iOS and Android games. My opinions

This is more of a rant then it is a review, it should also be noted that these are just general terms and unless told otherwise, do not relate to any specific game.

iOS and Android gaming, oh how I hate thee so. Unlike most people nowadays, I couldn't give less of a crap about iOS and Android games even if I tried. To me, it is infuriating to see those games. I will admit that I have played a few and there are some I generally enjoy, but for the most part, unless its a port of a game, I don't play it.

And now for the reason why: iOS and Android apps are designed to be small, easily downloadable and easily be erased. Because of this, I feel that the games that are produced have little to no effort put into it. I want to divert your attention to Candy Crush and its developers. Candy Crush is just Bejewled with different textures. If it was just Candy Crush, I would live with it but the developers have released 2-3 other games that are, once again, BEJEWLED WITH DIFFERENT TEXTURES. All for a quick buck. If it was Candy Crush 2 or something similar then I wouldn't care as much but their claiming that its a new IP, that it is a completely new game when its anything but.

Another reason why I hate iOS and Android games, Ads and Micro Transactions. If you get a game for free off of the Apple App Store or Android App Store, then chances are, one of the two (if not both) are going to be in that version of the game. It frustrates me to no end this lame excuse for money. IF YOU WANT MONEY FOR THE GAME, THEN SELL THE GAME AND NOT PUT IT UP FOR FREE!!! I don't want to have to wait 24 hours to complete a game session, nor do I want to pay to complete said session. I don't want to pay for WHAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN INCLUDED IN THE F&!#^)! GAME TO BEGIN WITH (though I will pay for DLC, but I'll explain why at another time). I don't want to watch a add every 5 F&^$*(! minutes just to get s$%@ done.

And finally, the last nail in the coffin. The argument that iOS and Android systems are better then portable game systems. BULL@*!^. iOS and Android systems will never be able to keep up with portable consoles like the 3DS and PSVita. The reason: because their not designed to be gaming consoles, their designed to be PHONES AND MUSIC PLAYERS. They are phones and mp3 players first and games are thrown in second or at the last moment where as the 3DS and Vita, they are designed to be gaming systems. Are they more expensive? Yes. Are they worth the price? It depends on the library. Will they be going anytime soon? No, the reason: Because there will always be a market for portable gaming consoles, it might be a small market, but as long as there are the games that need the power of the portable consoles, there will be portables, even if its a laptop.

That is all that I'm going to say on the matter, I have finished my rant.

Nostalga, feeling older then you actually are.

Unless you were born in the new millennium (and even then that's pushing it), I'm pretty sure everyone has had a moment when you suddenly feel older then you actually are, normally if you witness a anniversary of something you saw at the beginning if its life. While I'm sure it feels worse the older you get, for me at least, as someone who's 18 years old, it's a weird feeling knowing that the games you played, the shows and movies you watched are being classified as retro. I have very fond, memories of playing Nintendo 64's at restaurants and even my Primary School's before school care service when I was younger, playing Super Mario 64, Mario Kart 64, Star Wars Pod Racer and Pokémon Stadium 1 and 2. Playing Crash Bandicoot 1, Spyro the Dragon 1, The amazing Spiderman, Atlantis the lost empire and Tomb Raider on my family's (specifically my father's) PlayStation 1, having to swap Memory cards when needed just to find my save files, along with the Need for Speed Underground games, Burnout 3 and the early LEGO games on the PlayStation 2. These are memories ingrained into my head, memories that are so strong that I can pick them up again 20+ years latter and still play it like the last time I played it was yesterday. It is because of those games that I remember the consoles controller's layout off by heart, to me, all the buttons on them are exactly where they need to be. I still remember the original Beyblades (I went to a Beyblade Tournament myself, when it was almost impossible to learn how to play Yu-Gi-Oh because the first season barely resembled the card game (I know this from experience). When Tamagotchi's were physical things and not apps, Scannerz were around and you had kids in shops scanning everything with a barcode (I might have been one of them...) when rumours were spreading about the mythical E-Reader, the theories of how to get Deoxys and or Jirachi, Mirage Island and more. I know this might be pathetic for readers who are older then me and even for people my age, I don't know what it is, but I always do like reminiscing on those days...

Please let me know if there is anything you like to reminisce about your younger days, what makes you feel older then you actually do when you realise how long its been.

On a non related note, my blog for Super Smash Brothers, Fan Disagreement has had over 100 views, so again, thankyou to all who have actually read the blog and this one as well.

Over 100 Views???

Thank you to all who have seen this, while I was asleep (and before the last post) this blog has had over 100 views. This is actually quite comforting so again, thank you.

