227 public written reviews
The views here are this user’s only and are not representative of Giant Bomb's thoughts and opinions on the discussed video game. GB's official reviews reside at giantbomb.com/reviews.
Super Punch-out(!!) stars MAC, whom might be, or be related to, Little Mac from the previous game. One can’t be so completely sure, what with this MAC having a muscular frame and a goofy haircut that would have done the New Kids on the Block proud. He also lacks esteemed manager Doc Louis in his corner, due to either a dispute over MAC’s use of growth hormone or Mac’s refusal to join the Nintendo Fun Club. I can…
If there is but one employer in the entire world that I admire but would never want to work for, it’s Dana White. Here is a real man’s boss. He praises the hard work of people who brutalize each other for a living, yet has the common sense to *try* to retire Chuck Liddell while his head is still superimposed on his shoulders. Likewise, to be an enemy of Dana White is to be verbally dismembered. The man is a vanguard…
In a virtual plane, there exists three dimensions, referred to in a mathematical equation as X, Y and Z. As of late, young gamers have shown an eagerness to shun the letter Z. Platformers that cling to just X and Y have been enjoying something of a renaissance thanks to handhelds, downloadable remakes of old sidescrollers, and whatever the hell LittleBigPlanet is supposed to be. But on the other hand, the 3D…
Read the full review Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction
There’s a consistently growing insecurity about the length of games. If one high profile website too many labels a game too short, then the hardcore gaming public becomes worrisome of investing $70 into a game they could likely finish that very day. (Knowing full well that the woman in your life wishes you’d spend that money and day giving her attention.) As a result, players who booted up Devil May Cry 4 developed…
Vin Diesel is in the midst of the safest comeback attempt I’ve seen in a long time, in that it appears that he’s revisiting every property he’s ever seen any success in. First he reprised his role in the latest Fast and the Furious movie, alongside most of the original cast in a movie that was all too identical to all movies Fast and Furious before it. And now we revisit the Riddick character in his only multimedia…
Read the full review The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena
The Wind Waker is a game that has been subject to a modicum of controversy. To my recollection, it could very well be the most controversial kid-friendly, cartoon-styled piece of family entertainment to not feature cropped-in naked girls or questionable wording. (Go on Youtube and look up “Disney sex” to skewer your perception of The Lion King). Part of this is the cause of Zelda fans and haters, arguing the merits…
A lesson that all gamers must come to grips with is the idea that not every game is accessible or interesting to non-gamers. While many college boys in dorms filled with Xboxes and Halo players who smoke substances that match the Chief’s green armor, the rest of us have to contend with girlfriends, cousins, younger siblings and jock classmates whom have a hard time grasping that one analog stick moves and the other…
So here we have a game that the Guinness Book of World Records proudly proclaims to be the best selling game of all time. When I went to the Guinness museum in , they had a nice little display with a Game Boy Advance set up for anyone that wanted to play Mario 3 for themselves. And while I was eager to sit down and play through the entire game in that one sitting like the platforming geek that I am, this was New…
I’m not exactly the kind of person who jumps for joy every time another sequel is announced to a gaming landscape that is peppered with sequels. (Some game sequels even have their own sequels; look at Call of Duty or the Tom Clancy games.) Yet, my brain will all but completely block out the existence of a new franchise, regardless of what, if any new ideas it may bring to the buffet table that is the holiday season.…
While scientists theorize as to why the dinosaur went extinct, nobody will ask any questions as to why the light-gun shooter is on the endangered species list of genres. Nor will PETA or the WWF have any remote interest into saving the breed of zombie/terrorist shooting simulators. The arcade, their natural habitat, was deforested by the loggers of Time. Their unwillingness to adapt to modern standards made the…
In the early 90s, the then-WWF was caught amidst a major drug scandal, wherein Vince Mcmahon was accused of giving his performers anabolic steroids. The federal government managed to crash down on one Dr. Zahorian for his prescribing drugs to assorted wrestlers and put him in jail. However, some legal mistakes on the government’s behalf and a claim from Hulk Hogan that he enhanced himself on his own volition allowed…
