Serious Sam - The First Encounter

Croteam and GOD Games deliver one of the greatest FPS's of all time!

  I remember the days when Wolfenstein 3D and Doom were the must-haves for any respectable PC gamer. The concept of those games was simple: If it moved, SHOOT IT!!!  Now, everyone seems to be cranking out FPS's, and only a few of them get it right. Games like Unreal, Halo, and Half-Life are considered the pinacles of the FPS genre. These games combine action with an impelling story and out of this world weaponry. Then a new guy came to town. His name? Serious Sam. It may sound like a corny name, but the game is anything but corny. Serious Sam is hailed as the King of the Bargain Bins, costing only $19.99 at most stores. Serious Sam takes FPS's back to their roots, back to a time when the story took a backseat to the non-stop action.

GRAPHICS: GOD Games and Croteam took the initiative and developed a whole new graphics engine for this game, called the 'Serious Engine'. All I can say is WOW!! The game contains wonderfully rendered levels on a massive scale. The game takes place in ancient Egypt, and the land of the pyramids never looked prettier. Several of the real-life locations are beautifully rendered. 

The cutscenes are brief, but all run very smoothly.  One of the greatest aspects of the game is its ability handle several dozen enemies on the screen at a time without any slowdown. The glare from the sun on the camera during the day and starry night sky, complete with a beautiful nebula is absolutely gorgeous. Croteam and GOD Games held nothing back when they designed this beauty.

GAMEPLAY: Serious Sam is without a doubt one of the funnest FPS's of all time. One nice thing about the game is the addition of NetRicia, your computerized companion throughout the game. She acts as your guide and an onscreen manual, giving you detailed information about every new area you come to, every enemy, and all the weapons. She also points you in the right direction when you complete one task and are ready to start another. There are ten weapons in the game, most of them pretty standard, and one that you have to see to believe. The weapons include a combat knife, two six shooters, a pump action shotgun, a double barreled elephant gun, a tommy gun, a chain gun, a personal missile launcher, a grenade launcher, a quadbarrel laser cannon, and a cannon. You heard right, you get an honest to goodness pirate cannon that fires uranium filled cannon balls at your foes. It is by far the most destructive weapon in the game. 

Now for the best part, the action. Serious Sam is a non-stop action game from beginning to end. Each level contains at least 400-500 enemies each, and over 2500 enemies in the entire game.  You won't take more than two steps at times before 30-40 enemies are dropped on you....at once. Probably one of the most entertaining parts of the game are the arena areas. These are massive areas where you face off against wave after wave of enemies. In most FPS's, you have to conserve ammo. Not in Serious Sam. Ammo is scattered everywhere, which is good, because you'll need every last shotgun shell you can find to fend off the thirty plus beheaded kamikaze bombers that are running after you screaming at the top of their lungs. 

STORY: People say there's not much of a story here, but they're wrong. There is a very deep story that explains Sam's trip to the past and his one-man war against an army of aliens. Way off in mankind's future, in the ruins of ancient Egypt, evidence of a highly technologically advanced alien civilization is discovered. Man uses this alien technology to travel deep into space and colonize other worlds. 

Then, without warning, merciless aliens from another dimension start literally appearing out of nowhere and wiping out colony after colony, conquering world after world until mankind is pushed back to Earth.  Sam 'Serious' Stone is one of the greatest human warriors. He has fought hoards of the aliens and never lost a battle. 

Knowing there is no other choice, the world leaders decide to use the timelock, another of the alien artifacts that can send one person back through time. They choose to send Sam back to ancient Egypt to find out who the aliens were that lived there, and discover what the aliens that are attacking Earth want.  The story then continues in between battles in the form of cutscenes and text messages from NetRicia. On the way, you'll learn some history about ancient Egypt. But again, Serious Sam is all about the action, the story is good, but just takes a backseat to it. 

SOUND: What would a hardcore action shooter be without music to kick butt by? Serious Sam has many excellent tracks, and uses them to let you know when a batch of baddies are about to be dropped on you. There are several types ranging from heavy-metal type action music, to mysterious-like Egyptian tunes, to the final battle music. It's probably got one of the best soundtracks for FPS that I've ever heard. Another great addition is hearing Sam spout out smart ass remark throughout the game. This is reminicent to Duke Nukem 3D, but the difference is that Sam isn't simply quoting Ash from 'Evil Dead' the whole game like Duke does. Sam does things ranging from whistling 'Singing in the Rain' while walking through a storm to saying 'AAAAAAAAAAAAA, yourself!!' after first encountering the screaming kamikaze bombers. 

