The Suffering

Midway. Yeah, you heard me: Midway. Chances are if you are a gamer and were born any time in the last 30 years, you have probably played or at least heard of one of their games. These are the guys that brought us Ms. Pac-Man, Spy Hunter, Tron and Rampage. Without a doubt, they were the fucking GODS of the 80's arcade scene.

Your arguments are invalid.

Then in 1992 they came out with a little something called "Mortal Kombat". These guys were able to make a fighting game so badass that they actually got a kid who hated fighting games (me) to convert and become obsessed with one.

The reason I bring all of this up? I'm not a fan of survival horror. Okay, so far this sounds like a totally random rant but hear me out: If Midway can make a fighting game so awesome that a kid who hates fighting games goes apeshit over it, surely they can make a survival horror that the same kid will also love right?

Challenge accepted and beaten you beautiful bastard.

Well they went ahead and decided to give it a shot. First they took a living legend for the monster designs: Stan freaking Winston. Name sound familiar? It should, Stan Winston is the guy that worked on many of Hollywood's greatest monsters over the past 3 decades.

Some of his contributions include visual effects and creature designs for The Terminator, Alien, Predator, The Island of Doctor Moreau and Jurrassic Park. Also he is responsible for "The Thing", an 80's movie monster that still gives me fucking nightmares to this day.

Of course, the monsters will only get you so far, the next thing one needs to consider is the setting. Best way to describe the setting of The Suffering for all you modern gamers is relatively simple - Batman: Arkham Asylum with a horror twist. The entire game takes place on a prison island. A relatively large place that is semi-free roaming.

This little slice of heaven is called Abott State Penitentiary, on Carnate Island in Maryland. This place has a serious history of pure nightmare juice that you will become pretty well aquainted with over the course of the game as you start off in the main cells/areas inside the prison while eventually making your way outside to see things like: An abandoned village where they had witch burnings, World War II Fort and an Insane Asylum just to name a few off the top of my head.

- insert random joke about toilet humour here -

Ah, now to our protagonist. Torque. We are never told whether this is his first or last name and they never give us more than that. Torque: A man so badass he only needs one name. Torque was sent to Carnate for the brutal murder of his wife and 2 sons. Apparently he smashed her head open, drowned one of the boys in the tub and threw the other one out of a window.

So why should we care about him? Because he claimed he was innocent. But screw that, he is here and that's all that matters. The moment he gets in his cell, all hell breaks loose and it is up to us, the players to get him out of this alive.

How bad does it get? Monsters start appearing all over the island, the prisoners break out, start rioting and playing a little game of "survival of the fittest" and the Warden totally loses his shit, claims that judgement day has come and starts mass executions. Wonderful.

So hardcore that he doesn't even need shoes.

Torque starts off the game armed with nothing but a shiv and balls the size of watermelons, picking up guns and other goodies along the way. But that is all just an excuse for him to take it easy on his enemies because the man himself is a weapon.

As you kill things, a rage meter quickly fills up and when it is full you can transform into "The Creature". Torque becomes fucking death-incarnate, dealing out murder by literally tearing anything he can get his hands on to pieces while looking like he would be right at home beating the shit out of Hellraiser's Pinhead for his lunch money.

The story is relatively interesting but takes a total backseat when compared to the feeling of the game itself. As you go through the game you will sometimes be presented with moral choices that leave you picking good, neutral or evil paths that can even affect how the game ends.

Some are simple enough like: Team up with a survivor to fight your way through an area or kill him and loot the corpse for weapons and ammo. While others are more ambiguous like: Shoot the mutilated guard to put him out of his misery or ignore him and walk away.

You seriously do not want to piss Torque off.

These choices will leave a lasting physical effect on Torque, with good making him look cleaner and overall more human while evil will make him start to take on a paler appearance with his skin looking scarred and decayed and his clothes becoming increasingly dirty to reflect the rotting of his soul.

There are other nice little touches in the game such as blood splattering onto you as you fight, clinging to your body and eventually making you look like Nancy Archer from "Attack Of The 50 Foot Woman" used you as a tampon.

Random screams or sudden disturbing image flashes on your screen will have you jumping out of your seat the moment you relax and all around you there are always interesting things going on such as fights between the many residents of the island or random disturbing events taking place when you least expect it.

One of the moments that made my nearly shit myself.

Speaking of residents, lets talk about some of the monsters. These guys really steal the show, instead of going the lazy route and taking the usual zombies approach, each monster on Carnate is based on a form of execution.

