Gaming Journal

[Wildfire the Dragon]

I just thought of a small journal to talk about video games you've played and some you owned. Tell us about them. Are they cool, do they suck, what's cool, what's not. Just give us a good and bad thing about the game.

[Lord of the Dance]

Yoshi's Island: Pros:Terrific game in every way...
Cons: It's a very old game if you want the original version, and the remake doesn't seem all that great in my opinion.

[Alpha]

Ookay then, well, I like Mario Tennis, but is has an error on it. You see, they make believe people are just plug and play but I just look at EVERYTHING IN EACH SINGLE GAME. I saw this error in the starting movie when wario and Waluigi are walking by thei so called tournament board. When you look closely, you see a picture of Toad's team. I just did almost everything in the game including completing the chart with the ace level. Well I Have more games to post I can post them here again right? I'm so lazy that I don't wanna put all of the games I have

[Lord of the Dance]

I can't read half of what you just said could you type a little clearer, please? Pay a little more attention to what you're writing...

[Wildfire the Dragon]

He said that if you look closely in the Mario Power Tennis starting video, look at the boards with the players, look and you see Toad and Toadette's pictures.
Don't forget that I saw more of the bloopers in the Yoshi Cafe but not in the game.

I have alot of favs. but I'll start with this one.
Spyro: A Hero's Tail

+ Graphics Finally Improved, Good Humor, Control, Cool moves, almost everything improved. WAY BETTER THAN ENTER THE DRAGONFLY!

- Sometimes it way to complicated like's Spark's Mini Games, does seem a little short at times.

[Alpha]

yosheechamp said:

I can't read half of what you just said could you type a little clearer, please? Pay a little more attention to what you're writing...

Sorry is just that I feeled tired

[Lord of the Dance]

Understood.

I don't have Mario Power Tennis, so I had no idea what you were talking about in the first place... it's sorted out now I thought you had meant the first one.

Hm... Yoshi's Story:
Pros: great game for younger kids, easy to grasp controls and such.

Cons: Still a 2-D Yoshi game, main game can be too easy for older kids, some think that Yoshi song is annoying.

[bloodoftheyoshi]

Damnit, I never played Yoshi's Story. I'm desperately trying to get my hands on it though. And we all know that N64 emulation sucks badly.

Mario Power tennis, Ay ay ay.. it was a fun game, but Nintendo is milking poor Mario. All these sports titles and whatnot, I hunger for a good old fashioned Super Mario platformer darn it! Sometimes I wonder if Miyamoto is running out of ideas...

[Enrique]

Miyamoto probably is running out of ideas. You ever notice that the games start to repeat themselves? Yeah, Mario Kart: Double Dash had lots of nice changes, but not the same with Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour. So, I wonder how the new sports games starring Mario on the DS will turn out. Thus, If Nintendo wants to do sports, I think they should stink with the Mario Kart stuff, because they do seem to do a good job on that, otherwise, leave all the sports games to a company that actually specializes in sports games. And preferably programmed by people whose names I can pronounce without having to transliterate first.

As for Yoshi's Story, It was kinda cool for a while, but the story was too short. Plus, it presents absolutely no challenge to the game whatsoever.If they were going to do something like that again, don't squash Yoshi's Island into a book; make it an actual island. And have the Yoshis actually co-operating together, not just being hopeful you'll select them for the next level.

And for my own takes: Mario Party 6. Are you kidding me? I unlocked the entire game in less than a month! I just went through Solo Mode so many times that it becomes a routine, collected all the stars I needed, and, boom, everything unlocked. I had more difficulty on a strategy game with practically nonexistent AI.

[Lord of the Dance]

enrique said:

Miyamoto probably is running out of ideas. You ever notice that the games start to repeat themselves? Yeah, Mario Kart: Double Dash had lots of nice changes, but not the same with Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour. So, I wonder how the new sports games starring Mario on the DS will turn out. Thus, If Nintendo wants to do sports, I think they should stink with the Mario Kart stuff, because they do seem to do a good job on that, otherwise, leave all the sports games to a company that actually specializes in sports games. And preferably programmed by people whose names I can pronounce without having to transliterate first.

As for Yoshi's Story, It was kinda cool for a while, but the story was too short. Plus, it presents absolutely no challenge to the game whatsoever.If they were going to do something like that again, don't squash Yoshi's Island into a book; make it an actual island. And have the Yoshis actually co-operating together, not just being hopeful you'll select them for the next level.

