This review really rubs me the wrong way, I imagine some people around here will call me a fanboy but the definition of fanboy on Zero Punctuation seems to be a person that likes whatever Yahtzee hates, you know, that very limited and enclosed circle of genre and quality so strict that a game needs to be practically perfect or a total revolution just to be mentioned. Yahtzee seems to have a tendency to only talk about a game's problems when he reviews, and it can get a little weird to hear him bash a game for 4 minutes just to have him wrap up with how good it is. The thing is, I'm also a Halo fan and I took his Reach and Halo 3 reviews in good light, but for some reason I just felt sick while watching this. Admittedly I can look over most of it because it's Yahtzee's style, the usual, dull and repetitive and chest high wall jokes and the characters with no personality I can forget that I disagree with them and laugh at it. A couple of things bugged me about this review, first of all was the usual brown complaint, ignoring the fact that brown what I would expect from a planet like Sera, the game takes you to several colorful areas that all felt unique, the last act taking place in a massive and gorgeous hotel. Secondly, he mentioned that the world was going to blow up...when did it mention that? All I got was that it was going down the crapper and the Lambent were taking over, but the planet itself would be intact. Third, I actually felt that the plot was well written, we get some emotional moments from Cole in the beginning that actually made me feel really sorry for him, knowing what he had lost and knowing that he would never get it back, not to mention I always knew what I was trying to accomplish. And as someone who only ever skimmed plot summaries of the novels, I had a fair grasp about what was going on. Fourth, Yahtzee said that Gears 2 didn't leave any impact on him and he couldn't remember what it was about. He mentioned that he has to play a game, think of jokes for it, write a script, put together a video and post it all in one week while squeezing that around the rest of his life. It doesn't sound like he has the time to sit back and drink in the finer parts of a game, and to be frank I doubt he remember much of the hundreds upon hundreds of games that he has played. Personally I remember what happened in Gears of War 2 very clearly and I haven't played it in months, but since it was a covered based shooter, I get the feeling Yahtzee wasn't even trying to enjoy it, just get it over with.
All these can be overlooked though, but what really put the nail in the coffin and got me angry was how he more or less said that Dom's death was forgetful and rather pointless. This was also coupled together with how he mentioned earlier that the idea of Marcus doing drama was laughable, when Marcus' reaction coupled with the death felt like a punch to the stomach and made me tear up. As for why it was necessary, when I was playing it, on normal, Lambent, Locust and Formers were coming at me from all sides and I was on the brink of death the entire fight and running low on ammo...on normal. I seriously doubt that they would've just let us climb in the truck, even if we did manage to all cram into it. Mad World playing over it softly made nearly it impossible to not cry. To me that was the saddest part of the game and Yahtzee just brushed over it, so I think I reserve the right to be a little mad. If he ever reads this (I know he probably won't) and anyone else that reads it will probably think that I'm a GOW fanboy when in reality I'm actually a casual fan and I've never read a single comic or book based on the series and have only played GOW 2 and GOW 3. Keep this in mind when I think that Gears of War 3 was one of the best games of this year.
