Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories Review

There are many popular video game series that stand out in the crowd above everyone else. Grand Theft Auto is definitely one of those. Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories is the newest addition to the series, but the first on the PSP. Now I know what you are thinking, its on the PSP, it has to be a port. Ok, I can't say you are wrong, because it is pretty much a port. You still do the same things, steal cars, kill hookers (the best thing of the game, oh yeah), shoot guns, do missions, etc. The story of the game is pretty much the same as all others. Tommy Vercetti is back with a brand new voice that sounds very whinney. Its gets annoying. Now when you see the title, stories you probably think it takes place before all the other games, but no. It takes place in the late 90s. You do missions and everything you do in the others. Nothing new. Now let's start off with the good. The graphics are phenominal. When you look into the PSP, you can't believe what you see. It looks more like you are looking through a small, portable window in your hands. It is really cool. You can see the facial features of Tommy very well. He looks really good in this game. There are unlockables, such as wardrobe. There is one where you can make Tommy where nothing but his underwear (perfect for some fun with the hookers, ok that was bad.) You have all your vehicles. They are all still fun to crash and hit civilians with. The missions are really good.Some rissions. Such as firetruck, police, taxi, etc. Ok, now the bad. The framerate SUCKS. It freezes up a ton which really takes away from the gameplay. But, what do you expect with graphics like these. Also, a very ironic thing is, it always freezes up right when you fly from your bike/motorcycle, which makes the crash look really cool. Either the developers meant for this to happen, or it just does. Another bad is the controls. Yes, the controlles. They are so bad!!! Its starts off with you using the nubby (analog stick) as the movement. This gets really hard because you can't get a good grip to control you nubby. This is hard because you nubby doesn't stick out to get a good grip (oh man that was wrong.) You also move you car with your nubby (wow, very wrong.) You can go to the start menu and change the controls to the D-pad, but let me explain why that is bad. When you begin with the nubby, you are like, "Hmm, this would be much easier with the D-pad." So you go to the menu and go to controls and change it to the D-pad. Ok, this is a worse idea then looking at porn in a church. When you move with the D-pad, Tommy stops every 2 seconds!! This is so frustrating. You try to switch directions, but he just stops and get hit by a car flying by you. Then, you just end up switching back and trying to get used to the nubby. Ok, next. I couldn't find any multiplayer, although it says there is. I will keep searching for that and get back to you. Next, after a few years, Tommy still hasn't taken swim classes. Everytime you hit the water he just falls in and dies. When you played San Andreas, you missed Tommy, but ironically, when you play this, you miss CJ. That is bad. Another bad thing is the loading times. Way too long. Hmm..... that is pretty much it.Even though those bad things really effect it, people are still going to buy it just because it is GTA. And I mean, it is pretty good, it makes you feel dangerous. Even women like killing hookers and stealing motorcycles. My friend's girlfriend really gets a kick out of it, and she doesn't game for anything. So this game is pretty good. The graphics are the best part though, it pretty much makes up for everything in it. I really wanted to give this game a 5, but Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories gets 4 hijacked Banshees with dead hookers on it, out of 5. Now excuse me while I steal this cheetah from this grandma, oh crap, she had a gun, run...........Wasted.

Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow

Oh how the DS needs a good RPG. What a coincidence! Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow is a good RPG on the DS! For some odd reason, it made me reminisce of Metroid Zero Mission. Anyway, the main adventure is based in 2035, a year after Soma (the main character) supposedly defeated Dracula. He thinks his troubles are over, but there is a cult trying to kill him or something like that. So much for no more troubles. The point of the main story mode is to defeat the cult obviously. You do this by poking stuff with your weapon. If you poke them hard enough, you might get a soul which gives you a special ability! You can equip 3 souls: an enchant, a guardian, and a bullet. Every monster has a different soul, and trust me, there are a lot of monsters. So you can use the souls for special abilities, but wait, that's not all! You can a soul with a weapon to make it better! Each weapon has a certain soul that will upgrade it to the next level. This is the best way to make money in the game. Speaking of weapons, there is a weapon for whatever your attack style is. The controls a little while to learn, but you'll get them after a while. There are bosses once in a while, the first few are easy, but the later ones get rather hard. Once you get the boss's HP to 0, you have to draw a "Magic Seal" that you found earlier to kill it. If you screw up, the boss will get some more HP and you have to bring down the boss again, and draw the symbol. So if you draw like a drunk penguin, you will be fighting for hours and hours. Then, there is enemy set mode. If you have the soul of a monster, you can put it in the rooms, for the cost of a number of points. After you set them, you can run through the rooms and kill all the monsters. You can also use the wifi and go through the other person's track and they can go through yours, the first one through wins. That is the only wifi mode apart from soul trade, which makes multiplayer the weakness of DoS. Also, there is a Boss something mode that you can get to if you beat the game. In it you have to kill all of the bosses in a row. If you win in under 5 minutes (how?!?!?), you get a rocket launcher (w00t). The graphics in this game are rather good for a 2d game. The enviroments are awesome, for example, if you jump on a snow-covered car, it will tilt to whatever side you are standing on and snow will fall off. The sound is pretty good, good for halloween. There isn't much bad about this game. The few bad things are that it can get talkative, but you can skip that. Also, if you change your armor, you look the same. The last thing is the use of the touch screen. All you need it for is breaking ice blocks and drawing symbols, but hey, it's something. This game is a GM2 first, it gets 4.5 big swords out of 5.

