Dead Alert! Red Alert 3

Bring it on

I had high hopes for this run through. It had it all - a genre I considered myself good at, a game I hadn't played so it would be a new experience, it was modern so I could take plenty of nice looking screenshots.
Yep it was all adding up to be a doozy.
Guess what happened?

Dead! Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3: Reds Under the Ground

Well, obviously

We're deep into the C's now and with 'C' comes C&C,  one of my favourite franchises. I think I have all of them except the terrible FPS and the latest one which seemed a bit weird (walking bases that respawn sounded interesting, but I think I had other games to focus on). With three campaigns which can be played co-op or single player, this game is going to get a LOT of time between the three of us, so here's my first run at the solo Soviet campaign.

Skipped! Civilisation: Call To Power

Hey gang!

Just a note to say that I'm unable to install Civilisation: Call to Power. It just sticks at 61% and never goes any further.
I'm skipping it for now and moving on to Red Alert 3, but if you have any idea how to get it to work then let me know!

Dead? Call To Power 2

Yay?

Call To Power 2 could be the first game in this project which I've finished.

It could be.

I got to the end and I didn't die. I think that fulfils the criteria. There is some uncertainty though.

How did I reach this possibly astonishing conclusion? Read on...

Dead! - Bastion

Well, well, well. It had to happen eh.

After giving it all that in the previous video, I only bloody went and got myself killed didn't I.

Lets see how.

Wall of Duty: Bastion

Eh! Get it? Because it's like a walled structure yeah? And a game?

Urgh. It's been a while, give me some time to warm up the pipes. Good news is that I've finally got round to playing Bastion, after failing to save a zombie infested city. Inspired by Thom's latest video playthrough, I decided that it was about time you saw my awesome game skills - LIVE.

So.

Without further ado...

Red Dragon Age: Call to Power 2

This isn't from my game unfortunately*

Things have reached a precarious point for Owain Glyndwr. A couple of hundred years ago he took the Welsh people by the scruff of the neck and said - "Look here gang, this nomadding business is great and all, but have a look around you. This place is quite nice isn't it? So maybe we should take a chance, knock up some slightly more permanent dwellings and see how it works out for us? I mean there's plains, grassland, some ocean with some pearls in, what more could you want? Some bits are a bit marshy mind you, but we'll probably work out how to drain them one day (depending on what branch of the tech tree we prioritise). Come on everyone, let's give it crack eh?"

Today however, Owain and his now thousand strong population find themselves hemmed in by a large, well-armed civilisation who have shown no qualms about stretching their considerable muscles at the slightest hint of provocation. Aggressively expansionist, the tipping point has come, and some tough decisions will have to be made to ensure the future of the Welsh nation.

DEAD! Neil returns from *REDACTED* only to die at sea

Neil here.

Where have I been? Well, I can't really say. Remember that huge nuclear attack that wiped out most of Europe last week? No? That's because I'm good at my job baby. Moving on...

Now where were we? Ah yes, Aquaria. Last time I scribbled about this I got nicely tucked into the opening hour of a seemingly inoffensive little indie number about swimming around a little underwater maze. Around and around and around I'd go, making little splashes and singing to aquatic fauna. Yey.

Dead! - COD4 "Soap" MacRubbish

I think you can all pretty much guess how this went. I completed the tutorial and it told me I should play on Recruit. I chose 'Veteran' (You Will Not Survive).
"Are you sure?" it asked, "That difficulty is not recommended".

Well we'll just see about that...



And that's that. the one bit where I actually have to shoot some people and I'm killed instantly.
:(

Call to Power 2 next! Bring it ON!

Dead! Braid - Time Reverses For No Man

Braid is widely held to be a masterpiece. A hugely popular indie game with innovative mechanics, some excellent puzzling, sarcastic nods to platformers past and an interesting and grown-up storyline.
My playthrough of it lasts about a minute and a half.

Dead! Bookworm Adventures Vol. 2

Well, this is embarrassing.

