Minecraft Creations: Lanslide and Respawn Comp Roundup, Mesa Mario Kart, "Apple" Trees and Golden statues

I’ve done a few builds for Minecraft comps at lans over the past few months so I thought I’d sum them up in the one strip starting with the ones from Lanslide.

Mesa Biome Minecraft Mario Kart track

This was quite an interesting theme for a Minecraft comp as what was announced was basically create a Mario Kart track in Minecraft, though it doesn’t have to be an existing track in the Mario universe you can create a new one and also it doesn’t have to be flat. So I immediately thought, “how would we do hills and grades?” but of course I if remember the only Mario Kart I really play anymore is the SNES version and every track is completely flat so what the hell I’ll just use stairs. Funnily enough my though after that was “how would we do corners?” but I suppose I just had to deal with it and started thinking.

Basically I thought everyone else would do a Mario Kart track so I decide to pick a biome and do a track designed to the style of that particular biome. Finding one of the new Mesa Biomes I decided it’d be perfect with its flat topped mountains. I then had to work out what kind of materials the track was made out of, I missed around with various types of clay but then remembered that clay had no stairs equivalent so I went with smooth sandstone and sandstone stairs for the main body of the track with brown stained clay around the edges. I spose my intention was that you'd "run" through this track not drive a car as it's more suited to Minecraft and gives the hazards more meaning.

First shot of finished track

I didn’t really have a track layout or design in mind I just decided to build as I went (as I usually do with my Minecraft creations), I decided to make all the turns right-angled and zig-zaging with the blocks would be too time consuming and as it was becoming night I decided to light up the track with lightstone light poles. So I set the starting line on a relatively empty strip on one of the mesas then continued creating a rather elevated track for the first zigzag and left turn across the divide and onto the next mesa.

Zig-zagy!

As there was a lava pit on the next mesa I decided to run a bridge right over it and remove some blocks for a pit hazard which worked well. I contined on with a sort of elevated skybridge style until I though instead of just going above the canyon divide I’ll create some sort of underground section, and yes that meant that I needed to run the track downward and TNT a hole through the canyon wall and up through to the top of the mesa, was a bit messy but I cleaned it up and even put some lava raining down to act as another hazard.

Running smack into a lava flow, yeeeowch

The track then went through tunnel then up through to the top of the Mesa where it zig-zagged through the trees.

Oddly this was one of my favorite sections of the track, I must just like skimming through trees.

I then had to make one hell of a drop down the edge of the mesa to the red sand below. I decided to make this part of the track offroad, not that it made any difference when running of course, then wheeled it round the side of the mesa back towards the start of the track.

That's quite a drop

At that point it was suggested to me that I should make an alternate route. So at the first corner down to the sand I cut a tunnel through the opposite direction which went under the mesa and back out the south side just after the sand, had to add some lighting to the tunnel obviously.

From then on the track got a bit zigzaggy as I went round the mesa and down onto the beach for a small water hazard then right up to the start line again via this giant staircase.

Well it was a pretty good effort but unfortunately The team of people that partially created Royal Raceway ended up taking first prize with me in second, and yes the team of people, I don’t know how I was supposed to compete a team of 5 people but anyway, was a job well done and I didn’t need that new mouse.

Shot of finished track

Nightmode! and may I point out that unlike the winning team my track was usable during the night.

The Lanslide Apple tree and Logo

The category for this months comp was “Apple” and not specifically the Macintosh Apple that we know, just Apple in general so after thinking for a while I thought, what am I good at? trees, so I decided to make an Apple tree. I was determined this time to make a proper tree not a boxy thing with other trees stacked onto it like I did before, I contracted the trunk like a usual square Minecraft trunk but then added some other logs around it so it wasn’t a square mass, I also added some slight kinks to the trunk so it looked a bit more realistic to the photos of apple trees I had searched for online (yes I actually used photos for reference)

For the branches I found the best way of doing this was just flying backwards and holding down the right mouse button to place block creating a sort of jagged line and I dipped a bit to create a slight curve when making the branch. I used dark oak wood for the trunk and branches for a difference and had to do a bit of adding and pruning of the logs to look correct, also used Dark oak leaves in keeping with the dark oak theme, they ended up looking pretty good even though I just “sprayed” them on really by moving around and holding down right mouse.

Once I thought I’d made enough branches it was then time for the apples which was a bit of a dilemma. I first tried just throwing actual apples all over the tree, but they were too small to see and ended up disappearing anyway, so then I tried using red stained clay but that didn’t look any good either. So after some advice from others I decided to use redstone blocks as they were the most red thing I could use, I also tried creating apples out of pixel art but they ended up being too big. So I just made these square things that I could pass off as apples. Once I’d finished the tree I looked at it and though it needed something more, plus I hadn’t put the Lanslide name in there at all so I had to come up with something else. The only other thing about apple I could come up with was the Apple logo, specifically the 1980’s Apple Logo, so I reproduced it as best I could in the game along with the correct colours, and put the Lanslide  title around it matching the colours. Logo took a damn while to get right I can tell you.

