The Mutant Descendants in Uncharted: Drake's Fortune

No one can deny the success of Uncharted: Drake's Fortune.  Its large-scale levels, set mostly in ancient ruins full of hazards and treasures, feel like a throwback to the Tomb Raider games as well as the Indiana Jones movies.  And just like Lara Croft and Indy, Nathan Drake encounters some elements of the supernatural on his adventures.

Drake has no idea what he's in for.

About 80% of Uncharted consists of exploring ruins and gunning down rival treasure hunters.  For the most part, the ruined temples and other various structures look incredible, yet wildly implausible (I seriously doubt some of these giant structures could have been built without advanced technology).  Despite this, the game feels like it is grounded in the real world, and a few hours into Uncharted you'll think you've nailed what the atmosphere of the game will be like.

These illusions are shattered later on in the game, when we are introduced to mutant zombie-ish characters known as the Descendants.  It turns out that the main treasure Drake is looking for: El Dorado, a giant statue made out of gold, contains some sort of virus/curse/(insert your favorite magic voodoo here).  This curse has enough potency to rapidly turn a person into a mindless, vicious zombie.

Apparently a group of Spanish settlers who came into contact with El Dorado (and moved it to an island where the game later takes place) were all infected.  These mutants continued to breed for hundreds of years until Drake encounters them in their current horrifying forms.  While this does add some variation to the combat, I couldn't help but feel that adding zombies was out of place for this game (also, do we really need zombies in so many games?!).  To the game's credit though, there is one dark, spooky level involving the Descendants attacking Drake at different intervals, which is actually quite good.

What do you guys think? Should they have left zombies out of Uncharted, and kept it as a straight-up tomb raiding game?

The Ghostly Poes in Zelda: Ocarina of Time

What's Halloween without a good ghost story?  Well how about this: once upon a time in the land of Hyrule, a hero named Link encountered many ghosts on his journeys.  The ghosts are called Poes, and in this article we'll be looking at their appearances in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.

In Ocarina of Time, you will encounter Poes all over Hyrule, but their main haunt is the Kakariko Village graveyard.  If Link is foolish enough to start disturbing the graves by pulling back their headstones, Poes will appear and begin patrolling the graveyard.  These ghosts are all pretty similar in appearance, wearing a hood which hides all facial features except for their glowing eyes, and carrying a lantern.

Expect to find a large concentration of ghosts here.

Poes will attack Link by charging at him while spinning their lantern around.  Trying to lock on to most Poes will cause them to go invisible, eliminating any easy slingshot/bow-and-arrow attacks.  Successfully defeating these ghosts will allow you to capture their spirit, which you can then drink (gross), or sell to a Poe collector.

There are various special Poes found throughout the game, such as Big Poes who appear at specific locations in Hyrule field, which fetch a high price at the Poe Collector.  Another example are four special Poes found in the Forest Temple, which must be defeated in order to advance to the temple's boss.

A Big Poe eludes capture.

While not very scary, these ghosts add a little bit of darkness to Ocarina of Time, and they are for the most part well-placed in areas of Hyrule that should be haunted (the land does have a bloody history after all).

Zombies in Minecraft: The Blocky Undead

Ah good old Minecraft, the addicting sandbox game where you can build anything, provided you're fine with using lego-style blocks.  The game includes a day/night time cycle, and whereas building a masterpiece in the morning can be a peaceful experience, nighttime is when the game decides to unleash its horrors upon you.  You wouldn't think that a game like this would include hordes of undead zombies, but it does....yes it does.

Appearance-wise, the zombies in Minecraft aren't too threatening (there's not too much a graphics artist can do with limited blocks), but once you run into one in the pitch black, you will be afraid.  You can usually tell when a zombie is around by their distinctive moaning sounds, at which point you should have your sword equipped for battle.  In terms of combat, zombies will attempt to melee you to death (sadly the graphics don't allow for detailed flesh-biting animations).

One entertaining/horrifying feature of zombies is that they will attack any doors they encounter, producing loud pounding sounds that are startling, and have you wondering if your block fortress is really all that safe.  On higher difficulty levels, zombies can actually break down doors, raising the terror level quite a bit.

Just when you thought you were safe...

In conclusion, when playing Minecraft, always wear armor, always carry a sword, and fortify your base as well as you can (place torches everywhere!).  If you prefer to ignore this advice, then at least make sure to avoid leaving your safe areas until the sun comes out, which will cause these undead terrors to burst into flame and die.

Gregg the Grim Reaper: A Funny Take on Death

Today let's continue our adventure into Halloween-ish gaming experiences by talking once again about Conker's Bad Fur Day.  Oddly enough, this game does have some elements that would fit in great with Halloween, despite being very humorous.

The first time you die in the game Conker is sent to the afterlife, where a gigantic hooded shadow slowly approaches him, speaking in a booming voice and claiming that Conker is dead.  However as this imposing figure steps into the light, we discover that he's a short little grim reaper speaking into a megaphone to produce the threatening voice.  The megaphone breaks as soon as the reaper becomes visible to Conker, revealing that the little guy has a hilarious squeaky voice.  And this is how we are introduced to Rare's version of Death: Gregg the Grim Reaper.

