G l i t c h y G o b l i n !

• Badges:  16
• Pokédex:  198
• Play Time:  104 hours and 11 minutes

Whew, I’m beat.  Keep in mind that the entirety of this content was local to the game cartridge.  There was no outside trading from a different game (yet), and I didn’t catch anything on the Pokéwalker (yet).  That’s enough for now, as I’ll explain more in the review itself.

PROS:

It’s a remake of Gold/Silver/Crystal (a.k.a. Generation II… G/S/C from now on). The best Generation is better than ever in this remake.  The developers overhauled the graphics in the style of Diamond/Pearl/Platinum (a.k.a. Generation IV), the only other Nintendo DS Pokémon game.  The original was the best because it offered so much content, especially because, in one of the best plot twists ever, there were 16 badges to get instead of 8.  Hallelujah!

There’s so much to do! I said G/S/C had tons of content, but this has even more content, more than even Platinum (the strategy guide for that game is over 600 pages long).  Along with the 16 badges there are stylus-based minigames, two different game corners, a new safari zone, a pal park (like in Diamond/Pearl/Platinum… D/P/Pl from now on), added areas not in the original, added trainers, longer gyms, a trainer house, gym leader rematches, online trading/battle, a battle tower, a Pokéwalker so as you walk around in real live action life your Pokémon gain XP, Nintendo-sponsored Wi-Fi events so you don’t have to make the trip to Gamestop anymore, the Suicune event from Crystal, more legendaries, and more Pokémon overall.

As I said, there as so many ways to get Pokémon! Apart from getting them normally (tall grass, surfing, water, and caves), you can get Pokémon from the safari zone, pal park, game corner prizes, head butting trees, bug-catching contests, breeding, in-game trading, online trading, gifts, catching them on the Pokéwalker, swarms, radio music, and more.  Also, since this is based on G/S/C, time is a crucial part in the game, and some Pokémon only come out at certain times of the day.  Plus, three different times you get to choose a starter!  At the beginning there are the Generation II starters, of course, but after the game you are able to choose from one of the Generation I starters and in a different place one of the Generation III starters!  Yay!  There are perhaps the most available locally in this one than any other.

There are more legendaries than ever! Game Freak wanted to have 99% of all 493 Pokémon available on the DS series alone, so they crammed as many Legendary Pokémon as they possibly could into it.  Along with the obvious Generation II legendaries (Entei, Raikou, Suicune, Ho-Oh, Lugia), there are Articuno, Zapdos, Moltres, Mewtwo, Latias or Latios, Groudon or Kyogre, Rayquaza (if you have both Groudon and Kyogre), and more will be opened eventually through events (like Mew and Celebi).

The Safari Zone is ridiculously improved! They completely remade the idea of the Safari Zone into a completely customizable experience.  Most of the Pokémon in the game can be caught in the Safari Zone if you know what you are doing, and the new idea is to create your very own Safari Zone for your very own little old self.  There are six sections to it, and there are 12 areas to choose from.  You put which areas you want where you want them, and violà.  Then you are eventually given different types of objects to place in the different areas and can put up to 30 objects in each area.  Depending on what objects are put in what areas, rarer and rarer Pokémon come out.  You leave the objects in the area over a period of time and they upgrade into more powerful ones.  From then on those types of objects in that area are forever upgraded even if you remove them and then put them back in later.  It’s hard to explain, and you’ll have to look up the minor details to get the full experience.

CONS:

There are some minor issues, like how some Pokémon need the correct objects laid out in the right area for an upwards of 110 days to get some Pokémon to come out.  A lot of those I have bypassed by simply getting them a different way, however.  Also, the Pokéradar from D/P/Pl was awesome and isn’t in this one.  There are still different swarms, but these seem to repeat Pokémon a lot more than in D/P/Pl.

The Pokéwalker’s like 10 year old technology. It’s cool to get a pedometer that also lets you get experience for your Pokémon while you walk, but the thing itself is kind of old.  However, it does have some sort of nostalgic feeling when using it.  Plus, the little monster inside of it can only go up one level until you reset it by putting it back in the DS.  It’s like after that point your Pokémon isn’t actually getting anything useful out of being in there.

This is still like a 10 year old story. As always, for an RPG Pokémon never seems to have much story.  This one’s twice as long, but the little story events are few and far between in the second half.  Plus, the first 3 or so gyms after getting to the second half are over almost before you know it.

