The Internet Channel was released just a few weeks after the big Nintendo Wii launch  back in November 2006, allowing Wii owners to a cheap and efficient way to finally surf the web through their TV without having to lift their lazy asses off the couch (yes that includes YOU). Contrary to what many considered to be useless (such as many of the Wii Channels), many folks for odd reasons or another, actually made use of the Internet Channel and discovered the “usefullness” of it. Those of you who were lucky enough to obtain a Wii early on before June 30th of this year, the Internet Channel was a simple free download as a beta before it was upgraded to the full version in April, and then went on sale in the Wii Shop Channel for price of $5.00 afterwards.

The Internet Channel featured the Opera 9 Web Browser, customized to run on the Wii. It’s was surprisingly capabable, as it allowed you to browse most websites with out any issues and supported web technologies such AJAX, RSS, and Flash 7.0. Navigation was made simple with the Wii-mote and the pop-up virtual keyboard. The last Nintendo Wii update even made it easier to use by adding USB-keyboard support.

One of the cool things about the Wii-Opera browser is that you can easily watch video clips from sites like YouTube and flash videos from NewGrounds, thus allowing us to waste more time in front of our TVs. Unfortunately, the Wii browser is limited to playing Flash 7 video clips, so anything higher is unplayable on it.

So besides watching clips, Wii owners discovered that you can actually play a lot of the flash games available out there. Such was the popularity of it, that many web designers even built sites and special flash games that were design to run on the Wii Opera Browser. The benefit in this is that now once you’ve gotten bored of grinding out with Guitar Hero 3, or shooting it out with Metroid Prime 3, and don’t have the extra cash to buy Battalion Wars 2 yet, you can load up the Internet Channel and play some free flash games!

“Pinboliada” - The Zuma Clone on the Wii Opera Browser

But are they any good? Yep, quite a few one them play very well via the Wii Opera Browser. Here’s some of my favorites :

Pinboliada - You remember Zuma, right? The game that took the casual gaming world by storm? Well now you can play it on your Wii!

Crazy Cubes - For puzzle lovers out there, this is a very addictive puzzle game. Works excellent with the Wii Opera Browser. BTW, there’s also an apparent identical game called 3D Logic.

Oshidama - An abstract casual game that only Japanese minds can conjure up, this simple game of pushing a circle to its goal will keep you addicted forever.

Smashing - Your typical Breakout clone, except with the modern adaptation of weapons and powerups.

Bare Knucle Brawl - Be John McClane from the Die Hard flics and kick some serious ass. Not quite Wii Boxing but makes good use of the Wii-mote.

Test your speed stacking skills in Stacktopolis 2.

Stackopolis 2 - An addictive puzzle stacking game in which you build geometric layouts based on the required design pattern.

Bumper Car Madness - One of the most unique games ever designed and happens to actually make use of the Wii-mote itself, the only way I can describe this game is a mix of bumper cars and Pac-man.

Missile Strike - A modernized clone of the legendary “Missile Command” game for the Atari 2600. You can never get enough of Missile Command.

Those are just a few of the games I’ve enjoyed. If you’re looking for more Wii enabled flash games, be sure to check out that little flashing icon on the bottom right hand corner of the site. Haven’t had enough? Heres some other Wii supported flash gaming sites :

• MiiWiiGames.com
• Candystand.com
• Wiiflow.com
• MiiBoard.com
• WiiCade.com
• WiiPlayable.com
• WiiArcade.com
• WiiScape

Happy Flash gaming!

I’ll get started by stating the obvious. Zack and Wiki is one of the most innovative and unique titles for any system this generation. This game can’t be done on any other console. It just isn’t possible. Not only is it a great game, it’s a great third party game; which is something Nintendo has been lacking. From start to finish, this game is a personality filled point and click adventure with mind bending puzzles that will leave you feeling like you have been challenged as a gamer.

First thing I’m going to point out is something everyone should have noticed by now, the beautifully crafted cel-shaded visuals. Simply put, these visuals bring life and personality to the game. It is obvious that Capcom spent their time with trying to create a gorgeous game on the obviously underpowered Wii. Surprisingly, the title only runs at 30 frames per second, which isn’t a problem to me. Where the problems begin is when the game dips below 30 frames per second when a lot of particle effects are being shown. While this doesn’t happen often, it happens enough to become a slight annoyance every now and then. Don’t fret though, this game still runs in beautiful 480 progressive-scan and 16:9 wide-screen modes.