REPLAY: There are secrets to be had in every level, ranging from finding powerful weapons early in the game, super-charged health items, and the weirdest having to be finding the developing team locked in a room and having them run after you and introduce themselves. There are also two secret levels that you can find. Both of them are really fun and very challenging. The main reason you'll want to come back to this game is to just fire off that cannon of yours over and over again. 

BUY or SKIP: BUY BUY BUY!!!! 

OVERALL: Serious Sam proves that you don't have to have a massive in depth epic story or tons of futuristic weapons to have a good FPS. No Plasma Beam Cannon will ever be the same as turning an enemy into a smear on the wall with a good ol' fashion double barreled shotgun. 

 NAME: SERIOUS SAM - THE 1ST ENCOUNTER

SYSTEM: PC, LINUX, XBOX

Gargoyle's Quest

The Red Gargoyle Strikes Again

 Here is yet one more reason why the Gameboy has lasted so long. Horridly hard games that you just can't seem to put down. Okay, I'm stretching it a bit. But seriously, after running into spikes on the ground, spikes on the walls, and spikes on the ceiling, one does tend to get a bit jaded with the whole game-playing experience. However, this game came out back when I was in sixth grade, I think, and we generally bought any cool-looking game we could get our hands on back then. Anyways... 

GRAPHICS: For the Gameboy, these were cool. FireBrand the Gargoyle and all of his adversaries are drawn large, making the playing field a bit tighter than usual but letting you see small details, like an enemy opening up its weak spot for a well-placed fire blast. The sprites are really the best part, actually, especially when you see the almost unreservedly huge and menacing end-of-level bosses (fish on first level EVIL!) The backgrounds, as well, are drawn down to tiny details. When you see the burning buildings in the background, or look closely at the ground and realize (with revulsion if it weren't such a common sight in video games today) that it's made of skulls. You thought Castlevania was evil? This is a world that's so hostile that even the ghouls are having trouble surviving, not to mention your hapless gargoyle! Aside from a bit of shoddiness on the world map (darn, this blasted wasteland looks exactly the same everywhere I go!) the graphics are sweet almost without exception. 

SOUND: Bringin' it down a point here! Sorry, but GameBoy music is rather hard to do right under the best of circumstances, and they weren't exactly trying very hard on this one music-wise. The sounds were HORRID. It's bad enough having to hear the same music every time you get into a random battle, having to hear the overdone fanfare whenever you won has been proven to cause hypertension and schizophrenia, especially after extended play sessions. TURN THE SOUND OFF! You'll thank me later, trust me. 

STORY: Magnificent! The most convoluted reasoning behind a story that I've ever seen! Whereas normal games have you as the good guy fighting the evil guy, in this one you're the evil-but-sorta-good creature battling to save the evil-but-good-in-their-own-way ghoul population from the rule of one of the evil ghoul princes who seeks to take over the realm by sitting in his big chair and sending his envoys out to do the dirty work. Apparently there's some evil magic involved, but the evil prince Breager never gets off his lazy butt to cast it, so we're assuming he hired a passing mage to do that too. Which leads to the question: Why did the other ghoul princes not hire a bunch of guys to go kick Breager's butt? I mean, sure, ''sit in chair and wait for hero to come rescue you'' may be a good strategy for most video game damsels in distress, but these are rulers, for crying out loud, we're looking for a slightly more substantial strategy than that. Now you can see why these supposedly ''revolutionary'' plots aren't used that often.

