Best Videogames of 2010

2010 Has passed in quite a breeze and there comes a time when one thinks back to what made the year a special one.

In this post (and probably the next few posts) I’m going to list the best stuff I’ve seen/played/done/experienced and explain why I think it’s worth your time.

Best Videogames of 2010

Let’s start with what I love most. The videogame market per se (and by that I mean retail videogames) hasn’t been very extraordinary in 2010 but some games outshined others. Here are my top 10 videogames of 2010.

This list is based on what I had most fun playing this year.

10 – Call of Duty: Black Ops – Xbox 360, PS3, PC

The Call of Duty Franchise is already at the pinnacle of the 1st person shooter genre.

You would think this top-selling blockbuster game would be higher on the top 10 chart but I didn’t like the single player at all.

The story is cliché, the AI is so embarrassingly 1992-programmed that even Pac Man CE seems to do better in that area.

It has some very good parts though. Piloting a Helicopter, or infiltrating Vietcong bases killing them in their sleep was worth the effort.

I included Black Ops mostly because I had fun playing multiplayer with friends over xbox live.

On the other hand, I do hope the whole 1st person shooter genre renovates itself in the next installment (I wish there wasn’t another iteration in 2011) because personally I think the Call of Duty franchise is getting very boring indeed.

9 – Need for Speed Hot Pursuit – Xbox360, PS3

I felt like I needed to include a racing game in the list.

Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit has gone back to the origins with the first need for speed games. I remember how cool it used to be to play “Cops and Robbers” in the older games on the PC and this new game has brought that all rushing back with a hint of novelty that makes it a whole new, great experience.

You can either race as a Bandit, increasing your wanted level by escaping from police capture or you can play the cop, increasing your rank by catching baddies! The gameplay is simple and arcadey and that’s what I was looking for this year. I was pretty tired of the old driving simulators. Forza Motorsport 3 and the endless wait for Gran Turismo 5 didn’t really do it for me.

8 – Sonic 4: Episode 1 – XBLA

People hate it a lot, others hate it less.

I actually liked this modern take on the classic Hedgehog. You might say I’m a little bit of a fanboy (playing Sonic on my Sega Master System II and Game Gear), but I actually really enjoyed it this time. After endless shitware Sonic games, finally something playable! The levels looked great, sonic controls pretty well (even though some people say he is too floaty), the lock-on feature is awesome and the Sonic avatar costume you can unlock makes it worth playing!

Only a few downsides to this one. It cost me 1400 Microsoft Points and considering its length it wasn’t worth all that money. The cost of the next episode will determine if I’ll buy it or not.

Oh and the music… OH THE HORROR! Play this one on mute!

7 – Game Dev Story – iPhone

This little gem for the iPhone made my battery run out very quickly for a few weeks or so. The idea seems really stupid and uninteresting until you actually start playing it.

You impersonate the founder of a game developing company and you start by hiring some coders to make your games. It’s similar to what an imaginary Game Dev Tycoon would be. You can buy licences to develop for consoles with silly parodic names such as the Playstatus instead of the Playstation and so on.

You can choose what kind of game to develop and what genre it will be.

Your aim is to sell as many games as you can and in the end you will also be able to develop a console.

It’s hard to believe such a great game could come out of this idea but I urge you to try it out to see for yourselves. I wasted more than a few weeks on this one.. Ask my girlfriend! A true gem of 2010.

6 – Kirby’s Epic Yarn – Wii

Speaking about my girlfriend… Kirby’s Epic Yarn wouldn’t even be on this list if it wasn’t for her. This has been my “sit on the couch with my girlfriend and play together” game of 2010.

Kirby’s Epic Yarn graphics are incredibly innovative. Everything is made of yarn and you can move the whole background by unzipping it or pulling a well placed string. Your co-op characters will sometime merge together creating a truck or train and sometimes even a huge mech that shoots missiles. These parts of the game are really exciting and really need you to cooperate with your partner to get to the end of the level safely.

Death doesn’t exist in Kirby’s Epic Yarn. Instead you are faced with humiliation… a gamers’ worst nightmare. The score of the level depends on how many Beads (Bijoux for Gloria) you can collect. By falling into pits and getting hit by enemies you lose most of your beads. And the humiliation comes when you finish a level without any beads at all. This formula is kind of new and it works pretty well with the game as it makes you want to keep those beads to end the level well and removes the frustration that dying might give.

