5.1 or 6? Seems like a random question, of course we want 6, more is better right? 6 tootsie pops or 6 fresh Cheezburger is better than less, unless I’m talking about punches to the kidneys. But instead of it being some nonsensical question that crazy Elk has pulled from his head, I’m referring to this new wide website that all the kids are talking about nowadays, which version are we on?

   “But Mr Elk sir, how can we possibly summarize 12 years of history into a single number?”

Why Billy, thank you for asking. The answer is simple when you have the Internet, some free time (turns out, a lot of free time) and a time machine consisting of nothing but software, that lives on the Internet.

Many of you will have no idea what I’m talking about when I mention mplayer.com, happypuppy.com or geocities sites with blink text.

   “Oi Grandad” You might say “Get back in your chair and I’ll hear no more stories about the interwebs before YouTube”

Well, perhaps later. For now let me show you what I’ve found. GameSpot, this is for you.

GameSpot 1.0 - May 1996

The first version of the GameSpot Site that I’m able to find, you’ll find lots of banner ads for mplayer.com and talk of the current multiplayer revolution. The 1996 site is a shining example of sites for its age, except for the fact that it features video content and isn’t full of ugly animated gifs and <BLINK> text

GameSpot 2.0 - Late 1997

The GameSpot logo lost its shading and still hasn’t totally taking shape yet. You’ll find articles about this new AGP slot in computers and previews for Quake II and Starcraft. This marks GameSpot’s early infatuation with the colour purple and a red G sun which is the strangest version of the GameSpot logo I’ve ever seen.

GameSpot 2.01 - Late 1998

The logo takes shape and also animates, you’ll also find a poll on the site, but little other changes.

GameSpot 2.02 - Late 1999

Now flying the banner for ZDNet GameSpot sits under their breadcrumb trail. Not many changes here except the introduction of a real banner.

Fun fact: News shows ZDNet were pleased with GameSpot having 2.1% of the web audience over all competitors (IGN, HappyPuppy, GameCenter (CNET), GamesDomain)

GameSpot 3.0 - Mid 2000

Now things start looking really good, GameSpot now replaces all of ZDNet’s game pages and shifts further across the breadcrumb. You’ll find crazy stuff like forums and GameSpot Live already active over eight years ago!

GameSpot 3.1 - Late 2000

After a brief turn of blue GameSpot goes purple again and clears the ZDNet breadcrumb totally off the site. ZDNet and GameSpot are now under the CNET, however there’s no mention of anything on the site yet except that the ZDNet forums now redirect to CNET

GameSpot 3.2 - Early 2001

Now we see a GameSpot I clearly remember. Forums are tucked away under each system and you now see the CNET footer on each page, navigation is pretty slick and it’d pass for a pretty decent site even in todays times.

GameSpot 3.21 - Mid 2002

Just a few minor changes, very cosmetic giving the site a very metallic feel. Login box is now shown on the main page for members and here’s an article for GameSpot 4.0 where we say goodbye to purple *sniff*

GameSpot 4.0 - Early 2003

Hello orange! Forums and the entire site is now buzzing and busy, user profiles allow friend lists and PMs but blogs may not yet have not hit mainstream yet and are nowhere to be found on GameSpot for now.

Gamespot 4.1 - Early 2004

Each system has its own icon in a very OS9 feel, forums labeled just as community. The site really went through a whole load of 4.X revisions and added blogs (called journals) sometime in the last quarter.
Ignore the silver center of this page, looks like the new design became inserted into the old causing some strange problems in the space time continuum. Also ignore the red and white box, my ad filter at work gets a little hyperactive.

GameSpot 4.2 - Early 2005

Icons for each system didn’t last long, another slight change in the long list of 4.x revisions

Gamespot 5.0 - Mid 2005

GameSpot’s last site I’m sure your quite familiar with and it needs no introduction, forums are labeled as forums, blogs are called blogs, all is right with the world.
Little changed in the three years of 5.0 except for slight changes such as a much shorter system list and element changes, making 5.0 the longest lasting GameSpot revision to date.

