Philosophical: Moral Panics and dealing with change.

OK so I have touched on the subject of Moral Panics many times in the past, I have discussed things such as the ''Video Nasties'' the Horror comics of the 1950's, Violent Video games but its a subject I feel I just have to keep returning to, why? Basically because I think it is an important topic one which needs to be discussed for multiple reasons a number of which I hope will become clear by the end of this post.

 

OK so what is a Moral panic? Well I will offer up the following Quote/Definition for clarification ''A moral panic is a widespread fear, a fear which is most often an irrational fear, a fear that someone or something is a threat to the core values, the safety, and the interests of a particular group of people, a community, or even wide spread society in general.''

To talk about moral panics it is probably best to start of by talking about the man who is credited with both coming up with the phrase ''Moral Panic'' and with the development of the sociological concept, this man was called Stanley Cohen. Stanley Cohen was a South African Sociologist who was born in 1942 and died in 2013. Cohen introduced the social theory of moral panic in his book Folk Devils and Moral Panics which was published in 1972.

In this book, Cohen detailed his study of the public reaction in England to fights between the "mod" and "rocker" youth subcultures of the 1960s and '70s. It was through studying these youths and the media and the public's reaction to them that Cohen developed a theory of moral panic that outlines five stages of the process.

1. Something or someone is perceived and defined as a threat to the social norms and the interests of the community or society at large.

2. News media and members of the community/society then depict the threat in simplistic symbolic ways that quickly become recognizable to the greater public.
3. Widespread public concern is aroused by the way news media portrays the symbolic representation of the threat.
4. Authorities and policy makers respond to the threat, be it real or perceived, with new laws and/or policies.
5. The moral panic and actions by those in power that follows it results in social change within the community.

Cohen also suggested that there are five key sets of actors involved in the process of moral panic. They are:

1. The threat that incites the moral panic, which Cohen referred to as "folk devils";
2. Enforcers of rules or laws, like institutional authority figures, police, or armed forces;
3. The news media, which breaks the news about the threat and continues to report on it, thereby setting the agenda for how it is discussed, and attaching visual symbolic images to it;
4. Politicians, who respond to the threat, and sometimes fan the flames of the panic;
5. And the public, who develop focused concern about the threat and demand action in response to it.

The truth was that Cohen found that rather minor fights between groups of Mods and Rockers in beachside resorts were highly sensationalised by the media they were blown out of all proportion. One headline was “Wild ones invade seaside town – 97 arrests”. In this case the real truth of the matter was that there was not 97 arrests the number had been highly exaggerated there were in fact only 24 arrests, which when you do the maths it means that the media had in fact decided to make out 4 times as many people had arrested. Cohen found that this media reporting in fact led to increased policing which actually intensified the problem.

So why is this being brought up on a blog that's about gaming, horror films and other geeky pursuits you might ask well that's simple. The first proper research in moral panics might be the above case, at the very least its the first known research where this term and concept is used however when you look at things both before and after this point it is easy to see lots of examples of moral panics.

I have seen people argue that the concept of Moral panic goes back as far as World War One when the British wartime government used the media to portray the Germans in a certain manner in the hope of provoking a response from them, however I think you can go even further back than that, it all depends on how you view this. Think of the Salem Witch Trials for example and I would argue that there is an element of Moral Panic there.

Some people perceived certain women as a threat to social norms because of either certain practices they engaged in or in some cases just how they looked, these individuals were the folk-devil's, a panic was stirred up by those with power or social influence and if you think about it from that point and follow the steps you will see how it could be seen to fit all of the patterns of a moral panic (yes there was no media in the way we think of it today but there were town meetings and councils and gossip etcetera).

Historically society looks for things to blame and there are those who resist change and/or anything which is out of there comfort zone or anything which they choose to see as wrong. If like me you are a geek and you enjoy video games, or horror films or even comic books then it is important to realise that all of these areas of interest have been targeted by moral panics.

