If there's one kind of game I like, its those that allow me to be a desktop despot. Oh the hours, hell truth be told days, weeks probably when you add up all the time I have played the Age Of Empires games. I just have a thing for having tiny pixelated minions do my bidding. So when Games Faction's Project Aftermath popped up in my steam news I figured it was probably going to be my type of game.

The premise is simple, "In the aftermath of a great war, when your enemy has wiped out everything you hold dear, the time has come to regroup and strike back. Enlist in the Morphid army and use all the weapons and genetic powers at your disposal to eradicate the New Order menace!"

Billing itself as an arcade RTS Project Aftermath lets you take command of up to four heroes and their squads of troopers. There are ten missions to play with the initial phase forming a tutorial. After each mission you can research new weapons and equip you teams with more. With a 3 man core team Games Factions have produced a pretty polished and very playable little game. Sure some of the sound effects are simplistic and there's no sweeping full motion cut scenes. How ever the comic style inserts are more than adequate and tell the story nicely. Impressive as some games cut scenes are I only end up hitting escape to skip them most of the time anyway. At the end of the day its the game itself that counts and that's where they have put their energy. The graphics are pretty good and the game ran bug free on my vista machine (Microsoft's studio's Gears of war still crashes every-time for me and my PC is more than powerful enough to run it fine.)

To add a degree of replayability (I'm sure that's not a real word), Your ability to score points is affected by how much you spend on weapons and armour. If you spend a lot you start the game in dept, if you play frugally the game will be harder, but you have more chance of climbing higher on the leader-board. Games Faction are already promising new features, including challenge mode with 10 new levels, a new tactical deployment system and new leader-board and steam achievement's features.

The price point is more than reasonable in my opinion $19.99 and the UK price is fixed to the US one so what ever the exchange rate is at the time will be the price you pay in pounds. Which with the pound currently falling against the dollar means its not going to be quite as cheap today as when I bought it, but still not much more than a tenner. UK based Games Faction has proved itself the little games studio that could, essentailly running with "one programmer, one artist, one designer" you have to be impressed with what they have done.  You can download the full game or a demo from either Games factions website or via your Steam account.

Oh and remember to take your leader-board account online and see how you rank, maybe, you can take the number one spot away from ... me (that's right bitches I am the greatest!)

Buy It | Download Trial

www.gamesfaction.com | Project Aftermath - Trailer

Legendary UK TV film critic Barry Norman looks at the making of two early 90's Low budget UK horror movies. Jim Grooms 1992 cult horror-comedy Revenge of Billy the Kid and Cult director Richard Stanley's horror / sci-fi Hardware.

This segment is taken from the BBC's long running film show Film '90 (now obviously Film 2008). Barry Norman presented the show for 25 years starting in 1972 up until he left and in 1999 and was replaced by current host Jonathan Ross.

Though Hardware was slated as a Terminator rip off by some at the time it made a profit and Richard Stanley went on to make another film with a cult following the Namibian serial killer movie Dust Devil in 1993. DVD label put out a remasterd directors cut of Dust Devil in 2006 which you can still pick up from Amazon. However his career stalled when he was thrown off the set of the 1996 production of The Island of Dr. Moreau and replaced in the director’s chair by John Frankenheimer. 2006 saw him contribute to the screenplay for Nacho Cerdà's hit indie horror The Abandoned and next year should see the release of his return as a genre director, the post apocalyptic movie Vacation.

The team behind Revenge of Billy the Kid fared worse if anything, which personally I think is a shame as it was not a bad little flick if you like low budget horror comedy. Jim Groom was to direct only one other movie Room 36 which was beset with so many problems it took over a decade to reach its first Screen release and as far as I know has never had any distribution outside festivals and screeners. Tim Dennison one of the films writers has gone on to be a producer involved in various films including Simon Hunters The Mutant Chronicles.

Hardware - UK Theatrical Trailer

Hardware - US Trailer

Revenge Of Billy The Kid - trailer

Revenge Of Billy The Kid - Review

Room 39 - Review

Room 36 - Website

It is 1879. Coffey (Karl Geary), a young Irishman settled on the plains of Dakota, is about to ask his sweetheart to marry him. His dream of wedded bliss is shattered, however, when something or someone attacks the young lady's family farm, kidnapping the women and children and slaughtering the men. Coffey joins a group of local ranchers and cavalrymen in search of the victims, who are assumed to be prisoners of a fierce band of natives.

Put off by the sadistic and single-minded tactics of self-appointed group leader Henry Victor (Doug Hutchison), Coffey sets out with a couple of ranchers (William Mapother and Highlander's Clancy Brown), as well as a teenaged boy and a freed slave (Sean Patrick Thomas). They soon discover mysterious holes in the ground and a catatonic girl buried in the dirt, suggesting that they may not be hunting an ordinary tribe. A sinister enemy seems to be stalking them from below the serene grassy plains of the vast new frontier.