Zero Punctuation - Yahtzee reviews

[Pidesco]

Hilarious as usual.

[Tale]

Yes, just like Call of Duty 4! Your theory is flawless.

If you count team deathmatch as co-op deathmatch, yes, so far it is!

Edited January 23, 2008 by Tale

[Nick_i_am]

Yeah Dead Rising had that.

 

But this is nitpicking, you're right, coop is normally a boon to an otherwise good game.

 

'otherwise good game' being the key.

[Meshugger]

Hah, i would've been suprised if he liked it. Then something would've been seriously wrong.

 

The Witcher was one of the best games of 2007. That and MotB shared the award for RPG of the year at least.

[Hurlshort]

It's a hilarious review, but I'm surprised he even played it. It's clearly not a genre he enjoys, he's stated as much in the past.

[WILL THE ALMIGHTY]

I like the little "Painkiller" bit at the end. Hopefully there'll be more of those.

[Sand]

Yeah, this week's Yahtzee is so far the best of the bunch. HA!

[Pop]

Hah, i would've been suprised if he liked it. Then something would've been seriously wrong.

 

The Witcher was one of the best games of 2007. That and MotB shared the award for RPG of the year at least.

A BLOO BLA BLOO

 

As per the norm, Yahtzee obviously has a distaste for what he's playing, but he also has a myriad of valid and sound points to back up his foul language.

 

In fact, dare I say that he was even more right than usual this time.

Edited January 23, 2008 by Pop

[Moatilliatta]

In fact, dare I say that he was even more right than usual this time.

Where?

The first warning sign is that the manual is thick enough to beat goats to death with.

Were there multiple versions of the manual? Because mine is like 1/2 of a centimetre. Must be some pretty sickly goats.

bla bla... Interface as unintuitive as Microsoft Access

This might have been because I've been desenticized by games such as JA2 and similar games with horrible interfaces, but I actually don't see his point.

Bla bla Geralt doesn't know where the skull is located.

If I were a game designer then I would probably have told him that this isn't a case of amnesia, but is instead a case of Geralt not knowing how to remove something, like a skull, without damaging its alchemical properties. Oh and balancing too of course.

Bla bla drawn out with dull conversation

I'll give him this one as much of The Witcher's writing were quite bad, especially when you quite after a few hours, totally missing the good parts which come afterwards.

Runnign from one part of the place to another at the behest of fat NPC jerks.

Now, I do understand that yahtzee has some kind of childhood syndrome that prevents him from enjoying an RPG, but complaining that there are quests in a game genre that usually includes them is kind of strange. I actually found that there were very little running in the game, unless you have som kind of Obsessive-compulsive disorder that forces you to do only one thing at a time.

You fight enemies by clicking on them once... And then if you're really advanced clicking on them again.

Valid complaint, and one I've made about the game, especially considering that it's an action-rpg, which I'm guessing is supposed to have proper combat.

This is a MUMORPUGER!

Yes. If you totally ignore the focus on actual roleplaying.

Bla bla Yahtzee forgets who he was supposed to kill and why he ever cared.

How? If I remember correctly then there are 'meetings' with the baddies at the end of every chapter. So how he can forget the plot at the start of a chapter, which funnily comes right after an end with a baddie 'meeting', is beyond me.

 

The problem witht his review isn't that The Withcer is perfect, because it isn't. The problem is that Yahtzee totally misses the parts that are actually bad or chides a game for having something he doesn't like. He has two valid complaints (combat and conversation), but who needs a reviewer to tell you that combat can be boring at points and not all of the dialogue in a game is good? And who would chide a game for it?

I wonder why The Escapist editors keep feeding him RPGs considering that it's like asking a speed pumped partygoer to sit down.

 

In other news: Does anyone know what that painkiller stuff was about?

Edited January 24, 2008 by Moatilliatta

[Pop]

Were there multiple versions of the manual? Because mine is like 1/2 of a centimetre. Must be some pretty sickly goats.

I don't think I received a manual. However, Yahtzee is pointing out the inherent Eastern European-ness of the game, in that everything is needlessly complex. Saying "I don't mind that" isn't really a refutation of the point.

 

bla bla... Interface as unintuitive as Microsoft Access

This might have been because I've been desenticized by games such as JA2 and similar games with horrible interfaces, but I actually don't see his point.

Case in point.

