The Dark Knight Rises---Spoiler Free Review

      There isn't a lot I can say about The Dark Knight Rises without giving something away, so I'll keep this short.

Everyone is this movie is brillant, but Anne Hathaway and Joseph Gordon-Levitt's characters are the best. Those two actors/characters pretty much steal the movie. That said, Gary Oldman & Micheal Caine were so brillant in this movie and the other two movies. And Bale. HE is Bruce Wayne/Batman. I'm not sure how anyone else is going to do any better than his Bruce Wayne/Batman.

  The story is also excellent. Dare I say it, but its the best Batman story of all three. Tom Hardy's villian is nowhere as great as Ledger's Joker, but the story here is better in my opinon. That is saying a lot too since the Dark Knight had a great story!

Overall, the Dark Knight Rises is the perfect ending to a great Batman trilogy. 

Wish I could say more, but I don't want to ruin this movie for anyone who hasn't seen it yet! Its a MUST see.

Grade: A++

Rainbow Moon First Impressions

I wanted to write something long and detailed as my first impressions for Rainbow Moon, but to be honest, thats better left to a review (I'll try to have a review after I've beaten the story at least).

For now, I just want to say: If you love turn-based rpgs and/or turn-based strategy rpgs and have a Playstation 3, you MUST buy this game. GO GET IT NOW. Why are you still reading this? GO!

If thats not a good enough first impression, let me add these thoughts:

-The graphics are old school (think Final Fantasy Tactics or Vandel Hearts), but old school meets HD. You'll get a classic looking rpg experiance but with much more detail and just overall a great looking game.

-The battle system is like FF Tactics or Diseaga. You can only have three party members in battle though.

-While this is a strategy rpg, you don't just go from points on the map like FF Tactics. Instead, like a regular rpg, your character wanders around from towns to dungeons and there are some enemies shown, but there are also optional random battles. Yes, you heard me right. You can skip random battles if you want. That said...

-Even on Normal, the game can be challenging. You're going to have to level up. I hear you'll have to do even more leveling up on HARD mode though.

-Story? Don't worry about a story! The fun in Rainbow Moon is the battles and exploring the different areas you go to. Don't worry though, the game does point you in the direction of the next "plot point", so you won't be lost. But you can still do some looking around in the different areas. Believe me, you won't get bored. There are so many quests to take on, so many items to find, new enemies to fight, basically just suprises around every corner.

-This game is addictive! You'll have a hard time putting it down.

Rainbow Moon is a fantastic game. I really love it. I recommend it to all turn-based rpg/strategy fans. You'll have a blast!

Kingdom Hearts 3DS Demo Impressions

On the 3DS, publishers give the players a certain number of tries before they can't play a demo anymore. The Kingdom Hearts demo has 30 tries (which is what most of the demos have). I currently only have 21 tries left. This is the least tries I have left of any demo so far.

Why do I keep replaying the Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance demo?

First off, I have to admit that I'm a huge Kingdom Hearts fan. I loved the first two games a lot. Sure, the DS Kingdom Hearts game wasn't so great (it just repeated levels from the first game), but I still love the franchise. So I went into KHDDD hoping I'd love it.

And I did love it.

The graphics in the demo are stunning, especially with the 3D on. The 3D gives the game a lot of depth (only pop out I saw was in the Transverse Town logo) and it just looks amazing.

The gameplay is a lot of fun. Its similar to the other Kingdom Hearts games, in that there is a menu always there to select powers/items, but you move around in battles freely. New to the gameplay is something called Flowmotion. Basically, if you're character jumps onto a banner he'll slide across it quickly (almost like he's flying). Ditto down rails and if you grab light poles, you can fly at bad guys and attack them. Flowmotion is a really great new addition. It makes the gameplay feel very quick and fun. Also new is Reality Shift. In the full game there will be different ways to use reality shift depending on the world you're in. For the demo, when you reality shift, the gameplay goes to the bottom screen. You have hold of an object and can slingshot it far away. Very cool effect.

Demo disappointments:

The demo only lets you play in a section of Transverse Town, a non-Disney world. So there are no Disney characters in the demo (well there is a short tutorial with the villian from Little Mermaid, but thats it).

You only play as Sora in the demo, whereas in the full game, you play as Riku too. Its too bad we couldn't have seen what his gameplay was like.

The demo does not feature Drop mode. I have to admit I'm very nervous about drop mode. I hear when you're playing the actual Kingdom Hearts DDD game, there is a meter that goes down as you play. Once its out, you switch (drop) to the other games character (Riku or Sora). I wonder how this will effect gameplay. Does the meter go too fast? Will exploration of levels have to be really fast? I wish the demo had featured this so we would have a good idea.

In any case, I know the demo can't give away everything. I just wish the demo was a little bit longer and had included a couple more features at least.

I am looking forward to the full game a lot. This demo will have to keep me happy till then!

Amazing Spider-man Spoiler Free Review

I'm a huge Spider-man fan. Spidey is my favorite superhero and I still have a lot of his comics. That said, when I first heard about this movie I wasn't sure about it. A complete new cast and the origin retold again? And it hasn't really been that long since Toby Maguire's Spider-man movies too...

Then, I started to see previews for the movie. The more I saw of it, the more excited I started to get. It just looked like a really good movie. I admit, at first, I still wasn't planning to see it. Finally, I couldn't resist it though. It was a new Spider-man movie and it looked awesome.

