NiniaPimp Magazine

All games need conflict. Most of the time the player’s objective is blocked by several thousand faceless, nameless mooks throwing themselves in the path of danger with all the fervor of a headless chicken. But behind those mooks lies the antagonist, the figure that has been working against the hero all along. The best rivalry showdowns are between two solitary figures, foils of one another. These are the kinds of rivalries the player waits the entire game (or series) to settle once and for all. Here are some of the best one-on-one showdowns in gaming history.

7. Solid Snake vs. Liquid Snake in Metal Gear Solid

Cut from the same cloth—or rather, grown from the same Petri dish—Solid and Liquid are both clones of the same super-soldier. Liquid Snake was created from all the best aspects of the cold-war hero Big Boss, while Solid Snake was made from the inferior genes of the same man. However, because the American government couldn’t justify keeping a soldier with such a sinister British accent on staff, Solid Snake became the series’ hero, and the perfect-on-paper Liquid was kept from his birthright. Believing himself to be the genetically weak twin, Liquid’s inferiority complex drives him to do what any of us would, take over a secret Alaskan military base and hijack a doomsday device.

Snake (the solid one) must wind his way through Liquid’s facility, defeat an animal-themed squad of super soldiers and disarm Metal Gear, a nuclear-powered robot T-Rex (did I mention this was a Japanese game?). But before Snake can hang up his skin-tight rubber jumpsuit and call it a night, the two rivals settle their dispute the way they both knew they inevitably had to: a man-to-man fist-fight on the head of a metallic dinosaur’s corpse. Never change, Japan.

Roxxi Laveaux better know as Nikki Roxx on the Independent circuit made her debut on March 2001 after being trained by Killer Kowalski. Soon after, she formed a tag-team with April Hunter called The Killer Babes. It was April Hunter who originally convinced her to try-out at Killer Kowalski’s school, so a tag-team pairing was fitting. She quickly became one of the top female wrestlers on the independent circuit and also made strides in Mexico. The road led her to winning such title as the PGWA Championship, DPW Women’s Championship and many more.

On July 15th 2007 at TNA Wrestling’s Victory Road pay-per-view, she made her TNA debut as “The Voodoo Queen” Roxxi Laveaux aligning herself with the Voodoo Kin Mafia (Kip James & B.G. James). She immediately began a rivalry against Christy Hemme, and began participating in TNA’s Women’s Division.

We recently interviewed April Hunter. I know you’ve wrestled her. What do you think of April?

Well, April is the reason I am a professional wrestler. She was the one who talked me into giving it a try and since that day I have not stopped! I think April is a great wrestler and has a great look. I think any promoter would benefit having her apart of their roster.

What is your ultimate goal in wrestling?

My ultimate goal is to kick ass and enjoy every minute I am in the ring! Of course there is WWE or TNA but ultimately you only live once and why spend the time doing something you don’t love and enjoy.

What would you consider your favorite match?

I’ve had so many great opportunities it’s hard to pick just one match. You learn so much from each one. If I have to pick just one it would be my match against Susan Greene. She has been wrestling for close to 30 years. I learned so much just in that match!

Compared to other female wrestlers, how do you rate yourself?

I think we are all pretty equal. I don’t see anyone as better or less than me. All of us have different talents and when you can bring those talents together they make for a great match.

What do you think of other female wrestlers? Maybe you can tell us your thoughts on Chyna, Trish Stratus, and Tracy Brooks.

I think any girl that can get in the ring in front of a crowd and take the onslaught of the crowd’s comments is a hero. Not only that but just get in there and show everyone that girls are good wrestlers too. It’s an amazing thing.
As for Chyna, she was a pioneer for the girls. She wasn’t some Barbie doll or super model. She was a bodybuilder and she got in there and gave the guys a run for their money. She was my hero! Trish Stratus is great! You saw her first as the valet to T&A (Test and Albert). Then through the years you see her progress into the wrestler she is today. She’s done an amazing job and it motivates me. I see how she worked hard and it paid off.
I’ve actually had the honor to wrestle Tracy a couple times. I enjoy watching her matches and I’m so proud and happy to see how far wrestling has taken her. She totally deserves it!

What got you interested in wrestling?

I’ve always watched wrestling. It was a family thing to sit down and watch wrestling. Then as I got older my mom would bring me to Boston Garden to see the shows. But, I always just thought the wrestlers just showed up and wrestled. I had no idea there was actual training for this sort of thing.
So, one of my buddies asked for me to go to Killer Kowalski’s Wrestling Institution with him and I did. From there I met April Hunter and the rest is history.

