Just looking at this game’s cover, you know right away that this game sucks. If you don’t, you’re clearly new to Sonic.

Well, this is the second part of the “Sonic StoryBook Series” (lamest idea ever). The first was “Sonic and the Secret Rings’. Secret Rings wasn’t exactly a good game, but it wasn’t THAT bad either. After playing a while, you upgraded Sonic and you finally got some speed and the gameplay was… okay. It took quite a bit of upgrading before the game was playable enough, so it’s understandable that people quit fast. But, in the end, it wasn’t a bad game.

Now take everything that was bearable in Secret Rings and remove it all and add a sword. This gives you Sonic and the Black Knight.

Now, this isn’t a review. Well, not exactly. I didn’t finish it, only got halfway throug(fighting Arthur), and won’t ever touch this again. So this is more of a first impressions thing… Kinda.

Looks and Sounds

If there’s one thing I won’t diss too much about this game, it’s the graphics. They’re definitely up there by Wii standards. The environments and colors are vibrant and beautiful. there’s a big variety of areas, and a few of them, fields, lakes and the castle are really nice looking. The caves are a bit lame though. Otherwise, enemy and citizen design are generic and boring. The cutscenes are in a storybook style just like Secret Rings. Very light on animation, and the little animation there is is really lame.

The sounds are just what you’d expect from a Sonic game, and Sonic’s voice is fine, just like before. The music is lame though, but I didn’t pay that much attention to it so I can’t judge it properly.

Story
Now this is where the game goes to crap. Even after playing it I can’t comprehend how they thought about it, or why they thought it would be a good idea. Well, it’s about Sonic getting in a storybook about Camelot. But here, King Arthur is an immortal demon because of the scabbard of Excalibur giving him random powers like summoning evil entities from the underworld. So Sonic, with the help of Caliburn(a talking sword that says “Fool” a lot), must gather 3 legendary swords, stealing them from the Knights of the Round Table (who are still loyal to Arthur despite him being evil… don’t know how that makes sense at all), which will give Caliburn the power to defeat Arthur. Well, I can’t go much further than that, but I know there’s more to it, but really… Why? I don’t get it. Why make Arthur, and the Knights of the Round Table for that matter (though they become good guys later), evil? I just don’t get it. The story is horrible, and the cutscenes really don’t help.

Gameplay
If the story wasn’t bad enough, well brace yourselves, the gameplay is even worse.
Now, it takes the basic elements of Sonic and the Secret Rings, but pretty much ruins it all…. Whatever there was to ruin. It’s still “on-rails” (sometimes there’s an alternate path that leads to the exact same place). You pick fairies (which give rings), kills enemies, and do the objectives asked from you. There’s rails to grind, speed boosts that make it impossible to know what’s going on, and citizens you can give rings to.

What really ruins this game is the controls. Secret Rings had simple controls. Lean the Wiimote on the sides to move horizontally, jump with the 2 button(and you slide before you jump)), shake the wiimote to do the homing attack. It was simple and easy to use. Here they ruined it all. Now they added the nunchuk for movement and guarding(Z button), the A button jumps and does the homing… thing (it’s not an attack anymore) and random Wiimote waggling attacks. In theory that could be not too bad, but the controls are just badly implemented. There’s a delay when you attack, sometimes the waggling is just unresponsive and nothing happens, and it just doesn’t work really well at all. When you jump, you have to be at the right height to do the dash, if you’re not you just get back on the ground really fast. Attacking is a chore. Swinging at random brings you nowhere, but trying to do proper attacks is just as useless. Basically, you swing the remote around and hope for the best. Attacking from the air is pretty useless too, unless you’re doing the homing thing. But if you’re doing it and hit an enemy, it’s unclear as to whether you’ll be able to launch an attack or not. The controls are just broken. Nothing works as it should and it just sucks.

The only thing that’s well done here in comparison to Secret Rings is the backtracking. This really didn’t work well in secret rings, but here it’s loads better. But that’s about it.

To have some kind of control on your attacks, focus attacks(I think that’s what they’re called, frankly I don’t care) are the way to go. Hold B and slash, which brings you straight to the next enemy, and you can do it to a series of enemies. And if you wait a bit and attack when your sword glows, it replenishes just a bit of Soul Meter which is used to do those attacks. Those are really the only well done parts of the game.

