| 10/7/08:
You Changed It Now It Sucks The review of Lego Indiana Jones this week also brings
with it a new, original theme tune and intro
sequence. And so, as reliably as the tides, there
has been a lot of hostility towards it. Most of
it I'm putting down to the human instinct to be
opposed to sudden changes in routine and status
quo. I'd like to point out that if the reviews
had had original music and an intro like that
from the very beginning no-one would have cared.
I'd also like to point out that I kind of thought
everyone was here for the video game criticism,
which is unchanged.
Firstly, no,
this wasn't because of pressure from the
Escapist. It was my idea to spruce up the videos
and make them look a bit more professional,
because otherwise it reflects poorly on me.
Extreme paranoia concerning copyright
infringement may also have played a part and I
wanted to err on the side of caution.
The new intro
might be a bit PEPSI MAX for you but frankly I
like it. It gets me pumped. And for the music I
asked for something awesome with squealy guitars
because I'm extremely white and therefore into
classic rock. Give it a few weeks, I'm sure it'll
grow on everyone.
Yahtzee
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3/7/08:
Fun With Webcomics
Just to prove
that I am never one to discount pettiness and
passive-aggressiveness from my many, many flaws,
I devoted this week's video to ragging on irritating popular trends
in gaming-themed webcomics. The problems are so
endemic that I felt no need to name any actual
names, so as I say at the end, if you happen to
think I might be referring to any specific comic,
that says more about your own feelings about it
than mine.
Just a
reminder: I'm doing the Melbourne thing again
next week at ACMI, on July 10th, in a much larger
venue this time to appease everyone who couldn't
get in last time. I'll be there talking with
renowned video game blogger Jason Hill again,
basically on anything that comes to mind about
gaming, game culture and ice cream. Possibly not
so much that last one. Tickets are available on
the day from 10am, no pre-bookings, dipshits
please stay at home.
Oh yeah, I
forgot to mention last week, ZP and Escapist T-shirts are now available from
Splitreason.com. Now you can go around being our
walking advertising boards and become just as big
a sellout as me.
UPDATE!
UPDATE! AWOOGA! There's been some
confusion around it but I'm fairly certain that I
will be joining Yug and Matt (my AustralianGamer chums) for a live
podcast from GenCon in Brisbane, this Saturday at
11am. It's at the Brisbane Convention and
Exhibition Centre in case you weren't aware.
Yahtzee
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26/6/08:
Metal Beer Solid
Yeah, yeah,
reviewed MGS4 this week. Now stop
reading if you haven't played it because I'm
going to spoil some shit. It's the same colour as
the background so highlight it or copy paste it
into notepad and frame it on your wall or
something.
So
at the end of Metal Gear Solid 2 boy-fag usurper
Raiden hooks up with his pregnant shrew bitch of
a fiancee and goes off into the sunset, but in
MGS4 it seems she had a little baby booboo and
miscarried the whelp, whereupon the pasty twat of
a father-to-be got all depressed and buggered off
to travel the world becoming a cyborg ninja
badass. He saves Snake from a few close
encounters and generally acts like a broody
psychotic. Meanwhile his ex has married old
Colonel Campbell to hop up and down on dried out
military dick. Anyway, Raiden shows up towards
the end of the game to save Snake again and
apparently gets crushed to death, poignantly
thinking of the first time he met his wife.
At
this point, I was almost impressed. I'm cynical
enough to relish the schadenfreude when the
happily ever after goes balls-up. Raiden suddenly
seemed like much less of a universally hateful
pussy. And Mrs. Raiden shacking up with the
Colonel in response to Raiden's abandonment was
good characterisation; it's the kind of thing
you'd expect actual human beings to do.
But
then!
Otacon
mentions in passing after Raiden's poignant death
scene that, oh, guess he didn't die after all and
he's had a few glasses of milk and is ready for
more action. He shows up again at the end of the
last mission with both his arms chopped off and
with power over lightning for no adequately
explained reason. He's become a hideous, cold,
cyborgified demon. Fair enough, I thought, kind
of makes that whole poignant death sequence moot
but whatever. He gets stabbed up a whole bunch by
enemy soldiers.
