Battletoads and Double Dragon: The Ultimate Team Review (NES)

After the mighty Toads defeated the Dark Queen on Ragnarok's world she fled to the far reaches of the galaxy threatening revenge. A few months later a huge city sized space craft comes smashing out of the moon and heads directly towards earth. This time the Queen really means business and to ensure her evil plan bears fruit she has teamed up with the shady shadow boss to help with her evil schemes. 

Hugely outnumbered the Toads turn to brothers Billy and Jimmy Lee, known as the Double Dragons to even the score. Together, in the Battlecopter they set out to the ship to engage the troublesome evil villains. 

Containing a healthy mix of different playing styles, the game none the less is a beat’em up at heart and this is a very good thing. Selecting from five different characters you must make your way across the top of the battleship beating up just about everyone that gets in your way. Apart from general fighting there are the inventive touches associated with the Battletoads franchise such as the speeder bike and abseiling sections both making a return and being as excellently done as ever.

The game mechanics are closer to a Battletoads game than a Double Dragon one and in this instance it is a good thing they are. With the different styles of level in the game the Double Dragon fight system simply would not be flexible enough to allow you do what you have to.

Fighting is restricted to one button, producing a few hits followed by a big finishing shot and that is all that is needed as everything moves so quickly it would be hard to implement a huge array of different moves. With five characters to choose from you won't be hard pressed not to find your perfect fight partner. Though the characters are not massively different, there are enough differences to easily distinguish one characters strengths from another. 

Favoured combinations soon develop as Rash and Zitz are stronger than Billy and Jimmy, with Rash being slightly Faster and Zitz being a bit stronger. Billy and Jimmy are faster than all the toads, again with Billy being a touch stronger than Jimmy and Jimmy being a bit faster. Pimple on the other hand is very big, very strong and very slow. 

Graphically, things are a little plain and functional but still help to create the humorous and charming appeal started with the first Battletoads game. The first time you hammer someone through the floor like a nail or kick someone with a huge foot you will understand the attraction. There is a problem with flickering on the screen, but having the odd bit of flicker is better than having slowdown so with the limitations of the NES we should be grateful.

Something else that adds to the appeal is the sound, with both the music and FX being of a great quality. The sound in this title is the very definition of retro cool, everything being completely over the top and not taking its self seriously, a brilliant aspect that adds a lot of fun to the proceedings. 

Make your way past the third level and you jump into the little battleship and try and destroy the Queens craft from the outside in a sort of take on asteroids. After the initial homage to the game you have to destroy flying saucers before having a final showdown with the huge rat like space ship. The level excellently breaks up the unrelenting fighting of previous stages and comes as such a surprise that you cannot help but to smile. 

Overall, Battletoads & Double Dragon: The Ultimate Team is a great game with the emphasis set on fun throughout and it has a much better learning curve than the previous Battletoads game - you find yourself getting a little bit further every time you play. This acts as another example of what Rare can do if they want to, retro cool at its most glorious. 

Overall 8/10

Battletoads Review (NES)

The story goes that one day while the biggest and toughest Battletoad (Pimple), was taking Princess Angelica out for a spin in the toadster the evil Dark Queen ambushes them and takes them to Ragnarok’s world - the Queens home planet. 

The remaining toads, Rash and Zitz have to beat everything up that stands in their way and rescue their friends. Far from being the dull side scrolling fighter that this game could so easily have turned into, Rare and Tradewest have made sure that it is something different and fresh.

While the first level keeps the classic side scrolling fighter format, from then on each level offers something new. Level two has our heroic toads being lowered down a tunnel having to jump from side to side to avoid obstacles and enemies while Level three has you jumping chasms on speeder bikes, and the next level (if you make it), is a more standard platform affair, each level offering a different twist taking the game away from constant repetitive button bashing. 

