#lavatest

[lavatest]

Changes Are Coming...

Changes are coming to Lava Test! And in fact, Lava Test will continue soon! More info to come, so stay tuned!

[shumica-al]

Lavatest per Parukeri. Kompania Shumica.al ju ofron : Burim i sigurt blerje / Inspektim / Konsolidim / Transport #lavatest #produkteparukerie #produkt #produkteshumice #produktecilesore

[a3-glam-studio]

Trajtimi profesional me SILVER BLEACH, dekoloranti Vegan me pigmente vjollcë të shtuara për një rezultat më të ftohtë. Me përbërësin natyral KAOLINËN, ndihmon në mbrojtjen e strukturës së flokut, shton elasticitetin dhe parandalon plakjen e flokëve. Ne kujdesemi për flokët tuaj dhe e dimë që zbardhuesi është një nga trajtimet më të ashpra që mund të bëhet. Prandaj, i kemi besuar @marianilastockholm e cila ka zhvilluar një trajtim përfundimtar për lavatest, apo që ju ta merrni me vete në shtëpi në formatin 60 ml➡️SILVER SHOT Silver shot do të ulë nivelin e pH në flokët tuaj dhe do të mbyllë kutikulat që u hapën gjatë seancës tuaj të dekolorimit. Gjithashtu me pigmentin vjollce ai neutralizon çdo ton të verdhë të padëshiruar. 🤍 #veganproducts #ichoosefriendly #hairtreatment #noyellow #marianila #marianilaprofessional #tophaircosmeticsacademy (at A3 Glam Studio) https://www.instagram.com/p/CNC0AhNh96N/?igshid=17hg72454x8bp

[offertedilavorofirenze]

Negozio x parrucchiere

Vendo 3 lavateste piu 2 specchiere 4 poltrone e aria condizionata e lavatrice. con possibilita' di fondo appena ristrutturato ...

[lavorofirenze]

Negozio x parrucchiere

Vendo 3 lavateste piu 2 specchiere 4 poltrone e aria condizionata e lavatrice. con possibilita' di fondo appena ristrutturato ...

[lavatest]

Test #14: M.U.G.E.N

It fells good to be back, It really does. In case I haven't made enough excuses to explain my extended dormancy, part of the issue was that I was running low on games I’ve played that feature lava at all. There are any number of video games out there I’d love to talk about, from Splatoon to ModNation Racers, but one of my previously unspoken rules i hold myself too was that I cant review a game with no lava at all. a “0/5″ score is meant for games that fail on all accounts at the simple talks of portraying lava at all, not games with no lava whatsoever.

How am I about to segue (yes that’s how its spelled) that into Mugen itself? Well you’ll see what I mean in more detail after the cut, but Mugen walks a fine lava ridge on this rule. During all of what is now season 1, I was on the fence about including it on the review list. In the end I had to make an exception. There will be a lot of exceptions here in season two.

With that out of the way, lets quit beating around the burning bush! Mugen, you now face my trial by fire!

So, when you first download this game (for free mind you, it’s shareware), you’ll be greeted with what is perhaps the most boring user interface ever put on something that isn’t a scam.

Grey and devoid of personality, how fun. You see, “Mugen” isn’t exactly a game, its an engine. The purpose was to provide an easy-to-develop-for engine perfect for small scale fighting games. While some people did in fact develop stand alone games, the majority of people using Mugen have instead decided to spin it’s modular nature into the ultimate D.I.Y crossover. That said, let me move over to my personal build...

There! This is much more my style. It’s a bit empty, still very much a w.i.p, but keep in mind Mugen is only one of many side hobbies for me.

Right, where were we? Oh, lava! Well as you can guess, Mugen leaves quite a lot open for player customization. A gigantic community of “developers” for the engine persists to this day, and pretty much any well known personality or iconic environment is yours for the picking. Although further levels of customization exist, we’ll talk only about the big ones; stages & characters.

STAGES

You are all somewhat familiar with fighting games right? Well them Mugen isn’t that hard to grasp. Two fighters usually; a flat, 2D plane on which to fight; depleting health bars is the name of the game; etc. Out of those three, you most expect to see lava in the second, huh?

Stages can indeed feature lava. No big surprise really, It’d be pretty hard to restrict developers from doing that. The only restrictions are on part of the stage’s creator themselves; their imagination, skill, and resources available. Truly the sky is the limit!

CHARACTERS

Although not most people’s first thought when it comes to lava portrayal, it’s certainly not hard to imagine any number of ways one could utilize lava in battle.

