What's Happening With Ian's Game Corner?

As much as I hate to see it, you guys will probably not be seeing any new game reviews on here for a long time. The reason for all this is that I've found that I'm just not really as great with reviewing games as much as reviewing movies, which is why I made this. I may love games like a friend from school but I love movies like family. They are often as enjoyable to watch as they are fascinating to talk about, because even when they're not very great, I still have something to say about them. Ian's Movie Corner will now be (hopefully) my main review source until I fully understand how to translate my opinions into videos. 

"So Ian, that means the Game Corner is basically dead, right? You're not coming back to do any more reviews?"

No, not really. It's more in purgatory, so to speak. I might come back for a special occasion to do a new review of a game, but keep in mind that stuff like that will not happen very often. The Movie Corner is my primary review source now, and it will stay that way until I decide it's okay to move on to a video format, which more than likely won't be for a long time.

"Do the same rules apply to the Movie Corner as they do the Game Corner?"

No, they do not. I'm not going to restrict myself this time around. Almost any type of movie goes, whether it be animated, theatrical, direct-to-video, direct-to-television, or a part of a previously established franchise, which means I GET TO REVIEW AS MANY SEQUELS OR REMAKES AS I WANT. No movie is safe this time around. I will do Top 10 lists, I'll do compilation reviews, I'll be in full control.

Anywho, if you get the chance, check out Ian's Movie Corner, I promise that it won't disappoint. Right now I'm in the midst of working on a movie review series/event to get things going, so once it comes out, go check it out, as it will be of gargantuan proportions.

Until I come back, here's a picture to ease the pain.

RIP Ian's Game Corner

2014-Banana Pudding

"Also no, I'm not reviewing Five Night's At Freddies 2: Electric Boogaloo or whatever."

Half-Life 2 Review

Everybody's going to hate me for this, but here it is: Half-Life 2, the sequel everyone plays goes to because Half-Life 3 is taking forever to come out. This game is among LittleBigPlanet 2 as one of my favorite games of all time, and in this review I'm going to explain precisely why, while also stating some of my minor faults with the game. Also, let my me preface this by saying that even though this game was, indeed, first released on the PC, it was later released for The Orange Box on the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360, which means it technically follows under the rules of my blog. 

Half-Life 2 was a weird experience for me, because I had never played the first game before and at the time I first played it, I didn't really know much about the series as a whole. The good thing is that with having little to no experience with the Half-Life series, I was still able to get the basic gist of the story from the first 10 minutes, which is the sign of a good sequel. The game follows a scientist named Gordon Freeman who has to deal with aliens, the government, and all sorts of things. The story is kind of hard to describe, and it really isn't the shining point of the game, so that's why I'm being kind of vague about all of it. All you need to know is that this game is a first-person shooter, and that you are often fighting either Combine soldiers or freaky aliens. 

Gameplay is the strong point here. Of course, it's a first-person shooter, and if you've played any decent first-person shooter in your life, you could probably understand this game pretty quickly, but the way it's done here is way better than the likes of "Call of Duty Gritty Realism Into Darkness Deathly Mockingjay Hollows 7: Return of Jafar" or whatever. This game, like the first, has a great weapon known as the Gravity Gun. It picks stuff and puts it down, yo. In all seriousness, it does add some variety to the game and lead way to many really cool puzzles. The weapons you have each have advantages and disadvantages, and they're all laid out so you can switch between them really quickly and with ease. 

There's only one fault with the game, and it's any of the driving sections. Whether it's on land or on water, Gordon Freeman just cannot escape bad driving controls. The problem I have is mainly with the speedboat sections, because the steering (as in what direction you're driving, which is pretty important) goes from regular to inverted at complete random. WHY?!? Imagine how horrible it is to try and drive into cramped and narrow pathways with these controls, which, by the way, you have to do multiple times throughout the game. If I shift my left analog stick to the left, the boat should consistently go left, not switch to right randomly while I'm driving. 

Overall, great game. Probably not as great now as I used to think, but still great nonetheless.

