I told you I'd be back...

... and with one totally over-used Terminator reference, I can happily say that I have returned to the Old Bits to blog to the masses about general gaming goodness. I've had a busy past year, and I now feel like I finally have the time to post about gaming at least once a week. I've played some interesting stuff recently, and I can't wait to share my thoughts about it.

For starters, today I downloaded a title on XBLA called Nin2-Jump (pronounced "Nin Nin Jump"). It's a platformer that was developed by Cave, who are mainly known for their bullet hell shooters. I love most everything that Cave puts out, and Nin2-Jump is no exception.



This game puts you in the role of Nin-ja who must traverse five worlds, with ten levels in each of them, to save princess Sakura from the stereotypical bad guy who kidnapped her. Yeah, it's light on the story, but so what? The atmosphere more than makes up for it. The game is presented as a shadow puppet show, complete with a silhouette of a MST3K (that's Mystery Science Theater 3000 for you lame-os out there) style audience. The graphics are simple yet beautiful, and the music, while repetitive, fits the game perfectly.

The gameplay in Nin2-Jump is a bit reminiscent of N+ or Super Meat Boy. Each level can be completed within a few minutes each, with emphasis on speed-running, and in order to complete a level, you must collect a set amount of ninja scrolls to open up the exit. The game scores you based on your performance at the end of each stage with an S, A, B, C, or D ranking, in typical Cave fashion. The first couple of worlds consist of just platforming with a few hazards thrown in for good measure, but as the game goes on, it begins to throw enemies at you as well. By the games end, you will be tasked with some pretty intense platforming, seemingly unfair obstacles, and relentlessly spawning enemies.



In order to fight back against these enemies, you can hit the right bumper to activate your ninja power. When activated, Nin-ja essentially has the star power-up from the Super Mario games. He is immune to damage from enemies, but can still take it from spikes and other traps. His ninja power rapidly decreases while it is active, as shown in a bar on the upper right side of the screen, and can be restored by picking up new ninja scrolls. Thankfully, it regenerates itself for some strange reason in the final world.

There are boss battles at the end of each world, and they are very fun ordeals. One boss is a ninja who has a volcano for a head... tell me that's not the best thing you've ever heard. Every boss is in Nin2-Jump is huge and intimidating, and its actually fun trying to figure out their patterns. Surprisingly, and disappointingly, I actually found the bosses to be easier as the game went on though, as a result of Nin-ja gaining the ability to attack mid-way through the game.



The game has a story mode and a score attack mode, both of which offer endless re-playability. There are hidden Cave logo items in each stage that offer an achievement if you can find them all, which helps to add to the replay value as well. I know I'll personally be coming back to Nin2-Jump again and again. The game only costs 400 MS points (that's a measly $5), and until the end of June all of the proceeds from the game will go Japan's disaster relief fund. That alone makes buying this game worth it, but Nin2-Jump is an amazing platformer as well. GET IT!

The Godfather : Blackhand Edition

I don't think a movie, in the history of film has ever made quite the impact that The Godfather did. It is not only the perfect gangster movie of all time, it is a perfect movie in itself. Countless Top 100's have it as its number one, and I have to agree. From my first sitting of this movie I have always had a weird since of pride about my Sicilian heritage. So the movie is perfect, but is the game, that follows a original story line set in the Godfather world perfect? Lets find out.

Gameplay (7 out of 10)
The first thing that hit my mind, the hand to hand fighting system in this, I really think was pulled off well, its responsive and at times pretty fun, Its actually more in depth that Wii sports' boxing. Now the use of guns works great with the Wii-Mote, however its not as polished off as with some later games that have been released, but it does the job none the less.

The game sports some original ways to use the controller, example to open a door you tilt the wii-mote like opening a door, but for the most part these actions feel fairly forced and they are not really needed.

