Okay I’m doing this review becusae a friend asked me too (bob our guest reviewer) and I’ve been slacking on the reviews and well it’s a gadget. We’ll review gadgets from time to time. So here goes, my not to long, but not too short review on the Verizon Voyager!

I used to have a VX7000, I got it for mostly free since my mother and sister got one they had a buy one get 2 free or some crap, so they gave me one.. IT was a great little phone! but as of late the charging wasn’t working so well.. So i decided since i had 100$ credit in the bank and the voyager is down to 149.99 with a 2 year contract and rebates i’d give it a shot.. Hell its 50 bucks!..

 Right off the bat its a sexy phone! I allways thought it was.. True it is not an iphone, but i look at this phone as something different than an Iphone. Why? It has a fold open keyboard with another screen.. To be honest the touch on the front is almost gimmicky.. BUT I do like having a full size viewing screen on the front.. It makes viewing things much more tolerable. Okay lets get down to brass tacks.

The Touch Screen

The touch screen on the unit is more of a pressure touch screen. I Find that sometimes i cant get the unlock key to unlock the phone if i just barely touch it, i either need to make a solid tap of it, or i need to hit it a few times, once its unlocked tho it seems to notice most things i do just fine, That or i’m adjusting to what it wants to get from me. I have to say, since this is my first touch screen phone, that i’m not too impressed with trying to text with it on the screen.. IT all depends on my mood. IF i’m trying to text while in the car at a light or something, i hope you speak alien language cuz the t9 is going to throw up some wierd shit for you. IF i take my time and use two fingers i get better results but at that rate i may was well just flip it open and use the keyboard. So texting on the front.. meh.. its so/so I dont love it, i dont hate it.. but sometimes its a bit frustrating… navigating menu’s is nice though, i simply touch where i want and i can go there..  One thing i do not like though is that when I’m on a call it locks the phone after a few seconds, so if i’m being prompted by some number.. i.e. “PRess 2 to speak with an operator” I now have to first hit a button to the turn front screen on (it goes off while not being used after a few seconds) Then unlock the phone via touch screen then hit the number i want.. Its kind of a pain. There is an easier way though, there is a small button on the left side of the phone which does and instant auto unlock, i’m not used to using it yet, but it would drastically cut this down.. Though honestly i kind of wish it would just leave it unlocked during a call, and there may be a setting for this but i’m not finding it yet.

So there’s 4 main options you cause on the touch screen on the front of the phone, the first being the texting button which i like cuz i text alot, so its right there…(a tad small but workable), the next being the phone button which brings up a regular phone interface to call people, the third being the menu (same menu you get when you flip open the phone and select menu) and the fourth being the directory of people you know. There’s a 5th option which isn’t instantly obviously, that being if you push any part of your default background you’re given a shortcut menu, very similar to iphones. This menu gives you 11 choices you can choose from and luckily its customizable! well…. to an extent.. This is where it sucks.. not EVERY thing on the phone can be put here.. For instance, this phone features a stop watch, a cool little feature if you’re timing how fast your buddies can down a beer for instance, but you cant link that into the shortcut menu, it pre-selects like 15 items you can choose from and THATS it. well that isn’t so great for a touch screen phone which you want shortcuts with…

The rest of the interface and interactions are okay, i dont have too much to complain about.. Even with my screen protector over my phone its still pretty sensitive to my touches.  Although i do have to say the ‘drag’ functionality leaves a bit to be desired. I find that when i first tried to scroll through my phone book by ‘dragging’ i went the wrong way, not only that, but most people i give the phone too that have never used a touch phone do exactly what I did, they go the other way. I dont know why, but we did that, not that the phone is wrong, it would just be nice to have an option to invert scrolling or something. Though now i’m used to it, the scrolling still isn’t as smooth as it could be, often times i feel like i need to keep my finger pressed against the screen pretty good for it to register the full drag otherwise i get false clicks or select something i didnt mean too..

Also dont turn of the mini vibrate haptec feedback, it helps you, trust me. I tried without it, i text a bit better with it cuz now i know when i’m hitting a key. IT also lets me know that my phone is a tad glichy when i hit ‘unlock’ 4 times and feel a vibrate yet i dont get it unlocking.. So the phone isn’t absolutely perfect but i KNOW i felt a vibrate and my phone didnt un-lock.