Also no, I'm not reviewing Five Night's At Freddie's 2: Electric Bungaloo or whatever.


#getrektlol

LittleBigPlanet 2 Review

Here it is, folks! The first console game reviewed on this blog, LittleBigPlanet 2! The first game in Media Molecule's hit series was a game that most certainly left a huge impact on me when I was younger, but the second entry in the series is what really stuck with me. Why is that? Well, there's no point in really delaying questions with obvious answers, so let's jump into the review!

What is the LittleBigPlanet series about, anyways? You play as a cute little plush character named Sackboy (or Sackgirl, before you grab your pitchforks and torches) who you can customize to your liking thanks to lot of hats, shirts, pants and other accessories you obtain throughout the game. The game has a Story mode, where you go through several different levels, a Create mode, where you  make your own fantastic levels and upload them online, where you can play everyone else's cool little levels. Put simply, if LittleBigPlanet is an elementary school science kit, then LittleBigPlanet 2 is a professional laboratory. The first game gave you enough tools to make some pretty standard levels, but the sequel is for all sorts of creators. If you like making simple platformers, you can very easily jump in and make it quickly, but if you want to do something a little more advanced, something one step ahead of everyone else, you will be stuck for days. This is the hook of the LittleBigPlanet series; jumping into the fray and giving a new and unique perspective that nobody has seen before. There's so many new things in the sequel, I'm gonna need a little bit to gush, so just bear with me.

LittleBigPlanet 2 introduces Sackbots, robots that can be programmed to act the way you want. Do you want your levels to have a buddy that can pick up stuff that's in your way and throw it around? Just program a Sackbot to follow you around and pick stuff up. Another really awesome thing enabled is the ability to make Movies on LittleBigPlanet 2. This is an incredibly complicated process, but it definitely pays off when done correctly. Some movies posted online in the game have ranged from about a minute long to 45 minutes long! The Create mode in general in the game is really good and well-made…

…except for one major problem. The Tutorials given for each tool in the mode are really good, but they only really give you a sense of what they do, and sometimes even that is really vague. The main issue is that I've went through almost every tutorial available and I rarely came out of any of them with any real knowledge of what just happened. I know what each tool is capable of doing when used correctly, but I don't know how to use them correctly. Because of this, even though the rest of the game is almost perfect, the Level Creator feels too complicated, which is a shame, because as I just said, the rest of the game is great. 

The Online mode functions alright, although I really wish loading times weren't so long, but whatever. The levels people create in the game are amazing and the best ones are the levels that deviate, that defy what's expected and try to replicate other games, and that's amazing. Of course, there are also simplistic platformer levels, which are also loads of fun. And the Story mode, my god this is so hard. Oh no, it's not hard to finish the levels normally, I mean that it's bone-breakingly, soul-crushingly difficult to finish each level WITHOUT DYING. In the Story mode, you often get prizes. There are four ways to get prizes from levels: In the level itself, by completing the level, by getting all the prizes in the level, and by beating the level without dying. Beating a level in the game without dying is referred to as "Acing it" (as in "Ace", like the card). Trying to get an Ace on some of the levels is really easy, but the later stages drag on and on and the second you die, you have to restart the entire level all over again. Get ready to throw your controller across the room, because this game does not mess around. 

Overall, LittleBigPlanet 2 may have some problems, it may have a tough level creation tool, but it still remains one of my favorite games of all time. Sorry this review was also late, but next time, get ready, because I'm gonna review the long-requested sequel to everyone's favorite horror game...

SteamWorld Dig Review

We've covered Smash Bros, Kirby, and Zelda so far. Let's tackle a Nintendo eShop title!

SteamWorld Dig is one of many games you'll hear a wealth of great things to say about on this blog. It's also the first game I've reviewed thus far that is, in fact, not a game from retail. This game is available exclusively online, and although it is on many other consoles currently, I am reviewing the Nintendo 3DS version, because that's the one I have. Besides, from what I've heard, the game is almost identical on other consoles anyway. Without further ado, let's dig into the game! Get it?

