February 2006

Project Gotham Racing 2

February 19, 2006

Reviews / Xbox / by Wayne Phinney Make a comment! / Tweet it!

To some people, integrating a game into Live so deeply that it feels like you have to have it to play is a bad thing. As far as [i]Project Gotham Racing 2[/i] goes, however, this is far from the case. [i]Project Gotham Racing 2[/i](henceforth known as [i]PGR2[/i]) is one of the best games I have seen as far as integrating itself into Live as a way to make it a better game while still keeping it perfectly playable without having a Live account. I’ll get to the details of that in a moment though. I’m not generally a big racing fan. When I think of a fun racing title, it usually involves throwing turtle shells at Nintendo characters. Beyond that, I’m really not big on racing. Because of that, I went into [i]PGR2[/i] expecting the worst, but I was dead wrong. I got what is pretty much the best right from the beginning. I was blown away by this game, and it helped draw my interest back into the racing genre.

Like most racing titles, [i]Project Gotham Racing 2[/i] has quite a large selection of vehicles and tracks. The best part about the cars though is that they are real cars. These aren’t mockups of real cars and then given a different name for trademark reasons. These are real cars with their real names that were licensed by Microsoft for the game. The cars are such a big part of what makes up this game. A seasoned gamer can use a lower classed car and outrace the newbie, but yet a master of faster vehicles will be nearly unstoppable to anyone else. Thankfully, when playing online, there are ways to keep the playing field even.

One of the better features of [i]PGR2[/i] is the Kudos point system. Originally I thought, “How good can a racing game be if it keeps track of your score.?” This however did not take long to figure out. The Kudos point system is very well done, and in many races, your success is actually determined by points and not so much your ranking. Of course like any racing game, the purpose is to get first place, but depending on how well you drive, you can actually beat the first place guy by points while being in third.

The scoring is done in a variety of ways. You get a certain number of points for ranking in certain places, for doing tricks on the track like sliding, two wheels, or doughnuts, but at the same time you can get points simply for driving well. If you don’t touch any of the sides of the tracks, you get bonus points at the end. You also get bonus points for getting through certain sections of track without hitting the sides. Of course with other players, this can be hard to do even on the easy tracks, and that is why you deserve such a bonus when the time comes.

Speaking of not touching the sides, depending on how you feel about racing games, you may or may not like this. While playing this game, I thought I was playing Operation, but on wheels instead of as a board game. With the exception of the Nurburgring track, there is no grass. It’s nothing but pavement and guardrails which is good or bad depending on your view of things. If you touch the sides, the game makes a noise to let you know it, and of course you lose your bonus. You also lose any combo points that way as well.

On the subject of combo points, you can get a lot of points by stringing together tricks. Clean sections, 180’s, sliding, drafting, etc. can all be used to chain together a nice combo. A combo is when you do successive moves within 2 seconds of receiving points for the previous move. Because of this, you can get some mad combo points, spefically in the Cone Challenge.

This brings me to the game’s variety. There are many different types of gameplay. There’s the Kudos World Series, which is basically a class by class championship mode. Once you win on one class, you get to try it on the faster car class. You keep doing this while earning Kudos points and Kudos tokens to unlock more tracks, cars, etc.

In the Arcade Racing, you have a few selections. You can either do the timed runs, the street races, or the cone challenges. In the timed runs, you simply race against time. In the street races, tracks, cars, and weather are pre-selected and you simply have to beat the race. In the cone challenge, there are cone setups you have to pass through as you race. You get so many points per setup, and it’s very little, but if you can string enough moves and cones together to get a good combo, you can get some crazy scores. You have to become quite skillful to accomplish much on the cone challenge levels though.

On the topic of levels, the levels in this game go from country to country in major cities in the world. You are basically taking part in legal street races where sections of the cities are barricaded off for the races. Because of this, some races will get you thinking you are on one track when you are on another because some of the tracks share the same section of the cities. Still, there are a good number of cities, and each city has a fair number of tracks, so even though they may share some similar sections, there is enough variety in the game to really keep things going in that respect.

