Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime -- Tank Battles?!

I have rescued fifty-four out of the one-hundred kidnapped slimes in Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime. So I'm roughly just over halfway through the game. The player controls a slime named Rocket who bounces around. Rocket's main attack is called an elasto blast. Essentially Rocket is able to stretch himself in one of eight directions and then rocket himself forward for a bit. Blasting into most enemies three or four times is enough to defeat them. But the elasto blast has other features. When blasting into enemies and items you'll launch them into the air. If Rocket positions himself under said enemies or items he'll be able to catch them and carry them around. He can carry up to three items at a time, all stacked on his head. Pressing the R button will cycle through them as you're able to throw and use the bottom item in the stack. Rocket also has a jump and a hover ability. The bulk of the gameplay is in the adventure mode where you'll also do all the exploring. The other half of combat, the tank battles are in their own specific sections. You'll actually blow on a flute and start a tank battle. The tank battles are really quite fun. The tanks themselves are massive. With multiple floors and the like. The battles are a great blend of action and strategy. On the top screen you'll see two tanks facing off against each other. Each tank has two cannons. The top shooting in an arching trajectory and bottom shooting straight across. On the top screen you'll see the various ammo types being shot. If whatever you've shot hits a projectile from the other tank both projectiles are destroyed. The object is to insure your projectile finds its target. You do this by firing your ammo from the bottom screen. You'll run around the inside of your tank grabbing different ammo types to load into your cannons. You can have up to three other crew members inside your tank helping you. There are numerous allies from which to fill out your tank crew. Each one with their own action or strategy. You can have someone just firing from the bottom cannon. Or someone who is slower but will carry three projectiles at once to load into either cannon. You can fire over someone to infiltrate the other tank and attack the crew loading the cannons there, assuming you can get them into the tank with a clear shot. You'll also have to deal with the enemy trying to infiltrate your tank. Once you've taken atank's hit points down to zero you actually have to raid the other tank and physically destroy its engine. The tank battles are brilliant fun.  There is another aspect to the game and that's alchemy. You'll be using the alchemy pot to create better  weapons and armor for your tank. Pretty much every item in the game can be used to make something for your tank. All through the game there are railways leading back to the town. You need to gather items and even enemies and load them up on the cars to have them taken back to town for you where they can be used. You even use the railways to get the slimes you've rescued back to town. The game restricts your access to certain areas by having various spiked balls of differing weights blocking your path. They're all numbered, and the number refers to how many slimes it will take to lift and move the spiked ball out of your way. You can get more slimes by rescuing them of course. They're all trapped in treasure chests stashed all over the world. Mostly out in the open, but a few of them are hidden in tricky spots. There isn't a lot of plot going on. It's really just about exploring and collecting items for alchemy to use in and better your tank while rescuing the slimes. What's there is definitely in the for kids category. But it's very well done and quite fun.

Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime -- Initial Impression.

I've decided my next game will be Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime for the Nintendo DS. Rocket Slime is the sequel to a GameBoy Advance game that never saw release in the west. Rocket Slime is an adventure title. It's played in a top-down perspective very much the same as The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. The goal of the game is to rescue one-hundred slimes who have been kidnapped from your town of Boingburg by the Plob, a group of Mafioso platypuses. The game has action, exploration, and puzzle elements as well as one-on-one tank battles. The game is obviously a comedy. I'm expecting bright, colorful, and clean graphics, with a chuckle or three along the way. Hopefully we'll see a decent challenge with the puzzles and fun combat in both Rocket and the tank battles.

General Update.

