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!

The Past and Times of Yore: Spyro the Dragon and the illustrious series of Spyro, platforming excellence

Just a note, I’m going to start leaving scores on these reviews similar to the Gamefaqs style of a score for each section then an overall score (story, gameplay etc) but I’m not going to break it up into sections or advertise it in my facebook posts etc, it’s just go give an idea of what I think (or thought) anyway I’ll see how it goes.

 Release Date: 15/11/1998
Genre: Platformer
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment

Developer: Insomniac Games
Platform: Playstation
Players: 1
Classification: E (Everyone)

 
If there ever was a defining era for modern platformers In my view it would have to be in the era of the 4^th generation consoles where the Nintendo 64 battled for dominance against the first Sony Playstation console, though the Playstation did sell more units during that period (125 million to 33 million) it’s arguable which machine was more popular. It was during the mid 90’s that pioneered the era of 3D gaming and specifically the 3D platformer. It was always going to be a major move for Nintendo, how to do Mario in 3D? But they pulled it off, and pulled it off well a 3D platformer may have been difficult and somewhat cumbersome judging the gaps and dealing with the “floating camera” style view but Mario 64 as well as Rare’s Banjo-Kazooie and Conker series were a rousing success. For me though it was a different path as I don’t know how or why my brother and I decided to get a Playstation but fortunately for us the Playstation was rich in 3D platforming goodness with the likes of  Ape Escape, Rayman 2,  Gex: Enter the Gecko, the infallible Crash Bandicoot series and the lesser known Croc: Legend of the Gobbos though with all these great games I didn’t end up owning any of them, I had the arguable Crash Bandicoot series ripoffs of Mario Kart  64 and Mario Party.

Crash Bandicoot: A classic PlayStation series

What I did have though was the Spyro series and what a great series it was in the aptly named “Golden Years” of Spyro on the Playstation consisting of the first three Spyro games developed by Insomniac Games who went on to create the Ratchet and Clank series which is also very good I hear, I must have played them through more than three times each as they were the best 3D platformers that I have ever played. The three games put together gradually got better, the first Spyro the Dragon was set wholly in the Dragon Worlds while the Spyro 2: Gateway to Glimmer was set in a whole other world of Avalar and the third Spyro: Year of the Dragon gave some new insight to the Dragon origins. All three were very similar in gameplay, graphics and sound, with the gameplay and features only changing slightly each game which made them all so great.

I'll mention here that these screenshots were taken with ePSXe which is a Playstation Emulation software so they may not look correct, they may even look a bit more high resolution, also I apologise for the black bars.

Insomniac games, creators of Spyro's golden age of the first 3 games

After Insomniac left the Spyro mantle was handed down to various developers, the first iteration on the PS2: Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly made by Check Six although was a great looking game and didn’t differ from the Spyro formula much all, it had a multitude of gameplay and graphical issues inc invisible walls, incorrect hitboxes, frame rate jumping and irregularity and very slow loading times. The second PS2 Spyro title was Spyro: A Hero's Tail which I believe was the best one for the PS2 and last real Spyro game to date, this game changed quite a few things in the Spyro gameplay and universe but was by far the best since Insomniac so hats off to Eurocom for that one before everything went bad, so very bad.

Some footage of A Hero's Tail (because I couldn't get a screenshot)

The Legend of Spyro series which originated on the Playstation 2 was an entirely new trilogy-to-be with an almost completely new storyline with Spyro actually being brough up by Sparx (his dragonfly companion’s) family (which I found kind of ridiculous) though Sierra Entertainment seemed to pull out all the stops and managed to get Elijah Wood and David Spade to voice Spyro and the Sparx respectively with Gary Oldman as one of the four Dragon Guardians. After borrowing the first of the series The Legend of Spyro: A New Beginning (yes borrowing from the video store I still did that back then) I watched the intro and found the animation and voice acting to be awesome, then when I actually started playing the game I found that Krome studios had done something terrible. The gameplay was much more action based with Spyro pulling off punches, kicks and headbutt combos to defeat enemies who now had health bars and could no longer be killed in a single hit, they had effectively turned Spyro into a  linear beat-em-up. Rather than focusing on platforming i.e. exploring an area, defeating enemies and looking for treasure you now went on a liner path from room to room and had to defeat all enemies in that area before moving on to the next.

Some footage from The Legend of Spyro a New beginning, you can see the way Spyro now fights through different areas and how the game had partially evolved into a beat-em-up

Needless to say I found this absolutely unacceptable, and threw the disc out the window, well actually I didn’t do that but I did stop playing, there were two more games of that same tripe and don’t even ask me about that over-simplified toy advertisement Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure in which it seems Spyro is now shoved into the series in a cameo role like an old past-their-prime actor who everyone used to respect but is now just getting tired of them. I’ve never bought another Spyro game since A Hero’s Tail and by the way things are going I probably never will.

So that in a longwinded way of saying things is what brought me back to the original Spyro the Dragon, many times actually. I still carry the opinion that the original Spyro was the best as there’s wasn’t really anything added to the game since then that stood out in a big way with the possible exception of the areas where you played as Hunter in A Hero’s Tail, that guy deserved his own game.

Spyro the Dragon title screen,  as you can see the emulator does a pretty good job of smoothing out the models but not the 2D graphics.