And yet, again, it’s entirely up to the creator’s own unique whims if they make a character use lava at all, how heavily if they do, and to what effect if they do heavily. Although, in truth I was unable to find too many lava-centric characters to show off. (Honestly I have no idea weather Astaroth is lava or not, really he seems to be something completely diferent each game anyway.) In the end most of your Mugen lava will be stage-bound, which is a bit disappointing as without any complex mods, stages are purely cosmetic like most fighting games.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Mugen is certainly a game (engine) full of potential, the full extent of which is entirely incomprehensible. However, in the end “potential” is not “substance”, and how Mugen is experiences changed greatly from person to person. Mugen has potential lava, which is to say Mugen has no lava whatsoever is you choose so, and is a 100% accurate lava themed game if you set it up right. In the right hands Mugen can contain anything, and lava portrayal is user driven. What did I say in Lava Test’s very first review? “The best kind of lava is player controlled lava”? Well you literally cant get more player controlled than this!

Final Score: 5/5 (Subject to personal interpretation)

Creations used

Oh yeah, before I forget, I’d like to give credit to the creators of everything used in the screenshots of this review, save for those that only appeared on my select screen of course. Consider it the official Lava Test starter pack for Mugen!

Screen pack:

IMT Blue - By Infinity Mugen Team

Characters:

Rotom - By GarchompMatt

Shaq -  By The_None

Toro Inoue - By madoldcrow1105/dylanius9000

Taokaka - By SXVector

Astaroth - By CVS Artist

Jillian - By Dark Ruler

Stages:

Bowser’s Castle - By  ShinRyoga

Death Valley Mountain - By EX Shadow

Undertale stage - By Mr. Nate

[lavatest]

Test #13: Super Smash Bros. (Wii U)

Ok, yes. I’m covering smash. Don’t act all surprised, i can’t cover smaller games with a largely inactive following forever you know? I need to get a bigger title in every so often, or nobody’s ever going to even see this blog.

That said, if this is the first time you’re seeing this blog, welcome to lava test. I’m sure you, as a fan of Smash Bros, will enjoy this gag review of me ignoring the majority of the game only to talk about a handful of stages. Funtimes here at, er, the Pixel Volcano. Yeah, sure, that's where this blog is ran from. The Pixel Volcano. I totally didn’t just make that up...

Seeing as Smash is a fighting game, you don’t really progress through it in a very linear fashion. What order you experience the game is entirely up to how you decide you want to play, so I can't really talk about the game as though what I describe is how it plays out in game for everyone. So, in light of this, We’ll go at it a bit differently. I’ll review each lava-containing stage individually, in the order of how they are arranged on the stage selection screen. Ready? Go!

Ok, so, first one is...

Pyrosphere? Really? of all the marios stages they couldn’t get a single bowser’s castle in somewhere? ugh. anyway...

PYROSPHERE

Metroid huh? I’ve never played a metroid game, but it’s nice to know they have lava. According to various wikis I just read, this stage is set in a geothermal power plant inside a gigantic space ship.

Wait, really? How does that even work? Are you telling me they are drawing power from a simulated planetary core? That seems unimaginably Inefficient.

Anyway, this stage only features lava aesthetically, it’s not one of the stages many hazards as all of it exists out of bounds. Lame.

NORFAIR

Oh hell yeah! Now that’s a lava lake! It brings a tear to my eye. this place is the official lava test arena now, it’s just got so much of the stuff! 

And it’s not just for show either. if you dare to fight here lava will be flooding you from literally every direction. Walls of molten rock will rain down on either side, the lake itself will rise and engulf the bottom platforms, and biggest of all is the epic tidal wave that crashes through the entire stage at once, save for a small hut that appears and basically turn it into a king of the hill match.

Not the best place for a fair fight though, unless you can settle for the omega form anyway...

THE GREAT CAVE OFFENSIVE

Ok this is just absurd. The gimmick here is that if you have over 100% damage, the lava in this stage is an instant kill. Practice your grabs I guess, because this stage is cramped to the point of claustrophobia. 

Honestly THis feels more like it’s a Homestuck stage than a Kirby one with giant, conflicting environments in close quarters just like a dream bubble. Coupled with the near constant KO’s it’s like a genocide.

CASTLE SIEGE

This Fire Emblem based stage actually cycles between three areas during the battle. The first area, seen above, as well as the second are lava dry. It’s the third one that matters;

The platform (not pictured) is mostly flat with only a small mound near the middle. It’s tilts left and right with no relation to where the players are an is actually a fairly barren arena. Much like Pyrosphere the lava is only a background element, the fighters can’t interact with it at all. It’s also worth noting that only a third of the stage takes place here, as it will cycle back to the castle itself with enough time.

WUHU ISLAND

Yes. I’m serious. You may not have notices in the heat of battle, but there actually is lava to see on Wuhu Island. This is a traveling stage, and it makes several stops all over this sports resort, one of which is at the peak of the island’s volcano. During a brief moment while you’re traveling up there, the camera looks straight down into the lava chamber to reveal the volcano is still active! That’s more than a little concerning actualy, seeing as the island isn’t just populated, but a world renowned sporting venue. Let’s just keep our mouths quiet on this one...

