Video Game Review - The "Homeworld" Saga (1999 - present)

Back at the end of the 20th century, RTS type games were quite popular. Fuelled by the enthusiasm for the Command & Conquer series, many other RTS type games popped up and were popular, Dune 2000, Warcraft 2, Starcraft, the list was endless, and then genre became a bit stale and repetitive, what with its top down or pseudo 3-D environments where you sent worker units off to gather resources, built an army and then flattened your opponent.

The Homeworld games were something different though, as they were the first real stab at making a fully 3-D space combat game that actually worked, and, they all had a gripping storyline too, where you actually felt like what you were doing in game had an overall effect on the campaign at large.


Homeworld (1999)

The first game in the saga introduced the people of the planet Kharak.
The story goes that during an archaeological expedition into their planets great desert, the team uncovered the crashed hulk of what appeared to be a large space craft. The twist in the tale was though that the spacecraft wasn't alien in origin, as inside, the writings contained therein were in fact an ancient version of their own tongue.
The various peoples of Kharak, who were organised into tribes referred to as "Kiith", joined together to build their first interplanetary starship, as the translated pointed to the fact that their people originated on a distant world named "Hiigara".
The Mothership, as it came to be called, was powered by the crashed vessels still functioning hyperspace core, which allowed large vessels to use hyperspace to travel vast distances at many times the speed of light. With the construction of the vessel complete, 500,000 colonists, representing the various Kiith were placed in suspended animation for what was expected to be a long trip, however, this joyous adventure was not to be without incident, as the Kiith find that they had an ancient enemy, the Taidan, lying in wait for them as they prepared to launch into the great unknown to reclaim their lost home.

The game had all the elements familiar to RTS players, gather resources, build units, apply upgrades and unlock new units. What made Homeworld different though was its fully three dimensional play area, where you could order your ships to follow courses and plan attacks from all dimensions to take advantage of enemy weak points. Not only that, but you could tailor that units formation and tactics, similar to games in the "Total War" series, to get the best effect out of them when they attacked the enemy.
These things alone made it stand out from the crowd, and made it an instant classic.


Homeworld: Cataclysm (2000)

Set several decades after the Kiith reclaimed Hiigara from the Taidan, Cataclysm is a stand alone expansion for the original game, telling the story of Kiith Somtaw.
The Somtaw are miners by trade, and one day while carrying out mining operations from their most prestigious ship, the Kunn-Lan, they stumble across an ancient alien artifact.
Upon trying to examine this artifact, they find that it contains a deadly bio mechanical alien organism, which they name "The Beast", that begins taking over both the biological and technological systems of any ships or life forms it comes into contact with.
Kiith Somtaw, realising what a calamity they have unleashed on the known universe, set about trying to make right the situation, and begin building a fleet and finding technologies to combat the Beast.

HW:C used the same basic system as its predecessor, however you could now actually plot multi point courses for your ships, allowing you to get your ships into position without having to keep going back and moving the ships from point to point yourself.
Although the game enforced a strict fleet limit, you could still build a large fleet to your particular taste, and didn't feel pushed into maxing out on big ships if you didn't want to.
Although the storyline was good, this game wasn't as well received as the original.

Homeworld 2 (2003)

Set several centuries after the Beast incident, The people of Hiigara find themselves coming under attack by an aggressive and expansionist people known as the Vaygr.
The original Mothership, now rechristened the "Pride of Hiigara", is one of their major targets, as they want its hyperspace core so they can reactivate an ancient artifact which will make them unstoppable in their quest for galactic dominance.
The crew of the Pride of Hiigara must stop them by any means necessary, even if it means using the artifact themselves!

