It's the sequel to the smash hit Super Smash Bros that everyone has been waiting for! Featuring a starting cast of 14 fighters with more hidden characters and levels than you can shake a Beam Sword at!
You have several ways you can play <i>Melee</i>. First there is Classic mode, in which you fight a random assortment of characters in sequence to fight your way up to the evil Master Hand. Along the way you'll also be encountered with good old "Break the Targets" and "Race to the Finish" ("Board the Platforms" didn't make it to <i>Melee</i>).
Next is Adventure Mode. This is more uniform than Classic mode because you play the same levels. It may sound monotonous (and many do think it is), yet I find it to be a delightful side game. You go through levels from games, you fight your way through Mushroom Kingdom, get to dodge racers on the F-Zero track, and fly high over Corneria as you fight Fox and Falco on the Great Fox, then meet Bowser at the end.
As a fighting game, <i>Melee</i> has, of course, a multiplayer game, but not JUST a multiplayer game where you go in and fight. There are special types of Melees you can fight. You can fight giant size for a clash-of-the-titans remake, or tiny sized Melees for that ant-battle feel. Fixed Camera Mode just fixes on the battlefield and doesn't move, and Invisible Melee is self-explanatory! Theres even a Tournament mode for as many as 128 fighters (most are computer players, but wait till the GC Modem unviels! <i>MELEE!</i>)
Another addictive aspect of <i>Melee</i> are the trophies you can collect. Our very own Laser Link referred to them as the most addictive thing to collect since Pokemon cards! You get trophies for all sorts of things, such as beating classic mode with a character. You can wager the coins you win from fighting to the trophy lottery, where the more you bet, the more chance for a new trophy. The trophies can be anything. There's a trophy for the Super Scope, for every playable character, a Goomba, and some from games that never left Japan! There is also a side game during classic mode where three trophies fall from the sky, if you can hit any of them into the basket in the middle of the screen, you get to keep them, if not, well, maybe you'll see that trophy again eventually. There are 290 in total, can you collect them all?
There are also premade Events you can play, such as a battle with Pikachu where you may only inflict damage with Pokeballs and the Pokemon inside them.
Wow. Long review. But that just tells you how much there is to do in <i>Super Smash Bros: Melee</i>. I don't think I even covered a quarter of the cool stuff in this game. A must have, I repeat, MUST HAVE GameCube game! I rate it a 9.5!
The Mario Party series is getting a bit aged, as there isn't much new they can do with the series, however that doesn't keep <i>Mario Party 4</i> from being one hell of a fun game. Featuring over 50 Mini-games, 8 characters, 5 boards, a Party mode, and a Story mode, <i>Mario Party 4</i> is going to give your controller the biggest button-mashing bruising since Super Smash Bros. Melee.
It's a simple concept, one to four players can play in a board-game style game which end in a random mini-game after everyone takes their turn with the dice. Along the board, there are coin spaces, which I don't think I need to explain, Bowser spaces, which either calls one of the Koopa Kids to steal some of your coins, or the big bad Bowser himself, who then pulls some stunt, usually a Bowser game, wherein the loser usually either loses all his coins or all his items.
The Mini-games are a stroke of genius. Some of them are just so much fun to play, you'll be headed to Mini-game mode to play them over and over. Among a few of my favorites are Booksquirm, where the characters run around a huge book, avoiding falling pages by getting in holes in the pages. Domination is fun, you hit the A button as much as you can, racking up dominoes each time, then you knock them over after 10 seconds and find out who has the sorest thumb. Let's not forget the Battle Game Bowsers Bigger Blast, where there are switches to press. Each character takes their turn, one switch sets off a huge explosion. The process continues until only one remains. I could tell you more, but for the sake of continuity, I'll move on.
<i>Mario Party 4</i> is, obviously, at it's best with some friends to play with. If you're not a social gamer, fret not, there is plenty of fun to be had with this game by yourself. <i>Mario Party 4</i> will keep you coming back for more, and for that reason I rate this game an 8.5!