I first found out about Spyro through one of those many demo discs we used to get in Playstation magazines/showbags etc and immediately found it quite enthralling, the environment, graphics, the music it was nothing like I’d ever seen before, I’d only previously played 2D platformers on the SNES and when I experienced running and gliding around a fun new majestical world, well it was intense, I remember just running around the beautiful Artisian Homeworld going “wheeeeee!” I then knew that I had to buy the game, it was too good not to.

My favorite homeworld: The Artisan

The story of the game is quite simple, Spyro is a young Dragon living in the Dragon Worlds he also seems to be the only young Dragon at this point. The start of the game shows two of the Elder dragons being interviewed by what appears to be a TV crew about the Dragon Treasure and the threat of Gnasty Gnorc who is obviously the main protagonist and has apparently found the ability to turn the Dragon treasure into minions. The scene cuts to Gnasty  apparently watching this on TV in the Dragon junkyard where he was banished and he gets enraged when the Dragons mention he is ugly and no threat and uses his magic mace to turn all of the Dragons into crystal except for Spyro who is too small for the blasts to reach, Spyro then takes it upon himself to free all of the dragons, defeat the gnorcs collect the treasure and eventually defeat Gnasty himself.

The big guy himself: Gnasty Gnorc, here in all his blockyness.

I could ask a few questions about that into like how do the Dragons and Gnasty have cameras, microphones and televisions? Eh magic I guess. 

"I'd like to thank everyone for their support: my fellow Dragons and the Fairies who helped me alomg the way and I'd also like to thank Stewart Copeland for an excellent soundtrack, really kept me going."

Anyway so after that you start in the Artisan homeworld right in front one of the dragons trapped in crystal and after breaking him out he tells you what you need to do, find the dragons, collect the treasure etc and that’s pretty much it then you went off into the Artisan world. That was the beauty of that game, unlike some of the other titles which had cutscene after cutscene (especially at the start) this just goes straight into it. The game is split into six different homeworlds of the Dragon Realms which in turn have portal around the area that lead to levels within the world. Each world had a sort of theme to it, the Artisan world is peaceful and tranquil and has ornate gardens, architecture and castles, whereas another world I am fond of is the Magic Crafters which is set up on a fantastic looking snowy mountain with enemies that can levitate and move around walls, objects and the ground itself and other which shoot ice and lightning at you.

The Beast Makers world with it's swamps, temples coupled with Gnorcs with electrical weapons make for very unique area much unlike the usual flow that these kind of platformers tend to take, lava world, jungle world, ice world etc

I love the way the game starts off as a very low difficulty level, in the Artisian homeworld there are no enemies that can hurt you you just need to run around defeat the enemies and collect the treasure, I also love the way some of the gates are located in an area that suits their environment for example the portal to Dark Hollow is through a small hedge maze and the portal to Ice Cavern is in a tunnel to the underground. Your goal in each world/level is to free the dragons, collect all the treasure and as a side quest, collect all of the dragon eggs that have been stolen by thieves in the first three worlds, ahh it’s so simple isn’t it?. The last level of each world is usally the most challenging and ends with you needing to defeat a boss character, after that you would have either saved enough dragons, collected enough treasure or dragon eggs to satisfy the worlds Balloonist to take you to a different world.

The Ice cavern portal entrance leads to an icy zone in the middle of a desert so it is fittingly located in a cavern itself.

Controlling Spyro is pretty easy especially in the first game, you can charge, breathe fire, jump, glide and dodge/roll diagonally you can also look around Spyro with the shoulder buttons or view the environment through a camera on top of Spyro’s head and that’s pretty much it, the only qualm is you have to make sure the camera is set to “active” otherwise it doesn’t quite snap into view when moving well enough. As a platforming game Spyro is pretty simple, you jump around, you may have to do some tricky glides but that’s it, the only challenges I think come with the Supercharge pads (especially on the Tree Tops level) and the flying levels that allow Spyro to fly and the objective is to flame/charge all the enemies/objects within the time limit. The worlds have many whirlwinds  which act as lifts and allow you to reach high up places to glide from, sometimes whirlwinds activate after you have climbed a hill or building. To collect treasure you just basically defeat enemies, charge or flame chests or find keys to unlock chests, you health is monitored by your dragonfly friend Sparx who changes colour (from gold) every time you get hit until after 3 hits he disappears and on the 4^th Spyro is defeated, Sparx also helps you by collecting treasure in your immediate area.

Crystal Flight: One of the levels where Spyro has to fly around and flame all the targets within the time limit

The graphics and music in this game is a large part of what makes it so good, the graphics were great for their time and the visuals and sounds are so unique, especially in the first game , if I ever heard the music anywhere I was I would instantly know it was from Spyro, the mix of percussion instruments that I really wouldn’t be able to tell you what they were. Every world/level as the appropriate music for the area as well i.e. calm and happy for the Artisans world, upbeat and militaristic for the Peace Keepers and slow and quiet for the Beast Makers often the movie starts off slow or ominous (especially on the boss levels) and is quite scary then it gets into its main beat. The sounds are also great, charging enemies and breaking chests with Spyro’s charge attack is especially satisfying and also collecting the games for the sounds they make. It’s really hard to explain in words which is why I have a movie linked below.

