Just from the trailers, it was clear this game was gonna be great, and obviously a tribute to games of the old. The trailers displayed colorful graphics, fun gameplay, and incredible 8-bit music. Enough to make any gamer happy.

So obviously I was hyped for the game, and not just because I loved the Scott Pilgrim comics, but because it looked like a legitimately great game.

Read on and see if I was right!

Developer: Ubisoft Montreal
Publisher: Ubisoft
Date of Release: August 10th 2010
Platforms: Playstation 3 (PSN) (Xbox 360 XBLA release coming on August 25th 2010)

Genre: Beat ‘em up
Rated T for Teen

Presentation
It’s colorful, it looks really fun, there’s lots of detail even though all the sprites are masterfully pixelated. It’s not pixelated because the sprites are low quality, of course, it’s pixelated to fit with the SNES style. There’s actually lots of nice detail in the graphics, the animation is simple but smooth and it just looks really awesome. The sprites mimic the look of the the comic almost perfectly, but still have a very unique look. The mini-cutscenes between levels are cheesily awesome as well.

Sound-wise, the game couldn’t be much better. The best part here is definitely the superb 8-bit soundtrack by chiptune band Anamanaguchi. I was already a fan of their stuff beforehand, so I couldn’t wait to hear it…. And I wasn’t disappointed at all. The composition of each tune is great, all of them are fitting to the environment/situation and they’re energetic and fun to listen to. The rest of the sound-effects are really good, though nothing really surprising here.

There’s no real story here. It goes through various areas and events from the comic books, but there’s no dialogue or anything, so the game really concentrates on the gameplay rather than the story. There’s a few “cutscenes” but nothing really huge.

Gameplay

Fighting
The basic gameplay is really fun. It’s very reminiscent of old-school beat ‘em ups of the NES and SNES era, but the main influence is definitely River City Ransom.

You start with a few things you can do. X jumps, Square does a “weak” attack, Triangle does a strong attack, Circle blocks, R1launches a special attack that hits around you (using Guts Points) and L1 uses your Striker (at the beginning every character has Knives as a Striker, but she has different effects for everyone… my favorite is when Kim calls Knives… ). The controls are solid and very easy to use. You can move around pretty easily and dash. You can also pick up items such as trash cans and weapons like hockey sticks… or even pick up downed enemies to hit people with, or throw them. And you get extra moves as you advance through the game.

In addition to life points, you have Guts Points. Those are used for special attacks and summoning Knives, but it has a secondary feature: if your HP gets to 0, if you have more than 1 GP left, you revive, which takes away some GP and gives half that amount to HP.

Killing enemies gives money, and comboing enemies in the air generates some more, and each enemy type has a certain AI which you have to figure out to fight them properly, so button-mashing isn’t exactly an option here.

Leveling
Killing enemies, other than giving money, also gives experience. Enough experience levels you up. That fully heals you, and it also teaches you a new move. All the characters have a level cap of 16, and there’s another move you have to find and buy. In addition to levels, you have stats to care about. Stats are gained by finding shops. Some are hidden and some are in plain sight. Using money, you can buy various sorts of food, or books, or CDs, each raising a certain amount of stats. Some items, mostly food, heals your HP and GP. And some items can be bought as a Snack, where it’s used when you die. You can raise Strength, Defense, Willpower and Speed, each which are incredibly useful. There’s really not much more to say about leveling. It’s simple, but it works. (note: if you level a character up but want to restart him/her for whatever reason, you can do so in the character data options).

Difficulty
The game is pretty tough. Enemies hit hard, have pretty good AIs that can be tough to figure out, and are generally pretty hard to deal with. And some of the battles are just crazy hard. Of course, there are ways to deal with the difficulty. Figuring out enemy AI is probably the most important part. But stat building does bring the most direct change, as you can hit harder, get hit not as hard, move faster, get more critical hits, so, if you’re having trouble, you can always go on a shopping spree in the shopping district.

