being 1 combined house, or 4 houses in the same spot, the houses are now in random locations in the town), Tom Nook’s TPS system that allows you to buy Nintendo inspired items with points earned from Nook’s store, DLC (downloadable content) that Nintendo sends you with new items, the ability to take pictures in game (and save them to an SD card), and new makeovers that allow you to use your Mii for your City Folk character’s face. Aside from this there might be a few new bugs, or fish, or neighbors, or holidays, but it isn’t really noticeable.

All of that might seem good, but there are also things in City Folk that were just completely irritating. There is a new grass feature where the grass will deteriorate based on how much you walk on the grass. Originally, I thought this meant that the grass would die if you ran on it… No. It’s for any kind of walking on the grass. After a couple months, my town looked like a desert because the amount of grass that regenerates each day is not enough to cancel out how much someone might play in the game. Another thing, flowers die way too easily in City Folk. It is randomly generated when flowers will wilt and where flowers will spawn, but it is impossible for me to play the game everyday… sometimes even every week. Due to this, I will come back to the game to find out that most of my flowers died. Also, during the time that I can’t play, the neighbors that were my best friends will randomly move away because I wasn’t on the game to tell them to stop. Something the game needs is a vacation feature. That way you don’t have to worry about certain things occurring like this. I know Animal Crossing is supposed to mimic life (such as getting in trouble if you try to reset since you can’t reset in real life), but sometimes a person’s normal life is busy enough to deal with on it’s own without adding a secondary virtual life.

If you’ve played a previous game in the series, then going from Animal Crossing GCN to City Folk seems like a big improvement in the series… Though, if you go from Wild World to City Folk then it doesn’t feel like there is much of a difference at all. However, if this is your first Animal Crossing, then everything will feel new to you. Most of the things I discovered in City Folk to be fun, I realized were implemented in older games.

I’m not saying that City Folk is a complete letdown. It is a good game, and it is the game I play the most in the series, but it felt lacking compared to it’s predecessors. The game on it’s own is fine minus a few flaws here or there.

Trauma Center: New Blood
It took me forever to finally get this installment in the Trauma Center series, and I’m questioning why I allowed myself to wait that long to get this amazing game. The third game released, but the 4th game chronologically, this game no longer focuses on Derek, Angie, and the rest of the Under the Knife doctors, or GUILT for that matter. Instead new comers Marcus Vaughn and Valerie Blaylock are on the scene to save lives. This turned off some fans due to the fact of the beloved Derek Stiles, who originally shouldn’t have been allowed to operate period, was not in the game. As such, this is the game that rarely anyone knows about in the series. This is also the first game in the series that has multiplayer, online leaderboards, and FULL voice overs of all the text.

The story begins 7 years after the events in Trauma Center: Under the Knife 2, in a small town in Alaska, where Doctor Marcus Vaughn is about to do an operation. Along with him is Valerie Blaylock, who nags on him to put more thoughts into his patients. At the beginning of the first operation, Marcus is telling everyone to make it quick because he has reservations for Salmon at a restaurant  shortly afterwards. The first couple operations go smoothly, but within the next couple of days, Marcus receives a phone call enticing him to return to the Concordia Medical Institute for a serious surgery on his friend. The cause of the operation being something that Marcus “can’t wash his hands of it just yet.” Still deciding on whether to return or not, a woman calls the Hospital and reports that a man has been injured, and informs them of all of his statistics. Valerie, getting suspicious of how the woman knew so much, learns that the woman is Elena Salazar and she is from the Concordia Medical Institute. However, aside from just asking for Marcus Vaughn to return, she is also there to ask for a surgery as well. To replace a pump unit in her pancreas that Marcus placed there 10 years earlier. After the surgery on the one man, and Elena, you find out that the hospital you are working at is going to be shut down in favor of a better hospital being built nearby. So, you have no choice but to return to Concordia. Once there, you find out that Marcus’ friend is infected with a disease named Stigma. You preform the surgery, and end up saving his life. However, afterwards Marcus’ friend is kidnapped, all the data for Stigma is stolen and the Hospital room is set on fire. Afraid of the worse, Caduceus invites you to join them since you are one of the only people in the world who knows how to Operate on Stigma in case of a breakout. Which a breakout occurs a lot sooner than expected…

