After buying a Wii U, you will need controllers with Wii Motion Plus in them. For $10 less, you can get these, which are pretty well designed, and I like them a lot. PDP makes great products, and these are no exception. The Afterglow products look cool because they have colored LEDs and transparent cases. I also like the new layout for the controller. The + and – buttons are on the extreme sides of the remote above a. 1 and 2 are diagonally placed, so your thumb doesn’t hit both all the time when holding the remote horizontally. I just found the home button a little hard to press because it is inset with the power button at the top.
The LEDs are bright and vibrant and look cool in the dark. The remote feels solid and sturdy, not cheap like some Wii peripherals. It comes with a strap as well, so the whole package is here. It will fit any rechargeable battery, but it’s a bit tight. One thing you really have to look out for on third-party controllers is the quality of the buttons. They press nicely and give good feedback. I just found the speaker to be a bit quieter than the official ones, and the vibration is a bit softer as well. This is a minor issue, but it still feels nice and is a great product. For $10 less, you get cool LEDs, better button placement, and a solid-feeling controller.
I can’t believe this series has gone on for this long. It was a super-fun game back on the Nintendo 64 and continues to be so. The great thing about Mario Party is that it doesn’t fix what’s not broken. People love this game for its competitive nature and super-fun mini-games. Mario Party 9’s mini-games are pretty solid and some of the best yet; they just lack content.
The game consists of about seven boards, but instead of everyone moving around individually, you’re all stuck in a vehicle. This makes things fun because you are all heading in the same direction, and one person can decide everyone’s fate. The boards are fun and offer a lot of variety. Bowser’s Space Station has a jackpot and jackpot spaces. If you land on a mini-star space, it adds to the jackpot. If the jackpot reaches 20 mini-stars, a mini-game is thrown at you to determine who gets them. There are mini-bosses in each level, traps, hazards, and other fun things on each board. Blooper Beach has two islands that consist of negative stars and mini-stars. You are stuck on this six-space island until someone lands on the space to get out. Everyone loses stars or gains them until that happens. This is what I mean by saying that one person can decide someone’s fate. It’s like going on an adventure together, and you have to stick together.
However, I wish there were some other boards that allowed individual movement. You can unlock new vehicles with points in the museum, but there’s just not enough variety here. The great thing about having so few boards is that when you memorize them, things get challenging, and you can get really good and have an advantage over your player. With everyone staying together, the person whose turn it is is the captain. There are captain event spaces where that person gets to choose who moves during the board mini-game. It’s really a lot like Monopoly, where one person will be way ahead and then suddenly lose at the end. That’s so great about everyone sticking together, but it does have downsides.
The mini-games are the best part of Mario Party, and there are a lot of them here. They all use the Wiimote in a unique way, and each is different and a blast. Unlike other Mario Party mini-games, very few are unbalanced here. Everyone has a fair advantage, and most require actual skill thanks to Wiimote’s design. Some games have you tapping buttons really fast, shaking, pinching, and grabbing stuff, carefully tilting things around, and many others. Some Bowser boss fights get really fun and challenging, where everyone has to work together sometimes and then against each other during other times. One mini-game has Bowser throwing dice onto the platform. Each side has a player’s face, but one side has Bowser’s. You want your face to show up the most, but not Bowser’s. You have to decide whether to work together or against each other in order to get the most attack points.
A real big letdown is that there’s no online play. This game is really only fun with other people and is completely boring for you. It’s great to relax with, but the AI is usually cheap and not fun to play mini-games against. I also wish there were other characters, boards, and more extras for the $50 price tag. The graphics look great; there’s just a lot of aliasing, which is to be expected with the ancient Wii hardware. If you have a lot of friends with whom you play games at home, this is a must-have.
Modern Warfare gets the bad rep of being the game that sheep flock to. “Only morons play it,” some people say. “The only people online are 12-year-olds.” The problem is that those are true, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t a fun game. Sure, the game became too mainstream for everyone, and their mom has played it, but that doesn’t make it a bad game or series. What makes the game tiring is that nothing really changes. Modern Warfare 3 feels like Modern Warfare 2.5. Not much has changed from the second game other than the campaign and a visual upgrade. There are even recycled maps from the second game!
