Borderlands - Xbox360

Another Gamefly game. God I love Gamefly.

This is a game I've been waiting to get my hands on for a long time. I first remember hearing about this a while back in OXM and really wanting to play it. I love RPGish First Person Shooters, add in an apocalyptic wasteland and I'm sold.

Squid.

Tales of Symphonia - Review

Just how long is too long? That's the question that I kept asking myself while playing Tales of Symphonia. In my opinion, when I finished it with 90 hours played, Tales of Symphonia was too long. 90 hours played, and keep in mind that skipping a lot of sidequests just trying to finish the game... I imagine that if I had done all the sidequest and done more exploring I would have easily put another 10 or 20 hours into the game.

Don't get me wrong, a game doesn't have to be a set amount of time to be enjoyable. I put 125 hours into Oblivion and enjoyed every minutes. Between my two playthroughs of Fallout 3 I've put in damn near 200 hours. I don't even know how many hours I've put into Morrowind between all of my different games. I enjoyed every minute I put into those games and not once did I wish they were shorter... but they're different. Each one of those games involves a ton of exploring, it's a free and open world and you're encouraged to explore it. And because of this freedom you can spend a lot more time with these games. For those types of games, essentially the skies the limit on how long you can play them... but there's always the knowledge that if you want to finish the game, the main quest is always there to complete. But what about when there is little exploring and the main quest is 70+ hours long?

So how long is too long when it comes to RPGs? It's a hard question to answer, and certainly varies from person to person. I asked my brother that question, he thought that an RPG should be about 25 hours long. I thought that 45 was a good number... though it all depends. I'd gladly play a 60 hour game as long as I enjoy it. But to me, 35 to 45 hours with the possibility of 15+ hours of exploring is a good number.

Along comes Tales of Symphonia. A video game that can easily hit the 100 hour mark... and yet at about the 50-60 hour mark I was really wishing it would come to an end soon. Generally not a good sign.

Let me get this out of the way. I really enjoyed Tales of Symphonia, I really did. I just wish it had been about 30 hours shorter. It was just too damn long for me. Towards the end I began to feel like some of the quests were not essential and could have easily been cut or shortened and still the game would have been good. In fact, looking back at it there seems like the game could have easily been shortened without losing too much.

There seemed to be a lot of going back to places I had already been, doing quests that I didn't feel I needed to, a lot of back story that seemed like it could have been part of side quests and not as much of the main quest... there's the other problem. I'm not 100% sure what was and wasn't the main quest. As far as I know I didn't stray too far from the main quest, but on the other hand I'm really not sure. I just kind of went where I thought I should go next, or followed the synopsis that they give you in the game. All I know is that it took me 90 hours to finally beat the game.

Like I said, despite the fact that the game felt like it was dragging on in parts and was way too long, the game was fun. I had a very good time playing it as well as beating it. The combat is great, the voice acting is good, the story is good, and overall it's a great little RPG.

Like I mentioned before I originally started playing this game in about 2004 or so and it was a whole new experience. I had never played an RPG like this before. It was like a mix of Legend of Zelda, Final Fantasy and a hint of Street Fighter during battles. And even though since I have played games with a similar battle system or similar gameplay this game still feels fresh and new to me.

Overall this is a good game and well worth playing, just make sure you have plenty of time to do it.

Squid.

Tales of Symphonia - Nintendo Gamecube

Tales of Symphonia was one of the few Gamecube games that I bought. I remember it being like no other RPG I had ever played, the battles at least. Instead of the Final Fantasy "Choose what attack you want to do from a menu" it was more like a fighting game. It was all real time. I enjoyed this greatly.

Sadly I never beat Tales of Symphonia, I put it down for too long and when I came back I couldn't even remember what I was doing in the game so I gave up. Haven't played it since.

Later on I played Tales of Vesperia for the Xbox 360 and all I could think was "This game is great, I should really play Tales of Symphonia again." I guess now is my chance.

Squid.

Dead Space - Review

What do you get when you mix a little bit of Aliens, a little bit of Event Horizon and a whole lot of awesome? Dead Space.

Occasionally a game will come along that I hear very little about. That was pretty much Dead Space. I heard a few people talk about how awesome it was, or how scary it was but nothing really about the game. I resisted playing it because I thought it was a survival horror game, and well me and survival horror games have a love hate relationship.

Then a while back Dead Space went on sale, $15 at Best Buy. My brother asked me if I wanted to go in half on it... well, I generally don't turn down paying $7.50 for a video game so we went ahead and bought it. Seeing as I had a ton of games waiting to be played I let him have a go at it first. I would occasionally come over and see him playing it, even played it myself for about three minutes. Seemed good enough but playing it for that short period of a time wasn't really enough for me to see what the game was really about.

