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I actually took my own screenshots for this review (for once).

Games Beaten in 2016 So Far - 73

January (20 Games Beaten)


February (8 Games Beaten)


March (8 Games Beaten)


April (13 Games Beaten)


May (6 Games Beaten)


June (13 Games Beaten)


July (5 Games Beaten)


73. Far Cry Primal - Playstation 4 - July 27



This is my first main series Far Cry game. Before Primal, I played Blood Dragon on my Xbox 360 and Vengeance on my Wii (utter garbage). I've always meant to give the series a shot, but I just never got around to it until Primal was $20 new on Amazon Prime Day. I can say without reservation that that was $20 well spent. Legit savage combat, bruh.



I went into this game with low expectations to be honest. Despite the amazing things I've heard about the Far Cry games, I tend to expect very little from anything with Ubisoft's logo on it. I will, however, give credit where credit is due, and credit is due here. It's not perfect, and I countered a number of bugs (a couple of which I have recorded), but it was a thoroughly enjoyable 30 hours. 30 hours filled with dignified and cheerful decorations.



The weirdest part in terms of "This definitely didn't exist 12,000 years ago" is the grappling hook. It does, however, give you some badass rock climbing experiences. I wish they had just used more super long vines instead of grappling hooks (especially since it will only let you use the grappling hook when you're in the EXACT right spot, not just a certain distance away), but I guess platforming elements or whatever.



Oh, and there are titties (no, seriously, there's a titty in this spoiler tag; you've been warned).


Anyway, the premise of the game is that you're a guy from This Clan whose homies get rekt by a sabertooth tiger. Then you go through some cave to find the other half of This Clan. You find out that This Clan has been spread to all corners of Somewhere by the cannibalistic That Clan and the pyrophiliac The Other Clan. Then you go through shooting, stabbing, and clubbing your way to domination. Most importantly, though, you can ride a sabertooth tiger. I named mine Señor Fluffybottom.



So the storyline is pretty basic, but it takes place in 10,000 BCE; there's only so much they had to work with, I guess. Honestly, I spent more time doing side quests than I did the main quest, but that's because I PLATINUMED THIS GAME, BITCHES. It's not as impressive as it sounds; it's one of the easiest platinums around as made evident by the fact that I got it. Far Cry Primal is a bit lacking in the storyline department, but between the (I think) 17 animals to tame and the plethora of side quests and caves to explore, there's definitely enough to keep fans of open world games satisfied for a while (plus it takes less than 30 hours to platinum if you're an achievement hunter).

Games Beaten in 2016 So Far - 74

January (20 Games Beaten)


February (8 Games Beaten)


March (8 Games Beaten)


April (13 Games Beaten)


May (6 Games Beaten)


June (13 Games Beaten)


July (6 Games Beaten)


74. Black - Playstation 2 - July 28



Black is a game that I've had on my shelf for years but never actually got around to playing. When I kept seeing it get recommended on the forums here by various people and to both me and others, I decided that I'd have to bump it up the queue and see what all the hype was about. Seeing the 6-7 hour running time on HLTB made it a perfect fit for my "breather" between long games (three of my last four games averaged 80 hours each).



Alright, so let's talk about the story....is what I would love to say, but honestly, I have no idea what that game was about. Something about black ops (hence the name), Russians, and terrorism. I don't know. I don't remember. What I DO know, however, is that there are a LOT of things to shoot, blow up, and otherwise eviscerate in this game. I was pretty happy when the game gave me an AK-47. I was REALLY happy when it gave me whatever assault rifle has the pretty good zoom. I was ecstatic when it gave me a shotgun. I came when it gave me an LMG. Oh man, and the grenades. Shit blows up like a damn mini nuke. Guy's 10 feet away from your grenade? No worries; as long as you at least looked at him the wrong way first, the splash damage will kill him.



