Bully: Scholarship Edition was released for the Wii on March 7, and with that noted, is this version better than the original? Here’s what Rockstar Games changed about this edition:

• Better graphics. They’ve tweaked here and there to make it passable (at least more improved than the original PS2 version), and you’ll notice a slight difference. Just not a lot. It’s still a bit glitchy in some areas, but it’s not distracting.
• Controls. They’ve adapted the controls for the Wii, and it’s actually better than expected. Wiggle the Wii remote to fight against bullies. It just seems to make more sense, and it’s a helluva lot more engaging than a plain PS2 control.
• Multiplayer mode. You know you’re excited. Instead of playing it solo, play with a friend and compete against each other.

New missions and items. Of course this had to be added (and frankly, if it wasn’t, it wouldn’t be worth anyone’s time). You’ve got 8 new missions to play with unlockable items, mostly clothes. It’s still worth the play through, and you’re going to have more to explore.

There are very little gripes about this upgrade, and they’ve really tweaked Bully in the right way. Some mini-games are missing — which isn’t such a big deal, because they weren’t important mini-games to begin with — and the environment still feels too closed. For something that’s similar to Grand Theft Auto, it’s missing that freedom of exploration. However, you will have a lot more to explore, not in terms of space but in quantity, and you’ll barely remember that detail once you get into it (hello nostalgia!). Bully is definitely something to check out, even if you already own the original version. If you are not thinking of buying it, rent it out. It’s worth a good play or two.

So after 7 long years of waiting for a “three-quel”, Nintendo’s finally giving us another Super Smash Brothers installment, exclusively for the Wii. Super Smash Brothers Brawl’s had time to brew and cultivate into a Wii-exclusive beat-em-up game, and since the last installment — for people out of the loop, that’s Super Smash Brothers Melee — Nintendo’s worked on making the third installment better than the rest. From the looks of it, SSBB’s going to be the biggest thing to hit the Wii — behind Mario Kart Wii, of course.This is what’s different about SSBB:

• New characters. Along with Mario, Yoshi, and Link, SSBB introduces some new characters, including Princess Zelda (who, by the way, can transform into Sheik — oh yeah!), Pokemon Trainer, and more notably Snake. Yes, that Snake. Who knows how Metal Gear Solid relates with the whole kill-in-fluffy-safe-ways, since Snake isn’t exactly kid-friendly, but he’s in there, and he’s actually a very interesting character.
• A new addition called Adventure Mode. This was in previous installments to an extent, but nothing like this. The plotline is more involved, where you play out character storylines while fighting against evil Nobody-like creatures called the Subspace army, and depending on how well you do, you win trophies.
• Online capabilities. You’ll have the ability to play with other friends online, and that should open up some interesting possibilities.
  
  
• Classic games. Besides winning trophies, you can win masterpieces, which enable players to play classic games such as the original Super Mario Brothers and Star Fox. Boosting included.

There isn’t much information yet — SSBB was released the 9th of this month — so within the month more developments (or problems, whatever develops) will come forth. SSBB is going to be one of this Spring’s top sellers for the Wii, and possibly the best game of the year for the Wii. It’s only March too! Wii’s definitely going to be on top this year, something that can’t be said about other platforms. You know who you are.

Overall: 9/10 Sound: 9.5/10 Visuals: 8/10 Gameplay: 9/10 Story: N/A

Reviewed: Guitar Hero III

Are you ready to rock? I saiiiid, are you READY TO ROCK?

Sorry, I’ve always wanted to be able to scream that blindly at a crowd of people and not have things thrown at me as a result. With my purchase of Guitar Hero III, that seems to be the case. Now, I want to take a moment to express that I’ve never played Guitar Hero I or Guitar Hero II, so I can’t make any comparisons between the three games. So, this review comes from me playing the game with absolutely no experience with the series at all.

Radical.

After spending weeks trying to get my hands on one (without having to resort to buying it from some lowlife scalper) my girlfriend finally found six copies of Guitar Hero III, for the Wii (of course), in stock at a local video games store. I rushed down to the store and, after braving a massive boxing week sale line, got two copies (for two guitars, duh).

Oh how sweet it is.

Initial Impressions and Musings

The whole “guitar hero” thing never really appealed to me when the first two games were released. They looked like fun games, but I wasn’t a fan of DDR (Dance-Dance-Revolution) and I figured that Guitar Hero followed in DDR’s footsteps. Apparently I had decided that strumming on a fake plastic guitar was the same as hopping around on a plastic mat on the floor. Anyway, with the release of the third Guitar Hero I finally decided to bite the bullet and buy the game.

Once I got it home and got it all set up I noticed a few things.

1. The guitar is different from all of the other guitars. For the Wii you actually place the Wiimote inside of the guitar, meaning that you don’t have to buy any batteries or anything like that. Since I have a rechargeable battery pack (read my review of the “Phantiq Wiimote Rechargable Battery Pack“) I really liked this design choice. No more batteries to buy once you’ve got Guitar Hero III- just plug in your Wiimote and enjoy.
2. This game kicks ass. It’s bloody amazing, and I am kicking myself for not getting into it earlier.