SSE Replayability Idea

I think we all know about the infamous Subspace Emissary and how... tedious it was. A lot of levels had no significance on the plot, the plot itself had a lot of BIG plot holes and then there is the infamous Great Maze (ugh...). When designing Fan Disagreement, one of the things I wanted to do was redo the concept of SSE because to me, it has potential but was poorly executed (like a game I would rather not review *inset bad memories of that f^%$*&^ billiard puzzle...).

For this idea, I would like to divert your attention to the LEGO games, each of the levels in those games can be played and completed by any of the characters, like how SSE was trying to do, but in the games, the more characters you have, the more rooms you can get into in said levels and the more collectables you can find. This is pretty much the idea I would like to implement into SSE. Each character would have a ability that is shared between other characters and, depending on what characters you bring into a level, the more collectables like stickers and trophies you can find.

Case 1: Turnabout defense. A review of the Ace Attorney main series

*please note that I try to keep my reviews G-PG

This is one of the franchises I thought I’d never look at simply because of the genre. But thanks to a few friends of mine, I have played most of the games in the series enjoyed what I played and thought it might be time to look at gaming’s lawyer. The prosecution is ready, the defense is ready, court is now in session for the review of the Phoenix Wright “games”.

The Prosecution’s opening statement: To the keen eye, the “” around games was no accident. Some people struggle to call these games games. These are more visual novels and no matter what you do, you have to play the story out to the end. In the story, you are, for the most part, Phoenix Wright, a defense attorney who, start the start of the series, is starting out and becomes better as the games progress.

“The prosecution calls its first witness to the stand.

The testimony and Cross Examination: Before most cases (the first case in every game is a exception) you have an investigation, or to me it’s a “touch every ware on the screen” mode. While you investigate, you can search the area for evidence, talk to people who are in the room or move to another room, the more complicated the case, the more rooms you have to go through and the more backtracking you have to do. While it isn’t a problem in Duel Destinies, the newest one for the 3DS (at time of review), in the GBA and DS games, you can only progress to a specific area in a specific order, for example, to get to the boat keeper’s house in the first game, you have to go to the lake and to get to the lake, you have to go to the entrance to the park. While it might not seem that bad at first, it quickly becomes very annoying (something I’m glad they fixed in DD). Another issue that is fixed in Duel Destinies is a small prompt on your curser that shows you what you have already investigated and what you haven’t another thing I’m glad they fixed.

“OBJECTION!!!. This conflicts with the script, there is more to this then the witness is telling us”

If you give me a minute, I can explain the next phase

After you have investigated all that you can on a given day, you can begin the trial for that case, what I believe to be the best part of the game. In the trials, you have to present specific evidence at specific points in witness’s testimonies. In the testimonies, you can either question points further or present contradictory evidence, such as an autopsy report if the witness’s statement doesn’t match the report or people’s mug shots if again, the testimony contradicts the evidence. At first, the cases are pretty simple but as you progress through the games, bigger and bigger trials are accessible and require more and more evidence, it becomes a memory game trying to remember what evidence you have used already. The game is a bit vague overall when it comes to finding the contradictory evidence but it makes it more satisfying when you find the right one. The music is always fitting when you find the right evidence as well. As soon as you find the right evidence, the music cuts and a special track will play when the defense points out the flaw which, to me, makes you feel accomplished, as soon as I hear the music cuts out, you often think “Gotcha you lying jerk”. Which leads to another great thing about this, the animations of the characters, while the original trilogy might only have 32-bit sprites, the animations they make are really well done and its always satisfying to see their breakdowns (my favorite being Damon Grant’s from the 5^th case in the first game). The sprite reuse can come off as a bit lazy but I’m willing to let it slide as they are still high quality.

“HOLD IT!!! Who are the main characters?”

Again I’m getting to it. Aside from Phoenix Wright, you will also be running into Miles Edgeworth, the main prosecutor, Detective Dick Gumshoe and Maya Fey in the original trilogy, Trucy Wright in the second trilogy, Apollo Justice, The Judge and several other characters that I will leave as a surprise.

“In conclusion your honor, the defendant has told me that he believes that these games are good assuming you’re not looking for any actual game. This review hasn’t covered the Edgeworth games as they need a separate review. It’s a entertaining story that Point and click enthusiasts would enjoy.”

“Then I find the defendant…”

NOT GUILTY And worth playing

One of the most well known nerdy battles. Pokemon verses Digimon

Well, it might not be a Tamer’s review, but I thought that this might be a good intro to Digimon (my review at the moment has a lot of backstory and it that reason why I haven’t posted it yet). For this, I’m reviewing the Digimon Franchise and its pros and cons over its rival, the Pokémon Franchise.

