My life as a gamer began with a happy mix-up by my parents, who got me a Sega Mega Drive for Christmas back in 1991. I had asked for a Game Boy, but it was decided that my younger brother would be the one to get the Nintendo. Once my Dad had set my new console up, I popped in the game my parents had got me and turned on the power. As I raced through the Green Hill Zone of SonictheHedgehog, I knew right away that I was hooked. Read more …
It’sa Me! Why The World Still Needs Mario.
I get a lot of stick in my day-to-day life as a gamer, simply because (and I do not doubt that often this is a very founded assertion) I am primarily a Nintendo gamer. The fact that I support a company like Nintendo to a far greater degree than I do Microsoft or Sony confuses people. But, I am just as confused of the opposite, why wouldn’t people support such a company? More specifically, someone asked me today why I am not bored of Mario yet, and my answer was ‘Why would I be?’
I would go as far as to argue that Mario is probably one of the most necessary gaming characters in the industry today. Is he the most popular? Maybe not, but this doesn’t diminish his necessity. Think back, if you are old enough, to 1984. The gaming industry has collapsed (or at least begun to) under it’s own over-saturation, and then a remarkable Japanese fellow called Shigeru Miyamoto appears with an arcade game called ‘Donkey Kong’ with it’s charismatic protagonist ‘Jumpman’ (who would later become Mario). The gaming world changed almost overnight, and the era of modern gaming began.
Do I believe that just because Mario was there at the beginning, that he is necessary just based on that? No, but what I do believe is that a game character who has been around for twenty-six years and is still here, deserves a little more respect than he actually garners.
Okay so bring yourself forward around about ten years, and Mario is still going incredibly strong. He has a new rival in Sonic the Hedgehog, with both rivals individual franchises remaining consistently good, title after title. In the late 90’s, both of them made the jump into 3D and only one completely survived that fall, Mario himself with the incredible N64 title Super Mario 64. Sonic suffered what only can be described as a fall from grace, one that SEGA have struggled to erase however, Mario still endured, with every title described as a masterpiece.
Fast forward to present day and Mario is still here. He is still an ever-present entity in the gaming world and why is that? I have said it earlier – consistency. Each Mario title, although exploring new ideas whether it be in level design, power-ups, or new game-play ideas, will always have the same level of polish and subtle genius that we have come to expect. Super Mario Galaxy is a perfect example, for instance, on how Nintendo have taken the basic core and charm of a Mario title and explored how to do it differently, but still with the overall feel of a classic Mario title.
Some would argue that, especially when it comes to the New Super Mario Bros franchise, that the originality is gone from Mario games. Although that does seem to be the case from the outside, what they don’t seem to be acknowledging is that the NSMB franchise has become it’s own series now. It has seemingly entirely separated itself from the other series (the one which has Sunshine and Galaxy in it). With this separation, apart from a few updates with new themes, the NSMB titles are all similar to one another and this I would freely admit to. This being said; I think most people would struggle to find a platform series that, despite not changing very much between instalments, remains as popular as the NSMB franchise is.
That’s just it, Mario is popular. His games always sell in the millions and, for the most part, are always creative. There are plenty of gaming franchises out there which don’t evolve, and wouldn’t know creativity if it hit them in the face, yet sell millions too. However, does this make them better? I could wax lyrical for hours about the downfall of modern gaming being brought on by these ‘yearly instalment with minimal creativity’ games, but I do not need to do so with Mario remaining here. Nintendo have made him so that he is the antithesis to all of this.
That does leave the question of why I believe Mario is so necessary. If all game series had the creativity but also the consistent strength and polish of Mario games, the gaming industry would be incredible, but it doesn’t. Mario represents what gaming should be; fun, accessible, and ultimately, enjoyable. People may get a kick out of shooting people in a post-apocalyptic war zone (or whatever those types of games are doing now), but I would choose to take a stroll through the Mushroom Kingdom instead any day.
