Zero Punctuation: Kirby's Epic Yarn

[rembrandtqeinstein]

As little zangief proved sometimes the fat kids have their day

 

[mjc0961]

Wow, nice. That was hilarious.

I would like to know why developers feel the need to dumb down death mechanics. It's getting really annoying!

Death mechanics wouldn't be worth anything in this game. It'd just be another one of those things where you just start over again with no consequence anyway. Death meant something when running out of lives meant your game was over and you need more money for arcades, or in older NES and such games where you had no save files, dying too much and running out of lives meant starting the entire game over again.

Now we have checkpoints and saving after every level, and dying is just pointless. Oh no, I died? Okay, I'll just start this one level over from the last checkpoint. Oh no, out of lives? Okay, I'll just start this same level over again from the start, although I might be slightly inconvenienced with a trip back to the title screen first. Neither of those are really a consequence for failure, so if a game like Kirby's Epic Yarn comes along and decides to cut the last of the bullshit and just not kill me as killing me wouldn't get in my way, I say fine.

I mean really, I have a bit of a problem saying that Kirby's Epic Yarn has no challenge because you can't die. I can't help but think back to Killzone 3 which I finished recently, and how if I died I just went back to a checkpoint. No matter how many times I died, boom, back to the checkpoint as many times as I needed until I won. It's not really more challenging to finish Killzone 3 because I can die (it is more challenging than KEY in other ways of course, but being able to die isn't increasing the challenge). Getting to the end of levels in Killzone 3 and winning was just as simple as winning Kirby's Epic Yarn as far as death consequence goes: just keep playing until you get through because there is no consequence for failure.

 

[game-lover]

Anybody else wondered what Yahtzee's response would have been about letting his kid play Epic Yarn if instead of a hypothetical son, he had a hypothetical daughter?


In any case, this was hilarious. And it's funny how advertising tricks you. I didn't see any inkling about the whole tycoon apartment thing at all.

 

[0986875533423]

So far kids are stupid as hell.

oh please like your generations was any better

He said "kids are stupid as hell" that does not exclude "we were stupid as hell when we were kids." Hell, I know I was.

 

[SlothfulCobra]

I never expected Yahtzee to read this. Never in a million years.

But yeah, Kirby games are normally supposed to be pretty easy, but Epic Yarn was ridiculous. I thought at first that if you lost all of your beads than you'd die like rings with sonic, but I don't think you can even die by jumping down pits. Not to mention it's Kirby without crazy copying abilities. What a shame.

Also, it's pretty terrible that the use of the word "epic" to just mean "cool" is being reinforced more and more.

 

[Vredesbyrd67]

That last simile confused the shit out of me.

 

[twm1709]

You know, if you wanted to review a kiddie game I was hoping you'd go with the new pokemon games. At least you'd have newer, more interewsting stuff to say about it.
I'm predicting Dragon age 2 for next week.

 

[hecticpicnic]

Damn, so they streamlined Kirby and dumbed it down.

 

[spwatkins]

... Also, it's pretty terrible that the use of the word "epic" to just mean "cool" is being reinforced more and more.

I remember when this happened to the word "awesome".

 

[Sneftel]

...but my feeling is that a game whose quest is over halfway through -- with a whole bunch of optional levels remaining, and interior design your only remaining motivation to play them -- has its sights slightly misaligned.

You mean, like Braid?

 

[daxterx2005]

According to Yahtzee I'm a big fat pink retard who likes shit rubbed in my eyes.
I'm okay with this.

 

[Cid Silverwing]

Somehow I figured he wasn't going to like Kirby but kids these days are lame.

This x a trillion.

Curious selection even for you, though, Yahtzee me ol' mate. Not running out of games to hate, I hope?

 

[KorLeonis]

Couldn't care less about Kirby game thing, but cumsprouts is replacing spawn as my word for children. The Borg had the right idea, maturation chambers, lock em away out of sight til they are actually people.

 

[TotalHobNob]

I despise little kids too. and funny review this week.

 

[DTWolfwood]

o a righteously funny ZP this one is.

To be fair a 5 yo can play and beat this game. I don't believe games of old that catered to 5 yo were all that difficult neither. Less you're comparing pre-teen games to pre-school games.

 

[xyrafhoan]

I enjoyed playing Epic Yarn (though it was only a rent) and the whole YOU CAN'T DIE EVER thing was annoying until you realize, getting hit seriously reams your ability to rank highly in any given level. It's not so much reaching the end of the level, but rather reaching the end after a collectathon of every goodie in the level. That said, I don't see any instance where Yahtzee has ever liked collectathons so I can see why the game garnered a rather "meh" response. Nor did I really find the game challenging enough at a base level to want to buy the game, either.

Still, it didn't really sound like he hated the game, either. This was a much less angry sounding review than say, MindJack.