Toybox Turbos

Who remembers Micro Machines? Those tiny cars furiously driving around a pool table, trying to take each other out of the game with anything at hand, be it a giant hammer, a pool ball or even an opposing car as a blocker.

Toybox Turbos is the spiritual successor to Micro Machines by which I mean pretty much the same game. Both are developed and published by Codemasters and both follow a similar theme; Top down racing around unconventional tracks like breakfast tables, pool tables, science rooms etc. Toybox Turbos is one of those games that is always good to have, its great for parties or groups of friends and even playing solo as its quick, easy, colourful and above all, fun.Veteran racing game players wont have an advantage here, the specifications of  the car are non existent but that doesn't mean tactics aren't rewarded; Taking a car on the inside will give you the lead but also let your opponents sit in your slip stream to gain some speed on you, and when weapons are involved all bets are off. The weapons you have access to Toybox Turbos offer different effects but they all mainly slow you opponents down; The hammer allows you to smash another car to smithereens but limits you to a handful of uses before it disappears. The magnet is a great way of getting back into the race if you've dropped behind, it locks onto a car in whichever direction you're facing and rapidly draws you nearer to it, my personal favourite way of using the magnet is just before you're about to go over a jump as you get to lock onto a car in front of you and launch yourself off into the distance. The machine gun is what it sounds like. Its a rapid fire gun that last for a short period of time,  but it does lock onto whoever is in front of you and, if hit enough, will blow them up. The EMP is probably the least effective weapon as it only hits cars in your general vicinity, as opposed to something like the machine guy, but for a few seconds it does slow down the effected cars and send them veering left and right. The land mines are fun. You can pick these up mid race or, if the race has gone on too long, they will spawn on the track randomly. Land mines cause the car that hit it to flip into the air, losing speed and maybe not even landing the right way up,  I  had a lot of fun trying to do some sweet flips whenever I hit one just to make it look like I meant to drive into it.

There are also pitfall built into the tracks. Land mines aside, on some tracks you will come across fire, maybe from a Bunsen burner or a gas hob, and this will give your car a boost in speed which could win you a point, but could just as easily blow you up if you hit anything, including other cars. The car you hit however is now in the same situation you were just in, so it could end up as a chain reaction of cars being lit on fire and blowing each other up.
The cars are all cosmetic so there isn't really a case of the fastest car or the most resilient to damage, but some of them have fun horns like the Ice cream truck or the Milk float. Others, like the Mini or the Double Decker bus, have normal horns but there is humor value in watching a Mini, an Ice cream truck, a Digger and a Double Decker bus line up to battle it out.

The objective is to get to ten points which is done by getting ahead of the pack, at which point the bottom of the screen will start eating the last place car. Each time this happens, first place gets two points, second place gets one point, third place loses one point and last place loses two points.

All in all I think Toybox Turbos is a fantastic game and will always result in laughs, especially when alcohol is involved.

Thanks for reading and keep checking back to Game Changers fore more gaming news and updates.

Trials Fusion

Trials Fusion

 Motorbikes and frustrating physics, sound interesting?

Trials Fusion is the third installment of Redlynx's Trails games. Games based around accelerating, braking and leaning backwards and forward on your motorbike to complete tracks. No turning, the camera does all the corners for you and you just worry about the next oncoming jump or obstacle. This is probably going to be more about the franchise rather than just one game, as they all employ similar game play, but its still cool to hit a sweet ramp and do five front flips in the air.

So as I said, Trials is a motorbike game. Not your everyday motorbike game though, instead of riding in a circle, Trials takes a sudo side scrolling-third person view, using hybrid-3D graphics running on a 2D axis. Whenever you hit a turn, the camera pans around to reveal more track leaving you to worry about Trials other feature, the physics engine. Not that other motorbike games don't have physics, but Trials uses the rider's as well, meaning you can shift back and forth to generate slight momentum. Mainly being used for bunny hops across various incarnations of platform, but also being employed to keep your bike on two wheels as you ascend a particularly steep hill. Using two analog sticks an two triggers makes Trials simple to learn but hard to master. There is one last button though, a button that will make you curse your twitchy, Call of Duty (COD) style reflexes. While riding through tracks you come across checkpoints that you respawn at when you crash, the B button will also cause you to respawn at your time of choosing. This results in controller destroying game play when you accidentally hit the respawn button just as you finally land a jump after the thirtieth try. Saying that, Trials is very good at being addictive; one moment you're playing through the story and getting the lean before the jump down, then four hours later you find yourself laboriously going back through all previously played tracks to gold medal them all. It hits that completionist part of me I think, mixed with the stubbornness not to try another level until this one is beaten, and then it puts you into a trance. Once you've played a track ten or so times, you start to memorize the jumps and how to land to get maximum speed on the next jump. It all starts to get very methodical, but that's satisfying. Clearly marking out your plan of action and having it executed perfectly, step by step, is a feeling that's hard to beat, and this game offers it in spades. Provided you haven't thrown your controller out the window or through the TV in frustration of previous attempts of course.

Trials Fusion has added a couple of things to the Trials formular, firstly a couple of disembodied voices; SynDi and George, to tag-along on your motoring journey and sometimes teach you some new things. One of those things being tricks. You use the right analog stick while in the air to control your rider, moving it in certain ways to perform different tricks. These aren't just for show either. There are events where you need to rack up a certain amount of points to gain a medal. Most of the time they are being used in normal races if just to liven up the previous games "tricks" consisting of front flips and back flips.

As much replay-ability that Trials has, this game comes into its own when played with friends. Get three mates, some pizza and some beers and let the fun and shouting begin. 