The campaign is a disappointment because it just doesn’t feel as awesome as the past two games. It feels like a gallery shooter more than ever and has very little challenge. The epic set pieces aren’t as grand as previous games and have great potential at first, but no climax ever happens. Levels are really short without the varied gameplay clips that are thrown in. The story is confusing if you haven’t followed the games until now, but you aren’t missing much. The story between Captain Price and Soap MacTavish is interesting, but it just falls flat in the end. The campaign is entertaining at best and a lot of fun, but it isn’t solid like the past two games. What you are mainly here for is multiplayer, because that will keep you coming back for more.
The layout is like all previous Modern Warfare games without much change. You can customize your loadout, callsign, emblem, and unlock new items by ranking up. The only new additions really are how you score. Things like rescuing people and a few other things. To be honest, the controls and feel of the entire game haven’t really changed much. There are a few tweaks here and there, but it doesn’t feel like an actual sequel. The weapons are a little different, but everything is just the same when it comes to how you unlock them. There are a few different killstreak rewards, like the IMS and a few others, but if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, right? There are a few different perks, and that is really it. The maps aren’t designed as well as in the past two games and aren’t as memorable. There are a couple of maps in here from MW2, like the Airport map, which is a classic, but the others have to just grow on you. There are a lot more modes in this one, but I was missing the modes from Black Ops, which I felt should have been included. One in the Chamber was a favorite of mine, but the whole money system from Black Ops is also missing. I would rather buy upgrades than wait to unlock them, but what can you do?
The graphics received a huge upgrade and look decent on the PC, but look pretty bad on the consoles. There’s a slight texture upgrade, some SSAO effects, and anti-aliasing, but they are all very minor. You don’t need a powerful rig to run this game maxed out. There are a few cool scenes in the campaign, but overall, this doesn’t feel like a true sequel but more of an expansion. Multiplayer is super fun, and most players will pour dozens of hours into the addictiveness of it. There are a few complaints about the multiplayer, such as when you start. You are fighting people who are level 80 prestige and have all the best stuff, so don’t get discouraged. Quick scoping is a thing people complain about where you can look down your scope almost instantly, which is considered cheating by some. They fixed this by making it a perk, but if you play Battlefield 3, you will notice the difference.
Modern Warfare 3 has a lackluster single-player campaign, and not much has changed in multiplayer. The new maps are fun but not as memorable as past games. There are a few tweaks here and there, but no major changes you should expect. For the low price these days, it is well worth it, but just don’t buy it expecting a cinematic campaign and tons of multiplayer changes like you saw from Modern Warfare 1 to 2. I also have to say that there are a surprisingly large number of cheaters and hackers due to the lack of dedicated servers, but this only seems to happen at night. Still worth a purchase.
Need for Speed has taken many different directions, but the mid- to late-2000s were the worst for the series. ProStreet is probably the worst NFS I have played, and I can’t really recommend this to even hardcore fans. The game has good customization options and varied event types, but after a couple dozen races, you will be bored.
Races consist of earning a certain amount of points to “dominate the day.” These events range from drifts, drags, grips, time attacks, and sector shootouts. Sector Shootout is where you have a track divided into sections, and you must get the fastest times in those sections to win. Grip races are straight-up races, and the rest is history. Out of these events, the drags are the best because you need to heat up your tires before racing. You can only win by getting perfect shifts, but after you get NOS upgrades, the drags become really easy. There are 1/4 mile and 1/2 mile drags, but I would have liked to see 3/4 and 1 mile drags as well. All the other races are pretty boring, and drifting in the game feels like dragging an 18-wheeler through the dirt. No matter what car you use, drifting never feels right and is a huge pain to pull off.
The game was one of the first NFS games that used real-time damage, which is supposed to affect the way the car drives but really doesn’t. You can get light and heavy damage, but I never really noticed much of a hit in performance. If you damage your car, you have to repair it before the next race, but you can use cash or repair markers that you earn. My biggest issue with these “Race Days” is that if you quit in the middle, you have to restart the whole thing. This drove me nuts because I couldn’t go upgrade my car and come back.
