Socks II: The Smash Files

An adventurer-ish outfit that is detailed-ish and far better than that ugly 8-bit Luigi thing I've had for a year now. Maybe you guys will actuallly see it if I ever go on the BZP server.

DON'T YOU DARE CLICK THIS LINK

So far it's looking like if Xenoblade ends up being everything I hope for it'll be this:

First Place: Xenoblade Chronicles
Second Place: Paper Mario (assuming it comes out this year like it's supposed to)
Discovery: Mari0

I'm so scared to play it and see how much I must suck at it now oh god

So after returning from Jamaica, here's the white stuff in between the cookies:

• I am burnt on my shoulders despite layering them with sunscreen relentlessly. Stupid shoulders.
• Stupid sock tan.
• I missed that MLP episode about time and don't even know what it's called anymore. Time to go look it up!
• I do not enjoy the thought of how bad I'm going to be at TF2 when I return.
• I saw the 2011 Muppets movie on the airplane today woot.
• Woot I'm home.
• Oh wait I'm home and it's stuffy and I don't get to hang out with friends all the time now darn it.
• My cat is SO FREAKING FAT compared to the cats I was feeding in Jamaica.

Just a few personal awards.

Game of the Year: Portal 2 (PC, PS3, 360)
Second Place: Rayman Origins (PS3, 360, Wii)
Best Portable Game: Star Fox 64 3D (3DS)
Best Older Game Discovered: Team Fortress 2 (PC, PS3, 360) - 2007

Most Anticipated Game of 2012: Xenoblade Chronicles (Wii)
2nd Most Anticipated Game of 2012: Borderlands 2 (PC, PS3, 360)

And a new block to match this, in which I'll be adding my personal games of the year since 2006. Feel free to comment your own; I might add the most popular one (if it's not the same as mine) into the block.

Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door

Year: 2004
Platform: Nintendo Gamecube
Series: Paper Mario
Developer: Intelligent Systems
Publisher: Nintendo


Storyline – 8.5/10
In this sequel to Paper Mario, Mario travels to a run-down town called Rogueport in the Mushroom Kingdom after Princess Peach tells him of a magic map she found. In possession of the map (for whatever reason, the Princess enclosed it with her letter), you discover that she... has been kidnapped. After meeting several wacky characters, you go on a quest to collect the Crystal Stars in order to open the Thousand Year Door underneath Rogueport; meanwhile, through both Mario and the Princess you learn more about the legend of the Thousand Year Door and the plans of the evil X-Nauts (the villains of the game).

Playing through the game, the story is gripping, mysterious, and exciting; the best moment being Chapter 3, where you must discover the identity of “X” and also solve the mysteries surrounding a fighting arena called the Glitz Pit. The score here would be higher, but unfortunately the storyline of the game can be summarized into “Princess is captured, and Mario goes to save her”. Honestly, if the Princess hadn’t been captured, it’s questionable whether Mario would’ve bothered to lift a finger to save the world at all.

Graphics – 8.5/10
Most of you probably won’t agree with this score, and that’s fine- I’ve had minimal experience with other consoles. I’m going on what I know.
For the Gamecube, the graphics aren’t the most spectacular; however, they are innovative, and they do look very nice indeed. The visual style also works into the game play in several ways, which is why this section gets a 8.5 instead of, say, a 7.5. If you use a partner to blow on certain areas, the scenery is blown off screen to reveal a hidden secret; your character can turn into a paper airplane or paper boat; you can slip through thin cracks between walls. Without the paper style visuals, these things just wouldn’t make sense. This would have a 9, but man, does that second chapter kill my eyes! Geez!

Game Play/Controls – 9.5/10
The controls of this game are very smooth; especially the control stick. If you push it right, you go right; you push it left, you go left. No delays, and no super speed. The “A” and “B” buttons also respond smoothly. The “X” and “Y” buttons are put to good use, and the few times you use them, the shoulder buttons work good as well. However, the C Stick is very frustrating; it’s very hard to push in the right direction. Often I’ll wish to change my partner, but instead find myself in the item menu; I believe the D-Pad would’ve been better to use in this instance.

You have many abilities to work with, however; each of your partners has at least one special ability in the field that you can use to your advantage, and some (such as Yoshi) have two. There are also four different paper forms you can take on to navigate the environment, in addition to your standard jumps and hammer. In-game, everything works and feels great; whether it’s in the field exploring or fighting in battles. I just wish your jumps were a little higher and a little longer.

