Is it time? For a Metal Gear Solid 4 Review?

I think it is. So heres another game thats been out for a while but since theres been a hubbub (sweet word) about all the new Metal Gear junk thats gonna be coming down the pipe in the next year or two, I figure now is as good a time as any put up a review of yet another of the best games of all time (suppose I could probably throw up a top 10 of my favorite games ever on here someday, couldn't I?), Metal Gear Solid 4. This is yet another PS3 exclusive so perhaps its now pretty obvious where my loyalties lie, but I'm ok with it, I'm no huge fanboy or anything, I'll respect an awesome game on the 360 too if its deserved.

So to start with, as I usually do with the beginning of these things, I'll talk about how gosh darned pretty this game is. It also has style. Lots of it. So you have the old, aging hero, which is already something that sets this game apart from others - you don't have some young (usually douchebag, see Bionic Commando) dude thats going around wreckin' crap, but instead, you have a badass who has lived a pretty full life, and since he's nearly an old man, its probably pretty likely that we'll be witnessing his last days. This is common knowledge to anyone whose seen any sort of trailer to the game, but hey, there could be some noobs that stumble on this blog o' mine, and I gotta keep em in the know. So, we have Solid Snake, someone nearly as iconic as Zelda as Mario, perhaps living his last days on our crazy little planet. It's a neat premise, and if the introduction to what hes been doing with his life doesn't impress you, well then you sir have no emotions, or at least no sense of adventure. So the game starts with a sweet monologue from Solid himself, voiced by possibly the best voice actor to ever BE in a video game (and Sam Jackson was in a game too, so even over HIM!) about war and how it never changes...no wait, thats another game (it's called Fallout). But anyways, you have Snake as a mercenary essentially placed into a completely insane warzone, and after you watch the first 20 minutes or so (get used to setting your controller down, this game does NOT mess around with the cut scenes), you'll be pretty amazed that when the game gives you control, you'll be looking at the same incredible graphics you were just watching the past 20 minutes. Everything is seamless and flows together in this game, and thats a pretty incredible feat right there, and easy to see why that crazy ol' genius Hideo Kojima (hes the one who dreams up these nutty little games) packed this blu ray to the gills and almost had to go two disc style on it.

So thems the graphics, and without going into another paragraph about them, I'll just say, theys good. You'll like em. This is probably the first game ever that pretty much makes you feel like you are playing a movie, and thats no small feat. It will also make you nervous in some of the more warlike areas, particularly one completely insane part in the second chapter. Yes the Call of Duty games (the really amazing ones, so, every other one then) can really immerse you in the war experience and make you never, EVER want to sign up the army unless you are a meathead jock that thinks it'd be sweet to say "BOOM, HEADSHOT!" in rl (that means real life, to you noobs), but Metal Gear Solid goes one step further and gives you the character driven experience. It also has a whole MESS of guns, a whole BUNCH of ways to take out your foes, which is another awesome aspect of the game, and was a great aspect of the last MGS too (which I sadly never beat. I know I know, crazy! inexcusable even!). You can handle any situation however you want - you can try and sneak around and just choke out the people who are in your way. Theres even an award for doing something like that. You can just use your tranq gun and knock everyone out and tip toe around them. Or you can go the more direct (and my personal favorite) route - you can go in freakin' guns a blazing. This game gives you a pretty much ridiculous amount of weapons that you can buy from your friendly neighborhood gun dealer, who may or may not be on your side, but probably isn't. If you want to spend all of your credits on a rocket launcher and completely obliterate everything in your path, go ahead. If you want to never waste money on one of those pansy little "silencers" (its too bad theres no option for a loudener) and come loaded for bear with AK-47 bullets and all kinds of other fun semi-automatic weapons, sweet man. Want to just snipe everyones heads off? You can do that too. The weapon possibilities are endless, and I think this was one aspect that some reviewers overlooked - we want flexibility in our games these days, and this game has it in spades.
Yet another nice thing that this game does is it completely redeems this idiot here. This guy was, there really are no other words to describe it, but he was, a pussy. He was the main character of MGS2, and he frankly sucked ass. He actually called his girlfriend and whined about the first time he had to kill a man. And I mean whiiiined. Like cried like a little bitch with a skinned knee and crap. It was pathetic. You really wanted to jump in the game, slap his punk ass across the face and scream YOU ARE IN A VIDEO GAME MORON, YOU HAVE TO WASTE STUFF TO COMPLETE YOUR MISSION. But alas, you can't, and he pretty much remains a pussy throughout. In MGS4, hes manned up. And hes manned up by pretty much the best way that anyone in the world CAN man up - and thats by becoming a ninja. He doesn't really come out and say "hey everyone, look, I'm a ninja now!" but when you see his introduction sequence, I guarantee you will be impressed. The fact that one five minute cut scene of ass stomping pretty much redeems him an entire game is pretty impressive in its own right. Ok, so I think I've said enough about the characters and story, because I shouldn't say too much anyways, it needs to be played and experienced.