Read Greg Kasavin’s words on the 5.0 GameSpot Site upgrade here

Gamespot 5.1/6.0 ? - August 2008

Here we are at the end of my little 12 year memory lane to GameSpot’s current iteration. We’ve traveled through Purple, dabbled with blue and now are cutting the orange for a little silver. The argument and the question I pose to you all; are we now on version 6 or 5.1?

I hope you enjoyed my little tribute and trip down memory lane, it sure took some time to make and research.

McGee’s last title of Bad Day L.A. wasn’t too well received, after winning coaster of the year award and getting a Metacritic score of under 3/10 it seems things can only get better.

In Grimm you are tasked with changing fairy tails from their usual happily ever after to a far more twisted and grim version spread between 24 separate weekly episodes that’ll supposodly last half a hour each, although the first episode timed in far closer to just 15-20 minutes of usual gameplay. Each episode will tell a separate story, some are famous tales such as red riding hood or Puss in Boots, then there are others such as the pilot which are far more obscure. The whole idea and art style are set firmly in the roots on American McGee’s Alice, a true classic and demented game that represents the start and highpoint of McGee’s success.

Upon first starting the game I was instantly reminded of Namco’s Karamari Damacy’s art style, with simple bright figures around the landscape and cheerful faces, the twist here is that you take control of Grimm who’s simple presence spreads corruption and turns the green fields into dead land, people into zombies and generally makes the whole area around him a far darker place. You can’t just run around and change everything into darkness however, instead you need to turn smaller objects dark before you can start work on larger objects, sounding a little familiar? In a nutshell you are playing Karamari Damacy without having to roll around a large ball (instead you have a short fat man) and without a time limit, these facts alone bleed out really any challenge from the game at all since you can run around at your leisure until the whole world is corrupted. After you’ve run around for a while you will of filled up your Grimm meter enough that you can “butt stomp” (ground pound) a goal target in your area and then move on to the next, once you’ve completed all the goals in your scene you will continue the story until you’ve completed all six three minute scenes.

A couple of things do exist to bring a little game back into Grimm, such as a few platform sections over water or lava that will kill you instantly, but since you have infinite lives and start right back on safe ground these terribly simple platform sections are quickly forgettable. The other challenge you’ll tackle is that some people are too large for you to corrupt until you get larger, these people will slowly clean the corruption you have brought to the land. Early on in the game it’ll seem like this is exactly where the challenge will come in, but no, you can ground pound near these guys to stun them for a short while but there really isn’t any point since they go about their business far to slowly to be any kind of real threat. Overall the gameplay feels almost non existent due to the failure to challenge even the most incapable gamer. The whole experience feels like it targets young children until you remember the game’s T rating and the fact that you can pee in the faces of small girls. Yes, you heard right, stand still for a moment and Grimm will let loose the yellow flow of corruption, a perfect example of the games humor which is apparently included to help you judge the direction on your jump, just encase you happen to be that incapable that you cant tell which direction on your screen is forwards.

There are a few inclusions here to add replayability, you can compete on GameTap to see who can complete the game with the lowest time or try to collect all the hidden tokens on each level, competing with real people obviously brings a real challenge if you care at all to fight through game repeatedly for the top of the leaderboard. You could always play back through some levels and collect the hidden tokens that you may of missed, which you’ll find behind simple objects and just out of clear sight, of course with infinite time they can be collected very easily and upon collecting enough you’ll unlock the lackluster object gallery in which you can spin objects around and turn them Grimm.

The biggest bonus here is that each episode will be free for the first 24 hours when it reaches the GameTap system every Thursday for 8 weeks until the end of season 1, with the first episode remaining free for the foreseeable future. Of course the entire collection will be included for anyone who already pays for a GameTap subscription, for others it’s an obvious attempt to get people ‘in the door’, which is a great idea since GameTap is an often overlooked service that I’ve praised many times in the past, for anyone who isn’t a subscriber I’d recommend getting a free subscription and instead playing Psychonauts, Hitman or Tomb raider. 20 minutes isn’t a long game and the chapters could most likely improve in future but there are far better ways to spend your time.

