Super Mario 3D Land

Undeniably, Mario's latest adventure on the Nintendo 3DS holds a special tribute towards one of the greatest NES games, which is Super Mario Bros. 3, which also happens to be my favorite Mario platformer.

Super Mario 3D Land is also connected with the 2 Game Boy Land titles, but I don't think there is much relevance other than the name. It's design is closely observed from various kind of earlier titles, including Super Mario 64, the Galaxies, the New Super Mario Bros. entries and as if reincarnated for a new era, Super Mario Bros. 3 elements are floating around this whole game.

With it's precise controls where I only had to get used with the slide pad's movement for a few levels, 3D Land is instantly familiar for anyone who has played with the plumber's platformers before. It takes constructive level design, which gradually emerges towards getting better crafted, while it keeps you busy with collectable valuables, well known and new enemies, remixed and re-used songs from before and a steady rate of variety.

It is, if you think about it, so diverse by it's levels, that it constantly keeps the players busy and guessing as to what kind of obstacles are to be found next. The new and old power items such as the Raccoon Tail and the Boomerang Suit offer simple yet enjoyable ways of playing. And if you have trouble, presumably because of the last levels, there is help available.

The 3D is rendered useful in here, allowing for some interesting level designs here and there. It has also become more accurately to land on spots during the game now because of the third dimensional helping out. Certainly, this is a very good choice as a game if you want to see what benefits 3D brings towards gaming.

After beating the game, unlocking 8 more worlds, I beat those as well and I can safely conclude that it indeed is a better game than the New Super Mario Bros. games, but does not hold up well enough towards the Galaxy games, when speaking of level design, length and presentation.

For a portable 3D platformer, this is a good choice to pick up if you want to spend 5 through 10 minutes each day to swift through several levels, or just beat the whole game in roughly a week. Which means getting a whole lot of Star Coins and seeing the last available levels.

I am also told that the very last level is unlocked if you beat the whole game pretty much twice, but I don't feel like doing that, much like I did so with the first Super Mario Galaxy.  In any case, Nintendo has put up a very fine Mario game once again.

Rating: 8.0

Heroes of Newerth

After laying down Defense of the Ancients back in early 2009, based of Aeon of Strife as earliest as I can tell, this game succeeded it.

The same game concept is re-used in here, but instead of being limited to the engine of Warcraft III, Heroes of Newerth has it's own one, allowing for many more things to be designed here, including a shop, better dedicated servers and voicechat amongst several positive things.

It borrows or steals(take your pick) hero concepts from DotA Allstars, which was maintained by Eul, Guinsoo and IceFrog throughout the years, while creating unique kinds of heroes on S2 Games's own. Sometimes, in present day, even the community gets the chance for their suggestions to be implemented.

Heroes such as Balphagore, Martyr, Ra and Engineer add their own original spin towards the established formula, making it all even more intricate, time demanding and enjoyable to know and use each of those. Especially newcomers, who know by now that the game has become F2P, if this is their first game based of DotA, prepare to get overwhelmed by the content, as well as the community.

That's right, the community is still as bad as I remember from the days of DotA, perhaps even worse, as vote kicking, conceding and constant yelling at the microphone or insulting, blaming, grieving and raging are ways to demotivate anyone. It is the only reason why Heroes of Newerth isn't an excellent game to pick up and play, because there are uncountable multiplayer games where the competition is still intact, yet way less badly emotional.

Heroes of Newerth can either be very entertaining, or very obnoxious, depending on the circumstances, most of all including your teammates and the enemies's. The best matches are usually those where the teams are equal in their overall strength, and they continue to clash, all 10 players available at once during battles.

There are plenty of sites nowadays which can explain how these kinds of games are played, including League of Legends, Demigod, Heroes of Newerth and the upcoming DotA 2, Realm of the Titans, Rise of the Immortals and Blizzard's own version of DotA. So I won't mention how it is played once again(I wrote a DotA blog at IGN already).

This sub-genre of action Real Time Strategy seems to have originated partly from Herzog Zwei for the Sega Genesis in 1989, although I cannot backup this claim. Anyway, enough with the history lesson.

If you are looking for a team based competitive online game which can be very enjoyable and which constantly gets updated with new content, balance changes and bug fixes, Heroes of Newerth would be a good start. Other current valuable options within the genre are still the ongoing DotA Allstars and most likely League of Legends(I haven't played it).

Xenoblade Chronicles

This ain't "just" a game. It has the unique status of an authentic Japanese Role Playing Game on the Nintendo Wii. Excluding Monster Hunter Tri, last year's big third party game, Xenoblade is the largest available RPG on the last period of active months for the Wii.

Mind me, I know that the game is developed by the first party known as Monolith Soft., responsible for the Xenosaga trilogy on the PS2, Baten Kaitos on the GameCube and previously created Disaster: Day of Crisis on the white console.