In terms of difficulty, Black isn't too too crazy, but there are some things I noticed. First and foremost, the controls are utter balls, mainly the aim sensitivity. Let's think about it in terms of a computer mouse. Let's say that the average sensitivity setting for a PC game is 800 DPI, okay? Most hardcore players will probably want closer to 1600 DPI. Black gives you about 200 DPI and absolutely no option to adjust the sensitivity whatsoever. Couple that with the fact that with the fact that there's no sprint to get behind cover quickly when in a sticky situation and the fact that the enemies soak up more bullets than 50 Cent, and you're looking at combat situations that can turn nasty fast. I played around with a few different difficulty settings, and the biggest difference I noticed was the frequency with which health drops (none of that pussy ass regen shit) rather than more damaging enemies. Take Easy, for example - the vast majority of the time, there's very little challenge since health drops pretty often. You make one stupid decision in a big firefight, however, and you can still get rekt more easily than you'd expect. Just because health drops often doesn't necessarily mean that you'll have some within two feet of you when you decide to give an enemy's rocket a kiss on the nose.



Two things that REALLY stood out to me, however, even more than the bitchin' gameplay were the visuals and the audio direction. I'd heard even back when it was new that Black's graphics were ridiculously impressive, and that holds true, especially when you take into account how weak the Playstation 2 was compared to the Gamecube and especially the Xbox. Honestly, if you upscaled it to 720p and ran them both through the same cables, it wouldn't surprise me if Black on the Playstation 2 looked at least as good as if not better than Resistance: Fall of Man on the Playstation 3. I want to get the Xbox release of Black now to see just how good a 6th gen game can look.



The music in Black is really stellar. Great instrumental design with outright orchestral arrangements in some levels. On the last level (there are only 8 levels in the game), my buddy actually called out from the other room, "Damn, Stephen, did you start playing Star Wars instead?" I always appreciate good music in games, but rarely am so impressed that I'm legitimately dumbfounded. This is one of those times.



It's clear to me that Black would go on to influence later games in the genre in several subtle ways, the most noteable for me being storytelling. If you play Black and then think about to how the story was told in Call of Duty: Black Ops, they're almost identical in method. A now disgraced soldier is being interrogated by some mysterious government official and recalling the events of the mission for which he's in hot water via flashbacks (those flashbacks being the levels that you play). I'm not sure which of those games did it better, but it's obvious to me that Black was a major influence in Treyarch's decision to tell their story that way four years later.

ElkinFencer10 wrote:I want to get the Xbox release of Black now to see just how good a 6th gen game can look.

Black on Xbox does look amazing. Another crazy good looking FPS on Xbox was Far Cry Instincts. Far Cry Instincts is also really fun (stay away from FCI: Evolution though). And although I didn't care for its game design, Conker: Live and Reloaded looks like a 360 game on the OG Xbox. Other amazing OG Xbox graphics to behold; Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, Panzer Dragoon Orta, Otogi 1&2, Phantom Dust, and Ninja Gaiden Black.

One other Xbox FPS you should definitely play:
While it's not as insanely good as Black, it was made by Rocksteady, so you know it doesn't suck.

1. Oni - PC
2. Donkey Kong 64 - N64
3. Yoshi's Story - N64
4. Neverwinter Nights: Shadows of Undrentide - PC
5. Forsaken 64 - N64
6. Bloodrayne: Betrayal - PSN
7. Fire Emblem Seisen no Keifu - SNES
8. Fire Emblem Shin Monshō no Nazo: Hikari to Kage no Eiyū - Nintendo DS
9. Valkyria Chronicles 3 - PSP
10. Ready 2 Rumble Boxing - DC
11. Rise of the Tomb Raider - PC
12. XCOM 2 - PC
13. Shadowrun Hong Kong Bonus Campaign - PC
14. Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest - 3DS
15. Fire Emblem Fates: Birthright - 3DS
16. Lagrange Point - NES
17. Fire Emblem Fates: Revelations - 3DS
18. Cybernator - SNES
19. Outwars - PC
20. Resident Evil - GC
21. Resident Evil 2 - GC
22. Resident Evil 3 - GC
23. Resident Evil Code Veronica X - GC
24. Dino Crisis - PSX
25. Resident Evil 5 - PC
26. Dark Souls 3 - PS4
27. The Banner Saga 2 - PC
28. Bravely Second - 3DS
29. Star Fox Zero - Wii U
30. Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War - PC
31. Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War - Winter Assault - PC
32. Doom (2016) - PC
33. Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War - Dark Crusade - PC
34. Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War - Soulstorm - PC
35. Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine - PC
36. Doom 64 - N64
37. Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II - PC
38. Super Empire Strikes Back - SNES
39. Might & Magic 3 - Isles of Terra - PC
40. Mirror's Edge Catalyst - PC
41. Sonic 2 - Genesis
42. Resident Evil Revelations - PC
43. Resident Evil Revelations 2 - PC
44. Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE - Wii U
45. Kirby: Planet Robobot
46. Sin: Wages of Sin - PC
47. Torchlight II - PC
48. Star Ocean: Integrity & Faithlessness - PS4

