Betrayal

[mounky]

Far Cry had a pretty damn good betrayal! But aside from that its usually something stupid that makes me go WTF and then gives no reason.

 

[Dr_Steve_Brule]

Sorta makes you wonder why they didn't take the time to put in some crisp fresh lettuce instead, since there are people who like that, and there are those who lose their appetite when they find their burger with an old wilted plant hidden under the bun.
Maybe everyone should stop telling a man who's picky about his lettuce to tell you what he thinks about your new favorite burger when you know it's usually served with sub par salad.
Yay exhausting metaphors!

You're missing the point.
Fine, you want your lettuce fresh, I don't have a problem with that, but you can't judge the entire burger just from the lettuce perspective. The lettuce is not the main focus here. Even if you take it out, it's still a very good burger.
Yes, you should pay less for it, but it's still a good burger.

I think I just crossed the metaphor limit.

 

[PunkRex]

But guy the point was that you were a mindless goverment agent with no personality to speak of blindly following the voice coming out of your ear piece. I thought the speach was more focused towards the player then the character you used. Still I will admit the ending was more frustrating then challenging, climbing that tower, taking cover on top of those bells, that was good BUT then to reach the top only to get rocketed in the face and blasted off the top becoming a smear on the pavement. Funny the first time. Suicidal the 4th.

 

[Dectilon]

Saying a game can be judged by single player alone is retarded. Solitare is boring, but I wouldn't judge all card games based on that experience.

Take Mercenaries 2: Terrible game if you play it alone, amazingly fun if you play with a friend.

 

[ACHVDragon]

When i saw MW2, i was slightly surprised for some reason.

I mean, i know there was a betrayal, duh, but it reminded me of something. Why no Infamous/Prototype review style?

It would certainly decide the better game. You were going to do for Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood and Red Dead Redemption if it was any good.

And many people would like to know which is better(excluding me, I dont give a shit, just want more entertainment).

Besides, what are the chances science will fail twice?

 

[ResiEvalJohn]

OMG! Lol, it's so wierd that I was just thinking about this topic like yesterday, and the next day Yatzee did a column on it! I had just played Dead Space again and was like, wtf, why does the hot chick have to turn out to be the backstabber? Cuz honestly, I thought she was pretty hot, and if I was Isaac, I would've just found a quite room with a locker somewhere and banged the crap out of her. Maybe that would've unlocked some power nodes

But no, she has to turn out to be bad, and there was a government conspiracy the whole time, great... I agree this is getting old. I'm sick of every game having this kind of twist! I think the first game I played with a twist was Thief: the Dark Project. That was ages ago, and back then it was cool because it was one of the first games I had ever played with a betrayal twist, but seriously, it's not cool anymore.

Thank you Yatzee for pointing that out!

 

[docbox1567]

Saying you think the focus of Badfield 2 is multiplayer and not single player is like saying that the focus of McDonald's happy meal is around the free toy because that's why you buy it. Just because you buy it for the free toy doesn't mean the whole point of the happy meal is the cheap piece of plastic and not the god awful "food". Plus, what can you say about the multiplayer that has no story? The multiplayer is fun and you shoot people.

 

[GLo Jones]

A little part of me lit up when Yahtzee mentioned both PoP:SoT (Again) AND Second Sight. Man, I miss my PS2.

 

[Jin-Roh]

Hem... again why does multiplayer mater? I know it is fun in some cases. But I feel much hate for games that single player is not fun. What makes you think I am going to play the multiplayer? If I want to play a game for multiplayer I would go to a LAN. Not online to many poeple that I wish for them to remove the Broca's and Wernicke's areas of their brain removed.

