{"id":3431,"date":"2006-05-07T12:00:19","date_gmt":"2006-05-07T17:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/?p=3431"},"modified":"2013-06-18T15:47:36","modified_gmt":"2013-06-18T20:47:36","slug":"mass-review-time-episode-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/?p=3431","title":{"rendered":"Mass Review Time: Episode 1"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/www.torrentialequilibrium.net\/images\/massrev\/massban.png\" \/><\/p>\n<p>I did a little shopping over the past week, and rather than talk about each item separately in the blog as I usually do, I figured I&#8217;d take a page from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.themikehaynes.com\" target=\"_blank\">Mike&#8217;s<\/a> book and do a mass review of the stuff I bought. It just seems so much easier that way, and you only have to sit through one boring article rather than four boring bog posts. Everyone&#8217;s a winner! Except you. And everyone but me. So in conclusion, I&#8217;m the only winner.<\/p>\n<p><center><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/www.torrentialequilibrium.net\/images\/massrev\/walkon.jpg\" \/><\/center><\/p>\n<h3>\u2022 Item #1 &#8211; <strong>Boston &#8211; Walk on<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>Now, many of you should know that I really love Boston. I mean, they&#8217;re a fricking sweet band, how could I not? In any case, most fans think that Boston&#8217;s releases went downhill after their second, <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Don&#8217;t Look Back<\/span>. I&#8217;ll admit that <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Third Stage<\/span> was a little weaker than I&#8217;d hoped for, but <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Walk On<\/span> is awesome.<\/p>\n<p>The disc is split into three parts. The first three songs are kickass, even if &#8220;Surrender to Me&#8221; was featured on <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Don&#8217;t Look Back<\/span>. The second part of the disc is the &#8220;Walk On Medley&#8221;, a set of four songs that could stand on their own, but come together to make what could very well be the rockingest 12-something minutes ever recorded. The last set of songs is a bit weak and forgettable, but that&#8217;s forgivable due to the high quality of the rest of the album. Hell, the &#8220;Walk On Medley&#8221; alone is worth the purchase price (which was about $12). Seriously. It was basically the reason I bought the album in the first place. Also, I really love &#8220;Surrender To Me&#8221;. <b>Score: A<\/b><\/p>\n<p><center><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/www.torrentialequilibrium.net\/images\/massrev\/ggds.jpg\" \/><\/center><\/p>\n<h3>\u2022 Item #2 &#8211; <strong>Guilty Gear Dust Strikers<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>The most expensive item on the list, totaling up to about $40, is a game I&#8217;ve been looking forward to for a while. Why? Well, to be honest, the DS doesn&#8217;t exactly have a great catalogue of fighting games. The only one I had before this was <a href=\"http:\/\/planetgamecube.com\/reviewArt.cfm?artid=4393\" target=\"_blank\">Jump SuperStars<\/a>, and as great as that game is, it wasn&#8217;t going to last me forever and I don&#8217;t feel like importing <a href=\"http:\/\/planetgamecube.com\/reviewArt.cfm?artid=11139\" target=\"_blank\">Bleach<\/a> and it&#8217;ll still be awhile until King of Fighters DS is released.<\/p>\n<p>But now it sounds like I&#8217;m making an excuse for buying it. That would be because it hasn&#8217;t exactly been getting the greatest of reviews. they say it&#8217;s too far from the base GG material or something, but I&#8217;m not seeing what&#8217;s so wrong with it. Granted, my only previous GG experience is with Guilty Gear Advance, but I loved that game immensely. GGDS seemed like the next logical step. I&#8217;ve been playing it a lot since I got it, and I&#8217;m very much enjoying it. Of course, I&#8217;m pretty crap at fighting games (makes you wonder why I love them so much), but I&#8217;m even starting to get reasonably good at this one.<\/p>\n<p>Basically, the game takes the base fighting game mechanics (think Street Fighter, but cooler) and tries to cross-breed them with Super Smash Bros. This ends up with multi-tiered stages, items, and up to four fighters. It&#8217;s a little more hectic than your run-of-the-mill fighter, but I&#8217;m convinced that it works. Word on the street is that Guilty Gear Isuka for PS2 works in a similar fashion. The only thing that they forgot to implement was Wi-Fi multiplayer, which is strange considering how long it was delayed for.