Yu-Gi-Oh! Card of the Week: Steelswarm Roach 10/07/2011

With the start of the ZeXal era, the guys (and girls) at Konami have given birth to "Xyz" Monsters (pronounced ik-seez) and are summoned from the Extra Deck just like "Fusion" and "Synchro" Monsters. Instead of Level, these cards have "Rank". They also have a black outline and are immune to cards that mention Level Manipulation, e.g. "Gravity Bind". To create Xyz Monsters, it involves you combining two Monster Cards of the same Level. The Monster Cards you have used for the Xyz Monster are placed behind the Xyz Monster and are treated as "Overlay Units/Xyz Materials". All Xyz monsters have effects that involve removing one or more of their Materials to activate their effect. This week's card is being released in the upcoming pack, Generation Force. This week's choice is the Xyz Monster, Steelswarm Roach!

Sorry about it being in Japanese guys!

Fiend/Xyz/Effect
ATK/1900 DEF/0
2 Level 4 Monsters

When a Level 5 or higher monster is Special Summoned: You can detach 1 Xyz Material from this monster: negate the Special Summon and destroy it

This card is great against decks that use Fusion Monsters to beat you down. "Gladiator Beast Gyzarus" is a great example. If you have Steelswarm Roach on the field, you can negate it's summon and it's effect doesn't work and your cards will be safe. The same applies for Elemental Heroes. If the opponent would Fusion into "Elemental Hero Absolute Zero" or "Elemental Hero Necroid Shaman" you can just toss a Xyz Material to the grave and voila! No fusion!

Since the decks revolve around these, Steelswarm Roach can shut them down!

Steelswarm Roach works great against Synchro Monsters too! For example, if they want to summon "Black Rose Dragon", negate its summon and save all of you cards that are on the field. You can also negate the summon of "Great Shogun Shien" and you still get to play as many Spell and Traps as you want! It can also create a confusion among your opponents, as they will think on what to Special Summon carefully, as you can negate most Special Summons!

Steelswarm Roach can prevent these cards from ruining your game!

There are two main bad points about Steelswarm Roach; His low attack and the fact he only prevents the summon of a Level 5 or higher Monster. If your opponent is running Blackwings, they can Normal Summon a "Blackwing - Sirocco the Dawn" and because it has 2000 attack, it can easily defeat a 1900 attack Steelswarm Roach. Another point is that if an opponent Special Summons a "Legendary Six Samurai - Kizan", you can't negate it as it is Level 4 and your opponent can start abusing "Gateway of the Six" to Special Summon even more Level 4 or lower "Six Samurai" Monsters. And, for irony, you cannot negate an Xyz Summon as they are "Rank" not "Level", so your opponent can slam into your Steelswarm Roach with a "Number 39: Utopia."

These three cards = The bane of Steelswarm Roach's existence.

Overall, Steelswarm Roach is a good card. It has a nice effect and can slow down the opponent. He's weak but, I like this fact, as it doesn't make him too overpowered. So, he won't be seeing the September 2011 List. Steelswarm Roach should be run in most decks that use Level 4 Monsters often. Decks such as Blackwings, Machina Gadgets, or even Gladiator Beasts can run this card to it's potential. I'm gonna give Steelswarm Roach a well deserved 8/10. Thanks for reading!

Peace out!

CURRENT GEN REVIEW 1: DUKE NUKEM FOREVER (XBOX360/PS3/PC, 3D Realms 2011)

Our steroid filled, foul mouthed, misogynistic ass hole is finally back after 15 years of development but has Duke still got what it takes to survive in the modern era of games? As a huge Duke Nukem 3D fan it came as a massive shock to me, and whole lot of others, that Duke Nukem Forever was finally going to get released, no one ever expected this to happen. 3D Realms had been working on this game since 1996 and had officially announced it in 1997 for a release in the following year, using the Quake II engine. But then in 1998 Epic Games released the Unreal Engine so 3D Realms decided to scrap the work they had done with the Quake II engine and begin anew with a more realistic and a generally more powerful engine. Now this changing of engine and scrapping work went on for years, everything was getting out dated, so in came the new and out went all the hard work. Fast forward to around 2008 and 3D Realms were going bust and in 2009 the Duke team was fired, well so much for Duke then. After a lot of bitching between companies Take 2 acquired the rights to Duke and in late 2010 Randy Pitchford, a Gearbox CEO, brought news that Gearbox will be polishing up all the hard work that 3D Realms had done and be shipping out the Duke in 2011. This was a joyous occasion for Duke fans around the world, people were in shock and awe, for 14 years we were right to bet on Duke, or were we?

