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Biggest surprise/dissapointment.
#61
More mini-reviews, now with 50% more Sega Genesis! C'mon everyone, let talk about some games. :P Oh, and no disappointments this time. Yay!

Surprises: Dynamite Headdy (Sega Genesis): Now here's an awesome game. You play as Headdy, some sort of puppet thing whose world is being taken over by the Dark Demon (Original name! /not). It's a great game though with some awesome graphics and music that rival those in SNES games.

The game also has a bit of Battletoads vibe in that most of the levels try to do something different. The first level is a chase scene, followed by a basic platformer stage, but later on you have to climb a vertically scrolling tower, blast through a space shooter like level, and run through a stage while dodging giant rockets that take up half the screen.

DH doesn't fuck around though. It has no difficulty levels in the options, but the game is pretty challenging and you'll probably be forced back to start at least a couple of times (though probably more than that). Every boss has some effective strategy or weakness though so the game never gets too cheap.

Speaking of bosses, there are quite a few in the game and they all are rather unique from huge robots with spiked fists, to mechanical scorpions with laser beams, and a puppet which gains different attacks depending on its costume. Babyface in perticular was a fun boss with his changing forms as you knock down his lifebar.

All in all, it's a fun platformer that's really worth checking out. Fun Fact: This game was made by Treasure which also did the awesome Gunstar Heroes, Sin & Punishment, and Ikaruga games if you need another reason to get this.

Persona 3 FES (PS2): To be honest, I was somewhat tempted to put this a disappointment. Not because it's a bad game, but because Persona 4 takes engine of this game and does things so much better.

Okay though, let's talk about the good things about this game. This (or at least the original version of P3) game was the first to introduce the One More system where if you hit an opponent with their weakness, you can knock them down and make one more move. (The enemy can also return the favor if they can hit your weakness so planning ahead is key.) It's also where the All Out Attacks originated from which reward the player for taking advantage of the One More system if they can knock down all the enemies.

Another things I love about this game is that you can see your enemies outside of battle and have a change to sneak past them or get preemptive attacks on them. This system shows exactly why the Random Encounter system in other RPGs is a joke. Rather than just have the computer determine when you fight, you have choice in the matter.

Speaking of choice, the awesome Social Link system and various activities you can conduct after school are pretty much all here from P4. One thing I didn't like though was that not all of your party members had social links you could grow, and in addition, the ones that do have links don't get cool battle abilities as you strengthen their social links like in P4.

Persona collection and creation is still about the same as Persona 4. It has a Pokemon feel to it, but with added elements such as fusing new Personas, Fusion Attacks, and eight move slots instead of a constrictive four in Pokemon.

The story is okay, but it isn't very lighthearted to say the least. Death is a real big theme in this game as depicted by the story, some of the music, and the dungeon in general. It kind of comes across as emo, which deducts points from the game in my opinion. I can appreciate darker elements in a game, but I do like having some lighter ones as well to balance things out. Persona 4 handled this a lot better I think.

Speaking of the dungeon, it's kind of boring in this game save for the trippy looking Block 5. It's basically one big tower that's slowly unlocked to you by one big stack of floors at a time. I wouldn't have such an issue with place except that the dungeon theme sucks, sucks, SUCKS! It fits the theme of Death well, but in a bad way. Hearing this damn tune makes me want to die, it's just so depressing and boring. It's a shame too since the main battle theme is a great, somewhat funky tune.

And finally, in regards to the characters, they're kind of a mixed bag. I really like some of the characters including Shinjiro (it's hard to hate someone who's victory catch phrase is "Adios, asshole.") who past his gruff demeanor is actually a good person. Aigis is another interesting character to watch as she deals with her inner conflict (human personality vs. mechanical body).

On the other hand, characters like Koromaru (Who is a cool dog to be fair, but doesn't lend himself well to character development.), Ken (Seriously, you guys let a little kid on your team?), and Fukka (who does little to make herself interesting and has a terrible voice) are characters I could do without.

All in all though, this game is good, if not a little repetitive at times. I'll still play this any day over Final Fantasy X in the least. You have lots a choices in this game, the story is okay, the monster designs and most of the music are awesome, and none of the characters are as bad as Tidus. A word of warning though, playing Persona 4 (they aren't connected) may damage your opinion of this game a little since that game really streamlined things and improved everything.
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#62
Biggest Surprise : I Found a copy of Blue Dragon in a local game shop a year ago for £5. I thought ''Hell, looks like a good game for a cheap price.'' Never regret buying it, one of the best games I've ever played.

Also, Metal Gear Solid 4. Not that I thought that it would be bad, I just didn't think it would live up to its predecessors. How wrong I was. The online was kind of a disappointment for me but the story and gameplay more than made up for that. Need to get myself a copy of MGS: Rising now.

