Poll: Wii, Success or Failure?

Nintendo will release the Wii for a price of $249.99. Will the Wii be a big success, or Nintendo’s downfall?

Click here to vote!

Feel tree to leave a comment and explain your decision.

By Justin

PS – I voted for Success.

Super Ghouls ‘N Ghosts

This game, Super Ghouls ‘N Ghosts is the sequel to the arcade games Ghosts ‘n Goblins and Ghouls ‘n Ghosts. This game, is hard, no, it is almost frustrating how hard this game is. I will explain all of this in this new review.

In Super Ghouls ‘N Ghosts, you take on the role of knight Arthur and you have to rescue Princess Guinevere, who has been captured by the evil emperor Sardius. The story is an excuse to travel the land and kill as much monsters on your path as possible. As you journey through the eight stages in this game, you’ll be haunted and attacked by large numbers of enemies, such as zombies, werewolves, ghosts, man-eating plants and much more. You begin your quest with your lance and a normal armor, when you get hit by an enemy, you lose your armor and you are left in your boxers, get hit when you are in your underwear, and you die. This means that you die pretty fast in this game, adding to the difficulty. You can also get a green magic armor which makes your weapons stronger, and a gold armor, which allows you to use magic to kill your enemies in multiple ways. There are a few weapons in this game to attack your enemies with, like daggers, sickles hand axes and a few more. When you gain a new weapon, you will forfeit your old one, so you might think twice before you grab a new weapon. You find all these things in treasure chests which you find throughout the game. But beware, sometimes a jester comes out of the chest and casts a spell on you which turns you in a baby, a bee or a woman, making you helpless and an easy target for enemies.

Arthur is easy to control, you can throw your weapon, duck, and double jump. The bad thing about the double jump is the inability to affect Arthur’s movement in midjump, this means that you will fall in pits and die a lot in this game, this can be very frustrating. The game’s graphics are great, the scenery is nice, the backgrounds are beautiful and the sprites are great as well. The music is nice and the sound effects are top notch as well. Now a few other things…. When you are playing the game, and you are out of continues, and you die, it’s Game Over. You have to start all over again, there are no save points, or passwords, nothing! And even worse, when you finally reach the final stage, and you beat the boss, you get the message that you need the Goddess’ Bracelet to kill Sardius, with other words…. You have to play the entire game again, to find the Bracelet and kill Sardius. This is very frustrating, you finally manage to make it to the final stage, you beat the boss, and you are excited to face Sardius, and a few moments later you are back in the first stage of the game, and your quest begins all over again!

Conclusion – Super Ghouls ‘N Ghosts is a great game, and a SNES Classic. But a few things about this game are frustrating, the inability to affect Arthur’s movement in midjump, the fact that you have to beat the game twice and the game has no save function. But, when you finally manage to beat the game, you realize that you finished a great game.

Rating: 87 / 100

Reviewed by Justin

Related Article – Top 10 SNES Games

Poll: Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter

Welcome to the first VGCritics Poll! This time we will discuss which of the following is the best – The Mortal Kombat or the Street Fighter series.

Click here to vote!

Feel tree to leave a comment and explain your decision.

By Justin 

PS – I voted for Street Fighter.

Black

Also available for PlayStation 2

Me again, and this is another review here, and this time, on the game Black. First thing I would like to say about Black is do not listen to what people say about this game, it is nothing special, it is mediocre in nearly every way. Sure this game has glorious visuals for a current-gen title, but after that, I’m sure you will find that this game is incredibly shallow.

