On one of my previous blogs entitled Video Gaming at Christmas which can be found here http://www.destructoid.com/blogs/stee87/video-gaming-at-christmas--188552.phtml and in the blog I covered receiving the tea-bagging monstrosity on a 16 bit cartridge known as Sonic 3D Blast for the SEGA Mega Drive II and WWF Attitude, Bust-A-Move 3 and Soul Reaver for the Sony Playstation for Christmas, having been a Video Gamer for some 15 years I have received many games on Christmas so on this special Christmas edition of The Dob I will share with all you some of the other games I received on this festive time of the year.

One game I got for the Gameboy Color was Pokemon Trading Card Game, now back then when It came out, Pokemon Trading Cards were all the range and if you had a shiny charizard at school you were classed as royalty whereas nowadays if you whipped you charizard shiny you would get dirt thrown at your face and get called a geek, my how times have changed. But back then as I stated, Pokemon Trading Cards were at its popularity so you can imagine my delight when I unwrapped the package and saw it was Pokemon Trading Card Game.


Gotta Catch 'Em All

Upon opening and receiving a special edition Meowth card, I popped in the cartridge into my Gameboy Color and pretty much spent all day sitting on the chair immersed into this little world where you play as a boy who is a Pokemon card collector who upon hearing that The Legendary Pokemon Cards are up for grabs if you obtain 8 medals from the Club Masters, which is a pretty similar concept to the Pokemon games where you have to obtain 8 badges from the gym leaders, before being able to face the four grand masters in an attempt to win the The Legendary Cards, which is also pretty similar of having to beat The Elite Four.

Also in the game, much like the Pokemon games you have a rival called Roland which isn’t a very intimidating name and yes you guessed it, as you progress through the game you battle him a few times. Now when you battle it is basically a card battle where you set between 4-7 prizes and do your best to beat your opponent and there are two ways to win, you can collect all the prizes on the table or just humiliate your fellow nerd and make him no active pokemon left however it is more recommended to just steal the prizes. The gameplay is pretty much like that of the normal Pokemon games but only you don’t toss pokeballs at wild pokemon and then face other trainers, this version of the Pokemon phenomena is much more Pokemon friendly and the only thing that gets hurt is your pride when you lose.


Tis a simple island with one love.

Another game I got was called TV Boy which is just a small console with a d-pad with a RF Unit that just plugs into your television and power lead that plugs into your television, and on this magnificent mini console it contained a whopping 126 video games from the 1980’s, and some more well known names on there where PacMan which was renamed PacMania, a ported version of Space Invaders called Invasion, Forest Walk which was PitFall! and Frogger which was called River Crossing among many others.

Now its sole company that released the TV Boy would be impossible to trace as various companies distributed by Systema, Akor, and NICS. Another interesting note is the TV Boy is based upon an unlicensed clone of the Atari 2600 but regardless of it containing 126 video games renamed to avoid copyright battles, I thoroughly enjoyed it and gave me a taste of how far at the time video games had come and even in the 80’s how enjoyable the classics are, plus with imagination I had hours of fun playing PitFall! The Flying Man (Superman) and many others on the TV Boy.


Unlicensed clone of Atari 2600 aka TV Boy.

I have picked those two because even though I have enjoyed many video games on Christmas from Disney’s The Lion King on the SEGA Mega Drive II to Assassin’s Creed on the Playstation 3 those two really stick out in mind, I mean I thought long hard on what two to pick that really made my Christmas and I opted to go for two games I received growing up and that I have fond memories on, and come tomorrow I will have Dead Rising 2, Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood and The Sims 3 to add to the memories to be a Christmas Video Gamer.

So on closing, I will keep this short, so I wish all of you Dtoiders a very merry Christmas and a happy new year!

Holy Christmas on the horizon Batman, I can’t believe it has been a week since I last did a blog but I do apologize I have been somewhat busy getting my fifth platinum on inFamous and playing Spider-Man Shattered Dimensions but I have been meaning to do my latest installment of The Dob for a few days but for what I had planned detailing the murky world of Video game controversy I still need to do some more research rather than just use Manhunt and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas as material, so expect a blog in regards to that sometime soon.

Yesterday was the annual Spike TV Video Game Awards the biggest award show for console fan boys to vote on and for video game developers to treat it like a night at the Oscars, normally despite not caring for these awards I do like to vote however on the website the only game you could vote for was the most anticipated game which naturally I voted for the big gun, Batman Arkham City as that is one game I can’t wait to get my mitts on but as for the rest of the games you couldn’t even vote...just view the trailers for the nominee’s. Kind of defeats the purpose of it being a Video Game Awards show more so when the votes are supposedly from the fans, now where did I put my EPIC FAIL stamp?

Now i checked out the winners of the their selective category mainly to see hoping that Call of Duty: Black Ops didn’t scoop any awards, but I guess it seems whoever voted as it wasn’t the fans weren’t COD fan boys/fan girls and for that I will buy them a beer, as the poor Call of Duty fans were left bitterly disappointed as they scooped up two awards “Best Shooter” which was inevitable and “Best Character of the year” for Sgt. Frank Woods, that’s right...out of the Italian assassin and part time womanizer Ezio Auditore da Firenze, the Greek demigod who would rather swing his Blades of Exile at people than wait in a queue in Wal*Mart Kratos and the former outlaw turned farmer turned moral cowboy John Marston. *cue the audience laughter soundbites*


It must be the beard that got him the award.