On the negative side we couldn’t care less about personalizing our virtual kirby-home with the stuff we collected (Animal Crossing Style), some of the storytelling was way too childish (and also weird sexual references like Yin Yarn putting stuff into his weirdly placed sock), and playing alone with no-one to help you can be quite boring.

I mean… look at his sock!

Definitely a game one should own just for its innovation and co-op fun.

5 – Red Dead Redemption – Xbox360, PS3

I love westerns… and I love sandbox games… therefore I love Red Dead Redemption.

I actually had good and bad times with this game but pushing through and finishing it paid off in the end.

The game is what you’d expect from Rockstar. A GTA-similar open world-ish game with a Western theme.

Missions are mostly cool and horse riding really looks and feels amazing. The good nature of John Marston (the main character) makes for a nice change instead of the usual GTA bad boy.

The animations are so amazing in Red Dead that for the first time in videogame history I actually felt like crying when my horse got shot and died or when shooting an enemy’s horse by mistake and killing it.

I did get bored halfway through the Mexico campaing but I pushed on and the ending was truly worth it. Buy this game and finish it and you’ll know what I mean.

4 – Enslaved – Xbox 360

Enslaved… I wish I could put you at number one…but I can’t.

I have said, more than once, that Enslaved was my game of the year 2010, and I still want to believe it. So why is it sitting at number 4?

Enslaved has proved that proper acting can make or break a game… at least that’s what I wish it did. There’s a book (Extra Lives) that speaks about this thoroughly…and it seems that gamers don’t care enough about acting in videogames as they should, but that’s a topic for another day.

The acting portrayed by the characters in this game is so good it deserves an Oscar. Facial expressions, tone and especially EYE and eybrow expressions were all incredible and really made the story in this game a joy to experience.

In reality, other than the AMAZING acting there’s a good game underneath it all. I underline good and not great… It has a simple combat mechanic and the game could have done a lot more in the customization sphere of things.

You are Monkey, a very agile – Prince of Persia mixed with Goku – kind of guy and your weapon is infact an extendible Staff (just like Goku in DBZ, not to mention a floating cloud to roam around in). The first part of the game is one of the best I’ve seen in a while and I won’t ruin any of the story for you because it’s worth going into this one with no preconceptions.

I can’t bring myself to say anything else about it because you absolutely need to buy it and see for yourself. Game developers should learn from Enslaved and use that kind of acting to improve the whole videogame market.

3 Limbo – XBLA

Another XBLA game in my list… now you’re realizing why I mentioned a bad year for retail videogames in the beginning of this post.

Limbo is something you experience rarely in videogames, especially in modern videogames. Limbo’s gameplay is NEW and novelty is something new gamers don’t seem to care about. We are always fed iteration after iteration of the same type of game until the franchise is too milked to sell anymore.

Limbo is an amazing achievement, and a game that is different in how it makes you feel.

You are a child who wakes up in this black and white shadowy world inhabited by monster spiders and man eating shadow hounds.

The game is a solid mix between platforming, adventure, and strong puzzle gametypes and it delivers all of them perfectly.

The ending is something you hope to be prepared for but it really hits you hard. It personally left me open mouthed for a minute or so.

This game is ART.

An easy buy for 800 Microsoft points.

2 – Mass Effect 2 – Xbox360, PC

I have to admit… I only played this recently…and am still playing it. All of this because after having played Mass Effect 1 I knew how much time I’d spend being sucked into Mass Effect 2.

I decided not to import my previous character from ME1 because I wanted to start from scratch and create a female character with different stats.

Here she is (I tried to make her resemble to my girlfriend but to her say, I failed miserably).

Mass Effect 2 is just what you would expect but better. The story is amazing, gameplay is better than ME1, characters are well developed and they make you want to get to know them and help them in their own personal subquests.

You know an RPG game is good when you WANT to do the side-quests before continuing on your path with the main story.

Also: 2nd best start scene of 2010 (after enslaved ofcourse).

There’s little to add except to say this game is near perfect on every level.

The only downside it has is that it’ll suck up so many hours of your life you want to plan ahead for it, reason why I only got to it in January 2011, exactly one year after its release. SHAME ON ME!

