looking back before mkwii's launch, i remember mark and matt stating that the ds mk was the best version (agreed) and it was also faster than the mk wii. not to sure i totally agree with that one.

after finally getting to 150 cc on mk wii this weekend, i decided to pick up my ds, and take another look at mk, and here's what i think. ill go as far to agreeing that the standard speed at 150 cc is faster in the ds version, but i cant say the same for the overall speed. in mk wii, there are vastly more opportunities to gain boost than any other mk. along with tailing, drifting, speed strips, and items, u can also do wheelies, and land trick jumps. most of the new courses featured in this title decorate the tracks with jumps, allowing so many opportunites to get a boost. my favorite course in the star cup (the one with the water fall) is an adrenaline rush as riding the currents gives you more speed.

so comparing the two, i feel that mk wii is the faster title with all the boosting opportunities in the game. unfortunatly its not the best with the cheap, "rubber banding" AI, and missing features. but still an over all great title.

on my lunch brake a work the other day, i was reading the issue of electronic gaming monthly with the picture of Niko (gta4) on the cover page. i looked over a story discussing how the franchise influnenced gaming. at the bottom of the page there were a few pics such as true crimes, saint's row, and im like, "mmk ok, they're clones". then my eyes popped out when i saw mario galaxy. WTF?!?!?! so i say to myself, ok ok, i have to find the explanition of this.

later on in the article the author states, "... games such as Super Mario Galaxy, which took from the GTA's open world gameplay and used it to give tha game more appial to its audience." hmmm. now before i rant about how mind bottlingly stupid that sounds to me, and y i NEVER take gaming magazines seriously, i will say that its been many years since ive played mario 64 (plan on down loading it on the vc). ever since launch to be more precise. so i was far too young to remember most of the gameplay elements of that game, but as far as i can remember: ur at peaches castle, each world is represented by picture frames, u pick a world, play through the games levels designs, find the star, then move on to the next one. correct me if im wrong, but its the same concept for galaxy. instead of having picture frames, u have bed rooms. oh and not to mention the whole "3.5 D" element (i sware to god that better not be what the author as refering to, or im writting a letter to the editor).

so it seems to me that galaxy was influenced by mario 64, NOT GTA. i have no freakin clue where this guy gets off saying that. ive been racking my brain about this, and all i have to say that its just plain false. if any of u find ANYTHING, please tell me, or i will forever loose confidence in game magazine journalism .

this idea first sparked in my head a while back after watching x play's(i know i know, they suck) segmant about the lack of innovation in japanese developed games. these developers tend to stick to the same formula used in earlier titles, possibly because of the, "if its not broke, dont fix it" mentality. shining examples include, devil may cry, final fantasy, oh and who could forget... DYNASTY WARRIORS. im guessing that the decided to elaborate on this topic because not long before, they reviewed lost odessey and devil may cry 4. DMC never changed since the first, and lost odessey brought nothing new to the RPG genre. big surprise comming from mistwalker.

as far as jrpg's are concerned, there hasnt been much of a leap in terms of innovation. im getting the distinct feeling that the charming flamboyant characters with big multicolored hair, and questionable genders mixed with an epic story line and dozens of hours of gameplay, is very successful among jrpg fans who want nothing more than an emo tail (no offence, im a sucker for them too). wrpgs, however have made quite the turn around, especially in this current generation. now when i say wrpgs, i dont mean that lets save the kingdom and fight the same damn dark elvs, goblins, and dragons crap that u'll mostly find on the pc. to me, they seem to run together. the gameplay might be there, but just the same dull look and enviornments turn me off. at least with jrpg's, there's a bit of flare in the presentation ant the storyline to keep u interested. anyway, im looking at ALL rpgs made in the "west". mass effect is a perfect example as it combines a third person shooter with an rpg, and impliments one of the deepest storylines found in an rpg. just the entire experience is deeper than any jrpg ive ever played. there's also upcomming fallout 3, and a little game called alpha protocol.

for those of u who havent heard about this game, just think mass effect meets james bond. from obsidian, AP claims to have a similar but deeper customization system than that of mass effect, as well as a deeper dialouge system. not very original since the head developer openly says that this game is heavily influenced by mass effect, but atleast its a "rip off" of a fairly new idea instead of the traditional j or wrpg.

seeing this wrpg movement, will jrpgs finally catch up to speed? or will it take a huge franchise like final fantasy to encourage other jrpg developers to hop on this band wagon?

ok ok ok, PC gaming's not dead. but it can barely compete with the console market. i know no one reads this, but to the one person that does read, hopefully this will give u an objective or different view on this subject. or it'll just piss u off.

there are three major points to this issue: hardware, software, and investmant....

