Category Archives: 4 Star Games

Hail to the Chimp Review

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Hail to the Chimp is like the roughest of waves. It looks fun to play from a distance but once you’re on it you start thinking about how much more fun the kiddie pool would have been. The game had a lot of potential since it is effectively a 4 player fighting game with various themes built in to make the gameplay diverse, but it ends up falling flat. This is because the controls aren’t all that well thought out and the gameplay wasn’t very polished. I’ll give it some props on the unique premise of the story, but the way it was executed wasn’t great.

So, the plot is that a bunch of animals are trying to be President. Each level has you play as one of them as you become President I suppose. It was hard to tell if it meant that you won the primaries and could be President now or if you actually became President. I’ll go with the latter I suppose. Either way, it was a pretty intense moment as each character got a commercial first and then an interview after completing the level. I like to think that this must have been some kind of political satire as all of the candidates were really bad. One of them couldn’t even talk in a way that we could understand since it only knew alien talk. I wonder how it won so many votes. Anyway, that’s the main campaign. The Monkey got the last level so I’ll assume that he is the President. It is called Hail to the Chimp after all. The story was fairly amusing even if getting to the cutscenes could be a drag.

There isn’t really a lot to do in the game. The story will last a little while, but after that the only thing to do is Vs. Mode. I did unlock various videos during the story so I suppose that replaying the stories could help you get more. The problem is that the game is super vague about how or why you unlocked the videos so you wouldn’t know exactly what you would need to do. Furthermore, this came out before trophies so those can’t help the replay value. Vs. Mode is nice in that regard, but I have a sinking feeling that you won’t be playing it for very long. The game is only a few bucks to purchase though so at least it won’t set you back all that much.

The graphics aren’t anything special. The colors actually make it difficult to see the characters at times. It certainly doesn’t look like a PS3 game at all and the PS2 titles from the good ole days had more heart. The soundtrack is pretty bad as well with no good themes. I can’t think of a single catchy one and that’s too bad. I’d expect nothing less from Hail to the Chimp though. In theory the gameplay can save it so lets talk about that now.

The actual gameplay style had a lot of potential. It’s an overhead 4 player brawler so it’s similar to TMNT Mutant Melee. You swing at each other with your standard attacks and can use parts of the environment to hurt other players as well like cranes. You can even decide to do a link attack with another player if both of you press the team up button. Use this move strategically though since another player can quickly steal your teammate by running in first and also pressing the team up button. It’s incredibly overpowered and will always net you a few KOs. One issue that you’ll notice from the get go is that the controls are very limited. Every character only has one combo…that’s it. That sort of limits your options quite a lot if you think about it. Furthermore, the game rarely has you actually fighting it out with your opponents in a Last Man Standing ruleset.

The game gives you a few different goals depending on the level. In some you have to rig the voting machines by destroying them and others have you paint the machines. The vast majority of the levels are in this style and that’s the problem for me. I only really liked the combat ones. The others are all heavily luck based since the opponents will team up and sometimes they won’t. If you fall in the wrong place then you’ll waste a lot of time or all of the computers will gang up on you. There really isn’t much to look forward to during these battles and the fact that you have to play them over and over again really doesn’t help. I wouldn’t have minded the gameplay as much if it stuck to being a fighter, but the problem is that it wanted to be a party fighting game. That blend only works for the best of titles and this one lacked the budget as well as the gameplay to complete such a move. As a result, the game grows tedious very quickly.

Multiplayer mode is the only reason this game should even deserve a glance. It fixes most of the game’s issues as you can simply limit yourself to playing the survival mode of combat and the luck/cheese factor is eliminated for the most part. You may still grow bored of doing the same combat for so long but it’s a slight improvement. Beyond that, I suppose the videos will give you some chuckles. There are quite a few of them after all and the game wasn’t too popular so you may have a hard time finding them on Youtube unless you just skip through a walkthrough to nab them all.

Overall, Hail to the Chimp is not a game that you’ll want to play for long. The story mode wasn’t thought out too well as each minigame is way too long so nobody wants to play a 7 round tournament. Losing at the very end is also devastating because then you have to do it all over again. It’s quite telling that you’ll be hoping there is no secret final level just so you can finish the game already. That’s just sad. Since the soundtrack and graphics aren’t quite up to snuff either, there’s not much holding this game afloat. If you see it for a few dollars then I suppose you can’t go wrong, but you should still question whether you should do such a thing or not. It’s not worth it if you ask me. Just go buy a Mario Party game instead.

Overall 4/10

M&M’s Adventure Review

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It’s time for another game in the M&Ms saga. The previous ones weren’t all that bad. The DS game’s gameplay was pretty interesting and you can’t really mess up a racing game. This was the first one to be a full platformer though so that naturally came with some considerable risks. It has quite a few glitches and plays out like a slightly higher budget version of Ninjabread Man at times. The game definitely makes some mistakes and I’d have to call it a bad game. It’s not on the same level as some of the other disaster titles, but it makes enough of the wrong moves to sabotage itself like having to replay a whole chapter if you lose. Lets dive in!

The game starts on Christmas Eve as the M&Ms are getting ready to lock up for the night. Unfortunately, a security breach occurs and all of the M&Ms are stolen. The heroes have to quickly re grab all 120 of them before leaving, but they are now being guarded by a Snowman who likes to yell “Its hot”, The Easter Bunny who is very hungry, The Nutcracker who wants to blow everyone up, and the Halloween Man who is trying to scare everyone. Fortunately our brave heroes won’t back down when candy is on the line.

The gameplay is very straight forward. It’s a 3D adventure that “should” play out like a Mario game. You move and jump as you cross the level. Getting to the end is your destination, but not the goal. You must find all of the M&Ms in each level or else you’ll have to replay it anyway. Each level has 3-4 areas which can be as large as an average level in another game. You must beat them all without losing all of your lives or you’re sent back to the beginning and you’ll need to grab the M&Ms again. That is definitely the most annoying part of the game. Most of the levels aren’t all that difficult, but the last 2 are tough. There is a huge jump in difficulty between levels 2 and 3.