It’s still the same old Pokémon. It’s still the same 2-D battlefield with 2-D sprites and little MIDI sound effects.  This will apparently be finally changed somewhat with the release of Pokémon Black/White (Generation V) later this year… in four months, rather.  I have a huge list in my head of all of the improvements they could do… stuff that would make this game series even better.  I believe the Safari Zone was the first step in doing something right for once.

The “final boss” has Pokémon like 25 levels higher than the previous fight. I thought I was going to beat the final and most powerful trainer before I wrote this review, but no.  It will take many more hours of training to beat him.  Let me structure it for ya:  the 16^th Gym Leader’s Pokémon are about level 60, maybe slightly more.  Immediately, it’s like, “Hey, go fight the final dude!”  I go there and his Pokémon are around LEVEL 85.  OMGWTFBBQ.

If you like Pokémon, get this.  If you never have played one, this is a good place to start.  If you hate the game series, this is more of the same.  Anyway, after 104 hours I still have much to do in this game, so it’s definitely worth the money.  As a parting gift, here’s a nice little fact the game gave me:

Mr. Mime, the Barrier Pokémon:  Its fingertips emit a peculiar force field that hardens air to create an actual wall.  O.O

I’m back again, and this time with great vengeance.  Epic vengeance.  Glorious vengeance.  Finally, the day has arrived for the epic conclusion in the God of War series, God of War III.  If you haven’t played this series before, read the God of War Collection review and buy that game and then this one.  If you think it’s bad, shut up and continue playing anyway.  If you finish this spectacular conclusion and still don’t like it, go to an exposed corner of a brick wall and shove your face into it over and over.  I couldn’t care less what you think.  For those of us who deserve to live:  Play this game.  Now.  It doesn’t matter what else you’re playing; it can wait.

PROS:

Teh GRAFICKS. The best implementation of computerized video technology so far in the known video game world is in this game.  There are only 4 loading screens:  the one before the opening cinematic, the one you get if you die and have to restart at the last checkpoint (duh, the game wasn’t expecting you to FAIL AT BEING EPIC), one in a hallway toward the end, and one if you load your game.  But you won’t have that one because I expect you to play it through without stopping or blinking.

You kill things. Lots of things.  And if you have been following along in the story then when you kill these people it will be the most satisfying thing ever.

Switch weapons on the fly! L1 + X equals go to the next weapon and continue the brutality you are currently dishing out.

It clears up things that I had a problem with, mythology-wise.  They explain a lot of things that I was previously confused about.  You know that thing you said, “Well, that’s stupid and anticlimactic” about in the first game?  Explained.  The plot also refers back to many things Kratos did or plot points that were created back in the first two games.  It’s a smorgasbord of God of War trivia.

Like the first two in the series, it has lots of documentaries. The main making-of video shows a lot of the 2 and a half process of making the game.  Stan Lee makes an appearance!

CONS:

Some players might not like the ending. If you happen to be a fan of bad storytelling, or hate good things in general, then you will probably not like the ending.  Go find a cliff and throw your mother off of it.  Then, after you watch her death, jump over as well and try to hit her corpse for extra points.  The ending is poetic and makes sense in every sense of the word.

Challenge of Olympus seems easier. The extra mode that has been featured in every game (Challenge of ____) is in this one as well.  I beat 6 of the 7 challenges without too much retrying in about 30 minutes.  There is a Combat Arena, but it is unlocked after you beat all 7.  I don’t know what’s in that (maybe more, harder challenges, lol), but the game’s only been out for 5 days.

On one boss I died a lot. It’s a massive series of checkpoints.  At almost every point I died because I wasn’t quick enough or didn’t know what to do.  It’s ok, because when you go through that section on a second playthrough you’ll get every one of them and it’s amazing.

There’s no spear-a-majig. That awesome lance weapon from the second game.  I wish it was in this one.  Oh, well.

My main only real problem is: At one point I glitched this game so hard that I hard to start back like 2 hours previous in the game.  If Goblin had been watching he would’ve been proud of me.  Always keep more than one save of your game, in case you hit the same glitch I did.  If after a boss’s death cutscene you are at a previous (like 10 minutes ago) area’s portal and then after you go through that portal it takes you to a different area, don’t save.  After the boss’s death you were supposed to be dropped into a hallway.  I can’t find anyone online who has experienced the same glitch.  Without giving any spoilers, it would be the cutscene that triggers after you let go of L2 and R2 at the same time, about 5 or 6 hours in.

