Good Neighbor MM

[Scourge the Hedgehog]

#38
Patapon 2



A very good game and a very good franchise, if I'm honest. Patapon 2 was a vast improvement over its predecessor, and overall a game that has stood the test of time and remains good to this day. It has basically survived the curse of sequels in a trilogy (where the second ones are usually the worst of the three) and it actually turned out to be better than the 1st and the 3rd. The 3rd was the weakest in my opinion, because it lost its identity there. The 3rd game decided to put you in charge of four superhero Patapon and it overall lost its "Tribe" flair as opposed to the 2nd game, where you feel a great sense of camaraderie amongst your little Patapon warriors as they take down seemingly impossible odds.

That was one of the things that makes Patapon 2 for me; is the fact that your lead this tribe of various "Pons" through all sorts of conflict and watch them grow together. The customization and grinding is very enjoyable, and decking out your crew to your liking is fun. It does suck that some evolutions (the level up system where you can "evolve" your men into different races with different abilities) suck more than others, but that is to be expected (I'm pretty sure the Monkey Pon was like the worst in the game). The game is balanced enough to where you can bring almost any combination and do well, and some evolutions work better with different classes. For instance, if you use Yumipons (the bowmen), you might be more inclined to getting evolutions that excel in speed (like the cat race) so they can shoot faster and catch up, while for the Tatepons (the warriors), you might want to focus on evolutions that excel in damage, critical chance, and burn resistance (the red cyclops race). It's so much fun mixing and matching the different races of Pons, and it is actually fun to grind for the items you need to help them evolve. It's probably one of the greatest ways to kill time of all time. The songs are very good and catchy and you better get used to them because you'll be playing them throughout the entire game.

The meat of the gameplay revolves around these songs. You have to press certain buttons to the beat and you have to learn the "rhythm" ; for instance, one song has vastly different timing than another, and you have to remember certain button combinations to successfully manage the mission. Circle, Circle, Circle, Circle makes your units move, while Circle, Circle, Circle, Square makes them attack. Triangle, Triangle, Triangle, Square makes your units defend and vice versa. It gets really creative down the line and it keeps you on your toes. But the real hype comes when you hit Fever mode, because you know that you've been playing perfect. Whenever you hit "FEVER" mode, your Patapons yell their battle cry and you can visibly see the amount of "Oh sh.it" on your opponents faces. It's very satisfying and it makes for some good gameplay watching your men destroy and pillage everything. The boss battles are intense as all hell and you feel pumped when you hear that bagpipe in the background signaling your victory alongside the silhouette of your characters walking across a white background. I can't describe how good it is to play. Also, I forgot to mention that you have one HERO Patapon that wears these Kamina-like shades and he's a total G. He's your biggest damage dealer so you can't really let him die...haha

But then it has its downsides too. The game can be pretty unforgiving if you don't grind your men. Sometimes, you don't really know how tough a mission is going to be until you get to it and get wiped out. You keep all of your grinded items, but it is frustrating to get through the mission again back to the point where you lost. This also isn't a game meant to be played all day. This game is a game you can't play for a long period of time because you WILL get burnt out and tired of it. It's meant to be played in short bursts, to keep the songs fresh and to prevent excessive fatigue. When you start messing up the rhythm and losing FEVER status, nothing is more annoying. The mini-games are fun, but they suck at the same time. The minigames revolve around the songs and the button combinations as well, but it's very non-lenient even on the easiest setting. Sometimes, you have to close your eyes and do the minigame because what's happening on-screen can be super distracting. If you mess up one or two button inputs, the entire minigame gets shot and you have to try again...wasting the currency you used to initiate the minigame. This gets ridiculous because the minigames are one of the best ways to get some of the best grinding items. You also have to play this game when you're alone and when you know no one is going to talk to you. Headphones are an absolute necessity for success and if you are distracted for a second that's R.I.P for your crew, especially late-game. I don't even know if there is a pause button so once you're on a mission, you're committed unless there are no enemies around. There aren't any time limits unless it states there are on the mission briefing.

The story is decent...a continuation from the first game and it's nice. The dialogue is great and it's overall a great complement. However, the gameplay is where it's at.