So the latest Star Ocean is out and unfortunately ends up being an entirely forgettable entry. The game itself is competent enough, but it doesn't really do much new to be worth remembering, and it has several design decisions that are just full of frustration.

I&F cribs pretty heavily from SO1's playbook. You start on an undeveloped planet when something bad happens that's outside your normal experience, then you're visited by a captain and his female science officer that open your eyes to the fact you're living in a sci fi universe and your planet is the current testing ground for some bad people who also live in technology land. And even though you have access to a space ship you inexplicably spend your entire time on the undeveloped planet. The main difference is that the MacGuffin of the game is one of your party members; a little girl imbued with fantastic magical power that can upset the balance of power in the galaxy and only activates at appropriate story moments.

So the plot does nothing new. The new stuff comes from the fact that the game is taking influences from MMO design. The first influence is the fact there's no battle screen; like FFXII enemies appear on the battlefield and getting close initiates a battle. A circle gets drawn around the battle, which keeps other enemies out and serves as your escape barrier you push up against to retreat. Unlike basically every other JRPG ever, you get to fight with your full party of six characters + support that casts some buffs. It ends up making for fairly chaotic fights and is the substitute for the Tales series' combo system; here instead of your melee character chaining attacks for rich combos you simply pile on a bunch of characters to combo hits. There is a sort of chaining system in that you can smoothly transition attacks from one to the next, and doing so increases the power of your blows. So if your first attack does 100% damage your next would do 125%, then 150%, up to 200%, after which it resets. The rules for how this works is that basic attacks must alternate between strong and weak (so strong combos into weak, weak into strong) while your skills can be triggered after any attack, including the same skill. As a result, it turns into a skill spam not too far in once your SP raises enough to do so. The other thing the game tries to do is put in a rock paper scissors system of weak interrupts strong, strong breaks through guard, guard is immune to weak and can counterattack from it. The problem is that you very rarely can take advantage of this system. Enemies attack fast enough that you can't react to them, so your only way to interrupt/counterattack is to guess at what the enemy is going to use. And counters aren't reliable because enemies seem to target at random, especially bosses. Speaking of bosses, bosses and certain large enemies are immune to the effects of this system anyway. It's extremely half baked.

The thing that struck me most about the game was just how small the world is. The overworld consists of 9 maps that are all the size of a small dungeon. It ends up being in that spot where it takes several minutes to cross if there were no enemies and many times enemies can't be reliably dodged. This wouldn't be a problem except the game has an excess of backtracking, and that's if you only do the main quest. If you want to do the side quests (many of which have some major benefits) then you will be doing an even larger amount of backtracking. Sidequests fall into two categories; the first is find so many of a particular item which you probably already have or are gated behind progression to even find and the second is to kill enemies that don't spawn until you've taken the quest. The latter is the one that makes you run all over the place, as you'll frequently find that you take a quest to go to previous area A to kill some enemies, turn it in, then get another quest to go back to A again and kill something else. And the fast travel in this game is extremely limited; you get it for a small period of time midgame and then don't get it again until the end game.

