New iDevice game review - Ninja Assassins! For Hardcore Ninjas only

New iDevice game review at my sister iGaming blog!

...Okay I accidentally posted it here, might as well promote it for the invisible viewers.

Not so Tiny anymore

I never said I was going to be current







You remember Tiny right? She was in the critically acclaimed Donkey Kong 64, one of my favourite N64 games. She was the light character that was good at platforming, my favourite of the Kongs next to DK himself.
Now her name Tiny is aptly so, as she is apparently Dixie's "VERY little sister"
which pretty clearly gives the indication that she's very young.

Now let's take a quick look at Dixie herself.




Now as you can see, Dixie was very much of the same 'species' (or body type, species isn't really addressed in the Donky Kong universe) as Diddy. She was introduced as Diddy's girlfriend and rather than being sexualized she just appears to be a typical embodiment of femininity, like Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man. Let's just ignore her hideous appearance in the Donkey Kong Country show.

Now lets take a quick look at the other main female Kong, Candy Kong, DK's girlfriend.


Unlike Dixie and Tiny, Candy is a clearly sexualized character. However in her case she appears to be more of a cartoon caricature, a stereotype of the sexy girlfriend with an, erm, exaggerated figure.




Now back onto Tiny, after her big appearance in DK64 she apparently had some cameos in some of the Donkey Kong GBA games which I didn't really play, but overall she seemed to be fading into obscurity with Chunky and Lanky Kong.
But then, she was to become a playable character in Diddy Kong Racing DS, replacing Banjo, and I thought 'hey, that's great, she's being promoted from a one-off to a minor character and getting to race alongside her sister'.




What the hell is this? They morphed Tiny from a little kid to a jailbait teenager! It isn't even a caricature like Candy, its like some anthro fan art some furry would draw. She's sexy in a realistic way which raises a lot of questions;

Firstly, why would they do this? Did they want to pander to the furries? Were they expecting fan porn? Did they want to try and stop all the fucking weird enlargement fetish furry art of her?

Secondly, why was she suddenly given a realistic figure? She really stands out amongst all the other cartoony characters, its like those TV shows that have a live action person amongst puppet or cartoon characters.

Thirdly, how does this make any sense in universe? She's Dixie's LITTLE sister and Dixie is in DKR DS with her, but Dixie looks exactly the same as she always looks.



What the hell happened here, did Tiny ingest a bunch of growth hormones? Did she use the ring of acorns to become a teenager? And if Tiny is still Dixie's younger sister, why then is Dixie still the same size as Diddy? How come Dixie didn't grow up too? And now that I think about it, why is Diddy the only one with a tail?
And to make this issue even more ridiculously fucked up take a look at this:


TINY is big enough to give Diddy a shoulder ride. What the fuck happened here, the little girl smaller and younger than Diddy and Dixie is now big enough to be their older sister? Is that what happened? Dixie and Tiny swapped ages? Now Tiny is the older sister? Certainly looks that way.

Fourthly, here name is TINY, did they just forget that? The whole point of her character was that she was the small-but-fast character, and in-game she's a Diddy clone, and all-rounder character. Her most important aspect has been completely removed, why not just call her Tween Kong, Teen Hipster Kong, Babysitter Kong, anything now that she's a completely different character,
Speaking of character stats, this is her bio in Mario Super Sluggers:

A well-rounded player with a mean curve!

Yeah I see what they did there.

And finally, back up a bit, go into google image search, turn off safe search and search "Tiny Kong". What the fuck is with those enlargement comics? What kind of sick fuck draws about that and of all characters why tiny? I mean she did always have a sorta large abdomen but seriously! I shouldn't get to the disturbing fetish pictures until at least page 8 but here they're all over the place! I guess that's representative of how much they fucked up Tiny's innocent character.

I play as her most of the time in DKR DS now though. I don't know why, she just seems to handle the best for me. At least she doesn't look that weird in-game.



All pictures used without permission.

the average itunes customer reviewer

1. They'll have an old generation ipod touch/iphone that crashes because the game is meant for 3rd generation systems, but they'll blame the game maker anyway.

