The Life of a Simple Gamer

Another Week, More Games to Play

Well, the weekend has kind of gotten away from me, so this will have to be a brief update.

As most of my readers should know, Super Princess Peach has finally been released, with most critics giving the title reasonably positive scores. The highest I've seen so far is a "second opinion" score of 9.25 from Game Informer magazine (given from a female critic, not surprisingly), while towards the other end of the spectrum GameSpy gave it 3.5 stars, which is about the equivalent to a 7 on a 10-point scale.

Now that I've played both the Japanese and American versions, I think the game probably deserves a score falling somewhere between an 8 and 8.5. The game is a lot a fun, especially when played in brief spurts, but the truth is that the level design is a bit repetitive, the storyline is cheesy even by Nintendo standards, and the challenge is nearly nonexistent. I'm also not fond of how some of the characters in the game, namely Peach, Mario, Luigi, and Bowser are portrayed somewhat out-of-character. Princess Peach, for one, would never go after Bowser by herself (nor would Toadsworth appove of it), and Bowser, who actually has a sort of King Kong-esque crush on the damsel, would never brutally attack her like he does during the final boss battle in the game (you'll have to play it to fully understand). But I'm a Nintendo fanboy, so these things naturally bothers me - no doubt others could care less. In any case, I recommend the title to any Mario (and Princess) loving fan, as it's still one of the more charming titles seen in quite a while.

Speaking of portable platformers, MegaMan - Powered Up is almost here! A long-awaited PSP title, the game is essentially a remake of the original MegaMan, but with extras galore. There's new levels, bosses (which you can even play as), and best of all, a cool level-editor that allows the player to create custom levels and share them on-line with others. Budding game designers unite! If Capcom keeps the quality titles coming, the PSP might just catch up to the DS in sales afterall.

Lastly, just a few quick thoughts and news bits: The newly redesigned DS is selling out everywhere in Japan, creating shortages for DS-loving Japanese gamers everywhere. Microsoft has a new line of titles called "The Best of Platinum Hits" which is essentially the very best selling titles on the Xbox now offered for a paltry ten bucks each. Bargain, I say. Oh, and Gran Turismo 4 and God of War are finally on Sony's Greatest Hits list for twenty bucks a pop, so now no one has an excuse not to check out these quality titles (especially the latter one).

And with that, I'm off. Until next time. . .

posted by GamerDan @ 3/05/2006 05:41:00 PM