The 'Shroom:Issue 113/Critic Corner

Director's Notes
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Heya guys, I'm back! Unfortunately for one voter I'm actually here to stay! As suggested by I guess I'll just need to amp up my hypnotism. What's that? Voting? Yeah, that vote I had you guys do last month, I have the results for!:

From the looks of it, out of 64 votes, "More silly/not-too-serious sections" got the most at 15, followed closely behind by "More Mario-themed sections" with 13. I will try my best to get more of these kinds of sections included in future issues, and as always we will accept applications for anyone who wants to provide Silly sections, Mario-themed sections, or anything else! A thing to note, though: as is the nature of reviews and opinions, they might not always be positive, and I will not hold my writers to churning out only sections that give Mario games 10/10 every time. As much as a few of you may want to see that, a boring section they do make when that's all that's offered. Revel in the variety!

Congrats to Yoshi876 winning July's Section of the Month with Character Review! Make sure you guys keep voting in every SOTM poll at the bottom of the page to let our writers know how well they're doing!

We also introduce this month another section by wherein he gives us his opinion on various new headlines from the last couple weeks! I don't know about you, but my opinion is that he better be careful with how many sections he does unless he wants another tea party on his hands *eyebrow wiggle* Be sure to give it a read to get a quick view of what's going on outside our community, as well as to keep an eye on the ol' redcoat.

Character Review
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Kiddy Kong I've never really been a monkey person, whilst other kids were into chimpanzees and gorillas, I was more into bears and the like. And as I grew older this transitioned into the Mario series; now yes admittedly there are no major bear characters within the series, but I've never really cared for the monkeys that the series does quite often feature.

And so we come to the focus of this month's Character Review: Kiddy Kong. I've never really cared much for babies either so combining both a baby and a monkey is likely to result in a character I completely despise and whilst I hate his design and idle animations due to them emphasising his babyness, I am a bit fond of the character. I think what does it for me is how he's not useless or unable to fend for himself, he's a surprise in which he's more than capable of defending himself and makes for a very good playable character. Honestly, a character like Kiddy Kong should be the end goal, someone for the player to rescue a la Yoshi's Island, but here his abilities are much needed. However, he is just a substitute Donkey Kong, what with solving his problems with brute strength, and in all honesty it would have made much more sense have Donkey save Kiddy in this game (seriously, for a game series named Donkey Kong Country you sure do spend a lot of time with Donkey).

However, that small to medium sized paragraph above is really where analysis of Kiddy Kong ends, because as for characterization he is just a baby. He cries when he loses a life, he plays with random objects in his idle animations, he's mostly fine with being locked in a crib of toys for getting a game over. Other than when he is put into your hands, he's simply a toddler. There's nothing to distinguish him from any other one other than him being quite strong. And yes, it's a shame. Given how he's clearly not meant to be an ordinary toddler they could have tried giving him a more distinct personality, which in my eye would have been added maturity, despite having decent abilities and being the secondary main character it's completely unbelievable.

Kiddy Kong is an alright character, he's certainly not the worst Kong, but I wouldn't say he's the best of them of either. If he'd worked like Chunky Kong in Donkey Kong 64 then he probably would have been a believable secondary protagonist, instead he's just the end goal who got lucky as someone else got kidnapped.

Meta Knight's Boss Battle Reviews
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Greetings readers! This month, we will be looking at something from the same franchise as me, the Kirby series. Kirby Super Star is arguably the most well-known of the franchise, but I want to take a look at something from the remake instead. This boss first appeared in this game, and has reappeared in several Kirby titles since. This month, we are going to fight Galacta Knight!

This boss is extremely memorable, for a number of reasons. For one, that theme of his has a hard rock riff to it that has definitely gotten stuck in my head. Additionally, the first time you fight him is at the end of Meta Knightmare Ultra, which you could probably guess is my favorite mode in all of Super Star Ultra. At the end of this mode, a cutscene happens similar to that of Milky Way Wishes. However, in this version Meta Knight wishes to fight the strongest warrior in the entire galaxy. Galactic Nova summons Galacta Knight, and the fight soon begins. I like the fact that there is some explanation for who Galacta Knight is, as this was his first appearance.

Galacta Knight has several attacks, and each of them have a specific pattern that you will have to dodge. Some of them are easy, and others are really difficult to avoid. Meta Knight also has some special abilities to help out. If you don't have any points saved up, this is going to be a lot harder than someone who just uses a Mach Tornado. However, even if someone does use the Mach Tornado, it doesn't instantly kill Galacta Knight, and I like that because the player still has to have some skill to get the rest of his health down. There is less of a fight, but the player can't just win with a single tap on the touch screen. Since it's Meta Knight, you also don't have to worry about accidentally losing your power. This fight is fun, and the music gives an adrenaline rush. However, there isn't really anything at stake here, the player can be as reckless as they want with no consequences.