In true Star Ocean tradition a deep crafting system returns, but I found it to be this terrible mix of underwhelming and broken and frustrating. If you're playing the game normally then you'll find the main thing you can craft is some higher level healing items; everything else you never have the materials for until you've outranked the crafted item's usefulness. The broken part is the fact you can get end game gear before the halfway point if you know what you're doing (which is again tradition). The frustrating part is that said high level recipes are gated behind a massively random mechanic. You have to farm drops which are frustratingly elusive, but the real kicker is the synthesis system. This is a system where you combine items together to get a semi-random result. All the best stuff is stuck behind this gate, which means you either need to massively save scum or massively overfarm to get anything worthwhile not sold in a shop. And by semirandom, I mean you're usually looking at a list of 10-15 items that can be generated with about half good and half utter trash, and even the good stuff might not be what you're looking for. You need a guide just to have a chance at getting anything worthwhile, but even with a guide you're at the mercy of the RNG.

I'd personally rank Star Ocean 4 over this one; that game at least made the most of the sci fi setting in a way that the other Star Ocean games don't.

Games Ex has beaten in 2016:




83. The Lost Crown|PC|2008|adventure|17h 20m|8/10

Nigel Danvers arrives in Saxton, a forgotten coastal town in the UK. He's primarily there to hunt ghosts for his employer, a paranormal research firm. But while snooping around Nigel discovers the possiblity of a hidden treasure. A long lost crown, likely worth a fortune, but also cursed with a history of misfortune. During the day, Nigel spends his time exploring Saxton and its surrounding countryside, while getting to know its denizens as well. During the sunlit hours Nigel discovers clues and leads to haunted locations to research, as well as ever getting closer to the crown. But at night, Nigel must do his dirty work, trying to find paranormal experiences, document them, and maybe even interact with them as well. But as the saying goes; "And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee." Let's just say the crown doesn't blink.



So that's the premise of The Lost Crown, a large third person adventure game made 99% by one person alone, Mr. Jonathan Boakes. It is truly amazing that one person could make a game of this size, scope, and technical ability. And that lauded thought always remained in my head the entire time I played The Lost Crown. The Lost Crown is a labor of love, a focused experience free of outside pressure. But a game made by one person has just as many strengths as it does weaknesses, as all things do when developed in a bubble. But first, the strengths.



This game is incredibly immersive. Saxton feels like a real place, and its populace come across as real people. The immersiveness only amps up even more so at night, with incredibly chilling atmosphere and thoroughly convincing special effects. To that end, the graphics are almost always impressive, while the sound effects are utterly amazing. The Lost Crown has some of the best sound design I've ever heard in a video game, insofar as sound effects and music goes anyway. The writing and plot are involving, keeping you guessing to the very end (and beyond). Ghost hunting itself feels totally legit, with the tools and interactions coming across as believable. And above all else, The Lost Crown succeeds at being a creepy ass horror game. I played The Lost Crown alone in a secluded room, late at night, with very low ambient light, and this game scared the hell out of me. Often. I don't mean stupid jump scares either. I'm talking layers upon layers of dread and fear, building ever thicker the more you discover the dark secrets of Saxton. The Lost Crown is easily the most frightening and unnerving video game I've ever played. It sticks with you after you shut it down.



Now for the not so good stuff. Mr. Boakes is a very talented man, but no one can be a master of everything. And while I can forgive occasional bad voice acting and bad 3D character animation (due to a low budget), I can't forgive bad game design so easily. This is mostly an issue with the daytime sections of the game. During the day you are often trying to figure out simply where you are supposed to go, who to talk to, or even what pine comb you're supposed to click on, just to make the plot progress. The Lost Crown can be incredibly nonlinear and totally unintuitive, and often. So much so, that I was convinced Mr. Boakes intentionally made path progression obscure to sell a walkthrough. And guess what I found out? Yeah, he sells a walkthrough for The Lost Crown on his website. As for puzzles themselves, they're generally simple affairs to solve. And I promise you Mr. Boakes, nobody bought this game to collect soup ingredients or take pictures of flowers for old ladies. We bought The Lost Crown to hunt ghosts and be scared stupid. Thankfully the night sections of The Lost Crown let us do just that.



