So it's been a while since a game came out, and all relevant reviews are said and done. But perhaps there's room for one more say. That's what I intend to do w/ these Redundant Reviews. Not exactly captain obvious material, but some could be considered bordering on it given some of what i may say might have been mentioned somewhere else before, but that's fine by me, because i'm giving my opinion on these games

To kick things off,


(Thank x-box.com for the banner)

This here is a solid game. No way to slice that otherwise. It's plays out in the classic metroid/castelvania style that has become scare these days. I don't know why either because this kind of game is really fun and engaging. This one has it's own twist on things though, given the full 3d world, 2d degree of motion, and 2.5d combat. This is where i had the most frustration with the game. Perhaps we can chalk it up to my shoddy playskills, or how the 360's controller is not designed to work how they want it to. But when it came to aiming at targets in the background, and usually not directly behind either, it's near impossible to focus the fire on said target. Usually when attempted, our hero ( i forgot his name @ time of writing) performs a schizophrenic/retarded wha motion, which amounts to firing randomly into the background sections to try and hit anything.



These outbursts of flailing didn't hurt the game though, given unlimited ammo in the main weapon. which forgives the sometimes wonky controls. the special weapons are very nice, if a bit contrived is some regard. like the super-speed boots which samus had, along with missiles. though the foam gun is different enough from the ice-beam to be cool. but i suppose it's ment to homage ( the fancy word for rip-off ). this didn't bother me too much though because they were fun to use, aside from the speed boots in speed+jumping sections.



The boss battles were all solid aside from the end boss.
[color=red] SPOLIER ALERT (skip next paragraph if you dont want to know what it is,
not that it's very special tbh)[/color]
I actually stumbled into the fight by accident, i wanted to get the 100% completion so it would be easier to get the low item achievement next time round. but i would have liked to have been warned a little better about when this was going to occur. And just waiting for nukes to load up to fire was pretty dull to be honest. i enjoyed fighting the enemies actually causing damage and not the random ship supposedly going to attack SanFran. But yeah aside from waiting for a nuke to load, it was fun fighting the actual enemy hordes.

*END SPOILERS*



Story wasn't the games strong suit in note of the ending there... It was fairly contrived and typical, and to be honest, i don't see why anyone would care about it being set in Orson Scott Card's fictional world. it wasn't important to the game and it was pretty boring and forced plot to begin with. I really wished the whole base was done up like it was Cobra from G.I.Joe because then the story would have been a lot more awesome.The villains seemed to have been modeled after cobra and the leader was cobra commander after rehab, sadly. Oddly enough, the main character, looks like nathan drake from uncharted before he get's all battle suited up, on.



So moving from story to extras, we got the challenge rooms which are pretty fun and were nice to run through after beating the game the first time. there's medals in them if you care to perfect those too. I havn't speed run it yet but there's achievements in it for those that care about that sort of thing. and it felt like it was a solid game, just long enough, and worth the price of admission no doubt.

it get's a thumbs up in my book. I don't feel like a rating scale, too contrived. so it'll be in hand gesture recomendations.

I'll admit it up front and say i haven't owned any halo game. Ever. In fact back in the day i was anti-xbox (well mud on my face now...stop staring at me eltie, u e74'd on me b4 the covering of them) and thought the game was pretty silly and dumb. I mean the only impressions from it i had were via TechTV or later G4Techtv. when games were still on the channel.

But i digress, we were on about halo. 3 to be exact. when 3 was coming out i considered getting it so i could play people, but then i saw COD4, and decided that the only shooter i needed was that. and so it was. and i enjoyed it thoroughly.

roll around news of a halo expansion at discount. w/ full multiplayer. i was intrigued. I played the halo3 on 4 player co-op long b4 i had an xbox 360. It was mildly fun, in that context anyway. Any real gaming online with it brought about a level of indifferance that wasn't fun at all. i mean sure flying a ship around is fun. and sniping people is also fun. but flying off the maps and sniping people? wtf is up with that? how is that fun or challenging, or rewarding for that matter?

at the time when the lower price made it seem cool it was barely on my radar. A few month's roll by and here it's a full game now, with it's own horde mode. Yea? idk i mead there's a level i think. and just adding one because you think it helps justify the game as somethng new is downright absurd. i'm happy cod6 (modern warfare 2) doesn't have something along those lines.

