Little Big Planet Karting Review

Modnation Racers ... of sorry Little Big Planet Karting is the new addition to the LPB franchise but does it live up to it's predecessors ?

First off lets start off with the bad points in this game that you can complete in an afternoon. When playing racing games such as this the races start off with everyone close together with about 0.5 seconds between each player then a bit after players will be widely spread with an average of 5-10 seconds between them, however this game is not the case, throughout the entire race every player will be close to each other constantly leaving the winning position down to luck and less about skill, this is problematic and frustrating, if you're in last place you're okay but if you're anywhere between 7th and 1st you'll get hit quite often, let's say you're in 1st place and you get hit in most games like these you'd go from 1st place to 3rd usually, but in this game because everyone's so close get hit and it's way back to 5th place then usually you'll get hit again right after and go to 8th place which is really irritating, not only that if you're a few places ahead you'll find that you get hit constantly, you won't get hit by one person and that's that, usually it's a case of you get hit, gain control of your vehicle, then you get hit again.

The game has presents in the tracks, these presents are used to make you own levels, if you miss a present and wish to collect it you obviously need to reverse, uh-oh what have they done if you reverse for too long (about two seconds) you'll end up dying and re-spawning a bit ahead, so to reverse without that happening you need to reverse, stop, reverse, stop and keep going which is really terrible.

Some of the weapons can also cause problems for example, there is one that allows you to fast forward yourself, this can sometimes cause problems because you'll fast forward, then it'll stop and let you gain control again but it'll do this sometimes right before a turn making you gain control and crash into the wall, then wasting time reversing and stopping to then race on again.

In the Little Big Planet series each game has a bold theme, the first game is set on different continents, in the second game it's set in different periods of time, in this game however rather than being new themes they borrowed the ideas from the two games and making it slightly less characteristic.

When a new installment of a game comes out it's meant to move forwards but this game seems to have went backwards for some features. The game's aim is creativity in the first game when giving your level music you had to chose from those songs that the game had, however in the second game they made it better by giving players the ability to make their own songs with a variety of instruments, tempo's and so on, now making a race track and giving it your own music would be great and would help to set the mood but oh no wait a minute, for some reason they have removed this feature making it less creative, why did they do that ?

Fancy making your own track ?, well be prepared to look up tutorial videos on Youtube for it because making you own levels to the game's standards is near impossible, the tools are tricky to understand how to use and using them is even harder if you do manage to grasp an expert knowledge of it you may find it fun and enjoyable to create your tracks and try them out.

It's not all bad though the weapons in this game provide three uses, throwing/shooting it in front of you, behind you and to defend you, if someone fires a rocket at you a rocket symbol will appear beneath you, when it turns into a blue shield use the weapon whichever one you have and it will destroy the rocket, this feature is actually pretty neat as it eliminates the bubble like protectors you pick up in games like these.

While I did say that the level themes have been used before it doesn't mean to say it's terrible, it would have been better to go with new themes but these previously used themes are actually still pretty good and very cleverly put together.

It's not all racing too there are battle levels one of which takes place in the sky on two planes, there's also solo races that challenges players to get from point A to B within a certain amount of time, challenges that range from being a dinosaur to destroy cars, get the eggs to the goal, hit as many people as you can within a time limit and so on.

This game should be played if you are a LBP fan despite it's hiccups and flaws it's still a niffty little game so enjoy.

Rating

+ Creative level design

+ Bold graphics

+ Great for creative needs

- Can get frustrating

- gone a bit backwards with some level design tools

- Glitchy weapons

 

 

6/10

15 Hilarious Videos In Under A Minute

Just to help make you day a little bit better get a good start with these short but amusing videos:

They Can't Show That, Can They: My Parents Are Aliens

How can this be for kids, I mean really?

You know how when you re-watching a TV show from your childhood, have you ever been amazed at what you didn't notice? My Parents Are Aliens is one of the best examples, as it had plenty of mature content but back then nobody really complained about TV shows as much as they do now.

Mr Coleman: "Is there some kind of problem?"
Mel: "boys, pregnancy, drugs, eating disorders, shop-lifting, take your pick, i quite like the one about the drugs"

This is just one example of how it's made us wonder how it was approved for children.


