Kirby Super Star Ultra -- Final Opinion.

So I'm finished with Kirby Super Star Ultra a littler sooner than I was expecting to be finished with the game. Now I was aware that the title was a collection of smaller games. I just was not expecting them to be so easy and shallow. The concept is certainly sound. I think for me the issues I have with the title stem from the actual core Kirby gameplay. From what I've played of the series, outside of the Nintendo 64 game, the titles have always just seemed off at the core gameplay. Mainly because the copy enemy powers ability has no real needed use. It's not used for puzzles. It's really just a gimmick. If you enjoy the core Kirby gameplay then you're certainly going to enjoy Kirby Super Star Ultra as everything else with the title is very well done. The graphics are great. They're extremely detailed and highly colorful. The animation is good with lots of cute touches to be found here and there. The sound is clear and crisp and is upbeat and just about what you'd expect for the visuals. The controls are perfectly responsive. You'll have no issues there, even in the touch applications. I'm giving Kirby Super Star Ultra a solid 7. Now, to decide where to go from here...

Kirby Super Star Ultra -- Initial Impression.

Next up for me will be Kirby Super Star Ultra for the Nintendo DS. The game is a remake of the 1996 Super Nintendo game Kirby Super Star produced by Hal. The original Kirby Super Star was a collection of nine games. Kirby Super Star Ultra returns all nine games of the original and adds to it seven new titles for a collection of sixteen games. The returning games are Spring Breeze, Dyna Blade, Gourmet Race, The Great Cave Offensive, Revenge of Meta Knight, Milky Way Wishes, The Arena, Megaton Punch, and Samurai Kirby. The new games are Revenge of the King, Meta Knightmare Ultra, Helper to Hero, The True Arena, Kirby Card Swipe, Kirby on the Draw, and Snack Track. What am I expecting from Kirby Super Star Ultra? I'm hoping for some really good 2D platform action with some mini-game distractions thrown in. I'm also expecting them all to be done with bright and colorful graphics and have some great upbeat old-school music. I'm also hoping Kirby Super Star Ultra is the perfect game to cleanse the palette so to speak after Fallout 3.

Fallout 3 -- Final Opinion.

I put in roughly seventy hours into Fallout 3 and came away with the full one-thousand Gamerpoints. I can't say that I loved the game. I'm not even sure I can say I liked it. I feel drained, as if I really have been slogging my way through a post apocalyptic wasteland. And I don't really think that's a good thing no matter how you look at it. Make no mistake about it, this is Oblivion with a coating of radioactive glowing green paint splashed on it. Which is why I find my reaction to Fallout even more perplexing considering how much I enjoyed Oblivion. I can't really point to anything in the game I especially liked. I wasn't engaged by the story. I found it to be too goofy and even ludicrous. I didn't care about any of the characters. They're all very one-dimensional and too stereotypical. I wasn't moved by the world itself. I've heard people talking about the bleakness of the world and how overwhelming it all is for them and it just never resonated with me at all. The graphics are decent. I found the art direction to be bland. I wasn't a fan of the 1950's retro-future aesthetic as I was expecting to be. The combat was generally annoying. As a first person shooter the combat is severely lacking and behind the times. The much touted VATS system just wasn't that balanced. I was seriously annoyed from the start at how random it all is. The RPG conventions of damage rolls and hit percentages are just pointless beyond adding frustration. It made the combat feel broken overall. The voice acting was decent if a tad repetitive. Too few voice actors doing too many characters. I can appreciate the level of work Bethesda put into the title and that clearly shows. I just didn't happen to care for most of it. I'm giving Fallout 3 a 7, mostly for the respect for the effort.

Fallout 3: Wandering the Wasteland of Morrowind.

I've put in roughly thirty hours into Fallout 3. I have to say it's been an uphill struggle. Fallout uses the Oblivion engine, but it appears to have taken a step back towards the broken balance of Morrowind. And that makes the initial hours of Fallout 3 more of a grind than they need to be. The problem is that initially you'll need to suffer through broken gameplay so Bethesda can maintain their RPG conventions. I don't care how much radiation a rabid dog has absorbed, it's just a feral dog. A single bullet to the head means death. I can understand Bethesda feeling that you need to level and gain experience to correctly handle a gun. That's fine. So you miss more than you hit initially. But it's just annoying that when you do hit you do nearly no damage. It's insane to have to shoot a mere feral dog in the head upwards of fifteen times. And this carries over to every enemy in the game. If you think the dog is bad, wait until you come across an armored scorpion. But it does eventually get better. Somewhere around the halfway point of level ten you'll have advanced enough in your skills and perks to have become competent. The game begins to become fun. But that's a major hill you must initially climb. Let's see if the back half of the game will make up for the struggle of the first half.

