Showing posts with label xbox 360 retail price. Show all posts
Showing posts with label xbox 360 retail price. Show all posts
Sunday, January 11, 2015
Cheap XBOX 360 Console G-PAK Black Organizer and Travel Case (XBOX
Well, it's not a game. But it's a great case I got for my boyfriend and he loves it! He travels with his Xbox all the time, and this is perfect and saves him so much space. Our favorite feature, that most other cases do not offer is the fact that you can play the Xbox without taking it out of the case, making packing/unpacking extra simple and creating less clutter by the TV.
Saturday, December 20, 2014
Dance on Broadway - Nintendo Wii Reviews
Just Dance was a revolution in dancing games. Before it, most dance games just consisted of moving your hands or stomping your feet to an on-screen cue. Just Dance was the first game to incorporate real dance moves to choreographed steps.
Dance on Broadway plays pretty much the same as Just Dance. It retains most of its features, both positive and negative.
You follow one of four silhouetted on-screen characters, mirroring their moves as they dance.
There are also icons that scroll across the bottom of the screen that tell you what moves are coming up (basically, what "pose" you should be hitting when the icon hits the arrow). Honestly, I didn't find this as useful as simply mimicking the on-screen characters themseves, but I'm guessing over time once you memorize what the icons mean it'll help you perfect your performance.
Up to four players can play at the same time. Like Just Dance, this makes for a ton of fun with friends or family.
Each player holds one Wii remote. No nunchuk, no second remote, no MotionPlus is used. This is good in that it simplifies things and there are no cables to get tangled up in. It's not-so-good, as Dance on Broadway still suffers from a lack of precision in motion tracking.
In addition, Dance on Broadway adds a few neat enhancements that its predecessor did not have.
The casting of the four characters matches the song. For example, for "One Night Only", there are four African American women which allows you to live out your dream of being one of the "Dreamgirls". For "Aquarius", there's a nice mix of hippy guys and girls.
The choreography is more detailed. For some of the songs, each of the characters has their own individual dance steps resulting in a pretty cool and fully choreographed Broadway routine when four people are playing together.
The precision of the motion tracking is a little better than before, but still leaves a lot to be desired. Still, as before it's so fun learning the dance steps that you don't really care (I was thrilled with my "70%" accuracy, even though I knew it was really closer to 90%). They do give the advice to hold the remote firmly in your right hand, which I found helped.
The songs are decidedly less "intense" than the ones in Just Dance. The songs are rated by "difficulty" and "effort", but in all honesty, even the most difficult songs were pretty simple. So it's not as good a workout game as its predecessor, but more suited for those of us who have always dreamed of being on Broadway.
There's the option to turn vocals off, meaning you can not only dance, but you can also sing along with the words.
Here's a complete list of songs, the shows they're from, and their rating of Difficult / Effort in parentheses:
All That Jazz from All That Jazz (1/2)
Aquarius/Let the Sun Shine In from Hair (1/1)
Bend and Snap from Legally Blond (2/3)
Cabaret from Cabaret (3/2)
Dreamgirls from Dreamgirls (1/2)
Fame from Fame-The Musical (1/3)
Good Morning Baltimore from Hairspray (1/1)
I Just Can't Wait to Be King from The Lion King (2/2)
Luck Be a Lady from Guys and Dolls (3/2)
Little Shop of Horrors from Little Shop of Horrors (2/3)
Lullaby of Broadway from 42nd Street (2/2)
Money, Money from Cabaret (3/3)
My Favorite Things from The Sound of Music (1/2)
One Night Only from Dreamgirls (3/3)
Roxie from Chicago (1/2)
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious from Mary Poppins (2/3)
Thoroughly Modern Millie from Thoroughly Modern Millie (3/3)
Time Warp from The Rocky Horror Show (3/3)
We're in the Money from 42nd Street (2/3)
You Can't Stop the Beat from Hairspray (2/2)
In short, while I gave Just Dance 5 stars, I'll give this one 4 mainly because I would have liked to see Ubisoft improve the motion tracking more than they did, as well as include more cardio-intensive choreography. Still, it's a solid title which I definitely recommend. There are a lot of titles coming in the next few months like Ubisoft's Gold's Gym Dance Workout, Majesco's Zumba for Wii, and Konami's Dance Dance Revolution which will also focus on real dance moves. I definitely commend Ubisoft for starting this trend, and hope between these companies they can really perfect the motion controls and get the world dancing :)
* "All That Jazz"
* "Aquarius"
* Caberet
* Luck Be a Lady
* Lullaby of Broadway
* "Bend and Snap"
* "One Night Only"
* "Dreamgirls"
* "Time Warp"
* "Fame"
* "We're in the Money"
* "Let The Sunshine In"
* "You Can't Stop the Beat"
* "Little Shop of Horrors Theme"
* My Favorite Things
* And there's more....
The idea of the game is to follow your chosen dancer, like in a mirror image, with dance, rhythm and arm movements. One of the options is to set it so you see the words to the songs at the top of the screen and they're highlighted, kind of like a bouncing ball but without the ball, so you can sing along. There really isn't any recording of your voice so it's just kind of for your own amusement. When choosing a song, you see a difficulty level and an effort level shown by the number of stars. Several of the songs are at a somewhat slow pace so it's pretty easy to follow along. There are some little icon figures that move along the bottom that show upcoming moves. I found it easier just to watch the dancers. The game does a reasonably good job of recording your movements and you can see with a gauge above your dancer whether you've missed the move "X", got an "OK" or a "Great". It's possible to get combo points by scoring several "Greats" in a row. Your points are totaled up at the end in each category.
Ok, so why did I give this game only 4 stars if I like it so much? Well, I just got the game today and after playing it for a couple hours I'm already scoring pretty well. It's not that I'm really good at this sort of thing, in fact I'd have to say I'm pretty uncoordinated most of the time. It's just that I like games that are more challenging and I want to get a lot of hours of enjoyment out of it. Now I do have to say that I really, REALLY had fun playing with it tonight. I love the music, the graphics are pretty good and I just like the whole idea of the game. But I'm not sure a couple of weeks from now that I'll be challenged enough to be looking forward to playing it as much. I always compare this type of game to We Cheer and We Cheer 2, by Namco. Those are rhythm games as well, kind of on the same principle, but I couldn't even get past the first song for over a week. I played those games for hours and hours trying to open new levels of songs and stages. (I still have fun playing them). With Dance on Broadway, there are 20 songs and as far as I can tell, everything is accessible right away, no additional challenges or hidden things to open. Some of the songs like All That Jazz and Aquarius are very easy to score on because of the way these games record the Wii movements. Now, if you want to follow along with the steps and really look like the dancers on the screen it will be more difficult. But this game, like others of it's type records only your arm movements to score.
So would I buy the game again? Yeah, I love the music and I'm a sucker for rhythm and musical type games. But I wish it had more levels and was more challenging. The challenge for me will be not so much the scoring, which I think I'll probably be able to ace in a fairly short time, but trying to really copy all the footwork and look like the dancers onscreen. And while it's not as energetic as some games like We Cheer, my arms are sore after playing it for a while. I'm not exactly huffing and puffing but it's still good exercise. I just wish Ubisoft would have added a little more interest and more levels to this game. It's good as far as it goes but seems as though it was rushed to market too soon.
Update 6/27/10 After playing with this game for 10 days I'm finding that the motion sensing is sometimes a little quirky. It doesn't always pick up the motions of the Wiimote as quickly as it should. But we've also had some really big fun with this game when we had friends over. After a couple glasses of wine we started up the game, and after watching, had 4 people playing at a time and it was hilarious! Watching a line of "dancers" make their Broadway debut with exaggerated dance movements and expressions was way funny. And trying to outdo each other on the points kept everyone playing for a long time. Because there are a lot of easy dance numbers like the one from "Hair" or "All That Jazz" everyone can score reasonably well after just a few tries. And there are definitely some that are more difficult and energetic. So I have to give the "party potential" 5 stars even though I rated the game 4 stars for the rest.
"Dance on Broadway" is quite a few steps down from "Just Dance"it sucks.
For every song, there are four characters on screen, making it difficult to see their movements. They have created the program to pan around (to the right, left, and above) the characters while they dance, so not only can you NOT see the movements your supposed to be doing, you can't always fully see your character (sometimes the characters do minutely different moves). The characters movements are not fluid, they jerk around. The graphics looks very cheap and like old technology.
The actual dances are slow, repetitive, and simple so much so that I imagine elderly people doing these moves in a water aerobics class.
If you have an older family member that can't keep up with Just Dance, this may be perfect.
You can not enter your name to keep score. The game keeps score for the current song, and then it's gone. You have no way of knowing if you've improved or not.
There are no additional games that you can play only poorly created dances.
The music is great.
Dance on Broadway plays pretty much the same as Just Dance. It retains most of its features, both positive and negative.
You follow one of four silhouetted on-screen characters, mirroring their moves as they dance.
There are also icons that scroll across the bottom of the screen that tell you what moves are coming up (basically, what "pose" you should be hitting when the icon hits the arrow). Honestly, I didn't find this as useful as simply mimicking the on-screen characters themseves, but I'm guessing over time once you memorize what the icons mean it'll help you perfect your performance.
Up to four players can play at the same time. Like Just Dance, this makes for a ton of fun with friends or family.
Each player holds one Wii remote. No nunchuk, no second remote, no MotionPlus is used. This is good in that it simplifies things and there are no cables to get tangled up in. It's not-so-good, as Dance on Broadway still suffers from a lack of precision in motion tracking.
In addition, Dance on Broadway adds a few neat enhancements that its predecessor did not have.
The casting of the four characters matches the song. For example, for "One Night Only", there are four African American women which allows you to live out your dream of being one of the "Dreamgirls". For "Aquarius", there's a nice mix of hippy guys and girls.
The choreography is more detailed. For some of the songs, each of the characters has their own individual dance steps resulting in a pretty cool and fully choreographed Broadway routine when four people are playing together.
The precision of the motion tracking is a little better than before, but still leaves a lot to be desired. Still, as before it's so fun learning the dance steps that you don't really care (I was thrilled with my "70%" accuracy, even though I knew it was really closer to 90%). They do give the advice to hold the remote firmly in your right hand, which I found helped.
The songs are decidedly less "intense" than the ones in Just Dance. The songs are rated by "difficulty" and "effort", but in all honesty, even the most difficult songs were pretty simple. So it's not as good a workout game as its predecessor, but more suited for those of us who have always dreamed of being on Broadway.
There's the option to turn vocals off, meaning you can not only dance, but you can also sing along with the words.
Here's a complete list of songs, the shows they're from, and their rating of Difficult / Effort in parentheses:
All That Jazz from All That Jazz (1/2)
Aquarius/Let the Sun Shine In from Hair (1/1)
Bend and Snap from Legally Blond (2/3)
Cabaret from Cabaret (3/2)
Dreamgirls from Dreamgirls (1/2)
Fame from Fame-The Musical (1/3)
Good Morning Baltimore from Hairspray (1/1)
I Just Can't Wait to Be King from The Lion King (2/2)
Luck Be a Lady from Guys and Dolls (3/2)
Little Shop of Horrors from Little Shop of Horrors (2/3)
Lullaby of Broadway from 42nd Street (2/2)
Money, Money from Cabaret (3/3)
My Favorite Things from The Sound of Music (1/2)
One Night Only from Dreamgirls (3/3)
Roxie from Chicago (1/2)
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious from Mary Poppins (2/3)
Thoroughly Modern Millie from Thoroughly Modern Millie (3/3)
Time Warp from The Rocky Horror Show (3/3)
We're in the Money from 42nd Street (2/3)
You Can't Stop the Beat from Hairspray (2/2)
In short, while I gave Just Dance 5 stars, I'll give this one 4 mainly because I would have liked to see Ubisoft improve the motion tracking more than they did, as well as include more cardio-intensive choreography. Still, it's a solid title which I definitely recommend. There are a lot of titles coming in the next few months like Ubisoft's Gold's Gym Dance Workout, Majesco's Zumba for Wii, and Konami's Dance Dance Revolution which will also focus on real dance moves. I definitely commend Ubisoft for starting this trend, and hope between these companies they can really perfect the motion controls and get the world dancing :)
Click Here For Most Helpful Customer Reviews >>
Are you the kind of person that can't listen to a Broadway soundtrack without tapping your foot and bopping out in your chair? Do you want to get some exercise without even realizing you're working? If you're anything like me, I think you'll like this game. Remember the dancers in the Broadway hit, "Fame", dancing their hearts out to that great song? Or the dancers in "All That Jazz" doing that cool tap dancey thing? Well, this isn't quite as complicated as all that but its lots of movement and fairly easy choreography that you follow along with while the Wiimote records your moves. You can play with up to four people. You choose one of four characters that you would like to be at the beginning, when you choose the song. There are 20 songs, some of which are:* "All That Jazz"
* "Aquarius"
* Caberet
* Luck Be a Lady
* Lullaby of Broadway
* "Bend and Snap"
* "One Night Only"
* "Dreamgirls"
* "Time Warp"
* "Fame"
* "We're in the Money"
* "Let The Sunshine In"
* "You Can't Stop the Beat"
* "Little Shop of Horrors Theme"
* My Favorite Things
* And there's more....
The idea of the game is to follow your chosen dancer, like in a mirror image, with dance, rhythm and arm movements. One of the options is to set it so you see the words to the songs at the top of the screen and they're highlighted, kind of like a bouncing ball but without the ball, so you can sing along. There really isn't any recording of your voice so it's just kind of for your own amusement. When choosing a song, you see a difficulty level and an effort level shown by the number of stars. Several of the songs are at a somewhat slow pace so it's pretty easy to follow along. There are some little icon figures that move along the bottom that show upcoming moves. I found it easier just to watch the dancers. The game does a reasonably good job of recording your movements and you can see with a gauge above your dancer whether you've missed the move "X", got an "OK" or a "Great". It's possible to get combo points by scoring several "Greats" in a row. Your points are totaled up at the end in each category.
