Spyro, Spyro, Spyro!

Spyro.wikia.com

My brother’s birthday is on the 19th, and for an early birthday present we took him to BestBuy and let him get any game of his choice for the Wii. After a bit of searching he found it, Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure. This instantly brought back a wave of memories. Spyro is definitely on my top list of games. I used to have the old GameBoy Spyro games and they would consume hours of my life. Spyro is one of those games that just never gets old, and I couldn’t wait to see how this new game lived up to its older counterparts.

Although I did not get a good chance to really sit down and play the game yet, I did watch my brother play it for a while and the first thing I noticed was the glowing portal like object that plugged into the Wii. The game came with different plastic toy characters which, when placed on this portal, changed the character you controlled in the game. This immediately grabbed my attention and brought up many questions. This seems like a cool feature from the outside, but it is hard to tell if it is just a selling point and has no real benefit to the game.

I still must sit down and really try out the game for myself and than I will be putting up a review of it along with my review of Zelda, Skyward Sword.

Twisted Metal 2 Character Review: My Old Favorite

This is a review on a specific character from the first game I’ve ever played, Twisted Metal 2. To read my review of this game in general go here, https://potassiumpizzaparty.wordpress.com/2012/02/13/twisted-metal-the-only-good-car-destruction-games/.

The person behind the wheel: The only character I used to play as on twisted metal when I was young was Mr. Slam. The driver of Mr. Slam is named Simon Whittlebone, he is a nerdy ginger who’s profession is that of an architect. He enters the contest because his dream of building the tallest building in the world was taken from him. If he wins he will wish to have his chance to finish his masterpiece, but like just about everybody else in the contest he gets screwed over by his wish. Before he is able to finish his building he falls from the very top of his building all the way to the ground.

Needless to say, he kicks the bucket. Just a random side note, I’ve always found that term strange… it refers to when somebody ties a noose around their neck and kicks a (in this case) bucket out from under their feet. But who stands on a bucket while trying to kill themselves? Come on go all out! Kick a stool, or if your really adventurous, a chair.

The Car: He drives a tractor who’s handling is (as the game states) sluggish.

His max speed without turbo is 91 miles per hour, which sounds fast, but I don’t think the programmers realized how fast 91 miles per hour is, so it’s agonizingly slow in-game. The car also turns slow, overall it is difficult at best to handle Mr. Slam, but what else would you expect from a tractor? Each car comes equipped with a special weapon that only that vehicle may use. For his special Mr. Slam makes use of his claws, he picks other vehicles up and slams them about three times, hence the name Mr. Slam. This special weapon does a more than decent amount of damage and it’s recharge rate is fair, but for the attack to connect, your target must be directly in front of you, and can’t move for about 2 seconds. When you Combine this with Mr. Slam’s unresponsive handling, you get a special that takes the accuracy of a surgeon to hit.

The freeze attack aids Mr. Slam’s special greatly, but when I used to play as him all those years ago I could never remember how to use the freeze attack. Nevertheless I still managed to get enemies in the grip of my tractor, I have no idea how. Mr. Slam’s shining feature is his ability to take damage like a boss. He is one of the two most armored characters that do not require a code to play as.

If you have ever played any of the twisted metal games I would love to hear from you, but otherwise I do believe that old games have a certain charm to them that newer games simply don’t have, wether its the old Spyro games, super smash brothers, or old pokemon games. I’ve never really been able to put my finger on it, so I’d also love to hear from you regarding such.

Twisted Metal: The Only Good Car Destruction Games

Tomorrow a game that I have been waiting for a very long time will be released, Twisted Metal. The twisted metal series has been through a lot, and has had many great games, except for twisted metal 3 which was okay and twisted metal 4 which was just awful, and I hardly even consider it to be a part of the series. Twisted metal 2 was the very first video game I ever played, and the story goes like this. when I was about 3 years old, my dad would hand me an unplugged controller while he played twisted metal with his friends so I thought I was playing. One day my dad plugged my controller in and I actually could play the game.