But
then!
At
the very end of the game, in a tacked-on epilogue
sequence, Raiden shows up in a hospital bed.
Totally de-cyborgified with two nice healthy pink
arms glued back on. And then his ex-wife shows up
and tells him the full story. Apparently she and
the Colonel were only PRETENDING to be married in
order to defer suspicion from the Patriots! And
she couldn't tell him this earlier because the
PATRIOTS would have found out! Also her child was
actually born healthy but she couldn't tell him
that either because the kid had to be hidden from
the PATRIOTS for some reason! Also his house
didn't actually burn down and his dog didn't die,
it was all the PATRIOTS! It was all because of
the PATRIOTS and now everyone can be happy
because the PATRIOTS are gone. PATRIOTS.
I'm not even
going to explain why this shit pisses me off. If
you don't agree that this is all complete fucking
bullshit, just give Konami all your money. You
don't fucking deserve it.
Yahtzee
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13/6/08:
Are You Still Here
Oh yes, I
remember; I have this site I sometimes update.
Anyway, the last ZP video was Oblivion, and there wasn't one
this week because I was away in NYC attending the
Webby awards thingy, eating fancy meals, wearing
a suit and rubbing shoulders with more
interesting people than you. Only just got back
today, actually, but I don't seem to feel as
tired as I aisjdzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
- Yahtzee
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30/5/08:
Turns Out The World Doesn't End With You
ZP this week is The World Ends With You, the latest DS
Squeenix... thing. Anyway, about my next
appearance at Game On, looks like I'm going to be
doing it on July 10th at 6pm. Tickets will be
available from 10am and we're doing it in one of
the cinemas this time to fit more people in, so
now you've got nothing to complain about. I'm up
there with Jason again and it'll be a bit of a
dialogue between us about whatever comes to mind
about gaming culture. Come one, come all.
- Yahtzee
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22/5/08:
Pain Filler
Painkiller this week, as we move
into the less interesting part of the year.
Sunday's talk
was... interesting, in some ways. I enjoyed
verbally sparring with my two peers, Jason Hill
of the Age and Bajo of Good Game. I sort of
underestimated my own popularity, though, and the
embarrassment factor came in when I realised that
99% of the audience consisted of the weird
fanbase I drag around that corrupts everything it
touches.
The event was
run by some really very nice people who didn't
deserve the mass outbreak of retardation that was
visited upon them. Really, guys, I know it was
frustrating that only a third of you could fit in
the audience space, but what was with all the
banging on the glass and yelling and generally
being a bunch of titwhistles? What Soviet gulag
did you grow up in where that's an appropriate
way to behave? Anyway, I've been talking with the
organisers and we're probably going to do another
talk in June July some time in a
bigger auditorium for all those poor crushed
weirdoes who didn't get in, so watch this space.
- Yahtzee
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15/5/08:
Grrrrand Theft Auto
Grand Theft Auto IV. And yes, it's probably
only going to be downhill from here as we move
into the usual summer games drought.
As I mention at
the end of that review I'm contributing to a
panel entitled What's A Good Game at Game On in Melbourne
this Sunday. It's taking place at 2pm at the
Screen Pit at ACMI. I'm flying down that morning,
doing the talk, and almost immediately flying
straight back in the evening, so if you want to
say hi you'd better make it fast.
- Yahtzee
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8/5/08:
Mailing Wall
Last week Chains of Olympus. This week a little rundown of my favourite
responses to the Brawl review. Shooting fish in a
barrel, perhaps, but we're starting to enter the
'not much good stuff is coming out' time of year
when I get to mix it up with special features and
retro reviews. So there.
I mentioned in
the Brawl review that I hate it when
party games make you unlock the multiplayer
portion by playing the single player, and
recently I fell victim to this phenomenon again
when my roommate and I picked up Wario Ware:
Smooth Moves on the Wii for a barbecue we were
having. When we loaded it up, we discovered that
not only did we have to play all the single
player levels before the multiplayer was
available, but also after we did start the
multiplayer that you only used one controller and
took it in turns. Fortunately we did come up with
a way to get some hearty communal fun out of the
situation, by a method I will now share with you.
