The SkullBlog

ACTUALLY, IT’S NOT ALL THAT SPECIAL.  I WAS GONNA DO THIS ANYWAYS.  JUST NOW I’M DOING IT IN ALL CAPS BECAUSE IT’S CAPSLOCK DAY.  SO HOORAY, I SUPPOSE.

THE GAME REVIEW THIS WEEK (OR MONTH OR WHATEVER THE DEVIL IT IS) IS THE LEGEND OF ZELDA OCARINA OF TIME 3D FOR THE NINTENDO 3DS.  SO TO START OFF, I THINK WE’LL GO WITH:

THE NEW AND IMPROVED!

THIS GAME, AS WE ALL KNOW, IS JUST A REMAKE OF THE SINGLE GREATEST GAME EVER MADE.  IF YOU DON’T KNOW THAT, PLEASE GO PURCHASE A NINTENDO 3DS, NINTENDO 64, AND A GAMECUBE, AND PLAY THROUGH ALL THE VERSIONS OF OCARINA OF TIME AVAILABLE FOR THEM.  OR SHOOT YOURSELF IN THE FOOT.  YOUR CALL, BUT ONE OF THEM IS A SMART IDEA.

ANYWAYS, AS ANY GOOD REMAKE DOES, THIS GAME HAS NEAT NEW FEATURES!  LET’S PUT THEM IN A NEAT LITTLE LIST SO WE CAN EASILY ACCESS THEM, THEN I’LL GO MORE INTO DETAIL AND SAY WHAT I LIKE AND DON’T LIKE.

NEW FEATURES:

3D-NESS

MOTION CONTROL

UPGRADED GRAPHICS

ALTERED INTERFACE FOR SOME ITEMS AND SOME ITEMS CHANGED FOR LACK OF RUMBLE PACK

UPGRADED SOUNDS

REMOVAL OF GLITCHES

I THINK THAT’S IT, BUT IF I REMEMBER ANYTHING ELSE, I’LL PUT IN A FOOTNOTE.  BY WHICH I MEAN RANDOMLY INSERT IT WHILE I’M TYPING.

3D-NESS!  AS I SAID BEFORE, I REALLY LIKE THE 3D EFFECT ON THE 3DS.  IT’S NEAT.  THIS IS THE FIRST NOT-A-FIGHTING-GAME-TYPE GAME THAT I’VE GOT FOR 3DS AND IT REALLY MAKES IT COOLER IN AN ACTUAL 3D GAME.  IT’S COME TO HIT ME IN THE FACE SUDDENLY THAT THE 3D IS DIFFERENT FOR THE 3DS AS OPPOSED TO A 3D MOVIE IN THAT RATHER THAN LOOKING AS THOUGH THE THINGS ARE COMING OUT OF THE SCREEN AT YOU, IT’S MORE LIKE LOOKING INTO THE SCREEN LIKE IT WERE A DIORAMA LIKE YOU MIGHT SEE IN A MUSEUM.  THE MAIN DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE SIMILE AND THE 3DS IS THAT RATHER THAN DINOSAURS AND SUCH, YOU HAVE LINK AND SUCH.  THIS GAME IS PROBABLY THE COOLEST 3D ANYTHING THAT HAS EVER BEEN, NOT ONLY BECAUSE IT’S OCARINA OF TIME, BUT ALSO BECAUSE THE 3D JUST SINKS INTO THE GAME WELL AND YOU KIND OF GET USED TO IT AFTER A WHILE.

OH YEAH, FORGOT ONE.  THE ADDITION OF THE MIRRORED MASTER QUEST MODE.

NEXT IS THE MOTION CONTROL.  IT SEEMS A LITTLE GIMMICKY AT FIRST, LARGELY IF NOT EXCLUSIVELY DUE TO THE FACT THAT IT’S A GIMMICK, BUT IT’S A COOL GIMMICK.  I KNOW WE’RE ALL TIRED OF NINTENDO THROWING A GIMMICK AT US AND SAYING, “THIS IS THE NEWEST COOLEST THING IN THE WORLD, JUST GO WITH IT!” BUT THIS TIME, THEY MADE A GOOD THING HAPPEN.  AIMING THE BOW BY MOVING THE SYSTEM ITSELF GIVES IT A NEW FEEL THAT HAS NEVER BEEN EXPERIENCED IN ANY GIMMICK BEFORE.  IT DOES MAKE IT A LITTLE MORE DIFFICULT TO HIT MOVING TARGETS, BUT THE OVERALL NEATNESS OF IT CANCELS THAT OUT AND THEN SOME.

UPGRADED GRAPHICS AND SOUNDS!

I FIGURED I’D SAVE SOME TIME AND JUST MASH THESE INTO ONE.  THE GRAPHICS ARE THE SECOND MOST EPICRIFFICALLY SWEETTACULAR AWESOMESAUCE GRAPHICS I’VE SEEN ON A HANDHELD SYSTEM ONLY TO FINAL FANTASY VII CRISIS CORE ON PSP.  AND THAT GAME ONLY GETS A BETTER SCORE IN FMVS, THE GRAPHICS DURING GAMEPLAY IS ON PAR FOR THE TWO GAMES.  THE MUSIC IS THE MAIN DIFFERENCE IN THE SOUND UPGRADES, AND IT JUST SOUNDS A LOT CLEARER AND MORE REFINED.  NO MAJOR DIFFERENCE, BUT YOU CAN HEAR THE INDIVIDUAL PARTS OF THE MUSIC BETTER NOW, WHICH I THINK IS A GOOD THING.

ALTERED ITEMS!

