A sea monster ate my ice cream!

Video game number thirty nine: Sega Superstars Tennis

noreply@blogger.com (JoshEEE) — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 21:07:00 +0000

Game review number thirty nine in my 365 Games in 365 Days project is "Sega Superstars Tennis".

Ever wonder what Sonic the Hedgehog gets up to when he's not starring in terrible 3D adventure games? Apparently, he gets together and plays tennis with his buddies from other Sega games.

I enjoy a good arcade tennis game once every couple of decades. The last one I actually purchased was Super Tennis for the Super Nintendo when I was in high school. I enjoyed the simplicity of the game, and I remember playing it for hours on end. In the last couple of years, I played tennis in Wii Sports, which is pretty fun, but using a Wii-mote took some of the fun out of it. You swing at the ball, you hit it....and you can't really control the motion like you could on the old games. I recently played Rock Star's Table Tennis, but that's ping pong and doesn't really count. I think this is actually the first tennis game I've played on my Xbox.

I picked this one up out of frustration with the Sonic the Hedgehog game I am about to give up on. The review is linked above, but basically...it's an incredibly difficult and confusing RPG/3D-action game that I am not enjoying at all. I've been grinding through it in the hopes I can reach an achievement, but the only reason I want to do that is because of this project and so I can stop playing. That's not really in the spirit of this project, so I think I may just give up playing it and move on to another game in it's place.

In any event, I wanted to remember why I liked Sonic, so I grabbed a fun little game of tennis...starring Sonic and a bunch of my other favorite Sega characters. Right out of the box, it was an enjoyable experience.

The controls are exactly what I remember Super Tennis being on the SNES back in the day. "A" button hits the ball, there's a "Spin" button you can use (X), but that's basically it. It's the kind of game you would see in an arcade and have some fun challenging a friend on, quick to pick up and learn, tough to master.

Serves can be powered up by timing your "A" button press when your star meter is full, and a 5-star serve gives you a "perfect" rating. Most of the time it's an ace, sometimes the computer can return it. After you've had a long enough volley, you get a special move you can use, and they vary from character to character. Some of them are pretty crazy (making the ball spin in circles, teleport, or in the case of Ulala from Space Channel 5, throwing a bunch of droids in your way).

I played through the career mode, and played probably 10 or 15 matches before I called it a day. I used a lot of the different characters...my favorite was probably Amigo (from Samba de Amigo on the Dreamcast). Other characters I enjoyed using included Sonic, AiAi (from Super Monkey Ball) and Beat from Jet Set Radio Future.

Each character has their own court, and the levels are really interesting to look at. The one from Space Channel 5 reminds me of Tron, whereas the Samba de Amigo court is a tropical paradise where the crowd sings songs. Some characters have mini-games you can play. The Jet Set Radio Future guys have a graffiti game where you collect spray cans and then hit tennis balls into graffiti to color it in with the selected color in your can. It's challenging, and fun. The Super Monkey Ball level has you hitting tennis balls at Monkeys in their little plastic balls, trying to knock them into gates. There are more, I didn't unlock them all yet.

This is a fun little game, although some of the bonuses and super powers can get challenging at times. Still, after playing Singles and Doubles, I can say it's a good tennis experience at heart. I give this one thumbs-up all the way, definitely glad I played it.

Also, it made me hate Sonic a little less. :-)

Overall Score 7/10 Fun tennis game, lots of stuff to do besides just the regular games.

Achievements? There are a ton, here's what I got after a few hours.

Video game number thirty eight: Katamari Forever

noreply@blogger.com (JoshEEE) — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 19:47:00 +0000

Game review number thirty eight in my 365 Games in 365 Days project is "Katamari Forever".

Ah, my first PS3 game this year. As you can tell by my reviews so far, the Xbox 360 is my primary gaming console of choice, but I certainly don't plan for it to be the only platform I play games on this year. I have access to all of the 360 games thanks to my job, so that means if a game is available there, I'm going to play it there. I never play a port on the PS3 or the Wii. I like to keep the bulk of my gamerscore in one place. Still, I buy all the best exclusive ones for the PS3 and Wii, and I play them whenever there's a lull in good titles for the 360. The trouble is, for the last several months...there have been so many great games on the 360 that I haven't had time to dive into some must-plays on the other systems. As a result, I've got quite a few games stacked up I've been waiting to play for quite some time now. Granted, more of them are on the Wii than the PS3, but this is essentially true for both systems. It was nice to use the PS3 for something more than a Blu-Ray player....as I don't think I've played a game on it since Little Big Planet.

Katamari Forever was a Christmas present from my friend John, and I knew I'd want to save it for this project. I love Katamari games, and had very high hopes for this one. It did not disappoint.

My Katamari Damacy fascination started on the Playstation 2. I enjoyed the first one I played and went back and bought all of the other games. I've bought it for the PSP, the 360 and just can't get enough of the gameplay. The Katamari games, Grand Theft Auto and Dance Dance Revolution were my number one games for Playstation 2 back in the day....in that order.

This game has a lot of similar levels to Beautiful Katamari on the 360, but they're all cell shaded now, so they look a bit different. It's sort of like when one of my favorite classic games gets a facelift for Xbox Live Arcade. This game instantly felt familiar to me, but new at the same time. That's my favorite kind of sequel.

The music is fantastic, a lot of it is remixed from previous soundtracks. Katamari Damacy may be my favorite video game music of all time next to Mario Kart, and I've always meant to head down to the local Japanese Import shop Pink Godzilla (which has apparently changed its name to Pink Gorilla) to buy the soundtracks. Only thing that has stopped me is the price.

The game is simple enough. You are a little guy pushing a sticky ball, and your objective is to bump into things smaller than you are, collect them and get bigger. Some levels start you with a ball the size of an egg, and you'll roll up coins, sugar cubes and other tiny things until your size grows to the point that you can collect bigger stuff. Other levels start you with a ball the size of a human...and eventually, your ball becomes so big it can roll up houses, cities, continents and eventually planets. It's quite addicting.

The challenges from previous games are all there. Most the objectives are either size challenges or time challenges, where your only objective is to become as big as possible in the time allotted. There are also specific size challenges, where you have to roll a Katamari of a certain size, strictly by guessing. You are scored based on the size at the end of the round.

New for this game, there is a "watering" challenge, where you get your Katamari ball wet and then drive it over dirt to grow plants. It's different and it was actually the demo level I played at PAX last year. I enjoyed it, but scored a measly 54/100 on my first try.

The menu layout has also changed. There are two worlds you can play in now (King's world and Robo-King's world). They both feature similar gameplay, but it looks like this will mean many more playable stages than before. There is a Vs. Mode and several mini-games to play after you've died. New to this game are the cut-scene movies...which you can collect and re-watch. They are very non-sensical and I don't understand them, so I've been skipping by them.

I checked out the "trophies", which are the equivalent to achievements, and it looks like the goals are on par with the 360 game from a couple of years ago. I managed to unlock 100% of those, and I can see myself going for some of those goals here as well. I added a PS3 Trophy icon to my blog to the right of these posts, and I found that playstation.com allows you to copy and paste trophies here...which is nice.

Overall, this game is a 9/10 for me. Katamari Forever is more of the stuff I love from the previous games, with enough new stuff added in that it feels fresh. I'm really enjoying this sequel so far, and re-playability is clearly going to be scored very high on this one.

Trophies: I played for 2 or 3 hours, and here's what I was able to unlock. I'll definitely be coming back to this one to play more, so hopefully this list will grow.

Video game number thirty seven: Army of Two: The 40th Day

noreply@blogger.com (JoshEEE) — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 17:46:00 +0000

Game review number thirty seven in my 365 Games in 365 Days project is "Army of Two: the 40th Day".

The 40th Day is a sequel to the original Army of Two, which I never played. The original seemed like a Gears of War clone to me, a co-op shooter in the third person. I like Gears, but that game is more the exception than the rule as far as my tastes are concerned. I prefer my shooters in the first person, and generally...solo-style. It's really tough for me to get together with friends who want to co-op the campaign of something, most times when we game together, it's for multiplayer experience. All these things combined kept me away from the original, and I only played this one because it's new and I'm trying to hit all the new releases lately.

This game is tailored for the co-op experience, which means when you play it alone, the experience will naturally be lacking. Right out of the gate, I was annoyed with my AI partner, who wasn't nearly as brave as the box art implied.

