Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War

"Walk softly and carry a big gun."

It has been a great many years since I first encountered Warhammer 40,000, the grimdark tabletop miniature wargame that costs a lot of time and effort before you even begin to play the game itself. Kinda like gathering a bunch of games and a gaming computer for a silly little 1001 list, really.

The setting is so embracing of different alien races and ideologies that it has spawned games dedicated to small skirmishes, to piloting giant mechs, to racing around in demolition derbies. The Black Library contains what must be hundreds of stories for readers of all interests and ages, with seemingly more coming out than you can ever keep up with. And then there are the video games.

Ah, the video games. For an incredible setting that has captured the imagination of a great many fans across multiple mediums already, why is it so tricky for video games to do right? Warhammer video games are always - or at least, always were - OK at best. Entertaining for fans, but could have been so much more. Not phoned in, per se, not half-arsed, but just nowhere near the quality that the setting deserved.

Does Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War serve as an excellent example of that mediocrity, or is it one of the highlights of the many, many attempts at a Warhammer video game? It has been sitting in this Steam library, unplayed, since I got my Steam account. It's time to find out what we've been missing.

WarioWare: Twisted!

Again!

Can you make a game about ironing? You can indeed, and thankfully this game is so short that it's over in three seconds. Did you iron that shirt, or did your tilt sensor go mental and the iron go A.W.O.L. in WarioWare: Twisted!, another bunch of mad mini-games for your Game Boy Advance?

Wario is back for more mayhem, and he's here to show off some advancements in technology, too. We've definitely got time to play this one.

Unreal Tournament 2004

Killing Spree?

If memory serves, I've only played Unreal Tournament on the PlayStation 2 - hardly the best of setups to see what the series has to offer. According to the 1001 list, we ought to skip a few sequels on from that and play Unreal Tournament 2004, the pinnacle of the multiplayer FPS series.

Described as a refined entry to the series, capable of running and delivering great gameplay on systems at the lower end of the performance spectrum, UT2004 stands as the only entry point into the Unreal universe that you should ever consider.

So, let's consider it.

Torus Trooper

Speed! More speed!

The 1001 list isn't perfect. It can't be. Nobody would be able to agree on the contents of the list if there were only 1,002 games in existence, such are our likes and dislikes across genre or difficulty. What it can do, if not definitively stamp a seal of approval upon 1,001 games, is highlight some of the many games that fly under the radar.

There was a time at school where some friends of mine would bring in copies of Zork to play on the school computers. I wasn't interested in Zork for very long, but when the likes of Geometry Wars hit the screens, now things were getting interesting. The Internet wasn't just beginning, but it certainly wasn't what it is now. Flash games were entertaining to a point, but when someone got an actual small game up and running, that was a talking point.

Nobody, to my knowledge, got Torus Trooper out to play, but it was the kind of free download that might well have done, if anyone had known about - or stumbled across - its developers humble little website.

The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures

I thought you were the blue one.

The formula for a Legend of Zelda game is well known by now. You know not only what you're going to get in a game, but who you're going to get as well. Characters may share a name, signature costume, role in life, and so on, but they're not identical from game to game. Each title is different from the last. Except for all the similarities.

You'd think, then, that The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures would be similarly filled with Links, and Zeldas, and Hyrules, and Hyahs!, and you'd be right. You'd think it would have swords and shields, and puzzles that require the use of an item or two, and you'd be right there as well.

But you'd never guess the form the game would take. Semi co-operative. Four players. Multiple gaming systems working together.

What's going on in Hyrule this time?

The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap

"If only we had some way to defend ourselves against those nuts of his."

The Legend of Zelda on a Game Boy Advance. This should blow my mind, right? A reliable game series on a handheld console that I wish I knew more about when I actually had one. The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap is - I hope - going to entertain me.

But I know nothing about it. I can be safe in saying there'll be dungeons and monsters and puzzles, navigated by a kid in a green tunic called Link, in a land called Hyrule, but apart from those common elements (and many more besides), I don't know anything about The Minish Cap.

Let's dive headfirst into this tiny cartridge and unpack its secrets.

RollerCoaster Tycoon 3

Keep your arms and legs inside the vehicle.

Tycoon games have never given me the greatest of gaming experiences. The promise of being able to create the theme park or transport network of your dreams (strange dreams) is admirable, but the accounting and business management side of the simulation is a chore.

Sure, there are actual sandbox modes in many of these games, but that's not why they were made. These games are made to challenge your skills in balancing the books and giving the customer a good time. Preferably while emptying their wallets in the process.

Here, then, is the next one to try: RollerCoaster Tycoon 3. I think you can guess where the focus of the game is to be found. And yes, I'm aware there is only a hint of a rollercoaster in that image.

Can we turn a barren park into an amusement park? Can we bankroll ridiculous rollercoaster designs off the back of aggressive pricing policies? Shall we indeed scream if we want to go faster?

The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay

"Smell some lead, prisoner!"

I've seen quite a bit of The Chronicles of Riddick series, from the films to the anime and back. It occurred to me, though, that I hadn't seen the most recent film, Riddick. So I watched it, and all the way through, had a nagging feeling in the back of my mind: I had seen this film. Everything is so familiar. Have I just completely forgotten the entire movie? Is it that kind of action film? So like the others that you forget you've ever seen it?

While I mulled that over, I was installing The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay, a first-person action game set before the events of the first film, Pitch Black, detailing how Richard B. Riddick got those fancy eyes of his.

I suppose you'd have to know a bit about the series to know about the importance of his eyes. Hmm. Let's see how well Escape from Butcher Bay can fill us in.

Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords

"There's a price on your head, young Jedi. There's a blaster bolt with your name on it."

