This is another Japan-only crossover Smash-Bros-style fighting game on the Gamecube with characters from Takara, Hudson soft, and Konami. I'll say right out the gate: Like for most of these crossover Smash-style games, if the novelty of the characters doesn't sell you on it, don't buy it. There's a PS2 version that goes for only 20 bucks, but that version doesn't have a 4-player mode, and the Game Cube version runs about 50 bucks, so when you can get D.O.N. Battle Stadium (which I feel is a technically more competent game) for like 10 bucks, this is really hard to recommend for the price.
For reference, the fighting roster is: Power Pro Kun (From the Konami Baseball games), Simon Belmont, Twinbee, Solid Snake, Moai (from Gradius), Optimus Prime, Rika chan (she's basically the Japanese Barbie equivalent), Micro Man (apparently his toy line got a US release in the 80's (?)), Taoka Kun (the Beyblade guy), Azura (honestly no idea what she's from other than the fact she's a Takara toy), Megatron, Momotaro (from Momotaro Densetsu), Adventure Island guy (I can never read his name properly, and that's just what I call him), Mejimaru (the protagonist of Far East of Eden (I think)), Bomberman, Yugo (from Bloody Roar), and Binbougami (also from Momotaro Dentetsu). Mechanically, it is far more similar to something like D.O.N Battle Stadium than something like Smash Bros. or Playstation All-Stars. There are so many hearts distributed between the lot of you, and you've gotta beat the hearts out of them to lower the amount they have. When someone loses their last heart, it flys out of them really high, and once it's collected they're out. You can recollect it though and get back into the game though, but it's hard to do that because the enemy can potentially just grab it the instant it flies out of you. Definitely my least favorite mechanics out of the 4 games like this I've played. Despite my earlier comments, this game does control just fine, as it's yet another crossover fighting game from the guys at Eighting (who would go on to make the also great Castlevania Judgment and Tatsunoko Vs. Capcom, and the Naruto Ninja Taisen series). My main problems is that the balance on the characters is ALL over the place, and mechanically it isn't as deep as something like Smash Bros (in most areas). The most notable changes from Smash Bros are less special moves (only a standard and then a direction-you're-facing + special) as well as less normal attacks (though you do have smash-attacks, effectively), and no ducking or block-rolling. The only mechanic which really adds anything is the ability to parry an enemy's attack by blocking at the moment their attack hits you. It does add a different layer to the strategy, but it doesn't really make up for all of the things they omit, in my opinion. Granted, this game is about as competitive as Smash Bros. Some of the characters just downright suck and there's no reason to use them unless you just really like the character. Binbougami, Megatron, and Moai especially are so fat and slow, they're the (Brawl versions of) Gandondorf, Bowser, and Dedede of this game in how they're bad guys who hit hard but are way to slow to do jack shit when the game revolves around collecting hearts, not just hitting people. Then there are characters like Momotaro who move quicker but have basically no range or attack speed so they're useless as well. Then you have guys like Optimus and Taoka who just have such crazy speed and natural combos that there's no reason not to ever use them if you're trying to win. Again, it's not the biggest problem in the world because it's a party game, but it's just more pronounced than something like Smash Bros because the game is so much more simplified mechanically that the more obviously better characters really stand out. The biggest nice thing I can say about the characters, though, is that they're very simple and easy to unlock. No faffing around with ridiculous arcane banalities like Smash Bros Brawl and Melee, just beat the single player mode with everyone, and you'll have everyone unlocked. Verdict: As I said before, really hard to whole-heartedly recommend for the price you'd have to pay. If that roster sounds like something you'd have fun with and you're okay paying for it, then go right ahead. You'll probably enjoy it about as much as I did (and I did, really, despite all of my complaining). An okay game, but really only stands on its fanservice as mechanically and price-wise it just isn't up to par with the other entries in the genre, let alone on the same console.
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It's Metal Slug, but on DS! On a gameplay level, there's not really too much more to say about this one. It's a unique Metal Slug adventure on DS, with it being somewhere between the arcade games and the other portable games with the fact that you no longer have a health bar like the other portable games had, but you do have the collectable POW's just like Metal Slug Advance did.
