Super Smash Bros Brawl: First Impressions

Sorry about the delay. I should’ve had this up yesterday but I was playing Brawl obssessively.

Anyway, the first thing that one would do when starting up Brawl is seeing how the controls work in a Group Battle or Training mode. I use the GC controller and the controls work very well. There are 4 ways to play the game, as you’ve probably heard: Wiimote on its side, Wiimote and nunchuck, Classic Controller and (my personal favourite) the Gamecube Controller. The battles remain untouched except for a few things. There is a new Smash Ball that I’m sure many of you have heard of. The character who manages to break it open will get a very powerful special move.

You will spend quite a lot of time in Solo mode as well. Classic mode, Events mode and more await you in this menu. But for this first impressions, let me talk about the Subspace Emmisary. The Subspace Emmisary is where you’ll want to unlock new characters. Every character that isn’t playable at the start of the game can be unlocked here including characters that contributed a lot to the hype (for me anyway), Snake and Sonic the Hedgehog. SSE sees you clearing enemies of an area and then proceeding to another level. But the levels are not always like this. Near the start of the game, there is a level where you have to run away from a live statue, whilst fighting some enemies. The story of SSE is that the Ancient Minister wants to take over an un-named land, by planting bombs with a time limit in many different locations. He has many monsters at his disposal to try and slow you down, so the characters of Brawl will have to save the land by stopping the Ancient Ministers plots. Along the way, more characters will come to help you.

I think the game is very good at the moment. Good story mode, amazing group brawl, and online. What’s not to like. Look out for my review soon.

Brawl Impressions Tommorow

This is just a quick little post to say that my First Impressions of Brawl will arrive tommorow. For one reason. I can’t get off the damn thing because it’s so good! I’m about 2 hours in to the SSE, but it’s nearly 10pm now, so I will have to write the first impressions tomorow. Sorry about that, but I can give you some words of advice. Go and buy the game.

Wario Land Renamed in US

I know, this isn’t really big enough for its own post now is it? But the new Wario Land game for the Wii has been renamed in the US to Wario Land: Shake It, which is the subheading I would have expected the rumored WarioWare Balance Board game to have. The US also have a new date to mark in their calendar. NOA revealed through their Press Website that Wario Land: Shake It will be released on September 29th, 3 days after the European release. On an unrelated side-note, my Brawl has been despatched, so it should come tommorow. Hooray!

Wario Land: The Shake Dimension Dated!

Nintendo of Europe released their line up of games for the next few months on the Wii and DS, which has a European release date for Wario Land: The Shake Dimension, which I will be pre-ordering.

The big announcements are the releases of Wario Land (26th September), Pokemon Mystery Dungeons 2 (4th July), and Guitar Hero: Aerosmith (27th June), which is big for some people. Brawl is also on the list, but everyone knows Brawl’s release by now anyway.

I would get Wario Land from Japan, but:

1) Buying Okami, Brawl and a Wii Points Card in the same month leaves me with a short amount of money to spend.

2) By the time Datel fiddle with the freeloader to make it work, Nintendo can make an update to prevent this, probably boosting Wario Land’s EU sales.

You can find the actual list here: http://www.nintendo.co.uk/NOE/en_GB/news/2008/noe_announces_summer_2008_release_schedule_8775.html

To update you on the status of my Brawl delivery:

24/06/2008 – Your MY order is currently being picked and packed.

I don’t know when the game is going to be despatched yet, but oh well.

Happy Birthday Sonic!

It’s come to my attention that today: June 23rd is the 17th Anniversary of Sonic The Hedgehog being first released on the Genesis, unfortunately for “new” gamers, this doesn’t mean much because most of the new Sonic games are horrible. But for people who have played the original game (I can barley say that) it’s a pretty special occassion. So it would seem like a pretty appropriate time to post my review of the original game on the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis. But I have yet to complete the game, as it’s suprisingly hard on the first playthrough. But I hope to get it done before the end of the week.

Also, I may be able to post my first impressions, and some snapshots of Brawl on Thursday. Anyone who buys their games off of the GAME website probably know that it normally gets delivered a day or two early. Which is an advantage because I can send many Brawl screenshots to my friends and torture them with the snapshots. That being said, anyone from the US who reads this will probably post snapshots of Brawl.

But that’s about it. I have a lot of games that I want to review soon, so look out for those reviews on this site, and don’t forget to look out for my Sonic the Hedgehog and Super Smash Bros Brawl review, which should be coming soon.

Block Breaker Deluxe Review

Block Breaker Deluxe is a WiiWare title developed by Gameloft, and is based off of the flash game Block Breaker. I’m quite impressed by how much enjoyment I got out of this game, considering it is an enhancement of a game that can be played for free on the internet.

