Mario Kart 8 Review

I don't think I need to explain Mario Kart to you, so I'm only going to cover the new things here. The most new and interesting mechanic is anti-gravity, where you can drive along walls and upside down. It's an interesting concept that makes for the most interesting track design the series has seen yet. It even mixes up the mechanics where in anti-gravity you will attempt to crash into other racers and obstacles in the road, where previously you'd want to avoid collisions, here you actually get a speed boost. It adds a new layer to the game where if you and a foe are far behind first, you can actually work together by crashing into each other to nab first place. Game mechanics like Bikes, new playable ATVs, Coins, Hang Gliding  Underwater Driving and Customisable Karts, Wheels and Glidars, among others, all get brought back for a racing experience full of variety.

The character roster is a mixed bag I feel, there are 30 characters to play as (including the Mii, ugh) and although many are great, there seems to be a lot of filler characters due to time constraints on the game and it's easy to see. There are two, heavier metal reskins of Mario and Peach, five baby versions of existing characters characters and seven of Bowser's children taking up space which really decrease the diversity of races when 14 racers are so similar to others (fortunately I adore the Koopalings and have wanted to see them playable for a long time since their release on the NES, they're shown below). Fortunately fan-favourites like Shy Guy and Lakitu are here, so there is sill variety somewhat. Also the characters are wonderfully and smoothly animated and they really show their personality whist doing flips and tricks over ramps, laughing absolutely manically when slamming an opponent with a shell, or blowing a kiss and winking to the audience when finishing first, the game just has so much charm all the while playing at 60 frames-per second at 1080p.

Also counting Bowser, Koopa and Lakitu, and maybe even Yoshi if you want (but I won't), there are ten turtles in the game! And yes, you drive up and down that waterfall in the background.

The track selection is the same count as ever, 16 new and 16 revamped retro tracks from past games with the new mechanics 8 introduces.The tracks are the best in the series as all of the different types of gameplay can create some incredible track design, be it driving up and down a waterfall, through a bustling Airport or jumping from a plane atop a snowy mountain and finishing all the way at the bottom with a final ski jump. There's just so much variety here, and with the wonderful live orchestrated music. there's little to go wrong with here.

Overall Mario Kart 8 is a fantastic game that anyone can play, but it's brutal to master. There are a few nitpicks  for me such as the odd choice of characters in the roster, online voice chat being limited to lobbies only and Battle Mode being Balloon Battle only, whilst being played on the actual tracks rather than having dedicated courses to that mode. Even so, if you have a Wii U this game is a must-buy.

It gets a 9.5/ 10 from me.

Frobisher Says with DLC Review

Frobisher Says is a free game on the PS Vita, or £2.99 with DLC that adds a lot of generous content. It's essentially Sony's version of WarioWare, when you play the game Frobisher will tell you to do something in the form of a minigame, and when you complete it he quickly tells you to do something else over and over until you mess up. It's fun and wacky as the games get faster and faster each time and are always random, but Frobisher himself is unintentionally terrifying with this deathly stare and crazy voice.

Regarding the minigames, with the DLC you get 50 different ones randomly appear and all of them are so quirky they must have been invented in the mind of a lunatic. Ones has you smile for the camera in real life with quite good recognition, another has you milk Frobisher's Mammoth as he's riding it, one has you pull out the plug from his bath and another has you ring a bell to wake up a sleeping village. There's no much creativity and variety in these games that even if you play them again (you will come across the same ones more and more), it's a blast to play and can keep you entertained for quite a while!

Unfortunately the game is only that and there are only two game modes to choose from, playing a certain amount of games and finishing them as fast as possible and sudden death, where you play endless games until you fail one. Some variety there would have been welcome, but overall considering the game is free (though quite barebones without the DLC), I'd recommend the game to any PS vita owner.

It gets a 7/10.

Portal 2 Review

Portal 2 is a game on the PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 which is a first-person shooter with an innovative twist. I played the PC version. It's a puzzle game where the guns don't kill people (there are no people to kill!), instead they shoot two portals, where you walk through one and come out the other. The entire game's 8-10 hour long adventure are based around these puzzle elements and Portal 2 is constantly throwing new ideas at you, be it redirecting lasers, blue gel that sticks to the floor and makes you bounce off it and an alien-like beam that picks you up towards the base. All these gameplay mechanics mold together well and merge into a great, fun gameplay experience while it lasts.