You will
need:
1 copy of Wario
Ware: Smooth Moves
1 Wii
At least 3 friends
1 bottle of tequila (lime wedges and salt
optional)
- Take it in
turns to play the single player levels. In each
level of Wario Ware, you have four lives to get
through a sequence of unrelated microgames, with
a big boss microgame at the end.
- One or two
other players must announce that they are
'betting' on whoever is currently playing.
- If the current
player loses the level, (s)he must take a tequila
shot. If they beat the level, whoever was betting
has to take one.
- If you play at
the same pace we did, you'll run out of tequila
at more or less the point when the multiplayer is
unlocked. At this point you will all be shitfaced
and therefore the most fun to play against.
Try it yourself.
I guarantee you it'd be more fun than fucking
Mario Kart.
- Yahtzee
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24/4/08:
Smash Brothers Bawl
Smash Brothers Brawl this week, of all
things; I hope you enjoy it as much as I've been
enjoying the reaction.
I just noticed
the other day that Chris Livingston of Concerned fame is updating a blog again, this one in preparation
for (possibly) starting another Garry's Mod
comic. I've always had a soft spot for old Chris,
going back to his Not My Desk days, feels like he and
I have a lot in common; both struggling
self-effacing internet humour writers with a
gaming bent and a history of menial jobs, both
stopping and starting various internet projects
while being remembered only for the one good
thing we ever did. Anyway, his blog's a pretty
fun read, especially if you're into TF2, so I
thought I might link to it. What do you know, I did.
- Yahtzee
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17/4/08:
Getting Shirty
This week's
review is Condemned 2. Last week's was No More Heroes, but I couldn't be arsed
updating the site. Fuck you.
Also, for
CHRIST'S SAKE stop with the t-shirt related
emails now, I think they got the message and now
I'm afraid to go into my inbox.
- Yahtzee
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4/4/08:
Drunk Australian Men
Hi gang! Of late
I've been chumming it up with Yug and Matt from Australian Gamer the website, and last
night I joined them for their weekly podcast. It was a great laugh
and we had a lot of interesting discussion about
lesbians, cunnilingus and Peter Molyneux, not all
at the same time obviously. Go have a listen to
hear what I sound like when I'm not working from
a script.
In other news,
pop culture expo and creep fest Supanova is on this weekend in Brisbane,
and I attend to intend - sorry - intend to attend
on the Saturday. Feel free to gaze at me lovingly
from a distance if you're going along and happen
to spot me. I'll probably be the guy chumming it
up with all my important games industry friends
you could never talk to in a million years.
Oh yes, and I'm
still doing that weekly video review thing. Army of Two this week.
- Yahtzee
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28/3/08:
Dead Baby Joke
Zack & Wiki this week. Well done to
all those who noticed the repeated and deliberate
spelling error in which I referred to it as
"Zach & Wiki"
throughout. This was genuinely deliberate and was
intended as a statement on something or other.
I sort of wrote
another short story. This one involves characters
from Adventures in the Galaxy
of Fantabulous Wonderment, my experimental space
tradey game thing. It was birthed from the
thought process of 'let's put some established
characters into an awkward social situation and
see how the story unfolds as I write it.' The
story's called Crates of Babies, and here's a free
sample:
Contrary
to popular belief, the interior of a space vessel
does not jostle every time the vessel’s
exterior is fired upon (unless the artificial
gravity is damaged but that takes a pretty
accurate shot on most ships), nor do showers of
sparks explode from random consoles. There
isn’t even a distant rumbling sound. The
only way the crew would know that, say, a photon
missile had disabled the hydrogen ram scoop, was
by reading some flashing words on Dan’s
console.
“A
photon missile just disabled the hydrogen ram
scoop!” yelled Dan.
Boy
howdy, sounds like the crew of the Elaborate
Gesture are in a bit of a pickle! Click these words to find out how they got
into and out of it. Also, just to prove how much
not like Tim Buckley I am, criticism and analysis
is encouraged on the forum, since you did it to my
last story without me asking. Also, while you're
talking about it, recommend other characters from
my fictional universe to write stories about,
because I can't decide.
