May 14, 2009 by Greg Noe
There are a total of six released M-rated Nintendo DS games: Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, theresia, Ultimate Mortal Kombat, Dementium: The Ward, Touch the Dead, and Resident: Evil Deadly Silence (one more game, C.O.R.E. has been rated but not released yet). For over 1100 rated titles on the Nintendo DS, there are just six games considered Mature by the ESRB! That's about one half percent of all DS games. Kotaku has some theories on this, but I'm not really one to analyze the market or audiences - I'm one to play the dang games.
The following is going to be a 10 minute blitz of each of the six released M-rated games for the Nintendo DS, starting with the first released, Resident Evil: Deadly Silence, and finishing up with the recent Grand Theft Auto. I already had a friend review the first hour of Chinatown Wars, but a little overlap is okay. I'll say a few things about each game, play it for ten minutes, and then wrap each up with a few more notes about gameplay. I'll also decide if the first 10 minutes are worthy of the M-rating or not. Let's get this started.
This is also a taste of the new first hour review format. Less about numerical scores, more about what I liked and what I didn't. The reviews will be a bit more fleshed out next week as I have more room to roam. Enjoy.
May 03, 2009 by Greg Noe
Hitman was released in theaters in late 2007 and was based off the popular Hitman video game series. There have been four Hitman games made so far, but none since 2006. Kind of surprising they didn't try to time another game for the film release, and even more surprising that there hasn't been a sequel in three years. Hitman the movie stars Timothy Olyphant, Dougray Scott, Robert Knepper, and Olga Kurylenko.
This is my first movie review on a real video game based movie, while the Last Starfighter is full of corn and charm, Hitman attempts to be a serious imagining of game to film. I'm not really that familiar with the series, unfortunately. I've played the second one, Silent Assassin, a bit, but mostly just watched my roommate in college sneak through it. I love the concept though so was excited to get Hitman in the mail the other night. Nothing formal, just some things I noticed.
April 30, 2009 by Greg Noe
Lost Planet: Extreme Condition is a third-person shooter set on the eternal winter world of E.D.N. III. It was released in 2007 for the Xbox 360 and PC and the PlayStation 3 got a port in 2008. I reviewed the first hour of the game a few months ago and loved it. The game featured a great blend of action, atmosphere, and adventure. I definitely enjoy third-person perspective games typically more than first-person, the controls are usually a bit more unforgiving but I seem to get a much better context of the world around me. Lost Planet is no exception.
I honestly had low hopes for this game, fighting bugs on an ice planet? Sounds lame; sounds like it's been done a hundred times before. Mechs? Been there, blown up that. In reality, the game isn't much more than this, but it's action packed and you will be having fun. So there's mechs and ice and bugs, but all together, it makes for something awesome. Let's get into the full review of the Xbox 360 version of Lost Planet.
April 29, 2009 by Greg Noe
The Legend of Zelda: The Complete Animated Series is a 13 episode series that aired along with the Super Mario Bros. Super Show back in 1989. It features everyone's favorite skirt wearing hero, Link, and his chaste damsel, Princess Zelda. Don't forget about Ganon, Link's archnemesis and ever-persistent bad-guy-with-a-losing-plan. Throw in the Triforce, the Master Sword, and tons of swashbuckling adventures, this is probably the Legend of Zelda you know and love, right?
Well, maybe not. Remember, this was 1989, the mysterious time between The Adventures of Link and A Link to the Past. The characters were about 20 pixels high on the screen and the only real art we had from them was in the instruction booklets, not much to go on for an animation team to create a whole cartoon around. So Link really does look like he's wearing a skirt, Zelda looks like a twig at six feet tall and 100 pounds, while Ganon is sporting his classic pig design. A similar predicament faced the art team of the Panasonic CD-I Zelda games (yeah, those). There's a great interview over at Hardcore Gaming 101 detailing some of these problems.
So nothing formal here, let's just discuss some of the things I noted while watching The Legend of Zelda: The Complete Animated Series. The show is available over Netflix Instant Watch, check it out!