Next on the plate is the audio. Surpringly for me, the music is epic. It fits the stages perfectly. No matter what stage you are in, be it jungle, ice, lava, or anything else, the music fits perfectly and adds that extra layer of immersion which makes the experience that much better.

Last, but most definitely not least, is the game-play. You follow a young pirate, Zack, and his his flying golden monkey, Wiki, on a quest to find all of the missing parts of Captain Barbaros’ body. While the idea is simple enough, some of the puzzles are not. Obviously, the game progresses in difficulty, but what you wouldn’t expect from this kiddy looking game is that some of the later puzzles are mind-numbingly difficult. You will be losing your life often in this game due to booby-traps and mistakes you make which will sometimes make the level unbeatable.

But what really sets this game apart from the rest is how you approach it. You tackle the game using only the Wii-mote to control Zack and his interactions with the environment. This is the part of the game that makes Zack and Wiki a truly great game. You control Zack by pointing and pressing A to tell him where to go. While this sounds simple enough, I would have liked an option to control him with the nunchucks analog stick. It can be a tiny bit of trouble commanding Zack where to go sometimes. In addition to controlling Zack, you will take control of various items and use them throughout the level to help you get to the treasure. Since each item has its own control scheme, this can add a good amount of variety to the game.

Ending Comments
Zack and Wiki is a great game that deserves to be picked up. With a $40 price tag, it should be considered a sin to not pick this game up. It wonderfully revitalizes the point and click genre on Wii. While not perfect, its flaws are small enough to be forgiven. I personally thank Capcom for giving us this game. I think all of us should thank them for their wonderful support by buying this great game.

• Graphics-8-Beautifully crafted with some frame rate drops.
• Audio-9-Epic music that fits perfectly with the levels; lack voices.
• Gameplay-8.5-Great point and click adventure; great level design and challenging puzzles; lots of great Wii-mote usage, some uses could have been crafted better.
• Overall Package-8.7-A great value for $40; last around 15 hours for average gamer, only replay value comes with beating your own scores and multiple ways to beat some levels.

Yes, Guitar Hero 3 : Legends of Rock is finally out! On Sunday morning I headed over to Game Crazy to picked up my reserved copy and rushed back home to try it out. Now, I’ve played the previous Guitar Hero 2 before on the 360 and had a blast with it, so you can imagine my excitement when I found out it was arriving on the Nintendo Wii.  So I’ve been playing it for the past couple of days and needless to say, I wasn’t disappointed.

The guitar in Guitar Hero 3 now comes packaged with a detachable neck and body which from my understanding is different from the previous Guitar Hero games. The Wii version of Guitar Hero 3 is however quite different from the other consoles since the guitar itself was designed to house the Wii-mote. This of course works out well because it almost seems as if the Guitar Hero game itself was designed perfectly with the Wii in mind. The Wii-mote slips into a housing slot in the back of the guitar’s body, attaches to the connector in the slot, and now you’re all set! You now have a motion sensored guitar, with it’s own speaker, that vibrates, and no syncing or re-syncing needed. Perfectly seamless!

I’ve heard that the Xbox 360 and the PS3 owners are having issues with their guitar since the new detachable neck’s electrical pins aren’t connecting well enough with the body, resulting in the fret buttons not registering when pressed. A co-worker of mine brought his in today to work and showed us that the neck and body of the 360’s version does not actually snap in together as tightly as it should of. Well, I’m happy to report that the Wii’s guitar does not have any of that issues - or none that I’ve came across yet. The neck and body on the Wii’s seem to snap in tightly and perfectly with no loose gaps.

The other cool thing with the Wii’s version is the inclusion of the Wii-mote’s speaker. May not be a big deal to some, but it does enhances the experience when you can actually hear the clinking of the strings from the guitar when the wrong note is played. Not to mention that it’s actually kinda cool how the guitar vibrates when “Star Power” is activated - although this doesn’t seem to be very noticeable when you’re standing up.

