There was so much potential here, and unfortunately there still is. Marvel needs to get it's licenses away from Sega. But that's not the here or now. Right now we shall talk about why this is such an unfortunate game. Let's start with what I feel is the biggest problem with any comic book game (and something the people in charge of the Spire-Man games have finally figured out) and that's the fact that games based on movies based on comic books rarely turn out well (Spider-Man 2 is the only one I can think of at  the moment). Why, well other than the fact that they always seem to be half assed attempts at a good game, the story get's completely diluted. A comic book movie generally needs to boil down a bunch of story points to their essential bits for fit everything needed in the movie. When the video game based on a movie comes along that 90-120min story is clearly not enough to make a game of any sort of decent length. So what do they do? They shoe horn in different plot devices from the comic to fill it in. In Iron Man's case this would be AIM and the Maggia. AIM makes sense, Tony has always butted heads with them, but the Maggia? What the hell? For those of you unaware, the Maggia is Marvel comics version of the Mafia. Back in the early days of comics, the mafia was in full force to so protect themselves ever so slightly any time Marvel wanted mobsters in the comic they were referred to as part of the Maggia. The Maggia in the game is in name only as they have been completely re-purposed as some sort of nation or something. At any rate the story in this game makes absolutely no sense at all and is down right pathetic.
 
The gameplay sadly is not much better. While flying around in the suit feels great you are constantly hovering and shooting. That's not Iron Man dammit! That's Hover Shooting Robot Man. Did they not watch the movie? Have they not read the comic? Iron Man will shoot stuff from time to time, but he gets up close and tears shit apart just as much, if not more. There was no proper hand to hand as well, which made trying to smash things completely useless. Ok, so they focused primarily on shooting, so they must have done that well, right? Hell no! Its brutal, you can only shoot when you are hovering in mid air or on the ground (which is a very rare occurrence). Not only that, the only way to make sure that you aren't going to get shot or hit by ever single missle you have to freaking circle strafe your target......that was enjoyable in the 90's, not so much now. Then there's the damned re-spawning jets that shoot missiles at you non stop. Ok, cool, I need to take down the jet, fine. But don't bring more back after I clear the skies. Why the hell should I get rid of them in the first place if you are just going to bring them right back? I'll just keep trying to dodge them, thanks. There's so much more to complain about in this game, like the pointless upgrade system,  but I have more to cover and would like to finish writing some time this year.
 
To sum it all up, do not play this game unless under gun point. And even then, consider the sweet alternative of death, it might look better than you think after playing this for 20 minutes.
 

Iron Man (360) - 1 "Sega Hates You" out of 5

Hell yes I got that thing ya sent me. It was hilarious! Harvey Birdman: Attorney At Law is a Phoenix Wright clone with the illustrious Harvey Birdman in his place. I love the TV show, so I figured I would at least like the game a little as I also enjoy the Ace Attorney series. What I didn't expect was to enjoy this game so much I would play through it in one sitting. The gameplay is all very simple point and click, nothing fancy here. What you are really playing is for the story, there are 5 episodes and they range from 20-40 minutes each depending on how quickly you figure things out and they are all very funny. If you like the show at all this game is right up your alley. There's honestly not much more to write about on this game, it's all pretty simple, so let's just wrap this up here.
 

Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law (Wii) - 4 "HA HAAAH Nut Sack"'s out of 5

Finally got around to S-Ranking Banjo-Kazooie. This game is classic Rare, before they forgot how to make a good game aka after Microsoft bought them. I'm not going to really bother review it other than to say that the final boss was ridiculous. I beat this game back when it first came out and I don't remember having this much trouble with the final showdown. And I had everything unlocked including the Red Honeycombs, insanity. Oh well, it's done and now I can move on to my next XBLA game Shadow Complex.
 

Banjo-Kazooie (XBLA) - 5 "GOD DAMN YOU WITCH!!!"'s out of 5

I love Telltale Games! I've bought all of the games they have made even if I haven't played them all yet. The latest one I'm going through is the Strong Bad series. Episode 4 is played out entirely in the form for the action movie Dangeresque 3 The Criminal Projective. Which is written, directed, and edited all entirely by Strong Bad. Like all Telltale Games games, there are laughs abound and all in all, it`s just a really fun game. I love point and click games period, back to the old days of Maniac Mansion and the like. Once again, when it comes to this type of game there isn't much to review. The story is entertaining and fun, that's all you really need.   

Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People Episode 4: Dangeresque 3 The Criminal Projective (PC) - 4 "It's time to juuummp!"'s out of 5

Well that was a lot of game completes this week. I've started working my way through Dead Rising on the 360 so keep a look out for that. I've been playing for a little bit so far and am enjoying it way more than the last time, now that I know a few things I didn't back then. Like for example, the convicts keep re-spawning, so don't bother trying to kill them unless you want the achievement and that there is a short cut to avoid them, well dammit. But yeah, I've died a few times now and have done the restart with current stats thing. At about level 13 or so and about to start over again. But having fun, and that's what matters. There's just something about killing zombies. It just feels right.

Well I've fnished two games this week, Iron Man on the 360 and Harvey Birdman: Attorney At Law on the Wii. On Monday I'll be writing up reviews for both of these on the regular blog, so look forward to that. Both games had their ups and downs, one was certainly better than the other. But you'll have to wait until Monday to find out. Why Monday and not Sunday you might be asking? Well because it's a long weekend here in Canada and I intend to get a bunch of gaming done.  
 

Things I'm working through:

  
Sitting paused on my TV while I take a break from it so I don't throw my 360 controller through my TV is Banjo Kazooie. I'm on the last boss battle and have now died 5 times on the last phase. I do not remember this being this hard when I played though it the first time back on the good old N64. At any rate, this will be finished today, within the next hour or so in fact. This will also net me my 7th S-Rank and with that, hopefully that damned quest on here will update and I will get the completed for the 1 S-Rank and 5 S-Rank quests. I've also put some more time into Caslevania: Dawn of Sorrow on the DS and in fact technically finished the game. It's my first time though Finally I'm trying to get the Tour Mode of Rock Band 2 finished but I generally only play through tour mode with one of my very good friends so we are trying to get together and finish the Tour before Rock Band 3 comes out in a month and a half. I love Rock Band, plain and simple. It's a great party game and it's great to play with just a friend or two. I used to love playing period, but now that I have a good grasp on each instument (I play on hard for all including singing which if I'm drinking and playing with a group is my position of choice and I'll sing anything, I have no shame) I don't feel the same need to play alone. I feel that will change when RB3 comes out as I really do want to learn how to play each instrument in Pro mode, we'll see what my aptitude is for Guitar, but I feel I'll be able to learn Drums and Keyboard(YAY KEYBOARD!!!) with some effort. 
 

Things I'll be playing soon:

  
Currently on it's way from GameAccess is Mega Man ZX on the DS. I love Mega Man. Nuff' Said. That means however that I don't have any games from GameAccess right now, so that means I'll be dipping into the secondary queue. I think I'll play thorough the 4th episode of Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People and then hit up some Dead Rising. I tried playing it long ago but I gave up on it exactly when the Humvee killed me for the 12th time. I've decided I haven't taken enough punishment and I'm going to take another crack at it. Hopefully this works out better this time. Lastly I keep trying to find the time to jump onto Champions Online so hopefully this glorious longs weekend I'll be able to.  

Have a good one, everybody
Jesse "Goku13k" Dyck    

Having literally just finished the game about 10 minutes ago, I have to say I'm still kind of staggered. The ending was amazing and tied so much together perfectly. This is one of those games that need to be revisited by all. Something I don't think I've mentioned at all while talking about Folklore these last few blogs is that fact that it uses Six-Axis controls. I know, everyone is probably groaning right now, but I swear, it works perfectly in this game. When you a fighting you use the SAC (Six-Axis Controls) to harvest the Folk you have stunned. Now this ranges from a simple pull up, not unlike hooking a fish, all the way to final bosses where you have to pull, shake, and balance the Folks Id to tire it out and capture it. This is the only instance that I have seen where the SAC fit. It doesn't feel like another control scheme was hammered on top of the normal, it's completely fluid and just feels right. 
 
I will admit by the time I got to the 4 Chapter (for each character seperately) I started to get tired of trying to collect all of the Folk and unlock all of their Karma's. It's not the it got boring, it just got harder and harder to do. For example, there is one creature that as Keats I needed to kill 3 times with one Folk, plus absorb it's Id 5 times. The problem? This Id only appeared in one part of the 4th Chapter and it was a pain in the ass to capture because there were other Folks in the room that would stop you from collecting it. Kill the other Folk you say? Can't, this specific room had a stipulation that if you killed this one type of Folk the room would reset. Suffice it to say, I gave up on unlocking all of the Karma at this exact point. Any that unlocked on the way cool, but other wise I wasn't going to go out of my way any more.
 
