Blind Ignorance Follows Tragedy Almost Everytime

Hello.

It's been a while yes. But there's been things happening between now and my last post. I went to Barcelona which was awesome. I had lots of studying for my Health and Safety exams - yes...I'm a gamer, who blogs, is addicted to a sci-fi franchise AND I work in Health and Safety - super nerd. Super married nerd with 4 kids though baby. Awwww yeah.

Anyway. Onto the crux of this post. I wish my first blog back would have been something more jovial, something more jolly, something more festive considering the time of year. But alas, as with some things in life, the dice just didn't roll that way. This is of little to no significance however compared to recent events which have shocked the decent world.

Columbine. Waco. Virgina Tech. Utoya Island. Places of pretty much zero world-wide interest or attention before the tragic events that took place there. We now have the unfortunate requirement to add the name of Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton to that rather macabre list.

Being a gaming blog however, it may or may not come as a surprise that this event would be mentioned. Some of the tragedies mentioned above were politically motivated, Waco and the events in Oslo and Utoya Island for example, but as with most of these events the conservative media and the over-reactive elements of society will find a scapegoat. Things seem so much simpler when you can point an angry finger of blame at something or someone and unfortunately video games have bore the brunt of that angry finger for many a year now.

Violent video games will take the main hit obviously, I mean you're not likely to get angry people blaming games like FIFA or Viva Pinata for gun-slinging massacres are you? No.

People will point at video games for many a year to come still, but I feel that not enough is really done in the media to defend them from what is mostly ill-educated, angry and very ignorant people.

Let me take a step back in time to start this lecture. 20th April, 1999, Columbine High School, Columbine, Colorado. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold gunned down 12 students and 1 teacher, injured over 20 more and then shot themselves - not before trying to blow up the school with home-made explosives. It's clear that they were something of a pair of social outcasts, but that they had a variety of mental disorders, Harris was a clinical psychopath with a messianic-level superiority complex and Klebold was a depressive who was a follower. Harris masterminded the killings, but thankfully didn't mastermind the bomb building or the death-toll would have been much, much higher.

However, apart from famously blaming Marilyn Manson, the other channel of blame was aimed at iD Software, more specifically Doom and to a lesser extent Wolf 3D.

Wolf 3D and Doom

The first kings of the shoot em up, FPS genre - Wolf 3D and Doom are etched in my soul as such sublime pieces of gaming, yet I (along with millions of other gamers who have indulged in them) have never played the game and thought "Hey, that looks like fun. I'm gonna go to school or work and do some of this!". Firstly, Wolf 3D for those who don't know is about a POW being held in Castle Wolfenstein, who fights his way out and needs to fight through the Nazi hoards of the castle to escape. Doom is a sci-fi FPS, which revolves around a lone space marine, battling the forces of Hell who have escaped hell through a portal on one of the moons of Mars.

The games, Doom more so, were targeted by an angry society as one of the key reasons why Harris and Klebold committed their terrible acts. Forget the psychological problems involved, forget the social problems involved, they did what they did because they played Doom and wanted to emulate it. Morons.

Let's move on in this grim tour. Let's move forward 12 years to 2011, I'm going to skip the Virgina Tech massacre, simply because I don't know all of the ins and outs and don't want to feed you with misinformation. All I know is that the amazing Counter-Strike was scapegoated for a while. (A Multiplayer game which pits Terrorists against Counter-Terrorists).

In 2011 we saw 2 shootings, firstly one that I mentioned on here a while back - the HMS Astute murder and secondly Anders Breivik's "lone wolf" terror attacks in Norway. Now I mentioned the murder of Lieutenant Commander Ian Molyneux, and how the British newspapers blamed Grand Theft Auto for the actions of Able Seaman Ryan Donovan - I went into quite some detail, go back and read if you want.

