I remember when I first got Hero. Talk about addiction. Every weekend, my apartment became a stage for Hero and sing-song-alonging (Sing Star) parties. It made things difficult as half my friends wanted to rock out, and the other half wanted to put their singing skills to the test.

All I could think was, why don’t they just combine the two games? And how awesome would it be if they had something like “Drum Hero”? Then one day, as if the peeps at Harmonix heard my crazy thoughts, it was announced that the newest music game to be released would be called “Rock Band”.

I’ve always been a fan of the Playstation platform; however, I haven’t yet had the opportunity to upgrade to the newer PS3. This made getting a copy of Rock Band quite difficult. Any time I hit a store; there were piles available for the Xbox 360 and PS3, but nothing for my last-gen console.

Then it happened, one day when I was least expecting it, there it sat atop the other boxes…Rock Band for my PS2. There was a moment’s hesitation, but I quickly made the purchase, and rushed home so that I could enjoy, finally, the game I’ve wanted for so long.

The concept of playing the drums was the most exciting for me. I have horrible coordination where drumming is involved, but I didn’t care. I just wanted to bang on my drums all day long. The drums were quickly assembled, friends were called, and before I knew it, we were about to rock out for the first time as a “band”.

The layout was basically the same as what we’ve seen before in other music games. There were a few changes, but for the most part, graphically, it remained the same. Characters of course looked different, and in my opinion, seemed to match the actual singer of the song you played. For instance, when playing Learn to Fly by the Foo Fighters, your main character very much resembled Dave Grohl.

I soon had to share the drums, and moved to test my skills on the guitar, as the new Rock Band guitar offered a set of “chords” meant specifically for the guitar solo offered in the song. I could actually play an entire piece of the song, without strumming one note. How cool was that?

Not so cool at all. I found the new guitar to be anything but cool. The added “chord” buttons were much smaller in size, making it difficult to hit just one note at a time, causing me to make unnecessary mistakes.

The other annoyance…the actual “strummer” on the guitar. Gone were the ticks you were used to with the previous music games, and instead you were strumming silently. The lack of tick started to make me question whether I was in fact strumming, and again, I was making unnecessary mistakes.

Unlike Rock Band for the PS3 and xBox 360, the PS2 version was made by a third-party company, and many of the perks added in the game for the other consoles, were not included in the PS2 version. This was very disappointing, as I was excited to create my own character, and play a “world tour”.

The music track was impressive, giving you the option to play classics from the time I was born, to newer stuff that I grew up with. The option of having my older guitar used to play was also great. I could hear myself strum, and the mistakes were fixed.

The game very much follows previous music game releases, with the exception of having the option to sing or play drums. There were many disappointments with the PS2 version of the game, but all in all, I love the concept, and therefore, love the game.

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Publisher: Sega
Developer: Sumo Digital
Release Date: March 18, 2008
Genre: Sports
ESRB Rating: Everyone

As a huge fan of tennis games since the aptly titled Tennis was included on that massive all-in-one NES game cart (how many games were on that thing, 60? 100? I can’t remember, but you could get lost for hours in that thing), I was really looking forward to this title. While I generally prefer the more serious minded and technical sports games, complete with real players, detailed stat tracking etc.

I’ve had a blast with many of the Mario Tennis games, and was hoping for something at least comparable to them, and this game was almost certainly inspired by them. Sadly, SST is no Mario Tennis, nor is it even Tennis.

SST features a variety of characters and settings from past Sega games, some of which need to be unlocked, including characters from the Sonic series, Nights, Alex Kidd, The House of the Dead and more. There is also a good deal of game modes, both single and multiplayer, but the PS2 version is sadly lacking in online play. Many of the mini-games need to be unlocked by progressing through the single player tournaments and challenges, and most of them are fun at least for a while.

All sounds good so far, but problems start popping up when you actually get playing the games. SST is an extremely simple game that requires very little skill to play, which is evident from the first set of your first game.

The action and timing requires very little precision, if you’re in the general area of the ball and swing at around the time the ball is there, you’ll hit. That’s about all there is to it. The characters cover so much ground that lobs and net play is all but ineffective, forcing you to sit at the baseline and keep whacking balls back and forth till someone mercifully misses one. Each character has unique super moves that can be used, but again, there’s no real skill in using them and they don’t really add much to the game.

Now to be fair, the Mario Tennis games largely suffered from the same problems of simple game-play, but this was compensated for with the addition of RPG elements of character interaction and character building that SST lacks.

I grew bored of SST extremely quickly, maybe as a result of playing the similar Mario games for many hours already, maybe not. All I know is that aside from some of the enjoyable mini-games and challenges, I didn’t have much fun playing the actual tennis, which I can say I did with the Mario games, despite their similar weaknesses.

