Anyone for Tennis? - Mario Tennis Open Review.

Mario has certainly been in his fair share of sports game throughout his illustrious career. He’s had a stab at football, golf, tennis, volleyball, and hockey to name a few; he’s even an Olympian these days! Of all Mario’s sporting efforts though, the Mario Tennis franchise has been one of the most popular over the years and now 3DS owners will have the chance to take to the court with Mario Tennis Open.

It all began twelve years ago when Camelot released Mario Tennis on the N64, one of the best games on the console and my personal favourite tennis sim of all time! Okay, so Mario Tennis isn’t the most realistic tennis sim out there but I find it to be the most enjoyable! It’s essentially a simplified version of the sport with tonnes of action, loads of vibrancy, and the Mario Brothers instead of the Williams sisters. However saying that realism is definitely needed in some degree or the game simply doesn’t work. Just look at the below-bar Gamecube effort Mario Power Tennis where ‘power moves’ were added allowing the player to make an unreturnable shot once they'd built up enough power. The only way to return one of these shots was to have a power shot at your disposal too; you can probably see why this stopped the game from being a success.

Take. My. Money. - Nintendo E3 Conference 2012.

So with the other two big hitters having done their conferences, it was left to Nintendo to close up with theirs and they did it a little differently this year. Instead of having one big conference they used other means to tell us all what they’re doing over the next year. First of all before the conference itself they did a Nintendo Direct to reveal a few things with the gamepad being the main news, then they had the conference itself where they focussed entirely on the Wii U and its games, and then they finished off with a 3DS showcase, showing off several upcoming 3DS games.

Compared to their big rivals, Nintendo’s conference was much more modest and humble. Whereas Sony had a ridiculous arena full of people, Nintendo used a much smaller venue to set the stage for the Wii U. This played out pretty well for Nintendo as it felt a lot more homely and it allowed Reggie Fils-Aime to do what he does best.

There's life in the old PS3 yet - Sony E3 Conference 2012.

After Microsoft had had their say Sony were able to respond quickly having their conference only a few hours later. Was it any better? Well yes, miles better.

Sony’s conference was a far cry from last year’s effort where they spent forever talking about how 3D was going to revolutionise the way we play games. This year there was no mention of 3D and there was an actual focus on games.

Whereas Microsoft kicked off with their ace of spades Sony trickled them out bit by bit and had a much more balanced conference to show for it. After the typical long-winded montage opener we’ve all come to expect from Sony, Jack Tretton emerged onto the stage to give his spiel about how Sony loves the fans and how great they both are together. Seriously, he was either trying to get laid or attempting to farm more money from them, probably the latter in fairness.

Everything is better with Kinect, right? - Microsoft E3 Conference 2012.

Microsoft were the first major company to take centre stage at E3 this year and many were looking forward to what they were going to show. Rumours were flying here, there and everywhere of a new console, the fabled 720, but rather disappointingly this was not to be.

Instead it started pretty much from where they left off at last year’s E3 with Mr Green Helmet Man and his everlasting adventures in space. Yes, it’s Halo 4 and to be fair it looked pretty good! We were treated to an over-the-top trailer that Halo’s getting a reputation for and then a small playthrough of an early level which featured a lot of cinematics and a new feature that sees Chief using his visor to scan objects in a way that has echoes of the Metroid Prime series.

The Highs and Lows of E3 2012.

Last week the games industry came together once again for the annual E3 conference in Los Angeles. It’s the time of year when all gamers get excited and glue themselves to live streams of conference after conference hoping to get a good look at some of the games developers have to offer.

Overall it was a decent expo; some developers did well, others less so. There were plenty of highlights to be found and of course inevitable lowlights… All in all there was something for everyone.

If you like shooters for example you should probably check out EA’s conference as that’s pretty much all they’re bringing out in the coming year with Medal of Honor: Warfighter, Battlefield 3 DLC (no idea why this was shown), Crysis 3 and Dead Space 3 all being shown off. For those who don’t like shooters there’s always SPORTS! Sigh.

Seventh Heaven? - Mario Kart 7 Review.

Though the 3DS was critically acclaimed upon its birth into the marketplace back in 2011, it had a very slow start with pretty underwhelming sales. This was largely due to the relatively high price tag and the poor catalogue of games that were on offer at launch.

