Well, I could just say “O_O” and be done with it for this mini-review, but that wouldn’t do the film justice. I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect but I did hear lots of great reviews on this, so I went in there knowing it would probably be okay. But I was wrong… it was GREAT.

So let’s go just a little bit more in detail and talk about one of the weirdest people in the world of cinema!

Read on! (Yeah, I know this movie is 15 years old, but I just saw it for the first time and I thought I should share my thoughts with everyone)

Who was Ed Wood and why should I care?
Ah, Edward D Wood Jr. He was kinda like the Uwe Boll of his time, except less of a douchebag, and funnier… And his movies were so bad they were funny, while Uwe Boll… just sucks.
His most renown film is “Plan 9 from Outer Space”, which is considered one the worst films ever. He was a director/writer/producer/actor that never shot retakes, wrote completely weird scripts that made no sense and had total disregard to the negative criticism and didn’t care if there were errors in his movies, like actors making the sets wobble by hitting them, or bad special effects(Octopus fight!)… stuff like that. He was also well known for having famous Dracula actor Bela Lugosi in his movies. His career eventually(well, not very long after Plan 9 pretty much) degenerated into making lame softcore porn-horror films, like Orgy of the Dead.

Needless to say, he was a weirdo, and no good at his job at all, but at the same time he had a love for what he did, and movies in general. And this is what this movie is all about. And I’m sure he was a big influence in the industry as well, still having a fanbase up to this day. There’s even talk of a remake of Plan 9 from Outer Space (though it just looks like a random zombie flick according to the trailer)…. OH by the way he was a transvestite.

“I thought you were a fag.”
“No, I’m just a transvestite!”

What about the movie?
The movie is directed by Tim Burton, starring Johnny Depp. We’re off to a good start. Also, the movie was filmed fully in black and white.

The movie details part of the life of Ed Wood. It shows how he met Bela Lugosi (marvelously played by Martin Landau), how his first movie, “Glen or Glenda”, came into being, the various complications of “Bride of the Monster” (previously named “Bride of the Atom” but changed to have more appeal), the death of Bela Lugosi, and finally the big thing: The production of “Plan 9 from Outer Space”.

The events are told partly factually, though some things are changed, some things are exaggerated, and some things a. The characters are marvelous. Not only do they look exactly like their real world counterparts Martin Landau as Bela Lugosi, Lisa Marie as Vampira and Jeffrey Jones as Criswell are particularly convincing. Johnny Depp as Ed Wood looks a bit different from pictures I’ve seen, though he looks exactly the same when he wears women’s clothing. And all of them act more or less accordingly to their real life counterparts. The casting was fantastic to say the least, and there isn’t one character that really feels out of place.
Some events were skipped, some of his productions weren’t shown in the movie, like Jail Bait (before Bride of the Monster). Some other minor elements were changed, like the scene where the final filming of Lugosi is done. But I think the movie goes through most of the important parts of his career.

It was a bit unreal to hear Bela Lugosi swearing all the time, and I don’t know if he was like that when he was alive, but I think it adds realism to the character. We see the end of his life and his last filmed moments, his addiction to morphine and his detox period. He was definitely well portrayed and Martin Landau’s performance couldn’t have been better.

But the one who steals the show is definitely Johnny Depp as Ed Wood. Every time he’s on the screen, it’s marvelous. The way he moves, the expressions on his face at all times, how he looks in women’s clothing, and his overall acting…. it was perfect. When he said something you really believed it, and HE really believed it as well. The way he said “Cut! This was perfect” no matter how bad the scene he was filming was awesome. I’ll say that this is easily my favorite Johnny Depp performance.

I haven’t actually seen any of Ed Wood’s movies, but I saw multiple scenes of most of the more popular ones, and most of the scenes I saw before were shown here, but remade with the new actors, and all of them were perfectly redone. They couldn’t have honored Ed Wood’s pictures any better than they did here.

Overall
This movie is incredible. The acting, the portrayal of everyone in Ed Wood’s life up to Plan 9, the actors looking almost exactly like their real-life counterparts, the story, the comedy, the drama, the very few romantic moments… Everything was perfect. And there’s never a dull moment. I’m having trouble finding anything really bad about the movie. Some might complain that some events were changed or completely omitted, but I find that the parts that were removed weren’t incredibly important either. Oh, and the ending was a bit lame. There was no closure really. They showed a bit of the Plan 9 world premiere, and then showed everyone going out of the theater, and then… just showed every character, with a small text saying what happened to them later on in their lives. I was just expecting more of an ending.