You have the Slayers, based on decapitation: These things have their severed heads connected to their bodies by metal rods while their lower arms and legs have been replaced by giant blades. The Mainliner is based on lethal injections: hunched over creatures covered in syringes that they tear out of their backs to attack you with.

Marksmen are gaint blindfolded husks with multiple rifles attached to their backs as an incarnation of death by firing squad. Infernas are little girls in white dresses that happily greet you before bursting into flames while screaming and throwing fire in your direction.

The hangman is a skinned torso with a sack over it's head that drops out of the ceiling at random, hanging from it's neck by a rope and trying to strangle you. There are a couple others but at this point you get what I mean when I say that this game will have at least one thing to scare the shit out of anyone.

One of the many reasons I play this game with the lights on.

The major characters themselves are also totally unforgettable. You have characters like Horace P. Gauge, a prisoner sent to the electric chair for the murder of his wife. His ghost crops up from time to time flickering in and out of existence with sparks of electricty exploding in every direction, all the while trying to help Torque and convince him to go down a moral path, begging Torque to have the strength not to allow the island to take away what little good he has left in him.

Then there is Hermes T. Haight, a former sadistic guard who was the island's resident executioner. He eventually lost his sanity and commited suicide by locking himself in the gas chamber and has since been haunting the island in a green gaseous form, taking sick pleasure in the suffering of others and trying to guide Torque down a darker path.

Finally we come to Dr. Killjoy, a depraved psychologist who worked out of the Asylum in the early 1900's. He spent years running twisted experiments on patients before simply vanishing. Since then he haunts Carnate, his ghost manifested through old film projectors. He takes an immediate interest in Torque and hopes to "cure" him.

He only wants what is best for you....

I could go on a little longer but I really need to wrap this up. All I can really say is that this game is AWESOME. It's hard for me to use another word to describe it besides being a great game which gives you the feeling of experiencing a truly horrifying situation while still making you feel like a total badass. The controls are tight and well mapped, the graphics are not as good as they could be, but good enough for a 2004 game, the voice acting is superb and the ambience is beyond perfect.

The Suffering was originally released on the PS2, Xbox and PC and though I would normally say that you should get the version for whatever platform suits you best, I am happy to inform you all that the game itself is now freeware and with a quick google search, can be legally downloaded off the net for free. Now you really don't have any excuses. Go get this game. Thank me later.

Prototype

Here we are again. 48 hours since my last review and you are back for more abuse. Obviously you have no shame. Oh well, not my place to judge. The midget locked in my basement pretty much cheapens any attempt on my part to take the moral high ground.

I was sitting here in front of my keyboard thinking that it was time to either write something or masturbate furiously. I decided to go for the former, but staying with the spirit of my choice I am going to review a game that is itself pure masturbation for gamers with a God Complex.

My left hand is already trembling with anticipation.

Prototype was released back in June of '09, developed by Radical Entertainment and published by Activision. If you are an avid gamer then you have most likely heard of Radical Entertainment who are the current developers for the Crash Bandicoot series, but more importantly they were the makers of the "Hulk: Ultimate Destruction" game for the original Xbox and PS2 (One of my personal favourites from the last gen of games).

One reason I bring up the Hulk: UD game is because of the eerie similarity in gameplay. Prototype shares the same feeling of being a super powered being running around an open city causing death and mayhem and even uses the same system of gaining points from all the shit you pull to buy upgrades, abilities and new skills from one of the pause menu screens.

This is not a bad thing however. The game feels very fluid and you really do eventually build up enough power to feel like you are a God among insects. You will sprint up the sides of buildings, run from roof to roof, jumping hundreds of feet forward then gliding through the air before landing with a satisfying crash into a crowd of civilians below, turning one of your arms into a "whipfist" and cutting people in half with one swing of your new phallic symbol.

I'm pretty sure there is a sex joke in here somewhere.

You are Alex Mercer, an amnesiac who woke up on a mortuary slab with the power to absorb any living thing into his body while becoming more powerful with each consumption. You are the ultimate predator, able to run faster than any car, transform any part of your body into a weapon, take on the shape of anyone you wish and learn all the knowledge from anything you consume (or...at least you can do all these things to the limit of the game creator's imaginations).

With these abilities you eventually become nearly unstoppable, even learning to use tanks and helicopters as well as any gun or other random weapon you can get your hands on thanks to the memories of soldiers you consume. You also get stuff like heat vision, giant claws, a huge blade that practically screams "Fuck you!" and even an armored form.