I'll go into the actions of Anders Breivik shall I? He set a car bomb in Oslo, then went to Utoya Island and killed 69 people. An awful, horrible man (loosest meaning of the word) who doesn't even deserve death, someone like that deserves to be kept alive as long as possible, and to live in a state of perpetual anguish for the heinous crimes he's committed. Him and every paedophile out there. Anyway, going back to the topic this one is slightly more controversial a choice to try and defend. I'll explain.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare

Actually I'll let this extract from The Guardian website explain: Anders Behring Breivik has described how he "trained" for the attacks he carried out in Norway last summer using the computer game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare.

The 33-year-old said he practised his shot using a "holographic aiming device" on the war simulation game, which he said is used by armies around the world for training.

"You develop target acquisition," he said. He used a similar device during the shooting attacks that left 69 dead at a political youth camp on the island of Utøya on 22 July.

Describing the game, he said: "It consists of many hundreds of different tasks and some of these tasks can be compared with an attack, for real. That's why it's used by many armies throughout the world. It's very good for acquiring experience related to sights systems."

Basically, Breivik used CoD:MW to practice his aim and happily stated as much in court. This led to people blaming CoD:MW for the entire massacre, even though the guy was determined enough to set up fake businesses and plan the fucking thing for 5 years, it was all because he practiced on CoD that he managed to do what he did. It couldn't have been his political beliefs or his clearly disturbed mind that led to the killings, no it was because he could use pixels for target practice that on CoD:MW that it all happened. Forget the whole determination thing I mentioned before, forget that if he was THAT determined, that if he didn't use CoD he would have no doubt found another way to practice. Forget that CoD IS actually used by various military's around the world due to it's realism for trained soldiers to protect civilians, so it's probably contributed to saving more lives than ending them...I'll move on.

We now move onto what I feel is the most ridiculous of all the video game blame namby pamby's out there. A few short days ago, Adam Lanza killed his mother, went to Sandy Hook Elementary School, and killed 27 people, 20 of which were children all aged 6 and 7 before killing himself. Whenever things like this happen, I try and distance myself while watching the news, however watching Barack Obama fighting tears while addressing America, brought a tear to my eye, thinking about the words he said as they resonated with me, especially with me as a father of a child almost the same age as the victims.

Then I read something. Obviously as with most of these shootings and massacres, the blame game takes place. This time that angry finger pointed at my all time favourite game series - Mass Effect. This was for me, the straw that broke the camel's back. Anyone who has played Mass Effect will know that the game's underlying theme throughout is that of hope, the game is more about character development and building relationships while trying to defend not just your country, or your planet/species, but to save the entire galaxy. For anyone who's been on here a few times should be aware of my love and admiration for the ME Series.

Considering what happened and the main age group of victims let me let you in on something that happens to the main protagonist in the third game - Commander Shepard (you) have to escape Earth from an ancient race of sentient bio-synthetic machines, in doing so you see a small child who you had previously try to help, die in an explosion caused by one of these machines and the guilt of not being able to help him consumes Shepard throughout the game.

Shepard with the child in one of his nightmares

Well here's why it's ridiculous. Even though the game does involve combat with guns, the main crux of the games is what I've already mentioned, it's emotional, it's thought-provoking, it's inspirational the blame of this game isn't what is ridiculous, it's the way it all went down. Angry finger pointers looked up the suspected murderer on Facebook and found who they suspected was the murderer and saw that he "liked" Mass Effect on his profile. Commence the blame. The following are actual real quotes from the Official Mass Effect page on Facebook, steady yourself for some hate:

"Good job guys. You have blood on your hands that wont wash off"

"BAN THIS GAME"

"Ban this game and the people who created such sickness"

"Burn in hell!!!"

"I'm sure none of these precious children had this game on their Santa list...God help protect us from all the evil our society promotes"

"This is EXACTLY why i do not let my children play MOST video games...i do not want to destroy their innocence with this bulls--t"

And lastly

"Ryan Lanza, the 24 yr old that has killed 18 kindergarten children, 8 adults and his own mother, was a fan of Mass Effect. What are you and other games of your ilk doing to our society? Think on it."

Hang on..."Ryan Lanza"? Ryan Lanza, the older brother of Adam Lanza the ACTUAL murderer? Oh HE liked Mass Effect? Not Adam? Oh.

