Dissidia 012: Duodecim Final Fantasy (PSP)

Dissidia 012 is a sequel to a critically acclaimed game: Dissidia. Dissidia 012 is basically Square Enix's attempts at a 3D fighter for the PSP. You can pick characters from The Warrior of Light(Final Fantasy) all the way to Lightning(Final Fantasy 13). The game sound like an interesting idea, but does it uphold all of its promises?

The story is simple. There is a waging war going on between harmony and discord. Cosmos: The symbol of harmony and Chaos: The symbol of discord both call chosen warriors to fight for them. Each side is trying to win each battle. Cosmos wants to finally end the continuous cycles of fighting once and for all. She gathers up chosen warriors to hunt for specialized crystals that will aid them in destroying the cycle. Unfortunately, evil metal replicas aka manikins are slowing them down in finding the crystals. Chaos's warriors further delay the collection of the crystals.

In the story mode, you'll be playing as Cosmos's warrior such as Lightning and Tifa Lockheart. The story mode isn't that well crafted and planned out. The overworld is direct copy from the original Final Fantasy but in 3D. You'll use the overworld to go through gates to get to the crystal. In these gates, you'll usually find manikins to fight through. There are cutscenes along the way, usually at the end of these gates. Basically, you'll be going through continious battles with limited contact with other characters.

The graphics are not very impressive. In fact, they are pretty basic for a PSP game. The most impressive thing about the graphics is the fact that there are so many things going on without an inch of slowdown. You'll be attacking with swords, bows, guns, and even casting many magic spells in these battles. The stages themselves are well textured and have nice looking backgrounds. The character models are decent for a PSP game. There is a CGI intro along with a couple CGI cutscenes throughout the story. They look really good!

What I love about this game isn't the story or the graphics, it is the gameplay. You are thrown into a Final Fantasy battle field from Kefka's Tower or Ultimecia's Castle. There are two types of attacks in this game. A bravery and HP attack. Bravery attacks will increase your bravery number and HP attacks will deal how much bravery you have to the opponent. Use this to your advantage as bravery attacks will decrease your opponents and could even end up "breaking" it causing you to gain a load of bravery. You should never stay too low on bravery. Unfortunately, using an HP attack will set your bravery back to 0. The higher the bravery you had using your HP attack will increase the amount of time it takes to replenish itself. There is also another type of attack, an EX MODE attack. When you fill up your EX bar(EX orbs are made when you attack an opponent, and EX CORES summon throughout the battle)you can enter EX mode. You'll regain HP along with dealing higher critical hits. If you do an HP attack, you can do a finisher which deals tons of damage to your opponent. Another option is to use EX Mode while being attack. You'll enter EX revenge which will break you out of a combo and slow down time. This gives you chance for a free attack. Last but not least, you can use summons. Summons have many different effects from gaining free bravery or shuffling you and your opponents braverys.

In the sequel, they threw in a new gimmick; assists. When you attack, you fill up the assist bar. If you use an assist, you can chain combos with the assist to deal bravery damage. Having two assist bars will deal an HP attack. You can also use assists while being attacked to break out of your opponent's combo. Assists are useful for offensive and defensive purposes.

Dissidia has a lot of nice tracks to choose from. A lot of the older tracks are remastered to take advantage of today's technology. All of the tracks are from Final Fantasy along with a couple tracks specially made for this game. You can easily recognize the tracks from previous Final Fantasy games and enjoy the nostalgia.

The re-playability is very high for this game. You can level up every character to level 100. You'll become much more stronger and gain more abilities and attacks doing so. There are a ton of stages and characters to unlock. You can also unlock additional music tracks to be played during battles. After you beat story mode, you unlock the story mode from the first game. You also unlock secret reports that you can play and read. Along with that, there is a quest creator in which you can make your quest and trade it with friends. last but not least, you can do wireless battles with friends to show off your skill.

 This is one of the best games out there for PSP. The gameplay is just so fun and addicting you never want to stop playing. I already have 150 hours clocked JUST for this game. There are many characters to choose and master. This is a must for your PSP collection! Even if you own the original, you should still upgrade to the sequel. You can transfer your save from the first game too.

Rating: 8.5/10

Been on a looong Break...

I've been on a long break from making a blog post. I haven't really felt like making any reviews for some reason. I always think to myself "I'll do one.. later.." and eventually 2 months pass by. I PROMISE for a review (maybe more then 1 as a bonus) next month.