Back on the topic of skill, the single player mode has several skill levels for you to play at as your skill increases. Steel medals are awarded for winning races on the easiest difficulty. When I first picked this game up, I could barely even get steels because I was so bad. Looking back on it now, I can’t believe I was ever that bad. Steels are nothing now. Then there are Bronze medals, which would be the next difficulty up. From there you have silver, gold, and the hardest(and I mean this is Viewtiful Joe/Ikaruga/Contra: Shattered Soldier hard). Perhaps for experienced players these harder modes are not too tough, but for me, the average racer, they are quite difficult. I have gotten silver medals on everything, which makes me feel like less of a loser because that’s the average difficulty. The goal is to eventually get all platinums, but given that at this point most golds are even too much of a challenge for me, I don’t see this happening.

Now onto Live play. This game plays well on Live, with or without headset. Aside from the occasional jackasses who boot you for not using the car they want you to use even though they can change the race settings accordingly, it’s a very enjoyable experience. When not playng on Live, all your stats are automatically uploaded to Live. You can upload and download ghosts of certain races, and you can use those ghosts to improve upon your own skill in the game.

Live though is where you will really get your skills. When playing against computer opponents offline, they all follow the same basic strategy. Slow down for turns, draft behind opponents, and occasionally bump into you around corners to help you lose control. Online though it’s completely different. When I thought I was getting good at the game, I found out I wasn’t. I was still driving as if I was playing offline, but when getting bounced around like I was playing bumper cars, I couldn’t do a thing about it. After spending some time on Live though, things got much better, and it became an overall enjoyable experience.

I could probably go on and on about the levels, cars, features, Live support, etc. etc. but I’m not going to. Quite simply, this is one of the best racers out there, and the close integration with Live really makes you want to get Live, even if you don’t feel like playing the game online. At less than $4 a month, why not? Live is cheaper than most people realize.

In conclusion, I think [i]Project Gotham Racing 2[/i] is a very solid racer. The graphics and sounds are well done, the music is good and has variety, and the draw distance is more than good in this game. Being able to play split screen multiplayer on Live is just sweet, and makes up for the poor draw distances in offline 3 or 4 player games. Overall this is a very well done racing title and a great reason to buy a Live kit if you don’t already own one. I couldn’t be happier with a racing game that was designed to be realistic, yet still fun to play. Sorry Mario, but as much as I love hurling fireballs at other karts, I still can’t help but love [i]PGR2[/i].

Mortal Kombat: Deception

February 19, 2006

Reviews / Xbox / by Chris Massey Make a comment! / Tweet it!

[i]Mortal Kombat[/i] is back with a vengeance. Any fighting junkie from the early days of the Super Nintendo and the Sega Genesis remembers the first two iterations of [i]Mortal Kombat[/i] as two of the best fighting titles ever. However, after the second outing, the [i]Mortal Kombat[/i] series stumbled over itself and took a toll on the entire series. [i]Deadly Alliance[/i], released in 2002, brought the game back to the top though. Now, Midway has released [i]Mortal Kombat: Deception[/i], the follow up to the 2002 revival of the series. Gory and blood-soaked as ever, [i]Deception[/i] does a good job of capturing [i]Mortal Kombat[/i] nostalgia, fixing what needs fixed, improving on the good stuff, and overall, presents a very formidable fighting game.

In reality, you may find very few differences between [i]Deadly Alliance[/i] and [i]Deception[/i] as far the fighting mechanics go. Many of the things that [i]Deadly Alliance[/i] brought to the table returns, such as the three different fighting styles. And of course, the infamous fatalities return. The real differences in [i]Deception[/i] lie in the new game modes added in, as well as a few minor changes to the fighting system. Of course, one of the other huge factors is the amount of [i]Mortal Kombat[/i] nostalgia, bringing back old favorites from the classic titles.