Where do you see yourself in five years?

Kicking ass of course!

What’s your favorite TV show and what do you do for fun?

I love ESPN’s Cold Pizza and Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends on Cartoon Network. I love cartoons! Thank you God for making Cartoon Network! .
For fun I love going to the gym, movies, reading comics (yes I love comics too!), and just having fun! Oh yea! And watching wrestling tapes and DVDs!

Do you have any workout tips for us?

Don’t call it dieting! It is limiting your food intake. And, give yourself one meal a week to have whatever you want. But, only one meal! It helps you stay dedicated to your limited food intake.

Is there anything you would like to say to your fans?

I’d like to thank each and every one of them. They are always so great to me! Thank you for your support!

Have you ever seen our site before? What do you think of NinjaPimp?

I think you guys are great! I’m honored to do the interview with NinjaPimp! I’m sure I will make all the other chick wrestlers jealous!

What’s something not many people know about you?

Normally, it’s the comic book thing. No one ever suspects I’m THAT much of a dork but I totally am! I love comics!

Well, thanks for the interview… it has been fun!

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II – Retribution is the second stand-alone expansion to Dawn of War II, a real-time strategy/tactical role-playing game set in the Warhammer: 40,000 universe. Chaos Rising, the previous stand-alone expansion, required ownership of DOWII if you wanted to play the original’s factions in multiplayer. Retribution goes one step further by allowing you to play all six sides in both the single-player and multiplayer portions of the game without owning any of the preceding titles. Keeping everything fantastic from its predecessors and improving upon their flaws, Retribution is a must-have for DOWII fans and a great point of entry for newcomers.

Retribution can be played more like a traditional RTS than its predecessors if you choose.

The highlight of Retribution is its campaign, which is set on the long-suffering planets of subsector Aurelia. After decades of warfare and demonic infestation, Aurelia has now been slated for destruction by the Holy Imperial Inquisition. However, the true source of the sector’s problems is the corrupt Space Marine Chapter Master Azariah Kyras, and his destruction may stay the Inquisition’s hand and spare the sector its fiery doom. While the campaign’s story and opening cutscene are decidedly focused on the Space Marines, the five other factions have their own reasons for opposing Kyras (beyond a desire to save Aurelia for themselves). Their motivations generally make sense, but the need for each faction to experience the same basic story arc leads to occasional holes in the plot. An unnecessary case of Eldar on Eldar violence is particularly inexplicable. Less problematic are the simpler narratives of the Orks and Tyranids, who are motivated by, respectively, a desire to obtain an Inquisitor’s hat and an instinctual impulse to consume everything in the galaxy.

Regardless of which of the six factions you decide to play as, Retribution’s campaign feels like a hybrid of Dawn of War II’s campaign, which focused on micromanaging a handful of hero units, and a more traditional RTS. During each mission, you can collect resources to spend on building units or temporarily improving the stats of your heroes. For instance, you can buff up the Imperial Guard Commissar Lord Bernn’s health and have him punch tanks to death, or you can field a few tanks of your own. Likewise, when picking mission rewards, you must choose between grabbing better war gear for your heroes and making your army “more killy” by unlocking unit types or upgrades. This can be a tough call because heroes are insanely useful when properly micromanaged, especially if you carefully choose new abilities while leveling up. For instance, you might be able to take out a teeming mass of Orks by slowing down time with one hero while setting the area on fire with another. If you tire of micromanaging heroes and prefer a good old-fashioned tank column, you can leave most of the heroes behind for a mission in exchange for an increased population cap and powerful honor guard units that may be rebuilt or reinforced for free.

Mission objectives are more diverse than in the original Dawn of War II, where you’d repeatedly replay the same maps and where the goals generally consisted of defending power generators or defeating a boss. In Retribution, you play each map only once per campaign, and there is only one optional power generator defense mission. Some of the boss battles in Retribution offer additional variety. For example, in one level, you fight an Ork tank that takes a good 20 minutes to kill with conventional weaponry, but which can be baited into rolling over explosive barrels to its destruction. Other mission highlights include fleeing from a gigantic Baneblade tank, ambushing Ork convoys, and escaping from a planet while an orbital bombardment tears it asunder.

Tyranids aren’t the only bugs that you have to contend with in the Imperial Guard campaign.