Nintendo rectified this by firstly lowering the price making it more affordable for their customers to actually buy one, and then they boosted the catalogue before Christmas by adding Ocarina of Time, a remake of the N64 classic; Super Mario 3D Land, a brand new Mario Land; and the big one: Mario Kart 7.

Mario Kart has always been a huge staple for Nintendo, appearing on every single console since its genesis on the SNES. In terms of gameplay it’s as simple as you’ll find – Mario characters racing about in go karts, but this simple formula is so unique to Nintendo that many have tried to replicate it, and all have failed. In terms of racing games, this is as good as it gets; you can keep your realistic F1 games – all I want to do is toss a barrage of red shells at the leader and steal first place!

Game Over? Not yet.

Video game retailer, Game Group, finally went into administration in March and the outlook looked pretty gloomy to say the least. A massive 609 shops across Britain and Ireland were sadly closed down with over 2,000 employees made redundant in one fell swoop. Time was ticking down ominously as Game prayed someone out there would stick another pound in and press continue.

And at the very last second someone did! Yes it was OpCapita, the private investment firm that pulled Comet from the mire not so long ago, who threw down a quid and took on the company. I was a little surprised that GameStop didn’t make the purchase as that’s what I thought they would do when they withdrew from the UK market last year; leave, wait for Game to drop into administration, buy them and have instant access to the UK market. But instead it was OpCapita who, like an extra life, swung in and dragged them from the jaws of hell.

Beta Testing.

It has been nine months since the Nintendo 3DS launched and up to now I have done my upmost to resist its lure.

Yes, like a particularly attractive mermaid the 3DS has been tempting me with its gorgeous looks and upped visuals and so far I’ve managed to stay strong and keep hold of my money.

My brother gave in instantly on launch and bought it with Street Fighter 4 and Pilotwings but was starved of games really until Ocarina of Time and Starfox 64 came out. Yet he is being rewarded this Christmas for purchasing on launch, and rightly so as Nintendo dropped the price only a few months later.

@Spoilers.

I’ve been a gamer for quite a while now. The Super Nintendo was my first home console and I can still remember the anticipation I felt when a new game was about to be released on it.

Back then games catalogues were immensely smaller and the only real way to find out if a new game was good or bad before was to buy gaming magazines that’d give you a score, detail the positive and the negative points, show you some snapshots of the game and leave you to make your own decision.

Oh how times have changed.

Enrolling at the Wii U - Nintendo Conference.

Nintendo were last in line to do their conference at E3 this year and of the three they were probably the winners. Sony should take notes regarding the start to the conference; they chose to show a boring five minute montage of game footage, while Nintendo blew the audience away with an orchestral rendition of various Legend of Zelda themes mashed into one, in honour of the 25th anniversary of the Zelda franchise.

Shigeru Miyamoto was out first to talk about the Zelda franchise as a whole. He started off talking about the music and he used the orchestra in front of him to full effect, having them play chimes from the game such as the classic ‘item get’ music and the fairy fountain theme. Ah fairy fountain, that takes me back, already I sense this is going to be a good conference! I do love Miyamoto though, he’s like 58 now and he’s still a child at heart, mucking about on stage, doing the actions for opening a treasure chest. It was great, even if the orchestra played it too quickly and the translator spoke over him the whole time.

The Elephant in the Room - Sony Conference.

Sony were second in holding their conference at this year's E3 and they started off a lot worse than Microsoft did. First they handed out 3D glasses to everyone in the audience, before showing them a promo reel of some Playstation games, the PSP and of course the Playstation Move. All of that would be fine if the promo wasn’t insanely boring and ridiculously long! Seriously it’s like four and a half minutes of footage, most of which we’ve seen; it was just so so boring. And 3D…really? Did they not get the memo about Nintendo’s 3DS? I can’t believe people are still running with 3D. It’s 2011, give it up already!

But Sony’s conference did improve, firstly they got rid of the ‘elephant in the room’ when Jack Tretton immediately addressed the Playstation Network problems, and credit to them for that. People wanted an apology, a real one, and this was probably Sony’s best chance to do that.

In-Out, In-Out, Shake it all About - Microsoft Conference.