Biggest Disappointment : Awesome Possum. I BOUGHT this game! I bought this Goddamn game with my OWN money! And it just fails. The makers copied Sonic, but made it worse. It goes on about helping the enviornment but the intruction booklet, Ironically made of paper, is over 30 pages long. I mean DAMNIT. WHY?! If you ever see anyone in possesion of this game, you should hit them. Seriously, I gave mine to some homeless man, he gave it back to me, even HE didn't want it!
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#63
There is one good thing about Awesome Possum. When you blow it on one of the quiz questions, the animals all get this cool, psychotic red eye look. But yeah, the game is awful.

By the way, if any of you are looking for revenge against the makers of this game, you can blame Tengen. That's right, Atari's former side company.
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#64
Hm, Interesting Crimson, might check them out. I shall send them an email full of Angry faces! :@:@:@:@:@:@:@:@:@:@ D:< And I did find the red eyes quite good but other than that...
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#65
[Huge Spoilers ahead]

Quote:playing Persona 4 (they aren't connected) may damage your opinion of this game a little since that game really streamlined things and improved everything.

You got that wrong. I'm not sure what part of the game you are on, but if you paid attention to the dates, P3 goes with the timeline of P4, happening before 2010 (P4). Gekkukan (sp) High School is visited by the P4 team halfway through the game. Also, did you notice Chisao, the bookworm that fears men? Don't you remember who Yosuke thought was a darn hottie during the visit to Gekkukan (sp), when they received the welcome from a girl named "Chisao", who seemed to be pretty under-confident and made a reference to an ex-senior who taught her how to deal with things? (Mitsuru) :P

Also, during the same visit, you get a lecture from one of the teachers in Gekkukan (sp), Mr. Edogawa, the school's nurse, the same weirdo that loves talking about arcanna and mythology in P3.

If you paid attention to what Naoto said during one of the intermissions in P4 when she explains what Personas and Shadows are, you'll see she 'pulled a research document' from somewhere, it heavily hints to the stuff written during the P3 plot by the Kijiro Group.

Additionally, Igor and his assistant. If you play both games thoroughly, you'll find the reason why Elizabeth's been replaced by her sister Margaret in P4.

P4 insanely is related to P3, in major and minorly hinted ways, Crimson. I agree that Players won't be spoiled by P4 (At least not majorly) about P3, but I just wanted to note that they are connected, they pertain to the same timeline after all.

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Biggest Surprise: Resident Evil 5. HOLY DAMN! I still remember when I used to be 9 years old and Resident Evil 3: Nemesis scared me till I gave the CD away to one of my childhood friends.

Well, after that, I began on a Resident Evil playing spree when I got older. 1, 2, 3, 4, Survivor, Dead Aim, Code: Veronica X and then... it all suddenly came to a stop. Sniff. No PS3, no Xbox, no Wii... no more undead awesomeness.

But, fortune smiled upon me this year as after being able to purchase an all new PC that's well-equipped for gaming. First game for the PC I purchased: Resident Evil 5.

Okay, let's not beat the bush around this one. It's a smoothed-up Resident Evil 4 that adds co-dependancy during playthroughs with a partner that can assist you in your journey to kill stuffs. The graphics, revamped inventory system and overall game engine makes it all much sweeter. It might be hard as heck to pull off, but this is the first Resident Evil to employ combo attacks between allies, and seeing the Majini get slugged so hard really puts a smile on my face.

The game's full of unlockables, from Graphic Filters to Unlimited ammo for every single weapon that uses any kind of bullet. The game doesn't suffer from replayabilty boredoms, because aside the "New Game +" option you get you may also switch your Main Character for the other one. Hey, the perspective doesn't get major changes story-wise, but it may prove to be fun to take the routes the partner has to that you can't access normally!

Also, great job on Capcom's part for adding the Resident Evil History unlockables in the files, for everything Resident Evil related thing. I liked that, and read all the files out of interest and curiosity for what the backstory of it all had been.

The scenes are awesome, I don't really get why there's so much hate about QTEs, I personally think they are innovate, and have been thinking the same ever since RE4. I mean, most of the time you must QTE means you're either gonna be dangerously slugged or outright murdered. Instant Death is a recurring obstacle in most games, QTE-fail induced Instant Deaths doesn't make QTE dumb, it makes people sucky at paying attention to the enemy's reactions.

Still, even if most QTEs show how sweetly one can escape dire situations, I gotta agree that sometimes they are badly positioned. Why? Because you're trying to concentrate on the plot, too. Resident Evil 5 has an awesome plot, and the scenes are greatly done, with graphics having been worked to the bone with and the voice actors making great effort to put emotion in their dialogues. That's why I can't say that suddenly seeing F+V in my screen and then seeing Chris drop dead sort of got me mad. But yeah, I personally think the QTEs are fine. The game is more than just QTEs anyway!

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Another Biggest Surprise: Mass Effect.

Holy Brain Abductions.

The game isn't long when you analyze it from the gameplay angle. No. You got one Prologue, one diplomatic mission, three investigation missions and then you start going through to the last two endgame missions.

The question that will spring up then is- What makes it so sweet? I can't say for sure, not without sounding contradictory more than one time, but the game has you locked into a bull-load of side-quests and dialogue scenes. Dialogue scenes with multiple and re-takeable roads. For the vast majority of characters you talk to.

