Awesome “cover” of the James Bond theme with lyrics talking about how much of a twat Bond is, maybe a little NSFW

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Beasts

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Creatures 4 Festering Goblin 4 Wall of Mulch 4 Goblin Sharpshooter 4 Ravenous Baloth 1 Silklash Spider 1 Seedborn Muse 1 Silvos, Rogue Elemental 1 Kamahl, Fist of Krosa 1 Enormous Baloth 4 Krosan Tusker Spells 4 Oversold Cemetery 4 Naturalize 2 Starstorm 1 Slate of Ancestry Land 4 Contested Cliffs 14 Forest 4 Mountain 2 Swamp

Critical Combos & Tactics

• Build Mana quick and start dropping bombs
• Use Oversold Cemetry to return Ravenous Baloth and Krosan Tuker as needed
• Use Slate of Ancestry to fill up your empty hand or to swap out unneeded cards

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Timothy David “Tim” Minchin is an Australian – British comedian, actor, and musician.
Tim Minchin is best known for his musical comedy, which has featured in six CDs, three DVDs and a number of live comedy shows which he has performed internationally. He has also appeared on television in Australia, Britain and the United States. After growing up in Perth, Western Australia, he attended the University of Western Australia and WAAPA before moving to Melbourne in 2002. His breakout show, “Dark Side”, launched him into the public eye, achieving critical success at the 2005 Melbourne International Comedy Festival and the 2005 Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Minchin is an excellent musician, comedian and song writer and if you are genuinely unfamiliar with his work I hope you enjoy this post. We recently watched his Tim Minchin & the Hertiage Orchestra DVD and I enjoyed every minute of it, very sad we missed out on the tour. I personally find all the songs below funny but some have been slightly removed from context, please note if you’ve not really seen much Tim Minchin before and think any of this seems puerile you’re largely missing the point.

His comedy is very clever and I do him no favours by separating some of these out of routine I’m sure, but take my advice, he’s a pretty smart guy. I am also 100% behind him when it comes to the views I have seen him express in both his stage performances and TV/radio interviews regarding religion, spirituality and science, and the very fact he is openly a part of/involved with the British Humanist Association means he earns my respect regardless of how talented he is with music and comedy.

Anyway, on with the list and special thanks to Tim for actually giving me permission to use one of his songs on here which isn’t already bouncing around the net/on YouTube. Also i’m gonna throw a NSFW warning on this because of language, if you’ve got headphones you’ll be fine.

5. Five Poofs and 2 Pianos

This is one of Tim’s less “direct” songs but for some reason I just really like it. Back in the days when Jonathan Ross was on BBC I watched almost every week (mainly because I liked knowing  massive comics geek like Wossy was running a prime time BBC show) but I have to admit to being a bit of a fan of his camp house band, 4 Poofs and a Piano. When Minchin came onto the show and sang this I didn’t really know him but have to say was instantly won over. It’s catchy, funny and manages to not feel offensive at all even though it using some language [generally stupid] people would associate with homophobia. This song still makes me smile now and while many of Tims songs are about more controversial subjects this one manages to be funny and kind of sweet at the same time.

Favourite part of the song has to be the ending, love the rhyming and love the look on Jamie Cullens face in the green room, also gotta love anything that slags off Jan Mior and the Daily Mail.

4. Song for Phil Daust

Each time I hear this song I just sit through it smiling. As always with Tims work the music seems to perfectly not go with the lyrics and I love that juxtaposition, it makes the whole thing ten times funnier. Some people will, i’m sure agree, that I can take to criticism quite badly sometimes too and one of the reasons I love this song is that I think it perfectly captures that feeling when you know you’re the one kinda in the wrong but you just can’t let the personal side of the criticism go. I’m not famous enough for anyone to have written a real column about me but if I were and someone had a go at my work I’ve no doubt I would feel exactly like this.

Favourite bit of the song has to be “I hope something you love catches on fire” it’s not as harsh as some of the other comments but its so deliciously full of malice.

3. Not Perfect

This isn’t really a funny song but it’s just so beautiful I couldn’t miss it off the list. It’s one of my favourite songs full stop, partially because I think we all need to be reminded every now and again about the fact that things don’t need to be perfect to be enjoyable and partially because the music and lyrics are just so simple and pretty. I have started thinking about this song whenever I get especially down and listening to it really cheers me up and surely that’s one of the most important points of music and comedy.

My favourite bit has to be when he’s singing about his mind towards the end, lots of nice imagery and a bit of comedy too.

2. The Good Book

OK So I’m breaking out the religious satire now, it’s almost a speciality of Tim’s and he is one of the best at it out there. I’m staunchly atheist so I find this video both funny and accurate, the lyrics towards the end discussing people making modern day decisions based on evidence in the Bible is spot on. It’s one the things that annoys me most about forcefully religious people, stopping the rest of the species progress because of their beliefs. I don’t want to go into a rant as part of this post so I hope you thought the song was funny, itf nothing else it’s really, really catchy.

