Video game review

[Eva]

It was one of those games. You either loved it, or you hated it, and in my opinion, it's a little of Column A and a little of Column B.

I am talking, of course, about Kingdom Hearts.

Characters:

You are Sora, a boy with agirl's name Keyblade who is trying to find his missing friends, Asshole Best Friend and Dumbfuck Love Interest. Ignoring the fact that they each apparently hold really amazing powers, these three make up, by a wide margin, one of the least interesting and most annoying trios I've ever seen in a video game.



Better.

Okay, so here's what they do. Asshole Best Friend(Riku) is basically a minor antagonist who spends 3/4 of the game being used by Maleficent, the Head Baddy(or so we're lead to believe). So, not only is he an asshole, but he's also a dumbfuck in his own way. Kairi(Dumbfuck Love Interest) is your stereotypical shit-for-brains video game girl and rarely says or does anything interesting. And combat? Forget about it. Kairi's about as athletically skilled as a bag of sand. She's either comatose or getting her ass kicked. At least Riku can fight. Sora is also a personality free entity, and his grating voice made me flip out 'Rachel Leigh Cook Hates Your Drug Abuse' style.


This is your brain on Kingdom Hearts. Any questions?

Now for the villains. They're all Disney villains, and most of them are bleh. Maleficent rules, as she so often does, and the others are really just foils. None of them matter at all in the long run. The Heartless sound cool, but they're shitty at everything they try and only require a few wacks to dispatch. Fucking worthless.

Your allies are the only remotely cool things here. Jack Skellington, Ariel, and Tarzan are the best representatives for the Disney side. What about the Final Fantasy people, you ask? What about them, indeed.


This game was advertised as 'Half Disney, Half Final Fantasy'. Falsely so. It's 1/2 Disney, 1/4 Final Fantasy, and 1/4 annoying original characters. The characters who rep FF are typical: Squall Emoheart, here known as Leon and far cooler than he ever was, Cloud Strife, still annoying, Selphie from FF8, also cooler than she was before, and a few(I do mean A FEW) others that I could give two shits about. Why? Because, none of them are pre-FFVII. This completely ignores people like me, AKA people who liked Final Fantays before it was about brooding nancy boys and dumbasses. Bullshit. I call false that a game supposedly about Final Fantasy neglected one of its best and most groundbreaking characters, Terra Branford. Ms. Branford would kick more ass than Riku, and look twice as good doing it than Kairi, all while being more interesting than Sora.


Oh, this is pretty much the hottest thing ever.

Gameplay: This is KH's redeeming value. Pure awesomeness. Magic is good, albeit not as useful as combos, but still worthwhile. Summoning is key, as it can truly change the tide of a hard battle, and most of the bosses have interesting and unique methods of fighting. Most, but not all(I'm looking at you, Captain Hook). All in all, awesome.

Storyline: You are Sora(sadly), and your home has just been destroyed. Instead of caring that your entire family is now dead, you only think about your fuckwad friends and go after them. Your whore not-girlfriend is a zombie, and your best friend is a pawn. So, naturally, you must team up with Donald and Goofy of Disney fame, since they are (I shit you not) a master mage and knight, respectively. Ignoring the complete improbability of this, you set out and conquer the darkness and seal the keyholes and my god does this even sound good on paper?


So, all in all, this is a decent game. Just ignore the story, characters, and all that stuff and focus on the fighting.

*** out of *****

Hey, to end this on a high note, here's more Terra!

[GnomesAteMyCake]

*Sigh*

i am about to tell you about one of the greatest games i have ever incountered, but likewise, it is also one of the most unappreciated games i have also incountered. All set up for a sequal, and they didn't bother.
This majorly pisses me off when you see things like Bratz being passed off as a game when a retarded, one legged donkey could complete it in less than five minutes, and true quality games are egnored.
Ok, the title of this game is Psychonauts.

Characters: This is the main character that you get to step into the shoes of:


His name is Razputin, or Raz for short, and he is one of the coolest characters, ever. Ever ever. He is ten years old, he grew up in the circus, ran away to sneak into a government training facility disguised as a summer camp. . . and he can set things on fire with his mind. Oh yeah, he is awesome.
The other main characters are the Psychic teachers; Ford Crueller, Ranger/Chef/Admiral/Super secret agent. He pretends not to reckonise you when you see him outside of his 'secret lair', though there is a reason for this. . . Coach Oleander, a short-ass marine, Sasha Nien, A moody german scientist with a girls name that teaches kids to use there mind like a gun, (Using mental bullets, called Psi-blasting), and lastly, Milla Vodello, Party Girl who teaches the kids to use their thoughts as beach-balls and for floating around on.
The last important character is Lili Zanotto, Raz's cynical girlfriend, who kicks a lot more ass than Kairi (Check previous review). She like's to burn things, and to seem all mysterious by being foul to everyone.
Don't forget the other 15-20 campers, each one as insignificant as the next.

