Review Archives (Staff Reviews)

You are currently looking through staff reviews for games that are available on every platform the site currently covers. Below, you will find reviews written by Jason Venter and sorted according to date of submission, with the newest content displaying first. As many as 20 results will display per page. If you would like to try a search with different parameters, specify them below and submit a new search.

Available Reviews
	Final Fantasy Tactics Advance review (GBA) Reviewed on December 06, 2003 What this means is that if you're willing to devote enough time to the effort, you can have a kickass warrior who isn't afraid to cast a healing spell every once in awhile. Of course, the downside to all of this is that while you're learning those killer mage skills, you're weak to physical attacks from enemies. Or while you're learning how to handle a sword, you're dumb as a post and can't use magic.	4.5/5
	Mario Kart: Double Dash!! review (GCN) Reviewed on November 20, 2003 There's never a moment while playing Mario Kart: Double Dash where you'll pause the game to catch your breath and question how you can be experiencing such a masterpiece. However, early reports of the game being a major disappointment are greatly exaggerated. The truth is that Mario's latest outing may not be racing perfection, but it's certainly worth your time. I can't think of a better purchase for the holidays.	4/5
	Pac-Man (Tengen) review (NES) Reviewed on November 02, 2003 If the preceding statement is true, there's only one thing more I need to tell you about, the game's conversion. This is because while the NES saw its fare share of ports, most of them sucked, or at the very least paled in comparison to their arcade counterparts. Not so here. Pac-Man from the arcades makes the trip to the home console quite nicely. All that's missing is the joystick, and if you have the NES Advantage, even that's in place.	4/5
	Karate Champ review (NES) Reviewed on November 02, 2003 When you see the title screen, you might have reason to be optimistic. It shows that two people can play (though I later learned that even a single person wasting time with the game is a small miracle), and the letters that make up the logo don't look half bad. Not only that, but the background music is some of the best I've heard from the system. It really is. Unfortunately, I've just described almost everything positive there is to say about the game.	0.5/5
	Muppet Adventure: Chaos at the Carnival review (NES) Reviewed on November 02, 2003 Each level is distinctly different from the next, meaning there are basically four little mini-games you must pass on your way to the grand finale. The first of these is a kayaking trip down a little river. Kermit is the guy in charge, and he must steer his little vessel around rocks, floating logs, whirlpools, and the dangerous riverbanks.	1.5/5
	Super Sprint review (NES) Reviewed on November 01, 2003 A typical race is going to involve flooring the accelerator, dashing to the first corner, then swinging wildly about it like a drunken ballerina and hopefully aligning with the rails on the next turn so as to avoid smashing into a barrier and exploding (if going at high speeds) or becoming stuck for a few seconds while your opponents take the lead by about half a track and you curse at the television screen.	1.5/5
	Tony Hawk's Underground review (GCN) Reviewed on November 01, 2003 At first I thought this new feature might be a lame addition compared to the revert, the invert, and the manual. Then I had a chance to get used to it and decided it might not be so bad after all. Unfortunately, by the 'end' of the game I realized I was right the first time. Though it's cool to be able to climb up ladders, or Rambo your way along telephone wires extending over the streets below, the process through which you do so is so clunky that it ends up being more a curse than a blessing.	4/5
	Castlevania: Lament of Innocence review (PS2) Reviewed on October 25, 2003 Try not to stare as you walk through a chapel and see some benches upright, some tossed to their sides, and still others draped by cobwebs. Everything looks so tremendously organic. There's also a lot of color variation. Even though textures are reused throughout, they're all so good that it doesn't really impact anything in a negative way. Even better, there's good variety from one locale to the next.	3.5/5
	Disgaea: Hour of Darkness review (PS2) Reviewed on October 18, 2003 In short, Disgaea: Hour of Darkness is the sequel that might have happened if Square weren't developing for the Game Boy Advance at the time. Then again, it may not have. You see, the game has all kinds of personality that we haven't seen from Square in, well... forever.	5/5