Once the judging began the only other entrant was this guy who had made a man holding an apple, which was pretty good and when Nuke announced the entrants he didn’t even mention my tree just the logo above lol. In the end I took out the first prize and won a mousepad, oh joyous day, hah!

The Respawn “Fantasy” Trophy(s)

Before I start here I must mention that this was my first time at Respawn lan and it was pretty cool, biggest lan I’ve ever been to with over 400 people. I was even setting next to some guys who were fans of Minecraft.

ZOMG so many people!

The theme was quite interesting, and hard Your Respawn Fantasy. Man I was stumped for awhile before I though well I’d really like to win the Minecraft comp and I’d really like a big trophy for it, so I decided to make my own Respawn Minecraft Comp trophy. My first attempt was pretty weak but I got the design all right, a raised box down the bottom a stem and then a golden man with a pick and torch up the top. I added a plaque containing the winners name and details too.

Admins made a railroad through the super flat world

 I soon realised that to win this thing I was gone need something better than this. So with taking the advice of someone else I made it bigger MUCH bigger. When I’d finished the new version it stood almost 2 and a half times as tall and much bigger with the golden man on top reminiscent of my earlier statue of myself. 

Tah-dah! I named the smaller one the 2nd place trophy

Goddamn did they take awhile to get to the results of the competition, I was waiting around well after 12:30 waiting. Ended up taking out 2^nd place and a new mouse for my efforts, the kids from another clan next to me ended up taking out first with their Respawn fantasy “garden” which looked pretty cool I guess I didn’t need a new set of headphones anyway, I also didn’t need a new mouse and gave it to my brother lol.

All in all was a good event and glad I went for the first time.

Ahh a beautiful flatworld sunset

The Past and Times of Yore: Grand Theft Auto San Andreas, The Original Gangsta of all Trades

Release date: 29/8/2004 (PS2)
Genre: Action-Adventure
Publisher: Rockstar Games
Developer: Rockstar North
Platforms: PS2/XBOX 360/PC
Players: 1-2
Online Classification: M (ESRB)

Well well, I can’t really believe I haven’t done a review of this gem, and what a gem, it’s like a giant ruby, like the giant rubies I used to collect on the Forbidden Bridge, actually I’m not thinking straight as looking back now it’s like an old car that was amazing and cool for its time but now looks as unfashionable as baggy pants these days but you still drive it even if people ridicule you for it or in my case still wear the damn pants cause I CAN. Well actually I wasn’t wearing pants when I was playing, and before you all reel back in disgust it’s because I was wearing shorts, yes that’s correct. The reason being was during a particularly warm period in Melbourne’s summer where it was constantly over 40 degrees and I had moved in to my new apartment not so long ago which only had air conditioning in the main room (only fans in the bedroom) so playing on my computer would have been unhealthy for both me and it (goddamn I came home some days and it was 33 degrees in my room alone) When I moved I took the Playstation 1 and 2 consoles that my brother and I had both bought but not the PS3 as my brother played that much more than me, so I only had those to choose from.

Oh yeh, that's how we rolled back then.

 So for my hot weather couch gaming sessions I obviously needed to choose a console and a game, I chose the PS2 as I tried some PS1 games inc Tenchu 2 and Spyro the Dragon but they looked so awful on new TV’s I couldn’t do it. I actually have a Playstation 1 Emulator which I use to play the games as the anti aliasing you can get on them makes them look much better, unfortunately as the Playstation 2’s “Emotion Engine” is quite difficult to emulate PS2 emulator’s don’t work so well, one seemed to work when I tried it though they still look ok on newer TV’s. I needed a game which was long enough to last the period but also be fun in an nostalgic way. So I chose San Andreas as since I’m currently waiting for GTA5 to come out on PC, I needed a GTA fix again, and it would be good to reminisce.

The infamous Grove st cul-de-sac

So back on topic Grand Theft Auto San Andreas was quite a milestone in the GTA history, probably not so much as GTA3 which when it arrived on Playstation 2 in all its 3^rd person 3D glory, but saying that San Andreas was by far the biggest GTA for its time. After the success of GTA3 and then Vice City things just seemed to get better, and bigger, and when the next instalment was announced my brother and I hungrily anticipated what would come next reading over all the details and previews of the game. And when it finally came out it caused nothing less of a stir achieving the best-selling video game of 2004 and selling over 27 million copies as of 2011; it remains the best-selling PlayStation 2 game of all time. San Andreas is based primarily around the fictional state of San Andreas (which is actually an earthquake fault line in California) The “state” of San Andreas consists of three metropolitan cities: Los Santos, based on Los Angeles, San Fierro, based on San Francisco; and Las Venturas, based on Las Vegas. 

