Hotel Dusk Room 215 Review (Nintendo DS game)

Last week I was in the mood to play a different type of game rather than the typical game I usually play. While sifting through my games I found my Hotel Dusk Room 215 copy and though “Hm have no played this one yet”. I heard amazing comments about this game and since I am a fan of Trace Memory and detective sleuthing games, I figured this was my different game to play. Hotel Dusk is not a hard game to play but it can be a little tricky at times. I had a fair share of moments where I was lost in what I needed to do and searched over everything more than once till I found what I needed.

The story for the game I found to be very interesting. Initially I thought that the player would focus only on one story which would be the main character Kevin Hyde. The game certainly cleared that up for me right away. There are multiple mysteries that are revolved around the Hotel Dusk. Each person staying there during the time Kevin is there were brought there for their reasons. Now you being the curious man you are in the game need to figure it all out. This was one of my favorite things about the game, that being every character had a tie to something you were looking into that related to the person you are trying to find. I thought that was really interesting. Ultimately you do find out the information you need about the person you were looking for at the end.

Hotel Dusk had a unique way of playing the game. Instead of your typical top to bottom play, you played the game like you were holding a book. It makes you feel like you’re playing a book instead of reading it.  The top screen (on the left) showed the visuals of what your character was looking at. So say in the bottom (right screen) you were looking at the outline of a desk then the left screen would show you all the colorful images. Unlike the right screen which shows you as a red dot and and arrow showing which was you’re facing. It also shows the outlines of everything in the room and it’s also where your search and other buttons are. Other characters in the game were blue dots, as an fyi. Also the puzzles were not too complicated to figure out but some of them were a little bit harder to figure out than others.

The art work I thought was really interesting. I loved the fact that the characters where mostly black and white (color in certain parts) and had the sketchy look to them. It really made me feel like I was in an old detective movie! Even the music added to the effect of it as well. At certain times it gives you this feel of being an old school detective. Even though your character use to be one he’s a salesman now. The music however does not make him seem like a salesman when he wants answers though.

Another aspect of the game I liked was the characters personalities. Each one was completely different it really added to each conversation Kevin has with them. Some people he was all down to the nitty gritty demanding answers; while others such as the child Melissa he was a little softer with. I just liked how you could feel the difference in conversation with each person.

I highly recommend this game. It was something I was always interested in playing and a friend of mine, Tami, told me how awesome it was since she played through it. So I am glad to have purchased it and finally got around to beating it!

Score: 10/10

Cooking Mama 4: Kitchen Magic Review

I am a huge fan of the Cooking Mama games, although they do tend to be a bit repetitive and have a few new features added to try to make them different. Cooking Mama 4: Kitchen Magic just like your typically cooking mama with bonus games to play but in 3D! You have recipes  already there for you to choose from and start to make. Once you finish one of them Mama gives you presents, these tend to usually be new recipes, kitchen accessories,  Mama accessories, or new mini games. I’ll break it down by the different categories that you can choose from once beginning up the game.

Box Art

Lets Cook is traditional Cooking Mama game where you pick a recipe and win more ecipies and other prizes mentioned above. Lets Combine allows you to take certain recipies that you have already created and stick them together for example you could combine steak with snow cones. Lets Help is a mini game area to help out Mama in various tasks she has lined up for you to do such as catching items or keeping items from falling off a table. Lets Play Together allows you to play online with multiple players. I am not sure if this is restricted online play for just local area only. I never tried it out. Finally you have Mama’s Gallery where you can see everything you have won to spruce up your kitchen and Mama.

A feature added to the Lets Cook portion of the game shows stars next to the recipe  This means you are able to do certain tasks for cooking it in a different way then the screen tells you. For example you could tilt your DS to the side to drain water from rice instead of using the stylus to tip it for you.

I felt though since it is so similar to the other cooking mama games trying to pay though it all at once got to be a little boring after awhile. Some of the recipes are the same from previous games while others were brand new. Since I am such a huge fan of this series I feel they need to bring something new to the table for it. They have made the Wii versions have interesting ideas done to them so I feel that the DS/3DS versions should get the same type of treatment as well.

There is no high replay value on this game. It probably will not be picked up again for a few years.

Score: 6/10

Starcraft 2 Wings of Liberty and Heart of the Swarm

A double feature review! I decided to put these two games together because I can easily compare the differences and it follows on the same story line.