However, fighting Galacta Knight as Kirby is a completely different story. Galacta Knight is the second-to-last opponent in The True Arena. For those of you don't know, the True Arena is the hardest mode in every Kirby game, and no matter what game you play it in, the challenge is extremely high. If you get to Galacta Knight, it means you're almost done with the True Arena, and I think that it is better to be careful for this fight. It potentially will take longer as well, because there is no Mach Tornado to use at all. I like the Galacta Knight fight, but in the True Arena I find myself just being a coward and using Stone to avoid all his attacks for fear of dying.

In the end though, Galacta Knight is a great boss, he's got a great challenge no matter who you are playing as, the music theme is fantastic, his design looks pretty slick, and I'm glad that he has become a staple in the Kirby series. In Super Star Ultra, I highly recommend it as Meta Knight. I still like fighting him as Kirby as well, but players may get frustrated with it, especially if they lose.

Marioverse Reviews
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Hi again! PowerKamek here! I am so busy. I just recently started school, in 11th grade. By the way, those of you still in school, good luck! Also I am still working at Cliff’s Amusement Park, on weekends. I literally have no days off. I had to make time to write this. Anyways, I am going to throwback to 1997 with Mario Kart 64!

Mario Kart 64 released on February 10, 1997, before I was born! It was actually the first mario game I had ever played in my life, back in 2006, so it gives me great memories. Yes, it has only been a decade since I started playing Mario. Anyways, my favorite moments of Mario Kart 64 is playing on my favorite courses with my friends. When I was playing it at the time, I thought it was a new game, like only a year old. But nope, it was already almost ten!

My favorite course in this game is… DK's Jungle Parkway! I like the theme of the course, it’s a nice, well done representation of the Donkey Kong games. The background is so pretty too! My favorite part of this course is that when you get in the grass, these “Natives” throw spiky fruits at you. By the way, I am not violent. I just like it. It makes the course fun!

Battle Courses! I always played battle courses with my friends. We just popped each others balloons with a single banana. Good times. My favorite battle course is… Double Deck. I had been throwing bananas all over the place in this course. No, but seriously. I like it because it’s different, and there are others just like this one in later Mario Kart’s. It’s easy to battle on, and can be challenging too, it depends. That’s what makes it fun, to me anyways.

There's really nothing I dislike about this game, except maybe the annoying long Rainbow Road. It takes 6-7 minutes to complete it, that’s so ridiculous. Plus, it's the same thing over and over, and it gets so annoying. It’s also my least favorite Rainbow Road.

To the reviewing: Pros: Fun Courses; Fun Battle Courses; Great Gameplay Cons: Rainbow Road

I would give this game a 9/10.

Summary: Fun Courses to race on; Has great Battle courses; and has fun gameplay; Rainbow Road is overly long and repeats itself over and over making it tedious.

Hope you enjoyed this issue! It’s not appropriate to wish you guys a great summer now, so, Enjoy August!

Movie Reviews
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Suicide Squad

My first movie review for The 'Shroom was a filmed called Focus, which starred Will Smith and Margot Robbie, and I absolutely hated it. So will their latest venture leave me with the same disappointed taste in my mouth?

Suicide Squad is based on the DC comics of the same name and the film acts as an origins story for the formation of the squad. So as a result the film mainly focuses on the squad rather than its individual members and due to this Deadshot and Harley Quinn (played by Smith Robbie respectively) are the only two characters who get major character development, and they are they are some of the few who even get a decent backstory and Harley's is a lot more in depth. However, in a superhero film it is nice to see them get some development, whether it's Deadshot slowly coming to trust Rick or Harley Quinn realising that she does actually like the Squad as well as loving The Joker. El Diablo is another character who gets some development, but this feels slightly shoehorned in just to explain why he's trying to avoid the use of his powers, and they try with Rick Flag, but it just falls flat. Every other squad member I genuinely forgot were in the film unless they were on screen, with Boomerang probably being the main offender on this, especially since his main contributions to the film are some vague recon near the end and a Deadpool reference; I admit to having no knowledge of Boomerang's character in the comics, but I just find it highly unlikely that both he and Deadpool have unicorn fetishes. Slipknot feels like he was an afterthought, seeing as he doesn't even come from the same prison as the rest of them and he's killed after about five minutes. And for a film that heavily advertised The Joker and Batman, you think they'd play a larger role, The Joker's sole contributions were his attempt to reunite with Harley and Batman only showed up in backstory and the post-credits sequence.

