Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Entourage Movie Green Lit and other news.

     It is official, the movie based on the hit HBO television show Entourage has been green-lit.  So it will not be long until the cast will be gracing the silver screen.  Mark Wahlberg is confirmed to be involved (considering I received this news from his Facebook.)

Other news: Sorry about the lack of review for last week's episode of Adventure Time, there was an issue with the stream from Cartoon Network's website.  Power Rangers Megaforce and Pokemon Black and White: Adventures in Unova start this Saturday and reviews will be posted as soon as possible.

Saturday, January 26, 2013

Pokemon Red Version: Retrospective and Modern Review

     Today, I am going to review Pokemon Red Version.  The game, and its sister game Pokemon Blue Version were both released in late 1998 for the Gameboy handheld entertainment system.  This game is truly unique in its style and mechanics.  The game's premise is that you are a boy named Red who is going about to start his journey along with his rival Blue (who goes by many other more colorful names) to become masters of creatures called Pokemon.  Your Pokemon are your weapons for defeating enemies and they level up through battle and evolve.  You're job is to defeat all eight gym leaders of the region and then travel to the Indigo Plateau to fight the Elite Four. Along the way, you meet the sinister Team Rocket and their leader Giovanni who are basically the Pokemon Mafia.
     Now, this game's review in its time.  In 1998, it was an incredible spin on the traditional RPG game where there were such a wide array of weapons at the player's disposal and even between the same species, gender, level, and move set, they were different.  However, the game had its flaws.  Out of the 152 Pokemon programmed into the game, only 151 had sprites and 150 were obtainable between the two (with Mew and an unknown Pokemon related to Kangaskhan excluded).  The Psychic type is broken as only Bug-type affects it.  The game had game breaking glitches to get infinite items, making it easy to get the three birds with Master Balls or level up all your Pokemon to level 100 and destroy the elite four without even trying.
     Based on today's games, it is severely lacking.  The colors are limited, the front sprites are off and not alike the official artwork.  This is most noticeable on Pikachu and Koffing, where Pikachu is fat and the skull is on top of Koffing instead of under it.  There are no natures in this game, no breeding, no EVs, and many of the pokemon (roughly 400) are not in it.  This would make the game hard to sell.  Plus the HM mechanic makes the water type in your party know surf while you always have two HM slaves.

Rating 9/10.  Nintendo shouldn't try to sell this game on the eShop.  It won't sell.

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Wii U News and Predictions

     Today, like a few weeks ago, a Nintendo Direct was held that fundamentally changed the landscape of the dedicated console market.  While last time, Pokemon X and Y were announced\, complete with trailer for the 3DS, this time the focus was the Wii U.  The information given was that there would be a new Legend of Zelda title that would return "back to basics", Windwaker will be released for the Wii U complete with gamepad support.  The Virtual Console will go live with all games having gamepad and Miiverse support.  There will be a Yoshi title, Super Mario title, and Super Smash Bros title in the near future (at E3). I believe that we will also in the near future have some announcement relating to Super Mario Sunshine.  Why?  When the 3DS came out Luigi's Mansion 2 (Luigi's Mansion Dark Moon) and Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time came out.  We now have Windwaker, where is the Mario title other than the ambiguous 3D Super Mario title that was unveiled.  Recently there have been Super Mario 64, Super Mario Sunshine, Super Mario Galaxy, and Super Mario Galaxy 2.  Unless it is something totally new, I am going with Super Mario Sunshine 2.

Monday, January 21, 2013

Adventure Time "Mystery Dungeon" Review

     Another week, another Adventure Time episode.  This week is the episode "Mystery Dungeon."  The premise is NEPTR, the Ice King, Tree Trunks, Lemongrab, and Shelby wake up in a Dungeon and they must progress through it using their particular skills. Eventually, they reach the last room which should be opened by BMO and the Ice King's plan falls apart.  It turns out he knocked out everyone and used them to get to the prize, a man who can make anything real.  The Ice King wants to use it to make Fionna and Cake become real.  This fails as the wizard turns the book containing the story real, not the actual story.  It ends with the Ice King saying that he will never give up bringing Fionna and Cake to life.
     This was an alright episode until the end.  I believe that this will open up a new arc with Fionna and Cake allowing for the story lines there to gain more traction.

Final Rating: 8.75/10

Sorry about the length, I feel like death.

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Pokemon Direct Announcement

     Pokemon Direct has ended a little while ago, and in it Pokemon X and Pokemon Y were announced as the Generation VI games.  First and foremost, the main character has an anime look, similar to games like Tales of Xilia.  The world is in full 3D and the game is for the 3DS. Also, it appears as though your character has roller skates instead of a bike.  The starters were revealed to be Chespin the grass type, Fennekin the fire type, and Froakie the water type.  Sprites have been replaced with 3D models for battles and it illustrates that old pokemon from the previous generations will appear in these games.  Two of the legends appear too, both unnamed so far.  The first is a flying demon/falcon creature.  The other is a deer like creature with rainbow antlers.  The games will be released in all markets in October of 2013.  The video of the announcement can be found here: http://www.nintendo.com/nintendo-direct/archive/01-08-2013/

     At this point, the games look good, but that is to be expected from a reveal trailer.  As a huge fan of Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald, I find this as good news because I hope to see the Hoenn Region rendered to full 3D.  Now, it is time to buy a 3DS and wait the 10 long months for the game to come out.

Monday, January 7, 2013

Review: Adventure Time "Jake the Dad"

     So, Lady Rainicorn had the puppies. Five to be exact.  After Finn and BMO leave Jake behind to live with Lady and the pups, Jake begins to be stressed out by the pressures of fatherhood.  He starts to read them a book about a wolf that eats babies and discovers that it is not age appropriate and throws it out the window.  Foxes discover it and decide that they are going to start eating babies, just as Jake takes the pups for a walk.  Jake falls asleep on the walk and the pups start playing.  Jake freaks out and Lady calls back the pups.  Jake gets mistaken for a baby and gets carted off by the foxes and the pups come to his rescue.  They share a heartfelt moment and Jake returns to live with Finn saying that the pups have aged enough to take care of themselves.
     I feel that it was a good episode, with a small reference to the three episode Lich arc a few months ago with the barn being the same as the one in the Farmworld (correct me if I am wrong).  I think that this wrapped up the pregnancy line too soon and removed what would have been an interesting dynamic on the show.  It could have been written as the pups would be cared for by the Candy Kingdom or Lady herself, but aging them to the point where they can take care of themselves removes them as a factor.

I rate this episode 8.5 out of 10 because the episode itself was good, however if they ended them still as pups it would have made a longer story.

Final Rating: 8.5/10

Tune in next week at 7:30 for "Davey."