Much surprise to me was that Kratos and Santa Monica was quite successful at the VGA’s, don’t get me wrong I do enjoy God of War I, II and III despite the tricky puzzles in the first game and mass amounts of re-spawning enemies in all three games, and what with the release of God of War Collection (which i purchased earlier this year) and the release of the very impressive God of War III, 2010 shall forever be known as The year of the white, red stripe tattooed, goatee wearing, son of Zeus bad ass...KRATOS! The awards Santa Monica scooped was Best Playstation 3 game, Best handheld game and Best Graphics.


Enter Kratos: Man of three awards.

Okay let’s go with the nominees for Best Playstation 3 game: God of War III, Heavy Rain, ModNation Racers and Red Dead Redemption. Now I have played GOW III, Heavy Rain and Red Dead, sorry ModNation you never appealed to me but here’s a Mcvities Biscuit as a consolation prize, and I would of put my money on it being between Heavy Rain and Red Dead Redemption as while God of War III was pretty decent even more so in the violent cut scenes but Red Dead Redemption given it’s phobia of walking up steps, the detail that went into it was simply amazing even more so when you play it and it makes your PS3 sound like it’s gonna take off and fly like a Jet plus during the long horse rides from location to location the background left all teary eyed like a 14 year old boy who has seen a pair of boobs for the first time in their father’s “private” magazine not to mention the detail of head’s getting blown off and all that remains is a neck and scrambled egg like remains of their head.

Now Heavy Rain, while it was lacking good voice acting which on some bits like when Ethan Mars loses his son Jason in the busy mall and goes around shouting rather robotic like “Jason!” which I found rather amusing along with the bad voice acting of the french Canadian children who did the voices for Jason and Shaun Mars and Scott and John Sheppard, I found it graphically amazing and this game is my favorite PS3 game of 2010 for numerous reasons and when I had to sell Heavy Rain for financial reasons I was a sad panda but fear not readers I shall buy it again. So yes while God of War III is graphically decent in my opinion it should of not won Best Playstation 3 game and out of a toss up simply because Red Dead scooped Game of The Year, I would of gone for Heavy Rain for the fact that graphically it was good, plot wise it was well written and the fact you get emotionally involved with the characters even more so when it comes to poor Ethan and the trials he has to do in order to save his son Shaun.


Now Ethan, just because you didn't win anything, blowing your brains out isn't the answer.

In the Best Graphics Category(which i mentioned above), the nominee’s were as followed: God of War III, Red Dead Redemption, Heavy Rain and Kirby’s Epic Yarn and much like ModNation Racers a consolation Mcvities Biscuit goes to Kirby as I haven’t played the game but I have just looked up on Google some screen shots for Kirby and I have to say, considering it’s the first Kirby game to be on a home console in 10 years and it’s naturally on the Nintendo Wii the graphics do look pretty damn good. Much like above where I was stating why Red Dead or Heavy Rain were better candidates for Best Playstation 3 award in terms of enjoyability and graphics and how God of War III had good graphics the other nominations were simply better graphically and I think much like Best Playstation 3 award Quantic Dream should of won this award.

Two more award winners caught my eye with shock so I shall do them in order of the awards so let’s start off with the Best Multi-Player Award, granted I am not a fan of any kind of First Person Shooter (one of the main reasons for my dislike with the Call of Duty franchise) with exception for Nintendo 64’s Goldeneye 007 which is one of my favorite N64 games of all time but c’mon who didn’t like Goldeneye 007, plus I am not a big fan of Multi-Player (Online) games even though I do on rare occasions go online with GTA IV, Red Dead and Uncharted 2 but normally I don’t care for it as teenage kids masturbating into their headsets over a head shot or crying over their headsets for sucking and getting killed 100 times doesn’t appeal to me, but for that award I would of thought Call of Duty Black Ops had this game in the bag as it is “The best selling game of 2010” which was almost as funny as Modern Warfare 2’s “Most anticipated game of the decade” tag line but X-Box 360 fan boys rejoiced as their franchise which according to them is the only game for the 360 won the Best Multi-Player Award in Halo: Reach. Now Halo is pretty much the Call of Duty of the distant future only in Halo they are dressed in colorful space suits and shoot laser guns and armed with electromagnetic grenades but pretty much the same style of play, same level of kids playing it and swearing or crying in their headsets and from what I can gather it has the same plot.


Call of Duty: Space at War, oops my mistake, Halo: Reach.

Now for the last award I shall cover that shocked me is Best Adapted Video Game and the nominee’s for that award were: Lego Harry Potter: Years 1-4, Scott Pilgrim vs The World, Spider-Man Shattered Dimensions, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed Part II and Transformers: War for Cybertron. Now if you would be thinking Spider-Man Shattered Dimensions won (like I did) you would be sadly mistaken as from when the nominee’s were announced we knew that all the Marvel nerds (including myself) knew we would get the award as the opposition was almost as funny as watching SEGA claim their Captain America game would be the best Superhero game of 2011, so cue the shocker of crap movie Scott Pilgrim vs The World’s video game entitled Scott Pilgrim vs The World which if I remember rightly was released as a downloadable game on the Playstation Store and X-Box Live Arcade won the award. Now I played the demo for it just because I was bored and didn’t want to feel left out, I played it and sure the controls were good but it was boring not to mention the annoying background music that sounded like a cat being spun around by it’s tail, but as a trooper I carried on and by the time the demo ended I felt like I had been playing a beat ‘em up version of Hannah Montana where the plot of the game is to get the scantily clad photos off the mean paparazzi and picking up bags of pot to restore health.

