If you’re reading this and haven’t already, go and play You Have To Burn the Rope. It won’t take long, and it’s fun! 🙂

It’s quite funny, check it out. Actually some quite insightful nominations (go Hotel Dusk!). Some great recipient videos as well 😉 (look out for the huge group receiving the best online game award!). While it is spoiling it, there’s also Jonathan Coulton on the show, wheee 😀

Amazing how they got it together, really good episode. As really the only UK videogame show (I think there are some strange short or rubbish ones on the cable channels…), it ain’t half bad. 😉

However, it doesn’t have any reviews, which usually are cracking, so check the archives for the previous web episodes too if you’re able.

Let me start by saying I have a huge love of voiced videogames, which many are nowadays – RPG’s being the ones I like most. But harkon back a fair few years – before DVD’s, even before CD’s – what was possible when putting a voice to a sentence? Continue reading Voiceacting in your head →

I’ve found, via the miracle of “View Manual”, that Team Fortress 2 has one – a rather funny one. You can download it, and I put up PNG’s of the pages, and it’s a funny look at how the engineer can build his “Sentry v2.1 from TF Industries”. 🙂

Funnily enough, I did wonder what Team Fortress 2 did about teaching players the basics – it seems like absolutely nothing, which is a shame. It’d be a good game in some respects (due to having nice respawn times and easy to learn classes) to play if you’ve never played a FPS before. With no tutorial, and no manual, it’s pretty difficult to start playing! I guess Half Life 2 is include for that reason, to learn the basics of movement and shooting there. This manual is nearly unknown (as far as I’ve seen),

Anyway, the manual is a blast. I love the instructions for upgrading:

Loosen both sides (swing wrench violently) of main
housing barrel to allow for separation and retract-
ion of both the main barrel and housing container.

Most of the instructions say to hit the damn sentry gun with included wrench (selectable from the HUD of course) 😀 like against the spy’s sapper:

When Ultra-Sapper device is affixed to the top sec-
tion of the sentry device, remove red and green
wire and tune dial (bludgeon device with reckless
abandon using wrench included in package. Follow
up with sporadic shotgun fire in the immediate
vicinitiy of sentry device. Shotgun also included in
package.) to frequency KZQ-10z.

I wish there were similar manuals for the other classes. I’d love to know who made the spies odd working knife or disguise kit, or perhaps how the Medic’s Medigun actually works! This however, is an neat unexpected Easter Egg and likely a bit unknown!

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I checked Portal and there isn’t a manual for it, sadly, since I’d have loved a similar thing from Aperture Science 🙁