I essentially have a month before the spring deluge arrives. It's going to be the busiest year in gaming history, in my opinion. The winter has proven itself packed with games to play. Spring has Mario Kart and Grand Theft Auto and Persona 3: Fes in the same freaking week. Not to mention that Phantasy Star Universe sees Maximum Attack G arrive that very week. An event we've been waiting months for and will require some serious time put forth.June will see Ninja Gaiden 2, LEGO Indiana Jones, Metal Gear Solid 4, and Battlefield: Bad Company.  When has June ever had so many must play games in it? I mean really, freaking June? Even summer seems to be filling up. And this holiday season already looks insane and a lot of titles haven't even been announced yet. Like all of Nintendo's second half of the year offerings. So I guess I better get cracking and knock out some games in this month before it starts pouring. The question becomes what to start next of course. Between all the consoles and portables and their respective virtual offerings I'm sitting on some thirty plus games to play.

To touch on another recent topic. My online situation seems to have resolved itself as far as the Wii is concerned. Nintendo had an online form to fill out and they wanted to know your personal information as well as your Smash Bros. Brawl error code along with your modem, router, and Internet service provider information. I filled it out. To my surprise I received a call from one of Nintendo's 'advanced techs' and we set about trying to resolve my issue. She essentially ran me through everything I'd already done, port forwarding, assigning the Wii a static IP address with the router, placing the Wii within the router's DMZ, the whole nine yards. She came to the conclusion my router wasn't the issue. She had me attempt to connect the Wii directly to the modem. No luck there. She had me adjusting every setting just about everywhere over a couple of hours. We essentially ran through everything she could think of before she came to the conclusion that there was nothing Nintendo could do and I was essentially fucked out of online on the Wii for the generation. During this time I had forgotten to write down what my initial router settings were before she had me flipping switches willy-nilly. Needless to say I found myself off the phone with Nintendo and having no Internet connection at all. Having power cycled everything and having messed with all the switches I could think of trying to restore a connection, I came to the conclusion I'd have to use the router's 'restore factory defaults' option and I'd just have to install it again and I'd be good as new. No such luck. Seems all that messing around fried my router outright. So now I'm at the store to get another one and sorely pissed off and the like, I decide on going wireless. So $69 later for a PCI card for the PC that will accept a wireless signal, and $89 later for the latest in wireless routers, and $99 later for the Xbox 360's wireless adapter I'm at home with a few hours of headache inducing set up left to take care of. I open up the PC and insert and install the card. Install the router. Get my PC up and running and all secured away. Move on to the Xbox 360. Couple minutes of failing the connection tests and figuring it all out. Got it. Port forwarding and everything set. Nat type open. Good to go. The X360 experience makes the PS3 experience a breeze. The PlayStation 3 is up and running in seconds with a NAT type of two. Which is open, for the PlayStation 2. On to the Wii. The fucking thing can't find a connection to the Internet. But the thing is the champion of wireless technology and all that. Nope. No good. Nintendo couldn't annoy me more at this moment. Even if Reggie Fils-Aime himself came over and took a giant shit in my mailbox I couldn't possibly be more annoyed with Nintendo as I am at this moment. The wireless router has four ports for wired connections. I connect the Wii to the wired port and use the old connection settings from my previous router and it finds an Internet connection. No problem. I'll at least be able to connect to the Wii Shop Channel and buy the Virtual Console titles I want. It's not a total loss. Just because I'm a masochist or something I sign on to Brawl and test the friends connection with Riddel. What the hell do you know? It works. I can now seemingly connect to the people on my friends list at will. I'm not going to tempt fate. I'm going to enjoy it while it lasts. It gives me a headache all over again just thinking about it days later. As it stands now, everything is a go. Knock on wood...

SEGA Superstars Tennis -- Final Opinion.