Flip open keyboard and screen!

One really nice thing about this phone is that LG didnt skimp when it came to flip open functionality, the screen inside the phone is VERY bright and vivid and crisp, as well as just as large as the front screen! it might be a tad smaller i haven’t measured and i’m FAR to lazy to look up the spec’s but its damn nice to be sure!  it is NOt touch screen but does it need to be? There’s stereo speakers on the left and right.. They do get a little crackly when its too loud, or on certain speaker phone calls, but i’m happy to at least have gotten speaker phone! Speaker phone works best when the phone is open by the way. 

Another great feature i love on this phone is the completely back lit keyboard. Its not super 100% bright but its enough to see every single key, and its pretty evenly lit. Unlike my saitek eclipse 2 keyboard on my computer where you can hardly read some of the keys in the dark, these are all lit up nice. At first i didnt think it would have a lit keyboard and I was a bit down about that,  but when i saw it, i gasped and smiled It was nice of them to remember that some of text at night while lying in bed! Keys are square and fairly big, i never have much trouble hitting them or over or under hitting.. I am still getting used to the space keys so often times my words are seperated by periods instead of spaces, but being my first full qwerty keyboard, it is real nice to be able to switch between numbers and letters immediately just by moving my thumb and not having to change an entry system.

The screen pivots open two clicks one at an angle and one puts it almost straight with the keyboard (a littler further back then the first click).

Sound quality

So the only issue i have with the phone is that its sound quality leaves a little to be desired, Its not that i cant hear people, but when i talk, i hear myself echoing and sometimes its fairly bad. I’m getting used to it i suppose, but I shouldn’t have too. I really hope they can fix this with a firmware becuase its akward. I dont think i notice it when using a bluetooth headset though. Other than that i can usually hear the person on the other end just fine and they can hear me as well without too much effort.. Talk time has been fine and standby just as good.

Camera

So camera’s in phones aren’t all that.. Its still about as blurry as my old vx7000 there’s just more of it now.. instead of 1290×900 i’m now at like 1900×1600.. its more resolution i cant complain, but its fuzzy and not the greatest picture quality.. Downsized pictures do look good. But any pictures taken in anything other than  full light suffer from alot of noise and grain.

My second biggest gripe/issue with this phone is how SLUGGISH it is to get into the camera interface.. WAna capture that perfect expression on your cats face? or that guy who is about to run into a brick wall with his car? well forget it with this phone.. You’re going ot need about 6-10 seconds of lead time depending on which you want to do. Getting into the camera first requires you to have the phone unlocked, then you press the camera button first displays a “Turn the phone on its side to use the camera” message which displays for about 1 second then you get a ‘please wait’ for about 2-3 seconds.. you’re already 4-5 seconds in and the camera is just now starting so you can get a preview of what your going to shoot.. The preview is pretty laggy probably 10 frames per a second.. so not super smooth… The shutter lag is HORRENDIS! you press the button to take a picture, and depending weather you have auto focus or not it can take 3-4 seconds to take the actual shot.. I prefer to use auto focus becuase your shots wont look good without it, but the problem here is that its all in one button click, you cant auto focus first then snap, you just press it and it does it all, often times meaning you’ll miss that perfect shot for clarity. IF you turn of auto focus its a bit faster but still a 1-2 second lag from when you push the button to when it takes the photo.. It also takes about 1 or 1.5 seconds to write each image to the card.. I know seconds doesnt seem long but when you’re between shots it can start to bog you down.