GAMEPLAY: Immensely. You can hover on your wings and shoot fireballs. Power-ups given to you by grateful(and weak) ghoul princes increase your life, give you special fireballs to shoot(such as those that can break through walls or stick onto spikes,) increase your jumping power(you DO have to jump before you can fly, Daniel-san,) and increase your ''hang time''(nothing to do with basketball, although Firebrand would make a mean point guard.)Gameplay goes in a style pretty much like Zelda 2, which has long, side scrolling main levels and small bouts in the overworld where you can run into random battles. You don't get experience, but you DO get vials(of cocaine, I'm assuming, since anyone who actually WANTED to live in this place would have to be mostly drugged out of his brain anyway. Oh yeah, I forgot, these are zombies we're talking about. Generally not the smartest things in the world when it comes to choosing hospitable places to live. All major points of interest-such as bridges and buildings-are inaccesible to anyone who can't fly, and even if you can, there's a whole lot of spikes put everywhere to discourage any actual thoughts of living there. It's an undead life, I guess. But it's really annoying to have to go back and replay an entire level because the stupid spikes hit you again! There are also some rather major problems with flashing and slowdown, but then again, that's normal for the Gameboy. What should NOT be, however, is the horrid difficulty of the two last bosses, who give you the pleasure of a clear shot at their weak point aroud...once every ten minutes, maybe. BAD DESIGNERS! Still, there's an aura of mindless fun about Gargoyle's Quest, great for a quick play, especially if you ahve it emulated and can save-state your way through the tough spots. 

OVERALL: You gotta hand it to Firebrand. No matter how often life shoves a spike in in one of his many orifices, he still manages to keep that unflappable smile for all good little devils to see. But I'm thinking. Why bother saving this spike-ridden realm when he can go to Hollywood or Washington and gain some real fame? It's not like half the people there aren't his kind of people anyway. He'd fit right in. Failing that job, there's always his old fallback of knocking Arthur's armor off in one more round of Ghouls n' Ghosts. What a little gargoyle could do in this world... 

NAME: GARGOYLE'S QUEST

SYSTEM: GAME BOY

World Of Warcraft

The redefining point in online gaming. Let's remember how everything we know, love or hate, began!

Continuing Blizzard's tradition of releasing outstanding games, World of Warcraft is their first attempt at entering the field of Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPG), a new phenomenon in gaming. There won't be a second attempt - Blizzard has not just entered the field; they have completely dominated and revolutionized it. World of Warcraft is by far the most popular MMORPG ever, and one of the most popular games. Hundreds of thousands of players in America and millions across the world play this game. There are over 100 servers needed to support the huge population of World of Warcraft. Thousands of websites are dedicated to this game. For a game as revolutionary, popular, and outstanding, the only rating worthy of this game is a full ten out of ten.

Being an MMORPG, World of Warcraft provides you with a character, which can be chosen from a wide variety of combinations. Your character will progress through the game by killing monsters and completing quests for experience, causing him to grow more powerful and acquire better equipment, enabling him to progress to new areas of the game. However, you are doing this alongside thousands of other players; some of whom you will trade with, others who you will group with to defeat powerful monsters that you couldn't defeat alone, and others who will be your enemies and will engage you in battle. Although this unique concept for a game has obviously been done before World of Warcraft, it has never been done nearly as well. All of the common flaws of previous MMORPGs like Everquest and Star Wars Galaxies have been drastically reduced or eliminated altogether.

The concept of World of Warcraft revolves around two warring factions: The Alliance and the Horde. The Alliance consists of Humans, Dwarves, Night Elves, and Gnomes. The Horde consists of Orcs, Trolls, Undead, and Tauren. Your character will belong to one of these factions. The players on your faction are your allies, and the players on the opposing faction are your enemies. You cannot talk or trade with players of the opposing faction, and there are many situations where you will fight them. Your faction controls certain areas of the world, where you can play without ever seeing a member of the opposing faction. However, as you grow more powerful, you will be sent into zones where you will come across enemy players. On certain servers, you are able to fight them, while on other servers conflict will be more avoidable. The two server types, player vs. environment (PvE) and player vs. player (PvP) is a great concept that allows players to choose whether to focus on combat with monsters or combat with enemy players. Regardless of what server you choose, you will still be able to participate in both PvE and PvP when you want to.

After you have chosen your faction, you will choose your race. All eight races look significantly different, have many different ways of customizing thier looks, and have unique abilities and passive bonuses that can give them an edge in combat. There are a total of nine "classes" to choose from, each of which use different techniques to defeat enemies, and will experience the game remarkably differently. For example, a Warrior will most often engage in melee combat, while a Mage will cast powerful spells from afar. Hunters will call deadly creatures that they have tamed to aid them in battle, while Rogues will sneak up on an enemy and stab him from behind. One great thing about World of Warcraft is that they have managed to achieve a very close balance between the classes - there are no dominant classes and no classes that are worthless. With proper skill any class can become a killing machine. The balance is still not perfect, but Blizzard has made a lot of progress since the game was first released and continues to even things up with every patch. 