Level 3 has you go through many jumps with metal birds trying to peck you along the way. It seems like you can possibly step on them or lure them to a bomb, but it’s much harder than it looks. With enough repetition you’ll get through it, but the levels can be long so you don’t want to have to replay them too much. Fortunately to counter this, the bosses are incredibly easy. The only one that is even a little difficult is the final boss which is also very generous with health bits everywhere. For the Cupid you just have to hit a bunch of switches. Taking down the Bunny just means luring him to candy and you lure the soldier to poison smoke. You lure the Lantern to bombs and take out the Snowman by hitting a lot of switches. Either the developers didn’t put too much thought into the bosses or they just didn’t want to make them too difficult. Imagine having to go all the way back at that point.

There is one part of the game that is just unfair though. In Green’s last level there comes a point where you have to board a boat as cannons shoot at you. The problem is that you die instantly for no reason. It’s possible an unintentional glitch in the game or something, but that’s it..you’re done. The only way around this that I found was to just jump in the ice cream and swim to shore. It takes up a lot of health, but at least I lived. I wasted a lot of lives trying to figure out why I was dying though. It would be like an invisible energy blast hit me or something.

Fortunately the game has so many glitches that you can exploit them as well. You can jump on air to skip parts of levels by just mashing jump and you can also achieve infinite lives. The way to doing the latter is getting a lot of coins like 98 for example. Then you reach a checkpoint. After that you grab the final 2 and keep on going. You get the extra life from this and then even if you die, you’re brought back to 98 coins at the check point. Since the coins reset despite the life sticking around, you can keep on getting lives forever. Figure out what section it the toughest for you and do the coin trick at the nearest checkpoint. This helped me a lot in the Snowman level. Hey, if the game is going to pull out cheesy tricks to stop me from winning…then two can play at that game!

The graphics are nothing special, but they get the job done. You can always tell what is happening and the level designs are pretty clever. The Christmas levels have the best designs for sure, but the Halloween level is surprisingly spooky as well. There are creepy portraits everywhere and even the music feels rather dire for the heroes. I think they put more effort into the soundtrack and levels than the gameplay so their priorities may have been a little mixed up. It was fun hearing Jingle Bells and Sleigh Bells ring at the end. It helped show that the developers cared about this game at least a little.

There isn’t any replay value here though. Once you gain the 120 M&Ms you are completely done with the game. That’s the end of your adventure and it’ll be time to put the game back in the drawer. The campaign isn’t all that long, but it is artificially lengthened by having to play the same levels as all 3 characters each time. If you ask me, you shouldn’t have to collect all 120 M&Ms to see the ending. That’s like having to grab all of the Stars in a Mario game. It’s something you should want to do, not something you have to do. Mix that in with the tedious nature of having to replay levels while looking for M&Ms and the game definitely gets hurt quite a bit.

There’s also a glitch where you’ll turn invisible if you try to approach the M&M machine. I guess the game won’t even let me look at the cool candies that I’ve collected eh? Well fine, I didn’t want to look at them anyway. I should quickly mention that each M&M has an ability. Red can fly whenever you see a flight symbol, Yellow can double jump, Green can swing her tennis racket whenever she finds a tennis symbol. Red’s flight levels are the best part of the game so I wish they had appeared more. It was certainly better than the main part of the game.

Overall, This game had a lot of potential, but the gameplay’s just a little too weak. You know there’s a problem when some levels are purely luck based. I almost died at the very end with Green because you have to dodge falling rocks for about 3-4 minutes. I barely survived and since I had 0 lives left that would have been fairly upsetting. I do like the challenge at times as some of them can be fair, but then we should get more lives or every stage should be its own level. That would fix a lot of issues. I died a lot of times on the revolving Ice Cream door which is easily the toughest part of the whole game. Seriously, just try to get out of that one in one piece. It can hold its own with some of Mario Maker’s toughest levels. Having to go back all the way is just too much of a detriment. The game is only about 5 dollars so if you want a real challenge it’s worth taking a look. That being said, it’s not always fun to play and games should at least be fun. I’ll have to give this one a thumbs down and I recommend Mario Galaxy instead. Even the ending was very lackluster.

Overall 4/10

Rock ‘n’ Roll Adventures Review

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It’s time for another Ninjabread Man esque game. No worries, this is the last one that I currently own from the game. Does the franchise end on a high note? (For the record, there is one more game that I plan on getting from these guys, but that is a day that may be far away) Unfortunately, it really doesn’t. In a sense, this game is better than the others because it never gets annoying or frustrating, but that may just be due to how many titles I’ve played recently. Since the levels are always reused, I already knew what to expect from it all. In a pure gameplay stance, this game is certainly better than Trixie, Ninjabread Man, and Anubis. However, it is extremely short and the easiest game in the series.

You play as Elviz. Yes, not Elvis, but Elviz. He always speaks with a very artificial voice, but the voice is drowned out thanks to the music so good luck making out what he is saying. The game plays out like a classic 3D platformer. You have to find 10 CDs scattered in the large area and then make your way to the teleport device. The levels are fairly large so the back of the cover is technically correct, but there is a lot of empty space in the levels. You also move very quickly so each level can be beaten very quickly. While you can attack enemies by swinging the Wii Remote, it is very unresponsive so it is best to just blast them with musical notes.

A tip that will make you life a lot easier is the fact that you can jump with the Z button. That could have made quite the difference if I had known for other games, but this time I was ready. The levels are fairly linear, certainly more so than Trixie or Ninjabread Man so you shouldn’t have any trouble getting through them. The compass is also fairly decent this time. There are only 3 levels and a quick tutorial so you should have the game completed in around 30-40 minutes. I really should have been timing myself to be honest, but I just didn’t expect the game to be quite so short. Trixie and Ninjabread Man at least forced me to die a few times due to tricky jumps and glitches, but this game was so easy that none of the obstacles bothered me. Even the minions are significantly weaker.

