Wednesday, December 01, 2004
Incredibles Games and where they went
It's Wednesday again! Right now it's 1:00 pm, and I'm at the WinMagic office. So I'm here, my dad gave me a spare computer so I can get on the internet and do stuff, so I'm here blogging now on an old machine with a barely working mouse. I've been blogging a lot lately, but that's okay, right? Besides, there's not much else to do right now.
Anyway, so I'm still in 'Sauga, but I'll be back in Waterloo by 6. Yeah, I realize I missed my stats quiz, but I couldn't get back earlier. I'm going to Waterloo with someone in the office who lives in Cambridge, so that's why I'm here. Couldn't get a ride last night, and we couldn't reach the professor that would've brought me back in the morning.
Damn, exams are coming up soon, eh? This Friday is the 3rd of December, and my first exam's on the 11th, and then my last exam's on the 18th, and damn, we're not ready at all! Such ninjaness...
Driver's Ninja
Speaking of ninjas, yesterday I took another road test, and once again, I ALMOST passed. Last time it was an observation error on the last left turn before coming back to the examination center, this time it was also on a left turn, but of course a different error. It was indeed a ninjalicious error, and I'm kinda pissed. Wanna hear about it? Of course you do.
So at 12:45, my instructor Paul comes to pick me up for a 90 minute sorta refresher course prior to the exam, and it was very sunny out, so I put down the sun visor. At 2:15 was my test, and then we get to this left turn. The light turns green, so I creep up into the intersection and cars were coming, so I couldn't go. So I continue creeping up, until the traffic light disappears behind the sun visor.
So here I am, paying attention to the cars, and it hadn't even occurred to me that the traffic light disappeared out of my vision, because, well, I'm not paying attention to it. So eventually I see 2 cars coming my direction, and the light turns Amber, but of course I don't see it. And then... the light turns red. Car honks. Instructor tells me to go because it's a red light. And... well, that's a fatal enough mistake and thus I fail.
So... it was very ninjalicious. If I remembered to put the visor up prior to the test, of course I would've noticed it was a yellow light, and then I would proceed if it was safe to go. But I didn't, so that sucked. It was such a stupid mistake too... but then again, it's proof enough that I'm not tooo ready or too keen to drive by myself yet. If the instructor didn't tell me to go, it would've taken a little bit longer to notice it was red. So that sucks.
So... it's not like I'm a horrible driver. It's not like I can't make right turns and left turns, or that I crash into cars all the time or speed or whatever. But there's always some observation error that gets me everytime. A different one, of course. I wonder what the next observation error will be...
Yesterday's Night
Also, yesterday, as the rumours said, Ken Jenings lost on Jeopardy, after 74 wins (75 appearances) and over 2.5 million dollars in winnings. I haven't watched the episode, but I had Duy tape it for me on my computer, so I'll watch it tonight. I checked some forums and stuff, and many say that the show was rigged; that episode, that is. That Ken gave up on purpose... well, I'll have to watch the episode first to see what happens.
But ya know what's cool? A Zerg beat him! Go Zerg!! :D Also on that night, Ken Jennings was on Letterman, so I saw that. That was... in the words of Alan... interesting.
I had super amazing dreams last night! Well, they weren't super amazing, but they were vivid and had weird storylines, and involved people like Eric and Christa. There were also a lot of dreams because I woke up in the middle of the night ~5:30ish so I could recall more dreams then, and another few dreams when I got up at 10:30. Anyway, I'll describe them in another update or so.
The rest of the update is composed of reviews and analysises and stuff.
The Incredibles
Yesterday my mom had 2 free-passes to movies that expired that day, Nov 30, so my sister and I decided to see The Incredibles. I invited Jody too, so he came too, although he already saw it last Saturday. The movie was great. I really enjoyed it. No, I'm not going to be like everyone else and say it was "Incredible", although it might've been, but that's just... meh. Well, it was really good. As an aside, it seems none of these 3d-computer-graphics Pixar and Dreamworks productions disappoint me. Some were betters than others of course, though.
