Super Mario 64

• Developers: Nintendo
• Publisher: Nintendo
• Genre: Platformer
• Platforms: N64
• Release Date: 23rd June 1996
• Microtransactions: No

Pointy Polygon Pounding

So as I write this the switch has been out for a week and I am thoroughly enjoying every minute of its portable/TV console glory. Whilst the launch line up may be lacking it’s got me looking at the upcoming games and one has definitely peaked my interest much more than the others- Super Mario Adventure….. Sorry I mean odyssey.

Due to this trailer I was compelled to share my memories with you not from this game but from its Great grandad-Super Mario 64, quite possibly the greatest 3d platformer ever made. Picture the scene- Early March 1997, I swapped my Sega Saturn plus 10-15 games (which are probably worth a bloody fortune now) for a Nintendo 64 console with star wars shadows of the empire and Turok dinosaur hunter at Mega Swap in Accrington. The game I wanted more than anything was currently out of stock but a small glimmer of hope was given when the owner told me ‘ I know someone who is swapping their copy for Pilot wings tomorrow’

Bob Hoskins!

Holy Moly!!!! I rushed home to test out my new games and whilst I enjoyed Turok I decided that was the one I was going to swap for Mario. Saturday arrived and I begged my mum to take me over to Accrington so I could be there when the shop opened. One Turok plus £5 later and Mario 64 was in my hands!

I rang my best friend and he was round my house faster than the penguin on ‘cool cool mountain’. The game boots up and I hear the now famous ‘IT’S A ME MARIOOO!’ then the massive Italian plumbers mug fills my screen. That’s it I was hooked it was simply the best graphics I was ever going to see in my entire life, I mean how could it get better than this!!!

Then the opening cut scene with Lakitu flying through the world and under the bridge until the magic moment came and Mario jumps from the pipe and I took control. It truly was an amazing moment that nearly brought my 14 year old self to tears. From then it was 120 stars of pure platforming perfection. Racing giant KOOPA’s up a mountain, turning into a Mario version of the T-1000, swimming to the depths of a giant lagoon and then to top it off spinning a huge Bowser with his tail like something from a cartoon.

Looking at the game now, sure it has the classic N64 jaggies but it still holds up and who would have thought Nintendo perfecting the genre on their first attempt. There is only a select few games I will regularly replay every couple of years and without fail Super Mario 64 is the game I can always come back to and complete a few stars when the outside world is getting me down. If you have never played this game please please please give it a go and I promise you it will change your life!

PROS

• Control perfection for a 3D platformer
• Excellent variety of levels
• Changed the face of gaming forever  (editor’s note: These are the opinions of our freelance writer)

CONS

• Wish it had more stars to just keep going
• Hi editor here again, just trying to add balance. With some actual cons.
• Terrible clipping
• Falling through the world (or did Super Mario 64 invent that and everyone copied?)
• No luigi

Verdict

9.9/10   editors note: With all the bugs in this game, even to this day I believe this score is to high. 9.7/10 is more about right.

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Watch Dogs 2

• Developers:  Ubisoft Montreal, Ubisoft Bucharest, Ubisoft Reflections, Ubisoft Paris, Ubisoft Toronto
• Publisher: Ubisoft
• Genre:  Action Adventure
• Platforms: PlayStation 4 (Reviewed), Xbox One, Microsoft Windows
• Release Date: 15th November 2016
• Microtransactions: yes

Anonymous

Another month another Ubisoft open world game but is it any good?

Watch Dogs 2 is the sequel to the underwhelming original released in 2014. For those that have never heard of the series the basic gist is you play a hacker in a world controlled by the internet and big corporations are manipulating you to control your life. At your disposal is your trusty mobile phone which can be used to hack the city’s servers and control traffic lights, gas mains etc. it really is a novel idea and in Watchdogs 2 it is incorporated quite well.

Ctrl-Alt Del

The game is set in San Francisco and you play as Marcus a 20-something who has just joined the hacker group DED-SEC. You are joined b a gang on mis-fits including a familiar face from the first game and a bloke with a electronic mask covering his face. If im honest the dialogue between the group was a tad cringy in parts and sometimes come across as Ubisoft executives writing what they think is ‘cool’ and ‘hip’ but overall they are likeable.