Cap'n a fool....had to do it

The way the story is told is fairly good, the cutscenes look pretty good as there main focus is the character models, which as I mention in the graphics section, are fairly nice. The game really does feel like a enhanced version of Mafia (Enhanced in terms of the wii). It doesn't really pull you into the time as much as you would like, but the music aids in that.

The game kind of reminds me of the Scarface game, the game had the potential to be awesome but it fell short, the missions just drag on and many feel like 'Point A to B for no reason then kill person, drive back to point A' and after awhile it becomes fairly boring. The missions that do revolve around the story though are fairly nice and makes doing the boring ones worth while just to know what happens next.

Sound (8 out of 10)
The sound is really well done in The Godfather, beautiful background music that really makes the atmosphere of the game pull you into the time frame. The voice acting is some of the best I have seen in a sandbox style game, though sometimes the cliche italian voice is a little over used but other than that the voice acting is right on the money.

Graphics (6.5 of 10)
I was expecting some horrible graphics to be honest, and what I was greeted with was not that bad at all. The character models displayed are fairly detailed, there faces are unique and hold quite a bit of detail. The textures are not the greatest and they do looked washed out at times but for the dark moo of the game they fit fairly well. The only real downside to the graphics are there are quite a few jaggies in the game, but if your a Wii owner you are more than use to this by now. The textures used on buildings could also be a bit cleaner but overall this is one of the better looking Wii games, despite it being released as a launch title, though we all know the Wii can pump out much better graphics than this. Another problem I noticed as time went on is every now and again the FPS drops by quite a lot, if this happens in a gun fight, its makes the controls jump around a fair bit, this has only happened twice in about 2 hours, but none the less it does leave an annoying impression.

Face!

Replay Value (6 out of 10)
No multiplayer, as its a sandbox game and once you finish it I highly doubt you will be screaming for more. 

Overall (6.875 out of 10)
The Godfather movie, was perfect. The game falls several feet short, to its many graphical downsides and lackluster excitement factor it does get a bit dull at times. If your a Godfather fan, I would suggest you pick it up just to enjoy some more of the Corleone family goodness. If you own a Wii and are a fan of the GTA series I would pick it up as there are not many mature games on the Wii and as a GTA clone, it goes all right.

But as for the rest of you, I wouldn't suggest picking it up. Other than the hand to hand combat system, this game really doesnt have anything memorable about it. If you have played Mafia, you may feel your in a rerun at times.

As a fan of the movies (and I mean they are up there in my top 3 movies with Dog Day Afternoon and Donnie Darko) I have to say this game was a bit of a lit down, it would of been better IMO if you controlled one of the Corleone's.

Mario Strikers Charged

When Super Mario Strikers came out on the Gamecube in 05/06 it was hardly a 'must own' title with many people either not buying or not even knowing it was out. It was a plan arcade style soccer game with the normal Mario world twists such as using powerups ,etc. Wifi is something that every Wii user has been waiting for since they unrapped there little white box. This year, PAL zones first game to make use of the system Wifi capability's, falls somewhat short in both single and online play. Read on to find out why.

Gameplay (Score 6 of 10)

Well I don't really know what to say about the game play, its a simple 4 a side soccer team with one of the Mario world stars as captain. There are power ups such as shells, hammers,etc. And every character has there own unique special attack and special defense move, but in reality thats where the games depth ends. Once you have played through your first match, you will feel like you are watching a video on repeat. With a wide range of levels I expected they would hold my interest for slightly longer however it was not the case, its pretty much a simple swap of the background and course and a change of the levels hazard and you have a new level. The game just lacks the depth of some form of leveling system, you end up playing the same levels multiple times over to win a new trophy for your cabinet, when it comes to rewards I find trophies to be somewhat lackluster. There are some new additions to the game which make it a big up from the GC original such as super shots and the new and improved control of the goalie where you control the goalies hand as balls fly towards you. As for the super shots once you have them mastered and figure out all you have to do is shoot a shell then a super shot form anywhere and your pretty much guaranteed a goal the game becomes somewhat boring. Well with such a average single player experience I was expecting the online to make up for it, it seems the Wii's first online title is a fairly big let down, even by Nintendo's standards of poor online interactivity. There are also single player challenges that place you in situations where you are a man down or two goals down and you must try to win the game, honestly I found this to be the most entertaining point in the entire game.