Death has never been this laughable.

Gregg's main purpose in the game is to explain how to collect extra lives, through the use of squirrel tails found throughout the levels.  According to him, as long as Conker has some tails in his inventory, he'll be "dead, but not quite" whenever he gets killed somewhere.

Besides being short (which Conker points out, but is shut up real fast thanks to a snappy reply from Gregg), another standout feature of Gregg is that he hates cats.  Multiple times he will go off on a tangent and start talking about why he can't stand them, and later on in the game Conker finds Gregg on a dock, attempting to kill (you guessed it) catfish.

Conker's conversations with Gregg are something that must be experienced, so for your enjoyment here are some videos of these encounters:

Gregg's introduction:


Gregg going fishing:


That wraps up our quick look at the non-scary grim reaper, Gregg!

The Horrific Nurses of Silent Hill 2

It's October once again, and that can only mean one thing: Halloween is in the air!  This month in Strange Moments in Gaming will be dedicated entirely to spooky gaming, so let's get started!  Today we'll be revisiting our favorite fog-and-monster infested town: Silent Hill.  More specifically, the nurse monsters in Silent Hill 2.

As you all know, each Silent Hill game custom tailors its monsters to reflect the psyche of the game's protagonist.  In the case of Silent Hill 2, we encounter hordes of monstrous nurses which are representative of protagonist James' terrible memories of his wife's fatal sickness.  These nurses have so many horrifying features that just remembering a play-through of this game is enough to give you the creeps.

When these terrors catch sight of James, they unleash a blood-curdling guttural scream, and begin shuffling towards him with their unnerving gait.  Seeing their heads lazily hanging down only adds to the disturbing appearance.  Speaking of heads and disturbing features, the nurses either have no face (just a faint outline where the face should be), or their face consists of a bloody mouth.  While you're taking in all this visual input, the nurses will swarm James and attempt to beat him to death using steel pipes (seems like an odd choice of weapon for a nurse, but whatever).

Now that you have all these wonderful images in your head, I think this is a good time to wrap up this first Halloween/spooky themed gaming article.  Did you guys play Silent Hill 2? If so, were you unnerved by the series' signature nurses?

Final Fantasy X: The Infamous Laughing Scene

I think it's time to pick on Final Fantasy X again!  Despite being a really fun (if way too linear) Final Fantasy game, the cast of characters can be awkward and annoying at times.  Unfortunately for main character Tidus, he's awkward and annoying all the time.  In a past blog entry I already picked on Tidus pretty hard, but why stop there?

Today let's take a look at the infamous "laughing scene" in FFX.  In this scene, summoner Yuna is trying to cheer up Tidus, who's depressed about being torn away from his home and dropped into the world of Spira.  Yuna explains that her secret to keeping her spirits up is to make herself smile, as well as laugh.  Tidus then attempts these actions, with disastrous results.


You'd be hard-pressed to find a more awkward instance of forced laughter in any other game.  I dare you to watch this whole scene without cringing once, truly it's an impossible feat.  Thank you Final Fantasy X, for providing us with tons of awkward moments we can look back on and laugh at.

The Freaks of Twisted Metal Black: Mr. Grimm

Previously on The Freaks of Twisted Metal: Black, we met the mutilated boxer known as No-Face.  In continuing with our coverage of all the psychos in Twisted Metal: Black, today let's take a look at one of the most well-known characters in the series: Mr. Grimm.

Mr. Grimm is one of the few characters who makes an appearance in every Twisted Metal game.  This scythe-wielding bad-ass always rides a motorcycle into battle (with the exception of the sub-par Twisted Metal 4), and is usually introduced to us as the one and only Grim Reaper.  His storyline is pretty consistent throughout most of the games; he enters the contest in order to consume as many souls as possible.

In Twisted Metal: Black, the developers abandoned Mr. Grimm's supernatural aspects in favor of a more realistic representation.  In this game, Mr. Grimm is a regular human being; a Vietnam War veteran to be exact.  At the beginning of the game he is being contained in the asylum because of an extreme case of post-traumatic stress disorder, as well as another mental issue that we'll get to in a moment.

It turns out that back in the war, Mr. Grimm (we are never told what his real name is) and his best friend Benny were captured and locked in a cave after witnessing their whole squad get annihilated.  This resulted in Benny dying in the cave, while Mr. Grimm had to result to cannibalizing Benny's corpse in order to survive.  Going insane from this experience, Mr. Grimm makes himself a helmet out of Benny's skull, giving him an appearance more familiar to Twisted Metal fans.

As the game goes on, we learn that Mr. Grimm has developed a taste for human flesh, making him a consumer of humans rather than the consumer of human souls.  This definitely makes him one of the most disgusting characters in Twisted Metal: Black.  What did you guys think of this incarnation of Mr. Grimm?  Did you prefer him as the Grim Reaper?