The main storyline is that someone is going around stealing children's brains, and Raz is the only one who can get them back and rescue them all. Oh, and he's only got one day to do it in before his circus daddy comes and takes him home. This means that he has to search Whispering Rock Psychic Summer Camp, and Thorny Tower for the Mentally Unstable that the camp happens to have over the lake. But this isn't where the game excells.

Being Psychic and all, Raz has the power to project himself into the minds of those around him. This is where the game is at it's strongest, since each mind Raz jumps into is totally different, Whether it be control freak Sasha's modern cube mind, Or Milla's twenty-odd floor nightclub mind.
The most fun mind is Boyds, which is a 'normal' nieghbourhood, full of agents and little cameras in mailboxes and stuff. The paths go all swirly and stuff, and the main thing is to try and find the 'milkman', who is Boyds other personality.

Gameplay is pretty good, all psychical attacks on the square button, and three different Psychic powers are tagged to the L1, L2 and R1 button (there are eight different powers to chose from), and the camera and stuff is pretty good.

One last main defining quality is the comedy in this game. Richard Horvitz (Othopox, Destroy All Humans!) provides the voice of Raz, and man, there are jokes a plenty in this game. One of my faviourite being the conversations between Raz and Crueller, as well as Raz's concept of 'making out'.

I give this game **** out of *****, and ask everyone to run out and grab a copy quick. They don't make them anymore, so grab this gem before it's too late.

[Vale]

Hm, so I felt like reviewing something, Valentine-Style.


This game is called The Legend of Dragoon, yet another offshoot of a Final Fantasy Break off. Albeit more like FF8/9. During the break in between those two titles, yes this game was made by SquaresoftEnix. So whatever, they more or less have a monopoly on the video game business, in the field of RPGs.

It's got the proto-typical format for all RPGs of this time, fight scene, town scene, and world scene. Yes, things like that seem to be frequent in all video games of this era, so bare with me, I do like this game.

The Plot? A Really Angsty Guy garbed in red armor got upset when he came of age, and wanted to take revenge on the "Black Monster" who murdered his family and took his dear childhood away from him. Although, I think that regardless of how strong he is in the beginning, he'd get owned by the monster if it LEVELED AN ENTIRE TOWN. Humorless at that, his dumb bitch of a love interest gets caught in the opening cinematics, and he rescues her from prison. (with the help of a douchebag knight named Lavitz Slambert, but it's alright...he get's his.)

Anyways, so pop, they spring the girl out, and realize she's special. (Oh shit, seems like Aeris to me) So they go to the king, King Albert, and he sends them to go fight a losing battle in a city which has been invaded by Sandora. (BTW, did i mention this is taking place during a civil war?) Anyways, so they do that, they fight a giant, and several other troops, and this flying dragoon woman comes out of no where and forces her lusty bosom on Dart the Red and turns him into a dragoon. (he's the guy on the cover above!)

Anyways, so they go to a city and meet a guy named Lloyd, who claims he's the greatest swordsman in all of the land. You fight him, lose cuz he's the fuckin' shit obviously. You later find out, he escaped you to kidnap King Albert. Lavitz tries to defend him, and gets killed in epic glory.

He pulls a Temple of Doom on the king, and pulls a stone out of his chest and flees. Doing so, causes Albert to freak out and kill his uncle (who's leading the rebellion against him.)

They find out the stone was important, and is onsetting the end of the world, and Lloyd is orchestrating an epic coup to gather all the items, for someone known as "The Last-True King." being the Dragon Emperor Doel, who was believed to be dead for centuries.

Anyways, so Lloyd gets everything, and even becomes a Dragoon Himself, (of the strongest dragon in the world, go figure this guy is fuckin' the shit.) and takes the group to meet Doel, who is actually....OMFG Dart's Dad!/The Black Dragoon's Ex Sex-Buddy.

Doel freaks out, and presumably kills Lloyd, and sends everyone to the ends of the world. BTW, you have a really big party now, and Doel tells you Shana, the love interest from the beginning, is actually the creature which is suppossed to herald the end of the world.