Ok, so why did I give this game only 4 stars if I like it so much? Well, I just got the game today and after playing it for a couple hours I'm already scoring pretty well. It's not that I'm really good at this sort of thing, in fact I'd have to say I'm pretty uncoordinated most of the time. It's just that I like games that are more challenging and I want to get a lot of hours of enjoyment out of it. Now I do have to say that I really, REALLY had fun playing with it tonight. I love the music, the graphics are pretty good and I just like the whole idea of the game. But I'm not sure a couple of weeks from now that I'll be challenged enough to be looking forward to playing it as much. I always compare this type of game to We Cheer and We Cheer 2, by Namco. Those are rhythm games as well, kind of on the same principle, but I couldn't even get past the first song for over a week. I played those games for hours and hours trying to open new levels of songs and stages. (I still have fun playing them). With Dance on Broadway, there are 20 songs and as far as I can tell, everything is accessible right away, no additional challenges or hidden things to open. Some of the songs like All That Jazz and Aquarius are very easy to score on because of the way these games record the Wii movements. Now, if you want to follow along with the steps and really look like the dancers on the screen it will be more difficult. But this game, like others of it's type records only your arm movements to score.
So would I buy the game again? Yeah, I love the music and I'm a sucker for rhythm and musical type games. But I wish it had more levels and was more challenging. The challenge for me will be not so much the scoring, which I think I'll probably be able to ace in a fairly short time, but trying to really copy all the footwork and look like the dancers onscreen. And while it's not as energetic as some games like We Cheer, my arms are sore after playing it for a while. I'm not exactly huffing and puffing but it's still good exercise. I just wish Ubisoft would have added a little more interest and more levels to this game. It's good as far as it goes but seems as though it was rushed to market too soon.
Update 6/27/10 After playing with this game for 10 days I'm finding that the motion sensing is sometimes a little quirky. It doesn't always pick up the motions of the Wiimote as quickly as it should. But we've also had some really big fun with this game when we had friends over. After a couple glasses of wine we started up the game, and after watching, had 4 people playing at a time and it was hilarious! Watching a line of "dancers" make their Broadway debut with exaggerated dance movements and expressions was way funny. And trying to outdo each other on the points kept everyone playing for a long time. Because there are a lot of easy dance numbers like the one from "Hair" or "All That Jazz" everyone can score reasonably well after just a few tries. And there are definitely some that are more difficult and energetic. So I have to give the "party potential" 5 stars even though I rated the game 4 stars for the rest.
Best Deals for Dance on Broadway - Nintendo Wii
I got this for my wife and she loves it. She was big into dance when she was younger and we go to Broadway shows now so this was the perfect game. Can't believe I bought a video game that she actually enjoys! I even had a surprisingly fun time playing some of the more upbeat songs with her too.Honest reviews on Dance on Broadway - Nintendo Wii
We have "Just Dance 2" and love it."Dance on Broadway" is quite a few steps down from "Just Dance"it sucks.
For every song, there are four characters on screen, making it difficult to see their movements. They have created the program to pan around (to the right, left, and above) the characters while they dance, so not only can you NOT see the movements your supposed to be doing, you can't always fully see your character (sometimes the characters do minutely different moves). The characters movements are not fluid, they jerk around. The graphics looks very cheap and like old technology.
The actual dances are slow, repetitive, and simple so much so that I imagine elderly people doing these moves in a water aerobics class.
If you have an older family member that can't keep up with Just Dance, this may be perfect.
You can not enter your name to keep score. The game keeps score for the current song, and then it's gone. You have no way of knowing if you've improved or not.
There are no additional games that you can play only poorly created dances.
The music is great.
Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for Dance on Broadway - Nintendo Wii
I bought Just dance 2 and fell in love with the game. So when I found out that there was a Broadway dance game I was so excited I had to get it! When it came I played it right away but I was disappointed. The graphics were not great and neither were the versions of the songs they used. It was also difficult, at least I found, to know what dance movements you were supposed to do. Overall I was really disappointed with this game.
Monday, December 1, 2014
Best Nyko Wii Charge Station Deals
List Price: $24.99
Sale Price: $22.89
Today's Bonus: 8% Off
As many other reviewers, I quickly learned after getting my Wii that the Wiimotes are understandably battery hogs. I'm a little surprised Nintendo didn't build something like this into the system. Regardless, this charger really does the job, and you almost expect to see a Nintendo logo on it because of the great job Nyko has done with quality and style that matches the Wii itself.
I don't use skins on my Wiimotes (just looks like a hindrance to me), so that hasn't been an issue, although I imagine it would be for any charger/cradle, not just this one. The rubberized battery doors required to use this kit really do improve the overall feel of the Wiimote.
I don't know if battery life matches regular alkalines, but that's because I just put the controllers back in the cradle when I'm not using them, and they always stay charged! I haven't had the indicator on the screen get below the full 4 bars while I've been playing so far.
Also, I prefer the wall plug setup used by this as opposed to some other models that plug into the USB port on the Wii. Those models can only charge one controller and take longer because of the power limits of USB. The wall plug also allows you to keep your charger somewhere else in the room if you like.
Click Here For Most Helpful Customer Reviews >>
Picked this up the other day....suffice to say they are selling like hotcakes at the Gamestops across the country.This is a definite purchase for a Wii Owner:
Included in the package is:
Charging Stand
2 Rechargeable Battery Packs
2 Rubberized Battery Covers (Necessary to use)
After unpacking the unit....you see that the rechargeable battery pack slides inthe the Wii Remotes battery compartment with a snap and has a protruding part with the 4 metal contacts for the charging station.....this is why the use of the rubberized battery compartment covers is mandatory as the covers have the hole for access to the battery contacts.
Placing the controllers with everything installed into the charger initially worried me as I wasn't sure if I had to remove the Wrist Straps.
Thankfully...you do not have to....there are small grooves on the left and right of the stand for you to lay the Wrist strab connection through.
Charging of the 2 remotes from install took approximately 3-4 hours.....and everything works like a charm and it looks great.
If you have a Wii....buy it.... with batteries....not too bad :)
Best Deals for Nyko Wii Charge Station
I have owned this product about 4 months and have had to replace the battery pack for one unit already.The Battery pack lasted about 4 weeks and then it stopped working it would just get very hot but had no charge. Contacted customer service who had me return the batteries at my expense and they sent me new batteries in a previously used envelope (I mention this as it is indicative of an extremely small shoe string operation not a solid company). The new battery worked fine for awhile but now one battery pack is definitely getting hotter than the other so will probably not last and is out of guarantee. I think this is a good idea just not a quality product needs to be re engineered and made by a quality company.Honest reviews on Nyko Wii Charge Station
On the intial charge the battery melted and nearly ruined my Wiimote if I hadn't checked on it and realized it felt a little too warm. Customer support offered to replace what they determined was a defective battery but declined to replace my Wiimote or give a refund. Great idea but it seems I am not the only one that is having problems with this product. If you have the money to risk it may work out for you but beware that it is a potential fire hazard and could at the very least ruin your Wiimote which cost $40 to replace. I wish I could give this thing a 0 or even negative stars. Buy at your own risk.Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for Nyko Wii Charge Station
I purchased mine a month ago. After about 2 weeks, one of the batteries went dead (the other worked fine in either controller). I wrote their customer service, and they told me to return it at my expense and they'd send me a new one. They then returned the battery and it still didn't work -same problem. At the same time, the second battery went bad. Rather than pay more shipping, I just dropped it in the trash. I'm using the stand, just not the batteries...Thursday, November 27, 2014
Discount uDraw Marvel Super Hero Squad: Comic Combat - Xbox 360
My son is 6 years old, and loves this game. I was skeptical of the uDraw when I purchased it, but could not pass on the great deal Amazon had it. He then tried the drawing game that came with it, and was not too excited. After popping in the Super Hero Squad, I changed my mind about the uDraw. He has been sitting non stop for the past hour playing it, and it is keeping him glued to the xbox. Neat concepts with drawing to beat up your enemies etc..... I like the fact that this gives a little more activity into playing the xbox for him then just sitting with a buttoned controller and playing!!!
Good graphics.
Very little learning curve.
Simple game-play that is some-what enjoyable.
Solid sound-track.
The Negatives:
Very quick and easy to beat.
Weak voice acting.
Incredibly annoying and stupid one liners.
No replay value what so ever.
Overall, Didn't care for the game. Thought it was far too simple and easy, Not to mention quick to beat. Wouldn't recommend it at all.
Click Here For Most Helpful Customer Reviews >>
My Grandson is into the Super Heros. So when we saw this we got it to go with the UDraw that we bought at a great price. He enjoys playing it.Best Deals for uDraw Marvel Super Hero Squad: Comic Combat - Xbox 360
The Positives:Good graphics.
Very little learning curve.
Simple game-play that is some-what enjoyable.
Solid sound-track.
The Negatives:
Very quick and easy to beat.
Weak voice acting.
Incredibly annoying and stupid one liners.
No replay value what so ever.
Overall, Didn't care for the game. Thought it was far too simple and easy, Not to mention quick to beat. Wouldn't recommend it at all.
Honest reviews on uDraw Marvel Super Hero Squad: Comic Combat - Xbox 360
our 4yr old loves Super Hero Squad and he loves this game! He didn't get frustrated like he often does with other kid games. We only had to show him a few of the shape moves, and then he was good to go!Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for uDraw Marvel Super Hero Squad: Comic Combat - Xbox 360
got the game for the uDraw system cause my son LOVES Super Hero Squad show...and he just LOVES that he can play as the characters in the game! thanks!Wednesday, November 5, 2014
Best Xbox 360 8 MODE Rapid Fire Controller LIME GREEN Shell with RED Deals
this controller is great! It works great. the only problem is that the left stick doesnt click but still presses in so if you are sprinting in call of duty so when you push it, it wont click. but over all a great product for a great price.this controller is a beast it works on all games left for dead all call of dutys including mw3 i will rate this 5 stars thanks
Monday, September 22, 2014
Reviews of Activision Skylanders Giants Triple Pack #5 (Prism Break, Lightning
List Price: $24.99
Sale Price: $23.95
Today's Bonus: 4% Off
These things are like pokemon but way more fun!! Got started because of my roommates kid. He loved it, so we got them all. Now he's in heaven.
Click Here For Most Helpful Customer Reviews >>
If you don't know skylanders, just buy them. They are awesome figures to collect (even without the game), but my kids are addicted to it as the game is easy at the same time it challenges them to know the best creature to use, when, against whom.Best Deals for Activision Skylanders Giants Triple Pack #5 (Prism Break, Lightning
Prism break is almost too powerful, it is hard to do many heroic challenges because he kills everything and breaks everything. we renamed lightning rod " zeus "because he is so strong. Drill bot has awesome homing weapon as well. A triple threat triple pack!Honest reviews on Activision Skylanders Giants Triple Pack #5 (Prism Break, Lightning
Just what we ordered! I love when that happens!! My son was more then pleased!! Thanks!! We will be returning!Thursday, September 4, 2014
Cheap Stormchaser Gamepad
Let me start off by saying this is a good joystick. However, if you are choosing between this and a Dual Shock joystick, I suggest going with the dual shock. Firstly, you can just tell the dual shock is higher quality. Also, the buttons are way too close together. There are 6 buttons on the face, but the 2 rightmost buttons default to L1 and R1. You think you are hitting triangle or O, but you end up hitting L1 or R1 by mistake due to the buttons being so close together. Also, the D-pad is analog which can be good for some people. However, if you plan on using it for a fighting game then it is horrible; it is very hard to do a double-tap on the d-pad because of its analog nature. In my opinion, the thumbsticks are made to be analog, leave the D-pad under digital control. Finally, the rumble is a little overdone. It is cool to feel, but the joystick sounds like it is about to explode. The sound can be so loud at times that it drowns out the game. In conclusion, I feel this is a decent gamepad; it does the job. But if you plan on playing fighting games or want the highest quality joystick (in my opinion), go with Sony's Dual Shock.
WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY??????? DOES IT CHASE STORMS???
IT JUST BEATS ME, WHY IS IT CALLED A STORMCHASER????????
Click Here For Most Helpful Customer Reviews >>
this controller is bulky, its not very comfortable the bottom line is even if you think your hands are big enough to handle it, buy a regular dual shock 2 controller thats what i did pay another 5 bucks and you'll save yourself a lot of trouble, the program function is useless, the analog joysticks are too tight, the two extra buttons are just plain annoying, and the shoulder buttons are impossible to use, by the way it look like something batman would useBest Deals for Stormchaser Gamepad
This is a piece of shoddy merchandise. I managed to break the left joystick in less than an hour of playing. My Sony controller on the other hand is almost a year old and isn't broken yet.Honest reviews on Stormchaser Gamepad
I recently bought one of these last month for multiplayer games with friends. I tried it out to make sure everything was okay then I shelved it for two weeks. My friend and I went to play two weeks ago and the thing didn't work! The only thing that worked was R1. What a piece of junk! I've tried it on all my friends PS2's and they all have the same results. So save yourself some money and get something else.Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for Stormchaser Gamepad
BUT WHY'S IT CALLED A STORMCHASER???WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY??????? DOES IT CHASE STORMS???
IT JUST BEATS ME, WHY IS IT CALLED A STORMCHASER????????
Monday, August 11, 2014
Cheap The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword with Music CD
The Legend of Zelda series is one of the greatest video game franchises of all time, and arguably, it's *thee* greatest. With each release, Nintendo has showed us the magic of journeying through Hyrule's beautiful kingdom. Now, they have done it again, greatly injecting innovation into the tried-and-true formula of past titles. This is a Zelda game unlike any other, and feels all at once both an incredible nostalgic celebration of 25 years of history, and a wholly new adventure full of wild, awesome new directions. Get ready for a fairly long review, but please know that this is written from the heart of a young man who loves the series above most others in his favorite pastime.