While it’s easy to go back and review an old game that you never played or cared much for in the past, reviewing an old game that you grew up on presents a small challenge. My play experience differs from that of other due to having the innate knowledge of how to solve every single puzzle programmed into my cerebellum, and I’d be degrading a part of my childhood if I were to denigrate the game in question. Likewise,…
Read the full review The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
Resident Evil is an example of a franchise that could’ve only succeeded as a video game. What other film or television series has gotten away with combining the depth of storytelling equal to a Power Rangers episode with the gratuitous violence of a horror film? Such a concept would nary succeed in movie theatres where film ratings are enforced, but the ESRB ratings didn’t quite carry the same weight in a video game…
The 18-35 male is a valuable commodity. They have the kind of money that allows them to afford $500 consoles, and thus makes them the hot target for developers. They work part time jobs at your local supermarket and are usually in some form of debt in spite of their spending habits. In their free time, they enjoy multiple energy drinks, weed to ease the energy drink buzz, and UFC because there are fewer highs more…
So this is my essay. It’s titled “Why I hate the Nintendo DS sometimes”, by me. The thesis to this essay will be “games like Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars makes me hate the Nintendo DS sometimes.” Hopefully handing in this instead of an essay on Macbeth’s greed will still net me a passing grade from my English teacher. I’m fully aware that there’s no way to write an essay titled “Why I hate the Nintendo DS…
What’s in a name? Well many dollars out of the marketing budget for one. I’ve been refusing to give this game a fair shake for the better part of five months by in large for having such a bad name. “Left for Dead” struck me as the title of what would be an uninspired bargain bin shooter, and then to see it referred to as “Left 4 Dead” added an extra layer of tackiness. So I deemed Left 4 Dead the worst-titled game…
Jack Ryan is a CIA agent who must protect his country and his freedom from evil Soviet threats using only his wits and high intellect amidst pressures from US government agents and…no, nevermind. Ubi Soft outright bought the rights to the Tom Clancy name and all properties within it, thus giving them free reign to create Tom Clancy strategy games, Tom Clancy aerial combat games, Tom Clancy’s Extreme Skateboarding,…
AC/DC Live Rock Band Track Pack: An 18-track edition of Rock Band based on the Live at Donington album. Story : In the beginning back in 1955, man didn’t know about a rock ‘n roll or any of that jive for that matter. The white man had the schmaltz and the black man had the blues; no one knew what they were going to do but Tchaikovsky had the news! He said “Let there be sound” and there was sound. He then proclaimed…
Metroid : A popular NES platform/adventure game. One of the first games that could be called in adventure game in that there’s some sense of exploring/invading foreign territory. Story : Nintendo doesn’t view bounty hunters as the mulletarian white trash on television that hunts down pre-cast, harmless law breakers, or intergalactic, armoured villains awaiting a comic death. No, deceased producer Gumpei Yokei viewed…
Eat Lead : The Return of Matt Hazard : A Meta-third person Meta-cover-based Meta-shooter. Forgetting that Eat Lead is billed as a spoof of the video game industry, lets talk about the gameplay first. Your objective, more often than not, is to go from Point A to Point B in a level and shoot…well most of the enemies that move. If the chance to run by an enemy presented itself, I sure as hell took it. The game has a…
Well it’s been awhile since I’ve done a Wii Virtual Console review. So my first 2009 old game review is for… Castlevania 3 : The second good Castlevania game on the NES. Story : One gets the impression that Konami was attempting to be more “cinematic” with Castlevania 3, being that the opening title screen starts with an 8-bit screen of a film reel streaming along. The game starts with the Simon Belmont sprite…
Deadly Creatures: A game about a scorpion and a spider, the type of alliance you’d normally only see in comics when the writer is running out of ideas. Story : Dennis Hopper and Billy Bob Thornton lend their voices to a pair of hillbillies looking for treasure in the desert. Except you’re not playing as Dennis Hopper and Billy Bob Thornton, you’re playing as a tarantula and a scorpion, who’s own paths in life only…
Killzone 2 : Stop me when you’ve heard this pitch before. Imagine a first person shooter where you play as bulky space marines battling evil invaders. The kids will totally eat it up. Story : You play as “Sev”, part of a troop of marines on a mission to invade the enemy homeworld and capture their leader. The enemy is the “Helghast”, a literal army of British Darth Vaders with machine guns. It’s as if someone asked…
Arcana Heart: An all-school girl anime fighting game! Story : A rich, Dennis Rodman-like figure buys an island and invites all of the female fighters together to contests of bikini-clad volleyball and relax in the sun while the player watches and…okay not quite. There’s something about inter-dimensional disturbances and gods and evils and school girls fighting to stop it and I’m not really sure whatsoever what the…
