Author: Kaosukage

Metroid Prime is one of my old favorites, a game that I cherish from my childhood. On playing it again, I find it just as good as I recall, one of those few games that holds up to the same feelings the player has when they first get the game. It hasn’t, at least in my opinion, aged at all. What I’m talking about today is one of the best examples of this; the very beginning. The game starts very minimally at first- with a simple text description about a distress beacon being tracked to a “derelict space vessel in…

While I have heard that video games based on movies often have difficulties, or aren’t made well, Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith was certainly an exception. It is sort of a combination beat ‘em up and fighting game- the vast majority of the game is fighting droids and clone troopers as Anakin and Obi-Wan, but the bosses are able to face the heroes on equal footing, and help increase the roster for the versus mode, both of which I found quite fun. Obviously the normal enemies won’t stand much of a chance against our characters, and the controls certainly…

Today I am looking at Sly 2: Band of Thieves. It was one of my very first Playstation 2 games, and on beating it again, it is still fun to me even after all these years. The story picks up after the first game- I had not played it, but the first level does a great job of acquainting the player with our main characters, Sly, Bentley, and Murray, as they are raiding a museum to find something called the “Clockwerk Parts”. We see their individual strengths as Sly, who we directly control, slips through security and runs on a…

First impressions are very powerful things. When I first played Digimon Rumble Arena 2, I felt as though it wasn’t a true sequel to the first one, a Digimon game in name only. Of course, I think I was sick at the time and it was a few years ago, so recently I decided to give it another chance. And I was pleasantly surprised to find it not only was fun to play once I relearned the controls, but an actual improvement over its predecessor in several ways. Firstly of course there are the graphics- not usually the first thing…

Today I am looking at a rather interesting first-person shooter called Goldeneye: Rogue Agent. As the name may imply, it is a game based in part on the James Bond movies- but it doesn’t actually have anything to do with the famous Goldeneye video game, nor is James Bond himself your character- instead, you play as a former agent of MI6 that was kicked out of the organization for his brutal methods. The prologue explains that after being shot in the eye by the famous criminal Dr. No, the agent became increasingly aggressive and violent, until they had no choice…

Recently I’ve been playing a game called Darkest Dungeon- or as I’ve come to think of it, “Dark Souls, RPG edition”. The game is very difficult, or at least gives the feeling of difficulty- it is not that objectives and missions are hard to complete persay- they have been, but not terribly hard. No, the hard thing about this game is that even if it doesn’t kill you, it will weaken you. Let me explain. The setting itself is quite a dark one- there was once a rich estate owned by a wealthy family. They lived good lives, until one…

Today I am looking at a very interesting Mega Man fangame, called Mega Maker. As the name implies, it is for Mega Man what Mario Maker is for that series- a way for you to create your own levels, hazards, and so on for Mega Man to traverse. While not an official Capcom work, I would still recommend it to any Mega Man fan. Firstly, the fact that you can make your own levels, with several elements taken from the first six Mega Man games is itself simply incredible. The game also has a very charming tutorial where Dr. Wily…

Lately I’ve been playing an interesting game based on the Terminator francise called The Terminator: Dawn of Fate. It is functionally a prequel to the first movie, showing the events leading up to Skynet’s defeat and both the Terminator and Kyle Reese being sent back in time. It is effectively a third and first person shooter, and a pretty fun one. Today I’ll be looking at what I think is the most notable boss from the game, but first, a bit on how the game works. Normally you are running around in a third person perspective, but pushing R2 will…

Today I will be looking at the Star Wars Battlefront series. While I haven’t played the new game coming out in November, I have heard news about it, and what I heard worries me enough that I feel I must write about it. And while I’m doing so, I’ll tell about what I have played- the original Battlefront II from 2005. For those who do not know, the Star Wars Battlefront series are a series of first and third person shooters where do not play as some all-important character like Han Solo or Luke Skywalker, but instead as the typical…

Today I am taking another look at Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks. I did an article on one of the more note-worthy enemies from the game a year ago, but on replaying it I realized it deserves a more in-depth analysis, for reasons both good and bad. The game is very unlike other Mortal Kombat games; while they are fighting games, this one is an action adventure that borrows a lot from them. The game begins with the end of the first Mortal Kombat, showing a very impressive cutscene where Shang Tsung is defeated, saving the world, and the evil sorcerer…

I recently beat a very interesting and fast paced game called Strider 2. After playing through Marvel vs. Capcom with Strider Hiyru, I started wondering where the character had come from, which lead me to this. Why Strider 2? Well, I tried it along with the first one, and compared them, finding the second to be the best of them. I’ll talk a bit on both and explain why. Both games are very similar in plot and execution. An evil sorcerer of some sort, the Grandmaster, has conquered the world. In order to put a stop to him, those who…