The plot of the movie is your typical superhero fare, just minus the heroes, which does bring about one massive question: wouldn't you call upon a superhero to actually sort this out before calling upon the villains? The reasoning behind the formation of the squad was for "covert black ops" and if they acted against the government's wishes "they could be chucked under the bus", but is their genuine plan to kill them for destroying the city despite the fact that it's obvious it was some otherworldly being? The plot's fine, but you do have to overlook this absolutely massive hole in it.

One major thing in superhero films is how faithful they are to their comic counterparts, and I'm not going to pretend that I'm an expert in this field. I've never read any of the comics and my sole experience with Batman is the LEGO Batman video game, so I'm not going to say that Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje played Killer Croc perfectly, or that Jai Courtney's interpretation of Boomerang left much to be desired, but seeing as I walked home with one of the biggest Harley Quinn fans in the world and he didn't have anything bad to bad to say, and from my research I can see that the creator of her said Robbie nailed her in her performance, I'd imagine that'd set a good standard for the rest of the characters. However, I would have liked to have seen more scenes with Harley Quinn and The Joker. The film's modern interpretation of him works and Jared Leto's performance is phenomenal, so it's sad to see Robbie share more chemistry with Smith than Leto, who's playing her one true love.

I really enjoyed Suicide Squad, I usually get bored in films that last longer than an hour and a half, but this film never dragged and I was engrossed for the entire runtime. Yes, there is an absolutely massive plot hole and under-utilized characters, but neither of these seem to affect the overall enjoyment factor of it. There's already an announced sequel where they plan to delve properly into Katana's hinted at backstory, but hopefully they won't do this for every character, because if they are, I'm dreading the Boomerang story.

Yoshi876's Monthly Thoughts
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Hello readers and welcome to my new section: Monthly Thoughts! Here, I give a run down on the 10 news stories that interested me the most in the past month. Now, the things that will likely interest me are disasters and similar things; politics; and scientific discoveries, particularly in the fields of astronomy and biology. This issue we'll be covering news from July 24 - August 13.

10. Global warming brings jellyfish to UK - The sea is freezing cold in Britain, I genuinely envy you Americans and Aussies who have warm seas, but thanks to global warming I may not be envying you forever. As the seas around Britain vaguely warm up, they have started to attract jellyfish to our shores. Whilst jellyfish like the Portuguese Man of War haven't been seen this year unlike in past years, it's reckoned that it could be making its way back to Britain soon and Lion's Mane jellyfish are moving from Irish waters to Scottish waters. Now as much as I'd enjoy a dip in the sea, I'm not going to enjoy getting stung by one of these creatures; it's not on the top of my priorities list. I'd quite like them to return to their usual grounds, but first we have to solve the larger issue at hand.

9. Loneliest star in the Milky Way - NASA recently discovered CX330 and it's a sad discovery if you believed that stars were sentient, as this young star (believed to be one million years old) has formed in part of the Milky Way where there are no nearby star-forming regions. However, I hope it paves the way for further discoveries into how stars are formed, because I'm sure even though it's lonely it still holds lots of juicy new information that we haven't discovered yet.

8. Robot surgeons vs. human surgeons - It turns out that surgeries conducted by robots are just as successful as ones done by humans. An Australian survey tracking those who suffered from prostate cancer and had a gland removed has found that patients who had it removed through use of a machine have the same quality of life as those who had it removed by a human, potentially even better. They reported less pain doing day to day activities a week after surgery and a better overall quality of physical life six weeks after surgery before the results started levelling out. For those of you who don't know, the surgery isn't conducted by an artificial intelligence, it is a robot controlled by a surgeon, but with results like this it seems that for operations like this robot surgery should be the preferred route. The survey didn't follow patients who had had other robotic surgeries so it could be more a case by case basis for which one is the better route overall.

7. Hepatitis C drug rationing - Approximately 215,000 people suffer from chronic hepatitis C, but the NHS is only going to be treating 10,000, that's not even 10% of the people who suffer from it; however, it will be the sickest people who will be getting cured. In the mean time, those sat on the waiting list could develop liver cirrhosis or even cancer which could lead them to death. Now, the NHS isn't doing this to go "Ha ha you die", there is the finances of everything; however, given the fact that the UK has signed up to eradicate the disease and the fact that treatments for liver disease cost the NHS more than the drugs required to cure hepatitis C, it seems odd to cap it at such a low number. I'm not saying that every single person should be treated immediately as sadly we don't have the money to do so, but surely a few more thousand couldn't hurt, and given that we have a cure to a disease that causes 700,000 deaths worldwide a year, surely the government could inject some more money into the NHS to help fund it, maybe something attune to the £350 million it got promised.

