Rage Gives Me Rage

Way to alienate your entire fanbase, John Carmack:

Game is being developed with controller first in mind (X360 pad on PC version demo'ed) because Carmack says, "...the largest chunk of our market's going to be on the consoles."

Gee, thanks id Software!

Furthermore, reading all the information on that website, one thought came to mind (apart from things to do with every single copy of Wolfenstein and Carmack's arse):

"Isn't that Fallout?"

- Chris C

I'msorrywhut?

So here I am, having vanished yet again (due in no small part to University cock-ups and my subsequent need to hide in a small hole and play games until 5am). I survived not only another week being molested by Dave and Steve at PCZ, but also the worryingly obsessive 105 hours spent in Fallout 3 (more on that story later).

In the meantime, I just thought I'd have a good short bitch about something.

Bioshock team's next project more "ambitious" - Kotaku


Uhuh. "More ambitious" than anything they've ever done? "Substantially more ambitious than Bioshock"?

What, you mean like...System Shock 2?


- Brax

We don't care about the young folks

Now this caught me by surprise. I'd been looking forward to Call of Juarez: Bound In Blood for a while and I've nearly finished it. In fact I'm fairly certain I'm on the last level,
ominously set in the same fort I bitched about recently. I was also really enjoying Fallout 3, which is still very new. Plants Vs Zombies also took up a bit of my free time too.

And then, out of nowhere, I got hit with a retro vibe. Instead of finishing Call of Juarez, I've returned to Return To Castle Wolfenstein. Instead of killing Super Mutants with my dog friend in Fallout 3, I've got back into the Clone Wars in Republic Commando. Instead of killing Michael Jackson as a zombie (ahem) I've insulted pirates and enslaved monkeys in Secret of Monkey Island.

Of course I'm blaming LucasArts for most of this. Releasing a load of their old classic games of Steam along with a really cheap Special Edition of one of the greatest and funniest games ever made? Sold. Wolfenstein's Activision's fault though, delaying the game for two weeks and reminding me how much I preferred RTCW to Medal of Honour.

Now with Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 up to fifty-fucking-five pounds I'm actually looking forward to Raven's attempt.

Although I'm sure I'll get halfway through it and start playing Blood instead.

Coincidence?

Turns out I'm actually a German writer, journalist, actor and model. Won a few awards too. Who knew?

Wait a minute, that's the life I want! DAMN YOU PHILIPP TINGLER!

Smug git.

- Chris 'Not P. Tingler' Capel

Dragon Age, by... who, again?

Here's an interview with Bioware's Ray Muzyka about Dragon Age: Origins.

Here's what I was thinking while watching it:

The Witcher, The Witcher, The Witcher, yeah right, you said that about Mass Effect, The Witcher, The Witcher, we getting a story or something? It looks like a MMO! A book, like The Witcher, backstabbing Bioware saying its just as good on consoles when you just said PCs were the only platform getting the quest editor, The Witcher, is that a console screen in the background? The Witcher... ooh, October 23rd? Cool!

- Chris Capel

Merge For The Kill!

Developers, merge and form Devastator!

Sorry for the crappy Transformers reference, I'm just trying to put a lighter spin on June Merge Week as it's beginning to be known.

First Bethesda purchases id Software yesterday, today EA staples together Mythic and Bioware. Tomorrow Valve is becoming 2K Steam.

So what does this mean for us? That some great developers aren't as independant or free from publisher messing around as we'd hoped? I think that should be obvious now. Ensemble Studios never made a bad game that wasn't successful, and Microsoft destroyed them. Irrational Games sold their souls to 2K to make Bioshock a success, the game paid for it, and they're not even allowed to touch the sequel. Westwood and Bullfrog got devoured whole by EA, and all they'd done was make great genre-defining games. Lionhead have lost Peter Molyneux and must surely be on their way out. Rare is now making casual games and 360 avatar clothing.