Holy crap this story!!! Seriously this is probably the greatest story I have seen in game in a while. It's deep, it's meaningful, it honestly makes you think about life in general, about your mortality, your morals. It's simply terrific. Next time a Games as Art debate shows up around me, I feel I know have played a game that I can honestly say is a prime example of a game that is art. The story is told via both FMV as well as an odd choice of comic book style cut scenes. Don't misunderstand, they certainly work, but it seems odd for a PS3 game to rely on text based story telling. Also there can be some unanswered questions about certain plot points, fortunately the developer, Game Republic, put in side quests that you can complete that fill in more of story, mainly some characters motivations for their actions. 
 
Now, this is a section in my reviews that you will rarely see, but it needs mentioning. This game is freaking beautiful! From main characters to the Folk, from the tiny little room Ellen stays in to the huge environments like the Faery Realm, one word, gorgeous! When I first got to the Faery Realm (Just one of 6 different worlds you visit) I was completely blown away. That is all.
 
In the end, it has now been about 30 min of me typing up my thoughts on this game and I still am blown away at the ending. Never saw it coming. My mind is still racing through my time with the game and coming up with pieces of clues. I truly feel that everyone needs to go find this game and give it a play through. It's one of those rare gems in the sand, and deserves a second look. Go play this game ASAP, you owe it to yourself.
 

Folklore (PS3) - 4 Barghests out of 5

 

What's next?

 
Well, it looks like Iron Man on the 360 is the next game up. Also with the One Year Anniversary of Champions Online, I'm patched up and ready to jump on again, so that will take up some of my time. One last thing, I'm thinking of copy/pasting my above review of Folklore and posting it as a proper review on the Folklore page. I'm just not sure if that's OK or not. I mean i wrote it and all but it's duplicating the text found on the site vs. making it easier to find a review of this game, anyone have some thoughts on the matter? Until next week, make sure to keep on gamin'!

I Know, I know. I said I'm bad at this blogging thing last week, but do not give up hope! I've decided to move the full weekly blog to Sunday nights and start a new recap side blog. Why? Well first of all, Fridays can be busy for me, not unlike most. If I'm not hunkering down to game solo, then I'm hunkering down to game with some friends, or on rare occasions, actually leave my cave (trusty trusty safe warm cave..........huh!? oh yea). Second, well I generally get most of my gaming done during the weekend. So it just doesn't make much sense to me to have a Friday blog that talks about the games I'm currently wading through and talking about stuff I played mostly the week before. That's pretty much it.
 
Now the question is what will this part of the blog be about? Kind of a brain dump of my escapades over the week days. What I've played, anything important I feel the need to mention about said things I've played, etc. This part (I don't like the word "part" for this....need to come up with a better word....feature doesn't seem right...hmmm, maybe you all can help me with that one?) should appear once a week or so unless I have done no gaming at all (which generally means I'm currently devouring a couple DVD sets or perhaps something even more catastrophic). So let's get to business shall we? No need for this to be as long as the last one eh? (Betcha can't guess where I live ya' hoser!)
 
Item the First:....(I did mention this would be itemized didn't I?...oh, well it is, deal with it)
Folklore is still awesome! There has been a slight set back in the plan however. There comes a point where you have to play as the second character (Keats) to be able to advance the story further. Which means I am currently working through the game with Keats. Do I regret my decision? Hell no! You are playing through the same levels as before so I think it was good that I had that time between replays of levels. Don't think for one second that it's boring though! Getting to see the other side of the story is lots of fun and there are different folk in each world to collect. At any rate, fun is being had still and will continue to be had, the world is safe.
 
Item the Second:...(I should really have neat little titles for these things...wait then what are these things?)

...WTF? I didn't play anything else this week? Accursed DVDs!!!!! Hmmm.... ah this is a topic worth covering. Champions Online is having it's 1 Year Anniversary!!! HELLS YEAH!!! Currently patching up and getting ready to dust of the old character, Dr. Steambolt (seen in append. A or is that exhibit A?) .... wait a second that's Iron Man.....one second....There we go, that's better! At any rate,

Hello Giant Bomb! Welcome to what I hope to be a regular installment to my blog here. I've tried this whole blogging thing a couple times before but it's never really panned out for me. No because I'm looking for some sort of financial gain or fame, but put simply, I'm quite lazy. But here I am, in a brand new community that I just joined the other day, giving it another go. You know why? Because I think that I have something to say, nothing important mind you, but I just want to stand on my soap box like everyone else, shout as loudly as possible and be heard.
 
