PixlBit

It's the penultimate week of bad. Only 8 more days of February! Insane it's gone so fast. Anyways here's today's games!

 EA brought back NBA Jam and boy oh boy was it just as fun as ever. It was like reliving a beloved memory and upon hearing that age old "boom shaka laka" You knew that you were in for a treat, especially with the return of various presidents and political figures!

New Play Control Donkey Kong Jungle Beast is just that. As I mentioned in my Mario Power Tennis and Sluggers highlight, it's a new way to play swapping the DK Bongos with a wii remote and nunchuk. It's still just as fun, but it's pretty tiring flailing your arms about.

New Play control Pikmin is another in new play control. It works surprisingly well as you point and click to march your pikmin wherever you go. It's still the Pikmin you remember so, the 28 day cycle is still a pain. Still the controls really make it a lot easier, so you gotta give it up to Nintendo.

NiGHTS Journey of Dreams is the long awaited sequel to the Saturn classic. It took 15 years and finally here it was. So how was it? Well it was alright. In many cases when you are flying around as NiGHTS, flying through the rings, performing loop-de-loops, etc. Even the bosses are unique in which you'll fight a giant spider or even deflate a giant baloon type clown. Unfortunately, one aspect is kind of crummy. The adventure segments are just boring. Whether running around as the boy or the girl, there's no real reason to wander around the map. The Nightopia online segment was okay, not as cool as the chao garden, but neat enough.

Ninjabread Man...is just awful. God awful. The graphics, controls, the bugs, the glitches, etc. It's just terrible. Nuff' said.

No More Heroes and Desperate Struggle. The first No More Heroes was fun, over the top hack n slash game about an otaku named Travis Touchdown who wants to be the world's number 1 assassin. If the plot isn't strange enough, you'll face even stranger baddies and equip a beam katana. The game had an open world in Santa Destroy where you would get on your bike, ride around the city doing side jobs to make cash to take on the next assassin. It's fairly montonous in some ways. You'll find yourself repeating various assassin missions or side jobs like mowing lans to make the dough. You can find Kolotov balls (or whatever they are called) to show to a drunk russian at a bar to learn wrestling moves.. It was a fairly enjoyable game, but had it's flaws. The sequel fixes a few things. Desperate Struggle removed the monotony as you don't have to pay to enter into the next battle, and the mini games are strange, enjoyable 8-bit throwbacks with the exception of a returning game in picking up scorpions in the desert with your beam katana. Still both are really fun.

Octomania is a game I covered and it's a typical match 3 chain game in the style of tetris or puyo puyo. It was fairly  okay. The story is nonsensical and really kind of bizarre. And while you may or may not like a story about rapping trees...it's really about whether you enjoy this style of game.

Okami was critical darling and the last game to be developed by Clover before they closed and became Platinum studios. Okami had all the reason in the world to be perfect for the Wii with the use of the celestial brush. It works fairly well and Okami is an excellent game that even got an HD re-release and move support on PS3. The Wii port that Ready at Dawn made had some small things wrong. Some copies received a cover with the IGN logo (I still have that cover) and the end credits featuring the excellent song reset was removed.

Onechanbara Bikini Zombi Slayers is a fairly boring hack n slash game. It's a fairly average game by any sense of the word, but some small part of me enjoyed the nonsensical plot and hack n slash gameplay. Still the game is a bit misleading. Of the 4 main characters you can play as... only 1 wears a bikini. Why ya gotta lie to me? I expect bikini zombie slayers gosh darn it!

one piece unlimited adventure is not unlimited, but it was a fairly enjoyably beat em up. The enjoyable nature of the story coupled with the pirates you know and love whether you watch the anime or read the manga is quite good. The locales range from a sunny beach to a snowy mountain. However, a lot of the game is hampered due to the fact  you often have to go on a collectathon for things. It's an okay game, but not the adventure you may crave.

One Piece Unlimited Cruise ep. 1 & 2 were never released in the U.S., but was released in Europe with an english translation. The games are exactly like Unlimited Adventure in that fun rpg mechanics are hampered by the constant slog to collect various items and objects. As fun as fishing, bug catching, or being able to hop aboard the Sunny and just putz around on it, looking at your collection of crap...it can get quite boring.

Opoona is another game I covered as a bargain bin buy. It's a jrpg with a roughly translated story, although the controls are terrific if only for concept alone in which you control entirely based on the nunchuk and it works. The job system is really bad though. It's often forced upon you. Still there are elements of this game that has it's charms.