Mother 3 Patch… Released.

What a glorious day! I love it when fans do what Nintendon’t. And no, in this case it isn’t just translating an old, classic Fire Emblem game. This time its translating the *much* hyped Mother 3 GBA game. Why is this a big deal? Well, if you’ve been living under a rock then I will tell you now that Earthbound (From the SNES, starring Ness) was actually Mother 2. Getting it yet? Mother 3 stars Lucas (who debuted in Smash Bros. Brawl) and has been something many fans have been praying for a English-speaking release… but alas, no such thing came.

So the good people over at Starmen.net done us a great service. They have translated the game into English for the many Earthbound fans around the world. Unfortunately for Earthbound fans, for some reason Nintendo doesn’t seem to have interest in translating and releasing it stateside… even though they did it for the obscure title of Fire Emblem 1 on DS. You may say Fire Emblem isn’t obscure, but to the English speaking world… it was (unless you did your research).

Anyway. Play it. Play it now. I am.

Next up on my list of things to write about is that new horror game that was sneakily leaked out of Hudson but quickly sealed back up, it goes by the name “The Calling.” And I will tell you now, it’s very much looking like Dementium x Fatal Frame.

Dragonball – The Insult

Or some delusional people may know it as Dragonball – The Movie. However, to refer to it as a movie is insulting. Why? Because it looks like utter crap. I’m talking absolute, utter crap. How can I say this without having seen the film in its entirety? Well… have you SEEN the trailers? That may or may not have been leaked, well I have seen them. The more recent, slightly longer one showcases just what crap we can expect from it.

Now, I’m not one to say that Dragonball was the sparking King of anime… because it wasn’t. But Hell, it is better than what Fox are doing to it. The first showings of its crappiness were revealed when Fox said they wanted to try and make it as realistic as possible (Wha?! This is a series based around flying guys shooting energy and powering up) and family friendly (self explanatory, what is family friendly about blowing holes in enemies).

It comes out in April, and the trailer that was going to premiere with Max Payne has been delayed to fix special effects. Hell, fix the whole damn movie by scrapping it.

Having said all this, I’ll still be there premiere date in my local cinema laughing at the hysterical insult to a popular anime we’re going to see. I tell you, if anyone walks out of the cinema saying “I enjoyed that” then they will inevitably have no taste in film. I know there is always a small chance a film can turn it all around, but seriously… the only way to fix this is to scrap it and start again. Just look at them!!

This longer trailer was the first time I had seen Yamcha, and oh dear… he looked terrible. Piccolo, Goku, Roshi and Bulma also look horrible, but I’m sure that’s been re-visited many times. So if there is a sequel who will they screw over next? I dread to think if they ever reach Frieza… my favourite villain would be ruined in live action.

Rage.

Silent Hill Has Been Silenced In Australia.

Sigh.

SIGH.

SIGH!!

So, Silent Hill: Homecoming has met the mighty banhammer of the Australian Classification Board. This is quite the crappy result, but not surprising. Recently Fallout 3 was flagged and had to change the in-game names of drugs. But if they expect Homecoming to have the violence edited out then that’s impossible, and if that can’t be edited out will it EVER see a release here? Probably not.

This sucks. As Australia continues to suffer because it doesn’t have an R18+ rating for video games. Which we should clearly have! Why don’t we? I mean, we have one for movies. And both have very similar sort of content in certain cases. If this keeps up, then the survival horror genre will die. Does this mean Resident Evil 5 will meet a similar fate here? Most likely yes. And this is a mighty big shame.

Don’t forget importing is illegal. *cough cough*

But never fear Australians. The Board hasn’t banned Wii Music despite the fact it is clearly more horrifying to look at than the horrible of Pyramid Head moments.

That’s right, I went there. Down with Wii Music.

PS. I think I’ll write another review soon. But what should I do? Hum.

Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood Review

Yes, I said I swore off Sonic games after the embarrassment of Sonic and the Secret Rings (what a horrible game) but it was when I heard there was a new Sonic RPG game coming to DS that I started paying attention. Furthermore, when I heard the developers at BioWare were making it, I decided this was a game an exception to the ruling of your typical Sonic game. It was a long wait, but now it’s out and it is completed and left with a rather ambiguous ending. So what did I think of the game? Well, that is what the review is for. But if you want to know what I did think of it right now, the game itself is a simple passable RPG for the DS, nothing too special (Like World Ends With You was) and it’s nothing too bad. It’s just your typical RPG game. And it is a game, which will be overshadowed by already great RPG’s (World Ends With You, Final Fantasy IV and Chrono Trigger to name a few).

So without further delay, let’s dive straight into this review with the meatiest part of the RPG genre, the storyline. Now as Sonic games are generally platforming games, the storyline’s are often less than stellar. But in that genre you don’t need a great storyline to be successful (Hell, look at Mario. He’s been saving the same Princess for 20 years) but in an RPG, it is essential that the story is deep and can suck the gamer in. This begs the question, how have BioWare worked a deep, or at the very least, engaging story into the Sonic franchise. In short, they have done a decent job. They have given Sonic and friends a new life, but the story itself isn’t much to ride home about.

Continue reading here.

Nintendo’s Fall Conference 08

aka We already know you are revealing a new DS.

And so Nintendo just cut the crap and revealed a new DS redesign… we’d known it was coming for awhile, only thing was we weren’t sure when. But in the last 7 days the rumour mills ran overtime stating that the Fall Conference would be when we’d see it. All rumours should always be taken with a grain of salt, but this time it delivered. That’s right folks, Nintendo revealed the brand new DSi.

So did it deliver in all the rumoured areas? Yes. It has the camera, the mp3 playback capability and the SD slot. What has it lost? The GBA port. That’s right. Suck it Guitar Hero On Tour players…

Nintendo DSi

And it releases November 1st in Japan. Wow, really close. Tomorrow’s press conference in America is expected to reveal the English release (at least we hope). It will retail for 18900 yen (US$179), which is a fair price. Hopefully the US price doesn’t bump up (because I plan on importing)

With the SD card, the new DSi will feature a function called DSiWare (which I assume will be similar to WiIWare) which makes me hopeful for a GB, GBC and GBA VC style feature now it can use SD cards. It will even come with a built-in web browser (Opera) and the ability to manipulate images and such with the touch screen.

Sexy new DS to play with. I’ll probably hold onto my original DSLite for the use of the GBA port. Since this new model has ditched it. There was other news at the conference like the revelation of Punch-Out!! Wii, but frankly I would have rathered Kid Icarus. Anyway, DSi for the win.

Here is a nifty comparison between the DSi and the DSLite.

Sonic and the Generic RPG Chronicles

Oh dear. Oh dear. BioWare.

First be sure to note this blog will probably contain spoilers from the Sonic Chronicles storyline. So be warned if you are actually excited about the story and don’t want it to be spoiled. And when I say spoiled I mean you’ll learn what happens and hear me question the game in general. So yeah, spoiler tags.

So, the DS has a pretty rich library of RPG games. And what we have here is the first DS game from famed RPG developers, BioWare. They have a lot of fantastic credentials to their name, so when the world learned that they were the team behind a new Sonic RPG (Just late enough for us not to question another Sonic copied Mario moment). This isn’t a review, that is yet to come (I haven’t quite finished the game yet, you’ll learn why soon), but it is me venting.

The game starts with typically with you being introduced to various Sonic characters, but the first thing you’ll notice is that the combat system leaves a bit (or a lot) to be desired. The touch commands seem okay but when it comes to healing my party, I don’t want it to be based on me timing touch commands properly. If my party desperately need to give my party more PP and I miss one of five touch circles and then it fails as a result… then I reserve the right to get mad.

And even when the combat is going your way (it will happen occasionally) it will sometimes feel dreary and dragged out due to hte fact that your team can randomly miss. And in a really unlucky fight you will miss a lot. Some enemies can call reinforcements, some enemies can heal all their HP by attacking you, there are just a lot of elements against you.

Now, you may think I hate the game, but I really don’t. It’s just wearing on my nerves a little bit. I’ll post my full review upon reaching the end of the game. At the very least the storyline has now picked up, woo!

What I can say so far is that Sega’s little blue hedgehog may in fact be a curse, because not even BioWare has managed to make a great game with him yet. But at least it’s passable so far.

lmx out!!