- Yahtzee
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23/3/08:
You Cad
Review this week
was Turok, for anyone who didn't
notice. Watch it and let's all get on with our
lives.
As a recent interview with me over at Gamespot and
several references in previous reviews and
writings may have informed you, I have a
long-standing hatred of the webcomic Ctrl-Alt-Del. I thought I'd take a
moment to explain it a bit better.
You see, I have
this theory that the internet is causing a
general mediocritisation of human culture,
because you can put pretty much any piece of work
on the internet and no matter how hugely it sucks
dolphin jizz you'll find some dick who's prepared
to tell you it's brilliant. This is the principle
on which Deviantart appears to be founded.
But the
cruellest thing you can do to an artist is tell
them their work is flawless when it isn't.
It gives them no incentive to improve or try new
things, which a creative person must always
strive to do. And it tends to foster the kind of
monstrous egos the webcomic sphere grows like
mushrooms in the shit-spattered dark. Tim Buckley
of Ctrl-Alt-Del is notorious for having a zero
tolerance for any criticism, constructive or
otherwise, often deleting it unregarded from his
forums, or declaring them invalid for half-baked
reasons. It seems blanket praise has already done
its damage to this fevered ego.
I don't hate
Buckley. I look at CAD and I see a lot of
misdirected potential. I know, that sounds
hilarious even to me. But if you look at
Buckley's art blog, you'll find that he's
actually a pretty decent artist when he wants to
be. But the promise of easy praise and popularity
keeps him mired in his copy-pasted
shoulder-hunched droopy-eyed slack-jawed magnum
opus.
Not that
copy-pasted art need necessarily ruin a comic - Dinosaur Comics is one of my favourite
regular reads. It's the fact that for having run
a gag-a-day strip for however many years, Buckley
still has no idea how to structure a joke.
I've never known an artist so determined to never
learn anything about their craft. His usual
response to this sort of thing is that he just
has his own style and that there's no such thing
as a 'right' or 'wrong' opinion, but the fact is,
while humour is a flexible harlot, it
still has rules. Rules which can be
broken in the right contexts; contexts which
don't include anything Tim Buckley has written.
I'm going to
post a link now to a Ctrl-Alt-Del comic from July
2007. Don't let the fact that it's old excuse the
mistakes; this is still very typical of Buckley's
current work.
http://www.ctrlaltdel-online.com/comic.php?d=20070718
Here's another
comic, this one a Penny Arcade strip from early
the same year. The subject matter and joke are
the same (Puzzle Quest) but it's a fairly obvious
joke to make and I can easily assume both writers
came up with it independently.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/03/28
Both comics
identify the humour in the situation - that the
rules of a game world seem absurd when applied to
the real world - but while Penny Arcade
understands that the crux of a joke should be
reserved for the final panel, Ctrl-Alt-Del is
apparently so excited about the idea that it
blurts it out right away, leaving three more
panels to flounder in excessive dialogue and
pointlessness.
A
punchline should be equated to an actual punch in
the face. That's why it's called a punch-line.
You deliver it and run. You do not hang
around explaining how you did the punch and that
the recipient should probably be in a lot of pain
now.
Identify the
funny part of the idea and save it for last.
Leave with the audience laughing. If you
do nothing else, finish strong. That's a
rule any humourist will agree with. But with the
centrepoint of the gag already uselessly spent,
Buckley's comic is forced to fall upon its old
standby of violence as a sort of prosthetic
punchline. Now, violence can certainly be funny,
modern cinema was virtually built on the
tradition of slapstick, but it doesn't work in
static, non-animated media. There is humour to be
found in shock value, but most people have been
on the internet long enough to not be shocked by
anything as mundane as a claymore through the
sweetbreads.
But even if the
joke were structured properly, there is
still far too much dialogue. This is a
problem common to a lot of webcomics, but since
we're already in the CAD-bashing groove we'll
stick with it. Shakespeare wrote that 'brevity is
the soul of wit'. He did not then add 'unless
you're writing a webcomic'. It applies to
everything, and don't tell me you're arrogant
enough to claim to know better than Shakespeare.