Movie capture is not much better, my first grip is that the only way i can find to get to movie capture fast is to first go INTO camera mode, then hit the options button THEN hit the movie button then it switches over, so add another 2-3 seconds onto your already 6 seconds of getting into the camera.. While it may seem like i’m making a big deal out of this, when you know its going to take you 10 seconds to get the film mode up and running you often times dont even bother recording anything.. Also its confined to a really really low resolution with a ton of compression.. Why do we not have an uncompressed mode? I would have thought uncompressed would be faster for the camera, granted i’m not a programmer..  i have a 4 gig SD card in there i can easily hold 320×240 uncompressed for probably hours..  Also i wish we could have gotten a tad higher resolution.. 640×480 would have been too much to ask for i know.. but maybe something like 400×300 or something? The compression blocks just kind of suck .. and the movie quality often times isn’t THAT much better than my vx7000, okay i’m being mean, it is substainally clearer, but still, i feel like they could have done a little bit better at least cut out the compression if you could.. With an added SD card slot it seems we deserve that much.. The other thing that annoyed me was that while you are filming a flick or even taking a picture, a txt message (and probably a call too) will completely interrupt what are you doing. It’s more so annoying with a txt message, i understand a call is more urgent then a txt, but in the middle of recording a video, the text will pop up and stop your recording. luckily they save however much you had been recording automatically asuming you have space, but i’d prefer some kind of subtle warning that i have a text or they completely hide the notification untill *I* decide when i’m done filming, not the phone. Its annoying in picture mode too when you’re getting it centered and lined up and push the button and it does it’s autofocus thing and BAM! text message comes in and you loose the shot and now have to trudge through the slow camera mode to get back to where you were.

Unfortunately I didnt really get to try the TV functionality or the music or movie playback on this phone, It has some of those features, tho i can say this, I accidently hit the ‘my music’ button, and it took like 5 seconds to load it up.. when i have NOTHING in there.. that seems  a bit absurd to me.. I’m sure the quality of playback is fine and i’m sure movies and other things probably look fine as well i just dont really have an interest in those..

I’ve only used the web to surf my account information as well, so i really cant comment on how well it surfs websites.. When i try the instore demo, it was slow to be sure.. And i dont want to be billed 1.99 for every 1 meg i get just to test websurfing that i hardly use. I really wish the phone had WIFI.

Over all

I had some issues with some OEM car chargers i bought off ebay, i basically sent those back though, The problem was the guy was sending me chargers that worked with OTHER LG phones but none of them listed the VX10000.. Dont asume one charger workers for all.. OTher than that i’ve been pretty happy with this phone.. For one it has taught me that sometimes I am just not in the mood to deal with a finicky touch screen interface for texting, and that the iphone may not have been the right thing for me. I like tactile keys on occasions espically when i want to say something fast. I would be frustrated as hell with the iphone, and i base that conclusion off my time with the voyagers touch screen. I do admit the voyagers touch screen probably isn’t as sensitive but it still gives me a rough idea. But its sleek, has nice screen, and from what i was using the picture and movie quality are substantially better. Its actually thinner than my old phone and only an inch or so taller.. Its sleek and with my cheapo plastic case, it glides into my pocket. I will admit i’ve read horror stories of the screen cracking becuase people wang it up against something while in their pocket, but i’be tried to be careful, becuase of its longer shape, it does tend to get it self tight my pocket when i sit.

All in all i feel pretty good about my purchase, i’ve dreaded the ‘NOW COMING VOYAGER 2′ announcement that would come 5 seconds after i purchased it but so far nothing like that.. and for 50 bucks and a 2 year commitment for me, its not a bad upgrade! It’s a solid phone, but i am looking forward to this rumored ‘refresh’ they are going to have for it.

All in all i give it …

8.2/10

I’ve been a major fan of the battlefield series for years since battlefield 1942. Console gaming from a pc usually comes out to pretty shitty game play or crappy controls but in bad company it was built just for a console and not like a traditional FPS more comical Game play Well Time to get dirty with bad company.

Basics:

The Game starts as you joining a rag tag group of misfits called bad company.  You’re thrown in to a war with the Russian’s.  You and your new found cohorts have to go in and take out targets to help with this so called war.  Each rifle in the game is realistic no laser scope on a shotgun here boys no shitty perk system like in COD.  Each rifle looks great and nicely detailed you can tell each of them apart with ease.  The single player game is very creative with a great sense of humor unlike other battlefield games this one is more like a mercenary style game. Your quest for money and guns and bitches the American dreams.  Missions are pretty long and giving you access to vehicles  Such as Tanks , Boats , Helicopter I’m not going to spoiler for anyone but there is one vehicle in the game that is just funny to drive in.  The Game’s Single player doesn’t feel like it was tacked on at the last second it has more depth than the previous games like the last battlefield: Modern combat it felt like it was more of a training mission for online play. On this game it’s more of a pleasure to play through it with the humor and makes you ready to want to get on Xbox live and kick someone’s ass.

