Defeat: Patapon

 I tried.

 Patapon broke me. I tried, I swear to god I tried, but stage four kicked my butt, so I went back to grind... and my prey kept escaping because I kept dropping the beat. And even then, I was started to get annoyed at having to bob my head or sing along to keep the beat, looking at the edges of the screen somewhat helped, but I'd mess up the drum inputs or I'd just drop the beat. Because I suck and I've no rhythm.

 So... yeah, Patapon broke. No review, I only played about 20 minutes, so I shouldn't. Still, this game broke me, it broke everything about me. I don't think I'll ever want to play a rhythm game again. I'm just too bad.

 So... yeah, Patapon, congratulations, you broke me. You broke Me.... Well, guess I'm gonna go cry myself dry on the corner. Because I suck.

Now Playing: Patapon

 It's gonna break me, I can feel it.

 I can't keep a rhythm, I admit, I am no musically inclined in the least. And it shows. This game is gonna break me, eventually, I can feel it. I love the sounds, the Pons, the music... But the gameplay? I can't keep up with it.... unless I sing along and, in the process, make myself look like a dumbass. I'm gonna give it another chance... not like I have a choice, I will finish it, that much I can promise, eventually, even if I dislike it.

 Still, it's not a bad game, I think, just not one I can enjoy.

Review #196: LocoRoco

  ADORABLE.

 What is a LocoRoco? Even after playing the game, I still can't say. It's a blob-like, head-like being that likes to sing, and it comes in different colors. It also likes to eat bugs, burgers and some sort of fruit that makes it grow larger, allowing it to divide itself in smaller LocoRocos. That is a LocoRoco. I think.

 LocoRoco is a platformer, of sorts. You don't take control of LocoRoco itself, but rather, you tilt the screen left or right by using the shoulder buttons. Pressing both buttons at the same time will make LocoRoco jump, and by pressing Circle you can make it divide itself in many LocoRocos, assuming you have enough to spare. Y'see, throughout each level you'll find orange fruit, eating one of these will increase LocoRoco's size(1-20), which is also the amount of LocoRocos it can split itself into. The game is very similar to Kirby, in a sense, since finishing each level is incredibly easy, but to achieve 100% on any given stage is a whole 'nother story.

 Levels hold many secrets, from hidden routes, through certain walls that you can go through, hidden breakable walls, and three MuiMui on each stage that bestow you with more parts to build LocoRoco's house. The hidden routes are, usually, much harder than the normal routes, with tougher platforming sections, more obstacles or areas that you can't backtrack to, forcing you to restart the level if you want to attempt it again. There are also secrets behind sleeping sentient beings, that require a certain amount of LocoRoco's to wake up. There are very few enemies, but they take but one jump against them to defeat. Hitting pointy enemies will take a couple of LocoRoco's away from you, but if you manage to catch them soon, you can recover them. Taking a hit when you are only one LocoRoco in size will result in game over. Truthfully, I only saw the Game Over screen once on the latter levels, but I was being careless.

 The game lasts about 7 hours if you aren't aiming for 100%, which is more than enough for this kind of game. There's a bunch of extras, like other five different LocoRocos, while they play the same, they sing different songs and emit different sounds, which is kinda cute. Then there's the customizable LocoRoco house which has some extra collectible parts! And three minigames that are fairly lame, but it's not like you have to play them.

 LocoRoco is beautiful, very colorful and everything is so happy! Everything is made up of very simple shapes, but it's just so cute, even the enemies are adorable. The soundtrack is... adorable as well, it sounds like little chipmunk voices singing on the background, and each LocoRoco has its own song, and they are all so cute. IT'S AN ADORABLE GAME, that's the best way to describe it!

 I liked LocoRoco. It ain't my kind of game, but I appreciate Sony being willing to invest in weird games like these, Journey, Patapon and the such. And I believe it's an excellent IP for the PSP, if only they'd bring it back for the VITA...
 7.0 out of 10

Review #195: Naruto Shippuden - Ultimate Ninja Storm Revolution

 Filler done right.

 Another year, another Naruto game... well, technically, this is the second Naruto game I'm tackling in 2015 and the third one I played in less than 364 days time. But I digress, this is, potentially, the last Naruto game on the PS3/X360 generation, and while it is a filler game, it ain't completely terrible.

