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.

Minecraft Adventures: Vancraft and the Sunken Temple of Solitude

In the fine month of Autumn I decided between the builds of my Brick mansion that I felt like some more survival classic PvP, and actually do PvP this time, so I trawled the Australian Servers under minecraft-mp.com and settled on one that looked pretty good called Vancraft named after it’s friendly owner Vandorann and it ticked all of the boxes including Bukkit, Factions, PvE, PvP and Survival. Pretty much as soon as I got there, there was a “Drop Party” going on, where the Admins would fly around the spawn room and drop various items while the players below would jump around trying to get them. I managed to score myself quite a haul getting 5 diamond blocks, a Steve head, 4 Iron blocks, lots of coal and iron and redstone, gold nuggets, wheat and various other goodies that allowed me to start off with a bang.

A shot of the Vancraft Spawn Area

The Spawning Chapel where they had the drop party

The Market

And with a bang I did, I walked around for a while exploring the area, there were quite a few things to see as there always is around these servers before finding a jungle biome and digging a small hole in a hill to forge some Diamond armor and a sword to have the best level of protection in the wilds.

Some kind of Mushroom-related house

I then decided to log in to the Teamspeak server and went to the Minecraft channel where Tim0776 came down and asked me how old I was, and in saying I was 28 moved me down to the Admins channel where I met Vandorann and Mstrdonut and they were all quite friendly. Tim0 even invited me to his faction and his odd looking base out in the ocean.

I find it interesting how much I am trusted when joining Minecraft servers once I tell them I’m over 21 I spose it’s just all the griefing, immature and distrustful younger generation that people were suspicious of. It’s happened quite a few times actually so the advice I give is if the server has some of kind Teamspeak/Ventrilo or any type of voice server get on and say hi, you’ll be amazed of how far that goes with trust once people hear you and  if that isn’t available then some random acts of kindness will go far too i.e. giving someone a gift of iron bars or even diamond if you can spare goes a long way too. I’ve learned over the time i’ve played on random factions servers that you need create a reputation of integrity for yourself in the community if you want to remain part of one.

I had came out of my Nether portal and found myself in someone's house once and found this odd setup, I cannot fathom why someone would use Anvils as a bedrest display. You literally looking at 186 iron bars there less the amount of coal that was used to smelt them as well.

  Anyway once I had my temporary hideout sorted I decided instead of a jungle retreat high up in the trees I wanted to build in a swamp and make a sort of sunken-temple-like structure in the middle of a swamp lake (much less picturesque I know) be but in order to do that I was going to need a swamp. So after trying the ‘random location’ command “/rl” a few times I found a few interesting things  and falling in a large hole and going splat and Van very nicely recovering my stuff. I'd made quite a few saved locations with Rei's Minimap it's quite useful when you use the marker options so you can see how far away everything is to you and that's useful when you want to get as far away from spawn as possible.

I called this "the blasted desert"

I did actually find a little swamp near a large lake with towering wooden walls above it, Van said some people had used to it raise there woodcutting skill which I found kind of odd as due to the Decapitator Bukkit mod the trees fall as soon as you cut part of the trunk but still this was much too close to spawn so I figured I was going to have to do some exploring. I went out to tame the horse that was sitting in the trees near my hole, I had bought a saddle with in game money that you recieve from voting for the server which I had done a few times and after a few tries of breaking it in I got the saddle on and was up fine.

Horsey come down!

So off I went on a grand journey across the world in search of a suitable place. This was the first time I’d ridden a horse and man are they fast and they can jump damn high too and I felt like a badass running monsters through on my high horse. After a while I did find a small swamp, fortunately though Tim0776 did some flying around and found me an even bigger swamp where I gratefully travelled to, to build my creation.

The Swamp, as taken from the edge as you can see the green from the forest biome is covering half of the tree. This also happens with the water as you can see from the edges of the swampland the water is murkier.

Now you might be thinking, “isn’t this a survival PvP server” why would you want to think about building a large structure when it might get destroyed, and unfortunately I really didn’t think that all I could focus on was creating a brand new funky creation that I always do. I don’t know what gets into me maybe I just don’t like PvP but I don’t know why I keep joining servers that have it, maybe for that extra element of danger I guess? So anyway, I picked the lake, made myself another hole and got building. One thing I found during my extended period in the swamps is that they were one of the hardest biomes to build things in, their dark in texture, there’s water everywhere and they seem to spawn the most amount of monsters out of any biome I’ve seen including Slimes which can see you wherever you are and their splotchy moving noise is hella annoying. I also found that I would have to deal with a Zombie horde every night, I even tried creating pits and traps to kill them all but unfortunately since their AI upgrade they don’t just walk blindly towards you and fall down the hole in between you and them anymore so you have to be a bit more creative and unfortunately I wasn’t.