After a long 4 years with the Ninja Gaiden 1 iterations of Ninja Gaiden Black, Ninja Gaiden Sigma Turbo and Ninja Gaiden: Championship Edition (where you place the bosses), Team Ninja has released the first totally new Ninja Gaiden game for a current generation system. The Ninja Gaiden series has been running since the late 1980’s and has been doing very well for its self the past few years with its 3D re-imagining under the guide of Itagaki, however the future now looks a little rocky with his recent departure from Team Ninja, giving this game the potential to be the end of series, or at least end of an eara. But enough about game politics, lets get this started.

Wolverine's got nothing on Ryu

As soon as you jump into Ninja Gaiden 2 you’ll get a pretty good idea of how things are going to play out for the next 10-15 hours, you are greeted with a cinematic that lasts just a couple of minutes and sets you up with a basic plot, rescue the girl, without a pause for breath you are quickly dropped into a circle of foes, sword in hand. Combat seems straightforward on the surface, you have the usual, high, weak, dodge, block moves to get you by in the early combat of the game, smash a few buttons and on the starter difficulties you’d be quickly fooled into thinking slaming down on butons will send you on a one way cruise to Ninja victory, soon you’ll find that’s not the case. Many people find the title of “Ninja Gaiden” to be synonymous with “Brutal Difficulty” and although the easy mode from Ninja Gaiden Black has been adopted in Ninja Gaiden 2, even on the easy setting your going to die and not just a few times, there’s a reason why this game has an achievement for restarting 100 times and a reason that all your friends who have completed this game have it. Before we get to far into this I have to warn you all that Ninja Gaiden 2 is hard, really very hard indeed, if you don’t fancy yourself as someone who is very good at games, or someone who is easily frustrated then this isn’t the game for you, otherwise please read on.

The bosses are huge and look great

To survive in the brutal world of Ninja Gaiden 2 you’ll need a lot to patients, skill and sharp weapons Ninja Gaiden will gladly provide you with the tools as long as you have the talent. There are 9 different melee weapons available that you are able to ‘level up’ by visiting a shop and spending essence that you’ve absorbed, once these weapons reach level 3 the move list looks like something out of a a DOA fighting game with a whole host of available moves for each of the weapons. Those long attack lists will be very welcome when you see the list of foes, and while you won’t be seeing new targets at every corner, there’s enough difference to keep you on the toes on your ninja boots. Throughout the game’s 14 chapters you’ll be fighting all kinds of different creatures, you might start by fighting two different types of Ninja, some with explosive shuriken and others with bows and you’ll find that they each have a different behavior and will require different strategies to beat, especially when you start fighting strange beasts, dogs, robots and dragons. It’ll take some time to decipher what tactic you’ll want to be using and what weapon fits the moment, but combat will often revolve around some well timed blocks and parrys, absorbing essence for a quicker power attack when you have a moments breathing room and then clearing half a room, then more of the same guys will start flooding towards you and you’ll attempt to repeat the process, on paper (or internets) this may seem rather tedious, and it sure would be, if the combat wasn’t just so much fun. The joy of the combat does partly lie in the difficulty, you get a honest feeling of accomplishment for getting through each wave and real fear about what could lie around the next corner while you pray it’s finally the save point that you well deserve. Combat is also helped by the brutal dismemberment, sometimes you might wale away at a for for several hits before your target drops, other times you might just get the right move at the right moment and slice a leg and a arm clean off, the crippled ninja will lie on the floor and throw shuriken at you until you run up and drive a sword through his back, bringing out new weapons will give you a whole set of new ‘Oh Snap!’ moments when you pull off that final kill. Between fights you will now auto heal, this new mechanic works extremely well as it does keep the game moving at a fast pace without you constantly worrying about healing, but at the same time it doesn’t mean that if you barely survive a fight that you’ll be doing just as well as an ace Ninja since every hit you take reduces your maximum available health until you use an item or reach a save point.

