Banjo-Tooie - XBLA (Review)

I recall never liking Banjo-Tooie as much Banjo-Kazooie when they were on the N64 and after playing through Tooie's re-release on the X-Box Live Arcade, I can say that my feelings haven't changed. Banjo-Tooie attempts to go through the natural evolution of a game series by taking everything that made the first game great and super-sizing it. While I would like to say that this grandiose scheme is an improvement, this is only serves to make the game a giant chore. Gone are the relatively small, enclosed worlds of the first game. Instead, worlds are more like giant hubs for smaller areas and some of the worlds are even inter-connected with each other. Every level after the first three becomes an exercise in tedium rather than exploration. Some of the Jiggys can't be obtained learn moves from other levels, yet there is no indication of which Jiggys can't be collected and what moves are needed. I found myself exploring for hours, accomplishing little and getting tired.

In a rather welcome move, Banjo and Kazooie start the game with all the moves they learned in the first game and begin to add a lot more to their repertoire. This helps keep the original game's habit of throwing new gameplay concepts every other moment in tact. But while the first game did this flawlessly, Banjo-Tooie mucks this up a little bit. Some of the new moves are innovative and cool and have a multitude of uses like the new types of eggs, the drill beak attack, and the areas where you use Kazooie like a gun. A good bulk of the other moves are used once, but never again in the whole game. It’s great that Rare wanted to add so much innovation in Tooie, but sadly a lot of it just doesn’t work like the moves that result from the split-up ability, they just feel like unnecessary additions.

Banjo-Tooie is a sequel that suffers from the old cliche of bigger is better. The game that I loved is in here somewhere and when the design pulls itself together the game gets really good. Some Jiggies are a lot of fun to discover, some levels are interesting and unique, and the boss fights are a real treat. Having now played through all three major games in the series, I found that series has clearly gotten weaker as it goes along. Banjo-Kazooie is a true classic, Banjo-Tooie is a flawed but decent follow-up and Nuts & Bolts is just a middle of the road outing. It mentioned within the game that Rare at least has plans to do another Banjo game and I'm up for it so long as it captures some of the magic of the original.

Dragonball Z (Review)

Dragonball Z is the follow-up series to Dragonball, a manga/anime about a really strong boy named Goku and his friends who love fighting and go on adventures to collect 7 mystical Dragonballs that grant wishes. Dragonball Z is basically about Goku and his friends protecting the world from increasingly powerful villains. DBZ is the show that got me a little interested in anime and after watching the complete series on DVD, I can say I still love it. It's a great action series and a classic among anime.

Running through 291 episodes with basically 4 major story-arcs, DBZ is a show that does drag on from time to time. This show does follow a standard "fight scene followed by exposition followed by more fight scene" path and the fights can go on for many episodes with little actual stroy development. The prime example is Goku's showdown with space tyrant Frieza which last for a whopping 19 episodes! Even though they run long DBZ has some of the best, well-choreographed fights...ever. These people go through tough fights and it shows.

The characters and their overall development are the highlight in DBZ. Old characters return, new ones appear, characters' pasts intertwine with the current plot and a lot of time is spent watching people change. My favorite development is watching Vegeta's inner conflict with the life of power and war he's accustomed to and the new one of peace he can't get used to. The show was just a joy a revisit and I don't have much else to say other than I'd recommend it to just about anyone who loves insane action.

Diddy Kong Racing DS (Review)

Back when it was released on the N64, Diddy Kong Racing was one of only two games that came close to reaching the addictive high quality of the Mario Kart series (the other was Crash Team Racing). The game was unique due to it's mixture of Mario 64-ish adventuring and kart racing. The game was updated for the DS in 2007 in an attempt to make a great game even better....and they failed miserably.