1 – Super Meatboy – XBLA, PSN, PC, Mac

Man oh man… another XBLA game in the list and NUMBER 1 too!

Super Meatboy, just saying it makes me shiver with various emotions that include love, hatred, rage, fear and frustration.

Super Meatboy started as a small flash game created by 2 people that I personally never played. It got then converted and improved into an XBLA game and BOOM!… mega success.

It’s a simple 2D platformer that takes from all the best platformers ever made and merges them into a game that not only will amaze you, but it will make your hands hurt like with old school hardened games.

All you can do is jump and move left and right to reach your girlfriend in each of the hundreds of levels. Yet it ends up burying itself right in your heart as one of the best games ever made.

The sheer happiness you receive after completing a level you were trying for the past 4 hours after dying 600 times is something I hadn’t felt since reaching the second castle in Alex Kidd in Miracle World on the Sega Master System II.

You can see some of my videos trying some of the most frustrating levels in Super meatboy right here:

I did complete them later off-camera.

So that completes my top 10 videogames of 2010.

Here are some Best of the Rest that didn’t make the top 10:

Donkey Kong Country Returns – Wii

A great reboot of the saga that deserves to be bought

Super Mario Galaxy 2 – Wii

Great game but it’s just more of the same

Pac-Man Championship Edition DX – Various

Having missed the CE version I decided to buy the DX version and I couldn’t believe how I could still be enjoying Pac-Man after so many years.

Hope you enjoyed the list and obviously I want everyone to have their say!

o/

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Super Castlevania IV SNES Review

W O W

This game… This game (luckily for me) was the first Castlevania game i ever played seriously. And i think that’s why I came to love the Castlevania series. Being used to games that had amazing controls like Super Mario, Sonic and games like Alex Kidd, the first Castlevanias never managed to grab me when I was little. The inability to throw that whip in every direction always put me off as it was something I could not conceive.

Super Castlevania IV for the SNES changed all that. The controls were spot on for the first time ever. It’s basically a remake of the first game on the NES with better graphics and controls. You can whip in 8 directions, make the whip go limp and control it with your D-Pad and you can also change your direction slightly whilst in mid-jump.

Many purists never liked these changes and blamed the game for being too easy. Others regard SCIV to be the best Castlevania game ever! I’m closer to the latter description if you really need to ask.

The game, I must admit, is somewhat easier than it’s predecessors. I mean just being able to whip in 8 directions would make any Castlevania game easier right? Nonetheless it’s still quite challenging. You WILL die often trying to learn enemy patterns and boss phases just like in the old games. You will have infinite continues and even a Password save system though (oh and just on this note, it’s the best password system i’ve seen in a videogame. Quick and easy to jot down and insert).

The graphics are amazing considering SCIV was one of the first games out for the SNES (1991). There are subtle things like glowing eyes, or bats flying out of somewhere in the background and this adds to the great atmosphere the game creates for the player.

Rotating room level

The sound… OH THE SOUND! I’ve never heard a SNES game sound so good. The music is amazing (they are all close to original remixes of classic Castlevania songs), and I really hope there’s a soundtrack to download/buy so I can listen to it everywhere I go. It’s simply SUPERB! You can hear the music to the first level (and see some gameplay) here:

I’m actually listening to this music right now for inspiration ahah!

Konami actually cut some stuff from the US/EU version of the game. Some blood was changed to green instead of red and a cross was taken out of the title screen. The whip apparently sounds different too. Not lifechanging anyway.

One of my favourite parts of the game was right at the end when you’re fighting Dracula (i’m guessing it’s impossible for this to be a spoiler). When you finally get him to 1/4 of his lifebar the music changes (to the first stage music) and it truly brought shivers of excitement onto me like crazy. Felt on top of the world.

The whole game took me around 6-7 hours total (guesstimate and took it easy), with moments of frustration and also moments of wtf. I have to agree…it wasn’t the most challenging Castlevania game but it’s still VERY satisfying to finish it.

Highly reccommended. Do pick it up, it doesn’t go for much on ebay these days.

Riqz’s score:
9/10

Donkey Kong Land Review

Ahhh! Back to the real classics of my childhood.