SUPER MARIO MAKER

Oh boy, here we go again with this one. I used this picture before haven’t I? I turns out one of the Mario Stages does have lava! Still not Bowser’s castle though, darn.

The SMM stage is interesting in that it’s randomly generated every time you play on it. Elements aren’t present every time, and that includes the lava. In fact the lava element is actually rather rare. You can play this stage many times and not once see it crop up. When it does show up it’s a hassle to navigate, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Additionally, this stage cycles art styles during the fight. So you get a 4 for 1 deal on the lava’s appearance.

Custom, wait, really? 

Alright.

CUSTOM STAGES

Yeah, Smash Bros 4 also includes a custom stage builder, of which one of the five backgrounds is a volcano. It’s actually pretty cool looking, and you’re only chance outside of omega stages to play competitively in a pure lava environment. That is, assuming you decide to make a competitive stage anyway, because even though your options are limited, you still have a lot of room to cause complete chaos here.

Honestly though, just look at that background. Is that a lava Niagara Falls? That’s so awesomely unnecessary, I love it. To bad you can’t play here more often...

Well. yeah. That’s all the lava smash 4 can offer. 6/55 stages + 1/5 of all customs is not a lot, and they vary greatly in terms of lava usage, so it’s hard for me to commend it on anything it gets right when it turns around and dosen’t to that in another stage. Sorry Smash, but the heat of battle can’t hold a candle to my trial by fire

Final Score: 1/5

[lavatest]

Test #10: Bleed (Ft. Lion Leone)

(You’d be surprised how hard it is to find a good logo sometimes)

In case anyone couldn’t guess, I’m a bit limited in games I can review here on Lava Test. I don’t trust myself to write a good article on a game I’ve never played, understandably because I’d have little to no prior knowledge of it. It’s for this reason that I’m not as against guest reviews as I probably should be.

Lion here is another good freind of mine, and good friends are much more likely to play along with your shenanigans than random strangers. It’s for this reason that I have not yet asked a random stranger to do a review. (If you want to do one though,  feel free to ask.)

Logicly I asked him to do a game I have no knowledge of, and he chose Bleed. Good for him. Let’s see what he has to say about it and it’s lava. It looks a lot more like milk to me, but I’ll take his word for it.

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening and goodnight to you all. My name is Lion.

Ah, Bleed. A game that I have mentioned before is one of my personal favourites currently on steam (until the sequel comes out, that is). I remember playing this game nonstop until I completed it. It's a very difficult game but you know that every single death is your fault and not the game's.

but that's not what we're here for. We're here for how much lava there is in this game.

While looking through bleed for lava, I remembered something: "Level 2 is set in lava, isn't it? There's gotta be a lot of lava there."

This is the first thing you see once you enter the center of the earth.

This is basically lava heaven right here. There's a lot of lava throughout the level and it's a continuous obstacle throughout the entire level, to the point that lava comes OUT OF THE WALLS.

This is the main obstacle throughout the level (barring the bug things that continuously exist throughout the entire level), even on the boss screen where there's a lava pit on either side, and even in the boss battle, there's an attack that the boss can do where he spews lava OUT OF HIS MOUTH.

There are only two problems with this though, the first is that it only does a single bit of damaged for each time you hit any lava source, which, when the health is fully upgraded, isn't really much for lava. The second problem with this is that lava only appears in this level, and no other level.

Even though there is a great deal of lava in the level and it is always a hazard throughout, it has to be marked down for the lack of it in other levels and the low damage it does to Wryn.

Final score: 3/5

[lavatest]

Test#9: Undertale

Yeah, I guess I had to do this one eventually. I’d be crazy if I waited for the game to disappear into the void before I talked about it.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the game. It’s pretty much the only RPG I’ve ever beaten. (It’s not really that long or challenging of a game though, so perhaps I’ll reserve that title for something else) It just that I felt If I covered it to early that might look like I’m just mindlessly jumping onto a bandwagon, and subsequently burning it down because for all intents and purposes I’m a lava elemental in hypothetical scenarios such as that.

Did you follow that? No? Too many big words? Sorry, I tend to do that a lot. Go grab a dictionary and prepare for me to completely ignore the first half of the game because around here, we only care about the lava!

(And don’t worry about spoilers on this one, I’ll avoid them as best I can.)

Ok, so, give me a moment here. I need to skip ahead to the lava part...

...Sorry Toriel, I don’t have time for formalities on this run...

...Ew, snow. no thanks...

...Fries please, I’m not that hungry...

