VideoSnakes' Game Corner

hello and welcome to my new column on the greatest jumpers in video gaming.

everyone knows that video gaming and jumping go hand-in-hand - to jump, to game; such is life.  however, one often wonders - who are the best jumpers, and what innate quality sets them apart from the rest of electronic entertainment’s leaping chaff?  throughout this series, i will attempt to find that cruel, vertical line. 

before we begin, a quick note about the review system i will be employing - i will be operating in a manner not unlike the michelin star; simply put, for a character to garner even a single mark is a huge honour.  many fine jumpers will not even be mentioned in the following annals and that does not mean they are not excellent at jumping, but concisely that it does not alight a passion in this reviewer.  to jump divinely is a meaningful and rare feat - the sort of thing one comes upon naturally only twice or thrice in a lifetime.  yes, i am keenly aware that the ninja turtles can jump effortlessly and with grace in the hit arcade game, Turtles in Time - but do they perform these jumps with a resonant exuberance?  no.  they do not. their jumps are trash and they will be forgotten.

now that we have cleared that up, we shall proceed after the break to dissect the best of the best.

When I was but a boy, my father got me a computer program that was basically a huge collection of various cool arcade games. It had Joust, a game about killing ostriches and their offspring with a big pole. It had Frogger, a game about avoiding cars and not avoiding logs. It also had Sinistar, a virtual nightmare that would haunt my ghastly days and stalk my restless nights forever until I might one day pen a piece that might finally set me free.

I deeply loathe Sinistar— they have wormed their vicious face into my dreams, and whisper dark speech into my ears whenever I should be feeling even vaguely comfortable. They have labelled me a coward and have sworn to follow me wherever I might go; pursuing me endlessly, until the day I might work up the courage to face that shrieking darkness head-on exclusively in the form of a short piece created for an online blog.

To any heroic souls who might be brave & foolish enough to have read these cursed paragraphs, know that you are no longer safe — by reading these ill-fated words, Sinistar will already be coming for you. Once you have learned their twisted name and looked upon their harrowing visage, Sinistar will mark your soul and find you.

Having transferred my eternal burden, know that I do not intend to attempt to return to a regular way of life. The guilt and the trauma has ruined any hope I may have to seek refuge in daily routine; I may be free from the lash of Sinistar’s gaunt howl, but I know that I will still hear their cruel words in every hushed breeze; that I will see those wicked eyes in every lamplight.

Please, do not hate me — one day you will copy and paste this very article, as I have done, and you will find yourself in my place; a place where Sinistar is screaming at you to RUN COWARD, and reminding you that THEY HUNGER. You will become a coward, you will run, they will hunger. It will never end until you publish this same blog entry.

i want to begin this by being very upfront with you folks — there is absolutely nothing about this opinion that is unpopular. no one is out there saying that doctor robotnik is sexy. not once have i ever heard a person voice these words: “doctor robotnik has some sexy qualities” — never.

have you seen doctor robotnik? he is nauseating. everything about his design is completely repulsive. he’s got it all — bad clothes, bad facial hair, bad attitude. he is not sexy and i don’t care for him and no one cares for him.

if i ever heard a person say that they felt that doctor ivo robotnik was sexy, i would look at them and accuse them of perjury — even if i didn’t know them at all, and i am very socially anxious. i don’t even like talking to my mom.

doctor robotnik is not sexy at all — he is a human orb and a miserable person and i don’t even like thinking about him ever. he is mean to animals, and mean to his subordinates, and frankly i am growing weary of this discussion.

do not sexualize doctor robotnik. he is a tyrant and a yucky nasty man and that is all i have to say. good day, sir.

also why is his nose like that it’s like a weird gross hook nose uGH!!!

in life we are often asked to rank the things we love.  people will say “what is your favourite colour” or “if u could only save one member of your extended family who would it be” or “what kind of breakfast sandwich would u like sir please make a decision the line is very long”

it is important to make these choices because otherwise you will be a weak paper person with no values

i don’t want to be that kind of person!