Recommending this The Lost Crown to a general audience is difficult. The Lost Crown is niche as niche can be. It's a third person clicky adventure game, but also a horror game, yet not in the traditional sense. Its subject matter is one of very divisive debate, and the often glacial pacing will bore all but the most devoted. Most of the graphics are in black and white, or black and green, not something everyone will enjoy. But for those who can put up with its strangeness and occasional bad game design, they will be rewarded tenfold in experience. The Lost Crown is absolutely a work of art, flawed as it may be. An unflinching, uncompromising, and deeply complex canvas of madness. Its true that The Lost Crown may have made a better novel than a game, but I am honored to have gotten to play it still. As someone who has personally been affected by paranormal events, The Lost Crown was deeply fulfilling and thoroughly disturbing on a whole new level.

---



84. Echo: Secrets of the Lost Cavern|PC|2005|adventure|5h 45m|6/10



A young caveman decides to find the greatest cave painter he knows, to study and learn the craft for himself. And so this caveman embarks on a dangerous and complicated journey to find the master. Inspired by the amazing Lascaux Caves, this French developed adventure game is definitely unique. Echo initially starts off as a survival adventure, escaping large predators and finding ways through maze-like caverns and such. This is aided by the need to create stone age tools, necessary survival instruments. Later in the game you begin interacting with cave paintings that come alive and become puzzles themselves. But it is the creation and usage of authentic prehistoric tools that was always the saving grace for me.



While never short on creativity, Echo is very short on fun. This game is more educational than entertaining, by a long shot. The amazing graphics certainly help make learning about paleolithic life more endearing. But the late game abstract puzzles that feel entirely disingenuous do not. At all. Really I felt like Echo fell apart about 2/3rds of the way through it. If the designers had stuck to the authentic feel of the start, everything would have been fine. Turning this caveman adventure into a festival of out of place wonky puzzles just didn't work. I'd rather cleverly escape another cave bear then rearrange sliding tile cave paintings any day. All the same though, Echo: Secrets of the Lost Cavern is a highly unique experience, and I do deeply appreciate that.

I've taken several brakes from gaming this year but i still have managed to beat 30 games so far.

1.Fire Emblem: Awakening (3DS)
2.Pilotwings: Resort (3DS)
3.Final Fantasy XIII:Lightning Returns (PS3)
4.Pokemon X (3DS)
5.Parasite Eve (PS)
6.Ace Combat: Assault Horizon Legacy+ (3DS)
7.One Piece:Unlimited World Red (PS3)
8.Sacred Citadel (PSN)
9.Pokemon:Super Mystery Dungeon (3DS)
10.Persona 4: Dancing All Night (PSVita)
11.Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (PS3)
12.Saint's Row IV (DLC included) (PS3)
13.Bravely Default (3DS)
14.Sword Art Online: Lost Song (PSVita)
15.Radiant Historia (NDS)
16.Suikoden (PS)
17.Stella Glow (3DS)
18.Shovel Knight (3DS)
19.Ontamarama (NDS)
20.Dementium II (NDS)
21.Pokemon Conquest (NDS)
22.Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon (NDS)
23.Yo-Kai Watch (3DS)
24.Narcissu 10th Anniversary Anthology Project (Steam)
25.Summon Night 5 (PSP)
26.Aegis of Earth: Protonovus Assault (PSVita)
27.Grand Kingdom (PSVita)
28.Atelier Shallie: Alchemists of the Dusk Sea (PS3)
29.The Cat Lady (GOG)
30.Hyrule Warriors: Legends (3DS)