The main differing factors that set [i]Deadly Alliance[/i] apart from most other fighters were the three fighting styles each character possessed, which again, returns in [i]Deception[/i]. Little has changed from the system. Each character has two different fighting stances (such as judo or moi fah) and one weapon stance. Aside from the combos though, most of the fighting will feel the same. Although there is a new breaker option, where you can counter an opponents attack at any time, although you are limited to three in one match. The characters make up a bundle of new and old faces, although for the most part, you will see many old faces from the earlier incarnations of [i]Mortal Kombat[/i]. The sword-arm freak Baraka returns, as well as crowd favorites like Mileena and Ermac. And of course, the trademarks return as well, including the rival mascots Scorpion and Sub-Zero and the electric Raiden.

A new feature to hit the arenas in [i]Deception[/i] are traps, which, if you or your opponent gets caught in one, ends you life in an incredibly gruesome fashion. Some traps include a dragonhead that chomps down on the pathetic bait. Another is the smelter, which throws the person onto a bed of red-hot plates just before sandwiching him. And of course, like the copious amounts of blood spewing from the fighters, these are just as gruesome, if not worse than the infamous fatalities.

The fatalities have made a change as well this time around. This time, each character has two different fatalities that end the life of their opponent in a horrible, but admittedly devilish way. Ermac uses his psychic powers to tear his opponent in two, while Scorpion, in an almost too-gruesome-for-television kind of way, literally rips the head off of his opponent, spinal cord and all (and parades it like a trophy to boot). The fatalities clearly state that this game isn’t for the faint of heart, if those people didn’t know better already. Another new twist on the fatalities are the Hara Kiris, which is basically a suicidal way of killing yourself, robbing your opposing victor the satisfaction of killing you himself.

The Krypt returns as well. Many who played [i]Deadly Alliance[/i] will remember the nearly overwhelming graveyard full of secrets, and [i]Deception[/i] continues with another round of graves. However, like [i]Deadly Alliance[/i], while The Krypt does have an overwhelming amount of “kontent,” most of it probably will not interest many people. Most of what you’ll find will be still pictures of developers, concept art, and rendered models of characters and arenas, and almost makes collecting the large amount of koins futile. Very few of The Krypt’s tombs contain anything worthwhile actually, and most of the good stuff (such as hidden characters, alternate costumes, and puzzle fighters) remain under locked tombstones, which require you to play though the game’s konquest mode in order to unlock.

Speaking of konquest mode, it has been revamped in [i]Deception[/i]. Unfortunately, it is for the worse. The developers decided to package the usual fighting konquest mode into an all out third person adventure. I won’t go into huge detail about the story, although it is fairly mystical and at times, a little bland. The main character goes by Shujinko, who starts out as a young man who is granted power by a mystical force, which allows him to copy other fighters attack styles. In return, he is to set out and retrieve relics for the force that granted him power. The majority of konquest mode has Shujinko traveling to different realms to retrieve these relics, as well as copy the various techniques of fights like Scorpion and Sindel.

The majority of konquest mode is incredibly flawed though. It is really more of a chore to work through the story, which comprises of very badly voiced characters and a plot that is inane to say the least. Most of the time, you will be forced to walk from point A to point B in the third person adventure perspective, and most of the fighting involved is actually training in the different character workings, which gets old after the first couple training sessions. The worst part about konquest mode though is that in order to unlock most of the things in the krypt, it is absolutely necessary to play through it. Most of the koins you receive will be from konquest mode, and to top things off, most of the secret characters and other goodies are hidden throughout the konquest world, most of the time in very obscure places.

So far, this may sound like [i]Deception[/i] is a fairly bland rehash of [i]Deadly Alliance[/i]. This is not so, as there are other significant additions to [i]Deception[/i] that make it a worthy update. The most notable of the upgrades is the ability to play against other people over Xbox Live, which is actually very enjoyable. The game plays very smoothly over the network. There are very few complaints to be had with the online mode, except that it could have had a couple more options to what you can do. Overall though, the online play in [i]Deception[/i] is a great new feature.

[i]Mortal Kombat: Deception[/i] also adds the game of chess into itself, with a quirky and gory twist. The same rules of chess apply as always, with pawns guarding the major pieces and the king acting as the backbone of your army. You select your army of chess pieces from the roster of characters, and each piece has a specific advantages, such as the knight’s ability to cast spells. The biggest point of chess though is that when two pieces meet on the board, they go into kombat, usually receiving bonuses depending on the situation. Chess kombat is a great and inventive mode of play, although it can feel sluggish in the beginning and can actually take a long while to pick up in any real action.