 

Bla bla Geralt doesn't know where the

skull is located.

If I were a game designer then I would probably have told him that this isn't a case of amnesia, but is instead a case of Geralt not knowing how to remove something, like a skull, without damaging its alchemical properties. Oh and balancing too of course.

Yahtzee is pointing out the ridiculousness of it. It doesn't matter how it "balances" the game, it's still goddamned stupid. Like how in the first Commandos only one person on your team knew how to drive a car, and only one knew how to row a boat. You could make up bull**** excuses like "durr, the alchemical process requires educated removal", but that's functionally the same as saying "Durr, it's that way because I said so." It's a rationalization, not a refutation, of the point.

 

Yahtzee has no reason to care about the grand vision of a game designer. He plays games. He is a gamer. The role of a gamer isn't to appreciate the vision of the designer, it's to have fun.

 

Bla bla drawn out with dull conversation

I'll give him this one as much of The Witcher's writing were quite bad, especially when you quite after a few hours, totally missing the good parts which come afterwards.

Contrary to popular belief, a badass ending doesn't really justify a ****ty beginning. Yahtzee is not wrong in walking away from an unsatisfactory game when it demands that he eat **** today to get a hamburger on Tuesday. I'm about 10 hours in and the game is fundamentally the same as it was before. I'm taking a break, but it looks like I'm not actually going to ever actually finish this game. I keep waiting for it to justify itself, and it never does.

Edited January 24, 2008 by Pop

[Pop]

Runnign from one part of the place to another at the behest of fat NPC jerks.

Now, I do understand that yahtzee has some kind of childhood syndrome that prevents him from enjoying an RPG, but complaining that there are quests in a game genre that usually includes them is kind of strange. I actually found that there were very little running in the game, unless you have som kind of Obsessive-compulsive disorder that forces you to do only one thing at a time.

I understand that RPG gamers have some kind of childhood syndrome that causes them to accept (nay, demand) ****ty quest design and gameplay. You must have been playing a different game, because the fedex quests were many and there was a ****-ton of running around in the Witcher.

 

You fight enemies by clicking on them once... And then if you're really advanced clicking on them again.

Valid complaint, and one I've made about the game, especially considering that it's an action-rpg, which I'm guessing is supposed to have proper combat.

This is not a refutation of the point.

 

This is a MUMORPUGER!

Yes. If you totally ignore the focus on actual roleplaying.

This statement is meaningless.

 

Bla bla Yahtzee forgets who he was supposed to kill and why he ever cared.

How? If I remember correctly then there are 'meetings' with the baddies at the end of every chapter. So how he can forget the plot at the start of a chapter, which funnily comes right after an end with a baddie 'meeting', is beyond me.

The chapters are as long as an old man's balls. In a way, The Witcher is much like a pen & paper D&D game, in that it starts off with some sort of plot but the players become more interested in banging chicks and killing things until the DM has to throw them a reminder that there's some reason they're playing. Until the next chapter starts and we get back to banging chicks and killing things.

 

The purpose of Yahtzee is to be funny and review games without regard for their pretensions, which is exactly what he's doing. And Yahtzee is painfully correct in that the Witcher is padded so hard it makes Neverwinter Nights 2 look like ****ing Portal.

[WILL THE ALMIGHTY]

Personnally I think he nailed everything about the game... though I haven't played it. *ignores the fact he now sounds like a hypocrite*

[theslug]

I wish I would have seen this review before I bought the game. I have the same problems with the game as yahtzee and I share the exact same sentiment that pop does. I keep on trying to justify a meaning to play the witcher (I'm in Vizima so I've played over 5 hours which I think is plenty of buffer time for a game to at least begin to get good or give you the hint that it's going to soon, which it has not) but I just can't find one.

[Morgoth]

I enjoy Yahtzee's reviews, and he really hits the nail on the head on Witcher. One major turn-off for me was indeed the long-stretched world, irregular pace and the "What am I supposed to do actually? Who was that guy again? Where?" feeling. BG2 or Gothic2 were huge games too, but there was still the invisible red line that motivated me to go through all this.... Witcher just lacks this red line.

[Meshugger]

Hah, i would've been suprised if he liked it. Then something would've been seriously wrong.

 

The Witcher was one of the best games of 2007. That and MotB shared the award for RPG of the year at least.

