Birthday!

It was my birthday on the 15th and I turned 13!

Unfortunately, on his birthday, a couple of days before mine, my rabbit Buttons fell ill with a tumour that had re-grown, we decided he had a good 10 years of life and put him to sleep so he wasn't to endure any more pain. We we're all very upset.

It was a pretty good birthday as i when downstairs and saw a lot of presents waiting for me!

One of them, a large-ish sized package which i opened first...

A DSi XL! Yay! It came in the dark brown colour and i switched it on straight away.

The first thing i noticed was that the screens are... Massive! 93% bigger than my old DS Lite.

The dual cameras are still there - one on the front and one next to the mic. inside. The photo editing
software is amazing, and you can play around, morphing your friends faces and giving them mario hats
and so forth. There's an SD Card slot and you can exchange photo's from the SD card to the DS or vise versa.

The day after I went off with my twin brother and the rest of our youth group (TNT) to Spree! Spree is a massive event for young christians, like myself, where youth groups from all over come to Great Walstead. Great Walstead, luckily, is about a 10 minute drive from my house. It is a large private school with a massive field. This is where all of us (around 900 i think) pitch our tents. It lasted from late evening Friday to mid-afternoon Sunday. I slept with my brother and our friend, Lewis in the same tiny tent. When I woke up, i was hurting!

There was loads of activities such as football, basketball, unihock, rifleshooting, paintballing, lasershooting, quizes, movies, tug o' war, scavenger hunts and midnight walks!

When i got back i went downstairs and into the garden. My late rabbit's hutch was out... why? On further inspection, a small furry head popped up and stared at me, i smiled back. Tilly, my new rabbit (so soon!) had been at my house for less than a day as my parents had bought it for the family whilst Josh and I were at Spree. My sister seemed delighted (she was also delighted that we were out of the house for a weekend)!

Anyway... When I got back i had a lovely shower and dived straight into a GTA: Chinatown Wars which I also got for my birthday along with Warioware: DIY.

I won't go to far into it, but, all i can tell you is it's an amazing game! DIY is... well... a little confusing, but, all the same it's an interesting and amusing game aswell.

Today I ordered 'Advanced Wars: Dark Conflict' (Days Of Ruin) on the DS. I have heard so much about it and i have read about it in ONM. I have seen people recommend it countless times so i thought i might check it out!

I'm looking forward to playing it, sorry i haven't done a post for ages.

Final Fantasy Fever

I have always enjoyed Square Enix's games. Kingdom Hearts was my first one and is one of my favourite series. Final Fantasy is their most famous creation though and they have no created 13 main stories. Not to mention the countless spin-offs such as Revenant Wings and A-2 on the DS.

At my school's annual summer fair last Saturday, I trapsed through the small carboot sale on the field with a couple of friends. Obviously we were hunting for games and right next to each other were two games stools.
The first I looked at had mostly Xbox 360 and PS3 games along with a few, unheard, random PS2's. I moved along to the next one and glanced at the wide variety of DS games up for sale.

FFIII took my eye! I picked it up and checked it all. I had seen it reviewed countless times and seen it with a high rank (I think it was 85%) in my monthly Nintendo Magazine - ONM.

But (there's always a but)!

It was £8. I had already spent...
£1 on a lucozade,
£1.50 on a burger,
and 50p on an impossible and crappy sideshow run by my friend's dad.
Damn! I only have £7 (I said this very angrily and loudly by the way)!
The man (old man) at the store said i could have it for £7...

Yay!

Anyway, I got home, turned on my DS Lite, popped in the game and started to play!
The first thing that struck me was the awesome graphics on the opening movie.
For 2006, they're amazing!

I did realize, that playing a port of an old game like this, there would be hardly any movie clips and the objectives would be very vague. There was no chance of it having a tutorial!

You first play as this guy called Luneth (you can change the name to suit you, but i didn't).
He kinda looks like a... well... a girl - but hey...
He falls down a hole created by an earthquake and has to fight a load of goblins, eye fangs and carbucles.
What made me confused was, playing a lot of final fantasy games, some of the enemies have the same names. In Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings, the carbucle is a kind of cat thing and in FFIII it's a weird purple shell with one eye in the middle... I'm confused!