Imagine Minecraft, but in 2D, and replacing the retro aesthetic with steampunk. Now you have the basic sense of what SteamWorld Dig is. Of course, there are many things that make the game so interesting. The game has two sections that you will be seeing a lot when playing the game: the hub-world of sorts, where you trade minerals for cash and buy upgrades, and the caves, which takes up most of the game, where you mine around, get cool minerals, find baddies to either kill or get killed by, and have a grand ol' time. You start off with a basic pick-axe and minerals that don't really get you that much money, but gradually you get to upgrade your pick-axe, get a drill in one of the special caves (which I'll get into later) and find more valuable minerals like rubies, diamonds, and more. Again, sounds a lot like a Minecraft ripoff, but there's still a ridiculous amount of stuff to talk about.

One of the things you will come across in the game are cave or dungeon levels, that you go into to get the better upgrades in the game like the Drill, the Steam Jump, and more. Instead of being auto-generated, they are pre-designed and are basically a test of your skills. These are some of the highlights of the game, as they help you get through the regular caves a lot easier. You can make your digging experience a lot better if you dig smartly and conservatively, but it's also quicker and easier to dig straight down. Oh, and that leads to another thing, you can dig one block above you when staying in the same place, and no more than that. You also cannot mine while in mid-air or sliding down the walls, which means you have to dig very carefully in the mines. It's a neat touch, and it definitely makes the game way harder than you would expect. This is one of the other areas in which SteamWorld Dig sounds simple, but is actually way more complicated depending on what situation you're in. 

Oh, and let's take a bit to appreciate the music. The graphics and art direction are also fantastic, but it's the sound in particular that is amazing. It's not all intense, complex, Mega Men-style music, it's a lot slower, more atmospheric. More and more often I become so enveloped in this game because of the sound. The loud and distinct clanking of your pickaxe when you mine, the moans and other sounds from all the creatures, the sound of machines buzzing, it's just so immersive, and there's really nothing quite like it. Each of the three different areas in the game have their own distinct music and feel, and the little snippets from the above-world characters about what happened to the world are very interesting, although I am glad they didn't make the ending into a big reveal of what exactly happened, because it leaves the stuff you don't hear completely up to your imagination.

Anyway, among the gush-fest 5000 that was the last few paragraphs, what isn't quite good about the game? Only one thing: It's way shorter than it should be. But maybe that's just another sign of how much I like this game. It's really fun, and I actually wish more people knew about it.

Anyway, leave a comment down below suggesting a franchise for me to tackle. Thanks for reading!

The Legend of Zelda: Link Between Worlds 3DS Review

No suggestions? None? Okay, let's do another 3DS review. 

The Legend of Zelda series has a weird history with me. I have almost never been good with puzzle games, I rarely ever played Zelda games aside from the first game and Wind Waker. Whenever I would see a Zelda game I would respond with "oh, well, that exists, I guess" and forget about it. But finally, Zelda fans, the day has come, for that kid named Ian who none of you actually know has found his true introduction into the Zelda franchise, the very game that will get him interested in the series! 

The Legend of Zelda: Link Between Worlds is the first Zelda game I have ever played all the way through and beaten. It's the first Zelda game that had me sucked in for weeks, and in case you couldn't tell by the way I was talking about it, I really like this game. Throughout the review I will try to explain the gameplay, puzzles, and more, but keep in mind that because I don't play Zelda games very often, I'm not familiar with some of the more subtle tropes from the series. Anyway, without further ado, let's dig into what I think!

