Female Video Game Costumes

Gamer costumes are popular every year at Halloween, yet the choices for female video game costumes are somewhat limited. With a little creativity though, any girl or woman can find a gamer costume that fits their personality. Here are a few of the most popular choices for female video game costumes.

Princess Peach Costume

Princess Peach is one of the oldest and most endearing female gamer characters of all time. Princess Peach was designed as the damsel in distress in the Mario Brothers series. However, starting in Super Mario Brothers 2, Princess Peach became a player in her own right. Princess peach later went on to star in games like Super Smash Brothers, Super Paper Mario, Mario Kart, and even her own video game Super Princess Peach in which Mario and Princess' roles are reversed with Mario being saved by the Princess. Most Princess Peach costumes come complete with Princess' signature pink dress, a golden crown, and white gloves.

Lara Croft Costume

Lara Croft is another popular female video game costume. Lara Croft starred in the video game series Tomb Raider and was also featured in two popular movies starring Angelina Jolie. The Tomb Raider games were first released in 1996 on the PlayStation. Since then the Guinness Book of World Records has recognized Lara Croft as the "Most Successful Human Video Game Heroine". The Tomb Raider heroine's popularity and sex appeal have made Lara Croft a very popular costume amongst young women. Typically, the Lara Croft costume comes with shorts, a top, a belt, and fake guns. Some of the more expensive Halloween costumes also include a wig modeled after Angelina Jolie's hair in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider.

Princess Zelda Costume

The eponymous character of Princess Zelda is a great costume choice for any woman who enjoys The Legend of Zelda franchise. Princess Zelda has had numerous appearances over the course of several Legend of Zelda games and her appearance is quite different in each, giving the costume wearer a wide variety of choices in how to display the character. Originally, in The Legend of Zelda, Princess Zelda has blond hair and wears a pink ballroom gown with pink shoes. In the Twilight Princess video game, Zelda has brown hair and a more elf like appearance. In that game, the Princess Zelda wears a purple and white gown with brown knee high boots and an elaborate gold headdress. Either of these outfits would make an excellent Princess Zelda costume.

Visit our website for more great female video game costumes, as well as information on where you can buy the costumes listed in this article.

Farmers Market

Farming isn't just about tending chickens and growing corn. Half the fun is showing off your products and earning decent cash for all your hard work! That's what you get to do in Farmers Market, where you sell your vegetables, dairy products and meats, as well as processed foods like burgers, roasted corn and fruit pies. Hire bands to keep your customers entertained, and create the best and most profitable marketplace in this fast-paced time management game!

Farmers Market is a unique time and resource management game that has managed to breathe new life into the time management game genre. Gameplay is similar to farm management games such as Farm Mania and the Farm Frenzy series, but this game deals with what happens after you've milked your cows and harvested your corn, when the goods get sent to market. No longer do the crops get sent off-screen in a truck and magically turn into money. Instead, your job here is to properly manage marketplaces to make sure the farmers turn a profit and everyone walks away happy.

The game will take you from region to region as you transform the many farmers markets around the country into thriving trading posts. Enjoy the scenery and the friendly townsfolk as you set up shop in various locations such as by the Mississippi river, in the scorching heat of the western plains, and by a rustic barn in the agricultural heartland. You will get to explore each area as you progress through the many levels of the game.

Each level in Farmers Market comes with a set of objectives you need to complete, and these objectives will quickly become more complex and difficult to achieve. These objectives include things like producing a certain amount of raw goods or processed foods, selling those foods, or earning a target amount of cash. These aren't too surprising, since you are running a money-making market, not an agricultural show!

So how do you achieve these objectives? In each marketplace, there are a number of plots which you can allocate to farmers and vendors. Once allocated, booths will be built and the farmer or vendor will start selling their foodstuff. There is a lot of dependency in making processed food for the vendors though. For example, if you want to sell hot dogs, you will obviously need a hot dog stand. But the hot dog stand will need meat from a butcher, and bread from a baker. And making the bread will require even more ingredients from the miller and the dairy booth!

