Army of TWO: The 40th Day

"How hard is it for you NOT to kill somebody?"

Source // PlayStation

Here's what I know of Army of TWO: The 40th Day before playing it: two masked mercenary dudes bro their way through whatever warzone they find themselves in, and they wear customized riot masks.

Here's what I didn't know of Army of TWO: The 40th Day before playing it: it's the second of three Army of TWO games. How did this concept get three whole games out of it? What are video games even doing in the 2010s?

I don't know where I first heard of Army of TWO but I can safely say I wasn't too bothered about whether I played it or not, and so I didn't. Should I have not missed an opportunity to buddy up and take on the world while donning a weird mask?

PixelJunk Shooter

Is that a warm, welcoming glow, or a hot, dangerous one?

Source // PlayStation

Gravity. Love it or hate it, it's here to stay, and as soon as it could be modelled to any degree of accuracy in a video game, games were built around obeying its laws, including a great many that subtly taught generation after generation how to fly - and crash - spaceships.

Lunar Lander, Exile, Gravity Crash and more I'm sure have crossed this 1001 list as physics-based challenges involving spaceships shooting enemy forces, bombing infrastructure, and rescuing stranded companions, and these games just don't stop coming.

PixelJunk Shooter is the next in line, but the twist in this PlayStation 3 title is that gravity plays as much of a role in-game as fluid dynamics. Are you ready to safely wrap your head around a lava flow?

Reflect Missile

a.k.a. Trajectile

Source // Nintendo

We've already had one new take on Breakout in the form of Shatter, but the block-smashing formula can be made into more of a puzzle instead, as demonstrated by DSiWare title Reflect Missile.

Rather than a paddle and ball, you've a launchpad and rockets, and while they can bounce too, you won't really be playing this game with that aspect in mind.

Zen Bound

All tied up.

Source // MobyGames

Keeping your hands busy in a world without fidget spinners can be tricky for someone who wants to do something, but doesn't want to do something too involved. Just idly fiddling with something for no real purpose other than to play, chill out, and pass the time is something I can get behind, depending on the something, I suppose.

In 2009, if you had an iOS device and wanted to chill out in such a way, you might have opted for the wrap 'em up that is Zen Bound, a simple little puzzler where you just wind a piece of string around objects.

That's it, nothing more taxing than that, but you can bet it gets thinker than you would have initially thought.

Starship Patrol

a.k.a Starship Defense

Source // Nintendo

The Tower Defense genre has always been a home for small projects as well as large ones. It started with Flash games for your browser, and the gameplay is something that doesn't take much effort to get used to at all.

As such, it's an ideal genre for a downloadable Nintendo DSiWare title by the name of Starship Patrol, or your regional equivalent - and perhaps more obviously relating to its genre, Starship Defense.

You've got a starship to defend, and turrets to defend it with. You know the rest.

Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor

The itsy bitsy spider went up the water spout...

Source // MobyGames

A long, long time ago, in the arcades of the early 1980s, was a puzzler by the name of Qix. You had to draw lines to create boxes, sectioning off the screen from the enemies buzzing about and ruining your chances of filling up your level quota. Carve out 75% of the play area and the level is yours. Rinse and repeat as enemies moved faster and there were more of them.

It was addictive, it was tricky, but it was ultimately short lived. But what if it was given a complete makeover? What if it could be thematic, rather than abstract? What if it could have a story, a point to doing it all?

Strictly speaking, Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor isn't Qix remade, but it's a good place to start thinking about it.

Rolando 2: Quest for the Golden Orchid

Keep rolling, rolling, rolling, rolling.

Source // Apple

The iPhone, iPod Touch, and later iPad did absolute wonders not just for mobile gaming, but for new ways of playing games using accelerometers and touchpads. While you could thoroughly enjoy playing LocoRoco on the PlayStation Portable, nudging shoulder buttons to rotate the planet you're playing on just isn't the same as rotating an entire device to solve a puzzle involving similarly circular childlike blobs in Rolando 2: Quest for the Golden Orchid.

