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.

Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess - Review

I love the Legend of Zelda franchise. I have very fond memories of playing Zelda II: The Adventure of Link on the NES over at my Cousin's house as a kid. Since then I've played almost every single incarnation of the Legend of Zelda that I could. NES, SNES, Gameboy, it didn't matter, I loved them all. I rank The Legend of Zelda a Link to the Past as one of my favorite games.

When the Wii came out I was very excited to hear about Twilight Princess, I wanted to play it, I needed to play it. So when I finally bought my Wii it was the first game I picked up. But something wasn't right...

When I played Twilight Princess on Wii, something felt off. I couldn't get into it, I played it for about five hours and nothing pulled me in. The controls felt off as well, despite the fact that swinging around a wiimote to control your sword should feel natural, it didn't. It just felt wrong.

So I put it on hold for a bit, decided to play some other games. Maybe I just wasn't in the mood of a Zelda game.

One day while waiting for a game to come from Gamefly I decided to start up Twilight Princess again. I got about five hours into it and had the exact same thought as before. Something felt off. So I put it down again.

It was kind of a disappointment. As much as I love Legend of Zelda I just couldn't get into Twilight Princess, and yet I really wanted to play it.

A couple months down the road I had an "Aha!" moment. I didn't like the controls on the Wii... but it was also available on Gamecube. So I threw it on my Gamefly queue and waited.

There really was no difference between the Gamecube version and the Wii version, visuals aside. The first five hours or so of the game were not anymore exciting on the Gamecube, but this time I was ready for it. Ready to push on through.

The controls weren't any better either. In fact the controls were sometimes downright frustrating. I can't tell you how many times I went left when I meant to go straight, or how many times I accidentally jumped down a hole when I didn't mean to... tons of little examples of controls just not being what I thought they should be. I also wasn't able to invert my Y axis either (It might be Z, I can't remember which is which).

And yet I was having fun. Even with all the problems I was having with controls I was still having fun.

After about the six hour mark, the game started to pick up. Slowly at first but then at an increasing speed. By the twentieth or so hour I was having a lot of fun, it felt like Legend of Zelda again.

The new additions to the game felt natural, the double claw shot and the spinner were great. Though I wished they had been used more during the game. Going from Light Link to Dark Link was also fun, especially when you could do it at will. Everything new felt like it could be old. It worked out very well.

At the end of the day I had a great time playing Twilight Princess, it took me about 58 hours or so to beat it and at least 53 of those were incredibly enjoyable... the other 5 weren't bad, just kind of like a boring walkthrough tutorial.

If I had to suggest either the Wii version or Gamecube version I'm not sure which I'd pick. Despite the control issues the Gamecube honestly felt more natural. Maybe it's because I didn't play it enough on the Wii, but to me the Gamecube control felt the way a Zelda game should be, though that's just my opinion.

If you haven't already played Twilight Princess and you own either a Wii or a Gamecube I highly recommend picking it up.

Squid.

Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess - Nintendo Gamecube

I've tried playing Twilight Princess on my Wii, I really have. It was the first game I bought when I purchased my Wii. I played it for about five hours and just couldn't get into it. About four or five months ago I picked it up again, same thing, got about five hours in and just couldn't get into it. The controls felt off, I needed a controller and all I had was a Wii-mote.

So I decided to give it another go, but this time on the Gamecube. I figure that maybe using a physical controller will be better. Thank God for Gamefly.

I'm only about three hours in so far and I like the Gamecube controller a bit better, but I still just can't get into the game. Hopefully it picks up, because everyone has been telling me it's very fun.

Squid.

Phantasy Star - Review

Occasionally I have to write a review for a much beloved game from people's childhood that I know certain people aren't going to like. This is one such review. Maybe it's because I had never played it before so it held absolutely no nostalgia for me, but I did not enjoy Phantasy Star.

