By Kieron Gillen on February 20th, 2009 at 6:08 pm.
For a few seconds, when watching the trailer for this forthcoming adventure game, I became a little over-excited. Text explodes onto the screen: “HE IS SMALL! HE IS CRUEL! HE IS…” I’m on the tenterhooks. Surely someone hasn’t made a videogame fanfiction adventure about our own Alec Meer? But no. It’s Ceville, who appears to be some medieval-esque ruler with a sinister tache and staring eyes. It’s a comedy adventure game from Germany. Which seems like a set up for a joke, which proves that Sun-esque xenophobia is terribly ingrained somewhere deep in my Psyche. I’m sorry. I’ll stop blogging now before I paint my face with a union jack and start gabbling on about two world wars and one world cup. Er… you can get the 500Mb or so demo here and the trailer’s beneath the cut.
20/02/2009 at 18:16 Kaatridge says:
Downloading the demo now. Looks pretty good.
20/02/2009 at 18:41 Sturmfalke says:
Looks promising…but I remember how badly Vampyre Story and The Abby turned out. So I’m not particularly holding my breath on this one.
20/02/2009 at 18:42 HidesHisEyes says:
just looks Awkward to me…
20/02/2009 at 18:45 Calabi says:
Reminds of the spectrum game “How to be a complete bastard”.
I’m surprised more developers havent used that sort of premise more often.
20/02/2009 at 19:19 A-Scale says:
Don’t delay, buttstomp away!
And don’t download.
20/02/2009 at 19:28 Redd says:
Danny DeVito.
20/02/2009 at 20:43 rob says:
What are John Walker’s thoughts on this?
20/02/2009 at 20:50 Fetthesten says:
That trailer reminded me of the awkward “comedy” adventure games of the Nineties that failed because they were written and directed by programmers. Awful acting, jokes ruined by botched timing and a lousy script, stiff and unnatural animation, etc. Of course I would love to be proven wrong, but I have a strong suspicion this will receive less than enthusiastic reviews upon release.
20/02/2009 at 21:11 Noc says:
Be Evil! Selfish! Be Nasty! Be Obnoxious! Be . . . Guybrush Threepwood in Monkey Island 2.
Which, incidentally, I’m finally getting around to playing through. And man, what a dick.
Also: Two Wars One Cup what?
20/02/2009 at 21:46 Tei says:
“This product have been blocked for your country.”
20/02/2009 at 23:36 Lobotomist says:
Not trying to be prejudiced – but comedy game made in Germany? Even the Germans them selves claim that there is only one good comedian in the whole country, and even he is actually from Switzerland ;)
21/02/2009 at 00:18 Garrett says:
This is a great little game, but my one complaint is that there is no support for anti-aliasing, even if forced in the driver. That’s a very strange omission for an otherwise technically accomplished game.
21/02/2009 at 04:48 N says:
I suggest playing Dragons Sphere instead…
21/02/2009 at 04:49 N says:
Dragon Sphere* god dammit…
21/02/2009 at 05:31 skizelo says:
From the trailer, Cerville’s responses seem a little stock (“talk about a dirty buisness” when raking gold off the floor?), which is a bad sign. It’s upsetting enough when there’s only a generic response to wrong item/puzzle combinations, but when they couldn’t afford to get unique dialogue for the solution?
21/02/2009 at 10:34 Hoernchen says:
2worldwars1worldcup. AWWW. I see what you did there…
But is it really this awful ? I mean, like a cup full of shit ? With no girls around to ahehhehem.
21/02/2009 at 10:47 bansama says:
“This product have been blocked for your country.”
Yeah, it’s regionally restricted on GamersGate, but apparently region free on Steam. While 2K games are region free on GamersGate and regionally restricted on Steam. Seriously, I fail to understand what publishers get out of regionally restricting on one service and not another.
It’s certainly going to do nothing to help their sales and isn’t even good for digital distribution as a whole. I can just see it now actually, the building competition in DD isn’t going to be waged via price wars, but through regional availability. There will be no winners, but you can be assured that *we* will be the losers.
21/02/2009 at 11:07 Lewis says:
This arrived on my desk yesterday in the form of an unassuming DVD-R with ‘Ceville Review Code’ scrawled on it in messy handwriting.
Shall be giving it a spin this weekend. Might report back.
21/02/2009 at 11:34 Kast says:
I didn’t hear a funny line in that trailer… isn’t a trailer for a comedy game supposed to have some element of comedy in it?
21/02/2009 at 12:20 Mischa says:
“This product have been blocked for your country.”
I also got that error when I clicked on the “Download Games” button, but when I clicked the “Download it!” link at the bottom of the page, I could download it without any problems.
21/02/2009 at 17:09 Jochen Scheisse says:
There are actually several good comedians and cabaret people in Germany. Sadly, none of them are in the gaming industry.
Also, which World Cup?
21/02/2009 at 17:13 Jochen Scheisse says:
Oh, football. Right.
22/02/2009 at 04:16 Blaxploitation Man says:
He’s like Wario but not as entertaining.
23/02/2009 at 17:52 Keksmehl says:
I have already finished the game and it’s fuckin’ great! Undoubtably best Adventure in the current generation ^^ The puzzles are awesome and the graphics are good.. unfortunately some of the dialogues .. dunno if this expression exists in english but in Germany we’d say “artificial”.. but aside it’s hellish fun!