2. They want to give it a good review, but for some reason think 1/5 is the highest score you can give a game.

3. Are casuals who have no idea what they're talking about.

tbc

I will pay for your Receipt

Two things I'm sick of on the iTunes app store: Tower Defense games and Web-Based MMO's.
I've played a fair few Tower Defense games and I didn't like it a whole lot. I admit, the ones that are more like "You defend this tower with your finger power" are okay, but really the app store is flooded with them.
And what's with the Web-Based MMO's? Why can't you just go to Facebook and play them? Do they really deserve their own dedicated app? You could make something more interesting yourself. I'd rather play a choose-your-own-adventure with mild RPG elements than click on a quest a few times then wait a while for you to regain energy to do more quests. There's hardly any gameplay in them, but my main gripe is that there's just so many of them, and I'm willing to bet they all play the same.

There are a lot of apps filed under "lifestyle" that are essentially a collection of pictures that you can save to your ipod, and they're always expensive. Really? Do they expect someone to pay $4 for some pictures you stole off DeviantArt and I could find with google image search? For FREE?

The app store game genres are really innacurate. Cheat guides for console games are listed AS games. Web-Based MMO's are listed multiple times, with pay-versions coming with something trivial. Slide To Play's genre classification also has problems. "Unarmed Combat"? Couldn't you just say "2D Fighting Games"? Punch-Out ripoffs should get their own genre.

$8 for Sonic The Hedgehog? Sure its a timeless classic, but $8? Isn't that a bit much? And no, the controls are fine and the lack of a continue option is somewhat offest by a level select cheat.
WWE SvR 2010 was an impulse buy. It may be the same as the java mobile game in many ways, but its still good. No CM Punk? Aww...

And don't EVER buy an iTunes gift card, always get them printed ON the receipt.



Finally, there's this one app, iAllosaur, I... don't really understand it. Its kinda an educational virtual pet where you have extremely limited interaction with the pet and... I just don't get it.

The dumping ground/nitpick of the day 1 March 09

Since I have no current use for this

Jenohart says:
after doin sum hard kor maths and geography
Jenohart says:
back onto dancing
Jenohart says:
i dun get it
The Walrus says:
neither do i
Jenohart says:
liek, they interpreted The Beautiful People as an animalistic dance routine
The Walrus says:
did you see the choreographers for jazz?
Jenohart says:
but that's not the actual feel for it
Jenohart says:
no
Jenohart says:
The actual motif of the song, that comes through in the lyrics and theme, is the Nietzsche ideology of slave/master etc etc
The Walrus says:
every second they were on screen i felt my self getting gayer and gayer
Jenohart says:
lol
Jenohart says:
epic lol

I'm more of a music person.
In So You Think You Can Dance they once did The Beautiful People in one of their dance routines. I thought this was pretty cool guy eh, dances to industrial rock and doesn't afraid of anything. But they really didn't like the routine (well no shit it's Industrial rock from one of the most controversial music artists in popular media, from an album called Anitchrist Superstar) and criticized it for not being 'animalistic' enough, which was the theme of the routine.
And, as I've pointed out in the msn quote, that's not really the best use of the song material, Necrofriggian hell.

On that subject
NITPICK OF THE DAY
Oh noez, it's ben 10 that faggy show for kiddies.
But this is NITPICK time so lets observe the image above
Big Chill, possibly the ONLY cool alien from the new series (and the plotline, Jesus christ, Alien supremacist racist aliens, alien-human babies, romantic sub-plot, what the fuuuuuuuuuuu) as he appears in the game. Among other things he can breathe ice.
WHY THE SHIT IS THERE SNOW FLAKES COMING FROM HIS MOUTH?
I've seen a clip from the show, he just spews his blue freeze breath, like sub-zero, y'know
So why do they have to do this in the game?
Wasn't the blue particle effect and the fact it turns things into ice enough? Why the fuck did they feel the need to add that snowflake icon into the effect? WHY ARE THE SNOWFLAKES THAT BIG? It's like he's trying to shoot snowflakes that knock people out! They probably thought the target audience was too retarded to realize that it's ice breath.

