Tag Force 4 is the first game in its series set in the Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds series. *So I am in the middle of a Yu-Gi-Oh! binge, and I figured that I don’t want to let this enthusiasm go to waste. Therefore, I am going to try and write a few blog posts about certain games from that franchise that I have fond memories of. I am also writing under the assumption that you, dear reader, have the basic rule...
I’ve put in at least 100 hours into Fire Emblem Fates, even if I don’t consider myself an expert on the game (never played past the normal difficulty). I don’t think it is as memorable as Fire Emblem Awakening, but I really liked playing Fates regardless and I expect to play it for the foreseeable future. Its stories in either the Birthright or Conquest paths are a combination of derivative and...
*This Appleseed movie review is the last of four that I will be doing for the month. For a small primer on the comic series, check out my Appleseed Month announcement here * Appleseed Alpha is an experiment of sorts. It trades in the futuristic cityscape of Olympus for the war-torn streets of New York. Its main characters, as a result, are less optimistic and more antiheroic than their counterp...
I have (sort of) re-used this image from the first Appleseed Month post. But man I am a sucker for that action pose. *This Appleseed movie review is the third of four that I will be doing for the month. For a small primer on the comic series, check out my Appleseed Month announcement here * Appleseed Ex Machina still is a fun cyberpunk action movie that flies by seamlessly and effortlessly. It...
The movie that brought me into the Appleseed universe. *This Appleseed movie review is the second of four that I will be doing for the month. For a small primer on the comic series, check out my Appleseed Month announcement here * My first memories of this Appleseed movie are hazy at best. I remembered that I was roughly ten and that I first watched it in Cantonese. It had robots, explosions, a...
The movie is so bad that I reduced its cover to the smallest size possible. *This Appleseed movie is one of four that I will be doing for the month. For a small primer on the comic series, check out my Appleseed Month announcement here * The movie ends with Deunan Knute setting down flowers for her fallen co-worker from the police force. She takes in and contemplates her colleague's last words...
PEW! PEW!... PEW PEW PEW! Dear anyone who happens to read this, After spending the last few months reintegrating GiantBomb.com back into my life, I am happy to announce that I will be having an Appleseed Month in June. That is, I will be reviewing four animated movies from the Japanese manga series in the following order: June 4 - Appleseed OVA (1988) (*update* it's done! Come check it out here...
The formula for the Ultraman series has been pretty consistent for close to half a century. You have a bunch of giant daikaiju monsters running around the city, and a team of quazi-science-military personnel constructed to fight said daikaiju . Thanks to plot convenience one of the members of said team can transform into a giant alien warrior who is a part of the Ultraman race. The Ultraman of...
From left to right: Zoe, Tommy, Takuya, JP and Koji. Meet Takuya, Koji, Zoe, Tommy and JP. They are five teenagers with attitude who will become the unwitting saviors of our world against the forces of evil! If I blank out the names above, you might have guessed that I was talking Power Rangers or Super Sentai. But in fact, I could also be referring to characters from Digimon Frontier, a 2002-0...
I wrote a very short review of the video game based off of Rise of the Guardians, an animated movie for kids, on my blog. Is this game just another segment of the cash cow? Or is it better than anyone can possibly imagine?
Lakers/NBA/basketball fan? These guys are worth your while. These two assume that you have some knowledge of the NBA, especially info about the Los Angeles Lakers. From time to time they also drop an F-Bomb to make a point, thus ruling them out as family entertainment. That being said, if you are a Laker follower, an NBA aficionado , or a b-ball junkie who wants some smart yet funny analysis on...
Is Code Lyoko Evolution worth your time? Here's my opinion. In my last blog post I went over the general premise, plot and structure of Code Lyoko Evolution [CLE], a show that continues the story of the original Code Lyoko cartoon. This post is largely going to contain analysis. Specifically, I am going to actually give an opinion as to whether or not this new series is watchable or not. If you...
Is Code Lyoko really evolved? Or is it more of the same? Here's the 101 on the new series. Hello dear reader, It has been a while since I wrote anything about Code Lyoko. In case you are unaware, Code Lyoko is a French anime that depicts a handful of children entering a digital world named Lyoko to defeat the evil virus XANA, all the while juggling school responsibilities and what not. I have r...
