Mega Derived

Command & Conquer 3 (PC)

Thirty six missions of antiquated RTS enjoyment. Kain lives! C&C is sort of an icon of my youth. I doubt any people new to RTS games would give a damn, especially when you’ve got games like Company of Heroes and Dawn of War kicking about. But I don’t play them, because I’m old, and I like to remember all those great C&C moments from over the years. Apart from Tiberian Sun. Essentially, C&C3 boils down to either building a fleet of twenty mammoths (GDI) or twenty avatars (NOD) and watching them blow the enemy base away. Then if you’re lucky you’ll get a cinematic, hopefully one where lovely caring Cameron from house leans over a desk or something. Tactics!

Final Fantasy IV (DS)

FFIV is another bastion of my youth reincarnate. I played FFIV on a SNES emulator absolutely yonks ago, before having a go at the loving GBA port a couple of years back. This new DS version had whizzy 3D graphics and the relatively minor addition of being able to augment your characters. But it’s still good because FFIV was epic, and so good they haven’t really bothered changing the formula since.

Burnout Paradise (360)

Paradise is so slick you can invite your friends to an online game whilst screeching around a hairpin turn. It looks great, it’s smoother than the Fonz and there’s enough meat on its bones to last you a lifetime. But for some reason I can only tolerate it in short bursts, so I hammer away at it for a week and then put it back on the shelf for a month. I still think it’s great, mind.

Red Alert 3 (PC)

I’ve been hammering away at the multiplayer beta to the point that I’m on the cusp of being able to win most of the games I play. It’s like a colourful C&C3 that’s been slowed down a bit (which is good, because multiplayer C&C3 is basically a an RTS game with turbo boost) and with some really interesting, over-the-top units. I doubt it’ll take off that much, even though I’ve pre-ordered the retail version, because people soon get sick of engineer rushes (even though they’re a mainstay of C&C) and there will probably be some balance issues. I just want a game that’s perfectly balanced that allows me to win every single game I play with minimum effort. Is that so much to ask, EA?

Bionic Commando: Rearmed (XBLA)

An 800 point game that I initially bought out of devotion to Capcom and almost instantly regretted. Then I played it for about three hours and it became the most incredible thing since those original adverts for the Barcode Battler, only Bionic Commando isn’t shitty. Apparently it’s ported from the NES original, but I’m not really old enough to enjoy NES games. Bionic Commando: Rearmed is a puzzle game trussed up as an action game, but thankfully you get to enjoy both. The soundtrack is absolutely immense, sort of an electro remix of the original NES tunes. The game is quite short, but you’ll probably go back to it on hard because once you manage to work the game properly the idea of going without it makes you want to cry a little. When you’re done there’s something like fifty challenge rooms, which will kick your face in.