Game Addiction Blog

So earlier this week TMNT Turtles in Time Reshelled was released.

I of course jumped at the occasion since Turtles in Time is one of my favorite beat ‘em ups not to mention the TMNT being my favorite childhood heroes.
While it was a big arcade hit back in the day, I only played and owned the SNES port of it and boy was it good.

Now comes along a next gen version of the classic with 3D graphics, online co-op!

However, it turns out it’s boring, extremely repetitive and has some of the worst soundtrack,voice over and sound effects I’ve heard.

Why they didn’t just make a remixed version of the original soundtrack is beyond me. It would have sounded much better then whatever that is they play under in Re-shelled.

Seeing as how this is based on the orginal Arcade version rather then the SNES version, there were a lot of tweaks made in the SNES version missing and mini bosses, levels that I remember in the past which were far superior to what I saw in Re-shelled like the whole level in the Technodrome is missing and all in all you can finish the story mode in about an hour and..that’s it. There is quickplay mode where you can select levels and survival mode where you only have one live but that’s that. There is nothing more left to keep you interested in the game.

I hopped online and played with some random xbox live guys through the story and, boy did it get old fast. Not only are you just mashing the same button constantly but with so many footmen and four nearly identical turtles on the screen I had a really hard time keeping track of where I was. Now I know it’s a beat ‘em up and by nature they are pretty repetitive, but there was actually a combo the turtle did in the SNES/Arcade version. In this game, the turtles just jab the same move again and again.

The boss fights are the worst thing in this game. They are all pretty much the same, and due to awkward 3D plane, it’s hard to judge where you have to be to hit him. I didn’t have fun in any of the boss fights. It came down to running into him to get a few hits and then avoiding his counter.

Throwing enemies and slamming them against the ground were always great fun in the SNES version and they also had a mechanism to them. Depending on where you stood and what button you pressed you could decide whether to throw or slam them. In Re-shelled it just seems to happen at random and you have very little control over it.

The comical things in the original are just annoying in this game due to the voice over, like when they fall into a sewer shaft…It’s terrible. But the worst of all is the “My toe! My Toe!”. It’s really really annoying especially because you move so horribly fast in the sewer level, you are being attack from all directions and due to bad color template it’s hard to notice those pins sticking out. So you’ll be hearing My toe! a lot.

Shredder’s voice is meh, and krang is just annoying.

It also seems like every single enemy you encounter is made out of a sponge since they all make this *squish* sound when you hit them…Even the footmen that are robots, I don’t know what they were thinking.

So lets recap the pros and cons.

Re-shelled

Pro:
Widescreen HD 3D graphics
Online co-op

Cons:
Over before you know it
Missing vital tweaks and levels from SNES version
Bad music
Bad Voices
Bad sound effects
Repetitive combat
Hard time telling the turtles apart
No extra modes to keep people interested

Bottom line, if you have a craving for playing Turtles in Time for nostalgic reasons, don’t satisfy it with this game and play the original Arcade version or better yet the SNES version instead. They are much more worth your time then this game.

- X

Made this earlier today just for the fun of it.

It pretty much sums up the movie…

- X

I maybe have been slacking off when it comes to actually writing something for the site up late so I’m going to make some sort of an effort.

The main reason why I haven’t been writing/reviewing anything is because I haven’t been buying any games due to my focuses being on paying bills and buying a few presents for Christmas, I haven’t either been doing any extensive gaming lately so I don’t really have much to write about in the first place.

Left 4 Dead is great and all, but I think I’ve mostly moved on to other things now, at least until they add more content to the game.

I’ve mostly been messing around older games lately. I picked up a copy of Metal Gear Solid 3: Substance a few months ago, mainly because I never actually finished it so I’ve been meaning to go back and give it another shot. It’s a good thing I have a 60GB PS3 because my sister has my PS2. I managed to grab one just before it got sold out and I’m really happy about that. Especially considering the prices it’s going for these days. I saw on ebay that someone had a buy now price of $1700 for a sealed 60gb PS3.

That’s just insane.

I also messed around a little bit with Twisted metal 2. That game is awesome. It’s kind of a predecessor to Carmageddon, and I used to have lots of fun playing that game in versus mode.