I've played enough of SEGA Superstars Tennis to be able to safely form a final opinion. I like it. Plain and simple. SEGA Superstars Tennis offers up great fun online and serious challenge in the massive selection of mini-games in offline. There is also what would amount to a decent party game aspect for those offline with friends and extra controllers. There isn't really a main offline game. You have a tournament option which takes you through five matches in either singles or doubles play. And you have one-off matches in single or doubles play. That's it. The wealth of the game is in the online and mini-games. The graphics are simplistic and clean but very good looking and clearly high definition. The music is exceptional. It's some of the best music from SEGA's history. You'll have everything from Sonic to Afterburner to Space Harrier and OutRun to Jet Set Radio and more. The voices are well done and won't annoy. The control works for the most part but you'll struggle and fiddle with them for a while. The game just provides good simple fun. I'm giving SEGA Superstars Tennis for the Xbox 360 a solid 8.

SEGA Superstars Tennis -- Sand the Fence, Paint the House.

I've unlocked all the secret characters and all of the tennis courts in SEGA Superstars Tennis. I've done so by playing the Superstars mode. Superstars mode is essentially a collection of challenges or mini-games designed to teach you how to play the game without you even knowing you're being taught. It's wax on, wax off Daniel-san. There are an awful lot of them too, some eighty or so mini-games spread over numerous SEGA titles. Stuff like Chu Chu Rocket, Puyo Pop, Jet Set Radio, Virtua Cop, Space Harrier, House of the Dead and others. The games will teach you how to make drop shots and to control spin and all the other tennis subtleties. They're quite fun and more than a few are truly challenging if you're going for the top rank in each. I haven't even touched the tournament side of the single player game as Superstars mode has been so packed with things to do. I have however spent a lot of time playing the game online where it proves to be flawed fun. The game's control methods result in some I didn't want to do that or what the hell was that type moments. It takes into account stick position and button presses compounded by player motion but the where and when of it all is what's causing said issue. These slight annoyances don't really get in the way of what's been fun online gaming.

SEGA Superstars Tennis -- Initial Impression.

While I'm eternally playing Phantasy Star Universe and wrapping up Condemned 2 for the last couple of remaining single-player achievements I'm moving on to my next game. It happens to be SEGA Superstars Tennis for the Xbox 360. What am I expecting with this one? Given the game was developed by Sumo Digital, a rather really good time. SEGA Superstars Tennis is essentially the Virtua Tennis 3 engine with a fresh coat of mascot colored paint. So it should be a good playing game of tennis. I'm also expecting bright and colorful high definition graphics that look great and are really clean. I'm expecting really good music as there are some reported heavy hitters on board arranging classic SEGA tunes. Supposedly Richard Jacques of Jet Set Radio fame has an arrangement of the Space Harrier theme somewhere on the disc. That should prove worth the full price of admission right there. I'm also expecting a wealth of fun and creative mini-games which would be par for the course with Virtua Tennis. There should be a rather large amount of un-lockable items. And of course, to sweeten the deal we should have some fun with the Xbox Live aspects of the game. As always though, time will tell.

Condemned 2: Bloodshot -- Final Opinion.

I have completed the eleven levels that make up Condemned 2. It took a little longer than I expected as I've found myself replaying levels as to earn perfect gold rankings for each. Condemned 2 is an all around better game than the original. They've done pretty much everything you'd want for a sequel. And that's improve just about every aspect without straying too far from what made the original shine. The graphics are the most obvious improvement. The game looks great in all its gore and grime and grizzle and nastiness. Also improved are the levels themselves. They're far more varied in design than the original. The game still has you roaming the back alleyways and tenement buildings, but it also expands out to pristine office buildings and otherwise ideal mountain lodge settings before returning to the trash and sludge. The level designs are also generally less confusing. Something the original Condemned suffered from a little bit. The game's story is also much improved. Not only is it more coherent, it even helps fully explain the events of the first game. Beyond just giving the original a canon ending, it clears just about everything up. I liked where Condemned 2's story went, and where it's pointing towards in the hopeful future sequel. The combat is still yet another improved upon area. The game offers far more depth in combat. It also offers up generally tougher combat. Improved gun play, truly vicious and painfully brutal melee combat, environmental kills, and improved boss battles all await the player. The original condemned was a wonderfully jump-scary game. I can say that Condemned 2 retains a lot of the original fright factor that made Condemned such a success. The developers have taken what they've used in the original and messed with it as to keep the player guessing. They're teasing your expectations. They're still masters of misdirection. They'll have you looking here or there at the obvious scare so you don't see the real scare. Condemned 2 will make you jump. It's not going to mess with your head, it only wants to make your wet yourself. The last area they've improved up is the crime scene sections. The new system where you're graded for your use of logic is far more fun and rewarding than those found in the original. It's just too cool analyzing blood splatter patterns to determine if they were caused from arterial spray or from an exit wound. I'm still not entirely finished with the game. I'm likely to play it two more times through to wrap up the single player achievements. I really enjoyed Condemned 2 and I'm eagerly awaiting the sequel. I'm giving Condemned 2: Bloodshot for the Xbox 360 a 9.