The other mode of play, puzzle kombat, shares this setback as well. Puzzle kombat is essentially the game Tetris Attack we all played years ago, only with a [i]Mortal Kombat[/i] twist. There are no real changes in core gameplay mechanics from the original Tetris Attack, although as you stack up the blocks, your bobble-head character will battle it out with the opposing character, and at times, each character will build up enough power to execute a special attack. Other than that, it is a fairly simple game, but interesting nonetheless. Like mentioned though, puzzle kombat can take a while to really heat up, and the first few matches will actually feel a little dull.

[i]Deception[/i] looks and sounds pretty good, although there seems to be little difference between [i]Deception[/i]’s graphic quality and those seen in [i]Deadly Alliance[/i]. The music is set in a fairly dark tone, but to tell the truth, you’ll usually be too busy fighting to really even take notice of the music. Characters spew out blood by the buckets as per usual, and the gore factor is out of control. In fact, sometimes it may seem a little too bloody, making [i]Deception[/i] seem a little laughable really. Even so, the blood graphics are done fairly well, and even if you are skittish around the red stuff, you can turn it down or completely off, although I question why you purchased [i]Mortal Kombat[/i] in the first place if that’s the case.

In the end, while much of it seems rehashed, [i]Mortal Kombat: Deception[/i] is a worthy follow-up to [i]Deadly Alliance[/i] and a formidable part of the series whole. [i]Deception[/i] does have its flat moments, such as in the cases of konquest mode and the unbearable amount of useless “kontent” that fills the krypt. Even so, the new additions like puzzle and chess kombat somewhat make up for the poor decision of konquest mode, and online play with Xbox Live makes konquest seem forgettable off the bat. And even if the fighting is what we all saw in 2002’s [i]Deadly Alliance[/i], the magic and gruesome qualities of [i]Mortal Kombat[/i] just cannot be overlooked.

Prince of Persia: Warrior Within

February 19, 2006

GameCube / Reviews / by Kat Ingersoll Make a comment! / Tweet it!

Have you ever been so enamored with a game that you rabidly waited for the sequel, only to have your beloved franchise ripped to shreds and defecated upon right before your very eyes as you played it? That pretty much sums up my experience of [i]Prince of Persia: Warrior Within.[/i]

Once again, you are the beloved and sexy Prince of Persia — only much more morose, dark, tattooed and… [b]EDGY[/b]! You saved the Sultan, Farah, Daddy and your army from certain doom by killing that conniving Vizier before he could betray you. But there’s a small catch: you were supposed to die along with Daddy and all your buddies when you released the Sands of Time. By going back and stopping the Sands from ever being released, you screwed with the Timeline.

So now, a few years later, you’ve got something called the Dahaka, a dark, [b]EDGY[/b] monster that looks like something from a bad yaoi-themed hentai, chasing after you to ensure your quick tentacle-involved death so you can’t screw with the Timeline.

A brief pow-wow session with an old seer at the beginning of the game sends you on a quest to the Isle of Time, where the Sands were created. You didn’t Get the Girl in [i]SoT[/i], but you did get her pendant, which has special powers. Maybe you can somehow use it to travel back in time and prevent the Sands from ever being created. Then you can go home, wrangle an arranged marriage with the Girl and live happily ever after.

The plan seems to be going well until a storm and some baddies from the Isle of Time ambush the Prince’s ship, killing everyone except the Prince. The bad guys are captained by Shahdee, who has a penchant for shopping at the local Middle Eastern S&M store and making sure the camera catches her barely-covered ass as much as possible. (The other primary female in this game is Kaileena, who wears more fabric than Shahdee, but still manages to show just as much skin.)

Yeah. Like I said: [b]EDGY[/b]!

After you dispatch the enemies, the Prince’s ship sinks and he washes up on the shores of the Isle of Time. And the fun begins.

