Sweeter than Cake: The Review for Portal: Still Alive

In this game, you play a woman who, for reasons unexplained, is in Aperture Laboratories as part of an experiment. In this experiment you have to use a portal-firing device to solve increasingly difficult puzzles. The computer, apparently named GLADOS, talks to you in a multitone voice as you go through each puzzle, several times reminding you that there will be cake after the test.

At one point, you might find something a little creepy; a hole where someone or some people sneaked in where "she" can't see you and wrote things on the walls in blood and I'm afraid to know what else. All I'm saying is that maybe you should believe them when they wrote:

The cake is a lie

The cake is a lie

The cake is a lie

The cake is a lie

Overall, the game features great puzzles, and slightly more deadly ones after you discover a not-so-predictable twist. And I guarantee you'll like the song at the end which explains the other half of the title.

Final Rating: 78%

Live by the Creed: The review for Assassin's Creed

This game combined the three main things I am looking for in a video game; Plot, Gameplay and Overall Fun.

The story takes place in 12th century Middle East and somewhere in the near future. The main character, Altair, lost his credibility as an assassin when he botches one of the biggest jobs he took. To get his reputation and his rank back, he has to kill nine important people that are working for both the Christian Crusaders and the Muslims, some betraying the side they work on. The other character, Desmond Miles is Altair's far descendant. His memory is being tapped by a company that claims to be doing this for the greater good.

If you expect to be able to silently kill your targets, you are sadly mistaken. All of your targets will either run or directly fight you. The realism in this game is phenomenal. The villagers in the cities will say something when you start climbing walls, drawing attention of guards. However the realism ends when after the guards stop looking for you , you can walk in front of them and they will barely recognize you. Also, when Altair assassinates a guard in public, the guard raises his arms in the air and has someone covering his mouth when he dies, but no one notices, not even guards standing in a 10 foot range.

The fighting system in the game is very easy to master. You can counter almost any attack a guard makes and , based on how open their attack made them, can either knock them to the ground or kill them. What I liked most was the story-developing conversations Altair has with his targets right after killing them. The game also has a twist that I would guess half of the players will know will happen.

In conclusion, the game's complete realism, almost perfect AI and incredible storyline make this one of the best games in the past five years.

Final Rating: 92%

Towering Success: The Review for Rabbids Go Home

Ubisoft has created the final installment of the Rabbid series. In this game, the rabbids, after causing all of their mayhem decide to go home and also decide that their home is the moon. Their brilliant plan is to simply collect stuff from the nearby city and build a tower reaching all the way to the moon. You play as two rabbids whose job is to collect stuff to bring back to the tower.

This is one of the first Wii-exclusive games to have real voice actors playing the inhabitants of the city. You could even scare the clothes off of the people, but it was kept tasteful. The fumigators, the main enemies of the game, are harder to chase rather than fight. However, your main enemy is falling off the edge, because you instantly lose all of your health. What's frustrating is that the checkpoints you go back to might be past a point of no return, where there is stuff, but you can't go back to get it.

What challenges you is the Rabbid in the Wii remote, where the more stuff you get from courses, the more you can customize the rabbid. However, for the overall story, much less effort could have been put to build the tower.

In conclusion, this game is incredibly creative, has beautifully made environments, and great acting done on the people. While there were no major battles nor real incentive to get a perfect score, its challenging levels and lovable characters made this a great game to play and watch.

Final Score: 82%

K.O. Punch: The Review for Punch-Out!!

Honestly, I wasn't going to try this game. But the trailer made it look much more interesting.

A remake of the original 1984 classic, Punch-Out!! is a Wii adapted boxing game where you play Little Mac, the true underdog in this entire game. But, you play no one else. What I liked especially was the various controls, based on how you want to play it. What this game proved was that there is a fine line between discriminatory and just plain racist. Each opponent is a stereotype of the people from the country that they're from. For example, Glass Joe (a.k.a. the weakest opponent in the game), is french. If this doesn't say the french are weaklings, I don't know what does.

While the other boxers are obviously stronger than Little Mac, that's what makes it challenging, without being impossible. But there were some points where I was pulling my hair out wondering how Glass Joe got so much tougher just by wearing a helmet.

The developers of this game, Next Level Games, also made Mario Strikers Charged. I hope they keep making gems like these two games.

Limited selection of players, stereotypical characters and not much of a story. What does it make? One of the better fighting games for the Wii and a great remake of an old classic.