Guitar Hero 3 comes packed with a whole new slew of rock songs from the past and present. In all, there is a total of 71 playable songs, while 46 are the main set list of songs you play, there are 25 that are bonus tracks. Now, I will say this right now. I’m not totally big into rock music, but I’ve found some of the songs on here that I recognized from before and discovered a few new ones that I liked. Some of the songs that I was already familiar with and liked are “Bulls on Parade” by Rage Against the Machine, “Paint it Black” by Rolling Stones, “Even Flow” by Pearl Jam, and “Cult of Personality” by Living Colour - which ironically are all “encore” songs in the game. And then there are others that I’ve heard before, but never really listen to until playing the game that I found to be quite “interesting”.

The game features a Quick Play mode (only for single player though), a Career Mode and a co-op Career Mode with a partner, and an Online mode. Not all the songs are available right away. You have to play through the Career mode to unlock them. But one particular issue is that there are certain songs that can only be unlocked in co-op career mode, so if you don’t have a partner with another guitar to play with, then you’re out of luck until an unlock code appears on the Internet somewhere. Guitar Hero 3 also features special rock legends boss characters such as Slash, Tom Morello, and Bret Michaels who can be unlocked after defeating them in a battle. 

The online multiplayer feature worked quite nicely on the Wii without any issues. You can either hook up with a friend online using your friend codes or find a random gamer to battle against. I was able to load up some online battles and one in particular against some guy named “Dan” who totally kicked my ass to “Cult of Personality” - note that at the time I hadn’t even made it to that song yet so it messed me up badly. Needless to say, I think I’m going to stay offline until I get a little better.

One missing feature that the Wii currently doesn’t have is the ability to purchase and download new songs to play like the other consoles. Apparently they are still working to get it functional, but when it’ll be done is still another questions. Some of the issues stems from the the Wii’s limited internal storage and how it can load data saved on the SD cards. Of course there could be a chance that they don’t get it working at all and we’re just stuck with the songs we have now. Hopefully that doesn’t happen…

So anyways, if you haven’t picked this game up yet, you seriously need to now. Definitely one of the most unique games in recent years and I highly recommend it. The game has enough difficulty settings so that even the most novice player (like me) can get into it right away. The variety of songs is enough to keep you interested for a long time, or at least until Mario Galaxy comes out in a couple of weeks…

Part of the Wii’s success can be owed to the straight forward simplistic little demo-like game that overtook the world called “Wii Sports“. Outside of Japan, Nintendo made the perfect move by distributing the Wii around the world with a copy of this game disc. It was an instant success because this little series of game demos provided gamers and non gamers alike with a new way of gaming and the possibilities of what the Wii may provide. Everyone was impressed - well not everyone, but Electronic Arts sure was. So impress that they decided to tackle their own version of a Wii Sports.

EA’s first foray into the casual gaming market is known as EA Playground on the Nintendo Wii and DS. One may think that a game that extends Wii Sports would definitely make for an interesting game, but not all was impressed. I recalled a couple months ago when I mentioned this game on a forum and displayed some screenshots. To my surprise, the response was not very positive. I would of expected that some die hard Nintendo fan boys to be somewhat interested in this game - since it sort of encapsulate what made the Wii so fun in the first place, but nope. They pretty much trashed it, but I think they were mainly just trashing EA in general. Tough crowd, heh…

EA Playground was released a few days ago and since I was always interested in this game (yeah it’s kinda against my beliefs in casual gaming, but what the hell..), I went ahead and picked up a copy at Best Buy for the price of $39.99, which I think is reasonable because I’m not expecting a AAA title here.

So what’s my first impressions of it? Well before I begin, I must make it clear that I haven’t played this thoroughly in multiplayer mode with a whole bunch of people yet. Aside from a few quick games with my girlfriend, that was the extent of the multiplayer gaming I’ve done with it so far. But I did get to lay down some good single player time with it on my own. With that said, let us begin.

Overview

Lets just say that EA Playground won’t revolutionize the way you saw gaming like Wii Sports did, but it does provide you with what you would expect - a bunch of mini games. Note the word, “playground” in the title. You can already figure out the general demographic target of gamers that EA was shooting for when they designed this game. Think back to the good old days of elementary school (not the part of you getting picked on by a bully :p ) and recall all the playground games you use to play. Following in the footsteps of Wii Sports, EA decided to take some of these school yard games and put it all into one package. The only problem is that some of these games don’t actually exists….or do they?

