Hearts and Minds (by Brogan)

How ironic is it that I watch and subsequently review Hearts and Minds (a 1974 documentary about the Vietnam War) the very night before the release of Call of Duty: Black Ops (a first-person-shooter video game about special-ops soldiers in the Vietnam War)? Personally I feel there’s no way in hell our friends at Treyarch injected even a sliver of the pain, suffering and hardships of the people from both sides of the war into Black Ops. However, I can’t use this powerful film to attack a game I haven’t played yet.

This documentary depicts both the opinions of the Americans involved and the atrocities committed against the citizens of Vietnam. Ex-soldiers, enlisted soldiers, Vietnamese villagers, stock plus captured footage, and various other people are all shown as they are. Reactions are real, opinions are stated plainly, and above all, I felt I was the only one who really took sides. I felt all that was shown here was truth; there was a scene that a small part of me will never be able shake.

This one will be short. But I don’t think there’s a whole lot to say. There are themes expressed in Hearts and Minds that could easily be applied to today’s modern world.  All I can really say is, if you like documentaries, or better, if you have an opportunity to see this film, see it; and if you don’t have an opportunity to see this movie, make one. I won’t give Hearts and Minds a score, but whatever your “see it” threshold is, give it that score if you really want to.

Revolution X (by TanRans)

Revolution X is an arcade light gun game developed and published by Midway, with the soundtrack done by Aerosmith. The game was ported to the SNES which was actually developed by Rageware and is what I will be playing and reviewing for you. The game is a standard rail shooter in which you "the Protagonist" have to save the band Aerosmith from the "New Order Nation" or the "N.O.N." who have declared war on youth. The game starts with a man or robot thing yelling at you saying "WAKE UP! The revolution has begun! Generation X is in effect" and then you see a helicopter fly by until you get to what looks like a club.

The gameplay is almost unbearable and since you can't use a light gun you have to use the D-pad on the controller, this is true on any and I repeat ANY of the home console ports, which  makes aiming ridiculously hard to do. You have 2 weapons a machine-gun and a rocket launcher, I didn't realize I had the machine-gun until the second level because I am used to using the right shoulder button to shoot, however you don't need the machine-gun because the rockets never seem to run out of ammo and it's a one hit kill while the machine gun takes 4 or 5 bullets to kill an enemy. You never know if your getting shot because there isn't any sign of it like the screen shaking or turning red for a second and that makes you die a lot, but that doesn't matter because you have infinite continues for whatever reason. The worst thing about the game is actually beating it, you have to find all five of the band members of Aerosmith to get the real ending of the game, and they are all in hidden places, if that isn't ridiculous I don't know what is.

The graphics aren't good in any way, they are digitized sprites just like Mortal Kombat but they do a poor job of showing what the SNES can do. The enemies look like they belong in a motocross game, they look like they are wearing dirt biking gear, and some of them look like they are wearing roller skates and they are rolling around with there legs not moving. The sound is horrible but don't take my word for it because I loathe Aerosmith and I mean that. All the music is a loop of the same song over and over (I don't know the song because I hate Aerosmith so much) but honestly that is just annoying and gives me a headache. The voices make me want to cry they all sound like a recording that was put on a CD and left out in the sun for 3 years.

Overall this game is so bad that it has made me take off all of my clothes in anger. You will not have fun playing this game unless you have some weird disease where you like bad games. I will give this barely playable, poor excuse for a video game 13/100 points


By the way, I have heard good things about the arcade cabinet of this game. This review only covers the SNES version.

Megamind (by Brogan)

Megamind is DreamWorks latest CG animated film. This is another movie that seems to follow DreamWorks strange trend of having their audiences cheer for the villain (see Despicable Me). This one takes on a more classic superhero-vs.-supervillian motif, but in many ways is a real parody of the whole thing.

Our “hero”, title character Megamind, was given up for adoption the old 

“Kryptonian-way”, and at the same time the neighboring planet send out a baby of its own. This rival baby grows to be Metro Man, defender of Earth city “Metro City”. After Megamind eventually defeats his rival and subsequently takes over the city, he learns having everything is rather disappointing and decides to create a new Metro Man all while trying to gain the affection of the woman of his dreams.

I was presently surprised about how the plot of this film turned out. I was afraid this would turn out as another villain-becoming-a-hero type story that has been done to death in children’s films. It turned out to have a complex- yet not overly-complex- plotline that’s pleasantly funny and enjoyable for all ages.

This time around, DreamWorks put a lot of work into their animation. It’s well-detailed and the characters don’t look lazily designed as they did in Despicable Me.  The soundtrack consists of overused, yet still awesome tracks. Voice work is fairly top-notch; the all-star cast brings their usual charismatic energy to the characters. While some jokes fall flat, and fall hard, a great majority of the humor comes from the subtlety in the dialogue.

Just in case you’re wondering, the kids will love it. I asked my 9-year-old brother he thought, and obviously it was, “really funny”. It’s a good family flick; I give Megamind 82/100 points

Get your friends to read. We love our readers. Let us know you’re reading. For the next month or so, I will be reviewing an old back-catalog of films I haven’t seen yet, so be prepared. I’ll try and get the other guys in on it too. The New Guys love you guys! Thanks a million.