I'm more interested in what will happen with the games. I doubt Bioware will change much, but poor Mythic feel like they've just been trodden on. I'd hoped EA were past this stage. Bioware have already made their mistakes.

It's the id Software buyout that has me raising my eyebrows. They've been with Activision for years, and it's obvious they don't like what that publisher's become now. Even Rage is still down for being EA published instead. I'll give John Carmack some due for being honest, but mostly to this quote:

"We're not going to change the kinds of games we make…. It allows us to accelerate the growth of our internal studios, so we can focus on making all of our internal games as opposed to working with external partners where there has been a step down in quality..."

Heh. Not liking the look of Wolfenstein either, John? Still, about damn time. Doom 3 came out five years ago, and all we've had since then are ports. Rage isn't due out until next year, and it's looking... unexciting so far. Maybe if id stop worrying about making a new engine from scratch for every game and hoping to rely on licensing to keep them going (which backfired with the D3 engine), and instead work on making games, maybe they wouldn't be selling out. And hopefully now they'll stop getting Raven to make their games...

Oh, and 2K Boston's days are numbered. You know I'm right.

Oh the Payne, the Payne of it all!

Why are they even bothering? I think Rockstar are a little too up their own arse with their dark, gritty stories.

You know, I'm actually looking back at the Max Payne movie with something approaching respect at this point. Even Mark Wahlberg, the unexplained weird Valkyr angels, and the dull non-ending (all they had to do was copy the game's, and they fucked it up! There was even a helicopter circling the building, but did Max blow it up? NO!).

None of these compare to... whatever this is.

Now, I'm going to have a go on Stranglehold.

- Chris C

Remove head from onus kthx

Tomorrow I'm off to London, and on Monday I shall be returning to Team PCZ to ooze sexuality at them and smother them in Braxline goodness. Come on Dave, you know you want it.

Anyway, this week in a new series I'd like to call Americans Trying Too Hard, "Tycho" from Penny Arcade once again rapes the English language -

"...I can't actually enunciate a clear onus that would culminate in your purchase..."

Mate, seriously, you can't expect to "enunciate" anything clearly with your head so firmly entrenched between your own buttocks. In all honesty, I don't think I've ever read beyond the first paragraph of a Penny Arcade article without feeling my brain start to trickle from my ears and nose.

SPEAK ENGRISH.

Don't get me wrong; I love Americans. They're awesome. But my GOD, when they start to think that their grasp on the English language is anything other than tenuous...the pain of it. It's like when a friend gets all intellectual down the pub, finds a fancy word like...like "dichotomy", and tries to crowbar it into every sentence. It's the very zenith of facepalmery.

Urgh, now I'm doing it. Who the fuck says "zenith"?


You know, I think there was a character in Unreal Tournament called "Zenith". Can you imagine what a twat he'd be in conversation?

"My name is Zenith. Because I am."
"You am what?"
"The Zenith."
"Is your head pointy or something?"


- Brax

Call of Wrrarrrezzz

In preparation for the very good looking sequel out in a couple of weeks, I decided to try out the original Call of Juarez. Basically the only Western game I've ever played was the classic LucasArts FPS Outlaws, which I enjoyed immensely, so was hoping for a worthy successor. It didn't disappoint. Oh sure, it had it's problems, but it had a great story, an interesting two alternating players mechanic with each character (Ray and Billy) having different skills, some great setpieces, and a fantastic character in Reverend Ray, whose backstory will be told in the sequel/prequel Bound In Blood.

I was hoping the big problems would begin and end with Billy's "spiritual journey" Episode. A gigantic open area you can traverse on horse-back, with mountains, fields, rivers... and no enemies. Techland created this hugely impressive level to go rabbit hunting. That's it. After that you have to climb a mountain, but the massive open area plays no part in that.