It worked out well to the extent that the game wasn’t super frustrating as a result, but at the same time, it really exposes just how short this game is. While it actually doesn’t feel as cheap as some of the others, the short length and absolutely no post game content definitely hurts it. There is literally nothing to do after beating the game so that means you will be paying for 30 minutes of “fun.” You can get the game for cheap so it won’t set you back all that much, but you’ll just have to ask what the point of it all is. By all means, buy this game if you are interested in playing it, but if you want a fun platformer, there is no shortage of alternatives out there.

I will give the game some credit for finally changing up the soundtrack a little though. After playing several games that had the exact same tunes over and over again, this was a very welcome change of pace. The main theme is actually all right, but you probably won’t notice it much. The graphics aren’t bad either. They are definitely an improvement over the other games in this series. It is as if the company decided to slightly increase the quality of the whole product at the expense of the length. It’s certainly shorter than Trixie and Anubis after all. It’s close with Ninjabread Man, but that game was more challenging so it balanced out. I am glad that the presentation improved, but the game should still aim for greater heights.

There isn’t even a final boss and the credits don’t play automatically when you beat the game. It simply sends you right back to the main menu. There is no sense of true accomplishment or anything like that and in the end you have to ask yourself, “Why?” I would have even settled for a quick montage of my awesome adventures in the game as the credits rolled. It would have been fun to see my character retrace his steps for 5 seconds before I skipped the credits anyway. Well, the game goes off my backburner list and I feel like I’m finally making a lot of real progress here. There will always be a backlog, but it is getting smaller and that’s always awesome to see.

Overall, There’s not much more to say here. The gameplay surprisingly isn’t bad since it doesn’t rely on the motion controls almost at all. It’s extremely easy so it can actually be played well by its target audience. Older folks may have a kick out of playing this with friends to poke fun at the graphics and the situation. If you enjoy playing “bad” games then this is the one for you. Otherwise, it’s safe to say that this is another one to pass on. With this title out of the way, I’m ready for some more positive game reviews. I’m nearly at the end of Final Fantasy VII and I’m making progress in Sly: Thieves in Time. One of those may be the next game review unless I end up beating another one of these short Wii games first. Only time will tell.

Overall 4/10

Billy the Wizard: Rocket Broomstick Racing Review

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Only 14 reviews onto the blog will have reached 1000 reviews total. Not too shabby if I do say so myself! What better way to keep the ball rolling than by bringing in another Wii game with a very dubious reputation. I’m talking about none other than Billy the Wizard. While the game may not be able to keep his name straight, I have to give it some major kudos for actually being fairly original. The parts that aren’t an obvious Harry Potter rip off anyway. The idea of 3D races while on broomsticks is actually quite impressive. It’s just a shame that the gameplay mechanics weren’t quite up to the challenge.

There is no story mode here so don’t get your hopes up too high. Honestly, you should always go into a Wii review with very low hopes since I have played most of the good ones by this point in time. You have 4 different modes to choose from and each one has 6 stages in it. That’s not a bad start right? Well, the first mode is tutorial. It’s actually fairly challenging to beat one of the final levels in that one, but I pulled through. Not a bad way to start off the game I guess, but by then I had already realized that the controls were completely and utterly terrible. Unlike Super Kart GP, this one insists on using the nunchuk as well. Big mistake. Just about everyone who owns a Wii likely remembers how sad and insulting the Nunchuk was to fellow gamers. It was basically Nintendo’s way of hitting us while we were down because the motion controls weren’t emphasized as much, but it didn’t matter because the nunchuk was still a bad controller.

In this case, the nunchuk is still mainly used as a motion controller, but you still have to use the Wii Remote as well. They both help with turning, but it’s awful confusing and you’ll be scratching your head by the end. Racing is virtually impossible and from the 4 modes, that was the only one that I couldn’t beat. Forget about beating all 6 races, I couldn’t even handle the first one. It’s insane just how difficult it is. You can’t simply race to the finish line. You have to also go through every ring in the level and missing one is fatal so you can’t go too fast. The problem is that the other racers are travelling at full speed at all times, which gets rather dicey. They won’t just pass you, these kids want to watch you squirm. What I mean by that, is that they will blast you with energy attacks. You can fire back as well by waving the Wii remote, but that doesn’t always work so well while racing. You can imagine how easy it is to run off the track when something like that occurs. I ultimately had to choose not to fire anything, but then I’d lose regardless. The races are definitely the worst part about the game and the irony is that this is technically a racing game.

The third mode has you flying around to collect books. You merely need to pass through all of the books scattered in the level in order to complete it. With a compass and how well lit the stages are, this is a breeze. It may have been on the easy side, but at least it was fun and not tedious. Billy finally scored and the final mode was also fairly decent. This one was about blasting Dragons away. You just had to spam your energy blasts and hope that they landed on the dragons. It beat a few levels with only seconds to spare so this one was definitely quite tricky. Just keep on blasting and when in doubt, blast some more. It will ultimately help you out and the dragons won’t stand a chance.

The cover art is really misleading so I feel like I should warn you about that. The back hints that you get to have a really cool totally 3D race that looks like something out of a Mario Party minigame. Unfortunately, that is simply not the case. The picture is actually taken from one of the loading screens and cropped appropriately to trick the audience. It’s what the game does…and it does it well. I guess the developers were willing to do just about anything in order to sell a few more copies.

Graphically, this game will fail to impress you. The dragon doesn’t really look like a dragon. I’ll give the landscape some mild props I suppose as it doesn’t look all that bad. It needs some work, but it’s not as bad as it could be. The soundtrack is terrible though as the main theme is officially overused. It’s quite telling when games like Madden…which aren’t exactly known for their great musical selections, have a more energetic song list. Most of the songs are quite sad so you need to definitely take this on a case by case basis, but at least they put in some effort over there. I couldn’t feel any effort with Billy the Wizard.

I suppose you could say that there is a reasonable amount of replay value here thanks to multiplayer mode. Playing with a friend is always better than playing by yourself in a game like this. It won’t make the game worth 20 dollars or anything like that, but it can slightly help the game out in the long run I suppose. It’ll have to do at any rate as this game won’t really be offering you anything else.