The gameplay in Black may very well Black’s biggest weakness. This is probably one of the most repetitive games ever made. The main idea of the game is to kill everyone and destroy everything. And for the first half-hour this is great, you’ll actually feel like you’re in a blockbuster action film. Guns are blazing, things are blowing up and the action is intense. However, soon you’re going to get bored of this, and for a good number of reasons. For one, each enemy will take pretty much a full clip (30-60 bullets) to bring down with your standard assault rifles. This isn’t so bad up close because it’ll only take about 3 second to unload a clip, but at long distance or even medium range, it’s a whole different story. This aspect of the game is probably, the worst. There is nothing more aggravating than to sit for about a minute tapping the trigger button for those accurate shots until finally, 60 bullets later; your target is down. Over the course of the game, this can drive you insane, literally. The AI in Black is also atrocious. If you shoot an enemy, instead of scrambling for cover, he will run towards you, run by you, and then start looking for you after he just passed you by.

The repetitive style of Black doesn’t stop at the gameplay, it goes right into the graphics. In Black, There are only 5, (count them) 5 enemy models. This isn’t too bad for a game that only lasts about 6 hours, but then again, when at the end of the day there are nearly 1,300 enemies you will need to take out to finish the game, yeah, that is bad. Not only that, there are no physics, so you will see each of the three pre-animated deaths about 400 times. The environments are extremely dull; each level looks about the same except the main tone of colour used is different. The only places you will ever visit are factories, power plants and other standard industrial locales. The last big problem is the horrible cinematics, which you cannot skip no matter what. These scenes are boring and long, and made even worse by horrible, dry, dialogue.

Take a breather now because that was just a prelude…. And now, for the worst part of all (drum roll please). If you can survive the awful gameplay and cinematics and actually make it to the end of the campaign, you will be rewarded with a short cliffhanger ending that is stupid and could’ve been made up by a three-year-old! Yeah, the ending is actually that bad.

The good is that the explosions, lighting, and camera blurring effect can be stunning. The blurred reload feature works out great and adds some realism and depth to a game that really lacks the both. The only other good thing this game has to offer is a great score. This all adds to the sense of being in a blockbuster action film you’ll experience in the first half-hour or so. Only problem with this is that the same tracks will get played over and over again and you will tire of the music fast too.

Conclusion – Black is your average shooter that really has nothing special about it. This game takes repetitive gameplay to a whole new level, and without multiplayer, absolutely no replay value. Luckily this game is saved from being a complete waste because it does have nice explosions and lighting. But in the end, if you’re a serious FPS fan, rent it first, if you’re not, avoid this one completely. I give Black 60/100.

Rating: 60 / 100

Reviewed by Robert

Street Fighter Alpha 3 MAX

Handheld fighting games have been pretty bad for the last few years. The Street Fighter franchise has already been ported to the Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance, and now, Street Fighter Alpha 3 MAX is released for the PSP. And I can say that this is an excellent fighter for the Sony PSP, and a great fighting game in general. Allow me to explain.

Street Fighter Alpha 3 isn’t a new game, as a matter of fact, it’s a 8 year old game by now, having been released previously for the PlayStation, Saturn, and Dreamcast consoles, as well as the Game Boy Advance handheld. The PSP version of this 2-D masterpiece, however, is the ultimate version, because this version contains all of the characters and features from the previous releases, along with a few exclusive new characters one brand new game mode. There are 39 unique characters to pick from, while the Dreamcast version had 35 characters, and the original arcade game contained 25 fighters. The single player modes are: Arcade, Training, VS 100 Kumite (battle your way through 100 matches), Survival, Dramatic Battle (2 players against 1, you and a CPU controlled fighter against 1 CPU opponent), Reverse Dramatic Battle (you versus 2 CPU characters), Variable Battle (You pick 2 players and you can switch between them during a match, it is just like a tag team mode), Final Battle (you fight the final boss without having to play through the entire Arcade mode), and World Tour (pick a character and travel the world, fighting certain matches to improve your characer, this mode adds a RPG element to the game). There is also a Edit and a Entry mode to customize your character, and ofcourse, a Network mode for multiplayer, no online play however, only ad hoc, which is a disappointment.

