Sigh.

I've been meaning to post, but finals week and other end-of-the-semester crap is getting in the way. I'll hopefully have some new stuff up in a week or two.

GoldenEye 007

...I'm working on it. So far, it's okay, I guess. I'm only on the second level. Hopefully next weekend I'll have a review up.

Also, I think I was a little too hasty to review Force Unleashed 2, I'll have to think about that one for a bit and update my original review.

Force Unleashed 2

The story is really weak, and has barely any continuity with the film series. Then again, George Lucas himself has no concept of continuity, so I suppose it all works out.

Some of the best graphics I've seen on the 360, right alongside Halo Reach. The cutscenes are beautiful.

Combat is pretty good. There isn't that awful Force Push wheel, targeting is vastly improved over Force Unleashed 1, and having two lightsabers is pretty cool, except I'm still waiting for the game where you can unlock Darth Maul's lightsaber and actually use it.

There aren't too many glitches from what I could tell; Starkiller disappeared out of the game for a few seconds then came back, but that only happened once. There's still that annoying bug where if you're on the edge of a platform or object and try to jump, you don't move forward, but timing the jump differently can fix that.

My only major criticism is that the boss battles were a little too epic for their own good, at least to me. The giant creature you fight in the arena (Gorgon? Goron? Al Gore?) seemed to be just a little too fantastic for the scope of the game, and the ending fight with Vader seemed to drag on and on and on interminably. Also, the frantic button-mashing at the very end made me wish there was still that 'Turbo' option on controllers... my fingers were pretty beat up after doing it twice. A more minor criticism is that there were some really repetitive elements to the game, such as outrunning an bridge that is exploding behind you and facing the same kind of enemies over, and over, and over, and over. At least there weren't any Imperial Purge Troopers, I would have punched my hand through the TV (and it isn't a flatscreen, it has actual glass on the front).

All in all, I think that this is a great game. The developers really took the time to address the faults of Force Unleashed 1, and work past them to make a game that I really enjoyed playing. Sure, the story was rather lame and the campaign takes maybe 5 hours to do on Medium, but I'm willing to look past those issues because I had a heck of a time playing. Good job, LucasArts!

Graphics: 5/5

Audio: 5/5

Gameplay: 4/5

Story: 3/5

Overall: 4/5

Creepy games

I don't know why I play them, but I do. I got F.E.A.R. Files from Gamefly yesterday and played it for a few minutes tonight, and it's freaking creepy. Naturally, that's the last thing I play before I go to bed. Hopefully I don't have nightmares of that sergeant being thrown around and getting blood all over the walls and floor.

Why do I play creepy games? I've never been able to figure that out. I played RE4 for the Gamecube and beat it one and a half times, then I got it for the Wii and I've played it for all of 20 minutes, and I usually end up screaming like a girl and waving the controller around in a frenzy while hordes of Ganado or whatever they're called chase after me with pitchforks. Don't even get me started on the Regenerador.

Maybe tonight will mark a change for me. As of tonight, I'm not going to play any more creepy games because they just aren't worth the time and effort. Besides, I think my roommates would get annoyed if all I did was play creepy games and scream like a girl.

Quantum of Solace

Why do I always buy games two years too late?

Anyway... I beat this game last night and I'm glad I didn't pay full price on it. The graphics seemed so-so to me, the mechanics were underwhelming, and the campaign was a disjointed mess (you spend roughly an hour or so in Quantum of Solace, and three or four hours in Casino Royale in a massively extended flashback). Not only that, but half of the achievements are based on online multiplayer, and no one on XBL plays this game anymore. I fired up Perfect Dark Zero (you know, the 360 launch title) to see if anyone was on that, and I got into a deathmatch right away. Weird, right?

Overall, the game is an okay first-person shooter with third-person elements here and there. The cover system seemed a bit dodgy to me, and the blindfire really isn't all that blind. If you peek out of cover, line up a shot, then go back into cover and blindfire, you'll hit the exact shot you had just lined up. Maybe this is how blindfire is really supposed to work and I've just played all the wrong games. I'm not complaining too much; this makes the game rather easy, but it just didn't feel right.