Starting out EA Playground, you’re given the option to either choose to play a single player game mode, multiplayer, or quickplay game mode to jump straight to the game. To play a single player game, you are required to create a new profile from a selected list of pre-made “kid” characters, instead of using one of your own created Mii’s like Wii Sports. In single player mode, you start out on the school yard and is immediately greeted by a kid who claims to be the “King of the Playground” and guides you throughout the game. I’m assuming you’re going to have to take him on before you can claim the title yourself towards the end. On the school yard, there are kids running about throughout the area and with particular ones who you can challenge to a game, while others have to be unlocked before you can do so. Defeating a kid will give some marbles in which you can trade with this “King of the Playground” kid for stickers and other upgrades. Successfully defeating more games will unlock different areas to challenge other kids throughout the playground. Aside from the main games, there are other mini games scattered throughout that really does nothing for you (to my understanding), but just to get you marble points like dribbling a basketball, free throw shooting, bug catching, and apparently “high-fiving” other kids.

In quick-play mode, you can jump straight to all the main games. The games are quite simple actually and I’m not sure how some of these are actually playground games, but they are in EA Playground :

• Dodgeball - Your typical dodgeball game. A 3 on 3 game, you control your main character with 2 other AI players. If your main player is out, you assume control of one of the other AI players. The objective is simple : run and get the ball and fling it at your opponent trying to hit them before they hit you. Get all the players out on the opposing team and you win.
• Kicks - Apparently a combination of soccer and volleyball, you’re basically on a volleyball court with goals at each end. The objective is to score by kicking the ball into the goal. Weird game, plays alot like volleyball to me though.
• Slot Car Racing - Not sure how this became a playground game. I would assume that this is more of an indoor game. You simple race slot cars on a track. Switch lanes, smack into each other, and drop tacks on the track in order to slow your opponent down. Win the race and you win the game.
• Tetherball - This one I remember playing as a kid. You swing a ball tied to a rope around a pole. Swing it all the way until it wraps one direction and you win. Just hope that it’s actually the direction you’re suppose to be swing it to.
• Paper Racers - The object here is to guide a paper airplane through some obstacles and grab some items along the way to score points in the lowest amount of time.

• Wall Ball - A game that I actually remember vividly playing as kid, you simple throw a ball at the wall, alternating between an opponent. The objective here is to throw the ball in a way so that your opponent misses the ball or gets hit. Knock him out and you win.
• Dart Shootout - Remember those toy guns that shoot those orangy-red darts that stick to a glass or smooth surface when ever you shoot it - but yet we always aimed it each others eyes? Yeah, we all did and I’ve done my fairs share of losing darts and taking out an eye or two in the process. Well now you get to enjoy it all again in this first-person-on-rail-like lightgun shooter game where you have to hit targets and as well as other kids shooting at you. Probably one of the more funner games in the bunch, make it through by deflecting the other darts and taking out the bosses to win the game.

Haven’t played too much of multiplayer yet, but from my understanding you can have up to four players to compete with. And in case you’re wondering, no online multiplayer here!

Graphics

Yes, graphics. My favorite subject in gaming. Being the graphic whore that I am, graphics are the first thing I usually take notice of before anything else. The graphics of EA Playground remind me of the cartoons or CGI shows that you would see on Nickelodeon or the Disney Channel. They’re not great and can easily fit into the standards of the last-gen console graphics, but then again, it doesn’t have to be good and it doesn’t try to be. The game presents you with a colorful cartoony world which could only appeal to kids 12 and under and perhaps…..female gamers (no offense girls!). With that said, it doesn’t look bad and everything detailed quite nicely. But on the bright side, it sure looks better than Wii Sports - and yes the characters in the game actually have arms and legs!

Controls

Controls are quite simple in EA Playground and responds fairly well. You only need the Wii-mote to play, no nun-chuck needed. The controls are your basic gesture mapped movement for the sports game, but for the Paper Racer game, you’re actually tilting the Wii-mote to control your paper airplane. In the Dart Shootout game, you’re basically in lightgun shooter mode so all you do aim and shoot. Each game has detailed instructions on how to perform the movements so you’re never lost.

