Gaming with Killatia Gradius 3

Today on Gaming with Killatia after playing hours of Otomedius Excellent we take a look at the games predecessor Gradius 3 for the Snes

Catch my Tales of Symphonia review on gotgame.com Right now!

Cam's Eye View: WWE All Stars for the PS3 and 360

Hey, everyone, welcome to the New Year! WOOOOOO! It is 2012 and time for more new games and time for me to make them into game reviews. I decided to spook you all a little and do something different with this year’s first review. I decided to review a sports game! I know, I can hear you all gasping, since out of over 200 reviews, I haven’t really reviewed any sport games. This is mostly my fault for being biased towards these games. The other fault though is that sports games come out year after year after year. They don’t take their time and make something special, they usually do it to make money for the consumers who do enjoy and play sports games. Don’t get me wrong, I love the thrill when you play a football game and you are running down the field and no one is tackling you. I understand why these are popular to some extent, but they don’t really make me want to review them or put the money down for these games. I just want to play a sports game that is over the top and arcade-like, and doesn’t result in a realistic simulation of that specific sport. This is where this first review comes from, WWE: All Stars. Admittedly, the sports games are turning into the Guitar Hero and other music-based franchises, where we are getting kind of tired of seeing them, but WWE: All Stars decided to take a more fun approach, with an odd, but cartoony art style, more arcade style gameplay, and not too simulated like every other sports game out there. Let us see if this game succeeds! This is WWE: All Stars for the PS3 and 360. There really isn’t any story here, and all I could say is that all of the famous wrestlers old and new are in this game, and it’s a fan-serviced game where you can fight Andre the Giant with Rey Mysterio and take him down with your finishing move. Let’s move onto the gameplay then, shall we?

The gameplay, instead of being a tedious wrestling simulator, is more like an arcade wrestling and fighting game. You have your usual wrestling mechanics like pin downs and ringside take downs, but there are some light and heavy fighting moves like punches, kicks, throws, and even special moves that are easy to pull off. In the normal case of each match, you will either need to knock out your opponent or pin him down for 3 seconds. There are special cases, like in the cage match, where you need to knock out your opponent and get out of the cage as fast as you can. In extreme rules, you fight in a normal match, but can use weapons like 2x4’s to add some extra damage. Sometimes, you will be fighting only one opponent, or in make a million viewer episode, forced to fight multiple wrestlers at once. There are other modes, like tag team, where you team up to take down another team of wrestlers. The 3 main campaigns will have you fight the Undertaker, another will have you fight Randy Orton, and the other one has you fight against D-Generation X as the final opponent. A fun feature is the dream match-up fights where you can choose from either one or another wrestler that was paired up for a “dream match” like the Ultimate Warrior vs. Sheamus and they show live footage of both wrestlers, which is pretty cool. There is also online multiplayer with the usual suspects that you can play with offline, like cage match, and or just brawl each other to the ground. There is also a character creator, but due to the kind of silly art style, you won’t be able to truly make a dream wrestler. Either way, there is a lot to do with this wrestling game to keep you going with simple and easy to-get-used-to controls, a good deep combat system, multiple wrestlers old and new, and other things that make this game worth a purchase around the 40 dollar range, or simply for hardcore wrestling fanatics.

The graphics and art style are pretty silly-looking. The art style makes all of the wrestlers sometimes look the same body-wise with their over exaggerated muscle bound bodies. The graphics just get the work done. Don’t expect them to be Castlevania Lords of Shadow or Uncharted 3 good. The licensed music, like in Splatterhouse, really works here as you do get pumped a little when you see yourself go down to the ring and see the other wrestlers you will be going against. It is definitely how wrestling is in real life, over the top and flash-over-substance mixed with fake wrestling. Oh, and I don’t care if I offended you by saying wrestling is fake since it’s somewhat true. There are also some small bits of humor put in, like when in one cut scene, one of the wrestlers advertises his own game to the masses and the other looks at him like an idiot. Either way, they did as good of a job as they could do using the Unreal 3 engine.

However, there are some major faults in this reboot and makeover of the wrestling game genre. There is no god dang training or tutorial mode. This made getting used to the controls and knowing what you can do with the controls really awkward and clunky, making for some unfair and terrible first fights. I mean, I am not saying that I need my hand held, but a proper training or tutorial stage would have worked so much better with this game where you can learn about the controls and techniques you can pull off. I took off a whole point from the score because of this one screw-up. Another major complaint I have is that the AI can be a mixed bag. One fight you are breezing through this fight with no trouble at all and the next fight, you are struggling to get out of harm’s way since you can’t block well or dodge attacks easily. Difficulty should be given to us slowly as we play through the game more and more as we get to the end and not just random spikes in difficulty. It is the same problem with games like Virtual On Marz where in one fight, I am having a huge issue with taking down two opponents, and then after a couple of times fighting the same fight over and over, the AI just got dumb and I got lucky. The next few complaints are just minor, but do add up. The cage match is tedious since it isn’t just taking down your opponent, but you also need to get out of the cage and do a timed button press to get out successfully. That is tedious and not needed. The other is that the Unreal 3 engine is showing its age and in the character creator, everything looks blocky, but that could easily be the art style that makes everything blocky.