I'd say that the bottom line on this game is if you're looking for a few hours to kill and you have a man-crush on Daniel Craig, give this one a tumble. Don't pay full rental price for it unless you're only getting it for a day or two; GameFly it if you can, or get it for a few bucks at your local Gamestop or similar venue. Don't pay full price for it or you'll end up having spent $13 an hour for the time it takes to beat the campaign on a middling difficulty.

Halo: Reach

First of all, a disclaimer: I am a huge Halo fan. I've played through all of the Halo games multiple times (except Reach), and am guilty of what the guys at sarcasticgamer.com call 'Halo Jesus' (Halo is perfect, Halo is amazing, Halo is the best thing to ever happen to gaming, etc.). So if and when I seem biased towards thinking that Halo is one of the greatest gaming series of all time, there's your reason why.

Let's break it down, shall we?

1. Gameplay

-For me, gameplay was very smooth. I never had any issues with pressing the wrong buttons on the controller (likely due to my involvement in the Reach beta), the armor abilities were very intuitive, the weapons were great (with some notable exceptions, cough cough Assault Rifle). The game mechanics, for me, are probably one of the core strengths of the game at large.

Level design was typical Halo: run around, shoot stuff, complete the objective, and move on. There was enough variety within the missions, at least for me, that I never got bored (with one very notable exception, to be dealt with later). However, it must be pointed out that the Reach campaign is probably the most difficult out of the whole bunch. I played on Normal, and even then some levels were extremely frustrating. I found myself using tactics that players on Legendary would use, and I was on Normal. I don't want to imagine what getting the 'A Monument To All Your Sins' achievement is like...

As for weapons, I think the DMR is one of my favorite Halo weapons of all time, right alongside the Battle Rifle from Halo 2 and the Silenced Pistol from ODST (the all-powerful Magnum from Halo: CE goes without saying as the greatest weapon in the series). The Needler Rifle was pretty cool too.

Despite the strengths I've glanced over so far, there is one level out of the entire campaign that annoyed the crap out of me, and that was the mission in space. When I saw this level in the trailers, I was beside myself with excitement, because I thought "hey hey hey HALO IN SPACE it's going to be awesome!" Maybe my expectations were too high, but the space level underwhelmed me, and that's, well, an understatement. You pretty much fly a Banshee in space. I had hoped for a better experience than just that. Heck, I can hijack a Banshee in Halo freakin' 2 and have more fun in that thing than I did in Reach.

2. Audio

-Marty O'Donnell's score is fantastic, as I've come to expect. The sound effects were pretty kickass. Dialogue was a little jittery at times, simply because I couldn't understand what Jorge (George? Joge?) was saying half the time, but overall the audio was a great experience. I wish I had an actual hi-def sound system so I could hear it in surround sound.

3. Story

-Seeing as you know how the game ends, the story seemed like it was just going through the motions until the last cutscene. I never really figured out what Dr. Halsey's role in the story was, and

***SPOILER ALERT***

Jorge's death was rather predictable. Of course the bomb needs to be manually detonated, and of course Jorge lets Noble Six go, sacrificing himself for the greater good, and of course this plot device hasn't been used half a million times in every single video game and movie ever made.

Also, introducing Cortana as some secret Forerunner AI didn't make much sense to me. If she's Forerunner, why would she let herself get captured by the Flood? Why not reveal the secrets of all Halo-dom to the UNSC right away and finish the fight before it starts? Maybe someone who's a bit more versed in Halo knowledge can explain this to me. That's what the comment section is for.

All my gripes aside, I think the survival level was really, really cool. I loved how your visor cracked and fell apart as you took damage, and your shield and armor ability never recharged, until finally you fall to the Covenant. That was a really impressive moment for me.

4. Multiplayer

-Firefight Matchmaking? The Armory? Arena? Heck yes. Count me in. Yeah, it would be nice to have more maps, and it would be super cool if more classic maps were redone for Reach since it's Bungie's last Halo effort (Turf! Turf! Turf!), but I'm assuming that new maps will be coming down the pipe eventually. I haven't played Reach since the most recent Matchmaking update, apparently it adds Team SWAT as its own playlist and Campaign Matchmaking is either here or coming soon.

5. Graphics

-This game will likely go on the list as one of the best-looking games on the 360 so far, maybe even for the console's entire lifespan.

