This weekend, the Mario Kart Wii Driving School Tour came around to Las Vegas, so I decided to check it out. After all, it’s the least they can do for us since this isn’t Europe anytime soon, where it’s already been released.

Despite the 30 minute drive there, taking the 215 east, driving up the horrid traffic on the 15 north, exiting 515 to the Fremont Street Experience, and getting lost in the ghetto downtown Las Vegas area to score some free parking, doing countless of illegal U-turns and dangerous lane changes, it seems I’ve got some driving school left to do that not many has really heard about. That’s what I’m there for, right? I should technically become a better driver after all this.

Alongside taking pictures shortly before we were told not to by the charming pit-stop clad female workers, I got to see inside the touring van and play the game for myself, free of charge.

So far, it seems like what Mario Kart should have been years ago if they didn’t go down the Double Dash!! path. Interesting track designs, new characters, motorbikes, and Miis driving recklessly in the Coconut Mall parking lot. The items are fairly the same since Mario Kart DS as well.

They didn’t have any GameCube controllers available as I’m sure they’re trying to promote the Wii Wheel. It felt quite awkward holding a disembodied steering wheel at first, but you get used to it after a while. With it, you can also jiggle it around the air or something and pull off stunts in mid-air, rewarding you with a boost upon landing successfully. I find it a nice touch compared to the mindless use of GameCube controllers, obtaining maximum control every time. It’s the Wii after all, and I suppose we’re meant to be more interactive with our gaming now.

After two races, I got kicked out in order to let the other kids have a turn at it. Fair enough. It was merely a test toast anyway, and now I can’t wait to check out what else ought to be in store when I get the game myself. Stepping out of the van, I was given a piece of paper to fill out, asking things like my name, nickname, favorite character, and so forth. I guess I earned my driver’s license!

After filling out such vital information, I was taken into a shady photo booth to get my disturbing picture taken.

Wait, that was it!? Two whole races and your picture taken after signing down your soul on a piece of paper soon to be discarded? Well… yeah. After all was raced and done, I got my shiny and new “driver’s license.” They also passed out some freebees as well, such as a Mario license plate, a stolen ballpoint pen, and a Mario Kart Wii air freshener that smells like some kind of Swiss meringue or whatever scent that drives you into breaking into an office break room or any other place of work you’re not allowed to be in and steal their snacks, namely the pastries.

Hoo boy, can’t wait to tell the folks at home how much money I just saved on going to this school instead.

The time where the YC members throwdown in ZSNES – or whatever we’re using – to fight for their right to party exclusive bragging rights. I’ve been parading my incredible victory in Bomberman in the last tournament for far too long, so its time for a new tournament.

There’s a topic over on YC which can be found here, here, and here.

Those of you who have any interest in such an event feel free to post furiously and without hesitation. Whether it’s suggesting games, ideas, or anything else related to it, post it there.

At long last, the awaited comic specially for our members at YC. The comic will update on a weekly basis, more likely to be on a Monday or a Tuesday, depending on how far/behind I am with the next one. I’ll try to get it into a schedule that works best for me, and I will be looking out for people to be authors/artists, because I won’t be able to keep up with it on my own.

The actual link to the comics is a huge one, however, PinkFloydYoshi is kindly going to go and give me a subdomain which means that the link will be smaller and much more memorable. I’ll let you know of a link for it once it gets here, but for now, enjoy the first comic!

So, I’m hoping some guys are wondering what in God’s name is happening about this comic that was supposed to happen some time ago? If you didn’t know, you do now, or if you didn’t care about it, you better now. (Or I’ll eat your children) Though if you’re actually interested to know, then let me reassure you about it.

The comic is going ahead as planned, there was just a mix up with how it was going to be created, I assumed that PinkFloydYoshi was going to create the actual website for the comic to go up on, but instead, he meant that he’d host the comic on one of his servers (since he has 1337 bandwidth, apparently). Since I have no website building experience, I’m having to go rake around for a site to host it on instead, now. If anyone knows how to whip up a simple website where I can place the comic on, then drop me a line. If all else fails, I’ll most likely have to host it on smackjeeves.com, though I’ll let you know if anything else comes up.