A fill landscape map of San Andreas, as you can see it's quite large.

 When you boot up the game and hear that excellent soundtrack you know that you are immediately going to be immersed in 90’s gang culture argued by some as to where it was at its peak in the early 90’s and undeniably in LA was where the action was especially with black culture. A few previous GTA games namely Vice City set in the Miami in the Mid 80’s and the older expansion for GTA1 London 1969 were based around parts of the world which had some historical significance around them at the time and San Andreas was no different. I always knew that GTA comes come with a huge amount of references and easter eggs through the game from movies and TV but I had no idea that it had this had so much reference to real-life events such as the rivalry between the Bloods and Crips street gangs, the crack epidemic, the Rampart scandal, and the 1992 Los Angeles riots. The different areas are also packed with movie referenced gameplay from Boyz in the Hood to casino Heist films such as Ocean’s Eleven but it could be anything really, in this game you do so much it’s hard to keep up with the story and remember you’re just a two-bit gangsta from the “hood”.

Your sworn enemy the Ballas gang, possibly akin to "The Bloods" of real-life LA

The story this time begins with Carl Johnson (CJ) who is the main protagonist of the game. Carl is a twenty-something black male who is returning to Los Santos to attend the funeral of his mother who has been killed, the opening scenes show him at the airport then being removed from his Taxi by the C.R.A.S.H Officers, Frank Tenpenny, Eddie Pulaski and Jimmy Hernandez who take his money and bag and dump him in enemy gang territory. This is the classic down-on-your-luck-slow-to-get-started kind of opening I like, you start off with nothing and you have to work yourself by starting off slow and everything is easy and simple to start with, too many games these days want you to “hit the ground running” I hated this statement in job descriptions and I hate it when applied to games. It’s happened in a few of the games I’ve played namely Battlefield 3 and most of the Need for Speed series they sort of just throw you into the action where you got this high end car or weapon and most of the time you have to win, it’s supposed to be a sort of “taste of what’s yet to come” and some people like this but frankly I don’t.

Ahh the classic beginning for an RPG, you start with nothing, no money, no weapons, nothing.

 But anyway as with previous GTA games you play as Carl throughout the entire game. The story revolves around the main theme of Carl who is part of the Grove Street Families (GSF) Gang and the C.R.A.S.H officers who were involved with the murder of his mother, their liaison with the Ballas (GSF’s rival gang) and their apparent vendetta against CJ’s brother and Grove Street Families Gang Leader Sean "Sweet" Johnson. The first part of the story plays out in Los Santos and shows how CJ decides to stay in the city and help his brother Sweet and their fellow OG’s Big Smoke and Ryder build their gang back up from the brink of destruction. A first it play out small time with you invading crack dens and shooting up gang members but then gets to some rather cinematic moments like car chases that could have been out of a blockbuster action film. Following the climatic ending to the Los Santos story you get booted out into a hick town in the country which is quite a difference from the cityscapes that you spent almost all your time in the previous GTA games. That’s right San Andreas had a quite large stretch of country woodland (and rocky desert on the Las Venturas part of the map) which was amazing to see in a GTA game, there’s quite literally a dense forest on the map and boy is it fun to hoon around in on a quad bike or buggy. I’m not going to describe in detail the whole storyline but basically CJ starts off in Los Santos then gets exiled to the (presumably LA) countryside then heads to San Fierro where he acquires a garage, then on to the rocky desert where he obtains an airstrip and infiltrates Area 52, he then goes on to Las Venturas where he helps set up a Casino and also helps do a heist on one. He then trots on back to Los Santos to finish things off with some high stakes shenanigans and a showdown with the main villain.

CJ with Smoke, Sweet and Ryder

 So as you’re probably thinking wow you go through 3 cities in the one GTA game this must be huuuuuge, and it is, it may not have been huge to early MMO’s but for an action RPG it was gigantic and you have so many extra real-life activities as well as the story. My brother mentioned at one point back then that his favourite part was in Los Santos at the start as when you get to the country and start robbing country town banks, doing high speed chases on quad bikes and using a flamethrower to destroy evidence of a weed plantation before the cops come it gets pretty silly not to mention what you do in the desert which is even more ridiculous and harder still to identify a young black male from downtown LA to be doing these things.