6. Finish, er, start the fight...

-Overall, I don't regret buying the game right away. I don't like it enough to put it on my list of favorite games of all time, but I can't say that I hate it. It's got its fair share of weaknesses, but as a whole I am very satisfied with the total experience. I give it 4/5 stars.

What did you think of Reach? Write a comment!

Halo Reach: REVIEWED!

...to come later tonight.

Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga

I love it so far. I think the developer took the concept of Lego and applied it to Star Wars perfectly. I completed Episode I in around 2 hours (counting trying to find all the secret bricks and whatnot), which ultimately proved to be a better and more satisfying experience than the actual movie.

This is probably one of the most quirky games I've played recently, and I can't wait to play more of it.

Okay...

Resident Evil 4 is still the scariest game I've ever played, even on the Wii where the controls are magnificent (and much easier since there's an actual crosshair on the screen instead of a red laser dot).

Come to think of it, I don't know what controls have to do with scariness. This post has no point and I apologize.

Force Unleashed for Wii is...

awesome. It's completely different from the other versions, in mostly good ways. Yeah, the graphics look awful (seriously, is this the best the Wii can do?), but gameplay was a blast. Using the Wiimote and Nunchuk to blow people away with the Force was one of the more enjoyable gaming experiences I've recently had.
The top five things I like most about it are:
1. Wii-exclusive Force powers
2. Wiimote lightsaber combat
3. No Imperial Purge Droids
4. Lightsaber hilt customization (seriously)
5. No annoying glitchy Star Destroyer-pulling sequence

That last one really delivered for me. Playing that part in the 360 version was a nightmare, especially since the developer said that the whole sequence was crippled by a bug to begin with (so release a patch and fix it! Honestly!), so I was bracing myself for "twist the Nunchuk a little bit this way, then gently pull the Wiimote down, and twist a little more, then hold it, then twist a little more," but it never materialized, thankfully.

The top five things that annoyed me the most are:
1. Really, really bad graphics
2. Sound issues (does the Apprentice really shout and scream like Master Kota?!)
3. Lots of waggling at the end of boss fights
4. The horrible camera swiveling that you can't really control
5. Did I mention bad graphics?

All in all, though, it was a very fun experience and I can't wait to see what Force Unleashed II will be like on the Wii. Four stars.

Watchmen: The End Is Nigh

After taking more time to play this game, I think I'll offer a second opinion on it. Yeah, it's a bad game, but it's so bad that it's actually... rather enjoyable. You walk around, punch stuff, and listen to hilariously bad tough-guy dialogue. Is that so bad?
I finished Part 1 this morning, and I'm just starting Part 2 now, so I can't speak for the second half of the game completely. From where I'm at, it looks like more of the repetitive beating up that you did in the first episode. That might turn a lot of people off (and admittedly, I took a break after beating Chapter 1 of Part 2 because I was bored), but if you like a simple game where you beat people up a lot, this is for you. Buy it used; don't spend full price on it.

The Worst Games I've Ever Played... Terminator Salvation

In the final entry of this series (for now), I've got Terminator Salvation in my crosshairs. This game could have been really good, and should have been, given the source material, but we Terminator fanboys got stuck with a clunky mess of a game that isn't even fun to play. There's no 'it's so bad, it's good' going on here. It's all bad.
From the first time you load up the game, you'll see a loading screen that seems to take much more time loading than it should. You'll see this screen a lot during the game; in between chapters, in between different parts of a level, and all in all I'd say there are between 5-10 minutes total you've spend staring at this loading screen by the time you finish the game (assuming you don't die a bunch of times and have to see it even more so). I'm no developer or anything, but it seems to me that most loading should take place behind the scenes and not interrupt gameplay every 15 minutes.
Once the game has actually loaded, you'll be bombarded with blurry graphics, awful writing, and awful, bored-sounding voice acting. In the first level, you as John Connor lead a team into a beaten old building in Los Angeles, and discover a Hunter-Killer hovering around outside.
Blair: John, use that rocket to blow up the HK!
Equip the RPG, find cover, and peek out when you see the HK hover in front of the building. Fire the rocket. The rocket will hit the HK and it'll fly away for a minute.
Blair: Good work John!
Rogers: Nice shooting John.
Do this three or four more times. See what I mean?

