No review, easter break

Yep, break

Aztaro Reviews: The Binding of Isaac

Title: The Binding of Isaac
Platform: PC, Playstation 3 and Playstation Vita
Genre: 2.5D, Dungeon Crawler, Action, Gore, "What you get is what you get" [items]
Online Interaction: To download and DLC

Story: You are Isaac, good boy and son. One day the voice of God talks to your mother and begins labeling you as corrupt. So your mother begins taking things away and imprisoning you. Eventually God is pleased with her work but demands a sacrifice, that sacrifice is her own son. Quickly hearing this you try to escape your room even though it's locked as tight as a prison cell, hearing her steps come ever so closer. With a little luck on your side there is a trap door under the rug, jumping in almost as soon as your mother swipes at you. Starting your journey to freedom and righting the wrong this God has started.

This is a very good game, it has a dungeon type feel [almost exactly] as some of the first Zelda games with different bosses and enemies. It has loads of power-ups and items, bosses and difficulty to keep you playing for quite some time. The skills requited the talent needed is definitely something that can be taken in when laying but that odd Genre tag is there for a pretty good reason. This game can give you bad items as well and make your invulnerable Isaac suddenly become a cowering baby or an almost dead Isaac into a slaughter house. This game will make you rage, but it's short enough to where you can keep trying it over and over and over again. Is has almost an addiction factor to it and it has collectables, lots of them from the items that can help you to odds and ends that are hidden in levels.

Rating: 69/100

Reason: This game, be it fun as it may, doesn't have the same frustrating charm as Dark Souls. This one sense it's so short you can set it down and try another time. It's a great game but how easy it is to screw up with one accidental button press is astonishing. Sense it starts the game fresh each time, it's easier to set down and come back to later.

Aztaro Reviews: Tera Rising

Title: Tera Rising
Platform: PC
Genre: Massively Multiplayer, Action, Hack and slash, Graphics, Fast paced, Roleplaying, Free to play
Online Interaction: MMORPG [need the internet just to start it up]

Story: Now I only paid attention to the intro cinematic so this is what I gathered...

There were these new continents that appeared and they were needed to be studied but shortly after arriving they all realized that this is a very harsh and unforgiving area. Monsters roamed free and slaughtered just about anyone who got near and threatened the research that was needed to be collected to not only know about these races but to build settlements and live in the area. Being pushed to a lone island and asking for anyone who is willing to, to help not only protect the people who are there but research the lands as well.

Sorry for the disregard for story but with how many missions that game puts you through I just stopped keeping up, anyway Tera is a [depending who you play as] a hack and slasher mainly but it's so fast paced. Even the archers and mages are bouncing around all over the place, I seem to be very fond of the berserker class myself. Races are more cosmetic than a use but they are neat, customization is rather deep and it's fun to just fool around in the character creation, just a shame you can only have 2 characters if you're a free to player. But seriously, this game will keep you occupied and you will find yourself dumping some hours into it and it'll be mainly from "Wow even on the lowest setting this game looks great, what's next?". With an archer, mystic, slayer, berserker and more this game will have something for your tastes of fighting style.
[Added note: There is crafting and gathering in the game as well but it's secondary and meant to help take away some of the "too many missions" blues.]

Rating: 79/100

Reason: Fun game, great graphics and can get very easy to learn but the story gets kind of overshadowed easily for just "I wanna go kill and see the landscape!". As well as the missions, they are so short and to the point you can gather a group of them and be able to finish them all in one area, no need to return to the area or do the repeatable but for some small cash and experience. And a MAJOR MAJOR problem I had with it was it's controller option, it gives you the option for keyboard or an Xbox 360 Controller or Playstation 3 controller.