The storyline follows the gang trying to topple Blume the evil big corporation controlling the city. It hits similar beats to TV shows such as Mr Robot and I found it very entertaining and I definitely wanted the main villain to get his comeuppance.

Monkey Fist

As well as the lengthy storyline there is quite a lot of side activities to complete such as drone racing and crazy taxi style driving missions. The missions are also varied- one minute you’re infiltrating a Google rip off and the next you’re cracking into cash machines and deciding wither or not to credit or debit cash from different people. I must also mention the soundtrack which is excellent, it works in a radio style and the licensed tracks are great.

Streets Of San Francisco

Now unfortunately we do have to talk about some of the negatives in the game, Watch Dogs 1 was criticised for being a bit boring and dull so for Watch Dogs 2 Ubisoft has cranked everything up to 11 with the colourful visuals and wacky residents of the city. The issue with this is it comes across extremely similar in style to, in my opinion, the ultimate sandbox game GTA 5. Now GTA 5 does everything pretty much that this game does but it does it better. If you can get pass this or have become bored with GTA 5 then I definitely recommend you give it a go.

The sales figures for this game have been a bit poor so its often on sale and can be picked up quite cheaply. All in all I would definitely recommend this is if you’re a fan of open world stealthy shooters with an engaging storyline plus lots and lots to do.

8/10

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The Typing Of The Dead

• Developer: WOW Entertainment, Smilebit
• Publisher: Sega
• Platforms: Dreamcast, Arcade, Windows, Playstation 2, iOS
• Release Date:  30th March 2000 (Dreamcast)

We’re Meeting G Over There

So its been awhile since my last review and thats mainly down to a couple of reasons.

1. Im a lazy sod and more importantly
2. I’ve been addicted to the typing of the dead!

‘Woah woah woah there you idiot ‘ i hear you scream ‘its HOUSE of the dead not typing!’. Well sit down and ill tell you a short story on one of the weirdest, most excellent dreamcast/arcade games out there.

This game came out around in an era when SEGA was really experimenting with genres and their own titles spawning such classics as SEAMAN and jet set radio. They were not afraid to try anything. First released in japanese arcades in 1999 the game was a mod of sorts of the 1998 arcade sequel ‘The house of the dead 2’ The arcade cabinet is a sight to behold with a similar shape to the original light gun cabinet but the guns are replaced with bright white keyboards.

Less than a year later a port was released to the new SEGA console the dreamcast but only in North america and Japan, us europeans never got chance to play it except if you exploited the dreamcasts poor piracy restrictions *cough Utopia cough*.

The game is a carbon copy of house of the dead 2 but the characters in the game are all running round with dreamcasts on thier backs with keyboards attached to them, looking like some freaky SEGA ghostbusters. The difference between the two games is in house of the dead 2 you blasted away at the zombies using various guns here we use our typing skills! So for example a zombie pops up with the words ‘You’re Toast’ and you must quickly type this word out using all correct grammar and once completed the zombie dies and you are given a rating on how quick and efficiently you typed out the words.

The game also has the ‘excellent’ voice acting which was most prevalent in zombie games of that era, maybe the a zombie apocalypse is just another day for these guys! Another point I must make is some of the phrases that are asked of you to type, sure you get normal sentences like a ray of hope or small words like DO but its get weirder and weirder as you progress with sentences such as ‘i want to fill a bra’ and ‘touch my wattle’ Yeah it goes very very strange.

With some excellent boss fights and just a quirky concept It’s definitely one to pick up if you have the means to play it.

8/10

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• Developer: Capcom, Nex Entertainment, Capcom Production Studio 4
• Publisher: Capcom, Virgin Interactive
• Platforms: Playstation, Playstation 3, Playstation Portable, Microsoft Windows
• Release Date: 1st July 1999

With last years reboot of the Jurassic park franchise it got me thinking about what dinosaur related games I used to play. The Jurassic park games of the 16 bit era were fair to middling, with the titular game being the usual platforming licensed games of the early to mid 90’s. We had to wait until 1999 when resident evil director Shinji Mikami developed the survival horror classic Dino Crisis.

