Game #846: Super Scribblenauts

 Who said you can't play god?

Tons of bite-sized stages. Most can be solved as soon as you type the correct word. You get a playable avatar, Max(Although you can use a few alternate skins), and you can move him around with the stylus or the D-Pad, but most of the stages end as soon as you write the right word to produce the required object.

 It's amazing how many words and adjectives the game recognizes. There's so much you can create it's incredible. You can type words either letter by letter, on the touchscreen, or by writing every letter with the stylus, but it isn't very accurate.

 The are so many fun interactions and things you can do that it's even disappointing that we don't get bigger and larger stages. Things like creating a "Small Good Cthulhu" and give him a Katana to fight a "Evil Giant God". You can create things like jetpacks, excavators or other vehicles and/or accessories and have your very own created characters use them!

 I can't stress enough how many fun things you can create, like a 'Suicidal doctor', or a 'zombie spotted robot'. Most stages can be solved with multiple different solutions, for instance, there are many ways you could jump over a hill. A 'trampoline', a 'jetpack' or maybe a 'plane'. Some stages actually require being beaten 3 times using different words for 100% completion.

 The "Press Start" screen is actually a small playground you can toy around with. There's also a stage creator.

 There are about 120 levels, and some of the final levels are a bit tough.

 All in all, it was pretty fun. I just wish it had bigger, larger and longer stages I could play around with. I think the gameplay has potential for bigger and more ambitious things. That said, what we have here is fantastic, and that's why I wish we could have more of it.

 8.0

Game #845: Trick'N Snowboarder

 Snowboardin' zombies.

 Let's get this out of the way first: You can unlock Resident Evil 2 characters, namely Leon, Claire and a Zombie cop, in Trick 'n Snowboarder. That should've already sold you on the game.

 Tony Hawk this is not, but as soon as I could I mapped X to jump, Square to flips and Circle to grabs, because that's the correct scheme for x-treme sports videogames that involve boards. R1 and L1 are used to spin on the air, for tricks, or to help you turn while snowboarding down. Overall, it felt a bit clunky and stiff, but I got used to it and started having fun.

 The game is pretty arcadey, which is why I wound up enjoying it so much. It's all about scoring points by tricks, and most of the time it's you against the slope, but there is a multiplayer mode. There's also a Story Mode, which has you performing tricks on specific parts of every stage as well as snowboard against 'rivals' and a free mode to snowboard to your heart's content.

 There's a very lame create-a-character mode, and you enhance you stats by going through story mode. You can unlock unique characters seemingly at random by playing the Story Mode. They look pretty neat, the 2-D artwork of these characters is top notch.

 There's a small but serviceable amount of tracks. The story mode can be beaten in under an hour, but considering characters unlock at random... that's for the best.

 The framerate can take a dive, specially in Story Mode whenever you get the 'trick cam'.

 The game is quite fun to play, but not as good as the Tony Hawk games. And maybe that's an unfair comparison, but the game is similar enough to warrant the comparison, 'sides, I'm pretty sure Activision had a Snowboarding Tony Hawk clone. Still, the game can stand on its own two feet, and the Resident Evil 2 characters are a neat curiosity.

 7.0

Game #844: Assassin's Creed Syndicate

Grand Theft Carriage.

 Do you like Assassin's Creed? You're in luck, Assassin's Creed Syndicate is pretty much identical to every other game in the series!

 There are two protagonists, the twins Jacob and Evie Frye, and while I was a bit put off by Jacob's lame one-liners, I really liked how the played off each other. You can play as any character for every non-story part in the game. Both characters share money XP, but have different equipment and 3 exclusive skills each: Woke Ubisoft decided that Jacob, the man, had to have the strength/combat based upgrades, while Evie gets the stealth ones, because she's a woman. To be honest, both characters are practically identical so not to worry.

 The game finally went GTA, you can hijack carriages and drive around, and you can even cause some light destruction around the city. The police will come after you, however.

 The controls are a bit weird, more limiting, probably to help with how inaccurate movement could get sometimes. I always tolerated it because it felt like a byproduct of the freedom you had in climbing pretty much anywhere, well, the new tweaks are unnecessary and to the game's detriment. Holding R2 enters parkour mode, and holding X will move you upwards and O will move you downward, just like Unity, except that now you can't press X to jump any time. This means that if you are on a ledge and you want to go below, to a pool of water for example, pressing X will result in Jacob and Evie staying rooted to their place. The water is below, even if you want to jump down instead of dropping down, so you have to press O. It's counter intuitive to how we've been playing Assassin's Creed, so it produces more issues than the ones it solves.

 Equipment has been limited a bit, now you can customize wrist guards, belts and outfits. It's alright I think, while I miss the larger variety in pieces and clothes from Unity, you also don't have as many pieces that turn obsolete because their stats are atrocious and you should be wearing something with better stat increases.

 1880's London is smaller than the piece of France we got in Unity... but I actually like it this way, Unity was a bit TOO big. As a result, this piece of England feels a bit more dense. Sure, at the end of the day it's just a lot of busywork, collect the flowers, collect the posters, find the chests, yadda yadda, but I like the mini dopamine-rushes. Lockpicking is no longer a mini game, praise the gods.

