Castlevania: Dawn Of Sorrow and Castlevania: Portrait Of Ruin Reviews

Hey guys! Spartan 120 here. I love castlevania games too much I think and I own both and so I wondered which is better on the DS.

I'll start with Dawn Of Sorrow, this was released before portrait of ruin and it is the sequel to Aria Of Sorrow, you play as Soma, the reincarnation of Dracula (but your good) and an evil cult are trying to release your inner demon to restore balance in the world. This is different from most Castlevania games because you don't play as a Belmont and you won't have the Vampire Killer whip.

The game has the classic 2-D gameplay and you must collect Magic seals (Which are used by drawing on the touch screen) and when you beat a boss you must draw it to seal it away. These seals start as simple shapes buy get harder and harder to draw. Many of the monsters in this game are also from Aria Of Sorrow like Balore if any of you guys know who he is XD

The game has a good way of telling the story, most cutscenes are triggered when certain bosses are beaten or if you enter rooms. The castle itself is very big and you will find yourself getting lost or not knowing where to go if your not careful and you may have to consult a walkthrough like I had to a few times.

After you beat the game you unlock Julius mode, a harder version of the game where you play as three characters, but you cannot use items and this makes it a lot harder the final boss is also different because the mode sticks with the bad ending where Soma turns evil.

Moving on to Portrait of ruin, this game is like dawn of sorrow in gameplay terms. In this game you play as Jonathon Belmont who is on a mission to investigate Castlevania, Dracula's castle which appears once every 100 years (or something like that). Jonathon is also partnered with Charlotte, a wizard who is helping Jonathon. You can keep switching between the two and you can give them both different powers.

This game has a big castle too. You'll find portals scattered around and each takes you to another world. These vary from a scary carnival to a desert palace. The one thing I didn't like was when you get near the end of the game you have to basically do a repeat of all the previous levels, but these are a lot harder and have harder bosses.

When you beat the game you unlock two more modes, which let you go through the game with the old Belmont from the SNES castlevania games and where you can play as the two vampire sisters, this mode uses the touch screen for attacks and is very well thought out.

Overall I think that both the games are very good and fun to play. However Portrait of ruin is better because I think it has more gameplay. However Dawn Of Sorrow is still good and I did have problems with Portrait Of Ruin's Quests because they are very difficult and not very well though out

Portrait Of Ruin- B

Dawn Of Sorrow- B

(I put them as the same because it's really what you prefer out of the two)

pictures from GameFaqs.com and nintendods.com and staticgamesradar.com

GTA IV: The Lost and Damned DLC Review

Say goodbye to Niko Bellic, that loveable rogue from Serbia that we know and love, and say hello to the new guy: Johnny Klebitz. This new DLC follow’s Johnny Klebitz, a hard-as-nails biker in the gang “The Lost”. Johnny is the vice-president of The Lost, and as the president of the biker returns from rehab, Billy Grey, Johnny’s ex-girlfriend is the least of his worries. Billy decides to go on an all out war with the rival gang, “The Angels of Death” – whom are currently having a ‘ceasefire’. Ill not delve into the story any longer, as not to ruin it for anyone whom has not yet purchased it.

The DLC, priced at 1600 Microsoft Points, and a hefty 1.7gb download is not short of content. Along with the 23 individual new mission’s included in the game (which, if you paid attention to the story of GTA, link in very well with it). There are 25 new gang wars, in which you and your fellow gang members take out rival gang members – much like the gang wars of GTA: San Andreas. These gang wars help you to boost your fellow gang member’s overall toughness, and how good a chance they stand in a fight. On top of that, there’s also new Road Rash style race’s, in which you can knock each other off your bike with a baseball bat! Also, the little extra’s from GTA IV carry over – like being able to take out your buddies to get drunk, or watch a comedy show. This DLC also includes something that I believe should have been in GTA IV in the first place, mid-level check points!

In addition to the new single player features listed above, there are also new multiplayer modes. These multiplayer modes are a great addition to an already great multiplayer game. New multiplayer modes include “Own the City” (In which you and a rival team capture territories, which when captured, friendly NPC’s appear in to protect the area from the rival team appear – a gun van can be found to upgrade the NPC’s weaponry), “Chopper vs Chopper” (a 1 vs 1 where one player drives a bike, and must try to survive the longest by going through checkpoints, and the other player fly’s a NOOSE helicopter, and must try and kill the biker as quickly as possible), and “Lone Wolf Biker”. (A version of ‘tag’ in which if you kill the Lone Wolf Biker, you become the LWB, and must try to survive the longest, whilst other players try to kill you and become the LWB.) My personal favourite is Lone Wolf Biker, as nothing beats being chased by a person in a car and nipping down into the subway to get away from them!

