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 long awaited demo for Crysis was set to be released today with no information saying otherwise.

Many are aware that the demo was due out on the 26th September but was held back a month, with no reason given.  There were beta releases through EA and FilePlanet during that time, so they were either trying to get the game up to demo standard as they were still running behind or they wanted to squeeze money out of gamers by using hype to get them to sign up to FilePlanet.

But that was a month ago.  EA announced that gamers would see the Crysis demo on the 26th October.  It turns out that this was purely for those that pre-ordered the game through the EA Store.  If you bought the game through the EA Store you get to play the demo 24 hours before everyone else.  The price in the EA Store in the UK is £34.99.

This seems a bit pricey given the fact that most PC games retail for £34.99 in the high street. So I can only assume, the people that pre-ordered are paying for the demo and a small amount for the unlocked vehicle in the multiplayer. Does this mean that only people that pre-order the game through EA can go on servers that have a map with this vehicle on?  Who knows….

As for the price of the game, it can be bought cheaper from elsewhere:

I am not sure how CDWoW are able to offer it so cheap, but after previous experience with their shipping, I would rather pay a little more elsewhere at Play or DVD.co.uk.

The demo should be released worldwide and appear on good old GamersHell at some point mid-afternoon Saturday, although I wouldn’t hold your breathe.

The full game is slated for release on the 14th November but that will not be definite until the demo feedback has come back clear.

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.

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.