Awesome Game Trailers: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Killing Monsters Cinematic Trailer

Purple Haze

«Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon» serves up VHS era nostalgia by the bucket for those of us who remember the eighties as a purple neon haze.

It is the first game I have seen fit to pre-order based on the awesomeness of its cover art design.

This is a game which definitively doesn't take itself too seriously. It might be appropriate to call it a spoof on eighties action B-movies like «Eliminators», but based on the amount of enthusiasm and care which has been channeled into the project, I am rather leaning towards tribute.

Ubisoft even convinced Michael Biehn, co-star of «The Terminator» and «Aliens» to voice the main character. Also, it has 16-Bit era pixel-art cut-scenes and fluorescent dinosaurs who shoot LASERS! What's not to like :)

Of special note is the soundtrack, composed by Australian duo Power Glove who has managed to create a truly inspired synth-based soundtrack of the kind you rarely find anymore.

The tracks generally have a thematic resemblance to compositions from legendary movie composer Vangelis.

Particularly the main theme has a strong «Blade Runner» vibe to it. Other tracks like «Blood Dragon Theme (Reprise)» invoke the sonic imagery of Harold Faltermeyer with a dash of Jean Michel Jarre. Brilliant stuff.

Realism in gaming

I had an epiphany a few years into the 7th console generation. I found that I was no longer particularly fond of video games. This surprised me, as I had loved gaming ever since the early eighties and games had up to this point kept getting better as they evolved.

At the time, I had a clunky, big and somewhat noisy initial model Playstation 3. This was the one which was still backwards compatible with older Playstation titles, and I found that instead of enjoying new games on it, I primarily used it to watch movies or replay older Playstation games.

I initially figured that this probably meant I was getting too old to be a gamer. I had often suspected the day would eventually come, and that what still kept me around was likely just nostalgia.

As it turned out though, I was just playing the wrong games.

I had made the mistake of attributing my disenchantment with contemporary titles to internal factors, instead of the real issue, which was that most games at the time just weren’t very good.

This was the age of the “realistic" first or third person shooter, where realism mostly meant that level designers had to use a lot of grey or brown assets.

Fortunately, games like: «Braid» and «Geometry Wars» (which I discovered quite late), with their colourful and completely unrealistic play-fields rekindled my passion for gaming again. As it turns out, I like my games to not be "realistic".

Awesome Game Trailers: BattleBlock Theater

UPDATE (06.03.2014): The release of «BattleBlock Theater» on Steam was accompanied by an additional trailer, just as awesome and hilarious as the original one.