...Yeah, yeah, not reading all the worldbuilding this time...

...Alright, here we are!

Here we are in Hotland! The 4th major area of the game. Not a whole lot of story stuff happens in these parts so I think I’m in the clear. From the picture above that I got off the wiki it doesn’t look like there’s much lava to be found, but I assure you there is. This game takes place underground after all, that boosts the chance of geological activity by like 100%. 

Ah, there it is. Kudos to this underground civilisation being smart about it and going with geothermal energy to power their tech nonsense. Going green in the red-orange-est way possible!

You know I don’t think I’ve actually had a chance to talk about pixel art lava on this blog. Not that I have much to say about it, Undertale’s lava looks fine for the art style and fits with the rest of the game rather naturally. I know I say that about most games, but honestly why complain about accuracy when the whole game doesn’t hold itself rigidly to the physical laws of reality.

What I can complain about however is the fact that we lose sight of this sea of molten rock about as fast as we lose our trust in flowers. You see, Hotland is a tiered area, with elevators and floors and what not, so the moment you get past the first floor you’re just left with rocks and steampunk stuff to decorate the higher floors. You only see it again in scenic shots like the one in the last picture. Honestly, once you’ve climbed to the top of hotland, there’s not even any real reason to go back to areas where lava is visible. You’d think for one of the area’s primary aesthetic features it’s be a bit more prominent.

And yes, it’s only for show. Nowhere in this area does the lava pose any sort of threat. Well, not the lava itself, you still get to encounter these cute little monsters.

(That’s 2 tiny living volcanoes so far on this blog!)

So, in closing, Undertale’s lava honestly feels a bit generic. I can understand that, the fact is that this place being “lava themed” dosen’t really matter to the overall game. It could have very easily been a crystal or acid based environment without changing a whole lot. Still, contrary to the popular opinions of fish, Hotland rules! Toby Fox had the creativity to not make this place just a completely generic volcano, and I’m glad for that.

Final score: 3/5

[lavatest]

Test #6: Spore

Spore is not a very well documented game, which is a shame because, for what it was, I very much enjoyed it. Where usually a burned out fandom still leaves behind its archives in a dated format, Spore feels like the warehouse that housed those archives caught fire. so much is missing that I even had a hard time finding an appropriate song for this blog’s playlist.

Then again that’s partially because the game’s soundtrack doesn't include anything meant specifically for the geologicaly active environments. Most of the game is quiet ambient tracks, but hey it’s space, what do you expect?

Still you can’t have a galaxy without planets, and no (solid) planet is without lava, so let’s see if spore can show us some hostile terrain.

Ah, space. Take a deep breath of the fresh vacuum and reflect on the fact that you can’t accurately comprehend its size. sadly, once you are past the game’s menu, you see next to nothing of worlds beyond your own. You have to earn you access to other planets buddy, and in this game you’re starting from scratch. Frozen on a meteorite and flying past you home star, you’re tasked with evolving from a single cell simpleton to a multi cellular, interplanetary empire.

The first part of the game contains next to no lava, understandably because you’re underwater. once you grow legs and lungs, you’re still not going to see a lot of lava unless you’re lucky to live near a volcano, and even then the thing won’t ever actually erupt. 

moving on to when you’re species is set in stone and learns to set things in stone, your cave-things still won’t face magma like obstacles. When you organise and civilise, you’re finally given the chance to explore the whole planet, but still you won’t see lava unless you have a volcano set piece.

 However, none of that matters. everything so far has just be setup, familiarizing you with the rules of the game, and preparing you for the real challenge. If you prove as a race that you are ready for a bigger challenge, then and only then will you leave your gigantic nest.

Oh yeah baby, now we’re talking! ever expansive starfields just waiting to be exploited for the benefit of you empire! each planet a geologist’s playground ready for the digging. the best ones as far as we are concerned are the ones too close to their stars. You know, the lava covered ones.

I brings a tear to my eye. Lava oceans, several thousand planets with completely natural lava oceans. Space is really beautiful you know? I mean sure, you can’t support life on these planets without some serious terraforming, but sometimes you just gotta leave a planet alone to boil.

And should a planet be a goldilocks paradise, or dare I say even covered in ice, terraforming works both ways. Any planet can burn if you believe in yourself and your ability to spawn volcanoes anywhere.

or you can take the quick route and just blow the thing up. 

The neighbors may not take to kindly to it, but whatever.

When I judge a game’s lava, I look for both quality and quantity. Spore’s Lava may not be all that realistic, or even that big a threat at all, but my god is there a lot of it. You can’t even begin to imagine how much of it there can potentially be up there. Spore let’s us dream big about aliens, and I like to think that somewhere out there is a race that wants nothing more than to melt every planet it can, and I think that’s beautiful.

Final Score: 4/5