There are six types of enemies in the game, three of which will hound you constantly from beginning to end. You have five weapons to choose from, and two different types of grenades. That by itself should turn around 84% of gamers off, especially those who play Halo and Call of Duty, where dozens of weapons await you over the course of the game. Then again, neither of those games are 4 hours long.
Another huge problem with the game is that the graphics and design are awful. Everything is a bit blurry and flat. The environment design, at least in the first couple of levels, is pretty good; LA looks like a broken shell of a city, just what you'd expect after a nuclear attack. After that, though, it's the same thing over and over. You walk into a building where several layers of barricades sit in the middle of the room, and robots walk out and shoot at you, and you hide behind a barricade and shoot at them until they die. Flanking is a huge part of the game; the spider robots won't die unless shot from behind. Your AI teammates, however, like to run for cover in random places and crouch behind it, never popping out to give you covering fire. This makes for some fairly drawn-out battles on the hardest difficulty, because you're the only one actually doing anything, and your health winds down very quickly.

Speaking of the hardest difficulty, I played the game once through on Easy, then went all the way to Hard, and it was only a little more difficult than the first time around. No challenge whatsoever. Well, unless you count 'moving in slow motion even with the sensitivity turned to 100%' and 'popping out of cover and pressing the Fire button but your character just stands there and gets shot to death.' The last two chapters are literally 10 minutes long apiece, if that. If you play in co-op, it would probably take around five minutes apiece.

This game is slow, clunky, badly voiced, and needs to be played on the hardest difficulty to get your rental fee's worth out of it. Yeah, you will get 1000/1000G easily since there are only 12 achievements, and if you liked the movie you'll get filled in on some of the backstory leading up to the events of the film, but if you don't have the patience to put up with shoddy game design, avoid this at all costs.

Splinter Cell?

I'm too aggressive for stealth games. I got Splinter Cell: Double Agent from GameFly last week, and loaded the training missions since I've never played an intense stealth game before (I don't count Metal Gear Solid as strictly stealth since you can still shoot people if you really want to). My 'handler' told me that lethal force was not allowed, and I had to sneak past everyone and avoid any kind of detection to complete the objective. In the first mission, I disabled the security cameras, walked through the laser trip wire, triggered the alarm, and took the objective. In the second mission, I punched the cop, walked into the next segment, and on the staircase overlooking the maze with the two terrorists clearly visible, I pulled out my gun and shot them both. Then I walked through the maze and completed the objective.
When I tried the first mission, I shot the first couple of guys in the face, infiltrated the base or whatever kind of facility it was, and shot people in the back. Then I was gunned down. I did this two or three more times, and decided that enough was enough, and I sent the game back. I'm sure that Splinter Cell and the like are really awesome games, but I don't have the patience to sneak around everything. I like games that let me utilize the direct approach, like Halo, and GTA IV, and Asteroids.

The Worst Games I've Ever Played... GameCube Edition

1. Wreckless: The Yakuza Missions
Imagine a world where all of the characters look like they are modeled on an N64, so they are perfectly polygonal. Imagine that one of these characters is eating Jello out of a martini glass, and she drops the glass, and a perfectly polygonal, sharp-edged object that is understood to be Jello spills out. Then you start playing the actual game, where you are driving around in a car, racing to catch up with, as your boss tells you, 'the Yakuza cars.' You also learn that you work for a secret anti-Yakuza car-driving team knows as 'The Flying Dragons.' If you fail the mission, your car comes to a halt and your characters says "oh noooooooooooe! we lawwwwwwwwst!" because your character is a whiny-voiced girl. Then is where I turned off the 'Cube and cursed myself for paying to rent this worthless game.

2. Prince of Persia: Warrior Within
What does heavy metal have to do with ancient Egypt? If you ask this game's developers, probably a lot of stuff, because that's all you hear when you play. I would have rather had my fingers crushed with a hammer by Islamic terrorists, like what happened to Leo DiCaprio in 'Body of Lies' (avoid that movie too).