i want to live in a world with sacrifice, and with passion, and with morals!  i want to face judgment - i want to be scrutinized for my selections and to defend them with a powerful fervour!  i shall endeavour to do the difficult thing!  i am the hero of my own story and that story will be one marked by conflict and struggle!  this is my quest!  this is my great & endless battle!  i am the most important person in my own life!  it is not hubris, it is a fiery lust for challenge!  i long to eat the sun and capture the stars in a huge net that darkens the sky because that is the greatest desire any can fathom!  i am a warrior and i shall not be disheartened no matter how impossible the burden before me may seem!  i shall do these things!  the most demanding things!

anyways here is a ranking of the individual members of team chaotix from knuckles chaotix

1. vector the crocodile

2. espio the chameleon

3. charmy the bee

thank you for reading please don’t make fun of my list it is really important to me

quite often, my readers will send me letters asking me to write on specific subjects. 

they ask me intriguing questions like “do you think little mario without a mushroom is very cute and i want to kiss him” and “will lil mario return my kiss or is he going to make it weird” these queries are commonplace for me now, and yes dear readers, know that i will of course one day give you my hot take (no he will not little mario only loves adventure) 

however, overwhelmingly people feel compelled to tell me “holden you know so much about video games and about snakes when are you going to tell us who your top five video game snakes are” 

well, my dear sweet beautiful friends; the time for wondering has ended.  here is the definitive list.

holy shit there are a lot of pokemon!  google tells me there are 721 official pokemon as of the last generation of games, and there’s probs gonna be like 100 more after sun & moon come out in a month.

with that many pocket monsters runnin around, how does anyone keep track of which ones are ugly & stupid???   there are just SO MANY!

simply put, it boggles the mind.

so let me help you out a little - here’s a very short list of just some of the worst offenders...

Alright my fellow nerdlings, get ready for the biggest jizzfest about Mass Effect you've ever read, cause I love these games more than I love my cats and I'm going to tell you why, whether you want me to or not. So keep reading. Or not, if you want to live the rest of your life with a hole in your soul where Mass Effect should be. Up to you.

I guess I should start by saying that this will have spoilers so if that ain't your scene stop reading and just GO PLAY THEM INSTEAD.

So the first game, unlike most game series, is the worst of the three in my opinion. It's dated, it's slow at times (most times), the game play is kind of meh. Is it amazing anyway? Fuck yes.

Mass Effect 1 to me feels mostly like filler, if I'm being honest. It gets you introduced to the game, to the ME universe, to the characters, to YOUR character, the amazing and wonderful Commander Shepard, the most beautiful person in all of existence.

You're tasked with defeating Saren (I mean you task yourself with this because the council is full of d-bags, but I'll get to that later), a rogue Turian spectre who has been brainwashed by the reapers and has a mega boner for one of them in particular named Sovereign. He's convinced that they're going to make everyone amazing and that the world will be better, blah blah, typical indoctrinated shit. We all know he's gone bonkers, but you've gotta kill him anyway.

The game play for ME 1 is pretty hilarious from a modern day gaming perspective. The graphics are pretty shitty and while you can design your Shepard the way you want, in game it looks pretty drastically different from in game cut scenes. I learned this the hard way.

Pro tip, give your Shepard what seems like a Jay Leno chin at character creation cause that shit gonna hella shrink during actual game play.

Your team in ME1 will be pretty lack luster, in my opinion. The only one I really like is Garrus, the Turian with a voice of fucking gold and velvet - I swear he can just... I mean he can talk to me all he wants. He's a C-sec officer when you meet him, working on the Citadel which is the games like... main capital city I guess. I mean it's not actually a capital city cause it's in fucking space, but you'll be there a lot. Anyway, moving on.

Eventually you'll meet and acquire Liara T'Soni, the pretty and sweet Asari who's going through her maiden stage, making her in constant need of adventure and exploration. She's pretty rad, I guess. A little boring and with a pretty severe case of hero worship for you, but I mean hey, who doesn't like to be worshipped every now and then??

You have Kaidan Alenko who's basically space Justin Timberlake circa 1998, only with a fuckboy attitude. He's a space fuckboy.  And then there's Ashley Williams, who is pretty much the chick version of Kaidan. No other explanation really, they don't deserve it.