Closing Comments

If you own GTA IV, and enjoyed it, this DLC is a must have add-on that you should definitely buy. It contains at least 8 hours of gameplay, for the quickest gamer, and if like me, someone who likes to take it steady, at least 20 hours of gameplay! The story adds an interesting new layer to Liberty City (and by taking mostly place in Alderney, the last island, my least explored – and I’m sure other people’s least explored island as well, it feels like a completely different experience), and great new multiplayer mode’s that should not be missed out on. Highly recommended!

All pictures taken from: http://www.listal.com/game/the-lost-and-damned-xbox-360/pictures

A Challenger Approaches!

Yo dudes! Dave here making my introductory post! Im mainly a Xbox 360 gamer, but i also play my Wii from time to time. Ill be writing reviews on Xbox 360 games and perhaps some Wii games.

Hope you enjoy the reviews!

Teh Gaming News Issue 4

Hey readers, 

Its time for Teh Gaming News which is fashionably not done quite on time as per usual! Where kicking of with first......

Dead Space Wii

Well Dead Space Extinction to be exact. This is a on rails shooter (much like Resident Evil Umbrella Chronicles) which is a prequel to the 360 game and its coming to the Wii. With this and many more games such as House of the Dead: Overkill and Mad World will people still call the Wii for Mums and little kids?

Halo Wars and more

Yeah, Halo Wars is officially in stores now although I do not own it yet because I maybe sorta owe my Mum and Dad money, then I need to fix the DS Lite...... But as soon as thats all done you can expect a review of the game! Other notable games which has came out this month....

Street Fighter 4 which I would like to get but seeing as I am not the best at Street Fighter 2 I may just wait until someone else gets and just borrow it of them. 

DLC GET!

Brand new DLC is now up for Grand Theft Auto 4 which goes under the name of 'The Lost and The Damned' which will be reviewed soon. So sit tight GTA fans!

New Dudes

We here at Triforce Games are always looking for new people to write with us and we have done just that. Enter Platinum aka Dave. He will be reviews this that and the other like the rest us. 

Thats about everything for this month! See you again next month for Teh Gaming News!

Wii Speak

Hey I was ment to get this up last week sorry it's a little late.

The long awaited Animal Crossing: Lets Go To The City, came with a nifty little addition to the Wii's collection of peripherals (add ons); In my opinion of course the worst one of all. Wii Speak. My experience with it is terrible. It echo's, it squeaks it makes noises it really shouldn't.

Yes it does the job and it does what nintendo wanted it to do but for me it could be better. I seem to get the feeling they were making it just to fill a gap in the market and did it as cheap as they could.

Now don't get me wrong it is a great peice of kit to have for your wii and so far i have only used it a couple of times for animal crossing and nothing else really. So if you have not yet bought Animal Crossing don't get Wii Speak Animal Crossing Bundle. AC is good on it's own and has an in game keyboard so who needs to talk. Plus you could always just ring the person your playing with anyway. Thats it for my rant if you have any other opinions on Wii Speak just leave us a comment.


Callum out.

F.E.A.R 2: Project Origin Preview

Hey guys Mark here, I'm previewing the F.E.A.R 2 demo which came out a couple of weeks ago.

F.E.A.R 1 was a scary game, I never got it myself but I played the demo and thought it was awesome. F.E.A.R 2 has carried those scares over. Almas back and she's even scarier in this demo, you star in the remains of a crashed helicopter and you see Alma. The demo takes you through a school, a subway, a freaky street, a cinema and it finishes with a level on a mech. It's quite long and fun to play. There are a lot of weapons to find and your character has the ability to slow time. This is very hand if you ever get trapped in the middle of a firefight. The game is still quite graphic and gory, the shotgun will shoot enemies limbs off.

The game has had a huge graphic update and the new look makes it even scarier. Your often walking down a corridor and something will happen to make you jump. These vary from simple things like doors flying open, to ghosts attacking. There are moments in the game where you'll be confused and wonder "What just happened?!". I remember once I heard freaky music and nothing happened so I laughed and said down the mic to my party "Ha I just dodged something scary =D" Then I got raped by ghost things and it was scary XD

Overall I would say its full of fun and scares. I would recommend it to anyone who likes scary games and shooters, or fans of the original F.E.A.R (Which stands for First Encounter Assault Recon before I forget to throw that in) =D

picture from gameupdates.com

Halo Wars Hands On Preview

I'm no stranger to the RTS (Real Time Strategy) genre and if anything I am more familiar to that then FPS (First Person Shooter) games such as Halo. So to me I couldn't wait to get started with Halo Wars.

