can you make your own decisions about a game?

[escapistrules]

okay, im about to beat a dead horse here. why do people hate Final Fantasy XIII? i found the battle system entertaining, the story awesome, and i enjoyed the characters and their development. i have had someone tell me that im just in a minority of people who actually enjoy this game, which im perfectly fine with. but what i do find annoying is that i have actually talked to people who hated this game or even changed their opinion of it because they saw that yahtzee hated it on zero punctuation. granted his show is entertaining, but seriously. take his reviews with a grain of salt and think for yourself. if anything (and i know im going to get alot of complaints about saying this), yahtzee is just a troll.

 

[Clive Howlitzer]

I've never played it but speaking from other games, my opinion is never changed by the opinion of others or reviewers. I really have to play a game to decide my stance on it. I've really liked games that were universally scathed and hated games that were massively popular.

 

[Easton Dark]

Prevailing views can be very convincing. You have to be careful about WHERE you find them, but they can give you a general idea.

There's no substitute for first-hand experience though. After playing Kane and Lynch, I can guess on the horribleness of Kane and Lynch 2, and oh look! Every reviewer and their grandma seems to agree.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

I don't put a lot of heart into most reviews. If a game looks interesting, I buy it, and screw the reviews. If it turns out not to be so good, I can live with that. I just never play it again.

Also, I post a lot of my own reviews on Newgrounds, some of which do go against the grain. And not all of them were automatically labelled 'useless' by the sheeple!

 

[The Weaver]

I never make an opinion on a game without seeing some game play first at the least, and I rarely take a critics word at face value. While I do often watch his show I only use it for its entertainment value and for laughing a bit at my favorite games flaws (as the saying goes "if you can't laugh at yourself"). You wouldn't take advice on anything from someone like Larry the Cable Guy especially during one of their shows. You also would have some doubt in someone who is lactose intolerant to tell you what food you should eat. Many of my favorite games and genres are intolerable to others.

Getting back to your original point of Final Fantasy XIII, after trying other Final Fantasy games and looking at its game play and "story" its safe to say I dint have Yahtzee or some other critic tell me what I should think of this game.

 

[Flailing Escapist]

Its the f*@king cut scenes that always get me, tho thats not enough for me to hate it.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

I certainly can make my own decision regarding a game. And, in my own opinion that was formed after more than a dozen hours spent playing FF13 my opinion is that the game, while well made, is seemingly engineered in such a way so that I would be guaranteed to hate it with a passion.

 

[Pearwood]

I thought FF13 was ok but it had to follow my favourite in the series, FF12 so its flaws were a bit more noticable. The battle system was very good though, shame that the world felt a bit empty.

 

[Zhukov]

So, if I'm reading this correctly, you encountered an opinion contrary to your own and assumed that people held that opinion for invalid reasons.

In this case you assumed that people hate FFXIII because they must be parroting Yahtzee's opinion because... I dunno, because he's funny or something.

*sigh*

I played the game. I hated the experience of playing it. Therefore I hate the game. Is that a sufficiently independent decision for you?

The gameplay was horrible. Run down funny shaped corridor. Encounter random grab-bag of enemies completely unrelated to the plot. Mindlessly spam auto-attack. If someone gets low on health, switch someone to healer. That's it. That's not even a simplification. That's literally all I did for 17 hours.

I loathed the characters. Well, except for Sazh. He gets a pass on account of occasionally acting like a human being. I might be able to forgive Vanille as well. But that's only because I am aware that the wacky-uninhibited-young-female-who-is-ostensibly-above-the-age-of-consent-but-looks-about-15-years-old archetype is a specifically Japanese... thing. The rest can go die in a fire. Actually, scratch that, Vanille can die in a fire too.

As for the story, well... I hated the first 17 hours of it. Maybe it gets good later on. I wouldn't know. If a game wastes 17 hours of my life with turgid drivel I'm not going to give it the benefit of the doubt and just keep playing. I'm going to throw it in the bin. Or in this case, return it to its owner.

The only nice thing I can say about FFXIII is that some of the environments looked very pretty. I'm just glad I didn't pay money for it. Then I'd really be annoyed.

If you like the game then more power to you. But don't assume that anyone who disagrees on such a subjective thing is doing so for invalid reasons.

Someone really needs to invent a meme along the lines of, "IT'S ALL FUCKING SUBJECTIVE!"

 

[an874]

Look man, I tried to like FF13 and ended up putting at least 35 hours into it, getting fairly close to what must have been the end. I couldn't care about the story since I found it poorly told, the only character I liked was Sazh since half the time he seemed to do what I was doing (watching the others and shaking his head in bewilderment), and the combat system was at best average, made worse by the linear corridors. If you liked this mess great, I'm happy for you, just don't go knocking other people because they may have been swayed by reviews, since someone could just as easily accuse you of the same since both GameSpot and IGN, the two arguably biggest gaming review sites out there, gave it good reviews (although, in my opinion I think they only did so by viewing the game with what I call "franchise beer goggles" liking or respecting the franchise too much to objectively review a single product such what I believe happened with Halo ODST).