The problems with this game become evident early on with the battle on the ship. In [i]SoT[/i], you were eased into the action with relatively simple puzzles and enemies. Here, you are dropped right into the battle, without the benefit of getting used to the controls before kicking some ass or climbing around like a monkey.

It obviously assumes that you’ve played [i]SoT[/i], since it glosses over single-weapon combat and leaps into dual-weapon combat. (More on that later.) Also, the traps at the beginning in [i]SoT[/i] were mostly navigating ledges and poles and running along walls. In [i]WW[/i], they drop you straight into the balance beams and bladed traps. And they make the traps even more heinously difficult as the game progesses, adding such things as horizontal spinning logs, stationary spinning logs, retracting squishy blocks and floor buzzsaws. Thank Allah that they gave Slow Time more teeth, allowing you to slow the traps down and get around them more easily.

The dreaded in-game camera causes a multitude of problems and is my main gripe with the game. So enemies pop up seemingly from out of nowhere and it screws with you more than once when navigating the traps. Frequently, the camera switched angles while I was navigating a trap, causing me to screw up because I wasn’t expecting it and overcompensated. It also hid ledges and other ways out of traps in its attempt to be more cinematic and [b]EDGY[/b]. I made a lot more leaps of faith than I should have.

I applaud UbiSoft for making use of the GameCube’s highly underrated graphics engine, but the game’s graphics are so dark and [b]EDGY[/b] that I often missed the solution to a puzzle, a way out of a trap or the next step in a dungeon because I simply couldn’t find it. It was usually hidden in plain sight because it looked no different from the rest of the landscape or was hidden by foliage. I ended up having to consult a walkthrough for some of the puzzles as a result.

And will someone tell the character and background designers that there are other colors aside from red and black, please? Sure, there were a few dashes of color to break up the monotony, but a lot of the landscape just seemed to bleed together. And I don’t think it’s because you’ll be backtracking several times through the game.

A big part of the game is jumping back and forth between the Past (before the Sands were created) and Present (where the Dahaka is trying to kill you). Some areas, like the Central Hall, you have to go through up to five times. The designers were merciful enough to vary the traps and obstacles enough between the two timelines to keep it from getting stale. Plus you gain either a new combat trick, a Sand Power, or Sand Tank to fuel the former two every time you use a portal.

But if the constant backtracking isn’t irritating enough, the game has another trick up its sleeve to make you tear your hair out. Every time you jump to the Present, the Dahaka eventually finds you and starts chasing you again like some homoerotic stalker. And if he catches you, you’re dead. So you have to remain at least two seconds ahead of him as you navigate obstacles through an [b]EDGY[/b] ’50s noir-like haze to the [b]EDGY[/b] guitar riffs of Godsmack’s “I Stand Alone.” The chases provide an interesting challenge and the obstacles you have to navigate through aren’t particularly difficult. Thankfully, the designers weren’t ass enough to put bladed traps in your way. Which is good. Because one wrong step or moment of hesitation costs your life.

But that didn’t make the chases any less irritating. And I looked forward to finally beating the crap out of him at the end… provided that I remembered to pick up the sword at the end that gave me that ending.

Speaking of swords, let’s talk about the combat, which was the only consistently good thing about the game. Since the Prince no longer has the Dagger of Time (having given it to Farah at the end of [i]SoT[/i]), what are we going to do with that Y button? Enter the new [b]EDGY[/b] dual-weapon system! All the ultra-cool acrobatics are there, but you can also pick up, attack with and throw secondary weapons. The secondary weapons have a limited shelf-life, but that never became an issue with me because I chucked them at enemies more often than I used them. It wasn’t like they weren’t lying all over the place.

There are some new moves added to the system, such as swinging around columns and both throwing and strangling your enemies until they die. They made vaulting (towards enemy, A, B) over enemies more difficult, in my opinion, since I kept rebounding off of them more often than I vaulted over them. However, they made the ever vital wall jump (you only have to press B while pressing toward a wall) and the ultra-cool Haste function (tap L while blocking) much easier to execute.

