DS Lite Video Review

Not mine, unfortunately. That’s lost amongst the millions of Japanese and potential importers who are scrabbling to obtain what little stock is available, although I may be able to get one next week since Eynon and team are off to Japan again. This is a video review put together in two parts (the second is answering questions from the first one) and answers most of the concerns from people wondering how much better than the standard DS it is, so without further ado…

The bigger Mac geeks out there may have noticed that the videos were made by Cabel, co-founder of Panic, who are in turn makers of the best FTP program ever and one of the few pieces of shareware that I’ve bought. He’s a great host for the videos, with some classic lines explaining how the DS Lite can function as a death ray whilst also managing to call it “mildly retarded” and coming out with a great ending to it. I’ll be watching for more material from him in the future.

Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter

Yes, unbelievable as it is, there’s a new Xbox 360 game out. The first of many this month, in fact, and if they’re all as good as this one we’re in for one hell of a month. That faint sound you can hear is my wallet sobbing quietly to itself as it contemplates the cost of this, Burnout Revenge, Far Cry, and Oblivion.

Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter

Some of the early games might have not really pushed the hardware, but with this and Burnout it appears that developers are finally starting to put it to good use for some absolutely stunning HD visuals (not quite as drool-worthy as Rainbow Six: Vegas, admittedly) which make a great approximation of the intense Mexican sunlight. Graphics aren’t the whole puzzle however, and Ubisoft have done a good job of making this more accessible than the last time I played a Ghost Recon, which was the original for the Xbox.

The whole thing is still tactical and unforgiving (meaning bloody hard) but the near-future technology that they’ve added is a great addition that fans should still enjoy while allowing those like me who found the series slightly heavy going to give it another try with an open mind. It also has some great multiplayer modes which I’m looking forward to trying out, including the salivatory prospect of 16 player online co-op missions. I’m not decided whether or not playing alongside 15 random people is something that I should be excited or scared about, knowing what I do about the Live community.

It seems that I’m not the only one who likes it, and with Burnout also getting excellent reviews dare we hope that the 360 drought is coming to an end? Possibly, but at least we have enough stuff to carry us through to the wonders that E3 will bring.

Onimusha: Dawn of Dreams

I’ve just been sent a review copy of the new Onimusha, due out for the PS2 next week (my review will be on Pro-G at some point), and thought I’d come out with some impressions to go with all the big review sites who reviewed it last night. I thought what I saw of Onimusha was quite cool when it came out and got a kick out of Jean Reno and modern France in Onimusha 3, but this is the first time that I’ve played one at any length.

Overall it’s pretty good. It’s fast-paced and the hack and slash action is good fun and reasonably deep, and the presentation is decent (no 480p, though – boo!) – graphically it’s very colourful and even in its 4:3 480i nastiness looks great.

There are a lot of story scenes which all look good, both when they’re in-game and CGI (nothing as impressive as the intro for Onimusha 3 so far, unfortunately), but what lets them down is some pretty bad voice acting. Not original Resident Evil bad, but more like Resident Evil 4 mildly grating. The reviews of the US version all say that that version includes the option to switch to the original Japanese voices, but inexplicably it’s nowhere to be found in the PAL one.

It’s too early for me to give this a score but if I had to do it right now I’d give it 8/10. It’s one of the better pure action games that I’ve played in a while.

Deadwood

I picked up the second season of Deadwood on DVD yesterday, and I have to say that I think this is one of the finest shows on TV at the moment. I don’t get to watch it until it comes out on DVD because it’s shown here on satellite, but I’m not bothered because I love DVD as a medium for TV shows.

Deadwood

I’m always up for a good western, preferring the more gritty ones like Unforgiven to the older, more quixotic ones, and Deadwood does nothing if not fall into that bracket. I’m not entirely convinced that conversation in the real Old West was quite as populated with “fucks” and “cocksuckers” as it is in Deadwood, but the setting is still remarkably authentic. The characters are similarly believable, all painted in varying shades of grey and subject to their own numerous vices. If you haven’t seen it and like westerns at all, definitely check it out.

The show is obviously a western but often seems to turn into something of a political series, as much of the storyline is based on the struggle for power and wealth in a soon-to-be-but-not-quite legitimate frontier town, complete with the necessary negotiations and murders that this entails, usually with an especially gruesome method of disposal. Even though HBO DVDs never seem to drop in price, the first season is still readily available and worth every penny.

Now I just want to see HBO’s Pacific War miniseries. It’s the spiritual follow up to Band of Brothers, which probably is the finest thing ever to be on TV.

Retrospective: Yoshi’s Island

Yoshi's Island (GBA)

After a lot of dredging used game shops and eventually eBay, I managed to find myself a copy of the oddly hard to come by GBA version of Yoshi’s Island and have recently been playing the hell of of it since it’s one of the all-time classics. In fact I was so inspired by the greatness that I decided to try out something which might turn into an occasional feature – a retrospective. We’ll see how this one goes.

Yoshi’s Island may carry the subtitle “Super Mario World 2” and feature Yoshi and Mario, but that’s really where the similarities end. One of the last great SNES games was originally going to be Nintendo’s reply to Rare’s Donkey Kong Country, featuring the same kind of realistic (for the time, at least) CG sprites that had blown everyone away in 1994.

Instead they took a wholly different path, going for hand drawn storybook visuals and some heavy use of the Super FX2 chip for advanced sprite scaling and rotation, giving the graphics unbelievable amounts of life and personality. In screenshots it might look colourful but basic, but in play it looks about as good as 2D platformers get. It’s a fantastic demo for the screens on the GB Micro and SP+, as well.

Technical coolness aside, Yoshi’s Island is quite simply my favourite platform game ever made. There’s so much imagination and variety to the gameplay that almost every single one of the 48 levels has its own gimmick, whether it’s enemies on stilts to stop you easily swallowing them or, amusingly, floating spores that make Yoshi trip out when he touches them. The fundamentals are always the same – swallow enemies to turn them into eggs which can be thrown, and try not to lose Baby Mario along the way – but they’re so simple and intuitive yet versatile that they’re essential in even the weirdest levels.

As with the best Nintendo games Yoshi’s Island is absolutely full of secrets and unlockables for the completist. The levels get pretty labyrinthine and each one hides a set number of collectibles that are needed for the maximum score, and by getting a high enough score on each world, extra bonus levels are unlocked. The game is a decent length as it is, but for the real completists it can take a very long time to truly finish it.

In short this is the best 2D platformer ever, without a shadow of a doubt. Now that I’ve finally played it at decent length it would probably even make my top five games full stop.

Pro-G

Another site now has the dubious pleasure of hosting content written by me. This time it’s Pro-G, a UK-based gaming site, which has my review of Castlevania: Curse of Darkness on PS2 available here (I know it’s been out in the States for ages, but we’re just getting it now) which is a slight comedown after my previous Castlevania stupor but to be fair isn’t as outright bad as I expected. I was surprised because I was looking forward to bashing it (negative reviews are often the most fun to write) but ended up getting at least some fun out of it.

As long as they’ll have me I should be writing more stuff in the future for them, so subscribe to their RSS feed because it’s a nice little site with some good content.