Luigi has won a mansion in a contest! Problem is he doesn't <i>remember</i> entering a contest! He calles Mario up and tell him the good news and Mario says he will meet him there and they'll celebrate. Luigi makes his way through a spooky forest before arriving at his mansion. He cautiously enters and sees everything is pitch dark. A ghost drops a key on the floor and Luigi uses it to open a door...where a ghost nearly scares him out of his skin! Then as the ghost closes in, a strange man with a vacuum cleaner starts to suck him up, but before he can, the ghost hits him and disappears. The man introduces himself as Professor Elvin Gadd (E. Gadd, get it?). Before he can say much else a bunch of ghosts appear and they make a run for it.
Back at Gadds lab he tells you that he has been hunting ghosts for decades, traveling the word and turning them into paintings using his invention, the <b>Ghost Portrificationizer!</b> Upon trying to capture a ghost recently though, he escaped and freed all the other imprisoned ghosts. He asks that while Luigi looks for Mario in the mansion, he would also try to get some of those prized ghosts back. Gadd gives Luigi another of his invention, (this is genius) <b>THE POLTERGUST 3000!</b> He also gives him a <b>Game Boy Horror</b> which is very useful. You can use it to check your map and inventory to name a few things. Armed with the Poltergust 3000 and the Game Boy Horror, Luigi enters the haunted mansion...
Luigi's Mansion is fun, the controls are very straightforward. Push the stick in the direction you want Luigi to go. To capture ghosts with the Poltergust 3000, you must first hit them with a beam from your flashlight, stunning them and showing you their "heart". Then you start to suck them up. To do that, simply press the control stick in the opposite direction of the ghost to Luigi. If the ghost is on the left of the screen, you'll want to press right, and so on and so forth. Little ghosts take only a bit of vacuuming, but bigger ones can take a few tries to get them all.
There are many types of ghosts in the mansion, some are straightforward and will attack when near you, but others can be a bit tricky. Some ghosts grab you from behind, while others can throw banana peels all over the place as you try to suck them in. In the house there are also 50 Boos. The Boos are the ones who freed the painting ghosts and Gadd wants them gone. He adds a special function to your Game Boy Horror which alerts you to a Boo (or Boo shaped object) hidden in a room.
One last thing, in the mansion is lots of MONEY. Its hidden in every nook and cranny, and it would not be a bad idea to collect it all, at the end of the game, how much money Luigi has is turned into your high score. How much can you make in a game?
Luigi's Mansion is a very entertaining game, its flaw is its length. There's about ten hours of total gameplay, which means it's not a good game for people who like ot get immersed in a good long game, but it is good for people who like games that can be beaten in a few days. This is great for a casual gamer. Its very fun, but it's lack of replayability costs it points, I give it a 7. Rent it and see if you like it before you shell out the money buy it.
Don't let the name fool you, <i>Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee</i> is not just a clone of Super Smash Bros. Melee, it is an original game that sci-fi fans everywhere will go wild for. Epic battles in real world cities with famous monsters like Megalon, King Ghidora, Rodan, and the all-powerful MechaGodzilla make this game one of the best fighters on the Cube today. Power-ups are scarce so you have little option other than to use every move in your arsenal to send your opponents flying.
You can fight in different sections of such cities as San Francisco, Tokyo and Monster Island with any of the 12 different characters. The visuals in the game are spectacular. The detail on the cities and monsters is absurdy well done, even the smallest detail isn't neglected. You can see the seemingly tiny cars you stomp on explode on the street below. The cities are also fully destructable, meaning if you jab at an opponent and miss or do a bit too much stomping around, you could take down buildings. As fun as this sounds (and it is), you have to make sure you don't overdo it. The army will attack whichever monster has done the most damage to the city with increasingly nasty weapons such as the freeze ray, which makes you a sitting duck for your opponent to hit you hard without chance of missing. The upside is, if you grab the other monster and toss him into a group of buildings, then the army considers him to have knocked them down and they start attacking him. It's a great sight to behold!
Controls are a bit clunky and do take some getting used to, especially if your used to the simple controls of SSB:Melee, once you have played for a while, it becomes easier to pull off those powerful attacks. As I mentioned earlier, the graphics are stunning and you even get a replay from different angles after every fight so you can watch in slo mo as that building you tossed smacks Rodan in his face. Oh, did I mention you can pick up and throw whole buildings? You can, and they do big damage too.