I return to Ultimate Spider-Man after a major hiatus. *Dear reader, unfortunately Giantbomb.com still refuses to allow me to submit reviews, now the site says "Please select an object [to review]" although I chose the game to review for a thousand times. So I'm just going to post the review here. Apologies for the inconvenience. ------ Ultimate Spider-Man is one of those games I really wanted t...
I am back to talk about Teen Titans: Battle Blitz Before writing this article I told my friend how excited I was to start this section of my "memoir". I really was excited to reflect an enthusiasm about this game that I would never be able to replicate ever again. I wanted to talk about arguably my two favorite characters of the game, both of whom were added at the same time. As the picture par...
It is time for me to move away from the consoles for now, and talk about Teen Titans: Battle Blitz. I'm going to stop doing Rapid Fire Reviews for the interim; I think the subsequent entries just weren't as good as I've hoped to be, balancing between compact and informative. For now, I'll write about games that I was very fond of but aren't either console games or handheld games. The games I'll...
I look back at one of my favorite PSP games, the 3rd Birthday, in this edition of Rapid Fire. Foreword: This is a very truncated version of my 4000-word, highly recommended, review of the 3rd Birthday for the PSP. If you want more details as to why I gave the game the rating that it has, hop on down to that review ; I go over most if not all the things about the game.I did omit parts of the gam...
Hero or villain? The choice is yours in Fable 2 Some games are played for the challenge, to stretch your tactical chops to the limit. Fable 2 isn't that type of game. You aren't going to run into any difficulty roadblocks or the like when you play it, but that doesn't discount the fact that Fable 2 is still a quality RPG game. It has an great open world, full of quests and missions worth your t...
The crew of lovables star in Nier for the Xbox 360/PS3 You know the old saying: Don't judge a book by its cover. However it is nonetheless difficult to have a good impression of the game N ier when you first see footage of it. The graphics look very dated, with texture fitting more for a Playstation game than a contemporary XBox 360 game. But here are some reasons why you should give this seemi...
You ready to soar? Foreword : This is going to be one of (hopefully) several mini-reviews in the spirit of the way Toonami looks at games , as I still am unable to post reviews for Giantbomb.com due to a glitch . I am going to keep doing this until the issues are resolved. --- Sonic is one of the fastest video game characters since the days of the Sega Genesis. So seeing the Blue Blazer ride on...
Cytus 2.0 : Androids, tricky songs and orchestra A while ago I reviewed an excellent game for the iPhone/iPad called “Cytus”. Here’s the link for the review , but in sum I loved the game thanks in large part to its phenomenal soundtrack and its sublime presentation. A year later and now the Cytus in the App Store is so much different than the Cytus I started with. The purpose of this post is to...
RC's Journal December 14th, 2012. Seen both sides of the coin today. Shooting in the state of Connecticut today, among the dead include shooter and grade-school children. One of those moments in which you remember again the darkest depths that humanity can sink to. A moment that makes you remember that you are capable of the same. Not an angel, not exempt from the meat grinder and sins of the w...
Just going to run with the idea.As a gamer, have you ever encountered one character in a game that you were just so interested in, or really like, and yet this type of sentiment is not shared by a lot of people (if not at all?) As an extension do you feel like you want to point that character out to your gaming peers and explain your affection to this character fully? This is where this experim...
Eden awaits... I probably should have done something a lot sooner, because I haven't picked up a review pen since who knows when, but finally I've settled on reviewing Child of Eden for the XBox 360/ Kinect. Just a progress report on me playing it. I did beat the whole game once so that's a solid foundation there. However the one missing piece is playing via the Kinect because I don't own the d...
Dear reader, This is RayCarter. I've been reviewing games (and getting recs) since roughly.. I forgot... and I'm now approaching my 50th review. Certainly it's not as much some other devoted reviewers on this site but 50 is a milestone nonetheless. I was just wondering if there are any games that you want me to review. I did have Fable 2 and 3 on the docket but maybe that can wait... I want to...
Hi. RayCarter here. I am going to set a schedule for myself concerning game reviews. For the month of July I did a Ninja Month, when I reviewed 4 ninja games (2 from Tenchu, 2 from Ninja Gaiden). This month, though, I am not going to follow a theme per se, but just trot out reviews about 4 games I've beaten already and played extensively even after the fact. Here they are. Not a very sexy list...