Starcraft 2 is a RTS game for those who do not know. Starcraft 2 follows the story of Jim Raynor going out and trying to save the love of his life Sarah Kerrigan from destroying the world. He also got wrapped up in some other fun work collecting relics and learning of the worlds impending doom from the gods. The story then continues after Jim with Sarah Kerrigan and her story as the Queen of Blades. She is dead set on killing her enemy Mengsk and getting her revenge which is another key point in her story as well. Then when it is all said and done we now must wait for the Protoss story to emerge from Blizzard and not sure how long that one will take. These two games have such a different feel story wise though. Wings of Liberty was not as sad of a story as Heart of the Swarm is. Sure it shows the struggles Raynor has to go through but in Heart of the Swarm the choices Kerrigan makes affect the rest of her life forever and tough choices that she will have to decide on doing.

Screenshot WoL

Screenshot HotS

That was just a very brief overview without giving away too much of the stories in Wings of Liberty and Heart of the Swarm. Now for game play  They pretty much play the same but there were some changes made in Heart of the Swarm that were not in Wings of Liberty. When controlling Zergs you can control hundreds of them, which I believe this is not the same to be true for the other races. I was unable to do so in Wings of Liberty I did not try it in Heart of the Swarm…but I believe it is a Zerg only trait. Another thing changed was how you upgraded your army and character. In Wings of Liberty Jim was unable to be upgraded himself since he was not really out on the field much. Troops got upgraded through collecting Zerg and Protoss relics and the more you collected the more you could upgrade different features for your army. You also had an Armory to upgrade multiple traits of different units as well. In Heart of the Swarm however you played Kerrigan a lot so you had to level her up by finding the different Zerg and Protoss relics to get her to learn new traits. The units were only able to be upgraded specially once and you could also change another trait of theirs whenever you wanted. I wasn’t too crazy about it myself, I wish they kept something similar to what they had for unit upgrades from Wings of Liberty instead of changing it whenever but also keeping the evolution missions for the units as well. I thought the Kerrigan leveling was interesting but again wish it was more of a perm choice for different upgrades/moves for her as well. Half of them I did not use.

WoL Upgrades

Kerrigan Upgrades

WoL Unit Upgrades

Unit Upgrades

Music was your typical Starcraft music some pieces were more enjoyable to listen to more so than others. It gave it that space and war feel. Graphics were great looking. One of my favorite parts of the SC2 games is the amazing cut scenes, I feel they add a lot to the game and it’s nice to see the character interactions with one another. Even before you start a mission it’s nice to see the communication you can create with everyone.

Cut Scene

Cut Scene

Starcraft 2 games are a game you can certainly play more than once, especially since they have achievements and if you are an achievement collector like I am you will enjoy going back playing it all over again. Even if you aren’t an achievement collector the replay value is high up there. It is highly recommended that you beat Wings of Liberty first, otherwise you will be lost in Heart of the Swarm. There is also online play for both games to play against others around the world. There are achievements for that as well and it’s a completely new experience. I personally do not play much on the online with others. Some other options you can choose to do as well are challenge missions, training, and fight against the AI.

I really liked both of these games and I am sure to play through them again in the near future.

Score Separate:      Wings of Liberty 9/10                  Heart of the Swarm 9/10

Melon Journey Review

The name make you think this will be a game about a melon going on a journey right? Well completely wrong about the melon and about 50% wrong about the journey. So what is this game really about?

Menu

You’re main character is a rabbit girl who is camping in the woods with her friend who is a rabbit boy. You can pick to play as a boy and find your female friend instead as well; so it’s your choice. Your mission in this game is to wander around a world called Melon in order to find clues about where your friend may have gone. For you to obtain this clues you must first look for the items that some of the residents of the world want in order to trade information with you. The residents of this world are also animals ranging from cats to hamsters to hedgehogs and more.

As I stated before you have to find your friend and in order to do so you must obtain items to trade for information. While you go around collecting items you can check your menu to read the description of the item, this can give you a clue of who you need to give it to, unless you can remember what everyone tells you about certain things they are missing. Items can be found in resident houses or the outside world. It’s a fairly easy straight forward game in terms of how to play it.

Gameplay

The music was retro sounding, this went very well with the feel of the game which had a retro look to it. I feel it was trying to mimic a Gameboy type of game which is black and grey but instead this was more of a green and white color scheme. Certainly added some pop to the game and give it that authentic feel.

Retro Look

This is one of those once play through type of RPG Maker games. I feel it does not have much replay value to it, but it is something to certainly play if you cannot decide on what to really play. In order to play this you will need the RPG Maker 2003 RTP downloaded. I have provided the download link for the game.

Link: http://rpgmaker.net/games/4204/

Over all I did very much enjoy this game for the simplicity of it and the retro feel it did bring.

Screenshot

Score: 7/10

Anime Brief Reviews

The past few weeks the Spring season of anime has started up coming out with some good-looking shows. For me though I am watching some of the older animes and finishing them up before poking my toes into the new season.

