Punching Out Punches!

So I've played the Wii version of Punch Out and it is good!

The game is fun and funny and captures perfectly the spirit of the old NES game. It's also wicked hard!

I liked most all of the characters and made it all thenway to the world championship, which I won. 

That got me the credits screen, which means I could stop. However, the gane doesn't quite end there. You have to face all the fighters again, this time defending your belt, and the second time around their style is completely different. I stopped, but I'll be back. It's time for Rock Band 2. 

Fast Forward

Today MotorStorm stopped being fun.

To say that I bought this game is both factually true and a bit of a stretch.

This game was included when I originally bought my fat 60 gig PS3 on craigslist. I paid for it as much as I paid for about 19 other games, a console, a PS Eye and other stuff. I probably would never have bought this on purpose (again, stretching the definition of "on purpose".)

Put in other words, I have no special feelings for MotorStorm. Owning it was always purely circumstantial. 

I've played it for a few days and it was fun for a while and today it became unfun.

Do know the person who holds the world record for most books read is a librarian? Do you know her secret? She never finishes a book she doesn't like.

 

I am moving on. I'm glad I got to play MotorStorm and I did do well for a while, but it isn't holding my attention. I'm marking this as done.

And while we're talking, the next game in my list was MTV Music Generator for PS2. This game was a hand-me-down from a friend and it's a music looping tool more than a game. I'm never going to spend enough time on this recording tool to mix my own tracks. I put it in and five minutes later I knew I could move on too. Nothing against it, just not my cup of tea.

So long story short, I'm now on Punch-Out for the Wii.

Motorstorm, Between Schlocky Arcade and Tricky Twitchy Racer

I started Motorstorm for the PS3. This 2007 title is a little old and came with my playstation when I bought it in 2009. I just started playing it seriously and I seriously don't know if I'll stay with it for very long. This is an over the top racing game that takes place in Monument Valley. You race over mesas and buttes and in the muddy river banks, so there's buggys and rally cars and big wheel trucks. And mud. So much mud.

It's a tricky game and it's easy to fall off a canyon. The terrain is rugged and rocky. This is a far cry from Gran Turismo. It's more like Off-Road. It's also ludicrous to think anyone would race on to of a mesa. Then again, the beauty of video games is that you can go and do something you just cannot do in real life.

This game is old and it feels old even for a PS3 game. When you're driving, whether it's bikes or cars, you kinda have control over the vehicle in mid air. Remember when SixAxis was a thing? And Sony was saying that it was going to save gaming to have a controller you tilted around and that's how you'd play your games? And how it was nothing like that crappy Wii motion control? Yeah, this game is from that time. Some races let you pick any kind of vehicle while others force you to choose a specific type. Let me tell you, some types are no fun, namely bikes and big rigs. This is something that's telling me I might not go all the way in this game. The difficulty isn't ramping up too badly, but it's not the most precise driving game ever. This is a bad thing for a racing game unless it's a super goofy arcade game, which this game certainly qualifies as.

I'll let you know how I'm doing.

Done with Metroid: Other M

Well, today I powered through the last few hours of Metroid: Other M.

The verdict?

I like the game well enough. I'm glad I paid under $10 for it. It has its control problems, but for what it is I thought it was worth my time. This is a game about exploration, but it's also a sort of new take on the story. Many Metroid games are about the loneliness of exploring a dangerous world that means to kill you and you never encounter anyone. In this game there are a few characters you interact with at some points. This story has some things in common with Alien in that the Metroids are being used by shady factions to produce bioweapons. 

As I got more and more comfortable with the controls, I began to enjoy this game more and more. The exploration is a little different, as this is a third person view game, unlike classic 2D scroller Metroids or the first person exploration games of the Metroid Prime series. This game is kinda stuck in between. It plays kind of as if Crash Bandicoot could go in first person view. The camera is fixed and you point the wii remote to go into first person (but you can't move). The map is not the exercise in simplicity of classic Metroids, nor the 3D complexity of Metroid Prime. Maps are pretty much top down perspective. I imagine because of the complexity of going into an immobile first person all the time, you seem to have some kind of radar for items that makes them appear on your map. This doesn't necessarily make items easy to find, since they could still be out of sight, at a different elevation, or you could need a special skill to get them. 