Bookworm Adventures is a game for children. It's a fun way to practice your spelling from Popcap, who are widely known for their approachable, fun, and ultimately fairly easy games. You play 'Lex', a bookworm who is sucked inside the world of books and has to battle his way out by spelling the longest words you can from a four by four grid of random letters. There is no time limit and potions are given out liberally. Each opponent you defeat replenishes your health to full.
I have just been beaten by a boss less than half way through the game.

Dead! Atom Zombie un-Smasher

We can learn much from history, as my old history teacher would harp on about. "mrbenn," he used to say, "mankind's greatest triumphs and catastrophes are written in the annals of history; moments of true inspiration, mistakes that we must not make again. History is probably the greatest indicator as to who we are, as a species."

Well, he would say that. It was his chosen subject to teach.

However, he would be right when it came to zombie disaster management, in that my time in charge would surely be written down in history as one of the greatest failings of our time.

Dead! Well, defeated. Blood Bowl

Ah, the sport of kings! That's horse racing. Blood Bowl on the other hand is a turn-based sport board game set in the Warhammer universe. It's kind of like American football but with the flow and excitement removed and fantasy clichés and  random dice rolls added. Let's see how my team-The Baker Street Irregulars-got on in their first season in the top flight.

Dead! (Inside) - Black and White

Well, I don't know what to say really. I haven't died in the game, but I have died inside, and my enthusiasm for playing and writing about it is also close to death which is why, for the sake of the project, I've decided to just stop playing it.

Black and White: Find out which of 2 possible people you REALLY are

So Black and White then. Not a game I've been looking forward to particularly. It poses a lot of problems, both personal and practical and I'm not sure how it'll pan out just yet. Firstly, I got a bit sick of it when it first came out. It's lengthy unskippable tutorial, and laboured, hand-holding opening hour really didn't hold up to replays. It's also one of those games where the choices are so 'black and white' that it's easy to make sure you pick the 'right' one depending on your intended play-style. There's no chance you'll do something assuming it was good but find out it was actually evil. The other big issue is how I should calculate failure. As a God I can't die, and I don't remember ever reaching a point where my village exploded or anything. Can your creature die? That might be a good measure. Anyway, let's see how I got on...

Atom Zombie Smasher

I always talk about how I think I'd be pretty good at surviving the zombie apocalypse, so much so, that I really do want it to happen. Really. I do. I've seen enough zombie films in my time, so I know how they move and what they feast on. How to get rid of them? Well, I've practically grown up playing video games, so obviously I know to aim for the head. My youth was training.

The flat I'm currently renting seems to be perfectly designed against the undead horde, too. Firstly, I'm on the 2nd floor in this house. Second, the narrow entrance to our flat acts as a brilliant choke point. Thirdly, my cupboards are well stocked with baked beans and green herbs. And lastly, I own a shotgun.

Okay, well I might have embellished that a little bit.

I actually live on the first floor.

What I would be very rubbish at though, is evacuating a whole city. I can't stand middle management, you see. Unfortunately for me, this would be the goal of the next game on the list: Atom Zombie Smasher.

Dead! Bioshocked.

I knew my death was only moments away so I thought I'd video the moment for all to see. In the end though it didn't quite turn out that way...

Bioshock - It's Good to 'B' Back

Legend

Let's not beat around the bush, Bioshock is amazing. This is the first game on my list that I've really looked forward to. I only played it once and it was long enough ago that I don't remember much of the details, so this was more of a rediscovery than a return to an old friend. The one thing I do remember is that it was hard. I remember redoing several sections and regularly needing the vita-chambers and that was on normal and in my twitch FPS heyday. I have no idea how I'm going to cope on hard with my rusty old man APM.

Let's find out!

Battlefield NOW!

It was supposed to be so damn beautiful. For our big Battlefield 2 event, the Ninth Life were to link up together, destroy noobs on-line and do so with a swagger and a video camera strapped to our faces. It was to push the boundaries of video game blogging and enter us into a new era of vidcasting and voice wording. So, to kick start this new venture, we chose an ancient game that was on-line and we'd never used the video capturing software before. NINTH LIFE, ASSEMBLE!

