Time for Some Quickies!!

I finished a couple games the past week or so and I just thought I would share my thoughts on them in a couple of quick reviews:

Dead Space

I absolutely loved this game and think everyone should check it out. It's definitely a Resident Evil style game but set in space, but it improves on some of the mainstays from the RE series. More than anything, I really liked that I was able to shoot my gun and walk at the same time. I don't quite get why in RE you stop dead in your tracks (no pun in intended) before trying to kill the zombies. To be quite honest, if I had zombies coming after me, I wouldn't stop running. I might stop and do Thriller, but that's it. I almost wish now that I had started it after Resident Evil 5 so that the lack of moving while shooting wouldn't stick out so much.

This game definitely has some of the best spaceship environments I've seen in a game and it definitely has a very creepy atmosphere that provides for some very tense moments. The creatures/aliens have some pretty cool designs to them too. The suits your character wears do remind me of Bioshock but I love how your health and other stats are displayed on the suit, allowing the game to have HUD that isn't full of displays. The headsup video communications and inventory system look very cool too. Almost like something out of Minority Report.

The weapons in this game are some of the coolest I've ever used in a game. My favourite was the line gun. Since the objective when fighting enemies was to dismember them and not just fire into them as much as possible, the line gun perfect for this purpose.

I'm definitely looking forward to any eventual sequels. I really recommend that everyone check this out as I think it's definitely in the top 5 of games that came out in 2008 for me.

Mario vs. Donkey Kong 2: March of the Minis

Just finished this one today after swiping it from my girlfriend on the weekend. I haven't played the first one, so I don't know what kind of game it is, but this one is very much like Lemmings. You have to get your mini-Marios through the exit in each level. The most you have on one level though is usually 4 or 5 (a few have 6 or 7), so it doesn't have quite the numbers that Lemmings does.

I'm a big fan of Lemmings, so I really enjoyed this even though as I said it doesn't have the number of characters and you also don't have the tasks you do in Lemmings, i.e. diggers, builders, etc. You do have to manipulate the playing board though and it's all done very well with the stylus. Controlling the minis with the stylus is pretty easy too although if they're tightly bunched up, it's a little hard to control specific ones.

The levels start off pretty easy and get very tough as you progress through the game. There are 8 floors of 8 levels, plus a minigame and then the boss fight against DK. I'd say I put about 6 hours into this game tops to get it finished.

I haven't played with the level maker yet and the game does have Wi-fi too. I do recommend you check out this game but at a lower price.