Super Smash Bros Brawl -- Final Opinion?

So I've fiddled around with Super Smash Bros Brawl for far longer than I probably should have. I've unlocked all the characters and all the stages. I've completed the forty-one events. I've collected a few music CDs and even more stickers. I've also collected all the useless game demos. Having to load out of the game to play forty seconds of the original Zelda? Really? That's all the memory the Wii has? In this time I've been frustrated as hell. Not just with the whole online debacle but with the game itself. My initial opinion of Super Smash Bros stays true through Super Smash Bros Melee right into Super Smash Bros Brawl. And that's at the core, they're just not very good games, no matter how much gets piled on top.  They're not especially balanced for fairness. I also just can't ever seem to wrap my brain around the jumping and or saving grab mechanics of more than a few of the characters. I find them predominantly useless and ineffective. The game's collision detection also leaves a lot to be desired. I'm also just not that big a fan of randomness and chance of it all. Now, I understand of wanting a user friendly game that anyone can pick up and play in theory. I just don't think it's even that. It's too frustrating to be bothered with unlocking everything there is to be unlocked.  And the game's supposedly greatly improved adventure mode translates to just extending it out to the point of tedium. On the graphical side of things, I'm hardly impressed. The Wii is already really showing its limitations graphically. There are so many jagged lines I'd swear I was looking at a PlayStation 2 game. The game really should have a far more polished look to it. I really appreciate the amount of music that they've put into the game to be unlocked. Only problem is, none of it really fits with a fighting game. It seems more appropriate for use in shopping malls and elevators. Maybe things would have been different had I been able to actually play the game online. You know, if Nintendo could pull its head out of its ass and actually get things working like it was 2000. As it stands now, I'm giving Super Smash Bros Brawl a passable 6.5.

Condemned 2: Bloodshot -- Initial Impression.

Next up for me is the Xbox 360 version of Condemned 2: Bloodshot. The game is the sequel to Condemned: Criminal Origins, which just happened to be one of the best titles for the launch of the Xbox 360. The original was a wonderfully scary and brutal experience, if a slightly flawed one. Bloodshot picks up twelve months later with Ethan Thomas having quit and having fallen on hard times. He's haunted by the events of the first game and is a raging alcoholic who has nearly lost everything. He's a bum in a city filled with bums and the insane and it's just going to get worse from there. It's a rather depressing jumping off point, but  that seems to be the intention. From my initial play time spent with the game I can see that the graphics have greatly improved. That the scare tactics employed by the first one are still in place. That they're going to try to shake things up and take everything to the next level. The combat system has been expanded. I found myself struggling with the learning curve throughout the first level. Another thing greatly apparent is the combat is as mean and brutal and cringe inducing as the original, if not more so, if that's even possible. There's a lot more going on in combat this time around. The first level took me places I wasn't expecting, which is a good sign. It means I have no idea where the hell I'm going. It means they're going to keep me on my guard. They're smartly messing with my expectations. Hopefully this will pan out through the full game. If I can wrap my head around the new combat subtleties and if they continue to shake things up, I should be in for one hell of a scary fun ride. We'll see...