While they seem to shop at the same S&M store as their mistresses, the enemies are pretty varied and there are vastly different strategies to defeating them. Some are a sucker for the wall-jump. Some buy it after you throw them over a ledge. You can chuck your secondary weapon at them. You can carve them up until they suicide bomb their buddies and you laugh maniacally from the ledge you managed to scramble over. Some are so slow that the Slow Time function ruins them. You can even throw or lure them into traps and laugh sadistically as they get murdered by their own convoluted security system. Or you can just become a human Cuisinart and carve up the entire board for eight seconds. Any way you choose, they are sure to die in a gruesome and [b]EDGY[/b] fashion.

While the combat is great, it still has flaws. For example, some points in the game require you to lure jihading wolves over to a crumbling door or wall, carve’em up and get out of the way as they blow said door or wall open. They give you a busticating sword later on. So why not give it to you before any busticating became necessary? I guess that just isn’t [b]EDGY[/b] enough.

Why does the whole screen have to turn red when you utilize the Haste function? I found it hard to fight enemies wearing red, which coincidentally the harlequins wore. They, along with their invisible and S&M cousins, were the ones I used Haste on the most.

And why did UbiSoft think it necessary to add blood and gore to this one? True, you can turn the blood off in the options menu, but [i]SoT[/i] seemed to do just fine without blood. The enemies just bled… sand.

Ah, yes, sand. How do we get the sand to fuel our cool time powers now that we don’t have the Dagger of Time to suck it up from enemies? That’s where Farah’s amulet, which is implanted on the Prince’s armor, comes in. Apparently, the enemies still have suckable sand, which the amulet absorbs after you defeat them. It makes the blood and gore thing seem even more unnecessary, in my opinion. You can also find it in barrels and jars. Combined with the secondary weapons you find in the racks, it gives you a reason to bust stuff up in the game.

Another change here is that [i]WW[/i] makes you work for your health upgrades. [i]SoT[/i] gave you a beautiful hallway with shiny, happy music that lead to a pretty fountain. [i]WW[/i] makes you navigate a hallway of gritty, nasty, [b]EDGY[/b] traps to get your upgrades, ensuring that you’ll burn through a few sand tanks to get there. Mercifully, the traps deactivate afterwards, but it’s still a chore to get through those nightmarish traps.

Other than the upgrades, the only unlockables you get are some secondary weapons with special abilities and “artwork chests” that you break open to unlock [b]EDGY[/b] pictures. Ooh.

Some more miscellaneous bitching before I’m done here: The voice acting is horrible! Many times, the lips don’t match the words. The dialog isn’t much better, so I didn’t care one bit about any of the characters aside from the Prince. I missed Farah and the funny dialog she shared with the Prince in [i]SoT[/i]. And the enemies didn’t need [b]EDGY[/b] dialog. Just grunt and scream while I’m kicking your ass. That’s all I ask.

Not you, Prince! I don’t need to have the hero of my game sound like he’s taking a crap after eating a dozen cheese pizzas while he’s fighting for his life.

I am also trying to wrap my mind around why UbiSoft decided to pepper the game’s soundtrack with heavy metal. This is supposed to take place in the Middle East during the feudal ages. So what’s with all the S&M and guitar riffs? Oh, I know! It’s [b]EDGY[/b] ! I’m gonna go slit my wrists now.

It’s obvious that UbiSoft rushed this, because there are glitches galore in this game. I’ve seen the floor spikes stay up after I’ve run through them. Kaileena’s outfit blurs out several times during her time on the screen. The sound goes out on several occasions. Occasionally, a glitch in the game caused me to fall to my death and burn a sand tank. And the big boss battle in the end featured sand tornadoes, which didn’t seem to go away when they should have. (The screen still blurred and the sound still went a full thirty seconds after they disappeared.)

I don’t know whether or not the glitches are unique to the GameCube version (the red-headed stepchild for multi-platform games), but that doesn’t make them any less annoying.

All in all, the game was a very disappointing experience for me. While it was a mildly amusing romp and is mercifully short at around 10-15 hours of gameplay, I don’t think I could make myself pick it up again. Unless you are a die-hard [i]PoP[/i] fan, I suggest passing this atrocity by and picking up [i]The Two Thrones[/i]. But if you absolutely have to play it and have a spare weekend to kill, do yourself a favor and rent it from the rental place of your choice.