Hm, Save the World, or Save the one you love? That is the true question!
I won't give any more into it, but please!
Watch this video...


and this one too, the beginning part is from the video for the Dragoon War, which is epic.



Downside, you don't find out about the Dragoon Wingly War until disc 2 (of 4) Which is what the game is mostly about, the first two discs are the bullshit which prep for the good stuff.
Winglies Oppressed Humans and all other life forms, until the Dragon was created
Dragons and Humans alligned themselves to fight the winglies, and Dragoons were born. (Human, Nexus Riders) Hence that video.
Note: Rose, the woman shouting Zeig in that, is actually in fact the woman who saves you in the town in the beginning, she's 10,000 years old, because she worked with a group of people to kill the Vyrage Embryo (Seed of Destruction, aka End of the world, aka Shana, the bitch Dart loves) to prevent the end of the world. Neet, Dart's town, is where Shana was supposed to be, but She and Dart escaped..

[Weremouse]

Lets go with something that will get 5 out of 5 just because of the name:
THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: Twilight Princess.



If you havn't played this yet, you must hate Nintendo. Zelda is one of the best game franchises ever made (screw Mario. Link is hot!) According to me, it's the best. According to anyone who's played it, it's the best. According to someone who doesn't know what video games are, it's the best. According to someone loyal to Playstation or Xbox, it's the best.

In case you're an idiot, you play a teenaged righteous dude named Link (you can name him whatever you want, but his real name is Link. I named my cat after him.


Link is just a normal human. He might look a little elfy, but in his world, that's pretty well normal. BUT *plottwist* apparently he's the decendant of an ancient hero (The Link in Ocarina of Time. This game is a parallell universe to Wind Waker, where THAT Link was a decendant to Ocarina Link, too. Twilight Princess is what would happen if the King of Hyrule hadn't flooded Hyrule. Notice the sailing and stuff in Phantom Hourglass and Wind Waker.) said hero saved Hyrule when an evil spirit/elf/manthing/beast named GAGNON (oops, that's my math teachers last name) sorry. GANON tried to take over the land by reuniting the Triforces.



These triforces are magnitized (I'm not sure if theyre INSIDE the people, or just attracted to them. I havn't played OoT yet.) to three people. Each triforce has a quality, which is always one of the main qualities of it's carrier. Power, Wisdom and Courage. (Link always has courage, Zelda always has Wisdom and the bad guy always has Power.)

Anyway, in Twilight Princess, you're a simple village dude. I think you're ~17 or 18. You're living on your own, and you have a job. You could easily pass for 15, though. Anyway, naughty monkeys have been messing up the village. You just got a wooden sword from Colins father. The kids ask you to teach them how to use it. You do, and one kid sees a monkey and goes after it with a toy sword. The chase begins! You find his two friends early on, they got tired out. You keep chasing. Eventually, you see the kid and the monkey in a cage. You see monsters around the cage, and kill them. Then, you open the cage. The kid runs home, asking you not to tell his dad. The monkey runs off. This doesn't bode well. Monsters in the forest?
Naturally, the next day, you're supposed to be getting a gift to Hyrule. Your love interest notices your horse (Epona) has got a cut on her leg. She yells at you, and takes the horse to the "healing spring" you follow her, but the kids are blocking the way. Young Colin is afraid of being bullied by them, and asks if he can see your love interest with you. The kids want your sword. If you don't give it to them, you can't pass. (As if you couldn't just threatan them, but NOOO you HAVE to give the sword.) You get the sword to them. Love interest tells you to stay out. Colin offers to explain about Epona while you crawl through the back entrance to the spring. Love interest forgives you "but don't be too rough". Randomly, the fence into the spring blows open. You're knocked off your feet by a strange beast. They pick up Colin and Love Interest! (Oh no!) The boss comes in, doesn't trample you, and somehow doesn't see you. You pick yourself up and run after them, swordless. You're sucked into a vortex of darkness. Twilight. Hyrule has been consumed.
The whole point of the game is to get rid of Twilight.

Plot.....................10 out of 10
Graphics..............10 out of 10
Sound..................10 out of 10
Programming.........10 out of 10
Everything Else.......10 out of 10

[Eva]

Of course.

I've recently begun to play the Fire Emblem series of games, as they were highly recommended to me by Gafe. Lacking a Gamecube, I've been limited to three titles: Rekka No Ken/Blazing Sword, Sealed Sword, and Sacred Stones. The first I shall review is the one that I played first: The Sacred Stones.