The basics of the game are still in place, you go around and race in cars, planes and hovercrafts to win balloons that allow you to access other races and locations, and you still have to race the boss of each world twice to get your reward. Even though you're given three different modes of transportation, none of these vehicles are particularly fun to use. The original game made excellent use of the N64's analog stick to make the controls seem more fluid and responsive. For the DS, the controls have been transferred to the D-Pad with shoulder buttons used for drifting and weapons. These controls are slightly unresponsive and sluggish at best which make racing far more of a chore than it should be. The hovercraft in particular is terrible in the controls department and makes me wonder how something like this made it through testing. This problem is slightly balanced out by the truly pathetic A.I. Most of my races were blowouts as my opponents seemed to be even worse at navigating the game's cramp and poorly designed racktracks than I was. True to any kart racer you're able to blast your foes with weapons and unlike in the recent Mario Kart games, everybody has access to all the weapons and there is no cheap over-powered weapon for the A.I to spam. This is the only thing this game has over Mario Kart, although the choice of weapons aren't as inventive.

Even worse is the needless and poor implementation of the DS's abilities. To do a boost start in a race, you have to use the stylus to rotate wheels or propeller. When driving the hovercraft, you'll be forced to blow onto the screen. It's unbelievably awkward to use the stylus to rev up the vehicle, and try to get your hands back to the regular controls when the race abruptly starts. After defeating a boss for the first time, they'll tell you to complete another set of objectives to complete an area. This challenege is a horribly designed rail shooter mini-game. With the stylus, you'll float along a race track and pop all the balloons drifting in your way. Both the popping and the aiming are done with the stylus and with many of the balloons off in all directions, you'll have to first drag the stylus to get a good viewing angle, then tap it again to bust your target. I found that one misplaced touch can foil screw you over. After that's done and the area boss is beaten again and you complete the area's trophy race challenge (racing through the same tracks...again), there is an optional third boss race. In this third encounter, any semblance of quality racing gameplay is thrown out the window. The screen switches to an overhead perspective and The D-Pad and buttons are replaced with the stylus. In order to get your vehicle to move, you'll have to use the stylus to spin a wheel in the touch screen, and then draw a path for the vehicle to follow. This fails like everything else as your kart doesn't follow the stylus path accurately and when your kart slows down, you'll have to spin the wheel again.

This game could have been good, even great. All of the element were present: a variety of playable characters and vehicles, a lot of tracks to go through, and an online multiplayer mode that's actually better than Mario Kart DS. Unfortunately, this game is marred by far too many problems to save it from its mediocrity. The controls, A.I, touch screen, and nearly everything else are poorly implemented. Instead of allowing the new features to be "enjoyed" at leisure, you're forced to endure all of them before finishing the adventure in its entirety, making the game's replayability aggravating. I highly recommend that those looking for a racer on the DS get Mario Kart instead, or if you have an N64, stick with the original Diddy Kong Racing.

Spiderman 3 (Review)

I like Spiderman for pretty much for the same reasons everyone else likes him: He's very easy to relate to and he makes mistakes. I enjoyed the first two Spiderman movies. They were fun, exciting, well-written movies that served as grade A examples of how superhero movies can be done. The third film is almost as good but it misses its mark by being a little too...busy. Part of the problem comes from the film featuring three antagonists instead of just one or two. The Sandman is pretty cool or at least the special effects used for him are cool. I never really found him to be a memorable foe in the comics and I must be one of the few people who wasn't bothered by the film making him Uncle Ben's killer. He was just a normal criminal when he killed Ben so it's not like Peter still couldn't have done anything stop him. Harry Osborn taking up the mantle of Green Goblin is fun even though it happens a bit too soon in the series for my tastes. At least it gives actor James Franco more to do this time. Finally the big fish in this villain buffet is Venom, who was pretty much guaranteed to appear when it was revealed that the symbiote would be play a role in the plot. I would have preferred that they held off on Venom for the inevitable sequel as he's just too cool and popular to share the spotlight with another baddie.