Microsoft were first to hold their conference at this year's E3 and they kicked it off with some Modern Warfare 3 footage which included a demo run in a submarine and then on a speedboat. Yes of course it featured some bullet time again, there’s nothing quite like some overuse of bullet time in a game but overall considering I’m not a big Call of Duty nut it looked quite cool. It’s very high impact, very over-dramatic, very Call of Duty. It made me want to at least try the other two games.

Next up was the new Tomb Raider game which actually looks really good! It’s set to go back to the origins of Lara Croft and it might just tempt me into playing the franchise again. The demo shown appeared to be the start of the game where Lara is escaping captivity on an old ship that could be in the Bermuda Triangle, which I‘m only guessing because of the old ships Lara finds at the end of the demo. It’s a lot darker than we’re used to and looks very gritty, much more than the old ones. I haven’t played a Tomb Raider game since the PS1 and I’ll keep an eye out for this one as I’m interested in how it turns out in the end.

The Good, The Bad and The Downright Embarrassing - E3 2011.

The biggest video game event of the year took place a week ago and I’m always happy when it comes around. The Electronic Entertainment Expo has been visiting Los Angeles now for 16 years, and although in recent years it has downsized a little, it still has the magic all gamers know and love.

I love it when E3 is approaching, the anticipation for what’s going to be shown, what’s going to be playable, new hardware, new games, new ideas. It represents the biggest stage video game companies have in showing off their products to us. And boy do they like to show off!

I personally love E3 because it reignites the gaming industry and gets me interested again. People start talking again, forums start buzzing, Twitter explodes, everyone has an opinion and there are plenty willing to argue til their faces turn blue!

It pays to be the strong, silent type.

Earlier this week, one of gaming’s greatest heroes reached the major milestone that is his 25th anniversary. The gaming hero? The one and only Link from the ever popular Legend of Zelda series.

Well I say the one and only but in truth there have been several different Links, each with their own story and past and of course in most of his adventures he isn’t usually called Link at all, he’s called whatever you want. In my case: Andy.

The fight for silver rages on.

The Kinect has been out for a while now, and I can’t make out whether it was a success or not. The grapevine tells me that Microsoft’s shifted 8 million of the little blighters, which I think is successful but there’s been a bit of a backlash towards it, mainly from those who I suppose you'd call ‘hardcore’ gamers.

These are the fellows who aren’t too happy at Microsoft spending too much time with this camera sensory devise thingy, many of them have threatened to divorce the Xbox 360 unless they put more effort in with them. Not that Microsoft care, they'll keep on neglecting them and working alone in the shed all night while the hardcore gamers sleep alone wondering what could have been.

Connection Failed.

It’s been a tough old week. Studying and working away tirelessly until your eyes themselves start perspiring. Naturally when I went for some downtime with my faithful friend, the Xbox, I just wanted to kick back and play some games. But it was not to be.

The stupid thing starts prompting me to update it, and it won’t let me progress until I do so. So what do you do? You update it, and sit there waiting for it to download and install. A few boring minutes later and it’s done. Fantastic. Now what?

A new dashboard, cool. I’m a bit of a nerd when it comes to new versions of stuff, every time I update my iTunes I’m jumping up and down gleefully waiting to see what new changes they’ve made to my lovely little neat media player. Of course when I load up iTunes afterwards, I find that nothing has changed and I’d just wasted five minutes of my life watching a status bar move from left to right. And it’s much the same with the Xbox.

It’s all kind of changed without really being different. All the menus are still there and the submenus are now white instead, making it look like Apple. I’m sure that’s just a coincidence. Oh, and for some unknown reason my avatar has grown about two feet and looks like a ganglier version of Robert Pattinson with blonde hair. Why is this? And then it dawned on me.

That's actually hilarious.

Video game movies suck, yes? Tomb Raider, Resident Evil, Alone in the Dark, Mortal Kombat. Yeah they pretty much all waver between God-awful and depressingly disastrous. But I went to see a movie recently that may very well defy this fact. A fact that has been written in stone ever since Bob Hoskins popped out of a green pipe and yelled ‘Mamma Mia!’.