                                                   Hail to the king, baby!

The day finally came, 15 years of wait, it was here. Duke Nukem Forever was finally here. I smashed it into my Xbox, pressed start and I was away...well actually no I wasn't, I had to sit through a very long loading screen, but I shrugged it off because you know it's got to load all the massive areas of gameplay right? So the first level starts, and I'm peeing, yep peeing into a urinal. After finishing my whizz, oh and by the way this is in game not random moments that occur in my life, I was given the option to pick up a piece of poo, oh how my heart melted as I chucked around a log getting the achievement of "Turd Burglar." Anyway enough of this crap (puts on shades) after talking to some pretty wooden NPC's and drawing a cock on a white board, I run down some corridors watching destruction and death as the alien hordes approach. Finally I come across a weapon, The Devastator, a rapid fire rocket launcher, up a lift I go to meet my first alien scum.

                                            What a huge one-eyed monster!

After shooting the crap out of the cycloptic monstrosity, it's revealed that it was all a game that the real Duke was playing it all along, while getting fellated by twins I might add, one of the twins ask "Was the game any good?" To which the star remarks "After twelve fucking years, it should be." Well he's got that right. Afterwards you're given control of the real Duke and you can walk around and do, well, a whole lot of nothing. You go down a lift, talk to some people, the president tells you not to kill the aliens that came back because they might be nice this time, you get attacked by the nice aliens blah blah everything unravels. Now in regular FPS games you usually have a lot on screen to shoot, but not here, at first I thought that it was because it was early on in the game and it'll flesh itself out eventually but no. You can run around for nearly twenty minutes at a time and not bump into anything, and that's not to say the levels are massive and open ended because they really aren't.

When you eventually find some aliens to shoot at, the actual first person shooting experience seems so weak and unimpressive. For some reason when shooting an enemy they just kinda stand there shooting back, being unresponsive like your bullets are made out of fluff, it's that kind of thing that makes you look at your weapons and think that they are making no impact what so ever which leaves the game with no impact either. Another thing that irks me is that you take a hell of a lot of damage, so you die a lot. Now the dying isn't the actually irk it's the long frigging load times that follow, they take at least 40 seconds which doesn't seem like a long time, but when you're just sat looking at a loading screen so you can get back into the frantic fire fight to die again, it really is.

                                         You'll see this kind of thing a lot.

When you're not shooting (which is 70% of the game) you'll be either driving, platforming or solving a pretty bad puzzle. The driving is really monotonous, you drive down a road, hit a ramp, run out of fuel, do a puzzle, kill two enemies and drive again. This happens on nearly every single driving section, it really should not take up this much of the core game, also the handling on the vehicles is horrendous, you touch left, off the cliff you go! The platforming parts are hard for me to judge, they're well done yet terrible at the same time and most of the platforming sections are done when you've been shrunk, which like the driving parts is too much of the game.

This game seems like it's trying to be a comedic Half-Life clone and it fails miserably, the core elements of this game are overshadowed by that of far better games out there. The shooting fails to impress, the puzzles fail to be immersive, the platforming fails to feel relevant and the driving feels like it was just tacked on. The comedy of the game also fails, massively, Duke 3D was funny because it didn't have to shove everything in your face and this game isn't funny because it does try to shove everything in your face, it's like the game is going "Duke just cursed and made fun of another game, please laugh."

              You may be an ugly alien but that's not the only reason you look like shit.

Now the graphics on this game are bloody terrible, 6 years ago they would be acceptable but today, no. I'm not one to bash a game for it's graphics but it's hard not to on a game with such an expansive development history. The textures on this game are awful, Doom 3 looks better, hell the original Duke Nukem 3D looks better and the enemies were 2D! You really have to wonder what 3D Realms were doing during the creation of this game because they were certainly not making the Duke Nukem experience everyone wanted. Once you've completed the game you get a movie gallery showing the different builds of Duke Nukem Forever through out the years and each one of them looks better than the finished product. I tried so hard to like this game, it's the sequel to my favourite classic FPS and I find myself struggling to find anything to hang on to. The boss battles are quite good and some of the shoot outs are actually quite fun, but they're just a few flashes in the 12 hour proverbial pan that is Duke Nukem Forever.

