Adam Allcroft

I'm Adam Allcroft, the resident 3DS expert and general British guy. I love most Nintendo products, though I do have a 360, especially RPGs such as Dragon Quest and Pokemon. I also have a weak spot for sports games and Football Manager. Contrary to popular belief, I do not own a top hat, but I do own a worker's cap as I'm a Northener. My Xbox Live gamertag is adamallcroft13 and my 3DS Friend Code is 5069-3911-1450, feel free to add.

What makes a ‘casual’ game a success?

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Feb 212012
 

We all know that making the greatest games ever does not mean they will beome universal successes. We see that now with games such as Xenoblade (which you haven’t got, nyaah) and Soul Bubbles. Then we get angry when crap mini game collections sell well mainly because of mums.

But most mini game collections are actually failures. Many many collections simply flop because of a lack of publicity and quality. So it seems as if making a typical casual game isn’t the way to be a commercial hit, so how do you do it?

This man knows how!

Well firstly, you need to get your games in supermarkets. Yes, Wal-Mart is the key to success. Mums, who are they key to success nowadays, do not go into Gamestop or CEX. When they buy games, it will be while on the weekly shop. So the publisher needs to spend the money its on the shelf next to the cabbages.

It also needs to be original but familiar. Most mums will be on a tight budget, so if they buy something they are after something they are sure they’ll like, and remember they don’t and won’t do the research beforehand, so they have to judge on the back of the box. Will they buy anything unique? No, they’re not sure whether their kid, who they are buying the game for, will like it. But won’t they buy the same old thing though? Course not, have you ever bought a child under a ten a toy similar to something they already have? They will be mardy (Yorkshire slang translation: Upset) and act up. The mums won’t bother with that.

This child has already got Carnival Games, yet her mother has got her Game Party. She is underrreacting in my opinion.

Oh and remember that it has to be child friendly. Thanks to various awareness programs, parents are more aware of the age rating system. This will hopefully prevent parents from buying some uber violent game for their five year old, like what used to happen. Now, they will check it. Also, no way to realistic games, it has to be cartoony. Even semi cartoony things can sometimes make it in, but usually real life will not be bought.

The key thing however is price. As I’ve mentioned before mums are on a tight budget and will not want a game that will seriously bump up the bill at the tills. So that $60 blockbuster game? No way. But somehing half that, is much more appealing. This was the reason Just Dance was a success, it was cheap and looked good on the shelves.

It also sold because you can BOOGIE

But there has been many an original game that has been sold at a supermarket for a cheap price that is child friendly. I bought the excellent A Boy and his Blob for a bargain £8 from my local Morrisons. So is there anything extra? Well yes, something that publishers can’t control. Gossip.

While many will call me sexist for saying this, women enjoy to talk about stuff. They will give each other advice on make up, clothes and obviously relationships. Sometimes, and this will make some of you have a crisis I’m sure, they talk about video games. They will say its good and trust that opinion completely and buy it. And it goes on. Just Dance, Wii Fit and many others fed off this great marketing resource. Heck, Twitter and Facebook makes this even more prominent.

This bird is a wet dream for admen. Though they don't have a feather fetish unlike actors.

So you can have best publishing and developing team in the world making a game directly aimed at the whole family but if you don’t manage to get tongues wagging, the money men will be taking your stuff for repayment.

What makes games addictive?

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Feb 132012
 

You may remember that one of my first articles for this website was about some of the most addictive games. Now I wish to explore that a little further and actually write something clever, not offensive to most of you Americans. What actually makes a game addictive, what part of a game makes us never want to turn off our console?

For this, I am going to pick three games all from different genres. My personal time sink Football Manager, the game that almost every article on here is about Skyrim and the original addictive mess that is Tetris. Games that missed out are World of Warcraft, addiction funnily told in South Park and Starcraft where a Korean gamer died playing.

Your average Warcraft players.

At first glances, they seem completely different. Football Manager is an in-depth simulation game which looks frightening to the average moe. Skyrim is a huge Action RPG with a massive world to explore. Tetris is a simple puzzle game. But together they have probably broke up marriages, forced people into rehab and made adult diapers a valuable asset. How come games so different can all have the same effect into turning us into zombies that piss ourselves?

If you look a bit more in depth, you’ll still struggle to find the similarities. Skyrim has an end, when you’ve done all the quests. Tetris hasn’t, and Football Manager hasn’t either unless you win every cup in every nation, which I think is impossible.

You might be pointing to the depth and yes both Skyrim and Football Manager check these boxes fairly easily. Skyrim goes without saying and Football Manager has the many numerous ways you can achieve the titles. But then tetris breaks it because there really isn’t that much depth, its just moving some shapes around to fit in the gaps.

So we’re left in a complete mystery. These three games have only one feature in common, that they are very addictive. There seems to be no magic formula to making a game addictive, or is there because I think I’ve cracked it.

This is not it.

That feeling when you finish a quest. That feeling when you’ve completed a Tetris. That feeling when you’ve won the Premier League with Swindon Town. They don’t just give you immense satisfaction, they give you a high, the root of all addictions. They give you a safe high thats made not by drugs but by the serotonin in your body. Its makes you happy and you keep on playing so you can get another high. So there you go. Don’t take drugs because Skyrim does the same thing without f*****g up your organs.

Just Dance 3 Review (Wii)

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Jan 162012
 

-Error reading from ESRB datastream-
Please visit ESRB.org for rating information.

When we think of the greatest games ever, we tend to think of those that contain massive adventures with endless scope and imagination of the best. Its why when people make those cliched lists have Mario, Zelda and more recently Skyrim on the top of the lists. But games are meant for fun and to waste your time on. So really, Just Dance should be near the top of every list.

The original Just Dance was a real surprise. It seemed like just another cheap game made to capitalise on families. This is why most review companies actually ignored it. But we were all forced to take notice when it shot to the top of gaming charts, becoming the first 3rd party Wii game to hit the top of the charts. Reviews panned it, when they got around to it, for poor controls and a boring single player. So why was it a success?

Because when you got some like minded or drunk friends, prefably both, and you have a great dance song on, its a blood good laugh. Especially if one of you fell over. After every routine, you were pissing yourself at your friends who looks like morons. And the best thing is that you also look like an idiot. It was perfect.

I can tell you now that if you have never liked Just Dance or its many spin offs, with Abba, Michael Jackson and Broadway even Guitar Hero cringes at the amount of spin offs, I hereby name you party pooper. But even with that, you won’t like this. With many fans, Just Dance doesn’t need to change. It can keep the same engine, and just change the songs and it will still be a hit.

So the game relies on its soundtrack. Luckily the soundtrack is massively varied and even the biggest musical snob will find something to appreciate. You’ve got Cee Lo Green, Katy Perry and even Queen. What impressed me most was the amount of European music on offer. Not just British acts like Jessie J, but stuff from the continent. Lena Meyer-Landrut, the winner of Eurovision 2010, is featured and even Bollywood Rainbow from India have a song. It shows us Ubisoft were thinking about the soundtrack.

Its also worth pointing out that the game likes to give you some persuasion to play in single player. You earn points which then get you extra modes such as altered versions the songs on the game. While its nice that Ubisoft have thought about this, it doesn’t really make you want to carry on playing.

There is also a Just Sweat mode, which is meant to help you keep fit using the game. Its a novel idea where you collect ‘sweat points’. It also has a multiplayer mode. But sweat points mean nothing to me. I don’t know how many calories I’m burning, and that’d be more useful and more useful to people on diets.

Its weird then the main problem will come with your size. Yes your height, not the controls. The controls aren’t accurate, they are worse if you are six foot like me. For instance when you have to raise your arms to full stretch, which you have to do a lot, the game often can’t detect it due to the limits of the sensor bar. This can be rectified by raising the sensor bar but often then when the shorter people do the low down moves they are not detected.

Despite this what normally be a fatal flaw, the game is still fun. You don’t care about poor controls when you are dancing way, having a while of a time while everyone else is laughing and one schmuck is trying to sing along. Its even fun when you are constantly being beaten by your girlfriend who normally thinks games are the Satan’s work.

Just Dance 3 is the ultimate party game, just because its a right good laugh.

Nintendo Wii

Graphics

85
  

Audio

100
  

Gameplay

75

Creativity

70
  

Execution

90
  

Offset

80
    

8.3
  

How do these ratings work? Click here for descriptions!

Pros:
Great fun with friends
Massive variety of songs

Cons:
Just Sweat rather pointless
Controls are a pain.

Gaming Irresponsibly Staff Votes – Adam Allcroft

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Dec 112011
 

Bit late I know, but you Americans arrive late to every one of our wars so I thought you could get the same punishment.

Action Adventure of the Year

Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword

Eiji Anouma famously said in an interview that he wouldn’t retire until he surpassed the magnificence of Ocarina of Time. We all mocked saying he would be working till he is in his 200s. However he can retire happy now, because he has created one of the greatest games ever. The gameplay is perfect, with MotionPlus being the best addition to the series since it was made in 3D. The dungeons were top class, being perfectly designed. This was superb.

RPG of the year

Elder Scrolls V – Skyrm

This is awkward. I have not played any of the nominations. All I played RPG like this year was Pokemon Black, which was not a nomination for some bizarre reason. So I have to take the comments of one of my friends who is slowly losing his life to Skyrim. Well when you start to lose your life to a game, isn’t that the sign of a good game? Also, there are some awesome statue competitions at game stores because of the game.

Shooter of the Year

Battlefield 3

I think we are all broed of Call of Duty now. So how come Battlefield appealed to me, when they are so similar? Well it was the online maybe. The maps were designed to deter campers, which means no morons. That was another bonus, no stupid Americans who think because you are British, they must lecture you false infomation on why they won WW2 for us. Just as a quick history lesson, the Americans had hardly anything to do with the European Front, and just sent some broken tanks and ships to keep the good feelings up. Anyway, an amazing campaign and multiplayer with decent people wins this for me.

Sports Game of the Year

FIFA 12

Wel I’m a Brit, what do you expect? Football, yes I call it football not soccer like you heretics, is my favourite sport ever and FIFA is the perfect representation of this. The amount on offer, including the fantastic Ultimate Team and season modes, but what really appeals is the work and detail. My team Sheffield Wednesday are not the highest they will be, but despite being in the third tier of football there is the right kit, the players names are correct and the competitions are fully licensed. That is so important to fans like me, and there is no other sports game with so much work put into it.

Fighting Game of the Year

Mortal Kombat

Sometimes, we get frustrated. We get frustrated at bad games. Most of all we get frustrated at average games from previously great serieses. Mortal Kombat for years was like this. Then fans anger rose after the turgid DC Universe cross over, and something had to change. It did. Sometimes the best way to find out what made the series great is to go back to the beginning and see why people made a fuss over the game. It was the blood. The fatalities. So they brought them back. Thats the only reason this game is on this list btw.

Puzzle/Strategy Game of the Year

Portal 2

Seriously, no Football Manager 2012? I’ve seriously lost days to that game? No? Damn. Not even some Professor Layton? My god. So I have to go with a puzzle classic to be, Portal 2. This game had the usual Valve sheen, and that dark sense of humour that makes every game they make fantastic. The puzzles though were a masterpiece. They were amazing, and you always got a headache after playing like any great puzzle game. This will be a classic.

Indie Game of the Year

I’m sorry, I haven’t played on any of these games and have no friends to direct me. I just like the mainstream releases, ok?

Platformer of the Year

Super Mario 3D Land

I recently declared this the best game of the year for the 3DS, so obviously it was going to win this as well. No one makes better platformers than Nintendo, like no one makes better vans than Ford. This is definitely proved by this game. Everything is pitched perfectly, such as the difficulty curve which ramps up at such a level that you’ll be thinking how easy the early levels were. There was bounless imagination in every level, and there is a ton to do. I really should get round to finishing the special worlds soon.

Family Game of the Year

Just Dance 3

If I looked at this game on a purely technical view, I’d declare this as a broken game because most of the time the controls do not work. However, I never play this game on its own. I play this game with family, or with my girlfriend. Then this game magically turns from a broken mess into one of the greatest games of all time. Why? Because I can guarantee you after every session you’ll have a massive smile on your face. And after all, isn’t that the point of games?

Game of the Year

Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword

As mentioned before, this is a masterpiece. This is a masterpiece of design and drue video game designing skill. Every person who wants to make games should be made to play this game and aim to try and beat its quality in its life time. Then the gaming world would be brilliant.

The Best 3DS games of 2011

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Dec 072011
 

This year was the launch of the 3DS. When released in March to a fairly weak opening, it was blasted with criticism that it melted your eyes. Obviously gamers didn’t care about that, we were worried that none of the games released in the early months were not essential. However once Ocarina of Time 3D was released, the 3DS turned a corner and finally the flood of great games came. Here are the ten 3DS games that made sure its launch year wasn’t a failure.

10. Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars

Here was a surprise. While we were all concentrating on Splinter Cell as the main Tom Clancy game, which ended up being a pile of shit, this one crept up on us and became a shock winner, and one of the best of that dire launch line up. The game may not be original but this strategy game is hugely addictive and will keep you attached for around 40 hours. This is now in bargain bins because of the lack of interest, and is well worth a go.

9. Ridge Racer 3D

With what was a fairly poor representation of Street Fighter on the 3DS, it ended up being Namco who saved the launch with what was the most solid package of the luanch line up. The graphics looked great and made you want to play in 3D, especially with the water spraying all over the csreen. There were a ton of races to take part in, and they ended up being really difficult and a challenge simply to win. This was the best racing game on the 3DS, until that certain plumber turned up.

8. Pac Man and Galaga Dimensions

Namco have been on great form this year for the 3DS, but the rebirth of Pac-Man was something to acclaim. This game had six games, all of them were solid. You had the three Pac Man games, with the original Pac Man beign as addictive as ever and the Championship Edition being brilliant. However it was Tilt that stole the day, with its innovative control system, it was the best of the package. However the Galaga section didn’t let down. The old Galaga is losing its shine, but Galaga Legions is mad geniius and 3D Impact is a properly good shooter. A fantastic bargain.