REMEMBER HOW ANNOYING IT WAS TRYING TO PUT ON AND TAKE OF THE IRON BOOTS IN THE WATER TEMPLE EVERY FORTY FREAKIN’ SECONDS?  WELL, THEY FIXED IT.  THE HOVER BOOTS AND IRON BOOTS NOW USE THE WIND WAKER STYLE OF EQUIPPING, SO YOU JUST HAVE TO SET THEM TO A BUTTON INSTEAD OF GOING BACK INTO THE MENU ALL THE BLOODY TIME.  GOOD THINKING.  THIS FEATURE GETS A THUMBS UP.  ALSO, THEY CHANGED THE STONE OF AGONY TO THE SHARD OF AGONY.  SINCE THE 3DS HAS NO RUMBLE FEATURE, IT JUST LIGHTS UP AN ICON AND MAKES A SOUND WHEN YOU’RE NEAR THE KIND OF SECRET THAT THE STONE WOULD RUMBLE FOR.  I DON’T REALLY HAVE ANY STRONG FEELINGS ONE WAY OR ANOTHER ON THIS CHANGE.  IT DOESN’T AFFECT GAMEPLAY MUCH, AND THEY NEEDED TO CHANGE IT SOMEHOW, SO I GUESS IT’S AS GOOD AS THEY COULD’VE MADE IT.  WHATEVS.

REMOVAL OF GLITCHES:

I THINK SOME OF THEM WERE A GOOD THING TO TAKE OUT SO YOU COULD NO LONGER GET INFINITE SKULLTULAS, BUT SOME OF THEM AMUSED ME, LIKE PLAYING THE SWORD LIKE AN OCARINA.  HOW DID THAT HURT ANYONE?  I GUESS THERE’S NOT REALLY ANYTHING ELSE TO SAY, JUST SOMETHING I NOTICED IN THE GAME.  MEH.

AND MIRRORED MASTER QUEST MODE!

THIS IS COOL.  REMEMBER MASTER QUEST?  ME TOO.  GOOD TIMES.  ANYWAYS, THIS MODE IS AVAILABLE AFTER YOU BEAT THE GAME ON REGULAR MODE.  IT’S LIKE MASTER QUEST ONLY IT’S GOT ALL THE GRAPHICS FLIPFLOPPED LIKE THE WII VERSION OF TWILIGHT PRINCESS.  IT’S STRANGE TO WALK INTO THE WORLD YOU’RE SO USED TO AND HAVING IT BACKWARDS, BUT WHAT’S EVEN MORE STRANGE IS AIMING A SLINGSHOT WITH YOUR RIGHT HAND.  THIS MODE HAS WON MY APPROVAL, THOUGH, ‘CAUSE IT’S THE SAME THING AS MASTER QUEST ONLY HARDER BECAUSE YOU KEEP FORGETTING HOW TO GET PLACES BECAUSE THE WORLD IS BACKWARDS.

ALL THESE SILLY THINGS MAKE FOR ONE GREAT REMAKE OF ONE GREAT GAME.  A REMAKE THAT ADDS NEAT THINGS TO A GAME WITH A 17 CAN’T REALLY GET A LOWER SCORE, SO THIS GAME STILL HAS A 17 OUT OF 17.  HOORAY!

ALSO, A WORD OF THE DAY!

FORK

–NOUN

AN INSTRUMENT HAVING TWO OR MORE PRONGS OR TINES, FOR HOLDING, LIFTING, ETC., AS AN IMPLEMENT FOR HANDLING FOOD OR ANY OF VARIOUS AGRICULTURAL TOOLS.

SOURCE: WWW.DICTIONARY.REFERENCE.COM

Actually, the third.  Or the fourteenth.  Depending on whether you’re thinking of Dimensions or Dead or Alive.  I’m thinking of both.  Now that my nonsensical intro of doom(TM) has plagued our fine reader, I can actually talk about the game.  RANTIN’ TIME!

Story:

Okay, I beat most of this game while watching baseball, so I’m not really sure what was going on the whole time.  Also, it was kinda boring.  A couple interesting twists, but overall nothing that enthralled me for more than the length of a fight.  Plus, I haven’t actually played a DoA game for like ten years or something ridiculous like that, so I haven’t been following the story of those games, and this one, as far as I can tell, is following the story from at least one previous one, so I’m not really sure what’s going on.  None of the characters really develop at all except for the one that you find out at the end has been kind of more or less the villain the whole game from the perspective of a character you meet in chapter two who doesn’t do anything until chapter four, and that’s not really the kind of story I’m looking for.  I think there were three Dead or Alive fighting tournaments, and you played in one of them from two perspectives in the game, but don’t quote me on that.  It’s hard to tell.  Also, the fights in the story don’t usually have to happen and they just sort of do.  In some cases, there’s literally no explanation as to what possible reason you could have to fight this character who for all you know is just summoned to you for no reason other than the entertainment of Bael, the Lord of Exploding Heads.  Or it could be that he was teleported there by a mistake by Dr. Light trying to put Megaman somewhere and accidentally moving somebody from a different universe to a place that is still wrong.  Thank you, Dr. Light, for inexplicably placing Ryu from Ninja Gaiden into the world of DoA.  Seriously, where’d he come from?  He’s a cool character, but still.  Kinda random crossover.  Almost as random as throwing Solid Snake into Super Smash Brothers.  I don’t think any crossover will be more random than that, though.

Anyhoo, it’s a fighting game, so I hardly give a crap about the story, but it was still strange, nonsensical, and mostly kinda pointless.  6 out of 17.

Music!

I actually noticed the music backing up some of the fights in this game.  It’s nice to have it stick out in a fighting game.  I don’t think I even did any review for Street Fighter’s audio.  There’s a lot of cool tracks if you take the time to listen, and even if you don’t, it melds well into the game.  15 out of 17.

Visuals?

Dear people who worked on this game:

Tanks.

Love Spammy.

I think this is the first game I’ve seen that’s really shown me what the 3DS is capable of graphically.  It’s an early release still, but I think this will stand as the best 3DS graphics for a while at least.  Street Fighter looked cool, but the animation in this game has surpassed my expectations for any kind of handheld system.  I can only hope we’ll continue to see such beautiful graphics in the future of gaming.  Only thing is that the dubbing didn’t usually even come close, and a lot of the scenes had a certain lack of animation.  14 out of 17 overall, 17 when they tried.