Overall, Billy the Wizard is exactly what you would expect when you check to see who made the game. The company has always set the bar low and then they crawl under it. While the gameplay is fairly unique, there’s nothing really positive to say about it. The execution simply wasn’t handled all that well at all and you’ll be done with most of the game’s content in roughly an hour or so…probably much sooner. If you want to play a racing game, go and play F Zero GX. That game had hype, presentation, and good controls. Billy could learn a thing or two from that title.

Overall 4/10

Anubis II Review

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It’s time to finally play the third big game in the Ninjabread Man family. Conspiracy Games came up with other titles of course and I will be playing one of them soon, but Trixie, Ninjabread Man, and Anubis are the ones that I consider to be the big 3. Unfortunately, this might be the worst game in the trilogy. It all begins and ends with the final boss that is excruciatingly bad. It’s quite telling that this is the first game in ages where I had to go to Gamefaqs in the end. I try to make it a hard and fast rule that I will never use online resources to help me out in a game because I need the full 100% bragging rights. No matter how tough it makes it for games like FF VII. Still, I didn’t think that I needed to give Anubis the same level of respect and attention. The game basically cheats by not even telling you what the controls are.

There isn’t really a plot, but based on the back of the cover, you have been sent out to stop the villains! That’s not a bad premise I suppose although it certainly could be better. You are thrown into the first level without any other context. There are 4 main levels and four-5 mini ones as well. They all play out the same way aside from the final boss fight, where things get a little more intense, but not in a good way. You have to find 8-10 sacred pieces of something to unlock the time gate that will let you clear the level.

The levels are a little more linear than Ninjabread Man and I am also pretty experienced at playing this game by now. The levels are very similar to the other titles after all and you get used to reading the compass after a while. The game certainly isn’t very difficult so you will clear each level on your first or second try. The actual length of the game is quite short after the unreasonably long first level and you’ll have it beat in a few hours at best. There is absolutely no replay value to be found here, which hurts the game even more. The price is very low so that’s a start, but at this point you may as well buy a slice of pizza.

Now, I don’t mean to knock the game too much, but it has some pretty big weaknesses. For starters, the gameplay is your classic 3D platformer. You can swing your cane around to whack people on the head and you can shoot energy blasts as well. The latter is always your best option so use that to defeat enemies and beef up your health bar and lives. You can also jump of course and I recommend using the Z button over the motion controls. The latter is simply too unreliable and it is what hurts the gameplay. The level designs aren’t great as it is, but it’s even worse when you keep falling in the same spot. Luckily, there aren’t too many places where you can fall to your doom, but it can still be sad. I didn’t find out that you could jump with the Z button until I was at the final boss. If I had known about this earlier…things would have been very different!

Either way, the sword swinging is still rough though and a nice little Z button feature isn’t going to save this flawed game. The music consists of the same recycled theme that we’ve heard over and over again in the other two titles. It even plays for the final boss since the developers clearly couldn’t grab a second theme to put into the game. It’s pretty lazy if you ask me. The graphics are rather sub par although I wouldn’t call them terrible or anything. You can still see what is happening so that is definitely a plus. Games like Hidden Invasion have a lot to learn about proper brightness settings.

The final boss is what destroys the game though. If you thought that you had seen a poorly developed game before…think again! The final boss isn’t really a fight as you have to keep climbing these blocks that will disappear from time to time as you grab grenades. The game never tells you how to fire them by the way. To do this, you have to hold the A button and make a swinging motion. The problem is that it won’t work very often and the boss is on full spam mode so the energy shots never stop coming. If your grenade doesn’t come out in time, prepare to take some heavy damage. It gets old quickly and this boss took me way too long to complete. It quickly brought the game down to size. Otherwise, it may have stood a good chance of being the best in the trilogy. The Z button allowing you to do proper jumps is a huge improvement, although I suppose that there is the chance that the other two games had such a feature as well. All of the levels are suddenly a lot more manageable with this feature. If only there was a button for attacking and throwing bombs as well.

There’s also a weird glitch in the game where the Nunchuk will stop working sometimes. The game will keep telling you that it is not connected anymore of the game will suddenly have you running in a direction and you are unable to stop without unplugging the Nunchuk and plugging it back in again. I had to do that a great many times during the game so I feel like there is something wrong with the code. Granted, there are probably so many things that went wrong in the code that you could get lost there.

Overall, There’s not much reason to play this game so I can safely say that Anubis II lived up to its reputation. The Motion Controls on the Wii weren’t very good even with the AAA games. It’s not really a surprise that they tanked miserably with this title. The developers probably just checked to see if it could at least be slightly playable and then ran off with what little money they got from this game. I doubt it had a whole lot of quality control and it may not have had any at all. I can’t really picture myself buying an Anubis III, but if I ever see it in the 2 dollar bin, then maybe I’d take the plunge. If you’re looking for a bad game to play for fun, then I recommend Ninjabread Man. That game certainly had more heart….just a little more, but that’s good enough.

Overall 4/10

Yugioh The Falsebound Kingdom Review

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It’s time to review another Yugioh game, but unfortunately it is easily the worst one that I have ever played. I’m sorry Yugioh fans, I didn’t think it was possible to have a bad one…but here we are. For starters, it doesn’t feel like a Yugioh game at all. The plot is laughable and the gameplay is as bad as possible for its turn based style. It makes Digimon Data Squad and Pokemon Colosseum look like they had lightning fast loading times. It doesn’t help that Yugioh overstays its welcome as well. Prepare yourself for a rocky experience when playing the game!

You can choose to play as Kaiba or Yugi initially. I believe that after completing both stories you unlock Joey’s mode as well. You’d have to be extremely dedicated to do that though since this game is very long and completing both stories could easily result in a 20+ hour long game. Kaiba’s mode sees him in Ancient Egypt. He leads an army, but unfortunately his brother was kidnapped by a guy called Scott, whose clothes look like modern day gear. Kaiba quickly pursues this villain, but he will have to fight off many other armies, bandits, and other such fighters who get in his way. Can Kaiba rescue Mokuba and stop this random guy from messing around with the past?