7. Star Fox 3D

We were all looking forward to this one, especially as it brought Fox into the glory days of N64, and just shooting everything you saw in sight. Great, it meant we could go mad and even try to shoot Slippy down. Sadly though, while we knew the gameplay was going to be excellent, we also forgot that our modern tastes need a lot more for our money. However StarFox is from a different time, when we would play a level twenty times to find a new stage. However now we won’t do that, and that means StarFox isn’t as good as it used to be.

6. Dead or Alive Dimensions

To be honest, we didn’t really care about this game. But when it turned out our hotly anticipated games were coming later than we thought, this game suddenly became ever so more important. It then became the best fighter on the console. First, it was actually a 3D fighter that worked on a handheld, which is to be admired. Then it was the online which actually worked, showing the 3DS’ online days could be very good. More importantly, it was very fun.

5. Tetris 3D

We all love a bit of Tetris. From the iconic music to the various ailments caused through addiction, we have loved Tetris in every edition it has been in. Now despite my jokes about how Tetris in 3D is not going to matter one jot, this is the definitive version. All the features from before return but with some extra stuff thta makes it all the much better. Also you can now spread the AR fun, with some frankly amazing Tetris games in AR, if they are a bit limitted. Also, its cheap!

4. Cave Story 3D

We’ve seen god knows how many ports of that original free PC game. So when the inevitable 3DS was announced, we wanted something a bit different. And we got it. The graphics got a massive re-invention but despite that the massive charm still shone through. Also we still experienced that fantastic level design, the beautiful music and the stunning story. I am still in disbelief that this was made by just one person.

3. Mario Kart 7

Despite the ‘hardcore’ bemoaning Mario kart Wii because it toke away snaking to make the game more fun and equal, Mario Kart 7 is still one of the most anticipated games for the console. It paid off. Despite my many fears that the new gimmicks, the fact you can fly, go underwater and customize your kart for specific tracks, simply would not work out, the game became something fairly incredible. You may have seen some establishments call Mario Kart 7 the best Mario Kart ever. I’d agree.

2. Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D

Wow. Thats what I said when I closed the 3DS lid after defeating Ganon for the first ever time in this classic. After waking up as a kid in the Kokiri forest to escaping Ganon’s tower, only to be confronted by the beast when you finally do escape. Being attacked by an invisible creature to going into the Temple of Time and becoming an adult. All of these are classic moments that will be ingrained into every worthy gamer’s mind. How can anything beat this? How can anything match the care, skill and passion put into this game? Is it even possible?

1. Super Mario 3D Land

Oh my. Super Mario galaxy was one of the greatest feats Nintendo have ever done. They then had to surpass that when they decided to make the first ever brand new 3D adventure for the DS. Some how, they have done it. There were many fears that the changes to make the game a lot like the good old 2D days would just hinder the game, but it gave the game pace, that you had to do things quickly. It also played brilliantly into the short burst nature of the handheld. The fact after you think the game has short changed you by giving you only around six hours of gameplay, to give you double the amount of special worlds. How the 3D is used to such a brilliant effect, you never want to turn it off, even when your other half has collected the drips of your eyebals. Simply amazing and not only the best game on the 3DS, but one of the greatest of all time.

/rant Online Passes? There Are Holes in My Games!

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Nov 242011
 

Video game companies realised that they couldn’t really win the war on piracy, as the people who managed to crack all the defence codes are really clever and if you put more complex codes on, these piracy people will just crack them again. It was a lot of work and money for no gain. So they gave up that war, and every so often sue Pirate Bay to make it look as though they are doing something. Now though they hate Pre Owned games, and they have a massive vengeance to stop people buying them.

At first they sent nasty letters towards game companies who do pre owned games. However both need eachother to exist so nothing actually happened. The the game companies actually did something rather good, and offered incentives for people who bought games new. This was DLC that you could live without but was a nice bonus to anyone who bought the game new. Also if you really wanted it and bought it pre owned, you could still get it online.

We were pretty close to this, but with Xboxs.

However now, the video game companies have decided they are going to go one step further. They have now decided that unless you buy new game, you will not be allowed to go online unless you pay a fee. Yes, a major part of the game will be taken away from you if you can not afford the $60 the game costs.

Its like these publishers have no idea what world they are living in. There are only three reasons people will buy pre owned games. 1. They are massive cheapskates. 2. The game they are looking for is only available in pre owned now and 3. They simply cannot afford it. Obviously I will address all three issues because I am a boss like that.

Or this guy.

Now obviously the main target audience for changing people from buying Pre Owned are the cheapskates. If you are not familiar with the term, it means people who will deliberately go for the cheapest option no matter what. These people will also complain about rip offs and have some weird sort of pride about it. When they buy the game and realise that the online multiplayer, they’ll just sell the game on. It won’t make them buy the new game, just out of spite. Yeah thats typical Yorkshire, which is why I know so much.

A lot of games are simply not in production any more. Either they weren’t successful enough to warrant any more printing or they are very old and there is no point. When games do go out of production, it is very hard to find them new as obviously they simply aren’t being ordered. Soon this will happen to the games with Online Passes, so lets say you want to buy Battlefield 3 in 5 years. It won’t be possible to get it new because Battlefield 8 is out, and no one actually cares about Battlefield 3 anymore apart from you. So what if you want to check out of the multiplayer, or co-op play with someone else equally sad. Unless you cough up the dough online, you won’t be able to.

This was the story of your life, but now there is obsessions with old video games.

Now the ones who will be punished most will be those who simply can’t afford brand new games every month. We are living during a double dip recession and a lot of people are losing their jobs due to reasons beyond their control. It may sound a little sad but many are resorting to gaming in order to have a bit of fun, a bit of respite from looking for work. Some are even taking game making courses simply because the games industry is still growing. Obviously when scrimping and saving you can’t justify a $60 purchase, or more for certain Activision games, the Pre Owned games are the only way to go. Why should they miss out on major parts of a game because they simply don’t have the money? No wonder they were all in Wall Street and now camping outside every cathedral in England.

Yes publishers, if you get rid of online passes, the Occupy and 99% movement will stop.

The 3DS hits of 2012

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Nov 162011
 

After a price cut, and an onslaught of amazing games and some helpful advertisements, the 3DS is finally taking off. Oh yes, instead of reading these articles with some laughter thinking that no success will come of the 3DS, it is now the new hot gadget to get. But as we look towards 2012, which games will be topping our list?

Metal Gear Solid 3D

So finally, will we be able to get our hands on this remake of the PS2 classic? According to Konami, yes we will and in the early part of the year as well. Woooo! So what will this game offer us? Well we get the award winning stealth that we’ve come to expect and love about the series. We also get some 3DS exclusive features, such as clever use of the accelerometer and a unique feature called camoflauge. This feature will see you taking pictures of real life objects and then using their colours to help you hide from your enemies. Obviously you’ll be sticking to green leaves and vines, and not the bright pink flowers that the trailer recommends. Yeah Konami, not too smart. Though very dashing.

No worse than some of the bridges in Sheffield

Resident Evil: Revelations

This is another big mature title that keeps getting pushed further back but just like Konami, Capcom promise us that we shall be receiving this in the first half of the year. So what will we be exploring this time? Well unlike earlier suspicions, it won’t just be a spooky cruise ship we will be scared to death of. We’ll also be taken up to the dizzying heights of a mountain range, plus various other environments. Capcom are promising the full Resident Evil experience, and something that is actually scary unlike Resident Evil 5 which was just blowing up as many mutants as possible. We simply cannot wait.

Someone will clean that up

Professor Layton vs Phoenix Wright

We are still not sure if Capcom and Level 5 will be taking this over to Western shores but hopefully this extra bite of publicity will help convince them because this is easily one of my most anticipated titles. Our heroes end up in a Medieval style village where a girl is being accused of witchcraft, and Phoenix Wright is drafted in to defend her. However these trials are not standard court trials that we’ve experienced before, though we expect at some point to return there, but ‘mob trials’ where simple hear say can count as evidence. Gulp. However Professor Layton will be helping to solve puzzles that will hopefully save this girl. This could be amazing.

This is the window into the most british life possible.

Professor Layton and the Mask of Miracle

So you are not into this crossover malarkey and would rather have a solid Professor Layton game to play, prefably continuing on the new trilogy? Well luckily for you, Level 5 are making such a game, and it is also looking just as good. We actually know a lot of the details to this already and if you really want to know, the ending, as it was actually a launch title for Japan, so hopefully we’ll get this by the end of 2012. Layton and Luke visit Montdolm City which is having a celebration. That is until a man in a mask starts to turn everyone into a stone, and is a general party pooper. Layton then tries to solve the mystery, which as usual won’t be as it seems. Should be awesome.

I actually wore this outfit on Haloween. They thought I was a Communist and got lost.

Kid Icarus: Uprising

It seems like a common theme between this games are constant delays. This one was originally labelled as a launch title but now we are most likely going to get it in the first part of 2012. This game looks like no other on the 3DS, and could carve a new genre out. You are trying to take down the evil Medusa once again, but the story has plenty of knowing nods and a good dose of humour, which makes that voice acting slightly more bearable. The gameplay is much more interesting however. At first your swooping through the air taking down enemies in the blink of an eye just like in Sin and Punishment. Then your on the ground slicing up enemies easily and calmly, until the later levels obviously. Which will kill you, if it follows in Kid Icarus tradition.

This is a typical flight over North Korea.

Animal Crossing

I don’t really like Animal Crossing. I find it a game where you just wander around doing chores, and if I really wanted to do chores I’d do them in the house. For money. However I know many people are excited for the 3DS version so I have included it in this list. You lot will all be thrilled that you can change your house shape, with obvious references to fellow Nintendo franchises such as Zelda. You’ll also have some advanced models which allow better costumes, YOU CAN WEAR TROUSERS AND SKIRTS, and the most exciting new feature is that you can swim. My god.

If you Yanks had Lazytown, this caption would be so easy.

Luigi’s Mansion 2

You thought Resident Evil had the ability to scare you shitless? Just wait until you play this. Ghosts jump out of wardrobes just to scare you. But as the protagonist, you need those ghosts, so you must scare yourself in order to advance the game! How evil a formula is that! You may be able to detect my sarcasm there, but even though we’ll be laughing at poor Luigi rather than looking as pale as a sheet, this will still be a fun game. Nintendo have addressed the concerns that people had about the original. Ghost battling is expected to have some extra difficulty, there will be more mansions to explore and it will be a longer experience. Yay for us, nay for Luigi, who will need some therapy and medication after this one!

Notice the face in the background?

/rant: Stupid Games Tweeting!

 Posted by  No Responses »
Nov 112011
 

This is Monday night and I am looking at my Twitter. Honestly, I have free time and shouldn’t be doing anything to do with college. And what do I see? Well tonnes of people hyping up the release of Modern Warfare 3 that night, and how it will be the world ending game and that everyone else’s Zeldas and Battlefields will look pathetic. And simply, I do not care.

I know that a lot of the people who follow me don’t actually care about games. That is why I do not constantly go on about them. I do not want to give what are mainly my friends a load of nonsense that they don’t really care about. So my Twitter is used for what are hopefully thoughtful and funny statements that will provoke a response and then some good light hearted discussion. Much like what I post on here, but with less characters and more sex jokes.

Just like him!

I also like to see the same sort of tweets. I like tweets that will make me think, and help me waste more of my time that I should be using on college work. However when people start tweeting about games, the intelligence of the tweets seem to go down for no reason whatsoever.

For instance, most of the tweets involving Modern Warfare 3 normally went like this “MW3 tonight!!!! Can’t wait!!” which does not add anything. Now I know you want Modern Warfare 3, but do I really care? I most likely have your XBLA so if I really wanted to know, I could just check on there in a couple of days. Couldn’t you tell me on why you actually excited, instead of just using pointless exclamation marks?

Just one

Then there are your insulting tweets because your opinions aren’t the same as someone else’s. I said that I wasn’t excited for Modern Warfare 3 because of the lack of change and it was an unproven developer making it. I got a couple of tweets about my mother and her infidelity, as well as people questioning my sexuality. Yes because I wasn’t looking forward to the release of a game that allows me to hear insults from ten year olds that really shouldn’t have the game, I liked Louie Spence.

So really what am I saying? Well tweets about games are a minefield. The type of game you buy can show what type of person you actually are. And you put that over Twitter and it can make people judge you a lot. But please, gamers already have a bad reputation for bad grammar. So when you tweet about a game, please put some thought into it.

And use spell check.

Review – Football Manager 2012 (PC)

 Posted by  No Responses »
Nov 052011
 

-Error reading from ESRB datastream-
Please visit ESRB.org for rating information.

You Americans. You don’t know what you’re missing. Because you like your sports to stop every minute so you can have an advert for Budweiser, you have missed on the delights of proper football. The simple delight of seeing a beautifully constructed move ending with a fantastic finish, well nothing matches it. But by not supporting the greatest sport on earth, you are missing out not only on FIFA, but the most addictive game of all time, Football Manager.

Football Manager does what it says on the tin, it puts you in charge of the club. You control everything from transfers to training, and you have to not only please your chairman, usually the owner of the club, and the fans. This requires a lot of patience and a lot of work, but its well worth it.

Every year, Football Manager does never make any major changes. Usually there is a slight change to the interface, a couple of minor features are added that if you don’t like you can ignore. Normally though with the fantastic hit rate that Sports Interactive have, the new features are well considered and normally add to the experience. However the main feature added is a big one.

The big selling point is the fact you can add leagues while playing. This may not sound like much, but to us veterans this is massive. Before you could only use the leagues you picked at the start, which severely limitted the game. It meant you had to predict where you could end up in ten years, which was a pain. Now though, if you decide you’ve had enough with life in the MLS, you can add the English Premier League and have your dream of managing West Brom fulfilled.

There isn’t just this however though. You get to hand pick the best youth players for your academy, much like you would with a draft in American sports, and dispose of the ones that just aren’t good enough. In press conferences and private chats you can pick the tone of your answers, and depending on the personality of who you are talking to, they will react differently.

If you take control of a country, the experience leading upto a tournament is even more realistic. The press hype it all up, just like they do in real life, well British press anyway, and make lots of news articles about certain players. You pick 30 man provisional squads, and then have the two friendlies to wittle down who will be in that final squad. Its fantastic and makes the experience so much more addicting.

