Rate the game!

[Kid Icarus]

Originally Posted by Peanut

It seems to me with this game, you either spend a lot of time with it, or very little. With very few people being in between. My girlfriend can't get enough of it, while my sister went for a good length of time and stopped, and I did a couple competitions and went on a walk and I was done.

Edit: Probably should have mentioned this, for all you guys with a girlfriend who doesn't like games...get her to play Nintendogs. She'll be DONE. My girlfriend would join in random playings of Mario Party and Donkey Konga, but that was it. After Nintendogs she's been insane into Nintendo. She's playing through both Pokemon and Paper Mario: TTYD and she actually ASKS me to play games with her now. Nintendogs works for hooking chicks! She even started getting into some Xbox games with me, not anything wussy either. We're talking KOTOR here.

And that is how you expand the market . I got my 60 year old team manager hook on Nintendogs when I brought it in to work, along with a hand full of other coworkers.

But I agree. It's an either or game, like Pokemon. You either really like playing it, or you coulden't care less.

[ThirdMarioBro]

Yeah, Nintendogs is meant to convert new gamers, though there will be existing gamers who enjoy it. I'm already a gamer, so the game kind of bored me rather quickly, but then again, I don't need converting and don't really enjoy pet sims. I just bought it to give it a fair shot. But anyway, I saw three hot women (ranging around 21 to 28 ) comming out of Gamestop with Nintendogs and brand new DS's. Freaking unbelieveable.

Of all people to do it, Nintendo created the ultimate electronic chick magnet.

[XERO]

Ha!

Is Nintendo just for kids now?

[The Stryker]

Alright i gotta do this...ya'll know how i roll.

WWE Day Of Reckoning 2

I'll just get to the point.

Graphics: Almost all of the wrestlers look like themselves and the lighting and texturing effects are nice.and an all 3D crowd. But dammit if Keibler doesn't have a Hilton eye 7.5/10

Sound: can't really comment since i only grade on...if i can hear it, its alright. 10/10

Gameplay: Alright heres the meat of the matter, The gameplay hasn't changed much from DOR1 but some of the new features are helping and i look forward to seeing where they go in the Next-generation. The Stamina system adds a new degree of difficulty to the game so rationing moves is key in most matches, Its a bitch when you're tapped out. Speaking out Tapping out, HA- the submission system is now guided by the C-stick and well...you can do stuff. I don't know what DRAIN does. 9/10

Replay: If you don't have friends or a sibling that likes wrestling, You're F*cked. but otherwise the multiplayer is awesome as usual for Nintendo brand Wrestling games. 8/10

Overall: A good wrestling game to tide the fans over until the supposed Wrestling game "coming of jesus" known as SVR2K6. A solid grappler and very reminicent of No Mercy and Wrestlemania 2000. The only BIG failure on the game is the Story mode....I HATE LINEAR STORYMODES. 8.5/10

[Kid Icarus]

Sonic Mega Collection

Game Play: It's all here. Well duh. It's emulated. I'd hope they woulden't be able to mess up emulated games. >_<.

Sound: Games sound great in stereo. <3.

Graphics: Now this is nice. RCA inputs are the way these games were ment to be played. Reduced screen blur, increased resolution, and more vibrant colors. *joygasm*.

Features: All the manuals, comic book covers, sound samples, games, and bonuses any SEGA fan would kill for. Thankfuly they only have to spend $10-$20 now. Yay for those stoopid SEGA fans for not having to kill! (read: this is/was a joke, ment to flash us back to the 16 bit days when SEGA and Nintendo fans would have knife fights in the street. k?)