in terms of hardware, everyone knows that PC gaming offers a better experience compared to console gaming. the graphics which can fun up to X 10 on the PC via vista, which is noticably superior to the consoles X 9. compare games like boishock and lost planet, u'll notice the difference between the two platforms. Crysis is the one game that all PC gamers turn to when they want to look at visuals. not a game on the consoles have achieved that. also FPS's, RTS's, and MMO's PLAY better on the PC becasue of networking and controls. but in order to gain access to this type of gaming, u need money. and when i say money, i mean MUCHO DENERO. i hear these trolls on system wars cry about how PC gaming's just as, and cheaper than consoles. 1, my ass it is. 2, depends on the performance ur expecting. im no tech head, but i have friends who r, and if u want a lackluster experiance on ur PC, then go ahead and throw a few hundred dollars at ur desktop. if u want something worth while, expect a grands worth hole in ur pocket. if u decide to be cheap, and only spend a few hundred dollars on ur PC, expect lag, freeze, and constant updates to ur platform. does that sound fun to u? it sure as hell doesnt to me. an example, one day i was over my friends house and he was playing battlefield 2. after a few attempts, he FINALLY connected. now here's the good part, this game is suppose to run at what, 30, maybe 60 fps? yeah try 2. eventually the game commited suicide and shut itself down. so, now he got an all new computer with vista and he's having a pretty smooth experience... ... ... for the most part. ive even heard some people actually fried their computer trying to prep it to play crysis. generaly, if u want an experience that even compares to the consoles, a few hundred dollars doesnt cut it... not even close. in terms of functionality, i would rather have piece of hardware that's MADE for gaming, and offers more of a garuntee for a rather smooth experience with little interruptions, opposed to me having to build one that offers a garuntee that there will be issues. now lets give PC a head start. lets say that with 4-500 dollars u can put together ur very own gaming platform, how ya gonna do it? do u think ur grandmother will rather learn how to piece together a gaming PC, or just buy a Wii, where everything's right there for her. yeah, i thought so. i know its hard to believe, but not everyone is computer literate. there are people out there who wont have a clue to what they're doing. yeah, u can teach someone how to to install a graphics card, and more RAM. but what about all the updates that follow? now look at what i just said there, teach. most would rather skip the learning and just buy a console.

i have to take the moment to make fun of an editor of PC magazine. she stated, "...i ran by a statistic that said that there will be 33 million PC's sold this year. that makes me hopeful" hopeful for what? so that everyone could look at porn? congrats PC editor, u go down as one of the dumbest gaming journalist of all time next to Morgan Webb. and i ask u, how many of these PCs will be used for gaming? 16 million? id stop there. ud guess she'd stop to think that these computers r also being bought for business and personal purposes. and my guess is that those two other options far out weight gaming. atleast she somewhat redeems herself by saying that, "hopefully we can teach them that they have a gaming platform in their own home". correction, a POTENTIAL gaming platform.

alright, enough with the hardware, lets talk games. owning a Wii and a 360, im a gamer who likes a wide variety of genres. from platforms, to racers, to FPS's, to RPGs, to action, to games that dont even fall in a particular genre. console gaming allows me to have access to a wide variety of games. as for the pc? meh... not so much. the majority of the bigger titles on the pc consist of FPS's, RTS's, MMO's, simulation, and western RPG's. dont believe me? walk into any place that sells games and look at what u find. personally, some of these games r very one dimentional as its usually one form of gameplay. not to say that they're not good, i loved starcraft, and i stopped playing wow cause i was afraid that i was never going to see my other games again. its just that some of the console games like mario galaxy, ratchet, and others of the type offer multiplay forms of gameplay. pc barely offers that. not to mentio that the most highly acclaimed games lay in the consoles. looking back at past award shows, consoles dominated the nominations. u may only see a hand full of pc titles up there. now some may say that its because there r more games on the consoles than the pc. that right there is proof. devs r turning away from the pc market knowing that they're going to make a lot more money with consoles.

in the end i strongly believe that consoles r the way to go. yes pc can potentially perform better that the consoles, but u'll have to possess the patience, and the knowledge to prep ur computer for that. even in the end, the experience might not be as smooth as what u'll fin in the consoles. as for the games themselves, there r and will be games that will hold it up from dying, like wow, and upcomming spore and starcraft 2. but theres little variety there, as it aims to a particular demographic.

overall better performance (depending on ur pc). better and more varied games. that's my opinion

hopefully this wil be the last time i ***** about this game. in saying that, it is still my favorite game on wii, and will remain in that spot for a long time, but just like the title of my previous blog post, overall im disapointed in this game.

