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Okay, so there's quite a few games that many people haven't heard of, and are really quite excellent. I don't know any besides on Wii and PS2, so let's tell you those...
"de Blob"
A game that doesn't look too much. You colour a grey world. Er, yahoo. Until you realise that the gameplay is outstanding, of course. You smash paint pots to collect colour, then splatter your goodness on building segments (just touch a part to colour all of it), reducing your paint points. A paintpot gives you ten paint points, you have up to a hundred. There are primary colour paintpots, you can mix them to make green, orange, purple and brown. And the scoring system is excellent.
Basically, for colouring buildings you get points. So far, so duh. But colour whole blocks and you'll get a mass of points. Colour them one colour, about 1000. Colour them two, about 2000. And you can get mass points by changing your colours and splattering them over the building...and let's not even get started on how difficult it can be not to re-paint a segment (it's possible).
The graphics and music are awesome, the more you work, the more awesome they both become. Witness a grey world become vibrant, and witness dull music become huge jazz orchestras. Seriously, it's just...g-g-great.
And then there's landmarks, which have to be pumped full of a certain amount of paint-points to be transformed.
And enemies cost paint-pots to destroy-the best even require you to be a certain colour to destroy them. If you go in ink or get hit by an inkie (enemy) you have to go in water before your paint-pots get down to 0 and you die. Going in water takes all your colour away too.
There's more, but...too much more. The game is also great social commentary on the mundane nature of life and how cities are becoming dull and lacking joy.
"Zack and Wiki"
This isn't in my good books too much, it's a puzzle game that's immenseley difficult, but it uses the remote very well and is well worth a pick up. It's very taxing on the brain, and you should only get it if you're an adult or rather intelligent.
"Okami"
This game is the symbol of unsung heroes, the lord of the unkown games, the king of being unnoticed, yet outstanding. Better than de Blob, though not as talk-aboutable (it's the new verb).
It seems like a complete rip-off of Zelda to many people apparently, though it is nothing of the sort, though it fits into the action/RPG genre. Okami's excellence is extremely hard to pin-point. First let's just get something through before I tell you about it properly-it's about a goddess wolf you have to play in order to destroy a giant eight-headed serpent that eats a women once a year. Well, that's the first of a sort of trilogy of quests, but there you go.
So you go around doing general Action/RPG stuff. The characters are positively endearing, the main two characters (your lovable wolf and your even more lovable-and a lot more annoying-weird bug guy) in particular. You have a brush, and the meat of the game comes in here. You can go into a special mode and paint symbols to activate powers which you get as you go through the game. This is where the PS2 version may be better because the Wii version is hard to control according to reviews I've seen.
The battle system is nice, random battles the order of the day. There are many different enemies, and your brush thingy comes into play-like slowing down time to beat up a really fast monster; slicing up a little imp with your sword movement. It's frankly really enjoyable.
So far, so not outstanding, but you really have to play it to see what I'm talking about. And there's one thing I neglected to mention-the graphics. Beautiful Japanese water colours make for the prettiest (not the most realistic) graphics you'll ever see, most likely. They are just...wow...they have to be seen on a TV to be believed, screenshots won't cover it.
And then there's the great storyline. Typically Japanese, of course, and bizarre, but brilliant nevertheless. You'll see French lightsaber weilders holding secrets (no, not evil ones). Well, one, but he's still awesome. The ending is possibly the best game ending I've ever seen, absolutely tear-jerking.
Okami is almost as good, if not better than, as Super Mario Galaxy. It's one of the greatest games I've ever played and is an epic journey.
Now that's my madly long post done. Anything from you? Yours sincerely, the every annoying mariosuperlative.
"de Blob"
A game that doesn't look too much. You colour a grey world. Er, yahoo. Until you realise that the gameplay is outstanding, of course. You smash paint pots to collect colour, then splatter your goodness on building segments (just touch a part to colour all of it), reducing your paint points. A paintpot gives you ten paint points, you have up to a hundred. There are primary colour paintpots, you can mix them to make green, orange, purple and brown. And the scoring system is excellent.
Basically, for colouring buildings you get points. So far, so duh. But colour whole blocks and you'll get a mass of points. Colour them one colour, about 1000. Colour them two, about 2000. And you can get mass points by changing your colours and splattering them over the building...and let's not even get started on how difficult it can be not to re-paint a segment (it's possible).
The graphics and music are awesome, the more you work, the more awesome they both become. Witness a grey world become vibrant, and witness dull music become huge jazz orchestras. Seriously, it's just...g-g-great.
And then there's landmarks, which have to be pumped full of a certain amount of paint-points to be transformed.
And enemies cost paint-pots to destroy-the best even require you to be a certain colour to destroy them. If you go in ink or get hit by an inkie (enemy) you have to go in water before your paint-pots get down to 0 and you die. Going in water takes all your colour away too.
There's more, but...too much more. The game is also great social commentary on the mundane nature of life and how cities are becoming dull and lacking joy.
"Zack and Wiki"
This isn't in my good books too much, it's a puzzle game that's immenseley difficult, but it uses the remote very well and is well worth a pick up. It's very taxing on the brain, and you should only get it if you're an adult or rather intelligent.
"Okami"
This game is the symbol of unsung heroes, the lord of the unkown games, the king of being unnoticed, yet outstanding. Better than de Blob, though not as talk-aboutable (it's the new verb).
It seems like a complete rip-off of Zelda to many people apparently, though it is nothing of the sort, though it fits into the action/RPG genre. Okami's excellence is extremely hard to pin-point. First let's just get something through before I tell you about it properly-it's about a goddess wolf you have to play in order to destroy a giant eight-headed serpent that eats a women once a year. Well, that's the first of a sort of trilogy of quests, but there you go.
So you go around doing general Action/RPG stuff. The characters are positively endearing, the main two characters (your lovable wolf and your even more lovable-and a lot more annoying-weird bug guy) in particular. You have a brush, and the meat of the game comes in here. You can go into a special mode and paint symbols to activate powers which you get as you go through the game. This is where the PS2 version may be better because the Wii version is hard to control according to reviews I've seen.
The battle system is nice, random battles the order of the day. There are many different enemies, and your brush thingy comes into play-like slowing down time to beat up a really fast monster; slicing up a little imp with your sword movement. It's frankly really enjoyable.
So far, so not outstanding, but you really have to play it to see what I'm talking about. And there's one thing I neglected to mention-the graphics. Beautiful Japanese water colours make for the prettiest (not the most realistic) graphics you'll ever see, most likely. They are just...wow...they have to be seen on a TV to be believed, screenshots won't cover it.
And then there's the great storyline. Typically Japanese, of course, and bizarre, but brilliant nevertheless. You'll see French lightsaber weilders holding secrets (no, not evil ones). Well, one, but he's still awesome. The ending is possibly the best game ending I've ever seen, absolutely tear-jerking.
Okami is almost as good, if not better than, as Super Mario Galaxy. It's one of the greatest games I've ever played and is an epic journey.
Now that's my madly long post done. Anything from you? Yours sincerely, the every annoying mariosuperlative.
