Zack and Wiki[edit]

Long ago in the mists of time, when main characters didn't need to have biceps bigger then their
faces and when bump mapping was just something cartographers did to their wives, there lived
adventure games. This shy, thoughtful tribe was known for its great story telling tradition and
ruled the great PC gaming plains for many years before mysteriously dying out around the onset
of the Quake era. Some blame the aggressive expansion of neighboring first-person shooter
tribes; but personally I think it's more to do with the fact that most of them were shit. [33]

Army of Two - Yes, Two[edit]

We're quickly and frequently reminded that the military is shit and so is everyone in it, while
mercenaries are unstoppable immortal badasses who make tons more money and like it rough
from men with hairy bums — NO! Bad Yahtzee! I meant to say: and you get to wear funky skull
masks like it's Halloween every day, except that it's you giving out the candy, and the candy is
bullets.

Having grown tired of my AI partner's insect-filled brain, I tried playing co-op split-screen with a
friend. In one shootout sequence, there was an elevated hold-out position that I gave him a
boostie up to as part of a cunning higher ground strategy. But since my friend had trouble
understanding that enemy bullets were something to be avoided, he was taken down. When this
happens, you basically can't move or get up until your partner comes over to stick a healing foot
up your arse. But since there was now no one to give me a boostie up to where he was, all I
could do was hop impotently up and down like a skull-faced bunny until his bad case of idiocy
proved terminal.

It's repetitive and broken and nothing you haven't seen before. If you can play Gears of War with
one hand and Splinter Cell with the other, then you don't need to play Army of Two. And make
sure you film it because that's a pretty impressive talent you have there. [34]

No More Heroes[edit]

[Suda 51's] last game was killer7, and let's get one thing straight: I fucking loved killer7! There we
were, living our gray, predictable lives, playing our gray, predictable games when along came
killer7 in a technicolour dream coat, leaving slightly perplexed joy in the wake of its huge
motorbike, showing exactly what could be done when you flaunt [sic] all established convention
and just start exploring what can really be done with gaming as an art form. I still don't know
how to classify it: puzzle, action/adventure, rail shooter... well, whatever it was, it was a
preciously unique amusing cartoon whale in an ocean of second-hand bong water. Now we have
No More Heroes, a Grand Theft Auto clone. "Shine on you crazy diamond," said Yahtzee, his
voice thick like sarcastic Marmite.

So, I'll say the same thing about No More Heroes that I say about Killer 7, Earthbound, and
Branston pickle: As flawed as it is, get it anyway because you will never experience anything else
like it. God knows what would happen if you spread Branston pickle onto No More Heroes,
possibly the universe would end. And it would be awesome! [35]

Condemned 2: Bloodshot[edit]

There's a final boss sequence in Condemned 1 in which you run through a dark claustrophobic
labyrinth with a serial killer in hot pursuit. It's really intense and genuinely terrifying, and part of
what makes it so effective is that it takes place in a normal house, exactly like, oh say for
example, YOURS! Right down to the psychotic serial killer who lives under your bed and is
standing behind you right now but don't look because that'll really piss him off! Condemned 2,
by contrast, ends on a stupid sci-fi tower thing resembling something the Combine would throw
together if they were all drunk, and a piss-easy final boss fight which you win by shouting at him
so loud his brain explodes. I wish I was fucking kidding. [36]

Super Smash Bros. Brawl[edit]

As I've said, time and again, Nintendo is a company that does altogether too much wanking off
of its old franchises. That might be fine while the Wii is riding high, but all it'll take is a few more
Virtual Boys and they'll wank the whole company away! Some of it gets really obscure too. Who
the fuck is Marth, and why is unlocking him considered a reward? Oh and thanks, Nintendo, for
putting in a character from Mother 3, a game you're never going to fucking release outside Japan
despite the fact I can fucking guarantee that more people would play it than Mario Kart Eleventy
Billion: The Next Generation!

But really, reviewing Smash Bros. Brawl is pointless. Chances are you already know if you like it.
There's a simple test: When the name "Nintendo Wii" was first revealed, did you ever seriously
try to defend it on an Internet forum? If yes, you will enjoy this game whatever its faults, and you
might as well start spamming my email address with hatred right now, you miserable, fanboy
twat. [37]

God of War: Chains of Olympus[edit]

Chains of Olympus is a PSP-exclusive prequel installment in the God of War series, a bunch of
games that combine an, at best, loose understanding of Greek mythology with a level of violence
that hovers somewhere between excessive and completely off its tits. [38]

Around weaker enemies there's really no reason to use anything other than the instant-kill grab
attack, or as I like to call it "The 'Fuck You' Button."

