The Wheelman Review

by Videep Vijay Kumar

Did I have any expectations for a video game featuring Vin Diesel and a lot of driving? Of course not. On the other hand, campy action movies are without doubt, my thing. I dig preposterous dialogue full of cliché, macho one-liners and bucketloads of cheese. There's hardly anything more entertaining. Wheelman has a lot of this, and then some. And this is not necessarily a good thing because it's the 'then some' part that's the problem. Yeah, there's an insane amount of over-the-top action, and yeah, there's a semi-convincing open-world version of Barcelona to drive in and blow stuff up, but the fundamentally broken gameplay, downright dumb AI and lack of mission variety all bring this game down.

Vin 'Milo Burik' Diesel bringing the pwnage

In the game, you play as Milo Burik (voiced by and modelled after the one and only Vin Diesel), who arrives in Barcelona in search of information. There wouldn't be much of a plot if Burik didn't get involved in some sort gang war, now would there? Funnily enough, it's not much of a plot even after Burik gets involved in said gang war. Anyway, it becomes quite obvious to everyone that Burik is one hell of a 'Wheelman', a maniacal driving specialist. “How does it become obvious?”, you ask? It's because Burik goes around telling everyone he's a 'wheelman'. Very subtle, don't you think? Since this is a video game and not a 'realistic' Hollywood movie (which is no place for over-the-top stunts, by the way), Burik is able to perform mind-blowing, physics-defying moves such as the Vehicle Attack, the 'Airjack' and more! In the 'Airjack', for example, we see Diese.. er.. Burik jump about ten dozen yards from his vehicle, and then accurately landing bang-inside another car, taking control of it! The other moves aren't quite so preposterous, but are brilliant in terms of camp value. Throw in some super slow-mo ala The Matrix, and you've got a pretty awesome visual feast. Now if only the game wasn't so frickin' lame.

La policia hit the deck when Vin Diesel is around

Now to the storytelling. Wheelman's plot is very mysterious. Now, this has nothing to do with a complex plot-line, interesting characters, or cryptic dialogues. It's mysterious, because there happen to be a bunch of factions in Barcelona (including the CIA!) who hate each other and are very open to the idea of blowing each others brains out, and the only way to get to the bottom of things is to work for all of them. Very mysterious, indeed, simply because there aren't any attempts to tell a story of any kind. Not even the cheesy/campy dialogue can save such gaping holes in the plot. The open-world environment doesn't help either. For starters, everything has been blatantly ripped off from GTA IV, which one might think isn't a bad thing. But then again, one could simply just play GTA IV, and that would be an infinitely more fulfilling experience. Oh, and this 'sandbox' adventure's 'story' mode takes about 7-9 hours to labour through, and if memory serves right, that's shorter than like, GTA 2.

Wheelman's mission system is a bit rubbish as well. The first few are a breeze to complete, but the difficulty spikes make life truly miserable. Whatever happened to progressive and transitional difficulty levels? Doesn't every single game have it these days? The side-missions seem pretty cool, but ultimately end up being pointless simply because the rewards gained are insubstantial, and are not required to complete the 'story' mode. Okay, forget the missions, forget the story. Let's talk about the fact that Wheelman often feels like a beta build. There are an absurdly large number of physics bugs. You can run over trees, walls, but get stuck on say, a piece of cardboard or a box. Kill a bunch of enemies, and they magically come back to life and take a stroll in one of Barcelona's pretty parks. Midway, please stop insulting gamers' intelligence by releasing something that looks to have been coded by a bunch of teenagers on a Red Bull high.

Verdict

So, does Wheelman actually have any redeeming elements?Sure, Vin Diesel's one-liners are great, but there's nothing that can make up for the overall shoddiness of gameplay. The game is 'fun' on some level. It's ridiculous, over-the-top and dumb. The graphics look alright and Burnout Paradise-ing your way through Barcelona isn't all bad.

Assault on Dark Athena Review

by Videep Vijay Kumar

Pitch Black is one of my favourite Science Fiction movies -- it's also probably the best movie featuring acting legend Vin Diesel. The movie introduced us to a character, who arguably is one of the most interesting characters in science fiction: Richard B. Riddick (he calls himself only as 'Riddick', and understandably so). He possesses a supernatural ability (he explains in Pitch Black that he had his new eyes implanted on some vague planet) to see clearly in the dark. This helps him move around stealthily in the darkness, effecting brutal kills on unsuspecting baddies. I guess it was only a matter of time before a video game got made. In 2004, Escape from Butcher Bay added a back story to the cult-favourite character, chronicling his escape from the horrible prison, Butcher Bay. The game was also one of the best first-person experiences of 2004, accurately translating the feeling of being in Riddick's shoes (boots?) with a great blend of stealth sections, mêlée combat and shooting. What's more, the game was a reasonably big hit on the Xbox on PC. The Assault on Dark Athena bundle includes the original, plus an entirely new solo story mode.

