Hub42tube gaming - Zombies were people too

What made the Saturn great INSERT RING PUN HERE.

After last week’s Saturn celebration/commiseration I broke the old beast out of storage and went through my Saturn games to check out what it was about the system that made it stand out for me.

The first thing I notice is the game boxes.  Playstation games come in plastic CD style jewel cases, the N64 have cardboard boxes like the SNES, the Saturn however is a little different from the norm, they resemble the cardboard cases the first DVD’s came in, you know the ones- they had the tear out proof of purchase tabs- (what the help were they for?? why were there loads of them in each DVD???).   The card sleeve was glued to a plastic lining that has a CD/DVD shaped recess that allowed you to click the game disc in safely- this gave a really nice bespoke feel to the games and set them apart from the cheap boxes of the N64 and generic CD style of playstastion.

Having dung through the box and realised the AV lead was missing i spent 20 mins looking through draws full of cables trying to find the sega one withe the odd S video style connection for the console.

Ive written at length about the different styles and models of the saturn so im not going to go on about this, suffices to say that it looks great, keeping black megadrive looks and feel.

But its the games that set it apart, Nights, Sega rally and datona are all gold in my eyes and theres enough exclusive titles to keep up with the likes of Playstation.

At the end of the day it was a rushed launch, lack of games and Sony's master stroke of embracing the 20 somthing post pub/club crowd that where the real nails in the saturns coffin, the console its self was pretty damn fine.

Happy saturversary.....birthdaturn....oh forget it! The saturns 20...

Its 20 years since SEGA launched the Saturn on the world. As you know I’m a bit of a SEGA fan, seeing as I believe the Dreamcast to be the best games console ever released, and as such I thought i would post my own personal experiences with the doomed playstation rival.

The media is focusing on the negative side of the launch- Sony’s petty $299 one word price point announcement, the panicked early release and the subsequent supply problems.

I’m going to tell a different story, one of joy and 90’s retail displays, of packaging and the mistaken belief that a certain blue hedgehog would turn up late to the party and save the day.

The year was 1995, Brit pop was king, baggy jeans were worn with pride, unaware of their hideous skinny future and the world (well my world) waited with baited breath for the 32bit gen to start.

Having read all about the up and coming consoles in both Edge and Mean machines magazines I was over the moon to find out the Saturn would be released early.

Back in the 90’s Virgin megastore was still a big deal in the UK; in Brighton it took up 5 floors of a building on what was then the main shopping street. Most of the floors were taken up with music, video and band posters and t-shirts; however the 3rd floor had an entire corner taken up with video games. This was when specialist game shops were not as common as today, you had to go to HMV or V store to be able to play the latest games consoles to release- and they looked great! The machines were encased in Perspex bubbles, game pad cables hidden in flexible tubes with the pads screwed to the ends to stop little toe-rags from stealing them. The attached monitors were hidden in neon and plastic to give the look of futuristic portals to other words- the whole thing looked like future zone from the crystal maze crossed with the Nostromo from Alien. 

Each screen ran demos for the respective consoles, Playstation had wipeout and Toshinden, 3DO had Jurassic park (oh dear, oh dear L ) but the cream of the crop was the Saturn with Panzer Dragoon, an on-rails shooter that had dragons, castles and huge flying gunships, all beautifully rendered in 3D.

This is how I will always remember the Saturn, not as Sega’s next misstep or as a failure, but as a great console that dared to hold onto smooth and crisp 2D sprites in a world of jaggy and low textured 3D, as a great alternative to Sony’s rave loving, lad mag reading zeitgeist snatching monster.

Don’t get me wrong, the PS was an amazing machine and I still own my first one, it’s just that i also still have my original Saturn as well, and in hindsight there is not allot to hate about it- okay it had more graphics chips than a 3DFX landfill, and was a bugger to program for- but when it was done right, it was just soo right.

Well happy birthday Saturn fans.

Head for Saturn!  

Zombie Revenge or a dish best served cold...and dead...braaaaains.

Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig a shit load of graves.

After moving some of my collection from my attic to my newly decorated man cave (or the second bedroom if you speak to my wife), I stumbled upon a crate of dreamcast discs that i bought off eBay but never got round to unpacking.

Among the usual street racers and chu chu rockets was a game i had only ever played in the arcade before, Zombie revenge.

Quite what the title means I have no clue- can zombies get revenge? Are the zombies having revenge reaped on them? Is someone using them a tool for revenge? We may never know however here is what we do know.

