Another 'catching up' gaming entry..

Guitar Hero 2. I finally got this one.. How could I resist? The first one was awesome and I wanted a second guitar to play multiplayer with sweetie. So I got a whole new kit, with the red guitar, we applied stickers all over and started rocking again.

A couple of weeks later, having done all songs on medium (think I might be missing only one star somewhere) here's the good the bad and the ugly.

Good. Hey it's more GH! Shouldn't need any more than that! New songs, new characters, new venues, new modes, new guitar. The hammer-on and pull-offs are easier to do for some reason (a bit less strict on timing?). The multiplayer mode is worth the buy pretty much by itself -- while in the first game you could only select a song and you would go back and forth playing parts of it with a friend, now you have different parts to play, either guitar/bass or lead/rhythm. Each player can select his own difficulty level, so there's no problem with a newbie jamming with a pro. Sweet.

The practice mode has been totally revamped for the better. In the first installment you could play the songs you wanted in the practice area but the only different was that you didn't haved the venue lights and animations and if I remember correctly you couldn't fail out of the song. Now you can select what parts of the song you want to play (so you don't have to repeat the intro and bridge sections if you only have trouble with the solo) and you can slow the song down to break it down even more into easier chunks to learn!

Since they give you options for training, they upped the difficulty a notch across the board, especially at hard and expert levels. You can now get 3-notes chords.. Most songs are also *longer* than the selections we had before.. Guess that's been a given ever since they announced YYZ and Freebird were part of the track list..!

The unlockable songs list is pretty neat. Something for everyone. Also finishing some goals (like clearing all songs, then clearing all songs with 5 stars) will make special guitars available in the store. All characters get an alternate costume/item available in the shop..

Bad. Longer songs don't mean all of it is interesting.. Yeah, I know, they're reproducing the real songs, but geesh, maybe they didn't need to opt for the ultra extended version each time they could.. Ending a song with a minute and half of repeating the same riff exactly is just plain boring... I read somewhere they wanted to add an 'endurance' aspect to the difficulty tweaks instead of only adding more/faster notes.

Track list.. This is of course the most highly subjective point. There's a lot of great names, for sure.. But after playing all the songs on medium, I personally can't help but muster a small 'meh'. There was too many times when after finishing I thought 'don't think I'll ever want to play that one again'. Some songs sounded boring even with interesting playing, others were songs I could listen too all day but got bored to tears playing them. At least there's enough tracks I really like to keep me busy for a long while... Hangar 18 and Trogdor will always be there :)

Ugly. It's more nitpicking than anything else here, but some details do bother me. First, seems the QA team missed some not so subtle things.. On at least three occasions we saw orange notes thrown in *MEDIUM*. While playing I had the impression that most of the attention was given to hard and expert modes, the medium difficulty level was so uneven across the different tracks. I also liked Death's character model better in the first game.. this time around he looks skinny and weak. On thing I'm still not sure about is the way they changed the money and store mechanics.. In GH1 you had unlocks per difficulty, while in GH2 unlocks are global across the levels for your band. Playing on Easy nets you no pay checks, while Medium doesn't give you enough to buy everything you want (more than enough to buy all extra tracks, no worries there). You have no choice but to get better and succeed at Hard then Expert if you want all guitars and skins.. Maybe I would have just liked to know about this before I started spending my cash. Thankfully I started with the songs, but I regret getting the 'behind the scenes' videos -- really not worth the several grands.

I still recommend it to everyone! Maybe my expectations were just a tiny bit high for the sequel.. 8.5 / 10.

Haven't blogged in a while, but I've still been busy! Let's get right down to it:

Nintendo Wii Status: Should be soon!

I didn't get out of the house early enough to snatch one on release day, but someone with a plug to an alternate source offered to hook me up.. sweet! I should be getting it this week.. In the meanwhile I managed to pickup Zelda, Rayman and an extra Wiimote (still no nunchuk sightings! nope, can't consider the one listed on amazon for 750$. sheesh). Also got Madden '07 coming in via the same channel as the console itself, for an astonishing low price... (no it's not illegal copies, it's just an industry insider plug.. good thing Montreal is becoming a nice place for gaming companies! :P)

A colleague did bring his to the office last week, and it's really a blast! Really looking forward to my own :)

Castlevania: Dawn Of Sorrow [DS]

While on the topic of hard to find items, I finally succeeded in getting this at an ok price (used, of course), from EBay. Like pretty much all 2D Castlevania titles this one is totally worth the hunt, and I wanted to finish it before Portrait Of Ruin comes out next year.. In all fairness, I must say that if previous GBA incarnations of the castle trek adventure left you with an impression of deja-vu, it's bound to happen again. In DoS (so it's really Castlevania:DS.. gee someone must have felt so clever thinking of that one) you play Soma, a descendant of the Dracula family but who wants nothing to do with the family business.. Of course other people feel different and want to use him to bring the Lord Of Darkness back yet again. Soma doesn't like the sound of this. Soma goes to the castle to hunt the creeps. Soma beats up tons of monsters of all types. Soma gains new abilities. Soma triumphs of course in the end, but if he saves the girl or not depends on a couple actions on your part...

