New review. This time for The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction for the Gamecube. Its a good game, so check it out.
August 2005 Archives
When it comes to superheroes, I never really considered the Hulk one. In fact, I still don’t even after playing this game. While he does have superpowers and fights in unbelievable battles, Dr. Banner spends more time running away and trying to find a cure for the Hulk inside him than fighting villains or trying to make the world somewhat better. Considering the Hulk’s power and lack of control, it is no wonder that military organizations are out to capture or even kill him. However, it is still fun as hell to run up walls, use buses as skateboards, and knock out people just my running.
The game starts out with Dr. Banner trying to find a way to destroy the Hulk and the emerging third persona growing inside him as well. Because of military action, his research is destroyed and he is left to start his quest from scratch. However, he does have a little help in this game. Dr. Banner’s friend and psychiatrist, Dr. Samson, is using subliminal messages to give the Hulk mission objectives so they have at least a chance at stopping the military and gaining information and equipment to aide in his goal. As with all Marvel games, you soon fight off large mechanical suits and even other Gamma poisoned people gifted with various superpowers.
The game play is simple, fun, and versatile. The actions flow better than those in the Spider-Man 2 Movie game. Having a list to upgrade and gain new moves also proves helpful as well. The controls are very responsive and the adjustable camera also makes the game much easier. And despite being “the strongest there is,” the game is actually difficult in spots unless the player thinks about what they are doing. But the excess in healing items does make the game easier and more enjoyable. While playing, you shouldn’t think “what would the Hulk do” but rather “what will actually work”. For a comparison of game play, think GTA with superpowers and the idea of stealing cars by picking them off the ground.
The Graphics are pretty good as well. The character design and dynamics seem on par. The humans seem generic and small, but it is hard to stand out next to a big green monster. Still, there is nothing special about the sound or music of the game. Nothing is inappropriate and in need of using one’s personal music, but there is nothing worth buying the soundtrack. That is, if a soundtrack for sale exists. If it had the piano music theme from the old television show, then it might be worth it.
To be honest, I have no gripes with the game. It’s a fun fight fest in various locations. I highly recommend this game for all players, unless they prefer games that follow the lead of whining pretty boys with no proactive bones in their body.
Pros: Fun full range rampage, good graphics, and nice difficulty that requires players to think before fighting.
Cons: Nothing of real interest in the sounds department.
Comic's up. A little late for a few reasons. 1: I'm kind of lazy at the moment. 2: I've spent the last two or three weeks constantly calling and visiting Kent State trying to get my enrollment worked out, and constantly getting caught in red tape. 3: I broke down and bought the new Hulk game. But the good news is that there is finally a great Hulk game out now. And for those confused with the new comic, don't worry. It is a set up for next weeks comic.
Two new Sticks & Stones are up (#7 & #8. Sorry for the delay, I have been busy with some things and it slipped my mind. I promise it won't happen again...
In other news, the PSP firmware 2.0 was not released as promised by Sony. Looks like we may be looking at next week. Who knows, it may be mid September till it gets released here. Not sure why they keep pushing it back, maybe they are adding new stuff to it. Probably not though.
New Comic. Again, featuring our now pants-wearing hero. But hey, at least he proves that there are such things as good elves. And Elves that choose normal names instead of stupid ones, like silverleaf or something equally lame. In other news, I'm still waiting for the release of Dynasty Warriors Advance. Which I belive also has no lame elves.
Here is a pretty cool program for you Mac users with a PSP. Ry sets up a server on your Mac that will let you control iTunes and DVD, as well as read your email and look at your clock. It is still in early development but I have a feeling this will go far.
I remember a while back I made something similar for my Xbox. I used XBMC's webserver and my PSP with a custom webpage to control everything in XBMC. It was pretty nice to use my PSP to watch videos and listen to music on my Xbox.
But If you have a Mac and own a PSP, check it out.
As for movie games go, they are either created very soundly and offer a game experiences that go beyond the movie or they just end up as a poorly created promotion for the movie. Unfortunately Batman Begins falls under the latter category. Instead of innovated game play and missions beyond that of what was shown in the movie, the game pretty much was a short annoyance of lackluster game play that one finishes in two or three days. The game acts as either a poor Metal Gear copy or tiresome version of Burnout. Along with a lack of interesting enemies and no boss battles, the game might as well just get rid of the stealth command because you are always need to sneak around everywhere. And the two Burnout knockoff Batmobile stages are only during their first minute or two, after a while even I wanted Rachel to die from the “fear” gas instead of having to go through the uninspired car battle. In general, this was just a bad game.