For anyone interested in film-making, this is a must watch. Otherwise, I think it’s still worth checking out.

Ed Wood: He might have been the worst director of all time, but he was passionate about his work, and this is what this movie really wanted to show: That he was, despite his flaws, a fascinating person.

I haven’t exactly played this enough for a full review, But I still wanted to do a quick post about it.

I’m not exactly the biggest Soul Calibur fan, and I haven’t enjoyed a Soul Calibur game just as much as Soul Calibur 2 on the gamecube. Maybe the series just felt stale afterwards, or maybe I just wasn’t really into it anyways.

So, and I’ll be quick on this, here are my impressions of the PSP version of Soul Calibur!

Developer: Namco
Publisher: Bandai Namco Games
Date of Release: September 1, 2009
Platforms: PSP

Genre: Fighting
Players: 1-2

ESRB Rating: T (Teen)

Looks and sounds
The game uses the same graphical style as previous SC games. It’s set in a fantasy world with magic and swords and shields and stuff. It still looks really good, even on the PSP. The characters are very well done, their animations are nice, and they look just like the PS3 versions. They have a lower polygon count and lower-res textures(of course), but they still look quite close to their console counterparts.

Sound-wise… well I frankly paid no attention to it. There’s still the weird narator saying non-sensical stuff before each battle, and the voice acting is the same quality as in SC4. Sounds the same as usual I guess.

The presentation is really good, and for a PSP game to look that close to the console versions it’s quite nice. There’s some graphic glitches here and there, with clipping and such, but nothing big.

Gameplay
The gameplay… well it’s exactly like in Soul Calibur 4. The same controls, same combos, seemingly the same gameplay engine, it has the armor-breaking element (though I don’t think it has the cinematic finishers).

It’s basically a stripped-down version of SC4. There’s fewer modes, the create a character mode is far from being as deep (there’s no stats on different clothes, and different weapons don’t have different effects), no arcade mode, no story mode. If anything, it’s a big tutorial for SC4.

You have Quick Match, Trials and Gauntlet. Gauntlet is pretty much a tutorial, starting you with beginner stuff and then easing you in the rest of the gameplay by gradually teaching more moves and combos and techniques. Trials is basically arcade mode but with a minor twist. If you choose Trial of Attack, you have to be agressive and you get points for big combos(5 fights in a row). Trial of Defense is similar, but it encourages defense(duh) and counter-attacking(8 fights in a row). Endless trial is a Survival Mode. Quick Match is just a quick match! Choose a character, choose your opponent and fight. There’s also a Versus mode, which is Local only.

I barely touched the new characters, but I found that Kratos was bland and nothing really special(just like in his own games, surprising), and Dampierre was a more gay version of Voldo(different attacks and all, but a similar style).

Overall
It’s not as deep as SC4 and cuts many of the features from it. But the basic gameplay is still intact. It’s also pretty good for beginners with the Gauntlet maode which shows you everything you need to know. Basically, I’ll agree with everyone saying this game iss a big training mode for Soul Calibur 4 which you can bring anywhere with you.

I’m not a huge fan of Soul Calibur, so this didn’t really appeal to me, but for any fan of Soul Calibur who wants to practice on the go, it’s a fine buy.

Pros/Cons
Pros
- Great presentation
- Same gameplay as the console versions
- Good for practice

Cons
- LOTS of stuff cut from the console versions
- Character creation is now only for the looks, since the equipment has no effect anymore
- Kratos

The Save Factor
Well, I can’t find much reason to spend more than $20 on this unless you’re a big SC fan. The starting price of $40 is a bit too high.

The Bleach DS series is a weird one. The first 2 games were straight up fighting games. Really well done too. And made by Treasure. There were some balancing issues, of course, but overall they were quite good. The third game in the series was a Strategy RPG, and made by Sega. And now this new one is a Beat ‘em up. 1 series, 3 genres. Really strange.

So, is it a good beat ‘em up, or is it just a lame cash-in on the Bleach name? Read on!

Keep in mind, this is a Japanese game, and I have no Japanese knowledge, so there are certain things I can’t explain/know. (and this is a pretty shot review too)

Developer: Sega
Publisher: Sega
Date of Release: August 6th 2009
Platform: Nintendo DS

Genre: Beat ‘em up
Players: 1

Looks and sounds
The characters look really good, they’re completely recognizable from the series and their animations and attacks look quite good. But one thing to note here is that the sprites are mostly just recycled from the previous leach DS games, or just mildly changed from them. The enemy design is lame at best. There’s just a few enemy types and some are just upgraded versions of older ones, either bigger or with different colors. The environments range from random areas in Karakura village, some random areas in Soul Society and… randomness! Nothing inventive and not much that really has to do with the series.