There’s also boss battles, which require guarding and timing your attacks properly, but they’re barely worth mentioning. Even fighting Arthur is boring. In stages there’s gonna be citizens of Camelot and the surroundings. You have to try not to hurt them, but you can also give them rings. I actually don’t know why I’d do that, but some quests require you to do that. Giving them rings is a simple QTE mini-game that REALLY sucks. Why just not give them the damn rings?

There’s some other gameplay elements. There’s a class system, where you can be either a Cavalier, Paladin or Knight (you start as knight). Depending on which you choose, you have different skills. Those can add to your speed, change your attacks and other stuff like that. This is the alternative to the skills system from Secret Rings which was infinitely better and actually gave you customization. You can also get equipment, which give you other skills, but those are pretty limited. There’s a few cryptic systems like the title thing that gives you followers that do nothing, stuff like that.

What’s really annoying is that this is a slow Sonic game. You’re constantly slowed down to fight enemies, or do puzzles, or give rings to idiots. And even when you’re going fast, those parts are when you don’t really do anything. It’s never a fast game. And considering the combat is horrible, slowing down to fight is not a good thing.

Overall
This game is horrible. I mean… The moment I saw the first trailer for the game, I knew it was going to be crap. THEY GAVE SONIC A SWORD! What’s next, giving him a gun? Oh wait *recalls in horror the… horror that was Shadow the Hedgehog*. Well, this game sucks, that’s really all I need to say. Sega clearly don’t care about Sonic anymore. Simple as that. They don’t WANT to make a good game with him anymore.
Unless they want to make a proper game with him, they might as well just drop him altogether. He’s had a good run in his days, but Sonic is dying and Sega is doing with him what they did with the Genesis: keeping him on life support*coughsegaCD32xcough*.

Damn, how long did I wait for this movie? It was around my second year of college, so at least 3 years ago, probably close to 4 years by now. Needless to say, I was constantly doubting this movie would actually come out beyond random screenings at places far from here. But at total random I check out the video store’s release list and lo and behold, I see My Name Is Bruce. So it’s actually coming out? Really?

As excited as I was, I had to wait a bit to watch it, because I wanted to see it with friends. But finally, no more than 20 minutes ago, I watched it.

Was it worth the wait? Read on! (don’t worry, really short review, with a few screenshots at the end)

Story

A kid (who is a MAJOR Bruce Campbell fan) goes in a graveyard with his friends, and releases a powerful Chinese demon (A god of war and bean curd), who vows to kill everyone who is related by blood to the kid. This takes place in southern USA, so of course that means EVERYONE IN THE VILLAGE (a village called Gold Lick) is blood related.
On his side, Bruce is feeling down, being depressed that he doesn’t feel the magic of making movies anymore and his personal life is sucking ass. Yeah, it’s really Bruce, not a character.
This all changes though, when the people of Gold Lick kidnap him and tell him a demon is attacking them, and that he’d be the one to save them all. Because of something his agent said the day before, he believes this is all a stunt and just “plays along” for a while, thinking everyone there is an actor, but he eventually realizes the truth.

The story is entertaining. It has that B movie quality to it, and it leads to a bunch of fun situations.

The rest of the stuff
The special effects are good. Gotta love B movie special effects. They always seem a lot more real than CG. Sometimes they look cheap, but that’s just because they’re supposed to. Not the best effects in Bruce’s history, but some good stuff nonetheless.

The comedy is awesome. Bruce is a badass bad-mouthing dude who loves referencing his old movies, and the rest of the characters, though (mostly) not that funny themselves, help Bruce’s comedy a lot. May it be random references to his old movies or just random little jokes and recurring jokes, the comedy here is really entertaining.

The deaths are sadly a bit cheap. Mostly beheadings that all look the same (or at least are handled similarily). The best death though is Ted Raimi’s (when he’s playing that painter guy), really funny. A few other funny deaths, but nothing REALLY great.