The main resource room of my underground base

Over the course of building I had to add a few extra rooms to my underground base inc. a bedroom, a room for the, anvil, incinerator and nether portal and I also covered up my pit trap and started digging downwards to gather enough cobblestone to cook to smooth stone to then turn into stone brick. Basically not much happened after that, I just started building and kept building with amazingly no interference from any players, the main problem was the monsters that made life difficult but that’s what it’s like building on a survival PvP server.

The incinerator and Anvil room

The Nether portal, I had to create a gate around it as at one point I had a zombie pigman walking around.

 This was one of the more difficult builds that I’ve done as it required a lot of underwater work which was a major pain especially when you don’t have access to any kind of underwater breathing potion, as I forgot to go up for air quite a few times and ended up dying on occasion. Basically what I wanted to build was a temple that was half underwater so I started at the lowest point of the pool and built in a  supposed square around the bottom with stone brick and putting in glowstone on the rows every so often to be able to see what I was doing. And then basically I just kept building up and up and mining down and down heh. I voted for the server any time I could and used the money to purchase more stone brick.

Underwater building be a pain, also doesn't quite look very good with the stairs, hopefully they will fix that at some point.

When I’d almost finished the temple and was mining the last bits of stone I looked up and it was quite a damn long way up there, like I was some kind of miner looking around the huge cave of other miners, except it was just me but anyway. I built in a pyramid style right up to the waterline using stone bricks and steps though when I was directly on the waterline I noticed that the steps make that weird gap in the water so I had to leave that part without the stairs and then continued to the top which I filled in and made a roof across it with the glowstone in the middle of the poles supporting it.

That's a looooong way down.

The finished outer temple.

The next stage was to make a stairway down into the temple itself which didn’t take very long as there was only a few levels till I hit the sand island in the middle of the water inside the temple. Having become bored with building this creation I was just going to leave it as a quiet temple of solitude then Vandorann kindly helped me rid the water from inside the temple, so then me and another very helpful member of my faction whose name I unfortunately cannot remember started digging out the inside and removing the excess water left behind until we’d got down to the level that I started the temple.

Dredging out the lower temple.

 While we were doing this so many zombies and monsters appeared that we decided to wall off the entrance to the temple and add an iron door just to make things easier. I cleared out the floor and used the sand I had left over as a base for the downstairs level, I wanted sand down there as there’s something tranquil about cool sand in an underground place though I suppose it would be more suited to a beach or desert, there was also a section in the corner where I left a pool of the excess water which added to the tranquillity.

The door and some shots of the inside of the Temple

I didn’t do much else to the temple as I’d kinda had enough, I added a few torches and christened it “JDman’s sunken Temple of Solitude” and that was it really. I may re-create it in creative mode in the future thought. I’ve now shut off my home base to the world and will log in from time to time to see if anyone has found it since that Lockette has been removed but my Temple of Solitude will always be there.

Higher view of the temple.

The temple using Rei's Minimaps large surface map

So that’s that really, I’ve gone off to play some Star Wars the Old Republic and of course Battlefield, I’d just like to thank everyonething on Vancraft for an awesome time and hope to see you guys again.

JD

Probably my favorite shot of the Vancraft server, the lonely path to the red pyramid house, the texture pack really makes it quite picturesque.

 

Only the lonely

The Past and Times of Yore: Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's island, a sublime prequel

Release Date: 26/10/1995
Genre: 2D Platformer
Publisher: Nintendo

Developer: Nintendo EAD
Platform: Super Nintendo (SNES)
Players: 1 (2 Player Mini battles)
Classification: E (Everyone)

I have always been and always will be a fan of the original Nintendo and Super Nintendo consoles and games and as I discussed in the first ever Past and Times of Yore post the graphics just seem to be timeless as I would much prefer to see the crisp 2D image of Super Mario World rather the next-gen but pixelated 3D mess of some of the games on the PS1 inc Driver 2 which did look good at the time but have not aged well at all. There are some games I could play over and over again in the Super Mario Bros series on the Super Nintendo and the one I’m about to “review” is no exception. I say review in inverted commas as it’s not really a real review, you can’t review any Mario game this good and make it serious but here goes anyway.

Before Mario and Luigi’s romp over the Mushroom Kingdom in Super Mario Bros. 3 before the whole gang set off in the dreamland of Subcon before Mario and Luigi set out to save the Princess in Super Mario Bros and even before Mario (then known as “Jumpman”) defeated Donkey Kong to save, well the Princess the first time possibly.