Combat:

Combat is Furious and dead on.  There is really no cover system in this game but the game does well with what it gives you such as major destruction you can blow up pretty much 99% of the games assets buildings crumble when you fire at an enemy.  Taking out gas canisters lying around near buildings to finish off an enemy nice and cleanly.  Guns are spot on each feel unique and look the part.

Ai:

Ai is surprisingly good pretty bright when they’re in a tank they will chase you down and follow you till your dead. And their dead eyes with aim they can do some major damage at distance.

Graphics:

Nicely detailed world and major destruction everywhere you go.  Everything being able to be blown up by a RPG or a tank or chain gun gives the game a awesome edge. Reminding me of the days of red faction and being able to blow holes in to walls and hide in them. This makes it really nice when fighting with a group of enemies you can’t seem to flank just blow a gas tank beside the building and take a few of them out and finish them off.  All characters in the game are nicely detailed and rifles look spot on nicely detailed. Buildings and levels look unique to each area. Except for some frame rate issues and texture ripping in some areas .

Sound:

Perfect voice acting and funny dialog and music isn’t too bad letting you do a little GTA style with the hummers and trucks listening to music on your way to kick some ass. All guns have a unique sound making it feel like you’re in this war fighting with the Russians.

Multiplayer:

Like the other battlefield games they’ve added to it with new game plays such as gold rush were you attempt to attack and capture caches of gold.  The old style of Game play with the new style of blowing shit up really fits perfect to the multiplayer blowing a building to hell and taking out people camping it always a huge treat.

Final Thoughts:

I seen the parody videos and I thought what the hell I’ll buy this game and it might be alright or just another rehash I was far  from bring right this game is unique with its sense of humor and poking fun at everyone. The single player is great and fun and ai is very challenging.  The multiplayer is another major reason to buy this game blending all the elements nicely letting you go buck wild and blow shit up and using tanks to blow people up is always golden. If it wasn’t for the odd frame rate issues and hiccups with the textures tearing this game could have been perfect  I really did enjoy the game one of those games you think oh what the hell EA? But it’s actually pretty fun. if you’re a fan of the old battlefield games you should enjoy this plus the humor makes it even better.

Pros – Humor and funny FPS with the solid game play, very polished 

Cons – frame rate issues & texture issue

9.8 / 10

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A hit tv show now has it’s own game I’m a big fan of the show and i thought it be great to try out crabbing so it’s time to get dirty with this game

Game play :

You play as a captain of a boat you name and design using the template they supplied choosing your own crew and how much bait, gas and repairs are done on your ship you get to choose from 5 different designs for boats. There are 2 seasons of crabbing in the game and you only have a few days to get all your pots out and finding the best spots to get the best catch. Using the onboard computers it will give you the best guess of where they might be located at. The game also has a Great tutorial mode that steps you through the how-to of the major boat and management of the game. With 2 types of mini games like throw the hook and skiff racing the game. Guides you through using very nice crew videos of live action and talks you through every step helping you with becoming a captain. Then there is also a virtual tour of the boat. Also Xbox live support which is pretty neat.

Graphics:

I’ve got to say this game does look last generation the graphics kind of hurt it but then you see the beautiful water effects and then you’re suddenly back in the game and total in to crabbing. The crew looks alright but you can tell who is who from the show. The game does a awesome job with how much detail there is on the boat tour, The ports in the game all look the same bland and lifeless.

Sound:

The game sound is not to bad full vivid video of Capt. Sig and Phil talking you through stuff. Staff member’s voices are a bit bland but at least they have voice acting. Basic Audio but it does what it needs not like you need anything fancy it’s a fishing game. Not much music in the game except the intro and sometimes a little at the end of the seasons.

Final thought:

Not a bad game but far from a perfect game. The water effects and the addicting game play make it a pretty fun game and the way they did it was to make you feel like you’re really fishing and captain of your own boat and rushing to finish the seasons just like the show. And it does that really well

Pro – Addicting game play, Xbox live support

Con – Bad Graphics

7.5

Like everyone i’ve been addicted to this game since it’s release now it’s time to get really dirty with this game and see if it’s really worth the hype machine behind it.