Other then that I’ve been messing around with video editing. I can’t say I’m a pro when it comes to it. I’ve only done a few school projects and one really goofy Mortal kombat video me and my friends did back in 2004. I spent hours on that thing. Did credits and everything for it but unfortunately due to a hard drive crash it was lost to the sands of time.

We also did a few other things, like if I recall correctly a Ninja Monks versus Italian Mafia movie.
It was pretty stupid, but it was tons of fun to make. But again that was lost because the miniDV cassette got ruined due to some glitch in the camera if I remember correctly.

I’ve also been working trying out doing video reviews for games/movies, inspired from the work of Nostalgia Critic and the Angry Videogame Nerd.

The other day I recorded a little(long) review for a bad NES game based of Bill and Ted’s Most excellent Adventure Movie called *drum roll* Bill and Ted’s most excellent videogame adventure…
Yeah that really rolls of your tongue.

The movie is stupid enough as it is but this game takes it to a whole new level.

This is the second review I’ve attempted, the first one was for Deadly towers and…well it sucked bad. Not to say this one is any masterpiece. I have no problem writing English but when it comes to speaking it, my accent/tongue gets in the way sometimes.

I’d love to be able to link it but unfortunately I’ve been hitting a snag. When I’ve tried to render it the video output is black while I can still hear the audio.

I don’t know why this is. I guess I’ll try some other compression or just do it full frames and then compress it with another application and see if that does the trick.

I have some ideas for other stuff, the problem is that I don’t have a Video camera so it’s kind of hard doing videos without one. All I’ve got is a crappy webcam and my cellphone.

I suppose I could link my Deadly towers review, but oh god is it bad. Half the time I don’t even know what I’m saying.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-48743422263797982&hl=en

Well I hope it’s worth a laugh or two only because it sucks. :p

- X

I’ve been playing in the beta and the headstart for Warhammer Online. First impressions is that this game reminds of me WoW. However when you go deeper it is in a lot of ways different. First, the game relies heavily on PVP or as it’s called RVR so a lot of the quests you first come across in the game are quests related to killing someone on the other side.

The game also has right from the start battlegrounds not all that unlike Arathi Basin from WoW which you can enter at anytime. There are plenty of these that you can go into throughout the game.

They also have what are called Public Quests which are kind of like instances out in the open. You can join in the fight at any time just by walking into the area. It’s not necessary to be in a group to get something for taking part in the fight. The final prizes for defeating the boss are rolled. So even if you just entered right at the end and did just a few hits you still have a chance to win something though the chances are very slim.

Now as for grouping, they have made it very easy. You have the option to look for nearby open groups. So if you happen to be in a public quest, you can just check for nearby groups and join. If there are a lot of people doing a public quest you can make a warband(kind of like a raid group) and then everyone is in one big group to finish the quest.

The game is divided into chapters. Each section has it’s own chapter and you do the PQ to finish the chapter. You gain influence points which fills up a meter. At certain intervals you can go visit a Rally master and he will give you rewards. You have to accept a reward at each interval so he will give you a quest to go on to the next rally master. You don’t need to do it, but it’s just some extra XP right there.

In retrospective, this is easily the least grindy game I have ever played. You don’t need to grind if you don’t want to you can level up just by doing RvR there are also plenty of quests that don’t involve searching out some parts of an animal he has a fetish for or something like that.

Another interesting thing, I don’t know exactly how it works but it seems ganking is impossible in this game. If a high lvl character goes into a low lvl area flagged for RvR he gets morphed into a chicken, which makes him easily killable and he can’t do nothing but maybe lay eggs.

Now as far as graphics goes. They are good. They aren’t “*nerdgasm*mmmmmm Crysis*nerdgasm some more*” good but still nice.

See below for my character and how it looks.

There are only 40 lvls in this game against the orginial 60 that was in WoW, however leveling goes a little slower and also there hasn’t been a level that I haven’t gained some new ability yet so you don’t have to wait two or more levels like in WoW for something new and exciting to use on your foes.

Anyway I think that about covers it.

Oh and I am currently playing with the US version of the game on the Ostermark server as Agilaz.

- X

Virtual boy eat your heart out! You’ve got nothing on the Cyber FX 3D!

- X