First, the story. This game takes place many, many years after Link to The Past for the SNES, which explains the similar design, camera view, and gameplay. The idea is that some villain who's name I can't remember because of how generic they are (this is Zelda, I should expect these things) is wants to remake Hyrule in their image, filled with all sorts of painting versions of the different characters. So, he/she is after the Triforce because of course they are, and so you, Link, have to get the Master Sword (again), obtain the Triforce (again), and save the world (again). So, it seems pretty run of the mill, but the gameplay is its own story…

In this game, the main star of the show, the power that completely flips Hyrule on its head in this game is really cool. At one point, early in the game, you get a purple bracelet that, at first, doesn't do anything. But when the generic evil knevel villain magoo fires their magic beam of whatever at you, you get to use the bracelet as a way to go into walls in a painting form. This small gameplay change almost completely turns Hyrule on its head, giving you new and cool ways to solve puzzles and snag new items. It's really cool and the mechanic alone and how it was executed had me hooked for weeks. Great job, Nintendo. Give me more.

Now let's discuss the difficulty, since that's kind of important when talking about Zelda games. The difficulty varies a lot throughout the game. The main world has the most easy puzzles yet the stuff with collecting all of the Maiamai is awful, whereas the dungeons kept consistently rising level of challenge all throughout. Most of the fun I had in this game was in going through the dungeons or fighting bosses, as whenever they got seriously challenging, it was never because of bad controls or poor level design, it was because I just didn't quite have all the pieces together yet.

Overall, this game is great and I really need to get to the next review. 10 outta 10, A+, whatever, go watch Big Hero 6.

Please leave a comment suggesting game franchises I should talk about down below and please be patient, I know these past few reviews have been way overdue and I apologize greatly for it. The next review will be of SteamWorld Dig for the Nintendo 3DS.

Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land + Amazing Mirror GBA Review

This week, since I'm low on suggestions and I want to encourage people to give suggestions via comments, I'm going to just pick a franchise myself. In this case, it's Kirby, everyone's favorite pink marshmallow vacuum! For those who aren't familiar with Kirby, he or she is an adorable pink marshmallow-looking thing that sucks up enemies like a vacuum and copies their abilities. Swallow a ninja, you get a sword to carry around. Swallow a guy with a hammer, you get your own hammer to swing around. It's well known in the gaming community and by Nintendo fans as being a series of very easy games, usually best for kids who want to get into video games. It's also, quite like Kirby, changing and evolving, presenting new and innovative games as well as games that more so celebrate Kirby's early days. Some games, like Kirby Mass Attack for the DS or Kirby Air Ride for the GameCube, take Kirby into new and weird directions, whereas games like Kirby Triple Deluxe for the 3DS or Kirby's Return To Dream Land for the Wii are less innovative and more similar to past entries. That's why, to celebrate and show just how split in half the Kirby series feels, I will review two Kirby games. Lord help us all.


Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land:

This a Kirby game that, admittedly, is more my speed. It's like the other Kirby games, but I'm okay with that. It at least is a fun overall experience. Here are my in-depth thoughts.

First thing, controls are solid. Controls are rarely a problem with Nintendo games, so it's no surprise when I tell you that this game controls perfectly. Different commands are laid out with the best possible buttons, and Kirby moves around at just the right speed. Gameplay is also great. Kirby's copy abilities are awesome and in this game, you have the freedom to experiment with the different abilities, something the game also encourages often. Something I really wish there was more of would be copy abilities like "Sleep" that act more as a detriment than an advantage. To clarify, the "Sleep" ability makes Kirby just fall asleep mid-game, leaving you completely out in the open and vulnerable for 10 seconds. It's one of my favorites, because unlike other abilities that you can use to just zoom through levels with ease, this one actually makes the game more difficult. 

Speaking of difficulty, this game's story mode is really easy, which I guess is supposed to be a standard for most games in the Kirby series, but it's still irritating. Because the levels are relatively long and really easy, the story mode feels really, really tedious. There is a mode you unlock after beating the story mode that has you fight all of the bosses in the game with only one life. This mode is ridiculously hard, which feels weird after playing such a pushover of a game. Aside from that, there's a few side mini-games that feel like they're taken straight out of Mario Party and they're just okay.

Now, is this a game you should come back to after one playthrough? In my opinion, yes, but only because of the Boss Battle mode. It forces you to think critically about the way you play and it is also so incredibly difficult, but not because of unresponsive controls or bad design. If you die, it's your own fault, and since you have only one life I suggest you think carefully about how you approach each boss. Overall, this is a great Kirby game.