Pokemon Black and White Tour

Here comes the Pokemon Black and White Tour. I didn't even know it existed until today. Good thing I found out since this is the last day. (Although, my brother is sad now that he can't go) You were able to collect stamps to get rewards and even play the new pokemon game. It was available at Strongsville's mall on Feburary 5th and 6th.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to play Pokemon Black and White at this station. The line was too long and I didn't feel like wasting my whole day there.

Ha ha ha! This is the Pikachu girl at Hot-Topic!

Over here, we can see that the event only lasts 2 days.

Here is Ash Ketchum, sorry for the blurry shot. Here you can watch Pokemon Diamond episodes.

Here is the epic Pokemon next to me. Oh, I went to JCPenny and bought a shirt.

There are several stamp stations across the mall. You get to have a booklet(that has information about the game) and a stamp page to get stamped. After you get all the stamps, you can spin a roulette to get a prize. I won a "green starter guy" stylus. You can win plushies, stylus, and pins.

I wasn't able to, but you can watch a sneak peak of the new Pokemon movie. If you do, I've heard you can get two limited edition Pokemon "giant" trading cards.

I look forward to buying Pokemon White/Black and reviewing them.

Kingdom Hearts RE:Coded

It was only a matter of time before another Kingdom Hearts game came out. Kingdom Hearts RE:Coded is a remake of a cell phone game exclusively made for Japan. Square Enix again manages to squeeze the PS2 franchise into the palm of your hands onto the Nintendo DS.

The story is presented very nicely with 2D moving frames and 3D cutscenes. It starts off with Mickey trying to find out what happened to Jiminy's journal. All they can find is "Thank Namine" and a odd message talking about hurt. Mickey brainstorms an idea to solve this puzzle. He brings out Data Sora to fix the bugs. Since they are debugging the original journal from the first game, expect to revisit the same worlds again.

The graphics are extremely well done in this game. There are a ton of 3D models for the player and enemies. The textures are quite detailed and varied. Every single command in this game has its own sprites. Most of the worlds are filled with plentiful vibrant colors. You might wonder how this game could possibly be done on the DS!

Kingdom Hearts RE:Coded has to be one of the most unique Kingdom Hearts game. It takes the classic Kingdom Hearts gameplay along with the Birth By Sleep command deck. Along with that, you'll find that there are platforming, side scrolling, RPG, and even shooting sections. Before you ever get tired, the game will throw you into a totally new gameplay scenario. All of the different types of gameplay styles are done very well.

There are a ton of different music tracks in this game. Although, some may be disappointed that most are recycled from previous games. All of the music tracks fit nicely with their respective worlds. The battle themes sound pretty good. You might even pause the game to listen to the music then actually play the game, that is how great the soundtrack is.

Unfortunately, there is no real multiplayer in this game. The only multiplayer function there is is the ability to trade avatars and play other player's floors. Playing those floors will grant items that your avatar can wear. This adds a bit of replayability to the game, but not too much. Speaking of replayability, the game has tons. After beating the game, you can replay any world you have beat to gain extra rewards you might of missed the first time around. Along with that, you can do optional quests and system sectors to reap rewards.

This game is perfect for any die-hard Kingdom Hearts fan. The story is very simple that even players that never entered the Kingdom Hearts realm won't get confused. The graphics and gameplay are amazing for a handheld. This is a game I would recommend to buy right now. You won't regret it and I'll bet that you'll have a ton of fun with it. You'll be playing this game for a long time.

Rating: 9.5/10

Sega All Stars Racing Wii

Sonic and Sega All Stars Racing is Sega's latest All Star title. The first title was an eyetoy party game, the second was a tennis game, and the third is a racing game. The game throws in all its stars into one game, similar to Super Smash Bros Brawl. The game is on many platforms which include the PC, Nintendo Wii&DS, PS3, and Xbox 360.

Controls
With a regular controller, the controls are nearly spot on. The Wii wheel controls, on the other hand, can be crappy sometimes. I have had moments where I turned the other direction out of no where. I personally prefer the Classic Controller Pro, there are no motion controls that could affect your performance.

Characters/voices
The game has a lot of people to pick as. It has Sega's best stars, old stars, retired stars, and "other" stars Sega still uses today. The characters all have really nice voice acting and emotion while playing. The character roster isn't as big as other racers, but it still has a nice amount of people to choose. There is also an additional option to play as your Mii. I can see why people are mad that Sonic overruns the roster. I remember Sonic characters taking a huge portion of available characters in tennis. There was huge potential for a bigger variety of characters and tracks to choose. One problem is that there are no alternate vehicles to choose from. While playing Mario Kart, you get to choose from a huge range of bikes and cars!