As a child born in the 80's I have lived through a fair few moral panic's in some cases I was aware of them in other cases not so much. In the 1980’s a moral panic was created in the media over HIV/AIDS. I was too young to really understand this, my basic memory of it is school pushing sex education right down our throats, they seemed very keen to push a massive fear of aids into all of us, to scare us into using condoms or even avoiding sex altogether now being scared in to remembering that sex can be risky and that sexually transmitted diseases exist might not be the worst thing to happen but then I also remember some media outlets nicknaming HIV/AIDS the ‘gay plague’ stigmatising a specific section of the population as being the primary cause and carriers and to put it mildly this was not cool in the slightest, anything which leads to one group of people unjustly being looked down on is simply wrong and should not be accepted in a civilised society.

 

The irony was that the next major examples of Moral Panic I can think of are the video nasties panic and the violent video games panic, in both of these cases it was suggested that young impressionable minds might be corrupted by them witnessing blood and violent acts in various forms of media, that these images might somehow blacken our hearts and cause us to become monsters.... this was suggested by the very same media which had effectively tried to make us hate a whole group in society based on there sexual preferences.

This is the point where this whole post should begin to make some sense. I have raised the point of moral panic's because I think people need to stop and think about what is written in the media, who is writing the things that you read, why are they writing them, who do they work for and what is there agenda both as an individual and as an employee?

The world around us is in a constant state of change and some people are better equipped to deal with that, some people embrace new ways of thinking and new challenges, other people feel that the world is slipping away from them that it is becoming less there world, less the world they grew up , less the world they feel safe in and to this end they will try to do anything they can to try to halt progress to try and keep a hold of what they know, but in truth you cant do this if you try then it will just slip through your hands like grains of sand. I hope this has given you something to think about dear reader.

SNES Review 110: Mortal Kombat 3

Now lets be honest Mortal Kombat had been a very popular game and all of the fuss its blood and gore caused basically just made it be seen as even cooler and more desirable. So it wasn't surprising that there was a Mortal Kombat II or that a third one was announced. I can remember when I first heard there would be a third Mortal Kombat and boy was I excited, Mortal Kombat 2 felt like a giant leap from the first game and all I couldnt help but get excited at the prospect of a third game I just thought what if the third entry is as big a leap from the second as the second was from the first.


Well Mortal Kombat 3 came to the arcades in 1995 both developed and published by Midway Games it was converted to the snes by Sculptured software (who would be latter renamed Iguana West and then Acclaim Studios Salt Lake City before finally closing in December 2002). I will say before continuing that Sculptured Software did a great conversion much like with Mortal Kombat 2 the blood from the arcade version and all of the gory finishers made it across fully intact and any faults with this game are pretty much faults with the game itself and not this conversion.

So the first thing most people ask about sequels and this is especially true of fighting games is so what new things does this one bring to the table? Well with Mortal Kombat 3 the first thing I noticed was that there was a "Run" button, which comes with a"Run" meter. You can only run forwards but it allows you to close the distance between you and your opponent quickly and I find that it helps when you have a character who is better at close combat. Apparently this was introduced to the game due to fans who had felt that the Mortal Kombat games always seemed to favour those who played more defensively. Mortal Kombat had never really seemed to pay much attention to the idea of combo's sure you could string a few small pieces together or juggle a little bit but now there were what were called "Chain combos",sequences of moves that cannot be interrupted once one hit connects; some of which end with an uppercut or other move that knocks the opponent into the air, so you can add your own juggle on to the end of this. This feels to me like it was an effort to move beyond the initial Mortal Kombat shock and awe sell it with the blood and an attempt to try to give the series a bit more depth, to try and help it compete with the Street Fighter games on a technical level.

There were a lot of other things added. There was the idea of the fight being able to break out of its initial arena. In certain levels if you uppercut your enemy or he uppercuts you through the ceiling then you are both taken to a new area where the fight will continue, its a nice touch.

Lots more ways of finishing matches were added not only were there new Fatalities,new Friendship moves and the return of babealities but there was also the introduction of Animalities, where the character transforms into an animal in order to kill their opponent, as well as some new Stage based Fatalities. Some of these things are gruesome, some are just plain funny but they all feel like they belong in the game (I am not one of those people who wants Mortal Kombat to be a purely serious blood bath, I think you need humour in it to balance it out).