The two biggest additions to this game are the playable characters and the training school. The training school is run by a very tsundere anime girl army officer, and allows you to practice specific and certain things in regards to every level you beat on arcade mode. This is a fantastic way to practice going through each stage so you can wreck arcade mode, as there are missions that scale up from just beating a level within one continue, to beating it without getting hit with only your pistol, to practicing specifically hunting for POWs, specifically just fighting the boss, and even special stages dedicated to navigating the unique eccentricities of each level's static obstacles. The better you do on these challenge/practice stages, the higher rank you will get on them. The more high ranks you get, the deeper your relationship(?) with the tsundere girl gets (you can see both her dialogue and thoughts), and the weird sort of crush she develops for you had me giggling quite a lot whenever I used the option to specifically chat with her. The game and these training missions are enhanced by the fact that there are six playable characters in the game. Now, Metal Slug usually has at least a few, but these guys are actually STATISTICALLY DIFFERENT!!! For example, Marco's pistol bullets are twice as powerful as everyone else's, Tarma's Slugs have twice as much health, Ralf can knife twice as fast and more powerfully, etc. This really adds a well needed level of customization to the runs, and makes your choice of character really feel a lot more important than just petty cosmetics. Verdict: $30 is a bit steep of a price for just another Metal Slug game, but if you've played the Anthology to death and you absolutely still need more Metal Slug in your life, then this is a great pick up to seek out. In a sentence: This game does for the Metal Slug series what Contra 4 did for the Contra series (a fantastic farewell game on DS with a great final campaign and tons of challenge stages). I have finally completed ALL of the Mori Mori Slime games! As I predicted, the tank battles were the key new feature in the DS game, so this game is all on-foot(?) action stuff, but it has by far the best action parts of any of the Mori Mori Slime games. The bosses are silly and challenging, and you might even die once or twice figuring out their patterns. The game is very forgiving though, if you die. You just get sent back to town, and any resources you collected while you were out are sent back with you, so there's never any wasted effort
Being that there's no tank/ship battles, collecting monsters and items via the carts and rafts are far less important in this game than the others. They're largely just completionist cosmetic things back in your main town, as the items let you cosmetically fix up the town, and the monsters just hang around town like they do in the other games. There's no tank for them to be able to crew around in, sadly, but that's not really the game's fault of how good its successors were . The only big reason to explore and be vigilant are the fact that, very rarely, you can find life-fruit (right out of Dragon Quest) to extend your health bar, as well as all of the other villager slimes that you have to find to progress the game. The story is very light-hearted and silly, just like the other games. It's just a little bit of a shame that Mihon and Surami (your Healie friend and little sister) are kidnapped for almost the entire game, because they're some of the best and funniest characters :/. Verdict: Highly recommended. I have to assume there's an English patch for this game out there somewhere, so I can recommend it to a wider audience, as the GBA game itself is fairly difficult to find online (in my experience). This is a fantastic action game for GBA, and definitely one of my favorite adventure games on the system. I play this all the time when I have friends and family over, but I always want to start from the beginning so they can see the story progression and get a proper difficulty curve (because this game gets fairly hard). Finally actually had a friend over long enough to get through the whole thing last week. It'd put it somewhere between Conker's Bad Fur Day and Octodad in terms of how how much I enjoy it as a very odd-ball, weird game that doesn't take itself seriously.
Stubbs is in the Halo engine (which becomes very obvious as soon as you come across a not-Warthog in the 2nd stage), and it plays like it. Other than the fact that Stubbs is pretty slow until you walk for a little while, where then he goes into a kind of run, and the fact that the game is 3rd person and you don't really have guns, the game controls very very much like Halo. The sticky-grenades work almost exactly the same, the co-op also works exactly the same. It controls far better than Conker's Bad Fur Day, which owes to its enjoyment, but I wouldn't say that the writing was nearly clever enough to raise it to Octodad levels of praise for me. The writing is very Duke Nukem (trying far too hard to be adult or edgy for a laugh) for the most part, and even though it's pretty darn funny sometimes (I fucking love the gas station bit), a lot of the lines, especially towards the end, come off really cringe-worthy. But to each their own on the comedy aspect. Verdict: I'm not sure if I can justify the price for a physical copy, but if you want a fun game to plow through in 3 or 4 hours with a friend, I'd toatally recommend picking up the XBLA version (if it's still up there). Not quite sure it's worth playing through by yourself, but you have a lot of weapons and silly things to do, and the game doesn't outstay its welcome. It's a fun action game on the Xbox, and probably one of the best non-FPS exclusives for the OG Xbox. And so ends the last chapter of Fire Emblem if for me. To be perfectly honest, I'm a little torn about Revelations' on a "right to exist" level.
From a story perspective, there's the argument that having a path where both families win is a nice middle ground to have. This is also the only path where you actually get the titular "Fire Emblem," and also do the other thing that so many Fire Emblems end with (which I shant spoil, but you can probably guess). On another level, I really respected Conquest and Birthright for how bold their stories were in showing that war really sucks, and there may be winner but there are also a lot of losers. Those stories had a much larger impact to me, and I feel Revelations misses out on that by quite a bit. On a gameplay perspective, Revelations has some of the most interesting level gimmicks out of the other if games. It also has SO MANY fucking characters, it certainly feels like if one was going to be inclined towards an ironman run, this would certainly be the game to do it in (there'd just be a million billion hours of ginding up a new guy every time an old one dies). However, that character overflow was kind of overwhelming, and I kinda felt bad that there were SO many characters whom I never used once. That said, every one of those characters (sans one) were already playable in Conquest or Birthright, so I'd already seen all of them to a satisfactory point. Verdict: Recommended. This is definitely the FE: If game I liked the least, but I think that's down to me just playing 3 FE games in a row. Part of me feels like this game has trouble standing on its own because of how much better the stories were told in the two sister games, but part of me also feels like this game stands best on its own because it has all of the character content of those two games. I wouldn't really recommend playing only Revelations, but if you can really only stomach to play one FE: if game, then I'd say it might as well be Revelations. |
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AuthorI'm an avid gamer who likes to detail their thoughts about what they play in the hopes it might aid someone else's search for a game to play. Archives
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