Upgrading your cars is pretty fun because there are a lot of options for both performance and cosmetics. You can fine-tune your car as well, but there is a quick upgrade option for impatient people. You can only have certain cars for certain event types, but you can only save customizations as blueprints. This allows you to have multiple looks and load-outs for your cars. I found that cash is given very slowly and parts are very expensive, so you won’t be upgrading very often, which is a huge bummer.
Lastly, the game is just monotonous. After about a couple dozen races, you will feel fed up with the same tired races over and over again. The physics feel too weighty, and most cars feel the same no matter how you upgrade them. The whole game is really unbalanced and poorly designed. The game doesn’t even officially support the Game for Windows controller and just shows keyboard buttons instead. I just gave up about halfway through because some races were always easy, no matter who you were, and some were extremely difficult, no matter how good you were. The visuals are decent, but not anything to write home about. The announcer is just extremely annoying to listen to with his stoner one-liners, and he just blabbers on about nonsense.
Overall, ProStreet wasn’t very good when it came out and isn’t 5 years later. There were, and still are, better racing games out there. I can’t really recommend this game unless you like monotony and repetitive nonsense. ProStreet is half-broken and highly unbalanced. As it stands, this is probably the worst NFS out there right now.
Rayman has been a struggling series since the PS1 games came out. There have been spin-offs, ports, and terrible sequels since then, but Origins redeems the series. There isn’t really a story here except that you’re saving lums and princesses of different lands to earn powers. There aren’t any cut scenes or voiceovers because this goes back to its old-school roots, and yes, the game is hard.
The controls are silky smooth, and so are the animations. It helps that the controls are responsive, as well as that you can jump around the levels that require focus and skill to navigate. Obstacles lay in your paths, such as treacherous waters, enemies, and fire. Each new area has unique enemies, hazards, and an overall layout that is very nice to look at. Enemies can be jumped on or punched, and after that, they inflate. You can use the Vita screen to touch them so they pop to get the light inside, which actually makes this version more forgiving than the consoles. When you jump around to find lums, you will see them in hidden objects, and some will be trapped in bubbles. You can touch them to pop them up to add to your collection, which is much easier. While you’re bounding about the cleverly laid-out levels, you can find hidden areas with cages full of lums that you can find by hearing their cries for help.
The game is just so cleverly designed, with levels that are tricky but not so tough that you can’t forgive the game. You may restart a few times, but it actually requires skill instead of luck or exploiting the game’s faulty controls (if they were). Sliding around on the ice, dashing towards an enemy and punching them, grabbing onto a ledge, and then jumping up on top of an enemy can be tricky, but it can be done with a little practice and a quick reaction. The levels slowly get harder, but the whole point is to collect the lums and get medals at the end of each level. Save enough, and you can unlock special treasure missions where you have to chase one down through a series of tricky obstacles.
Origins is just so clever and charming that you can’t really hate it. There are plenty of characters to unlock, as well as extras. This game is perfect for people who love exploring levels and finding secrets. There are plenty of levels and things to find to keep you busy for many hours. I do wish there were some more features for the Vita besides just using the touchscreen. However, what is here works, and nothing got downgraded from the consoles. I can only really recommend this game to hardcore platformer fans because of the difficulty.
Everyone was bullied at some point in their life during school, so Rockstar took it upon themselves to help people reflect on that and become bullies themselves or anti-bullies. Jimmy Hopkins is sent to Bullworth Academy because he’s a huge jerk and his mom and stepdad hate him. The story really makes you reminisce about high school because of how accurately it portrays it. You walk around, and you see jocks beating up nerds and greasers beating up preps. Of course, due to the game’s age (about 7 years old), there are problems, glitches, and stiffness due to the PS2’s limited technology, but the overall atmosphere and fun content will keep you hooked.