The other thing that makes the storyline here overstuffed is the continued and completely unneeded romantic drama between Peter and Mary Jane. Spiderman 2 pretty much had the two where they needed to be as they were together and M.J. knew Peter was Spiderman. In other continuities Mary Jane and Peter get together and M.J. acts as strong supporter for Peter and his problems. They had a strong relationship and pretty much only had minor typical rough patches. It's confusing to me why they felt this movie needed more drama when there's already so much stuff going on.

Even though the movie packs in a bit too much, it's still executed extremely well. Peter wearing the symbiote suit fuels some of the humor as we see him become a huge twat and the situation only becomes irritating during the kinda funny but completely retarded dance sequence. The fight scenes are wonderfully choreographed, one of my favorites being the Sandman fight in the sewer/train track tunnel. The final battle is the highlight as brings together all aspects of the story and wraps them up in a satisfying way. I enjoyed Spiderman 3, not as much as the other two but I believe it does a great job of concluding the over-arching storyline. There's a fourth movie coming, but I'm not really looking forward to it as superhero series don't really do so well after three movies... oh well at least these first three films were good.

Klonoa (Review)

Klonoa: Door to Phantomile for the Playstation is a game many people have hailed as a must play game, so I was pretty excited to get my hands on this Wii remake. It makes sense that Nintendo would release a remake of this game as it has a lot in common with Nintendo's own Kirby series. Both feature a sickeningly cute cast, both take place in some kind of dream world where some kind of nightmare creature is invading, the main villain in this game bares an odd resemblance to the main villain of Kirby's Adventure, and both are incredibly easy platformers that are really solid diversions.

As a platformer all Klonoa really adds to the mix is grabbing and throwing you're enemies, and using you're enemies to jump higher. It's well implemented and helps Klonoa stand out from the pack. He can also use his ears to float for a few seconds, kinda like Yoshi's flutter jump...only not as good. I didn't like that the closest thing to walking for Klonoa was a jog, and this makes the latter stages a bit of an annoyance when trying to make some precise jumps. The game doesn't present any real challenge from beginning to end, but that's unsurprisingly not a big downside as the game (like the Kirby series) is fun enough to overlook that detail. The words that I would use to describe Klonoa are fast, easy, and fun. It's a well made platformer that the Wii needs more of. There's a PS2 sequel that I hope gets remade for the Wii, but if it doesn't I'll definitely find a copy for the PS2.

Bomberman Generation (Review)

I kinda enjoyed the Bomberman single player games that were released on the Nintendo 64. They weren't exactly stellar, but they were memorable little excursions. Bomberman Generations is the first of two Bomberman games released for the Gamecube, and it's pretty fun. Its still retains the basic go from point A to point B while blowing everything up that the older games featured and it also adds these odd pokemon like things called charaboms that you raise and battle. The charaboms add neat abilities to your bombs like maximum fire power or remote control movement for the bombs. Before long, I become adept at avoiding enemies and solving puzzles and I quickly gain enough power-ups to deal with most any problem.

The flaw of the story mode is that it's fairly easy and too short. The difficulty of the bosses don't progress as you make your way through the game, but rather become easier. With the charaboms, crushing any and all obstacles is a piece of cake, with an exceptional few. What I found most irritating were these god awful mini games that you have to play in order to gain an item needed to progress through game. The premise behind most of them are crap, the control for most of them are ill conceived, and the execution of most of them are horrid. Other than that the game is a lot of fun. It certainly doesn't revolutionize the action genre or blow you away, but it does what it sets out to do well.

Songs I Like - Vol 2: "The Great Escape" (Boys Like Girls)

I don't care too much for the band Boys Like Girls. They're just too generic for my tastes. But I will admit that I love their second single "The Great Escape". My friend was playing this song in his car constantly this past week and I haven't been able to get it out of my head.

