Christmas Games Part One

Are you ready for Christmas Madness? 
We know we are. Best source for Christmas games? For me- Big Fish Games!
I just love casual games that focus more on the atmosphere than on gameplay. It's that kind of time in the year. Lazy and cozy. With warm tea with cinnamon and snow outside.

There are my favorite ones: 

Christmas Adventure- Candy Storm:
It's a wonderful game where you play a character that is stuck in the snow because two witches made a mistake and made his car completely out of candy! It's funny. These three witches are so funny. I loved collecting things for them. I also managed to finish the game without walktrough.  
Click on the image below to buy the game or play the free demo:



Holly- A Christmas Tale:
Holly is a mother that dreams she becomes Santa's Fairy and helps him get the presents for children all around the world- even Africa and Japan. Embark on epic journey with Santa and elves. 
Click on the image below to buy the game or play the free demo:

 

Christmas Wonderland: 
Game that takes you on the journey to find all the hidden object that Santa needs. If you don't have much time for video games- this one is perfect. Its short and sweet.  
Click on the image below to buy the game or play the free demo:



Christmas Carol:
This one is more like a serious challenge. I just love this game. It's a tale we all know but this game takes it to a whole new level. You come to help your Uncle Scrooge, but some friendly Christmas ghosts have other plans for him… and you. 
Click on the image below to buy the game or play the free demo:

 

Check them all on:
Big Fish Home Page

Check out our blog for part 2! And maybe part 3 or 4. It depends on how long will we enjoy this christmas madness!

Game Review: The Cat Lady

The Cat Lady is a psychological horror graphic adventure game developed by Remigiusz Michalski released on December 2012 in English. It is an indie game made using Adventure Game Studio

 First, I must say that this is a game you either love or hate. I think there is no middle way here.  I don’t just like it- I love it.

In this game you play as character named Susan Ashwort, a chronically depressed, middle-aged woman with no friends- except maybe just cats. 

Now- if you want to play this game- STOP here. This is a serious spoiler alert.  You don’t want to spoil yourself fun of playing this game.

The game starts with your suicide. Yes- a suicide. You end up in a limbo kind of place where you meet the queen of Maggots that offers you a job. Well- we can call it a job. You must kill some parasites. That’s how she calls some people that really deserve to die. She brings you back to your old life and now you are immortal. Parasites can kill you, but- you will be back!

So- what are the things I loved the most about this game? Well- I would probably say the story line. It is absolutely fantastic. The whole idea behind the game, all the things that happen to Susan, her friendship with Mitzi, all the deranged people that she kills in the game and of course- music.

I was playing this game for hours and never had enough of it. I can’t describe how I felt in the end of the game when I first saw colors, because you are constantly playing in black and white world, with occasional drops of red. If you have suffered from depression in the past this game will hit you hard. If you wanted to know how a suicidal person feels this game is like walking in her shoes.

If you like deep and emotional games- you should try this one.

First  40 minutes:

Check out my whole walktrough on this link:  The Cat Lady Video Walktrough

 

Rating:

9/10

Dinosaur Movies: Unknown Island (1948)

Not a bad movie. Story is very good, classical island lost in time type. Group of adventurers travel to the lost uncharted island to take a photos of live prehistoric animals, and there mutiny and megalomania take place and everything goes to ruin. Effects are good and drawn backgrounds are beautifull, but I cannot swallow those dinosaurs though, they are dull and sloppy, very slow, that's not how dinosaurs should act like. No matter it's an old movie, effects are not problem but visualization of dinosaur behavior. Last battle is good though, kinda ripped of King Kong, but nice.
All in all solid movie to watch, not in top of my list of good dinosaur movies