Sadly, while most people would be happy to suddenly become something like the lovechild of Spawn and Jackie "The Darkness" Estacado, our dear Alex spends most of the story whining about not having his memories and wanting revenge on the ones who did this to him.

Seriously dude? You're fucking complaining?

Speaking of  the story: A short time after you wake up, the city starts getting a little...messy. People start turning into zombie-like things, buildings start growing fleshy tumors and eventually monsters start popping up. The Military also comes along to add some flavour to this barrel of monkeys as well as a mercenary group named Blacklight showing up to the party who have mysterious connections to Alex Mercer.

New York basically becomes a free-for-all warzone with Military/Blacklight areas and Infection areas as well as a few civilian areas thrown in for shits and giggles. The way the story is told works pretty well, you kill, consume and otherwise destroy your way through to get more answers with the plot advancing as it would in any other action game.

One of the interesting aspects of the story which breaks away from the norm is how they used the consume ability as a story teller in itself. There are certain people in the game world who you can consume to get more information on either Alex or the Infection. Whenever you come across these individuals, their consumption will add to your "Web of Intrigue" and reward you with a short video that reminds me very much of one of my acid-flashbacks from college.

Falcon Punch!

Now that I have pretty much covered as much as I possibly can without going into spoiler territory, lets talk about the other things that matter. Controls are tight and responsive. After around 15 minutes into this game I was pretty much comfortable with how everything ran and there were very few framerate issues on both the Xbox 360 and PC versions of the game (the only time I got even a minor framerate dip was when I had around 100 people on screen with blood/body parts flying in every direction and tanks exploding on all sides). The draw distance is very good as well, just slightly better on the PC but not by much.

The graphics are very decent considering how much can be going on at any given time, you will constantly have rockets and bullets flying around, tanks, helicopters and a silly amount of people on screen at once (Infected, civies or the other guys I refer to as "lunch"). Alex is detailed to perfection with his jacket flapping in the wind as he runs and dodges, transformations looking beautiful in their own weird "Guyver" way and explosions looking like...well lets just say that Michael Bay comes off as a sensible drama film director in comparison.

Tentacle Porn and explosions? I can die happy now.

Apart from Alex and 6 or 7 other characters, the rest of the cast is slightly lacking in detail. There are around 8 different models for civilians (all using the magic of colour swapping clothes to give you the feel that there are more....it doesn't work) There are only around 3 different models for the Military units (pilot, captain, soldier) and 2-3 models for the Blacklight troops (super soldier and regular).

Of course that is not really an issue since around 90% of the time things will be too frantic with too many bodies and explosions going on around you to even notice. Unless you really take the time to just stop and walk a little around New York away from all the fighting this is not something that ever really comes up to bother you. Speaking of New York, the city itself looks gorgeous. Though not as detailed as some people would want (but seriously, fuck those people and their spoiled expectations)

Are you really gonna be a prick about how detailed the windows are right now?

It is still a pretty damn fine rendering with all of the major landmarks/places you would expect and is one of the true stars of this game. Starting in pristine condition and pretty much looking like you would expect it to, then slowly deteriorating over the course of the game until entire areas look like they were taken straight out of a wannabe movie sequel to Apocalypse Now. Eventually you have a city in flaming blood soaked ruins. Just the way I like it.

There is no question here. If you like action and want to feel like a GOD then get this freaking game now. I'm not kidding, the game doesn't even try to be coy about it. Around 20 minutes in, Alex gets nicknamed "Zeus" by the soldiers. Stop staring at me with your dead unloving eyes and go play the game right fucking now.

Overlord

I figured since this was my first review I would keep things simple. Unfortunately I am an idiot and decided to pick a game that is both simple and yet difficult to fully explain. I shall however try to keep things straight-forward. This actually reminds me of something my Grandfather used to say: "Kiddo, you can't fuck a horse and expect the child to come out 100% up to standard."

These wise words certainly follow me into my thoughts of this game. Though it is very entertaining and an all around solid product, the game suffers from some issues that do detract from it truly being a great title. The best way to explain "Overlord" in a nutshell would be thusly: Imagine if Dungeon Keeper, Fable and Pikmin had a threeway. Overlord is the club-footed. snaggletoothed loveable mutated child that would be left behind after such an unholy union.

Also I'm pretty sure he has red hair under that helmet.

