I just turned 21this month. Also, tons of PS2, PS3,and GBA game reviews/impressions.

Wow it has been awhile since my last blog. What can I say; I am a lazyhoboguy after all. Well here is an excessively long blog that will rot your brain and make up for my absence.

I have been getting in a good amount of gaming lately and picked up a few new games with some birthday money I got. I am now 21 and can legally drink. Although, I have no interest really in drinking alcohol anymore so this birthday was not as exciting as it could have been if I was a typical habitual overdrinking loud college student like many of my peers.

Two days after my birthday I decided to buy a 6 pack of Corona just because. It stayed in my fridge about a week before I even touched one. I did not like it much. It has been about 2 weeks since I bought them, yet 4 out of the 6 beers are still sitting in my fridge. I don't really understand why people like beer. It tastes nasty, it makes me feel all full and like a slob after, and they usually upset my stomach. Plus, I am cheap and would rather spend my money on something else. Also, if you drink beer for the purpose of turning into a super drunk person, why not just get some hard liquor and not deal with the super full feeling that beer gives you?

Anyways, back to gaming. I don't want a bunch of angry drunks realizing I trash talked their miracle beverage, so I am shall quickly change the subject.

The games I picked up recently are:

PS2

Amplitude

Family Feud

Lumines Plus

Rogue Trooper

PS3

Red Faction Guerrilla

I have not touched Amplitude or Rougue Trooper yet, so I don't have much to say about them. I absolutely loved Frequency, which Amplitude is a sequel too, so I am obviously excited to try it.

Also, here is a new animation I was inspired to make after playing one of the following games.

There are NO SPOILERS in the following Reviews/ Game Impressions

Family Feud (PS2)

This Family Feud game is terrible. I expected such, but I did not realize quite how terrible it would turn out. I got it mainly to try its online mode with a friend, but it turned out the online mode is most likely no longer functioning. Two other people and I all get the same error when trying to host an online game of this. In fact, one of these guys called the company to see if the game was officially offline now, and the guy had no idea what was going on with that game. My friend was the first person to ever call the company about it lol.

I wrote a quick review a little while ago about this game.

http://www.gamespot.com/ps2/puzzle/familyfeud2006/player_review.html?id=706595&tag=all-about;review1

I tell you what.

The only thing this game has going for it is its family creation system. I had about 10 minutes of amusement making Hank Hill and his family play the game. Here is a video of that

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMGihV0rk4w

Once the novelty of that wore off, I realized that I can't stand to ever play this game again. That tells you something is really really atrocious, when even the most brilliant salesman of propane and propane accessories cannot save the game.

Lumines Plus (PS2)

This is a puzzle game that originally came out on the PSP. A guy I know had been telling me for months about how fun it was and then recently I heard that this game was created by the Japanese dude who made the game REZ. Finding this out made me very eager to try it so I picked it up off of amazon.

I really like this game. It is a deceivingly simple puzzle game at first glance. You drop squares that are made up of 4 smaller blocks that are mixed up in random combinations of 2 colors. You can flip this big square around and you try to line up 4 small blocks of the same color. When you do that those 4 small blocks disappear. You lose the game when the stacked up blocks reach the top of the screen.

What makes this game innovative is that all the time there is a scrolling horizontal line that goes from left to right. Your groups of 4 same colored blocks will not disappear until this scrolling horizontal line reaches them. You can get lots of combo points by adding more blocks to your group of 4 before that horizontal line reaches the mass of same colored blocks. This makes things interesting because you are always rushing to add more blocks before the line reaches that section so you can get the most points. However, you have to be careful because if you carelessly toss blocks down, you may miss and screw yourself over for the future.

Also, this game has a beautiful visual design and cool music. If you last awhile in the game, the visual theme of the game will shift and so will the music. It is nice because it gives you a cue that tells you when the difficulty is going to ramp up. When you're in the middle of tons of block stacking madness, it's hard to keep track of the level counter at the bottom of the screen, so the changing visual theme helps a lot.

This game is very very addicting. The game keeps track of your high scores, so it compels you to keep replaying the game over and over to beat them.

I had not acquired a new puzzle game in a very long time, but I am happy that this particular game ended up as my newest one.

Red Faction: Guerrilla (PS3)

My PS3 has been getting a lot of use after a few week period of me not touching it and that is because I got this game. I had wanted this game since its launch, but I am a cheapo and could not shell out the cash for it. It finally dropped down to 20 bucks for a new copy on amazon with free shipping and I could not resist.

I have probably put in over 10 hours in this game. I loved the demo of this game when it was released and played that for hours and hours. That is because the destruction engine in this game is simply amazing. Any building or object can be destroyed. Stuff breaks apart differently based on which weapon you use to attack it. You can ram a car through a building. You can cover your car with 10 mines, jump out of the car at the last second before it hits a building, and after its has crashed into the building you can detonate the mines on the car and totally devastate that once proudly constructed structure. The only thing in this game that cannot be destroyed is the ground.