A gag strip has
a very simple formula. Buildup. Buildup. Buildup.
Punchline. Anything that does not in some
way build towards the punchline can safely be
removed. If any dialogue can conceivably
be replaced with a gesture or facial expression
(visit Perry Bible Fellowship for a crash course in
this), do so; this is a comic, a predominantly
visual medium, not a fucking essay. Additionally,
any dialogue pertaining to either ninjas,
pirates, monkeys or Jesus should be excised,
sealed in resin and buried in an undersea
volcano.
This is why
Ctrl-Alt-Del is a blight, and the fact that it
remains crushingly popular despite making
mistakes that a child would be brutally caned for
on their first day at comedy school is one of the
main reasons I openly weep tears for the future
of human culture.
I know that an
opinion can't technically be wrong and that there
could be people who still like CAD for the
characters or the art, but if you genuinely think
that it is well-written, then you are
demonstrably wrong. That's all there is to it.
Yahtzee is
well aware that his own previous webcomic efforts
aren't necessarily any better but reminds you
that they came out of a dark time in his life
from which he has determinedly moved on without a
backward glance
- Yahtzee
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14/3/08:
Driving Me Mad
Zero Punctuation
this week is Burnout Paradise, as you probably already
know. Yes, driving games aren't the most widely
played of genres but I'm making a conscious
effort to do things other than first person
shooters all the time.
Oh yes, and
those guys at the 'other' Escapist video series,
De-Rez, have made a quaint little video in which I fall victim
of parody. Ha, ha, ha, those crazy guys. I take
their jabs with good humour and sincerely hope
they don't inhale any Drano anytime soon.
In all
seriousness you should check out De-Rez's videos, they're pretty funny
when they're not desperately beating jokes into
the ground like they're trying to drill for oil
OH SNAP YOU JUST GOT SCHOOLED MOTHERFUCKERS
No, really,
those guys are cool.
- Yahtzee
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8/3/08:
Shock Horror
Sing choirs of
angels and take a quick look outside to make sure
the apocalypse isn't taking place because I've
actually written something for the website for
once. I'd been neglecting my fiction ability, you
see, so I've been trying to write more of it.
Specifically I've been trying to do short stories
about my established characters that I'm into.
Here's what I
hope will be the first of several short stories
from my fictional universe, this one featuring
the nice comfortable territory of Trilby. It's
called Trilby And The Ghost, and if you haven't
already clicked on the funny blue words to go to
it then here's a free sample:
I spun
around. The ghost was quite freshly-killed,
judging by the way he was still holding onto his
residual self-image. The blurry grey outline of a
short, dumpy young man hung sulkily in the corner
of the room. Despite myself, I was impressed. It
took a ghost with astonishing levels of control
to manifest so clearly, and to be actually heard
speaking in a clear, articulate voice… I
realised with weary certainty that the Ministry
were going to want this encounter documented.
It's set at a
point either just before or after Trilby's Notes, when Trilby is working
as an agent for the Special Talent Project, more
often that not as a freelance paranormal
investigator for the Ministry of Occultism. Here's that link again in case you're
dangerously stupid.
- Yahtzee
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7/3/08:
Debble Meh Cruhh
Okay, so I
forgot to update the site about it, it's not like
anyone still reads this shit. Devil May Cry 4 was this week's review.
Also, someone
added an Italian translation to the 5 Days foreign language
version. It may have been me.
- Yahtzee
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28/2/08:
Hats Off
Uncharted: Drake's
Fortune
this week, complete with surprise guest
appearance of myself. Many people seem to have
bemoaned that I wasn't wearing my hat. Well, it
was like this: I could either wear my hat or my
headset, and my hat lacks the ability to record
sound.
I have a touch
of the flu this week, not that it'll stop you
from expecting free quality entertainment from me
all the time anyway, you bloody vultures.
