Category: Shoot the Barrel

Kids are off school this week, which – as a real-life parent – makes working from home more challenging than normal. However, rather than see this as a pain-in-my-ass-quit-making-so-much-noise-daddy’s-working-can’t-you-just-watch-TV-all-day sort of problem, it’s actually an ideal opportunity to exploit their tiny little innocent children brains in the name of video game themed internet content. So that’s what’s happening here.

Basically, I compiled a collection of images of various videogame heroes and villains, showed them to my youngest daughter (she’s 6), and asked her to tell me whether she thought they were a goody or a baddy character. Simple as that. Not trying to draw any psychoanalysis social commentary style conclusions, just trying to get some work done and interact with the younglings at the same time.

Here’s how it turned out (all words my daughters, I just wrote down what she said)…

Mecha-Hitler | Wolfenstein

Goody or baddy: ”Baddy”
Reason: ”Because it’s got two guns on each side and a …

‘Sick as a XBLIG’ is potentially a regular feature in which we play an Xbox Live Indie Game and then write about it. Today we are writing about Don’t Die Pluto.

At its most basic Don’t Die Pluto from developer AJspartan is about steering a thing while trying to avoid some things and deliberately trying to hit some other things. But scratch below the surface and Don’t Die Pluto reveals an emotionally complex story of disenfranchisement, empowerment, revenge, and also steering a thing while trying to avoid some things and deliberately trying to hit some other things.

The main character in Don’t Die Pluto is Pluto – a planet bullied by other planets, of which Earth appears to be the ringleader, for being small. This is based on a true story, because the actual real Pluto used to be a proper planet but then got kicked out of the planet club for being too small and got downgraded to the …

If you’ve enjoyed this Celebrity Gamer Profile, then please come and see our other Celebrity Gamer Profiles. We’ve got Bonnie Tyler, Daniel Day-Lewis, and Taylor Swift. …

Ever since the dawn of time the best video games have always had shooting of one kind or another in them. Space Indavers, GoldenEyes 007, Gran Theft Auto, Hayloft: Combat Involved – the list of great games with shooting in them is as long as the day is night. So with the next generation of PlayStations and Xboxes almost coming out, it’s really important for the games industry to have more games that have got shooting in them this time round. Here’s why…

Games with shooting are easy to play

Everybody understands shooting in games and the skill of shooting is transferrable from one shooting game to another. The instructions for all shooting games is: stick to move, trigger to shoot, and the three magic words: ‘just shoot everything’. That’s it. There are other buttons involved, but they aren’t important. Only the shooting button (which is actually usually a trigger or shoulder …

We love eating Doritos and talking about Doritos so here are some things in games that are sort of shaped like Doritos.

Connorʹs Arrowheads

Although this is an arrowhead from Assassin’s Creed 3, arrowheads in any game are sort of Doirito shaped. Lots of games feature bows and arrows. Despite being similar in shape, a Dorito would make a poor substitute for an actual arrowhead.

The Ship In The Atari 7800 Version of Asteroids

The two Doritos next to the score represent the remaining player lives. We put in the bullets ourselves to make it clear the Dorito is meant to be the ship and isn’t just a sort of Dorito shaped asteroid. Like an asteroid, a Dorito can break into many pieces.

Bowserʹs Shell Spikes

The background image is a picture of some foreign Dorito packs with a Photoshop effect to make it look a bit arty. Although not visible here, the writing on the pack seemed to be …

The fourth Assassin’s Creed game was announced recently. It’s called Assassin’s Creed 4: Pirate Hats and is about someone called Edgar Conman – he’s a time-travelling pirate assassin who has knives where his hands should be. He’s like Dr Who crossed with Edward Scissorhands crossed with Captain Pugwash. The aim of the game is to find one of Edgar’s relations who lives in the future. Once you’ve done that you’ve won the game.

Anyway, we know a heck of a lot about pirates and there are a few things we think Assassin’s Creed developer Ubisoft should know about to make sure they make the most historically accurate game possible. This is what we know about pirates:

Some pirates had two wooden legs

If you were a pirate during the early 18th Century it was desirable to have at least one wooden leg as it was a mark of a good pirate. However, having a wooden leg became so popular amongst …