MOH Airborne[edit]

The Medal of Honor series has been going on since 1999, meaning that it has officially been
going on longer than the actual second World War did. And if you put together all the games,
films, and TV shows that have depicted it, the Normandy landings alone probably lasted
somewhere within the region of six months. So why does the US have such a fascination about a
time that everyone else would rather just forget about and move on? Well, probably because
that was the last war in which they did any good, when they had a clear win over an
unambiguously evil villain who posed a genuine threat -- rather than any of these wishy-washy
recent wars where they just run in, stomp all over a developing nation, and run out again
declaring victory around the time the population have to start eating their own dead.

As evil as the real Nazis were, it seems they weren't evil enough for the developers, and so the
accuracy's a little bit skewed against them. And then it's skewed a little bit more. And then it's
put in a thumbscrew until it resembles a slinky. I'm no historian, but I'm pretty sure there wasn't
an elite branch of stormtroopers who wore gas masks, wielded miniguns, and could take three
sniper bullets to the forehead before they died. And I'm also pretty sure the Nazis didn't have a
gigantic armored concrete tower that can only be described as a doom fortress. [13]

Zelda Phantom Hourglass[edit]

A world without Nintendo would be a far bleaker one than this, and yet there's something about
them I find incredibly infuriating. They've got roughly enough money to buy Earth and all the
heavens, and a fanbase so devoted and rabid that they could release a game about a sewage-
encrusted rapist and it would still sell like billy-oh. And while they sit in this position that many
game developers worldwide with slews of new and interesting game concepts would happily
hack off their wedding tackle to occupy, all they do is constantly remake the same games! Okay,
so sometimes you've got an ocarina, and sometimes you're in a boat, and sometimes you're a
werewolf having repulsive erotica drawn about you by people on DeviantArt; but pick any one of
the ninety billion Zelda games there have been so far and odds are good you'll always be the
same bloody guy saving the same bloody girl with the same bloody boomerang.

For the most part the movement feels natural, and there's something about being able to
scribble all over my maps that I found very therapeutic. The reverse effect is offered, however, by
the blatant shoe-horning of the DS's other exotic functions into gameplay, such as when you
have to yell at the top your voice into the microphone. Doing such a thing while out and about
(which, I remind you, is what handhelds are for) would probably cause your own major organs to
physically tear themselves from your body to escape humiliation. [14]

Clive Barker's Jericho[edit]

The game is just littered with bad design choices, like Worthy Farm after the Glastonbury festival.
Just as an example, in the second level I was faced by a number of wartime pillboxes that diced
the entire team to festive confetti the moment they came within fifty yards. Eventually one of
those helpful hints that games flash up when they feel sorry for you for being so obviously
retarded appeared and told me that one of the girls would run up behind the pillbox and drop a
grenade in it if I pressed a certain button while in a certain position. Excuuuuuuse me, Jericho,
for not possessing the kind of clairvoyant space brain necessary to instinctively know something
that has never until this point been mentioned and indeed will never be used again!

Maybe some of this could be forgiven if the seven main characters weren't all completely
unlikeable. There's so much black leather on display, it's like someone took the goth clique from
a small town high school, pinned them down in front of a 24-hour Rambo marathon, then
smacked them brutally around the head with a baseball bat made out of frozen stupid. [15]

F.E.A.R. Perseus Mandate[edit]

Every now and again, F.E.A.R. remembers that it wants to be a horror game, too, and makes the
lights flicker or throws down a random bloodstain like there's someone with the world's most
copious nosebleed about fifty yards ahead of you. But I have to admit, when the game does
descend into sheer balls-to-the-wall mindfuckery for a few minutes, it's the only time the
experience really comes alive for me. I'm running down a corridor when the lights come down
and then I'm in another different corridor, only now there's a blurry filter on my vision and I can
hear what sounds like a moose being strangled in a tin bath. Awesome! I open a door and it
vanishes into nothing and now there's a door on the ceiling. Sweet! There's a corpse at the end
of the hall but as I get closer it jumps up and yells at me like everything's my fault. Finally I'm
having a good time! Then everything simmers down and you return to boring predictable
normality, wishing you were back in the nightmare.

