Category Archives: Review

The Breakdown: Eryi’s Action

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System: PC/Publisher:Nyu Media/Developer: Xtal Sword/Players: 1/Release Date: 9/14/12

Around the beginning of my college years, I was introduced to a romhack called Kaizo Mario. I wasn’t playing the game, but we were watching someone else play the game. Basically Kaizo Mario took Super Mario World and made it extremely hard to the point of parody. To a select few, this was a good way to test one’s gaming mettle. To the rest, it was comedic! I Wanna Be The Guy, an indie game, took things to the next level by incorporating assets from old games like Kirby, Castlevania, and MegaMan, and making the game downright sadistic. Then came Syobon Action, which was a re-imagining of the first world of Super Mario Bros. and added some twists to intentionally kill the player. This one was more parody/puzzle than actually difficult. That brings us to today’s game, Eryi’s Action, one of the first (if not, the first) officially published game from this ilk of games. Is it worth buying just to die, or are you better off watching another schmuck die constantly and just laugh at him? After the break, I review Eryi’s Action.

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Review : Sleeping Dogs

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Sandbox games are not typically the most enjoyable experiences for me.  Aside from Infamous 1/2, Red Dead Redemption, Crackdown…. alright, maybe it’s just GTA that I think sucks ass.  Those early trailers got me pumped really fast, and the game was quite well advertised.  There’s no Wei they could fuck up a game like this, right?

Just to get it out of the Wei, the protagonist, his name is Wei Shen, and yes you can expect a bunch of shitty puns in this review.

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The Breakdown: The eXceed Collection

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System: PC/Publisher: Nyu Media/Developer: Tennen-sozai/Players: 1/Release Date: 3/29/12

The shmup genre, a playstyle that’s lived longer than most of us on the staff. As we played these games and grew, our skills were honed to the point that memorization and bullet dodging became second nature. As time went on, a desire for a more… difficult approach arose, and along came the Bullet Hell Shooter. Like watching a fireworks show, the screen is littered with bullets with narrow passages of escape. Thanks to small hitboxes, escape was somewhat easy, and pretty cool at that. So in the heap of Bullet Hell Shooters comes a series of indie games called eXceed. The three games in the series sought to change things up a bit by introducing certain mechanics to the standard Bullet Hell formula. And now, they’re in a complete little package for a small price. Is it worth getting all three, getting part of ’em, or not bothering at all? After the jump, I breakdown each game of The eXceed Collection.

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Review : Rock of Ages; PSN (Played), XBLA, PC

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I remember once in composition class, my professor mentioned something about Rock of Ages while telling one of his old stories (the guy’s at least in his 70’s), tipping me off that there might be some other, probably more popular work that shares the same name. Sure enough, a Google search is more likely to direct you to a musical or movie. I never was into theatre, so don’t be too surprised when I say that it was the game I first heard about before the production.

While titles are shared, thematic content is not. Our game does not revolve around a timeless musical genre (there isn’t even rock in the soundtrack). Instead, the title is to be taken more literally; it’s about one man and his giant boulder traveling through different time periods and doing battle with various historical figures throughout Europe.

Any of you guys remember those old JibJab political cartoons which while slightly funny, started a trend of manipulating still pictures of people so that they appear to be talking or performing various actions? Imagine that treatment with authentic historical art styles and you have just about every cutscene in the game. While in play, units, buildings and the overall scenery on the playing field are three dimensional models. On the other hand, all human characters including the ones controlling the boulders from behind castle walls and the giant human hand that places the boulder back on track if it falls off are presented as paper cutouts.

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Review – Gabriel Knight : Sins of the Fathers (PC, 1993)

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Aside from the RPG there is one genre of games that have always managed to stimulate my imagination better than any other. The point and click adventure has been a regular part of my diet since King’s Quest 7 which introduced me to the genre soon after it first came out.

Usually, puzzles that stump me for hours are the intimidating factor that keeps me from jumping between adventure games regularly, but some more user-friendly games such as Telltale’s fantastic Tales of Monkey Island and Sam & Max alleviated my fears and I felt that I could survive just about any adventure game without seeking help from hints or guides.

Gabriel Knight : Sins of The Fathers beat my pride into the ground.

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Gamer Review: No More Heroes

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The Justic League tried to set up a branch in San Diego. It…didn’t pan out.