The story and characters present in Skyward Sword are very different among the other Zelda titles, despite the obvious recurring ones. I don't just mean the amazing setting of Link's home, Skyloft, a fantastical city floating above the clouds where everone is bonded to their own guardian birdlike creature, a loftwing. No, from the start, Nintendo truly changes almost everything of what you'd come to expect from a Zelda game. This is the earliest tale in the series chronologically, acting as a prequel, making way for Ocarina of Time's tale to come. Zelda is not a princess here, just another common schoolgirl. She and Link have been best friends since childhood, and may even have feelings for each other (it's pretty obvious, and incredibly touching. My wife and I were both pretty moved by it). In Skyloft, the local school is essentially a knights academy, the uniform being a tunic that is easily recognizable to fans of the series. After completing a ceremony to become a senior in his class (the senior tunic is, you guessed it, dark green), Zelda and Link ride together through the sky to celebrate. Out of nowhere, a malevolent tornado knocks Zelda to "the surface," a vast, unexplored land below the cloud cover and once again, Link takes up the mantle of being a fated hero, destined to save the day. I'll stop here, because this is virtually spoiler free and if I say more it won't be. Just know that Nintendo has really changed up the formula of story and characters we've come to expect from the Zelda franchise, and as a result, Skyward Sword feels incredibly refreshing.
Another immediately noticeable change is in presentation. The story is much, much more cinematic than Zelda has ever been. Cinematic shot angles are much more dynamic than ever before, character expression is stunning, animation is smooth and realistic, and the writing is just fantastic. If anything, this feels like a very intimate entry in the Zelda series, not just epic or grand like past titles. It's a lovely direction for the Zelda series, if you ask me. The characters all come to life thanks to this presentation, of course, but the writing present certainly helps too. Each character has so much personality, and talking to each of them is a joy. Link is a somewhat distracted dreamer with his head in the clouds, loves to sleep, but has tons of courage and kindness, a true hero. Accompanying him in his journey is Fi, a new kind of companion to the series. Fi looks like a ceramic doll, her "speech" sounds like GLaDOS, and is purely logic driven. She is amazing. Zelda is a strong-willed, tough tomboy of sorts, and very lovable. Lord Ghirahim, the new villain, is *extremely* compelling and creepy (Ganandorf makes no direct appearance). All of these characters, as well as the plethora of side characters, are written and presented beautifully.
The art design and graphical implementation is awesome here. The game has married the art design of two past masterpiece Zelda title styles into one wholly unique direction. You have more realistic people and settings, like in the dark, mature Twilight Princess, but you also have the vibrant color and imagination of The Wind Waker, and it is a joy to behold. Nintendo EAD designed the game to look like a water color painting, and I must say, they did a fantastic job doing so. Draw distances are fairly short, and anything beyond is purposely blurred to look exactly like a water-color painting of the impressionist style, full of brushstrokes of beautiful color. I am deeply impressed here. The Wii is a painfully underpowered system in comparison to its two competitors, but it is genius art design like this that shows why the Wii has had some of the most beautiful titles of this generation (Metroid Prime 3, Muramasa: The Demon Blade, Super Mario Galaxy, Super Mario Galaxy 2, Okami, now this game, the list goes on and on). To put it succinctly, Skyward Sword is one of the most beautiful games in recent memory, and that is totally thanks to the absolutely brilliant (and well implemented) art design.
Koji Kondo and Hajime Wakai; any fan of Nintendo will instantly recognize these names as two of the greatest musical composers of video gaming. They are almost unrivaled as composers, writing some of the most iconic music in the entire medium. Koji worked as musical supervisor in this title (as well as composed the main theme and some other songs). Hajime was in charge of music composition. This may be, and I *do not* say this lightly, some of their very best work yet. The music here ranges from the entire spectrum of musical emotion: epic, intimate, touching, sad, meditative, dark, joyous, achingly beautiful, uplifting, goofy/doofy (for a certain character), anything you can imagine. Each theme, whether for an event, a character, a place, whatever, is absolutely perfect for its place and can greatly change depending on the situation. It takes something special for music to not only define the experience for any gamer playing the game, but also convey the emotion and thought its supposed to, and the soundtrack here does so perfectly. Like most Zelda games, Link acquires a musical instrument that helps progress the story (Ocarina of time had... well... duh. Wind Waker had a baton), here it is a harp. You can play it at any time, and when you do, you can actually accompany the beautiful background music of wherever you happen to be on the harp. That's very, very cool. Great job Koji and Hajime! You're amazing.
The gameplay is what you're probably the most curious about. Does the Wii-Motion Plus work? Yes, it does very well, for the most part. You'll have to deal with calibration from time to time, sometimes actions won't register the way you hoped, but it's not too big a deal and doesn't happen nearly enough to mar the experience. The 1:1 swordplay works pretty flawlessly once you become acquainted with it. Link will seamlessly swing his sword however you do. Horizontal, vertical, diagonal, it all works quite well. Pretty much every enemy you will encounter will require a different strategy to defeat, and I have found that the swordplay grows more enthralling with each hour I play (Boss fights are outstanding). It took me quite a while to get used to it, but I must say that this is truly the game the Wii was made nearly six years ago for. It's about time. The quest items you'll find are also a blast to use. They give you some new ones right off the bat, and they're all awesome, feeling completely new yet appropriate for the franchise. Also, Link now has stamina that runs out as he climbs and dashes throughout the world (yes, Link can now sprint around if you'd like). Link's stamina actually adds a small layer of strategic depth to the game, and the concept comes into play in many scenarios throughout the game. This gameplay concept worried me at first, but it's actually really enjoyable, and implemented excellently.
So far, I have been through three temples in about 20 hours (I bought my copy at a midnight release "party" and have been playing ever since). Gone is the field-dungeon-field formula of past titles. Instead, here you have a hub world, the realm above the clouds, with Skyloft as your main town to visit. Here you can restock supplies, buy or upgrade your shield and other equipment using items you've scavenged in your questing rpg-style, and go on very personal side quests that feel very much like Majora's Mask did, making for a character-driven experience. A great change of formula, one I was *very* skeptical about beforehand.
You can ride your loftwing and drop to the surface world below at key rifts in the clouds. Here, you have more concentrated lands you can adventure through until you get to a dungeon/temple that will advance the story. The world below, and its temples, feel quite a lot like the Metroid series. The land is more condensed and concentrated, feeling like dungeon of sorts by themselves, but as you acquire newer items, more and more dimensions will open up in those places as you revisit them. It's a huge change-up to the Zelda formula, but one that feels surprisingly good. As I've said, I've played through three temples so far and I am amazed at the ingenuity of them. Yes, you'll be pushing blocks and shooting targets to open doors, but you'll also encounter brilliant new puzzles. I mean, the puzzles are challenging and downright laugh-inducing in their ingenuity, and feel very satisfying when you figure them out. Combine this with the totally awesome new items, stellar swordplay, and ease of use and you get the feeling that every area feels like an innovation, in much the same way playing through Super Mario Galaxy 2 felt like standing before a firing squad of brilliant new ideas. I am downright astonished. I did not think it could be done, honestly, but this game really has reinvigorated the series through great change to the formula rather than refining it further like Twilight Princess did, and trust me when I say no one is more surprised than me.
This is a brilliant game, even among the other entries in what has been for 25 years a brilliant series. It takes Zelda in a plethora of new directions, while miraculously feeling *exactly* like a true-to-form Zelda game. Color me surprised. If you're a fan of Zelda, then you don't need me to tell you to go get this right now. This series has some of the most diehard fans of any gaming franchise out there, but just for emphasis' sake, I proudly, and loudly proclaim that this game is incredible! Buy it, soar through the realms above, and dive to the vast, mysterious lands below and fulfill your destiny to save the world once again!
* I know this review is quite long, but honestly, this game has so much that merits attention, the review could be much, much longer and still be appropriate. I will edit my review as I play through the game more if I feel there is something worth mentioning that I come across. However, I feel that this is a pretty good summary that hopefully gives you a good picture of the game. Seriously, go get it, like, right now. You won't regret it.
Final Update, 11/27/11:
Ok, after playing the game for roughly 50 hours I have finally beaten Skyward Sword. In short, this game is an absolute masterpiece. Each and every hour spent in this game was filled to the brim with brilliance and excellence, and not one single minute felt like boring filler that artificially extended the game. This feels like the Super Mario Galaxy 2 of Zelda titles, where there seems to be an exciting new gameplay/puzzle element at every turn. The story is incredible, with a lot of twists that genuinely thrilled and surprised me. This game essentially acts as an origin story for the entire Zelda series. Pretty much every element that you're familiar with from Zelda games see their true origin here, and it is spectacular (I won't give any spoilers though, you'll be blown away when you experience it for yourself). I have to say that I have not been this entranced and enthralled by a Zelda game since Ocarina of Time or The Wind Waker, and I am a HUGE fan of pretty much every entry in the entire Zelda series, so I don't say that lightly. The music is among the series' very best, which by itself is a massive accomplishment. The visuals the art design are incredibly beautiful, some of the most gorgeous and brilliantly inspired of the past decade, despite the underpowered system it is on. Because of all of this, I was compelled to play this constantly until beating it, AND there's a new game plus mode that adds substantially to the game as well! For fans of the series, this game is an immediate must-own. I give it the highest recommendation possible. I absolutely love this game, and I'm fairly certain most of you out there will too.
*That's my final statement. This is meant to finalize the points I made from my original review, which I think will be as detailed and informative as anyone would want or need. Thank you for taking the time to read my review. Good day. :)
The sword is Motion-Plus genius in that what you do in real life is exactly mirrored on screen - in combat there is a perfect 1:1 balance I have not seen in any other wii game. You can wave your sword around while waiting for an opening to strike or just flail it around with perfect precision. Nearly every enemy requires a specific sword technique to defeat it although there aren't a ton of enemies in this game, each one offers a unique challenge.
Each item is quickly enabled with the remote so there is not much pausing to go through menu pages. Aiming with the slingshot or bow is much easier since you are using the wii motion-plus. Occasionally the controls will be slightly off, but a quick downward tap of the d-pad resets the pointer.
While there are only 3 unique worlds, you find yourself going back to these worlds repeatedly throughout the game as you gain new tools to unlock different areas. You are also able to freely go back to Skyloft to buy items, assist townspeople and do many other quests.
The dungeons are unique and flow naturally. In previous games, dungeons were basically designed for one item, but not this time -you must use many items in every quest, which makes for a nice challenge and improves upon the level design.
Music is always central in a Zelda game, and Skyward Sword doesn't disappoint -where Skyward Sword finally uses orchestral music for the first time. On a side note, the CD that comes with the game has songs covering the entire history of the series and is of high quality and production, but in all reality I likely won't play it more than once. Skyward Sword has been rendered using an art style that places it somewhere in between The Wind Waker and Twilight Princess and while that sounds weird, it is an improvement on the previous titles.
I have played for many hours already and knowing this is a 40+ hour game is all the more satisfying knowing that I got my money's worth. (I actually received the game Saturday 11/19 after pre-ordering from Wal-mart and have been playing non-stop).
Yes, there are minor quibbles to be had with motion control inconsistencies, small variety of enemies, and occasional camera issues, but this is a masterpiece of modern gaming. This IS the game the WII was made for! Must buy. (9.8 / 10)
**** UPDATE 11/23/11 *****
I have just hit the 35 hour mark and have yet to actually beat the main adventure. This has been one of the most exciting games I have played in years!
Visuals:
The new visual direction is amazing and it works. It's art! Everyone has their own option and some will disagree and that's OK. But it works for me and I was impressed. It's a blend between cel shading and the more realistic approach art direction of Twilight Princess with a touch of water paint.
Sound:
I really enjoyed the music scores and sound effects. Again, it's my opinion and some will really like it and some won't. Everyone has different tastes.
Gameplay:
Simply put, one of the greatest aspects of the game. The controls work and are implemented very well. This particular game can't be played with a regular controller because there are gameplay elements that make that impossible. Motion controls adds another level of satisfaction that a person can't get any other way.
This particular game has changed the "Zelda formula". If you've played other iterations of the game, you'll notice the difference early on. There is now a central hub from where you will branch off to complete various tasks including side quests. In addition, the dungeon designs are genius.
There is a crafting system in place that works very well. Though it's basic in comparison to other games, it works very well and adds another level of greatness to the game.
Presentation:
I would love to see a Zelda game with the full glory of voice acting (some will disagree with me) but this game sticks to the traditional text bubbles. And you know what? It still works. Especially because of one particular reason, elaborate facial expressions. It's done extremely well and it fits.
The game interface works well but can get very clunky. Thankfully, there is an option to make most of it invisible.
In conclusion, this new Zelda game simultaneously feels new and familiar. In my humble opinion, it's better than Ocarina of Time which makes it the greatest game ever created.
If you own a Wii, this game is a "must have". If you don't, this game should be the reason to purchase one.
I have played all the major console releases of Zelda, starting with Ocarina of Time. Words cannot fully encapsulate the range of emotion or the imaginative zeal that resulted from playing through Ocarina, and it definitely started a love for the Legend of Zelda games to follow. From Majora's Mask to Wind Waker to Twilight Princess, we finally arrive to Skyward Sword, the 25th Anniversary of the franchise. How does it stack up to its predecessors? Personally, I feel there are strengths and weaknesses in what I think makes a Legend of Zelda game, and these feelings are based directly on my past history and experiences with the previous titles.
Pros:
Controls. Personally, I don't think that WiiMotion+ has ever been better. Smaller titles like WiiSports Resort showcased the ability of Motion+ on a smaller scale-The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword has Wii Motion+ fully grafted into the controls of the game to rather accurately manipulate items (primarily, Link's sword) on your quest. As opposed to Twilight Princess' Wii Remote integration into the game, Skyward Sword makes the user feel dramatically more in control.