The story of this one seems interesting and the graphics are great. The city of Shanghai is being destroyed around you and you have to kill soldiers while saving a friend trapped in the building you're stuck in. Most of the game play feels like a watered down Gears of War to me, right down to having to press an "action" button when you arrive at an obstacle. You use cover and "blindfire" a lot, and you can grab enemies to use as cover or take as hostages.

I dug the morality choices, which you're asked to make in many games these days. The first one was to choose whether or not to kill a contact you had made. I killed him, and you get a screen that shows you the aftermath of that decision. Later, I chose to spare someone...and found via the aftermath screen that I should have killed the guy (turns out he was a traitor).

As for the game play itself, I didn't really enjoy it. The camera was annoying, and constantly needed to be adjusted, the weapons felt weak, and constantly getting incapacitated and waiting for the computer to save me was annoying. I just don't enjoy playing games like this one alone. The Left 4 Dead campaign is another example of a game that I really like playing with friends, but hate playing by myself.

Overall: 5/10. It's average, but it's not something I wanted to keep playing....unless one of my friends buys it and wants a co-op partner. The combat just isn't rewarding by yourself.

I got a few achievements, but barely scratched the surface of the game. I won't be going back to this one to clean them up.

Video game number thirty six: CSI: Deadly Intent

noreply@blogger.com (JoshEEE) — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 03:50:00 +0000

Game review number thirty six in my 365 Games in 365 Days project is "C.S.I: Deadly Intent".

If I had to review this in a sentence, I'd say this: "C.S.I Deadly Intent is about as fun as I imagine working in an actual crime lab might be."

Who knew they could take a good show, turn it into a video game and then make it feel like homework? This game features 5 cases, starring the actors from the TV show and YOU as a junior detective that they lead through solving the case. I only solved one case (I thought quitting sooner would be lame)...but I think I've played all there is to play here.

The first case stars Nick Stokes, who acts as a guide taking you through your first homicide investigation. You can visit the morgue, or go see Jim Brass to get warrants. This is actually the sequel to the first C.S.I game, so Grissom isn't in it....but I ran into Morpheus in the fingerprint lab once. All of the other characters are in the game, but they appear in later cases that I didn't play.

Anyway, you and Stokes find a dead body at a motel, and proceed to interview people and collect evidence. The interviews are ok, except you can't do anything but press "A". It's not like you have a selection wheel of questions to ask them, you have a list of questions to ask, and all you can do is press "play". I suppose this makes some people feel like they're not watching a cut-scene, but I thought it was lacking.

Looking for evidence is tedious, and you can spend a long time scouring the room (probably like a real CSI). There's no button to speed it up into a montage either, you have to hand comb every inch of the crime scene yourself. My first crime scene involved searching for pieces of glass, taking samples of blood stains and looking for "trace". For some reason, you have to revisit the same scene multiple times just to find all the clues that weren't there the first time around.

When you have been searching for a LONG time, you'll get an email tip from Catherine Willows, who tells you "Hey...try looking here, or doing this". Those tips jump-started me and I was able to get back to the lab.

Once in the lab, you take the samples you collect in the field and you run them through equipment, playing little mini-games to match fingerprints or DNA. These games suck ass, and you have to play them every time you get a sample. Again...it's more like work than a game.

Eventually, you get your warrants, arrest suspects and interrogate them. This is probably the only part of the game where efficiency matters. If you tell a suspect that they are lying, and don't have the evidence to back it up...your grade on the case goes down. I think there's an achievement for getting 100% efficiency, but I messed up quite a few times and mine was around 80. It was frustrating to know who the killer was and not be able to skip to the confession in the story. Now I know how the CSI folks on the OJ case feel.

I finally solved the case, and got to hear the twist ending, which was sort of rewarding. I think the entire process took me about 3 hours....for about 15 minutes of actual story. If you'd like to play a demo of this game, simply tape an episode of CSI....and then watch it a little bit at a time over 3 hours. When you're not watching, you can do crossword puzzles or play some other game you don't enjoy at all. It'll be just like playing this game...and you'll save 50 bucks.

Overall score: 3/10 It's not a fun game, but it did have an interesting story. The cases seemed to be of the quality you might find on the show...and if they'd made the game more fun, I would have enjoyed seeing all of them.

Here are the achievements I got for beating the first case.

Video game number thirty five: Star Wars the Clone Wars: Republic Heroes

noreply@blogger.com (JoshEEE) — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 01:48:00 +0000

Game review number thirty five in my 365 Games in 365 Days project is "Star Wars The Clone Wars: Republic Heroes".

I love Star Wars.

I wait in opening night lines at theaters for the movies. I own just about every type of collectible you can possibly buy from the saga. I've played most of the Star Wars video games they've made. I even dress up in Star Wars costumes and go to conventions sometimes.

All that being said, I can't give this game a positive review. First of all, it's based on the Clone Wars TV show. I didn't like the Clone Wars movie much (Anakin calling his Padawan "Snips", and her calling him "Skyguy" pretty much made me hate the two of them instantly). The baby Hutt called "Stinky", the way the Battle Droids are even more of a joke than the prequels and the corny announcer guy pretty much made me hate that movie. I never bought the DVD, and I've only watched one or two episodes of the TV show that it spawned. I'm not impressed.

Still, this is a Star Wars game, you control Jedi with lightsabers and in some levels, you can be a Clone Trooper. Sounds like it could be a combination of the Episode 3 video game (which I thought was a lot of fun) and Battlefront, which is also good. It's not. I really wanted to like this game. I'm probably genetically predisposed to like it....but I just couldn't.

This game is a terrible platformer, with terrible controls, terrible graphics and a stupid story. It's not like I played a few levels and gave up, either. I have a HIGH tolerance for all things Star Wars, so I played through the entire first Act (21 levels) of this game. There are two difficulty levels, and I played it on the Master difficulty, and I kept playing it...despite the fact it wasn't very fun. I kept hoping it would get better, but it never did.

This game is a mix of lightsaber hacking (always fun) and terrible jumping puzzles. Yoda pops up to give you "tips" every five seconds, whether you want them or not. One of the tips he gives you is that a Jedi can land any jump he begins. Bullshit, Yoda. Maybe in the movies...but not in this craptacular game. Played this piece of shit, you must have not....my little green friend.

All too often in this game, you have to jump from one place to another, and it's always some kind of bottomless pit that will kill you if you miss the jump. This isn't a matter of skill, it's a matter of luck. If the camera decides to cooperate (or maybe, if the Force is with you)...you'll land the jump. Other times, you'll fall and die, for no reason. Dying costs you points, but nothing else. Like Lego Star Wars, you spawn right back onto the screen, and the furthest back you'll ever go is a few feet to the previous checkpoint.

As dying is no consequence....one wonders why they made these jumps so damn deadly. Most of the levels I went through as a Jedi caused me to die a dozen or so times on missed jumps, and the only penalty that there seemed to be was doing things over and over again. I got frustrated with the game, and the story rewards at the end of each level became less and less worth it. It was a slow grind, with no payoff.

I haven't watched the cartoon enough to know whether or not this is based on the series, but the plot basically involves you moving from level to level, hunting various bad guys. I didn't care who...or why. There wasn't enough dialog to let me know what was going on, just enough to let me know I was hunting a bad guy because of feelings my Padawan had. In a Star Wars game, this is rare...usually there's an interesting story, but this one might as well have been a Crash Bandicoot game for all I cared.

Aside from the jumping and dying, the game is all about killing bad guys. When you're a Jedi, you use your saber, or the force. The force push is pretty cool....and powerful. Your saber has no combos or "moves", you mash the attack button and it kills everything on the screen. I actually didn't mind that, it's always fun to kill things with your saber. You can "Droid Jak" the robots in the game by jumping on their head. Once on their head, you can either take control of them and make them shoot down the other droids, you can kill them....or...if you spend your points on the upgrade, you can make them dance.

In Lego Star Wars, the dancing made sense. It's a silly game, set in a Lego world, and every once in awhile you would find a disco ball that would make the characters dance to Star Wars music. It was cute and infrequent enough that you would actually have fun every time you saw it.

In the Clone Wars, the "B" button activates "Dance mode". All droids on the screen start dancing. I don't remember this part from any of the movies, and I don't assume the cartoons include it. It seems almost as if some jackhole executive was sitting in a conference room with the designers telling them that this game had to have dancing, because he really liked the dancing in Lego Star Wars. The implementation in this game is stupid and over the top, and has absolutely nothing to do with the game itself. It would be like playing Halo and suddenly finding a smiling star from Mario brothers that made you "super" for a few minutes. Having dance power makes you pretty much invincible, and you can pretty much walk around and hack the droids up when they're dancing....at least until the song stops. You can use this at any time, on any level. It was fun about the first 3 times I encountered it....then it was just stupid.