The controls for Wii Trauma Center games are all the same, meaning that until you get used to them, they are really hard. Using the Nunchuk’s control stick, you choose what item you want to use, and the A and/or B buttons of the Wii Remote with specific point and click movements to use said items. Holding the Z and B buttons while drawing a star after a certain point in the game allows you to use the Healing Touch (though the game never tells you when). However if a person starts going into Cardiac Arrest, then pushing the Z and B buttons at precise timing allows you to resuscitate them.

While the DS Trauma Center games are a lot easier to control than the Wii versions, this is a storyline that you can’t find on one of the handhelds, and it is one of the best storylines in the series. I would highly recommend this game to anyone. Even though it seems like it would get repetitive, it doesn’t. The gameplay is so action oriented, that you’ll most likely find yourself not wanting to wait to get to the next chapter after just finishing one.

However, if you do want to play this game then play it with a friend. Because this game was the first with Multiplayer options, the game tended to lean more towards the multiplayer difficulty. This meaning that even on easy mode, playing this game on single player makes it almost as hard as the original Trauma Center: Under the Knife; which had no difficulty options whatsoever.

There was a point in time when I decided to rush through all of my games and review them solely based on an hour or so’s worth of gameplay. This is one of those old reviews:

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Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World
This is another one of those, “I was really excited for this, but…” games. I mean, it’s a sequel to my favorite RPG from my Tween years, so it should be awesome… right guys? Wrong.

For the sake of not spoiling the first game, I’m not going to talk about the back story much. 

The game starts out a couple years after the last one. Everything is all peaceful. Happy Fun Time, yay! This is actually not the case. Apparently the ideals of the main character from the previous title didn’t exactly translate with the rest of the world. While the Church of Martel sides with the Heroes from the original Tales of Symphonia, a group called the Vanguard opposes what happened, and decides to fight back every chance they get. One of these skirmishes takes place around the city of Palmacoasta. An unlisted number of innocent people are killed, and the city goes up in fire. This tragedy is later named the “Blood Purge” and come to find out, it was all lead by the main character from the previous Tales of Symphonia, Lloyd Irving. I guess he found out he wasn’t going to be the Main Character anymore and didn’t like that. Oh well, everyone that died were just NPCs, or Non-Player Characters. No big loss.
Well, it seems that Emil Castagnier’s, the new Main Character, parents were 2 of the people killed amongst the masses. However, Emil is too much of a coward to face Lloyd at that point, so Emil waits some time, in the process being moved to a town named Luin and being picked on everyday for not being a devote Lloyd Irving fan, until one day he hears a monster cry. While going to check on it, he comes across Richter Abend. Richter saves Emil from being bullied, due to the fact of Richter being bullied as a child himself. However, he quickly becomes irritated with Emil because he doesn’t stand up for himself. Emil is so much of a coward that the beginning 20 minutes consist of Emil trying to get up the courage to Thank Richter for saving him. Richter ends up teaching Emil how to fight, and they both travel along to where the monster cry was heard. From there, the pair get separated.
Emil then runs into the main girl, and apparent love interest of the game (Think Amy Rose from Sonic the Hedgehog type love interest), Marta Lualdi. She has a Centurion’s core on the left part of her forehead, but not just any core… the core to the “God” of all Centurions, Ratatosk. Emil decides to accept Ratatosk’s power to protect Marta. Well, Richter meets back up with Emil, and guess what, Marta was the target Richter was looking for to kill because of the core on her head.
Protecting your parents from being killed in front of your eyes… whatever, Random Girl you just met… Hell Yeah!
Emil uses the power of Ratatosk to transform into himself, only with red eyes, a deeper voice, and wearing a tube top dress. Good thing about this is that he is no longer a wuss, but now more along the lines of a crazed sociopath. The only thing that snaps him out of this is talking with Marta. Richter leaves and Marta informs Emil that they need to collect ALL of the Centurion cores to restore the world. So this gives Emil a reason to finally go out and extract his revenge on Lloyd Irving for killing his parents.

