Tuesday, 7 April 2015

ZOOCUBE & ZOOCUBE ZQ

GO APE!

Put your puzzle-solving skills to work! Simple to learn, tricky to master. ZooCube offers addictive, engaging, heart-racing 3D puzzle action!

Rotate. Stack. Match. React.
Engage in head-to-head multi-player action with your friends.
Match animal pairs on all six sides of the ZooCube to free the animals.
12 game modes, 7 unique environments with added power-ups and bonuses.
~ from the back of the US GameCube box

Zoocube is a fun and simple puzzle game for the GameCube that unfairly got mixed reviews upon its release in 2002. You are tasked with re-building all of the deformed animals of the world by matching their globular shapes together using the titular magnetised cube...

YOOT TOWER (A.K.A. THE TOWER II)

You Build It, You Deal With It!

Control a metropolis with the simulation/strategy sequel to Sim Tower
  • Build your own community amidst the cascading serenity of Kegon Falls, the frenzy of Downtown Tokyo – or beaches of Waikiki with special tower Location Module included free!*
  • Plan every detail of your tenants' lives–from the infrastructure of the subway to the menus at the restaurants and the movies at the theaters.
  • Fail to plan, maintain, and protect your facilities–and stressed-out residents will boycott your lousy service, empty out your hotels, and take their yachts to another boat-dock.
  • Provide top service, protect your residents from fires, terrorists, and traffic jams–and soon rock stars will be arriving in limos.
  • Simple rules make it easy to play–so you can make your towers as complex as you want.
~ from the back of the box

Yoot Tower, a 1998 sequel to SimTower, confused a lot of people on release. In a lot of respects, it is the same as its predecessor in all but name. Maxis owned the 'Sim' brand at the time but it was Sega who put up the money to publish this game and therefore named it after the game designer, Yutaka "Yoot" Saitō.

Sunday, 5 April 2015

X-FILES:RESIST OR SERVE

TRUST NO ONE. PREPARE FOR ANYTHING.

The quiet town of Red Falls erupts in shocking, unexplainable violence... and Mulder and Scully find that their new X-File has a deadly relationship to past cases they barely survived and would rather forget. In this original "lost episode" you will enter a treacherous world filled with authentic X-Files mythology, thrilling challenges and genuine terror. Battle horrific paranormal phenomena and conduct autopsies while in search of the truth.
  • Play as Mulder or Scully and investigate two deadly parallel paths to  the truth
  • Original story from the writers of The X-Files, featuring voiceovers by the cast of the hit TV show
  • Player-conducted autopsies reveal grisly clues
  • Battle bloodthirsty zombies and unspeakable evils
  • Includes Bonus DVD-Style Content
~ from the back of the box

 The X-Files was a phenomenon back in the 90s and you couldn't step into any shop without some item of merchandise being sold. There was even an average FMV adventure game in 1998 which has some trouble running on most modern machines. In 2004, two years after the show ended, and after a lot of the hype had past, a survival horror interpretation of the series was rushed to market on the PlayStation 2...

Saturday, 4 April 2015

WRONG

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00BQK4YC8/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=B00BQK4YC8&linkCode=as2&tag=thecollcham-21&linkId=L5EMGU436HIKYHEA

Art cinema can be difficult to define, especially to a casual movie viewer more accustomed to Hollywood narratives. Most tend to lump in everything that isn't made on America's West coast into this category, but I feel all movies can and should be considered art. Absurdist cinema, on the other hand, take this art to a whole new level and Quentin Dupieux's 2012 movie Wrong takes the absurd to the Nth degree.

Friday, 3 April 2015

VEIL OF DARKNESS

LIFT THE VEIL OF DARKNESS AND ENCOUNTER THE NEW FACE OF HORROR!

Bloody from the flaming wreckage of your cargo plane, you stagger into a desolate village in a time-forgotten valley. With each step, you slide deeper into a horror beyond reason. 

A terrifying tale unfolds - of Kairn, a man compelled to murder his father and brothers. A man with an all-consuming lust for power. A man who feasts on human blood! 

You must destroy this blood-mad demon and his flesh-devouring ghouls and werewolves. Or you will die.

