Game #1323: The Legend of Tian Ding

  Every culture has their own Robin Hood.

 My quest to play Chinese-developed games continues with The Legend of Tian Ding, a game based around a Taiwanese Robin Hood-esque type character.

 Being based around a thief you'd expect the game to be a stealth game, but thankfully it ain't. It's a 2.5-D sidescrolling platforming beat'em up type of game. Divided into various chapters, Tian Ding must sneak into different areas, beat policemen and thugs while avoiding traps. You can jump and propel yourself from hooks and what not, but when it comes to fighting you can even steal weapons from your enemies.

 It's fast and fun, even if a bit too simplistic for my taste. I quite enjoyed the game all things considered, I needn't think too much, just try to stylishly beat enemies while using Tian's special abilities... or their own weapons.

 7.0

Game #1322: Breakers Collection

  More than a Street Fighter Clone II... I think.

 Lemme tell you about a couple of my favorite fighting games of all time, conveniently repackaged in Breakers Collection, a compilation of both Breakers and Breakers Revenge.

 In a few words, it's a Street Fighter II clone but with SNK's flair. You get four attack buttons instead of 6, while you also get 8 characters based on very generic stereotypes. You've got a Japanese martial artist that can throw fireballs, his Chinese rival, and Indian wrestler and even a Pharaoh that can stretch his limbs much like Dhalsim. Breakers Revenge adds a 9th character, a fun Ninja named Saizo.

 For all intents and purposes, Revenge makes the original obsolete, as it includes every character, move and background stage from the original plus the new character, Saizo.

 What makes these games good is just how much fun they are to play, the gameplay is fairly simple, but very solid, creating your own combos is fairly straight-forward, but the combat feels nice. Landing attacks feels weighty and the physics are satisfying. It's also fairly colorful, and the sprites are pretty nice.

 That said, the overall package is a bit... barebones. There's a bit of art to unlock, an online mode, a training mode.... and not much more, not even in the way of options. That said, both games are a ton of fun, so I can overlook it.

 8.5

Game #1321: Mario & Luigi - Superstar Saga + Bowser's Minions

 The adventures of Mario and the green Mario. 

 Good news, I think, since Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga + Bowser's Minions is practically identical to the GBA original in gameplay and story, so I'll write mostly about the differences between the original and this remake.

 For starters, the game sports a completely new look, which is probably gonna be quite a divisive element of the game. On one hand, the animation is undeniably smoother in this one, however... the artstyle is completely different. The original was very bright and colorful, and the character sprites had these thick black outlines that made characters look like caricatures, it was a gorgeous game. These sprites are more tame in comparison, they don't have outlines, and they went for a more natural looking lighting, which does look more realistic... but why would you want Mario to feel realistic? So yeah, it's a give and take. Smoother animation, for sure, but it doesn't look as pretty. That said, I'm sure some people might prefer this art-style.

 The game added a ton of shortcuts to make the experience easier. Cycling through environmental actions, such as the high jump or the spinning jump, is done with L and R, or by using the touchscreen, which is very easy and comfortable, you don't even need to bother with formations. The X button now makes both brothers jump at the same time, so you can have another environmental action selected without losing the ability to jump. You can also use the bottom-screen as a map, which is quite convenient. When using Special Moves, now the game shows you the order of the inputs on the bottom screen, which is very useful.

 The game felt way, way easier than before. There are a ton of Heal Blocks near save spots that completely restore both brothers' HP and BP, for free! Apparently, the Japanese version of the game had them and they were removed for the international version. That said... I didn't die once in the entire game... up until I reached the second form of the final boss. It felt way harder and more brutal, to the point that... maybe because I was tired, I'm not sure, but the game offered me a new "Easy Mode"... and I took it, why not? I already finished the original. But yeah, I feel as if the entire game is way easier, but the final boss way harder.

 On another note, there were two times in which I was absolutely stumped and had to resort to a guide to check where I needed to go.

 The entirely new addition is Bowser's Minion, a campaign that unlocks pretty early into the game. It's a fully fledged strategy-sort-of mini-game in which you make an 8-member team comprised of Goombas, Bobombs, Shyguys, Parakoopas and the such and have to face off against other enemies following a rock-paper-scissors type of weaknesses and strengths. I didn't care for it, but it's got about 8 worlds.

 Overall? I liked revisiting Superstar Saga, very little has changed... and very little needed to change considering the game was fantastic from the get go. If anything, the combat is so involved that I was a bit tired of it by the end, but I still had fun.

 8.0

Game #1320: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets(Playstation 2)

 This chamber can keep a secret.

 Now this one I actually owned when I was younger, but I'm sure I never got to finish it. I remember when Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets released on PS2 it received a ton of good reviews and it was being compared to Zelda, so I took the plunge and bought the game, and I'm pretty sure I liked it quite a bit, so I'm not too sure as too why I never got to finish it.

 Anyways, this game actually came out before the Philosopher's Stone on PS2... and it shows. The camera is a bit janky and the game as a whole feels a bit rough. Flying is super annoying, because every time you move him, the game jerks him towards the center of the screen, which makes it feel as if Quirrel is casting something to make Harry fall from his broom... except that this is the sequel and professor Quirrel is long gone.

