Gaming related sentiments by Yahtzee that have stuck with you

[bartholen_v1legacy]

As in, what do you remember particularly agreeing or disagreeing with on what he's said about the games industry, its audience, practices, production model and so on.

To me one statement still hovers above all else he's said, from his Ninja Gaiden II review from way back in 2008:

But on the other hand the bugs and gameplay issues make it seem unfinished and its immature obsession with blood and titties make me almost insulted to be the target audience.

The bolded part is what's stuck with me for years, and I didn't even realize it until recently. I hate to kick this dead and long buried horse, but when we had that stupid kerfuffle over the Dead Island Riptide special edition statue, it got a particular rise out of me. Not because I necessarily thought it was offensive to women (though I see how someone would think that), but because it was plain offensive to gamers period. To me the idea that the developers who made a mature rated game would think their audience was immature enough that featuring a bloody, dismembered and decapitated torso as a special edition bonus would actually make them want to buy the game more spoke IMO of an unbelievably low opinion of their audience.

I only recently realized that the sentiment I quoted earlier was what influenced this stance. No, I don't need to be treated like I'm some 14-year old juvenile, horny shut-in gorehound to make me want to buy games. If you want to call and rate your game "mature", have it reflect that. Hence, whenever I see sex used as a shameless games marketing tactic (or hell, any shitty, juvenile marketing tactic like the Dead Space 2 "Your mom's gonna hate it" ads) or completely gratuitous boobage or similar content (this is part why the marketing of Dragon Age Origins felt rather immature to me), I just roll my eyes and think "Is this really the best you could think of?" Yeah, I know, sex sells, but there's a time and a place for everything. I wouldn't want to see, say, the next Elder Scrolls game market itself with some buxom Nord wench holding a copy of the game when there's so much more the game can market itself with. This is why Dante's Inferno (and I think a lot of you can agree with me) feels incredibly gratuitous in its nudity and shock value to me, and ends up being almost embarrassing to play at points.

Anyway, that's my one Yahtzee thought that's stuck with me. What's yours?

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

This is why Dante's Inferno (and I think a lot of you can agree with me) feels incredibly gratuitous in its nudity and shock value to me, and ends up being almost embarrassing to play at points.

If you read the Divina Commedia or at least looked at the pictures you'd know the Inferno is nothing but shock value.

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

This is why Dante's Inferno (and I think a lot of you can agree with me) feels incredibly gratuitous in its nudity and shock value to me, and ends up being almost embarrassing to play at points.

If you read the Divina Commedia or at least looked at the pictures you'd know the Inferno is nothing but shock value.

In fact I have. And while that may be true, the transition from still images and text to a full audiovisual, moving experience amplifies the effect to a borderline absurd level. The addition of audio, for example, makes a drastic difference: when the background is nothing but constant roaring of fires, snarling of demons and agonized wailing of the damned, it loses all effect when there's neither point of comparison nor the element of imagining it in your head. And there definitely wasn't a giant naked woman birthing demon babies out of her nipples in the original text, at least that much I remember. If the shock value in the original poem is like a man going "BOO" behind your back every once in a while, the shock value in the game is like a man shouting at you for 8-10 hours.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

Forgot which review its from, but the "And then there's a woman who's there, whose sole purpose is to be the woman who's there."

And the ever useful line 'Because of reasons.' that describes 99.9999% of all terrible plot choices/twists/arcs.

Oh and one that I use to describe just about every main character ever, from some Vampire review, "I want to reroll my character." God I love that idea. Looking Bungie square in the eyes and asking to reroll the stats for Noble 6 because we rolled double 1s for intelligence, charisma and personality.

 

[Dalisclock]

One of my favorite ways to describe something that seems pointless "It's about people nobody likes doing things that nobody cares about".

Which is pretty much my one sentence review of Catcher in the Rye.

 

[JUMBO PALACE]

Holy crap. I googled that Dead Island statue so I knew what you were talking about. My favorite part is on the box it's described as a "hand painted figurine." Guys, it's a tit statue. Let's not mince words.

OT: I can't think of anything in particular. Though Yahtzee maligns the portrayal of game consumers (I hate the word gamers) as immature children semi-frequently and I do agree that it's frustrating. Nothing epitomizes this more than the clear marketing Activision does every year to get CoD on mountain dew cans and doritos bags in an effort to get them into the hands of the 14-17 year old bracket.

 

[SweetShark]

I think I remember I didn't liked his humorous article which called all people who leave comments in his reviews fat and assholes I think?
Yes, I say humorous article because obviously he wanted to joke around the fact that even he call all of us assholes, in reality he wanted our feedback for his games as well. So he wrote this arricles just for the shake of comedy. Bad Comedy mind you of course.

However I agree with Shuriken and Lightning with Tits on Fire Weapon. He have good taste.

 

[Thunderous Cacophony]

I like some of the things he's said about romances and relationships in Extra Punctuation. It's way more valuable to me if there are two or three relationships with real depth and weight to them, rather than passing friendships with a dozen cardboard cutouts, one of whom will eventually get their heart meter filled enough that they will let you take them aside, mash your character models together, then cut to the next morning where your relationship is exactly the same but for the occasional sprinkling of terms like 'dear'.

 

[FPLOON]

This was alway the quote that stood out to me the most:

"Grrrrrrrrrrr... Awwwwwwwwwwww... Grrrrrrrrrrr... Awwwwwwwwwwww... See you next week."

Other than that, there's that jingle he made not too long ago:

"Let's all laugh at an industry that never learns anything, tee, hee, hee."

 

[Trooper924]

His description of Dark Void as "a game that ran out of something" and from the same review: "They wrote a script for Lord of the Rings and had to perform it with finger puppets." It always reminds me that a game having an interesting idea doesn't mean anything if it doesn't have the proper support (time, money, etc).

