Reviews

Review – Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow

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“Don’t you find exercise to be a little more painful without skin?”
“Oh, yeah. But I still get out and jog. You have to keep busy.”

I consider myself an old school gamer. I have every Sega and Nintendo system set up and ready to play in my living room (besides the N64 DD, I said old school, not rich). I am a huge 2D enthusiast, I lament its demise and rue the day 3D took center stage (which was an excellent movie, by the way). I also loved Symphony of the Night. I really wanted to like Dawn of Sorrow more than I do.

Gameplay is the same as it has been for nearly a decade; your character navigates Dracula’s absurdly designed castle corridors and fights progressively more deadly monsters who sit around discussing the pros and cons of no longer having flesh while waiting for intruders. Like in Symphony of the Night and the games that followed, you collect weapons and equipment through your travels, and an inordinate number of mushrooms. →  Tony Hawk’s Pro Reader 3

Flash game review bonanza 3

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Well I’m in that post-school, pre-summer job phase of life right now, by which I mean my cash flow is almost zero (there is, of course, always the five bucks I garner here and there for offering sexual favors to passing sailors). That being said, I haven’t purchased any new games recently, and it thus seemed time for another foray into the fantastic field of Flash-game fun (By the way, that just cost me two skill points in alliteration creation… and one in rhyming). Again trying to establish some continuity to my reviews, I decided to head over and try some of Popcap’s esteemed games. Thus, my reviews are limited to the one hour trial demo popcap.com offers, and I will offer along with the review my opinion on whether or not the games are worth shelling out the 20 bucks needed for the full version. And now, on with the show.

Insaniquarium:

An alien invades a once peaceful aquarium… or is that my ex-girlfriend?

 →  Read, I am your father!
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Review – BloodRayne 2

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A lot of reviewers would start this off by saying BloodRayne 2 “sucked” and then make some lame joke about this being a vampire game and there being a lot of “sucking” going on anyway. Well I think that sucks … and this game blows. If you’re not familiar with titular character you need only watch Uwe Boll’s opus “BloodRayne” to gain absolutely no insight whatsoever into this franchise and probably confuse the hell out of yourself in the process. Now that movie sucked!

Putting aside the cinematic abortion that will forever mar the face of this spotless product line, BloodRayne 2 is one of the most boring games I’ve played in a long, long time. Poor voice acting, horrible dialogue, tedious battles made even worse by a frustrating combat system… this puppy runs the gamut. The first game in the series wasn’t stellar by any means, but a game about a Nazi-killing vampiress is hard to screw up. Unless of course you remove the Nazis and move the story to present day, replacing them with cyberpunks that would make the Wachowski’s jealous. →  Illiterates hate her! Click to read this one weird trick.

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Review – Indigo Prophecy

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Bonjour. I made this game and am better than you, non?

About halfway through Indigo Prophecy I began outlining this review. Had I finished the review but not the game you’d be reading something very different. This is a game with massive potential that completely implodes. But still, for trying something innovative and nearly succeeding, Quantic Dream deserves much respect and anyone interested in innovation and experimentation should try it out.

Indigo Prophecy was made by the French developer Quantic Dream, who were behind the poorly received Dreamcast title Omnikron (I hate it just because David Bowie is in it). This is not a modest company; or rather this company is not run by a modest man. My first experience with Indigo Prophecy was on a demo disc from a magazine. David Cage, the head of Quantic Dreams, does a whole lot of talking about his game on the demo. He also wrote the introduction of the game’s manual. Maybe he won’t come off as pompous after he gets a few hits under his belt, but for now there is a very short list of designers who can brag about their games in their games without sounding like snobs. →  All this can be yours, if the read is right.

Review – Neopets Petpet Adventure: The Wand of Wishing

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It’s like Animal Crossing, only for even younger players.

Cute, cuddly, and lovable are just a few words I would use to describe the ever-popular amongst kids Neopets, but the PSP game, Petpet Adventure: The Wand of Wishing, is anything but. Don’t let the title fool you into thinking that this is simply for spoiled eight year-old little girls lucky enough to own PSPs.

It has a cute story line, but it’s in no way original – Neopia, the land of Neopets, is in grave danger when the Wand of Wishing disappears into a hidden portal. Now the Neopets are racing against time to retrieve the Wand of Wishing before the powerful villains do so that they can undo the evils the villains have visited upon the world.

