The Past and Times of Yore: Super Mario World, the Greatest

Hello and Happy New Year! I did mean to get this one finished off before New Years but unfortunately it didn't happen but anyway we'll start the new year off with a bang with the greatest game I have ever played. Looking forward to a new year in gaming and I hope you like the new look and colours for the blog.

Release Date: 1/7/1992
Genre: Platformer
Publisher: Nintendo

Developer: Nintendo EAD
Platforms: Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES)
Players: 1 or 2 player
Classification: E (Everyone)

Of all the games I’ve reviewed, this one may be one of the most difficult, how do I review my favourite game of all time? Not to mention it’s one of the most popular Mario games ever, It’s like reviewing Pac-man and giving it a score out of 10, but I suppose I must.

Before I owned a console (or a PC for that matter) I, like my other gamers my age in their younger years, cut my teeth at arcade’s playing Pac-man and Space Invaders, and also on those crap little handheld devices with dot matrix screens. Later on I played consoles at friends houses who had  either Sega Master Systems and played Sonic the Hedgehog and other built in games such as Alex Kidd and Golden Axe or they had Nintendo Entertainment systems and played the Mario series obviously and other greats such as New Ghostbusters II and A Boy and his Blob. It wasn’t until my father brought home a Super Nintendo, one of the greatest and most popular consoles ever made, that my gaming career really took off.

The mighty Super Nintendo Entertainment System, PAL aka Europe and Australian version of course.

And the very first game we bought for that console was none other than Super Mario World.

Oh how do I love thee?

Thinking back now I can’t really remember my thoughts about playing it, I guess I just really liked it as I always looked forward to coming home from school and playing. I never owned a NES and had only played a bit of the previous super Mario series but this one, being on the a new console was obviously something else. I still view the crispness of the 2D graphics, the simple controls and the gameplay that was easy to pickup but difficult to master as something of true gaming genius, and have never regarded it as inferior to any game that has come out after it, no matter home good the graphics, gameplay, complexity or replay value are.

BANZAI!, Giant enemies like the Banzai Bill became more common in the Yoshi Island sequel 

So we’ll start with the story. After the Events of Super Mario Brothers 3, Mario, Luigi and Princess Toadstool decide to have a vacation in Dinosaur Land. Which contains Yoshi’s island and the “race” of Yoshi’s (see explanation on previous Yoshi’s Island post here) who have been captured and trapped in enchanted eggs by none other than Bowser, who has returned and is building his Koopa army up again in Dinosaur land and inevitably captures Princess toadstool again and Mario and Luigi have to save her again. Storyline-wise it’s pretty simple but if you’ve played the entire series before this one it’s just another episode in the Mario world and plus you’ve got a whole new world to explore.

And a new world it is indeed, I’ll always remember that starting music where you see Mario standing there with that beautiful background of the dome mountains and the welcome text come up, before you appear on Yoshi’s Island right outside Yoshi’s “house” which is a nice little sub level where you find out that Yoshi is out at the time.

Hey Yoshi there's something I've been meaning to ask you, if this is your house where the hell do you sleep, or live?, in the tree?, on the ground? Forgive me I'm just curious

 I was glad that Nintendo kept the ‘world-map’ format from the last game where you traversed across the screen as a “Mario icon” before entering levels except this time Mario actually appears to walk, turn and spin around while moving across the map. The map is beautiful looking in itself though it lacks the constant movement of SMB3 though it has movement in little areas like fish jumping in the lake and ghosts circling round the ghost houses and it also transition into several sub zones with their own music, like the awesomely named Vanilla Dome and the Forest of Illusion. I also like it how the world changes as you complete things i.e. bridges and hills grow, new paths are made, new geographical elements pop out of the land or sea, it made the map quite an interactive experience. Dinosaur land has a range of environments including grassy plains, wetlands, underground caverns, forests, ghost houses, castles and an Island resembling chocolate.

A full map of Dinosaur Land plus the interior and special areas.

