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After years of hiding away in Shanghai and delivering beyond-terrible gaming with Bad Day L.A., the veteran behind Doom, Quake and Alice - American McGee - has emerged back into the land of the living with his uniquely twisted take on the already-twisted Grimm Brothers’ Tales. The first of 24 tales in the series, A Boy Learns What Fear Is, is out today on GameTap, with the others set to release consecutively with each passing week.
All the games will be free to play for the first 24 hours, after which players will be required to fork out $3.99 per episode. A Boy Learns What Fear Is, like all the other tales that are set to follow, should offer around an hour’s worth of play and is loosely based around a cruel, sadistic and blood-chilling version of Katamari Damacy’s gameplay style – according to the official website, a boy who wants to learn the true meaning of fear goes around “hanging gallows, a haunted house and even a wedding, but doesn’t truly encounter fear until Grimm decides to enter the story.” After all the terrifying nursery rhymes and the sheer violence and terror of having gone through the original stories once, I am most definitely staying away from these games. But then again, it’s not like I really have a choice – GameTap still refuses to serve gamers outside the United States. Thanks a lot, guys.
Oh GOD! FINALLY! After months of no activity at the site, and most fans having given up the series for dead, the final episode of Tomb Raider: Re\Visioned is now up at the GameTap Tomb Raider site.
The final episode, A Complicated Woman, written and directed by Jim Lee (Punisher, X-Men, Fantastic Four, Batman, Superman) and Christos N. Gage (Legends of the Dark Knight, World War Hulk: X-Men, House of M: Avengers), tells the story of three fortune hunters after the Treasure of Perseus who regale each other with tales of how each one of them killed Lara.
Wrapping up the final episode, GameTap has also announced that the second season of Re\Visioned will feature six animated episodes that will showcase games from “the golden age of Activision” - like Pitfall, Kaboom and Pressure Cooker. GameTap has even partnered with The Hero Initiative that will feature top writers like Mark Waid (Flash, Kingdom Come, Legion of Superheroes), John Ostrander (X-Men, Punisher, Star Wars Republic) and Paul Jenkins (Spectacular Spider-Man, Incredible Hulk, Civil War: Front Line) to bring their awesome talents in to work for the next season
To download the final episode, click the links below. Needless to say, you will need a Flash player to play these files.
Download Episode 10 - A Complicated Woman (Requires Flash Player)
Download Episodes 01-09
About a week ago, I was on the phone talking with Reggie . No, I didn’t ask him if he knew Hutch had switched over to Vodafone!
He did throw a question that ostensibly came out of nowheres-ville: “Dude, have you every played Ninja Commando?” A quick and resonant “Yes” followed, and for moderately good reasons. That sucker along with many other arcade games from the late 80s till the early 90s, were carved into my mind like stone. For every passing day, I dropped a few quarters into these soul-sucking apparatuses with their half-working joysticks. Just a few quarters, and then maybe a few more. And if I ever ran out, hey no biggie, I’d come back tomorrow with a new stack. And then the next day. And then the next day. And then the next day. I didn’t have a lot of friends back then, what can I say.
Ninja Commando was released way back in 1992 (although I mostly likely played it roughly a year afterward) and later ported to SNK’s Neo-Geo/Neo-Geo CD console. Developed by the now defunct Alpha Denshi Corp (or ADK), they were also responsible for other relatively well-known games – World Heroes, a 2D Fighter, and Twinkle Star Sprites, shoot’ em up with puzzle elements and no less than three under-aged girls hiding underneath a grand sailor motif. But this isn’t the time to blabber about that, this is about ninjas going commando!
Remember Lara’s foray to find Atlantis in the first game, and more recently, in Anniversary? Well, Lara’s up to her old tricks again in the latest episode in GameTap’s Tomb Raider: Re\Visioned series, Raising Thaumopolis. Trying to find the (new) Lost City, Lara is contacted by a mysterious man, Anton Cooper, who provides Lara with all that she needs to find and recover the powerful arsenal of the Thaumopolians, before her itchy trigger-finger gun-nuts can. Facing off against the leader of the gun-wackos in the dream realm (where they are informed by the Thaumopolian leader that death in the dream world will mean death in the real one, just like good ol’ Matrix mindfuck) Lara must successfully complete three ancient challenges to secure her prize.