For the third entry in the series, the game went back to its roots, having the player control the original mothership, which had now been upgraded so it could be moved and wasn't simply a static fortress that needed defending. However, the game abandoned some of the features which had made it successful, for example, although ships tactics could still be set for aggressive, defensive or neutral postures, the ability to set their formations was eliminated and replaced with a "strike force" option, which encouraged mixing of different vessel types in one of three fixed formations, which would then proceed to move and attack in preset "waves", moving at the speed of the slowest vessel in the formation. This loss of tactical flexibility seriously hampered the fast paced combat action of the previous two entries in the series, and instead meant that any "light" vessels attached to a formation were relegated to being cannon fodder for the larger, lumbering battlecruisers and destroyers.

Although the game was well received, it is not considered to be the series best entry, and numerous fan made mods for all three games exist which allow skin changes, additional missions/scenarios, or allow different game "rules".

All in all though, the Homeworld series was a fun to play game, which is in dire need of a new entry.

Fillum Review - The Pentagon Wars (HBO 1998)

A bit of military historical hi-jinks here, courtesy of HBO.

                                                                       (DVD Cover)
"The Pentagon Wars" is a 1998 TV movie based on the memoirs of Colonel James Burton (USAF), specifically a period during the late 1970s/early 1980s in which he was assigned to oversee the acceptance into military service of the long delayed Bradley Fighting Vehicle.

Using mainly comedy actors, the film takes a comedic look at the corruption that is rife within US military arms development.

The story begins when Colonel Burton (Cary Elwes) is assigned by congress to evaluate the Bradleys development and to have the final decision about whether the project, which was well behind schedule and severely over budget, was fit to be placed into production and be accepted for Army service.
He becomes suspicious after the project manager, General Partridge (Kelsey Grammer) appears to be being deliberately obstructive to his enquiries about the vehicles performance under combat conditions.
After attending a demonstration at Aberdeen proving grounds, in which a live RPG round is shown to bounce harmlessly off the vehicles armour, his suspicion is further aroused when Partridges adjutants (John McGinley & Tom Wright) actively prevent him from examining the vehicle or seeing any of its performance data. He later leans from a concerned technical sergeant that many of the tests that the Bradley has "passed" were because the data was falsified due to using sub standard ammunition or substitutes.

Burton formally requests that all data and materials concerning the development of the vehicle are made available to him, and, when tons of paperwork is dumped on him, he gradually begins to realise that the Bradley "as is", is in fact a piece of junk, and that the project has continually been mismanaged by successive overseers ever since its inception in the late 1950s, due to the designer being forced to incorporate numerous ridiculous features on to the vehicle by a succession of armchair generals.

He sums up the vehicle as thus:- "Its a personnel carrier that cant carry personnel, its a scout thats so big it cant hide and its an anti tank platform with no armour."

Most of the film is relayed through flashbacks, as General Partridge gives evidence at a congressional enquiry into the mismanagement of the project, and it soon becomes clear that Partridge and his cronies were more interested in securing lucrative private sector work and promotions over developing a vehicle that is combat ready and safe for use by troops.

The film ends by stating that the Bradley Fighting Vehicle was introduced into service in 1981, having undergone extensive modifications in order to correct the glaring errors in its design and construction, however, Colonel Burton was "Blackballed" by the military, who saw his whistle blowing as a threat to the arms development industry.

If youre interested in this sort of thing, this film is a good watch, and the "dry" content is helped along by the films use of comedy actors and numerous farcical scenes (which incidentally really happened) in which Burtons progress is impeded by the conspirators.

This film is available to buy on DVD, but is quite hard to find, however it is available to watch "by other means" on various video sites.

Moar Sci-Fi viewingz....

So, I've found myself watching a few bits of borderline dodgy sci-fi recently, well, I say "watch", but they're more like "have on for background noise while I play World of Tanks", although being as I have the ability to multitask, I have watched them with the same level of interest as I usually would.