When you're not a dance-inducing Jedi, you play as a clone. The clone levels are more of a third person shooter than the Jedi levels. You can shoot with the right trigger or use both sticks...a la' Smash TV. The clones have grenades, blasters and every once in awhile, a rocket launcher. One thing the Clones don't have? Impossible jumps. This makes their levels a nice breather from the Jedi levels.....but because a random jump doesn't kill you every few minutes, they feel a little easy by comparison.

There were a couple of small things I enjoyed in the game. Sometimes you have to take down a force field, and you do this by "hacking consoles". This is fun little mini-game, where you align grids on a circle with other similarly colored grids, taking care not to align red grids (they reset the hack). Some of these puzzles are actually difficult, and I wonder how little kids are at these.

I like flying the STAPS (the vertical standing speeder bikes the battle droids ride in Star Wars: Episode 1). I enjoyed force pushing droids off cliffs (although I never got the achievement for doing it 50 times). Driving the AT-RT as a clone was mildly amusing...for a minute or two.

Overall, this game sucks. The only reason anyone should ever buy it is if they REALLY love the Clone Wars or if their kid does. Parents could also buy this one if they hate their kid...and want to punish them. Perhaps you've got a fat child and you want them to go outside and play? No problem. Buy them this game and tell them it's the only game they can play until Christmas. I guarantee it will work better than Wii Fit.

Seriously, there are 100 other Star Wars games out there, and just about all of them are better than this one. I tried hard to think of a Star Wars game I liked less than this one....and so far the only one I can come up with is Star Wars: Masters of Teras Kasi. I even liked Super Bombad Racing better than this one. :-)

Overall score: 3/10. Purely ass.
Achievements? Yeah...they're easy...but really not worth the grind. The gamerscore isn't worth letting people know I was silly enough to play this passed the first level or two.

Video game number thirty four: "Chime"

noreply@blogger.com (JoshEEE) — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 01:57:00 +0000

Game review number thirty four in my 365 Games in 365 Days project is "Chime".

Chime was released this week on Xbox Live Arcade and is the first game that I know of on the service that was released as a charity project. All the descriptions I have found online say that this game will donate 60% of the royalties towards a couple of children's charities. It's only 400 points to begin with (about 5 bucks), so the actual cost becomes almost negligible.

Every year, my favorite charity Child's Play proves that gamers are a charitable bunch and are willing to spend their hard earned cash to help kids. Occasionally, there will be a Rock Band song you can purchase that will donate proceeds to charity, but this is the first game I've ever seen on a console that was launched right out of the gate as a charity project. I hope it's a success and I think it's worth buying just to ensure that it is.

It's a good concept, but is it a good game? I suppose that's the million dollar question here. The answer is...yeah. Chime is an interesting mix of Tetris and Lumines, a horizontal puzzle game where you arrange "following" blocks to create music as a "beat bar" scrolls by.

I never really understood Lumines at more than a basic level. I bought the game because it was "the" killer app for the PSP when it came out and I never really progressed into the advanced stages of the game. Whenever I break out the PSP, it's still one of the games I have packed along with me, but I've never gotten any better at it. I have always been pretty good at Tetris, but Chime is just a little more like Lumines than it is like Tetris...which means it may take me awhile to learn.

The blocks fall from the right side of the screen instead of the top. You stack them against the left, top and bottom of the screen....and when you get big enough stacks (at least 3 wide and 3 tall), they form a "quad" that flashes. You can add to these flashing quads for a certain amount of time, then they become a permanent fixture on the screen. The music changes based on the number of quads on the screen, very much like Lumines.

That's the game in a nut shell. I haven't mastered Chimes, but I think it was worth picking up, especially because it was for charity.

Overall score: 7/10. I like puzzle games a lot, and I think my eventual final rating on this one would depend on whether or not I ever get better at this one. Right now, it's fun...but I certainly don't exceed at it the way I do at Tetris. I think it will take some time to get better at this one...and the good news is, I think it'll be worth it to try every once in awhile.

Achievements? Yeah...I got a few...including a 50 point achievement they give you just for buying the full game. For 5 bucks, most of which goes to children's charities...how can you resist those 50 points?

Video game number thirty three: KrissX

noreply@blogger.com (JoshEEE) — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 01:58:00 +0000

Game review number thirty three in my 365 Games in 365 Days project is "KrissX".

A few weeks ago, I heard about a game coming to Xbox Live Arcade called Kriss Kross. "Are you kidding?!" I yelled to anyone within earshot.

The Mack Dad will make ya...JUMP JUMP!
The Daddy Mac will make ya...JUMP JUMP!

I love those guys. I hope you can dress them up in different backwards outfits. Maybe it's a shooter like "50 Cent, Blood on the Sand". Maybe you chase after a school bus and try to catch it, so your teacher won't send you to the principals office.

Turns out this isn't actually a "Kriss Kross" game, although they did have their own "Make a video" game for the Sega CD back when I was in high school. I remember seeing that one and the Marky Mark "make a video game" at Sears (yes, I bought video games at Sears) back in the day, but I ended up spending my hard earned money on Night Trap. I heard they were going to recall it. Plus, I heard it had girls running around in nighties, and I was sixteen years old, so that was awesome. Actually, that's still awesome today (nighties, not Night Trap).

Back to the point.

This game is actually a word search game, hosted by an owl. I think he probably has a name and a back story, but it was scrolling by slowly and I hit the "A" button to skip it. Now I'll never know what his deal is. Perhaps he's "Owl" from the Winnie the Pooh books and since there aren't any movie sequels lately, he's hosting video games to get by. Perhaps he's the owl that used to lick Tootsie-Pops in those commercials and this is what he became when he grew up. I think VH1 needs to do a True Hollywood Story for famous owls now.

Anyway...the entire object of this game is to take a bunch of anagrams and make actual words out of them. If you speak english, you will probably be pretty awesome at this game. I speak english and was able to score 110 points worth of achievements in around an hour of gameplay. I was playing the "Quest" mode, which is apparently endless....so I don't understand how the hell that's a "quest". There is also a time attack mode, where you solve the anagrams quickly, and a "timeless" mode....where you have all the time in the world to look up solutions on the internet before locking in your answers. No, I didn't play that way.

This game is not bad, but it's not great. You know how guys used to say "I wouldn't kick her out of bed for eating crackers" when they saw a hot girl? That was a pretty stupid expression, because really...what girl would you be willing to sleep with, but not willing to let stay in the bed with you if she broke out some crackers? Anyway, that's besides the point. The point is this: I'd totally kick this game out of bed for eating crackers.

Overall rating: 5/10. It's average, but in 2 weeks, the only thing I'm going to remember about this game is that it's a puzzle game that did NOT involve a rap group that wore their jeans backwards.

As far as the gamer score goes...you achievement whores should love this one. As I mentioned above, I was able to unlock 8/10 Achievements in this game in a single hour. Not bad.

Video game number thirty two: Battlefield 1943

noreply@blogger.com (JoshEEE) — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 02:30:00 +0000

Game review number thirty two in my 365 Games in 365 Days project is "Battlefield 1943".

According to Major Nelson's game ranking list, this remains one of the top ten most played games on Xbox Live Arcade, several months after the release. It's a remake of a retro PC game and when it was released, it wasn't something I felt I needed to run out and play.

This may sound like sacrilege to some of my gamer friends who might read this review, but you have to keep in mind that I never played the original. I don't have that deep-rooted affection for the original game that some of you might have. You see it remade, new graphics, online multiplayer on a console, achievements and think "awesome!". I've been there. When they remade the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game for Xbox Live Arcade, I was stoked. Same for Street Fighter and other coin-munchers I spent my high school years wasting my money on.

I have no history with this game, and today was the first time I'd ever played or even encountered it. As such, my review is unbiased.

In a nutshell, this game feels like a really old version of Call of Duty, with vehicles. Please don't get mad at me and tell me that the Call of Duty games probably evolved from this, I concede that point in advance....but remember, I played those games first, and I already think they're better by comparison.

I started out on an aircraft carrier parked next to an island. In the distance, I could see nametags for all my teammates. A few of them had communicators, but no one was using them much. There are PT-boats and airplanes on the carrier that spawn at timed intervals, and you can jump into one or the other to get to the island. Everyone seemed to want to fly the planes, so I grabbed a boat and headed for action.