 It’s hard to put into words the impact the graphics had on me just seeing the crispness of the image and the new effects of the Super Nintendo, it certainly had much more of an effect then the NES or any of the older PC games I played before. The graphics were perfect for the game you could see the detailed backgrounds with many layers that later got added to the original Mario series and got upgraded even more with the Yoshi’s island sequel and sometimes they actually move and spin with the level itself, you could see the grass and the dirt and the bushes and trees and those shiny pipes all in great detail. The effect like water splashing and lava flowing look great and at certain times (especially during the castle cutscenes) there are some great animations where sprites fly towards and away from the screen. With the enemies you can see how some of them actually have animated reactions and sometimes appear visibly distressed when jumped on, something that you never saw with the mostly static-faced enemies of the previous games until they got the Mario All-stars reboot. Mario himself looked great with visible eyeballs and more humanlike features, especially in his bigger “super-mario” form and I admit the Yoshi’s look the best in this game. 

Beautiful, it seems so minimal but there's so much detail.

The controls this time around are a bit different seeing as there are two other buttons on the controller this time, the B button is to jump and jumping is still the predominate way to defeat enemies. The X and Y buttons are a composite of Dash/Interact/Special ability and the A button is used to do the new spin jump allowing you to do a number of things which include causing some enemies to disintegrate completely (instead of jumping on them twice), breaking certain blocks and as a way to bounce across enemies you wouldn’t normally be able to jump on. Other controls include being able to scroll the screen using the L/R buttons and Start button to pause as usual. The select button has an interesting new feature that when you have any kind of powerup already and you grab another one, your previous powerup is kept in a blue box at the top of the screen and drops down for you to pickup when either 1. You hit an enemy and lose your current powerup, or 2. You press the select button.

There was some levels, like this one in particular which emphasized breaking blocks with the new spin jump

There powerups in the game include the Super Mushroom, Fire Flower and the new Cape Feather which turns Mario into “Caped” Mario (not Super Mario obviously that’s what the mushroom does) which allows you to fly like superman after taking a running start similar to the Super Leaf in Super Mario Bros. 3 though flying with the cape is a little more complex and it wasn’t till later in life that I realised how to use it properly. With the cape you could spin it around and defeat some enemies you usually couldn’t, you could also spin jump higher and when holding B, use the cape to float down slowly when jumping or spin jumping. Flying with the cape turned out to be quite a complex matter, you could fly up into the top of the map and then zoom down and slam the ground cause a quake killing enemies nearby, though you could also use  the left and right directional buttons to use the cape to float so for example when doing a dive you could pull back and zoom up higher and if you were good enough you could float along for awhile which was actually required for a couple of the secrets in the game. There was this bit on the first level you get the cape which had heaps of coins in a row in the sky and I never figured out how to get them all until I’d played the game through many times. It’s true the different suits have gone missing like the Tanooki Suit, the Frog Suit, the Hammer Suit, and Kuribo's Shoe but their really not needed in my opinion.

Up, up and awaaay!, this was quite an awesome feeling much more so then the Super Leaf in my opinion

Other powerups included the P-Balloon which made Mario expand and allow him to float, the Star which was the usual invincibility and Yoshi's Wings which could only be used when riding Yoshi and flew you up to Coin Heaven and also turned your current Yoshi to a blue (or purple really) Yoshi. New items include the Dragon Coins where you collect 5 in a level to earn and extra life, Key and Keyhole which lead to an unlockable alternate area and the rare 3-Up Moon which does exactly what it says. The P-Switches also make a comeback with a grey variety that turns enemies into Silver Coins and goddamned did it take me awhile to realise that some of the timed ones that leave a trail of coins are actually able to manipulated by the player as to which direction they go.

The new dragon coin

Having played the game through again recently, I thought to myself that I really never came that close to how good I used to be at this, playing it on emulator now with a PS2 style controller also was a slightly different feel and I had to fight off the urge to use the ‘save anywhere anytime’ feature that emulators have before difficult sections or boss fights. As with all Mario games you quickly get a knack for the gameplay and pretty soon you’re jumping and flying and riding along with ease. Speaking of pace, the pace of the game is great, with the exception of the levels that automatically move the camera and you have to keep up, you can run and jump along at your own pace (though there is a time limit) and even run back through the level to finish something off or chase after a powerup. I never really liked the Sonic the Hedgehog games, sure it may have been cooler and faster, but I’m the type of person who likes to explore a level, and barrelling at top speed around a ramp and then crashing into some horizontal facing spikes is not my idea of a good time.

V for Victory!

