2006/11/24

First Impression: WWE Smackdown VS RAW 2007

When you set the goal of releasing a game every year from the same franchise, sooner or later your gonna run out of ideas of ways to improve the game series from the previous year. WWE Smackdown VS RAW 2007 could just be an example of that.

So what's new?
- A huge roster of wrestlers, divas & legends to choose from.
- A new control setup.
- You can now fight into the audience.

What's bad?
- Roster doesn't feel up to date due to numerous firings and releases by WWE during the production time of the game. A lot of favorites are still missing, like Paul London & Brian Kendrick, the current WWE Tag Champions! And yet jobbers like Snitszky are still in the game.
- The new control scheme makes the game HARDER to play, and the timing for counters has been changed and doesn't help matters any. The CPU will counter your strong grapples 9 times out of 10, leaving the moves useless and you just rely on the quick weaker grapples and strikes.
- You can actually MISS moves like STOMPING a down opponent when they are right in front of you, and even when you connect, you just don't feel any impact from it, like your kicking air.
- Reportedly, over 200 moves taken out of the CAW mode! And it's not duplicate moves like all the clothesline and DDT variations, but individual moves like the Ki Krusher and the Death Valley Driver!
- They removed the Slobber Knocker match!
- Divas still can't take part in matches with more than 4 people, or gimmick matches either.
- When you play as a tag team, only the first member of the team is announced. There are a whole lot of audio bugs and glitches, like the announce team mis-calling moves and talking about things that have nothing to do with the match. Than again, that might be accurate to the current WWE TV product?

I haven't really played a whole lot of this game, mostly due to not being into the new control scheme and the fact that it's just not as fun as the previous games because of it. The main complaint about fans of the game stems from the game mostly having cosmetic improvements, and nothing to really fix all the previous complaints of the game series. I would gladly give up the good looking graphics for better gameplay, am I right people?
I might review it in a few months if I get around to playing it some more.

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2006/11/23

The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy

If your a fan of Capcom's Power Stone games, you would definately get into this one easily. You pick from one of several characters from the cartoon series and plow through a story mode where you fight the other characters but running around a small environment and beating the tar out of them either with your fists or with an assortment of weapons laying around. You can even use traps in the area to dish out damage, but the only way to truly defeat your opponent is to do a finishing move once their life meter is all drained and their standing there dizzy.
Besides having a lot of extra characters to unlock and other hidden goodies, there isn't really much replay factor in this game unless you've got a 4-player adaptor and a group of friends to mindlessly waste the afternoon away with.
For some reason, some of the characters don't seem to translate all that well to 3D, like Mandy's hair for example. But the cell shaded characters are nicely done overall. Audio is ok, with a lot of repeated voice samples throughout the battles. And the controls can be confusing as it's hard to get a lock on who your trying to hit and you end up taking a lot of punishment just trying to get a weapon.
Overall, this probably could have been done a lot better I think. Power Stone is definately the better game if your looking for a 4-way brawl for all. Rent or borrow, but not really a keeper, maybe just for the kids.

Game Ratings:
Graphics - 6
Sound - 6
Gameplay - 6
Lifespan - 5
Overall - 5

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2006/11/16

Super Previews

Marvel Ultimate Alliance
Play as over 20 of Marvel's greatest comic book heroes in X-Men Legends style action RPG gameplay.

Justice League Heroes
Play as a handful of DC comic book heroes in tag team adventure.

WWE Smackdown VS RAW 2007
The latest edition to the WWE game franchise.

Splinter Cell: Double Agent
I never finished the first two games, never even started the third game, and now this one is out and the fifth game is already in development!

Bully
Not as controversial as everyone expected it to be from what I heard.

2006/11/14

First Impression: Mortal Kombat: Armageddon

I played this game just ONCE, and already got fed up with it. Why? It still has all the same problems as the previous Mortal Kombat game and how anyone can say this is one of the best fighting games ever is off their rocker.

DON'T BUY THIS GAME!