Graphically superb, everything is well animated and presented extremely well. The toads themselves offer different facial expressions from time to time, for instance having their jaws drop to the floor and eyes pop out when a huge monster arrives on the scene. Enemies differ from level to level but are repetitive in their respective worlds with only a handful of different creatures per stage. But this slight lack of variety is more than made up for by the shear quality the game overall. 

The Game plays well, although there are areas in the game when the limitations of your toad become far too apparent. During fights you could not ask for better controls, and while they simply consist of hitting one button continuously the attacks vary from level to level - in one the toad may hit the enemy with a huge fist while another will see him knocking him into the ground before kicking the enemy away like a living football. What lets the game down is when you are required to perform precision jumps, with the game being set in a multi-levelled playing field it is hard to judge the depth of the field often meaning a fall to an untimely death. 

Another problem with the game is the insane difficulty level, unusual for Rare games the difficulty curve for Battletoads is extremely unforgiving and in fact if you manage to get past the third level without using a warp then I would be very surprised. But strangely, the difficulty of the game adds to the overall charm and though you will die over and over again you will find yourself returning for one more go. 

Battletoads is a charming and fun filled game, which for a moment in time kept the mighty toads at the top of the gaming pile. Alas, along with many other characters from the creative minds of Rare the Toads never made it past the sixteen bit generation. Although we doubt a new version would have the same sort of charm it would still make a unique experience for the modern gamer. Until the day the Toads rule again this serves as a good reminder that it was not all Mario and Sonic back in the good old days.

Overall 8/10 

 

Mario Kart 8 Review (Wii U)

Written by Adam Gulliver

Driving into the final corner, you jump and drift giving you a much needed boost. Victory is within your grasp, but at that moment a red shell appears. You are hit, coins flying, you are inches away from the finish, but alas cannot gain enough speed to make it across. As you finally come to the realisation that your victory is ripped away, out of the corner of your eye you see Luigi. He looks, glares at you with pure evil behind those eyes, and drives across the finish. Welcome to Mario Kart 8. Where the Year of Luigi lives on. Forever.

Arriving on the Wii U to much fanfare, and incredibly solid sales for a struggling console, is Mario Kart 8. The granddaddy of the karting genre has returned and shows once again why it’s always been on top. On the surface it’s very much like any other MK game, but get deeper and you’ll find a number of key improvements that make it actually one of the best in the series. And not just because of the abundance of Luigi gifs that have appeared across the internet.

Tracks once again split between classics and new, however even the classics have had something of an overhaul. Less a copy and more of a remake, classic tracks are now adorned with a number of new features, none more so than the anti-gravity sections. Tracks like Toad’s Turnpike now come with added jumps and drivable walls to navigate. It adds a different layer to each track, and with the new graphical grunt of the Wii U they look simply magical. Despite being vastly more underpowered than the PS4 and Xbox One, Nintendo still manages to make their game look glorious, simply because they put art style before anything else. This can proudly stand alongside the likes of Infamous and Ryse and that is a testament to Nintendo’s ability at getting the very best out of their hardware.

MK8 really feels like it’s had pure joy injected straight into the veins. Even in 150cc where the difficulty really ramps up, and you’re left reeling from hit after hit, we very rarely stopped smiling. The difficulty being something that has definitely been raised since the last iteration. In 150cc this may be the most challenging Mario Kart game since the original. This is a good thing.

As frustrating as it can get when on the final lap you’re hit by anything and everything, it never became controller smashingly annoying. Our loss was accepted and we simply retried until those final championships were conquered. And you’ll need to beat all the championships to unlock everything, and there is a ton to unlock. Hidden characters, new kart parts and Miiverse stamps are all waiting and will take a lot of time, skills and luck.