Anyway, in the end - you travel through this goblin cave and the first boss battles you. A Land Turtle!
I killed it easily and then you meet this crystal who says your some kind of warrior of the light.

A couple of hours later and your fighting a Medusa. This gal has, like, 3000HP. And i was level 15. Anyway, I died because 3 of my party were silenced (cannot use magic) and i had no echo herbs to cure them.
I went back and endured many stupid enemies. I only had 1 guy silenced this time... my only magician...
Yeah.. I still managed to kill the snakey hairball and when i did i was really happy. Yay!

Then i went to this Dwarf Island in my boat: The Enterprise and found out that the dwarf's ice fang had been stolen and i had to get it back. So, I turned my party into toads and dived underwater, killed some annoying, hard hitting enemies and found the guy that had stolen the ice fang. After a long and loathsome fight, I managed to secure victory dealing a measly 26 damage with a wooden bow and arrow. I was happy again!

Until i noticed a weird shadow following me after the rogue criminal mysteriously vanished and took no notice of it until i returned to the dwarves, went to the alter and returned the fang. The rogue reaapeared, stole the ice fangs and ran off to the crystal of fire.

And that's about all i've done so far. It is actually a tricky little game and it can take a good while to actually level up...

Though, it's still epic!

A few more games wont hurt 2

Okay, instead of mercenaries - which i had left too long and was gone by the time i got to Gamestation - I bought 2 games!

GTA: Liberty City Stories - PS2 (18)

25 To Life - Ps2 (18)

-- Grand Theft Auto: Libert City Stories --

GTA: Liberty City Stories is an excellent accomplishment by the joint effort of Rockstar North and Rockstar Leeds (Also helped make Chinatown Wars - DS). Basically Toni Cipriani, part of the Lione crime family, had killed a made man and went into hiding, but now he returns to Liberty City, now voted the least place to succeed in America, and begins to takeover. Your main enemies are the Sindaccos - a rival crime family - who have the same plans and will shoot any Lione on sight. A lot of people will help you but too many will try to stop you, including your Mother who will call a hit on you. Around every 10 minutes some bald guy will drive to you in a vehicle and attempt to gun you down, usually they're really dumb and are dispatched easily. You can happily grab their dropped weapon and body armour for further use.

 A lot of the game is similar to Vice City - the same sound effects, coloured orbs around weapon pickups and radio controls. Personally I preferred San Andreas' radio controls and you could switch to the next or previous radio station with up and down on the d-pad instead of cycling through them over and over with the L1 shoulder button. A lot of the time the radio stations dont appear in the usual order and sometimes it even skips some, a minor glitch. The driving controls are much better than the previous Grand Theft Autos on PS2, they seem more real and there is a lot more varience in the speed and the mass effects the speed in a realistic way which is finished well with skid marks and nice smoke from the tires. The only thing I dislike about this game - again, alike Vice City you can't swim!

My Rating: 9/10

-- 25 To Life --

25 To Life is a much more linear game. It is about crime on the streets and follows the story of a man who owes a lot of money and ends up robbing a bank. For the first three levels you play as this guy and kill cops with various weapons from sub-machineguns to sawn-off shotguns. Pressing triangle allows you to switch to your melee weapon or on the police levels a zapper which allows you to apprehend criminals. One thing that i don't understand is that it can take nearly a whole round using  a pistol to kill an enemy whereas if you hit them once with a baseball bat they die instantly.

You have the main objectives which you must complete to finish the level and you have the secondary objectives which can be completed if you wish, but don't have to be. These can be things like, register 8 headshots or achieve 30% accuracy.

I dont think the game has much varience at all and it can get pretty boring because of that. The storyline is really not interesting and it's one of those games where you play a couple of missions and then turn the system off. The one thi ng that really stands out though is its impressive sound track full of catchy rap tunes which actually add a nice movie scene effects to parts of the game.

Nice effects, some cool guns, brilliant sound track, but, bad storyline and too linear.

My Rating 5/10

A few more games wont hurt

Sorry I haven't done a post in a while, but, hey. Anyway - got some new games from a few thrift shops.

