Toronto Thumbs

REVIEW
SingStar ABBA

“Can you hear the drums Fernando?”

This is the beginning line to ABBA’s  super hit “Fernando”, the first song I attempted to belt out when I popped in SingStar ABBA.  To give you an indication of how things went, I didn’t even know this line, let alone the rest of the song.  This is fundamentally the problem with a a game like SingStar that thrives in a party environment, being focused on a single group.  That being said, the game mechanics themselves haven’t changed (for better or for worse) and SingStar ABBA still makes for an entertaining experience overall.

Everything we have come to love about the series is present in this latest iteration, although there have been no changes to the tried and true formula at all.  Much like SingStar vol. 2 for the PS3, no additional functionality is made available by purchasing the disc.  What you do get is 25 of the Swedish pop group’s biggest songs (only 20 on the PS2 version), a number that falls slightly shy of the 30 tracks per disc that we’re used to up to this point.  This really is a testament to ABBA’s success over the years though, as there are few bands that could fill a disc with that many well known hits.

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Posted in Holiday Hints, Music, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Reviews | 2 Comments »

REVIEW
Eternal Poison

The kid behind the counter stared at me for a solid minute after I asked. He likely hoped I was joking, but when I didn’t crack a smile he set about finding me a copy of the game that hadn’t been opened and covered in pricing stickers. And it was a relief since I was already being knocked over by parents struggling to remember titles and gazing at box covers in utter confusion. It was also late and I didn’t have the will to start arguing about why an opened game isn’t new anymore. But is there any other media product where that’s even a debate? Okay, I promised I wouldn’t go there today, but you already know where I was! Anyway, during the ten minutes it took him to dig past releases on that mystical shelf behind the counter, I began to feel that despite my initial excitement, my quest for the Eternal Poison was going to prove difficult.

Starting the game seemed to prove my suspicion, though at first the CG sequence I was treated to looked promising. Not ground-breaking, but certainly in line with the semblance of production values. The game’s central character, Thage, was enticing in her Gothic lace and sharp green eyes. Her companion/servant was a magical creature known as a Majin, the race of creatures encountered in the game. He looked as if he’d just emerged from a Studio Ghibli production, which is a good source to borrow inspiration from.

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Posted in PlayStation 2, Reviews | 3 Comments »

HOLIDAY HINTS
Disney Sing It

At this point in time, some parents may be sick of the likes of Hannah Montana, Camp Rock, and High School Musical. But chances are their kids are not. Disney’s Sing It (which is available for Wii, PS3, PS2, Xbox 360, and PC) is a karaoke video game that lets kids of all ages belt out their favourite tunes from recent popular Disney shows. There are 35 tunes to choose from, so there’s no reason to have to hear Hannah Montana’s “Best of Both Worlds” ten times in a row – though I’m sure you still will.

Posted in Holiday Hints, Music, PC, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Wii, Xbox 360 | No Comments »

REVIEW
Disney TH!NK Fast

Trivia games are becoming a popular trend in the video game business, and surprisingly we’ve not seen much for the Wii, which is odd considering its “party system” status. PlayStation has the BUZZ! series, Xbox has Scene-It?, and now (although it does have to share with PlayStation 2) Wii has Disney TH!NK Fast, henceforth dubbed “DTF” as it is too mind-taxing to type out a name with punctuation smack-dab in the middle of it. (As a side note, yes, all trivia games must have either an exclamation or question mark in their titles).

As one can expect from a title bearing the Disney trademark, DTF is a game that’s not only kid-friendly, but fun for the whole family. Unlike other games in the genre, the Wii version (which is the one I played) doesn’t require the use of custom peripherals: the Wii Remote is sufficient, however not used as one might expect.

Off the bat the game asks a few short questions of its players. Enter your name, choose a Disney character to play as, and off you go. The interface for inputting your name isn’t as intuitive as it could be, given the Wii Remote’s capacity to be used as a pointer. Instead, in-game selections are handled by the D-Pad. Answering questions, though, can be done using gestures.