The game can be player either 1 or two player with the 2^nd player playing as Luigi and the two players taking turns. All the usual Mario mechanics are in there, hitting question mark blocks, getting coins, getting points, the end goal this time is an actual goal which is often guarded by an interesting new enemy called Chargin’ Chuck who resembles an NFL player, the Giant Gate that acts as the end goal has a beam moving up and down and depending on how high Mario hits the beam he gets a certain number of points and after reaching 100 points he gets to go to a bonus game to gain some free lives, some bonus levels are also hidden throughout other maps. I remember in my childhood finishing a level and giving the V for victory sign with my hand at the same time that Mario did.

A  Chargin' Chuck near the Giant Gate

As we all know, this was the first Super Mario game to include Yoshi who (after taking a brief visit to his house) is found trapped inside an egg in one of the first levels of the game, he explains to Mario and Luigi that he and many other Yoshio’s are trapped inside eggs throughout Dinosaur land some of which are held by Bowser’s children aka the Koopalings in their castles. Riding Yoshi was great fun I especially liked the bongoes that got added to the music when you were riding him. Yoshi could eat almost any type of enemy as well as explode them when he jumped on them, he could also eat the berries which were hanging in various levels which I’ve only just found out actually did something. You could fly with Yoshi if you had a cape albeit just up and down and he is able to hop across surfaces or enemies that Mario cannot such as Spinies he also had that special Yoshi's Wings powerup.

Yoshi launches a shell at the enemies inside the Forest of Illusion level

There are other colours of Yoshi’s that you could get such as:

Red Yoshi, a Yoshi that spits out all Shells in the form of three fireballs. It loses any Shell Power by spitting the shell due to all shells being used for fireballs and thus being unable to be recaught.

Blue Yoshi, a Yoshi that flies as long as a Shell is in its mouth. 

Yellow Yoshi, a Yoshi that can shake the ground by taking a Shell into its mouth, defeating enemies with its impact.

These Yoshi’s are obtained usually through the Star World which I’ll get into later with the exception of Blue Yoshi who you also receive when using a Yoshi's Wings powerup. If Mario is hit while riding Yoshi, Yoshi will run away but Mario can run and jump back on before he runs into a bottomless pit or whatnot.

Mario with Purple (Blue) Yoshi in a night version of coin heaven

If there was ever a game where I enjoyed almost every bit of music and sound effect from then Super Mario World would come quite close. The sound of Mario jumping, the sound Yoshi makes when he breaks out of the shell and when he shoots out his tongue, the awesome sound when you get your first Cape Feather and the very satisfying sound of a castle, fortress or switch palace going under. The sound effects make Super Mario games what they are and this one was no exception, it’s kind of hard to describe but everything just works, the sounds are much smoother then Mario Bros 3 (yes even the All-stars remake) and make for a better feel overall.

Boing!

The music in the game in none other than exception, from the very moment the circular transition opens and you hear that magnificent intro music well I can’t think of anything better. I also love the tune that plays when you start the game but basically every bit of music is amazing, even in the overworld map which has different tunes for different areas, the homely juvenile tune of Yoshi’s island, the plain and simple overworld tune, the cool drum beat of the Vanilla dome and gentle violin of the forest of illusion. I like the way the music changes with the level for example normal level have happy slower tunes while athletic moving screen and jump levels have a faster ragtime beat. The caves, Castles and Ghost houses are equally good, the caves with their quiet solemn beat and the castles and fortresses with their haunting music have one of the best soundtracks in the game. The music in Super Mario world is a large part of what makes it the best game I’ve ever played so hats off to you Mr Koji Kondo

The castles had one of the best (if not the best) soundtracks in the game. Here Mario is climbing on a fence and could also punch koopas off, something we'd never seen before.

One of the things I liked most about Super Mario World was the secrets, there were heaps of them, every level had a little secret of some kind, the many pipes in the world still led to secret areas inc the bonus 1up areas. Many of the levels had a key and a keyhole and led to alternate paths and secret levels, the cape feather was most often the catalyst of this as many secret were in areas above the level  either in the sky or on the roof of the cave. The Star World where the baby coloured Yoshi’s are found requires you to reach the various star roads where Mario does this amusing spin and flies off into the sky (damn it took awhile to find a path to the last one). The levels of the star world to find the key and keyhole to get to the next area and I won’t spoil anything else in the rare case that you haven’t played it. 

