The best gaming power-ups continued…

50 Cent: Blood On The Sand: Explosive Bullets
It’s bloody typical, isn’t it? The gaming press derides 50’s first game because it was rubbish and then everyone goes out and buys it. Then Blood On The Sand comes along with its all right-ness and upgradeable swearing and hardly anyone buys it. Their loss, really. What they’re also missing out on are 50’s exploding bullets. By completing the many little scenarios like killing everyone within 30 seconds or collecting a certain amount of cash, 50 earns exploding bullets that take out any enemy with one shot. It’s just another slice of the multilayered onion that is Blood On the Sand.

Even 50 Cent needs a helping hand sometimes.

Dead Rising: The Juice
Juice is good for you! Juice in Dead Rising is even better for Frank! There are various juice-based power-ups in Dead Rising, and almost all of them have a positive effect. One will make you walk incredibly quickly so that you can cross the vast distances in the mall in no time and another makes you invulnerable. You can also make the zombies ignore you or attract all of them on screen at once. But the best one is the Spitfire juice, which turns your saliva into something deadly to undead. It’s useful and hilarious when you see Frank take down a room of zombies just by phlegming on them.

Peggle: Zen Ball
We had a discussion on this, took votes, and in the end the Zen Ball won. It was a close thing, because the triple scoring and magic hatting of Warren Rabbit’s Lucky Spin is really handy when you need increasingly high scores in the Challenge mode. But when you fire off a Zen Ball it’s just amazing to see the computer work out what the best shot is, especially when it bounces the ball off the bucket for a few more pegs before going in. That’s zen, and it means you can take a break from carefully planning out your next shot, which is kind of zen too.

God Hand: Red Card
Actually, there are two red cards in God Hand that you find when you break open a box or a barrel. One of them refills your God Reels, and the other, the one we’re more interested in right now, powers Gene up so that he does increased damage and, more impressively, all his attacks become unblockable. The timely appearance of this card can save your life in God Hand, because even if you’re on a sliver of health you can easily defeat at least two or three enemies and hopefully pick up some cherries to get your health back.

Henry Hatsworth In The Puzzling Adventure: Cup of tea
Affable gentleman and leader of the Pompous Adventurer’s Club, Henry Hatsworth isn’t all about tweed and monocles as he first appears to be. Sure he’s going around with that moustache, a bowler hat and a sabre killing enemies and solving puzzles, but with one sip of tea he transforms into a huge mechanical robot and goes to town kicking ass and chewing cucumber sandwiches. In this form he gains new attacks such as a rocket fist and lasers that can fire through walls. Oh, and it also makes him invincible, which makes some of the more difficult levels a lot easier.

… continued