Before getting the facts and before even knowing the actual numbers of victims, the angry finger pointers had already leapt onto the angry bandwagon of hatred and misinformed ignorance to spew their misguided judgement onto a game that had nothing to do with the ACUAL MURDERER! Amazing.

As I said, for anyone who actually knows these games, knows that it's not a mindless hack and slash or shoot em up, it's a tactical third person sci-fi shooter, with it's main emphasis being on story, characters, relationships. It isn't sickness, any more than Jules Verne's War of the Worlds is sickness, any more than Star Wars is sickness. Evil? Innocence destroying? No.

It then led me to this painfully obvious thought: do these people think that if there were no video games then murder, mass murder and massacres wouldn't take place? Like these things are a symptom of video games that were non-existent in the harmonious "before-time".

Bonnie and Clyde? The Moors Murderers? Jack the Ripper? Albert Fish? Pol Pot? The Zodiac Killer? Many, many more on top of those as well, what video games were they playing to inspire them?

I for one cannot wait for games to finally be accepted by the masses as just another entertainment medium, not as a wrongly perceived way for innocent people to be turned into murdering psychopathic maniacs.

And on that note, despite all of this, the world is generally a decent place, don't forget that! And if I don't do anything on here between now and the 25th December: Have a Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year.

Toolbox24

Top Ten Games 2003

We’re sneaking ever closer to the present year and what better way to do that, than by bringing you the Top Ten Games of the year that comes next after 2002 – that’s right it’s 2003. Like with the 2002 list I’m going to give you some hints and stats about 2003’s list.

Firstly the MBG disclaimer: Some of these games came out on multiple platforms, therefore that is why the amounts of release dates and platforms don’t add up to 10. Some of these games could be defined as having multiple genre’s, that’s ok, that’s why I’m here. And lastly, some of these games, although yes might have come out on multiple platforms, you might see that some of them aren’t mentioned. Well that’s just because say Game “X” came out on the PC in Nov 03, the port for the PS2 and XBOX might not have been released until Jan 04, therefore it will just show as coming out on PC on my list. This will mean as well that Game “X” will not be listed on 2004’s Top Ten Games. It’s just not right to throw it into 2 top ten lists. Last part of the disclaimer, these are all based on European release dates – not North America or Japan. They can do their own list if they so wish to.

Well, firstly the least popular genre for a second year on the bounce was – Sports. There wasn’t a single sporting game that came to mind or through my research that I felt was worthy of a Top 10 spot. That being said there was no stand out popular genre but there was 2 of each of the following: Racing, FPS, 3^rd Person Shooter and Action/Adventure. Despite this, the No. 1 game is none of those – although it could be defined as a 3^rd Person “Shooter” or Action/Adventure game, it’s much more of an RPG than either of those.

The most popular 2 months for these games releases were (shock horror) November and December – right in the build up to Crimbo. The most common Developer in the Top 10 is Ubisoft, well kind of if you include as 3 Ubisoft Montreal (No. 10), Ubisoft Montpellier (No. 6 PS2) and Ubisoft Milan (No. 6 PC). Otherwise it’s a mix ranging from Big Huge Games to Vicarious Visions to Nintendo. However for publishers you have 2 of each from Microsoft Games Studios, Activision, LucasArts and Ubisoft with EA, Nintendo and Rockstar Games making up the numbers.

The most popular format was PC, with 8 of the 10 titles being available in 2003 on the PC. Followed by half was the XBOX, with 4 of the 10 titles being on Microsoft’s console in 2003, PS2 followed shortly thereafter with 3 of the 10 and joint bottom was the GameCube and GameBoy Advance with 1 out of the 10 titles each being available on those formats.

