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Back when I picked up Virtua Tennis 3 I also picked up Viva Piñata, so here’s a mini-review.
For those who don’t know, Viva Piñata is a game where you build up your garden to attract new piñata to come and visit, complete a certain set of goals and then they become “residents” and stay in the garden. In a way it’s kinda like Pokémon, except instead of having to attack and capture new creatures, you attract them to your garden to become residents and then build them a house and then they “mate”. You mate your piñata by running through a little mini game by guiding your creature through a maze to its mate, and then poof, along comes an egg, it hatches and you’ve got a new piñata to play with.
So far it’s been fun messing around with it, the bad guys are annoying, but it’s a game, you have to have something annoying in it for a challenge, right?
Anyways, if your having reservations about buying it (which I suggest you do, go buy it), then you can download a demo on the Xbox Live Marketplace now, Hell, I did before I bought the game.
Well, I finally got around to picking up Virtua Tennis 3. It’s insanely good, pure and simple. Since I picked it up I’ve been playing it pretty much non-stop.
Back when the Dreamcast was all the rage, my brother and I got Virtua Tennis after only playing the dinky little demo included on a demo disc with the Official Dreamcast Magazine once. And then we proceeded to play the heck out of it. And then in 2002 they released the updated Virtua Sega Sports Tennis 2k2, and I pretty much played it non-stop for a while, until new games/systems came along and I moved on. And now Virtua Tennis is back in full effect! It’s great. The graphics are gorgeous, the loading tolerably-quick, and most importantly the awesome gameplay that has made the series great is intact. And finally, since I only have a 360 and not a PS3 (e.g. blu-ray player that plays games as a bonus), I got the 360 version, which is actually the better of the two from what I’ve read in reviews, seeings how it is the only one with online play. I haven’t actually tried it yet (nor the spectator mode, VT.TV), but I suspect that I will sooner rather than later, and proceed to get my ass handed to me by a 12-year old.
Hot damn, this game is fun! Sure I played the demo already (in fact I have yet to delete it), but the full version is a million times better. I’ve only had it a few days but I’m already to the Shai-Gen (the most advanced of the 3 gangs). But Honestly it’s a lot of fun to run around the world just jumping from building to building and throwing crud around the world. And once you upgrade your driving skills the Agency vehicles get a huge bump in every way. One place this game definitely excels is with the achievements, not only are there a lot of them, but they are well integrated in the overall experience of the game. So in a lot of ways Crackdown raises the bar for future games not only in terms of achievements but also with the multiplayer co-op over Xbox Live. Go out and pick it up already!
So I haven’t posted in a while, what with work and some new games I seem to have neglected to set aside anytime to post for all my voyeurs.
So I have yet to get a Wii, sadly, but recently got both Rainbow 6 Vegas and Smackdown Vs Raw 2007 for my 360. One’s freakin’ awesome, the other is good but has problems.
First the good. Rainbow 6 Vegas is a blast in both single and multiplayer. And everything you’ve heard (or maybe haven’t) about the graphics being insanely cool is true. It’s a very good looking game, and plays as good as it looks. Now I realize I’ve kinda said the same thing twice over now but it deserves to be said as such. Multiplayer is well thought out and implemented. While playing Co-Op over Xbox Live I didn’t really have any lag, but when I was trying to versus the game were usually around 10-14 people and they got really laggy, not so fun.
As far as Smackdown goes, they did a pretty good job with their first next-gen effort. But as with pretty much every game that they’ve done since the original Smackdown on the PS1, all of Yuke’s games have had absolutely abysmal load times. It’s sad really, that an otherwise great game is hampered by constant loading. Hell, after each wrestler’s intro it has to load another 5-10 seconds, then again before the match begins. And finally once the match is over, it goes to another loading screen before it shows the wrestlers celebrating. Maybe, just maybe next years game will cut back further on the loading time, but I’m not holding my breath.
Lastly I also got the Rambaldi Box-set of all five seasons of Alias. Today I finally got started with season 5. It’s kinda weird watching it as season 5 wasn’t on that terribly long ago, and I still kinda remember various bits and pieces of the episodes more-so than any of the other seasons. But it’s great to have all the seasons right there at your fingertips because the storyline for the series is pretty serial so you need to see them all to get the whole picture. And if you haven’t ever seen Alias, now is the perfect time to get ‘em all.