I guess if you're a huge fan of F.E.A.R., and I mean huge, like, if you play it twice a day and you
have Jason Hall's face stenciled onto your toilet seat, and if you've got a love of repetitive tactical
combat that borders on the fetishistic, and if you really badly need to know what happens next
to the faceless characterless protagonist of the ongoing storyline, then I heartily recommend
Perseus Mandate. Maybe you can play it while you hang around the labyrinth with Theseus,
because you're obviously a nonexistent creature of myth. [16]

Assassin's Creed[edit]

Another good way to blow your cover is to randomly stab innocent civilians, and trust me when I
say that forcing yourself not to do so is a lot harder than it sounds. Those wacky, fun-loving
lepers have this hilarious tendency to shove you with all their retard strength and send you flying
ye olde mosh-pit style, which I feel makes me well within my rights to lamp them one; but then
everyone turns against you because apparently it's not as funny when you do it. And then there
are the beggar women who will latch on to you like a lamprey eel and constantly run in front of
you whining for coins in a manner scientifically designed to get on my tits. Then I give them a
gentle, discouraging knuckle sandwich, and they run off yelling like I'm the asshole. It hits
particularly close to home for me, because this is pretty much how all my relationships turn out.
First you have to walk all the way down from your home base at the top of a fucking mountain at
the start of every fucking mission. Then you have to make your way through the target city
(pausing occasionally to nut the lepers Glaswegian-style). Then you're forced to do a few errands
around the place which are basically the same three side quests over and over again. And when
you do finally get to stab someone up, it's all bookended by long wordy unskipable cutscenes.
Even after the stabbing, you have to sit through a prolonged conversation with the victim. You'd
think having a spike shoved in to the throat would impede one's ability to soliloquize, but you
just can't shut these twatmouths up! [17]

Guitar Hero III[edit]

Don't believe the lie of Guitar Hero Three. It's actually the fourth title in the series, the third
being Rock the '80s, which I haven't played, but the day I fork out seventy bucks for an expansion
pack is the day I swallow razor wire, pull the end out of my ass, and floss myself to death.

Then I got to the last venue and the last group of songs on hard mode and came to a screeching
halt because they are fucking impossible. NO. STOP. Do not reach for your e-mail client; I do not
want to hear about how you five-starred "Blood Rain" on Expert, because if you did, you are a
fucking freak, a freak with either three arms or a trained pet spider working the buttons for you!
[18]

Mass Effect[edit]

People often say to me, "Yahtzee, you callipygian superman: How can you, a game writer
yourself, complain about a game having too much dialogue?" I would reply, "For the same
reason that a hairdresser is entitled to complain when someone fills their car with shampoo."

Mass Effect is like an incontinent who just drank six bottles of Mountain Dew, so full to bursting
with dialogue that it leaks out at every turn. Characters will spout their life stories at the slightest
provocation like you've got a documentary crew with you. A mere glance at a computer screen
or starship component will dump an entire Reader's Digest into your journal. To the game's
credit, you're never actually required to read any of this, but not doing so leaves you the strange
feeling that the game somehow resents me for it. [19]

Super Mario Galaxy[edit]

But don't be fooled; this is your standard fill-in-the-blanks framework. Mario's hateful
emotionally retarded ball-and-chain has been kidnapped again, but before you can do the rescue
you have to collect a whole bunch of stars - and it is always stars for some utterly arbitrary
reason. And in the end, Mario succeeds in rescuing the needy bitch who once again fails to put
out, although frankly I've given up expecting any kind of actual human intelligent reaction from
that clueless bint.

Initially, Mario Galaxy gets an easy ride because it has to be inevitably compared to Mario
Sunshine, the last "proper" Mario game (disregarding all that spin-off bullshit). And you could
transplant the head of Joseph Goebbels on to the body of a praying mantis and it would still
compare favorably to Mario Sunshine. [20]

Silent Hill Origins[edit]

...You have one second to name any game in which weapon degradation has been a good idea.
Time's up. That's what I thought. There's something very wrong about a katana that shatters
after five or six hits, one that ostensibly isn't made out of glass or chocolate.

To me, the Silent Hill series is over. And if Silent Hill 5 convinces me otherwise, then I will remove
three of my own vertebrae, curl my spine back, and eat my own arse. [21]