Now really this is getting kinda silly

But I suppose that doesn’t need to matter cause these things are fun and I had a heap of fun doing them. Controlling CJ hasn’t changed much from previous GTA games, you move around and run and jump using the same buttons as before. The lock on reticle that you used to aim and fire now has various colours to show the health of the enemy, going fright bright green down to red then black for dead. There is however some more advanced combat techniques that you get shown at the start such ducking and rolling to avoid fire and shooting a cars gas tank to blow it up, you can also now move while crouching which is used in a  few missions which require stealth as well as stealth kills with the knife.

The game now includes new lock-on and crouching mechanics

CJ can also climb and swim, bringing some much needed athletics to the GTA characters as it was kind of silly before where you could only do a small jump to get over things, Rockstar themselves said  “We added swimming because we got tired of people saying “why can’t you swim in the game?”” and goddamn rightly so if you ask me.  I mean seriously was that the only reason? It was kind of stupid how you couldn’t swim in the first previous games anyway though I think the real reason was that the water was there to act as a barrier to the other islands while the bridges were either broken or blocked off but in San Andreas you can swim or even take a boat to the other cities regardless of whether you have progressed there or not. They did put in feature though that if you did manage to get to another landmass before you were meant to be there you automatically gained a 5 star wanted level and that of course meant that armoured SUV’s full of FIB (no I didn’t spell that wrong) agents armed with MP5s pull up and shoot you to pieces, I would have thought this would be unnecessary but apparently Rockstar really want people to play the story mode through.

Swimming, underwater too (though there's not much to see) a much needed addition to the series

In addition to climbing and swimming there’s now various stats including Respect, Stamina, Muscle, Fat and Sex Appeal. Stamina is gained over time by running and walking while Fat and Muscle are both raised and lowered by eating and going to the gym respectively, for example if you eat too much you get fat obviously and the more you go to the gym the more muscle you get. The gym has various activities including dumbbells and deadlift for gaining muscle and exercise bike and treadmill for losing fat though fat can also be lost by not eating of course and just simply running around, you can also learn new fighting moves at the various gyms around the city. Respect can be gained permanently by completing missions or temporarily wearing certain clothes while sex appeal can be raised by wearing certain clothes and bulking up.

Yes, he does lift

The customization in the game is greater than ever before, most of the beginning missions teach that the player that they can change CJ’s hair, clothes and tattoos in various shops around the game world. To be perfectly honest though these mechanics were more annoying then useful, my brother and I got a bit annoyed with the constant nagging of the game that “you are getting hungry and need to eat” (or your muscle bar will go down) got pretty annoying especially when you weren’t doing the story mode just mucking around and we were glad that they were removed in GTA 4. Another thing I found quite a waste of time was the Girlfriends mechanic as when I tried dating girls it became more tedious each time, dancing to those annoying rhythm based minigames, going out to restaurants and of course you never saw the sex, well at least you weren’t supposed to. Goddamn it’s seems scarily akin to real life.

Don't do it CJ!

It’s amazing how large this game is, as it includes a hundred things that you can do but forget about inc Pool (8-ball), Arcade games, Basketball and even small things like being able to get cans and snacks from vending machines to replenish your hunger. Once Las Venturas is unlocked the player can also gamble in the casinos as well as gambling on Pool and other things. There are the usual missions from previous games including Vigilante, Paramedic, Taxi and Fire truck missions, you can also go to strip clubs or enjoy service of prostitutes.

Pool is cool, though hard, lost a bit of money to this.

While I won’t go into details some new extra features include:

Pushbikes: There are a variety of bicycles introduced (as wekk as a bike skill) for the first time to a GTA game, these include mountain, BMX and chopper style bikes

Mod Garages:  Los Santos has a Lowrider shop which allows you to customize lowrider cars, San Fierro has a shop called “Transfender” (lol) which is a haven for street racing which is a big feature in the storyline in and leading up to San Fierro and there is at least one auto shop in each city which caters for modifications including NoS and body mods depending on which kind of car you have.

Burglary: Introduced in the storyline and only available at night via accessing a certain black van in each city, you drive around and silently infiltrate houses to steal things like TV’s and Microwaves with a risk to alerting the police.

Import Export: Obtain various vehicles from a  list on the board near a freight ship and load them on with a crane for moneys.

Trucking Missions: Drive a truck and either get to a destination fast, carefully, or avoiding the cops depending on the cargo.

Train Missions: Unlocked in Las Venturas (though you can driver a train anytime) commandeer a train across the whole map again and again for cash, much exciting!