When you pick a character in one of the many modes, you get to pick a ism, you can choose between X-ism, A-ism ( Z-ism in Japan and Asia ) and V-ism. X-ism gives you a single super combo and a single bar, A-ism lets you use multiple levels of super moves when you’ve got enough energy and V-ism is a custom combo system. Experimenting between these ism’s is fun, I personally prefer A-ism above all, since I like to have multiple super moves for certain amounts of energy. Now for the controlls, I have read many reviews about this, and most of them talk about the fact that the D-pad is a real pain when playing the game, and that the analog nub isn’t perfect neither. If you ask me, it is just a matter of practice, when you play the game for the first time, it can be pretty hard to pull of certain moves, but after a while, you can perform almost every move. I prefer this method to play the game: I use the D-pad to move around and use the analog nub to perform my special moves, or combos. And if you still have trouble with the controlls, you can always buy a mod for your D-pad.

The graphics are absolutely stunning, despite the fact that this game is completely in 2D. The PSP screen helps to bring the visuals to life, the characters look great, the backgrounds are beautiful and the animation is perfect. The audio in this game is top notch as well, the music is nice and the sound effects are good as well. Now the bad thing about this game, you can’t unlock characters, stages, music, art, or anything else in this game. You get all the characters right form the start, same for the stages and game modes, you can’t unlock anything in this game. This is, together with the lack of online play ( and perhaps the controlls to some people ), the only bad thing about this game.

Conclusion – You have a PSP? You like fighting games? Get this game right now! You have an amazing roster, excellent gameplay and a wide variety of game modes. The only bad thing is the lack of unlockable content, online play, and perhaps a D-pad issue for some gamers. Despite these things, this game is a must buy for PSP carrying gamers hungry for a beat ‘em up.

Rating: 92 / 100

Reviewed by Justin

Related Article – Mortal Kombat VS Street Fighter Poll

Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks

Also available for PlayStation 2

As we all know, the Mortal Kombat games have always been known as “those violent fighting games”, which created a cult phenemenon in the gaming world. To date, there have been alot of MK fighting games with several games that attempted to bring the series out of the fighting game genre, but generally missed the mark. The MK team went back to the drawing board after releasing MK: Deception late last year, and has created a game that has successfully blended all things MK with the action/adventure genre. This game is Shaolin Monks. A game described to be retelling the story of MK2. Now most would think: “MK has a story?” It does have a very good story if you look for it. This game has a decent one, but for diehard MK buffs like myself, the plot in this game has a few interferences with elements that have since been established in recent games.However, if you just like the action and the overall fun to be had in an MK game, these issues won’t bother you much. The story is a nice setup for the game to start on, despite the hiccups in the plot mentioned earlier on.

If you are used to the pretty high resolution characters in the recent 3D fighting installments of the MK franchise, these graphics will look a bit foreign. That is, because the camera is much farther away now, showing your character and the vast enviroment you can interact with. The character models that you play as look great and are pretty detailed, but the generic enemies it is easy to see, did not get as much detail. That’s ok though, there are so many enemies on screen fighting with you from time to time, that this can be forgiven. The environments are decent looking, it is definitely a bonus seeing all your favorite arenas expanded and brought into full 3D from the 2D fighting days. At the same time however, its easy to see which areas got a lot of attention (the arenas that were in MK2), and those that didn’t (all the branching rooms in between). Nonetheless, the combination of enemies and your character duking it out in these environments looks overall very good. The other area that needs to be mentioned are the cinematics (which there are few), which look excellent. Other than those cinematics, in game cutscenes are used otherwise to tell the story.
Graphically, this game is definitely above average, and with all the action, there is hardly ever any slowdown.