1. The Match Of The Millennium (NGPC)
2. Pocket Tennis Color (NGPC)
3. XCOM 2 (PC)
4. Street Fighter V (PC)
5. Spelunky (PC)
6. Gone Home (PC)
7. Day Of The Tentacle Remastered (PC)
8. Heroes Of The Storm (PC)
9. The Elder Scrolls Legends (PC)

alright so the NDA has been lifted so I decided to finish up the Story mode which I had started a while ago. Obviously this is an early build of the game, so keep that in mind. Not surprisingly, it plays a lot like Hearthstone. But it has some really cool differences too. The biggest, and best is the lanes. There are two lanes, so basically you are playing two game boards if you will. And each lane can have its own effects - such as Shadow (cards are not able to be attacked on the round they are played). This addition makes for some good strategy. Some stuff is still a little rough around the edges, but it looks to be a pretty impressive title when all is said and done. The Story is 20 chapters, so it offers a good way to learn the ropes. I haven't dabbled with online play yet. And from what I could tell the deck builder UI could use some tightening up. But I will recommend this game when it officially launches.

1. Sly 2 Band of Thieves HD (PS3)
2. Black (Xbox)
3. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (Xbox)
4. Super Mario Bros Advance 4: SMB3 E-Reader Levels (WiiUVC)
5. Galerians (PSX)
6. Shantae and the Pirate's Curse (WiiU)
7. TRAG / Hard Edge: Mission of Mercy (PSX)
8. Soul Blade (PSX)
9. Castlevania Circle of the Moon* (WiiUVC)
10. The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess* HD (WiiU)
11. Mega Man 9* (PSN)
12. Mega Man 10* (PSN)
13. Dark Souls 3 (NG++) [PLATINUM] (PS4)
14. Mega Man 1* (PS4, MMLC)
15. Mega Man 2* (PS4, MMLC)
16. Mega Man 3* (PS4, MMLC)
17. Mega Man 4* (PS4, MMLC)
18. Mega Man 5* (PS4, MMLC)
19. Mega Man 6* (PS4, MMLC)
20. Doom [PLATINUM] (PS4)
21. Quake (PC)
22. Quake 2* (PC)
23. Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 (PS3)
24. Quake Mission Pack 1: Scourge of Armagon (PC)
25. Quake 2 Mission Pack 1: The Reckoning (PC)
26. Quake Mission Pack 2: Dissolution of Eternity (PC)
27. Quake 2 Mission Pack 2: Ground Zero (PC)
28. Quake: Dimensions of the Past (PC)
29. Bayonetta 2 (WiiU)
30. Wolfenstein The Old Blood (PC)
31. Dishonored DLC The Knife of Dunwall (PC)
32. Dishonored DLC The Brigmore Witches (PC)
33. Metro Last Light Redux (PC)
34. Doom 3 BFG Edition* (PC)
35. Metro 2033 Redux (PC)
36. Doom 3 Resurrection of Evil* BFG (PC)
37. Doom 3 The Lost Mission* BFG (PC)
38. Ninja Gaiden 3 Razor's Edge (PS3)
39. Ultimate Doom* (PC)
40. Devil's Third (WiiU)
41. SOMA (PC)
42. Doom 2* (PC)
43. Gone Home (PC)
44. Metroid Other M (Wii)



The wacky adventure of Metroid Other M comes to an end! I've had my ups and downs with it expressed in the Now Playing thread for those that were following. Overall, Other M fails the most in the area that's been prominently discussed whenever people talk about this one... the story. It doesn't help that Samus' new voice is pretty terrible here too, just doesn't get the job done at all. I loved the inner monologues, but then the further you get, the longer the cutscenes get, and the more awkward the experience becomes. It doesn't help that the plot itself is absolutely cliche' boring garbage, predictable betrayals, secret government experiment cliches, etc. It doesn't do anything good with the lore of the franchise at all, Samus was a maverick soldier and you probably could have guessed that anyways. And yeah, it's definitely pretty sexist. I don't mind Zero Suit Samus, or any body suit designs like that for that matter, I'm a man that doesn't mind T&A, but this is sexist in the context of Samus' character being under the ultra power of the big man's boot, it's cringeworthy dooky. Romance is exactly what you wanted in Metroid, right?


(The man will save you!!! Even though you're the intergalactic space bounty hunter badass with ancient alien tech armor and powers...?)

