Happy New Year!

Happy New Year! To all readers at GameSpotting.net, we thank you for reading our news and reviews and for sticking around when we have had our troubles and problems. Thank you to all, and we hope to see you in 2007!

Tony Hawk’s Project 8 Review

Here we go again with a new Tony Hawk game. This is his 10th game and it’s still like other Tony Hawk games. Like American Skateland, Project 8 has Tony looking for a new skate team of 8 skaters. And you are “the rising one” which makes the game sound mythical. The game still has weird goals and sometimes, challenging events. You are in a leader board. Depending on how well you do in an event, your rank rises up and you become closer to pros.

The game’s graphics are not bad for a Tony Hawk Game. They are also not superb. I can’t complain. However, I do like how all the areas of the world flow into each other and how there is absolutely no load times in between worlds. And the level design was incredibly nice. Big and great to roam around in, and very hard to get lost in. Activision has also lowered the amount of product advertising. The only real ads I noticed were ones for Nokia.

The game can go extremely off topic by showing you ads for a golf video that will improve your swing. Of course the video isn’t real but how does this flow with skateboarding? I have no idea. The music isn’t that great either. Metal? No way. And I couldn’t say much for the sound. It’s really no different from any other Tony Hawk game. It seems like Activision just stuck to it’s roots of what it knows works well with Tony Hawk games.

However, Activision added a really cool new feature to the game. It’s called Learn the Trick, it’s where you actually…wait for it…learn the trick…what a surprise! Anyway, Learn the Trick is a great idea but you can’t master the trick in one try. It takes multiple tries. And the game insults you if you mess up. It’s not very helpful. And the game can be very frustrating in general. Almost to the point where you will either:

A) Scream at the game

B) Use a Cheat and then figure out it really doesn’t help anyway

C) Take a break from beating the game

D) Give up

One goal I am stuck on is where I am given 4:30 on the clock and I have to complete 5 events in a small space. The events are quite easy..except..one…where I have to nail a 50,000 point combo. All I got was 25,000 and then I died. It’s hard because unlike other Tony Hawk games, you can’t buy new stats. You “earn them” but the game never reveals what you have to do to get them. You just get them as you go along. Also, you can “steal” money from other skaters..but then they will chase you. I found that it is easier not to be caught by getting off your board and then jumping onto a high wall (By the way, something the game doesn’t tell you but is extremely helpful in the Xbox 360 version is that you can climb walls and hang from edges by pressing the RB button)
So to the ratings:

Sound: 7/10 -The music isn’t that great, just a bunch of metal. And the sound has barely changed from other Tony Hawk Games
Graphics: 8/10 – Nothing to really complain about. The worlds are nice though.
Controls: 7/10 – Controls are fine. I really wish that it could at least give a picture when you first start career mode that shows the controls rather then forcing you into a very hard tutorial for a beginner.
Playback: 6.8/10 -I thought this game had good playback but was too frustrating. Watching out for skaters who try to run into you is pretty annoying in the skate park.
Improvement: 7.8/10 -Almost no real improvement. Other then the fact that you can move from place to place without having to have loading screens. And a new feature called learn the trick.
Overall Score: 7.8/10 – Not much changed. Good game, but I personally would not continuously play it.

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The King has creeped us out.

Everyone knows the Burger King guy, right? Well Burger King made 3 Xbox 360 games that involve this creepy royal guy doing all kinds crazy stuff. From racing to performing sneak ups behind people in order to freak them out and give them a cheeseburger (Sounds a lot like Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell), you could play as “The King”. And for some reason, the games are enjoyable. And they sold only for $4 bucks each, which is a great deal for a game that is half way decent.

So what am I getting to? Well Burger King has announced that in just 4 weeks they have sold over 2 million copies of the Burger King games. The best selling game of all 3 is Sneak King.