If you have played the MK games, you know and love all the signature yells and screams your favorite characters make and that is not absent here. Liu Kangs “turkey calls” as they are commonly known sound better than ever and are certainly recognizable. Aside from the playable characters speech in battle though, all the bosses you will fight have those same famous lines. I.E Scorpion’s “Get Over here!” Also not to be glossed over are the wonderful sound effects. The crushes and splats and shattering sound effects when hitting an opponent with an uppercut, and the grunts and groans that accompany them are all recognizable and sound great too. The music, while sometimes unnoticable is also a great addition to the aural experience when playing the game. Orchestral themes, and famous music that plays before executing a fatality is all well reproduced here as well. The only qualm I have about the sound is the sometimes downright laughable voice acting. But that could be considered keeping with the source material.

Now here is the meat of any game, and what truly matters to most, gameplay. Luckily, this is definitely the best feature the game has to offer, and is overall immensely fun experience while playing. So let’s explain shall we? You have the option at the start to choose either Kung Lao or Liu Kang (and other secret characters to be unlocked later) for the adventure. Both characters are balanced out and each have their own play style and strengths and weaknesses to get used to. Once you select your character, you are off on the adventure. The game basically has you going from area to area, fighting various villains and enemies, and interacting with classic MK characters along the way. But the main part of any MK game is the fighting, and while this system is not the same as others, its in some ways alot more fun at times. The game has a freeform combo system that allows any attack mapped to any button to be combined in any way, and also allows special movies to be linked within. These combos are only limited to the imagination, and can range from just on ground fighting, to juggling the enemy in the sir, to jumping on top and throwing them into spikes and other enviornmental hazards. Of course, as in any MK game, there are also multiple Fatalities that you can perform when the meter is charged, as well as Multalities (fatality that kills everyone around you), and Brutalities ( a rage mode where you fight many times faster and hit much harder).

In addition to the main combat, there are also various weapons to pick up and punish your opponents with. Any way you want to play, you can. The best part of all, is any way you choose to fight, its always an absolute blast. While you are performing all these combos, you are constantly earning experience to upgrade your character. You can purchase new combos, new special moves, and new variations of a certain special attack. For instance, for Kung lao, you start out with his normal Hat throw, but can choose to upgrade it so you can spin it around your body as a shield, or have it richochet off of walls. As you might guess, this means you have access to a huge array of moves after getting a lot of experience, and by the end of the game you will be a killing machine. As well, there are multiple boss battles to fight in, some even hidden. All of these are tons of fun, and require alot of strategy to complete. All of them are a nice challenge, and the diffciculty of them ramps up at a steady pace, which is nice.

And that’s just the single player story mode. There is also a 1 versus 1 fighting mode for 2 players which has you using characters you unlock during the story mode, and a ko-op mode. The Ko-Op mode is tons of fun, and doubles the enjoyment of the already outstanding single player game. In this mode, you can link moves together, do group fatalities and special moves, and best of all, coordinate attack strategies with one another. The only minor complaint, is that the game is a pretty short adventure, but with the loads of extra things to find and accomplish, it won’t be hard to keep busy.

Conclusion – This is one superb game, and a very unexpected surprise that an MK game that isn’t a fighting game could be so good. There are tons of things to do in this game, and the bevy of cool unlockables and attention to please hardcore fans is astounding. This is a game that should most definitely not be missed by any MK fan, but even any action game fans. Trust me. You won’t be disappointed.

Rating: 88 / 100

Reviewed by Neil

Related Article – Mortal Kombat VS Street Fighter Poll

Video Review – The Legend Of Zelda: The Wind Waker

For the text review, please go to:

The Legend Of Zelda: The Wind Waker Review.

This is my first attempt at making a video review, please place comments, I want to hear some opinions

Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance

Castlevania: Circle of the Moon was one of the launchgames for the Gameboy Advance and was a nice game, but was critized for a few things, critics hammered CotM for being too dark to see on the screen of the handheld, the game was also pretty hard and the card system wasn’t very popular neither. Harmony Of Dissonance, the second Castlevania game for the Gameboy Advance, fixed these problems, and made some other changes to the gameplay.