Bully: Scholarship Edtion -- Final Opinion.

Some thirty-seven hours later and the credits have rolled on Bully: Scholarship Edition. I have managed to earn all the achievements, including Perfectionist, which requires one-hundred percent completion of the game. That's something I've never bothered with in the Grand Theft Auto games. I can't really tell if it's because I enjoyed the game so, or it's because of the lure of the achievements guiding me through the game. It's probably a little of both. I really enjoyed the game. The game's story never strays from exactly where you're expecting it to go but it is handled greatly all the way through. Just about every teen movie in existence has some influence on Bully. Just as it should be. The music is decidedly playful and fits very well with the story and setting and events of the game. The graphics are decent enough. The Xbox 360 version is easily the best looking version of the bunch but as I said in a previous post it's definitely a port of a PlayStation 2 title and as such looks the part. The control issue remains throughout the game but you sort of get used to it. You don't quite reach the point of stopping it from happening but you can resolve it immediately. Bully is a packed title, if you want to do everything there is to do, that is. You'll definitely get your money's worth here. Bully is Grand Theft Auto Lite: Charming Edition. I'm giving Bully: Scholarship Edition for the Xbox 360 a 9. Bring on a sequel.

Super Smash Bros Brawl -- 86420.

I have been messing around with Super Smash Bros Brawl, but not really playing it. Externally the game has provided me with the most frustration I've ever experienced with a title. The sole reason I bought Brawl was for the online versus play. Guess what? I can't even connect to a match. I'm eternally getting error 86420. Which according to Nintendo is a NAT issue. So I've opened all the ports for the Wii. I've assigned the Wii its own static IP within the router. The correct one, mind you. I've even gone so far as to place the Wii in the router's DMZ. The Wii couldn't  be more wide open according to my router.  I have no issues connecting to Nintendo's WFC network. I've had no problems connecting to the Wii Shop Channel. No problems purchasing titles therein. I've had no problems surfing the Net with the Wii's Internet browser. Within Brawl I've had no problems getting the daily updates. I can send and receive user created stages without issue. I can use spectator mode with ease. I can see the online status of the people on my friends list in real time. It's only when I try to connect to another person, when there is any sort of peer to peer interaction, that I  get disconnected. I have disabled the Windows firewall as well as McAfee's even though the router is out ahead of the PC and the Wii shouldn't be influenced by them, just in case. I have done everything I could do on my end short of buying a different router. According to the game's stat tracking, I've spent twelve hours with the game just dealing with this, trying to connect. This has just been one massive headache. And it only looks to get worse. If Nintendo can't fix it, and I can't come up with something, I'm probably going to be out of online play for the life span of the Wii. I understand the first steps online are painful for a company, but this is ridiculously bad Nintendo.

Super Smash Bros: Brawl -- Initial Impression.

Here we are, at another triple-A level Nintendo release. This time it's the third entry in the Super Smash Bros series that began on the Nintendo 64. The second entry, Super Smash Bros Melee, just happens to be the best selling title on the GameCube. Fans have been frothing at the mouth for the last half of a year or so. It's time to brawl with Super Smash Bros Brawl. But first I'll have to let you in on a little secret. They're not very good games. At least in my opinion. I found the Nintendo 64 original to be a very shallow slapfest version of king of the mountain and not the fighter I was expecting. Felt a little burned on that one. Jump forward to Melee and the hype of the GameCube launch and the promise of oh so much more that turns out to be the same thing with a bunch of extra fan service piled on top. When discussing these games with people they always brought up me having only played them against the CPU and not against the living. And I always gave them that point. Maybe it does make a world of difference. And that's what has led me here, to Brawl. The promise of online. Will it save the game for me? I'm hoping so. Having messed around in single player my initial impression tells me it's going to be an uphill climb. We're talking like a cliff here...

