It’s Halloween! Well, Halloweek, at least. After a few weeks of spooky Top 5 topics, we dug deep into gaming’s roots for five seriously old-school horror games. Atari 2600 old-school. Terrifying. With that out of the way, it’s on to business as usual with Sunset Overdrive, Lords of the Fallen, the return of X-Wing and TIE Fighter, and your favorite in-game haunted houses.
Question of the Week
What’s your favorite game that lets you play as a villain?
If ya haven’t checked out the Laser Time YouTube channel, here’s something swell you might’ve missed: The Top 5 Tiny Toons Games!
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listed roughly in order of release date
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Try to play Destroy All Humans and not imagine you’re Dagget from the Angry Beavers trying to end mankind. That was one of the first times I recognized VO work in Videogames that sounded like cartoons I used to watch.
I’d have to go with Knights of the Old Republic – does that count? I suppose you could say “anti-hero” but considering how aggressively I played a Dark Side character (killing people, robbing the poor, etc) I would say I was more of a villain than the actual villains.
Any Total War game. What is more villainous than marching on smaller nations, conquering them, running down those who retreat, enslaving and executing their armies and cities of innocent civilians alike, where the neighboring kingdoms will line up to do your bidding and will take on your cultural identity and faith out of fear. History is fun!
Made a $5 donation but there was no where for me to specify that I wanted to donate to the awesome homeless guy with the hat for vidjagame! Go find all the moneys.
QotW: Rampage! Destruction for the sake of destruction!
Also does torturing and murdering Sims count?
I tend to not like to do evil things in video games. I even have a moral compass towards pixels and polygons. I am a little bit interested in checking out Saints Row though. I think the cartoonishness might offset any guilt I may have.
I guess this sort of counts but Borderlands 2, specifically a psycho. The class is based off the minions you fight in the game and his skill is to go into this sort of frenzy with an ax that you can chuck or just slash people with. You’really super vulnerable in this mode but whenever you kill an enemy, your health goes back up. Due to the mechanics, this is the most I’ve felt like a serial killer in a game. The psychos skill puts you on this rushed timer where your goal is to run around and murder as many enemies as you can with your ax before your skill deqctovates.
Sorry for the typos, it’s early in the morn and I’m typing on my phone
Got to go with 1996 Blood Omen Legecy of Kain for the the O.G. Playstation. I am sure this game does not hold up well now, but it was one of my earliest playstation games and its cg opining with spoken dialogue was a revelation for its time. Wait is it almost 18 years old? Damn I feel old!
I’m glad I’m not the only one who still thinks Myst is a great game. Also the Myst game that was on original Xbox that Anne was talking about is either Myst III: Exile or Myst IV: Revelations. Myst III is ok but not nearly as good as Riven while Myst IV, with the exception of 2 puzzles near the end of the game, is pretty damn good. I actually consider Myst IV and Riven to be the best in the series with the original game being a little overrated. There is also a Myst V but its not that great and I wouldn’t recommend playing it.
Anne, the game you were referencing on the calculator is Block Dude. That’s the only thing that saved me from boredom in calculus during high school. Fun fact: The last level had floating cubes, and the cheat code to start at that level was WTF, which I found hilarious 5 years ago when I was in calculus.
Anyway, as for QOTW, I guess I’ll say playing as Dracula in Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2. That game was a huge disappointment after the first game, but it’s the only game I can think of right now where I played as the villain.
I fucking KNEW it was something simple like that. Man I loved that game. That’s basically all I did in calculus.
We’re what??
ENGAYGED
I liked playing as Ada Wong in the RE4 HD remaster for the 360, PS3, and PC. In fact, I really in some ways have fallen in love with the character not just because of how pretty she is, but also because of her personality. It’s great whenever I get to play as a woman since it helps to show the world that a woman who kicks ass is one of the most awesome things ever, and that certainly brings a large smile to my face. In terms of the gameplay with her, everything is about the same, except for the look of her weapons and not having that many weapons to choose from, but those extra chapters were still a heck of a lot of fun and helped to explain some of deus ex machinas and other weird instances that happened in the game when you play as Leon.
A bittersweet fact that this is the last horror themed week, but damn am I excited for this episode
I always love these conversations about Avatar/Korra since they all go exactly the same way and are just filled with complete fallacies. Those shows are both animated in South Korea by animators that were taught to animate just like the creators favorite “Anime”. Since “Anime” covers all types of stories and genres for different age groups and also have various art styles and animation techniques utilized by different Japanese animators who freelance at various studios it’s next to impossible for a western studio to capture and bottle that essence. Frankly it’s a complete misnomer that Japanese animation is an entire genre that’s done in single style when that clearly isn’t the case.
