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Review – Urbz: Sims in the City (Handheld)
Way, way back during the Nintendo DS’s post-launch software drought, I was hungry for games. My mother, as awesome as she is, caught a copy of the DS version of Urbz: Sims in the City marked down at Blockbuster Video and picked it up for me. I wasn’t really sure what I was getting into, as this was before I…
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Review – The Sims 2 (Console)
When EA launched The Urbz: Sims in the City, they had hopes for it to become the next big Sim franchise for them. It’s just too bad that game sucks out loud. They were so optimistic that they allegedly began work on The Urbz 2 five months before completion of the first game. Sales still managed to exceed 2 million…
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Review – Lost Kingdoms
I first encountered Lost Kingdoms as a rental way, way back in my adolescent years, during that post-console launch drought that followed the GameCube’s release. I found it interesting because it had a female protagonist back when the market was moving swiftly away from them, and it had a dark, grim atmosphere without descending into horror. It stuck with me,…
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Review – Army Men: Turf War
Turf War is the last of the three Army Men titles on Game Boy Advance. It's interesting, since it uses 3D models over 2D backdrops. Sort of like the Tony Hawk GBA games. Unfortunately, that's about the only thing interesting about it. It isn't as bad as it could be, though.
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Review – The Urbz: Sims in the City
I grew up in a small rural town, population somewhere below 2000 (the signage was never quite clear on the number). The pervasive boredom of growing up in an area with no consistent social scene is probably the greatest factor in my embracing of video games as a hobby. It also meant that I’d perpetually be envious of city living,…
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Review – The Sims Bustin’ Out (GBA)
The Sims on PC was a massive success, selling somewhere past the 10 million mark. That’s still pretty impressive today, but was incredible back in 2000. Electronic Art was eager to cash in on their new hit series, so by 2003, the tap had been turned on and the ports and spin-offs had begun to flow. There were two separate…
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Happy 1 Year Anniversary!
My first full year of running what was then called the Game Complaint Department. It's actually kind of painful to reach back that far into my memory, as that's right before my life got really tumultuous. Also before I started doing this professionally. So, I was still writing this on someone else's time.
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Review – Army Men: Operation Green
Army Men: Operation Green has probably been the biggest surprise for me as I've played through the series. Coming from Pocket Studios and releasing on Game Boy Advance, everything points to it being pretty unspectacular. That much is true, but there are some surprising
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Review – Army Men: Air Combat (GBC)
A lot of the time, when an Army Men title got ported to another platform, it would be remade from the ground up and become a distinct game. However, for some reason, most of the games that landed on Game Boy Color were recognizable ports, including Army Men: Air Combat.
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Review – The Sims Bustin’ Out (Console)
The console port of the original The Sims was okay. It did what it had to do, which was translate the game to console, while also adding on some extra features, like a light story mode and multiplayer. It wasn’t bad, honestly, but it did leave some room to grow. So much room, in fact, that less than a year…