ill take the time to talk about the game itself. ill leave the online alone, as its been bludgened to death. we know it sucks, now lets move on. while playing regular brawl offline, i noticed that there are quiet a few differences between this and melee. the characters r slower, yes, but that seems to be more pronounced in the veterans of the game. as for the newer ones (with the exception of the characters that were ment to be slow) their speed feels just about right. as for the characters in general, they seem off balanced compared to melee. i remember playing the hell out of melee and i fought pretty well with just about everyone. that's far from the case in this game. is seems that they just added some moves for style and nostalga rather than substance. put that all together and sometimes u end up with a pretty crappy character. off the top of my head, ones like ganon, olimar, ROB (debatable) and others arent very good. sure there always people that can utilize these few, and tap into their hidden potencial. but compared to the last game, there were never characters that were this bad.

melee was always known for its random gameplay, but brawl seems to be a bit more randomized. hits r less consistant as they dont always send ur opponent flying as u think they should, and items dont always react like they should when u use it. a perfect example of the is the use of the B-bomb(the red one with the B on it. i havent looked at the trophy to get the official name yet) when u smash it at someone, u expect it to explode right? ha, well sometimes it just bonks them on the head and keeps going. im sure my neighbors have heard me screaming WTF!!! whenever that happens.

another small detail ive noticed may not have been picked up by many is in melee, after uve been knocked off stage, if u manage to make it just under the ledge of the stage, with a character like fox, u can use ur boost and slide up the side and recover. that's not exactly the case in brawl. where u expect to slide up, depending on who u r, u'll just hit the edge, and fall to ur death. not cool.

the AI is far more aggressive than the last game, which is some cases is a very good thing. but in this game, it can get pretty annoying. the one thing that annoys me about the AI is it often seems to be attacking u. let me explain. in a free for all fight, i run to the opposite side of the stage. what does the computer do? sometimes, all charaters would stop fighting and actually walk towards me. huh? yeah, its very strange behavior.

nothing is more frustrating than unresponsive controls. there will be occurances where i use a smash attack, but instead i do a regular A attack. so now, i have to resort to the C stick, and only use the A for charge up smashes. there are 2 issues i have with this game pisses me off so much that if i reviewed it, i would actually drop the score becasue of it. roll dodging is no longer relayable, and the scoring system is off. ill start with dodging. the first time i picked up this game, i noticed facing the opposite direction after dodging, but thought that it was just a minor glitch. then in another 3 hour sit down with the game, it became clear that this technique isnt reliable at all. there were often times when my character would consistenly face the opposite direction, and its not just me. a friend and i were on a streak of about 15 matches. in the last one, it was just the two of us and this is what pretty much sums up the match: roll-dodge attack. rinse, wash, repeat. but again, there were moments that the both of us stood back to back, throwing punches in the opposite direction. then there's the scoring system. im not a fan of stock matches, so i usually set the time at 5 min. during a match i played, i got hit by a car, died and noticed that the point went to another character. again, wtf? so i decided to test it out. i played as pit and kirdy hit me, though not hard enough to send me flying to my death. so i got up, ran around for a bit, the walked off stage. -1 pit, +1 kirby. that makes absolutely no sense to me. so quiet often, points will be given to characters who had nothing to do with ur death.

in the end, i wish that they had just stuck with the melee's engine, and added all the extras in brawl. i thought that this game will top melee as my personal favorite game of all time. guess ill have to wait till the next SSB

so i finally got my hands on SSBB. after holding it in my hands in my girlfreinds car, having to later drop it off at my house cause i was pressured to go visit my friends college in south jersey (christ that was a long ride) i finally picked it up. overall the game is a beast. but there are some dissapointments, some minor, some quite major. everyone knew that the game was going to be slower (atleast the ones that have been following up on it) but god, i didnt think it would be this slow. controlling some characters like ike, falcon, and ganandorf, feels more like moving a tank. especially ganon. it seems to me that even DK's faster that him, and he's on the same speed as king dedede. hes also been stripped down of what made him an awesome character in the last installment. he was slow in the previous game, but his attacks kept up to speed making him a well balanced character. its been a while since ive played melee, and even longer since ive played the original, but i dont remember ever seeing a character swinging their weapon as if its a sledgehammer. ike is a perfect example as hes one of, if not the most powerful in the game, and having his execute his attacks quickly might making him overpowered. but i gotta say, its a pain in the ass, and its not just him, lots of characters in the game attack slower. there's also one thing that ive picked on. who ever reformulated roll dodging is an idiot. often time u roll dodge, and then u end up facing the OTHER direction. players used this all the time in the previous games, roll, attack. not as smooth as it used to be. not u have to take that extra milisecond to turn ur character around to stike. that fraction of a second is all someone needs to nail u. but those r just minor. these issues r more pronounced in adventure mode as ur not always in the heat of battle. what's fun about this game is still there, as u might not even notice these issues in vs matches.