[Jo269976]

Resident Evil 4 - PS2

(this is a quick review)

Story: Leon Kennedy (from RE 2) has been sent to look for the presidents missing daughter in Europe, what he finds is much worse than Raccoon City

Graphics: PS2 graphics may not be as great as Gamecubes but the PS2 version of RE 4 has got the best graphics you will find on the PS2! You will see how the game got so much hype when it first came out

Gameplay: RE 4 has got an amazing gameplay value, no longer is the old camera angles and dumb enemies, Resident Evil has been REdefined and REborn, you better think fast on your feet as you have no idea when an enemy with a chainsaw will charge out at you and decapitate you!the Ganados (villagers) will plan their attacks and trap you in confined spaces

Sound: RE 4 has the best sounds in the series, one minute it will crickets chirping or just the wind, then you will hear a Ganado shout something in Spanish and you will be plunged into an explosion of chilling sounds and screams

Extras: RE 4 has some amazing extras that some you will only find on PS2, you now have a new stroy moe playing as the secretly seductive Ada Wong, you will also find mini-games such as the Mercinarys or Assignment Ada you will also discover unawnsered questions in Ada's Report

Overall: RE 4 is the best game I have ever played this game is a must buy for any PS2 owner, 10/10

[Peanut]

Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones

Speed kills
+ Narrator
+ ORIGINAL PRINCE VA
+ SoT Charm
+ Proven PoP play mechanics
- WW style and music
=
BEST GOD DAMN GAME EVER IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD!

11/10

[Barkworm]

I have no money to buy it...

[Peanut]

WELL YOU NEED TO GET MONEY FOR IT! It's the best game of all time.

[Peanut]

I just beat PoP: TTT moments ago, so I decided to do my full review.

Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones
X-Box

Graphics: One thing PoP has always had going for it is a great graphical style. It may have become dirty and muddled up in WW, but it's back in great form in TTT. The developers have some how managed to combine 2/3's SoT with 1/3 WW to pull off a PERFECT visual balance. The game takes the more realistic looking visuals and matches them with the beauty and bloom lighting of SoT. Running the game at 480i, the only supported HD type, the game looks great. Some of the city scapes are just beautiful. You can tell the graphics are beginning to age, but not in a bad way. The lip-synch is slightly better this time around and I found no graphical glitches what-so-ever, much unlike WW. The Prince, as usual, animates so well it's just a joy to watch him jump from spot to spot. All of the new animations look amazing. Much more so than the ones added in WW.
Score: 9

Sound: If there was one thing I always found a little lacking in PoP it was in this department. The music and voice acting in SoT was terrific, but the enemy noises were as annoying as anything I had ever heard. WW had god awful music, bad voice acting and even worse enemy sounds than SoT. This has all been changed! Not only does TTT make a welcome return to the music of old, (No Godsmack! YES!) but it even makes away with the terrible enemy noises and brings back the original Prince voice actor! Absolute joy!
Score: 9

Gameplay: I will firstly go on record saying PoP is probably my favourite series of all time. I've never laid hands on a more fun game in my entire life. Even with the abysmal sound and atmosphere of WW, I had a blast. I never thought the PoP play could be improved...but I was wrong. Welcome to speed kills. I was kind of fuzzy on them when I read/heard about them on various game sites. Speed kills are basically a quick, quiet and FUN AS HELL way to take out enemies. It's all about the timing. Keeping quiet and out of sight is vital to speed kills, because if an enemy gets a peak of you, or hears you smash something, he'll run at you and you'll have to face off against him with the normal PoP fighting system. (Which remains unchanged from WW) Once within distance of an enemy unseen the screen will glow around the edges. Pressing Y will cause the Prince to jump out from where ever he is, (Between two walls, from behind, hanging from a plank, hanging from a chain etc etc.) you'll then engage in a kind of timing mini-game. When the picture slows down and your sword flashes blue, you hit the X button. The Prince will perform various devestating moves to take out the enemy, or enemies, quickly and without hassle. The blue flash can come anywhere from 1 to 5 times depending on your enemy. All of the speed kills are animated to be completely bad ass. The first time you see any number of these you'll probably saying something from "Awesome" to "HOLY SH!T! OWNED!" depending on how much of a loser you are. I won't spoil any of the animations, but suffice to say, The Prince 0wnz. With speed kills the time spent in a fight is dropped significantly. Truthfully, this game is all about the platforming.

Speaking of which, there are a couple new platforming elements in the game. One of them, my personal favourite, is the sword stabbing spots. These allow the Prince to plunge his sword into the wall and use it to climb, wall run, or slow his descent. Another is window shutters. These allow the prince to be flung from walls in various different directions, sometimes onto a platform that lays to an odd angle from the wall, or to another shutter.