Oh, and the mountain, the mountain. This now infamous section involves literally climbing a mountain, which takes ages, all in the name of getting a feather. But it's not just a linear climb, oh no, it's a goddamned maze. And just to further add irritation to this already very irritating cake, there's a eagle that you can't kill that does a very good job of knocking you off the cliff.

I hate you.

In the end though, if you manage to work out that you were actually at the top (I didn't as the eagle kept killing me within moments), grabbed the feather (didn't notice it at first for the aforementioned reason, and even then grabbing a tiny feather while being raped by a homicidal eagle is quite tricky) and made it down the mountain without dying (several quicksaves later), you find it was all for nothing but at least you can get back to shooting things again. Phew.

But unfortunately it wasn't to be the end of my troubles.

The final section of the game is filled with plotholes, conveniences, questionable gameplay choices, stupidity, and the breaking of most of the rules Techland had spent hours carefully cultivating. I don't want to list all the problems... oh, hell, yes I do!

(Some spoilers here, so if you haven't played it and are going to, don't read!)

1. The baffling removal of Ray's patented 'concentration' mode for all of two moments in the game, with no explanation given.
2. Respawning enemies for the first time, en masse. This also makes no sense as they don't have anywhere to come in from.
3. Billy being asked to put his guns down, then having to do a fistfight because his guns have apparently vanished.
4. Main villain Juarez coming back to life all of three times, and both Ray and Billy being surprised each time he does.
5. And on the third time, Billy keeps his back to Juarez for ages, allowing him to get to his feet and pull out a Crocodile Dundee-size knife from nowhere.
6. And if he had a knife all the time, why didn't he use it in the fucking fistfight?
7. How the hell did Juarez and his entire gang manage to follow Billy through some of the most irritating Tomb Raider traps ever without making a noise, and finally make it there before him?
8. How did Ray know where to go? We didn't get to play that part.
9. Some bosses who inexplicably have a health bar, including one who just runs around in circles making you chase him... and he warps, too.
10. The final moment is just a joke. After Juarez pulls that knife, without any warning you get control and have to shoot him. The first time I didn't realise what was happened and Billy died, long unskippable cutscene, the second time I tried to take out my gun and found out it was a Quick Draw moment even though this the first time the game hasn't slapped me in the face to tell me so, Billy dies again, long cutscene again, third time I do it straight away. The drama's long gone by now though.

Up until this point I was utterly loving this game. By the time this ridiculous scenario was over (and I've by no means mentioned everything that ticked me off, this is just off the top of my head) I was glad to see the back of Call of Juarez.

Nevertheless, I'm still eagerly awaiting the sequel. If there's an eagle however I may just snap the game's disc in half and have done with it.

- Chris C

OMG PIE-RASEEE!!

"Sure it glows, but can it run Crysis?"

Crysis 2 to hit consoles. With a big stick. Of performance issues. And odd creative decisions.

Here's a thought Crytek; if you're so desperate for money, how about you try releasing a game that actually RUNS ON OUR FUCKING PC'S.

Alternatively, live in a country that doesn't seem to hate you.


- Brax

Monkey Island 5 and 1 Special Edition Out Soon, Life Officially Good

Considering we're named after it I think we're officially obliged to talk about the Monkey Island games here, but as much as we love the games we never thought in a million years would LucasArts:-

a) give the licence to ex-LucasArts adventure game and Sam & Max developer Telltale to make an episodic Monkey Island 5
b) re-release a Special Edition of The Secret of Monkey Island with full voice acting, new improved graphics, and an orchestral soundtrack
c) have Monkey Island as their only internally developed game
d) have Monkey Island as the main game on their website
e) produce an adventure game again after cancelling both Full Throttle: Hell On Wheels and Sam & Max: Freelance Police six years ago and going down the Dark Side of almost pure Star Wars development.



Yesterday they did all of these things.




I heard all the rumours, but I dismissed them as pointless wish-fulfilment. Then they all turned out to be true, and I spontaneously combusted. All I can say is it's lucky I had to change my trousers anyway.


