I'm glad I'm not burden with the
explanation of these weekly (*cough*) posts. So without further
adieu, raise your hand if you've been wondering what I'm been playing
this week. Hmm, either you guys don't have hands, or you're just pullin'
my leg. Well, if being a part of Shlockness Industries has taught me
anything, it's that if people don't want you to do something, it's
most likely because they feel like you're making everyone else doing
similar things really jealous and they fear for your safety. Luckily
for you guys, the Chief Shlock-xecutive Officer* (aka, Mr. CSO
himself, John) has set a strict deadline. I'm lead to presume that
this is a knee-breaker. Wow, I say “without further adieu” at the
beginning of the paragraph...sorry about that.
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| picture from: internet (their official website) |
First up on our tour is a fascinating
little gem entitled, Sonic the Hedgehog 4 Episode II. From the makers
of blah blah blah Episode I, comes the second installment (you've
just read a useless sentence). It's gonna be hard for me to take off
my fan eyeballs for obvious reasons, but I'll try for the sake of
“you, our lovely and talented reader” (now I owe John like 14
cents). I found this game to be a noticeable improvement over the
first game. They've improved the physics to make it feel more like
classic Sonic, while also adding some cool elements to make it seem
distinct for the game that this game is, more or less, based around,
Sonic 2. Tails is used as more of a puzzle-solving element as opposed
to a “follow you for a few seconds before he dies or gets
stuck...because he's dumb” element. From flying over obstacles, to
swimming with Sonic, to a new combo-super-spinny spin dash, Tails'
presence seems justified, which is a good thing. The bosses are also
really awesome, especially the final boss. There's chaos emerald and
red ring collect-'em-alls, you know the drill. It took me about 8 or
so hours to get through and collect everything and another hour maybe
to get through the special “lock-on technology” missions with
Metal Sonic. These are accessed by owning both episode one and two and
consist of playing through four acts from Episode I as Metal Sonic.
This serves to explain what happened with Metal Sonic between Sonic
CD and this game...he's get like mystical powers or something, I'm
not too sure but I had fun with it. There's co-op locally and online,
but I haven't tried that out because none of my friends have this
game. Doesn't seem like it'll add too much though. The game's
currently running (haha, unintentional pun) for about $15. If you
haven't already picked this up, I recommend looking into it when the
price drops a bit. Here's hoping for an Episode III.
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| nerdreactor.com? Whatever you say... |
Coincidentally, I played another
episodic title this week, Telltale's “point-and-click” epic, Back
to the Future. Telltale has done a good job entertaining me in the
past, with SBCG4AP and Inspector Hector (both episodic) and they
continue to do so here. I finished episode two this past week and
have been thoroughly impressed up to this point. The voice cast is
awesome mostly because of Christopher Llyod reprising his role as Doc
Brown and A.J. LoCascio doing such a good Michael J. Fox impression
that you probably wouldn't have known the difference if I hadn't told
you just now. The story is engaging and well-written and the puzzles
can be pretty challenging at times. But if you get stuck, you can
receive hints. They'll usually provide 2 or 3 hints that increase in
clarity with each subsequent hint before the straight up tell you
what to do with the last “hint.” This does, in theory, give you
the opportunity to breeze through the game in like 10 minutes. I said
“in theory” because I'm unaware of any deterrents from doing this
because I ain't no cheater! There's 5 episodes and, if my current
rate continues (2 hours/episode), you'll be enjoying about 10 hours
of Back to the Future good-feeling happenings. Look up how much they
are, because I'm too lazy to do so. I highly recommend this one to
fans, non fans, and jerks alike.
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| The Game |
I'll wrap up this MM(w)MM with Prince
of Persia: Sands of Time. I picked this up back in like December and
just recently got to it. Based on that one Disney movie, the game
follows the unnamed Prince of Persia adventure to restore time after
getting hoodwinked into releasing the Sands of TIME oooOOooOOoo. All
kidding aside, this game put a different spin on action-adventure. It
focuses more on getting around than the actual combat. This helps
serve two purposes, helps the game from growing stale and repetitive
with challenging platforming puzzles and transforms the would-be
redundant combat into a pretty awesome occurrence where you have to
be strategic. Trust me, I have like 25 deaths worth of experience.
The time elements work pretty well, and I think that's because you
could go the whole game without using them. They don't feel gimmicky,
they feel helpful. There are also some secrets here and there. I had
no idea what these like secret fountains did for about half the game
until I figured out that they increase your max health. It's a unique
experience that I think you'd enjoy.
Whelp, that's it. I've gotta figure out
a better way to end these things...byyyyyeee!
*John is really co-CSO.
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