Flock! Wins First BAFTA Scotland Award

Toys: Stomp Rockets

Stomp Rockets now featured on Toys page.

Have a blast. This Stomp Launcher comes with two rockets and a stomp launcher base. Set up the rocket, stomp and blast it out-of-this-world!

The length and height of the flight depends, of course, on the strength of the stomp. Heights of 15-20 feet have been reported.

Paintball Supplies

Top 10 Tecmo

The Game Guys of KXTV/News10 in Sacramento, California have selected the Top 10 video games released by Tecmo since 1981. They are, as follows”:

10. Ninja Gaiden Sigma (PS3 - 2007)
9. Rygar (NES - 1987)
8. Monster Rancher (Playstation - 1997)
7. Dead or Alive: Xtreme 2 (Xbox 360 - 2006)
6. Mighty Bomb Jack (NES - 1986)
5. Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly (PlayStation 2, Xbox - 2003)
4. Ninja Gaiden Black (Xbox - 2005)
3. Dead or Alive 2: Hardcore (Dreamcast/PlayStation 2 - 2000), Dead or Alive 2: Ultimate (Xbox - 2004)
2. Ninja Gaiden (NES - 1989)
1. Tecmo Super Bowl (NES - 1991)

Red Faction Guerrilla Review

THQ’s new release, Red Faction Guerrilla, has hit store shelves and it continues to sell well. In Red Faction, you, Alec Mason, are a miner who has immigrated to Mars from Earth to live an honest life. Things however turn sour fast as Alec’s loving brother is killed in cold blood by the Mars military police force, commonly called the EDF (Earth Defense Force). The EDF pegs you as a terrorist working for a group called Red Faction. Since you have nothing to lose and everything to gain, you join up with Red Faction in order to avenge your brothers death.

Red Faction has you trying to take over individual segments of Mars in an attempt to rid the planet of the EDF forever. Avoiding EDF troops is usually in your best interest because there are quite a lot more of them than there are of you. You will mainly be destroying lots and lots of buildings on your many travels. Red Faction is set up so that you are in a completely destructible environment. If you see anything man made, you have the ability to destroy it.

You have many tool’s at your disposal that you can use to destroy buildings. Your most trusty tool at your disposal is by far, your hammer. You can use your hammer strategically to focus on the support beams of a building and take it down in about a minute. You also have a wide arsenal of explosives at your disposal that can turn a building complex into a pile of rubble in with the press of a button. Red Faction also includes the usual assault rifles that work really well against the EDF shock troops.

Driving in Red Faction Guerrilla is really empowering and is one of my favorite things to do on Mars. There are a wide variety of vehicles to drive, from civilian cars to jeeps and even to big martian semis. The Red Faction and the EDF both have some pretty impressive vehicles that are packing some major firepower including machine guns and gauss cannons. There are also some really huge vehicles like tanks and mechs that make taking down a building extremely easy.

These vehicles can be used in various ways. There is always the standard way of just driving around. Even this mundane driving seems fun because Mars has a very rugged landscape that gives your vehicle plenty of jumps to go off of on your travels. Vehicles can also be used to take down buildings. Drive a semi through a EDF bunker at high speeds and it’s sure to cause a massive amount of destruction.

There are also a variety of missions for Alec Mason to complete. Some missions have Alec saving civilians from the EDF where as others have Alec trying to destroy a building in a set amount of time with only a certain amount of supplies. Even others have Alec teaming up with several of his Red Faction buddies to attack a EDF controlled stronghold. Missions give the game variety and give you an interesting way to play the game.

I thought this game had very wonderful cinematics that looked simply amazing. I was very disappointed that the game did not have more of them so that you got to know the main characters a little better. The only character from the game that I really got to know was this fat guy named Jenkins that you ride around on a bike with blowing stuff up with an amazingly powerful cannon. Just have to stop here and say that the explosions look amazing. As you ride around with Jenkins you learn about how he feels about the EDF and life in general.

All and all, Red Faction Guerrilla is an amazing and unique open sandbox game that looks and plays amazingly. Red faction is the best game I have played so far in 2009 and I look forward to future titles from our friends at THQ.

