USC - Dino Thunder Review Review

the Underground Song Critic's review of: ... a Review?!

ok, i can explain...

it must be pretty hypocritical of me to review another reviewer, given my stance on respecting and accepting everyone's opinion. but damn it, i'm supposed to review the worst the Internet has to offer, and what the hell would i be if i let bullshit slide because of what it is, namely, a review of a videogame. more specifically, a review of a game i played: "Power Rangers: Dino Thunder" for the Gamecube.

i played this game, and it is shit. if the playable Zords weren't shiny, i would've swore this was an N64 game with a wierd controller! the controls are floaty and unnatural for a giant robot game. the weapons and powerups are boring, the environments and music are uninteresting. and i swear, if Dr. Oliver won't shut the Hell up about me stepping on cars and I CAN'T HELP FUCKING HELP IT, OK?! I'M SO GOD DAMNED BIG! I CAN'T HELP IF THESE SUICIDAL FUCKS WANNA DRIVE RIGHT UNDER MY FUCKING-! ... sorry.

point is, the game's more of a novelty, and that novelty runs out fast. so why am i bringing this up? well, today's review is a review of this very game, and this review is bad. it's written on IGN.com by a man named Juan Castro, and it reeks of amateur and bias. don't understand what i'm talking about? well, let's get a look at this guy and see why the pen isn't always mightier than the Zord.

... get it? because... oh, fuck you all, that was funny...

funnily enough, this guy misses the point right at the first paragraph. check this madness out:

[Regardless of how astonishingly corny the television show may be, Power Rangers: Dino Thunder still held potential. Let's face it; anything with mechanized dinosaurs with the power to decimate entire cities will always hold some potential. Every male on the face of the Earth has at one point or another dreamed of climbing aboard a robotic monstrosity brimming with unholy weaponry.]

while yes, the guy has a point, and i commend him for his taste in giant mechanized dino warfare... he does know he's supposed to be the good guy in this game, right? he can't really be expecting him being allowed to destroy the entire city of Reefside out of boredom when doing that as a Power Ranger is a big no-no.

[... For starters, the engineers who built the buildings in the game must have used Adamantium and later blessed them with holy water because none are destructible.]

... holy shit, Dr. O nags the fuck out of me whenever i accidently smash a parked car trying to get rid of a Lobber, how and why the hell did this guy expect he was allowed to destroy the environment IN A POWER RANGER GAME?! where stopping things from destroying the environment is the whole fucking point?! while again, smashing shit in a giant metal T-Rex would be rad as hell, but this isn't Rampage: Total Destruction!! he isn't gonna be getting points for killing civilians. in fact, the game fails the mission your doing if too many civilians get hurt!

JUAN CASTRO: Jason David Frank pulled the plug on me because i wanted to crush every car i came across, what the hell?!

[The mechs in the game, called DinoZords, feel more like dino-shaped Halloween costumes. They lack a sense of genuine weight. And yes, they even lack plasma cannons, nuclear rockets and other required party favors.]

they're trying to sell toys, they're supposed to look like that, Castro. and of course they don't have nuclear weaponry, once again, your not supposed to destroy the city!

at first, i was willing to believe that this is just a revenge review since he had a bad time with the game. and i don't blame him, the game is balls, but then he said the game was too easy. really? then maybe you got a better version than me, because the later levels in the main story and some of the challenge levels in this game are fucked. and it's all accidental diffficulty too, since every damn Zord controls like a dump truck driving on ice on the moon, and this is at it's worst with the Wild Force Zord challenges. seriously, play the Wild Force flying challenge, you will begin to hate life!

but if there's one bit that showed me that this guy wasn't even trying, it's this part, right here:

[Gamers will assume command of the Blue Ranger, Red Ranger, Yellow Ranger and Black Ranger.]

... he does know Tommy isn't playable, right? hell, his BrachioZord is an NPC you have to protect in the worst missions in the whole game. seriously though, Brachio can go fuck itself...

[DinoThunder lets you swap Zoids on the fly, but the game hardly ever exploits this ability.]

firstly, bullshit, i had to swap all the time to either stay alive or get around the stages. second... did he just call them Zoids? eh, it must be a typo...

[The only time you really need to switch Zoids is when, for example, piloting a ground-based Zoid and you need to reach a mission objective on a cliff. Sometimes, a certain obstruction can only cleared using a specific Zoid's special attack, forcing you to calling that Zoid into battle. While the game tries to shake things up in later levels, each puzzle is basically a variation of the "clear obstruction" or "reach the cliff" type challenge.]

ok, once again, bullshit. they at least try to do different objectives, it falls flat on it's ass, but it's admirable. second, he's doing it again! is he seriously confusing Zords with Zoids?! he did use to call them Zords, but for the rest of the review, he refers to them as Zoids. Juan Castro does know the difference between the two, right?

[You can also grab power-ups throughout each mission, none of which feels particularly powerful. You can collect 100 Dino Bolts to restore a Zoid's health or one Power Cell for the same effect. Interestingly enough, it's far easier collecting Power Cells since every enemy in the game drops upon its destruction. The Dino Dart provides a temporary burst of speed you never really need. The only power-up of any importance comes by way of the Dino Claw, which allows each Zoid to perform its special attack. Since each mission calls for the use of at least one special attack, it's really the only power-up in need of real collecting.]

OK, this is pissing me off, let's look at the following:

TyrannoZord, PteraZord, TriceraZord, Liger Zero.

~one of these things is not like the others!~

also, no; collecting 100 Dino Bolts is an annoying way to refill health. yes, you get all your health back instead of just one unit. unless you almost already got 100 Bolts, i don't recommend trying for it when you can just kill a few lobbers to get back health just as easily.

[The environments in the game suffer from serious issues, the worst of which is size. The first group of missions takes place in the "Tar Pits," the first of nine supposed "worlds" in the game. You can literally run from one corner of the Tar Pits to the other in less than a minute. While some of the worlds do open up in later stages, such as Reefside City, none offers the scope you would expect. Each is small, sparse and graphically flat.]

well, what did you seriously expect, XBox 360 quality?! while yes, the Gamecube and PS2 has games that are amazing environment-wise, it's just a Power Rangers game. you can't really expect a game that's supposed to be Power Rangers Merch to be held at the same standards as Kingdom Hearts and Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker!

he concludes by saying the game can only attract the attention of young Power Rangers fans, which i see as offensive. if you truly believe children deserve bullshit games because they don't know any better, then it's my opinion that you're an asshole.

while we agree this game is bullshit, this guy clearly has no idea what the hell he's talking about. i swore i had to double check this guy to make sure he wasn't Navgtr. if this is what Professional Internet Reviewers are like, then i'm proud of my obscurity! i hope i Never become well known as a reviewer!

oh wait, i'm already like that... well good! i'll keep it up.

well if you excuse me, i'm gonna try that Wild Force Flying challenge again. hopefully i won't try to take my own life...