Well without further ado, I take you off to the dawn of Civilization…well imagine a kind of RTS version of Civilization…

10.      Rise of Nations – PC (May 03) – Real Time Strategy

Developed by Big Huge Games

Published by Microsoft Games Studios

From Brian Reynolds, one of the brains behind my much loved Civilization II, comes Rise of Nations. On the face of it, just another RTS game. However, take that average RTS game and slap a dose of Civ II into it and you get – Rise of Nations. Taking you from the starts of Civilization with your chosen nation, to the Space Age; Rise of Nations is a wonderfully full and rich game to explore and play with for more time that you really have spare. Given a few Best PC and Best RTS awards in 2003, this game constantly scored an average of around 9/10 (90%). With various ways to beat the game, and using the methods from the Civ series such as the evolution of the military and Wonders, this game can captivate you and keep you locked in for hours at a time. Well worth a look, and well worth your time.

Next we have a golden oldie renovated for the 21^st Century…

9.         Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time – PS2 + GBA (Nov 03) PC (Dec 03) – Platformer, Action/Adventure

Developed by Ubisoft Montreal

Published by Ubisoft

Nope, not Frogger not this time, but the Prince is back and he’s all 3D and what not! Personally I love the original 1989 Prince of Persia, remembering how scared I used to get as a toddler watching it…but this game is NOT a flop remake, the film may have been a bit, but this isn’t a films reviewing blog. If you want that, then go away! The game feels like a fluid definite next step for the PoP series, definitely banishing to the shadows the Prince of Persia 3D that was released in 1999 on the PC and Dreamcast. It received a number of GotY awards and multiple super-high (9+/10 or 90+%) scores and rightly so. The gameplay was fantastic, and as I mentioned really did feel like the true successor of the series. The game was so highly thought of that Hollywood stuck their oar in and made a film of the game in 2010 starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Ghandi…I mean Ben Kingsley. Your best bet would probably be to get it on the PS3 or PC now to taste a slice of this awesome game.

Our next game is a gritty crime sequel. Close your eyes, feel the rain beating down on the dirty, cracked sidewalk. Enter the world of Rockstar’s…

8.         Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne – PC (Oct 03) XBOX + PS2 (Dec 03) – 3^rd Person Shooter

Developed by Remedy Entertainment (PC) and Rockstar Vienna (PS2 & XBOX)

Published by Rockstar Games

Remedy Entertainment brings us the 2^nd instalment of the Max Payne series of games, following our beloved hero Max as he returns to the Police force as a detective investigating a series of murders by the group known as The Cleaners. This is much of the same from the 1^st game in the series, albeit with a shorter storyline. It was highly rated by reviewers and received a few Editors’ Choice Awards, however the sales were poor and MP2 never reached the heights of it’s predecessor (which had it not been for the mega hits Halo and GTAIII would have walked into top spot in 2001) but it’s still a very fun, very engaging game with a style that is very Frank Miller (Sin City, 300) in the way it’s carried out. Definitely worth a punt on the PC and should also be available on XBOX Live as an “XBOX Original” to download.

From the dark, dirty, rain-soaked streets of Max Payne, to the arcade style racing game that makes me think of Batman…

7.         Project Gotham Racing 2 – XBOX (Nov 03) – Racing

Developed by Bizarre Creations

Published by Microsoft Games Studios

PGR2 is a phenomenal racing game, much like it’s predecessor was in making the XBOX a “must have” console. Developed by UK based company Bizarre Creations, PGR2 took what made PGR a good racing game and made it a completely amazing racing game. With a selection of 92 tracks and 102 vehicles to eventually unlock, this game will keep you busy, not to mention keeping “kudos” in the game which you can use to unlock some of those cars. Oh yeah, you’d achieve “kudos” points for some seriously awesome driving, like good slides, fast times, smooth run-throughs – that kinda thing. I personally loved the PGR games, and felt their attention to detail was amazing in these games. Definitely worthy of it’s top 10 place, but when you see what’s up ahead you’ll understand…for the most part.