Gameplay.

Now the important part.  Fighting games are all about this part!

Overall, the game was pretty easy.  I only had to retry a couple of fights, and most of the time that was because I got kicked down a set of stairs when I looked up for several seconds to watch at an exciting time in the ball game.  I only actually had to retry legitimately on two of the boss fights, but even then only once or twice.

Most of the characters play in a similar style, which is good for button mashers like me.  Still, as you play a particular character more, you get used to the little neat things that are unique to that character, so it evens out.  Also, button mashing is a pretty bad strategy in this game because of all of the quirks to the system.  There’s a triangle of techniques involving holds, throws, and strikes, and I don’t even remember what beats what, but think Rock Paper Scissors.  I also got boned several times because in order to make that kind of system feasible, you have to slow the gameplay a bit, and I just came from Street Fighter, so I was expecting to have constant movement, attacking, blocking, and whatnot with no stopping whatsoever, so I kept hitting the counter combo right as the opponent stood there, and after I was too far into the counter to actually react to anything, they’d kick me in the head.

Despite being slower paced, it is a nice change from Street Fighter.  It’s kind of nice to be able to win a fight for once.  :P

Also, remember when I was reviewing SF4:3DE and I talked about the figurines or trophies or whatever the devil it was?  There’s that.  Um.  Woot?  Whatevs.  And Ryu from Ninja Gaiden.  Whevever that came from.  Again I says whatevs.

So anyway, it’s fun.  15 out of 17.

Overall, it’s a good game with great graphics, marvelous music, and fangorious gameplay.  Actually, I just started alliterating and couldn’t think of a good word that describes the gameplay with a G.  Good and great were already taken, as you can see.  Anyways, I’d recommend it if you’re a fan of the series, a fan of fighting games, or want to challenge me over the internets.  14 out of 17.

Bird

–noun

This is going up as our first 3DS rant! History is in the making!  Not here, probably in some important place like…  I dunno, England.  They seem to be on top of things.  Except when the Daleks invade.

Anyways, I don’t remember if I covered the original here or just on Facebook or the Tweeter or some stupid thing like that, I don’t know.  Alls I know is I’m going at this thing here and now!

Now that I’ve written enough introduction that doesn’t actually relate to anything, I think it’s safe to start the rant.   It feels funny to say “The original SF4″ because it’s kind of a paradox; An original third sequel?  Well, that’s what I’m going with.  The original SF4 started you off with a cast of only a few characters with several unlockable ones for a grand total of 19.  Upon booting up this game, I was quite dismayed to see that all of my work that I’d put into unlocking only a few of the characters available was for naught; if I’d just waited three years, I’d get all of them PLUS the boss Seth, who I don’t believe was playable in the original version, PLUS about 15 extras.  I think it was 35 that this one gives you, and there’s no unlocking at all.  That’s nice because you don’t have to work at all to get the character you wanted to play from the start that you had to play four other guys that you weren’t familiar with, and for those of you who don’t know, Street Fighter is one of the more difficult fighting game franchises out there, so even thinking of getting the guy you want is pretty much impossible.  Personally, I was actually very impressed with the introduction of El Fuerte, and I primarily play him.

Anyways, I think I’ve ranted about that enough, and other than that, the differences are as follows:

1: 3D!

2: HANDHELD!

3: FIGURINES!

You can guess at the first two and I’m pretty sure there’s absolutely no way you can not be correct in assuming what I would say if I cared to type out more.  As for the figurines, I don’t remember what they’re called, figures, statues, something like that.  Anyways, it’s the same thing as the Super Smash Brother’s trophy collection.  You get certain trophies, figures, or whatever the devil you want to call it, for completing certain challenges like beating the game with certain characters, getting perfect scores, completing high difficulties, things like that.  Anyways, it’s a lame excuse for giving you something to do instead of unlock the characters that you got all of just for purchasing the game.

I do like some of the new characters, though, some neat movesets.  Nothing specifically awesomeriffic, I still like El Fuerte best and Ryu/Ken/Sakura in second place.  Same character, different graphic, and Sakura doesn’t hit as hard, so I place them together.  It’s a solid all around set of things that make your enemies dead.

I would like to complain that they made Seth a playable character.  I refuse on principal to play a character who is literally the most annoying moves from all the other characters stapled together pretending to be a moveset.  I’d like his creators to die in a fire.

I figure I’ll put in a few words on what I think about the 3D for the 3DS in general, as it’s the first review for the system, and that’s pretty much the only advancement from the DSi.  There’s also the movement sensor thingy, but that’s basically just a Wiimote that’s not quite as good.  I’m sure if applied right, it could be really cool, like the Wiimote as been, but so far I haven’t seen anything worth noting about it specifically.  That’s probably got something to do with the fact that I’ve only got SSF4:3DE as far as games for the system go, but still.  I’ll wait until it does something awesome to get to that.

So the 3D is an interesting effect that makes it so you don’t have to have glasses for it to work.  I’m not sure precisely how it works, as it’s a screen, but it looks a lot like those 3D card things or like when the front of a 3D movie case has a little changing thing that changes the image slightly as you move your field of vision past it.  I think that’s probably the worst description I’ve ever given to anyone about anything (Except possibly when I said to the Tweeter that I was going to stuff at place with people), but there you go.  It probably sounds kinda lame from that description, but I think it’s pretty neat.  After some development, I’m sure in ten years, it’ll be seen on every  TV, cinemas, game devices, phones, and whatever else.  If you’re just looking at a still picture with the effect, it’s not all that great, but it’s kind of cool in a moving scenario like a movie, and I think it adds an interesting dimension (SUCK MY PUNS!) to video gaming.  Particularly Ryu’s spinny kick, (Which I could probably spell, but I wouldn’t know where to put the spaces) can only be described as “Sweeeeet.”  the 3D effect for the console has earned my approval and a 13 on the scale.  It’s pointless, but cool.  Like a dull Katana made of ice. Get it? pointless and cool?  SUCK MY PUNS!