Released in 1999 in the arcades and at the same time on Dreamcast, ZR was a spin off from the house of the dead light gun series. As such it features allot of the same characters and themes as thotd games.

Having played the first 3 hotd games and several spin off games (pinball of the dead on the GBA being a surprise fav of mine) im used to the francise trying new and bizarre directions (im looking at you typing of the dead),  however this one is somthing really different.

Gone are the on rails shooting range levels, instead we get a free roaming beat em up in a 3d streets of rage style. You can punch, kick and shoot your way through the hoards of the dead that jump, run and even operate fire arms (yes there are shotgun toting zombies in this one).

The cut scenes (they use the ingame engine) feel very hotd, with hamy, stilted and just plain weirded dialogue "Here, take this. A man with golden eyes told me to give it to you!".

The game plays allot like dynamite cop, you move to a new area, punch, kick or shoot enemies till they dont get up again and then move on. After several areas are clear you move onto a boss fight, this is where zr really shines, the battles are fraught and the giant undead freaks
are well designed with a good level of challenge without being to irritating.

If only the controls weren’t so bloody fiddly! Actually aiming is automatic with your character locking onto the nearest enemy, but the camera angles make it very hard to see where you are shooting, this is not helped by the fact you shoot the creature you’re locked onto and so others can sneek up off camera and hit you before you know they are there.

Picking up items and weapons is also a drag, you have stand right on them and press the right button to pick them up, easy enough you say! Well it would be if you could see if you are actualy standing on them, the camera pans to such odd angles that your not sure where exactly the right place to stand is, this is also an issue when level hazards like lasers and fire balls that reqiure you to stand in particular spots to avoid them, you end up guessing and half the time you get killed for not having a clue where to stand.

As per usual in hotd games, you have to rescue innocents who are trapped in the now zombie infested city. These bits are quite good, they usualy take place in a store room of locked off area with little room to manoeuvre and as such add a nice degree of tention while you defend the hapless fool whose got themselves trapped with the dead (if there is not a zombie film called trapped with the dead then someone  needs to make one!).

This is an out dated beatem up for a dead system, hotd has long since been rebooted as hotd overkill, a game that openly parridies itself and the francise.  However it is great fun as a 2 played romp and some of the boss designs are awsome. So if you fancy an early 2000's arcade perfect zombie blast you could do allot worse...now all i need is a sequel - Zombie 2-the re-revengeaning anyone?

Google cardboard (or flatpack VR, or the maketrix...i'll stop now)

Ever since I watched "Tron" and  "The lawnmower man" in the early 90's I've wanted to have virtual reality at home, not the migraine inducing virtual boy, nor the over hyped fail of 3d TV. No, I wanted actual 3d virtual worlds to explore.

Well that dream is nearly here, in the next 12 months we should be able to get our hands on Sony's project Morpheus, face books oculus rift and a whole new world of other headsets and visors that promise to give us access to our own personal holodeck experiences.

 

But for now we have to wait- unless you spend big bucks on a developer kit.
Or so I thought. It turns out that all you need is a smart phone, cardboard box, some glue and a pair of lenes from eBay, you can build your own fully functional VR headset!

 

Having found this out i went straight to google's google cardboard website and downloaded and printed the pdf.

 

While i waited for the lenes I ordered from eBay to arrive i got a head start by building the headset itself. I assembled all the tools needed to make this bit of high tech meets low tech kit.

 

 

 

I started by cutting out the template and gluing it to a flattened cardboard box, this took allot longer than i planned,  the tabs and hole were fiddly and I nearly sliced off my fingers on several occasions.

 

 

After an hour waiting for the glue to set and a further hour swearing at the god of cardboard for letting such a complex and exasperating card folding monstrosity to come into existence, I finally had my full cut out and ready template, now I just needed to fold it , put tab A into slot B, and slot in my old iPhone 4S and would be away!! 

 

 

How wrong I was (I'm married so should be used to being wrong by now). Getting the bugger to actually slot into place was a nightmare- the holes don't line up, the tabs are to small and glue and tape wont keep the thing together!

 

After a quick game of bloodborne to calm me down (in hind sight not the best game to relax to) I tried again and with a bit of creative adjustment (and more swearing) I finally got the thing to look like the web site pics...sort of.