Dismemberment is fun, good thing only Ryu's sword gets blood on it

While Ninja Gaiden 2 falls into the same genre as God of War 2 and the far more recent Devil May Cry 4 it does have a very different tone and pace to it, firstly you won’t be finding any of the God of War style puzzles, the closest you’ll find here is confusing level design where the camera spins you around in a small cave and you loose your direction and start walking back on yourself, or you’ll wonder around for ages, then realise you need to backtrack through the level and find a crossroads you didn’t see before because the camera obscured it. You won’t be getting much help from the camera showing you where you need to go, instead think of the camera as just another enemy to conquer, the view is often passable as long as you keep attention to it and it does zoom in nicely when you pull off that final blow. You’ll hear many reviews complaining about the camera, perhaps I’m just so used to bad camera games that it just washed off my back, just be aware of the angle and you can get by.

The Irish folk dance move is deadly

After each act there will be some story handed to you in the form of a cut scene which you can hear in either English or Japanese, you won’t find any surprises here however, it’s all very run-of-the-mill stuff and its main focus seems to be explaining why you were just fighting in San Francisco and now your halfway across the world. The environments are nice throughout the game, rather varied in both scale and design, from a tight underground cave to a large open area in a city, you’ll be having to change tactics as you worry about creatures getting behind you and switch to a different style of weapon to survive. Sometimes these areas get a little too large for their own good and you’ll get far to may creatures on screen at once and the frame rate drops well past just being noticeable and at a couple of points in the game it becomes a slide show if your running high resolutions, this gets to be a real heavy frustration when you are simply trying to survive against a screen full of creatures. Even when the screen isn’t full the game often pushes beyond hard to just grueling and unfair, some creatures will be able to bypass your block from a distance and cause massive damage, the solution to the problem can often be to run past the entire fight (if you can) or to exploit the AI somehow and shoot from around a corner or lure a smaller group of foes with you. I hate to go on about the difficulty, but at the hardest settings the game wears it’s challenge like a pretentious badge of honor, sure it’s possible, but sometimes it seems like it’s being unfairly tough just for the sake of it. The boss battles are equally challenging and sometimes harder than the preceding levels, the difference with the boss battles is they challenge you without being overly ridiculous. As long as you are well prepared with healing items you can persever through the bosses by just learning their attack patterns and exploiting their weaknesses, just like a good boss should.

If you find time to look at it, you'll find a rich and detailed scenery

Since Ninja Gaiden 2 is missing any kind of Multiplayer, much like most games of its kind, online interaction is limited to sharing your score and recording and sharing video. Video recording and sharing is a nice feature since you can really show off a lot of style although the features are limited to simply start record, end record and upload recording, still, it’s a nice feature to have.

Some people will welcome the challenge that Ninja Gaiden brings them, others will become frustrated and leave the game in their “Do not want” pile next to Ninja Gaiden 1 and Dead Rising. For those who can get past the difficulty and fame rate issues you’ll find a solid game with a lot of polish and style, since the Xbox Live Marketplace has a downloadable demo, users with a Hard Drive and internet should check the demo out before jumping in, playing the demo will undoubtedly prove to you just how cool it is to be a Ninja.

GTA4 is the 1st release on current generation hardware and has been anticipated for nearly 4 years since GTA:San Andreas

The Grand Theft Auto series was the first notable series to introduce open world gameplay outside of the RPG genre back in ’97 with the release of GTA 1, now fast forward 11 years to today, GTA 4 has been released and the evolution and controversy of the series continues. Here in the new Liberty city you’ll be taking the role of Niko Bellic, a Serbian who’s come to the city to meet up with his cousin and find that special someone. The same core gameplay is still firmly in place, you’ll be going around a massive interactive city while completing missions while you gain renown in the world of organized crime. One of the stand out features of the series is how it’s just as much fun to ignore the main plot and just drive around filling out your criminal fantasies and performing wanton destruction. Killing people on the street may not seem like something you want to do, but given 5 minutes in Liberty city and most folk will soon be running from the law and beating pimps with baseball bats, the way that GTA brings out the worst in people is part of the beauty of the whole series.