For the first part of the game, you play as Eirika, the typical virgin princess type. She's the princess of Reinas and is forced to flee from her castle because an evil dragon-rider has decided to molest her country. Her daddy is murderized, but Eirika escapes with the help of the inexplicably young hawt General of Renais's army, Seth. Of course, being a video game protagonist, Eirika somehow knows how to fight, so Seth gives her a Rapier(the only one available in the game, so I guess Seth has a Bag of Holding that contains every rare sword ever). They are then attacked by a sad contingent of enemies, who are complete fodder for Jeigan-Seth and Eirika.

From there, Eirika and Seth must find Eirika's brother Ephraim was off in the country of Grado, the very country that attacked them. They say he was leading a squad there, but why? I mean, the game says multiple times that Grado and Renais were allies before Grado raped Renais's king to death, so why would Ephraim be leading a group of armed soldiers into allied territory? Boredom? Fuck, maybe it's this blatantly hostile invasion that caused a backlash. Of course, that's logical, so there's no way it's true.

Characters:

Eirika is okay. She's no Lyndis, who was the female protagonist of Rekka no Ken, but she's okay. Her Rapier gives her mad critz, and she's fast, so she'll hold her own. Seth is a Jeigan, so nevermind him. Ephraim is basically a bloodthirsty killer(he admits this to Eirika at one point, although she shows NO concern that her brother would rather kill shit than be king). Other characters include Prince Innes of Frelia, the kingdom neighboring Renais, the Sage Saleh who like Seth is impossibly young and hawt, God-Warrior Princess L'Arachel of Rausten, a theocracy that probably stones heretics and burns witches and homosexuals in the town square, and dragon girl Myrrh.

The other characters(read: permanent-deathable fodder) include Peggy Knights Vanessa and Tana, the former having a crush on Prince Innes and the latter being Innes's sister. No wonder they're such BFFs. Also included are the blonde Cleric Natasha, ego-mage Lute, sweetie pie Monk Artur, tank Knight Gilliam, FalcoKnight and B-SILF Syrene, Lancer Amelia(blonde 2!), snobbish mage-in-training Ewan, Father and son combo Garcia and Ross, and many other one-shot asses.

Sounds trippy, eh? Gameplay is great, offering a chance for your characters to promote in more than one way, unlike other FE games in which promotion is insanely linear.

Blonde Chick count: Three. Natasha, Selena, Amelia.

**** of *****

[Eva]

PART TWO


Rekka No Ken has the dubious honor of being known as just 'Fire Emblem'. Between the two titles, I'll just call it the Lyn Game.

The story is actually quite interesting. Your character is a tactician who passes out in some plains and is tended to by a hawt swordmaiden named Lyndis, who prefers 'Lyn'. She's the green haired chick wearing very little in the image above. Your tactician is given the job of helping Lyn wipe the floor with a few pathetic bandits, and it is by no means challenging. Lyn then suggests that you two stick together, and being a video game sprite, you cannot object.

Long story short, Lyn recruits a few friends(Leisure Suit Larry type Sain, honest knight Kent, shrinking violet Peggy Knight Florina, sweet archer Wil, and androgynous monk Lucius among them) before running into a pair of freaky children. After rescuing said freaky kids, they then run into Prince Eliwood, who exists solely to steal the spotlight from Lyn. After ten chapters, Lyn's turn ends, and we are forced to follow Eliwood's story. Oh, and unlike Lyn, Eliwood gets a Jeigan! Yes, his Paladin guard Marcus just serves to soak up EXP, which is just sad. They don't even try to mask his obvious Jeigan-ness.

Well, it's fairly good. The story has some decent twists and surprises, and most of the people you meet under Lyn's story come back for a hurrah in Eliwood's. Eliwood as a character isn't that great, and he's not very strong in personality compared to Lyn or his best friend Hector, the game's third Lord. He's also weaker than both of them, no surprises there.

In characters, well, it's not bad. Hector is pretty awesome and snarks on Lyn and Eliwood for being idealogical, but Lyn is a badass, so she snarks right back. The hangers-on are Ninian, one of the freaky kids who is also a dancer, royal couple Pent and Louise(blonde!), tiny archer Rebecca, tank-knight Oswin, bitchy cleric Serra and her bodyguard, Erk, chaste troubadour Priscilla and her evil brother Raven, and many others. The characters are vaguely amusing, but none of them really inspire closeness. There's not a Lute or a L'Arachel among them.

A great game, but not as good as SS.

**** of *****