Today I’m looking at another Castlevania game, Dracula X Chronicles, for the PSP. It is a remake of Castlevania: Rondo of Blood, where you play as Richter Belmont as he journeys into the castle to stop Dracula and save his girlfriend. Of course, being a remake, it is a huge improvement on the original graphically, and it makes everything from the scenery to the enemies interesting to look at, and a bit more intimidating. However, today I am not looking at an enemy or Richter, but instead the other playable character, Maria. First, she isn’t available from the start. The…

Today I will be taking another look at Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, though a much later part of the game than before. Last time we covered an early boss, but now I’m covering two areas and the bosses inside them. Before that, though, there is a tiny bit more plot to cover. Since the Doopelganger battle, Alucard has discovered someone else trying to stop Dracula, a girl named Maria who has magical powers. He later finds Richter Belmont, but rather than stopping Dracula, the former vampire hunter seems to be acting as the lord of the castle himself, even…

Today I am looking at a very interesting encounter from Epic Battle Fantasy 4. The game series is a typical turn-based RPG in execution, but the way it presents itself is as a tongue-in-cheek satire of RPGs in general. It pokes fun at everything from common enemy types like slimes, which have been turned into cute blobs with cat faces, to the main characters themselves who are caricatures of their traditional roles, though as the games went on they did start to develop their own personalities. The game starts with a slight recap of the previous one, introducing our three…

Today I’m looking at the boss of Marvel vs. Camcom, Onslaught. The game itself doesn’t say much about who Onslaught is, but it also bears out that whoever he is, he has a lot of power and is mostly certainly an evil villain of some sort, given the city in the background of the fight seems to be on fire. After a bit of digging, though, I did indeed find out who he was. His origin is a bit complicated, but can be summarized fairly well. Basically, Magneto, long time enemy of the X-Men and a mutant with magnetic powers,…

Today I will be looking at Digimon World 3, one of my favorite JRPGs and indeed one of my favorite games in general. Specifically, I will be explaining the mechanics of the game and how one could get started playing it. So, to begin with, we start the game on a street corner, where a boy, Junior, is waiting for his friends, Teddy and Ivy. As he waits, he sees a news report from some store TVs that many members of the terrorist group A.o.A. have been captured. The group does play in with the story later, but they aren’t…

Like many long running video game series, Legend of Zelda has staples that gamers would come to expect, like the general nature of the game, running around, investigating dungeons, collecting items, and so on. Today, I will be looking at one of these staples, which pertains to boss battles, and usually the final boss: The Dead Man’s Volley. Simply put, the Dead Man’s Volley is where the boss(usually Ganon in some form or another) fires an energy blast at you, and you have to knock it back at them with your weapon. They will usually knock it back again, and…

Today I am looking at the final bosses of the Nintendo 64 Spider-Man game. While it isn’t related to a movie and thus one I had forgotten, I took another look at it recently and the finale of it certainly stands out. So does the plot in general, since it isn’t based on a movie, but I’ll try to move on to the ending fairly quickly. The game starts at the Science Expo 2000, where Doctor Otto Octavius, formerly supervillan Doctor Octopus, is showing off some invention he made. Both Peter Parker and Eddie Brock are there taking pictures when…

Today I’m looking at a boss from The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, Dongorongo. The game is a direct sequel to Wind Waker and carries many of the same concepts, like traveling from island to island by boat. Personally, I believe it does that a little better than the original, because while the ocean of this game is smaller, that actually works in its favor. Smaller waters means that everything is less spaced out, and thus you don’t have to go far before you find something interesting or get attacked by something. Another side effect of the smaller game is…

Doppelgangers are a common enemy in video games. It only makes sense- it is always fascinating and difficult to face what is essentially yourself. However, the Castlevania series to me has always been what first comes to mind when considering this sort of foe. In particular, today I’m looking at the Doppelganger from Symphony of the Night. To understand this fight, first we must look at our character, Alucard. The story of this game is that for whatever reason, the current Belmont vampire hunter, who defeated Dracula previously, has not shown up to face him again when the vampire’s castle…

Generally, when a game is remade in some way, it is an attempt to not only update the game and bring it to more modern standards, but also to improve on it by adding what has been learned since its making. For instance, Metroid: Zero Mission is a remake of the original Metroid and I would wholeheartedly say it is an outstanding improvement in every way, primarily because unlike the original, wherein I could easily get lost, health was hard to come by, and the password system made continuing a pain, simply updating the game with features like maps and…