Donkey Kong Land is a platformer in which you take control of Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong. Storyline is pretty much non-existant but the gameplay makes up for the lack of it very well.

The first thing that’s going to blow your mind is the yellow game pack. That’s right! You can even see it advertised on the box: “Banana Yellow Game Pak included!”… WOW ahah. I still think it’s pretty cool!

Look how cool it is:

The game has 4 different worlds to play in, much like the newer mario games on the NES and SNES. You go around the map and at the end of each world there’s a mini boss. The only boss I found semi-challenging was the last. Let’s just say that the bosses aren’t really the hardest part of the game.

The hardest part of the game is trying NOT to throw the banana yellow cartridge into the sea (I played it on the beach on my holidays) out of sheer frustration and anger. The game gives you 5 lives (hearts) and pretty much like Mario you can be “touched” by enemies twice before you die. This is if you collect the Donkey Kong barrel in the level. When you do collect it, if you die, Donkey Kong gets replaced by Diddy Kong and you can carry on playing without losing a heart.

Even if you do lose all your hearts, you will continue from the last level you were on. The game pretty much gives you infinite lives.

Donkey Kong Land has a good, but rather annoying, way of saving. On each level there are 4 letters to find: K O N and G. If you find all of them, the game will let you save your state. Most of the letters are easy to find, but sometimes you won’t find a certain letter for a few levels just to add to your frustration.

The graphics are really impressive considering it’s a gameboy game but they can be a little glitchy (maybe it was just my cart), meaning it will sometimes flicker enemies or Donkey Kong. Sometimes I think they tried to overdo it and put too much stuff on the screen making it hard to understand what’s going on.

That coin gives you a heart..Can you see donkey Kong between the clutter?:

Ah the enemies!!! You will find jumping crocodiles, huge rats, stone-spitting hawks, snakes flowing down poles, snakes crawling on the floor, and barrels. Wait WHAT? Barrels… wasn’t that the trademark weapon for Donkey Kong in his first appearance? WHY OH WHY would they hurt you in this game then??? God knows… Let’s just say I found out they could kill you the hard way. I then laughed…and after that I cried. Anyway you can kill enemies just like in Mario by jumping on them or by making a cartwheel by pressing B. Judging the distance of the cartwheel was pretty bad for me so I never used it. Jumping on enemies will be your most useful attack.

Did I mention how frustrating the game is? The game requires you to make precision jumps, predict that an enemy will appear after that jump, and then jump again over a barrel, then a rat appears and a crocodile jumps in your face. Not to mention the underwater levels where anything you touch rapes your face.

The game is very trial and error and dying is going to become the only thing you’re good at in Donkey Kong Land.

Underwater tentacle rape:

There are bonus levels which are reachable via cannon-like barrels. They shoot you to another area where you can ride a Rhino (kills anything in its path) and also an Ostrich sometimes (it can double-jump and glide), to gain more bananas (Donkey Kong’s version of Mario coins). Every 100 bananas you get a heart (not that you need it).

Nonetheless, this game was very enjoyable and entertaining. The gameplay is good and it wants to keep you stuck on your gameboy until you finish it. The lack of story is a bit of a deal breaker but maybe it’s just me craving for some Donkey Kong backstory.

All I can say is…that I’ll be waiting a while for my next adventure on Donkey Kong Land 2… Let my frustration cool off before.

Riqz’s score: 8/10

Policenauts Review

Being a big Hideo Kojima fan (Creator of the Metal Gear series) I was reading his wiki page when I found out about a couple of games he made when he was much younger. I say “made” but mostly he wrote the story and directed it. They were called Snatcher and Policenauts. We will talk about Snatcher for the Sega CD soon enough (it’s on my to do list) but the one that really intrigued me was Policenauts. While Snatcher was released in the US in English for the Sega CD (Mega CD in Europe), Policenauts was only released in Japan firstly for the PC-9821 then ported to the 3DO, the Playstation and the Sega Saturn. It was never officially released in Europe nor in the US.

So I learned Japanese! No just joking around. I wish I knew Japanese but it’s not easy. Anyway, some fans actually decided to translate the entire game for us English speakers and patched the game with their fan-made English translation.

I played my version of Policenauts on my PSP (emulating the psx) and my first impression was great. The feeling I get from playing a game that only a few people were fortunate enough to own just gets me all excited!