There comes along, once in a while, a game that utterly stuns you with its uniqueness. It resides so far outside the bounds of what you, or others for that matter, are used to that even as you play it, you sit slack-jawed in disbelief. I’m not talking about a game with new, unique gameplay features or a boundry-pushing technological advancement. I’m talking about an air, a mood, a certain…something that lends it an aura of the special or the strange.

Looking through the catalogue of one Goichi “Suda 51” Suda, you will find several games that fit this category. His most recent contribution to gaming, Shadows of the Damned, was reviewed a ways back by my companion Suiko on this very site. Still, even that gem was diluted somewhat by the (not unappreciated) presence of Shinji Mikami. Suda’s games tend to be a bit rougher around the edges, both in terms of content and the game’s actual construction. Regarding his style, his magnum opus is probably Killer7, a horrifically dark and strange little gem that defies any real attempt at description. Being part surreal horror, part rail shooter, and 100% crazy and unique, not to mention touching on some rather ugly issues (terrorism, cult mentality, the variability of reality, child trafficking, suicide, rape), it handily shows Suda’s propensity for wholly individual and utterly unrestrained expression.

His other opus, No More Heroes, is similarly unbound, but for entirely different reasons. Where K7 was dark and disturbing, NMH is ridiculous and over-the-top. Where K7 asks you questions about the world around you, NMH just tells you to strap in for the ride. Where K7 casts you as seven psychotic killers, NMH casts you as one really, REALLY expressive one. And it is good, it is all good. NMH is one of the most enjoyable, fun and wholly unique experiences from this generation of consoles, and deserves to be played by anyone with an open mind and a taste for the eccentric.

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The Breakdown – Ether Vapor Remaster

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System: PC/Publisher: Nyu Media/Developer: Edelweiss/Players: 1/Release Date:6/29/2012

It’s kind of unfortunate to see space shooters fall by the wayside after the 16bit and 32-bit days. While there were some out there that really impressed, they’ve all fallen to the niche circle. Indie hit Touhou reached a level of popularity the likes of Gradius and R-Type. Then Ikaruga brought forth a space shooter with bullet hell elements. And now, the scene is mostly quiet, with ports and remakes of Shoot ‘Em Ups hitting the download scene. Alongside that, smaller teams have developed shooters of their own, bringing over ambitious ideas quenching the thirst of old-school shmup fans, if only temporarily. However most of them never made it outside of Japan. Here’s one of the few that managed to make it out, Ether Vapor Remaster. Will this quench that thirst for a while, or are you better off drinking water? After the jump, I Breakdown Ether Vapor Remaster.

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The Breakdown – ICO

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System: PS2, PS3 (reviewed)/Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment/Developer: Team Ico/Players: 1 (2 after beating game)/Released: September 21, 2001, September 27, 2011

Picture if you will, the beginning of a console. From the moment it’s in its concept stages to when it’s finally out the door and into the homes of consumers, the company that makes it wants it to be successful. It does everything in its power to prove that the console is worth your hard-earned dollars. Features, controls, ergonomics, power… all of these are important to the console. But most of all, the games make the console, and it is the games that will shape the future of your console. And so, the company picks from a bushel of games to showcase around the launch period to show the public. You want to wow these people to buy your product. Since this is a new console, everyone’s going to go on about the graphics. Well, here’s a game that can wow you, while doing a few nifty things on the side. This was the reality back during the PS2’s early life when ICO was released. 10 years later, do those same enamored feelings still hold true for ICO? After the jump, I break down ICO.

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The Breakdown – Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance

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System: GBA/Publisher: Konami/Developer: Konami/Players: 1/Released/Sep. 16, 2002

While the world enjoys the new Harmony that descended on the downloadable game scene, I took the time to go out and buy an old Harmony on the GBA. Released after Circle of the Moon, Harmony of Dissonance released during a sort of renaissance period for the series as Castlevania was once again a force to be reckoned with in the gaming scene after the release of SoTN. However, this entry was seen as a bit lackluster, and to this day is seen as the black sheep of the post-SoTN games. Were the initial critiques spot on? Has the game aged better as time went on. Or should it have been a forgotten note? After the break, I breakdown Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance.