Having been floored by what I saw in Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic, I am delighted that the 1001 list has seen it fit to also include Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, the almost inevitable sequel.

I'm well aware that it was just a few games ago that I moaned at the inclusion of both Pikmin and Pikmin 2 - great games for some, sure, but why do I need to play both? I'm probably going to have to address that point with KotOR II as well. Here goes: I like Star Wars more than I like gardening.

So, with that out of the way, how do you follow up the epic space adventure that was KotOR?

Puyo Pop Fever

Popping Puzzle Fun?

Match three or four puzzles can be found everywhere. Competitive, head to head puzzles less so, but there are flavours of those too, of which we've been pointed towards Puyo Pop Fever.

It's certainly got a bright and bubbly look to go along with its blobby coloured characters - if you can call your pieces 'characters'. Let's see what it's all about.

Pikmin 2

That's unusual product placement...

A while ago, I played Pikmin and wasn't thoroughly impressed. I could see what it was trying to do, I could see how some players would be all over the kind of gameplay it offered, but ultimately, I just wasn't interested enough in playing it myself.

I ended by wondering whether Pikmin 2 would alter my views. And I suppose I also wondered why it, too, was on the 1001 list. Can this gameplay, of ordering sentient seeds to do your bidding, really warrant two entries on the list?

Rome: Total War

I came, I saw, I crumbled.

Medieval: Total War was a bit of a mixed bag for me. I liked the carnage that was taking place on the rolling hills of the English countryside but wished I could control some of it. Or most of it. Well, all of it. The idea is to be in control of your armies, not panic, lose shape, and hope for the best.

Anyway, there were some highlights that a sequel could potentially make brighter and more natural to grasp for my feeble little brain. Enter Rome: Total War.

Set further back in time, Rome: Total War takes us through a campaign to become the Emperor of Rome, fighting out in the fields and seizing territory from our enemies across a mix of turn-based, Civilization-like strategy and real-time battles.

I wasn't too keen on that in Medieval. Will I come around to it in Rome?

Red Dead Revolver

Well, darn tootin'... or something.

Red Dead Redemption was a phenomenal game back in 2010 but wasn't released in time for the first edition of the 1001 list. It grabbed my attention, and I've played it multiple times since. I knew there was an earlier Red Dead title, but heard it was a little weird, a bit iffy, and certainly nothing like Red Dead Redemption. I never tracked it down to see it for myself.

But Red Dead Revolver is on the 1001 list. It's been released in many versions across both PlayStation and Xbox systems. It's not hard to find, so why haven't we bothered? What are we missing? Is it anything like the Red Dead series the vast majority of us know about, or does it just share a name?

Strap on your boots and don your cowboy hat, because it's time to find out.

Ridge Racer

Seriously Sideways

Way back in the mid to late 1990s, when I first got a PlayStation, I owned Ridge Racer, the port of the arcade racer designed to show that the consoles could do just as much as the cabinets could. If you squinted and ignored this or that. It was a great little game, holding plenty of attention until Gran Turismo made itself known, and then never being heard of again.

Ridge Racer Type 4 capped off the console generation with a game arguably better than Gran Turismo, assuming you wanted arcade-style racing. Long before that point, however, the Ridge Racer series was effectively dead to me.

When the PlayStation Portable came to town in 2005 for us Europeans, Ridge Racer was there once more to show off the power of the handheld in a compilation game of sorts, Ridge Racer, or Ridge Racers in its original Japanese.

Yeah, the naming isn't brilliant for this series. Still, I can get behind a game that gathers together the best bits of a series, mainly because I a) only remember a single track from Ridge Racer and b) didn't pick it up for the PSP until a few years ago, second hand. My launch title of choice was Archer Maclean's Mercury if you wanted to know.

Right, let's get these wheels sliding.

Sly 2: Band of Thieves

Now there's more of you sneaky little devils?

Better in every way, we're told. You'd hope a sequel would be, I suppose, and the next sequel to get looked at is Sly 2: Band of Thieves.

The gang return. Their cel-shaded style returns. The inspector trying to hunt them down returns. It seems an awful lot of things return, actually, so how is it all going to turn out better than Sly Cooper?

Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy

I'm definitely getting a sense of deja vu.

In the latter half of 2004, if you wanted a third-person shooter full of psychic abilities on a home console, your choices were pretty much Second Sight or Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy.

At the time, these two games were highlighted for their similarities, in the same way that Armageddon and Deep Impact are brought together for being the same film. In a nod to that, I must assume, the 1001 list puts these two titles back to back so that we can see which one pokes their head out just that little bit higher than the other - or else knocks it out of the park.

What conspiracies are we going to uncover in Psi-Ops? Will our brains hurt just as much trying to find out?

Second Sight

Are you getting a sense of deja vu?

The PlayStation 2 had a little bit of everything, and third-person action-adventures were everywhere. But not all of them involved a protagonist with psychic powers to manipulate their surroundings. At least two of them had that, one of which being Second Sight, from the minds behind the TimeSplitters series.

It was an intriguing idea, but despite my gaming life being dominated by the Sony console back then, I didn't ever come across Second Sight, and my interest was only really a passing one. It wasn't on my radar, and it's time to see what we're missing.

We're going to really need our brains for this one.

Daigasso! Band Brothers

Say what?

Launch titles and gimmicks go hand in hand, and it was the case with the dual-screened Nintendo DS and Daigasso! Band Brothers, a rhythm game that has you button-pressing and screen touching in time with a whole load of music, from the classics of the past to the ear-worms of video games present.

That screenshot is from the sequel, as I understand it, and I can't read any of it. This might be a short one...