I just went on a rather awesome road trip across America. It was a great way to get away from my unhealthy job (working on a computer) and my admittedly unhealthy hobby (playing on a computer) and I was both excited and ashamed to realise every place I visited reminded me of some videogame or other… As we traveled from Miami to New York and back again I saw so many locations which influenced some of my favourite games and it was great to compare them to my memories of their virtual counterparts.
New York is the obvious one. There’s been loads of games set in the sprawling Big Apple, but GTA 4 is by far the most accurate. Aside from the severe shortage of cars and people, it gets the feel of the city pretty much spot on.
I made a point to visit Battery Park, in an effort to evoke memories of Deus Ex. It worked. I managed to find Castle Clinton (but was unable to verify if there really is a secret underground tunnel within its walls) and the subway station where you get the first opportunity to fight Anna Navarra.
Atop the Empire State Building looking down onto what are pretty damn tall buildings themselves, I couldn’t help thinking of Prototype.
And every time I looked at the MetLife building, it reminded me of that scene in Crysis 2…
The subway system reminded me of The Darkness, and Cloverfield simultaneously. The Darkness has a sequel which was recently announced, by the way, which I’m rather happy about.
I visited Miami rather briefly and despite failing to find any recognisable locations from the brilliant tv show Dexter, everything else made me think of Vice City of course.
We also drove past Washington DC, and saw the Capitol Building and the monument in the distance. This of course made me think of Fallout 3, and I could easily imagine the area being ravaged by a nuclear winter. We even drove over a huge bridge, which must’ve been part of the collapsed freeways you see many times in that game.
Driving through Pensylvania made me want to play Alan Wake through again – this place was full of gorgeous rolling hills chock full of trees. What a brilliant setting for a horror game.
I will definitely make a point to visit more awesome places from videogames in any future trips. I wonder how accurate Doom’s vision of Mars is…?
I recently played through Cult of the Lamb, a satirical take on the concept of running a demonic cult. It turns horrific things like sacrificial rituals, cannibalism and straight up gaslighting abuse into hilarious amusements by filtering everything through its cartoonish lens. You are a sheep, after all, and all your followers are sycophantic anthropomorphic […]
Hello, world! This post marks the moment in time and space when BangClickReload got a little redesign and was dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century. Every post before this point is rather old and might not look right, and unless I decide to go through them all to fix them, they’re going to […]
I’ve been pretty absent from PC gaming for some time, since moving to Canada in early 2017, because I haven’t had a proper computer to play games on. That has recently changed, since I got myself set up with a new gaming rig that can handle pretty much anything that’s out at the moment. I […]
The epic Mass Effect trilogy comes to a close early next year. I need to find time to replay through 1 and 2 in order to get my savefiles back and get the true experience, (I was one of the only people in the world to be relieved at the news of its delay). Until then, here’s a new trailer, which is all action and little story, but I appreciate the un-spoilery nature of it, compared to what they did during the buildup of Mass Effect 2…
Who doesn’t love suicidal rocket-riding goblins? Click for higher-res version. It’s from Relic’s Space Marine.
There’s some exciting yet controversial news for Bioshock fans! There’s an all-new game on the horizon (woo!) but it’s not set underwater, not about Rapture, and well, seems to have next-to-nothing to do with Bioshock 1 or 2…
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