Later, I discovered that you could spawn in your choice of locations, which was cool. Once on the island, you basically are playing a game of "king of the hill", standing near an objective until you can raise your flag and turn it your color. People are trying to kill you from the ground, air and in tanks while you're doing this.

I was able to capture a handful of flags (almost got to 5, which was an achievement) and kill a few people with each class of soldier. Once I figured out how to choose my spawn point, I chose the carrier and finally got into a plane. They are REALLY hard to fly, and I wasn't able to kill anyone but myself while flying it.

I finally got the achievement for parachuting out of my plane, but I wasn't able to land before being sniped by someone.

In my third match (the entire game is online multiplayer), I ranked 3rd or 4th in points out of a team of 10 people. Not too bad.

Overall, I have to give this game a 4/10. If I had teenage ties to this game, it might be a higher score for the nostalgia factor, but standing on it's own...it doesn't even belong in this current generation of console games. Go play Call of Duty, and get an experience that's 10 times richer. You can fly a plane in that game too, it's called the AC-130 and it decimates everyone on the ground. :-)

Video game review thirty one: Tony Hawk Ride

noreply@blogger.com (JoshEEE) — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 03:20:00 +0000

Game review number thirty one in my 365 Games in 365 Days project is "Tony Hawk: Ride".

Tony Tony Tony has done it again.

I didn't think any skateboarding game could piss me off more than Proving Ground did over the last couple of days, but I was wrong. That game made me think that I might be getting a little too old. This game proved it.

Tony Hawk Ride is a one hundred and twenty dollar package consisting of a skateboarding game and a plastic skateboard shaped controller. The controller is a giant deck, which feels a little beefier than any actual skateboard I've ever been on. It feels hefty and when you put it on the floor, you have high hopes for this game. There are four sensors on it (two on the sides, two on the nose and the tail). I believe there's also a gyroscope or something inside, but I might be wrong about that.

I immediately launched into the tutorial. I figured Tony would teach me how not to fall on my ass. Pushing the board along came naturally (I scuffed my foot along the carpet as if it might actually take me somewhere). I could move forward well enough, but when it came to the Ollie (the most basic skateboarding trick, and one I used to be able to do for real)...I had some troubles. It's tough at first to get your balance on a board with no wheels, but you get a feel for it. I completed the Ollie tutorial and moved to grinding. I was ok at that too. When it came to kick flips, that's where it started to get frustrating.

Maybe my board was broken (I borrowed a very used one)...but I couldn't get the damn kick flips to work for the life of me. I went to youtube, and they showed you pretty much the same video tutorial that the game shows you, so I know I was doing the right motion with my feet.

In any event, I spent the next 30 minutes flailing around, trying to beat that tutorial before I called it a day and jumped into the game instead. The game is a lot more fun. I was able to completely beat the first level of the game, with perfect scores. Granted, I was on easy difficulty, but I felt good about my progress after failing the tutorial. I only have 37/500 stars you can get in the "casual" difficulty, then there's experienced and hardcore after that.

This game isn't what I'd call a workout (I reserve that exclusively for games like Dance Dance Revolution and Wii Fit), but it got me sweating. I'd say an hour of this is akin to an hour of vigorous drumming in Rock Band, and about halfway through, I changed from pants to shorts and went shirtless because my clothes were getting pretty sweaty. No, there are no pictures. :-)

I like this game. I think it's a interesting concept. I think all the bad reviews it gets are probably from people who played it for a few minutes at Best Buy, their friends house...or maybe failed the tutorial like I did. It's got a steep learning curve, and I'm pretty sure if I had progressed past casual, I would have become frustrated with it. When you get into the actual game though, it's pretty entertaining. I only have this skateboard for the weekend, and I'm pretty tired of jumping around right now, so I think that's it for me on this....but if it ever comes way down in price (which I think it may eventually do), I'll pick one up. At 120 bucks though, it's not worth the price of admission to me. Even though Tony has said in interviews that he sees this as the future, I am not sure there will be a sequel to this game after the poor sales of the first one. Project Natal will also be coming out this holiday and making the board controller virtually obsolete.

Overall Rating: 6 out of 10. Pretty solid experience, and it's always nice to play a game that forces you to move around a little. It's not a game changer though. I can't see most people getting into this...especially couch potatoes.

Achievements? They suck as much as the other Hawk game I played today. You have to beat all sorts of stuff before you start unlocking gamerscore. The one achievement I was able to get was for a 10,000 point combo I got one of the levels, and that was a combination of luck and luck. There was another achievement for finishing a speed run in 1:30, and I finished it in 1:35 a couple of times. I'm pretty sure I could have shaved the extra 5 seconds off if I wanted to grind, but....that's not the aim of the mission here. :-)

Video game number thirty: Sonic the Hedgehog

noreply@blogger.com (JoshEEE) — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 01:21:00 +0000

Game review number thirty in my 365 Games in 365 Days project is "Sonic the Hedgehog".

I should have known better than to play another re-imagined game from my younger days after the terrible Tony Hawk Proving Grounds, but I decided to check this one out anyway.

Grr. This is a TOUGH game.

I remember when I first played the original Sonic the Hedgehog on the Sega Genesis (with the "Blast processing"and everything). Sometimes, the springs would launch Sonic into a series of loops and you'd be going so fast, you'd be unable to avoid the spikes you didn't know were coming at the end of the loop.

That was the good kind of frustrating.

This Sonic game is just all wrong. First of all, it starts out like Final Fantasy or something, there's a CG cut scene with a really nicely rendered town and a princess who looks like she's from an RPG somewhere. Professor Eggman comes down, only he's not a cartoon character anymore...now he's rendered like an RPG character. He steals the princess and in runs Sonic....who is still the same. It's sort of like Roger Rabbit I suppose....Sonic is a toon in an RPG world. It's strange at first, but you get sort of used to it. It reminds me a lot of the first time I played Paper Mario (a game that everyone seemed to love except for me). I didn't think Mario belonged in that universe and Sonic doesn't belong in this one.

You start out in a town walking around with people you can talk to by pressing X. The conversations are really lame and the developers at Sega Japan didn't bother to hire actors do the voices, instead option to have them say simply "Umm" or "Oooh" when you walk up. I wonder if the original Japanese version has speech or not. Anyway, you finally find your first mission (after getting a few clues from the silent crowd as to where it is) and this is where the frustration (or fun) begins.

The first level is divided into two completely separate parts. If you die on the second part, too bad...you have to do the entire first part over again as well. I hate when games pull this sort of bullshit. Usually, it's Capcom, Team Ninja or even Konami games that do this...and I suspect it's because these veteran game developers have a fundamentally different philosophy on gaming from their counterparts in the United States. I know they are aware that consoles have memory cards and hard drives now, so I don't understand why they won't give us a lousy check point in the middle of a difficult level. It would be nice if I could make some progress instead of replaying the same stupid area over again 15 times just because the final jump is something I have trouble with.

Mastering the first part of level one became very important, because the second half is this super speedy level where you have a split second to dodge all these oncoming obstacles....and until you've played it a few times, you don't know what's coming next. That's clearly what this game is going to be all about: Memorization and repetition.

Well guess what: I've had enough of that.

Unfortunately for me, it looks like the first achievement apparently won't pop until I've gone through over 20 similar missions and beaten 5 bosses. This is the third game in two days that has become more of a chore than something fun, and it's because of my achievement rule I set when I started this challenge.

If I want to stick to my plan, that means I HAVE to come back to this game and get that achievement later, but I don't want to waste anymore time on it right now. It's a decent amount of fun, but the lack of save points and the fact that you have to start over so many times if you die is pissing me off to the point that I don't want to play anymore. You can only do the same level so many damn times in a row.

Overall score so far? 2 out of 10. Save points would have made it fun, but as it stands...it's far too grindy.

Update number one: 8:15pm the same day. I came back, finally made my way through that second level, and then I was able to beat the next boss stage after that. It was no picnic...but at least I made a little more progress. Game is still incredibly hard. Rating has still not changed. :-)

Update number two: February 8th, 2010. I've given this game several more tries...played it on 4 different days, but I'm still not making any progress towards an achievement. I've tried browsing the forums for walkthroughs and tips, but nothing I've found makes this game any more fun to play. At this point, I'm calling it a day. The game is incredibly tough, I'm not having fun replaying levels over and over again in the hopes that I'll get a little closer to an achievement. I played it more than enough to know I hate it....and in order to stay true to this challenge, I'll go ahead and play an extra game, rather than keep playing this one to get an achievement just so it counts.