I know that in general one-on-one beat-em'up's dont really need the best stories, after all your just looking for a reason for people to be punching other people in the face, thats why so many of them are based upon fighting tournaments, now the original mortal kombat was based on this with a little more added basically the idea that the fate of the world was dependent upon who won this tournament. Mortal Kombat 3 decideds to overly complicate this though, the plot goes a little something like this Shao Kahn frustrated at the continuing failure of his minions to win dominion over Earthrealm either through the tournament or otherwise decides that he needs a new plan,

Shao Kahn decides to send Shang Tsung and his Shadow Priests to Earthrealm to resurrect Sindel his wife who died thousands of years ago, because he will then be able to stroll into the Earthrealm and reclaim his bride as his own, somehow doing this will cause Earthrealm and Outworld to begin to merge, this merger will cause billions of humans to drop dead and loose there souls and will allow Kahn to pretty much do whatever the hell he wants including sending his soldiers to kill any remaining humans and well just generally taking over the earth. Clearly he never cared about his wife and was quite happy to be rid of her, maybe she was always nagging at him and asking him to take out the trash or take his shoes off when he came home, or take his helmet off indoors as its only now he has realised her rebirth will create this situation that he seems to remember he once had a wife. It all sounds like a convoluted B movie plot and is kind of to much as far as reasons go for one character to punch person after person.

Graphics wise I cant really complain about the game its pretty good overall sure the sprites have been shrunk a bit in the port and lost a little bit of clarity but considering the power difference between the arcade hardware and the SNES this is very understandable and at the time of its release the graphics here were very impressive in my opinion, I still think Mortal Kombat II looked a little better though, but still nothing here gets in the way of the playability. The sound is also nice and solid the music is good and the sound effects such as the punch and kick sounds have a nice solid quality to them. The game handles very well and its just as fun to play with a Super NES controller as it was in the arcade.

My main issues with this game are sort of a mix of the tangible and intangible. On the one hand I find the character selection to be kind of questionable. There are a number of brand new warriors that have been brought into the game, and I personally like the cyborgs Cyrax, and Sektor they are definitely a welcome addition, but I have to admit that I miss some of the fighters who have not been brought back this time the prime example being Scorpion, there are after all some rather bland new fighters who take up space I would have rather seen being filled by a classic. The other issue is that this game just doesn't feel as good as Mortal Kombat 2 and as this is a feeling there is no real way I can explain it, maybe its just don't to the fact I feel a lot more nostalgia when it comes to number 2, it was at a point when the series felt like it was at its prime and it felt a lot better than much of what was out at the time, by the time the third game came out lots of other fighting game series had either got a good start or kicked it up a gear, after all the PlayStation was out at this time so we had been introduced to the likes of Tekken and Battle Arena Toshinda etcetera.

I ended my review of Mortal Kombat 2 by concluding that I would give it 8 out of 10 an that if you caught me in the right mood then I might go as high as a 9, unfortunately I wont be going that high this time in fact I feel that despite this game technically having more it kind of feels like a step backwards like a worse offering and so I would have to give this game a 7. No its not a bad game I would recommend trying to get a hold of the second one instead myself and to be fair when I reviewed the second one I did recommend that if you had a Xbox 360, a PS3 or a Decent PC that you looked at downloading the Mortal Kombat arcade collection as it has the first 3 games on it, and not ports actual arcade perfect versions and this is still true. I also went on to mention that there was a modern Mortal Kombat game, will since that review there has been a sequel game and then it has had a special edition with lots of extras, this special Edition is called Mortal Kombat XL and I would strongly recommend it. It has a lot of characters, a whole heap of finishing moves and some very interesting special guest characters, there is Leather Face from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the Xenomorph from Alien, the Predator from Predator and its just a darn good game that you can now get for under £20 new if you look around. It is hard to recommend an old loose cart of MK3 when you could use your money for this instead. If however you simply need a cart of MK3 for your snes how much are you looking at? Well for a loose cart your looking around the £15 to £20 mark, its worth noting that when you look up MK3 you will see a regular and Ultimate Version, it is the regular I have reviewed as that is what I own, the ultimate version was a latter release with more characters and often goes for more money it has added characters and such, this is not something I will ever actively be searching for so it is highly unlikely I will ever provide a review of it. (If I ever saw one for a few pounds id grab it but its not something I am looking for cheap or that I am willing to pay the going rate for).