Other gameplay differences come in the form of the Dark Prince. I had a great deal of fear about playing him, as he reminded me a good deal of the Sand Wraith from WW, but cast all worries aside. Although he plays a bit similar, mostly because your health will constantly drop when playing as him, he also has a number of difference. Not only is the Dark Prince fun, but he adds a bunch of cool new moves to the Prince's growing collection. The Dark Prince is all about power, so he can kill enemies a lot faster than the normal Prince one on one. His speed kills mostly revolve around using his lasso like chain to rip heads off, and yes heads still roll in this game. The Dark Prince's chain also acts as a rope. He can grab onto wall hangings as well as suspended pipes. If that doesn't sound like your cup of tea, don't worry; he's only in the game in small doses and only about a dozen times. Everytime the Prince touches water he reverts to his normal self.

The bosses, of which there was none in SoT and a couple sword weilding baddies in WW, are a huge bright spot in this game. Although there are few of them, they all are nothing but a joy to face off against. Running along with the new platforming/speed kill fighting, the developers created bosses that need to be defeated using all the Prince's skills. For example, one rather large boss will require you to do a bit of platforming in order to reach a high enough level to face off with him, once there you'll have to utilize quick timing to take him down via speed kills before you can finish him off with normal fighting techniques.

Basically, this game has everything you could ever want in terms of gameplay. The platforming puzzles are still as fun as ever and the all new speed kills add platforming to the fighting, and more PoP platforming can never hurt.
Score: 10

Story: WW was nothing short of a disappointment in this category. SoT delivered an amazing story tale atmosphere and a charming story. Luckily Ubisoft took a note from the fans and critics and went back to the SoT forumla. Not only is that loveable, charming, funny Prince from SoT back, but so are a couple of old characters as well. I really knew Ubisoft did the job when I heard Kaileena, the narrator of this game, tell me how the Prince had begun to find some of his former self, only to hear the Prince begin to have one of his amusing conversations with himself about a certain returning character. This is the true sequel to SoT and a fitting end to this trilogy, which I hope more than anything returns.
Score: 9

Replay Value: This is a tough one to handle. If you love PoP like I do, you'll play it over and over and over. If you like it, you'll still probably go through it 2 or 3 times. It's about 8-9 hours long. but it's one of those games you want to go back and play again, just to experience it all over. This is an automatic 10 for me, but to look at it from other people's perspective I can see it being a little lower.
Score: 8

Overall: The best chapter to one of the best action adventure games of all time. Amazing on all fronts. Buy it and love it!
Score: 9.8

[Kid Icarus]

man, i still remember when 8-10 hours was a LONG game, and 2-3 was the norm... =\

[Peanut]

Some else buy the game!

[Spitfire]

Resident Evil 4 Review

Resident Evil 4 for the Playstation 2 is a very watered down experience. The Gamecube version, released early this year, featured stunning graphics, sounds, visuals, and gameplay. This sadly has not been transferred to the PS2. In my review I will cover why I find this version to be easily the worst port ever made.

Story – The story for RE 4 was never that great to begin with but it does its job and is fun to play along to. I never had any gripes with it and the PS2 version in fact adds to this story. So in this field the game does a good job.

9/10

Graphics – Leon himself looks good*except I find his hair to be a bit to light* and the backgrounds are decent. The enemy models and items however look horrible. Their faces look blocky and not very detailed. The items seem to bright and also lack detail. And while in your item box they look more like blobs of color as opposed to items. I didn’t play this game on a High Definition TV, but I played the GC version of the same TV and I can see the differences are massive. This version almost looks like a late Playstation game. Even the main menu is missing the flare. Another gripe I have is load times. I don’t see how a game that looks like this could take so long to load. The GC version loads were instant. This however is not. I might also add that saving takes longer as well.