I didn’t like the plot for a lot of reasons. The main one is that I really don’t like AU stories a lot of the time unless the concept is super good to actually justify having the characters here. There is a plot twist that makes this moot by the end, but also reminds you how pointless the whole charade was. Kaiba and friends didn’t need to be here and this could have easily been a Dynasty Warriors game instead. The monsters felt really out of place as well if you ask me. I don’t like Ancient Egypt as a setting and most of the characters were either generic or annoying. It was fun to see Yugi show up for a quick cameo, but that was it. He was gone as soon as he appeared and then it was back to fighting Scott in a battle of no interest to anyone playing.

This game also felt very low budget. The soundtrack is essentially nonexistent and the only tune that I can recall was very dead and lifeless. Certainly not what you’d like to hear while having a nice duel. All of the cutscenes were just little picture boxes with text after it. Once in a while, the background would change which was a nice little touch and Slifer got a quick cutscene, but that was basically it. The graphics were all right I suppose, but not while on the overhead map. Everyone looked the same there and the creatures were so tiny that you typically couldn’t see anything. Moving on the map was a pain and likewise, using any item took way too long there. Travelling to enemy camps would take forever and by the time you made a move, the enemies were already on top of you. Typically, the best move was to simply beat all of the minions and then attack the castle, but that would mean a very long level for you to play. The quickest way to win is to dash over to the enemy castle, but odds are that your monster wouldn’t be fast enough to pull this off. I was able to do it a handful of times, but mostly my strategy didn’t pan out.

This wouldn’t be terrible…if the combat system was any good. On the surface, it is the classic turn based system that Pokemon uses. You take turns with the opponent on who gets to attack and each battle is a 3 on 3 match. The problem is that everyone’s attacks take a little long since you have to watch the whole animation and every member has a lot of health. You have a limited amount of actions in a battle so if both teams run out, then you have to fight again after a 0 second intermission. It can be 5 seconds if you are fighting from a castle. Rinse and repeat for all of the minions and this can be tough. Especially if you send out 9 teams and the opponent has 9 as well. Personally, I recommend sticking to 2 and just using them the whole time. Even if you lose, the level ups save so you can keep retrying until you win. I also recommend avoiding any optional minions as the mild EXP boost isn’t worth it and just focus on completing the level. Pegasus was extremely valuable and Ishizu was good as well. Kaiba was actually pretty weak, which was a shame.

Items are crucial as well since the computers will constantly be healing themselves. You’ll want to have some kind of healing array on your side as well if you really want to win. It costs a lot of money, but you should naturally have enough while playing through the game. I only ran out after the final level was over and by then I didn’t need to buy any more items anyway so it was all good. Either way, the matches will drag on quite a bit. You’ll need to use some strategy rather than just attacking over and over, but since every character only has 1 attack, prepare to see the same one spammed over and over and over again.

There is some replay value here as you can try to beat the game with all 3 characters, but there’s not much of a purpose to this beyond just doing it for fun. I didn’t find the game to be all that fun at all so I certainly don’t plan on doing that. The game was long enough as it is so it will definitely satisfy you considering how cheap the game is. You can get it for under 5 dollars, but should you? Think carefully on that because it is a Yugioh game in name only. Seriously, there is no card playing to be found here at all and that is rather tragic if you ask me.

Really, this game should have been good, but it really felt like a bad fanfic. The story just makes no sense and is not interesting in the slightest. How did this Scott guy go and kidnap everyone anyway? The game doesn’t bother to explain this at all. The computer also gets sentient by the end and suddenly turns into an old guy with a beard. The concept is cool even if it has been done to death (By other Yugioh games as well) but the design was pretty bad. Fighting against a God card was cool, but it had way too much health so it was tedious to defeat. Not hard, but tedious. If the gameplay had only been sped up 2X, I could have easily seen this game grab a 6. Probably not a 7 anyway since it just wasn’t interesting, but gameplay plays a huge role in any title so if it was as smooth as the average Pokemon game, this review would be quite different.

Overall, The Falsebound Kingdom is a game that I recommend avoiding. It is easily the worst Yugioh game out there and that is even including the odd GX game where you follow a calendar and as such, there is no real plot to the game and nothing to do either since if you miss a day, you miss an opportunity. I can’t stand the day system, but luckily I’ve only encountered 2-4 games that do such a thing. Back to this game though, I don’t see if being surpassed as the worst anytime soon. Even the Duelist of the Roses game for PS2 (Something like that) should be better since it uses the standard gameplay. I’ve had this game on the backburner for many years (And I can see why) so I am glad to have it done once and for all!

Overall 4/10

Myth Makers: Trixie in Toyland Review

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It’s time to take a look at another infamous Wii game from back in the day. While Trixie isn’t quite as well known as Ninjabread Man, it is on the same level. It is by the same company after all and the game is almost completely copied from the Ninjabread Man title. Seriously, it’s probably hard to believe but you are basically playing a reskinned game. Even the main menu theme is exactly the same. It does seem to be a little more polished though, but this works as a doubled edged blade. You’ll see what I mean in a moment. Trixie’s a bit of a bad game due to the short length, but it certainly could have been a whole lot worse.

As with the Ninjabread Man, there isn’t really a plot in this one. You’ll have to check out the back or read the booklet if you want to get the story behind the game. You play as a girl with rabbit ears who goes around whacking people with her weapon. Eventually, you reach the final boss and take the win, freeing the land from the oppressors. By this point, you will notice that the game did have higher production values than Ninjabread Man. For starters, there is actually voice acting in this game. “Take that buster” is Trixie’s catch phrase and she tends to say this when you hit one of the enemies with her weapon. As you can expect, this does get a little repetitive so I’m glad that it doesn’t happen every single time. It seems to be random, but at least I do like her enthusiasm. The villains also yell “Destroy” whenever they fire a missile. Those guys are tricky, but nothing you can’t handle.