After my last game I decided I wanted an old school RPG, I looked around and couldn't see one that caught my eye. Then I remembered the Ultimate Sega Collection on Xbox 360, I remembered that it had the Phantasy Star series on it. That's great! I loved Phantasy Star III or IV (I couldn't remember which) so I had found my game. Then I got thinking, maybe I should start the series on the first game. So after the hassle of unlocking Phantasy Star I started playing.

It started off good enough, your kind of standard RPG fare. I decided to get some levels under me at the very start in hopes that it would cut down on my grinding later. It made sense at the time, now I look at it as I was grinding early so I wouldn't have to grind later. That's neither her nor there though, I was having fun for the first few hours... and then things started to go downhill, and the farther I got into the game more we kept going down.

I'm just going to start off with my complaints.

If there's more than one enemy you can't choose who to target. You may think that this sounds petty, but let me tell you, it gets really annoying. Here's an example. I got into a battle with four bad guys who were at or a little above my level, but shouldn't have been much of a problem. They had about 58 health each and my guys seemed to be attacking one of them and eventually whittled down his health to 3. Then they started attacking the other guys. The guy with the 3 health was the last one to die. Instead of killing him he got an extra hit in every round. If I could choose who I wanted to target the one with the 3 health would have been the first to die. This didn't happen a lot, but enough that it got annoying.

Attack power can seem wildly inconsistent at times. Towards the end of the game I had to back track to one of the starting zones where I happened upon a red slime. No problem. Odin attacks and causes... 4 damage. At this point in time all of my characters were about 6-7 levels from the cap of 30 and had the best gear in the game, and Odin couldn't manage to kill something with 12 health in one shot. It was like this through the entire game, no matter what level I was or what gear I had I would occasionally throw out an incredibly weak hit. Again, not a super huge deal breaker but it would get rather annoying at times.

Random battles tend to cluster. Phantasy Star uses the random battle system, that means you can't see the enemies and could get attacked at any time. Occasionally you would run into fight after fight after fight. One times I was trying to get to a town and in eight steps I had five battles. The random battles seem to cluster and when they do, they do it bad. It's not that you run into two battles it's that occasionally you take a step, fight a battle, take another step, fight another battle, and it will keep going. This is especially a problem when you're in a dungeon and fight four battles in the six steps before the boss.

Low level battles, huge damage. After every battle you get a chest, you then can open it and receive the gold and perhaps other items inside. There's a flipside however, you see these chests can be booby trapped as well. And holy hell can they be annoying. I don't know how many times I would fight a battle that I could kill all of the enemies in one round only to have the chest be booby trapped taking sometimes 60 health off of all my characters. It wouldn't be so bad if...

Healing in this game sucks. You have three ways of healing yourself: magic, food, or hospitals. While this doesn't sound bad, trust me, it is... especially farther into the game. Hospitals aren't bad, they're just kind of out of the way. They're only in towns, which would be fine if the other modes of healing worked a little better. With food you have your choice of Cola or a Burger. The Cola heals 10 health and the Burger heals 40. So essentially Cola is useless even fairly early in the game, and 40 health is nice but occasionally not enough. So then you have to carry a ton of them, only problem is that you can only carry so many items and towards the end of the game you've stockpiled a TON of items that you have to carry and can't get rid of, so that really cuts down on Burger space. Magic works the best, you have three characters who can heal. Your main character has a spell that will heal 20 points and two other characters have a spell that heals 80 points. Which is great except for...

You don't have enough magic points. Your main characters heal spell uses 2 magic points and the spell that heals 80 uses 6 magic points. Doesn't sound like a lot until you realize that you only have about 40 magic points... and you still have to use other magic. Having to seriously ration MP because you know that this is a huge dungeon and you're going to have to fight a boss at the end and you NEED your MP kind of sucks. Also? There's no way to replenish MP except by going to a hospital. Which basically makes healing and magic in this game kind of crappy.