I read a review in the Star that said the movie was more oriented towards Adults than other pixar/dreamworks pictures were. Yes, partially this is true, and it works out well. At heart, it's still a children's movie, with plenty of stuff for the children, but that doesn't mean it's bad. It's gooood. Very good. I gotta get someone to download it for me now, and then I gotta buy the dvd when it comes out.
Umm... yeah, so it was great. Since we had free-passes, we didn't need to pay the $9.25 admission fee, but it's worth it. Although, the theatre had some problems (Coliseum #11, 7:30 show). Before the coming attractions, there was audio but no video, and then the video and audio were out of sync by about 1 second, so as the movie started, Jody and I went and complained. It's the first time I ever complained. But yeah, after we complained, they fixed the problem. I missed the first few minutes of the film unfortunately, but it's okay.
So... ummm... yeah, the movie is great. Everyone should see it. It's funny, and it's good. Out of our group... sure, everyone would like it. Unless someone has a real grudge against Pixar or something... I dunno why... but yeah. And yeah, it's less kiddy than Finding Nemo and... other stuff primarily aimed at Children. So we old Fogeys, even the ones that didn't enjoy the kiddy Pixars... we'd like this one more. So go see it! (hehe, that was a pretty empty review - it just said "GO SEE IT!" nothing about plot, characters, story, animation, etc... but yeah... go see it.)
Halo 2
On Monday, I beat Halo 2. So I was playing a mission, and then I beat it, and so I see Master Chief and he says something, and then I expect to go into his viewpoint, as another mission starts, but then the game feeds me ending credits. I'm like, "What the hell? FROM WHERE?" That was truly, from where. I've read a few reviews and things, and a lot of them say the ending is... bad, or not very well liked, and now I'm one of those people that agree. Fortunately, after the ending credits there's a 20-second cutscene that's sorta interesting, that might give rise to an interesting Halo 3, but that doesn't change that the ending sucks.
The story was getting really good too, but then the game feeds me ending credits. Well, in the last mission, you do defeat some boss, and you deactivate Halo, but that is SO not the end of the game. In Halo1, you destroyed a piece of the Halo, and then you could tell it was the end of the game. But here... the ending comes out of nowhere. And just when the story was getting goood.
Other than the ending however, the game is Good. I've read some reviews and a lot of them say how this game has a lot of story, and, yes, it does. After the first few missions, the story starts building up, and it gets interesting and it pulls you in. When I first read the GameSpy review before playing the game, I thought that meant the game would be different in terms of how you play.
Well, it's not, in that sense of speaking. It is at heart, still an action game, and that's what you do; walk around, kill baddies. You don't explore like an RPG or whatever; it's still an action oriented FPS. But, what keeps you going is the story in the back, with cutscenes in between levels. Compared to the first game, the story here is much better. Too bad the ending cuts it off.
There's a lot of talk about dual-wielding, hijacking vehicles, the sword, etc. but I'm not going to talk about those. Anyway, I've noticed that... you get more grenades in this game, at least I think you do. I've noticed that whenever I hit L, and I'm not dual-wielding, I usually throw out a grenade. I think in the first game they didn't have as many grenades lying around so they weren't used too often (and they weren't all that useful), but now they're still not thaat useful but you get more of them, so you can use them more. Yay for more fun! More explosions! ^^
To emphasize action and explosions, you get much greater use of the Scorpion Tank. There are more missions that let you use vehicles, such as the Scorpion and the Wraith (the Covenant tank). Maybe it's something the fans wanted, but it's nice. It makes you feel so powerful while riding a scorpion tank and blowing up other vehicles.
One of the best things a game or movie can do, at least for me, is to make you "feel" for the bad guy. There are movies where badguys are total scumbags, and those work for those kinds of movies. Then there are movies where you feel for the bad guy, like The Rock, or Spiderman 2.
