Reviews from Last Year: 2012

The handheld version of Rise of the Guardians for 3DS & DS. I must say here that with many handheld Nintendo games i've played this one is no exception to greatness. Gameplay is a good ol beat em up where you beat the crap out of dark enemies. You can play as not only Jack Frost but Santa Clause, Easter Bunny, Tooth, & Pitch. Each character has their own animations & weapon attacks but controls & mechanics work great. Each enemy has their own health bar & you must whack the hell out of them until they die. Keep in mind that no matter what character you're using your health will still be the same. To regenerate health, you can use the dream gems to refill but they're in limited quantity. When you run out of health, you are like a ghost which cannot be hit but cannot fight enemies.
 

For handheld version, graphics & characters look great & what's important is being able to play the game. I do feel that unless you have it in 3D like the 3DS, you may find it's grainy texture annoying but not enough to give it a bad graphics rating. There is text instead of voice acting BTW as with most DS & 3DS games. Anyway, there's your classic beat em up for you. Home console versions are different & more sophisticated so stay tuned for that review.

Rise of the Guardians for home consoles have more detail to them & better image than the handheld ones. The story is identical to the movie & might I say the characters sound & look movie like. Pitch Black is the main villian & the Guardians Bunnymund, Sandy, Tooth, North, & Jack Frost must fight to stay alive by having children believe in them. Gameplay consists of fighting enemies. Each character has their own attacks & you can even get attack bonuses & dreamsands. You can carry 3 dreamsands at a time & what these dreamsands do is restore the character's health. When the health bar runs empty, the character is invisible & cannot get hit by enemies. When all characters die, you reset to the latest checkpoint & health is restored. Fighting moves work great & gameplay is as fun as a classic beat em up. Each character has a seperate health meter so if one light goes out the rest are not effected by that one misfortune. While graphics are not at their best, they're still appropriate for this time. You may find the graphics to look like there's less light but depending on what TV you have, graphics could look even better in High Definition. You can even see similarities between the home console game & movie. Marvel's The Avengers Battle for Earth is an awesome fighting game. The gameplay, graphics, resemblance, & everything makes this game great. This game is a fighting game for the Xbox 360 Kinect & the Wii U. Gameplay: I played it for Xbox 360 & it will give you a workout. Each character has different moves & it even shows you what positions to use to activate controls, which is really helpful. Going through menus, you simply slide the option or game mode you choose. The moves responded to your body movements but it only did so in the form of moves but responded perfectly. You can see the action right in the game as many moves do so much action & butt-kicking. You can play as two characters in one game but you can switch in between them. You have two opponents. There are two fighters at a time in the ring with one being from each opposing team. With Xbox 360 Kinect, you truly get a workout. I feel fighting games are made more fun with the Xbox 360 Kinect since you can use your arms for moves. What would have been better is having more flexibility in terms of spitting image body movement responses. This game deserves a grade A-. Graphics: Eighth Generation is here ladies & gentlemen & comparing this game to 2005 games, you can clearly see the radical improvements to graphics which Grand Theft Auto IV failed to compete at. Frame rate is slick finding no cryptic scenes at all unlike Grand Theft Auto 4 which felt somewhat more cryptic than the average game back in 2008. Clear graphics are key for eighth generation gaming & this game brings it forward. See the character designs & environments flash before your eyes. Presentation: Marvel comics is proud to present the awesomely done characters including Captain America, Wolverine, Spider Man, Iron Man, Black Widow, The Hulk, & Thor to name a few well known examples. Characters here are perfect & kills in the ratings for best character animations yet. Looking better than super Smash Bros. Brawl I can say that. Environments are greatly designed & characters look perfect. What can I say? Sounds are also Marveltastic just like everything else. I'm now speechless here. This game certainly makes the first Super Smash Bros.(N64) an old classic from decades ago. This Avengers game is now reminding me of how much Nicktoons MLB sucked.