So now to the point that you all are probably starting to realize that you can just scroll to  the bottom of the post and see if I gave it a good review or not by looking at the number in the last paragraph rather than reading the entire retarded rant of ridiculous review, SSF4:3DE gets a 17 on the regular scale, (Same as SF4), and on the remake of a game scale, probably a 15 because it basically gave a giant middle finger to anybody who did any unlocking of anything in the original.  I can’t even imagine what it would’ve been like if you were one of those dudes who unlocked ALL the characters and then spent endless hours on the laggy as crap online play pwning the faces off n00bd0uch3z.  It wasn’t because you were more skilled than them necessarily, but mostly just ’cause you had unlocked Gouken and he hits harder than the other guy for some reason and it’s so laggy that the only effective strategy is to mash the punch button and stand in a corner and hope they accidentally walk into you.

RANT OVER!

I’ve not quite completed the game fully due to Oh Heck’s lack of giving me all the Pokeymanz from Black Version (He’s about five badges, a Pokemon League, and a the other explorable areas of the region behind me), but I think I can fairly accurately review the game for the most part.

For years, every person I know has complained that Pokemon has been selling the same game since the original Blue and Red Versions.  Most of these same people, however, continue to purchase said games every time a new one comes out.  This is no exception.  It has proven that age-old adage, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”  Change brings about terrible things.  Like Zelda 2.  Wanna know why no other Zelda game sported the half sidescrolling gameplay?  Because it blew.  NO! Don’t tell me that you liked it, ’cause I don’t care.  A sidescrolling platformer requires a laser cannon embedded in the hero’s arm or enemies that die when you jump on them.  You can’t do it with a sword.  It just doesn’t work.  You need to get too close to the enemy, plus then you get to enemies like Stalfos that have shields which inexplicably ALWAYS KNOW IF YOU’RE GOING TO DUCK so they can block every attack you throw.  Then you get to things like Goriyas and they throw ranged weapons which SAMUS WOULD HAVE BROUGHT! Ergo, you’re totally boned.

Now that I’ve gone off topic, I can safely return to the topic at hand and say that change is not always a bad thing, but you don’t necessarily need it.  Pokemon Black and White are a prime example.  You are a kid that gets your first Pokemon.  You want to challenge the Pokemon League.  You have a rival who also wants to, but his reasons to do so are wrong.  Whatever your reasons are, the game assumes they’re the right ones and that you’re fighting for love and peace and all that good stuff, which you probably are, but still, they could’ve at least asked, right?  Anyways, along the way you meet a team of evil guys who are trying for whatever reason to steal people’s Pokemon, you eventually take them down, defeat the Pokemon League, and all is well in the world.  Same story, I will give you.  It’s almost as similar to Blue Version as Eragon was to Star Wars.

The main differences are obviously the Pokeymanz available, but on top of that, there are two new kinds of battles to be had.  In previous titles, you’ve been mostly doing one-on-one battles with interspersed two-on-two matches.  Now you can have what are called Triple Battles and Rotation Battles.  In a Triple battle, you have three Pokemon against your opponent’s three.  Pretty simple.  The rotation battles are interesting.  Each combatant has three Pokemon on a rotating plate.  Before you attack, you can select to rotate the plate to the right or left, then select an attack from the Pokemon that will now be in front.

It’s difficult stylistically because you don’t know if your opponent will switch out for his water Pokemon or his Dragon Pokemon.  Or he could keep the electric Pokemon he has out.  So if you switch to be super effective, he might switch his guy so he’ll be super effective.  Unfortunately, they you’re both probably not very effective.  There’s a lot of strategy that I don’t really understand.  The only one I actually found through the game was fairly easy and I just fainted all three of his guys with my Lilligant.

I’m very happy with a lot of the new Pokemon, my favorite being the previously mentioned Lilligant.  Unfortunately, as has been the case with many other generations of Pokemon, a lot of them are just plain stupid looking.  If you haven’t gotten the game yet, when you get a Lillipup, DO NOT EVOLVE IT.  Just trust me.  It’ll suck the rest of the game and die easier than most things, but it’ll be better than being under the shame of calling yourself a trainer of either of its evolved forms.

The music’s kinda cool.  Same style as the last one, but it’s nice.

There’s not really much else to say that wouldn’t fall under either the category of “You already know this because you played a previous game in the series” or “Spoilers,” so I’ll leave it at that.  Not much of a review, but it’s a game so simple that a sea monkey could play it.  And I don’t think a sea monkey’s range of vision is even large enough to comprehend a single pixel.  Especially not on my epicriffic DSi XL.  Come to think of it, I don’t even know if they have eyes.  They’re a kind of shrimp, and shrimp have eyes.  Until you cut off their heads and cut out their guts and dip them in cocktail sauce and eat them and then consider yourself stupid because you left the shell on and then deshell them and repeat the process.

Anyways, that’s my review of the game.  16 out of 17.  If you cut Lillipup’s evolved forms, Trubbish and Garbodor, I’d probably have given it a 17.

Fallout Vegas.  I liked very few games better than it that have been made in the past several years, and it’s just plain nogglefrap.  I considered Kirby, then i got this game.  Also, Kirby had a problem; it was too freakin’ easy.  In most levels, you were literally invincible.  The only places that could actually make you die and have to restart the level were the moving levels where the screen moves free of you, so you can’t go back and if you’re not fast enough you get squished between the end of the screen and a ledge or something.  On the plus side, it had a very amusing storyline, and the most unique gameplay style I’ve seen in a while.  It was a bit odd at first, being Kirby and not having the ability to fly, but then you found you could jump in holes as much as you pleased and only lose your beads which didn’t really matter much anyways.  you could use them to get neat crap for your house, but that was the only purpose for them.  I think they should’ve been like the stars you collected in Kirby 64, 100 stars=extra life.  Then implement the same five bubble health system Kirby’s had for every single game in the world, and you should be good even considering the new yarn style powers.