Anyway, in the first Halo, you play as Master Chief, and you always get to see Master Chief. The Covenant, the bad guys, always looks like minions and critters that just run around and shoot at you. Eventually, you feel a bit for them as they too feel fear for the Flood, but not too much. In Halo 2, it's a totally different story. It starts off with a cutscene on the Covenant's side, and yes, the aliens do speak english. So now they're given a human characteristic, so you can feel for them.
And then pretty soon in the game (this was very surprising the first time we played it), we got to play as a Covenant. That was so cool! And we had Elites and grunts as teammates, and that was pretty cool. So you put your shoes in those of the bad guy, and you see they're not... as... bad... or at least you feel for them and that's cool. And then you go back to Master Chief and you destroy Covenant like in Halo 1 :P
Another thing is Team-ness. It's cool to be a Covenant, and be on a team with other Elites, grunts, yellow Elites, and even Hunters. It makes you feel good to be on a team. All Masterchief gets are humans, and they're not even all that good. And eventually you play as the Covenant long enough and his camouflage powers are pretty cool, and eventually Master Chief isn't as cool. :P
Anyway, all in all, Halo 2 is a pretty good game with a crappy ending. I gotta go through Legendary mode now, but I read that there won't be extra missions or anything, but there'll probably be a slightly better ending. And then I gotta get Xbox2 and Halo 3...
Oh, as for Multiplayer, haven't played too much of that, but it's pretty customizable.
Paper Mario - Thousand Year Door
A few weeks ago we got Paper Mario - Thousand Year Door for the Gamecube. Duy started playing it, with Alan and I watching and discussing it, and it was fun. Duy played for maybe 4 hours in total, and then that November 23rd came along and Duy hasn't touched it since. Since then, I made a copy of his file and since then played another 8 hours more.
So far, I'm really impressed! I really like it. The mechanics are good, the RPGing is good, the fighting is fun and it's user friendly, for the most part. It's RPG meets Mario, once again, and it's working out well so far. I'm 12 hours in, and it looks like it'll be at least another 24 till I'm done, or maybe more.
There's lots to do, many mechanics that lets you do many different things and use your brain to figure out what to do, the battles are fun, and...yeah, overall it's pretty fun. The game also takes parts from other games, such as... say, Pikmin, Mario Bros, and Donkey Konga, to name a few.
Graphically, it works really nicely. It probably could've been done on the N64, but the touch of extra colour and particle effects and the framerates make it Gamecubeish. Sound's not bad either.
So overall, I really like this game. It's too bad I left it in Waterloo this weekend (since there wasn't enough room in the car to bring it back), but now i have something to look forward to for coming back to Waterloo :P So, we still have 2 savefiles available, come over and give it a try!
Unfortunately now, I'm waay ahead of Duy and Alan now, so when I watch them play... well, maybe I won't watch them. But it's like I've read spoilers they don't know about, so I can't discuss things with them. But oh well.
As for other games in the Future...As for other games in the past...
Future games:
Metroid Prime 2 - I read a review that said it was more of the same as Metroid Prime - which was a winning formula, so there was no need to change it. As for multiplayer, it's nice, but at its core it's just another variation of deathmatch. But it still should be fun. So for single player, it's like Megaman 3 compared to Megaman 2. Still good, but more of the same. And for the time being, any multiplayer game that's not World of Warcraft shouldn't be looked at as multiplayer.
So I'm just looking at the single player Metroid Prime 2, which shall be good, but as with Ambrose and Wen, I have a small backlog of games, namely, Thousand Year door so I won't buy Prime 2 just yet.
Mario Power Tennis... well, it's multiplayer... so I'll hold off on that for now. At first, I was just going to buy it with Prime 2 so we can get the EB $20 voucher, but now futureshop has each game at $10 off, so... there's no real point to get both unless we really want both. We'll probably want Power Tennis sometime in the future though...
Viewtiful Joe 2 - It's not near the top of priorities right now. It's a capcom title, so it's probably $50, and maybe it'll go down in price soon... or not... but since it's not near the top of priorities, I don't think we'll be getting this soon.