And story isn't all that makes a game, right? Well, the bad news is that if you are someone who just plays a game for its gameplay and skips past cut scenes and stories, this is not the game for you. At all. This is where people may split on whether this is one of the best games of all time or not - if you are a person, such as myself, that loves movies as much or more than video games, this game will freakin' blow yo' MIND son. The convoluted, sometimes confusing but always entertaining tale of the 15-20 hours you will first spend with this game is incredible, and BETTER than a lot of the turds hollywood craps out and expects us to pay money for (a few from this summer come to mind...Channing Tatum as Duke in GI Joe?! SERIOUSLY? THE GUYS NAME IS CHANNING! ...but I digress), so if you love you some movies and enjoy games too, this is the game for you. However, if you are all about the gameplay and could give a hoot less about the story to a game - and I can't say I could blame you really, ALOT of video games have completely pointless and tacked on stories, or ones you simply just don't care about - like Bionic Commando, for instance. But if you come here for just gameply, you'll be disappointed. Of those 15-20 hours, maybe a little less for the hardcore, maybe a little more for the light gamer, you'll actually BE playing around half, MAYBE 2/3 of that. The rest is cut scenes. If you don't enjoy the idea of setting your controller down to watch a cutscene, you may not like this game.

But that doesn't mean that everyone shouldn't give it a try. For one, its definitely one of the best looking games out there, and its not gonna be surpassed for a long time - probably when FFXIII comes out and kicks us all in the face with awesome MGS4 will take a back seat, and some other pretty ones like Uncharted and Bionic Commando give it competition, but really, this is high end stuff. This is another game to shove down Roger Ebert's big ol' piehole too - the story to this game rivals many great movies, and I guarantee that while you won't particularly be moved by any of it like you will in Valkyria Chronicles, you'll be damn well impressed. Especially the end of Chapter 4, which in my humble opinion, game could've ended there and no one would have complained. Really, anyone who loves watching junk blow up owes it to themselves to see what happens at the end there - if your jaw doesn't drop at least once when you see the COMPLETELY INSANE ending to that chapter, well then I'm not sure if you even have a pulse. But ok, enough ranting about this classic-but-may-not-be-classic-for-every-kind-of-gamer game, and on to some scores!

Graphics - 10/10. Hasn't this already been established? They will freakin' rock your face off. You'll be in awe in some of the junk that happens on your (hopefully obscenely large like mine) TV screen. They don't make them much better than this.

Sound - 10/10. This is why surround sound exists. Particularly in some of the war zone areas (yes, theres more than one - why haven't you ran out and bought this game yet?), the bullets and explosions will make you nervous. Thats a good thing, books, movies make you nervous. Games usually don't. This one will, if you have the sound cranked. It will also piss off your neighbors if you live in an apartment. But if they come to bitch, toss em a beer (or a soda for our younger readers!) and tell them "dude...check THIS out" and show them a sweet cutscene. Maybe they'll go buy a PS3 the next day.

Challenge - Well, it depends. This game, like many nowadays, can be as easy or as ridiculous as you want it to be. When you first start out and if you've never played a Metal Gear game, you will die. A lot. You may even want to throw your controller. But, don't! For one thing, they are expensive. For two, it gets easier. This game definately believes in the "trail by fire" idea of life, because Chapters 1 and 2 are seriously probably the most difficult in the game. But if its too tough, crank down the difficulty. And after you beat it and want to do the whole thing over again (you probably will), crank it up to big boss mode and work on the crazy things they want you to do in THAT mode. You may cry. And you will love it. So how about we'll just go with a 9/10 for Challenge, but you could dumb it down and make it about a 5/10 if you so desired. This game is cool like that (anyone remember that rap song, Cool Like Dat from the 90s? That was a jam).

Fun - 10/10. You will be entertained. Those who play for gameplay, maybe not so much. Bump it down to about a 7/10 for those who just come for gameplay and don't care about story. But seriously, if your jaw doesn't drop once or twice or you don't yell out "oh MAN!" at some of the insane stuff that happens in this game, you probably shouldn't be playing video games anyways, because you obviously have bad taste. This game will rock your face off. Its one of the best games ever. It didn't get a huge review for no reason.

