Review Round-Up - March 2014

Baby Mario, along with players like us,
dropped into the world of the Yoshis.

Now it's time for the REAL Review Round-Up for March 2014. We started off retro with the original, the classic, The Legend of Zelda. Its old school difficulty and sometimes obtuse design put Phil off a little bit, but the game still opened up a dungeon treasure chest and acquired a 7.0 score. Tappingo on the 3DS eShop, a game with a resemblance to Picross, also solved its way to the same score. Just realize that we're not saying Tappingo is as good as The Legend of Zelda. It's a fool's errand to compare games from totally different genres. We're rating these games based on competition in their own genres. 

Speaking of going retro, Nintendo gave us a nostalgic twinge with NES Remix, scoring an 8.0. Also on the Wii U eShop was F1 Race Stars: Powered Up Edition. Unfortunately, most kart racers speed past this disappointing (and aggravating) cartoon racer. Next up we revisited Yoshi, but this time we took a vacation at his brand-new digs with Yoshi's New Island, a game that hatched an 8.0 score. 

Three more platformers rounded out our productive month: Klonoa: Door to Phantomile (8.5), Crash Bandicoot (7.0, reviewed by Bean), and DuckTales Remastered (9.0). Overall, it was a fun month of games to review. It was a varied selection of titles, and we hope you enjoyed taking a look at them with us. April is all about the PlayStation Vita (with some other non-Vita games thrown in for good measure). Please look forward to this month of reviews!

The Legend of Zelda (NES, Wii U VC, 3DS VC) - 7.0

Tappingo (3DS eShop) - 7.0

NES Remix (Wii U eShop) - 8.0

F1 Race Stars: Powered Up Edition (Wii U eShop) - 3.5

Yoshi's New Island (3DS) - 8.0

Klonoa: Door to Phantomile (PS1, PSN) - 8.5

Crash Bandicoot (PS1, PSN) - 7.0

DuckTales Remastered (Wii U, PS3, 360, PC) - 9.0

Scrooge McDuck's back from an extended hiatus,
and his adventure was worth its weight in gold!

Review Round-Up - March 2014

Sales don't lie.
Battlefield 4 is great.

March was an astounding month for reviews here at SuperPhillip Central. We may have only touched upon seven games in these past 31 days, but the ones we did get to talk about are rather special and rather large titles! We started the month off with the conclusion of Final Fantasy Lightning's trilogy with Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII, which we gave a 7.0. We then turned our attention to Kojima Productions's latest with Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Heroes. Some may call it a glorified demo, but we stand by our 8.0 score. A game that positively surprised us was Deus Ex: Human Revolution - Director's Cut, specifically the Wii U version. That game nabbed an impressive 9.0. 

Next up was Dark Souls II, which as our review stated, "a frustrating game of artificial difficulty under the guise of a "mature" game." The game received a disappointing 2.0, which also had the game-breaking glitches to note. Following that was a game that was quite the opposite-- glitch-free-- Battlefield 4. Don't listen to the whiny gamers that plague our industry; the press got this one right, and we agreed with the quality of the game being terrific. We scored the game an 8.5. After all, we've yet to be unable to find a match or get kicked out of a match. We've never played this game either.

From there we reviewed Serran Kagura Blast, a game that we called "a fantasy for otaku nerds who can't get real breasts to look at, so this is the next "best" thing." Suffice to say, we didn't care for the game, "awarding" it with a super low 1.0. Finally, we were on our way to review Capcom's Mega Man Legends 2, but we cancelled the review a somewhat far along in the process of writing. We blame the fans for this. So as you can see, SuperPhillip Central kicked some serious butt this past month.

Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII (PS3, 360) - 7.0

Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Heroes (PS4, X1, PS3, 360) - 8.0

Deus Ex: Human Revolution - Director's Cut (Wii U) - 9.0

Dark Souls II (PS3, 360) - 2.0

Battlefield 4 (PS4, X1, PS3, 360, PC) - 8.5

Serran Kagura Burst (3DS) - 1.0

Mega Man Legends 2 - n/a

Dark Souls II is great if you
are a glutton for its punishment.

Central City Census - March 2014

The short month of February is now over, so that means less votes for our monthly Central City Census. Regardless, we're back with a new topic to question you guys on. Before that, let's see the results of last month's poll.

Asking which of the two latest eighth generation consoles you currently own, it seems most of those who responded to the Census have neither, which makes sense. There's a risk involved with being an early adopter. There's hardware problems to worry about, droughts to contend with, and possible price cuts to contend with. Twenty voters own just the PlayStation 4, but what really stood out to us was that no one who voted only owned an Xbox One. We consider that system to have the better games at the moment. Perhaps the DRM fiasco and higher price are factors to think about in this.

Now that we've taken care of old business, here's new business:

With more powerful tech that pushes console hardware to the limits, it's much easier nowadays for a console to break. Since the Red Ring of Death surrounding the Xbox 360 was so common, we're interested in knowing how many Xbox 360 systems you had to buy last generation.