Betrayal

[Abedeus]

Games should be judged by the single player

You have GOT to be kidding me.

Neverwinter Nights, Diablo 2, BATTLEFIELD, Borderlands, STARCRAFT, WARCRAFT...

 

[Seneschal]

No, Plan 9 From Outer Space becomes FANTASTIC when you watch it with other people.

And this Second Sight thing sounds interesting. I might check it out.

 

[Woodsey]

It is becoming rather tired, though. Mass Effect 2 discussion inside:

Spoiler

I'd been waiting from the start of the game for the point where the Illusive Man inevitably betrays Shepard... And I was thoroughly surprised when it never really came. Sure, I had the thoughts of "Yep, there it is. Great plot twist Bioware." on board the Collector Ship, but when they managed to logically explain it as not really a betrayal and have TIM and Shepard keep working together, I was actually pretty impressed.

Agreed. They let you make up your own mind up about him, and to be honest it hits that morally-grey area perfectly.

 

[adderseal]

Maze from Fable was badly done- Someone who looks that evil to begin with means he'll betray you. I think they could have played on that stereotype and made him NOT betray you, that would have been good. But they didn't.

 

[Hazelwolf]

Games should be judged by the single player

You have GOT to be kidding me.

Neverwinter Nights, Diablo 2, BATTLEFIELD, Borderlands, STARCRAFT, WARCRAFT...

Most of those are exclusively multiplayer anyway. Apart from Warcraft which is exclusively single-player and not even online. Unless you were referring to WORLD of warcraft which, again, is exclusively multiplayer.

So of course you couldn't judge these exclusively on the single player.

I find it interesting that so many people here on the defensive about BF:BC2 are doing so purely because Yahtzee has chosen to not laud their new favourite toy with the praise they feel it deserves on a game mechanic that they clearly don't need convincing is awesome and neither do other reviewers. Instead he focuses on the single player that he finds lacking and worthy of making fun of that most of the whiners say they hardly even bothered with.

The butthurt is almost matching that of the SSBB fanboys. He didn't like the single player, end of. Unless you have some desperate masochistic desire to see him tear into the multiplayer or you feel that somehow the sheer majesty of an online fps will make him see the light and put the multiplayer campaign of BF:BC2 right on his top game list why do you keep pushing this? If you love this game, fine. Gods know I've not always found Yahtzee's opinions to mirror mine when it comes to my gaming enjoyment but I can accept the points he makes and see where he is coming from and take solace in the fact that not everybody likes the same thing.

OT: I think it just goes to display how cookie cutter and cliched generic gaming plots have become over the past 2 decades. Though the betrayal cliche has been a standard of bad thriller/action/drama since Shakespeare. Why should games be any different?

 

[Shjade]

The Battlefield series has always been about the multiplayer. Hell, for the most part, they don't even HAVE a single player campaign... Bad Company 1 was their first attempt at a single player campaign. BC2 was their attempt at a REAL single player campaign.

Let me get this straight: you're saying that a franchise that specializes in multiplayer experiences should not have their attempt at a single-player campaign called out for being shoddy because, and I'm paraphrasing here, "C'mon, guys, it's their first try!"

If you're a multiplayer FPS aficionado wouldn't that be your cue to turn to the game developers, inform them they are campaign-making nubs and proceed to teabag the crap out of them while laughing into your mic?

Badness properly labeled as bad seems fair to me. You say it wasn't the focus of the game, then you turn around and say it was an attempt at a "real" single-player campaign. This suggests it was supposed to stand on its own, worthy of judgment. Either it is or it isn't: pick one.


Oh, and regarding opinions being "demonstrably wrong," common sense would suggest so as in your example, but technically no. If water is, in your opinion, dry, I can't prove to you that it's wet any more than I can prove that blue isn't red. Why? Because words are abstract, representations of ideas, and opinions are relative. Water is wet to me because I follow the social understanding of what wet means and agree with it. That you do not makes you wrong from the popular viewpoint (sometimes referred to as "reality" in this case), but it doesn't make your opinion wrong.

