Duality

Castlevania: Lament of Innocence is a 3D action game like Devil May Cry. Unlike the latter, this game is boring.

You again?
The combat system is full-featured. You can pull off stylish combos involving launchers and aerial maneuvers. You can side step, side step then attack, and double side step. In classic Castlevania tradition, you also have subweapons at your disposal (cross, holy water, dagger, axe, crystal). Each subweapon can be combined with orbs to change their effect.

Sounds great. The problem is none of that is necessary. Most of the enemies in the game can be dispatched with the basic 4-hit combo or a few subweapon attacks. After the first few encounters, combat becomes more of a chore. It never feels like you’re in danger.

Wasn’t I just here?
The level design doesn’t really help the situation. Every room looks the same and every corridor looks the same. Sure, each major area of the game has different textures, but it still feels like the same square room and rectangular corridor. Even worse are the numerous empty rooms and corridors.

Other reviews give Lament of Innocence high marks. Sure, the control scheme is good and you can do fancy combos. But none of that matters: the game isn’t fun to play. It’s an action game that lacks action.

To sum it up…
Castlevania: Lament of Innocence combines unchallenging gameplay and bland graphics into an entirely forgettable experience. For a game that came out two years after Devil May Cry, shouldn’t it be better?

(2 stars out of 5)

Let me first say that Castle Shikigami 2 (CS2 from now on) is a shoot’em up (shmup). And when it comes to shmups, you either love’em or hate’em. So if you love’em, stop reading right now and pick this game up (it’s only $10!); and if you hate’em, you’re probably better off renting or borrowing it for a one night stand.

Welcome to Bullet Hell
Like other shmups, the goal of CS2 is simple: shoot down anything that moves. But of course, it’s not really that simple. While you’re shooting, you’ll have to dodge enemy bullets—something that the game gives you plenty of. In the later levels, the screen is often filled with so many bullets that the game will lag. In any other game, that would be bad; but in shmups, anything that gives you more time to react is always welcome.

CS2 features a cast of seven characters, each with their own shot pattern, bomb attack, and Shikigami attack. Shikigami attacks (enabled by holding down the shoot button) vary quite a bit from character to character. Ko calls a spirit which automatically attacks enemies; Kim projects three swords around him (type-1 variant); Nigi creates a barrier that reflects bullets back at her enemies (ala GigaWing). Shikigami attacks slow down a character’s movement, but all coins generated when enemies are destroyed are automatically collected.

Live Dangerously
What sets CS2 apart from other shmups is its Tension Bonus System (TBS). The TBS rewards players for putting themselves in harm’s way—in this case, being close to enemies or bullets. The closer you get, the more points you get (up to 8x) and the more coins spewed out from enemies you destroy. As a handy indicator, your character’s normally-green aura will change to yellow, orange, and finally red. When your character’s aura is red, his shot pattern will also be powered up.

The TBS works incredibly well with Shikigami attacks. Without the TBS, Shikigami attacks might go unused because of their start-up delay (0.5 seconds approx.) and how much characters slow down while using them. With the TBS, Shikigami attacks become indispensible when going for high scores. As I mentioned before, coins are automatically collected from enemies destroyed by Shikigami attacks. Thus, to maximize your score, you’d want to jump from bullet to bullet while using your Shikigami attack to destroy enemies—no easy feat.

Concluding Comments
In case you’re wondering, the graphics and sound of CS2 are average, but both are just icing. The cake is the gameplay and CS2’s gameplay is excellent. The TBS combined with Shikigami attacks introduce risk/reward decisions on multiple levels: more damage from powered-up shot patterns vs. less damage but safer position; more points using Shikigami attacks vs. more maneuverability using normal shot. It’s a refreshing addition to the tried-and-true challenge of staying alive.

(boxed rating and few-liner summary goes here)

In life, having the right friends can make all the difference. In this case, I was able to score free tickets to a press screening of Superman Returns. The rest of you will have to wait until next Wednesday, the 28th, but this morning, I got to see it, and let me be the first to tell you, it is great! I’m really tempted to write a full blown review of the whole movie, but I don’t think I’ll be able to keep myself from spoiling the movie for the rest of you, but I’ll try to say a few words.

