Three Days Til Absolution.

The day is nearly upon us. Super Smash Bros. Brawl is mere days away from release in Japan and then all of our questions will be answered. All of those “prophets” will be deconfirmed and thrust back into the nothingness from whence they came. And most importantly, us English speaking folk will be one step closer to playing the game. The prospect of knowing the full roster is very exciting. Will I get to play as Ridley? There is a high chance I will, but if not then I won’t be too annoyed as I’ll still have my high tier characters in the form of Peach, Marth and Sheik. (In case you’ve been living under a rock Jigglypuff, Lucario and Ness are now 99% confirmed due to a slip up in one of the later Wii.com videos).

And where did I pull Marth from? Well, on the 25th of January the update regarded Virtual Console demos of classic games starring some of the characters. So what you say? Well, on the Japanese one there was a screen grab of Earthbound (Ness’ game) and Fire Emblem 3 (Marth’s game) so that essentially confirms them in my opinion.

NOTE: I, like many other Brawl fans, don’t take the NeoGAF “35 Character Roster” one as serious as some. I mean, pfft… playable R.O.B.

I’ve been a busy man this month, playing through Umbrella Chronicles, working on reviews for it and a couple of other games and trying to fully finish Final Fantasy XII.

My game clock just ticked over 131 hours. That really is something, I would like to see Twilight Princess *try* and give me anywhere near that much game time. And if its taken *you* that long, then give up gaming. Because Zelda takes about 50 or so hours tops to get everything you need. And by that stage in FF-XII you were only heading towards one of the final areas with heaps of extras left to complete. My score for FF-XII without giving a full blown review? 9/10. Its a very solid game, only let down by some character/story work.

Umbrella Chronicles, casual gamers ahoy! (That also includes anyone who wanted to play Resident Evil games but were too scared they’d kick their lame asses) This game is perfectly suited for casual gamers, but if you are a hardcore Resident Evil fan then come here only expecting an enjoyable rental. It plays like a House of the Dead game. Which is all good and well in the arcade, but bringing one of them home isn’t much fun. Which is why I enjoyed it, but am 100% sure that I would not have blown $99AU on it. My quick score for UC is about 7/10. Better than expected, but not as good as it could have been (had it been a real RE game) the main thing of interest is that I spotted a small hint at Resident Evil 5, which I thought was very cool of Capcom to do.

The Couch Warrior 2008 Season for SSBM is set to begin around March-ish. Which works fine for me, means we’ll have 5 or 6 imported copies of Brawl to play on. Yay!

This is a filler blog. I will post a cooler one soon >_>

See you next mission, blogee’s.

A New Year. A New War.

2008 has come in with a bang, and I must say I look forward to seeing what this year holds. We get a lot of potentially good games this year, as well as a lot of guaranteed great games.

With Smash in Feb, Mario Kart somewhere mid-08 and MGS4 in late-08 this is shaping up to be even better than last year… and we got some pretty cool games last year, oh… and Halo (that’s right, it’s not great.)

Anyway, I recently completed FF-XII and I must say that it is by far superior to Twilight Princess on the Wii. Not only was its story better, but its gameplay and music were, its characters were and its lifespan was. I mean, I played TP for about 60 hours doing all the sidequests and such. Not bad, hey? Well so far I’ve spent 100 hours on FF-XII, and I *still* have a few things left to do. Including a 6 hour boss fight to complete. Only thing that TP has over FF-XII is the fact that Ganondorf is an awesome villain, Vayne in FF-XII was not. Plus its ending built to nothing, clearly showing they WANTED that damned sequel. Which I think is wrong.

My mod chip goes in my Wii soon and I start saving to import SSBB from America and then I start my PS3 fund so that I may buy MGS4.

Also, Raiden is a girl. RUFL!

See you all on WiiLoaded.

This is the beginning of SSBM Season 2008. I look forward to it, I am assuming it’ll start Feb/March.

Final Fantasy XII: Completed.

I will probably post a review of this game up in a week or so since I’ve actually finished it now (by finished I mean I couldn’t be arsed going after Yiazmat)

Okay, so where to start if I were to sum up my thoughts of the game? Battle system was awesome, the visuals were mighty impressive (make FF-X look like a very ugly game), story was okay (it had a steady build, but I hated how it amounted to nothing at the end. And no, I don’t care if they left it open for Revenant WIngs… that’s just plain stupid.)

I can say with confidence this game IS better than Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. Its longer, more entertaining and isn’t a new sort of Final Fantasy… even if it is one of the biggest rip offs of Lord of the Rings/Star Wars I’ve ever seen in my life.

I’d give it 9/10. Review soon probably.

Two games I got that aren’t Galaxy.

So, its now two days til Galaxy is released and instead of going out and spewing $99AU to get a game after I’ve spent $300 in the last two weeks on Metroid Prime 3 + MUSE merchandise. So to fill the gap (which I doubt I’ll really notice) I have borrowed Final Fantasy XII from my friend as well as Resident Evil 3 – Nemesis from my other friend.

I’m looking forward to putting in some long hours on these two games. And I’ve restarted Fire Emblem 6 – Sword of Seals again. Because Roy is all man.

See you next mission.

3 days til Galaxy. 3 days til greatest game ever? And other stuff.

So the constant debate of “Best Game of All Time” now has a new contender, the newest Mario game nonetheless, Super Mario Galaxy. Now there are a lot of worthy games which could easily snag this title but there are some who are willing to give it to Galaxy. I personally haven’t played the game yet (It comes out in three days and I don’t feel like spending the little amount of cash I have left on it right away) but from what I’ve seen it definitely looks like an exceptional game, there is no doubting that.

However, anyone who can remember the magical feeling of first inserting Ocarina of Time into their Nintendo 64 might have something to say about this.

Now, I’m not one of these people because for me it was the magical feeling of first inserting Super Metroid into my Super Nintendo. But same difference.

One interesting thing I have noticed is that a few of the people claiming Galaxy is the best thing since sliced bread didn’t grow up in the golden days of gaming (ie. Nintendo vs. Sega days) and though I will not say “OMGTHISISWHYTHEYDON’TKNOW!” I will say it might be a contributing factor. Some of them have grown up with gaming being 3D which is why they could be forgiven for not seeing one reason why OoT is so good. And they could be forgiven for not seeing the magic that Super Metroid gave us when we played it for the first time.

These same people often say that Twilight Princess is better than Ocarina of Time, but most of us weathered games know this not to be true. It is merely a buffed up Ocarina clone with a couple of new elements. Where as we can see Galaxy is re-inventing Mario after the stuff-up of Sunshine (which I am writing a review for this weekend).

On another note, finishing Metroid Prime 3 on Veteran was easy… taking on the challenge of Hyper Mode seems a bit steeper, but once again like Echoes its because the enemies dish out for damage and have higher defence not because they actually feature improved A.I. So in that area Retro still has to do some improving but to say I’m getting frustrated with Hyper Mode is fair. Not because I suck at the game, because I have picked up the controls well and have them down now… just the fact that the enemies deal out so much damage and every enemy that can go into Hyper Mode will go into it just to make you use your own Hyper Mode to take them down them *BAM* you are down an Energy Tank (unless your as fast as I became in dealing with enemies in which you are probably down half a tank)

I am borrowing Final Fantasy XII and Metal Gear Solid 2 off of my fellow gamer friend this weekend so that’ll ensure my PS2 gets some game time whilst my grudge for my Wii continues.

Expect my Sunshine review by Sunday and a special review is being done for December 3rd. Until then, I’ll see you all next mission.

If you people were half as manly as Captain Falcon then you’d be as manly as I am.
Rofl.