Harmony of Dissonance is set in 1748, and stars Juste Belmont, a member of the legendary Belmont family. Juste can jump, double jump, use his whip, and much, much more. As Juste you have to make your way through Dracula’s castle and find abilities to reach other castle areas which you couldn’t get to earlier in the game. Just like Symphony Of The Night and Circle Of The Moon, this game is nonlinear, making it possible to go everywhere you want right form the start. You won’t be able to reach every place however, for this you need certain abilities like I said earlier in this review. You will face a ton of enemies in the game, some enemies show up in pretty much every place in the castle, while other enemies only show up in a few rooms. It is nice to see much variety in enemies, you will fight skeletons, bats, knights, zombies and much, much more. You will also collect magic books, to perform magic attacks, artifacts, a wide variety of items and other stuff. Juste’s main weapon is his whip and his other sub weapons are daggers, crosses, holy water and some other small weapons.

The graphics department brings bright colors and special enemy attacks, and also more detail in the areas of the castle. The characters also have more frames of animation, when compared to CotM. Overall, the graphics are great, the sound on the other hand… The sound in this game is… terrible. The CotM soundtrack was top class, the HoD soundtrack is garbage. The tinny music and weak sound effects sound very similar to Game Boy or NES soundtracks, which is a bad thing. CotM was also noted for being a hard game, HoD goes in the opposite direction making the game very easy. The bosses are fun, but are no challenge at all. You will probably rush through this game in a few hours, and you will get some nice unlockable modes, but still, there is not much of a challenge in this game.

Conclusion – Despite a few problems, like the soundtrack and the difficulty, Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance is a quality adventure and a good attempt at miniaturizing the brilliance of Symphony of the Night. If you want a good game for your GBA, or can’t decide which GBA Castlevania you want, get this one first, it offers a nice adventure and is fun enough to keep you entertained, even after you finished the game.

Rating: 82 / 100

Reviewed by Justin

Ultraman

To pull an Ultraman: to disappoint even when expectations are already low

To be teh Ultraman: to be teh suck.

To hand somebody an Ultraman: to give somebody something completely useless and disagreeable.*

“That’s like calling Chuck Norris Ultraman”: “That’s suicide!”

Ultramanly: Gay (related: Ultramannery: Faggotry)

*On a related note: The ultimate insult would be to go through the trouble of procuring an original Snes with an original Ultraman Cartridge, just to give it to someone you don’t like.

Above are some examples of what the English language might have looked like if the “game” Ultraman had been more well-known. When using the word “game” in relation to Ultraman one must use parentheses, because Ultraman is not a game as such, seeing as you don’t actually play Ultraman; you just start it up, make your way through the intros and shake your head in sheer disbelief at what appears on your screen after that. Reading this you might be wondering: “Who is this Ultraman you speak of?”

I’ll tell you. Ultraman is a Japanese superhero. He stands approximately 250 feet tall, and makes a living fighting giant monsters in a world where, apparently, giant freaks are abundant. Ultraman looks like a giant mighty morphing power ranger (It should be noted that Ultraman predates the Power Rangers by about thirty years). Ultraman has that androgynous look going, still I’d say its save to assume Ultraman is a male: Judging by the name “Ultraman” and the fact that he doesn’t have any boobies (some nice juicy bouncing boobs, might have been the only thing that could have saved this game from complete oblivion). In this Snes game you take control of this Ultraman as he battles his giant foes.

The title screen provides some of the obligatory rotating and scaling, thus showing of the graphical prowess of the Snes. Incidentally I dare you to find a Snes game that doesn’t find a completely useless way to incorporate these graphical abilities.

Then… It starts. Stage one: Gudis.

You fight this Gudis one on one. Gudos looks to be a living heap of trash. After you beat Gudis you must fight other giant monsters. This is a one-on-one beat ‘em up. The graphics are mediocre at best. The thing that bugged me most is the fact that there is nothing in the scenery that gives you a sensation of the size of the characters; they’re supposed to be giants, but for all you can tell they might just be only four inches tall. On to the sound. The game features typical generic monster-movie music. Nothing bad about that. The sound effects, however, are bad.