As you can imagine, successfully completing each level's objectives will require proper strategy and planning. You will need to decide how many of each type of booth is required, and in what order you should build them (building booths costs money). In addition, booths need to be upgraded in order to produce rarer goods. A vegetable booth that initially sells corn can be upgraded to also produce corn oil or potatoes. Since french fries require both these ingredients, you will need 2 vegetable booths (each of which has received a different upgrade) plus the french fry booth in order to produce that artery-clogging snack.

Allocating booths is only half the game though. Farmers Market is a time management game after all, and this facet is present in the game in the form of workers. You start each level with a worker (and can hire more when you upgrade the office), and you send him around to basically do everything. Allocating a plot doesn't make a booth magically appear. A worker has to go build it. You also need workers to transport ingredients from the farmer booths to the vendor booths to get the food made.

However, making the food isn't going to make you money; you need customers! You'll have friendly townsfolk visiting your market and buying your available produce and food. You can also build special booths like bandstands to get a larger crowd coming to visit you. A large crowd creates more trash though, so you'll have to build enough trash cans and make sure the workers empty them regularly. Nobody wants to visit a dirty market! Many more of these elements are thrown in as you progress through the game.

Farmers Market is designed around pretty simple concepts, but the beautiful premise and huge variety of things that you can do in the game transforms it into a rich adventure with lots of replay value. All of this is also supported by crisp and colorful graphics as well as good music. Farmers Market will be a great game for you if you like farm management games such as Farm Mania or Farm Frenzy.

Rating: 4.5/5.0

You can read more about Farmers Market at http://www.game-tycoon.com/farmers-market.html

Steven maintains the time management game review website at http://www.game-tycoon.com/ - a website devoted to strategy, simulation and time management games for the PC and Mac. You can read game reviews, download games and play them online.

Final Fantasy X

As is the case with all modern Final Fantasy games, FFX delivered an incredible experience through and through. It was bold, innovative and amazing to play through. But there were some who were heavily dissatisfied by it. How could this be? Let's take a look.

The world of FFX was breathtaking. Many screen shots can be posted on walls as artwork, the vistas are rendered in the most complete detail. Even the characters seem very alive. There is certainly little negative one can say about the presentation of the game itself. The Aeon summonings will leave your jaw hanging slightly open. The animation is smooth and consistent throughout the game, and the attention to detail is truly commendable.

The ability to switch out characters mid-fight was something you don't see in a lot of large scale fantasy games. It lent a powerful, multi-character strategy to be developed and, in many cases, scrapped just as quickly. The advancement for each character on a map-like grid was especially appealing to me. There were several locations where one could choose one path or another, developing the character in different ways. The ability to learn powers that started off on another character later in the game was helpful for solidifying character teams the player preferred.

Of course, getting characters to the abilities you wanted for them could be time consuming, and this led some people to gripe about the feature. I found it exhilarating myself. The long hours of effort pay off in the end when you can build each character exactly how you wanted them, with a variety of different abilities and even build their stats around those abilities.

The largest complaint seemed to come near the end. In the final stages of the game you actually wind up inside the boss himself. The fight to get to that area is intense and very challenging. The reward? The final battle. This is the point where you would be hearing some cliffhanging riff, no?

However, the final battle is a disappointment of the highest variety. It seemed scarcely more challenging than the first boss of the game, many hours and levels prior. This, to me, was the largest letdown of the game. The inability to build to something climactic and intense is frustrating on all levels. To be sure, it is the games largest drawback.

Overall, of course, FFX is a solid 8.5 or 9 out of 10. The final battle, I'm afraid, is a 3 at best

Mirror's Edge

Mirrors Edge was born out of Parkour/free running and places you in the role of Faith, a messenger for the people of the city who don't trust electronic communications. Faith travels across rooftops, out of sight and out of mind of the authorities. However things are about to change.

I'm a bit late reviewing this, since it came out on PC in the early days of the site and I had already bought several games to review. So I've had the "opportunity" to read other reviews of this and see if my hopes that it would be the great landmark game it seemed like it could be. Apparently not!
So now it was my turn to have a go and see if I agreed with the general consensus. And the answer to that is yes and no.