Kapow!

When you first enter into worlds and the levels inside that world the environment, objects and enemies fit right in, there are various types of Gnorcs though most of the other enemies are unique to the area, I especially like the Dream Weavers world where some of the wackiest creatures and enemies are found. I find myself just wandering around looking around various levels especially at the little nooks and crannies where treasure can be hidden, as I’ve probably said before I love the Artisan world the most, it’s what probably made me enjoy the first levels of most adventure games as their so easy and peaceful. The worlds consist of a mostly fantasy settings in plains, valleys, mountains, deserts and swamps with vibrant colours, most of the enemies wield medieval weapons if any with the exception of some worlds where the Gnorcs use guns, cannons and electricity. The polygonal graphics in this game although they glitched and teared at some points they were great for the time and I just loved the simplicity, looking at every little bit of water flowing every castle, every intricately designed cave and vibrant colourful sky. If I had one word to sum up the sound and graphics it would be unique.

The Dreamweavers world, a wacky place

I think I’ve played this game at least 4 or 5 times through, that and the trilogy made by Insomniac are just that damn good. Even now I would recommend this game to anyone who wanted to see what a true 3D platformer should be and yes it does beat Mario 64 in my opinion. Spyro was just magical in almost every way, sound, visuals, environment and gameplay The Playstation had a great bunch of 3D platformers going for it and this was the best of the lot.

Story - 9
Gameplay - 10
Graphics - 9
Music - 10
Sound Effects - 10
Play Time - 9
Replayability - 10

Overall: 10

JD

Press the jump button twice to glide, and don’t be afraid

The Past and Times of Yore: WipEout HD/Fury, the Last of a Legend

 







Release Date:  September  24, 2008 (HD) October 15, 2009 (Fury)
Genre: Futuristic Racer
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment Europe
Developer: Studio Liverpool
Platform: Playstation 3
Players: 1-2 (Splitscreen) and 1-8 Multiplayer
Classification: E 10+

Playing this title again, It never occurred to me how much impact this title has now despite being almost 4 years old, since Sony announced the closure of Studio Liverpool (formerly Psygnosis) in August last year it is essential the last WipEout game to be released for a Playstation Console (apart from WipEout 2048 on PS Vita) and thus ends the Wipeout series. I can still remember playing the original WipEout game on PC the late nineties using a joystick as well. Back then the only racing games I had played before were SNES titles such as Mario kart, Biker Mice from Mars and Rock’n’Roll racing, but this was something else. The first Wipeout defined what the whole "playstation experience" was with a single game. It also defined a lot of current day "club culture" At the time the WipEout soundtracks were also, for a lot of younger people, the first time they were exposed to artists like The Prodigy, Chemical Brothers, LFO, Underworld or Aphex Twin which could possibly have been my first influences into Techno and Dance which I love today.

Of course the main point of Wipeout was the awesome speeds you could reach with the Wipeout “ships” which blew away any car racing game out there, ships being the operative term here as they obviously didn’t have wheels they hovered above the racetrack and used ‘airbrakes’ to turn corners and there was a small backstory about the Anti-Gravity “F” titled racing league and mock press releases in the booklets for each game

The original Wipeout game released in 1995, oh the memories. by mastes1

I was only in my early teens at the time and was a bit young to realise but the original WipEout revolutionized gaming for the older gamers who were around when it all started, it had a non-cutesy futuristic setting with ultra-fast ships and bangin’ dance beats, it was like it was made for that generation hence why the directors of the movie Hackers saw it as something they wanted to include in their film which had a dance music listenin’ cyberpunk culture of young people which WipEout appealed to the most and represented in the gaming world. I kind of never saw it this way, I just thought of Wipeout as a cool futuristic game and spent many hours zooming along trying to win all the races and not hit the damn sides, and it was a blast to play especially when I got the PS1 version which worked perfectly compared to the PC version which I had a bit of trouble sometimes getting to work properly being DOS and all.

Shortly After that came Wipeout 2097 with more tracks, classes and music, the second game in the series smoothed down both the graphics and the physical racing gameplay making the racing experience much more enjoyable, it also added shield energy to the game for the first time, meaning that the weapons as well as stalling your opponent now drained their shield as well which they could recharge by flying into a “pit lane” which was adjacent to the starting grid and losing a few seconds. This added weapons such as the Quake disrupter which fired a ripple down the track and the Plasma bolt which destroyed opponents in a single hit. The game also introduced the Vector and Phantom being the slowest and fastest Speed Classes in the game with the original Venom and Rapier being in the middle. Wipeout 2097 was probably best known for its soundtrack which featured The Prodigy, The Future Sound of London, The Chemical Brothers, Fluke, and Underworld. There was also a popular soundtrack album. I now know that the reason for all the Red Bull advertising was that the game was featured and played in various nightclubs as a promo in conjunction with Red Bull Energy Drink though it wasn’t till years later that I actually started drinking the stuff lol it seemed that back then Wipeout was more in the club scene than ever.