 

 

Now I just have to await the lenses to arrive and I can enter the matrix!! or more likely look like a mental with box stuck to his face- either way I'm happy with the result so far...now where did I leave my light cycle?





 

She mixed it up right there in the sink; it smelled like terps and looked like Indian ink...

Potions’, gaming is full of em.

Need to heal a near fatal arrow wound to the chest? There’s a potion for that.

Need run faster than a speeding train? There’s a potion for that.

Need to fly up through the clouds and punch a god to death? Yup, there’s a potion for that.

From MUD to Skyrim, potions are the practical alternative to the graft of first aid training or hitting the gym, and let’s face it, none of us are going to play a game that requires us to take a break from the action to learn CPR in Tamriel or spend 4 days a week at the gym to stave off Nathan Drake’s beer belly.

 

Good god that's a messed up bottle!

Potion of Transmogrification ; Fable 2

Get to the end of fable 2 and earn yourself 1 million gold (or choose to kill your dog and get given it for free- you monster!!!), you can then purchase the HQ of your now dead nemesis, Bowerstone castle.
Hidden under this imposing pile is the alchemy lab of one of the previous residents.
Revealed in several diary entries scattered around the place are the details of his greatest achievement, a potion that lets you permanently change from he to she with one swig from the disturbingly shaped bottle.

Morrowwind, The elder scrolls.

This speed run aiding creation can be knocked together within the first 10 mins of the game.
Once you have used your alchemy skills to create this potion you can take a swig and instantly fly though the clouds, develop super strength and instantly kill the games main big bad and complete the a game that should take dozens of hours in just under 30 mins- check out some of the speed run videos on you tube.

White Radford's decoction ; The witcher.

The witcher games take potions to the next level, the shear verity of mutagens, potions and elixirs you can create is astounding.

This decoction allows bones to mend, flesh to heal and wounds as deadly as a crossbow bolt through the chest to be shrugged off easily.

The creation screen for these potions is quite daunting when you first start, but with miraculous liquids like this one available its well worth the effort!

Pop idle.

I am not a musician, and I have come to the depressing conclusion that I will probably never be a musician. Much like my F1 racing driver and fighter jet pilot fantasies, this is another the musician dreams will probably stay just that, dreams.

However over the years’ technology, games, PC software ad plug in peripherals have given me an all too brief glimpse of a world where I was a club DJ, a rock guitarist or just maybe a writer and composer of complex and beautiful symphonies.

There are the obvious ones, the guitar and band heroes with their plastic guitars and drum kits, the borderline karaoke of sing start and lips and the one step too far of DJ hero- however these are not the ones that stick with me.

 

Rave EJay

 

 

Back when rave was still under a decade old, I made an impulse purchase from a Brighton book shop that was having a closing down sale- it was a game/tool that allowed you to take beats, samples and melodies, stack them horizontally along a scrolling time bar so you could create cut and paste tracks and create and save them in MP3 format.

The fact that you could knock together a simple track in 5 to 10 mins and then spend hours tweaking and adjusting it with new samples, increased or decreased tempo and even record and convert your own samples to use in the program as well.  It was this last feature that kept me coming back to this simple to use sequencer- I spent hours sampling movies, music and even SNES and megadrive sound effects to make increasingly complex and diverse musical tracks.

In the end I moved on to more complex and professional applications, but none matched the fun and accessibility of Ejay.

 

 

Electroplankton    2006 UK

 

Now this is an odd one. It’s not a music design app, it’s not a rhythm action game and it’s not a tech demo- the only way i can describe this weird fish related undersea music mash-up is that it is a collection of noise making, sound distorting beat repeating mini games that have no other function other than to delight you with their short, useless, musical muses.

This was only on the original DS ad took advantage of the mic, duel screens and touch pad to allow you to manipulate sounds you recorded, add beats and create loops and phrases with the help of the afore mentioned plankton .

The really odd thing about this cartridge was there was no way to save the results and no way to use the tools together to create anything but disposable snippets of what could have been. Why the designer ndieszero did not allow the mixing and matching and even eventual saving and storing of the results is unknown, but what we are left with is a spark o genius that could have been so much more.            

Always online?

Imagine a world where ever aspect of your life is connected. Your fridge tells your oven what it has inside so it can pull meal ideas you could prepare from the net and pre heat itself to the right temp.

Or your car knows when your up in the morning and adjusts its internal temp and plans a route to work avoiding traffic jams and delays.