Sound and Music

Well, there’s not much to say about it. Nothing really stands out but what you expect to hear. The kid characters in the game make these nonsensical sound when speaking to you like how its done in The Sims series. Other than that, its….okay.

Overall

Over all this is a decent game, but if you are coming off of Resident Evil 4 or Metroid Prime 3, don’t expect this to compare well to either of them. This game is definitely for kids and not for the hardcore gamer. The single player game just doesn’t have the depth to hold most gamers attention that long and the games themselves are not too challenging for the seasoned gamer. Although the mini games here are all very simple and does not quite capture the same wow factor that Wii Sports did, it does appear to be fun when playing with a group of people. The replay value may be a bit limited since EA Playground is basically a series of mini games, but if you enjoy playing Wii Sports till this day, you may actually enjoy EA Playground also.

So if you have kids, or looking for another party game to add to you collection, then this game is definitely for you. Pick it now up for $39.99.

These two monster hitters have been battling it out for months through blogs and message boards even before they were even released. Fan boys of all walks of life have thrown out their rants and raves on the both of these games about why they think one is better than the other. So now that the both of them are out and have made their impressions on the gaming world, will we finally be able to decide which is the more kick ass game? Not just yet. The battle still rages on because while Halo 3 has hit the entire world with a bang, Metroid Prime 3 : Corruption has yet tackle it’s position outside the United States (as of this writing).

What a lot of people are failing to understand is that while these two games are in a sense, first person shooters, they are way too different than one another to really make an easy comparison.  While the Halo series is well known and accepted as an FPS, the Metroid Prime series is considered more of a “first person adventure“.  The type of gamers that each of these games would appeal to would also be different, considering the gameplay itself is not very similar to one another. Not to mention certain features of each of these games are totally absence from the other. However, even with these differences, they both share a similar quality that appeals very much to the hardcore gamers. Which is why everyone loves to compare these two.

So whats the results of the battle so far? Well in terms of sales figure, Halo 3 totally mopped the floor before it was even release with an astounding 1.7 million pre-orders, then went on to dominate the rest of the world by making over $300 million by its first week. As of this writing, Halo 3 has currently sold over 5 million copies worldwide. Halo 3 had so much selling power that it even helped the Xbox 360 outsell the Wii during the month of September. Metroid Prime 3 on the other hand, is not even close by a margin. Currently only a little over 500k copies have been sold since it’s release in August 27 in the US alone. However, it should be known that aside from the Metroid Preview Channel, Nintendo decided to not make any effort to promote the game at all until over a week after it was release with one of their typical crappy “Wii would like to Play” commercials (making it seem like MP3 would make a great party game or something stupid like that). But even with the minimal advertising, MP3 managed to pull in a respectable 400k copies sold during its first week. Sales figures are still yet to be determined for the rest of the world until it releases on October 28 in the UK, November 8 in Australia, and unknown for Japan. So right now its quite safe to say, Halo 3 has won the battle.

With sales figures aside, lets get deep into the gritty details of each of these games and what makes them so awesome. After having a good first hand experiences with the both of them, I think I can make some “un-biased” comparison. Or at-least try to..

Main Character

Halo 3 has Master Chief. The quiet, 7-foot tall, SPARTAN Marine clad in a high tech green armour who spends his time kicking the Covenant’s ass throughout the galaxy. He is the epitome of what a hero is thought to be : big, strong, tough, fearless, and gallant. Ever since he made his first appearance in Halo : Combat Evolved in 2001, Master Chief has grown to become the new icon in video gaming media joining the ranks of famous characters like Mario, Sonic, and others. Because of this, he quite well known among all video gamers out there.

Metroid Prime 3 has Samus Aran, the silent protagonist in the Metroid Primeseries. And unlike most video game heroes, she is a female. With the usual cliches of todays girl-power-female-heroes aside, Samus sports a large shoulder sized body suit which allows her to perform super human abilities and kick Space Pirate’s ass as well as other strange creatures throughout the galaxy. She made her first appearance in the legendary Metroid game for the NES back in 1986 as the space Bounty Hunter, so one would think that she is quite well known by now - which is definitely not the case due to the large number of popular Nintendo video game heroes, and especially Mario..

