Review: Soul Sacrifice Delta (PS Vita)

Soul Sacrifice Delta isn't quite a sequel, yet it still feels like a fresh game. It improves upon many aspects that people disliked about the previous game, and adds a bevy of new content on top of it to encourage us to take another look through Librom's pages.

A major gripe with the first soul sacrifice was that of the difficulty curve. Delta mixes this up by rebalancing a lot of the offerings, as well as the damage and HP of earlier monsters. Going back to early quests makes you feel sufficiently powerful, while the late game pacts are incredibly challenging in some instances. Your most powerful offerings can also be upgraded into Black offerings, giving increased potency at the cost of fewer casts. This may not always be worth the trade-off, but some spells become more powerful than they ever were before.

Review: Y's: Memories of Celceta (PS Vita)

 

The Y's franchise never really got the traction in North America that it should have, which is really a shame for RPG fans like myself (who couldn't find a copy of the original games for decades). As a result, the fourth game in the franchise never was officially released in North America until now – and it's been updated to match modern sensibilities.

Review: Rainbow Moon (PS Vita)

Rainbow Moon is a PlayStation Store download title that first came out for the PlayStation 3 back in July of 2012 and is now available for the Vita.

The combat system uses a top down isometric-view battle area, akin to Final Fantasy Tactics. In an ideal world, the battles are a balancing act of using both position and well placed battle strategies to maximize your inflicted damage and protect your team. Typically though, the battles are an enemy dog pile where you try and keep your team afloat with judicious amounts of healing items.

Review: Jewel Master: Cradle of Egypt 2 3D (3DS)

Puzzle games that are addictive tend to get copied a lot. Such is the case of Tetris, and later another less-known (but also Russian developed) game called Shariki. Shariki was the original inspiration for what would eventually become Bejewelled, and  thus an entire generation of what is collectively known as "match three" games was born.

Jewel Master: Cradle of Egypt 2 is another game in the Jewel Master series, of which over a quarter million games have been sold. Built upon the basics of a match-three game it does add some extra elements in to make things a little more exciting.

Review: Mario & Luigi - Dream Team (3DS)

Thoughout Mario & Luigi: Dream Team, Luigi's characterization as a lazy, bumbling, incoherent moron that's merely worthy of being a sidekick (barely) to his brother Mario, a glory hog if ever there was one, is insulting if not an outright character assassination.

Even in games that ostensibly star Luigi, like Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon, he's a scared and reluctant hero, with only as much bravery as his insecurity will allow to make something of himself in comparison to his fearless brother. In that respect, Luigi's a sad sack of a character, which explains why in his dream state Luigi's the exact opposite.

Review: Kickbeat (PS Vita)

Music rhythm games are one of those vices amongst some gamers – find an addictive enough game and you'll end up losing track of whole hours, if not days, at a time.

Most games in the genre use flying colors to keep you visually stimulated while you bang out the buttons on your controller or plastic instruments. Kickbeat has you wailing on hordes of enemies to the tune playing in the background. Mistakes normally would have an audio queue – either a screech in the music playback or a gap; instead mistakes are more tangible – your character gets hurt and takes damage. Too much damage and the game is over.

Review: Naruto Powerful Shippuden (3DS)

Every once in a while a game comes along that takes every opportunity to slap the player in the face. In a nutshell, that's Naruto Powerful Shippuden, a game that constantly hits below the belt with utterly arbitrary challenges that encourage hair-pulling frustration and grinding levels to earn experience points (XP) to upgrade skills and unlock more skills.

Review: Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D (3DS)

From my 2010 Wii review of Donkey Kong Country Returns:

"Stop rolling into the pits!" 

This happened to me again and again. For some reason, to perform the ground attack a player has to quickly shake the Wii Remote. That's fine. However, if you happen to be moving forward at the time, you'll roll forward. That's good for attacking enemies and bashing things but it's also a very efficient way to send you wheeling into a hole. There are some really tricky platforming elements in the game and the inability to just press a button to perform this action makes some areas far more difficult than they needed to be.