When you are first dropped into the world of GTA you may find yourself at a loss where to begin, the world offers a whole lot of ways for a guy to make some easy cash and you’ll likely be drawn towards the missions, which would be a good choice since they’ll give you tutorials and ease you into the action which will help get new players and GTA vets onto a level playing field. These early missions give you very basic objectives and offer just a small taste of what’s to come, eventually you’ll find the story spinning out of control in various directions. There will be many friends of yours all with their story to tell and things they want you to do, despite the fact that you may have five different storylines running at once everything is held together well, although with such a large cast of characters it can occasionally become confusing if your bad at keeping track of peoples names, much like I am. A new feature brought to GTA 4 that brings the main quest lines to a new level is that you can now make decisions on the lives of some of the main characters. These decisions offer minor ethical dilemmas and introduce many shades of grey in the storyline, when you have someone cowering before your gun and you’re deciding if this man will live or die, right and wrong aren’t as clear as they once were.

Missions are now delivered to you a little differently, you can say goodbye to the old GTA pager or the basic cell phone in San Andres, since GTA IV is set near the present day you’ll be staying in contact through your new cell phone and email, fortunately both methods work extremely well. Your cell functions just like one from the real world, you can scroll through the menus even while driving, receive (not send) text messages and generally use it to keep in touch with your friends throughout the game. Your cell is also customizable and you are also able to equip your cell phone with $100 ring tones by using the Internet. Pimping out your cell is just one of the uses for the internet, more importantly is the new feature of checking email, you’ll receive your usual bucket of spam as well as messages from game characters and can reply with a preset positive or negative response, you can later also use the email system to accept certain side missions for some extra dollar. The actually web surfing behaves a lot like a real browser, you can buy ring tones like I mentioned earlier but also arrange dates or simply sit and read some of the crazy website and news available to you.

With such a large selection of characters available you may end up feeling like chucking that cell phone in a lake when you have 7 friends trying to call you up to arrange an evening out, fortunately the available venues are pretty interesting. One of the larger criticisms that GTA has been receiving is the drinking and driving, you can head out to a nightclub with a buddy and get totally trashed, your character will be stumbling and falling around the street, to get home you can stumble into a car and attempt to drive home avoiding the inevitable attention you’ll get from the police. Drinking is a lot of fun in the game, but definitely doesn’t glamorize drinking and driving, instead it serves as a rather exaggerated deterrent since everything becomes so tough to control and encourages you to hail a taxi. The highlight of the events is the comedy clubs and shows, you’ll be watching recorded acts from both Katt Williams and Ricky Gervais, both guys have several acts and some material is recorded especially for the game. It’s a real pity that none of these events are available in multiplayer modes, as getting drunk with 16 friends and trying to drive to a comedy club would be a total blast, the real shame is that the minigames aren’t available in multiplayer either. The minigames include pool, darts and bowling, these are a fair deal of fun when playing a computer, the occasional glitch in the AI reminds you of how much fun it would be to do this as a group.

Even without the Minigames the Multiplayer is a blast, having 16 players spread across the entire city is an incredible achievement, plus you have a whole slew of game mode to try. You can enjoy competing to complete missions the fastest or get involved in a good ol’ fashioned game of cops and robbers, the game modes are well varied and I’m sure they will be people online to join up with for a long time to come. Of course instead of heading out to complete objective and win a multiplayer match you can also jump into a free roam game and just enjoy the open world of GTA with a group of friends, this just limits you to your imagination and will likely end up as free-for-all death match even though it started off as just a tour around the city in the helicopter, because the city looks, well, amazing.