Rating stays the same. It's a 2/10...I hate it.

Video game number twenty nine: Mad Karts of Madagascar

noreply@blogger.com (JoshEEE) — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 22:41:00 +0000

Game review number twenty nine in my 365 Games in 365 Days project is "Mad Karts of Madagascar".

After "grinding" for several hours on a game I wasn't enjoying (Tony Hawk's Proving Ground), I thought it might be nice to play a casual game that wasn't going to make me want to smash my controller. Something fun, easy and mindless. I chose Madagascar Karts.

It's a shame that all go-kart racing games must be compared to Mario Kart, but it's just the best of the breed. Ever since the Super Nintendo, Mario Kart has defined what kart racing (and for me, multiplayer racing games) should be. There have been dozens of imitations, and I've tried many of them, but none of them have ever really been able to meet the bar set by Mario Kart.

Madagascar Karts is no different.

The game borrows heavily from the great Mario Kart series (there are 4 cups, starting at 50cc and progressing in difficulty from there). You race in cartoonish locations including a beach that closely resembles Koopa Troopa Beach from Mario Kart 64, a ship that resembles the Princesses's cruise ship from the Gamecube version, and so-on. There are item boxes with question marks, speed arrows that send you flying and instead of coins, they have "mangoes" to pick up. The mangoes don't speed you up, but they are added to your points total at the end of the race and can help you win that way.

I knew it didn't stack up in the middle of the first race, but I still wanted to give the game a fair try. First, I raced through one race in the championship with each character, looking for my favorite. I started with the Penguins (because the Penguins are awesome) and beat the first 3 levels of the 50cc championship with them. I switched to Alex the lion, then chose the Zebra, the Giraffe and so on. I'm not sure if the actual actors from the movie do their voices. Some of them sound close....others, I'm not so sure. There were also characters from Monsters vs. Aliens and Shrek, but I think they're unlockable, and I wasn't interested in grinding to get them.

The controls leave a lot to be desired. They've tried to copy the "blue sparks" from Mario, by forcing you to power slide to build your turbo up. Unfortunately, this doesn't work as well as the Mario Kart version does...and it sometimes makes you crash. There is definitely a lot of rubber-banding, the computer will slow down for you if you're behind and gets 1000 items to throw at you when you're ahead.

I had no trouble beating the entire 50CC cup before I moved on to another game. This might be a good bargain bin game for kids, but only if they don't own a Nintendo console and don't already have every Mario Kart game ever made. It's fun...but it just doesn't compare.

Overall Rating: 5 out of 10. Simply average.

The achievements in this game are cake...and I was able to unlock nearly 25% of them in less than an hour or so with this game. So many in fact, that I had to shrink my browser window in order to copy the list. Gamerscore whores, Enjoy.

Video game number twenty eight: Tony Hawk Proving Ground

noreply@blogger.com (JoshEEE) — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 07:53:00 +0000

Game review number twenty eight in my 365 Games in 365 Days project is "Tony Hawk Proving Grounds".

I figured after the craptacular Blood Bowl, it was time for a little fun. I've always enjoyed a good Tony Hawk game. Proving Ground is something that's been out for quite awhile now, but I wanted to play this to remind me what a Tony Hawk game is like before I try Ride.

I played this one from about 11pm on Saturday night until after 2am on Sunday morning, without unlocking one achievement. Gone are the days of Tony Hawk 2X where you can skate around town pulling off amazing combos with a few moves you know and button mashing for the ones you don't. Now it's all about accuracy and being precise with your moves. Grind, Manual, do a flip, land on the rail, all without losing your combo....just to pass the first level or two. I was totally stuck on just about every part of the career, even after reading the instructions and checking out the web for guides.

I found a list of cheat codes that make your skater better at manuals and grinds. I thought entering those might help me with a couple of the challenges I was stuck on, but they did not. Apparently, my problem is landing tricks from jumping. It's nearly impossible for me now, probably because I am used to Tony Hawk 2X, the SSX games, SKATE, Amped and other skate/snowboarding titles that aren't this brutally difficult.When I woke up Sunday morning around 9am, I started playing again...and it took me four more hours before I finally got a sponsor and unlocked an achievement. It was beyond frustrating, and several times I wanted to throw my controller at the television. I actually fantasized about how good it would feel to shatter the mirror in the office with my 60 dollar Todd Macfarlane Halo themed controller, but that would be a waste of a collectible (not to mention 7 years of bad luck).

I can't really say this isn't a good game, because there is a lot to do in it. It has everything the old Hawk games had and then some. Unfortunately it's evolved into something so complex that I never want to play it again. Perhaps folks who have been playing since the old school days and have experienced this evolution gradually are enjoying the step up in difficulty, but it's too much for me. It reminds me of how I felt when I played Street Fighter 3 after all those Street Fighter 2 sequels in the arcade. That game turned into something which had lost all of the things I loved about the original. That's exactly what happened here.

I'll still try Ride, but I'll never play this game again.

Overall Rating 1 out of 10. It's just too damned hard for me to get the hang of. It took me over six hours of frustration to unlock the first achievement in the game, and I honestly didn't feel like I could have made it further without tearing body parts off in frustration. It's still more fun than Blood Bowl though. :-)

Here's the one measely achievement I was able to unlock. The only reason I did it was because of this 365 game project. If it hadn't been for this mission, the difficulty would have forced me to quit long ago. I suppose that's a benefit of this project. If I wasn't trying for an achievement, I would have quit. If you ask me in ten days how I feel about this game, my opinion will probably improve...but right now...I'm still mad at it, and hence, the crappy review score.

Video game number twenty seven: Blood Bowl

noreply@blogger.com (JoshEEE) — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 02:10:00 +0000

Game review number twenty seven in my 365 Games in 365 Days project is "Blood Bowl".

This review could end after the following three words: This game blows.

For those of you that would like a little more....we're talking about a turn based D&D style football game with Orcs and Elves here. Why the hell did I play this? Oh yeah... I played it because I looked at the box and it seemed kind of cool. The back of the box described it as a football/strategy game, and apparently...you could actually kill the other players on the field. I assumed it was some sort of fantasy football game....little did I know it was essentially D&D. I suppose that will teach me not to read reviews online first.

I have been playing for the last two hours and I can't even beat the computer on easy. You roll dice to move, your player will miss the pass if you roll the wrong number on the dice...it's ridiculous. You can miss a pass to someone wide open a couple of feet in front of you. Aargh.

Overall Score: 0.0. I can't remember if I've ever hated a video game as much as I hate this one. I feel stupid for even booting it....because according to my rules, I'm supposed to get at least one achievement before I choose to never play it again. I slogged through two hours of this piece of dog shit trying to get even the most basic achievement so I could quit, but I struck out big time. I finally had to put it down.

Worst. Game. Ever.

Edit: 1:49am on Saturday night/Sunday morning. So, I gave this another try this evening...after I realized that there was one achievement I could grab in the campaign mode. All you have to do is get a superstar player on your team. I did that by spending all of the money in my bank (I figure I'll never need it for anything else anyway)...so now I'm really done with this horse shit game, forever.

Video game number twenty six: Are you smarter than a 5th grader?

noreply@blogger.com (JoshEEE) — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 00:12:00 +0000

Game review number twenty six in my 365 Games in 365 Days project is "Are you smarter than a 5th grader?".

Are you smarter than a 5th grader?
Not if you like this game. :-)

First of all, I'm not a fan of this show. I've watched it once. Jeff Foxworthy going on TV making fun of people's intelligence would be like Paris Hilton hosting a charm school show on how to act like a prim and proper young lady. The guy might be smarter than a 5th grader, but that's not the image he's cultivated over the years....and it doesn't make for great TV. The show seems designed for fans of his, or people who want to answer questions aimed at grade school children after an episode of Jeopardy made their brain hurt.

I chose this game because the concept itself is interesting to me. Answer questions you think you're "better" than and see if you can win a million bucks. My very first game, I won the million dollars...but that's because I cheated twice. The 5th grade geometry question (Which of the following places are the Shetland Islands next to?) is something I had to look up on Bing to figure out. The 500,000 dollar question was about the Alice in Wonderland book "Through the looking glass". Heather happened to walk into the room right before they asked that one, and she gave me the answer to that one. The million dollar question was actually easy...and I got my 25 gamerscore for completing the game show.

