Need for Speed – Most Wanted Black Edition (2005)

Description

In the game, players take part in illegal street races across Most Wanted’s setting, utilizing a variety of licensed real-world cars (available at the time of the game’s development and release) that can be upgraded and customized with new parts, while contending with the involvement of the police in their efforts to impede the player. Racing events feature a mixture of competitive racing across circuit or point-to-point races, and checkpoint, sprint and drag races. The game features three modes of play – Career, Quick Race, and Challenge Series – with a fourth mode allowing for multiplayer being available to players on certain console editions. While many of the racing events feature those used in previous entries in the games, particularly the Underground set of games, some events – Drifting, Street X, Underground Racing League tournaments and Outrun – are absent from Most Wanted, and replaced with two new ones. The first event is “Tollbooth”, a checkpoint-styled solo race, in which players must hit a set of checkpoints, each one within a set amount of time; reaching a checkpoint quickly adds the time left over to the timer for the next checkpoint. The second event is “Speedtrap”, in which players compete in a competitive checkpoint race, and must hit each checkpoint at their fastest speed; upon crossing the finishing line, each checkpoint’s total speed is added together to determine the winner. …

Need for Speed – Underground 2

Description

The story begins after the player has beaten Eddie’s street gang – “The Eastsiders” in Olympic City. The player is now revered as the best street racer in Olympic City. The player is called after the final race by a bald man with an “invitation” to join his team. The mysterious bald man on the video screen tells the player that he “is not taking no for an answer.” In defiance, the player abruptly hangs up the call. One night, the player is called by his friend, Samantha whilst en route to a celebration party, who informs him that the party is really kicking and the people want to see him at the party. An unidentified black Hummer H2 waits in a dark underpass for the player. The call is suddenly interrupted by a dazzling light from the Hummer’s headlights, which blind the player while instantaneously ramming his blue Nissan Skyline GT-R in an effort to wreck it. A man with a scythe tattoo on his hand rolls down his window following the collision and calls to confirm that he “took care of a problem.”

Six months later the player boards a plane to Bayview with a good luck note from Samantha that also refers to her friend, Rachel Teller (Brooke Burke) as well as a car key. The player arrives in Bayview to find Rachel’s green Nissan 350Z waiting for him outside in airport terminal parking. The player competes in a few races using Rachel’s car before handing it over to her. The player buys his first car using the money provided by the insurance on his totaled Skyline. The player soon gains fame by winning races and encounters Caleb Reece (David Palffy), who is the leader of “The Wraiths” and turns out to be the driver of the mysterious Hummer that wrecked the player’s car in the first place. …

The Sims

Description

The Sims is a strategic life simulation video game developed by Maxis and published by Electronic Arts in 2000. It is a simulation of the daily activities of one or more virtual people (“Sims”) in a suburban household near a fictional city. Players control customizable Sims as they pursue career and relationship goals. Players can also use their Sims’ income to renovate their living space, purchase home furnishings, or clothing for their household. Players can also choose to pursue a social and successful life.

The game’s development was led by Will Wright and the game was a follow-up to Wright’s earlier SimCity series; Wright was inspired to create the game by Christopher Alexander’s 1977 book A Pattern Language, and Scott McCloud’s 1993 book Understanding Comics later played a role in the game’s design. Seven expansion packs were released from 2000 to 2003, each of which added new items, characters, skins, and features.

Upon release, it garnered generally positive reviews and was described by Wright as being successful in attracting casual and female gamers. It also won several awards, and placed 31st on Time’s The 50 Best Video Games of All Time list. Several sequels were released – The Sims 2 in 2004, The Sims 3 in 2009, and The Sims 4 in 2014. …

Resident Evil 3 (2000)

Description

On September 28, 1998, 24 hours prior to the events of Resident Evil 2, former Special Tactics And Rescue Service (S.T.A.R.S.) member Jill Valentine attempts to escape from Raccoon City. Most of the population has been transformed into zombies by an outbreak of the T-virus, a new type of biological weapon secretly developed by the pharmaceutical company Umbrella. On her way to the Raccoon City Police Department, Jill runs into fellow team member Brad Vickers, who is killed by a new enemy. This creature, Nemesis, is a bio-organic weapon programmed to target surviving S.T.A.R.S. members, witnesses of Umbrella’s experiments. As she evades Nemesis, Jill encounters three surviving members of the Umbrella Biohazard Countermeasure Service (U.B.C.S.): Carlos Oliveira, Mikhail Victor, and Nikolai Zinoviev. Nikolai explains to Jill and Carlos that a rescue helicopter can be contacted if they manage to reach the city’s Clock Tower and ring the bell.