And for my own takes: Mario Party 6. Are you kidding me? I unlocked the entire game in less than a month! I just went through Solo Mode so many times that it becomes a routine, collected all the stars I needed, and, boom, everything unlocked. I had more difficulty on a strategy game with practically nonexistent AI.

Mario Sports games I can live with, because they are some of the only videogame sports I play.

Yoshi's Story could have been longer, but at least it didn't have Mario (or Baby Mario) in it. I would have loved it to be a little longer, harder, and it could have repeated some of the strategies (like rolling wheels across bottomless pits).

Mario Party 6? It's getting OLD. I liked the first 3 ones, they rocked, but then as the graphics got better, the game itself got worse. It could have been a lot better. It hardly seemed to have a story line "Solo Mode" Shlomo mode. Make it a good, hard game with lots of fun minigames

[Enrique]

I agree. They should just forget about the so-called "story line," and just cram as many mini-games as they can onto a disc, but have some interesting ways to unlock the good ones (just something like play a certain mini-games x amount of times).

As for the Mario Sports games, I can understand stuff that is more individual sports like golf and tennis, but the proposed DS games baseball and soccer? They would practically only have two teams! (Mario vs. Bowser) Well, I guess that would be okay, as they would cram more features or stuff into it.

[red.yoshi]

starcraft - excellent game! the battle.nets rpgs are awsome!
final fantasy XI - another very great game that keeps you playing for hours on end.
pokemon (all versions) im waiting for new games to come out X P
zelda game series
and others that i cant remember right now. mostly rpgs.

[contention]

Ok ok, so the game I am about to talk about is not Nintendo related. But its first version was very Nintendo related. As we all know the game was known as Conkers Bad Fur Day, and I can't talk about it much here because well I stick to the rules and the game is a mature subject. Though on the new version for Xbox many fifth graders play it for reasons unknown. We all know the old N64 version started with Conker getting a little.. woozy and waking up to find himself in a strange place, close to home.. yet he couldn't find his way back. The whole adventure takes place in the land of Windy. In Conkers Live and Reloaded the game was rebuilt for the Xbox with much better graphics than I can explain. Every strand of hair on a squirrel look so real, and every stitch on a teddy looks like its really there. The Reloaded part of the game stands for the fact that the game has been redone with new graphics, and the Tediz have a very new look. Conker finally wears pants! Woooo Hooo Conker! The Live part stands for the online section of the game which is played in War Like circumstances. The BFD section is the exact same as the N64 version, just much better looking and upgraded music. Unfortuantly the game lacks replay and longness. It's very simple to beat, and theres no reason to play it again, because there is no difficulty setting, like every other platformer.

Now to stretch into the online section. You have like six classes to choose from. Those clases can be Sneekrs, Demolishers, Long Rangers, Grunts, Sky Jockeys, and Thermophiles. Each one has their own skills, and they have objectives like storm a beach, capture the flag and so on and so forth. Each one is very entertaining in its own way, and allows you to show off your skills. Sneekers can hide and so on and so forth to capture flags, the rest are self explainable. I have already beaten and killed about 420 or so other players and died about 300 or so times. I guess you can see my stats at community.conker.com/live/playerdetails.htm?gt=Contention

[UMS Author Lava]

[glow=red,2,300]EarthBound[/glow]
Pros+: Funny, soulful, all that stuff
Cons-: Enemies are too fast on the field
[glow=blue,2,300]Kingdom Hearts[/glow]
Pros+: Almost EVERYTHING
Cons-: Not much, except Velvet(my sister) says I HAVE to play FF7 and FF8 to understand everything

[Angela]

we cant be Toad and Toadette on MarioPowerTennis huh? i don't really think so... anyway
eum.... sometimes on my MarioSunshine, the camera... gets stuck behind a house or something other annying stuff. it's annoy me really hard!! and sometimes the C-stick dosn't help, so it suck even more then =|

Oh and another thing suck! if example Nintendo64 sold out MarioKart64, another GameBoy came up with the same idea! like YoshisIsland on SNES, the same game on GBA. that suck... not in all ways, but many ways

[Sky]

I don't think I'll talk about one game only but a generation of games to be quite exact.