Mario Golf: Advance Tour

February 19, 2006

Game Boy Advance / Reviews / by Wayne Phinney Make a comment! / Tweet it!

Golfing on a handheld. Is this a good idea or a bad idea? Well, the only way to tell is to try it out, and I’ll tell you something. On the GBA, it works out well.

[i]Mario Golf: Advance Tour[/i] is the epitome of handheld golf. Thanks to Camelot, this game could not have been done better. In fact, I dare say that it is even better than [i]Toadstool Tour[/i] on the Gamecube. That’s right, this game is that damn good. Now, that’s certainly not to say it’s perfect, but really, not many games are. This one though is really special.

What is [i]Mario Golf: Advance Tour[/i] exactly? Well, take one part [i]NES Open[/i](the original [i]Mario Golf[/i], which happened to be superior to every golf game in the 8 and 16-bit era), add in some [i]Golden Sun[/i], and then finish it off with [i]Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour[/i]. When you mix it all together, you get [i]Mario Golf: Advance Tour[/i], and that my friends, is a good thing.

[i]Mario Golf: Advance Tour[/i] has a good deal of variety in it. You have your obligatory story mode, the quick game mode, and of course the multiplayer mode via system link, or on the single GBA. The system link is the preferred multiplayer experience though, since it gives you the ability to pit your best character against your opponent’s. Amongst the game modes, there are four standard courses, what could be described as a bonus course, and then five more “star” courses, which are basically more difficult versions of the original five courses. You might think that there’s just not enough courses to keep you entertained, but trust me, there are. Between all the game modes, all the courses, and collecting badges for each hole, there will be plenty of replayability. Then of course there’s the leveling system which forces you to play courses repeatedly.

As you play through courses, you gain experience that you can use to level up your character, or your CPU controlled partner(I recommend keeping all the experience points to yourself until you are maxed out). As you level, you get an attribute point that you put into various categories. There’s distance, fade/draw, spin, impact/control, and height. These stats will determine how your character plays. You can’t just put all of your points in distance though, because as your distance improves, you must keep up in the other categories. Otherwise you’ll have a 400 yard drive, but it’ll be incredibly hard to control, quite inaccurate, and simply put, suck. Balancing these attributes, and making sure they stay balanced all the way up to level 99 is key. Once you reach level 99 with both characters, then the experience becomes a moot point.

As you level up, you of course should become a better golfer, but no matter how good a golfer is, you can only be as good as your equipment allows you to be. That’s where the customization shop comes into play. As you travel around the [i]Golden Sun[/i]-looking game world, you’ll find a shop where you can get custom clubs, but in order to do that, you need to get a custom ticket. By performing various tasks in the world in story mode, you can get these tickets, and in turn, you get to cash them in for better clubs. Some clubs have better distance, some hit the ball lower so wind affects it less, and others have a bigger sweet spot. Determining what clubs are best for you is also vital in becoming a good [i]Mario Golf: Advance Tour[/i] player.

Let’s get down to the actual gameplay, shall we? Basically, as you play, you start out viewing the course from a bird’s eye perspective. You will do most of your aiming from here. Then you go into the behind-the-player perspective, and you can do more adjustments from there, or simply take the shot. When the shot is taken, it goes back to the overview to show you where the ball is going, and when you get close to the green, it zooms in so you can see how accurate your shot will be. Also, when you take your shot, you have the simple yet oh-so-effective shot-bar on the bottom of the screen. You tap the button to get things going, tap it again to measure your distance, then tap it again for accuracy. Even though that follows along with the general simplicity of the gameplay it certainly does work out just fine. Overall, the gameplay is done about as well as could be expected for a handheld golf game.

My only gripe about the gameplay is that when I’m on the green and trying to putt, I can’t zoom in on the hole to make a more accurate shot, I have to keep pressing left and right or up and down alternatively until I know I’m right where I want to be. Of course, even then it doesn’t always work out. Due to the low screen resolution, the hole appears to be bigger than it actually is, and until your ball gets a few feet away and you go into closeup mode, you won’t know if your shot is as accurate as expected. That’s a very minor gripe though. I had few problems with that. Half of the issue was that initially I just wasn’t any good at the game.

