Favourite Video Games #1 - Red Dead Redemption

If you've been reading the Western Weekend posts, you could probably figure out that I'd have Red Dead Redemption - 'Grand Theft Auto in the West'. Well, not quite. Yes, it's the same publishers and a similar engine, but this game offers an epic tale of redemption in the twilight years of the American West.

Taking place in 1911, we follow John Marston - a retired gunfighter and bandit who is seeking to live a peaceful life as a farmer with his family. Unfortunately, the world he knows is changing and he finds that it isn't easy to escape his past when agents from the Bureau of Investigation come knocking. As an alternative to prison or execution, John is offered amnesty if he agrees to hunt down the old members of his gang. He agrees, but his wife and son are detained to ensure his cooperation. Thus, John sets out on his odyssey through the south-western United States and northern Mexico.

I love the game's open world, with deserts, canyons, plains, forests, swamplands, and mountains. Compared to open worlds like Just Cause or Elder Scrolls games, it's actually quite a small world but it feels big. There's plenty of activities ranging from picking flowers to chasing wanted criminals, along with a variety of random encounters as you travel around. Vehicles are simply horses, wagons, or trains, but there are some missions where you can ride in an automobile. There's a wide variety of characters, both good and bad, but as the game goes on they become more morally grey.

On top of that, there's a pretty good multiplayer mode where you can either play traditional deathmatch games or free-roam in the world with other players. There's even a co-op mission pack that's free to download.

I could rattle on for a lot longer, but I'll finish by saying that I'm really looking forward to Red Dead Redemption 2. It's such a shame that it's been delayed until next spring. Take your time, Rockstar. Make it worth the wait. Perhaps a re-release on the PS4 will help pave the way.

I'll probably disappear for a bit now. Maybe I'll post again if I can think of another top ten or franchise review. Happy writing.

Favourite Video Games #2 - Deus Ex

Every time somebody mentions Deus Ex, someone somewhere is re-installing it. This cyberpunk espionage game mixes first-person action with RPG elements to create a fantastic adventure that's been re-playable for seventeen years now. Seventeen years of wearing a trench coat and fighting conspiracies.

Taking place in a dystopian future, the world is being ravaged by a virus called The Grey Death. There's a vaccine, but it's in short supply and reserved for governments and corporations. With the collapse of social order, the United Nations Anti-Terrorist Coalition (UNATCO) is formed to deal with the rise of terrorist groups around the world. You assume the role of JC Denton, a UNATCO agent who has been given superhuman abilities through nanotechnology. His missions soon get him entangled in a conspiracy which has him questioning his loyalties.

While Deus Ex has a linear story, the gameplay allows you to complete your objectives through any means necessary, whether through stealth, open combat, or a mix. As stated above, there are strong RPG elements too, in which you can invest points into improving skills. For example, a higher level Computer skill allows you to hack computers and even reprogram security systems - shutting down cameras and ordering the automated gun turrets to attack your enemies rather than you.

I think Deus Ex may have been the first game I played which features moral choices as a core element. For example, you confront a terrorist ringleader, whom you have been ordered to eliminate. However, he surrenders and offers to share some important information when your ruthless partner shows up, leaving four choices:

1. Proceed with your objective.
2. Try to hear the leader out, at which point your partner kills him.
3. Leave, again prompting the partner to kill him.
4. Kill your partner, in order to listen to what the leader has to say.

I used this example to minimise spoilers. Some of the early decisions can impact the late-game, but I'll leave you to guess those.

I recommend the Steam version, as that one runs a lot more smoothly on newer computers. They even released a re-skin for the game's 15th anniversary.

Well, we're almost at the end now. And if you've discovered this blog at some point in the past year, you can probably guess what the top pick will be.

Favourite Video Games #3 - Super Mario World

What can be said about Mario? I've grown up playing most of his games, but I think my favourite has to be his debut on the Super Nintendo - Super Mario World.

Story-wise, it's business as usual for our working class hero. His royal love interest Princess Peach has been kidnapped by Bowser, and Mario must embark on a quest to Dinosaur Island to rescue her. Aiding him is Yoshi the dinosaur, who is trying to save his kin from Bowser's seven kids. What follows is an epic journey spanning a variety of locales, including forests, caverns, haunted houses, castles, and even "Chocolate Island".

I think the cover art sums up the game's best features: The cape and Yoshi. Don't tell Edna Mode this, but the cape can be acquired by obtaining a magic feather and it allows Mario to fly, providing that he can get a running start and he maintain his momentum. Meanwhile, Yoshi the dinosaur can be ridden and can eat enemies.