They should have brought the Patapon games to the consoles and made it more of a full-scale war type thing (like what The Last Remnant failed to be), but I can appreciate it on the PSP and I can honestly say this is one of my favorite games of all time.

[Scourge the Hedgehog]

Excited for Tekken 7.

Same. I'm very much looking forward to the Arab fighter for some reason.

[ganonfloyd]

He'll be boss probably. Middle Eastern fighters are usually awesome.

[Scourge the Hedgehog]

#37
Final Fantasy VI



The Final Fantasy game that sticks out the most to me. I remember first getting this for GBA and I was so heavily hooked on it that I basically ignored most of the field trip I was on one day. I played the hell out of this game and I enjoyed every minute of it. The characters were all interesting and I enjoyed the grinding/battle system where you could get every character to learn spells according to the espers you had equipped. The game was great.

But then I hit the half-way point where Kefka obliterated most of the world....and that's where I fell off at first. I had barely used Celes throughout the game and now they were forcing me to use her. I got so frustrated that I ended up quitting for three whole years because I couldn't progress. I didn't know what to do. I suffered from FF-curse because I could never finish a FF game. I owned FF1, FF2, FF4, FF5, and FF6 and I couldn't finish any of them.

So I picked it up again after that third year and finished it pretty easily with my better knowledge of RPGs and such. It's a great game that I've played over and over..and the final playthrough where I named characters after my friends was probably one of the most enjoyable experiences I have had. The first half of the game contained so much awesome that it'll never grow old to me, but the second half wasn't bad either; just nowhere near as good as the first half. Cyan is my favorite character even though people think he sucks.

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#36
Call of Duty: Black Ops



Putting this on here solely because of the multiplayer. The multiplayer here is one of the best out of all of the CODs and I can say that I had so much fun with this one. It still has a following and people playing it even now and it's easy to see why. I don't know where the series is going, but I can say that Treyarch won with this one and it might not have even been intentional. COD4 easily has the best single-player, but BLOPS easily has the best multiplayer. Its campaign...well.....I didn't play more than 10 minutes of that.

The multiplayer looks pretty decent even now but it's so cartoony and funny looking with the characters and their animations. That is what makes it the best to me. BLOPS 2 and Ghosts failed HARD here and they made the games broken as all hell. BLOPS has awful hit detection at times and a ton of other problems (Ghost perk..Flak Jacket perk...no-scoping snipers..invisible players..cough) but it's definitely the most balanced. Most fun multiplayer here that I've sank vast amounts of time into.

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#35
Mario Golf



Awesome game. Vastly superior to that crappy Gamecube version. This is the ultimate golf game and it is intense as all hell. I've played this time and time again with friends and it never gets old. It looks dated but it doesn't matter; this golf game wins. Nintendo killed it with this one. My friends and I despise golf...but this game is the definite exception. Even the no-name characters like Sonny and Harry are beast.



Words of a true beast.

When you're up to putt on a birdie hole..the concentration makes your mouth dry and the silence in the room is enough to put someone into perpetual asphyxiation for no damn reason. Just listen...

http://youtu.be/skEwmaK6dD0?t=2m25s

Your friends wait quietly...they want you to fail. You line up your shot...you charge your meter and putt it straight into the hole taking your score and breaking the tie that had been bogging you down for five straight holes. There's nothing like it. As long you make a few rules and not pick the broken characters like Metal Mario, everything should be space dandy and the competition is unparalleled even for a freaking golf game. The tension is real with this one.

The music is great, the gameplay is great, the courses are great..the modes are great...this game has it all. A worthy champion of the N64 glory days.

[ganonfloyd]

yesssssSSSSSSSSSSSSS

I actually dig the World of Ruin a lot, although I recognize the problem people have with it. Some of the best moments in the entire series come from that and I love how little is explained to you (like finding Doomgaze.)

[Scourge the Hedgehog]

Yeah, it got better once I actually had Celes adequately leveled beforehand, but it was a struggle at first. My God.
And I never utilized Gau that much, like ever, but he turned out to be one of the best characters once I came back from that break imo. He destroyed.