Overall - 10/10. I love this game, which should be obvious. Before Valkyria Chronicles changed my entire perspective on what a video game can be, this was my favorite game ever, even topping Zelda Twilight Princess and Final Fantasy VI. A note about the ending though - crazy ol' Kojima (and he is crazy, nobody can argue with me about that!) obviously didn't want to let go, since this was SUPPOSED to be the last Metal Gear game. We all know now that it wasn't, but still, the ending runs a little long. You may yell and say "Isn't it over YET?! GOD!" at the end, but then you'll remember what happened at the end of Chapter 4, and then you'll smile and won't care so much. But yeah, play this game. Its incredible.

Oh, and a sidenote: Guitar Hero 5 just came out, and me likey my music games. I just don't have anyone to play them with, not that that will stop me from buying Beatles Rock Band promptly at midnight next week. I haven't reviewed one yet, but I will, but for some fun info about it, check out my equally hilarious friend's blog, at http://www.miserableretailslave.com/?cat=10

A game I'll review cuz I felt like it: Folklore

So, Folklore is a bit of an old game, at least as far as the next gen stuff is concerned. It came out around two years ago in the Fall of '07, and this one was unlike Bionic Commando, and actually got some much-deserved attention. It's probably gotten a lot more in the past year or so though, because you can pick this one up for about 20 or 30 bucks at most places, sometimes even cheaper than that if you are a real cheapass, such as myself. I'll admit that I checked out the demo way back then in the summertime, but I was busy with other games like Devil May Cry 4 and other fancy stuff like that, so it even went overlooked by ME back then. Crazy I know, that such an awesome video game genius such as myself would overlook this gem, this diamond in the rough if you will (Sorry, I watched Aladdin this weekend). That picture there is just something I found on the innernets that someone probably drew, and while it isn't in-game graphics, it gives a pretty good representation of some of the characters in the game.

So that dude running there, his name is Keats, and probably no relation to the great author (can you tell that I'm a literary nerd too?) John Keats who died at the age of 27, yet wrote more than pretty much all of us could write in two lifetimes, back in the 1800s. But Keats shares a few things in common with that writer - for one, hes a bit dark and twisty. He's a reporter that works for an occult magazine, and, probably like most of the writers for magazines like that, he doesn't believe in any of that nonsense. Or, hoo-hah, if you will. But he gets this weird call from some lady saying she needs help, in this eerie little village with a goofy name thats probably meant to make it sound less eerie, called Doolin. And the OTHER main character you will be playing has the very common and less cool name, Ellen, and I say its too common of a name because shes very pretty.

Maybe I just think shes pretty because I have a thing for blondes in plaid skirts (and lets be honest, who doesn't?) but anyways, she takes an even creepier ship to get out to this strange town, because she lost her mom when she was a kid and doesn't quite remember how that happens (you know, amnesia, that old video game fallback, but don't worry! This game is cool!), but she gets this weird letter from her "mom" saying she should come here. So, in true horror movie fashion, the boatman doesn't want to take her all the way into this odd village because its storming and well...the village is odd, I might have mentioned that. So we are treated to a cool cut scene at the beginning that has Ellen diving into the water to swim to the village, showing us that shes a pretty determined chic that isn't going to mess around. So heres the setup to the story, and Ellen and Keats meet up soon after they arrive, and find this odd lady that contacted Keats...right before she jumps off a cliff. BAM, didn't see that coming! This sets up an odd (but not unfortunate, thats for another book series!) series of events where most of the strangest things happen at night, where Ellen finds out she is a sort of "spirit walker" - I've dumbed that whole term down a bit for the sake of a review - and she can control these "Folks" to fight for her in the land of the dead, which is naturally where she'll want to meet her mother, since you know, shes dead and all. Probably. Maybe. In a cool twist, Keats gets hired by basically the other side of the land of the dead, and the two end up doing different things and basically unknowingly working against each other in the land of the dead...until things come to a head for a pretty kickass ending, of course.