Wipeout 2097

In the interim of Wipeout 2097 and Wipeout 3, Wipeout 64 was released which was basically a port of 2097 but had two very distinct new features such as steering with an analogue stick (digital control was disabled even) and split screen multiplayer which is written as supposedly being 2-4 players though I only ever played 2 players with a friend myself, this is still a massive improvement over 2097 where the only way you could play two player was the ridiculous Playstation “link cable” which you need to purchase as well as requiring two television sets, two PlayStation consoles, and two copies of the game. It was the time where the Playstation multiplayer functionality was laughable compared to N64 which had a greater number and quality of (albeit kid-friendly) multiplayer games and most important 4 controller ports whereas I had to buy a multitap for both my PS1 and 2 to be even able to play 4 players. The benefit with that though was with some games you could get up to 5 players but that another story.

Wipeout 64 vertical split-screen gameplay by jk7201b

I was much looking forward to the release of Wipeout 3 or “Wip3out” as  seemingly any 3^rd game of a series which has an E in the title always turns out to be i.e “Driv3r”, one of the most ludicrous version of this I’ve seen was Thief 4 or “Thi4f” I’ mean seriously since when does a number 4 look like an e? Also they didn’t do it with the previous game as there was no number in the title, figures. Anyway Wipeout 3 was a pretty clean package, it’s wasn’t that much different in terms of features, it retained the same ship/teams and most weapons from 2097 and added a couple more. The tracks were different this time in the way that they were not based on real world locations but in the fictional “Mega City”. The soundtrack was as good as ever being composed of techno and electronica tracks selected by DJ Sasha and features contributions by Orbital and The Chemical Brothers. Probably the two most prominent features of the game were for one the inclusion of a 2 player split-screen mode which after finally getting the feature I was only able get a few friends to play with me regrettably. The second feature was its unique graphical style which I really can’t explain, it was sort of like 2097’s graphics but much smoother, brighter and funkier (with most tracks) with a much better level of details then 2097 and was the first in the series to run at high-resolution mode (720 x 480, or 480i).

Wipeout 3

The Designers Republic who had worked co-operatively with Psygnosis on the first three Wipeout games’ visual style including menu’s, text, load screens and in-game billboards and screens really gave Wipeout its edge where other games may have had great looks vehicles and tracks but bland landscapes for the backgrounds, their designs were especially prominent with Wipeout 2097 and Wipeout 3 with the ultra-minimalistic menu interface.

Some shots of the Wip3out menu screen designed by The Designers Republic, minimalist is an understatement

Wipeout Fusion was the premier Wipeout game for the Playstation 2 and the first game made after Psygnosis' name change to SCE Studio Liverpool. The main changes (apart from the obvious graphical upgrade with the PS2) brought in vast changes to the track layouts which now instead of being a single track was a giant one split into 3 creating a short, medium and long circuit of a particular location, also for the first time trackless sections where I have slammed into a boulder and blew up a lot of dust in my time, it also included hidden-wall shortcuts or ones that required a turbo-boost power-ups to get over.  In Fusion weapons and combat suddenly became huge, the proton cannon, grav stinger, flamethrower, and gravity bomb was added and each team was given a unique super-weapon, as you progressed through the different leagues the cpu players got more and more aggressive, sometimes it was such a clusterfuck of ships firing everywhere that you barely got through the first lap without being blown up, it became less of a race then a survival to just see who could finish and the only time you could repair yourself was in the pit lane.


Wipeout Fusion gameplay featuring a trackless section of the course.

Apart from the pilot aggression there were a few other things I didn’t like firstly there was the way that there was no Speed classes anymore, when you did the various leagues you were given credits to spend on upgrading your craft which you needed to do to stay competitive, this was alright it’s just that then you end up stacking all the points into the one ship. What confounds this even more is the return of the Pilot characters from the first Wipeout which was evident as there was much more storytelling elements and backstory in the game, but instead of putting points into the team, you put points into either the first or second pilot and the more points you put into a pilot and their ship it got bigger and “meaner” looking with 3 variations. This kind of thing really irked me as I enjoyed the way Wipeout 2097 and 3 just had the teams though it did add a bit of character to the game but I liked the ships stats staying the same and changing accordingly so it was a bit off-putting. Also the way the ships had obvious damage I didn’t like either but I guess it was more realistic.

After Fusion I had quite a long break from the Wipeout series and really consoles in general, until we happened to get a PS3 and I course decided to purchase and download the Wipeout HD/Fury package, I’d only played it a bit before on a friend’s PS3 but buying it myself and having a good go made me realise what a nice tight package it was for a Wipeout game, it was quite similar to Wipeout 3 in terms of teams, tracks and controls so pretty much all the gameplay, and the grid style Campaign was excellent, I did the HD campaign first as you did all of the types of races including: Single Race, Tournament, Speed Lap, Time Trial, and Zone. Zone mode, which first appeared in Wipeout Fusion, has you piloting a ship with full stats in an awesome looking digitized track with minimal textures and a graphic equalizer in the sky moving to the current music. I was glad to see that pretty much all of the unwanted stuff inc individual pilots, new teams, credits-for-stats, super weapons have been taken out.