 There's three main modes: Ninja World Tournament, Ninja Escapades and Free Battle, there's also on-line if you are into that, but I tend to cover mostly offline features, so yeah. Ninja Escapades is made up of three different stories: Akatsuki's Formation, Shisui/Itachi's past and Team Minato interacting with Kushina, all three of them are told via anime cutscenes, they aren't the best animated scenes you'll ever see, but it's original animation and they are more than passable. As for the stories themselves, they are fairly bland and unconvincing, however, I kinda liked the Team Minato/Kushina one, and it was the only one that didn't have a single battle peppered through its duration. Free Battle on the other hand houses: Vs, Survival, Tournament, League and Practice, pretty much the same mainstays from the other games in the series.

  Ninja World Tournament actually is two modes in one, the aforementioned World Tournament and a separate Storyline involving this new character, Mecha Naruto. It lasts about 2 hours, and it's terrible, I found myself laughing at some of the most dramatic scenes, since they were so poorly written. Ninja World Tournament takes place in 'Festival Island', and they made some tweaks to the overworld exploration. For instance, Festival Island is now made up of four big areas, and the character you choose now runs much faster than Naruto did in Ninja Storm 3. It makes finding Missions much, much easier, and exploring the Island is much more fun since it's faster and it has more variety in its geometry, plus, there's 'Mission Stores' in order to find even more side missions. Speaking of stores, sure was annoying when you had to buy stuff one by one... now you can buy it in bulks! And I haven't even mentioned the main event, the Ninja World Tournament. It's divided in 6 classes D, C, B, A, S and S+, naturally, you need to begin from Rank D and clear them from the bottom up.

 The fights in the World Tournament are unlike anything else you've seen in the Storm series, these are 4-man battles, in which dealing damage translates to making orbs fall from the enemy. At the start of each battle, each character has 1000 orbs, and if you drop to 0, you lose. These battles usually are fought in group, and after a battle is done, the next character in your team has to fight another three enemies, while the orbs you got in the last round carry over to this one. At the end, the fighter with the most orbs wins. As you go up in ranks you'll also have to deal with 'obstacles' in the form of NPCs and orbs that allow you to use Ultimate Jutsus or Awakenings. It's definitely different, and this mode has proven to be pretty hit or miss but I liked it... mostly. Y'see, you can't play this mode with other players, nor can it be found under 'Free Battle', plus, at latter levels, the CPUs just gang up on you, it can get quite annoying, which is why characters like Kimimaro, who cover wide areas with their attacks, become very strong. Another issue I had was with the targeting, you can lock on by pressing on the right analog stick, and then switch targets by moving the analog stick around, but switching targets was pretty sloppy, and kinda cumbersome in the heat of battle when you have three guys aiming at you, two of them being outside your vision area!

 There's been a lot of changes, so I'll start with the smaller ones first. Now you can customize your character, which sounds awesome, but it sucks. Customizing means equipping up to three items on your character, most items being Anbu masks. Ever wanted to have Naruto wearing a mask, with two other masks on his shoulders? Now you can. It's really lame. Most accessories aren't even cool. Know what would've helped? Allowing you to change the colors of the characters, say, giving the Raikage Gaara's colors, or maybe even a Black Bijuu Naruto, that would've been awesome and would've made up for the very limited amount of items. For some reason, costumes were removed from Ninja Storm 3, to be honest, most costumes sucked, Napoleon Sasuke? Cowboy Naruto? But why would you remove stuff? Probably so that they could justify selling the swimsuits again, yes, they sunk that low. Speaking of DLC, why would they charge for the Pre-reanimation/Reanimated costumes? The only characters that had any noticeable change, besides their eyes, where the Tsuchikage and the Raikage, these costumes should've been on the game from the get-go. At least the Jinchuriki robes are pretty cool, those are good DLC... except that you need to update the game to use them, so you better not uninstall the game unless you want to download the patches again in order to use the DLC that you bought! Awesome.

 As for positive changes, there's a new 'Counterattack' mechanic which is pretty neat, and if you manage to predict an attack and counter it, you will leave them open for attack... and they can't substitute out of it. Some special team combinations(Like Gaara/Tenmari/Kankuro or Hashirama/Madara) now produce some very epic team ultimate jutsus, even if it's just for eye candy, it's gorgeous eye candy. But the biggest change of them all.... They divided features. Ultimate Jutsu, Support Drive and Awakening, you can only pick ONE of them to take into battle. Each style has its own nuances, Ultimate Jutsu types can cancel out of their attacks to use a Jutsu, Awakening types can Instant Awakening(Now everyone has a generic Awakening, and some characters that used to have special Instant Awakenings(Nine Tails Chakra Mode) are now reduced to a generic IA) and the Support Types can change between offensive and defensive at will. I am most definitely not a fan of this change, I hate how some characters that had unique IAs before now have generic Awakening, and I dislike having to sacrifice a feature in order to use another. Oh, and the dumb ring-outs and anime stills when offing an enemy with an Ultimate Jutsu are back, sadly.

