The Escapist

Yahtzee is a British-born, currently Australian-based writer and gamer with a sweet hat and a chip on his shoulder. When he isn’t talking very fast into a headset mic he also designs freeware adventure games and writes the back page column for PC Gamer, who are too important to mention us. His personal site is www.fullyramblomatic.com.

Yahtzee is a British-born, currently Australian-based writer and gamer with a sweet hat and a chip on his shoulder. When he isn’t talking very fast into a headset mic he also designs freeware adventure games and writes the back page column for PC Gamer, who are too important to mention us. His personal site is www.fullyramblomatic.com

The game was surprisingly short but I guess you could say it was expected as I thought it was going to end a lot sooner than it did.

The main highlight of the game for me was not the actual gameplay itself but GLADDoS. The hilarious comments throughout the game made Portal something special that seperated it from all other games. Every gamer who has played Portal will be walking around saying “The cake is a lie…..” while hugging their companion cube.

For those that haven’t played Portal yet, play it, if you haven’t bought it yet, buy it.

The whole Orange Box itself is worth the price. The box includes:

• Half Life 2
• Half Life 2: Episode 1
• Half Life 2: Episode 2
• Portal
• Team Fortress 2

If that isn’t a good package I don’t know what is.

Here is a review from Yahtzee:

The Escapist

It would seem as though certain companies are either trying to improve their new games to remove as many bugs as possible by doing a public beta or saving money by skipping private beta testing.

Who has been the biggest winner?

Probably FilePlanet. They were offering beta keys to subscribers for Crysis. If you don’t know what Crysis is you have probably been living under a rock on the Isle of Man for the past 2 years or so. The beta keys were only available to FilePlanet subscribers which meant you had to pay a subscription fee. A lot of people signed up to FilePlanet purely to get their hands on the beta of Crysis. Crysis has been so overhyped gamers are willing to pay for a beta release of a game. I am sure these will be the same people that complain in a months time that the game costs too much.

Is it so hard to wait 2 months for the whole game to come out? Or even 1 month for the demo which is out on the 26th October, 2 days from now. The demo was supposed to be out last month but was held back a month, I assume this was because EA can pile more shit, I mean a working beta of the game on to users machines while getting a tidy sum from FilePlanet I am sure.

There was also a mysterious release of Unreal Tournament 3 (UT3). With all due respect you either release a beta or a demo. What the fuck is a beta demo supposed to be? Is it a demo that isn’t quite ready to be released? Or is beta supposed to make it seem more exclusive, although under the name it is just a demo. Eitherway UT3 was extremely impressive, it held on to Unreal Tournament 2004 perfectly and has increased the graphics alot.

For those that don’t know; UT3 was released with medium quality textures. Texture levels 3,4 and 5 are all the same. I found it oddly amusing that gamers were ecstatic about playing this new super game on max settings as smooth as medium settings.

The third game that I have seen released lately in a public beta was BlackSite: Area 51. This game hasn’t had as much press, mainly because of Halo 3, Orange Box, Crysis and Unreal Tournament 3 and the fact that after playing it for around 20 mins found out it is just another bog standard first person shooter. Unfortunately I have only had the mispleasure of playing the game on the Xbox 360 as I am sure it will get more advertising through the console market than the PC market.

Every Wednesday a new game review is put on to the Escapist Magazine website.

This week Yahtzee is reviewing Super Paper Mario for the Nintendo Wii.

The Escapist

What the fuck is the point of banning it? All they have done is give the game more of a public highlight than it would of without.

The adult rating is a joke. I believe they said kids should not be playing this game. Well it is adult rated so they can’t play it unless someone such as their parents buy it for them. If the parents buy and adult only gave for someone under the age of 18 then that kid is probably already fucked in the head after watching many gorey films and their dads Jenna Jameson porn videos.

Video games do not make killers. The release of Manhunt 2 will not make people run around with tweezers trying to rip each others bollocks off because they did it in Manhunt 2. If anything banning the game is going to cause more violence. I am sure the majority of the gaming community and Manhunt fans now want to get some tweezers and rip off Jack Thompsons nuts, but it isn’t going to happen because gamers have a brain.

Why not ban the SIMS? People get addicted to it and don’t go outside, but rather make a character of themselves in the game go outside and play on the computer. How fucking sad and pathetic is that? Is that worse than Manhunt 2? Yes.

At least if you played Manhunt 2 and went out to kill someone you would get some exercise. Perhaps if the game is too gorey we better get people to stop watching the news and seeing the fucked up stories about paedofiles and rapists or even WW2 documentaries. Manhunt 2 is an unrealistic game made for fun. If you come home from work after a stressful day you will want to pretend the AI in the game are your colleges that have pissed you off all day, but you won’t go in to work the next day and kill them all like you would in the game. If you do go in to work and kill them all it will not be because you played the game, it will be because you are fucked in the head.

Violent games and films are just scapegoats for parents who don’t know how to be a parent. Go and fuck yourselves in the arse for raising a shitty little child and not games for supposingly making your child a killer.