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Posted in PlayStation 2, Reviews, Wii | 3 Comments »

SWAP MEET FIND
Hori PlayStation Fighting Stick

This weekend, being Halloween weekend, was somewhat low-key in terms of game playing. I did, however, get to check out a video game swap meet in Brampton, hosted by the folks at CGCC.

Today’s time change threw me off, and having gone to bed at 4 a.m. last night, I was more than a little tired when I finally realized that today was the swap meet. When I arrived at the location, a friendly but grumpy drunk met me at the door, angrily asking why I didn’t say anything to him as I made my way inside. Did I have to give him a password? Who knows? He seemed to want me to ask him how he was doing, which is something I rarely do with anyone because people always say they’re fine anyway. I asked him expecting “fine” as a response but he started to ramble so I politely told him I didn’t really want to know how he was, and headed inside to the swap meet.

I met up with Jamie Love once I got in and told him the story of the angry but friendly drunk. Jamie laughed and reminded me we were at a bar, after all (technically, it was the “banquet hall” area of the bar).

The many vendors at the swap meet had a lot of games and accessories that I had never seen before. One of them had the Hori Fighting Stick, pictured above. I’ve always wanted to own one of these and was able to get this one, in used but good condition, for just $10. The best part is that it can be used on my PC as well as my PS2.

Posted in Arcade, Awesome, Events, PlayStation 2 | 4 Comments »

SUPER MEGA CROSS-PLATFORM REVIEW
NBA 09

Basketball season is upon us once again, and to many gamers that means a fresh new crop of NBA games to decide on.  I’m not going to attempt to compare the big 3 ballers against each other in this review, rather I’m going to tell you about my experiences with NBA 09 in all its incarnations: PS3, PSP, and PS2.  So hold tight and let’s get ready for some Foot…  err Basketball!

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Posted in PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, PSP, Reviews | 1 Comment »

REVIEW
SingStar Pop vol. 2

As difficult as I thought it was going to be to review yet another SingStar product, the recent Canadian Thanksgiving holiday weekend really provided me with more than enough content to present to you our loyal readers. Having had a taste of the SingStar experience during our last family gathering, the question of playing “that karaoke game” was immediately posed after our turkey and stuffing had been devoured. This alone surprised me, as the person who asked the question was initially timid about singing last time. I mention this only to highlight one of the most intriguing aspects of the SingStar games: because it can be played in a very non-competitive way, offers a wide range of familiar music, and has a very simple interface to navigate, it is a usual case in my experience to have someone who says they’d never try it early on in the evening be the one who won’t give up the mic in the end.

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Posted in PlayStation 2, Reviews | 5 Comments »

Mortal Kombat Armageddon Wii

It’s been over a year since I first reviewed Mortal Kombat Armageddon for Wii. The review was done for a music magazine that shoehorned its game reviews into half a page of real estate, so the review was only about 30 words long. How can you review anything in 30 words? It’s certainly difficult. See, this paragraph is already longer.

At the time I wrote the review I really didn’t play the game with anything other than the Wii Remote and Nunchuck combination, which is the control scheme that series creator Ed Boon promised would have your grandmother pulling fatalities on you. Could that even be possible? Turns out it was an overstatement, as half the time I couldn’t get regular moves to execute properly. Of course, at the time the Wii was still very, very new, so I figured that some of the misfiring of the controls wasn’t due to them being programmed poorly, but that it was me who couldn’t pull them off because I wasn’t skilled enough to.

I guess, in a way, this is because I generally feel that if I can’t do something, I’m not worth a damn. Instead, I likened this to when I was first discovering fighting games. Street Fighter II was selling Super Nintendos sell left and right despite its heavy $100 CDN pricetag, and the first time I played it I was confused why the creators would have six buttons at their disposal but not assign special moves to any of them. Instead, players had to pull off a series of different combinations on the control pad and then hit a button in order to throw fireballs, do hurricane kicks, or perform other devastating attacks.