Though, I can tell you that the first comic has been done and is ready to go up, but what day that will be is.. indefinite. Just keep coming back now and again to check.

But let’s start off with the beginning and review Burnout: Paradise. I’m reviewing the 360 version, because it’s the one I have.

Burnout Paradise as the name suggests is a Burnout game set in Paradise City, a place which will be not familiar at all I wouldn’t think until you race around a bit. I’ve played Burnout 2 before and some of the places are very similar because it’s set in the same place. I’ve already found such classic areas I’ve loved such as Flimsy Fence of Certain Doom and Drift of Bus Crash but whatever. The basic aim of the game is to race, smash, roll and flee your way to more cars, higher licence rank and of course those tasty tasty achievements.

That’s about the gist of what you have to do. I suppose it wouldn’t be a great review if I said just that so I suppose I’ll have to delve deeper into it. The things I do for you guys. Honestly!

There are 5 main ways to gain points on your licence. Speeding, reckless driving, death by dangerous driving, resisting arrest and speeding again. If you get 12 points on your licence you get it revoked and oh wait wrong type of points.

There are 5 main ways to gain “points” on your licence. You get 1 point for each event won and after a certain amount you go up a rank. The 5 ways are Cosmological, Teleological, Ontological, Moral and Experiance (if you get that then hats off to you). Wow I made two jokes out of the main points system in this game I’m that awesome.

There are 5 main ways to gain “points” on your licence. You get 1 point for each event won and after a certain amount you go up a rank. The 5 ways are Races, Stunt Runs, Road Rage, Marked Man and Burning Routes. Races are self explainatory, as are stunt runs. Come first and do some stunts respectively. Road Rage pits you against a few other cars and you have to to take a certain number of them out in a time limit. They keep respawning near you so if you get lost don’t worry they’ll be near you again soon. Marked Man is almost the opposite. You have to get from one place to another before you get smashed to death by the lolwatsuperstrong cars. And Burning Routes are basically using a certain car to do a time trial and winning gets you a free car.

To start said events, you need to find a junction with traffic lights. All of them have one. For races, burning routes and marked mans you race from said traffic light to one of 8 locations. These are the only places they end and can end, which is quite a good system I find. Every few wins a car will start running around the city and whilst cruising if you take it down you win it. Difficult when you’re driving, said, a light speed car and you’re trying to take down a fricking van. I did that, by the way. I get wrecked.

So that’s the jist of it, quite simple really. There is also an online mode, oh yes. Freeburning is the only one I’ve tried and, having played a 5 player one as the most (Myself, Toshi, moot, PinkFloydYoshi and Contention) I can say the online is brilliant. We spent a good half hour running around a figure of 8 dirt track just crashing into each other, pure hilarity. There are some challanges too. 50 for each number of players 2 to 8. Me and moot have completed all 50 2 player ones. I think they sold out a bit with these, most are just repeats as you go up the player numbers. The same things but with more amounts. Quite lame really. Although some provide much hilarity, see the 3 player jump over two people on the steps, 5 player flat spin off the steps and 5 player meet in a small area, the latter taking us ages because some people *coughpinkfloydyoshicough* kept jumping on us. Moot especially hated that one and most likely gave a good amount of bad rep.

So is the game actually any good. Short answer: Yes. Long answer: Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees. This game is brilliant amounts of fun, and whilst it may just seem like an average racing game with some silly crash animations and fun takedowns, it is actually rather addictive. I’ve spent the good part of 15 hours on it so far, maybe more. The races may get a bit tedious and the burning routes infuriating, but there’s just a moment of golden glory when you nudge a racer into a split ramp and what him get obliterated on the asphalt. The online makes it all the sweeter, and some hilarious moments such as Pink’s indestructable car, moot’s horrific luck and repeated vertical takedowns make this one to own if you have a 360.