Sound-wise… It’s nothing great. The voice-acting is fine, using the same actors from the show. The music is very forgettable, and the sound effects are either completely normal “hit” or sword sounds. Don’t expect anything ground-breaking, of course.

Gameplay
It’s a platforming Beat ‘em up. It doesn’t get much simpler than this. Y attacks, pressing different directions change what attack you do. B jumps. X does you special attack, and if you press X and Up at the same time you do a bigger special that takes more SP. A uses your currently-equipped assist character. Holding R pauses the action and let’s you change assist character if you have multiple in your deck. L let’s you stand in the air. It’s useless(or at least i never really found a use for it) and takes up SP. Double tapping a direction makes you dash, and pressing an attack button during the dash, no matter the direction, makes you do a special dash attack.

So the basic flow of the game is ” Select a level, See a conversation, Go to the end of the level, Get a Rank up to S depending on various variables, Repeat”. It gets repetitive after 2 worlds, and there’s 8 worlds in total. Levels play out in a simple “kill everything that gets in your way” manner. Heck, you can skip most enemies. There are some sections in stages where you have to kill everything that comes at you, but the rest can be skipped. At the end of each level, you get one of 2 things: a boss battle, or a “bonus stage” where you have to attack some… flying ball with tentacles, which gives you money for the shop.

The difficulty level is pathetically low. There’s only one level, based on platforming, which was able to kill me. The rest of the levels, even the tougher bosses, are really easy to beat. The only “difficulty” is finding everything. Each levels have 1 collectible to find: Hell butterflies. They’re hidden through the levels (1 per level), and they give you a boost to your SR meter. Also, getting S ranks everywhere might offer just a little bit of challenge (though I never got under an A rank so it’s really not that tough either).

A different element here is the Support Deck. Using cards you either find in stages, or buy in Urahara’s shop, you set a deck of sorts, in a grid. Each card takes either 1, 2 or 4 spaces in the grid (and you can get extra grids for different kinds of decks, i guess).  From what I understand, the ones that take 1 or 2 spaces are stat boosts of sorts. And the 4 space cards are assist characters (which I explained earlier, they all have different effects like healing, protection, or attacks).

Oh, and the character list is a bit lame. Ichigo, Rukia, Uryu, Renji, Hitsugaya, Yoruichi, Byakuya, Young Byakuya… Why is Byakuya in there twice? Aren’t there enough Bleach characters not to have to use the same one a second time, but younger? Not a big problem, but it’s a bit strange.

One thing I have no idea about is the SR stat (under SP), and I have no idea what Oversoul is (when the SR meter goes at 100% or above). I know higher SR gives you more points in the end of a level(which makes it easier to get a high rank), and if you get hit by an attack that knocks you down your SR goes down to 50, or lopwer if you’re at 50% or below.

Overall, the gameplay isn’t bad. But it’s awfully simple. And there’s little to no difficulty.

Import-friendlyness
Can you press buttons? If so, you can play this game. The basic gameplay is really simple, and just randomly fumbling around the menus you should be able to shop and build support decks without much trouble. There’s not much of a big community for this title, but you can surely find places on the web where people can help you out here. It is Bleach after all.

Oh, and for modes, Ichigo (and i guess you can change the character) tells you what each option in the main menu is, so the menus are simple enough to navigate.

And you’ll miss the story, but you can fast-forward through the conversations so it’s not a burden to the gameplay.

Overall
It’s a competent enough Beat ‘em up. It’s incredibly easy, but it works. But if you’re not a Bleach fan, skip on it. Heck, even if you ARE a Bleach fan there isn’t much of a reason to get this. If you can read japanese, the story is just random filler junk so you’re not missing much here. It’s pretty much a cash-in on the Bleach name, nothing more.

