Why you gotta hate on vidya

This is where I get to plug the shit I am listening to, Gabriel Iglesias- I'm not fat, I'm fluffy, go fucking watch/buy it best stand up I've seen in a while, absolutely fantastic.

As an avid gamer and a "video games are art" campaigner as well as a gaming blogger and a lets player seeing people spitting on video games (figuratively of course) makes me twitch uncontrollably. Now I'm going to ATTEMPT to go through all the problems I have with the most common criticisms people give about video games without removing my eyes with a spoon.

The first thing I hear people say, games make people violent/are responsible for certain acts,  yeah, ok, I'll agree with that, but you've gotta remember other forms of media can and have been responsible for violent acts, there are two examples I can think of off the top of my head relating to movies and, brace yourselves, BOOKS! That's right folks, books can be the root of violent acts. The movies example dates back a year or two ago, some bloke beheaded his spouse while on holiday and I read something some weeks after the incident happened that he was imitating something form Predator or something similar, its been about a year so the details are a bit hazy at this point. Now onto the true intellectual art form, books! This incident is very well known and dates back to 1980, the assassination of John Lennon, I assume you all know the story, the shooter was supposedly inspired by Catcher in the Rye, I don't really know much more about it though, really shoulda researched it before I started this and I cannot be bothered to do it now so I'm gonna leave it there. In a nutshell, video games can promote violence, but so can books, TV shows, movies, music, politics, religion, the list goes on and on ad infinitum.

The second thing people spew is video games are addictive, got a bit of news for you, EVERYTHING (literally everything) CAN BE FUCKING ADDICTIVE. People get addicted to all sorts of things, things like drugs, TV, sex, books, exercise, eating, dieting, pornography, violence, adrenaline, again, AD IN-FI-NIT-UM, its something you cannot control so why don't you push for bans on fucking treadmills while you're at it, the idea is moderation, if you really think banning video games is the only resolution then I do not want to share a planet with you, please kill yourself.

Third stupid BS, video games make you stupid, ok, lets examine myself (vain I know), I play video games constantly, I must clock at least 10 hours a day when I'm out of school or what have you and I've been a gamer since I was 6 years old, at the time of writing this I am 19 years old so yeah, avid gamer for 13 years, now let me run through my A-level grades which I got about 2 weeks ago, B, D, Distinction*, that may not seem too impressive but it is enough for me to continue onto a honors degree in game development, a career which demands advanced programming skills, consider your argument dismantled.

And now onto the fourth and final point, video games teach you nothing, ok firstly, some can, I know thats kinda bullshit without examples but fuck you go do the research yourself, and secondly I am currently reading a book by Gareth Roberts called Shada, it is a lost Doctor Who serial and the only novelized serial by the late Douglas Adams, it is entirely fictional, it's not like 11.22.63 which is based on true events and has genuinely taught me a thing or two about the Kennedy assassination and Lee Harvey Oswald, but Shada? Not a single fucking thing with the exception of what that serial was to consist of, does that make that book bad?

 Right that's all I can think of, I might come back to this at a later date and amend it but until then I am going to play Mother 3 or sacrifice a goat to the mighty lord Satan or something evil like that, buhbyee.

I'll be back later this week or sometime next week for another psuedo-review and a little revisitation of New Super Mario Bros. seeing as I've gotten a bit further and have new likes and gripes about it.

Until next time!
TheWardy signing off.

P.S. I have now jumped onto the community bandwagon and created my own Facebook page, not the best thing in the world but I think you should check dat sheeet out.

P.P.S. Here's another page that me and my girlfriend co-admin.

Review (but not a review): Super Mario Bros. Mashup (AKA New Super Mario Bros.)

Unfun fact: I'm listening to roygbivmlp's second Ponystep mix right now You should probably go fuckin' check that shit out.

OK heres my review (not a proper review) of New Super Mario Bros.
"But Tom, that game has already been out for 6 years"

And that's not exactly true, its only been out for 5 in South Korea and 3 in China, HA! 'Tards.

So yes, NSMB, been out in most of the world since late spring/early summer '06 and moved almost 29.1 million units worldwide. I bought this game less than a week ago and have since made it to world 3, do I like it so far you may be asking? Well yes and no at the same time, allow me to explain.

First let's start by saying what I like about the game, the concept seems fresh, it being 2.5D and whatnot, the music is pretty good too, everything about it seems new and exciting, as if it's only just been released, really love the new powerups in the game as well which are as follows:

• THE MEGA MUSHROOM

 

 The mega mushroom basically allows Mario to grow to a pretty impressive size and gives him temporary invincibility allowing him to kill/destroy anything in his path (including warp pipes) which eventually leads to Mario earning a certain number of 1ups depending on how much he destroys (the maximum being 5 mushrooms) and generally makes easy work of the more fiddly levels.

• The mini mushroom

Which is ironically a little bigger than the mega mushroom...not in-game though.

 The mini mushroom obviously does the inverse of the mega mushroom in that it makes you tiny and gives you the same damage resistance as normal sans-mushroom Mario has (i.e. 1 hit and its bye-bye Mr. Plumber stallion), it also allows you to jump a bit higher and the ability to climb into small gaps...also you have to stomp on enemies in order to kill them, think that's about it. And finally:

• The blue Koopa shell

Apologies for the pants-quality image, I'd find a better one but Wikia was the first site I found on my quest for images so I'm just using that.

It's a shame theres no real effect I could use for the blue shell, unless I just made the rest of the text blue, which is exactly what I'm doing. The blue Koopa shell allows you to sorta act like a normal Koopa shell in that you will slide when running and crouching/crouching on a slope (not too impressive mind you, you don't slide much regardless of what you do), crouching also grants you invincibility for the most part (some enemies will still be able to hurt you) and I've read that it improves swimming too but I've yet to use one in an underwater level so I cannot confirm that, I might come back at a later date and amend this when I've tried it.

So theres what I like about the game, now for what I don't like (or at least what I find to be a bit off). The one that's always there screaming at me, it looks like a bit like a Frankenstien'd Mario game (i.e. it seems like a lot of features have been borrowed from older Mario games). Examples include: The flagpole from the first game, the world map, item/1up hut and hammer bros. (they only seem to be relevant to 3 so I'm attributing it from there) from the third, the saved item from World (although you have to select it manually no matter what, also its touch only, which is a bit of a bummer cause there could have been a nostalgia factor to it if you could do it using select, which is unused throughout most of the game...I think...doesn't say anything in the manual about it so I assume it isn't used much, if at all) and the timed bits from Yoshi's island. Thats all imma list because this bit is already too long and under-punctuated (it's been a while leave me alone!). The other gripe I have about it is that it seems to lenient in terms of time, I've not played 1, 3 or World for a while but I'm sure the timers on those games tended to be shorter, I could be wrong though, and I cannot be bothered checking so this may very well be hideously inaccurate.

And now we come to the conclusion, as much as I want to hate this game I've gotta give this an 8/10, absolutely top class game, it has it's faults but then again so does Quake 2, Doom and Spyro 2, they're still fuckin' brilliant games.

If anyone's interested I will be doing a LP of New Super Mario Bros. 1 in a short while (Planning on starting Christmas Day 2012 and continuing from there every Saturday from there) so watch this space.

Anyway that's the end of a terrible review from a stale reviewer, sorry, I'll improve once I get back into the swing of things, I promise.

Buhbye for now!

TheWardy signing off.