There's no map. Now, I'm not 100% sure if this is true. There's a chance that the original copy of the game on the Sega Master System came with a map. Let's hope so because without a map you will wander around hopelessly lost. No one in this game gives you directions, apparently you're just supposed to know where to go... well let me tell you, I for one didn't. Which is especially annoying in the...

Dungeons. Jesus Christ are the dungeons annoying. Basically they all look like this



The walls are all the same color and it's like a goddamn maze. The first dungeon I tried doing without a map, and I managed to wander around lost for about a half hour before I broke down and got a map. I used a map for every other dungeon and cave and still occasionally got lost. I honestly don't even want to know how long it would take you do this without a map.

There's a lot of back tracking. A lot. Now, this one I kind of actually understand. You only had so much memory on a Sega Master System so you couldn't have these huge sprawling maps... but holy hell did I constantly feel like I had to go back to the places I had visited before. After a while it just got repetitive.

My number one complaint is that there seems to be no direction. Look, I don't need a game to hold my hand all the way through but honestly I don't think this game ever mentioned what to do next. I would spend time just wandering around not sure where to go or what to do next. It would often get very frustrating.

Is Phantasy Star a bad game? Not really, it was occasionally rather fun and inventive. At the end of the day however I spent way too much time being frustrated or feeling like I wasn't sure what the hell I needed to do next. Towards the end I just wanted to get it over with, I wanted the game to be over and done with, and that's never a good sign. Hopefully when I get around to playing Phantasy Star 2 some of my complaints will be fixed.

Squid.

Somethin' a Little Different

I know, it's been a while since I last updated. If you follow me on Twitter you'd know that I am in fact trying to get through Phantasy Star. However I've been really, really busy as of late. On top of my normal job I've been busy with my second job as well, I've also been unable to play due to things such as house sitting and generally just not being at home a lot.

This week I'm going to be house sitting yet again, and instead of lugging over my Xbox 360 I've decided to put Phantasy Star on the back burner for now and try to play something on the Wii (which the house I'm house sitting has).

I will finish Phantasy Star, I'll be home one day this week and I'm going to try and beat it then, if I don't I will next week.

So have no fear if you notice I'm playing a new game without having posted a Phantasy Star review, it will be coming.

Squid.

Phantasy Star - Sega Master System

If you're really paying attention you're probably saying "But Squid, there's no mention of a Sega Master System or Phantasy Star in your original post about what games and systems you have!" to which I reply "You're paying way too much attention to this blog, seriously."

But you would be correct, I don't own a Sega Master System. Then what type of witchcraft is this you ask? Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection for Xbox 360. So while I may not technically own a SMS or Phantasy Star I'm still counting it toward the games I need to play.

As far as I know I've only ever played the third Phantasy Star game, but I remember absolutely loving it. So much so I remember almost purchasing it about ten years ago for $35. Never having played a Phantasy Star title other then three I'm not exactly sure what I'm in for, but I'm looking forward to it.

Also just a helpful little tip: if you want to unlock Phantasy Star on Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection for Xbox 360 you need to play Sonic 2 with two players and beat the first boss who's at the end of the second level. Don't have a second controller? The Guitar Hero controllers will also work, just keep in mind a lot of people say that on the boss fight the second player has to at least hit one button.

Squid.

Metro 2033 - Review

A while back I read about Metro 2033 in Official Xbox Magazine, they had a couple page preview. I remember being rather excited about it, it looked great and I love those types of games. Then I didn't hear anything about it for a while. I had almost completely forgot about until I noticed a release date for it. I quickly added it to my Gamefly queue and hoped they would have it by the time my disc got there.

After playing a few hours I realized that Metro 2033 is a game I should have hated. It's incredibly dark, there's escort missions, and it's occasionally very difficult to stealth... but for some reason, I enjoyed it.

Let's start off with the things I thought I wouldn't like.