Music – 9.5/10
I’ll bet some of you are gonna be all over me for giving the music this score, but, simply put, I love the music in this game. There are better soundtracks out there, and it might not be orchestrated, but several of the tunes are very catchy; others fit the environment perfectly; and some songs are just awesome (such as the Rawk Hawk battle, which also happens to be in Chapter 3, my favourite chapter). There are a couple songs in the game I dislike and would have preferred maybe some tunes from the first Paper Mario, but overall everything is good in this category.

Overall – 9/10
In short, I love this game. If you are a fan of Mario, RPGs, or are interested in either, you should definitely check out this game; if you’re looking for a different experience from RPGs such as Final Fantasy, I recommend this game as well. This game is on the short (and easy) side of RPGS if you know what you’re doing, but that doesn’t really matter; you’ll have loads of fun while it lasts, and there are side quests that you can do afterward (along with a pit of 100 trials). I’d recommend trying out the first Paper Mario first, even though it doesn’t affect the plot; this game is better than the first (with better graphics, controls, and new features), so that way you won’t ruin the experience of the first game after playing the refined sequel first.

Buy this game and play it.

Just a couple reasons why I think we might get this instead of a pair of Ruby/Sapphire Remakes.

• The Red/Blue/Green and Gold/Silver remakes came out I believe ten years after the originals; with Black and White 2 announced, that means Ruby/Sapphire remakes in 2013 (ten years after the originals) are impossible. However, a 2015 release for an Emerald remake is still possible.
• Since Generation 3 each Generation has had 5 "main" Pokemon games: the two new games, the third game that has a slightly different focus and adds some stuff, and then two remakes. If Generation 5 continues this five game trend but we're getting Black/White and Black/White 2, then we have room for only one remake - and Emerald fits that bill.
• Emerald was an amalgamation of Ruby and Sapphire; both legendaries from the previous games were catchable, both Team Aqua and Team Magma acted as helpers and antagonists. In addition the Battle Frontier was added and we had new trainers to battle outside of it too.
• This one is mostly proof that we will get at least Ruby/Sapphire remakes, and it's because we have every single region except for Hoenn (and, by extension, the Pokemon there) on the DS.

If I can think up any others I'll add them in later, but to me this is proof enough.

They've been announced, which is simply spectacular. Now I have to go and actually play through Black or White. Ugh.
I want my Emerald remake!

Thanks to Toa Zehvor MT for sharing his opinions. More game reviews will be coming, so leave any requests you might have in the comments!

I will be posting a review I did on Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door in the next few days.

Been a while since I did a BZP video game review, so I figured I'd start with a game that I recently played(well, perhaps recently isn't the right word, it was a few months ago). Skyward Sword is easily the Wii's best game of 2011, but with such a short list of AAA games for the Wii in 2011, does it measure up against other consoles games? You can find out by reading below(or, more correctly, find out my opinion).

STORY: The story in Skyward Sword is, thank God, something original. Seems like it's been forever since we've had a console Zelda that's attempted something besides "Ganon captures Zelda, Link fights Ganon, Link saves Zelda," etc. This time, Zelda's not a princess that the player has very little connection with, but an old friend that you can legitimately connect with. The other characters in the game work incredibly well, and it's actually fairly reminiscent of another favorite game of mine, Okami. The world is scattered with a colorful cast that makes it actually feel like you're attempting to save a real place. No more barren wastelands with barely anyone inhabiting them like in Twilight Princess, the world of Skyward Sword is full of great characters. Even the villains showed up, with Ghirahim being quite possibly the most entertaining bad guy in the history of Zelda.

The actual plotline is done very well, and for the most part, makes sense. There's a couple of time shifting what the heck moments later on, but as long as you don't think too hard about it, it shouldn't be a problem. It's not Okami or Asura's Wrath quality, but it's very preferable to the predictable formula of "fight through a bunch of dungeons to get to Hyrule Castle to save Zelda." My main complaint is the ridiculous amount of fetch quests you are sent through early on in the game. There are quite a lot, and they take quite a bit of time.

Score: (9/10)

GAMEPLAY: The gameplay is an interesting mix of good and bad. I'll begin with the sword controls, one of the central focuses of the game. Being able to fully control where you sword is is nice, and there are some battles where it feels very natural, and then others where it feels like Nintendo had to adjust the speed of combat to the new controls. For example, there's one boss very late in the game where he'll hold a sword to block your attacks, and you have to beat on the sword until you make a hole in it. From then on, he'll begin shifting the sword's position, forcing you to strike in different ways to continue whittling the hole down until you cut the sword in half. The issue is that he basically stands still the entire time, refusing to attack, and looking ridiculous.

