This episode has been at 95% since early December, so there exist a couple of dated comments, but NSMB Wii is still going strong in the charts; I figure the review can still be helpful. The sound should be clearer than usual, but there are a couple of instances near the end where it fluctuates out of its own volition. You’d think it’d be easy to fix, but it only appears at the final encode and not while editing, so I suspect metaphysical shenanigans. Probably one of those damn Boos.

Next review will be of a much fresher release and it will be up… soon!

As the seminal (PC) gaming connoisseurs over at RPS might put it, my analysis starts a bit like:

It’s hard to believe it’s been more than three years since my review of the DS version. I think that my writing style has changed a bit, but I have an innate aversion to looking at my older pieces for too long, so I can’t say for sure.

Most of my reviews will probably be considerably shorter, but I like to be as informative as possible and keep even the casual gamer in the loop. For a high-profile sequel such as Assassin’s Creed II, that means quickly going over the original, the special editions and the downloadable content, so the run-time piles up.

Still, some bits are edited out, believe it or not. For example, I really wanted to debate whether “Assassins” is an accurate name for our hero’s group. They are vigilantes, sure, they take the law into their own hands, but assassins?

When I think of an assassin, pop culture makes me picture someone you’d hire to sneakily & efficiently terminate an enemy.

In Assassin’s Creed the self-proclaimed Assassins usually kill out of their own volition, to protect their beliefs, and they go about it using the most extravagant methods possible. There is no poisoned food or drinks, there are no “accidents” or staged suicides.

You might argue that you can play it very sneaky if you want, but the gameplay clearly regards complete stealth as a secondary matter. Besides, even in the short movie, Assassin’s Creed: Lineage, Giovanni reveals himself early in order to have time to make his little speech first. The bad guys of the AC universe actually prove much more assassin-like in their ways.

Now, I’m fine with fiction breaking stereotypes, but I’d like some acknowledgment that the writers do realize that if an average person met an assassin, they wouldn’t curiously look at their ring finger and assume they’re looking for Templars to kill.

That would be like having something as strikingly unconventional as vampires that sparkle in the sunlight or werewolves that are unaffected by the moon, yet every supposedly normal person in your universe acts all nonchalant about it. That would drive me crazy.

Even though I did like the original and had high hopes for this one, Ubisoft still managed to surprise me positively with Assassin’s Creed II. More insight when the video review goes live, hopefully by the end of the week!

It also pretty much served as the script for the video so, even though they still are quite different, the two versions are as close as they’re likely to get. It would certainly be very interesting to know which format you thought was best and I’ll investigate with polls, as soon as I get the rest of the site in working order.

During the research for this review, I couldn’t resist popping in the old Super Punch Out!! for the SNES. I remembered playing it of course, but I was shocked to find out that not only had I finished it, I had two separate save game profiles, both with some insanely fast time records!

I really hope some time traveling was involved because that was fifteen years ago and I am way too young to start feeling old!

The above player should play all of them in order and you can change between them using the guide. Direct links for mixing and matching at your leisure:

I’ve been wanting to do a video review since before my text review of MGS4 was published and Metal Gear seemed like the perfect foil. I’ve been planning out the scenes as I was writing the review and, as time passed without biting the bullet and going ahead with production, I kept story-boarding again and again.

This is probably why I originally envisioned the video as a normal fifteen-minutes-tops review and ended up with this personal epic. There were so many ideas I just couldn’t bear to cut, which inflated the project to five different parts, one for each of MGS’ acts.

Even when shooting started however, I thought I’d wrap the shoot, edit and publish the thing in less than a week.

Ha!

Anyway, there is a bit of drama surrounding my inaugural video review (that is actually a playthrough) but, long story short, we ended up with this gargantuan critique, that has a combined runtime of one hour, twenty minutes. I love it.

It’s still shorter than MGS4′s ending cutscene.

Trailer:

Behind the Scenes:

The Total War franchise has such massive games and I am such a stickler for detail that rainforests have to die when I write-up reviews like this.

Even when they are published online.

There are just so many things to show and although I do love describing them on paper, I understand there should be a less strenuous alternative for those that would like to keep the Amazon, as well as their eyesights, intact.

And, of course, since my OCD prevents me from writing a synopsis like “Empire is pretty good if you have a monster PC, monstrous patience and mostly nothing but free time.” and calling it a day, that alternative will just have to be video reviews!

Pivotal not because it features anything new itself, rather because, behind the scenes, I was solidly thinking “video-version” as I was writing it. There were so many sketches I wanted to do, so many things that would be easier to explain with footage! I couldn’t stop thinking about filming this project and sure enough, bam! One year later we have the video review/playthrough.

We’re talking lightning-fast response times here.

Anyway, between the hour+ of video and the 3500+ words of this text version, I probably don’t need to add any more insight on this one.

I was very impressed with the original WarioWare, for the Nintendo Game Boy; it had the clever idea of 5 second “microgames” and a quaint way to merge it with the story. Even though later installments dropped pretenses of story intergration and focused solely on the wacky microgames, they still are pretty entertaining to play and make for a fun multiplayer experience on the Wii.

The original Prince of Persia is one of the first games I vividly remember playing, way back, in the years of the Amiga. The platforming action, the sword-fighting, the seminal tale of saving the princess in the last minute, these were all great elements, but it was the smooth animation that made it unforgettable. It really was something else.

Incredibly, the series went on to revolutionize platforming yet again, when most people had written it off, with Sands of Time and its “Time Rewind” feature. The latest, “next-gen”, Prince of Persia played it a bit safe but I have a feeling that the series will someday present us with more genre-defining features that will make us wonder how we ever played games without ‘em.