So the story is definitely bad and is extremely forced, so there is no denying that is a tough pill to swallow and hard to ignore while playing. My second issue that's more of a series nitpick that I knock on Fusion with as well, is that Other M is once again in a completely mechanical industrialized setting. Sure, they have this hologram technology going on and organic environments for breeding monsters and such, but it's still not the same. Zebes and the Prime games did it best with their ultra strange mesh of organic and mechanized settings and level design, creating these really vibrant and cool worlds that seemed far more massive than what you get to explore, they feel so alive. But I didn't get that vibe here at all, or with Fusion.

Research has shown over the years that the story and direction of this game is actually at the hand of Nintendo and series co-creator Yoshio Sakamoto. Amusingly he even directed Super Metroid... was it the limitations of the SNES that prevented him from unleashing some wacky bad story with that one? Or perhaps Gunpei Yokoi being around, along with Makoto Kano whom seems to be credited for the first three games, helped keep the game in check. Who knows, but Other M is a starking contrast compared to the other games with their subtle storytelling and lore building. Arguably, Metroid has been a concept that is probably better in the hands of Western developers thesedays, proven by the Prime series.

Otherwise, dare I say this... I actually think it's strangely disappointing that this is the only Team Ninja Metroid game we got, or one in this style. Because it really doesn't seem like they are the ones to blame for some of the mess here. Their legacy with DOA didn't help them I guess, but it's fairly unjust. Anyways, with the Prime series Retro knocked it out of the park and frankly set the bar too high immediately with the first game, though I still love the sequels and consider it one of the best trilogies ever. But with Other M here, there is a ton of great ideas and game design, that is truly unique and something I don't think I could compare to anything. With another entry, they maybe could have worked out the kinks, stripped away these bad story segments, expanded upon the level design bringing in more larger rooms and less hallways, trim down the monster encounters, etc, and it probably would have been a damn fine game.

So, in the end I think it was a solid experience and am glad I finally played it for myself and gave it a shot. People might hate me for this one, but for the other big three Nintendo series... I'd maybe put Other M above Wind Waker and Super Mario Sunshine, two of the lower points in said series to me personally. I'm thinking a solid 7/10 for Other M, but I don't really see it being something I revisit.

Also, Other M is currently looking to be about $8.00 on Amazon. When do you see a first party Nintendo game at that price? It definitely wouldn't be my first choice recommendation for someone getting into Metroid, but for fans of the series and that price, it's worth a shot. Could go either way for you.

1. Star Wars Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader (GCN)
2. Max Payne (XBOX)
3. Eternal Poison (PS2)
4. Dragon Warrior III (NES)
5. Arkanoid: Doh It Again(SNES)
6. Super Mario Brothers 2 (NES)
7. Phantasy Star Online (DC)
8. Power Stone (DC)
9. Bare Knuckle 3 (GEN)
10. Thousand Arms (PS1)
11. Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (GCN)
12. Mega Man 5 (NES)
13. Ninja Gaiden (NES)
14. Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic (XBOX)
15. Mega Man 6 (NES)
16. Metal Saga (PS2)
17. Mafia (XBOX)

I beat Mafia for the XBOX this afternoon!

Mafia is a GTA style game set in 1930's New York. It's a much more realistic version of the sandbox game as cops will pull you over for minor violations like speeding and running a traffic light. They are also much more aggressive and take a while to shake off. Stealing cars isn't as easy as it takes a few seconds to break into them. I love the setting of the game. I am a historical nerd, so to see cars, music and fashion from the time was a real treat. Driving the old cars was a joy as well. The story had many twists and turns and I liked how it ended up.

Unfortunately, most of the game is gun play and that is the game weakest suit. It was a PC port, so the aiming is very sluggish. Also, I would get shot several times without even knowing where it was coming from. The autosaving was problematic on several levels with so many enemies and little health.

Overall, it is a much shorter game than GTA. It's a different take on the genre and I like that about it. The setting and historical factor was really the best part. It's a fun, simple game with not much to it. If you like this sort of game, give it a try and you will be pleasantly surprised.