Zero Punctuation: Final Fantasy XIII

[Dr_Steve_Brule]

Meh... this is a pretty unfair review. He really should have waited a bit longer and reviewed it after getting to the open world part. I usually am not bothered by his reviews, but this one is a little bit too much. I admit the first 5-10 hours aren't all too great. It wasn't until the minute I tore off the shackles of linear corridors and went into the wide open world did the game get really fun.

The first 5-10 HOURS?
God dammit man, how can you grind through that shit?
If a game isn't good for 1 hour, I can forgive.
3 hours, If it looks nice.
BUT 10 FUCKING HOURS? ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND? There is no WAY in the world I would sit in my living room and force myself to play a shitty game for 10 hours.

Just because it isn't as good as after those 10 hours, doesn't mean it is bad. It's just average, and it gets better and better every hour you go in, as new gameplay mechanics are unlocked. DA:O certainly took a longer game time for me to get interested in it.

First impression is everything, man.
And i'm sorry, but 10 hours of forcing myself to go through a bad game are just not worth it.
Why should I suffer through this when I can do things that wont actually bore me to death, like watching TV, reading a book, or PLAYING A BETTER GAME.

 

[Vigilantis]

Can't agree more with you Yahtzee, played this game for the about 17 hours and I regret it all, thank god it was a borrowed game as I would be enraged at wasting money on such crap. The visuals are nice though, especially on a HD-TV

 

[moosek]

If it were up to me (I'd rewrite history, and change my destiny), I wouldn't pick a long JRPG to review. Yahtzee is honest about his first 5 hours of a ridiculously long game. I don't really care for JRPG's so I wouldn't review FFXIII if I had a weekly show. It just doesn't seem like a good investment of my time and could possibly hurt my integrity.

 

[dmcc85]

great finishing-move, but the fire was missing.
anyways, absolute destruction of this game.
i played FFx2 but i allways ended up in the same spot, asking myself:
what did i miss on my way here? because i do not understand a bit of what is going on NOW!
few months later i forgot about it all, and start the same damn thing over again.
is it kinda fun, just like ffx, BUT by the time you fall into that big hole and a dreamworld appears it is like playing a totally different game, because the storry flips upside down...
or maybe down only.

*flush

 

[Caiti Voltaire]

Meh... this is a pretty unfair review. He really should have waited a bit longer and reviewed it after getting to the open world part. I usually am not bothered by his reviews, but this one is a little bit too much. I admit the first 5-10 hours aren't all too great. It wasn't until the minute I tore off the shackles of linear corridors and went into the wide open world did the game get really fun.

I find that a pretty poor argument. The dental surgery may get better when I've finally gotten the comicaly oversized syringe with anesthetic jabbed into my gums but that doesn't mean that needle doesn't hurt like hell.

Proper pacing is something that is important to a game. A game should be fast enough that it doesn't feel like it's dragging on whilst being slow enough that the player does not feel rushed or overwhelmed. It's something that doesn't get properly looked at in a lot of reviews and I am always impressed that Yahtzee as a reviewer always looks at pacing.

Chances are, if it takes you five hours just to get to what equates to the introduction of the game, the game has pacing issues. I shouldn't have to waste five hours of my life just to find out the premise of the game, that's what intro cinematics and shitty over-done narration are for.

 

[Diceman]

Fucking THANK YOU Yahtzee. That is precisely what I found throughout the game and I got the fun of playing 8.5 bloody hours of it. And by that point the plot was STILL confusing... And it still hadnt even gotten good by then...

 

[Azaraxzealot]

I don't understand how people can enjoy this game. Who likes to be completely uninvolved in the combat? It's the only thing that makes me hate about 99% of the games that come from Japan: either the inability to be involved in combat, or having too MUCH control of the combat (having millions of button combos and whatnot), i like games that strike a happy medium, like God of War or Fable.

 

[Azaraxzealot]

Meh... this is a pretty unfair review. He really should have waited a bit longer and reviewed it after getting to the open world part. I usually am not bothered by his reviews, but this one is a little bit too much. I admit the first 5-10 hours aren't all too great. It wasn't until the minute I tore off the shackles of linear corridors and went into the wide open world did the game get really fun.

I find that a pretty poor argument. The dental surgery may get better when I've finally gotten the comicaly oversized syringe with anesthetic jabbed into my gums but that doesn't mean that needle doesn't hurt like hell.

Proper pacing is something that is important to a game. A game should be fast enough that it doesn't feel like it's dragging on whilst being slow enough that the player does not feel rushed or overwhelmed. It's something that doesn't get properly looked at in a lot of reviews and I am always impressed that Yahtzee as a reviewer always looks at pacing.