Advance Wars: Dual Strike Review

First off, I want to think Zam and Ton for letting me offer my opinion on their blog. Secondly, I want to tell everybody out there who has a Nintendo DS, to GET THIS GAME. If you don’t have a DS and you are considering one, this is the game to get. This game alone will make owning your DS worth it. And I should know, it’s the only game I have. I also want to mention this. Advanced Wars is a real time strategy(RTS) game and I hate RTS. With that said, you now have to understand just how good this game is, if someone who hates RTS games likes this one.

First off, If you’ve ever played an Advanced Wars title in the past, this one hasn’t changed that much as far as gameplay is concerned. It's a turn based RTS. Each player,weapon can move different amount of spaces per turn, and can shoot from different areas. Some are for direct combat, and others are for indirect combat.You also have to try and capture buildings to earn money to build new weapons. The biggest change to the game is having two battles going on at once. Sometimes you have a ground battle and an air battle going on at the same time. You have the option of controlling the air battle yourself, or letting the other CO (controlling officer) do it for you. They’ve also added some new weapons to your arsenal this time around.

The best thing about this game is that there are so many game modes. The main mode I play is Campaign mode. This is basically the part of the game that has the storyline. You basically travel around a country taking on all comers and you learn more and more about the story as you go on. Same as any other game.

The next mode is known as War Room mode. Here you battle against the computer and try to earn points for using good strategy. The more points you get, the higher rank you earn and the better your CO will become. Each CO has different strengths and weaknesses. Some are good for ground battles and some are good for indirect combat. It all depends. Picking a CO becomes important.

I haven’t used this mode, because I have no DS owning friends in the area, but they offer versus mode. I think you can figure this one out on your own. You battle your buddy to the bitter end. Die boy Die!!!!

My favorite mode is suvival mode, and within this mode you have 3 options. The first option is money. You have to beat as many maps as you can with only a certain amount of money. So that means once you run out of money, you can't buy any more weapons. The next option is Turn. You only have so many turns to beat a given map. For example, you have 15 days/turns to beat a map. If you take longer, you lose. The last is Time. You have so much time to get through as many maps as possible. It's a lot of fun. Very fast paced compared to the Campaign mode.

Another thing I've yet to try is Design Mode. You can build your own maps to fight on. I'm sure this is cool but it's not something I've had time to get into yet. I've been working on my Campaign mostly. One thing I'll say about this game to potential buyers. Be prepared to put in some time into this game. Some maps can take as few as 5 minutes. BUT, there are some that take an hour and half to get through. Normally, I can't hold my attention that long, but this game is so fun I forget about time and just keep trying to win. This is a must get for any DS owner and it's a reason to buy a DS if you are looking for one. I give Advanced Wars: Dual Strike 5 missle strikes out of 5.

Doug (D.S)

(For more from Doug, go check out his blog - The Only Opinion That Counts)