First thing I did after downloading the demo (which by the way for all you who haven't yet, takes some time) was go campaign. Two levels controlling the UNSC fighting the Covenant. It is based 20 years before Halo Combat Evolved and you can tell. In the campaign unlike in the FPS which you see a few marines and ODST's every now and then here there's loads (as you can expect).

 There are also plenty of Spartans at your control which is pretty neat, which all act like Master Chief. They can take enemy vehicles and use friendly ones to there full potential. Most units all have a special move which can be activated with the Y button (X is used to command your units to move and attack). For instance Warthogs drive at full speed into enemies knocking them flying much like what you do on Halo, but if try to ram a turret or building the unit will lose health (which should be noted because many a time I sent my Warthogs charging at building only to have them explode in my face a few minutes later). Marines can chuck grenades which can be later upgraded with flash bang technology. 

The story line as far as I can tell is the usual Halo affair. Covenant find Forerunner relic and try to use it to defeat the flood (which have been confirmed to be in the game).

Anyway back to the campaign. Your first mission involves re-taking your base from the Covenant. You start of with only a Warthog under you control with a hero unit inside (Not much is known about hero units, as there mainly seen in campaign), but slowly you rally the surviving soldiers and take the base back. This can be seen as a non guided tutorial to controlling units because it goes through vaguely how to play (Don't worry there is a detailed tutorial at the ready if you need it)

The next mission involves remaking the base and taking out the Covenant. Base making is standard RTS stuff, although you only have a certain amount of squares. So if you run out of squares you need to find another spot to make a base. Its all simple stuff.  Like Halo its pick up and play and just good fun. 

The game it self is made just for the 360 so for those thinking 'Oh noes! I can't play a RTS without a mouse and keyboard!' need not worry because it plays fine. Like I said before you could pick up the controller and make a wild stab at the controls and likely get 70% of it right. The only problem I find is when you just want to select one type of unit say your ground ones and you quite often end up selecting your air units and vehicles as well. 

After I had completed the two levels I then headed over to skirmish mode. On the demo, you can only play one level but you can look at the levels you could play with the full game (including a map called Blood Gulch!). You can also choose to play as the UNSC or The Covenant. Also it looks like there are different team leaders who get special advantages and units. For instance the UNSC leader you could play as on the demo could make Elephants, while the The Covenant leader could have a Prophet unit as well as special Elites with twin energy swords.

 So there seems to be many ways to play. With co-op and online confirmed it looks like Halo Wars could be one of the best RTS games for the 360!

picture from https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEie76oEPf6_tX23xYMbAlu2dwYYODIQl_824xHPBLqB5k6NhDBP4-3nQM4f4i3m8wjY9LSq0RMA295J8Mq4Rbgc1LqPCGOQG-ElI0_PBrxMu-fhJTHutCsZ4i2wayQFo-8PPN6w8jzKEs4/s400/DGN_Halo_Wars_Box_Art.jpg

Animal Crossing Lets Go To The City / City Folk

 

Animal Crossing has at last come to Wii. This long awaited game has been on every Animal Crossing lovers christmas list, and to be honest it is a good game but it is just like wild world only with a city but there are a few new features to the Wii version.

1. Improved graphics thanks to the Wii's higher capability.
2. A city. This place has all your much loved shops like Shampoodle and Crazy Redds.
3. They have brought back the different levels like in Animal Crossing for Game Cube.
4. Nooks shop, instead of having to have someone vist your shop to get the higher upgrade all you have to do is spend spend spend.
5. The wii's interactive wii remote allows you to shake the wii remote to use tools and to get out of those ever anoying pit falls.
6. You can chose out of four different houses which is a nice little bonus.

There is also a lot in the game that is like the previous games. We have Nooks shop the local money hungry racoon, the museum, able sisters, and villagers. (well it wouldn't be Animal Crossing without them) We also have the rolling world like in wide world when the screen rolls as if your village is the world. We have all the fruit to sell to money grabbing Nook.
Animal Crossing also brings with us wii speak..... it's a microphone.
The Wii version also has an updated wi-fi mode where you can use wii speak to talk to the person your playing with. ( I don't know why you can't just ring them up but wii speak is free.)
But overall this is a good game a few new features a few old ones add them all togeth it makes a great game but for me it is too like Animal Crossing wide world. i give this game overall an....


 A for the great gameplay that never gets boring. (unless you never come off it)



pictures from: http://www.animalcrossingwii.nl/blog/uploaded_images/boxart-744010.jpg

Second Opinion

I got Animal Crossing City Folk for Christmas knowing that it was the same game as Wild World and the Game Cube version because I needed a reason to go on my Wii again and to me I thought it was okay. Only okay that is because really unless you are an Animal Crossing fanboy or need a reason to play the Wii then there isn't much real point buying it if you already have it on DS or Game Cube. The things it does add such as the city, extra shops, more items, new villagers and events are pretty cool but really when push comes to shove it is a port of the DS version with cleaner graphics and a few extras. If you really want to get the most out this game see it as AC WW 1.5. Its the same game with added extras.