2 Player Co-op: The PS2 and Xbox versions feature a co-op mode, which allowed 2 players to either 'free roam' or go on a 'rampage'. This is limited in a way as both players have to be on screen at the same time but still created some hilarious scenes from my tiem playing with friends, it was quite annoying however that two player could only travel in a vehicle with two doors and two visible seats so you couldn’t both travel in vehicles like buses and passenger planes which was kind of stupid.

Bikes: Another welcome addition to the GTA series

 There are various boards with race meets similar to Vice city which involve all kinds of terrain and vehicles including offroad buggy races and time trials in planes and boats, winning these races is made easier depending on your skill with various vehicles (Bike, Boat, Driving and Flight) and there are 4 schools which have various lessons/challenges to complete and depending on whether you get Bronze, Silver or Gold for all of them gets you up to 3 vehicles spawning outside the school. All I can say is getting all gold is freakin hard especially in the driving school. There is also various events on at the stadiums around the world, from destruction derbys to motorbike "trial" style events.

Wooo Barnstorming!

San Andreas has the biggest list of Weaponry so far, with various types of each slot of weapon, a new feature is weapon skill which when shooting accurately with certain weapons allows you to gain skill with them eventually allowing you to move while aiming, and your lock-on range, accuracy, rate of fire, and strafe speed increase and eventually move while firing. The shooting gallery missions in the Ammunition stores also make a return allowing you to hone your skills there.

And you’re going to be needing skill with weapons as you’re going to be doing a shitload of shooting , most of east Los Santos and some other parts of the map are “gang territory” indicated by coloured overlays in certain areas. CJ’s “Grove Street Families” gang is green and around the area you can see your homies which when enough respect is gained, you can recruit to roll with you. When travelling around enemy gang territory they will obviously be hostile towards you and your homies will be towards them, it’s kinda fun to see them hanging out of the car while shooting and having to move around depending on which way you turn, you do quite a lot of shooting either while driving or being a passenger making the tec-9 and Uzi type weapons important. Gang territory can be won and lost and this is a large part of playing in Los Santos just remember it comes back into play when you get back to the city so don’t try to take over all the damn territories at the start like I did lol.

Gangsta shot

If enemy gangs weren’t enough there is also the ever present 5-0, the Police, like in Vice city thankfully aren’t always out to get you and might occasionally attack enemy gang members depending on who shot first, though most of the time it’s you. The tiers are relatively the same as before with four, five and six stars bringing in SWAT, FBI and the Army respectively.

Cops on bikes! yeeeow!

 Lastly the collectibles bracket includes more than ever before with most unique to each city:

Los Santos Gang Tags: CJ can spray over enemy gang tags with his own.

San Fierro Snapshots: Take photos of unique buildings/locations

Las Venturas Horseshoes: Nothing special here just collect for money.

Oysters: These are scattered underwater throughout the map which CJ has to swim to get to.

"Collectibles" are now kinda fun to do I especially like the spraying over gang tags and collecting oyesters

  Of all the good parts of San Andreas the graphics probably were the most lacklustre, I mean yes there were games that looked better but these graphics are slightly better than Vice City anyway and most people really didn’t care, I certainly didn’t. Most of the people I talked to at the time didn’t even mention the graphics, but reading some of the reviews now at least some people were disappointed. San Andreas at times can look really bad, like intermediate Tafe 3D animation bad and parts of the game can appear very murky, this is often felt at certain times of the day, I noticed that the explosions looked much better at day rather than night as at night there was this sort of neon-effect which gave the fire and explosions this green and blue tinge. You could really sense the hours changing as the game featured very orange sunsets and sunrises and for some reason there seemed to be this glitch that vehicles appeared very dark although it was sunny outside.

A bright day in eastern Los Santos, the cars look ok in this instance.

The world overall most of the time appeared quite bland of course you could argue that’s what it’s supposed to be like as based in gritty gangster neighbourhood LA but technically this doesn’t apply to the rest of Los Santos or San Fierro or Las Venturas for that matter, but hey let’s face it, the PS2 graphics although not spectacular were still better then the blocky polygonal people from the PS1 days and hey it looked and felt heaps better then GTA3. There are still some great scenes in the game, the desert and woodland country looks great and so does the raised flora including tall grass and wheat, the cities and towns although somewhat lacklustre are appropriate, with the right people in the right places, people around the gang territories predominately black or hispanic, people in the country are hillbillies and people in Las Venturas are extravagant, exotic and also Elvis, lots of Elvis.