The controls were not confusing at least. It was responsive and it was easy to remember and pull off the necessary commands for the mission. Unfortunately the lock-picking and hacking mini-games were just tiresome events that failed to add anything but irritation. Also, I could not understand why Batman would not use his Batarangs on any enemy and only threw them at objects. But I also wondered why they acted like throwing stars instead of boomerangs. They are called Batarangs, not Throwing Batars or anything similar. Of course I was also wondering why he refused to kill thugs, thieves, murders, and pretty much everyone else but felt no loss when bringing forth the near certain death of justice hungry ninjas.
From what I can gather the game follows the movie scene for scene but adds nothing new, aside from some extra half-ass costumes. Other movie titles like the Spider-Man games at least had some side stories of Spider-man adventures that happened between parts of the movie. It almost seemed like EA used existing game programming to paste together a half-ass movie game to promote the movie, kind of like how the old Batman movies were poorly made toy advertisements.
Sound and graphic wise, there are no real complaints, but nothing stellar either. Aside from the demonic Batman hallucination that some of the criminals see. That was the only part that I enjoyed thoroughly, and unfortunately it was not available as an extra costume to unlock.
There is no replay value, unless you want to finish the game a second time in Adam West’s costume. Even the Hall of Fear was pretty disappointing. Instead of concept art or anything fun, it was just a poorly done enemy bio that involves you running in front of prison cells. You could not even attack the prisoners. This is clearly a rental game for sure.
Compared to other Batman games released, this one is not that bad. But compared to Metal Gear Solid, Burnout, and any other game it borrowed heavily from, it was utter garbage.
Pros: Good if you want another Burnout, Metal Gear, or Tom Clancy game. Very good if you like doing the same types of actions over and over. Also very good if you like inane mini-games.
Cons: Not much original game play. To heavily based in the movie and next to no missions or events outside the movie. A lack of good extra costumes. A lack of special features for the extra costumes. No real replay value. Easily finished in one to three days. Might as well see the movie instead.
Sorry the comic is late folks. My internet crapped out on me Friday before I could upload the file. But at least its finally back on today. And as an extra bonus, I'll upload a new review for the site as well later on tonight. But now I have to hunt up some dinner.
Edit: the review for Batman Begins is up now.
Since Tony posted a wallpaper for PSP, I might as well show everyone what I've been working on. A PSP portal.
So far, it only shows the last 10 posts we have made on the site. It has been formatted to fit your PSP browser perfectly. While the main site still loads and works just fine, I thought it would be nice to have something that loads faster and a bit cleaner. I am deciding if I want to make other parts of the site PSP compatible. But there will be more to come.
Here is my first TGZ PSP background. click the image for full size. Expect many more.
The new installment of the Sticks and Stones MMORPG is now up. This makes a total of six, which means it is half-way over.
In other news, the US PSP 2.0 firmware has been pushed back to the week of August 15, 2005 (previously aug 12). Xbox 360 has been added to EB's inventory at 299.99 with most games at 59.99. Summer is always slow for game related news, but it should start picking up in early fall as the 360 gets ready to launch. And hopefully Dive can get the actual weekly comic soon (not my poor excuse for humor).
-Ryo out
The Fifth installment of Sticks and Stones: "An MMORPG Story" is now up.
New Comic. If you have no idea what's going on in it, either play a Dynasty Warriors game or study ancient Chinese battles. After some Scanner issues, I've finally been able to complete the comic. The new appartment in Kent is pretty good, aside from the students who keep trying to earn some points or something like that. Hopefully Kent State will let me in this Fall for classes.
As Stndrddc posted earlier, the current rumor for the Xbox 360 release date is November 4, 2005. There have also been unconfirmed reports that it will cost $299.99 with games such as Perfect Dark Zero and Project Gotham Racing 3 costing $59.99.
OH, and after surfing the net, I found an interesting picture.
The Retail Box
The price isn't all that surprising as other game consoles were released around this price in the past. As manufacturing costs rise to make and develop games, so does the price tag. Expect to see most, if not all, games to be around $60. There have been other reports that the PS3 will not be cheap (maybe $399 or even $499?)
The third panel of Sticks & Stones is now up. The fourth panel will be up later this week.
In other news, our visitor numbers greatly increased in July. We welcome all of our new visitors and hope you keep coming back. I decided to give up homebrew on my PSP and update to firmware 2.0. It was a big decision to make and since I barely played any of the games that were on there, I decided I could use another web browser. The browser is a lot faster than the Wipeout and the 2ch browsers that have been released. There are other improvements, such as the new AVC MP4 codec, but I haven't tried those out yet. Updating to the new firmware is NOT for everyone though. If you have version 1.5 and play homebrew apps and emulators a lot, then do not update. Those programs are not compatible with 2.0.