The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961)

One of the things that permeated post WW2 Britain was a tremendous amount of worry about the ongoing nuclear arms race. Once the horrible after effects of radiation became known, the general public started to object to the building and use of nuclear arms. This film capitalises on this concern by presenting a "what if..?" scenario.
The film begins with a lone reporter, Peter Stenning, wandering through the deserted streets of London in the middle of a massive heatwave. Peter explains through flashback how 90 days previously, both the United States and the Soviet Union test detonated a series of incredibly powerful hydrogen bombs as part of their weapons development programs.
A few days after the explosions, people mistake a rise in global temperature as merely being a particularly hot summer, however, it soon becomes apparent that something is amiss as flash floods hit Australia, London becomes engulfed in a cloud of steam and flash fires begin breaking out.
Although the governments of the world try to keep the populations calm, Peter learns through his contact (and subsequent love interest) at the met office, Jeanne, that the nuclear blasts have in fact altered the Earths axial tilt by 11 degrees, which has the knock on effect of severely altering the global climate, and eventually its orbit around the sun.

The only people I've ever heard of who star in this film are Leo McKern, and a very young and unknown at the time Michael Caine, who stars in a bit part as a policeman directing traffic in the films closing sequence.
This is quite a good film for what it is, as it tells a decent and intelligent story with very little by way of flights of fantasy, and the acting on the part of the cast is superb.


The Angry Red Planet (1959)

During the 1950s it was generally believed that space exploration would become a routine part of life, and that by the end of the 20th century, man would have set foot on other planets.Plenty of sci-fi literature and films speculated on this subject, and this film is one of them.

Mars Rocket 1 returns to Earth after being out of contact for several months, having successfully completed the first manned landing on the planet Mars. The rocket is landed by remote control and it is found that two of the crafts crew, Dr. Iris Ryan and Colonel Thomas O'Bannon, have survived, however Colonel O'Bannon is severely ill with a strange growth on his arm, and Dr. Ryan is almost catatonic with shock, furthermore, all of the ships data recorders, save a single tape recorder, have been smashed.
Using a combination of drugs and hypnosis, the authorities manage to get Dr. Ryan to tell them what happened.
The ship made a successful landing on the planet, and found that it was teeming with strange plant and animal based life, however pretty quickly, the crew of MR-1 find that the life on the planet becomes hostile, killing their engineer and eventually fatally wounding their scientist. As it turns out, the martian natives have been watching them, and are non too impressed with the human visitors' predilection towards violence.

At just over an hour long, this film is a proper B-movie, having a very obvious shoestring budget, and extremely poor special effects. For example, the surface of mars is represented on screen by applying a strange orange filter to the film, meaning all the sequences on mars are shown in an eye wrenching combination of orange and black. Alien creatures are shown by having hand drawn animations superimposed over the film, to produce some seriously laughable effects.

As a film, this one is just bad, and not even so bad that its good.


The Stone Tape (1972)

Ok, so this one isn't a B-movie, but is in fact a BBC TV play written by veteran sci-fi/horror writer Nigel Kneale.

A research team working for "Ryan Electronics" takes up residence at "Taskerlands", a recently renovated Victorian era mansion which has a reputation for being haunted. The purpose of the teams research is to find a new recording medium with which to replace magnetic tape, of which one of the team members has already made tentative steps towards developing a crystal based medium.
Quickly, the team finds that the room which had been set aside for use as a server room has not been completed, which angers the research manager, Peter, however the site manager points out that the work crews refused to work in the room as many unexplained paranormal events occurred in there, and they were scared off. The teams computer programmer, the highly emotionally unstable Jill (Jane Asher) has a terrifying experience when she enters the room, seeing a woman dressed in Victorian clothing running up a disused flight of stairs before screaming and falling to her doom, however no one else present notices it. As it turns out,t he room is much older than the building itself, possibly dating back over 1000 years, and indeed at least one death had happened there, namely a Victorian maid who died under mysterious circumstances in 1880.
Deciding to investigate this phenomenon, in part spurred by others in the team reporting hearing screams and footsteps while in the room, Peter hopes that their investigation will yield something along the lines that they are looking for, a high capacity mineral based data recording medium.
At first, their results seem encouraging, but then things take a bit of a sinister turn for the worse.