2/10

Sound – Graphics are not the problem for me with this game. It’s sound, the gunshots, breaking glass, explosions, the music, and the voices all these seem like their muffled. I jump out a window and I can barely hear the glass breaking. I didn’t hear any music at all in some parts. I heard no background noises and most of all I couldn’t hear the enemies talking. Part of the fun was hearing someone yell right behind you, you turn around and you see a scary guy behind you with a pickaxe. Gunshots sound awful and then they hit the ground after they fall off a roof you get a little thump instead of a back shattering thud. This muffled sound is even noticed when picking up items such as ammo, where it used to make a gun cocking noise now I can hardly tell what sound it makes.

1/10

Controls – The controls are all right. I have no real grips with them. Though I believe you should be able to skip cut scenes with the start button and I didn’t like using L-1 and R-1 to draw my weapons. I also personally hate the PS2 joysticks, but that’s just me. Not everyone will have the same issues with the controls as I did.

7/10

Extras – Nothing new here for me, I found the ADA missions to be horrible rehashes of Leon’s. They just stick ADA somewhere Leon has already been and have you fight waves of enemies. No fun to be found in that for me. I did like the extra story but the rest of the gameplay itself ruins that for me. The costumes would be nice if they showed up in cut scenes but they don’t. And the only new set is the Gangster/Knight. Boy…that knight suit sure makes a lot of noise. I found the new guns to be utterly pointless and I never use them. Mercenaries mode and Assignment ADA are on the cube version so I’m not going to comment on those since nothing new at all was added.

2/10

To be honest this game offends me. It’s like playing a downgraded version of a masterpiece. It’s so bad I can hardly play myself. So my advice would be the following. If you have yet to play RE 4 then play it for the Playstation 2. You will enjoy the extras and have fun. However if you already played it for the cube then avoid the PS2 version. The extras are not worth the downgrade in my opinion. RE 4 is still a great game even on PS2. So if you haven’t play it give it a shot it’s a wonderful game, but if you have a cube I suggest playing it for that.

3/10

[Peanut]

Prince of Persia: Revelations (PSP)

Graphics: They look remarkably well. Almost on par with the PS2 version of the game, which is amazing for a handheld. It's actually very easy to completely forget you're playing a handheld game at times. Everything is crisp, animations, as usual, are beautiful. I was very surprised at how much it looked like it's console counter-part. Great stuff. There's one problem and that's the loading. The game takes about 5 minutes to start up during the first load. Once it's up and running it's not so bad, but you'll get 10 second load times between certain areas, which can be quite annoying as they every so often come at horrible times. I got one load right as I was wall running over a spike pole and needed to time my jump just right to hit a ledge on the opposite side. The game keeps a pretty respectable frame rate for most of the time, and only dips when a bunch of enemies are on screen at once. It's impressive overall, but the load times are pretty annoying.
Score: 7


Sound: The sound in Warrior Within was never very good to begin with. The great music of SoT was dumped in favour of heavy guitar rifts and some blaring Godsmack. In short, the music is awful. Next we come to the sound effects, they were terrible in WW as it was. The enemies are so annoying you enjoy killing them just to shut them up, rather than to protect yourself. Lines like "OOOOOH, PRINCE! Hit me HARDER!" are just un-called for. We'll also add in the fact that the Prince VA has been changed to "generic bad-ass #94". He has no charm, no wit and he sounds like nails over a chalk board. Complete trash. Now let's talk about the soung glitches. There we many in WW...but this is just pathetic. In this game the sound will work in two ways, either it will cut in and out so badly that you can't hear what's happening anyways, or it just won't work at all. Sometimes you'll hear basic sound effects, like the prince running or swinging his sword, but the music and voices will be all gone, which is actually a good thing at times. When the sound is running fully, it's off-synch, meaning you'll do a wall run and a second later you'll hear the Prince's feet running across a wall. Basically, the sound doesn't work, and when it does it's god awful anyways. Mute the f*cking thing.
Score: 0.5

Gameplay: Luckily Revelations doesn't skimp on this, the most important part of the PoP package. Gameplay is just like any of the PoP games. It's fun all around, but the platforming is where it's at. This version of the games add's several new puzzles and environments to the game that actually tack a couple hours onto the games length, and more PoP platforming is never EVER a bad thing. The original WW was long enough as it was and now it's even longer. Besides the added areas, which are actually some of the most fiendish PoP platforming puzzles to date , the game is pretty much the same. From enemy placement to difficulty. Not that that's a bad thing, as WW played just as well, if not better, than SoT. The controls can get a bit wonky at times, what with the sand powers being mapped to the D-Pad, which makes quick rewinding nearly impossible as you'll need to move your thumb from the joystick to rewind, but it all works out once you get used to it.
Score: 9