The game is set in the futuristic year of 2009, a team of special operatives named Secret Operation Raid Team, or SORT for short, are dispatched to Ibis island to take the evil scientist Dr Edward Kirk (who was presumed dead) back into custody. You control stunning polygonal sexpot Regina, and on arrival at the island you discover, that it has been taken over by dinosaurs, and not the nice friendly triceratops kind, but the flesh eating carnivore raptors! Its up to you and your team to discover how and why this has happened and get off the island (hopefully with all your limbs intact).

The gameplay is similar to resident evil but has some key differences. Namely the rooms in resident evil had pre-rendered backgrounds whereas in Dino Crisis they are all real time generated 3D and was a technical marvel on the PS1. The enemies also follow you from room to room, and in a nod to Jurassic park the raptors can open doors! Shinji liked to describe the game not as survival horror but as panic horror due to quick movements of the dinosaurs and random events occurring involving the giant T-REX. Other than the technical difference the game does play like your typical survival horror fare such as reading diaries of previous employees and solving puzzles.

Which brings me onto one of the negatives about this game, the puzzles. Towards the back end of the game I found the game relied on them too much and these rooms usually meant no dinosaurs which was slightly disappointing. Also, even though the game was a technical achievement for the ps1 you could still see the machine straining to the point that you could predict that the rooms with the most stuff going on in them e.g. an x-ray machine, that there would be no dinosaurs to fight as good ol’ PS1 just couldn’t cope.

Other than that the game was a great experience and in some ways my 16 year old self preferred this to resident evil. The game was ported to Dreamcast and windows but in all honesty there’s not much difference between all the ports. Dino Crisis was a huge hit on release and is currently Capcom’s 18th best selling game of all time- not bad to say they release a street fighter every 5 minutes. It also spawned two sequels the action orientated Dino Crisis 2, which added combo building and basically unlimited ammo into the mix, and the obligatory Dino Crisis in space with number 3. Both these sequels have there plus points and negative points but for me it will always be the first and original game that I would always come back to, If you’ve never played it give it a go. I just hope one day they reboot it instead of releasing lacklustre resident evil sequels every few years and with the success of Jurassic World now is a better time than ever.

Score

8/10

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Looking back over the releases of 2015 it was a great year for gaming. I spent many hours walking the wastelands of the commonwealth and taking down super villians in gotham city. The thing is these are things Ive done time and time again but I cant remember that last time I controlled a computer generated avatar of Hayden Panettiere in a towel? But the wait was finally over in 2015 as Supermassive Games developed the PS4 exclusive Until Dawn.

The game tells the story of 10 friends who meet up at a lodge in the Blackwood Mountains in Alberta Canada which is owned by the parents of Josh and his twin sisters Hannah and Beth. The games prologue shows the friends getting very merry. Whilst Josh is passed out drunk the other friends prank Hannah into thinking she is going to sleep with one of the friends – Mike. When the other friends jump out she is humiliated and runs off into the woods. Her sister Beth goes after her and they are then chased by someone or something which eventually leads them to go toppling over the mountain side to their deaths.

The story picks up a year later with all the friends being brought back together at the same lodge by Josh who wants to remember his sisters by having a drunk sexy dancing party or so it seems!! The premise of the game is heavily built upon the idea of the ‘butterfly effect’ which is the theory that even the smallest action can have huge reactions the most recognisable example being a butterfly flapping its wings on one side of the world leading to a hurricane on the other.

Throughout the game you control the 8 remaining friends whilst they make their way up to the lodge and you make decisions on seemingly small things such as throwing a snowball at someone or going through a friends bag. Every decision made in the game effects something and its one of the first games I have played that this has rang true.

Once at the lodge that’s when things start to go wrong and every single slasher movie cliché occurs from false jump scares to the teenagers falling over and telling their friends to ‘go on without them’ but this isn’t a bad thing and it’s a great rollercoaster ride through the surprisingly lengthy game. It really is a fun well told story with twists and turns throughout and the game has a unique feature in that every single member of the group can make it to the end, they can all die or a mixture of the two meaning multiple playthroughs is a must.