Lyrics to The Great Escape:

Paper bags and plastic hearts
All are belongings in shopping carts
It's goodbye
But we got one more night
Let's get drunk and ride around
And make peace with an empty town
We can make it right

Throw it away
Forget yesterday
We'll make the great escape
We won't hear a word they say
They don't know us anyway
Watch it burn
Let it die
Cause we are finally free tonight

Tonight will change our lives
It's so good to be by your side
But we'll cry
We won't give up the fight
We'll scream loud at the top of our lungs
And they'll think it's just cause we're young
And we'll feel so alive

Throw it away
Forget yesterday
We'll make the great escape
We won't hear a word they say
They don't know us anyway
Watch it burn
Let it die
Cause we are finally free tonight

All of the wasted time
The hours that were left behind
The answers that we'll never find
They don't mean a thing tonight

Throw it away
Forget yesterday
We'll make the great escape
We won't hear a word they say
They don't know us anyway

Throw it away
Forget yesterday
We'll make the great escape
We won't hear a word they say
They don't know us anyway

Throw it away
Forget yesterday
We'll make the great escape
We won't hear a word they say
They don't know us anyway
Watch it burn
Let it die
Cause we are finally free tonight

Angry Video Game Nerd - Vol 1 (Review)

Apparently its James Rolfe's birthday today.

James Rolfe somehow managed to make a career out of yelling about 20 year old video games. Starting out as a series of Youtube videos, Rolfe's "Angry Video Game Nerd" series quickly stood out from the pack, just watching this guy brutally curse out some of these old games for a few minutes and it's easy to see why he is one of the most subscribed youtube users of all time. Eventually, James got hired to produce these videos for Screwattack.com and later Gametrailers.com. This DVD covers his first couple of youtube videos and his first official year as the nerd. These episodes mostly set the basic layout of the series, each review ranges from 3 to 10 minutes and during that time he exposes some the flaws in the games like high difficulty, tedious gameplay, bad controls, and even spelling errors...while cursing like sailor. There are few people who can really make fowl language itself funny and Rolfe mostly succeeds at this. My favorite of these early episodes is "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" which is a game so bad that the nerd doesn't even bother showing us much of the actual game and I think it's one of the best written episodes of the series.

It would have been easy for him to just keep doing quick straight reviews but thankfully, Rolfe starts to experiment a little with the format in the latter end of this run. "Friday the 13th" and "A Nightmare on Elm Street" showcase higher production values and these episodes start Rolfe's habit of adding some kind of entertaining storyline in addition to his reviews. Rolfe injects his real life passion and knowledge of films into an episode that talks about confusing movie titles. The Christmas episode that concludes this run is another highlight that sees a group of reviews for unlicensed Christian bible games. At this point Rolfe doing a great job of keeping the series from growing stale. This show is pretty damn good for an Internet series. I'm not as crazy about the show as I was a year ago, but I can say that The Angry Video Game Nerd doesn't disappoint.

The Hangover (Review)

My friend wanted me to go see this with him. I went even though I didn't really think a movie about four guys waking up in Las Vegas after a bachelor party, not knowing what happened the night before would be that great...I can admit when I'm wrong. The Hangover has to be the funniest film I've seen in a while and it seems to be one of those rare comedies that we're going to be quoting lines to our friends for weeks afterward.

The film plays out like a comedic mystery as three of the four guys have to wonder around piecing together what happened the night before in order to find their friend, Doug, who was absent when they woke up. The best part is that there are real clues to where Doug has vanished and it is possible figure the truth out before the big reveal. Something else that I really like is that when the guys first wake up, their room is destroyed and many odd things are in the room: a tiger, a baby, one of the guys is missing a tooth and another apparently went to hospital. What's cool is where most films would have left that as a just an unrelated joke, The Hangover actually takes time to explain where these things came from and often the truth is just as funny as what could have been implied.