- Yahtzee
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24/2/08:
Back in Black
That's right,
spunk guzzlers, I'm back from GDC having shook my
hand raw and have finally plowed through the big
piles of email I specifically told you not to
send me. Incidentally I deleted without reading
all the ones that complained about the censor
beeping in my GDC shorts. No, the reviews aren't
going to be regularly bleeped now, shut up. They
were put in there at the request of the GDC
people and I deliberately made it clear what the
word being bleeped out was. Personally I feel a
censor bleep can have greater comedy value than a
swear word on it's own so I was all for it.
How the hell did
they make the videos 'unwatchable', as one viewer
put it? Do you have some kind of chip in your
brain that deactivates all your senses whenever
you hear a high-frequency noise? Christ, you
people are freaks.
Anyway, I was
interviewed on G4 but the clip doesn't seem to be
online yet, so I'll post it here when it is.
- Yahtzee
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19/2/08:
Gee Dee See
I'm toddling off
to San Francisco for GDC tomorrow, so that means
you shouldn't email me until around Monday, so I
don't have to wade through a fucking wall of
correspondence when I get back. Actually, why not
leave it for a couple of weeks? That suits me
better. On second thoughts, just hang the whole
idea. I thought about taking my laptop but I was
afraid US customs might shove it up my arse.
For this reason
there's no review this week, but if you'll let me
finish my sentence before you start throwing
things, the Escapist will be releasing the shorts
I made for the GDC award ceremony at around
midnight on Wednesday, in place of a review.
Perhaps they will keep you mollified.
If you're
attending GDC, feel free to say hi and force me
to pretend I appreciate your company. If you're
not attending GDC but have access to G4, watch
out for me, because apparently they will be
putting me on the goggle box during their GDC
coverage to stammer out some answers to some
questions. If you're not attending GDC and you
don't have access to G4, you can, I dunno, go
shove a laptop up your arse or something.
- Yahtzee
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14/2/08:
Sim Shitty
The astute among
you will no doubt have already noticed that this
week's review is up, Sim City Societies to be precise.
The even more
astute among you, emboldened by your previous
victory, may have also noticed that previews of
ZP are now being shown on G4, the cable
television network. This is the latest step in my
increasingly alarming rise to fame. Yes, I have
been harvested by mainstream media for whatever
time remains for television to still be called
'mainstream' before the internet destroys it once
and for all.
I just want to
address a concern I've noticed some people
having. G4, extremely nice people as they may be,
are only showing short previews of the vids. They
don't have any editorial control over the actual
videos. They can bleep out swears in their
preview if they want but the Escapist edition
will remain 100% unobliterated by the smushing
finger of editors. If you can't get G4 wherever
you are then this information probably won't
affect you in the slightest. Not even sure why I
brought it up.
- Yahtzee
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7/2/08:
Call of Duty Cor
Yes, it's Call of Duty 4 this week. Check it out
then come back so I can yell at you.
Did you see that
last screen at the end which was fairly typical
for the last screen of these reviews because it
goes 'Ask me about...' such and such before
giving the email address? You do understand that
I only put those things there for comic effect,
right? Do you honestly think I genuinely want you
to actually ask me about whatever it is?
Because I don't.
I'm abandoning rhetoric at this point so I can
crowbar this into your thick skulls without
confusing you with complex literary devices. I.
Do. Not. Do not send me an actual genuine email
asking me why I release my email if it only
brings me suffering or how long it's been since
I've known the touch of a woman, because (a)
doing so isn't part of the joke and just
uselessly overworks it, (b) it's even money that
a hundred thousand other wags will have beaten
you to telling me this incredibly funny joke
which (c) I already know because I MADE IT UP.
So this is for
every one of the dipshits who, blind to irony,
flooded my email with the question from the end
of the CoD4 review repeated verbatim out of some
retarded sheep-brain instruction-following
mentality. I hate every single one of you. This
is not your yeah-ha-ha-casual I hate you, you
genuinely fill me with a level of contempt and
disgust that genuinely aches my abdomen.
Just clearing
that up.
- Yahtzee
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1/2/08:
Painfiller
OK, I guess some
of you liked it. Please stop emailing me now.