Firstly, story wise, I think this was a fantastic movie. It even mentions events that happened in Superman I, and it feels like a part of the Superman… *thinks* … quintilogy, I guess. There is just the right amount of humor and drama to make this a very compelling story. And as far as visual effects go, this movie is top notch. The growing of the….no, wait…I’m not going to spoil anything! Okay well….it looks great! ;) Oh! So okay, the part of the movie in which Superman is saving the airplane (it’s not a spoiler because it’s been in every trailer) is an amazing rush! To see him zoom across the screen trying to catch up with the plane was exhilarating. Actually, all the parts with Superman flying were some of the best parts of the movie. It just looked fantastic! And the musical score was amazing as well. The composer did a great job of mixing in John Williams’ old Superman theme into a brand new score.

I know this isn’t much of a review, but I’m really trying to not spoil anything. I would highly recommend this movie to fans of Superman, comics, or even action movies in general. There’s more than enough content to satisfy everyone. And the ending and discovery of Superman and his _______ (no spoilers remember) leave the movie wide open for a slew of sequels. And personally, I couldn’t be happier if they continued this franchise. Bryan Singer did a fantastic job with one of comics most beloved icons. Go see it next Wednesday!

(Also, it’s supposed to be coming out in IMAX in 3D and from what I saw today, a 3D version of this on IMAX would blow my freaking mind. It’s a must see!)

“Manny, until now we’ve scraped along the ground like rats, but from now on we soar like eagles. Like eagles on pogo sticks!”

Let me let you in on a little personal history with me and online gaming. My first introduction to Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs) came in the form of Anarchy Online. I played it for about three weeks. Straight. I rarely left the comfort of my desk (which at the time was actually not that comfortable), and usually went to sleep as the sun, and my roommates, were waking up. Unfortunate for my AO friends, my timing couldn’t have been worse. After those few weeks Thanksgiving break came along and I was out of state with no way to access my crack. About a week of going cold turkey (and eating it too..get it? cold turkey? ha!) and by the time I got home, wanting to play AO was the furthest thing from my mind. So, one down…

About a year and a half passed before thoughts of MMOs came crawling back into my head. As they say, you can take the addict away from the drugs, but you cant take the drugs away from the addict. (ok…no one says that, and if anyone did, I’d punch them….what a crappy saying…hopefully, the point is still semi-clear.) Anyway, as a long time Final Fantasy fan, when I heard they were making a FF MMORPG I had to join in. In fact, I was so dedicated to playing that I actually sold $900 of my DJ equipment just so I could upgrade my computer for FFXI. And once it was finally released, lo and behold, the addiction was back. I even dragged two of my friends into it with me (one of whom still plays today). But after a few months, the drudgery of killing the same rabbits 50 billion times got old. (Oh, and let’s not forget the UBER rabbits that reared their ugly heads every now and then.) So, with a heavy heart, and a lighter wallet, I decided to stop. The addiction had been fed and it would go back into hibernation for a while.

But like a zombie that just wont die (god I suck at metaphors), it came back. Actually, I think I’ve learned to control it a bit. It was begging to be let out last April but I held off until about a month ago. For those of you who have read some of my posts regarding the Justice League, you might get the impression that I enjoy my superheroes. Well, you couldn’t be further from the truth. I LOOOVE my superheroes! So, with the impending release of City of Villains I figured it’d be a good time to test it’s current counterpart, City of Heroes (CoH).

“But Alexis, aren’t you just going to leave this game in a couple months like all the rest?” I can hear you all thinking the same thing. And who knows? I just might. However, after everything I’m about to explain about this game you might start to see why this is not only a stand out MMO, but one that will have me coming back time and time again.