Sounds pretty sweet, right? Sounds different than most of your run-of-the-mill video games, doesn't it? Well the good news is, it also LOOKS really sweet. Thats a picture of an in-game fight you'll have with one of the cooler (bigger) folks. You can even get that bad devil to work for you after you defeat him once too. So within this story, we have some pretty cool video conventions - we have a sort of Pokemon mentality with the folks in each area, where you will want to fight and "absorb" them all, so you can see what kinds of cool powers they'll give you. They also have mini challenges with each new Folk, where you can power them up in a certain way - be it the number of times you can use them in succession, how much damage they can take, their range, etc. So this will keep you playing, but admitedly the main reason I kept coming back was the story. It's also a cool idea that you have two main characters, and this game really means that - you don't just pick the blonde hottie Ellen and play through her till the end, then you could play with Keats after you beat it - to get to the end of the game, you have to play both of their stories. Which is cool, but its also a curse.

Because herein lies my (and others) biggest fault with the game - it gets repetitive. When you first enter into the insanely cool goblin war area (that'd be chapter 2) with your respective favorite character, you'll be in awe. You'll be thinking "wow, this is only world 2, and I got like 5 more to go?" (theres 7 chapters you see). However, that novelty has worn off when you come back to do it with the second character. Yes, it'll be somewhat different folks, and its a different story or faction you are working for, but still, its mostly the same damn place. However, I talked about the story for so long at the beginning for a reason - unlike Bionic Commando that was written by fifth graders that just learned the F word, unlike Ikaruga which doesn't even need a story, with this game, you'll keep playing to see what happens next.

Heres a picture of that cool goblin world in case you were curious. But anyways, the graphics are pretty, and the gameplay is novel, but sort of loses it lustre after a couple of chapters. If you are a collectaholic (I just made up a word there, because I can do that here, because I am awesome) you'll want to backtrack through the worlds and finish some of the sidequests you can do in between chapters to get all the Folks and unlock their powers. But for those that aren't of that different breed, you'll just want to keep playing through the story. I'll move on to the scores here in a minute, but basically, as with many other games I've talked about already, this game is worth a look because its completely different. It's often called a "dark fantasy", and while that is CERTAINLY a sweet genre of books, you don't see it with many video games. It's worth the (incredibly cheap) price of admission just for that aspect. Now onto the scores!

Graphics - 8/10. I may not have talked about it much up there, but this is a gorgeous game. It sometimes may look like a high res PS2 game, which is maybe, how you say, not so good, but the environments are amazing and the characters are very imaginative, particularly some of the folks. And you tell me if you don't have an amused smile on your face when you first see some of the weirdos that inhabit the pub at night. The presentation is just great overall, how the story is told to you in a sort of comic book style, with each character having a certain blurb appear above them when they talk, is original too. It also has a blonde hottie in it, which really lets be honest here, should be a prerequisite for most any video game.

Sound - 8/10. Pretty amazing stuff here. Some orchestral junk for your dramatic moments, some atmospheric stuff for whatever situation you are in, and surprisingly, decent voice acting when its called for, though those parts are few and far between. You probably won't be buying the soundtrack, but it certainly works for the game and keeps you in the moment. Thats the reason I rate sound in here, in case any of you thought that was an odd thing to rate - it often helps to set the mood and increase your enjoyment of the situation. ...can you tell I'm a music freak, too?

Challenge - 7/10. I'll be honest with you: this game pissed me off a couple of times. For one thing, the motion controls are pretty stupid, but I think that about all PS3 motion controls, so maybe I'm biased. You'll get annoyed when it has you shaking the controller in a bunch of different ways just to capture one big folk or something. What is this, the *!%$in' wii? NO, because the wii is terrible. Those controls don't belong here, and sometimes its frustrating because enemies keep reappearing. This is one of the downfalls of the game here, but honestly its still well-worth a play through for the amazing story.

Fun - 7/10. This game gets repetitive, something I've mentioned up there. It's also annoyingly and pointlessly difficult in some places. So you may be asking, since this is my lowest reviewed game so far (besides Superman, which barely even counts as a game), why put it up here? Easy answer: because all of its downfalls won't matter as you progress through the increasingly dark story. I promise you that if you have any nerd bone in your body, you will be intrigued by whats going on here. Besides, who hasn't at least wondered about whether or not there is a world of the dead and if spirits are among us? If any of that stuff fascinates you at all, check this game out, even with its problems.

Overall - 7/10. It's not the best game in the world, like I said. It won't change your life in any profound way. But you will be entertained by a well-penned yarn (always wanted to use that term! awesome.) and you will definitely love some of the atmospheres and creatures you come across. It's a very original game, one of a kind, and thats why it needs to be played, and why I wanted to talk about it today.

The most under rated game of the year so far? Bionic Commando!