Wipeout HD

As you play through the campaign all the different modes of play are randomly laid out in a hexagonal grid, you start from the middle and gradually unlock the surrounding hexagons, you can change the difficulty at any time before/after a race if you are having trouble.  After acquiring a certain number of points unlocks the next , as you progress through the events the modes get harder i.e. faster speed classes, more aggressive opponents and more challenging medal goals. I reckon this a great addition to the series and much better then the Fusion version as what Wipeout really needed was a single campaign that created a fun and balanced way to play most of the singleplayer content in the game.

The new tracks were pretty damn cool, the first track Vineta K situated on the beach with a classic underwater section, Metropia dodging around skyscrapers with breathtaking drops, Ubermall, a new incantation of Mega Mall from Wipeout 3 and Sol 2, a track suspended in the air with a dreaded open-sided section. The tracks included a reverse option but were not divided into 3 as before, also there were no-more trackless sections or shortcuts in any of the tracks.

The Sol 2 (sky track) Phantom class time trial by HellfireWZ

The ship roster is made up of all the ships from the original Wipeout to 3 with new ones (Triakis, Mirage and Harimau) taken from Wipeout Pulse I was pleased to find out that the Triakis team is Australian and true to Australian form our ship is built like a brick shithouse with maximum shields though their quite hard to handle but I don’t care I go them all the time in multiplayer. As I had gotten the Fury expansion I already had access to the Fury ships which I used through the HD campaign where I should have been using the HD ships though it didn’t matter all that much as I used the Fury Mirage ship almost all the way through I wish I researched all the unlocks and ship skins etc properly before I played I used the same team for most of the HD campaign thinking that you had to get full loyalty for a team to get all their ship skins but it turns out all you need to get is 8000 for each team to unlock two alternate skins and 10000 only once for a team to unlock the classic Wipeout HUD (which I wasn’t going to use anyway) I ended up getting 26000 points with Mirage and although they are a great all-round ship it was kind of a waste as apart from achievements all the other skins are unlocked via the Campaign

Wiepout HD Ships/Teams

Reading the reviews now I notice that lots of people are saying how smooth and great the graphics look, I must admit I didn’t really notice this as all PS3 games look equally good to me really though I admit as the Wipeout games got better quality they also a bit harder to see where you are going as before there was just a plain coloured track and bland walls and scenery, now there’s intricately detailed track grids through Las Vegas entertainment complexes with lights (flashing, neon or otherwise) all over the place. But I suppose it’s not exactly that hard though I found though that when the lights went green (or whatever happens) on your first race and you thrust forward your eyes go kinda fuzzy and have to re-adjust to the speed, especially at the higher levels, the graphics look great though any way you look at it.

Wipeout HD - The Amphiseum - Phantom Time Trial by HellfireWZ

As I mentioned before the fury expansion brought new ships (with upgraded stats), game modes, tracks and another campaign. The new ships looked a bit sleeker, newer and somewhat chunkier/blockier then the previous ones. Three new game modes were added inc

Eliminator: Which is basically an endless single race where the objective is to damage and destroy other ships until you get to the targeted damage count.

Zone Battle:  Which is a twist on the original Zone Mode. Rival pilots appear on the track as you race to reach the target zone. Drive through zone pad to charge your zone bar and you can use it to either boost your zone and come closer to victory or absorb it to replenish ship energy and activate your shield. The first to reach a target zone wins.

Detonator: Which is again similar to zone mode except you are in a ships which fires laser bolts and have to destroy objects on the track in your path.

The new Detonator mode by Kylethe2011

Eight new tracks were introduced for the expansion with 4 of them being zone mode only, this made things a bit repetitive as with the whole campaign you only had 4 tracks for doing Single Race, Tournament, Speed Lap, Time Trial and even when they were reversed sometimes I still reckon they needed at least 1 or 2 other tracks for the normal modes.

On my recent foray back into HD/Fury to finish the Fury campaign, I’ve had a grand old time playing multiplayer and getting my ass kicked by Japanese punks, strangely enough even playing people from different countries, the game still seems to play pretty smoothly though sometimes I don’t see ships moving at all and certain modes like Eliminator can get fairly laggy though most of the time it’s just single race or tournament being played. I’ve done pretty well for myself though getting seconds and thirds though there’s always one lightning fast motherfucker who creams us all, one instance I was doing pretty good and got 2 minutes 14 seconds for a race in Ubermall but the guy who came first beat me by 13 seconds. As I said before my favourite team used to be Mirage but now it’s Triakis cause their Australian, the ship is hard to manoeuvre but is fast and tough as cause of the full shield stats.

I can honestly say that together Wipeout HD/Fury has been the best Wipeout game ever, yes it even beats 2097 and 3 and that’s in terms of overall features, gameplay and obviously visuals and for the mere fact that it’s the first Wipeout which I’ve been able to play online rather than having to make people play 2 player with me. I encourage anyone who hasn’t experience Wipeout to spend that 20 or so dollars and get a digital copy or get Wipeout 2048 if you have a Vita, and experience it as with a Wipeout game, you can’t really get any better  you’ve never seen racing like this before.

WipEout - Through the Ages 2012 by HellfireWZ

So sadly that would appear to be it, Studio Liverpool has been closed down by Sony so it seems unlikely we will see any new Wipeout games in the near future. Of course I haven’t mentioned all of them in this post just the ones I have experienced myself, the full list can be found here, feel free to have a look and more importantly “like” the facebook page to spread the love. I’d just like to say thank you to Studio Liverpool for creating one of my favourite racing game of all time and will hopefully see Wipeout again in the future where it began.