Overall
Overall, well it was worth the long wait. The comedy was great, the effects were okay, the story was entertaining enough, and it features Bruce Campbell’s chin, who did a pretty good job here.
If you’re a Bruce Campbell fan, this is a MUST WATCH. Otherwise, well the comedy might be good enough for just about anybody, though non-fans might just not understand a lot of it.

Pictures
Yeah, I’ll insert a few screenshots.

The God of War and Bean Curd in all his foggy glory!

Bruce gets pwnd by a quarter and a baseball bat

"Don't you speak engrrrish?!?!?!?!?!" What a useless character that was...

Bruce getting some MILF ass

Bruce and his band of Southern minions, about to fight the demon!

Didn't he learn to use a shotgun in the Evil Dead movies? Don't let a girl teach you man!

When you think badass action games featuring ninjas, you normally think of Ninja Gaiden. Smooth stylish gameplay, lots of patience and skill require to do most tasks… You know, great gameplay and challenge. Ninja Gaiden was the action game mostly done right, only surpassed slightly by the Devil May Cry series (disregarding part 2)
To cash in on the idea, From Software brings you Ninja Blade. But all it is is basically a “what if” scenario, where instead of being good, Ninja Gaiden sucked ass. That is Ninja Blade in a nutshell.

Read on and see the suckyness!

Why the game is horrible
There is 1 major problem with the game. That one element really helps in making what could be a great game with some polishing, REALLY BAD. What one element could make an action game boring? Quick Time Events (QTEs). Yeah, you know, the laziest gameplay element in all of gaming? Yeah, that. I thought Wintrale might have exaggerated just a bit when he told me the game was a QTE-fest, but then I knew he was telling the truth right when I started up the game. The very first thing you do is a QTE.

The QTEs themselves are standard fair. The button appears and you have a lot of time (like 2 seconds) to press it. There’s another circle that closes in the the button and you have until it disappears. Depending on where it is when you do the QTE you get graded, though whichever grade you get doesn’t have any impact on the cutscene. So what’s the point? 
When you miss a QTE, the game rewinds through the cutscene and you have to try again, but not just the QTE you missed, but all the QTEs in that sequence. Which is really stupid since the buttons you must press don’t change. There’s no limit to how many times you can retry, which is stupid, but the whole rewinding thing is annoying. Really, I’ve seen the cutscene already, I don’t need to watch it again. Just cut back to the last QTE and stop bugging me with the whole cutscene. Those were the worst QTEs ever… after the ones in the PC version of Quantum of Solace…

But the QTEs aren’t the only problem. The other big problem is the combat against normal enemies. Unless it’s just that the enemies in the demo are really lame… well the game is a button masher. Pure and simple. You can do a variety of “ranged” and “close-ranged” attacks, but in the end you just press random buttons and win. You also have ninjutsu which pwns everything around you, and sometimes enemies with shield comes and that’s when you switch to the heavier sword. No strategy and just plain button mashing. To give an illusion of “this is not a button masher”, you can stop attacking to block or dash to move away from enemies. Yay…

The last part of the game, after a bunch of really lame QTEs, has you go up against a huge spider crab thing. And you know what’s weird? This part almost feels like… a game! Yeah, strange. The boss sends shockwaves which you must avoid to get close to him and them you destroy his legs when you’re close enough. I was almost enjoying it when suddenly… QTEs. Yeah. Way to ruin the only good part in the demo guys…

How this game could be made somewhere at least near “good”
Remove all the QTEs. All of them. Think of some interesting gameplay elements instead. You know, instead of pressing buttons in cutscenes which bring you to the next area, why not MAKING YOU FUCKING GO TO THE NEXT AREA YOURSELF? I mean, the ninja has wires and such, this could be similar to spiderman 2 or something. Add some other moves and tricks you can do to make it a bit original and VOILA, you have something better than lame QTEs. Implement an actual aerial battle system instead of making you press buttons during cutscenes. I don’t know, anything to make the game a bit less lame. Make the fighting more strategic and not just “I press random buttons and win!”. The only semblance of strategy was switching swords to hit the enemies with shields.

