• 27Aug 08

  Happy B-day to me! =)

  Well today is my birthday! Whoop! I'm now officially 17. Nothing really special about 17 but hey it's got to mean something right?
  • Posted Aug 27, 2008 5:20 pm GMT
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• 15Jul 08

  Crappy emblem for a crappy conference

  Well it appears I have the Microsoft Conference emblem. Frankly it looks very ugly. They seriously didn't put very much effort into making them this year. But then again this is a very good representation of the quality of the conferences this year. All of them pretty much sucked. So why not have a crappy icon to add to the crap that is this year's E3. If E3 is going to be this boring from now on I don't care if it shows up next year. I was hoping it would be better then last year's since it was back at the LA Convention but instead it is worse, which I would think it would be hard to do worse then last, I was wrong oh so wrong. Well hopefully Glitchspot won't kick in and it will give my the emblems for Nintendo and Sony since that is the only good thing I'm getting out of these conferences. If you consider a crappy emblem a "good" thing.
  • Posted Jul 15, 2008 7:08 pm GMT
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• 20Jun 08

  Brawl Review

  Well Super Smash Bros Brawl has been out for a while now and most of you probably already have the game. Which brings up the point of why I'm bothering to do a review of it; I frankly don't know why. But nonetheless I'm doing a review of Brawl so enjoy it.
  
  As most of you know Brawl is the third in the Super Smash Bros series of games. The series has you playing as many of your favorite Nintendo mascots as they fight each other to the death! As with past games multiplayer is the main draw here. Playing with friends locally or via wifi is a blast and easily the best part of the game. And continuing the trend from Melee the developers try to make the single player campaign more interesting as well. Whither or not they succeeded in this attempt is debatable. The goal of Brawl is to fight with other players and have the most points at the end of the round or be the last one standing depending on the match settings. You do this by knocking opponents off the screen to kill them. You attack the opponents to increase their damage percentage. Once they have enough damage they become easy to knock off the screen and kill them. The premise isn't that deep but it turns out Brawl is far more engrossing then you might expect. The amount of items, stages, and character move sets makes each match unique and it never gets old.
  
  Let's start of with the basic controls. Brawl makes use off all controllers available on Wii. You have the choice of using the GC controller, the Wiimote sideways, the Wiimote with the Nunchuk, and the Classic controller. Each control setup has it's own pros and cons and which is best for you will depend on preference. All the control setups work fine, although the Wiimote sideways is a bit of a pain to use because of the odd shape of the Wiimote when you hold it sideways and the lack of buttons. If you have played past SSB games then you will be familiar with Brawl's control scheme. As usual the A button is for regular attacks with the B button for special attacks. And you can use different combinations of the control stick and A/B buttons to do different attacks. Then you have the regular jump, shield, taunt, etc buttons. All of this is fairly easy to get into and if you don't like how the controls are set upped you can customized the controls to your liking. Although the customized controls are a bit limited. You can't just put any action to any button, it limits you severely sadly. If I want to press left to go right I should be able to! >=|
  
  So far Brawl is basically Melee all over again. But you will notice some differences. The most obvious is the addition of the smash ball. The smash ball is an item the floats around on the screen. All the characters can attack it to try and break the ball open. Whoever breaks it open gets to use a new move called the Final Smash. Each character has it's own Final Smash(minus a few very similar ones). The Final Smashes range wildly in appearance and effect and you're best off trying them all for yourself. But all of the Final Smashes are very powerful and the appearance of a smash ball will instantly change the course of the match as everyone tries to get the smash ball. Okay let's go onto the characters. Brawl has quite a few characters, 35 to be exact. Most of your favorite characters from Melee are back along with some very good newcomers. Fans were outraged that Melee had some carbon-copy characters, luckily Brawl doesn't do this. While some characters, such as the Star Fox set, are very similar they are unique enough to warrant the different characters. The characters seem to be well balanced, and while there will be top tier characters, for the average player each character has potential to become your main.
  
  Now it's time for the stages. Brawl has a ton of new stages and a decent selection of stages from Melee. Brawl's new stages have far more going on then stages in previous games. Almost all the stages have some sort of special effect doing on; whether it be transformations, destructible environments, physic changes or anything else it makes for a much more chaotic gameplay. Along with the regular stages Brawl also lets you made your own stages using a bit of a limiting grid system. First off you choose the size, theme, and music of your stage. Then you get to fill the gird in with various different stage pieces. Although the stage builder is very basic and there isn't much to it, it works and you can still make some good fun stages. As an added bonus you can send stages to your friends as well.
  