It took me quite a while to work out all the secrets that I’ve currently found and no matter how many times I finish the damn thing the highest I’ve gotten is 97%, something about getting all the level exits and I didn’t even get that far. Until a couple of years ago when I was playing on emulator and finally found the Soda lake secret area which had the Torpedo Teds which I saw in the ending credits but never knew where the hell they were for years until I finally couldn’t take it anymore and had to look it up and there was a few other things I had to look up too but I guess that’s why games used to have strategy guides.

The Soda Lake secret level with the Topedo Teds

I can’t say much more about Super Mario World other than that it was the game that shot my gaming career into life, and I’m definitely not alone in my praise, you look at the reviews on Gamefaqs and there’s barely a score below 9 (out of 10 of course) Shigeru Miyamoto himself has often stated that Super Mario World is his favourite Mario game and needless to say I fully agree. There’s not many games I experience anymore that come close to what Super Mario World did for me, I remember even thinking about it while in class at Primary school but I guess I did that for a lot of things.

It's nice to get a thank-you

This game was the epitome of the Mario games on the Super Nintendo (along with Yoshi’s Island) and I have never and will never care about any Mario game that was made after the SNES as much as I did the original series and Super Mario World has always been and is still my favourite game in this world.

JD

Others come close, but never conquer.

Minecraft Christmas Time 2013

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Minecraft Creations: The Brick Mansion Chapter 5, That tops it and 1.7.2, the update that changed the world.

Greetings fellow Minecrafters, I originally wanted to make this update to my brick mansion after I had finished the entire outdoor area inc the gardens and farms etc but since the 1.7 update had come in I felt that I needed to discuss this now and can leave the full unveiling of the house to when it’s finally goddamned finished.

Though I will start with the rather large and exciting 1.7.2 update, as you probably know this resource brought a major overhaul of the game’s code meaning that the resource for mod creators the Minecraft Coder Pack (MCP) is still in the process of being updated so until that has happened unfortunately we won’t be able to use any of our beloved mods.  This doesn’t really bother me as I’ve still got 1.6.4 available and can use that whenever mods are needed but I may be curtailing my Minecraft business for a while until the mods are back up to business.

But anyway let’s go through some of the major changes...

There has a been a few changes to the options, the resource menu screen overhaul which apparently lets you select more than one resource pack at once?  and the fun “super secret settings” which adds in a random filter to your view such black and white and inverting colours. Lighting has been changed with black spots in the terrain being almost fixed and thunderstorms make the day much darker. There has been new changes to both fishing mechanics and items as you can now fish up more than just fish and we now have more fish including Raw Fish, Raw Salmon, Clownfish, and the Pufferfish which we can now use to brew the water breathing potion. There’s also some plans for players to create Nether Portals bigger and with different shapes  that may even allow ghasts into the overworld.

And in case you ask, no it automatically shrinks to a smaller portal when you actually go into the nether so I'm not exactly sure how a ghast would get to here.

 Probably the biggest addition is the changes to the Biomes featuring 11 new ones inc the Mesa, Savanna, Sunflower Plains and Roofed Forest as well as some variants of existing biomes inc the Flower Forest and the snowless Taiga biome and speaking of temperature each biome now has a base temperature to determine whether it rains or snows or whether rains at all. There’s lots more changes but I’ll let you read the version history for the rest. Thanks to the new biomes there are new Wood varieties inc Acacia and Dark Oak (as well as new saplings and leaves). New Fish have been added inc the Pufferfish which can be used to make the Potion of Water breathing which creates an alternative to the respiratory enchant for armor. 

A new Savanna biome.

There is lot of new Flowers for you to pick so you can make some different coloured wool other then red, yellow and orange and there is also flowers which are two blocks high that can be grown with bonemeal! As well as two block tall grass, all this is perfect for my upcoming garden with hedge maze for my Brick Mansion. And what’s more once you have crushed those flowers into dye you can now not only dye wool but glass! Yes Stained Glass windows are now possible so you can stain away all 16 colours. 

Stain that glass

So that’s that for the update, there are a few other improvements and changes which are listed in full on the Minecraftwiki version history. I leave you now with a video by autotroph who very nicely details the features of 1.7 in this 3 and a half minute video.

So now on to my quite extensive Brick Mansion...