Of course, it’s not all pudding and gravy in paradise. Some issues include DJ Atomica or Atomika or whatever being a noisy git. Sometimes he’s funny and there are some quite humourous lines, though most the time you wish he’d stop talking. The song list is questionable. Avril Lavigne? What? Most the cars are pretty piss poor unfortunately hence you will find yourself only using a select few cars. Marked Man opponents are cheap as crap, events are quite unforgiving, the map is hard to use, in races the turn off markers come in too late and so you can’t turn in time and inevitably crash, the physics sometimes cause you to clip a car and flip endlessly, and sometimes jumping from a cliff and landing on your roof and flipping onto your wheels isn’t a wreck. Takedowns online are unpredictable, the showtime is a bit too silly and there’s no Marked man and road rage online events, which is a shame because that would be epic.

Don’t let the above discourage you, it is still a fantastic amount of fun and well worth the £40 or $50 or whatever the price in yankland.

For those unfortunate people who live in the cesspit of scoring I’d say this deserves a high score. Yeah that’s all you get from me!

And now I’m off to work. I work in the warehouse of Morrisons, jolly good fun (not) but pay is nice. If you’ve skipped this review to see the extra, then the extra is that there is a hidden message in the review. Post a comment here or on YC when you find it.

Later guys.

<PinkFloydYoshi> I think I just joined heathen land.
<Toshi> lulz
<PinkFloydYoshi> ffs
<PinkFloydYoshi> I’d say, but I don’t want to be hated just yet, rofl.
<Moot> translation: <PinkFloydYoshi> So I just pre-ordered Brawl
<Moot> lolololo
<PinkFloydYoshi> Ew gross.
<PinkFloydYoshi> No, wrong end of the spectrum.
<Moot> lawd
<PinkFloydYoshi> Lets just say I’m opening my shiny new copy of Ratchet & Clank: Tools of Destruction.
<Moot> oh god you bought a ps3 didn’t you
<LC-DDM> WTF
<PinkFloydYoshi> I have to laugh. I saw Mass Effect, and Burnout Paradise, and pondered between the two, then I thought “Ahh sod this” and I instead got the £299 deal on a PS3 and Ratchet & Clank.
<Moot> you turned down mass effect and burnout
<Moot> for a ps3
<PinkFloydYoshi> This is blog worthy amirite
<Moot> excuse me while I make a phone call to get you sectioned
<PinkFloydYoshi> rofl

It’s official. Hell has frozen over.

Well, I bought it on the 25th of this very month without fail, and despite a few niggling issues regarding the map system (that could be very easily fixed in a patch, Criterion) the game is hugely enjoyable and probably won’t be removed from my 360s disc drive for a long time.

Anyone who has been keeping tabs on the development of this game will know that Burnout has changed significantly for this outing. Instead of selecting events from a menu and going on to race around closed tracks, as soon as you boot up the game you’re dumped into Paradise City and told – by the not-that-obnoxious announcer DJ Atomika – to go nuts, basically. Either you can do what I did, which is floor it and crash spectacularly into the first passing bus, or go straight onto the events which are found at every junction in the game. There are 120 events or so to complete when you get bored of watching your car of choice get mangled realistically, which will probably be quite a while as smashing cars into fragments is just something that will never get old.

The events range from your standard Burnout fare, such as races, burning routes and my personal favourite, road rage. There’s a new event named “marked man” in which you have to make it from point X to point Y without getting your car totalled by the other drivers that exist solely to take you out. One of my only problems with the game is the minimap you get. Instead of the Giant Flashing Chevrons you got in the other Burnout games, you can now make your way to the finish however you want. This would be all well and good if you actually got a degree of warning of when to turn off from the in-game compass, but more often that not you’re going at such hilariously dangerous speeds you can often miss your turning and end up miles away from where you want to be. The minimap is no better, as that suffers from “Micro Machines Syndrome” – That is, you know when you’re playing that game, and you’re driving down the screen, and controls are essentially reversed? It’s like that with the minimap. If there was the option of a rotating minimap instead of the static one, this would essentially remove the issue altogether.

