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Post by JDarkside on Aug 5, 2015 10:42:25 GMT -5
I actually like his videos, he's gotten smarter with them overtime. But I don't watch them anymore because that means I'd support The Escapist in some way, and I have far too many bones to pick with that garbage site.
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Post by GamerL on Aug 5, 2015 11:21:53 GMT -5
I kind of fucking hate Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw, he helped start the trend where it's cool to hate video games, not enjoy them. When Zero Punctuation first appeared, we had already had The Angry Video Game Nerd and his slew of imitators. The Nostalgia Critic and The Irate Gamer had been around for a few years. You can't really blame Yahtzee for the angry, overly negative reviewer gimmick becoming a thing. It was overused before he even got there. What he should really be criticized for is the number of times when he's blatantly wrong, usually because he's only played through the tutorial areas. But even that might be due to strict deadlines or things of that nature. Who knows. Except for when he thought you had to walk on a hamster wheel for fifteen minutes to advance in Super Paper Mario. There's no excuse for him being dense there. As an aside, the "everyone should just be positive about games all the time" sentiment that keeps cropping up lately is equally terrible. Other people are and should be allowed to state their opinions, even if it means that they don't like what you or I like. AVGN is something different, he plays and reviews old games, not new ones, I mean there's similarities sure but that's a pretty key difference. And look, I don't believe "everyone should just be positive about games all the time", sometimes a game just plain sucks, for example I fucking hate Call of Duty, people can diss that series all they want, I'm just saying that some people take it too far, they forget that in any given era there's good games and bad games, people look back on the NES era for example as a borderline mythical utopian age of nothing but classic games, but that simply isn't true, this is still the era that also gave us Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. I actually never watched any of Yahtzee's videos until reading about them in this thread, I don't agree with all of what I've seen but I'm not seeing anything particularly terrible being said here? Especially with your examples: Bioshock: I LOVE this game, I even triple dipped getting it on 360, PC and PS3, but it literally is System Shock 2 but too easy, like this was a conscious part of its development process to sell the atmosphere more through its graphics and sound than through combat. He dislikes the game for this and I disagree, but that's a totally valid way to discuss the game. SoulCalibur 4: This game is rushed crap. It's fun for me and I played it constantly but come on. It's hyper-broken even compared to US PS2 Soul Calibur 3, with not even 1/3 of the content. Even the devs were openly embarrassed by it which is why SoulCalibur 5 ended up being pretty good. Halo 3 I'm not going to comment because I completely skipped it, but I'm not really seeing the reason for the hate for this guy beyond the unimportant "this person dislikes a game I like won't someone please think of the feelings of the multi-million dollar publishers." And I think it's naive to think that one person's efforts singularly made it "cool and rebellious to shit on modern games" when that's been going on since basically forever. Like you can look at game reviews from 1993 talking about how whatever game was ruined because it was made for consoles first and therefore for children, or the massive initial hate Metroid Prime received from some dissenting sites because it's a first person game that isn't a Quake III clone. The "this is the THINKING MAN'S first person shooter" game critique plague of the late 90s. "Is Gone Home a video game" was like the great mystery of the fall of 2013 when you could put a kid in front of it for two seconds and they'll know it's a video game. The idea that the endgame of writing or making videos about games should be "to be 100% objectively correct about if this game is a good game as long as that's what most people already think" is way off target." From what little I'm seeing of his videos, he's accomplishing the mission of "I get an overview of this game and know if I would like it or not," plus some ideas are brought up that I may not have thought about. Seems fine? The point about Bioshock is valid yes, but he never said "at the end of the day the game offers unique atmosphere and an interesting story and is maybe still worth playing", he just kinda dismissed it as over-hyped and left it at that, in my opinion a review should weigh the good and the bad, not solely focus on the negative, I also feel that story matters in games, anyone that just completely dismisses a game's story as irrelevant is a bit of an idiot, frankly (like say, the people who dismissed Gone Home entirely). Halo 3 was nothing too special (though it wasn't bad), but it was like, OF COURSE he's gonna shit on Halo, of course he would, it was predicable to the point of being boring. At the end of the day this has just been my perception and experience with gaming culture over the last 8 years, maybe I'm not right about everything, but this is the impression I've gotten, but to be clear though I've long moved past the point in giving a shit what anyone online thinks of any particular new game, I play whatever I find interesting and decide myself if it's worthwhile, people can say whatever they want online and that's their prerogative of course, to be honest I had kinda forgotten Yahtzee even existed until this article, however when the topic is brought up, I will say it's a bit frustrating to me that it's the 8th gen now, but people seem to be stuck in a 7th gen attitude.