[Rant commenced] I tried the controller option after the keyboard and I am VERY upset and disappointed by it, seriously they messed it up beyond belief. Even though the sticks are analog they don't utilize them at all, the pointer magically becomes inaccurate and to top it off, the camera and menu navigation for the stick are the same speed! "My camera is to slow", turn it up, "now my cursor is to fast", turn it down, "now my camera is slow again". This is EXACTLY why the stick should be utilized! Because it's either full speed or it won't move at all and trying to make something that only moves at top speed try to move to a [remember the cursor is already inaccurate when switching to a controller] try to highlight something is literally a pain. I found myself going for the mouse every menu navigation then using the mouse for the camera then I just put the controller down completely. Sorry but if this is an option, please try better, but sense it's an option and the rest of the game is good, I didn't take off as many points. Sure the layout of the buttons and using the Xbox 360's bumpers to get to different areas of navigation was smart for trying to fit everything in but if the controlling of it all is, needless to say, crap then it's not going to be fun for anyone involved.

But the keyboard controls aren't only the main option but HIGHLY PREFERRED.

Aztaro Reviews: Ib

Title: Ib
Platform: PC
Genre: Horror, puzzle, indie
Online Interaction: None

Story: You are Ib, your parents have brought you to an art museum to look at some of the art. After a short while something seems strange and you find yourself alone with no exit, a painting with a set of foot prints leading to it. After walking to it you're taken to a different world where you must solve puzzles and escape monsters to get back to your world, or stay in this one forever.

Ib is a 2D puzzler with a very deep story, characters are well developed, levels easy to navigate and puzzles that get harder as you go. This game was made in a program called RPGMaker with sprites which look amazing and portray the game amazingly. There's so much I'd like to say but the game has such a good plot and twists that mentioning even one will ruin it, just play it! okay? Play Ib, I'll even provide the download link.

Rating: 90/100

Reason: This is an amazing game with amazing story and I feel great graphics for portraying it, with multiple endings it'll have you play at least more than once. The only hold back is that it's the same game with the smallest of changes that aren't really that game changing till the end. Though this has to be played, it's an amazing tale to interact with.

Download: vgboy.dabomstew.com/other/ib.htm [Aka the download site]

Aztaro Reviews: Jet Set Radio [HD Remake]

Title: Jet Set Radio
Platform: Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network, PlayStation Vita and PC
Genre: Objective Seeking, Point gathering, Timed, Trick chaining, Incline Skate, Racing and advoid the enemy
Online Interaction: Leaderboards

Story: You are the gang called the GG's, being in Tokyo-To, a place where skaters and graffiti artist roam, you are trying to grow your gang and paint the town GG. With a total of 3 rival gangs, you must spray their turfs and in the end, tag them with your own insignia to show the town who are the dominate gang. Though everything changed when one of the leaders drops a piece of a mysterious record that everyone has thought to be a myth.

Jet Set Radio is one of those games who ideas sound a bit weird for a video game but made to work out... except when the police send tanks to residential areas and Apache helicopters to crowded city squares . Though this is one of those games you'll want to come back to every once and a while to hear the phenomenal music and simple yet fitting graphic styles of it's cell shading [I like to tease my friend cause when I put it on he can't stop watching due to the cartoon style graphics, colour and catchy music]. This game has a rather simple objective, spray paint over the rival gangs graffiti with your own, the problem is the more you cover the more the police will try to get you. After a couple of those you will then face the gang itself where you must label their backs with your logo, basically saying "you're ours now". And due to this part being more of a twist I cannot reveal the part after you beat them all but it does step the game up a bit. The music is catchy, the characters are well thought up for their short cutscenes and voice dialogs and overall differ in little ways which you can almost distinguish as something more when playing them. Now the graffiti, there are collectables to get so you can obtain more but there's a custom graffiti maker which is hard to control with a controller let alone a keyboard trying to be a controller. There is a way through a Jet Set Radio Graffiti Manager you can use any image as a tag but I haven't gone and tried this, apparently you can use any kind of picture as spray paint, kind of neat.

Rating: 90/100

Reason: This games music and mechanics have aged VERY well, this game is fun to play, watch and listen to so there's almost no reason you should buy this and enjoy a great game that had a console that died a big early. The reason for the 90 and not 100 score is because when you beat the game, you can then only have 3 new modes to play and be able to choose all the unlockable characters you obtained. It pretty much just resets the campaign and keeps your scores, characters and graffiti you obtained. Sure I play it over again but with repetition that great, kind of have only the secret characters to unlock, collect all the graffiti types and get the high scores on all the stages. After the first two campaign runs this would be more of a "I need something good to play".