Kirby and the Amazing Mirror:

Now, if you like Kirby games that introduce new ideas or do unexpected things, this is the game for you. Do like the Metroid game? This game is right up your alley.

Since controls are basically the same as before, I'll skip to gameplay. In this game, you have to travel around, find new areas and pathways, and locate all of the hidden shards of the Amazing Mirror. And instead of one Kirby--there's four! You play as the regular Kirby, but every other Kirby is traveling in a different area while you play, and at any point you can call all of them to your area so that they can help you. It's definitely a great idea, and the game itself is fun, but there's one big problem that hinders the whole experience: The world in this game is way too big! You either get lost because you find a whole bunch of unexplored areas all at once, or you get bored because you've already looked everywhere and you can't find anything new. To this day I still have yet to beat the game because whenever I pick it up, I get frustrated by the lack of things to do. Again, it's a great idea, I just wish it was executed differently.

Difficulty wise, for reasons stated literally just a few lines ago, this game is very hard. It, too, also has useless mini-games that are really just distractions. They're really easy, and I'm not sure if there's some kind of special mode you unlock after completing THIS game's story mode, and if there is, I'm not going to be playing it anytime soon.

Overall, the game is pretty good. In some areas, it feels a lot more polished than the other game and abilities like "Sword" and 'Fighter" are given a bit more depth and control to make them more fun to use. However, this type of game just wasn't for me. I admit that its concepts, ideas, and some of its executions are very good, but the fact that it gets increasingly harder to find new, branching paths the further you progress is just tiresome. Sorry, but I'm gonna stick with Nightmare in Dream Land.

Hey guys, this review took me forever to finish but if you enjoyed it, let me know in the comments, and please suggest a Nintendo franchise for me to cover next week if you can. It would really mean a lot to know that people are reading these things, and it would really be helpful to have an idea of what those people want me to talk about. See ya next week!

Super Smash Bros for 3DS + First Post, Explanation, etc

Hello friends! My name is Ian and I really like video games! I also really like reviews, so I've decided to do a blog where I review video games and also talk about life from time to time. In this first post I'm going to review Super Smash Bros for the Nintendo 3DS. Leave a comment below suggesting a video game franchise (preferably Nintendo-related) and I will pick a random game from that franchise to review in the next post. Without further ado, here's my first review for the blog:

Super Smash Bros is a weird franchise for me. The only entry in the series I really played was Brawl, and I knew almost nothing about the previous games. Almost half a year before the 3DS game was released, me and my brother Colin played Brawl at almost any chance we could get. We unlocked new characters, experimented, and found new strategies. It was a great game, because the gameplay and characters were always the same, but experiences were different. Some of my funniest and my most intense moments playing video games came from there. It had a staggering amount of content, and still today I have yet to get all of the music tracks, trophies, and other things. I say all of this stuff about the game because that's what I've been thinking about while waiting for the newest entry on the 3DS. "Will it be as good?" was a question I asked myself a lot. Everything looked promising, it would have new fighters like Mega Man and Pac-Man, the 40-minute Nintendo Direct video about it and its Wii U counterpart indicated that Nintendo seemed to know what it was doing. Recently, I got the game and spent a few days getting a feel for it. Grab some popcorn, ladies and gents, this is going to be really long.

First, the gameplay. I was really skeptical about how the 3DS button layout would fit with a game like Super Smash Bros. I, among many other Smash Bros fans prefer using a GameCube controller, but the 3DS isn't that bad. Can the Circle Pad be unresponsive at times? Yes, it can. Is it much of a problem? No, it really isn't. Even though you have to use the Circle Pad for moving your character and you can't change that, you do have some options for how you want to lay out your commands with the buttons. Once you get used to the controls it is pretty much a breeze from there. From the beginning, A is regular standard attacks, B is specials, X and Y will make you jump, L will make you grab the opponent, R will make you shield yourself, and the D-Pad is used for taunts, although the D-Pad can't be changed to anything else. I really like the control layout. It may not be as good as a GameCube controller, but it does the job of letting you control the game pretty well.

