Retro Review - ActRaiser

For our first 'Retro Review' (titles from the Virtual Console), I'd like to touch upon a game I was quite surprised by. This game is ActRaiser, an SNES side-scrolling simulation RPG. Yes, you heard me right. This game is sim city meets side-scrolling action meets RPG, so get ready for the ride of your life. Surprisingly enough this is a game that I've heard about before, but I was completely unaware that it was developed by Enix (now part of Square Enix.) I want to break it down for you all, I'm currently only on the 3rd Act of the game but I can only assume the rest of the game plays exactly the same.

Story: You are a god, sort of like Zeus or what have you. You can pick your name at the start of the game, I gave myself a god like name simply because I find a name like 'Joe' to not sound very godly. Anyhow, so you're this god and you need to save all these people throughout the realm from their horrible lives under the rule of some evil god and his evil monsters. That about sums it up really. Oh, you also have some cool little cupid wannabe side-kick/minion/follower.

Gameplay: So the game pretty much goes as follows, first you go into side-scrolling mode where you get to go around and smack things and kill monsters and get power ups and such. After you defeat the boss of that stage you go into 'sim' mode where you get to start building villages, vanquishing monsters with your little cupid guy, and just doing stuff and gaining EXP and followers. The larger your city gets the more EXP you get, there are tons of side-quests and other things that can help you out along the way and you can even gain the use of some magic spells for side-scrolling mode (and even sim mode) along the way. Eventually after you seal off all the evil monster spawning locations you get a request by some villagers to go into side-scrolling mode and vanquish some evil final boss. This system repeats throughout the rest of the game (I assume) during each 'Act'.

Graphics: Not much can be said, I mean they're awesome SNES graphics. The sim mode is very basic and generic for the most part because it's a birds eye view and the side-scrolling mode has what you'd expect from any sort of side-scrolling game. The graphics have aged very well and you can tell exactly what things are what on your screen at all times.

Audio: ActRaiser has a really awesome soundtrack, I heard a lot of the music remixed before at places like OCRemix, but this was my first time hearing the original songs and they were WONDERFUL. I can't stress how awesome this soundtrack is, it makes every stage come to life and gives this game such a great unique feel to it (as if it wasn't unique enough!)

Overall: It takes a lot to get a 10 out of me, so I think this game deserves a solid 9.0, if anything my major complaints can go as follows, the game feels very very short overall, from what I can tell it shouldn't take more than a handful of hours to complete the whole thing, in addition, some of the boss fights just seem ridiculously hard/boring due to the limited ability of your moves during side-scrolling mode (basically you just swing your sword and can cast magic occasionally.) Aside from those minor things I think is a very solid buy for the virtual console, and a magic little treasure from Enix that a lot of the Final Fantasy freaks might have never realized existed if it wasn't for the Virtual Console.

Short Version

Pros:
- Unique multiple gameplay styles.
- Wonderful music
- Overall high fun factor and moderate replay value.

Cons:
- Limited side-scrolling abilities
- Game isn't long enough to satisfy my addiction to it

Score: 9.0

Game Review - Red Steel

So, the first game I'd like to touch base on is actually a game I don't personally own. I heard a lot of bad stuff about Red Steel, a 5.5 at Gamespot. So I decided it would probably be safe to rent it off of GameFly.

Trivia: Did you know that Red Steel was the very first game ever announced for the Wii? Yep, no Mario, Zelda, Metroid, or any of those big hitters, but a completely unique and new game series not even created by Nintendo, but created by Ubisoft.

Story: The plot of this game is pretty solid, I can't complain about anything really, it's your typical kung-fu flick type of plot. It's only slightly better than a "The President has been kidnapped by ninjas." plot however. Basically, your girlfriend's dad is some Yakuza (japanese mafia) crime boss. However, some rival crime boss tries to kill him and kidnaps your girlfriend. It's up to you the 'Gaijin' (Foreigner) AKA American dude 'Scott', to rescue your girlfriend and save the world/Tokyo/yakuza crime syndicate, etc. It just so happens that you used to be a bodyguard so you already know how to use a sword and a gun fairly well, good thing!

Gameplay: When I first started playing this game, things felt a little iffy, and it felt really crappy and everything was hard to get used to. But, I think it was just a learning curve, I cranked down some of the sensitive of the controls from high to medium, and then started cruising through it. Around Act 2 of the game, Harry's Bar, everything started to work a lot better. There is a Multiplayer (no co-op) and Single player feature, I personally only have experience in the Single player aspect, which I imagine is the most important part of the game. So, let's break things down into gun vs. sword gameplay though.

