[:plant:] The Game Review Thread - No Posts By Skills Because He Never Finishes His 10000 Games

So, returning this thread to normal, I played a game recently called Paper Mario. It's pretty old (N64 RPG) but I had only played the sequel, The Thousand-Year Door many moons ago. Bought it day one and marathoned it in a race to the finish with Jenneriku/Bunny Love (he won ;_;, but just barely!). It's rare to play something so simple and yet so amazingly fun at the same time. Since I had this Wii sitting around gathering dust I figured I'd grab the first off the Virtual Console and see what it was all about.

Paper Mario:

First off, it's easy to see where they got a lot of the ideas they refined in TTYD from here. The partner list is huge (8 compared to 6 in TTYD), there's a bit less overall in terms of side-quests and extra stuff to do, but a lot of the fun concepts like the dialogue and character interaction are still there.

The partners are all useful in their own way and give you a pretty great deal of choices as far as battles go. It sucks that BP maxes out at 30 though. I can't remember if that was the limit in TTYD or not.

Overall each chapter had plenty of laughs and the game never felt like it dragged on or got boring. The Ninja Koopas, The Shy Guys, the most uncool cool Latiku ever, oh and Jr. Troopa too. Stuff that just made the game a riot from start to finish.

Koops is the best Koopa out of both games though. Accept no substitutes. Parakarry was pretty neat though.

::Bow ohoho laugh::

Debating on whether or not I should give Super Paper Mario a shot. I hear it's kind of convoluted compared to the first two.

Oh, and there was Transformers: War For Cybertron which I was recently gifted. It's a pretty solid title and worth it for just how quotable the game is. In essence, War For Cybertron is best summed up by this cutscene. I can't put it any better than that.

Most amazing jew boots

Man this poor thread, time to bring it back to life for a bit I guess! Tails has too much time/money on his hands so I decided I'd try Project X Zone and Mighty Switch Force! 2 because why the fuck not.





ProjectXZone.jpg

For the unfamiliar, PXZ is the spiritual sequel to 2005's Namco X Capcom, the TRPG that never got ported to the west because fuck you that's why.

The game itself is pure fanservice, in both the literal and figurative sense. There's nothing deep or particularly engaging about it, it's just an excuse to get characters from multiple franchises in one big beat-em-up game. Bandai-Namco, Capcom, and Sega all contributed a bunch of characters new and old to team up for crazy fights. From OG Dante from DMC and Dimitri Maximoff from Darkstalkers (Team 2Edgy4U), to Frank West from Dead Rising and Hsien-ko from Darkstalkers (Team WACKY HIJINKS) to the more traditional pairings like Ryu/Ken (Team HADOKEN), Chris Redfield/Jill Valentine (Team JILL SANDWICH) and X/Zero (Team WHAT AM I FIGHTING FOORRR).

The game itself is pretty simple. You navigate across a battlefield (think the battle fields from FFT) and go into battles against minions and bosses alike. The attacks are all simple one button commands that revolve around not letting the enemy hit the ground during combos. You can also call in nearby friendlies for support or if you've got a solo unit attached to a pair you can use them too. Solo units come in all varities, from Devilotte from Cyberbots (Jin Saotome BLODIA PUNCH) to Heihachi from Tekken and Imca from Valkyria Chronicles 3.

Given that the game itself is pretty simple, most of the effort was spent on the sprite animations which are all pretty amazing, and the character dialogue, because why else would they bother getting all these characters together. There's lines for every possible Pair/Solo Unit combination and it's really entertaining if you're at all familiar with the characters themselves.

The only downside to the game is that the final 1/3 suffers from Banpresto Syndrome, where instead of upping the difficulty they just throw more enemies at you, turning the last ten or so stages into a slow churn. It's kind of a shame really because up until that point the game is a blast. Random things of note:

-The dub is in Japanese. This leads for funny shit like Dante suddenly becoming 100% engrish. SHOWTIME. TORICKUSTA. LET'S ROCK BABIES. Dante is the best.

-Pairing Juri up with just about anyone results in massive laughs. Juri best evil girl.

-NO ONE CARES ABOUT .hack, SKILLS

-As mentioned above , the actual fanservice really is off the charts, particularly in the special attack animations. Japan.

Onto things that don't make Skills mad, I tried Mighty Virt Force! 2 and really loved it.

It's more or less the same game as the first, but the new fire hose mechanic (Patty is now a firefighter rescuing the reformed Hooligan sisters) actually makes the puzzles much more interesting. The first MSF! didn't really feel difficult until the last couple of stages, whereas here it feels like they really upped the challenge level.

But let's be honest. The only reason I bought this was because of Mr. Jake Kaufman. Seriously. Soak Patrol Alpha (virt dubstep loool it owns), Rainbow Love Zone, The Afterblaze. Fucking case closed, this man is never going to stop being incredible.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

PLANT GIRL BEST GIRL

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.