  And let's not for get the items as well. Most of the items are the same as Melee with some new ones here and there. Besides the smash ball mention earlier other new items include: Dragoon where you have to collect the three pieces to use it, the pitfall to stop players in their tracks, the gooey bomb that sticks to you and will explode if you don't attach it to another player, and many more. But the biggest change is the addition of Assist Trophies. You will find trophies laying on the ground during matches, you can grab these trophies and unleash powerful items that do various things. It's basically like a Pokemon ball but with all sorts of characters from different games, and don't worry Brawl still has Pokemon balls. Overall the selection of items are more varied then every, although 'hardcore' players will choose not to use items altogether. Okay that's enough of the multiplayer let's get onto the singleplayer. Brawl's singleplayer is much like that of Melee's. You have the basic classic mode where you face enemies one at a time. Training mode, All-Star mode where you face all the characters with limited recovery items, and event matches. All of these are basically the same as they where in Melee. The only thing that has been changed from Melee to Brawl is the Stadium mode. Most of it is still the same, it still has home-run contest, multi-man, and boss battles. But the mode is missing Stand on the Target, which as taken out of Brawl completely. This isn't all that bad although I wish they kept it as it was an interesting diversion. The Target Smash is also different then Melee. Instead of having different levels for each character like in Melee there are now only four different levels based upon difficulty. This is a bit of a let down since it feels like you are missing a lot of content, but it's not a deal breaking thing just a bit disappointing.
  
  The biggest change in Brawl's single player is the Adventure mode. It's now called the Subspace Emissary and is quite an adventure. The Subspace Emissary will take around eight, yes eight, hours to complete. Unfortunately this is a very dull eight hours at best and just plain tedious at worst. The SSE is basically and adventure told through cut scenes. Once the cut scene is done you do into a 2d sidescrolling platformer gameplay. This is where the first flaw comes in, Brawl was set up to be a fighter not a platformer. The controls don't work that well for platforming, it's playable but not nearly as fluid as say a true Mario game. So essentially you just run around mostly linear platforms until you get to a boss battle and then repeat. The gameplay is fun and is just tedious most of the time. And it is so repetitive, SSE uses the same enemies and backgrounds over and over. The only redeeming qualities of SSE is the cut scenes which are actually very nicely made and look great. And of course that SSE is the easiest way to unlock all or most of the characters, which is really the only incentive to beat it.
  
  Now then let's go onto the graphics department. Brawl is easily one of the best looking games on Wii. The characters are well rendered and are highly detailed. The stages are all unique and styled well. The only complaint here is that some items are a bit too small to tell what they are at times. But besides that there isn't much to fault graphics wise.
  
  As with the graphics the music and sounds of Brawl don't have much to fault either. The soundtrack is easily one of the best video game soundtrack to be made in a long time. Literally dozens of composers from various companies helped in making the soundtrack and it shows. The soundtrack consists of remixes of many classic Nintendo tunes. All of these are done very well and you are bound to find something you like. The same can be said for the sound effects. Brawl also introduces a new feature they call "My Music." Basically this mode allows you to choose what song will play for each stage. This sounds great when you first hear it, but it's actually very limiting and a disappointment. The game has tracks preset for each level, all you can do is choose between those tracks. So I can't have a Kirby song on Mario's stage, this is really irritating and defeats the point of have customizable tracks in the first place.
  
  Okay let's see what else Brawl has to offer. Brawl has an online mode that doesn't really work. Like all other Nintendo games(besides Mario Kart Wii) you have to trade Friend Codes to battle your friends. And while there is a random match mode it's pretty much useless. The system takes forever to find people, literally ten minute waits for me. And then when you do find someone you can't communicate with them at all, not even simple blurbs. And it can be very laggy at times. If you are playing against friends though it is a bit better. Most notably is that fact you can assign blurbs to your taunt buttons. You just press a taunt button and the blurb will show above your character. This is a fun little addition that should have been in random matches as well, just use some censoring Nintendo geez. There is also the Spectator mode. Here you can watch battles people have uploaded, this mode works well but isn't all the interesting to most people. Overall the online is decent with friends but still filled with bugs, lag, and other little annoyances in random matches that make the overall feel leave a bad taste in your mouth.
  
  Before I rap up this review I should mention some of the little extras Brawl has as well. Like Melee you can collect trophies. In Melee you got trophies by using a slot machine, in Brawl you have a fell fledge minigame call the Coin Launcher. In the Coin Launcher you fire coins to get by playing the game to hit trophies and enemies to collect them. It's a very fun minigame and addictive to play. Brawl also has a screenshot capabilities. You can pause a match at anytime(besides online of course) to take a picture. You can sends these pictures to anyone on your FC list which is a nice little touch. You can also recored entire matches and send them to friends as well. And the last notable extra in Brawl is the Masterpeices. The Masterpieces are trail versions of various games you can find on the Virtual Console. This is a cool idea, I mean what better way to advertise games then a demo in a popular game. It's too bad the demos are short, and when I say short I mean 30 seconds short.
  
  Overall Brawl is a great fighting game. It has the characters, stages, items, options, and extras to make it a superb game. While it's lacking in some areas and some things could have been a bit more polished, mainly the online, the minor flaws the game has are stuffed away in the corner easy to be forgotten by all the positive aspects of the game. The Super Smash Bros series has always been know for it's lovable characters, crazy stages and items, and it's great and easily accessible controls. Brawl has all of this and improves on it making it a blast to play and easily the best Super Smash Bros game to come out yet.
  • Posted Jun 20, 2008 7:12 pm GMT
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