Zero Punctuation: Painkiller
- Thread starter Yahtzee Croshaw
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"Detachable peeeenis..." Lovely closer.
When ZP first started, I used to laugh out loud at the jokes. Later on, I becamse more subdued, tittering occasionally.
And then, Yahtzee had to pull out the shurikens and fucking lightning.
To anyone still having problems with the video, try clicking, then leaving it for a bit. If you start hearing Stairway (another great choice there), it's started.
When ZP first started, I used to laugh out loud at the jokes. Later on, I becamse more subdued, tittering occasionally.
And then, Yahtzee had to pull out the shurikens and fucking lightning.
To anyone still having problems with the video, try clicking, then leaving it for a bit. If you start hearing Stairway (another great choice there), it's started.
I seem to remember Yahtzee saying that it's not funny reviewing a game you like, will I must say he was wrong, this is definitely one of his better reviews and a step up from GTA4
Long time lurker, first time poster just to kiss Yahtzee's backside. A lot of the games reviewed I haven't heard of before (I'm not a "serious" gamer) but I watch every week. Today was torturing me when the site wouldn't load. Yahtzee's reviews are like crack--I have to have my fix.
What is his obsession with this game?
Although I did think the shuriken-machine-gun was awesome...
Although I did think the shuriken-machine-gun was awesome...
Oh, two points I'd like to reply to:
1) Yes, seeing Yahtzee (and I can finally spell it without error! Hoorah!) review The World Ends With You might be an entertainment. He'll probably make a multi-tasking joke.
2) Crikey is used by Brits as well. The people of Australia, as I recall, were convicts shipped there by the Crown. So of course some remnants of their past would remain. And crikey it is. Also, spelling words correctly. Like "colour".
EDIT:
1) Yes, seeing Yahtzee (and I can finally spell it without error! Hoorah!) review The World Ends With You might be an entertainment. He'll probably make a multi-tasking joke.
2) Crikey is used by Brits as well. The people of Australia, as I recall, were convicts shipped there by the Crown. So of course some remnants of their past would remain. And crikey it is. Also, spelling words correctly. Like "colour".
EDIT:
No no no. It's the gun that shoots shurikens AND LIGHTNING.Grampy_bone said:
An overlong between-mission cinematic transcript:
Now that we've left GTA IV in the dust, and MGS4 is still an overly verbose speck on the horizon, we've entered a time of year known as "The Season of Bugger-All's-Coming-Out," too far from Christmas to be of any interest to publishers, so the flow of big-name titles slows to the point that internet game critics can relax a bit, and indulge themselves with reviews of old games that interest them and no one else, either to bring exposure to an underappreciated gem, or add a few bitchslaps that have managed to escape the first time around, so let's talk about a game I found in a bin.
Painkiller is a first person shooter from 2004, by Polish developer People Can Fly, perhaps best known for their previous title, ET for the Atari 2600. Not really, of course. Painkiller is the only game by People Can Fly, which makes it all the more amazing that Painkiller is fucking awesome, and can kick the ass of most big-name mainstream titles, and have them for breakfast afterwards. Which is a shame, because if the game blew goats, I could have made a funny joke like, "Painkiller: you'll certainly need one." Painkiller is in the same bucket as Serious Sam and the original Dooms, in that it serves as an antidote to fancy-pants complex, modern FPSing. There are no stealth elements, no key-hunting, no escort quests, no dorky support characters dribbling in your earhole, no mission objectives besides "kill everyone"; there's just you, some guns, and the entire population of Murdertown between you and where you need to be. It's pure genocidal fun, which many FPS developers these days seem to think is somehow beneath them.
Some people refer to Painkiller as the unofficial Doom 3, since the actual Doom 3 tripped over something in the dark, banged its head, and forgot that it wasn't System Shock. I'm not about to shake my walking stick and say, "FPSes were a lot better before they started putting on airs," but it is worth remembering that sometimes all we want is the relentless catharsis of old-school action gaming, blended with the immersive greyish-brown of current-generation technology, and that's a niche Painkiller fills beautifully. It hangs out in the rough side of FPStown, where keycard puzzles don't venture for fear of getting curbstomped. That's not to say Painkiller is nothing but murdering tonnes of dudes; there's a series of unlockable bonus cards that make it easier to murder tonnes of dudes, there's a soul-collecting gameplay element that results in a new and interesting way to murder tonnes of dudes...OK, so maybe it is nothing but murdering tonnes of dudes, but it does it so well, what more could you want? You could explore the levels, and hunt for secret rooms and treasures if you really must, but if more than a minute passes without a dude and a murder, you're not playing it right.