Earth Vs The Flying Saucers (1956)

Another one of the quintessential "B-Movie" archetypes, this bit of melodrama sees the Earth coming under attack by a fleet of nomadic aliens and their deadly flying saucers!

Theres not much else to say about this film really, it has fairly good acting, very good special effects for the time, and a nice simple "us v them" storyline which sees flying saucers zooming around randomly destroying buildings and historical landmarks in Washington D.C.
It might be a throwaway bit of 1950s sci-fi cheese, but its a bloody good one.


The Uninvited (1997)

This is a 1997 ITV miniseries (4x 50 min episodes), written by and starring actor Leslie Grantham.
The show is essentially a combination of a mystery thriller, sci-fi and a commentary on environmental issues.

Photo journalist Steve Blake witnesses a high ranking government minister die in a car accident one night while driving along a deserted road, thinking he has a story, he visits the ministers home, only to find the man alive and well. When the police give the "official" explanation that what Blake witnessed was in fact a car thief dying in a stolen car, he becomes suspicious and begins an investigation. Pretty soon, Blake seems to uncover a conspiracy involving the residents of a seaside village called "Sweethope", which was destroyed in a flood some 5 years previously, however miraculously, no one was killed, and, since then, all the survivors have gone on to become very influential in both industry and government.
While continuing his investigation, Blake uncovers a sinister secret involving extra terrestrials and the destruction of all life on Earth.

This show starts off fairly good, with the first episode setting up some pretty tantalising plot points, however it becomes somewhat cliched from the second episode onwards, with various plot holes appearing and requiring an excessive amount of suspension of disbelief. That said, if you can ignore this, the story is a pretty good one, not outstanding, but not too bad.

Film Review:- Import/Export (2007)

Bit o' foreign cinema here for ya's all...

Import/Export is a 2007 film made by Austrian director/producer Ulrich Seidel, and follows the lives and changing fortunes of two individuals, an Austrian man named Pauli and a Ukranian woman named Olga, both of whom end up in each others countries whilst trying to get themselves out of various life related problems. The film cuts between the two unrelated stories periodically to show important plot developments as they go along.

Both stories show the everyday struggles of people trying to find work and make money to live on, even when they are at their lowest. For example, Olga takes a job working as a "camgirl" for a seedy internet porn site, and Pauli ends up trying to scam money from people in the street by claiming he lent them money while they were out drinking.
The thing is though, the film shows what seems to have become a norm for people who struggle to find work in this day and age, namely a job opportunity suddenly appears for both of them which seemingly offers a way out of their drudgery, however these wonderful, magical jobs end up vapourising quickly. In Olgas case, she is offered a job working as a housekeeper in Austria, and in Paulis case, he is offered a job installing gambling machines in the Ukraine, and in both cases, something, call it fate or simply bad luck, see them both getting the shitty end of the stick for following the opportunity through.

The film does a really good job of capturing the every day drudgery of modern life, from the scenes set in the porno studio, where its quite clear all of the camgirls working there are bored as fuck with their job and nothing is half as glamorous as what you'd think it is, to the scenes in which Pauli wanders the streets of Vienna bored and trying to scam or steal money from people to pay back what he owes to various unsavoury characters. One particular bit, which probably everyone will be familiar with, is a sequence of scenes in which Pauli and Olga receive "inductions", Paulis while on an insulting "back to work" type course at the jobcentre, and Olgas having to listen to an overly long and excruciatingly detailed presentation about the correct use of cleaning cloths.