Jst because it was in one shooter, doesn't mean all shooters need them now.

Moving on, this summer i actually played halo 3 a fair bit. along side of some other decent players and one in hidden league gaming if anyone knows what they are.

And it was growing on me, slowly till it got to the point where it just became tedium and rushing. I mean all multiplayer has these in some regard, smash bros's items being "notorious" as far as torney-fags are concerned. And power weapons in gears 2 in the middle of the map, usually river....or well you get the gist.

it isn't a matter of wheter or not the game is "good" or if everyone is playing it. I'm not going to try and bash halo 3 now. it's been done before and better most likely. what i'm saying (at least i think i am) is that it was bland. and unfullfilling. like a mint pie. shure it was a pie, but it tasted like toothpaste, and what kind of person liked toothpaste pie? well a lot seem to, so maybe something less exotic, more along the lines of white bread. All these people out there are eating the white bread, some toasted, others using it as sandwich-ends, and some even with jelly.

but i don't want white bread. bread for the sake of bread. because everyone must enjoy it here's the blandest thing we could make. I'd rather a pumpernickel or maybe raisinbread. or perhaps multigrain for the nice texture.

what i'm getting at is that while halo 3: ODST is essentially a great, solid shooter that expands halo's already well established formula some more. it's just so expansive and conventional, that it is wholly unremarkable as well.

I can't just look forward to buying the game and competing against the players on iit who have experienced halo online since it's inception, if they are die-hard enough.

now mw2 looks to evolve the ideas from mw1 in a new and interesting direction, not jst saying "here's the game u bought as few years ago and pay 60 bucks a month to be called a**licking-chickenf***er, or something like that. It has some notable expansions other than returning old favorites and adding a phone'd in full game price.

playing the demo for odst didn't impress me to be frank. (no not that frank.) it felt like it's halo, and i should be excited, but i'm not so i must be some form of xbox-resistance dream cycles.

so yes this was an anti-halo 3 blog for those who say TLDR. but then again why are you on a gaming site, let along the blog section. leave now and go play your haloz while i do some more college work.

ROCK ON!!

Well it finally arrived the yesterday, (Sunday i know right?) but it's here. the D-toid Kelly Green PAX Special Shirt. And man is it sexy.



I mean look at me i'm good enough to model for anything now! It got me in the mood to game a bit so much i began lifting controllers like weights. 1v1 was never this intense when it's against yourself!

Anyway i rocked some shadow complex and splosion man some more. also picking up I made a game with zombies in it today to enjoy for some low cost, high fun collegiate-ly budgeted gaming.

Well back to class i suppose.

ROCK ON, DESTRUCTOID!

Hello D-toid. I'm back with a blog appologizing for not delivering my promise of blogging my exploits in the final month before college kicked off. So i'm sorry that i wasn't able to keep that up for you all and myself. College planning and other events rained on my catch up gaming parade as it were.

Now that that is out of the way,

Burnout Paradise.

It's still jst as fun as when i got it. but i hvn't bought any of the addon packs for it yet. I'm torn between the legendary cars, cops and robbers, and big surf island. All sound so much fun, but idk what is the most "value" packed purchase, given i'm in college and trying to save money as best i can. Any thoughts?

Well those Gears 2 dlc came out too... which is also tempting but haven't played gears lately so i might hold off on that.

playing splosion man and shadow complex a lot lately. both really fun. splosion is a tad difficult, in an old school way. but i love it.

now contemplating getting a wiimote+ classic so i can play some snes on my mac in glorious glossy screen'd macintosh gaming glory. because it is exponentially cheaper in the long run. unless the tales game on 360 is any good. but with that whole ps3 being super enhanced i dont know what to do about that. i'm dying for a good JRPG if you know what i mean.

anyway i hope to actually complete a month of game blogging some month down the line, but till then

Rock On D-Toid.

I cheated a little and included friday's and saturdays's play into a single post. Reason being, GRADUATION WEEKEND! from high school anyway. so then my month long romp through last gen awesomenss will go unhindered by such things as school at least.