Policenauts is a game that’s heavy on the story telling, but that’s why we love Kojima isn’t it? The game is mostly a point and click adventure with some action sequences in a Time Crisis style. The original game came bundled with a Light Gun for the PSX. It obviously can be played without the light gun resulting in a laser dot on screen that you can move around with your d-pad. Not having a gun had no real impact on difficulty so don’t worry about that.

The game starts off explaining how you (Jonathan Ingram) were once a policenaut sent to “Beyond”, the new human space colony built inside a huge rotating cylinder (Encounter with Rama anyone?), to become one the 5 founding members of the new law and order. A cutscene shows someone sabotaging your space suit and whilst on a routine space EVA something goes wrong and you are thrown into deep space by your “faulty” propulsion system on your suit.

The five members of the Policenauts:

You find yourself luckily rescued 25 years later thanks to the space suit’s cryogenic system that managed to keep you hibernated for all those years without having aged a single bit! The game now switches to the present and shows that you have become a private detective on Earth.

A lady appears at your door and you soon realize who she is. Lorraine was your wife back when you were a policenaut. She married another man (Hojo) after you were thought to be dead. Hojo has now disappeared and she’s asking your help to find him. As you decide whether or not you want to take the case, Lorraine is killed by an unknown person just outside your building.

This is where the story kicks off. I won’t go much into it because I’d have to write an 800 page novel if I had to. The gameplay is the usual gameplay you see in point and click adventures but I noticed something special with Policenauts. Everything you click, and you can click practically anything you see, has a detailed explanation and you never get bored of exploring all the rooms you’re in because of how well written the descriptions are. It really is impressive even for today. Descriptions range from random people to books, photographs, a clock on the wall, a “history” lesson in a museum, food you find around, panels, computers…GORBI (lol), really anything you see can be clicked on to see what your character thinks about it. Oh and yes, you are a Japanese pervert and you DO touch the boobs of every woman you encounter with funny bouncy effects (both visual and auditory ahah).

Pervert time:

What to say about this game then, well some people might argue that it’s like watching a movie, but we all know that’s Kojima’s style. Nonetheless it never gets boring and it always wants to make you carry on playing to see how the story evolves. You can expect crazy revelations, incredible twists and intense boob action, yes intense boob action. The story is told fluidly with excellent voice acting (in Japanese), subtitled in English in this version. The spoken parts (quite a lot of them) are used for main story telling. Most of the other parts are just written with text. Music is great throughout the game and the same can be told about the sound effects.

Yes that’s Meryl:

Longevity was great too. It took me about 12 hours to finish the game and considering that I clicked pretty much everything I saw I think the game can be finished in a lot less.

The Policenauts cast:

 

Concluding, if you are a Kojima/Metal Gear fan then this game is a must have and I’m absolutely sure you’ll enjoy it. The mix between exploring/viewing and action sequences makes for a compelling experience in general. This is a title not to be missed!

One thing…just one thing that pissed me off big-time was that when you die, the characters say stuff like “oh I’ll get him this time” or “Don’t worry we only died once!”. It’s like they know they’re in a videogame and that just ruins the mood and involvement you built up until then. I personally don’t like dieing and think it’s a big deal in games like this so why do they have to make the actual characters say it’s no big deal? Reminds me of the “Funny Games” film remake where the main character rewinds the scene…

Anyway it’s a really small negative point but mostly why I didn’t give it 10/10

Riqz’ Score: 9.5/10

Do I just review good games?!? Mostly yes! Or maybe I’m just too kind.

Drill Dozer

This undiscovered little Gameboy Advance Gem created by Game Freak is an incredible action/platformer game that probably went under everyone’s radar. The game was awarded best game of the year for the gba by nintendo power but the poor sales never brought about a sequel which is such a shame.

The game starts off telling you how your father (Doug) and boss of the “Red Dozers” is beaten the shit up by the Skullkers, the rival dozer gang. They stole a red diamond from you.
The gameplay kicks off by sending you (Jill, Doug’s daughter) to find such diamond on your wonderful crazy dozer machine!

The idea of having a platformer where you control a dozer that can drill through stuff is so fresh that it just begs you to play it.

