Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Okay, that’s just going for the fancy pun-based headline as is RPS’ wont – it’s not dead, dead. But I’ve been thinking about EA’s recently released Dead Space’s chances, and this post was prompted by Yahtzee’s Zero Punctuation annihilation of it – which I’ll embed beneath the cut. He takes it apart – which is his wont, obviously – but it’s a game that seems to be slipping past everyone’s attention. Which seems somewhat odd. I mean, big-budget, hyper-slick action/horror game. It’s not exactly Dwarf Fortress.

I’m saying “wont” a lot in this post.
Read the rest of this entry »

Russ Pitts of the Escapist interviews various Internet Youtube supa-dupa-stars on their awesomeosity. While The Guild’s Sandeep Parikh is chatted with it’s (perhaps predictably) Zero Punctuation’s Yahtzee who gets centre-stage. But predictably doesn’t mean undeservedly, and I was amused to see a little more about his reception at GDC this year, which I’d already heard about in snippets delivered by GDC-veterans.

“…Croshaw did have his moments of celebriphobia at this year’s GDC, where even a short trip down the hall inevitably resulted in more than a few handshakes and requests for autographs. One woman had been clandestinely following him around all week, finally accosting him on his way to the airport to show him her sketchbook. He had a beguiling manner about him, she said, showing him how she’d captured the jaunty tilt of his hat with pencil and ink. The experience was jarring.”

What Yahtzee does next is the interesting one. The smart money, I suspect, is on him ending up doing the Erik and Chet Old Man Murray thing and turning developer love into being a lovely developer. In a more traditional mainstream way than his indie stuff, obv.

It’s not just Walker who’s had a chance to fawn over Gabe Newell. Taking a break from eviscerating Clive Barker’s Jericho, Yahtzee has been off for an audience with Valve. And he’s written a travelogue of his escapades over at The Escapist. And here’s a picture of him with Gabe Newell.

Yahtzee is the one in the hat and Gabe Newell is the one who looks like Gabe Newell.

Oh, praise the Lord of Gaming – someone, finally, agrees with me about Peggle.

Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw, developer of the wonderful Trilby adventure games, and now Mr Famous for his ludicrously good Zero Punctuation Flash reviews on The Escapist, entirely concurs with me that a) Peggle is fun and distracting, but not incredible, and b) Bookworm Adventures is better! Mr Yahtzee – marry me. Here it is:

This is made all the more vindicating having just got back from a Peggle-obsessed Valve, where the game is still the number two played Steam game on the in-house Steam Community. I tried to promote Bookworm as best I could, but… well, wait for the interviews.

(I should add, I’m not affiliating myself with Yahtzee’s comments on PopCap, as I’ve not given the subject enough thought.)