Replay Value: This is tough. I didn't play through the original WW to many times because of it's length and deeply disappointing story/atmosphere. Revelations adds on a couple more hours and at the same time keeps the dark and brooding atmosphere. I wish they had recoreded new dialouge for the Prince while doing tTT for this game. As it stands it's very long for a game of this type and going through it will take you some time. It would be well worth it to go back and play a couple more times though, just because it's so fun.
Score: 7

Overall: I love PoP, so I love this game. However it does have it's problems. The sound is completely abysmal and the load times are a pain in the ass. On the flip side the same awesome PoP gameplay is intact, and they even added on a couple hours of extra content. Is this the superior version to WW? I can't really say. If I were playing this game on a console I would probably say yes, but as it is I'll say it's a little below the original game. It's still tons of fun, but some of the detracting points can really get on your nerves.
Overall Score: 7.9

[Barkworm]

I finally beat PoP: The Two Thrones (GC):

Presentation:
The story and the mood in "Warrior Within" sucked. I think we all can easily agree on that. A crazy dominatrix, exploding dogs, horny sand bitches, a slutty empress and an asshole prince just wasn't what fans of "Sands of Time" wanted. The developers listened, killed off Kaileena, brought Farrah back and seperated the Prince from his asshole side. YES! Even the funny conversations between Farrah and the Prince are back, this time plus witty comments of the Prince's dark side.
The ingame cutscenes are mostly clumsily delivered but apart from that the story is really good. To me it still lacks the magic and charm of "Sands" though.
8.5/10

Graphics:
I was kind of disappointed by the graphics this time. I had the impression that there were a lot more glitches (clipping) than in the previous games and the framerate wasn't as steady as usual (especially in the early Dark Prince parts and the cutscenes). The engine has really noticably aged. On the plus side the animation is as great as ever and for the first time in this gen's PoP series the lip synching is GOOD. The graphics are still good but I was expecting better.
8/10

Sound:
One of "Warrior Within's" big negative aspects. Fortunately Ubisoft got rid of the generic Hardrock and the crappy voice actors. The music is very good this time around and Yuri Lowenthal is back in action. Rick Miller as the Dark Prince is also doing an excellent job. I'm glad the guy who voiced the Prince in WW didn't get the part. Sadly there are still many glitches with the sound effects.
8.5/10

Gameplay:
Everything about the speed kills has been said by Peanut. They rock! I also like how they were implemented into the boss fights. I've got to admit that the whole thing reminds me a lot of the mini-games in "God of War". That's definitely not the worst game to take some inspiration from though.
Boss fights haven't exactly been the series' strong point but the few we have here are really good, especially the first and last one.
The platforming is as awesome as usual, I did have the impression though that it's getting a teenyweeny bit old this time (don't kill me, Peanut!). I actually think it was a good decision to wrap the series up with this one, the franchise could use a fresh start. Anyway, I'm just being a bitch. After all this is one of the few games I can't stop playing.
9/10

lasting Appeal:
Well, the game is not really long, a little longer than "Sands" maybe. I don't have as much time for video games as I used to anyway so I'd say the lenght was enjoyable.
7/10

Overall: A great ending to a great series. I still think "Sands" is the best "Prince of Persia" but "Two Thrones" definitely makes up for the flaws of "WW". I'm very excited to see what the new generation's PoP games will be like.
8.7/10

[Peanut]

Yeah! I love that game. You totally need to play it on Xbox though. The GC version is craptastic. Just like WW. There are absolutely no audio or video glitches in the Xbox version, plus the graphics actually look nice and clean. (Might be because I'm running it in HD)

[Peanut]

A couple quick reviews for stuff I got over the last little while.