General Tips for Nazi Zombies

Keep in mind that following these tips will not completely ensure your survival to a high level of Nazi Zombies. The main purpose is to give you, the player, inspiration to come up with great ways to survive against the zombie hoard and to give you a little push in the right direction.

1. Try to knife enemies and use your pistol at the beguinning as much as possible.

Using your knife and pistol gives you more points than a bolt action rifle that you will want to use early to reach better places to hold off against the waves of zombies. For the first level you should be able to knife through most of the level and most of the second as well.

2. Keep letting windows get destroyed so that you can repair them (only as long as you get points!!)

Repairing windows gives you lots of points that can be used to buy good weapons and get access to more places.

3. Remember that you can move and shoot while repairing windows!

This is vital to any game! You need to repair windows but that does not mean that you are helpless. Sure your friends should be covering you but that doesn’t mean that you can’t help out too!

4. Remember where valuable assets are!

It is important that you memorize where the mystery box is and how to find it, where perk machines are, where the various traps are located, and where various guns can be bought all over the level. This will help you when you need to reload because you will not need to buy a whole new gun, just the ammo.

5. Learn the zombie animations

Once you learn how the different zombies move it will be easier to line up a headshot.

6. Keep the bombs around for when you need them the most.

There is no sence killing lots of zombies and not getting any points for it unless it keeps you or a teammate from dying.

7. Reload your guns before picking up a max ammo pack.

Think about it!

8. Avoid using fire unless you have a full party or your glitching.

Fire only slightly hurts zombies and will not help if you are only playing with a few people. Sure it might save your friend a bullet or two but then again so will just shooting at the zombies. One upside to the flamethrower is that it doesn’t run out of ammo. So for those of you that glitch fire might be a good weapon for you.

Review Coming Soon

A new Red Faction Guerilla review should be coming to you fairly soon faithful followers!

Empire Total War: Review

The newest installment in the total war franchise, Empire: Total War, has improved an already great formula with the addition of multiplayer battles and new battle concepts.This game is perfectly shaped to entertain the strategic side of your mind and entertain you for hours.

The addition of multiplayer is a great decision for Empire. Steam compatibility makes online play run simply seamless and what little lagging there is between computers can be used as extra time to plan out your moves. There are several new types of battle like naval battles, which I will talk about later, as well as old classics like siege and classic  land battle. What units you are able to use are determined by the cash flow that you have to spend. At first I, and all of my friends assumed that this was just an addition that was last minute that was really bad.

Soldiers do an impressive job in battle

They have really spiced up the battles in this game too. Ranged attacks have gotten the biggest improvement. In older games of the franchise, you really could not tell how far your archers could shoot. Now there is a icon sensor that shows how far your forces can shoot. It really comes in handy and occasionally when you miss a bullet can sometimes fly two or three times it’s range and hit a soldier standing behind the other forces. This is purely chance however, and it should never be completely relied on.

Infantry is now the most used force in the game and with forces up to 150 per battalion, it’s not any wonder. At close range, normal infantry actually do pretty well with plug, ring, or screw bayonets that can cause some serious damage to anything in their way.

Cavalry has been toned down quite a bit in this game. Sure, if they fight any unsuspecting infantry unit close up they will do very well. But if they ever stray into an open firing range in the middle of a field, you can say good bye to that unit. Even the dragoons, horsemen equipped with guns, do poorly against infantry mainly just because of them being bigger targets. All and all, I found that infantry are best used just to back up infantry that are in close range combat.

Naval battles are definitely the focus of Empire. There are gigantic ships with many cannons to battle with and the water effect is very realistic. The physics of the ships getting damaged is simply spectacular. The explosions or sinking of destroyed ships is awesome and it almost makes you want to loose another ship just to see another pretty light show. I found boarding enemy ships kind of awkward and hard to do effectively but with a little practice it shouldn’t be too hard. All and all this was the kind of battle that I loved the most about the entire game. I am already looking forward to my next battle!