JD

Image from Studio Liverpool's final post on the Wipeout facebook page.

Perfect lap!

The Past and Times of Yore: Aliens vs Predator (2010), Cause screw Colonial Marines

  
Release Date: Febuary 18, 2010
Genre: First-Person Shooter
Publisher: Sega
Developer: Rebellion
Platform: PC, PS3, Xbox 360
Players: 1 and Online Multiplayer
Classification: MA 15+

I’ve played a few Alien vs Predator games in my time, the first was the quite mediocre 1993 side scroller beat-em-up on the Super Nintendo system, the second was the fairly awesome 1994 Arcade side scroller beat-em-up which was a much better, more well-designed version with support for up to 3 players. The third was the 2001 Alien vs Predator 2 FPS releases for PC along with the 2002 Primal Hunt expansion that I remember playing back in high school but didn’t get round to actually playing it through properly till much later though I did really enjoy the storylines in those ones and they did seem a bit longer then the latest one. The 2010 version was something I had been looking forward to playing for a while as I been wanting to play a new more modern Alien vs Predator. When Aliens Colonial Marines came out to much critical review I was kind of disappointed, not in the way the game turned out (I hadn’t actually known about it beforehand) but because you could only play as Marines, well I it’s called Colonial Marines you could argue but there’s also Aliens there too and you can play them in the Multiplayer I spose.

Yes, what the hell did happen? apparently even the Developer lead doesn't know

I had already played AVP through a first time then decided to again after playing the Predator Hunt mode at the Bluewire lan which was quite fun with one person going around as a Marine with a motion tracker and the other playing as a cloaked Predator, the second time round was just as fun I think as I knew what to expect and was ready for it, takes some of the surprise away I guess but there were enough surprises that I didn’t remember anyway.

I do agree with that Yahtzee’s Zero Punctuation Review of the game he states his frustration and confusion over the many, many Alien vs Predator games out there which have been called the same thing since 1993 and the fact that the games should be called “Alien vs Predator vs Human” cause that’s what it is really and I agree completely. Also if you’re going to make an Alien vs Predator game make sure you play as the Aliens and Predators the most, as it seems the Marine singleplayer campaign is always the longest, playing as the Alien does get a bit tiring at times jumping around and crawling upside-down all over the place and you never seem to be the Predator long enough in my opinion.

Zero Punctuation AVP 2010 review

The story in this version of AVP happens on another codenamed planet: BG-386 where the Weyland Yutani Corporation headed by Karl Bishop Weyland himself has discovered an ancient Yautja Pyramid, “Yautja” in case you didn;t know (I didn’t) is the factual name of the Predators. Weyland hopes to unlock the power inside the Pyramid and the game intro starts with him opening these giant doors while inside before some sort of blue energy comes bursting out of the doors and out the top of the Pyramid into space, though I’ve played it through twice and have never been able to work out what it actually meant. So anyway, the Weyland Yutani is also studying the Alien Xenomorphs who are on the planet as well and have thus captured a Queen which they are using to breed alien test subjects which inevitably escape causing chaos which prompts the United States Colonial Marine Corps to show up as well as the Predators who are responding to a distress call from a pack of Youngblood Predators who are on an initiation hunt. The stories slightly intersect with each other as was the idea with the AVP2 Primal Hunt expansion and as before the main difference between the Marine and Alien/Predator missions are that is that the latter is much more stealthy and preying on unsuspecting humans. One thing I found pretty cool was that after finishing one section you could play it again as another race but I could never really do that as I’d be in the mindset of a certain playing style and couldn’t move away from that.

"Hey no-one will notice us doing this right?"

I found the AVP Marine campaign to be a pleasant experience, it’s just you’re usual FPS dark, it was scary, you just hear the motion tracker going and it’s frightening as. To tell the story basically you are a rookie Colonial Marine who is responding to a distress call from the Weyland-Yutani corporation on BG-386, while you are heading down to the planet in a dropship, your mothership “The Marlowe” (I swear I’ve heard that name used before, I think it was Battlefield, Bad Company 2) gets shot down by a Predator mothership and you subsequently get knocked out in the landing. One of my favourite bits of the Marine campaign was at the start where you wake up and have nothing but your pistol and flashlight with your comrade Corporal Tequila giving you advice through your radio as you travel through the dark corridors and outside into Colony which looks quite scary and unpleasant due to the planets usually featured in the Alien movies being very dark, windy and generally uninviting. It’s thrilling as you play through this part as it mimics the intensity of watching Alien movies where your waiting for something to jump out at any moment.

Pictured: dark, scary corridor

I’ll have to admit walking around dark scary corridors with occasional flickers of the always helpful motion tracker was a bit more fun then when you were actually fighting the Aliens, as at the start I hadn’t played an Aliens game for so long I had forgotten how quick they moved and it was very hard at first to kill them and I was backing up all over the place and not watching my back so I ended up bumping into another one while shooting. There is some melee moves you can do but their pretty useless as they just shove the Alien off you and your better off just shooting them.  I soon realised that if there was multiple Aliens they all sometimes crawled the exact same path to get to me so I sort of just killed them as they came, but meh what are you going to do? Pretend you don’t know where they’re going to go?