Cuticle Tantei Inaba:

When I saw previews for this anime I thought it was going to be your semi-serious and funny type of show. It’s really more of a silly, random type of show where everyone acts serious for maybe about 6 seconds, then it’s back to chibi and humor. I actually really liked it, despite it being different from what I originally thought it was going to be.

A bit of background on the show! The story…well of what story is there…it seems like the main character Inaba is looking for his brother while at the same time crime fighting to bring in the notorious goat Don Valentino and his team. Inaba use to be a police dog but quit and opened up his own agency. He has two people who work for him, one is a cat obsessed boy names Kei who is surprisingly one of the normal characters. The second person is Yuta who is really a boy dressed up as a girl. He has an obsession with trying to kill Inaba’s old handler Ogi. Ogi is a policeman who is obsessed with his little girl Azusa; he is serious for work but really happy and smiles around his daughter. The Don and his groupies, Lorenzo and Gabriella are the “bad” guys. They want to dissolve the police force along with the help of Inaba’s brother and his protectors. Also yes the Don is a goat…which I find to be one of the greatest things.

That’s a bit of the characters and story…but really the story wasn’t super pushed due to it being more of a parody than a serious anime.  I am actually a person that loves animes that feature more of a random silly time, I suppose it suits my personality in a way which is why i like them so much. Although for others they can say they do not care for silly random animes.  Even though in the beginning they showed he was looking for his brother, they did not explain anything about what the Don was doing till near the middle/end of the anime. I feel it may have been a little too packed in where there was not enough time to really show everything that I would have liked to see. Granted even though it was a parody I would have liked to see them expand a bit more on the dissolving the police.

If you’re in the mood for a random silly anime…this one is worth checking out!

Score: 8/10

Fairy Tail:

This is one of my favorite shows that I was watching till they decided to end it and will have it continue at a later time. I feel this was due to them catching up to where the manga is that they needed a break in the anime to put some distance between the two. Anyways this anime has action, adventure  humor, romance, etc.

The story of the anime follows a lot of characters but mainly focuses on Lucy. Her dream was to join Fairy Tail and become a great wizard, which she got to accomplish. The anime takes us through her different adventures with the guild and also throws in some of the other characters stories to get a better understanding of who they are as well. The central theme(s) of the anime is friendship and never give up.

When I started watching this anime back when it first came out in 2009 I thought I would eventually drop it like I did Naruto. It felt like it was going to be a Naruto/One Piece type anime where it goes through a story arc and then has a butt load of filler episodes. Surprisingly it didn’t have as may filler episodes and jumped right into a different story arc rather quickly I feel. Of course the action sometimes felt repetitive since the characters use the same moves over and over again…and it seemed to be the same old type of battle. I felt that the battles got better as the anime went on and as the character grew it became less repetitive feeling. This is an anime I cannot wait to have come back, I am sad it’s no longer on my weekly watch schedule…maybe I’ll start to re-watch it though!

Score: 10/10

Girls und Panzer

I was not really sure what to expect with this anime…it looked interesting though since it had tanks and cute girls. I figured to give it a shot and see what it was all about. It was a decent anime but not a great one. This to me was one of those animes to pass some time with when you just don’t know what to watch.

This was about a school that was starting up tankery again which the main character attended due to the reason it had no tankery. Due to certain circumstances they had to start it up again and picked the main character to be in it due to her family having a big background in it. At first she is hesitant but eventually she learns to love it again. She and her friends help her school bring home the trophy for the main competition and she finally finds her own type of tankery.

It is a cute anime I do not like the filler episodes they put in to explain everything since the series was short to begin with I felt they were not needed. I was not extremely impressed with this anime but it was still a good one to sit back and enjoy. If you need something to watch just to pass some time I would recommend this.

Score: 7/10

Senyuu

So remember how I said I loved silly random animes? Well this is one of them and it’s also a mini anime, as in each episode is only about 8 minutes long or so. I actually was completely wrong with this anime when I went to start watching it. I am expecting a 24 minute per episode and this awesome adventure….when it just really turned around. This is what I get for not reading about it first!

The story is about the King finding heroes to go defeat the demon king! Yes it is that short of an explanation for the first season of the mini-anime.

This anime I was actually torn about…I liked it thought it was really funny. I suppose I just wish it was more along the lines of what I originally thought but still have the funny humor in it just make the episodes longer. When I breezed through the show I was sad to see that they also stopped it in a middle portion of the story. I am happy they are picking it up again in the Summer though! Despite it being short and not what I thought….it was still really enjoyable. I think the random silly animes will always have this soft spot in me where no matter what I will always like them.