Xcom: Enemy Unknown
Having spent significant time playing UFO: Alien Unknown and its subsequent unofficial remakes, I feel I can give a reasonable view of the new Xcom: Enemy Unknown game. First off, I will admit, I was a huge fan of the original game. It was incredibly sophisticated and in-depth for the time, requiring planning and attention to the most minute detail to succeed. This was the era of the ‘spreadsheet game’ with titles like Simcity and Civilisation (made by Triarch, the makers of the new Xcom game co-incidentally) enjoying their heyday. Even in this, Xcom stood out; marrying complex resource-management challenge with intricate and rewarding squad tactical combat. Along with this it managed a level of immersion unusual for games that basically looked like their art was drawn with a dot matrix printer.
Assassin’s Creed III: A Spoiler Free Review
Lately I’ve noticed that there seems to be a trend of ‘over-revealing’ in trailers for games. The trailers tell too much of the story or inadvertently give away something that is a major spoiler. It happens in films all the time, the difference being that at the cinema you are paying £6+ for a few hours, with a game you’re paying nearly 10 times that much and will be playing it for a considerable amount of hours; you don’t want to see something that will give you an idea of what’s to come.
So, in light of that, I’ve decided that in this review I will not mention a single thing about the story of Assassin’s Creed III. There is one of course and it involves people and places and people saying things to other people in those places. And Unicorns. OK that last one was a lie; wait is me telling you there aren’t any Unicorns a spoiler….Dammit! Anyway! Not a single word will leave my fingertips regarding the plot.
Assassin’s Creed III, despite the name, is the fifth game in the series. It’s been in development since the release of Assassin’s Creed II back in 2009. It’s had the longest development time of any of the games since the first one and it looks AMAZING.
The previous two games in the franchise were both based in large cities, Rome and Constantinople. Assassin’s Creed III takes places within a large portion of the Eastern United States and as such Ubisoft have crafted a world that is filled with colour and life. The Sun will shine, rain will come, leaves will fall, snow and blizzards will blot out the landscape. During your time within the Assassin’s Creed world you will experience each season and the landscape around you will change to reflect that, creating a world that feels real enough to touch.
And you will touch it! You’ll climb trees, hide in bushes, peek out from round corners, swim across rivers and streams, fend off animal attacks and maybe kill a few people too along the way. The world slowly opens up to you and it’s your choice what you do in it.
The untamed frontier isn’t the only thing to explore, the two main cities of the game, Boston and New York are both equally impressive. At first they give you the impression that actually, they aren’t that big, but then suddenly you’ll crest a hill or climb a tower and the true size of the city will be laid out before you. The cities in the New World had something that European cities did not, space. The settlers were able to make use of the untamed land available to them and could build outwards, as opposed to Europe where there was no space left so everything went up. The streets of Boston and New York are, for the most part, wide open thoroughfares, which after the almost claustrophobic layout of Rome and Constantinople, feels refreshing and gives you more room to manoeuvre when following targets.
Manoeuvring around the world of Assassin’s Creed III has been become as close to perfection as possible. Ubisoft have removed the need to press an additional button to begin parkouring all over the place. Now you just point and press the RT or R1 button and you are off. This gives a much more seamless feel to the whole experience and allows you to kill whilst on the fly. Which is nice.
Speaking of killing, you’ll be doing plenty of that. Oh yes, there’s a lot of killing to be done. It’s not that there are more reasons to kill; it’s that when you do have to kill, you’ll be killing a lot more people. Does that make sense?
Assassin’s Creed III runs on the new Anvil Engine, which as well as giving us the gorgeous landscapes and backdrops previously mentioned, it also allows for more people to be on the screen at any one time. This makes the game more believable when you launch an attack on an enemy base and encounter an almost never ending supply of people to stick with the pointy end of which ever weapon you are holding.
Combat has also been tweaked to be a smoother affair. The counter/combo system remains intact and each button is assigned a ‘finishing’ option to either, throw, disarm, kill or use a tool. You can easily build up a run of combo’s before performing a final slightly bloody finishing move.
Combat isn’t just restricted to the land either. As you’ll have seen from numerous clips and screenshots, there are now naval missions. Due to my initial promise of no story spoilers I can’t say how you’ll acquire a ship but you do and it’s great! The naval battles had the slight whiff of mini game that made the Tower Defence sequences in Assassin’s Creed: Revelations really dull to play, BUT thankfully the whiff was just a passing sea breeze. Your ship will rise and crash across the Atlantic doing battle with the might of the English Navy. Naval warfare isn’t particularly tricky, more of a case of getting alongside them and shooting, but they also shoot back so it’s more about trying to limit the damage taken whilst trying to move your ship into position. It ends up being a game of skill rather than brute force.