This Movie is: Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. Now I know it’s not a video game, all you pedantic boffins will know it’s based on a comic book written by Bryan Lee O’Malley, but it is a video game movie! It just is! It’s so awesome! From the moment it starts you know it’s a video game movie. The Universal logo is presented to you in 16-bit format with an 8-bit version of the theme. Okay movie…you have gained your first star.

It’s directed by Edgar Wright, of Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead fame. I didn’t reckon much to Shaun of the Dead but Hot Fuzz was hilarious. And this movie beats it. Easily. That’s so hard to say considering how much I love Hot Fuzz, but this is on another level.

This is the point where I’ll be nice and polite and announce a spoiler warning.  I don’t want to ruin the jokes for you so yeah, stop reading if you’re thinking of going to see this film. As it’s best enjoyed without being ruined by idiots like me on the internets.

So the movie begins and we’re introduced to our protagonist Scott Pilgrim very early on. He’s played by Michael Cera who plays the role perfectly. I loved him as George-Michael in Arrested Development and he plays a very similar character here. It’s a no-brainer for the casting team. You find out he’s dating a high school chick who I presumed was Ramona Flowers. But it isn’t, it’s a Chinese girl called Knives Chau (Ellen Wong) who he’s going out with on a rebound from his ex girlfriend Envy Adams (Brie Larson) who, when she got signed by a record label, dumped him. Brutally. I’m probably a complete noob for not knowing this but I didn’t read the graphic novel and I abstained from all trailers to avoid spoilers. The only thing I knew about this movie before I walked in was Michael Cera, Chris Evans, Ramona Flowers, evil exes, graphic novel. That’s it. There’s nothing worse than trailers ruining funny bits in movies. I’m so glad I avoided them.

The character of Ramona (Mary Winstead) comes into it fairly quickly and becomes the object of Scott’s desire instantly. Their relationship is kind of quirky and fun throughout the movie, there’s an obvious attraction but in the end it’s just two people trying to figure out what they want out of life and a life partner rather than a typical love story. A lot of guys will be able to relate to Scott, he’s been dumped by a girl he was in love with. Funnily enough a few guys might be able to relate to that. So you instantly warm to him. Well I did anyway. Even if he is a total broom handle at times. He basically two-times with Knives and Ramona and he treats Knives and fellow band-member Kim (Alison Pill) pretty badly. Kim’s another ex of his. Yeah, you may have noticed, there are a lot of exes in this movie.

As the story progresses you get a lot of in-jokes thrown in your gawping face, but you don’t need to know them to find this movie funny. And my God it is funny. So funny in fact I laughed out loud in the cinema so many times I lost count. I don’t think that’s happened since Hot Fuzz, and before that it was Anchorman. Alright so I got a lot of the in-jokes because, well, I’m a nerd, but I’m pretty sure I would have missed a hatful as well. Some of the great moments in this movie involve a constant barrage of nostalgic video game sound bytes, a shoryuken and even a scene replicating Seinfeld! It’s just great writing. Okay movie that’s another star for you.

Of course not all of the jokes perform perfect landings. Julie’s bleeped mouth borders overuse, for example. And the pee bar is a fail. But I know that was in the comic so fair enough, I’ll let that slide, and if you don’t like those jokes just deal with it! There’s so much more in this movie so chill out. I know some people would have hated the writing on the screen, but I loved it! It was genuinely funny, and I didn’t even get to read some of them because I was concentrating on something else. I need to watch this movie again.

So once Scott is dating his beloved Ramona he is randomly attacked by a dude named Matthew Patel (Satya Bhabha) who crashes in through the ceiling and kicks off the movie’s first fight scene. Yeah this movie just got surreal. And it’s a good thing. Reality is finally fully disbanded and you can just sit back and enjoy the festivities. Matthew Patel reveals that he’s an ex of Ramona who wants his revenge for being dumped all those years ago in 7th grade. He then breaks into song in the most comedic Bollywood scene I’ve ever seen and is easily disposed of by Scott. Ramona then tells our hero he must defeat her seven evil exes in order for him to continue to date her. Pretty standard stuff so far, I’m sure you’ll agree.