One word, Awesome! Gears embodies every meaning of the word. It’s ridiculously fun to play and can be (and is) a great challenge to play. I have to agree with all the reviews I’ve read so far, Gears of War is easily a ≥~9.5. And for those wondering –Yes– Gears of War has the best graphics of any console game ever. In a few of the reviews I’ve read people have been saying that the lowest difficulty setting is too easy, I wouldn’t go that far, I’ve still died plenty of times repeatedly thanks to the computer. So basically don’t listen to the idiots saying it’s too easy, after all you do get some achievements for doing stuff in the Casual difficulty setting.
Not directly related to the game itself but just wanted to stick this out there. I had Gears pre-ordered at Gamestop and initally was told that they would have it today (Wednesday), so since I had the afternoon off I made a trek up there and am promptly told that they would have it tomorrow — needless to say i was bummed. So I did the usual thing when they don’t have a copy of a game, on my return trek home I made a stop at Best Buy. Apparently I got their last copy of the collectors edition of Gears. Then once I got back home I promptly gave Gamestop a call back to cancel my pre-order on Gears of War and move the money over to my pre-order on the HD-DVD drive which they say will be there on Friday, good this I have friday off already so I can go pick it up.
Well that’s enough rambling for tonight.
Well, I’ve been randomly using some of my 40+ hours of PDP time-off from work lately and stopped up at Gamestop for no particular reason– well, actually because I wanted to see when they were going to be getting Gears of War in so I could take the day (or more likely, part of it) off. And while over there I broke down and picked up F.E.A.R. for the 360, and put down $50 (out of 199) on the HD-DVD player add-on for the 360. Too many good games coming out this month dagnabit, not to mention the Wii!
As far as FEAR goes though, it’s a really good game. It basically is Condemned crossed with Unreal or Quake, in other words, really crazy-scary-cool stuff. 
Tuesday/Wednesday here I come. We got Gears coming, the HD-DVD player, and all the stuff I already have.
And randomly coming into my head at the moment is that I got the VGA cable for the 360 — And although it doesn’t support the full native resolution of my widescreen lcd @ 1440×900, it can get awfully close and still look great. Anywho, I’m just rambling now…
Whoops, look at the time. Work, work, work, work, oh–and did I mention work?!
That’s all I’ve been up to as of late. In between the previous post and this one, I’ve seen a few different movies, and gotten some new games.
As for movies, I went and saw The Descent: Pretty good, not really as jump-scary as people have/had said, more a kind of freaky scary. But overall it was pretty good, and I think I’ll probably get the dvd when it comes out over here.
I saw some movies on dvd lately, too; Inside Man is a pretty dang good heist movie plain and simple. Go get it. 
Kingdom of Heaven is mighty long (about 3:30 hrs), but ultimately a really good Middle Age movie.
And finally, The Transporter is a really, really good action movie. Great chase scenes, great fight scenes. What more is there to say about it?
Onto some gaming newsies…
I’ve gotten a few new 360 games (as you can see by clicking on my Gamercard on the side there);
Dead Rising: Basically think Dawn of the Dead as a video game. You play as Frank West–a photo journalist–on the job to discover what is really going on in the area and where all the zombies are coming from. Anywho, the game is really great even when your just dinking around killing zombies.
N3 – Ninety Nine Nights: Basically Dynasty Warriors but not set in ancient China or Japan. and of course it’s more “next-gen” than even Dynasty Warriors 5 for the 360 is, you can see all the way across the level (or pretty dang close) and the fallen enemies stay on the battlefield until you finish the level, so by the time you finish the field is just littered with bodies.
And finally, I got rid of my PowerMac G5 that I had (a dual 1.8 Ghz machine), and got a new Mac Pro (from MacPros). Needless to say I’ve been playing with that the past few days, and it’s just way too much fun.
That’s pretty much it for now. Just working (or more accurately, slaving) away. Until next time!
