Man this time of year is hectic for me. Shopping, cooking, all sorts of friends and family to visit. But somehow I managed to get a free night to go over to my friends' house because he bought a WiiU along with Playstation All Stars Battle Royale. So without going into too much depth I'll give my impressions of what we played.

First off the WiiU in general. I like the sort of Facebook inspired plaza that has all the Miis standing around talking about certain games and features. The games I saw in the plaza were Nintendoland, New Super Mario Bros. U, Sonic and All Stars Racing Transformed, Assassin's Creed 3, ZombiU and Black Ops II and then stuff like Netflix. Also some people make some really nice fan art. Part of me wonders if this is what Playstation Home was going for but just went about it the wrong way.

Rabbidsland don't ask me why they had this one as this one got panned worse than ZombieU. My friend Megan was a fan of the first Rabbids game on the Wii (as most of us were) and apparently had the Kinect version as well. Though I will say Rabbidsland isn't as bad as reviews made it out to be. It is mostly blatantly ripping off both Mario Party and Nintendoland with a theme park inspired board game setting and the three of us playing with their daughter had a good time and most of the games worked well once you figured out what you had to do and unlike Nintendoland, you only need the game pad and a single Wiimote/Nunchuck combo. Still I only reccomend it if you want something to play with friends or if you have kids.

And there's this song that plays during one of the mini games that I LOVE!! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0yL1C5CwCY

New Super Mario Bros. U- I love Mario and honestly we all had fun with the newest 2D Mario romp espeically their daughter who, say what you will, the 2D platformers are very accessable to kids. Of course having a person with the gamepad essentially playing God can either be really helpful or a great way to troll your friends of course I have a bad habit of being impatient because I've played enough 2D Mario to know the ropes of jumping, finding the hidden areas. NO SCOTT I DON'T NEED THE BLOCKS I CAN WALL JUMP THANK YOU!! Also the level design while not drastically different is mixing it up a bit in terms of theme and surprisingly reminds of a a cancelled CDI Mario game called Super Mario Wacky Worlds where Mario traversed levels with some interesting themes and designs outside of the standard, grass, water, fire, desert, etc. worlds. Here's a vid of an early EARLY alpha and more exist on youtube.

Wacky Worlds video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nv3dhx4rR0 Seriously I see some similarity in these Wacky Worlds backgrounds and some of the unique levels of NSMBU.

Playstation All Stars Battle Royale My friend, Scott, like me doesn't like playing party fighters online much. Anyone who's read my past blogs knows my qualms about SSBB online. Not just the lag and long wait times but annoying people repeatedly taunting, people standing around on the edge all fight, people cheating with Jigglypuff on the Bridge of Eldin and of course the constant NO ITEMS!! FINAL DESTINATION!! Stop-having-fun guys making online play repetitive and boring. Sorry I play SSBB TO HAVE FUN!!

But we both had played demos and betas of PSAll Stars and we agreed that one of us would get this game and the other would come over to play and as a party fighting alternative to SSB, it is fun. He kept kicking my butt with Ratchet though. Now last time I said I was pretty good with the store kisok demo playing with Jak however I think now I do better with Spike from Ape Escape plus he's got a big ass laser. It is nice that the game has all stages and characters unlocked from the get go so we didn't have to sit and play single player stuff to get characters unlocked but at the same time then it really doesn't give you anything to work for. I mean the whole reason we all slogged through SSBB's Subspace Emissary was to get all those characters unlocked faster than trying to get through a 100 man melee, or doing the Target test with everyone or playing hours and hours of vs. matches. So this is sort of a catch 22. you have all characters there from the start but unless you want those extra costumes or taunts there's little reason to go play through all those story modes. Then again some say we should compare this to the first SSB which was fun as a party game but also had little single player content.

*SPOILERS*

Also Polygon man is definitely not as threatening or scary as Master Hand, Crazy Hand or Tabuu. He shows up with a ridiculously silly voice sounding like a cartoon villian and I get the impression that Kevin Butler was going to voice him until the whole lawsuit thing and had to find a last minute replacement. Then falls into the background and makes this game's equivalent of the Wire frame, polygon creatures from SSB. Purple versions of various characters with some of the stage hazards like the Patapon and the Negativatron showing up, Then P-Man tries to smash you with his chin where you get a chance to pound him. Then at the end he shouts "Nooooo!! How can I lose?!" My friend said "because your polygon count was too low" (ba-dum tish), then Ratchet appeared to absorb his power. OMG the PS All Stars are like Highlanders!! There can be only one!! lol

Anyway I'd like to get into more depth about these things but this blog is long enough and I got Christmas stuff to do.