Because this was a whole new way of playing games for me, it took a while for me to get used to pulling off these moves, and indeed I will admit that I can do uppercuts for Ken and Ryu a lot easier from the right side of the screen than I can from the left. So you can see how me not being able to pull off MK Wii’s gesture-based special moves reminded me of getting my ass kicked in Street Fighter in the arcades in the early 90s.

Due to my recent revived interest in Mortal Kombat, which is spurred on by the fact that Mortal Kombat VS DC Universe will be released in November and because I associate Halloween with MK anyway, I decided to give Mortal Kombat Armageddon another go this weekend. On Friday, I played it after my guests left for the night, and stayed up ’til 3 a.m. playing it. Only this time, I used the Classic Controller. It is by far the best way to experience this game – other than with friends, that is. I spent a few hours learning different fatality steps and practiced them over and over again and now I’ve created a particularly cheesy and over-the-top finishing move that it makes some of the Friendship moves from MK2 and 3 look serious.

Armageddon can probably be had on the cheap these days, if you can find it in stores. Also, the PS2 Premium Edition includes Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, which is another amazing title in the series. This month, Midway will be releasing Mortal Kombat Kollection, a three-disc PS2 bundle featuring MK Deception, MK Armageddon, and MK Shaolin Monks. If you’re a fan of fighters and for some reason haven’t played the last few Mortal Kombats, give them a shot – you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

Posted in PlayStation 2, Wii | No Comments »

You Have to Really Like Rock Band to Get These

At X’08 in August the Rock Band 2 set-up didn’t feature the new and improved stock drumkit that will be included with box sets of the game. Instead, EA opted to show off a piece of third-party merchandise: The ION Drum Rocker.

It’s an expensive but impressive piece of hardware. At $300, you could most definitely buy a real, if not beat-up drumkit – or, you could just buy this and have the coolest Rock Band kit around. The pads feel much better than those on the pack-in kit, and the cymbals are just mapped green, yellow, and blue pads. The pedal’s solidly constructed and I don’t see anyone ever having to replace this kit once they’ve bought it.

Although it is a fine piece of hardware, the price point and the fact that it’s about twice as big as the regular Rock Band kit are off-putting, especially for those of us who live in small apartments. Then again, these fancy pads can be used as an electronic drum set with some additional equipment. The kit will be available in three styles: PS2/PS3, Xbox 360, and Wii.

Posted in Awesome, Music, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Wii, Xbox 360 | 7 Comments »

REVIEW
BUZZ: The Hollywood Quiz

Even through the BUZZ series of games has gained a massive following in the UK, I had never gone out of my way to try and play the few releases that have made their way to our great white north. Although the concept of a game show videogame seemed like it would work well on a console level, I wasn’t completely convinced, and I’ll admit that the word gimmicky crossed my mind when I saw the buzzer laden retail package on store shelves. Actually playing the newest instalment in the series: BUZZ: The Hollywood Quiz, both enlightened and surprised me. I was happy to find out that the idea completely works on the PS2, specifically in a large group; and that though gimmicky the buzzers really add to the BUZZ experience which just wouldn’t be the same without them.

The graphical styling works well with the overall concept of an over the top game show hosted by a mostly obnoxious host (yes quite the stretch from reality I know). Since this is The Hollywood Quiz, the red carpet clad award show environment does well in setting the mood for all the Hollywood trivia about to be experienced. Keep in perspective though that it is a PS2 title, and one that is targeted at a more casual player. That being said, things look as good as they need to and even add to the charm of the BUZZ experience.

Thanks to the aforementioned obnoxious host, appropriately named BUZZ of course, there are plenty of surprisingly excellent sound bites to be heard. As players make their way through round after round, Buzz is sure to chime in with something witty depending on how well or poorly each contestant is performing. Everyone involved always had a some chuckles at the wisecracks BUZZ spits out, although I did notice the quips got slightly repetitive after playing through so many rounds myself. The music works for the stage that is set, though none of it is memorable. There are no leaps and bounds being made in the sound department, but adequate works for the type of game that BUZZ is.

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Posted in PlayStation 2, Reviews | No Comments »