It's like after the developers were resigned to making an unsophisticated shooter, they vowed to make it the most stylish unsophisticated shooter ever, and spent all the leftover escort mission and fetch-quest money on tarting it up. Levels range disjointedly from giant cathedrals to military bases, and the level design gives me a big fat architectural stiffy. There are over 50 distinct varieties of dude to murder, all amazingly well-designed (they don't give me any kind of stiffy, though; that would be gay). The weapons are a bold effort to escape the usual line-up of melee, pistol, shotgun, machine gun, rocket launcher, overpowered exotic thing that you never get ammo for and only use in boss fights anyway. The default melee weapon is the titular Painkiller, a rotating blade arrangement perfect for forecasting light showers of body parts and reenacting the lawnmower scene from the movie Braindead (that's Dead Alive, if you're American and fat). As for the guns, I could mention the hugely satisfying penis-extension gun that pins baddies to walls with entire trees but all you really need to know is that there's a gun that shoots shurikens and lightning. I wish I could make something like that up. It shoots shurikens and lightning; it could only be more awesome if it had tits and was on fire.
Amazingly, there is a story, contained entirely within overlong between-mission cinematics, and which concern a man resembling a shaved bear, whose life is a cavalcade of success and happiness and sunshine and flowers, before he takes one too many lingering looks at his sexy wife and smacks straight into a truck. Wifey goes to heaven, while our hero goes to Purgatory, because God wants him to kill the generals of Satan's army, who are trying to invade through some graves, and blahdy-blahdy-blah. The story is entirely needless and entirely forgotten during the actual gameplay, but you wouldn't think it, the way the cinematics bang on and on, emptying huge dustbins full of half-baked expositional dialogue into our screaming faces because they were determined to crowbar this shit in somewhere.
Now, I'm one of the first advocates of games-as-art, so I like a good narrative, but any game in which you can make all of an enemy's limbs fly off in different directions is already a work of art. There are certainly plenty of criticisms, aside from the fact that the storyline can go fuck itself; the criteria to unlock the bonus cards are obnoxiously difficult in some levels, souls take ages to emerge from the corpses (so if you're trying to collect them, then you have to hang around your conquered foes twiddling your thumbs, which breaks the flow somewhat), the AI is pathetic, with enemies often getting stuck behind scenery while you throw bits of rolled-up newspaper and laugh, but any criticism I find is immediately quashed when I remember that one of the guns shoots shurikens and lightning. So that's Painkiller, more proof that the best way to blow off steam is to blow off someone's nadgers.
Now that we've left GTA IV in the dust, and MGS4 is still an overly verbose speck on the horizon, we've entered a time of year known as "The Season of Bugger-All's-Coming-Out," too far from Christmas to be of any interest to publishers, so the flow of big-name titles slows to the point that internet game critics can relax a bit, and indulge themselves with reviews of old games that interest them and no one else, either to bring exposure to an underappreciated gem, or add a few bitchslaps that have managed to escape the first time around, so let's talk about a game I found in a bin.
Painkiller is a first person shooter from 2004, by Polish developer People Can Fly, perhaps best known for their previous title, ET for the Atari 2600. Not really, of course. Painkiller is the only game by People Can Fly, which makes it all the more amazing that Painkiller is fucking awesome, and can kick the ass of most big-name mainstream titles, and have them for breakfast afterwards. Which is a shame, because if the game blew goats, I could have made a funny joke like, "Painkiller: you'll certainly need one." Painkiller is in the same bucket as Serious Sam and the original Dooms, in that it serves as an antidote to fancy-pants complex, modern FPSing. There are no stealth elements, no key-hunting, no escort quests, no dorky support characters dribbling in your earhole, no mission objectives besides "kill everyone"; there's just you, some guns, and the entire population of Murdertown between you and where you need to be. It's pure genocidal fun, which many FPS developers these days seem to think is somehow beneath them.
Some people refer to Painkiller as the unofficial Doom 3, since the actual Doom 3 tripped over something in the dark, banged its head, and forgot that it wasn't System Shock. I'm not about to shake my walking stick and say, "FPSes were a lot better before they started putting on airs," but it is worth remembering that sometimes all we want is the relentless catharsis of old-school action gaming, blended with the immersive greyish-brown of current-generation technology, and that's a niche Painkiller fills beautifully. It hangs out in the rough side of FPStown, where keycard puzzles don't venture for fear of getting curbstomped. That's not to say Painkiller is nothing but murdering tonnes of dudes; there's a series of unlockable bonus cards that make it easier to murder tonnes of dudes, there's a soul-collecting gameplay element that results in a new and interesting way to murder tonnes of dudes...OK, so maybe it is nothing but murdering tonnes of dudes, but it does it so well, what more could you want? You could explore the levels, and hunt for secret rooms and treasures if you really must, but if more than a minute passes without a dude and a murder, you're not playing it right.