The graphics have also been given a bit of a boost. If you pick the 3D camera, there player models are improved and there are a lot more stadiums to look at. It doesn’t look like FIFA, but it’ll do. The interface, which is where you will be spending most of your time, is also much clearer and the better resolution on your screen, the more info you get. You won’t need a powerful rig to run the game, my old casket of a computer can do it fine, but it does make everything better.

If you are a Football Manager veteran, I urge you to get on Steam now and download it. Its just like what you knew with 2011 but even better. The new features will make sure that your girlfriends hate you even more than they already do and the amount of stuff to do is staggering. However if you are a noob to the series, you may want to read on.

The amount of features in Football Manager as I’ve said before is staggering. The amount of stuff you need to be in control of if you want to be a success, and trust me you want to be to avoid suffering the embarrasment of being sacked, especially as it now gets sprayed all over Twitter and Facebook, is very tricky because of the evolution of the series. There are tutorials, but these do not really help you. It takes a lot of work and a bit of trial and error to be a success, and some gamers may not want to go through all that, and just get a quick fix.

Football Manager 2012, an addicting masterpiece but noobs will suffer before their discover the joy of it.

PC Game

Graphics

80
  

Audio

70
  

Gameplay

95

Creativity

90
  

Execution

100
  

Offset

95
    

8.8
  

How do these ratings work? Click here for descriptions!

/rant: Paying for what we have? Thanks for ripping us off!

 Posted by  1 Response »
Oct 192011
 

Imagine you’ve just bought a big box of chocolates. You’ve paid some big money for it, and you are planning to eat them all while watching who Cowell demoralizes next on The X Factor. You open it up and chomp through your favourites. You then notice that there is a seal up portion of the box, to the top right. You look at it and notice there is some writing. It tells you that to have these chocolates, which you don’t know if you’ll like yet, you must pay and extra $8. Despite them being under some plastic.

You might think this is very outlandish and if a company ever tried to do something even remotely similar to this, they’d be a massive outcry and that company would have to apologise and refund lots of money. Yet it is already happening to us gamers. We are buying content on the disc that we have to pay extra for and no one has even raised an eyebrow.

DLC is a good idea. In the right hands it can give a game extra life, and save you money by delaying the time you have to buy a new game. Sure, more often that not the DLC often doesn’t match upto the content in the game but it gives you more time with that game you just can’t bear to leave.

However like everything nowadays, it comes with a dark side. Some publishers thinks that the $60 you pay for a game won’t be enough to buy them the golden bathtub full of pretty ladies. So they play the game, and they see which of the stuff people will really want. And they lock it away behind endless XBL and PSN transactions, you get to pay them some extra money!

It honestly boggles the mind. These developers have got the content ready, its been checked to make sure nothing’s wrong and copied onto the disc. How do they get away then with making us extra? We have already blught the disc and the content, its criminal to then make us pay even more to the publisher. It smacks of greed and nothing else. When it is online, at least we can trick our minds into thinking that its a nice bonus from the developer to make us feel good about ourselves and to justify our pruchase to the other half, not a sneaky ploy to take away your money.

Then I guess some of the blame must lie at our feet. As in the metaphor I said at the start, with any other product there would be a media uproar, with newspapers swarming the creator and calling him the evil face of capitalism. However when DLC on the disc came out, we said nothing. Like the nice obeying people we are, we just bought the content without as much as a murmur.

Well if we don’t say anything, how the hell is it going to stop? When are we just going to buy the right to own the box and then buy the actual game when we get home? When are we going to see prepostrous prices on DLC, because they know we are going to lap it up anyway? Well we shouldn’t.

There are two ways to try and stop the publishers ripping us off. First is to go campaign outside their offices and go make a fuss to the local media. Sadly because it has been going on for so long, they will just laugh at you and label you a communist. The better way, and the most effective way, is to simply not buy any DLC on the disc or not buy any game that tries to rip you off in this way. Simply ignore it and eventually the companies will listen because when their bank accounts dry up, they listen. They listen and sort it out.

Or we could do this

F1 2011 Review (PC)

 Posted by  No Responses »
Oct 122011
 

-Error reading from ESRB datastream-
Please visit ESRB.org for rating information.

As detailed in another article, annual sporting games are like Christmas, Thanksgiving and Easter. You moan about them when they’re coming but on the day you enjoy them and forget about all the moaning. However F1 2011 may have slipped under your radar, mainly because it is based on a sport you Americans shun so you can see idiots go round a ring and crash. Seriously you lot call yourself civilised.

By the way, if you are an F1 fan, skip the review. There is no point you reading on. Even if I said this was the worse racing game ever, you’d still go speeding to the shops faster than Sebasten Vettel. All I can tell you then is that this is the most faithful representation of F1 to date and that everything goes how you want it to, apart from a few niggles.

In the wet, this game looks amazing.

For anyone who has no idea what F1 is, it is very simple. Its a 24 person race with highly specialised cars that last just under two hours around 19 tracks across the globe. You are in a team with one other driver and will treat himma bit nicer than the others. However while I say the basics are very simple, there are a lot of complicated rules that go with it. Stuff like how you have to have used Option and Prime tyres in a dry race, and that you can’t refuel during a race.

Its these little complications that make the game so much different from other racing games like Forza and Gran Turismo. Before the race you must decide your strategy, although you can let your race team get on with that if you wish, and when you’ll pit and whether you will start with the option, the very slick but short life tyre, or the prime, a slick but not as slick as the option thats lasts a bit longer. Thats before you get to the customization screen where you can tweak every little bit about your car. There is a quick screen for this for us not completely into our aerodynamics where we can select if we want high grip or high speed.

 

Its a Virgin. Hehe.

Now as with every annual sports game, you want to hear all the new stuff. Well there is some obvious stuff, and some stuff that only those F1 fans will gobble up. And they won’t care cos earlier on I told them to piss off. Well because of the civil unrest earlier in the year, Bahrain was cancelled and hence the track shall not reappear in the game. However that is replaced by the Indian Grand Prix, which is a very fast track which is fun to play. Other tracks have seen some alterations as they have in real life.

Now for the geeky F1 stuff. Because of rules changes, you cannot move your wing about to increase speed or downforce during a race. You also can’t change engine settings. However lets not just say what you can’t do because I’m starting to sound like the Catholic Church. There is a Co-op Championship, and we doubt only the best of friends will make it to the finish to claim an achievement. The two new gadgets of KERS and DRS will appear. Both will help you overtake, and will be pains in the backside when a car chasing you uses them. KERS is an electronic boost system that will help you accelerate on straights. It will recharge every new lap. DRS allows you to open your rear wing to increase speed on a straight. You can use this anytime during practise or qualifying but only if your on a straight and within a second of the next car during a race.

There is a strange rush of adrenaline when slipstreaming.

That brings me onto another critical thing of the game. You can pick either Long Race Weekend or Short Race Weekend, and they differ a lot. Long Race Weekend is the same as is in real life, where you have three practise sessions, where you can develop your car, and the three tiered knock out qualifying session. In the Short Race Weekend, you get one practise session and one qualifying session to decide your place on the grid.

The career mode has been improved as well. The e-mail system gives you much more information about the race ahead and where the team believes you are with your team mate than the bland PA you got last year. You don’t get an anonymous interviewer this time, but David Croft from Radio 5 Live interviewing you. Whever this is different for other regions, I can not be sure. On the track the Safety Car is much better used, and actually used for once. Also it is impossible not to love the animations after a race, especially if you do badly and you attack the camera.

The attention to detail is amazing

The graphics are simply stunning. They are on par with the amazing Forza and Gran Turismo serieses, and some stages are absolutely breathtaking. There isn’t many more great sights than going through Singapore at night while doing 180mph, racing through the amazing sunset at Abu Dhabi or the general buzz, activity and atmosphere at Monaco. Also when you see the ran drops run down your helmet during a wet race at Silverstone, you know you the successor to this game will struggle to get you even more into the game.

There are very few problems with this game. Its a bit snidy of Codemasters to make you pay more for online if you haven’t got the game new, and we are still waiting for massive 24 player online grand prixs, but we can cope with just sixteen for now. Also, getting on a podium feels less special now we don’t get the special conference. The main problem, which just affects our mind but not the game, is the lack of retirements during a race. I know it sounds bad, but we need more random engine or gearbox break downs to make the results seem like an actual race. However it is an improvement from 2010, when everyone finished everytime. Except at Monaco.

F1 2011 is a great racing game and even if your not an F1 fan, you will still get a lot of fun out of this.

 

PC Game

Graphics

90
  

Audio

80
  

Gameplay

95

Creativity

75
  

Execution

95
  

Offset

90
    

8.8
  

How do these ratings work? Click here for descriptions!

 

The football battle: FIFA Vs PES

 Posted by  No Responses »
Sep 272011
 

We are nearing the end of the year and that means that the annual sports games will get released. There are a wide range of games available from proper football to American football, from Rugby to basketball. Despite us taking the mick of them for not changing that much, they are usually very solid games. But one game in particular doesn’t really get much attention from you lot across the pond. They are FIFA and PES.

Meet Wednesday's token leprechaun.

For the less informed, FIFA is the annual proper football game. If you ignore its ties to the very corrupt organization, and if you cared I could double the size of the article why Sepp Blatter should have his skin roasted and fed to Bermese Mountain Dogs, it is a very good game. However, because of its ties with FIFA, it has one of the best licensing deals in the sports business. There isn’t just the main leagues like the Premiership, La Liga and Serie A but the lower leagues for each of thise divisions and those from other countries. That means my beloved Sheffield Wednesday is included.  So even the MLS and the Mexican Football League features. Yes, you can have that dream match between Den Haag and New York Red Bulls!

FIFA isn’t the only major football game that gets released in the lead upto Christmas. Konami also release Pro Evolution Soccer, or PES, just two weeks after. This game has a standard license which is easily avaulable, and that shows. The major leagues are represented, but not only doesn’t it have the wide range of leagues but some of the teams are not licensed. That means you get a random badge and a silly name such as London FC for Chelsea.

This is generally what Chelsea do.

Then, its just football. Both games have very similar modes, both games have normal manager career and virtual pro modes for instance. And both are very similar in template and gameplay. So basically, how can you seperate the two?

Well the licensing issue sounds very small doesn’t it? You’d think it’d be something you wouldn’t care about after a bit. Well you do. Honestly, you get a much more special feeling when you take your favourite team to the top instead of a random club because yours wasn’t in there. The experience feels so much more authentic when you are playing as Manchster City than Manchester Blue. Yes it is a difference of just four letters, but so is love and hate. PES does claim back a few points through the fact it has the most extensive edit mode ever, so if you are willing to put the time in, you can make it look all authentic like FIFA.

So PES already has a massive hurdle to climb if it wants to match EA’s FIFA. It needs to claw it back in the one way it can, through good old fashioned gameplay. This was where PES used to rule the roost. FIFA used to be a little kid, getting all the features it could just so it could hope that one day catch upto PES, who just slowly added what it knew would be good. The fact is that now, FIFA has not only caught up PES but surpassed it. PES stood on its laurels for so long, FIFA and its 360 dribbling system have become not only the kids choice of games but the gamer’s choice.

ATTACK

That is a massive blow to PES but Konami don’t seem to be doing anything about it. All they are doing is making the passing more difficult, but realistic and a more realistic stamina system. However the dribbling and passing isn’t very smooth whereas FIFA you can do Barcelona type play.

So it looks like FIFA will take the footballing crown once again. So when you obviously go searching for a football game when you want to go to proper sports which doesn’t have constant Budweiser adverts in it, FIFA will be the one to do. Just never beat Sheffield Wednesday. Ever.

Review – Starfox 64 3D (3DS)

 Posted by  No Responses »
Sep 142011
 

-Error reading from ESRB datastream-
Please visit ESRB.org for rating information.

In June, Nintendo released the remake of Ocarina of Time to worldwide critical acclaim. In fact, I proclaimed it to be the greatest game of all time since it improved on what was the best game of all time. Nintendo obviously likes these remakes, mainly because they aren’t as hard to make as all new games, so they will be giving us another N64 classic, remade in a fancy new suit, with a spinning bow tie.

Starfox has been in a coma for a while, so it might be worth reminding you about him and his crew. Starfox is the space fighting team consisting of Fox McCloud, the character you become who is brave, Falco Lombardi, a cocky fighter who hates being helped, Peppy Hare, the experienced chap who constantly compares you to your deceased father and Slippy Toad who the internet obviusly hates even though he is rather helpful with telling you how much health bosses have.

Recently, Starfox hasn’t been doing so well. Starfox Adventures was arguably the last great Starfox game, and really that was just Dinosaur Planet with some altered characters. Starfox Assualt and Command for the Game Cube and Nintendo DS received average reviews, and no one has since dared to try and bring them back into limelight. Even Mashiro Sakurai thought that bringing back Kid Icarus was less risky than returning Fox to his former glories. However Q Games have realised that maybe the way to bring Fox back into Nintendo’s A List is to show everyone what made him great in the first place, Starfox 64 3D.

Obviously the remake has a load of fancy new stuff to go with it, like the spinning bow tie. The graphics have been redesigned from the ground up to make the game look the best it can. The controls have been altered too, with all new gyro controls. There is a great addictive score attack mode with lots of medals available and if you get all thirty available, there is a special prize awaiting. You also have an easier 3DS mode to accommodate to the gyro controls.You’ve also got a multiplayer mode which is sadly download play only and an unknown quantity as when writing this review I have not had a chance to play it.

Does the original gameplay though hold up? I’ve gone back to many games of my youth which I adored such as Goldeneye and Duck Tales which weren’t as good as I remember. In fact I ruined my good memories of them. Luckily though, Starfox doesn’t fall into that trap. The game is still as good as it was when it was first released. Going through the asteroids of Meteos, the crazy mess of Sector X or the thumping nerves of meeting Andross at Venom still feel as great as they did in the 90s. The action is still as fluid as ever and simply put there are very few shooters like it so it still feels fresh.