There are two main types of villains. The robots are the strongest and I recommend taking out from afar. That being said, they’re a lot weaker than the counterpart from the Ninjabread Man so you can win in close quarters combat as well. The controls are a lot more responsive than Ninjabread Man so you can actually fight normally for a change. The other enemies don’t even try to attack you all that much so you can just swing at your discretion. The part of the game that is a little tougher than Ninjabread Man is the jumping part. The game loves to eat your double jumps so then you end up falling into the gap and plummeting to your doom. Trust me, it’s not a fun way to go out. This won’t be much of a problem until the final two levels, but you should expect to lose many lives at that point.

The main levels are all in 3D and you travel through the level trying to grab the 10 puzzle pieces to complete it. They can be a little hard to see, but luckily you do have a compass which helps you find them. It’s certainly not the most accurate one by any stretch of the imagination, but it works well enough. What does make things difficult is that the first level is very large. Even by this game’s standards, you’ll have a hard time locating anything. There are around 10 floors and all of the differently colored blocks start to look the same after a while. That level took me a very long time and naturally, losing a life can be very sad because you go all the way back to your latest check point, which may not have been all that close.

This is really what I meant when I said that the extra polish was not necessarily a good thing. The levels are a little too big now and while they have more of an actual design than the Ninjabread levels, it also means that it takes a little longer to find everything. The game is also longer than its rival, which should be a good thing in theory, but I wouldn’t have minded it only being the usual 4 levels. There are 10 levels in this title although 5 of them are fairly short.

After each main level, there will be a bonus one. The gameplay for those varied from overhead to side scroller. They were actually pretty fun and were more enjoyable than the main levels. You would have to reach the goal while surviving from these different gameplay styles. It’s hard to see where you are going so I recommend taking your time. As for the final boss level, it’s a small one that just has you work on getting through a few jumps. The actual boss is very easy and you shouldn’t lose any lives against him. Just run around the guy while shooting your darts the entire time. The damage will built up and the villain eventually falls. It’s much safer than actually trying to fight the guy in hand to hand combat.

Graphically, the game isn’t all that bad. It certainly looks better than Ninjabread Man, but still wouldn’t hold up all that well to the average Wii game. At the very least, I did like Trixie’s design, but the main villain could have been a little cooler. The soundtrack is pretty bad and the fact that it has the same theme as the other title is pretty lazy. It works for nostalgia like having Melee’s theme in Smash 4, but it shouldn’t be reused for convenience.

There isn’t really any replay value here so that hurts the game a little. It’s still very short even if you do end up getting lost a few times so this wouldn’t even last you the full afternoon. Luckily, you can grab it for a few dollars, but that’s why I definitely could not give the game a positive rating. Honestly, it would have probably dropped to a 3 if it had gone on for much longer. The final boss level was pretty frustrating as I kept dying to the same jump and the final main level was a little too much of a maze. It also had tricky jumps that could be quite tragic.

Overall, Trixie in Toyland is actually not as good as Ninjabread Man even though it seemed to have been more refined and to have gotten more of a budget. Sometimes more content isn’t always a good thing. I did appreciate the voice acting though and the fact that the game actually had a final boss was also a nice improvement. The minigames were solid too so if not for the main level designs being so bad, this title would have had a decisive victory. I certainly recommend trying it out for the novelty value, but you won’t be missing much if you decide to skip out on this one. I’ll be trying out the Trixie racing game soon so we’ll see if that game is able to surpass this one. I don’t see how someone could mess up a racing game so maybe we’ll finally see a 5-7 star game from this company.

Overall 4/10

Ninjabread Man Review

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Have any of you ever heard of the Ninjabread Man? This game may have flown under the radar for a while, but it does have quite the reputation and it is certainly well deserved. This is known as one of the worst Wii games of all time although I have to say that this may be overdoing it a little. Sure, the production values are quite bad and the game is extremely short (Roughly an hour) but it does have heart. If anything, the game would have been more annoying if it had been longer…but maybe that just means that this game really isn’t that good. Regardless, it is getting a negative score, but it could have been a lot worse.

There is no real plot to be found in the game as it stays on the cover. You simply start out as a living Gingerbread Man who wields a sword. You go around destroying Cakes and Tomatoes. The Cakes are very overpowered so don’t engage them in close quarters combat. Instead, spam your Shruikens. They can take out any enemy from a safe distance and they also get stronger the more that you use them until you get to the point where every enemy will die from a single hit. It’s a nice way to effectively break the game. The controls are very spotty though so watch out for that. We’re back in the classic motion controls era after all and this isn’t exactly a AAA title. The sword swinging rarely worked which is why I switched to throwing in the first place.

The gameplay is in 3D and you can jump. You now know all that their is to know about the gameplay. The objective of each level is to find 10 puzzle pieces to fix a generator. You then jump in to automatically complete the level. There are 4 levels total and one of those is a tutorial level so there are really just 3. There are no bosses whatsoever and no real ending either. The credits just play and that’s it. The 3 real levels all have the exact same format. There is a compass towards the bottom of the screen which lets you know which direction to go. Unfortunately, it’s not always the greatest way to find a piece as the terrain messes with its sensors, but it does its best I suppose.

The final level tries to be more linear which helps with the finding. As long as you don’t make a wrong turn, you should be fine. Each enemy that you defeat gives you one health point and defeating 6 of them gives you a one up. I recommend stocking up on those. Not really because of the enemies since they’re reasonably easy to deal with once you start spamming the projectiles. You’ll want them because of the jumps since the sensor bar will often times not record your jump or it will merge them together so you won’t go far enough. It will rarely lead to a death, but there is one section where you can die. I got through it fairly easily, but I wasn’t so lucky in another title from this company. (I’ll be reviewing that one shortly)

On a technical merit, Ninjabread Man is no more impressive than with the gameplay. The soundtrack basically consists of free domain type music that don’t seem to have much emotion. It just feels like the music was put together in roughly 5 seconds and the developers just figured that you wouldn’t get tired of it. There’s no real variety and while the theme can be a little catchy after a while, it’s no fun compared to titles like Sonic and Mario. I want my hype themes. Meanwhile, the graphics are naturally not all that good. They’re pretty low budget and while they aren’t terrible, Ninjabread Man will lose in a head 2 head fight against just about any other title. It may look better than Balls of Fury at least.

