Today's Kudos goes out to those games with plenty of flammable barrels and containers, whose placement is surprisingly convenient in taking out evil-doers. Also, the barrel or board, pipe or baseball bat, and other environmental objects used to clobber skulls are special.

This became apparent to me while playing AO2 that the exploding flammable container gets little recognition, yet it's been around with us for a generation. Imagine all the games that had flammable drums just waiting to be shot at.. Metal Gear Solid had plenty. Super Mario Bros. 2 and 3, Final Fight, God Hand, Streets of Rage, Manhunt, the Marvel/X-men Activision series games and River City Ransom also make extensive use of environmental improvised weaponry.

I'd have to admit that River City Ransom took this to a new level however. When you ate the right foods in the game and beefed up, you could get a turbo clobbering thing going that would basically decimate enemy thugs with like 5 barrels hits over the head in about 3 seconds. Somewhere along the way however, I feel we forgot just how cool these things are, even if sometimes unrealistic. Metal Gear Solid series was perhaps my favourite mixture. Once we got to MGS3, you could not only shoot barrels, but you could use plants to heal yourself, animals for food, and items for camo! Talk about improv opportunity.

The latest neat thing I've seen in this area was in AO2, when you use a car door as a shield for you and your partner to advance. It's a wonderful concept that really shouldn't be glossed over.

So here's some kudos to the designers who develop these little goodies.