The graphics are nothing to write home about, and the game takes unnecessarily long to load between different scenes and if there is one thing I hate, waiting would be it, so that aspect is a thumb’s down for me. →  Reading more, assemble!

Review – Eternal Darkness

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These guys are pretty athletic considering they have no skin.

Eternal Darkness can join Psychonauts and a few others on the list of the Best Games from this generation that no one played. While it is difficult to understand how titles of such high quality continue to be shunned by the public, it is not difficult to see why the few die hards who played Eternal Darkness enjoyed it so immensely.

You start the game as a Roman officer named Pious and at the end of the first level you choose your fate. There are three paths, and the choice you make influences both the storyline and the gameplay. In Eternal Darkness you have three gauges to monitor (health, magick, and sanity — more on this later) rather than the standard two. Choosing one artifact over another at this first of twelve stages determines which of these gauges will be the most difficult to maintain, and tweaks a few other gameplay mechanisms. →  Please sir, can I have some more?

Review – Psychonauts

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I know this scene is somehow sexual, I’m just not sure exactly how.

Psychonauts came out to little fanfare in the broader sense, but there are dedicated Tim Schaefer fans who had been looking forward to the title for quite some time. Growing up I played a few of his PC adventure games and while I enjoyed them, I was probably a little too young to appreciate them as much as they deserved. Everything about Psychonauts appealed to me though and when I eventually found a copy, the experience did not disappoint.

In an interesting twist, the main character runs away from the circus in order to join an elite force of psychic detectives. The Psychonauts operate by entering people’s minds and ridding them of their demons. Raz, in a shocking turn of events, shows real promise as a psychonaut, but has to fight his father for the right to do what he wants. The story is by turns creative, funny (although I do think reports of its hilarity are a little overblown), and touching. →  Romance of the Three Articles IV: Post of Fire

Review – Ninja Gaiden

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I wanted to like Ninja Gaiden. I really did. Despite my disinterest in Namco’s Team Ninja and their “style over substance” approach to game design, I always hoped that this new Ninja Gaiden would live up to the high standards set by the 2d originals. It turns out that the final product is much like I expected. Team Ninja has a history of being able to do one thing incredibly well, be it the graphics of Dead or Alive or the … models in Extreme Beach Volleyball. Meanwhile pretty much everything else in the game ends up being mediocre at best.

The good news is that Ninja Gaiden’s combat happens to be the one thing that is done right. The bad news is that once again everything else is rather crummy. You’ll have to cut through both your enemies and several layers of bullshit in order to become a true ninja, and whether this is actually worth doing is a difficult question to answer.

 →  Can you read me now?

Review – Kingdom Hearts 2

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Sora picks up a new, more badass outfit in KHII. Donald still uses his sailor outfit left over from his porn star days.

Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away (let’s call it Japan), a man from SquareEnix and a man from Disney were getting drunk in a karaoke bar when, somewhere between sake and bad renditions of Michael Jackson songs, one of them stumbled upon a most wonderful idea: why not take all the best aspects of the Disney universe, throw them together with all the best parts of the Final Fantasy series, and from this soup of uberness draw the most amazing game ever conceived by man? The two set off to do just this, and on September 16th 2002, if Jesus himself had come down from heaven to bring rapture to the world, no one would have noticed because they’d have been too busy picking up their reserved copies of Kingdom Hearts from Gamestop.

Fast forward three and a half years later, and Square and Disney have gotten together again to bring us heaven-in-a-DVD in the sequel, Kingdom Hearts II. →  Postlanser: Heritage of Read

Review – Star Trek: Shattered Universe

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Developed by Stasphere Interactive
Published by TDK Mediactive
Released 1.13.04

No … this game was not made in 1990. Why would you say that?

This Trek game was developed by Starsphere Interactive whos last game seems to have been You Don’t Know Jack for the PS1. They should have stopped there. Just take a look at their impressive list of games and I believe you will already know where this review is going.

Being an enormous fan of the Trek universe, I really want the franchise to do well. Movies, books, new shows, video games; I just want them to make enough money to keep the universe alive. That’s why games like Shattered Universe bother me so much. I think this game was made in two months … by monkeys … monkeys who were somewhat slow. A couple of these in a row and you have a seriously dying franchise, which is exactly what’s happening to Star Trek these days. →  I only ask one thing. Don’t read in my way.