Time for me to cover a classic! It’s getting really hard for games made back in 1998 to stand out against today’s market, especially an RPG. See, the majority of RPG games back then have that one defining feature, and everything else has aged rather badly. Wild Arms…did EVERYTHING right. So I think it’s a crime that the game’s been overlooked in favour of stuff like Final Fantasy 7 and stuff.

Following the status quo of Japanese RPGs, Wild Arms features an overly complex storyline packed complete with  demons, goddesses, and huge, ridiculously overpowered weaponry.But, you know, not a game to break trends, this time around there’s a group called the Metal Demons who are looking to destroy the entire planet, and it’s up to your little team of people to stop them.

Wild Arms takes place in a world called Filgaia which has been turned into a wasteland thanks to the Great War from well before the game started. The Guardians, a group of magical deities charged with maintaining the natural balance of the world, have come under stress from the world’s natural decline, and eventually they get too weak to fight off the Metal Demon invaders.Enter the main characters, who come from all stretches of the world and end up together in a huge accident.

And…well, Wild Arms’s story is way more advanced than everything back then, and it’s even something which can stand up to the modern standards of time travel and that lot. I’m not going to go into spoilers, but all the characters have a huge plot twist coming in the future, and the story is even better as it advances into a very fluid and engaging sci-fi plot, something which was way beyond it’s time and still doesn’t have the reception nor appreciation it deserves.

See, instead of just talking about where you characters come from, you get to play an individual prologue with all the characters, showing you their back-story; how the main character was exiled from his town, how leading female is a priestess who heard the voice of the deities, and how the final character is a treasure hunter who just got dragged into everything.When compared to some of the ridiculous backstories which get drip fed to people, this feature is something which I used more games would use. It’s such a cool feature, getting to play the backstory.

It uses the tried-and-tested almost perfect method of turn based battling, and everyone has special moves and power-ups and magical spells and stuff. Outside of battle, you navigate a 2D map complete with charming sprites which were all the rage way back, and you get to navigate traps and bottomless pits and the like. That feature didn’t come into RPG’s until several years into the future. I love that whole depth in Wild Arms, how it feels more like an action game when you’re navigating the map and how it feels more like an RPG in the battle.

I love Wild Arms. This was the first RPG I ever played, back when I was 10 or maybe even 9, and it was ground-defyingly epic back then. It’s even got a great soundtrack full of those kind of beeps and sounds which make the game even better. ANY fan of RPG’s or role-playing games, or even fans of the classics should be shot for not having tried this game, since it’s a crying shame Wild Arms is destined to take a back seat to Final Fantasy. For a game made back in 1998, I consider this to be brilliant, and it’s still one of my favourite RPG’s to date

From the creator of Sonic, a little game about a kiwi who needs to find it’s mother. When I say it’s a little game, it’s a very little game. It lasts about two-three hours, but the time it lasts is fun.

Your character keeps running in a direct line, and you have to steer the character to the goal. Essentially, you do this by waving  the Wii pointers and drag it to create a vine for your character to run along. It’s simple yet effective, as all the stages gradually climb an incline of difficulty, starting off with simple obstacles and eventually turning into roaming baddies and moving boulders, and generally stuff like that.

When accompanied with simple gameplay, the only solution is to have a really simple graphic and soundtrack. The graphics in this show are nothing short of fantastic, with a very fairy-tale theme and colour scheme. The soundtrack also follows theme, with a rather quaint yet attractive selection of songs. They DO get slightly repetitive after a while, though, and you find yourself wanting to turn the music off.

For a game that lasts two-three hours, you’d expect it to be on the iPod or something, however, not on the Wii. It’s fun, and it’s a good game to play, but don’t spend more than a fiver on this…what you get from it is hardly worth how much it costs.

I’ve been playing games for around 13 years of my life now, and I can safely say that hands down, Muramasa has the best presentation and soundtrack i’ve ever had the pleasure to experience. It’s so gorgeously Japanese that you wouldn’t know you were playing a game at some points, and it’s obvious how much love and care went into the majority of this game.

So, Muramasa is a 2D Action-RPG styled game, playing similar to Castlevania or that Metroid game on the GBA, where you’ve got a 2D map and your character navigates from one end to the other. In most cases, each screen contains a group of enemies to fight, defeat and gain EXP from, and then you move on to the next screen until you reach your destination. Yeah, it sounds as thrilling as it gets, to be honest. It’s not something you can spend a long time doing before you get bored, and the lack of an improved transport system blows. I mean, you get to spend time going back through that level you just went through and the one before that just to get to where you want. But, that’s the only bad point I found about this game.