Not only is this a pretty cool picture of something you can do in the game, it also represents pretty well the nosedive that reviews of this game took as soon as it came out. I think that this game was treated pretty unfairly when games that keep doing the same thing over and over again, like oh, say, Halo and Gears of Wars (although I'll admit, 2 wasn't half bad, mostly that part where you are in a tank, because, well, tanks are awesome), get huge scores on video game websites. Is this because they were paid off? We may never know! But I have some theories. It might be obvious, perhaps even glaringly obvious, that when you come to this blog, you may realize that I am not a big fan of Microsoft. I've had four broken 360s and after the power cord (that godforsaken $100 monstrosity brick known as the power cord) went to hell on my FIFTH one, I was a tad peeved with the 360. It was then I sort of permanently switched over to PS3 games, and while my reviews for next gen stuff can be universal, I'm almost always talking about the PS3 version unless its a 360 exclusive (and since those exclusives mostly consist of Halo and Gears of War, don't expect any of those reviews any time soon). But ok, enough of one of the staples on this little blog here, the Clev rant, and on to this great and overlooked game.

The first thing that I probably don't need to tell you after you've seen these two pictures is, this is an awesome looking game. Even gives the recent Resident Evil 5 a run for its money in terms of graphical accomplishments, and thems big words indeed. Some of the cut scenes between characters don't really look the best, and of course those crazy people in the video game world still can't seem to get down the lip synching so the words will come in odd places, but if you don't worry about that stuff much, the places you have to climb and the stuff you have to shoot is very, very pretty. I might even make the completely insane claim that this is the prettiest next-gen game I have played so far. I know, I know, and I'm not even drunk! But seriously, seeing this game in motion really impressed me. I read a couple advance reviews of this game and frankly didn't expect a whole lot, and I figured it would look like all the other action games out there - like Wolverine, Force Unleashed, and the upcoming Batman game. Not that those games are ugly, they aren't - they just all seem to have a similar pattern to their graphics and the way stuff moves. Bionic Commando doesn't have much in common with any of those games, even though some people might want you to think that. For one, it isn't an open-ended game, one of them "sandbox" dealies that are all the rage these days. It may trick you into thinking its open world because some of the places you have to explore are MASSIVE, but it keeps you in check by this little gimmick called "radiation", which is basically a sort of goofy looking fog that is not so good for you fall into. It may bother people that you can't really go ANYWHERE you want, but the truth is, its pretty damn close to letting you do whatever you want. And how you fly all over to these buildings and cranes and poles n such is something that some people will love, and some people will hate, which is perhaps the reason for the mixed (read: mostly bad) reviews of this great and different game.


I'm talking about the Bionic Arm, and since pictures of the actual PS3 game are in short supply on the innernets, heres a picture of what it is from the recent remake of the old Bionic Commando on nintendo, which is of course the reason we have the new one today. That one will only set you back like $10 anymore so theres really no excuse for you if you haven't played that. The nintendo one was a classic, even if it didn't have a *!)>#@ jump button (that was a swear word, if you hadn't noticed), and surprise! This remake didn't either, but you get around it by swinging all over the place on your grappling hook. Now, everyone should pretty much respect the idea that a grappling hook is awesome. It's just a given. And WHY is it a given exactly? Simple. Because ninjas use them. And ninjas are awesome. But anyways, not one to mess with tradition, in the next gen Bionic Commando, you have your trusty grappling hook again. The problem here is the same with the other Bionic Commandos: it has a pretty stiff learning curve. You are going to want to spend a few extra minutes in the practice areas (whereas most real mean skip right past these and CERTAINLY don't read the instruction book, you may want to do that this time), because getting the hang (PUN!) of how to use your hook takes a bit of work. Mostly because with the other ones you were confined to sweet, glorious 2D, this one has you in 3D. So yes, it has a bit of a learning curve, but so what? Once you are about an hour in you'll be swinging around like a little dumb looking monkey with dreds that swears too much, because well...thats pretty much what your main character is.


So heres another thing people complain about: the story. Truth be told? It sucks. Its terrible. You won't give a rats ass about all of these unlikeable characters, you might think its cool (I don't) that Nathan "RAD" Spencer (I'm not kidding, I didn't make that up, Capcom did) is voiced by Mike Patton of Faith No More fame and occasionally you may find a TV or stereo playing a Faith No More song, which is kinda neat I suppose, but you won't care at all what he has to say. He's the standard authority hating douchebag that we've seen in thousands of other games over the past couple of years. He's stupid. You can skip right on past most of the cut scenes really...EXCEPT the ending. I won't give too much away of course, but needless to say, ol' RAD (I just shuddered as I typed that) redeems himself pretty nicely and it gives a decent amount of closure to the story you probably didn't care about.


