Wildhalcyon

I need to spend ROCKTOBER learning how to play the guitar. The instrument of ROCK.

Pretty much by playing Brutal Legend until my eyes bleed fire.

I've really enjoyed it so far, but you have to understand what you're getting yourself into with it. Its somewhere between a full-scope game and an interactive screensaver, occupying a small niche in a no-mans-land that unfortunately gets it some pretty paltry reviews from people who expect a total game experience. I would happily recommend it to anyone I thought might like it.

For a console plagued with shovelware and party games, Endless Ocean has taken a unique twist on the definition of "casual". Its not the next Twilight Princess or Super Mario Galaxy, but its not bad by any stretch of the imagination. Its amazingly well-polished. (I've heard some reviewers remark negatively about the control scheme. I've had no trouble with it personally).

Alliance!!!

Alliance FTW!

Alliance, rock on!

Alliance!.. yes! Definitely.

I've had some mixed bags with this. When I was younger, I got some great games on the NES and SNES from my relatives. Usually they had absolutely no idea what it was about, but that's how I ended up with both Simcity and Pilotwings. Lately, its been a little even-handed. Last year, I got Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance (sweet!) and Baten Kaiton Origins (not so sweet...). Since it was from my wife, I returned that second one for about $15.00 and picked up Tales of the Abyss instead. It all worked out good.

Heck, a gift is a gift, and even if it sucks, at least they meant well. Its actually pretty amusing to head down to a game store, find one of those $5.00 bargin bin suck-fests and pick it up as a gift for someone just to piss them off.

I think its a fine game. 7/10 sounds about right.

Surprisingly, this review didn't touch upon some of the issues I thought were pretty severe:

- The house construction mode is ill-designed and devastatingly simplistic. You can't even paint your house with the essences. It would be fairly simple, in my mind, to allow you to paint the outside of your house with the essence of choice.

- The furniture construction is pretty simple too. There could have been more shapes. Sometimes I'm frustrated that they didn't add a quarter-sphere so I could make a perfectly rounded corner. All blocks are done on a grid basis - so you can't center a 1x1 block on a 2x2 block. I've made some pretty fun things, but its all been trying to tease some ingenuity out of the editor.

- The lag is abysmal. You mentioned it, but it needs to be reiterated. It didn't look this bad in preview videos, which makes me think they were either not working on the same hardware, or they screwed up a build somewhere. Its tolerable for the most part, but sometimes it gets so bad that its not playable.

- Extracurricular activities are sparse. You show a screenshot of flower planting. Yeah - that doesn't happen. You can plant trees (limited, not like Harvest Moon or Animal Crossing), fish (very basic - not as fun as Harvest Moon or Animal Crossing), and prospect in specific locals (laggy, a little boring). Unfortunately, you're also limited to the sims that come with the game. No moving in some crazy characters you've created and named yourself. This was one of the points that made me really dislike Animal Crossing, and now its in this game too. Bah.

- The intro screens are much too long. It takes about 2 minutes to go from selecting the disc channel to selecting your town. Then you have a loading screen. Exit house, loading screen. Enter hotel/workshop/anywhere, loading screen. The first 5 minutes of any play session is pretty sleep inducing.

Overall, I think the game design was a great idea on paper. Probably a great idea halfway through implementation. At some point EA decided to publish it half-polished. I enjoy playing it for 30 minutes to an hour per day, but any more than that and it gets mind-numbing.

I suppose I get to be devil's advocate here. I think both the article and the commenters here are wrong.

The Metroid series would have languished in 2D, but at the same time, an essential piece of the Metroid puzzle was lost with the Prime series. The first-person shooter aspect is just one piece of the puzzle. The game tried to be a little edgier and add some cliched plot elements like super-empowering goo. While there was plenty of backtracking, I thought the maps lacked sophistication - except for the Chozo area each map was fairly linear, particularly the mines. Adding darkness and suspense felt out of place for the series too - its something much more in place in the FPS genre. Its not something that was really present in Metroid and Super Metroid, which focused more on puzzle solving and enemies-as-puzzle-elements.