Liberty City is based Around New York, you’ll start in Brooklyn (Brooker) and just as in the other games you’ll eventually get access to the other islands, the most interesting of which has to be Manhattan (Algonquin). You’ll be driving around great landmarks like Central Park (Middle park) and Times Square (Star junction). All the areas all feel very real especially when you see all the yellow cabs filling up the downtown districts or all of the different people walking around in the park during the day, the only thing that looks better than seeing all this going on during the day is viewing the skyline at night. The draw distance scales extremely well and you can see huge amounts of the city at once giving you a jaw dropping experience.

Although the total map area isn’t as large as San Andreas, the densely packed city can become a chore to navigate around when you find yourself repeatedly having to have to cross bridges into different districts, well say hello to the taxi to lift that burden from your already heavy shoulders. You can hail any empty taxi with a quick click of the right button, should the taxi be occupied no problem just swing the door open and drag the unwitting passenger to the street and climb in. These taxis allow you to instant travel to any road around the map for a negligible fee, giving you the freedom to drive if you choose or get back to that mission you just screwed up without the 5-minute drive. Travel is aided even further with the almost total lack of load times, although the taxi drivers with occasionally glitch and end up causing the police to chase you, roll the car or just start ramming a wall over and over, these events aren’t all that frequent and don’t warrant a black mark on this well thought out system. If you do choose to drive then you’ll be glad that the cars are fitted with a GPS system to help you work out where to head to get across those bridges. The GPS idea is a leaf from the Saints Row book, but the Saints owe the GTA series a few points, so it’s hard to hold a grudge.

All of the major points for the game are well documented, but the little things are just as important, such as the voices of Karl Lagerfeld, Iggy Pop, and Lazlow Jones on the radio all giving great performances along with all the usual other radio shows. The attention to detail on the car damage is also noteworthy, you’ll see tiny dents and scuffs appear on the cars as you make minor collisions, try to fire out of a car window or break into a locked car and Niko will smash the window through using his gun, or take a shot to the wheel your car and watch as air will slowly leak out, tires may also catch fire if things are going really badly. My final point worth mentioning isn’t really that minor and involves the new cover and lock-on system; this has transformed the clumsy previous gunplay into something far more enjoyable and tactical. You can now drive towards a group of targets, slide the car to the side, jump out and take cover behind it, begin blind firing at the targets and then start rolling across the ground towards a nearby dumpster. All of this while can be done while quickly switching between targets and taking well aimed shots, although headshots are perhaps easier than perhaps they should be.

It’s hard to avoid the tsunami of GTA news around the release of a new game, be it in magazines, in the paper or on the telly and it would seem to be impossible for any game to live up this kind of hype but somehow GTA IV still manages to exceed even the most lofty of expectations with an average completion time of around 30 hours and plenty left to do afterwards, this ones a keeper and scores an easy 5 hookers out of 5.

Missing
• No fitness levels
• No turf wars
• No pedal bikes
• No planes
• No car mods
• No taxi missions, ambulance missions, pimping.

Bad
• Only 3 Clothes shops
• Occasional faulty AI for taxi drivers and minigames
• No online minigames
• Graphical glitches sometimes when entering new area
• A button overused, sometimes when running by tapping A quickly you’ll suddenly skip a cut scene

Good
• Beautiful city, especially at night
• Free roam multiplayer, two people on a bike or in a chopper
• Involved story mode with multiple choice
• Nice extra touches
• Cover system works great
• Minimal load times
• Taxi system saves a lot of aimless driving
• Comedians and radio are great
• So many different faces and voices with great acting
• Niko is a great star

I just spent some time making a banner for Suicidal_KO, I thought I’d share it with you all

Click for biggerness

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Explorers of Darkness/Time represent the latest incarnations of the fifteen year old mystery dungeon series, which has once again been given the Pokemon treatment and offers a few enhancements over last year’s Blue/Red rescue team games. Players of the previous games will see a lot of the same core gameplay here and can safely skip these next two paragraphs, for the rest of you, you’ll find that a lot happens when you mix two games in a bucket and stir, so please read on.