I last left off in Disney's idea of China, a land of dragons apparently. Well Mulan/Ping was pretty helpful and it also showed off some pretty cool tagteam moves that were opened up in this sequel. Like the 1st game it fell along the lines of the movie it was based on except in short order abridged styling. Didn't get the montage that made the movie fun to watch tough, so i never saw anyone make a man out of anyone else. expect for mushu passing mulan off as a guy which counts i guess then...

Moving on.

What was the most annoying thing though was these Centaur guys w/ giant spears. They can charge at you, spin their spear round like an attacking shield, and have a high level of health. They were a pain in the balls to fight. Whiped out the fancy valor form to make them more manageable. It really goes to show how much combat has been amped up since the first game. If anyone who didn't play the first game, tried this one, they would have deffinatly found it difficult going.


Bastard centaurs w/ spears.

Anyway aside from those jerks, i came to realize that even Disney went as far to insult sian women, showing how surprised the captain is when he discovers mulan is a woman and not a guy who he was becoming attached to it seemed. Now i'm not going to agree with disney here, infact any race of women can be pretty hot imo. but it was pretty hysterical the expression on the captain's face was when he learned the truth. Wish i had a pic of it to show.

After clearing Chinaland, I stopped @ beast's castle. Well ovrrun w/ heartless it seems. and one of the organization XIII guys was trying to get Beast's nobody by turning him into a heartless. He also showed off how he inspired Christian Bale's acting style, being very gruff to everyone to sound threatening that is. I wished for a rendition of be our guest however, which i never got.

The final boss here was really fun, being 2 stages. first off a poltergeist like heartless that possessed parts of the ballroom and attacked through them. and 2nd being this huge heartless modeled after beast somewhat. He wasn't impossible or anything like that but he was fun to fight. What pissed me off though, was the lack of a new keyblade to use. I mean wtf all that and nothing to show for it in the end?

I'll stop here and note on how the gummi ship levels have improved over the first game. gone are the annoying fetch quests from the original as well as the bland levels presented. Now we got these fancy old school 2d shooter inspired levels with enough bullets and things happening to maybe impress a vet of Treasure game, for at least a solid mini game anyway.

Got to Olympus Colosseum next. Here I ran into Auron from Final Fantasy. Pretty cool imo. Pete Showed up again plotting along side Hades. other things to note included super fat heartless returning, and an easy fight against a guitar wielding orgXIII member. Pete was a pretty fun boss to get around to fighting. But not as much fun as Hydra was. One of the reaction commands that you could use if you got on it's back involved phil throwing an urn at you which you promptly smashed into the hydra vai "the urninatior" Such a clever pun usage.

After all that DIsney Castle showed up and i had to stop for the time being. So later today i might be able to get in some play time and clear it as well. Exceeded my hopes and got through 3 worlds though. Maybe i'll clear 1 and a 1/2 today pending on graduation shenanigans.

Time to give an update of exploits from my last gen gaming yesterday.

Kingdom Hearts 2 went down. Some interesting things i noticed. The radically improved control scheme was a welcome change, improved camera and the reaction commands helped make you feel like a badass. Obviously there were a fair number of squeenix pretty boys. But what took me by surprise was some of the voice acting that appeared. Christopher Lee voicing red mummy scientist, DiZ. That was pretty awesome.


[color=darkred]Pic of DiZ[/color]

I liked how they filled in and reminded you of plot points through flashbacks/dreams/static old timey T.V.Some of the points i forgot like the chain of memories stuff i didn't remember well at all. Fun game but the card battle part was weird to get used to.

Later on after i finally got through all that stuff w/ roxas including the kick ass fight against Axel w/ 2 keyblades. Finally get back to Sora and the real game it seems. Pete showed up w/ a outfit even more ridiculous than any other KH disney character. And the magician from Fantasia appeared, Yen Zin he's named apparently.


[color=darkblue][size=9]Pic of "Mighty Pete" in KH2
[/size][/color]

moving on now i'm in "The land of the Dragons" aka China. Home of mulan. anyway that's where i got to. about 5 hours logged in according to in game time. Hope to make another 5 today so I'll see how a social life affects play time. want to get through 2 worlds at least today.

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