Gamefreak doesn’t stop surprising you throughout the whole game with new additions to the dozer and new ways to use it.

For example, in each level you start off with a crappy dozer with 1 gear. You use your R button to drill clockwise and L button to drill anticlockwise. When you pres L or R there’s a little gauge that appears and charges up. In first gear you only get it to reach the end of the gauge once and then it comes back down giving you only a few seconds of drilling power.

Once you find second gear in the stage, you can pres R or L again once the gauge is full to enter 2nd gear mode making your drill stronger and last longer.

In third gear things get serious and you will have a very powerfull drill that can help you navigate more easily through levels and last as long as you want.

If you think drilling stuff around levels is easy and boring you’re wrong. The gameplay is actually really good. There are good puzzle-like situations where you have to use your drill on certain “jelly” blocks that push you to higher platforms. It’s very hard to explain and can only be experienced once you try out the game.
This for example was one of the puzzles: Find 3 different activators around the level and insert the right combination to open the big safe:

Every level brings something new to do, a new block that involves new abilities, tunnels that propel you around depending on clockwise or anticlockwise drill direction, underwater levels with a propeller-drill, air levels with helicopter-drill, it’s really pretty amazing.

The end level bosses are incredibly satisfying. Not too hard but not too easy, i mean I rarely died (i bought some life enhancements at the shop) but it still was a challenge trying to find out boss softspots and learning how to kill them.
The last boss is quite the challenge too and very very satisfying to beat (one of the coolest moments in the game!!)

Speaking of difficulty, it really isn’t too much of a challenge. I found myself dead only a few times, especially at bosses, when trying to learn how to beat them but not much other than that. If you do lose all your life, it’s game over and it asks you for 50 ingame currency to continue. I always had enough currency to continue and I found it a great way to manage death and continues.

I have to mention that the cartridge even has a rumble feature if you buy the original!

All in all this was an incredible experience for a very underrated videogame that deserved so much more than it got. It reminded me of the first time I played Sonic on the game gear. A new experience with new characters and abilities, a fresh change!!
I wish there was a sequel and seriously hope they’re working on one!

Anyway: Final Riqz score 9/10

Enjoy it if you can cos it’s definetly worth it!

Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3

I have recently stopped playing modern games. I don’t really know why. Maybe I’m tired of increasingly boring sequels and the “hollywoodisation” of 90% of the titles out there. Maybe these new games just aren’t cutting it for me.

This is why I’ve decided to go retro. I whipped out my old consoles and started seeing what games I hadn’t finished completely. I found a website that can help me with my goal of finishing all my games. It’s called www.backloggery.com and it lets you make a custom list of your game titles and you can say what you’re playing (it can choose what you play next randomly) and what you’ve finished. It also makes very interesting statistics.

Anyway back on topic. Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3 for the Gameboy.

I actually had finished this title when I was little several times. We’re talking of a 17-18 year old title here…. I WANTED to play this through again. So many childhood memories came flooding back.

This game is just magnificent. Nintendo managed to make a completely new platformer with new abilities/strategies but with the same feeling of Super Mario somehow. Some of the things you find throughout this game are so well planned and thought out that it just makes playing it a wonderful experience.

What did Nintendo introduce that was so revolutionary then? First of all they created an Anti-Hero and made him lovable and that’s no small feat. You really end up rooting for this big version of a Mario gone bad. I believe he is the poor version of Mario. I imagine Wario sitting on the couch smelling like a sweaty road worker, with a stained white tank-top, with a full grown beard with food bits stuck in it, eating pizza and mumbling to himself trying to think up some master plan to beat Mario in any way possible.
From playing the game all you gather really is that Wario is a greedy bastard. All he wants is to get coins and end up building his own castle! I guess that’s what we all want in the end!

The game is beautifully structured with a classic Mario “world” where you run around the map into different zones which are all then divided in classic mario style levels. There are 40 levels in total with 5 secret levels.:

 

Wario plays very differently to the classic Mario saga, he doesn’t only have run and jump abilities, he also has a tackle ability that can send enemies flying in the air. Makes me think that Wario was a pretty good American Football running-back. This is coupled with “hats”. Wario can wear different hats to gain some useful abilities that will get him through the perilous stages he has to face.