Dominic Armato's still Guybrush! Michael Land's doing the music (his first composing job since helping out with EFMI)! While the consoles get screwed over in some fashion (Wii gets new, 360 gets old, Sony gets nothing) the PC gets everything! And it starts NEXT MONTH!


Gentlemen, start your quotations!

Consoles invented AI

Are Our Games Alive? - Kotaku

"...More than the graphics or surround sound, the latest game consoles' processing power are bringing to life AI-controlled characters unlike anything experienced before..."

All I can say is,

Fail face.

-_-


- Brax

Chocolate breasts and Dragunovs

So long story short there I was, walking the Las Vegas Strip at midday, sweating in strange new places and in quantities I didn't think were possible, drinking some peculiar blue drink calling itself a "Hurricane" from a long plastic tube, and wearing sunglasses to hide the fact that I was a deformed freak thanks to a nasty case of conjunctivitis.

I drank vast quantities of alcohol to distract me from the fact that there really isn't much to do in Las Vegas except gamble and vomit, I took antibiotic eye-drops to keep myself from going blind, cough sweets to hold back the feeling that I had swallowed razorblades, and received oral sex from my ex in the changing rooms of a multitude of expensive clothing stores that all looked alike (each featuring a clone of the original effeminate trendy-hair-plastic-grin gay shop assistant) as she dragged both me and my roommate through them all without mercy.

Far Cry 2 felt a bit like that.

Yes, it would have been nice if I hadn't had conjunctivitis. Sure, it would have been great if I had slept the night before, or my ex hadn't insisted on assaulting my wardrobe with such zeal, or I hadn't been mentally undressed by quite so many men in one day...
...but all that being said, I achieved an impressive level of intoxication, I saw the sights, my roommate acquired a vast collection of "hooker cards", and by the time we left I felt utterly destroyed in that wonderful "oh my god yes" post-orgasm-panting sense.

And then there were the little moments of magic; the little understated moments that gave the whole thing an added layer of depth. Like driving through the desert at dawn, mountains silhouetted ominously before the rising sun, evaporite basins there in the distance like ghostly lakes. And the time a waiter flirted with my ex, unaware that I was the one paying. HOW YOU LIKE ONE DOLLAR TIP BITCH!?



So yeah, Far Cry 2 was awesome. Fuck all you people with your “I got bord all u do is shot peepol crisis wos bettar”. Crysis can fuck right off; Far Cry 2 looked like breasts smothered in chocolate and yet was just as smooth and occasionally sticky (don't ask).
Oh, and I hereby present a new award to Far Cry 2:

The Brax Award for the Gratuitous Slaughter of Main Characters

Never before Have I been allowed to kill quite so many of the annoying fucks that give you missions in games.
As for the endings; the entire internet seems to think that they were shit, but you know what? Fuck that too. It was a fantastic ending, presuming you weren't a complete pussy and went with the car battery.

So now I'm playing The Witcher. Just thought I'd put that in bold, since everyone has been pestering me to play it for ages.

I have to ask: Why the hell does Geralt have to keep, like, talking? Shut the fuck up Geralt you albino twat and draw your fucking sword. I swear, every time I see a group of bandits just waiting to be slaughtered by the power of my left mouse button, he starts talking to them, brimming with his "I'm not sure if I'm Jack Bauer or Max Payne" grumbling badassery.

And then when he's done talking? HE STANDS THERE LIKE A COMPLETE FUCKING CRETIN, no sword drawn, taking damage while I hammer the "draw your sword you tit" button. The sword he sheathed so that he could tell them he was going to kill them.



GARAWRAWRRARARARWRAWRAARRGH!!!

It's a hot day.

- Brax

Finding £5 in an Old Pair of Trousers

The title refers to that lovely feeling when we're digging through some old junk we haven't looked at in ages, and finding some real gems we had no idea we had.