Story. Every Legend of Zelda game seems to bring something new to the world in terms of background for the hero, the princess, and the evil which pits itself against them: Ocarina revolved around age; Majora's Mask revolved around time; Wind Waker revolved around water; Twilight Princess revolved around realm; and Skyward Sword appropriately revolves around a land in the sky. The makers of Zelda did not disappoint when it came to an innovative and novel story-while Legend of Zelda elements exist, the backdrop surrounding them are fresh enough to revitalize approaches to solving puzzles and to interact with the world on a general level.
Characters. Besides the key characters associated with every Zelda story, Skyward Sword provides certain individuals who are dynamic and progress as the story develops. Even more appreciating than their ability to change, these characters are a large part dependent on your interaction with them in order for their own growth, making you feel like a real agent of change with the sidequests you undergo for them. This feeling of "belonging" with the NPCs of the game models the experience of the characters in Wind Waker, and a departure from the lesser relationships in Twilight Princess. A part of this feeling stems from limited options of responding positively or negatively (and not just "yes" or "no") in certain dialogued conversations.
Land. As with story, the land is creative and new. The regions that you explore resemble the traditional types of areas found in all Zelda games, and yet the names and faces of what you think you ought to meet are different enough to further instigate the feeling of newness and discovery. Also as with other Zelda games, the different regions of Skyward Sword are not fully accessible at the beginning without later equipment, depending on your own search for rare items apart from the storyline-it's a sense of adventure.
Equipment. The past three major console installments of The Legend of Zelda incorporated innovative weapons and items (alongside traditional ones) into their gameplay, and skyward sword is no exception. These added weapons are well utilized throughout the game, whether it be for dungeon bosses and puzzles, traveling to new areas, or fighting the various grunt monsters. Furthermore, the addition of the WiiMotion+ promotes both integration and ease for these novel items, and that includes the elimination of the item-select pause screen in order to select your item in real-time, on the fly. That addition alone is a major benefit and separates this Zelda title from its previous siblings.
Replay Value. You can repeat the game after you have beaten it in Hero's Mode with enemies that deal twice amount of damage and do not drop hearts (additionally, the grass found in dungeons also do not drop hearts), challenging your skill and use of potions to survive. Your progress resets, allowing you to re-experience the game from the beginning (however, treasures you found in the previous saved game file do transfer).
And now my complaints. Although there are no plot spoilers, other elements of the game may be necessarily discussed.
Cons:
Controls. Having been the product of the previous game's button-mashing and combo-utilizing of traditional controllers, I was and still am a cautious gamer with the Wii's interactive controls. Like I stated on the positive side, WiiMotion+ has never been better; it's true: I swing horizontally and so does my sword, I swing vertically and so does my sword, and so on. HOWEVER, a problem arises considering the pace of the game and this control scheme. For solving puzzles where time is no issue or wandering through the various environments, the small flaws of Motion+ are really no issue. Yet, when you are in a more intense situation fighting an enemy and are supposed to swing a certain way, I find that it is really hard to be consciously aware of how your nunchuck is placed, or even if your directional swing with the Wii remote is correctly balanced; too often has my thrusting motion with the remote been misinterpreted as a circular swing because my nunchuck wasn't positioned in a certain way-it is in these fast-paced fighting situations like these where skirmishes are unnecessarily prolonged because you are not hitting the enemy the proper way/direction. Slowly attacking your target while trying to make sure the controls are in the right places takes away a considerable amount of the feeling of a real battle situation.
Story. Perhaps I had higher expectations since this is indeed the 25th anniversary of the franchise, but I only found the storyline decent at best. Similar to Twilight Princess, the buildup surrounding the antagonist was just not as personal or emotionally-stirring as it was with Ocarina of Time (for reasons you will understand when you play the game). The result of such (which I would argue as a critical component) only gives the sense of getting the job done or completing a task rather than abolishing an evil you can really relate to. Although it has been stated that this game precedes Ocarina of Time, I don't find that fact enough excuse to neglect the relationship between the small hope of good versus the imminent dominance of evil.
Characters. My problem with the relationship between good and evil has already been stated above. [Non-plot spoiler] Being the traditional Zelda gamer and fan, I took real issue to the eradication of the Goron and Zora species. True, there are about three Gorons in the game, but as a species, both the Gorons and Zoras were strangely absent (unless you want to count the Floria Lake fish as Zoras). This can again be explained by the fact that this game precedes Ocarina of Time, or is in a different land area, however this game goes against its constituents (you could also put Wind Waker in the same camp, as interaction between Gorons and Zoras were also severely limited) by not having either staple species play a prominent role in the game. I have no problem with the species they introduced in this game, and I know this will be a small quibbling point to some-but Gorons and Zoras have been a recurring part of the Legend as Link himself. The dungeon bosses also need to be mentioned. I have never been less intimidated by the bosses of the Legend of Zelda than I have in this game. They just do not look the part of hideousness or scare that has been reproduced with every Zelda game. I found myself fighting a large purple Tellytubby with Jamaican dreads for one of the bosses-the bosses failed to do their part to add to blood-rush or intensity and looked like a misguided band of creatures on Sesame Street.
Land. Contrary to games like Twilight Princess or Wind Waker, the land of Skyward Sword felt restricted. That's not to neglect all the extended areas made possible by certain parts of the game/equipment; however, as was made known before its release, the non-dungeon areas of skyward sword were largely created to blur the field-dungeon distinction and make even the field-areas more like dungeons. As a result of this, the large-world feel of adventure that one received through Twilight Princess is limited to more puzzle-based interaction with Skyward Sword. This dried the wonder aspect given through "adventure-awe" and hyped up more critical thinking in these areas of exploration.
Equipment. The only real weakness to the equipment in this game pertains to shields. Unlike the other major console games, shields are breakable (and I'm not talking about a burnable deku shield). After so many hits the shield begins to break, indicated by a status bar on the screen. This poses quite the problem considering that shields can be upgraded through finding various treasures; if your shield breaks, that's it. You have to go and buy the initial shield you upgraded from and redo all of your upgrading. It can be a real hassle.
Replay Value. This is more of a personal point but for every Zelda game, I look for replay value similar to Wind Waker in which you keep certain items, have a modified look, and are able to accomplish additional content upon your first beat of the game; it adds to interaction and the feel of the game. I have not played through all of Hero's mode yet, but I do not think it will amount to the replay scope of Wind Waker.
Concluding Thoughts:
If you have read all the above wordage, then maybe you have deduced the underlying problem I had with this game: psychology. All other Zelda games I have played had intensity and scariness from bosses, a feeling of hopelessness against a larger evil, wonder and amazement at new-land discovery, as well as other meaningful emotional ties with NPCs. If Skyward Sword did these things, they were either severely under-played out or were just for the wrong reasons. It is because of the psychological distance this Zelda game has from the others that I would go so far as to say that it didn't really feel like a Legend of Zelda game-and certainly not one of 25th anniversary caliber.
Would I recommend you buy this game? Yes. For the experience. Because underneath all of these flaws, it is still a Legend of Zelda game and worth at least your initial investment. But do not expect this game to be all of what you have come to know the franchise to be, for the reasons already stated. While the creators focused on championing WiiMotion+ for the Zelda experience, they neglected needed attention on the key aspects that makes a Legend of Zelda game a Legend of Zelda game. If Nintendo continues along this same vein with Zelda in the years to come, perhaps we won't make it to another 25th anniversary down the road.
Graphics I'm not going to get in depth with graphics because as we all know, the Wii uses last gen hardware, and so graphics aren't going to be all that great. They're pretty comparable to Twilight Princess despite the game being 5 years newer than its predecessor. That's all that needs to be said on that. It gets an 8 (average) because it's average in terms of what we expect from a Wii title.
8/10
Sound Sound is very good. I enjoyed most of the music the game had to offer. I didn't think the song playing between the water dragon's cave and the entrance to the second forest temple fit too well in a Zelda game, but hardly brings it down all that much. The song for the end credits was a good homage to the original entries in the Zelda series. For some reason Nintendo still has sounds it delegates to that monotone speaker in the Wiimote controller, though.
9/10
Controls And speaking of controls, this is where the game takes a big black eye. I was hoping that after Twilight Princess, Nintendo would've seen fit to focus less on motion controls. Instead, they made an even heavier emphasis on said motion control. The motion control scheme sounds good on paper swing your Wiimote to swing your sword, aim your Wiimote at the screen to aim your bow, etc. but it doesn't prove so good in execution. It proves to be cumbersome, unwieldy, imprecise and in some cases, maddening. At least in TP, you had a fairly small set of moves, each distinguishable from each other. In this game, just with the sword alone, you have horizontal strikes, vertical strikes and diagonal strikes, two of each, in fact, and many enemies where only one set will work, the others fail, and the controller is so hairline sensitive that it's far too easy to do a vertical slash when I needed a diagonal, or a horizontal slash turns into a ham fisted shaking of my sword, or a forward jab results in the enemy laughing at Link's inability to produce the same result. If I'm fighting a boss, I want to do that fight the boss. I don't want to be fighting both the boss and my controller because it thinks I want to do something completely ineffective. This is especially true when having to manage that awful whip weapon, especially seeing as how both it and the sword rely on the same controls, so using the one when you need the other is far too easy, especially when fighting the boss found in the dungeon where you get the whip. The boss himself isn't hard it's the fact that you have to fumble around with the controls almost as much as you do fight it. But the most damning of all is the tilt controls. The tilt functions (yes, plural) are found everywhere in the game. You need tilt to free fall, you need tilt to swim, you need tilt to control your free-flight Beetle, you need tilt when flying on your mount (and the tutorial for flying the mount is misleading tilting up on your Wiimote does not I repeat DOES NOT cause your mount to fly up. You need to "flap" the controller to do that, yet this is never mentioned in the tutorial,) so suffice it to say, you're going to be tilting a lot. There's a reason why Sony's Sixaxis was a colossal failure. It's a simple enough question why use tilt when you have the thumbstick a much easier, more reliable, more easily reproducable, more fine tuned control system than tilt could ever be? Somebody might respond that Nintendo wanted to take full advantage of the WiiMotion Plus. It's understandable if they want to showcase its capability, but not to the point where that's the one and only consideration at ANY AND ALL COST. That desire has to be tempered and balanced with a consideration towards how well the game will play if the controls are cumbersome, it's time to make some changes. I've yet to read an unbiased review for this game anywhere that didn't have at least one mention of the control scheme giving issues. Having no option to change the sensitivity hurt this score as well.
3.5/10
Gameplay and Presentation As controls directly affect gameplay, it is impossible to give a perfect score in this category. But despite that, the game is still fun. Nintendo promised that they were moving away from the Zelda games of old, and... to some extent they succeed. Many of the conventions we expect to see in Zelda games are still intact, but they did throw us a few new curve balls. The second trip to the desert was probably my favorite dungeon, despite having to find an invisible and actively moving target, and what sold me on it was what happened immediately before the actual boss fight begins, as it's not something that a Zelda game's done before. (At least, that I'm aware of.) A common enough convention in other games, sure, but I wasn't expecting what they did with that particular dungeon so I will give them kudos. A certain other boss you have to stop from reaching its destination was another good twist.
On a sidenote with the gameplay, I almost wish I could give Link the t-shirt that says "Let me just drop everything and work on YOUR PROBLEM", as the townsfolk, like always, are needing his help with everything. It's probably a good thing that we can't interject our own personality into the main character, because I'd probably tell them, "Okay, I'm in the middle of trying to find my childhood friend, someone dear to me, who's gone missing and whose life is in serious danger. I'm also trying to stop an evil entity from breaking out of its prison and destroying the entire planet. There's also a magic-wielding sociopath who wants find my childhood friend for his own nefarious schemes and kill me in the process. But SURE, I'll be glad to dust your house/find your (Fill in prized possession here)/go fetch something you could easily get yourself for you, since you don't want to do it! Not like I've got anything important going on, right?"
I do feel the need to bring this up as well the dialogue feels like it's straight out of a Saturday morning cartoon. A lot of us have been playing Zelda games since the first one when we were kids, and so I do not know why there's yet to be a Zelda game with dialogue that is on the level. This is especially evident with the first dialogue with Link, Zelda and her father. And I'm not saying there should be the kind of dialogue we have in Dragon Age, Skyrim or Game of Thrones, but is it so much to ask to have a script that isn't cheesier than the state of Wisconsin? Ghirahim is far too much of a clown to be taken seriously. If Nintendo was trying to make a nuanced, sinister, disturbing villain out of him, then they failed at it miserably.
I do like Fi, however.... well, okay, SOMETIMES I like Fi her emotionally neutral, overly analytical, almost computer-like speech is humorous, especially with how oblivious she remains to just how she sounds. Now if she'd just stop reminding me that my batteries or health are low.... or if she'd stop saying something that's either blatantly obvious, or give away the solution to the puzzle 30 seconds after I've encountered it.... she could at times be more annoying than Navi, and that's saying something.
Nintendo did get both the intro and ending right. Considering those are the two most important elements of the story (especially the later) I will give them credit where credit is due.
And I really hope Skyward Sword is the first and last Zelda game where our mount is a flying bird. This is Zelda, not StarFox.
Upgrading makes its debut, and it's a good addition. Get some supplies from the enemies, upgrade your shield or other item(s.) I do not know why the Slingshot is still a weapon in this series, however. It was obsolete the moment the Beetle was found (longer range and no ammo to collect) and twice obsolete when the bow is collected (why use a sling when you have a bow and arrow?) I didn't bother investing into it, as I had more important things to put my materials into than seed satchels. Arrow quivers, on the other hand, received the full upgrading experience. One related gripe regarding the process whenever a bug or upgrade treasure is found for the first time in each and every playthrough, the game deems it necessary to pause the game, just stop it dead, and repost the information we've seen thousands of times before before letting us continue. Even if you collect a given bug, go save your game, quit, enter back in five minutes later and collect another of that same bug type, the game will once again pause the game and give its full description of what that bug is. And it does that with each and every type of bug, and each and every type of upgrade treasure you find. I think I've got a good handle on what items do what when the last dungeon in the game is looming on the horizon.