Conclusion
This game is gonna suck balls. And you know what the worst part is? It’s gonna be popular. Just like God of War before it, people are going to call this piece of crap “a great game”. But people don’t understand that QTEs, especially bad ones like this, are just about the laziest thing a game developer can do. And they aren’t fun, not in the slightest.
Screw QTEs, they should just die. And this game along with it. Something that was potentially interesting was almost completely destroyed by that one lame gameplay element.

Whoa, how did I forget to review this?
Well, being a fightng game fan, it was hard to ignore the latest rendition of Capcom’s Street Fighter 2. Having a solid fighting engine already, a big following, people were hyped for this, and for good reason.

Well, I’m a Street Fighter fan, but I’m in no way a pro. I don’t play at pixel and frame perfect levels,  but I still really enjoy playing SF2.

Now Capcom brings us a visually updated and rebalanced version of Super Street Fighter 2, so let’s check it out.
 
Graphics
Let’s start with a comparison pic for the lulz. It’s Jeremy in all his HD glory VS Jeremy on the Super Nintendo!

No one can say the old sprite looks better. The difference is massive. I thought the sprites in Guilty Gear X2 games were great, but this blows them out of the water(not that GGX2 graphics aren’t badass). The colors, the details, everything is incredible. Udon, who draw comics for Capcom’s Street Fighter and Darkstalker series, made some of the best looking sprites ever. The art style is great, just like in their comics.
Not only the character sprites, but all the backgrounds for the stages were redrawn and look just plain awesome.

I might not be doing this game justice since I’m still playing my PS3 on Standard Definition TVs, but even there it looks awesome. No one can really fault the graphics here.

Sound
Did you like the sounds in previous versions of the game? If you did, well you’ll like them just as much here, since they’re the same! From what I’ve seen the sounds come from various versions of SF2, depending on fan input as to what sounds were better. I think Guile’s sonic boom is from Hyper Fighting… but don’t quote me on this. The music tracks are all remastered, and the soundtrack is just as good as before.

Gameplay
Well, SF2 is one of the pioneers of fighting games. With the millions (exageration) of revisions, it eventually became one of the best and most popular fighting games as well. If you’re one of the many who loved SF2 and any incarnation of it, you will love this one.

The fighting system remains pretty much the same despite the major graphic upgrade.You have the same kicks and punches as usual, you to the same motions for your attacks (though some might have been slightly modified), and the timing and such for attacks seem to be the same as before. The combos are the same. 

The fighters are quite varied. There are 2 basic types: Ones that use quarter/half circles and some other motions to pull of special moves, and others that must “charge” in a direction for 2 seconds and then press on another and an attack button to pull off their moves(I suck at that). Within those types come a bunch of other types. Close-range fighters, mid-range fighters, long range-fighters, grapplers, more balanced fighters, etc. Overall there’s lots of varietyn the fighters, none of them really play the same (well, Ken/Ryu/Akuma seem pretty similar to me, but I’m 100% sure you can prove me wrong on that).

Of course, they made a bunch of changes to make the game more balanced. That remains to be seen, but from what I’ve seen, the change should give a good change of pace to high-level players. Here’s a list of changes from one of the makers of the game:
http://www.sirlin.net/articles/sf-hd-remix-complete-change-list.html
Though for me those changes didn’t impact me that much(since I’m not that good at the game and all), I did find myself to do a few things differently because of some nerfs and buffs. 

As for modes, there aren’t many. Arcade mode pits you against a series of CPU controlled opponents. What I’ve seen here is that the opponents are stupidly good. They have superhuman timing and always know exactly what to do. And I’ve only been playing on medium…
There’s also multiplayer. You can either play locally or online. The online is actually not that bad from what I’ve seen. There’s some lag here and there and sometimes an opponent pretty much teleported in front of me while attacking because of that, but overall it’s not too bad. Online you have 2 choices: ranked matches and friendly matches. The only difference is that in ranked matches your losses or wins are counted, determining your place on the leaderboard.

Overall
Yeah, this was a short review. It might have been longer if I was a pro SSF2T player, but sadly I am not, so I can’t really comment on some of the changes made to balance out the characters.
But fact remains that this game is incredibly fun, the online community really helps and, well, it’s Street Fighter 2. Well worth the 15$. There is no reason not to get this game, unless you really don’t like fighting games.