Heretic-Gamer

NICE MUSCLE!!

So Muscle March had me, and other people on our forums, intrigued since Day 1.  After seeing any pictures or footage of Muscle March, you may have the exact same thoughts that I did: Why are all these muscular men, and a polar bear, running around in tiny little colorful undergarments?  Is this seriously a Wii game?  Yes, courtesy of Namco Bandai.

IT'S CALLED A ROAD, IT'S CALLED THE RAINBOW ROAD

The premise (I think) of the game is to chase a person through different environments while using the Wii Remote and Nunchuk to flex your muscles in order to fit through the holes in the wall caused by the person you are chasing.

There are many happy animals as well

So we still haven’t figured out why this game is so damn flamboyant.  In case you haven’t noticed, this game, like many other crazy ones which I’ve featured, it from Japan.  That’s pretty much the only answer you’ll need. And it is VERY obvious that it is full of kooky Japanese influence after watching this trailer.

Muscle March was released in Japan on May 26th for WiiWare, and can currently be purchased for 800 WiiPoints. Once it comes to America, it’s definitely worth checking out, if only for how strange this title truly is. I GIVE MUSCLE MARCH TEN NICE MUSCLE OUT OF TEN POSSIBLE NICE MUSCLE.

Coming out of beating Persona 3: FES a week ago, I’ve moved on to playing Final Fantasy IV: The After. But I can’t really just move on without mentioning my final thoughts on a game I spent over 80 hours with.

I can basically sum up Persona 3: FES as follows: Great style does not make up for the uninteresting, slow, underdeveloped story and characters. So many things about the game’s presentation are great. The music, the colorful world, the French scattered randomly about, the sunny, rainbow-filled locals, not to mention the fact that you shoot yourself in the head in order to use skills in battles.

A special note should be made to the game’s final three months. At this point, after perhaps 40 to 50 hours of dragging story, the plot actually starts to go somewhere. Unfortunately at this point, it is too little and too late. The plot and characters still do not make it to a satisfactory level, albeit getting very close, and so, while the game finishes stronger than what precedes it, the game’s story ends weak.

One final shout-out must go to the final month of the game. During this period, the game takes the other half of the soundtrack that is just “OK,” and rearranges all these songs into awesome remixes. Like, I put off finishing the game just to hear these songs, awesome.

All in all, I can still easily say that one should try at least one of the Persona games, just for how refreshing and different they are from a standard RPG. With that in mind, however, I would recommend playing Persona 4 over Persona 3: FES without any regrets. Just think about playing through it on Easy!

Final Score: B-

We’re still a little light on news editors, so unfortunately I’m essentially the only one updating the front page at this time. Instead of doing a crappy job of summarizing the Nintendo and Sony conferences, I’ll redirect you to Mr. Wonderful’s link to the 1UP podcast summary of E3.

View this post for a link to the podcast and more

Well Microsoft was up to bat yesterday, and it seems as if they hit a home run [/stupid baseball analogies]. With the highly anticipated Nintendo conference just a few minutes away, I figured there’s only a short time left to summarize what happened yesterday in a “nutshell” for those who missed it. Here are the key points:

• Crysis 2 - PC, 360, and PS3 bound. The sequel will be available for console owners.
• Crackdown 2 - Multiplayer seems to be getting a huge overhaul in this sequel. Ruffian Games is the development company behind this game.
• Metal Gear Solid Rising - Announced for the 360 so far. Stars Raiden. Looks badass.
• Halo 3: ODST and Halo Reach - Not a whole lot of information on either.

Left 4 Dead sequel in development, Final Fantasy XIII will probably be released during spring of 2010 (is this really even a legit announcement?), Starcraft II by the end of this year (come on just release it already fuck), Guitar Hero 5 band list out, also Guitar Hero Beetles game (at least it’s not something like Aerosmith again) .

Just posting for the heck of it mostly, but also becuase you should check HG (especially Mr. Wonderful’s E3 threads on the forums) for E3 updates and news about the big announcements. We’ll be trying to cover as much as we can as events unfold.

