Day 55 of 100 Happy Gaming Days: Metal Gear Rising Revengeance Poster

What's so special about a poster? Well, I'll tell you.

I got this by going to Play Expo a couple of years ago where Konami were demoing MGR: Revengeance. We stood in a queue for what seemed like forever where Konami had about 15 PS3's set up with a 10-15 minute demo. Konami were apparently demoing Zone of the Enders as well but I don't remember seeing it...

Anyway they had a tutorial mode involving the carving of watermelons, which was fun for a couple minutes, but I wanted to see the mission mode that Konami had brought with them. It was awesome dashing around slicing up bad guys and demolishing mechanical monsters, I had to restart at one point when I got shot to pieces, but I managed to finish the demo with only seconds to spare and one of the reps gave me this holographic poster.

It may not seem like much but getting to play a game months before it's released is fantastic, and getting a little something to take home with you makes it even more awesome. Can't wait for Play Expo 2014. ^_^

Day 39 of 100 Happy Gaming Days: Silent Hill

I finally picked up a copy of Silent Hill, and about time too considering I've played all of the others (except Book of Memories on PS Vita but who cares about that). 

Silent Hill follows the story of Harry Mason, a writer who takes his 7 year old daughter, Cheryl, to Silent Hill for a holiday. While driving to their destination Harry suddenly loses control of his car and crashes just outside of town. When he regains consciousness his daughter is nowhere to be found, so Harry journey's to the infamous town to find her (I bet he was wishing he went to Blackpool).

I'm about 2 hours into the game and I'm starting to prefer this one over Silent Hill 2. Despite the fact it hasn't aged well graphically, Silent Hill has retained its chilling atmosphere and will certainly have you sleeping with one eye open after a late night gaming session.

Where Resident Evil tried to harness your fear with all-out gore, Silent Hill went for a more unnerving psychological experience thanks to the disturbing creatures and characters that inhabit the world. There's some nice use of Dutch camera angles in Silent Hill (I don't recall them being used in the sequel), following the character and twisting around while not compromising the controls was an impressive feat. A lot of attention went into the sound production as well, the slightest noise in this game can literally have you jump right out of your skin.

Any developer working on the latest installments of Silent Hill should really learn from the series origins. In the likes of Homecoming and Downpour for example, the transition from the real world to other world is a loud obnoxious affair, with lots of special effects and it generally isn't frightening. The first game on the other hand provides a much more subtle transformation and hence much more unnerving as you start to question what's going on.

I'm looking forward to playing through the rest of Silent Hill as I've become a huge fan of the franchise after playing through the rest of series, and it's been fantastic seeing how it all began. Like any series Silent Hill has had its highs, and its lows, but we can always revisit (and in this case discover) the games that made Silent Hill famous and have them terrify us all over again.

Day 19 of 100 Happy Gaming Days: Sunset Riders

Sunset Riders is my favourite western game, after Red Dead Redemption of course.

This western-style arcade game from Konami was ported over to the SNES and Mega Drive/Genesis. It was a side-scrolling run-and-gun shooter where players would have to blast their way through wild west themed levels and defeat a boss to collect a bounty. The console version has two playable characters; a young gunslinger named Billy and a shotgun wielding Mexican named Cormano, other than the weapons there wasn't really any difference depending on who you played as. The game also featured a two player co-op mode so you could tackle the game together with a friend.

The SNES version of the game has some slight differences due to Nintendo's family friendly policies. The Mega Drive version featured female enemies that threw dynamite at you, but these have been replaced with male bandits in the SNES version, probably Nintendo not wanting to glorify violence towards women. Also the Native American themed boss in the Mega Drive version, known as Chief Scalpem, was renamed Chief Wigam in the SNES version.

Sunset Riders is perfect if you want something simple to just pick up and play, so grab a buddy a wreak some havoc through the west. Yee-hah!