<\/p>\n<p>Aside from the fighting, there are a handful of touch-screen minigames, all of which are kinda dumb and\/or hard except for one. Their only purpose if to unlock movesets for a single customizable character. And speaking of which, those would be the only unlockables in the game. It&#8217;s odd for a fighting game not to have a small warehouse worth of unlockables in this day and age, but I don&#8217;t think that the game suffers any because of it. Mostly because I&#8217;d never be able to get half the stuff unless it were time-released or something else not relating to skill. <b>Score: B+<\/b><\/p>\n<p><center><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/www.torrentialequilibrium.net\/images\/massrev\/bamds.jpg\" \/><\/center><\/p>\n<h3>\u2022 Item #3 &#8211; <strong>Bust-A-Move DS<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>Have you read my <a href=\"http:\/\/www.torrentialequilibrium.net\/art0025.html\">Bust-A-Move article<\/a>? That alone should really be enough to justify why I dropped $20 on BAMDS. I mean, why not? It&#8217;s portable Bust-A-Move, which in itself is worth even $30. Not to mention that the damn game has been out since December or so and this was the first time I&#8217;d seen it anywhere. A chance encounter is all it was, and I couldn&#8217;t have hoped for better.<\/p>\n<p>So how is it? It&#8217;s friggin&#8217; Bust-A-Move! Do I really need to tell you how it is? To be honest though, it is a little tricky to get used to. See, the D-pad is way oversensitive for Bust-A-Move, and there&#8217;s no control stick, so what&#8217;s a guy to do? Well duh, this <i>is<\/i> the DS we&#8217;re talking about. Obviously you get to aim with the touch screen, which works awesome once you get the hang of it, which takes maybe five minutes tops. Also it features 5-player single-card multiplayer. Top notch!<\/p>\n<p>One odd thing to note is that both DS games I picked up were made by Majesco. What a silly coincidence. <b>Score: A<\/b><\/p>\n<p><center><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/www.torrentialequilibrium.net\/images\/massrev\/haunting.jpg\" \/><\/center><\/p>\n<h3>\u2022 Item #4 &#8211; <strong>Haunting Ground<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>I saw this game one time at Superstore and I was like &#8220;Holy crap! New Capcom survival horror game!&#8221; but it was like $35 and I didn&#8217;t feel like taking that chance. Luckily, while I was perusing the games down at the Best Buy, I found it for a meager $20. That was more like it! While it was clearly more of a budget title, I was pleasantly satisfied with <a href=\"http:\/\/xbox.ign.com\/articles\/602\/602235p1.html\" target=\"_blank\">Obscure<\/a>, so my susceptibility to a cheap survival horror game was at it&#8217;s highest.<\/p>\n<p>I haven&#8217;t played very far yet, but for what it&#8217;s worth, I&#8217;m very much enjoying Haunting Ground. If you&#8217;ve ever played a Clock Tower game, you&#8217;ll have a very good idea of how this one goes down. If not, here&#8217;s the lowdown: you&#8217;re a (rather busty) girl trapped in a big spooky castle being stalked by a big spooky ogre-man. The catch? No weapons. Unlike most survival horror games, Haunting Ground really emphasizes the survival bit by leaving you almost completely unarmed, save a few defensive items to help slow down your stalkers. Unlike Clock Tower though, you are aided by a friendly dog who will attack your assailants for you, but it&#8217;s still more of a run-and-hide game.<\/p>\n<p>I probably just suck at it, but I&#8217;m finding this game almost as difficult as it is entertaining. That damn ogre-man is a lot more persistent than I need him to be, but it does add a good bit of fun to the game, as it&#8217;s always more rewarding to complete a difficult task than an easy one. The dog is also really cool. He&#8217;s animated really well, easily the best video game dog I&#8217;ve seen to date. Oh, and he acts like a real dog too, with the not listening to you when he doesn&#8217;t feel like it and all. The scenery is also insanely pretty too. If you like graphics, you&#8217;ll love this game to no end. If you like gameplay, you&#8217;ll like the game too, but maybe not quite as much. Sadly, the music is little more than atmosphere&#8230; And speaking of atmosphere, the game builds so much tension that lesser men will pop while playing it. <b>Score: B<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I did a little shopping over the past week, and rather than talk about each item separately in the blog as I usually do, I figured I&#8217;d take a page from Mike&#8217;s book and do a mass review of the stuff I bought. It just seems so much easier that way, and you only have &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/?p=3431\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Mass Review Time: Episode 1<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,14,41,27,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-music","category-pretty-ladies","category-spooky","category-video-games"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3431"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3431\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3435,"href":"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3431\/revisions\/3435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/torrentialequilibrium.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}