The Mystery dungeon series is based around the original ‘Rogue’ in which you simply went down the floors of a dungeon and battle monsters in search of treasure, you’ve likely heard of ‘Roguelikes’, a title given to these spinoff games that enhance on the original idea in so-many ways but stay true to the core elements. One of the biggest characteristics of Rogue is the difficulty, and although not as brutal as traditional Roguelikes, you’ll be failing a lot while trying to play through Darkness/Time and then you’ll be failing some more. Since the dungeons you enter are generated at random each time you visit, you can’t take advantage of prior knowledge to reach the end and sometimes the layouts will seem just darn right unfair when you encounter another of the Rouge features, the ‘Monster House’. Throughout most of the game it’ll be just you and a partner, and you’ll likely be facing just one or two enemies at a time, but the random ‘Monster House’ will throw a large amount of monsters in the room with you, giving you little chance of survival, such is the burden of the dungeoneer. If you believe you can get through the difficulty you’ll find that the game behind it all has a lot to offer, outside of the dungeons you have a storyline, people to talk to, items to buy and a lot of things that make RPGs what they are. Your millage on the series greatly hinges on your love for both Pokemon and/or Roguelikes, but the most interesting moments can be seeing how your Pokemon behave in these new situations and environments.

Most of the core Pokemon rules are here, you’ll level up with experiences, eventually get the ability to evolve, learn new moves with your levels (up to 4 as usual), hold items, use PP, TMs and try to build a selection of all available Pokemon. All these rules are merged so well with the Rogue rules, it’s like they were meant to be together, but just as the Pokemon rules are unfamiliar to a Rogue fan, some of the additional rules here may take a little getting used to for the Pokemen and Pokegirls. A few of the new things you’ll find are; Having to keep your belly full on long dungeon trips, only four Pokemon in a team at once, throwing items and a whole lot else, such as the crazy shops in the middle of dangerous dungeons. You’ll also find tweaks to the way that your moves behave, some weaker moves have a lot more punch in the right situations and can really turn the tide however having a powerful move that you can use only 5 times may not always be the best choice when faced with 20 floors of danger. These moves can also be ‘linked’ allowing you to use two moves in a single turn, giving you a quick one, two punch effect such as lowering your attackers defense before delivering a quick slap to the face.

The new features in Darkness/Time won’t turn any heads and it definitely won’t win over any new fans, however the changes do improve over the previous games and are well worth mentioning. As you’d expect you now have access to the full roster of Pokemon, that’s a staggering 490 for those of you keeping score, up from the 386 from the last adventure. All should be obtainable if you have access to the alternate game (time - darkness) but before you ask, no you cannot in any way transfer these across to Diamond/Pearl to boost your legendary collection, sorry! Of course you’ll have a new story to follow and dungeons to visit, but I’ll go into that a little more later. The last major feature is wi-fi support, which isn’t all that surprising since many DS games have taken this routes recently (Diamond/Pearl included), the most surprising part of this is the email support, yes email. Just like the previous games, when you inevitably fall in a dungeon you can request help from another player, this was achieved before by posting a lengthy code up on a forum and hoping someone would rescue you, now you can simply post it out through wi-fi for the world to see or send it to friends (using friend codes) at which point your request will trigger an email to be sent to their address. What this means is you could register your Wii number and be alerted with a blue light, or my personal favorite is to have it sent to a cell phone where you’ll receive your friend’s urgent plea for help while you’re doing totally mundane day to day life, it’s all about synergy.

One thing I wasn’t expecting to stand out was the storyline, Pokemon games have always featured a story that was purely functional and never anything that was stand-out memorable. The biggest surprise here was that the storyline ended up having a lot more going on than I first gave it credit for, it starts off very much like the previous games but ends up with a few surprises and a great ending, it surely won’t win any awards, however it’ll have you fighting through the dungeons to see what would happen next. The characters you meet are varied and all the townsfolk will be talking about what’s going on with dialog changing often, the most interesting character you’ll meet is your guildmaster Wigglytuff. This Pokemon must of evolved with a bad moonstone and you’ll be constantly wondering if his random singing and shouting of “Yoom-Ta!” is just a facade and if there’s actually a mastermind behind those glazed eyes, either way the sheer insanity of this Pink balloon puts him in the same line as Minsc and HK47 in my book.