Now for some background on my gaming habits and preferences. I like games. All of them. Any type, any genre, any platform. I play pretty much everything I can get my hands on, and because of that, I'm roughly 3 years  and 300+ games behind (that's including all current gen platforms/handhelds, I finished my last PS2 game 3 months or so ago). I've complete every game I play, no matter the quality (there are of course rare cases that prove the rule,
Assassin's Creed: Altair's Chronicles comes to mind *shudder*). Now I might not S-Rank or even A or B Rank them, but I complete any story/single-player campaign that exists. I'm not a multiplayer gamer but i do enjoy some co-op with friends from time to time. I don't prefer any console over another other than the simple fact that 360 had achievements well before PS3 had trophies and therefore I prefer to play my games there. I always buy the DLC if it's adds to the game because 1. I rent almost all of my games through a service in Canada called GameAccess and I like to give the developers their fair share if I'm playing their game and 2. I'll be damned if I don't love extra stuff.
 
Ok, so know we know a whole lot about you you're saying to yourself (Why are you talking to yourself.....weirdo) "Ok, we know what you play, why, etc. Why should I read your blog?". Well good people, because my blog is going to be all about those games you might have missed, passed by, or worse forgotten about. Oh don't think I won't write about the AAA titles, no, I play plenty of those too. But I play them well after they are released, with all the DLC that was released with it, getting a (in my mind) fuller experience. Since I've been going on for a little while here, I'm going to rapid shot some reviews (one sentence + rating) and then talk shortly about my current game: Folklore on the PS3. This is probably the only time you will ever see rapid shots, they are mainly here so you can get a taste of what floats my boat and what I have been playing for the last 3-4 months to get an idea of how damn far back I am.
 
Rapid Shots!!!

Gears of War (X360): Pretty cool, ok story, fun gameplay. ****
The Legend of Zelda (NDS): Phantom Hourglass: Classic Zelda action in the Wind Waker universe ****
Rayman Raving Rabbids 2 (Wii): More mini-games, sorta fun with a crowd, nothing too special **
Beautiful Katamari (X360): I don't know why, but I can never get enough of rolling that damn ball, stay away from the DLC though ****
Ratatouille (X360): Meh, not bad for a Disney license, not good for a platformer however **
Red Steel (Wii): For what it was, I think it was great. Sword combat was fun as was shooting, short though ***
Mass Effect (X360): God damn you Bioware, 50+ hours in 1.5 weeks, yeah I guess I liked it *****
The World Ends With You (NDS): Very cool game, great concept, good gameplay, very cool story *****
Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII (PSP): Square, Square, Square, what can I say, ya did good here ****
 
And that was rapid shots! Be aware that the style above is very reflective of my longer form style. I could not give a crap about graphics, and only care about gameplay if that is the focus of a game or it's horrible. I care about story. If a game has a bad gameplay but an interesting story, I can suffer through and still enjoy the game, because it becomes about getting that next piece of story for me. I promise the next blog will not be this long, it's starting to get ridiculous already. So let's talk briefly about Folklore on the PS3.
 
Folklore is a whole lot of fun so far. The basic premise is that you go to this lone forgotten town to find out about your past. While there you get dragged into the Faery World and to find out your past you must defeat the Folklore, huge beasts of immense power. To help you, you collect Folk. These creatures are your offense and defense. From whacking guys with a stick to dropping sludge on a folk so it can't move, they can do it all. You collect them as you go through the worlds. But it doesn't end there, you also can unleash their Karma and cause them to grow in strength. If you're like me, you'll find yourself grinding Karma to complete each Folk's list. As far as story goes, there is something of a mystery going on. There are two characters that you can plays as that have separate stories that run concurrently and overlap and you can switch between the two. I've decided to only play as Ellen for as long as I can however and currently I'm in the 3rd chapter with her. I've got to say, this game has a great gameplay mechanic in the various Folk. They are all so varied and fun to use. On top of that, the worlds you explore are gorgeous. When I first entered the Faery World, I was awestruck. Great designs all around. This game truly deserves a look if you've passed over it. 
 
Well that's it for now, I've got a blank slate weekend so I plan to put in a lot of time into Folklore. Unfortunately I'm feeling the MMO itch, but I'm trying my best to stay away for now. If you've read all the way to the bottom, I thank you. Please comment and give me some feedback, if it's on my writing or to shout out that you've played Folklore too.
 
Have a good one, everybody
Jesse "Goku13k" Dyck