Favourite bit has to be the Bible “book reviews”, they really make me laugh.

1. Thank You God

Thank You God is my favourite of Tim’s Song to date, it’s another religious themed one from a later tour. A response to a comment by a fan who presented Tim with the “proof” of a miracle after his church congregation “prayed” his mums eye better. Its bitingly sarcastic, extremely clever, occasionally shocking and as catchy as Tims other songs. I really like the main argument pushed over in this and how Tim doesn’t hold anything back at all. Some people would criticise it for the fairly harsh language but I think it’s used to genuine effect. I currently struggle to get through a day without listening to it and I can’t give Tim enough credit for putting something this good out there.

Favourite bit has to be the “Fuck me Sam, what are odds” line. Again there is some awesome lyrical/musical juxtaposition stuff going on and it makes me laugh every time I hear it.

That’s it, there is loads more on YouTube if you want more, Tims official YouTube channel is here. Honorable mention goes to the beat poem Storm, it wasn’t song-y enough to make my list but its funny as hell and, in my opinion, very right. Other honorable mentions go to the very funny Pope Song and the very clever 3 Minute Song.

Hope you’ve enjoyed all the songs on here, thanks to Tim for being so bloody good at his trade and for letting me embed the MP3. Go and buy his DVDs, he does lots of funny talking between the songs and frankly he deserves our money.

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Star One is the brain child of Dutch musician Arjen Anthony Lucassen. There are a few definitions around of the type of music that Star One plays, but I think the title of the first album actually sums it up best – Space Metal.

Star One is geek friendly music; each song tells a sci-fi story and the vast majority of their tracks are based on SF movies or TV shows. Here’s a taste; “Earth That Was”, from Victims of the Modern Age:

Space Metal was the first album I listened to and was pretty much sold when I realised that there were songs on there about Stargate, Alien, and Star Trek. Victims of the Modern Age went on to add The Matrix, Firefly, and 12 Monkeys into the mix, amongst others.

What I like about Star One is that the massive sound I loved about Ayreon (Arjen Lucassen’s best known project) was still there, but now it was attached to songs about movies and shows that I loved. Additionally, while the songs remain heavy, there’s a good deal of synth in there (which suits the SF theme) and some of the tracks are insanely catchy as well.

A cast of singers allows room for different characters, particularly in “The Eye of Ra” and “Songs of the Ocean”. The “stories” aren’t told outright either; events are often seen from the point of view of the characters from a film or show.

I discovered Star One through listening to Ayreon, another band that I can’t recommend enough, and which is also “geek friendly”; telling a continuous SF story across many albums (with one exception). The music is massive, the story is massive, and the musical cast is great.

I can’t recommend Lucassen’s music enough (there are many other projects and bands with which he’s been involved), but it’s Ayreon and Star One in particular that captured my imagination.

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• Star Trek

As you’re no doubt aware big time MMORPG Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR) launched just before Christmas, as avid Star Wars fans both Onimi and I were extremely excited about this. Docta Jonez has also jumped on board for the ride and so far we’ve all been loving it.

I genuinely believe you can’t properly “review” MMORPGs, it’s an extremely subjective genre and worse other people can change you experience significantly. All my reviews should be treated as subjective but this one more than any other, I am a huge Star Wars fan and it’s an MMO. If nothing else I hope I can at least shed some light on the games good and bad points and explain how certain systems work.

Gameplay

Clearly Force Choke & Force Lightning is everywhere

SWTOR features pretty generic MMORPG questing gameplay at its heart. No matter how much you dress it up it’s still a quest giver telling you to go kill X of Y or deactivate the thing in place Z. I think this grind and quest game play either does or does not appeal to you as a player, the good news is that if it usually doesn’t, I think SWTOR could be the one that wins you over.

It’s more story driven than any MMO before it and you character matters more than ever before thanks to them incorporating Biowares favourite moral choice systems and conversation trees.

There are 5 main types of gameplay TOR offers that we need to explore;

Class Quests

Class quests are the meat of your gameplay experience. Each class has a unique story that they follow through from level 1 up to around level 35. While new content is always being added this is where the legacy content is ending at the moment.

Class questing essentially plays like a Star Wars themed Mass Effect expansion. For those who have not properly player Mass Effect this is a pretty extreme compliment. For the first time ever in an MMO your character is rich, interesting and not a mindless mute who just accepts every quest that comes to them. I am playing Sith Inquisitor, essentially the Dark Side Mage class, my story has involved following a twisting network of Sith betraying each other, questing for power and generally acting evil. Not only does it feel perfectly in line with the expanded universe it really helped me build and understand my character.

The voice acting is amazing, the sheer amount of options and acting in one story is staggering, combined with all the other quests and class story lines I really can see how it’s taken so long to put together but its 100% worth it.

The moral choice system is pretty standard but it’s still really interesting to play it inside an MMO and I love how the voice actors have actually put emotional inflection on some of the choice so you genuinely sound maniacal when continuous force lightning torturing some NPC.