Fear not though, Spider-man Shattered Dimensions won the Best Performance of a human male award which it would of made sense to to call it Best Performance of a male voice actor because I think it’s safe to assume we know the voice actors are not recorded by those funny voices heard when using Google translator, but yes Neil Patrick Harris won the award for his portrayal of Spider-Man of the Amazing Dimension and rightfully so as Amazing Spider-Man and Ultimate Spider-Man have delivered some funny Spidey puns.


Spider-Man came web swinging away with an award.

Oh and the winner of the Most Anticipated Game award I mentioned at the beginning which consisted of heavyweight challenges from Batman Arkham City, Gears of War 3, Bioshock Infinite and erm..Portal 2 went to *cue dramatic tension* PORTAL 2!!! Yes I shit you not, Portal 2 won Most Anticipated game and after making sure i was reading it correctly, yes Portal 2 won and well done to Valve Corporation for winning....oh and I never heard of Portal 1 but after looking on Wikipedia for Portal 2, it’s a first person action/puzzle game...could be fun..enter my inner Batman fan boy. That winner of that award is bullshit, if i wanted to play an action puzzle game I would play on Columns or Tetris while getting into a fight with twenty biker gang members, I mean Batman Arkham City, sequel to record sales breaking, entering the Guinness Book of Records for Most Critically Acclaimed Superhero game ever with average scores of 91.67 and winner of several awards got beat by first person action/puzzle game . I wouldn’t of minded if Bioshock Infinite or Gears of War 3 beat Arkham City but Portal 2, that’s like saying Playstation 3 vs. X-Box 360 award’s winner is the SEGA Game Gear....clearly some clever people voted.

Now speaking of Arkham City, a new trailer got released along with the new Uncharted 3 trailer both of which look pretty damn good and make me drool at the mouth and want 2011 to hurry the hell up, so for your viewing pleasure here is the Batman Arkham City and Uncharted 3 trailers.


Sam Fisher in Batman Arkham City?! =O


Look's like Nathan Drake has a long walk home.

Now among the two major trailers there was Mortal Kombat, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Resistance 3, Portal 2, SSX: Deadly Descents and Forza Motorsport 4 trailers along with announcements of a sequel to Prototype which considering it’s rival inFamous is bringing out sequel it was as inevitable as an old person moaning about the youth of today, along side a new game called Insane directed by Guillermero Del Toro and Volition who for those video game buffs will know they did the Saints Row games.

Now I only covered in depth a few awards that shocked me with the winners announced however the winners for all the awards are as followed:

Game of the Year: Red Dead Redemption

Studio of the year: Bioware (Mass Effect 2)

Best Multi-Player: Halo: Reach

Character of the Year: Sgt. Frank Woods (COD: Black Ops)

Best X-Box 360 game: Mass Effect 2

Best PS3 game: God of War III

Best Wii game: Super Mario Galaxy 2

Best PC game: StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty

Best Handheld game: God of War: Ghost of Sparta

Best Shooter: Call of Duty: Black Ops

Best Action Adventure game: Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood

Best RPG: Mass Effect 2

Best Individual Sports Game: Tiger Woods PGA Tour ‘11

Best Team Sport Game: NBA 2K11

Best Driving Game: Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit

Best Music Game: Rock Band 3

Best Soundtrack: DJ Hero 2

Best Song in a game: “Far Away” by Jose Gonzalez (Red Dead Redemption)

Best Original Score: Red Dead Redemption

Best Graphics: God of War III

Best Adapted Video Game: Scott Pilgrim vs The World

Best Performance by a human male: Neil Patrick Harris (Amazing Spider-Man, Spider-Man Shattered
Dimensions)

Best Performance by a human female: Tricia Helfer (Sarah Kerrigan, StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty)

Best Downloadable game: Costume Party

Best DLC: Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare

Best Independent game: Limbo

Most Anticipated game: Portal 2

On closing, the Spike TV Video Game Awards 2010 voted by video game journalists and not the fans which defeats the purpose of an Awards show, then again it is Spike TV so ‘nuff said really had some deserving winners and some winners that make you shake your head in disbelief and wondering what the heck are they doing in the video game industry, an awards ceremony where Playstation 3, 360 and Wii fan boys can all post on their respective forums and bash on each other and why their game should of won.

Now I did this blog covering the VGA for a few reasons, but the main one because some of the awards given to the winners are just underwear dropping at a house party shocking, and as with every blog everyone has their opinions, so on this blog I voiced my opinions on the VGA and some of the winners of their perspective awards but in my defense I did add light hearted humor, so if you comment on this blog with trolling saying how much I’m a douche, etc then you can expect Mr. Three Awards Kratos to head round your house for a polite chat.

Before reading, please note if you haven't played the game this will contain spoilers, so look away now or just read it anyway to be polite.

“I’m the best there is at what I do, and what I do isn’t very nice” the immortal words from Marvel Comic’s mutant with an attitude James Howlett a.k.a Logan but is better known as the admantium claw popping, cigar smoking, yellow and blue jumpsuit wearing bad ass Wolverine. Having been a fixture for Marvel Comics since making a cameo for The Incredible Hulk #180 back in October 1974 before making his fully pledged permant stay the following issue and he has left a trail of wisecracks, bad attitude and bodies behind him since then.


Getting close with nature side.