When combat is not being slown down, however, it's a blast. The sword controls work perfectly for the most part, and it feels like there's a whole different level of control being given to you with the sword's 1:1 movement. When they're being worked into a fight with multiple layers of strategy, such as using a powerup or two alongside the sword, there aren't many other battles in Zelda history that can compete with it. The fights where the game completely falls back on sword movement aren't bad either, but they're nowhere near as fun or as engaging. As for the difficulty, the enemies are never difficult, but that doesn't take away from how fun they are.

For everything else, however, the Wii motion plus sucks, and this is where Nintendo's decision completely boggles my mind. You'll use the Wii motion plus for everything from flying, to aiming your bow, to swimming, to using a vacuum cleaner, but the issue is that the controls are very insensitive and frequently become unaligned, which becomes very annoying in the middle of a fight. The sensor bar would have worked fine for most of these, and I'm stunned that Nintendo didn't use it for that. Oh well.

Exploration still plays a big role in the game, though, make no mistake about that. The puzzles are some of the highlights of the game, in my opinion, and, for the most part, they're neither too subtle nor too obvious(though there are a couple that I think could have been explained much better). If you're any sort of fan of puzzle solving, or really any sort of mental games, you'll enjoy the puzzles here. As for the other parts of exploration, they're fun too, although you'll never really be in doubt as to where to go, so it's a bit less noticeable that you're "exploring"(unless you go out of the way of the main quest to look around the areas that you're in).

The upgrade system that makes its way into this game is fun, too, though it doesn't keep every tool from becoming obsolete like has been claimed(sorry, slingshot). The upgrades they do give out aren't easy to come by, but they are very helpful, and this helps facilitate further exploration in areas below the clouds. Believe it or not, Nintendo actually managed to make "treasure hunting" a worthwhile sidequest just for this. I like it, I just wish that Nintendo had made catching bird feathers a bit easier. But it's a minor complaint for something that was implemented very well.

The biggest issue I have with the gameplay is when it completely falls flat on its face, which happens several times. In these instances, Skyward Sword drastically shifts the aspect of the gameplay, forcing you to protect something, or leaving you weaponless while being chased around by giant robots attempting to collect tears of light while not being spotted in poorly done Splinter Cell esque parts. Most of these instances aren't really fun, some of them are downright annoying, and it's another head-scratcher as to why Nintendo thought it would be a good idea to implement them.

The gameplay, when it's not slowed down tremendously or changed into something entirely different, is still worthy of the highest recommendation.

(9/10)

GRAPHICS: The graphics, meh, they're not bad. They sort of seem like a cross between the cartoonish Wind Waker and the realistic Twilight Princess. It works well, but it's not spectacular. Metroid Prime 3 easily remains the best looking Wii game, just to clear up the claims that this game has the best graphics on the Wii.

(8/10)

MUSIC: The music is what we've come to expect from Zelda. A couple of themes will get on your nerves here and there, but the music is spectacular for the most part.

(9.5/10)

REPLAY VALUE: Skyward Sword's definitely worth a replay, but only on hero mode, and only if you don't mind Fi's hand holding, which gets far more annoying the second time through(especially since there's no way to skip it). However, it's almost guaranteed you won't finish anywhere near everything there is to do the first time through, so give it a second go.

OVERALL: When Skyward Sword is good, it's really good. Its few mistakes, however, are VERY noticeable and quite annoying. If it wasn't for how bad some of these issues are, I would have no problem rating this game right alongside Ocarina as the greatest title in Zelda history. As it is...well...these problems are here, and they hold it back from being a completely amazing experience. It's a great game, no doubt about that, but the issues in game really make you wonder how awesome this could have been had some of these problems been fixed.

9/10: If you have a Wii and Wii motion plus, definitely get this game. If you like Zelda games, but don't have Wii motion plus, I would still advise you to get it. However, if you don't have Wii motion plus and Zelda's never been your favorite franchise, or you've never played Zelda before and you're not sure, I wouldn't advise shelling out the $30 for the plus and then $50 for the game. $80 is a lot for a single game, especially when there are cheaper games out there that have lot more content and lot less Fi.

It's great, but it's not quite the legendary Nintendo game Super Metroid/Ocarina/Metroid Prime caliber.

Again, thanks to Toa Zehvor MT. I myself have hated the demos of Skyward Sword and disagree with pretty much everything in this, but to each their own.