I should note, before I cover the games, I have only played (and still working on) the DS games, Digimon World DS, Digimon World Dawn and its counterpart Digimon World Dusk so my review might be a bit biased. That being said, the Digimon World games haven’t held my interest like the Pokémon Games have. The plot is pretty simple, you’re a kid who has either been sucked into the Digital World (the world of the Digimon, they are digital monster’s after all) or has been living in the Digital World already (these are for the before mentioned games so intro might be different depending on the game). For World DS, because your being sucked into the Digital World, you can choose your partner, who are the three “In Training” forms of the partners in the, current at the time of release, main members of DATS, the organization in Digimon Data Squad, more on that latter. From there, you complete objectives to improve your Digimon’s residence, collect information about other Digimon and raise your Digimon so that they can “Digivolve”. Dawn and Dusk’s plots might be similar to the late game as DS (again, haven’t played that much of it yet at the time of post). You are a member of one of two organizations (depending on which version you play) and you have to stop something from causing havoc on the Digital World using the Digimon you already have and anymore you collect on the way. While I haven’t played a lot of the games, I do like the evolution method the games use. When your Digimon reaches a certain level and has a specific number of special experience based on the species (Insect, Machine, Dragon ect) it can Digivolve to the next level. In order, these are Baby/Newborn, In Training, Rookie, Champion, Ultimate, Mega and some species have the ability to go further, but I’ll explain latter. What makes this better then Pokémon for me is that most Digimon can Digivolve into multiple forms depending on the circumstances. Take the “mascot” for example, while I won’t explain how, Agumon can turn into either Greymon and from there it can turn into Metal Greymon and then War Greymon, or it can turn into GeoGreymon, RiseGreymon and then ShineGreymon (this is a basic toned down version but you get the point). This gives the game a lot more replay ability because you could choose the same In Training Digimon but get a different Mega.

For Pokémon, on the other hand, you’re a 10 year old kid who gets either a Grass type, Fire type or Water type Pokémon as your first Pokémon (unless you’re playing Yellow in which case you get Pikachu). You go out, get 8 gym badges from other cities, take on the Elite 4, champion, enter hall of fame and congratulations, you’ve beaten the game, go onto post game if you wish. While it might seem that I’m hating on the plot of the games (and I am) for some reason, this keeps my interest unlike the Digimon Games. My guess is because, to me, Pokémon gets to the point faster and lets me play faster than the Digimon World games have. I prefer games that get to the actual gameplay fast (which is why I dropped Skyrim after I left the first town…). It could also be 9 years of playing Pokémon to 2 years of Digimon but I digress. The Pokémon games are much easier to get into unlike Digimon because all the Pokémon games assume you don’t have prior knowledge of games (which is good until you see the “How to catch a Pokémon Tutorial for the 50^th time which often resorts to myself saying to the game “I’ve been catching Pokémon since before you were programed”. I guess the nutshell is, Pokémon is baby’s first RPG with Digimon being the next phase up, they are worth a look but you have to have knowledge of the series (for Digimon’s case anyway) to understand what you’re getting yourself into. One of the things I like the most though in Pokémon is that it feels a lot more like a world then the Digimon games ever did, but I’ll explain why latter.

And now for the ne thing that people remember the most when it comes to Digimon, the anime. I will be looking at the English Dub’s for this so to fans, I apologies. That being said, I really enjoy the anime, it does a lot of things that the Pokémon Anime would never do. For example

1.       Changes the main character. While Ash is STILL the protagonist of the Pokémon anime, the Digimon anime changes its group of lead characters at the end of almost every season and even then, the group is generally larger than the Pokémon series. While there are 3-4 primary characters in Pokémon every season, Ash still gets the most screen time trying to flesh out a character that has run dry in my opinion. Granted I still like characters like Misty, May and Dawn, its primarily due to their personalities and how they grow as trainers. The Digimon group has 3-8 characters per season and they all have decent air time and fleshed out characters by the end of their series. Because of the new characters, it is understandable for them to get information on all the Digimon, even if it is just for the viewers but for Pokémon, it is becoming harder and harder to take ash seriously because he is using the Pokédex on older Pokémon, THAT HE HAS ALERADY SEEN AND IN SOME CASES CAUGHT!!!