Up, Up and Average!

Sound (Score 8 of 10)

Good sounds that suit the game well, lots of Mario sounds of yesteryear,  really not much to be said about it.

Graphics (Score 6 of 10)

Now some people might say I have been harsh only giving a 6 out of 10 for graphics. While they do what they are there for, its graphics we could have expected on the GC. Theres only so many times we can see Mario and his friends on new systems looking slightly 1 up'ed from there last gen counter parts. Graphically its nothing special, in fact if you put the game side by side with its Gamecube counter part I am sure you couldnt tell the difference, but does it job.

Replay Value (Score 6 of 10)

First the single player, with the amount of trophies and challenges you can do the game should keep you playing for awhile, that is of course if you can stomach playing it that long without being bored to tears. Now onto the online play, the thing many people bought the game for. Well in 1 word. Disappointment. Being on a Nintendo console no one expected voice chat or even talking via a on screen keyboard, but this game has no interaction at all. You can either play with your friends, or a random stranger (Who you can't talk to or play again or add as a friend), the only community feeling it has is where you score points and go on a scoreboard. The online in reality feels like you are just playing a harder version of the CPU, I really hope future Wifi titles are not this much of a let down.

Overall (Score 6.5 of 10)

While it is a step up from the Gamecube outing Mario and his friends still deliver one of the least entertaining ways to play soccer, with the single player portion of the game feeling like a broken record repeating itself and the online play feeling barely online I would suggest you not to waste your hard earnt dollars on this unless you either are a soccer fan or just want to play your Wii online. Perhaps after some price drops and you find it in your local targets bargain bin would I suggest this.

Skate It

All right lets jump (or Olie, haha four words in and I have a bad joke, new record!) right into this, skateboarding games did, for a long time suck ass, with the exception of 720 on the NES there wasn’t much to keep our videogame skating needs at bay, that was until of course until the release of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, the game was a complete revolution in gaming, something brand new and fresh that skaters and those who had never picked a board up in there life got behind and said, damm this game is awesome. But after 9 years of annual installments the franchise was starting to feel stale and bloated with features that no one really cared about, that took away from the core gameplay. It seemed that with each new installment that came after about Pro Skater 3 the series felt like it was taking backwards steps in terms of the enjoyment gamers got out of there skating sessions.

Skate brought something new to the world of skating games in much the same way the Tony Hawk series did. By reinventing the control scheme, the game flowed much more smoothly and more importantly gave the user the feeling of freedom that comes with skating. The game never saw a release on the Wii but a spin off title, Skate It was released, can the little white box actually have a good skating game? Let’s find out.

Gameplay (8.5 out of 10)

Kick it off with the controls, there are 3 control scheme to the game, which is awesome you can pick the one that best suites you right. There is Wii Remote, my least favourite, its really too much on the one controller. Its nice the option is there but steering, spinning and doing tricks with the one hand is a bit much. Then we have Wii Remote + Nunchuck, this is the one that I used to playthe game through, you could actually skate in the direction you wanted to (twisting the Wii Remote by itself to turn is never that accurate and hurts your wrist after awhile) and the general ability to control what you want to do is a lot easier than the other two, when I talk about controls inthe game this is the scheme I am talking about as in my head its the 'default' way to play skate it. The third and last is with the Wii Balance board, its a great idea in theory but its a pain in the ass at times. You do tricks in the way you would expect to, to ollie you lean hard on the tail, nollie hard on the nose, kickflip you put weight on you right side (if you skate Goofy), etc. I found it pretty hard to just skate around on the board, and I don’t think its because I am a complete retard because I have Shaun White snowboarding and I have almost finished that game with its Wii Balance board scheme. I just constantly found myself banging into walls and objects ingame, and it got to the point that halfway through the first level I just put it away and restarted the game with the Wii Remote + Nunchuck scheme, maybe some people enjoy the board more, but for it I found it a pain in the ass.