The controls are all button based, no motion controls whatsoever. Typical RPG controls, only battles are real-time and not turn based. You do get some characters from the original Tales of Symphonia to join your party, but it’s best to not put them in your party because they don’t gain ANY experience. It’s best to just dawn your Pokemon Explorer Hats and go Catch ‘Em All, since the only other way to get teammates is to capture monsters. Battles ended up feeling like a chore to me, instead of actually enjoying them.

I, of course, would only recommend this game to those who beat the original Tales of Symphonia. Otherwise, a lot of stuff won’t make any sense. However, it’s your choice if you wish to play it. Some fans think it’s a great sequel for ToS, while others think it’s horrible. Myself, I’m standing on the fence, but slowly falling off towards the not-so-good answer.

Sonic Unleashed (Wii)
I’m torn on this one. The Day Stages of the game are AMAZING; despite any motion controls they had. The Night stages had too much motion control, to the point where after playing one or two levels I would be too tired to continue. However, you can opt out of that and use a Gamecube controller, but I like playing games with the controls for the system that they are on. The Wii and the PS2 versions are the same, but the Xbox360 and PS3 versions are different. However, between all the versions I’ve played I would have to say the Wii version is the best; even though it cut out a lot of stuff the Xbox360 and PS3 versions had. Also, the Wii and PS2 versions have more Night Stages. Trust me, the Wii Version is the best for the sake of gameplay making sense with the storyline.

To see the actual opening to this game, you need to watch the video that plays right before you get to the start menu. Sonic is in space, and looking to confront Eggman on his ship. Sonic runs Eggman all over his ship before turning into Super Sonic and continuing the fight. Eggman traps Sonic, and uses a ray to zap the power of the emeralds from Sonic; which in turn causes the emeralds to turn black. Eggman uses this power to call forth Dark Gaia from the center of the planet (that looks very similar to Earth). In doing so, Sonic receives some of Dark Gaia’s power; turning him into a furry, more spike clad wolf Werehog. …Werehog is not the proper term to describe that. I’ll attempt give my own proper description of Sonic’s alternate form: Take Sonic the Hedgehog, and mix him with a wolf. Take that creation, give it the clothes of a wannabe punk kid and a spike-hair-style to match. Then give it the Gomu Gomu fruit Luffy ate in One Piece, call your bastardized Sonic-Wolf-Punk-Stretchy Arm thing a masterpiece, and then throw the concept out to your pack of fans that are mostly in the young ages of their lives… Allowing them to name said creation with their lack of understanding for prefixes, suffixes, and probably the English language as a whole.

Anyways… Sonic the Werehog, and the Chaos Emeralds, then falls down toEarth the planet, and land on top of a weird pink and white furry creature with fairy wings. After apologizing to the creature, Sonic learns that it has amnesia. Sonic guesses that it’s his fault for this, and offers the creature to follow him along in his quest to restore the world. Knowing nothing else to do, the creature agrees and Sonic soon nicknames him Chip. Eventually you run into Amy and Tails, and a Professor friend of Tails. With their help, you go to set things straight and end Eggman’s attempt to destroy the world.

The day stages allow you to control Sonic the HEDGEHOG. The night stages then change you to Sonic the Werehog. The day stages’ controls are simple and set on a 2D setting with 3D graphics. Depending on how you play, the Nunchuk is used to move Sonic and on the Wii Remote you use the A button to jump, and after jumping you can swing the Wii Remote to do a homing attack. Swing the Wii Remote normally grants you a speed boost, if you have enough rings, but then again, it is really easy to get rings in most levels.