Rating: 6/10

Movie Review: Doragon Heddo (Dragon Head) 2003

Dragon Head is post apocalyptic disaster manga by Minetaro Mochizuki.This was very weird Japanese movie. The major theme in the books is fear. As the woman in the ruined village said, a balance needs to be found between feeling fear and giving into it. Another theme is mystery. It is never stated exactly what happened. The characters guess that a meteor hit Mount Fuji, but it seems that the researcher had something to do with it—perhaps by assassinating the Japanese government, or by use of the nuclear weapons. It is also not stated what condition the rest of the world is in—we learn that some of them have unavailable governments, but they seem to still have a working military. We do not learn any more than the characters. Plot evolves around boy and girl who have awakened on train that was trapped in tunnel, and they realize that something is gone very wrong with the world. Whole Japan is covered in ashes, and everything is in post apocalyptic state, ruins and crazy people all around. They say it's the Earth magnetic field that is causing humans to go mad and be more violent and aggressive. And we have giant volcano that erupts every once in a while and rains down fireballs from the sky, so I guess something is gone wrong with Earth's core. So we follow journey of those two teenagers on their way trying to find safe harbor and remains of human civilization. Human survivors find food storages deep underground in cases of catastrophes like that, but that food is genetically changed. Persons who eat it, became drugged and lose all their feelings, just became puppets, that was also very strange part of the movie, as I said it's not clearly stated why such food is developed, is it government's doing or what. Acting is very good, music is also very good. Movie remind me little on ''lord of the flies'' but with Japanese touch. Effects are also on high level and awesome. Some scenes are little shockful and too violent, but that's just that dose of weirdness that we find in Japanese movies. All in all, very nice movie, sometimes it's slow paced, and it has some weird dialogues, and it's two hours long (I love long movies). I recommend you watch it if you like Asian cinema. You could have fun two hours.
rating: 7/10

Russian Fantasy: Alye Parusa (Scarlet Sails) 1961

This is movie from the hands of great Russian fantasy maker Aleksandr Ptushko, it is one of his more realistic films. It's based on Alexander Grin's 1923 adventure novel of the same name. It is happening in the late 19th century, and it is beautiful story of true love and adventure. The setting is a small fishing village. The former seaman Longren raises his daughter Assol alone after losing his beloved wife, making a meager living by selling the toy boats he carves from wood. As a child, Assol encounters an old man who claims to be a wizard and promises the girl that one day a prince will come on a ship with scarlet sails to carry her away. The villagers scoff but Assol believes her dream will come true one day. Arthur Grey is a nobleman's son who breaks away from his cruel father to pursue a life at sea, and eventually becomes the captain of a merchant vessel. Having set to port at Assol's village, he spies the young maiden sleeping in the forest and falls in love. After inquiring in the village he learns of Assol's dream and sets about to make it come true. This movie has a beautiful surroundings, I cannot resist such great nature landscapes and old Russian villages. Whole movie has this fairytale feeling in it. If you're into fantasy, and like those magical movies of old, be sure to give this one a watch, it's really awesome piece of Russian fantasy filmography.

rating:10/10

Russian Fantasy Movies Reviews

I got a large collection of old Russian Fantasy Movies, I'm great fan of those old magical movies, so I'll be doing some series of reviews on those, every time when I see one of those I'll post a review, so stay tuned! Those movies are really beautiful and worth watching, especially if you're into fantasy.

Game review: The Witcher: Enhanced Edition (PC)

Witcher series have started with books written by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski. First witcher story was written back in 1990, game adaptation was released in 2007, and as I hear was not so smooth and had various glitches and bugs. I myself never played original release, I'm now playing Enhanced Edition, where whole game is redesigned, characters, enemies, NPCs, everything is redone and they also added 200 new animations. This edition was released in 2008, due to many complaints from gamers, on long loading times, and tons of problems while playing the game. Also original witcher was censured in USA, because game holds strong adult language, and every time Geralt has sex, you receive sex card which was too ''adult'' for their standards, so cards are redrawn for more softer taste, and also Dryads (protectors of nature) are whole naked, and they redesigned it so their hair covers most of their body. Now let's say something about Enhanced Edition itself. This game looks beautiful, graphic are awesome, colorful and magical, it uses Bioware engine, but I find this game so much more atmospheric and epic than Bioware's Dragon Age: Origins, which was released sometime later. I really like fantasy games, but I need something to captivate me to hold me to the gameplay and the game itself. It is usually a great story and gameplay, and graphic and atmosphere, this game has it all, It has some of the most beautiful environments I saw in the later new generation games, I saw trailer and gameplay from Witcher 2, it looks even more beautiful, haven't played it yet, will do sometime later. This captivating atmosphere made me wanna play and see what's next, and also story is great, and develops based on your decisions that you do, during your gameplay, it's a common stuff in modern RPG's and even other type of modern games, so you can play with one decision and play game again with new decisions and story would develop a little different, your allies and enemies will be different, and it will all lead to conclusion which is always the same I think just with different stuff going on before that. It's an RPG with heavy accent on story and talking and quest solving, not so much on combat and battles, you develop skills and magic and alchemy and everything, but there are massive dialogues and tons of quests to keep you entertained for a very long time. Whole game consists of 5 chapters, prologue and epilogue. It is very political influenced so you will take part in many schemes and scams and stuff like that. It reminds me heavily on Gothic game series which I also like very much, it has similar touch, many characters, quests and talking. Game itself is not so hard to finish, I played on normal difficulty, the real difference is usage of alchemy and potion making, on easy you don't need those skills to finish the game, which I find not so challenging, and on normal difficulty usage of alchemy is your choice, you can finish without it, but it is much easier to finish with the help of it, and on hard difficulty alchemy is necessary to finish the game because battles are much more tougher. I finished the game not so long ago, and now I'm playing additional story missions, which deepen the story around some characters. I will not talk about story, because it's big and complex and I don't wanna make spoilers or something. I'm leaving you to dive into rich and captivating world of Witcher games, and see everything for yourself. For me, I can say that I'm really proud to have this game in my collection, it's really one of the best games I've ever played. It is must have for any fan of Adult Fantasy RPGs.

