Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge: Special Edition (2010) - Comedy Horror Video Game Review

With Return to Monkey Island having been released this month, and with it following on from the events of the second original game, I knew I just had to play through the first two. With The Secret of Monkey Island I chose to play using the dreadful new artwork, mainly so that I could hear the new music mixes and spoken dialogue. Loading up the sequel, Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge, there was actually the option from the start to enjoy the original game as it was, but with the dialogue also spoken. I fully expected that would be the way I chose to play, that is, until I saw how expressive and surprisingly good the updated graphics were this time around. Spoilers for the first game to follow.

The game begins with my new favourite phrase 'in medias re', basically the story begins halfway through. Haplass pirate Guybrush Threepwood is dangling over a huge pit, a treasure chest in one hand, his other holding the rope that is preventing him from falling to his doom. Threepwood's former love interest, Elaine Marley appears, and it is while asking how he came to be in this situation that the story skips back to the start of the game. Threepwood had arrived on Scabb Island as part of his search for a legendary treasure known as Big Whoop. He discovers while there, that the treasure was discovered on a mysterious island, and that the people who found it split their map of the place into four pieces so that no one else would ever discover it. Unfortunately, Threepwood also encounters Largo LeGrande, a pint-sized bully who used to be LeChuck's right hand man. This inadvertently results in him providing LeGrande with the final ingredients needed to resurrect LeChuck's body as a zombie.
With LeChuck back to life and wanting Guybrush dead, the young pirate realises that the power that Big Whoop is said to provide may be enough for him to escape LeChuck's clutches forever...

I enjoyed replaying The Secret of Monkey Island, yet it also made me realise that that first game, while good, didn't have as much of an impression as its sequel. Everything this time around is so much better. There are more wacky characters to interact with, the story is a lot more involved, the wonderful pixel graphics are more detailed, and this features some of the very best video game music that was ever created, something I still believe today. While you can play the game using the original point and click interface (of commands and items being kept in the bottom third of the screen), the updated controls thankfully don't follow the cumbersome controls of the first re-make. Instead, there is a much better feeling control scheme, more like what The Curse of Monkey Island did. My memory of how to do the first game was a bit fuzzy, I imagined it would be the same for LeChuck's Revenge, turns out it wasn't. Outside of one moment (where I briefly forgot to get the cook out the kitchen you had to rattle some bins), I remembered all the puzzles and solutions, and this is a game where it doesn't mind you doing things out of step. Even if it makes no sense for where you are in the story, you are able to collect items before you are aware (within the story) that you require them.

Needful Things (1991) by Stephen King - Horror Book Review

On many occasions over the past few years, usually when reviewing one of the many adaptations of his books I have commented how I am not a huge fan of Stephen King. However this is a position I am more than happy to change if I come across a book of his I really like, and so I have many of his works sat in a queue waiting for their time to be read. Needful Things was one of these, and earlier today I finished reading the nearly 800 page novel. I have memories of skimming through this book back when I was a teenager and my sister happened to be reading it, so it had a little bit of sentimental value returning to read it properly.

A new shop has opened in the sleepy town of Castle Rock, it is called 'Needful Things', and its new in town owner Leland Gaunt promises to sell to each visitor the item which they most desire. All he asks for in return is that they each do a seemingly harmless favour for him. By this process he orchestrates chaos and destruction that will send local sheriff Alan Pangborn to his limits as he tries to stop the madness spreading across Castle Rock.

I have only really ever read a handful of Kings novels but I had heard how he likes to include easter eggs referencing other books he has written. Throughout Needful Things there are many references to an incident involving a crazed dog many years previously which obviously points to his earlier novel Cujo. Then there is the penitentiary 'Shawshank' that gets mentioned every now and again. I'm sure there are many more included here which I didn't notice, but even spotting these ones really added some flavour to the novel. This was an easy to read novel, but did have some bad choices for what was being written about. Things such as Brian Rusk's inappropriate dream about a female teacher at his school for instance, his young age creating moments where I didn't want to picture what King was writing about.

Fatal Rewind (1991) - Sci-fi Videogame Review (Megadrive/Genesis)

As a teen Fatal Rewind was one of those games that I would spend hours studying screen shots for, it was even featured on the classic 'to be this good takes Sega' advert as an early reason to get a Megadrive/Genesis. Fatal Rewind was in fact the Amiga and Atari ST game 'The Killing Game' released a year previous that had two levels chopped off and a name change for it's console outing.

In the future there is a popular TV show called 'The Killing Game' in which unwilling participants are forced to enter with the reward for winning the game being freedom. You play as one such contestant. Wearing a mech suit your goal is to forever advance upwards through the sets avoiding the ever rising acid river and also dispatching the many robots programmed to kill you.

This is one tough cookie, you collect power ups that can be used to change the gun you fire but there are also key cards you need to get to progress which take away whatever power up you currently own. The enemy design is quite bland with floating groups of squares and circles, your mech is quite cool, able to jump kinda high and also able to scale walls with ease. Each stage is split into two acts, all stages themed on different things. The first stage has a futuristic look to it for instance while later stages have an underground cave, Greek temple motif and more.