Philosophical: The Quest for Self Relevence.

So lets get philosophical for a moment here, I was watching Boston Legal, the very first episode of it to be precise and there was a speach by William Shatners Character Denny Crane about there being a point in a mans life where he starts to be a little less who he was, where he starts to feel like he might be irrelevant and so he searches for anything to make him feel relevant again to prove that he still has it. I recently finished William Shatners Autobiography ''Up Till Now'' and in it he talked about how he could relate to the character of Denny Crane after all he had been William Shatner the actor who was loved and celebrated as Captain James T Kirk one of the greatest science fiction heroes of all time and after this he went through a period where he did lots of little projects diffrent bits and pieces and some people started to use terms like ''has-been'' and to claim that he had become a sort of parody of himself that he had become somehow less. Now I need to make it very very clear here that I absolutly adore William Shatner I dont think he ever diminished I think his star has only glowed brighter and brighter with time in fact I see his work as Denny Crane to be some of the best of his career.I do think that there is something to this quest for relevance though.

The thing is I dont think the quest for relevance is something that starts when your older I think its something which is always there it just becomes more central at times, seems somehow more important. When I was younger back at university I got apart time job, now I did get a certain sense of who I was from being a uni student but at this job I set my sights on the role of supervisor because something in me told me that if I got that role it would make me someone. I got the role about a year after I had been there so I was at Uni and I was a supervisor at work and I was around 20ish. I finished my degree and was a graduate but I never pressed this fact with work, I did think about using my qualification to look for something else but decided that manager was just a push away from me, I figured if I could get the manager job without using my degree then I would have proved I could make it twice once through education and once just through pure hardwork. It was a bout a year latter and i was a manager, then I should have left but I kept pushing up the ranks becoming a higher graded manager and then deputy manager of the whole work place, then I found myself being sent to run other branches for the short term when there were isues eceetera and then I was on the verge of being given my own branch to run, then I got ill, I got ill and I had to give up my job to concentrate on getting better.

When I left work I left my title behind I stoped being Deputy Manager Kerr and simply became Kerr or in a way as I saw it more as unemployed ill waste of space Kerr. You see I had allowed so much off my sense of identity to become linked to the role I had taken on, I had focused so much of my sense of pride and self worth on this job title. I had given this company my everything, I had worked myself sick and endured more than I care to currently talk about but what had I actually gained from it? Well with each promotion there had been a pay rise, but there had also been a massive rise in responsability, a rise in preasure and a rise in expectations. The diffrence from assistant to supervisor had been a 20 pence pay rise, a badge that said supervisor and a tiny bit more respect on the one side with roughly twice the pressure, twice the work load and twice the expectation on the other. If the safe was down money it was now my fault, if a sales assistant cocked up it was now somehow my fault, if something broke down I had to find a way to fix it, and the list goes on and on.

Am I saying dont progress at work? I guess I am saying think long and hard about why you want to progress, think not only about what you are gaining but also about what you are loosing. Remember though that you are not your job title, you can trick yourself in to feeling that the label you wear at work gives you real life relevance that it makes you something but you are at the end of the day only what lays under that uniform, and what is more if you decide to give your life worth based only on one thing such as your job or your part in a relationship or status as a university student or any other single thing then you run the risk of falling to pieces if you loose this one single thing that you have determined makes you who you are, that makes you worthwhile.

