Team Fortress Review Update......and shizzle

Team Fortress is proving very hard to play at the moment, in that no one’s ever online when I am and it’s online only. I’ve managed to sink about an hour into it and I’ve found it to be reasonable fun. There are 9 different “classes” of character you can play as and I’ve spent most of it playing as The Sniper (Self explanator9 and the Grunt (A big gun wielding nutter)


I’ve not played it enough to actually review it and it’s likely that I won’t any time soon, so I’ll “hang fire” (hate that term) on it for now and will get back to it at a later date. In the meantime, I’ll think of another game to review or I’ll do another movie review (Iron Man 3 is sitting on the side of my TV giving me a disparaging look for the past month. Poor blighter still isn’t out of the plastic). I’ve also got The Hobbit and Blade Runner on Blu Ray and have yet to watch them.

Rest assured, there will be something soon. I could complain about the day I had yesterday for endless pages, but I’ve done too much maudlin stuff on here in the past and now I want to do funny stuff or righteously angry stuff, as they give me the most enjoyment. A good rant energises every section of my body, but it has to be entertaining for the reader, otherwise I might as well go and see a shrink, who is at least paid to hear me complain.

You come on here for escapism. If reading me on a suicidal tangent is your idea of escapism, then you probably live in Luxembourg. However, if reading me on an angry, yet hopefully humorous tangent, is more your bag then I’ll hopefully be able to provide that in spades.

So yeah, this officially is a “fluff” piece. I’ve written purely to confirm to everyone that I’m still here. It’s a place holder, an interim champion, a short snappy bit of nothing disguised as something. I’ve just wasted your time really. Not much to see here. Go and have a nice cake or something. Hva eit on me (Metaphorically of course, I ain’t buying you no cake)

Ta

Dominik Diamonds Are Forever: The Orange Box, Part 3: Portal

Portal is an absolutely cracking game. I know another internet goon like me espousing the brilliance of this game must be getting redundant for some, but it really has to be said. Portal is up there with The Wire, Breaking Bad and Mr Muscle Window Cleaner in the “everyone universally bangs on about how bloody brilliant it is” category. But it is bloody brilliant. It really, really, REALLY is!

Portal is a game that challenges and enthrals in equal measure. Once I started playing it, I really couldn’t stop myself. I’d finish a puzzle and say “Well, that was fun, time for me to go feed/clothe/wash myself now before I become even more a shuffling wreck than I already am”. But then I’d walk into the next room “just to have a quick look at the next puzzle” and I’d ultimately then complete another three in a row. I just couldn’t help myself. It was like when I had a box of 12 Krispy Kreme donuts and ended up eating half the box because I still had coffee remaining and I just couldn’t stop dipping them.

To try and explain Portal won’t be entirely easy but I’ll give it a go. Basically, it’s a first person puzzler. You play an unnamed female character that wakes up in a strange testing centre. You quickly acquire a gun that can create Portals in the walls of the complex. You then have to use said Portal gun to try and escape the complex itself. Sometimes you won’t be able to access certain areas before you have pressed a button or moved a block onto a switch to ensure the escape door remains open. In situations like these, you will need more than just the Portal Gun itself to make it to safety.

I’ve personally never been hugely fond of games that included puzzles. The original Tomb Raider games on the Playstation would sometimes drive me to despair with some of their fiendish and downright annoying conundrums. However, Portal never frustrated me in that way. I mean, it did frustrate me, but in a way that made me want to solve the puzzle. It didn’t contain the agonising frustration that made me want to use Tomb Raider 2 as a £40 coaster.

The difficulty curve of the game was set up just right for me. It eased me in gradually and by the time the puzzles started getting harder, I felt prepared to tackle them. Considering that I’m hardly what you’d call “good” at video games, I can only conclude that Portal has been weighted perfectly in regards to difficulty. The game doesn’t outstay its welcome either. It clocks in at around 3 hours and is paced to complement the run time exceptionally well.

As far as negatives go, I don’t really have any. The game is perfect for what it needs to be. If it was released on it’s own for £40, it would not be worth the money as there just isn’t enough game to justify that price. As part of The Orange Box though, it’s a veritable steal. I almost feel guilty playing it, as if I’ve unfairly got one over on the people at Valve.

If you don’t like puzzlers, I’m still quite certain you will enjoy this. I really can’t find a complaint with it. It exceeds everything it should have been and happily embraces everything it can be.

Portal is just amazing and if you don’t like it, you can go fist a Yak

Rating – 10

Play it, love it, praise it and have a pint of sunshine while you’re at it.

Up next, we finish The Orange Box by reviewing "Team Fortress"