Current Team

Chikorita Lv 8
Pidgey Lv 4
Sentret Lv 4

Lot of training to do today if I'm to beat Falkner. So I started from Route 31 and went into the Dark Cave first, but came right back out after 5 seconds. Nothing I can do there without Flash and a sizeable number of HMs. Without anything to do, I got a few numbers from the Trainers along the way and entered Violet City

Kotone(the female Trainer in the game), came by to hand me my Vs. Recorder, which is exactly the same as the one in Platinum. Violet City hasn't changed much in terms of layout, but man is it pretty now. It has a more ancient Japanese vibe to it. Suits the Gym Leader. I found one of the people I loved back in G/S...Earl. He's the one who teaches you about Pokemon in his school, but unlike in the other regions, he spins around crazy every time you talk to him, and he says stuff like

'Earl, I am!'
'Wonderful are Pokemon, yes!'

Sure, it's the Japanese version so he doesn't really say that but hope Nintendo doesn't mess with his unique speech in the US version >_>. To Sprout Tower we go. Nintendo gave each forest, cave, and important building a picture just like they did in FireRed/LeafGreen. Wonder why they never do it for the main, non-remade games even after FR/LG was out. All the monks there use Bellsprouts as always. Pidgey breezed though them with its newly learned Gust. Hoothoots at the end gave a bit of trouble with Hypnosis.

Oh, I just remembered it's Tuesday today! Crap....all the way back to Route 29 to meet Tuscany of Tuesday. Now THIS is great. Weekly events are awesome :D.

Okay, back to Violet City after a 15 minute trek. I think I've trained enough, now to the gym. Falkner's gym is way up there...I mean waaaay up there. The basic design is still there but you have to ride a tall lift up to where him and his 2 gym trainers are. Look, the sky! Taking down his underlings with ease I confront Falkner. Damn he's stronger than the Falkner I remember in Silver. Pidgey is Lv 9 which was pretty easy, but Pidgeotto came out and gave me hell. It's at Level 13, faster than any of my Pokemon and knows Roost. Time to bring out the dirty tricks, I got a Hoothoot to put it to sleep, switched out to Rattata and lowered its Defense. As soon as it woke up the offense began and it stood no chance, Roost or not. Yeah, take that Falkner! Zephyr Badge get!

Down to Route 32 and a brief visit to the Ruins of Alph. I did the puzzle(which is touch screen controlled now, pretty much expected, if they left touch out of this one I would have killed Nintendo) and caught a few Unown. There was another new Key Item out of this, the Unown Notepad, which is the same as the Unown Dex for G/S. The ruins itself has been slightly redesigned, with square cubelike structures to hide the entrance to the puzzle rooms(you have to go inside of them). I wanted the Unown in a different box, so I went back to the Pokemon Center. Surprise, you can now move Pokemon around the boxes with the stylus! Best addition ever? Best addition ever. As far as storage is concerned.

Now waiting for night to fall so I can catch a Wooper. I stop at the end of Route 32, next to the Union Cave, and added Hoppip and Mareep to my team. Next update tomorrow!

Starting from New Bark Town as always. Mom gives me the Pokegear which has her phone number on it by default. The Pokegear has 6 (SIX!) different skins, and everything is touch-screen controlled. Even the menus are touch-controlled now, or if you prefer to stick to buttons, you could still press X and navigate using the D-Pad, but that is so last year, isn't it. Even when you're talking to people, you can advance through conversation using a button on the touch screen.

I picked Chikorita and interacted with it for a while. It isn't that used to me yet, so off I go into Route 29. My first Pokemon met was a Sentret. Ah, those were the days. Then I found out I could press A on every tree that I passed by. Seems now that EVERY TREE can be Headbutted on. Much more convenient then. I couldn't pick the Apricorn along the way because I didn't have the case yet. Anyway, I got to Cherrygrove, got my Map Card and advanced to Route 30. The map has lots of markers you can put on in every location, like a small Pokeball or tree, to remind you that you have something to do there. Again, all touch controlled. THIS is what Diamond/Pearl should have been like when it was released all those years back >_>

Up the route and back, nothing special. Did get Chikorita up to Level 7 though, because of all those Weedles I fought. Choosing Grass is the toughest route in Johto, I admit...Imagine the Antidotes I had to buy. Talked to it again, Chikorita smiled at me too. Played in the grass whenever I was in it, looked around at buildings when it's in town, lets out a relaxed yawn when in the Pokemon Center, they really fleshed this 'following Pokemon' thing out. It's kinda cute.

