No One Lives Forever is a spy-genre game franchise that first began in 2000. In both the first game and the sequel, you play Cate Archer, master spy of UNITY – a secret British organization, an organization that feels ripped straight out of a typical 1960's spy movie. As Archer, you are sent on various missions around the world, starting in Morocco. Multiple UNITY agents have been killed as the game begins, so Cate gets a quick promotion and sent on assignment to Morocco. The Morocco mission is long, and exciting. Aside from some of the “gimmick” levels involving skydiving without a parachute and a zero-gravity space station, the Morocco mission is perhaps my favorite, in both the mix of humor and large and spacious level design. You soon realize that H.A.R.M. is involved and the game takes off!

I honestly do not know how innovative the game was at the time, but it's hard to find another game that mixed so many different locales, land, air and sea so perfectly. You get a taste of East and West Germany, the Alps, escape from a sinking boat, scuba dive a shipwreck, *free fall from an airplane*, explore tropical jungles, zero gravity space stations and underground lairs. This game pretty much has it all.

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My next game is different from the other games that I've reviewed. After playing two adrenaline fueled games, it was time for something more low-key and the games on my Android just were not going to cut it. Myst is a game I revisit every few years, and the game itself has evolved since my first steps playing it on my childhood friend Kevin's old Macintosh machine in 1994.

Myst has had two major overhauls, Myst: Masterpiece Edition which was released in May 2000 and realMyst: Interactive 3D Edition which was released later in 2000. The latter is the version I've sat down to play over these past few days. I felt incredibly nostalgic. This game hit the spot.

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Quake III Arena is the follow up to the wildly successful Quake and Quake II games.

The game makes a departure from the single-player game play of its predecessors, instead shifting gears and focusing heavily on multi-player gaming so much so that playing the single-player game is simply playing a multi-player campaign against computer controlled bots.

The technology behind the game play was a step up in PC gaming. The id Tech 3 engine was fast, and detailed. Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Star Trek: Voyager Elite Force and Star Trek: Elite Force II are just a few games that used the engine.

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Some would argue that Resident Evil is the Godfather of the survival horror sub-genre.  You could definitely make a strong case for that, however, Resident Evil never really terrified me. But it would be foolish of me to ignore it.  After all, it is because of Shinji Mikami that we now have so many other great survival horror games to play.  There is one game that could be considered the best video game horror franchise period.  That honor would go to Silent Hill.

Fresh off the success of 1998’s blockbuster Metal Gear Solid, Konami decided to release a psychological horror title named Silent Hill in 1999.  There was nothing like it at the time. “Silent Hill's creators remarked that one of their main goals with the game was to frighten people on an instinctive level, and that's something that, in my mind, they've clearly succeeded at doing.”(Gamespot review Feb. 1999).  I love that.  The creators wanted to terrify you like no game before it. 

Silent Hill is frightening on a very different level.  Akira Yamaoka’s haunting soundtrack plays an enormous factor in this.  Using ambient industrial music and guttural sounds, the music is a character within itself.  When you aren’t being attacked by skinned dogs, demonic midgets or flying aberrations, the music is always there to remind you that you’re never safe.  While games like Resident Evil relied heavily on cheap scares, Silent Hill toyed with your head.

The game preys on our fear of the unknown.  For instance, Harry Mason is drawn to this town called Silent Hill to find his adopted daughter.  Why this town?  Why does the town seem abandoned?  Why is there a cop in an abandoned town?  Why are things getting so weird?  What are these creatures?  Why does the town turn into Hell at night?  These are all the questions to the player and to Harry, and while you may be completely taken aback by what’s occurring, the only way to find out is to go forth.

That’s what makes Silent Hill so…Silent Hill.  While playing the game I noticed myself remembering the first time I played it, and how I found myself in positions where I didn’t want to go any further because I was afraid of what was behind the door.  What other unknown and shocking surprises could there possibly be?  I was afraid, but I had to know.   I wanted to be scared because that’s what makes the experience so damn fun. 

The game does an excellent job of making you feel conflicted all the time.  You’re scared to go any further, yet you have the inexplicable desire to keep going.   Silent Hill may have lived in the shadow of the more popular Resident Evil, but manages to create its own legacy in the process.  Silent Hill is a hell of a game.  You can scoop it up on PSN for a mere $5.99.

I'm new here. Thanks for having me aboard.

It only took me 14 years, but I finally played Quake. It comes to some surprise to me that I had never played the original Quake before, which makes it all the more interesting that Quake II was and still is one of my favorite games. I wasted hundreds of hours of my life playing this game. Did I say wasted? No. Enhanced. Bettered. Some out there may not like the painfully simple first-person shooter video games – the kind where you hit some buttons, switches or levers spread around a map and kill a bunch of bad guys, but hey - they're my action film in video game form.

Taking Wikipedia's word for granted, Quake first reared its head with the first Commander Keen game in 1990. Originally titled The Fight for Justice, it would follow a character named Quake, "the strongest, most dangerous person on the continent." Quake in its final form is an odd mix of fantasy addled middle-ages to futuristic space-age building. It is literally Heretic meets Doom. The clash apparently comes from John Romero wanting to make a fantasy hand-to-hand combat game, while level designers Tim Willits and American McGee wanted a Doom-like game. Or so the story supposedly goes. That would make a lot of sense since the designs seem to really clash that way.

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This episode we discuss Dead Rising Case Zero,  the finer points of JRPG's in the classic Wild Arms, going on impulse game buying binges, revisiting Halo with ODST, PlayStation Plus and more.  Thanks for listening.  

Ending Music Credit: Flying Lotus

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