 I can't say that this is the best Ultimate Ninja Storm game, but it is the one with the most characters available to date, which is a huge selling factor to most fans. It's most probably the last Naruto game on last gen consoles, so if you like Naruto and aren't planning to upgrade any time soon, it might be worth it. While I don't like some of the new tweaks, most were pretty damn good, and while it is another filler game, it has much more content than Generations.
 7.0 out of 10

Review #194: Power Stone Collection

 So... what's a Power Stone?

 Power Stone is one of the many, many great Capcom Arcade games that never saw a port outside the Dreamcast... until the PSP Collection. Collecting everything Power Stone, Capcom yet again delivers a fantastic PSP package. Power Stone Collection includes Power Stone 1, Power Stone 2 and the three VMU mini-games in one neat package, alongside a couple of extras in the form of official art.

 Power Stone is an Arena based 1-on-1 fighting game. As with most games of its ilk, there's a bunch of weapons that you can collect in order to defeat your opponent, but the game's main feature are the Power Stones. Defaulting at three(5 on the Sequel, but you can change it in the options menu), gathering these stones will temporarily transform your character into a super version of him or herself. It's not as simple as it sounds, as getting knocked down will make one of your stones fall down, allowing your enemy to grab it. All in all, it's a fairly fun game, and the version featured in this Collection allows you to unlock the new comers from Power Stone 2, which sounds awesome until you play as them. Y'see, these 4 unlockable characters play just as they do in Power Stone 2, with a simplified control scheme, which translates to less moves, and they are much, much slower than the other characters. Basically, they are completely outclassed, making them a pretty worthless extra. As for ways to play it, there's Arcade, Versus, Training, Ad-Hoc Vs, Training and an unlockable 'rear view' Arcade Run.

 Power Stone 2 builds upon Power Stone 1, now you can play with up to three other players/CPUs, it features even more items and weapons, more characters(Kind of a null point since you can unlock them in this PSP port on the prequel!) alongside interactive stages that feature transitions into other areas and even vehicles and turrets! The controls have been simplified, reducing attacks to just one button and removing one of the two normal attacks of a character's super form. While characters move a bit slower, when playing with 3 other enemies, it's barely noticeable, and that's how you should be playing the game this time around. Weapons are more prominent than before, as even gems will appear inside chests instead of simply spawning on the ground, unlike the first game. As for Modes, there's a 1-on-1 Arcade run, 1-on-3 Arcade run, Versus, Adventure(A slightly altered 1-on-1 run, Ad Hoc, Training and a Network-only Bomber battle).

 Power Stone 2 only has five stages, which as fun and multi-tiered as they are, they can eventually get old, but you can unlock four other stages(Only for use in Vs or Practice) for a total of 9, which isn't so bad. You can also unlock the two Power Stone 1 bosses, and they are much faster than the characters in this game, plus, they have more moves, kinda making them a bit too good when compared to the rest of the cast. All things considered, I think I like Power Stone one a little bit better, but I'm sure Power Stone 2 is the better multi-player game.

 As much as I enjoyed both games, I had a couple of gripes. First of all, the loading times are a bit long, particularly on Power Stone 2. And the other one, which I thought was worse, is that they didn't rework the 'guest' characters to fit the other game. Power Stone 2 characters in Power Stone 1 are useless, they are too slow to even stand a chance, and their reduced movesets make them not as fun to use. Capcom should've, at least, increase their movement speed. The same goes for the Power Stone 1 characters in Power Stone 2, they are much faster than the others, with more moves, was it too much of a bother to put them in line with the rest of the cast? These features could've been a really cool bonus, but as it stands, they are a very disappointing extra.

 Both games use the same engine, as far as I could tell, which means that they look the same. Not that it's a bad thing, as both games are very colorful and good looking. Stages are pretty creative, specially Power Stone 2's with their multiple transitions. The characters, sadly, aren't very creative, they are fairly generic, and slightly uninspired, their super transformations are much, much better though, still, let's just say that there's a reason they never made it to Capcom's VS games. Music, while hardly Capcom's finest, is pretty good and upbeat, very fitting of the games.

 Power Stone Collection is a great way to get to play the Power Stone games, you even get official art and the VMU mini-games. Still, it doesn't necessarily make the Dreamcast ports obsolete, as the new unlockable characters are fairly disappointing and not worth double dipping into the series.