 

[Corps]

The reason Bad company 2 has a single player campaign is so they can make another game, its not like Call of Duty where they just choose another war to base a game on. This "technique" offers more options rather than, if they're Japs they will bonsai charge you, Germans will have tanks, or Middle Easterns will be masked at least and fire RPGs and AKs at you. Heck did anyone really know before hand what kinda of weapons those South Americans would have? I am still upset that Yahtzee complained too much about the dust (real men shoot through the dust and get head-shots ), but he hit the nail on the head with this article. Bad Company 2 is NOT just for multiplayer and definitely had a single player focus. Though they can still pull off a great multiplayer game thanks to the successes of the previous Battlefield games.

Oh and ya all that betrayal stuff is an overused plot device as well

 

[Fensfield]

Suikoden II

I hope it's not irrelevant.. but one of my favourite plot twists ever was a betrayal, and it was in that game, and it got me out of nowhere for a total blindsider and left me reeling for the better part of the game after. It worked perfectly and had me hooked into chasing Jowy with the sheer single minded wish to find out what the hell drove him to betray his friends' trust and murder the woman had taken them in.

The reason in the end was a pretty satisfying plot development and all. So.. yeah, I still like that one, but it's true it's one to treat with delicacy lest it bite you and your plot >.>

All plot devices are overused, it's a rule of writing and we all know it. I think the trick to making betrayal work in a videogame is to make it something that drives the player. I admit, it's pretty tired when the betrayal and the explanation come together..

Another reason I think Sui II achieved a 'good' betrayal was because Jowy doesn't directly betray the player. He betrays the trust of the people have been kind to them instead, and thanks to the sheer quality of that game's writing, the indirect assault still lands squarely on the player's emotions anyway.

 

[sammi43055]

I was disappointed with Battle Field Bad Company 2, but that still will not stop people from buying the game. I got the game and beat it before the review came out and now I wish I had done it the other way around. I have already traded it in too.

I don't usually play games online so I agree that games should be able to stand alone on single player.

 

[lifesucksadapt]

*quickly hides God of War 3*
yes very tired over used plot twist......*cough*

 

[glenbruton]

yep betrayal is overused.

however... Jade Empire did it right.

 

[Shjade]

Sorta makes you wonder why they didn't take the time to put in some crisp fresh lettuce instead, since there are people who like that, and there are those who lose their appetite when they find their burger with an old wilted plant hidden under the bun.
Maybe everyone should stop telling a man who's picky about his lettuce to tell you what he thinks about your new favorite burger when you know it's usually served with sub par salad.
Yay exhausting metaphors!

You're missing the point.
Fine, you want your lettuce fresh, I don't have a problem with that, but you can't judge the entire burger just from the lettuce perspective. The lettuce is not the main focus here. Even if you take it out, it's still a very good burger.
Yes, you should pay less for it, but it's still a good burger.

I think I just crossed the metaphor limit.

I like where this metaphor is going.

Okay, so you've got your burger shack with its various additions and condiments and you've got three customers. One customer just wants meat - he doesn't really care about the extras as long as the meat is good. One customer is even easier to please - he'll be satisfied as long as any part of the burger is worthwhile. One customer wants the total package - if the bun's sweaty and gross or the lettuce is spoiled or the tomato's gone bad, the ketchup's just water that drools onto your hands, any of that, will obviously have a negative effect on the burger as a whole and lessen his enjoyment of it as a result.

Judging a game with both single- and multiplayer modes based on its single-player experience, assuming the two modes are based on the same mechanics (a game that plays like an FPS in single-player and an RTS in multiplayer wouldn't really work for this as they are, for most intents and purposes, completely different games rather than the same game but with additional players) is asking for the burger, the meat of it, to be good. If the extras (multiplayer) are good too, awesome! That makes it an even better burger, well worth the price of nomnomming. If the extras are crap, eh, you're still full and the meat was well-cooked. Maybe better to buy when the shack's having its weekend special deal for half-off on burgers. -- This obviously doesn't apply to multiplayer games - games that either do not have a single-player mode at all or in which the single-player is, at best, a framework to introduce you to the multiplayer. If there's a single-player campaign, you aren't playing a multiplayer game. You are playing a game with a multiplayer option. That the multiplayer is more polished than the single-player does not make the game a multiplayer game; it makes it a game in which the multiplayer is the only part worth playing because having other people around compensates for the otherwise unsatisfying gameplay. (Left 4 Dead/Left 4 Dead 2 are difficult to classify as the single-player and multiplayer games are...the same game. Except in one you have idiotic bots and in the other you have players. I might be inclined to label that a multiplayer game given the bots qualify - barely - as "players" even in the single-player mode; you can't really play it alone unless you mod it to be able to save yourself or you remove the special infected, either of which would dramatically alter the game. Difficult to judge.)