Basics:

You play as Niko belic a man fresh from off the boat and getting away from his passed to start a new life in liberty city. Your Then unleashed on to a massive city we’re everything is fluid city that everything is alive. Thiers traffic and rush hour. Once you’re in the city you meet up with your cousin and then the story unfolds from there. This Grand theft auto does have a nice story line that follows nicely to its game play. The game story unfolds at a very nice pace doing a odd jobs and friend and de-friend people. Doing odd jobs for friends you meet up will unlock new features such as going to the bar and hanging out with friends at the bowling alley. Being able effect game play by your own judgment I.e. killing a guy can impact this and give you another story.

Combat:

The combat is not too bad you now have access to a cover system and weapons are a lot easier to find and gather in missions the cover system isn’t bad but it’s not near perfect a lot of reviews I’ve read say they nailed it. Not even close sometimes being covered but still being hit through a car to me is a bit buggy the game’s shooting and targeting system is pretty good hitting the bumper you can flip between your targeted enemies and shot from cover.

Graphics:

Solid nicely detailed world the game has had a major overhaul the game looks great the character you are has nice details. The buildings are nicely detailed each area of the city has its own feel and tone and style. The feel of the world is very realistic such as the feel of time square it feels like you’re sitting in New York city in the center just taking it all end very detailed. The statue of liberty and the Brooklyn Bridge the cars are very detailed as well some of the best in car damage in a game in a while. You nail a car at full speed your ejected from that car or the car takes major damage and you’ll lose wheels and not be able to achieve full speed and sparks will fly from the rims. A nice touch of detail in the car physics the physics are spot on when it comes to being hit by a car or riding a motorcycle. A very nice touch on rockstar part giving the game a really realistic almost photo realistic look. Even people on the streets all look different giving it a lot more realism.

Sound:

Man the sound everyone in the cities have their own voice and will tell you what they think of you the voice acting is very good and very funny dialog. Listening to people on the street will crack you up. Walking down the block hearing a cop talking about his wife and his cop buddy is replying back just like he was really bitching. The soundtrack is very long many stations to choose from just like in the previous GTA games you have the funny talk shows and radio Djs giving the game a nice feel

Multiplayer :

The mp is what makes this game stand out over Xbox live you can have 16 players just having fun blowing stuff up. Playing cops and robbers or jacking cars and trying to keep the other team from getting that car. There are many game plays such as

· Hangman noose

· Car Jack City

· Bomb da Base

· Bomb da Base II

· Mafia Work

· Team Mafia Work

· Deathmatch

· Team Deathmatch

· Turf War

· Cops N Crooks

· Race

· GTA Race

· Deal Breaker

· Free Mode

· Car Jack City

The Multiplayer really did give it a much needed boost it’s nice just being able to grab a few friends grab some helicopters and just going buck wild with a huge group of people.

Final Thoughts:

Great game & Great story but sometimes the game makes you feel like your gridding just doing all these quests and mini quests to get everyone friendly with you. The game looks great and shows a lot of work that was done on the franchise. Multiplayer makes it last a lot more and the DLC content coming soon will expand the game even more. I’ve heard a lot of people talk about issues within the game I only noticed a few frame rate drops in game. I really did enjoy GTA 4 the story was great being able to interact with people going to a Internet café and messing around jacking a helicopter and taking a tour of the city is always great. If the cover system didn’t bug me so badly this game could have been perfect don’t get me wrong this game is good and fun just didn’t like how the cover system works. If you own a Xbox 360 this is a must own just for a few minutes of play or a few hours you’ll have a lot of fun and well worth the cost.

9.7/10

June For Europe and No ETA for the USA. I want the GREEN ONE!!!

I’ve been busy as of late reviewing a lot of games so I was looking for a game to try out that was a good waste of a few minutes I think I found that with this game WTF – work time fun the name Explains it all Time to Get to reviewing it

Basics:

This game is a puzzle game on crack it’s like wario but then it’s got the whole WTF?!? style of game play It’s got around 40 very odd puzzle or WTF games you could just call them such as a Top roman timer , Sniping people with a happy bullet , chopping wood , drunken mayor , rock paper and scissors and even a game to guess what a girl’s phone number. the games are odd but really unique but sometimes just make you wonder what the makers of the game we’re intending to really make. This game is one that you can pick up and just play a mini game and get a little chuckle out of it. With 40 mini games , a huge case of vending machines to buy stuff , tools such as bingo number caller , a funny eye spy tool that mimics your eyes to the ramen timer