Even though this film is terminally depressing, its one of those films that you watch with a morbid sense of curiosity, as it approaches the subject matter with a no holds barred attitude. When Olga ends up as a cleaner in a geriatric hospital, they don't hold back in showing what happens when you get dementia. When Pauli ends up visiting an East European romany settlement on business, they have no qualms about showing how awful the living conditions there are, nor what people will do for money.
Don't be expecting big laughs form this film, because there aren't any, the film goes to great lengths to show how ordinary people get treated like shit, and how more often than not the concept of the "happy ending" is only the stuff of fantasy.

Star Trek & Gaming : A retrospective.

As with the Babylon 5 Universe, much interest surrounded the Star Trek franchise with regards to gaming. The TV series alone features large set piece battles in deep space between Federation ships and alien vessels, so it comes as no surprise that fans would eventually want to recreate these battles in game form.

For this look at gaming in the Star Trek universe, I will not be looking at video game adaptations, as there have been a lot made over the years and warrant a piece of their own, instead, I am going to have a look at some of the more notable entries in the tabletop gaming and CCG aspect.

Star Fleet Battles - 1979

First produced by Task Force games in the U.S.A, Star Fleet Battles is a follow on work to the unlicensed 1972 "Star Trek Battle Manual".
Using miniatures or counters, this was the first real attempt to produce a space combat game set in the Star Trek universe as it was prior to the release of "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" in 1979 (essentially including everything featured in the Original series, plus the animated series)
The game follows the usual premise of having the players make a fleet for whichever race they choose (the game also contains rules for creating your own unique race and designing their spacecraft) , designing a scenario, and then fighting it out to see who is best.
The rules themselves are quite complex, leaning more towards fleet level actions and stressing the importance of looking after ships and using equipment and tactics as opposed to just charging in guns blazing, but game play can sometimes get bogged down with the more RPG aspects, requiring dice rolling to see which sub systems on ships are affected and applying modifiers to dice rolls etc.

Nonetheless, Star Fleet Battles continues to be one of the most, if not THE most popular Star Trek based tabletop miniatures game on the market, with various source books, rules updates and rejigged editions of the core rule book being released at semi regular intervals.
Although numerous "official" SFB miniatures have been released over the years, numerous miniatures companies make ships which are compatible with the system, and, with the advent of generally available 3d printers and 3d computer design, just about any ship can be made available for your fleet, all you need is some minis, a few hex bases, and you're off!.

Star Trek: The Customizable Card Game - 1994

Published by Decipher inc, this CCG is unusual as it is one of the few licenced Star Trek products to use imagery and plot lines from the TNG and movie era.
Using a play system which would later be adapted for their "Star Wars" card game, like all CCGs it requires players to purchase packs of cards to build gaming decks with.
In terms of actual game play, players would begin by placing cards from their "seed deck" which would take the form of locations and/or objectives to form a "spaceline", which they would then use cards from their "main deck" to travel along to complete missions, partake in ship and land battles or to fulfill some objective to secure victory points in order to become the winner.
Although the game enjoyed considerable popularity, with over 15 complete booster sets being released, as well as several different editions of the game and numerous variant methods of play being officially sanctioned, many players criticised the game play, citing that it was excessively complicated, especially so when a mechanic was introduced that meant that players would find themselves needing to construct additional side decks to accommodate "Q continuum" or "tribble" cards.
In many respects, ST:ccg played like a hybrid of a CCG and an RPG, many players found this a refreshing change, however those who were used to games such as Magic: The Gathering disliked the games various RPG like mechanics, which tended to make games somewhat long to play, especially in multiplayer games. That said, at its peak, ST:ccg was the third most popular ccg on the market, behind M:TG and Pokemon tcg.
The end came somewhat unexpectedly in 2007, when Decipher inc announced that they were discontinuing their ccg systems to concentrate more on their RPG and board game products, within a year they had disposed of their entire range of ccg products and had removed any mentions of "Star Trek" from their website.
The game still enjoys a cult following to this day though, with numerous "virtual" sets and rule updates being created by fans.