Doing big air feels pretty good with the Wii controls.

Now to quickly talk about the actual controls rather than the different schemes, basically to olie you whip the Wii-Remote up, every flip trick then comes from doing a certain motion with the Wii-Remote before doing the Olie, such as, making a U shape, then doing a olie will perform a pop shuvit. Grabs are as simple as using hte B button and a direction, and grind happen when you land on a rail with the Wii-Remote pointed in the grind you wish to grind, hold the Wii-Remote with the nose down, you do a nose grind. Pretty simple and it is leaps and bounds better than the slapped on controls we saw in Tony Hawk Proving Ground on the Wii, in which they mapped the regular 4 buttons used in the THPS series to different buttons on the Wii-Remote and made a shitty game, pretty much unplayable, as far as controls go, Skate It gets it right minus the frustration when you sometimes pop tricks you didn't want to.

Now that the boring stuff is out of the way we can talk about the game itself, at first, being a big THPS fan (I Have completed all Console releases to date and 100%'ed the first 4) and a skater myself I was looking forward to this game hitting the Wii. Once I got the controls down (which actually takes awhile)the game just flowed. Doing lines of tricks rolled and just like in real skating you felt really frustrated at time trying to do lines, but it was a good frustration. The game is full of the usual challenges, such as 'manual from a to b', 'kickflip the 5 set' and so on, each challenge has a easy and hard option such as, the easy version may allow you to just kickflip over a gap, while the harder version is to do a kickflip and a grab, its nothing new to THPS fans, but its a nice feature. While much of the core gameplay is similar to past Tony Hawk outings the controls set it apart, Its no longer a fast paced arcade style game. The game is much more realistic and strategic. Leaps and bounds not only over Tony Hawk Proving Ground on the wii and the Tony Hawk series in general. My only complaint is I felt the game was far too short, but I will get into more detail with that later.

I’m not going to talk about the multiplayer aspect of the title at all as I didn’t / don’t really have the urge to play with the game with other people, want to know about it, read it elsewhere, IGN is a good start.

Graphics (7 out of 10)

It seems that when it comes to the Wii developers have decided since it cant look as realistic as other consoles, trying to make anything look realistic is a waste of time and we are left with cartoon style graphics, while it was great at first it is starting to become a pain in the ass now, being straighter than a arrow I don’t enjoy the pain. Its not to say they don't look good but I would have prefer something that looked similar to the Tony Hawk games on the last gen consoles, its just a personal preference but what we got was graphics that while not jaggard like many Wii titles are very bland and simple with a ‘bloomish’ effect. It does the job but we all know the Wii is capable of better graphics than these crayon drawings we keep getting.

You better hope you don't stack, or your gonna crack the shits HARD!

One of the most annoying things graphically, I don't know if you disable it, I know I couldn’t! Is the stupid ass 'Hall of Meat' cutscenes every time you bail, while its a 'ok' concept of gameplay to break bones on stacks, making me have to watch a 5-10 second scene every time I bail becomes so annoying I often turned my Wii off when I bailed. It wasn’t needed, its retarded. When your trying to do a challenge it is a pain in the ass that it takes no less than a minute to have 6 tries because you are forced to watch this stupid screen that serves as nothing, even if you don’t break a bone you still have to watch the stupid thing. Its retarded, its useless. I have no idea how a tester missed the annoying factor on it. Get rid of it, its bloody stupid.