The Kingdom of Rolando has been infected by the Kilgorean Flu, and only the Golden Orchid can save the day. Enter Sir Richard and his skilled underlings, and you, some sort of overlord that manipulates the world around them so that they can platform their way to success.

Have you got what it takes to help Rolando out?

One-Dot Enemies

.

Source // Apple

The 1001 list isn't afraid to put time-wasters in the limelight, but many of them so far - if they've really not had anything else to offer gamers - have been artsy enough to get by without too many problems.

Noby Noby Boy, for example, is a 'game' about stretching until you're bored of stretching, then contributing your score to a collective goal. That's all, really, but its presentation is just as much of a talking point as its 'gameplay'.

But One-Dot Enemies is something else. It's Noby Noby Boy to the extreme, and it goes a little something like this...

Grand Slam Tennis

You cannot be serious.

Source // EA

Motion controls and a tennis game were such an obvious pairing that Nintendo themselves made sure to include the sport in a few Wii titles of theirs, but the addition of the Wii MotionPlus controller meant even more accuracy in terms of what inputs could be captured and used in a game.

And so EA sought to capitalise on it all with Grand Slam Tennis a cartoony looking but deadly serious simulation of tennis, and all the spins and slices your backhands can manage. Do I know what a spin or a slice is? Have you not seen how many tennis games the 1001 list has seen me suffer through already?

geoDefense Swarm

Another one?

Source // Giant Bomb

I genuinely thought we'd seen all the Tower Defense genre had to offer. The 1001 list was adamant we saw a whole bunch of them, but once you've seen one, you've seen them all, no? What could geoDefense Swarm possibly add that we've not yet come across?

Neon colours? Is that it?

DJ Hero

Wikiwiki clack clack!

Source // Giant Bomb

Guitars? Done. Drums? Done. Keyboards? Don't be silly. Band-specific games? Done. What new territory was left for the likes of poor Guitar Hero and Rock Band games to move into? What new peripheral could capture the attention of the masses. What does everybody secretly wish they had the talent for?

Uhh... turntablism? Time for DJ Hero.

Demon's Souls

Cor, you're getting those words quite a lot, eh?

Source // PlayStation

I don't like hard games. There, I said it. Now we can make this post about Demon's Souls go by a whole lot easier. Masochism disguised as an RPG, this game, and more definitively its sequel, brings the brutality of needlessly difficult video games of the past to the graphics of the future, wrapping everything together into a game that will push you to your limits, break you, almost taunt you to try again, over and over until you bloody well get it right, yeah?

But then 'needlessly' is a word that brings quite a lot of debate, as does the game of Demon's Souls itself. Is it needlessly hard, or worryingly realistic? Must it be hard to sell its ideas of overcoming incredible odds and rewarding the patient and the persistent? Is it just trying to do something nobody else seems to have bothered to do, and hope it pays off?

Whatever the reasons behind Demon's Souls, it sure rooted itself into video game history, and won't budge from it, though it is overshadowed by Dark Souls. Let's see what's what - and no, I didn't get very far at all.

Aion: The Tower of Eternity

PvPvEvMe?

Source // MobyGames

I don't have the biggest history with MMORPGs, another genre that I run screaming from, come to think of it. These days though, MMORPGs that have found a spot in the 1001 list have likely been refined to the point where I'm not tearing my hair out trying to play them, and probably have free-to-play entry points for us newcomers to dive into.

Aion: The Tower of Eternity is the next challenger to try and show the world that you don't have to play World of Warcraft like everybody else, and it's still going a decade later, so let's find the download button and get going.

Assassin's Creed II

"Nothing is true. Everything is permitted."

Source // PlayStation

Remember when Assassin's Creed games were good? No, that's not fair, let me rephrase it. Remember when Assassin's Creed meant something? When the overarching, convoluted conspiracies of the Templars and the Assassin's was a strange alternate history tale that was silly, but fun. Engaging.

In its heyday, I, like many other players, dove into the series head first and consumed it all. Brotherhood, if I recall correctly, was played so much that it gave my PlayStation 3 a yellow light of death, forcing me to purchase a new console (which I still have today for all of these missed games). I even read the books to see some of the stories from another perspective, and actually bothered to try and understand what was going on under the surface.

