[REVIEW] Super Pokemon Rumble (3DS)

For years, I've always been incredibly wary of Pokemon spin-off games. It seemed that for a while, they were scraping the barrel with titles such as Pokemon Mystery Dungeon (of which there were five, I think) and the irritating manic-circle-drawing-fest that was Pokemon Ranger, which actually managed to snare thirty quid of my hard-earned cash as it is the only way to get the legendary Pokemon Manaphy. And I shelled out for the sequel, too. I played those games through to the end with a frozen grimace on my face, desperate for my prize at the end of it all.

So how did I end up with Super Pokemon Rumble? Normally I wouldn't touch it with a barge pole, unless there was a rare Pokemon associated with it, or some other massive benefit to myself. I played it briefly at GAMEFest where it raised a reaction of "meh", although I was horrifically hungover, so pretty much everything got that reaction bar the girls giving out free Mountain Dew. No, I popped into my (former) shop for a quick chat with the lads, and noticed that it'd been slashed in price from £34.99 to just £19.99, only a week or two after its release. For some reason, something just snapped, and I thought "What the hell."

To say that I was pleasantly surprised is a small understatement. I was, in all honesty, expecting to ten day exchange this game, but it's simple appeal has me hooked. There's some vague story that runs through it, but I shan't bore you with that. The idea goes something like this. It's sort of implied that you're some kid who collects wind-up pokemon toys - but you only ever seem to walk around as whichever toy is chosen to be first in your party. You proceed in a fairly linear fashion through levels where different types of wind-up Pokemon toys will come and attack you. You must hammer the A button until they are all dead. Sometimes you will be rewarded with a new wind up toy of the breed that you just demolished, sometimes not. The random nature of which toys can be collected means that levels get replayed, so you can collect 'em all.

But wait! Are you meant to catch them all? There doesn't seem to be any pokedex available in-game, apart from in the village. There's the Toy Shop, where it's implied that you can swap your Pokemon toys via Streetpass, although you don't seem to be able to choose anything, people just come and throw money at you. In the village there is also the release point, for when you have too many... But I've got HUNDREDS of the buggers, and I don't seem to be short of pocket space. And then, suddenly, I had my epiphany.

I had been reading FAR too much into the meaning of this game. The reason it seemed so simple on the outside was because frankly, it's simple on the inside as well. This is a good old fashioned frenzied button-bashing game, and it keeps it simple with a maximum of two buttons that can be assigned to your toy. The idea is to cause as much destruction as possible, then at the end of each little level you are rewarded with some wholly unexpected drum and bass. Oh yeah, probably forgot to mention the thrash metal introduction too. If you purchase this game, do yourself a favour and have your first game with the volume turned right up - the music is excellent!

So all in all, a rather pleasing little gem. It's completely mindless, and there's much of it I don't understand, but it's GREAT to just pick up and play in short bursts, lunch breaks, for example. Fortunately, I think my new colleagues already think I'm a bit nuts, so the sight of me giggling into my DS doesn't seem to faze them! :)

A joyfully violent romp, but they're only wind-up toys, so it's fine! 4/5

[REVIEW] Harvest Moon - Grand Bazaar (DS)

Harvest Moon Grand Bazaar was a game I didn't originally intend to buy straight away. I've been a fan of the farm-em-up series for a while, but was intending to hold off for the 3DS version, when it eventually surfaces. After the traditional summer dead period for game releases, I was infuriated to find out that my beloved Tropico 4 had been put back a few weeks, so I scanned the new release sheets for something else to do, and Harvest Moon caught my eye. Well, I shan't recount the full story but that was put back too, and I was left wringing my hands in fury for a FULL MONTH, but now finally I have a new game to play! (Still waiting for Tropico 4, despite the PC version being out already. *sigh*)

This particular title in the Harvest Moon franchise sees you as a new farmer in the backwater Zephyr Town, a small town in a rural area that used to be a thriving commercial hub, but in recent years has seen a decline in trade in the area. One can only assume that recent council cuts and extortionate parking fees are choking the town and leaving it dying on it's ass. As the new kid in town, it's down to you to grow some excellent produce and reinject some life into the weekly market. As with any Harvest Moon game, the first thing to do at 6am on your first day is grab some tools from the Mayor, have a quick chat with the chap (yeah yeah, sales targets, growth, etc) and then quickly dash around the village looking for anything that's not nailed down that can be sold to the local seed merchant in exchange for a pocket full of turnip seeds.