This didn't actually work out as planned

Assault on Dark Athena takes place immediately after the events of Butcher Bay, with Riddick waking up from his cryo-chamber to find his ship being captured by a band of mercenaries. His original captor Johns is also taken prisoner. The initial stages involve walking/sneaking around inside the massive ship, picking up some cool mêlée weaponry and talking to prisoners on-board. You'll also end up doing favours for some of prisoners, and in exchange, they'll help you with what you need. A lot of the tasks will involve crawling through ventilation shafts, ducts, sneaking around and picking off the ship's crew one by one. You will also mostly indulge in mêlée combat during the initial stages, relying on some slick new moves Riddick's picked up since Butcher Bay.

The game does a great job of making you feel that you're on a large spaceship in the middle of nowhere thanks to some great atmospheric effects and an interesting graphics-filter. However, at times it becomes obvious that a lot of the graphics have only been touched up and the filter was necessary to cover up any obvious blemishes. The graphical high-point is the use of shadows – it's quite spectacular. The lighting effects obviously help, as well. You really feel that you're looking through the eyes of Riddick when you head to the darkest place around and crouch. The first game did it well, and this game does it brilliantly. The voice-acting is up-there as well. It's not over-the-top like The Wheelman, with Diesel delivering one of his best performances to date.

The ultimate intellectual debate

The game is all about melee combat. Movement and timing are crucial in all of the game's encounters not involving guns. Since hand-to-hand combat is a lot more personal, it makes for a lot of intense moments – particularly when Riddick is outnumbered. Tactics really count and you've got really got to pace your moves well. I'd still say Condemned: Criminal Origins / Bloodshot sport better melee combat mechanics overall, but Riddick's moves are simply way cooler – even the finishers.

On the other hand, there's just way too much shooting in Dark Athena. It's not a good thing because when guns are introduced into the mix, everything goes downhill. The code doesn't help because a lot of the levels / set-pieces require the use of guns, and guns only. There's not even an option of using stealth to take your enemies out. You can still shoot out lights to turn the tide of battle, or at least make things more conducive to a Riddick-like approach. The weapons arsenal includes a Tranquillizer gun, shotgun, assault rifle, an SMG and SCAR. There's nothing spectacular about the weapons or the shooting. There are problems with the level design in the later parts of the game, when you emerge on the surface. There's a lot of sun, which pretty much neuters all of Riddick's abilities. Enemy drones and turrets do too much damage – in normal difficulty, you'll lose over half your health just tracking a spider turret. The precision required for stealth kills is also pretty insane. If you mistime your attack by a pico-second, you'll get owned. When you're outnumbered, you're better off running to a passageway with one entrance and killing all the baddies who blindly follow you. That exposes the AI quite a bit, because, you see, it is quite dumb. To make up for its inherent dumbness, what does it do? Why, it cheats, of course! They're way more accurate than you will ever be, they dodge bullets, can see through crates, walls and large objects and instantly fire in your direction during scripted sequences.

Verdict

The package is great overall, particularly if you haven't played Escape from Butcher Bay. Assault on Dark Athena sports some great mêlée combat, but is ultimately quite annoying – I recommend playing it on 'easy' difficulty, unless you're patient and masochistic.

Bionic Commando Review

by Videep Vijay Kumar

Bionic Commando is a remake of the 8-bit title of the same name which appeared on the Nintendo Entertainment System back in 1988. In fact, it's a sequel, with the events taking place ten years after the events of the first game. You still play as the protagonist from the first game, Nathan 'Rad' Spencer, who is voiced by former Faith No More frontman, Mike Patton. Following his defeat of the Imperials (or Hitler and his Nazis in the Japanese version), Rad has been betrayed by his government, which sentences him to death. On the day of his execution, an experimental nuclear weapon is detonated by a terrorist group called BioReign in Ascension city, causing an earthquake which destroys the city, kills its populace and fills the air (some select places, at least) with radiation. The government is left with no choice now but to put Spencer on the job to rid Ascension city of the terrorist menace. The story is a perfect set-up for the game's swing-and-shoot style of gameplay, with the environment playing a crucial role.