All that sounds great until the servers go down. All of a sudden your fridge forgets what in it and the oven stays cold and you get home from work with the expected meal still on the shelves at Tesco.

You wake up and the car has not down loaded the new firmware, the screen is icy, you finally get on the road only to find the M25 is Jammed to hell and your late to work.

Always online sounds really good for games to, you can meet friends in game, have a never ending supply of intelligent enemies or tem mates to compleat with, so much better than AI bots.

But once again, what if the service fails? 

PC gamers have experienced this allot in the last decade, Sim city 4 had server errors from day one, this meant hundreds of gamers could not play the game for hours on end. Diablo 3 suffered from the I dreaded "error 37" server busy message- the pop up that spawned a thousand mems as gamers lashed out on forums and blogs after finding that you could not even play the game offline.

And there in lies the problem, if you can't play a game like Diablo 3 offline then what happens when blizzard stops the online support? Some companies are good enough to release patches that allow offline gaming when the servers are taken offline, but not all.

What if you live and work in areas where high speed internet is a luxury? I spent time working in areas of Saudi where I could not get wifi for days at a time, this lead to me lossing access to many games that i had purchased expressly to entertain myself in my work down time.

Retro games at the moment are reach a stage where add ons, characters and even whole levels are missing as the servers have long since shutdown- I recently played guitaro man on the dreamcast only to find i could not play the last level as a download was needed, and if i want to play halo 2 i online i have to pay microsoft a second time for the privilege as xbox live does not let you play the original anymore.

With all the dlc games demand we pay for and download, in ten years time will you be constantly bothered by Arkham city demanding you download the catwoman pack that is no longer avalible? You can bet if you want said items or even to play todays gamesyou will have to buy the 4K full VR remake :(

Lost the plot part 2

Quake 2

The original quake was a tour de force in H P Lovecraft style gothic meets dark science and magic.

The plot saw a creature called quake (later revealed to be the old god Shub-Niggurath) open portals to earth via our own teleportation system and sends its troops to attack humanity.

Quakes troops are genetically created psychopaths, wired up to enjoy killing and violence. Along with an assortment or monsters, zombies and devils, quake prepares to destroy humanity.

You are the Ranger- last survivor of the human strike force sent to take out Quake. Just like doom, it is your job to travel through each of 4 worlds to collect 4 magic glyphs to us to kill quake and end the invasion.

Quake 2 however strayed from this plot line completely.

Gone are the gothic horror themes, the zombies and devils- in their place are the Strog.

The Strog are an alien race that attack other species and use their biological matter to make more Strog to carry on their race- think the Borg but with anger issues.

The only things that the two have in common are the title, the lone solider against the world and the invasion of earth theme.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Quake 2, the sound track, the weapons, the way the grunts reflex fire into wall as they go down- It’s just I would have liked to have seen a true sequel to Quake.   

Lost the plot.

Sequels, prequels and even run by the side of the original titles time line- if you create a high grossing game, movie or book you will want to capitalise on its success with a follow up (or at least your studio or producer will want you to...).

Most game sequels follow on from the original narrative or at least take place in the same universe/reality as the source material that spawned them, such as final fantasy or the metal gear series that may stray wildly from the original but still keep themselves grounded to the overall concept or idea; however you sometimes get games that bare such little resemblance to the original that you have to read the box to know that there is any connection what so ever, here are a few that spring to mind.

Phantasmagoria 2: a puzzle of flesh.

The original Phantasmagoria came out in the mid 90’s, right in the middle of the P.C.s digitised point and click era where games like Gabriel knight ; the beast within and burn cycle were all the rage.

The plot focused on Adriana and her husband who buy a creepy gothic house in the middle of the woods, Adrian is a writer and her spouse is a professional photographer- all seems rosy with the couple going about their daily lives, that is until Adriane discovers a secret chapel hidden behind a panel and ends up releasing the spirit of an evil spirit stage magician who, after being taken over by a demon, killed his first 4 wives and ended up being killed live on stage by his assistant and his 5th wife.

And so begins a story of possession, rape and violent ghost related torture porn flash backs that beat the Saw movies to the punch by 15 years.

  

A puzzle of flesh was the sequel to this and has absolutely no link to the original save for a flyer for a book signing that Adrian from the first game is having in town- you don’t even get to go to it!

You play as Curtis, underling at a software firm that has a dark past, under the building is an abandoned lab where the companies MD used to throw “volunteers” through a hole in space time and into another dimension- your usual evil corporation type stuff.

