Video Game Review: Yoshi's New Island 3DS

I loved the original Yoshi's Island. It was just so fun! Of course, by the original game I mean the remake of Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island that was ported to the Gameboy Advance in 2002 and named Super Mario Advance 3 because the Japanese can't name things. For examples of this, look no further than the Wii U or the New 3DS XL.

But yeah:

This. This game was amazing. 

You play as the Yoshi's, a group of multicoloured Yoshi who safeguard Mario against the evil Kamek and his minions who are attempting to steal him. I guess the art department got bored, made nine different colour palettes for Yoshi and just ran with all of them.

Anyway, the Yoshi find Mario after he drops from the sky in a blanket. A stork carrying Baby Mario and Baby Luigi to his parents was ambushed by Kamek and Baby Mario gets dropped and Kamek makes off with Baby Luigi and somehow the stork.

Anyway, you fight tonnes of bosses embedded with powers given by Kamek including slime, a crab, a piranha, a raven.

The fights were unpredictable and hilarious. Since you'd fight a bigger version of the smaller enemies you were jumping on and squashing, you'd think you'd get a sense of "Oh, just use the same tactics, right?"

WRONG.

Raphael the Raven was a brilliantly thought out fight. It started out with you scaling a tower to fight the raven. You've got to keep going up whilst a large pit of lava suddenly rises. If you fall down you die. 

So you get to the top, see the tiny enemy, Kamek rolls up and sprays magic multicoloured shit on it and you think "Ok, the room looks fairly empty. Not sure how this fight is going to play out. He's a raven, seen these before. Not dangerous. Slightly bouncy."

That's when the raven rams you, you bounce off the walls, into the sky and the Raven follows you.

SURPRISE MOTHERFUCKER, YOU'RE ON THE MOON. Look at that tower you came from! Forget that, you're on the moon now! The rules are different here!

I was so addled by this weirdness, it took me a while to figure out how to beat the boss despite the solution being pretty simple. (Groundpound on the pegs when Raphael walks over them.)

Another memorable fight was Prince Froggy. He gets made big...

Then he just eats you. Before you have a chance to move.

WELCOME TO FROGBELLY. HOPE YOU SURVIVE.

So Shy Guys, the hooded little enemy people, leak through his abdomen, you eat them, make eggs and fire them at his lungs until he dies of heart failure.

I was nine years old and I'd never seen a game so fun. It had everything. Collectables like red coins, flowers and stars which increased your counter in the top right hand corner. Extra levels you unlock once you've got all the unlockables

I'm 21 now and this has been released.

I wouldn't recommend this to my worst enemy. The art is awful, the enemies are either the same or worse, the bosses (SIX unoriginal and awful bosses down from FOURTEEN because the rest are just Kamek fights that make no sense.) are uninspired. The control scheme is wank, the responsiveness is piss-poor and it's just awful.

Nintendo have just lost the handle repeatedly on making a unique and compelling game. It's as interesting as pocket lint, as refreshing as drinking hot tar and as funny as someone with thalidomide poisoning. 

Potentially the developers at Nintendo all have thalidomide poisoning. That would explain why they keep losing the handle of things.

And this:

MR PIPE. WHO AT NINTENDO DEVELOPED MR PIPE?

This awful bastard gives you power ups if you die too much in a level. So if you're repeating a level trying to collect shit and having a grand old time dying because you need to get all the red coins and sunflower, then he's here to urinate on your cornflakes by puffing out Flutterwings that give you infinite hover so you can fly through the entire level or Golden Flutterwings which stop you from dying.

Well fuck you, Nintendo. Are nine year olds these days too bowl headed to play an actual game and instead need to just ride this game like a bloody roller coaster at an amusement park? I'm sorry, I thought having a challenge was fun?

And then the final boss battle was just a rehashed fight of the GBA version that was watered down to the extreme with all the excitement drained out of it.

And then the ending happens and it's exactly the same as the last version.

And then Bowser pops out of nowhere "from time and space" and you fight him in a stage which is just like the one in Super Marios Bros with the shitty switch and everything.

And then Kamek uses magic powder and you fight him again, in an exact copy of the first fight.

Then the credits roll and you find out that Mr Pipe is actually Mario who has gone back in time to give out power ups and be a shithead who's ruining national IQ's, stopping kids from thinking for themselves or learning independence and generally being a dickhole.

As for the extra levels that used to be in the original? Forget them being unlocked after you've got collectibles, you just open them when you've repeated enough levels.