 And I thought ghosts were annoying in the Philosopher's Stone? You can't defeat ghosts in the game, which is very annoying, and if they touch you, you lose all-flavored beans(currency)! Midway through you get Expeliarmus, which is actually a deflect spell, and afterwards the game starts throwing Gargoyles your way, which must be fought by reflecting their fireballs.... over and over again. They take forever!  And that's a thing I felt with this game... many times, it felt quite tedious. The puzzles are alright, but going through them feels like a slog at times.

 Compounding to that... is the stealth. Every time you go out at night you need to be stealthy, and it's SO annoying. Prefects can hear you from far away if you do anything other than slowly crawl, which is so boring. And they always have the SAME boring patterns that force you to wait. You do know that Harry has an invisibility cape, don't you? And if they catch you, you lose house points, which hurts you right in you ego. The game is easily at its best when you are exploring Hogwarts with your spells to obtain Trading cards, and every ten of them you get a small permanent health boost. And exploring Hogwarts works, it really does. The puzzles are very simple, but just using your spells and finding chests feels quite magical, for lack of a better word. Exploration is top notch, everything else, from combat to stealth just feels rough and half-baked.

 One big point of criticism that this version(PS2) of the game received are loading times. And I'm not gonna lie, when it came to my memories of the game... the loading times weren't something I remembered. Well.... they are not hideous, but, they are quite frequent. Sometimes after going into the menu to swap spells may trigger a half-second long loading screen, but once again, very brief. Loading times when exploring Hogwarts? Not too long, but frequent. Totally manageable.

 The game looks exactly like Philosopher's Stone, which means it's a bit of Sims and a bit of the movie take on the franchise, and it's quite fitting for this part of the Harry Potter saga. That said... they completely removed Dobby from the plot! Harsh! Harry and Ron don't even get Gilderoy Lockhart to help them reach the chamber.... It's quite surprising, but among all the versions of CoS I've played... this one does the worst when it comes to adapting the plot of either book or movie, much unlike HP 1, in which the home console version had the best adaptation of the plot.

 Chamber of Secrets is alright, but it hasn't aged very well, honestly, you're better off playing Philosopher's Stone, which is this game but polished, and, if you want to follow the plot in videogame form, play the PS1 take of Chamber of Secrets.

 5.0

Game #1319: Cruis'n Blast

  The most obnoxious game out there, and proud of it.

 Cruis'n was a series I wasn't familiar with until a few years ago, and boy, was I missing out. Cruis'n Blast is quite different from the original, and it takes things up to eleven.

 The good news? It's still a A-to-B kind of racing game, which I much prefer to laps. On the other hand, the game is made up of mostly very brief tracks, few going over a minute long. Heck, A lot of tracks are repeated albeit with different themes, such as being chased by the police or having UFOs, which means that there aren't as many unique tracks as I would've liked.

 That said, this game is as in your face and as obnoxious as it gets. Its colorful, too colorful, and you can have all sorts of obnoxious and ridiculous neon upgrades and metallic painting on your vehicles. Heck, you can drive a Shark, a Helicopter and even a Unicorn, and you too can customize their color and add neon upgrades to them. This game is crazy ridiculous, it knows it and it revels in it. And I love it.

 In other words, the game is a lot of fun. It's not very deep, and it's definitely style over substance, but it works and it kept me hooked for a spell. A sequel with more content would be amazing.

 8.0

Game #1318: Azure Striker Gunvolt 3

  Man... what is Inti-Creates doing with the series?

 In a way, it seemed as if they made Luminous Avenger 2 worse than the first as to make Gunvolt stand out... but that was way off-base, as Azure Striker Gunvolt 3 sends our hero into the shadow realm.

 In what's a huge departure from the series, the game takes place 100 years into the future.... a future in which Gunvolt turned into a giant rampaging dragon and was sealed away by the new bad guys. Oh, sure, every dangling plot thread from the previous games? Gone, for good. And just as the game starts, you play as new comer Kirin who EASILY defeats this powered up version of Gunvolt and seals him away again... and to further humiliate the hero from the previous games, now he's turned into a dog. I am not making this up. Honestly, what they've done with Gunvolt is just baffling.

 Dialogue is as annoying and distracting as it was in the original Gunvolt. At first I thought I had to endure getting hit because the dialogue cutouts couldn't be turned off, but it turns out you can... it's hidden under "Story Mode+". Why? I thought those were new game+ options. Who came up with branding this option like so?

 Anyways, now Kirin is the main character, but Gunvolt takes a Megaman X3's Zero-like role, as you can temporarily play as him in his human form. He is ridiculously over-powered and is this game's easy mode. On the other hand, Kirin is really fun to play as. She can tag enemies with talismans, but not outright kill the enemy, in order to weaken them for either your simple slashes or using the homing-aerial attack. Her gameplay is truly satisfying, they made melee work... unlike what they did with Coppen in Luminous Avenger 2.

 Defeating bosses net you new attacks for Kirin, and you can find and equip both passive and active skills. Honestly, I think Kirin might be have favorite playstyle in the series... But she and Gunvolt should've had different campaigns, much like Gunvolt 2, and they definitely shouldn't have done Gunvolt dirty like they did. Turning him into a dog, what were they thinking?

 I downloaded the free update and it adds the final boss as a playable character. He is very similar to Kirin and has a shorter campaign.

 Gunvolt 3 is, gameplay-wise, pretty good, although going back to a single playable character kinda sucks. On the other hand, the direction they are taking the series in is... kinda dumb. At least it's better than Luminous Avenger 2.

 7.0