There is just no way around it. If you are by any chance a faithful JRPG fan, Xenoblade will deliver for you, in one way or another. It's grand presentation is marvelous, and it's interface is designed in a simple but helpful way. This is, without a doubt, one of the Wii's prettiest games.

The gameplay reminds me the most of Final Fantasy XII, except that it is here executed more smoothly, more exciting and best of all, it fixes small things common to the traditional thinking design that only RPG veterans will notice, regardless of it being an action based one. For example though, skipping large areas of walking grounds by the use of landmarks is well done and well needed for a giant design such as this.

I had barely traversed through the landscapes and I can say already that I love the soundtrack accompanying me. The songs feel calm, exotic and grand to me. The battle theme, that can change according to the hectic tension each battle provides, actually never bores me, because it is that good.

As far as the story goes, it starts out pretty normal, aside from watching two gigantic gods fight each other. Shulk leads a calm life alongside his childhood friends Reyn and Fiora, and spends most of his time inside interiors. It is not until abnormal circumstances arise involving Mechons and the legendary Monado sword that the plot is starting to move and from there on out, no matter how large the game is, the plot thickens and continues to grow in an intriguing way, while every party character is very much likable with good portraits of human emotions.

Some of the traditional RPG standards, such as normal attacks and mana, are both ignored. Instead, normal attacks activate automatically, and health regenerates the same way after battles. A special system called Chain Attacks is available once you use Art(the equivalent of Spells or Abilities in here) skills effectively, which definitely reminded me of Mega Man X: Command Mission's Final Strike. Once activated, you can chain Art attacks for free on an enemy, and if you chain well enough according to the game's rules, you can do even much more damage.

Next to this, each character has their own special ability to use in battles, which fills up the more attacks are successfully done. Such as Reyn being able to drag enemies towards him using aggression, or Shulk being able to reflect off special incoming future attacks.

That's right, future attacks. This RPG involves a future concept used during the story as well as combat and when picking up certain items, showing you possible future events happening. Stronger enemies usually start using dangerous future attacks, which you can overcome by either calling in for help from your allies, or using one of your own counter Arts, such as letting the enemy fall asleep.

Xenoblade also incorporates a crafting mode, letting you create certain gems out of crystals and cylinders, which make you able to equip their bonus attributes on your character's equipment. There is another kind of gameplay, called Heart-to-Heart. It basically is about building off affinity towards party characters, which then unlock bonus scenes at many parts of the game, giving you more rewards.

The Art skills themselves can be leveled up by collecting enough AP(action points if I remember) using various ways. Each character can also learn special Skill Trees, most of them being active passively, while experiencing around. And if you collect enough items in an area and place them in the so called Collectopedia, you can get access to bonus rewards. Even trading items amongst party characters can give more affinity and thus more options to see Heart-To-Hearts.

Convenient tutorials are placed alongside the first parts, explaining the gameplay well and understandable and the amount of it is also quite impressive for an action rpg such as this. Even tedious repetition in battles(should this happen, although I doubt it for most of us) as will be noticed by the ones preparing to beat the game can easily be bounced of by changing characters once in a while, offering just as much entertainment because of the diversity in them.

The only dissapointing note for me in this is that many of the side quests, next to the many others in this huge game, are tedious to complete, because certain characters only appear at certain times during day or night. Other than this minor point, nothing else of serious error can be mentioned by me.

For it's sheer amount of fun, length and lasting appeal already is Xenoblade an absolute must play for RPG fans.It's graphics and soundtrack are top notch, it is rewarding on it's own to traverse the god's bodies(which are the world maps of this game basically) and listening to these dazzling songs while the great gameplay kicks in plenty of times. Even the difficulty is fair and spot on for me.

It's amazing how a single game can let me enjoy a dying console as excitingly as possible until the last few promising games are released and the next generation is amongst us.

Rating: 9.0

The Reigning Horror Icons of the 80's

Halloween, I tell you. The more I have touched horror media, the more this holiday sticks into my mind, and during this year, specifically, I decided to hold a marathon surrounding two of horror cinema's largest franchises from the 80's, while I also watched two anthologies. It continues to be too bad for me personally that this holiday isn't celebrated nationally really over here.

There are a ton of movies surrounding this genre, and about 95% of them are absolutely horrible as far as average film qualities go. However, for about a roughly 20% of them in a whole as I predict, and I target horror fans then, they are worth watching, if you can forgive poor budgets, bad actors, cheap and predictable scares and many times stupid plots. And only about a mere 5% out there are truly recommendable for everyone, from critics to average joes, if you can handle the horror.

However, I won't talk anymore about the genre as a whole from now on. Instead, I would like to focus on three horror icons from the 80's that everyone is aware of if they have done basic research into these kind of films. I am talking about Halloween, Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street.