From the streets of Project Gotham we slide around the Hillys to…

6.         Beyond Good and Evil – PS2 (Nov 03) PC (Dec 03) – Action/Adventure

Developed by Ubisoft Montpellier (PS2) and Ubisoft Milan (PC)

Published by Ubisoft

If you’ve played BG&E then you’ll get the reference to the Hillys, the fictional location of the game at No. 6. From the French guy who brought the world Rayman, Michel Ancel brings us BG&E a fantastically beautiful game which definitely feels continental. Does that make sense? I’m not making sense. Basically the game hasn’t got the best graphics in the world – even by 2003 standards – but the story and gameplay make this one of the top games of 2003, and really does leave us all wanting that damned sequel!!! The game is made up of a good narrative and also is made up of various elements, such as mini-puzzles and stealth missions. Making your way around the maps in order to gain photographic evidence of certain things going on with the Alpha Sections and DomZ. Anyways I must press on with this list!

From the Hillys we travel to a Galaxy…far, far away…

5.         Star Wars: Jedi Knight – Jedi Academy – PC + XBOX (Sep 03) – FPS/3^rd Person Shooter

Developed by Raven Software (PC) and Vicarious Visions (XBOX)

Published by LucasArts and Activision

Star Wars: Jedi Knight – Jedi Academy…or SWJKJA…or Jedi Academy was an amazing game for the PC and XBOX definitely living up to the achievements of it’s predecessors in Dark Forces, Jedi Knight and Jedi Outcast. I always enjoyed playing as Kyle Katarn in the games, and this is one thing that is slightly different – you play as Jaden Korr a new student arriving at Luke Skywalkers Jedi Academy, chosen to become Katarn’s apprentice. With this change, you can actually choose Korrs species and gender, and while starting off with a single single-bladed lightsaber, half way through you can choose to upgrade to wield dual lightsabers or a saber staff – a variant on the double bladed job, ol’ Maul uses in the Phantom Menace. You can choose a number of weapons for this game, much like those that came before, but you must use 3^rd Person when you wield your laser sword – whereas you can seamlessly swap to FPS when using blasters…as clumsy and random as they are. A good story with a good couple of endings, brilliant multiplayer on the PC also helps makes this one of the top 5 games of 2003.

From mastering an elegant weapon for a more civilized age to managing the water supplies of your city and wondering just where would be best to put that darned power station…

4.         Sim City 4 – PC (Jan 03) – Construction and Management Sim, City Building

Developed by Maxis

Published by EA

So addictively fun it should come with a warning, and with some SimCity news just around the corner this is definitely worth downloading from your chosen games provider – be it Steam or Origin. It’s the exact same premise as those that came before, but done so amazingly right that Maxis were able to focus on their Sims games for another decade before the imminent arrival of SimCity in February 2013. The way the game plays is very intuitive, and easy to pick up. The only thing I’d say is pace yourself – Rome wasn’t built in a day, and your new City of Cuntopolis doesn’t have to go from a small stretch of houses to a New York Style sprawl in the course of a few years!! Amazingly fun title, and of course so fun to build your city up to the max with sky scrapers galore and amazing sights and what not…then to bring it all to rack and ruin with a tornado, UFO, fire or whatever else they put on there to wreck the city of Fucksberg. Go and enjoy, especially since it’s dirt cheap at the moment (with it’s Rush Hour expansion not to mention), and get ready for what could already be a contender for GotY 2013.

Next we go to our Bronze medal winner for 2003, winning hearts and causing arguments and stroppy losers the world over…