The game offers a wide variety of power-ups, fun challenge, a catchy soundtrack, and a vast map with branching paths and secrets aplenty. However, the game is notoriously difficult, albeit not as much as some games from that era. In fact, to this day, Super Mario World is the only Super Nintendo game that I've actually managed to beat, and even that wasn't 100% completion. In fact, this might be one of the first games to do that kind of thing.

I'd be amazed if my Super Nintendo still works, especially on my TV setup. But if the opportunity presents itself, I'd love to play it again with the original controller in all its glory.

Favourite Video Games #4 - Half-Life 2

I can't think of a first person shooter franchise that's better than the Half-Life series. Half Life was a brilliant and challenging game ahead of it's time, trying to tell a story without pulling you out of the gameplay. The second game continued that and surpassed it, but I'd like to talk about both.

In the first game, you assume the role of the voiceless theoretical physicist Dr Gordon Freeman, a research associate at the Black Mesa Research Facility. An investigation into a mysterious mineral causes a 'Resonance Cascade' which opens a portal between Earth and the alien world of Xen. Gordon is tasked with escaping the facility, navigating structural weaknesses and fighting off aliens from Xen while being monitored by the mysterious G-Man. However, things get complicated when the military take over the facility to deal with the alien threat - which also involves covering up the incident by eliminating anyone associated with the project. Gordon's mission soon changes to helping the Lambda team try and close the dimensional portal. For 1995, the game was innovative.

Anyway, Half Life 2 takes place twenty years later. The earth has been invaded by an alien empire known as The Combine. Gordon, who has spent the past two decades in temporal stasis, is pulled out to become a messianic revolutionary. The sequel features an all new physics engine to add more ingenious puzzles and sometimes allow you to use the environment to your advantage - with a special Gravity Gun to accomplish this. There was a lot of creativity, which was continued with the episodic follow-ups, but after a while the set pieces do tend to repeat themselves.

It's such a shame that Half-Life 2: Episode 2 has been on a cliffhanger for ten years now. While the action is repeating itself by this point, the story was beginning to get interesting. Another Half-Life to me is just as mystical and foreboding as winter is to the Starks.

Favourite Video Games #5 - Saint's Row 2

I've not played the original Saint's Row, but I've heard it's just a Grand Theft Auto clone. However, the sequel very much impressed me, taking a much more comedic tone.

In the first game, you assumed the role of an unnamed and completely customise-able protagonist who joins an up-and-coming gang called the Third Street Saints. He/she embarks on a series of missions to eliminate the other three major gangs of Stillwater, culminating in them assuming leadership of the Saints before falling victim to a yacht explosion. Anyway, Saint's Row 2 takes place five years later, in which The Boss (as you're now known) wakes up from a coma in a prison hospital with the help of fellow inmate Carlos. In the five years that have passed, the Saint's territory has been renovated by the Ultor Corporation, and other gangs have emerged and taken over the city.

I really enjoy the creative freedom you have with customising your character in this game. In fact, I love the complete freedom you get compared to the more linear Grand Theft Auto. All activities and shops are available from the beginning of the game, although I do think the respect system seems rather odd - you have to earn a certain amount of respect before you can do the next story mission. However, this isn't a serious issue, as the side missions are hilarious.  I think my favourite activity is 'Fuzz' - you have to help someone obtain footage for a police brutality lawsuit by dressing up as a police officer and taking part in a reality TV show called Fuzz.

There are sequels, but the only one I've played is Saint's Row: The Third. It's good, and even sillier than the second game, but I prefer Saint's Row 2 myself.

Oh, and my advise is to do the base-jumping mini-game as soon as possible. If you land on the car in the drop zone, you become immune to falling damage.

Favourite Video Games #6 - Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic

I don't play as many RPGs as I do first person shooters or real time strategies. I guess I never really got the hang of the whole side-quests and levelling up side of things. However, that's not to say that don't play RPGs - I think one of my favourites is Bioware's Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. It's a Star Wars game done right, a prequel done right, and an RPG done right (for my tastes anyway).

Knights of the Old Republic takes place four thousand years before any of the films, meaning a whole new cast of characters and a conflict between the Galactic Republic and a Sith Empire spearheaded by Darth Malak. The player assumes the role of an unnamed soldier/scout/scoundrel loyal to the Republic and their growing number of companions, who escapes from the Sith-controlled city world of Taris, learns the ways of the force on the lush planet Dantoonie, and ultimately embarks on a mission to find the 'Star Forge' believed to be the source of Malak's fleet. The game takes you on a variety of planets, including the desert world of Tatooine, the forested Kashyyk, the oceanic Manaan, and the volcanic Korriban.