Second Opinion Rating: C

Teh Gaming News Issue 3

Hey Readers!

Sorry about a lack of an update during the Christmas months. I hope you won't bite my head to much it was Christmas! X D Anyway I also owe you guys an apology. I wanted to get this article up on Wednesday but I have been ill a lot the past two weeks. Anyway enough of my excuses and lets get on with the news!

1Up has changed hands

1Up and all its associated sites (gamevideos.com,mycheats.com and gametab.com) are now owned by UGO Entertainment and the company has fired many good 1Up staff . It was a sad day on the 6th of January with most of the 1Up podcasts discontinued (including The 1Up Show), but even though there not working a 1Up now there still doing there thing! For instance the guys who brought you 1Up FM can be found at www.eat-sleep-game.com and then the three guys behind The 1Up Show can be found now www.area51.tv which can be watched on Youtube at the moment.

Resident Evil 5 Demo, now complete with token white zombies!

I downloaded the RE5 demo as soon as I got home from school and spent all night playing online co-op with my friends over and over on the same two levels. Now for those with just a PS3 and have to wait a little while longer for the demo I can safely say (on the 360) it is brilliant if you like RE4. To be honest, the best way to see RE5 is RE4.5 which to be honest is not a bad thing! Resident Evil 4 was great fun and I have completed it at least three times and spent who knows how many hours on 'The Mercenaries' mini game. Now RE5 is so good for a demo the mistakes I noticed were really small, but the biggest of the small problems were the fact that the game's gone 'politically correctness' mad! For instance the game got moaned at because apparently killing Africans is racist, but killing Americans in Raccoon City isn't. So to stop being 'racist' Capcom have put token white zombies everywhere in the demo. To me that took me out of the mood of being in a shanty town full of zombies. Other than that the demo was awesome. The graphics are beautiful and nothing beats hiding in house with a friend when you know outside there is a mad man with bag on his head carrying a chainsaw.

Final Fantasy XIII - New Trailer!

Square Enix put out a new trailer for FF XIII and includes something which for me is brilliant.... gameplay! Now, I love CGI as much as the other guy but gameplay talks to me more. So in this paragraph I will not be talking about the story because I trust Square Enix to do a good job with that. The gameplay interests me more. From the small part of the trailer which was gameplay I could tell it is a step up from FF XII. As in its RT and you queue up commands. It also looks slightly Kingdom Hearts like with all the jumping up in the air thing. If they can combine KH and FF together battle wise then this game could be amazing! Oh, and heres a link if your interested: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GC1-_hnxwa4&annotation_id=annotation_942682&feature=iv

Thats all for now from me,

Signing out Josh aka The Triforce Fighter

Dead Space

Hey guys, Mark here, been a bit late this week but I've been busy, so here's my review on Dead Space for the 360 (and its also on the PS3).

Dead space takes place in the future, you play as engineer Isaac Clarke and you are sent to the Ishimura, a mining ship with your team to investigate a sudden stop of transmissions. You are separated from your team and discover monsters called Necromorphs are on the ship and they are mutated crew members. There are 12 long chapters and a variety of weapons, the weapons are mainly makeshift weapons like a mineral cutter, a blowtorch turned into a flamethrower.

The game focuses on dismemberment to kill the Necromorphs. You can have to strategically shoot off your foe's limbs you save ammo and kill them. Your ememies won't die straigt away though, for example shoot a Necromorph's leg off, it will crawl after you.

This game has beautiful graphics, I know that might sound strange for a horror game but the real beauty is in the Zero Gravity areas or in space, you can jump around, fight and solve puzzles in the Zero G areas. This is really fun because you can just bounce off the walls and it's really enjoyable. The Vacuums are cool aswell, your in an area of Space, you have a air timer on Isaac's back that says how much oxygen you have left.

The game has a brilliant story, however you have to really get into the game before it starts to unveil but it's really good, much better than I originally thought and nothing like I've ever seen. The game looks and plays very similar to a lot of other horror games- Resident evil 4, bioshock, Far cry and it really works =D

It really fits the role of horror game aswell and will keep you jumping throught it's action packed storyline aswell.

Overall I think this is really good and has brilliant gameplay, story and ideas. It's inresting and has thought of everything. Theres even a Zero G basketball court in chapter 10 :D. I really haven't seen anything else like it. At some times it seems you have too much ammo and too many health kits then theres like a boss or you get attacked by loads of Necromorphs and suddenly you have very low ammo and not many health kits =S.

My Rating: A*

Screenshots from 360hq.com

gamepro.com

shacknews.com