And the difficulty is never at a Battletoads level of cheapness, or even a Ghosts n’ Goblins level of challenge. If you lose all your lives, you only return to the level-select screen, which isn’t too bad. The number of enemies is rarely overwhelming, and boosting your stats/leveling your characters generally really helps to advance. It’s not incredibly impossibly challenging, but it’s still a healthy challenge.

Problems
The game does have a few problems.

The first minor problem is the lack of online. It’s not a big problem for me, since I have extra controllers and friends. I don’t know why it lacks online. Some people from the team are saying it’s to make the game as old-school as possible, so they want people to meet up and play together. It’s not a big problem for me, but it is for other people. So if you really care a lot about this feature, you’ll be unhappy with this game.

The other problem is actually in regards to local multiplayer. You can have people either joining as guests, or loading a profile. If someone joins as a guest, all the levels and stats that person gets are lots forever once the game ends. Only the stats and level gained by the first player count, and that’s kind of annoying. Same for profiles, except they actually save their stats on their profile. Another problem with the local multiplayer is that there’s no “drop-in”. So you can’t just add a player to an ongoing game, you have to exit the game, add the new player, and start a new game. And you can’t drop players from games at all. If you’re playing with other people, and one of them falls asleep (it happens), you can’t easily drop him from the game.

The last problem is that the game is really glitched. I’ve seen people talking about loading errors, which I didn’t see, but I did come across various other glitches, like enemies that couldn’t be hit and just moved everywhere never hitting you either… which kinda slows down the game when you have to kill said enemy to advanced. I’ve seen a few variations of that, and it’s annoying having to pause, choose to return to the level select screen and then having to restart a level. I don’t know how many glitches there are, and how big they are, but the ones I found were incredibly annoying.

Overall
The game is just really fun. The gameplay is fun, smooth and really easy to pick up. The presentation is some of the best I’ve seen this year, with really fun graphics and an incredible soundtrack. The game offers a pretty good challenge too, and it adds a bit of enemies when you get more people in your game.

Just like the comic book it’s based on, it does a lot of references to various things in the video game industry. Of course, some things graphically show things in regards to other games (end of level animations for each character is a reference to games). But some elements of gameplay/level design are also references to other levels. Heck, one of the levels is actually pretty much remade from a classic NES game. And I did already mention that the game, as a whole, is just a big tribute to River City Ransom. Most gamers will love finding out all those references.

Some people might complain about the lack of online, but it’s really not such a big problem. The single-player is really fun, and I’m sure most people will have friends they’ll be able to play with locally… right? The only big problem with the game is the glitches, and from my experience they don’t happen TOO often.

This is a MUST play for both fans of the comics and people who are into classic games. No questions about it. While Ubisoft has been pretty crappy in the last few years, this is easily the best thing they’ve done in a while.

Pros and Cons
Pros
- Awesome gameplay
- Awesome graphics
- Awesome music
- Fun boss fights (though the Twins were way too damn easy)
- Challenging even with a maxed-out character
- Local Multiplayer is great
- Gamers will appreciate the ton of references to other games

Cons
- Lacks online (not a big problem for me, but it might deter people from playing this game… even if it really shouldn’t)
- People playing as guests doesn’t save the progress of the character they are using
- The game occasionally suffers from glitches that require you to exit the map and restart a level
- Not really a con, but I might as well mention it here: all the characters play exactly the same, other than their support attacks

The Save Factor
The game costs 10$, and the gameplay alone is worth that. Add in the awesome soundtrack and great presentation, this would be priced well even if it was 15$, despite the lack of online (which shouldn’t be much of a problem anyways, if you have friends and extra controllers).

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The first game in the series only made it to America recently via the Wii’s Virtual Console. So we can be pretty happy that the second one came out here in a relatively timely matter.

The original on the N64 was a fun shooter in the veins of Star Fox, but with really confusing controls, since you had to control the character seperately from the cursor that you use to aim at enemies, it was a bit hard to manage (though not impossible once you got the hang of it). So the Wii release should logically correct that minor problem, and at the same time make for a very fun game.