The controls do give the game some variety. You will try them out in the training ground area, and probably give them a go in the Corneria Zone. They work brilliantly as soon as you learn the 3DS reacts better to more subtle movements than jerky ones, and even though you lose the 3D effect it still feels all so satisfying swooping through the mess of what is happening in Corneria. However, even though it works perfectly, you will only use it very often, maybe to show off the gyro controls. Then you will return to the circle pad and never think about switching back.

There are fifteen stages in the game but the twist is that you will only get to see seven at one time. This obviously means you will need to replay the game to see all it has to offer. Sometimes though you have to go through the same stage various times just to see how to unlock the other stage. Sometimes this can get frustrating, and eventually you do get bored of seeing the same scenery. Its frustrating and eventually you think that you should just have a simple choice on the world map.

The game does try to offer you so much replayability with the expanded medals system and the alternate routes system. However you just can’t get past the fact the first playthrough will only last you around three hours. Each playthrough will get shorter as you learn the areas and how to make things go just that little bit quicker. There really isn’t that much in the game.

Its such a shame though because you will fall in love with the game. You’ll find yourself caring for the characters despite the underwhelming voice acting, and actually trying to save them when some of the enemy try to take them down, which doesn’t happen to Slippy that much as the Internet preaches, and having a real good go when you finally take on Andross. However when shops are asking so much money for what will get around ten hours gameplay, its hard to say that it is comparable to other 3DS options. Especially when all Nintendo could have done to add so much longevity is put up some servers for the multiplayer mode. Online works on 3DS, we don’t need it hiding from us.

Starfox 64 3D is undoubtedly a great game with so many moments that you will remember forever. It is also a template for all action games that have come since, and they can still learn from it even now. But the sad thing is that with the short gameplay experience, its so hard to recommend. It is a great game and improves on the N64 original, but we simply ask and need much more longevity than we did back then.

3DS

Graphics

90
  

Audio

80
  

Gameplay

60

Creativity

65
  

Execution

70
  

Offset

65
    

7.2
  

How do these ratings work? Click here for descriptions!

+Great Graphics
+Brilliantly designed levels
+Fantastic medal system

-Gyro controls are a gimmick
-Not much longevity
-Multiplayer should be online

Starfox 64 3D is a brilliant action game, but you may struggle to get your money’s worth the second time around.

Will the ‘Hardcore’ Ruin Gaming

 Posted by  No Responses »
Sep 062011
 

Unless this is your first time on the internet, and if so beware of scary people on Omegle, you’ll know that there are a band of gamers who call themselves hardcore. They will complain about 99.9% of games because they aren’t hard enough for them to never complete, they are too colourful or are aimed at a family audience. These basement dwellers may not be seem that influential, but they could ruin gaming for the rest of us and for future generations.

The problem mainly is that this hardcore contingent are very loud. So loud in fact that many developers might consider them as the main voice for gamers, and not just as a load of idiots who have nothing better to do. So lets take Super Mario Galaxy as an example. The hardcore complained about this game a lot, mainly because Nintendo are their main enemy due to the fact they are aiming for the more profitable family market than the hardcore, and said it was too easy and therefore it was the worst game in the world. They also complained about the story because you know, Mario always has an AAA story. Even though Nintendo did make the sequel harder, it still wasn’t hard enough.

They won’t just complain about games though, they will complain about gamers. They seem to all share a common hatred of the new type of gamer found by Nintendo, the family gamer. You know the kind, mums who will see a cheap game on the shelf during a shopping trip to Wal-Mart, and will buy it for a laugh later. Its why games like Just Dance have been such a hit. However according to the hardcore, they don’t deserve the right to game. Because they don’t buy the latest Zelda, which is crap you know because its not Majora’s Mask, or go on the forums and vent their anger on how Nintendo have betrayed gamers, they don’t deserve to have a half an hour stint on Wii Fit doing some Yoga and having a check up on their weight.

Now as I’ve mentioned, the hardcore want every game be Mega Man hard. For us older gamers this might sound great but eventually, we are going to stop gaming for one reason or another. However this shouldn’t matter as our kids will be getting into gaming? Right? Well lets say every game was as hard as Mega Man. Can you see the kids with their short attention spans really staying with it for so long? They will become disinterested and unless they have gamers for parents, which I didn’t, who will push them and help them, they will give up. Plus non-gamer parents wouldn’t complain, because games are very expensive so why should they buy them, for a chance that the kid will get interested.

Yet for the hardcore, the games aimed at children are the Devil’s spawn itself. Yes games like Wii Party, Nintendogs and the Rabbids games are more aimed at children are easier but that is because children now have a shorter attention span, and if they get frustrated with a game, they will just give up and go do something else productive, like squash bugs. Eventually though, the children will move onto harder games, like the Mario games. Eventually they will probably come onto websites like this because they want to avoid the rubbish, kids do know what rubbish is when they play it but when you’ve convinced your mum to part with $60 for a game that you now don’t like you are not going to admit it, and hopefully become a sane gamer.

So how could the hardcore ruin gaming for not just us normal people, but for the entire industry. Well lets imagine a hypothetical world where the developers make games solely for the hardcore. So every game is a sequel to cult serieses or a JRPG, because the other genres were liked by too many people. The games are rock hard and need the patience of a saint and massive amounts of spare time to complete. Now, will mums ever pick a cheap game up for their kids for a laugh in front of the tv? Will you ever see that charming sight of a 6 year old boy grabbing at their mum’s shirt and begging for a game? No, you won’t.

I’m sure now that the hardcore are loving this and are now rushing to the comments section telling me why this wouldn’t be a great world. Well in six months you’d find out. You’d be seeing countless studios going under until all developers and publishers have gone bust. It’s be another video games crash, unlikely to be resurrected again.

This is simply because the hardcore aren’t that many. Go have a look at an average gaming forum, but then sign up to ours. Look at the member count and quarter it to find all the ahrdcore members on that forum. I’d estimate that just double that is how many hardcore gamers are in the world. Not a massive amout is there? Thats when the games the hardcore love are actually released, they become commercial failures. When a game is aimed at the family though, it normally picks up a lot of sales. Mario Kart Wii, which was scorned because it evened the playing field, sold ridiculous amounts. Heck despite Wii Fit’s hefty price tag, that was a success.

The reason family games sell more is because of female nature. Women talk a lot, which is why you need to think very carefully about what you say when around them, and they will talk about games. They will talk about how much fun Just Dance is, show it off when they come around next time, and the friend will often buy it. Its called Word of Mouth success, and is the main reason the Wii is a success. The hardcore seem to think they are better than normal people, so they will often only have a small band of friends that are excluded from other social groups. How can they spread the word a game is awesome when no one will talk to them?

So what should we do to the hardcore to make sure gaming doesn’t go bust? We can’t kill them, shame, but what we can do is generate a voice for the general gaming populace. We are in much bigger numbers than the hardcore, so we can make a bigger voice. Or we could ignore the hardcore, and they will get bored and realise that the games that are made specially for them, aren’t that good.

Which Ambassador Program Games Are Worth Your Time?

 Posted by  No Responses »
Sep 042011
 

Today, well the day I wrote this article, the Ambassador program launched with ten NES games. But how good are these games, and before we even get to the Game Boy Advance games, is being an early adopter of the 3DS worth it.

With all ten of these games being available on the Virtual Console for the Wii, we could say the whole amount is worth about £35, or $57. If we add an estimated value of all the ten Game Boy Advance games as well, which I believe is around £46 or $74. Take this off the RRP of the 3DS originally, its almost the same value. So its all down to the twenty games. Here are the first ten games.

Mario and Yoshi

With Tetris being so popular, everyone tried to make a puzzle game that matched its popularity. Mario and Yoshi was Nintendo’s effort. You are meant to match popular Mario enemies together in order to feed Yoshi. The game mechanics are fine, its just very dull. I didn’t get a game over, I just got bored and turned the game off. Even though a lot of the other games on this list are average or bad, they still had some potential to be good games, but this one is simply dull. 3/10

Legend of Zelda II: The Adventure of Link

The sequel to one of the most revolutionary games ever, and it couldn’t be any more different. In fact is Miyamoto came out and told us that it was another game, but then with the generic characters replaced with Link, Zelda and Ganon, I wouldn’t be surprised. Instead of the usual and common place overhead battling like was previously seen in the original, it started with a more traditional RPG overhead and when you interacted with an enemy or entered a dungeon, it turned into a side scroller. It also has more traditional RPG elements, like levelling up. The people in the towns gave you more direction than the original, which was the major problem with it. However, it is massively frustrating, and its difficulty is just plain nasty. 6/10

Ice Climbers

I’ll have a bet with you. I bet you’ll know who Nana and Popo are, and even that they originally featured in Ice Climbers on the NES. But you’ll have only played a minute’s worth of gameplay, thanks to the small demo on Super Smash Bros Brawl. However that can change now because its free on the 3DS, but you’ll realise why Nana and Popo have been left in the history bins. You have to get to the top of a mountain to rescue your eggplant off a pterodactyl. To do this you must jump and smash the floors above you with your hammer. The main problem with this game is the jumping. Its simply horrible. Its not accurate at all and most of the time you’ll fall back onto your previous level, or even lower. Its frustrating, as it isn’t your fault. 3/10

Balloon Fight

A real surprise package of a game. Not many people will have played this game, but it really is a good game. The main mode sees you trying to pop other people’s balloons by ramming into them. Its a great risk reward system because obviously if they hit you, you’ll have one of your two balloons popped. There is also another mode called Ballon Trip, which has some awesomely catchy music, where you must avoid the obstacles to get to the end. Its incredibly addictive. It takes a while for you to get used to the controls, you need to hold a button to fly up and take it off to go down, but once you do this is an excellent game that hasn’t aged. 8/10

Donkey Kong Jr

Yet another sequel, and one that isn’t very good. Everyone has played the original Donkey Kong, and I’m sure many of you have tried to tackle that incredible world record, so Nintendo have decided to give us a go at the sequel, which sees the son of Donkey Kong trying to free his dad Donkey Kong from the grasps of the evil Mario, who is mistreating Donkey Kong. This means you have to climb up vines and make perfect jumps to reach him and eventually rescue him. This game really feels its age. This game came before Super Mario Bros, so we still have that jump movement which is pre determined. Also if you fall, even from a small height, you die and that is very frustrating, especially when you try on a leap of faith between some vines. 5/10

NES Tournament Golf

NES games pretty happily threw you into games without much help. That was ok because most games were very simple and didn’t need much guidance. Sometimes games were a little more complicated than get to the right side of the level, so you read the instruction manual. So I am sure that this game had a good instruction manuel because with the instructions that are given with the download are terrible, and give you no help whatseoever. This is a game that is complicated and maybe when you actually can play it and play it well, it could be a good game with surprising depth for a NES game. However now, unless someone gives me help how to bloody hit the ball, it is a shambles. 2/10

Wrecking Crew

This is probably the most obscure Mario game you’ll ever play. This is nothing like a normal Mario game, as you can’t even jump. The aim of the game is to destroy everything on a level without being killed by the enemies, which you can dispatch by making them go through the door of death, named by me. A very simple game, unlike the previous. However that fact you can’t jump is a massive problem. It means that if you make a mistake early on in some levels, you have to die to reset the level and try again. It seems like very poor developing, but more likely a sign of the cuthroat tendencies of NES developers in the eighties. 6/10

Super Mario Bros

A pure classic. The platforming is perfectly pitched and apart from the frustrating water levels and the most disappointing glitch ever, the minus world, it is a fantastic game that despite the obvious evolution with the Mario games to follow, some consider it the best because of its purity. Its where you were rewarded for trying to exploit the game with warp pipes, and where you could actually control your jump, something that is so obviously brilliant when you play the original Donkey kong games. However the main problem comes with the 3DS itself. For the last levels, you need to be very fast to not only jump over the massive gaps but finish the level. But with how the buttons are laid out on the 3DS, its damn near impossible to run and jump. Still a brilliant game. 8/10

Legend of Zelda

Another one people consider a classic, because it probably innovated more than Super Mario Bros, and inspired a legion of devoted fans. It was the first game where you could adventure freely, and was incredible at the time. However its one of those NES games that plunges you in without much help. A game like this needs guidance of where to go, or at least a light push in the right connection. No matter how good the engine is, and seen as a similar template and engine has been used since 2004 with the Minish Cap it certainly is good, if you don’t know where to go without blindly walking around or using an online walkthrough the game has some problems. It has aged badly. 6/10

Metroid

Super Mario Bros is a great game, and the system seller for the NES. Super Mario Bros 3 was better, but the second best game on the NES when you look back now is easily Metroid. This is yet another revolution but this time from the late Yokoi. The music is amazing, even if it doesn’t match upto Super Metroid’s atmospheric tones, and the platforming is brilliant. Even at its most basic like it is here, the back tracking and exploration to find new tools is excellent and it feels like your adventure is real. The boss battles are also epic and real highlight of the game. This game would be essential, even if you had to pay for it. 10/10

With The 3DS Price Drop, These Games Need to be on Your Christmas List

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Aug 262011
 

White writing for Gaming Irresponsibly, I seem to have become the main guy for 3DS stuff. And no one has cared. Which is a shame. since it is a brilliant console with brilliant features. But I think the games coming out for Christmas, might just change your mind.

Super Mario 3D Land

There was a time when Mario launched every Nintendo console with his new adventure. Now Nintendo are confident enough with their consoles to lead with Nintendogs, Zelda or Luigi’s Mansion. But that doesn’t make the first big Mario game on the console to be less of an event. In fact as we know what the 3DS can do, its an even bigger event. This is the first all new 3d Mario adventure on a handheld and it looks great. After taking us to space with the two Galaxy games, Mario is bringing us back to basics. The levels are far more traditional and while there a few touches that are took from Galaxy, it looks more like Super Mario 64. Though the game takes its inspiration from arguably the best 2D Mario game, Super Mario Bros 3. All that is disappoitning is that the much hyped return of the Tanooki suit, is just Yoshi in a disguise.