SWTOR is worth buying and playing just to play these quests. For that to be true of a MMO is a really huge step, I think the only thing that has come remotely close is Guild Wars and even then your character really wasn’t your own. If you played games like Mass Effect or Dragon Age and know how important it is to play a character you create and shape then you’ll know what I’m talking about when I say it makes all the difference in this game.

General Quests

These are pretty simple bread and butter MMO quests that you pick up alongside adventuring for your class quests. The difference between this game and other MMOs again comes down to sheer attention to detail.

Nearly every quest (at least 90%) is given by a voiced NPC, each of these NPCs genuinely has a character. Some I liked, some I hated, some I didn’t care about but what other MMO is this true of? Quests tied into each other well and one of the early planets the Empire finds itself on is Balmorra.

Balmorra is basically in the midst of a rebellion and many of the quests you pick up on the planet involve suppressing this revolt and bringing the planet back under control. Even though the bottom line gameplay is go out and kill X of Y it’s made to feel much more fresh and enjoyable because you doing it as part of a larger objective. Again I know TOR isn’t the first thing to do this but it’s certainly the best, the voice acting and cutscenes make even mundane quests interesting and gives you even more chance to develop your character. I genuinely refused a few quests at times because I felt they were “beneath” my character to complete and the game actually accepts this.

You’re going to spend a lot of your time doing these quests and while many are solo-able there are frequently more advanced 2-4 player team quests that need completing, again these tie into the overall storyline of a particular planet. And feature conversation points similar to the ones in Flashpoints described below.

Flashpoints

Each location has a few “Flashpoints” to explore. These are basically special multiplayer missions that have important stories and longer term objectives. They often interact with the major over arching story which I am beginning to take for granted in TOR but most games would easily fuck up.

You start by rounding up a few friends and going to a specific map point to start the mission. You’ll then be transported to an instance with them and the story will begin. You’ll now play something similar to a short series of class quests which work multiplayer.

That doesn’t sound especially impressive until you consider what I said the class section about conversations and character development, in a Flashpoint this happens multiplayer. You still have prolonged voice Acted conversations only this time instead of just your response the whole team has to respond. This basically works by randomly picking who’s “choice” is read aloud but it adds a real feeling of richness to the missions, you never know what your crew mates are going to do and since the missions often include moral choices you could quite easily end up on a completely different story depending on who is with you.

I am really enjoying the Flashpoint system and this is one of the things that Bioware have promised will continue receiving content, if you have a few real life friends you can bring with you to SWTOR then it’s worth it just for this. If they ever do make that ME MMO it should play like this continually.

Space Combat

I think this is the Republic Trooper ship, not quite the Falcon but trying hard

Space combat in TOR is probably the most disappointing thing for me. Not because it’s bad, in fact it’s very enjoyable but more because it’s not what it was in Star Wars Galaxies which is what I really wanted.

Space combat is essentially a single player (to my knowledge I have not done multiplayer missions yet) rail shooter where you fly around shoot and dodge your way to victory. If I were to say it plays like a really good PSN Store game maybe you’ll get the right vibe from it. It defiantly feels like a minigame and not as “part” of the universe as all the other stuff.

Bottom line it looks great, controls well and is generally fun so I don’t want to complain about it but I really liked Galaxies free roaming space. As Docta quite rightly pointed out they probably just didn’t want to spread the game development teams too thinly.

PvP

Obviously the game has a big PvP side to it being set in the middle of a war, to be honest I have not had a huge amount of time to explore PvP yet. I’ll probably return and update this section once I have got a more informed opinion.

Controls & Systems

Controls

The controls are basic but fine. They are tried and tested MMO stuff with a skill bar and some basic run, walk jump controls. Most interaction is done via clicking it and while combat can be frantic it’s never much more than using your skills and hopping out of AoE skills.

Conversation dialogues use the Mass Effect style wheel, again tried and tested and no complaints there.

There are plenty of tweaks you can throw at the UI and the controls in general but all of it is surface detail to the basic truth that there is only one way these kind of games control.

Space combat is very point and clicky but it works quite well, its responsive and I have no complaints here either, it would be nice to see an extra layer or two of complexity to the space combat controls but again this comes back to my love of space combat in Galaxies, not specifically that there is anything wrong with these controls.

Moral Choice System

There has always been a lot of criticism out there for moral choice systems, the most common criticism is that you can’t play a life of balance and expect rewards, I’m sad to say that this has not been fixed in TOR. I personally don’t mind that much but I do understand the criticism and anyone who does care about it will find the problem very prevalent in TOR. Essentially the moral choice system is all about building your character, you shouldn’t care how much light or dark side points you have as long as your character is doing what he/she would do. Unfortunately this is not the case, some items have dark/light side requirements and things get complex very quickly.

