The Consolevania review of African Safari had us in absolute stitches at work the other day. Well worth a read for a laugh, that fence is long.

My good buddy Ian (dude, fix your website) recently put me onto the incredibly fast-paced “zero punctuation” video reviews done by a fellow Brit living in Australia. With his dead-pan voice over and accompanying stick figure animation he manages to brilliant summarise some of the latest games, as well as get in plenty of sight gags and pithy commentary. Here is his review of Valve’s Orange Box:

Playing:

Bioshock

Gorgeous visual, gorgeous sound design, brilliant voice acting, almost real moral choices. Runs like a dog on my aging PC but is still an amazing game.

Quake Wars: Enemy Territory

Also runs like a dog on my “rig” but is very fast and fun, in the same vein as the original Enemy Territory. Similar to Battlefield 2, but then also very different – more arcadey. It also has the usual technical/gameplay polish of all the iD/Splash Damage games.

Team Fortress 2

The very, very late sequel to the original Team Fortress is now in beta and it is one heck of a lot of fun. Inspired visuals (cell shaded cartoon style) give it a whole new take and makes it a different kind of game. The slightly simplified graphics also help to make it fly along on my PC.

Watching:

Heroes Season 2

From the first episode it is certainly looking promising and just as good as season one. From the upcoming guest star gossip it also sounds like there is a lot more fun to come.

The Wire Season One

I watched the entirety of The Wire “off the internet” and now I’ve started buying the DVD boxsets because it is so damn good. Possibly one of the finest cop shows ever.

Madmen

A new show created by one of the writers of The Sopranos about the lives of the “madmen” – the Madison Avenue ad (as in advertising) men in the 1960s. Interesting period stuff which is covering a lot of the changing social aspects of American life.

The ioquake3 project aims to build on id software’s release of the Quake 3 source code. Tremulous uses ioquake as it’s engine and the project will hopefully allow for many more games that are stand-alone and use a decent engine.

Saw these guys performing a version of the Mario theme tune.

Gamers are everywhere these days.

Silliness aside, it is an extremely clever brand and logo. Just what we’ve been led to expect from Nintendo really 🙂

update: and the new wii website is just as purty as the logo!

Buy some toys for sick children at xmas.

F.E.A.R.

FEAR stands for something daft like First Encounter Assault Recon. FEAR has some truly awesome fire fights, the “gun play” is very, very good. In firefights the developers have gone for a full on experience. Particles and chunks fly off every surface as your bullets inpact on it. Paper sprays off bundles of paper, splinters fly off piles of timber, glass shanters into lots of pieces and sparks and smoke come off all the weapons. Whilst you’re getting all of this eye candy thrown at you, the AI is cunningly flanking you, flushing you out with grenades and generally being clever (or giving a very good illusion of being clever). This was the first game since half-life 1 (when the grunts first flushed me out with a grenade) where the AI actually surprised me. The bad guys will vault over surfaces and pull over desks and filing cabinets to provide cover. Get too close to them and they lunge at your and knock you flying. It’s all very impressive.

So, the guns, the fire fights and the AI is all good. Unfortunately the level design is mind-numbingly repetitive. Abandoned warehouse, abandoned office, sewer, repeat. The story seems pretty good initally but the briefings at the start of each mission get more and more pointless as you realise its just another warehouse of bad guys to shoot your way through. It does have some genuinely creepy moments, just as you turn a corner a ghostly figure will walk past into a wall. Or, just as you reach the top of a ladder a figure will be there and then scatter into lots of fly-like black particles. It does bits of horror stuff very well in places, but then you round the next corner and it’s back to mowing down bad guys again.

I’ve been playing it in small bursts, it seems to be best that way.

Call Of Duty 2

Call Of Duty 2 is very much a sequel. It doesn’t look vastly different from the first one. There has been a bit of polish to the engine, it has very good smoke for one thing and still has its intense edge. The one thing that stands out after playing FEAR is how static the scenery is. Everything is completely glued to the floor, unless it’s scripted to get blown up by a tank or something. I mean, a small wooden crate can provide cover from a tank shell, which is just silly.

The various scenarios are still huge fun though, and you get into those intense situation we’re you’ve got enemy fire zipping past you and you’re throwing grenades and jumping over walls and stuff. Crouching…reloading…popping up…sighting down the weapon…capping a bad guy. Great stuff.

Great site devoted to Crates & Barrels in games. You won’t “get this” unless you’re a gaming geek, sorry.