Well, the gist is that you should play this on a 1080i HDTV with really loud sound, in the dark and in one sitting.  Then cry out of either happiness or because you’re currently mutilating your face against a brick wall.  In the end, there will only be chaos…

For the first time, this week’s review is of more than one game!  God of War Collection is Sony’s way of getting everyone hyped for today’s (March 16, 2010) release of God of War III.  I’ll have that review completed next week.  God of War Collection is a port of the first two games of the series, originally only on the PS2.  Now they have been re-mastered in High Definition to base all three games on one system.

PROS:

Hopefully this is a trend. Having the first two games on a current system is something that hopefully Sony and other companies start doing more often.  I fully expect Sony to reveal at E3 2010 that a Team ICO Collection of ICO and Shadow of the Colossus will be released shortly before the third game, The Last Guardian.  The convenience of not having to dust off your PS2 is awesome, and that’s all most people have, as most PS3s do not have backwards compatibility.

It has some visual upgrades. It wasn’t recoded to be in true HD, but the scaling does improve both games quite a bit, more so in the second one than the first.  The frame-rate is now at a perfect 60fps (frames per second), and there is none of the screen tearing that was pretty noticeable in both games on the PS2.  The frame-rate actually does make a noticeable difference in the fluidity of the combat.

It’s worth the money. If you love the God of War series, then to have both 1 and 2 re-mastered in HD on a current platform is definitely worth the budget price of $40.  Both games are about 10 hours the first times through, and there are hours of documentary videos for both games.

There are two sets of trophies, a set for each game.  I’m not a trophy whore (achievements ftw), but most of them on both are easy to collect.  This is double the fun for a gamer, especially if the player hasn’t played either game before.

If you are new to these and happen to love them, then you’ll get a lot of re-playability out of these games.  I’ve personally played God of War 6 times and God of War II 4 times now, with a count added to each because of Collection.  It’s only just now starting to get old to me.

CONS:

No Chains of Olympus. If would’ve taken a lot of work to put the PSP’s God of War:  Chains of Olympus onto the PS3, but it would’ve been the cherry on the God of War Collection sundae.

No extra content. There are a lot of documentary videos, but they’re what came with the games originally.

Cutscenes and documentaries are not in HD. In-game cutscenes look pretty muddy, and the documentaries are less than DVD quality or less.  The Collection is meant to be played on a large HDTV, and these videos don’t stand the test of time.

And speaking of standing the test of time: even with its slight upgrade to HD, the first game doesn’t look near as good as it did when you first played it on the PS2. Or if you’re playing it for the first time, it’ll look pretty old.

Widescreen stretches the HUD. For those that know me, one of my worst pet peeves is incorrect aspect ratios.  It bothers me to no end.  The sides of the gameplay’s view are just extended to show more on the screen at once, but the HUD (heads-up display) is instead stretched wider.  All circular things are now ovals, and so on.  It personally gets to me.

There you have it.  If you know what’s good for you, you’ll get this and God of War III, play them all through in one continuous sitting, and then die happy while shouting, “Ares!”

It’s Vegieza, back once more to bring you a review from what I believe Assassin’s Creed II knocked off its Game of 2009 pedestal:  Call of Duty:  Modern Warfare 2.  It’s the sequel to the 4^th game, but the game before this one was Call of Duty:  World at War.  But World at War is not Call of Duty 5.  And Modern Warfare 2 is not 5 or 6.  And you’re just supposed to call it Modern Warfare 2.  And they dropped the “4” from “Call of Duty 4”.  Confused yet?

Before I get to the Pros and Cons, I have to say that I had quite a hard time coming up with cons for this game.  The basics are that if you’re a fan of First Person Shooters, this is a must buy as it is one of the most exhilarating, depthful FPSs ever conceived.  If you’re looking for an action game, at least borrow this from someone.  If you don’t like FPSs at all, then you probably should find something else.

Pros:

It’s Action-Packed. Rarely will you see so many different action sequences rolled up into one campaign as with this.  It’s like they had a list of cool things they thought up and then squeezed them all in.  Basically, it’s an entire season of 24 in one game, but with most of the dialogue cut out.  When you put in the disc it even warns you on the screen that some levels are disturbing, and if you press a certain button those sections can be skipped over.  I actually gasped out loud at one point in the game.  At other points you will just be in awe at what’s going on around you.  If you’re going to play this, you really shouldn’t look anything up on Youtube, wikias, or anything to not spoil any of the like 50 surprises.