The gun mechanics are very very solid, it acts and feels like a real shooter like in the arcades. Zooming in and out feels a little 'weird' simply because it's not how you'd expect to zoom in with a gun, maybe a button press or something to tune your aim or scope, but... moving your controller towards the screen to zoom, I just don't buy it. Focus (time slowing down) mode is where everything becomes awesome and easy, you can easily start aiming at peoples guns and making people submit to you. The first Act of the game without focus mode makes everything feel very... generic, but once you start freezing time to aim your shots it just feels a lot more complete.

Sword battles are where this game becomes a bit wonky, no matter what you do it always seems that you're not swinging the way you are in real life. If you take things slow and timed well it seems to work better, as if the game does not register your movements very quickly and you need to time things out like in a rhythm game. Overall though a lot of fights I usually just tried repeatedly to do some of my high respect (a point system for a rank at the end of the game) earning moves. If things got scary I started doing my 'special' ability which simply involved holding down the Z button and swinging down both the nunchuk and wiimote like a hammer, thus the move is called 'Hammer', or something along those lines. By doing that you can either ultimately win, or break their sword over time. Either way, it's pretty powerful throughout the whole game and speeds things along if you dislike the sword fights.

Levels: Fairly solid, some felt a bit 'linear' due to the fact there were doors everywhere and you could only open certain ones, and others felt really large and 'free roaming'. The bar and dojo designs as 'training grounds' was a really nice touch, and then again when those areas were expanded upon for later levels. One level REALLY stands out in this game though and that's the 'Tetsuo's Game' level. Basically, you're in a giant zany funhouse with all sorts of weird spooky and odd things occurring. It feels completely out of place from the other levels, and it was a ton of fun just because of how random and odd it was.

Graphics: I don't see a problem with it. I've never put the Wii up there with PS3 or 360 graphics, and therefore I didn't feel the need to say the graphics sucked for a 'next-gen console'. However, many people DO knock it because of the graphics and that's just silly. The graphics are about as good as any Gamecube/PS2 game if you ask me, and the odd 'clipping' around the outlines of characters I personally think adds a unique style to the whole thing, like they were aiming for some sort of 'XIII' comic book feel. While these may not be cutting edge graphics, the gameplay for this is what is really important.

Audio: was awesome, there was some awesome J-Pop that was thrown into some of the levels that just felt really awesome and fun. Everything sounds and acts as it would be, and overall I just can't complain. Sometimes the music just blended right in, and other times it would pop out at you, but that's how it is with almost every game soundtrack there are always those select songs that are just pure awesome.

Overall: While this game is 100% worth a rental, it may not be worth a purchase (at least not new, maybe at a used game price.) There are many things that hold this game back, there are indeed some bugs within the game, but nothing I experienced personally, and the sword battles are sometimes a ridiculous pain in the butt and totally offbeat from the shooting aspect of the game. Overall though this game gets a solid 7.8 review from me, it is nowhere near deserving of the horrible reputation it has received. I feel that a lot of this bad rep has been gained simply due to high expectations and the tons of hype surrounding this release title.

Short Version

Pros:
- Arcade shooter in your own home
- Solid rental title
- Decent soundtrack
- Overall good fun factor
- Really awesome 'Tetsuo's Game' level

Cons:
- Wonky sword battles
- Occasional glitches
- No real reason to replay game

Score: 7.8

Wii Channels - Everybody Votes

So, here is how it basically breaks down folks, you hop on the channel and you get some questions, and everything works out fairly well for the most part. You pick your answer, then you predict what answer will be the most popular, sort of like a GameFAQs Character Battle. So far I've got a 100% prediction rating, so that's pretty damned awesome. Overall, Everybody Votes is something cool to check out every 2 or 3 days if you're bored. I just kind of wish that the votes didn't last an entire week and it was something you could do on a more daily basis.

Got my Wii

I bought my Wii off e-bay for a rocking good price of 400 bucks. Oh noes! It's only 250 bucks retail you say? Well, I like to think I sort of broke even and maybe even saved some dough in the process. The following is a screenshot of all that was included:


For those who can't make everything out it came with the following:

- All the basic Wii crap you get when you buy a Wii (1xWiimote, Wii Sports, Wires & Cables, etc.)
- 2x Nunchuks
- 1x Wiimote
- Fancy pants fan cooling base with blue LEDs
- Warioware: Smooth Moves
- Legend of Zelda: The Twilight Princess
- Super Paper Mario
- Need for Speed Carbon

I will be covering all of the games and Wii channels and giving them reviews and scores and other things. I'll try to cover as many games as possible and do my best as a single person in the Wii universe. I'd like to think I can give an honest assessment of a lot of these games, and I'll do my best to give every game a fair chance.