The Bull-hat puts horns on Wario! This increases the distance of his dash and he can butt-stomp enemies to death. He can also break stones with one dash/headbutt instead of 2. He can also stick to ceilings with the horns (very underutilized ability).

 

The Dragon-hat makes wario breath fire out of it! This is especially usefull underwater as it can break stones, kill enemies and unlock nice bonuses from the bonus blocks.

 

The Jet-hat makes Wario fly! This hat lets you fly for a limited amount of time letting you breeze through some levels and access previously inaccessible areas. It also makes you walk faster!

 

This screenshot brings me to another beautiful point. I mentioned that Wario was greedy earlier and this influences the player, making you become greedy as well. The game lets you gain money by collecting coins in levels, but there’s also a cool feature. You remember checkpoints in Super Mario World for the snes? You just passed through a ribbon and you were saved half way through the level. In wario it doesn’t come as easy as that… You actually have to give up 10 coins in order to save with the checkpoint. You press up and B and hey presto a 10 Wario-Dollar coin appears in Wario’s hands. You then throw it inside the slot to save your state. This has to be done to open the end-level door! It really makes you greedy in that sense. Sometimes I felt like I didn’t need to waste 10 Wario-Dollars to save because I wanted to risk trying the whole level. Just to save 10 coins ahah. Real Wario-style.

Another good addition to the game is the treasures. All throughout the world there are a few levels in which you will find a special key. This key opens a special door in the same level which will give you a treasure. These treasures will add up to your “wealth” at the end of the game. They are nice puzzles, some hidden, some not so much, scattered through the Wario World.

All in all this is a very good game that withstands the test of time. I played it after nearly 2 decades and it’s still so fun to play you’ll be amazed.
If you’ve never played it or never finished it this is a must for any gameboy owner or for any gamer that deserves being called a gamer after all.

A negative point has to be given for the shitty mini-games after the stages. When you finish a stage you’re brought to choose between two doors. One has the money mini-game and the other has a heart-minigame (100 hearts=a life). The heart mini-game is pretty useless as you won’t be needing many lives if you’re a decent gamer, and the money mini-game makes you lose more money than you gain. So stay away from it.

P.s. MARIO YOU OWE ME A GOLD STATUE!

Final Score:

9/10

You Know What Grinds My Gears?

It’s been a while and I feel like I need to vent some of my repressed anger issues. I have a lot of little things that really annoy me. This will be a mega-rant post.

1) I hate Football, I hate football players and I hate football maniac-fans. The sport used to be good, the players used to love kicking the ball around. Now all I see is overpaid pseudo-legends that throw themselves on the ground without even being touched, holding their knees just to get a penalty. They actually think it’s a tactic. If I was their coach I’d sell them to some other team. I remember when I was small and I used to play football in a team. I was taught to always try my best to stay on my feet. You never know… you might miss a goal opportunity if you fall down.

2) I hate my allergies. I have had allergies for about 5 years now. Some kind of grass pollen. It makes my eyes water, my nose stuffy, and gives me light asthma. I stupidly mowed my lawn 2 weeks ago and I had one of the worst asthma attacks I’ve ever had since I was 10 years old. Stayed home a whole week and took heavy doses of Cortisone. I’m fine now but I guess I won’t be mowing the lawn anytime soon. Let the grass be freeee!

3) I hate when trains aren’t on time. I went to see my girlfriend in Trieste this weekend and on Sunday I had to take the 17.44 train. We ran to make it on time, only to be told the train doors weren’t working. This meant it took 30 minutes to change train and get on our way. I had to take a replacement bus to get home. I hate replacement buses too.

4) I hate LOST. With all my heart. I have watched it for 6 years every fecking week. I saw the latest episode a few weeks back and quarter of the way through I just had my jaw wide open…I just said “WHAT THE FUCK” to myself and turned it off. I tried finishing that episode but ended up turning the tv off again because it’s just not enjoyable at all anymore. Even the actors hate the show. You can see it in their faces. Jack just wishes he never started acting in this show, Kate has become ugly, there are 2 alternate realities, Locke is not Locke bah fuck it. They don’t deserve to be watched anymore. I don’t want to hear anything about lost for another…BILLION years. I doubt I’ll watch the finale. Here’s Jack thinking what I’m thinking:

5) I hate organizing holidays. I’ve been trying to organize my summer holidays (a week in the south of Italy), but I just can’t bring myself to sit down and find a decent bed and breakfast, call them, book a double room etc.