The Darkness. This game is dark. We're talking Doom 3 dark. We're talking playing an original Gameboy Advance in a closet dark. And yet... this game makes it work. Instead of a hindering you it actually adds to the ambiance of the game. The darkness seems to encompass you. Every little bump in the night seems all that much worse because you're not sure what it is or where it's coming from. All you have is your flashlight and later on in the game, night vision goggles to light your way. Not since Alien Vs. Predator 2 have I seen a game that makes the darkness work so well in its favor.

Escort missions. If there's one thing I hate in a game it's escort missions. Metro 2033 did it right though, it gave me escort missions without me knowing they were escort missions. Occasionally you have a computer controlled teammate that will help you out along the way, occasionally these are escort missions. So if that person dies, you have to start from the last checkpoint. For the most part you won't actually know that it's an escort mission unless you let that person die, and as long as you help them out, for the most part you don't have to worry about them dying.

The problem with stealth isn't really that much of a problem. When you have an AI teammate they're not stealthy so you can't be stealthy. It's occasionally a pain because stealth in this game is awesome, but there are plenty of times when you'll be by yourself so you can just be stealthy then.

So even the points about the game that I thought I wouldn't like turned out to be okay... and after that you had an awesome game.

A really awesome game. When I first heard about the game it sounded a lot like Fallout 3, and since I have a love obsession with Fallout 3 I was totally game. Other then being set in a dystopian, irradiated future it turned out to be nothing like Fallout 3... but instead I got a little gem of a game.

Metro 2033 is like if you mixed Fallout 3, STALKER, and FEAR all into one game. So basically, awesome.

A nuclear war has taken out all of human civilization, those who survived now live in the metro under Moscow. And that's where you meet Artyom, the protagonist of our little story. Basically you're world has been taken over by a bunch of funky mutated creatures who are hell bent on eating your face off as well as the Dark Ones. The Dark ones are the real threat in the world, they have the power to drive humans insane and slaughter entire groups of people... and it's your job to stop them! Lucky Artyom!

So you start out on your quest through the metro, and you're going to meet a lot of people and creatures. Some will want to help and some, again, will want to eat your face. Which keeps things interesting.

This game certainly keeps you on your toes. Whether it's sneaking past a group of enemies, heading down a dark corridor, wondering where that noise came from, or searching for more gas mask filters, you will be on edge.

Seriously, one of the most tense moments in the game came from searching for a gas mask filter. You see the air on the surface is unbreathable, so you need a gas mask as well as filters while on the surface. Run out of filters, you run out of air, which means you die a slow death. There I was, in a huge firefight and I notice I have no filters left. There's still three guys to kill and I can't breath. I start choking for air. Two men down, one to go. I'm gasping. I kill the third. It's a mad dash into houses, cars, corridors looking for a filters. My mask if fogging up, the wind is whipping up snow, I can't see. Finally I spot a shack, I run in and find spare gas mask filters. I can breath again. It was a seriously intense moment... and it wasn't scripted. I ran out of gas mask filters because I had been wandering around. Not because I hit a trigger scene and it happened. It could really happen anywhere... and it was great. Sure if I had died I would have just gone back to my last checkpoint, but I wasn't thinking about that. All I was thinking about was that I needed to find more filters.

There's just so much fun to be had in Metro 2033. My advice, as soon as you can, get some silenced guns. Once you have the night vision goggles it can be so much fun. I was sneaking up on a camp of bad guys, so the first thing I did was shoot out all the lights and shroud them in darkness. Then I pull out the night vision goggles and pick them off one by one as they stumbled around in the dark. Now I know why Buffalo Bill did it in Silence of the Lambs... because it's damn fun, that's why.

Sure Metro 2033 has some flaws: I would have much preferred a save anywhere system to a checkpoints system, sometimes I was unclear on whether the gun I was carrying was better than the gun I could buy/pickup, there were a couple quick time events, and scopes seemed fairly useless. But these were all minor complaints in an otherwise very good game.

This is 4A Games first game, and I'm looking forward to seeing what they do next. This game was a hell of a fun time, do yourself a favor and grab it. If you're a fan of first person shooters I don't think you'll be disappointed.

Squid.