Jackreyes' Gaming Blog

Yeah, I know, ages since I last updated, I’ve been pretty busy though.
I’m in the process of writing an E3 Round-up now.

Here is our Weekly Roundup.

This week:

• The blog is up and running again. Great news, obviously.
• Svenn and I took a challenge, to write a review about a couple of old freeware games. This resulted in Svenn reviewing Beneath a Steel Sky and me reviewing The Lure of the Temptress. 
• New PS3 Rock Band Instruments.
• Stalin vs. Martians Interview.
• Assassin’s Creed 2 Information.
• Pandora Article.

Happy Easter all.

~Jackreyes

Ok, admittedly, I’ve been putting this off for ages, but just 10 minutes ago, ex-regular author here – svennie93 – contacted me and asked if he could start writing again and I of course lept at the chance to have a ‘writing partner’ again.
As such, regular articles will return to the blog, and so will Sven.

~Jackreyes

Hopefully I will start reviewing again soon.
I now have an Xbox 360 and am slowly massing a nice collection of games that need reviewing.

~Jackreyes

Wii Music:

Wii Music is supposed to be released in Japan on the 16th of October. Not long to go.

It is a music game, but instead of doing something at the right time, you have to pretend you’re playing the instrument by moving the Wii Remote. This game also makes use of the Balance Board for use when using the drums. Over 40 instruments are said to be available.

USA release: 20th October

PAL release: 14th November

This, looks to me like if done well, it could be a very entertaining game.

Review coming soon.

The Nintendo Conference was quite eventful this year, mostly because of the announcement of the DSi which I will preview in my next post.

Other points were:

• To address the lack of storage space on the Wii, Nintendo will make it possible from Spring 2009 to download WiiWare or Virtual Console games straight onto an SD card from the Wii Shopping Channel, and presumably then loading them from the SD card.
• Nintendo plan to re-release Gamecube games on the Wii as a new series of Play on Wii Selection. One game included will be Pikmin.
• Punch Out will be receiving a Wii title soon.
• Miyamoto showed Wii Music again.

For all the full details of the conference I suggest looking here.

Alright, this has taken me far too long, but I think it is something that must be done.

So first, the Packaging:

The packaging this product does come in is pretty run of the mill I must say, but there’s nothing wrong with average. The plastic packet was sent in a well padded box and the Acekard arrived in less than a week.

The Physical Cartridge (and Micro-SD reader):

Pretty shiny isn’t it.

Unfortunately, the back isn’t shiny.

And there you can see a picture of the micro-SD reader as well.

I’m not too sure why, but each cart has some clips on the side that you can unclip and look at the circuit board. Might be useful… Anyway, I think that the general build of the Acekard 2 is quite high quality, however, taking off the front isn’t recommended, you could easily break one of the clips because, they’re not the strongest of plastics. The micro-SD reader is very neat and compact, seems to work 100%, but doesn’t seem like a very good build quality. Then again, you’re not really buying an Acekard 2 for the micro-SD reader.

The Software: The Acekard 2 firmware is quite nice looking and has pretty much every feature you need on the start bar. However there is a homebrew version of this firmware which adds even more features to the already great firmware. Some of these features are: direct cheat database download and direct Gameboy Advance rom compatibility (only if you have a RAM pack). You can download the homebrew firmware (AKAIO) here. Or you can download the official firmware from the Acekard website.

The Compatibility: This card seems to be 100% compatible with every one of my backups I’ve tried. It scored a full 10/10 on the games I tried. (Please note again, I own all of these games). Mario Kart DS Pokemon Diamond New Super Mario Bros. Mario 64 DS Nanostray Final Fantasy III Jam Sessions Mario Slam Basketball Geometry Wars: Galaxies Mysims

Ratings: Packaging – 9/10 Physical Cartridge – 8/10 Firmware (Official) – 9/10 Firmware (AKAIO) – 10/10 Compatibility – 10/10 Overall – 9/10 93% – P.S. I’d like to say thanks again to Acekard for providing me with a review sample, and I’m sorry the review took so long. I do not condone piracy in any way. And finally, this review is completely impartial, it got such a high score because it really is the best flashcart I’ve used. Congratulation Acekard 2.

My Pokemon Ranch was one of the few Wiiware titles that interested me, having clocked up a lot of hours of playtime on Diamond I thought this game might be able to get me those last few fun hours from Pokemon Diamond.