Pros/Cons
Pros
- Nice Graphics
- Simple gameplay
- Import Friendly

Cons
- Way too easy
- Could use a bit more character variety, the only character that plays different from the others is Uryu
- Get repetitive FAST, there’s no gameplay variety at all

The Save Factor
With a starting price of $48.90 on Play-Asia, the Save Factor for Bleach DS 4th: Flame Bringer is:

$10 (only for big Bleach fans)

A long time ago, RPGs were quite different than what we know now. They were in First-Person perspective, dungeons were “3D” wire-frames, and the gameplay was mostly taken or inspired from Dungeons & Dragons. And they were damn hard. Wizardry and Ultima are the grand-daddy’s of the genre. Well, this time I’ll touch upon a game that’s largely inspired by such games.

Actually, The Dark Spire, recently published by Atlus in the US, basically plays just like Wizardry 1, made way back in 1981, with a major facelift of course.

Now, this is more like a first impressions post, since I’m not very far at all in the game.I’m only a good ways into the second floor for now, but progressing pretty well. But I feel like I’ve gotten enough gameplay to review it and I’ll definitely be playing a lot more of it.

Read on!

Looks and sounds
The game looks good… if you’re not expecting too much.  Each floor in the Tower has a different look, but each floor is also stupidly repetitive. There’s a variety of monster types as well, but there’s a massive use of palette swaps, so Killer Bats look just like Giant Bats but darker colors are used. But enemies look pretty good anyways. It’s also important to note that the number of enemy sprites shows the number of enemy groups, and not the actual number of enemies. The graphics style is awesome and unlike most games on any console right now. The menus are okay as well, relatively simple to navigate.

The sounds are really nice. You know, when in a dark room, whether there’s a wall in front of you or not, the sound cues are good. There’s actually very few battles sounds, but they let you know what’s going on pretty well. The high part here is the music, it’s really good and gives off a really epic feel.

But it doesn’t look or sound really oldschool. Well, that’s where the settings come in play. In the settings, you can choose 2 types of display. What I just described is the “modern” display. There’s also an option for a “Classic” display. This makes the graphics as simple and barebones as possible. No more textures on walls, instead it’s wire-frames, showing rectangles  for doors, and square on the ground or ceiling when there’s stairs to the next level. Detailed enemy sprites are replaced with small 8-bit sprites in big rectangles on the top screen. There’s no more stylish windowing on the top-screen or any kind of design in the menus anymore, all replaced by boxes with text and nothing else. And to make it feel more classic, the music is replaced for 8-bit version of the normal tracks, and they sound almost as good. And there’s actually advantages in playing that way: slightly shorter “animations” in battle, and moving through the dungeon is almost twice as fast.

Though the graphics are not great by any means, and there’s literally no animation, the style is nice and the Classic view is awesome. If you liked this kind of game before, the graphics will make you feel right at home. If you’re a stupid graphic-whore, stay away at all cost.

Story
“There’s an evil magician on top of the tower whole stole some stuff, go kill him”.
That’s it. It doesn’t go much deeper than this. There’s a variety of quests to do, and a few villages and such in the tower, but there’s no big storyline beyond killing the magician. You’re a group of adventurers, and you have to power up enough to get to him and eventually fight him.

Definitely do NOT expect big plot twists or any kind of emotional attachment to the nameless characters or anything of the sort. Simple and to the point, but that’s it.

Gameplay
Well, I mentioned that this was basically like Wizardry, so if you played that you know exactly what this game will be like. Otherwise, here’s the gist of it.

Character Creation and Leveling
At the start you have no characters in your party. Here you have 2 choices: Make your own characters, who will start at level 1 but will have stats more like you want them, or pick up the 4 pre-made level 2 characters with pre-determined stats. The better choice is to make your own, of course. You have some choices to make here: choose the race of your characters: Humans, Elves, Dwarves and Halflings are the choices you have. Each has its own specialty, and if you’ve been playing RPGs for any amount of time you know what each of them specialize in. You also have to choose one of the four basic classes: Warrior, Priest, Mage and Thief. Those are pretty self-explanatory, other than priests which are relatively good physical attackers and tanks. Then you have to get the stats for them. That’s the random part… literally. The numbers for each stat are going fast and you have to press a button to stop them, and you do that for each stat (Strength, Vitality, Intelligence, Dexterity, Charisma). For each race, there’s a maximum and minimum number for each stat, and getting certain stats high enough give you access to the various classes (example: you can’t become a Warrior if your strength is too low). Those are apparently determined by invisible dice rolls. When all the stats are determined, you can decide to keep those or you can re-roll the stats.