Gonna burn some muscle. Street Fighter 4: A BRAND NEW Street Fighter video game. That’s right, not a “Turbo Edition” of an existing one, not a crossover fighter with SNK or someone else with reused sprites from 1996, a brand new actual fighting game, and you can even unlock Sheng Long, the fighter EGM magazine made up for an April Fools joke back in 1992. Proof positive that a fly stepped on in prehistoric ages will…
Read the full review Fei Long, the hot blooded : Filming a Super Action Movie
So the first 2009 release that I review is going to be a bunch of old games! Sonic’s Ultimate Genesis Collection: A really big compilation of Sega Genesis games. Story: Once apon a time, Sega mattered in the same way that In Living Color mattered. Names like Sonic and Golden Axe were once meaningful to a young, badditude-loving generation of aspiring Bart Simpsons and Jonathon Taylor Thomases before they were…
New Super Mario Bros: A two-dimensional side scroller in the vein of…Mario Bros. Story : A dystopian tale of love and loss, examining the inner workings of the human psyche under extreme duress in an age of industrial crisis. Just kidding, Princess gets kidnapped. Though in a sign that this is one of the less important Mario games, it’s Baby Bowser and not full-grown ordinary Bowser that you’ll chase after. I will…
Resistance 2 : The First Person Shooter of the Month! In particular, Sony’s fifth or sixth-odd attempt at mimicking Halo, including all the Killzones and Hazes of the world. Story : Why it’s the ever popular Humans versus Aliens! Actually I’m not quite too sure what these “Chimera” are supposed to be. Are they’re alien invaders, a virus that infects humans, or a combination? That had to have gotten those spaceships…
Valkyria Chronicles: The shiny, big-eyed fantasy and magic version of World War 1. Story: So two fictitious nations in a fake version of are waging war over a fake non-renewable energy source. Along the way, Welkin, a teenage aspiring teacher with no military experience, gets involved with Alicia, a teenage aspiring trooper with slight military experience, and the two of them survive an assault on their hometown by…
LittleBig Planet: The forerunner of the “Game 2.0” movement, a 2D sidescroller that allows the common man the power to create their own levels. Story : The supposed storyline existence behind the world of LittleBig Planet is that all stray bits of imagination from human minds floats up and condenses in space as part of this giant planet. I know this to be a lie, judging by the lack of breasts in LittleBig Planet.…
Motorstorm : Pacific Rift : An offroad racing game. Yep. An offroad racing game is Motorstorm Pacific Rift. Story : There doesn’t seem to be a storyline, so lets invent one. The Coors Light Offroad Sex Party Power Team is throwing their latest mystery party contest (the ones that are always on commercials and boxes every season) at an island in the Pacific for a weekend of intervehichle offroad racing excitement and…
Metal Gear Solid 4 : Guns of the Patriots: The supposedly FINAL rendition of one of the most popular and bat**** insane franchises in the history of the industry. Story : Here’s something to think about. Guns of the Patriots is the first Metal Gear game in about ten years where you actually play as Solid Snake. Yes, after ten years of having Solid Snake dangled in front of us, only to be baited and switched into…
Read the full review Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots
Dead Space : EA’s brand new Survival-Horror franchise. That statement feels like a lie. Story : Dumb. Okay the story of Dead Space is that you’re on some kind of mission to go to this spaceship. You and your dim-witted crew discover that everyone’s been slaughtered by some kind of monstrous species and now must find a means to survive. The first thing I noticed about Dead Space is that the voice-acting is bad (and…
Sega Superstar Tennis : It’s a tennis game with assorted Sega characters. Or at least the Dreamcast-era Sega characters. Story : I don’t think there is much of a story here other than the story of a bunch of big-eyed cartoon characters getting together to play tennis. Okay, here’s a storyline, one executive at Sega says to another “hey! Nintendo makes tennis games with their franchise characters. We already make…
Fallout 3 : Oblivion-developer ’s open world post-nuclear apocalyptic RPG thingy, combining dread and depression with a smiling 50s cartoon character! Story : The character creation system and tutorial are not-so-subtly tied into your character’s birth and upbringing, within a giant Vault that’s been shut of from the rest of the world. When you’re father (voiced by Liam Neeson and why not?) suddenly escapes, all…
Battle Fantasia : A Cel-shaded, medieval fighting game from Ark System Works, whom are famous for a very wonderfully obscene franchise. Story : So there was this massive evil force, some kind of black-armoured embodiment of all things diabolical, and all the races in this mystical kingdom united to trap him in what looks like some giant volcano. However, evil stirs once more and…well this sounds familiar. Well…
