Archive for the ‘ Video Games ’ Category
I love time travel. I don’t know what it is about the genre, but I will read any book, and watch any movie there is about it. “Back to the Future”, and its first sequel have been two of my favorite movies since I was a kid (the third one is OK, but not nearly as good as the other two). So when I heard they were making a new game that would continue the story, I was completely against it. Continue reading
In an age where CD’s and records have become obsolete in order to make way for the sale of individual songs, it is rare to see a band release a full album that tells an overarching story, rather just being a collection of songs about numerous unrelated subjects. The Protomen’s recent release entitled “Act II: The Father of Death,” does just this, creating a compelling story over twelve songs.
The Protomen are a band that took the plot of the original Mega Man games for the NES, changed it into a 1984-esque world and turned the whole thing into a rock opera. Some details are changed from the original source material, the biggest being that Wily is actually successful in his attempts to take control of the world, and he oversees everything from a tower while his robots create a dystopia where Big Brother is always watching. Continue reading
The appropriately titled “Desperate Escape” is the latest downloadable chapter for Resident Evil 5. Players are given the chance to play as Jill Valentine and Josh Stone, a BSAA agent who helps Chris and Sheva in the main storyline. From beginning to end players are constantly bombarded by wave after wave of Majini, giving those with an itchy trigger finger plenty of reason to play this chapter several times over.
“Desperate Escape” occurs within the events of RE5. Shortly after Chris and Sheva free Jill from Wesker’s mind control device, Jill urges them to focus on the mission and take Wesker down. After Chris and Sheva head out, Jill passes out, waking up moments later to the sound of Josh’s voice. The two of them partner up and make a daring escape from the Tricell facility. Continue reading
“Lost in Nightmares” is the newly released DLC (downloadable content) for Resident Evil 5. As most who have played RE5 will know, this episode is about a memory that Chris Redfield has. He remembers the night that he and his partner, Jill Valentine, encountered their long-time nemesis and former leader, Albert Wesker.
In the main game, we are treated to a flashback where Chris and Jill find Wesker standing over the corpse of Ozwell E. Spencer, one of the founders of Umbrella, the company responsible for the zombie outbreaks in Raccoon City. The duo gets the crap kicked out of them matrix-style, compliments of Wesker’s superhuman abilities. He tosses the two of them around like a couple of stuffed pillows, and after a few minutes, Wesker effortlessly grabs Chris by the throat and is moments away from ripping out his heart when Jill makes the ultimate sacrifice by latching onto Wesker and flinging herself out a window, where the two of them presumably fall to their deaths. Continue reading
Whenever an old game franchise is revived it is met with fan skepticism and nervousness. This is especially true with games which have large fan bases. Over the years, I have personally seen a lot of old games updated to varying degrees of success. The most recent of those is a revival of one of my favorite series: Monkey Island. Telltale Games took the license from Lucasarts and released five episodes over the past 6 months. The story of Guybrush Threepwood is continuing on and is still filled with plenty of puzzles and humor along the way.
The plot starts off with Guybrush once again trying to take down his nemesis, the demon pirate LeChuck. In the process, Guybrush messes up a spell, and sucks all the voodoo energy out of LeChuck, making him human again. Unfortunately, all that voodoo is spread throughout the Caribbean, infecting all the pirates, making them all sick and prone to fits of demonic anger. Those possessed include his wife Elaine, and like in Evil Dead 2, his own hand. So it’s up to Guybrush to find a cure for this demon pox by traveling all over the Caribbean in search of… a voodoo sponge to suck up the energy, obviously.
You can see where this might be a problem
I am a simple man, the littlest things amuse me. So when I see a game called “Little Red Riding Hood’s Zombie BBQ,” for the Nintendo DS, I am going to pick it up because it has an awesome title. All I expect from the game is two things: Zombies, and a way to kill them. The game does not disappoint in this department.
Lucasarts used to do more than just release multiple Star Wars games year after year. That was twenty years ago. They had a game division which made a lot of classic adventure games that had nothing to do with Star Wars. I always thought the term “adventure” wasn’t all that fitting, that brings to mind more platforming elements, but I guess it sounds better than “plot-driven puzzle games.” They produced many classic titles, such as “Maniac Mansion”, ‘Grim Fandango” and “Sam & Max Hit the Road”, all of which had memorable characters, hilarious dialogue and brain-scratching puzzles. The genre died out in the mid to late nineties, but fans have always wanted more.
In the past few years, they’ve had something of a revival, especially by the company Telltale Games who have been releasing adventure games in an episodic format. They started getting major attention when they released two new seasons of Sam and Max two years ago and continued on with other games like “Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People” based on the characters on Homestarrunner.com and “Wallace and Gromit’s Grand Adventure” based on the famous duo of the same name. Recently, it was announced they would be releasing episodes for one of my favorite series next month: “Monkey Island”. Continue reading