Like just now I was digging through my very very old games pile, and discovered this lot:

1. A Star Trek game compilation, comprising Starfleet Academy, Generations, 25th Anniversary, A Final Unity and Deep Space Nine: The Fallen. The last three I was thinking of tracking down as they're supposed to be really good, but it turns out I had them all along!
2. A special Eidos demos CD, with demos of Deus Ex, Anachronox, Thief II, Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation, Urban Chaos, and most prominently... Daikatana. And more! Man that was a good time for Eidos. Mostly.
3. Duke Caribbean - Life's A Beach, Duke Nuclear Winter, and Duke!Zone expansion packs for Duke Nukem 3D. And they work with Good Old Games' version of Duke! Woo!
4. Redneck Rampage Rides Again. I knew I had the original, but the expansion?! No way!
5. Realms of the Haunting. The precursor to Clive Barker's Undying. When did I buy that? And why haven't I played it to death?!
6. Star Wars - Episode I Insider's Guide. Um, okay, I do remember buying that one. Whoops.

- Chris Capel

Post-University Whoring

The degree’s in the bag and there’s little being released this summer, so it’s back to old games I missed first time around.

Brax and I have been playing through the Call of Duty: World at War single player (and the odd round of nazi-zombies) cooperatively. I’m enjoying it – far more than I originally thought I would. Then again, Infinity Ward basically coded the core concept, and TreFail just reskinned it. Thanks go to Steam for offering this at £14.99 (which is actually a reasonable price).

Neverwinter Nights 2 has actually held my attention second time around. I originally played it on release, but found it ridiculously buggy and system intensive, despite the sub-par engine. I’m on the final battle for the keep and might progress onto the expansions if I can pick them up cheap. If not, the community is still thriving and there are plenty of awesome single player mods out there that could capture my attention.

That’s if I don’t lose any remaining free time to Titan Quest: Immortal Throne. Diablo, but in Greece, Egypt, China and Hades. How I missed this first time around I don’t know. Ludicrously addictive and polished, if you enjoy loot, it’s awesome. It’s a shame Iron Lore went out of business.

Freelancer played online with friends is also pretty cool. It’s like a lite-EVE, something I’d probably find myself addicted to if I had the time. Freelancer is what X3 should have done to my spare time. Easy to get into and masses to explore, it’s a blast – apart from trade lane disruptions and Brax’s irritating habit of cutting cruise engines and shooting me when I’m in formation.

Snoozer out.

Spot The Cliché

I've discovered a fun new game. It's called "Spot The Cliché". Basically you watch this trailer for GI Joe and see how many clichés, stereotypes, rip-offs, or things done before and better in other movies you can see. "Here they come!" "It's only just begun..." "We're running out of time!" etc.



I want to make it clear that under no circumstances should you see the movie afterwards. They're never as good as the trailer.

Additionally, doesn't it seem like a live-action version of Team America? Except shit?

- Chris Capel

Correction

I'd just like to say that no, I'm not Paul Presley in disguise. I have beaten him on Football Manager Live a few times, but he supports Arsenal and I completely do not. That is all.

Prezhead.

Well, I'm back!

Bet you didn't even know I was gone, did you? Actually no, you probably did, because no bugger wrote here while I was away (glares at blogmates).

So where was I? As Dave can attest (and Brax too actually, since he was spying on us), I've been living the high life down at Zone Towers in sunny Marylebone.