Fallout 3 -- Initial Impression.

Continuing to move through the more current backlog from this past holiday season finds the Xbox 360 version of Fallout 3 on deck. Fallout and the sequel Fallout 2 were originally PC role playing games from Black Isle Studios centered around life in a nuclear wasteland. Needless to say they developed a very strong cult following. A cult following that was very vocally opposed to the very idea of another Fallout not made by Black Isle Studios but somehow wanting nothing more in life than another Fallout title. Fallout 3 is from Bethesda Softworks, the makers of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. I never played the original Fallout titles and I enjoyed the hell out of Oblivion. So I don't have any set in stone concept of what a beloved Fallout game should be. I don't have any reason to bitch about the Fallout aesthetic being laid down on a foundation of the Oblivion engine. The game will stand on its own. If it's good, it's good. If it's bad, then it's bad. I will say that I've played through what amounts to the opening sequence and have escaped Vault 101. I haven't had much time to come to terms with the game. I can say the voice acting is pretty good initially and that I like the shades of humor on display. I'm also expecting a rather long haul. This one is going to take a while...

de Blob -- Final Opinion.

I've completed de Blob for the Wii. If I had to estimate, I'd say it took roughly twenty-five hours to fully complete the game with all rewards. The game is traditional platform action title with some Wii Remote waggle thrown in. The goal of the game is to recapture sections of the city by covering them in paint. With that you're put into rather sprawling levels. In fact you'll be spending an hour to an hour and half in each of the game's ten levels. That's if you're going to aim for all the rewards. And de Blob is a game much like Super Mario 64 and Wario Land: Shake It in that if you haven't really completed the game one-hundred percent, you're missing out on the bulk of what the game offers. The game's levels are massive, but you're not in them without some focus. Throughout the levels there are challenges offered up by the game's cast of characters. They keep you focused and moving through the levels and they offer up more time. It's important to note that the timer is king in de Blob. In story mode you're under the gun to finish on time. The more challenges you do, and the more blocks you complete, the more bonus time you'll earn. You're rewarded the more thorough you are. The game offers up some truly fun and interesting platforming action. The monochrome, then colorful graphics actually are very aesthetically pleasing even if the game isn't really pushing the Wii in any way. The music is very interesting. The tracks are very relaxed and almost improvisational and jazz-like in nature. You're able to select whatever music based on Blob's mood for that level. The music adapts and changes based on your actions in the game. There is some gibberish voice acting in the game that's quite good. You'll pick out real words from time to time and it actually has a strange unsettling feel to it for some reason. The story is also interesting in just how much they play up the color revolution aspect of the game. The game's cast is rather serious about their color. The game's control is really rather functional. Which is pretty good considering it's a Wii title featuring waggle. Every once in a while you will fall or miss a jump because the waggle failed to register. I'm impressed with de Blob. Especially with how much of gameplay is there is being offered. And how that gameplay has a decidedly classic feel to it. I'm giving de Blob an 8.5.

de Blob -- Initial Impression.

As I await the download content for Fable 2 that's now officially set for January 13, I'll need something I can hopefully fit in meanwhile. For that I'm going to be going back over to the Wii with THQ's and Blue Tongue's de Blob. The game is an action title where you'll control a rolling and bouncing blob of paint in a once formally colorful world that's been turned monochrome by an evil corporation. You'll be joining the underground movement to return color to the world and free the enslaved people from the colorless monotony of their existence. The game uses the Wii Remote and the Wii Nunchuck. My initial impression is that the control is a tad loose in the jumping. I can't tell if that's because of the Wii Remote or not at this point. Initially the game seems to have a great sense of humor and fun. It also seems to have a great soundtrack. It does initially seem to be a solid third party entry on the Wii, which in itself makes de Blob something of a rarity.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed -- Final Opinion.