So, I saw the movie on Thursday. I was prepared to like it, but I didn't think I'd like it more than the first two Maguire movies. That just seemed impossible.

Well, I was wrong. The new Spider-man movie is the best Spider-man movie yet. Andrew Garfield, who plays Peter Parker/Spider-man, blows Maguire's Peter/Spidey away. Garfield IS Peter Parker. He just lives in that role. And Spider-man? Wow! Finally a wisecracking Spider-man! Maguire's Spider-man wisecracked once in the first movie and that was pretty much it. His Spidey just didn't talk too much. Garfield's Spidey has a problem shutting up! Not saying he's never quiet, but if you compare him to Tobey's Spidey, he's a complete jabberbox. Garfield's Spidey is, without a doubt, the Spider-man from the comics.

As far as the rest of the cast: I'm not really a Gwen fan in the comics (I like MJ), but Emma Stone IS Gwen Stacy. She lives in the role too and does a great job of it. In fact, I like her better than MJ in the Tobey movies! Doctor Curt Connors is perfect too; so is Gwen's dad.

And Uncle Ben! Oh man. Martain Sheen IS Uncle Ben. He had something really great lines and just does a better job than Cliff Robertson did. Sally Field is good as Aunt May too! She and Sheen are very believable and great in their parts.

You might also be wondering about the story. I won't tell you what happens in it, but I will tell you that its a much darker story than the other Spidey movies. And yet, there's more humor than the other movies too. For Spider-man fan reference, the story is very much in the vain of a J.M. DeMatties Spidey story, but staring the Lee/Ditko Peter/Spider-man with the Romita Gwen. For the non-comic book fan reference, Garfield's Spider-man is different from the Maguire movies, but its full of more heart than those movies. Its much more focused on Peter Parker. Not to say there isn't any Spidey action, cause there is, but its without a doubt Peter's story.

Overall, its an AMAZING movie. I loved it.

Grade: A+

Heroes of Ruin (3DS) Demo First Impressions

Today, I got to play the Heroes of Ruin (3DS) demo for the first time. My dad and I have been waiting awhile to play this game. We were really disappointed when the full game got pushed back to July 17th in the U.S. So how is the demo? Is the full game still worth buying?
Let me back up a bit, for those who don't know what Heroes of Ruin is. Heroes of Ruin is a game developed by a company called Nspace & published by SquareEnix. The game is an action rpg or to be more specific, a dungeon crawler. You start out by choosing one of four types of people to play as (only two available in the demo), customize them a bit, and then are thrown into the world of Veil. In this world, you go on quests, fight bad guys, collect loot, and have a great time. What makes Heroes of Ruin especially fun is that you can team-up locally, with a friend or parent (my dad & I will be teaming up) or online with friends or strangers.

In the demo, you can play locally with someone nearby or online with strangers (I suppose you could play with someone you know...but...well I'll get to that...).

The local multiplayer works great. The load times connecting locally are not too long and there were no errors at all while playing.

The online works...well...not so great so far. I did connect a couple of times with strangers, but other times I tried to connet & had an error. One time an error caused my system to reboot...

Also, finding a person you know online with Heroes of Ruin? It seems impossible. I started a game online and my dad could not find me when looking through the online player list. The same thing happened when my dad started a game. I could not find him at all. Worse: the demo does not support the 3DS's Join Friend friend list feature. :(

I'm hoping that in the actual game you'll be able to join your friend online right from the friend list. If not, well, I hope there is a better way to find your friends online in the actual game...

In any case, the online is the only real problem I have with the demo. The gameplay is fun, there's lots of loot to collect, bad guys to fight, the local multiplayer works great, and the graphics are nice.

Overall, its a really good demo and I can't wait to have the full game! July 17th is going to take forever. Well, at least I'll be able to play the demo while I'm waiting. :)

It's July! FINALLY!

Whew. Its finally July. June just seemed to be going on and on and on and on...lol.

I'm so happy its finally July. There are just so many great things coming out this month...like...

-Heroes of Ruin: This Thursday, there will be a demo for Heroes of Ruin for the 3DS. Can't wait to play the game for the first time. Very excited about it. The actual game comes out July 17th! I'll try to have impressions of the demo up sometime this week. And a review of the actual game soon too.

-Amazing Spider-man (movie): Wow. I am very, very, very, very excited for this movie! I'm a huge Spider-man fan and the more I see of this movie, the more I want to see it. I'm, maybe, more excited for this than I was for Avengers. And thats saying a lot! Can't wait. We are seeing it this Thursday! I'll try to have a non-spoiler review of it up on Thursday or Friday.

-Rainbow Moon: For the PS3. Its a downloadable stradegy rpg. I'm very excited for this game. It looks great. It has exploration like a regular rpg and lots of other cool stuff. I will try to have a review up about it sometime this month. Maybe. Its a 40 hour game (with extras taking over 100 hours). So it might be next month or...later. :)

-The Dark Knight Rises (movie): The third & final movie in the Nolan Batman trilogy. Oh man. This is going to be epic! Looking forward to it a lot. I'll try have a non-spoiler review of it up after I see it.

-Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance: For the 3DS. I'm getting this too. Loved the demo (hey, I really should try to get impressions of the demo up soon). Can't wait to play the actual game! I'll try to have a review of it up in August.

So yes, I am planning to write more on this blog. Well, unless I'm too busy playing all the games that come out this month. lol. :)