Fast forward to this week.

My brother was going on vacation so I'm house sitting for him. I brought along Tales of Symphonia to play, but then I remembered Dead Space. My brother was going to be gone for five days, plenty of time to beat Dead Space. So I decided to pop it in and give it a go.

I'm glad I did, because Dead Space turned out to be a great game.

Once in a while a game comes around where things just seem to click. Where everything just seems to come together perfectly. This is how I felt about Dead Space. Everything came together to create a tense, creepy experience.

I've often said that in both video games and horror movies, ambiance is the key factor. You have to create a creepy atmosphere before something can be truly scary. Sometimes something not happening is scarier then it actually happening. When there's a monster around every corner you lose something, you come to expect it... but when you hear that monster, but can't find it... when it stalking you and you're waiting for it to pounce on you at every turn... that's where the real tension comes in. That's how Dead Space it. You're kept in almost a constant state of fear about what's going to happen next, what's going to sneak up behind you, what that noise is and where it's coming from. You're constantly on the edge of your seat.

Dead Space performs flawlessly at getting you, and keeping you, on the edge of your seat. You almost never know what's coming next. The next room you go into could be full of monsters or it could be empty. Either way you get the feeling that you don't want to go in there.

The story is great, the atmosphere is great, the game is great. Seriously, you can pick it up for $20 on Xbox360, PS3, or PC... there's no reason not to play this great game. Do yourself the favor.

Squid.

Dead Space - Xbox360

I'm at my brothers house sitting, so my video game vault is fairly small. I had brought over Tales of Symphonia when I remembered he had Dead Space. Sure I could borrow it at some point in time, but why not instead just play it now while I have the chance?

I know absolutely nothing about this game, which is kind of odd. I haven't read anything about it, haven't heard anything about it, don't even really know the plot of it to be honest. Other then hearing people being pretty excited about them announcing the second one, I really don't know much about this game. Should be interesting to see it through my own eyes before hearing about it.

The one thing I have heard is that it's scary, which should be pretty awesome... at night... alone... in a big empty house.

Squid.

Golden Axe Warrior - Review

Legend of Golden Axe... err... Golden Axe Zelda... umm... Golden Axe Warrior. That's what I played. Sorry, I got confused. Let me get this out straight off the bat: I'm not really sure how Sega didn't get sued for this one. This is about the closest you can get to playing Legend of Zelda on the NES without actually playing Legend of Zelda.

Golden Axe Warrior is hard. Very hard. Like if you started off Legend of Zelda with one heart instead of three kind of hard. There's two ways to regain health in Golden Axe Warrior, staying at inns or the occasional dropped food from monsters. Let me tell you, the first three or so hours seemed like all I was doing was clearing a screen and then running to the nearest inn only to do this over and over again. When you have three hearts and have to kill five to six enemies who can take off a third of your health just by touching you... not easy.

After beating the first few dungeons you'll get more hearts, making the game a little bit easier. Don't get me wrong, the game is never a cakewalk but with equipment and health the game does become a tad easier.

Once I got past the first few hours the game really picked up. Golden Axe Warrior is fun. Is it as fun as Legend of Zelda? No, probably not, but I would say that it's certainly in the running. At the end of the day though I had a good time beating it, even if there were some moments of frustration. It's just unfortunate that it's so difficult to distance it from Legend of Zelda, the games share a lot of similarities. Even so, Golden Axe Warrior is a fun game.

Here's the deal, if you played Legend of Zelda and enjoyed it you will most likely enjoy Golden Axe Warrior. Sure it's a little bit more difficult but it's bigger and also has a few interesting things that Legend of Zelda didn't. Golden Axe Warrior is essentially what Legend of Zelda would have been if it had been released four years later. Why not give it a shot?

Squid.

Golden Axe Warrior - Sega Master System

Another game off of Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection. Seriously if you don't own it go out and spend the $20 and get this awesome collection for the Xbox360 or PS3. It's well worth it.

Golden Axe Warrior. Honestly up until today I had never even heard of it. I saw that it was in this collection but assumed it was like all the other Golden Axe games. Hack n' Slash that I can beat in a half hour or so, then I saw a screenshot of it, noticed it looked more like the original Legend of Zelda game. Color me intrigued. Not sure if it's good or bad, haven't really read anything about it... guess I'll find out.

Squid.

Mission Impossible - Review

I promised you a story of how I came to own Mission Impossible, so here it is.

I rented Mission Impossible on Nintendo 64 from Blockbuster probably back in 1998 or so and had a good time playing it. I very distinctly remember the Embassy mission, actually that mission and the mission in the terminal room with the lasers were the only missions I really remember. But I remember having a good time with the game. Well, except for the terminal laser room. I remember that being frustrating and never being able to get past it.