The rest of the achievements in this game involve a whole lot of time spent playing, which is not something I'm going to do. Answer 6000 questions correctly. Play 25 matches on Xbox Live. Earn 50,000,000 bucks. NO way.

While Heather was watching me win the money, she remarked that the graphics are absolutely terrible. She's right. I realize this one is a port and it's available on the Nintendo DS, the Wii and PS2, but it looks like they developed for the lowest common denominator and called it a day. Actually, this looks like a PC game that you might get free in a cereal box or sitting in the checkout aisle of target. It's that bad.

Overall rating: 1 out of a possible 10. My new worst game so far.

I actually had more fun with Thrillville Off the Rails than this piece of garbage and that's saying a lot.

Here's the achievement I got for winning the million dollars. This was my first and last achievement for this game.

Video game number twenty five: Fairytale Fights

noreply@blogger.com (JoshEEE) — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 22:55:00 +0000

Game review number twenty five in my 365 Games in 365 Days project is "Fairytale Fights".

It's 2:56pm on Saturday. I'm about to start Fairytale Fights and I have to admit, I have absolutely no idea what to expect from this one. I know two things:

Number one: There's a guy at work who wears a Fairytale Fights shirt all the time. He freakin' loves this game.

Number two: There is an achievement for killing a bunny with a carrot. I am absolutely going to get this achievement, no matter what.

Stay tuned... :-)

Ok. It's now 3:25pm. Wow. That was a pretty stupid game.

The opening scenes show promise. Several well known fairty tale characters (Red Riding Hood, Snow White, the Emperor with no clothes, etc) are getting into fights and comic mischief ensues. There's lots of blood and gore. The graphics remain cutesy, like a Saturday morning cartoon.

You start this game up and you're in a little town. You select your character and enter either the quest mode or the arena. First, I chose the quest mode and did the first chapter. I unlocked the bunny killing achievement right after starting the level. That was rather satisfying. You find weapons, you fight lumberjacks, rinse and repeat. The combat isn't particularly fun, and the view is overhead (a la' Lego Star Wars), so it's got that detached feeling to it. I beat the first level with no effort at all.

The arena mode seems designed for multiplayer, so playing that alone was rather pointless. I tried out and they gave me a bunch of random things to kill. It was pretty lame. I suppose playing it with someone else would have been rather pointless too, unless it was that guy at work who really loves this game.

Overall rating: 3 out of 10. I don't want to play this game anymore.

The overall rating would have been a 2, had it not been for those funny cut scenes. They bump the game up to a 3. They were not enough to get me to want to play it anymore....but enough to save it from a two rating.

Best feature in my short amount of time with this one: When you kill people, there's blood everywhere and your character slides around in it. I couldn't help of think of Cowboy Gil from Parenthood....slippin' around in their guts. Too bad no one made any balloon animals afterwards. I would have given the game a 4 for balloon animals.

Video game number twenty four: Guitar Hero Van Halen

noreply@blogger.com (JoshEEE) — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 21:55:00 +0000

Game review number twenty four in my 365 Games in 365 Days project is "Guitar Hero: Van Halen".

I never thought that Van Halen deserved their own version of Guitar Hero. They were a good band, but they only had a few good albums back in the 1980's before they broke up the first time. After that, they turned into Van Hagar, then went back and forth a few times before realizing they could make a lot of money touring with good old Diamond Dave again. The idea of their own standalone game seems sort of silly and that's probably why they gave it away for free with Guitar Hero 5. That's also probably why I haven't played it until now.

I've mentioned before that I'm a Rock Band fan first and foremost and so I've strayed from the Guitar Hero sequels lately. There are a couple I've never even booted and this is one of them. I had planned to play until I reached the songs "Panama" and "Jump" (my two favorites off 1984), but they stymied me by making Panama the intro song. I haven't made it to "Jump" yet, but I'll give it a few more songs.

This game is Guitar Hero. There's really nothing new, except for the characters who dance on stage while you play, and the songs you're allowed to choose from. By the way, one thing that really bugs me about the characters on stage is they're all "new" Van Halen. I want to see classic Van Halen, in the crazy leather outfits and long hair. This is plastic surgery, short hair Dave, and Wolfgang on the bass. It would be like having a Michael Jackson game...and having Thriller and Beat It be performed by 2008 plastic surgery Michael. It's just kinda lame.

Like Guitar Hero Metallica, there are "guest artists" on the disk including Fountains of Wayne, Blink 182 and Billy Idol. I assume maybe Van Halen toured with these bands at some point or another, or maybe they just like them. Who knows?

Either way, this is your basic Guitar Hero. I'm not going to finish it. I might play it when I'm bored, but it's been on my shelf for months now and the only thing that caused me to crack open the plastic was this 365 challenge. I'm going to give it an hour and see if I can get to "Jump". If not, it's on to other games.

Overall Rating: 6 out of 10. Not terrible, but nothing special either.

Edit: It took me about 7 songs....but I finally unlocked "Jump". You play the keyboard parts on lead guitar. I got 100% of the notes. I have to admit, that was awesome. :-)

Here are the handful of achievements I unlocked, on purpose. Unlocking more would have required a lot more time, and once you've played one Guitar Hero game, you've pretty much played them all.

Video Game number twenty three: SpongeBob: Truth or Square

noreply@blogger.com (JoshEEE) — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 20:18:00 +0000

Game review number twenty three in my 365 Games in 365 Days project is "SpongeBob: Truth or Square".

With my Saturday "chimp" marathon out of the way, I decided to stick with the kid's games and play something I've secretly wanted to try for a long time. The SpongeBob game.

Yeah, I said it.

Keep in mind, I just got done playing Space Chimps, so I was already on a platformer kick. Perhaps that experience helped contrast this one, but either way....this game is SO much better. I enjoy the SpongeBob cartoons. When my nieces and nephews were younger, they would always ask me to turn the channel from whatever I was watching to Nickelodeon or the cartoon network. When SpongeBob was on, they'd be happy...and I didn't mind watching the cartoons. It's a good, funny show.

The game is voiced by all the same actors. The controls are great. The camera is easy to control. The difficulty is dumbed down quite a bit from the game I just played, but that doesn't make it lame. In fact, when I was thinking about which game I wanted to play next....I was wondering if I shouldn't just keep playing SpongeBob for awhile.

The story isn't what I'd call "deep", but it's funny. SpongeBob needs to find the secret Krabby Patty recipe that he's been entrusted with, only he can't remember where he left it because he's sad. The only way to jog his memory is to make him happy. He starts out at a party, and the levels you take him through are his "happy memories".

SpongeBob chatters throughout the game, with lots of silly one-liners and throwaway jokes. "I'm going to knock you into next week!" he shouts at an enemy. "Or at least a half an hour from now".

You collect coins and power-ups to enhance the adventure. There are tons of secret items to find if you're into the whole completionist thing. There's an achievement for making SpongeBob grow old, which you do by putting down your controller and watching the character animation while he waits for you to pick it back up. This reminded me of the first time I played Sonic the Hedgehog and he would tap his foot when you stopped in one place too long. In Mario 64, Mario would eventually fall asleep and start snoring. SpongeBob has some great idle animations, and they're worth watching even without the achievement.

Overall rating so far: 7.9 out of 10. Great little game.

Kid factor: This one is easier than Space Chimps was, and I can see kids being able to figure it out and make progress. There are plenty of things for the older generation of gamers to do, including collecting all the "Happiness items" and what-not.

I dig it.

I need to play about 7 more this weekend in order to be on track for January, so I'm going to have to keep moving...but I think I'll be back to this one sooner, rather than later.

Here are the first few achievements I unlocked.

Video game number twenty two: Space Chimps

noreply@blogger.com (JoshEEE) — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 19:40:00 +0000

Game review number twenty two in my 365 Games in 365 Days project is "Space Chimps".

Part two in my Saturday Chimp Saga is Space Chimps. I played them in this order on purpose, because I figure you should get to be president and THEN go to space (I chose to rank the jobs in order of excitement).

This game is apparently based on a movie, only I've never heard of it. I'm sure I saw the preview for it at some point, but it has been completely erased from my mind. I'm sure the space in my head that once stored information on the Space Chimps movie has been replaced with some more important fact....such as "Did you know Shia Labeouf flipped his car while driving drunk during the filming the Transformers sequel? Yeah, that's why he had to wear that silly hand bandage during the part of the movie where he goes to robot heaven".