ANYHOO, Fallout New Vegas has my three of my favorite things for a video game to have: A sandbox world, explosions, and a new aesthetic for every single item in the game.  Add some ninjas, giant robots and a reeaaallly hot babe, and it would be the perfect game.

I’m a big fan of everything Bethesda makes, and I thought Fallout 3 was, for the most part, what I wanted from Oblivion that I didn’t get.  The problem I had with Oblivion was that the sandbox wasn’t big enough.  There were invisible walls everywhere making it impossible to get to half the stupid continent.  I was so depressed because in Morrowind, my absolute favorite thing to do was to run around in random directions, look at the scenery, find caves, graves, dungeons, stuff like that, take everything that wasn’t nailed down, and repeat.  The world was so large that I actually managed to go for all of the hours I’d played without even uncovering the entire map.  I had huge portions of it, but there were still probably double my hours worth of playing yet to explore.

Fallout 3, I’ll admit was slightly more linear than I would’ve liked, but the world was still there to explore.  Now, that small, unfortunate happening was overcome by the gynormous wasteland I can wander around in for like ten hours and only completed like an hour of actual storyline, sometimes not even that much.  I’ve been running around looking for people to talk to, random stuff to do, just seeing all the strange things that the people of Nevada forgot existed because the world exploded.  I’ve only so far encountered two communities for any extended period of time, but I’ve got one to like me as much as they can, and the other to hate me.  Silly Powder Gangers.  With their locked doors that nobody complains about you picking the locks of until the third one.  Yeeeaaahhh…..

I’ve been told there’s a lot of game ending glitches, but I so far have yet to encounter any, so I guess I’m okay with that.  Anyhoo, I give it a 17.

Now that it’s finally the new decade, maybe I should get around to this.  :P  I’ll also do my game of the year, if I have time before I get bored and go to bed.

ANYHOO….

Battle 4; Almost-but-not-quite-a-platformer/action-and-puzzle-kind-of-game:

Batman: Arkham Asylum, The Legend of Zelda, Wind Waker

Batman:

When I first read about this game, I was jizzed with excitement.  I think I misunderstand the definition of that word.  Well, anyway, it sounded great, bringing back the old voices I know and love from the old cartoon show, which is probably the best part of growing up in the 90s.  So that’s the reason I initially decided to buy it.  Then I didn’t buy it ’cause I forgot, so Gimp bought it, but the point is, it was brilliant.

As all, or possibly even some of you know, I’m generally the kind of guy who wants to run into every situation I am placed in head on with a large hammer, sword, machinegun, missile launcher, or whatever different kind of junk it could be.  Point is, I’m generally as far from stealth as you can possibly get.  This took the stealth game genre to a place it’s never been before.  There’s still lots of actiony parts, plus the stealth is…  Cool.  Like in Splinter Cell or something, you’d sneak around and the greatest thing you’ll ever do is shoot something.  And even that will usually completely screw you and alert all the other guys.  In this game, you’re sneaking around for grapples, divebomb-dropkicking people, all sorts of cool stuff.  You might say, couldn’t you do lots of similar stuff in Tenchu?  Well, yes, you could.  However, the big difference is that in Tenchu, if you were forced into combat with somebody who DOES know you’re there, you’re probably going to die.  Either that or run away and try and sneak up on them again.  Plus this has bossfights.  Which as we saw in…  I don’t remember, some PS2 Tenchu…  Anyways, it didn’t work.  I had to try that part over like forty times.

This was a very well done recreation of the Animated Series in the form of a video game.  It was great from the angles of nostalgia, and I was extremely pleased with it.  17.

ZELDA!

Okay, I have to be honest, yes I liked OoT Master Quest better, but I decided not to put on remakes.  Otherwise I’d also have Chrono Trigger or FF4 on the list.  Lots of ridiculous things.  Anyway, this was my favorite Zelda game of the Decade, and my favorite since OoT.  Which I suppose means it’s better than eh…  Majora’s Mask.  Hmm…  Well anyways, it was friggin’ nogglefrap.  Wait…  The Oracle games, I knew I forgot something.  They were in there somewhere.  Anyways, nogglefrap and stuff.

So the game starts out:  Zelda.  Off to a good start.  After looking upon the box, or seeing any gameplay at all, it suddenly dawns on you that Link totally looks like a Powerpuff girl.  A little awkward at this point.  After about ten minutes of playing, you seem perfectly content with your enormous head and cel-shaded world.  All is at peace.  I have no idea how it happened, but I fell in love with this strange cartoony Link the same way that I did with Link in Ocarina.  Twice.  Two different versions of yourself and whatnot.

I’m a big fan of long games that keep you glued to the chair for forty hours or so and just when it seems like you’re about to see the end, the actual game begins.  You know, like when you get the three stones in Ocarina the first time and you’re like, “Oh, this’ll be great, I’ll just go turn this in, defeat Ganon, and then….”  And the game happens right in your face.  Or in Twilight Princess when you get all the fused shadows.  Then you need to go find a mirror.  And that’s like twenty hours in.  That’s just awesome.

In this one it’s like right after you go through the Tower of the Gods or so.  So much story opens up to you, you have to explore everywhere you go now, you don’t just go between the seven major squares on the map anymore, all sorts of awesome stuff opens up to you.  The world suddenly seems a lot bigger.  It actually is a fairly large world in WW anyways.  It’s among the greatest things ever.

The story is brilliant, it references Ocarina, and has a foreboding reference to what I think is actually Minish Cap, (even though that one hadn’t come out yet) in the beginning sequence, and it’s just overall the perfect mix of Zelda and Zelda to make me happy.  17

THE FIGHT:

Batman: Epic Story.

Zelda: Epic Story.

Batman: Nostalgic takeback to the 90s.

Zelda: Nostalgic takeback to Zelda.

Batman: Brilliant gameplay system integrating stealth and combat very well.

Zelda:  That thing that Zelda does where you have forty weapons to solve puzzles with.  Iron boots, giant hammers, mirrors on the back of your shield, bombs…  The puzzles are all so clever.

Batman: Three batarangs at once.

Zelda:  99 bombs but not at once.

Batman:  Epic bossfights.

Zelda:  Epic bossfights.

Batman: Protagonist is a relatable character one can sympathize with for having lost his parents at a young age and striving to achieve the greatness that he did.

Zelda:  Protagonist never speaks, but says ever so much.

Batman:  I dunno, I think I ran out of things.

Zelda: Pirates, cannons, lost treasure, princesses to save, gigantic world to explore and chart, though it does lose points for featuring Tingle.

Despite Tingle, Zelda still has enough things up on Batman.  Sorry, but this round has a winner.

Battle 5; Fighting Games:

Street Fighter 4, Soul Calibur 2

Street Fighter:

Okay, I’m not much of the fighting game type, but I’ll have fun with them.  One thing I have to say for SF4, it’s probably the hardest game I’ve played this decade.  Most games I’m just breezing through in an afternoon, but it actually took me a couple days to even get good enough to beat the standard arcade mode all the way through.  Part of that may stem from the fact that the final boss is a flaming douchecanoe who deserves to be shot for being so cheap.

Remember all the moves you thought were cheap from all the Street Fighter games?  Teleporting, double Sonic Boom, that thing that what’s his name did that made it so you couldn’t move and you just got sucked in and then he punched you in the face?  Well, take all those things that you hate particular characters exclusively because of that move, pile them all together on a naked man spray painted silver, and you’ve got the final boss of SF4, Seth.

It was moderately difficult to get to him, and then once you were there, I literally couldn’t beat him without sitting in a corner and spamming my good ol’ Down, Forward, Punch.  HADOKEN!  HADOKEN!  HADOKEN!  That’s how you beat him.  Anyone who says they can beat him otherwise is a liar.  Slap them.  Unfortunately, you don’t always have hadokens, so on alternate characters, you have to find other ways to do it, but it all boils down to being as cheap as you possibly can be.  If you ever played like this versus a human, they’d call you a dick, punch you, steal your XBox, sell it, use the money to buy a knife, dull it, then throw it at you just because that’s how much of an ass you were being.

Despite the difficulty that borders on unbearable, the arcade mode was very interesting with separate cutscenes for each character which unfolded a different angle of the story, so you had to beat it with every character to see the whole thing.  Needless to say, I’m still unaware of large parts of the story from characters I didn’t like playing and whatever.  Still, I saw a whole lot of things that didn’t make sense from two characters perspectives, but when you see it from both of them separately, they both see a thing the other doesn’t so the player can piece together what’s going on.  It’s cool.

17.

Soul Calibur 2:

This is a very interesting fighting game, I think, because most of the fighting games I play are all kung-fu kinda hand to hand things.  This series goes with a different road and is a weapon based fighting game, which has been seen before, but I think this series does it better than any other.  Partially because the only other games I can think of with weapon oriented fighting are the Gundam series of fighting games, which are kind of a different genre.  Space robots with gattling guns aren’t quite the same as semi-realistic old timey swordfighting.

One of the things I like about this game is the different styles of fighting.  Most of them look believable, and based on what little I know about weapons, several look like they could be based on actual fighting styles.  Even if they’re not, they’re extremely well put together from an outward perspective.  They’re all extremely varied with a wide range of things to do, even with your basic big-friggin’-axe dude, you’ve got a multitude of attacks, lots of them having different stances they can enter in order to do even more moves, all based on situation, and it’s just a wonderful system.

Also, Link.  Happy face.

Despite having very little story, I think it’s done very well.  Each character starts out on whatever quest they have to in order to destroy Soul Edge, ultimately, they fight a rival battle, they destroy Soul Edge like they meant to, then it gives a little text scene with a couple pictures explaining what they do the rest of their life.  Which ends up not happening because of the two sequels to this sequel, which the original was kind of a sequel to Soul Blade…  Anyways, stuff happens and stuff.  Story good despite simplicity.

THE FIGHT:

SF4: HADOKEN!

SC2: LINK!

SF4: LONG COMPLICATED STORY FROM MULTIPLE PERSPECTIVES!

SC2: SIMPLE STORIES THAT GET THE POINT ACROSS.  You don’t really need much more than that.  It’s a fighting game.

SF4: EXTREME CHALLENGE!

SC2: LOTS OF REPLAYABILITY TO COLLECT WEAPONS

SF4: COOL 3D GRAPHICS IN A 2D STREET FIGHTER STYLE GAME!

SC2: NEAT FIGHTING STYLES OF AWESOMERY THAT SEEM REALISTIC/POSSIBLE!

I think if I went on, I could keep going a while with the back and forth, but I’m bored now.  Anyways, I liked Soul Calibur 2 better.  That’s the simplicity of it.  I had more fun with it, played it a lot longer, and only got frustrated with it on dungeon levels in the weapon master mode.  Rather than every time I had to fight Seth, or the subboss, which was actually pretty annoying in SF4.  It was sorta like your rival battle.  Anyway, Soul Calibur=Win.

Metroid Prime, Tales of Symphonia, Mirror’s Edge, Zelda: Wind Waker, Soul Calibur.  These are the finalists, all game of the decade for their category.

Being honest, I had more fun with Tales and Zelda than any of the other ones.  I beat both of them multiple times, which I can’t say for any of the others but Soul Calibur, and ten fights in a row doesn’t really feel like beating a game to me, so I’d go for completion when talking about that one, so if you want to get technical, I guess I didn’t beat it more than once.  I didn’t even complete it.  I did everything except one single step.  The very last thing I had to do to unlock Lizardman just because I hated the level where you had to play as him so much that it was worth it.  I unlocked absolutely everything else except that and whatever one thing it was that I needed to get him, which I don’t even remember anymore.

Point of the story, Tales and Zelda are my favorites, so they’re getting the final two spots ’cause otherwise I’d have like six more versus battles to go.

THE FIGHT!

