Ricochet bounces in

by noodles on Thursday, September 2nd, 2010 at 07:56 - Comments: 0

GCL (short for gamer's checklist) is currently in the political climate of redevelopment, trying to figure out where it wants to go; hence the lack of articles and reviews.

But in the meantime we would like to welcome a new challenger!
Ricochet, Rico for short, has entered the mix.

We're also welcoming other challengers, so if you feel like entering the game, send an email to noodles.g1@gmail.com

tags: rico new challenger

To whom it may concern

by noodles on Tuesday, July 27th, 2010 at 14:51 - Comments: 0

Not that anyone besides the two of us noticed, but the site was down for a few weeks while the servers were being updated. They're still being updated, actually, but the site is up on a temporary location in the meantime.

tags: downtime

Maybe it's not for you?

by noodles on Tuesday, May 25th, 2010 at 18:50 - Comments: 0

At the time of writing there are adverts for the arcade racing-game blur that seem to twist the gamer-community's metaphorical panties in their tailpipes. You can see the commercials here:

Blur - Nitro VS Mine - PS3/Xbox360
Blur - Surcharge VS Eclair - PS3/Xbox360

What's been upsetting gamers all over the world is the purely sexist TnA-factor of the ads and complaints point to the non-scientific fact that gamers aren't pubescent boys that eat this shit up. Here's a quote for ya:

I can't really disagree with the quote, but is it actually valid? Follow me on this:

First off, the ads are in French, obviously created for the French audience. To understand that the French people aren't the same as the rest of the world you don't have to look any further than their cooking. Point being that maybe the croissants French gamers don't respond the same way as non-French gamers do to the ads.

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tags: mario blur kart commercial ad tv spot

Silent Hill 2

by noodles on Tuesday, December 1st, 2009 at 21:14 - Comments: 0

I guess the best person to write a game about psychological horror is someone that has genuinely troubling psychological problems. At least I imagine that the gamedesigner Masashi Tsuboyama spends his days picking imaginary cockroaches in his hair while mumbling about how doctors are killing his pet turtles on odd weekends.

What I'm trying to say is that Silent Hill 2 is a sick and twisted game. I don't mean that as in disgusting, I mean it as in being a very disturbing game. It's filled with metaphors, psychological trials and plain out brainfucks. Nothing seems to be random, everything has a meaning and represents something and can be interpreted in some way or another, all connected to the story.

You take on the role of James Sunderland. You start out in a restroom just outside of the town called Silent Hill. You're here because you received a letter from your wife, asking you to come here and meet her at your special place. Thing is, she's been dead for quite a while. Hey, if my dead wife asked me in a letter to come see her, I'd probably be too curious to pass it up too. Either that or figure out when I have to surrender my credit card and pin-number.

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tags: 2 silent hill

Resident Evil

by noodles on Thursday, November 19th, 2009 at 14:52 - Comments: 0

Audio; it's more important than you think.

The Resident Evil franchise, know by the more story-based-appropriate title in Japan: "Biohazard", has gone on for over 10 years. The high sales-numbers are not from the launch-weekend, but from different versions that are slowly seeping off the shelves across all the years. While the latest numeral iteration came out this year for the current-gen consoles, I took a trip down video-game-history-lane and in an attempt to explore my recently discovered discomfort with horror-games experienced the Nintendo GameCube-remake of the Sony PlayStation title Resident Evil; on my Wii.

Being one of the original titles from the "survival-horror" genre, I'm guessing that anticipation played a big part of my comfortless relation to the game. I do, however believe that the updated visuals and audio of the remake may have helped my (way too easy) immersion.

You get to play one of two characters, Jill Valentine or Chris Redfield. What character you pick only affects the game slightly, or so I've heard, so I went with the guy for no other reason than him being a guy. Don't get me wrong, I'm not unfamiliar with playing female characters.

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tags: wii resident evil horror playstation gamecube jill valentine chris redfield survival

Shadow Complex

by belajjal on Wednesday, November 4th, 2009 at 13:31 - Comments: 0

Shadow Complex

At E3 this year the creator of Gears of War, Cliffy B of Epic games, showed a demo of a 2,5D Castleroid (or Metrovania if you like) clone. A few months later Shadow Complex was released on Xbox Live for 1200 MS points. The game is set in the universe of Orson Scott Cards novel Empire, which I had never even heard of before I played the game. You play as Jason Flemming who are on a date in the woods. After a game of hide and seek in a cave your date Claire gets kidnapped by unknown men in uniforms and helmets and carried in to a futuristic door in the cave. You pick up her flashlight and backpack and set out to find her. Once inside the door a large underground complex is explored bit by bit in a style that is very close to Super Metroid or Symphony of the Night.
The game is presented in full 3D but played in 2D with the exceptions of enemies in the fore- or background where you character auto aims. This brings us to my first issue with the game, the auto aim. There is no way of forcing the game to aim at someone in the background as this is handled automatically. I had several instances of enemies blasting me to pieces from the background with my character shooting straight in to a wall.