You play as the titular Overlord and must bend the pathetic masses to your will (Or kill sheep. Killing sheep is an important aspect of this game). The story begins with you being woken up in a crypt and decked out in your evil armor, handed an axe and told that you are the Master of Evil, Prince of Pillaging and Regent of Rape (okay, I may be exaggerating a bit on the personal titles) and must do what you do best.

You are informed that the previous Overlord was killed by adventurers who also happened to trash your newly owned Dark Tower. All of this information is given to you by the leader/master of your Minions, an aged sage named Gnarl, who looks like a cross between Yoda and an Evil Mogwai from Gremlins.

Am I the only one that can see the resemblance?

Gnarl then goes on to tell you that you need to restore the Tower, get a Mistress to spend your hard earned gold and rebuild your army of Minions. There was also something about punishing the 7 heroes responsible for the death of the last Overlord who have themselves become corrupt, each representing the 7 Deadly Sins but at this point I was barely listening and just wanted to kick some puppies and eat a few babies.

As the story unfolds you get to make choices on whether to do good deeds for the sake of long term evil or just do evil for the sake of being a dick. The long term evil thing is explained in a way that makes sense but ultimately feels like an excuse to give you a "good/hero" path. (something that I hear they *fixed* in the second game by making your choices boil down to Dominating Asshole or Destructive Asshole)

You're doing the whole "Evil" thing wrong dipshit.

The Minions themselves come in four colours: Brown, Red, Green and Blue with each having a speciality. The Browns are your Warriors. The front line troops. They rush violently towards enemies, stabbing and clubbing with glee and can even equip the armor and weapons of fallen foes.

The Reds are your ranged troops, they shoot little bolts of fire from their hands and are very deadly if kept out of danger but die very quickly when faced with actual harm coming their way.

The Greens are your stealth troops. The spies/rangers/ninjas of your army. When they attack, they swarm around the enemy, jumping onto their backs and generally acting like like the Protagonist from Shadow of the Colossus, they also become nearly invisible when given a post to guard.

Finally we come to the blues. These little guys are your Healers. When a Minion dies, these bundles of joy come along, carry the body to safety and restore life. They are also the only minions that can cross water (the others drown like a certain nine-fingered Templar killing Assassin we all know and love).

I love these little bastards

You start the game with only the Browns at your disposal and must find the others as you go along. The Minions are used to beat little enviromental obstacles or just cause murder and mayhem and are a true joy to watch. They cackle with glee, rush forward at your command, eager to please you, smashing living creatures and inanimate objects alike while bringing back gold, potions and anything else useful to you with happy screams of "For You!" and "For da Overlord!" while also picking up anything they find useful for themselves such as pots and pans or even dead rats as armor. Though they do seem to repeat the same things over and over again, for some reason even after 20+ hours of gameplay it never got old and never lost it's charm.

Though the Minions do all of the heavy lifting and around 90% of the killing the Overlord is no pushover and can stand up for himself pretty well. He comes with 4 basic spell types (damage, buffing, disabling and protection) which come with different effects over 3 levels as well as armor and a weapons that can be upgraded and enchanted using Minions as sacrifices to power your gear. This is all done through a Forge which can be accessed back at your Dark Tower, an area that serves as a Hub of sorts, with your Armory/Forge, Throne room, Personal Arena and a few other goodies.

I don't need my minions to prove you are a noob.

The Game world itself is lush and varied with swamp areas, countryside, castles, haunted elven forests, dwarf ruins, halfling villages and other places found often in all fantasy stories. The game itself feels almost like a parody of The Lord of the Rings, with the Hobbit Village that you eventually leave in flaming bloody ruins feeling blatantly similar to The Shire.

The graphics are very nice when looking at the Overlord himself, the minions and the enviroment, though on the flip-side all enemies and almost all NPCs of certain types share the exact same face and models as well as showing a certain age in graphics quality. However, this does not really detract from the game in the long run unless you are a nit-picky asshole (I'm looking at you spoiled new-gen gamers here).

Though the world itself seems rather large, it is also quite linear in design (similar to the Fable Series) and can at times feel frustrating to navigate thanks to the fact that there is no world map or minimap other than the paper copy that comes with your game (The PC and 360 both suffer from this, though I have heard that the PS3 version comes with an in-game minimap) Ultimately, everything feels bright, funny and alive, carrying the same vibrant feel and verbal humour that made the first Fable game so charming.