I also remember going to this island and getting repeatedly anal-blasted by dinosaurs. They gave HUGE experience but kicked my ass without trouble 98% of the time.

[Scourge the Hedgehog]

#34
Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch



Found this game for like $8 on Amazon...and what a great investment that was. I had a lot of doubts when I first looked into this game but they were quelled almost instantly as I dove into the game. The game looks good, it's got superb music, and it's overall a great experience. The story here was good..albeit a bit cheesy with the dialogue that makes you cringe at times, but I honestly think it's one of the things that makes the game good and it would have detracted from the game if it was all....non-cheesy. The characters in this game are alright...I never grew too attached to any of them or anything but they fulfill their jobs rather well at being likable. You don't get the feeling like, "blah, I can't stand this character", or anything like that, and the stories surrounding each of them are interesting.

The main premise is that there are two worlds; one is the reality and the other is like a fantasy world in which you have a "soul-mate" or a parallel version of yourself. It was rather awesome finding out who paralleled each other in each world...like for instance, the awesome pirate captain in the fantasy world was actually a bulldog in the real world. The emotions people felt in the fantasy world were directly correlated to how they felt in the real world, and you'd have to go between worlds to solve their ails. This part was a bit eh, because it almost felt like a waste of time. You'd have to figure out what was wrong, cast a spell to go back to the real world, find the real person, cure them, then cast a spell to go back. It's almost as if they should have made the entire process a cutscene instead. These scenarios add absolutely nothing to the game...not to mention Oliver, the protagonist, runs slower that desired. But I digress..that's just nitpicking but whatever.

The real enjoyment here is the gameplay. You get these "familiars" to fight for you during battles and you fight other wild familiars. It's compared to Pokemon so much and I can't really defend the game in that regard. It's like arena action-RPG Pokemon. You can tame wild familiars and add them to your team, but you can only have three on the field at once. You get two other human party members at different points in the game, controlled by the A.I., and you each can only have one on the field. The monsters each have a stamina bar and once it is depleted you have to switch them out with your backups. The monsters learn different commands and attacks and some are blatantly better than others. I remember the Lumberwood and the Monolith monsters could not get hurt..they were basically impervious to all damage most of the time making them ideal for your teammates.

Overall, the battle system and monster collecting is extremely fun. However, your A.I. partners can be extremely derpy. They use items when they're not supposed to, they don't do attacks that are obviously super effective on enemies, they don't defend when a super attack is coming...they just mess up a lot. You can prepare them with AI options before battle..but a lot of the time they'll be dead in battle leaving you to fight alone which is most efficient a lot of the times. They don't screw up ALL the time, but it's enough to where it's noticeable...especially early on.

The bosses are my favorite though. There's a LOT of boss battles and they're all well done. They are intense, epic, and keep you on edge throughout. There are plenty of events that happen during battle to keep you focused, but it's nothing too difficult. The battle system could use some improvements and I'm looking forward to the sequel. It's a great game. I will say this though, the game dragged on longer than it should have. It would have been perfect if it ended after a certain battle........but I can appreciate it for what it is and I'm happy to say that I finished and very much enjoyed this wonderful game.

[ganonfloyd]

New Tekken character. Central/South American Savate user. Her name is Catalina evidently.

[Scourge the Hedgehog]

I saw that! Seems interesting but I don't really know what to feel. I'm sure it'll be better once I see some gameplay, but it's a step in the right direction as far as new characters go; like with Miguel, and NOT Bob, Alisa, Lars, and the clone characters. Can't wait for October.

[ganonfloyd]

Seems boss so far. I'm hoping she ends up awesome since there's not a ton of Tekken females I like all that much.

[Marie Rose]

Why's that?

[Scourge the Hedgehog]

Now that I think about it, I feel the same way. I like Zafina and Nina, Julia too when she's not off being Jaycee.

[ganonfloyd]

Just personal preference I guess? I don't know, I just don't like a lot of them outside of Nina and Xiaoyu. Its not like KoF where the ratio is even/higher on the female side for who I like.

[Marie Rose]

I thought you didn't like Xiaoyu

[ganonfloyd]

I've come to appreciate her in recent years.