 8.0 out of 10 

Review #193: Guilty Gear Judgment

 Let's rock!

 Guilty Gear is awesome. It's widely considered to be the progenitor of the 'animu fighter', and a very complex fighting game to grasp, and as the series grew, it only got even more complex. In all honesty, at a casual level were you don't have to worry about hitting those 1-frame Fake Roman Cancels, it isn't so bad.

 Judgment is the PSP port of the series, and it's a fairly interesting package. Japan got Guilty Gear Accent Core and Judgment, while America got XX # Reload(It makes sense, I promise!) and Judgment. While Accent Core is a latter update to the franchise, which added Order Sol and ABBA, it also added Force Edge attacks, something not everyone took kindly, so depending on how you see it, 'Guilty Gear X2 # Reload' might be the better game. You are probably wondering just what is 'Judgment', it's a verb. But it's also a made-for-PSP game, a beat'em-up using Guilty Gear XX's characters. And it sorta works.

 Judgment offers a Story Mode, Survival and a 2 Player mode. Story Mode is made up of 6 stages, the first four being comprised of 4 areas each, while stage 5 and 6 are only one are long. You can play as almost every character from XX, except Judgement, Kliff and Robo-Ky, but it does allow you to play as Judgmen't last boss... Judgment. The game has infinite continues, of sorts, every time you pick a your character, you can choose to start from any area, and you always start off with 3 lives, so dying is no biggie, plus, there's a fairly simple extra life cheat that you can just spam if it gets tough. Still, a fairly short game.

 I really loved seeing how each character was adapted into beat'em up form. They kept most of their special and super attacks, via simple quarter circle forward or back inputs. Pulling the ones involving quarter circle backward motions were a bit harder to pull off consistently, but it wasn't a big issue. While this sounds amazing, as the movesets are far larger than, probably, any other beat'em up, the game is very repetitive. There's about 5 different enemy types, and they aren't very creative. The stages are fairly lifeless as well. Sometimes the collision detection felt a bit off as well, but nothing too bad.

 Now then, if only Judgment was on the UMD, I'd suggest skipping the game, but Guilty Gear XX # Reload is one of the finest fighting games ever made. Ever. This is a bit of a straightforward port, everything is unlocked from the start(Justice, Kliff, the SP and EX versions of each character), and there's no Story Mode. You do get Arcade, M.O.M., Vs Player, Vs CPU, Training and Survival, which is all you need really.

 The game looks fantastic on the PSP, I doubt these sprites had ever looked so good before. The character sprites got shrunk for Judgment, but they are every bit as detailed in XX. The Soundtrack is excellent, as per usual, in both XX and Judgment, at least if you like Rock.

 Guilty Gear XX # Reload is a classic, a great fighting game that's great to have on the go. Judgment isn't anything special, but as a companion piece to XX, it's a nice little extra to play if you get tired from the fighting.
 8.0 out of 10.

Review #192: Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm 3 - Full Burst

 The fourth Ninja war begins....!

 'nother year, 'nother Naruto game. As disappointing as Generations was, this is another numbered entry which means CyberConnect2's putting effort into the game again! Picking up where Ultimate Ninja Storm 2 left off, UNS 3 covers the beginning of the Ninja War... and kinda ends on a decidedly non-cannon ending.

 Firstly, Story Mode is back and plays just as UNS 2 did, you take control of Naruto, mostly, as you move around the world of Naruto and follow the story... or fulfill side objectives. This time around, the story is very linear, most roads being blocked off until you clear the Main Story of the game. As linear as it is, it's very slow-paced, with some cutscenes lasting more than 30 minutes... but I'm OK with that, as it does a better job at telling the story... kinda. The first chapters of the game are fairly faithful to the story, but the latter ones, the Ninja War ones, feel much more rushed, a ton of fights missing, including Chiyo(Who is a playable character in the game!) or simplified, like the fight between Mifune and Hanzo or Darui vs the Silver and Gold brothers. Some battles also let you choose between 'Hero'(Normal) or 'Legend'(Hard), which is usually just a different spin on the same battle, since the outcome is the same. I didn't much care for this, I guess it adds some replay value, but I could've done with just a faithful adaptation of the events.