After I had grown bored of building on the Vancraft server I decided I had to have a crack at finishing off my Brick Mansion, well the house part at least and I started of course with the main roof though I’ll first need to talk about the roof of the lobby. Apart from the stone bricks and pyramid the lobby roof was mainly constructed of oak wood planks unlike the stairs design I currently use, probably because there was no stair edges like there is now, though I did add some stairs in to finish off the roof as well as a oak wood slab trim to add a bit of overhang and it looked much better. When I started the roof of the main house I went for relatively the same effect with oak planks except I would use oak stairs to join the levels for a much cleaner look.

Buildin' that roof

Night time, I added torches around the roof to keep monsters from spawning (when I eventually turn then on)

The finished roof

 I think I used about a two block overhang (which I hope was low enough then did the usual trim of oak slabs, I then went 3 blocks across then 3 stair blocks up in sections right up until I’d closed off the roof, didn’t run into many problems apart from forgetting to extend some of the chimneys. When I’d finished off the top I went to work on the upper level and quickly decided which rooms were going to use the main roof as their actual roof as the rooms looked quite cavernous without a roof of their own (which is lower down obviously). So I designed rooves for the activity room, band room, gaming room, home cinema, lavatory and the inner guest rooms as the roof was low enough for the ones on the edges. I then heightened the walls of the rooms and boy did those rooms look big especially the main upstairs hall.

Band room roof.

Activity room roof

One of the inner guest rooms which have a roof and also has a tree growing out of it.

Viewing the inner roofs from above is an interesting sight.

The Main upper hallway, that's some high walls yo.

I decided to do a sort of lookout deck at the very top of the house, and I would use my favourite type of stone: stone brick to do the floor and made a sort of fenced platform right round the top layer of the roof, I also made a mini tower to get even higher up, then it started raining and I realised as always when it rains I had to make a roof over the platforms so I decided to put some glowstone on the top of the lookout roof as a sort of beacon. I then had to create the stairs down (or up) to the platform which I basically just made over the stairs down to the middle level which I did in the usual design.  I also added some hanging light in the form of lightstone on wires though I had to use fences as always with these things as there’s a lack of any type of wire, but I guess Minecraft is mostly blocks and I’d have to look at mods such as Industrialcraft to get any semi-proper structure building items but this house was always supposed to be vanilla Minecraft and that’s the way it will stay.

The "lookout deck" at the top of the roof with light tower

The stairway up to the roof in the main upper hallway.

Hanging lights

With the rest of the lighting the activity and band rooms had the glowstone light worked into the ceiling, the great library was chock full of torches (which is kind of dangerous around books now I think about it) but I made some spruce log chandeliers so the roof wasn’t this big dark mass. The “Hot Box” cinema obviously had minimal lighting and the games room had lighting worked into the roof but I made some mushroom lamps for the games tables to keep in theme with the mushroom-style roof. I had decided when making the staircase up to the lookout platform to include a gap in the wall with a fence overlooking the guest hall so I had also decided to not put a secondary roof over the guest hall or the very eastern guest rooms.

Library Roof Chandeliers

Games room mushroom roof

Guest room hallway

The gap in the wall on the stairs down from the roof which I thought looked better then just a plain wall.

 So because of that I decided to my some wall windows or ‘skylights’ I suppose you’d call them and some jutting out glowstone lights to give a bit of feature to the upper wall of that long hallway I also added some chandeliers which were supposed to be oak wood then I realised I’d done them in jungle wood but meh. For my own room  I didn’t need too much more light but I made a golden chandelier of lightstone. I also made some more windows for my room and the activity and band room and this made the southern facing upper wall of the house look much better. I added all the rest of the signs that weren’t there for the rooms that I could think of, inc some with some fairly funny names.

"Wall windows" and jutting out lightstone

Jungle Log chandeliers

My cool golden chandelier

More windows for my pad

Windows make house look better

My dad would get this...

Another thing I’d been meaning to do for awhile was a pool/sundeck, I was going to make this a sort of extension to the inside pool but ended up just creating a triangle shaped pool and deck outside the window and removed some of the plant features to make two entryways outside. I made the pool and deck raised up to the floor height of the middle level though the pool gets deeper from the top down for the diving board, didn’t know what else to put so I put lots of deckchairs around, might add yet another bar later, not sure.

Pool party baby, it was a cool party, cool pool party, lalalalaa

New exit out to the deck, there's also one on the other side of the indoor pool.