There is no replay value to be found here whatsoever. I suppose you could just replay the game, but there is literally no reason to do so as it doesn’t keep track of your score and there are no collectibles around either. This game didn’t even get any real voice acting so the game is very silent. I imagine that the game must not have cost a lot to make so the developers probably made a profit off of it. It’s a scary thought to have considering that this game was just not all that good. Again, it wasn’t terrible considering all of this.

The concept is decently sound. How bad can a 3D platformer be right? The controls are the main frustrating part. Luckily, I didn’t come across any big glitches so that was good. If the jumping was more stable, that would have gone a long way. That being said, the overall length is really what keeps this game from getting a 5 or higher. There’s no way I can justify a game being about an hour long or less. Even if it had multiplayer this would be a bit of a stretch although it would certainly help out quite a bit. This game now goes for around 1-5 dollars so at least you won’t be losing a lot of money.

Overall, Ninjabread Man is for the hardcore Wii owners who want to own all of the titles. I honestly purchased it because of how bad the game is known to be. I’m the kind of guy who gets curious about things like that. It’s still not the worst game that I’ve ever played by any means and I actually think that it was more fun than the higher budget spinoff that I played afterwards. That review is coming soon and it will help you remember that sometimes bigger isn’t better. Quality still trumps quantity even if both of them are in very short supply here. If you’re curious about Ninjabread Man, I recommend satisfying your curiosity. If won’t cost you much and then you can finally count yourself among the select few who got to play this game. It’s truly something else!

Overall 4/10

De Blob 2 Review

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I actually enjoyed the first De Blob game quite a bit. It was a lot of fun and took a unique approach on the Platformer genre. Painting everything in the city before moving on was a lot of fun and it made for a peaceful adventure. My main problem with the game is the fact that it drags on a lot this time around and they actually decided to switch the gameplay up rather dramatically. It makes for an easier Platinum, but that’s about all that I can say for the game and trust me…it’s not saying a whole lot anymore. It’s a shame that De Blob 2 couldn’t stay true to the original.

Comrade Black is back and once again he has decided to eliminate all color. Yeah..the plot is basically the same exact thing as the first title. The story is easily one of the weakest aspects in the game. Who thought it would be engaging for every character to speak gibberish while gargling water the whole time? It gets annoying very quickly. Even ignoring that, all of the characters are really annoying. None of them come across as particularly annoying and could Blob have been given a worse design? He is always making a lot of “cool” poses after accomplishing a mission, but they all come across as arrogant or mean. A cool character can pull that off, but not Blob.

For example, Blob was actually trembling when he first made it to the villain lair? Really!? Keep in mind that Comrade Black is a baby himself who is always getting teased by his subordinates and crossdresses once in a while. He has a little horsie float to keep himself from drowning and he’s comic relief the whole game. To be fair, every character is comic relief in this game and a lot of innocent civilians die and are blown up, but this is also used for comic relief since they are just made out of ink.

The only deep part of the game is at the final level where Blob must make a difficult decision 3 times. Save the civilians who are stranded on a planet which is about to explode or keep on going to stop the main villain. I went to save these guys two times, but it never helped at all and the people weren’t even grateful. It’s still heroic to save them, but I didn’t want to by the end. I did try to help the third group once, but then I died and the game took me 10 whole minutes back. I was not going to make that mistake a second time. A cutscene played and we saw the planet blow up with all of the civilians on it. For a second I was worried, but for the wrong reasons. I thought that maybe it wasn’t optional after all, but luckily it was okay. The sidekick didn’t even care and told me to keep on going.

That brings me to another negative, the lack of check points. If you die in a section, prepare to possibly be brought back 10 or more minutes into the level. When you consider the fact that each level is around an hour or even 2, this can get old fast. Towards the end of the game, a single hit from some enemies can easily destroy you. Multiplayer mode helps a little with that as you can have a second player fire some blasters at the enemies. Still, the enemies were a little overpowered. I like a challenge, but I don’t like it when one mistake can send you back such a long ways away. This isn’t Chess after all! (Chess is hype)

Luckily you do have power ups that you can give to Blob. I decided not to buy any upgrades during my playthrough for an extra trophy, but if you do use them, it should make the task a little easier. I highly recommend grabbing more lives and decreasing the cost to roll out since these are related to my two biggest problems. The roll out will help you get rid of the Helmet enemies and the lives will keep you from losing 10 minutes of your time. Keep in mind that if you are trying for the Platinum, then you shouldn’t buy any upgrades. If you don’t, you only need to complete the game two times to be done with it. If you do use the upgrades, it’ll possibly take you 3 times or just a verrry long twice.

The platinum is fairly doable as just completing the game should get you over half of the trophies. That being said, replaying the levels sounds like a huge drag at the moment. Even if there are only around 13 levels, beating them all again could take around 20 hours. Who has that kind of time for a Platinum nowadays eh? If the levels were shorter, that would help this game tremendously. I recommend that to all games. Having a bunch of short levels is better than having a few long ones. I’ll take 60 3-5 minute levels like the Mario games over having 7-13 1 hour long levels. It’s just a lot easier to plug and play with the shorter levels.

This probably won’t come as much of a surprise, but the graphics aren’t all that great. They actually aren’t all that bad though. This game certainly looks like it is a PS3 title so I’ll give it some props there. The soundtrack isn’t even all that bad either. It goes for a full on party feel, but it’s one that works pretty well for De Blob. At the very least, De Blob is actually good on a technical level, I just wish that the gameplay could have held up as well. After all, gameplay is the most important part of a game.