Though the campaign is generally excellent, it suffers from a few bugs that occur almost exclusively while playing as the Imperial Guard, the new side introduced in this expansion. Lord General Castor, the chief hero in the Imperial Guard campaign, is particularly cursed. During the second level, there is a cutscene where a bridge is destroyed, and without fail, Castor’s bodyguards get stuck on inaccessible ledges beneath the bridge. Unfortunately, Castor and his bodyguards are considered to be a single squad, so he remains trapped in place until his stranded squadmates perish. Furthermore, using Castor’s special ability to air-drop a tank onto the battlefield causes multiple bugs on maps where you normally couldn’t build tanks. In one instance, the game wouldn’t recognize that the mission objective had been completed; in another, game-pausing messages about a “Fatal Scar Error” popped up constantly. Without these “forbidden tanks,” the missions were bug free.

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Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II – Retribution is the second stand-alone expansion to Dawn of War II, a real-time strategy/tactical role-playing game set in the Warhammer: 40,000 universe. Chaos Rising, the previous stand-alone expansion, required ownership of DOWII if you wanted to play the original’s factions in multiplayer. Retribution goes one step further by allowing you to play all six sides in both the single-player and multiplayer portions of the game without owning any of the preceding titles. Keeping everything fantastic from its predecessors and improving upon their flaws, Retribution is a must-have for DOWII fans and a great point of entry for newcomers.

Retribution can be played more like a traditional RTS than its predecessors if you choose.

The highlight of Retribution is its campaign, which is set on the long-suffering planets of subsector Aurelia. After decades of warfare and demonic infestation, Aurelia has now been slated for destruction by the Holy Imperial Inquisition. However, the true source of the sector’s problems is the corrupt Space Marine Chapter Master Azariah Kyras, and his destruction may stay the Inquisition’s hand and spare the sector its fiery doom. While the campaign’s story and opening cutscene are decidedly focused on the Space Marines, the five other factions have their own reasons for opposing Kyras (beyond a desire to save Aurelia for themselves). Their motivations generally make sense, but the need for each faction to experience the same basic story arc leads to occasional holes in the plot. An unnecessary case of Eldar on Eldar violence is particularly inexplicable. Less problematic are the simpler narratives of the Orks and Tyranids, who are motivated by, respectively, a desire to obtain an Inquisitor’s hat and an instinctual impulse to consume everything in the galaxy.

Regardless of which of the six factions you decide to play as, Retribution’s campaign feels like a hybrid of Dawn of War II’s campaign, which focused on micromanaging a handful of hero units, and a more traditional RTS. During each mission, you can collect resources to spend on building units or temporarily improving the stats of your heroes. For instance, you can buff up the Imperial Guard Commissar Lord Bernn’s health and have him punch tanks to death, or you can field a few tanks of your own. Likewise, when picking mission rewards, you must choose between grabbing better war gear for your heroes and making your army “more killy” by unlocking unit types or upgrades. This can be a tough call because heroes are insanely useful when properly micromanaged, especially if you carefully choose new abilities while leveling up. For instance, you might be able to take out a teeming mass of Orks by slowing down time with one hero while setting the area on fire with another. If you tire of micromanaging heroes and prefer a good old-fashioned tank column, you can leave most of the heroes behind for a mission in exchange for an increased population cap and powerful honor guard units that may be rebuilt or reinforced for free.

Mission objectives are more diverse than in the original Dawn of War II, where you’d repeatedly replay the same maps and where the goals generally consisted of defending power generators or defeating a boss. In Retribution, you play each map only once per campaign, and there is only one optional power generator defense mission. Some of the boss battles in Retribution offer additional variety. For example, in one level, you fight an Ork tank that takes a good 20 minutes to kill with conventional weaponry, but which can be baited into rolling over explosive barrels to its destruction. Other mission highlights include fleeing from a gigantic Baneblade tank, ambushing Ork convoys, and escaping from a planet while an orbital bombardment tears it asunder.

Tyranids aren’t the only bugs that you have to contend with in the Imperial Guard campaign.

Though the campaign is generally excellent, it suffers from a few bugs that occur almost exclusively while playing as the Imperial Guard, the new side introduced in this expansion. Lord General Castor, the chief hero in the Imperial Guard campaign, is particularly cursed. During the second level, there is a cutscene where a bridge is destroyed, and without fail, Castor’s bodyguards get stuck on inaccessible ledges beneath the bridge. Unfortunately, Castor and his bodyguards are considered to be a single squad, so he remains trapped in place until his stranded squadmates perish. Furthermore, using Castor’s special ability to air-drop a tank onto the battlefield causes multiple bugs on maps where you normally couldn’t build tanks. In one instance, the game wouldn’t recognize that the mission objective had been completed; in another, game-pausing messages about a “Fatal Scar Error” popped up constantly. Without these “forbidden tanks,” the missions were bug free.

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