Anyway, this game is a pretty decent platformer. You are a chimp named "Ham", (presumably an astronaut if your uniform is any indicator) and apparently, you're trapped on some crazy planet for some reason. There are other characters in the game, and they have silly conversations that I didn't much care for in the cut scenes.

The game itself was entertaining enough to continue for at least a little while. You run, you jump, you attack...you pick up bananas for power and little gumdrop things called "Globhoppers" can be found hidden all over the place (I think all these things give you is achievements). There are Dole brand bananas that you can collect to unlock costumes (I unlocked a mime outfit, which was pretty funny). If I had to compare this game to a platformer I had played...I'd have to go back to Munch's Odyssey. Not great, not bad....just..good.

I will say one thing for Space Chimps. It has succeeded in making me feel more retarded than any other video game has in recent history. On the second level, you switch from the "Ham" character to some female chimp named "Luna". Right off the bat, you notice she doesn't seem to have a weapon. I assumed that maybe that's a part of the level and carried on. A very short time into your journey, you are asked by one of the in game characters to find "Squirt". I look across this chasm, and I saw an icon I haven't seen before. I assume this icon is "Squirt". I jump to it, and now I'm getting in game instructions to press the "X" button to attack. The "X" button isn't doing anything. The enemies kill me, over and over again.

I restart this level, my "X" button still isn't working, and eventually...I think maybe there's something wrong with my controller. I pop the battery out and in. No dice. I reboot the game. Still no dice. I search the internet. There is no walkthrough for this game anywhere online that I can find. I search forums. No one mentions anything about not being able to attack in the second level. I've literally spent 20 minutes trying to figure out why the fuck I can't hit anything with this stupid girl monkey.

Finally, I find a post on the Xbox forums from someone having the exact same problem. Turns out that "Squirt" is a little lizard I didn't see....and he's standing right next to the dude who told me to find him. When you pick him up, he turns into a "Squirt Gun". OMG LOLZ. Getting through the rest of the level was cake after that, but man did I feel stupid.

This game is filled with difficult jumping puzzles, and although you can get a ton of gamerscore just going through the campaign...the bulk of it seems to come through beating levels in under a certain target time. The story wasn't compelling to me (I have no idea if it's based on the movie or an entirely new adventure) but after 3 levels...I'm calling it a game.

Overall Rating: 5 out of 10. Simply average.

Kid factor: I can't see this being a fun game for small kids, as it's kind of difficult. Even if you find that lizard that I missed, there are still a bunch of really tough jumping puzzles....that take excellent timing. I died a LOT while learning them.

Retro-factor: This is more the kind of game that someone my age might want to play to remember the golden days when there was an endless selection of platformer games for the Nintendo, Sega and Turbographx-16. Or hell, even the days of the N64 when they all turned into 3D platformers. It's simple, it's fun...and it's a nice change of pace from all the shooters out there right now. It's deeper than an Xbox Live Arcade game, and after a quick search around the web...it looks like it's priced around 20 bucks these days. Not bad I suppose.

Aside from the 20 minutes or more I spent stuck on that one level, I only played this game for about an hour or so. In that time, I was able to unlock these achievements:

I think I might go back and finish this one. Maybe. Someday.

Video game number twenty one: Hail to the Chimp.

noreply@blogger.com (JoshEEE) — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 18:29:00 +0000

Game review number twenty one in my 365 Games in 365 Days project is "Hail to the Chimp".

This is the first game in my two part Saturday chimp saga.

I remember hearing about Hail to the Chimp a few years ago. I saw the cover, it had a monkey on it. It's apparently full of political satire. I assumed this was a game making fun of George Bush or something. I didn't read anything more about it at the time, it's sort of like a TV Show with a funny name (like "That's my Bush"). You hear about it, you smile, you always forget to watch it the night it comes on and eventually it goes off the air.

This game hasn't been on the radar of anyone I've ever met. Other than my initial encounter with the box art, I hadn't seen or heard about this game since. When I noticed it on a shelf, I thought...."Oh yeah, this should be one of my 365 games. It's gotta be worth at least an hour".

It's not.

The political satire is great. You live in an animal kingdom, where apparently...you're running against other animals to win the presidency. The news station "GRR" runs as you open the game, and in between matches. There are funny little political ads with your "candidate" (the first is a hippo named Ptolemy). I really like the humor here, but unfortunately, the game itself is fairly stupid.

This is one of those "Mario Party" style games, but it doesn't have anywhere near the fun factor of the aforementioned title. It's not as good as Fusion Frenzy. It's not as good as Viva Pinata Party Animals. In a word: Crap.

You run around various stages collecting "Clams", which you either deposit into a ballot box, hold on to for a certain amount of time (think Oddball in Halo), or simply try to accumulate before time runs out. I tried the first 6 or 7 different levels...and it was already becoming repetitive. I logged onto Xbox 360 Achievements to see what the gamerscore was like for this one....and the entire forum for this game suggests that you plug in 3 controllers and scream through them alone.

Lame.

Good concept, poor execution. The cut scenes are funny, but it's not worth playing this to see them.

Overall rating: 3 out of 10. I had to rate it better than Thrillville, because even this didn't suck that much.

Here are the first and most likely only achievements I will ever earn in this stupid game:

Video game number twenty: Thrillville: Off the Rails

noreply@blogger.com (JoshEEE) — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 07:30:00 +0000

Game review number twenty in my 365 Games in 365 Days project is "Thrilleville: Off the Rails".

Thrillville Off the Rails is an amusement park simulator. If you've played Roller Coaster Tycoon, you probably understand the basic concept. If you're like me, you probably didn't play Roller Coaster Tycoon, because you're not really into simulators. If you're like me....you might have borrowed this game because you thought it might be fun to try building some crazy roller coasters.

You start the game by creating a character. I chose a little kid, because like me...he was named Joshua by his creators. Some people might think it strange to have a small child own an amusement park, but Cartman had one in South Park and that's precedent enough for me.

I took the tutorials and began building my park. I started with some video games, because...well...I like video games. I played one called "Stunt Rider" which reminded me a lot of a scaled down version of Trials HD. I wasn't able to get the high score on my first try, but I did pop an achievement for doing some flips (much like Trials, it's pretty easy to do).

After screwing around with my arcade games, I built a giant rollercoaster. I made it super tall and super fast (turned the nausea factor up to 100%). I did this to get a couple of achievements, and also because I thought it would look really awesome. Unfortunately, riding it wasn't nearly as fun as building it. The "on ride" graphics in this game are pretty lame. I'm not sure why I thought it would be awesome....

As the manager, one of your duties is to walk around the park interacting with your guests. You can select from several different pre-scripted chats....until your guests like you. Three days ago, I was playing Mass Effect 2, having conversations about my character's demise and resurrection. Tonight, I'm asking people if they like basketball, and telling them that my amusement park has the best coasters around.

I'm sure this game is a good introduction to simulators for kids. It's probably an easy 1000 points too. Unfortunately, I'm not interested in either of those things right now....and playing this game was tedious.

Overall Score: 2 out of 10. Worst game I've played so far this year.

Below are the achievements I was able to unlock with minimal effort after less than an hour. If you tried...I'm sure you could do better.

Video game number nineteen: Monster Jam

noreply@blogger.com (JoshEEE) — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 06:27:00 +0000

Game review number nineteen in my 365 Games in 365 Days project is "Monster Jam".

There's one great thing about this game: When you boot it up, you are inspired to talk like one of those Monster Truck announcer guys. I lowered my voice a few octaves and yelled out "MONSTER JAM!" and "GRAVE DIGGER!" until Heather came into the office to ask me what the hell I was doing. I told her I was playing a monster truck game...and that was pretty much all she needed to hear.

I grabbed this game because...well, why not. It was in the software library at work and I was picking out random titles to try. It's a racing game, featuring world famous monster trucks like "Grave Digger" and...well...."Grave Digger". Seriously, that's the only famous truck in this game that I recognize so far. I didn't see "Bigfoot" or "Truckzilla", or any of the other names I might have remembered from those commercials when I was a kid. "Grave Digger" is there though, so I picked that one and started up a race.

The controls feel natural. You start off in an off-road race against five other trucks, and it was just like playing every other racing game I've ever played. Right trigger is gas. Left is brake. The "A" button boosts the car. The "Y" button changes your view. I won my first race, my second...and when I won my third in a row, an achievement popped up. Nice.

