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.

Goat Simulator Review

Goat Simulator is a very new game that released on April the 1st that really is 'next-gen'. There isn't much to explain about the game, as the name implies has you play as a Goat (with more unlockable Goats such as Tall, Satan and Feather Goats). You go about the life of a Goat doing the realistic things they do 'simulating' their life, such as running around town, head-butting things, licking things, baaaing (using the baaa button), gallop and jumping around, blowing up Petrol Stations and jumping off construction cranes, bouncing off a trampoline and landing inside a high-security anti-gravity testing area. Nothing particularly exciting.

The game costs £7 (£6.20 if you preordered, not exactly as cheap as chips but still cheaper) and only really offers about three hours of hysterical gameplay but once you've explored and collected anything, there's not really much else to do. But wait! Although barren at the moment, CoffeeStain Studios (the developers) have incorporated Steam Workshop into the game along with the nececery tools for fans to make, well, whatever they want for it. They have also announced another map with more things to do, plus local splitscreen multiplayer that's due to arrive in an update during May.

Overall, this game has potential to become really expansive as it's still early days, so I'd say wait it out for a while and nab it while on offer in a Steam Sale. You can't really give a score to a game like this, since it's more of a joke than a game. But even so, short at the moment, this game could actually be considered art.

Goat/ 10. (Seriously though, 8).

The Sims 3 + A Few Expansion Packs My Adentures/ Review

What can I say? Even though the Sims 3 released in 2009 I just never got round to buying it until last week. I played the Sims 2 and Sims 2 Pets years ago 'back in the day' on the Gamecube and friends/ family's PS2s. And haven't even played the 1st, although most say it hasn't aged well. It's still regarded as a PC classic and the Sims has managed to keep moving forward with the evolution of video games. But after seeing how much content is in this new game and how much I really liked the second, I decided to give this a buy. Along with the base game, I also obtained numerous expansions including: Pets, Seasons, Supernatural, Island Paradise, Generations, Garden Stuff, Into The Future and Katy Perry's Sweet Treats (I had no choice, they have cotton candy trees! And I adore food so, yeah).

Whoa nelly! That's a massive amount of stuff for one game! And really, it's a bit too much! After making a town with my family Fat Bob the local sales assistant fairy (even with wings!) who is also a slob and couch potato, Burgundy Blue his angry witch wife as an overly athletic woman in a hot-dog suit who puts glasses on when she goes to sleep/ goes swimming with two cats, a dog and a horse, I started to explore the game.

Now backtracking a bit, when I say 'I made this family', it was no quick task, it took around 1 hour of loading screens and creating of my house/ family before I even started playing the game! And speaking of the house, it was a load of furniture on a boat that could go across the ocean, naturally. As I settled into the game I found myself not taking it seriously enough. As my family had children and established jobs I found myself toying with their lives and everyone around them.

Firstly I made the obese 'Crazy Cat Lady' live down the street, who owned six cats and visited her as Burgendy. After a rude introduction I threw a potion of mummification at her and casted a spell of fire that not only burned her into ash, but tore down half her house before the fire brigade arrived, Burgendy smugly sad there in the dead Cat Lady's rocking chair. I really had gotton bored of everyday life in the Sims within about three hours.

(Essentially the damage that was done to poor Crazy Cat Lady's home)

After I stopped playing the Sim 3, I came to realise it's not a game you play all at once, you play it in little bits at a time for years to come, upgrading your game slowly with the constant expansion packs. No wonder I was so overwhelmed missing out after all this time! So overall I would heartily recommend this game to anyone, hardcore and casual gamers alike. Because it's pretty genuine fun, and it's really rewarding to see your family grow. I've been constantly coming back to the game after over a week of owning it, and it's great fun in short bursts! (Well, as short as the long loading times will allow.) It's much better than the Sims and Sims 2, due to all the new content and connected towns, so buy it if you please!

Overall it gets 8/10!

Garry's Mod Review

After playing multiple LAN games each week at college, I can safely say it's time to give Garry's Mod my ol' opinionated view!

The game is such fun to play, and it's HIL-A-RIOUS to play with people, the more the better! Yet without mods and as a game on its own, besides shooting other players constantly, attaching elastic ropes to random objects and setting off multiple key-controlled bombs at spawn. There just isn't much to do! I suppose it's got that whole 'Minecraft thing' about it where, you actually need to be dedicated and focused on what you want to do, and you actually have to have an idea of what you want to do too. You don't really mess around with it, but making inventions takes a long while to do.

Singleplayer is even more boring, with the only real benefit having no hyper friends who bulldoze through and destroy your creations. But this is where the game needs mod support. There are so many mods on the Steam Workshop that can enhance the game, yet only a handful are fully multiplayer compatable. But if you get a dedicated group of friends with the right map an goal, you can have a pretty good time.

Overall, if you see this game on sale, I'd heartily recommend it to you. But if you don' know anyone else with the game, I'd say to pass on it as playing with sweaty losers you don't know on servers is no fun! Even so, if you're more creative than me. Go for it!

It gets 7/10.