NFSU2 - NFSU1 was fun. I hear the open city concept's not so fun, and it doesn't sound so fun, so... meh. Should I get it? For PC? For Xbox? Not sure. As for racing games, we have our fair share, composed of Project Gotham Racing 2 and Burnout 3, but I could use a new challenge now. And with additional modes in NFSU 2 and more cars, that should be fun. I think I should get this soon.
So in order of priorities, I think it's Prime 2, NFSU 2, Power Tennis, and then VJ2. I'll probably pick up Prime 2 around Christmas.
As for games in the past...
Burnout 3 - Well, it's not in the past. Having the Xbox here with me these past few days, I've been playing a lot of Burnout 3, trying to beat the last few events. I still have about 25 of 150 events left to beat, and then I still need to get different awards and more gold medals. After I beat all events and got more silvers though, it'll be hard to get more golds and stuff, but the game will still be fun to play. Road Rage will never get tired :P
Project Gotham Racing 2 - Jason and I finished Kudos mode, and we've unlocked many cars, and now it takes a lot of points to unlock more cars; so right now it's just a completionist game. Okay, I made up a word, I think, but basically, we're done the game, but of course we don't have all silver, or all gold, or all platinum medals, and let's say 15% of the cars are still locked. And we're not perfect at the game yet. So we can beat more goals, get more points, unlock more cars, do time trials until we perfect each course and each car, but... it's just a completionist/perfectionist game now. It's still fun to play, but we haven't played it much lately. Not because of WoW, but now that Wow came out, yes, that will be the primary factor. However, I played it a bit with my sis this weekend, and got a few more Kudos points, but overall, we're done the game when it comes down to it, and we'll play it less often now...
Sega Rally - PC Game, lots of drifting, was lots of fun. Whatever happened to it? I forget when we stopped playing it; I think it was before the xbox came out, so the xbox wasn't the reason. But for some reason, we stopped playing it. Now that we have the xbox, part of it comes... yeah, from the racing games on the xbox. Now that we have Wow, then...well, the rest is clear.
Warcraft 3 - up until Wow, warcraft 3 was going strong. Now I've used the level editor, so now I can put a spin on the games, but unfortunately, everyone else has stopped playing now so there's no real point in making levels and changing units and stuff.
Magic the Gathering and Unhinged - oh boy, after we got into apprentice, real magic went down; Unhinged went down right away, except for me, cuz I still liked it. Then Betrayers of Kamigawa will come out, and then it'll be at a high point again for a while, but soon after will go down again, I'm sure.
Magic: Battlegrounds - I'm not sure what happened, but one day Alan and Jason were playing it, and then the next day and all the days that followed, they stopped. They just stopped playing it, and... that's all there is to it.
Last but not least, Zelda: 4 Swords. I bought an additional GBA just to play it multiplayer. And for the few weeks, that was fun. We'd play it a few times a week, maybe a few levels per session, and eventually we beat it. The next week we'd play a few multiplayer games, and after that... poof. Barely touched the game after that. My GBA, after beating most of Mario vs Donkey Kong, also barely touched. What happened? There's still a bit of life... I could try single player... or Jason and Alan can go through the game... or we could go crazy and buy 2 DSes so we can play 4 player for a few weeks, and then... that's it? Is that it?
I guess 4swords' replay value isn't that high. Although multiplayer, it isn't a spectator multiplayer game, and such isn't a party game (unless the party only has 4 people). And it's partially an RPG with little replay value so there's no point for me and Duy to go through it again... I could go through it solo, controlling all 4 links, that might be fun... but other than that, it's over, and there's no more life in 4swords. But I'd like to hang on to it, and maybe one day we can all play it and have fun again.
End
Anyway, it's 3:16 now, and I should be leaving in the next half hour or so. And that's all I have to write for now... I'll save my dreams for later. Somebody want to interpret them or analyze them? Maybe it'll be fun! Anyway, that's it. Ambrose will be coming to Waterloo this weekend, and he'll watch people play Wow, or co-op Halo 2 with me, or watch and play Thousand Year door or something. Hawk will be in 'sauga, coming over to get Fzero GX, and then he'll play that all day long until he beats it... and.... that's about it.
