"Is thumbelina size 10, On a Wednesday"

It's Wednesday, so for people seriously interested in video games that means only one thing. Yes folks, Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw has a new video review. This week his chosen game to demean, humiliate and destroy is... Mercenaries 2: World in Flames.

You can watch the review here: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/231-Mercenaries-2

Now for those of you who don't know who Yahtzee is, he's a Brit currently living in Australia who works for a website called The Escapist. He's notorious for hating virtually every game he reviews, and is extremely apt at picking at every minuscule flaw. Oh and he's fucking hilarious!

To say he rips most games to pieces, I usually do tend to agree with most of his criticisms. Yes, the face that you can loose the cops on GTA IV by simply driving in a straight line is silly. Yes, 90% of the Oblivion world is boring and the AI of most of its inhabitants is insane. And yes, Fantasy Land Dizzy is the best game ever!!

There has been, however, one instance where I didn't agree with Yahtzee. That was regarding his review of Metal Gear Solid 4. I game which, in my opinion, is one of the top 5 games EVER.

Yahtzee tends to pick on games from 2 categories of games:

1) The really high profile games. Games like GTA IV, MGS 4, Halo 3 and Super Smash Bro's

and

2) Games that really, really, really suck. Games like Too Human, Haze, The Witcher and.. Mercenaries 2.

If the particular game is from the second pile then you know you're in for a treat. If you thought it was bad, just wait until Yahtzee has ripped it up, spat on it, wiped his ass on it and used it to clobber paedophiles over the head.

Anyway you really should check him out! While your at it watch the rest of his reviews so you're up to speed for next week.


Now on to a quick look back at what's happened in the gaming industry in the last week.

The release date for LittleBigPlanet has changed a few times. At the moment, Media Molecule are set on a 24th October release. Which gives us all just over 3 weeks to get our filthy little paws on it. And I for one cannot wait!! This game really is going to be a benchmark in video game production and user content capabilities. Do yourself a favour and pre-order your copy now from Play.com.

Meanwhile Fallout 3 and WWE Smackdown vs Raw 2009 are building up to be really great games. The former being an FPS/RPG set in apocalyptic Washington DC and the later being the latest installment of Yukes' ever popular wrestling franchise.

Also, Dead Space is still looking great too. For thos of you who are out of the loop, Dead Space is a third-person action game which puts you at the controls of engineer, Isaac Clarke as he battles a polymorphic alien species called the 'Necromorphs' on board an interstellar mining ship. The fact that this guy is basically a miner.. in space.. makes me immediately think of Red Dwarf. And then you read the word 'polymorphic' and again are reminded of that episode- Polymorphs, in Series III of the sci-fi sitcom. There's nothing like a bit of nostalgia to intensify the hype around a video game!!

I really do hope it turns out to be a solid title, though with it being made by EA I'm not entirely confident. Still, it looks beautiful (in a blood and gore, alien spaceship kinda way) and the next-gen consoles are in dire need of a decent space-horror game. It reminds me a lot of the first Alien film, which is always a good thing! I personally can't wait to get my hands on it and scare myself shitless!

Over and out.