When Tasering goes wrong: UK cops use stun gun on blind man, mistook his white cane for samurai sword

Poor Colin Farmer was minding his own business last Friday when he was Tasered by a cop who mistook his white cane for a samurai sword.

In the UK, the vast majority of cops don’t carry guns. When trouble occurs, they have only their baton and powers of persuasion to deal with the situation. In recent years, however, more and more cops have been issued with Tasers.

As you probably know, a Taser is a kind of stun gun that allows a cop to administer an electric shock to a person who is out of control or refusing to co-operate. While it can be an effective tool for law enforcement agencies, use of the device can sometimes go horribly wrong – like it did last Friday in Lancashire, north-west England.

In an incident that would be amusing if it wasn’t so shocking (no pun intended), a cop messed up big-time with Colin Farmer, a 61-year-old blind man who walks with the aid of a white cane.

Somehow the cop, who apparently isn’t blind, mistook Farmer’s white cane for a samurai sword (yes, a samurai sword) and fired the Taser at his back, administering a massive electric shock in the process.

Farmer, who was taken to hospital following the incident, has – not surprisingly – made an official complaint which is now being investigated by the UK’s Police Complaints Commission.

Speaking to the Guardian about what must have been an utterly terrifying ordeal, Farmer said he’d been walking down the street Friday evening when he suddenly heard lots of shouting. He had know idea it was the police. The next moment he felt something hit his back.

“The Taser hit me in the back and it started sending all these thousands of volts through me and I was terrified,” Farmer said. “I mean I had two strokes already caused by stress. I dropped the cane involuntarily and I collapsed on the floor face down.”

He continued, “I was shaking and I thought ‘I’m going to have another stroke any second and this one is going to kill me. I’m being killed.’”

Farmer said he walks so slowly that the cops could easily have walked past him first, or driven past, to confirm that it was a white cane he was carrying and not a samurai sword.

Chief superintendent Stuart Williams of Lancashire Police managed to throw at least a little light onto what had happened, saying that prior to the incident a number of sightings of a man wandering around with a samurai sword had been reported to police.

“One of the officers believed he had located the offender,” Williams told the Guardian. “Despite asking the man to stop, he failed to do so and the officer discharged his Taser. It then became apparent this man was not the person we were looking for and officers attended to him straight away.”

He added, “Lancashire Constabulary deeply regrets what has happened. We have clearly put this man through a traumatic experience and we are extremely sorry.”

A man with a samurai sword was later arrested by police – and no, he wasn’t Tasered.

While Tasers may be a useful tool for police, it seems that some cops in the UK need better training on when to use them. Lessons on how to tell the difference between equipment that helps guide the blind and lethal weapons that can cause horrible injuries are evidently also required.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

Have sword will travel; Hands-on with Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance

Konami and Platinum Games continue the Metal Gear franchise with the story of a man with a sword, and his penchant for slicing everything in the way.

Although once nearly dead, Konami and Platinum Games’ Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance is back with a, well, a vengeance. I have to admit that I have had grave misgivings over this game, but they were all due to the history of the property rather than the game itself. In 2010, Kojima Productions cancelledRising after it came out that the development team was having trouble finding the right balance and couldn’t settle on a firm direction. It sounded like it was a mess. Then Platinum Games came in an saved it, but that just meant it was going to be released, not necessarily good.

The important thing to know about Rising is that the game is based on the mechanic of sword combat. Everything else is just details. Thankfully the mechanic is a good basis to build a game on.

Rising is a full-on action game. The stealth mechanic that defines the Metal Gear series has been abandoned in favor of a much faster paced experience. The main character, Raiden, is a shark; he can never stop moving or the game is dead. There is always a very direct path for you to follow – or at least that was the impression the demo gave, and that fits with the style Platinum Games has shown in its previous releases.

There is a frenetic pace to Rising. There are a few collectibles that make exploring the limited areas beyond the direct path worth exploring – including a handful of enemies hiding in cardboard boxes ala the classic Metal Gear hiding spot – but for the most part the game wants you pushing forward at all time.

You have two ways to attack. The first way is through button strikes. You have the traditional heavy and light attacks along with a parry and jump, but the real feature that deserves attention is the “blade mode.”

When you hold the left trigger or L2 button, the game slows down. With the right analog, you then control the arc of the swing. At first it takes a moment to realize the amount of control you have with this method. If you slowly move the indicator, you then need to pull the stick back then let go to swing. It feels clunky and awkward, but that is not how you are meant to play.