3. The Scorpion King: Rise of the Akkadian
The graphics were awful, the cutscenes were all pre-rendered CGI, so they looked infinitely better than the actual game. The voice acting sounded like the producer had gotten The Rock, et al into a darkened room and threatened to not turn the lights on if they didn't record their lines.
(The Rock and a Mysterious Old Man walk up to the exit of the evil dungeon where Rock just killed a giant water serpent. They look off into the distance.)
The Rock: I'm going home now.
Old Man: Eeeehhh, Akkadian... (imagine the most stereotypical old man voice possible)
The Rock: No. It can't be.
Old Man: I'm afraid so, Akkadian. Akkad is in flames. Someone has attacked it.
The Rock: I must go.
Fun fact: if you walked over a save point in the third or fourth level with a broad sword equipped, the game would crash.
Fun fact #2: Mark Hamill does the voice of one of the bosses. I'll give you a hint as to who that voice really belongs to. It starts with 'J' and rhymes with 'toker.' Yep.
This game's mediocrity should have prevented me from playing it, but I beat it several times over, because once you beat the game, you start over from the beginning with all of your upgraded abilities, while the enemies remain in their 'easy mode' state. This makes the game incredibly easy to beat and a laugh-fest at that. Go to Amazon and pay $.53 plus shipping if you want to play one of the most repetitive, uninspired games in all of Creation.

4. Enter The Matrix
This game should have been mind-blowingly awesome. Instead it was buggy, and the combat sucked, and those driving levels were some of the most painful experiences that a human being could ever have, aside from having their limbs removed with a can opener and having to watch 'Mio In The Land Of Faraway.' The story was pretty interesting, seeing as you'd be really confused if you watched The Matrix Reloaded/Revolutions without playing the game first, because it explains the backstory of Niobe and Ghost and everything that they do while Reloaded is happening. But you have to play the entire frickin' game in order to discover the whole story, and you just might drop your controller and say that it isn't worth it, and you'll read it on Wikipedia instead.
If more time and effort had been put into the game, it might not have been as bad as it is. And it has its redeeming qualities. The bullet time is awesome, as usual, and some of the combat moves were really cool, especially since using bullet time (Focus, in the game) changed the moves into jaw-dropping moments of arse-kickery. Prime example: if you walk up behind a guard and press the Action button, you'll clamp your hands over his mouth and strangle him. If you press the Action button and then press the Focus button, you'll snap his neck so hard that his head is turned around 180 degrees, so when he lands facing down, his face will be looking up at you. How awesome is that?
One of the other great things about this otherwise-awful game is that if Hollywood and the game industry did partnerships with this level of detail and cooperation, movie-based games might not suck as bad as they do. That, and the hacking mini-game was spectacularly well done. That by itself might justify buying it for a very small amount of money.
Otherwise, the game falls flat. There are numerous bugs within the game, and a lot of graphic-related issues that made the game really hard to enjoy for me. Yeah, I played it a lot, because I was bored at the time, back in 2003, and couldn't afford to buy a whole lot of games.

The Worst Games I've Ever Played... Rogue Warrior

There aren't enough negative words in the English language to describe this saucy goatshtup of a game. It's based on a guy who I guess was the original Navy SEAL, so when I got bored one night and rented it, I figured it wouldn't be so bad. The cover looked pretty cool, and Mickey Rourke did the voice of the protagonist, so... how could this go wrong?
In just about every way possible.