The gameplay is very simple, yet addictive. You hit a ball into the air with some sort of shield, and destroy all of the blocks to advance to the next level. Certain blocks have power-ups, like more powerful balls (wait for that to be misinterpreted), more balls to hit into the air, lasers to shoot the blocks and a few more. The Wii Remote has taken the place of the mouse unsuprisingly, as you point in the direction you would the shield to go. There’s another control scheme where you use the D-pad to move the shield around. But this isn’t the Wii remote on its side control scheme that anyone with common sense about the Wii could have thought of. No, you still point at the screen, but you just use the sideway buttons on the D-Pad. This may not sound that bad, but trust me, it’s a really bad control scheme. The D-Pad makes the shield move really slowly, so you can forget about passing the harder levels with this control scheme! How Gameloft could have not recognized that the Wii remote on its side would most likely work is beyond me. Not that the Wii pointer is a bad way of controling the game, but it sometimes goes a bit wrong and I end up missing the ball.

I find it humorous that the game actually has some sort of story. I can tell it has a story, but all I can gather from it is a guy trying to work his way up to the top by… being good at Block Breaker? Which brings me to one of my gripes with the game. It’s one of, if not THE cheesiest game I have ever played. I can’t describe why it’s so cheesy. It may be the dialogue, the 80’s design of the game, or the menu screen. Ironically, it’s the cheesy design which I despise so much which actually makes the graphics look good. It features as much 2D as Gameloft can get away with, but the glossy designs make the game look OK.

Your score is counted as US Dollars. You use this money to unlock a secret area and unlock some new items and power ups. The more power ups you get and the shorter it takes for you to finish a level, the higher your score will be! There is a Multiplayer mode in the game, with different levels of difficulty. You and a second player try to destroy as many blocks as you can, and you both get your own shields. It’s not the best multiplayer mode, but it’s still fun to play.

Pros

• Core Gameplay is fun
• Very addictive
• Boss Battles are great

Cons

• The lack of online
• The cheesiness
• No Wiimote on its side

Overall: 7.8

Overall, the game is good. Very good and addictive gameplay, but the lack of any online multiplayer and leaderboards drag the game down a little bit. If you can excuse that, then you’d be wise to have a look at this game.

First Impressions: Sonic The Hedgehog

I know, I’m about 17 years late to do a First Impressions of a game. But, better late than never, right? Sonic the Hedgehog may not be appreciated by people introduced in to gaming in the past 5-10 years, as most of the 3D Sonic games suck. People in the Genesis and Super Nintendo generation will aprecciate the game a lot more, some considering the original Sonic the Hedgehog as one of the greatest video games ever created. It’s for this reason that I downloaded it on the Virtual Console today.

When you first start the game, you will be greeted with the classic Green Hill Zone, and while the first level is easy, it isn’t meant for challenge. It’s merely meant to introduce those people back in the Genesis era to the overall concept of the game, and it does that very well. After getting used to the controls, running around and collecting gold coins almost feels like second nature whilst playing the game. I found the collecting coins part of the game to be a good feature, but there’s one thing that annoys me about this. If you get by an enemy, ALL of your coins will drop. And if you get hit when you have 0 coins, you will die! This is hilighted in the Eggman battle on Green Hill Zone Act 3. Whilst the battle isn’t really that hard, it is when you’re low on coins. But the fact that this is a tricky game isn’t a reason to shun the game.

So, there’s no question whether you should buy the game or not, you definitely should. But if you want to find out how great the game is and whether or not I think it’s among the very best video games ever, you’ll have to look out for my review. I hope to get my review out before Super Smash Bros. Brawl’s European release date.

On an off topic note, I’ve decided that my next purchase after Super Smash Bros Brawl will be Sonic & The Secret Rings, as I’ve heard that the game is a return to what Sonic is all about: pure SPEED!

First Impressions: Block Breaker Deluxe

Just to get this out of the way, I actually downloaded this game by accident. I went to see how much memory the game took up, and it took up nearly 300 blocks, so as I went to download Donkey Kong Country instead, I accidentally clicked the Yes button, and downloaded it.

Anyway, on to the actual game play. You may have played the game, like me, but don’t recognize the actual name “Block Breaker”. Block Breaker is a game which can be played for free on the internet, and requires you to hit a ball in to some blocks in order to break them. You deflect the ball off of a shield, and certain blocks can give away power ups, more balls to hit and stuff like that. You control the shield by pointing at the shield. I have a feeling that Gameloft didn’t have too much trouble converting the mouse controls to the Wiimote.

One thing I don’t like about this game is the lack of any more control scheme options. Wiimote on its side seems much more suited to this game, though a power up would have to be sacrificed to make this work. Another thing that I don’t like is the menu. It’s something only an 8 year old could appreciate, it’s really trashy and cheesy. You get some item for clearing a level, presumably to help you progress through any type of story the developers could possibly come up with. That being said, it doesn’t really affect the overall gaming experience, it’s just something I thought was pretty wierd.

Keep an eye out for my full review soon.

First Post

Hi everyone, I’m Koopamaster, and as you can see, I set up a nice little WordPress blog to talk about games, post reviews and stuff like that. So if you’re filled with Nintendo related hatred, you should probably never return to this blog, as the only other games console I have is a PS2, which I don’t think much of (don’t ask why). I also may be doing some video reviews soon, the time depends on when I get the equipment (dazzle, AV splitters, etc). I’m not really good with introductions, so I’ll leave it at that.