Me and my dad recently started playing twisted metal 2, so that we could get our time in with it before the new one came out. My first thought was, were the graphics always this bad? I mean I knew they would be bad simply because the game is so old, but they were far worse than I remembered or expected. But strangely, as we played more and more I got used to the graphics, and now they don’t seem too bad.

My second thought was, how the hell did I deal with these controls? The controls for the game were awful and unresponsive. But, like the graphics, as I played more I got used to them and discovered that the controls weren’t bad, they were just hard. With a little bit of practice you could get your character to do whatever you wanted them to do.

The controls to the game are hard, but the game itself is even harder. Back in the day me and my dad would easily beat the co-op tournament every time we set out to, but recently it has been a feat we have only accomplished 3 times. Now the first idea would be to lower the difficulty from medium to easy right? Wrong. Because after the first boss on easy, a screen comes up with a big stop sign that reads: “No losers beyond this point, change the difficulty and play the real game.” Yeah, they dont make games like they used to! calling you a loser because you were trying to have some fun.

Now as for the story, it’s pretty simple. There is this guy named Calypso, and he as all these super awesome powers. He can grant anyones wish, so he hosts a contest every year called twisted metal, the winner gets his wish granted. Everyone who wins gets screwed over by their wish either by the way they worded it or by Calypso just being messed up, unless they wish for something incredibly simple.

Now I didn’t do much research on this, but twisted metal has got to be one of, if not the first car destruction game out there. This genre of games is generally terrible and the twisted metal games are the only car destruction games I’ll play. I’m not exactly sure what they do but the game feels so different than other games like it, and its just so entertaining and fun.

The characters drive a variety of cars ranging from dune buggies, tractors, monster trucks, motorcycles, drag racing cars, ice cream trucks and much more. I’ll be doing character reviews of my three favorite characters this week.

Overall old games have a certain charm that newer games simply don’t have, for me twisted metal 1 and 2 have the most of that charm out of all the older games I’ve ever played.

My Personal History of Gaming

Let me begin by introducing myself. My name is Sam and I have been an avid gamer since as far back as I can remember. Although gaming is only one of the many activities that I participate in, it is one of the biggest and most time consuming things that I do daily. I am the proud owner of an Xbox 360 along with many other consoles, but my life as a gamer was not always so luxurious.

Let me take you back to when I first got my hands on a gaming device. I was around 6 or so and my family had ventured out to Disneyland for a quick vacation. At this point in my life I was desperate for a Game Boy and I had been bugging my parents endlessly for one. When we got to Disneyland I saw it, a red, Mickey Mouse shaped handheld gaming device. It was much less advanced than Nintendo’s Game Boy, but it incorporated many elements of the Disneyland experience was solely based on Mickey Mouse.

From there I moved on to a real Game Boy. My friend and I would always meet at his house, each with our Game Boys, and trade games back and fourth until we had fully exhausted each other’s collection. Soon enough our Game Boys were not sufficient and my friend got a Gamecube. This led to hours spent on his living room couch attempting to score in quittage, trying to find princes Zelda, killing giant robots in Rocket Power and many other important activities. The Game cube was fun but it did not last. That Christmas my friend got an Xbox original. Along with his Xbox came Halo 1. The idea of an 8 foot tall, steroid-induced super-soldier running around killing obnoxious alien beings bent on destroying our galaxy did not appeal to my parents and so I was forced to play the game in secret.

From the Xbox I moved to the computer. Internet games were the trend in 5^th grade. I played everything from MMORPGs to free flash based games. Websites like Shockwave and AddictingGames became my life. Although Internet games were fun, they only held my interest until I finally convinced my parents to allow me to get an Xbox 360. This has been my main weapon in the gaming world sense 7^th grade and without it I would have way more free time. Although the red ring of death is a pain to deal with and the fact the disks constantly get scratched for no apparent reason is extremely obnoxious, overall my Xbox 360 has done its job of consuming countless hours of my life. Although my Xbox is currently my favorite console, it is hard to tell what the future of gaming will bring. But I know that without a doubt I will be ready to upgrade when the time comes for the release of the next major gaming console.