For starters, the graphics were absolutely awful. Most of it looked like a PS2 game that was illegally hacked to allow usability on a 360. Your player's face hardly ever changes, and neither do the faces of your enemies. The environments looked like they were straight out of Tomorrow Never Dies for PS1, and that's saying something.
Continuing the horror, the sound effects were pretty standard. All of the guns sounded like they came out of a cheap Jason Statham movie that no one bothered to see. Your enemies all talk in very exaggerated Asian dialects (you're in North Korea), and Mickey Rourke mumbles all of his lines and only puts feeling into them when he really feels the urge. For an example...
1. "ManthisplaceisashitholehowthefuckdidIgetinjured."
2. "Dropthatmotherfuckeryoufuckin'amateurs! AW FUCK!"
Oh, in case you couldn't tell, there are more f-bombs in this game than any Quentin Tarantino movie you've ever seen. Not that I cared; most of the time it was downright hilarious because it was so over the top. Case in point: you're walking down a hallway, with your night vision goggles on, and you gun down an evil North Korean Communist, and Mickey decides to shout "Goddamn cockbreath Commie motherfuckers!" You tell 'em, Mick.
Gameplay was an absolute wash. When you're firing at your enemies, your bullets will only hit them around half of the time, while they pump lead into you mercilessly until you die. You'll want to take cover a lot, assuming their bullets don't magically pass through the object you're hiding behind (yes, it's true). When you're not in a firefight, you can pretty much walk into an enemy's peripheral vision and kill him, because the AI is so stupid that a dying amoeba would pose more danger to you than one of these guys. It's almost as if the developers decided to go for the player demographic of 'blind horses without legs' when figuring out how difficult to make the actual game. Don't believe me? You can go up to any enemy, even if they're firing on you, and press the Action button to perform a very sweet-looking knife kill, which is just about the only redeeming quality the game has, even if you are in the middle of a massive firefight with 10 guys shooting at you and you can take them out one by one with your knife. Besides the fact that...
...it's only 2 hours long. On the easiest difficulty, too. And they throw achievements around like candy; I was able to rack up 495 Gamerscore points in total, and there's still a bunch left I could get if I wanted to, assuming anyone plays this game online (they don't), or any of my friends rent it to try it out (they won't).
This is, without a doubt, in the top three worst games I have ever played. Yeah, I tried really hard to get my money's worth out of it, but at least I didn't pay full price for this steaming pile of diseased walrus crap. Heck, I wouldn't have been able to get my money's worth if I had gotten the game for free. So... if you're looking for shameless, easy ways to boost your Gamerscore, rent this game for a day. Or steal it. And if you do, steal two copies so you and I can play online and get even more achievements, while losing our last shred of dignity in the process.

The Worst Games I've Ever Played... Watchmen: The End Is Nigh

In this series of posts, I'm going to write about the worst games I've ever played, in no particular order. I'm going to start with Watchmen: The End Is Nigh.
Last month, this game was for sale on XBLA for something around 800 points. I downloaded the demo to see if it was any good. I had heard that it wasn't the greatest game of all time, but I figured I'd try it since I love Watchmen and I love good deals even more. I fired up the game, started the first level, and part of me died inside. I'm not kidding.
You have the option of playing as either Nite Owl or Rorschach. I chose Rorschach because he's my favorite character from Watchmen. After a brief cutscene, Nite Owl and I dropped into the prison so we could quell the riot happening there, and began to fight against the inmates.
First of all, the graphics were awful. The prison consisted of a bunch of brick-colored blocks with flat gray lines for prison bars. The inmates all looked like Michael Chiklis in a gray jumpsuit. The dialogue was flat and mind-blowingly inept. A sample:
Rorschach: Daniel, cover me while I open doors.
Inmate #1: You're just a midget!
Inmate #2: Fuck shit!
When you enter combat, you have two or three buttons to press: strong attack and light attack. When you punch or kick the inmates, you hear these incredibly cartoony sound effects, and buckets' worth of blood appear from nowhere and splash on the floor. After dispatching the first group, you enter the next segment of the prison, and experience more of the same. This was when I went back to my Xbox Dashboard and deleted the game. Total playing time? Less than five minutes.
What a colossal waste of time and energy.

Extra Life 2010

This fall, I'm going to be involved in Extra Life. What is that, you ask? It's a 24-hour long gaming marathon on October 16th, and for all of those 24 hours, get sponsored $1 per hour. All of that money goes to local Children's Miracle Network hospitals, hence the slogan "Playing Games, Healing Kids." I've got a team set up and good to go, and we're going to rock the casbah on October 16th to help the kids at St. Joseph's in Marshfield, WI. If you want to join the team, go to extralife.sarcasticgamer.com and sign up, and search for my name (Sean McCormick) so you can join the team (My Needler Is Hypodermic). If you're not a gamer but want to donate, you can donate online here. Rest assured, there are no shady middlemen or Ponzi schemes here; all money you send goes directly to the hospital.
My team's goal is to raise a minimum of $100, but we'd love to go beyond the call of duty and raise even more than that. Give as much as you feel you should, and let's make a difference in the lives of these kids!

