Posted by Oculin in Featured Articles, Originals, Previews, Wii | 0 comments

DPrime Preview: Monster Hunter Tri

Online games don’t fare well on the Wii. Friend codes and a lack of a real online community really hurt the system’s online potential. But Capcom plans on giving Wii owners a title with a real online component with Monster Hunter Tri, a hack and slash title. While you may not have heard of the Monster Hunter series, it has been very successful in Japan. Most of the titles have made it to Europe and North America, but the sales of the series has been less than stellar in these regions. Monster Hunter Tri, the third major installment in the series, will be hitting North America and Europe next month. The demo is available now at Gamestop for free, but many locations are requiring a pre-order to get the demo. Of course, if they are giving you a hard time, you can always just pre-order it and then come back at a later date and cancel it.

Posted by Oculin in Gaming in General, Nintendo, Originals, Previews, Wii | 1 comment

DPrime Import Preview: Tatsunoko vs Capcom

Tatsunoko vs Capcom is the latest in the vs. line of games. For a long time it had very little chance of being released outside of japan due to licensing issues and the fact that Tatsunoko’s characters aren’t very popular outside of Japan. Americans and Europeans are finally getting their hands on Tatsunoko vs Capcom later this year. We must thank Capcom for putting so much work into getting this game overseas, After going through what was basically licensing hell. Some how Capcom was able to get all the characters except one over into the North American and European version of the title. The question is, was it worth all the effort, or were fans just clamoring for the fact that we didn’t receive the title?

Posted by Keenan "SuperMario290" in Featured Articles, Nintendo DS, Previews | 0 comments

First Impressions: Pokemon Platinum

Well, like I said before with the Pokemon Platinum motivational picture, or you’ve been keeping up on my twitter, then you’d know that I’m having a pretty good time with Pokemon Platinum. Well, here are my first impressions of the game after investing about 4 hours or so into the game.

Okay, so upon starting the game, you pretty much go through the same bullshit that you have for the last 10 million games, you are introduced to the professor in this region, which is Professor Rowan. So after contemplating whether I’m a boy or a girl, making the wrong decision, and naming my guy, I am thrown into my hometown (that I can’t remember the name of).

So after being tossed into my hometown, I talk to my best friend who I named, ADHD freak-boy, we go, do some shit, and get our first pokemon. Woopdy doo. Okay, so everything in the game is a lot like that of Pokemon Diamond or Pearl on the DS, and I can’t remember, but I think that the games take place in the same region, as everything seems pretty fucking similar. So there are a few tweaks this time, not too many though. You can go through everything like battles and through the menu’s and everything on the touch-screen, or you can be boring and use the buttons (I use the buttons). You move around, talk to people, and all of that stuff with the d-pad, and the x/y/a/b buttons.

So pretty much, I’ve come to the conclusion that I can only pick up 1 out of every 3 pokemon games that come out on any given console. I think that it’s hard for me to stay enthralled in the same world like this, without too much change in scenery or variety, no matter what the difference is in the storyline.

I also think that it’s sort of a phase. I mean, I went from my first Pokemon game, Pokemon Yellow on the original Gameboy, to Pokemon Gold on the Gameboy advance, and then to Pokemon Saphire, and eventually Pokemon Diamond. So there’s a little bit of spacing in-between each of those games to let me “rest”. In my last pokemon adventure in Diamond, I think I beat the game in like 30 hours, and spent another 10 hours dicking around, leveling up every pokemon I had to 100, and just chillin.

All in all, I like the game, it’s fun, but I wish the environment was bigger, or a little more different. I can’t judge it too much thusfar, because like I said before, I’ve only put 4 hours into the game, and only bought it yesterday. So I’ll probably try to beat the game, or put at least 20 hours into it before I get a review up, but you better be sure that I’ll be twittering whenever I level up my Pokemon, or one of them evolves.

Posted by Keenan "SuperMario290" in Featured Articles, PC, Previews | 5 comments

First Impressions: Plants vs. Zombies

Yes, while working today, I decided to load up steam for the first time in a couple of weeks. To my surprise, Plants vs. Zombies, a game from Popcap, was out and ready to demo or buy. Well, I jumped on the chance to download the demo, and after playing through the whole demo, and right now buying the game, I would like to give my first impressions.

First off, the game is really fun and easy to pick up and play. It is definitely a casual title for the casual gamer. what you do is you have a lawn (that’s all you get in the demo), and you are pitted against a horde of zombies. Well, you use pieces of sun that fall down magically from the sky to get what look like plant trading cards in the upper right-hand corner of the screen. The pea-shooter, the green one in the picture, “costs” 25 sun pieces (or whatever the hell you’d want to call them). Each piece of sun gives you 25, and once you get 100, you can give them all up to get one. You place it on your lawn, which is in a gridded format as for easy configuration of plants and the like.

Zombies come one after another, in all shapes and forms. You can put sunflower plants (that cost 50), on your lawn, and those will give you more sun pieces so you can get more plants to fight off the zombies. As you fight off the zombies, you will destroy the “normal” horde, and then at the end, a whole plethora of them will start coming at you from every angle. After you defeat the big horde, most of the time you will be rewarded with new plant cards that you can use in future “battles”, or maybe a new item such as a shovel, that allows you to dig up plants if you don’t want them in a specific place any more.

From what I’ve played, the game is shit-tons of fun, and once I play a good part through the regular game, I will get a review up for you guys. I’ll try to get a review up by Friday or Saturday at the latest. Definitely though, if you’re interested at all in the concept, or just want a casual, fun, and challenging game to play, definitely pick up the demo on Stem, and if you like it, go ahead and drop the $10 to buy it.