The rest of Muramasa is pretty much amazing, in all honesty. The gameplay is amazingly fun in short bursts, and it’s accompanied by a fairly decent story. It’s a tad confusing for those new to the game, but you get the hang of it really quickly. There’s hardly any flaw in the sword-fighting mechanics, and being Japanese-styled, the way of the ninja really shows. It’s great fun to play, and amazingly entertaining. The only downside is that it gets old after an hour or two, and you end up wanting to play something else, but that’s something which can’t really be helped.

The real shine of this game is when you get to fight those huge bosses. Be them some powerful youkai, gods or even a Buddha, the bosses span across the screen and never fail to impress. They’ve all got stunning design, and even the enemies have a creative design. When added onto that is the fluid animation behind all the attacks, and the way that most of the specials and combo slices pack the wow factor, it’s a really beautiful thing to watch.

If you havn’t figured out by now that the game looks amazing, it does. I’m running out of adjectives I can think of to describe this game, and that’s because the appearance IS what makes this game amazing. However, there is something else. The music. I don’t know who composed it, but I know that i’m downloading several tracks…they’re just so wonderful to listen to! Listen to tracks like this and you can feel your mind escaping and that lot…the music is equally luscious, and when combined with the graphics, it makes for one of those experiences.

See, I think that’s what Muramasa is. The gameplay, whilst good and fun in short bursts, does have it’s flaws, but you get a good 5-6 hours out of each of the characters, and then you get to spent extra time hunting all those extra bosses and gathering every demon blade. However, the graphics and the soundtrack are what sets this game above being just another fun, good and slightly flawed 2D Action game, and ensure that it’s worth a spot on your collection, making an end product that falls short of amazing.

Everyone, shield your eyes! Here i’ll show you everything NOT to do in a game, and make my first truely negative and critical review simply becuase i’ve never done it before.

Sonic 2006…is a bad game. A terrible game. You can play as Sonic, who runs fast, Shadow who runs around the same speed yet has SUPER POWERS or Silver who uses psychic powers to manipulate objects.Except half the time, you won’t actually be playing as these people, you’ll be playing as one of Sonic’s many friends, be it Tails, Amy or Blaze.  You have to stop Doctor Eggman from his evil plans, save the future or something alone those lines.

However, things aren’t really all that dandy. Sonic has sadly broken his ankle or something, and can now only run about as fast as your average person, and he forgot how to curl into a ball to jump. He remembered how to homing attack, but he must have been hit on the head and forgot how to do it right. Silver is even slower, walking at around the same speed as your average human, who has to use the shoulder buttons to pick up an object and fling it around. Shadow actually runs faster than Sonic, but he has the option to drive cars and bikes around if he wants to. And it really sucks when you’re forced into driving them.

On top of that, all the side-characters you play as have utterly terrible controls, handling around as well as a shopping trolley at your local supermarket with only 1 wheel. They have stupid mechanics, stupid ideas and move so slow that you wonder if everyone has suffered a tragic accident and broken their ankles so that they cant run.

Characters aside, you get to navigate a huge hub-world, complete with a boring setting with boring music and boring looking buildings. In doing this, you have to find the warps to bring you to the next level or do a Town Mission. However, the setting is SO big that it’s not unheard of for a poor person to spend ages just wondering around the map trying to figure out what the hell they have to do next. There are hardly any prompts, and almost all the people you talk to have nothing of any interest to say whatsoever.

However, there are a few features that save the game from being utterly terrible. The majority of the time, level design is amazingly terrible, however…there are a few instances where the level design is pretty cool. They’re few and far between, but at least all the time you spent playing it is terrible. Secondly, the stories. Sonic saves a princess, and that story is utterly terrible. However, Shadow and Silver’s stories aren’t actually that bad. The ambition is there, and there ARE moments of amazing script-writing. However, it’s just an instance of more-often than not being let down by a poor execution, seeing as time travel and multiple time-lines are something which you can’t handle with a half-hearted attempt.

That feels like the way the game works more often than not, actually. It’s got the ambition and the ideas to work brilliantly, but it falls flat on it’s face when it counts. Ultimately, this becomes a recurring theme for Sonic games starting from this point on, with terrible game-play yet an ambitious plot. If I can take one good thing from this game, it’s that it introduced Silver, and he’s much better than Sonic (overly cocky to the point of annoyance), and better than Shadow (Who’s too emo and silent at times), and he generally is a breath of fresh-air in the world of terrible characterization in video games. But you’re better of watching a Lets-Play or something on Youtube than buying this game, to be honest.  It’ll just frustrate you.