The game is fairly linear, but each world offers a myriad of side quests. Speaking as a writer, I'd have to say that the main protagonist seems like a blank slate, but it's an RPG so that's expected. However, it's the other characters who make the game great. My favourites include Jolee Bindo, a grumpy old "grey" Jedi who has both Light Side and Dark Side Powers, and HK-47, an assassin droid who gets all the best lines.

I recommend the PC version over the console versions. Like many (but not all) the games on this list, it's available on Steam and doesn't cost much.

While the Star Wars games are a thing of the past, what with Disney's closure of LucasArts back in 2013 and the licensing in the hands of Electronic Arts, this one is a strong indication that the Force is still with us.

Favourite Video Games #7 - Evil Genius

John Milton once said "It is better to reign in Hell than to serve in Heaven" (I got that quote from a game further down the list). If there's anything I think personifies that thought, it's this tongue-in-cheek Sims-style spy thriller from the now-defunct Elixir Studios.

Evil Genius puts you in control of a 1960s Bond villain with a secret island base (complete with boiler-suited minions), with the simple goal of taking over the world (of course). Well, maybe not simple. You have to build and manage the numerous facilities in the lair and maintain a valid workforce, and carry out acts of infamy around the globe in order to build up your notoriety. On top of that, you have to conceal your activities from tourists who visit the island, and the Forces of Justice - five government intelligence agencies dedicated to fighting Nebulous Evil Organisations.

What I really enjoy about this game is the humour, which parodies a lot of spy thriller cliches. This includes having piranha tanks as one of the unlock-able traps. There's also the strange personalities of the named henchmen you can recruit to your cause - including the explosive-obsessed (but impractical) Red Ivan, or the ghetto mob boss Eli Barracuda. While your minions are pretty much expendable (providing you have the ability to train the higher level ones), the henchmen can be incapacitated but not killed. This is until you become notorious enough to attract the attention of the five Super-Agents from the exotic seductress Mariana Mamba to the suave playboy John Steele.

If there's anything I do have issues with, it's the lack of any sort of "open play" there's only one campaign, with three different masterminds to play it through. It's only a minor thing, but a lot of these management games usually have a sandbox mode where you can mess around. Nonetheless, the campaign's a great one - although the difficulty curve ramps up on the second island.

Oh yeah, I've heard there's a sequel in the works.

Favourite Video Games #8 - TimeSplitters 2

Time to shift to the first person shooter territory, with this classic from the GoldenEye 007 development team. I've not played the first TimeSplitters, as it was a PS2 exclusive and I had a GameCube, but TimeSplitters 2 very much impressed me.

In 2401, a race of aliens known as the TimeSplitters have waged war on humanity - pushing them to brink of extinction by taking their war into the past. We follow Sergeant Cortez as he seeks to recover the Time Crystals used by the TimeSplitters in order to turn the tables on them - a quest which takes him through history to recover them.

Each mission is relatively self-contained, with Cortez jumping into someone else (which has been compared to the series Quantum Leap, but I haven't seen that), and fulfilling different objectives in addition to recovering the Time Crystals. Settings include infiltrating a biological weapons facility beneath a Siberian dam in 1990 (a tribute to GoldenEye), an Untouchables-esque story in 1930s Chicago, and a Hammer Horror tribute set in 1890s Paris.

The GameCube version isn't online, but is great for local multiplayer games. This can be playing the story mode cooperatively, or head-to-head in the massive arcade multiplayer. You can unlock more maps, modes, and characters through story mode, the arcade league, or through challenges. There's even a map-making tool.

The follow-up game, TimeSplitters: Future Perfect, was more of a mixed bag. The campaign used a more over-arching story, and was a bit more comedic. It's still a great game, but I preferred the second one.

A lot of people want to see TimeSplitters 4. I don't know, myself. Everything was wrapped up quite nicely in Future Perfect. But I'd like to see these games on the current generation of consoles.

Oh, and there are monkeys. Everything's better with monkeys.

Favourite Video Games #9 - Age of Mythology

I grew up playing the Age of Empires series of real-time strategy games, but my favourite of them is definitely this Ray Harryhausen-inspired spin-off. Like its siblings, the game is about starting in a small village, gathering resources, building up an army, and crushing your opponents. While the other games in the series were based on historical settings, Age of Mythology takes place in more of a fantasy world based on Greek, Egyptian, and Norse Mythology.

The factions in Age of Mythology are more clear-cut from one another, so they all play a lot differently compared to the different factions in Age of Empires. Each culture has three different major gods, with different bonuses, and as you advance each age you choose to worship different minor gods who grant different technologies, mythical creatures and god powers. This divine intervention can range from boosting the output of farms or healing your troops to unleashing tornadoes and earthquakes on your enemies.