Judging a game with single- and multiplayer modes based solely on the multiplayer experience is customer #2, the guy who'll accept anything burger-shaped as long as something about it is good. Everything inside the bun might be shit, but damn that bun is nice - sold! If more than one thing in the burger is good then it must be a completely awesome burger, right? Or so it would seem, given this customer has grown accustomed to devouring a lot of crap that resembles hamburger given his extremely high tolerance for low-grade meat and expired condiments masked by excellent bread. -- Again, doesn't apply to MP-only games using the above reasoning.

Customer #3 rarely eats anything and weighs seventy pounds. He plays Portal, Starcraft and Thief and only occasionally deigns to speak with anyone who plays with anything else, most often to inform them of what their chosen games lack. He is unlikely to live for much longer for reasons of malnutrition...or so the doctors would have him believe. However, Customer #3 is far too savvy to be fooled by this sort of misinformation.

You see, Customer #3 is well aware of the global conspiracy amongst the world's most successful game developers, movie producers and licorice merchants to enslave the masses and do away with those too enlightened to manipulate into assisting with their diabolical plans. If pressed he might admit that this is the real reason he partakes of so few forms of electronic recreation or processed foods, knowing what he does about the subliminal signals sent out by the former and the nano-machinery embedded in the latter, a pairing with the synergistic purpose of turning a living, breathing, thinking human being into little more than a blind consumer, a slave to join the growing chain of bodies wrapped around a corrupt core of single-minded pursuits guided by the unseen hand of a council spawned in the shadowed crevices sheltered by the facade called Capitalism. The evidence of waning creativity in the world's gaming is in actuality evidence of once-creative minds being drowned by suppressive influences, silently ground into dust by the unceasing pressure of a massive ever-present will not their own forcing innovation from their thoughts and replacing it with sex, bullets and betrayal. Customer #3 knows the truth: the greatest betrayal is hardly those we can see, these idiotic hand-puppets propped up as obvious targets so clear we can mark them for death long before they physically earn their imminent murders. They are a smokescreen shrouding the overthrow from within, the spirits we thought so independent and critical, so keen in observation of a morbidly predictable world that they never think to observe their own gradual self-destruction.

Customer #3 knows that we are the conductors of our own evolution into oblivion and he refuses to play that music any longer. He will not compromise. He will not accept a weapon firing at his very being in the guise of a half-finished game with a purposely addictive and competitive goal, an obvious trap to snare those with potentially threatening urges to lash out in a rebellious fashion, a pre-emptively cast net grabbing up those who could grow into a dangerous factor if ever they realized the true darkness growing in the world all around them, within them, indeed created by they themselves in walking the path set out before them without question. Customer #3 is the future, the last hope we have of surviving this deepening marsh of mediocrity and vanishing expectations.

He also enjoys Swedish Fish.

 

[Nohra]

Yahtzee, here's how you put it for the "REVIEW THE MP" crowd:

Think of the worst movie you ever saw. Now think of watching it alone. That was a waste of two hours, right?

Now think of watching it with your friends and mocking the plot. Oh wait, Mystery Science Theatre 3000.

 

[Shjade]

We basically explained it that way the last time this argument came up, Nohra. It didn't take.