Richard's Online Journal

[22/11/08] Why I Love Valve, Part XIV

Graffiti from one of the safe-rooms in Left 4 Dead

[20/11/08] Plumbers Don’t Wear Ties

Sorry for the lack of posts of late. Too busy. Too much to do. Too many games to play. Games… completely unlike Plumbers Don’t Wear Ties. Any PC Gamer reader will know this one by reputation - a truly foul piece of gaming from back in the days when little movies in computer games seemed like The Future. It was a running joke in the magazine for over a decade… in fact, I’m sure it was referenced only a couple of months back, quite possibly by me. But why mention it now? Why invoke its dark name in 2008?

Because someone’s made a fully functional YouTube version. The pain begins… now!

Don’t be fooled by the angry, somewhat bipolar FMV lady in her bra - so-called adult game or not, PDWT is as objectively erotic as an Ayn Rand striptease. The bit above is the only bit of movie in the whole game, and even in the uncensored version, all you got later on was a shot of a guy’s bottom and half a nipple. The rest is simply a photostory with truly scary narration created by… I don’t know. I really don’t. Just remember, whoever they were, whatever pit in Hades they crawled out of, they actually wanted to sell this game to actual humans. For human currency. They’d have been better off gift-wrapping their own faeces and calling it Chocolate Surprise.

Brr. Plumbers Don’t Wear Ties. Quite possibly the worst game in the history of all time. And yes, that includes ET. And Big Rigs. And Max Payne.

[02/11/08] Fallout 3

After Ending Report: Except for one of the most staggeringly poorly thought out endings in the history of all things - I’d explain more, but I need to go finish that short story about a fish who was frightened of drowning - it’s good. The main plot is depressingly predictable, especially if you’ve wandered through these wastelands before, and many of the areas badly needed a smack with the design stick, but there’s so much cool stuff to experience, I doubt you’ll care. What’s missing is sadly what I expected - the breakdown of the different towns demonstrating I was doing more than standard RPG quest-bitch duties, and that any of my decisions mattered outside of their individual tasks. Right. Back to the past...

War. War never changes. Unless you count it changing from an isometric tactical RPG to a big AAA FPS hybrid from a different development team with a totally different design style. Then it does. Quite a lot, actually…

I haven’t finished Fallout 3 yet, so this is more a loose collection of thoughts than a review. In a nutshell: I like it. I like it a lot. It’s far from perfect, but it’s an excellent game. If you need a number to explain that, it’s high eighties/low nineties. If you’d rather have a vegetable: tomato. If you just shouted at the screen ‘Tomatoes are a fruit!’, please submit your name to this year’s edition of “Who’s Whom?” - the world’s leading directory of pedants and pendants (patent pending). That score could flicker either way during the rest of the game, so don’t take it as gospel.

Headshots are your friend. They never stop loving you. They never leave you. Not like those cheap melee tarts.

[12/09/08] Spore

Capsule Review: A fantastic civilisation design tool that gets your creative juices flowing in a game that bores me senseless.

[02/09/08] Wrath of the Licking

In which Richard gets access to the beta, and Blizzard discovers that it’s not the best idea to include the game’s scariest baddie as a standard named NPC.

I thought his Wrath was something about the Scourge and divine retribution. But no. Just revenge against those damn RPG geeks…