Luigi's Mansion Dark Moon

 The boy has a lengthy report to share on one of his (current) favourite DS game: Luigi's Mansion Dark Moon.

This game is a sort of a strategy game. You need to find out how to defeat the ghosts. Also, it's a bit of a puzzle game mixed in. Some things you will need to use your noggin to find out. 

The story of the game is that King Boo (a king of the boos from the first Luigi's Mansion game) is back and over Ever Shade Valley, (which seems to be a new place in the Mushroom Kingdom) is the Dark Moon. Any ghost who comes there is good  and they like anyone. But, King Boo broke the Dark Moon and all the good ghosts became bad. They started to tear up everything they saw. Then, we go to Luigi's house. We see him laying on his chair. The TV starts going on. Then, a guy comes up on the screen - he's called Professor Egad. He says "Luigi!" Luigi runs back to his chair and bumps his head. Then, Professor Egad says "Luigi, all the good ghosts became hostile. Why are you on the floor? We'll need to defeat these evil ghosts if we want to save Ever Shade Valley. Stay still, I'm preparing the Pixelator." That's the beginning of your game.

 These three pictures I have here are three of the most common ghosts. The green ghost is called Greenie. It says in their research that they like to tinker with things. The red grumpy ghost is called Slammer. He's stronger than Greenie. His research says "They may look like ruthless brutes but they have a tender heart of gold - just don't let them give you a round of applause." (This means they'll slam you with their hands and create a loud bang that will hurt you.) The blue skinny ghost is called Hider. They're weaker than Slammers but more powerful than Greenies. They like to hide a lot, as their name indicates. There's also a bunch more ghosts that you encounter later on in the game. I may post the ghosts later. 

When you beat the fourth level, you will unlock a mode called Scare Scraper. This will allow you to team up with friends online and go into Scare Scrapers finding ghosts. There are three different modes in it. The first mode is called Hunter. In order to reach the next floor, you'll need to kill every ghost on the map. The second one is called Rush. Find the exit quickly before time runs out. Collect time pieces (which look like stop watches) to increase your time. The third mode, which I like the most, is called Polterpup. Use your dark light device to find the paw prints of the polterpups and find every one and kill them. Every five floors will give you a boss battle, which is basically the main thing that is keeping me playing this game. It will give you a chance to find a new type of ghost but it's completely random who will come. 

Here's a tip about Scare Scraper: do twenty five floors of any mode and you get the mode "Endless" of the mode that you did. It creates an Endless Scare Scraper that won't stop until you fail. 

This tip is about capturing ghosts: if you are trying to dodge any ghost attacking you, press the B button to do a dodge to dodge all attacks and take no damage. 

New Game Review: Mario Kart 7

Here's the second game interview provided by our house's video game guru, aka the boy.

This game is called Mario Kart 7. You can play as the same characters as in other Mario Kart games, like Toad, Mario, Luigi, Peach, and even more. Now the basic boom about this game is that it introduces hang gliders that will allow you to go around in the air. The glider has a bit of a complicated control. If you want to go up, you've got to hold down on the control pad. If you want to go down, you hold up on the control pad. 

You can go into water and swim down it. Also, if you press up, you go faster diving. 

There are also three new powerups: the Tenuki leaf, the Fire flower, and the Lucky seven. The lucky seven gives you seven items, only if you are lucky (obviously). The items that you get from the lucky seven are a blooper, a mushroom, a banana, a shell, a red shell, a star, and a bombomb. 

You can also customize your vehicle. You can change its wheels, its car, and its glider. The only way you can get more customizations is to collect coins which are scattered around the course. They appear when you are racing. Any level has coins somewhere.  

The last thing that you can do is race against the programmers in time trials, where it shows a ghost and their previous records. At the end, when you finish, it shows what the programmer used to do this good run-through. 

I'd probably say this is also a B; it's pretty fun but I wish they added more than just a glider and swimming underwater. 

Player's tip: Don't forget, mix and match your car, wheels, glider and character, because even switching your character can switch your car's stats. Try your best to find your best vehicle. 

New Game Review: Ben 10 Omniverse

Here is the first of three interviews given by the boy and transcribed by his mother to describe some of the newest games he's played and his opinions. First up - Ben 10 Omniverse.

This is mostly a platformer game. The story is - I don't really understand it myself but from what I've gathered slowly but surely, it seems like this alien called Malware is trying to suck some sort of morphic generator, as its called. This one guy is traveling through time (the guy's name is Rook) so he's switching between the future and the past, so this is why there are two Bens. The second basic premise is that it's all about the aliens. As you might know from the normal Ben 10 show, Ben has this thing on his wrist that allows him to change into aliens. Now, the thing about both of the Bens is that they can usually transform into the same aliens. I will name a few for you:

• Cannonbolt
• Diamondhead
• Fourarms
• Wildmutt
• Heatblast
• Upchuck
• Arcticguana

The thing about both Bens that's interesting is that they both have their own aliens that are unique only to them. For teenage Ben, he has Shocksquatch, Crashopper, and Gravattack. For younger Ben, he has Eyeguy, Feedback (a new alien), and XLR8. Also in this game, you can get upgrades that let you do certain things in the game that would let you do what you couldn't do before. One of the last upgrades allow you to change into all the aliens, letting teenage Ben have Eyeguy, Feedback, and XLR8 and younger Ben can also have Shocksquatch, Crashopper, and Gravattack. I recommend getting the upgrades as soon as possible because it can really be fun to use all the aliens with one Ben. 

I would give this game a B because it's not the best game but it's pretty fun at first. It seems like it was easy to beat in no time at all. 

Here's a tip for the final boss: Malware will do an attack. You should dodge it and then his shield will go down and then you attack. Eventually you'll have to fight two Malwares at once.