It was pretty easy to win the races, smashing my way through obstacles, other cars and terrain. It seems that your truck can take endless damage (on one track, I drove it with only three wheels left). There are tons of things to smash, and you get "combos" for smashing lots of them in a row. There are several different roads you can take in each race, and shortcuts you can find by boosting into a jump. For people who want to get serious about their Monster Truck racing....there's lots of depth here.

There are off-road races, elimination rounds where the last place car is dropped from the race....and then there are these Stadium matches, where you do "real" monster truck things....like crush cars and take your truck off sweet jumps. These are a little more difficult than the races...and I actually had to restart one of them a few times before I won it.

I finished the first championship, popped several achievements...and called it good. This game is fun, but I've literally got a dozen racing games sitting on my game shelf at home that I like better. The Forza games, the Burnout games, the Project Gotham Racing games, the Dirt games, Need for Speed...and even Full Auto are all probably better games than this. It's not a bad game..it's just "average".

Overall rating: 6 out of 10. The extra point taking it above "average" is because it made me yell "GRAVE DIGGER!"

Here are all the achievements I got in an hour or two of playtime:

Video game number eighteen: Hasbro Family Game Night

noreply@blogger.com (JoshEEE) — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 04:00:00 +0000

Game review number eighteen in my 365 Games in 365 Days project is "Hasbro Family Game Night".

I decided to bring home a bunch of games to power through this weekend and one of them was Hasbro Family Game Night. This is a compilation disk filled with a bunch of adaptations of board games (all of which were previously released on Xbox Live Arcade). I had never played this before and I thought it might be something worth giving a quick try.

I started out with Connect Four. Either I've completely forgotten how to play this game since I was a kid or the AI opponents are too hard, because I lost every single match I played. Every single match. I must have played 10, because there was an achievement for winning just one and I was trying to get it. No dice there. :-)

Frustrated, I moved on to Boggle. This is a single player word search game, made famous by Peggy Hill from King of the Hill. "Hooyah!" It's exactly what you'd expect. I finished a game or two and moved on to Yahtzee....which is surprisingly less exciting than playing the actual game (with a cup of dice and a pad of paper).

Growing bored of playing these board games, I tried one I hadn't tried in real life before, Sorry Sliders. This one is actually kind of fun. You slide your little Sorry gamepiece towards a bullseye at the center of the game board. You try to get as close as you can to the rings (a la' darts) as other people slide their pieces towards you to bump you out. That part reminds me a bit of the Canadian sport "curling". First person to get all their pieces "home" wins, just like regular Sorry. This was the best of the bunch for me so far.

To wrap this sucker up, I tried a game of Scrabble. It's just like any other online version of the game....except those are all free and this one costs around 6 dollars by itself. I knocked out a few achievements overall, but this game was sort of a disappointment. It's actually more fun to play the board game versions of all of these games. I didn't even try Battleship...as playing against the computer seemed pointless. Mental note: Pick up a copy of the real Sorry Sliders.

By the way, if you're an achievement whore, I've read online that you can simply plug in a second controller and get almost all of the gamerscore in this game by playing against nobody. I'm not gunning for maximum gamerscore here, just trying to play as many games as I can.....so I decided not to chase the achievements this time around.

Overall rating: 4 out of 10. It's sad when a video game makes you miss the cardboard version.

Achievement Ease? 10 out of 10...if you want to cheat. I played fair and square, so here's all I unlocked:

Video game number seventeen: Diner Dash

noreply@blogger.com (JoshEEE) — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 02:08:00 +0000

Game review number seventeen in my 365 Games in 365 Days project is "Diner dash".

I've wanted to play this Xbox Live Arcade game since I first heard about it. I had a feeling it would be similar to Root Beer tapper, which is one of my favorite old-school arcade games. Root Beer tapper is actually the "watered down" version of what was originally a bar game called "Beer tapper". You serve a bunch of cowboys, foot ball players, wenches and other rowdy bar people before they decide to walk up the bar and beat you up. Somewhere in there, there is can-can dancing.

Diner Dash is a similar concept, with a little more difficulty thrown in. First of all, I love the concept of the game. You're working at a white collar job (perhaps a software company), and the work you're being asked to do is making you crazy. Finally, you get frustrated and yell "there's got to be a better way!" as you run from the office. You find the answer to all your prayers is opening your own restaurant.

I'm already intrigued. :-)

Customers line up to eat at your place (presumably because the entire experience takes less than 30 seconds a table). You seat them, take their order, serve them coffee, bring their food, then put away the dishes. This is basically the game....but you have to handle about 4 tables worth of customers. Some of them are impatient. Some are college students who like to sit around and drink their coffee and talk about indie rock. Some are restaurant critics that need constant ass-kissing if you want to get a 5 star review. Basically, it's just like being in a real restaurant, but you won't come home smelling like onions after playing this one.

I have a LOT of games to play this weekend, so I am not going to spend a lot of time on this (you get the basic idea after a few levels anyway) but I see this one as a great time waster. Especially at work. Until I open my own restaurant for real. :-)

Overall Score 7.5 out of 10
Fun factor: Great. Reminds me of Root Beer Tapper and other fun web games I've enjoyed in the past.

Replay: I can see playing the single player whenever I want to play a quick arcade game. When I looked for people to challenge online, there was unfortunately no one playing this.

Achievements? I got a couple...but it sounds like most of them are going to involve getting perfect scores on all 40 levels, which I don't plan on doing.

Video game number sixteen: Scene It: Box Office Smash!

noreply@blogger.com (JoshEEE) — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 01:59:00 +0000

Game review number sixteen in my 365 Games in 365 Days project is "Scene It: Box Office Smash".

I always enjoy a little movie trivia. Box Office Smash is a pretty good trivia game, with a variety of different questions. There are scrambled movie titles, movie clips (where you answer questions about the movie you just saw), lists of movies that you have to rank in order of release, etc, etc. This is the sequel to another 360 game I actually own, and I've only played that one a handful of times. If you're not playing with a group of friends, there's something hollow about the experience.

This game is just like every Scene It DVD game you've seen in the aisles at Target, except this one has achievements. I played for about 2 hours and got over 300 gamerscore. If I'd had four people playing, that would have bumped it up even more.

I'm sure I'll play this again sometime, perhaps when we're having company over. It's always a fun one (even if you don't use the big button controllers they pack in with it).

Overall Score: 5 out of 10 (eventually, it does get old).

Achievements unlocked? A metric ton, all in a couple of hours. I think this is the highest number of achievements yet for me on this challenge (on a single game in one day):

Video game number fifteen: Ikaruga

noreply@blogger.com (JoshEEE) — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 21:49:00 +0000

Game review number fifteen in my 365 Games in 365 Days project is "Ikaruga".

I need to catch up, it being January 28th and me only having 14 games completed. That's 14 games shy of being on target for the year, which isn't good at all. If I'm going to do this, I have to stop playing games I'm really interested in trying (and playing for hours and hours at a time) and instead start casually trying more games.

I decided to pop in Ikaruga. This is one of those crazy, Japanese space ship shoot-em-up games. It reminded me a lot of playing Silpheed on my Sega back in the day, and after a quick search of Wikipedia, it turns out this was done by the same developers.

I probably plunked a lot of quarters down on games like this in the arcades back in the 80's and 90's, and I never got any better at them. I swear, they're designed to kill you quicker than almost any type of game out there. You pilot a ship, then 10 or 20 enemies shows up on the stage and each of them fires about 100 bullets at you. I'm sure you could get really good at these games if you wanted to play them over and over again until you memorized the fire patterns, but I never did.

This game features something a little unique...you can "reverse the polarity" of your ship. Basically, your ship starts out blue, and fires blue bullets. You can absorb any blue enemy bullets that head your way, which is a neat trick. Of course, there are also red ships, that fire red bullets. In order to absorb their shots, you must quickly press the "B" button to reverse your polarity. At first, the ships come in straight lines of blue, then red....to teach you how to do this. Very quickly, they start ganking you in giant intermixed squadrons.

There's a big boss at the end of each level. The first one took me 3 or 4 tries. On Easy.

That's how hard this fucking game is.

Overall Score: 2 out of 10. For the genre, it's decent...but I've never had much of a stomach for the genre. Give me the good old days of Galaxian and I'll be happy.
Overall Gank factor: 11 out of 10. There are more bullets on the screen than you can count...and they're all coming at you. I prefer my video game odds to be the other way around. :-)

Achievement Unlocked: Just one, for the very first level. I was lucky to get that far.