Game play:

40 mini games and a lot of really odd little unlock-able & toys it’s good for a few minutes of fun every so often just turn it on and play a few mini games then your set. And you can’t forget the little tools the mini games are pretty unique such as counting animals , counting people , trying not to stab your self , shooting people with happy bullets , chopping wood , trying to figure out a girls phone number

Graphics:

Like I said above mini games they look like a DS game sometimes a little better but it’s all about Work time fun or WTF! the game isn’t going to win any beauty contests. But the eye spy tool did look pretty real and pretty funny

Sound:

Sound is basic except for having the ramen girl chat with you while waiting that’s pretty much it bare minimal in that department.

Final thoughts:

This game is not bad for what it does give you a few minutes of rewards for playing you play a mini game you earn cash then can cash that money in using a vending machine for a toy or a new game to play. The game isn’t pretty it’s not the best but hell it’s a good way to blow off a few minutes between classes or waiting for a ride. But this is one of those Chinese games that makes you wonder what the fuck they we’re thinking about when they were making this game. It’s not a replacement for a real game in no means.

7.5 / 10

Okay I finished Ratchet and clank Future tools of destruction a while ago and I just never got around to writing the review! So here is going to be a short take on this game for the PS3. I’ll keep it short, I swear.. Did I mention it would be short?…

Okay so I was given this game as a gift, but it was one of the few games I actually wanted to try out for my ps3.. Having never played a ratchet and clank game before.. Wait no.. I lied.. I played the PSP one, and uhh well I had issues with it.. You can read my review HERE. Or I can sum that one up, I gave it an 8.0 cuz it was just a bitch sometimes and I grew tired of it fast.. BUT this is the ps3 verison, the new super awesome ps3!! Okay yea the system is lacking super great games at the moment, there’s a few but not enough.

Ratchet and clank Future tools looks pretty damn nice on the ps3. The thing that really excites me the most is that it constantly runs at a 60+ frames per a second rating, and this is pretty impressive for a game that has as much going on as this does. The graphics look good, its not just a shitty level with nothing in it at 60fps. It’s a living breathing city straight out of star wars or the fifth element or something like that. Guys explode into thousands of tiny little gears and parts and such, you can see the fur very clearly on ratchets head.. Its really quite the great looking game! So it gets top notch remarks for that.. Sound is great, All the voices appear to be in line with what I heard on the PSP version so the technical stuff is all there and good.

The game play follows what I’ve experienced as well.. Get guns.. Use em.. They randomly gain levels, and get more powerful. Pay with your nut and bolts to make them em MORE uber powerful!.. This game seems to offer a ‘tree’ where you can branch out and expand only the area’s you like of your gun (sometimes having to get some you don’t to reach the ones you do want). For example, you might like max ammo, so you put most of your hard earned dough….errr nuts? Into the more ammo power-up. But to get that very last ‘max ammo’ power-up, you may have to sink a few bucks into ‘increased damage’ to get to that last one.. not that it’s a bad thing, but it does offer a little more variety in what you do with your weapons. Tho to be honest.. I think most players are going to do the same thing I did.. Max damage with some max ammo.. the rest of the stuff never seemed quite that important. But I guess more features is better than less? (sometimes…..).

Other than that, there was minimal (but fairly fun) use of the motion sensing controls when falling.. You run around, jump shoot stuff.. Throw your disco ball and have a good time.. (hey I really liked the cheese but fun disco music they had for those balls! It was catchy! Nice work on that mr music designer!). Blow more crap up.. Fight a boss….. Good stuff. There’s LOTS of level design and variety here too.. Space levels, dinosaur levels, abandon alien planet levels. But beyond that, its your standard run and gun action game with a TINY bit of adventure mixed in. I’m fine with all of that..  This game was actually pretty funny for me in parts.. The PSP one was corny and didn’t make me laugh really, and I NEVER laugh, but there was a few scenes in this one that actually had me laughing, so I was kind of charmed by that. Because of that, and the low frustration factor associated with this game, the nice graphics, and the pleasant feel, I’m going to give it a fairly nice rating. The only thing I’d probably complain on, is the fact that after a while you just get kind of bored doing the same run/gun/kill thing.. It starts to wear thing.. But I found it was just about the right thing.. I was probably tired of it about 85 or 90% of the way through, and by then you’re not far from finishing it, and the story was actually fairly interesting enough to a degree, to keep me playing to finish it through. Otherwise This is not a bad playing experience. In my opinion though, if you were considering this or Uncharted, I’d go with uncharted (if you like that style of game play, read the review HERE). Just because I enjoyed that game a tiny tiny bit more. But both games are worth of purchase in the slew of junk out there for the ps3 right now. I don’t regret playing either. So my rating for this one is…

9.1/10

Very good considering the crap out there now. Good quick arcade like fun.