After you have chosen your class, you customization options are not over. Starting at level 10 you will gain a talent point every level, which can be applied boosting one of your abilities, or sometimes to learning a new one. Your character will specialize in one or two aspects of your class. For example, Priests have the choice of boosting their ability to heal or boosting their damaging spells, while Shamans can specialize in casting magic or in melee combat. With talent points there are thousands of combinations for your class, meaning you can be very unique. At any rate, once your character has been created you will enter the world. You will immediately be sent on quests to defeat monsters, gather items, and explore new places. Your first few levels will be quick and uninterrupted; you should have no problem reaching level ten in a couple hours. You will learn the basics of the game very quickly, as they are not that complex. New skills and upgrades to previous skills will be available every two levels starting at level two, which makes the game feel less repetitive. Every so often, your character will learn a key ability, such as Dual Wield for Rogues, Ghost Wolf for Shamans, and so on, which is really exciting and encourages you to achieve those levels. At level 40 you can purchase a "mount" for a small fortune, which you can ride on, drastically increasing your speed. When you hit level 60, you will not be able to learn new skills and gain any more levels, but there is plenty of powerful gear to acquire by completing very difficult "instances" - areas where only you and your group can go, meaning they are free of other players. There is also a unique PvP "honor system" where by killing enemy players roughly equal to your level you will slowly gain ranks, giving you access to very elite gear. In short, the game always changes and never ends. Blizzard is constantly adding new instances to the game, with new monsters to kill and new gear to acquire, as well as new upgrades to PvP to make it even more fun.

Level 60 may sound a long way off, but in reality it doesn't take years, or even months to reach. In a solid month or two of fairly casual playing your character can reach level 60. Gaining the necessary experience to level up in this game is a lot different than other games. In most MMORPGs you simply must kill monsters over and over again for many hours to level up, known as "grinding," which deters many people from playing MMORPGs, as they find them boring. However, World of Warcraft has a system of quests, where NPCs give you quests that involve killing monsters, gathering items, delivering stuff, and sometimes killing a boss, and as a reward you gain significant experience and usually either some money or a good item. Especially during the first half of the game, completing quests is often faster than grinding, and you will acquire more money and better items than you could have by grinding. Quests take you throughout the world, often leading to new quests. There are thousands of quests to complete, so if there's a few that you don't want to do, you can simply skip them and attempt other quests. By doing quests, you should never get bored of this game like you may have with other MMORPGs.

When you don't want to work on making your character more powerful, you can work on improving your "professions" - skills that either involve collecting raw materials or using raw materials to produce equipment for your character. There are many different professions, and the good thing about them is that they are all relatively easy to improve and they are all useful. While in Star Wars Galaxies you would have to produce thousands of useless items to level up your professions on notch, in World of Warcraft you only have to produce one item of the right type to level it up, and every five levels you gain access to producing new and better items. In short, this is the first MMORPG where professions are both quick to level up and useful to your characters.

When you want to engage in PvP battles, you may choose to enter the "Battlegrounds," which are huge arenas where large PvP battles occur. Some battles involve simply killing enemy players, while others involve capturing a flag or defending key bases from enemies. Even if you lose, you will have still gained tons of points for all the players you have killed. Battlegrounds are open to players starting at level 20, and are set up in blocks, where all people level 20-29 will play together, 30-39 together, and so on. This way, you don't have to worry about getting completely decimated by a player who can kill you in one hit. Never before in MMORPGs has player vs. player combat been so accessible.

From everything I have said, World of Warcraft sounds like an awesome game and the best MMORPG by far. This is true; don't get me wrong. However, I would be deceiving you by not to mention the disadvantages. The first thing is the community. If you've played other Blizzard games online, you may have noticed that many of the people who play them are loud and immature. Unfortunately, many of the players in this game behave the same way. There's not much you can do about it, but if you join a mature guild you will always have plenty of well-behaved people to play with, so the community is never an obstacle for enjoyment in this game. Since this is a role-playing game, you may wish to actually "role-play" your characters - pretend you are your character. Blizzard has set up several official role-playing servers, so you can be with other players who like to role-play, and no one will make fun of you. In fact, if they do they will face punishment from Blizzard, which is remarkably fast about addressing any concerns you may have about the game.