And why, oh why are we limited to selling only 4 types of treasure or bugs at a time? Randomly selected, at that?
Also, why are we over a decade past the turn of the 21st century and there's STILL no voice acting in a Zelda game? Before any ultra-hardcore Zelda purists (read: Raving psychopaths) start breaking their keyboards pounding away their righteous fury at how voice acting would somehow break the "holy sanctity" of the game, or start talking about how that'd turn Zelda into another mass-marketed series that only wants to turn a buck, let me stop you right there. First of all, every video game, regardless of when it was made or the genre it was built for, is a mass-marketed game, intended for a business to make a profit. Second of all, again, note the year we're in. It's time for voice acting, already. Should it be good? Absolutely. But for the last time, start giving voices to the characters. Reading text is boring. Boring is bad. And considering the sheer amount of written dialogue... the sheer amount of BAD dialogue.......
One last thing on the subject I'm not sure why Nintendo would think we'd need tutorials if we're playing on Hard Mode, given that we have to go through the entire game once to access said mode. I wanted to say "I think I've got a good handle on this, thanks!" more times than I would care to admit.
And that stamina bar? That has to go.
8.0/10
Replayability There's a Hard Mode after the game's completed once, but like every other Zelda game, Skyward Sword is completely linear in fashion no branching story lines, no moral choices with long-term consequences that dynamically change the story, nothing like that. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt, as it shows evidence that Nintendo has listened to its fans decrying the easy difficulty of its previous Zelda games.
5/10
All in all a good experience. I'm not going to say if it's better or worse than Ocarina of Time or Twilight Princess, because nostalgia can cloud an otherwise objective point of view. So, it's a good game in and of itself. Hopefully when the next Nintendo console comes out, they'll have given something more responsive and dependable than the motion controls we have to put up with now. While control and general presentation issues do prevent the game from being perfect, or even as close to perfect as games are capable of becoming, it's a solid entry in the Zelda series and one of the best games the Wii has to offer.
Overall: 8/10 (NOT an average of the other scores.)
Graphics: 8/10
Sound: 9/10
Controls: 3.5/10
Gameplay/Presentation: 8.5/10
Replay Value: 5/10
Overall score: 8/10
The story and characters present in Skyward Sword are very different among the other Zelda titles, despite the obvious recurring ones. I don't just mean the amazing setting of Link's home, Skyloft, a fantastical city floating above the clouds where everone is bonded to their own guardian birdlike creature, a loftwing. No, from the start, Nintendo truly changes almost everything of what you'd come to expect from a Zelda game. This is the earliest tale in the series chronologically, acting as a prequel, making way for Ocarina of Time's tale to come. Zelda is not a princess here, just another common schoolgirl. She and Link have been best friends since childhood, and may even have feelings for each other (it's pretty obvious, and incredibly touching. My wife and I were both pretty moved by it). In Skyloft, the local school is essentially a knights academy, the uniform being a tunic that is easily recognizable to fans of the series. After completing a ceremony to become a senior in his class (the senior tunic is, you guessed it, dark green), Zelda and Link ride together through the sky to celebrate. Out of nowhere, a malevolent tornado knocks Zelda to "the surface," a vast, unexplored land below the cloud cover and once again, Link takes up the mantle of being a fated hero, destined to save the day. I'll stop here, because this is virtually spoiler free and if I say more it won't be. Just know that Nintendo has really changed up the formula of story and characters we've come to expect from the Zelda franchise, and as a result, Skyward Sword feels incredibly refreshing.
Another immediately noticeable change is in presentation. The story is much, much more cinematic than Zelda has ever been. Cinematic shot angles are much more dynamic than ever before, character expression is stunning, animation is smooth and realistic, and the writing is just fantastic. If anything, this feels like a very intimate entry in the Zelda series, not just epic or grand like past titles. It's a lovely direction for the Zelda series, if you ask me. The characters all come to life thanks to this presentation, of course, but the writing present certainly helps too. Each character has so much personality, and talking to each of them is a joy. Link is a somewhat distracted dreamer with his head in the clouds, loves to sleep, but has tons of courage and kindness, a true hero. Accompanying him in his journey is Fi, a new kind of companion to the series. Fi looks like a ceramic doll, her "speech" sounds like GLaDOS, and is purely logic driven. She is amazing. Zelda is a strong-willed, tough tomboy of sorts, and very lovable. Lord Ghirahim, the new villain, is *extremely* compelling and creepy (Ganandorf makes no direct appearance). All of these characters, as well as the plethora of side characters, are written and presented beautifully.
The art design and graphical implementation is awesome here. The game has married the art design of two past masterpiece Zelda title styles into one wholly unique direction. You have more realistic people and settings, like in the dark, mature Twilight Princess, but you also have the vibrant color and imagination of The Wind Waker, and it is a joy to behold. Nintendo EAD designed the game to look like a water color painting, and I must say, they did a fantastic job doing so. Draw distances are fairly short, and anything beyond is purposely blurred to look exactly like a water-color painting of the impressionist style, full of brushstrokes of beautiful color. I am deeply impressed here. The Wii is a painfully underpowered system in comparison to its two competitors, but it is genius art design like this that shows why the Wii has had some of the most beautiful titles of this generation (Metroid Prime 3, Muramasa: The Demon Blade, Super Mario Galaxy, Super Mario Galaxy 2, Okami, now this game, the list goes on and on). To put it succinctly, Skyward Sword is one of the most beautiful games in recent memory, and that is totally thanks to the absolutely brilliant (and well implemented) art design.
Koji Kondo and Hajime Wakai; any fan of Nintendo will instantly recognize these names as two of the greatest musical composers of video gaming. They are almost unrivaled as composers, writing some of the most iconic music in the entire medium. Koji worked as musical supervisor in this title (as well as composed the main theme and some other songs). Hajime was in charge of music composition. This may be, and I *do not* say this lightly, some of their very best work yet. The music here ranges from the entire spectrum of musical emotion: epic, intimate, touching, sad, meditative, dark, joyous, achingly beautiful, uplifting, goofy/doofy (for a certain character), anything you can imagine. Each theme, whether for an event, a character, a place, whatever, is absolutely perfect for its place and can greatly change depending on the situation. It takes something special for music to not only define the experience for any gamer playing the game, but also convey the emotion and thought its supposed to, and the soundtrack here does so perfectly. Like most Zelda games, Link acquires a musical instrument that helps progress the story (Ocarina of time had... well... duh. Wind Waker had a baton), here it is a harp. You can play it at any time, and when you do, you can actually accompany the beautiful background music of wherever you happen to be on the harp. That's very, very cool. Great job Koji and Hajime! You're amazing.
The gameplay is what you're probably the most curious about. Does the Wii-Motion Plus work? Yes, it does very well, for the most part. You'll have to deal with calibration from time to time, sometimes actions won't register the way you hoped, but it's not too big a deal and doesn't happen nearly enough to mar the experience. The 1:1 swordplay works pretty flawlessly once you become acquainted with it. Link will seamlessly swing his sword however you do. Horizontal, vertical, diagonal, it all works quite well. Pretty much every enemy you will encounter will require a different strategy to defeat, and I have found that the swordplay grows more enthralling with each hour I play (Boss fights are outstanding). It took me quite a while to get used to it, but I must say that this is truly the game the Wii was made nearly six years ago for. It's about time. The quest items you'll find are also a blast to use. They give you some new ones right off the bat, and they're all awesome, feeling completely new yet appropriate for the franchise. Also, Link now has stamina that runs out as he climbs and dashes throughout the world (yes, Link can now sprint around if you'd like). Link's stamina actually adds a small layer of strategic depth to the game, and the concept comes into play in many scenarios throughout the game. This gameplay concept worried me at first, but it's actually really enjoyable, and implemented excellently.
So far, I have been through three temples in about 20 hours (I bought my copy at a midnight release "party" and have been playing ever since). Gone is the field-dungeon-field formula of past titles. Instead, here you have a hub world, the realm above the clouds, with Skyloft as your main town to visit. Here you can restock supplies, buy or upgrade your shield and other equipment using items you've scavenged in your questing rpg-style, and go on very personal side quests that feel very much like Majora's Mask did, making for a character-driven experience. A great change of formula, one I was *very* skeptical about beforehand.
You can ride your loftwing and drop to the surface world below at key rifts in the clouds. Here, you have more concentrated lands you can adventure through until you get to a dungeon/temple that will advance the story. The world below, and its temples, feel quite a lot like the Metroid series. The land is more condensed and concentrated, feeling like dungeon of sorts by themselves, but as you acquire newer items, more and more dimensions will open up in those places as you revisit them. It's a huge change-up to the Zelda formula, but one that feels surprisingly good. As I've said, I've played through three temples so far and I am amazed at the ingenuity of them. Yes, you'll be pushing blocks and shooting targets to open doors, but you'll also encounter brilliant new puzzles. I mean, the puzzles are challenging and downright laugh-inducing in their ingenuity, and feel very satisfying when you figure them out. Combine this with the totally awesome new items, stellar swordplay, and ease of use and you get the feeling that every area feels like an innovation, in much the same way playing through Super Mario Galaxy 2 felt like standing before a firing squad of brilliant new ideas. I am downright astonished. I did not think it could be done, honestly, but this game really has reinvigorated the series through great change to the formula rather than refining it further like Twilight Princess did, and trust me when I say no one is more surprised than me.
This is a brilliant game, even among the other entries in what has been for 25 years a brilliant series. It takes Zelda in a plethora of new directions, while miraculously feeling *exactly* like a true-to-form Zelda game. Color me surprised. If you're a fan of Zelda, then you don't need me to tell you to go get this right now. This series has some of the most diehard fans of any gaming franchise out there, but just for emphasis' sake, I proudly, and loudly proclaim that this game is incredible! Buy it, soar through the realms above, and dive to the vast, mysterious lands below and fulfill your destiny to save the world once again!
* I know this review is quite long, but honestly, this game has so much that merits attention, the review could be much, much longer and still be appropriate. I will edit my review as I play through the game more if I feel there is something worth mentioning that I come across. However, I feel that this is a pretty good summary that hopefully gives you a good picture of the game. Seriously, go get it, like, right now. You won't regret it.
Final Update, 11/27/11:
Ok, after playing the game for roughly 50 hours I have finally beaten Skyward Sword. In short, this game is an absolute masterpiece. Each and every hour spent in this game was filled to the brim with brilliance and excellence, and not one single minute felt like boring filler that artificially extended the game. This feels like the Super Mario Galaxy 2 of Zelda titles, where there seems to be an exciting new gameplay/puzzle element at every turn. The story is incredible, with a lot of twists that genuinely thrilled and surprised me. This game essentially acts as an origin story for the entire Zelda series. Pretty much every element that you're familiar with from Zelda games see their true origin here, and it is spectacular (I won't give any spoilers though, you'll be blown away when you experience it for yourself). I have to say that I have not been this entranced and enthralled by a Zelda game since Ocarina of Time or The Wind Waker, and I am a HUGE fan of pretty much every entry in the entire Zelda series, so I don't say that lightly. The music is among the series' very best, which by itself is a massive accomplishment. The visuals the art design are incredibly beautiful, some of the most gorgeous and brilliantly inspired of the past decade, despite the underpowered system it is on. Because of all of this, I was compelled to play this constantly until beating it, AND there's a new game plus mode that adds substantially to the game as well! For fans of the series, this game is an immediate must-own. I give it the highest recommendation possible. I absolutely love this game, and I'm fairly certain most of you out there will too.
*That's my final statement. This is meant to finalize the points I made from my original review, which I think will be as detailed and informative as anyone would want or need. Thank you for taking the time to read my review. Good day. :)
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This game is a prequel to all of the other Zelda games in which we find Link is a trainee knight of Skyloft, a town floating high above the clouds where Zelda is not yet a Princess. This is a unique and original adventure that intentionally tries to break apart from the franchise trend.The sword is Motion-Plus genius in that what you do in real life is exactly mirrored on screen - in combat there is a perfect 1:1 balance I have not seen in any other wii game. You can wave your sword around while waiting for an opening to strike or just flail it around with perfect precision. Nearly every enemy requires a specific sword technique to defeat it although there aren't a ton of enemies in this game, each one offers a unique challenge.
Each item is quickly enabled with the remote so there is not much pausing to go through menu pages. Aiming with the slingshot or bow is much easier since you are using the wii motion-plus. Occasionally the controls will be slightly off, but a quick downward tap of the d-pad resets the pointer.
While there are only 3 unique worlds, you find yourself going back to these worlds repeatedly throughout the game as you gain new tools to unlock different areas. You are also able to freely go back to Skyloft to buy items, assist townspeople and do many other quests.
The dungeons are unique and flow naturally. In previous games, dungeons were basically designed for one item, but not this time -you must use many items in every quest, which makes for a nice challenge and improves upon the level design.
Music is always central in a Zelda game, and Skyward Sword doesn't disappoint -where Skyward Sword finally uses orchestral music for the first time. On a side note, the CD that comes with the game has songs covering the entire history of the series and is of high quality and production, but in all reality I likely won't play it more than once. Skyward Sword has been rendered using an art style that places it somewhere in between The Wind Waker and Twilight Princess and while that sounds weird, it is an improvement on the previous titles.
I have played for many hours already and knowing this is a 40+ hour game is all the more satisfying knowing that I got my money's worth. (I actually received the game Saturday 11/19 after pre-ordering from Wal-mart and have been playing non-stop).
Yes, there are minor quibbles to be had with motion control inconsistencies, small variety of enemies, and occasional camera issues, but this is a masterpiece of modern gaming. This IS the game the WII was made for! Must buy. (9.8 / 10)
**** UPDATE 11/23/11 *****
I have just hit the 35 hour mark and have yet to actually beat the main adventure. This has been one of the most exciting games I have played in years!
