Forsooth and Pi said:
Zephyros said:
Don't look at my post count and discout it immediately, I've been watching ZP since Bioshock. Neither am I fandboy of any sort.
I watch ZP for two reasons: (1) Funny comments about games and (2) *relatively* objective reviews of games I woulnd't have heard of otherwise (Psychonauts, Condemned) while at the same time seeing the games I like be discussed through the viewpoint of someone other than me who is into the opposite spectrum of gaming(FPS and PC gaming) as I am (console adventures/RPGs).
Now, I knew Yahtzee would hate Brawl. I knew he would spew pure bile after that first protracted "Ugh" because I had a feeling he was being pestered nonstop to review it. I am actually sad he reviewed it now - all it would lead to was more frustration and hate for this game for the sole reason that he was forced into it. I was not expecting this review today, either.
But to avoid discussing the game itself, or elitism, or something else retarded that would lead to this topic's degeneration, I want to ask something about the review itself - that IS what this topic is for, right?
Now that I've got the prelude out of the way... is it just me, or was this not really a 'review' in the slightest? Normally Yahtzee bashes the game, but he comments on the mechanics, the story, the gameplay, the quirks, the pitfalls, the benefits... and you come out with some understanding of what the game is like. He gets valid points across. I just watched the review again, and he did not bring up many points about the game at all! Maybe a handful of comments at best, but nothing substantial. It was just full of hatred for this game and everyone who made him do it. Sure, I laughed a bunch of times, but he did not 'review' the game. I came out of this review with nothing I didn't know beforehand - something in direct contrast to literally every other review he has done - just the knowledge that Yahtzee (A) truly hates fighting games almost as much as JRPG's and (2) He abhors being forced to review a game.
Am I the only one to see this as not a 'review', but more of a hate-rant? Or am I in the minority on these boards (which I must admit I don't post to often, though I do lurk a lot).
I agree, and judging from a few other posts I don't think we're the only ones. There's probably a little bit of a "fanboy" in me who doesn't like seeing the game bashed thusly, but I knew the kind of reviews Yahtzee gives and that aside from Portal, he has criticisms for every game. I laughed at his bashing of J-RPGs and MMORPGs, even though they are some of my favorite games, because his statements are so damn accurate! This one just lacked any real substance, and it felt like he was angry more at the fanboys who support the game than the game itself.
Unfortunately, you're both very much wrong. Yahtzee makes a number of good, relevant points in his review that I have to say I totally agree with, as another would be reviewer of games being forced by powers beyond his control to play through the horrible thing when he'd rather be out catching butterflies or getting sexually assaulted by passing otters.
1. The single player campaign is long - frankly, too long
2. The "fighting" kind of sucks a whole lot for a fighting game, to the point that it lacks any kind of obvious control. His point about the camera being zoomed out and the action obscured could only have been made clearer if he'd said what I'm (probably not everybody else) all thinking - you never feel like you're really in control of your character, or having much influence on what's happening on the screen.
3. The game has unlockable everything falling wholesale out of its sensitive bits, which he construes as horrible. As a tremendously anti-social gamer (also a self-diagnosed Aspy, lest anyone think I'm denigrating his disease) who still kind of enjoys a good fighting game, unlockable stuff is wonderful. I like finding out that something I did reasonably well made more content happen. It's like that feeling you get when you finally finish putting together your PC and it turns out to be more than the sum of blood and frustration you just had to sit through. But he makes a fair point - in a game that is at its best when you know precisely dick about what you're doing in the first place, putting in a bunch of incredibly obscure (I had to look up who Marth was, though I managed to guess all the Earthbound associates) unlockable crap that you don't actually get access to until ten hours in - or approximately two and one half parties' worth of coherent play - is the kind of stupid that's normally reserved for reality programming on basic cable, and the only reason Nintendo can get away with it is that it has such a massive and rabid base of fans dangling from its genitals that they could make the game explode in the console and burn down your house and only expect to hear mild complaints. Unlockable anything in a casual multiplayer game is criminally stupid.
4. His frustration also proves a point - specifically, that this ridiculous excuse for a game seems to be all anybody is talking about. Well, two weeks ago, but you get the idea. When enough people are discussing something like this, you expect it to be either really good or really bad, and this game is neither. It's a barely tolerable platformer strapped to a fighting game engine more interested in mascots and bright colors than it is with gameplay. That's the formula for below average. This is nothing anybody should be going on about. It is not revolutionary. It is not an affront to God. It's just a thoroughly meh game, and the fact that the gaming community, at least temporarily, was gripped with the sort of rabid obsession over the title that normally leads to restraining orders is incredibly frustrating and annoying to those of us who "don't get it." I can only imagine what it's like when you're a guy who's expected to write one funny review every week and read it over the air with clever and entertaining accompanying animation and you realize that, like it or not, you're going to have to address this.....thing whether you want to or not. It says something about the culture - probably not complimentary - and we deserve to be chastised for it.
So yeah - there's valid points that he's making there. And he's right. What else is there to talk about? The control scheme? What controls? You could change out the big rubber condom on your remote and bounce the thing on the ground and affect roughly the same response from your characters. The visuals? What visuals - it looks like every Nintendo game ever, though I'm sure that for the sequel they'll pull some other obscure title that time forgot out of their butts. The cute, lovable characters? What love? I don't know who half of these dinguses are in the first place, and the half that I do know about I'm ambivalent toward at best because it seems like they show up in every game Nintendo releases ever. The story? You mean the story told entirely through pantomime about a recognizable evil character (that we can't mention, mind you, or be screamed at for spoiling things) spewing purple crap all over some weird reject island from Skies of Arcadia where apparently everything ever associated with Nintendo or HAL Labs lives when it's not off doing the same thing for the thirtieth consecutive time to earn money for the parent corporation? You mean that story? I'll be happy to explain it to you as soon as I find somebody to translate the depth of feeling and subtext conveyed in Diddy Kong's apish buffoonery into the English language.
The moral of this review is that he pretty much reviewed everything there was to look at that was worth mentioning. The game is Melee after a big fat flaxseed oil rubdown with an ungainly platformer surgically attached like some kind of bizarre conjoined twin, sharing some of the same vital organs but using them in twisted and inappropriate ways that put the whole operation at risk of sudden death. Most of all, what's Yahtzee going to say that's going to affect anybody's opinion about anything on this game? Nintendo fans will buy it because they drink the Kool-Aide. There's nothing wrong with that. They'll enjoy it for whatever reason they do. I certainly don't understand it, but since I actually finished the first Shadow Hearts, I don't think I'm in a position to criticize people for playing below average games out of an unexplainable sense of affection. But all that's going to happen if you sit here like I just have and point out the game's flaws is they will get angry. Similarly, people who don't like Nintendo are going to very rightly hate this game for its myriad failings. People who don't care....well, they'll keep right on not caring. I'm personally glad that Yahtzee took the game (and the culture) to task for that, and I'd pity the guy for having to go through it if I didn't kind of want his job.
But not a real review? No sir - there was a review in there.