Be Yourself

The most widely praised and downright cool part of the game is the character creation. CoH has one of the most in-depth character creation systems ever..well..created! You start by picking how you got your powers (ie, Mutation, Science, Technology, Magic, or Natural). I chose Mutation. After picking your body build (Female, Male, Giant Male) you can then start the process of making your superhero. There are hundreds of different options to choose from and complete control over the size and shape of any part of your character. There are hundreds of different clothing options as well. From hoods to masks, tights to business suits, everything you could imagine is in there. (Capes however, though available, are something you have to earn later in the game.) You can even pick from an enormous selection of logos for your superhero to display proudly on their chest. And on top of all this, you can change the color of every piece of clothing and any part of your body. With all of this, there are literally millions of different combinations so that you’re almost guaranteed to never meet someone who looks like you. Gone are the old days where you can take two steps without running into another pointy haired elf (I’m looking at you, Final Fantasy XI). Here, you’re completely unique. And the best part? You can create as many different characters as you want and keep them all! CoH really wants you to experiment and find as many ways as you can to enjoy the experience.

HELP!!!!

So what does a superhero do, exactly? Everything a superhero’s supposed to do! To start with, you’re given some simple missions like “Arrest 10 Lost” (Lost being the name of a gang, and ‘arrest’ being a nice word for eliminate), but for the first few levels you’ll pretty much be walking around town stopping street crime. As you might be saying “and this is different from killing rabbits…how?” let me explain the contact system to you. As a superhero, you have many different contacts. From the City Representative to the lowly newspaper reporter, you will gain the friendship of many different contacts. Each wanting to either give you a new mission or introduce you to even more contacts.

As an example of the missions you might be going on, I’ll tell you about a recent experience I had that spanned many different missions. I was talking to my contact who deals primarily with the “Clockwork”, a group of dangerous robots. After being asked to clean a few of them off the streets, I set off to dish out some justice. However, among the remains of one fallen Clockwork, I saw the words “Help me!” scratched into it’s case. Taking this new clue back to my contact we discovered that a top mechanic has recently been kidnapped and realize that it must have been him who wrote this message. I decide to go to the factory where they are making these specific Clockwork and shut them down. Afterwords, I find an encoded note that I can’t make sense of. So I take it to the City Representative who then passes it along to her scientific contacts and returns the note to me decoded. Apparently it’s an address where they’re keeping the mechanic! I run over, bust in to the abandoned warehouse, and take down all the Clockwork I can find only to be ambushed by one of the Clockwork leaders! After defeating him (or should I say ‘it’) I rescued the mechanic who tells me that not only was he kidnapped, but his family too! Fortunately, he knows where they took them and I dash over, kick some more bot-butt, and save his family. All in all, a very long set of missions, but it was so much fun to get new clues and try to figure out the case.

I HAVE THE POWER!!

In City of Heroes your character can choose from many different “power sets.” I personally decided to go with a Katana and enhanced healing. Though after certain levels you can pick up powers from new sets like martial arts or the power to control fire. Another power you can eventually pick up is flight. My character just hit level 14 and I picked up Flight without thinking twice. With the power of flight (or super speed or super jump) the world becomes a lot more open to you. What might have taken me minutes to get too only takes seconds. Not to mention that it just looks awesome! Oh, and to explain the quote at the top, it’s from one of my favorite games (prize to whoever identifies it first), and it’s exactly what goes through my head every time i jump off the top of a building and start soaring through the air. Awesome.

What? No Gil??

Actually, no money at all. “But how is this possible? You need money to buy goods!” Simple. No goods. Now before you faint, let me explain. Unlike almost every other MMO out there, CoH doesn’t have items. There are no +5 Swords or “Armor of Whatever”s. What superhero upgrades his costume? In CoH there is no crafting, trading, or auctioning. There are only two things you’ll ever have: Enhancements and Inspirations. Inspirations could be compared to potions. You have inspirations for strength (Enrage), healing (Respite), accuracy (Insight), etc. They are temporary boosts to your stats that can help you out a lot in tough battles. Enchantments are essentially what you upgrade your character with. You could think of them as training. After certain levels you can add ‘Power Slots’ to your list of skills. Then in these slots you can place enchantments. You can have enchantments to increase a skills accuracy or strength, or perhaps increase your flight speed or health recovery speed. There are dozens of different enchantments to help you improve your character. Both enchantments and inspirations can be acquired in two ways. Firstly, you can get them by defeating enemies. Secondly, you can buy them from contacts or superhero trainers. “But wait! You said there was no money!” In place of money, CoH dishes out Influence. You can acquire influence by saving people’s lives, completing missions, or giving trainers extra enchantments you don’t want. So while technically there may be some form of currency, it’s definitely something you’ve never seen before.