Read on and see if it’s any good!

Developer: Treasure
Publisher: Nintendo
Date of Release: June 27th 2010
Platforms: Nintendo Wii

Genre: Arcade-style shooter
Rated T for Teen

Presentation
Surprisingly, the graphics suffer from similar problems lots of modern games have: the color palette is boring. Other than the bullets, the whole game is brown and gray. The areas are pretty much all boring to look at. The base built around a volcano is probably the most interesting area, and even that is mostly brown. The graphical quality itself is just above average Playstation 2 level, nothing overly impressive here. The character design is simple, basic anime stuff, with nothing unique. Overall I’ll say the game doesn’t look BAD, but it doesn’t look good either.

Sound-wise, the voice acting is okay in japanese (though the translation in the subtitles is pretty bad at times). There’s audio cues for most things going on on-screen, so you know when you’re hitting things and getting it, as well as bullets speeding towards you. The sound effects themselves are fine, shots sound like shots, sword slashes sound like sword slashes, everything sounds good and nothing is out-of-place.

Gameplay
One of the big problems, for me, were the controls in the N64 version. So let’s talk about this right away.

The controls here are super simple: You aim and attack with the Wiimote, move/dodge/jump with the nunchuk. Everything works really well. Where the N64′s controls were confusing and hard to use, the Wii controls feels very tight and natural. Instead of having to use buttons to move your character around, and other buttons to aim your cursor, now everything works near flawlessly using the Wiimote’s pointer, which makes it easier to move around properly while aiming at enemies. You can float in the air freely so you have a lot of freedom of movement. Dodging makes you quickly dash in the direction you’re going, and you’re invincible while dodging.

You have 3 attacks: A normal fast shot by holding the B button, which aims where you’re pointing, a sword slash if you just tap the B button and a Charged shot if you hold the A button long enough and let go. The charged attack deals big damage to bosses, and kills almost any other enemy in one hit, including everything in the target’s surroundings, but you need to wait a bit before being able to use it again. The sword slash only hits close to you, but, other than killing any normal enemy in one hit, it also stops most projectiles and reflects certain projectiles towards where you’re aiming. The normal shot isn’t nearly as strong as the average attack, but it’s more useful than the other attacks since it has a good range and can always be used. You can also press A near a target to lock-on, which makes your attacks home in on that target no matter where you aim, but it’s weaker than manually aiming.

You get points for killing enemies. You get point multipliers for killing enemies as well, increasing your score further. Getting hit reduces your multiplier. Bosses give bonus points depending on speed. When you finish a level, you get bonuses based on remaining HP, Time spent to finish the level and a bonus for every Secret found through a level. Secrets can be destroying certain objects, or doing something special against bosses. Learning everything in a level is required to get a good spot in the leaderboards.

A stand-out of the game is the fact that it has a lot of boss battles. Each of the 7 levels (not including the super-easy tutorial level) has multiple bosses, each harder than the last (heck, the final level is just a series of bosses). And they WILL kill you. A lot. Until you figure out their patterns that is. Each boss battle is fought differently and  each are fun to fight. I think this makes the game faster paced and more varied.

The game has 2 types of levels. Most of the time the levels that play sort of like a mix between Star Fox and Wild Guns, and others play like side-scrolling shooters. The both use the same type of controls, so going from one level style to another works perfectly. This adds a bit of gameplay variety.
There is one extra style of gameplay, but it’s only used in one of the boss fights late in the game and it SUCKS. While the whole game is a shooter, this one boss battle in level 6 suddenly becomes a fighting game with terrible controls… It’s stupid and pointless, but at least it’s not too hard when you figure out the timing.