After building your party, it’s time to get quests and go exploring. But you have to know how leveling works. Well, after each battle, or when finishing a quest, you get EP. Those can be used for a variety of things. Leveling up classes gives you more skills and HP (HP increase is random, so you might want to save before leveling to reload if the HP increase sucks). Also, leveling multiple classes can lead to completely new classes altogether with skills beyond the normal classes(like mage-types that can wear warrior armor… nice). For mages and priests, leveling their base class leads to getting more points that can be assigned to spells. Oh, and leveling the class of your characters makes the inn and reviving/curing in churches more expensive. Learning skills is almost self-explanatory, I’m pretty sure that each of them actually have some kind of bearing but I can’t say for sure… Finally, Boosting stats is the last thing you can do with EP, and probably something you won’t do very often. This takes a lot of EP, so you might as well just increase your class level instead. For example, leveling my dwarf’s Vitality from 16 to 17 requires 33000 EP, while going to my next level in warrior class only requiring  a few thousands instead. Just seems like a waste, unless you’re already fully leveled and have a lot of leftover EP.

The last element of leveling is equipment. You can either find weapons in the tower or buy them in the shop, and each of them have various stats, most being invisible and requiring testing. Damage for each of them is determined by dice rolls+stats, others have different properties(attacking from back row, chance of hitting multiple enemies, stuff like that), and of course Armor Class. Armor class is basically… the lower the AC, the least likely you are of getting hit. Armor doesn’t affect the damage you’ll get, but whether or not you’ll be hurt by the attack. Or you could just click here for a proper explanation(link “might” not be appropriate for kids). Basically, your mage with an armor class of 8 is more likely to get pwnd than your warrior with an armor class of -4.
Also, some equipment is good for certain classes, and if you equip things that aren’t suitable for them, they won’t perfom well. If, for example, an armor is not good for mages, they won’t be able to cast spells. And if you have equipment that’s negative for any character class, you won’t be able to level up other classes to eventually get a “super class”.

You have quite a bit of control on how to boost your characters.

Exploring
This is the meat of the game.The game is played in a first-person perspective, basically in a grid-like map, where each time you move, you move 1 space in the grid. You can get in doors by pressing A. Some doors are locked, so you can lock-pick them (usually a thief is more able to do it). Pressing X makes you observe around you, or in front of you (for example, you won’t be able to read the graffiti on a wall if you’re not looking at it). That’s very important, since you won’t ever see anything in the dungeon unless you use the X button to look around. Is there a merchant in front of you? Well, press X to see that. There’s sometimes hints for that. You might get in the room that tells you that there’s something in the following room, or that there’s something on the wall. Also, it’s pretty useful to observe random walls, since some of them have secret doors. As you go around the tower, there’s gonna be random encounters, empty rooms, rooms that are completely dark, various traps, weird devices to open doors, and other random stuff.

But there’s a ton of puzzles. For example, on the first floor, you’re come across a bunch of doors, but you’ll be blocked by a statue. To get passed that, you are given a riddle and you must use an item on it to get beyond that point. There’s a ton of things like this. To get through most of them you have to remember everything that was said and get a hint out of that. And sometimes you just have to be lucky.

The exploration is made a bit easier because of the map. In games like this, usually, you have to bring out a piece of paper and draw your own map, but this game does them for you. There’s a slight problem of not knowing exactly where you are on the map when you look at it (by pressing Y), but there’s a skill for that, that will show it to you while you’re at that spot (but you’ll have to recast it if you want to see where you are again later). But still, having the map right in the game makes things a lot easier.

Fighting
This is handled in a turn-based fashion, with invisible die rolls(and some calculations) determining everything. You have a few things you can do in battle. Attack, defend, use spells, or attempt to run away. For each of those (other than running away), depending on the class, you can press Right and get other options depending on your class and equipment. If you have a sword, you can do a lunge attack, if you’re a mage you can cast spells fast or take your time for more effect, and thieves can try to counter attacks.

So after choosing your commands for all your characters, the turn starts, and each time a character attacks, there’s an invisible die roll for accuracy (which is also dependant of Armor Class), then another invisible die roll for damage if you hit(depending on your weapon and strength stat, or depending on the spell and intelligence stat). Enemies are set in groups, so for each enemy sprite there is on the top screen you have 1 group. Some attacks hit groups, other single enemies. There’s a good variety of enemies. Some are hard hitters, other give incredibly annoying status effects (poison, paralysis, sleeping), others are magic users that will be able to attack any of your characters regardless of which row they are on (you will always have at least one character in the back row, and at least one in the front row, the other 2 you set like you want).