Not only do you have to have a certain level of dark/light side points you have to dedicate yourself to a path to truly equip the specialist items. This is because the game works out your alignment level by taking them away from each other, for example if you have made a bunch of dark decisions giving you 1000 dark points but 2 good decisions giving you 100 light points this makes you 900 dark. This means you are almost punished for mixing your decisions up, I really don’t like this and it means I sometimes end up not choosing a dialogue option I want because I’m concerned for my alignment. The specialist items are at the end of the day replaceable so I guess you could ignore it but MMOs are often all about your equipment and I don’t want to be wishing I could equip my new dark side sabre; I just want to equip it.

The good news is that the actual conversations and social interactions from the two paths are fantastic, the dark side really is dark often involving unneeded killing and torture and I am enjoying playing a bad guy for a change.

Companions

This is my companion. Not a sex scene though, he's always half naked.

To help with soloing and to bolster the story modes TOR has a companion system. You pick up your first companion during training, as an Inquisitor I picked up a tank companion who does me a lot of good by taking damage and aggro. Most classes have a well chosen primary companion who will counter balance their classes own skills. The most amazing thing about them is that they are genuinely characters in your story. Not only was gaining my companion a really important part of the story he remains important, interacting in important conversations and commenting on various developments in my narrative.

There is a weak Bioware approval system in with your companion, you can give them gifts and converse with them when you’re on your ship to improve ratings but the majority of the approval/disapproval will come from normal quest conversations.

Your companion will often react to things you say and do inside quests and you’ll gain approval if you impress them with how you handle situations. This is another fantastic example of how hard Bioware has worked to make it all tie in well together; the alignment, approval and conversation systems all sit together well and in turn tie in beautifully with the universe.

You get multiple companions (but can only travel with one at a time) and they count towards the party limit similar to Guild Wars so are often not around in multiplayer quests.

Crafting

A staple of a good MMO crafting can contribute quite strongly to making and breaking a game, I’m very pleased to say that SWTOR scores a hat-trick in the crafting department.

Why is the crafting so good in TOR? Because you don’t have to do it yourself. You send your recruited companions off to craft whenever you want. You still have to manage the tasks, choose the right missions, craft the right items, manage materials and schematics but you don’t have to do the grind. Speaking as someone who works full time and has other hobbies this is a godsend. I hate missing out on crafting inside an MMO because I simply don’t have time to actually do it and this solves that problem 100%.

Crafting is called Crew Skills and you have 3 crew skill slots, one of these can be an actual crafting profession (where you make items) and the others can be either gathering or mission based professions. They all provide different rewards and obviously certain gathering and crafting professions go together.

It’s very simple menu based stuff but I think it’s a wise step for crafting inside MMOs and I honestly prefer it to any other crafting system I have seen before.

Social Points

The game also contains a social point’s reward system where you gain points and levels just for questing with other people. This in turn gets you access to specific items. It’s a small tweak but I like anything that encourages people to play together.

Audio

The games audio is, in a word, fantastic.

Firstly the voice acting is superb. We’re talking 1000s up on 1000s of hours of dialogue in this game, not only do all quest givers and story NPCs talk to you there are also plenty of random conversations going off in cities and spaceports that are simply awesome. It’s such a small change on the surface but switching most of the dialogue to spoken rather than text creates a much, much more engrossing experience.

It reflects emotion well and just my own character has been funny, arrogant, angry, arrogant, sarcastic, mistrusting and arrogant. [Obligatory "bit like me"]

It seems the “Imperials” are all Scottish, English or Welsh because as we all know, the UK is the source of all evil. I don’t mind so much, I can tell what they’re saying at least.

The music is also beautiful, I have the special edition so got the CD to go with the game and I’ve really enjoy it. It fades in an out in the game really well and switches during bigger battles and important story points and while it’s not been done by John Williams it captures much of the epic scale that he usually weaves into the series.

We also have all the Lucas brand Star Wars sound effects which let’s face it are nearly as important as brand itself. Alongside the music it really helps to add depth to the world and I really can’t find a single point of criticism for the games audio department.

Graphics

The pretty landscape of Nar Shaddaa

It’s always hard to judge MMORPG graphics, they generally look worse than single player games because of server load and TOR is no exception. After walking away from Skyrim to play this I can’t turn around and say the visuals of TOR are particularly stunning.

This doesn’t stop the game looking good however, the games not breaking any boundaries with its graphics but they are more than good enough to work with and the environments and space battles look really good.

They have chosen to slightly stylise characters, it’s not quite cell shaded but it has that slightly cartoony feel to it. They are still reasonably realistic and there are plenty of well done facial animations, especially lip syncing and emotions but it’s hard to make the Star Wars Universe with all its odd aliens and robots indefinitely realistic. I found the character creator limiting because of this stylisation but later on you realise the equipment massively changes your characters appearance so don’t worry about it too much at the start.

The game makes up for its slightly unimpressive character models with the environments, huge draw distances and great looking scenery (ok it’s not Skyrim). Some of the city heavy planets look especially nice and considering this is an MMO you really can’t complain.

Space combat looks especially nice, really large vistas and impressive looking ships flying around screen, exploding and/or on fire. They’re often lots of animations of screen and I’ve not seen it suffer yet.