The game is based on Grand Theft Auto, so if you play that series a lot, you are right at home here. You get a mini-map with stars marked on it, a combat system, a vehicle system, as well as a shooting system. They all work really well and even better than the GTAgames, but don’t forget, this is a teen-rated game, so you can forget about Jimmy killing hookers and pushing drugs. After you get familiar with the engine, you will be introduced to the combat system, which works well thanks to a lock-on mode and target switching with the right analog stick (keyboard controls stink). A health bar is displayed around the target’s feet, and the melee combat system is surprisingly deep. You unlock combos and moves by bringing transistors to the bum that lives behind the school.
With grapples, takedowns, and various combos comes ranged combat, which is fun thanks to the interesting and fun weapons. Instead of rocket launchers and AK-47s, we get potato spud launchers, bottle rocket launchers, slingshots, stink bombs, itching powder, spray paint (for tagging), eggs, and various breakable melee weapons that are awesome to use. You can’t jack cars, but you can jack bicycles, and you have a skateboard in your inventory. I really wish there were more vehicles to use than just these two things, but it works because the world isn’t big enough to need anything faster.
The days in Bully go by like school, and of course, you can get busted and, instead of wasted, knocked out like in GTA games. Prefects are the authority on campus, and there are a lot of rules. There are two classes a day, and you will see a bell on your map. If you skip class, you can be busted for truancy, hit kids and get chased for violence, hit girls or adults, and the meter goes red, and everyone runs after you for this. You can be busted for trespassing (being inside a building after hours), theft, vandalism, and all the hijinks of kids, so watch out. Of course, getting busted is actually hard because you can always outrun them, and if a prefect gets a hold of you, you can rapidly press Y to break free. If a teacher or cop gets you, you’re done.
Classes are fun and consist of mini-games like music class, which uses the triggers to tap out the rhythm; biology class, which has you dissecting animals; math class, which has you answering simple questions; shop class, which has you doing button commands to repair bikes; and photography class, which has you snapping pictures. There are more classes, and they help keep you busy between missions and can be fun. When you aren’t doing missions or classes, you can do one of the two jobs in town, which is a paper route and mowing lawns. I really wish there were more jobs, but more on why later. There are also challenges for each faction as well as random activities like people having you egg things, make deliveries, or break into lockers.
Missions are varied and range from throwing snowballs, playing tricks, assaulting faction fortresses, sneaking through an asylum, and helping teachers with adult problems. There’s a lot of variety in the main missions, and it will keep you hooked and wanting to do the next one. I just wish there were more side missions that had a good payoff because money is kind of useless in this game. I rarely spent it and didn’t really need to. There is also a lame dating system built in where you can compliment a girl, then give her a gift, and then she’ll kiss you. This is as far as it goes, and after trying it once, you won’t do it again.
All this sounds fun, and it is, but it comes with a price. Everything feels stiff, stilted, and linear, which really detracts from the experience. The same NPCs walk around, sayings repeat constantly, animations are stiff and awkward, the same music repeats constantly, the sound is low quality, and the graphics aged poorly with low poly models and some ugly textures. The only things that haven’t aged are the excellent voice acting, memorable characters, and charming and witty dialog. This is the best part about Bully because of characters like Gary, who are whacked sociopaths who you want to just punch. The world isn’t very big at all, and while you can change your clothes and hair and earn money, there’s really no reason for it. You can find collectibles in the world, do races, and more, but honestly, for what? There’s no payoff, and I guess you just do it to be the best completionist.
I could go on about how stiff the game feels or the multiple glitches that I encountered, but after completing the 10-15-hour campaign, I felt no reason to continue on. I couldn’t bear hearing the same saying, listening to the same music, or seeing the same NPC walk by me. Back in the day, it was revolutionary, but now it’s just a wrinkle in the game timeline as something unique and playful because there isn’t a single game out there like it. Enjoy the game for the great dialog, characters, and story, as well as the fun mini-games and varied missions, but if you can’t overlook the many faults, then move on.
Need for Speed has taken many different directions in the last decade, but The Run tries to go back to its roots while trying something new. Sure, you’re being chased by cops, doing illegal stuff in a car, having great graphics, and having a super-fast sense of speed. It sounds like an NFS game, right? Well, in a sense, it is, but it won’t change haters’ minds or make hardcore fans happy. This isn’t the true return like Hot Pursuit was, but it does convey a nice idea. You play a guy named Jack Rourke who owes a mob a lot of money. You hear about a race from San Francisco to New York, and your “agent” will give you a cut of the prize money and make your little mob problem go away. You start at the 200th place and make your way to the 1st.