Mario Kart 7

A weird thing happened on the Wii. For the first time I could ever think of, a spin off actually outsold the main game. Yes Mario Kart Wii outsold both Galaxy games. That just showed how popular the series is, and there is a real chance that once again Mario Kart will outshine the big daddy Mario 3D Land. This game is the one that seems most different from any of the others, so its going to have to be careful not to scare off the casual userbase. If you go fast enough off a good jump, you’ll be able to activate a kite on your kart which will allow you float over obstacles such as maybe the mass amount of mud in the Luigi’s Mansion track. You’ll also get a rotor if you go underwater but apart from different physics, that probably won’t add much. You will also b able to customize your kart and if you unlock more parts via single player that could mean we invest more time in it by ourselves. The thing that has made old school fans get excited is that the coins, which the more you collect the faster you go, have returned. This could be the best Mario Kart yet.

Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater 3D

So we know that this prequel to the whole Metal Gear Solid series is awesome so most of you that have a 3DS will already have this on your pre-order list. The question is though, can the 3DS improve this game? Well the graphics are certainly awesome if you’ve seen the many trailers that have been released for the game, though it seems like there will be some cheap shots, like a snake trying to bite you. We can see from the trailers that you will be using the gyroscope the navigate tricky situations. What seems very interesting though is the modified Camoflauge mode. You can take a picture of anything, such as some pink flowers, and that will become your camoflauge outfit. The aforementioned pink flowers though won’t work very well though, as you might be picked out. Maybe.

Kid Icarus: Uprising

Time for a couple of questions. How many of you played Super Smash bros Brawl and thought Pit was cool, so he deserved a new game? And now, how many of you actually played the origina? That leaves about, 20. However despite this, Sakurai is bringing the angel boy back and he couldn’t be any more different from his days at the NES. You’ll go into the air and deal with some old fashioned Sin and Punishment style killing with whatever weapon you pick. Then you will sink to the ground and start doing some Zelda style sword fighting. This game looks frantic and probably one where the 3D will look awesome but melt your eyes. There is also some humour vailable heer, with Pit acting like the joker, which annoys the serious Palutena, which gives us some amusement. The game is very aware if itself, and Pit actually jokes on the controls at one point. Also, the three on three multiplayer, which none of us expected, is online and looks awesome. Now this list is telling you what 3DS games will be on your Christmas list, but for us Europeans it’ll be what we get in the january Sales. Well, at least we get Xenoblade, Last Story and Pandora’s Tower.

Shinobi

Now for the third party game that could blow your world. It was a toss up between this and Cave Story 3D, and Shinobi won out simply because the event of him returning is much bigger than the reimagining of a game that we have all played recently. It will not be Joe Musashi that will try and restart the series, but his dad called Jiro. After the infamously tricky PS2 3D version, we shall be returning to a 2D side scroller. Even though it is a 2D side scroller, the environments look brilliantly. This game could be the one that proves that 2D side scrollers can look amazing on the 3DS, and will hopefully pave the way for more. Sadly there isn’t much infomation on this game yet, but we expect it to be an awesome return for form.

Five Games You Like, But Won’t Admit To

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Aug 162011
 

We all love playing games such as Super Mario, Zelda and Grand Theft Auto. Thats a given. We like those games because they define vidoe game design perfection, are massive fun and the latter contains nudity with the right codes. However, some games contain things that your friends would not appreciate. They might actually not be able to contain their laughter. here are the games you secretly enjoy, but won’t admit to.

Just Dance

If you looked solely at Just Dance and its bare components, it isn’t a very good game. It tries to be too ambitious with the moves it wants you to pull off, and often doesn’t register because the basic Wiimote isn’t as responsive as many think. However if you have three good mates, with alcohol, this is a fun game where you can arse about to James Brown. However this isn’t the reason you won’t admit to liking this. The reason you won’t admit to liking this is because this game is not aimed at the average gamer. Its aimed at ‘tweens’ for their sleepovers so they can pull off dance moves like their idols. And does anyone want to be in the same league as a Belieber?

Don't try to use dance routines from Just Dance in the real word, it makes you look like a clot.

Wii Fit

This game wasn’t the revolution it promised to be, with the balance board going litle used as it simply could not improve many games. It also proved why when you do go snowboarding, you often go home in an ambulance as you fall off the board again. It also didn’t take off with the average gamer crowd. It toke off with the most uncool crowd possible. The average gamer’s mums. With a big advertising campaign with middle aged women, albeit in the UK we got Louise Redknapp who is a bit of a looker, this game was designed to put off us lot. Despite this, we don’t mind taking the Balance Board out and having a go at some of the kookier games such as that Chicken flapping thing and the platform one.

That is not Louise Redknapp.

Pokemon

Now before you haters get to me, I love Pokemon. Its one of the greatest series ever and I’ve probably poured more hours into the various games and spin offs than any other game on the planet. Once your scratch the surface past the usual collect them up, there are hours full of permutations with IVs and EVs and breeding to make Pokemon that could take down Sinnoh, the CIA and News International. However despite the amount of depth and actual toughness of the later parts, people see the cute ‘Mon, and my girlfriend the game hating girl says she’d like to have an Oshawott as a pet, and instantly tag the game as a kids game. They will also laugh at you when you mention the word ‘badges’. Trust me, try it.

Its New York without the drugs.

ET The Game

This was the game that came very close to finishing off the video game industry in its infancy. Its commonly voted as the worst game ever because of the massive glitches and the worst gameplay and idea behind a game ever. However if you don’t actually spend your money on the game and instead download it on an emulator, oh come on your not exactly hurting Atari in the pocket with this, this game actually becomes a bit of a laugh. When you fall down one of those invisible holes you laugh because of the terribleness, much like you’d laugh at a talentless sod on American Idol. When you get caught by what we can only assume is the FBI you also laugh. However if you admit you like this game, even for its comedy value, people chase you with straightjackets and tranquilisers. Its not fair.

Oh the muddy textures.

Kirby

Nintendo sure know how to make games are really good, but will get you laughed at. Kirby has lots of good gameplay ideas such as eating, and eating is cool and funny. Its why we hang around fat people as long as they don’t smell. The main enemies are a skull armour ball with a sword and fat bird with a hammer, which is both awesome and funny. The reason you won’t be admitting to being a fan of this series any time soon is because of the main character. Not only is it pink, and no matter what the object is, if its pink it is very girly indeed, but very cute. In fact you just want a cuddly toy of of it and squish it very hard. This means that Kirby is very very girly. So girly in fact we suspect it’d give you sensitive conselling and paint your nails when you’re asleep.

SMASH

10 Games That Absolutely Have to be on the Ambassador Program?

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Aug 102011
 

Nintendo recently announced that the Nintendo 3DS would be receiving a price cut, so they could really put pressure on the PS Vita. Early adopters grumbled at this, they were being punished for being loyal! However, Nintendo pulled out a marketing masterpiece. If you connected your 3DS to the eShop before August 11th, when the price cut would happen, you would get 20 free games, ten free NES games and ten free Game Boy Advance games. Five of each have been announced already, but what classics would you like to come to your 3DS, completely free of charge? For the purpose of this article, we shall be sticking with first party as the announced ones are all first party.

NES

Metroid

How do you expect me to caption this?

An absolute classic. This game innovated so much, and widely deserves the amount of praise that it gets. At first it shocked gamers by not just allowing you to go right and up, but left and down too. Back in the early 90s gamers were easily impressed. It also eliminated early forms of sexism by having the main character as a WOMAN. Then tore those new morals down by rewarding the gamer for being quick by showing them Samus in a bikini. In more gameplay terms, Metroid was the first truly free platform game, taking many aspects from the Zelda games of gaining items and then backtracking to discover even more. A truly breathtaking game, and its sequel Super Metroid is one of the greatest games of all time, and this one isn’t far off it.

 

 

 

Kid Icarus

Again, these NES Games are uncaptionable!

This will probably be on the Ambassador program, simply to promote the upcoming sequel on the 3DS. However, this game is much better than a promotional tool. The game runs on the same engine as Metroid and was sadly less popular, probably because of the lack of bikinis. You can tell the links which show its a brother of Metroid as it has the beating bosses to gain upgrades. However while Metroid is very tough and will make seasoned gamers swear, this game just takes the piss. As you climb up through the levels, you can’t fall or you will die. You will have to be absolutely brilliant to avoid losing a life, and anyone who manages to complete this game deserves a lot of respect.

 

 

 

Punch Out

If you lose to Glass Joe, there is something wrong with you.

This was one I said should be part of the 3D Classics, but its looking unlikely. But it still needs to be played by the masses, so here I hoping Nintendo brings it to the 3DS. This game despite being over twenty years old is massively playable, which is why it didn’t change much for the Wii sequel which is also worth buying. The characters are unique and will certainly stick in your mind for a long time, especially the brilliant King Hippo and Glass Joe. And apart from the latter boxer, the game is really tough. You have to be on your toes and make sure you learn their tactics very quickly so you don’t end up knocked out. Also, remeber to give Coach a chocolate bar!

 

 

 

 

Kirby’s Adventure

Environmentalists don't tell you about this sort of tree when they want you to plant them.

The first Kirby adventure on the Game Boy is already out on the eShop. Have you downloaded it? If not, download it now and play it through. You done that? Well I’m sorry but you had to be taught that not all of Nintendo’s big franchises got off to such a good start. Kirby’s Dream Land was very boring because it was very easy and didn’t contain the ability absorbing that Kirby’s NES debut had. That is what makes this game such a classic. It was also much trickier than that Game Boy game which made it much more fun. It was also surprisingly large for a platformer of the age, and you would be playing for a long time. In fact, I can only think of one platformer that betters it…

 

 

 

Super Mario Bros 3

Cos a Raccoon tail can make anyone fly.

Nintendo would be idiots not to put the best game on the NES on the Ambassador Program. Super Mario Bros was brilliant, but the Super Mario Bros 2 we got was a departure which we liked, but wasn’t as good as we wanted it to be. Miyamoto and co then made a game that competes for best ever. The levels were designed to perfection and you could never blame yourself when you died. And you will die, especially on those maic last few devils which the Angry Video Game Nerd said was Hell itself. The graphics were also superb for the NES and packed in a lot of detail. It is so good that most of Super Mario 3D Land will be based on this game, and fans are disappointed that hasn’t happened sooner.

 

 

Game Boy Advance

Advance Wars

And Libya would be so much more fun if it was like this.

This series is very much underrated. The only turn based strategy games come from Nintendo themselves with this and Fire Emblem, and they deserve a lot more love than they get. The first few levels which introduce you to the wide array of vehicles, planes and boats that are on offer. Once you have learnt about all them, you must then balance your money with buying enough troops to beat the opponents. At the final few levels when you’ve learnt everything, it gets very tricky. One wrong move, and your whole battle will crumble and there is nothing more crushing than seeing the opposition troops slowly capture your buildings and defeat your troops. However, there is nothing more satisfying than destorying their last unit after a long exhausting battle.

 

 

Legend of Zelda: Minish Cap

Don't. Mess. With. Link.

Handheld Zelda games have always been good, if a bit short. This game perfectly fits that gap. Never mind that The Minish Cap has basically torn the Star Wars trilogy, apprentice betraying his master and turning incredibly evil, it is still a fun game with great graphics. This is the Zelda game that is often most forgotten because people often concentrate on the brilliant remake of Link to the Past and the controversial but brilliant Wind Waker, and the Minish Cap was forgotten in the rush. This game is very important though, because if the Zelda nerds are to be believed, this is the first game in the Zelda universe.

 

 

Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga

Yes, Nintendo can advertise as much as Fox.

Mario has had a good history with RPGs, with Super Mario RPG on the SNES and Paper Mario on the N64 and this trend continued with Superstar Saga on the Advance. The battle system was different though many of us red blooded males took a while to get used to it as we couldn’t do two things at once. The battle system was only one part of it though, as what seperated this from the usual RPG fare was the characters and writing. Characters like Fawful made this game simply amazing and the humour actually made me laugh at loud at points, which many games that attempt to be funny fail to do. This is a classic, and is almost the best RPG on the console.

 

 

 

Pokemon Emerald

ITS A TRAP

We all know that with the pattern of games in the Pokemon series goes, that after we get the Rumble game, another Ranger and Mystery Dungeon we’ll be getting a remake of Ruby and Saphire. But to whet our appetites now we’re starting to get bored of Black and White, why not give us the now traditional third game in the series instead. Not only does this game build on what was a departure for the time for Pokemon, with there being two exciting teams to defeat in this version, but adds a lot of stuff. It marks the first appearance of the Battle Frontier and their signature Frontier Brains which first appeared in the anime. It also features a new gym leader and a new champion. A great game.

 

 

Golden Sun

Yes, he's just a rip off of the Rock.

The Game Boy Advance sure had a lot of great RPGs, and Golden Sun was definitely one of them. Well, that is what I am told. I am ashamed to admit this, but I have not played any of the three Golden Sun games, but that is exactly why I want the game to be free on the ambassador program. According to fans of the series, too many people haven’t played the series and experienced this Djinn battle system for themselves. I certainly agree, and want to be one of those fans and it would be brilliant if I got it for free. Because I’m a northener and I’m a cheapskate.

Top 5 Games for the 3DS

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Aug 102011
 

So the 3DS has had a troubled start with many newspapers making bad publicity with how the console will melt your eyes, it doesn’t, and gamers saying that the launch was fairly weak, which it was. But we’re over four months into the lifespan of the 3DS and we have had a steady stream of good games, in preperation for the onslaught we are getting at Christmas, starting with the super duo of Pac Man and Galaga Dimensions and Starfox 64 3D. But what are the best so far?

Ooh, he still has plenty of Nitro left

5. Ridge Racer 3D

Now this is the one that interests you. How come this game is at number five, with other games that are probably more worthy like Pilotwings Resort or Nintendogs + Cats. But Ridge Racer was a complete surprise because it was a game that wasn’t so good in the previous builds. Many complained that it was too blurry in when played at events such as E3. But when it came out as a launch title, which made gamers even more sceptical, people bought it and fell in love with it. Racing games really do show off the 3D effect, and Ridge Racer was the first to prove that to us. It was a fun game and very well made. Namco are looking to become a good developer for the 3DS with this, Dream Trigger, Pac Man and Galaga Dimension and Dual Pen Sports.