 One of the most beloved things about the Storm series are the Boss battles, and they are back and as impressive as ever. True, they boil down to glorified QTE scenes, but they are done so incredibly well that in this case, I don't really mind them. Also introduced are 'Mob Battles', battles against many weak enemies, which are fairly alright and a nice change of pace. UNS 3 also introduces 'Secret Actions' which are triggered by doing some particular action... there's only three of them(technically 4) in the game, five counting the Full Burst episode, which makes me wonder why even bother with this gimmick if it's gonna go so underused. And as previously mentioned, the game actually has a 'fake' ending in which the bad guys run away(seriously) and peace is restored, it actually left me with a sour taste in my mouth, in this case I would've preferred a 'To be Continued...' to it.

 After you finish the Story, you can finally roam at your leisure and take on and complete sidequests. There's a ton of side activities, from the multiple 'Ninja Timeline' fights or taking the other route on the main story battles to the various quests given by NPCs(Or PCs not on your team), and while it does offer a lot of stuff to do, it doesn't come without flaws. The first issue I've with this is that quests seemingly pop up at random or only after finishing other quests, which means a lot of walking around hoping to run across characters in need. The world is kinda extensive and Naruto isn't the fastest runner around, which can make it a bit tedious. There are some characters that can instantly transport you to other places, for a fee, but there's only about... six of them, not nearly enough, so there's gonna be a lot of walking, back and forth, particularly to clear some of the quests that require finding NPCs... or Zetsus. Lastly, and the thing I despised the most, every now and then a quest will change your 4-man team, but when the quest is over, you will be left with only Naruto, meaning that it's back to the Leaf Village, then walk aaaaaaaall the way to the Hokage's house and reform your team.

 There's both offline and online VS, naturally, you can have Tournament battles, Challenge Missions(There's a 100 of them!), unlockable Survival and Practice. It's pretty clear that as far as things to do go, there's a lot, it seems CC2 wanted to make amends after Generations' weak offering. However, there's a disappointing lack of characters. The revived Kages that you fight in the game, which have their own moves, aren't playable, nor are the Seven Swordsmen of the Mist. It's not like the game was overflowing with characters, it may appear so if you look at the character select screen, but there's many versions of the same character. Plus, for some reason they reduced the combo attacks to 3. Yes, they actually removed moves from characters, and while these 'combos' don't really affect the viability of a character(Since your only attack button is circle, and the only thing they change is how the combo ends), it screams of laziness when coupled with the non-playable characters, as if they wanted to make characters faster so they removed moves.

 Other changes include the addition of  'Instant Awakenings', which is just an excuse to allow you to play as KTS Naruto without having to lose over 60% of your health bar. Some character, mostly the ones with generic blue-aura awakenings, have this feature, which allows you to enter Awakening at any time by flicking the right analog stick, and it lasts until your chakra bar gets reduced to about a fourth of its original size(Don't worry, as soon as you exit Awakening, it begins to increase in size) or until you cancel it flicking the right analog stick again. Characters with Instant Awakening felt slightly stronger than the others, Instant Awakening cancel is too strong a tool! Some characters also had their awakenings tweaked with "awakening actions", which are used with R1 and L1(Which means if it's a team battle, you lose access to supports) and vary depending on each character. It's a good addition, just a shame not everyone got them...

 One puzzling new addition are the Ring Outs. Why a Naruto game needed ring outs is beyond me, but you can't turn them off and they can only be done on certain stages. I'm pretty sure nobody asked for this feature, and it happened so rarely that it barely affected me, besides some 'broken' skies(Yes, hitting an enemy against a 'wall', which isn't really a wall, makes the sky 'crack'. It looks hilarious.), but it certainly wasn't needed. Ultimate Jutsus have also been slightly altered, by defeating an enemy with one will make an anime-cut in appear during the animation. It's very jarring, as it brings the Ultimate Jutsu's animation to a halt, put a sepia-colored anime image on the screen while your character says a line, and then continue with it.

 The presentation is top-notch as per usual, smooth animations and excellent character models. Stages are a bit simple, but true to the show. They actually outdid themselves this time around with little details, like how the Kyubi's cheeks jiggle when you hit him, it looks pretty neat. I've never been a particular fan of the UNS soundtrack, but there's some good pieces in this one which fit pretty well the mood of the scenes, particularly the more dramatic or depressing ones.

 While I spent most of this piece complaining about it, I still liked the game, quite a lot. It's fun to play at a casual level, there's a ton of eye-candy, there's a ton of stuff to do(Most of it involving fighting, naturally). It's a much better game than Generations on almost every account, but there's some things that just left me asking "Why?". Why remove combos? Why add Ring-Outs? Why the anime cut-ins when defeating an enemy with an UT?
 8.0 out of 10