I won't get into too much detail, but highlights included playing Left 4 Dead "to get screenshots", an okay pub breakfast for £2.99, Dave and mine's comical attempts to play DeathTrack (which was on course for a 0% since it was actually impossible to play it with a keyboard), me getting in 45 minutes early on the first day because I didn't realise they started at 9.30, spending an entire 30 seconds on Dave's computer before managing to spill orange juice all over his desk, Steve making the Dead Space developers cry, Plants Vs Zombies addiction spreading to me after I spent just 5 minutes on it getting some pictures, The Path proving to actually being quite good, Damnation proving to be actually quite shit, Perimeter 2 becoming my new worst game of all time (HOW THE FUCK WAS I SUPPOSED TO DEFEND AGAINST THAT WITHIN 10 SECONDS OF STARTING?!), Brax freaking me out by knowing what I was wearing, CVG playing Mario Kart hourly and only stopping to glare daggers at me for asking whether they played Smash Bros at all, another Telltale game to add to my PCZone reviewing list, being repeatedly stabbed in the back by Omar during Fight Club Team Fortress 2, a surprisingly good Greek pizza, and just generally having a good time.

Oh, and it turns out David Brown is actually just Paul Presley in disguise.

- Chris Capel

And so much for June too.

A couple of posts ago I was disillusioned with the quality of May's games, while at the same time looking forward to June. Well, thanks to last-minute sneaky business tactics, those games might be no longer optional. These two games I'm about to talk about I was really excited about, as you can see if you go all the way back to my Most Wanted List. The first is Ghostbusters: The Videogame and the second is Batman: Arkham Asylum.

(This is all your fault)

This first one wasn't the first to slip but it has me the more annoyed, as the game was already done and will be released in June in the US. It's Ghostbusters, which is one of my favourite films.

Despite the film being a Sony property, Sony didn't give a shit about the game back in 2008 when Activision dropped it. It didn't give a shit when Atari picked it up and carried it on for every format except the Sony PSP. Spider-Man is a far more lucrative license that's even more closely connected to Sony (the PS3 logo is in Spider-Man's font, for example) and yet all the games based on it have always been multi-format. Sony just didn't care.

Suddenly, a month before release and just after ex-Sony head Phil Harrison arrived at Atari, they suddenly give a shit about a game based on a 25-year-old film. Ghostbusters is now PS3 and PS2 exclusive until later in the year. The PSP version comes later. And only in European territories.

I mean, huh? There are so many things here that don't make sense. Why wait until a month before release? Why only push for the PSP version now when it's too late to arrive for the timed exclusivity? Why only in PAL territories? Why are Atari claiming that Sony's support will "allow them to reach more customers in Europe" when they were doing perfectly fine without Sony's help and actually will now be reaching about 64 million less customers than they were before? Why do Sony think this will do anything but piss off Xbox, Nintendo and PC gamers, magazines, stores, and the developers?

Still, us PC gamers have the last laugh because we can import it from the US without fear of region-locking. And even with tax and international delivery rates it's still cheaper than the PS3 version

(You're a bastard too.)

Which brings me on to my second game, which I accept a lot more... providing the reasons behind it were honourable. It's Batman: Arkham Asylum, it was due to come out the same day as Ghostbusters, and once again this decision was only made a month before release (is that day cursed or something?). And unlike Ghostbusters, there's no importing as it's worldwide not coming out until "Late Summer 09". Nice of you to be specific, guys.

Once again just like Ghostbusters, the reason for this seems down to last-minute business shenanigans, with Square-Enix taking over Eidos (the game's publisher). Eidos had been really ramping up the hype (both PCZ and PSM3 have it on their latest covers, demos in stores), so I doubt they would've gone with this choice themselves.

If Eidos/Squeenix are to believed that the game was held back "to make it as perfect as possible" (I thought it was perfect already) then I don't mind too much - more development time means a better game (unless you're 3D Realms of course). On the other hand, maybe they wanted it at a more lucrative time of year... but publishers aren't driven by money, surely?

Oh well, at least I've still got Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings on the Wii.

(Sobs).