Explorers of Time/Darkness isn’t without faults, many non-persistent gamers will undoubtedly get frustrated with the challenging difficulty, people who are easily disturbed by completely unfair odds may quickly find themselves dropping the game early before finishing. Another minor shortcoming is the menu system, epically related to the wi-fi which isn’t very user friendly and streamlined, options aren’t in obvious places and you may find yourself repeatedly disconnecting and re-connecting from wi-fi in order to get a few simple tasks done. That said, the wi-fi does work, but having the options integrated into the actual gameplay rather than in a bunch of menus could of been a better route to take. It’s also surprising not to see any kind of Pokedex included, although this does make sense since you aren’t a trainer who has been given the task of cataloging every Pokemon, but it does make life hard if you are trying to add all the Pokemon to your team.

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Explorers of Time/Darkness isn’t for everyone, in fact it isn’t for most people, it focuses on it’s audience and doesn’t add much to last years adventure. Fans of this genre will find there’s a lot of gaming to be had here with 20 chapters that will take a long time to get through, followed by several extra missions that’ll keep you playing after the main game is completed and take your patience to a new level. With so many hours of gameplay and plenty to do, I give Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Explorers of Time/Darknes 4 flaming monkey heads out of 5.

So after 11 hours I’m finally done with DMC4 on normal, it’s definitely more palatable than the previous outings that were as tough as nails. It was a fun playthrough as a rental, but I don’t have the patience for playing through on a tougher level, after already having to do each level twice and fight each boss about 3 times just to complete it once, it gets a little old. I was a little disappointed about only getting 80 achievements for completing the game, I feel a little shafted but decides replaying some of the totally over the top cut scenes, it’s time to set this baby to rest.

I’m also still working my way through mystery dungeon, I’m on chapter 19 after many, many hours of play and it is seeming like I may have just 1 chapter left, it’s a really fun game and I hope to have a review up by the end of the weekend as soon as I’ve completed the main quest, that’ll clear out my games to play list just in time for GTA4 on Monday night! I plan on hitting up a midnight release for my collectors edition and then taking a couple of days off work to see if I can get through the game and throw out a early review, I’m pretty stoked that it’s coming out so soon, I’ve not looked forward to a game like this in a while.

Just wanted to let you all know what I’ve been up to, hope you all have a killer weekend.

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Just a note to say I just picked up Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Explorers of Darkness. Before I start it up I thought I’d show you my Pokemans

So I’m still working through my Pokemon collection, so far I’m at 405 out of 490, nearly there but man, it’s taking a good long time! Doesn’t look like the Pokemon feaver will be leaving any time soon since the two new Mystery Dungeon games’ll be coming out tonight, that’ll be a lot of fun and keep me going until the GTA release.

Anyway, the message I have here is that those of you with Diamond and Peal need to head down to Toys’r'us on May 31st or June 1st to pick up a Daraki, details should be posted on Pokemon.com sometime closer to the event. Also should any of you want to help out with my crazy Pokemon quest, I have my current collection list available on GOOGLE DOCS

That image pretty much sums it up, I got into a bit of a knock on my way into work this morning, not too much harm done but it was pretty jarring and I’m on some Naproxen tablets.

I’m thinking of ending my DOTD segment at the end of May and replacing it with perhaps a daily(?) entry of a gaming news story, much like the story today of the email from Majesco to Alex Nevarro.

This had to of come from a disgruntled developer, no way this could of got past a PR check.

It’s sad when your work gets summed up on a 1-10 scale and you don’t like the result, but to the people that complain about their work not being seen as good enough “If you can’t stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen”

Max creds to Joystiq for the story