Swing-and-Shoot

Level design is one aspect in which the game excels. Well, at least in terms of aesthetic appeal and its conduciveness to the game's platforming. The 3D environments look nothing short of spectacular, with the ability to latch on and swing between virtually anything and everything in a level is an awesome feeling. You'll find yourself swinging in the ruins of Ascension City, an underground complex, docs and an oil rig. However, access isn't totally unlimited thanks to the presence of irradiated areas which will result in a quick death for Spencer. This isn't a good thing because the illusion of freedom to swing around in a level is exactly that: an illusion of freedom. It's particularly frustrating when you want to get the drop on a sniper in a particular level by scaling a really high building and the game tells you that you will die if you try to get an advantage. There are a bunch of other annoying swinging sections in the game: one in particular involved swinging over a 'flood' in Ascension City early on in the game. You see, Spencer can't swim. I mean, that's understandable considering the massive weight he carries in the form of his bionic arm. But it's upsetting to see how easy it is to drown in the game. On one particular occasion I drowned in water that was roughly one foot deep, with Spencer's head actually above the water! Even when he falls in deep water, there's no drowning animation of any sort – he just gets 'stuck' at a certain depth till his breath meter depletes, and then, well, death.

Locked and Loaded

The weapons in Bionic Commando are very generic. You've got your pistol-type one-shot weapon, a sniper rifle, a shotgun, a grenade launcher a few types of grenades. They're all okay, but aren't fun to use at all. The rocket launcher, on the other hand, is pretty cool. Called the 'Tarantula', you'll need to use it to take out aerial threats in the game by 'painting' them with the 'launcher. You can simultaneously take out multiple targets once you've painted them. Unfortunately, since the focus is more on the bionic arm than anything, ammo is very limited and you can carry just a couple of guns at one point of time. On the other hand, some of the arm powers are cool, with the ability to damage in multiple ways, including causing 'splash' damage from heights, throwing objects at enemies, 'latch' attacks and more. Again, there really isn't a variety in terms of enemy-types, other than a couple of boss monsters.

Verdict

Bionic Commando can be entertaining at times, but a steep learning curve and the not-so-brilliant swing-and-shoot mechanics are sure to put a lot of people off. This game is hard to recommend at 3,499/-, particularly when there are much better games around at this point.

The Tenth Art - Videogames are possibly the first bona-fide medium to emerge in decades.

by Anand Ramachandran. This article first appeared in India Today's new technology mag, Gadgets and Gizmos.

Have you ever been the new kid in class? Everyone regards you with suspicion. The kids gang up on you. They spread stories and titter among themselves. All without really bothering to get to know you better. Recognize the feeling?

That's exactly what's happening to videogames today. Recently, a respected senior journalist sniggered on her blog about people who considered videogames a 'serious hobby'. A noted film critic wrote of a film that 'like videogames, was all fluff and no substance'. People all over the world blame videogames for everything from mass-murder to the food in their fridge smelling funny.

Which would really be quite all right, if any of these people had bothered to play some the games they are so quick to criticize. Without the relevant understanding and experience of the medium, their ignorant, even if well-meaning, criticisms are essentially worthless.

Consider these words : “A pastime of illiterate, wretched creatures who are stupefied by their daily jobs, a machine of mindlessness and dissolution”. And that wasn't someone speaking about videogames; these word were written over eighty years ago by french novelist Georges Duhamel, about the cinema. Scepticism and mistrust about new media goes back a long way. Socrates believed that written texts, as opposed to the oral teaching and storytelling traditions, would make people lazy and forgetful. Novels were once considered too low-brow to be included in university literature courses.

Unless they want to end up sounding as silly as their unfortunately myopic predecessors, videogame bashers would do well to listen to Marshall McLuhan's words of wisdom, and focus on studying the medium itself rather than the content that is expressed through it.