Ahhh the chains that bind… God of war strikes on the PSP.. Is it a killer app? One that can bring the masses to the PSP? Or is it just shades of Olympus?… My short but sweet review after the break!

Let me start this review off with a quick background of my experience with god of war. I originally played it on the Playstation 2 system, I loved it to start, it was gory, it was fun mashing academy action and it was a semi interesting storyline.. Good boss fights as well.. As time went on, I got further and further into it, and I started to get to these area’s that would trap you, and feed you monster after monster after monster in an ultimate endurance test to see if you could kill 30 guys without dying.. This kind of killed it for me and ultimately I gave up the game. I prefer to advance the game and storyline and not waste repeated ours of frustration because I cant beat guy #25 out of 30.. Not to mention I have no idea how many guys are coming, I’m honestly just making up an arbitrary number.

Regardless of that, I gave up on god of wars for that simple fact.. But then I was determined to play god of war on the PSP all the way through because many review sites said it was the most beautiful game on the PSP to date, and it was worthy of all your play time. You know what? They are right.. I dare you to find a better looking game on the PSP. It blows me away with what they were able to do on this small system. There’s one point where you’re looking at one of the gods chained up and he’s this huge rock being (yea my greek mythology sucks, bite me) and you see his HUGE hand actually moving and his body, and normally I would expect a half-assed cheap limited gimmicky effect or no movement at all—at least on a hand held. But they pulled off so many good effects and the attention to detail is just wonderful! You’ll open a chest under water and air bubbles will creak out and then rise to the surface. Your chain and slashing effects seem to be as good as the ps2 version! It almost feels like this game is every bit as good as the ps2 version only smaller screen size and smaller textures. It really does look THAT Good. Graphics get the best from me..

Okay Sound is sound, it sounds great I have no qualms, obviously the psp isn’t surround sound, so it is what it is.. Lets get to it.. the game play…

I’m fairly happy to announce that for someone like me who thought god of war 1 was just far too annoying with those ‘freeze’ points of killing massive amounts of enemies, this game was still HUGELY enjoyable if you like the god of war style of game play. It’s a 3^rdperson perspective, on a set path mostly so not much exploring, you run around and you kill stuff with button mashing. You can use combos and learn to get better at killing, and maybe this is why I sucked at part 1 on the ps2 because I didn’t master the quickest way to kill stuff.. God of war Chains of Olympus does in deed still have those ‘freeze’ moments where it traps you in an area and makes you fight repeated spawning of certain monsters, and sometimes it WILL toss you in with small amount of health and very little health to get back. Those moments do exist on the psp version, but they few and far between and in my opinion not NEARLY As frustrating. There was one time where I started to feel the burn and just simply put my psp into sleep and came back a few hours later and got past it.. That happened probably 1 or 2 times actually. Either way, I did eventually get past those parts and they were not nearly as bad simply because the amount of enemies spawned was not nearly the same at least it didn’t feel that way. And this was on normal difficulty. Not easy mode. Boss fights were a joy, and the last boss impressed me the most.. You know why? Because they decided NOT to be dicks, and if you get the boss to a certain point of health, and die, you start over with her health at that point!! YES! Why do I like that? Because, I don’t believe players should be subjected to having to fight a boss 450 times to learn every single trick of her 17 different modes of attack, just to have to perfect them all in order to kill her JUST so they can claim and additional 3 hours of game play time. That is wrong….. Here they just make you get past each ‘stage’ of her health and if you do, you can restart mid battle pretty much. I still died a few times, it still took me a few tries, but I was never frustrated or felt cheated, I honestly just felt I ‘needed to do better’ and so many games never make me feel that way, they make me feel like I’m being cheated or they are just too damn hard to be worth it. I’m happy to announced at least for bosses, that god of war chains of Olympus did a great job with this.