The Final Showdown

So what exactly sets City of Heroes apart from every other MMORPG out there? I could say the character creation, or the in-depth missions, or the fact that you can even create a super-group with all your friends. And while some aspects may be similar to many other MMORPGs, there are several main differences. One of them is its level of accessibility for the average gamer. You don’t have to spend hours and hours trying to finish your next quest to get your next item which gives you a new quest to find a new item. You can sit down and play for 30 minutes if you want. The point is, it doesn’t suck up your life like every other MMO. Another main difference is its subject matter. Not everyone can live in a world of swords and sorcery. I sure couldn’t. But like many other comic book nerds I’ve finally found a place that let’s me live out my fantasies. And really, who didn’t want to be a superhero when they were a kid?

A 4 out of 5.

Translated, the title of this show is Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi (MSAA), and it is hands down one of the funniest animes I have ever seen.

Gai-who?
For the anime newbies out there, Gainax may not be a company you know of by name, but you’ve probably seen, or at least hear of, one of their anime series. Furi Kuri (FLCL), Mahou Tsukai Tai (Magic Users Club), and—most famously—Neon Genesis Evangelion (NGE) are all anime series that have come out of the Gainax’s studios. For anyone who has seen NGE, you know what they can do to fuck with your mind. And to anyone who’s seen FLCL, you also know what they can do to fuck with your mind. Gainax is probably most famous for making the most mind-fucking anime’s ever.

So, what’s the difference?
Both FLCL and NGE are excellent examples of the work Gainax is capable of. However, they both screw with your head in very different ways: NGE with it’s intense psychological overtones and FLCL with it’s “where the FUCK did that come from?” Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi is in the same category as FLCL (and RE: Cutie Honey, if anyone’s seen that Gainax production as well).

…wtf?
I, like many other people, find incredible humor in the “wtf” side of comedy. The “that was absolutely the last thing I could have imagined happening” category. For people like me, MSAA is a godsend. Not just for it’s random sense of humor, but for its amazing sense of style throughout it all. When MSAA changes tones, it doesn’t just change the story, it changes the setting, the character, and even the animation style. You can really tell that the creators knew exactly what they wanted and poured their hearts into it.

It all starts with a boy and a girl…
And in this case, yes, yes it does. The story starts with young boy and girl around the age of 10. They’re childhood friends and have grown up together. They live in the shopping arcade known as Abenobashi with each of their parents owning different shops. The whole town is protected by containing perfect Chi and maintaining four statues, one in each point of the town (North, South, East and West). But when one of them is broken, strange things start happening and it seems to center around our two young heroes.

Where to go from here
With their town falling down around them, literally, they decided to follow a rainbow bridge which leads them to a castle they swear must be in France. However, it turns out that things start to look very similar until they realize that they are in the Abenobashi Shopping Arcade—only this happens to be the Sword and Sorcery Shopping Arcade. Here, they encounter random enemies they must fight (and end up always losing to) until they reach the final boss and destroy it by making it’s breast’s explode. Yeah…did I mention that there’s a mole with sunglasses who pops up to tell different things about the enemies like HP, name, etc?

