Mario Golf Advance Tour

Anyone who knows me will attest to the fact that I am not very fond of sports games. I like the occasional stand-out game, such as Tiger Woods or some of the older NHL games but as a rule I stick to non-sports related gaming. I suppose it stems from the fact that I would rather be playing said sport in the real world. Games are an escape; I couldn't, for instance, go slay the Dragon Lord here in real life.

In any case, it strikes me as odd then that I truly enjoy the Mario-style sports games. I enjoyed Mario Golf on the Gamecube and here I find myself truly enjoying Mario Golf on my GBA SP.

I finally completed the Pokeclone that is DemiKids (look for a rather unflattering review soon enough), and have upgraded to what can only be called a Golf RPG. Very interesting that. Golf does not seem to be the sort of game that could be easily turned into an RPG, but somehow Camelot has managed to create a hybrid Golden Sun meets Mario Golf.

So far I have only played about 5 holes and seeing as I did not read the instruction manual or anything of the sort, I am doing pretty well, only 1 over par. That, in itself, is a testament to the wonderful pick up and play style that I love so much. That a complete sports game rookie can walk in, pick up the game, and actually do ok speaks very well for the game in question.

In any case kudos to Nintendo (and Camelot) for creating another original game that can bring new gamers into its respective fray.

Comments (0) | Permalink | Lee Babin | 10.7.2004

Shadow Hearts Covenant

After scrounging and scrimping, I finally found enough money to pick up a new game. My money savior came in the most unlikeliest form. While perusing my bank account to see how far down in the hole I was, I noticed an 80 dollar swell. Yee Haw, hello GST cheque. Those of you in Canada are probably with me in knowing that the old GST cheque is the perfect money for booze/games/miscellaneous anything you have been dying to get.

With money in hand I began my quest to first figure out exactly which game it was that I wanted (the choice was between Shadow Hearts Covenant and Shin Megami Tensei). I read some reviews and previews online and finally decided upon Shadow Hearts. The reasoning behind my decision is the decidedly played out concept of "recruiting" over 300 types of demons or however many Shin Megami is offering. In my lifetime of playing games I have recruited WAY too many demons/pokemon/suikoden characters to care anymore about another game revolving around collecting characters and then evolving them to masochistic levels.

So anyway, Shadow Hearts it was, now where to find it? I started at my local EB and found that they were well out of stock. I got the usual, "Did you pre-order it?", but then, that was to be expected. I therefore moved on to Future Shop where I had seen mention of a cheap wireless PS2 controller I could pick up as well. Future Shop claimed that Shadow Hearts Covenant wasn't even in their system and tbe controller was only cheap if you bought it in conjunction with some football game. Seeing as I am not the greatest sports game fan (except for the occasional round of Tiger Woods), I politely declined.

My search then brought me down into the dregs of society, Wal-Mart. Now don't get me wrong, I enjoy their great selection and good prices, but I have problems with huge businesses destroying smaller businesses and let's face it, Wal-Mart destroys businesses with just a rumor of its coming. In any case, Wal-Mart was indeed packing both Shadow Hearts Covenant and a sweet little Mad Catz wirelss PS2 remote (I'll post on that later).

With purchases in hand me and the wife retired to home to enjoy a relaxing evening of Shadow Hearts Covenant, beer, and about 7 different types of salads procured from Co-op. My initial impressions? So far, so good! It strikes me as a no holds barred, old school RPG. The game mechanics are slick and the story, atmosphere, cut scenes, and even voices are great! I'm looking forward to watching the wife play through this one and will post more impressions as they come...

PS - Check out Katamari Damacy, the soundtrack alone makes it worth playing...

Comments (0) | Permalink | Lee Babin | 10.4.2004

Til the end of time...

Well, my adventure through the world of Star Ocean 3 finally resumes. With my plate completely full as of late with a myriad of activities, I haven't had nary a second or two to continue on my quest. Finally last night I was able to sit down and play for a solid 2 and a half hours or so.

The thing I don't quite understand is that the battles in SO3 keep making me question whether they keep getting better or continue to get worse. On one hand, I ran into a few frustrating battles yesterday where piss poor collision detection and ass-backward team AI cause me to actually lose a fight or two. I then figured out that I was battling in a dungeon I wasn't supposed to be in yet. After I returned back to the storyline at hand, the battles suddenly improved again and I was pulling off mad combos having the time of my life.

I guess SO3 is like that. There is simply so much to see and do and the fact that you can explore pretty much anywhere makes it difficult to stay on course. Tales of Symphonia had a log that told you where you were supposed to be going at any given time. With my frequent week off excursions, coming back I hardly ever remember what it is I am supposed to be doing. I therefore find myself lost a good portion of the time fighting monsters that would scare a party 10 levels ahead of my own.

To conclude, I am truly enjoying the game and cannot wait to sit down with it again, but there are definitely some aspects to it that could have done with some fine tuning. Also, what masochist decided it would be a good idea to award cool prizes to people who are insane enough to fully explore incredibly huge maps? I finally completed my first couple maps yesterday and couldn't help but feel that I had wasted a good portion of time...Oh well, the name of the game is truly beginning to make sense.

Comments (345) | Permalink | Lee Babin | 9.29.2004

Page: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] [32] [33] [34] [35] [36] [37] [38] [39] [40] [41] [42] [43] [44] [45] [46] [47]