In Conclusion

SWTOR is the best MMO I’ve played in a while, it’s better than Guild Wars and WoW and it’s defiantly better than the more recent Final Fantasy XIV. The story focus is exactly what I want form an MMO and it does such a fantastic job of keeping the mess that is the extended Star Wars Universe together.

I brings together a range of decent systems and minigames and combines it with amazing levels of voice acting, a 5 star soundtrack and very respectable graphics.

The Flashpoints are the real gem here, I hope this changes how all developers of future MMOs look at co-operative multiplayer missions but I doubt any will pull it off as smoothly as Bioware.

SWTOR proves that Bioware really are a great studio, lesser teams would have fucked this game and while it bares many of Biowares “one trick pony” hallmarks I honestly don’t see it as a problem.

I hope i can stay enthused about this game for a while to come, I know that all MMOs have a plateau point but maybe Bioware’s promised content will keep me on board.

I think SWTOR is a must buy for real Star Wars fans and a strongly recommend buy for anyone who likes Biowares other games or people looking for a new MMO to love.

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We end with Artifacts and Non-Basic Lands…

Artifact Creature

Jesta

Solemn Simulacrum was one of those cards I just put in any deck. 4 mana for a chump blocker that finds a land and draws a card? Yeah, I’ll take that :) A key part of my Tooth and Nail deck and is part of a couple of other decks.  Reprinted in M12 too…

Diablos

I think the recent Magic sets have had some good Artifact Creatures and my favourite is probably Phyrexian Metamorph. Yeah, yeah it’s blue but its a good creature and thanks to Phyrexian mana it can go in almost any deck sideboard. It doesn’t target so its a good way of killing certain hexproof legends too.

DoctaJonez

I have fond memories of Thran Golem.  Sure he’s not great by today’s standards but back in the day all you needed was Rancor and it was clobbering time!

Legend

Jesta

Umezawa’s Jitte is silly. It’s very cheap and very versatile. It’s one of those cards that gets a bullseye on it when played and when it has a few tokens on it you can’t help but feel hopeless when playing against it.

Diablos

I have to side with Jesta and say  Umezawa’s Jitte. It’s just fucking stupid good.

DoctaJonez

I love Umezawa’s Jitte, it’s so flexible and arguably broken.  It’s a lot of fun though!  It’s not really a surprise that all 3 of us chose this one.

Artifact

Jesta

Way back when I played a mill deck which was Howling Mine, Island Sanctuary based. The problem is if you lose either of those cards you were.. in trouble.  Jester’s Cap allowed me to search my opponents library to remove and Disenchant of similar cards to protect my board. If they didn’t have any I stripped out any flyers, islandwalkers or anything that was  threat.  Looking through the library I could look to see what I needed to counter so I could quite often draw up a couple of counters then skip my turn until they played something I didn’t like, counter it, replace the card and carry on. I obviously don’t play decks like that any more but back in creature heavy days, a creature-less deck left many dead cards in the opponents hand and left them confused.

Diablos

Coat of Arms is probably my favourite Artifact. Not only does it boost your tribe decks and go in almost any format but it also increases the amount of maths in Magic! Yay! I have had lots of fun games where my 12 rat warriors and 5 rat ninjas have gone against your 7 human clerics and 3 human soldiers. Just funny combat damage phases.

DoctaJonez

I love playing Rage Extractor.  It isn’t very flexible but it’s a lot of fun in the right deck.  Add in a few Phyrexian Metamorphs and see how many copies of Rage Extractor you can have in play!

Non-Basic Land

Jesta

I love Reflecting Pool. Back when this first came out I thought it was the best land ever. If it’s legal when I build a multi-colour deck I ALWAYS put 4 of these in.

Diablos

I think Cabal Coffers is my favourite non-basic land. A really powerful land and responsible for single handedly winning and loosing me games after drawing 3 in opening hands. ¬¬

DoctaJonez

Contested Cliffs is hands down my favourite land.   I’ve always loved the fight mechanic, it’s fun :-)

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5) Missi Pyle
Even if you don’t know her by name, you’ll recognise Missi when you see her. I think we probably know her more from movies that TV shows, but she has been in her fair share of genre films.
The first thing I remember seeing her in is Tim Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory but she’s also been in:
Galaxy Quest, Josie & The Pussycats, Roswell High, The Tick, Big Fish, Dodgeball, Anchorman, My Name is Earl, Heroes, Pushing Daisies, and American Dad

4) Amanda Tapping

Amanda Tapping will, first and foremost, always be Samantha Carter to me, and to millions of Stargate fans around the globe. I know she splits opinion among some people, but I think Sam Carter is a great character (once the sorted out the first season niggles, and we have Amanda to thank for some of that). It was only after I had seen her as Sam Carter, however, that I realised how much other SF stuff Amanda Tapping has been in. Not only has she been in every Stargate series, from SG-1 to Universe, she’s also appeared in:
Goosebumps, Due South, The X-Files, The Outer Limits, Millennium, Earthsea, Sanctuary, Stargate: Continuum, and Stargate: The Ark of Truth

3) Summer Glau
Summer Glau has only been appearing on our TV screens for about 10 years. Of course, most of us know her as River Tam from Firefly, but a glance back over her filmography on IMDB reveals that right from the start she was appearing in our kind of shows. Let’s take a look at what else you’ll know her from:
Angel, Cold Case, CSI, Serenity, The 4400, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Dollhouse, Superman/Batman: Apocalypse, Chuck, The Big Bang Theory, and Alphas

2) Gina Torres
When Gina walked onto our screens as Zoe in Firefly, I knew I’d seen her in other things before, but couldn’t quite place her. Again, when you start looking back, it becomes apparent that she’s been in a lot of TV that we’ve watched over the years, and a few films as well. Add to this some video game voice over work and you can see that SF and fantasy seems to be one of her mainstays. You’ll have seen Gina in:
Law & Order, Xena: Warrior Princess, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, Cleopatra 2525, Angel, The Matrix Reloaded, The Matrix Revolutions, CSI, 24, Justice League, Without a Trace, Alias, Pushing Daisies, Flashforward, The Vampire Diaries, and Transformers Prime

1) Lucy Lawless
Known to all of us as Xena, Warrior Princess, Lucy Lawless has carved herself a niche in geek friendly TV. It seems impossible that Xena was first airing almost 20 years ago, but that also shows how long Lucy Lawless has been on our screens.
So, as well as appearing in Warrior Princess, Lucy Lawless has also been in:
Hercules and the Amazon Women, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, The X-Files, Spider-Man, Tarzan, Spider-Man 2, Veronica Mars, Burn Notice, Dragonlance, Justice League, CSI: Miami, The Simpsons, Battlestar Galactica, Flight of the Conchords, American Dad, Spartacus: Gods of the Arena, and Spartacus: Blood and Sand

Honourable mentions have to include: Claudia Black (check out how much video game voice over work she’s done), Mary McDonnell, Jewel Staite, Eliza Dushku, Gillian Anderson, and Melinda Clarke.

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OK so I’m a bit late with this one but wanted to get it up on the site before SWTOR comes out. There is a lot to talk about here so grab a cup of tea and a few biscuits and let’s talk about the Dragonborn.

Sequel to popular free roaming RPG Oblivion, Bethesda’s Skyrim is one of the most anticipated games of the year and bottom line it really delivers as both a great free roaming RPG and as a much improved sequel to Oblivion.

I was a big fan of both Oblivion and the more recent Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas games, they are expansive, enjoyable and engrossing, three very important qualities of good role playing games and I was honestly looking forward to Skyrim as one of the best games this year.

While it has its flaws I can honestly say that Skyrim lives up to the hype, I still have a few to go through (Batman, SWTOR and Uncharted) before I say it’s THE best game of 2011 but at the moment it’s a strong contender.

Gameplay

Most dragons are dicks. Get over it and go kill them.

Skyrim clearly aims to be an immersive experience, from the opening scene to your first visit to a major city the game aims to impress you, draw you in and get you excited about fighting dragons and questing.

The most notable point of the gameplay is just how free roaming Skyrim really is. If you’ve played Fallout 3 or Oblivion you’ll be familiar with how Bethesda does things. Main story progression really is optional and you can run around doing side quests until you hit the level cap before the story ever even thinks about forcing you to proceed. In actual fact it can even be quite difficult to identify story missions from side quests early on, a blessing and a curse which I will go into later.

Essentially Skyrim plays as a 1^st or 3^rd person adventure RPG in which you play through a series of dungeon crawls to fetch artefacts kill bosses or learn information. Nothing in any way about the basic setup and execution of the gameplay of this game is really unique but what it lacks in pure innovation it more than makes up for in almost flawless execution.

Dungeons are generally well balanced, they have interesting surroundings and different styles of traps and puzzles that will keep your interest for a fair amount of the game. Repetition does start to creep in towards the end of the game but I have a feeling this is because there is just so much content not because the game especially lacks variety.

Although the story is nothing astonishing it’s actually very enjoyable and while your character is a bit of a bland nobody the world is literally filled with fun, interesting quest givers and villains of varying types which more than makes up for it.

One of the things that impressed me right off the bat was how much race seemed to matter in the game, people of different races often had connecting opinions and discourse and this created a really strong feeling of tribal unity that crossed the whole content. It even successfully pulled off racism without being tacky or cliché and I think that deserves a mention on its own. So many sci-fi/fantasy setting games handle that subject like a Warhammer of Clumsiness +10 and it’s great to see someone play it subtly and not just go “Yeah people hate Elves/Dwarves/Blue Aliens, they’re slaves JUST LIKE BLACK PEOPLE WERE AT ONE POINT IN EARTH HISTORY, DO YOU GET THE REFERENCE??!?!” [I’m looking at you Bioware]

One point of innovation Skyrim does get is how quests “evolve”. It’s only a little touch but it really does make a lot more sense than speaking to one NPC and then getting a huge long quest dialogue for no particular reason.

Essentially quests usually start with a menial task, deliver this note, find this bit of information, investigate the cave but many evolve into being much larger stories. An example is that at one point I got a quest to fetch some medicine for a sick old guy, after I got this it didn’t work I went on a big quest to get a legendary item which when discovered was broken and I had to go get a series of rare items to fix it. Some would argue this is stringing out side-quests but because the characters are actually deep and involving it never feels like a chore.

Although many quests eventually evolve into dungeon crawling or fetching there are lots of nice exceptions including stealth missions, hunting, puzzles and even conversation system quests.

Controls and Systems

The really pretty skill tree screen. Yeah even menus look good.

A note before we proceed any further; I mainly played Skyrim as a 1^st person game because frankly, I’ve played 100’s of 3^rd person RPGs and wanted a change and I always played Oblivion and Fallout 1^st person. I have a sneaking suspicion the controls would be clunky as hell in 3^rd person. I also played it on the PC, I have feelings controls on a console would also be a bit crap.

Controls in general were good, I tweaked a few but honestly it’s very similar to tried and tested PC RPGs and also very similar to Oblivion. There were occasions where I got stuck or struggled a little underwater but you do get used to the controls quickly and it’s not a huge issue.

The levelling system is fun and one of the best solutions to actually creating a unique character I have seen in an RPG. The skills in Skyrim are split into the usual three RPG archetypes, Mage, Warrior and Rouge, the big “innovation” for want of a better word is that you can literally level whichever attributes you want.

It’s hard to illustrate in words but let me give you my character as an example, I specialised in the following combat skills;

• One Handed
• Shield
• Heavy Armour
• Conjuration

This basically enabled me to play a shield warrior necromancer! It was great fun killing things as a warrior but raising my dead enemies to help and trapping their souls to power my weapons. I also specialised in support skills to help me outside of combat;

• Smiting
• Enchanting
• Pickpocket

So you can see how I really diversified my class, a little bit of Rogue, a decent helping of Mage and a healthy dollop of Warrior. The system allows for loads and loads of combinations and I already want to replay the game focusing on magic.

You level a skill up by using and this means you can easily focus and get better at specific traits, each time you level a skill like “one handed” or “conjuration” up you get exp which increases your base level. Each time you increase your base levels you get to boost one of your three main stats (health, mana or stamina) and choose a perk.

Perks are much like they are in Fallout, each skill has a small skill tree of perks that make that particular skillset better, for example taking shield perks helps you block more damage and gives you a handy shield bash technique. Since you have to progress a tree you can’t master everything, considering 50 is the level cap it means you can specialise in 6 or 7 skill trees and get the “level 100” skill ability in each. It’s balanced well and is one of the best level systems I have seen in a while, it’s a bit prone to over-levelling early on but to be fair they can’t really account for that.

The big balance problem comes in the form that Bethesda’s games always suffer from. Bottom line is this; it’s just too fucking easy to steal and pickpocket your way to huge riches and awesome items. Yahtzee pointed out in his Zero Punctuation column on this game that he purposely avoided pick pocketing and stealing because it spoilt Oblivion for him, I honestly wished I had done the same thing. By the time I was level 20 I basically had level 80 pick pocketing and infinite money, whenever I was short of cash I fast travelled to a town waited until dark and robbed jewellery off everyone I could find. Sure you can get caught and maybe lose a bit but considering the thief guild progression lets you bribe guards it’s barely an issue.

I strongly suggest you avoid stealing and pick pocketing [too much] if you want the game to retain its intended balance. You can make much better items with smithing and enchanting than you’ll ever steal, concentrate on that.

Audio

Yeah this guy will literally sing to you if you pay him.

The games music isn’t that stand out, it’s not bad but it’s not ground breaking either. I really like the little songs that the ion game minstrels and bards sings but this isn’t really the main game music and other than doing well to support atmosphere the music really doesn’t stand out much.

Where the games audio really stands out is in voice acting. Since FFX back on the PS2 games have been constantly upping the ante on voice acting and Skyrim really is this year’s ante upper.

The sheer amount of voice acting in the game is staggering, every single pointless NPC talks to you. I mean every single one even the kids playing in the street, even the cooks in the castle kitchen. Everyone.

In general the voice acting is awesome, races have specific accents and dialects and people have huge ranges of potential greetings and reactions especially when you start taking sides in the in game civil war.

One seemingly small thing that really impressed me is how the NPCs actually react to your characters progression. A great example was early on I put a lot of time into conjuration and when passing guards they would remark on how I was a conjurer. “Couldn’t conjure me up a warm bed” one would say or “keep your dark magics to yourself” a less approving NPCs snorted. I really enjoyed this but was even more impressed later on when I got my enchanting high and NPCs responded differently to me, that same guard now said “You couldn’t enchant my blade could you?” or “That’s a mighty fine blade you have there”.

It’s a really small environmental tweak with a lot of work behind it that really helps sell the world you’re in and adds a huge amount of depth to the game especially when you consider all this is voice acted.