The game also has a really good story about you, a test subject, in a massive science facility trying to escape with a blue robot called Wheatley. All the while an evil AI woman (called GLADoS) is trying to kill you. It's a gripping tale and the story is always taking unexpected twists of which is thrilling for the player. The gameplay doesn't get stale however some of the puzzles were so difficult I found them infuriating, so I had no shame looking up an online walkthrough every now and again.

There's even a choice between online or local co-op for two players where you play as two robots (Atlas and P-Body) built by GLADoS taking the place of human test subjects as its own seperate story/ campaign mode. Meaning combined with the Steam Workshop where anyone can create their own test chambers with a relatively easy to use editor, there's a lot of content in this game!

Unfortunately, once you've finished both campaigns there's not much replay- value left inside, apart from the Community Test Chambers in the Steam Workshop as mentioned before. Unfortunately 95% of them are terrible and goes to show that nobody makes levels quite as good as the developers do. Also, there are microtransactions in this game in the form of virtual hats you can buy with real money. This is something I am strongly against and considering this is a full retail game pricing and retailing at around £15 on Steam, Valve shouldn't stoop as low as the free-to-play developers on Apple's App Store with their free games cluttered with microtransactions.  

Overall this game gets 7.5/10.

Octodad: Dadliest Catch Review

Octodad: Dadleist Catch is a brilliant game on the PC and PS4 that's designed to be hilarious. It's about a Man with a wife and two children who has a big secret, he's really an octopus in disguise. The hilarity shines through when Octodad tries to do ordinary everyday tasks like to to the supermarket or mow the lawn, which is very difficult for a slippery octopus who slides around the screen. Of course nobody suspects who he really is, apart from the sushi chef who live next door. he's trying to hunt down and kill Octodad, it's a lighthearted story for a lighthearted game that doesn't take itself seriously. And I love that.

One of my gripes with this game is it's so short, only about 2 hours long. But you'll be laughing the whole time and the longevity is extended by the Steam Workshop. But the game's got so much quality and little quantity it just doesn't deliver what a great character like Octodad deserves. The game's character dialouge is spoken all the way through and you really start to get attached to them and can't bare to see them go. The voice acting of every single character is superb and helps their personality and quirkiness shine through, with Octodad himself not even talking. He just makes 'blob' and 'blib' noises that are adorable to listen to.

As a whole this is a great, cheap-as-chips indie game that should not be missed. I only hope this game gets another entry in the series, as I demand more! The creativity shines and more games as a whole should be like this, not take themselves too seriously and not be afraid to become down-right hilarious and silly.

Overall the game gets 8/10.

Yoshi's New Island Review

Yoshi's New Island is the third game in the series that recently released on the Nintendo 3ds and it's been 8 years since the last Yoshi's Island game was made, all the way back in 2006 on the DS, which was a wonderful game. However, Yoshi's New Island tries to forget that ever existed and instead attempts to copy the SNES Classic in every possible way, and do a bad job of it to boot. Problem is, the game hasn't aged well enough considering it's 19 years old. So New Island tries to copy a dated game with aged mechanics. It's not that the mechanics are bad really, or that the game itself is awful, but it's just gone through a lot of bad development choices.

The game is a 2d platformer where you traverse from left to right, and Yoshi has a variety of abillities such as eating enemies to lay eggs (you ca then throw those eggs at enemies and objects to progress), pounding the ground and flutter jumping... everything the original had. The game has slowed down the physics of the gameplay to focus more on exploration, but Yoshi just takes forever to go anywhere. He runs extraordinarily slowly and the developers decided to slow down every action, probably to also pad out the shockingly short levels. The game doesn't really introduce any 'New' gameplay elements, even though the game's title says otherwise. There are a few new enemies and Giant Eggs that Yoshi can throw, but it's essentially new levels with better graphics using a lot of the foundations of the original.

The game's art-style is really good and innovative though, it's one of the few things in the game I can safely say is good. The game's levels and characters are themed after a storybook, with crayon coloured hills and water painted shaded enemies. Sadly some of the level themes can clash with each other that just looks weird, for example one level has a grey black and white background but fully bright platforms and enemies in the foreground that just looks odd, and another has a volcano that shoots lava rocks at you, that emit a weird radioactive glow that looks unnatural.