So you win the battle if all the enemies are dead (simple, huh?). After the battle, you get EP, Gold and sometimes a treasure box. But those are usually trapped, so you can disarm the trap before opening it. Of course, Thieves come in handy here. Basically you inspect the treasure box first, and if it’s trapped you try disarming it, by choosing the options in the menu in order. Sometimes it will randomly start up the trap, sometimes that section won’t get disarmed but you can try again, and sometimes it will disarm and you can go to the next one. Whether or not you disarm it you still get what’s inside the box.
So overall the gameplay is really good… IF you like that type of game. The controls are a bit confusing, especially when casting spells or using items. You have to make sure that you have the proper character selected (using the L and R buttons) before using an item or you’ll just waste it.

Overall
If you’re interested in knowing what RPGs were like before Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy came along, this is a great way to experience it. But most people will not find this game fun, and that’s very understandable. But I think it’s well worth checking out.

There’s tons of grinding, solutions to puzzles aren’t obvious at all most of the time, sometimes finishing quests isn’t really obvious either, and you usually have to examine every nook and cranny to find everything or even to just advance through the game at all.
It requires a lot of patience to do it on your own, and even then the game requires to remember everything you’ve read and finding small hints in those to be able to move on.Sure, now there’s the internet for help on things like this, but if you’re going at it on your own, expect this to be a very long game.

Well, I’ll start this review right away by saying that I’m not a Mortal Kombat fan. I’m not a huge fan of the fighting system, thus the reason it took me so long to check this out. That being said, such a random mix of characters was interesting enough for me to want to check it out.

The idea of Superman fighting Scorpion indeed made me quite curious, but does it work? Read on!

Story
They managed to make the story here relatively interesting. Divided in 2 “sides”, the MK and the DC side, with 7 chapters in the MK side and 8 in the DC side(1 character per chapter, with a few you don’t end up using in the story mode), each side gives you that “team’s” point of view on the events.
The story starts similarly in both side. Superman is fighting Darkseid and Raiden is fighting Shao Kahn, and both open up a portal, at the very same time, and at the very same time superman uses his heat vision on Darkseid and Raiden shoots lightning at Shao Kahn. Obviously, this screws up stuff and both worlds start merging. As a result of this, characters from both sides think characters from the other side are invading them. At the same time, characters are consumed by “Rage”, which makes them more violent and sometimes delusional. This results in multiple fights between characters from both sides and amongst each other.
The story works relatively well. It’s nothing incredibly good, but it does the job very well, and makes both universes work relatively well with each other, despite being quite different. The only “problem” is the T rating that DC imposed, making it a lot less violent and bloody than MK normally is.
One thing I’ll mention is that the cutscenes transition from to battle really smoothly. At first it felt almost seamless. After a while you see that it’s not entirely seamless, but it’s really well done.

Graphics
The characters look great. They’ve never looked better. Very detailed, and they really look just like you’d expect them to. There’s other fun details like cuts and bruises appearing on characters during fights that carry on to the next rounds. The animations are also relatively nice, I have no problems with them at all.
Otherwise, the environments are… okay. Nothing special. Really not much more to say here. They’re appropriate.

Gameplay
Okay, like I mentionned before, I’m not really fond of the usual Mortal Kombat fighting system. Usually because I find it to be too stiff. While this does not completely correct the problem, I find this to be a lot smoother than previous MK games. Maybe it’s because I have more experience in fighting games than before, but I have a lot less trouble pulling off combos and special moves. The movement and jumping and such just feels a lot betterr than what I’m used to with MK games. Now, there’s still some stiffness and still has ways to go before I get comfortable with the fighting system, but this is a good step forward IMO.
 So the fighting itself is pretty much the same as in previous MK games. The basic combos are simple enough, and higher-level players(AKA not me) can experiment to make their own combos, the special moves are simple, mostly requiring tapping 2 directions and then an attack button. Fatalities you have to figure out the motions and distance, but they’re relatively easy to do when you get the hang of them. Fun little scenes, but nothing as brutal as you’d expect.

Some new stuff
New things here including the close quarter combat mode and the freefall mode (don’t know if those are official names, but I don’t care). Close Quarter happens when you do a certain grab, and it becomes a sort of button mashing thing, where the attacker presses a button, and before he does so the other must quickly guess when button he’s gonna press, otherwise he gets hit. If he guesses it right, he counters the attack and you get out of close combat. The freefal works pretty much the same way. For each attack the attacker lands, a bit of a bar on the left goes from green to red.  If the defender guesses the button the attacker will press, the positions are changed, and the defender will bethe one doing damage on the landing. That’s the annoying part, 30% damage for that is quite a lot. 

