Jackreyes' Gaming Blog

I never got to writing this article until now >.<

I had a date on March 9. It was so dang beautiful. It was the best night of my life! What? You think I had a girlfriend? Noooo!! I bought Super Smash Brothers Brawl and played it for quite a while. The story is well set up, and even if there is absolutely no dialogue, it works amazingly!

The story mode is called the SubSpace Emissary. The story is basically that there’s the SubSpace Emissary, who are destroying parts of the Smash World with special bombs that turn the area into SubSpace. We also have the 2 greedy kings (Bowser and Dedede) beating the crud out of our heroes and turning them into trophies. The story is actually full length this time, and lasts probably 10 hours.

Brawl includes a new an improved group mode, which includes rotation (automatically swaps out players if you’re playing with more than 3 buddies), improved special brawl (bunny ears + large sized character + high gravity + metal), and the removal of the cruddy game variants we didn’t like (coin and bonus).

The game includes a lot more items and characters, such as the long awaited Sonic The Hedgehog, and the unexpected Solid Snake . There are about 34characters total, and will keep you playing for a while until you finally get them all. Some items from melee reappear, as you battle with an improved beam sword, super scope, and fan (it’s only better because you can trap people in your fan’s fury for a while LOL). The bumper (remember from the original SSB?) made a reappearance too. The nice new toys you get to play with are the cracker launcher (sounds a little weird), which shoot fire crackers at an angle that you choose, the smash ball, which summons your character’s special attack, and the Smart Bomb (Star Fox), which makes that huge explosion you see in Star Fox 64.

The vault mode (has collectibles) has a lot of nice features, such as the returning trophy feature, sticker feature (another nice collectible), stage builder (have not tested it yet), and screenshots + replays. I have not really tested much on Vault.

I have a few complaints about Brawl (it doesn’t matter how good a game is. There is always going to be something wrong with it).

1. Final Smashes are cheap and unbalanced. Kirby’s is almost impossible to avoid, and knocks you off the map easily, but Peach’s only makes you fall asleep and doesn’t make you fly off the map.

2. The game doesn’t have a dedicated camera mode. You can only angle the camera when you have paused the game. A lot of videos I see on SSB use the dedicated camera on Melee and angle their shots while the game is not paused. The zoom is not as good anymore (doesn’t zoom in as much as it used to).

3. No language changing

Gameplay: 9/10

Graphics (based on my taste, not compared to those fancy 360 and PS3 games): 10/10

Concept (same as always): 8/10

Controls: 10/10 for 4 different methods

Music: 9.5/10 because it is like a compilation of all the Nintendo stuff

Replay Value: As high as the moon gets.

Overall: 9.5

-sakuramaxx

Yeah, it’s delayed.  U.S. release date is now March 9th.

WRYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!

Sakuramaxx

Crysis was the first thing in mind when I got a new computer. It’s a great game, but sadly has some big flaws..

The game takes place in year 2020 where a group of American researchers found an amazing discovery. Though, they are taken captive in the Philippine Sea by North Koreans. You, Jake Dunn (Codename Nomad) are equipped with a special suit that can adapt into any situation while on a mission to rescue the researchers. But soon, a war starts against the North Koreans. As you progress through the story, you discover extraterrestrial life and you must defeat them. Throughout the game, you go through many hostile environments, like an alien spacecraft in zero gravity, the Korean jungles, the ice sphere (a frozen version of the jungle), and much more. There are 8 guns in single player mode, and more in multi player. This is what I think of the game:

Graphics: 8/10

The graphics are amazing in this game, and it looks like someone just put the jungles, and everywhere else in a little CD. Problem is, to see those graphics, you need a super powerful computer. It even lags on a 5.9 grade PC, so I recommend playing on Medium graphics. In other words, it’s almost impossible to play on very high graphics without mass frame lag.

Sounds: 7/10

Sound effects were realistic. Every gunshot, every explosion made it feel like I’m in the action. The music was rather boring (most of it is silence with random sounds to make it a little scary, and a couple sound like the stuff you’d find in those war movies like Saving Private Ryan), which gave me the low rating. The dialog is very original, and some of it is a bit humorous.

Gameplay: 9/10

The game is very interactive, as you can pick up almost every object lying around (I like to throw keyboards at Koreans). The AI is smart, and even walking through the grass and making the slightest noise can make the enemies notice you. What adds to the game is the nanosuit. You can use armor mode (the default mode), which uses suit energy as a substitution for health; You have speed mode, which makes you walk faster, and sprint faster at the cost of suit energy; strength mode, which reduces gun recoil, makes you jump higher, and throw stuff further; and cloak mode, which makes you invisible at the cost of energy. The game has a bit of replay value due to how much you can do to the environment, and do objectives in different ways. Some levels have major bugs, which can be frustrating (It took me 6 times to complete a section of a level since the enemies froze and wouldn’t die), and the game is a little shorter than expected (Likely because I am used to 40 hour RPGs). Luckily, it’s going to be a trilogy. There are many attachments to put on your weapons to make them stronger and more accurate than they are. The multiplayer is very good, and I am spending a lot of time on it. It uses an objective style format requiring you to capture objective points to make weapons of mass destruction.

Controls: 9/10

The controls are 10 since this is my first FPS on PC. But I loved the controls. They are the default of most shooters. F to interact with things, WASD format, point and click shooting, and that simple stuff. Only problem is that they never implemented a function to hold your breath. Sometimes you need to snipe enemies in the game.

Overall, this game was very good, and I am hoping that you pick this game up, because it is PC shooter of the year, and it’s better than Halo.

Sakuramaxx.

The Jackreyes Blog team would like to wish you all a happy new year.

Here are some things you can expect for 2008.

• Reviews – Of course! Some reviews currently in the works are: Metroid Prime 3 – Wii, Motorstorm – PS3, Super Mario Galaxy – Wii and Assasin’s Creed – PS3
• Rankings and Lists – With me everything is down to stats. If something cannot be measured and compared with similar products the chances are i’m not interested so we hope to give you the best Ratings, Rankings and Lists of games in 2008. One list I am in the process of making is Jackreyes Blog – Games of 2007, this will look at our favourite games of last year.
• Videos? – We may have some video tutorials or just some ingame footage for you, I thought this might be a good idea so I asked my friend Liam to create a watermark for us to boast with. The videos may never actually be made though.
• Games, Games and more Games! – We also hope we can be the first site to keep you up to date with releases and previews of the upcoming games for 2008.

And these are all great reasons to favourite Jackreyes Blog for game reviews, previews and insites.

So Happy New Year everyone!

Have a great 2008!

Name’s SakuraMaxX (in reference to songs). I will provide Wii, DS, arcade, and PC game reviews. I have been gaming since I was maybe 3 years old, and I’m 13 now. I live in America, and I’m a dedicated gamer with gamer A.D.D. (which means I play a game, and switch to another real fast. I can’t focus on just one). I personally like to play a lot of Crysis and Drift City in my time, and I’m an RPG specialist. Currently starting FPS games. I have been playing a lot of rhythm games, such as Dance Dance Revolution and Guitar Hero. Look out for my reviews, and I’ll be staying here for a looooooooong time.