• Winner : Master Chief - He has the slight edge in this one because of impact he made on the Xbox gaming community. Unfortunately, thanks to Nintendo’s relunctant to promote Samus any more than whats already done, she’s just one of the many faces of Nintendo.

Gameplay

Halo 3 is your typical first person shooter. It follows the same schematics of all the other FPS out there. You run and fight your way past check points until you reach your goal. Occasionally encountering enemies and bosses along the way and cut scenes to introduce the next area. Gameplay is very linear and you usually have an idea of what you’re suppose to be doing at all times. Most of the time you are on your own, but certain areas you will be aided by other characters in the game. The point of the game is clear and simple : shoot them before they shoot you, then keep going. One of the cool things about Halo 3 however is it’s multitude of weapons and the ability to fire from two weapons at the same time - a gameplay feature not present in many FPS games.

Metroid Prime 3 takes it’s gameplay style from all the previous Metroid games. And that is Metroid games are not all about action and fighting, but rather exploration and information gathering, thus many would refer to Metroid Prime 3 as a “first person adventure”. With that said, MP3 does have the same FPS perspective and you do your fair share of fighting, FPS style. However, while a general idea of the objective is given, how to do it is not exactly defined. Because of this, MP3 is slightly more linear than other Metroid games - which many people liked and others did not. There are a lot of puzzles along the way and you do some serious backtracking in the game - which of course is one of the aspects of the Metroid genre. A new gameplay feature allows you to lock on to an enemy and still maneuver around them. And you know those annoying shields that certain Covenants carries around in the Halo series? Well the Space Pirates have them too, except that you can actually rip them off in Metroid Prime 3.

• Winner: Metroid Prime 3 - I feel that MP3has the better gameplay of the two because it actually combines the typical FPS style of gaming with problem solvingin the process. A lot of people may not agree with me on this and would prefer mindless button mashing, but that’s their decision.

Controls

This one is a no brainer. While I do agree that the Xbox 360 does have a very well design control pad that works well for FPS games, you just simply can not compete against the Wii-mote - when done right.  From my poor experiences with other FPS games on the Wii, I was beginning to think that the Wii-mote probably isn’t suited for this type of game. Metroid Prime 3 changed all of that. I won’t go into anymore details. You have to experience it on your own if you haven’t already in order to really understand.

• Clear Winner: Metroid Prime 3

Game Features

Now I thought the single player gameplay for Halo 3 was pretty good. Nothing mind blowing, but pretty good. But Halo 3 is also come with other feature which makes the entire package so appealing. Such as the Forge, which allows players to add and move objects around the game world during gameplay, Save Films which allows players to save multiplayer gameplay to hard drive and view it again from any angle, and File Share which allows players to exchange screenshots, Forge files, game films, among each other or uploaded to a central server for public download. Of course the biggest feature and selling point for Halo 3 is it’s multiplayer aspects. You can play, co-op with a friend, locally against other players via split screen, and online against players from around the world. Not to mention, there are also different kinds of multiplayer games you can play such as free for all and a tag-like game.

Metroid Prime 3 has well…not much in terms of features. The only thing that actually comes close is this “extras” features in which you can use special tokens gained during gameplay which you can use to unlock special content like original design drawings and game music. Tokens can also be sent to other players via the Wii Connect 24. Other than that, that’s just about it…

• Clear Winner : Halo 3.  Many people was hoping that MP3would have some kind of multiplayer feature, while others thought MP3 didn’t really need all of that. I personally thought that it would have definitely enhanced that game had it did. But you can’t always get want you want.

Graphics

This is probably going to be a bad comparison, but I think it’s well worth mentioning. Obviously the Xbox 360 has superior graphics capabilities than the Wii, but how each is made use in the games is what actually matters. Halo 3’s graphics were definitely improved from their earlier released beta demo. However, since we’re all so use to seeing what the Xbox 360 is capable of, the graphics for Halo 3 is still nothing to be excited for. Now it wasn’t bad by any means and it was actually quite good, but I was expecting a lot more from it. It didn’t disappoints or excites, but rather it warrants a big “meh” from me.

The graphics for Metroid Prime 3 is visibly stunning and a true testament of what the Wii can do when it makes use of it’s graphics power. Granted it’s not pulling any serious next-gen card with it (though it comes very close to it), but the developers did an incredible job on it and I definitely think its one of the better games to actually look at. Now if only all Wii games can have graphics like this…

• Winner: Metroid Prime 3 - Even if Halo 3’s graphics wasn’t its main priority, I thought it could of use some work especially for a game of this caliber.