 

They know that you've not been concentrating on the fighting, and instead concentrating on something else. Bad boy!

4. Dead or Alive: Dimensions

Firstly, the reason this game is good isn’t because we get to see very bouncy boobies in 3D. That was just a bonus. A very good bonus. Anyway, perviness that I hope my girlfriend won’t ever see aside, Dead or Alive Dimensions was a very good fighter. It was the first Dead or Alive to go onto a Nintendo console and it showed the gamers that were loyal to the Big N what they had been missing. Because once you’ve taken your hands out of your trousers, you realise it is a very good fighter, and that the online play is seemless. As soon as you look past the bouncy boobies in 3D.

 

 

3. Street Fighter IV 3D Edition

I don't want to be on the end of that.

With Dead or Alive and this game already established and games such as Tekken and BlazBlue on the way, the 3DS seems like a good home for fight fans. This was the game that showed the world that handhelds could do fighters well. Not only was it a seemless port from the HD consoles, it carried over all the features from the HD consoles and looked just as good. Even the new 3D camera angle looked cool. Then this game actually improved on the console versions by sorting out the main problem with the game. The fact it wasn’t very accessible to normal gamers, and the 3DS offers combos on the bottom screen to ease players in. Learning the combos will allow you to be better, so we get a new legion of Street Fighter games for a new generation. And doesn’t that make you happy?

 

2. Resident Evil Mercenaries

These Africans were making sure that Angelina Jolie didn't take another child.

Ok, I know that the main event is Revelations that is coming in early 2012. However the first Resident Evil and obvious stop gap game Mercenaries was very fun. Ok, so I know that our royal highness AgentXK didn’t like it very much, giving the game a 6.5 in his review, but I enjoyed it very much. There is a ton of stuff to unlock with characters ranging from the mysterious HUNK to the evil Wesker. Even you perves that are bored of Dead or Alive have Claire in a nurse outfit to enjoy. The online co-op is also great and allows you to hit the highest scores. Then the graphics, they are some of the best on the 3DS. There is spectacular detail in the exploding guts and blood. If you are a high score chaser, and there are plenty of you out there, this is a great game.

 

 

1. Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D

And the Grand National is so more awesome now.

Oh come on. If you came onto this article expecting any other game to be number one, to be honest your pretty blind. Ocarina of Time is one of the greatest games of all time, and my favourite game of all time. There are so many epic moments that just plaster a massive smile on your face. Whether it be right at the start when Navi starts her journey by banging into every obstacle, or when you meet Zelda for the first time, or where you see Zelda and Impa escaping from an evil Ganon, lifting the master sword for the first time to make yourself into an adult and when you finally get to defeat Ganondorf in a fantastic boss battle. The game was simply magical and it was only improved when put onto the 3DS. The 3D looked great and the graphics were much improved, if you look at Ocarina of Time 64 it looks rather rough, and the gyroscope use was subtle and brilliant. This game is the best of the year so far, never mind 3DS.

Resident Evil – Evil goes HD

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Jul 272011
 

Two Resident Evil games will be upgraded into HD this coming September.

Both Resident Evil 4 and Resident Evil: Code Veronica X will be coming to Xbox Live Arcade and Playstation Arcade for £14.99 in European regions. Resident Evil 4 will be arriving on September 21st with Code Veronica following shortly afterwards on September 28th.

Both games will be good warm up for Resident Evil: Revelations on the 3DS that should be coming this Christmas.

All this in lovely HD

Review – Cubic Ninja (3DS)

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Jul 252011
 

-Error reading from ESRB datastream-
Please visit ESRB.org for rating information.

If you have read any of my previous 3DS articles, and if not why not, you’ll know that I’ve been hyping a weird little game called Cubic Ninja–saying it could be an underground hit and its uniqueness makes it worth of a look. So I’d be a massive hypocrite if I wasn’t to take the plunge and buy it myself.

Looking at the screenshots scattered over this page, you could be fooled into thinking this is a platformer. You’d be wrong to do so. because a maze game is probably a better term to describe the game. This is because not only do you have to try and negotiate the many many obstacles that are blocking your way, but find the exit as well, though there are handy arrows pointing you the way.

You will hate the spikes

The main lure of the game isn’t that its a maze game, but that you don’t have to use the buttons or circle pad at all. You will be controlling the game just by using the gyroscope and accelerometer built into the console. This means you’ll be tilting your way through 100 levels of danger.

This game shows good use of the motion control. Many people don’t think that the motion control in the 3DS is up to much, and only detects you tilting the console like the iTouch does. However Cubic Ninja doesn’t want to to just tilt the console madly. You’ll be tilting the 3DS ever so slightly so your Ninja can just slip through a tiny gap without touching one of your enemies. You’ll also have to put your 3DS above you and below you to bring your Ninja into the foreground or background, making you feel like your actually moving the level about.

This is the first boss. This is one of the hardest and most flawed.

This is the first game to put such focus on the motion controls, and get it right. Super Monkey Ball tried to do it, but got the learning curve all wrong. Ocarina of Time put the motion controls in very well, but they didn’t take up much of the game. Yet despite the motion control boundaries of the 3DS still being tested, there are no problems with Cubic Ninja’s controls. They work perfectly and when you die, and you will die, its your fault not the controls. The only problem isn’t Ubisoft’s fault because the problem is that if you dare to play this in pubic, you look like a twat.

 

 

This is the easiest boss, but its still frustrating for the wrong reasons.

So what about if you do try and take the game into public? You can pick up some levels through StreetPass, more on that later, and you don’t want to look like a twat? Well you can turn the motion control off and control the game through the circle pad. However you then show the game up because when you aren’t tilting the 3DS, it becomes very easy. In fact, you can breeze through the game without breaking sweat and the game seems like a waste of money.

So saying that you play the game as it is meant to be played, you should clock five hours by the time you have finished off the last boss. This sounds very poor, but there is plenty of replay value. At the end of every world, and there are five of them, you unlock a new ninja with different characteristics. For instance one is made of metal and will drop quicker because of that, even though that defies the laws of physics, but it will slide slower whereas the Ice ninja will slide so much quicker. There are more level parts to unlock if you complete levels with the other characters so you can quadruple your time with the five extra ninjas.

BURN BABY BURN

Talking of level parts, the level creator is quite fun as well. It isn’t as flexible as we would have liked, you can only pick from a few level templates and not make your own, but despite this you can take up some time making your evil masterpieces. You can share them through either StreetPass or through QR codes, just like you can share your Miis. There is sadly no online database LittleBigPlanet style, but there is a bigger problem. There are no levels available. I’ve been searching for QR codes online and there aren’t any. I’ve been searching for a few days and I’ve come up with nothing. So send me an e-mail at adamallcroft13@hotmail.com if you actually have uploaded a QR code, and you may get on the website.

The worst problem though are the boss battles that end each of the world. They are extremly frustrating and go against the game. The bosses are varied and you have to do something a bit different for each one, but they are boring and frustrating. There are some technical problems with them as well, with my ninja exploding without touching the giant bird of a boss.

You'll have a smashing time!

Desite this, the majority of the game is very fun and is very testing. You will be swearing at this game, but after putting it down in frustratuon you won’t resist having another go at it. Ideally this game should have been a launch game because of how well it shows off the motion control, but sadly it will be probably seen as decent curio thats worth spending a bit of money on if you find it languishing in the bargain bins. Even if you see if close to its RRP, its still worth a go until Starfox 3D comes out in September.

 

 

Cubic Ninja: A fun game that should not be overlooked.

+ Controls are brilliant
+ A cool unique look
+ Plenty of replay value

- Bosses are horrid
- No levels are shared

3DS

Graphics

75
  

Audio

70
  

Gameplay

70

Creativity

65
  

Execution

60
  

Offset

70
    

6.8
  

How do these ratings work? Click here for descriptions!

5 Games that Ruined the Wii’s Reputation

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Jul 202011
 

Because the Wii has been successful with gamer’s mums, and not gamers themselves arguably, the console hasn’t gained a cool reputation. This wasn’t helped by awkward performance by Cammie at E3, who was infamous for dying on the first Goomba. Let’s face it: verything about a console comes down to the games. One has to wonder, what were the games that guaranteed that the Wii would be shunned by the hardcore?

Carnival Games

That sinister guy on the left is the creator of the game.

I’m sure that even the most hardcore gamers will still find some fun in a well made mini game collections. Sure they’ll frown when people mention Mario and Sonic or Wii Sports Resort, but they will be grinning when in private when they are taking on their gran in a sword battle. Sadly because the casual gamers loved these mini game collections, some developers decided to make one. Sadly though, they decided not to make it properly. The main culprit was Carnival Games because it was a success, gaining around one million sales. Its in many a house, and I’m ashamed to admit mine. Gamers often mention this game when they say the casual market has overran it with rubbish games.

PokePark

Even three year olds think this is too childish.

Pokemon hasn’t got a great reputuation with older gamers as they played it when they were kids. Nowadays, Pokemon has fallen out of favor. Yes, it is their loss because they are missing out on a great RPG. When Pokemon made a full priced Wii game to make up for the disappointments of Pokemon Battle Revolution and My Pokemon Ranch while helping shift its reputation for more mature audiences like the fifth generation, we got a game that might provide five year olds some enjoyment, if it wasn’t too colourful for them. We might have been able to forgive the game if it was more like a proper Pokemon RPG. Sadly this was a stupid mini game collection for one player, with you playing hide and seek. This worsened the Wii’s reputation for dumbing down games, and Pokemon’s at the same time.

Wii Fit

Lose some weight fatso!

Wii Fit is a good game, and its Balance Board is very innovative. Its also pretty fun, especially when Nintendo have gone a bit loopy with games such as the Chicken flapping game. Nintendo achieved its aim with this game to not have the usual audience playing, but their mums as well. Then normal gamers got bored with the game, and moved onto the next thing. Their mums didn’t. Nothing your mum does is cool. Even if that thing was cool before, it isn’t when your mum starts to do it. Heck, it’s even joked about in South Park. So when it was just people’s mums doing Wii Fit, and Louise Redknapp over here, people laughed at the Wii. It was a mums machine, not a proper games machine!

The Popcorn Arcade series

Seriously, the man behind this game should be hung up.

A developer called Data Design aimed to release a number of budget games for the Wii. The three most well known are some of the worst games not just to grace the Wii, but the entire games industry. All three games, Ninjabread Man, Anubis II and Rock and Roll Adventures were all broken and heavily flawed. Luckily these forms of torture had one good thing going for them, that they didn’t last very long. Ninjabread Man had only three levels. The games were rushed out, so much that on the side of the case for Rock and Roll Adventures, it has a typo which meant it read Rock and Roll Advnetures. Luckily these games weren’t easy to find, I’ve only seen the games a few times in the Pre Owned section of game stores, so they didn’t sell well. Despite this, the game became infamous and was laughed at.

 

 

The Conduit

I doubt mosquito spray will deal with this lot.

High Voltage sure have some confidence. When they announce The Conduit 2, they said the graphics would be at Xbox 360 level, that the control system would have more options that you had ever seen, that the single player would be amazing and that the multiplayer would blow your mind. High Voltage were confident that this game would provide a fitting end to Sega’s hardcore three, started off by the great stylistic duo of House of the Dead Overkill and Madworld. This game made sure that the trio ended on a sour note. The graphics were indeed good and the lighting effects very nice, but the graphics were not as hyped–the control customization was the same as we had seen before, the single layer was a humdrum corridor shooter that seem ripped from the 90s and the multiplayer was a highlight but was sadly easily hacked. It was so hyped up, and then failed, with good proof that the Wii couldn’t cut it with the big boys.

Sadly, the Wii’s reputation was ruined by these games, and perhaps helped destroy perfectly good game’s chances of doing well commercially, and perhaps even critically, because of some biased idiots at other websites and publications. Its why you should always come to Gaming Irresponsibly instead of those other sites.

5 Reasons That TV Shows Shouldn’t Inspire Games

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Jul 152011
 

Unless you are a very serious gamer, you have probably used your television’s other application, which streams television programs onto your screen. No, not through the internet, but through either a cable or an aerial. Isn’t technology great? Well you may have thought that some of these television programs could make good video games. Some people up high in the video game world have thought so too, but sadly they often don’t put enough work into these games, and these games can actually be worse than the dreaded movie tie-in. So what are the worst and most disappointing?

Doctor Who

EXTERMINATE the Developers.

In the UK, Doctor Who is a very popular Sci Fi show that finally after many years of trying, is starting to break into the US fraternity without a damn conversion like The Office and Shameless. Sadly though last year, two Doctor Who games were made for the Wii and DS. The DS version was a decent game. Yes, it was a clone of Professor Layton but it was a good clone that had a bit of flair and good dialogue. Sadly though, despite the hype, the big Wii game failed on all levels. The story tried to cram in every big enemy they could think of, Daleks, Cybermen, Sontarans, Silurians, you name it the game had it. This meant that the story was rubbish and when a Doctor Who story is rubbish, you have a terrible start. Then you make the game a bog standard platformer with graphics from the PSX age. Simply awful.

 

Hell’s Kitchen

Yes this is the Wii version, not my slammed DS version. Its why Ramsey is angry at me.

Ah, one that both sides of the Atlantic can enjoy or grimace at, depending on your views on Gordon Ramsey and Marco Pierre-White. This is of course unless you decided to buy the DS version, where you would be screaming in anger. You’d think that the game would be easy to make: just take a basis of Cooking Mama, make things look a little more realistic, change Mama’s face for Gordon Ramsey and have a few challenges that’d make it similar to the tv show. But the developers tried to be ambitious and shove a load of stuff onto your touch screen, and the resolution couldn’t handle the amount of stuff they tried to put on. The controls were then fiddly as you tried to handle your kitchen, but most of the time you just ended up failing and Gordon Ramsey swearing at you.

House M.D

Damn. I was hoping I could stop this game from being released.