6. Cure to Alzheimer's? - Nothing is concrete yet, but scientists have tested a drug (LMTX) that had halted the disease for 18 months, although only on test subjects who weren't already on other forms of dementia medication; those who were sadly showed no changes. Those who weren't on other medications reported no loss in memory, retained the same reasoning skills as they had when they first started taking the drug and had key parts of their brain shrink less than a third as the other participants in the trial. The drug still probably faces a long while before it's fully approved, but it hints that a future where Alzheimer's isn't as terrible as it is today could be nearer than what we thought previously.

5. Train fares - Yoshi876, why do you find train fares so interesting? Simple, because rail companies are yet again overcharging us for using their services. In 2014 it was revealed that ticket machines could cost customers twice what they should be paying as they didn't offer the cheapest ticket for their journey, and a new investigation has found that customers are paying up to £85 more than what they should be for their journey. One of the main culprits for this, companies pushing customers in the direction of their "Express" routes, so whilst you get to your destination quicker, you're paying double than the cheapest available. As someone who will be using the rail services quite a lot in the coming year, this is just downright despicable from the companies, especially in the year it was discovered by a student that if he got flights through other countries to his destination it was cheaper than going by train. The investigation also chucked something else, machines had to be labelled saying how they only offer a select amount of journeys and that cheaper options were available, but in London half out of 63 machines didn't have these labels. At this point I refuse to believe the rails spokesperson who says "We want customers to get the right ticket for their journeys at the best price." If that was really the case, then you'd advertise it as such, personally, I think the company who owns those machines should get fined, and companies that continue to hide their best fares should have the same done to them.

4. As an Englishman, stories of King Arthur were a big part of my childhood, and it seems they aren't as far-fetched as everyone believe. The most recent evidence is a royal palace having been discovered around the time that he was supposed to have lived and it certainly has the hallmarks of the upper life enjoyed by noblemen of the sixth century with pieces of pottery linked to Turkey and fine tableware and glassworks. As much as the stories are probably legends it would be great to find out that he was real and that this castle was a place he lived, honestly someone please find Excalibur and make the legends true.

3. Investigation into the Munich attack - So first things first, at least we know this wasn't an IS inspired attack, in fact due to it happening on the 5th anniversary on the Norway attacks, it is more a homage to that, this and the fact that the shooter changed his profile picture on one of the online sites he visited to that of Anders Behring Breivik. It's currently thought that the motivation behind this attack was bullying of the shooter, which does link in with other mass shooting events like the Columbine Massacre; however, one does have to consider race here. The majority of the victims were of Turkish heritage and this is because the shooter felt that this particular group was bullying him, but seeing as a lot of people have reservations about Turkey joining the EU, it could have been motivated by that as well. Like many others I despise seeing mass shootings in the news, due to the obvious loss of human life, but with this story even more so; it feels like failings in certain areas caused this, if the shooter was being bullied then it shows that Germany (and probably by extent other countries) needs to do something to confront the whole bullying problem faced within schools a lot better than what they already are. The other one is how this person seems to have been obsessed with mass shootings, something that potentially the parents should have picked up on. Now, obviously I'm not blaming any of these groups for the shooting, that lies solely on the shooter's shoulders.

2. Pakistan Honour Killing Bill - I'll be honest and say I don't have much hope for this bill, but in the event that it passes than it is great news. If this bill passes through government then it means that so called "honour-killings" are to become illegal in Pakistan, even if the murderer gets forgiveness from the family. Pakistan had already tried passing a bill like this before in March 2015, but it was rejected by the National Assembly. However, it the bill got further momentum earlier this year when social media star, Qandeel Baloch, was murdered by her brother, Waseem Baloch for bringing 'dishonour' to their family. Waseem is being charged with crimes against the state no matter what happens, and so he should given the fact that he is a murderer, but many others may soon be arrested as well if the bill passes. I'm uncertain on whether those who had committed earlier honour killings will be sought out and prosecuted, but I do know that it will at least hopefully prevent anymore of these, although with over 1000 of these killings last year I highly doubt it will.

1. Flight MH370 investigation- On the 28 July it was reported that the flight simulator had plotted a course over the Southern Indian Ocean, on the 31 July, crash experts reported that because of how the flaperon (part of the wing) was extended when it hit the water, someone crashed the plane. The 28 July report stated how many investigative bodies said that nothing should be inferred from this simulator and they refused to call it a murder-suicide plot, but in the 31 July report investigator, Larry Vance, said that the plane was brought down by a rogue pilot, and waiting for official confirmation might not be far off due to the parts of the plane that washed by in Tanzania, they too were wing parts and if they were extended like the flaperon then it's evidence that someone was in charge of the plane and likely crashed it. I'm still hoping though that it was a mechanical fault though, I hate it when pilots purposefully crash planes to end their own lives, suicide is never the answer and I express sympathy with those who suffer from suicidal feelings, but my sympathy goes when they decide to take perfectly happy people leading their own lives with them.

Thank you for reading and I'll see you next month.