While I was doing this I had a bit of a crisis when I found out that the flaming netherrack from the forge entrance had set fire to the stairway above it yet again ( I stupidly though I could block it’s effects with a single cobblestone block) and had spread and destroyed whole walls, I couldn’t even put it out so I had to revert to a previous save and thank god I had made one as it would have taken days to rebuild the quite details corners of rooms it had destroyed. Unfortunately this meant I had to do a few of the changes inc the pool and deck again which was not fun. I also realised that I’d made this area on the east side of the house where the sun obviously rises not sets so this was a bit of a blunder (I definitely wouldn’t be the best architect).

The sun sets in the west you dumhead, though I spose the dancefloor balcony can see the sunset making a fairly romantic setting (with myself).

Probably the last thing I did was create a wall around the entrance to the main mine and the surface material processing with the secondary mine entrance. I’d original intended for this to be the finish of the house but really it isn’t. I haven’t done any of the garden or farms and I think I might extend the wall to go around the pool area and in fact I make might it cover most of the east side to make room for all that and maybe do a hedge maze or at least fence off a small area so the pool didn’t have to have monsters lurking underneath lol. I think I will make a decent garden or at least line the walls or patches of the grass with the multitude of new flowers that are available. I do feel a bit disappointed that I’ve made the house with a lot of emphasis on different types of wood and now there’s two new types but meh could have been worse, I could have done this when there was only one.

The wall around the mine entrances

The quite bare west side of the house. Mainly because of the Library and the movie theatre but might add some windows to the library and band room if I can fit them in

Southwest side of the house.

The house in all it's grandeur

So that’ll be the next job, walls, farms inc horses/cattle, gardens, hedge maze, maybe a gazebo or two but I ain’t makin’ this place too high class ;D

JD

My Usual Spiel: Saints Row IV, Turn the epic crazy up to 11

Release Date: 12/9/2013
Genre: Action Adventure
Publisher: Deep Silver

Developer: Volition Inc.
Platforms: PC, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360
Players: 1 or 2 Co-op and multiplayer.
Classification: R for REFUSED (in Australia)

When the infamous Saints Row the Third was released there were a lot of people asking how Volition was ever going to top the semi controlled chaos that was the storyline and the gameplay,  but now they’re saying that again about the latest installment.

Part of the cast from Saints Row IV from left to right: The Boss, Pierce Washington, Shaundi, Matt Miller, Kinzie and Asha Odekar

Having not played the original two Saints Row games I found Saints Row the Third one of the most enjoyable games I have played in awhile, I rightly considered it a fun alternative to the sometimes tedious realism that the Grand Theft Auto series creates and does well of course but sometimes you just need to let loose, and I mean hanging off choppers while shooting a rocket launcher then parachuting onto the top of a skyscraper then falling off that or shooting people dressed in animal costumes in a game show entitled “Professor Genki’s Murder Time Fun Time”. So because of that you could in all regards view Saints Row the third as a wacky brother to GTA but the next in the series shakes this theory up quite a bit.

Oh yep, that's a big ship alright.

Without spoiling too much yes this time around the leader of 3^Rd Street Saints (aka you) gains presidency of the United States after stopping a nuclear missile from exploding the country, then the Earth gets attacked by Aliens and you have to stop them. This was a bit of a drastic step as I thought as the Saints Row series could have possibly gone from a humble street gang to taking over two cities to taking over the whole of the United states in this installment rather than you being president right from the start then a out-of-nowhere alien invasion. So I guess I feel like they kind of went a bit further then they should but who knows really there will always be way to go in the future, not to mention prequels everyone loves prequels even if it’s going over past game content, actually wait. The usual Saints Row wit and flair is there obviously, the white house seems more like a party house with MP’s drinking beer and watching strippers dance on poles installed in the rooms, on your walk through the halls of congress you get stopped by Keith David with two documents and you shortly have to decide whether to end world hunger or cure cancer, gawd, I was playing it at a lan at that point at was so concerned that I had to walk outside and ask people their advice on my decision, how democratically-minded of me.

Being the president means making difficult decisions.

