Gamer--freakz

Gamespot score:6.2(fair)

my score:7.8


(+)pros:-atmosphere is great for a horror game,- static when approaching a monster is great for panicky situations,- dark and compelling story will suck you in,- little but interesting and well made in game characters,-many endings

(-)cons:-camera sucks,-puzzles can be mind boggling at times,-combat is rather slow

gameplay time:10-20 hours(below average)






Yet again another review. Today's game is silent hill 2 for the PC. And once again I am pissed with gamespot. Silent hill 2 was released for XBOX,PS2 and PC. XBOX got 7.9, PS2 got 7.7, and PC got what...6.2? Holy shit gamespot what is with that. Anyway Im gonna say that this game deserves a score equal to that of the console counter parts, as it is, after all, a horror game with a deep, dark and compelling story that will appeal to its players. Lets move on.




James is a lonely man. His wife died of a disease, and he is lonely, very lonely. One day though, he receives a letter with the sender name "mary" the name of this dead wife. She says she is waiting for him at thier special place in "that town". Since james and mary went to silent hill for a stay before, he automatically knows the content of the letter and heads to silent hill in search of his wife. But not knowing what is going on in the town himself, little does he know the trials and terrors that await him in the foggy monster that is silent hill. On the way he will meet friends, who become foes and betray him, or maybe they are all foes to begin with? His journey to find his wife is not an easy one.




Being a horror game silent hill 2 has some bloody good atmosphere. Especially in indoor areas, silent hill 2 does exceptionally well. With only your torchlight to keep a small part in front of you ligthed up, you will find yourself in dark dark environments throughout the game. Plus, while you can only hear your footsteps, one will be on auto alert when a static is heard. In silent hill 2, when a static sound is heard that means a monster is near. Every time you move it gets louder and louder, since you are approcahing closer towards it. As you go closer, the sound gets louder. Even if you dont move, it still gets louder as the monster itself is walking towards you. This, is scary as hell, as you wont know where,when or how the creature is going to strike you. The monsters themselves are grosteque....ugly abominations that are supposedly remants of the once good town. They look ugly, and are certainly not friendly.

To combat these abomination james has a few array of weapons to help him, smack, poke, saw or gun down his foes. For melee weapons he has a wooden stick as a default weapon, an iron pipe and a chainsaw. For guns we have the usual, pistol, rifle and shotgun. Not much here, but the weapons at least have a variety to choose from. Weapons of course help you combat the nightmares of silent hill, but though the weapons serve you well, combat doesnt. Combat is slow and stiff, though all you need is the keep pressing the attack button until the enemy dies, the monster probably wont be able to do a thing to you if you keep the attack button pressed. Boring. Plus, james's and the enemies' attack both so slowly, sometimes it just feels like an RPG game -.-''.

Gamespot score:9.3(editor's choice)

my score:8.5


(+)pros:-Incredible story that sucks you in,- commendable graphics even for such an old game,- top notch voice acting,- many cool characters,- sphere grid system is really good and creative,-not much grinding required,-well designed bosses

(-)cons:-trials before obtaining aeons are boring and slow,- game bosses may be abit too easy at times


gameplay time:30-40 hours(above average)




Time for the re-do review of final fantasy 10. This is one of the oldest games for the PS2, and here I am reviewing it! Oh by the way, final fantasy 13 had its review done at gamespot. 8.5,not too shabby, but I expected a 9. Damn. Anyway I was rather reluctant to do this as I wanted to review something new, but I realised many of my previously reviewed games required re-dos. Zzzz. Well cant complain. Many say this is one of the best final fantasies ever released, beside 7 and 8, I very well agree to that, well lets get started.




Final fantasy 10 has a phenominal story, one of the best I have heard and seen. It talks about a young man named tidus who lives in a city called zanarkand. One day a huge whale-ish monster known as sin attacks the damn city, and for some reason when tidus is absorbed by sin, he is transported to the world 1000 years ago. There he faces many trials and makes new friends. He goes on an epic journey with his comrades to guide a summoner known as yuna to complete her journey and defeat sin. The story is wide and fairly huge in terms of content, but its suprisingly not too hard to understand at all! Too many epic stuff happens in between for me to state so I shall stop here.





Final fantasy 10 is different from many of its 3D predussecors, in terms of battle. In previous games like final fantasy 7,8 and 9, battle consists of usage of the ATB system(active time bar). In this game they removed it, and instead a turn by turn system is used, like that of final fantasy 1. Its pretty god if you ask me. While I was playing 7 or 8, everytime the bar fills up I have to frantically choose a command in quick speed, since every second counts. In this game you have all the time to relax and choose whatever command you want to use to defeat the boss. I like this, its so much better, since to rushing is required. For battles you have your basic commands, attack, items, skills etc. But you get for this game, overdrive(AKA limit break in FF7). Overdrives are great with flashy animations and almost all of them have great effects or damage, this is pleasing to see.