• GAMEPLAY: As I stated for an FPS game to have so few fire fights and the length that's between them, is just absurd. Everything feels flat and out dated and the clunky mechanics in the driving and shooting itself really hurt the game. Also only 2 guns at a time!?
  5/10
• CONTROL: Though the controls are responsive they do seem a bit muddled and moving Duke himself sometimes feels sluggish, also the controls on driving, albeit simple, really needed some tweaking.
  7/10
• SOUND: Dukes voice actor is as good as ever, when doing one liners, he seems to struggle somewhat when having to say more than a few words. NPC voices are pretty wooden. The music isn't very good and the sound effects are very flat and generic.
  4/10
• GRAPHICS: As I said the graphics are terrible, textures sometimes don't load, everything has sharp edges and just generally look like crap.
  4/10
• OVERALL: As bad as the game is, it does have it's moments and you will find yourself smiling a few times after one of Dukes one liners. But sadly nothing clicks, everything is dated and it just cannot live up to 15 years of hype and attention, and it pains me to score it so low.
  5/10

First Review: Retro Review 1: STREETS OF RAGE (SMD, Sega 1991)

It was 1991 and video games were still young and exciting. The Sega Mega Drive (or Genesis if you're evil) was only around 1 year old when this beast of game came out. And that game was....well you've already read the title, anyway, it was called Streets Of Rage. For those unfamiliar, Streets Of Rage is 2D side scrolling beat 'em up, akin to that of Final Fight or Golden Axe, in which you go from the left side of the screen all the way to the right side of the screen punching people in the face. Sounds good already huh?

Starting up the game it gives you short cinematic explaining that a secret criminal syndicate has taken over the government and are wreaking havoc in a once "happy, peaceful, productive city." And in comes the 3 main characters, all ex-cops taking the law into their own hands. There's Adam, who's a boxer, Axel, a skilled martial artist and Blaze, a female judo expert. Non of their apparent fighting styles really come across though, since when did judo teach flip kicks? Each character has slightly different stats based on power, jump and speed, though when in game they're not really that noticeable.

                                           The character select screen.

The player must cross through 8 levels, or Rounds as they are called, battling a variety of enemies who all have various attacks and quirks, such as the legion of ginger punks who punch you in the face or come at you with knives or the ho's who hit you with their whips! Each henchman that crosses your path can be, and will be,  victims to your combos or grab attacks which are easily achieved by simply walking up to your enemy and mashing the B button, or to throw them you just walk into them and you'll initiate a clinch style grapple. From there you can mash B to give them some knees and elbows or press away and B to toss them into their buddies, you can even flip over them with the jump button and give the a nice German suplex, but if you find yourself getting swarmed and in trouble pressing the A button will call for some back up who will unleash a special attack.

                                      A rocket launcher flavoured special attack!


  During the course of the stage you come across objects such as phone booths, trash cans, traffic cones etc. which are all breakable with a single punch. When broken, the phone booths (or whatever you've just plunged your fist into) reveal power ups or items such as apples to restore your health or steel pipes to break teeth with or even bags of gold to increase your score. At the end of each Round you have to fight a huge disproportional boss like a wrestler or a fat fire breathing guy. Freddy Krueger even makes an appearance!

                       Okay so it's not really Freddy but we'll set 'em on fire anyway

The last stage of the game takes place in the Syndicate H.Q, on the last floor of a huge building. Pushing through enemies and previously defeated bosses, albeit from right to left this time, you come face to face the with the head guy, Mr. X! What is interesting about this meeting though is that Mr. X actually offers you to join him as his right hand man, now you can say no, pound his face in and beat the game with the "good" ending OR you can accept his offer in which he activates a trap door and sends you back to Round 6. If you make your way back to him and then beat him you get a pretty cool "bad" ending where you become the new head of the Syndicate, what's even cooler is if you're playing 2 player and one of you accepts his offer and the other declines, you both have to fight...to the death. And by the death I mean until you have no more continues!

            Is that a machine gun in your hand or are you just pleas...oh it is a machine gun

Just before I finish I must stress how great the music is in this game, by the end you'll have at least one track stuck in you're head that you'll whistle to yourself for hours on end.

• GAMEPLAY: Beating up some guys and walking right doesn't sound particularly interesting but I assure you the game is super fun, even more so with a friend.
  8/10
• CONTROL: The controls of the game are easy, intuitive and precise. Seriously how can you fuck up mashing B?
  10/10
• SOUND: As I said in closing, the soundtrack to this game is funky and catchy and will never dissapoint, although the sounds themselves like the punching and breaking of objects sound a little too soft.
  9/10
• GRAPHICS: Yes the game is 20 years old and to be honest they look it but are they bad? Not by a long shot. The characters look good, the dark and grimy stages look great and the HUD is clear.
  8/10                                                          
• OVERALL: This is a great example of a beat 'em up, it has great replay value, looks cool and has fantastic music.
  9/10