Zero Punctuation: Top 5 of 2011

[ph0b0s123]

I cannot +1 hard enough at the game trailers without game play sentiment. Just why bother. I don't care about you amazing story line if I cannot see that you have gameplay to back it up.

 

[Sir Thomas Sean Connery]

But..... But..... I got you a waffle! (>;_>#

Loved the list! Though I'm a bit surprised Jew Sex: Human Revolution wasn't on there.

 

[icaritos]

Every year there's that one game that I DON'T regret buying. In 2011, that game was portal 2. Good choice.

Skyrim FREEZES? I thought Bethesda was over "New Vegas" levels of glitchiness! I thought that Skyrim's worst bugs were along the lines of "hovering ground ladies" or spinning horsemen (as seen in a Youtube video).

Has anyone else had serious glitches with Skyrim? I'm starting to doubt whether I should get it if it's going to crash on me.

If you're on the PC, wait for the modders to fix it.

If you have a 360, play it for 10 mins at a time so it doesn't melt.

If you have a ps3, avoid it like the plague.

They say patch 1.4 will "address" it which means that they can't "fix" it.

I'm guessing they didn't send Yhatzee the ps3 copy...
Oh yea, he's a reviewer.

Can't fix what is fundamentally a hardware issue. Unless they send someone in your house to shove more RAM into your PS3 it is quite likely that there won't be any massive improvement.

 

[CapitalistPig]

Another great installment. I almost thought to myself when i read the site general GOTY awards where was portal 2 in this? Great list for great reasons.

 

[Kopikatsu]

This is why I can never take Yahtzee seriously as a game critic despite the fact that I love his "reviews" and look forward to them every week.

I mean, BF3 and MW3 are your worse games of the year? Worse than Mindjack, DNF, and the new Red Faction that effectively killed it's franchise? Not to mention the other games you reviewed and hated like Brink and Call of Juarez: The Cartel? Really? I mean I'm not the biggest fan of those games (Black Ops > MW3, KZ3 > BF3) but it just comes across as him making a rather tone-deaf statement than saying they're really that bad. Like a stuffy movie critic naming a big-budget 3D movie as their worse film of the year because it's in 3D.

To me Yahtzee is no different then a comedian riffing on whatever movie he just saw. Sure it's funny and he brings up a few decent points, but are you really suppose to take his opinion seriously? No, you're not, and if you do you're an idiot.

Did you miss the part where Yahtzee said that he didn't hate the games because there was anything wrong with them as far as gameplay goes?

 

[Yopaz]

I absolutely loathed inFamous 2 to no end, it got dragged on so much to the point where I was testing myself to see how far I was willing to go before one of us gave up. I lost.

Woooow, was NOT expecting Portal 2 to be where it is.

Also, Bastion better than Skyrim? =o

Someone clearly didn't listen to the part where he said this was subjective based on what games he had most fun with.

OT: I discussed this with a friend and I guessed he would have Driver either as number 2 or number 3. I thought he would have Duke Nukem Forever as number 1, but I guess the ones he put there was kinda predictable too though. I love watching Yahtzee's top 5/bottom 5. It combines his most positive comments with his most negative ones in the same video. Simply brilliant.

 

[Anthony Wells]

Every year there's that one game that I DON'T regret buying. In 2011, that game was portal 2. Good choice.

Skyrim FREEZES? I thought Bethesda was over "New Vegas" levels of glitchiness! I thought that Skyrim's worst bugs were along the lines of "hovering ground ladies" or spinning horsemen (as seen in a Youtube video).

Has anyone else had serious glitches with Skyrim? I'm starting to doubt whether I should get it if it's going to crash on me.

If you're on the PC, wait for the modders to fix it.

If you have a 360, play it for 10 mins at a time so it doesn't melt.

If you have a ps3, avoid it like the plague.

They say patch 1.4 will "address" it which means that they can't "fix" it.

I'm guessing they didn't send Yhatzee the ps3 copy...
Oh yea, he's a reviewer.

but...my ps3 copy is just fine... its a very touchy game..works for some..not for others.

 

[Sylveria]

Yahtzee, you cavernous hole! Good list. You are wrong about a game needing to stand on it's single-player element. I, like you, play games to have fun. I lurrrrv the multiplayer of "Realistic" shooters, (for the most part.) I rarely bother with the single-player. I just can't be buggered to care about single-player elements in "Realistic" shooters when there's a world of twelve-year-olds out there ready to test the limits of their imaginations in fictional, sexual conquest of my mother.

That begs the question, why even have a single player component? Even among the people who lurv MWCOD3^2 so much that they cut a hole in the box cover so they could have sex with it, the people who contribute any of that love to the single player campaign are almost non-existent. If the whole crux of the fun and fanbase of a game is the multiplayer, just release a multiplayer only game. Take that money that was essentially wasted on the single-player component and invest it somewhere else.