Put another, simpler way, your opinion isn't wrong - your facts are wrong. Your opinion might be misinformed as a result, but it isn't wrong because there is no right or wrong in opinions. There's accepted or not accepted, popular or unpopular, agreement and disagreement.

Disagreeing with someone's opinion, even if that person is the only one on Earth who has that opinion, does not make it wrong. That's just not how it works.

 

[rembrandtqeinstein]

Planescape Torment, the best written video game ever has a few instances of truly surprising and heartbreaking betrayal.

I don't see how any game in my lifetime will beat the writing that went into Planescape.

 

[Eruanno]

(Slightly spoiler-licious, people) As has already been mentioned: Bioshock 1. But then again, that one was masterfully done, and I spent a good couple of minutes catching my breath as what was essentially my best (...and only) "friend" stabbed me not in the back, but in the freaking face, while laughing like a maniac. (End of spoiler-licious)

 

[Abedeus]

Games should be judged by the single player

You have GOT to be kidding me.

Neverwinter Nights, Diablo 2, BATTLEFIELD, Borderlands, STARCRAFT, WARCRAFT...

Neverwinder Nights, starcraft and warcraft wernt created with multiplayer as the main focus and all have very long single player campaigns. Diablo 2 was more of a multiplayer game but the single player was the exact same game except that you were by yourself rather then with some other people which is massively different then most games today.

Borderlands well sure it was meant to be played with other people but they did a really bad job at implementing the multiplayer aspect, it simply felt like playing with 3 npcs not other players. Basically it triend to do what diablo 2 did and failed.

And i havnt played the battlefield games because i have mw2 and i dont feel the need to spend money on basically a clone of it, and yes pretty much every fps game these days are clones of each other and i dont care which one came first. I play the one that i have the most friends on.

Excuse me, but Neverwinter Nights' 96 max players online, Dungeon Masters and huge servers is definitely for Multiplayer. Especially the first one, the single-player campaign sucks.

Starcraft? Anyone you know still plays the Single Player? No? MP? Sure.

Also, you said that BFBC2 is a clone of MW2. It means one of the things:

a) fanboy
b) flame-bait
c) ignorant
d) blind.

Seriously, you compare an arcade-y shoot'n'hide/nade spam/knife throw to a squad-based tactical realistic (destruction of environment and buildings) FPS?

The Battlefield series has always been about the multiplayer. Hell, for the most part, they don't even HAVE a single player campaign... Bad Company 1 was their first attempt at a single player campaign. BC2 was their attempt at a REAL single player campaign.

Let me get this straight: you're saying that a franchise that specializes in multiplayer experiences should not have their attempt at a single-player campaign called out for being shoddy because, and I'm paraphrasing here, "C'mon, guys, it's their first try!"

No, we're saying that reviewing 1/10 of the game and criticizing it without saying ANYTHING about the actual game and calling it a review is simply wrong.

 

[PhunkyPhazon]

Don't forget every single Grand Theft Auto game since GTA3 has used betrayal as a plot twist. I always expect it now, because I KNOW I will be betrayed in those games. Let's see here:

Spoiler

GTA 3: Salvatore Leone sends you on a fake mission to steal a car that's actually rigged to blow.

Vice City: Lance betrays you in the last mission.

San Andreas: Big Smoke and Ryder betray you early on in the game.

GTA Advance: Turns out your partner faked his death so he could leave Liberty City without you.

Liberty City Stories: Your own mother sends hitmen after you.

Vice City Stories: Your commander in the military frames you for having drugs.

GTA4: Dmitri betrays you early on, I'm still playing the game but I won't be surprised when I get betrayed again.

Chinatown Wars: Your Uncle in the final mission.

I haven't played any of those GTA4 expansions yet, but I'm sure those have betrayals as well. Please try to be more original Rockstar. It's not the least bit shocking anymore.

 

[Dr_Steve_Brule]

I call bullshit.
If a game should be judged by it's single player, then Team Fortress 2 should have gotten zero.
Single player is an addon in Bad Company 2, thats all.
Judging A Battlefield game by it's single player is like judging a party by the decorations.
Yahtzee, I am disappoint.