Now for the different game modes. Classic Mode is back and has a really cool thing where you can set the difficulty before it starts. The higher the difficulty, the more coins you get, which you can use to get trophies and other things. But if you lose during the Classic Mode, you get to continue where you left off, but the difficulty lowers, meaning you get less coins. Trust me, if you think you can beat Classic on the hardest difficulty without losing, you better kiss your social life goodbye because you'll be trying to beat it for hours with no success. New to the series and exclusive to the 3DS version is a mode called Smash Run, where you run around, fight enemies from all sorts of different video games, get power-ups that increase your stats like Speed, Jump, Defense, and then after five minutes of increasing your stats, you and some other players will either race, fight enemies or really anything to win. This is probably my favorite of the modes, because you start out really slow, you can't jump very high, but as you go through it you become faster and can jump higher. You have to have all of your bases covered when playing this mode. All-Star Mode is back, but it is really easy, and keep in mind I played on the Normal difficulty. You fight all of the other fighters in order of when their games were released, starting with the oldest and working your way up to the newest. It's cool, but the problem is that the A.I is really dumb and (for whatever reason) is set to take more damage from your attacks, making the mode really easy, yet also really tedious. You also take damage a lot quicker and when you die, it means Game Over and there are no "Continue?" things anywhere to save you. Every time I lost on All-Star Mode (which was most of the times I played), it was because I slipped or overshot an attack and fell off the stage. 

For smaller modes, Home Run Contest and Multi-Man Smash are back and basically play the same, with a few minor changes like Rival Smash, where you and an A.I race to defeat as many Mii Fighters as possible. It's okay, but I doubt I'll be coming back to it anytime soon. There's also a little game that's like a combination of Home Run Contest and Angry Birds with a bomb that starts ticking as soon as you touch it. Once it has three seconds left, send the bomb flying to destroy as much of the structure as possible! This mode is also okay but not really good enough to warrant a second play-through.

Now for the fighters. My personal favorite of the new fighters is Little Mac, because of how much damage he does while on the ground. He forces you to think about how you fight, which is really cool. Because his recovery moves are garbage, you need to be on the ground and close to the center of the platforms as much as possible. My least favorite of the new fighters would probably be Charizard and Greninja, as they play almost exactly like Bowser and Fox respectively. Mega Man and Pac-Man are just sort of in the roster, and while I'm glad they're there, I really wish they had something else that could justify playing as them. You also start off with almost all of the fighters from the very beginning, which kind of really sucks, especially considering how many fighters there are total on the roster. In Brawl, there were a lot of characters on the roster, but most of them had to be unlocked from doing very specific things and you had enough time in between unlocking fighters to try each of them out, which is also why I miss The Subspace Emissary so much, because even though it did drag a lot and the final section of it is awful, you could unlock most of the roster by playing through it and you always had a little bit of time to try out each fighter you unlocked. Here, there are more fighters than before and because there isn't any kind of story mode that encourages you to try each of them out, it feels really tedious and daunting.

Almost all of the stages in the game are okay. Moving on.

How does the regular Smash fare? It is still just as good, if not better, than before. Nintendo ditched the Coin matches, which is great, but it feels a lot less great when you realize they probably removed it for hardware reasons and not because they thought it was an actually good idea to remove it from the game. Every fighter moves at a crisp 60 frames per second, which looks great. And hey, the 3D actually looks really awesome with Smash Bros! It's still headache-inducing, but at least it looks good! Local Multiplayer Smash Bros is really good, there is virtually no lag, and everything is easy to figure out. There's also Online, which, while very laggy at times, is still very enjoyable. They also have StreetSmash, which I haven't tried out and probably never will because it looks really stupid.

Overall, Super Smash Bros for the Nintendo 3DS is fantastic. No doubt about it, if you plan on buying a 3DS or a 2DS, get this game, it's worth every cent and fulfills expectations wonderfully.