I'm surprised at the middling reviews for Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. I did play a patched version of the game and I have to wonder if that made such a difference. I'm thoroughly impressed with The Force Unleashed. I'd go so far as to call it the best Star Wars game ever made. The Force Unleashed uses Havok, Euphoria, and Digital Molecular Matter. Havok allows for objects to bounce off each other in a realistic manner. Euphoria allows for the enemies to adjust to what you're doing in a more realistic manner. And Digital Molecular Matter allows for you to destroy your environment in a realistic manner. What that really means is the game allows for you to have some wickedly fun and creative moments using Force powers to be completely and totally badass. As a Sith and or Jedi you're able to harness the Force to allow for certain abilities. Force grip, Force push, Force lightning, and any combination therein. That may not sound like much but picture this scenario. You're on a starship and you're heading down one of the corridors. At the end of the corridor is a junction room with five or six stormtroopers in it. Near you are a mouse droid and a box droid. You can Force sprint down the corridor and attack the stormtroopers with your lightsaber. Or you can hang back and use your lightsaber to block their blaster fire and send it right back at them. Or you could hurl your lightsaber down the corridor. You could charge down the corridor and attack them with Force lightning. Or throw them around. But I'd rather have some real fun. So I'll use Force grip and pick up that box droid near me and throw it down the corridor above them and through the window behind them sending it out into open space. Of course that causes a rush of air that pulls the stormtroopers out into space. But those engines combine to make it more than just that. The window breaks and the stormtroopers start being pulled out into space. Only one in the middle manages to grab on to a railing, and another manages to grab his other hand. So we have two others dangling in mid air out of some cartoon trying desperately to hang on until the emergency air lock shutters close. But of course it's too late for those two as I'm already upon them ready to deal out death. The Force Unleashed uses a leveling up system that allows you to earn points you can spend towards more Force powers. You don't start the game as a Jedi Master. You have to work towards badass. The game starts tough and you never truly feel indestructible. It wouldn't be much of a game if you were invincible now would it? And on the harder difficulties you'll actually feel far more fragile. The game has some impressive bosses. They're interesting in concept and character. The graphics are great. They really nailed them from an art design perspective. You always feel apart of the Star Wars universe. The graphics do suffer from that current generation syndrome of having anything metal or wet be way too shiny. The character models are wonderfully detailed as far as their outfits go. Their faces aren't the most technically impressive out there, but they work great at emoting subtleties. The music is great. Of course the bulk of it is John Williams' brilliant Star Wars score. But the other all new bits are quite fitting and work well and never take you out of the universe you're supposed to be in. The voice acting is very well done and this is probably the best Darth Vader outside of James Earl Jones. It was actually nice to see Jimmy Smitts reprise his role as Bail Organa. The story is the best surprise of the experience. It's a very well thought out and crafted story. A story that tells the tale of the creation of the Rebel Alliance. What Revenge of the Sith only hinted at The Force Unleashed fleshed out into a great Star Wars experience. I'm going to give Star Wars: The Force Unleashed a 9. I enjoyed it enough to play through it twice for all the achievements, and enough to purchase the extra level download content.

Phantasy Star Zero -- Final Impression.

So I have stumbled my way through the seven areas of the Japanese version of Phantasy Star Zero. I've made it to the final boss who promptly proceeded to kick my ass numerous times. I think I'm done. I don't want to see the end. I'll save that for the English version of the game. The game is a return to form and a return to Phantasy Star Online. The game takes the best bits of Phantasy Star Universe and Phantasy Star Online and blends them perfectly. I'd say it's eighty percent Phantasy Star Online and twenty percent Phantasy Star Universe. As the game is in Japanese I have no idea about the story. I can say that the graphics are amazing for a 3D Nintendo DS game. It's PSO up and running on the NDS and it looks better than it has any right to look. The sound is also great. The composition is pure Phantasy Star Online. The controls, at least for a Force are great. I had no issues controlling my character at all. I can't imagine the other classes having any issues. The areas are diverse as are the creatures. There are four primary bosses and numerous mini boss battles. I'm thoroughly impressed with Phantasy Star Zero and since this isn't a review I can only score my anticipation for the English version of the game. And I'd score my anticipation a 10.