Another reason why I loved playing this game is the fact that my wife played it with me. Now my wife is definitely not a gamer and the most she stretches to is candy crush saga but due to its realistic depictions of the actors playing the roles, the voice acting and the horror movie theme she loved it and it was great to share my gaming passion with her. To wrap up if you want a game that is funny, scary, great to look at and most importantly fun then I would definitely recommend Until dawn. It is a single player game but I feel its much better when played in a room full of your friends just make sure you have a PlayStation eye set up as it records certain jump scares and they are great to look back on!

Score 8/10

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16th June 2015- There I was sat watching the Sony E3 press conference expecting the usual franchises with their usual updates and so far it was business as usual. ‘yippee’ I thought sarcastically -ps4 getting the COD maps early. New footage of Uncharted 4 showing off the power of the PS4, last guardian footage and street fighter 5 looking great.

So far so predictable it was very late so I was dozing whilst watching until suddenly the room goes dark and a familiar tune plays with the words ‘Shenmue’s story was left incomplete’ blazended across the screen. My 32 year old brain could not compute the images I was seeing and it the first time in my life where I actually pinched myself to check if I was awake. Yu Suzuki, one of-in my opinion- the greatest game developers of all time, announces SHENMUE 3. Holy moly!! Its real…… well if us fans pay for it!! Yes this was the Shenmue3 kick-starter announcement. The game I had been waiting for all my adult life is finally real!! Luckily it was funded in no time at all and now the long wait is on for the actual release date.

Why should anyone care about a sequel to a 15 year old game that many of the current generation of gamers wont have played or even cared about? Well make yourself comfortable and ill tell you about the tale of Ryo Hazuki, his dead dad, evil Lan Di and some bloody sailors- the truly wonderful and magnificent Shenmue.

Originally being developed for the Saturn before shifting development onto the white magician- the Dreamcast. The game is very unique as its based in 1986 in Yokosuka Japan. It starts as all good stories start with a murder at the hands of a kung fu master named Lan Di. You see Ryo’s dad has a mysterious artefact known as the dragon mirror and Lan Di demands it from him, a scuffle occurs and Lan Di threatens to kill Ryo so his dad gives up the location of the mirror- beneath a cherry blossom tree in the garden. Its then that Lan di gives the finishing blow and murders his dad and he dies in Ryos arms. The game then puts you in the shoes of Ryo and you have to investigate the murder. Thus begins a web of intrigue and betrayal and numerous weird and wonderful characters including the pre-mentioned sailors.

The gameplay was revolutionary at the time as it was completely open world and it felt more like a life simulator than an actual game. You could just spend your time shopping for capsule toys of popular Sega characters for your collection or nipping down the arcade to play arcade perfect conversions of space harrier rather than find your dads killers. It inspired countless games and arguably laid the foundations for 3d open world games such as Grand theft auto and the Yakuza Series.

It wasn’t all good as the game did have very clunky controls even for its time and the voice acting is ridiculous but I feel that just adds to its charm and the game gave birth to the QTE or quick time event which divides gamers to this day. There is a fighting mechanic which is a like a very dumbed down virtua fighter- which is understandable as it was originally titled Virtua Fighter RPG and was going to be the adventures of Akira before switching to its current state.

It really is a unique and excellent experience that I feel everyone should at least try. I think ill finish with a quote from Brendan Main from the escapist- If the Grand Theft Auto games have been vilified as crime simulators in which you can press a button to buy a hooker then run a hooker over with a car, Shenmue is a game where you can press a button to politely ask directions, then combo into cherishing your elders and always remembering to recycle. Instead of giving us a city to be tested and battered against in all directions, Shenmue builds you a world and asks you to follow the rules rather than break them

It is pretty expensive to pick up a copy due to the announcement of Shenmue 3 but it is definitely worth your while and I haven’t even mentioned the also excellent sequel Shenmue 2, but we’ll save that for next time!

8/10

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