You can’t get a decent enough actor on your own seas, so you come over here and poach Hugh Laurie so that we have someone to support at the Golden Globes. You can see how the game could pan out well, get some good dialogue and interesting story which sees you solving illnesses and then have some Trauma Centre action as the main meat of the game. Despite some good potential, the game had hardly any emphasis on story, which I am told is a good part of House by someone who fancies Hugh Laurie. The title has you doing stuff that has nothing to do with the medical emergency that you have been presented with. You then have cutscenes with dreary language which make up the majority of the game. It was declared dead a long time ago.

Lost Via Domus

That'll hurt in the morning

Well this had to be mentioned at least once, so lets get it over and done with. The developers didn’t get a good start, they had to create a new character because the Lost writers didn’t want their precious story being meddled with. Yes, because Lost fans wouldn’t notice one more confusing plot line. Once the cut scenes stop though, you realise that there is no gameplay. So you start moving and sometimes a black fog will come and kill you, for no apparent reason. Then when the black fog doesn’t kill you, you find invisible walls. How could an annoyance, easily capable of being avoided on the N64 be on a cutting edge Xbox 360 game? Despite being a poor game, it still got good sales just because it became infamous as an easy achievement game.

Deal or No Deal

Ugh. This game should not have been released out on retail for £30. Maybe at a push we would have seen it on download stores for cheap, but no, they put it in our game stores and asked us to pay a lump of money for it. Yes, the game show which requires no thought at all can be very gripping, especially when they get a sob story on, but how can you feel the tension when there is no real money at stake? And then to break up the ‘action’, and I use that term very loosely, there was a mini game which was a glorified what box is the ball in. After this you get some fake money which you can do nothing with. This should have been kept as a flash game on the internet to mess about with at the depths of boredom.

The Banker is clever, he knows exactly what the game is worth

But despite this, we will hanker for some tv shows to be made into games. Maybe we will see what soon…

Must-Have Classic Titles on the 3DS

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Jul 122011
 

The 3D Classics range got off to a good start with Excitebikes as the 3D actually changed the look of the game and made it better. As of now, Nintendo is promising more 3D remakes in this fashion. They’ve recently released was Xevious (which I have excitedly made a point of playing). So with Nintendo saying there are four more games in this series to come, what games from the past would we like a 3D makeover?

Rad Racer

This racing game actually had a 3D mode on it if you had the iconic red and blue glasses, if you recall–but we’d love to see it get a proper 3D remake. Racing games are the first genre that come to mind when you think of games that will improve under 3D for obvious reasons. The game is good fun and also a bit of a curious one as it is made by Square, who also made the Final Fantasy games. You can’t get much different from continous level grinding than blistering speed.

 

Maybe a title change is needed.

Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past

This one is actually quite likely because the King of Gaming Shigeru Miyamoto hinted at it when interviewed about the 3D classics range. The question is this: what could 3D styling do to improve the game? We can expect one of two things: a new camera angle which emphasizes the 3D, or the more likely option, where the buildings and characters are given depth much like the recent Pokemon games. Also, this would no doubt be the best game of the 3D classics range because of its great story and exploration.

This could look epic.

Starwing

Does anyone remember this classic?. Not only would it be a great tempter and advertising tool for the forthcomes Starfox 64 3D, but it would look incredible. Those early polygons and jibber jabber language are starting to gain some charm with age that could be enhanced with 3D. It would be much easier to aim seeing the depth of the screen and as said before would allow people to get a taste of the Starfox world before taking the plunge with the N64 remake. It would also give people a chance to see how this series all started and hopefully get more people to buy the forthcoming Starfox 64 3D.

It does look slightly jaded.

Donkey Kong Country

This game had some of the most impressive graphics of its time on the SNES! If the models were then fleshed out into 3D it could amaze us all again, and actually probably show up some of the new 2D platformers on the console. Then seeing the water effects in the Aquatic levels could be sensational, and make you ignore your frustrations AT HOW THAT BLOODY SWORDFISH IS UNCONTROLLABLE! It’d also be a great history lesson to the kids thast only found out that Donkey Kong games could be good when they played Donkey Kong Country Returns. Anyway this game is a great platformer that rivals the Mario series, which is tough to do.

Oh yeah! Rambi!

A Virtual Boy Game?

This game console should have ended Nintendo’s 3D love affair, and yet it inspired Nintendo to carry on. The GameCube does actually have 3D tech built into it and there were 3D tests with the Game Boy Advance. The fact is while the console was badly designed and deserved to fail, some of the games were actually pretty good. For instance, the Wario Land game– this was actually a great game but sadly not recognised as one because of the console it was on. So maybe we should hope for some returns of the good Virtual Boy games?

Thought it wouldn't help with the it hurts your eyes problem.

Now I’m probably going to be disappointed but I obviously hope not. What games would you like to see?

The Death of the American JRPG

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Jul 072011
 

As you may know, games such as Pandora’s Tower, The Last Story and Xenoblade shall not be going to the Americas. Nothing unusual in that, they are cult RPGs and they often don’t leave Japan. The strange thing is while they won’t be visiting New York or Los Angeles, they will be coming to Europe. Maybe they like the Eiffel Tower better than the Statue of Liberty.

This does provoke an interesting question though, why did these companies decide not to publish in the Americas? Europe isn’t a thriving land for RPGs like Japan and has actually more similar tastes to the Americas than it does to the Land of the Rising Sun. So how come we will be seeing these titles over here in the UK, but not over the pond?

We're getting these great games, you're not. Who's independent now?

Maybe its because of the way foreigners see America. We see your teenagers as frat boy morons who will bully anyone who is slightly different to themselves and just play Madden and Call of Duty. I don’t know how British teens are seen by foreign markets, but I’m guessing not as badly as that. Also don’t blame us for these rather poor stereotypes, blame your tv programs and movies for that.

It could also be the extremist groups that prevented Pandora’s Tower from making an appearance. PETA has an annoying presence in America, and with the story revolving around a vegetarian having to eat meat to save herself, I’m sure PETA would make a big fuss and ask for it to be banned. Activision and EA are able to sweep away any controversial stories but Pandora’s Tower’s publishers aren’t so big so sadly, PETA’s voice would be too big and maybe ban Pandora’s Tower, which would mean big losses.

There are actually tonnes of captions you can think of for this.

Stranger though is why The Last Story is not coming to the USA. The game is being made by Hirnobu Sakaguchi. who made the Final Fantasy series. Tell this to any audience of any nationality and they will lap it up just because of the big name Final Fantasy is. Thats how the world works. It even has amazing graphics that also speak no language. Maybe its just the fact it is an RPG.

RPGs are a very cultish genre. This is because the stories are often complicated and when people want to relax, they want to be slogging through piles of text or poor English voice dubbing. Yes, sadly a lot of the smaller RPGs are poorly dubbed because the development studio can’t afford decent voice actors. They either overact or simply just don’t care. Sometimes it just easy to skip the story and pick up Call of Duty and gun down some Russian terrorists.

This rather than Xenoblade? And I though that Palin program was the most stupid thing you've done.

The casual gamer is also very important. In the UK, a lot of casual gamers didn’t just pick up the easiest RPG for kids (Pokemon) but they picked up Dragon Quest IX instead. This was because of timing the adverts very well, right in the middle of Britain’s Got Talent; and seeing how Nintendo can be clever, they appealed to the casual gamers. I’m not sure what the sales were like in America but if the publishers have seen good sales of RPGs in Europe, they should go to the effort of localisation for the European audiences.

So there are many reasons why the Americas won’t be getting this trio of possibly excellent games. These are of course very speculative and until someone dares to ask that question in an interview to the developers we won’t really know. Maybe with the right number of people petitioning you could still get these games. Hopefully you will. And hopefully PETA will cause such a fuss over Pandora’s Tower, they don’t need any adverts.

Classic Nintendo DS: Timeless, Immortal, and Still Publishing Great Games

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Jul 062011
 

The 3DS may have had a rocky start to say the least, but as I’ve mentioned many times before, there are plenty to come. This Christmas will probably put the final nail in the coffin of our humble DSes. It is a shame that we shall finally see the highest selling console of all time put to rest. But which games shall see it going with a bang?

Kirby: Mass Attack

Kirby has had plenty of games on the DS, with Power Paintbrush/Canvas Curse, Mouse Attack and Super Star Ultra. All of them have been well received but the last two have been fairly standard Kirby adventures, so its time for the pink blob to go mad. That means now you will be not controlling the one Kirby, ten of the buggers. This sounds like the game will be a mess but like all Kirby experiments it does seem to work. I swear there is something wrong with the water at HAL Labatory.

DO DA CONGA

Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker 2

I love the Dragon Quest series, its very addictive and the humour is brilliant and witty. The fact that the localisation, with every regional accent you can mention is brilliant addition. So I will keep a keen eye on any spin off, as this game combines Dragon Quest and one of my other favourite serieses, Pokemon. You’ll be touring the area capturing classic Dragon Quest creatures such as Slimes to help beat whatever you need to beat. Seriously, why have I never played this?

Yes this is a screenshot from the original Joker. Kill me now.

Professor Layton and the Last Specter

Normally the Layton series is hyped by not just the hardcore but mums and people not normally into games. But the fourth in the series has seemingly being forgotten because its staying on the DS. This includes the other upcoming Layton games such as Mask of Miracle, and his cross over with Phoenix Wright. Its a shame because this is the start of a new trilogy which shows how Layton met Luke and more of his past, with a lovely female assistant. Also, more of those brilliant cut scenes for the last time in plain old 2D.

Luke wants a 3DS, but has been forced to get a Vita instead. Feel for him.

Solatorbo: The Red Hunter

With games like Pandora’s Tower and The Last Story not going to America, it seems that the power is shifting over to us. Even more now as this unknown game has been released here, last Friday. If you haven’t heard of it, perhaps you should import it, because it’s rather good! You are a massive mech creature and the game never allows you to become bored with what you have. This is because you get upgrades constantly and by time you have come to peace with the new upgrade, you get another one!

Lego Harry Potter Years 5-7

You may say I have got desperate. I may agree slightly, but when Years 1-4 came out, it was actually the DS version that was the best. Mainly because it dared to do something different, and was like a kids Grand Theft Auto with magic. To most kids, that is the most awesome thing in the world. The graphics were also pretty good and slotted nicely into that category of “Buy it for litthe brother, nick it off him later to play myself”. It is also actually better than the core series which is very unusual.

Moody bastard.

So the DS still has a few good games in it yet. You may think that I have missed out Miles Edgeworth 2 but that game will not be released in the US, and bets are on that it isn’t released in Europe either. Shame.

What Will Top Gear add to Forza 4?

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Jul 062011
 

Forza 3 was a brilliant game. But for everything it got right with flying colours, something was lacking. After hours of playing it I realised, despite the mass amount of customization, the game lacked a soul.

Now for Turn 10, this is tricky. How do you solve this problem? If there are graphics problems, you just make them more details or go for a new art style. If the controls are a problem, you look at what the reviewers found bad about them and solve them. But soul is such a tricky to nail down. Some stuff has it, some doesn’t. How do you give something a soul? Well Turn 10 have decided to call upon the world’s most popular motoring program and Jay Leno’s favourite program, Top Gear.

Better than Fifth Gear

Many people will not know about Top Gear as while it is an international tv program, Clarkson’s outbursts and insults can alienate people, mainly people from the southern states, especially Alabama. So if anyone does watch it, skip past the next paragraph and carry on reading. If not, read on.

Top Gear is a motoring program fronted by middle aged men Jeremy Clarkson, who was brought up not far from where I live, Richard Hammond and James May. What makes it different from normal motoring programs is that it doesn’t take itself seriously. Also the presenters often take on challenges such as buying a certain type of car for a cheap amount of money and completing ludicrous challenges. The most ludicrous is possibly when they filled British Leyland cars with water and had to go as far as they can until the water went below the steering wheel which Clarkson failed at as the door fell off. They are also famous for doing these challenges in foreign countries such as America, Vietnam, South America and the Middle East.

What a trio!

Welcome back true petrolheads, or gearheads I have been reliably formed is the term in America, and now you will be wondering how this tv show will be incorporated into Forza 4. Well lets get going then?

Firstly, they are going to get Clarkson to provide a commentary on every car. He has driven every car in the Forza garage and so he can tell you reliably what they are like to drive. Despite the amount of work that the people at Turn 10 have done to get the rights to these cars, and the rights to bash them up, Clarkson has been allowed to unveil his true opinions. Also don’t expect this to be a boring drone from a lonely man, Clarkson is known for his outbursts and radical opinions so expect to be laughing as well as learning. He is also a gamer, he once did an experiment to see if he could match a time he set on Gran Turismo 4 at the actualy track which he couldn’t, so he won’t be talking with a looking down on you tone.

Not a face you want to wake upto.

Top Gear also has its own track at Dunsfold Park which you will probably recognise from Gran Turismo 5. Turn 10 however want to flesh this out using the show’s past. This is through two of the show’s famous features, the Power Lap time board and the Star in the Reasonably Priced Car.

Firstly, the Power Lap board. This is where the Stig, a nameless faceless racing driver in a white suit, laps the latest powerful car. Some say it’s impossible for him to wear socks, and he can open a beer bottle with his testes! Currently topping this is the Ariel Atom V8 with a time of 1.15.1, a full 1.5 seconds ahead of its nearest competitor, the Bugatti Veyron SS. You will be able to lap these cars around the track and try to be the Stig’s times. This will give you a goal to achieve as you lap constantly.

This was Perry McCarthy, then Ben Collins. Who knows what it is now?

So now for the Star in the Reasonably Priced Car. This is where Clarkson interviews a celebrity and the celebrity laps the car as fast as he can. The Reasonably Priced Car is meant to be a car that most families would be able to buy, and has been a Suzuki Liana, Chevrolet Lacetti and a Kia Cee’d. The times are tricky with even F1 drivers lapping the Liana. The celebrities, excluding F1 drivers, who have lapped fastest with these cars respectively are Ellen MacArthur, Jay Kay and John Bishop who you’ve never heard of.

So what else can Turn 10 add? Well they will be adding the classic challenges. You will presumably buy an old clapper and buy extra add ons and put on crazy paint jobs to help complete challenges, these may sadly be a downfall if not properly made and fleshed out.

This would be awesome though?