Right from the get-go you can get into a single-player career mode, or play multiplayer with a friend (either cooperative career mode or “battle mode”, where two players duel the same song and launch guitar-themed attacks at each other). Since I had two guitars, and my girlfriend lives with me, we decided to jam together in cooperative career mode.

As you play along and strum the notes your virtual guitarist (a character that you can pick to be in-game) will play on the screen. If you stop strumming (or start making mistakes) the guitar portion of the song stops or makes a “twang” sound, while the background music and drums continue to roll on.

Now, I can’t actually write this review without saying (at least once) that your wrists will get sore for the first little while that you play it. But, after the eighth or ninth hour your wrists kind of go numb and then it’s no longer an issue.

Career Mode: Single Player and Cooperative

Both my girlfriend and decided to play on the “easy” setting, and after choosing our characters and their respective outfits, we got to playing. The first song, “Slow Ride”, was just that- a slow, easy song that introduces the basics of Guitar Hero to anyone who’s never played it before. After six or seven attempts we finally beat it and moved on to the next song.

What’s really cool about the Wii version of this game is that every time you mess up you hear a “twang” come from the Wiimote, making the experience that much more realistic.

We continued to play and eventually we beat 3 of the 4 starting songs, allowing us to play an “Encore”. We did, we rocked it, and we took a break for a whole (to ice our wrists and to celebrate or awesomeness as rock stars). We continued down this path, only using the first three (or five) fret buttons as that’s all we can use on easy. Eventually we rocked so hard that it was time to graduate to medium- this is where it begins to get difficult.

Easy is just that- easy. The songs are slower-paced, there’s only three buttons to worry about, and generally there are no combo’s or key-combinations that are hard to deal with. But on medium the difference is really night and day. That fourth button, combined with a faster tempo and harder key-combinations, really ups the ante in a good way. For someone who wants to feel like an actual guitarist, jamming along and medium or hard is perfect- you get a good tempo, plenty of keys to hit, and a satisfaction of knowing that you really do rock after nailing down the awesome guitar solo in “One” by Metallica.

Single player is even more fun than cooperative career play, as you get to “battle” with Tom Morello (from Rage Against the Machine) and Slash (from Guns’n'Roses), and at the end you unlock a song or two. It’s a great experience no matter what difficulty you set it at, though I recommend at least medium for maximum rockage.

Two Player “Battle Mode”

At first I had mixed feelings about this. The premise seems alright- you duel over a song, earning power-ups that you can unleash upon your opponent and vise versa, but I never really enjoyed it as much as I did the cooperative career mode. Perhaps it’s just me, but I’m much happier “jamming” with a friend of mine than trying to ruin their whammy bar or cut one of their guitar strings.

But, that being said, for those that enjoy competition this is the perfect way to truly show who the true guitar hero is.

Replayability and the “Fun Factor”

I love this game. I love the fact that I can jam to over 60 songs (42 in the standard track list + what you unlock in career mode + what you can “buy” with the money you earn while you play), and the track list has a little something for everyone- Red Hot Chili Peppers, Rolling Stones, Santana, Slayer, Metallica, Rise Against, and a lot more.

Once you’ve beat this game on easy, move on to medium. Once you’re done with that, move on up all the way to expert. You’ll constantly be learning and expanding your song-list, and once you get really good you can even try to crank out perfect scores and wicked “star power” combinations. Besides, what’s more fun than jamming with a friend on cooperative career mode or duking it out head-to-head on the “battle” mode?

This game has a little something for everyone, so if you can manage to find yourself a copy I recommend buying it, playing it, and rocking right the heck out!  

Oh, just make sure that you buy some ice packs for your wrists.

Overall: 9/10 - This game is amazing in every way.  If you have never played Guitar Hero before you will love this game.

Sound: 9.5/10 - Jamming to Santana’s “Black Magic Woman” is as good as it gets.

Visuals: 8/10 - The visuals are nothing really fantastic, but they get the job done.

Gameplay: 9/10 - Must… put… guitar… down… but I CAN’T!

Story: N/A - this game isn’t about the story, it’s about the guitar.

Overall: 5/10 Sound: 7/10 Visuals: 7/10 Gameplay: 5/10 Story: 3/10

Reviewed: Alien Syndrome

I won’t lie- the Wii was lacking some good multiplayer games for a while. The single player arena was handled well right from the get go (games like Red Steel and Super Paper Mario), but when it came to playing with your buddies your best bet was always to load up Wii Sports and have at ‘er. Unfortunately, you can only play the same 9 holes of Wii Golf for so long until you’re a bloody expert and completely unbeatable.

Enter Alien Syndrome. This game has been out for a long time, but after a friend of mine gave me a copy for my birthday I decided that it was time to get my game on. Actually, we got our game on, but that’s beside the point. As it turns out, my friend (who gave me the game) wouldn’t be playing it for very long. Read on.

