Game Review: Cocoto Kart Racer

Game Review: Cocoto Kart Racer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjWGFnea9DA

A brand new review, of a game that resembles another kart racing game quite a bit. Was planned to review the GBA version, but technical difficulties scrapped that. At a later time I will review it. Hope you enjoy this review. Thanks for watching

Cam's Eye View: Prince of Persia Retrospective part 1: Prince of Persia: the Sands of Time for the PS2, GC, Xbox, and PC review

So yeah, game-to-movie adaptations still don’t work out very well today. It sucks since there are some decent ones like the Tomb Raider and the Silent Hill movie. Yeah they still aren’t great, but they are fun to watch. Well, the ones that aren’t made by Uwe Bowell are not fun and are just horrible, though, some light has shined though since Prince of Persia: the Sands of Time came out and has gotten somewhat positive reviews. Of course, it won’t be as good as the games, but it looks fun and I’ll go see it with a friend or rent it. I decided in this honor and since a new Prince of Persia game came out, I would do a special three-part review special of the Prince of Persia franchise. Now, I am going to look at three of the 3D Prince of Persia games and have no intention on looking for the original PC or the 3D version of the first PC game. I am going to look at the three that I think are worth reviewing. The first will be Prince of Persia: the Sands of Time, the 2008 version of Prince of Persia, and the most recent of the series, Prince of Persia: the Forgotten Sands. So, let’s get started with the first game I mentioned and winner of multiple awards from 2003, Prince of Persia: the Sands of Time.           

 The story starts us out with a narration by the prince himself, who for some reason, sounds like Legolas from Lord of the Rings. It shows us that he is a part of a kingdom that is very powerful, and this kingdom attacks another kingdom that holds an ancient relic known as the Sands of Time. After obtaining a unique looking dagger, the Prince leaves with multiple women and the Sands of Time themselves to this other kingdom to offer it as a prize for a sultan. Then, one way or another, the Prince gets persuaded by the mage of the kingdom to stab the dagger into the hourglass and release the sands. The Prince then stupidly lets the sands out, and that changes everyone but the prince, the mage, and a girl into sand demons. It is up to the Prince and the girl who is a princess to stop the mage from controlling the sands of time, and restore peace to the land.           

The game play featured in the Sands of Time is of an action platformer, like the PC games that came before this. You have interesting moves like wall-running and a wall jump, like in a Mario game. The sword fighting mainly has to deal with what you do and who your opponents are. You have to be very strategic with your fighting, unlike the Assassin’s Creed games. You can’t just slash willy-nilly when you have to fight sand demons that can easily surround you and kill you. By the way, here is my biggest tip for people who haven’t play this game yet. DO NOT and I mean DO NOT get yourself surrounded by enemies. You will find an early grave if you do. Just keep moving and you should be fine. The main gimmick however, besides strategic sword fighting and great, but challenging platforming, is the dagger of time that you wield. If you are ever in a rut or you get killed, you can turn back time to a certain point as long as you have sand spheres. You gain more sand and powers by stabbing demons in the back, like Link in the Zelda series. You can also use this to fix a mistake you did, like jump the wrong way to get hit by a buzz saw or something. It becomes very handy, but there are some kinks in it, which I will talk later about in what are the bad parts of the game, in my opinion.           

The graphics still hold up well, even though most of the people in the game look a little funny in a cartoonish kind of way. I think hands-down one of the best things of this game has to offer presentation-wise is the music. Composer Stuart Chatwood, who was famous for the now-defunct band The Tea Party, composed a wonderful soundtrack that fits every moment of the game. If you are curious, he has basically done the rest of the soundtracks for the rest of the 3D Prince of Persia games, so that is what he is famous for. The voice work for me is a bit on-and-off. Personally, I do not like the Prince’s voice. He sounds too much like Orlando Bloom or that wizard guy during the first episode of Gargoyles. Yuri Lowenthal who does the voice for the Prince didn’t do a horrible job doing his voice, it’s just I don’t personally like it. Don’t get me wrong, I love the guy. He has done some legit work in voice acting, but he could have used a better voice for the Prince. I also like the wall running ability, I just never get bored of it.

However, there are some things that didn’t age greatly with this game. The sword fighting, while it can be cool, is more or less tedious in this game. During the end of the game, demons become guard-happy and it becomes annoying. It becomes more tedious than fun. I also don’t like the little timer you are under, when you slow down time or reverse it. Even if I have four sand balls left and I die and the timer is low, I still can’t do jack about it! I also think the lighting could be better. A lot of areas look foggy and blurry. Why the heck are there flying enemies when the only way to kill them is to roll out of the way and then in 2 seconds strike them once? It makes no sense. Granted, it gives the enemy roster more variety, but it’s more annoying than creative. Another thing I have a deal with is with environmental stuff, like lamps and boxes. In some areas they are freaking everywhere and it makes fighting groups of enemies even more difficult than it should. I can’t count how many times I died because my back was stuck on a lamp or some form of item that you can easily smash. That’s another thing, why are there breakable things when they hold no money or reward? It’s like, “hey, I can smash things! Hey, where are the gold or blue energy orbs?” There is no point in having destructible items if they don’t yield any reward from smashing them. The voice acting in this game is bad and I mean bad. Some people just yell and sound like people found in a Monty Python skit. I couldn’t find one person I liked who did a good voice acting job.