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tags: shadow complex metroid castlevania

Where music has been, games are going.

by noodles on Friday, October 16th, 2009 at 15:59 - Comments: 0

We've all heard the words "They were better before". It usually refers to a band that's been around the general circulation of records for a few years. The theory being that when the band or artist gained the attention of a broader audience the record-company put more production and promotion into the development of further songs from that artist. This usually goes hand-in-hand with the term "sold out", accusing the musicians of chasing the all-might-dollar over "keepin' it real". The latter usually involves scraping by on a day-to-day basis not knowing where the next paycheck is coming from and playing where you're offered, making the artists go to the people, instead of the more popular version of the people going to the audience. To clarify, I'm talking about fans having to pick between not seeing the performance and, not only, coughing up an arm and a leg for tickets, but also to get to the venue, and perhaps even find accommodations near the event. Whereas the other version, known as the "band on a budget"-approach, involves - sometimes metaphorically, sometimes literally - a band living out of their van, going from gig to gig to earn enough money to put gas in the tank and food in their bellies.

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tags: resident evil music industry zombie korn video games

Haze

by noodles on Monday, July 27th, 2009 at 14:27 - Comments: 0

An interesting faction-mechanic hidden in a haze of terrible story, characters and mediocre gameplay.

Wearing the suit of Shane Carpenter, you're a sergeant in Mantel Corp's military. On a mission to clean out insurgents and capture the notorious "Skin Coat", a guerilla leader so nicknamed by the rumor that he wears a coat made from the skin of his enemies, somewhat à la Silence of the Lambs. To help you is your squad, made up of characters that really go out of their way to make you dislike them. Not you, as a character, but you as a player. Their frat-boy manner and moronic commentary seem to be drawn directly from a antagonist quarterback from a college-movie; you know, the one that treats his "girlfriend" like crap, drives his dad's SUV, and makes a sport out of hitting nerds in the head with beer-cans while discussing how much they want to join the army so they get to fire guns at terrorists. Luckily, you don't have to suffer their sub-intellectual behavior for long, as you'll switch faction to the rebels after only a few hours.
Oh did I spoil the story for you? No, wait, I didn't, because it says so on the friggin' box! After some questions that any school-child that has a problem with authority would ask, Skin Coat converts you to fight for his cause instead.

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tags: haze average nectar mantel

Uncharted: Drake's Fortune

by noodles on Friday, July 24th, 2009 at 09:51 - Comments: 0

I went in expecting adventure and got a shooter. Gears of Indiana Jone... - I mean, Uncharted was not what I hoped it would be.

A descendant from a more or less famous treasure hunter, Francis Drake, you climb into the pants of Nathan Drake. With your travel-companions, a female journalist that's documenting your treasure-hunt and a older male long-time partner-in-grave-robbing, you follow uncover clues that will supposedly lead you to the lost city of gold, El Dorado. The story plays out in the same manner that the movie-series The Mummy rips off the Indiana Jones franchise. There's old languages, graves, tombs, clues, trails, multiple characters after the same treasure, a hint of super-natural, and yes - even Nazis. It's basically a summer-blockbuster-adventure-movie in interactive form, except the main emphasis is on the gun-fights and not the adventure part.
This leaves you with the same interest that you would have in it'snon-interactive counterpart. Some will be swallowed by it, some will finish their popcorn and then leave the theater to wait for the DVD instead.

Gameplay-wise it's a third-person-shooter. Basically, if Marcus Fenix, of locust-bustin' Gears of War-fame, had a baby with Lara Croft, plain busty Tomb Raider-fame, that baby would be Nathan Drake.

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tags: uncharted nathan drake fortune

Silent Hill

by belajjal on Wednesday, July 15th, 2009 at 07:15 - Comments: 0

"The fear of blood tends to create fear for the flesh."
That is what welcomes you as the intro starts and it sets the mood perfectly for what you will experience in this game. This is a game based on psychological fear rather than moments that make you jump. The game is Konami's response to Capcom's Resident Evil success and where RE had dogs busting through windows Silent Hill had morbid nurses and children crying in closed lavatories.

Harry Mason crashes his car trying to evade running over a little girl on the road. When he comes to his daughter, Cherryl, is gone and he sets out to find her. When he exits the car he sees her wander off into the fog that sits heavily over the town. Harry chases after her and winds up in an alley where the world suddenly transforms into rusty metal and bloody corpses pinned to the walls. Suddenly small children with knifes attack the defenseless Harry who passes out. He wakes up in a cafe, wondering if he just had a nightmare. A female cop, Cybil, found him passed out in the alley and brought him there. Cybil tells Harry she didn't see anything strange but suddenly a winged creature crashes through the window. Harry takes it down with a gun Cybil gave him and sets out to continue his search for Cherryl.

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tags: silent hill