biggest issue of couse is online. ill be the one to say that SSBB is one of the worst online games this gen in terms of performance. quite often, ull be concidered lucky if u manage to engage in a random match. and even if u do, it takes quite some time. ur best bet on getting in on the online experience is to make some freinds, and swap friend codes. but even that isnt enough. how about the matches themselves. one word, LAG. this game lags horribly. at times the game will come to a complete stop for a long period of time. even for a minute. compare this to the other two consoles, matches start with in a few seconds, and there's little lag. obviously they;re a few exceptions like team fortress which is god awful, and many others. but this game stands out as a sore thumb, because there only a handful of online games on the wii. and most of these games suffer the same problems. so much for the reviewers stating that SSBB had a seemingly flawless online. keep in mind that SSBB was tested in japan, which is a small country, and most of the populous have a kick ass connection. it was also tested here in te states, mostly in studios that r a few hundred miles from each other, with a limited amount of people online with the game, as opposed to millions that r thousands of milespart with semi kick ass to bad connection. i look at nintendo and say this, please fix it. online gaming is NOW. this isnt something that u **** around with and just shove to the side. ya need to get serious. i hope brawl makes an example out of itself and sends one hell of a message to nintendo

i finally finished bioshock a few days ago, and i gotta say, that's one hell of a game. i know that a few different games won goty by different award ceremonies, websites and etc. but the two most recognized games were Super mario galaxy and bioshock.

i finished galaxy first and was convinced that there wasnt a game in 07 that could top it. u may think that this is going to be a transition to, "until i played bioshock." no. i still think that galaxy was the winner of last year, but bioshock came very close. after finishing the game, i had to sit down and think, "what was wrong with the game?" everthing seemed perfect to me. eventually i mustered up some issues, but they were very minor.

what won me over to galaxy was the fact that i put me in awe. a game hasnt done that since resident evil 4. bioshock didnt have that element, 2k did something that many gamesfail to accomplish, they succeeded in putting exactly what they wanted to do. but, there wasnt really anything in the game that jumped out and made me say holy ****. galaxy did.

for years half life 2 has been recognized as the best first person shooter. and it deserved it, the characters and the story, the platforming, use of the gravity gun, there was so much in this game.

but earlier last year a little game called bioshock came out. it use a lot of the elements that was used in half life. the story was great, and it turned away from the standard space marine, one dimensional gameplay. u could even see that it was influenced by half life. u started out with a wrench instead of a crow bar, and u may have used telekinesis as a weapon, much like the gravity gun. but comparing it to half life, i personally thought that bioshock had more elements to it, and did a damn good job of implimenting them. every part of ur character was upgradeable. weapons, health, eve, plasmids, and the different tonics, were all customizable. the use of the plasmids also offered different ways to play though the game, and each had some strategic value. i would call this a first person rpg, more than a shooter becasue there were so many elements in the game.

in the end, i personally thought that bioshock takes the titles this time compaired to half life. the story was just as good, but bioshock had much deeper gameplay than half life did.

Super Smash Bros. Brawl

House of the Dead 2 & 3

Worms: A Space Oddity

Pro Evolution Soccer 2008

Obscure: The Aftermath

Opoona

Baroque

Okami

Mario Kart Wii

Monster Lab

Boom Blox

Harvest Moon Heroes

Wii Fit

Alone in the Dark

Guitar Hero III: Aerosmith

Madden NFL 09

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed

King of Fighters Collection: The Orochi Saga

Animal Crossing Wii

de Blob

Deadly Creatures

Disaster: Day of Crisis

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Crystal Bearers (and the wiiware version)

LEGO Batman: The Videogame

LostWinds

Rock Band

Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World

Wii Music

Monster Hunter 3

Wii Chess

Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse

Eternity's Child

Fragile

Oboro Musarama Youtouden

Mysterious Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer 3: The Sleeping Princess in Karakuri Mansion

Sonic Unleashed

Mario Super Sluggers

Deadline

Mushroom Men

King of Fighters Collection: The Orochi Saga

Samurai Shodown Anthology

Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30 (although i have no faith in this game since its ubisoft. and NMH doesnt count)

Call of Duty 5

Red Steel Project [untitled]

Spore [unofficial] (official)

i just read ign's review of brawl 9.5, anyone expected anything less? did think so.

but in the review they mentioned that in brawl, they removed wave dashing. and if any of u have been following up with mario kart, they removed snaking from that. this is clearly a move from nintendo catoring to casual players, as the take away some of the advanced in game strategies, thus making it slightly easier for casuals. do i have a problem with this. absolutely not. brawl got a freakin 9.5. and im sure that mario kart will get something up in the 9's. these r nothing more that tiny gimicks. i barely used either strategty.

so, is this a habit that nintendo is easing its way into by simplifying hardcore games just to cator to the casual? and if so, (a question that no one can answer) will nintendo slip and ruin a game by simplification?