- Chris Capel

Getting all emotional

Maybe I'm a psychopath, but when I was presented with three Nazi prisoners about to be executed by the Russians in Call of Duty: EXTREME HARDCORE AAWWW YEEEAAH! (World at War), my immediate and unflinching response was to shoot them. Poor Gary Oldman; he's a fantastic act0r, but quite frankly he was taking far too long with all his words and sentences and whatnot. Even as he opened his mouth to speak, I had identified the situation as one that had to be resolved before the general violence could continue. So I shot them. And chuckled a little at the abruptness with which what was clearly meant to be a "dramatic" moment was brought to an end. It reminded me a little of Call of Duty multiplayer; of creeping along, watching your corners, keeping an eye open for snipers, staying low and quiet...
...only to have some little shit with an SMG come bunny-hopping around the corner, spraying you with bullets and utterly destroying your attempts to play soldier "properly".

"Wut iz morraleaty?"

Actually, you know what? Fuck you. I'm not a psychopath. I simply failed to connect to the sequence on an emotional level; I saw the entire scenario through the eyes of someone who knows how to make a skybox in UnrealEd. I saw it as that which it really was; a scripted event designed to regulate the flow of gameplay and ensure that it wasn't all run-shoot-run-shoot-quickload. And given that the run-shoot aspect is WaW's strongest component (and it should be, given that the entire game is essentially a WWII mod for CoD4, which had rock solid gameplay), I really didn't want the flow of such running and shooting and frolicking amid the corpses to be regulated at that moment.
Gary Oldman; I love you, but stfu, seriously. Just shoot someone. And then shout, "I. AM. VEWWY DISAPPOINTED!" like you did in the Fifth Element.

Penumbra, however; now that's a different story entirely. I was really very impressed with Overture and Black Plague; they showed not only a level of polish that is rare in indy games, not only a really interesting combination of the FPS and Survival Horror genres, but most surprising of all; they made me feel something.

"WHOTHEFUCKISTHAT!?!"

For a game that uses the player character's isolation and claustrophobia as its primary weapon, I found the secondary characters to be the most interesting and engaging that I've encountered in quite some time. For the most part, they did nothing; they were voices, or text, or the occasional image. For the most part, their physical presence in the game was manifested merely in terms of the associated scenery; the places they'd been, the things they'd done before you arrived. And yet, I found myself actually giving a shit.

Perhaps it was the isolation that served to emphasise what little non-hostile life there was in the game, or perhaps the writing was simply fantastic (certainly, I'd put a few of Clarence's lines up there with HK47, given his tendency to call you "monkey"). More likely it was a combination of the two, and perhaps this is related to the small development team; a closer relationship between the writing, and the "physical" side of the game.

Dunt look like much, but this had me all emotional

Whatever the case; as much as I laughed at the prisoner-execution in World at War for trying too hard to be dramatic...I found myself quite unexpectedly speechless and rather sad at the conclusion of Red's story in Penumbra: Overture. In a world full of games in which I'd happily set fire to virtual opponents, and then throw their flaming flailing bodies at their friends before jumping up and down a bit on the remains...here was a game in which I actually felt a little shocked by such violence. I think it was the manner in which it was handled, in addition to the writing itself; there was no big cinematic effects-laden spectacle. Just a sad end to a pitiable character.

And in the end, I suspect that the easiest way for a game to trigger emotion in the player...is to not try too hard to tell the player what to feel. The trick is to understate the entire thing; if the player in question is capable of feeling something, they'll be more inclined to feel it with a subtle nudge that sets their imagination on fire, than a big foam hand being thrust in their face with the words "CRY NOW BITCH" written upon the finger.

Of course, another way to make the player emotional is to not let them play the game. The publishers of Dark Athena apparently like losing money; completely fucking up the game's PC release so that at least two online retailers no longer have the game's price listed, while potential buyers are having a hard time finding copies in the shops. I was rather looking forward to playing this, having been a fan of the last game, so I'm getting a tad emotional over the fact that the universe apparently doesn't want me to have it.
An emotional state that is compounded by the fact that I'm still waiting for Far Cry 2 to arrive, despite having been told that the item had shipped last week.

- An Emotional Brax