On the topic of putting, I feel that I should mention that this is the biggest difference between [i]Toadstool Tour[/i] and [i]Advance Tour[/i]. I find the putting to be much easier, and with the overhead view and the tiny arrows representing hills, a la [i]NES Open[/i], I find that I simply have a far better short game than I did in [i]Toadstool Tour[/i]. Simply put, [i]Advance Tour[/i] is just better.

Now to go into the sound department. While some of the sound effects and more specifically the music, may feel a bit like they belong in [i]Golden Sun[/i], it is all original music. It’s simply that Camelot seemed to go with a similar style of music overall. The thing about a golf game though is when it comes to music and sound effects, nobody ever expects anything fancy, so even though it’s only a bit above average, for a golf game it’s quite good.

Forget about sound though. I think one of my favorite features of the game is the ability to hold up to five played holes in memory for your good shots. That is to say that five birdies, eagles, hole in ones, and albatrosses get saved for you so you can view your awesomeness later. After fifty hours of gameplay though, I still haven’t gotten five hole in ones or albatrosses. While there’s a fair deal of skill involved, just like in real golf, there’s a fair bit of luck as well. There are some pros out there who have never gotten a hole in one, yet they can land the ball within five feet of the hole on a regular basis. That’s just how golf is, both real and digital. As much as skill is involved, there’s luck too. Still, I’m so glad that my flag shot that fell down and right into the cup was saved on the cartridge. That’s such a good feeling to see that shot and know that luck or not, I made that shot.

There’s only one problem with [i]Mario Golf: Advance Tour[/i]. As good as it is, it’s not perfect. I think what aggravates me the most is Doubles Play. The problem is my partner, whether she’s at my level or not, just absolutely sucks. I find that I feel more like I’m competing with her than my actual opponents. Let’s say I have a bad shot that lands behind a tree/cactus/etc. Instead of hitting it ten feet to the left or right, she sometimes hits it all the way back to the tee. In fact, one time she did this and hit the ball back behind the tee. She aggravated me to no end, and it made it really difficult to even beat my opponents with her “helping” me. I swear, the AI for my opponents was better. Sure, they made mistakes, but nothing like what she does. There were times she’d try to hit the ball over an area of water even though her best club doesn’t have the range. She’ll hit it right in, and then you get a penalty stroke. She was the bane of my existence in this game, and when I got the option to change her name, I changed it to “Bitch.” Oddly enough, she said she liked it.

Speaking of computer AI, another minor issue, and this is quite minor, involves when the computer is thinking. If it’s changing where it’s aiming and thinking at the same time, you will see game slowdown. This of course only happens when they are taking a shot, so it has no actual affect on how the game turns out, but it is a minor nuisance in an otherwise near-flawless game.

The last minor problem I had with this game is that if you are playing in story mode and trying to get the rest of the badges for your holes, on the Links and Mushroom course, you have to watch the credits again. Unless I didn’t know the proper button combination, there is no way to skip the credits even if you have already seen them once. It’s a bit of a disappointment. Especially if you’re just trying to beat your own best score in story mode. A minor thing, but still a nuisance if you just want to try the course again.

Overall though, I’ve found that [i]Mario Golf: Advance Tour[/i] is a very good game. This game was just meant to be played on the GBA, and it’s actually one of the better golf games I have ever played on any system. I even feel that it is better than [i]Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour[/i], which proves that graphical prowess and full 3D doesn’t always mean everything.

Powerstone 1 and 2 for PSP

February 19, 2006

News / by Joe Teed Make a comment! / Tweet it!

Capcom is releasing a Powerstone 1 & 2 collection for PSP! It’s not about to tip me over the edge, but I know a lot of people who are crazy about Powerstone. In the heyday of the Dreancast, that was one of the “party” games of choice.

I’m really glad to see people reviving classics from the DC, even if it is for a system I am unlikely to get.

Source: [url=http://arstechnica.com/journals/thumbs.ars/2006/2/18/2907]Arstechnica[/url]

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