Another small problem is the monthly fee. Yes, this game costs $15 a month to play besides the money you pay for the game. Depending on your age and your ability to acquire money, this may be a factor that stops you from playing this game. Blizzard is not trying to rip you off; this game requires tons of expensive servers to run, and they employ many people to take care of any possible concerns you have with the game. After playing this game for a month, you will definitely discover that it is worth the monthly fee. 

Switching to a new topic, the graphics and sounds of this game are nothing spectacular. If you are expecting beautiful looking character models and landscapes, you will be disappointed. However, the advantage to having a game with mediocre graphics is that you only need a mediocre computer to play it - you will most likely not have spend a dime upgrading any part of your computer to run this game. And if you do have a higher end system, this game does look very nice, but not nice enough that it slows down your framerate at all. There is a little bit of lag in this in the busy areas of the major cities, but that's it - you won't experience lag anywhere else. 

If you have ever played an MMORPG and didn't like it because it was too slow, too boring, or too complex, you obviously did not play World of Warcraft. World of Warcraft has solved the problems of other MMORPGs. In a sense, it has brought this field a step closer to perfection. Just as Warcraft 1 revolutionized the field of Real Time Strategy games, World of Warcraft has revolutionized the field of MMORPGs, and has brought gaming to a whole new level. This game must be recognized by all as key step towards the evolution of gaming, and only a perfect rating is right for this outstanding game.

 Do you still watch this clip?

NAME: WORLD OF WARCRAFT

SYSTEM: PC

Monster Hunter Freedom Unite

A great game, worthy of hundreds of hours of your time.

 I have been a long time Monster Hunter (almost 700+ hours of total game play) and I must say this third "redo" of Monster Hunter Freedom takes the cake and spits it in all the faces who turn their noses at it. Vastly more customization, way more monsters than the 2nd game, and an outstanding visual enrichment give this game five thousand thumbs up (if I had that many). I have come to realize how many hunters there are out there, either in this American country or another foreign one like Japan where Portable 2G made its debut earlier last year. Capcom, I salute you 100%. Ever since Monster Hunter Freedom came into the world as an infant, all of the world has come to appreciate the wonders the hunting world has to offer, including the realistic actions, like rolling doges, gathering speeds, sword and gun actions, and even mishaps such as getting your butt kicked by a Nargacuga and rolling so hard you forget where you're at for a few minutes.

 The game starts similarly to the 2nd game, although there are changes if you have a saved game from the previous release. If you do have a saved file from MHF2, you start the game as if you had just saved moments ago: you wake up and shuffle off the bed and stand up in a heroic position. Nothing abnormal about that... except when you exit your house and find that almost everyone outside wants to speak with you about something important and new. When you visit the crafting shop, the clerk will give you some little bits of advice on the upcoming crafting options that are available, such as X and Z armor sets and new armor spheres: Royal AS, and True AS. If you go first to the retired hunter, he will tell you about the epic hunting quests of the G-rank status, which are by far the most difficult quests ever since White Fatalis... You may even go to the Village Chief, who will introduce you to a little cat that gives you High-rank quests you must do by yourself, but with new areas and monsters, not to mention another great arena area. The Chief also has new quests, such as the red Lao-Shan Lung and pair-ups of various large monsters, like Yian Kut-Ku and Ceanataur at the same time. 

As you progress in the game, either on the cat's quests or the G rank ones, you will notice changes in the monsters and their fighting styles. All the prey monsters are WAY more aggressive; all large monsters have new or improved attacks, such as the ever-annoying "move-jump" the hermitaur does every so often; you will gain better items and can put vastly more of them in your item box; you can have more custom armor sets, the limit increased to 20 instead of MHF2's 10; and many more great changes in the game thus far. Your guild card changes as well. There are several new menus to see on the card. For example, the weapons usage panel, where it displays the times in which you used, say, a LS or a Sword and Shield. It will also keep track of your monster logs, treasure hunting quests, awards X2, and many more things. If you want to find out something, just go to the guild card. Its your access pass to your stats. Various new things have been added to the game play motion. You may now employ the fighting courage of a Felyne Comrade. When you go out on quests with a felyne, it will automatically attack any monster in the area, unless you run off of course, then it'll run after you. Also, you can teach your felynes skills, such as lightning attribute weapons, attack up, and clairvoyance (ESP for monsters). You can also trade over one of your chefs to fight for you as a comrade, although I don't recommend that because you can't trade over a felyne from your comrade list once this is done (you can undo it, but you can't trade a comrade over anyways). 

