Has anyone else been following Ben "Yahtzee" Crenshaw's hilarious Zero Punctuation series of game reviews?  He's basically a Brit living in Oz and he verbally shreds any and every game he encounters with side-splitting results.  He puts a new one out every Wednesday on The Escapist.  My two favorites linked below:

On the console war:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/article … le-Rundown

On Tomb Raider Anniversary:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/article … nniversary

You can find all of them by putting "Zero Punctuation" (with the quotes) in the search box at Escapist.

I can't believe how fast that guy talks. Was Tomb Raider Anniversary really that bad, by the way?

I wouldn't say so. He said in the review that he was biased against remakes, so I'd expect that his opinion was already skewed against the game. I'd disagree that the levels were just CTRL+C/V'd with new graphics, but I do agree that the camera kinda sucked and Lara didn't grab on to as much as I wanted her to while I was playing (that's not a hj joke).

Also, bollocks.

I think this guy is pretty funny!

Check out his take on Super Paper Mario: http://blog.wired.com/games/2007/10/yah … prove.html

Italia, Italia!

Funny, and I love the music bits!

I've just started the Orange Box on 360 (which wasn't even in an orange box) and I think he went way too easy on it. I didn't play HL2 back in the day but, man, I'm not impressed. I wish the ZP guy ripped into it more.

I didn't like it...Thought the messages were good, but the delivery was flat (I watched the console war one). He's got nothing on AVGN, who just has me in stitches half the time. This one...I wanted to laugh more, but I was getting a headache at the same time.

Seriously!?
I never played it back in the day either, but always wanted too, so I got the Orange Box yesterday and it's been nothing but awesome for me so far. The graphics still look amazing to this day, Portal is pure genius no matter how you look at it, and I actually like that HL is not as bombastic as most other FPS's.

Can't speak for the 360 version, but I enjoyed HL2 and it's followups on the PC.
My comp is just barely Powzered-up enough to play it, but I thought it was a nice game.

Portal is genius. No doubt about it.

But HL2? Well it hasn't made a great impression so far but a first impression is all it is. The telekinetic lift/drop mechanic I find to be horrendous. Where are Gordon's arms? What a way to remove me from a game world. And he can use these mental powers from such a distance, I can't help wondering why he doesn't go all Yuri Geller on the crowbar an just stand beating his enemies with it using his mind. And he can throw a brick with his mind but can't pull himself up on a ledge at head height?

The see-saw 'puzzle' early on was ridiculous. So contrived and only exposed the flaws - why am I loading a see-saw with bricks when I could put one brick down and lift myself over the ledge? Because Gordon is no more than a telekinetic eyeball.

He doesn't even have feet.

The layout design so far has been plain old FPS Half-Life (which set the standard at the time of course) and just gives the illusion of being outdoors. There's a whole city but I just feel like I'm being led around corridors.

Visually, okay, it's three years old so I guess I should forgive the flat look and the colours.

Where it's really working for me is atmosphere. I love the world they have created and can see now why people referenced it when talking about Children of Men. Great atmosphere. But one that is affected by the disconnecting lift/drop powers and the loading every two minutes.

That said, I'm still very early on and will keep at it so could completely reverse everything I say here at some point. I guess I just got caught up in three year old hype that said it was revolutionary whereas now I can't see how it's all that differenct from the first HL and I'm stunned they got away with some of the things they are doing.

Actually, you can see Gordon's arms when he reloads his gun

Also, the see-saw puzzle I got through just by standing on the far end and taking a running jump towards the heightened ledge, no brick physics involved.

I don't know, maybe I haven't played enough next-gen games yet, but the graphics are totally stunning to me, even though it's 3 years old.

I'm no FPS fan by any means, but HL just grabs me for some reason.

This guy is great!  Thanks for posting