Over all I’m fairly impressed with what they did here. Its definitely a must have if you have a PSP and remotely liked the original god of wars.. Even if you didn’t finish them like I did, but enjoyed the button mashing, you’ll get a fair amount of enjoyment out of this. I’m going to be nice, despite the few times I was thrown into a situation with 5% health and huge guys with big swinging axes and saw blades dicing through the floor completely shrinking my odds of living to about 1 in 1000000, I ultimately had fun and got past those few ‘roughly tough’ moments. I’m going to rate my overall experience with my frustrating being low on the list of feelings I get with this game.. Henceforth my rating is….

9.0/10

I’ve never heard of beats till the other day when I noticed it.  thought what the hell ill give it a try. Might be worth it or not let’s find it out is it just another music rhyhm game?

Game play:

Really straight forward Buttons Flow toward the circle you hit the corresponding buttons and Work on getting power-ups and a streak going.  This game is much like boom boom rockets on the Xbox 360 Arcade.  You load your own tracks. It’s pretty nice because when you get a great streak going then you hit a hyper mode and then the effects get even better on screen and a little harder. It’s all about nailing the right button to the rhythm. The game gets harder and harder. You can also record and replay a cool and very neat feature. Also has a very nice jamming so you can just go in and mess around with sound.

Sound :

Great since you put your own tracks on it if you get bored just load the duo with even more tracks and your set to go it comes with pre loaded tracks they’re not that bad but having access to your own music is a huge plus since it’s a rhythm based game

Graphics:

This game looks great reminds me so much of The 360 Rhythm game Boom boom rockets and the DS game elite beat agents. Nice visuals especially when you hit the hyper mode the game then looks great.  Then being able to change Visualize , Themes  Really lets you style the graphics to your own personal likings.

Final Thoughts:

A very nice game and the price it’s a keeper for the price you would pay for a coffee you can have a addicting little game with a lot of fun just a good old pick it up and play style game.  I love how you can load your own tracks from your home computer. The game is great looking and really fun to play and being able to customize it is a major plus this game is simple and it works very well.  if it only had multiplayer maybe a battle mode this game would of been perfect but still it’s really fun.

8.8 / 10

Well, it’s been out for a while and i started watching the star wars movie so i had a urge to play it and thought what the hell let’s review it. Time to get Dirty with The Lego Universe

Basics:

You’re a Lego and you’re in the star wars universe playing through the classics from the movies. Playing as such people as Luke sky walker, Obi wan, princess laya , Vader , and R2D2 Pretty straight forward Your running around playing through the many classic levels from the movies such as the death star.

Game play:

Straight forward you shoot, you use your Light saber and Jedi powers and unlock and open paths. On the way you put on helmets from storm troopers to open up doors and gadgets. You can use at-at’s and flying missions well. Once levels are completed you can unlock more characters and then buy them using the Lego’s you have collected in the levels and then go back and play missions to unlock other rooms you couldn’t access before giving the game a lot more replay then just a fast run through the game.

Graphics:

The game surprising looks pretty damn good. It looks much like the PS2 version and the 360 version just a bit toned down but the thing looks great nice 3d animations and unlike the DS version this game does 3d pretty darn well. The game does have its issues such as major slow down when in a big area the game will pause for a second and then game play kicks back in. takes a bit out of the whole immersion of the game. You have tons of characters to choose from and they all look pretty good.

Sound:

The game sounds pretty good. You have the nice r2d2 sounds and Chewbacca doing his little grunts and each level sounds well like it’s xbox360 counterpart and the PS2 version. There is no dialog so not much to go off that.

Final thoughts:

I really enjoyed this game I’ve played it on my pc a while back and on the 360 again and now on the PSP the game is always fun to just get in and play and the price is really nice usually 19.99$ In the US a good deal since it’s got wireless place (Local) and a ton of play here with all the characters to unlock. It’s one of those games that everyone plays and it might be odd but it’s a pretty fun game except for the major slow down issues it’s a pretty solid title This game is a must own for any geeky star wars fan boy it’s fun and kind of corny but it’s fun and it’s cheap that’s the best part and now it’s been out for a while getting it used shouldn’t be too hard to come by.

8.5 / 10