The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles grab a new movie and a new game

Okay, so just about anyone could agree that the Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtles movies were not that great. Well now there is a new movie coming out that will be done in CGI. And because there is some wierd rule about almost every movie that’s not a documentry (and mainly geared to younger viewers) being made a video game, TMNT is getting a game too.

Previous TMNT games were never well recieved and ended up getting poor ratings because they were mostly a rush job. This game is now under the hands of Ubisoft, who generally make pretty good games. The game is about Raphael, Donatello and Michelangelo leaving the squad and not being ninjas anymore ($5 bucks that one of the endings puts them all back togther). The graphics are not so “cartoonish” as they were before, and the atmosphere suggests that this time, they aren’t joking around.

Check out the pre-review here.

Need for Speed:Carbon Revisited

carbon logoI have never liked the Need For Speed series for various reasons. One because I never liked the crash effects, steering and the controls. However the cars were cool. Carbon seems to have made me reconsider a very bad review. Personally, I liked this game alot. I think it was well done. The game has a new feature called “call a crew member”, but I rather call it “SIC EM!”, since you are really just sending your crew car to get the guy. You call up a buddy who is constantly giving you radio help (like a real crew member) and telling you when other racers are about to crash you up. This is probably the best improvement in NFS. You got your little helper guy to help you out in tough jams. But since you have a helper, EA decided that the game would have to be just a tad tougher. But it really makes the game more fun to play.

Awesome Graphics. Looks better when you click I liked the idea that you could also customize your ride’s body. In previous NFS games you could only change how the car looked decal and color wise. This game in the series allows you to customize the body of the car. And modify things from rims, tire depth, hood depth, and all that other good stuff that I can’t remember right at this moment. And your car looks awesome on the track. Speaking of tracks, NFS: Carbon has a really cool track system. You have to earn tracks by defeating others but until then they are under the control of a rival Car Crew/Gang/Mob. That makes the story line a lot more exciting.

Now graphics in this game have improved from the blocky car designs seen in NFS: Underground 1&2 (I think they both look blocky, maybe cause I didn’t change the default settings). Anyhow, the graphics have really improved and they are great with the night time atmosphere. Overall, Carbon is way better then any of the other NFS games. This game is awesome, but still not as good as the Burnout series also made by EA. The controls have inproved but they aren’t perfect yet. The steering is better but it’s still really annoying. You will still spinout if you counterstear, and hear the stupid tire screaching noise when you are going really fast and start to turn. NFS:C has great motion blurs, that make you really feel the action. Now let’s get to the ratings.

The Ratings:

Sound: 8/10 -This is super! The talking that the crew member gives you doesn’t seem like it was recorded previously and seems like he is really saying it. Music was N/A, I just didn’t pay attention to it.
Graphics: 8/10 -Graphics have improved since NFS: Underground 2
Controls: 7/10 -The controls have moved to somewhere where they are more accessible but the Respawn button seems to be on the other side of the controller. No support for joysticks.
Playback: 8.5/10 -Great game but it can be a bit frusturating. Story is really interesting.
Improvement: 8/10 -Lots of great improvements.

Overall Score: 8/10 – Controls were okay, but they needed to be improved. Other wise if they were this game would have been an 8.5

An offtopic cool thing about this game: the loading screens have the best animation, and cool effects that I have ever seen (the ones that Burnout has are cool but they are kinda boring as they never change, it’s always the same 4 transitions).

Win a Nintendo DS Lite everyday!

Nintendo has a contest going where you can win one of the three DS Lite colors of your choosing if you sign in and win. You only need to signup once and then you are entered. You will also win one GBA and DS game that are chosen by Nintendo. You can signup at this site.

Nintendo states in their latest press release that this contest is still going on. On other pages it says that this contest is over but according to Nintendo, the contest like the Wii Warranty deal was extended. Enter and see if you win.

NOTE: We want to make it clear that we are NOT running this contest! We can’t make you win. If you want to win in a contest, try out the rumble box contest we are running.

Q&A Answering your Pokemon Questions

I have decided to dedicate a post to answering some pokemon questions I recieve daily.

You have no idea how many comments I get a day about when Pokemon Ranger comes out. It releases on the 30th of this month people. I don’t know what is really causing the want for the game.

The second most popular question I recieve is when Pokemon Mystery Dungeon (insert color here) Rescue Team comes out. If you are still asking me this question it’s because you missed the release. It came out a month ago. But the release was silent. It wasn’t overly advertised or from what I saw, advertised at all (on TV I mean).

The third question of the day is: “Is there going to going to be a pokemon game for the wii?”

The answer to this one is yes. The name of the game is called: “Pokemon Battle Revolution” and is being made by the same people who made the Pokemon Colessuem games (Genius Sonority). As of now all we know is that it has a release date in Japan, and Nintendo has not said anything else on this topic. UPDATE: It will release in America, check the recent news articles on this site. Or search “Pokemon Battle Revolution” in the box above.

Thanks for sending in your massive array of questions!

LEGO Star Wars II Review

legostarwarsLego Star Wars 2 is a great game, I love legos. I like Starwars. It’s a great mix. In Lego Star Wars 2 you play through the “old school” movies with many references to the recent movies. Like the first game, it’s jam packed with humor. From Han Solo kissing Leia and then winking to the camera to things like the stormtroopers in a spa, or them acting like models to open the gates of doors. New to the game is the ability to customize your own character, bringing the true spirit of LEGO to the game. At times the game is really frustrating due to controls (I play with a joystick). And the game keeps repeating that you must press “J1_Button 1”, which I have no idea what that is since there is no button 1. The ability to change the controls is nice but the descriptions for what the buttons do are very very vague. I like the special powers some characters have, like chewbacca can rip other characters arms off or greedo (some weird bounty hunter) can throw thermal detonators as well as shoot you.



The graphics are really good for a lego game, in fact they improved from the last game. Better reflections (as seen in the photo above) and much more. The game has pretty good voice and sound. However most of the talking is “Blah blah blah”. But it makes the cut scenes a lot funnier. That aside, let’s get to the ratings:
Graphics: 8/10 – A nice improvement from the last game
Sound/Music: 9/10
Controls: 6/10 – Yeah it kinda failed here, with terrible button descriptions and the annoying messages
Playback: 10/10 – Awesome makes me wanna play again
Improvement: 9/10 – Great improvement except the controls are a step back from the first game.
Overall Score: 8/10 -Awesome game just needs better control functionality.The best version to get is the Xbox 360 version as it’s controls, sound and options for graphics are way better then the PC version.

The DS version is the game that you should pass on. Do not get this game. It’s not even fun. It’s a terrible port and is filled with levels that were not finished, terrible graphics and the whole game is pretty much a glitch. So many that you will go insane.