Like many other final fantasy games, this game has summons as well. But in this game, summons are MORE than welcome. In previous games, summons just involve your character calling forth a monster who just uses its special attack to blast the entire zone of enemies, then they disappear after that. That isnt bad, its a good way to dish out great deals of damage. In this game however, summons stay on the field when summoned! Cool right? A summoned bahamut(above picture),ifrit, or shiva will stay on the field and have thier own HP,MP,skills and such. This makes using a summon in battle really fun, since they have awesome attacks,great damage, above average HP, and their own awesome overdrives.Using a summon during boss fights can get really interesting, watching your own gigantic summon battle against an equally huge boss rarely gets old.




There is the usual "level up" in this game too. I mean it wouldnt be a JRPG game without leveling. In this game you get levels too. But levels dont directly make you stronger in terms of power. S.levels are spent in moving steps in your sphere grids, and as expected, each step you move grants you the bonuses in the next step you are in. If the next node you are about to move to grants you +200 hp, it means if you spend one S.level to move to that node and activate it, you get 200hp. Impresive and innovate system, I pretty much like it more than endless grinding to level up. Also, gaining S.levels aint hard, it takes usually a battle or 2 to go up a few S.levels.

Final fantasy 10 is an incredible game, a touching tale and a half movie all in one. It has top notch voice acting, combining it with the beautiful CG cutscenes makes it like a movie at time. With its few flaws, such as the boring and lame trials before obtaining an aeon, or the many a times simple bosses, this game isnt perfect. Overall, a game that deserves to be called a classic.

OVERKILL. Sorry I couldnt resist.

Happy gaming.

Gamespot score:8.5(great)

my score:8.2

(+)pros:-SHITLOAD of quests available to do,-gameplay seems unending,- loads of free roaming,-many variety of enemies,- loads of perks and statistics to add and experiement on,-vats mode kills look cool,- crap load of weapons to use and collect,- pits players on a rather challenging level

(-)cons:-wastelands feels empty as spawn of mobs are scarce and rare,- manual and vats aiming with a gun is fairly unaccurate at times


gameplay time:100 hours+(very long lasting)





Lets kick off this great month with one of the world's most popular games. Fallout 3 is a game bought by my brother, NOT me. I couldnt care less about WRPGs, they are just no my cup of tea...thus this game didnt last very long for me. But my brother has been playing this game like a dick,day and night.Well each time he plays I watch,sometimes. And all I can say is though this game isnt my type, I cant seem to find faults with it. Its a good game and thats all I can say. Well seeing my brother play till the game's completion and till he explored the entire map, I can have a clear opinion for this game.



Fallout 3 has a pretty normal to mediocre-ish story. Its like this, the world is a wasteland, you a born in a vault, an underground living place for people. One day your father leaves the vault and you do the same to go after him and trace his footsteps. Along the way you run into people your father have met, and you have to do something for them before they will tell you where your father went. Its pretty repititive. You go to point A where your father has gone, ask the person at A where your father is, instead of telling you where your father is, you gotta run an errand for him before he tells you. He tells you to go to point B, so you head to B and ask the guy there where your father is, he asks you to run an errand for him too, before he tells you that your father is at C. The process continues, fun right? No.



Well fallout 3 is a shooter(duh). And I must comment the combat is pretty okay, but you have LOADS of weapons to use, making battle a new experience most of the time. Weapons range from modern day to futuristic. The chinese assault rifle, 10 mm pistol and even baseball bats.... there are really lots of weapons for you. Rippers, laser pistols/rifles....even nuclear missle launchers. This game really has a way for thier weapons. Combat,besides all your weapons, is affected by your perks and stats one way or another. Different perks which increase your melee damage or explosive damage and such help you alot in battle at times. Also, by adding points to strenght, your melee attacks are obviously more painful. Theres loads of experimenting and trying of weapons here so combat is always welcome.






Now to talk about other aspects of the games. Okay, I have to admit, even for a free roaming WRPG, this game is HUGE. There is a big bucket load of quests for you to do. Just the main quests to complete the game alone seem so tiny and little compared to the total quest amount this game has. Whats more, many of these quests have continuations to them, which means.....near never ending quests. This can get repetitive, but luckily, many of these quests lead to new areas and places on the enourmous map known as the capital wasteland. The capital wasteland is the only place in the game you will be exploring, but dont worry, its HUGE, huge beyond words, you get alot of areas to explore. This makes running around the wasteland like an ant scavenging the sahara desert for food rewarding.


Like above I mentioned how combat is new and can be experimented from time to time. I have to state one thing thats makes experimenting seem hard and sometimes near impossible. While wandering the capital wasteland, there will be mutated animals, insects, human raiders,mutants.....seems like alot to fight, but spawn of these monsters are so godamn little. When wandering aimlessly around the wasteland, finding foes to fight is always difficult. Enemies are so hardly found, and sometimes when you find some, they can be horribly weak that you will be swearing that this is a waste of time. Or they can be horribly strong, walking out of a train station to get one hit KOed immediately by raiders who have in possesion some rocket launchers, or by having 3 deathclaws come out of nowhere and claw/bite the shit out of you in less than 10 seconds....these can get annoying. Whats more is that when attacking them with your ranged weapon, the cursor is unaccurate. Manual shots get some bullets randomly flying off. Vats mode always gets many shots miss, altough they state the % hit chance is above 80 %.


