Star Wars Costume Party

By Ainarand on June 19, 2010

Ever wondered about organizing a Star Wars costume party? Perhaps this would be a good idea for a Halloween party for the kids, but a friend is organizing one in the middle of summer, for adults. I think that he is hoping to see the girls turn up in Princess Leia costumes, I know I am! Finding kids Star Wars costumes would probably be easy, but finding one for an adult might be trickier. Anyway, the movies have such a rich background that choosing a good Star Wars costume should be a breeze. The only problem is, are you going to be on the light or the dark side of the force?

Where to Get a Star Wars Costume?

I am 6’5″ tall and so getting a costume to fit an adult like me can sometimes be difficult. We considered paying for a kit to try and learn how to make a Star Wars stormtrooper costume as my partner is pretty good with her hands, but making something that looks authentic would be a real task. After some thought and discussion we decided that it would be easier to look for a fancy dress hire store than caters for adults. Eventually we found one, but it is on the other side of the country and somehow paying for mail order Star Wars costumes doesn’t excite me. How do you know if it fits? How would you know if it looked good before you order? I mean what some people think is a great Jedi costume is actually a brown sack and some kind of camping light-stick! So, it looks like a roadtrip is in order.

Renting an Authentic Star Wars Costume

The good news is that they have a wide variety of fancy dress costumes and not just the usual Darth Vader costumes (read long black cloak and a black helmet). They claimed on the phone that their products are “authentic Star Wars costumes“, but because of licensing I am curious to see exactly what that means in reality. As I am reasonable tall, a Darth Vader costume might look good, but my plan is to go in the generic looking Star Wars stormtrooper outfit, complete with Star Wars blaster (and sound effects if I am lucky). The games playing kid in me is coming out already! The reason for choosing this costume is that probably a lot of people will come in duplicate costumes and having two dozen Darth Vaders or Obi-Wans running around will be a bit cheesy. At least if I go in a storm trooper costume then we will actually look better if there are a lot of us. Another possibility is to try the clone trooper costumes as that is slightly less well known and so might be rarer. We will have to see what is available. Whatever happens I am not going as a Wookie! Perhaps wearing a fur suit in the middle of summer to look like Chewbacca is a bit too much like suffering for my art.

Breathing in a Stormtrooper Helmet

My plan is to get my partner in a Princess Leia outfit if possible and find a realistic Star Wars stormtrooper outfit for myself. This sort of nicely relates to the first movie, but no doubt the guys would prefer the Princess Leia slave girl costume from The Empire Strikes Back. Hard luck guys… Her outfit should quite easy to find and fit as it is sort of a Greek Toga style of dress, but I kind of have some misgivings about getting a stormtrooper helmet that I will be able to speak/breathe in, but we will see.

Star Wars is a copyright of Lucas Films

Posted in Blog | Tagged Clone Trooper Costumes, Darth Vader Costume, Halloween Party, Kids Star Wars Costumes, Star Wars Blaster, Star Wars Costume, Stormtrooper Costume, Stormtrooper Helmet

Doctor Who Games – Free Online Download!

By Ainarand on June 12, 2010

Free Doctor Who Games

If you are a fan of free games, science fiction and the Doctor Who series I have some really good news for you – The BBC are giving away four free Doctor Who games completely free of charge and that’s not all!

Doctor Who is a hugely popular family entertainment television show produced by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in the United Kingdom. As a public service broadcaster the company provides its service free of charge and the new Doctor Who games are no exception.

Doctor Who Adventure Games

Image of Daleks Courtesy of the BBC

The first game in the adventure games series features one of the Doctor’s arch enemies, the Daleks. In this first free adventure game, the TARDIS has transported you back in time to the year 1963 and you must travel to the Daleks home world in order to rescue the last survivor of the human race, the doctor’s beautiful assistant, Amy Pond.

The second game and subsequent games will feature other foes from the Doctor’s vast array of enemies, such as the Cybermen.

The first game is available for download now and the other three will be released over the coming weeks, but before you go off to follow the download link let me tell you about some of the other free Doctor Who games that are available.

Other Doctor Who Games

The BBC are also making a number of Doctor Who action games available such as “Save Paris”, “K9: Deja Who”, “Into the Vortex”, “Security Bot”, “Flight Simulator”, “Clockwork Quest” and “Black Hole”. But wait, there is more!