As to be expected with the rest of the Marvel Superheroes, when video gaming hit it’s popular boom in the mid 80’s thanks to the emergence of the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), Wolverine was no exception and made his video gaming debut in 1989 alongside Cyclops, Colossus, Storm, Iceman and Nightcrawler in The Uncanny X-Men for the NES however the game pretty much sucked with awkward controls, pointless melee attacks and hard navigation maps but then again LJN made it, so what do you expect from The Rainbow of Death? Needless to say LJN produced quite a few X-Men games included a Wolverine game which was released in 1991 for the NES and much like Uncanny X-Men, it may aswell of been a vacuum cleaner as it sucked and blowed at the same time with the main reason was to use your claws it would cost health which was pretty ludicrous plus the fact when he landed on a narrow platform it was like he had melted butter on his boots.


Uncanny isn't the word.


No wonder he looks pissed off.

Okay so let’s travel forward to May 1st 2009 when a few days or so prior X-Men Origins Wolverine was released in the cinema much to mixed reception, for me i enjoyed the film but only downsides was in certain places they fucked up his Origin in certain parts and they had Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool who was about as funny as a cheese grater wrapped in barbed wire scraping against some testicles, and the fact he is doing a Deadpool movie almost makes me want shove my head into a blender. But movie aside, as with nearly every movie nowadays their is guaranteed a video game unless your Max Payne then a piss poor movie gets released in your honor so it was inevitable that a game based loosely around X-Men Origns Wolverine and it did on the Playstation 2, Nintendo Wii, Playstation Portable, Nintendo DS, Playstation 3 and X-Box 360.

The reason for my video game review on a game that came out last year is pretty simple, this was the first game i got my first Platinum on and I am big marvel fanboy minus the thick black glasses and obsession for Magic: The Gathering and Wolverine is my favorite Marvel character of all time, but before I compare the PS2/Wii versions to the PS3/360 versions I will point out that I think Hugh Jackman was the wrong choice for Wolverine, as I know he is the actor of Wolverine in the movies but in terms of video games and cartoons no-one does a better voice for him than Steve Blum who has voiced the pint sized Canadian bad ass for the majority of cartoons and video games, so Mr. Blum should of been given the green light on this game instead of being given the voice of Wade Wilson which was for all of 20 seconds.


All pissed and ready to slice and dice.

I can’t really say alot about the PS2/Wii versions as i don’t own a Nintendo Wii and I no longer own a Playstation 2 but from what I have seen on youtube is the graphics look pretty blocky, don’t get me wrong I know the Wii isn’t like the PS3 and X-Box 360 in terms of stunning graphics and the Playstation 2 is the sixth generation of gaming but it is capable of playing a game with decent graphics, but what I saw from the youtube video was pretty bad graphics but maybe that’s because the Wii and PS2 ports were made by Amaze Entertainment. The combat from what I saw of a flannel shirt clad Wolverine beating his fellow lumberjacks was okay but at times i noticed it wasn’t as fluid as the PS3 and 360 ports, however one bit i saw that was quite impressive was the Bounce move where Wolverine decided to be Tarzan of the Canadian wilderness and bounce from tree to tree and I would of liked to see that incorporated in the PS3/360 port.

Now I know I said that I would of preferred Steve Blum as the voice as Wolverine but on the PS3/360 port Hugh Jackman did do a good job as the voice for Wolverine, however on the PS2/Wii port it sounds as wooden as Tekken’s Mokujin, for example when Kayla is presumed “dead” Wolverine is cradling her body he repeatedly shouts “Creed! Creed! Creed!” which I found hilarious and after a showing a friend of mine named Adrian he compared it to shouting your dog in for dinner, that’s how bad it was and made me glad I didn’t own the game for the Playstation 2.


You can smell the freshly cut down timber.

Now for the Playstation 3 and X-Box 360 port of the game entitled X-Men Origins Wolverine: Uncaged Edition which is called Uncaged Edition for the sheer amount of blood shown which would be a blood bank’s dream, the sheer volume of brutality and I guess a solider’s head shoved in a helicopter rotor blade is the reason it’s known as the Uncaged Edition. Now before the game starts, you get a couple minute intro of Wolverine in some post apocalyptic world killing guards in some pretty brutal ways, a couple of my favorite is when a guard is against a wall and then get’s some adamantium claws in his head for good measure, another bit is where Wolverine is shot by a shotgun and it show’s you the hole left in Wolverine’s body before his regeneration abilities kick in and show’s you his flesh and body muscle reconnecting it’s self before killing the guard.


Epic opening, full of blood and testosterone.

Following this we get a flash back to Wolverine, Victor Creed, Wade Wilson, Wraith and Nord on an airplane above Africa before being shot down which is the same place where in the movie Wolverine see’s that killing innocent people for not giving William Stryker answers is wrong, but for one half of the story in which is a flashblack by Wolverine this is where the game is set, donning Wolverine in a blood stained and slightly dirty tank top and a military combat pants and one thing you will notice that since this is before he was bonded with admantium his claws are made out of bone. But don’t let that deter you as the bone claws are as lethal as his admantium ones, only less shiny, so during your flashback in Africa which broken up in parts as the other half of the game is placed in the modern day (before Wolverine took an admantium bullet to the head) which I will cover. Okay so back to Africa, you will encounter miltary guards with guns and machetes, giant rock like monsters known as Leviathans, machete guards who are pretty much like The Human Torch but with machetes, blue females with teleporting abilities, and guards who can respawn other guards which if you don’t kill the guy respawning the guards it will seem very God of War like with the respawning enemies.