The night stage’s controls made me despise the game (for that section). Sonic moves a lot slower than normal, unless you go into a dash; with which Sonic runs on all fours (like a wolf…). However, if you go into a dash, you have almost no control whatsoever over your movement and I can count numerous times that I accidentally went running off the side of an area because of the dash. When climbing up poles and walls, you have to move the Nunchuk and Wii Remote accordingly to mimic Sonic’s climbing. Then when you get into battle, Ugh. I won most battles by just flailing my arms around like a crazy person, and hoping I had enough rings to keep me alive throughout the onslaught of what felt like an endless number of enemies most of the time (or enemies with really large amounts of health and defense).

As far as this Sonic game goes, I’d recommend it for the sole sense of the Day Stages. However, if you are wanting to play for the sake of the Day stages, then any version of this game will be fine to play (warning: Xbox360 and PS3 have faster paced stages). Though, one could come to love the night stages if you enjoy beat-em up games that rip off other games.

No More Heroes
Ever since this game originally came out, I had been wanting a copy for so long. One of the reasons is because Suda51 wanted it to be more violent than Manhunt 2 (which had an AO rating for a while, if I remember correctly). The second reason being that it was a Mature game on the Wii, and a third reason being that people would not shut up about it. Sad to say, it took me almost an entire year to beat this 14 hour game due to the fact of me constantly getting sick and being unable to play games.

You play as Travis Touchdown, a stereotypical American otaku who lives in the motel complex “No More Heroes”, in the fictional city of Santa Destroy on the US West coast. He ends up winning a Beam Katana (read: Lightsaber) from an internet auction, but quickly runs out of cash afterwards. He later meets up with Sylvia, the main blonde haired girl of the game with a wannabe French accent, in a bar. Seeing Travis devastated she offers the Johnny Knoxville lookalike a gig: Kill a man who goes by the name of Helter Skelter, aka “The Drifter”. Travis accepts, and the events of the fight are shown in a Trailer for the game that can be watched on the TV in Travis’ Room. When Travis wins, Sylvia appears and informs you that Helter Skelter was the 11th ranked Assassin in the United Assassins Association, but now that he’s out of the way Travis is newly ranked 11th. With this information, Travis decides to make it all the way to the Number One ranked spot. However, after the first mission of the game with the defeat of the 10th ranked Assassin, Sylvia tells Travis that if he ever decides to stop killing, others will come after him to take his spot. With no way out, you must go and kill everyone who stands in your way.

I know a lot of people complain about the controls of this game for the sake of the Wii having stupid motion controls, but I must combat this for this game. You need both the Wii Remote and the Nunchuk for this game. The Wii Remote controlling Travis’ weapon, and the Nunchuk controlling Travis’ movement. When preforming one of Travis Touchdown’s wrestling moves, you need to swing both the Nunchuk and Wiimote in certain directions; mimicking where Travis’ arms are supposed to go in order to throw a person. As far as the Wii remote controlling Travis’ weapon, don’t think you go spaz happy and have to swing it every which direction. All attacks are controlled with the A and B buttons on the Wii remote, and depending on if you hold the remote high or low will depend on the stance your character will take. If you get really good at fighting, it ends up not mattering if your stance is high or low. The point when motion controls come into battle is when the battery on your Beam Katana runs out. To recharge it you need to hold the 1 button, and shake the Wiimote up and down… this is mimicked by Travis on screen which gives off the hilarious sight of looking like he is masturbating. 

To help you in your quest, you can seek the aid of Doctor Naomi for better weapons (collecting them all gives you the secret ending), Master Thunder Ryu for upping your stats (with motion controls taking place for training since it happens in a Gym), and Randall Lovikov, a drunk you find in a back alley who helps you learn new fighting abilities.

This is one of my favorite games amongst my Wii collection, but I’ll be honest and say I’m glad I didn’t shell out the $50 when it first came out. With a port of this game being made for the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 (under the name No More Heroes: Paradise), I’d happily recommend this game to anyone I know (just for how much violence and language there is in this game, don’t play it around little kids). What’s funny is this game was originally going to be for the Playstation 3… before someone in the development team suggested the Wii for the sake of motion controls.