PS2
Shadow of the Collosus 9.0/10
Jak 3 7.0/10
Sly 3 7.5/10

Xbox
TMNT: Mutant Nightmare 7.0/10
FarCry Insticts 8.5/10

Xbox 360
Call of Duty 2 9.5/10
DOA4 8.0/10
Perfect Dark Zero - Single Player 8.5/10, Multiplayer 7.0/10

[Barkworm]

I'm bored so here are a couple of Mini Reviews:

Sonic Rush:

Presentation: The colourful style of the game is great but the story sucks hard and most of the characters (especially Cream) are horribly annoying.
7/10

Graphics: Neat. Excellent blend of 2D and 3D. Everything's colourful and highly detailed.
9/10

Sound: Light and shadow here. The music in generally is very catchy, while most of the voice acting is simply atrocious. Stupid 4Kids...
8/10

Gameplay: It. Is. Fast. Very fast. And "fast" in this game equals "fun" most of the time. There are some unfair moments but the overall level of difficulty is very balanced (although the final boss is about a 100 times harder than anything else in the game) It's a pleasure dashing through the levels with highspeed. Unfortunately there is no use of the touchscreen apart from some totally gimmicky (but fun) bonuslevels.
8.5/10

Replay Value: I'm sure you'll play through this more than once and if it's just to get better ranks. There is also a multiplayer mode which is supposed to be quite fun.
8/10

Overall: Definitely a great game, though the lousy voice acting and mediocre story hurt it a little.
8.3/10


Castlevania Double Pack

Presentation: Creepy haunted-house atmosphere (especially in "Harmony") plus interesting (but generic) story.
8.5/10

Graphics: Both games look good although the main characters' animations are very choppy. Enemy and boss sprites are very detailed.
8/10

Music: "Harmony"'s music is actually not bad but the midi quality is very poor. "Aria" makes up for that. And I LOVE the Japanese voice samples!
8.5/10

Gameplay: Both games are very similar. Juste is the more fun character to play, simply because he's so fast. Thus playing "Aria" right after "Harmony" might feel a little clunky at first. The ability to collect enemy souls and use them in battle totally makes up for that though. Plus there is a lot less backtracking.
A word on the difficulty: "Aria" is quite challenging while "Harmony" is a bit on the easy side.
8.5/10

Replay Value: Both games together will get you playing for at least 15 hours. If you want to see all the different endings, add at least five more.
8/10

Overall: These games are a hell of a lot fun. 'Nuff said.
8.6/10


Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow

Presentation: The Anime style might look generic but I happen to like it a lot. It's good to see Soma Cruz back in action.
9/10

Graphics: Soma's sprite could look better but apart from that, these are some of the finest 2D graphics I've ever seen.
9.5/10

Sound: Good to freaking fantastic.
9/10

Gameplay: Basically it's the same as in "Aria of Sorrow" but everything feels improved and more polished. The touchscreen support feels a little forced.
9/10

Replay Value: Meaty quest plus multiple endings = approximately 15 hours of fun.

Overall: "Dawn of Sorrow" is an awesome game in every way.
9/10

[ThirdMarioBro]

Metroid Prime Hunters:
-------------------------
Graphics: 9.5

Okay, I know it seems like a given, but stop and look at how beautiful this thing is. See it running on a DS Lite, and you may stop for a second and question if this is really DS software, or FMV. It's unbelieveable. People compare DS visuals of the DS to N64, and that's bullsh*t. This sucker can crank way past that. The ole' N64 had a sh*tty rendering engine that could do a lot, but would choke on framerate every time it did it. DS shows how many years have passed, because it's processors are actually slower combined, but the graphics chip is so damn capable, this sucker can pull the full Metroid Prime engine at obviously lower resolution which a portable can get away with and you not notice. Only problem I had was that enemies in the distance are hard to see/shoot at, but I soon realized that was the fault of the screen brightness. DS Lite will solve that problem.

