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!

Buttons the Rabbit

I've never mentioned that i have a pet rabbit called Buttons before.
He's nearly 10 years old and is has brown fur, we think he may be blind though! Last week we discovered that he had a large lump down below. Turns out he had a tumor... He had to have an operation yesterday under an
anesthetic while it was removed...

He survived and although he WAS rather sleepy he's now jumping around and even tried to climb into his hutch but fell backwards and rolled over. He fell asleep on my brother's lap yesterday and he was completely zonked!

His favourite food is actually green beans. Last year he had an absyss on his cheek which was also operated on. When he recovered we had to inject him and feed him this weird, disgusting smelling (and probably tasting too!) medicine stuff. My idea was to split a green bean in half and pour some inside, close it again and feed it to him. It worked and was really funny to watch.

The other week we also found out he eats toast!

Lately I have been developing one of those online guides you can find at Gamespot and Gamfaqs and all that. I am doing it on Kingdom Hearts 358/2 days on DS. So far i have just finished the basics and the beginning missions. I don't know how long it will take, but i just hope people actually view it!

Enjoying Metroid Prime 3: Corruption

Metroid Prime 3: Corruption on Wii is one of the best FPS i have ever played and is definitely the best Sci-Fi I've played! The camera is immense and there are so many interesting angles to view the game from especially when your travelling through tight tunnels in the Morph Ball. The controls show that the Wii can display dynamic gameplay and show a diverse story-line and stick with it throughout. The graphics are also some of the best I've seen on the Wii! Why don't more recent FPS's like Call Of Duty 4: Reflex on Wii have this quality of graphics? It goes to show that Nintendo put a lot of effort into making this game one of the best! It was released in August 2007 and a new Metroid game: Metroid: Other M is going to be released soon, but, Other M will be in the Third Person so I'm not sure if it will be a good as its previous instalment to the Metroid series. That is just me though - other people may prefer Third Person Shooters like I used to, but i prefer First Person now...

Gamingheap Review - Monster Hunter Tri (Wii)

Who would ever think beating hell out of ugly beasts could be so fun? Monster Hunter Tri has been out for over a week now (9 days) and let me tell you... it is so addictive. There is over 1000 different armour pieces and weapons to be forged or bought, 30 monsters to gather information on and defeat in various quests or just by roaming the Moga woods. There's a farm a fishing fleet, a trade ship called the Argosy, hundreds of different items to collect and even a little ally that travels with you called Cha-Cha!

The quests are the key objectives in the game - completing them allows you to advance through the game and gain access to harder quests and more hunting grounds. The quests go from easy 1 star quests which range from delivering mushrooms to defeating a specific amount of monsters like the Jaggi or Jaggia.

To 5 star 45 minute boss battles which are not only really hard and frustrating but are mandatory to go further along the story-line. The Great Jaggi is the first boss which you confront and is really hard when you're just starting out, but 4 hours later along the line they prove extremely easy to defeat and another boss takes its place. I never used to be able to kill this mimicing bird called a Queropeco which can reproduce other monster's distress calls so that they think it is their species and come to help fight you. Now, i find it really easy and hardly a challenge, thus making it easier to collect the unique and neccesary resources which can be harvested from its corpse.

This game is epic and today i had my first taste of proper, hardcore, online 4-player, team monster hunter quests. I even added to people to my friend roster so that i can meet up with them again and kill more monsters together. Monster Hunter Tri is compatible with Wii Speak which, unfortunatley, I don't have.
Incase you don't already know, Wii Speak allows you to talk with you friends online, meaning you can shout out orders and not have to type it all in and send a message to all your comrades.

It is awesome and I highly recommend it!