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Happy Valentine’s Day!  Here’s a Valentine’s treat you’ll love: more game reviews!  Yup, it’s another one of those blogs with links to game reviews I’ve written lately.  Please read as many as you can and post a comment or two if you like.  I’d appreciate it.

I’d also like to take this time to wish each and every one of you a happy Valentine’s Day!  I got you all pretend Valentine’s Day presents!  For the ladies, I got you a box of chocolates.  But since they’re pretend chocolates, they give you super powers when you eat them and you’ll be able to beat all the bad guys in one punch!  Since I’m a guy I don’t know what to give guys for Valentine’s Day, so all you guys reading this, you just get a big pretend pizza.  Hey let’s play a silly Valentine’s game.  In the comments section, tell me which video game characters you’d like to send Valentines to.  And try to guess who you think I’d like to send a Valentine to as well!  Just try it, it’s fun when it’s fun.

I know Valentine’s Day can be a discouraging holiday for some of us who are single.  I know it’s hard, believe me, but try not to be so discouraged.  Just think of all the people you do love and care about, and let them know how much you care about them on Valentine’s Day and every day of the year.  That might make you feel a little better.  Works for me anyway.  And you can also be thankful for the freedoms and advantages of being single, too!  When I know my friends here are reading my blogs, that makes me very happy and I thank you all for that.  OK, now let’s get to the reviews!

Skylanders Valentines

You know how in Elementary School you would give out those little paper valentines with cartoon characters on them to everyone in your class?  Well they still make those.  Ever wonder why you don’t see many with video game characters on them?  Is it because the licensing fees are too high?  Or maybe kids just don’t like video game characters as much as I think they do?  Nah, it’s gotta be the licensing fees.  Well I saw Skylanders Valentines at the store so I had to write about them.  I hear Skylanders has made more money for Activision than Call of Duty, so seeing Valentines of them just proves their popularity.  What video game characters would you like to see on Valentines like this?  Let me know in the comments section.

The Firemen 2: Pete and Danny (PS3)

MonkeyPaw Games has been releasing classic PSOne import titles on PSN lately, and this one’s awesome.  It’s a top-down action game where you control a fire fighter and must run around mazes putting out fires with water and rescuing people.  Two can play at the same time, and player two uses an axe to put out fires, somehow.  The graphics look like a late-gen SNES game, which warms my heart since the SNES is my favorite game console.  In fact, I hear the original Firemen game was on the SNES and even made it to the US.  Never played that one, but I bet it’s really rare!  Anyway, this game got me to thinking.  Real life fire fighters are awesome heroes, so why aren’t there more games about fighting fires?  I know there’s Burning Rangers, and I love the silly arcade shooter Brave Firefighters.  But there’s not much else I can think of.  The fireman suit in Mickey’s Magical Quest is the best suit in the game, and the fire truck power is the best in Kirby’s Epic Yarn, so why not have more fire fighter games?  Let me know what you think in the comments section.

Lucifer Ring (PS3)

The other MonkeyPaw import game I reviewed is this 3-D arcade style beat ‘em up. It reminds me of Dragon Valor, but since most of you probably have never heard of that one, I’ll just say it’s like a mix of Golden Axe and Ghosts N Goblins.  It’s not great, but not awful either.  I do love the first dragon boss, though, as he doesn’t move hardly at all so he looks like he’s just lazy!

Tiny Brains (PS3)

This was originally a PS4 launch game you could download, but now you can play it on PS3, too.  It’s a four player co-op puzzle game where you control one of four lab animals trying to escape the experiments of an evil scientist.  These rats, hamsters, and rabbits can do things like create ice blocks, repel or attract objects, or teleport and switch places with certain items.  You’ll use these skills together to solve puzzles in each room.  It’s a neat idea, but gets really hard, really fast!

NBA Rush (iPad)

This is not a traditional basketball game.  Instead, you control famous NBA stars in this endless runner as they avoid obstacles while defeating space aliens.  Yeah, you heard right.  It’s similar to other endless runners like Temple Run, and despite the goofy premise, it’s not THAT bad of a game.  But the basketball players are REALLY buff in this game!  I know they’re athletes, too, and all, but it looks like they ate some spinach here.

The Guided Fate Paradox (PS3)

In this game you play as a high school boy who wins a lottery and the prize is to be a god.  So now, assisted by angels dressed as maids and butlers, he must use a machine to enter dungeons and fight monsters in order to answer people’s prayers.  Yeah it’s as strange as it sounds, especially since some of the prayers you answer are from people like Cinderella or a zombie.  Gameplay is like any other dungeon crawl RPG.  Only problem I had with it was there is WAY too much story and dialogue.  Also, even though I’m a Christian, I’m pretty easy going about a lot of things.  But even I found some of the themes in this game a bit off-putting.  And that’s all I’m going to say about that.

Darklings (iPad)

It took me a while to figure out how to play this one, but once I did, I felt like an idiot for not figuring it out sooner.  You play as a luminous creature who can’t move, but can possess creatures called Darklings, who creep up on you from both sides of the screen.  You must possess them to keep them from touching you, otherwise the game is over.  The Darklings have symbols on their heads, and you must draw the symbol on the touch screen to possess them.  And that’s all there is to it, really.  For some reason, this game reminded me of Patapon.

Atomic Fusion: Particle Collider (iPad)

This one is like a mix of gameplay ideas from Ikaruga, combined with the thumping soundtrack and graphics from Geometry Wars.  You play as an atom, and each stage is marked by one of the elements from the Periodic Table we all had to learn in school, and then never see again (unless you’re a chemist).  But it’s not the first game based on chemistry themes.  Anyone remember Namco’s arcade game Phozon?  Anyway, it pissed me off because the makers of this game said they were sending me a review copy, but it turned out to just be a demo.

Kid Aviator (iPad)

And lastly, in this game a boy is shot out of a circus cannon, and you must drag objects in the sky away from him so he doesn’t bump into them.  You can also tilt the tablet left and right to steer him.  Decent game, but not great.  Reminds me a little bit of a game I reviewed earlier called Jetbee.  On the Game Over screen, the boy has a black eye and bandages, but still looks super happy. That cracked me up for some reason.

Thanks for Reading!

And that’s all for now!  Thanks for reading my reviews and posting comments!  Sorry I’m not doing the Blog a Day thing.  I barely have enough time to read all of your blogs; much less write them every day myself!  Next time on my blog, in honor of the upcoming release of Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, I’ll talk about my top five favorite DK games!  Later!  --Cary