Videogames (more on the term later) are arguably the first bona-fide new medium to emerge in the last thirty years, especially if you belong to the school of thought that believes that the Internet is merely a mashup of existing media (text, images, moving pictures, audio). When playing a videogame, users engage with the content in a constant, real-time feedback loop wherein their input influences the content, which provides instantaneous feedback to the user, who responds by altering the next input, and so on. All this happens in real-time, blending to create an interactive, immersive experience that is far beyond what is possible in any other medium. What this means is that the user and the content interact with each other in an intricate dance where each one controls the other's movements and responses, until it all comes together and the 'fourth wall' is broken – suddenly you're IN the gameworld, not merely viewing it through a TV screen. Coleridge coined the term 'suspension of disbelief' to describe the reader's willingness to accept the oddities and quirks in a fictional world that they would normally question, in order to heighten their enjoyment. More than any other medium, videogames evoke this behaviour in users, and reward them with experiences that, in terms of immersion, surpass anything that the movies or books have to offer.

Unlike the more passive media, gaming allows users to influence outcomes rather than merely experience them. Games like Oblivion, The Sims, or Spore merely set up the framework that allows millions of gamers to create millions of unique stories – since each gamer's experience is an 'emergent' story that wasn't scripted by the game designers, but played out through the gamers' actions. Titles like 'Boom Blox' and 'Little Big Planet' are merely new ways of tapping into the same joys of playing with Lego, Play-Doh or Meccano kits – with features that simply wouldn't be possible in physical media. And the party's merely starting.

With technologies such as BrainGate and AmbX taking the gaming experience closer to a full sensory experience, the medium continues to grow at a frightening pace. Already, games like Tom Clancy's Endwar enable you to control the game by speaking voice commands into a microphone. Force Feedback vests simulate the effect of bullets pounding into your armour when playing Call of Duty. Soon, you will be able to control gaming systems using thought commands. You'll feel the heat burning your face as you run through a burning wreckage to make your escape. You'll smell the rotting zombies well before they charge at you with raised hand-axes. Users will experience levels of immersion not even dreamed possible a few years ago.

Alain and Frederic Le Diberder, in their seminal book L'Univers des Jeux Video, call videogames 'the tenth art' ( Tradition names six : music, poetry, architecture, painting, dance and sculpture. The Le Diberders add TV, cinema and comics to the list.) Whether you agree or not, there's no disputing that the gaming revolution is already here. The worldwide videogame industry is worth over fifty billion dollars.

Now, stop for a moment and think of the possibilities that open up when the medium matures, and people start using it for purposes other than racing cars or killing things. The print, audio and visual media are all used not merely to entertain, but also to inform, educate, train and so much more. Already, games are being successfully used to train people in areas as diverse as military tactics, disaster management and flight operations. Schools all over the world are discovering that using games to teach children a range of subjects from math to history to language are incredibly effective. Game technology is finding application in creating explorable virtual spaces for industries such as tourism, architecture and real estate.

Which is why the term 'game' is actually a rather misleading word to describe this new medium. It describes the message more than the medium itself, much like the word 'comic book' is used to describe rather serious works in the horror, adventure or romance genres. It's more due to the fact that, at this stage of relative infancy, the medium is almost solely used to create products meant only to entertain. Happily, the term is likely to stick, at least until someone comes up with an equivalent to the convenient 'graphic novel' moniker that Will Eisner invented to broaden the scope and appeal of comics.

It's an exciting time – the opportunity to actually watch an entire medium take birth and evolve is an exhilarating experience. For those of us who've been around long enough to have seen a PONG machine, experiencing Niko Bellic explore Liberty City in Grand Theft Auto IV isn't merely a thrill, it's a signpost that shows the way to the future.

A word of advice to those of you who think videogames are evil or dangerous or just plain stupid : Get to know that new kid in class. He just might become your boss someday.

Holding out for a hero

by Anand Ramachandan. This article first appeared on my weekly Game Invader column for The New Indian Express

inFAMOUS is the latest, greatest superhero game to hit stores – and it's a good one.

It puts you in the shoes of Cole, a regular guy who suddenly finds that he can leap from skyscrapers, shoot bolts of electricity from his hands, and scale up buildings with the nonchalant ease of . . .er . . . Altair from Assassin's Creed. You then proceed to rescue innocents, deal with creeps on the streets, and save the world from a mysterious conspiracy hatched by mysterious conspirators. You'll then divvy up your time between the rooftops, the mean streets and the festering sewers, performing all manner of cool stunts and unleashing your superpowers on unsuspecting (and suspecting) goons and baddies. Dizzying leaps, cars being tossed around, exploding barrels and good old fashioned fisticuffs – it's all there in a great mix of superhero and classic videogame action.