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I would like to begin my review by stating that I'm a gamer. I play PC games, console exclusive games, and portable games. I treat all platforms equally and only judge the content. In addition, I'm fortunate enough to have been alive and well pre, during, and post the golden age of gaming.Visuals:
The new visual direction is amazing and it works. It's art! Everyone has their own option and some will disagree and that's OK. But it works for me and I was impressed. It's a blend between cel shading and the more realistic approach art direction of Twilight Princess with a touch of water paint.
Sound:
I really enjoyed the music scores and sound effects. Again, it's my opinion and some will really like it and some won't. Everyone has different tastes.
Gameplay:
Simply put, one of the greatest aspects of the game. The controls work and are implemented very well. This particular game can't be played with a regular controller because there are gameplay elements that make that impossible. Motion controls adds another level of satisfaction that a person can't get any other way.
This particular game has changed the "Zelda formula". If you've played other iterations of the game, you'll notice the difference early on. There is now a central hub from where you will branch off to complete various tasks including side quests. In addition, the dungeon designs are genius.
There is a crafting system in place that works very well. Though it's basic in comparison to other games, it works very well and adds another level of greatness to the game.
Presentation:
I would love to see a Zelda game with the full glory of voice acting (some will disagree with me) but this game sticks to the traditional text bubbles. And you know what? It still works. Especially because of one particular reason, elaborate facial expressions. It's done extremely well and it fits.
The game interface works well but can get very clunky. Thankfully, there is an option to make most of it invisible.
In conclusion, this new Zelda game simultaneously feels new and familiar. In my humble opinion, it's better than Ocarina of Time which makes it the greatest game ever created.
If you own a Wii, this game is a "must have". If you don't, this game should be the reason to purchase one.
Honest reviews on The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword with Music CD
**Disclaimer: For some Zelda fans patrolling Amazon reviews in order to defend the franchise's name from negative experiences from other players, this review may be another outlet for your negative feedback**I have played all the major console releases of Zelda, starting with Ocarina of Time. Words cannot fully encapsulate the range of emotion or the imaginative zeal that resulted from playing through Ocarina, and it definitely started a love for the Legend of Zelda games to follow. From Majora's Mask to Wind Waker to Twilight Princess, we finally arrive to Skyward Sword, the 25th Anniversary of the franchise. How does it stack up to its predecessors? Personally, I feel there are strengths and weaknesses in what I think makes a Legend of Zelda game, and these feelings are based directly on my past history and experiences with the previous titles.
Pros:
Controls. Personally, I don't think that WiiMotion+ has ever been better. Smaller titles like WiiSports Resort showcased the ability of Motion+ on a smaller scale-The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword has Wii Motion+ fully grafted into the controls of the game to rather accurately manipulate items (primarily, Link's sword) on your quest. As opposed to Twilight Princess' Wii Remote integration into the game, Skyward Sword makes the user feel dramatically more in control.
Story. Every Legend of Zelda game seems to bring something new to the world in terms of background for the hero, the princess, and the evil which pits itself against them: Ocarina revolved around age; Majora's Mask revolved around time; Wind Waker revolved around water; Twilight Princess revolved around realm; and Skyward Sword appropriately revolves around a land in the sky. The makers of Zelda did not disappoint when it came to an innovative and novel story-while Legend of Zelda elements exist, the backdrop surrounding them are fresh enough to revitalize approaches to solving puzzles and to interact with the world on a general level.
Characters. Besides the key characters associated with every Zelda story, Skyward Sword provides certain individuals who are dynamic and progress as the story develops. Even more appreciating than their ability to change, these characters are a large part dependent on your interaction with them in order for their own growth, making you feel like a real agent of change with the sidequests you undergo for them. This feeling of "belonging" with the NPCs of the game models the experience of the characters in Wind Waker, and a departure from the lesser relationships in Twilight Princess. A part of this feeling stems from limited options of responding positively or negatively (and not just "yes" or "no") in certain dialogued conversations.
Land. As with story, the land is creative and new. The regions that you explore resemble the traditional types of areas found in all Zelda games, and yet the names and faces of what you think you ought to meet are different enough to further instigate the feeling of newness and discovery. Also as with other Zelda games, the different regions of Skyward Sword are not fully accessible at the beginning without later equipment, depending on your own search for rare items apart from the storyline-it's a sense of adventure.
Equipment. The past three major console installments of The Legend of Zelda incorporated innovative weapons and items (alongside traditional ones) into their gameplay, and skyward sword is no exception. These added weapons are well utilized throughout the game, whether it be for dungeon bosses and puzzles, traveling to new areas, or fighting the various grunt monsters. Furthermore, the addition of the WiiMotion+ promotes both integration and ease for these novel items, and that includes the elimination of the item-select pause screen in order to select your item in real-time, on the fly. That addition alone is a major benefit and separates this Zelda title from its previous siblings.
Replay Value. You can repeat the game after you have beaten it in Hero's Mode with enemies that deal twice amount of damage and do not drop hearts (additionally, the grass found in dungeons also do not drop hearts), challenging your skill and use of potions to survive. Your progress resets, allowing you to re-experience the game from the beginning (however, treasures you found in the previous saved game file do transfer).
And now my complaints. Although there are no plot spoilers, other elements of the game may be necessarily discussed.
Cons:
Controls. Having been the product of the previous game's button-mashing and combo-utilizing of traditional controllers, I was and still am a cautious gamer with the Wii's interactive controls. Like I stated on the positive side, WiiMotion+ has never been better; it's true: I swing horizontally and so does my sword, I swing vertically and so does my sword, and so on. HOWEVER, a problem arises considering the pace of the game and this control scheme. For solving puzzles where time is no issue or wandering through the various environments, the small flaws of Motion+ are really no issue. Yet, when you are in a more intense situation fighting an enemy and are supposed to swing a certain way, I find that it is really hard to be consciously aware of how your nunchuck is placed, or even if your directional swing with the Wii remote is correctly balanced; too often has my thrusting motion with the remote been misinterpreted as a circular swing because my nunchuck wasn't positioned in a certain way-it is in these fast-paced fighting situations like these where skirmishes are unnecessarily prolonged because you are not hitting the enemy the proper way/direction. Slowly attacking your target while trying to make sure the controls are in the right places takes away a considerable amount of the feeling of a real battle situation.
Story. Perhaps I had higher expectations since this is indeed the 25th anniversary of the franchise, but I only found the storyline decent at best. Similar to Twilight Princess, the buildup surrounding the antagonist was just not as personal or emotionally-stirring as it was with Ocarina of Time (for reasons you will understand when you play the game). The result of such (which I would argue as a critical component) only gives the sense of getting the job done or completing a task rather than abolishing an evil you can really relate to. Although it has been stated that this game precedes Ocarina of Time, I don't find that fact enough excuse to neglect the relationship between the small hope of good versus the imminent dominance of evil.
Characters. My problem with the relationship between good and evil has already been stated above. [Non-plot spoiler] Being the traditional Zelda gamer and fan, I took real issue to the eradication of the Goron and Zora species. True, there are about three Gorons in the game, but as a species, both the Gorons and Zoras were strangely absent (unless you want to count the Floria Lake fish as Zoras). This can again be explained by the fact that this game precedes Ocarina of Time, or is in a different land area, however this game goes against its constituents (you could also put Wind Waker in the same camp, as interaction between Gorons and Zoras were also severely limited) by not having either staple species play a prominent role in the game. I have no problem with the species they introduced in this game, and I know this will be a small quibbling point to some-but Gorons and Zoras have been a recurring part of the Legend as Link himself. The dungeon bosses also need to be mentioned. I have never been less intimidated by the bosses of the Legend of Zelda than I have in this game. They just do not look the part of hideousness or scare that has been reproduced with every Zelda game. I found myself fighting a large purple Tellytubby with Jamaican dreads for one of the bosses-the bosses failed to do their part to add to blood-rush or intensity and looked like a misguided band of creatures on Sesame Street.
Land. Contrary to games like Twilight Princess or Wind Waker, the land of Skyward Sword felt restricted. That's not to neglect all the extended areas made possible by certain parts of the game/equipment; however, as was made known before its release, the non-dungeon areas of skyward sword were largely created to blur the field-dungeon distinction and make even the field-areas more like dungeons. As a result of this, the large-world feel of adventure that one received through Twilight Princess is limited to more puzzle-based interaction with Skyward Sword. This dried the wonder aspect given through "adventure-awe" and hyped up more critical thinking in these areas of exploration.
Equipment. The only real weakness to the equipment in this game pertains to shields. Unlike the other major console games, shields are breakable (and I'm not talking about a burnable deku shield). After so many hits the shield begins to break, indicated by a status bar on the screen. This poses quite the problem considering that shields can be upgraded through finding various treasures; if your shield breaks, that's it. You have to go and buy the initial shield you upgraded from and redo all of your upgrading. It can be a real hassle.
Replay Value. This is more of a personal point but for every Zelda game, I look for replay value similar to Wind Waker in which you keep certain items, have a modified look, and are able to accomplish additional content upon your first beat of the game; it adds to interaction and the feel of the game. I have not played through all of Hero's mode yet, but I do not think it will amount to the replay scope of Wind Waker.
Concluding Thoughts:
If you have read all the above wordage, then maybe you have deduced the underlying problem I had with this game: psychology. All other Zelda games I have played had intensity and scariness from bosses, a feeling of hopelessness against a larger evil, wonder and amazement at new-land discovery, as well as other meaningful emotional ties with NPCs. If Skyward Sword did these things, they were either severely under-played out or were just for the wrong reasons. It is because of the psychological distance this Zelda game has from the others that I would go so far as to say that it didn't really feel like a Legend of Zelda game-and certainly not one of 25th anniversary caliber.
Would I recommend you buy this game? Yes. For the experience. Because underneath all of these flaws, it is still a Legend of Zelda game and worth at least your initial investment. But do not expect this game to be all of what you have come to know the franchise to be, for the reasons already stated. While the creators focused on championing WiiMotion+ for the Zelda experience, they neglected needed attention on the key aspects that makes a Legend of Zelda game a Legend of Zelda game. If Nintendo continues along this same vein with Zelda in the years to come, perhaps we won't make it to another 25th anniversary down the road.
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So I recently finished Zelda: Skyward Sword. I originally got it for Christmas but didn't really pick it up until recently, what with the Mass Effect 3 face glitch (simply will not play until I can play as my Shepard!) All in all, it's a good game. It's even a good Zelda game. But still far from perfect.Graphics I'm not going to get in depth with graphics because as we all know, the Wii uses last gen hardware, and so graphics aren't going to be all that great. They're pretty comparable to Twilight Princess despite the game being 5 years newer than its predecessor. That's all that needs to be said on that. It gets an 8 (average) because it's average in terms of what we expect from a Wii title.
8/10
Sound Sound is very good. I enjoyed most of the music the game had to offer. I didn't think the song playing between the water dragon's cave and the entrance to the second forest temple fit too well in a Zelda game, but hardly brings it down all that much. The song for the end credits was a good homage to the original entries in the Zelda series. For some reason Nintendo still has sounds it delegates to that monotone speaker in the Wiimote controller, though.
9/10
Controls And speaking of controls, this is where the game takes a big black eye. I was hoping that after Twilight Princess, Nintendo would've seen fit to focus less on motion controls. Instead, they made an even heavier emphasis on said motion control. The motion control scheme sounds good on paper swing your Wiimote to swing your sword, aim your Wiimote at the screen to aim your bow, etc. but it doesn't prove so good in execution. It proves to be cumbersome, unwieldy, imprecise and in some cases, maddening. At least in TP, you had a fairly small set of moves, each distinguishable from each other. In this game, just with the sword alone, you have horizontal strikes, vertical strikes and diagonal strikes, two of each, in fact, and many enemies where only one set will work, the others fail, and the controller is so hairline sensitive that it's far too easy to do a vertical slash when I needed a diagonal, or a horizontal slash turns into a ham fisted shaking of my sword, or a forward jab results in the enemy laughing at Link's inability to produce the same result. If I'm fighting a boss, I want to do that fight the boss. I don't want to be fighting both the boss and my controller because it thinks I want to do something completely ineffective. This is especially true when having to manage that awful whip weapon, especially seeing as how both it and the sword rely on the same controls, so using the one when you need the other is far too easy, especially when fighting the boss found in the dungeon where you get the whip. The boss himself isn't hard it's the fact that you have to fumble around with the controls almost as much as you do fight it. But the most damning of all is the tilt controls. The tilt functions (yes, plural) are found everywhere in the game. You need tilt to free fall, you need tilt to swim, you need tilt to control your free-flight Beetle, you need tilt when flying on your mount (and the tutorial for flying the mount is misleading tilting up on your Wiimote does not I repeat DOES NOT cause your mount to fly up. You need to "flap" the controller to do that, yet this is never mentioned in the tutorial,) so suffice it to say, you're going to be tilting a lot. There's a reason why Sony's Sixaxis was a colossal failure. It's a simple enough question why use tilt when you have the thumbstick a much easier, more reliable, more easily reproducable, more fine tuned control system than tilt could ever be? Somebody might respond that Nintendo wanted to take full advantage of the WiiMotion Plus. It's understandable if they want to showcase its capability, but not to the point where that's the one and only consideration at ANY AND ALL COST. That desire has to be tempered and balanced with a consideration towards how well the game will play if the controls are cumbersome, it's time to make some changes. I've yet to read an unbiased review for this game anywhere that didn't have at least one mention of the control scheme giving issues. Having no option to change the sensitivity hurt this score as well.
3.5/10
Gameplay and Presentation As controls directly affect gameplay, it is impossible to give a perfect score in this category. But despite that, the game is still fun. Nintendo promised that they were moving away from the Zelda games of old, and... to some extent they succeed. Many of the conventions we expect to see in Zelda games are still intact, but they did throw us a few new curve balls. The second trip to the desert was probably my favorite dungeon, despite having to find an invisible and actively moving target, and what sold me on it was what happened immediately before the actual boss fight begins, as it's not something that a Zelda game's done before. (At least, that I'm aware of.) A common enough convention in other games, sure, but I wasn't expecting what they did with that particular dungeon so I will give them kudos. A certain other boss you have to stop from reaching its destination was another good twist.