By the way, is Vladmir Makarov, a Russian terrorist who terrorizes an airport, voiced by one of the Russian terrorists who hold up an airport from season 5 of 24?  Why, yes.  Is the “Overlord” who explains all of my mission objectives mid-mission my favorite character from 24, Aaron Pierce, head of the Secret Service?  Why, yes.  Yes it is.  What a coincidence.

You’ll be playing multiplayer forever. Call of Duty 4:  Modern Warfare’s multiplayer overtook Halo 3 as the most played game of Xbox Live.  They took everything that made that multiplayer amazing and added more.  For people who don’t know about the multiplayer, you can create custom classes with the different guns, attachments, grenades, killstreaks, the new deathstreaks, and more.  This lets you really customize the multiplayer to the way you want it to be, as you can switch between your custom classes mid-match.  Add to this the fact that for every single gun, attachment, and more there are challenges to unlock.  You constantly get more XP and rank up all the time, and the more you rank up the more you unlock.  It makes it feel like you’re actually being continuously rewarded for playing, unlike in Halo 3.  It even keeps track of the percentage complete your multiplayer is, and it goes up to 1000%.  You can play for months straight (24 hours a day) and still not have everything.  I’m still not even doing it justice as I’ve left out even more things you can do.

Special-Ops is great. Spec-Ops is the co-op mission mode of MW2.  There are tons of really diverse and fun missions to do, and all of it is tracked just like in multiplayer.  As you complete more you unlock more, and some of the most fun times in this game has been playing this mode with a buddy.  Imagine a friend runs under cover of night across fields and through barns while you bombard all of the enemies coming toward him or her with an AC-130.  It’s glorious.

Grenades aren’t spammed constantly. This was World at War’s biggest downfall, and what made it the hardest Call of Duty game.  You get behind cover so you don’t get shot, right?  Well, you duck behind cover and 12 GRENADES LAND ON YOUR POSITION AT ONCE.  This doesn’t happen in MW2.

Graphics are just…  wow. Play this on a big screen TV in 1080i, and then be amazed.  It’s really, really realistic.

Cons:

You have a disadvantage when starting multiplayer. You get the crappiest guns and can’t use attachments and the like for about the first 5-10 levels or multiplayer.  I had such bad Kill/Death Ratios (K-Ds) toward the beginning.  The point is to stick with it, and don’t get discouraged.  It gets better.

Some choke points in the campaign are tricky. If you’re playing the campaign on Veteran, the hardest difficulty and what Call of Duty should always be played on, some (but very few) sections are really difficult.  One section of the white-water rafting comes to mind. If you get in a place like this (not the rafting, but in shooting sections), remember sometimes you can push forward and get another checkpoint.

The story isn’t as good as it could’ve been. It’s still gripping, mind you, but some events are really far-fetched.  Like I said, they had a list of cool things and then wrote the story around it.

Achievements/Trophies are hard for less-skilled players. If you aren’t that great at FPSs, then you might not be able to get the majority of the achievements/trophies, which have to be done on Veteran.  This Veteran isn’t as hard as 2, 4, or World at War, though, so if you’ve beat them then you probably can do this one.

There is no Jack Bauer. I know, I’ve probably mentioned 24 too many times by now, but Kiefer Sutherland (Jack Bauer, the main character of 24) was the voice of your commander in World at War.  He should’ve been in this one, but he probably is under contract with the other Call of Duty company (it’s a long story, look it up yourself).

Well, there you have it.  Those first two pros were pretty long, but I still didn’t even say all that I wanted to.  Please look forward to next week’s review of Mass Effect 2, a game that I believe has achieved a pinnacle of gaming never before witnessed.  This has been Vegieza, and remember:  No Russian.

Oy!  It’s Vegieza coming back straight from seeing what June is like on Jupiter and Mars to bring you a review of Bayonetta.  From the director of Devil May Cry, this game is even more ridiculous.  Just listen to this:  The two clans of light and dark, The Lumen Sages and Umbra Witches, had a schism and disappeared from the Earth after Europe’s Witch Hunts.  You play a resurrected witch named Bayonetta. Her clothing is made of hair, she wields a gun on each hand and each foot,  and battles upside-down crotch baby-faced dragon armed Angels.  Or a tube-fingered thing.  Or the 12th Colossus from Shadow of the Colossus.  Or spear-wielding tribal seagulls.  Or God.  All of those things.  While riding a missile.