Rayman Raving Rabbids TV Party : A mini-game compilation on the Wii. Surprise surpise. Story : I guess, it consists of a bunch of neurotic rabbits discovering the joy of television and living vicariously through their favorite brain-rotting programs. Most of the parodies are really clever, and everything from the channel logo-flourishes to the Happy Tree Friends-esque cutscenes involving the Rabbids breaking out of…
Prince of Persia : …you know how it’s become trendy in Hollywood to “reboot” franchises, throw away all the backstory from the previous (and usually bad) sequels and start fresh? Batman did it, James Bond did it, Star Trek is going to do it, The Incredible Hulk did it after only one bad movie, and now we have a video game in Prince of Persia, which ignores the Sands of Time trilogy or all of the quick death traps of…
Mirror’s Edge : A first person RUNNING game from Electronic Arts and Battlefield 1942-developer Dice. Story : So evil corporations are ruling and oppressing the masses with their…well they’re evil alright, and whatever makes then so evil is enough to warrant a group of “runners” who leap across rooftops to give each other information that this evil corporation doesn’t want you to know about. Plot develops into some…
Call of Duty : World At War : A World War 2 first person shooter developed by Treyarch, and using the gameplay engine from Infinity Ward’s Call of Duty 4 : Modern Warfare (as well as their boxart design, I guess.) Story : The missions generally fall under two separate, largely unrelated storylines, involving the Americans attacking the Japanese and the Russian invasion of Berlin. Between missions, there are these…
Spiderman : Web of Shadows : An original Spiderman action-adventure game…essentially what we’re getting in the absence of a Spiderman movie for Activision to try to cash in on. They even managed to shoehorn Wolverine in the game (right on the front box) to squeeze out some extra dollars. Story : In what could very well be filed under the most typical form of fan-fiction, Venom is unleashing an army of self-produced…
Quantum of Solace : A first person shooter based on the recent James Bond movie and powered by the Call of Duty 4 engine. Story : Like most video game tie-ins, the story in the Quantum of Solace video game is a random mishmash of plot points from the movie tied together in a way that’s nothing short of incoherent unless you’ve seen the movie(s) that it’s based on. This game in particular goes an extra mile (or…
Chrono Trigger DS : An altered rendition of the celebrated 1995 Super Nintendo RPG. Story : An ordinary, silent joe who just happens to be a sword expert named Chrono (or whatever you’d like to name him, as most text-based RPGs of the time let you name the characters after any profanity you choose) gets involved in his best friend’s experiment gone awry, and their mishap evolves into a quest that involves traveling…
Here's the incredible sales pitch that pushed me over the edge and made me purchase... WWE Smackdown vs. Raw 2009 : THQ’s annual loved and hated WWE wrestling game release. Story : For wrestling fans, 2008 will go down as the year Chris Jericho carried an entire show on his shoulders, Mike Adamle stumbled his way to the top and thus proving that talent is nary rewarded, Edge went to hell and nobody raised any…
Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix : The latest update to Street Fighter 2. That’s right, it’s 2008 and there’s yet ANOTHER re-release of Street Fighter 2. Story : Well, I guess Street Fighter 2 set the standard back in its’ heyday, of fighting games having incredibly cheesy storylines. The core of the story is that there’s an evil superpowered dictator and to get to him, you’re going to have to beat up an…
Gears of War 2: The more heterosexual Gear -named franchise. Story : Surprise Surprise, it’s humans versus aliens! Or mutants, or some kind of grotesque monster that happens to speak English and have mastery over human guns. This new game’s plot elements include one squadmate’s missing wife, a city that is supposedly humanity’s last refuge, another enemy leader whom ranks above the enemy you killed in the first game…
Castlevania : Judgement : A fighting game comprising of assorted Castlevania characters. An odd concept, to be sure, considering that most people can only name about 2 or 3 actual Castlevania characters. Story : Judgment uses an old cliché of Saturday morning cartoons and comics, bringing in some kind of all-powerful being from another dimension to unite characters from different fictions together for a battle. This…
Wii Music : Apparantly, the next big thing. Story : No story applicable. Other than “this game was a freaking joke when it was presented at E3 in all it’s hairy glory.” But despite all that, Nintendo continued to proclaim that this was their big holiday game of 2008. Wii Music was going to follow in the footsteps of the absurdly popular Wii Sports, Wii Play and Wii Fit, whether we liked it or not. Well, the former…