Instead of painting everything to move on in the level, you have to beat a lot of missions. “Beat all of the enemies.” “Infiltrate a building” etc. This gets very repetitive as per usual and of course, if you die while infiltrating a level, get ready to do it all again. You can’t skip cutscenes either by the way so that also adds onto the time. I’m not sure how long it took me to beat this game, but it may have actually been around 20 hours, which is crazy. To think, I had actually picked this game as the next one to play because I thought it’d be a short breather before tackling FF VII as my next RPG. I couldn’t be more wrong!

The sidescroller parts aren’t even that terrible once you’re in the buildings. If that was the only part of the game, I would probably like it a lot more. There are some puzzles, but none of them are all that bad and it’s fun enough. The 3D part which I liked so much in the first game is what hurts this sequel because of the bad level designs. Ironically, the game only gets good once you are close to beating the level. After the final challenge, you are given the option of leaving the level of playing around for a while. By this point, the timer is gone so you can take your time having fun. That is when the game finally looks appealing, but by then it’s a little too late. It is convenient for the trophies of course, but beyond that….it’s way too late. By then, you’ll have very little interest in taking the game up on its offer.

Overall, De Blob 2 is a very underwhelming sequel to the first game. While the final level is the best one and the game shows promise at several points, it simply comes across as lazy and uninspired. There are only two bosses in the game and they’re both tackled the same exact way. The final boss even turns large for no reason except for the fact that it could then have the same boss mechanics as the first one. The rest of the mini bosses are the same wheel that you fight over and over again. The plot is terrible and one of the worst…if not The worst plot that I have ever played. The game should have been as good as a 7, but all of the negatives add up rather quickly and the result is that we’re given a game that I never want to play again. Trophies may lure me back in, but otherwise…it’s over!

Overall 4/10

Knack’s Quest Review

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I’m still working on completing the PS4 Knack game, but in the meantime I decided to go ahead and try out the mobile version. This little app game allows you to gather pieces for the gadgets in the PS4 game so you can send them along and save yourself some time…in theory. This is helpful since the gem system in the PS4 game is rather tedious. You only get one part per treasure chest and you can only find them in story mode. Even Level Select doesn’t have them. It’s impossible to get all of the pieces in one playthrough and you could end up playing the game over several times without getting everything. That’s essentially why this game was made. If you play it long enough, you can eliminate around 80% of the grind. It’s a great concept and unlike other free to play games, there is no waiting period to tempt you into buying stuff. It actually plays out like a real game and has a ton of replay value. I could play it for hours easily since it’s like Pokemon Shuffle, but without the “Play 10 times and then wait an hour” rule. Unfortunately, no free game can be perfect at this rate as this one runs into some rather large issues.

Before I get into that, I’ll explain the gameplay. It’s your average mix and match title. You have to connect 3 or more gems of a certain color to get points. You rinse and repeat until you clear the level. You have to work fast or you’ll lose and you won’t keep any of the gems. Also, once you’ve charged enough energy to fill up 3 Sun Stones, you can use a super attack that destroys all of the gems of a certain color. (You choose the color) The game doesn’t tell you this so it’s a good heads up although you’d eventually find out about it while playing the game. The Stones charge very rapidly so you’ll be tempted to give them a whirl at some point. Each level has 3 phases and once you’ve beaten them all you move on to the next round. I believe that there are around 6 chapters so it is a fairly short game. I beat it in 2-3 hours I’d say.

After you beat the game, you unlock Unlimited Mode where you keep on earning points until you lose. It’s great for racking them up as I actually got over 999999 during one run, but I teamed up with my Mom to get that. It’d be incredibly hard to do that on your own. To earn a piece for the PS4 game, you only need 20000 at first, but eventually it’ll get to be 300000 or more. To get around that, you can delete the app and then reinstall it. You’ll keep your parts, but the requirement for a piece will go back down to the 20000. The only downside is that you’ll lose unlimited mode until you re unlock it, but I’d say that it’s definitely worth it. After all, Unlimited Mode’s one drawback is that it has a lot of load times every minute, which can get very annoying after a while.

This sounds like a positive review right? The gameplay is a blast and it’s why I look up to Free to Play games a little. The gameplay is always simple, but addictive. The problem is that this is all nullified by the game’s main problem, which literally breaks the game and destroys the score. It is simply a broken game. The app will constantly crash after almost every level and forget about looking at your pieces. Just clicking on any one of them will crash the game and a lot of times this means that the app won’t send them to the PS4 game…defeating the entire purpose. It will also crash during a game at times so you’ll lose whatever gems you may have just acquired. This would be fine if it was once in a while, but it’s constant. The game crashed on me dozens of times. I’m happy to say that I still got my time’s worth as I got around 2 dozen pieces, which has helped me quite a bit, but after a while it is simply not worth it. I don’t understand how this game can be so broken. Maybe it’s just a mobile problem. I read somewhere that IOS games that were ported to mobile are typically not very good. It explains why Madden Mobile had the same problem, albeit it was to a far lesser extent.

That’s really the only negative that I’ve got, but it’s a doozy. The most annoying part is naturally the fact that the crashing will prevent you from transporting your pieces half of the time. It’s also a waste of time to have to constantly open the app once again after it crashes. There is really no excuse for having such a broken product on the market and I’m certainly glad that it is free. It may look very useful on the outside, but it will ultimately start to get on your nerves by the end. At least the graphics are fairly good. The game is nice and bright. There is a lot of recycled footage of course, but it seems like some effort was put into this section. The soundtrack is basically nonexistent though.

Overall, I’d recommend taking a pass on this game. It’s simply not worth the time and patience that the game crashing will cost you. The gameplay is excellent and would have guaranteed the title a 7, but I can’t give it anything above a 5 since it is completely broken and glitched. I highly doubt that any patch will be coming to fix this issue so the game will likely stay in this state forever. If you want to play a free to play title, you’re better off with Pokemon Shuffle or Madden Mobile. Whatever you do, just don’t buy Knack’s Quest unless you really need the parts. If you are in that situation, then just play it for a little to get the quick parts and then get out of there!

Overall 4/10