BECAUSE EVERYONE IS A WINNER AND YOU SHOULDN'T FEEL AS IF YOU HAVE TO WORK TO ACHIEVE SOMETHING.

MODERN VIDEO GAMES.

So in conclusion, shit game.

But it's not really for me, is it? I'm not the target demographic.

Still,  I strongly feel that kids deserve a better Yoshi's Island than this one.

Video Game Review: Destiny.

I can't do a proper review. I mean, I'd love to but I just can't judge this game at how it currently stands with the promise of multiple free extra packs and two expansions.

So I write this to generally give you an idea about the game and just give you an equal measure of its pros and cons.

So, Destiny is a game set on Earth in the future 28th century in a post-apocalypse world. After a big ol' white sphere called "The Traveller" has arrived and increased human knowledge tenfold by introducing them to better technology, the humans have conquered the farthest reaches of the galaxy and have prospered in a new "Golden Age."

Unfortunately, The Traveller brought about an event called "The Collapse" which was brought about by either an evil entity called The Darkness that can still be stopped/that can't be stopped/ the traveller trying to get rid of the Darkness.

So shit went down for three reasons that differ depending on various accounts, all of them vague, none of them described fully in-game.

Why can't we go fly to The Traveller? I don't know. What is The Traveller? I don't know. Why is this games story so incredibly straight-faced? I don't know at all.

In fact, story is fairly minimal in Destiny. There's just not a massive focus. Ask any Destiny player who they're fighting and why and you'll get an answer such as

- Aliens, because they're bad.
- Those dudes with robes and lots of arms.
- Killing things because I can progress through the game.

In Bungie's defence, you pick up Grimoire cards throughout the game which give you bits of lore on Bungie.net.
That's great and all, but for a game with a $500 million dollar budget, I'd like the option to read them in-game, between matchmaking on the multiplayer mode or just during downtime bits.

In any case, I made a Warlock class and started playing on my PS3 console. I had to do a bit of fiddling with my controller because whenever I melee attacked, the controller would disconnect from the charger, but that's hardly the games fault.

The first tutorial bits are very straightforward and it wasn't long until I'd got to the main hub of The Tower.

It feels very Warcraft meets Borderlands, without the humour of either. Harsh, but true. The writing is a bit strange, because this is an MMORPGFPS (Massive multiplayer online role playing game first person shooter.)

A Memorpegerfpeeyes, for the uninitiated amongst you.



So the game requires you to go back to previous planets and do things, so it can't have any sort of ultimatum on any of the planets. A big boss fight, yes. But nothing stupidly major.

You may have seen other reviews of Destiny online and seen that it's received very mediocre scores. And there's a reason for that.

The people who bought Destiny as an FPS are used to fast paced action sequences, cutscenes, a driving narrative and lots of Michael Bayish explosions.
The game can't do that, because it's an RPG.

The people who bought Destiny as an RPG, unless they've played Borderlands, are used to class-building, rich environments and a deep story.
The game can't do that, because it's an MMO.

People didn't particularly recognise the best of both worlds, but saw the worst of every single planet in the solar system.

At current, Destiny is a bit like Disneyworld. You go in, see the attractions, go on a little train to see all the different things the game has and then the ride is over. Don't forget to have your picture taken with Goofy.

Now if Destiny had procedurally generated, properly terraformed planets, with one big bad wolf in the centre attached somehow to the planetary core that would cause the planet to collapse if killed, NOW we'd be talking.
Players would literally have to run as the whole place collapsed or face falling into the void of space and not being able to log in for six hours or something funny.

If they had unique player upgrades that players received for doing quests instead of a constant gear overhaul, THEN we'd be talking.

If the game didn't act shitty and stop me from soloing bosses meant for three like I did in Borderlands 2 or pull shit like making Level 26 elites spawn in a place full of Level 12 goons and stop me from completing objectives whilst resisting all damage, THEN we'd be talking.

But we're not really talking, Destiny. We're muttering to each other and it all feels a bit of a formality.

As a final note, the graphics are lovely. However, the draw distance was disappointing and everything melds into clay to the point that I can't tell whether I'm looking at distant trees, distant rocks, distant spires or distant hot dog stands. If you spent $500 million, Bungie, I'm sorry to say that I didn't notice.

The combat is fun, especially smashing enemies to bits mid-jump or jumping over a building to nova blast a massive enemy into bits. (The five minute recharge makes it even more satisfying when it hits.)

I'll be updating as more stuff becomes available, I do a few more online bits, a few more raid bits and more is added to the game.
At the moment, only write home about it if you've got pretty stationary that you'd really like to use.