Multiplayer has also had a new lick of paint. A new Wolf Pack mode allows you and friends to work together to kill a set of NPC’s. This is in contrast to the more familiar Assassinate mode where it is every one for them self. The updated engine makes the assassinate mode even trickier now that the amount of people on screen has been increased. If you were a fan of the multiplayer options in the previous games then you’ll be happy with these, if you weren’t then I’m not sure that enough has changed to bring you into the fold.
One thing that I personally enjoyed about the game was the fact I felt I was actually learning something. This is not new for the franchise, but the time period the game is set in isn’t one that, as an English person, I was familiar with. Coming across the different people whose names are part of modern culture thanks to the over familiarity of Hollywood was a learning experience, and was made all the more enjoyable by the rather sardonic nature of the write ups in the Animus Database.
Assassin’s Creed III is a great game, it feels like the breath of fresh air the series needed after languishing in the Renaissance for too long. It still has some of the same faults such as frustrating camera angles, glitch prone NPC’s and ventriloquist cut scenes (the audio is there but the characters mouth doesn’t move), but it’s strange that they have become as much a part of the series as the hidden blades.
9/10
Dragon’s Dogma or: How I suck at the game I’ve wanted since I was 6
When Shadow of the Colossus came out it opened games up to a realistic fight system that has been lacking, I speak of course about, being able to climb and crawl up giant enemies. For too long were we forced to hack away at the ankles of behemoths, somehow able to fell them without much of a resistance. We just accepted that David smote Goliath before, but no more! Now these giants felt truly imposing and your disadvantage felt real.
SoTC was so widely praised of course it was only a matter of time before it was ripped off. The first most notable instance of that was the polarizing Castlevania: Lords of Shadow. While I’ll save discussing that game for another week suffice to say that it tried to mimic SoTC’s colossus combat but to a worse degree, too many quick-time events and a touchy, unforgiving hold system. Now a few years later we have the ever-baffling Capcom attempting the same thing but on a different scale. Dragon’s Dogma doesn’t just borrow from SoTC though, it also is heavily influenced by Capcoms most popular franchise in Japan: Monster Hunter. And really, combining Monster Hunter with Shadow of the Colossus is a brilliant idea that I am completely on board for. Or at least I was until I remembered one very important thing about Monster Hunter which is I totally suck at it.
Monster Hunter is a franchise that I so desperately want to like but can’t because of impatience and suckage with the controls. I love everything else about the game though, the massive bestiary of cool looking dragons/dinosaurs/monsters, the silly impractical fanservice-y armor, and its unrealistic approach to hunting and nature. I just can’t get over the slightly looser than Resident Evil controls. I probably just need to play it more and get used to it but time is a bit hard to find lately! I love the idea of having to eat and survive to be honest, after all I loved Harvest Moon, and I love being able to make armor out of the monsters you kill that looks so gaudy and ostentatious that it defies logical combat attire and realistically would probably get you killed by any monster more nimble than a Rhinoceros.
Dragon’s Dogma improves on the controls and combat aspect of the game but at the expense of being significantly blander looking. Ditching the vibrant and goofy world of Monster Hunter, Dogma opts to have a more Western fantasy look with grey castles and realistic-ish looking monsters. Cockatrices look like big turkey/cassowary’s and hydras like real world snakes. It’s not a BAD look but other than the monsters the world is a bit drab. I love the over world and everything being one giant map instead of segments. For one reason or another I’m not all that wild about dungeons and caves since they all seem to look the same. But the most important thing holding me back in Dragon’s Dogma isn’t the fault of Capcom (even though they left in the ridiculous J-pop rock song on the starting menu), or maybe it partially is.
