[Game Review] Kid Icarus: Uprising (Nintendo 3DS)

Kid Icarus UprisingFor years now, rumors have been running rampant about a radical revival for one of Nintendo’s forgotten franchises. Most of it stemming from the hopeful wishing and constant speculation of a select few big time video game journalists, the rumor mill was almost constantly buzzing with talk of Kid Icarus making a comeback every time the Big N announced it would be revealing any kind of news.

The reason for this is very unclear to me, because I’ve always felt that both the original Kid Icarus for NES sucked pretty hard. Frustrating controls and garbage gameplay mechanics really irritated me every single time I tried to play it. Maybe it was just the fact that I sucked really bad at it, but for whatever reason I just hated the original. So why would anyone want the franchise to make a return?

Luckily, when it was finally confirmed and shown off for the first time, the painfully boring vertical tower climbing gameplay mechanics of the past looked to be completely thrown away in favor of radical aerial combat and action-heavy ground battle segments. For the first time in my life, I was excited for Kid Icarus. And now that the finished game is finally available for the Nintendo 3DS, I am happy to say that it doesn’t disappoint.

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[Flash Game Review] Spikes Tend to Kill You 2

Spikes Tend to Kill You 2 is a flash skill platformer.  You are a steaming square with a dot in the middle, and you must navigate a series of screens.  Each screen is filled with spikes or turrets that shoot yellow pixel bullets.

The bulk of the gameplay is…well what I described in the previous paragraph.  It hearkens back to other skill jumping games like of maddening insanity like I Wanna Be the Guy or the nightmarish disappearing blocks from Mega Man.  The major difference though, is that with I Wanna Be the Guy it had bits of old Nintendo games and nostalgic graphics.  It was pretty much a self-aware parody of the platformer genre.  With the Mega Man series, the invisible blocks were only part of Dr. Wily’s nefarious plan.  You still get to fight robots and earn different weapons.

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[Flash Game Review] Last Robot 2

Last Robot 2 is a typical distance flash game.  Try to get your robot up to a big pizza in the sky by bouncing off of platforms.  There are different abilities to help you reach your goal.  There is a parachute to help you get from platform to platform, and you can buy the ability to fly.  It’s the same as most distance games: get as far as you can while collecting “coins,” fail to reach your goal, buy upgrades, and try again.

The graphics are weak, but that’s not what these games are about.  There are 8 upgrade categories in which to sink coins, and three levels that compose each upgrade: maneuverability, jump height, and armor are just a few.  There are even a few achievements to top everything off.

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[Game Review] Resident Evil: Revelations (Nintendo 3DS)

System: Nintendo 3DS (Exclusive)
Developer: Capcom
Publisher: Capcom
Genre: Horror/Adventure

Let me preface this by saying that I love Resident Evil. I have Resident Evil tattoos, have read three different Resident Evil books (and reviewed each one), and have tracked down and played every game the series has released on a dedicated console here in America. Hell, I even forgave Capcom for the direction they decided to head with Resident Evil 5, provided it never happens again. The only thing I haven’t done is watched any of the films besides the shitty first one.

Revelations has been on my radar for a very long time and, after much anticipation, it’s finally here. After all the hype that’s surrounded it, is it enough to quench 3DS owners’ thirsts? Yeah. It totally is.

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[Drunk Game Review] BlazBlue: Continuum Shift II (Nintendo 3DS)

I’m drinking this really awful wine. It’s called The Naked Grape and is an attractive-looking California pinot noir. Peanut noir, lol. Anyway, I’ve been so tired of not having a vast array of games on my new 3DS, that every game that comes out piques my excitement to the point where I run out and buy it ASAP.

My stomach hurts.

Such was the case with BlazBlue: Continuum Shift II. As I’ve said in my previous two reviews for fighting games on the 3DS, I’m just not that in to fighthing games. I like DOA: Dimensions a lot, and I got plenty of fun out of Super Street Fighter 4: 3D Edition, but I really don’t need yet ANOTHER fighting game to play. I knew that. Consciously even. I considered turning around on my way to the store, thinking that I really didn’t want the game. I just wanted more games for my 3DS. This is awful wine. Why am I drinking cheap-ass wine? I’m not a teenage girl.

 

Review:

Ok, so I played this game a little bit earlier and was unable to enjoy it. It’s too damn hard. Lol, Squidbillies is on TV. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. It’s the episode with truck balls or whatever. Now there’s blood inside the window. And a face on the floor. Oh. A Bunch of baby squids. Lifeguard on Booty. This show is gross.

Anyway, it’s just too damn hard. It took so long to learn how to be compitant at SSFIV, and this game seems even harder to learn. I’m not a hardcore fighting fan. Why did I buy this game?