It is the acting talent and the dedication of Helms, Cooper and Gilifanakis that make the movie work. Bradley Cooper has a few laughs in his role of the likeable dickheaded group leader. Ed Helms wears the role of a guy broken down by his bitch girlfriend like a glove. But the comedy crown goes to Zach Gilifanakis as Doug's future brother in law. If you didn’t know who Zach Gilifanakis was before this movie started, you’ll know who he is now. He not only steals the movie, he runs away with it early on and never looks back.

The only problems I had in the movie was that the Asian mobster that appears late in film is very annoying, although he does get some good lines in and I also didn't like that the way guys figure out where Doug is due to a random dialogue exchange rather than from a concrete clue. Other than that I really liked this movie. All I can say is that if you’re looking for a good, fun movie, look no further.

Banjo-Kazooie - XBLA (Review)

I loved this game when it was first released for the Nintendo 64 over 10 years ago. I haven't played the game much since then, but I was really excited to hear that Mircosoft was releasing the game for their X-Box Live Arcade service in conjunction with the franchise's recent game "Nuts & Bolts". I'm pleased to say that the game is just as fun as it was then. I personally think Banjo-Kazooie was better than Super Mario 64 (and I love Mario 64). The game takes the formula of that game and tightens it up. Like Mario 64 (and almost every 3d platformer since) you're still collecting a certain number of objects to gain access to other areas. It’s a formula which has been used many times before by platformers new and old, but that doesn’t mean it feels anywhere close to dated here – it’s still just as much fun to play, if not more than when it was released all those years ago.

The game keeps throwing new gameplay concepts just as you've come to master the last one. By the time you've gotten the hang of egg shooting, you're learning to fly. After you've learned to fly, you learn a dive bomb attack and so on and so on. This is a wonderful method of gameplay that I wish more games these days would adopt, it really keeps things from getting stale and repetitive. The best part is not the sheer number of moves, but how necessary they are in many situations and the ease and responsiveness at which they are pulled off. Many puzzles are designed to be solved with a specific move or combination of moves. . The game is very well-balanced in this respect, and since most moves are specialized with obvious purposes, it's never a matter of guessing to get past an obstacle.

Rare's talent for creating well written stories is still intact as the characters are charming and the dialogue is amusing, though it's not as clever as it thinks. The game was never as challenging as Mario 64 and this re-release actually makes the game easier by saving all the items you collect as you collect them (You would lost them if you dyed or quit in the original). The gaming world is littered with 3d platformers, but this game stands out from the crowd even 10 years later. I proudly admit that Banjo-Kazooie is a game I love.

[Prototype] (Review)

I was pretty excited for this game prior to it's release. The game seemed to cater to my needs of playing as some kind of super anti-hero going around and causing chaos. The end product is a tad disappointing, basically taking an interesting concept and doing almost nothing with it. Off the top of my head I cannot think of a single story mission that did not involve going somewhere, destroying this or kill that. It's mostly well done so it's not to much of a problem. The game does however commit some of my pet peeves in video games:

1) A large open world to explore with almost nothing interesting to do.
2) Boss fights where half of the difficulty comes from weaker enemies that attack along with the boss.
3) Collectibles that are too high in numbers and not worth the effort to collect.
4) Difficultly level that remains fairly consistent for most of the game and then suddenly jumps up at the tail end of the game (the final boss specifically).

The story in itself is rather bland and there's a convoluted backstory that is revealed by absorbing web of interest targets. Tracking these people down is fun and the backstory cutscenes that result from it are wonderfully designed, but their presented in a random order and when when you finally track down all of the targets, there's no option to view the related cutscenes in their proper order.

I know I just spent a lot of time complaining about the game, but I actually really enjoyed it more than I should have. You have a vast amount of attacks and abilities to tackle obstacles, so many in fact that most of them will never be used. The city is fun to run around as you jump and glide from building to building. The missions are really fun despite most of them following the same structure and they feature numerous checkpoints to avoid frustration. The game definitely could have been handled better, but luckily most of those pet peeves I mentioned come off more like annoyances than major problems. If you can handle some annoyances, this is still a really good action game.