Name: Chrono Trigger

System: Nintendo DS/DS Lite/DSi

Developer: Square-Enix

Release Date: February 6, 2009

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Looking for a good RPG to keep you occupied this summer? Well if you’re the owner of some sort of Nintendo DS, you’re in luck. Among the tons of other quality RPGs you can find on the system at this point in its life, a port of Chrono Trigger to the Nintendo DS is one of the best.

Overview:

Chrono Trigger, if you are familiar with the original in any way, is heralded as one of the greatest games of all time by Gamespot, IGN, and others. Simply put, this game remains near flawless to this day. It’s epic, exciting, fun, challenging, and interesting. Before I start to go crazy about this game however, I should point out the specifics of the DS version for those of you thinking about picking up this remake, especially if you’ve had the game before. If you haven’t by the way, and you like RPGs at all, pick this up if you have a Nintendo DS. Any gamer who hasn’t witnessed this RPG in all it’s glory needs to.

Differences Between Earlier Versions:

If you note the difference between the two pictures shown, you’ll see that the DS version attemps to make a decent use out of the touch screen. For the most part, it succeeds. First of all, battles feel a lot less cramped than they would if only one screen was in use. This could have potentially been a huge problem on the DS due to the fact that a DS is smaller than a television. Alas, there is no need to worry. Even if you prefer the “classic” view, it is an option that you can change. Really the options accomodate everybody.

The touch screen use can get kind of annoying if you’re in active battle mode, however. Scrolling through your techs with the stylus gets to be a little tedious, and most will probably just resort to using the d-pad. This is a reasonable choice and in the end the fact that you get another screen to scroll through techs and items mid-battle turns out to have plenty more pros than cons. It does it’s job in the fact that it improves the port from its predecessor. In terms of the battles though, there is one major, major advantage if you have any experience with the PSX version of this game, and that’s load time. This game is best not played on a CD. The battles become really painful when your characters freeze for five seconds before the battle screen is loaded. Thankfully the DS version corrects that horrid problem, and keeps the cutscenes from the PSX version as well.

Extras in the newer version of Chrono Trigger involve a battle arena where you can compete against other players via wireless, and there are a couple new features as well. The interdimensional vortex offers a series of extra challenges, including a new superboss which is exclusively part of the Nintendo DS version of this game. I haven’t personally been through the entire series of challenges myself, but I can’t complain about having an extra challenge around. If you’re wondering about the rest of the game, however, it’s just as challenging as its previous versions. It’s hard. Very hard.

Conclusions:

This relatively brief review lacks any sort of depth in terms of getting into the games mechanics, but to be perfectly honest I don’t see any reason to go into them. If you like RPGs, there’s no reason you wouldn’t like this game, that is, unless you can’t stand linear “story-based” RPGs and prefer games like Oblivion. It’s worth pointing out though that 13 different endings shows that there are many choices you can make along the way, and each one will have an effect on the past, present and future.

This game deserves none other than an

A - Legendary

I’m reposting the conference times from Mr. Wonderful’s  signature on Zelda Universe and what he has posted over 9000 times in the E3 thread.

Keynote Times

1UP has a schedule up for E3. At some point before Sunday night, when the action is getting ready to start, I will have found live updates/videos so you can follow the announcements as they come. Until then, here are the times you should pay attention to (from 1Up).

Thursday

For those of you who have registered before this post, I have changed your permissions according to your forum usergroups and previous permissions. All content posters have editor status and forum staff members have admin status.

If you have any problems with your permissions or accounts, or if you need extra help, send a private message to me, aeternus aura, on the forums. You know where to find me.

A couple of things right off the bat. First, I’m skipping the bridge between the forum and the main site to avoid bugging issues. You can still comment on posts, they just won’t won’t mean anything in terms of your account on the forum. This unfortunately means you will have to re-request access to post reviews and articles. On the bright side, however, this switch makes posting your reveiws as easy as ever. No more typing in darkness or publishing issues. You just select the appropriate category to post in and voila, your post appears on the front page. This “blog” format allows us to do just about anything we want.

PM Mark or aeternus_aura on the forums to get access to the website, or visit the “request staff” link for more information.

Here’s to a fresh, clean Heretic-Gamer!