3.         Mario Kart: Double Dash!! – GameCube (Nov 03) – Racing

Developed and Published by Nintendo

Let’s be fair now – any Mario Kart game is going to be in the top ten. And this is the only reason why we still have a GameCube in the house. Playing split screen Grand Prix’s or playing on 2 teams of 2 this is an amazing game at bringing together members of a house who’s primary interest is in gaming. It’s one of few games where the parents are as eager to play as the teenager, who in turn is as eager to play as his younger brother, who in turn is as eager to play as the younger sister (even if she can’t manage to turn corners properly) who asks on a daily basis if she can play the game. I would go as far as the 2 year old but at the moment, she just gets annoyed that she doesn’t understand why everyone is shouting and laughing at the TV when SpongeBob is nowhere to be seen. MKDD takes what makes the Mario Kart games amazing and carries it onto the GameCube. Personally, I believe this to be the last great Mario Kart game ever made, since the newer ones on the Nintendo Piss just don’t have the same soul and spirit as the older variants. With unlockable items coming with gold wins on various CC, and the personal belief that the Red Shell car with Wings is totally better than the Yoshi Head car…even though I’ve since discovered there isn’t the massive-est amount of difference in any of the cars when it gets down to the nitty gritty. But still you cling-on to your belief. Massively addictive game, incredibly fun game play, and dedicated to old-school multiplayer – sitting next to your opponent instead of being on the other side of the world. MKDD is such a good game, I fully endorse you finding a GameCube on eBay, buying 4 controllers, and a copy of this game and enjoying it in all it’s splendour. Go on right now. I’ll wait here for you to continue.

Now if you have a good idea about games since the turn of the century you could probably make a good educated guess as to what will come next. Our Silver Medal for 2003 is a title that is all to familiar in games these days, but in 2003 it was all just beginning…and good holy fuckery didn’t they do well??

2.         Call of Duty – PC (Nov 03) – FPS

Developed by Infinity Ward

Published by Activision

COD. Do you need me to continue? Actually I probably should, most COD fanboys these days think of COD as Modern Warfare…sigh. Firstly MW is good, but they cannot hold a candle to the games that started it all off. Think of how amazing Band of Brothers was...is- it’s timeless really. Well think of that, now turn that into a computer game. Right, now make that game easy to learn, hard to become an expert. Are you there? Right now package it and call it Call of Duty. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here, just think of what it’s called – Call of Duty, as in when asked, will you answer the Call of Duty? For your country? For Freedom? Not COD: MW oh look I’m just another American soldier in Afghanistan…it’s not really following the same wartime spirit that you had in WW2. In WW2 you had wide-spread support to fight the Germans, the Japanese and the Italians. In Afghanistan you have wide-spread antipathy that our soldiers are out there fighting a war that should have finished years ago. That they are out there not really for freedom now, but because we’re in too deep. Erm…anyways…

It follows along the same lines as the newer spawns, in that you don’t just play as 1 character, you play as an American paratrooper, an English SAS operative, and a Soviet Conscript. The battles are intense, the locations attention to detail simply stunning, and the multiplayer? Get outta here, one of the best MP experiences of my life. The game has a good narrative, and follows closely in the footsteps that the real guys took during that bloody conflict. Historically accurate, you feel like you gain a better understanding for what those brave men did in real life after playing this game.

A worthy silver medal, fuck that a worthy gold medal, however the game that comes next is by far and away the No. 1 for 2003. When I first thought of making these lists, I knew before I did 2000’s list what would be Number 1 for 2003. And we must go a long, long, LONG, time ago…in a galaxy just as far away as before…

1.         Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic – XBOX (Sep 03) PC (Dec 03) – RPG

Developed by BioWare

Published by LucasArts

Firstly, picture if you will a timeline. Picture Star Wars Ep. IV: A New Hope. Picture the Battle of Yavin, where the first Death Star was destroyed by the farm-hand turned starfighter pilot and Jedi in the making – Luke Skywalker. Picture that event happening at year 0 BBY/0 ABY. BBY and ABY stands for Before and After the Battle of Yavin for those who didn’t know.

Right you have your starting out point – 0. Now imagine all that happened 19 years previously in the year 19 BBY. Anakin Skywalker was seduced by the Dark Side of the Force. All but a handful of Jedi Knights survived Order 66. And C-3PO was about to have his memory wiped before being handed over to Captain Antilles.

Seems like a whole lifetime apart…well I suppose it was really. Right, go back even further to 32 BBY and you’ll have the Invasion of Naboo by the Trade Federation. It all seems like quite a large chunk of time from 32 BBY having the Galactic Republic and a young Darth Vader being a little annoying American kid to eventually 4 ABY when the Galactic Empire get’s pwn’d by a bunch of tree-dwelling teddy bears.