6) I hate going to the toilet at work, opening the booth, and smelling someone else’s shit at 8.30 in the morning. Who shits so early at work anyway? Word of warning… If you use public toilets often, always choose the booth with the most open door. People who take a shit are usually subconsciously ashamed and always close the door on their way out. That was a free tip, on the house.

7) I hate a messy dinner table. Sounds weird I know but after a few weeks my dinner table becomes home to a million pieces of paper, letters, crumbles of food, bags, receipts etc. I try not to make it happen but it always does. I cleaned it up yesterday and now my house looks less like a den and more like a house.

8 ) I hate my neighbor. I live in an apartment and the woman underneath mine is the most annoying person in the whole world. She’s probably a whore from what I gather. She has a Spanish accent, maybe Cuban but I’m not sure. She has a “smoking” kind of voice if you know what I mean and really high pitched. The Spanish accent doesn’t make it any better. I’ve heard her shout and fight with different male voices (hence the whore) and she has a very stupid small dog. On weekends and occasionally on Thursdays she plays (AND SINGS) raggaeton music. The ONLY fucking music genre I loathe. She also rambles on about how I throw shit in her garden when it’s obviously not true. Sometimes I have my window open and I can smell her smoking weed. Woman… you’re too old to be smoking that kind of shit. Stop it bitch.

9) I hate trying to lose a few Kilos. I’m trying to lose a few Kg because I had stopped training for 3-4 months. This involves a decent diet. No carbs at dinner. I hate no carbs at dinner. It means I can’t eat potatoes, I can’t eat pasta, no rice, no mashed potatoes, no polenta, no pizza… All I eat at dinner is Meat, vegetables and vegetable soup. No parmesan on that crap either. And I’m not losing any fucking weight.

10) I hate my watch repairman. I gave him 3 watches to repair last September 2009. He still hasn’t done them.

11) I hate having to go to sleep. It’s like fast-forwarding 5-6 hours of lifetime just to get to work.

12) I hate Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare 2. This image sums up multiplayer pretty well.

13) I hate smoking. I used to smoke. I’ve stopped since January 2009. I don’t know why this hate came upon me so hard but it’s crazy. I can’t stand the smell of people smoking close to me, I can’t stand how my clothes smell after I’ve spent time with a smoker, I hate how people say they’re addicted to the nicotine… we all really know they’re just addicted to the actual gesture of smoking. I hate cigarettes, I hate ashtrays, I feel like my lungs are being raped by other people’s smoke. Cigarettes should be erased from the face of the earth.

14) I hate people that just do stuff to get noticed.

15) Which brings me to how I hate Facebook. It’s unbearable. All I see is people that cry out “look at me”, “ask me why I wrote this”, “look at what I’m a fan of”, “look at what I just liked”, “look at my cleavage on this shot”, “look how clever I am by making this witty remark”, “look at how farmville is ruining my life”. I can’t stand it. Showing off is one of the things I hate the most.

16) I hate hating.

17) I hate not having a job in the videogaming industry. It was always a dream of mine. I still hope to fulfill it one day.

18) I hate the fact that if I do leave this job, I would leave all the benefits that come with it.

19) I hate that my Boss still hasn’t given me my yearly evaluation. Does it mean he’s scared to tell me how shit he thinks I am?

20) I hate travelling. I’ve travelled around the world most of my early life. Maybe that’s why I hate travelling so much. It’s not that I don’t like going to new places… it’s just that I hate what it takes to get there. Train rides, car journeys, airplanes, airports. Waste of time. Still hoping for instant teleportation soon.

21) I hate how new technology is already old when it is released. For example Iphone 2g,3g,3gs. Mostly why I don’t think I’m going to buy an Ipad.

22) I hate the Italian Government. All of it. They should’ve been on that plane that crashed in Poland with all their politicians instead.

23) I hate going to the toilet and seeing people playing Quake 3 Arena on their workstations…fucking IT department.

24) I hate waking up early in the morning to go to work. I also hate waking up late on weekends and miss the whole day.

Good god.. I think that’s enough.

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