Will you be the final victor? Or Kairn’s next victim?
  • Unravel terrifying riddles. Fulfill bone-chilling quests. Clash in a deadly face-off with the vampire Kairn.
  • Live the horror with heart-stopping graphics and animation, stunning cinematic sequences, haunting music, and blood-curdling sound effects.
  • Fight for your life in one of three combat levels. Use the right weapon to destroy each ghoul, werewolf and zombie. Or die.
  • Meet a host of spectral characters whose dark secrets reveal more of the mystery.
  • Sink deep into this gothic nightmare adventure with state-of-the-art gameplay.
  • Record every step you take in dungeons with line-of-sight auto-mapping and print-out features.
Veil of Darkness. A new vein of terror.
~ from the back of the box

Released in 1993 by SSI and developed by Event Horizon Software, Veil of Darkness is a bit of an oddity. It looks like an RPG. It controls like a typical isometric RPG. It's even published by a company known for great RPGs using the Dungeons & Dragons license. Those expecting roles to be played in their game, however, will be very disappointed. Veil of Darkness is very much an adventure game at its core...

Thursday, 2 April 2015

U.F.O.s (aka GNAP)

Dateline...
  1970s, the height of the disco craze.

Location...
  the Ozarks.

A one-eyed purple sausage alien, named Gnap, crash-lands in the middle of a farmer's pigpen. His intergalactic cruiser is messed up, BIG TIME. So Gnap, and his dimwitted sidekick platypus, set off to find spare parts. Along the way, they mingle with an offensive mob of psychotic wackos - otherwise known as humans! It's rude, offensive and everything you've dreamed of!

This game is likely to be detrimental to your health.

Twisted humor that your mother would never approve of.

Absolutely no attempt to be culturally significant!

What's in it for you?
  • 4 out-of-touch arcade style games
  • screens jam-packed with animations
  • more gags than a political campaign
  • 800x600 24-bit graphics (supports 640x480, 16-bit and 8-bit)
  • not one single, solitary, second of educational content
~ from the back of the box

Dateline: 1970s - the height of the Disco craze. The place: the Ozarks, middle America. The event: an alien named Gnap runs out of gas, crash lands on a hick farm and befriends a duck-billed platypus. The game: U.F.O.s...

Wednesday, 1 April 2015

TERRA NOVA: STRIKE FORCE CENTAURI

From the creators of Ultima Underworld I & II and System Shock

"Live fast, die young... leave a pile of good looking corpses."

How did the world get so ugly so fast? We were almost there, and then Gomez got scragged by a heavy turret and Slugger learned the difference between horseshoes and hand grenades. That left Rossi and me.

"There's the dropship!" Rossi screams.
"We're outta here, Nik!"

"Rossi wait!" But it's too late. A particle beam turns Rossi into a smear on the landscape. The pirate sniper makes a quick sprint for cover... not quick enough.

"Get aboard, Nikola!" your radio squawks. Suddenly, a hulking tank crests the hill launching a deadly hail of missiles at your position.

The radio crackles: "Nikola? Nikola, are you there? Come in Squad Leader..."
  • Suit Up in Scout, Standard or Heavy Hi-Tech Powered Battle Armor depending upon your mission. Each suit bristles with particle beams, grenade launchers, missiles, thermal disruptors, jump jets, recon drones, mine layers, and other deadly tools of your trade.
  • Take Charge of a crack unit of Strike Force Commandos trained to follow your lead. Assemble mission specific teams to face an increasingly cunning foe. Employ "fire and maneuver", diversions and other squad combat tactics. Send individual team members on special missions; or sometimes simply trust your buddies to get you out of hot water.
  • Move Out into a fully rendered 3D outdoor environment. Fight your way through richly detailed worlds with realistic terrain and stunning atmospheric effects: rain falls, lightning strikes and clouds race across alien skies. Experience the shattering reality of 3D Q-Sound audio and a driving musical score. See the drama of the campaign unfold in full motion video sequences.
  • Kick Butt across the bloody battlefields of four unique worlds where only your "combat smarts" will buy the squad a ticket home. With 39 missions plus a scenario editor for creating your own combat adventures. Terra Nova grabs hold and doesn't let go.
~ from the back of the box

It's a great shame that many great games can disappear into obscurity where those who may go on to love them will have probably never heard of them. It's an absolute travesty that most games from Looking Glass Studios fall into this category. Their output was inventive, universally praised yet played by so few. The subject for today's post - Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri - is no different.