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?
Quite fun :D
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From the looks of it it doesn’t seem to be a part of the Chzo mythos. A shame.
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Surprised no-one’s mentioned Elevator Action yet. This looks a lot like it, in level design.
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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.
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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.
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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)
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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…
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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.
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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
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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.
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*Whistles*.
KG
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I really wish I hadn’t Alexad my own website.
*sob*
//\Oo/\\
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I saw nuttin’ Guv’nor!
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“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.
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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.
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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.
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Dave Gilbert is the big one I’d recommend.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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