Graphics also fail to impress. The character models are decent, and the environments are unique and quirky for the most part, but lack detail and resolution, and the frame rate occasionally has hiccups despite the lack of graphical might.

If you enjoyed Mario Tennis or are simply a big Sega fan looking for a game with some great fan service, you may get some enjoyment out of SST. Anyone else would do well to rent first before giving this one a purchase.

News: Poor sales (at least in the U.S) caused many retailers such as Gamestop to quickly slash their prices on SST. You should be able to find a new copy for as little as $19.99.

External reviews of SEGA Superstars Tennis

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Naruto: Ultimate Ninja 3 Review
Publisher: Namco Bandai
Developer: CyberConnect2
Release Date: March 25, 2008
Genre: 3-D Fighting
ESRB Rating: Teen

With games based on licences, a reviewer is often left wondering whether their words will have any impact on those reading. If you’re a fan of the licence, you’re probably going to buy or at least rent the game regardless, as the familiar story and setting can probably make up for any glaring errors in game-play. If you know next to nothing about the license, you’ll probably pass, feeling that you need advance knowledge of the scenario and characters to get the most out of it, which is often the case.

The nice thing with a fighting game is that with story not playing a big role, the game can be enjoyed by just about anyone solely for its game-play, though devoted Naruto fans will surely get the most enjoyment out of it. And there’s plenty of game-play and depth to go around.

Naruto is a fast and furious cel-shaded fighter with a massive selection of characters and moves. Combat is deep and challenging, while still being accessible to those unused to fighters by focusing the majority of special moves into a single method of use. By tapping random directions on the control pad followed by the circle button, you’re all but certain to pull out some sort of zany move that will have Japanese symbols flashing across the scene, and a flurry of hits assailing your opponent.

The other buttons are not put to waste though and allow your character to jump and throw weapons among other things. You can also counter your opponent’s moves if your timing is right for added damage and insult. The battles feature many other elements such as power struggles when conflicting moves collide, ultimate moves, and transformations.

Battles take place in 3-D environments, with the combatants aligned on a 2-D plane. You can freely move to different ‘planes’ in the environment, and some battlefields also feature tiered levels. Objects are scattered around the arenas as well, and can be used to assault your opponent, or smashed apart to reveal health restoring goodies or weapons.

You can only choose a couple moves, called Jutsu, to bring into each battle with you, and additional moves can be unlocked for characters as you progress through the single-player campaign. You can also unlock numerous other goodies through the game’s Tanzaku Market, including videos, music tracks, cards and more. If you’re a fan of the cel-shading style, you’ll love UN 3. The cel-shaded graphics are outstanding, with vibrant colors and fluid motions filling the screen.

I found the soundtrack to be a mixed bag. I enjoyed some songs, but found others wince inducing. You have the option of Japanese or English voices for battle shouts and other dialogue, and the sound effects give a great sense of the impact of thunderous strikes and explosive blasts.

Naruto UN 3 is a great fighter, without a doubt designed with the fans in mind, but one that could be enjoyed by anyone looking for a solid and accessible fighting engine with a lot of depth.

News: The ever expanding Naruto universe will see two more releases in the near future. Ultimate Ninja Heroes 2 will launch in late June for the PSP, with Ultimate Ninja Storm tentatively scheduled for a 4th quarter 2008 release on PS3.

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Persona 3 FES is the newly released expansion pack to the original Persona 3 that not only includes a standalone epilogue game entitled The Answer, but brings many changes and additions to the original Persona 3 as well, which is also included with FES as The Journey.

As anyone who’s played the award-winning Persona 3 can attest, it was already a massive game to begin with, easily offering in the range of 100 hours of game-play, and this expansion simply adds to that. Additional quests in the original game, coupled with the 20-30 hour long epilogue could lift your playtime with FES into the 150 hour range.

The addiction of building your social links, exploring the dungeon levels and tinkering with the new weapon synthesis system could send your real-life social links into a tailspin, and your consumption of caffeine for those late night FES marathons skyrocketing.

For those unfamiliar with the original Persona 3, it’s a traditional turn based RPG similar in style to the two previous entries in the series, which both appeared on PlayStation 1. Like those games, the story is set in a modern style alternate world, and centered around a high school student and the high school itself.

The main attraction of the series is the unique collecting of monsters or personas, which can be used by the characters to increase their stats or skill sets. FES features over 160 different Persona, which gives the game a small Pokemon collection vibe. In addition FES offers the ability to fuse those Persona to your weapons, creating new weapons in the process with unique stats and abilities.

New to the Persona series is the increased focus on character interaction and storytelling, turning FES into a hybrid dungeon crawler/dating simulation. You spend your time outside the dungeons immersed in daily activities, which includes going to classes, spending time playing games and interacting with people.