You're taken through the basic training that shows you how to do the special wall running/jumping and rolling that helps you traverse the landscape. I have to admit, I tried this on the Xbox-360 and I found it far easier on the PC. Throughout the game I did come across some areas that took me many, many attempts to get past. I remember one area where it took me almost 30 times to get a tricky jump right. So it's not easy anyway. However, when you get it right, it's fabulous fun and the whole world feels completely accessible. I was really, really hoping for more possible routes in places though, they could have reduced the difficulty by doing this and made the game a little more fun for those of us who don't care if we get every move spot on.

The scenery itself however really appealed to me. The bright whiteness and huge scale of the city really gave Mirrors Edge an Epic feel to it. The problem was though, it's a bit like driving:
You don't really notice the scenery when you have to drive.

Combat wise was a similar story to the rest of the game. They suggest you try to isolate the enemies before you take them down, but the process of isolating them is tricky. If you get more than one attacking you in close quarters you can pretty much guarantee you'll be returning to the last checkpoint in no time. On the other hand, there are times where the combat just flows beautifully and you seem to be running rings around the bad guys. I do wish there had been a little more stealth in there. When you're taught combat you're shown how to disarm someone from behind. But I only came across one opportunity to do this. The bad guys always, always knew where I was otherwise even if they hadn't seen me for a while, so there was no real way to crawl around in secret and then disarm them easily. Additionally to this, the actual window of time for disarming some of these enemies was ridiculously short and I was forced to jump kick everyone and then run away before they could react nearly every time. Either that or use bullet time (oh yeah, they have bullet time) to slow everything down enough to get the click in.

The story of Mirrors Edge is short. It's a complaint I agree with, but on the other hand this is a fast game so the large areas that would take quite some time in your standard fps game take only a few seconds here. And although the story is short, it's not bad, which is a relief considering the daughter of the great Terry Pratchett was involved! I really hope that a sequel that focuses more on the story is on it's way because if there was just a bit more plot I think this could have been the hit of the year.
Some of the story is told in animated comic-book format. You'll either love it or hate it. I, for one, thought it was great.

The story is well matched by the music score that really worked for me. The minimalist sound really lent itself to the huge openness that the game, at least, portrays. I'm also a fan of the theme song, which helps I guess!

Basically the main problems with this game revolve around its length and it's unforgiving nature in regards to jumps and combat. It has huge plus points in its setting, quality of story/setting and fun once you've gotten used to it. If you can get your hands on the demo or not you'll know the second you start playing if this game is for you, but I think it's excellent.

Score: 80 out of 100

Final words: Mirrors Edge is a great game, but look before you leap! Try the demo first as it's not for everyone!

This article was written by Andy Yates of PC Games and Reviews
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Call of Duty 4

Few series in the gaming world have been so varied in terms of quality quite as Call of Duty. Many console owners have only really had experience with 3rd game in the series, an Xbox 360 only installment that was developed by a different company from the original games. Call of Duty 3, while not a terrible game, wasn't a great example of what the series can achieve under the right direction.
Luckily Call of Duty 4 sees a return of developers Infinity Ward and a change of pace for the series. Traditionally set during the Second World War, COD 4 has moved the series forward to the modern day, swapping out the traditional Japanese and Nazi enemies for a more contemporary battlefield focused around terrorism.

A modern first person shooter set predominately against Middle Eastern terrorists might not sound exactly original, but the story turns out to be one of the games major selling points. The usual bravado and macho garbage that you usually find associated with FPS games is completely absent, replaced with some incredibly varied environments, realistic characters and a sense of the futility of war rather than the promotion of it.
The plot is backed up by some amazing level design. All of the epic set pieces that made Call of Duty 2 so amazing have returned in full force with the advantage of modern graphics and modern weaponry making the game even more explosive and dynamic than it was before. Levels involve a mix of the linear and open, and while there's nothing approaching a Farcry level of 'choosing' how to fight, there are plenty of areas where you've got enough options to allow for a variety of play styles and tactics.