You have Tali'Zora nar Rayaa who's cute as a button but will shoot you in the face if she's gotta. She's a mega smart engineer Quarian. Quarians are vaguely humanoid in appearance, with super cool backwards legs and no immune system at all, so obviously bad ass as fuck.  Would you walk around with just a thin space suit protecting you if you had literally no immune system? No? You are uncool and don't deserve Tali.

You'll get Wrex, a Krogan who starts off being pretty fuckin mean, but he'll grow on you, I promise. Keep him around.

It's been a while since I played the first game so if there are more team members, they aren't that important anyway. Moving on.

Once you've got a solid team together, you'll do some basic mission stuff, whatever. At some point you'll come across a cerberus run Krogan clone making facility on a planet called Virmire. It's a pretty horrible place that's shitting out some nasty Krogan clones and you gotta blow it up. Wrex, your Krogan homie, is naturally pretty upset by this and gets into a slightly heated argument with you about what to do. If your paragon or renegade are high enough, you can talk him down yourself and all will be well. If it's not however, like mine wasn't during my first play through, our LOVELY FRIEND Ashley Williams comes along and shoots him in the fucking head. Because she's a fucking gryffindor when it comes to making decisions. Do the thing first then deal with the consequences after. Try not to let that happen, cause you want Wrex alive. Eventually you all agree that the place needs to go boom boom. However, last second, because we can't have nice things, you find out that someone on your team has to stay behind to manually detonate the giant fucking bomb. Both Ashley and Kaidan volunteer because they have a hard on for being the hero, so you're going to have to choose who you despise more at this point. Honestly, it's a hard choice because they're both awful. Whoever you don't choose will be in the second and third games, so choose wisely friends.

Anyway, once that's done it's honestly just a bunch of mission after mission stuff where you're grinding your teeth and fighting the slog to get to the end of the game. The final mission/battle is a pretty decent fight. You have to kill our good crazy friend Saren, who comes BACK as this even more crazy cyborg version of himself after death number 1. So you gotta kill him again which is annoying, but it's whatever. The Citadel is being attacked by Sovereign, that Reaper that Saren has a boner for, who also has to be destroyed. At this point, you'll be given the choice to save the council, thus letting civilians and fellow soldiers die, OR you can save more people and let the council die. It's up to you. If you let them live, they remember it in the next games. They're still mega dick bags, but...I mean they'll be like “I guess you DID save us or whatever”. If you kill them, they'll be replaced by new council members who will look down on the human race as selfish babies. I mean it's up to you, really. Just remember that major decisions like that carry on into the next two games.

And that's pretty much it for ME1, to be honest. I left a lot of plot stuff out cause A) I'm too lazy to write it ALL out and B) you should play the fucking game. Mass Effect 1 on it's own is a journey you only take once. It's exciting and draws you in because of the potential it gives for leading into the next two games. It leaves you wanting more. You'll be sitting in your chair, covered in your cheetoh dust screaming “That's it?  That's where they end it??  What about the reapers?  What happens to Shepard and GARRUS (I have a hard on for Garrus the way Saren does for Soverign) I need MORE YOU FILTHY ANIMALS”.

Well worry not, my beautiful babies for there is much more. Mass Effect 2 is just around the corner and THAT is where your true love affair with these games will begin. ME1 holds a special place in my heart simply because it gave me ME 2 and 3.

Should you play Mass Effect 1? Definitely. Should you play it more than once? I mean, it’s your life, but probably not. Final rating is 6/10.

This piece was guest written by Ariel Grady - a wonderful human being, an enormous Bioware fan, and also an old roommate of mine so y’all know she can tell you all about my ability to keep a house clean (medium to poor).  She has played through the entire Mass Effect series like a jillion times.  

for too goddamn long y’all motherfuckers have been stifling your opinions about blastoise’s mega evolved form

it’s time to get down to business

it’s time we get fucking real about this thing

some immediate observations:

1. huge cannon

2. lil gauntlet cannons

3. intense facial features

4. greek nose

5. fucked up piercing red eyes

and that’s it there’s nothing else to say about blastoises mega evolution it’s pretty good blastoise looks like blastoise but with more armaments and that’s exactly what any god fearing person should want out of a blastoise mega evolution it’s got more cannons and a better cannon and it looks stern as shit

thank you

and good night

i finally got into that super mario maker thing and i’ve been having a really good time making shitty levels for my dumb friends to play and that’s been really fun

but here’s the thing

sometimes i check out the ‘new uploads’ section to see what other people have been making

and i would say 99 times out of 100, the levels you guys are making are just the absolute worst

so here’s some useful tips for making the best possible supa mario man levels:

1.  mario is really really good at jumping

did you guys know that?  he’s SO good at jumping.  mario loves to jump and i love to make him jump.  sometimes it’s fun to play a level where mario just jumps in cool and interesting ways.  too many levels are trying to have clever puzzley bits or just like shitloads of stuff going on all the time.  mario is at heart a platforming game and it is fun to navigate platforms so maybe put some neat jumps in there okay

2. get your friends to playtest your levels while you are designing them

one of the reasons that most levels suck is that they’re not intuitive.

so get your dumb idiot roommates or parents or whatever to have a go at your levels and watch them really close when they’re playing; you can even take really specific notes if you want to be really weird about it.  if they get stumped or frustrated, that’s a really good place to add a useful arrow or uh oh hey here’s another tip

3. coins and 1-ups are for leading players

see in this game, coins and 1-ups are more useful to you as a creator than they are to your player.  extra lives don’t serve their usual purpose in this game because there’s no real progression.  

that being said, people will still go after them because in the past, they did matter, and also they make little noises when you pick them up and it feels good; you should take advantage of this! arrows are really helpful but i think they’re a little too on the nose.  a handy trail of coins doesn’t feel like you’re giving things away; it’s just a lil nudge.

4. don’t lie to your players

one time i was playing a level and there was an arrow pointing to a pipe so i went in the pipe and i just fell on to some spikes and i died.  

the fuck is fun about that??? nothing

there’s nothing funny about that 

don’t do that shit

5. don’t make me die because i couldn’t see a thing before it killed me

mario is a game about assessing a threat and then surmounting that threat.  it’s about seeing a bunch of piranha plants and jumping over them just right.  it’s about using the fire flower to take out the goomba before i try to land on the mushroom.

it is not about a thwomp that was placed off screen crushing me before i had a chance to fucking do anything.  it is super not about putting a spike trap at the bottom of a long fall and i just die because how was i supposed to know there was a spike there

6. do less

most of the levels i play just have too much fucking trash everywhere.  piles of trampolines with seven winged bowsers jumping on em and fireballs flying every which way.  

pick two or three things you want your level to focus on and then do those things right.  make your level about using the monty moles to get over pits.  make it about using the raccoon tail to break some blocks or whatever.  i don’t care what you do just make it tiiiiight

7. let mario do the peace sign at the end of super mario world levels

when i finally get past your shitty level, i want exactly two things - i want to intentionally not give your level a star because let’s face it it sucked, and i want to see mario stop and look at the screen and make a lil peace sign.  

well it’s bugs week here at videosnakes which means i have to write about a bug’s life for the playstation or what else am i gonna write about???  lemmings???  THOSE AREN’T EVEN BUGS THEY’RE LIKE RODENTS U KNAVE

ok

i don’t remember much about a bug’s life for the playstation other than that it was a shitty mess.  the graffix are so bad and the controls are real bad and why is the bug’s name “flik” what kind of dumb name is flik???  flik isn’t a name it’s an action and like this is coming from someone whose name is holden so believe me i know a thing or two about names that are also actions

a bug’s life is a game about finding seeds and tokens and changing the colours of seeds and growing mushrooms it is a fucking game about being a bug and gardening

also i hope you like throwing tiny fruits at bad bugs because that is your life

that is your literal life

the game is called a bug’s life and apparently all a bug may ever do is throw tiny fruits, grow mushrooms, and shout “I’M INVINCIBLE!!” like an idiot whenever u pick up a token thing

fuck a bug’s life

fuck flik

fuck all video games 

and u know what - i don’t even feel like this game is a good representation of what a bug’s life is like

there is a literal bug on my laptop screen right now and he’s just sitting there

he’s not growing anything

he’s not throwing anything

he’s just walking around on my stupid laptop screen and falling off every now and then and climbing back up slowly

that’s what a bug’s life is like

a real bug’s life is monotony and pain

actually now that i think about it this game does a pretty good job of representing a real bug’s life 

because the game is bad and dumb

so

nevermind i withdraw my previous statements

- holden

Let me start you off with the theme music.

Much like Hudsonsoft’s weird-ass bomb-man game Bomberman Hero, this game is scored by a genre of electronic music (Garage) instead of something a little more traditional and whimsical, but this is a game about a cybernetic bee killing a bunch of mutant bugs so I’m not sure what else would have worked.

Like I mentioned a sentence ago, this is a game about shooting bugs. You get a bunch of cool guns, you are a bee, and you shoot bugs. You can do flips, if you want you don’t even have to fly, too. You can land and walk around and be abeille and you don’t gotta give a fuck. I really think the concept speaks for itself but I will elaborate; There is a multiplayer mode where you shoot a big soccer ball with guns to knock it into your opponent’s goal.

I kind of wish i had something to complain about, but Buck Bumble is objectively perfect; the platonic archetype of a video game fashioned from polygons into the lumpy shape of a bee. Sure the draw distance is a little low, and the resolution is a bit pixely, but there’s no way that’s gonna kill my buzz.

In the genre of games that let you play as bugs ( which I think is pretty much locked down by Buck Bumble and that shitty Bugs Life game), Bugdom is a weird middle child. It has a relatively simple structure; you are running shoe bug, and you go around kicking stuff until you find a key, which you put into a leaf door, which leads you to more stuff to kick, and you repeat that until you find the exit. You free a lot of ladybugs in cages, and they make helicopter noises when they fly away. That’s how you get da big points.

Here, just watch this guy play it for two minutes:

Here are some things you might notice about Bugdom from this video:

Fuckin nuts everywhere

You can roll into a cool ball

The music just goes on and on and on

There’s a lot of stuff and that stuff is nuts

This guy is way better at this game than I am, because it took me 15 minutes to find the exit, but I honestly had no idea where to go and what to do. It seems like you have to break every nut in the level to find the keys if you don’t know what you’re doing. The controls do not help, which are stupid tank controls that use a keyboard super poorly. You can use the mouse to control your bug too, but it makes so little sense to me that I can’t really describe it properly to you without making you experience it yourself. It’s too bad the controls are so weird, too, because I think these guys really wanted to make a cool rareware platforming game, but couldn’t figure out how to make the Z axis work so they just put all their obstacles on X and Y instead.

This game didn’t make me angry or frustrated, because it’s straight up not that hard, but what it did make me is super confused about everything, because the real difficulty was in trying to figure out where to go and what to do and WHAT IS HAPPENING.

You play as a bug though so I’ll give it four out of six legs.

metal gear solid 5: the phantom pain - first impressions:

1. this game is definitely the best kidnapping simulator to feature high powered weather balloons.  

your main mission as big boss is to run around afghanistan tranquilizing or suffocating hardened soldiers when they happen to get distracted, and then abducting them back to your offshore base by strapping a tiny zeppelin to their belts and lofting them into the air.  sometimes these men do not want to join your army; they eventually come around.

2.  this game is the best crawling and hiding simulator available.

sometimes i get to ride a horse around a big desert.  sometimes i have to make serious moral decisions about whether or not to betray my best friend & partner by taking a highly useful but also extremely dangerous buxom sniper back to my military village, despite my buddy’s protests.

but mostly i hide on my belly in medium high grass and wait for dudes to look at a wall or whatever so that i can shoot them with drugged darts and then steal & indoctrinate them.

3. the game allows me to listen to 80s pop-rock legend Asia’s Only Time Will Tell while I am playing.  i like to put the song on repeat, loudly sing along to the 20% of the lyrics I know, and blow up tanks with a grenade launcher.  it is a good game.

4.  when i am not playing metal gear solid 5 the phantom pain, sometimes i like to hide behind trees and shrubbery so i can surprise my roommates.  i am not as good a sneak as the big boss, because i do not have a noise suppressing sneaking suit; however what i lack in tools, i make up for in waiting until after we are drunk and it is dark out and also my friends are not private military soldiers so like fuck them.

—

in conclusion i think that metal gear solid 5 the phantom pain is a fun game to play.  it has explosions, cool music, and a sneaky sneaky man.

i give it a good thumbs up.