In addition to the random map skirmishes, the game features an epic campaign following the Atlantean mariner Arkantos. An ageing classical hero, he spends his days protecting Atlantis from pirate raids, but after leading an expeditionary force to Troy he finds himself on a journey which takes him across the world to foil the schemes of the cyclops Gargarensis.

While I'm here, I'd like to mention the expansion packs. The Titans, was released a year after the game's release. This introduces the Atlantean culture, which is less grounded in mythology. There is also a much shorter campaign taking place ten years after the first one, as Kastor, the Son of Arkantos, seeks to help establish a new Atlantis for his displaced people but unwittingly releases the imprisoned Titans who were deposed by the Greek gods.

The second expansion was released only last year: Tales of the Dragon, which introduces Chinese mythology to the game. There is a new campaign, but it's not really related to the other campaigns. At least, the scenarios I played weren't. It was quite buggy so I didn't get very far in.

Strategy games aren't everyone's thing, but if they are, I recommend this gem if you haven't got it already. There's even been a HD reboot on Steam. It hasn't added much, other than a zoom function, but it's kept the original game in all its glory.

Favourite Video Games #10 - Commandos 2: Men of Courage

First on my list is this squad-based stealth game from Spanish developer Pyro Studios. Based heavily on the works of Alistair MacLean (specifically The Guns of Navarone), Men of Courage follows a team of eight British Commandos during the Second World War as they carry out numerous missions behind enemy lines: a hand-to-hand expert, a frogman, a sniper, a driver, an explosives expert, a spy, a thief, and a seductress.

You have to make use of the team's different skills in order to fulfil the different objectives while trying to avoid direct combat. One of my favourite characters is the spy, who has the ability to walk around unmolested if he's wearing a uniform. And if he's wearing an officer's uniform, he can order guards to look the other way while the rest of the team sneaks past. It's what I like best: there's not always a clear solution to fulfilling the mission goals, and there's a lot of trial and error.

If there's any issue with the game, it's the notorious difficulty curve - even on the tutorials. I recommend having multiple saves when you carry out a mission. Nonetheless, once you get used to it, there is a fun challenge factor which provides excellent replay value. I'll be using that term a lot during this countdown, but I'd make the argument that it's why these games are my favourites.

The game is available on Steam for a pittance, and I do recommend that you buy it. If you have a headset with a mic, there's even a co-op mode in which the different players control different commandos.

Top Ten Favourite Video Games

According to Twitter, today is Video Games Day. I've got a bit of a backlog of stuff to play, and the writing's slow again. So, I figured that I'd do another Top Ten series about my favourite video games.

I've already done TV shows and films, and I think this should round things off. I'll have the first post later tonight.

A Society of All Work and No Play

Credit to Giphy

"Everyone's a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing it is stupid." - Albert Einstein

It's September. Schools and universities have started again. Fortunately, I left school five years ago, but I'm still holding a grudge and I want to get this off my chest.

Education is one of the most invasive things in life. You go to school five days a week, spending around six hours sitting in dreary classrooms. And once you escape for the day, you get however many hours of homework in the evenings or the weekends. To top it off, there seem to be exams lingering around every corner - so there's always a need to revise. All to appease some faceless bureaucrats who are scarcely on the same page.

Back in January, I recall sitting in a restaurant where I picked up a conversation at another table (I'm a writer, so I eavesdrop). Some kid was being asked by her parents about revision for an exam. This kid was probably not even in secondary school yet, and was being given the January exams that were the bane of my life during my GCSEs and A Levels. Does anybody else think that's messed up? What parent wants their kids to be under so much pressure at that age?

To add insult to injury, you hardly use any of the stuff you have to study. For example, I did A Level Maths, which is full of calculus and trigonometry. Unless you're an engineer, what are the chances you're going to use any of that in later life? I've even heard that the "creative" GCSEs are being scrapped from the curriculum.

So, if school hasn't given you a nervous breakdown (or worse), what then? Go to university? No thanks. I'd had enough of exams by that point. The last thing I want is to deal with both that and debt. Besides, employers these days are more interested in experience than qualifications. I qualified as an accounting technician two years ago, and I have no interest in pursuing further education on that topic. And I certainly haven't used any calculus or trigonometry in that field. If you're lucky enough to get through the Catch-22 malarkey of needing experience to get experience, you're essentially made to become a machine - with only four weeks out of every year to escape.

So, I guess the bottom line is that "Learning is fun. Education isn't." I've probably learned more from research for my writing than from any classroom. I've previously spoken about my bitterness against "The Society of All Work and No Play" that we seem to be living in. I feel like I could convey this in my fiction. But full-time employment is numbing for a creative mind, so I guess I feel I have to discuss it more overtly.