Earth 2160 Demo Review

Hmm, what are my favorite RTS games? Age of Empires, Empire Earth, Earth 2150, The Moon Project (Earth 2150 2), Outpost 2, and Submarine Titans. Earth 2160? No, I've played about a half hour of the demo, and I can tell this is no Earth 2150 or Moon Project. I think that they shouldn't even call this Earth 2160, this is nothing remotely resembling Earth 2150 or the Moon Project. Sure, the graphics are more advanced, but after looking at The Moon Project and Earth 2160, I have to say I liked TMP better. It might be just me, but I think 2160's graphics look rather unrealistic. However, some of the tanks and vehicles look cool, but that alone can't make the game good. Also, when the people talk in the campaigns, it shows their faces blown up, and they are 110% UGLY! In the gameplay department, I noticed a few glitches that I've never really seen in RTS games, and I've played a LOT of RTS games. First of all, selecting units was REALLY annoying, sometimes when I was trying to select more units using shift, some of the others would come un-selected. I don't know about you, but to me, that gets really really annoying. The other thing that really ticked me off was when I was controlling a group and I told it to go somewhere, some of the units went the right way, but a bunch of others ignored me and went the absolute other way. By the way, going to the other way got themselves killed. That REALLY ticked me off. Those two things alone make me not want to play this game. One thing that does make this game different is some characters have inventories and you can equip different stuff to them. To me, that isn't something that belongs in an RTS. What else could go wrong? Oh yeah, it looks like don't have the unit customization anymore. That just drops this game from maybe being awesome to being nothing. This game ends up being just a average/below average RTS game. Only buy this if you have a huge need to play a space RTS, even then try and get a copy of Earth 2150, the Moon Project, or Outpost 2. I guess this just has to do with the fact that Ubisoft isn't making it anymore, Midway is. So based on the demo, I give Earth 2160 2 bad RTS games out of 5. Don't waste your time downloading the 360MB download file. That's it everyone, I am off to play the Moon Project.

-Ton

Star Wars Battlefront 2 Demo Mini-Review

Welcome everyone to my first mini-review. It is of Star Wars: Battlefront 2 on the PS2. This is very good from what I have been able to play on the demo. There were two playable things on the demo, a 3 minute space Battle Over Coruscant and an 8 minute land battle on Utapau - the big hole in the ground. First I'll go over the Battle Over Coruscant. The space battles look very promising, but with 3 minutes, I couldn't get very far. However, one thing I noticed is the addition of little objectives in missions, they can get a little annoying. It's like you're about to win the game, there's one wookie left to kill, and it tells you you have to blow up a satellite tower. Then, after you blow it up, an army of wookies runs over you. That could happen, and I would be pissed at Pandemic for adding objectives. Also, there are tons more ships then in Battlefront 1, I got to play against the CIS, and I saw 6 ships from both teams combined. That's just the Episode 3 ships too, there's bound to be tons more from the other Ep's. Ships can now boost so fast that it doesn't even look like they're going fast, in addition to the 3 speeds from BF1. One flaw I saw was the amount of ships, there aren't enough for how big the maps are, it looked empty when I was playing. The farthest I got in the objectives was: Blow up the communications tower, Enter the enemy hangar, and then blow up the main generators. Overall, the space battles play pretty well. Ok now to Utapau, the holey ground. Not that much has been done to land battles. Oh wait, how dare I say that. First of all, at certain times in the game, you will be asked in you want to be a jedi. I got to try out Obi-Wan, and it seems you have to kill people to stay as the jedi. The controls of the jedis aren't the best, they can use their lightsaber, force, and a high jump called force jump. They are pretty useful, but not incredible. Also, they have added a new class to each faction, from what I know, the Republic has Clone Commanders, I didn't get to see any others. The Clone Commanders are these people that look like Zam (Wessell, not THAT Zam) and have these huge chainguns, which have strengths and weaknesses, and I am going to believe in you and think you are smart enough to find out those on your own. Also, the look of all of the character classes have been updated which is good. One very good new feature is the ability to switch class at each command post that your team owns, so you no longer commit suicide just so you can blow up a tank, then commit suicide again because the tank is gone and you don't need a rocket launcher anymore. Speaking of tanks, the walkers from Ep. 3 are now in the game. Now to the map - Utapau - well, it's ok. The problem is it's very small, sure it will probably be bigger in the real game, but not in the demo. Another issue is the lighting, it is very dark and hard to see. Another dissapointment is the map is only one level, you'd think with a place like the hole in the ground, they'd make it like the movie with the different platforms at different levels, but they didn't. So it is an ok map, not one of the better ones though, but hey with 24 maps confirmed, it's not like I HAVE to play that. There are tons of objectives in it just so you know, stuff from killing General Grievous to blowing up some anti-air guns. Now just to the overall game, the in-game design has been a little more streamlined. They have added targeting to both air and space so you don't lose your target, it's not very useful. They haven't really updated the graphics however, I am not complaining though, they were pretty good in BF1. An addition to the overall presentation is that they now have actual movie footage on the menus, including Episode 3 footage. That's all I have to say about the demo, it looks like this will be a 4-5 star game when it is done. Peace and carrots.

-Ton