-holden

hey people - are you on the fence about whether or not you might actually like or dislike Mr. Mime?  here are some things to consider when making a mr. mime judgment call -

1) as it matures, mr. mime gains the power to solidify air molecules into physical objects.  i guess this is so that when mr. mime pretends he is in a box, he is actually in a box.

2) mr. mime is generally pretty rare, but it can be found in suburban areas.

3) mr. mime is creepy as fuck and that is not an opinion it is a fact look at this fucking thing why does it have those creepy long arms??  there is nothing to like about mr. mime

4) elf shoes elf shoes elf shoes

5) he learns light screen at level 22 which i guess is good if you like making light screens at level 22

6) he is literally born wearing kneepads why is this so fucked up

7) i always imagined that mr. mime and jynx were married and in love because they both kind of look like people but that can not be the case because they are fucking pokemon and all they do is say their own stupid name and make light screens fuck

8) i don’t like mr. mime and you shouldn’t either

- holden

Mr. Mime evolves from Mime Jr when it levels up after learning mimic.  He also swims in my nightmares and is, without a doubt, the freakiest pokemon in pokemon.  I think Ash’s mom had a Mr. Mime.  There was something really weird & sexual about Ash’s lonely single mother owning exactly one pokemon who was a weird humanoid mime monster.

dr. neo cortex has a forehead tattoo and frankly i think it just serves to undermine everything he does.

i mean, this guy is capable of incredibly effective & more or less consequence-free genetic mutation.  he is a fucking briliant scientist & engineer who is getting shit done.

but fuck this guy why would you get that fucking arrogant and shitty forehead tattoo with your own stupid initial on it what were you even thinking

it’s not even a good one - if you’d gotten a tasteful mandala or maybe some cool triangles that like come out of your weird spindly hair, maybe that’d be a different story but no you got a dumb fucking n and i don’t even want to hear about it

and don’t give me that shit about how you fell asleep in the tattoo parlour you know that didn’t happen you thought you’d look cool and guess what? you don’t.  you look like an idiot and it’s killing your career, and that’s why you have to live on a stupid island and eat giant apples for the rest of your dumb pointless life.

i mean if you’d just been a bit more professional with your appearance, your stupid brain-pun name would be appearing alongside titans of science like oppenheimer, einstein, and gauss but instead i look at your stupid face and all i see is forehead tattoo forehead tattoo big stupid giant head loser

it’s about respect neo - you have to respect yourself.  when you get a big N on your skull, you’re telling the world that you don’t deserve respect.

which means no matter how many marsupials you transform into frankenstein colossi, no one is going to take you seriously because you remind them of charles manson or that girl who got drake’s name printed on her face

i’m sorry neo - maybe you can use one of your ten thousand laser cannons to try and burn that thing off.  it’s your call, dude.

-holden

ADDENDUM: in doing research for this piece, at some point i remembered this horrible nightmare:

Hey whoops, looks like I’m a huge piece of shit again! I’m not doing horror game music, haha, fuck that. Today we talking about HALO.

Now I’ve been on record at least twice in on this blog stating that I think Halo is cool, and gosh darnit I think the music really is a big reason for that. But you know what? I’m not going to cover the really well known stuff here. We know that the main Halo theme is great. This is a known thing. It does not bear repeating. Lets talk more obscure.

Now I really loved ODST, but for writing this article I took another listen to the soundtrack and dude, there’s a lot of good shit here. Marty O’Donnell decided to go for a darker film-noire aesthetic for this game and does it ever shine, my friends. The little Mé-Ré-Sol melodic thing at the beginning… I’m not sure if that’s a saxophone or an oboe actually, but damn if it doesn’t give me huge flashbacks to watching The Big O as a kid. 

Now before I go on to other things I’d like to point out a cool little thing at the beginning of this tune called “Bits and Pieces”:

Hear what the strings are doing at the beginning? Maybe it sounds familiar???

YO MARTY I’M DIGGIN ALL Y’ALL LEITMOTIFS IN THIS SERIES OF VIDEO GAMES, KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK, MAN.

Yo you guys there’s just a lot of cool Halo music that I want to write about, but I can only post five videos at a time, so I’m going to split this into a couple different posts. SEE YOU LATER NERDS.