The next evil ex is Lucas Lee, played by none other than Captain America himself, Chris Evans. Lee is a skateboarder turned cocky movie-star and is one of the best characters in the film. Scott’s room-mate Wallace (Kieran Culkin, yes Macaulay Culkin‘s brother), who is also one of the best characters in this movie, reveals Lee when he tells Scott he’s going to be stalking him. He sprays magazine cuttings of him across the table and one of them is a poster for a movie called ‘Action Doctor’ with the tagline ‘The good news is, you’re going to live. The bad news is, he’s going to kill you.’ Genius, absolute genius, I don’t know who wrote that but give him an Oscar now, two Oscars, heck just give him them all. Movie, have a star.

Once Scott defeats Lucas Lee and his army of stunt doubles. His ’big’ ex enters the movie, randomly, and invites him to her gig. Scott obviously turns it down but his band-mates decide otherwise when they are offered to support her band (The Clash at Demonhead). Poor Scott. Once at the gig we get introduced to the next ex, the psychic vegan Todd Ingram (Brandon Routh). Another fight scene ensues where Scott challenges him to a bass battle, only to lose and trick him into drinking coffee with half soy and half milk. Obviously this prompts the vegan police to burst in through a wall and take away Todd’s psychic powers. Incidentally the Punisher is in the vegan police. That alone blew my mind.

Next up it’s the bi-furious Roxy Richter (Mae Whitman, yes she was in Arrested Development too, come to think of it she played Cera‘s ex in that, I wonder if that was planned…) Scott finally realises this is an ex of Ramona’s but we’re treated to a fight scene between the two ladies rather than Scotty. He eventually has to step in but Roxy’s speed gets the better of him and he has to resort to hitting her sensual spot, revealed to him in slow motion by Ramona, behind her knee. Job done Scott well done.

The fight scenes make this movie for me. They are some of the best I’ve seen in ages. You might think as there are seven exes it would get boring. But it doesn’t. They’re all so varied and fun, they’re simply bad-ass. They easily keep you interested. I never once got bored in this movie. There’s always something going on. Whether it’s the massive summoned creatures in the battle against the Katayanagi twins or the final battle’s sword play, this movie keeps you wanting more, and more, and more. I need this on DVD. I really do. Another star for the fight scenes? Consider it done.

As for music, it’s pretty darn good. It’s very rock influenced, which you’d expect considering Scott’s in a rock band (known as Sex Bob-omb). It uses the music brilliantly and it’s used to great effect in the fight scenes, adding atmosphere and general vibrancy to the proceedings. There’s a few slower numbers thrown in there as well as the heavy stuff. But the soundtrack will be enjoyed more by rockers. Rival band ‘Crash and the boys’ produce some very short but good ones. I like the way the bands in this movie are named after Nintendo games. That’s pretty cool.

In the end Scott goes up against the final boss Gideon (Jason Schwartzman). But oh no! He loses to him and he’s left dead in a sandy purgatory! Whilst he’s here he gets to speak to Ramona and he learns a valuable lesson. Too bad he’s dead. But no, he has an extra life. I told you it was a video game! So he goes back, endures Gideon’s cut-scene (thank God Hideo Kojima didn’t direct this one) and starts the fight over, this time for himself not Ramona. This fight scene is so epic, he fights off a few guards with swords only to come up against Gideon and give him a kicking. Knives randomly jumps in to attack Ramona, as you do, and they fight for a bit until Scott finally defeats him and the final final boss! Phew.

So once all that’s done and Gideon has given his end of game boss defeated speech, Scott leaves the building to find Ramona and Knives. Ramona gives a little speech and walks off leaving Scott with Knives. But Knives tells him to go after her as they’re meant to be together or whatever. So he does. This is good and all but by the end of the movie I kind of grew fond of Knives more than I did Ramona. I wanted him to stay with Knives! She deserved it and was way more interesting than Ramona. Ellen Wong should go on to do tonnes of other stuff after this performance. I’d say it’s the best in the movie, and there are some pretty good performances here.

This really is one of the best movies of the year. But I’ve noticed it’s not doing well. It’s bob-ombing in the States and it came in at number two in the UK box office behind Grown Ups. Now, I haven’t seen Grown Ups but I can imagine that this film is several times better than that one. So go and see it! You need to! If you don’t Action Doctor will never be made! As for my final verdict, eagle-eyed readers would have counted the four stars I’ve given but no it gets 5 stars. The last star was for awesomeness. Yeah. It happens.