Fire Emblem: Awakening

Written by Taylor Tomlinson

Fire Emblem: Awakening is a painfully customizable team RPG with literally thousands of different ways to play. Now, needless to say, when I picked up this game the only strategical bone in my body came from knowing which Pokemon type is super effective against my foes. That all changed after I got into this game.
The game starts off with your cliché character creation station. Only this time, it’s a bit more in depth than eye color and hairstyle choices. when making a character, you have to pick a strength and weakness and seeing this, I groaned aloud, “There’s no way I can beat this…”, praying I could survive this game. I’m absolutely awful with building strong and tactful characters, and guess what, YOU’RE the team tactician. It is literally your job to be tactful. I sucked it up, and begin playing the story.
The game graphics are absolutely beautiful and the cutscenes are very well made and well voiced. Further and further into the game you’ll grow bonds with your characters and actually become upset when they die. I know I did.
Without giving away any major plot points, the main point of the game is to save your kingdom by joining up with different kinds of characters in building the perfect team. Characters can get married and have children, becoming better teammates as such bonds occur.
I had an amazing time building up my team and watching the story grow. Play this game, and play in classic mode. You won’t be sorry. The Fire Emblem characters you know and love are back, but not as you would think..
and a little tip from me, Marry a thief. You’ll never get hit! 😉

Rating: 9/10
(flaw: online play can become a bit confusing.)
Replay Value: High 🙂

Free Games Friday!

It’s that time of the week again, and I’m here to bring you two more free to play games. This week I’ve chosen some older games, and overall lighter in tone from the ones I featured last week.

 

 

Game number one is a quick Shoot-Em-Up (or “Shmup” as they tend to be referred to) game titled Genetos. This Japanese title was developed by one man named Tatsuya Koyama, and features a theme of evolution. You start the game in a fun (and admittedly kind of cute) homage to Space Invaders, shooting aliens and collecting the coins that they drop. Collect enough coins, and you will evolve into the next generation of vertical shooters, making you more powerful as a result. The way you play will determine the type of weapons you get in the next evolution, so the game has a ton of replay value despite being easily beatable in about 30 minutes. It’s a fun nostalgia trip through the generations of vertical shooters, and has some pretty damn good graphics and music to boot. You can download the game to play here.

 

 

Continuing the completely unintended theme of nostalgia, the next game for this week is called Rom Check Fail. This quick and fun game is more of a minigame than a full fledged title, but it is nevertheless entertaining. The basic premise of this game is to complete the levels by defeating all of the bad guys on the screen. The catch? Every few seconds the game will “glitch”, changing your player character, the enemies, and the background. From Mario fighting Space Invaders to Zelda stabbing Asteroids to Pacman eating Goombas, every switch is a gamble and you never know what you’re going to get. If you have a couple minutes to kill and want a fun and quick game to occupy yourself with, this is a good title to do it with. The game can be played online here.

 

That’s all for this week, tune in next week for more Free Games Friday.

Nintendo’s Pokemon: The Origin Trailer.

Pokémon: The Origin

Surrounds the story around the original Red and Blue Pokemon games. Following the story of Red as he sets out to challenge his Rival for their first Gym Leader, Brock, for his Boulder Badge. When this franchise surfaced I was wholly excited for it. However, containing my excitement to write about it had been hard for the first twenty or so minutes. Nintendo is finally doing it—recapturing childhood in the best way possible. There is no real footage otherwise suggesting Ash or his companions will be making an appearance—seemingly it is a new series altogether. By all means go for it Nintendo, it is about time if you ask me. Seeing as I have been a fan of the First Generation of Pokemon (151) seeing those stories put into animation will be pretty amazing.

And it is done so spectacularly with a completely engaging trailer. Already it is shown to have some pretty amazing art direction, while still affording the growth of seeing our stalwart protagonist reach the apex of his journey. While there is no true telling how closely they will stick to the game, until otherwise proven we can only hope that we get to see a full reenactment.

There are hopes that it is divided into a series of movies to extend this franchise, or at least a short seasonal television stint. There is still much to be uncovered about Pokémon: The Origin, but this trailer is a fantastic start to what could be a step in a great direction. Slated to launch in Japan October 2, 2013 only ten days before Pokémon: The Origin there will only be more bits of news dropping as the months drag on. Maybe the tail end of 2013 will be the year of the Pokemon.

Character posters released for ‘Thor: The Dark World’

The two poster boys, Thor and Loki, are each on their own separate character posters. But who else would they put on the posters? I guess you could do a Malekith poster to show the evil in the movie. Thor will team up with evil adopted brother Loki in the movie to fight Malekith.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’m excited to see how this movie turns out with all the re-shoots that have been taking place. I just hope they don’t make too many changes and make it of Spider-Man 3 quality.

THE SHOPPE EPISODE 3: Fat Guys Got Big Weynis — I’m Done.

 

Gather round folks we have plenty of stories to tell, we are joined again with Corey (@00saywhat) Chris (@PallyDots) and Ballsrog (@Ballsrog) bringing all the awesome with a pinch of ridiculousness. On the table this session is Ben Affleck as Batman, Upcoming Games, Comics, GENCON adventures, Frogger games, and Mocking Ballsrog.