So, if the story sucks, why play it then? Simple: because its fun as hell. Everything feels natural in it, nothing is stilted, the hook might be at first, but once you get the hang (Pun again! OH!) of it you'll be swinging around like a madman and trying for all those crazy rewards for the challenges. Thats more of an incentive to play it through it than the suck-o story - the challenge system is great, and they are directly tied to the trophies/achievements you can get. It has some cool weapons in there too, but the ammo is so limited you'll be sticking to your normal pistol and your hook. But guess what? You won't care. You tell me if you didn't have a big ol smile on your face the first time you picked up a car with your hook and chucked it at some jerk shooting at you. Tell me you didn't laugh maniacally when you picked up one of those said jerks and hurled him into oblivion. This game has a great combat engine, and much like Ikaruga, the fun you will have with the actual gameplay is the reason to stick around, not the lameass story that was probably written by two 12 year olds that just learned all their swear words.


So then, I think I've said enough about this sleeper hit, except to say BUY IT, its getting knocked down in price already because not enough of you did in the first place, but I gladly spent $60 on it the day it came out and I don't regret it, I even went through it on hard after I beat it once, and I don't play too many games twice all the way through. Oh, and as a sidenote, theres multiplayer in here too, but its just a novelty. It's kinda neat seeing everyone swinging around and trying to shoot each other in the air, but you'll get bored of it quick, its only a couple of maps anyways. But hey, nice of them to tack something on to the 15-20 hour game either way. And now my scores!

Graphics - 10/10. Didn't I start with talking about how gosh darn pretty this game is? It's beautiful. Some of the (seemingly) wide open city scapes are easily some of the best graphics I've seen on any video game. Characters don't look half bad either, even if they are all a bunch of neanderthals/idiots.


Sound - 9/10. It has remixes of the classic Bionic Commando jams at tense moments and sometimes they just chime in the music just to pat themselves on the back for a job well done. It's awesome and definitely sets the mood. You have your basic gun shots and people yelling and such and those work just fine too. The "hidden" Faith No More tracks you might stumble on are a neat bonus too, if you are into that sort of thing.


Challenge - 7/10. Game isn't gonna kick your ass too much. There are a few frustrations you'll stumble on - particularly the fact that you will pretty much immediately drown in water (that there grapplin' hook is heavy, and also made of metal, you see) if you fall in there (and you will), and some needlessly long swinging work with the bionic arm where you don't have a safety net. But overall, nothing that will have you pulling out your hair, a pretty adequate challenge throughout. Hard mode however, naturally doesn't screw around. Bump it up to 9/10 if you are one of those weirdos that start playing on hard mode (I know someone that does that. Guess what? Hes a weirdo).


Fun - 9/10. Even with a story penned by 12 year olds or possibly even their younger siblings, this game rules. Its a grand old time, has a pretty good length in this day and age of 6-10 hour games, has a few cool bosses, and an ending that nearly redeems the atrocious story and idiotic characters. Nearly. It's worth getting to the end to see all the nice environments and battles that you end up in, and some of the stuff is pretty epic. Its really a great game, trust me.


Overall - 9/10. Sure King of Fighters might be the sleeper hit of the summer, but this game has definitely been the most overlooked. It's a lot more interesting than Gears of War or Halo, and while there are alot of these "action/adventure" games that tend to use the same mold, this one breaks it with the use of the hook and other pretty cool combat mechanics. Seriously its one of the better games out there on the next gen systems, go pick it up today, its probably pretty cheap now anyways since none of you jerks gave it a shot in the first place.

Valkyrie Profile - Covenant of the Plume

There are a couple of strange things about this one right off the bat. First off...what madness is this? Actual COOL box art? That doesn't happen in America! We get lameass "art" that was probably drawn by one of the producers children for a kindergarten assignment most of the time. Most of the people that work in the video game business apparently have never heard the term "don't judge a book by its a cover". Either that, or they just don't believe it. Guess what? People DO judge books - and in this case, games - by their cover. You show me a dude with a long flowing mane and a sword about to hack up an angel, well then I am SOLD buddy. So, we'll put a win in Valkyrie Profile's favor right off the bat for having a cool box. Second of all, surprise! I'm not all about consoles here, I will recognize the occasional great handheld game. And the DS is pretty much the little handheld that could when we are talking about RPGs. Sure you get your occassional great console RPG (like Valkyria Chronicles...play that yet? You should have. And go read my review if you haven't yet! Also...this game is no relation to that one), but the DS has pretty much had them in spades for a while now. The remake of FFIV is on there, Dragon Quest V (which I wasn't a big fan of, sometimes things can be a little TOO old school), the new Final Fantasy Tactics, Fire Emblem...they are all on the DS. Really if you are an RPG fanatic and can't afford much to support your video game habit, you could do much worse than pick yourself up a DS and not even have to worry about consoles.