GTA: Vice City - PS2 for £2.99
Judge Dredd: Dredd VS. Death - PC for £1

-- GTA: Vice City --

GTA's addictive - i got San Andres a year and a bit back, so, i know the casual "Drive there, kill him, drive back" gameplay style. I love running from the police, it's always fun seeing how many stars you can get before being shot to death then being brought back to life at a random hospital. I hate dying - you lose $100 and all your weapons which you payed thousands for, for all of the ammo too. The main thing i have against this game is that Tommy Vercetti (the player) cannot swim. Therefore, if you accidently drive your car off a bridge or something or fall out of your boat you drown instantly and get put somewhere 10 minutes away from the mission start. Dieing on missions is not fun!

It has a sweet soundtrack and some funny quotes on the radio stations. The weapons are impressive and some of the effects that show when you fire a weapon look impressive and realistic. Parts of the game can be pretty hard as you can have nearly 20 enemies against you with a pistol, at those times it gets frustrating and you need to save up for better weapons and more ammo.

A highly addictive game and the free roam aspects like any other GTA improve the whole experience. Some funny scenes and quotes from the radio, cinematics and pedestrians make it more amusing.

My Rating: 8/10

-- Judge Dredd: Dredd VS Death --

Judge Dredd i already had on PS2 so there's actually no difference in the two games apart from the fact that you can team up with players online in multiplayer - though because it's really old (2003) and not well known, not many people do so. It's pretty fun going around with your lawgiver mark II gun. You can change the ammo type with the mouse wheel to stuff like Hi-Explosive and Incendiary. Setting people alight, whether they're good or bad decreases your law meter - arresting people and completing objectives inctreases it.
If the law meter decreases to zero you lose the mission and the special judicial squad comes along and kills you... nice!

The whole game is linear as it is a FPS. Playing the game i think that the first person shooter style has been executed very well for the game and there seems to be next to no glitches when enemies like the vampires jump at you unlike other older game i've played where the enemies just morph through you. The variance in the ammo is really a unique and fun way to play the game and what i like is that there is a lot of difference between the ammo type. For example using a heat seeking bullet will work against civilians and anything living. But, when you get to the undead/zombie levels you cant use heat seekers against them of course, they don't give off heat - they're dead!

The main storyline is about an outbreak of vampires which occurs in the first mission of the game. This is the work of the dark judges and throughout the game you end up killing their mortal bodies and capturing there seemingly immortal spirit forms. In the end you go to the Dark Judges' home world which is void of life as the dark judges kill the living as every crime is committed by living things. You have a team of special Psi judges and they use there special mind powers to destroy Judge Death' mortal body... confusing!

Unique ammo types make it more fun, FPS style executed well, but, story mode very hard.

My Rating 7/10

Later after the next world cup match between Greece and South Korea, I hope to go up to gamestation and grab Mercenaries - PS2 for £2.99!

Gamingheap Review - Civilization Revolution (DS)

Sid Meiers has been creating Civilization games for a while now. My first experience of playing one of his, from the ground up, games was last year - Civilization Revolution!

Basically, the rough concept of these games, is that you are in charge of your own civilization whether it be Genghis Khan of the Mongol Empire or Nelson of the French Empire you'll attempt to lead your civilization to victory! First of all, you'll select one of the civilization leaders and then you can begin...

Starting with your capital you can either train troops or construct buildings. Most buildings give you a bonus such as, Banks times your money production by 4 in the city it's built in and Aquaducts promote growth in the city they're built in. You also have the option to build wonders of the world such as Stonehenge or, later on in the game, The Manhatten Project which rewards you with a large nuclear missile which can totally annihilate the city it is fired upon whether it belongs to friend or foe.

There are 4 ways of winning a game:

- Domination Victory: All other civilization's palaces have been taken during warfare.

- Technological Victory: You have constructed a space shuttle (SS) and have launched it to Alpha Centauri.

- Cultural Victory: You have 20 great people, wonders of the world or converted cities.

- Economical Victory: You have 20,000 Gold Pieces in your treasury.

Great people appear randomly in your cities but the more wonders and buildings you have the more common they will become.
Culture is needed to maintain a sophisticated civilization and can be produced by temples and cathedrals built in your cities. Sometimes you'll even uncover a secret like atlantis and unlock special bonuses like a few free technologies and a free unit, usually a tank.

Technologies play a big role in this game as you need to learn them to build different buildings and train better units - without them your civilization will fall down in war and have a bad economy.

This game has definitely taken up over 50 hours of my time and i still enjoy defeating my foes (especially Nelson of France)!