Difficulty-wise… on your first playthrough, this game will kick your ass. Almost every boss will kill you a few times until you get a hang of their pattern. But it’s not unfair difficulty. Sure, you’ll die a lot, but there’s infinite continues and lots of checkpoints, so, the first time through the game, even if you die a lot, you won’t despair since you’ll always be right back where you died, or at least not too far from where you died. And there’s healing items too, though some levels barely have any of them, and others are full of them. But the real difficulty comes from getting up in the leaderboards. Now that’s a challenge, and, if you really get into it, could keep you occupied for quite a while. There’s a lot of trial-and-error involved in playing this game, but it’s very fun.

Overall
The presentation is a bit subpar, the story (which I didn’t mention in the review, for good reason) makes no sense and isn’t really interesting, but the gameplay is great and that’s all that matters for an arcade shooter.

The point of the game isn’t really finishing it, which should only take a few hours on your first playthrough, but to learn how to play the game as well as possible, until you can manage to finish levels without dying to get high scores. Getting high scores is very tough to do, and requires a lot of practice, even on lower difficulty levels.

There’s good challenge to be had here, with even the normal mode being real tough. The difficulty is never overwhelming on your first playthrough at least, as there’s a pretty high amount of checkpoints. Sure, some bosses take multiple tries to finish off, but a bit of practice and pattern-learning will get you through any of them in no time. The real challenge isn’t just finishing the game, it’s actually getting good at it.

The gameplay is solid, the challenge is good and the controls work great compared to the original version. This isn’t a must-have by any means, but it’s definitely worth checking out. It can become pretty addictive.

Pros and Cons
Pros
- Great controls
- Lots of replayability (if you get into it) with the online leaderboards
- Fair difficulty
- Really fun to play
- Rather long for an arcade-style shooter (can be both a pro and a con)

Cons
- Sometimes the difficulty is just a bit too intense, even on Normal mode
- If you somehow care about this(which makes no sense for an arcade shooter), the story sucks
- The stupid fighting game segment in the sixth level

The Save Factor
The game starts at $50, which I find a bit too high. If you plan on playing a lot and try to get high in the leaderboards spending $35-40 is fair. Otherwise, you shouldn’t spend much more than $20.

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You might remember, not too long ago, I reviewed Retro Game Challenge(click here to read it, as I’ll make reference to it a few times). Retro Game Challenge was actually a translation of Game Center CX: Arino no Chousenjou, which came out almost 2 years over here after the Japanese release. Well, a bit over 2 years after Game Center CX: Arino no Chousenjou, we get a sequel! Sure, it’s in japanese, but why not review it now instead of waiting another 2 years?

Well, my experience with the original is fresh, considering it came out just a few weeks ago. Now, keep in mind, I can’t read japanese, so I can’t do a 100% complete review of the game. I don’t know what the characters are saying, I can’t read the magazines or instruction booklets, and I can’t play some of the games in there at all with a step-by-step guide. And of course I either have to improv my way through challenges or check guides.

So let’s go and see if the second Retro Game Challenge is actually a challenge this time around(yeah, the first game was easy… yet really fun!).  

 

As for the games, they look mostly like in the first game: They’re made in styles similar to the time the games are supposedly made in. So the 8-bit games look great, and you have one 16-bit game which could look just a bit better. But there’s no doubt that the games were made in old-school style. 

As for the sounds, well they’re reused. Pretty much all of them, and the music is the same. When Kid Arino speaks, he seems to have more phrases than in the first, though I can’t exactly tell since he’s speaking in japanese. It just feels like there’s more things he can say when he reacts to the games.

 

Like in the previous game, you have 4 challenges to complete in each before going to the next game, which brings you later in the time line. This time it’s from around 1982 to 1992. 

Wiz-Man
Pac-Man. Pretty much. But with a twist. There are 2 colors of dots to collect, and you can only collect dots of a certain color if you’re weilding a rod of said color. Getting a rod also gives you an attack: Ice or Fire (blue and red respectively). Some enemies are weak to one of them, strong to one of them, or weak to both. As you pick up dots, eventually big point bonuses appear, there’s various ways to score extra points, and sometimes an orange rod appears. The orange rod gives you an attack that can kill any enemy and you can pick up any color of dots. You can also pick up multiple copies of each rod, to get multiple attacks and move faster. When you get all the dots, you need to get to the door to end the level.