"Hurr mum can i buy dis omnitrix watch mum pleeez its only firty nine niney"
"Fuck you ugly shitface, mum needs her fix so she's going to fuck the next five people she sees. Go kill yourself with a rake you unholy hellspawn cunt"

Perhaps that was a bit much
All they ever buy is the watches
Can't they see the 4 inch figures of the old series are fucking hard to get now?
I've only ever seen like one store still stock them.
WHY ISN'T THE NEW STUFF OUT YET?

[
The Walrus says:
a clockwork orange is about morality
The Walrus says:
not dancing around a police car in one piece overalls
]
enned outn

Yo u k now I can get aw ay wit h this be cau se no one rea d thi s blo g =D

Sirius newz: Star Wars The Force Unleashed~comments on the game

"The platforming makes you feel like you're playing as a toy come to life [...] it was rly rly fluid and awesome and that it felt perfect" ~GIR

"The combat sucks" ~GIR

The hype for this game is hueg. The first I ever heard of it was technically in the ads for the sith spikes/colour change lightsaber thingy (which technically comes from the game). There are ads for it, toys for it, lego for it, a novelization for it, makes me wonder if we're going to see a movie of it (hopefully not).

So I have the PSP and DS version (will get 360 version, EVENTUALLY. The PSP version is almost identical anyway, differences will be noted).

I love how the above image has NOTHING to do with the game.
Which brings me to my first point about the game
The lightsaber combat isn't as good as in the Jedi Knight games (Jedi Academy and Jedi Knight II). In the mentioned two games you could change your lightsaber stance and in Jedi Academy you could wield two lightsabers or a double bladed lightsaber. Ignoring that, the lightsaber combat in the mentioned games was good as all you needed to do was press the attack button and move around and your character would attack in a way that suits the direction (eg moving sideways would cause your character to spin around whilst slashing). In Force Unleashed you only use one Lightsaber and while you can unlock new combos, it's still not as good as it could've been. The main focus is on force powers and you may be able to get through most of the game using just them.
But the force powers are of course, the main focus of the game, and they're really impressive. You initially get force lightning, force push/grip, force repulse and lightsaber throw. All of them are quite impressive. Force grip lets you pick up any free object like debri or other enemies and throw them around. As you progress, you unlock more force powers but also unlock force powers that are combinations of the powers. For example, you can do a force push that explodes on contact, or grip an enemy and throw objects at the enemy while they are still in your grip. As long as you have enough force energy (the curse of the blue energy bar strikes again!) you don't really need to use the lightsaber, unless you're up against a large enemy or another Jedi in a duel.The game makes heavy use of quick time button press sequences and they are sometimes required to defeat certain foes.

You can customize your lightsaber. In the PSP version instead of compressed etc. modes on the lightsaber you instead collect crystals that are different hues of the lightsaber. You can also collect and use different hilts. It ads a little bit more of a replay value running around the level looking for stuff.

It has quite a few platforming segments, fairly average stuff, nothing too challenging. Though the PSP version suffers from not being able to move the camera (a recipe for disaster in a 3D game). You often find yourself having to stop running just to let the camera adjust, otherwise you could run into a pit and die (the penalties for dying aren't too harsh).

One thing I note in the PSP and console versions is that you can play as many characters from the Star Wars universe, and many from the game's plot as extra skins. If you're playing as someone other than a costume of the main character then cutscenes will be disabled but hey, you can play as the freakin Emperor. With a pink lightsaber.

Oh yeah, the DS version is controlled with the Dpad for moving and the touch screen for everything else. There are minigames instead of button press sequences, the force combos are done by sliding the stylus over the icons, the ability to use the force on your environments is limited and overall, I didn't like it.

Mission statement

I AM THE HORSEMAN

IM NATURALLY MAD

I AM A SHARP SHOOTER
SITTIN ON A ROOF TOP
MAH NAME IS MC H
I GOT BIG BRAEKS
AND DA FACE
ONE
TWO
CHECK
IT'S A MIXTURE ROT TO THE CORE
THRU DA TEXTUR
COME ADN GET A TAEST OF DA FIXTUR
YAEH




Expect to update NEVER