Graphics

It looks this good. All. The. Time.

I really can’t say much about Skyrims graphics other than they are really, really fucking nice. Do they have issues? Yes lighting problems and glitches do occur. Does it matter? No. Not one bit when you climb a huge mountain through mist and clouds and look out over Skyrim to see rives flowing and Dragons swooping around you won’t care. It really is one of the best looking games ever made.

Character animation can be a bit clunky but honestly stop looking at the people and look how nice the vistas are.

The Glitches

Yeah the Mammoth flies. Quite a lot.

OK so I’m sure you’ve heard Skyrim has some glitches. Flying mammoths, impossible jumps, and vertical ponies. Yes this stuff is happening in the game. I have been frustrated a few times with quests being a bit glitched or enemies breaking. My most memorable moment was a huge dragon stuck in a mountain peak spinning around like a spinning top and generally being immortal. He is still there, I can’t kill him.

It’s not great; these things shouldn’t happen but in a game as huge and varied as Skyrim I can see how much trouble they would have with little bugs and very, very few of them seem to drastically affect the game.

Unfortunately the crash to desktop stuff does affect the game. It doesn’t happen too often, maybe 1:3 times I play but random crashing really is annoying as fuck and one time I really lost a lot of progress. My advice is turn on the auto saves and quick save like a boss.

Also it’s not a glitch but I found my companions getting in the way. A lot. I actually ended up making my housecarl (read: bitch) a set of armour and childishly calling her shield the “Minions Roadblock”. She is always in the fucking way and always complains when I get her to move.

In Conclusion

Skyrim really is as good as people are saying, it has its flaws there are some major balance issues with the economy and with higher level item making, sometimes quests surprise out level you and the glitches and CTD’s can be really, really annoying but the games sheer scope and beauty outweigh these niggles.

It’s really set the bar for open world RPGs going forward and Mass Effect and Dragon Age 3 are gonna have some huge work to do to catch up. Personally I prefer the Fallout setting so I hope they deliver with Fallout 4 as much as they have with Skyrim.

Most importantly of all Skyrim is an example of a game that blends innovation with execution. Yeah the dungeon crawling bits and general feel are nothing new but the breath taking visuals, amazing voice acting and well thought out levelling system add unprecedented depth to the game and make it much, much more than the sum of its parts. Games series like Call of Duty and GTA could learn a lot from Bethesda’s handling of the 4^th Elder Scrolls instalment.

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• Game Review: LA Noire
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• Game Review :: Rock Band 2

The Creepiest Mr Sci-Fi?

5) Zeljko Ivanek
I honestly think that Zeljko Ivanek specialises not only in being Mr Sci-Fi but being creepy Mr Sci-Fi. The first thing I remember seeing him in is 24, where he played a scary as hell terrorist – whose father was played by Dennis Hopper. He’s been in loads of other shows though and you might remember him from the following:
The X-Files, Millennium, Homicide: Life on the Street, Black Hawk Down, The Twilight Zone, The West Wing, Law & Order, CSI, Law & Order: SVU, Die Hard 4, Heroes, True Blood, The Event
 
 
 
 
 
 

He even looks scary when he's smiling

Pretty cunning, don't you think?

The first Mr Sci-Fi?

I think Erick Avari is possibly the first actor I categorised as a “Mr Sci-Fi”. He’s been in loads of stuff that I’ve watched over the years. And he’s awesome in everything he’s been in. I think I first saw him in Stargate, but you may also know him from:
Star Trek: The Next Generation, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, SeaQuest DSV, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Independence Day, The Mummy, The West Wing, Stargate SG-1, Enterprise, The X-Files, Law & Order, Alias, NCIS, Heroes, Law & Order: CI, Burn Notice, Castle, Warehouse 13
 
 
 
 
 
 

Our winner!

The shows and movies I’ve listed for these guys are only a small sample of what they’ve been in – go check their IMDB profiles for a proper idea of how many times you’ll have tagged them as “that guy from that thing”.

It was tough narrowing this list down to five people, so here are the honourable mentions:
Greg Grunberg, Lance Reddick, Clancy Brown, Scott Bakula, Brian Thompson, Michael Ironside

Next up – Top 5 Mrs Sci-Fis.

Related posts:

• Top 5: Mrs Sci-Fi
• Top 5: Films From Childhood
• Top 5: Male TV Characters

Flag

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Creatures 4 Goblin Legionnaire 4 Razorfin Hunter 4 Whirlpool Warrior 4 Lightning Angel Spells 4 Absorb 4 Fire and Ice 4 Prophetic Bolt 3 Jilt 3 Quicksilver Dagger 2 Suffocating Blast Land 10 Island 9 Mountain 5 Plains

Critical Combos & Tactics

• Get Quicksilver Dagger on Lighning Angel and keep her alive!
• The deck is low on creatures so burn\counter threats where possible
• Keep spare lands in hand to throw away with Whirlpool Warrior

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