Kahunaburger said:
I don't agree with this at all. He makes legitimate critiques - the problems he has with this game, for instance, are absolutely problems with the game.
Let's review these complaints, shall we?
1) Yahtzee claims early on that the game requires patching and updating when playing. This is not true. If he bought a retail copy, he would have had to activate the game using SecuROM, otherwise there is no activation and no mandatory patching. The patch that was available on day one took approximately ten seconds for me to download, and was fully optional.
2) Player training isn't handled well. This is kind of true, but I think people overstate it and confuse "learning curve" with "difficulty" and "bad training." The game spams you with pop-ups early on, and that's definitely not the best way of handling things. On the other hand, it takes about 3 seconds to figure out the controls, and the first battle where you're supposed to fight "dozens" of enemies actually requires you to do absolutely nothing, as you'll have just as many allies on your side during that very battle, who are glad to do the heavy lifting and let you figure things out in the background. But then, I guess I can't blame someone for assuming they're going to be Fucking Badass Incarnate at level 1 and ruin all the enemies by diving onto their swords, right?
In truth, I would have added a sparring practice or something to the king's war camp to let players get the basics down, but it still took me all of five minutes to become comfortable with the game's combat.
3) Kind of ties in with the above, but blocking. This is what we call "RTFM", kids. Blocking requires vigor so that you can't just sit there blocking endlessly. If you have no vigor, your block won't work because Geralt is fatigued. While it's a legitimate complaint that the game doesn't do the best job telling you this stuff, it's clearly in the manual as well as in the tutorials found in the journal - and the game makes it quite clear that you should read them the first time through without outright forcing them to. And then if they were forced, people would complain about that!
4) Yahtzee complains about not being able to dodge properly. I... don't know what to say here. I guess he must suck at the game, because Geralt always dodges in the direction I tell him to, and instantly, unless he's been hit. But yeah, sure, let's just ***** about the game not playing itself, how about that?
5) Spell names? Not completely obvious upon looking at them? Have to read the manual? Oh gnoes! How dare my fantasy game not be absolutely 100% generic as shit! Why isn't my game playing itself yet?!
6) Complaining about the different sword types? Really? First off, it's a pretty damn standard component of the lore. Second, it's explained pretty clearly in the game that silver swords have magical properties, and as such are used to fight monsters since they're more sensitive to the metal. Of course, silver is also a weak metal and not useful against armoured human opponents. Complaining about this is about as fucking stupid as complaining that ammunition designed for dealing with soft targets is less effective against armoured ones. Well, at least the game automatically chooses the right sword depending on what type of enemy I'm facing, so I guess it wins points for playing itself a
little bit!
7) Drinking potions before combat rather than during it is a pretty obvious design choice and basically comes down to encouraging smart preparation rather than chugging potions while enemies wail on you. It's also more true to the lore, since potions take time to take effect and most of them are useless instantly upon imbibing. But I want my Quik-Heal(TM) button dammit, and nobody better take it away from me!
8) Interface for meditation is hard to understand? Uh? If Yahtzee is confused by four labels written in clear text (Meditate, Character, Drink Potion and Alchemy) then I guess there really is no hope for him. That, or I guess I missed the point where PC mind-reading devices were released and obsoleted all user interfaces. God dammit, why is this game not playing itself?!
9) Tying in with the last, how do you know when battles are going to happen? Gee, how about intuition and common sense? If you were wandering out in the wilderness and saw monsters in the distance, I'd take that as a pretty clear indication of impeding danger, hm? Foreboding-looking cave with strange sounds coming from it? Perfectly normal! Obviously telegraphed pivotal plot point? Now why would I ever expect violence to come out of that? And more importantly, why is my game not playing itself yet? We're nine points in and I'm still waiting!
10) I agree about the interface, in part. It's clearly been designed as a compromise for gamepads, but I didn't find it impacted the usability of things too much. It's easy to figure out how to use weapon upgrades (drag and drop), and while I agree mutagens should have been explained better, that's the only major problem I can really think of interface-wise.
11) See what I said above about writing, but suffice is to say Yahtzee is pretty much ignoring the game's quality on the basis of genre. Which, as we all know, is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Silent Hill 2? Well, it's one of them survival horrors, right? I played one of those, it sucked, ergo, all survival horror games suck. Fall before my flawless logic!
12) On combat: learn to dodge, learn to use crowd control, learn to use bombs, learn to use spells/signs. Oh, right, almost forgot it's supposed to be playing itself! Whew, lucky I caught myself there!
13) On autosaves: I actually agree, more autosaves would have been nice to have before major quest events. Apparently these have been and are being patched in, but I still don't see why Yahtzee seems to look on quicksaving with some sort of disdain.
14) On unskippable cutscenes: that cutscene is skippable, and I don't think he's actually talking about the cutscene right before the fight, but rather, the one prior to that, because the one immediately before facing the boss is very quick. Either way, point invalidated.
So yeah, out of the 14 major complaints Yahtzee addressed here, we've got about 1.5, maybe 2 that are actually legitimate in any way. The rest are either petty and superficial, come as a result of not taking the time to actually learn to play the game or read the manual, or are simple bad logic if not outright hypocritical when put next to things he's previously said. But hey, don't take my word for it, I work at the dick-sucking factory, right Yahtzee? Har har, fuck you too.