 

[Titan Buttons]

I love the graphics of game, the battle system is good (if only it had a dam dodge button and everyone stopped crowding together so they get owned by AoE attacks), the story is well made and the characters have depth (even if the game takes its sweet ass time showing that).
I don't like FF XIII because the ratio of gameply to cutscenes are just so painful that they could have made a movie trilogy out of the game but I'm still playing the game, I haven't finished it yet and I'm over 30hrs in but I know I'm almost at the end

 

[escapistrules]

So, if I'm reading this correctly, you encountered an opinion contrary to your own and assumed that people held that opinion for invalid reasons.

In this case you assumed that people hate FFXIII because they must be parroting Yahtzee's opinion because... I dunno, because he's funny or something.

*sigh*

I played the game. I hated the experience of playing it. Therefore I hate the game. Is that a sufficiently independent decision for you?

The gameplay was horrible. Run down funny shaped corridor. Encounter random grab-bag of enemies completely unrelated to the plot. Mindlessly spam auto-attack. If someone gets low on health, switch someone to healer. That's it. That's not even a simplification. That's literally all I did for 17 hours.

I loathed the characters. Well, except for Sazh. He gets a pass on account of occasionally acting like a human being. I might be able to forgive Vanille as well. But that's only because I am aware that the wacky-uninhibited-young-female-who-is-ostensibly-above-the-age-of-consent-but-looks-about-15-years-old archetype is a specifically Japanese... thing. The rest can go die in a fire. Actually, scratch that, Vanille can die in a fire too.


As for the story, well... I hated the first 17 hours of it. Maybe it gets good later on. I wouldn't know. If a game wastes 17 hours of my life with turgid drivel I'm not going to give it the benefit of the doubt and just keep playing. I'm going to throw it in the bin. Or in this case, return it to its owner.

The only nice thing I can say about FFXIII is that some of the environments looked very pretty. I'm just glad I didn't pay money for it. Then I'd really be annoyed.

If you like the game then more power to you. But don't assume that anyone who disagrees on such a subjective thing is doing so for invalid reasons.

Someone really needs to invent a meme along the lines of, "IT'S ALL FUCKING SUBJECTIVE!"

i believe you miss understand me. im fine with people hating this game, as i said, im in the minority who like it. but i also said that i have spoken to people who actually changed their opinions, or didnt even play it at all because they heard it sucked from critiques like yahtzee. as you said "IT'S ALL FUCKING SUBJECTIVE!", but im trying to say is one should try the game before saying its shit, simply because yahtzee said it was.

 

[Senaro]

The only problem I had with FF13 was the first 5-6 hours. It dragged on a bit, probably because I had to restart my file shortly after getting to chapter four. Once I trudged past that point again, something clicked and I was hooked. I'm loving it still, I just hate the first few chapters.

 

[Trolldor]

okay, im about to beat a dead horse here. why do people hate Final Fantasy XIII? i found the battle system entertaining, the story awesome, and i enjoyed the characters and their development. i have had someone tell me that im just in a minority of people who actually enjoy this game, which im perfectly fine with. but what i do find annoying is that i have actually talked to people who hated this game or even changed their opinion of it because they saw that yahtzee hated it on zero punctuation. granted his show is entertaining, but seriously. take his reviews with a grain of salt and think for yourself. if anything (and i know im going to get alot of complaints about saying this), yahtzee is just a troll.

I lol'd.

First, extra punctuation needed.

Secondly, no Yahtzee is not a troll. You oh so very clearly don't even have the faintest grasp of what a troll is.

Finally, 13 was shit. If you liked 13 you liked narrow story, whining pre-teen angsty characters, and several hours of exposition and cutscene disguised as gameplay.

 

[escapistrules]

okay, im about to beat a dead horse here. why do people hate Final Fantasy XIII? i found the battle system entertaining, the story awesome, and i enjoyed the characters and their development. i have had someone tell me that im just in a minority of people who actually enjoy this game, which im perfectly fine with. but what i do find annoying is that i have actually talked to people who hated this game or even changed their opinion of it because they saw that yahtzee hated it on zero punctuation. granted his show is entertaining, but seriously. take his reviews with a grain of salt and think for yourself. if anything (and i know im going to get alot of complaints about saying this), yahtzee is just a troll.

I lol'd.

First, extra punctuation needed.

Secondly, no Yahtzee is not a troll. You oh so very clearly don't even have the faintest grasp of what a troll is.

Finally, 13 was shit. If you liked 13 you liked narrow story, whining pre-teen angsty characters, and several hours of exposition and cutscene disguised as gameplay.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080709120612AAsOOqe