 I'm not too fond of the Experience system. You only earn XP by doing missions or doing actions that unlock perks. For example, only your first 120 assassinations will give you any XP, afterwards you won't get more XP from simply assassinating enemies. The perk system, however, is kinda neat. Performing a certain task a certain amount of times will give you a small, passive enhancement to an ability related to said action. For example, use sub-weapons mid-combo 75 times to get a damage boost on sub-weapons mid combo.

 I hated how they gated progress in this one. Basically, higher level enemies can take an ungodly amount of punishment, to the point that it seems like their final third of health lasts forever. They can also break your attacks mid combo with an attack that is impossible to dodge unless you guess it's coming and preemptively press circle to dodge. And while you can unlock high level equipment as you explore the city, equipment now has level requirements.

 That said, I am a hard-headed explorer, so I toughed it out and managed to outcheese some harder level missions by using subweapons and stealth, and thus was ready to continue the game at level 8. I hadn't even gotten the dart rope!

 The dart rope works similarly to Batman's grappling hook in Arkham City but worse. It's hard to gauge the correct distance when using it on foot, and a lot of times pressing L1 just had Jacob use the rope behind him, behind where I wanted to go. That said, when it works it's a neat new way to explore the city, it gives you a lot of horizontal freedom when scaling.

 Present day parts are still only cutscenes. I can only ever be so thankful.

 Bugs and glitches, oh boy, boys and glitches. People said Unity was buggy? I played both games unpatched and this one was way worse. Evie was invisible in a few cutscenes that involved Greene, and he himself was duplicated in another cutscenes, not to mention the many bugs and glitches mid missions that forced me to restart a mission. The Hypnotist's mission was particularly bad, I had to restart like 3-4 times because something would go wrong, like the Hypnotist entering an alert state while in the carriage so I couldn't get him out to the fact that the mission doesn't tell you that if you knock him out it's game over. The game crashed twice, Blue screen of death kind of crash. Honestly, this made Unity look like high art.

 There's an entire zone dedicated to World War I. A portal stealthily appears after Chapter 6 at the right edge of the Thames. If I didn't know that this part existed I could've easily missed it, which is really dumb. You don't get a single hint or notice that something appeared over there.

 Syndicate is alright. Honestly, it's just another Assassin's Creed game, you know what you're getting. It's a safe, fun way to spend some time, but it's very forgettable. Unity was simply more ambitious and more interesting, which is disappointing considering how I love this era's wardrobes. At least we finally get a female Assassin tied to a more than decent game. Aveline deserved better.

7.0

Game #843: Elite Beat Agents

 Has there ever been someone with less rhythm than me? I think not!

 Elite Beat Agents is really hard man, even on the easiest difficulty setting, at least for someone like me who was born with no sense of rhythm whatsoever. It's really fun though, I can see why the game exploded in popularity.

 This is the game that made the "Tap/press the numbered buttons to the beat of a song" genre popular. And it's very addictive and fun, so I can fully understand why it became so popular. That said, as popular as it got, it's a bit weird why Nintendo never capitalized on their popularity.

 The game has covers of famous songs, but they are good covers. There are comic book vignettes before, during and after each song, and they are hilarious. Each stage has a song and a plot in which the Elite Beat Agents must help someone with some ridiculous task, such as a mother affect the weather itself in order to get a sunny day for her son, or a cat having to rescue a baby. Not only are the stories hilarious, the songs on the background make them so much more fun!

 The game has 19 songs, and I think I liked all of them. Each difficulty setting has a different Agent, which is just a cosmetic thing, but I think it's a nice little touch.

 8.0

Game #842: Lunar Knights

 Take me to the moon.

 Lunar Knights is yet another fun handheld Konami game, I mean, most of their GBA and DS games I played were pretty darn good and Lunar Knights is no exception.

 I liked the game's 2-D sprites, they are simple and undetailed but look neat. I hated Aaron's character design, however. Aaron and Lucian are pretty much Naruto and Sasuke rip offs. I know that Django, the Solar boy, used to be the protagonist, so I find it weird how Lucian, the moon dude, is more of a protagonist here. Oh, and in the original, Japanese version of the game, Aaron is called Django, but the localization just renamed everyone because why not.

 While I enjoyed the action and RPG elements of the game, I can't say I was any fond of the stealth sections. Thankfully, stealth is pretty much optional. I hate having to blow on the microphone to whistle and draw an enemy towards the sound. Oh, and falling down a bottomless pits is an instant game over, that sucks!!

 I liked the idea of playing as a duo of characters, but I stuck with Lucian most of the time since I liked his sword and simple Y 3-hit combo. I kept Aaron as a back-up, mostly, since he relies on guns and ranged combat, and can't attack if his energy meter is depleted, unlike Lucian. Thankfully, both characters earn experience points whenever you kill something. But, y'know what? The game offers an interesting variety of enemies that are better tackled with an specific hero, and as soon as both characters team up bosses start having gimmicks that revolve around switching characters.