This sounds like it would take forever or be just one straight race, but it isn’t. The game is broken down into 10 stages, and each stage has various races. The terrain obviously changes a lot, and this means lots of different environments to look at, which gets help from EA’s latest Frostbite 2 engine that was used in Battlefield 3. While it doesn’t look as amazing as that game, it looks fantastic and is probably the best-looking NFS game to date. There are so many different places to race—snow, open fields, farms, factories, cities, you name it. There are several different race types, but they are thrown up variously, and the overall experience is repetitive.
Races range from gaining a certain number of positions to battling against the clock in elimination races. There are “boss” races that have you racing a good distance; there are also races solely against the clock to catch up time. That’s about all there is, and the only thing keeping you from getting really bored are the constantly changing environments, which are great to look at, and not one stage is the same. There are some better elements that make the game thrilling, and these are the survival sections. One has you running from an avalanche, another from a helicopter shooting at you, as well as a mountain demolition, but these are so far, and few of you yearn for them between the constant drag of gaining positions.
While these moments are highly entertaining, and probably the moments in the game, a few times Jack will get out of his car and initiate quick time events, which are also entertaining but pretty pointless since you normally don’t play an on-foot NFS game. Don’t worry, you don’t control him; just think of it as an interactive cutscene.
A great NFS game needs fast real-world cars, and there are plenty here, from Ferrari to Lamborghini. You will find them here. You can change cars by pulling into gas stations throughout stages, but overall, you usually stick with one car until the next group is unlocked. You can earn experience through things like drifting, jumping, overtaking cars, etc., but I found this kind of useless since you only earn one thing when leveling up, and it’s usually an avatar or something like that. You can use resets during a race if you crash or really screw up, but watch out; they are limited.
The game features Autolog, which everyone has grown to love, plus there are Challenge Series races to do after you beat the short 4-5 hour campaign mode. Multiplayer is pretty standard and nothing to write home about, but The Run is a fun weekend rental and nothing more. You will quickly forget about this one, but the whole idea is fun while it lasts.
Kart racing games tend to be able to beat the king of them all: Mario Kart. While that game started, all a few entertaining offbeat ones have raced by, but this is Sega’s serious attempt at it, and it works. You can play as almost every major Sega mascot, such as most Sonic characters and familiar faces from Space Channel 5, Super Monkey Ball, and others. You race around tracks that reflect the design and setting of various Sega games while using power-ups to stay ahead of the pack.
The game has a power sliding ability that will increase your boost, which is the key to getting in the first place, but also picking up capsules that hold random power-ups such as a homing missile, mines, shields, speed boosts, and various other power-ups we have seen countless times. The game has a great sense of speed, and sliding around corners and doing various stunts is exciting, but the overall experience is borderline juvenile and very easy, even in the hardest mode. There are various missions you can complete as well as buying characters with Sega Miles, but this only goes so far.
The ideal way to play is with friends, but you need several controllers to do so because there is no online play. Why this was stripped from the PC version beats me, but it really brings down the experience since crowding around one computer isn’t very convenient. Once you do get some friends aboard, the game is a blast, and power-sliding and knocking enemies down makes for great laughs.
But when it’s all said and done, the game is a really average kart racer and has dated graphics as well as some annoying sounds. The game just feels the same no matter what you do as a single player, and I highly doubt anyone over 10 can play all 50+ missions without going crazy. If there was just some online play in here, it could sweeten the deal some, but the single-player can only be tolerated for so long.
The Driver series has been pretty rocky ever since the first game came out in 1998. The PS1 classic was one of a kind but sparked some bad-to-average sequels. San Francisco is the comeback for the series, and it is very strong and will please fans of the original. The story is kind of weird and takes a supernatural spin, with the lead guy (John Tanner) getting into an accident and falling into a coma after wanted criminal Jericho smashes into his car. Tanner can now leave his body and float around the city, entering any car he wants, and this is what the game is wrapped around.