<i>Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee</i> is also a great multiplayer game. Up to four players can fight against one another in a last man standing match, a match to see who can do the most damage to a city in the given time, team battles, a survival mode where you fight against monster after monster and see how long you last.
It's got flaws though, for instance, when you first boot up the game, you have a weak choice of three playable monsters in 4 arenas, you must unlock everything else. Flying monster have a bit of a glitch too. Rodan can be soaring over the city and suddenly get hung up on an invisible wall and twitch there in mid-air for a few seconds before resuming flight. An option to change the sometimes ludicrously difficult computer players AI would also have been a welcome addition. Also the adventure mode is basically the same thing over and over, with rearranged monsters. There's no such thing as a perfect fighting game, but Godzilla made a fair attempt at being one. I give <i>Godzilla</i> a 6.5 and suggest you rent before you buy, as it may not be for everyone.
The evil wizard Garm has used the power of Runestones to unleash a great evil power named Skorn, who breaks free of Garms control and kills him. Skorn then begins to terrorize the eight realms and scatters the runestones so they can't be used against him.
The history of the arcade game Gauntlet has culminated up to this beautifully rendered game. The game is fairly easy to learn, with three different control styles so as to make it as uncomplicated as possible. In Gauntlet, you have your choice of 8 different characters, each with their strengths and weaknesses, and there are another 8 waiting to be unlocked. You have to throw weapons at enemies to kill them, and thats without powerups.
Powerups include anti death halos. Death can steal health and experience from you if it gets near you, with the halo, the opposite happens, you either gain health or an experience level. Also you can get the Hand of Death, which kills enemies you touch instantly for a short time. You can also charge your projectiles with electricity, fire, acid and other magic. You can find treasure to buy items or you can find them in the levels. Also a certain number of a certain type of crystal will open the doorway to another realm.
This game would be a dream come true for players of Dungeons and Dragons type games or earlier Gauntlet games. I give the game an 8.0 and recommend anyone with a Cube at least try the game. I myself never played any previous Gauntlets and I don't enjoy this type of genre typically, however this game was an exception, I enjoyed it very much.
The original game from the PS1, completely redone to make it an incredible game, whether your a RE veteran or newbie, you'll love this game. This was the first game I ever played that truly frightened me...got my pulse pounding because you never know if something might come through that window. If I use an Ink Ribbon now, will I have enough when I really need one? <i>What the <b>hell</b> is running towards me!?</i>
The basic premise of the game is some very strange murders have been occuring in Raccoon City. The special force team S.T.A.R.S. Bravo Team was sent out to investigate but their helicopter went down in the woods. Nobody was found aboard, alive that is. Alpha Team was sent out to investigate and was forced to enter a deserted mansion. Inside the game heats up. You can play as Chris Redfield or Jill Valentine, each character has differing plotlines so its difficult to say much else. Chris has 6 pockets while Jill has 8. You can put an item in a pocket or occasionally several in one pocket (ex. Ammunition). There are many more items to find than you can hold so you must keep most of them in Item Boxes found in various places around the mansion. They are connected so if you put a herb in one Item Box, you can fetch it from any Item Box. They find zombies roaming the house seeking brains...and occasionally finding them.
The first thing you see and one of the things that makes this game so damn great are its jaw-dropping graphics. Everything in the game is beyond meticulous detail, its a sight to behold and its uses every bit of processing power the little 'Cube can muster. An intriguing saving method is used as well. Save points are typewriters and you must use Ink Ribbons to save, you can find Ribbons peppered around the game. No Ink Ribbons, and you can't save. In a game like this where you never know what's next, saving is very important. Also, there is no getting around it: I don't care how much of a marksman you are, you're going to get chewed a few times. If you happen to have found one of the ultra-handy defense items you'll be out of its grip quicker than you can jam a dagger into a zombies skull. If you aren't that lucky though, you're gonna get bit, and it's gonna hurt. You need to find some Green Herbs or First Aid Spray somewhere in the mansion to treat your wounds. If you don't, you become zombie chow, and must restart where you last saved. I reiterate, saving is VERY IMPORTANT :).