In the end, I've played better Metroids. This is okay, but not amazing. I might replay this in the future.

Right now I'm moving on with my 60% item collection rate.

Up next, Motor Storm. This does not bode well...

I Thought I Had Time to Rock

One of the games on my list is Rock Band 2. I've had that game since it came out and when I put it on my list, I assumed I had all the time in the world to play it, and even to go in the Rock Band Store and download some of those DLC songs that I'd been so looking forward to playing and jamming.

A couple weeks ago, I had a bit of a scare. I randomly tried to go in the Rock Band store to see if I could get Manfred Mahn's Blinded by the Light only to find out that I could not log onto the store. Like at all. I was suddenly struck by the horrific thought that Harmonix had shut down the Rock Band Store and no amount of customer service could answer the question of whether anyone would still take my money to download songs for Rock Band. Nobody knew. Everyone said it was such an old game, nothing on it was being supported.

Finally it occurred to me that maybe if I upgraded to Rock Band 3, the store would still be available to those users and I could get some songs. After a few eBay scares, and not being able to score a copy of RB3 at a decent price, I got a reply from Harmonix's website. They said the stores were indeed still up and running but they had had some server instability when I tried to log on. (I can now log on but it's still a little shaky).

I've now had time to pinpoint the songs I want and I've decided to put down a hundred bucks for what I want, with a little wiggle room for experimentation and recommendations. This was always money I was going to spend, I'll just get it out of the way now, and if I ever updrage to Rock Band 3 I know there is a way to import my whole music library to play on the latest interface... but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.

Nintendo's Alien

I'm playing Metroid: Other M and once again I'm reminded that Metroid is Nintendo's answer to Alien. There are many problems this game has, but ambiance and mood are not among them. This game has a way of making me feel uncomfortable, like something is out to get me.

There are federation soldiers that you come across and there are cut scenes now (Not the first time, I think Metroid Prime 3 you also encountered bounty hunters), plus flashbacks to let you in on more of Samus's back story. They flesh out the character of Adam Malkovich, who we first met in Metroid Fusion as the computer.

As I said, aside from the problems, there is a lot to like in this game. Samus now literally kicks ass. Team Ninja have brought into play some fighting moves. Samus always jumped and fired. She had gadgets that let her do double jumps and space jumps and attack in her jumps. She had gun upgrades and bomb upgrades. This time around she has melee attacks, automatic animations where you see Samus get down and dirty in her fighting. If you charge a shot and approach an enemy, you'll get to see Samus jump on top of the enemy, put her gun against his head, or even right up to his gaping mouth, and just blow him away. In one case, I've seen Samus rip off the wings of a space pirate bug looking thing. It's really quite cool. Add to that split second dodging to get out f the way of attacks and Samus comes closer to the ass kicker we see in Smash Bros.

More soon.

Oh and by the Way

At the very last minute I found out Devil May Cry 3 is actually a prequel.

Devil Done

Very well, with this I am done with the back tracking.
A while back I had run into a couple series of games, various Legend of Zelda games and the Devil May Cry series (1, 2, and 3) and back then I decided I didn't want to go through multiple very similar games in a row, I put some aside and kept them in the back burner.

These games I put on hold were Devil May Cry 2, Devil May Cry 3, and The Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword.

As of today, I have cleared up the back log and can proceed to the regular list. I am now moving on to Metroid: Other M.

Devil May Cry 3 is over the top and ridiculous but also really fun. I'll go back and play it on Normal one day.

Devil Cried Tears of Joy

Well, I'm 18 missions in of a 20 mission game and already I can tell you that Devil May Cry 3 is a keeper. It's a very deep combat system and I'm probably going to go back and try to max out some of the fighting styles and maybe even power up the rest of the melee weapons and guns.

This game is one tough cookie. I started playing it on Easy, but I can see myself going for (gasp!) Normal. I don't know about Hard or Dante Must Die difficulties.

I want to be done with it today so I can go on playing Metroid: Other M.