As a student of Psychology let me offer this advice, the human personality is a huge and complex thing, there are so many reasons for each and every one of us being the person we are and if you try to simplify who you are, to crush it down to nothing more than a small label then you cheapen it and you cheapen youself. If you want to know what makes you relevant its not your job or your house or your money its whats in your brain and what is in your heart. You dont need a label to have worth, you dont need a shiny badge to have respect you simply need to be yourself. The people in my life who I respect both at work and socially I respect or dont respect because of the way they are, give them a badge or take one away from them and it wont change my thoughts or feelings about them in the slightest if I thought they were great to start with I will still think they are great, if I thought they were a prick then I am still going to think they are one.

So who am I, I am Kerr the father, Kerr the son, Kerr the boyfriend, Kerr the writer, Kerr the Survivor, I am smart, funny, silly, loving, kind, insightful, a little bit crazy and a lot complex. Every single person is a list like this in fact there a much longer list a list far to long to ever truly read or write and this is worth so much more and so more important than anything that can be pinned on a uniform or written in a simple summary. Hold on to what makes you who you are, value yourself on every single part of who you are and value those around you in the same way.

I could end with some huge quote from a philosopher like Aristotle or Plato, or I could even quote the famous song lyrics and  make refrence to ''I did it my way'' but in truth I think the whole point of this is better summed up by a quote from the fictional charater “Bill” S. Preston, Esq. (From Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure)

“Be excellent to each other.”

SNES review 109: Wings 2/Blazing SKies

So the title I am going to talk about today is actually a game I accidently purchased twice, how do you accidentally buy a game twice well in this case it has something to do with the fact that it has a diffrent title in each of the 3 regions 1 of which essentially makes it a sequel to an Amiga game. In Japan the game is called Sky Mission, in Europe it is called Blazing Skies and it is in America where it has sequel status and is calledWings 2: Aces High. For the purpose of this review I have been playing the two versions I own the European and the American.

Now the first thing that attracted me to this game was the fact it involved planes, there have been some flying games I have absolutly adored but in both cases when I decided to buy it there was really 2 main factors one was the low price and the other was that it had the Namco brand on it.I have said before that you just have to see certain video game companies logos and you automatically feel safe in buying one of there products and I find that this is usually true with Namco, there is a big issue here though Namco didnt make the game they simply published it, it was made by a Studio called Malibu Interactive who have a far worse pedegree than Namco, in fact I can only think of about 2 of there titles that I actually enjoy one of them being Ex-Mutants on the MegaDrive. I guess this is an example of how having the right publisher can help a title because if I had realised this game was by them I would have been far slower in reaching for my wallet. I am not even sure of how this became a sequel to Wings as that was both made and publised by Cinemaware although I believe by the time Wings 2 was released they had gone bankrupt so maybe the rights were brought up or something, either way its not really anything to do with it and is pretty much just a game about the same sort of thing which is a sequel in name alone.

So as far as the story goes all you need to know is that its set during World War I and basically your overall mission is to destroy Kaiser Wilhelm II's factories, out fly his best pilots and generally do your best to put a significant dent in his war efforts. As the game is set during World War I, you'll be using biplanes from that era and there limitations are pretty much stuck to, there are no lock on missiles or fling like a nut with no fear of stalling here and there is no radar system, sure this makes it close to the truth of what it would have been like but in some cases it doesn't make for the best of games.

This game has three different kinds of missions. There are the dogfighting ones basically plane against plane in the sky try to knock as many of them out while trying to survive yourself. These missions become harder and harder as the enemy AI/Pilots improve as the game progresses. You will really have a tough time on your hands moving all over the place trying to outmanoeuvre the enemy Since your flying a WW1 era biplane you can only shoot at enemies that are directly in front of you and some of them can be pretty darn tricky when it comes to getting them to stay still long enough for you to get enough shots of to down them.

Then there are bombing missions, in these you fly far overhead an area and you drop bombs on strategic military sites while watching out for anti-aircraft attacks coming from soldiers on the ground. You get shown a photograph of the target before the mission so you know what and where you are bombing but there is one important thing to remember and that is that you can not physically turn your plane around during these missions so if you miss something then you've missed it.

There are also what the game refers to as "strafing runs". In these you fly your plane at a low altitude and you have to wipe out targets that are described during the mission briefing. This doesn't sound so tough but you seem to fly like a bat out of hell so its very easy to miss lots of things and fail the mission.