So yeah, this game hasn’t aged well in some areas, but it’s still an interesting experience. If you are sick and tired of all the God of War clones, then I say rent this game, but ONLY rent it. I can see why it was a big deal back in 2003, but it didn’t age well at all in some areas. Oh well, that’s life, you know? Thanks for reading and stay tuned when I review the 2008 Prince of Persia.

This game gets a 7.5 out of 10

Cam's Eye View: XIII for the PS2 review

When you think of a first person shooter, what usually comes to mind? Resistance and Killzone on the PS3, Left 4 Dead 2 and Halo 3 on the Xbox360, and Golden Eye on the N64. I basically have listed the more popular ones. I know I didn’t add Modern Warfare 2 and Battlefield Bad Company 2, but I don’t know much about those games, and that is just me. I’m not much of a FPS kind of guy. It seems harder though to make an original FPS without some jerk to say it looks likes another FPS that is out. I mean, sometimes it’s good to say that since a game like Haze looks like a poorly made version of Halo. There have been some attempts at doing something different with an FPS game like Mirror’s Edge with its platforming. However, I think an interesting take on the FPS genre is stealth. I don’t mean being a sniper and sitting your butt in one place during the entire match and killing everyone, I mean a game like XIII. I wouldn’t say it’s a good example of doing something different with a FPS, but at least it tried.

The main story of the game revolves around a guy name XIII, who was found badly injured on a beach in New York, and has no memories of the past. He must find out what he did, since he is charged with the assassination of a past president. It’s interesting since it seems like the beginning was based on the Kennedy assassination. It shows the president getting shot in his car by a sniper during a parade. However, I have never read XIII, and I know nothing about it, but it caught my eye because of the title and the graphics, which I will talk about later. So, yeah, it’s your basic, guy has amnesia and must find out what he did or has done and who he is. It’s not like we haven’t seen this before…wait.

The game play featured in XIII is a mix between a first person shooter and a first person stealth game. Like I said, it’s hard to make a first person shooter game original, and when someone attempts to do it right, sometime it works and sometimes it doesn’t.  The first person shooter aspects aren’t anything new since you have your normal variety of weapons like pistol, shotgun, sniper rifle, and the works. The stealth section of the game is that basically you sneak around during some levels where you have no weapons and have to use stuff like bottles, ashtrays, and chairs to take out people who do have guns. You can take the guns off of people, but then it turns into a normal shooter. You do get some unique weapons, like throwing knives and a crossbow with a sniper scope, which can be cool since if you get a head shot on someone, it shows a quick three-sectioned comic showing the bullet or arrow heading to the guy’s head and hitting him. Other than that, there is a multiplayer section, but no one is on it and I think it might be shutting down, but I don’t know

The graphics are pretty unique, but nothing we haven’t seen in cel-shaded comic-style graphics. I mean, if you look at games like Jetgrind Radio, Killer 7, and No More Heroes 1 and 2, they also have nice cel-shaded graphics. I also like the voice work in the game. One of the most surprising voice actors I saw in the game was the Mayor of Quahog himself, Adam West. I was surprised since you see this guy doing voice work in shows like Family Guy, Boondocks, and other things, then you look at him as the 60’s Batman. It’s weird where he has gotten from back then to today. I happen to like his voice in the game. We also have David Duchovny, who was Fox Mulder from the X-Files movies and TV series doing the voice for XIII. He does a good job doing the voice. The music is also well done, giving the sound and feel of the game something like the film, The Professional or the anime series Noir or Cowboy Bebop.

Now, it seems like there couldn’t be a lot of things wrong with this game, but there are a few things. First off, the controls seem really finicky. They are just all over the place, kind of like that game Mr. Mosquito. It kind of makes you feel spoiled by the controls in shooters of today. The polygon count on everyone is pretty low. It looks okay as a PS2 game, but everyone seems so blocky and not animated as well. I don’t know if it was a budget thing, but it’s annoying since this game came out in 2003, and by then I think people should have gotten some knowledge on how to use the potential of the PS2. The voice work could have been better since some voices are just annoying, and it sounds funny when people say the word “alert”. It sounds like they are saying “ALEEEE!”

Overall, this game sounds good and is interesting, but falls short of expectations. It isn’t the worst game of all time, but it’s definitely not the best. I know some people think this is an underrated gem, but I think they need a brain scan. I would say it’s worth checking out as a rental, but just like Dark Void, it is mostly forgettable and shouldn’t be picked up more than once. I have read that some people want a sequel to this, and I would be interested in seeing if they do, but I highly doubt it with the game’s sell numbers.

This game gets a 5 out of 10

Gaming with killatia: Resident evil 4 widescreen edition

A wide-screen edition of my old resident evil 4 review

gaming with killatia: viewtiful joe (rerun)

A old review a did a while back, new game review coming this week.

This cult hit from capcom is a blast to play! Available for the Gamecube and Playstation 2! HENSHION A GOGO BABY!