As stated before: Sheep killing plays a large role in this game

I wish I could say the same for the controls. They feel awkward and downright clunky at times. The consoles suffer from this most with an irritating setup due to using the right analog stick for both camera control and manual Minion "sweeping". I found myself often times forgetting to hold the "center camera" button and wanting to pan the view around with it ending in my Minions running into a pool of water and dying stupidly or just running in a big circle and doing something I really did not want them to do.

The PC suffers less from this, with the mouse and keyboard having enough choices for the different functions, though also feeling a little less fluid when it came to casting spells as well as not being able to walk. On the consoles you can go from a slow walk to a brisk jog depending on how far you push the left analog stick forward, whereas with the PC you were in a constant state of jogging at around 80% of the console maximum.

There is no favouritism here. You both fucking irritate me.

There are actually a few other minor things left that I have not really covered yet, this game just has so many different aspects to it that it *sounds* overwhelming but in truth is not, due to the simple fact that it is all introduced at such a reasonable pace and integrates so well. Apart from a few minor gripes concerning some very simple yet tedious puzzle challenges, controls that can be annoying at times and a slightly outdated saving system, Overlord is a memorable and entertaining game definately worth playing.

The Plan

So, here I am. Early Monday morning and I am not quite stable yet. I suppose this is the part where I make my intentions clear to all. Well first off, my name is "Burke" and I am an alcoholic. Also I plan to eat your babies, devour your children and consume your offspring (I am unsure if those are all the same thing. My doctor says they are).

But that is of course besides the point of this blog. No, the point of this blog is for the review of video games (or something along those lines). Let me start by explaining the name itself. "Dark Island Games" is a happy nod towards Black Isle Studios, a division of Interplay formed in 1996 specifically for the creation of computer roleplaying games.

They were masters of their art and were responsible for many of my personal great gaming experiences. Were it not for games like Baldur's Gate, Planescape: Torment or Fallout I would not be the gamer I am today nor have the same appreciation for story telling, roleplaying or interactive entertainment in general. Truly they were pioneers and I salute them.

Rest well beloved creators. You shall be missed.

The actual origin of your's truly into gaming as a medium is quite simple really. As with many children born into the late 80's, before me stood a vast and wonderful world of video games far beyond the daily dullness of life's own little affairs, already strong and alive thanks to the efforts of many talented people from previous years spent making them a reality.

There was nothing quite like the first time I made a new friend playing Pong at the arcade. Or the first time I played Mario Cart or Goldeneye on the N64 with someone I barely knew from down the hall of the apartment building.

Games simply became the new window to the world just as the films and books of the past had been. Not a violent usurper or an unwanted guest, but a new player into the halls of the entertainment industry, ushering a whole generation into a bright new age of something we had long wanted: Interactive Media.

It was a brave new world. A world of fantasy, action and adventure. Where a boy might become a champion and legends manifest into reality. Where dreams became nothing but a matter of time and Empires rose and fell at our command. A world made of pixels and imagination. A world where we could meet those we had never even dreamed of meeting and finding deeper connections in those we already knew. A world where anything was possible.

We were Gods, we were children and we were Pilgrims. We were mortals with Destiny caught between our minds and hearts. We were the new treasure seekers, forging bonds with the old yet stepping forward without fear, into a completely unknown Universe where immortality was only a button click away.

On the other hand, I love the Atari for all the wrong reasons.

It has been 19 years since the first time I held a console controller in my hands. 15 years since I first logged onto a PC and felt what it was to hold the fate of an entire Civilization at my fingertips. After 23 years of experiences in both pain and happiness, there are still few things that compare to some on my experiences gained from games. Few heartaches as terrible as the death of Aerith. Few wonders as epic as my first foray into Hyrule. The simple joy of beating Super Mario. The pure frustration of a weekend of Battletoads.

All of these things and more. Video games are not just childish entertainment. At times they are lessons in emotional pain and attachment, sometimes they are a study into the very core of who we are.

The greatest of games can make us stop and hold our breath. Mourning the loss of a friend, feeling a sense of closure after a long journey through a series. Even going so far as to make us question ourselves from time to time, making us wonder if this avatar we see before us may in some way be a manifestation of who we wish to be or who we can aspire to be like.

Perhaps in the end it is all as meaningless as some may believe. Or perhaps in the end some games may speak to us so profoundly as to still capture our imagination decades later. Perhaps, the easiest way to look at it is to ask ourselves a question that Planescape: Torment asked of it's players so many years ago. "What can change the nature of a man?"

I welcome you to the new era. Welcome, to Dark Island Games.