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Post by Neo Rasa on Aug 5, 2015 12:34:43 GMT -5
The point about Bioshock is valid yes, but he never said "at the end of the day the game offers unique atmosphere and an interesting story and is maybe still worth playing", he just kinda dismissed it as over-hyped and left it at that, in my opinion a review should weigh the good and the bad, not solely focus on the negative, I also feel that story matters in games, anyone that just completely dismisses a game's story as irrelevant is a bit of an idiot, frankly (like say, the people who dismissed Gone Home entirely). Halo 3 was nothing too special (though it wasn't bad), but it was like, OF COURSE he's gonna shit on Halo, of course he would, it was predicable to the point of being boring. At the end of the day this has just been my perception and experience with gaming culture over the last 8 years, maybe I'm not right about everything, but this is the impression I've gotten, but to be clear though I've long moved past the point in giving a shit what anyone online thinks of any particular new game, I play whatever I find interesting and decide myself if it's worthwhile, people can say whatever they want online and that's their prerogative of course, to be honest I had kinda forgotten Yahtzee even existed until this article, however when the topic is brought up, I will say it's a bit frustrating to me that it's the 8th gen now, but people seem to be stuck in a 7th gen attitude. Why is he required to not be dismissive of Bioshock, but he's "allowed" to say whatever he wants about a Call of Duty installment? A review shouldn't do anything you say here, because an ideal review is going to give a clear picture of what the reviewer takes away from the game. Any approach towards doing that is valid. The idea that we want to take a serious worthy look at a game, but are then ideally going to accomplish that by "weighing the good and the bad" as if each paragraph or video or podcast segment about it is just part of a glorified checklist is really counterproductive for some people. So why should they have to review games that way? Yahtzee or anyone else shouldn't be judged just because they don't go easy on a game that has a bigger budget or whatever. Who cares? What is 7th gen attitude? If anything the 7th gen is the opposite of what you say, with the big publishers pulling in more $$$, critical and popular good will than ever. It's never been a "trend" to hate popular or heavily hyped games because that's a thing people have always done while discussing any creative field for all of history. I mean more appropriately to this thread, even proto-nerd lord H.P. Lovecraft himself WALKED OUT of Dracula and wrote angry rants about it to his friends. So what?
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Post by llj on Aug 5, 2015 13:16:16 GMT -5
I wonder, did he also start the trend of nerds wearing fedoras? He's the earliest example I can think of. I'm quite sure Seth, the Canadian alt-comic artist, predates him on this.
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Post by nerdybat on Aug 5, 2015 13:23:39 GMT -5
Never saw any problem with Yahtzee and Zero Punctuation. For me, Ben shows quite a good knowledge in video game industry, and even if most of his reviews are somewhat exaggerated for comedic effect, there are a lot of good, valid points in his videos.
What's for the game itself, it makes me remember "Darkest Dungeon", considering that both of them are Lovecraftian roguelikes with sanity meter as a primary game mechanic. And "Darkest Dungeon" was an outstanding game, so yeah, will definitely spend my money on this one c:
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Post by kaoru on Aug 5, 2015 13:27:47 GMT -5
I honestly never took a Zero Punctuation video as a review to base my playing decissions on. They are pure entertainment for me, not factual information.
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Post by GamerL on Aug 5, 2015 15:54:51 GMT -5
The point about Bioshock is valid yes, but he never said "at the end of the day the game offers unique atmosphere and an interesting story and is maybe still worth playing", he just kinda dismissed it as over-hyped and left it at that, in my opinion a review should weigh the good and the bad, not solely focus on the negative, I also feel that story matters in games, anyone that just completely dismisses a game's story as irrelevant is a bit of an idiot, frankly (like say, the people who dismissed Gone Home entirely). Halo 3 was nothing too special (though it wasn't bad), but it was like, OF COURSE he's gonna shit on Halo, of course he would, it was predicable to the point of being boring. At the end of the day this has just been my perception and experience with gaming culture over the last 8 years, maybe I'm not right about everything, but this is the impression I've gotten, but to be clear though I've long moved past the point in giving a shit what anyone online thinks of any particular new game, I play whatever I find interesting and decide myself if it's worthwhile, people can say whatever they want online and that's their prerogative of course, to be honest I had kinda forgotten Yahtzee even existed until this article, however when the topic is brought up, I will say it's a bit frustrating to me that it's the 8th gen now, but people seem to be stuck in a 7th gen attitude. Why is he required to not be dismissive of Bioshock, but he's "allowed" to say whatever he wants about a Call of Duty installment? A review shouldn't do anything you say here, because an ideal review is going to give a clear picture of what the reviewer takes away from the game. Any approach towards doing that is valid. The idea that we want to take a serious worthy look at a game, but are then ideally going to accomplish that by "weighing the good and the bad" as if each paragraph or video or podcast segment about it is just part of a glorified checklist is really counterproductive for some people. So why should they have to review games that way? Yahtzee or anyone else shouldn't be judged just because they don't go easy on a game that has a bigger budget or whatever. Who cares? What is 7th gen attitude? If anything the 7th gen is the opposite of what you say, with the big publishers pulling