But is it strictly a kill-everything-in-sight bloodfest game? Not in the least. Sure there's lots of blood gore and exploding heads (yes, exploding heads), but it doesn't make the game. There are puzzles to be solved, mysteries to be unlocked, hidden items waiting to be found. You wanna survive in this game, you're going to be using your brain just as much, if not more than your gun. For instance, you better burn that zombie you just took down. Don't believe me? Well go on back in that room in an hour and don't say I didn't warn you. As you progress through this unprecedented two disk GC game, you come to find there is much more going on in this mansion than you could have ever imagined...
But, as with every game, it has it's flaws. The most glaring of which is the odd and occasionally restricting camera angles. It can make battles (or even movement) a bit difficult. Also the controls take a little getting used to. Well actually a LOT of getting used to. Lastly, before every room you must watch a cinema of the door opening while the room loads, it gets a little old. These minor shortcomings notwithstanding, <i>Resident Evil</i> is a monumental game that no GameCube collection should be deprived of.
If you want a light-hearted, upbeat game with ghouls and ghosts, stick with Luigi's Mansion, but if you want to play a game that will really scare you, reach for <i>Resident Evil</i>, you better play this game. I give this game a 9.0, now go buy it before I pull out my Incendiary Rounds.</font></p>
<b><i>"May the rats eat your eyes! The Darkness comes, it will damn us all!"</b></i></font>
The words of noted scholar Maximillian Roivas echo true in this creepy game. An early morning phone call alerts Alexandra Roivas (note that Roivas is Savior spelled backwards ;)) that her grandfather, Dr. Edward Roivas, has been murdered. She flies to Rhode Island and after seeing the grisly scene, she vows to find out what happened, thus begins the game. Since it is so integral to the plotline, I will now tell you how the next part of the game unfolds. It contains some mild spoilers, so if you'd rather play the game for youself, skip over this next paragraph and move on to the next.
You open a secret passageway in the mansion by solving a fairly straightforward puzzle. Inside the room you find, among other thins, an old book: The Tome of Eternal Darkness. Get used to seeing it, it's a big part of the game. When you find the tome, only one chapter page is inside, the story of Pious Augustus. Pious was a centurion in the Roman Army, when a strange calling led him to a ring of stones in the desert, where magic transports him to a hidden temple. Inside he fights zombies and collects items, until finally getting to the last room, which holds three artifacts. The choice you make now influences the rest of the game. Pious picks an artifact, but before he can grab it, energy from the artifact overwhelms him as he lay screaming on the floor. When he rises to his feet again, he has been horribly changed and is now a dark master under the clan of the artifact he chose. Chattur'gha, the red artifact, makes enemies stronger and gives them the ability to regrow lost limbs or heads. Xel'lotath, the green artifact, will cause your sanity to fall quicker during the game. Ulyaoth, (you guessed it) the blue artifact, focuses more heavily on magic use. Pick your poison, none of the paths are easy.
Riding out on the coattails of the GameCube scarefest remake of Resident Evil, Nintendo shows a little more of the dark side their little console has. It's not as gory as Resident Evil (no grenades in zombies mouths here) but it makes up for it with one of the best, most immersive storylines I have ever seen. You must solve puzzles as Alex to find chapter pages to the Tome of Eternal Darkness and once you find them, you enter the chapters character. A sample of the handful of characters include a young man from the ancient Middle East trying to win a womans heart, an archealogist from the 1980s, a fransiscan monk from the time of the inquisition, and a cambodian dancer.
The graphics here don't stun you like Resident Evils did, but they don't disappoint either. The camera pans and zooms smoothly as your character walks or runs and will almost always have a clear view of what is ahead.
One of the coolest effects in the game is your characters sanity. Every time you are spotted by an enemy you lose some sanity. The more sanity that you lose, you start to hallucinate. Hallucinations can either happen to your character or they can mess with YOU directly, such as showing you false error messages suddenly. You can regain some lost sanity by performing finishing moves on enemies and by casting spells once you learn them.