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The Captains Speaketh – New Review Format

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Hello everybody, and welcome to the great big review policy discussion. Since it would be best to write reviews that we can add to the big review databases in the internet for exposure, naturally the first thing to discuss would be our review policy.

The reason that I want this to be in conversation form, of course, is because we have no single review structure, and thus, the way each of us rate our games will be entirely different because of the different contexts that they are placed in. Thus, I ask you all this to begin : What is your criteria for ranking a game?

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Gamer Review: Shinobi (PS2)

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Hotsuma is going to show the moon what happens when planetary bodies get mouthy him...

Games are meant to fulfill a variety of “enjoyment types”, so to speak. Some of them are meant to evoke strong feelings of relation to the characters that populate its world, like JRPGs. Others are meant to simply pull feelings of joy and happiness from you (*coughKatamariDamacycough*). And still others are meant to inspire a mad devotion to learning the intricacies of a complex, involved system of gameplay styles.

There are literally dozens of others I can think of right now, but the subject of this review caters to one very specific aspect of the gamer psyche: the thirst for a challenge. Any game worth its salt is going to involve a modicum of difficulty in its structure. Be they through difficult puzzles, tough enemies, difficult bosses or even a world that requires more thought than just “You are here. Go over there”, games present us with obstacles to overcome to add that necessary sense of satisfaction.

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Late to the Party Reviews : Super Mario 3D Land

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I was going to join this party a little later on down the road, but something interesting happened while filming our upcoming podcast for The Wired Fish.  While discussing our biggest disappointments of 2011 (spoiler), Hachi called out Super Mario 3D land as his disappointment.  Not that it was a bad game, but rather that it felt like it was missing something.  From what I experienced playing the demo at Comic Con, I loved it, and in the back of my mind was hoping that his claims were full of shit, and that maybe he doesn’t know how to handle the 3DS nub properly, so I could laughingly say “You’re playing the game wrong”.  That same night, I decided to debunk his claim one level at a time…

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Recent Release Review : Sonic CD (PS3/XBLA)

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I was debating whether to call this a current game review or a “Late to the Party” Review, where I plan to discuss older games that fall beyond a certain cutoff point, but enough changes were made to this version to call it an entirely new release.

When I was a kid, I remember getting a Sega CD when it launched — the piece of shit hardly worked when mounted to my Genesis, and even though I wanted to get into Sonic CD, faulty hardware and my lack of mechanical expertise (I was like 5 when it came out) meant that there was only one or two occasions where the system actually worked for me.  I tried a second time when that Sonic collection for the Gamecube came out, but I couldn’t get into it.  Now that all of my good games this holiday season are behind wrapping paper, I needed something short and sweet to play before Christmas flooded me with games, and look at what came out — a Re-Release of Sonic CD with some new bells and whistles.

Finally, I beat the game, muliple times : once for the normal gameplay experience, once with Tails who is a new addition to the game, then I went through every stage and boss through Time Attack mode, and finally a proper run through the game for the good ending, I chose to do it by altering the past instead of gathering those damn time stones. Continue reading →

Anime Theater: ShootFighter Tekken

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Oh! It's a Super Saiyan Ghetto-Retard!

I want you to remember a time that you watched a really funny internet video. You saw it, and you said to yourself “Wow, this is hilarious! I have to show my friends!”. And so you posted it on your facebook, or showed it at a group hangout. Sure, it was stupid and devoid of any real meaning, but everyone laughed and had a good time, and it was quickly forgotten. If the mood strikes you, a long time later on you might still reference said video with a knowing wink and a smile, and a few people will chuckle and move on with their lives. And you will too.

This is kind of what Shootfighter Tekken is in a nutshell. A three episode OVA utterly devoid of any real intellectual or emotional depth, but still a ton of fun to watch while it lasts. Is it one of the greats, destined to stand with the great artworks of anime? No. But I deny you to not have a blast while watching this gaudy, ridiculous, and awesome little gem.

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Here comes a new challenger!

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After a little more than a week, a few thousand matches, and a hand cramp or two, I think a review of Ultimate Marvel Vs. Capcom 3 (Umvc3) is in order. I am very impressed with the overall rebalancing of the game. It seems Capcom really took the time to research problems within the original and tried their best to not make the same mistakes. For example, the DHC glitch is now removed from the game and I couldn’t be happier. Continue reading →