Comments:
Post a Comment
|
It's Wednesday again! Right now it's 1:00 pm, and I'm at the WinMagic office. So I'm here, my dad gave me a spare computer so I can get on the internet and do stuff, so I'm here blogging now on an old machine with a barely working mouse. I've been blogging a lot lately, but that's okay, right? Besides, there's not much else to do right now. Anyway, so I'm still in 'Sauga, but I'll be back in Waterloo by 6. Yeah, I realize I missed my stats quiz, but I couldn't get back earlier. I'm going to Waterloo with someone in the office who lives in Cambridge, so that's why I'm here. Couldn't get a ride last night, and we couldn't reach the professor that would've brought me back in the morning. Damn, exams are coming up soon, eh? This Friday is the 3rd of December, and my first exam's on the 11th, and then my last exam's on the 18th, and damn, we're not ready at all! Such ninjaness... Driver's Ninja Speaking of ninjas, yesterday I took another road test, and once again, I ALMOST passed. Last time it was an observation error on the last left turn before coming back to the examination center, this time it was also on a left turn, but of course a different error. It was indeed a ninjalicious error, and I'm kinda pissed. Wanna hear about it? Of course you do. So at 12:45, my instructor Paul comes to pick me up for a 90 minute sorta refresher course prior to the exam, and it was very sunny out, so I put down the sun visor. At 2:15 was my test, and then we get to this left turn. The light turns green, so I creep up into the intersection and cars were coming, so I couldn't go. So I continue creeping up, until the traffic light disappears behind the sun visor. So here I am, paying attention to the cars, and it hadn't even occurred to me that the traffic light disappeared out of my vision, because, well, I'm not paying attention to it. So eventually I see 2 cars coming my direction, and the light turns Amber, but of course I don't see it. And then... the light turns red. Car honks. Instructor tells me to go because it's a red light. And... well, that's a fatal enough mistake and thus I fail. So... it was very ninjalicious. If I remembered to put the visor up prior to the test, of course I would've noticed it was a yellow light, and then I would proceed if it was safe to go. But I didn't, so that sucked. It was such a stupid mistake too... but then again, it's proof enough that I'm not tooo ready or too keen to drive by myself yet. If the instructor didn't tell me to go, it would've taken a little bit longer to notice it was red. So that sucks. So... it's not like I'm a horrible driver. It's not like I can't make right turns and left turns, or that I crash into cars all the time or speed or whatever. But there's always some observation error that gets me everytime. A different one, of course. I wonder what the next observation error will be... Yesterday's Night Also, yesterday, as the rumours said, Ken Jenings lost on Jeopardy, after 74 wins (75 appearances) and over 2.5 million dollars in winnings. I haven't watched the episode, but I had Duy tape it for me on my computer, so I'll watch it tonight. I checked some forums and stuff, and many say that the show was rigged; that episode, that is. That Ken gave up on purpose... well, I'll have to watch the episode first to see what happens. But ya know what's cool? A Zerg beat him! Go Zerg!! :D Also on that night, Ken Jennings was on Letterman, so I saw that. That was... in the words of Alan... interesting. I had super amazing dreams last night! Well, they weren't super amazing, but they were vivid and had weird storylines, and involved people like Eric and Christa. There were also a lot of dreams because I woke up in the middle of the night ~5:30ish so I could recall more dreams then, and another few dreams when I got up at 10:30. Anyway, I'll describe them in another update or so. The rest of the update is composed of reviews and analysises and stuff. The Incredibles Yesterday my mom had 2 free-passes to movies that expired that day, Nov 30, so my sister and I decided to see The Incredibles. I invited Jody too, so he came too, although he already saw it last Saturday. The movie was great. I really enjoyed it. No, I'm not going to be like everyone else and say it was "Incredible", although it might've been, but that's just... meh. Well, it was really good. As an aside, it seems none of these 3d-computer-graphics Pixar and Dreamworks productions disappoint me. Some were betters than others of course, though. I read a review in the Star that said the movie was more oriented towards Adults than other