<img attachment="264390_full.jpg" align="left" class="frame"><div style="margin-left: 160px">Of late, there's been no better place to go for a quick review of the latest games than Yahtzee. His <a href="http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/zeropunctuation/2808-Zero-Punctuation-Crysis" source="Escapist Magazine">review of Crysis</a> is a beauty. The plot is summed as follows: <bq>Your task is to infiltrate some island in the South Pacific and slaughter Koreans. There's probably more to it than that, but I found it hard to sympathize with the heroes when they're using expensive, top-of-the-range hardware and are backed up by the entire armed forces of the entire United States while most of the enemy have to make do with war-time machine guns and harsh language.</bq> The hardware requirements are described thusly: <bq>Crysis is apparently designed for some hypothetical future computer. From space. I played it on a brand-new gaming PC that resembled the monolith from 2001 constructed from obsidian by the proud dwarves of Middle Earth and it still chugged when things got busy.<fn></bq> The fun continued with vehicles: <bq>It's a somewhat above-average, first-person shooter. Until you get into a vehicle, that is. And then it becomes an adventure into annoyance and failure. Every single one handles like a three-legged mule and occupying one during battle is like occupying a pile of gasoline and matches that explodes when the enemy so much as coughs at it. ... There is one section near the end where you're forced to pilot a futuristic helicopter jobbie and well: imagine that you've just woken from a twenty-year coma, celebrated the occasion by drinking six bottles of Mad Dog 2020, then were called upon to pilot a light aircraft bearing a cargo of hippopatami.<fn> And they expect you to enter dogfights with this thing; that's like trying to solve a Rubik's cube with your elbows.</bq></div> <hr> <ft>At this point, the computer in the video has a thought balloon that reads "Oh God. It hurts."</ft> <ft>The caption above the helicopter graphic at this point reads "Jesus Fuck Christ Fuck", which is a highly accurate depiction of that frustration encountered when you play a game with a vehicle that handles as described above <i>and</i> you're forced to perform a mission with it in order to continue (I'm looking at you <i>GTA: San Andreas</i>).</ft>