It's like after the developers were resigned to making an unsophisticated shooter, they vowed to make it the most stylish unsophisticated shooter ever, and spent all the leftover escort mission and fetch-quest money on tarting it up. Levels range disjointedly from giant cathedrals to military bases, and the level design gives me a big fat architectural stiffy. There are over 50 distinct varieties of dude to murder, all amazingly well-designed (they don't give me any kind of stiffy, though; that would be gay). The weapons are a bold effort to escape the usual line-up of melee, pistol, shotgun, machine gun, rocket launcher, overpowered exotic thing that you never get ammo for and only use in boss fights anyway. The default melee weapon is the titular Painkiller, a rotating blade arrangement perfect for forecasting light showers of body parts and reenacting the lawnmower scene from the movie Braindead (that's Dead Alive, if you're American and fat). As for the guns, I could mention the hugely satisfying penis-extension gun that pins baddies to walls with entire trees but all you really need to know is that there's a gun that shoots shurikens and lightning. I wish I could make something like that up. It shoots shurikens and lightning; it could only be more awesome if it had tits and was on fire.
Amazingly, there is a story, contained entirely within overlong between-mission cinematics, and which concern a man resembling a shaved bear, whose life is a cavalcade of success and happiness and sunshine and flowers, before he takes one too many lingering looks at his sexy wife and smacks straight into a truck. Wifey goes to heaven, while our hero goes to Purgatory, because God wants him to kill the generals of Satan's army, who are trying to invade through some graves, and blahdy-blahdy-blah. The story is entirely needless and entirely forgotten during the actual gameplay, but you wouldn't think it, the way the cinematics bang on and on, emptying huge dustbins full of half-baked expositional dialogue into our screaming faces because they were determined to crowbar this shit in somewhere.
Now, I'm one of the first advocates of games-as-art, so I like a good narrative, but any game in which you can make all of an enemy's limbs fly off in different directions is already a work of art. There are certainly plenty of criticisms, aside from the fact that the storyline can go fuck itself; the criteria to unlock the bonus cards are obnoxiously difficult in some levels, souls take ages to emerge from the corpses (so if you're trying to collect them, then you have to hang around your conquered foes twiddling your thumbs, which breaks the flow somewhat), the AI is pathetic, with enemies often getting stuck behind scenery while you throw bits of rolled-up newspaper and laugh, but any criticism I find is immediately quashed when I remember that one of the guns shoots shurikens and lightning. So that's Painkiller, more proof that the best way to blow off steam is to blow off someone's nadgers.
One of the only times I had a different opinion than Ben but this is based upon likes and dislikes so nothing earth shattering. I'm somebody interested in stealth and tactical play and indeed I'm no fan of mindless slaughtering. So this new games are not crap because they don't do the simplest thing on earth ( NO, not sex 
) but because they miserably fail at deliver "stealth" and "tactics" ( I'm asking myself if most developers slept in class during the presentation of Deus-Ex or Thief or similar examples of fun stealth and tactics game mechanics as why they suck so hard at reproducing it ) at it. That doesn't mean that I consider this game crap or something like that it's just not my cup of coffee so I'm not trying to judge this title ( judging titles you don't like fair is difficult ).
Another nice review but something has been off with the sound. Microphone fell into a pool beforehand? Or did the Escapist hire a new technician guy ( who doesn't know that IE ass-kissing is poison )? The old player work better. At last it played the video.
"Detachable Penis"... you made me laugh hard. I've heard many strange and obnoxious lyrics in a song but this one is just hilarious. How do you manage to find those gems man?
) but because they miserably fail at deliver "stealth" and "tactics" ( I'm asking myself if most developers slept in class during the presentation of Deus-Ex or Thief or similar examples of fun stealth and tactics game mechanics as why they suck so hard at reproducing it ) at it. That doesn't mean that I consider this game crap or something like that it's just not my cup of coffee so I'm not trying to judge this title ( judging titles you don't like fair is difficult ).Another nice review but something has been off with the sound. Microphone fell into a pool beforehand? Or did the Escapist hire a new technician guy ( who doesn't know that IE ass-kissing is poison
)? The old player work better. At last it played the video."Detachable Penis"... you made me laugh hard. I've heard many strange and obnoxious lyrics in a song but this one is just hilarious. How do you manage to find those gems man?
I played the demo on steam and it is bloody difficult. Serious Sam was ten times easier. Still I think that was one of his best reviews of late and his choice of music was brilliant. Stairway to heaven is amazing and I never knew there was actually a song called "Detachable penis".
the reason for transcripts
sometimes yahtzee slurs his words, although he has been getting better and faster over time,
Also sometimes yahtzee british accent obscures words just a lil too much. And also if you aren't a native english speaker yahtzee is impossible to understand and you need a transcript to understand
sometimes yahtzee slurs his words, although he has been getting better and faster over time,
Also sometimes yahtzee british accent obscures words just a lil too much. And also if you aren't a native english speaker yahtzee is impossible to understand and you need a transcript to understand
I dunno; I did it once out of boredom, and people liked it, so I continued. Some of Yahtzee's best lines are spoken so quickly you could miss them.KBKarma said: