Nintendo Wii

[Azuth]

Well I used to have a Wii, but I sold it due to lack of interest in the titles. As much as it's cool for you to like the Wii, it's also cool if someone happens to not like it. I mean, if you're gonna expect everybody to respect you for liking the console, shouldn't you respect also those who don't ?

I do not consider myself an elitist prick or jealous or whatever, I just plain didn't like it.

That being said, it's obvious that someone who spends their time telling everybody how liking the Wii is gayer than gay etc etc. does not deserve your respect.

I feel the same way. I gave mine away because I simply hated the motion controls. It's just a personal preference thing.

I might've kept it for the virtual console though if I didn't already have a modded Xbox to emulate the older systems. It sure beats re-buying my old game collection, plus it upscales them all to HD resolutions. Sprites look incredibly sharp in HD.

[Nabeel Ansari]

I feel the same way. I gave mine away because I simply hated the motion controls. It's just a personal preference thing.

I might've kept it for the virtual console though if I didn't already have a modded Xbox to emulate the older systems. It sure beats re-buying my old game collection, plus it upscales them all to HD resolutions. Sprites look incredibly sharp in HD.

You could also mod your Wii to run emulators... Even though it's not HD, you can use the Virtual Console Controller.

[Penfold]

Has anybody downloaded Castlevania: The Adventure Rebirth or The Magic Obelisk (the Game Arts Wiiware title) that came out today? Haven't seen any reviews up yet for either, but the both look like they could be fun.

[q-pa]

... but where for art though my Earthbound sequel that I've been waiting 20 years for... :puppyeyes:

It's on GBA. And not released in America.

[SoloGamer]

An official release would be nice, but a fan translation is just as good.

http://mother3.fobby.net/

[Devyn]

I've been playing Mother 3. It's awesome.

[XZero]

What would you have done to make NSMB Wii "better" just out of curiosity?

Other than 'better graphics and more characters'

I'll just say now I think the bouncing/pushing is an aspect I like about the multiplayer game. So I'll just pre-emptively agree to disagree with you on that bit. (I mean I got used to the bouncing and learned to control and use it to my advantage). Maybe I'm just weird and enjoy that there actually is some interaction during multiplayer beyond 2-4 people being on the screen at once.

I can think of several ways to improve the game, all of which could have been accomplished while retaining the fantastic level design and generally good gameplay (I can't see us agreeing on the bouncing issue). First and foremost, it does not need HD graphics, and graphics in no way make fun game more or less fun as long as they are passable (neblix, I agree with you on this point). That doesn't mean, however, that it should look generic when it could look better.

So how would I improve the graphics? I would have liked to see something graphically more aligned with Wario Land last year or Muramasa this year. Both were beautiful, and both had a fantastic art style.

The second thing I would improve about the game is its character selection, as already noted. Peach was kidnapped, but that was far from a necessary plot device (Bowser could simply have stolen her castle as he's done before). There was no reason to keep her, Daisy, and others out of the playable character lineup, especially when two of the four characters are the same character.

Finally, I think to compliment the level design, I would like to have seen more usage of items like the mini-mushroom and Yoshi in particular, who only appeared in a few levels. Also, the motion controls, while unobtrusive, should have been mapped to buttons on the GCN or Classic controllers as an option.

Bear in mind, I acknowledge that reviewers did not focus on the positive aspects of this game. It is a hell of a lot of fun, it does feature some of the best level design we've seen since many of us were kids in the 80s and 90s, and it is certainly a generally polished game. Don't get the wrong idea; I really, really like New Super Mario Bros. Wii. It's one of the best Wii games released this year, and it absolutely rapes Animal Crossing and Wii Music as a holiday title. I simply think that there were things that could have been done better.

[Schwaltzvald]

Has anybody downloaded Castlevania: The Adventure Rebirth or The Magic Obelisk (the Game Arts Wiiware title) that came out today? Haven't seen any reviews up yet for either, but the both look like they could be fun.

Am playing Castlevania Rebirth and have been waiting ever since I found the soundtrack a good while ago and shared it here. Will give a review post later on.

[Penfold]

Am playing Castlevania Rebirth and have been waiting ever since I found the soundtrack a good while ago and shared it here. Will give a review post later on.

Cool, thanks for the response man. Looking forward to seeing your review of it (still haven't seen any professional reviews up for it, but I guess that's the holiday season for you).

[Schwaltzvald]

SO hey after playing up to four levels I have to say it actually very good, if not entertaining. It does contain the familiar difficulty of the older Castlevania games however it also stays fresh with a different feel of control on Christopher Belmont. I say different feel because while he does move like Simon in the original Castlevania on the NES, he does not suffer lost control while descending from a jump. However there seems to be an option for "classic" play which I assume it actually brings back that bit of difficulty; I haven't tried it just yet so I can't say much for it.

The music rarely ever feels stale throughout gameplay though find myself wanting to hear different tracks for different bosses for some reason; personal nitpick perhaps but otherwise the boss fights themselves are more or less enjoyable.

I actually find the first few major bosses (as well as the mid bosses) more or less easy to fight. I have to say it's mainly to being used to the game play for years as I would imagine any one playing a Castlevania game for the first time will be crushed by them a couple of times before beating them.

Mind you though I had been playing on Normal mode, as there are hard and easy modes available I assume Normal mode would be just the game in its original difficulty.

Overall it's an enjoyable experience imo.

Five holy water bottles torching giant eyeballs out of five.

[Thalzon]

I beat Shattered Memories today. Pretty awesome, but far more cinematic than gameplay, really. The difficulty dropped to zero immediately after the hospital, but I'm okay with that. The narrative remained compelling the whole way through.

Now to gamefaqs, to help with my second playthrough.

[Malaki-LEGEND.sys]

Ok gang, we're gonna be talking about Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers(The Movie: The Game) in this post.

Where to start? Well first I think I'll touch on the negatives, of which there are several. For starters, this is not your standard Final Fantasy. Hell, this isn't even your standard Crystal Chronicles game. It's a single-player open-world adventure game with a ton of interesting, yet not compelling mini-games. While not entirely a negative in and of itself, it might turn a few people off from the game. The game's narrative follows an established(in the game world anyway) set of characters and as such, you won't see a huge amount of background and world exposition, which to me was a disappointment, because there was a bunch of potential there.

Now on to everything else. I personally enjoyed the game. There's a lot to do in this beautiful world, combat is pretty fun once you figure the ins and outs, the soundtrack is excellent, and the main character doesn't have a huge cloud of melodrama hanging over him the whole time. The main focus of combat is Layle's(the main character and a Crystal Bearer) telekinetic abilities which are activated through the Wiimote. You can pick up objects, toss 'em at enemies, toss people off cliffs, pick up enemies and toss 'em at walls, or other enemies and so on. It sounds pretty basic at first, and you'd be right to think so given that the game does NOTHING to explain how you can interact with enemies and the environment.

For example: You're fighting a malboro who has a bunch of its tentacles protecting it. Well, you could try picking up a cactuar, squeeze it so that it fires 1000 needles at the malboro, or toss boulders at it. Nope, that's hardly killing the bastard. Hmmm... Wonder if I could take out those tentacles protecting it? Sure enough, they go down fast and leave different colored bulbs. Well now what? By accident, you happen to grab the malboro and manage to get it's mouth open. AHA! Let's give it a case of indigestion! Wonder what would happen if I threw that red bulb into it's mouth? ...BOOM!!! Explosion! A few more of those ought to do the trick!

There are plenty of other interesting things you can do like supercharging electric jellyfish, overloading flans, making goats crap then using their dung as projectiles, etc. I found myself not advancing the story often just to see what kind of crap I could do to monsters(here's a hint: A lot)

The storyline is predictable at times, but takes a few interesting turns here and there, it's just too bad that it wasn't as fully realized as it could have been. What's a Crystal Bearer? How does one become one? Are there more? That sort of thing. Also while Layle's telekinetic abilities are cool, it would have been more interesting had he been able to do more with it, like picking up two objects at once, some kind of shield, or blades or something. I have a hard time trying to score this game myself, being that I know I enjoyed it, but most reviewers have been unkind. On my personal scale, I'd probably give it a 7.9. It's a fun game, but so much more could have been done with it. Anyway, give it a shot, see what you think, and happy gaming.

[BardicKnowledge]

SO hey after playing up to four levels I have to say it actually very good, if not entertaining. It does contain the familiar difficulty of the older Castlevania games however it also stays fresh with a different feel of control on Christopher Belmont. I say different feel because while he does move like Simon in the original Castlevania on the NES, he does not suffer lost control while descending from a jump. However there seems to be an option for "classic" play which I assume it actually brings back that bit of difficulty; I haven't tried it just yet so I can't say much for it.

The music rarely ever feels stale throughout gameplay though find myself wanting to hear different tracks for different bosses for some reason; personal nitpick perhaps but otherwise the boss fights themselves are more or less enjoyable.

I actually find the first few major bosses (as well as the mid bosses) more or less easy to fight. I have to say it's mainly to being used to the game play for years as I would imagine any one playing a Castlevania game for the first time will be crushed by them a couple of times before beating them.

Mind you though I had been playing on Normal mode, as there are hard and easy modes available I assume Normal mode would be just the game in its original difficulty.

Overall it's an enjoyable experience imo.

Five holy water bottles torching giant eyeballs out of five.

I'm agreeing with the 5/5 review. A couple important things to note: Switching between Normal and Hard difficulty actually changes the location of all of the platforms, giving you effectively two games in one.

Also, don't think of it as only having 6 stages, as there are TONS of branching paths per level (use those keys!).

Finally, Classic mode does give you Simon jumping. If you're looking for a challenge, I'd recommend Classic mode for Normal difficulty, and giving yourself controlled jumps for Hard mode.

[Thalzon]

Ok gang, we're gonna be talking about Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers(The Movie: The Game) in this post.

*text*

I want to play it, but the reviews sort of scared me off at first. Thank you for posting, because I probably would've just forgotten about it. Now, when it drops in price (and since it's a Squeenix game, that means 6 months to a year) I'll definitely pick it up.

[Malaki-LEGEND.sys]

I want to play it, but the reviews sort of scared me off at first. Thank you for posting, because I probably would've just forgotten about it. Now, when it drops in price (and since it's a Squeenix game, that means 6 months to a year) I'll definitely pick it up.

No prob. That's what I do.

In this post, I'll be talking about Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles.

RE: The Darkside Chronicles is an on-rails light gun shooter much like a Time Crisis or House of The Dead game, which chronicles the stories of Resident Evil 2 and Code: Veronica, as well as adding in a new campaign called "Operation: Javier" which is set in South America in 2002 that tells the story of Leon's first mission with Krauser.

Being that the game is designed with two-player coop in mind(no drop in/out though), several elements of the RE2 and C:V stories have been rearranged to accommodate having Leon/Claire and Claire/Steve/Chris traveling together. For any hardcore RE lore fans, it shouldn't be that much of a problem as it definitely feels natural, almost like it SHOULD have been that way in the first place. Speaking of lore, this game has plenty of interesting pieces of info and background into the RE series, including audio logs of key characters that explain their motives and such. Since you unlock these archives during the course of the game playthrough, there's plenty of replay value, as there might be up to 15 different hidden archives in one chapter, in addition to plenty of other unlockables like standard extra costumes and such.

This game is pretty. I mentioned that I thought The Crystal Bearers looked nice, but this game probably wins my award for best looking Wii game(although I've yet to play Silent Hill). Chapters are decently long and take you through all the usual locales and several new ones(such as a strange "training hall" used by Alfred on Rockfort Island. A lot of the game's environment can be destroyed as well to find gold, herbs, archives and ammo as well.

The game is compatible with Wiimote & nunchuck, Wii Zapper(or perfect shot) and nunchuck, or Wiimote only controls, although I personally feel that using a nunchuck allows for easier controlling. Basic gameplay involves you pointing and shooting(duh) at zombies and other nasties that come your way. Headshots improve your score multipliers(and they're so damned satisfying to pull off) among other things like time to complete stage, number of enemies defeated, etc. You can use a bunch of different weapons such as a handgun, shotgun, SMG, grenades, bow gun, etc. as well as your knife and melee attacks(when things get dicey), and you can upgrade the stats on all guns by using the money you collect in stages.

The one big negative that this game has that'll either make it or break it for you is the camera. To be specific, the shaky cam that's become a movie favorite in stuff like Cloverfield and Paranormal Activity. Personally I found that it adds a layer of tension and promotes a "when to shoot" attitude. Other than that, I can't think of any at all. I'm an RE fan and while I was skeptical about whether I'd enjoy RE on rails, I found myself loving the hell out of it.

I give the game a definite 8.5 on my scale. Zombie-killing and light gun shooters are fun. Resident Evil is fun. This is a no-brainer(HA!). If you liked The Umbrella Chronicles, chances are you'd like this one more. Go out and give it a shot. Happy gaming.

[Dr.Flintlock]

I picked up Sky Crawlers Innocent Aces today and am having a helluva lot of fun with it. While I'm only the 3rd or 4th mission in, its proving to be a pretty satisfying addition to my Wii game library. Kinda plays like an Ace Combat game (seeing as it was handled by Project Aces) but with a higher emphasis on actually flying to strategically place yourself behind your opponent. You don't have any lock-on missiles and are restricted to machine guns and unguided bombs mostly, so the bigger picture is put on dogfighting instead of "fire and forget" kind of stuff you get with other flight sims.

The story's so far pretty good, notably if you've watched the anime by Mamoru Oshii. The game is a sort of prequel to some of the events in the anime and serves as a nice companion to the whole thing. Cutscenes are nice and all the radio chatter is pretty good as well (although I do think they have the voice of Shamrock from AC 6 as one of your co-pilots in this one; a minor annoyance).

Only nitpick I have right now is that the motion controls, while intuitive enough, take a LONG time to get used to. I still prefer using a classic controller, but if I want to mess around, using the wii-mote for throttle certainly feels pretty legit.

Also, I should mention that there's no option to have a Japanese dub of the game. It doesn't bother me much, but then, I'm no purist when it comes to my anime games.

Overall, its a lot of fun so far and the soundtrack is also pretty catchy with lots of synth rock and such. I'd say its a purchase, given I think its only around $30 stateside.

Just my 2 cents. kthanxbai

[Malaki-LEGEND.sys]

I picked up Sky Crawlers Innocent Aces today and am having a helluva lot of fun with it. While I'm only the 3rd or 4th mission in, its proving to be a pretty satisfying addition to my Wii game library. Kinda plays like an Ace Combat game (seeing as it was handled by Project Aces) but with a higher emphasis on actually flying to strategically place yourself behind your opponent. You don't have any lock-on missiles and are restricted to machine guns and unguided bombs mostly, so the bigger picture is put on dogfighting instead of "fire and forget" kind of stuff you get with other flight sims.

The story's so far pretty good, notably if you've watched the anime by Mamoru Oshii. The game is a sort of prequel to some of the events in the anime and serves as a nice companion to the whole thing. Cutscenes are nice and all the radio chatter is pretty good as well (although I do think they have the voice of Shamrock from AC 6 as one of your co-pilots in this one; a minor annoyance).

Only nitpick I have right now is that the motion controls, while intuitive enough, take a LONG time to get used to. I still prefer using a classic controller, but if I want to mess around, using the wii-mote for throttle certainly feels pretty legit.

Also, I should mention that there's no option to have a Japanese dub of the game. It doesn't bother me much, but then, I'm no purist when it comes to my anime games.

Overall, its a lot of fun so far and the soundtrack is also pretty catchy with lots of synth rock and such. I'd say its a purchase, given I think its only around $30 stateside.

Just my 2 cents. kthanxbai

Thanks for posting this. I had heard about the game in passing a few times on 1up, but after reading this and then looking up reviews and more info on the game, it seems like a real steal for 30 bucks.

I'm actually pretty impressed with all the games companies like Ignition and XSEED are bringing over stateside. Games like this, Fragile, Little King Story, Muramasa, Arc Rise Fantasia, etc.

Tip of the hat to you fine people.

[BardicKnowledge]

If you still haven't bought a classic controller, you might want to wait because these new ones look badass.

[Native Jovian]

Sweet, I haven't played Sky Crawlers yet and I was wondering if it was going to be any good. Now I'm actually looking forward to playing it instead of being cautiously pessimistic.

Shamrock's a fucking tool, though.

[Malaki-LEGEND.sys]

Nah, I'm a flight game nerd, so I'm totally excited about using the Wii remote and nunchuck as an actual flightstick. Oh man oh man oh man.

[q-pa]

If you still haven't bought a classic controller, you might want to wait because these new ones look badass.

I already bought one imported. It feels real good.

[Dr.Flintlock]

So I know there's usually an unspoken law about not trading games in, but I did anyway and picked up Mass Effect 2 and No More Heroes 2 the other day. I've barely played the latter as I've been pretty busy with the former, but from what I can gather, its just as inane as the first one and a definite upgrade. I usually don't agree with journalistic reviews, but those retro-style mini games really do kickass, complete with awesome chiptune music.

I won't lie though. I actually had to go online to remind myself who the dude was who died within the first 15 minutes of the game....Also, arcade game called BJ5 (ahem) is hilarious.

Overall, I'll hopefully have something a little more thorough in the next few weeks.

Shamrock's a fucking tool, though.

"I HAVE HIM!!!"

That he is, my friend, that he is.

[The Mutericator]

Ragequit on NMH2's haunted house boss. Has anyone figured out a good way to beat him?

Instead I played Crystal Bearers, and beat it. Definitely thinking about New Game+, since I only bought, like, three pieces of equipment the entire game. Ending was weird, but kind of cool. Hoping that there'll be a sequel somewhere far off with Layle, but no one else (since they killed off most of the cooler cast members).

[Malaki-LEGEND.sys]

So I picked up Sky Crawlers for $30 earlier today. Thus far I'm on mission 4 and I can say one thing for sure about the game.

It's hella fun.

I'll give my full thoughts once I finish the game, but so far it's going great.

[Poke'G]

I already bought [a classic pro controller] imported. It feels real good.

Yeah, the new Pro controllers are amazing and finally give the Wii a comfortable controller with a logical button layout. It's Nintendo's best one in well over a decade. Playing the N64 VC with it is amazing.

I bought one when they first released over here and was so impressed I immediately picked up another one.