There’s also a “mode” in certain stages where there’s no freefall that goes on when you small an opponent against a wall, and then you’ll charge into them and have to button mash while crashing though multiple walls, acucmulating damage on the way. Not great, but whatever >_>

Added to that is Rage mode. This is a bar that fills up when you attack or get attacked. When it’s full, pressing L2 and R2 at the same time will initiate Rage. Rage raises your attack power, and if you do multiple hits while the opponent is blocking, their block will break. Also, you get a super armor. This makes you pretty uber, but it only lasts around…4 -5 seconds, so it’s not too long, but it can change the pace of the fight pretty easily.

Characters
There is a slight balance issue. Mostly having to do with The Flash, who is really fast and has lots of cheap attacks, and a few characters are a bit weaker than the other, more particularily The Joker and Catwoman according to “pros”. Overall though I play just about as well with each character.

Speaking of characters, that’s one of the big incentives here: the DC characters. And overall I find that they did a good job here. Their movesets are pretty nice, giving a few of them moves similar to what you’d expect from them. Some I’m not too sure because I’m not too familiar with them (Wonder Woman, DeathStroke, Catwoman), but overall they’re pretty cool and fun to play as.

Games modes
Other than story mode, there’s the usual arcade mode and practice mode. Added to that is the Kombo Challenge mode, which gives you different combos you can do, and doing them all gives you a trophy… Yay. It does help in knowing the different things you can do with each character.
Otherwise there’s Versus and Online modes, which are just as you’d expect. I get my ass kicked online so I can’t REALLY say how good it is, since I just spend my time getting killed on there.

Overall
Surprisingly, I think this is a good game. Still not a huge fan of the MK fighting style, but this is one of the better incarnations for me. The T rating is a bit disappointing though, the violence you’ve come to expect from the series is nowhere to be found,, most is censored.
Overall this is a fun game, the DC characters are cool and it’s a random mix of characters that they managed to make work well.

Oh, I think I linked to a Death Note image by error.... sorry about that... oh wait, it does say Castlevania Judgment.. weird...

A Castlevania fighting game? Inconceivable! But it’s true. And despite all low expectations, this is actually not too bad.

Though I’ve only rented it, I’ve played a substantial amount of time and went through most of the story modes(and a few “True” story modes),  lots of VS(tried all the characters) and a bit of Castle mode. Read on for more info and my impressions.

Graphics
For a Wii game, this looks great. The textures aren’t that good from too close up, but when you’re fighting it will look very nice. The environments are pretty varied, the character models are really good, the animations are pretty smooth. Overall this game looks very nice. If i had one thing to complain about, it would be Death. He looks awful. Or at least he doesn’t look like Death at all. Death isn’t Death without his badass cloak.
Otherwise, by Wii standards, this is a very nice looking game. It obviously won’t compare to most PS3/Xbox360 games, but for Wii I can’t fault the graphics much. 

Sound
I’m a junkie for Castlevania music. And this doesn’t disappoint. Taking music from the older games and giving us remixes/remade version is awesome, and in general they sound great. A Castlevania fan will definitely be all over the music in this game. 
Otherwise, the voice acting isn’t bad. Not overly good, but satisfying enough. Some of the voices are a bit emotionless, but overall the VAs do a good job.

Story
The story(or any semblance of it) is nothing to write home about. Each character has his own story, and it’s never really strong. They all start exactly the same way: Character goes somewhere, Aeon (a new character exclusive to this game) tells them they entered a time rift (whatever that is), then they fight other characters for seemingly no reason, and sometimes said characters come from other time periods. Some fights are predetermined, but others seem random. The stories are mostly just.. wacky and out of place. Maria’s story in particular is pretty stupid. She fights Shanoa because she’s hot (and she called her a little girl), she fights Sypha because she has big boobs, and she fights Carmilla because she has big boobs. Pretty ridiculous stuff.

After finishing all the story modes (except for Aeon, since you get his story later), you get the true story for each character, which is… exactly the same thing, except it adds a second battle against Aeon, and a boss battle against the Time Reaper, who is actually pretty hard to beat(pretty easy with Dracula though). There’s no real explanation as to who the Time Reaper is, what he does and why he wants to kill your character, but I guess that it’s besides the point……. yeah…

Overall, don’t get this game for the story, you’ll regret it. 