I know that there are other horror franchises out there, and some of them just as large as these three in particular, but as the title said, these three were simply all over the 80's, presented with their strong debuts, and from those inceptions onward, they kept getting worse and worse until you found the deepest pits of the art of milking awful sequel movies. And believe my word then, because I have at last saw each and everyone one of them, including the latest remakes, and three dedicated documentaries towards each of them.

I won't be talking about every sequel, instead, I would like to summarize each franchise with a few paragraphs.

HALLOWEEN

On this date, since at the very least several centuries, Halloween is celebrated, which at first was entirely different in its concept of a holiday than it is in present time. The well known Halloween franchise touches upon both concepts during its course, but the movies are, more to the point, about an immortal serial killer named Michael Myers.

The original film never clearly stated Myers's motivation in detail for doing these homicidal acts. Instead, they decided to let it remain a mystery, which therefore buffed up the tension of the story. Halloween and its antagonist tend to focus on babysitters, their friends, foster parents and other innocent humans usually residing in the fictional place known as Haddonfield, where they are killed off one by one.

The franchise is if you ask me, pretty average. Not even the earlier titles had left me profoundly fascinated by its design, or its cinematography, or its use of sounds. Nevertheless, they are worth watching up until Halloween 4. After that, it can no longer be saved, because the writers kept using terrible scripts to advance the story, and Halloween 6 and Resurrection are the lowest ranks for sure.

Favorite title: Halloween II(1981)

FRIDAY THE 13TH

The well known formula of Friday the 13th is "sex and gore", centering on the deaths of countless drunk and horny teenagers throughout the massacre films. It is a pretty popular game to send death wishes towards the many stupid characters.

It started with the accidental drowning of a misformed kid named Jason Voorhees while the caretakers of Camp Crystal Lake were too busy having sex. Driven by a twisted kind of revenge, Mrs. Pamela Voorhees ignites the start of the franchise in the original film, at first killing the original residents, and then returning in 1980 to continue her murdering legacy.

After being decapitated to death, the now grown up Jason watched in horror how his mother died, which in turn makes him all too unforgiving in the countless sequels. He is at first a very strong man who kills teenagers without any sweat, but starting with part 6, he becomes a zombified Frankenstein wannabe monster that still continues to kill people around the lake until he starts doing so randomly, and the latest sequels, Part 9 and Jason X, completely wrecked the antagonist, the franchise and the traditions for me.

There is no doubt that Friday the 13th is guilty of the worst kinds of horror sequels possible for me, but at least the first trilogy of the franchise is entertaining, interesting and even scary.

Favorite title: Friday the 13th Part 2(1981)

A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET

Whatever you do, don't fall asleep. The female protagonist Nancy Thompson tells us about these golden words of advice in A Nightmare on Elm Street, trying to warn everyone from the frightful demonic entity known as Freddy Krueger, the man born out of a hundred crazy maniacs raping a nun.

The story of the premise, especially what the original already established is simply put an interesting take on the theme of dreams, combining that with horror and its dream similarity; nightmares. Pop up an evil villain from beyond, manipulating everyone’s dreams with deadly results and you’ve got Freddy’s motivation throughout the movies.

And despite that not every sequel was polished well, at the very least does each film have unique kinds of horror for you to find out. Because of the freedom the manipulation of dream killing has, the directors and their teams had free reign and fun to benefit from this rule the original made, thought out by Wes Craven. So basically each movie is enjoyable by itself, even if standard cinema qualities such as acting, cinematography or editing are poorly done. Speaking quite in general now though when talking about what made some of them below average. Anyway, there is no doubt for me that the franchise is very enjoyable, mainly because of the unique horror premise.

Favorite title: A Nightmare on Elm Street(1984)

Breaking Bad

Breaking Bad is a popular TV series about a chemistry teacher gone bad by the time he hears of his dreadful news of having lung cancer. As if he is finally awake and alive now, Walter White leads a double life of a family man and a “cooker”, who eventually turns into a force of a drug producer along with his partner and former student of him, Jesse Pinkman, a professional but addictive drug dealer. Along the way, both of them must keep their personal lives stable with their hidden illegal work, while their partnership usually hangs on the edge because of the dangerous events happening, and because of their unmistaken differences.

The first season was just a warm-up, and the latter episodes of season 2 is where things started to get more thick and interesting. Some highlights of the series are in S2 a turtle with a severed head on its top walking around in the desert, then blowing up, killing policia, and Walter throwing a chemical on the ground and the building explodes partly in S1. The series continues to hold up well with Season 3, and Season 4 seems to be the best one yet.

It’s one of those series that doesn’t necessarily have a deep plot, but the direction of it and it's characters just continued to let me watch it. Character and plot development both are well done and most of the time, I wondered what would happen next. “Het kijkt lekker weg” I would say, in Dutch.
 