(trying) To play this game is a horrible experience. The controls are unintuitive: Example: this is a 2d beat ‘em up and you have to use an action-button to jump. It would have been a lot easier if you could just press up on the d-pad to jump. Ultraman can kick, punch, shoot and jump. The attacks of Ultraman don’t do much damage, because of that it takes forever to kill an opponent. The fighting itself isn’t any fun: You push the punch button, you see the move on screen and you see the enemy’s energy draining, but never is there the feeling that you’re hitting the opponent. Everything about this game looks and feels cheap. On top of all this the animation is choppy too; there are way too little frames used too represent the movements of the characters.

Conclusion – A game with mediocre graphics, lame sounds, terrible gameplay and horrible animation. If this isn’t the worst game ever that might well be because the worst game ever has yet to be made. It’s just that bad.

Rating: 1 / 100

Reviewed by Butch

Samurai Warriors: Xtreme Legends

Hello, here’s another review by the Hitman. This is going to be on Koei’s hack n slash war game (and spin off of the successful Dynasty Warriors series), Samurai Warriors for the Playstation 2.

The game is set in feudal Japan and you have to choose an officer to lead to glory in this time of turmoil. The basic idea is to fight in great battles, kill lots of enemy soldiers and eventually defeat the enemy general or escape from the battlefield alive in some situations. The gameplay is quite basic, you press square for your main attack and bash it a few times to create combos. The stronger the weapon, the more hits you’ll be able to do and the more brutal damage you’ll be able to inflict on the foe. You can also do charge attacks using the triangle button which can help give you some breathing space in the crowded battlefield. But the best attack by far is the Musou attack which is triggered by the circle button when you have a full musou gauge. This is basically a super combo that can be used to wipe out multiple opponents in one go. A stronger version of this attack can be used when you’re on the brink of death and can be extra helpful in getting out of a tight spot.

This way of gameplay is by no means original, Koei have been using this system in the Dynasty Warriors series(pretty much the same game only based in China) for god knows how long, so this system alone without tweaks would make this game pretty boring, but there is more to add to your characters abilities in this game. You can earn skill points which are given to you after battle which can be used to add improved skills to your fighter’s repetoire, for example you can add elemental abilities to certain combos or you can gain increased speed on the brink of death. These abilities can be critical to your warrior’s survival in later missions. It adds an element of character customisation that isn’t available in DW and adds a little bit of originality to the game to make it stand out more. Another original feature that makes this games feel a little bit different to the DW series is the missions that appear during the battle. These can be things like taking over a stronghold, helping out a struggling officer or taking out ambush troops. Completing these missions can dictate which battles your warrior will fight later on in the game. These two things help bring a unique element to this game, but there is always the DW feel coming up from under these attempts to cover this feeling, which can make the game becme a bore if you’ve constantly played the DW games before this.

Other modes in this game include a survival mode where you fight through a castle killing as many soldiers as you can and proceeding through as many floors as you can. This can be a good break from the massive wide open battlefields if you wish to fight in a more claustrophobic setting. Also there is a New Officer mode which involves you choosing a generic officer design and training it in the many aspects of war under the tutelage of a samurai master who will judge your perfomance and survey your progress as your stats increase. This goes on until you can go to the trials, where you get one opportunity to prove your worth to a clan. If you impress them, you’re in the clan and if you don’t, your training was for nothing and you will have to start again. To be honest that mode is good for one run through but after that it can be boring.

Conclusion – Overall this game would be great for you if you’ve never played any of the Dynasty Warrior games. But if you’re one of those hardcore players that has played most of the DW games may not find much new with this game. It’s still good, but the appeal really depends on how new you are to the series. I’d give it a 75 out of 100 because it lacks originality but is still a decent game nonetheless.

Rating: 75 / 100

Reviewed by The Hitman