Where Mario Kart 8 really shines is, believe it or not, online. Nintendo are finally getting to grips with online play and it’s a joy to see. Okay, they may not be on the level of Sony and Microsoft, but they’re trying! Able to either race in Grand Prix’s, Tournaments or Battle Mode, joining games is incredibly seamless. Choose a room and you’re pretty much good to go. Battle Mode however is quite a disaster. Gone are the arenas that made the SNES and N64 versions so fun, instead you just get the standard tracks featured in the main grand prix. It’s an incredibly lazy cop-out, which is something you rarely ever see from Nintendo. The tracks are designed for racing and it shows.

Much like Super Mario 3D World, Mario Kart 8 shows that nobody makes games quite like Nintendo. A master class in design that shows how tragic it is that the Wii U finds itself in such dire straits. A sure fire system seller that everyone who owns the console should buy, and if you don’t, now’s the perfect time to buy one.

Overall 9/10

PixelJunk Shooter Ultimate Review (PS Vita)

A few years ago PixelJunk Shooter first appeared on the PS3. Still one of the best games on the Playstation network it is now available with cross-buy on the Vita and PS4. It always looked like a game that would fit the Vita and now the team have got the physics engine working and combined Shooter 1 and 2 together you can enjoy the madness on the go.

The plot, such as it is, has you sent in to rescue your crew mates after mysterious goings on while mining on the planet of Apoxus Prime. To do this you have to fly your craft around tight underground caverns while using water, lava and magnetic black liquids to your advantage. It’s reminiscent of Thrust with its inertia and gravity based gameplay but your craft will stay still if left alone. Your also won’t die from hitting walls (which is a good thing or it would have been nigh on impossible).

The game is a 2D styled shooter where you manoeuvre your ship around a section of an enclosed map. Normally you will have to get water to turn lava to rock or lava to melt ice or some other combination of dropping one liquid onto another. You’re doing this because you need to get to and rescue all the lost crew members in each area. If too many of them die you have to start the level again. It’s wonderfully inventive and a whole lot of fun and there are hidden areas and diamonds to collect along the way as well.

The level design is nigh on perfect throughout the game and the difficulty curve is just about right. The huge boss monsters found at the end of each world may cause some frustration but they provide tense and heroic showdowns of David and Goliath proportions and once you work them out shouldn’t take too long to get past. The difficulty level ramps up considerably once you enter the second part of the game (Shooter 2), but it’s all still achievable.

Shooter Ultimate is now split into six main areas each consisting of five levels. There are the initial outer rocky areas, the ice caves and then the mine. After the mine something happens which we won’t spoil but you’ll be dealing with a host of new gases and liquids.  Each individual level is split into sections which require everyone to be rescued before a bulk head opens to the next.  Each has its own tricks and traps and will keep you on your toes throughout. If it gets too much you can always call a friend in for co-op action.

You’ll also need to think quickly as the game has a wonderful way of getting you to forget what you’ve just learnt. For instance, for the first area you are trying to keep away from lava (overheating causes you to crash), but then in the ice caves you’ll come across an inversion suit which makes lava cool you down and water heat you up.

It’s a game that keeps throwing new ideas and things at you to keep you interested. The water suit and lava suit are just the start and you’ll soon be switching around and dealing with freezing lakes and clouds of gas as well as the usual lava and water. The key thing is that everything stays fun and creative throughout. Once you’ve completed the game you’ll probably want to dive back in to further explore the levels and find all the missing diamonds and any crew you missed along the way. There’s even a hidden level to try and unlock and online combat.

PixelJunk Shooter is a game we’re still playing on the PS3 to this day. The fact a whole new audience can now pick it up is great and this really is one of the best games of its type. Q-Games have crafted something special here and the years have done nothing to diminish its appeal. With PixelJunk Shooter 2 included as well it becomes an essential purchase for Vita owners. We’ll be playing it through for yet another time and we would recommend everyone else do the same.

This was always going to be a certified hit with us as long as nothing had gone wrong in the conversion and from our experience this offers all the fun of the original. Vita gamers really need to play this as it’s simply a masterfully executed, great little game packed with more invention and ideas than most massive AAA releases can even come close to.

Overall 10/10