2.       Darker themes. While yes, Pokémon has gotten away with some dark themes, a lot of those episodes have gotten banned as a result. Remember when Ash got his 30 Tauros, I don’t. What about when Castelia City was destroyed, nothing comes to mind…. The only dark theme that I remember in the anime was in the first move, in the “Try not to cry, cry a lot when you first see it” scene where Ash dies (And after almost 20 years, spoiler warnings are thrown out the window). But in the Digimon series, they cover death quite a lot in all the seasons. The “Digi-Destined” also have to learn how to live with their decisions “when is it alright to kill”. Family is mentioned constantly in the first season. Digimon Tamers has been regarded as one of the darkest seasons to date for several reasons. In the past seasons, when Digimon “die” their data is reconfigured and they are reborn in a special area of the Digital World. In tamers, that is never mentioned so it is assumed that if someone dies, their dead for good, so when one of the heroes, Leomon is killed, on camera, uncensored (he slowly breaks down into raw data and dissolves, the equivalent of bleeding to death) and then the famous line by the leader of the group “I’ll make you hurt, I’LL MAKE YOU PAY”, which then leads into the final ark where the villain uses the hero’s mental states against them…

Probably my only complaint with the Digimon anime is the fifth season, Digimon Data Squad and its really just a personal opinion. In the past, it has been shown that Digimon are based off of kids imaginations (hence why you can have a giant dinosaur that fires missiles out of his chest) so it seems weird to me to see late teenagers-early adults being Digi-Destined. While yes, the cast of the first two seasons are shown to have matured and become adults while still having their Digimon, they got them when they were kids so I’m willing to let that slide. Again though, its just a personal thing to me

In conclusion, I highly recommend giving both a shot, to get your own opinions on both franchises. I haven’t covered anything about the other aspects of the franchises, including the toys ect and that’s just because of a lack of experience.

Impressions of the concluding Knight

It would appear that Rocksteady has been busy during the development of Arkham Origins. Earlier today they announced the conclusion to the Batman Arkham series, Batman Arkham Knight. They have been working on this title since the release of Arkham City and from the trailer, it would appear that their going out with a bang. Scarecrow looks to be the main villain in this game with Two-Face, Penguin and Harley Quinn also working on this plan. The setting is going to be one year after Arkham City and will have a bigger world then Arkham City, but I am not sure about it being bigger then Arkham Origins. One thing that has been confirmed is that you can finally, FINALLY drive the iconic Batmobile, which now has a design resembling several past iterations such as the Animated series and the Tumbler from the Nolan films. A Pre-order bundle was also released which allows you to play as Harley.

While I might not have a next gen console yet (this is being released for PS4, X-Bone X-Box One and PC) I am still very much looking forward to this game and will pick it up as soon as I have a PS4 (but first comes the PS3 for the two Kingdom hearts final mixes, and the WiiU for Smash 4). I do hope that you can play as Robin this time though as he was fun in the Arkham City DLC, Harley Quinn's Revenge.

Also, total number of times Arkham appears in this post: 10

Singleplayer

I know that it has been a while and I apologies for that. Aside from my other blog "Blaster's Reviews", to which I am currently writing a review of Digimon Tamers for, other things came up that I needed to prioritize.

As for the information, there are two things I want to discuss that relate to the single player aspect of Fan Disagreement. The first is the modes. There will be two separate singleplayer campaigns on top of the usual, a Melee inspired adventure mode (pretty self explaining) and also a Brawl inspired story driven mode.

The other thing I want to talk about is the points and smash tokens that you could get in Brawl, for SSBFD, you can use them to play mini games along with the ability purchase trophies, stickers, and characters (including special characters that cannot be unlocked in any other way).

A loss of old friends...

A list of the names of the fallen, whose online services shall be remembered for better or worse in the years after their untimely demise.
For the DS: http://en.wikipedia.org/.../List_of_Nintendo_DS_Wi-Fi...
And for the Wii: http://en.wikipedia.org/.../List_of_Wii_Wi-Fi_Connection...

May their losses not be in vein, may developers learn from the mistakes of these fine games and use their knowledge for better or worse

Wii will remember them...

In recognition of the fallen services, for better or for worse. http://youtu.be/2Zj_oZEZcGM

Before I sound crazy... All Nintendo DS and Wii games will lose online features on May 20th worldwide. However, this will not mean other online features will be terminated. The Nintendo DSi Shop, Nintendo DS Browser and Nintendo DSi Browser will continue to operate. Similiary on the wii the Wii Shop Channel, Internet Channel, Youtube and Hulu will continue to work.

On the subject of Pokemon

If you have your club Nintendo codes for your 3DS, 3DS XL or 2DS and a selected few games (Mario Kart 7, Mario 3D Land, DKC returns 3D and Animal Crossing New Leaf (there might be others)) you can get a free download code for Pokémon X and Y. I would say that this is worth it so if you are interested in playing Pokémon X/Y but don't want to pay for it. Use this offer.