The rest of the game has you flirting with co-workers, getting involved with German style S&M clubs and generally dickingaround while your friends and family are butchered, punctured by rogue electric cabling and fried in their own blood (I’m not kidding, this actually happens, sorry Tris).

The whole thing comes to head with zombified staff, evil twins and a final explosion that takes the the gate way to the alien world with it.

 

As you can tell this has absolutely nothing to do with the gothic supernatural plot of the first game. True, both have the same visual style with lots of FMV and digitised sprites and backgrounds, there is also allot of blood and an overall horror theme- but apart from these general similarities the two might as well be separate game series. 

Good to be bad part 4

It’s good to be bad part 4

Bob Page, Deus ex and Deus ex-Human revolution.

Billionaire Bob page is first encountered at the end of the training level in Deus ex. The billionaire and bio tech firm owner congratulates you for completing the course but avoids JC’s questions as to who he is and who he works for.

Pages influence is felt at every level of government and he has even had his right hand man Walton Simons appointed as the head of FEMA.

Whether its bio terrorism, political manipulation or creating a synthetic plague to subjugate humanity while he makes a grab for power, there is no level Page will not sink to attain his goal of godhood- as we have seen in this series of villain posts, bad guys like Page create their own downfalls – in this case the agent JC Denton, secretly (even to the agent himself) JC and his brother Paul were created via cloning vats as a warm up for Page’s own cyber ascension, however the brothers have other ideas and JC beats page at his own game by attaining the global domination in his place.   

Page appears briefly in the intro to the Human Revolution, master minding the abduction of scientists from Serif corp and arranging to use them to create his own Bio chem company Page industries which features heavily in the original game.

For taking on the illuminate, UNATCO and Majestic 12, and almost coming out on top, he deserves a mention on my list.     

Lost worlds

You can listen to the albums of your youth on iTunes or on the original cd or vinyl, you can read the books you read at school and you can even play the games you played in the 90's as roms or even on the original systems if you can find them.

What you can't do is experience the media that you may have sunk hours into over the years- there's no way you can fight demons in London's underground stations. You can't explore the alien worlds of Tablo Rasha and you can't travel beyond the dome of York.

You can play super Mario world even after the snes stopped being made, you can play pac-man or Robocop vs terminator outside the arcade on MAME via your PC. But what do you do when you want to play an MMO once the servers have gone dark?

No matter how big your customer base is, how many servers you have in how many countries, at some point even the mighty WOWs doors will close and Azeroth will be just another useless atlas in a charity shop pound box.

So, in 20 years time when we get a nostalgia trend for 2010 games to down load to our PS15s or the Dreamcast 360 (don't look at me like that, its going to happen!)  are we going to get to enter Necrons future cities for second time? are we going to be able experience what wow was the first time round- before the horror that was Pandaria?

Could it be taken one step further? could you log on in 2035 and continue with your level 110 Human Deathknight and continue the grind for epic loot and mounts?

There's some very dedicated people on the net who keep some of the closed MMOs going via private severs- these multiplayer heroes keep the matrix stocked with red pills, let wow continue to be hard as nails (guns need ammo, raids need 40+ members and take 5 hours and the dead mines have Van Cleef at the end and not Cookie!!!) and ensure Hellgate continues to trash London.

Perhaps retro games need to be self contained units that don't rely on online memberships or components, the recent Halo retro game Master chief collection's online has been rife with connection errors and multiplayer problems- god knows what online issues a redux of an 2005 mmo would have.

Maybe its best to leave their outdated mechanics and grind heavy gameplay in the past and remember the offline classics like uncharted and the last of us.

It's good to be bad part 3.

Prince Lacroix- Vampire the masquerade-Bloodlines

Part 3 of this occasional series of villains that have stuck with me long after the games have finished is the head of the camarilla, and yes he's another vampire.

This 200 year old vamp started out as an officer in Napoleon's ranks, over the two centuries that followed he slithered, backstabbed and  smoozed his way to the top of vampire society and is now prince of L.A.

Starting out as a lowly childe (young vamp) you are saved from execution when the  Anarkes (the local LA vampire outcasts who oppose the princes claim on the city) call him out in front of the local elite blood suckers and he is forced to spare you to save face. From that point on he sends you on every suicide mission, lost cause and kamikaze run he can dream up to ensure you end up a pile of dust at sunrise.