Sound (8 out of 10)

You usually assortment of rock, punk and a few hip hop songs you would expect from a skating game, while not on par with the soundtracks of the earlier Tony Hawk titles, it is far better than the more recent installments. The only thing that annoyed me about the music is that there is not a lot of different tracks, something near 20 if I remember correctly, but there are 3 or 4 songs that you can only listen to in free skate, this blows my mind. If you are going to have a modest selection of songs, at least let us listen to them all while we play the main game, stupid and unexplainable choice.

The sound effects are pretty standard, nothing really stands out, what you expect, skate over gravel, its sounds like it, skate over metal and so on. Solid effort.

Replay Value (7 out of 10)

It is kind of hard to comment on the replay value, a lot of the main replay value would come from playing the game through again completing challenges you only completed on easy, on hard. However since I did them all the first time around I found the only 'real' replay value was the 'Hall Of Meat' challenges, such as 'break 10 bones' in a stage. Ok, so they took one of the most annoying parts of the game and tried to add to the length of the game by making it challenges, I think I would break my Wii if I tried to do all these stupid ass challenges, so they don't even really add to the 'replay value' to me. There is also the Milestone challenges which are all like "Manual for 80 years", none of them are an actual challenge it is just if you can be bothered doing the same thing for long periods of time, no idea what happens if you complete them all because this gamer could not be assed to waste my time.

As for the main reason to come back and pick up the controller again in the Tony Hawk series, Unlockables, I have no idea what the unlockables are, I finished the game and don't recall unlocking a anything, no new levels, no new skaters, no skate videos. Skate Videos, if I am wrong and there is a way to unlock them, please someone tell me, it is one of the only reason I ever played the THPS series to much, to unlock those awesome videos, but nothing. SUCKS!

Overall (7.625 out of 10)

While its a good game, other than its control scheme which turns the genre on its ass it has nothing we have no seen before, but so strong is its control scheme that you feel like you are playing a completely new genre of game and not just a rehash of the Tony Hawk series, which is a great thing. Solid effort in the audio department, if it wasn’t for the 'Hall Of Meat' screens the game would have flowed much smoother, but even so it was enjoyable to play through.

Resident Evil 4 Wii Edition

When Resident Evil 4 was released on the Nintendo Gamecube in early 2005 it made many heads turn, an awesome game that was as graphically violent as it was addictive and it really brought the Resident Evil series back on track and back on top.In late 05 it hit the Playstation 2, with some downgrades such as pre-rendered cut-scenes, downgraded lighting effect (something that played an important part to the feel of the GC version) and downgraded water effects. So how does Resident Evil 4 hold out on Nintendo's new little white box? Does it still have the hard hitting effect it did 2 years ago?
Read on to find out.

Gameplay (Score - 9 / 10)
While nothing has changed in terms of level design, puzzles and enemy's, the overall feel of the game has changed to the point where you can really play this one through again just for the fun you have with beheading enemy's with your wii-mote, and yes despite all those romours of a censored version RE4 comes to us in all its gory glory. As little has changed from the previous installments I will move onto what makes the Wii port what it is, the controls.

The controls are crisp and precise, without a doubt one of the best use of the Wii-Mote we have seen in terms of how well it was implemented, no annoying accidental flics of your wrist and your character spins 180, no accidental reloads. The only downfall I see in the controls is that unlike many games before it on the Wii you no longer control the direction your character is looking via the wii-mote, it is still dont through the analog stick via the nunchuck, you simply aim with the wii mote once you have your weapon drawn. Thats not to say this did not work out well, after a good 10 or 15 minutes in it will feel second nature to you and you will be aiming at enemys heads before even having you weapon drawn. One thing that this really has over the Gamecube and PS2 versions is the button mashing (seen in the running from boulders scenes / to get enemy's off you) has now been swapped over for a simple back and forth motion on your controller, its feels much more natural and before you know it once a enemy has latched onto you you will find yourself frantically swinging the controller left and right. Another natural feeling motion is when you slice horizontally with the wii-mote Leon will slash with his knife, this I must say is something I am really happy with, I use the dagger a lot more now than I did in its counterparts.


