Random Game Challenge!!!

[PupinDaTurd]

Mike Tyson Boxing has a neat idea. You have stat growth, and week by week you pick training options to raise various stats such as Strength, Speed, Balance, Endurance, and so on. You also choose how hard to go in on the training, and how much food you intake. It seems like it'd be deep and interesting but-
As soon as you step in the ugly, fake 3-d that the GBA loved to do, ring it's awful. There's only two punches, predictably. No body blows or hooks or jab control. There's a left and right duck and a block I think. You have a top down view and when you circle it's strafing slowly. There's also some kind of goofy charge punch mechanic where your hand glows a second. The CPU just does this over and over while ducking.
I did a couple months of the training while waiting for my far off scheduled fight against the #19 our of 20 opponents (I'm at 20), fought him and lost, then did an exhibition fight and lost again and decided that was enough.
This game bites. Do not recommend.

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Game 14/52: Jet Li - Rise to Honor

This game slaps though. Slaps the Analog stick apparently. That's what the tutorial screenshot says lol
"Slap the Right Analog Stick to Attack"! Seems pretty gimmicky but I'm a big fan of Hong Kong Action so hopefully this is like a precursor to Sleeping Dogs, which I really enjoyed check that out if you haven't.
Be back next week to hear all about it. I kinda want to beat this one too. Bet it's not that long.

 

[PupinDaTurd]

I did not beat Jet Li - Rise to Honor for the PS2.
The reason for that is, although the game has a unique premise in its controls and several appealing factors to the gameplay which I'll go over shortly if you care to read on, it gets very boring and numbingly repetitive.

I recommend playing this game for about two hours, beating a couple of bosses and seeing some of the extra action scenes like the shootout sections and then quitting when it begins to get boring because it never changes up after that.

The combat is controlled by tapping SLAPPING the Right Stick in a direction, and using the R1 button for context sensitive commands such as grabbing, jumping, picking up weapons, dodging, et all. This is cool at first and there's many times where your combo ends just in time to finish a guy off and get a slo-mo look at the mo-capped Jet Li doing a jumping kick to their face or something. It's neat. Also the environments are quite interactive with many things breaking and glass cracking and walls shattering when you knock enemies into them. It manages to capture that excitement from Hong Kong Martial Arts, where everything is a weapon and bodies are going everywhich way over and through obstacles.

Four, six, eight or more hours later though and the thrill has worn off. There are no power-ups, weapons are scarce and not even that useful due to their slow speed and lack of adaptability, you never learn new moves or grow in strength or health. Instead HP is recovered when you go to the next fight area basically so you only have to survive the waves in the room and boy do they love their waves.
A typical scene in this game is like, running across a fallen pipe that connects two boats right? When you get to the open area on the boat four guys are there. Two fast guys and two fat guys. You beat them and then four more dudes jump down, two fat guys and two guys with a weapon, you beat them and four more guys jump down, two fat guys with weapons and two special fast guys, you beat them then move on to the next traversal segment where you fight a few guys and then get to the docks where six guys are waiting and two are on motorcycles you have to Counter to knock them off.

There's also forced stealth segments which are not a welcome reprieve from the tedium. They just slow you down and there's no point to escape to, it's stealth takedown so you have to creep up to whatever number of guys the game wants and take them out before the security guard on the stairs comes down so you can kill him and go up.

Back on the positives I think this game actually looks really nice. It upscales really well too. I was impressed several times with how detailed the backgrounds and distant areas were. There's a point where you're climbing up some tower scaffolding and in the distance below you can see the characters in the next cutscene standing/fighting where they're going to be. Honestly of them all Jet Li himself kinda looks the worst in terms of texturing and expressions. Plus his hands are always in the same pose so when he does a badass Kung-Fu flourish it just looks like stupid stiff flailing.
The music I can't remember at all but I did love that the voices for the Hong Kong sections of the game are default in Cantonese. Really helps the movie feel.

Anyways, yeah, just play a couple hours at most and then take my word for it that you're not missing anything else.

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Game 15/52: SDザ・グレイトバトル 新たなる挑戦
(SD the Great Battle - Aratanaru Chousen)

Why this game's title was half translated into English but used Hepburn Romanization instead of going all the way and calling it SD The Great Battle - New Challenge I don't know. Doesn't matter I guess.
This is one of those Bandai, I mean Banpresto, action games about Gundam/Ultraman/Kamen Rider where you run around and beat cute enemies and swap between characters you rescue. I've played one before but not this one I think. Not that they could be very different except for the characters available at the time.
I'm pretty familiar with Gundam but barely familiar with Kamen Rider (I've only seen some of the Original Series) and not at all with Ultraman. I've always meant to get more tokusatsu in my diet so here's a time to start.

See ya next week for the battle report!

 

[PupinDaTurd]

Early post today!
I have beaten SD Big Head Battle - The New Challengers. Thank you translators for your hard work.

(btw the letters "SD" in anime/manga stand for "Super Deformed" lol)​

This was fine. I also think it's the one I did play before. I actually don't know if there's even more than one of these but for some reason I assumed so.
Anyways, super simple top down action game. Walk, Jump, Shoot, and Special Bomb.
For a Japanese kid in the 90s this was probably an awesome fanservice game featuring beloved heroes and blasted villains from three very popular franchises.
For American kids it'd be like a game where you play the TMNT and G.I. Joe or something. Pretty cool.
I don't recommend it because it's so simple and short. Unless you're a huge fan of these series there's not much here for you.

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Game 16/52: Puzzle de Harvest Moon

Neat. I'm guessing this is like a Puzzle de Pon or something like that but with what looks like the original SNES Harvest Moon characters. Never heard of this one.

Come on back next week to see how the crops are doing in Puzzle de Harvest Moon for Nintendo DS!

 

[PupinDaTurd]

Puzzle de Harvest Moon is actually a pretty neat idea for a puzzler. You and 3 opponents share a field and you each have a row of actions that you can choose from that change as you use them.
The point is to plant a Seed, Water 2x, Fertilize 2x, then Harvest for points.
Sometimes you have to throw away actions that you don't need to get new ones that you do. Like I had a game where I could barely get seeds. My actions were all water and fert. It sucked.
However, Animals can throw a wrench into the gameplay because they all affect an area with different powers, like the Pooch makes it so you can't harvest or fertilize for some little amount of time wherever you drop him. Put him on your opponents to get ahead.
But also there are Super Waters and Super Fertilizers that affect an area, so you can accidentally be watering and ferting your opponents nearby plants, it's pretty hectic and fun.
There's no Story Mode or Campaign though, only single matches, 2v2, or a Survival Mode.
This is clearly one of those DS games that would have been great to do the Local Share with your buddies between classes.

It's cute and fun. Not good for singleplayer though.

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Game 17/52: Break Out

From one puzzler to another. This definitely looks like one of those games you'd get in a cereal box or for like 5 bucks in a bin. Alright then, I'll be back next week after clobbering some chickens with giant silver marbles!