If you have a bunch of friends on Xbox Live, you can invite them into Paradise City and clear up some more challenges. You can play these with up to eight players, if you’re so popular. Thus far I only completed 35 or so of the 2 player challenges with Twi, and despite a few annoying ones – that could probably be easily done with a car that is not a steaming heap of garbage – most of them are pretty fun, except the ones that consist entirely of “Meet at this place” or “Land one jump”. Once you get those out of the way you can start flat spinning and barrel rolling your way all over the place. I’m sure the fun factor will increase almost exponentially the more people you can cram into the game, and I’m certain that Pink and Toshi will be getting their filthy mitts on this game in due course so they can all laugh as I plough radiator-first into walls with alarming regularity.

If you actually have a burning sensation desire to find me on Xbox Live, feel free to add “mootinator” to your list and chuckle ruefully at my woeful gamerscore, and laugh merrily as I continue to turn cars into compact variations by crashing them with enough force to shatter Earth’s Moon.

Anyway! Despite the lurking horror that was Christmas 2007, There are a number of things going on over at Yoshi’s Corner now. Because I’m totally web 2.0 I’m going to list everything in a bulleted list. Although only to make the paragraphs a little more interesting.

• First thing I should mention is that the YC Secret Santa has officially ended. I don’t have a whole lot to explain about it, so go there and check out all the gifts posted for everyone else.
• Despite the fact it’s only the update below this one, I’m mentioning that Toshi is starting up a YC Comic again, because I enjoy redundancy.
• Regarding redundancy, I’ll plug the YC Oekaki again because a little more exposure never hurt anybody. That, and activity seems to have cooled down somewhat since the initial draw-fest. Damn you, Christmas!
• There’s also another project going on, led by Garr this time, which would be the YC Pixel Tower. The topic can explain the idea better than I can any day of the week, so I won’t go into it here. I will mention that you need to supply your own pixels, however.
• I’m going to (try to) get that YC Tournament thing started again. Expect some details here forthwith once I get things together regarding that.
• In more board related news, Pink is after suggestions on improving YC, not that it wasn’t awesome to begin with of course. Nobody can disagree with more awesome though, unless you’re some kind of filthy charlatan.
• There’s also been some talk of the return of the old YC Radio, in which Strangie was ridiculed live on air for everyone to hear. Also hopefully Pink won’t be playing any more N’Sync this time, and will stick with tasteful music such as Cliff Richard, or Enya.

Well that about wraps up this update, which was a long time coming. I still blame Christmas. As we all should!

Yes, as the title suggests, Yoshi’s Corner will soon be having their own webcomic to call their own. You may have heard about this if you are a regular over at the YC IRC room, if not, you will now.

I’ll sum it up in short for you. The comic will consist of various YC members and certain forum/IRC chat events that may happen, but there will also be some slapstick humour that should make one laugh, regardless of your age. It’s a new addition that I’m sure will bring more enlightenment to the growth of the site and give something new to look at while visiting the forums.

So far, the comic team consists of myself and PinkFloydYoshi (who is currently in charge of creating the hosting site for the comic to be put up on, information about its current status is not known by myself, but I’m sure it’s in progress). It may stay that way, but if things do get out of hand however, I’m sure there will be positions open for additional comic artists and authors who may be willing to participate and commit to the comic as well as extras to help with other features that maybe included. I’ll let you lot know of any more updates regarding this, but for now, stay patient.

Anyway, better wrap this up. I will let you know if anything more comes up about the progress, and whether a release date is known, but for now, keep an eye out.

Navigate your way on over to http://yoshis-corner.yoshicurio.com/oekaki/index.php if you have the burning desire to post some art over there. Don’t say “I can’t draw!” We know you can. We know you will. The pull is too strong. Do not resist it. Give in.

Bear in mind you’ll need to register an account there to start uploading and displaying your images, but that’s so easy I don’t even think I need to go into it. All you need to worry about is what you’re going to be drawing on there.