I'm sorry to hear about your loss. You have my condolences. Your grandmother sounds like an awesome lady.
I also agree with you that kids deserve good games. Too bad Nintendo seems to be one of the only companies that consistently delivers.
My Gamer Grandmother & Other Reviews
|
 On 08/01/2013 at 05:46 AM by Cary Woodham See More From This User » |
This past week was kind of rough on me. My grandmother passed away last week so over the weekend I was in Alabama for the funeral and stuff. She was really talented and artistic, and she was even a gamer, too! So I wrote a blog because I wanted to brag about her. I hope you get a chance to look at it, as well as some other reviews I’ve written over the past month.
I think I inherited my artistic abilities from my grandmother. Believe it or not, I CAN draw. My drawings are a bit more cartoony and I haven’t drawn in a long time so I’m WAY out of practice. But I’m artistic in other ways, too. I was in band in high school and I consider my writings to be an art as well. I think I credit a lot of that to my grandmother. One of the jobs she had was a florist, and she could also paint and draw really well. In this blog, I posted some of her paintings and sketches, so I hope you all can take a look at them. My grandmother was also a gamer, and enjoyed playing PC games like Deer Hunter titles, Mah Jongg, Solitaire, and Bejeweled. Actually nearly everyone in that side of the family are gamers to some extent. Anyway, while I will miss my grandmother, I’m not worried about her at all. I know she’s in a better place and with my grandfather, too!
Other Reviews
My grandmother enjoyed life, played funny jokes and tricks on people, and lit up a room whenever she was around. So since I enjoy life when I’m writing video game reviews, I’ll honor my grandmother with a list of game reviews that I’ve written lately. I hope you get a chance to read as many as you can and post comments, too!
You may or may not know this, but I’m actually a huge Garfield fan. Especially when I was a kid in the 80’s when Garfield was super popular. This iPad game is based on the new computer animated Garfield cartoon, which isn’t very good by the way. The game plays exactly like Jetpack Joyride, except not near as good. Plus it doesn’t make any sense for Garfield to be running and flying (it’s all a dream, according to the game). Anyway, if you want to watch a GOOD Garfield cartoon, watch the late 80’s/early 90’s Saturday morning cartoon called Garfield and Friends. You can get it on DVD and I think it’s on Netflix, too. I could probably write a whole blog about Garfield stuff, but I’ll just stop right there.
My brother Jeff’s favorite comic book character is Deadpool, so I let him review this one. It’s a pretty standard hack and slash 3-D action game, but the humor is what makes it fun. Even I laughed when watching Jeff play. It has other Marvel characters in it, too. I recognized Wolverine and Rogue, but others I wasn’t so familiar with looked pretty neat, too. Like Psylocke.
In this action RPG, you play as a royal knight who is about to marry a beautiful princess. But just before you kiss at the church, invaders come in and kill you! Just before you die, you see your beloved princess transform into a rough and tough warrior woman who kills all the assassins. Turns out the princess has two souls inside her body, and she can also travel back in time. So she goes to the past to prevent the wedding disaster, and you go back in time, too, in the body of her pet dragon! This game has some interesting aspects, like heavily animated characters and a battle system that kind of reminds me of Punch Out, believe it or not. But there is way too much talking in the game, and the main character is such a jerk. I just want to smack him up the side of the head! If I were the main character about to marry that lady, I’d be super nice. And if I got turned into a dragon, I’d be even nicer. Although I’d probably go run off to blow bubbles at bad guys in mazes (anyone who gets that reference is cool).
Touch and Sing Along Picture Book (iPad)
Believe it or not, I love reviewing kids’ games and have a heavy interest in them. So I try to review them whenever I can. Little kids deserve good games, too! This one teaches educational early learning skills like ABCs and body parts, paired with familiar songs kids know. It was developed by Japanese moms who wanted something fun for their kids to play and learn with. I think it’s funny that one of the music modes you can choose is 8-bit chiptunes!
This 2-D downloadable shooter reminds me of a fast-paced, bullet hell version of Pocky and Rocky, what with the Japanese folklore settings and characters and whatnot. It’s actually pretty good, too, with lots of gameplay modes and branching pathways. So I recommend it if you like those kinds of games.
Turbo: Super Stunt Squad (Wii, 3DS)
This game is based on the computer animated summer movie about a snail who gets super speed by infusing with nitro from a race car. I kind of want to see the movie just out of morbid curiosity, because that sounds like the dumbest premise ever. And surprise, the game based on the movie is a racer. Only original thing about the game is that you get power-ups by doing stunts, but that’s it. Otherwise it’s just a below average kart game.
Asterix is a very popular comic book series in Europe. It has spawned several animated movies and lots of video games. In fact, most of my knowledge of Asterix comes from the games that have been released in the US. From what I can gather, it seems like the European equivalent to Popeye. The iPad game is one of those typical mobile games where you try to send something flying as far as you can (I reviewed a game like that a while ago called Ninja Toss). In this one, you punch a Roman soldier and send him airborne. It’s slightly addicting in a simple way, but I think only die-hard Asterix fans will like it.
This is a simulation game where you are in charge of a call center and its employees. Aside from the 8-bit pixelated style graphics, this game wasn’t that charming to me. But it could be because I’m not big on simulation games. Or it could be because since reviewing games doesn’t pay the bills, during the day I work customer service at a call center of sorts, so playing a game about it just doesn’t appeal to me.
WWII German tank soldiers get shrunk down to the size of bugs, and must survive their new giant world. It’s a pretty standard shooter, but has some interesting twists like hiding your tank under leaves so you don’t get damaged by giant raindrops, for instance. Not sure why anyone would want to play as the bad guys in WWII, though.
This is basically Trials HD for the PS3. Except not near as good with over-sensitive controls, hard to navigate menus, and just an overall unprofessional indie look about it. But if you don’t have a 360 and want to play Trials, this is the way to go, I guess.
Conclusions
And that’s all for now! I hope you get to read as many reviews as you can and post comments. I’d appreciate it! Later! --Cary
Comments