Everybody sees the race from a side-on view but riders change position for each race. So, someone might be right at the from with a clear vision in one race, then shoves to the back of the screen the next. The fun here is trying to remember what colours your rider was as the games gives your three very quick seconds before hedging your bets and just holding accelerate. I have spend the first couple of jumps in a race, every now and again, thinking I'm controlling another rider while mine is flipping and crashing two lanes over. The other good part of multiplayer is turning "No bail" off. Doing this means that you get the effects of another button usually shut off in story mode, the Y button. Pressing Y causes your rider to launch themselves from their bikes in whichever way they may be facing. Usually this would count as a bail and you would respawn. In this case however, it can be abused towards the end of the race by catapulting your rider towards the finish line, the best part being if they cross it, it counts. Many a friend have been rendered furious as they witness my ragdollised pilots flying gaily through the air, sailing past them and taking first with no right at all.

Trials is a lot of fun and very good to play in short bursts, lest the anger get the better of you, or with friends. All three are solid games and can give you hours of fun and a thought out, patient style of play to go with the result. And don't to Bail.

Keep checking back to Game Changers for more updates.

Forza: Horizon

So what is Forza: Horizon?

Well if you know your racing games, you know Forza is…well, a racing game. But what’s the Horizon got to do with this? 

Are we constantly driving off into the Horizon like we can’t escape the end credits of some cheesy 80’s cop show? Are we the Horizon patiently waiting for the sun to stop cheekily poking its head over us before finally getting bored of its peek-a-boo style game and staying down to give the moon its chance? Or has Forza packed in this silly “racing” idea and become a science and nature game that predominantly airs on BBC at 3 in the morning? Well none of those of course although the first does bring back memories of Dessert Bus.

 No, the Horizon in question is a massive festival that has taken over an area that resembles all of the non-residential parts of America smashed together. Imagine the biggest festival you’ve ever been to, then multiply that by 100 and add cars racing through it. Seriously, even the guy who owns the Glastonbury field was apprehensive at first, whoever owns this small nation must be clinically insane!

Let’s get started. Game play: In all honesty, differs very little from most other driving games; triggers for acceleration, braking and reverse; analog sticks for camera use in both car and third-person camera and A for when you want to handbrake turn, pull a sweet Tokyo drift style… um… drift around that massive banking corner, and possibly even to pass first and win in such style almost demanding you brag about it on the chat room/message board thing that it constantly berates you with. That would be the case if it weren’t for the game interpreting your slight tap of the handbrake as you wanting to spin endlessly into a barrier while everyone else zips passed your overly cocky, now mangled, twat of an avatar. Oh and even if you do manage to pull it off, good luck acting all pompous through your Chat-pad because the uploading of anything was an arse, hitting maybe 10% of the time and leading to a fair bit of loading.

So, as you can tell, innovation isn’t Forza's strong suit. No, this game wears a very different suit, probably Armani or Hugo Boss. What I mean is the licensing. Now, in a game with cars, I am expecting some car brands to show up and Forza obviously provides this, but to an almost scary degree. The flash up of the manufacturer’s badge before the shot of the car, that lasts a little bit longer than you think it should, shows off the best angles of the logo and name just in case you missed it the first time, Blindy Mcgee. But that’s not all, while hurtling through the streets of wherever-the-hell-we-are town, you’ll be bombarded with brands, Oakley being the biggest offender but having its friends Bose and Goodyear close behind. The main problem is that when you’re going 120mph, trying to dodge both oncoming traffic and the slow arse N.P.C’s that choose to drive with due thought of the law (even though it’s become fender-crunchingly obvious that you aren’t welcome around these parts unless you travel everywhere in 5^th gear). You hardly see the bloody things! This is the opposite point of advertising, although it will work eventually when you plough right into an advert because you were trying to figure out what the last one said. 

In some of the loading screens, the game tells you about some of the bands “playing” at Horizon and it even does the Grand Theft Auto thing of letting you choose the radio station, but licensing music is OK. I’d rather listen to The Hives than the people that radio in to take up another 10 seconds of your time when you thought you might be able to drive again.

Sometimes it seems like the game wants to load more than it wants you to play it, or more like enjoy all the detail put into this tents and lights and the odd actual person but in its favor the loading times to load an entire world still skilfully drift in circles around Sonic 2006 and speed off with a powerful bellow of the engine. Speaking of lights, the lighting effects in Forza Horizon are pretty bad especially when the sun gets to the Horizon, the one off in the distant with the sun and shit not the one you’re at with raves and intelligent festival goers, choosing to stubbornly remain at whatever band they’re at instead of being smeared all over the road.

 As soon as that sun starts to goes down you just have to pray that the current track stays straight and you haven’t pushed the devilish A button recently, the helpful little arrows disappear and you’re left at the mercy of temporary blindness and a literal highway to crashing and failure. 

The story itself isn’t much to talk about, there are these “bosses” for lack of a better word that you race against in order to work your way up the ranks and gain different colored wrist bands. These “bosses” are just “celebrities” of the festival and the only people to get first names, now I’m not going to even pretend that I’ve finished the game because it’s one of those for me like FIFA. I play it when I’m taking breaks from playing other games or when I’m drunk, but the game keeps talking about one specific lucky first namer and I’m guessing he is the final boss in a sense but what I can guarantee is that in between where I currently reside in the game and that point the controls aren’t going to suddenly change. 

My final thought on Forza: Horizon is this; in other loading screen helpful hints, the game tells you about how you can change the difficulty of the racers in the options menu, and this annoys me. Why give someone the option to make a game easier if there isn’t really any difficulty curve? Driving games are pretty much skill and the parts that aren’t are luck but that randomness applies to all the NCP racers as well , for instance when you set off in a race the other drivers don’t take the same line every time, they will crash into each other and you. If you’re looking for baby’s first driving game, Mario karts are still being produced.