And turnips is all you're likely to see for the first season! Like the rest of the games in the Harvest Moon series, this one is a slow builder, and relies on you getting your foundations right before it lets you go wild with too many different types of produce. In fact, if you tried to grow everything at once, and care for too many animals, you'd rapidly find yourself with not enough hours in the day and a woefully empty stamina bar.

The Bazaar adds an interesting angle to the formula, as you can fetch a much higher price for your produce there than selling them to the seed man in the village. This then leads to the need for carefully controlling your budgets, as the main bulk of your income will be coming in once a week rather than every day. Many items can only be bought at the market - such as livestock! No longer can chickens be incubated from eggs, which is a bit of a pain, but I must admit to being concerned about the inbred nature of my flock in previous games. At least this way, the gene pool might possibly be a bit deeper!

So far, I'm enjoying Harvest Moon an awful lot. It's familiar, yet challenging, with enough new ideas to keep the franchise fresh but still giving the tried and tested HM experience.

All in all, a rather happy, fed, groomed and watered 4/5

[THINGS I LOVE] Top Five: Video Game Robots

Throughout the world of video games we often encounter our good old friend, the robot. Whether they are the protagonist, the enemy, or the hired help, the little blighters pop up everywhere, so in tribute to our metallic pals, here is a run down of my top five favourite robots.

5. Big Daddy (Bioshock): These docile behemoths aren't technically robots, but the genetically spliced cyborg chaps inside the huge diving suits are pretty cool. Mild mannered and gentle, they go about their business of protecting the Little Sisters while they go about their messy business of havesting the valuable goop known as ADAM from corpses. Nice. And your job? To either kill or set free the Little Sisters? Be prepared for some angry Big Daddies!

4. The Sackbots (Little Big Planet 2): If Big Daddies are the epitome of quietly lurking doom, then the Sackbots from LBP2 are their polar opposite. Cute, quirky and under Sackboy's vague command, they can be herded around like sheep or attracted with a lady known as Luscious Lucy. (Googling this turns up a selection of, ahem, businesswomen in the centre of London. Add additional search terms!) These robots are a LOT more friendly, but to be honest? A bit useless!

3. Wadsworth (Fallout 3): I often think to myself, how cool would it be to have a robot butler of my very own? That's just what Wadsworth is, a water-dispensing, wisecracking mobile hairdressing unit, and anyone who knows me well knows that I could really do with one. The Mr Handy units, however, were not well renowned for their precision with that circular saw blade, so I'll keep cutting my fringe myself, thank you!

2. Atlas and P-Body (Portal 2): These two robots are a perfect metaphor for my relationship with my darling other half. The one of us is tall and athletic, the other shorter, rounder and blue. My personal insecurities aside, Atlas and P-body's purpose in life is to live together, work together and test together for the rest of their lives. The harmony of their existance is further bolstered by the fact that they don't eat (no arguing about who's cooking tea), they don't sleep (no arguing about who's hogging the quilt) and Atlas has no bum to speak of, therefore by definition it cannot "look big in this". Perfect.

1. Claptrap (Borderlands): While Atlas and P-body both have the option to dance as part of the gestures menu, this fella likes to get down and funky entirely of his own accord. Generally in need of a bit of love and attention when you come across them, once they're up and repaired they'll strut their funky stuff for you quite happily! Go on, check him out in this video! Okay so maybe he's not the most USEFUL robot, maybe he doesn't have the best skills, besides giving you a few extra backpack slots but check out that rhythm! That personality! What a star!

So, who's your favourite robot and why?  

REVIEW: Pokemon Black (DS) - Part One



Oshawott. My starter Pokemon. Cute!



Firstly, a disclaimer. I am only seven hours into Pokemon Black. For some games, this might provide a full spectrum of everything the game has to offer (Bulletstorm being one of the most recent offenders, so I've heard) but just to put things into perspective, my Pokemon Pearl cartridge has clocked up around 350 hours, my Platinum about 100, my Diamond never really got past 20, but I did play it through twice to harvest the Legendaries and my SoulSilver clocked up around 40 hours but in my defence, I had started my chemistry degree by this point and that 40 hours might possibly have been better spent reading the last book in my second year course, Mechanism and Synthesis. Vital stuff. Still on my to-do list. One of my dear friends managed to put over a THOUSAND hours into one cart, with a few other Poke-freaks not far behind. (You know who you are!)