So yeah it's the same formula, but again it's done so gooood. Since it had been a couple of years between the 3 GBA games and this one I was ready for another dose. The DS version isn't revolutionary (did I make that clear enough yet?) but a major advantage of having two screens at your disposal is that action happens on the bottom screen while you can switch between the castle automap and your stats on the other one! Keeps everything flowing because you don't need to pause everything to get your bearings because you want to find a save room... Speaking of saving, you can also insta-save anywhere, but that file gets deleted when you restore your game. Still it's perfect to quit your game clean when you have to get off the bus or when your lunch break is done.

The touch screen aspect is more gimmicky.. After you get one ability, you'll be able to destroy blocks of ice by touching them on the screen.. It allows you to access a new path, climb up in a room and get an extra item, but that's about it.. After each boss fight you also have to draw a magic seal (by connecting dots) to capture the monster for good.. If you mess up or take too long to do it, the boss gets healed a bit and you have to get it back to 0 and try again. You might want to practice making them with your finger directly because you really little time to grab the stylus..

Gameplay-wise the mechanics do the job.. You can acquire several weapons (from swords to hammers to guns) but I guess I miss the Belmonts' whip :) I used axes for most of the game since they're the most powerful in attack rating and their great range/arc makes up for the slow rate of attack. When a monster dies, there's a chance you'll be able to capture its soul, since you're in the Dark Lord lineage and all.. Souls can be equipped three different categories: they're the source of secondary weaponry (so don't look for any candles to drop boomerangs knives and holy water), they can grant abilities, make summons available, and boost your stats. Good, versatile system to customize to your likings and gameplay style.  Souls are also needed to upgrade your weapons, but beware: doing so _spends_ the soul -- you'll have to reacquire another one if you want the equip effect it had again available. You can get 9 copies of each soul, but some are insanely rare (about a 4% drop rate according to different FAQs) meaning be prepared to grind a bit if you're a completist.....

It kept me busy for 18 hours, with a 97.8% completion rate (66% of souls) and Soma made it to level 67. I haven't touched the boss rush mode (not really planning to). I'm plenty satisfied with the game, and I'll be looking forward to the next chapter! Thumbs up, definitely recommended if you manage to find a copy. 8.6 / 10.

Spyro: a Hero's Tail [GC]

I loved the first Spyro games on the PS1, but everything went south when the license transferred hands.. This one does the job: not stellar, but worth a look in the clearance bin. I read most people think it's better than Enter The Dragonfly that preceded it, but I have no firsthand experience.

Once again you play Spyro.. Once again things go wrong in a terrible way. Once again you have to run, jump and fire breathe your way thru the levels, collecting trinkets and whatnot, beat bosses and Save The World (tm). Many aspects of the design is platformer-by-number. It's brought to both bad and good effect.. Bad: sometimes you'll know what's ahead with the only reason being that you've played the same sequence of events or type of enemies many times before in other games. Good: they made an effort to be funny by breaking the 'fourth wall'. Sometimes it falls flat and you just wince it out, other times it can be genuinely funny:

Spyro turns a corner and meets with a Mammoth blocking the path with instructions from the evil dude not to let Spyro pass.. You see the cutscene start and think 'here comes the cheesy speech and the boss battle.. oh well.'

Mammoth: You may not pass.

Spyro: Ok. Whatever. Let's do this.. We know you'll just go on and on about how I can't kill you, while I just run around until I figure out your weak spot.. Then all I need to do is hit it three times and..

*SPLAT - Mammoth stomps on Spyro* *fade to black*

The little firefly following you around (and glowing with a color corresponding to your health status) goes around and finds a friend of Spyro to ask for help.. The hunter replies:

"Don't worry little guy! If Spyro was really dead, you would have been brought back automatically to your last save point, right?"

Anyway.. I thought it was a least a bit funny :) Too bad every scene didn't click as much for me. Oh well. I mentioned the hunter cat, there's also other 'friends' you meet with that always get their own levels.. The hunter has a bow and can snipe from a distance, the penguin sergeant flies around with his jetpack to find items and bomb opponents, sparkx the firefly has a straight up shooting stage, and there's a newcomer mole that goes underground.. Each time you meet up with them you can do their stage twice, to get different items.. By the end I just didn't bother (especially hated the flying levels, since they had a frustrating time limit) with all those extra stages and focused solely on Spyro.

There's a lot less stuff to collect. There used to be a fixed amount of gems in each level, now while some items won't respawn after the first time you destroy them, the monsters will always give you more money for killing them. The shop sells key to open chests, a keyring upgrade, a horns upgrade for the drop/charge attack, and more slots to stash secondary weapon charges... You really have no use for the gem after maybe the first half of the game..! Getting all the lost dragon eggs will unlock minigames, extra character models and concept art in the main menu.. Getting more light gems will let you access some not-so-secret areas (a door with "you need 95 gems to access this secret area" kinda spills the beans no?). I got to visit 2 of them, and really they only looked like the rest of the level.. I read getting ALL eggs and gems before beating the last boss will give you an extra video at the end, but I just couldn't stomach the frustration of the side level minigames just for that..

In all, an ok platformer, just don't get it full price, please! Graphics could have been better (they kept the style of the series, but it started on the PS1!! can we get a decent upgrade please?) and some NPC characters look oddly out of place: they really look like they were lifted directly from a Disney cartoon..! A dozen or so hours for around 90% completion rate. 7.6 / 10.