As a 16 bit game it really does hold a special place in my heart, it is still as fun and challenging to play as ever and has a great tune playing even if there is only the one tune throughout the entire game. Special mention must go to the novel replay feature. When your mech explodes and you die a replay is shown, a replay that lets you take over at any point meaning you don't have to do the whole stage over, kinda cool!

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Dragon's Fury (1991) - Pinball Video Game Review (Megadrive)

Well, here in the UK it is Father's Day today. My Dad is off on holiday somewhere in Europe, so am doing a blog post in his honour. Dragon's Fury is a pinball game released for the Megadrive back in 1991. It features a unique gothic style to it's horror based table, and has excellent music, all heavy metal style instrumentals.

When I was younger there used to be a video rental store that my parents would rent me games from. If you liked the game you rented you were able to buy it.  I don't recall if it was my Dad who rented Dragon's Fury for me, or if it was one I chose. At the time I was off school ill, as I was feeling sick, playing Dragon's Fury made me feel ill, so it made a small impression on me. My Dad took the game back to the store, but later that day he revealed to me that he had in fact brought the game for me (perhaps as a get well soon present?). As such the game holds a special place in my heart, and is one game I would never part with. Playing it recently for this review I noticed that it still has passwords written at the back of the manual by my Dad which was a cool discovery.

The game is probably my favourite pinball game. The gothic setting is cool. It has H.R Giger levels of details on the table. There is just the one table, but it is split into three areas. The top area of the table has monks wandering about. The middle of the table features as its centre point a giant female head. By activating switches you can alter the appearance, each time the woman gets more and more monstrous looking until finally the head is a dragon's head, plus an entrance to a bonus round game. The bottom table has a dragon at one side of it, and a skull at the other side. Whenever you lose a ball the skull laughs with a loud rumbling digitised laugh. Skeletons, demons, and insects make up most the moving obstacles on the table which the ball can destroy.

There are six bonus rounds that are accessed by hitting various switches around the table. The bonus tables are single screen and usually task you with destroying a monster. In one you must defeat a six headed dragon, another sees you tasked with destroying six possessed urns, while another one sees you assaulting a castle defended by fire knights. Each stage has its own fantastic music to accompany it. The main table has a truly epic heavy metal track that plays for something silly like eight minutes before it loops. It is one of my favourite pieces of game music ever!

By getting a billion points you get access to the end of game boss. Pretty strange that a pinball game has a end boss in it! I of course could never even get close to a billion points, but via a password my Dad helpfully wrote in the back of the manual I can get to experience the boss, and the ending. It takes place on its own table in a throne room. Epic boss music plays as you aim your ball at a man sitting on a throne while bodyguards deflect your balls from hitting him. After his energy bar has gone down a bit he stands up and rips off his skin revealing a cool lithe dragon. Fantastic!

Annoyingly the game was quite censored from the original Japanese version (named Devil's Crush I believe). Pentagrams have been changed into red stars, and one bonus stage that saw you battling six wooden coffins marked with crucifixes were replaced with one where you instead fought six yellow urns. It's stupid how in those days religious imagery was really not welcome in video games, and pointlessly censored.

Dragon's Fury was actually a sequel in itself, the first game not released on the Megadrive was named Alien Crush. There was a sequel to Dragon's Fury called Dragon's Revenge (that I brought from Game for £25) Unfortunately Dragon's Revenge was pretty terrible, it had naff music, and bizarrely looked really really rough, and ugly despite coming out years after Fury. The game has also been remade and released on the Nintendo Wii Ware channel. I have not played it, but it received average reviews.

I am forever grateful to my parents for getting me into video games. I just wish my father had gotten into them more (as far as I can recall; this, and the point and click game The Dig are the only games he ever played). Anyway, Happy Fathers Day Dad, you are a most excellent person!

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Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991) - Horror Film Review

Freddy's Dead - The Final Nightmare is the film in which Freddy is finally defeated once and for all (or had meant to be at the time). A weird message at the start of the film states it is ten years in the future, every single child bar one in the town of Pine Woods has been killed by Freddy. The adult population have gone insane over all the deaths, and are in denial that it could be Freddy Krueger. Freddy chases the last surviving child out of the town so that he can bring more children/teenagers back for him to kill. It is revealed that Krueger had a child who was adopted, he hopes to be able to escape Pine Woods (to which he is confined) by using his child.

There is more back story revealed in this film. Finally a reason for his power is given which neatly explains how he has been able to keep returning after being defeated in each film. The backstory to his wife and child is odd in that it has never been mentioned in previous films, but it's cool to see Freddy as a normal human in the flashbacks. You also get to see him as a child in the film which is also cool.

The town in the film is very odd, it seems really odd that all the towns people would have been made insane by Freddy's reign of terror, and the whole scene set at the town fair is just really odd with too much over acting.

The film doesn't look as grimy as previous films, more clean. Freddy Krueger's role is played more for laughs with him breaking the fourth wall by him giving winks and nods to the viewer, he is the least scary he ever was here which is a shame. The way his death is dealt with is not very spectacular either. Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare was an enjoyable film, but would have been a disappointing end to him if it really had been the last film.

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