Fallout 3, as I said, is not my cup of tea. But I cant just randomly throw faults in, this is a solidly good game. Dont know why gamespot reduced its score by 0.5 for "graphical issues", screw them.

Happy gaming.

Opening songs-OP 1:Joint,OP 2:Blaze

genre:supernatural,romance,action,slice of life

episodes: 24

I got song siggies today :D. Anyway today Im doing the plot review for shakugan no shana 2. Honestly, I have got nothing to say, it maintains the standards of the 1st show execptionally well. Plot is obviously different, but the style, characters, and the episodes have the exact same feel as from the first show. Not too sad to leave this behind, since Im watching shakugan no shana S OVA now, and that season 3 is hitting japan soon.





Song:Joint(Opening 1)
Artist: mami kawada




Song:Blaze(Opening 2)
Artist:Kotoko


Well the 2 opening songs are like the 1st show, both are from the same artists and both are awesoooommeeee. For today, I have included siggies for the songs, for fun. Anyway the 1st opening is joint by mami kawada. 1 thing about it, its friggin awesome, one of my favourite songs from her, supreme song. 2nd opening is blaze by kotoko, one of her great songs. This isnt her best though, but its one of her better ones. Overall joint> blaze enough said.

Plot:8.5/10

Shakugan no shana 2 has a good plot like the previous show. The show includes many of the varieties of genres as stated above. The plot focus is however different from the 1st show, where they want to defend yuji's reiji maigo from the bad guys bal masque. In this show they figure out more about the reiji maigo other than try to defend it.

This show is great like the 1st show, with welcome additions to the plot. The love triangle continues, but however I think the victor of the 2 girls will be decided in the 3rd season. There is also the sudden change in attitudes for so many characters, and the ending of friendships and stuff like that. Its all epic and good, makes you wanna be a part of the plot itself :D. Among that comes many parts in the story where they explain and elaborate some of the unanswered stuff from the 1st show. There are also appearances of old allies( khamsin woo), and of course appearance of old enemies as well. Oh yeah and the new enemies look badass too(pheles and sabrac FTW).

Nothing else to say here, the plot base background is different, but the story being told is the same way it is told from the 1st show, so those who watched season 1 will have a sense of nostalgia. But no doubt, those who liked season 1 will like season 2, nuff said.

Peace.

Behold!! March has finally arived, time for informed gamers to blow some cash. March is indeed, the month of awesomeness, packed with piles of awesome shit, its impossible for players not to find nothing of interest in this month.






First, lets talk about the DS. For me, DS has the least of the anticipated games this month. For DS, expect Shin megamin tensei:strange jourmey to hit stores on the 23rd of march. Shin megami tensei:devil survivor last year was an awesome release, awesome enough to take the position of my 2nd favourite game. According to screenshots and articles, gamplay for strange journey is slightly the same from devil survivor, which means this is a definite must try for me.






Now for the PSP. 1st up is blazblue portable, my most anticipated PSP game currently. Blazblue on the consoles was released last year, and it was a huge hit. I cant wait to grab this, it looks damn promising. This is actually one of the best 2D fighters I have ever seen! Blazblue portable is hitting shelves on 9th march.

Next up for PSP is lunar:silver star harmony. This is obviously a JRPG, and I am, obviously, a JRPG kind of guy. Many JRPGs now adays get slaughtered in reviews and im not liking it.... good thing though, this one got 8.0 in gamespot, that means it must really be good. This hits shelves tommorow! Getting it duh, but not that soon though.

Last great game for PSP mimana Iyar chronicles. Another JRPG, good for me! This one looks more fun than lunar:silver star harmony from screenshots. Another one that looks really promising, just hope reviews dont get it butchered. This one hits stalls abit late, on the 30th of march.

Time for the boss console, PS3! These games are gonna create a hole in my wallet..... Anyway! 1st game is resonance of fate, actually its called end of eternity, but the US publishers changed it to resonance of fate, wth. But who cares! Another JRPG! But this one looks abit different from the rest somehow. Once again, who cares! Swords, guns, fists, its all the same since they are all JRPGs. This game is hitting shelves on 16th of march, same day of god of war 3...which is coming up next.

And ta-dah! God of war 3 baby. The next 2 game Im talking about are godamn blockbusters, if you have never heard of them, kindly leave now, you are damn outdated as shit. After being captivated by the beauty of gameplay in god of war collection on my PS3, I have seen god of war with a different eye. God of war is a series worth commenting on alot, since its a pure uncensored game of godman goodness! Getting this for sure, just not sure when. This game hits stores on 16th of march, same as resonanse of fate.

Lastly, we have final fantasy 13. My most anticipated game of the year. If you dont know this, get lost, just kidding,no Im not, if you dont know this you should get lost. Final fantasy 13 is the latest of the final fantasy series, which is by no doubt loved around the enitre world. This installment looks sick!!!! A must get for me, buying it on the day it releases. This game is out on the 9th of march.

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Well thats all for now. Pretty good to start off the month, with so many cool games, how can one say no to march?