If you haven’t heard of the games, here is a quick description of them:
Sneak King – Play as “The King” as you sneak around and deliver BK products to unsuspecting people. Don’t be seen. This game is probably the best of all three. You can run all around and do really cool poses (they are more funny then cool). Hide in garbage cans, piles of coal, etc.

Pocket Bike Racer – Race around with people from BK. This is probably the only sane game of the series. But only by a little bit. You can drive around as a chicken, drivethru attendent, cheeseburger, the king, along with some other characters too.

Big Bumpin’ – This game’s title is really weird. It’s a bumper car game. And it is probably the lamest game of the series. It’s not much fun, or very funny for that matter.
According to 2 resources, BK is not selling these games out anymore. But after checking out with BK, it would seem like some BK stores are still selling the games. I would suggest you go get one. They are hilarious, and cheap too.

Hard time finding a Wii?

That is because Nintendo is running out. It’s seriously official. The Wii has sold 3,190,000 of the 4 million systems made. It has become the best selling console for the holiday season so far and has beat Sony’s PS3 by more than 2 million.

Wii is very close to selling half the amount of Xbox 360s that have been sold. And it has done this in a bit over 5 weeks. The PS3 is still not selling well, with only 1 million consoles sold.

DS Lite gets ran over by reindeer..car. Several Times.

Normally, I don’t write about accidents caused by console owner’s mistakes but when I saw the remains of this DS lite…I couldn’t help it.

Apparently, HEADACHE157 (the person who’s sister owned the DS Lite)’s sister went out for a date with her boyfriend. The two went out stargazing (how romantic) and she left the DS on top of her boyfriend’s car. Then when they left to just drive around, she forgot she left it on the car and it fell off the car into a very busy street. When the two stopped at a Gas Station she remembered that she put the DS Lite on top of the car. Later the DS was found. And it actually survived..kinda. It was not in tiny pieces and it kept in the same shape a normal DS lite would be in. Wow, once again, Nintendo has made another durable, sturdy console.
You can read the full story and see the rest of the pictures here.

Sonic the Hedgehog Review

I know that this game is arleady out but I decied that it needed a review anyway. Sonic the Hedgehog is a much needed improvement from SEGA’s last sonic games. Sonic the Hedgehog is the best sonic game we have seen for a long time.

The story is that Doctor Eggman is looking for these things called “The Flames of Disaster” which is some sort of mystical weapon that will do something secret (I don’t really want to give it away [SPOILERS] but I am pretty sure it is linked to this huge evil molten dragon thing in a huge flaming whirlwind [/SPOILERS]). The key to this mystical secret is a girl named Princess Eliese, a 17 year old who rules over the City of Soleanna (The game calls it the City of Water even though the name suggests that it is the City of the Sun). All of the old characters (except for Big the cat, Cream and Cheese) appear in the game as well as a new character named Silver who is another foe of Sonic. Silver thinks that Sonic is going to distroy the world so he goes back in time to stop Sonic. Each character (as always) has a background story to how they are related to the story line.

The graphics are very detailed and the levels you play in are huge and very nicely done. Even to the point to say that they are beautiful. The game can be quite annoying when you are rope jumping. Sonic can jump on ropes like they are trampoleans to get somewhere. However you can fall off the rope if you push the control stick up and the problem is that using the control stick will not move you towards the land but rather push you into oblivion, however no other direction does this, for some reason. The voice acting is well done, they finally got rid of Omochao as being the one who gives you hints and tips. Naration is normally done by Dr. Eggman with a few exceptions where it’s the person who plays Dr. Eggman’s voice. Another great improvement to the game is that there is mulitiple ways to complete a level. There used to be just one and if you didn’t follow it, you would die.

This game is not like Shadow the Hedgehog which some people feared where it was heading. However it has some elements of Shadow the Hedgehog, like shadow can drive a jeep that has been tricked out with weapons and such and a motorcycle.