Fought the rival on the way back to New Bark, I didn't know what to name him so I just gave him a random English name.

And then it's the start of team assembly! I caught a Pidgey and Sentret, together with the rest of the Route 29 stuff(except Ledyba, I didn't play in the morning). These two are going to be important parts of my team later on. Train hard, you two! And Chikorita too!

Next stop, Violet City! I stopped at Route 31, next to the Dark Cave. I'll play more tomorrow. Stay tuned!

I got my copy, finally! The cart looks, well, the same as any other DS game, and the PokeWalker actually looks good too. I'm going to start a blog series on my progress through the game, so stay tuned. Anyway, I started the game. Title screen is just the same crap montage of in-game sprites...If they can make the game in 3D, why can't they make the opening in 3D, and at least make it so it makes a little sense? Sometimes I just don't understand Nintendo. Then I got to the Start screen. The sight of Lugia in 3D and the title on the top screen, so beautiful...:D I love the graphics updates to Johto. Everything's so familiar, and yet looks so new. Not an item or Apricorn Tree out of place. My starter? Chikorita! Having her follow behind me is great.

Whee, September is one long rollercoaster ride for the DS. Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story, Scribblenauts, Pokemon Heart Gold/Soul Silver(for importz only). And it doesn't stop till the end of the year.

Personally I'm going after Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of the Sky next month, and Spirit Tracks when it comes out on December. What are you guys hyped for?

And so the epic DS game arrives poised to be the DS GOTY of 2009. And I got it yesterday! :D Screw you, Mario and Luigi, this is the game to be playing right now. Who can resist a game where you can summon anything just by typing it in? And I do really mean everything, from tanks to seashells to owls to God and beyond.

You start with the title screen, a free-for-all playground where you can do anything, no puzzles, just one environment and your imagination. So go ahead, don't open a save file, cause the title screen is already a game in itself :P Alright, so the title screen does get old after a while with no goal to aim for.

The game's main stages are divided into puzzle and action stages. Main goals of both are to collect the star for each stage.The puzzle stages involve solving a problem to make a star appear, like 'help grandpa see the eye chart'. Give him a pair of glasses and the job is done. Or, give him contact lenses. Give him binoculars. Give him the eye chart itself. The sky's the limit. Action stages place the star in a hard to reach place and you're supposed to obtain it by defeating enemies, breaking obstacles and such. Hence there's less avenue for creativity here than in the puzzle stages(how do you get to a high platform? Wings, grappling hook, jetpack, trampoline...the same things for each stage).

After about 3 hours messing around, you get a feeling for how the game limits you. Firstly, most two word phrases don't give you the correct item if you don't type it in properly. For example you want a can of spray to kill a fly, and you type in 'bug spray'. A can of spray paint pops out, which is wrong. Type in 'insect spray', and you've done it right. The trick the game uses is, if the first word doesn't make sense, use the item meant by the second word typed in. Strangely enough, the game can place items four words long on the stage, like 'large cracked wood platform'. How the hell you are supposed to imagine those out is beyond me, though it's not impossible to type them out.

The creativity aspect probably outweighs whatever flaws I'm going to point out after this, but I'm just gonna go ahead and point them out anyway. They're small things that you just can't ignore. Mainly, the awkward controls. Point at a certain area of the screen, and Maxwell(the main character) moves over to it. If there's a small obstacle in the way, Maxwell will try to jump over it, if he can't, he's stuck in a mad jumping frenzy until you point elsewhere. If you mistakenly click outside of an item when you meant to move it, Maxwell will move instead, and will create a lot of problems, like getting himself hurt. His position is always quite precarious.

Number two is the physics of the game. Everything weighs about the same, and things that aren't supposed to be heavy are unmovable, things that are supposed to be breakable are not. Try to chain a dog to a tractor and try to move the vehicle. It'll only move little by little while the dog just sits there. Tie a wrecking ball to an enemy whose near a cliff and nothing will happen to him, he doesn't get dragged down to oblivion. Throw a bowling ball at a stack of glass bottles, they'l just fall over and don't break. The only way you can break them is by explosives and guns.

Complaints aside, Scribblenauts is still an ambitious and exceptionally unique DS game that tests your creativity and dexterity in puzzle solving by giving you every item under the sun to do so. And even with the huge pool of useable things, it's still a commendably challenging game. Quite simply, a masterpiece.

Japanese version came out yesterday. I'm waiting for my preorder copy to arrive. And when it does, expect another smashing review on my blog :D

For now, well, it's a short space, and I have only a short time, so I'll leave it at that until I get my hands on the game itself. Excited? Yes.