Now I guess it sounds all nice and varied but in truth it just doesn't feel right, it feels boring, the graphics do the job but don't really do anything to excite you and there is no effort through the music or sound effects to really grab a hold of you, the controls work but also it all just feels kind of clinical and laboured, the dog fighting seems to play out kind of slowly, even the worst of enemies seem to be to good at avoiding you and it takes an age to just shoot down what you need to finish the stages even near the beginning of the game, this game commits the cardinal sin of gaming in that it simply is not fun. I found myself wanting to put this game down almost straight away, in fact I wanted to go back to one of the flying stages from Empire Strikes back and just play that a few times instead as that seemed to capture the thrill of dog fighting in a way this game didn't even come close to. You might think that I am just being a bit of a dick and simply prefer Sci Fi, well I am a huge fan of a lot of science fiction things but I have enjoyed other games involving old fashioned planes, heck Pilot wings was one of my favourite SNES games, I adored the plane flying in that.

I cant remember what I paid for my English copy of this game but I know I got the American one for £5 or less and in all fairness I think that's the kind of price it needs to be, its simply not fun or particularly interesting past the oh look there is a game I haven't played before buzz you will initially get when you see/try it. If you want it then remember I would only give it about 3 out of 10 and think your cash would be much better spent on well most other things... Online you can find pal cartridge only copies of this for about £7 but frankly I think that's to expensive for this game.

My opinion on Call Of Duty Titles in general

 So I was working on another SNES review and I took a break to read a friends blog, its another blog about games one I would highly recomend its DS90Gamer's blog the link can be found in my list of blogs and sites I recomend. Still I digress, I noticed that in his introductionary panel he states that if you are looking for views on Call Of Duty ecetera then his blog is proberbly not for you, well I thought some people might be intrested in my views on that series so here goes. (Yes I realise I talked about the No Russian level once a long long time ago).

I will start by saying that I have played every single Call of Duty going so this can be considerd a somewhat measured oppinion, there are a few things I should make clear though, one is that I dont tend to play them much in multiplayer the main reason for this is the fact that they just seem to attract such hollering dick bags. I have no desire to hear a shrill 12 year old from America scream about how he shagged someones mum last night while spouting more profanity than the saltiest of sailors and no I am not a prude I swear at times, I tell rude jokes and I enjoy various comedy shows like SouthPark and Family Guy so I am not some old fuddy duddy who wants everyone to speak queens English I just dont want to spend my leasisure time doing what feels like babysitting a load of young teens who are most likly so into this game and trying to act big because there mums and dads dont give a shit about them and have simply locked them in there rooms with the latest game so they can go about there own business.... To this end most of my time spent on these games has been in solo or split screen modes, I think the games have by and large told decent stories with good set pieces but I also do not think that they have changed that much over the years, there have been odd inhancments of course and then there has been basic changes in setting with them basically moving on to a latter point in time whenever they think there fan base has become fatigued, but the thing is they have now worn out all of history and have started having to go to the future, this is what happens with successful horror franchises once you have hit the nail on the head a few too many times you have to start going to the future or going to space or going to hell so whats next Call Of Duty Hell where you shoot the devil in the face while having pro American sentiments pushed at you? It is either that or they start remakeing the old ones which we have kind of seen this year with Call Of Duty Infinite there future based game having a special edition that comes packaged with a remake of Modern Warfare one of there older but also most popular games in the franchise.

I would say that I dont know how many years Call of Duty can have left in it but then I know it has a very solid fan base who seem to buy it every year on release at full price, well as you can proberbly tell from what I have written so far I dont cue at midnight or buy it on release, I typically wait for it to be under £20, I didnt get black Ops 3 until it hit £13 second hand and I have to admit I havent even tried it yet as I purchased something else the same day that I wanted to play more. I did however grab Infinite Warfare a week ago for £22.49 yes its a bit more than I usually pay but it was a version with  download codes and various bits and pieces, the normal version was £20 but I guess the bigger shinier packaging swayed me, so have I played it Yes I have. I installed it and I played the first mission and then decided that I was a little bit bored, most of the Call Of Duty games I have finished but I have tended to play them one level at a time, I play a level I turn it off, then the next day I play another levelel ecetera, so I feel that in this way I cant really say there great games there semi enjoyable time killers, I really dont understand the massive hype that seems to surround the release of each game.