Balance
A majority of the roster have different stats. In the least you might find that one or two racers share the same stats. There is problem, some characters are very overpowered. Most people regard bikers as the best racers due to them having some of the best stats in the game. Ryo, Shadow, and Alex Kidd could be argued of being top tiered characters. This becomes an issue when everyone dives toward those characters and ends up having an advantage toward winning. Another issue is that there are some game breaking techniques. Sumo did say they wanted to patch unlimited boost, but they backed out on it*. (360/PS3 editions)

Graphics
The graphics are decent at best. Most of the character models look meh. It looks like a lot like the textures were pulled from a PS1 game. The graphics in levels fit the styles that they are in. (Casino type graphics in Casino type stages etc) Several times I have seen texture issues and [QUOTE]It's more likely of edge precision errors seen on game levels constructed with planes. They're either caused by the video driver, or a very sloppy game programmer.[/QUOTE]
white dots . This bogs down the look of the game as they can be distracting on bigger screen TVs. Some people might point out that many games have these white dots. I have seen them myself in a lot of other games. Although, this game has a huge amount of them and they are littered around in a lot of stages all over the place.

Multiplayer
The Multiplayer is average at best. Multiplayer severely makes the graphics terrible. The cool water oceans turn into MS Paint Blue puddles, waterfalls shut off, the whole stage looses all the emotion and charm the developers put into them. The basic stage still is there. Fortunately, this makes multiplayer run much more smoothly. There are also several different modes you can play. Most of them are plain boring and feel like fillers. They feels extremely poorly done and rushed in just for the heck of it.

Online
The online is pretty meh, with a terrible friends system that only allows you to create groups. What happened to joining friend races? As seen on these boards, many people complain about being disconnected. I've had this happen many times to me and this ruins the experience. There also happens to be a glitch where everyone gets kicked out from the race. Eh! The kick option was removed in the Wii version. I asked where it was and a Sumo representative told me to go over a name and press A. I did this and nothing happen, I replied it wasn't there and several people backed me up. There was no comment after that. This is very annoying when a player does not start a race. At least put in an auto-start! Another issue is that All Star moves are disabled online. Sumo has responded this was due to issues with the amount of data the game would be sending. Online could be much better with a few improvements; 2 player online, joining friend races, better stable connections and servers. Online... works is all I can say

Gameplay
The gameplay is amazing! All tracks are made with charm from their respective franchises. One example is from the pinball stages from Sonic. There are a ton of balls moving all over the screen. It looks great racing around with neon lights sparkling everywhere. Several tracks have shortcuts which makes the game a bit more open with multiple paths. Unfortunately, shortcuts seem to be used rarely in maps, even being cut from the final game.

Like other racers, this game has a mission mode and a cup mode. In Mission mode, you do what the mission does and you try to get the best score. Some can be a lot of fun while others can be downright awful. In Cup mode, you try to get first on several tracks. Your score is based on what place you came in the race. There are 3 difficulties for this mode; easy, medium, and hard. You'll also find at the end of races you get Sega Miles. These are used to buy race tracks, characters, and additional music tracks for levels.

Music
The music is a hit and miss. You'll find that some tracks don't really belong to a certain setting, or the music is just beyond annoying and repetitive. The game has a huge library of songs so you'll hear a different track every time. SD card support would of been really nice; playing your own music during the game. In the end, you probably think you could pick some better songs.

Replayability
Racing is fun every single time you boot up the game. There is a ton of tracks to race on with a broad select of characters to choose from. There is also a built in achievement system that awards you if you do specific tasks. Doing these tasks will upgrade your profile license to better medals. (Bronze--> Silver --> Gold) There is a ton of content to unlock with you or your friends. Sega All Stars Racing supports Nintendo Wifi Connection to race over the internet which boosts its playtime.

Final Comments
Sega All Stars Racing isn't a Mario Kart clone. Its more then a clone, a lot of people consider it to be closer to Sumo's previous works with Sonic and attack items thrown into. It has some quirks, but I can assure you at the price. It is worth a buy! When it was released, it was 10 dollars lower then the average Wii game. With all the content thrown into it, you shouldn't disregard the game!

*This is only present in the HD versions of the game, so this will not affect the final score/opinion. The HD versions also have slight differences such as graphics.


Rating: 7/10

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