Death and the Letter 'A'

The last game of the A's for me is Audiosurf, but unfortunately it doesn't really fit this project well. Audiosurf is about beating high scores and climbing the global leaderboard, but failure isn't really possible in a 'death' sense, only in a 'not doing as well as you could have done' sense. I gave it a bash though, because why not?

Dead! - Aquaria

"My story will become your own, and yours will become mine."

There was a time when I was just a fish woman in a crystal. I broke free. I sung songs to the fauna of Home Springs. I collected many recipes. I acquired knowledge of my past, not through ancestry.co.uk, but by slaying underwater manifestations of gods. I got laid in a clam.

I did this and much, much more.

Ahh crap. I'm dead.

First Project Update!

Firstly, we'd all like to thank you guys so much for your support for this project, and for taking the time read about us failing at games. We just hit over 30,000 views, across the internets, which is simply an incredible achievement for us. We love checking out the blogging stats in the morning and seeing where all the hits are  coming from!.

We've got lots of ideas on which direction we want to take it, but we're pretty new to all this blog malarkey, so we're learning as we're going. With that in mind, here is the first actual project update!

Aquaria - Sun, Sea, Sex

When starting this blog with Thom and Neil, I had assumed we would speed through our collection in record time. I mean, we're not the young gamers we used to be. Gone are the nights when you'd take it in turns to complete an endurance race in Gran Turismo, the 4am playthroughs of a newly released game, the endless 4-player goldeneye/mario kart sessions.

In fact, our average time per game played so far, on this blog, must be around the 15 minute mark. So we should be getting through the list quite quickly, right? 

However...at over 5hrs (and counting) Aquaria is surely going to screw that statistic.

Dead: Amnesia or How I Need to Learn to Stop Enjoying Games

Amnesia - The Annoying Design

So it seems like starting to enjoy a game is a herald of my upcoming death. What did I say just before my death in Conan?

"Just as I'm starting to remember what I like about Conan, and thinking that it might be fun to get stuck into it again for a while, it's all over"

I'm not going to lie I'm pretty annoyed at Amnesia right now. Just as I start to fall for it, and think that maybe there's a game underneath all the suspense, it reveals itself to be a big old liar.

It went as follows:

Amnesia - Am-(better than)-Neilisyeah?

...And Ben. I'm better than him too. Although only because I knew what was coming because of his runthrough.

And did I mention my name is Brigadier Camembert? Because it is!

Let's do this.

No wonder I'm not scared with a name like that

Aquaria - Episode III: Revenge of the Fish

To do list:
1) Punish Tubbs for his/her insolence.
2) Improve my cooking skills.
3) Redecorate the flat.
4) Sing a bit more.
5) Not die.

Amnesia - Why Does This Seem Familiar?

These are some of the first words you see when you start Amnesia: The Dark Descent:

Amnesia should not be played to win. Instead focus on immersing yourself in the game's world and story.

Sorry, but no.

Aquaria: Swimming / Cooking / Killing

Appearances can be deceiving. 

In my last playthrough of Aquaria, I had kinda deemed it a casual game. You swim about, collecting recipes and singing to things; avoiding crabs and the like. So upon launching it from steam, and after stirring from my red crystal cocoon, I was preparing myself for pretty much more of the same.

What I didn't anticipate was becoming some sort of fire fish daemon, who in turn would be hell bent on destroying any squid/crab/fish who stood in my way...

(though I did sing a lot...and collected more recipes)

Dead: Aliens vs. Predator vs. Aliens vs. Predator 2

Sorry I'm still FRAPless

With AvP's marine campaign sadly cut short due to a somewhat rude evisceration (and I mean impolite rather than poorly made, my viscera was externalised exquisitely) it's time to look to the monsters.

Aliens vs. Predator 2: Dead Frosty

Get off my ceiling you blimmin' pest!

With AvP dispatched in such rapid style (3 deaths in under an hour! What a feat!) it's time to look to the sequel for my first completion. At the time I remember not enjoying AvP2 as much as the first, but from a modern perspective, I'm looking forward to a slightly more mature FPS that's learned a few lessons from its predecessors. I decide to save the best for last this time and head straight for the Marine campaign. Let's see how it goes.