Also as you play through the Africa you will eventually encounter a CIA agent by the name of Raven Darkholme, sound familiar? Yup you Marvel nerds are right, that is none other than the shape shifting mutant Mystique. One of my favorite parts in the whole of the Africa flashback is in the first part of the flashback when you are the end of a cliff where a bridge used to be and all of sudden a chopper appears and starts firing rounds into you, so because Wolverine isn’t going to run away and cry into his beer, you simply use your Lunge move onto the chopper, repeatedly punch the glass and once it breaks, grab the guard and shove his head into the chopper rotor blade and see the blood fly across the screen.


Superman wishes he was that bad ass.

In the modern day parts of the game which i mentioned briefly, this part of the game follows the movie plot fairly closely barring one which i will mention shortly as in the modern day flash forwards (I don’t know the correct term but it sounds pretty cool) it covers when you beat up Creed in the bar, get your adamantium claws, escape from the Alkali Lake facility in which you encounter a young mutant with teleporting abilities which is thought to be Kitty Pryde, if you listen to the audio logs you will the scientists mention a certain Dr. Nathaniel Essex better known as Mr. Sinister. You will also battle a W.E.N.D.I.G.O which is another mention to the Marvel Universe and unlike it’s counterpart, they are basically regular soldiers but injected with something that when adrenaline increases it transforms them into huge monsters which resembles a titan monster from Batman: Arkham Asylum (note: Arkham Asylum came out later that year in August). After an epic scene in a sewage tunnel in which you deflect a rocket with you claws you find yourself in Alkali Lake, in which after another Africa flashback you find your next part of the game.


Wolverine lunging onto a poor guard.

During the course of this section which is pretty damn long, which involves a lot of guards which one drops a Magneto reference, plenty W.E.N.D.I.G.O’s, running across a bridge while avoiding being blown up, and finally after beating four W.E.N.D.I.G.O’s which i did and beat all four at the same time and got the trophy “Ultimate Wolverine” you face Nord a.k.a Agent Zero which involves jumping from chopper to chopper and destroying them before using your claws to destroy the rotor blade and then proceed to kill Agent Zero. Following this Wolverine visits Wraith but he’s not home, so he listens to a voicemail from Mystique which triggers that Africa flashback so Wolverine is seen climbing a mountain which turns out is a laboratory is inside, very clever eh? The enemies of this consist guards with guns and robots, a lot of robots but as you listen to various audio logs of Senator Robert Kelly and Dr.Bolivar Trask you find out this lab is for the eradication of mutants.

As you progress you see what is being built is a giant Sentinel and after jumping on various platforms, etc you meet up with Mystique and stay in contact via a ear piece, then later on you encounter Dr. Bolivar Trask and you battle his Sentinel Mark I prototype, once you have beat that, it triggers a cut scene where Wolverine slashes off his hand, once that’s all done you have to use that hand to get to a room where you have to free Wraith and after a brief cut scene where it shows Mystique is pregnant and the father is Wraith and he mentions the name “Kurt”. Following this is my favorite boss fight where you face Sentinel Mark I, once you have worked out what to do the giant robot tries escaping but Wolverine decides to finish him off and get a lift to The Blob’s location at the same time. After dodging falling bits of metals a few times and slashing the Sentinel it crashes and it powers off and then following that you meet The Blob to ask him where Stryker is, but surprise , surprise it’s another boss fight which I found rather boring and repetitive however after beating The Blob it’s revealed that a certain Remy LeBeau knows the location of Stryker so it’s off to New Orleans we go.


Up close and personal with the Sentinel.


OM NOM NOM NOM

In the movie meeting Remy LeBeau a.k.a Gambit was roughly 10 minutes included the fight, in the game however it’s a whole level of having a fight with Gambit then chasing after him, dealing with guards and Gambit’s assassins which are mutants with four arms and a staff which resemble Sheeva from Mortal Kombat 3, destroying another chopper and yet another showdown with Gambit, following him running away and you chasing after him through a building site before fighting him yet again and after beating him for the 10 millionth time he agrees to take you to the island where Stryker is.


A game of cards gone wrong.

Once your on the Island, you battle through a few guards then there is a cut scene where it reveals Kayla is not dead which was as much a surprise as Dr.Eggman attempting to get the Chaos Emeralds, so Wolverine agrees to have his memories erased but after Victor Creed starts to man handle Kayla so our ticked off Canadian decides to battle Creed. Upon beating him for the second time, its time to face the final boss Weapon XI aka The Dead Pool aka Its not Deadpool but someone like him with every mutant power and his mouth sewn shut.

Following a basic battle which involves slashing him, dodging laser beams and counter attacking him, you face Weapon XI again this time ontop of a nuclear power plant, which is pretty much the same as before only this time avoiding laser blasts that could knock you off thus re-starting the second fight yet again and believe me that happens quite a few times. Once you have disposed of him, you slide down the nuclear power plant and find Kayla mortally wounded and pretty much the same events that happened in the movie with the only difference is that Kayla didn’t walk into the water to die, she just lay there and died leaving a nasty mess on the floor.

Following that, there is an outro where Wolverine is captured by Dr.Bolivar Trask complete with robot hand and because he has since taken an adamantium bullet to the head he has no idea who this bald black guy with a robot hand is, and much like the intro the ending is pretty damn epic which screams for a spin off sequel for the game which I would very much like to see.


Epic ending.