As with all games this one has a few downsides. Sega has fixed a lot of problems with the Homing Attack, like the problem of homing things that are not really there (this appeared in Sonic Heroes) or homing jump pads rather then enemies (Sonic Adventure Battle 2 and Sonic Heroes) but now the homing attack now has a shorter distance (making it harder to rope jump) and if you push forward and homing attack you miss your target while in the air. The game feels like you are doing missions for everybody (Like Sonic Adventure Battle 2). Another downside is that camera doesn’t move around so well and is pretty slow when you hit the camera buttons (LB and RB). The controls are a bit too simplified. With the player only really needing the A and X button. The problem with this is that the X button has 3 features and the game often chooses the wrong one. The X button is your attack, light dash (sonic will go in the direction of a line of rings) and regular dash. Another problem was that the pause menu wouldn’t let me start over. It kept on skipping the start over option and went directly to quit. Now to the ratings.

The Ratings:

Sound: 8/10 -The music and sounds were great and are an improvement to songs with lyrics in them (which never sounded good for Sonic type games).
Graphics: 9.2/10 – Graphics have severly improved since Sonic Heroes and other Sonic games
Controls: 5/10 – Major problems with the X button. This could have been fixed. Also the forward on the control stick while rope jumping was really awkward (you would think that it would move you towards land).
Playback: 6.7/10 -For some reason I don’t want to play this game over and over again, which other sonic games have made me do. No unlocks maybe?
Improvement: 7.9/10 -Sonic the Hedgehog is a huge improvement to Sonic Heroes but still lacks a few minor things.

Overall Score: 7.6/10 – If controls were fixed and the playback was better then this game would have gotten an 8.2. Some levels could have been worked on more.

Wow, that was long.

Happy Holidays!

Well, this post was supposed to be on the site a week ago but due to some weird error, it never showed up. So happy holidays!

Nintendo Recalls All WiiMote Straps

Nintendo has just announced a recall all WiiMote Straps as they are a “serious” danger to players. They decided that most gamers have sweaty hands and there is a higher rate that the Mote will go flying out of their hands. Nintendo says that any person that owns a Wii and all Wiis that are on store shelves are affected by the recall. But here is the thing, you don’t need to send back anything. Nintendo will send the stuff to you. The new string is much beefier and has a huge security tie to make sure that the WiiMote doesn’t slip off your wrist. And by the way, the shipping is free. And you can get up to 4 straps at a time. The new WiiMote straps will start shipping on December 21st.

How cool is that? You can claim your recall by going here.

MadCatz releases the Wii Component Cables

MadCatz has sent their 10 foot long component cables for the Wii to stores so you can play your Wii on resolutions up to 480p. Might get them now if you need them, since Nintendo is out of stock on their own version.

The MadCatz component cable is for $20 dollars and you can buy it here.

The control of the earth is in your hands….remote.

J. Coulston has gotten his WiiMote to control Google Earth. Infact he has wrote another script that moniters your battery gauge for your Wii. And he is sharing these scripts with people so they can use it with their motes, too. The controls are simple:

Tilt to move around. Press B and tilt to rotate. Press Plus and Minus to control zoom. Press Home to return to an overhead view. Press One for a full-screen view.

You can get the script from his website:

http://coulston.googlepages.com/wii

Despite what his website says, you need to download and install the GlovePIE program from here:

http://carl.kenner.googlepages.com/glovepie_download

But this is not the only script that you can do cool stuff on your computer with. You can make your WiiMote work as a gun for FPS shooters, control media players, move the mouse and more. You can see a big forum thread with all the scripts at this site.

Enjoy!

Missed a Wii?

If you were not one of the lucky ones to get a Wii yet then their is hope for you to get one before the end of the year. Best Buy is forcing their staff not to sell any Wiis until December 17th. Which means that they have some and if you want one, you better go pitch that tent cause they will most likely go fast. Best Buy states that there will be a “massive sale”.

Stay tuned.