 You may not know it from reading the title, but this is actually Solar Boy Django's fourth game, albeit it's more of a prequel. Was this game good enough to make me want to delve deeper into the franchise?.. I don't think so, not anytime soon. Plus, this game is pretty much self-contained.

 There's a surprisingly large amount of stuff to do! Beating a level is fine and dandy, but speaking to NPCs may sometimes unlock sidequests on previously explored stages. What's more, as you defeat bosses you unlock elemental spirits to coat your weapons with as well as the ability to visit a NPC and change the climate. Changing the climate may unlock alternate roads on stages towards goodies, while revisiting previously played stages with new elemental spirits may allow you to open up new roads, which might reward you with a few goodies... or entirely new dungeons. These optional dungeons is how you obtain Lucian's alternate weapons.

 There's quite a few things to like about Lunar Knights, and it's yet another fun handheld game by Konami. Man, Konami really had some golden franchises and solid titles back in the day, it makes it all the more depressing how they decided to shift their focus into Pachinko and Mobile.

 7.0

Game #841: Dead or Alive

 The origin of breast physics with minds of their own.

 Y'know, I played Dead or Alive, this one, way after I played Dead or Alive 2. It was really good, it is really good.

 The game has a 10-character roster made up of the series' classics, characters that never left the series, except for Bayman who disappeared on vanilla DoA 2. I like how the characters' designs hadn't been finalized by then, so we have things like brown-haired Tina and red-haired Zack. Heck, one of Ayane's costumes has her with pink hair. This game also started the trend of having their females have dozens of costumes while the males get scraps. Every lass has 14 costumes while every lad gets a measly 5.

 I really liked the bonus costumes, a lot of them are lazy repaints, but there are a ton of very cool looking costumes that never returned to the series.

 The game looks really good for a PS1 game, having 3-D models that are almost as soft as what you'd expect out of the Nintendo 64. I'd say they are a happy medium between Tekken 3's detailed, blocky models and Tobal's more simple but softer models. The breast physics are as dumb as you'd expect, with every breast having a mind of their own.

 Characters have a ton of familiar moves, I love how I felt right at home with this game. It goes to show just how great the gameplay was, because it has barely changed. Based off of Virtua Fighter, one punch button, one kick button and one guard button is all you need. It also has the very abusable counter move, back+guard, which adds a lot of almost cinematic flair to the fights.

 The PS1 has a ton of fighting games, a lot of great ones, a lot of bad ones, but Dead or Alive easily falls into the former. Gameplay is simple, fast and responsive, everything I look for in a fighter, but you also get a nice amount of content.

8.5

Game #840: Onrush

 It's not about rushing forward, but rather, rush through everyone else.

 The soundtrack is glorious, although the female narrator is so cringe inducing, poor lass was handled one of the most tryhard and dumb scripts ever made.

 If you want to customize your character and vehicle with new skins, oh boy, Onrush pulls a fast one on all of us offline warriors, because you NEED to go online to access the in-game store. LAME. To be fair, you can unlock a few paintjobs(Which actually change the vehicles' 3-D model) and what not, but I'm not sure of what you need to do in order to unlock them.

 I love how this isn't a racing game proper, oh no, it's a team based battle game with driving. You'll either have to amass points by using turbo and wrecking fodder vehicles as well as enemy team vehicles, go through gates to add seconds to your team's timer, and whichever team's timer runs out first loses, or "Switch", where you get 3 'switches' and on each switch, which happens after you crash, you can pick between a different set of two vehicles, losing all your Switches isn't a game over, you are simply stuck with two vehicles per respawn, the team that runs out of switches loses though. There's a fun take on king of the hill too. Your Buggy or Dirt Bike will get wrecked frequently, but you can respawn unlimited items in a few seconds. It's fast paced, it's arcadey and I really liked it.

 The game is definitely meant to be played with other people, which is why it sucks so hard how there's no offline multiplayer. The single player mode is lengthy enough, but it feels quite limiting, heck, most stages only let you pick between specific vehicles. Some sort of offline 'quickplay' on any game type would've done wonders for the Single Player content. Plus, it being a Team VS Team game means you are at the mercy of your AI allies.

 Lemme tell you what really blows about single player: Some events are Tournaments, made up of multiple sub-events. If you lose a sub-event, tough luck, gotta start from the beginning. But you can pause mid-race and pick "Restart" to restart the sub-event if it ain't going your way. The fun part? You can't pause the game when you are respawning(4 seconds long) or when you are forced to watch the replay of your death BEFORE the four second timer, so if you lose while you're respawning.... Sucks to be you. Hopefully you didn't lose on the last event.

 Having played the game strictly in single player, I got a bit tired by the time I reached the fifth(out of six) set of events. I had already played every mode, driven on every stage(And the new snow climate wasn't enough to make them feel any fresher) and I wasn't unlocking new vehicle skins to keep me interested. I only finished the game out of a misguided sense of completion for completion's sake.

 If you plan to play online, it's probably a great choice, but I'd think twice about getting the game just to play it offline. I had my fun, yes, but this game needed a offline multiplayer option.

7.0