"Auugh, ze Aliens!" This is with the brightness turned up full no less

So I ended up wasting a heap of ammo, it also doesn’t help that the Pulse Rifle is fairly inaccurate, I started off firing in short bursts but it just wasn’t doing enough damage so I ended up spraying and that didn’t do much either, because of this I kept running out of ammo, while using the shotgun I was a lot better as it packed more of a punch and since the Aliens were all up in your face anyway, distance wasn’t a problem. I also have to admit I played the campaign on easy again, and yes you’re probably all thinking what a noob loser, but I just enjoy it more that way as when I’m playing these games again I cbf with a challenge, also what the hell was a supposed to do if my pistol ran out of bullets (on easy you have infinite pistol bullets), it was hard enough shooting down groups of Aliens with it when my main weapons ran out of ammo and you can’t kill Aliens using melee attacks.  The flamethrower and the smartgun are pretty cool I guess, but my favourite weapon by far was the Scoped Rifle, not only was it fun in the jungle and cave levels shooting down Aliens crawling along walls and ceilings while spitting at you, it also proved invaluable against Predators.

A brief example of the coolness of the Scope Rifle, the x-ray outline targeting, not needing to headshot, and three three round clip makes it kind of overpowered though.

I liked towards the end of the campaign where you saved Tequila from the Alien Hive and had to hurry to get her back to the Medlab to get the Alien spawn out of her. I won’t spoil the (or any) of the endings but it was basically just what you’d expect, a fun romp shooting Aliens and a Predator with lots of Aliens and Predator movie references.

As before I did the Alien campaign next, which the game actually wanted you to do last but I’m like screw that I’m saving the best till last. Playing as the Alien is quite enjoyable as it’s pretty much playing the enemy in its purest form as a speechless creature who wants to harvest or kill everyone and everyone else wants to kill you. It was great seeing the Alien side of things, the way you started off in captivity in a lab then (as usual) power goes down, you bust out and all hell breaks loose. As an Alien you receive your mission objectives from the Queen which all Aliens share a common link to and one of the first things you do is free your brothers and sisters! what fun! Anyway so the Alien campaign basically sees you playing as an Alien referred to as “Specimen 6” who quite helpfully has had a number 6 burned into his head since he first escaped from his host's chest. "6" escapes from the Weyland-Yutani test facility, freeing the queen and then you scurry around killing and/or harvesting whoever you come across.

"Not another goddamn sentry gun!"

Playing as the Alien (properly) does require a bit of skill as the main objective is to stealth kill the Marines by sneaking up behind them and pressing E, of course you can just swipe at them with your claws or fling your body at them to crush them but it’s nowhere near as cool with the animations you get when stealth killing such as plunging your tail through their chest, or if your particularly fast to bite them right in the face with your double jaws, the defenceless scientists get a more terrifying death as you grab and hold their heads for a waiting facehugger to latch on to. The skill part comes in by deciding where, how and when to get behind them and while you can crawl around upside-down on the roof and on the walls you do get a bit directionally challenged and sometimes screw up completely exposing yourself in the light or falling on top of them and have to either quickly swipe the fack out of them or run away, which you can do extremely fast, as an Alien you already run quite quickly though when you activate the sprint button man it’s like you’re an Alien version of the Flash or something. So to sum it up as an Alien, you can crawl around on (almost) everything, you can slash, you can tailswipe you can jump fast and a long way and you can gruesomely stealth kill or harvest people.

Oooo bet that smarts.

I actually realised partway through the Alien campaign that I’d turned the brightness up all the way from my previous playthrough which made playing much easier as you could actually see things though when I changed the brightness to the recommended level the scariness and atmosphere was pretty intense. I realised how much darker the game was and it made it much better playing as the alien as you were supposed to be hiding in darkness. I don’t think I could have played it that way with the Marine as I wouldn’t have been able to see anything at all as that flashlight is pretty weak it would have been like playing Doom3 all over again where playing as the  Predator the Thermal/Heat vision is nightvision anyway, your view as an Alien is a bit odd with its slight fish eye lens but you seem to have some sort of glowing nightvision happening which I suppose is supposed to reciprocate the fact that Aliens have no eyes, yes that’s right.

Sometimes is is actually hard to distinguish whether you are upside-down or not, thankfully the reticule in the middle of the screen always points to the floor

Now for my favourite, the Predator. Yes as I said I was saving the best for last and with the Predator being one kick-ass sonofa, I enjoy playing them the most. You only fight a Predator once in both the Marine and Alien campaigns but as the Predator you switch between Aliens and Humans depending on what you are doing. You have been sent by your clan to BG-386 for your first mission as an elite Predator hunter guy for reasons which include finding out what happened to a group of initiates who were sent to planet to hunt the Aliens as a right of passage and I’m guessing something to do with the Ancient Yuatja temple core being opened by Weyland and shooting a massive beam of energy into space (but just guessing)  You arrive to find that the initiates have become caught up in the conflict between the Aliens and Marines and some have been killed in which you have to mournfully stroke their helmets then detonate their wrist computers to stop the humans from discovering predator technology.

