Comments on:

By: Jason L

Jason L — Wed, 15 Mar 2006 16:41:47 +0000

Congrats on the successful review; the SA forumites are not easy to please! I'd love to be proven wrong about Oblivion; we'll see, won't we. I'm wondering if you've had any contact you can talk about with BioShock? It just recently came out of left field for me, and has me terribly excited. The impression I'm getting is System Shock's je ne sais quoi pedigree + Deus Ex' freedom, self-building and AI + Art Deco Submarine Vacuumtubepunk City, with the attention to detail and cohesive environment which I've so far found lacking in Elder Scrolls games.

By: Pentadact

Pentadact — Mon, 13 Mar 2006 19:59:31 +0000

Cheers. I can’t wallow in narcissism on that SA thread though because it seems to require an account to view.

By: Ian

Ian — Sun, 12 Mar 2006 19:27:53 +0000

30Boxes is a cool find too, I’m nicking that.

By: Rob

Rob — Sat, 11 Mar 2006 21:52:22 +0000

Awesome Oblivion review Tom.

You might be pleased to know that someone scanned and posted it on the Something Awful forums and it was followed by lots of people praising its quality :)

By: Dave

Dave — Mon, 06 Mar 2006 04:33:50 +0000

Congrats on the new house, wish i owned a house. . . but i still live with my mom, lol. i agree with out about the being offline and missing games especially Battlefield 2 and Half-Life: DM. the borders i go to doesn’t have the UK PCG so i can’t read your reviews. lame huh? but i reallly want to. anyway, keep up the obviously (cover page man) good work. . .

By: johnj

johnj — Fri, 03 Mar 2006 20:08:42 +0000

It’s no wonder you stopped playing fahrenheit, as it’s utterly abysmal. The reviews led me to believe this was heralding in a new era of gaming, HAHAHAHAHA! There’s a barely a game, filling it with quick time events (that bare no relation to what is happening on screen at all, there was a dancing one that was out of time ffs) and what amounts to little more than hide and seek, is ridiculous. The graphics are bland and medicore and the animation makes all the characters look like the thunderbirds, and their facial animation just doesn’t work. Then there’s the erratic change of pace where suddenly a load of stuff happens in about five minutes that has absolutely no explanation, I wuldn’t have minded that if the rest of the game wasn’t so bad. I mean, I read in one mag about it analysing the human psyche! What! There’s a black dude who you contrl…who’s apartment is decked out in 70s funk and when yo control him yes, the soundtrack is 70s funk. Then of course you’ve got your straight talking partner. And the dialogue is atrocious.

“Hey maybe you should take up another game….chess!”

as your playing some white boy at basket ball,your black character says possibly the unwittiest thing I have ever heard in my life. And then later:

“he needs to be dealt with definitively”

“he will be dealt with definitively”

dealt with definitively ? what on earth.

The only good thing you can say about this game, is the score is pretty excellent for the most part. It even has some embarrasing bullet time / air fighting scenes that look absolutely ridiculous, and while the score is good the sound effects are so wildly off most of the time, excellent work, videogames press , OR NOT.

By: Graham

Graham — Fri, 03 Mar 2006 10:03:32 +0000

I kind of thought that about Act of the Apostle to begin with, but they’ve grown on me.

Lots of story/journey type songs on there besides those though. I love White Collar Boy and Sukie In The Graveyard. Murdoch tells stories good, yes.

By: David

David — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 19:20:15 +0000

Agreed! Different, but still brilliant. Though oddly, the two Acts of the Apostle seem to me to be the weakest songs (except Song for Sunshine which I really can’t stand) – ‘oddly’ because they’re the kind of ‘story/journey’ songs that B&S have been so good at previously.

By: Pentadact

Pentadact — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 19:08:35 +0000

Ah, I only said I found the story. And David: yay! (oem).

By: The_B

The_B — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 18:56:31 +0000

There probably should be some sort of exsasperated comment that you are one part of the entity that is “The Spy” (As Graham put it, “Like the last boss of Path of Neo”.

As I put it: “Only good.”)

However, the fact that you are probably playing a lot of Oblivion will no doubt ease some of the pain, damn you.

By: David

David — Wed, 01 Mar 2006 20:51:36 +0000

Excellent on the house front. Congrats! Also: new Belle and Sebastian – yay! or nay :( ?