Federation Commander - 2005

Produced by the Amarillo Design Bureau, Federation Commander is essentially a simplified version of Star Fleet Battles, intended to make games quicker and simpler for those who do not have the time or patience to get to grips with SFBs somewhat complex rules and play style.
Using many of the same rules as SFB, FC is again set in the Star Trek universe as it was before 1979 and refers to itself as taking place during the non-canon "General War" period, thus providing a handy-dandy "get out" clause as to why everyone wants to kill each other.
FC uses the same miniatures and set up as SFB, and enjoys some popularity, with regular expansion books, boxed games, scenario packs and a thriving fan based home brew community providing feedback to the developers. The game is also somewhat unique in that it releases "booster packs" of cards containing ship tracking cards and equipment add ons, at the time of writing, there have been about 30 different booster sets for players to add variation to their fleets with.

Star Trek: A Call To Arms - 2011

Coming out at roughly the same time as their "Babylon 5: A Call To Arms" gaming system, and riding the wave of interest following the release of the "reimagined" 2009 Star Trek movie, Mongoose publishing had a stab at using their established "ActA" system with Star Trek.
Almost identical in gameplay to the B5 game, again players would build a fleet and using measuring tapes, dice and miniatures, fight a battle in the Star Trek universe.
Like its B5 counterpart though, Star Trek: ActA vapourised when Mongoose decided to cease production of miniatures wargames in order to concentrate on their much more successful (and cheaper to produce) paper and pencil RPG systems.
That said, ST:ActA was never as popular as B5:ActA, but still enjoys a lot of online fan interest, with "official" minitures changing hands on ebay for good prices now that they have been long discontinued.

Star Trek: Tactics - 2012

The Star Trek licence was next picked up by miniatures game manufacturers Wizkids.
Star Trek: Tactics was essentially a version of their highly successful "Heroclix" game, using ships from the Star Trek universe coupled with their "clixbase" game mechanic to produce a quick to play starship combat game.
Over the course of its run, Tactics had three distinct versions, numbered one to three (Tactics I, Tactics II and Tactics III) all of which added additional rules, races and ships. As standard, the game was available in "boxed" format, containing all the game play essentials, with additional ships being purchased in "blind bag" format, in the same way as Heroclix is sold.
Although the game enjoyed a small level of popularity, it never really took off, as most players saw the game system as being too simple and too similar to Heroclix to accurately represent a space combat game.
Officially, ST:Tactics has not been discontinued, however no new releases for it have been made since 2013.

Star Trek: Attack Wing - 2013

Wizkids were not done withe the Star Trek licence just yet, and, following on from their successful "Star Wars: X-wing" game, they adapted the rule set to produce this game.
ST:AW allows players to use a points system to build fleets and give the individual ships crews and equipment. Generally a fleet will consist of about 3 or 4 ships, and uses Wizkids' proprietary "FlightPath" manoeuvre system (a series of bespoke movement templates to represent sharp turns, shallow turns and straight manoeuvres, used in conjunction with "manoeuver dials" to plot ship courses for the turn) as well as red and green D8s to represent ships firepower and defensive abilities.
Numerous cardboard tokens are included with the games starter sets and expansion packs which are used in game to represent shields, targeting markers, sensor pings and alert conditions, all of which are used in relation to actions performed by ships.
What makes this game unique is the use of semi-collectable playing cards containing ship, crew and equipment data. Each card is allocated a faction and a point value, which players must choose when building their fleets, in this sense, it eliminates the need for record sheets etc as used by other similar space combat games. Many cards used in this war will have different versions, either using different artwork, or representing different versions of the same characters/ships from different points in the universe history.
The game comes as a "Boxed" starter kit, and players can purchase "Expansion" packs containing a single ship, plus cards, tokens and scenarios for use with that ship. Wizkids have also made special "Prize" ships and items available through Organized play events, which are usually based on episodes or storylines from the various TV series.
This game still enjoys some popularity, with new ships being released on a rough 3-monthly basis, however some players (myself included) have criticised the games system for not following the "feel" of the Star Trek universe. Many of the problems with the game system include numerous "grey areas" created by new items and characters being released which cause problems or conflicts with existing basic game play mechanics, leading to unbalanced game play and unbeatable combinations of ships and equipment. most notable in the games failures is the fact that the rules, although perfectly ok for X-wing type "dogfights", do not lend themselves terribly well to being a fleet/squadron level capital ship combat simulation. For example, there is little to nothing by way of combined actions or fleet bonuses, aside from the aforementioned "unbeatable card combos" that crop up and spoil it for everyone.