On a sidenote with the gameplay, I almost wish I could give Link the t-shirt that says "Let me just drop everything and work on YOUR PROBLEM", as the townsfolk, like always, are needing his help with everything. It's probably a good thing that we can't interject our own personality into the main character, because I'd probably tell them, "Okay, I'm in the middle of trying to find my childhood friend, someone dear to me, who's gone missing and whose life is in serious danger. I'm also trying to stop an evil entity from breaking out of its prison and destroying the entire planet. There's also a magic-wielding sociopath who wants find my childhood friend for his own nefarious schemes and kill me in the process. But SURE, I'll be glad to dust your house/find your (Fill in prized possession here)/go fetch something you could easily get yourself for you, since you don't want to do it! Not like I've got anything important going on, right?"
I do feel the need to bring this up as well the dialogue feels like it's straight out of a Saturday morning cartoon. A lot of us have been playing Zelda games since the first one when we were kids, and so I do not know why there's yet to be a Zelda game with dialogue that is on the level. This is especially evident with the first dialogue with Link, Zelda and her father. And I'm not saying there should be the kind of dialogue we have in Dragon Age, Skyrim or Game of Thrones, but is it so much to ask to have a script that isn't cheesier than the state of Wisconsin? Ghirahim is far too much of a clown to be taken seriously. If Nintendo was trying to make a nuanced, sinister, disturbing villain out of him, then they failed at it miserably.
I do like Fi, however.... well, okay, SOMETIMES I like Fi her emotionally neutral, overly analytical, almost computer-like speech is humorous, especially with how oblivious she remains to just how she sounds. Now if she'd just stop reminding me that my batteries or health are low.... or if she'd stop saying something that's either blatantly obvious, or give away the solution to the puzzle 30 seconds after I've encountered it.... she could at times be more annoying than Navi, and that's saying something.
Nintendo did get both the intro and ending right. Considering those are the two most important elements of the story (especially the later) I will give them credit where credit is due.
And I really hope Skyward Sword is the first and last Zelda game where our mount is a flying bird. This is Zelda, not StarFox.
Upgrading makes its debut, and it's a good addition. Get some supplies from the enemies, upgrade your shield or other item(s.) I do not know why the Slingshot is still a weapon in this series, however. It was obsolete the moment the Beetle was found (longer range and no ammo to collect) and twice obsolete when the bow is collected (why use a sling when you have a bow and arrow?) I didn't bother investing into it, as I had more important things to put my materials into than seed satchels. Arrow quivers, on the other hand, received the full upgrading experience. One related gripe regarding the process whenever a bug or upgrade treasure is found for the first time in each and every playthrough, the game deems it necessary to pause the game, just stop it dead, and repost the information we've seen thousands of times before before letting us continue. Even if you collect a given bug, go save your game, quit, enter back in five minutes later and collect another of that same bug type, the game will once again pause the game and give its full description of what that bug is. And it does that with each and every type of bug, and each and every type of upgrade treasure you find. I think I've got a good handle on what items do what when the last dungeon in the game is looming on the horizon.
And why, oh why are we limited to selling only 4 types of treasure or bugs at a time? Randomly selected, at that?
Also, why are we over a decade past the turn of the 21st century and there's STILL no voice acting in a Zelda game? Before any ultra-hardcore Zelda purists (read: Raving psychopaths) start breaking their keyboards pounding away their righteous fury at how voice acting would somehow break the "holy sanctity" of the game, or start talking about how that'd turn Zelda into another mass-marketed series that only wants to turn a buck, let me stop you right there. First of all, every video game, regardless of when it was made or the genre it was built for, is a mass-marketed game, intended for a business to make a profit. Second of all, again, note the year we're in. It's time for voice acting, already. Should it be good? Absolutely. But for the last time, start giving voices to the characters. Reading text is boring. Boring is bad. And considering the sheer amount of written dialogue... the sheer amount of BAD dialogue.......
One last thing on the subject I'm not sure why Nintendo would think we'd need tutorials if we're playing on Hard Mode, given that we have to go through the entire game once to access said mode. I wanted to say "I think I've got a good handle on this, thanks!" more times than I would care to admit.
And that stamina bar? That has to go.
8.0/10
Replayability There's a Hard Mode after the game's completed once, but like every other Zelda game, Skyward Sword is completely linear in fashion no branching story lines, no moral choices with long-term consequences that dynamically change the story, nothing like that. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt, as it shows evidence that Nintendo has listened to its fans decrying the easy difficulty of its previous Zelda games.
5/10
All in all a good experience. I'm not going to say if it's better or worse than Ocarina of Time or Twilight Princess, because nostalgia can cloud an otherwise objective point of view. So, it's a good game in and of itself. Hopefully when the next Nintendo console comes out, they'll have given something more responsive and dependable than the motion controls we have to put up with now. While control and general presentation issues do prevent the game from being perfect, or even as close to perfect as games are capable of becoming, it's a solid entry in the Zelda series and one of the best games the Wii has to offer.
Overall: 8/10 (NOT an average of the other scores.)
Graphics: 8/10
Sound: 9/10
Controls: 3.5/10
Gameplay/Presentation: 8.5/10
Replay Value: 5/10
Overall score: 8/10
Saturday, June 7, 2014
Buy Skylanders Spyro's Adventure Warnado
Warnado was in the last batch of Skylanders Spyro's Adventure characters released for the first Skylanders Spyro's Adventure series. Love playing the character and it's even a good character in Skylanders Giants and Skylanders Battlegrounds. Warnado is a blue spiked turtle that is a air element. In Skylanders Spyro's Adventure Warnado can be leveled up to level 10 and up to level 15 in Skylanders Giants.
Here are the starting and maximum stats for the console version of Skylanders Spyro's Adventure games.
Health: 310 (max. 620)
Speed: 35 (max. 83)
Armor: 30 (max. 100)
Critical Hit: 10 (max. 60)
Elemental Power: 25 (max. 100)
Power Stats:
Strength: 50
Agility: 70
Defense: 90
Luck: 45
Here are the starting and maximum stats for the console version of Skylanders Spyro's Adventure games.
Health: 310 (max. 620)
Speed: 35 (max. 83)
Armor: 30 (max. 100)
Critical Hit: 10 (max. 60)
Elemental Power: 25 (max. 100)
Power Stats:
Strength: 50
Agility: 70
Defense: 90
Luck: 45
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Camo, Warnado, and others are starting to come out a lot more in stores now, I just picked one up at Game Crazy for $10. I can't tell if the crazies are serious about the high prices or not but you should start to see more coming out soon. I can't imagine anyone buying this for more than $15, but I guess you just don't know.Best Deals for Skylanders Spyro's Adventure Warnado
This was bought for my grandson, as he loves playing Skylanders. He has just about all of them and the ones he does not have, he will have soon, I'm sure!Honest reviews on Skylanders Spyro's Adventure Warnado
My Son loves this game! Warnado ended up being the last character he needed to complete his collection for the original game.Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for Skylanders Spyro's Adventure Warnado
My son was so excited when this arrived as he has saved his allowance money for this. Good price and product in good shape.Wednesday, April 23, 2014
Thrustmaster T-Flight Stick X Flight Stick - PC Reviews
List Price: $29.99
Sale Price: $29.98
Today's Bonus: $0.01 Off
Basically, they took everything that could be improved about the old Fox II Pro and improved it--added more buttons, more than MW4 could recognize, but whose fault was that? LABELED them, how lovely, and the feel and balance are otherwise much the same. Good, robust, reasonably priced unit, very glad I gambled (mildly) on a new product.
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This is a great joystick. Just need more ps3 games to use it with. Excellent for blazing angels, tough for warhawk though. Controls can be remapped for different games with a chip inside to save settings.A definite recommendation.Best Deals for Thrustmaster T-Flight Stick X Flight Stick - PC
Great stick for a decent price. Good quality and features.I used the 2 day delivery, it arrived on time. The stick has an USB cord and the nice eazy option of a switch to chainge from a PS3 or PC, T-Flight, Stick X. A very happy customer.PS3/PC T-Flight Stick X.[[ASIN:B00154GXZQ T-Flight Stick X for PC & PS3
Honest reviews on Thrustmaster T-Flight Stick X Flight Stick - PC
T-Flight Stick X for PC & PS3 had fox2pro stick for a year of steady use and was happy with it. this is the new version with more buttons (some are quite awkward to use). shape and lightness of the stick are same as fox2 but heard an unwelcome crunch after only 3 weeks. part of the auto-centering ring inside broke and my stick now leans right if let go. pretty much unuseable now.Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for Thrustmaster T-Flight Stick X Flight Stick - PC
I've been a flight-sim enthusiast for 5 years (FSX and IL-2: 1946 Dark Blue World,) but found that the controller I was using (a leftover X-Box 360 Pad) didn't give me the "realistic" feel of flight. I'd purchased another joystick a few years back (Logitech Extreme 3-D Pro) and it wouldn't work with Windows Vista no matter what I tried. Thanks to that frustrating experience, it was with great hesitation that I purchased this joystick. I'm very happy to say that my hesitation was completely unfounded! This Thrustmaster T-Flight X Stick has been an absolute JOY to play, and has truly transformed the many hours I spend flying into a challenging, very rewarding experience. I'll now list the PROS:Truly a "plug n' play" stick. I simply plugged this into an external port on the back of my desktop computer, and within a minute, it had automatically located and downloaded the necessary drivers. I turned on my sim, assigned functions to the myriad buttons, and bingo I was flying! (By the way, I have Windows 7 64-bit...)
Ergonomically well-designed. It literally fits my hand like a glove. The resistance is correct and firm with the turn of a wheel located under the base, and the bomb, rocket, and gun buttons are easily ready to hand. The throttle, trim, and rudder function (twist the stick for L or R rudder) are perfectly designed and very sensitive, and likewise thoughtfully located. Quite handily, the throttle button has a small "notch" built in that allows the throttle to lightly click into place at 55% power, a generally good setting for cruise power on most aircraft. The number of buttons corresponds well with the essentials of all necessary flight regimes and weapons functions of most sims. I even had a couple of extra buttons left over until I could come up with some keyboard functions to transfer to the stick.
It has a good weight about it. It doesn't move or slide around, and with the help of some 99-cent Velcro strips, I firmly attached it to the throttle stand I built. It doesn't go anywhere unless I purposely move it. It now sits comfortably in-between my legs, just like a real WWII or Korean War-era Jet. With a nice, large screen, I quickly feel totally immersed in aerial battle.
Now would be where I'd list the CONS, but I don't really have any to list! The only thing I'd tell the designers is, on the next version, perhaps redesign the throttle button so the "dip" for the left hand's thumb faces in the opposite direction towards my front, and not off to the side. It's not a huge pain, but it would make this stick that much more perfect in my opinion. Likewise, a resistance adjustment wheel for the throttle would be nice. I'm also considering opening the bottom panel and seeing if there is enough room inside to add some lead weights, just for the hell of it and because I like to tinker with all things mechanical...
In sum, I highly recommend this stick. I couldn't be more pleased with it, and the price is definitely right! When I was shopping for a stick, I didn't see any others that felt this good and had this many buttons within the $30 price range. I was getting really bored of playing with the X-Box pad, so this breathed renewed life into my flight-simming experience.
Sunday, April 6, 2014
Reviews of Playstation 2 MLB New York Yankees Wireless Game Pad
Sometimes Amazon is a great tool & sometimes its just a TOOL This CONTROLLER Isn't A GAME But They Make You review it as such anyhow. This controller(Esp. for the price) is well worth it, does the job & the only downside is it takes 3 non included AAA batteries. It does shut off for power saving reasons if unused for about 10 mins. or so. I didn't care about the stupid sports teams designs for the madcatz line but it was cheap & M.C. makes a good product, everything I ever bought from them has really done the job.
Discount LEGO Batman 2: DC Super Heroes - Playstation 3
List Price: $19.99
Sale Price: $17.64
Today's Bonus: 12% Off
OK. I'll start with the one and only bad remark I have about this game. They really missed the mark with the camera on this one. It's very jumpy and erratic in co-op and takes quite a bit of getting used to. They did include a very limited right stick camera control on this game, but it's usually dependent on how far away you are from your partner. The further away you are, the better the individual camera controls are.
My son and I have been putting the hours in on this game since we picked it up on Tuesday, and it's a blast. The voice acting adds to the humor in a way that was missing when all that the characters would say were "mmmm", "aaaah", and "tee-hee-hee". The dialogue is obviously simple since the target audience is young children, but even as a 40 year old adult, I found it to be pretty humorous; especially the Batman to Superman animosity mixed with the Robin to Superman hero worship angle.
The gameplay itself is pretty standard to Tt Lego games and is similar to the rest of the games. Levels seem to be a bit longer than usual which is good. The Gotham City open world is large and contains several side "missions" to collect bad guy characters and bricks, as well as follow ghost studs from story to story similar to Lego Harry Potter. You don't collect character tokens in this game, but get them through story mode and side fights similar to Lego Indiana Jones 2. Graphics are smooth and colorful. Cut-scenes are hilarious and well programmed.
If it wasn't for the camera I would have given this game 5 stars. It's not a huge issue, but is a hindrance sometimes. We did find one area where the camera actually caused an enemy to be hidden by one of our characters during a flight sequence, so we were stuck for quite a few minutes while trying to figure out why the game wasn't progressing. Other than that, we have made it up to Story Level 11 and haven't found any bugs or problems so far. However, we haven't done any free-play yet.
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This is a must have for any Lego game fan.Just a heads up if you are playing for the COOP fun (PS3 version, might be same on 360):
I've played every single Lego game, and I just noticed from the options menu that they removed the Horizontal and Vertical camera options.
It is now forced. I play the game with my wife and we usually turn off the dynamic camera because we start getting dizzy from running around etc... but noticed in this new game you can not turn off dynamic... its more forced now at certain areas. So far, we both love the game, but this is the first lego game that we are having a really hard to time playing together because of the camera issue.