I have pretty much covered everything plot wise in the game in this video game review except some of the fun stuff. In the game you can level up by killing people and collecting Dog Tags from dead soliders who just happen to be lying everywhere and makes you wonder if they are all related as they all look the same, however by levelling up you can upgrade your health, rage, etc as well as skills in beating various enemies which are known as Mutagens and upgrading them to the fullest makes enemies very easy to beat, more so the robots if you upgrade that mutagen. Another nice feature is the special moves, Cyclone Claw, Spinning Claw, Hand Drill, Bersesker and Claw Job...okay I made the last one up, but upgrading the moves makes you near enough unbeatable, my favourite move is the Hand Drill which if your enemy is weaker enough shows a nice animation of the enemy being torn into shreds.

Another nice bit is when your under pressure by being shot at by guards, you can activate your rage mode which if levelled up high enough the guards piss their pants and cower as you slice them in half and no that’s not an exaggeration as quite a few times I have sliced guards in half.

Now while I found the combat very fluid where you can slash some guard, lunge to the next guard and then slash the next guard, it did get very repetitive and boring even more so when there was 20+ guards but while it’s fun slashing off arms and legs and punching through a stomach and have blood splattered up to your elbow i enjoyed the Quick kills which varied from ripping a guard in two to quick brutal claw swipes to body, but even that got repetitive but it was fun none the less to brutally butcher guards into human shish kebabs.


Wolverine getting up close and personal.

Aside from collecting dog tags if your trophy hunting, you can collect figures to unlock three bonus costumes, the legendary orange costume which he wore when he first appeared, the next being the yellow costume which he currently wears and the blue costume he wore when he was in the X-Force which you can wear while playing through the game if seeing Wolverine clad in a tank top doesn’t do it for you. Another feature is, you can play as Wolverine and face another Wolverine to test out your moves which is quite fun, it’s like the dream match if Wolverine was cloned...WOLVERINE VS. WOLVERINE!

Lastly as good as the game is despite the combat at times being repetitive, it was quite a buggy game more so when your facing Gambit for the 10 millionth time and on the giant neon sign your fighting on, a letter get’s blown away and you find yourself stuck on the floor with no way to get back up which means you have to reset the whole level and pray it doesn’t do it again.

Another bug in the game is when you face Weapon XI for the second time, as your dodging his laser blasts to avoid getting knocked of the nuclear power plant even if you dodge, sometimes your blown off the nuclear power plant and left hovering in the air before dropping to your death which is quit annoying as that happened to me on my hard play through in order to get the platinum.

For those don’t own the game but are tempted by this review, here is a list of the trophies please check out this link: http://www.ps3trophies.org/game/wolverine/trophies/

All in all, I did enjoy this game and played through it a few times not just because of the trophies but because as a Wolverine fan I did enjoy the game and was left quite satisfied, so on closing I hope you enjoyed my very detailed video game review and if you didn’t well as Wolverine says “I’ll gut you like a fish”.

Professional wrestling video games have been an addition on consoles and the PC since the 1988 release of WWF Wrestlemania on the Nintendo which consisted of six wrestlers: Hulk Hogan, Andre The Giant, “Macho Man” Randy Savage, The Honky Tonk Man, Bam Bam Bigelow and “The Million Dollar Man” Ted Dibiase. During the World Wrestling Federation’s boom in the 80’s it was no surprise this game was a commercial success which gave Acclaim Entertainment plenty money in the bank and more idea’s, this also meant that from 1988-1999 Acclaim was the main provider for creating the major WWF video games, along side other companies such as Flying Edge, Ocean Software and even the dreaded LJN.


WWF Wrestlemania

As the consoles improved from 8-bit to 16 bit and so on, so did the wrestling games and wrestling fans, man and woman alike picked them up quicker than a fat kid at an all you can buffet and the majority of the games received positive feedback from the video gamers and some video game magazines. Now for me, I was a huge wrestling fan from 1990 up until 2008 when i decided that predictable storylines, wrestlers who can’t wrestle are being featured as title contenders and the ridiculous segments was enough for me to not watch WWF (now known as World Wrestling Entertainment) and Total Nonstop Action(TNA) or any other wrestling company full stop.

However 10 years or so ago, for Christmas I got my first wrestling game since WWF RAW for the SEGA Mega Drive II, in the shape of WWF Attitude . Now in my last blog I detailed some of the aspects I enjoyed with WWF Attitude, so that is why for this edition of The Dob I will be doing my first video game review, so i give you from 1999 WWF Attitude.


Get It?

On March 31st 1999 Acclaim released for the Gameboy Color WWF Attitude, which was not received well by fans or critics as it was deemed to easy and over simplistic however Acclaim had an ace up their sleeve and August 6th 1999 for the Playstation they released WWF Attitude which was in dedication to Owen Hart who tragically passed away three months earlier, and then on August 31st and November 10th it came for the Nintendo 64 and SEGA Dreamcast. One of the first things I noticed was as I booted up the game was how good the opening was and i remember being impressed with it and it made starting up the game a joy.


WWF Attitude intro

On the create-a-wrestler mode, the title is self explanatory as you create a wrestler, either yourself to the best that you can which when your 12 years old you have no choice but to make yourself look manly, wearing the best wrestling attire, tattoo’s and perhaps some stubble in hopes of impressing Sable. Then once your appearance is done, you then select your entrance music which my favourite had to be Shawn Michaels’s entrance music “Sexy Boy”, then following that you have to select your quote which is used before you start and bash your opponent, one of my favorite quotes from WWF Attitude was Jeff Jarrett’s “Don’t piss me off!” which I remember being quite amused at as was my family.