Now go back a little further than the 32 years to Episode I. Ok, 57 BBY – Obi Wan Kenobi is born. No further, go further. Right then, 98 BBY, the natives to the planet Tatooine, the Sand People, attack Fort Tusken for the first time, earning them the nickname – Tuskan Raiders.

Further you pussy. Ok, 350 BBY – the Trade Federation is founded. FURTHER!!!

1000 BBY. Ok we’re getting a bit closer – Darth Bane established the Sith “Rule of Two” mentioned in the films – “only 2 there are, a Master and an Apprentice”. But go on, go a bit further back, you know what no. I’ll do it.

Go back to 3956 BBY. Now let me put that in perspective. 3956 years before the Battle of Yavin. Surely they must be like, technologically like we are now? Right? Nope, they are just as bad-ass and awesome as ever in that Galaxy. Whereas over here…what has happening 3956 years ago in 1944 BC? Well it was roughly the time the Minoans were not just at the height of there civilization, but just starting it. It was when the Babylonians were just developing Maths and when the first potato was grown in South America. There had been no Jesus, Judaism was just starting as a religion, Rome wasn’t even a collection of villages and Europe was smack in the middle of the Bronze Age.

Seems like an insane length of time before us now eh? Well Those clever fuckers at BioWare (Drew Karpyshyn especially) created a whole new saga in the Star Wars Universe set this far before the events of that original film. And trust me, this saga is one helluva rollercoaster.

You are the protagonist of the game, and your gender and class is up to you. There are some kinda parallels/opposites from KotOR and the original Star Wars films. Firstly there is a massive twist. Epically massive, I mean shit the bed, get your dick caught in a mangle, shove a deckchair up your nose massive. Secondly, there is a little droid who is helpful and beeps. Thirdly Tatooine is extensively visited. There is also things like the Ebon Hawk, your trusty – albeit knicked – starship, which is the “fastest ship in the galaxy”, and referred to as crap by your travelling partner, the posh-ish Bastilla Shan. Bastilla, like Princess Leia adopts an “Atlantic” accent, meaning that it’s North American, but sounds almost English – much like Kelsey Grammer, he’s a perfect example of someone with an Atlantic Accent. Anyway I’ve started talking about Kelsey Grammer in a KotOR bit…

There are also things like HK-47. HK-47 is one of the greatest video game characters of all time, he is what C-3PO dreams he could be. HK-47 is an assassin droid who lovingly refers to all organics as “meat-bags” and has a psychopathic need to kill. You have Carth Onasi, who is like your Han Solo of the group, but not a smuggler or a scruffy looking nerf herder. He’s a career soldier in the Republic, but definitely a bit of a cool dude to have around.

KotOR is a fantastic game, taking you all over the Galaxy and with a feel to it that is unmistakably Star Wars, it is nothing like the films. Better than the prequel trilogy and a good rival to the original trilogy, Bioware takes its first steps into space with a safe territory before expanding their own sci-fi epic a few years later.

The gameplay is smooth, the music is masterful, – what you’d expect from Bioware and Star Wars - the dialogue is brilliantly written and the story is fantastic. Still available in good games stores, and is well worth dusting off your lightsaber for.

I can and probably will at some point go into a lot more detail about the game in a separate post. But for now, I’m fine with the introduction being longer than the piece! SW: KotOR – is a must have in any computer gamers collection and is definitely worthy of the No. 1 Gold Medal Spot for 2003, and in my opinion is a high contender for game of the decade. Bioware at it’s best, pulling the twists, directing the play with the hint of player choice thrown in, and with gameplay that is phenomenal.

Epilogue

Well that was 2003 in Gaming – ish, there are some notable mentions to other games I’m sure but I can’t be fucked to go into them. They didn’t make my Top 10 so they don’t deserve a mention right now. The next Top Ten Games list will funnily enough, come from 2004 where I’m sure we can expect an exciting trip down memory lane, as we get closer to the present day. Happy Gaming!

Toolbox 24