If you prefer strategy games well there are some of those available too. You can try your hand at Daleks vs The Cybermen, Attack of the Graske, Odd Escape, Sonic Decloaker, or Dalek Breakout.

Finally, if that isn’t enough for you ,or you prefer your games to be more mentally challenging you can try your hand on four free Doctor Who puzzle games, or one of the eight Doctor Who jigsaw puzzle games.

So why is the BBC giving these games away? Well, as part of their remit as a public service broadcaster the corporation hopes to “encourage the family to gather round the PC or Mac in the same way they do the television” said Simon Nelson, head of the BBC’s Multiplatform in Vision Department. This is part of the drive to increase computer literacy in the UK.

All of these downloads are free and not available anywhere else on the net. Please avoid the “free download ware#” type sites out there as unfortunately some of the games have been found with virus and trojan additions and remember the BBC is the only reputable source of these free Doctor Who games downloads.

BBC Website

BBC Doctor Who Games Free Download

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Posted in Games | Tagged Amy Pond, Cybermen, Daleks, Doctor Who, Doctor Who Games, Free Doctor Who Games, Free Download

Heroes of Might and Magic 5

By Ainarand on June 10, 2010

Heroes of Might and Magic 5 (also known as HoMM5 or Heroes 5) is a turn based strategy game developed by Nival Interactive and published by Ubisoft. The game was released in May, 2006 and since that time has seen two other expansions released as well as no less than seven patches!

The game has a diehard fan community and there are a number of player designed maps and missions available as well as two content expansions called Heroes of Might and Magic 5 Tribes of the East and Heroes of Might and Magic 5 Hammers of Fate. Ubisoft has also released Heroes of Might and Magic Complete Edition in 2008 which includes all of the first 5 games and their expansions.

For those unfamiliar with the franchise, Heroes of Might and Magic is a fantasy medieval type of battle game. Each side in a battle moves in an alternating order until one side is victorious. The basic game has six factions which are Academy, Haven, Dungeon, Sylvan, Necropolis and Inferno. Later expansions add another two – Fortress and Stronghold. Unlike earlier games in the series HoMM5 takes place on a new and previously unheard of world called Ashan. The central character in this new world is Isabel Greyhound, the Queen of the Griffin Empire.

Heroes of Might and Magic 5 Gameplay

Heros 5 uses a time and resource model of strategic planning in which the most important resource is gold. Gold may be used to buy most of the units in the game and is raised from the population of the towns under a player’s control. If a player loses control of all their towns the game is over.

Combat takes place on a battle map that employs a square grid type overlay to enable a player to see how far a given unit can move or the area of effect of a particular spell. The combat screen is true 3d and is graphically appealing. Each creature has their own animations and special attacks and abilities.

Heroes of Might and Magic Gameplay Video

The heroes in HoMM5 almost take the game into being a RPG game as they have individual statistics, racial abilities, spells, equipment and back stories. Combining these attributes with the excellent sound and graphics in the game and it becomes a really great overall experience.

Anyone who has played and enjoyed Heroes of Might and Magic 3 will enjoy this version too. It is definitely and improvement over the much maligned Heroes of Might and Magic 4, which many consider to be the poorest game of the franchise. Although the magic system is different in this release it works just fine. It is different, not better or worse. Here it may actually be an advantage if you have not played the game before as you will have no preconceptions.

Thanks to the patches that Ubisoft has made available Heroes 5 is a solid game with no outstanding stability issues that I experienced. Some players on Ubisofts forums have complained that the game was not stable on their systems, but this seems to only happen on “bleeding edge” type PC’s.

Can We Recommend Heroes 5?

If you are a fan of fantasy turn based battle games the HoMM5 is one of the best games available in this genre and we would definitely recommend it to you. If you want a more fluid real time game then perhaps other games would suit you better, such as Age of Empires.

Fans of the original games will undoubtedly play and enjoy HoMM5, especially if you liked HoMM3 as they play similarly in many respects. When combined with the two expansions and the map editor this game offers endless hours of on and offline fantasy battling fun.

After some initial difficulties at time of release Heroes of Might and Magic 5 is now (when patched) a reliable and fun game that we can recommend to anyone interested in this type of fantasy battle genre.

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Limited EditionDVD includes HoMM3 and HoMM4.

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Posted in Games | Tagged Fantasy Battle Games, Heroes 5, Heroes of Might and Magic 5, Heroes of Might and Magic 5 Gameplay, HoMM5, Turn Based Strategy Games