Gameplay: None. None whatsoever, import Pokemon, watch them run around your Mii all looking pretty much the same. Occasionaly you get asked to find a certain Pokemon that you haven’t caught yet, so you whip out Diamond and go find it. Whilst this is a pretty good feature (even if it is the only one) its not actually My Pokemon Ranch which offers the gameplay. Instead My Pokemon Ranch acts as more of an alarm clock, useful, but kind of a one trick pony. When you have Pokemon and Miis in the Ranch, you can take pictures and post on the message board to send to friends so you can show them how much time you’ve wasted, or just advertise the game. Either way it can’t be a good thing.

So you’re depositing your Pokemon through Diamond and every so often Hayley the Ranch owner as it were brings some Pokémon. Then when you fill your Ranch the size of the Ranch increases, however you either have to wait 1 day, or skip the day on the Wii settings, this game isn’t really worth it.

Controls: At the beginning this game is hopeless to navigate. You just get a panel down each side with buttons. In that sense its a bit like the Mii channel. To see a pokemon closer you have to hover over them and press A, which isn’t the easiest when you can’t control the camera. Just as they’re doing something funny they’ll walk off the screen. However later on you get free mode which allows you to control the camera, move Pokemon and… well, thats about it.

Graphics: All the Pokemon are the same size… The graphics are… decent at best. They’re really nothing special at all. They’re quite bad actually as you’ll see from the pictures of my Ranch that I’ll post soon.

Ratings:

Graphics: 4/10

Gameplay: 6/10

Controls: 5/10

Overall: 5/10

54%

Pictures:

Today, I discovered the NaNoWriMo (or The National Novel Writing Month). I showed my friend Jamie (Gazok) and we agreed it might be fun to enter. Until we realised it was all one big scam. The quality of this ‘novel’ wasn’t marked, it was purely based on the quantity, that being 50,000 words.

So these so called 50,000 words, they could pretty much be any words which put Jamie and I off this competition. I won’t give an example because right now Jamie and I are busy trying to think of a name for our Writing Competition.

Because it will take a long time to organise a fully-fledged Writing Competition (based on the QUALITY), I have a small writing competition for you now.

We need a name for the Competition.

We have a maybe list at the minute;

The Finxi Awards (Finxi sounds like a dogs name)

The Final Draft Awards

The Antagonist Awards

The New Age Writing Awards

Neither of us are content with the current suggestions and are looking further afield. So yeah, any suggestions would be much appreciated.

- Jackreyes

There have already been various posts regarding SSBB but to my regret, there is no full review, so here goes.

Super Smash Bros. Brawl, is the third game in it’s series. The trend seems to be one for every Nintendo home console since the Nintendo 64. So its unlikely we’ll see another one for a few years.

The game is very popular and has a large fanbase. The concept is a fighter, using all your favourite (or least favourite) Nintendo characters. Now you’d think that the third game is pushing the series a little bit too far. Sure make a nice polished one with some extra characters and stuff for the Gamecube after the success of the Nintendo 64 game. But seeing as the Wii’s graphics generally aren’t THAT much better than those of the Gamecube there was a great deal of doubt as to whether this game would play much different to its prequels. This game has a lot of depth that wasn’t included in the previous versions. For instance, the graphics have actually improved quite a bit, the game has Wi-Fi multiplayer and the Subspace Emissary is awesome.

Gameplay:

If you have ever played a Super Smash Bros. game before, you’ll know it’s basically just button mashing and being ‘in control’ of a Nintendo beating the hell out of another. Fun to play alone, or in a group which the Wi-Fi makes a lot easier now. SubSpace Emissary is a single player adventure mode that allows you to play as all the characters while unlocking new ones. The story is pretty good too. This mode really lets you get a feel for each character and helps you decide your favourite.

Controls:

This game brings Wii Remote Controls however if you’ve ever played Melee then you’ll soon realise that this method of control is far inferior to the Gamecube controls. I recommend you pickup a Gamecube controller and play with that instead. Whilst this isn’t new or revolutionary, it makes the game play better in my opinion.

Wi-Fi:

The Wi-Fi mode seems to be pretty much flawless. Though there is still the issue of annoying friend codes if you want to play against your friends.

Ratings:

Gameplay: 10/10

Graphics: 9/10

Controls: 9/10 (Just because I prefer the Gamecube controls doesn’t mean the other options don’t work, and the Gamecube controls are as good as ever.)

Wi-Fi: 10/10 (Just the inclusion of Wi-Fi makes this game great. One you’ll keep coming back to.)

Overall: 90%

Summary – Great game, if you have a Wii then this, Mario Kart Wii and Super Mario Galaxy are the three first-party (made by Nintendo) games that you have to try at least once. The chances are you’ll like them.

- Jackreyes