The Artificial Intelligence is some of the best we've ever seen in a FPS. Combined with plenty of opportunities to make intelligent use of weapons and terrain there's a level of strategy in COD 4 that's slightly more advanced than most other Xbox 360 shooters. Even the obligatory stealth section is enjoyable rather than frustrating. The AI is good enough to make the game quite difficult, even on easier settings, so gamers will be in for a challenge.

Call of Duty 4 looks brilliant. Modern FPS games normally conjure an image of dull, grey brown colours and endless battles set in Middle Eastern, brown colored towns with no personality. COD 4 really breaks the mould with environments varying from barren deserts to lush forests that are nearly too nice to be destroyed by the battles that take place within them. The audio is particularly standout; if you have a good sound system it's nearly cinematic in quality and makes great use of directional audio.

At around six hours, the length is going to be the major turn off for many gamers looking to get more "bang" for their buck. However, what you get with COD 4 isn't so much about the quantity and more about the fact that every level and every fight has a purpose. Nothing has been added as filler just to pad out the game. It's honest, genuine quality from start to finish and well worth every cent.
Vince loves to write reviews and articles on digital gadgets and console games. When he isn't writing about Xbox 360 he is playing xbox live for free.

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Dead Or Alive 4

The Dead or Alive fighting games, produced for the XBox 360 by the production company Tecmo are well known for their sexy characters with large breast, flashing knickers, ripped torso's etc. This fourth release in the franchise is no different with buxom fighting girls such as Kasumi and Hitomi.

A new addition for this game that wasn't in the earlier ones is the presence of the Spartan character, who avid gamers will recognize from his fame in the Halo series, also made by Tecmo. This really does add a new dimension to the gameplay as well as adding obvious novelty value, and fans of Halo will really enjoy using Spartan to fight their way through the game and the other characters.

It is a fairly easy to learn game that doesn't require long hours of practice to learn enough moves to get anywhere, although the speed of the action can sometimes lend itself to button bashing rather than controlled skill. This makes it ideal for casual gamers or for people who don't usually play fighting games, but perhaps a little bit frustrating for veteran martial arts gamers.

There are some really beautiful backgrounds in the game, with plenty of attention to detail in the scenery. This does make it a visually attractive game and I think it is an important part of the overall experience.

There is perhaps an over-reliance on using big breasts and sexy female fighters to grab your attention, but then this is exactly what fans of Dead or Alive games love them for, so if you played an earlier incarnation and enjoyed it then it's a pretty safe bet that you will enjoy this one too. If your new to the franchise then don't expect serious hardcore gaming, but do expect to have fun playing an engaging game.

Westward III

After guiding settlers and thwarting bandit gangs from the previous Westward games, it's now time for your pioneers to stake their claim from Northern California's vast riches in Westward III: Gold Rush. A bright future awaits three new heroes as they find adventure in this third installment of the hit life simulator franchise. There are new stories to tell and new challenges to face with the same old gameplay mechanics that ensures this game to be a hit for fans and non-fans alike.

Just like Westward II: Heroes of the Frontier, in this game, you are to choose between three pioneers each with his or her own story to tell. However, even though each will follow a different path towards their destiny, there's one common denominator between them too, and that's to start a new life in search of greater fortune in the west. Furthermore, choosing your alter ego will also unlock one free building for you to use, depending on your hero's personality and expertise.

Westward III: Gold Rush plays the same as the earlier games of the series where your objective is to fulfill tasks and quests in order to build self sustaining settlements and continue on your mission. As the hero of the story, your main mission is to tend to the people living in your current town and keep them happy and well-supplied. Building different structures, searching for supply sources and providing jobs is only part of the story. Defending the town against bandits by hiring lawmen is equally as important.

All controls of the game make use of the mouse, with some alternatives using the keyboard buttons. You are provided with an action panel, a map and several other tools at the bottom of your screen. Above, you will find your missions, the store interface, and well, more buttons that you'll go visit from time to time. All in all, the icons can be a bit confusing at first, but just as traditional Westward fashion, you'll get use to all the tools in the interface as time goes by playing the game.

Westward III is one of the many games featured and reviewed at Casualicious. Please visit our site to read more about Westward III and get to play hundreds of other games worth your time and enjoyment.