Tales: Awesomeriffictacular.

Zelda: Epicsauce-mo-tized-pimpmazing!

Again, I’m having trouble deciding.  The magic fifty pence shall reveal all.

Fifty pence says Zelda.  WOOO HOOO!

Now that that’s done with, my game of the year is a difficult tie that I can’t seem to figure out between Kirby’s Epic Yarn, Fallout Vegas, Pokemon, and about four others.  I’ll call it a draw between all the games I liked ’cause I’m lazy.  Maybe I’ll decide later.

Things I thought were odd by other people I’ve talked to for game of the year that I just don’t see:

WoW: Cataclysm.  Really?  That’s not even applicable, it’s not a game, it’s an expansion pack.

Final Fantasy XIII: Umm…  too linear, couldn’t control more than one guy at once, Hope is a whiney douche, I hope he died after the FORTY HOUR TUTORIAL, also he sucked to play.  They tried to cram too much into one game, and large parts of it were fun, but I just couldn’t get over the fact that there was a new dynamic every single level.  And you could always find treasure chests on the map by turning the direction on the fork in the road that only went a few feet before stopping, rather than the STRAIGHT LINE THAT WAS THE REST OF THE GAME.

Final Fantasy XIV:  Wait, that came out?  I actually had no idea.  I saw it in the store the other day and I was like…  “Huh?  When did that happen?”  Plus it’s an MMO, which for the moment, I’m good with WoW.  Which is funny, ’cause I liked DDO better than WoW.

Final Fantasy XV:  I think this was a typo, but I did see some blog or another with this as game of the year.

Red Dead Redemption: Full of annoying bugs.  It was a cool concept, but lack of story and good gameplay turned me off.  I don’t even know if it had a story.  I always followed Babbitt or Gimp around for a while, got annoyed at the crappy horse riding system, found some bad guys, got annoyed at the crappy cover system, shot some guys, ran around and failed to hide behind a different rock, got into a building and found that it was COMPLETELY IMPOSSIBLE to shoot out of a window, got bored and played something else.  The whole time, the game screamed at me: “I want to use the Unreal System and basically be like Gears of War only with a westerny feel instead of a futuristicy feel and with no chainsaw, but I am not.”

Zelda: Phantom Hourglass: Uhh…  That came out like four years ago or something.  Even the newest one, Spirit Tracks, came out in 2009.  Silly blogs, not looking twice at their dates.  Or even once, apparently.

Anyways, that’s a look back at some of the games this year which I don’t think should be game of the year when other people do.  So screw you, other people!

And now back to the SKULLBLOG.  On our last episode, a duel of the RPGs happened and…  Well, you can still read it, it’s up.  So eh..  Anyways…

PART 3: PLATFORMERS!

Metroid: Other M versus Mirror’s Edge.

Metroid: Other M.

While the primes were great games, it’s my opinion that Metroid should be a platformer.  This new spin on the series is the direction I’ve been waiting for it to take.  It’s got a really fun system to work with, a unique story, and the graphics are brilliant. In one word, I would describe it as epicsauce.  I describe a lot of things that way, so I suppose that’s not the most helpful thing I could say, but nothing else quite captures it.

Mirror’s Edge:

Mirror’s Edge is, in my opinion, the most unique gameplay experience available on the Xbox 360.  It’s a platformer with lots of crazy puzzles based on things that seem almost realistically possible.  It’s a fast-paced, action-packed, epic adventure of jumping off buildings…  IN FIRST PERSON!  One minute you’re getting familiar with the controls, the next, you’re running around dodging bullets, jumping off ledges, crawling through ducts, dying, and repeating.  Despite the fact that I have no idea what the story was about because I wasn’t really paying attention and just sort of ran through the game thinking about the puzzles, I’m told it’s neat.

ANYHOO:

METROID:

Epicriffic new system that I wanted Metroid to be anyways.

Sweet story.

Awesomesauce graphics.

Inventive puzzles.

MIRROR’S EDGE:

Probably a good story. (Maybe.)

Extremely unique style of play.

Pretty good graphics.

Impossibly cool puzzles.

ON A HEAD TO HEAD KINDA THANG!

I eh…  I dunno.  Another where they’re both too epic.  COIN TIME!

My magical 50 Pence has spoken  Mirror’s Edge moves on.

Part two…  RPGs…

It was a dark and stormy night…  Three men sat in a living room huddled around the TV for warmth because the heater went out.  Little did they know that somewhere else in the world, people were playing video games.

Some of those people were me.  Some of those games were RPGs, but only two found their way to the top of the list for the battle for Game of the Decade!

Tales of Symphonia:

If you’re not familiar with this game, go buy a gamecube, a memory card, and a copy of the game.  Even if you already have a gamecube or a Wii and a memory card and are totally capable of playing it, go buy one.  That’s what you get for slackin’ off when the rest of us poor saps saved our hard-earned pennies (Well, not that hard) and paid for it in change.

I don’t know who did that, but given the chance, I totally would have.  That game is worth it.

For those of you who are familiar with this game, (which I’m assuming is the majority) You agree with me, right?  I mean come on, isn’t this friggin’ epicsauce and a half?  Yup.  Epicsauce and a half.  Anyhoo, I suppose I should now actually talk about the game.  A lot of games in the day would have either an interesting gameplay style, interesting puzzles, or an interesting story.  Two of the three if you were lucky.  This game delivered a suspense-packed story with a lot of struggles between characters that you sort of got to feel for, puzzles that would keep you wanting to grab a walkthrough, but you just didn’t let yourself the first time through, and an extremely different combat system that relied on all of your players being on top of everything, even if you were the only one.  There was a lot of frantic item-grabbing between me and the rest of Skulldaisy, inspiring a great inside joke, “Genis, feed me!”  On my own, I’d play through and frantically throw items around, often having to figure out who was about to cast, who was on the ground so they couldn’t feed the healer in time, stuff like that.  It was all a very hectic system when you really needed an item, but it made the game very interesting.