But anyways, so Valkyrie Profile. Why bring this one up? Well, in the first place, its my favorite DS game. Ever. I've had a DS since the huge monstrosity/blob known as the original DS (you know the one, the ugly gray one that sort of looked like a brick and wouldn't fit in your pocket even if you were wearing the worlds largest cargo shorts), and Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow (expect a review of that someday soon) held the top spot for a very long time, its even my favorite Castlevania game...until Valkyrie Profile came out and reigned down sweet and awesome vengeance upon it, and left it in the dust. This is an awesome, awesome game. It even has a cool ass name too, I mean Covenant of the Plume? Hell yeah, I'll become a part of just about anything that wants to call itself a Covenant. What a sweet word. Not sure what a plume might have to do with any sort of kickass Covenant...but I'm getting to that.

Ok, so since we are talking about a DS game, obviously this game isn't going to win any awards for graphics. No surprise there, the DS is pretty much like an overpowered super nintendo. But thats cool, sweet RPGs with awesome stories don't need graphics to impress you. So the dude at the top is the incredibly unforunately named Wylfred, not to be confused with Wilfred Brimley, the dude who sold Quaker Oats on all those commercials back in the day. Wylfred, despite having long purple hair and being named Wylfred, is actually a pretty cool dude. For one, hes pretty much the epitome of an anti-hero. His whole reason for going on this quest of his, is to get revenge on the Valkyrie. See, the Valkyrie is this (really good looking) goddess that works for Odin up in Asgard (which is sort of like the Viking heaven), and her job is to bring up all these awesome soldier or warrior types that kicked a whole MESS of ass in life, up to Asgard to basically fight the war in heaven. Uh...hell YES, now thats what I call a set up to an awesome story. It should be known - and it WILL be known already anyways to any nerds reading this - that Covenant is the third Valkyrie Profile game, and this is sort of the game that would take place between the first one (called VP: Lenneth on PSP, just VP on playstation one) and the second one (released on Playstation 2, and REALLY REALLY DIFFICULT btw), because somewhere between the first one and the beginning of this one, Valkyrie comes down from Asgard to pick up the soul of Wylfred's father, who was a sweet mercenary dude that wasted a whole mess of people during his life. Wylfred, who lives with his sick mother and younger sister, obviously doesn't like this much. This left just him to provide for his family at a young age, and he is not a fan of this. He swears vengeance on the Valkyrie, and whenever she takes some of these warriors to Asgard, she leaves behind a feather to let people still on earth know where they went. So he keeps that feather and sets out on his own, but always aware that it his mission to destroy the Valkyrie.

Ok, so we have a pretty sweet setup to a game, and especially if you consider that if the movies have taught us anything at all, its that revenge is awesome. So we have this revenge plot and its a pretty damn cool setup for a game, and I won't get much more into the story, but suffice it to say, that "Plume" and the whole "Covenant" business comes early on in the game (I won't reveal exactly how it goes down, but suffice it to say, it isn't something you'd expect from one of the opening battles of a game), Wylfred makes a deal with Hel, the Queen of the Underworld - yeah, real original guys, lets take out one L, ok, we get it. How about Satana, or maybe Beelzebub...girl, or something. Obviously we know who ol' Wylfred Brimley is making a deal with, and with this "Plume" he can sacrifice some of his comrades to her, and the more he does this, apparently the more powerful he will become, so that he can eventually kill the Valkyrie. Awesome right?

So thats enough story, and we've covered that the graphics aren't anything to write home about since we are on the DS, so hows about the gameplay? Heres where things get interesting - we have the usual strategy type situation, with players moving on a grid and attacking enemies, first we move, then they move, and whoever is attacked can counter attack. Sounds simple enough, right? Well, if it was simple, game would get boring quick. VP throws a couple of curveballs at you with its formula - for one, you can only bring four people out at a time. 3 extra plus Wyl usually. Not much, right? So how are you supposed to win when you are heavily outnumbered like that? Well, thats where the next twist comes in - you can surround enemies with each of your characters and these create chain attacks that basically eff up your enemies crap. When you create these chains and fill up that hit meter to 100% - thats that meter on the left there that says "hits" - the character of your choice gets to unleash a special attack of sorts. For your wizard types, it'll be a more kickass version of the spell they have equipped. For your sword dudes, some sort of cool omni-slash (oh! FF7 reference!) type attack, for your archers, an onslaught of arrows...you get the idea. It's pretty cool. You might get a bit tired of the animations after a while, but good news, game gives you the option to skip them.