pixar/dreamworks pictures were. Yes, partially this is true, and it works out well. At heart, it's still a children's movie, with plenty of stuff for the children, but that doesn't mean it's bad. It's gooood. Very good. I gotta get someone to download it for me now, and then I gotta buy the dvd when it comes out. Umm... yeah, so it was great. Since we had free-passes, we didn't need to pay the $9.25 admission fee, but it's worth it. Although, the theatre had some problems (Coliseum #11, 7:30 show). Before the coming attractions, there was audio but no video, and then the video and audio were out of sync by about 1 second, so as the movie started, Jody and I went and complained. It's the first time I ever complained. But yeah, after we complained, they fixed the problem. I missed the first few minutes of the film unfortunately, but it's okay. So... ummm... yeah, the movie is great. Everyone should see it. It's funny, and it's good. Out of our group... sure, everyone would like it. Unless someone has a real grudge against Pixar or something... I dunno why... but yeah. And yeah, it's less kiddy than Finding Nemo and... other stuff primarily aimed at Children. So we old Fogeys, even the ones that didn't enjoy the kiddy Pixars... we'd like this one more. So go see it! (hehe, that was a pretty empty review - it just said "GO SEE IT!" nothing about plot, characters, story, animation, etc... but yeah... go see it.) Halo 2 On Monday, I beat Halo 2. So I was playing a mission, and then I beat it, and so I see Master Chief and he says something, and then I expect to go into his viewpoint, as another mission starts, but then the game feeds me ending credits. I'm like, "What the hell? FROM WHERE?" That was truly, from where. I've read a few reviews and things, and a lot of them say the ending is... bad, or not very well liked, and now I'm one of those people that agree. Fortunately, after the ending credits there's a 20-second cutscene that's sorta interesting, that might give rise to an interesting Halo 3, but that doesn't change that the ending sucks. The story was getting really good too, but then the game feeds me ending credits. Well, in the last mission, you do defeat some boss, and you deactivate Halo, but that is SO not the end of the game. In Halo1, you destroyed a piece of the Halo, and then you could tell it was the end of the game. But here... the ending comes out of nowhere. And just when the story was getting goood. Other than the ending however, the game is Good. I've read some reviews and a lot of them say how this game has a lot of story, and, yes, it does. After the first few missions, the story starts building up, and it gets interesting and it pulls you in. When I first read the GameSpy review before playing the game, I thought that meant the game would be different in terms of how you play. Well, it's not, in that sense of speaking. It is at heart, still an action game, and that's what you do; walk around, kill baddies. You don't explore like an RPG or whatever; it's still an action oriented FPS. But, what keeps you going is the story in the back, with cutscenes in between levels. Compared to the first game, the story here is much better. Too bad the ending cuts it off. There's a lot of talk about dual-wielding, hijacking vehicles, the sword, etc. but I'm not going to talk about those. Anyway, I've noticed that... you get more grenades in this game, at least I think you do. I've noticed that whenever I hit L, and I'm not dual-wielding, I usually throw out a grenade. I think in the first game they didn't have as many grenades lying around so they weren't used too often (and they weren't all that useful), but now they're still not thaat useful but you get more of them, so you can use them more. Yay for more fun! More explosions! ^^ To emphasize action and explosions, you get much greater use of the Scorpion Tank. There are more missions that let you use vehicles, such as the Scorpion and the Wraith (the Covenant tank). Maybe it's something the fans wanted, but it's nice. It makes you feel so powerful while riding a scorpion tank and blowing up other vehicles. One of the best things a game or movie can do, at least for me, is to make you "feel" for the bad guy. There are movies where badguys are total scumbags, and those work for those kinds of movies. Then there are movies where you feel for the bad guy, like The Rock, or Spiderman 2. Anyway, in the first Halo, you play as Master Chief, and you always get to see Master Chief. The Covenant, the bad guys, always looks like minions and critters that just run around and shoot at you. Eventually, you