 

[The Cake Is Annoying]

The lack of a good story is something that SHOULD stop a game being given the green light, but the Committee of Cultureless Expensive Suited Bastards (CoCESBs) cares about the words "enormous sales" and knows damn well that no enormous selling game was a success mainly because of its story.

They're a combination of absurdly fussed over graphics and enormous marketing budgets for hype.

Hell, look at what's happening in the cinema. FernGully gots clearcut to make punchcards for James Cameron's Skynet render farm and now the film is constipated with the number of Golden Awards its shat out.

 

[awatkins]

Speaking of Second Sight, does anyone remember an equally awesome game called Psy Ops? It ended on suck a fucking HUGE!!! cliffhanger but a sequal was never made And the best part of Psy Ops (actually possible the best idea a game developer literally has ever had) is you can enter a cheat that makes you look like Scorpion from MK. Now, I don't wanna sound like a queer or nothing, but, watching Scorpion mow down legions of people with M16s, granades, shot guns and Pyrokinetic powers gives me a stiffy.

 

[mechanixis]

I want to see a game where you play as a character who over the course of the storyline gets betrayed by absolutely everyone, but at the end it is revealed that you're just a paranoid schizophrenic and no one actually betrayed you at all.

 

[Milenkov]

I'd put forth the suggestion that Yahtzee doesn't like online MP for similar reasons as myself:

I remember when games were fun. There was even friendly competition, with people sitting right next to you, elevating the experience.

Say I sit down with my wife to play a game of Mario Party on the Wii - we have fun, we razz each other, it's fun. The controls are easily picked up by a non-gamer, and can be enjoyed. Games are supposed to be fun, right?

Now say I sit down with my wife and jump on Live for some MW2 enjoyment. The controls are more difficult for her, which can be overcome with time and practice. What can't be overcome, is the tendency to find yourself in a game with prepubescent morons screaming about how 1337 they are for no-scoping someone that's simply not as good at the game as they seem to think they are. Inevitably, the trash talking starts, and pretty much any non-gamer is just going to put the controller down and walk away. In a more localized setting, a stiff jab to the upper nose bridge would solve this issue, but we've yet to figure out how to transfer physical movement over TCP/IP.

So what do we do? We break out the Wii, and we enjoy Mario Party without having to deal with the online megalomaniacs.

Yes, that is what multiplayer gaming has become. Used to be, even if you had NO IDEA how to play a game, you were easily involved into a game. Now, these 'Multiplayer-centric' games are just more of the same, for a specialized community that seems to get off in some strange online masturbatory circle jerk.

Heh, most likely going to get TL;DR to this...

You have just described my exact feelings on Multiplayer.

 

[mechanixis]

I call bullshit.
If a game should be judged by it's single player, then Team Fortress 2 should have gotten zero.
Single player is an addon, thats all.

Well, if you're reviewing a multiplayer game, 90% of what you're reviewing is the community. Judging a game on its multiplayer is like judging a restaurant on the people who were eating there when you visited. Multiplayer is the addon.

 

[Dr_Steve_Brule]

You have just described my exact feelings on Multiplayer.

And that is why I don't play it on a console.

I call bullshit.
If a game should be judged by it's single player, then Team Fortress 2 should have gotten zero.
Single player is an addon, thats all.

Well, if you're reviewing a multiplayer game, 90% of what you're reviewing is the community. Judging a game on its multiplayer is like judging a restaurant on the people who were eating there when you visited. Multiplayer is the addon.

Not at all.
If a game is multiplayer oriented, judge it by the multiplayer.
Again-Team Fortress 2: you can't judge it 90% based on the community, it's the game mechanic, the maps, the addons, the updating, all of it that make up a multiplayer game.
If I bring you a steak, judge the meal according to the steak you had, but If i bring you chicken don't base the meal around the fact that I didn't bring you steak.

 

[hi0marc]

Yahtzee, you're forgetting the greatest most awesomed betrayal of them all... 1984. Thats betrayal that only the SAW game can replicate