I know, I'm always slow when it comes to being hyped for games :P Have to admit though, I wasn't too hooked on this game(especially since my knowledge of Tatsunoko was extremely limited). Plus only half of the Capcom characters' names rang any bells with me(the Street Fighter ones, Megaman and a few others).

Never actually bothered to see it in motion...until now. This thing looks so slick. Only a handful of other Wii games could top this one graphically. And god, everything moves with blinding speed and attacks with such intensity, I don't think the lack of knowledge of the character roster would matter anymore after a few goes.

But what really sold me was this:

Not the screenshot itself, mind.

But it was 8.635 BILLION DAMAGE! worth of pure win!

Count me into the hype wagon for this game. Day-one purchase now. :D

It's been ages since I last did anything here, but I still have a blog so I might as well use it.

I got Wii Sports Resort two weeks ago and enjoyed it a lot. So here's my review of the game together with the MotionPlus accessory.

As soon as you boot up the game, you're inside a plane as one of your Miis, and you have to skydive down to the island. You catch a few Miis and form up a circle. As soon as the photographer gets her shot, all of you parachute upwards and the streaking, bright letters on yours beckon you to paradise- Wii Sports Resort.

The MotionPlus thing works wonders, although it does take up a bit more battery power. Some of the sports seemed like they were meant to be controlled with the new peripheral. You just can't imagine the swordfighting game without 1:1 motion control. Sure, there's the annoying thing about calibrating the MotionPlus before you start playing and sometimes it goes a bit off, but a button press is all you need to reposition it, so it's all good. Swordfighting has been done before on the Wii, but without MP you could only slash with the pointer on the screen the whole time(I'm looking at you, Dragon Quest Swords). It's clunky, that it is.

Table tennis is wonderful, it's much, much easier to do backhands and spins than with the Wiimote alone. It's a whole lot more fun than Wii Play's offering, although it's just a 6-point game(you could increase it to 11 by holding down the 2 button before each game, but that's beside the point). Archery is also quite fun, but without competition it gets old.

New golf and bowling controls well with MotionPlus, but angles make golf a little frustrating(go straight DAMMIT!). Fortunately, one major issue from Wii Sports has been addressed, the putting. No more swearing when a small waggle of the Wiimote causes your ball to fly past the hole when it's only a foot away. Frisbee is cute and the extra golf frisbee is just great. Holes in ones have never been easier to do.

What wasn't so great...anything that involved the water. All three water sports(Power Cruising, Wakeboarding, Canoeing) were boring and didn't have many clear cut goals other than getting high scores. You have no competition in these sports at all. Sure, you might argue about golf, bowling and archery, but the difference here is those 3 are more fun than the water sports could ever be. You also get the same unmotivated feeling for the 3 Point game in Basketball.

Want to know the island in more detail? Get on a plane and tour the island and visit all its landmarks. You'll be rewarded with different times of day, a balloon shooter and even your own resort home(you can't enter it, obviously. Dang.). If you so please, you can tour the island via a cycling race. Really, it's not as bad as most people make it out to be(it's not like the MotionPlus could be strapped to your feet while you make pedaling movements).

I know it sounds more like a love letter than a review, but Sports Resort really is great. However, great as it is, it only has so much lasting appeal solo. You might want to go to the Pro Cla$$ on all the activities, or you could have a go at completing the stamp collection- mini achievements in the game like getting 3 strikes in a row on bowling, or getting 3 bullseyes in one round of Archery, but the main attraction of Wii Sports has always been its multiplayer. It's the perfect party game. Have 3 friends over(make sure they have their own MotionPluses) and your afternoon's probably spent.

Overall, a great Wii game that no one should miss out on. It's made for the casual crowd, but regular gamers should have quite a time with it too. It's 'Everyone's Game', as Nintendo put it in their E3 2009 presentation. Brilliant stuff.

Once again, shameless advertising :P

Kirby 5-Star has been moved to a new location, and we jigged up the name a little bit to increase our scope. We're known as Nintendo 5-Star now, or more simply, N5S. We've had a long and proud history behind us, and we'd really like for you to show your support and help us make this forum and awesome place for all to be~!

Here's the link. Hope to see you there~

http://tinyurl.com/ninten5

Well, due to a few circumstances, the union I led, the Kirby 5-Star Union, has grown out of Gamespot and into a full-fledged website! The main site was created by toadster101, and the forums by Destiny_Guy. Anyone who's an old member, or if you want to join in as a new Kirby fan, click here!

I know, there's nothing much on the main site and the designs are still the default one, but rest assured we're working on them the best we can.