feel a bit for them as they too feel fear for the Flood, but not too much. In Halo 2, it's a totally different story. It starts off with a cutscene on the Covenant's side, and yes, the aliens do speak english. So now they're given a human characteristic, so you can feel for them. And then pretty soon in the game (this was very surprising the first time we played it), we got to play as a Covenant. That was so cool! And we had Elites and grunts as teammates, and that was pretty cool. So you put your shoes in those of the bad guy, and you see they're not... as... bad... or at least you feel for them and that's cool. And then you go back to Master Chief and you destroy Covenant like in Halo 1 :P Another thing is Team-ness. It's cool to be a Covenant, and be on a team with other Elites, grunts, yellow Elites, and even Hunters. It makes you feel good to be on a team. All Masterchief gets are humans, and they're not even all that good. And eventually you play as the Covenant long enough and his camouflage powers are pretty cool, and eventually Master Chief isn't as cool. :P Anyway, all in all, Halo 2 is a pretty good game with a crappy ending. I gotta go through Legendary mode now, but I read that there won't be extra missions or anything, but there'll probably be a slightly better ending. And then I gotta get Xbox2 and Halo 3... Oh, as for Multiplayer, haven't played too much of that, but it's pretty customizable. Paper Mario - Thousand Year Door A few weeks ago we got Paper Mario - Thousand Year Door for the Gamecube. Duy started playing it, with Alan and I watching and discussing it, and it was fun. Duy played for maybe 4 hours in total, and then that November 23rd came along and Duy hasn't touched it since. Since then, I made a copy of his file and since then played another 8 hours more. So far, I'm really impressed! I really like it. The mechanics are good, the RPGing is good, the fighting is fun and it's user friendly, for the most part. It's RPG meets Mario, once again, and it's working out well so far. I'm 12 hours in, and it looks like it'll be at least another 24 till I'm done, or maybe more. There's lots to do, many mechanics that lets you do many different things and use your brain to figure out what to do, the battles are fun, and...yeah, overall it's pretty fun. The game also takes parts from other games, such as... say, Pikmin, Mario Bros, and Donkey Konga, to name a few. Graphically, it works really nicely. It probably could've been done on the N64, but the touch of extra colour and particle effects and the framerates make it Gamecubeish. Sound's not bad either. So overall, I really like this game. It's too bad I left it in Waterloo this weekend (since there wasn't enough room in the car to bring it back), but now i have something to look forward to for coming back to Waterloo :P So, we still have 2 savefiles available, come over and give it a try! Unfortunately now, I'm waay ahead of Duy and Alan now, so when I watch them play... well, maybe I won't watch them. But it's like I've read spoilers they don't know about, so I can't discuss things with them. But oh well. As for other games in the Future...As for other games in the past... Future games: Metroid Prime 2 - I read a review that said it was more of the same as Metroid Prime - which was a winning formula, so there was no need to change it. As for multiplayer, it's nice, but at its core it's just another variation of deathmatch. But it still should be fun. So for single player, it's like Megaman 3 compared to Megaman 2. Still good, but more of the same. And for the time being, any multiplayer game that's not World of Warcraft shouldn't be looked at as multiplayer. So I'm just looking at the single player Metroid Prime 2, which shall be good, but as with Ambrose and Wen, I have a small backlog of games, namely, Thousand Year door so I won't buy Prime 2 just yet. Mario Power Tennis... well, it's multiplayer... so I'll hold off on that for now. At first, I was just going to buy it with Prime 2 so we can get the EB $20 voucher, but now futureshop has each game at $10 off, so... there's no real point to get both unless we really want both. We'll probably want Power Tennis sometime in the future though... Viewtiful Joe 2 - It's not near the top of priorities right now. It's a capcom title, so it's probably $50, and maybe it'll go down in price soon... or not... but since it's not near the top of priorities, I don't think we'll be getting this soon. NFSU2 - NFSU1 was fun. I hear the open city concept's not so fun, and it doesn't sound so fun, so... meh. Should I get it? For PC? For Xbox? Not