Gameplay
Fighting (NOTE: I ONLY PLAYED WITH GAMECUBE CONTROLLERS, BECAUSE I DIDN’T FEEL LIKE FLAILING MY ARMS AROUND FOR HOURS, SO I CAN’T COMMENT ON THE WII CONTROLS, ONLY GC CONTROLS)
Fighting here I would compare to Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm or Power Stone, but a bit simpler.
You move around freely in a 3D arena. To attack you either use subweapons or attacks. There are a few types of attacks: Normal attacks(B button), special attacks(A+B at the same time), Charged attacks (holding A until your character flashes a bit, and press B while still holding A), Block Breakers (L+B) and Ultimate Attacks (X).

Attacks change depending on if you’re pressing in a direction while pressing the button/button combination or not, so in the end there’s a good variety of attacks. Don’t expect to do huge combos here, but you can link various normal attacks to special attacks and such, so the combo system, while a bit limited, isn’t too bad. Like in all fighting games, there’s priorities on attacks and suck, but in the end it’s all pretty simple, making this a great pick up and play game.

Another interesting thing is the stages. In VS mode you have the choice to set on or off Stage Hazards. Each stage, except the throne room, have some kind of hazard. Not sure about the clock tower, but others can have monsters appearing, parts of the stage breaking, molten lava coming up at times, blades and spikes impaling you. This again adds lot of variety to the game, and if you don’t like it you can just turn it off.

Ultimate attacks (Finishers)
Now Ultimate attacks. These are actually a bit annoying. You have a bar at the bottom of the screen that fills up as you attack or get hit, and when it’s full you can use an ultimate attack. By pressing X, your character will launch his attack, and if it hits a cinematic starts with the character’s attack, and in the end it removes around 45% of the opponent’s life bar. These wouldn’t bother me much, but they last up to like 20 seconds, they can get pretty long, and watching them all the time gets tedious. And you can’t skip the animation. And they’re pretty overpowered too. Overall, I think they just needed ot be implemented better.

Subweapons
Ah, subweapons. A staple of the Castlevania series and they’re back here. Also comes destructible stuff that gives subweapons and hearts. In every stage, random boxes/candles/other stuff will appear that you can destroy and get hearts to use your subweapons, or other (randomly chosen) subweapons to replace your current one.

There’s a good variety of Subweapons. Most are ranged weapons, but some have other functions. Knifes go straight, axes move in an arc (not vertically), the cross works like a boomerang and can hit twice,  Holy Water stays on the ground a bit and hurts anything that touches it and finally the stopwatch. Other than the normal subweapons, there’s earth magic that makes spikes come out of the ground, bats that make opponents stagger, a gravity circle that hits everywhere around you, birds that pierce (i see little use to that though) and poisonous gas that does damage overtime. 

The subweapons add some good variety to battle, and each item has a super move which takes a few more hearts.

Modes
There’s a few modes here. Story is pretty much as explained before: randomly fight a bunch of people and… that’s it. The battle in the middle will be against one of two types of minions: Merman or Zombies, and after fighting a few of those you’ll either encounter a Minotaur or an Iron Gladiator, which are pretty much the same.
Arcade mode is pretty much the same, just a series of battles.

Then there’s the Castle mode, which is strangely reminiscent of Soul Calibur 2. You have a bunch of missions to get to the end of the Castle. Missions mostly ask you to beat your opponents, but sometimes they have boosted stats, or you have lowered stats, or you just have a certain condition to complete, like winning with an ultimate or landing an high number of hits in a combo, or doing a ring-out. This is a very fun mode, and it gets you accessories to change the look of your characters for their third and fourth costume.
Yeah, you can accessorize your characters to really make them look like you want to… or at least put on cool accessories on them, so your Maria can look different from your opponent’s. 

Added to those are Versus, tutorial and training modes. Overall there’s a bit of variety, mostly to be found in Castle mode.

Overall
This is really not a bad game. But it’s also not worth buying at full price. It’s nice to be able to play as all those Castlevania characters, the gameplay is good, if not a bit too simple. Don’t get this expecting a really deep fighting game, just something to pass the time. It’s not even really balanced(Dracula is broken).
Castlevania fans will probably like this, non-fans should at least check it out. And if you have Order of Ecclessia, you can get extra stuff in both this game and OoE by wirelessly connecting your DS to your Wii. 
My suggestion: RENT IT (or wait for a price drop)