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[Review] Dead or Alive: Dimensions (3DS)

The first game I reviewed for the 3DS was Super Street Fighter IV: 3D Edition. In that review, I talked about how I wasn’t a huge fan of fighting games. I spoke of how I really only truly enjoyed fighting games if they were Super Smash Bros, how I’d never played Street Fighter II (and had no idea a third installment even existed), and how I enjoyed playing Dead or Alive for a very brief time. By the end of that review, however, I talked about how SSFIV ignited a new-found (maybe just recovered) appreciation for the fighting genre, and I became very excited for the quickly-approaching Dead of Alive: Dimensions.

Part of the reason I was excited for DoA was nostalgia. I played the hell out of Dead or Alive 2 on the Sega Dreamcast as a kid, and the thought of playing another game in the franchise after so long really brought back some fond memories. The other, larger part of the reason for my excitement is the fact that the 3DS still has almost no games worth playing more than a few times, and dammit I’m starving for some new software.

Luckily for me, Dead or Alive Dimensions hits the spot pretty well.

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[Game Review] Pilotwings Resort (3DS)

I’ve never played a Pilotwings game prior to Resort, but I’ve heard mostly good things. People seem to traditionally find that this series has always been used for showing off how technically advanced the system it is released on is, and the past games have helped set the bar for what subsequent releases on the system should be able to achieve in terms of visual prowess. One look at Pilotwings Resort and it would be easy to see that the game does in fact do a great job of showing off the technical potential of Nintendo’s new handheld, but it doesn’t do it very well.

For as technically impressive as the Island of Wuhu (first seen in Wii Sports Resort) looks with full 3D popping on your shiny new 3DS, the entire game is just completely bland and totally boring. Does that mean it’s bad? No, not at all. It’s just really hard to get $40 worth of fun out of it.

Still, there are plenty of things Pilotwings Resort does right. Can the good outweigh the bad in this 3DS launch game?

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[Game Review] Super Street Fighter IV: 3D Edition (3DS)

I’m not a huge fighting game fan. In fact, with the exception of a childhood infatuation with Primal Rage and then a brief bout with addiction to Dead or Alive and Tekken 4, I’ve never even played many fighting games that weren’t Super Smash Bros. That is why I am perhaps completely underqualified to review a game such as Super Street Fighter IV: 3D Edition. I mean heck, I’ve never even played Street Fighter II, and I had no idea there was even a Street Fighter 3.

What I can tell you is that I have bought or rented nearly every game that has released for the 3DS since its release day, and while I can’t tell you how this game stacks up against Marvel VS Capcom 3 or the new Mortal Kombat (or its console counterpart, for that matter), I can tell you how well this game holds up when sat next to any other launch window game for Nintendo’s innovative new system.

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[Tech Review] Nintendo 3DS

After months and months and months of painful waiting, the biggest day of the month of March of the year of 2011 finally arrived. I sat with baited breath, eating up every bit of information regarding Nintendo’s 3DS handheld gaming console I could get my chubby little sausage fingers wrapped around. I read tons of articles, watched hours of video, and stared at countless photographs, dreaming of the day I would finally get my hands on the one thing I wanted more than just about anything else, and I finally have it.

You’ll have to excuse this review for being so late, as I secured my 3DS on its North American launch date but am just now rolling around to doing a write up on it. However, that’s not because I haven’t been using it enough to write a proper review. In fact, it is the exact opposite.

Since purchasing the system, I’ve not let it travel more than 20 feet away from my body. If it hasn’t been in my hands, it has been in my pocket. If not there, then in my bicycle trunk. If not there, then sitting safely on its charging dock. I’ve seriously invested more hours into the 3DS than I have school, work, eating or blinking for the past few weeks.

The funny thing? I’m struggling to write this review because I desperately want to play with it some more.

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[Game Review] Breach (Xbox Live Arcade)

System: Xbox 360 (Live Arcade Exclusive)
Developer: Atomic Games
Publisher: Microsoft
Genre: First-Person Shooter

The first thing we need to get out in the open is that I am not a huge fan of first-person shooters. I don’t play Call of Duty, have never played Halo online, and am generally not interested in any FPS coming to the market. There have been exceptions where I’ve fully enjoyed FPS games, like with the recent Goldeneye 007 remake for the Wii and the Left 4 Dead franchise on the Xbox 360, but generally speaking I have very little interest in this type of game. However, when the folks behind Breach sent me an email with a code to download the game for free a few weeks before it came out, I decided to go ahead and jump on in.

Now that you know I’m not a fan of first-person shooters, you may think that I’m not the right guy to be reviewing this game. And really, I’m probably not. Especially if you’re a huge fan of the genre and want to know how it stacks up against the likes of Call of Duty. That said, I can definitely tell you whether or not this game is fun, and I can do so without dwelling over pointless comparisons to other games.

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