Korean animators still have a long way to go before they can animate at a similar level as their Japanese counterparts did in the 80’s and 90’s who worked on various shows like Tiny Toon Adventures, DuckTales, and Batman TAS to name a few. The major road block is definitely the American staff who keep everything simplified so the Korean animators don’t “screw things up” which leads to all these current cartoons that all look like each other. I have zero interest in Korra so I can’t comment on it but Avatar the Last Airbender was a Work in Progress.
The schedule to get content out prevents Japanese animators from creating well crafted animation, outside of feature films, on a consistent basis but it’s better then rolling out the restricted “fluid” animation that works against the principles of animation set out by Disney that Western animators are still taught dogmatically.
Chris please stop spreading lies about Yukes. They are terrible developers who year after year managed to sell the same garbage game full of the same crappy animations, same bugs, same missing content that games on PS2 had and somehow got each successive game to look worse than the one before it. It was only last year that we saw actual progress when the guys who helped make NBA 2k12 and 2k13 (probably the 2 best sports games to date) helped them finish it and even that one was average and still had a ton of game crashing bugs.
This is the first WWE game that Visual Concepts is helping develop from the very beginning so for once I’m actually hopeful but only for the Xbox One and PS4 versions as it was clear from the moment they started promoting it that the 360 and PS3 were afterthoughts.
And if you think I hate Yukes, go ask the guys who run VGCW how much bullshit they have to deal with to make the best thing Yukes has ever helped produce.
Does blood omen: legacy of Kain count? More of an anti hero than a villain I know but that was probablythe first game I played where some of the stuff you do makes you question if you’re really a good guy or not. Plus being a vampire you kind of put yourself under the “not so nice” header by default.
QOTW: I am torn…. In Far Cry 3 if you decide to kill your friends and side with the chickadee who drugged and raped you, I would consider that as you played as a villain. More simple of an answer would be all of the fable series. You can really be an evil bastard in each installment of the series.
So, I watched most of Chris’ archived stream of Sunset Overdrive and…ehhhhh. I agree with him, it just looks kinda slow and plodding. Which sucks, because the art direction is absolutely incredible. I even love the over-the-top, vaguely ironic “tude” the game is saturated in. I just wish the gameplay didn’t look like such a snoozefest. Oh, well, I guess I’ll just keep playing Shadow of Mordor until the Master Chief Collection comes out, and maybe check out Wolfenstein. I’ve been wanting to play that since I watched that stream. Keep those coming, BTW. I’m usually at work when they’re on, but I can thankfully catch up on youtube.
Did Chris even play far enough into the game to unlock the dash ability? Because that really helps speed the game up a lot. I am loving Overdrive and its a game that really opens up with time. If you’re moving slow all the time, you’re playing the game wrong.
I’ll try to rent it, to see for myself. It really does look super pretty.
You will enjoy it.
The ‘slow’ feeling of grinding goes away basically instantly when you unlock the ability to dash and boost when you grind. It really plays like nothing else, and has the most satisfying world navigation of any open world game i’ve ever played.
QOTW: does renegade shepard count? if not then Juri in street fighter 4 that lass is Wicked!
Butt Clit was the funniest thing I’ve ever heard.so much so that the first time I’ve made a forum username to reply. I love the show and keep up the good work!
Qotw: Spoiler warning! for almost year old DLC i guess:
Bioshock Infinite: Burial at sea episode1 has a cool twist, revealing that this Booker is in fact Comstock.The ending shows that Elizabeth was trying to get him to remember why hes in Rapture before she kills him. His impalement by the big daddy drill as Elizabeth looks on is something i will remember.
Also KOTOR for the twist that you are/were the dark lord Revan was a twist that blew my tiny little mind when it was revealed.
Question of the Week:
What’s your favorite game that lets you play as a villain?
Playing as Darth Vader in the beginning of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, as well as Starkiller in the bonus stages of the Ultimate Sith Edition.
Mikel, you’ve made references to the AVGN in the past yet don’t mention him at all when he’s pretty famously reviewed all the top 5 games. Just seemed a bit strange to not give him any credit for bringing these games to a lot of people’s attention years ago.
“Butt clit” even for a guy who’s alter ego is Moaning for Sylvester Stallone, Id have say you officially gone….. TOO AWESOME Sir! Un rehearsed comidic outbursts is what makes this podcast a joy to listen too. #buttclit
I think I would say Wie Shen from Sleeping Dogs: I know that technically you are an undercover cop bla bla bla, but it´s difficult to have a clear conscience when you so freely kill other triad members by way of martial arts, explosions, electrocution, beating sensless with a phone or killing them with fish (my favorite)
Also Krauser in The Mercenaries mode in RE4 is pretty badass: especially when on the castle level and just using your arm (PLAGA-AAAAAARM) on the Garridor / wolverine lookalike.
PS: Kudso to Ann or whoever picks up the background music: Demon´s Crest? Lufia 2? FREAKING TERRANIGMA?!?! You guys are awesome