The idea is to attack quickly. Once you grasp the fundamentals, you can initiate the blade mode and quickly dissect an enemy. There is a counter that appears and you can track the number of cuts you make, which later helps to factor in to your overall score for the level. If you are fast enough, you can quite literally cut a human enemy into dozens of pieces in seconds. The game is also incredibly gory, and cutting a human to bits or just doing a single, powerful stroke opens them up and shows you their insides. Metal Gear Rising in an incredibly gory and grotesque game, but it is so over the top that it doesn’t really seem as horrific as you might think, and it is actually fun to try to get as many strokes in as possible.

But human enemies are not the only ones you will face, and you don’t even need enemies to slice and dice things for that matter. You will frequently face off against mechanized enemies, including many from the Metal Gear Solid series. Finding their weak spots is key, and once you do they can be chopped to bits. Some enemies will also require a secondary means to defeat them, like the rocket launcher sub-weapon you have, but it seems to be a set up to finish the enemy with the sword. You can also lay into just about anything from cars to pillars, tanks to tables.

Movement is also a major part of the game. Raiden has the ability to do a “ninja run”, which means that by holding down the proper button and running, he will begin a parkour-like sprint over any obstacles in his way. This, like the manual sword attack, uses up energy, which can be recharged by collecting energy packs dropped by defeated enemies.

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance is not Metal Gear Solid 5 (or even Metal Gear Solid 2.5, as the game takes place after MGS 2 but before MGS 4), but it does have a place in the series. It is a fundamentally different game from the other Metal Gear titles, and the stealth-action has been abandoned for something completely different, but despite that it still bears the influence of Hideo Kojima, who remained on the game as executive producer.

The sword mechanic is what will win over or lose fans. As a devotee of the Metal Gear franchise I may be a bit biased, but I personally thought it was exceedingly fun and I look forward to playing more of it in the future. The over the top action may feel a bit like a button mashing hack-n-slash to some, and in many ways it is, but the finely tuned sword mechanics mixed with the Metal Gear mythology make this game worth paying attention to as its February 19, 2013 release date nears.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

Reborn adventure series Broken Sword: The Serpent’s Curse seeks $400K on Kickstarter

Charles Cecil's much-loved 2D mystery series Broken Sword is back with The Serpent's Curse.

Back in June, we reported that Britain’s Revolution Software and adventure gaming auteur Charles Cecil were gearing up to make a new game in their Broken Sword series. Turns out those rumors were true: Revolution opened a Kickstarter campaign on Thursday raising funds for the development of Broken Sword: The Serpent’s Curse, the first entry in the series since 2006’s Broken Sword: The Angel of Death.

Unlike Angel of Death, Broken Sword 5 will return to the rich 2D animation of the earlier games in the series. Artists that have worked with Nickelodeon, Disney, Dreamworks, Sony and others are going to provide the visuals for Broken Sword’s first original HD outing. Veteran voice actors, including Rolf Saxon who voices lead George, will return for the new game.

Speaking of George, he and his constant companion Nico are once again caught up in a Parisian mystery in Serpent’s Curse. It all starts with a stolen painting but the adventure becomes a “race against time as dark forces from Europe’s turbulent past are woken from their slumber.” Sounds like Templar trouble to me.

Like Brian Fargo’s InXile Entertainment and its new RPG Wasteland 2, Revolution turned to Kickstarter due to trouble finding adequate funding in the traditional video game publishing world. Unlike InXile though, the issue hasn’t been finding publishers willing to pay for the game, but finding publishers willing to share the profits. “Revolution adventures have had considerable success—but the traditional publishing model has prevented us receiving the required royalties to fund future games. With limited financial reserves we have been unable to fund our own titles and so we have not benefitted from their success.”

Revolution is aiming to raise $400,000. As of this writing, the campaign hasn’t been open for 24 hours and it’s already raised nearly $110,000.

Broken Sword: The Serpent’s Curse is just the latest point-and-click adventure success story on Kickstarter. Al Lowe’s Leisure Suit Larry rebirth raised $650,000 in April. Gabriel Knight creator Jane Jensen raised $435,000 in May, funding three games including Moebius in the process.

It’s great to see Broken Sword back in action, especially hand animated rather than as a polygonal game like Angel of Death. Something from Revolution’s world is lost when rendered in the third-dimension.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com