Review – Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies

After it's hugely successful release in Japan over a year ago, Dragon Quest IX was finally brought stateside this summer.

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E3 2010: Okamiden Hands-On

During a guided tour of Capcom’s booth at E3, I had the chance to try out the new Ōkami game for the Nintendo DS, called Ōkamiden. The first Ōkami game dropped for the PlayStation 2 in 2006. Following in the footsteps of Amaterasu, the sun-god-turned-wolf in Ōkami, Chibiterasu takes the form of an adorable wolf pup for the mission ahead. Chibiterasu will join forces with a rich cast of characters to fight off a new threat that has leeched the world of its vibrant color again. Beyond the battles, Chibiterasu and the partners you meet along the way will come to realize their inner potential and accept the kinship that comes with being the children of great heroes and gods. In the demo of Ōkamiden, you play as Chibiterasu and Kuni. Kuni is your companion; he rides Chibiterasu and follows his direction while they traverse the worlds together. Ōkamiden feels

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Review – Chronicles of Mystery: Curse of the Ancient Temple (DS)

In chronicles of Mystery; Curse of the Ancient Temple, players assume the role of Sylvie Leroux, a young archaeologist who is in search of her uncle. Rating: E (for Everyone) Publisher: City Interactive Release Date: November, 2009 Official Website RENT Sylvie’s uncle is a renowned historian working on uncovering the secrets behind the ancient temple. After she receives a distressing letter from him in the middle of his archaeological discoveries, she leaves for France in hopes of finding and returning him to his important work in uncovering the mysterious underground chapel.  The game is mostly a hidden object adventure game, where you look for not only clues, but hidden doors and passageways to open; and figuring how the clues fit together in the search for the professor and who may be causing all the trouble with the expedition. The cast of characters and the mystery factor kept me guessing until the

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Review: Glory of Heracles

Glory of Heracles is the fifth part of a game series in Japan and the first of that series to be released in the United States. It features a curious cast of characters and a semi-familiar story with a twist: it’s set in Ancient Greece. Players: 1 Genre: RPG Rating: E 10+ Publisher: Nintendo RENT To be honest, there really isn’t anything spectacular or horrible about this game. It’s pretty average as far as combat and graphics go, and the story gets better as time goes on. I wish I could rave about something, but there isn’t much that stands out. The characters are pretty interesting, and I’ll be talking a little about them later on. I guess I should start with what most people care about: the story. The story is pretty nice. It’s based on Ancient Greece and the gods and goddesses of that time. You play as

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First Look: Fighting Fantasy, The Warlock of Firetop Mountain

Fighting Fantasy, The Warlock of Firetop Mountain is a little DS game brought to us by Aspyr. This game boasts meticulous graphical detail and stunning gameplay. It’s also unique in that it is a first-person RPG for a handheld system. I’m no expert on that, but I don’t believe there’s many of those in existence right now. There are a lot of problems with this that I’ve seen, some which made it almost impossible for me to play for more than 15 minutes at a time, no matter how curious I was. The first thing that really threw me off was, in fact, the fact that it is in first-person view. Normally this isn’t a problem because I love my first-person shooters, and Borderlands was amazing to me. The reason this is a problem is because that you need both hands just to move the camera around. The d-pad is

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Review: Playmobil Knights

As a child I had spend a large portion of my time using my imagination and Playmobil has taken a physical toy and put them into a virtual world. ESRB: E (for Everyone) Genre: Action Number of Players: One-Two Publisher: Dreamcatcher Interactive Release Date: January 26, 2010 RENT For the most part, the graphics in Playmobil’s Knights measures up to what we have come to expect on the Nintendo DS. There are some cinematics in the game which detail when you’ve hurt your flying dragon one too many times, and at the very beginning of the game that provides the background reason you have become a knight. There’s a very epic opening screen which began my journey within the fantasy world. I don’t say that about many opening screens, yet I felt that I was ready to explore the world that Playmobil has set out of me.  There are no voice actions within the game, which

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Review: Sonic Classic Collection

With some version of the spunky, blue rodent available to purchase on all of the gaming consoles, the issue is not “I want to play Sonic” – rather, it is “which Sonic game should I play?”

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Review: America’s Test Kitchen

Turn your family into your sous chefs and prepare 300 recipes from the comfort of your DS with America’s Test Kitchen. ESRB: E for Everyone Genre: Interactive Cookbook Number of Players: One  Publisher: Nintendo Release Date: March 28, 2010 Buy Buy it now from Amazon Spending time in the kitchen is something I both love and dread. Love because I enjoy making good food for my friends and family. Dread due to the inevitable piles of dishes that will be left to clean up, and I’m usually the one doing that, too. There is an entire row of cookbooks in our home covering a wide range of cuisines. We leave shopping lists stuck to our refrigerator and our kitchen table doubles as a prep table and cookbook stand. The kitchen in our apartment is rather small, not much counter space is available, which means its hard for two people to

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Review: Pokemon HeartGold and SoulSilver

A welcome addition to the Pokemon family, and a wonderful revamp of the original Gold and Silver versions, HeartGold and SoulSilver bring back memories of older players and draw in newer players all at once. ESRB: E (for Everyone) Genre:RPG Number of Players: One Publisher: Nintendo Release Date: March 14, 2010 BUY First of all, I should say that I grew up playing the first and second generation of Pokemon games, including the original versions of Gold, Silver, and Crystal. I remember being a little kid in middle school talking about what gym I just beat or asking if they wanted to trade their ponyta for my magikarp. Playing HeartGold and SoulSilver brought back a lot of fond memories of playing the original versions as well as gave me some of the nice additions that have been added to the series since then. The menus are amazing. Normally people don’t

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Review: Jonas

Picking up on the success of the musical group Jonas Brothers, one could not fault Disney for releasing various entertainment options that would appeal to their adolescent fans.

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