The match types included in the game were One vs. One, Tag Team, Tornado Tag, 1 vs 2, 1 vs 3, Lumberjack (Two other wrestlers are outside the ring and as soon as you get thrown outside or leave the ring then give you a good beating before throwing you back in the ring, or if your close to them they drag you outside and give you a good beating. It also work’s in your favour if it happens to your opponent.), WAR( This match has four wrestlers in the ring at one time. No BFF’s here and you must beat the other three to win.), Stable (Four teams of four wrestlers each start this type of match, each having one member in the ring. When a wrestler is eliminated (by pinfall or submission) one of his teammates comes in to replace him. The teams can tag in and out, and this goes on until only one team is left. Eliminated wrestlers stay at ringside to serve as lumberjacks.), Survivor Series( Pretty much similar to the Stable match but without the lumberjacks.), Gauntlet (One wrestler faces off against four opponents in succession to win. The wrestler your playing does not regain any health between matches, leading this to be a fairly difficult match type.), Tag team and Tornado Gauntlet, Triple Threat Match(Three wrestlers in the ring to begin, the winner is the first to score a pinfall or submission.), Triangle Match (Similar to the Triple Threat Match but with elimination rules.), Royal Rumble(30 wrestlers in an elimination match where to win you have throw your opponent over the top rope) and lastly the Battle Royal (Similar rules like the Royal Rumble but it only consists of four wrestlers.)


The Undertaker getting close with Mankind.

Now if those match types left you spoiled for your choice you have the ability in One vs. One, Tag Team, Tornado Tag, Triangle and Triple Threat matches to spice it up and I don’t mean the naked woman covered in Cadbury’s chocolate kind of spicing up. You can bash your opponents with a steel chair in a Hardcore Match, and accompanied with it is the Cage match, Last Man Standing, Fall’s Count Anywhere, First Blood, I Quit, Iron Man (Not the billionare superhero), Toughman and lastly 2 out of 3 falls.

Finally it’s the Career Mode, where you battle to become WWF World Champion but your not automatically the number one contender, you start off doing house shows, then before you know it your doing Shotgun and Sunday Night Heat shows and then fast forward a few matches your challenging for the WWF European title and then repeat and it does the same for the WWF Intercontinental title before eventually after some swearing and dedicated playing you win the grand prize, the WWF World Championship.

However, when you do start on Career you are placed at number 20 and you have to work your way up through various opponents before getting the shot at the European gold, when challenging for the Intercontinental title, your number 15 and so on. The downside for all this, once you win the world title you don’t get to defend it which i remember being disappointed about, but the plus note is, while playing Career Mode you will unlock hidden wrestlers such as Shawn Michaels, Chyna, Marc Mero, Paul Bearer, Sgt. Slaughter, TAKA Michinoku, Jerry The King Lawler and even Al Snow’s friend Head.


Four way action

However WWF Attitude did have it’s fall backs, the commentary for one which was provided by Jerry The King Lawler and Shane McMahon while funny at first with the wisecracks from The King but much like eating a Whopper everyday, it got boring pretty quickly as it did in later WWF/WWE games when it added commentary. Another fallback that as great a game it was pretty much a recycled version of 1998’s WWF War Zone but with new match types, a revamped Create-A-Wrestler mode and a few new wrestlers, so it would of made sense calling it WWF War Zone II:The Attitude Era, however one bit I did find troublesome was doing the finishing moves as back then you didn’t have to press L1 when you had a finishing move icon flashing, on some you had to <-- --> Square Circle in fact the only finishing moves i was able to do was the Stone Cold Stunner, The Rock Bottom and the Chokeslam.

On closing, WWF Attitude is a great game despite having a few flaws and was commercially a success but this turned out to be the last WWF game by Acclaim as the following year THQ became WWF’s sole provider for its video game franchise and continues to have the wrestling fans looking forward to the next installment, and it’s amazing how far wrestling in video games has come from it’s 1988 release on the NES to it’s 2010 release on the PS3 and X-Box 360.

First off, I apologise for the delay for this edition of The Dob, I was orginally going to do a blog yesterday but I seem to of been distracted by getting the last three blast shards on inFamous while i attempt to gain my fifth platinum ontop of getting roughly less than four hour’s sleep and going christmas shopping with my Mother. I know it’s not that much of delay granted but it is rather annoying when you plan to make a blog and then not do it, but I figured with a fried brain state that my blog would of only made sense to those who understand the equivalent of the wookie language.

However while I was out christmas shopping with my Mother, as i needed to get gifts for my family as well which later decided to be an eBay job, as we passed through various video game stores it got me thinking of a blog idea, as normally I plan my blog’s and what I would write before I go to sleep, but as we walked past various UK video game retail outlets (GAME and Gamestation) and CEX (which I refer to as the Sex Shop to much childish chargin) in which I came to the conclusion that in order to work there you have to have loads of tattoo’s, loads of piercing’s and have a love for shouty music vocalised by angry young people who didn’t get what they wanted for Breakfast, which even though I would tick the lot’s of tattoo’s mark I lack the massive amount of piercing’s and love for people bringing death upon the world because their Mother forget to give them a rasher of bacon. *ahem*

Okay back on topic, as I walked past them and on some occassion’s wandered in just to browse I remembered how as a kid and on some occassion’s even now it is a wonderful time of year to be a video gamer, I mean I remember while I owned the SEGA Mega Drive II waking up to find Disney’s The Lion King and Sonic 3D Blast(groan) under the christmas tree and as I got older when I got the Sony Playstation in which the only games I had was disc containing various demo’s which included Abe’s Oddysee, Disney’s Hercules and a few more demo’s, Tomb Raider II, Crash Bandicoot and quite a few more demo discs courtesy of the Official UK Playstation Magazine . So as it got to Christmas ’99 (only a few month’s earlier my beloved SEGA Mega Drive II passed away after being unused for so long upon booting it up, smoke came out the slots where you insert your game and then powered off.) I got quite a few games and was spoilt for choice, for the Gameboy Colour that I owned I had Pokemon Trading Card Game which was the game that led to my poor Gameboy’s demise, Metroid II: Return of Samus and a Bomberman game.