Overall, for the first major sports game to be on my list of reviews, this one is pretty good. Maybe the future of wrestling games and or sports games can learn from this little experiment. I have wished for years that sports games be more than just simulation games of that specific sport. While this game does have some minor flaws that keep it from being perfect, I could still recommend this to anyone who is looking to get into wrestling or sport games. Hope you all are having a great beginning of the year and hope you all come back for more.

This game gets a 7 out of 10

Gaming with killatia Cartoon Network Punch Time Explosion Xl

Catch my Otomedius Excellent review on gotgame.com right now!

These days many gamers are getting excited for big games Like Cod: MW3, Battlefield 3, Zelda, and so much more. But what about the lesser know games that no one will take notice? Killatia takes a look at such a game with Cartoon Network Punch Time Explosion XL. Is it a hit for the home consoles or just as crappy as the original 3ds version? Watch to find out.

Cam's Eye View: A Boy and his Blob for the Wii review

Many people my age remember a lot of retro games that are, well…not that good, but remembered fondly for some reason. When I was taking game industry classes, some people talked about the somewhat cult classic/bad game, A Boy and his Blob for the NES. What I remember hearing is that the concept is bizarre, and it’s very unforgiving in difficulty. Nowadays, people are always trying to bring back old classic games with varying results. The Blaster Master reboot was bad and the remake for Splatterhouse was pretty good. Nothing about these remakes has really blown my mind, until I picked up a specific game. What is this game I am talking about? Is it some whimsical underrated gem that is a remake…okay, the punchline is the remake of A Boy and his Blob. This game was a change of pace out of all the 2D style Wii games that are usually garbage. This game actually took some careful execution and actually results in it being one of the better Wii games. Now, from the look of it, I can see how you would need to take a second look to make sure it is a good game, but trust me, it’s one of the better Wii games out on the market.

The story is very light as well, there isn’t much to it. This game is more about immersing you into its world. The only story I could tell is that an alien-like thing fell from the sky and a little boy finds it. The thing turns out to be a little white blob. It is also shown that there is an evil blob that is trying to take over the world, and it is up to you and your jellybean-loving blob to save the world! It’s a simple story since this is a re-imagining of an NES game, so the story is very light. I will say, though, that it’s a cute story

The gameplay is like the recently released game, Stacking, where it’s a mix of adventure, platforming, and mostly puzzle solving. The main goal in this game in each of the four worlds is to get from point A to point B with your blob. Throughout the 10 levels in each of the worlds, you are equipped with a certain variety of jellybeans that can make your blob transform into multiple things to get you through the level. The blob can turn into stuff like a ladder, a trampoline, a robot, a protected ball, parachute, a jack, an anvil, and many other things to help you take down all 4 of the bosses and get around the monsters in the levels, since the blob is the only thing you can use to destroy the enemies. If you get hit ONCE, you are dead. This results in the game being very difficult at times, and somewhat punishing. There are also a couple of treasure chests throughout the levels and will give you extra stuff for your hideouts. This game does give you a good amount of stuff to do since you will get done with this game in around 10 hours or so. Oh, and by the way, there is a hug command to where you can give your blob a hug. It has no purpose but to look cute, and to calm the nerves after a tedious boss fight.

The graphics are beautiful for a 2D game. I mean, they aren’t as good as Muramasa or Odin Sphere, but if you have played games like Wario Land Shake it! or the upcoming Rayman Origins, then you won’t be disappointed by the visuals. It has a very soft warm look to it and somewhat reminds me of art styles like the Studio Ghibli films. The music is also very whimsical. It isn’t like Final Fantasy 9 or anything, but it’s very calming, like in Flower. The whole game definitely has a charm to it, and it pulls you into its cartoon-like world.

Even with its charm, it does have some flaws. The game has very little reason to replay through it. I mean it has a good challenge and there are some challenges to complete, but I never found a reason to play through it again. The game, like I said, can be rather difficult since you can’t attack. It’s like in Chip and Dale’s Rescue Rangers on the NES where you have to use boxes to hit every enemy. You can say that this game is more platforming oriented, but if you have enemies, at least have one transformation, like a vacuum cannon or something like in Ratchet and Clank. Since this is the case, you will die often. This game also has the old time formula of you dying if you jump off a high cliff. I also found the boss fights interesting, BUT they are tedious to find out what you need to do.

All and all, this game won’t make you want to get a Wii, but it is a small-underrated gem that is worth renting from Gamefly. You can also get this game on the cheap side by now, and is worthwhile if you are into platforming puzzle games. I know a lot of people are not fans of the original game, but this one is definitely worth your time if you’re into great animation and cute-looking settings. Maybe, some day, we can all have a little white blob to love and feed jellybeans to.

This game gets a 7 out of 10

Screwattack Takes a look at the Wii U

For my finaly e3 upload I was gonnapost a trailer for the Wii U but instead I figured I post a video from people who had played the system first hand. Enjoy