While it really isn't anything more than a next-gen mashup of ideas from games such as GTA, Spider-Man 2, and The Incredible Hulk : Ultimate Destruction, inFAMOUS takes these ideas and runs with them very well indeed. It looks great, and plays incredibly well. The combat is fun, exploring the world feels truly awesome, and the story, if you care to follow it, is fairly interesting. Importantly, Cole feels like a reluctant superhero who is slowly finding his feet within the meta-being business, understanding his powers. learning to control them, and making the moral choices that every true-blue superhero must eventually make. When you walk the streets, fighting beside the people, and restraining fallen bad-guys with an electric arc, you can't help feeling a bit righteous and all heroic (of course, I'm talking about when you make the 'good' choices).

I'm sure Videep will cover the details in his upcoming review, but there's one aspect of inFAMOUS I'd like to examine a little closely – the very core superhero concept of keeping crime off the streets. Besides the main story, inFAMOUS features a number of side missions that, when beaten, result in a neighbourhood block being cleared of criminal activity, and earning the lasting gratitude of its citizens. As you gradually begin taking back neighbourhoods, and cleaning up the town, there's a sense of genuinely heroic satisfaction that unfolds – and that is inFAMOUS' greatest achievement as a superhero game.

Whether I'm playing a game as a famous superhero like The Hulk, or a videogame specific creation like Cole, my biggest motivation is felling like one. I want to help the defenceless, needy man on the street. I want to foil evil plots. I want to kick ass. I want to save the town, the world, the universe. inFAMOUS, by delivering a believable, vibrant gameworld that truly looks and feels like it needs saving, gives me the opportunity to do just this.

In a sense, that's why role-playing games like Oblivion, Fallout, Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights appeal to me, they help me play the hero. But they don't let me do cool superhero things like leap from rooftop to rooftop, hand upside down from ledges while shooting electricity at faraway enemies, and plummet hundreds of feet and land with an explosive shockwave that sends cars flying in every direction. inFAMOUS is that sort of game.

Here's hoping it spawns more games that make you feel like a superhero, with the world at your feet. It's an opportunity for game developers to create entirely new, and lucrative, superhero franchises, which have traditionally always been born in comics. Developers, are you listening?

The remakes I'd like to see

by Anand Ramachandan. This article first appeared on my weekly Game Invader column for The New Indian Express

The release of 'Bionic Commando' strikes another telling blow for fans of classic videogames who'd like to see modern remakes and reinventions of their favourite titles from another era.

Fans of Bionic Commando will get to finally experience the action of their favourite one-armed operative and his grappling hook in glorious, hi-definition 3D. And they'll be hoping that he would have finally learned to . . . er . . . jump.

Bionic Commando. Now playable at BLUR in Chennai and Consoul in Bangalore. You should swing by. Pun not intended.

It's a good time to be a lover of classic gaming, with a whole bunch of titles being relaunched on a multitude of platforms from mobile phones to downloadables and virtual consoles. Remakes have always been popular with videogame fans, because they are always keen to see their beloved characters and settings in cutting-edge technology. Whenever gaming platforms evolve – with better graphics, sound and processing power – it opens up possibilities for remaking old favourites with a new, shiny coat of paint.

But why, then, do developers stubbornly refuse to remake some of the games I want to see in hi-def glory?

If ever a game cried out for a next-gen remake, it's the amazing PS2 classic, Shadow of the Colossus. Featuring the most gigantic bosses ever, the best videogame animal companion, a stirring score, and some of the most cinematic gameplay of all time, Shadow of The Colossus looked incredible when it made its appearance on the PS2. Surely, this game would be perfect for the PS3 to show-off its muscle? Or even a PC version that would knock our socks off? Why, Sony, why aren't you remaking it? Spoilsports. Imagine climbing up one of those humongous beasts, hanging on for dear life while it tries to shake you off and stomp on you, all in 5.1 surround and full HD. The mouth waters at the prospect.

Another old favourite I'd love to see remade is No One Lives Forever, the classic but sadly forgotten spy shooter that remains one of the finest examples of the genre. It was clever, witty, well-designed and challenging. And featured on of the sexiest protagonists in gaming – Cate Archer was waaaaaay smarter, hotter and more attractive than her more famous tomb-raiding countrywoman. NOLF is a game that would greatly benefit from the possibilities opened up by today's state of the art. And, after all the dark-as-doomsday shooters we've been playing of late, we could use a few laughs, and some old-fashioned spy excitement. Not to mention the delights of seeing Ms.Archer with more polygons doing the very creditable work of bringing her to life. What gamer would ask for more?