There was a point in time when I decided to rush through all of my games and review them solely based on an hour or so’s worth of gameplay. This is one of those old reviews:

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Rabbids Go Home
This game isn’t in my collection (because I rented it), but I’m sure one day it will be there. These rabbids are too adorable, and just like with a bunch of other people, I fell for the rabbids back with Rayman Raving Rabbids. Now, I’ve never played a Rayman game (that I can remember), but I know some fans of the series are saddened by the lack of Rayman due to the replacement of the Rabbids.

The game begins by telling you that the game is controlled with the Wii Remote and the Nunchuk, and that it needs to test to make sure the controls are working. Shake the Nunchuk 3 times, and it’ll work fine. Shake the Wii Remote twice, and then you’ll hear some noise from Wii Remote’s speaker. The game will “activate the internal Wii Remote camera” to show that there is a Rabbid hiding inside the Wii Remote. The game will inform you that it is played with a Rabbid inside the remote, because you can fire Rabbids at obstacles after clearing a certain part of the game. Once you reach past the third level of the game, you will get the option to design up to 3 rabbids (but you can save loads of designs to change at will).

Once kicking into the actual story of the game, it shows that the Rabbids appear to be tired of partying from the previous Raving Rabbid games, and merely just want to go home. They are now living in a junkyard with no idea of where their home might possibly be located. Two Rabbids come strolling along, one pushing a shopping cart with the other inside it. The one pushing the cart looks up at the moon, and communicates through rabbid gibberish to the others that they should go to the Moon; where they can rest peacefully. However to reach the moon they’ll need to make a really big pile of random items to climb their way there. Thus beginning a reign of terror throughout the city by these adorable creatures.

Game play is simple, and gets addicting quickly. Sad to say, I can’t quite remember the exact button controls of everything since I only played this game for about 2 days (and looking them up online is failing me). However, you control 2 rabbids, one riding inside a shopping cart who picks up your items, and another who pushes the cart around. You constantly have to scream at things to either stun them (so you can add them to your pile), or to scare the clothing off of various humans. Speed is also an essence in this game, due to having to chase after things or things chasing after you. Early on in the game you make enemies with one guy who ends up turning into a Verminator, a Rabbid Exterminator. Any boss battles you encounter are relatively easy due to having 2 choices of attacks, screaming at them or shooting a Rabbid from your Wii Remote. At the end of the level you end up collecting a huge item, and then throwing all your items down a toilet to get it back to your junkyard habitat. I can’t help but feel sad for the Rabbids afterwards, because at the end of every level they start celebrating, thinking they have enough items to reach the moon, but then find out that they don’t which causes them to get sad before they look out over the horizon and see more big buildings and items; which makes them happy again.

If you enjoyed the antics of the Rabbids in previous titles, then you’ll most likely enjoy this too. However, it feels like it begins to get repetitive after a few levels. I mainly love playing on the main menu and torturing my Rabbids inside my Wii Remote, but then again, I don’t know if torturing mentally challenged bunnies is a good thing.

Sonic and the Black Knight
Oi. I was honestly looking forward to this game. Just like with Sonic Chronicles, this game brings a lot of nostalgia back from older games; mainly my favorite 3D Sonic game: Sonic Adventure 2 (also ported on the Gamecube as Sonic Adventure 2: Battle). The reason for that being that the game was directed by the lead programmer of the Sonic Adventure series. Also, this game felt like it was aimed at fans; even moreso with them including fanart from all over the world in the galleries in the game and not just the “awesome” artworks. Fanart of multiple different styles and various age groups were included in this. Despite all this, my hopes were crashed within a couple hours; as that was all it took to finish the game.