Chances are, if it takes you five hours just to get to what equates to the introduction of the game, the game has pacing issues. I shouldn't have to waste five hours of my life just to find out the premise of the game, that's what intro cinematics and shitty over-done narration are for.

ALSO, if a game can't deliver entertainment within the first hour or so, then it's a failure as a game (which is supposed to be designed specifically to ENTERTAIN)

 

[MatsVS]

@MatsVS

It's not chest pounding. I have been playing the American releases since their debut in 1990. That is not meaningless ad hominem, it is fact.

I am sure it is, but in this context it is no more a valid argument.

[See, that run-on sentence and many others like it were what I was hoping to spare you from, but apparently, like other supporters of this game, masochism runs deep.]

Haha, I hardly consider myself a supporter, seeing as I haven't even played the game yet. All the more reason for me to wish for some intellectual honesty, as all this senseless shouting of unsupported opinions is terrible unhelpful.

But then again, I am merely a 15 year veteran, so I'll defer to your superior wisdom.

 

[Joshua Abt-Barnett]

well, i think the HOUR markers count as Punctuation..

 

[daltob]

I truly enjoyed this one

But like always it's fun to watch Yahtzee rip apart games i've been waiting years for

 

[Caiti Voltaire]

ALSO, if a game can't deliver entertainment within the first hour or so, then it's a failure as a game (which is supposed to be designed specifically to ENTERTAIN)

That's the important thing right there and I am glad you pointed it out. Entertainment. If the story is going to be slow, I can deal with that, maybe, but make the build up interesting and entertaining. It took me like three hours to figure out what was supposed to be going on in Planescape torment but the ambiance was so powerful and the dialogue so well written that I was drawn in anyways.

 

[Rayansaki]

And i'm sorry, but 10 hours of forcing myself to go through a bad game are just not worth it.
Why should I suffer through this when I can do things that wont actually bore me to death, like watching TV, reading a book, or PLAYING A BETTER GAME.

Except the first 10 hours are by no means Bad. They are just worse than the rest of the game. Not all games can start like God of War 3 fighting a God, this is a very complex game that if you got all the mechanics in the beginning, it would probably be overwhelming and do more bad than good.

If I had to rate the game as I go along, I would give 6/10 to the first 30 minutes, 7/10 to the first 2 hours, 8/10 to the first 10 hours, 10/10 after chapter 9 and 9/10 to the endgame after the final boss. Note that the game before chapter nine is only about 15% of the total.

 

[Caiti Voltaire]

And i'm sorry, but 10 hours of forcing myself to go through a bad game are just not worth it.
Why should I suffer through this when I can do things that wont actually bore me to death, like watching TV, reading a book, or PLAYING A BETTER GAME.

Except the first 10 hours are by no means Bad. They are just worse than the rest of the game. Not all games can start like God of War 3 fighting a God, this is a very complex game that if you got all the mechanics in the beginning, it would probably be overwhelming and do more bad than good.

If I had to rate the game as I go along, I would give 6/10 to the first 30 minutes, 7/10 to the first 2 hours, 8/10 to the first 10 hours, 10/10 after chapter 9 and 9/10 to the endgame after the final boss. Note that the game before chapter nine is only about 15% of the total.

If 10% of the game is awesome, that still means that 90% of the game is shit.

 

[adafuns]

shit, so many comments do I smell mailbox showdown part 2? I sure hope so. Final fantasy has the biggest range of fanboys. Every single game in the series is considered the "best game ever" by someone and they would defend it with such a passion that its borderline dogmatic fundamentalism. I admit Ive been guilty of this myself lol.

 

[Rayansaki]

And i'm sorry, but 10 hours of forcing myself to go through a bad game are just not worth it.
Why should I suffer through this when I can do things that wont actually bore me to death, like watching TV, reading a book, or PLAYING A BETTER GAME.

Except the first 10 hours are by no means Bad. They are just worse than the rest of the game. Not all games can start like God of War 3 fighting a God, this is a very complex game that if you got all the mechanics in the beginning, it would probably be overwhelming and do more bad than good.

If I had to rate the game as I go along, I would give 6/10 to the first 30 minutes, 7/10 to the first 2 hours, 8/10 to the first 10 hours, 10/10 after chapter 9 and 9/10 to the endgame after the final boss. Note that the game before chapter nine is only about 15% of the total.

If 10% of the game is awesome, that still means that 90% of the game is shit.

You can read it again and realize how stupid you are.

 

[Venatio]

Cor

 

[ahsingjai]

Much better than the previous episode, I have to say, even though I only have the most vague idea of what the game is about due to being a proud member of PC master race.

LOL. Yeah, I never touched Final fantasy series due to their play style.

 

[Caiti Voltaire]

You can read it again and realize how stupid you are.

You could, perhaps, realise that the point is still there regardless of the hyperbole in my numbers.