It can’t get weirder than that
Oh, but it can. It can, and it will. The wonderful thing about MSAA is the hundreds of pop culture references they have thrown in. MSAA knows it’s only an anime and because of that, completely doesn’t take itself seriously. Here is a short list of the various Shopping Arcade’s they encounter and a few of the spoofs that you might find (don’t worry, these aren’t really plot spoilers because it’s hard to determine exactly what the plot even is):

The Great Milky Way Shopping Arcade

Spoofs: Gundam, Neon Genesis Evangelion, 2001: A Space Odyssey

The Hong Kong Combat Shopping Arcade

Spoofs: Rocky, Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Fighting Video Games, Dragonball Z

The Ancient Dinosaur Shopping Arcade

Spoofs: The Flintstones, Tarzan

The Hard Boiled Shopping Arcade

Spoofs: Film Noir, Gangster Movies, ‘Chibi’ Anime

The Exciting Campus Shopping Arcade

Spoofs: Hentai, All Girls High School

The Fairy Tale Shopping Arcade

Spoofs: Disneyland, Cinderella

The Battlefield Shopping Arcade

Spoofs: Rambo, The Bombing of Pearl Harbor (they bombed Pearl Barbor….Hilarious!)

The Hollywood Shopping Arcade

Spoofs: The Terminator, Knight Rider, Robocop, Escape From New York, Twister, Jaws, North By Northwest, Indiana Jones, The Matrix, Friday The 13th, The Truman Show, Titanic, Back To The Future, and many many more.

So, have I piqued your interest yet? If so, then go out and get this anime right now. Go to Fry’s, go to Best Buy, heck, you can even get it at Netflix. Just go get it now. There are only 13 episodes and if you can’t dedicate a little over 5 hours of your life to something as entertaining as this, then you’ve got a problem.

Final Thoughts
This is one of the most original, well-made, and downright hilarious anime’s I have ever seen. I guarantee there is NO way that you can’t get a laugh out of this. However, one word of warning. Do NOT listen to the American dubbed version for ANY reason. It is absolutely god-awful and does this show no justice at all. Simply watch the original Japanese with subtitles and you’ll do fine. I can not recommend Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi highly enough. Trust me, you’ll love it.

For those of you who don’t know who Tim Schafer is, then you’ve been missing out on some of the greatest games of all time. His most recent of those being Psychonauts. So, does it live up to the legendary Tim Schafer reputation? You damn right it does.

Learn From the Past
Tim Schafer is considered to be a god in the Adventure gaming world. More specifically, PC Adventure games. Back when times were simpler and games were point and click, Tim Schafer found a job at LucasArts (then known as LucasGames) and began working on games built around the SCUMM (Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion) engine. One of the first games he worked on was The Secret of Monkey Island. He was primarily a writer and it was because of his hard work Monkey Island became on of the funniest games available. Afterwords it was quickly followed up Monkey Island 2 – LeChuck’s Revenge. Again, the game was unrivaled in it’s hilarity and ingenuity. The most amazing thing about them was how perfectly they got the secret of comedy, timing. Timing in video games was, and still is, a hard thing to get, but Schafer and his teams seemed to hit on the head every time. Other titles that you might have heard of are Day of the Tentacle, Full Throttle, and one of my favorite games of all time, Grim Fandango.

Look Towards the Future
After Grim Fandango, Schafer took many of his Fandango teammates and formed there own company, Double Fine. This was back in July of 2000 and they’ve been working on Psychonauts ever since so you can only imagine how perfectly polished this game is. And it is! Throughout the entire game I never ran into a single bug! They’re that good. Anyway, unlike all of Schafer’s previous games, Psychonauts is not a point and click adventure game. It is a fully 3D action adventure game and unlike most games these days that strive for ‘realism’, Psychonauts has its own brand of almost cartoony graphics that fit perfectly into its world.

A story for the Ages
The story of Psychonauts centers around a young boy named Rasputin (but everyone calls him Raz) who’s sole dream is to become a secret government agent of the mind, aka a Psychonaut! To accomplish this goal, he runs away from the circus to join a summer camp for the psychically gifted. While there, he discovers a horrible plot to steal all the children’s brains and implant them in psychic death tanks to take over the world! Of course, it’s up to Raz to set things right, earn all his merit badges, and try to become a Psychonaut before his dad comes and picks him up. To do this, Raz will psychically enter people’s minds to try to unravel all the clues and help set things right.