Most of the game consists of various side missions such as dares, speed chases, races, protecting vehicles, etc. You can leave the car on the fly, move around to any car, and smash into the car you need to take down. This can also be used in races to slow opponents down so you can win, but don’t consider this cheating since most of the races are very challenging. Sometimes you have to swap between two cars constantly and keep them in 1st and 2nd place, which is pretty exhilarating. Or you can just enter cars in oncoming traffic and smash them up to win the race. This can also be done on other various missions, and it’s great fun and never really gets old to take a big rig and smash it into cars to take them out.
However, this all gets old very fast because there are 50+ missions to finish, and as you unlock more of the city, you get more side missions to complete. Dares consist of doing certain things, like drifts, speed limits, jumps, etc. The reason for completing these is willpower, which you can use to buy cars and new garages to unlock more cars. The selection of cars is awesome, with pretty much every popular car you can think of. They even added the DeLorean, and if you hit 88 mph, you get willpower! Driving in first-person view looks great, and the car handles well. Drifting, jumping, and doing crazy stunts are great fun. The city is huge, and you really won’t get bored here during the first half of the game. After the last half picks up, you will be more engaged in the interesting story and probably stop with the side missions because they almost repeat forever.
On another note, the main missions are really interesting, and towards the end of the game, you really get to use your supernatural powers. Overall, the main missions have more diversity than the side missions. The voice acting is great, and the characters are people you actually get interested in because of the drama the story brings you through. While the whole story is hokey, you still get a kick out of being able to veer away from the realistic type of game while keeping it feeling pretty real with awesome licensed cars. You can boost in these cars and unlock a thrill cam, but the boost feels useless at low speeds because it doesn’t boost you at all, and you can’t really use it to boost out of a spin.
Multiplayer is pretty fun, but overall, you will get sick of the game due to the constantly repeated missions, and there’s only so much you can do with a car. I highly recommend this to anyone into cars, action, or just plain old arcade-style racers. If you can stomach the repetitive side missions, or if that’s just what you like, then you will find a good 25+ hour game here with the huge city of Frisco ready to explore.
You are Nyx, who is a winged goddess that falls in love with Icarus, but the sun-god Helios releases rage upon the gods and burns the earth into a fiery apocalypse, but you insist on defying the gods to save Icarus. While the story isn’t very deep, there is one there, and you do want to see what happens to Icarus at the end. Not very often will you run into “cut scenes” that have just some text across the screen and gibberish being spoken. This is an indie game after all, so you are probably coming for the unique gameplay.
While originally designed for the Wii, it works well on a mouse and keyboard. You control Nyx’s power with your mouse and hers with the keyboard. You can jump up to five times and also glide for about 8 seconds, and these are keys to gameplay. Jumping around is the main part of the game, and you must time everything carefully. The game is not a breeze, and even the platforming is tricky thanks to the game’s ability to make you multitask. With the mouse, you can move certain blocks around, shoot lightning, move fireballs, and pull around pillars. There is a lot to the gameplay, so you have to really play it to understand how deep it is. You have to be able to move Nyx around while also manipulating the environment with the mouse, or you will never get anywhere.
While the unique combo works well, it does get very difficult at points. The first couple of levels are novel and neat, but then the game quickly feels repetitive and tiresome until you start learning new powers later on in the game. While the gameplay is unique and deep, it’s really the same thing over and over again. Jump around 50 platforms and move this block or pillar around. Each level looks the same, and the art style has a Greek mythology theme to it, but the textures are flat, and no visual upgrades were given for the PC version. I also felt the physics was a little floaty because everything moved like there was little gravity.
The checkpoints are a little unfair because they are put in weird spots. Instead of sticking them right before a really hard section, you have to go through an easy section to get back to where you died. There are also only a couple of boss fights, and they are fairly easy due to the better accuracy of a mouse over the Wiimote. Overall, NyxQuest is a fun little indie game that really challenges your multitasking skills.
thebinarymessiah.com 
Yep! The fact that I forgot about this game until you made a comment proves that.