As they make their way to the tower, Nikolai disappears and is presumed dead, while Nemesis corners the remaining members of the group on the cable car headed to the tower. Mikhail sacrifices himself with a grenade, causing the car to crash into the tower’s main courtyard and separating Jill and Carlos briefly. At the Clock Tower, Jill summons the helicopter by ringing the Clock Tower’s bell before being confronted by Nemesis, which destroys the helicopter and infects Jill with the T-virus. Jill manages to temporarily defeat Nemesis but falls unconscious due to the T-Virus. Carlos finds Jill and takes her to safety within the Clock Tower. Three days later, he manages to find a cure for Jill’s T-Virus infection in the Raccoon City General Hospital. He returns to Jill and injects her with a vaccine, saving her. …

Need for Speed – Underground

Description

Need for Speed: Underground is the seventh installment in the Need for Speed series, and was developed by EA Black Box and published by Electronic Arts in 2003. Two different games were produced, one for consoles and Windows, and the other for the Game Boy Advance.

Underground rebooted the franchise, ignoring the previous Need for Speed games which featured sports cars and exotics. It was the first game in the series to offer a career mode featuring a storyline, and a garage mode that allowed players to fully customize their cars with a large variety of brand-name performance and visual upgrades. All races take place in a generic city at night called Olympic City, though the city bears some resemblance to New York City, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Rather than exotic cars, Underground featured vehicles associated with the import scene. Underground was commercially successful, and was followed by Need for Speed: Underground 2 in 2004.

Circuit is a standard race that involves racing with up to three opponents’ cars around a loop track for one lap or more, and is the main mode of the game. For about the last 4 races of underground mode, the number of players decreases to only 1 rival, and the number of laps reach up to seven (endurance race). …

Resident Evil 2 (1999)

Description

On September 29, 1998, two months after the events of the first Resident Evil, most citizens of the Midwestern American mountain community Raccoon City have been transformed into zombies by the T-virus, a biological weapon secretly developed by the pharmaceutical company Umbrella. Leon S. Kennedy, a police officer on his first day of duty, and Claire Redfield, a college student looking for her brother Chris, make their way to the Raccoon Police Department. They discover that most of the police force have been killed, and that Chris has left town to investigate Umbrella’s headquarters in Europe. They split up to look for survivors and find a way out of the city. While searching for an escape route, Claire meets a little girl, Sherry Birkin, who is on the run from an unknown creature, and Leon encounters Ada Wong, who claims to be looking for her boyfriend John, an Umbrella researcher.

Raccoon City police chief Brian Irons had been bribed by Umbrella to hide evidence of the company’s experiments in the outskirts of the city. He concealed their development of the new G-virus, an agent capable of mutating a human into the ultimate bioweapon. Leon has multiple encounters with a Tyrant, a monster air-dropped into the Raccoon Police Department by Umbrella to seek the G-virus. Irons tries to murder Claire but is killed by a G-virus mutant in the police department. Claire and Sherry escape through the sewers and become separated. After splitting up with Leon, Ada finds Sherry and picks up a golden pendant the girl loses while running away. Further into the sewers, Ada reluctantly teams up with Leon again, after he insists on his duty to protect her. They encounter a middle-aged woman who fires at Ada, but Leon dives between them and takes a bullet himself. Ada ignores the unconscious Leon and follows the woman, who reveals herself to be Sherry’s mother Annette and the wife of William Birkin, the Umbrella scientist who created the G-virus. In an attempt to protect his life’s work from special agents sent by the Umbrella headquarters, he injected himself with the virus, which turned him into the malformed creature and is now chasing Sherry. Annette recognizes her daughter’s pendant and attempts to take it from Ada. A fight ensues, during which Annette is thrown over a railing. Ada learns that the golden locket contains a sample of the G-virus, and later – taken over by her emotions – returns to Leon, tending to his bullet wound. …

Resident Evil (1997)

Description

On July 24, 1998, when a series of bizarre murders occur on the outskirts of the fictional Midwestern town of Raccoon City, the Raccoon City Police Department’s S.T.A.R.S. team are assigned to investigate. After contact with Bravo Team is lost, Alpha Team is sent to investigate their disappearance. Alpha Team locates Bravo Team’s crashed helicopter and land at the site, where they are suddenly attacked by a pack of monstrous dogs, killing team member Joseph Frost. After Alpha Team’s helicopter pilot, Brad Vickers, panics and takes off alone, the remaining members of the team (Chris Redfield, Jill Valentine, Albert Wesker, and Barry Burton) are forced to seek refuge in a nearby abandoned mansion.

Depending on which character the player assumes control of, either Chris or Barry are separated from the rest of the team during the chase and do not make it to the mansion. At this point, the team decides to split up to investigate. Over the course of the game, the player character may encounter several members of Bravo Team, including Enrico Marini, the captain of the S.T.A.R.S. Bravo Team, who reveals that one of Alpha Team’s members is a traitor before being shot and killed by an unseen assailant. The player character eventually learns that a series of illegal experiments were being undertaken by a clandestine research team under the authority and supervision of biomedical company Umbrella Corporation. The creatures roaming the mansion and its surrounding areas are the results of these experiments, which have exposed the mansion’s personnel and various animals and insects to a highly contagious and mutagenic biological agent known as the T-virus. …

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