Sexuality

In one episode Josh attempts to get together with a new student for her wealth, however this soon turns bad very fast as he realizes that the girl has some sever mental problems, he originally tries to break it off with her but it fails, so he decides to take another approach and attempts to get her to break it off with him, he gets Sophie to morph into someone he'd want to spend time with, however being an alien she is not fully aware of the concept of gender and sexuality and morphs into his best friend Pete, and tells the girls that he is Josh's and he is "my everything", the next day at school the girl outs Josh to everyone for being gay while a curious Pete -the real one- asks a bewildered Josh "does this mean you're my boyfriend now?"

This isn't the only example of homosexuality, Brain the other alien is off the scale, there has been countless scenes of him chatting up Josh's friends, to even kissing Pete in one scene.


Unfit Parenting

In another episode Josh ends up in an alternate reality where everything is the opposite but a bad opposite, in this version Sophie (who in the normal version tries her best to be a good mother) laze's around, drinks, doesn't care about the well being of them or barely pay any attention to their existence, and doesn't care about their feelings

Sophie: "That's. what. it. says, you noodle-brain simpleton"
Josh: "What?"
Sophie mimicking Josh: "Whhaaaat"
Josh: "no, it's just not something you'd expect from someone who want's to be a good mother"
Sophie: "Oh really, well up yours an all you stuck up self righteous little brat"

I think the dialogue speaks for itself, for a kids TV show that's pretty dark, in another episode Brain becomes a clothes designer and replaces all the children's clothes with obscene outfits such as clothes being made from beaded curtains which Josh uses as a chat-up-line, which is an sexual innuendo:

Tanya: "Josh you're wearing curtains"
Josh: "Feel free to pull me at any time"

Shortly after they express their discomfort and tell him that sometimes less is more, however this makes him go to the extreme and removes everybody's clothes leaving them all naked and resorting to wearing bin-bags.


Gender Confusion

Several episodes feature Brian dealing with an inner conflict of his gender, for example episodes have featured Brian wearing a skirt and saying how it feels right, wearing make up, to even deciding to become in touch with his feminine side by growing breasts and take over as the mother in the house hold while Sophie takes over being the man, but back to Brian when they all learn about breasts and how it can produce milk Brian stated that he already looked it up "I already knew that, looked it up this morning.Where do you think I got the milk for our breakfasts?"


Breasts

This show makes plenty use for breasts like mentioned above by a man growing breasts and feeding the milk to his children, but other than that the word boobs appears quite often, however in one episode Sophie becomes influenced by celebrities saying how they have big breasts, and big ... other bits, taking part in the celebrity culture Sophie changes her breast size way out of proportion saying how her bra was made by the space shuttle crafts parachutes , this episode is also slightly perverted as pretty much every male character can't stop staring at her overly sized breasts as she uses them to influence other people and make them do what she tells them to do.


It ain't over

From locking animals in small cages and giving them alcohol to drink, beating up characters at a family event, locking children in a room and forcing them to work, blackmail others, observing drunk people, listening to a teacher peeing over the phone while saying "good morning Mr Darcy", the list is quite endless for the content that was in this show that surprisingly sneaked past the people in charge of parental rating, it just shows you how much has changed nowadays everybody complains about what's shown on TV.

SNSD Flower Power

The indie days of Gee, Genie, Oh! and the like are long gone, now SNSD have became more mature and with that maturity they have became more fierce, it's been a long five months since their last release "Paparazzi" and now they come along with a new song to tempt us.

The initial thoughts of "Flower Power" was that it was going to be a girly and cutesy song, however that could not be more wrong, their 6th Japanese single is far from down-to-Earth it is a very upbeat dance number taking influences from Japanese Shibuya-Kei (a techno like genre), to those of you who may not like their choice of song you may find that it will eventually grow on you especially the combination of the gang singing "flower" with Sunny vocalizing a "OooooOoooOoooowoo".

The PV for the song yet again has various versions, one "normal" version which has all the usual elements of an SNSD music video, close up shots of individual members and dance scenes that change environments and clothes, from a car park or basement, wearing a bondage style of outfit to a empty airplane scene wearing flight attendant styled clothing, to the dance version of the song which replaces the individual shots of them to dance segments. 

Wether of not you've heard of SNSD/Girls Generation you should give them a chance as you may be surprised to hear what Japanese pop sounds like as the majority of you would probably imagine it being fully composed of anime theme songs, fast songs with high pitched vocals, or traditional Japanese song, give this a listen and realize how wrong you've been. Enjoy.