There is not much story to this game. Basically you are part of a guerrilla movement that is challenging the EDF (Earth Defense Force) who are oppressing the miners on Mars. The voice acting is well done in my opinion, but the story just does not have much meat to it and is not fleshed out much. But who needs much of a story when the destruction in this game is so much fun.

This game is a sandbox game. Meaning you can choose to go wherever you want in the game world and do missions and other things whenever you feel like. If you feel like tracking down some EDF soldiers and blowing them up and fighting a small scale war with their respawning forces, you can. The game limits you to sectors of the map until you beat all the missions there and reduce the EDF presence in that area to 0 percent. The map highlights important EDF targets, usually big buildings and military structures that you need to blow up. I really enjoy this part of the game because coming up with a plan of action for taking out a fortified position and successfully implementing it is really fun. Or, you end up having your plan go completely wrong and you have to suddenly improvise and hope you can take out the building and survive the pursuing forces afterwards.

The weapons in this game are very fun to use. Your default weapon is a sledge hammer. Do I really need to explain the awesomness of this? Ok fine I will. It is such a satisfying weapon to use. It can one hit kill enemies. You can bash is buildings with it. A sledge hammer is just fun to use. The other weapons in this game are just as fun. Your other trusty weapon is remote mines. You can originally only place one or 2 at a time, but you can eventually upgrade that ability and currently in the game I can place 10 mines at once before I detonate them all. Mines stick to anything. It is really funny sticking them on the soldiers because they will start running around frantically and will eventually shake them off. Mines are great all around weapons in this game since they easily allow you to destroy enemy vehicles. A few well placed mines can take down massive buildings as well. Other weapons include an assault rifle, and assault rifle with heat seeking bullets, a rocket launcher, shotguns, a gun that disintegrates anything you shoot (people, cars, buildings, etc), and a gun that shoots electricity that can electrocute multiple enemies at once.

So far I am loving this game. It lacks a gripping story, but the destruction engine in this game is the best and most realistic one ever created. Yay for Geo Mod 2.0. I have not even tried the multiplayer yet and it looks really great as well.

No Rules: Get Phat (GBA) I have had this for years, but just recently found it again

Before you read further, watch this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zsf7oes2BHA

I have decided to make this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7qHUWMGS4c&feature=response_watch ) the first in a series called "Unbelievably Terrible Games" which is up on my youtube account. I do not have too many crappy games like this in my collection anymore, but there are a few hiding in it. Whenever I come across a game that makes my blood boil from its shocking amount of mediocrity or outright blatant suckage, I will post a video of that game and add "Unbelievably Terrible Games:" before the video title.

I created a new playlist ( http://www.youtube.com/user/Lazyhoboguy#g/c/0E4390477A4A27CA ) where all other "Unbelievably Terrible Games:" videos will be located.

Here is a quote from the instruction manual to help you understand what this game is like.

"Background

One Eye Jack's got a kickin' life: Get juiced up with a bowl of Cocoa Soul Puffies, catch a little Snoop Nasty and The Super Homeez on TV, bust some airs with the crew at the skatepark, maybe even mix some phat beats after hours...

But when aliens from Planet Punkazz arrive, Jack's lifestyle takes it in the shorts. The Punkazzes say they're here to "get phat." But the Punkazzes don't want to serve people on a plate. To survive, they have to wack Jack's culture. And Jack don't play dat...."

Ummm yea lmao. Reading the instruction manual is much more entertaining then actually playing the game.

The story in this game revolves around One Eye Jack, who is some mutated freak kid who only has one eye, has white hair, and apparently thinks he is a hardcore gangster. He reminds me of like a little shriveled up Bart Simpson. He rides a skateboard and his weapon throughout the game is a slingshot.

The cut scenes in this game are the only interesting thing about it. They are like a comic book where One Eye Jack talks in gangsta talk about trying to save his precious cereal called "Cocoa Soul Puffies" from the "Punkazz aliens".

I had this game for many years, but forgot I owned it until this week. I remembered the game being frustrating as hell when I was a kid and it played just how I remembered it. The controls in this game are horrendous. You ride a skateboard or snowboard throughout the game and when you move left or right you glide for a bit. So it makes quickly turning directions or platforming needlessly tedious and sometimes near impossible. The developers have tons of sections where you need to make precise jumps on tiny moving platforms. The controls make this very very annoying. Also, you cannot shoot and move at the same time....

Boss battles in this game randomly turn into a mediocre rhythm game where you press the buttons that scroll across the top screen. When you hit a series of the buttons at the right time, you press the A button and the boss loses health. Repeat that about 10 times and the boss dies. You are djing during boss battles and apparently the sound of you scratching is able to kill aliens and make them explode.

Also, the only reason I bought this game as a kid was because it included a free knock off tech deck finger board lol. I think that is the only way this game sold any copies. I believe that fingerboard broke shortly after I bought it too.