Review: Luigi's Mansion - Dark Moon (3DS)

Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon is more than just a philosophical examination of life after death, a treatise on the supernatural and otherwordly; things unseen by the naked eye that brings to question God and the nature of existence; what it means to be human; and the boundary between what is Real and what imagined things hide in the shadows.

The game also has some swell puzzles.

It’s the puzzles that blunt the edge of the stabbing (cute) terror that dogs Luigi at every turn. Enlisted by Professor E. Gad to reassemble the Dark Moon artifact to bring some semblance of normality to Evershade Valley, Luigi takes up his Poltergust 5000 – it both sucks and blows – to clear out mansion after mansion of otherworldly and not-so-otherwordly creatures he'll come across many puzzles.

Review: Earth Defense Force 2017 Portable (PS Vita)

The original Earth Defense Force 2017 was easily one of my favorite titles for this generation of games – the Xbox copy that I own gets a re-visiting after any especially hard day at work.

The original premise is practically out of B-movie heaven – the Earth is under attack from an alien force comprises of giant ants, spiders and assorted robots then use these hyper-destructive weapons to blow the crap out of EVERYTHING!

Review: Paper Mario: Sticker Star (3DS)

It took more than a couple of hours for me to really shake the feeling that Paper Mario: Sticker Star did itself a disservice somehow when it came to the abandonment of the role-playing aspects that I remember from the other Paper Mario games. Gaining experience points and grinding for items are just two things that are missing from Sticker Star. Even if the rest of the game is actually relatively good, all things considered,  it's no role-playing game.

Review: New Super Mario Bros. 2 (3DS)

"In [the Mushroom Kingdom], you gotta make the money first. Then when you get the money, you get the power. Then when you get the power, then you get the women."

- Tony Montana (Scarface, 1983; paraphrased)

New Super Mario Bros. 2 certainly takes a more serious and dramatic turn when it's viewed through the lens of Brian de Palma's ode to drug-fuelled, mid '80s, Cuban gangsters in Miami. It's still a Mario game as it's traditionally known. It's a side-scrolling platformer where goombas are flattened, blocks smashed, turtle shells hurled, and tricky platforms navigated by, what else, jumping. And the coins... so many coins.

Review: Resident Evil: Revelations (3DS)

If you easily get seasick, this horror zombie adventure from Capcom is unlikely to go over well. If you are sensitive to 3D at all, it will just make the experience that much worse.

First, a little background. Revelations is set in the year 2005 (between Resident Evil 4 and 5). The story revolves around Jill Valentine and Chris Redfield, who you might remember from the first game. Jill and Parker are sent to search for Chris and Jessica on the “SS Queen Zenobia”, which is a cruise ship that serves as the main setting for the game. The typical storytelling crutches such as flashbacks are used to “flesh out” the story (sorry for that pun) which is told via a third-person perspective (although you can switch to first person if you wish).

Review: Kid Icarus: Uprising (3DS)

As of this writing, Kid Icarus: Uprising was released months ago. Whatever else I write about it should be taken in that light; it has been the portable game I keep coming back to even at this late date. That accounts for the tardiness of this review. Once a review is complete, there's usually no reason (and no time) for me to return to a game unless the multiplayer pulls me in or there's some significant new content available for it.

That's what I've been using to excuse myself from writing the review. "I'm still playing it!" I tell myself. "I can't possibly be ready to write the review."

Review: Mario Tennis Open (3DS)

The good thing about Nintendo Character GamesTM is that it's a almost a given that it will be an enjoyable experience. ("Almost" because the Mario Party games can be hit or huge miss.) Mario Strikers Charged, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Mario Kart, Mario Golf and Mario Tennis do a great job capitalizing on the most popular Nintendo characters and as a result, or more likely because of it, a lot of care and attention go into the games to make them pleasant games.