Control: 9.0
I hated the thumbstrap when I used it with SM64. Never touched it since. Well, I now see why it was packed in. Once you adjust to the lack of cheapo "Lock on", you see that this actually controls better than Metroid Prime. Be warned, the learning curve is steep, but I adore this setup. This is pretty much like Keyboard/mouse FPS control except with a Nintendo D-Pad rather than a sh*tty keyboard's arrow keys. Honestly, the level of percision is insane. The sensitivity can be tweaked to your tastes, and the touch screen buttons you need have a very wide hit range. I almost never miss, and can switch from morphball to plasma gun, to missles, and back to running in 3 seconds flat. It's astounding how good they handled the controls. You just have to adjust, that's all.

Sound: 9.0
Other than a couple of "bleh" tracks, if you loved Kenji Yamamoto's previous work, you'll obsess over this one. All hail the return of Super Metroid's omnious Male "voice Ahhs" chanting as you walk into the boiling gates of hell. Outstanding, and the sound effects even track your footsteps, just like Gamecube. Frequence is a little low, but hey, should I complain about 30Khz on a portable? Hell no.

Fun Factor: 9.9
It's no secret that Prime is my favorite Gamecube game, and this sucker plays just like it except with dual "analog/touchscreen" control. People claim that the action is more of the focus, but that is because there is more of it. It was not done at the cost of Metroid's puzzle solving roots, or Morph ball puzzles" , or find "a way to get the damn energy container locked away right in front of you" stuff. . The action is just better because there is no lock on, and the battles require more skill. You can still avoid most fights though, just like any Metroid title. This is not an "Add On Sequel", or unnecessary game in the series. It is a full blooded Metroid game.

Multiplayer: 8.9
Honestly, i didn't think Nintendo could do FPS this good. Headshots, Chump points, multiple weapons, sniper points, scalable arenas, 25 arenas in all, each of a different type, and respawn points are random to kill "camping" before it starts. Computer scans for a random place nobody is close to and sets you there. 8 different game modes, and dfferent characters with highly varied abilities. And no, rolling into a ball and dropping bombs like crazy won't work. in fact, you'll probobly just get pwnd for it. Only tactful use of the secondary forms in perferrably tight spaces will work. It's very balanced. Yes, people will drop out on you, but they will get marks against them for it, and if you see someone with a high "chump" rating, you can opt out of playing with them and wait for someone else. Now, I'm not a Halo master, but I know what a good FPS should have, and this has it. If it were on a console with 128 bit visuals, people wouldn't fluff this off like they do. It's really astounding how rounded and complete the package is. I'm having a blast. Now, imagine this with Revolution's idea of "point and shoot" and more players at once, and we're got a Halo contender. As it is, this sucker offers a console experience in online multiplayer. Only weakness is the 4 player limitation. Try it. You won't regret it.

Voice Chat: 8.0
Now, for the voice chat. I was expecting police scanner quality due to the nature of the device. What I got instead was near XBL quality sound with headphones or external speakers. Yes, you can only talk between games or when waiting for other opponents, but the ARM7 is only capable of so much at once, and if it had in game voice chat, the thing would lag like hell. It's already being pushed and hammered way past the limit and managing NO slowdown whatsoever. The designers admitted as much. it was not done to "protect children" or anything. We can likely not expect full voice on Revolution. Remember, this is a handheld being maxed out. To have GOOD QUALITy voice chat at all, it a damned fine bounus. I don't mark off for it's limitations.

Overall: 9.7
If you are a Metroid fan, buy this game. If you're a Metroid fan and don't buy it, you will be treated as a heritic and burned at the stake. I'm serious. Best handheld game I've ever played, and stands up to it's console brethern in the art design department, as well as physics, gameplay, puzzles, better action, and sound. The multiplayer is like a whole different game in one card using the same engine. It was worth the delay alone. Graphics aren't Gamecube of course, but it dosen't really show because it runs so well and looks so good. If portable game continue to evolve at this rate, consoles are going to have to start doing something new because simply, DS and PSP are showing that once the visuals advance a little further, there won't be anything they can't do that consoles can.

[Peanut]

Peanut's Quick Reviews!

Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter - Xbox 360
Graphics: 9.8
Sound: 8.0
Gameplay: The game rocks during the day, but the night missions are boring and ugly. Day - 9.0, Night - 6.0
Overall: 8.5

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion - Xbox 360
EVERYTHING A 10! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO