The Download Munkey : Finder of Things …

I’ve been a big fan of Traveller’s Tales’ series of Lego games with the sole exception of Lego Indiana Jones - I didn’t like the muddy palette (khaki, brown and more brown) and the jumping puzzles were too frustrating for reflexively-challenged me. Most of the time spent playing the demo was helping Indy fall into bottomless chasms or exploring spike-filled pits while been chased by a giant boulder

Now, the Lego Batman demo is a different beast entirely. It’s an enjoyable romp through a bright and shiny Lego (Legoized / Legofied ?) Gotham City with excellently animated Lego minifigs of familiar characters from DC Comics’s Batman universe (and less of those bloody jumping puzzles). It doesn’t seem to be tied to any of the Batman films unlike the other Lego games for the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises which probably imposes less creative restrictions on the developers.

Lego Batman now sports Hero and Villain modes so that fans of supervillains like dastardly The Joker get to start off as the bad guys immediately rather than having to unlock them first after playing the good guys as in the Star Wars series. Batman is far less “goody-goody” than most typical superheroes but it’s a welcome addition nonetheless. An uzi-toting Joker and acrobatic Harley Quinn are yours to control in the demo.

Robin in his Magnet Suit

New suits which dynamically change the special abilities of your characters allow you to approach some of the puzzles in your adventures through Gotham City in multiple ways. Most puzzles still require that certain suits be worn in order to advance to the next area.

There’s also a new Batarang mode for the good guys which allows you to precisely target and hit distant opponents or objects. It’s something that works better on paper since not everything can be hit with the Batarang and the aiming is rather finicky at times.

The poor man’s batmobile

Top-notch animation : Batman shimmies across a rope with ease while Robin follows along in his clumsy Magnet Suit

Batman prepares to pound a petty thug into tiny Lego bits

As with Traveller Tales’ series of Lego games, Lego Batman manages to appeal to gamers of all ages, non-gaming fans of the Batman universe and Lego enthusiasts. The gameplay won’t exactly challenge any serious gamer but it’s entertaining and endearing (the Lego characters are surprisingly expressive despite the fact that they don’t even speak a single word in the game.)

The series is also highly addictive : I still remember replaying the Star Wars game multiple times to collect enough coins to unlock additional characters and goodies to play with)

I wonder what’s next in store for Traveller’s Tales and the Lego videogames. Since Batman is a Warner Bros license, another WB franchise (Harry Potter or even better, Lord of the Rings) might be already in the works for Traveller Tales. Let’s keep our fingers crossed

Download and play the Lego Batman demo.

MORE @ THE DOWNLOAD MUNKEY
Dan LuVisi’s Portraits of Movie Characters & More!
Lego Batman Wallpapers
BrikWars - War with Mini-Figs!
Boxhead - More Rooms Zombie Shooting Flash Game
Warhammer 40,000 Vehicles in Lego

It’s actually quite surprising to see a dearth of World War I videogames considering that most real-time strategy games usually devolve into stalemated battles of attrition and the Great War was possibly the most significant conflict of the 20th century involving such battles e.g the Battle of Somme and the Battle of Verdun.

Con Artist Productions, the creators of the zombie defense games The Last Stand and The Last Stand 2 have shifted their sights to depict carnage on a different scale and timeframe in Warfare 1917, a fairly realistic depiction of the murderous bloodbath of trench warfare on the Western Front during World War I.

Playing as the British (The Old Contemptibles) or the Germans, you’ll lead squads of troops over the top through the barbed wires and landmines of no-man-land and into the trenches of the enemy in the face of heavy fire from the defending infantry and artillery. Historically, artillery bombardment was far more intensive than that depicted in-game but that would probably make a frustratingly unplayable game.

The introduction of the machine gun during WWI provided a significant advantage in the firepower and effective range of defending infantry over their attacking counterparts, thus mad rushes are definitely a no-no in Warfare 1917. Callously squandering away the lives of your men for neglible gains in ground will also quickly break their will to fight and lead to a quick and ignominious surrender.

As enemy machineguns and artillery bombardment will quickly make mincemeat of waves of attacking infantry, only a well-timed bombardment with mortars, heavy artillery (and later poison gases) to suppress entrenched defenders and reinforcements with infantry and (later tanks) follwing closely behind the barrage of explosive shells will stand a chance of getting anywhere near the entrenched enemy to employ their weapons and forcefully evict the occupants of a trench.

Using the correct mix of troops is essential too as by 1916, the Germans had developed specialized stosstruppen units for assaulting trenches in close combat with carbines and hand grenades to support the regular infantry. Assault infantry stand a fairly good chance to clear an enemy trench provided that they are supported by regular infantry, machinegunners or snipers to provide covering fire in order for them to close in with grenades.

Unfortunately, successfully capturing a trench means nothing if the next wave(s) of enemy reinforcements counterattack and retake it from the half decimated remnants of a successful assault. Learning to follow up on your assault with fresh infantry reinforcements to defend your hard-fought gains and hold the line is therefore as crucial as learning to assault the enemy positions, especially in the later actions where you have to take multiple trenches in a single mission.

To reflect your experience in war, upgrade points are earned to boost your units’ ability to give them the edge in inflicting more punishment while sustaining less themselves.

Play Warfare 1917.