True next-gen graphics for sure. In all seriousness though, the art-style's great, but if viewed on anything but a 3ds screen the game looks horrific and trailers do no favours for its visuals.

Sadly from that bad point we move on to another, the soundtrack. Oh God the soundtrack! Essentially every single level in the game (minus the castle, fortress and boss levels) use the same, mediocre boring music track remixed constantly to fit each them of the level. Some say it's a style, but I say it's atrocious. Seriously, just listen to this monstrosity! This should give anyone an idea of what horrible sounds await them in this game. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9RN2tSJIKM The game's primary instrument is a kazoo to simulate a children's playroom, and everyone knows a kazoo isn't even an instrument. It's a torture device.

Overall, I may love Yoshi as a video game character massively and adore his design, but that's not enough to save this game. It's not a train wreck I'd say, but it's got an extremely niche audience.

Overall it gets a 5/ 10.

Tearaway Review

Tearaway is a game for the PS Vita created by the team behind Little Big Planet. It's a lovely little game that's full of amazing ideas. The art-style is very innovative setting the scene as the entire world is made out of paper that folds in and out with realistic effects and sounds. The game's genre itself is a really quirky and fun mix of puzzle solving with 3d platforming, two types of games I very much enjoy.

The mechanic of the games are very intuitive and never feel forced, where new ideas will be thrown at you throughout the whole game, from putting your fingers on the PS vita's touch pad, allowing them to show up in the game and help the character go forward, to the ability to make clothes and objects for the characters and even have you become a character in the game taking the form of the sun.

Leading on from my last point, the game has two heroes, you and Iota, who has a message for you. You must guide him through the world to get to reach the sun where you as an in-game character live, as a huge being in the sky so you can hear what he needs to say with the letter. There's a lot of charm to be had with the majority of characters and enemies in this game, as they have very distinct and adorable designs.

The sound in the game is a mixed bag, on one side the sound effects are brilliant and a few music tracks are rather catchy, sadly the rest of the music I found to be extremely bothersome as they were seemingly short, repetitive and obnoxious that made me just want to turn the sound down. Of course it features a lot of kazoos and other bizarre instruments that shouldn't actually be used to play music with.

Overall if you own a PS Vita Tearaway is a must-buy, I had a blast playing it and since music is only a matter of taste, others may adore it. However the game is great in most regards, however it's quite short only shy of 5-6 hours so don't go rushing out your house to buy a PS vita just yet for it, however you will be in for a lovely expierience!

Th game gets 8.5 out of 10.

FarmVille Review

Way back in 2009- 2010 when FarmVille first came out, it was all the rage. I myself loved and relished the game as did many others. I got to the point of sessions where I'd set my alarm clock to 4 o'clock in the morning just to wake up and harvest the most profitable crops! These were the days when Zynga (the developers) weren't greedy. These were the days before FarmVille cash (a real life paid currency) and everything that doesn't cost that these days are priced at extortionate prices of say, 1 million coins for an animal. So the game has plummeted downhill min quality and popularity, however still quite a few people play it for some reason.

In he game you own a farm, and do things you normally do when owning a farm such as harvesting crops and trees, owning animals, etc. Problem is, the game is a fee-to-play model. Which means it's riddle with everyone's favourite microtransactions! The problem is, Zynga aren't even trying to hide their greed with the ruthless paid content, they've spent more time adding purple unicorns than the have spent adding to the bare-bones structure of the game. There's just nothing gameplay wise, except waiting to harvest your crops and sitting looking how much better your friend's farms are than yours.

The sound effects in this game are nothing short of abysmal. Depending on what animals you have on their farm, they'll make a random noise every now and again from a small selection of royalty- free stock sounds. The more you have, the more noises are made. My game has reached the point where I literally have around 400/500 animals on my main farm, and oh boy you can imagine the spam that comes out of my speakers. The music in this game is great, but it's literally just the one, main theme that loops endlessly so much that it'll be ingrained into your skull. So when you see a game like this actively try and make you turn off the sound while playing it, you know they didn't really try.

So yeah, try the game out if you want. It's not that good, but it is free. But just make sure that you can take the amount of in-game pop-up spam you'll receive, because they love letting you know how much you should buy everything for crazy- high prices. Also watch out for the in-game 'quests', if you can call them that. You'll receive far too many that really puts off returning players considering all the pop-ups actually hinder you from just playing the game.

Farmville gets a 3 out of 10.