Rating: 10/10

Game review: Left 4 Dead 2 (PC)

This game is not so old, it's from 2010, so it appears on PC and Xbox 360, like its predecessor its first person coop shooter, and it's very entertaining. Great pandemic has spread all over the world, and turns people into zombies. Military has created safe zones all over the America, in attempt to rescue as many civilians as possible, and that's where you step in. Directly into shoes of one of the survivors and together with your friends you try to blast your way through tons of zombies, monsters and witches (yes witches). There are many scenarios available for you to play, and together those scenarios create linear storyline, telling us how those survivors are trying to escape. You can play alone, with computer controlled buddies, which is not so fun, because they are programmed and mostly follow you and are very boring companions. Best solution is to play with your friends coop, or online, that's where fun starts. Hours and hours of entertainment, shooting, burning, detonating, smacking zombies. Weapon arsenal is colorful one, from standard, machine guns, pistols, and bombs, to really not so common, like guitars (yeah smack that zombie's ass with a guitar), crowbars, katana blades etc. Also if you got your ass kicked, your buddies can revive you, even bring you back from the dead with a defibrillator, heal you and everything, so having good team of people when playing online is nice. Because sometimes when I play some people are running around, not caring to cooperate or whatever is needed to do on certain level, and that sucks and ruins a game-play. Speaking of game-play, it is very smooth and nice done, even when there are hordes of zombies around you game still runs nice and smooth, graphics are beautiful and atmosphere is awesome. Landscapes vary from buildings, streets, cities, to forests, fields, mountain, almost every cool surrounding is here. Everything is nicely animated, zombies look cool, not cheap, and there are many variations of them, from workers to clowns. Also these zombies run like hell, they are not slow, as we got used in Resident Evil series for example, but it's ok, because story-wise it's different virus. This is second game in the series, but you only need this one if you're planing on buying this game, because here included are also all campaigns from Left 4 Dead first game, so you have two games for the price of one, so you got many levels to blast through. What I don't like in this game? Well I don't have any particular objection, the only one would be that on higher difficulties game is really difficult, I mean that how it's supposed to be, but sometimes it's impossible, and you have repeat certain part many times, but if you have good players on your team, that's also problem that can be solved.
In conclusion if you're fan of FPS-s and horror games, and zombies, be sure to check this game out, because I find it very entertaining and innovative, you're going to have great fun, especially playing coop with real people. 

Rating: 10/10

Anime review: Highschool of the Dead

It is anime series based on a manga series written by Daisuke Satō and illustrated by Shōji Satō. The story follows a group of high school students caught in the middle of a zombie apocalypse. It consists of 12 episodes, I think they will make season 2 because manga goes way further that anime, and also there is no particular ending, it just mostly follows same story and events as in manga series and I think it would be ok if they continue to do so, because I find it to be quite a good show. Story is that one day zombie apocalypse breaks out, none knows why, handful of students from High-school survive the outbreak of the virus. They travel through Japan is search of safe place and to find a cause of all that mess. I think Japanese people are kinda hooked to those zombi plots, Resident Evil started it all. It's almost the same as RE, zombies are slow, hungry, and virus spreads if you get bitten. Band of students is very colorful. It consists of school nurse, nerd, kendo master, two ordinary girls and one guy who is let's say main character, his name is Takashi Komuro. There are some sexual contents in the series, not too much, but enough to keep it interesting, every once in a while we see boobs jumping, panties showing, or some funny perverted scenes, it think, it's common stuff in manga and anime today, it's not bothering me, I find it kinda funny and interesting. I would recommend HOTD to all anime lovers, it's funny, action packed, storyline is great, there is also a lot of violence so I would not recommend it to younger audience, all in all great anime. Blu-Ray version is beautiful, animation is stunning, so pick it up and if you don't mind few perverted moments, enjoy this zombie killing, ass kicking piece of greatness


Rating: 10/10

Very Very nice