Landscapes like this were unheard of in previous GTA games

A few people have said that the cars don’t look to detailed enough though I don’t know why, the interiors look more detailed than ever and you don’t even have an in-car view. The annoying Blur effect is still there however and you didn’t get a reprieve of this until GTAIV and I don’t even know whether the console version had the option to turn it off. For the most part the graphics are fine, it’s very hard to judge by today’s standards which are obviously much better than this. Just playing GTA4 I was amazed at the ragdoll physics and level of details that had come about but of course that’s what GTAIV was about, gritty realism, you didn’t go parachuting our of planes in that one oh no, and you can forgive them for giving up some graphical quality for a huge amount of game play in an immense world.

The cars looked fine to me, FOOM!

 The Radio and Music in general are spot on I reckon, it’s got that awesome smooth hip hop intro and all of the music in the sequences and film clips are great too, I especially like how there’s a sort of ‘theme’ for when the CRASH cops come into the screen. The Radio has a good selection of music, there the two appropriate rap channels which play modern and classic rap and hiphop respectively which are a given when you’re riding around the Los Santos Hood  and you also have a host of others inc modern and classic rock stations, party music stations and an excellent country music station that really gets you into the spirit when out in the er country (and desert). There is some excellent voice acting in the game mainly because Rockstar have managed to pull together quite a cast featuring Samuel L Jackson as Officer Tenpenny, Chris Penn as Officer Pulaski and James Woods as Mike Torreno who make some rather convincing villains (or semi-villians). Other voice and Radio DJ personalities include Chuck D, George Clinton, Ice-T, Wil Wheaton, Axl Rose and last but not least: Andy Dick.

From left to right: Samuel L Jackson, Armando Riesco and Chris Penn

 The sound effects are ok, everything is at it should most of the time, though some of the gun sounds are kind of muted and weird like they’re really low quality, but I spose everyone does their gun sounds differently and these sounds just don’t seem right or sound good for that matter and when sound effects don’t sound good that’s a problem. This is made kind of worse by other sound effects which are either not quite right or annoying being played over and over again in certain areas like the odd grinding sound of the minigun and the aircraft jets which make your ears hurt after a while. But apart from this most of the sound effects are ok, there’s some great sounding car engines and some very satisfying crash sounds, especially when you run over people.

Brakka brakka brakka! ironically t tried searching for a movie of the original San Andreas gun sounds but all I could find was videos for mods that chnage them to make them sound more 'realistic' who'd have though?

Summing up, If you haven’t played GTA San Andreas then I highly recommend you do, it can be purchased as a classic game on most stores inc Playstation Network, Xbox Marketplace and Steam store, it remains as one of the most expansive of the GTA games which may actually be overtaken by GTA 5 which I am yet to review I might add as I am waiting for a PC version to be released possibly next month but who knows. San Andreas was the biggest and most feature-rich of all of the GTA games by far when it came out, words can’t really explain how massive it is though looking at the maps for both GTA3 and Vice City I still really can’t see how people can say that one of the cities in San Andreas is as big as Vice City or the Liberty City from GTA3. One of the best things about this game is that you an go absolutely crazy, tear down the highway in a  truck, shoot up a store, hijack a train, steal a  fighter jet then jump out midair, the possibilities are plentiful.  The game is most rewarding to the player who doesn’t rush through the story but takes the time to look around and see what the game has to offer with its hundreds of other features, the replay value is huge and if you can be bothered striving to do everything you will be playing for weeks, even months.

Joyriding in a fighter jet, yep carjacking is for pussies.

 If there was a top ten list for greatest PS2 games Grand Theft Auto San Andreas would definitely be on it. It’s probably in my own top 5 as it’s one of the few PS2 and PS1 games I can go back and play without getting bored and the magic being lost forever, though I will state that as with most GTA games once you’ve finished the main story.  Even if you have already played GTA5 and haven’t played this you still should go back and see what things used to be like where you didn’t have 3 men, you had one, the original gangster of all trades.

JD

Crazy.... Crazy for feeling so lonely

My Usual Spiel: Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm, yet another revenge story

Release date: 12/3/13 
Genre: Real-Time Strategy (RTS)
Publisher: Blizzard Entertainment
Developer: Blizzard Entertainment
Platforms: PC/Mac
Players: 1 to 8 
Online Classification: M (ESRB)

Awhile ago having played Wings of Liberty I thought to myself “well there’s no denying it, I gotta see how this story goes” so I shelled out 40 dollarz for Heart of the Swarm. I do feel a bit silly buying a game just to do the storyline though it is only an expansion and who knows I might play multiplayer again at a LAN or something at some point which I have actually, once. It’s kind of going to be a bit lopsided review as I only really purchased the game to play the singleplayer though I ‘m no stranger to the multiplayer and will give a brief rundown of new content and units available. I don’t really know what happened to my liking of Real Time Strategy (RTS) games, I say to myself it’s just all the micromanagement which is what others don’t like, though I used to play RTS like Warcraft and Total Annihilation all the time though technically I did cheat a lot, hey sometimes it made the game more enjoyable!