A BLOO BLA BLOO

 

As per the norm, Yahtzee obviously has a distaste for what he's playing, but he also has a myriad of valid and sound points to back up his foul language.

 

In fact, dare I say that he was even more right than usual this time.

 

Oh boo-hoo

 

He did correctly point out the faults of The Witcher, but they never made it difficult for me to enjoy my game of the Witcher. But Yahtzee really shines in deliverence on what's wrong with any game, and that is all that matters in this review.

Edited January 24, 2008 by Meshugger

[Niten_Ryu]

The chapters are as long as an old man's balls. In a way, The Witcher is much like a pen & paper D&D game, in that it starts off with some sort of plot but the players become more interested in banging chicks and killing things until the DM has to throw them a reminder that there's some reason they're playing. Until the next chapter starts and we get back to banging chicks and killing things.

 

Funny thing, since that was one of the reasons why The Witcher felt much more like our PnP RGP sessions from the late 80's then any other cRPG in long time. Getting drunk in local tavern, getting busy with waitress, then waking up from the gutter stripped almost clean and totally skint. You notice that you don't have any booze left either. No problem because you're one of the few monter slayers in the world, you go and blackmail some poor bastard to pay you some cash in exchange of some monster parts. Still bit drunk you go and kill few trivial monsters and try to keep your guts inside of you because of terrible hangover and/or potion poisoning. Yup, felt like I was playing PnP again

 

I enjoy Yahtzee's reviews, and he really hits the nail on the head on Witcher. One major turn-off for me was indeed the long-stretched world, irregular pace and the "What am I supposed to do actually? Who was that guy again? Where?" feeling. BG2 or Gothic2 were huge games too, but there was still the invisible red line that motivated me to go through all this.... Witcher just lacks this red line.

 

Was the plot that hard to follow ? I didn't get stuck nor lose track of the main storyline and I didn't know anything about The Witcher's world untill this game. I even learnt where characters lived, times when they went to eat/drink something in tavern and who sold what. Maybe this is because I always care more about world aspect in games, then often weak "main" storyline. Then again, in The Witcher I did enjoy both main storyline and the world.

[Magister Lajciak]

I just watched the HALO 'review'. It was hilarious!

[Magister Lajciak]

I am hooked! These are amazing - is there one for MotB or NWN2?

[Istima Loke]

....

 

Was the plot that hard to follow ? I didn't get stuck nor lose track of the main storyline and I didn't know anything about The Witcher's world untill this game. I even learnt where characters lived, times when they went to eat/drink something in tavern and who sold what. Maybe this is because I always care more about world aspect in games, then often weak "main" storyline. Then again, in The Witcher I did enjoy both main storyline and the world.

 

The plot was exactly what Yahtzee said. It was awfully dragged. The plot begins and nothing new ever happens until the end of every chapter, where they remind you what you are supposed to be doing. It's pace is so slow it, at times, becomes tedious. It needed some more complexity (and when I say complexity I mean more things to happen/develop) if they wanted to create a 80 hours game.

 

Anyway, as always it was funny. Yahtzee's points are (most of time) true, if not a little exaggerated. He just never mentions the good parts of the games and I think that was the point in the Witcher as well.

Edited January 24, 2008 by Istima Loke

[Magister Lajciak]

I did a search. No NWN2 or MotB review appears on the site.

 

Ah well, Obsidian is probably happy at that fact.

[Nick_i_am]

I can't wait for him to rip into a CRPG, just to have people here start bitching.

 

Hi guys!

[Meshugger]

I can't wait for him to rip into a CRPG, just to have people here start bitching.

 

Hi guys!

 

Hi!

 

I have gut feeling that he will love "No More Heroes" of some reason. I don't know why, but we'll see in the next upcoming weeks.

[Kaftan Barlast]

Yahtzee hates all games, thats his schtick. It would be no fun watching his review if he was nice

[Pop]

Yahtzee hates all games, thats his schtick.

I suppose that's a more comforting thought than the alternative.

[Pidesco]

Considering how game reviews consistently label games as brilliant when those games are just more of the same, I think more critical reviews like Yahtzee's are one of the things the games industry needs to improve the rate of innovation.

 

Take Bioware, for example. Why would they strive to improve their design formulas, if every single game they release is met with almost universal praise? Game journalists should be more critical, both in reviews and in previews. I mean, even NWN1's OC got fantastic praise at the time of release.