Written by Michael A. Stackpole and designed by Louie Del Carmen, Raising Thaumopolis, for the first time, actually seems like an animated fly-through of a Tomb Raider game, complete with the sophisticated yet funny remarks by the Countess of Abbingdon and all the puzzle solving elements that are the hallmark of the franchise, making this, practically the best (and truest) adaptation of the games in the animated series. Keep checking back for the last episode in the first season of the Re\Visioned series, A Complicated Woman, where three fortune hunters tell the tale of how each of them killed Lara Croft as they try to recover the ancient Treasure of Perseus. Obviously, Lara is going to crash on their little party and walk away with the Treasure, as you will see later in the episode when it releases. How do I know? Well, let’s just say I am a psychic. Click the links below to download Episode 09 - Raising Thaumopolis. Needless to say, you will need the Flash Player to play these files and oh, do check out and download the other episodes as well so that you can catch up with the rest of us. mmmkay?
Download Episode 09 - Raising Thaumopolis (Requires Flash Player)
Download Episodes 01-08
It’s finally here, the much anticipated eighth episode in GameTap’s Re\Visioned: Tomb Raider series. Written by the legendary Gail Simone (Birds of Prey, The Simpsons and the upcoming Wonder Woman) and designed by Six Point Harness, Pre-Teen Raider tells the story of a young Lara Croft with itchy fingers breaking into Croft Academy (there’s a Croft ACADEMY?!) in her typical, flamboyant style to “borrow” yet another precious, ancient and potentially deadly artifact.
While the episode seems to draw inspiration from Disney’s Kim Possible, Pre-Teen Raider is just briefly entertaining, without the adolescent charm of Disney’s teen-hottie-slash-butt-kicker. With Lara sporting, for the first time since Chronicles, a table top bustline and nary a shout-out to Minnie Driver in the credits (Looks like she didn’t voice Ms. Croft this time, judging the by the pained “Ouch” in the basketball court), Pre-Teen Raider may be the best episode so far in the animated series, but that’s like saying BloodRayne is Uwe “Toilet” Boll’s best movie to date.
Bah! Looks like the series would have done a lot better with some more focus and a slightly more “connected” plot. At least it would keep bringing people back. Oh well, we’ve got the episode download at the bottom of this post. (Click here for previous episodes) Check back next week for Ep. 09 - Raising Thaumopolis, where our booby adventurer friend must solve three ancient puzzles in the lost underwater city of Thaumapolis. Once you are done watching, head over to Kotaku where Gail Simone talks about the show and writing and designing for it.
Gail Simone Talks Pre-Teen Raider [Kotaku.com]
Gail Simone Interview [Wired]
NOTE: You will need a video player that can play the Flash Video format (FLV) in order to play these files. Download the Riva FLV player below.
Download Videos: (right click, select “Save Target As”)
Click here for previous episodes
Episode 08 - Pre-Teen Raider
We’d already brought you news about Tomb Raider: Re\Visioned the awesome new animated shorts being made by GameTap for their GameTap TV service. And now, to sweeten the pot, we bring you the latest episode to hit the intertubes! Angel Spit Pt. 2 takes off from the previous episode, which saw Lara head over to Antarctica in search of a mysterious substance that is claimed to have the property to cure any disease. Download the episode in Flash Video format right here and get your freak on with the luscious Lady Lara Croft, mysterious subterranean temples and lots of gooey Xenomorph-ey alien creatures. Check back tomorrow for Episode 07 - Lara Croft: Legacy, where the bombshell billionaire takes on an army of half-man / half-beast creatures as she tries to recover a scepter from an ancient monastery.
Download links for Angel Spit, Pt. 2 and previous episodes after the jump.
Update: As promised, we have Ep. 10 - A Complicated Woman right here for your download pleasure. Click here for more details and to download the video.
Remember GameTap’s homage to Lara Croft? Well, they decided to go all out as of yesterday and launched Re\Visioned, the new animated series that airs for free on GameTap’s Tomb Raider site at http://www.gametap.com/tombraider
With new episodes airing weekly starting today through August 23rd, the first season of Re\Visioned will feature 10 episodes that focus on some of Lara’s lesser known adventures. Voicing Lara Croft throughout the season will be Academy Award nominated actress Minnie Driver, as Jim Lee, Warren Ellis, Peter Chung, Brian Pulido, Gail Simone, Michael Stackpole, Ivan Reis, Cully Hamner, Christos N. Gage, Louie Del Carmen, David Alvarez, and Six Point Harness get to work on creating these awesome episodes.
“Re\Visioned is a chance for us to show fans another side of their favorite gaming characters as seen through the eyes of today’s top writers and artists,” says Ricardo Sanchez, GameTap’s vice president of content and creative director. “We’re very excited about this series and see it as a great representation of the innovative content available at GameTap beyond our immense catalog of video games on-demand.”
Awesome! Head on over to the site to watch Episode 01 - Keys to the Kingdom, directed by Aeon Flux/Matriculated director Peter Chung.
UPDATE: Click the jump to watch the video.