Final Rating: 87%

Off to The Races: The Review for Mario Kart DS

If you own this new magic box called a TV, you've probably seen an ad for the DSi and Mario Kart DS. Apparantly, there are no new games that are worthy of being advertised with the latest system. If compared by graphics, the DS/DSi is at the bottom of the list. But if compared by sales, the DS/DSi reigns supreme over any other system. Why is that? Because the games are playable by everyone. The commercial shows Mom, Dad and Grandpa playing, with the kid being the only one not playing Mario Kart DS.

The Mario Kart franchise has been around since the freaking NES, and it's still popular. This game brings racing to a new level. The dangerous, slow-paced not-at-all-realistic level. The only variations this game could have are the courses and the characters. While the only new character to the game series is R.O.B., the courses are even greater. However, knowing the players want more, the game brings back courses from Mario Kart games since the first.

Finally, this game, although not bringing more than new courses (required for every new Mario Kart), it still makes racing fun. It's not the most graphically detailed, or the most serious, or the most customizable racing game, but it is the most fun.

Final Rating: 73%

Fun with Physics: The Review for Boom Blox: Bash Party

EA, and some director, created a game called Boom Blox; a game that used physics and turned it into a game where you performed various tasks by destroying oddly shaped structures and gained points by doing so.

The sequel, Boom Blox: Bash Party is a game that uses physics and turns it into a game where you perform various tasks by destroying oddly shaped structures and gained points by doing so.

You see the similarity.

Although the game has the same reasoning, the sequel is bigger and better. The game actually makes you work for getting the most points. There are more structures, more themes, more challenges and more types of blocks. The best feature is that, just like Spore, you can download structures made by other players and use them in the game. The only problem is that the only way this game can be considered a sequel is if they put more of everything into the game, and adding a couple of new things.

Overall, this game was fun, and the variation of levels made the game fun until the very end. But, I doubt that another sequel would not have much more to give short of just adding more and more of everything.

Final Rating: 83%

MySims: The Worst Creation of Entertainment Arts

I myself am a fan of The Sims series. The ability to make the life you wish you had was the best idea EA could possibly have. However, they tried making it more kid-friendly by putting the characters as cute anime-esque characters in MySims and MySims Kingdom. Its simplicity was its downfall.

In both games, you played the hero (naturally) who had to help different types of people. And by "different", I mean classified by six different personality types and looks. Both games had you do what any K-3 teacher tells you to do, "be creative". The games required you to build random objects for people again, again and again. The real Sims didn't do that to us. The real Sims let us choose our virtual destiny, outside of being just a carpenter.

Its redeeming qualities were its great diversity of the people you could actually invite to your town in the first game, and the dozen different places you could go to in the second game. But it still wasn't enough to save it.

Overall, if you were a fan of The original Sims, don't buy these games. Odds are that if you did like The Sims, you won't like this dumbed down version, where there is an ending, but they still expect you to keep playing. However, if you are a person who enjoys showing their creative side when creating furniture and buildings, then I still wouldn't recommend this, because they expect you to be kind of specific when building anything.

Final Rating: 23%

Also, avoid any of the other MySims Games, like MySims Racing or MySims Party.

As if Real Life Wasn't Boring Enough Already: The Review of Animal Crossing

There was and is a series of Nintendo games where you live an everyday life, but not in the bustling ever-changing city.
No, you live in a slightly developed forest. The game is known as Animal Crossing.
You start off in a run-down house, sold to you by the market owner.
You slowly earn enough money to pay off the price of the house, which leads to a renovation, which costs nearly ten times the cost the house.

What I didn't like about this game was the fact that, just like real life, you have to be there nearly every day, which led to redundancy. People play video games to go to a world that could never be reached in real life, not for the "Back to Basics" package at a camp. This was also a game you could never really lose, except by not showing up. However, this game's simplicity makes you kind of excited when you catch a rare fish, or get a piece of furniture in return for doing a favor for one of your neighbors.

Thankfully, they learned their lessons in the sequels.
In AC: Wild World, there was a gate, where you could actually visit other towns. You could make designs that could redesign your entire town.
In AC: City Folk, you could take the bus, which looks a lot like a school bus, to the city, which gave you a lot more options other than fishing or bug collecting.
You could auction items to other users, buy junk in the alley (furniture, not drugs), or even listen to a comedian to give your character emotions other than "Happy".

In conclusion, these games take you into a world of the simple life, giving you an opportunity to live in a small town, be self-employed, and befriend your neighbors. The characters are diverse, the styles for your home are nearly endless, and it helps you enjoy the little things, in contrast to destroying a battle cruiser, or saving the world from the Germans.

Final Rating: 77%