Filed under: Reviews
Joystiq Review: Onslaught (WiiWare)
Click image for more bug blastin' screens
Hudson was kind enough to send me a review copy of its WiiWare FPS, Onslaught, and I'm sure glad I got it. Once I tore open the digital shrinkwrap, I found a delicious nugget of gaming goodness inside. That's not to say the game doesn't have its problems, but for $10, this is one polished experience.And, as always, if all of this text just makes your eyes hurt, enjoy the supplemental video synopsis here. It's fortified with 2,762% of our famous Joystiq Goodness™.
Wii Fanboy Review: Ultimate Shooting Collection
A compilation of shooters on the Wii may seem a bit unnecessary or even redundant. The Wii already has what could be dubbed the "Ultimate Shooting Collection" -- though not on a single disc. The Virtual Console is loaded with a surfeit of shooters, including many of the best games in the genre's history. The Ultimate Shooting Collection, in comparison, is composed of just three games, some or all of which you may never even heard of. But just like there usually is an argument for a new game over an old one you've played, there is content of interest here that doesn't exist in the downloadable space. The games in Ultimate Shooting Collection are a great showcase for the evolution of the shooter genre, which may seem stagnant or even dead, in the modern age. Even with the piles upon piles of existing shooters, there aren't any like these on the Virtual Console.
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Wii Fanboy Review: High Voltage Hot Rod Show
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DS Fanboy Review: Moon
Renegade Kid is doing their damndest to push the DS in a variety of ways. With their games Moon and Dementium, they've attempted to bring a big-console feel to the dual screens, and the two represent a genre outside of the handheld's typical comfort zone. Moon and Dementium aren't so colorful as most DS games, and they lack the familiarity of a game like Metroid Prime Hunters. These are games of atmosphere, and often, there's blood on the walls and malice in the air. So it's fitting that their games are also about exploration, about discovering limits and new areas. Renegade Kid may not succeed in every aim -- and Moon does not -- but they're doing something different (at least, for the DS). When you're talking about a phenomenon like the DS, when everyone wants in, and everyone is releasing games on it, companies that go against the norm are to be lauded if they are at all successful. Though Moon is uneven, it succeeds in a lot of ways, and so it is to be lauded, too.
Wii Fanboy Review: Family Glide Hockey
Family Glide Hockey had serious potential. A series of cheap, simple downloadable sports games in the Wii Sports tradition is a fantastic idea -- one that, if done right, would easily be one (or more) of the WiiWare service's killer apps. Glide Hockey's predecessor Family Table Tennis actually delivered on the promise of the cheapo family sports game, giving me hope for the series. Plus, air hockey, the arcade attraction on which the WiiWare game is based, is generally awesome and underrepresented in games. The combination of good family sports game series and air hockey seemed like a natural winner.
"Natural" and "winner" are two appelations that fail to describe Family Glide Hockey in any way.
Wii Fanboy Review: Sandy Beach
Sandy Beach is a baffling release -- in that I can't fathom how Konami saw this and decided there was enough game to be worth releasing. It's really two games, but the sum fails to provide enough value for the 500 Wii Point cost.
Zero Punctuation takes on Sonic Unleashed
In this week's Zero Punctuation, imperator of ire and maharajah of moodiness Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw has taken time out to sling a few quick-witted barbs at Sonic Unleashed.
True to form, Yahtzee quickly sets about smacking Unleashed down a peg or ten; in fact, this could be one of the angriest pieces we've seen from Croshaw in some time. It didn't totally agree with our own mainly scathing review, either: for one, he seems to prefer the
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Wii Fanboy Review: Castlevania Judgment
It's hard to place Castlevania Judgment in terms of an ideal audience. The wild deviation from pretty much anything characterizing Castlevania means that the series' fans are unlikely to be well-served by the game, and people who don't care about the series probably would never give it a second look. Furthermore, fighting game lovers would find Judgment too simplistic for their tastes.That said, having given the game a chance, I slowly found myself warming to it. It took me a while to shed my expectations of what it should be, however. It's not much of a Castlevania game, and it's not much of a fighting game, but it is a decent third-person, one-on-one brawler. Like Power Stone mixed with Lament of Innocence.
I must confess that I was slightly disappointed to find the game not-terrible, because I expected to completely savage it in this review. Oh, well.
Wii Fanboy Review: 8-Bit is Enough
Review: Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People
Wii Fanboy Review: Sonic Unleashed
"Sonic + 3D" is a formula that Sega has scratched its head over for the best part of a decade with ... not a great deal of success. If you ask me, it's the speed factor. Controlling the nippy hedgehog in two dimensions is hard enough. Add a third, and it becomes a twitchy, frustrating experience.
So here's the yaaay news: Sonic Unleashed handles Sonic's speed better than any other 3D game in the series to date. In fact, in its best moments, it's the modern Sonic game I always dreamed of playing: fast, exhilarating, ridiculously fun. Yet this is a game of two halves -- of day and night, of hedgehog and "werehog" -- and while the final product has patches of brilliance that made me love Sega again, Unleashed is weighed down by bloated platform sections of thudding mediocrity.
DS Fanboy Review: Metal Slug 7
After more playtime, however, I found that the imitation is accurate enough where it counts (mostly the controls). Even in its diminished state, Metal Slug is irresistibly fun.
Guitar Hero World Tour gets Yahtzeed
For his latest Zero Punctuation review, renowned intertubes misanthrope Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw has cast his jaded eye over Activision's Guitar Hero: World Tour.
Things start off well between reviewer and game (though Rock Band's troubled relationship with Australia undoubtedly has something to do with this) but Yahtzee soon finds assorted holes to pick at, with some of his targets including the pointlessness of Spanish language songs in an English language release, the new slide bar on World Tour's guitars, and the game's credentials as a karaoke simulator. Hit up The Escapist for the review in full or simply jump past the break.
Gallery: Guitar Hero World Tour
For Famitsu, 428 equals 40
The Famitsu 40/40 has lost some of its lustre in recent times. Since 1998, the magazine has awarded nine perfect scores, but three have come in 2008, including one for Super Smash Bros. Brawl.
However, even we found the latest game to receive the honor surprising. 428: The World Doesn't Change Even So is a "visual novel," a graphical text adventure from roguelike kings Chunsoft that keeps player interaction to a minimum. In other words, it's very unlike any other game to receive a flawless Famitsu grade. In fact, it's unlike most other games, period.
We haven't posted a great deal about 428. That's not because we don't find it interesting -- we definitely do. It's because, as Alisha has noted, a game of its ilk is almost entirely impenetrable to our western eyes. Suffice to say, it has now been instantly promoted from "intriguing curio" to "must-own import." Not that a release outside Japan will ever happen.
Wii Fanboy Review: Guinness World Records
Which is it? Read on and find out!
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