in more $$$, critical and popular good will than ever. It's never been a "trend" to hate popular or heavily hyped games because that's a thing people have always done while discussing any creative field for all of history. I mean more appropriately to this thread, even proto-nerd lord H.P. Lovecraft himself WALKED OUT of Dracula and wrote angry rants about it to his friends. So what? Dude, anyone can do anything they want when reviewing a game obviously, I'm not saying anyone is "required" to review game a certain way, but if someone does review games in a way I don't like, then I wont really value their opinion when deciding what game to buy, I have that prerogative don't I? In my opinion, if someone is reviewing games professionally, be it for a magazine or website or whatever I do think they should take a slightly impersonal view of the game, because the purpose is to inform the consumer of the game's quality, not just catalog your personal thoughts on it, so the "right" way would be for example say "the game has some clunky controls, but pretty graphics and can be fun if you can look past the control issues, you may want to try the game to see what you think 7/10" versus "the game was too easy, I like my games to be super difficult, yeah there was a story or whatever but I don't give a shit about any of that 2/10", I assume Yahtzee is payed for what he does, right? Do you see what saying? On the other hand if you're just running a personal blog or whatever then obviously you're free to say whatever you want and if I feel like your opinions are interesting and move beyond the tired snarky, cynical bullshit then I just may give your blog a read (this guy is pretty good). I guess it's because I cut my teeth on video game magazines, where reviewers would, even if they weren't crazy about the game, say "if you're craving a new RPG you may want to give it a rental", understanding that unless the game was total garbage like a Superman 64 there may still be an audience out there for it, that's all I'm asking from reviewers. To get away from Yahtzee though, for another example of the kind of reviewing I hate (and probably the worst example), look at Jim Sterling (who probably not coincidentally is part of The Escapist now), he was payed to review games but acted like it was his personal blog, if there was at least one thing about a game that rubbed him the wrong way he gave it a bad review, irregardless of what anyone else may think, the best example of this was his review for Arkham Origins, which he gave a bad review solely because he thought it was greedy for WB to make it, he never said anything like "though if you're just desperate for more Batman you may want to try it". That's the kind of garbage I hate man, there's nothing stopping people from writing it sure, but there's nothing stopping me from disagreeing or not wanting to read/watch it
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Post by Feynman on Aug 5, 2015 16:02:00 GMT -5
Zero Punctuation is not in any way intended to be a balanced, is-this-game-worth-spending-money-on kind of review. It's Yahtzee's own very personal opinions, filtered through an extra layer of hyperbole and snark, and they're intended to be entertainment. He picks on popular games, he picks on niche games, and even when he quite likes a game it gets a heaping pile of criticism. That's just what the show is about.
Anyhow, I bought The Consuming Shadow, because I rather enjoy Yahtzee's games. It's okay. The game's strongest features are the writing and atmosphere, as well as the logic puzzle you need to solve in order to banish the right god. Those are excellent. The rest is a mixed bag. My biggest gripe is that the game suffers a lot from lack of depth and gets very same-y, very quickly. Once you figure out the right way to play a character, you've learned it forever because there is no variation at all.
For example, in a game like FTL, you can use the same ship a dozen times and have wildly different experiences. The items you find and encounters you get force you to change your strategy to survive. What weapons did you get? Did you find a cloaking device? A teleporter? What crew members do you have? All of those things mean you can use the same ship over and over and over and every time you'll need to use different strategies because each of those things make a huge impact on how you approach the obstacles in the game.
The Consuming Shadow doesn't have that. Almost none of the items you find have a meaningful effect on the strategies you need to use to succeed. Getting a Rosary or Body Armor or a Stab-Proof Vest might make the game easier, but they don't actually change how you play. Your 10th run of the game as the Scholar is going to be functionally identical to your 100th run. Because of that, once you've beaten the game a few times with each character, you've seen everything the game has to offer. You can play a bit more to get all the diary pages, or grind to fill in the enemy descriptions, but in terms of gameplay you're done, you've seen it all, there's nothing left.
That's a crippling problem to have in this genre. The best rougelikes and roguelites use randomness and variation to force players to change their strategies and tactics on the fly to adapt to wildly different conditions, but the Consuming Shadow falls flat on its face in that regard. The moment-to-monet gameplay, while initially very fun, quickly becomes stale and repetitive because of this. It's not bad, but the lack of long-term depth is extremely noticeable. It's a enjoyable game that will give you several hours of fun, but you won't keep coming back to it again and again the way you would with something like FTL.
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Post by GamerL on Aug 5, 2015 16:10:43 GMT -5
I understand that, but he still kinda set a standard of a "cool" way to review a game, snarky, cynical, hyperbolic, that had an influence on other reviewers like Sterling.
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Post by drpepperfan on Aug 6, 2015 19:03:05 GMT -5
It was just Greenlit.
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Post by Gendo Ikari on Nov 20, 2015 14:08:44 GMT -5
Released on Steam today - along with "Zero Punctuation: Hatfall"
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