These days, in my own humble opinion, games have become too easy for their own good. I remember playing through my old SNES games the first time through, and they gave me much more for my money compared to games today. Of course, I'm not shunning all recently games at all, but there's not much these days that provides me with a decent challenge and/or lots of fun per sitting. Seems like with the increase in bit strength, game producers/developpers have been putting more and more effort into making the game as "eye candyish" as possible, and don't seem to give it the challenge games used to have. Do I just have too much gaming experience that everything's easy now, or are games really lacking there recently? I think the latter.

EDIT: Another intriguing question, did going from 2D to 3D decrease game difficulty level? More maneuverability compared to up/down/left/right makes a difference too. Of course, going back to 2D would be odd, but just a little thing I thought could be interesting to delve into.

[contention]

YW you make quite the point in your statement. In truth games really have lost all their difficutly nearly, and you can easily beat a game in one day if you spend enough time on it. The only game this year that has taken me at least a week was Doom 3, and that was merely because I enjoyed turning it off to save more because I loved it. Games have gotten so easy that any age can play them, and that might be the reason why. Games have always been geared to every age group, but they keep getting easier and easier as you said. Maybe to make us feel good to beat a game? Either way, you're right, 2D games did last much longer than our 3D games of today.

I think you make a good point by saying the 3D gives you lots of view point and knowing what to do, while 2D games you can only see so much and have limited movement thus the game is harder because you cannot do to much, yet these games are more fun because they are challanging and can hold your attention with the gameplay and storyline. Also keep in mind, as you said you used to have an SNES, we all in our own way grew up with the older systems. Inevitably those games were harder and more enjoyable, and still would be to us because they were are first and most challanging. If you were to have played a SMB game when you were five and then play it now chances are if you wanted to you could wrap it up in not to long.

Maybe this is why we see so many more games going online because they have gotten much easier to beat and cannot hold our attention. Of course, I'd rather play by myself than have some five or ten year old child curse at me when I blow him to pieces. Some good games that actually take patience to beat would still be American Mcgee's Alice, Myst games and so on and so forth, games where you have to think about your next move, not run in and shoot everything. Even Mario games have gotten much easier, yet as you said very beautiful.

If you notice, one thing game reviewers always look at are the graphics. I don't care about the way the game looks as long as it is challanging, fun, and addicting.

[Enrique]

That's what I think about first-person shooters. THEY'RE ALL THE SAME!!! You kill terrorists with guns! That's it! Seriously, all of these game developers are more concerned with the graphics and the sounds of the game they forget about the actual game.

Which is why I could never be a professional gamer. I don't like to entertain the idea of upgrading my computer every two seconds because of one game that is not unlike all the rest. Really, they're doing a favor for the hardware companies, not themselves.

[Sky]

contention said:

If you notice, one thing game reviewers always look at are the graphics. I don't care about the way the game looks as long as it is challanging, fun, and addicting.

I couldn't have said it better myself. For an example, I was playing Final Fantasy I that other day, and a few people I know were talking about how it was awful and boring, the graphics were bad, etc. Too bad for them, they don't know what they're missing out on. May have had bad graphics, and yes, the storyline was sometimes hard to follow, but interesting nonetheless, and it was challenging, and that's what I really like.

Continuing on Final Fantasy for example yet again. I remember playing FFX-2 and liking it, it's a good game, but somewhere deep down I felt disappointed. First time through, 25 hours. "25 hours? An FF? This can't be! argh! *explodes*" ...ok... I didn't explode, but I felt like adding humor for once. Anyway, just compare that to the older ones which took 40-70 hours to complete first time through, without any cinematics either, just plain playing. I don't know, I felt like it could've been longer, but that's me. I feel that this goes along the lines of today's trend of "Up graphics, down the rest" trend.

[contention]

You sure got that right YW, the old FF games were much longer and much more filled to the brim with good old fashioned playing, unlike the new FF-X2, which could have had a bit more in it, but thats alright that game did hold my attention. One thing I do enjoy in games nowadays would be the music upgrades. While the gameplay may be going down which is a big, very big negative toward the whole industry, they have quite caught my intrest with game music. My favorite by far would have been American Mcgee's Alice music, adding the creepy tone to the play.

I'm sure while running through a demented dream land you don't want to hear happy christmas bells or strange grunge rockers yelling, which really caught that game for being good. Same as FF, they all have great music. Especially the Otherworld Theme when you fight Sin in FFX which is by far my favorite battle music, even better than Sephiroth to me.