Other old classics I'd like to see re-imagined are Defender and Outlaw. Furiously flying a spaceship, shooting down mutants, and catching falling humans (okay, okay, humanoids) sounds like it would be a fun XBLA title at least. And Outlaw, the quintessential, bare-bones deathmatch experience, would be an outstanding online multiplayer shoot em up - I would happily plonk down cash for shooting opponents through fully 3D cactuses and stagecoaches, armed merely with a six-shooter. A little imagination, and these can surely be hugely successful games for the modern casual audience. Ironic, as they were once as hardcore as gaming ever got.

Of course, everybody's favourite reboot, the ill-fated Duke Nukem Forever, may now never see the light of day, with the closure of 3D Realms. But gamers worldwide will be hoping that someone picks up and revives the franchise, like what Bethesda did with Fallout3. And, as any gamer worth her salt knows, you can't keep The Duke down for long.

Catching up with the classics

by Anand Ramachandan. This article first appeared on my weekly Game Invader column for The New Indian Express

What's a gamer to do? So many games, so little time. Typically, there are so many great releases that happen simultaneously across platforms that it's humanly impossible to play them all to completion. In fact, even merely trying every single top-notch release is something that any gamer with a day job will find a tall order.

However, with the industry going through a fairly lean period in terms of releases, I had the opportunity to catch up with some old classics that I never had the time to complete earlier.

Phoenix was an old favourite for many years. A big bad mother spaceship . A rotating shield. Regenerating bad guys. The memories.

With Chrono Trigger being reinvented released for the DS, to well-deserved acclaim, an entirely new generation was introduced to one of the greatest games ever made. The original SNES version was a game that I never really got around to playing for more than a few hours, and I thought it might be a good idea to fire up an old SNES emulator and finally get around to paying my dues. And what an experience it turned out to be. Chrono Trigger remains one of the most poignant videogame stories of all time – with a fabulously interesting gameworld, captivating, layered characters, and addictive gameplay that will keep you engrossed for hours. The game also features imaginative minigames and modes of interactivity that were ahead of its time – and an indicator of how imaginative design could fill a game with quirky surprises and hidden delights that crank maximum gameplay out of an engine. It's a spectacular, unforgettable game that all gamers simply owe it to themselves to play.

I've also found time to revisit old arcade classics likes Centipede, Pac-Man, Donkey Kong and Phoenix. Needless to say, I suck at them now – worse than I did when I was an addicted kid about twenty five years ago. It's also interesting to see how these games were adapted to different platforms – there were significant differences between the coin-op arcade versions and the many home-video console iterations of these classics, and it's a great learning experience for a designer to look at these differences and analyze the reasons behind them.

As a game designer, I find playing classic arcade games an essential learning experience, partly because they tend to focus on very narrow aspects of gameplay. You'll learn loads about things like difficulty, basic AI patterns, level design and feedback by playing the single-screen games of the arcade era. Defender, for instance, can teach a young designer much about the basic implementation of the minimap, and Asteroids can illustrate basic physics and control lessons better than most sophisticated games. This is because these games are so simple compared to modern games, they almost serve as test applications, small laboratory playgrounds to look at specific aspects of game design that would be lost within the more complex, larger games of today.

I challenge you to find a more hardcore, bloodier, zanier shooter than Metal Slug. If you do, stay away - it might kill you.

Another classic series that I've been rediscovering recently is Metal Slug. After just a few hours of the most insanely hardcore 2D shooting you will ever play, I was left breathlessly wondering why I didn't play more of this when I was younger. Over-the-top violence, brutal difficulty levels, and some of the most laugh-out -loud yet intimidating bosses seen in gaming make Metal Slug another must-play experience. Think you're hardcore? Not if you haven't played Metal Slug.

Most of these classic titles are either available at budget prices, or are free to play on the web. When there aren't any other games worth dropping your hard-earned cash on, it's probably a good idea to try catching up with a classic you haven't played before.

In search of the ultimate gaming Badass.

by Anand Ramachandan. This article first appeared on my weekly Game Invader column for The New Indian Express

With the possible exception of comic books, which have featured some of mankind's baddest dudes (Lobo, Hellbrandt Grimm, OMAC, Galactus), gaming has perhaps been the home of the most dudes you wouldn't want to mess with.

