Remember Pac Man? the original cool yellow dude around before Homer Simpson? Well, he is one of those gaming characters which will be remembered for the ages. He will be around in history museums with big cool boards teaching 8 year olds about his rise to fame and how he was the big thing at time of the release. Now we have had Master Chief as a big icon but the fact is most of the games coming out now don’t have memorable characters. Even the most hardened gamer will find it difficult to remember all the character names of the player characters in the current big releases like BioShock for example.
Perhaps this will be a sign of future things to come with big action becoming more important than character development. The thought to be left with is, when the future comes around and people look back at the big gaming icons from the ’00s which big characters will be seen to represent us now? Let’s hope it’s something as positive as Pac Man.
As a fun easy quiz, what are the player character names in these games? (no prize, answers after the continue click)
1) Stranglehold
2) Halo
3) Half Life
4) Call of Duty 4 (x2)
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Schoolhouse Rock!: Election Collection
Disney DVD
Running Time: 49 minutes (15 shorts)
Release Date: September 23, 2008
So, here we are on the eve of the 2008 presidential election. A couple firsts this time around: first African-American presidential candidate (Barack Obama), and the first female Vice-Presidential candidate (Sarah Palin). Oh, and it’s the first time in 20 years that a Clinton or Bush isn’t on the presidential ticket! What better way Read more »
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Now if one of my favourite book series as a kid are Goosebumps, another will be Horrible Histories. Written by Terry Deary, Horrible Histories are essentially history books. They tell you history. But there’s a twist. They tell you the more horrible, the gorier, the more twisted parts of history. The sort your history teacher doesn’t.
Interestingly, there’s going to be an expansion to the franchise. While we won’t be seeing a movie for it, like Goosebumps (hmm, interesting idea), Horrible Histories will be going into the video games arena, with developer Slitherine Strategies taking it up.
If you’ve never heard of Slitherine, do not despair, for you haven’t missed anything. Slitherine’s previous works appear to be rather obscure titles I’ve never heard of either. Still, I think it should be in the right hands, since all of Slitherine’s previous works have been historical strategy games.
To be entirely honest. I’m not sure how a strategy game on Horrible Histories will work out. HH is more about the obscure facts and secrets of histories that were either distorted or maybe censored in time. How can you convert a series like that into a strategy game?
And the second focus of Horrible Histories is humour (and black humour at that). The last game I’ve seen that was actually funny would be Psychonauts. Okay, there’s Portal too. My point being, comedy in video games is an art. How well will Slitherine capture it?
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