The fight style and button configuration is identical to that of MHF2. You still roll with the X button, you still slash with the triangle button and you still kick with the select. The weapon button configuration hasn't changed at all either; spirit blade it still R, fire is still R, and everything is exactly the same. The only thing different is the weapon you use. Some weapons, especially dual blades, have multiple attributes. For instance, the Festive Fall Typhoon had both thunder and para attributes, not to mention a +12 defense. Another is a weapon with both fire and ice attributes.

The monsters just got a whole lot more complicated in this game, however. The Daimyo Hermitaur can move while it jumps into the air; the Ceanataur is faster; the Plesioth is so much more annoying with its hit-bump; the Congalala's farts and exploding flatulence is way more devastating; the Rathalos just doesn't want to die; and the Nargacuga (black version of Tigrex) is wicked fast. Despite these offsets, the game has gotten a whole lot more challenging with the new moves. Your circumstances are always changing, and a good hunter has to adapt in every way he (or she) can in order to slay or trap the monster targeted. Your strategy will change constantly as a result, keeping you and your comrade on your toes at all times.

All in all, MHFU is a must have for any hunter willing to step beyond the Akantor in toughness. I rate this game a 9/10 without regrets.

 

NAME: MONSTER HUNTER FREEDOM UNITE

SYSTEM: PLAY STATION PORTABLE

Golden Sun 3 - Dark Dawn

A worthy sequel that reaches expectations in almost every category

I've been waiting for this game to come out for a long time. People called me crazy, thinking that Camelot will release a sequel to the critical favorite Golden Sun: The Lost Age. I knew that a powerful fan-base like the one Golden Sun has would be able to catch Nintendo's eye. The purpose of this review is to review this game and give a bit of compare/contrast between this and the two games that came out before.

GRAPHICS: The original Golden Sun games were always praised for their outstanding graphics on a system that was about as powerful as a SNES. To this day I'm still impressed by the graphics on a game that came out around 9 years ago. Having said that I feel that they could have done a better job with the graphics on this game. If I had to describe the graphics I would use the word "blocky" a great deal. While the overworld is in much greater detail than the first two Golden Sun games I still feel that they could have made it look smoother. The overworld character sprites also suffer a similar case of blockiness (new word I just made up). The one thing I can say is that they use animation to its fullest potential. Characters seem much more animated (in both uses of the word) and I can't fault them for that. So why did I give it an 8 out of 10? Well, the battles are in much greater detail than the overworld. The detail and animations used in the battles far surpasses what they use in the overworld. If they had given the overworld map and characters the same sprites and details they used in battles I would have had to raise this to a 9 or even a 10. At that point I would have figured they could go into no greater detail; they are limited by the technology of the system after all.

STORY: Just note, I'm keeping this part of the review spoiler-free. You don't have to worry about the story being ruined for you. The original Golden Sun games had a great story. Across both games you uncovered schemes and discovered plot twists. While the characters in the first game could have had a little more personality (especially the silent protagonists) I couldn't fault them, because they had told an excellent story that I still enjoy to this day. In my opinion, Dark Dawn's story surpasses that of the first two Golden Suns. Without using a strategy guide it took me about 23 hours to complete this game, but even if I had used a guide I don't think I would have cut down on the amount of time it took by more than an hour or two. You can pretty much guarantee a 20 hour story from this game, at least. From an early point in the game you feel like your characters are apart of something epic and this feeling continues to grow until you reach the climax. The characters do have a greater range of emotion in comparison to the first two games and you feel more connected to them. 

This would have gotten a 10 out of 10 if not for one large problem and one small problem I have with this game.  The large problem is that Dark Dawn suffers from a bad case of SPS, or Silent Protagonist Syndrome. I had the same problem with the first two games (which also featured silent protagonists) and I really did hope they would have corrected it. I suppose they wanted you to feel like you were the character and all of the dialogue in your head was supposed to be your words in game or something along those lines. When playing an RPG, unless I'm creating the character myself, I can't really get intimately connected with who I'm playing as. It's a rather large flaw, and I believe that it took away from the overall presentation. I do also have one small problem with the game, and that is that a couple of characters that are introduced late into the game did not have enough time in the spotlight. Because of this they seem to have about as much personality as a robot. The rest of the characters have way more personality, and almost makes up for this minor flaw. I just wish I could have gotten to know them better. Finally, I do have one point to make. There is a lot of dialogue in this game, and the same holds true for the first two games. There are some scenes that seem to take 5 minutes to complete. I ENJOY THIS, and I enjoy it because this is a single-player, story driven game. I mention this because it is noticeable and not every enjoys spending 5 minutes reading what they need to do next.