Hi everyone, This is RayCarter here. I am a member of the GiantBomb community and I've written over 30 or so reviews about various video games. Of course, I am into some not-as-mainstream titles like Megaman Battle Network or Dynasty Warriors, although I have wrote about some more notable games like Prototype 2 or The Third Birthday. A month ago I've reviewed three games from the Code Lyoko ani...
Update: With the realization that no one was following my work for the past month, I am writing about a show that not too many people watch. If you have to know, it's about 5 kids fighting a malevolent computer program. by digitizing into a virtual world. For more, information, here's a blogpost I wrote earlier to hash out more details. Games Reviewed: Code Lyoko: Get Ready to Virtualize (DS) C...
“Suddenly copying and borrowing ideas from other good games shamelessly sounds like a GREAT plan” To all who are reading this piece, I apologize. I’ve made plans to fill up the entire month of May with a Code Lyoko-thon, where I complete all 3 of the Code Lyoko games and write reviews about each and every one of them. So I feel a bit ashamed to admit that I will stop playing (and therefore not...
Originally submitted in Chronicles of Ciahlo The Lyoko--game-thon begins with the simply named "Code Lyoko", a product released in late 2007 by little-known Game Factory, the same European publisher that will issue the other two Code Lyoko games. It is a game that takes no risk, and while there are flashes of good fun to be had, the game ultimately leaves a relatively mediocre impression. As an...
It was a bit of a lack of foresight. I mean, how can I even begin a Code Lyoko month without even talking about the show in the first place? I am pretty sure that only half of the people reading this know what I am talking about. So, for the Code Lyoko ignorant, I am going to quickly go through the main ideas, concepts and plots surrounding the show. Off we go! Introduction Code Lyoko is an ani...
Hi again! I am here to roll out another list of games that I thought should be given praise (or at least attention) because they are fun and well done. The drill is the same. Might not have some games you've heard of, and some that might be in the mainstream. The games don't have to be released this year, and it doesn't have to be games that I've PLAYED this year. Oh, and no "Game of the Year"...
Foreword: I've already wrote a review of this game. But it didn't show up in the site even after I posted it. This is the second attempt to write a review for this game. Hopefully this one goes through. Untold Legends: The Warriors Code is a sequel but not a sequel. Sony essentially removed everything from the first game except for its core gameplay mechanics. The result is a game set in a diff...
I've been gone for way too long. School, sports, school drama all jammed me out of the Giantbombverse. But thankfully it's New Year's Eve (at least in my hometown of Hong Kong SAR) and since it's the last year of the first decade of 2010, and that it's my last year of high-school before getting whisked off to Claremont, California for university, I've decided to post my top 10 games that I've e...
The Sonic Franchise is in a ditch. I think that everyone who know the blue hedgehog well could conclude that Sonic just wasn't the same since his transition to 3D. His games are now targets for GT and GameSpot to ridicule, pan and beat to the ground. So what did SEGA do wrong this time? What does it need to do in order to return to the level of games from Mario and Legend of Zelda. That's why I...
Now, this is a semi-review of FusionFall, the recent Cartoon Network MMRPG. I call it "semi" because i haven't paid for the game to fully play it, although I believe that I have played enough to make a solid opinion on the game. At first, I had doubts on FusionFall, because I thought it was style over substance, and I stayed away from it for a while. But I overcame my fear for it and tried it....
Hello to anyone who is reading this, I am still debating to myself about what game should I review next, because I am adding 2 games on my "to-do" list": Astro Boy Omega Factor (for the GBA) Code Lyoko (for the NDS) Code Lyoko Box Art So now I am now deciding between 4 handheld games. But I'm going to express my general opinions on the games here: Megaman Zero (GBA): Pretty good, with the gamep...
So, for the first time in my amateur career, I've decided to write a review of a game, which was for Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity. I am sorry that it was over 2000 words, but I felt like I had to explain everything. The game was really banged and bashed, so I felt as if I need to clear its name. And I felt that I did a good job. Please read my review and comment on it. The next review I am doing...