Either way, one day I was browsing eBay for old video games trying to find some good cheap games when I ran across Mission Impossible for Nintendo 64 for $4 buy now, shipped free. Well I remembered it being good, and hell, it was only $4 so I bought it. I waited patiently and about a week later I received it, I opened it up only to find... Mission Impossible for the NES. I was kind of disappointed that I didn't get the N64 version, but on the other hand I the NES version pretty much new in box, seriously the thing is nearly mint. So I went and checked the ad, maybe I had read it wrong and it was for the NES version, but after re-reading the ad it was definitely for the N64.

I chalked it up to a mistake on their part, it was $4 and I still got a game. I didn't really care.

So I went back to eBay and found another copy of Mission Impossible 64. This time it was $5 buy now, shipped free. Different seller, checked to make sure it was the N64 version, purchased.

About a week later I got it in the mail. Opened it and found... the NES version.

So now I had TWO sellers who sent me the NES version when they were clearly advertising the N64 version. Either these two sellers are really stupid or it's a very, very odd coincidence. Either way, I was out $5. I figured return shipping and the hassle was worth less than that.

So I proceeded to check Amazon. Found it used for $4.50 shipped prime. So two days later I had Mission Impossible, for Nintendo 64 this time, in my hands. Success!

So that's my tale of how I came to own Mission Impossible for N64 as well as two copies of Mission Impossible for NES.

On to the review!

Oh I'm about to get guffawed at! I enjoyed Mission Impossible more than I enjoyed Goldeneye. That's right, I said it. Whatcha gonna do about it? I'll even go as far to say that Mission Impossible held up better than Goldeneye, and that if you put the two single player modes against each other, Mission Impossible is the better game. Oh, I'm sure the nerdrage is on now.

Mission Impossible is a game based on a movie based on a TV show. It follows the movie starring Tom Cruise... kind of. There's two missions that bookened the other missions that have absolutely nothing to do with the movie. Even still, while the plots are similar to the movie they're far from identical. More just kind of based off of them.

Mission Impossible is semi-stealth/action/third person shooter. Frankly the third person shooter aspect is probably why I enjoyed it more than Goldeneye. Let's be frank, 3D games from this era look horrible. They don't even kind of hold up well. Most N64/Saturn/PS1 games look like crap. Sure, there are a few that still look decent, but for the most part they're awful. You almost had to go with a cartoony look for it to work well. The Legend of Zelda games and Mario 64 games still look decent-ish. Any games that tries to give you real looking graphics... well you end up with this:

The part of Sean Bean will be played by Kryten.

Playable? Yeah, though it is a detriment. Ugly as sin? Oh God yes. Because first person shooters put you right into that action with the whole screen filling up your view, you tend to notice it more. Over the shoulder third person? Not as much.

Enough with the Goldeneye bashing though, back to Mission Impossible.

Mission Impossible is fun. It's just stealthy enough to give you a taste of that, but there's also enough action that you're not just sneaking around everywhere, hiding in the shadows. There's also some levels with very interesting gameplay. In one level you stop playing as Ethan Hunt and play as two snipers covering him, switching back and forth between the two snipers and shooting people who come out of the shadows to attack Ethan. I have to admit, it was fun... and I don't really remember seeing something like that before.

There's a certain amount of thinking that goes into this game. Because for the most part you have to be somewhat stealthy you have to decide the best place to ambush people, plant traps, change identities, etc. It's not your standard "shoot everything that moves" kind of game. Sure, it's no Splinter Cell, but it it's certainly what I would consider a predecessor.

Overall Mission Impossible is fun, sure it has it's flaws. Sometimes the controls are sometimes sluggish, there's escort missions, timed missions, and civilians and your crew are bullet magnets, but overall I enjoyed it. The few hours it took to beat were a pretty good time.

Does that mean you should rush out and buy it? Probably not. Look, unless you played it in the past or have some sort of weird affection for Nintendo 64 games you'll probably think it's an okay game, but nothing spectacular. On the other hand it cost me $4.50 so maybe at the end of the day maybe it's worth it. Your choice.

Squid.

Mission Impossible - Nintendo 64

There's a long, long story of getting Mission Impossible 64 that I'll go into when I review it. I think this the only game I had to buy three times.

I'm going to be house sitting on Tuesday which makes video game playing difficult. I either needed a game I can beat quick or a game I can take over and play at the house on one of their systems. I spent a while trying to figure out what to do and finally decided to try a game that I might be able to beat before Tuesday.

To get in the Mission Impossible mood I think I might also watch the movies while I play, hell I own the trilogy I might as well.

Squid.