Gamingheap Review - Pokemon Emerald Version (GBA)

If you say you've never played a Pokemon game, you'd be lying! Emerald Version game out on GBA on the 21st November 2005. It's my personal favourite and is actually both versions - Ruby and Sapphire combined to create a long pokemon game filled with 2nd and 3rd generation pokemon to collect.

As per ususal in a Pokemon game, you'll start off by moving to your new hometown and talking to your ,all knowing, Mom. Eventually you'll meet professor Birch and he'll be chased by a wild Zigzagoon... can you see where this is going? You'll choose 1 of 3 pokemon from his backpack, one grass type, one fire type and one water type. Choosing one can be especially hard as it will be the pokemon that will stick with you throughout the whole game, not to mention it is also usually the strongest pokemon you'll have.

Going around catching pokemon and adding them to your pokedex is quite fun and you can always give them silly or cool nicknames. As you venture through the game, you'll become stronger, and so will your friend trainer. (This can be a girl or boy depending on which gender you choose at the start of your game).

At, suprisingly inconvieniant, times you'll meet them and will have to engage in a battle. Obviously, the higher the level, the easier it'll be. You'll earn money from battling and you can spend it on more potions, pokeballs and an assortment of different equipment and goodies for your pokemon.

The main storyline shows you, as a rising pokemon trainer, battling rivals, team Magma and team Aqua to stop their unknown plans for domination over the Hoenn region. Later, you'll find that they take control of a new weather station and set the weather to rain and heatwaves so that Kyorg, master of the seas will rise and Groudon, master of the earth will rise. You'll battle them, maybe even capture them, and head on to defeat, or capture, Raquaza. Raquaza is a powerful dragon the colour of emeralds and appears on the front cover of the box. After the madness has ceased you'll carry on along your path to fame defeating pokemon gym leaders and collecting badges. With 8 badges you'll gain access to the pokemon league. But, first you must pass the dreaded, Victory Road! Victory Road is a pith black cave area filled to the brim with high level trainers, wild pokemon, obstacles such as boulders (which require the HM, strength to move) and many dead ends and red herrings which cause you to get lost and go mad. If, and when, you get out of Victory Road you'll battle the Elite four...

Kind of self explanitory, the Elite four are the greatest pokemon trainers in the land, apart from the league champion and yourself of course! They each specialise in a specific type of pokemon, meaning you'll have to have with you a variety of pokemon types with you if you stand a chance of winning. Once you've beat them, its on the the league champion who has pokemon well over the level 60 mark. You'll end the main storyline if you beat him and gain access to the Battle Frontier. Basically, it's just a load of different buildings that house a variety of different pokemon games. The main one is the Battle Tower where you'll compete against other trainers and gain tower levels as you win battles. Lose one and it's all over!

You can also breed pokemon at the

Day Care Centre and obtain eggs which will hatch after a certain amount of steps!

Pokemon Emerald is now old and Diamond, Pearl, Platinium, Heart Gold and Soul Silver have over shadowed it by their 3d graphics and better Wi-Fi capabilities. But, I still think Emerald brings back memories of the older pokemon and fun storyline that i followed for 200 hours... until i accidently flicked the power button whilst saving... no explanation needed there...

Gamingheap Review - Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days (DS)

Kingdom Hearts 358/2 days is a magnificent game!

It follows on from the first Kingdom Hearts and happens somewhere before the events of Kingdom Hearts 2 with The Chain Of Memories happening somewhere in the middle. Square Enix, again, have made an amazing RPG full to the brim with items to synthesise, things to buy, enemies to defeat and of course the storyline to follow. I won't spoil anything but I can tell you that it is a very sad story and a lot of unexpected events unfold.

The camera can be a little fidgity at times but when you are locked on to an enemy you can swipe away at it with different keyblades you can collect each seperate from the others and all really nice looking. Collecting heart points will allow you to buy items and abilites in the Moogle store (Kupo!) and you can equip level panels, recovery items, along with your keyblade gears and abilites to your panel deck. Potions can really help when you are stuck on boss battles.

Although the game isn't too hard, i highly recommend it and playing as different characters from the game in the single or multiplayer mission mode is really enjoyable. Square Enix have made another spectacular game and hopefully we will see more like it on the DS soon!