April 23, 2009 by Greg Noe
Lux-Pain is a visual novel game for the Nintendo DS. Novel is an accurate description of this game's length and amount of reading. Lux-Pain took me about 21 hours to read/play through and compared to the other popular heavy reading games on the DS like Phoenix Wright or Hotel Dusk, has much less interactive gameplay and unfortunately, a much less polished translation. Visual novels are a big genre in Japan, but have never really made the transition overseas outside of the Ace Attorney series. Honestly the big difference is that Ace Attorney gets the localization it deserves whereas Lux-Pain's seems rushed and bland.
Anyways, Lux-Pain is not all bad. If you're a fan of this genre and like mysteries, this is probably right up your alley. It has a big story and starts off as a delicious cross between Persona 3, Phoenix Wright, and Heroes. It's a pretty serious game but has some great art and actually tons of voice acting. Lux-Pain offers a lot... if a bit scattered about. Let's get to my full review.
April 17, 2009 by Grant
Suikoden Tierkreis for the Nintendo DS is the newest edition to the classic RPG series released last month. It's the first portable original RPG in the series and features all the mainstays, including 108 Stars of Destiny (heroes), turn-based combat, an epic story, and random battles. Tierkreis is German for "zodiac." What that has to do with the game, I do not know, something to do with the Stars of Destiny maybe?
This is of course a guest review by my friend Grant. He recently reviewed the first hour of Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars and offered to review his newest purchase. We're both big fans of the Suikoden series, though we've played completely different games. I've played 1, 2, and 4, while Grant has played 3, 5, and now Tierkreis. I keep trying to get him to play Suikoden 2 as it's one of the best games ever... but as long as he writes for the site, I don't care. Enjoy Grant's review of Suikoden Tierkreis.
April 13, 2009 by Greg Noe
World of Goo is a physics based puzzle game available for Windows, Linux, OS X, and WiiWare. I reviewed the first hour of the game a few months ago and just kept on playing it until it was unfortunately over. World of Goo was one of the highlights during February's indie game month at the First Hour, and as Magic Toy Chest developers, Graduate Games, told me, "it's tough following World of Goo." That it is. The game has a ton of charm, wit, and atmosphere to carry it over about 50 levels. Each one is unique and will leave you wanting more, and while I feel the story is a bit overdone, this is a brilliant game. Let's get into it.
April 07, 2009 by Greg Noe
Chrono Trigger for the Nintendo DS is the second port of this classic Super Nintendo role-playing game. You guide a group of time-traveling heroes through different time periods to save the world from the alien parasite, Lavos. I'll get my biases out of the way right now and say that the Super Nintendo version is my favorite game of all time. Out of the hundreds of games I've played, Chrono Trigger stands as the undisputed number one. So I had very high expectations for the 2008 portable port of the 1995 original, so let's just get to my review to see if it lives up to the hype... and see if the game has stood the test of time.
April 02, 2009 by Greg Noe
My third day of gaming is up and I had a great time playing and writing about the games. This was the first set of reviews at this site instead of being hosted on Blogger, and I've learned a whole lot about hosting a site like this (like how your bandwidth will get eaten alive when you have a ton of images and allow hot-linkers). I also played my first overall 10 first hour in Call of Duty 4, not to mention the second, Ocarina of Time. And I had an indie-only game month playing a bunch of non-blockbuster titles made by one or two man teams.
Day Four's set of 24 games will start soon, but I have a bunch of full reviews to write first. I'm also planning on totally revamping the scoring system for first hour reviews. I've spoken to editors of other review sites and kept a close eye on the various comments scattered around and I feel like things need to change. More on this over the next few weeks though.
March 23, 2009 by Greg Noe
Dreamfall: The Longest Journey is an adventure game released in 2006 for Xbox and Windows. It's the sequel to The Longest Journey, a straight point-and-click adventurer released seven years earlier. Dreamfall takes advantage of the beefier hardware and features fully navigable 3D environments that plays more like Shenmue than Syberia. This may very well be the evolution of adventure games right before our eyes.
I never played the original Longest Journey, well, I take that back. I played the demo for a few minutes then turned it off. So much for the first hour of a demo, huh? There's something to be said about starting in the middle of any story driven game, it usually doesn't work. But that's The Longest Journey, and this is Dreamfall! If you're curious about the game after the review, it's readily available on both Steam and Xbox Live Originals on the 360. Check it out, after we check out the first hour of Dreamfall.
