By Kieron Gillen on November 13th, 2007 at 12:11 am.
Clearly, when the history books of gaming-discourse are written, the year of 2007 be given over entirely to the wonder of Rock Pa… no, not fooling anyone. Because clearly, the year belongs to Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw and his hyperspeed Zero Punctuation rants over at the Escapist (And, if you want an idea of how big a thing Yahtzee has been, have a look at the Alexa stats for the Escapist over the last few months).
But with his recent fame, his previous notoriety as creator of cult indie adventures has been kinda overlooked. Expect his first game post-Zero-Punctuation to arrive to a larger audience. Interestingly, while built in AGS, it’s not a pure adventure at all. Staring Trilby – the sort of gentleman thief which RPS will always approve – it reminds me of a cross between Impossible Mission and Thief (In fact, it vaguely reminds me of my limited time with old-skool Bonanza Bros). Download to see Thief’s dark=safe, light=trouble, kinda-dark=oo-er, missus mechanic integrated… well, pretty well, actually.
Now: How long until one of the fanboys who are amusingly annoyed over some of Yahtzee’s reviews to have a crack at doing a ZeroPunctuation-parody review of it?
13/11/2007 at 00:54 Pesh says:
Quite fun :D
13/11/2007 at 00:59 Filipe says:
From the looks of it it doesn’t seem to be a part of the Chzo mythos. A shame.
13/11/2007 at 01:15 Chis says:
Surprised no-one’s mentioned Elevator Action yet. This looks a lot like it, in level design.
13/11/2007 at 01:16 Al says:
Hell, I love Triby. Enjoying the game now. I like how you can revisit old levels with new abilities to emphasize how great your new skills are.
13/11/2007 at 01:44 SteveTheBlack says:
I’ve given it a quick spin and I’ve got to say it’s pretty good. The stealth stuff if simple but effective and the animations are cool. If it wasn’t 1:44am I’d be playing the hell out of this game.
13/11/2007 at 02:16 wiper says:
Blimey, Yahtzee’s really done well for himself (viewer stats-wise – his adventures have /always/ been awesome. That and his flash animations. And his old blog-thing. And his taste in B-Movies)
13/11/2007 at 03:08 The_B says:
Now I’m confused, did you mean to get the wording wrong but the link right or is that un intentional?
And the main thing I hated about Impossible Mission was those bloody piano memory tests…
13/11/2007 at 05:00 Dracko says:
This game is fine minor a few easily forgiven foibles (It was never established how to pick a wire to cut other than by guessing, for instance, which can cost you up to 2 alerts). But oh God, the plot.
Yahtzee’s lost it, hasn’t he?
All those stats help prove is that The Escapist needed something lower-common denominator to boost its traffic. Not that it was particularly clever in the first place.
13/11/2007 at 09:18 Kieron Gillen says:
The_B: Since I can’t see the error, I presume it was unintentional.
Dracko: EXCEPT IN THE WEEKS WHEN WE WRITE FOR THEM, obv.
KG
13/11/2007 at 10:56 Nick says:
I believe he means it says Mission Impossible and links to Impossible Mission.
Funny the first things I thought of were also Bonanza Bros and Impossible Mission, I now have the Bonanza Bros theme stuck in my head *sigh*.
I slightly sad it’s not another adventure, as he seems to be one of the only people making decent point and clicks anymore.
13/11/2007 at 11:40 Kieron Gillen says:
*Whistles*.
KG
13/11/2007 at 11:44 Matthew Craig says:
I really wish I hadn’t Alexad my own website.
*sob*
//\Oo/\\
13/11/2007 at 15:20 The_B says:
I saw nuttin’ Guv’nor!
13/11/2007 at 17:23 Pod says:
“I slightly sad it’s not another adventure, as he seems to be one of the only people making decent point and clicks anymore.”
What about most of the other people who use AGS?
Granted, it’s full of disgusting looking, poorly written pieces of tripe, but what creative community isn’t?
Wadjet eye games makes some good ones, for example.
13/11/2007 at 18:09 Lucky says:
It might have something to do with the fact that Yahtz is the only person who steadily keeps finishing his games, in spite of having a life.
14/11/2007 at 09:34 Nick says:
I have downloaded too much tripe to believe “most” of the people using AGS are good.
Any more specific reccomendations would be dandy =)
I also promise never to use the word dandy again unless talking about the comic.
14/11/2007 at 09:49 Richard says:
Dave Gilbert is the big one I’d recommend.
14/11/2007 at 20:54 Kast says:
This is THE most frustrating game I have every encountered. Yes, it’s fun. Yes, it’s simple on the face of things. But oh god, I could just beat myself into having a stroke in fury at the little errors that make me reply 5-10 minutes of game at a time. And JUST when I think I’ve escaped, I’m thrown into a hopelessly cruel boss-battle, causing a string of screaming, swearing and cursing that would make a sailor blush.
What I wouldn’t give for a checkpoint or two.
16/11/2007 at 20:49 Denton says:
Gah, I was going to do a parody review of it but it seems I’m far too predictable. At least this saves me the effort of actually, well… doing it.
23/11/2007 at 18:08 roBurky says:
Are all the cameras, guards etc supposed to reset every time I change screen? I thought it was just a terrible design thing at first, but there’s a spotlight that gets turned off by cutting a wire, but you have to go off screen and back to get to it once you’ve done that, which resets it back to on.
27/11/2007 at 10:32 Feet says:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=6XSpPIBvjN4
So I make that… 2 weeks? Also, this is a bit rubbish, primarily because the guy talks fast but forgets to pronounce anything properly, also the nasal whine.