sure. As for racing games, we have our fair share, composed of Project Gotham Racing 2 and Burnout 3, but I could use a new challenge now. And with additional modes in NFSU 2 and more cars, that should be fun. I think I should get this soon. So in order of priorities, I think it's Prime 2, NFSU 2, Power Tennis, and then VJ2. I'll probably pick up Prime 2 around Christmas. As for games in the past... Burnout 3 - Well, it's not in the past. Having the Xbox here with me these past few days, I've been playing a lot of Burnout 3, trying to beat the last few events. I still have about 25 of 150 events left to beat, and then I still need to get different awards and more gold medals. After I beat all events and got more silvers though, it'll be hard to get more golds and stuff, but the game will still be fun to play. Road Rage will never get tired :P Project Gotham Racing 2 - Jason and I finished Kudos mode, and we've unlocked many cars, and now it takes a lot of points to unlock more cars; so right now it's just a completionist game. Okay, I made up a word, I think, but basically, we're done the game, but of course we don't have all silver, or all gold, or all platinum medals, and let's say 15% of the cars are still locked. And we're not perfect at the game yet. So we can beat more goals, get more points, unlock more cars, do time trials until we perfect each course and each car, but... it's just a completionist/perfectionist game now. It's still fun to play, but we haven't played it much lately. Not because of WoW, but now that Wow came out, yes, that will be the primary factor. However, I played it a bit with my sis this weekend, and got a few more Kudos points, but overall, we're done the game when it comes down to it, and we'll play it less often now... Sega Rally - PC Game, lots of drifting, was lots of fun. Whatever happened to it? I forget when we stopped playing it; I think it was before the xbox came out, so the xbox wasn't the reason. But for some reason, we stopped playing it. Now that we have the xbox, part of it comes... yeah, from the racing games on the xbox. Now that we have Wow, then...well, the rest is clear. Warcraft 3 - up until Wow, warcraft 3 was going strong. Now I've used the level editor, so now I can put a spin on the games, but unfortunately, everyone else has stopped playing now so there's no real point in making levels and changing units and stuff. Magic the Gathering and Unhinged - oh boy, after we got into apprentice, real magic went down; Unhinged went down right away, except for me, cuz I still liked it. Then Betrayers of Kamigawa will come out, and then it'll be at a high point again for a while, but soon after will go down again, I'm sure. Magic: Battlegrounds - I'm not sure what happened, but one day Alan and Jason were playing it, and then the next day and all the days that followed, they stopped. They just stopped playing it, and... that's all there is to it. Last but not least, Zelda: 4 Swords. I bought an additional GBA just to play it multiplayer. And for the few weeks, that was fun. We'd play it a few times a week, maybe a few levels per session, and eventually we beat it. The next week we'd play a few multiplayer games, and after that... poof. Barely touched the game after that. My GBA, after beating most of Mario vs Donkey Kong, also barely touched. What happened? There's still a bit of life... I could try single player... or Jason and Alan can go through the game... or we could go crazy and buy 2 DSes so we can play 4 player for a few weeks, and then... that's it? Is that it? I guess 4swords' replay value isn't that high. Although multiplayer, it isn't a spectator multiplayer game, and such isn't a party game (unless the party only has 4 people). And it's partially an RPG with little replay value so there's no point for me and Duy to go through it again... I could go through it solo, controlling all 4 links, that might be fun... but other than that, it's over, and there's no more life in 4swords. But I'd like to hang on to it, and maybe one day we can all play it and have fun again. End Anyway, it's 3:16 now, and I should be leaving in the next half hour or so. And that's all I have to write for now... I'll save my dreams for later. Somebody want to interpret them or analyze them? Maybe it'll be fun! Anyway, that's it. Ambrose will be coming to Waterloo this weekend, and he'll watch people play Wow, or co-op Halo 2 with me, or watch and play Thousand Year door or something. Hawk will be in 'sauga, coming over to get Fzero GX, and then he'll play that all day long until he beats it... and.... that's about it. |