We all know that the Gamecube is quickly becoming
the best console of the current generation, it
passed up the PS2 about 6 months ago, and is
coming up on the Xbox fast. Well, that's just my opinion.
So to create awareness of the new Gamecube
titles, and to make some mad money, Nintendo
released the Gamecube Preview Disc, free to new
Gamecube buyers, a stunning $10 for us who owned
a Gamecube before. I say "stunning" in a bad way,
not in a good way. Ten dollars is a lot for a
demo disc when compared to the PS2's Jampack and
Xbox's Exhibition, retailing for $5 and $8
respectively.
There are 5 playable demos on this disc: Sonic
Adventure DX: Director's Cut, Tom Clancy's
Splinter Cell, Viewtiful Joe, Billy Hatcher and
the Gaint Egg and Soul Calibur II. There are also
some movies: F-Zero GX, The Legend of Zelda: The
Wind Waker, Star Wars Rebel Strike: Rogue
Squadron III, and two EA football games that are
probably just rehashes of last year's game with
updated rosters like every EA Sports game. Oh,
and there are 2 downloadable games that can be
played on the Game Boy Advance using the
connector thingy, Dr. Mario and a demo of Wario
Ware, Inc., however I am not able to play them
due to the fact that I do not own a "connector
thingy," but I can safely say that both games
rule a considerable amount of ass.
Well nobody gives a shit about Billy Hatcher,
Splinter Cell has been out for almost a year so
anybody who wants to play it already has, and I
own Sonic Adventure DX, so I personally do not
feel like giving a review of it. So let's get
straight to the two games that everyone wants to
know about: Viewtiful Joe and the almighty Soul
Calibur II!
Viewtiful Joe: I must say this game caught me by
surprise. I wasn't expecting much, I had heard
that it was good, but no review or preview I had
read went into much detail about the gameplay
mechanics. I found out why when I played it again
while typing this: It's near impossible to
describe. But I'm going to try my best. Okay,
it's a side-scrolling beat 'em up. You start out
as Joe, I'm assuming. And when an enemy is about
to attack you, a little skull & crossbones icon
appears where they're about to hit you; they can
hit up or down, so when you see the skull &
crossbones icon, jump or duck (hit up or down)
depending on where the icon appears.
Then later you become Viewtiful Joe, a superhero
with the ability to slow down time in a very
Matrix-ish fashion and the ability to speed up
time in a very reverse-Matrix-ish fashion. You
collect these "V" icons to give you more Bullet
Time- er, slow down/speed up time. That's
basically it. So very simple, yet so very fun.
And now the big one...
Soul Calibur II - I'm going to be honest: This is
most, if not the entire reason I bought this
disc. If there is such a thing as a "Gaming
Orgasm" this game is one of few ways to achieve
it. The demo lets you play as 2 characters (And
also has a neat little video of Link at the
first), Nightmare and Cassandra. I prefer
Nightmare, although not to maintain my
masculinity by playing as a male character so
much as it is that Cassandra kinda sucks. You
play against 4 characters: Raphael (Not the
Turtle, but that would be awesome), Asteroth
(sp?), Taki and Voldo, then the demo ends. It
plays quite a bit like the first one (I think,
it's been a long time since I've played the first
one), but I can't put into words how good of a
thing that is.