Lacroix is so power mad that he plans to drain the life out of a sleeping vampire ancient that is said to rest in a recently unearthed sarcophagus. He sends you out to locate said McGuffin and recover it's contents.

As with all power crazy villains, Lacroix's plans and schemes blow up in his face, literally

Bloodlines is packed full with NPCs who will lie, cheat and generally deceive you into doing what they want, however none of them can hold a candle to Lacroix's under hand antics.

By the way, I'm talking about Sabastian Lacroix, not Dwayne Lacroix of insurrection baby formula company (play the game and you'll get that one.)

Oh brother where art thou?

Blood is thicker than water, nowhere is this more true than in the world of video games. While the real world has Cain and Abel, Romulus and Remus and Ed and David Miliband; the gaming world has its share of siblings, and I'm not just talking about a certain pair of Italian plumbers- here's a few of gaming's family ties, some are memorable and some not so much.

Paxton Fettle and The point man- Fear 1, 2 and 3.

Life can be hard when your a member of the first encounter assault recon team, especially when your sent after your cannibal rogue soldier bother who wants to help your un-dead psychic mother give birth to a all new member of your messed up military experiment gone wrong family tree.
Hell have no furry like the clone armies of a dead woman scorned! 

 J.C. and Paul Denton- Deus Ex

Suspiciously similar trench coat combo J.C. and Paul Denton work for UNATCO, fighting the terrorist group the NSF.
Both heavily augmented with bio upgrades to make them faster, stronger and smarter that run of the mill human agents, these two have been tricked into believing their parents died in a car crash and that they are regular brothers.
After betrayal, conspiracy, some more betrayal and just a little more conspiracy on top of that the brothers find that they are in fact clones created by the sinister Page  industries as a test run for Bob Page's shot at immortality and cyber godhood. Bummer, still it will make for good story around the Denton family Christmas table this year.

Good to be bad part 2

Shodan- AI bitch queen from hell.

Before VIKI went mental and tried to take over the world in I robot, and GlaDos introduced us to joys portals and test chambers in portal there was another AI fem fatal that made these two silicon chip phycos look like SIRI compared to her.

This was the computer AI Shodan. Shodan was the computer in charge of Citadel station, a space base in the far off future where humanity was set on colonising the stars.

After processing a huge amount of data and becoming self aware, Shodan decides she is in fact a god and sets about murdering the pathetic carbon based life forms that built her.

You rarely see her in person as she is a computer AI that is part of the space station you are in, however she is an omnipresent voice in your head as you explore the corridors and rooms.

Although she is your constant companion she is not here to give you a pep talk, she is out to stop you from pulling her plug by any means necessary- this includes some of the best sound bytes from an enemy in game ever delivered.

"Look at you, hacker: a pathetic creature of meat and bone, panting and sweating as you run through my corridors. How can you challenge a perfect, immortal machine?"

Your flesh is an insult to the perfection of the digital.

Chilling,

Lara's best bits

 

Tomb Raider for the original PlayStation was released in 1996 and was the first time most console gamers had played a third person action game. The original game in the on-going tomb raider series really showed off the new hardware and pointed the way for a thousand copy cat games to follow.

As the series went on though the innervation got scarcer and  new ideas got a bit thin on the ground, by the third game, it all seemed a little stale and by the numbers,

However with each new entry to the series there were new features added to the formula to try and convince gamers to invest hard earned cash on next Lara Croft adventure.

Tomb Raider 

The first outing of miss Croft was an absolute game changer. We had never seen levels of exploration as large as this, the tombs and underground temples seemed to go on forever with labyrinthine tunnels and chambers filled with traps, creatures and lost treasures.

But not only did the extend out in front of you, they also towered above you as well! One of my stand out moments of the first game as scaling a huge underground water fall and viewing the enormous chamber it sat in from the roof of the cave it sat in, only to perform an elegant swan dive from the falls pinnacle into a freezing pool 50 feet below.

You could also partake in the disturbingly cathartic practise of getting the heroine of the piece to the lofty heights of a level and swan diving her off onto the concrete bellow, breaking her neck with a sickening crack...or was that just me?

It also featured the interior of Croft manor, Lara's homestead and the training area for the game. It featured stairs, a ballroom with an impromptu  assault course made of packing cases and creates and also Lara's bedroom and bathroom that feature in the final cut scene of the game (spoiler).

Tomb Raider 2.