Of late, Marcus Fenix from Gears of War is a personal favourite. This is a dude who stared down – yes, you heard right, stared down – a big, mean spider-monster about the size of Valluvar Kottam. This is a dude who killed a huge rockworm the size of Anna Salai by getting into it, and cutting of its arteries, and then slashing his way out of it with a chainsaw. All the while, making witty jokes and indulging in light-hearted banter with his buddies. Awesome.

I also like The Nameless One, from Planescape:Torment. Firstly, the guy simply couldn't die. Whenever someone managed to 'kill' him, he'd rise again, even more horribly scarred than before. Additionally, he had a journal tattooed to his back, and his best friend was a floating, talking skull. We're talking off-the-scale pWnage here.

Bioware also gave us some of gaming's greatest badasses in the Baldur's Gate series – Minsc, Sarevok, Bodhi and Melissan were tr00ly hardcore individuals who could decimate entire armies all by themselves. Er . . . okay, maybe not Minsc. He had a pet hamster. But it WAS a miniature giant space hamster, which redeems him just a bit, right? And, boy, could he dual-wield.

And then, there's Kratos. What do you say about a guy who took on the Gods themselves, and kicked their butts? That his main weapons – the Blades of Chaos – are fused into his flesh? That he clawed his way through a mountain of dead bodies piled on top of him? That he does all this bare-chested, since armour is for sissies? Words are not enough.

Of course, you don't have to look like a Badass to be one. You could be a short, fat, Italian plumber and still make the grade. Mario is so awesome, he can leap from planet to planet in effing outer space, without a 64y space helmet. He can take down massive monsters by chucking coconuts at them. All with a jaunty, cheerful air, and with that impossible jolly music playing in the background, too.

We could go on about many other crowd favourites – Master Chief, Solid Snake, Dante, Sephiroth, M.Bison, Astaroth, Baraka and Guybrush Threepwood. Er . . . okay, maybe not Guybrush. But he did out-insult an Aussie, right? Which makes him better than S.Sreesanth, right?

We have also had our share of bad ladies in gaming. No, not her. She's waaay too image conscious to be tr00ly badass. I was thinking Samus Aran. And Cate Archer. And Chun Li. And that chick from Deathtrap Dungeon. Ok, I'll stop now.

No discussions on gaming badasses can be complete without a mention of perhaps the great-grandaddy of them all – Duke Nukem. The Duke is the archetype on which almost all shooter protagonists are based on (except that wimp Freeman). Who else could say “There are two things I love – kicking alien butt and chewing gum. And I'm all out of gum.”, before matter-of-factly saving the world from yet another alien invasion? Besides, the Duke was the first character who could stop to take a leak in the midst of battling alien scum.

Sadly, with the closure of 3D Realms, we don't know if we'll ever see him again. But I'll resist the temptation to make the obligatory Duke Nukem Forever joke. Respect.

In search of the ultimate gaming Badass.

by Anand Ramachandan. This article first appeared on my weekly Game Invader column for The New Indian Express

With the possible exception of comic books, which have featured some of mankind's baddest dudes (Lobo, Hellbrandt Grimm, OMAC, Galactus), gaming has perhaps been the home of the most dudes you wouldn't want to mess with.

Of late, Marcus Fenix from Gears of War is a personal favourite. This is a dude who stared down – yes, you heard right, stared down – a big, mean spider-monster about the size of Valluvar Kottam. This is a dude who killed a huge rockworm the size of Anna Salai by getting into it, and cutting of its arteries, and then slashing his way out of it with a chainsaw. All the while, making witty jokes and indulging in light-hearted banter with his buddies. Awesome.

I also like The Nameless One, from Planescape:Torment. Firstly, the guy simply couldn't die. Whenever someone managed to 'kill' him, he'd rise again, even more horribly scarred than before. Additionally, he had a journal tattooed to his back, and his best friend was a floating, talking skull. We're talking off-the-scale pWnage here.

Bioware also gave us some of gaming's greatest badasses in the Baldur's Gate series – Minsc, Sarevok, Bodhi and Melissan were tr00ly hardcore individuals who could decimate entire armies all by themselves. Er . . . okay, maybe not Minsc. He had a pet hamster. But it WAS a miniature giant space hamster, which redeems him just a bit, right? And, boy, could he dual-wield.

And then, there's Kratos. What do you say about a guy who took on the Gods themselves, and kicked their butts? That his main weapons – the Blades of Chaos – are fused into his flesh? That he clawed his way through a mountain of dead bodies piled on top of him? That he does all this bare-chested, since armour is for sissies? Words are not enough.