GAMEPLAY: The first Golden Suns had a great (and unique) battle system. The battle system featured many creatures to aid you in battle, called Djinni, and when unleashed simultaneously you can summon powerful allies to bring on the pain to your foes. The originals also had a large amount of puzzles and dungeons that would always keep you guessing. I've played the first two games a number of times and try as I might I still have to look at a FAQ for at least one puzzle.  Dark Dawn was almost identical to the first two with one minor change. If the first two games had a flaw it was that if you had several of your party members attack a single monster and the monster died before all of your party members attacked it, the remaining party members would simply defend instead of attacking another monster. While this wasn't a huge deal it was a bit annoying at times in the first two games. Dark Dawn corrected this, so now party members will move onto another monster instead of defending. Dark Dawn also maintains a large number of playable classes. While there are a lot of similarities between classes they are all useful in some way or another. Puzzles have changed slightly and I believe they improved upon the way you solve them. It's not a huge deal, but basically it's much easier to target things you need to target in order to solve puzzles. There is only one flaw that I think needs to be mentioned, but first one thing needs to be explained. This game can be controlled one of two ways. You can either use the buttons and arrows on the DS to control your character or you can use the touch screen for all commands. I've tried it both ways and I much prefer to use the buttons and arrows (what can I say? I'm old fashioned.). I feel much more out-of-control when using the touch screen commands and I feel that it takes much longer to issue orders.  The good thing that comes from this is that you don't need to make a menu selection to switch between control types. You can simply do one or the other, and at times you can do both at the same time (which I did frequently). The bad thing that comes from this is that it is sometimes hard to move your character in certain places when using the D-pad. I believe that Camelot and Nintendo wanted you to use the touch screen as much as humanly possible and I think that in some small cases it's a bit of a hindrance. One final thing worth mentioning is that there is no transfer data between Golden Sun: The Lost age and Dark Dawn. Though there is an option in The Lost Age to save your data for what appears to be transferring, this was never implemented in Dark Dawn. It was a bit disappointing to find this out, but as the story takes place 30 years from the events of the last game it's not that big of a deal.

SOUND: Golden Sun has a history of GREAT music, and it spans across the entire series. The first two games had some of the best music I've ever heard in a video game, and to this day I'm still impressed by Motoi Sakuraba's skill. While it pains me to say, Dark Dawn falls SLIGHTLY short of its predecessor when it comes to sound and music. Don't get me wrong, there are some absolutely amazing musical scores in this game, and most of them are great. There are, however, at least two dungeons/areas where the music is TERRIBLE... I mean so terrible that I almost wanted to turn the sound off. I believe that for these particular dungeons they were trying to make it sound creepy and scary but it came across as sleepy and boring. If it weren't for those two dungeons I would have given the sound a 10 out of 10. I want to move away from that, because the rest of the music in this game is really great, it never feels old and it's always exciting. The battle music is where the game shines, I have never had a boss fight (in any of the Golden Sun games) where I didn't enjoy the music. One thing that is small, but still enjoyable, are the speech effects. When a character "speaks" a speech bubble appears and while the words are being written out it almost sounds like they are talking. Some find this annoying, but I think most (including myself) enjoy it.

OVERALL: This is one of the greatest games that I've played on a DS, and by far the best RPG I've played on a DS. Dark Dawn stands up to some of the best RPGs I've played in my life (and I've played a lot of them). This game took around 7 years to come out (the time between Golden Sun: The Lost Age and Golden Sun: Dark Dawn), and even though my expectations were very high Dark Dawn reached them in almost every category. This game is not without its flaws, but MOST of them are nit-picky at best. The sun has truly risen again for this series, and I look forward to the next installment. 

 NAME: GOLDEN SUN 3 - DARK DAWN

SYSTEM: NINTENDO DS