 

 

Tomb Raider 2 had it's work cut out to match the quality of the original. It kicked things off with a cut scene intro that had dragons, the great wall of China and monks fighting. This was a far more epic beginning to the game than TR1s intro that featured wolves being shot in the snow.
The second game also has a much larger version of Lara's home, Croft Manor. This time round it has full indoor and out door areas with gardens, a full assault course with death slide and cargo nets and a maze with a hidden secret.
The house also has Lara's butler who wanders the house after you carrying a clattering tea set and occasionally farting, If the old codger really starts getting on your nerves you can always lure him into the kitchen and lock him in the freezer where he will probably freeze to death...again was this just me who did this?
The game now featured full open environs including the great wall, Venice featuring canals, and even a oilrig and sunken ship level. 
It was also the first TR to feature a vehicle. You could hop into a speed boat and tear round the canals of Venice while "classical music" plays along in the background (it's not an actual famous piece of classical music, it was written by Nathan McCree for the games score, but it sounds great and fits the level really well) and you gun down gondoliers and Dobermans.
You can also use a spear gun in the underwater levels to shoot endangered species of shark.
With the more open areas and new vehicles, TR2 really adds new depth to the series, while still keeping all the aspects that made the first one great.

Tomb Raider 3; The adventures of Lara Croft  (because all she had done till then was just a walk in the park?)   

 

By the time the third time game rolled around the tomb raider franchise was getting a little stale.

Core design added some interesting features to number three that gave it a much needed refresh. First of all there is a bigger training section at croft manor that features a vehicle section, shooting section and allot longer assault course.

The second feature unlocks after you have finished the first section, once you have completed the India 

Section you get to choose one of three country's to carry on Lara's adventure. You can choose Nirvana 

In the US, London England or Antarctica.

The plot jumps between three continents and involves a cosmetic giant who wants eternal youth, a desert government research lab with a dark secret and a meteorite crash site. This non linear plot means you get I little more choice than the first 2 much more linear titles.

                                                                     And the rest of them

After the first three the tomb raider games there were several spin offs from chronicles, through to last revelation but these were way after I lost interest in the series.

After the disaster that was The angel of darkness and the vanilla but passable tomb raider Legends, tomb raider was rebooted yet again with tomb raider in 2012. 

As much as I enjoyed the 2012 reboot, I still consider TR1 for the ps1 the best one in the series, it's so basic now that you can play it on your phone but it remains as epic and engrossing as it did in the 90's on the first Playstation.

It's good to be bad

Everyone likes a bad guy, from Darth Vader to Gargamel, a decent villain always out shines the goody goody lead.
We all have our arch villain favs we love to hate, and here are the ones that have had an effect on me over the years.

Kain- Blood omen legacy of kain.

Kain is the anti Edward, pale pouty teen  heart throb he is not. This father to the vamps of Nosgoth, Kain has hacked slashed and drained his way across time and space to pursue his dreams of total domination of his world.
As with most antagonist however he creates his own nemesis in the form of his ex lieutenants Raziel, this upstart had the audacity to out evolve his master by growing wings, Kain, not to be one upped by anyone tore said wings off and had him thrown into the nearest vortex. Raz over reacted by becoming an eater of souls with the mission to slay every blood sucker not under the sun and consume their souls.    
For being underhand, scheming and just plane black hearted, Kain is a force to be reckoned with.

Bring a Flamingo to gun fight!

Violence, in the real world we get as far away from it as possible (at least I do, you might be a nut job who enjoys beating merry hell out of kittens, to each his/her own). So why is it that the tools most games use to let us interact with the virtual environments seem to run on bullets, shotgun shells or napalm?

 

Well no today, today I'm thinking about the boom sticks with a little less boom and a little more pizazz, pop and just plain HUH?!?!? 

 

      

The groovitron - Ratchet and Clank

Why blast enemy bots to pieces when you can force them to shake their funky stuff to 70's disco sounds, with the Grooitron you can avoid murder on the dance floor and slip by while your enemy jumps, jives and moonwalks, far to busy to bother shooting you full of holes.

Wabbajack - Oblivion/Skyrim



Any weapon gifted to you by the prince of madness has got to be good for a laugh, right?
The wabbajack is a daedric artefact in the form of a staff with four screaming faces at one end of it, and it functions very much like all the other magic staffs that you can loot from most areas of Tamriel but with one major difference,  point it at an enemy and one of several random effects kicks in. It turns your victims into chickens, mud crabs, a shower of coins and most disturbing of all- a sweet role, which you can then eat! messed up.