Pros:

Ridiculously Over-the-Top At All Times. All of the aforementioned Catholic stuff.  This game probably has won an award for having half of the top 20 most outlandish moments in gaming.  I don’t want to tell you anymore.  You just have to play it to understand.

It has huge bosses. Do you know the final Colossus in Shadow of the Colossus (one of the best games of all time)?  Every boss is 10 times bigger than that.  The boss fights are so big that they are their own level, and they’ll take like 10 minutes or more to beat.  Destroying one just feels so monumental, yet so easy at the same time.

There are references to other video games… ALL THE TIME. You have to be very attentive to catch the references, though.  Being a Capcom game, most of the references to other games are other Capcom games, but there are exceptions.  References include, but are not limited to:  Resident Evil, Okami, God Hand, Viewtiful Joe, Devil May Cry (of course)……… God of War, Halo, Metroid, and SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE.

It has great replayability. It is a relatively difficult game, but with practice you become an unstoppable force.  And there are multiple difficulties beyond that.  There are challenge rooms hidden all over the place, as well as journal entries, tombs, records (to get new weapons), and 50 birds to collect across the difficulties.  There are even making-of videos, 3-D model and artwork galleries, and tons of accessories, weapons, outfits, and extra abilities.  Each weapon has it’s own set of combos, and you can wear a different weapon for each hand and foot to make tons of combinations and you also have the ability to pick up enemies’ weapons and use them until they break.  There are lost chapters and bosses, special ways to get hidden weapons, medals for every chapter, those achievement things, and unlockable characters to play as.  It’s a very customizable hack-and-slash with lots of things to collect.

Gameplay is Vary Veried… err, Very Varied. It’s not just room after room of: “Oh, now I have to fight those same enemies, but there’s a couple more of them and they’re slightly more powerful.”  They change it up a lot.  The game forces you to battle differently sometimes.  Sometimes it’s just hack-and-slash, but then sometimes there’s a puzzle or some strategy.  Sometimes you’re playing a minigame the entire level.  Sometimes you’re freezing time on the top of a currently-crashing-into-the-interstate cargo plane so that you can put some sort of winged Mayan albatross into a guillotine while sucking on a lollipop.  Or whatever they make you do.  At least you’re wearing magical ice skates while you do it.

Cons:

There is a steep difficulty curve. Except for Very Easy and Easy, which I’ll get to in a sec.  Until you get the hang of dodging like every second and know when an enemy is going to attack you even if it’s off-screen, you will die a lot.  And your chapter score will be crappy.  You don’t want that, as they give you the Joe Pesci award.  Also, the only mini-boss is a cross between Henry from No More Heroes and Sephiroth from Kingdom Hearts.  And you fight this person a lot more than once.

It may be too Japanese for some. This game is so Japanese it’s… I really need to not use the word “ridiculous” anymore.  If it’s not blaring “Fly Me to the Moon” in the background, it’s something you’d hear in every j-rpg or anything from over there.  The amount of camp and style it displays is also very anime-esque.  For every person I know that doesn’t like this game, it was for this reason mainly.  On top of that, the Easy and Very Easy difficulty levels are apparently made so you can play the game with only one hand.  you just have to push two of the buttons and the game does all of the combos for you.  Well, I guess at least they’re thinking about the tough lives one-handed people lead…

Mostly Text-told story. In order to not be utterly confused all of the time, you must also read all of the journals and stuff that you collect.  This shouldn’t be necessary.  They should provide enough story in the cutscenes in order for the player to get it.  I knew what was going on because I read the journals.

The Achievements/Trophies are gonna take a while. The game creates this thing called the “101 Umbran Tears of Blood” (a pretty neat idea), which is basically all of the (I think) 51 birds you collect and the 50 achievements combined into one total.  It’s actually incorporated into the story that all of these tears were intentionally scattered around.  Anyways, you have to beat this game on hard, an even higher difficulty than hard, and collect tons of things in the game to get all of the achievements/trophies.  It would take multiple, multiple play-throughs.

The PS3 Version sucks.  Don’t get it. Before the recent patch the PS3 version of this game got stuck on the loading screen.  It did it when you go to the pause menu, when you unpause, when you pause during a cutscene (and unpause), and when you do anything or think about anything.  We’re talking a good 5 second pause.  Still, the framerate constantly drops and there is a lot of screen tearing, even during cutscenes.  These are not good things.

Well, that’s about it.  This has been Vegieza.  I have a fever, and the only cure is killing more Angels.