Tales of Symphonia: Epicsauce and a half out of 17.

The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind:

Some say Morrowind was a game.  Others say it was a new lifestyle wherein one could cultivate the civilizations from nothing.  The smart ones say it was a game.  I mean really, did very many things come out for original Xbox that were NOT games?  Well, maybe they did, and maybe I don’t remember where I was going with that.

Anyhoo, I’m told the story is good, though in my personal experience, I sold the package you’re supposed to deliver to some guy as the first quest to the first trader I found, bought an axe, found a better axe in a stump, sold my axe, and wandered around the world collecting miscellaneous swag along the way.  The thing that hooked me wasn’t any of the epic item creating things, not any of the vast storylines, none of the stupid quests, but the exploration.  This was the only game I’ve ever seen to have had a world so expansive that you could literally wander off of a trail and walk around for a week without seeing the same part of the world twice.  By the time I stopped playing Morrowind, I hadn’t even seen the entire map.  I had so much of it filled out, but there were still gaping holes of unexplored spaces.

This, in my opinion, is what made Morrowind what it was.  On top of that, it had the item creation stuff, all sorts of character customization, what seemed like endless different pieces of armor and weaponry, and maybe a cool story…  Er…  Anyways, this was among my favorite single-player experiences this decade, and it’s earned itself a 17 out of 17.  Bollocks to whether the story is good, this game’s friggin’ epic.

THE DUEL:

Tales: Epic story.

Morrowind: You don’t care about the story ’cause you’re exploring.

Tales: Fun combat system.

Morrowind: lots of interesting item creation stuff.

Tales: Multiplayer.

Morrowind: Among the most unique experiences in any game ever.

Tales: Broke my rating scale of 3-17 by punching it in the face, killing it, punching it in the face again, getting a shaman to revive it, killing it again, and punching it in the face again.

There was also a shotgun wound found on the corpse of the rating scale, though it’s hard to tell how that happened.  Perhaps Tales of Symphonia is a ninja or something.

So I think Tales wins this round.  Morrowind was a great game, I’m sure all will agree, but the hardcore epicrifficsaucery that is the Tales series is tough to beat, and this is the prime of all Tales.
KO: Winner; TALES OF SYMPHONIA!

Well, the first decade is almost up, so I’ve decided to go back and find my favorite games and put them against each other to see what the greatest game of the past ten years has been.  I’ve begun by choosing my two favorite games from several genres, and I’ll have a rant-off tournament to see what game I like best.  The brackets go like this.

Battle 1; Shooters:

Metroid Prime, Halo

Battle 2; RPG:

Tales of Symphonia, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind

Battle 3; Platformers:

Metroid: Other M, Mirror’s Edge

Battle 4; Almost-but-not-quite-a-platformer/action-and-puzzle-kind-of-game:

Batman: Arkham Asylum, The Legend of Zelda, Wind Waker

Battle 5; Fighting Games:

Street Fighter 4, Soul Calibur 2

I’ll put up a post for each battle, except the first one, which I’m about to rant through right now.

BATTLE 1; SHOOTERS:  FIGHT!

Halo:

Close to the end of 2001, many of us were still playing LoZ Ocarina of Time for the four hundred thirteenth playthrough.  For those of you who hadn’t played through that many times, you may have noticed the release of an all to unpopular video game called Halo: Combat Evolved.  Well, even though I’m completely sure nobody reading this has heard of this dreadfully obscure reference, just bear with me, it was cool.

Halo 1 was the high point of the series.  The story was brilliant, the graphics, for the time, were pretty good, and I’m sure the two of us who played it remember the multiplayer.  These sarcastically-calling-Halo-obscure-and-unpopular-jokes doing anything for ya?  Didn’t think so.

ANYHOO, the story was a work of art itself, it was such an epic tale spanning the whole of twelve to fifteen hours of gameplay, which by shooter standards, is a bunch.  At that point, it sort of set the bar for what was the best.  Several will argue that the Unreal series was better at the time, which I admit, they were fun, but I don’t think it’s humanly possible to count the number of hours I spent with my brothers and friends playing ten player matches in somebody’s basement after dragging over our xboxes and TVs only to eat pizza and drink mountain dew until four in the morning.

There were few games that brought a group of friends closer than when they just hung out and played Halo.  Rock Band and Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles come close, but the top prize in my book goes to Halo.

It was a wonderful game, and I’d give it a 17 out of 17.

Metroid Prime:

This was probably the most well respected Metroid game since Metroid 2 or maybe Super Metroid.  It took the series into a totally different direction, and the world liked it.  The graphics, as I’ve said before, were the best, in my opinion, for any Gamecube game.  It was one of the most fun games of the  time as well.  It had superb puzzles, terrifying enemies, and another generic adjective story.

I don’t know how far I got into that game, but I spent countless hours just exploring the enormous world that was placed before me.  I scanned so many random objects that seemed to have no real purpose, but every one gave me some hint of information that was either important or interesting just to know.

This was also a fabulous game, and I’d recommend it to anyone who hasn’t played it.  Which all of you have, so I guess I don’t have this problem.

17 out of 17.

VERSUS:

Halo’s got epic multiplayer, Metroid’s got epic graphics.

Halo’s got an epic story, Metroid’s got scanning random things and learning hundreds of things you didn’t want to know about the world, but it’s kind of cool to anyways.

Halo made 3 sequels, a prequel, and an RTS that I never played ’cause RTSs suck on console,  Metroid had two sequels, but neither of them had crappy endings.

Uh….  I think that’s pretty close to it.  So…  There’s no reasonable reason for me to pick one over the other, so I guess I’ll just see which one my gut says I like.  My gut’s not talking to me.  Gonna flip a coin.  Don’t have any coins on me, gonna use my dice app on my phone.  Even is Halo, Odd is Metroid. 47.  Metroid Wins Battle 1.

METROID MOVES ON!  It will battle the winner of Battle 2 after I’ve got all the other ones done.  HOORAY!