So what Turn 10 hope with this Top Gear license is that it will give the game a soul the third was lacking. Lets hope it will, and may persuade a few more casual gamers in the UK will buy this because of the Top Gear connection.

But for your enjoyment, some of best moments in Top Gear history.

9 Games Worth Wasting the Summer Holiday On

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Jun 292011
 

Finally it is time for the Sun to come out and play but despite the country being as hot as it can be, this is not enough! We must go to other lands and experience their sun which will most likely change our pale skins into ones of a more violent red and if anyone dares to touch, we will be agony for weeks. Then if any of us are lucky enough to get a tan, we will leave it in our seat on the plane back home, which the air hostess will most likely eat.

So how can you make this time much more fun? Well thanks to handhelds, you can play video games across the world! But some games are not suitable for holidays for many reasons. You don’t want anything that will grip you, or your holiday will just pass you by and you might as well have played it at home. Ideally, you want a game you can play for hours on end on the plane, but then be able to pick up and play for when your sun block needs to soak in your skin. You also don’t want a dark themed game as it won’t make its full impact in the Sun. Here are some of my suggestions for the three main consoles, DS, 3DS and PSP.

Trackmania Turbo

Even though this is a racing game, get things like Mario Kart and Race Driver out of your mind because it is nothing like it. This is all about trying to achieve pure perfection. Yet despite this very serious face of trying to be the best, some of the jumps are ludicrous and will give you a chuckle. Then as you bang slightly into a wall you will be angry at yourself for chuckling as it ruined your time. Despite this, the game is very addictive and when you have finished all the tracks, which is ninja like, you have other innovative stuff. There is a platform mode where you are not rated on your time, but how many times you must restart. Then there is a puzle mode where you use the Track Creator to try and make the shortest route to the end. Yet you can play it a few minutes because of the bite sized nature of the tracks. A great game.

When you see those red numbers, you may throw your DS into the pool.

Rock Band 3

What? Rock Band on the DS? Yes and it is rather good. There aren’t many songs on this version, just 30 compared to the console versions gazillions, but the gameplay is still fun as you have to switch between the four instruments to make sure you get the best multiplier possible. This is a different experience to the console version so you can buy both, plus there is some great music and thanks to the DSi speakers, it is a great quality. But to avoid nasty looks from your fellow sunbathers, I’d wear some good earphones which as long as you have good ones, should give you a similarly good experience. Also if your not a fan of the music on Rock Band 3 and would like more popular fare, Lego Rock Band would be good. Or you could be greedy and buy both.

IMMMMMM, GONNA ROCK AND ROLL ALL NIIIGHT!

Viva Pinata: Pocket Paradise

This game was criminally ignored. This game is actually much better than the Xbox games they were based on, mainly because the handheld is much more suited to these kind of games. The graphics are gorgeous and capture the charm brilliantly, and the stylus allows you to pick out your animals much easier. You can spend hours just making sure that the plants are right so your Pinatas can mate, which is shown through a funny little dance to protect children’s innocence. Its also available really cheap if you can find it, and is well worth it. Plus, it will capture the sunny atmoshphere of your holiday.

So many colours...

Cubic Ninja

You must be sick of me saying it but Cubic Ninja is set to be a great game. Even if you don’t like the tilt controls which look very impressive, you can control your ninja with the circle pad though I expect that to neuter the experience some what. It looks hard but not so hard that you want to murder your fellow sunloungers and pop someone’s lilo. You don’t even after to download levels from the Level Creator, you can get them through StreetPass or scan QR codes for them. Though despite my insistence, I bet you ignore me and buy something pointless. Like those crappy little ornaments at the airport.

You must be sick of the sight of this game. You should buy it still though.

Super Street Fighter IV: 3D Edition

You have probably played this game before on the Xbox but it is a very good game, so why should miss out when you are on holiday? Buy the 3DS version and carry on playing when your up in the air. Yes this game does not have anything special that the console versions don’t have, though the new camera angle is pretty cool when you have the slider up, but does that really matter when something that is almost as good as the console version has come with you to the Caribbean? You can play this for a long time as you go through the tournament mode, but fights don’t last long, if your good anyway, so you can just put it on while your waiting for your other half to get ready for the dinner.

You can't hit a girl. Bloody woman beater.

Pilotwings Resort

Its amazing how many people called for this classic series to return but didn’t care at all when it did return. Oh well, it does mean that you can get this for cheap. This game has plenty for you to do, though admittedly is a bit short, and is very fun. You actually care about flying around WuHu Island because it is a great environment to explore. I would go on holiday there. It is a fun game, and as Amazon UK, maybe the US site as well, have a special offer of Pilotwings Resort for £20 if you have bought Ocarina of Time 3D, which I bet you have, its an even better way to play.

Well the airfares are cheap, but they always catch you out on the airport tax.

Patapon 3

If you though Rock Band 3 would annoy some fellow holidaymakers, just wait until you turn the volume up on this. The music is very catchy and when you see the other tourists moving to the beat of it, you wonder if maybe you can cause a revolution and get the idiot Obama out. Seriously, just because you burn sausages on a barbeque like the rest of us, doesn’t excuse you basically badmouthed us for something we didn’t do. Anyway this is a fun game, and even the series is starting to run out of steam, it is still a unique game that is worth playing.

PATA PATA PATA PON

LittleBigPlanet

Somehow, Media Mocule managed to squeeze LittleBigPlanet into a handheld. That is seriously impressive. So obviously it is a very easy decision to decide to get this game. The controls are a bit of a problem and the game can be frustrating, but you managed to get an only slightly diluted creation masterpiece. Just download a chock load of levels and you should be done for the holiday. And you will be able to take your head out of it to go for a swim, which will mean all the sun block you applied earlier will disappear and you will become a tomato. Seriously though, this is a great game and everyone loves Sack Boy.

A light breeze may take him away.

Crush

A very under appreciated puzzle platformer. This is unique as at first it seems like a standard 3D platformer but when you reach an obstacle, you can crush the level into a 2D platformer and advance. Though its probably best to ignore the story as it possible the most bonkers story ever created in video game history. You need to play it to believe it. This game though does come with a proviso. Only get it if you don’t plan to get a 3DS as there is a 3DS version which is certain to be better. Though this version will be much cheaper.

Its a great looking game

So with these nine games, you should be well covered on your holiday. Though its best to only take two or three, as there is always a risk that you lose them. So go off and enjoy your holiday with video games, not big massive books that will probably mean you have to pay some extra money when you orange check in girl tells you its overweight. Normally though you can comeback with “And so are you” but don’t blame me if you are kicked off your fight for that.

Wii’s Last Stand Could Be The 5 Best Games of The Year

 Posted by  3 Responses »
Jun 282011
 

Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the last month and this is your first internet glimpse in, then firstly, cave people, I’d like to thank you for picking Gaming Irresponsibly and secondly, for normal house dwelling people, you should know about the Wii U. Developers will now switch their attentions to the Wii U and stop concentrating on the Wii. So what games will make sure the Wii ends with a bang?

Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword

I probably don’t even need to say anything. But I have to do or Frank’ll make an angry face at me. Just like Twilight Princess ended the Gamecube’s lifespan, it looks as if Nintendo will be leaving the Wii with this potential gem, which could be better than Ocarina of Time. The addition of MotionPlus will even give classic items such as the bombs and the bow new life.  Despite having been announced for over a year though, we still don’t know that many details about the game, which is probably for the best. The main mystery is about who and what the statue is, though Anouma told an English magazine that it was not Princess Zelda. Nintendo sure know how to treat us well.

Replace Deku Baba with nettles and that's me

Kirby Wii

As good as Epic Yarn was, it wasn’t a proper Kirby game. Even Good Feel, the developers of the game, admitted it was originally planned as a new IP that Nintendo put Kirby in just so they could get some more sales. Looking at the trailer though, this looks like a return to what Kirby traditionally is. Its a 2.5D platformer including your favourites such as King Dedede! It looks like a direct sequel to Crystal Shards and what the GameCube Kirby would have looked like in his prime. It also should be a good game to show to your children to try and get them into tougher games in the future and not just be playing Just Dance every day. Hopefully the pink blob can make a big impact in its intended form.

I think the Skyward Sword is already making appearances in other games

Mario and Sonic at the London 2012 Olympic Games

Ok, so this is a mini game collection, I realise that. Also, many of you will be questioning its credibility because of the Beijing 2008 game released four years ago. But with all the extra events added, how is this a worse game than titles like Madden and FIFA, when they hardly add anything to the gaming industry, and yet people lap it up every year? The new events look pretty good: things such as horse racing and badminton, and even some of the older events have been changed. The Dream Events will now reference the main games like in the Winter Olympics. The London license is also used a lot, with Big Ben towers, because Big Ben is only the clock, being used for the horse jumps. Should be fun for the family.

Just wait until Usain Bolt does this.

Pandora’s Tower

This last two we are going to have to beg for, as rumours are they might not make it over to Western shores from Japan. This one deserves to because it was given 36/40 by Gaming Bible Famitsu, and has an interesting story behind it. Ceres has a beautiful singing voice and is practising for a contest where Simon Cowell is judging. Not really. However she is attacked by beasts, and is saved by her hero. However Ceres is cursed now, and they must go to the top of every tower, kill the main beast there and Ceres eat the meat, or she will turn into a beast. However the twist is that her entire civilization are vegetarians. Dom’t get your hopes too high though as only mass petitions will bring it over.

She just saw Rebecca Black's Friday video

The Last Story

This is probably the best pure RPG on the Wii. The graphics are amazing, some of the best on the console. It is made by a certified genius in the name of Sakaguchi. So please, I beg of you, bring it over here. You didn’t expect us to take to Final Fantasy like we did, but we did, so why won’t we do it with The Last Story? Good storytelling can be appreciated all around the world, which is why many RPGs have been a success over here. You may think JRPGS are dying over here, but they only will if you stop having the faith to bring the games over here. We can’t buy them and love them if they aren’t released! So please Sakaguschi bring it out over here! It’ll do better than that 4 Heroes of Light shit.

Who doesn't want this?

So the Wii has some life in it yet, especially if Japan listens to our petitions to bring games like Pandora’s Tower and The Last Story over here. But don’t expect the last ever Wii game to be romantic and awesome, as a sign of the console. Because the Gamecube’s last game was Meet the Robinsons.

Is Nintendo preparing to ambush the PS Vita

 Posted by  9 Responses »
Jun 282011
 

Please Note: This IS NOT a comparison between the 3DS and PS Vita but an analysis of what Nintendo may be  doing to try and prevent the Vita from being a success. You cannot do one of those accurately until you actually have had both consoles in your ownership for a while, and we haven’t. I tried to persuade a Sony executive, but he didn’t respond to my advances.

The announcement of the PS Vita passed me by, mainly because it sounded like one of those healthy biscuits for dieters. Well, current rumours say it will probably be released around November time in response to the 3DS, so are Nintendo preparing to combat this?

The pretty little bubbles...

Well currently, they are. Nintendo have five massive games coming out at Christmas, with Kid Icarus: Uprising, Starfox 3D, Mario Kart 3D, Super Mario 3D and Luigi’s Mansion 2 all set for the holidays. I expect all four to be top class games and make sure that all the kids want for Christmas is a Nintendo 3DS. There is something for everyone, and with an already established userbase, these games may threaten for Christmas No. 1.

Its not just Nintendo games that are set for a big November release. Cave Story 3D is also being pushed back to November and while that might sond so big as we’ve seen it on countless platforms already, this is the first one to make any radical change. The graphics look amazing and still have that indy charm that made us all buy it in the first place.

Looks atmospheric.

So there are six major big hitters for the 3DS coming out, coincidentally when the Playstation Vita is set to come out. The folks at Nintendo aren’t stupid, they know that with their weak launch, the PS Vita could be a real threat. They need to try and squash it, and if they give the PS Vita a weaker launch than their own, they probably will retain their stranglehold on the handheld market. Its all about tactical business and Nintendo have the boost that they have proved that the console can improve on classics and give a top class game with Ocarina of time 3D. That game alone may convince fans that 3DS will be better than the PS Vita, and stop them getting that pre order slip.

A big factor in console releases is the amount of media coverage you get. As a new console, the PS Vita is bound to get a lot, but Nintendo have even bigger names to deal out that would minimize how many pages in magazines and web pages on websites that the PS Vita gets on. Super Mario 3D on its own will get massive coverage, its the first all new 3D Mario Platformer on a handheld, and it sees the return of the raccoon suit, in a 3D platformer! Not only that though, but after many years out of it, Starfox is returning with the best game from the series in 3D. Then, after almost two decades gone, Kid Icarus is returning in something that looks spectacular. The much loved Luigi gets to go around vacuuming ghosts, which parents will love as using that game they might be able to get kids cleaning, and the family favourite Mario Kart 3D, which pretty much speaks for itself.

Could this stop the Vita's launch dead?

We have no idea what the PS Vita’s launch games will be, but the big hitters are necessary. Nintendo were only able to recover from their poor launch line up as they had no real competition, and that allowed gamers to be patient enough to wait for Ocarina of Time 3D. The PS Vita does not have that luxury, especially with the games Nintendo are sending out in November. If the PS Vita does not deliver a serious reason to own the console, it will lose the entire generation.

To win this time, Sony needs to convince the mainstream gamers to buy the Vita and not the 3DS. This will be hard with Nintendo being family favourites due to the success of the Wii and DS, and never mind the damage that the massive hack on the PS3 has done for Sony’s image but it must be done. This means that other thanthe games, the Vita needs a massive selling point. What the Vita has got but Nintendo hasn’t is a second analogue stick and 3G capability. Now while obviously that is exciting for us gamers, but for the average person this may not mean much. 3G will be what sticks out, but with many people already stuck to their iPods, they might just shrug and carry on playing Angry Birds. Nintendo had the massive 3D without glasses which many people just wanted to see if it was possible, which it was. The 3DS is already a great ice breaker with friends.

So currently, Nintendo look like they will be able to keep the PS Vita quiet with the great games coming out at Christmas plus the uncertainty of whether the PS Vita launch will be any good or not. Expect Nintendo’s stranglehold on the handheld market to carry on.

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