"You fought well brother, now I will give you a proper burial by blowing you to smithereens"

The Predator possibly has the most complicated weapon system, though it isn’t really that complicated, your main attack is a melee with your wrist blades which have light and powerful attacks and you can also block and knock down your opponent and press E for an.... well I won’t say cinematic kill as it’s still in third person you basically get treated to an auto-kill of you dismembering your enemy in some way whether it’s pulling a Marine’s spine out our tearing out an alien’s double jaws then snapping it’s neck the Predator sure like to take it’s time with these things, at the rare time that I did this while there were other enemies around I almost felt that they were just waiting there for me to finish him/it off before they attacked.

Your other weaponry consists your shoulder cannon with has various charges from unguided weak shot to guided body-vaporizing overkill though it does need to be recharged which you can do at various point. There’s also that super-fun, spinny razor disc that Predators use which can slice through multiple enemies in one throw, some remote detonation mines and the hugely overpowered Combi stick which not only one-hit kills most normal enemies but automatically teleports back to you after thrown.

"This is going straight to the pool room"

As the Predator you basically go around killing Aliens and Marines and mopping up the mess they’ve made, similar to the Alien campaign you are also quite stealthy as a Predator you are able to leap great distances and the levels are designed in such a way that you can jump around treetops and ledges and strike from above you are able to use your cloaking device but it's not failproof with Marines  and it doesn't even affect Xenomorphs at all. I love using the different vision modes that your helmet has though you start off with normal and Thermal-Heat vision and it isn’t until later in the game that you get the Xenomorph vision which allows you to see Aliens much more clearly as the Thermal Vision allows you to see humans and androids. You can also distract your prey similar to the Alien except this time you can make them go to a certain location so it is much easier to sneak behind them

Thermal Vision: As well as marking out enemies and other dangers, your helmet also provides nightvision and tells you where it's safe to jump,or really where it's possible to jump.

I had a blast playing as the Predator with their clicky growling language and their superiority over the other races, especially the way they opt to destroy their technology rather then it get into clumsy human hands and speaking of which as well as running along doing your linear story mission there at least one other side activity for you to do. Throughout the 3 singleplayer storylines there are certain objects unique to each race hidden around the levels that you collect/destroy, for Marines it’s an interesting set of audio diaries belonging to various characters in the game (be they dead or alive) which you can listen to once collected, for Aliens it seems the scientists have taken “samples” of the queen and you destroy all canisters you find and as the Predator you collect any Predator equipment that the younglings before you have lost to keep the humans grubby mitts off them. And of course there is a healthy amount of Steam Achievements for you too.

Aha! an Audio Diary, plus a few other things

The graphics in AVP as you can see are presentable for the time, they’re not groundbreaking their just as you’d expect, I’m actually having trouble distinguishing if graphics are good or bad these days,. With a few exceptions they all seem to be the same. That said though it was a massive change from the last AVP game from the 90’s, as seeing Aliens explode when you shoot them and Predators rip out someone’s spine looks amazing even though it is a 3 year old game not to mention the dark and dramatic lighting which really captures the feel of the Alien movies.

"Oh no! the corridor is even darker now"

Upon reading some past reviews of the game I now feel saddened that I never got the chance to properly play the AvP multiplayer as in some reviews it’s hailed to be the better part of the game and I wouldn’t doubt it, with all 3 species shooting and jumping around everywhere it’d be quite the chaos as I remember briefly playing the 90’s AVP multiplayer years ago and playing the newer one again now. I must remind myself to try and get the game going at the Bluewire, Lanslide or any other Lan I go to, as a few people still should have it from when they bought it. Was pointed out on a review I read that this one is called “Aliens vs Predator” instead of Alien vs Predator as the last 5 or so have been called and I guess that makes all the difference in the world.

More hell breaking loose then any other game I know

So Aliens vs Predator was an enjoyable fair for me, I enjoyed a more recent version of the game which really captured the gore (and perhaps even more so) of the movies and man it was indeed gory. I would have thought I’d find the Marine missions boring but they were a great introduction and scary as hell in some parts. I love being an Alien and Predator as well and unlike most people I ask, I love having three intersecting storylines all in the one game though I did record that of all the Singleplayer Campaigns: Alien is the shortest, Marine is the longest and Predator is somewhere in the middle. Throughout the singleplayer campaigns there are dozens of movie references, the dark corridors and jumpy-effects in the Marine missions, the stalking above ventilation shafts and hanging upside-down in the Alien missions and the tree-jumping cloaked stealth killing in the Predator missions ah I could play it again and again, which I sort of am, getting all these screenshots and videos. My only regret was not being able to play much of the multiplayer when having wrote this as that’s the eternal problem I suppose you can’t really play old games in multiplayer if everyone’s playing something else.

I would most definitely recommend the game to fans of the series as well as the movies, sure it may be a bit short and a bit old, but I tell you you’ll have lots of fun and double that fun if you can scrape enough people together for the multiplayer. It is my long standing hope that after this Colonial Marines game/mess that there will be two games made where you play solely as the Alien or Predator, the Alien one I highly doubt but surely we can do better than Predator: Concrete Jungle as it seems an Alien vs Predator game devoid of any cookie-cutter FPS Marine content isn’t that appealing to developers but I’ll just have to wait.

JD



Tearing out spines since 89'