 

[Lovely Mixture]

I was hoping for something more surprising as the top game of 2011.
Portal 2 is well made sure, but I found it far too easy and lacking in replay value for it to be "game of the year." Instead it just made me more angry at Valve (not that Valve is a bad studio, I just don't prefer some of their design choices).

I understand he gave the two big selling shooters the worst-crown out of principle, but I think it lets his anger show too much and may have been misplaced. I haven't played either, so I have no idea about how well they are designed (or not).

 

[Chris646]

What really got me laughing in this one was the nice juxtaposition of the imagery of a bunch of people lining up, depressed, all about to kill each other whilst wearing party hats. That part was brilliant, Yahtzee. Anyways, Portal 2 was pretty good, and my opinion of it has probably lessened because I haven't played it since it came out, but it was pretty good. I heard that Bastion was really damn good, and I'll give it a try sometime.

 

[triggrhappy94]

It's kind of funny, just this morning a read a letter to the editor in the newest Game Informer about how they gave MW3 a good score, because they like and they weren't about compromising journalistic integrity just to make a point. What everyone else who wrote a letter to the editor didn't realize is that: everyone has their own opinion.

 

[Aprilgold]

Also, Bastion better than Skyrim? =o

Yeah because Bastion wasn't a boring copy - pasted cave to cave to get a mcguffin that also glitched like a thousand hookers on crack. Bastion was both pretty, had a great artstyle, never glitched and was innovative for many games now in days. Skyrim was basically Oblivion with a new coat of paint.

I shouldn't quote anybody else since apparently no one can get over Skyrim getting on 5th place. But Yahtzee has gave good games that were heavily unpolished bad standings in his reviews. Skyrim is a great example of this, only the PC version is barely playable with the least amount of glitches since modders will fix the game for bethesda, while the console ones were crash-tastic and glitched like 100 crackers on adrenaline.

I do think that the list did a good job of actually giving a top 5 games to buy and never to buy list, and was enjoyable.

I do agree that Battlefield 3 and Modern Warfare 3 got what they deserved, mainly because they wave around 'realism' while not being realistic in the slightest.

Every year there's that one game that I DON'T regret buying. In 2011, that game was portal 2. Good choice.

Skyrim FREEZES? I thought Bethesda was over "New Vegas" levels of glitchiness! I thought that Skyrim's worst bugs were along the lines of "hovering ground ladies" or spinning horsemen (as seen in a Youtube video).

Has anyone else had serious glitches with Skyrim? I'm starting to doubt whether I should get it if it's going to crash on me.

If you're on the PC, wait for the modders to fix it.

If you have a 360, play it for 10 mins at a time so it doesn't melt.

If you have a ps3, avoid it like the plague.

They say patch 1.4 will "address" it which means that they can't "fix" it.

I'm guessing they didn't send Yhatzee the ps3 copy...
Oh yea, he's a reviewer.

but...my ps3 copy is just fine... its a very touchy game..works for some..not for others.

Thats the problem, it should work for everyone, not just for a few. If we compare it to other games on the good list then you will see that all of them didn't have as many glitches as Skyrim does, because its a un-polished game because they didn't test everything like a Developer should before releasing the game to the public.

 

[daxterx2005]

Third movie curse huh, never heard of it before.

Alien 3 was great

 

[Beryl77]

I'm finally able to connect to the Escapist again. It can't only have been becuase of Yahtzee's video?

Anyway, very good list.
I can't agree more with Dead Island, I've rarely spent money for something so bad. My brother talked me into buying it and at first it was rather good but at some point I just stopped playing it.
I've yet to play Bastion, I've heard a lot of positive opinions about it, so maybe I'll give it a try.
I'm happy that Portal 2 got the first place, great story, funny and well written characters, good gameplay and of course excellent albeit a bit too easy puzzles. Just throughouly an enjoyable game and even the more the co-op if you've got a good partner.
I don't fully agree on bf3, I haven't played mw3 so I can't comment on that. While the singleplayer is just meh, the multiplayer is really fun. I don't know why everyone uses the word "realistic" when talking about bf3. The only thing it really tries to do realistic are the guns and to some degree the locations but anything else isn't realistic. If it was, it wouldn't be fun.

Just my two cents.

Edit:

Actually, I agree with Yahtzee's multiplayer hating. I myself am a HUGE fan of singleplayer games because I quite simply hate how gaming is abandoning it's singleplayer roots in favour of charging about $99.99 for content that if the game had been made in the last decade would have been included on the disk for the initial $20 game purchase!

In this case, I don't think you should be hating multiplayer but rather the fans who always buy those games and the developers who are just after money and abandon good singleplayer games. Of course, Multiplayer games just aren't your cup of tea but they can be a lot of fun.

 

[OneOfTheMichael's]

Well that was pretty much what I expected knowing yahtzee like the critic he is. And somehow I just knew it was going to be MW3/BF3 being the worst game/s of 2011. I didn't find them too enjoyable myself.

 

[DJShire]

That was some of best imagery he's ever done in spoken form. I'd say this is the best ZP of the year! Wait.....