For the Playstation i got WWF Attitude (i was big wrestling fan back then and was up until 2008) and Bust a Move 3(which vanished a few months later and I still don’t know how it happened, also known as Pocket Bubble 3 to the US) and Soul Reaver. I remember back when my Playstation was hooked up to the television downstairs and through out the Christmas Holiday before school started playing WWF Attitude, creating a fighter and playing through career mode where the top goal was to win the WWF Championship at Wrestlemania 15 aswell as winning the WWF European, WWF Hardcore and WWF Intercontinental titles.



As I got older I stopped getting video games for Christmas as with pocket money I saved up and brought games myself, the first ever game I brought for myself was ECW Hardcore Revolution made by Acclaim who also made WWF Attitude. So for Christmases to follow I was generally given money which then I brought games with, however in for Christmas 2002 I was given a Playstation 2 for Christmas which along with Minority Report that came with the console, accompanying it was WWE Smackdown: Shut Your Mouth and then Christmas 2007 I was given a Playstation 3 with Assassin’s Creed which was my only game till February until I brought Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune .

This coming Christmas my Mother asked me what I wanted for Christmas, instead of saying money I decided to ask for video games and i wrote a list and she proceeded to get me Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, Dead Rising 2, The Sims 3 and Spiderman Shattered Dimensions(off eBay) and yes, barring Spiderman SD I have to wait until Christmas to play my games which is only fair and make’s Christmas that much special, as getting money is good but getting video games is what makes Christmas great, that and the festive food, beer and spending time with the family...until you go upstairs and play your video games.

So on closing, being a video gamer around Christmas is the best, who needs socks, underwear, ties, deodrant’s, etc when you can have a video game and your console.

I know all blogs on Destructoid are interactive what with the ability to comment on the blogs and share your thoughts and opinions etc, so on this edition of The Dob i’m going to use that ability to it’s full potential by making this blog all about the users. How i intend to do that you may be wondering while sipping your Coca Cola, well just like the title says....What got you into video games?



That youngster in the fashionable jumper posing with the SEGA Mega Drive II (Genesis) would be your’s truly on my ninth birthday way back on the 4th April 1995, now why am i showing you this picture of myself from my youth? I thought i would tell all of you how i first got into video games.

Well, on April 4th 1995, i got the shock of my life as i unwrapped my bulky gift and i couldn’t believe that i had this console in my hands, so after my mother took the picture i started to admire the beauty of what i was given, reading the back of the box and looking at what games was in the six game cartridge compliation, the games on that catridge were as followed: Golden Axe, Streets of Rage II, Shinobi II, Columns , Super Hang On and Football Italia ’90.

The first game i played once i hooked up the console i can’t remember, but i do remember being slightly addicted to Streets of Rage II and Golden Axe, the stunning graphics, excellent gameplay, the catchy music, i was in 16-Bit heaven and i couldn’t believe how lucky i was to have this masterpiece of a console in my hands. Other games i enoyed was Shinobi II and Super Hang on which because i kept falling of my motorbike my mum opted to rename it as “Stevie Can’t Hang On” which i found amusing.

Now if i wasn’t bitten by the video game bug, then when my mother brought me Sonic The Hedgehog 2, i was taken into the warm bosom of video games like a fat kid takes to cake, chocolate and other sugary and high in fat food. There was so many good memories playing Sonic 2, being able to beat The Chemical Plant Zone, my Mother gambling my 100+ rings on Casino Night Zone and me getting the three Robotnik’s and finally advancing to the Death Egg Zone and failing to beat the final boss who’s name fails to come to mind.

But aswell as Sonic and the other games of the Sonic franchise barring the poo bomb beast known as Sonic 3D Blast, i played various titles to strengthen my video game passion such as Rocket Knight Adventure, Earthworm Jim, Mickey Mouse: Castle of Illusion, Splatterhouse 2, Beavis and Butt Head, Mortal Kombat 3, etc but despite only playing a SEGA Mega Drive II i also had the opportunity to play the Super Nintendo.

A friend of mine owned the Super Nintendo and i leant him a copy of Mega Bomberman and Toy Story to borrow his console and a few games which must of been for a month or so, quite the good deal i think.

Now during my month long play on the SNES i played Super Mario Bros 1,2 and 3, Chrono Trigger, Robocop vs The Terminator and my personal favourite, Boogeyman which was also out the Genesis. Now playing Chrono Trigger which was my first experience of an RPG and i was hooked on that and found myself drawn into the story and the whole character designs , music, attack system , etc i was addicted to it so much that before school and after school i would play it like a demon possessed or something of a young child with no social life. Now while i enjoyed Super Mario Bros 1,2 and 3 for me the best game i played on the SNES was Chrono Trigger.

So on closing that is how i got into video games and that passion still burns brightly to this day, over 15 years later, i have experienced the best games made and some of the worst games known to man but i wouldn’t change it for the world.

So now i have told you how i got into video games, how did you get into video games?