Thrik

Wrestlevania? More like wants strapping to the back of a lorry and reversing into an oak tree a dozen times.

There's no doubt a market for that, but I'd personally rather see material written to be read for the sake of being read in articles not specific to one game. In other words, not reviews and previews but instead general features about the industry like Thumbs is (was?) known for. If I'm reading a review then like you say, chances are I know a lot about the game already and just want to know what's good and bad about it before making a decision. That's not to say I'd be happy with a great big pros/cons list, but I do like a minimum of fluff.

Hee Spider, it was a Star Wars quote. I was being slightly tongue-in-cheek. His points still remain sound though. I agree with you in saying that reviews shouldn't just become soulless buyer's guides, but they certainly don't need to be as long-winded and generally tiresome to read as they tend to be — not to mention the piss poor humour that writers try to use at times. With less superfluous padding words and more focused reviewing they could be infinitely more entertaining. It is not rare to find writers who think that it is a clever idea to make sure that they use every single technically appropriate word like I have done in this sentence, which makes a review an absolute horror to read. I think it's worth pointing out at this point that I'm not really complaining about the most well known sites such as IGN and GameSpot, but instead the many smaller entities out there that could provide entertaining reading material if they didn't fill their reviews with so much bollocks.

Spider, the ability to speak (or write) does not make you intelligent. ; His points are valid. While I'm no fan of shit writing, I'm also no fan of writers who clearly go well out of their way to pack in fancy words and adhere to every English rule ever written. This usually results in excessively long sentences and paragraphs, and boring text. The overall goal of writing is to communicate. If you use words that a large part of the audience needs to consult a dictionary to understand, you've failed as a writer. The same applies to writing ten paragraphs that each equal a full 800x600 screen in height. But then, if you enjoy only having an audience of about 20 people and somehow think writing clearly and concisely makes you dumb, by all means ignore the article. ¬¬

There was also of course a massive portal in Half-Life 2 ... Screenshot Obviously nowhere near as advanced as the portals in Portal, but portals have consistently been part of the HL series. It'd seem a fairly natural progression for a future episode to feature them more prominently.

I was talking about TF2 elmuerte, but Portal looks hot too.

Yeah, I really can't believe how awesome it looks. Yet another Valve product that I'm almost desperate to throw my money at. :~

And for those looking for something to quickly show friends (I can't convince people to download a big wmv so easily), it's also on YouTube and Google Video: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-632852377335932141

Oooooooh, baby. Bring it on.

Consolevania reviewed The Ship in the latest episode, so get it downloaded.

I think it just occured to them that BF2 is essentially what they were originally shooting for with TF2; check out the Wikipedia article which includes all the info released about TF2 over the years and you'll notice it reads like a design document for BF2 or something. Going back and focusing on the arcadey, excellent gameplay of TFC seems like a smarter option to me. It'd be truly tragic if the tried and tested gameplay of TF died out and got twisted into some more realistic rubbish, which is what TF2 was originally going to be. Would have been cool in 1999, but not now. I'm really, really glad they're instead planning on reviving the glory of TFC. Just a shame they're not distributing it with something that more people will own.

Looks amazing and great.

Sounds like you were expecting a bit too much from it because of the hype. While it is a very nicely presented and fun game, it's certainly not something that redefines gaming or even real-time strategy. Hype aside, the fact remains that it's an indie/budget title and thus doesn't have the production values of your average C&C. If that's what you were hoping for, well, too bad I guess.

Irish? Scottish!

No, let's not stop. Let's watch a six minute compilation video of the excellent Alan Partridge, including the car graffiti bit. ;D http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdC5Hb9Pk1A

<-- This is Alan Partridge, FYI. Actually this is: | | V

You uncultured WANKERS.

Just a quicky. Anyone done this before? If so, do you know if they ship it so that it'll arrive on the release date, or they ship it on the release date?

You obviously don't have a Subway around your area, Oath. :~

Dude: New Mario Bros is good as fuck, incidentally.

A broadband connection and ability to read Japanese I'd have thought.

With a copy of New Mario Bros on my lap right now, I can happily confirm that Amazon (UK) does indeed (try to) ship games so they arrive on their release date. Yay! No macings for Spaff, then.

Amazon is based in the UK too so I'm assuming they stock and send from there when you go through the .co.uk website. I preordered New Mario Bros a while back so I guess we'll see TOMORROW whether or not they do ship to meet the date.