This is the second game in the Sonic Storybook series, the first being Sonic and the Secret Rings. This time we get to travel to the land of King Arthur, who has turned evil and has become the “Black Knight”. Merlina, a wizard and granddaughter to Merlin, summons “a brave knight swift as the wind”, aka Sonic, to her world. Sonic, for the second time, falls through the air and faceplants on the ground… this time with 2 chilidogs falling after him. Merlina apologizes for summoning him as Sonic soon notices all the enemies around him. With his normal “This happens to me all the time” response, he quickly disposes of all the enemies except for King Arthur. As he goes towards him, Merlina grabs Sonic and transports both of them away. King Arthur gathers the Knights of the Roundtable and orders them to kill the pair on the spot. Once the Black Knight leaves, Gaiwan (Knuckles) and Percival (Blaze) both question the order, but Lancelot (Shadow) tells them to not think about it. Afterwards, Sonic questions why Merlina stopped him. She describes that the Black Knight is invincible and teaches Sonic how to use a sword. With his new weaponry knowledge, Sonic pulls the sword Caliburn from stone, and decides to use it. However, Caliburn turns out to be a talking sword who doubts Sonic and is constantly throwing remarks in his general direction. With this, you set out to defeat King Arthur.

While it makes sense, this is one of the games where I hated motion controls in the levels (boss fights were tolerable). I felt like I was constantly pushing forward and swinging the Wii Remote ridiculously thoughout each level. Though, there were a couple levels I could stand, but they were towards the end of the game and were still very few.

I don’t really know how to recommend this. If you still enjoy playing the blue hedgehog’s games, can look past any issues they may have, and are a huge fan still, then I’d say to go get this… but just to enjoy the nostalgia, and have the completeness of adding it to your collection. Other than that, then I don’t think you’d like this game.

There was a point in time when I decided to rush through all of my games and review them solely based on an hour or so’s worth of gameplay. These are two of those old reviews:

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Resident Evil: Darkside Chronicles
This game came out on a special day for me, but that’s beside the point. I was kidnapped by my best friend to go play this game with her since it has a multiplayer option attached to the main gameplay of the game. Now, besides Resident Evil (the first one, remake on GCN) I have not beaten a single Resident Evil game. I’ve played up to the first save spot in Resident Evil 4, but kept dying very quickly and gave up. I’ve played a vast majority (I think) of Resident Evil 5 as well (thanks to my best friend again). However, for the actual storyline that is presented in Darkside Chronicles, I had no clue what the heck was going on.
“Resi Evil”: Darkside Chronicles focuses on reitterating the events of Resident Evil 2 and Code: Veronica. 
However, instead of making this an exact port, the gameplay is now an on-rails shooter game; just like Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles.
If you are lucky enough to have a Wii Zapper, then this becomes a Point, Click, Shoot game with simple controls. However, if you were like me when I played this game, then you will probably have a more simple time playing this game. Although the Wii Zapper seems like it would be perfect for a shooter game like this, it starts to get irritating when you are having to shake an entire gun-looking thing just to use the Knife; which if play this game without the Wii Zapper then all you would have to do is swing the Nunchuk to use the Knife. Other functions of the game do work well with the Wii Zapper, but overall, it can be just as easily (if not more easily) without it.
Despite me not being a huge Resident Evil/Biohazard fan, I was actually amused by this game. As a person who is horrible with normal shooting games without playing them in multiplayer, this game was exactly what I was looking for to enjoy a Resident Evil game. Personally, I’d recommend this to anyone. 

Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles
Read everything I said for “Resident Evil: Darkside Chronicles” but replace the “my best friend” with another friend of mine, and replace “kidnapped” with “insisted”.
Also, instead of it retelling Resident Evil 2 and Code: Veronica, Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles retells the events of Resident Evil Zero, Resident Evil 1, and Resident Evil 3. Another thing, I had the displeasure of playing this one with the Wii Zapper. 
Aside from that (which the Wii Zapper isn’t forced, so I’m not picking on the game for it), this game is another fun one. Yet again, I’d recommend it.