And with these chains comes the challenge of the game. With each battle, you need to reap enough "Sin" for Hel to be satisfied, theres a minimum requirement, and if you double or *sigh* triple it, you get rewarded. And rewarded well. If you get the maximum sin - which is no easy feat when you first start out and don't really know what is expected of you - you usually get the best weapons in the game, awesome items, and good spells earlier than you can buy them. So in short, you'll probably want to do this. But the problem is, sometimes, it's pretty damn tough to do this. It's annoyingly tough sometimes, because you have to be pretty much perfect. See, you reap "Sin" by causing overkill on the enemy, since this game is all about revenging vengeance, it makes sense Hel would want you to completely obliterate your enemies. So you pretty much have to have your enemies surrounded to get 100% of the sin each enemy has to offer you. Like I said, you don't HAVE to do this. But it sure will help. The way VP gets around this is, it offers you multiple endings. I always love multiple endings as long as there isn't a ridiculous amount for you to get (*cough* Star Ocean! *cough* Chrono Trigger! *cough cough*), and VP offers three - basically, taking the high road about vengeance, taking the middle road, and the...less than middle road. So yeah, good, average, and evil endings. It also gets around these problems by giving you the option to use the plume to sacrifice a character. If you do this, the character becomes a basically super saiyan (Oh man, DBZ reference, I'm all over the nerd stuff this time!) version of themselves and destroys everything, reaping pretty much maximum sin every time. The problem is, that character is dead after that. Gone. Can't use no more. So you have to use this ability at your discretion of course, and a problem lies in just how many times you can use the plume to make a character the ultra mega version of themselves. I recommed gamefaqs to help you out, you can thank me later.

So, with these multiple endings, you get a new game plus everytime you beat the game, and retain all your weapons. Good! This makes things ALOT easier the second time, and enables you to get all three endings at around 30 hours. Good stuff, and a great length for a handheld game, if I do say so myself. And with that, I think we've covered it, except for the scores.

And one more picture of ol' Wyl raping some enemies face. But here we go -

Graphics - 7/10. I don't think its really possible for a DS game to get much higher than this. They serve their purpose. Your characters and enemies are animated well, and some of the attacks look cool, but you wont, as Mr. Burns would say, "pollute your britches with joy", at anything this game shows you.

Sound - 9/10. Awesome. Epic. Everything you'd expect out of an RPG. Some of the eerie stuff comes in later when you have to make questionable choices, and the sound effects are spot on. Definitely more interesting than the graphics. Play with headphones.

Challenge - Lets split this up again. If you are going for the bare minimum and just want to make it through to see the endings (EDITORS/CLEVS NOTE - DO NOT MAKE THE SAME MISTAKE I DID AND GO FOR THE BEST ENDING FIRST! YOU WILL TOSS YOUR DS REPEATEDLY AT THE LAST FIGHT! If you DO decide to go down the ill-fated path I did, do yourself a favor and wrap some pillows or cushions around your DS so that it doesn't break when you toss it. You've been warned.), about a 6/10. It's not going to piss you off too awful much. But if you want all the best stuff, bump this up to a 9/10. Its tough to get the best stuff, but its also worth it, because you will pwn faces later on for doing so.

Fun - 10/10. This is a brilliant game. The story isn't like anything else. It's truly epic, its the stuff of a really great fantasy novel, worthy of David Eddings (name drop! Perhaps my status as a literary nerd as well as a video game nerd may soon be revealed on here) or something. It has great dialogue too. No one in the game is really a great person, they are all flawed, and that in itself is interesting. It's also damn fun to surround an enemy and completely ruin their stuff. You will let out more than a few maniacal laughs as you make your way through this one, I certainly did.

Overall - 9/10. It isn't perfect, which is to say, its no Valkyria Chronicles. But to be able to dethrone a magnificent Castelvania game to become my favorite DS game ever is no small task. This game is awesome, and it isn't like most strategy RPGs. It will keep you entertained for hours, and is well worth the price of admission. If you are new to the handheld world, start with this one when you first get your snazzy new DSi. After you are done taking goofy pictures of yourself or of various body parts, pop this one in and let the good times roll.