Also, I should mention that my digital camera kind of sucks so I posted screen shots of the game that have been taken from www.wiisworld.com- hit them up as they have a TON of great Wii resources. The screen shots are at the bottom of this review.

The Concept and Story of Alien Syndrome

The concept of the game is actually pretty decent if you’re a fan of 3/4 view shooters (as I am). You control a character on-screen with a “birds eye view” of the arena. Basically you run around and kill things, friends optional. The storyline is pretty vague- you’re some army chick (or something) and you’re on a ship that’s been infested with aliens. Your mission is to go around, collect some things, get to some areas, and kill a bunch of aliens.

Seriously, I’m not even joking. But, with this kind of game, the story is kind of irrelevant as it’s the actual gameplay that matters. The premise is very solid, and I had high hopes for this game as a fun shooter for when my buddy and I wanted to roast some aliens (and the flamethrower in the game made that very easy to accomplish).

One really unique feature is this robot that follows you around. It essentially allows you to make weapons/ammo from the items that you pick up along the way, and as your characters level up (there’s a slight amount of RPG element in the game) you’ll be able to use better weapons. Sounds pretty solid, so let’s get to playing.

Gameplay - The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

At first you’re playing a kind of training mission (be it by yourself or with the aid of a friend), and once you’re used to the controls of Alien Syndrome (which utilize both the Wiimote and the Nunchuck) you’ll be blasting away alien hordes in no time. Everything appears pretty solid- movement is easy, firing is easy, weapons collection is easy, picking up keys is easy… everything is pretty easy to do.

But, whatever you do, do not hold the nunchuck in any way other than vertical. I couldn’t figure out why the screen kept spinning, and it literally took me 15 minutes of getting ticked off before I realized it was because I had the nunchuck held horizontal. Apparantly that controls the camera, and once I had it figured out I was able to keep the screen steady and actually see what the heck I was doing.

The first 30 minutes or so of the game is actually pretty interesting. Right at the beginning of the game you get to pick your character’s class (which determines things like health, what weapons you can use, etc.). I chose the “sniper” class and my buddy chose the “tank” class. I got a laser rifle, and he got a stick with a sharp thing on both ends. HA!

However, once we beat the first mini-boss we realized it was all the same thing. Run over here, kill these guys. Right over there, kill those guys. Pick up this key thingie, run back over here, kill some more people. With enemies randomly respawning all of the time you are never really sure if you’ve made progress or not, but it’s nearly impossible to run out of ammo since your robot can make you new weapons and and ammo on request. This game could literally go on forever.

What Drives me NUTS about Alien Syndrome

The entire time I played this game I kept wondering if something interesting was going to happen. Every now and then some guy chimes in over the radio about one of your objectives, and once you get your head around the mediocre voice acting you figure out that you need to go to some location within the ship to do something… in reality, as soon as you get to the location you’re treated to a pathetic in-game cutscene and then it’s more of the same.

That’s what drives me nuts. Why have a story if you aren’t actually going to do anything with it? This game would be 10 times better if it was simply kill enemies, upgrade your guns, blow some stuff up, and move on from place to place. Instead of trying to incorporate a weak storyline, focus on those other elements and let me blow stuff away. If you MUST have a story, at least flesh it out so that I’m half-interested in what I’m doing.

Conclusion

The game has a solid base, and if you can live with all of the little annoyance and major shortcomings you may actually enjoy it. The fact that you can upgrade your characters and allow them to use new and kickass weapons is cool, and playing with a friend is always a good time if you’ve had a few beers. The problem is that no one part of this game has any polish, and as a result the entire game feels rushed and weak.

Maybe one day I’ll pick it up and beat it (when I have nothing else to do), but I don’t see that happening for a long time. If you’re looking for a fun game to play either solo or with a friend, move on. This game is more irritating than anything else, especially when that stupid camera starts spinning because you’re holding the nunchuck 1 degree off-center.

Overall: 5/10 - The game is decent, but it’s not in the top 10. Heck, it’s not even in my top 50. Unless you really want to blow some aliens away I’d look elsewhere.

Sound: 7/10 - While nothing is really fantastic, the sound is there when it needs to be and the explosions from the grenade launcher have a nice “BOOM” to them.

Visuals: 7/10 - There are definitely nicer looking games on the Wii, but by no means is it an eyesore. The colors are rich, the aliens look kinda cool, and the environments aren’t lacking either. Alien Syndrome does fairly well in this aspect.

Gameplay: 5/10 - The first little while is fun, but after that it’s the same thing over and over again. Some variation would have been awesome, though I will admit that it’s kind of cool to have my robot make me a laser rifle or grenade launcher whenever I want it to.

Story: 3/10 - Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. Story, WHAT STORY?

Screen Shots

These are taken from www.wiisworld.com, as my digital camera sucks and I haven’t quite figured out how to take good screen shots yet.