Look, when I was told this game was a space-drama-like RPG, I immediately thought I'd be playing some sort of FF VII with a Star Craft plot theme. Oh, I'm so friggin' glad I was wrong.

I've told this to people twice, and here's the third: Mass Effect is like having Star Craft's world, Resident Evil 5's battle interface and Persona 3/4's personality-building scheme gone wild. That, summed to some intrincate Level Up system Bioware came up with, makes this game a gigantic amalgam of awesomeness.

The diversity on races is incredible, the amount of fights you can CHOOSE to get in are staggering, the amount of outcomes you can choose for most of every situation in the game makes you feel like you had immediate save states like in an emulator.

The game isn't long, again. The vast amount of sidequests you can do to power yourself up, to learn about your platoon members and all the dialogues you can recurr to to get all the info on the universe's history and plot makes it long. Somehow, I can't drop it, even if I'm more a fan of nailing stuff down with assault rifles, and they got me down listening to every single alien I run into, I keep playing and the time flies by.

Hmm, I don't think I can adulate this game anymore, but I'm gonna say this: The only reason I haven't bought ME2 yet is because I don't have the money for it. Over and out.
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#66
I'm borrowing ME2 from my buddy this weekend. I lost track of how many hours I put into the first one.
BIGGEST SURPRISE-PS1 Legend of Dragoon. An amazing story of love, hate, and war and secrets and betrayals and blah blah blah. The fighting system was awesome too. When you used a physical attack, it would be a part of a combo. When your weapon was about to strike an opponent, you had to press "X" to ensure the next hit, and so on. By the end there were some crazy long combos with crazy timing on the hits. The magic system was neat, in that when you did use a spell or item , you had to rapidly press a button to increase it's strength. And the characters were deep. And I can go on and on and on.

Disappointment: Transformers Revenge of the Fallen-360
I expected it to be bad...not THAT BAD!
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#67
Biggest Surprise - I bought Dog's Life for the PS2 because I'm a pervert. I thought it would suck because it was a kid's game, but it was actually pretty fun with it's mini-games, and learning new tricks, and collecting bones, and saving the girl you wanna screw- also, anatomically correct, FTW! I had fun inputting the commands to pee on people or fart or take a dump near them. X3 There's also smell-o-vision. -And why Daisy was dog-napped? The reason is surprisingly dark... for a kid's game. I mean- there are blood-stained BUZZSAWS and blood spatters in the factory, hinting that other dogs became victims before! -How to defeat final boss? Fart. And she faints and is turned into cat food. A human woman is SLICED AND DICED AND TURNED INTO CATFOOD.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phRbv8VBwCI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7bC_kAR-wU

Likewise The Legend of Dragoon for the PS1 was a pleasant surprise for me. Back then, I bought FF9, and it was in Japanese, so I only managed to neeearly complete disk one before getting stuck, and then there was Legend of Dragoon. Oh mein gott, it had dragons! DRAGONS!! A kid like me loved that stuff! It was the very first RPG I loved, I suppose. It had a battle system that you had to pay attention too, not just press a button and watch someone attack, nuuu, there are combos, and those are fun! XD Oh, and the CG scenes had VOICE OVERS. Not totally good voice actors, but decent, and that blew my mind! It made me love everyone! -And SCREW the death of Aeris! The death of Lavitz happened so fast, and he was among my favorites at the time! D:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaMWwEgSYuo Such a simply and vague intro. X3

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hh8lUeFEsS4 all dragoons and magic + http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gb82cyACvxU&feature=related violet dragon. X3

Lil Ray: No Lavitz! NOOOOO!! Why'd you have to attack Lloyd!? He had the Dragon Buster- AWWW!!

Biggest Disappointment - At the time, I was pretty young, like, just in the single digits, and I was one hell of a fraidy-cat! So when I borrowed the game Nightmare Creatures II from a friend of mine who refused to play it alone, I had NIGHTMARES FOR A MONTH. That, and it made me panic and freak out so much that I couldn't learn the controls and kept on dying! The character had a gun, but I didn't know how to bring it out, so all I had was a fire axe!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtXyiiCCAus
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#68
I had the misfortune of playing Legend of the Dragoon in Spanish, or in gallego as we like to call it. The voice acting, in other words, sucked majorly. But I loved the game. I never expected Lavitz to die, that's true, and I loved being able to transform, made me think of a few series I used to watch when I was a kid, with people morphing and getting the elements to favor them in battle and all.

I loved Dart Master's dragoon fighting style, it made me laugh. I forget his name, but I'm speaking of the old womanizer dude :3
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#69
I don't think ANYONE saw Lavitz dying. Then Albert comes along and your like, what 'ev. But he grows on ya. Dragon I highly suggest getting an emulator and playing it again in English. It isn't too good, but WAY better then the spanish (at least I think.)

My Biggest Let Down Ever-Digimon World 2.
I HATE THAT GAME
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#70
I'm not playing through 4 CDs and doing sidequests again, lol.
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