Nevertheless, when played "as intended" ST:AW can be an enjoyable game, albeit one in desperate need of an overhauled "2nd edition" rule set.

Serial offender - Archer's Goon (CBBC 1992)

Its time for another delve into the murky world of children's television serials again...

Archer's Goon was a 1992 CBBC adaptation of the 1984 young adult fantasy novel written by Diana Wynne Jones.


Howard Sykes is an average 13 year old boy who lives with his parents, younger sister and their au pair in the fictional town of Holisbury.
One day, Howard is surprised when a leather clad, thuggish looking man, the titular "goon", turns up in a bin lorry at his home demanding to speak with his father Quentin; a local writer and teacher of English, with regards to "the payment of 2000".
Obviously, Howard and his family assume that this means some kind of monetary payment, and the"goon" is an enforcer for some shady criminal organisation, however, when they finally speak with Quentin, it turns out that "2000" actually refers to 2000 words.
Quentin explains that 13 years ago, he was suffering from writers block, but was miraculously cured of it when he was made an offer by local councillor, Mr. Mountjoy. In exchange for Quentin producing a document containing 2000 nonsense words once a year, Mountjoy would make sure that the Sykes household kept its amenities (gas, electric, water etc), and not have to pay for them, also, writing the document would force Quentin to come out of his writers block, and, oddly, it worked.

The goon explains that this years document did not reach "Archer", despite being delivered to Mountjoy at the local town hall as promised, and, as such "Archer" had sent the goon round to collect the "debt", with failure to produce an acceptable document punishable by having local amenities removed. Quentin sits and writes a replacement document, however this one is later found to be unacceptable, as it contains passages which appeared in previous entries, so, the Sykes family find themselves coming under some bizarre attacks, such as their water and power being cut off, local shops refusing to serve them, schools refusing to allow Howard and his sister to attend, rubbish laying uncollected and, most bizarrely, Howards mothers musical instruments playing themselves loudly and continuously.
The goon takes an unusual interest in Howard, and takes him to see Mr. Mountjoy to find out who "Archer".
As it turns out, the town of Holisbury is actually run by seven mysterious individuals with magical powers, all of whom "farm" certain aspects of town life in order to maintain their power:-

Archer - Controls the towns money and local authorities
Shine - Controls local crime
Dillian - Controls local law enforcement
Torquil - Controls local music, religion, sports activities and shops
Hathaway - Controls local transport, as well as town record keeping and administration
Erskine - Controls local refuse collection and water supply
Venturus - Controls local education and housing

Howard, after eventually getting to meet with Archer, begins to unravel the mystery as to what the 2000 words his father produces are actually used for, and exactly what part he personally plays in all this.

This is one of those stereotypically "British" bits of telly that folk from other countries would find difficult to "get". The fantasy environment it takes place in is wonderfully weird in its premise, insofar as that although most people live in the "ordinary" world, there is in fact a secret "underworld" that few people know or care about that actually pulls the strings of everyone in the town. The story also has a wonderful kind of "whodunnit?" mystery attached to it, and, eagle eyed viewers should be able to spot tell tale signs of the true story right from the first episode.

This is an enjoyable serial, and, having read the book, I can say that the TV adaptation is pretty damn close to the original source material.