Overall

So now that we’ve been through a bit of comparisons with both games, which one do I believe is the better of the two? Well, it’s a tough one. Both games has it’s pros and cons and certain aspects may be more important to different people. I think that the overall better game as a whole would lean a bit towards Halo 3 - but that’s because if you don’t like the single player campaign, you can always switch to multiplayer and blast it out against other people. But with Metroid Prime 3, if you don’t like the single player campaign, then well, you just don’t like the game. But if I were to base it on the actual game itself, I would definitely have to go with Metroid Prime 3. But then again, it all comes down to the gamers themselves and which game they enjoy most - or perhaps which console they actually own (yeah you know what I mean). Both games are great and both kick some serious ass. If you have the option, I reccomend everyone to play both of them.

So there you have it. A run down of the two biggest games in recent month on the Xbox 360 and the Nintendo Wii. Now go play some games!

One of the benefits of owning a Wii is that it’s 100% backward compatibility with the Game Cube. Hence once I got a Wii, there was really no need to keep a Game Cube, but there was plenty of reasons to keep the games. Going through my collection of Game Cube games the other day, I pulled out one of the more memorable ones that stuck out in my mind. Some of you may remember this game, many may not even have a clue of what it is. But for shoot ‘em ups fans, Ikaruga is the holy grail. Just look at IGN’s comment on the front of the box!

“Our frothing demand for this game Increases“

Developed by a four man company called Treasure, Ikaruga originally started as Japanese arcade game in 2001. It was later ported to Sega Dreamcast as it’s “swan song” in late 2002, then finally made its way to the Game Cube in 2003.  So aside from being a bullet-hell game, Ikaruga featured a unique polarity mechanics in which your ship has two polarity sides, black and white. Doesn’t make sense? Well its quite simple actually. All the enemies in the game also has two polarity modes and will shoot either white bullets or black bullets depending on their modes. Since you have the ability to flip modes at will, you can essentially absorb the bullets when you’re the same color as it while taking damage when you’re the opposite.  Keep in mind that your bullets also switch polarity when you change and you can only do more damage when your bullets are the opposite polarity of what the enemies is. Sounds easy right? Well not quite.

Even though there is only 5 short levels in the entire game, this is one of the most hardest game I’ve ever played and I still haven’t even beaten it yet - on normal! It could possibly be due to fact that I just plain suck, but I still beg to differ. This is one tough game and there are some very, very tense moments throughout. As with most bullet-hell shoot’em up games, you’ll need quick reaction time to dodge the barrages of bullets fired at you, but you also have to do some serious memorization of the patterns of the bullets, enemies, and the level itself. The good news is that the game has a tutorial mode that will actually show you how to pass each area. The only issue is memorizing it and reacting with enough precision to make it though. Ikaruga does supports 2 player co-op so you and a buddy can both blast your way through this insane bullet-hell.

The visual for the game is stunning and top notched for its time as it is now. Everything is rendered beautifully in 3D and it even features a “sideways” mode in which the games plays as a side scroller (but you’re control stays the same so I’m not sure if it actually wants you to flip your TV sideways :p). From my understanding, its a direct port from the arcade and the Game Cube version doesn’t suffer from some of the graphical slowdowns of the Dreamcast. The style of the graphics combined with the orchestral-like soundtrack made the game seem more “epic” than a typical shooter. Almost like what would happen if you were to take a Final Fantasy game and combine it with a shoot’em up game. The experience is definitely unlike anything you’ve played before.

So is this game worth trying out? Like I said before, if you like arcade shoot’em up games, then this is your holy grail. If you like a good challenge then this one is for you. Definitely worth it if you can actually find one around. Ikaruga is one of the more rarer Game Cube games out there so chances are you won’t be able to get one unless you check on eBay. Since it’s so rare, you can expect to pay upwards of $30 or more for a usedcopy. Now if you happen to also own an Xbox 360, good news for you guys because it’s also coming to Xbox Live Arcade in the near future.

So if you can get your hands on Ikaruga, plug in your Wave Bird controller and blast away!