Anyway before all of that there was.......

Yoshi

Yes indeed everyone loves a prequel and Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island was no exception. It does seem odd when you think about it, we first encountered Yoshi in Super Mario World where Mario and Luigi apparently meet him for the first time on Yoshi’s Island in Dinosaur Land though it seems they have met before, a long time before.

Mario on Yoshi in Super Mario World

In starting Yoshi’s Island (which is what I will refer to the game as) the opening cinematic is a joy to watch right from the start. With a tune that sounds like it’s playing from a child’s toy it tells the story of baby Mario and Luigi in a storybook style of moving pictures that seemed so damn advanced back then. They are being carried by a stork (in the classic tale spun by parents who were too embarrassed to tell their children where they really come from) when Kamek the evil Magikoopa foresees a great threat in the two brothers in the future of a Koopa Kingdom he does a fly-by on the stork but only manages to steal Luigi while Mario falls to the ground below and lands on Yoshi or more specifically green Yoshi as I guess we’ve known since Super Mario World that Yoshi is technically both a name for character and the species. Green Yoshi then takes Mario back to the other Yoshi’s and they find that Mario knows where to find Luigi by some kind of link between the twins and they all agree to carry baby Mario there by a relay system.

All the coloured Yoshi's in the opening cinematic.

The entire game takes place on Yoshi’s Island which was just the starting area of the previous game, the game opens with a clear view of the whole island which is now much bigger then before though technically the Super Mario World map was never to scale. I was kind of disappointed to see that the world maps was now completely linear where you did one level after the other (not that I had any problem with that) but I did enjoy the variety of the paths and getting the keys to the secret areas you could take on the main map of SMW (Super Mario World) but I guess it makes it simple enough also it . After the initial opening scene the game start with a “practice” level where you learn how to play the game and this does help quite a bit as there are some big changes here compared to previous Mario games.

Map of World 5: The Iceworld

When playing as whichever Yoshi you are you carry Mario on your back and you can run and jump on enemies as usual but this time it’s not your main attack. When Yoshi eats things he can either spit them out or swallow them to create an egg where you can have up to 6 bouncing along behind you, you use the eggs to aim and throw at almost anything with some things specifically requiring you to hit them with an egg to proceed. Yoshi can can perform a very useful “hover” to stay in the air a bit longer and you can also do a ground pound to pound different things inc enemies/poles etc. The controls are fairly easy to manage, I noticed their a bit easier now that you don’t need to hold the Y button to run, you just run all the time. If you get hit by an enemy Mario suddenly becomes encased in a bubble and floats around while a timer counts down and Yoshi has to quickly recover touch the bubble to break it before the timer runs out otherwise Kamek’s toadies come and carry baby Mario away. The amount of seconds on the timer can be added to by collecting Stars which are most often found by throwing an egg at a question mark cloud which burst and they spring all over the place unless your clever and collect them all as soon as they pop out. As well as the “timer” stars there are various other collectibles including Red Coins, and Flowers.

Quick Yoshi! get Mario back!, notice the flower there too.

This time around the “goal” is a spinning ring that you jump into and Mario flies through the air onto the next Yoshi in the relay, attaining five flowers in the level results in you being able to play a Bonus Challenge and your score is tallied at the end of the level depending on how many red coins, flowers and stars you collected. Apparently if you got 100% on every level in a world you got to play the bonus level of that world but unfortunately I just wasn’t good enough to get any of them. There are two different kinds of bonus challenges, the ones that are inside the levels themselves and the ones that are won when the flower circle lands on the correct spot, There is a house inside some levels which requires a key to open and in there you fight a Bandit by doing things such as Throwing Balloons or Watermelon Seed Spitting which is lots of fun and uses the new Watermelon item, I also liked the new function of the Super Star that turns Mario into Superstar Mario and he runs around and up walls, glides, floats and is generally invincible. Another new addition to the series is that Yoshi can morph into various forms including things like helicopters and cars using the Morph Bubble, he can also transform into a submarine which unfortunately are the only underwater parts of the game, I found these bits really fun as it changes the gameplay style immensely.

Superstar Mario! notice the eggs are still following him although Yoshi isn't there.

The level design is brilliant as always and possibly even better then SMW, I remember coming across the area where you meet Poochy there is an information box that says something along the lines of “At Nintendo we poured our heart and souls into this game, it is full of secrets, Enjoy!” and that really warmed my heart. They weren’t wrong either the levels are packed full of secrets and tricks and really get you thinking especially with your egg-throwing tactics. It seems that this Mario game has the most number of enemies yet and the special thing is it seems to include a large number of enemies from previous games most prominently the Shy Guys from Super Mario Brothers 2.  I love the 3^rd world in the jungle with all the pestering Monkeys, I also like the new big scary enemies inc. Nep-Enut and Chomp Sharks which add that element of fear to the game.