I couldn't explain it to you now, partly because it was ten years ago, but mostly because as the series grew, it lost focus, and now nothing makes any sense. It makes so little sense, even, that in the more recent games of the series, I don't even care about the modern-day story, instead thoroughly going through the alternate ancient histories so well presented for hours and hours and hours on end.

Oh... You didn't know there was a modern story? Let's get you up to speed for Assassin's Creed II then.

Trism

Why would I need an accelerometer?

Source // MobyGames

It doesn't look like much, does it, but then you have to say that about all successful handheld puzzle games. Tetris. Bejeweled. Trism.

Emerging on the early iPhone, gravity-based match-three puzzler Trism was unlike anything else, completely changed the developer's life, and, like many puzzle games, will make your head grind to a halt.

Reset Generation

"Hey Hedgehog! Your groin is nice and soft, for kicking!"

Source // MobyGames

You have to wonder just how this 1001 list was created sometimes. One of the arguments against it was that it neglected handhelds, but I'm not so sure about that. I mean, here's a handheld title that also made it as a browser-based game, Reset Generation, an action-puzzler for your... Nokia N-Gage. Huh. Well, that's going to be a pain in the arse to find, isn't it?

Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots

"This is good... isn't it?"

Source // Konami

Not too long ago, I said when looking back to the Grand Theft Auto series, I'd want to go back and play GTA IV before any of the others. It's not that it is the 'best', but it is the title that called to me the most.

There's another long-running series with games that ought to be returned to more than once, and another game with a '4' stuck on the end, but this one, Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots has a lot more going on.

If GTA IV is something I want to go back to and relive, MGS4 is something I'm not sure I do want to go back to - not sure to the point of having spent the last few days watching some 7 hours of YouTube video essays on the game instead of actually putting it into my PS3 for the first time in years.

Metal Gear Solid has been my top-rated game on this 1001 list since its appearance and is unlikely to be moved. MGS2 and MGS3 are up there too, the latter still sitting in the top ten. MGS4... well, MGS4 has a lot to unbox and I'm not sure where to begin.

Buzz!: Quiz TV

Question number one...

Source // PlayStation

Who doesn't love a good quiz? Me. It's got to be a good quiz, mind you. None of this Mensa application rubbish, or intellectual nonsense that only strokes the quiz-masters ego, no. I like my quizzes to be sensible for the most part, and humourous for the rest.

Your first question then: What is Buzz!: Quiz TV?

Afrika

Bless the rains.

Source // PlayStation

The closest I've ever come to an African Safari is whatever the BBC Natural History Unit decides is worth sitting in the blistering heat for years on end with an HD camera to capture and preserve for Sir David Attenborough to narrate over.

Wildlife you've never heard of performing extraordinary feats of survival in some of the harshest conditions for life there is on this planet. Wildlife you have heard of, personified and made relatable. Wildlife, out in the wilderness, minding its own business while we marvel at it all.

From my computer desk, I can glance out of the window and see the wilderness of a weed-covered patio, the odd bird hopping around P2's elaborate feeder, now overgrown with neglect because it's bloody cold out there this time of year. I could never see one animal hunt another unless the cats get lucky. I can't see anything big or bouncy or goofy looking, unless, again, the odd fat cat wanders through.

What I need is a digital safari. A hunt where the only shooting you'll do is through your camera, and where the playground is an entire continent. I need Afrika.

Warhawk

Now land it.

Source // PlayStation

The 1001 book contains a lot of pictures, and it usually brings out a chuckle when I find that the imagery chosen was one of the first you could find with a basic image search. What puzzles me from time to time, though, is imagery that doesn't quite represent the game that it's attached to.

You see, I'm lead to believe that Warhawk is about flying a fancy looking futuristic jet fighter through the skies as war rages below you. At least that's what the box art shows me. And doesn't 'hawk' lend itself to aircraft more than tanks?

A multiplayer exclusive game for the PlayStation 3, whose single-player content was supposedly cut for lack of quality. Ooh. This is going to be tricky.