As long as we're on the topic of magic (don't worry, I'll shut up soon), lets talk about spells. As you go through the game, you find runes, scrolls, and codeces. Runes are the building blocks of spells, however without a codex to decipher them, they remain a mystery. You can build spells with undeciphered runes at this point but it's very hit-and-miss. After you find a scroll and have all the appropriate runes, the spell automatically builds itself and stores in the the Tome of Eternal Darkness, so every character you play form now on will have access to this spell. Use of spells are certain times is crucial, for example, enchanting a weapon with the power of Ulyaoth will deal extra damage to Chattur'gha enemies. Conversely for Chattur'gha / Xel'lotath and Xel'lotath / Ulyaoth. It's a ring of power, red beats green, green beats blue, blue beats red. IT's a very useful thing to remember when you start fighting the big boys.
There is probably quite a bit I did not cover in this review, there is very much to this game, yet it remains very easy to learn and play. I give this game a 9.2 score and I <i>assure</i> you that this review is NOT a hallucination...or is it?
The box art for the quirky <i>Cubivore</i> features a quote from IGN calling the game "one of the most bizarre videogames ever created". Sounds like a safe bet to me. The opening sequence features a Cubivore (with its head looking like a GC logo) crapping in the middle of the screen, and running offscreen. If that's not bad enough, four insects then come and proceed to party around the pile of dung. I still laugh at it.
In <i>Cubivore</i>, you start out a little pig and move your way up the food chain to eventually evolve into a bear and a bird. As you progress, you find many other beings, of 5 colors: Red (Redapeds), Yellow(Yellowbrates), Blue (Bluocytes), Purple (Purpails), and Grey (Greyodons). You start out with one "meat flap". When you eat another animal, say a red one, that flap becomes red, and you mutate into a different creature. Eat a blue one and you mutate again. Eventually you get the opportunity to mate, and when you do, you die, and your offspring recieves one more meat flap. Now if you can get both flaps to one color, you mutate again, each color has different attrubutes. Redapeds have incredible jumping ability, Yellowbrates do more damage with their attacks, while Bluocytes can pounce from far away, Purpails can move backwards quickly, whereas Greyodons can run like the wind. Target specific types of animals and change all your flaps to their color to gain their abilities. Why would an animal do this? Because colorless beasts have appeared and taken away all the wilderness, causing animals to die off and the world to become a barren white land. At the center off all of this is the King of all the Cubivores, the Killer Cubivore. Do you have what it takes to overtake him and become King of the Cubivores?
Graphics are...subpar. I'm being nice by saying subpar. Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING is cubed. The animals, the grass, blood, the sun and moon, even ripples in water are square. You can count the polygons in a scene if you try. Obviously though, this makes for a light burden on the GameCubes processing, making for a silky smooth gameplay without a hint of slowdown.
Hope you weren't looking forward to a treat for the ears either. A few of the stages have a three second guitar riff repeated over, and over, and over again. Animals have various yelps, roars, and other noises, but nothing else to really justify having Dolby Digital sound. But hey, if you like that riff, crank up your stereo surround! I will say this, though, the music during the opening sequence (while the insects are having a crap party) has a beautiful piano song which I still find myself humming.
Graphically and audibly, this game is terrible, but it redeems itself with it's solid gameplay. There are nearly 150 different mutations, each with distinct strong points and drawbacks, and you'll have to work really hard to find them all. You find yourself loving how you're using your camouflage ability to pounce on unexpecting bosses. You find yourself stalking different creatures to gain their abilities, and using other animals abilities to take them out. Once you start playing, you won't want to stop until you reach the end...and it's tough. I won't say much, but it took me an hour of nonstop activity to fight the final battle. It is extremely difficult, not for the fait of heart. When I beat it, I breathed a sigh of relief, because had I played for one more minute, my aching hands would have jumped off my arms and strangled me for torturing them so.
If you're up for an addictive game and don't rate everything of graphics and sound, give Cubivore a try. Once you get into it, it's a very enjoyable game. I rate it 7.0 out of 10.
The basic premise behind Crazy Taxi is you select a time frame, then try to drive customers to their desired location in a reasonable amount of time to collect your fees. If you don’t get them to their destination on time, they’ll jump out without paying and you’ve lost money and time. Places you can take your customers include the Original Levis Store, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and Pizza Hut. There appears to be no sort of law enforcement in this city (even though there is a police station where customers will occasionally want to go, probably to turn you in for reckless driving), so you can be just as reckless as you need to be to get your customers where they want to go.