Video Game Review - Apache: Air Assault (Xbox 360)

Ive been buying cheapo video games again!

Apache: Air Assault is a 2010 action flight simulator game, developed by Russian game developers Gaijin Entertainment and published by Activision.

I picked up my copy for a measly £4 from the Doncaster branch of CEX , and, having immensely enjoyed the "Strike" series of games, I thought it would be a groovy idea to climb into the cockpit of an attack helicopter and rain hellfires, hydras and 30mm cannon ammo down on some assholes once again.

I wasn't disappointed :)

The games story line takes place over a fictionalised modern day setting, following the adventures of "Taskforce-191"; a multinational (mainly US and UK) anti-terrorism taskforce that uses attack helicopters in conjunction with air cavalry to combat terrorists and drug cartels in the Middle East, South America and former Soviet states.

As the games title suggests, your main vehicle of aerial pwnage is the Apache attack helicopter, you get to use various different versions of it, ranging from the "standard" US issue AH-64D "Longbow", to the UK version, the Westland AH-1 Apache (although in practice, the differences between the two are purely cosmetic).

The campaign missions have a series of objectives to be completed, such as destroying an enemy stronghold, destroying transport columns, protecting friendly buildings or providing air cover to ground forces while they clear out buildings.
In this respect, the game becomes a little repetitive, with many of the missions seemingly being more difficult versions of ones you've already done.

The games controls are difficult to master, being as they operate in pretty much the same way as a real helicopters controls would do, with one stick performing double duty by controlling altitude/air speed and direction, and the other stick controlling pitch and yaw.
The game has two distinct flight modes, "Training" keeps your chopper within "safe" pitch/yaw limits (one of the games achievements rewards you for performing a barrel roll, which can't be done in training mode), whereas "Realistic" sees your chopper performing some extremely unsafe/suicidal maneuvers with no safety margins. For novice players, "Realistic" mode, coupled with the difficult to handle control system, will see them crashing whenever they try to fly, however, the flight sim experience is one of the best I've seen for a helicopter game on a home console.

As this is an action game, there is, of course, combat to be done. The Apaches main armaments consist of a 30mm cannon for anti personnel work, Hydra "dumb fire" rockets for explosive ground support against lightly armoured vehicles,  Hellfire ATGMs for anti armour work and Stinger Air-to-Air missiles for use against nay aircraft you come across.

Your copilot can use the cannon independently, but control of the missiles comes down to you. Now, whereas the Hellfires and Hydras generally hit what you aim them at, the Stingers are another story.
You see, the problem is is that the AA combat portions of the game are frustrating as hell, being as 99.99% of the time, your Stingers will fail to hit, much less destroy whatever you use them on, and you spend a hell of a lot of time jockeying for position with Mi-35 Hinds (the export version of the Soviet era Mi-24 Hind) in the hopes that you can catch them with a "ripple fire" of Hydras or a good couple of hits from your 30mm, which is made harder by the odd fact that you cant seem to climb fast enough to get above them into the best position to fire. (It should be noted that Air-to-Air combat between helicopters in real life is extremely rare, with less than a hand full of reported incidences of it actually happening)

The other thing is that although you are given a certain number of "lives" to allow you to continue if you get shot down, the games AI likes to respawn you in rather odd places, which, I have found quite often leads to the bad guys "spawn killing" you in a hail of RPG fire before you have chance to maneuver away from the respawn point...cue a lot of me shouting "oh for fucks sakes!" after I get spawn camped into oblivion.

Outside of the campaign mode, there is "Free flight" mode, which allows you to pilot other choppers featured in the game, such as the Hind and the MQ-8 "Fire Scout" drone in mock battles.
There is also an online portion of the game, as well as a co-op mode.

All in all, Apache: Air Assault is one of the better combat flight sims available for home consoles, although its not perfect, it is still pretty good, and worth picking up for the cheapo.

Final score: - 8/10