Umbrella Chronicles. Go.
- Yahtzee
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24/1/08:
Bitcher
I have a new
video out, like that even needs saying anymore. The Witcher this time. Also there's
a little self-indulgency in there because I've
been doing reviews for months and need to do
something new to keep my interest in the world
alive.
I like playing
Team Fortress 2. It's fun. And if you hang around
a server that gets a decent low ping in eastern
Australia, there's a chance I may some day join a
server that you are on. Should that happen,
remember to follow these guidelines:
- Always
interrogate me the moment I have one foot in the
door as to whether I'm 'the real Yahtzee' or not.
Insist I go on voice chat to prove my identity
while the enemy busily penetrate our defenses.
This will swiftly endear you to me.
- Once my
identity is confirmed to your satisfaction, or
not, spend the entire game quoting myself at me
in all caps in both text and voice chat. It's
very gratifying to be reminded that my reviews
are very popular and that some of my lines have
entered meme territory, and being constantly
reminded of this will help my confidence and
improve our chances of winning.
- Don't be
fooled by my stony silence up to this point -
secretly, I'm probably on the verge of inviting
you to my next birthday party. Ensure that this
happens by adding me to your friends list and
trying to open Steam chat with me while I'm in
the middle of something important. Obviously
since I have total misanthropic hatred for 99% of
my fellow man, it's important that I communicate
with as many of them as possible to remind myself
of why.
- Relish
verbally every single time you kill me, because
obviously being a gaming industry professional I
am some kind of higher order of being, and
besting me in a game of skill is a sure sign that
you have a valid claim to all the thrones of
Europe.
- Remember to
get catty when I unexpectedly log off. I'm
probably just overwhelmed to the point of tears
by the wonderful friends I have made.
- Yahtzee
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17/1/08:
Piesis
Crysis is up this week for a
rollicking by popular demand. Its positivity may
surprise you.
Just to clarify
my position, I did like the game, even if the AI
was dodgy and the controls had some issues and
the ending was a bigger cocktease than a cheeky
hen, but I believe that Crysis was good for what
it was, that being a tech demo. It was certainly
amazingly good-looking to the point that even a
cynic such as myself had to be gobsmacked in the
face of some of the visuals. And that's really
all you can ask of a tech demo.
Anyway, I stand
by the position I made in the Guitar Hero III
review; people like this kid are fucking FREAKS and
must be shunned.
- Yahtzee
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10/1/08:
Violent Bill
Silent Hill: Origins is my target for
Flash-enabled grievous bodily harm this week,
hopefully a wee bit faster and less
drunk-sounding than last week. Long time readers
should know, of course, that I love Silent Hill. That's why Origins
makes me so mad.
- Yahtzee
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3/1/08:
Super Mario Jalopy
I trust we all
had a passable Christmas and New Year's. I'm sure
everyone who tuned into the Escapist last
Wednesday will be pleased to see that Zero
Punctuation is back this week, taking on Mario Galaxy. You'll have to excuse
me if I seem a bit slower this week; my roommate
was sleeping in the next room while I was
recording and I was paranoid that I might wake
him up.
But while we're
on the subject of Mario, I'd like to share
something that a number of correspondents have
drawn to my attention. If you look at the game
title on the box art of Super Mario Galaxy,
you'll notice that some of the letters have
little orange sparkles on them:
See them? You'll
notice there's one under the U and the R in the
word 'SUPER'. And if you continue looking at
which letters possess this mark, you'll also
notice that when put together they create the
God-forbid-I-call-it-a-phrase 'UR MR GAY', which
can of course be interpreted as You Are Mister
Gay.
It seems like I
should be grown up about this and talk it down as
a probable coincidence, since the designer of the
logo was more than likely Japanese. But on the
other hand, there's no real explanation for the
stars being positioned like that except to
covertly highlight the letters. I really don't
know what to make of it. Huh. Doubtless now that
it's on the internet the box will be re-released
in a matter of nanoseconds, so check it out on
your local copy of the game before Nintendo calls
in the stormtroopers.
- Yahtzee
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