Recently I downloaded Trilby: The Art of Theft, a game by Ben 'Yahtzee' Croshaw, well known for his Zero Punctuation Reviews. I havn't played any of his previous games, but what I know is that they are Point'n'Click adventure games, which means I should probably get around to playing them, but back to the topic.

Trilby is an eccentric english cat-burgler who has recently moved to The United States, the game states that it focuses on gameplay rather than story, but despite this, I find an intrigueing scandal unraveling in the story, and me, being someone who insists on a story in a game, well, I'm loving it, and I'm starting to wish I'd get my arse into gear and stop setting off so many alarms so I could advance it and find out what happens. As well as this, the gameplay I find quite superb, it's difficult, but unlike when I usually find a game difficult, I don't get frustrated, maybe thats because I can hardly fault the game for it when it was me who blundered into a camera, or maybe it's just because I'm one of those Yahtzee fanboys who just agree's with everything he says.

Trilby seems to be a quite likeable main character, maybe its because I'm english and he's taking american's money, maybe it's because he burgles in a pinstripe suit, an awesome hat, and with an umbrella as a weapon, and partly it's because of the comments he'll make when you find something of interest.

The graphics are simple, but I can hardly fault a game made by one man for that, and the environments make the best of the 2D. The varying degree of shadows were put in logical places, although I found it hard to tell whether I was in the light or not (Except for the light visibility indicator) when I was on the fifth heist.

The controls I found difficult at first, but they're simple and with practice you can use them almost thoughtlessly, if you're anything like me you'll start playing another game and wonder why your character dosn't skulk back into the shadows when you press x.

The missions I obviously found the best part of the game (It would be a bit pointless praising it if I didn't.) There's something greatly satisfying about seeing a guard walk right past you in the shadows, totally unaware, or silencing a guard with a quick zap with your taser before he sets of an alarm. Even when I was asked to mash Z then X I was more surprised than turned off from the playing experience, I guess it made sense for what I was trying to do, and I also guess Yahtzee was making some kind of sarky reference about hating quick time events.

I reccomend this game to anyone, unless they're only happy when they're getting laid on Grand Theft Auto, i.e. They're 8. I especially reccomend this seeing as it's free, and when compared to a lot of games that I have paid for/have been asked to consider paying for after pissing about for a while in the trial version, I would use the non-free games to whipe my arse. For anyone who's interested, I'll leave a link here and hope that Tom dosn't cave my head in with his Blam-hammer, seeing as I'm quite sure it's allowable with the rules, makes sense to me, otherwise why would there be a 'Link' button?

Trilby: The Art of Theft - Download

Today I discovered I had a rather nimminy-pimminy little response to my review of 'Arcane'.
Now, maybe it's just because these artists can't handle anything less than "THSI IS TEH B3ST G4M3 ON NEWGROUNDS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! U ROK D00D!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" after reading this response, I would like to use my news page here to defend myself from as Yahtzee put it, Team Retard. So, I've decided, I'll copy and paste the response here, and point things out from it.

"this is a game, not a movie, try examining the gameplay instead of the story and the music. nobody forces you to not press the SKIP button, and nobody forces you not to turn the music off from the OPTIONS..."

Now to examine this response, and if I decide to be petty, correct spelling and grammar. Oh, and I'll also copy and paste some things from the game page to prove my point as well.

First of all; "try examining the gameplay instead of the story and the music" Now, unless I'm mistaken (I'M NOT! HAH!), I did examine the gameplay, I wrote; "Despite my earlier worries the combat is actually quite good my only problem is that the shields just look too small, and it can be quite repetitive" That's pretty much the gameplay. Full stop. That's all I really had to say to sum up the gameplay. Regarding the story, well, lets take a quote from the game-page; "Fight and earn your way to glory in this middle age style tournament using bows, boomerangs, kunais, swords, axes and more!
This intense Real time action RPG game includes:" As you can see, I've highlighted the acronym; 'RPG', now to use an outside source to prove my point in this case; "Role-playing games are a form of interactive and collaborative storytelling." I think this proves my point rather well, it claims to be an RPG but neglects decent storytelling for the kind of story that I could write in my early years of primary school. Regarding the music (Yeah, I REALLY hate the music.) WHAT KIND OF PERSON PUTS F****ING TECHNO IN A F****ING SELF PROCLAIMED RPG?! It's like opening up Neverwinter Nights (Which was a good example of an RPG, not as good as Baldur's Gate, but the only baldur's gate I expect most people here to know of, is Dark Alliance, which is a hack'n'slash) and being hit full in the face by Scooter.

Now I'll move on to another part of this response; "nobody forces you to not press the SKIP button, and nobody forces you not to turn the music off from the OPTIONS..." Luckily, I can get through this rationally, without the urge to stab someone in the face. *Ahem* I, like to think myself as a reviewer, or at least a critic, now, how the hell am I supposed to properly review something without getting the full (headache causing) experience?

I'm going to leave things here and say; Don't complain to me if your miniscule Naruto watching brains are too weak to dissolve anything less than a 10 and a badly spelt "U ROK D00D!!!!"

I rest my case.

So, after quite a long time of being on this site and reviewing games (I used to do movies, now I just watch them if they look interesting, actually, I only tend to play games if they look interesting as well, maybe I'll start reviewing things if people pester me enoug to do them.) I decided to use this news post thing to say hello, so, uh... Hello!

I'll probably start posting more stuff here if something seems important enough to post.

On my banner you can see my sucky spur of the moment tagline, if it makes you chuckle, good for you, if it makes you feel rather queasy, then, uh.... Blame some other guy, I hold no responsibilities.

Feel free to comment, it's likely I'll respond because I have nothing better to do.