Score: 8/10

Vividred Operation

I just finished this series last night. Before I started to watch it I was in the mood for an action anime with mecha like additions to it. So I thought maybe this one would do the trick. Sadly this is another anime to just pass some time with.

The story is about these 4 girls who become friends and are able to turn into these super power girls thanks to the help of Akane’s grandfather. They are ment to fight the enemy known as the Alone and keep it from destroying their world.

I was not happy or unhappy with this anime; more like a meh feeling. It’s very big on friendship…that is basically the central focus of the anime. Again another time killer series.

Score: 6/10

Playstation Portable (PSP)

Today I decided to put up my PSP game collection onto PixlBit and I will say I am shocked at how many I actually have. I decided to also put a page up on here to show what I have to possibly help strike up some conversation. I have not played all of the PSP games I have, I mean I have only beat four of them out of the 44 I have. So that is certainly saying something about me…gamer ADD I call it.

The Playstation Portable is one of my favorite handheld systems. I actually still own the original PSP, the first version that was released. Compared to the other versions you can certainly see and tell the differences. The first version honestly is not the greatest build of the PSP. It does have a lot of flaws such as the power button on the side making it easy to accidentally shut off the system. There is also the fact it weighs a lot more than the newer editions. It also makes a lot more noise when you are loading a UMD, from what I have heard I believe the later versions run the UMD a lot quieter.

Visual History of PSP Models:

PSP-1000

PSP-2000

PSP-3000

PSPGo

PSP-E1000

Each PSP Model were different in various ways, but they essentially all do the same thing. The PSPGo though I believe was the only one that does a bit more than the other models.

It has come out with a lot of great JRPGs and other assorted genres. It makes me sad that it has not been that popular in the states though and made more impact in Japan. With this having been done it made a lot of great games not make it to the states from Japan. Although I applaud companies such as XSeed for bringing over some amazing games from Japan such as Corpse Party, Ys, Legend of Heroes and more.

Though with the Vita out, I appreciate how they are still making games available for the PSP for us that do not own a Playstation Vita yet or never will own one. I think there are a few more PSP games scheduled to be released in 2013 as well, I believe though it’s going to start slowing down soon since the Vita is out now and it should hopefully be picking up more momentum which will mean less and less PSP based games. Granted I have the feeling they will probably allow most of the games coming out still that are not Vita only to be playable on the PSP such as the Minis and continue having the PSone Classics allowable. But I just think either by the end of this year or maybe even possibly beginning of next year there won’t be any strictly PSP released games. I could be totally wrong too about this, but I feel since they have the Vita out it will be taking over. In a way it seems like the same thing happened with the Nintendo DS when the Nintendo 3DS came out. They were still making DS games and then it started to die out and more 3DS games came.

I will certainly miss the PSP when it’s time has come to 100% pass. I will still keep mine though since I have learned the hard way about selling handhelds and then needing them again. You never know when it will need to be used again!

(Images were taken from the Wikipedia Playstation Portable Page)

A Fresh Start

My first blog on WordPress! It’s pretty awesome, I am very excited to be starting this blog. As the title states this blog is a fresh start for me, i pretty much explained everything in the About Me page of why I am here and so forth. I think I may just go on a bit more though from the rant I put in there.

As stated I love meeting new people and making friends. I am also very open to giving out my gaming information if people are interested in adding me to possibly game it up sometime or just chitchat beyond the blogging comments. I even off to add them on facebook after awhile, but I typically wait until I get to know them a bit better before taking that step. Now I don’t want to come off as the PLEASE LET ME ADD YOU type of person because I am not. I only do this type of thing after talking to you a lot or if my gut just tells me you are an awesome person. The gut feeling does not happen often…just saying.

As one of the first blogs I want to eventually do is to place my entire game collection on a page for mostly my personal reference of games I do own and so others can see them to possibly start conversation by. I do not own many manga and anime, but that is why I put my profile for myanimelist link in the links. I always welcome people to add me on that.

I again encourage people to please share your opinions on my blog as well! I am not doing a blog to get attention and that people HAVE to comment on them. It’s just something I enjoy to read and like to hear what other people think.

One of the first blogging sites I was on was 1up.com they as stated in my About Me are shutting down. This is the link to my profile before they shut down if you would like to read some of my older blogs. I will not be posting them on here because I figured new beginning and new blogs are to be typed.

My 1Up Blog

I may not blog every day but I typically try to just to be all hey world this is how my day has been going how is yours. I do typically talk about things going on in my life, I try not to make it too personal but just fun upcoming events that I find exciting happening.

Hopefully you all enjoy my writing and please look forward to my next post!