SUPER PUNCH-OUT!! (by TanRans)

I'm going to start off with one of the best games on the SNES that I spent way too much time on. No, ear-biting, boxing superstar Mike Tyson's name is not all over this, so it didn't sell as well as the original. However, when I played it I wondered, “why wasn't this game advertised better". Super Punch-out!! truly a hidden gem of the SNES and I feel it's almost if not better than the original NES title. The only problem with this game is that it is incredibly hard. Once you get passed the minor league fights you will spend hours yelling profanities at the Television screen. If I had a nickel for every time Piston Hurricane gave me an uppercut I would have like 3 bucks. Once you get the hang of it the game it can actually be pretty enjoyable, everyone has their own little special thing where there coach that you can't see yells at them and they start whooping your ass... hard, but it isn't anything that a bit of blocking and dodging can't stop. That's another problem, the game is pretty predictable, and after I had beaten it I went back to minor league and was able to beat it in less than 4 minutes because everyone’s movements are so easy to predict.

Super Punch-out!! is a total upgrade from the original. You may not be Little Mac, but you sure are ready to take on the big guys. The graphics are phenomenal for 16-bit. I personally love 16 bit graphics. This games voices sound great, they’re really clear for this type of game. The music isn't memorable, but it is still pretty good while you’re in the moment. When you play you have these two moves, a jab and a hook, which you can alternate arms. Also, you have this thing at the bottom of the screen called a "super meter" which fills up when you successfully hit your opponent and when it fills up you can release a barrage of very powerful very fast punches, which if you knock your opponent down with, it will most likely knock them out. I have played it for over 15 hours and i know that the game is definitely good but it could be polished up even more.

I will give Super Punch-out!! 82/100 points

Super Meat Boy (Dengakuslash)

Super Meat Boy is an independently developed fast paced single-player platformer from hell on Xbox Live Arcade, WiiWare, and soon to be on PC developed by Team Meat. You control a little block of meat named Meat Boy (As the title suggests) who goes on a long quest to rescue his girlfriend, Bandage Girl, from the evil Dr. Fetus. The game is adapted from a flash game that started on Newgrounds (Meat Boy) and due to it's popularity, Team Meat was able to publish this platforming gem onto consoles.

This game is pure platforming at it's finest. The entire game consists of just reaching "Point A" to "Point B" by jumping, running, and wall jumping. Sounds simple enough, right? Wrong. This is one of the hardest games I have played in my entire life. Team Meat really went out of their way to make this so difficult. This game is so difficult, I bit my controller in rage after dying 200+ times on ONE LEVEL. Every trap and platform you have to  run, jump, and wall-jump to is positioned so precisely that one mistake will send you to a death. Although, even though this game is very hard, it never feels cheap, like a lot of hard games do. All the deaths can be blamed on mistakes you make. Also, it is nice that when you die there are instant respawns so there is no waiting between all of the many deaths that you will bring upon yourself. With the insane difficulty, each level feels very rewarding to complete. One thing I like is when you complete a level, The game plays all of the replays of the deaths that occurred on that level simultaneously, along with a replay of you completing the level mixed in with it. It's kind of a comic relief, seeing a sea of Meat Boys dying after each level.

Even though the game is single player, I had a blast playing this game with a friend and switching off every few levels. Having a friend to share the games with muffles the rage the builds up when you just can't beat a level.

At the end of each world, there is a boss fight. The bosses in Super Meat Boy are insanely difficult. One thing I don't like about the bosses, though, is that most of them are just an obstacle course. Although it's fast-paced and intense, it would have been cool for Team Meat to find a way for you to actually fight all of the bosses.

There is a neat item-collecting aspect to the game, where you collect Bandages scattered across all of the levels. Collecting these bandages grants you unlockables such as new levels and new characters. There are 12 unlockable characters, each with their own special ability. What I like about these characters is that most of them are from different independently developed, and they all have an ability native to their purpose in their own game. Such as Tim from "Braid", who can rewind time for a few seconds.

Being from Newgrounds, this game has a very cartoon like feel and is very humorous. The game FEELS like a classic NES/SNES era game, but with the visuals and aspect ratio of modern games. Although it's not really laugh-out-loud funny, the game's jokes in the short cutscenes made me chuckle. On the menus of this game, it sticks with a newgrounds-esque cartoon-like art style. In-game, though, it switches to a mix of the cartoon-like style and pixel art. Surprisingly, this mix of styles is very appealing to the eye and fun to look at.

My favorite part of this game are the "Warp Zones" scattered throughout the levels. When you Access the Warp Zones, Beautifully crafted Pixel Art "Title Screens" show up, prompting you to press start. When you press start, a chiptune rendition of the game's theme song plays with a set of 3 16-bit or 8-bit levels awaiting you. The moment I saw this, it was like a nostalgic Shin-Shoryuken right to my face.

At the date I bought this game, (10/22), the game was priced at 800 MS points, (That's $10, if you didn't know.), but the game is being raised to 1200 MS Points ($15) in November. It took me around 5-6 hours to complete the game's 6 main worlds. There is lots of re-playability to this game. If you complete a level in a certain amount of time, you unlock the "Dark World" version of the level. This is basically a harder version of the level. And since most of the levels are hard already, the Dark World versions are insanely difficult. Once you collect enough bandages you unlock a world called "Teh Internets", which is Free downloadable content. Free expanding to an already huge game.

Pros:

• Tight, responsive controls
• A good challenge among the modern sea of cakewalk-like easy games
• Great soundtrack
• Appealing visuals and great pixel art
• Massive re-playability
• Free downloadable content
• Even with the difficulty, the deaths do not feel cheap
• Fun to play as a pass-and-play multiplayer game

Cons:

• Sometimes, the difficulty can be rage-inducing
• Some of the bosses don't really feel like bosses

Final Verdict:
This game hates me. This game hates you. This game hates everyone. But that shouldn't stop you from playing this gem of a game. Super Meat Boy is a nostalgic, fun, challenging title that definitely should not be missed! With the great mix of fun, pure platforming, and a great art style, I couldn't recommend this game any more!
Final Score: 93/100 Points