This game is HARD. Not quite Dark Souls hard but still hard. Low level bandits are overwhelming my stupid ass and dropping me like a hot rock, which is odd considering I have little to no problem fighting 12 foot tall iguana people. I’d assume those guys would be harder much in the same way it’s harder to fight a gorilla than it is a person of equal size. Granted a gorilla can’t use a bow and arrow but I think their physical ability and ferocity make up for that. The game starts you off with a couple of quests against crippled monsters that you’ll fight later to pique your interest but after that the game kind of leaves you on your own. The difficulty spike is steep and it expects you to level on your own for a while so be prepared to fight a couple thousand wolves, goblins and small bands of bandits, not big bands of them because they will totally kill you. There’s a job posting board in town but for me all the quests were way out of my league and led me into dangerous territory and a very irate dragon. Perhaps I’ve grown too used to early game hand holding that I forgot the magic of exploring and adventure. Or perhaps I’m foolishly annoyed that slashing a guy 30 times in the neck with steak knives only took away 1/4th of his health bar.
The game is fun though and the ability to climb on pretty much anything including pigs and cattle leads to some pretty amusing moments. The companion system is a bit disappointing though, this game was MADE to be multiplayer, not babysitting 3 brain-dead robots. And don’t expect too much variety in companions from the player base, 2/3rds of them are super short skinny girls with big tits. Our chance to show the world our creativity just gets a bunch of creepy anime dorks creating their waifus. Really though why wasn’t this game on PC? Squad based action rpg is exactly what the PC needs and wants and this games got it. The games doing well and has gotten good praise enough for Capcom to claim they will develop the franchise which is good, but not because I think Capcom will do some good with it but because maybe someone will steal the idea and make it better, and on PC.
All in all I do recommend the game for those who love both action brawler games and RPGs like Skyrim. I know referencing Skyrim these days is overused but at least it’s pretty similar in this case. Successful franchises breed imitators. This sort of game needs as many imitators as possible to really refine the genre into something great. So grab a copy and start throwing pigs at your problems.
Sonic Jump
There are two reasons that Sonic Jump will feel familiar to you. Reason one is because it’s a Sonic game, you collect rings, defeat Dr Eggman and rescue cute animals. Reason two is that chances are you’ll have played one of the games that Sonic Jump is a clone of such as Doodle Jump.
Now here’s the interesting thing, reason one cancels out reason two and makes Sonic Jump one of the better additions to the franchise.
The Story of Sonic Jump is simple; Dr Eggman has again kidnapped some cute furry creatures to turn into his evil robots. Sonic must battle through three (initial) levels to rescue them. Not exactly rocket science. You’ll play through 12 rounds in each of the first three levels, with the 12th round being a battle with Eggman. The first three levels are Green Hills, Mountain Zone and Jungle Zone. There are more levels to come at a later date. There is also the arcade mode which is a never ending climb to see how far you can get.
Sonic moves through each round automatically and vertically. You control the direction of his jumps by tilting the device left or right and you’re able to do a double jump by tapping on the screen. The constant climb upwards has created one of the simplest Sonic games for a while.
Most fans of the Little Blue Blur will tell you that want only two things from Sonic, Speed & Rings, and while the first level isn’t the most taxing (Green Hill Zones never are!), once you reach Mountain Zone the game moves from being a simple jumping game to a more precise dance around a host of dangers. Disappearing ledges, platforms that rotate and drop you, rock falls, enemies and a multitude of those game ending spikes means that by the time you reach Jungle Zone you may have invented a few new swear words.
Graphically the game is beautiful, new Sega studio Hardlight, has done a fantastic job of bringing Sonic to life, the design is simple and harkens back to Sonic’s earlier days. As does the soundtrack, everything from the background music to the ring collecting to the enemy popping sounds perfect for the game
As you make your way through the game you’ll collect the Gold Rings that the franchise is known for. Difference is now you can spend them, the game has a store when you can exchange rings for items to help you such as bounce back nets if you fall, magnets to attract more rings, shields to protect you from harm and bombs to destroy enemies. You’ll unlock the items as you increase your level, you can increase level by completing in game missions such as defeat X amount of enemies, double jumping a number of times or finishing a round in a set amount of time.
Sonic Jump is not the greatest game available for your mobile device, but it is one of the best Sonic games to come around in a while. Sonic is best when he’s stripped down to the bare bones, no convoluted plot fines, Werehog transformations and no endless cast of annoying secondary characters. Just a blue hedgehog and the open road…..or in this case, skies.
Sonic Jump is available from the iTunes Store now and will arrive on Android in November. Check out the trailer below.