Anyway so I’ll try not to spoil any of the story but basically the story revolves around the now less-infested Sarah Kerrigan and her revival of the swarm. I started playing and enjoyed the starting missions as I always do because their very easy and simple, I especially liked the way  Kerrigan was now with Jim Raynor and Prince Valerian and the Terrans who have the Zerg in testing labs and request Kerrigan to command them. I was really enjoying this and wanting Kerrigan to get back with Jim but then they get attacked by Arcturus Mengsk’s forces then they get split up and Kerrigan’s has nothing to do but go after Mengsk and make the swarm hers again. So what ensues is lots of going to planets and finding her old swarm and convincing brood mothers to join her again and being contacted by the mysterious Dark Templar Zeratul just as Jim did then finding out origins of the Zerg while eventually confronting Mengsk himself.

Raynor and Kerrigan, their rekindled romance is unfortunately short lived.

Throughout the journey it was fun to see Kerrigan reunite with her old Zerg friends such as Izsha, Abathur and the Brood mothers as you’ve never really seen much Zerg interaction apart from the Overmind and the Cerebrates in the first game, I was kind of sad with the way things went I would have really liked to see how the Terrans got along with the Zerg, which they sort of did or really how the actual intelligent zerg like Izsha and Zagara handled the fact that Kerrigan’s missions was not the destruction of anything not Zerg.

Izsha is a one-of-a-kind Zerg similar to Abathur and acts as an Advisor to Kerrigan

Playing through the campaign was fairly similar to Wings of Liberty apart from the narrative, there was your mix of missions with no base and missions with a base and also missions where you started with no base and then came upon a base, there was the usual bonus objectives which make missions mission more interesting and also gave you more essence to fuel Kerrigan’s abilities and the Evolution pit missions, I found the different levels a very good mix up and much different to the usual “build base and army, then go attack” formula. As this time you were switching to single small unit/army style while playing normally and also the way Blizzard implemented controlling/defending more than one army was very well done I think they were actually aiming to minimize micromanagement as much as they could which was great.

One of the biggest changes was being in control of Kerrigan and several other ‘units’ almost all of the time, and as how Kerrigan starts of pretty damn powerful already and you can level her abilities up after that making her almost unstoppable (at least on the normal difficulty) and a very big help on harder difficulties. It reminded me of the missions of Wings of Liberty where you play as Jim Raynor himself and saw his reactions and character development through those missions except you do this with Kerrigan on almost every mission/level making it truly her story.

Campaign Zergling rush!

I did like the evolution missions that you received from Abathur who plays a role similar to what Rory Swann did in Wings of Liberty, upgrading and evolving Zerg strains for better use in game though you now need to get essence from doing bonus objectives in the regular missions. These evolution mission are quite fun as their role is to show you what strains you have available to upgrade to for a particulate unit. This involves you landing on two different planets and assimilating a select species of local wildlife to obtain their genetic strain. So for example with the Zergling strain you have two options the Swarmling strain which allows the Zerglings to spawn faster and 3 to come out of a single egg, and the Raptor strain which gives the zerglings wings that allow them to jump up and down cliffs, leap over obstacles and onto targets from range, and gains +2 damage (40% increase). The missions themselves are fun little skirmishes of you acquiring the DNA and the game showing you how they work in a controlled environment, I have to say I enjoyed them kind of more than the normal storyline cause you know me I like to keep things simple.

Baneling Hunter Evolution mission on Scoria

As well as the evolution missions, Kerrigan herself now has her own abilities which range from activated abilities such as Kinetic blast and spawning various creatures to passive abilities such as vespene harvesters not requiring drones to harvest and zerglings being brought back to life with no additional cost to resources, this was slightly different to Wings of Liberty as the upgrades now revolve around Kerrigan as the upgrades Egon Stetmann did were either from Protoss or Zerg research.

I must admit being only able to choose one of these abilities was a damn hard decision (I chose Improved Overlords)

Tier 3—Level 10

• Zergling Reconstitution: Killed zerglings respawn from your primary hatchery at no cost. Respawns up to 10 zerglings every 30 seconds until all zerglings have returned to life. Passive ability.

• Improved Overlords: Overlords morph instantly and provide 50% more supply. Passive ability.

• Automated Extractors: Extractors automatically extract vespene gas without drones. Passive ability.

Kerrigan upgrade screen, she gets damn powere up towards the end.