Of course, you don't have to look like a Badass to be one. You could be a short, fat, Italian plumber and still make the grade. Mario is so awesome, he can leap from planet to planet in effing outer space, without a 64y space helmet. He can take down massive monsters by chucking coconuts at them. All with a jaunty, cheerful air, and with that impossible jolly music playing in the background, too.

We could go on about many other crowd favourites – Master Chief, Solid Snake, Dante, Sephiroth, M.Bison, Astaroth, Baraka and Guybrush Threepwood. Er . . . okay, maybe not Guybrush. But he did out-insult an Aussie, right? Which makes him better than S.Sreesanth, right?

We have also had our share of bad ladies in gaming. No, not her. She's waaay too image conscious to be tr00ly badass. I was thinking Samus Aran. And Cate Archer. And Chun Li. And that chick from Deathtrap Dungeon. Ok, I'll stop now.

No discussions on gaming badasses can be complete without a mention of perhaps the great-grandaddy of them all – Duke Nukem. The Duke is the archetype on which almost all shooter protagonists are based on (except that wimp Freeman). Who else could say “There are two things I love – kicking alien butt and chewing gum. And I'm all out of gum.”, before matter-of-factly saving the world from yet another alien invasion? Besides, the Duke was the first character who could stop to take a leak in the midst of battling alien scum.

Sadly, with the closure of 3D Realms, we don't know if we'll ever see him again. But I'll resist the temptation to make the obligatory Duke Nukem Forever joke. Respect.

Make it hard, make it last.

by Anand Ramachandan. This article first appeared on my weekly Game Invader column for The New Indian Express

I've been guilty, of late, of playing some games on 'easy' difficulty. There, I said it.

My only excuse is that I have a job that keeps me rather busy, and I don't get enough time to play games as much as I'd like. So, in order to keep in touch with so many games across so many platforms, I need to, like, not DIE every few minutes. Cranking down the difficulty levels helped me quickly see as much of a game as possible in quick time – enough to get a good grasp on gameplay, underlying core concepts, production values and the rest.

But then, you lose the love.

The games I remember most fondly are those which I had to strain every sinew to beat – Baldur's Gate 2, Halo 3, Braid, Fallout 3, DOOM, Dawn of War. In the early days of true-skill gaming, there was Pac-Man, Defender, River Raid and Donkey Kong.

There's a special happiness to beating a challenging game on the harder difficulty levels – a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction that is one of the purest joys found in gaming. Anyone who loves their games will tell you stories of how they beat a Boss after ten tries, or solved a puzzle after six hours, or managed to better a seemingly insurmountable hi-score or race time. These are cherished moments in every tr00_b700 gamer's life.

I try several different games every month, but once in a while, I'll feel the love. And will want to finish it for the sheer pleasure of playing, dedicating twenty plus hours of my sadly packed life to it. And then, I'll look for the difficulty and crank it up.

The most recent of these is Guitar Hero : World Tour. The easier levels are great to get a hang of the game, but you'll never feel like Zakk Wylde or Yngwie J.Malmsteen unless you attempt the songs at the harder levels. And it's a truly warm glow (or awesome headrush) you'll feel when you nail a particularly difficult solo after much practice and multiple tries.

Some of my happiest (and most oft-narrated) gaming memories are of long struggles with specific battles in Baldur's Gate 2 – notably with illithids, dragins, and the game's no.2 boss, the evil vampire Bodhi. Believe me when I tell you that I used to actually arrive at tactics and strategies in my dreams. I kid you not. I was THAT into BG2. Completing Halo 3 on 'Heroic' was fun, too (though I wasn't good enough for 'Legendary').

I also remember the agony of wracking our brains over devilishly clever and ingenious puzzles in the early Sierra and LucasArts adventure games – and the matchless exhilaration of hitting on the right solution, sometimes after days of trying. Sometimes, it would come to you when sitting in class, or on a bus, or lying in bed, and you'd just KNOW, and you couldn't wait to get to the PC and try it out. When it worked, there would be high-fives and hugs all round. Remember folks, these were pre-Internet days. No walkthroughs. No cheats. None of that sissy stuff. You had to beat the game. Yourself. Like a woman. Or at least, like a really tough man.

Id software got it right with Wolfenstein 3D. The difficulty levels were called : "Can I play, Daddy?", "Don't hurt me.", "Bring 'em on!", and "I am Death incarnate!" . If you really wanted a good time, you know what you'd pick. Right?