MORE @ THE DOWNLOAD MUNKEY:
US Army Center of Military History Prints
War and Game - Military History Blog
The Last Stand

Finally found the standalone player for the latest version of Adobe Flash which allows you to run Flash applications and games written in Flash 10 offline.

Frankly speaking, the only application written in Flash 10 that I’ve seen is Hobnox’s Audiotool recommended by Andy over at Geeknews (more about this impressive online audio production tool in the near future), but the standalone player is still worth downloading since it’s backwards compatible with all games and apps written in earlier versions of Flash.

For example, BubbleBox offers a selection of freely downloadable Flash games which you can load and play with the standalone player. Above is Bubblebox’s Elite Base Jump in the standalone player.

Download Adobe Flash 10 Standalone Player. You’ll want the non-debugger version unless you’re a Flash developer (Versions for Windows, Mac and Linux are found in the zip download - Windows users should run flashplayer10r12_36_win_sa.exe inside the zip file).

MORE @ THE DOWNLOAD MUNKEY:
Playing Flash Games Offline with opera:cache + Adobe Flash 9 Debug Players
Rumble Roses Exclusive Wallpapers + Fun With Flasm
Flasm - A Flash Disassembler

While games are a great way to simulate interest in the various (violent) periods of human history, they aren’t exactly the best way to learn history since most games (with the exception of the more hardcore wargames) are after all entertainment products which have to carefully balance between playability and historical accuracy (yes, even Rome : Total War - that’s why there’s the Rome Total Realism mod).

Since not everyone enjoys reading history books, I believe that illustrations do a better job at dispensing nuggets of interesting historical facts with a significantly smaller investment of time. And if it encourages you to pick up a related book to learn more, all the better

I therefore present today, one of my favourite historical illustrators, Johnny Shumate, whose impressive portfolio of warriors throughout the ages is a veritable treasure trove for history buffs who always wanted to visualize the warriors (especially those from ancient Greece and Rome) mentioned in books.

© Johnny Shumate

For example, you’ve probably read that each Phalangite of the Macedonian armies under Alexander The Great used to carry a 6 metres spear known as the sarissa. You can’t really envision how long and unwieldy a sarissa is until you see it been pictured in use.

© Johnny Shumate

The classic phalanx formation of the Greek hoplites (and in this case the Macedonian Phalangites as idenitified by their distinctive helmets).

© Johnny Shumate

Romans in combat with the Gauls. As pictured, the unarmoured Gauls were unable to resist a Roman charge for long despite their well-known valour.

© Johnny Shumate

One of the famous Scythian horse archers. Gobryas, one of the eminent Persians who had accompanied King Darius in his futile attempt to subjugate the nomadic Scythians, was quoted in Herodotus’s Book IV of The Histories as having interpreted the Scythians’ gift of a bird, a mouse, a frog and five arrows to King Darius as follows:

Unless ye become birds and fly up into the heaven, O Persians, or become mice and sink down under the earth, or become frogs and leap into the lakes, ye shall not return back home, but shall be smitten by these arrows.

© Johnny Shumate

The Battle of Kadesh during the 13th century BC - one of the earliest recorded battles of the world - the earliest being the 15 century BC Battle of Megiddo.

Some famous personalities of the ancient period.

© Johnny Shumate

King Philip II of Macedon, the father of Alexander the Great.

© Johnny Shumate

King Pyrrhus of Epirus who won two victories over the Romans at the expense of enormous and irreplaceable casualties, thus giving birth to the term Pyrrhic Victory.

© Johnny Shumate

Ephialtes of Athens. Neither the anti-Spartan Athenian politician, nor the Ephialtes who betrayed the Spartans at Thermopylae but an exiled Athenian officer in the service of Memnon of Rhodes, the commmander of the Greek mercenaries under the King Darius III of Persia. Ephialtes is pictured here sallying out from Halicarnassus in 334 BC to attack the Macedonian besiegers and their siege engines.

As mentioned earlier, Johnny Shumate doesn’t just only illustrate ancient warriors. Below are a trio of Waffen SS troops defending Berlin against the Red Army in 1945 and a Rhodesian infantry soldier with a FN FAL.

© Johnny Shumate

View Johnny Shumate’s portfolio of works at ImagineFX. Click on the images to view them at full resolution.

MORE @ THE DOWNLOAD MUNKEY:
David Andro - Military/Police Illustrator (GIGN, GIPN, RAID, etc)
Scenes of War - Concepts from Videogames
Call of Duty 4 Mini-Artbook PDF
Motofumi Kobayashi - Japanese Military Artist

A rather detailed look into Aztec warrior suits and their social significance complete with pictorial impressions. While intended for wargaming use, this little PDF does make a very interesting and enlightening read about Aztec warriors.

Prowess and status in the Aztec armies were defined by the number and status of captives acquired by each warrior with each level of warriors being attired accordingly.

The elaborate and colourful feather suits often associated with Aztec armies were worn only by warriors of the nobility as well as those of priestly classes. Apparently these suits were more symbols of status rather than for any other practical purpose since they afforded little additional protection over the cotton armour worn by noble warriors of lower rank.

© Chronofus.net

Donwload this guide to Aztec Warrior Suits from Chronofus.net. Click on the link named “Aztec Shields, suits and back banners - Updated .pdf”.

MORE @ THE DOWNLOAD MUNKEY:
Mongol HD Trailer - The Rise of Genghis Khan
Edutainment Games (III) - Know Your Gladiator & Medieval Armour
War and Game - Military History Blog