Sound (Score - 9 / 10)
The sound, like in the other versions of RE4, is pretty much perfect, it sets the mood and scares you even if theres no action happening on screen, the only The only annoyance I had with the sound is lack of Sorround sound support (which is due to Nintendo, not RE4) but Pro Logic II more than makes up for this loss.

Graphics (Score - 8 / 10)
The graphics are pretty much what you find in the Gamecube version, I have not been able to find any differences that are noticeable in terms of increased texture size or AA levels. It still is a beautiful game to look at with its lighting effects (That were absent in the PS2 version) which still drop jaws to this day, but it doesnt have the same impact that it did 2 years ago. It now has true widescreen support as well as running through 480p. Playing at 480p really gives you an advantage in this game as you can see much further much clearer as well as making the colours all that much more natural and thus scarier. The funny thing about this is that it currently is one of the Wii's most graphically impressive games, and it was created for the last generation Nintendo Console.

Replay Value (Score - 7 / 10)
With no Online/hot seat multiplayer (For obvious reasons) and the fact many people have all ready sat through this title once the replay value is a little short. It does however have all of the extra content that the PS2 port held so that should keep you busy for awhile.

Overall (Score - 8.25 / 10)
Overall this is a well rounded game that shows what Wii owners should expect graphically from games at a minimum. The game plays well as is well worth another play through if you have finished it before. If you have never played Resident Evil 4 before then you are in for one massive treat as this is without a doubt the cream of the crop in terms of the best version to play through. The Wii-Mote is used to its fullest with its dead on accuracy. I highly recommend every Wii owner to get there hands on this. You wont be disappointed. Another thing I would like to point at this game retails a lot cheaper than normal new release Wii games.

Please note: This review was written close to the launch of the game.

Super Street Fighter IV - Review

While adding a new feature or two, slapping on a few fresh, or ever old faces and releasing it as a new installment is something that Street Fighter fans are very use to. Most had hoped that Capcom was over these addiction, it seems it really is a creature of habit. With the announcement of Super Street Fighter IV, just a year after the release of the original many were skeptical as to if this latest installment could have worked as DLC. Is it worth paying for more of the same, lets have a look at the up's and down's of Super Street Fighter IV.

The Up’s

The Down’s

8 returning and 2 new characters to boost the playable roster up to 35. Each character now has 2 Ultra combo's, rather than 1 from the first game. There has been character balancing, no more Sagat wars. Smashing cars and barrels mini games from SFII have been added. Indestructible, the 'theme' from SFIV is gone, thank god for that.

The new announcer sounds utterly horrid compared to announcer for SFIV. There has been no major changes to game play, no 'real' new features have been added, it is much more of the same. The exclusive content that was promised to SFIV owners is two 'colors'. T-Hawk seems unbalanced at a first glance. The time trial and survival modes have been removed, which was a big part of the offline experience.

While for Street Fighter fans, it is always nice to have updates, even if it sets us back quite a bit of money, unless you are a fan of fighters, you could easily skip this installment.

JFE2 Says

“I haven't had too much time to play around with SSFIV just yet, but the time that I have spent with it has been nothing short of spectacular. The opening movie alone made me unashamedly giddy like a school girl! Seriously, I could watch that on a loop for the rest of my life and it would never lose its sense of awesomeness.

The gameplay itself has been tweaked ever so slightly, but all for the better. I messed around with Ryu a bit and found his new Ultra to be particularly nice looking. I have yet to really test out the practicality of it, but you can't deny how absolutely epic that shoryuken looks.

I tried playing as Guy for a bit, and he seems to play a lot like his SF Alpha incarnation, which I liked quite a bit. The other new characters all seem interesting enough for me to at least try and mess around with. Juri in particular looks like she would be fun to play as.

Expect some more fleshed out thoughts when I get some more time with the game!”

Stay Retro.