	SoulCalibur II review (GCN) Reviewed on October 06, 2003 Rather than force you to face nine million matches to unlock all the hidden characters and their alternate weapons, Namco went the story-based route. When you first begin this mode, you appear on a map and get to read some text. This leads to a battle with an opponent, where you'll quickly learn the basic moves that make up a typical fight. From there, you advance onto the next area, where there's more story to read and an excuse for another fight.	4.5/5
	SoulCalibur II review (PS2) Reviewed on October 05, 2003 When playing in Extra Arcade, you can change what weapons your characters use in battle, provided you have obtained new ones. This can greatly affect how balanced a fighter your character is. Tamil can find a weapon, for example, that lets her take out anyone almost without effort, or she can pick a different weapon that has some attributes that are great and some that are a disaster. It's amazing how many ways Namco found to keep gamers playing.	4.5/5
	Enter the Matrix review (XBX) Reviewed on October 03, 2003 To be fair, the Focus idea is cool. It's a great way to put the player in control of what feels almost like a superhuman character. In this one regard, the game succeeds. The problem is that there's not much to do with it. You're just doing the same thing you were before, but now everything isn't as fast and visibility is low. There aren't suddenly more opponents and the environments don't suddenly morph to the point where they're interesting.	2/5
	The Simpsons: Hit & Run review (XBX) Reviewed on September 29, 2003 In the later stages, in the interests of raising the difficulty bar, the developers force you to drive from point A to point B in almost perfect form, then probably to point C in even less time, and perhaps even to point D. Sound tedious? It can be. And if you mess up, it's back to point A for a rehash.	4/5
	Pirates of the Caribbean review (XBX) Reviewed on September 08, 2003 Or if you're feeling particularly daring, you can find contraband on one island, then head to the tavern on another and set up a secret liason with some smugglers. Here, your luck comes into play, and perhaps your ability to handle yourself on land in more of those annoying melee battles, but it's easy to save just before trying to make the deal. Though it feels cheap, you'll soon find that if you save just before any minor skirmish, you can just replay it until you're satisfied with the outcome.	4/5
	One Piece Mansion review (PSX) Reviewed on September 05, 2003 Each such room represents an apartment within the complex, and you'll see the occupants doing their thing. Of course, their thing might interfere with the something the guy to the left or right enjoys. That's what One Piece Mansion is all about, then: keeping everyone in each of the rooms happy with the people around them.	2.5/5
	Gemfire review (NES) Reviewed on August 17, 2003 In any other game, sitting around waiting for a chance to cultivate your fields might not seem all that interesting. But in Gemfire, it can quickly become an obsession. Then you realize you were a moron to plant so much corn because it really didn't do you all that much good after your neighbor stomped all over your farmers with his massive army.	4/5
	Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Island Thunder review (XBX) Reviewed on August 13, 2003 The end result was that I was skirting this level or that for quite some time, trying to find the path the arrow thought was there, and I never really did. This is a problem that was present in the first game, too, but this time around it seems actually to have grown worse instead of improving as one might expect. Again, I blame this on the more intricate levels.	3.5/5
	Puss 'N Boots: Pero's Great Adventure review (NES) Reviewed on August 08, 2003 Just when you're starting to really enjoy yourself, you realize that you've reached its conclusion. Then you look back and realize with horror that it only took you perhaps 15 minutes to do so. From the first stage to the last, they are quick little jaunts almost without exception. The vehicle rides are all quite fun, but they end almost as soon as they begin, and there are arguably too many of them.	3.5/5
	Faceball 2000 review (SNES) Reviewed on August 06, 2003 The system simply wasn't made to handle three dimensions, and that's all there is to it. Really, Faceball 2000 is quite the impressive technical feat. Even though the floors are featureless, and the walls, and even though the balls look more like misshapen blobs, it's impossible to forget that what you're looking at shouldn't have been possible on Nintendo's gray and purple box of mystery.	1.5/5
	Chip 'N Dale: Rescue Rangers 2 review (NES) Reviewed on August 04, 2003 The first level is pretty good, a promising start for the game. The heroes run through a restaurant in an effort to diffuse a bomb someone has set in the building. It's not a match for the first stage in the first game, but it's good, a promising start. Unfortunately, things never really get any better.	3.5/5

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