Shrink ray - Duke Nukem  3D/forever

As if Dukes ego was not big enough already, with this green glowing gun you can reduce any hulking pig cop enemy to the size of a bug, and then you get to crush em under your size 14 combat boots, hail to the king baby.

Portal gun - Portal 1/2

This may be the most awesomely powerful non lethal weapon ever conceived by man or megalomaniac evil rogue AI woman. 
Developed by ex shower curtain and now big science military contractors Aperture Science, the portal gun allows you to connect two portals via a quantum space hole allowing instantaneous travel between to points- this means you can fall into a hole in the floor and fall out of a whole in the ceiling. Add to this the fact that there is no loss of inertia, lets you use your forward or downward momentum to launch out of the exit portal and over gaps far to wide for you to jump.

How is that a weapon I hear you ask, well when you can drop a crate into a hole in the floor and have it fall out of the portal you have just placed above that poor, innocent and heavily armed robot AI killing machine around the corner then you will see the result of thinking violent thoughts with portals- "I don't blame yo..."crunch.    

 

What's it got in it's pockets?

Inventory management, it's in almost any RPG, adventure or point and click game you can mention.

Keeping track of you celestial pants of god hood is complicated enough without the rest if the useless, oversized or just plain weird junk that some games throw at you.

Looking over some of the items I have jammed in my nether weave bags, sacks of holding or in one case just stuffed into my trousers ( I'm looking at you George Stobart) here is my list of the oddest things that have prevented me jamming that new GEP gun into my hold-all.

Hoate club membership card- world of Warcraft 

 

Picked up when your Death knight first sets large iron booted foot in Azeroth, the horte club card is a white labeled object and as such is not classed as a junk item. 

But after countless players logging forum posts and requests as to its use and the location of the titular club, it turned out to be just another story item with no function except to give a snippet of back story to the starting location.

Envious eyes- vampire bloodlines

Not so much as a useless item, just plain gross. When you visit China town in the latter stage of the game you come across the worlds creepiest shop keeper since the guy from res evil 4 (greetings stranger!)

This sinister fellow tells you a tail of theft, betrayal and revenge that culminates in you breaking into a freezer in the local triad run food store to swipe the eye balls from a recently dead gang member- quite how you get them and store them on the way back to the vendor are thankfully left to your own imagination (although I'm sure it involves a Mellon baller and a baggy).

Tequila worm- Broken sword, the smoking mirror.

 

Broken sword has had its share of weird and wonderful items to examine, combine and generally damage your mental health. But among the gourmet dog biscuits, satin heart panties and clown noses is the fleshy and gross tequila worm.

Found after the series lead character George Stobart swigs from a bottle while fighting a fire in a spider infested living room (don't ask), said worm is picked up, pocketed and can be shown to any NPC you run into who respond in everything from disinterest to utter revolstion.

Being broken sword you will properly combine it with an umbrellas and a coat hanger to escape an angry goat, as I said, it damages you mental health.

Wert's leg- Diablo 2.

 

The Diablo series has always been about the loot, from armour to swords and shields, these games encourage the collection if items, gems and ton and tons of gold.

However, among all the weapons and cash you pick up its wert's leg that stands out.

Belonging to Wert the one legged resident of the town of Tristram from the first game, this prosthetic limb seems useless compared to your broad sword of ork cleaving, however it has more to it than meets the eye.

Combine it with other items in game and prepare for a bovine surprise.

Rolls of film. Resident evil 2

 

Resident evil games have always been tight with inventory space, so having to carry around a shotgun, that odd chess piece shaped plug and the ever so sort after green red herb mix is hard enough without  Umbrella inc's undeveloped holiday snaps filling up valuable blocks.

The rolls can be developed in the photo lab safe room and turned intersting but useless photos of some aspects of then Raccon City outbreak, but until you do they sit in you bag where you could have put that extra clip and avoided the zombie dog that is now eating your face, damn.

Any weapon larger than a pistol- Deus Ex.

 

Guns, lot's of guns. When you're preparing to take on the NSF it's important to pack some heat, just don't expect to carry a flame thrower, rocket launcher and still have room for your favourite sawn off as well.

As with the rest of the game, it is all about compromise- and the blocks in you inventory ensure you never feel complently prepared for you next mission, forcing you to think round situation instead of gunning your way through the whole game.