This game is pretty fun. If you want an original take on pac-man, this does it very well. Fun, kinda fast-paced. The challenges are really easy though. Not that it’s surprising, but a bit of normal playing will get you through most challenges, except the second which might require a guide to know what to do exactly.

Muteki-ken Kung-Fu
A take on the NES classic Kung-Fu… As if the title wasn’t obvious about that. It’s very easy. You have, a punch, a kick, and you can crouch and jump (so you have both jumping and crouching attacks). Doing 2 consecutive attacks fast enough makes the second attack “shoot” the enemy either horizontally if the second attack was a punch and diagonally if the second attack was a kick. If you hit and kill another enemy that way, you get a muteki emblem, and when you get enough, you get a power up which lasts a few seconds. That’s… pretty much it. Each stage has a mid-boss and a boss. ALSO this has a 2-player version, but it’s only against Kid Arino.

The game is really easy. Only the bosses offer a bit of challenge. But it looks nice though. The animations are really smooth. The challenges are a piece of cake and you don’t need a guide to accomplish them, just playing normally 4 times will get you through all the challenges.

Demon Returns
A fun take on Super Mario Bros. With the story from Ghosts n’ Goblins (but not the difficulty). You just proposed to your girlfriend, a wizard comes in, kidnaps her and turns you into a demon. The basics of Mario are there, though a bit changed. You start small and can get power ups to become big and shoot tornados. You can jump on enemies. You can find souls (instead of coins) and 100 of them give you an extra life. There’s 2 ways to die in the game: get hit when you’re small, or get an empty “apple meter”. Over time, apples in the apple meter go down and you can replenish those by picking up apples on the way. You can jump on enemies then kick them when they’re turned over to kill them, but you can also use your attack on them, which makes them spin, then you can ride them. This gives you extra speed, acts as a shield, and gives you a one-time-only double jump.

This game is really fun. Fast-paced platforming, riding enemies is fun. The challenges are stupidly easy though. Perform a double jump, get the second power up and destroy a block with it, get 100 souls and beat the first boss.

Detective Arino
A text adventure game, with images so you can tell who you’re talking to, pretty much. Similar to classic text-adventure games like Shadowgate. That’s really all I can say though. Japanese knowledge is a MUST to actually play this game. For me though, I had to use a nicely done step-by-step guide in a Gamefaqs topic to get through it(THANK YOU swiegwo from GameFaqs for the awesome post, well done and helped a lot). It seems okay, but I’m not a big fan of this type of game.

There’s also a sequel you can unlock after playing GunDuel, but thankfully the sequel doesn’t have any challenges.

GunDuel
A vertical-scrolling shoot ‘em up. Quite similar to Star Prince in the first game. This time though you get 2 powerups at the same time. One of the powerups will shoot vertically, and the other from the 2 sides of the ship, and you can change the order of the 2 power ups. One interesting thing here is the co-op mode. You can play together with Kid Arino. Actually it’s needed for a challenge. Playing 2-player enables a new powerup: GATTAI! This combines the 2 ships, and the player who picked up the powerup controls the ship. Fun stuff, huge powerup.

Overall it’s kinda fun. Nothing really special, but the 2-player thing is cool. The challenges are easy though… of course. None of them really require using a guide, just shoot your way through everything and do basic stuff in the game’s engine to pass the challenges.

Triotos
Tetris! Kinda… This is the portable game in the Game Center CX: Arino no Chousenjou games (played on a gameboy clone named ”Game Computer Mini”). And obviously it’s gonna be Tetris… Kinda. Instead of doing lines, you have to do lines of at least 3 blocks of the same color, either horizontally or vertically. A bit more like Tetris 2.

The challenges are pretty easy, though you might require a guide to know exactly what to do for some of them. I got them all by playing randomly though… There’s demonstrations in the game that explain some mechanics which can help as well.