The giant Nep-Enut, they make quite a scary sound when rising from the water, there's also a Lava-welling version of these creatures called Gargantua Blarggs

The graphics are nothing short of awesome, you can tell by the opening sequence that these graphics were going to be something else and they did indeed push the SNES to its limits. The graphics have a cartoony pastel coloured feel with most backgrounds, text and features drawn from crayon or made out of patches though some features made the game look more than two dimensional. I can remember back then watching the bridges go up and down, running out of the way of the falling doors and jumping along the rolling logs that looked like they were 3D, I remember the crazy drug-fuelled effects of Fuzzy when you touched one of them and the moving platforms in the castle levels and balancing precariously in a log while riding through a lake of lava.

Yoshi touched a Fuzzy and got dizzy. Though the signs are all there that you aren't just dizzy

Unfortunately I do not own the game on SNES and also with my SNES controls being fairly uncooperative I had to use an emulator though this did have an effect on the graphics making them choppy in the parts with the advanced moving 2D graphics (like the intro) but I do remember playing them on SNES in the past and can appreciate what they looked like. Though the good thing about the emulator was I could manipulate the layers of the game and remove backgrounds etc and I noticed that foregrounds had been used to a large extent this time around i.e. flowers in the ground levels and mists in the cave levels.

The flowers in the foreground are a great touch.

It seems old Koji Kondo did it again as the music is his best work as usual, the music is instantly likable all bippy and boppy with that unique sound. I especially like the castle and boss themes and I love how the music is so appropriate to the area, bouncy and happy in the overworld, low and composed in the cave levels, and fast and upbeat in the athletic platform jumping levels which has that excellent ragtime theme. I also love the end level music and the way that the scores dance around to the music once they’ve been completed, the music just seems to work. The sound effects are up to standard for the Mario games all bouncy and poppy, as with the main theme of the game they do seem fairly cartoony but there’s nothing wrong with that, the music and the suit the game perfectly, there’s not much more to say.

The castle levels are a lot of fun and have a great soundtrack.

This game was underrated in my view and I don’t know why as it has all the best things that the Mario games of the time had, great gameplay, variety, music and sound, graphics, and also replayability, you will and would have played this game at least 2 or 3 times as it’s not the kind of game you can just play once. If. Yoshi’s Island is a great game though quite a deviation away from the standard Mario formula, not that that’s a bad thing, and not that I have anything against Yoshi, Yoshi is awesome, it just stops it from being my no.1 game of all time and you can probably guess what that is. If you haven’t played this before, get an emulator (I recommend ZSNES) and goddamn play it and it won’t matter whether you’re a fan of Mario games or not you’ll have a ball, or maybe an egg...

JD

Dancing numbers!

Minecraft Creations: The Lan Slide V5.0 Melbourne PC Minecraft Competition

I’ve been attending Lanslide since its second iteration and have a had a great time in the events I’ve been to. The last time I went I managed to win the Minecraft competition with my Jungle Greenhouse though at that time I only had one opponent and this most recently I had no competition which makes it kind of easy to win. Saying I really don’t have a problem with winning by default and I’m no stranger to it, especially with Minecraft. I went to 3 Minecraft competitions at the now closed Melbourne Mana Bar in which the first was a big turnout with my Tribalfield buddies and us having some quite serious competition, then the second and third times I was the only person who showed up for the competition.

Anyway, at Lanslide 5 the admins made a theme for this events Minecraft Competition and that was Melbourne PC yes the business that hosts the landslide events and I immediately wondered what the hell I was going to make and the only two things I could think of was a giant computer or the building itself so I decided to create the latter and ducked out to take some photos of the front of the building. I think it came out pretty well apart from the meddling with the Pokeball and the explosions from my interfering colleagues, I also had to stop-and-go with the tournaments I was in but I had enough time to make something decent.

Early shot, I did this in the default texture pack as that would be what everyone would see it as.

I added the Melb PC test up the top for extra effect

Was taking screenshots every minute with fear that those idiots blowing up their Pokeball that they had built right near my building.

Some night shots

Google Maps view of the actual Melbourne PC building

So that was that I won a creeper headrest hat and a set of coke glasses which is as good a prize as any I guess. I played in the League of Legends, Flatout2 and Armagetronad comps, was going to go in Starcraft II but that didn't end up happening. Anyway, fun times and looking forward to the next and possibly having some competition for the next Minecraft competition.

JD

Creeper Hood!

The unchallenged will always conquer