Bully: Scholarship Edition -- Bully on Bully's Structure.

I have completed fifty percent of Bully: Scholarship Edition, for the game's status tells me so. I've actually just arrived into chapter three of five. It's Christmas time at Bullworth Academy. The decorations twinkle brightly in the night and snow is on the ground. I've been mostly achievement hunting in the game. I've been avoiding advancing the story wherever possible and have made sure to attend all available classes while working towards whatever achievement in my spare time. And I've enjoyed myself doing so. The initial impression I had of Grand Theft Auto sandbox lite was pretty much dead on. Although Bully has a far more structured feeling because of the time constraints employed within. Jimmy Hopkins has from 8 AM to 2 AM to get things done. And attending classes will take a big chunk out of that time. Everything you do in the game advances time. One you've passed each class you no longer have to attend it and you'll begin to get more and more time throughout the day to do whatever you need to do. The classes in the game are clever minigames that are actually fun to play. And you'll be rewarded with some sort of bonus for each level completed in each class. There are five levels per class. And the classes are English, math, gym, chemistry, geography, music, biology, and shop. The rewards for chemistry for example will grant you a chemistry set in your room that allows you to produce your tools of the trade. Items like firecrackers and itching powder and the like. As you go through the levels of chemistry you'll gain the ability to produce more items at once and to use the chemistry set more than once a day. It's the same thing as getting weapons outside your safe house in Grand Theft Auto. It actually pays to stay in school. Although you're free to skip class if you so wish. The story is advanced through missions just like in Grand Theft Auto. You're trying to win over each of the cliques in the game, often by any means necessary. The nerds, jocks, greasers, preppies, and townies all come into play. The missions work just as they would in Grand Theft Auto. They move you through the game and open new areas and introduce new characters. You'll tie up character arcs that add to the overall tale of Jimmy Hopkins' year at Bullworth. It's the sum of the parts approach of storytelling Rockstar has so successfully used in Grand Theft Auto applied to high school. The missions are just as varied as you'd find in Grand Theft Auto. From the obvious panty raid to getting revenge on a teacher to the less expected helping a homeless man build a transceiver for talking to aliens, it's all there with standard love it or leave it Rockstar humor. I'm getting to the point where I'm spending more of my time advancing the story than achievement hunting so a final opinion shouldn't be too far off.

Bully: Scholarship Edition -- Initial Impression.

It's a strange March, hell, it's going to be a strange first half of the year. The first half of 2008 is going to see enough top tier triple-A titles to fill a good holiday season. One of those, Super Smash Bros.: Brawl is just around the corner. And most of us haven't even really put a dent in our backlogs recently bolstered from this past holiday season. So why am I starting an enhanced port of a PlayStation 2 game that was supposedly one of the better games for the system but sort of got lost in the next generation madness of holiday 2006 in the form of Bully: Scholarship edition for the Xbox 360? I can't even tell you because I don't even really know why. But here I am, starting Rockstar Vancouver's via Mad Doc Software's Xbox 360 port of Bully: Scholarship Edition. Being a Rockstar title, the game saw its fair share of controversy when it was first released on the PlayStation 2. There was an uproar over the game from various teacher's organizations over school violence and religious groups didn't care for the game's allowance of homosexual kissing. Bully is a game about being a teenager set in a hellhole of a preparatory  school in New England. A rather original premise, actually. The game loosely follows the Grand Theft Auto sandbox formula. You'll have the same free roaming mission based structure. And you should also have the same trademark Rockstar humor. My initial impression of the game thus far is its definitely a port of a PlayStation 2 game. Meaning, the graphics aren't going to impress anyone. And the controls seem to have issues right now. There's a weird thing where if you turn the camera while walking it realigns the left analog stick so that you don't maintain your direction. It's a weird on the fly shifting of directional control that seems entirely out of place in this type of game. The game seems to also have the sandbox issue of let's have every NPC talk at once so they're all talking over each other thing going on. I'm still very early into the game, something like 1.5% complete, so I haven't really gotten a feel for the flow of the game. Hopefully the technical issues smooth themselves out...

Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles -- Final Opinion.

I've completed Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles for the Wii. The game was advertised as giving you the full story of what went down throughout the Resident Evil saga. Before Umbrella Chronicles the Resident Evil series had become an absolutely silly story made worse by Resident Evil remake and Resident Evil: Zero. Umbrella Chronicles takes the mistakes made in those two games and furthers them into outright ludicrous territory. Don't come into Umbrella Chronicles for any sort of repair to the series' story. Beyond that, the game offers up wonderful levels of cheese seldom reached in video games. It's laugh out loud corny and bad, but it'll provide good entertainment on such a level. The gameplay is fun, but flawed. The Wii Remote actually functions perfectly fine. The problems come in the hit detection. Shots that should stop incoming attacks don't always do so. And the whole all headshots are not created equally issue is present from Resident Evil 4. The graphics are on the ugly side. There's just no way around it. It's an ugly game. The music is actually quite good and works great in setting a tense mood. The voice acting is awful. But then it adds to that 'master of unlocking' Resident Evil charm. Umbrella Chronicles is still worth the ten hours or so you'll put into the game. It lets you shoot zombies and tyrants and hunters and giant spiders and everything else you'd want to see from the Resident Evil series. It's not high art, it's just dumb fun. Really dumb, but fun. I'm giving Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles a 7.5.

Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles -- Bang, Waggle, Bang!

I believe I'm roughly half way through Umbrella Chronicles. I've completed the Resident Evil Zero and Resident Evil remake sections. That should leave the Resident Evil 2-3 and Umbrella's End sections. The game is the standard light gun rail shooter. You have no control over your movement through the levels. Everything is on rails. You have control over a cursor with the Wii Remote. The B button fires. To reload you just waggle the remote. The cursor has notches around it in a circle that represents how many bullets you have left in the weapon before you have to reload. You cycle through the weapons you're carrying with the D-pad. You throw grenades by holding down the A button until the cursor changes then pressing the B button. You're able to pick up items like weapons and healing herbs and information files by moving over them with the cursor and pressing the A button. That's pretty much it. You shoot, reload, and shoot some more until everything is dead and the level has run its course. The game adds a little depth and replay value by having you collect files and upgrading weapons. The files are hidden in the levels and they're just like the files out of any Resident Evil title. They reveal little tidbits about the story and characters. They could be hidden anywhere in the level, although never out in the open. They're always behind or under something that needs to be destroyed or otherwise removed before the files can be collected. So you'll have to shoot that lamp or that picture frame while just trying to survive the enemy assault. Each level is scored. The better you do in each category the higher your letter ranking. The higher the grade the more stars you earn. The stars allow you to upgrade your weapons. Giving you more ammo and larger clip capacity and the like. Making your life a tad easier overall. The action is mostly fun. There are some cheap attacks you can't possibly know to avoid. But then I guess that plays into the whole replay factor they've put into the game. Next time should wrap it up and cover just how cheesy that story is. And is it ever.

Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles -- Initial Impression.

We're heading over to the Wii for the next game. It's Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles, an on-rails light gun shooter. The game is developed by Cavia for publisher Capcom. The game offers the supposed real story that you didn't see originally through the events of the Resident Evil saga. The game covers Resident Evil Zero, Resident Evil remake, Resident Evil 2, Resident Evil 3, and the end of Umbrella revealed in a new chapter. The game skips the events of Resident Evil: Code  Veronica. In all honesty, I'm expecting a headache inducing story as Capcom tries to make sense of the absolute mess that is the Resident Evil series.  And I'm hoping for some fun light gun gameplay along the way as the game jaunts through the various Resident Evil locations. The expectations are low enough that maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised. As always, there is only one way to find out...