Sonic & the Secret Rings (Wii)
Hereafter called Sonic. This game has by far the WORST controls ever to grace the Wii, at least in my limited experience. This was a launch title, so naturally Nintendo asked everyone to use controls that no one would find comfortable OR reasonably useful. It was 2007, it was to be expected. The Wii was novel, the control scheme was novel, so these controls had to be novel, right? Thankfully, by 2008, everyone (in their right mind) understood that the waggle function really wasn’t necessary, and that hey! you still have the option to use the nunchuck and the gamecube controller, so that’s settled.
THAT BEING SAID, this game is fun. Very fun. Unbelievably fun. Yes, there were incredibly frustrating gaming moments where I considered tossing the wiimote through the tv, but I got passed that. Underneath the horrendous wii controls, there is a shining example of fun gaming where speed, skill and strategy all coalesce into one 15 hour bullet train ride.
The basic premise is this: Sonic is trapped in the book of 1001 Arabian Nights (henceforth known as the first chapter of the storybook series) and you have to fix the events in the book before the bad guy frees himself from the book.
The boss battles had an epic feel to them. Some of the ‘avoid getting hit while a bajillion enemies attack you’ were absolutely stunning, even with Wii level graphics. A few levels used the wiimote to perfection.
I paid $50 for this game, and I think I got $50 of entertainment out of it. The game isn’t finished – there’s over 30 hours of missions, and some of the best party games I’ve ever had an opportunity to play.
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Project Gotham Racing 3 (360)
There are only certain RPGs that I can play without being bored to tears. The same goes for racing games. PGR3 orginates on the Dreamcast under the title Metropolis Street Racer. Like MSR, I played this game until I achieved #1 rank. Unlike MSR, this game has difficulty settings – most of the tracks were beaten under easy, except for the first and last championships (hard difficulty).
While I enjoyed this game, I much preferred MSR. MSR had mostly normal cars, PGR3 gives you super cars AND gives you almost all of them right off the bat. In MSR, you could only keep four cars, PGR3 gives you enough garages to buy every single car in the game. In MSR, there were rain and time zone effects, in PGR3, no such stuff.
MSR was a hardcore racer. There were no difficulty settings. Races were largely won and lost by skill. In PGR3, mastering the Ferrari F50 GT will guarantee a win nearly every time.
That’s not to say it wasn’t fun. It definitely met my expectations. I wasn’t in any hurry to finish it; in fact, until a friend came over I had forgotten I had it. Driving inside the cockpit of a McLaren F1LM was unbelievable. The last race on hard was memorable. I’ll continue to have fond memories of the game. But if I had paid $60 (instead of the $7.50 for it being used) I would’ve been sorely disappointed.
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I’m over 45% completion for the year!
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