Saints Row IV was originally intended to be an expansion for the previous game but then changed so that it was a full sequel. This does mean that the graphics have not exactly changed much since the last installment but in my view the graphics were fine to begin with, not super trying to be realistic but not poor-looking either. Also the quality of the graphics is far less a topic of conversation than the eye candy on offer, the city of Steelport is pretty much the same as it was before but the inclusion of the alien buildings and ships and also the interior of the Alien vessels look pretty cool, not to mention the massive alien ship hovering over the centre of the city, though the ship which acts as your home when you’re not in the simulation does look kind of bland. As the city is supposed to be a “computer simulation” of itself you do notice many things that denote that for example there are matrix references with the water and parts of the landscape and buildings turning into 1’s and zero’s on certain occasions and cars and people sometimes ‘bug out’ by flipping around or the models suddenly twisting into wrong sizes and contorted shapes. The city is still as fully functioning as it was in the previous game with normal ‘simulated’ inhabitants etc the major changes are all the statues, billboards, posters, some stores and general signs and advertisements are all changed to a general theme of fear and submission by the alien invaders and their leader, the main antagonist Zinyak.

Looks like something from an Orson Welles film

Probably the most drastic change in the gameplay is the way you move around the city right from the start in this new simulation you are given superpowers that allow you to sprint faster than cars and jump as tall as houses and small buildings this along with other powers that you receive over time that help you move around such as wall jumping/running and air “dashing” and gliding quickly makes using actual vehicles seem pointless, even more pointless by the fact that to upgrade these powers you need to collect data clusters which are scattered throughout the city that you can spend as a currency for upgrading your current powers and when you acquire new ones through doing the story missions. Collecting these is heaps of fun and you jump and glide and dash across the city and even at the start where your power aren’t that good it’s much more practical and rewarding to jump and sprint across the landscape collecting data clusters to get better powers then driving a fast car there for the sake of efficiency which will be made redundant when you get better powers anyway. As you progress you unlock more powers such as the ability to throw energy blasts and objects around with telekinesis and one of my personal favourites is the ability to charge down to the ground from above superman style and create a huge shockwave.

Gliding through the air, probably my favorite thing to do in the game, you can see some data clusters on the top of those smokestacks.

A feature that has made a return from the previous game is your “hub” which now instead of it being your phone is now just a hub where you access things like the map, your ‘quests’, your normal and power upgrades menu, ability to phone homies etc and your money laundering account is now your ‘cache’ but works relatively the same way. Basically most of the hub menu features have returned including the upgrades menu where you can upgrade your health/stamina/weapons/homies etc and you can also increase your strength i.e. the power of your punches and how far you can throw people. The character creation is a bit less extravagant this time but you can still go pretty crazy I just tried out the randomizer a few times then managed to come up with a guy who I think looked exactly like my character from the previous game when I gave him the “clean cut” haircut he had before which was kind of weird though I don’t remember him having eyes that big, but meh there’s your usual array of modifiers so you can create your own crazy avatar. The simulation of the city of Steelport basically has basically the exact same layout and shops inc plastic surgery, tattoos, street and fetish clothes etc  as before though the Saints hideouts have been removed and the “Planet Saints” shops have been changed to “Planet Zin” though you can still get all the regular saints gear from there. I was going to go my usual jeans, skate shoes, trilby and purple dressing gown but decided to go with a jacket, shirt and tie this time being the president and all and it worked quite well, I didn’t really experiment much with clothes after that I just go with what works really.

Lookin cool with my "Lazor Razor"

Even with having all these awesome powers I was still interested in seeing what was to offer with the weapons as I’d heard of some of the Alien weapons inc the Abducto-matic and the Inflato-Ray. You do use the Alien weapons throughout the story mode and they are ok I spose, there is an alien version of each type of weapon but I decided I’d go with regular weapons since I’m a human fighting aliens though because most of these weapons were from the previous game though I went with the police versions of each rather than the gangster versions I had used before. There are 7 categories of weapons inc Melee, Pistols, SMG’s, Shotguns, Rifles, Explosives and Special, each category has different sub classes i.e. semi automatic and pump-action shotguns and each sub-category has various models of itself for example a water pistol model for a rifle. This makes quite a large selection of weapons available not to mention the new special weapons which aside from the usual flamethrowers and grenade launchers there is the addition of the Lasergun and Minethrower arms used by Alien enemies. Though my most favourite  weapon would no doubt be the infamous Dubstep Gun as not only does the gun fire “wub” blasts to the beat of the song it plays, these blasts can also be upgraded to explode creating massive damage, this gun uses no ammo but requires a charge to fire and pedestrians dance to the music when firing, seriously what could be better?