Earthworm Jim HD: Reviewed

I am a huge fan of Earthworm Jim. In my younger days, I spent countless hours playing the Win95 edition, and even downloaded a Sega emulator so I could play the original ROM. I knew where every bonus life was, every hidden level, and every trick to warp past levels I didn't feel like playing. As you can imagine, I was enthralled when I saw that there was an HD edition on XBLA, and I downloaded it immediately.
Sadly, my excitement didn't last.
The level designs are basically the same as the original, with graphical tweaks here and there to enhance the details that the old game wasn't capable of. All boss fights have a life meter onscreen, which the original didn't have. Everything has been polished to look good for the 360, especially the levels' static backgrounds (look at What The Heck? and Level 5 for the best examples of this). However, some of the additions really don't make sense. In the Andy Asteroids? levels, at the end of every race, there is a hyperspace warp-looking cutscene that shows Jim warping through the end of the asteroid field, then it cuts to the clip of him either celebrating or grumbling, depending on if you won or not. This new warp scene looks really out of place, given the old-school feel of the rest of the level, and it wasn't in the original. There are also several glaring absences: in the old versions, when you left Jim alone for a minute and no enemies were around, he'd do things like play with his blaster, flex his muscles, and other silly things. In the HD version, he plays with his blaster every now and then, but that's all. Everything else was cut out. Also, Jim looks basically the same as he did in the original. Same pixels, same old look, except scaled to fit in the HD version. If the developers spent so much time upgrading all of the other graphics, why did they leave Jim alone? The old-school Jim running around in the new-school environments looks... well... silly.

The audio is where I found the most disappointment. Jim's voice has been replaced by someone trying really hard to sound like the original voice actor, and most of the sound effects have been overhauled and made more cartoonish. The whip sound effect doesn't sound anything like the original, and the game's ambient sound effects are even more exaggerated. In What The Heck?, there are spurts of fire that follow you around, whether you're walking down the path or swinging on a chain, and they sound like a six-year-old boy making fart noises. It's obnoxious.
When it comes to the music, the entire soundtrack has been redone, and none of the music sounds anything like the original. I realize that for a game that calls itself 'HD,' all of its elements have to be HD-quality, and a lot of things had to be rebuilt from the ground up as a result. Still, I think the developers took too many liberties with what they were given.

As far as game mechanics go, using the whip is a nightmare. From what I remember of the Win95 and even the Sega versions, you didn't have to hit a hook spot-on to grab onto it; you could be pretty close to it and the whip would still grab on. In HD, you have to hit the hook right on the nose for it to work, which is why I can't beat the last level of the game. I'm at the beginning of part 2 of the level, after the 'Use Your Head!' introduction, and this is the place where you blow up the two hives and then there are two hooks way, way high up on the ceiling. I can't figure out how to get up to the first hook and grab onto it since you have to nail the hook with the whip. I've spent probably half an hour on this part, and I only managed to get the hook once, then missed the second one. It's very, very frustrating.
Also, the developers decided to go without the bonus content that the Win95 version had, which really annoys me. There are no homing missiles, no secret level (Who Turned Out The Lights?) hidden in Level 5, and you can't warp past Tube Race. Instead of keeping the additional content, the developers decided to add unlockable bonus levels that they had designed, and none of them appeal to me at all. Maybe other fans of platformers will like them, but they simply rubbed me the wrong way.

All in all, this game will definitely appeal to new fans of Earthworm Jim. I'd say that younger audiences will enjoy it, if they can master the whip usage (and maybe it will be easier for them, because they're not used to playing it on a keyboard or old gamepad). Honestly, the game might not even be as bad as I'm making it out to be, because I'm definitely a purist, and that probably colors my perception of all of the new additions and spices. Do with that what you will.

Gameplay: 3/5
Graphics: 4/5
Audio: 2/5
Average score: 3/5

The Inaugural

Welcome to this blog. In it, I will review video games and reflect on gaming in general. Don't be surprised if I review a bunch of games that are several years old; I like to shop out of the pre-owned bin rather than buying brand new games all the time (new games are expensive). I'm looking for contributors, so if you want to get involved and share your piece with the masses, email me and I'll set you up.
Verite!