Garry's Mod - My Top 5 Downloads

I'm a great fan of Garry's mod. It offers tons of possibilities, from building stuff to putting NPC's against eachother in twisted cage matches. Anyway, here's a list of the Top 5 Garry's mod Addons that I think everyone should have, in no particular order.

1-Inflator


I can't think of what other people use the inflator tool for, personally I use it for inflating headcrabs to twice the size and then watching the chase that ensues with a bemused NPC. The left click makes NPC's, living or dead, bigger. Arms can become bigger, as well as legs, depending on where you click. Further comedic value is added by the fact that right click shrinks. There's nothing more scary than running around gm_construct being chased by tiny, spider sized headcrabs.

It can be found here

2- Stacker



The stacker is a great tool primarily because of it's usefulness. Buildings can be made out of anything quickly and accurately. However, not being architecturally talented, I use it to create massive towers of explosive barrels, and then watching the fireworks display that ensues. Either way, it's a tool that can't be missed.

It can be found here

3- Laser


The laser tool can be used in many ways, for defence when making bases, or for traps for dimwitted zombies. The laser tool comes with different emitters and laser patterns, which means you can customise how your vapourise enemies, as pictured above. You can also alter the damage the laser does, if you just want to give your enemies a little warning before destroying them.

It can be found here

4- Iron Man


With the release of the new Iron Man film, "kliker" released a Garry's mod addon that allows you to play as the man himself. The addon has many different features, reloading changes between 3 iron man powers; a unibeam, atomic blast and uni nade, all are harnessed by using right click. Jumping also initiated a jetpack mode, and players will find have their health meter boosted. My favourite feature of this was the small clip of Black Sabbath's "Iron Man" when you select the Iron Man weapon.

It can be found here

5- Explosives


The explosive addon supplies you with various atomic bombs and missiles that can be armed by aiming at them and pressing E. Various other explosives can be attached to make a bigger bomb, as pictured above. My favourite feature of this addon is the TNT, as the more you add together the bigger the explosion, often leading in my demise as I fail to run away in time.

I could not find the original, but a similar one can be located here.

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Team Fortress 2 – Updates ruining gameplay?

I seem to share a rare opinion on the new updates that Valve are releasing for Team Fortress 2. While many welcome with open arms the new load out system and the changes for each class that are going to be released, I myself see it as ruining the game.

I became such a fan of Team Fortress 2 due to the fun of all the classes being extremely fair, complementing each other perfectly, but I think these updates are taking away this brilliant quality. Many of you witnessed how after the medic update, every server was full of German accented, lab coat wearing players, desperately trying to unlock the new achievements before everyone else, giving them the new and improved load outs. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s a great idea that they’re trying to change it to make it more fun, but why change it when it was fine in the first place! Many of you will disagree but I felt the simplicity of Team Fortress 2 was one of its strong points, and while this technical altering of classes may suit other people, but it just seems like one massive complication, and also, after all the updates, will the game really be fair anymore?

That’s where I’d like to mention another point. Achievements. I, like many people, was happy to see Steam releasing achievements for their games, Xbox live had this for a while, and it really does make the games more fun, but with the increasing amount of achievements, and the rewards that tie in with them, it feels like many people are playing games as they feel under pressure to get these achievements.

They also spread the Team Fortress updates to Day of Defeat, forcing it into a “Steam works beta” when it was a near perfect game already, which annoyed some of the small but dedicated fan base Day of Defeat had. The worst change was copying the “zoom in and who just killed you” camera from Team Fortress and placing it in Day of Defeat, which ruins the entire sniper strategy that Day of Defeat had.

To sum it all up, I enjoyed Team Fortress 2 before the updates, and I think all this ubersaw, and axetinguisher or whatever the hell it’s called, is something that will end up ruining a perfectly fun, fair game. Perhaps most of the love for these load outs is based around it being something new, either way I anticipate with the new Pyro updates, servers will be filled with much of the same overplaying classes.

F-zero - Retro Racing for the Virtual Console

Platform – SNES/Virtual Console

Number of Players – 1-2

ESRB- E (Suitable for everyone)

Release on Virtual Console (EU) – December 8^th 2006

Release on SNES (EU) June 4^th 1992

In 1992, Nintendo’s F-zero was released in Europe for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. This release spawned a number of sequels and the successfulness of the F-zero series as it is today. F-zero was also the first game to introduce characters from the F-zero series that are familiar with gamers today, the most famous of these being “Captain Falcon” who has been featured in the successful Smash Bro’s series, although I’ve seen him more in “Falcon Punch” abortion jokes. Many also see the SNES release of F-zero as setting the standard for the racing genre, which seems fair as the game still plays well today, despite the massive amount of racing games that have been released after (See; Burnout 1, Burnout 2, Burnout 3, Burnout Revenge, Burnout Legends, Burnout Dominator, Burnout Paradise etc.).

The first thing to surprised me when playing F-zero is the quick transition from selection screen to actual gameplay, despite being an old game and with limited technology, the loading process is surprisingly quick, even with the 3D graphics that F-zero boasts. The use of sprites in the game creates an almost realistic 3D experience, which is surprising as the game is over 10 years old. A small point could be made that the variation in car colours makes it easy to differentiate cars from a distance, whether they are zooming ahead of you, or passing behind you, although I found 3 or 4 that were the same and were not playable, which confused the hell out of me.

As mentioned before, F-zero has excellent gameplay that stands up through time. I found myself able to pick up and play this game almost instantly, and the races were truly exciting and fast paced. I myself am not a great fan of racing games, the idea of spending 3 minutes racing round a track and being beaten at the last minute isn’t my idea of fun, and causes frustration, however I still enjoyed F-zero. Most of the races are short and sweet, and there are various speed boosts and obstacles that can help you to maintain a spot at number 1, whilst still making the gameplay balanced.

The tracks that appear in the game are very varied and each has different obstacles, gaps and problems that keep the gameplay fun. Mute city is a personal favourite of mine, as the music accompanying the track is brilliant, and really makes the gameplay more exciting.

A minor gripe I had with F-zero was with the controls, as breaking and accelerating aren’t as smooth as they could be, and cause some problems, especially when playing with a SNES gamepad. I was also surprised at the lack of choice you had when selecting a car, there isn’t much variety, although each car has its own set of advantages and disadvantages.

Overall, F-zero is a great game and I’d recommend anyone to buy it on the Virtual console, whether they like racing games or not. If you can ignore the small gripes and appreciate the gameplay and graphics, then you’ll enjoy this. I rate it 8/10.