Best Deals for LEGO Batman 2: DC Super Heroes - Playstation 3
A few years ago I played Lego StarWars and the first Lego Batman to death, to the point I thought I'd never want to play another Lego game. I was actually bored with Lego Harry Potter, Indiana Jones, and Pirates otC, but I am a super fan of DC so that convinced me to give Lego games another shot. While this was in no way the best DC game, it was easily my favorite of the Lego games yet.First to point out what needed improvement, a lot of the same issues that have plagued previous Lego games have STILL returned in this one. Problems like stupid auto camera angles that can make things difficult, random glitches where things don't trigger as they should, and the complete absence of AI in your sidekick. Flight is also really weird and hard to get used to as well, that would be a new Lego issue. you push forward expecting to float forward and instead go way too fast past what your trying to collect. Also, When I fly up in games I expect to pull back on the stick to go up, like in a plane. In this game that counts that as pushing down, and can't by changed, so I just had to get used to that.
Back to the issue of the sidekick AI, it may be worse in this then in any Lego game. He will just stand there and allow henchmen to run out and punch him to death, and won't always come to help with switches that require two people to activate. It's also annoying that when you collect a red/gold brick the game instantly saves, taking away your ability to defend yourself while you get beat to death. Although death never really matters in Lego games, since you just come right back. Lego games aren't about survival, they are more about the puzzle work.
Which is why it annoyed me a little when a video review I watched referred to Superman's flying battle as boring becuase he's invincible. HE'S SUPERMAN, If you want to constantly die then you can easily switch to Batman within the same battle, flying alongside in a helicopter, he's just human so he'll die as many times as you want.
So, I guess there's going to be people disappointed in this game becuase there is no failure, there is no game over, it's a cute, light-hearted, puzzle and collect game. If you crave death and loss then Lego is the wrong franchise for you.
My main allure to this was the addition of the whole Justice League as playable. the downside there is, this game has been so specifically weaved together with Batman and Robin's special suits in mind, that it seems as soon as you turn into Green Lantern or Flash in free play, something pops up that needs a special bat suit. Other characters like Sinestro, and Brainiac are in this as playable (YAY) but don't really have any weapon or power. There's also no online, and very little you and a friend can do with the new free roam world via split-screen. So it REALLY IS Lego Batman, not Lego Justice League, like I wanted it to be. However IF you take it like it is, as a Batman themed Lego game starring other members of the DCU, then it is quite enjoyable. The puzzles are not too challenging becuase this is a Lego game made for all ages. I don't mind NOT getting completely confused and lost in one place for hours, though there were a few times when I got stuck for a few minutes becuase I just forgot about one of the abilities of one of my available characters. I also don't expect the replay on this to be eternal, I powered through the story in about 8 hours, some of that time with friends. If you have more of a life and pace yourself with this game it could stand to last a good amount of time. Extreme Batman fans should all like this at least for a few play-throughs, though I hope Lego makes a more overall Justice League game in the future.
Honest reviews on LEGO Batman 2: DC Super Heroes - Playstation 3
I am admittedly a huge batman fan and ever since finishing up Batman Arkham City I've been wanting to find something to scratch the itch to play through as the dark knight. Lego Batman 2 definitely fits the bill. It's got actual voice-over work with its own fun story that is enjoyable for adults and kids alike. I was pleasantly surprised by just how big Gotham City is and how much there is to explore. The hours will fly by just driving/flying/running around just messing around with side activities or hunting for collectibles before even touching on the main storyline. The bonus is you get access to a huge roster of other characters other than Batman that each have their own unique powers true to their characters. For example Flash has super-speed and Superman is of course invulnerable and can fly, has heat vision, use x-ray vision, has superstrength and has ice breath. The icing on the cake for the fans is the old-school Superman theme music that plays whenever you take flight. There's a lot of fan service to DC Comics fans both old and young that really adds that extra layer of charm that you don't always see. There are some things that are a bit annoying like camera angles that aren't always the most convenient etc., but they are by no means going to ruin your experience of the game.Point is, if you too are a Batman and/or DC Comics fan looking for a fun game to play regardless of how old you are then Lego Batman 2 is a great purchase that I strongly recommend you pick up.
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Disclaimer: I've played Lego Batman (100%), Lego Pirates (100%) and Lego Star Wars Complete Saga (NOT 100%).I guess this would have to be my favorite Lego game thus far. I'm biased though, as I'm a Batman/JL geek.
When this game was announced, I knew the reason it wasn't called "Lego Justice League" or "Lego DC Universe" was because Batman equals money. The name alone would sell the game. After playing through the story, I realized why it wasn't called LJL or LDCU. It's because next to Batman (and Robin), only Superman gets any real attention.
If you choose to give this game a try because your favorite(s) is/are Martian Manhunter, Aquaman, Hawkman, Black Canary then take note: They are not playable in story mode. Flash, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, and Cyborg are only playable in 1-2 levels. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed. Still, the game was fun to play as Batman and Robin and Superman. The flight controls in the levels (and Batcave hub) are great. Zero complaints. The flight controls, however, in the open world Gotham City are terrible. Once you get used to switching between 'level flight' and 'Gotham flight' then flying in Gotham can be enjoyable if you're just cruising around or planning to land in a general location. Aiming to land on a skyscraper's roof or in a crevice can be a pain.
Collecting is fun and challenging, but tedious at times. The thing that I love most about the Lego games is that it requires different characters with 'unique' abilities to access areas or accomplish tasks. This game is thankfully no exception. The special suits that Batman & Robin acquire are an upgrade, even though half of Robin's look kind of blah to me. These special suits are no longer available while toggling through characters during free play which is great. Instead, the game gives you the option to put on a special suit close to where it's needed both in free play and the open world Gotham City.
The future: No doubt Traveller's Tales (and Lego) plan to make a Lego Marvel game (maybe individually for the Avengers, X-Men, and Spider-Man) and (un)fortunately they got to try out this new approach with Batman/DC. The good news could be that after doing some more Lego games and learning from the big (but few) mistakes of LB2: DCSH, we might get to see a Lego: Justice League game. Perhaps to coincide with the eventual release of the JL feature film that WB's planning. If they do, I truly hope they give a fair share of attention to the rest of the league members and not focus solely on Batman or Superman. We don't even need Robin in it for more than a cameo or just one level. Maybe give each member (or a pair of members) a level or two each until they group together for some bigger, ambitious levels. Also, they could lose at least of half of the Batman villains that have been in both these games. Bring more villains in for the other heroes to battle.
Lastly, I would stress that this is a great DC game. At least for Batman, Superman, and Robin. The voice acting is almost all great. I did think The Joker was a little subpar, but it's a minor dislike and it still beats the silent miming of ALL previous Lego games. Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes is an ambitious (for its series) game that's good for all ages who love these characters. The game is at least worth playing through the story once. As for me, I'm close to 80% and should have it all complete within no time.
Sunday, March 16, 2014
Reviews of Deus Ex: The Conspiracy
After HalfLife, Red Faction and Sons of Liberty I hardly expected to find another good FPS instead I found THE FPS! Deus Ex is one of the very few games I recommend buying. Unlike most games, which can be finished in a couple of days, Deus Ex goes on and on, 24/7, and isn't pre-determined it might be the only game that can be played totally differently by different players.
Also, the graphics are great. They don't look all that impressive at first glance, but during gameplay you notice little details and even if you play for hours straight, you don't get that queasy feeling, usually associated with FPS's.
There's an unbelievable amount of weapons and gadgets, but you have to choose which ones you want you're limited to a certain amount of weapons on you at a time, which makes the game more interesting.
Bottom line YOU MUST BUY THIS GAME!
Graphics: 6/10
The graphics on the PS2 version of this game are only just above average. At first glance they look and feel smooth and textured. But, if you zoom into any of the objects in the game then you will realise that they are made up of pixels about the size of football pitches. As for the smoothness, it only takes a small gun battle with about two or three enemy soldiers and this game begins to freeze and ju... jum. p, jump.
Sound: 10/10
This is what first 'Wowed' me about the game, the music is incredible and is worthy of a Grammy any day... well actually, I wouldn't go that far, but it's still great. The music changes appropriately with the mood of the game e.g. if you are in an intense sneaking area then the music won't start blaring out some kind of heavy rock like in some games. The sound effects are top notch and the guns don't sound whim perish either.
Game play: 10/10
This is where the game really gets its place in the gaming hall of fame for me because it gives you so much choice and you can choose exactly how you play the game. You can upgrade your weapons using things like scopes, laser sights, silencers, extended mags and faster reload mods etc. You can also improve your character with character modifications. These include melee weapon skill upgrades, defence upgrades and rifle upgrades etc. In addition to this you can use special augmentation canisters which allow you to do a lot of things such as increase speed, increase jump height and reduce running noise etc. you choose which of these you use because, ultimately, its these choices which affect the way you play the game. Aswell as upgrading you're character, they're many routes you can take through the game and many different people you can talk too and different sides you can take. These choices also affect the outcome of the game. This is all very important because there are three different endings to choose from. Never before have I seen a game that has such diverse and dynamic game play as this.
Lifespan: 10/10
The first thing I noticed about this game was the fact it had no multiplayer. This was a down draw for me because it's usually the multiplayer, which keeps you going back to a game. However, the actual game is so long, it will take you ages to complete and, not only that but once you have completed it you will want to complete it again and again differently. The game also has a training mode, which will take away about, ewwww, 10 minutes of your time. Now that can't be bad can it?
Overall 10/10
Apart from the graphics this game is spectacular and well deserves all the hype it has received. It has won over 50 game of the year awards on the PC and deservedly so. Just remember, graphics don't make a game so go and buy this now.
Also, the graphics are great. They don't look all that impressive at first glance, but during gameplay you notice little details and even if you play for hours straight, you don't get that queasy feeling, usually associated with FPS's.
There's an unbelievable amount of weapons and gadgets, but you have to choose which ones you want you're limited to a certain amount of weapons on you at a time, which makes the game more interesting.
Bottom line YOU MUST BUY THIS GAME!
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I also played this game in the PC originally, and finished it. I HAD to. It ruined a semester of college for me, it's that addictive. You'll start playing, and 4 hours will literally pass by unnoticed. The combination of 1st person play, A.I., the ability to make choices that control your gaming experience, the intelligence and suspense of the story line and character development, and the sheer scale of the gaming enviornment make this the greatest game I have ever experienced. And yes, you don't simply play this game, you experience it. As much as I love Grand Theft Auto 3. it doesn't hold a candle to the intelligence and story line that Deus Ex offers a gamer. What you may find pathetic though... is I miss this game. I loved it so much, I MISS it. I've never found waiting for a sequel to a game so torturous in all my life. I miss this game so much, I plan on buying it for the PS2 and enjoying it again. Here's hoping I don't ruin another semester.Best Deals for Deus Ex: The Conspiracy
After playing a PC demo of this game when it first came out a while back, I decided on a whim to buy it for PS2. I played a bit, then got wrapped up in the carnage of GTA3. I picked Deus Ex up again about a week ago, and I have yet to get a decent nights sleep since. Part shooter, part mystery, the violent types will love the myriad weapons and opportunities to kill and destroy. The stealthy types will love crouching in the shadows and sniping. This game has something for everyone, and should be included in every serious game collection.Honest reviews on Deus Ex: The Conspiracy
There is only one word to describe this game.....AWESOME!! I rented it at first not knowing what to expect, but when I got home I wasn't disappointed. It has some serious plot and a very addictive style to it. The game will never let you down and is a definite contender for this year Game of the Year and the year just began.Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for Deus Ex: The Conspiracy
When I play this game I can't help feel slightly disappointed by the fact that the PC version is so much better and that it is just a cheap port created because the developers felt like squelching more money out of the innocent people that are you and me. However, with that 'truth' aside, this game is an absolute masterpiece and no matter how rushed together this game is, it is still better than about 99% of games on the market today.Graphics: 6/10
The graphics on the PS2 version of this game are only just above average. At first glance they look and feel smooth and textured. But, if you zoom into any of the objects in the game then you will realise that they are made up of pixels about the size of football pitches. As for the smoothness, it only takes a small gun battle with about two or three enemy soldiers and this game begins to freeze and ju... jum. p, jump.
Sound: 10/10
This is what first 'Wowed' me about the game, the music is incredible and is worthy of a Grammy any day... well actually, I wouldn't go that far, but it's still great. The music changes appropriately with the mood of the game e.g. if you are in an intense sneaking area then the music won't start blaring out some kind of heavy rock like in some games. The sound effects are top notch and the guns don't sound whim perish either.
Game play: 10/10
This is where the game really gets its place in the gaming hall of fame for me because it gives you so much choice and you can choose exactly how you play the game. You can upgrade your weapons using things like scopes, laser sights, silencers, extended mags and faster reload mods etc. You can also improve your character with character modifications. These include melee weapon skill upgrades, defence upgrades and rifle upgrades etc. In addition to this you can use special augmentation canisters which allow you to do a lot of things such as increase speed, increase jump height and reduce running noise etc. you choose which of these you use because, ultimately, its these choices which affect the way you play the game. Aswell as upgrading you're character, they're many routes you can take through the game and many different people you can talk too and different sides you can take. These choices also affect the outcome of the game. This is all very important because there are three different endings to choose from. Never before have I seen a game that has such diverse and dynamic game play as this.
Lifespan: 10/10
The first thing I noticed about this game was the fact it had no multiplayer. This was a down draw for me because it's usually the multiplayer, which keeps you going back to a game. However, the actual game is so long, it will take you ages to complete and, not only that but once you have completed it you will want to complete it again and again differently. The game also has a training mode, which will take away about, ewwww, 10 minutes of your time. Now that can't be bad can it?
Overall 10/10
Apart from the graphics this game is spectacular and well deserves all the hype it has received. It has won over 50 game of the year awards on the PC and deservedly so. Just remember, graphics don't make a game so go and buy this now.
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