Graphics and sound are great as usual, As with most PC games, the better your computer, the better the details are going to be. True to Blizzard, the game has some of the most amazing cinematics I have ever seen and I love it when I get one to watch throughout the story, I also love how there the story and cutscenes in between the action in the game. The graphics are sharp and smooth, I did like the various locales inc the missions on the jungle world Zerus and the lava animation on Scoria with was used to great effect with the   the Baneling Hunter strain mission. I have found delight in the way almost everything seems to have some kind of animation to it such as crystals shining and even some trees in the map moving slightly in the wind. The Zerg buildings and units are especially disgusting all pulsating or wriggling or squirming or twitching. All in all, the sound is great and the music is fine too, with an RTS I find these things have little bearing but Blizzard have done them well and up to expectations.

Video of Zerus, it's amazing how you can see the trees and grass swaying.

Playing through the singleplayer this time wasn’t generally too hard, I usually play on normal mode the first time so I can get used to things. Gameplay wise on the singleplayer campaign things were basically the same though the obvious different being you were controlling the Zerg which needed a slightly different mindset to the Terrans with things like the spawning flag for worker drones and spawning flag for everything else. I began to find more features that I’d forgotten about from playing Supreme Commander like holding down shift to have a worker build multiple buildings though I don’t do it quite as much as I did in that game, I also found worth using the patrol command for certain warriors to protect the primary or secondary base when I away somewhere micromanaging oh and yes I finally saw the worth in leaving a group to protect the base while I went off to attack the main force.

Ah build queuing, gets me all nostalgic about Supreme  Commander

I haven’t really played multiplayer all that much though one of the main reasons I did purchase the game was to play it at Lan comps if I felt like it, there was this particular incident where we were having a comp an Lanslide (which is a great lan in south east Melbourne btw you should go to it) where some of us didn’t have the Heart of the Swarm expansion, so the event coordinator said we can all play Wings of Liberty but then some other (fairly high ranked mind you) players whinged that they “Wouldn’t have their builds” I mean come on, you’re going to whip our asses anyway why not give yourself a slight disadvantage you elitist ponks. So anyway after that I decided to get it but naturally haven’t played much multiplayer since though I did have a great game at another landslide where these two older guys wanted to play a match on the “normal” speed which is really quite slow compared to “fastest” where most multiplayer matches are played.

That match was quite unique in that I wasn’t able to come up with a partner so I decided to play with a computer ally (that’s really kind of sad now I think about it) but anyway I ended up losing as the computer player was set to easy but it didn’t matter cause the match wasn’t going to count anyway. The other thing was I loved the way that you could actually communicate with your AI partner i.e. there was a menu where you could tell them to attack and defend certain places and the character (in this case it was Kerrigan) actually spoke to you and said if she was able to comply with the request and also if she was being attacked etc.

Playing with my best buddy, the AI

There are some new units in the game with the Terran and Protoss new one’s I haven’t been able to play with extensively but hope to in the future, I especially like the look of the Tempest. Apart from that there isn’t too many things that have changed apart from new maps, I won’t go into details regarding the changes to battlenet etc though I do like the new sort of “multiplayer training mode” they have which is a welcome feature as their semi-truth of “The singleplayer is the training for the multiplayer” really is not the case, it may be for other games but not this one. The training mode is a sort of multiplayer tutorial showing you the basic of building a base in multiplayer then goes on to defending and attacking then advances tactics such as rushing and ‘turtling’. You can do these tutorials with whichever race you like and receive experience points for completing them, there is also unranked play for people who are too scared to play on a ladder.

The new very much needed training missions for multiplayer.

Overall although I thought the story was a bit meh it did play out very well and the changes made to the game like the changes made to the whole experience were for the better and almost made me forget about all the micromanagement though I must admit there wasn’t much of it, well any more than before anyway. Heart of the Swarm introduced some great features into the multiplayer in order to curb the gap between singleplayer and to train newcomers, as not knowing how to build is one of my biggest weaknesses. The trilogy’s going pretty well so far and I might say even though I’m still not interested in this kind of genre anymore it’s impossible to ignore with the gaming championships going on and competitions at lans. And of course I am indeed wanting to know what happens in the end just like everyone else.

8/10

What I like:

• Story mode plays out well missions give appropriately diverse gameplay
•  Kerrigan reuinited with Jim and then her old Zerg buddies
• Evolution missions are fun and evolution itself is good
• Addition of Multiplayer training mode is great
• Visuals are fantastic
• Playing with AI opponent is better then ever before.

What I don’t like:

• Story is epic but I'm kinda sick of the whole "large scale revenge" thing, can't everyone just be friends?
• Same old micromanagement RTS issues but that's just me.
• Units available in Singleplayer and Multiplayer are different.
• Like League of Legends, community is fairly unforgiving

JD

Heart of the Swarm Gameplay

What I wouldn't give for an all-zerg sex scene.