A style of your own
To me, the most impressive thing about Psychonauts was its design. The main focus of the game is entering people’s minds. Inside you find a whole new world filled with figments of imagination, emotional baggage, and memory vaults. But the truly amazing thing about it is that each person’s mind is completely different from everyone else’s. They are completely unique. For example, at one point you enter the head of an old actress and enter the world of a theatre—complete with actors, sets, and even it’s own critic. At another point you go inside the head of a conspiracy theory nut. Inside is one of the most absurd and genius level designs I have ever seen. The world may look like 1950’s suburbia (complete with mailboxes, fire hydrants, and plastic pink flamingos, all of which can turn into cameras and take your picture. They’re always watching!) but that’s only until you look up and realize that what should be a straight road curves and twists in every direction imaginable. Imagine a roller coaster loop-de-loop and you’ll begin to see what I’m trying to describe. As you walk, the world around you moves and what was upside down and right above you is now rightside up and just as it should be. I could go on and talk about the levels where you’re a giant (Godzilla-size) and destroying a city inhabited by lungfish, or the level where you play a board game version of “Waterloo” against Napoleon. There are non-stop dance party levels, and even one that is literally a six-sided cube and you can travel from face to face. There is no simple way to describe the design and style of Psychonauts other than ‘extremely unique.’

And the Fun Starts Here
Remember when I said Tim Schafer was amazing at using comedy in his games? Well Psychonauts is no different than any other. The writing is so superb I can barely describe it. The timing of every line is perfect and cutscenes will have you rolling on the floor. And in regards to the cutscenes, they are placed apart just far enough to make you feel like you can’t wait to see the next one. They’re so good that you can end up playing the game only so that you can get to see the next cutscene. But Raz isn’t the only funny character. Your friends are just as good. Along your adventures you meet everyone from a Russian child who wants to fight bears, to a giant, deep-voiced, mutated lungfish named Linda. And who could forget the smooth-talking, “Issac Hayes”-voiced turtle, Sam Pokelope.

Gotta Catch ‘em All!
For me and those of you who like collection games (Pokémon, I’m looking at you) then Psychonauts is perfect. Every world has Emotional Baggage, Emotional Vaults, and most numerously Figments of Imagination. The latter of which can sometimes rise above 300 in a single world. Now, while collecting them all is not a necessity, it is needed if you want to reach level 100 and acquire all the Psychic powers (like telekinesis, levitation, and pyrokinesis just to name a few). If you do manage to reach level 100, you’re awarded with a scandalous cutscene involving Linda and Sam. ;)

In the end…
To sum it all up, Psychonauts is one of those completely original and purely fun games (lighting squirrels on fire never gets old) that come around all too rarely these days. It has no bugs (none that I found at least) and such a slick presentation, you can tell that a lot of people put a lot of work into making this game what it is. If you own an XBOX, you owe it to them, to the gaming community, and—most importantly—to yourself to try this game. I guarantee you’ll be hooked by minute one and laughing till it hurts.

5 out of 5 and my highest recommendation.

So..hmm, I’ve noticed that I start a lot of things out with “So”, so…I’ll try something different for now ;)

Well, (much better!) now that Qsk and I (or should I call you Quad…Lloyd is confusing me) have got this place pretty much up and running (with Qsk doing most of the work, of course), it’s time we started talking about reviews. One of the main reasons we decided to try this side by side weblog was so that we could review games together, as well as other forms of entertainment (that night at the strip club where I lost my innocence not included, Qsk). So the big question is, upon what scale should we put these games against? After much deliberation, many hurt feelings, and several binge drinking sessions later, we’ve agreed upon a 5 star scale. The breakdown is as follows (it may seem familiar to some):

Five stars: Our highest recommendation
Five-star games are a rarity. Overall, if a game gets a five, buy it. No matter what. I don’t care if you have to steal the money from the girl scouts outside selling cookies. If you’ve ever enjoyed watching pixels on a screen, you must own this game.

Four stars: Great
A fine example of gaming. A game with four stars is something that fans of the genre must own. Also, games that are terrific in their own right, but may have only a limited audience (like all Japanese games except Final Fantasy) may end up in this category.