However, it's not all academic doom and gloom. Anyone who claims that Pokemon is a kids game is a) sorely mistaken, b) unable to grasp the complex statistics that underlie the gameplay, c) a chav, or d) all of the above. Yes, kids, Pokemon is at heart a MATHS game. Even at the most basic level of understanding, more powerful pokemon (with the bigger numbers) have a tendancy to be stronger than weaker pokemon (with the smaller numbers) before factoring in the multipliers for effectiveness. If I were so inclined to have children, I would INSIST that they play Pokemon. Me and Dad would be the harshest gym leaders they'd ever encountered. And by god they'd LEARN.

All of this makes me sound a little psychotic, so let's get to the nitty gritty. 150ish new pokemon, and this time, none of the old ones seem to be available in the first half of the game! This is a good thing, as everything is NEW and EXCITING. The starter Pokemon consist of a fire pig, a water otter and some kind of grass snake, who looks sort of like a smug weasel at the same time. So far, all my friends seem to have chosen Tepig, the fire pig. I'm not sure what this says about my friends, or the fact that I chose Oshawott, the water otter. Gameplay seems fairly quick to get into, the story is laid out quickly and easily, and it's then up to you to get into that long grass and seeking out Pokemon. After the first gym, multiplayer is opened up, although I haven't experiemented much with that yet.

So far, a worthy sequel. This review is entitled Part One for a reason - I'll get back to you in a hundred hours or so!

Scoring: 5/5 - Not even Fallout is this addictive. I may actually require medication at some point. If you're talking to me, and I've got my face buried in my DS, please don't think I'm being rude. I need help. Please help me.

REVIEW: Little Big Planet 2 (PS3)

Little Big Planet 2 was one of my most anticipated games of 2010 despite the fact that I never really played the previous incarnation. It was on my "To Do" list along with other such explosions of cute as Viva Pinata. Vaguely aware of the premise behind the game, a platformer with elements of collecting stuff and customising oneself, I gave up on trying to get around to the first game, and instead put my energy into waiting for the second.

I was not disappointed. The game begins with a short introduction by a certain Mr Stephen Fry, which sets the tone for the rest of the game. This game is Made In Britain, by British People, for British People and Those Who Love Them. Forget your Lara Crofts, your Professor Laytons (and that little gobshite Luke), the characters in LBP2 could beat them all hands down in a tea-sipping contest. The whole tone of the game is incredibly quaint and quirky, without being overly twee or irritating. Expect lots of cakes, steam trains, castles, pigeons and other such icons of Britishness.

Our hero, throughout all this is the wonderful Sack Boy - or as when the player is referred to in the game, Sack Thing. That's the wonderful thing about Sack Boy, he is a blank genderless canvas, and can be dressed up however you like. Costumes and component parts of costumes are collected as you progress through the story mode, and mixing it up a bit is actively encouraged by a prominent "randomise" button. If you want to wear the bellydancer dress with your big clompy boots, a full moustache and a combover, then that is your business. There are a number of preset costumes as well, naturally, although so far I've found them mostly useful for just throwing on when I can't find anything else to wear.

Gameplay-wise, I have to admit I find most platform games infuriating. This is no exception. At times the controls can be a little fiddly - partly down to my own ineptitude and partly to do with the controls being a touch sensitive - the grappling hook is a fine example of where is all goes wrong. Up and down control the length of the grapple, and left and right control the swing, but because it's all controlled with the analog stick, things can get a bit hairy, particularly if you're swinging over electrified doom or lava death. Other than that, there have only been a few honest-to-god screaming fits, both at points in the game which are relatively easy, I have been assured by my colleagues, which kind of implies that it was my own fault.

Speaking of my colleagues, besides the story, the other main focus of this game is the online multiplayer. LBP2 includes some fairly powerful-looking level design tools, including a sequencer to create your own music. While I've not had the time to have a go at designing myself yet, I've had a brief look at a few other peoples, and seen a massive variety - from Fallout 3 inspired levels to crazy science adventures to a game where the aim is to see how long you can run away from a shark across bits of wood floating in the water before he eats you. There is an excellent Daft Punk/Tron level (one of many, I suspect) that shows off the full potential of the sequencer by recreating one of the scores from the Tron Legacy movie almost perfectly. And then there's the Lady Gaga level.

Despite its flaws in the control of your Sack Thing, I could ramble for hours about  how much I adore this game. Instead, I shall just leave you with a mental image of my Sack Thing. Currently in game I am wearing red boxer shorts, a birthday cake for a top, blue eyeshadow and a long black wig. Oh, and I have flippers on my feet.

Is it wrong that I hope to unlock a Predator costume later in the game?

Scoring: 5/5 - a gorgeous game. So gorgeous I'll even forgive it for the shoddy controls sending me to my firey death on a regular basis.