 

[Pirate Of PC Master race]

The chart.

 

[Foolery]

It shouldn't take 20 hours for a game to get interesting, it should be fun right from the first hour or two. Something to that effect. He said it in his Final Fantasy 13 review.

 

[Dalisclock]

It shouldn't take 20 hours for a game to get interesting, it should fun right from the first hour or two. Something to that effect. He said it in his Final Fantasy 13 review.

Yathzee:"It gets good 20 hours in!" You do realize that's not a selling point, right?

It's one of the few things I remember from that review and having watched a Cutscene LP of the game itself, it's pretty much what ran through my head through the 10 hours of cutscenes.

 

[DrownedAmmet]

I never understood my passionate hatred of isometric games until I read this Extra Punctuation article. [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/columns/extra-punctuation/12056-Taking-On-Detrimental-Isometric-Game-Design]
The slam dunk is where he says isometric games should be called Floor: the Game because that's all your looking at
So thanks to yahtzee for telling me what my brain thinks

 

[ArcaneGamer]

As in, what do you remember particularly agreeing or disagreeing with on what he's said about the games industry, its audience, practices, production model and so on.

To me one statement still hovers above all else he's said, from his Ninja Gaiden II review from way back in 2008:

But on the other hand the bugs and gameplay issues make it seem unfinished and its immature obsession with blood and titties make me almost insulted to be the target audience.

The bolded part is what's stuck with me for years, and I didn't even realize it until recently. I hate to kick this dead and long buried horse, but when we had that stupid kerfuffle over the Dead Island Riptide special edition statue, it got a particular rise out of me. Not because I necessarily thought it was offensive to women (though I see how someone would think that), but because it was plain offensive to gamers period. To me the idea that the developers who made a mature rated game would think their audience was immature enough that featuring a bloody, dismembered and decapitated torso as a special edition bonus would actually make them want to buy the game more spoke IMO of an unbelievably low opinion of their audience.

I only recently realized that the sentiment I quoted earlier was what influenced this stance. No, I don't need to be treated like I'm some 14-year old juvenile, horny shut-in gorehound to make me want to buy games. If you want to call and rate your game "mature", have it reflect that. Hence, whenever I see sex used as a shameless games marketing tactic (or hell, any shitty, juvenile marketing tactic like the Dead Space 2 "Your mom's gonna hate it" ads) or completely gratuitous boobage or similar content (this is part why the marketing of Dragon Age Origins felt rather immature to me), I just roll my eyes and think "Is this really the best you could think of?" Yeah, I know, sex sells, but there's a time and a place for everything. I wouldn't want to see, say, the next Elder Scrolls game market itself with some buxom Nord wench holding a copy of the game when there's so much more the game can market itself with. This is why Dante's Inferno (and I think a lot of you can agree with me) feels incredibly gratuitous in its nudity and shock value to me, and ends up being almost embarrassing to play at points.

Anyway, that's my one Yahtzee thought that's stuck with me. What's yours?

Well said, sir or madam. (I don't want to assume.) I feel the same way with manga, comics, or anime in general. Yeah, there's a part of our brain that wants that...but there's a also a part of our brain that wants more substance, or to be frank, we want to have some merit. We want it to have something else redeeming about other than just enjoyment. That's what happened with me with various shows and games. But to point to a specific one? Let's use One Punch Man, Dragon Age Origins, and Hercules. I bring up One Punch Man, because on the surface, it's just about a guy that beat anyone in a single punch. However, if you look further, you'll find something more than just a joke. You'll find it shows how boring ultimate power can be, what does it mean to be a real hero, and that it focuses on it's side characters more than the lead. It is a..deconstruction of Sho`nen characters you usually see in stories like these. Speaking of heroes, I frigging adore the new Hercules series by Marvel. A guy that is known mostly as a drunk troublemaker, is trying to repair his reputation and is "on the wagon". He is a guy that respects the old ways, but uses modern methods. And the reason I liked Dragon Age Origins? I agreed to pay half so he could get it. What happens? He eventually gets bored with it, and I check it out. Turns out, I quite liked it. We DO want goofier stuff in these stories, but we want substance, quality.

 

[JimB]

This isn't an exact quote, I think, but: "Movies have trailers; games have demos."

 

[GartarkMusik]

When I first found Yahtzee, and got past all the sarcastic, cynical bits and started to see what he really went for in games, I was incredibly happy, because I had been saying that games could very well be (and in many cases, are) the next great art form, only to be told either "LOL GAMZ R FOR ENTERTAINMENT LOOL" or "games are for immature children". It was a breath of fresh air to find someone who saw the potential the medium has.

 

[Legomaniac91_v1legacy]

From his Darksiders review where he riffed on the "tortured" and "angsty" attitude of characters despite them pulling off awesome stuff: "If I hoisted a 7ft demon into the air and sliced him in half I wouldn't be scowling. I'd be like 'Fucking Hell!! Did anyone else see that?! I am squirting machismo out of my nipples over here!! I AM A MONSTER TRUCK THAT WALKS LIKE A MAN!!!"

 

[Ryallen]

I don't remember which review it was in, but the one thing that I quote to this day off the top of my head is how he summed up JRPGs.

A bunch of teenagers using the power of friendship to kill God.

While for some JRPGs this isn't necessarily true, I still find that killing God remains a prominent ending for a lot of JRPGs, and nowadays when I play one, I always immediately ask myself if that is where the plot if going. It doesn't affect anything, but it's still something that I consider from time to time. It's actually how I knew that Yahtzee was going to like Xenoblade Chronicles X. Or, at least, not entirely hate it.