Three stars: Average
These are fun-to-play, pretty solid titles with a few minor flaws. A game with three stars doesn’t have to suck, but it may just something that we’ve seen a million times. If it’s not something unoriginal, then it’s just average. If you really like the genre, then you can buy it.

Two stars: Fair
Not too much here to recommend. There are way too many crappy things about this game to let anyone but the truly die-hard fans get any kind of enjoyment out of. You can buy this if you want to, but we’ll damn sure make fun of you for it.

One star: Poor
We cannot recommend this title under any circumstances. It’s now a law in California that if you get caught with this game in your possession, you will be dragged out into the street and beaten for all to see. Seriously, there is nothing redeeming about this game at all. So if you buy this game, tread carefully. Governor Schwarzenegger’s made beating your ass senseless legal, and I intend to take full advantage of the law.

Now the only difference between Qsk’s reviews and my own is that I will be reviewing them from the stand of the average gamer. I will be fiercely sticking to this rating structure, while Qsk on the other hand will be reviewing things from much more of a skewed perspective; His own. What this means is that…well..I’m not entirely sure. I’ll let Qsk explain it when he’s ready too. Also, the stars themselves have yet to be created, so we can’t officially start reviewing anything yet, although I’m of the opinion that we don’t really need images of stars. Simply saying 4 out of 5 or whatever should be enough, but Qsk is the designer, and I’ll leave that up to him.

Anyway, I’ll try to wrap this thing up and let you get back to your oh-so busy lives. If you have any questions or ideas, please feel free to comment like always. Hopefully, we’ll get this system up and running soon so you can bask in our pathetic attempts to amuse ourselves. In the meantime, I’ll give you something to ponder. Did you ever wonder why American cheese doesn’t have feet?

So I recently got WarioWare: Touched! and I just want to say that Wario will make you his bitch. Yeah yeah, it might sound simple enough, use the stylus, play a minigame, repeat. But after the 25th or 30th round, they get so incredibly fast, it’ll smoke your mind.

Touching is Good
So the big selling point of WW: Touched! is of course, the touching. Each character has minigames designed around a certain aspect of using the stylus, except for the karaoke robot. He just wants you to blow. For example, Wario likes you to tap, while Kat and Ana like you to slice. Other uses include scribbling, circling, and dragging. And then there are the weird ones, like 9-Volt and his old school Nintendo related minigames. One of my favorites is probably one of 9-Volt’s games in which there is a GBA on the screen with the original WarioWare’s nose picking game in which you have to then tap the A button on the screen to pick the nose.

Laugh till it Hurts
This game is funny. Hands down, plain and simple, no doubt about it, and whatever other clichéd phrase you can think of. There is such a twisted sense of the bizarre that you can’t play this game for more than a minute without seeing something so weird, so odd, so ‘what-the-fuck-were-they-smoking’ that you can’t help but break out laughing. Here is but an example of some of the game’s instructions: “Bubbles have only two purposes in life: confusing animals and irritating adults. Choose one and run with it!” or “Hey, Nerdy McGeekerson! You might be a little less of a dweeb if you joined a band! But you gotta learn how to play an instrument, first!”

Toys for Tots
Probably my favorite part of the game is the toy room. After completing different people’s minigames you start acquiring toys. These are essentially minigames that have no point. Also, they are some of the most random things I’ve ever seen in a game. Almost every one makes you say “why the hell did they put that in this game??” Because they could, my friend, because the could. Some of the toys you acquire include: a metronome, a calculator (that only adds or subtracts), a wind chime that blows when you blow in the microphone, a kitchen timer, a parrot (that randomly repeats things you say), and even a big piece of Jello which has absolutely no purpose other than to jiggle when you touch it. So far I’ve acquired about 30 of these things and each one is crazier than the last.

Bottom Line
WarioWare: Touched! may not have packed the same punch as the original WarioWare: Mini MicroGames did a couple years ago, but with 180 new minigames and a completely new way to play each one of them, this is one game that you’ll be keeping in your DS for months to come.