Mailbag Showdown[edit]

It’s true, I didn’t like Brawl before I even started playing; but then the same is true of every
game, object, animal and human being I encounter these days. Since the Internet is almost
diametrically opposed to the notion of quality control, in recent years it’s been a lot easier to
just assume everything’s shit until it can prove itself otherwise. I like to call it the "Guantanamo
Bay" approach to reviewing. [39]

Grand Theft Auto IV[edit]

About a million years ago, a company called DMA Design created Grand Theft Auto and
discovered that the combination of controversy, wacky humor, and vehicular homicide was a
lucrative one indeed. So they made a whole bunch of sequels, threw some TVs out of some hotel
windows, and changed their name to "Rockstar", in a slightly over-compensatory effort to make
us forget that they made Lemmings. Not that there was anything wrong with Lemmings, at least
not until the franchise was rigorously milked to it's last sour lumpy dribbles.

Once you inevitably grow tired of the sandbox mayhem and start on the mission paths, you'll
find that GTA4 is initially about as fast-paced as a Jacob Bronowski documentary playing at half
speed. The first hundredweight of missions are virtually all tutorials, which highlights the
inherent problem with incorporating so many different gameplay elements that you need to
spend half the game explaining the bloody things! You have to learn how to drive cars, how to
drive trucks, how to drive geese, how to use your phone, TV, internet, how to fist fight, how to
gunfight, how to shoot from cover, how to shoot from the back of a giant tyrannosaurus... [40]

Painkiller[edit]

The weapons are a bold effort to escape the usual lineup of melee, pistol, shotgun, machine-
gun, rocket-launcher, overpowered-exotic-thing-that-you-never get-ammo-for-and-only-use-in-
boss-fights-anyway. The default melee weapon is the titular Painkiller, a rotating blade
arangement perfect for forecasting light showers of body parts and reenacting the lawnmower
scene from the movie Braindead. (That's Dead-Alive if you're American and fat.) As for the guns,
I could mention the hugely satisfying penis-extension gun that pins baddies to walls with entire
trees, but all you really need to know is that there's a gun that shoots shurikens and lightning. I
wish I could make something like that up; it shoots shurikens and lightning! It could only be more
awesome if it had tits and was on fire.

So that's Painkiller, more proof that the best way blow off steam is to blow off someone's
natches.[41]

The World Ends With You[edit]

A major thing that turns me off JRPGs, and a lot of games in general, is when I don't feel that I, as
a player, am contributing anything to the story. All I ever seem to do is wheel the characters from
one whingy boring dialogue to the next. Events are driven by their actions, not mine. All I am is a
little angry id who takes over for the combat, spending the rest of the time jumping up and
down in the back of the main character's mind yanking on nerve endings, trying to make him
stop acting like a pillock.

What I'm saying is that I like games where the story and gameplay go hand in hand, while in
most JRPGs the story and gameplay are kept either side of a wrought-iron fence made of tigers.
Is TWEWY a good J-RPG? I have absolutely no idea. I feel like I'm on the edge of a frightening
world I don't understand, treading water on the surface of a deep, deep lake full of weird-
smelling creatures with completely alien concepts of fun and a tolerance for boredom to rival
the Man in the Iron Mask. [42]

Oblivion[edit]

You know me; I'm a twitchy, instant-gratification kind of gamer. The sort who isn't happy unless
there's a gun the size of a motorbike in his hands and a severed alien willy bouncing off the front
of his space helmet. But every now and again, the planets will align and I'll be affected by weird
cosmic rays, and suddenly all I want to do is play a nice fantasy RPG. Not a J-RPG, God no; it's just
space radiation, not the infinite power of Christ. But a western RPG, something with goblins and
swords and men in loin clothes going on about wenches.

In Oblivion, you start off in a dungeon in the imperial palace. You're never told what crime you
committed; I guess you're supposed to fill in that blank for yourself. So I choose to believe I was
in there for shagging the emperor's wife and daughter at the same time while playing a rock
guitar solo on the desecrated corpse of God. Anyway, then the Emperor showed up (played by
Captain Picard) and I have to say I liked him a lot. He was the only character who actually
seemed to know they were in a fantasy RPG. He took one look at me, noticed the camera
floating behind my head and said, "Oh, bugger. You're the protagonist; guess I have to die now."
And die he did.

For a game that is obviously trying so hard, Oblivion is one of the least immersive RPGs I've ever
played. The world map is huge, granted. If you intend to walk from one end to the other, you'd
better pack a few sandwiches. But frankly, take one good look around the moment you first
emerge blinking into the daylight and you've pretty much seen everything. It's like they took 200
square yards of medieval English countryside, added a few wolves, then copy-pasted it until it
was roughly the size of Yorkshire. [43]