This is when I have to do a little bit of a 360 in some ways, I am proberbly never going to bother with Infinite Warfare's multiplayer, I also think it will be a long time until I finish the story mode but I have to say I am happy having paid my £22.49 just for the Zombie mode alone. So what makes the Zombie Mode so cool and so much better than the rest of the game well for one it doesnt take itself very serious at all, the introduction to it is done in a brilliant way which reminds me of old classic horror movies with a host who very much reminds me of the work of Vincent Price. The game mode itself is set in the 80's and is full of 80's refrences lots of 80's music is in the background while you play, its basically a hoard/survival mode the more you play the longer you seem to be able to last  you get used to the layout, you get a feel for the way the zombies behave but you also get points that make you level up and also points that level your guns up, so after a few goes you can add something to a gun that makes it a little more powerful or that makes it work better for you. The thing is with this game is that yeah a go on it might only last 5 or 10 minutes maybe 15 if you are getting really good at it but it has that just one more go factor so you end up playing more and more of it, you can blow a few hours away without even realising that you have its simply that fun.

So I guess that is everything I wanted to say out of the way, I can certainly understand why some people dont like Call Of Duty and although I cant understand why other people love it I think that one of the best things about people is that we are all diffrent that we all have diffrent ideas and enjoy diffrent things so If you love it and it makes you happy then good for you, dont ever let anyone rob you of the things you enjoy or make you feel bad for liking something but do me a favour if your going to play online dont be a hooting dick hole.

SNES review 108 Super Empire Strikes Back

 I have tried as much as possible to review games in order when it comes to parts of a franchise/sequels for example I made sure I didn't review Donkey Kong Country 3 until I had reviewed the first and then the second entries in the series but I also said that I would not review a game I did not own. So when it came to the Super Star Wars games I reviewed Super Star Wars and then jumped to Super Return of The Jedi for a simple reason I didn't own Super Empire Strikes back. The truth is I had never owned Super Empire Strikes back not even as a kid, sure a friend had owned it and I had played it before but I had never owned and had a chance to really give it a proper go. I reviewed Return of the Jedi because I simply didn't think I would ever get Super Empire Strikes back, every time I saw it which wasn't often it was a lot of money, and to be honest it was more than I wanted to pay, to cut a long story short a few months ago I finally managed to get an American Cartridge only copy for what I considered to be a good price, I have sat on it since then knowing that at some stage I would play it and review it, so when did I play it? I started playing it after I heard the sad news that Carrie Fisher had passed away I guess this piece of sad news served as areminder that I had this game waiting for me, and I have decided that I have finally played enough of it to give a fair opinion on it.

So why didn't I get it as a kid? Well I guess in part because unlike a lot of other people of the original Star Wars films Empire was my least favourite, sure I like the snow speeder parts at the beginning a lot and its still a great film but I was always a Return of the Jedi fan the other reason was that I constantly heard about how much harder than StarWars it was and in truth as a child I had found StarWars hard, hard enough to be frustrating but still fun and overall just about manageable, I kind of thought that if it was tougher than this then it would simply be so hard that I wouldn't enjoy it. Plus lets remember as a kid you are very limited in how many games you can manage to get and if you spend all of your money on a game you then quickly get stuck on you might be stuck without a new game your actually managing to progress through for quiet a long time.

Well as you will probably know either from reading my review or another review or even from playing it Super Star Wars game was primarily a run and gun platformer with some Mode 7 levels thrown in to keep things fresh, well if you liked that then your in for more of the same here. The graphics are more or less the same there is not a massive jump in quality but they do feel slightly more polished especially when it comes to the Mode 7 focused ones. To the untrained eye you might look and go well its basically the same but with sand swapped out for snow, but its when you take a look at the enemy vehicles they are a lot clearer in Empire. The best new thing about Empire is that there is a password system. The length of Super Empire Strikes Back is roughly the same as that of Super Star Wars. However, with the added password system this not only means that you don't have to try to do the whole game in one it also means that if you keep a record of your passwords you can play the bits you like again and again without having to keep playing through the game until you get to them. This is great as there's a part later on in the game where you get to fly the Millennium Falcon and fight Tie Fighters in space. This looks and feels rather like a SNES version of the X-Wing and Tie Fighter games that were big on PC at the time of this games release. I can not tell you how many times I have returned to this part via password to play it again and again, there are entire flight based games on the SNES which are not as good as this little part of this game yes The Rocketeer I am looking right at you (as well as another title I have yet to review so wont name).

The difficulty is defiantly turned up from the first game which yes might be an issue if this is the first of these games that you grab but to be honest its not as hard as some people have made out if you have already played and finished the first game Super StarWars then most of the skills you learned will see you through the start of this game. This is where I will make a strange suggestion, nearly everyone knows the StarWars story, you will have seen the films probably countless times, if your my age then Christmas and New Years always seemed to be StarWars time with all of the films being shown during your Christmas holiday therefore I would say if you are going to grab one of these dont worry about the story order worry about the difficulty order. If you want to play them easiest first and work up to the hardest then in my opinion you should play Super Return of the Jedi, followed by Super StarWars and finally end with this game Super Empire Strikes back.

I have to say I really liked this game if you have played and liked any of the Super StarWars games then you will like this, it has the same high level of presentation with both graphics and sound effects that just scream StarWars. So if I was to give this game a score then what would I personally give it? Well I need to give it 7 out of 10, I really like it but I did enjoy both Super StarWars and Super Return of the Jedi just that little bit more. I spent around £15 on my American loose cart of Super Empire Strikes back but looking online at the moment your looking at something closer to £30 with boxed versions being more in the £60 to £70 price range. So is it worth it? Well that comes down to the individuals desire to own and play this game, I would certainly start with Super Star Wars or Super Return of the Jedi first, It might interest some people to know that Super StarWars can be got on the Playstation 4's download service for around £7 Yes this is the SNES version).

My plans for this Blog this year

So Happy New Year to everyone. I guess this is my first post of the year so I should quickly outline my plans for the year. Well the first thing to say is that I dont plan any major changes, I will continue to talk about Games, Horror, Wrestling and occasionally polotics or just things that have either grabbed my intrest or just pissed me off.

So for those who pay attention you have proberbly noticed that I still have not finished reviewing 150 SNES games, I have to admit that I did not quiet realise what a giant task this would be, the issues with it are mostly in playing enough of each individual title to feel that I am not jumping to any hasty conclusions. When a game is amazing this is not such a big issue but if the game sucks then yes its a little harder. I also set myself a few limitations like making sure that I played the game off an original cartridge on an actual SNES. Add to this that sometimes I will play a game and just not have enough to say about it to feel that its worth reviewing after all do you really want to hear about yet another football or baseball game that is not that diffrent from the one before it? Still I am going to try my hardest to crack on with this task of reviewing 150 SNES games this year and I hope to review at least 25 new titles that I havent previously talked about and if I do not own enough that I can manage to reasonably review then I will just need to grab some diffrent ones, obviously dont go asking me to review EarthBound or something as I am not going to spend that kind of money on one single old SNES cartridge.

I also wanted to point out that in a move to make sure this blog gets at least semi freqent updates I have aquired the services of a guest poster who will be talking about various subjects. Part of this is just to bring a diffrent point of view to certain subjects and also because they know more about certain things than I do, im not going to outline what they will be posting about or how often, partly because I want it to be a pleasent suprise.

So what do I have in line for you as well as SNES reviews? Well I plan on continuing to document my monthly retro purchases, I also want to review at least one horror film a month, I hope to return to talking about the WWE hall of fame. I dont want to make to many promises but I certainly intend to try and post more this year than I did last year.