The Dubstep gun in action demonstrated by GamingMistress

I was also thinking whether I would use the car shop again and I did right at the start to create my little smartcar that I loved so much from the previous game in the Saints Row style but realised almost immediately after that that I shouldn’t have wasted so much money as I wasn’t going to need a car at all, and even if I did need a car you get that many vehicles to use in your garage (inc flying vehicles) for free from doing the story missions so that using the save-a-car system is a novelty thing at best. Also now when you dial-a-car from your hub it just warps you straight into it so there’s another thing about vehicles that has been automated. Apart from the new alien vehicles (and some new city vehicles) everything is pretty much the same as before and as you do various missions you unlock new Alien and novelty vehicles mostly from the previous game which have little or no significance for this one. I can honestly say that the vehicles are really in this just for looks, for you at least.

I'll say it, these things are really OP

The gameplay works in a very similar manner to the previous game, in the simulation you have “entry/exit points” rather than hideouts that let you go to and from the Zin ship you have stolen. The activities are different this time around with the exception of Tank Destruction and Fraud which has become much easier now with the ability to launch yourself high in the air, the activities mostly revolve around using your superpowers which include super sprinting across a mapped course and a simulated racetrack dodging barriers Battletoads style, jumping and running up tower platforms, using your telekinesis to hurl objects in a new Professor Genki game as well as the Genki superpower showdown which is like some sort of super power WWE style wrestling match. As I mentioned before there are lots of data clusters for upgrading your powers scattered around the world and sometimes you need to use powers like telekinesis and super stomp in order to get at them, there is also statues of Zinyak to destroy and various audio logs which contain quotes from the characters.

Professor Genki's M.O.M, where you must pick up and throw the correct objects which is either humans, cars or Genki heads into the correct spinning hoops.

The sound and music in Saints Row is excellently over-the-top, the pulsating beats and pounding dubstep soundtrack to the game menu mixes well with the classical music remixes and I was more than often physically dancing to some of them, especially this one. The game includes a small range of radio stations with fully licensed songs, some of which are used to great effect in story missions especially Haddaway’s What is Love during a scene when you’re flying the ship. As I mentioned before because it’s almost unnecessary to drive vehicles Volition decided that because you spent the majority of your time in the simulation they have made it so you can listen to the radio while on foot, and this actually creates some great moments where you’re shooting up enemies to  Blur’s ‘Song 2’ or flying a helicopter to ‘Flight of the Valkyries’. Probably my most favourite station is the Klassik 102.4 which is interestingly hosted by Zinyak himself, this station has lots of great classics my favourite being Jacques Offenbach’s, Orpheus in the Underworld: Infernal Gallop which creates a hilarious soundtrack when doing anything really. The voice acting in Saints Row is great, I liked the first male voice and I love making a character that fits it so well, there’s some interesting celebrities in some of the cameo roles.

What is love! baby don't hurt me....

There have been many games that have stirred controversy over the years and the Saints Row series is today’s prime example. The game was refused classification in Australia due to the Rectifier Probe weapon (which was removed from the game) and the “Girls night out” mission where Shaundi and the player consume alien drugs and receive superpowers, this though was still in the game, the one I played at least. Though this was minor in my view, though the game has a large focus on sex and sleaze and there is plenty of scantily clad women around though there is no actual on screen sex, you can have sex with any of your ‘crew members’ aboard the ship (this is amusingly referred to as "romancing your crew member") and this is obviously off screen. A few times throughout the game I noticed that they would have been a bit more enjoyable playing as a female character and after I had finished the game I did start out with one just to quickly see the differences, it’s an invigorating way to play the game if anything though it’s a real change to the way I usually play.

The banned rectifier probe (pictured with another classy looking melee weapon), I don't have a screenshot of how it works but you get the idea. I don't know about you but I prefer the lazer samurai sword.

I enjoyed my pants off (not literally) of Saints Row IV there was just something so exhilarating and free of bounding, gliding and zooming over the landscape, the story is heaps on fun to play and each mission no matter what type of thing it is parodying there’s always that sense of Saints Row wit and flair. The game does have a bit of the GTA syndrome that when you do finish the story mode there’s little to do (challenges) etc though you can re-do almost any mission you like (to an extent). This series represents some of the best things gaming has to offer, chaos, freedom and fun and that’s what it’s all about.

JD

Free as a flying squirrel.