Depending on your choices during these interactions, the feelings that different characters have for you will change, resulting in different story arcs and persona becoming available.

The story is dark and mature with great localization resulting in natural and flowing dialogue. I enjoyed the social aspects of the game, though they create a greater dichotomy between interaction and game-play found in other RPG’s, as you’ll often spend long stretches of time either doing social stuff or dungeon exploring.

The Answer does away with much of the social stuff and turns into a straight dungeon crawler. It’s also much harder than the main game, meaning you’ll definitely want to play The Answer only after you’ve mastered the main story, for both story and challenge reasons.

Graphics feature anime style characters with nice character portraits, and a large, realistically modelled school that features every type of area you would expect in a major college and then some. The dungeons unfortunately are randomly generated, and as is the prevailing theme with any game with random dungeons they’re quite boring to look at and traverse after awhile.

The music is an eclectic mix of rock, jazz and lounge style tracks composed by series veteran Shoji Meguro. Overall the soundtrack is excellent and a change of pace from the traditional orchestral trappings of most RPG’s. Voice acting and sound effects are also well done.

For a budget title, Persona 3 FES offers an incredible amount of value in terms of sheer game-play alone, with the added bonus of great quality being icing on the massive, multi-layered cake.

NEWS-The sequel to Persona 3 FES, Persona 4 has recently been announced for North American release in late 2008 or early 2009, and in somewhat of a surprise will also be for the PlayStation 2. The setting will shift away from the urban school settings of the previous instalments to a more rural countryside setting.

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Publisher: NIS America
Developer: Gust
Release Date: March 31, 2008
Genre: Role-Playing (traditional turn-based)
ESRB Rating: E10+

Mana Khemia is an offshoot of Gust’s Atelier series of games, and will be very familiar to anyone who’s played one of those games in the past. Perhaps in its own little nod to alchemy, Mana Khemia mixes up ingredients and styles from many other past RPG’s and combines them into a solid package.

You take on the role of the amnesiac alchemist (say that five times fast) Vayne, who’s just accepted an invitation to attend the Al-Revis Academy of Alchemy, kind of like the Hogwarts for young scientists. Similar to Persona 3, Mana Khemia features a structured school system, in which you can attend classes and take tests, fraternize with your fellow students, and spend your free time by partying like all good student at Al-Revis do, by bashing monsters and looting their corpses for alchemy ingredients.

Bashing monsters occurs in turn based style similar to Atelier Iris 3, with cards on the top of the screen representing turn order. In a touch of Grandia, the turn order can be altered by casting spells or knocking enemies back down the order, giving the system a good strategic bent.

The battle system also has touches of Breath of Fire 4, by allowing 6 characters to battle at once, separated into two lines of 3. Only the front line can actually engage in combat, while the backline recharges their power. Effectively switching your party members between the two rows will largely determine how well you do in battle.

One major difference in Mana from other RPG’s is that characters don’t gain EXP to level up and increase stats. Instead you need to create items through the alchemy system that will unlock bonuses on your skill tree.

This system shares similarities with the sphere grid from Final Fantasy X, and is a nice change of pace from standard levelling systems, but is not without its share of difficulties. For those who like to level grind and build their characters up above and beyond what is required, you’ll find that this simply isn’t possible in Mana.

Items and ingredients you’ll need to unlock bonuses won’t become available until certain areas, meaning you’re all but stuck at a specific power level at each point in the game. The benefit to this system is that battles present a decent challenge throughout the game with a balanced difficulty curve.

The graphics are the usual Gust standard of 2-D sprites with 3-D backgrounds. The graphics are underwhelming on the whole, and recycle some artwork from Atelier 3 as well, but the animations in battle are solid and overall the look of the game shouldn’t turn you off.

As usual NIS America includes both English and Japanese audio tracks for the voiced dialogue. The English voice work wasn’t great, and the Japanese was your standard fare, you’ll either dig it or not, depending on your preference.

The soundtrack was decent with some great battle music, but I wasn’t a huge fan of the environment themes. It’s the type of music that fits the setting well, but that you’ll quickly forgot once the game is turned off. There are also some Japanese vocal songs scattered throughout the game which were quite good.

Fans of traditional RPG’s and previous games in the series will find much to enjoy in Mana Khemia. Those looking for a next generation style effort in terms of production values and innovation would probably be better off looking elsewhere.

News: The sequel to Mana Khemia, Mana Khemia 2 – Ochita Gakuen to Renkinjutsushi Tachi is scheduled for a May 29 release in Japan for the PlayStation 2. There has been no official announcement of a North American release yet from NIS America, but don’t be surprised to see one forthcoming in the next couple of months.

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