Rating: 8.0(Thanks to Season 4!)

Current State of Affairs for Nintendo

As a multinational corporation that has made many people happy especially in the last several decades, it continues to work hard, innovative and fulfilling towards their large group of costumers, stock holders and third parties.

Hardly anything of actual criticism can be said about Nintendo in present time, but sometimes the course of waiting inbetween quiet periods and exciting ones can be tiresome. Especially when we are talking about the latest generation available.

The Nintendo 3DS has yet to become a hot new handheld for me. Of course, this is it's first year, and look for example how many years the original Game Boy or the Nintendo DS had gotten out of their long life periods. From 1989 to 1998 and from 2004 to still ongoing.

But this is perhaps the first time since the Nintendo 64 days that I hold on to 1 game for so long, that it has been dissapointing so far that my 3DS has literrally been collecting dust since what, May 2011? It's true, Super Street Fighter IV 3D Edition wears off once you have beaten the game with every character and have seen enough of it's online mode that occassionally lags for me.

As pleasant as the free "Ambassador Program" is for early purchasers of the 3D handheld(which is equivalent with the price drop), as well as the recently available free The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Anniversary Edition is with actual new content, it does not cloud the fact that the system still lacks killer AAA titles from anyone.

Due to a lack of worthy 3DS software currently in store, I have been forced to look elsewhere for great modern gaming, and thankfully that role has been fulfilled with titles such as Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Xenoblade Chronicles at the moment.

The lazy remakes of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D and Star Fox 64 3D are ignored by me, not only because I played these about 12 years ago already, but most of all because there is no thrilling new content for us to experience. Seriously, if only Nintendo did the same procedure as they did with Metroid: Zero Misson or Super Mario 64 DS for example, then a lot more people would be willing to rebuy a part of their childhood games.

Promising future titles have been hinted and hyped at since E3 2010, and am I the only one that notices this? I know that they are coming, and it's good that we have been up to date with many of them, but it has been annoying me that because there is nothing worthy to play on the 3DS at the moment, I have been reading news for the same titles for far too long.

Finally, in the next month, Nintendo comes out with Super Mario Land 3D, which will be much needed in order for me to fire up my 3DS with pride once again. After that, Mario Kart 7 is next in December, and recently it has been announced by Capcom that Resident Evil: Revelations will be in Europe on January the 27th.

Good things are coming, but the wait has been long. And as for the Wii U, well, Nintendo said that the year 2011 was mainly for the 3DS, and that next year it will be focusing on their latest console. So, in a fair way, I don't have anything to add towards that system, as the news has been scarce about it anyway.

So yes, I know that Nintendo has nothing to be afraid of from whining people like me, but still, it doesn't hurt to give out comments once in a while for one of the most beloved companies out there in recent times. And Nintendo knows what they are doing. They have a gigantic schedule of different responsibilities and promises to make towards different kinds of gamer groups, and it takes time to please everyone.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution

The only reason this short but to the point review took a while for me personally because I wanted to "have Deus Ex". That means that I agreed on beating hard mode and boy does it live up to its name, being much more difficult than the original game.

A very well developed prequel to the original, Human Revolution is delightful in the sense that it carries over mature themes like the original, and improves on it by being more graphic, intellectual and making more sense. Implementing better graphics, inserting a new communication manipulation system as well as a well thought out hacking mini game and being more difficult than the first game creates a new entry for the franchise that can easily stand on both feet by it's own.

The 3 reasons why this gets a slightly lower score than it's future sequel is that first of all, the original is a longer game. Secondly, the soundtrack is superior there as well, and finally, the boss fights in this game are uninspiring, wrongfully designed and painfully annoying. The ones in the original were quite obnoxious and even odd for boss battle standards, but they aren’t as bad as the ones in here.

We have seen augmentations before, but perhaps not as polished or balanced as the ones in here. Everytime you would obtain enough experience points, or collect a praxis, you would be able to upgrade one of your inner systems by the use of augmentations. Pretty much all of the upgrades are useful by their own, but do know what kind of playstyle you will be going. If you are going all rambo on the enemies, do not consider to use your scarce upgrades into hacking skills.

Once again does the game end with you choosing for a faction or a “truth” to enter the world. The voice acting and dialogue by the way were marvelous to read and the music was impressive and fitting. The multipath system is still intact, which is good. A minor concern is that the A.I. isn’t the most intelligent, but other than that, Human Revolution will most likely surprise you with its content and eye for details.

If you are looking for a first person shooter with way more to offer than just killing everything on sight, Human Revolution would be a good start, with it's interesting storyline about ethics, prosthetics, conspiracy theories and the evolution of man and machine.

Rating: 8.4