Guadia Quest Saga
The first Retro Game Challenge has the Dragon Quest-like Guadia Quest, and now you get a sequel! But this time it’s not on the “Game Computer Mini”, but on the ”Game Computer Mini Color“. So basically the graphics and sounds and gameplay are exactly the same as in the first game. There is pretty much no difference. It’s a different game though… different story, different world map, different dungeons. The Guadia System seems widely different this time though, where you can talk to people, who will transform into Guadia, and will join you if you beat them. There’s other changes but sadly I have no idea what they are or what they do because I can’t read the text. 

But the game is super easy to play despite it being in japanese, and you definitely won’t need a guide for the first 3 challenges, and maybe even not the fourth. Just make sure to save from time to time (first item in your item menu). And keeping your equipment up-to-date is easy as well, you shouldn’t have any trouble with that.

Super Demon Returns
A sequel to the first Demon Returns, this time on the “Super Game Computer” keeping the SNES tradition of having “Super” in the title. This basically plays like the first Demon Returns. But there’s a lot more to do. More items to pick up, stages build differently, and you can do directionnal attacks (you can attack up and down O_O). Also, when you get the first powerup, you can hold X or Y and charge up a bigger attack around you. This can break some normally unbreakable blocks and kills enemies in one hit. In regards to the Super Mario Bros. series, this is a lot more like Super Mario World (Super Mario Bros. 4 in Japan), as you have more exploration in levels, but slightly slower gameplay.

The game is very fun, like the first. The challenges are easy again, but you’ll probably need a guide to know what to do exactly.

 

Added to that you get Daily challenges, which change every day(second menu option on title screen). I didn’t try them since I can’t read the challenges, but that gives a lot of extra gameplay. After finishing all the normal challenges you also get extra challenges. Speaking of challenges, if there’s somehow a challenge you just can’t go through, you can give Game Master Arino a call and skip said challenge, if you played the game enough times. I don’t know how that influences the game’s progress in general though.

There’s also a game and watch-style practice game, but I don’t know if playing it does anything. It’s on the title screen.

 

Is it import-friendly? Well yes. You’ll probably need a guide for some stuff, but overall it’s not really tough to navigate through the game. You’ll just DEFINITELY need a guide to complete the detective game challenges.

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Hey everyone.
Well, Rock Band 2 just came out on the PS3, so of course I got it right when the store opened.

So, considering I played the first Rock Band extensively, I don’t really feel the need to make a really long review for this one, since it’s basically the same thing other than new songs and some enhanced features. So I’ll basically talk about the setlist, the new features… and that’s it. If you want to know how the game plays check out some videos! Let’s go!

New stuff!
Let’s start right away with this. Though the basic gameplay is the same as in the first, there are quite a few new interesting features. So let’s check those out.

Characters
Now that’s something people have been asking for in the first game. In the first, when you created a character, it was stuck at the instrument you created it on. If you wanted your character to play on the drums but created it on the guitar, you’ll have to re-create it on another instrument. Now you just create a character and he/she will play on any instrument you want. Might seem small, but I think it’s a great addition. Now my pink schoolgirl can play drums AND guitar. Nice.

Overall 
If you have the first Rock Band and like playing it, there’s little reason not to get this. 84 new songs (plus 20 more with a code that… aren’t revealed yet but should come out relatively soon(though i don’t know if the wii version will have those, and the PS2 version definitely doesn’t)), lots of new features, and for 15$ you can transfer almost all the songs from the first into the second game.
If you don’t have the first and are willing to fork out the cash, buy the pack with(probably) slightly enhanced instruments(I have no idea how they are, since I had the intruments from the first). Well worth checking out, really fun for parties and just hanging out with friends.
And of course this game is challenging, quite a few really tough songs. 
Another interesting fact: By the end of the year the setlist including RB1 and 2 and all the downloadable songs will equal around 500 songs, making it by far the largest setlist in a music game right now(not counting Stepmania).
So yeah, get this, it’s really fun.

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Look forward to it!

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