You got good music to drive to, as well. The game fits four tracks of music: Them and Us and Ten in 2010 by Bad Religion, and All I Want and Way Down the Line by The Offspring.
The game is fun but it has low replayability, its very much a one-trick pony. However it still a very fun game. You would probably be better off to rent this game rather than buy it, because you can play all there is to play really within the time you could rent it.
It’s a good game, and if it had more levels of play and better replayability, I would rate it higher, but I still give it a respectable 7.5 points!
Hey there, friend. You say your cars broken down, parents and teachers driving you up the wall, things ain't going too good with your girl, and your shoelace just busted? Days like these, don't you just wish you could get up and go to a place where everybody knows your name and they're always glad you came? Well, forget "Cheers", now there's <i>Animal Crossing</i>.
First of all, right off the bat I should warn readers that <i>Animal Crossing</i> is NOT for everyone. You'll either love this game, or you'll hate this game, it's as simple as that. It won't appeal to some gamers, while others may be hopelessly addicted for months. I'm happy to say I believe I am the latter. <i>Animal Crossing</i> is an open-ended game, meaning there is no real set goals. You can set personal goals and do errands for other villagers, but basically, in <I>Animal Crossing</i>, it's do what you want, when you want, and there is plenty to do!
You've just moved to a new village, and you have little more than the clothes on your back and a handful of money in your pocket. Fortunately for you, a friendly passenger on the train you are on offers to call his friend Tom Nook and help get you a place to stay. As you pull into your town, Tom runs up to you and points out the houses he has for sale, you pick one (they're identical) and you find you find you don't have nearly enough to pay for it all, so he offers to let you work part-time in his shop to help you work off your debt. While not working you can do any number of things! You can dig for fossils to donate to the museum, you can fish, catch bugs, collect seashells, design clothing, buy furniture and stuff for your house, cut down and plant trees, or just chill with your new animal friends.
Gameplay is smooth, you press the control stick in the direction you want to go, and press A to do most important tasks, like talking or shaking trees to get fruit. Sound is alright, the music is not much since you really don't pay attention to it, and the animals all talk in a "Animalese" as it appears in a tetx box on the bottom of the screen. Listen really close, and you can tell what they're saying, because they are saying it, just quickly and distorted. Graphics are a disappointment, it's quite obvious this game started out as an N64 game, as graphics can be blurry, blocky, and the GameCube is capable of so much more, but you need to look past the flaws to see the creamy center of <i>Animal Crossing</I>.
Got a GBA? If you do, then the game gets even more fun. Hook your GC to your GBA and you can now access a special island where you can do even more cool stuff! Don't have a GBA? Hmm...well do you know someone else with a GameCube? If so, talk them into buying <i>Animal Crossing</i> too, and you can visit each others villages, where you can get stuff you normally can't in your village, and Tom Nook pays big for rarities.
It gets cooler! <i>Animal Crossing</i> utilizes the GameCube's internal clock, so it's set in real time, so when it's 6:30 P.M. where you are, it's 6:30 P.M. in your village. Seasons change, it rains, its snows, it turns from day to night. And stuff happens even when you're not playing! If you're fighting a battle royale in <i>Melee</i>, slaying zombies in <i>Resident Evil</i>, or collecting Shines in <i>Mario Sunshine</i>, there could be a festival happening in your village, or something else you wouldn't want to miss, so make sure to check back often. Also make time on holidays, because they're celebrated in your village too, they'll even celebrate your birthday!
I could go on about how much this game has to offer, because there is much more to say, but I think I'll cut this review off at this point. I don't want to spoil it for you, after all. As much as I praise this game, I encourage you to rent before you buy, since you may not like it. However there are many who will play this game and not want to stop, I rate <I>Animal Crossing</I> an impressive 9.8, docking points only for graphics. If they'd spruced it up a bit, this game might have gotten a perfect 10, but still, it's a great game, and anyone with a GameCube should check it out!