Battle look so real that you flinch whenever someone fires a bullet

This campaign was more enjoyable than any other campaign that I had ever played. Now you collect resources that are located in each province and which can be built up to be better at whatever they produce. They can also be fortified with star forts to defend against any attackers who would like to stop you from having resources and take them for their country.You can build some of these in your territory to add to the wealth of your nation.

There are also a wider selection of agents that can be used in the game. Not needing diplomats to negotiate peace treaties and trade alliances is a weight off of my chest. The addition of gentlemen has added a strange aspect to the way the game works as well. You can use diplomats to take advantages of your assets, like your schools and other resources at your disposal, or you can use them to duel with other gentlemen to fight for territory or technology. Spies are a major part of this game as well and they work the same as they have always. Generals can be recruited in any town that your troops are in. I find this much better than having to wait around for your great niece to have a kid that you can force into the military to be your new prized general.

One of the coolest additions that I liked was that you have a very cool setup for your government. Your people can rebel for change and if you want to go along with the rebelion you will become whatever government type that your people want. You also have a cabinet at your fingertips that are used to get bonuses like presteige, lower recruitment costs, and more resources. This system is by far one of the major determining factors of the game and can cripple your country so watch out!

I cannot get enough of this game and still want to play more of it. If you’re looking for a game with great replayability value and a great value for you buck, this is the game!!

Items for Developing your Skills

If you are going to get serious about gaming you are going to need some skills at solving technical problems and hardware issues. Here are some items to help you on your way!

DVI to HDMI Cable- When you are working for long hours on a large monitor things start to go a little blurry with a simple PCI setup but with this cable you can easily get a great picture in hi def that all of your friends will envy. In case you don’t know what VGA, HDMI, or DVI inputs are VGA is usually a blue connector, HDMI is a small plug that is rectangular and DVI is a large tan rectangle with little squares on the inside.

Books are a good way to learn about programming in general and they can help make it easier to understand how to do it. I have chosen these books because they not only describe what to do in a easy manner they also have pictures to help you.

Great Holiday Games

Everyone either knows a gamer or has one in the family. Now is the perfect time to show that you really appreciated all of the free tech support that he has given you over the years. Here are some great games that will surely make every gamer feel appreciated:

****Left 4 Dead: The zombie apocalypse is here! In order to survive it you will need plenty of ammo and great allies to help you survive. This game has great co-op and multiplayer with 4 human players being the survivors and 4 players being the infected. There are only 5 different levels but the experience is always different and each time you play through it zombies will not always be in the same place.

*****Medieval 2 Total War: Kingdoms: The Crusades never looked and felt so real. This is a great expansion pack to an excellent game. This game has great graphics and good controls. This is deffinately a good buy for anyone who you know likes RTS (Real Time Strategy) games and who already have the first game. If they don’t have the first game then here is a link to the gold version of the game: Medieval 2 Total War: Gold Edidion. It is a really good game and I enjoy playing it a lot.

******World in Conflict: The cold war never ended. Russia has envaded western Europe and the US has decided to send all of their troops over to fight in europe. What they didn’t expect was for the Russians to invade the western US. This game is a great game with good visuals and excelent gameplay. In this game you aren’t building up bases or recruting units on the feild. Instead everything is brought to you via plane drops. This makes for very interesting play. With the collectors edition you get special dvds and also you get your very own piece of the berlin wall.

*****Too Human: Norse mythology is really cool and this game is based off of it but with a twist. It’s in the future! This is a great RPG (Role Playing Game) with great control schemes and good visuals. There is also a wide veriety of equiment to equipt your character with. This is a great game for anyone who likes a good classic norse story.

*****Rock Band 2: The game that started the whole multi instrument band thing is back and is better than ever! With many new songs and all of the original songs to play over and over again this game has great replayability value. This time around you can go online with your friends and play in a world were you are an incoming band that is looking to get it’s paws on some fame. All and all this is a great game to enjoy with the whole family.

*****EndWar: We thought that WMD sheilds would make world peace a reality but instead it just made wars worse. Now three empires fight for global dominance. This is an awesome game that I love to play the demo of. It encorporates voice controll and it has great graphics. It also already has new extra content on xbox live to download.