The Not Quite Best Games of 2011

[DioWallachia]

The reason why I'm annoying by his Worst Game of 2011 pick is because it felt like he was only doing it to make a "Big Statement." It just felt kind of condescending. That's not what I watch his videos for. I watch them to laugh, not to have someone wag their finger at me and and chide me for having the gall to enjoy something he doesn't necessarily approve of.

It's like a movie critic naming the big-budget 3D movie that made a billion dollars and got mostly positive reviews as his worse movie of the year simply because it was in 3D and made a billion dollars.

Actually, Yathzee is like a film critic that criticizes Avatar for being Dances With Wolves in SPACE and having a very obvious manipulative narrative where the bad guys are unremediable assholes without any dept to them and the "noble savages" are perfect masturbation fantasies mixed with Mary Sue Utopia traits to have the people rooting for them to the point that even seeing them suffering is painful for the audience. After all, they look like puppies eye's with cat noses and the rest is human looking, but the point is that they were designed to trigger that instinct of the humans of caring about the innocent puppies.......so we can have the evil military open fire execution style on the innocent puppies so you can feel bad about it.

So if Yathzee hated the games its because they are lazily designed and relied of flashy lights to distract from the plot holes and still manage to get millons of dollars when other games with better traits are bitting the dust.

And since we are into the movie analogy, Citizen Kane + John Carpenter's The Thing + Blade Runner must be the most shitty movies of all times because they didnt make money in the box office, right?? Oh wait, they are cult classics now that people have taken the bloody time to realize that they have been tricked into seing shit. Not that they will ever admit that.

I was planning on writing this long reply to your post but after reading it over a couple of times realized it would have been a waste of time because it's quite obvious you missed the point of my post, the whole "You must hate Blade Runner because it didn't make a lot of money!" part of your reply just reinforces my point.

See this part of your comment?

"It's like a movie critic naming the big-budget 3D movie that made a billion dollars and got mostly positive reviews as his worse movie of the year simply because it was in 3D and made a billion dollars"

First of all, just because it made money it doesnt mean anything (Disaster Movie made a lot of money) and because the critics give 10/5 stars doesnt mean shit either (mainly because they can get pay to say its good like when Roger Ebert gave 3.5/5 stars to Revenge of the Sith and high rating to Avatar) Hell, even if all the planet says that you are not sitting on a chair and the correct term for that furniture is "apple" they still will be wrong because there are no absolutes in the universe (or i could use the example of the people beliving that the Earth was flat and was the center of the universe.....and killing everyone who says otherwise)
Yathzee hates those games because they represent the masses that dont want anything to change. They just want to have an excuse to do nothing and are happy with the bare minimum because it what they know and anything different is too risky and may alienate them from the rest. It think that Yathzee fells the same for the Mario Franchise, thanks to his last game Super Mario 3D Land that its so anemic and uncaring yet it still gets praised and only when you make a MASSIVE effort like Rayman Origins and Super Meat Boy you get at LEAST some attention.

 

[Realitycrash]

You can't say Arkham Asylum is "in fact" better than Arkham City because that's not a goddamn fact, it's an opinion. Yahtzee's been utterly dismissive of other opinions lately.

He's always been dismissive of other peoples opinions? The whole Anti-Wii thing, for instance.

And yes, he can say that MW3/BF3 is shit, because he only plays the singleplayer. So you people feel that the multiplayer is "70% of the content"? Fine, but he isn't reviewing that content, now is he? So every time he starts a review, imagine a big neon sign flashing before your eyes saying "THIS REVIEW IS BASED SOLELY ON THE SINGLEPLAYER EXPERIENCE OF THE GAME", and then maybe you could stop complaining about it?

That's not AT ALL what I wrote about. Your projecting pretty hard. I NEVER even hinted at the single vs multiplayer thing.

His anti-Wii thing: he merely says he hates it and gives strong reasons. He never stated it as fact. But, you got a point there. He is dismissive, and that wasn't the phrase I should have used.

This, on the other hand, what the fuck? You can't say that, especially as a professional.

The whole singleplayer/multiplayer wasn't aimed at you, sorry for the confusion.

And his "in fact" is a figure of speech, since there IS no facts in aestethics, they are ALL opinions, unless you count the sum of all opinions as fact, in which we can always turn to metacritic to find out the answer.

 

[Gorilla Gunk]

The reason why I'm annoying by his Worst Game of 2011 pick is because it felt like he was only doing it to make a "Big Statement." It just felt kind of condescending. That's not what I watch his videos for. I watch them to laugh, not to have someone wag their finger at me and and chide me for having the gall to enjoy something he doesn't necessarily approve of.

It's like a movie critic naming the big-budget 3D movie that made a billion dollars and got mostly positive reviews as his worse movie of the year simply because it was in 3D and made a billion dollars.

Actually, Yathzee is like a film critic that criticizes Avatar for being Dances With Wolves in SPACE and having a very obvious manipulative narrative where the bad guys are unremediable assholes without any dept to them and the "noble savages" are perfect masturbation fantasies mixed with Mary Sue Utopia traits to have the people rooting for them to the point that even seeing them suffering is painful for the audience. After all, they look like puppies eye's with cat noses and the rest is human looking, but the point is that they were designed to trigger that instinct of the humans of caring about the innocent puppies.......so we can have the evil military open fire execution style on the innocent puppies so you can feel bad about it.

So if Yathzee hated the games its because they are lazily designed and relied of flashy lights to distract from the plot holes and still manage to get millons of dollars when other games with better traits are bitting the dust.

And since we are into the movie analogy, Citizen Kane + John Carpenter's The Thing + Blade Runner must be the most shitty movies of all times because they didnt make money in the box office, right?? Oh wait, they are cult classics now that people have taken the bloody time to realize that they have been tricked into seing shit. Not that they will ever admit that.

I was planning on writing this long reply to your post but after reading it over a couple of times realized it would have been a waste of time because it's quite obvious you missed the point of my post, the whole "You must hate Blade Runner because it didn't make a lot of money!" part of your reply just reinforces my point.

See this part of your comment?

"It's like a movie critic naming the big-budget 3D movie that made a billion dollars and got mostly positive reviews as his worse movie of the year simply because it was in 3D and made a billion dollars"

First of all, just because it made money it doesnt mean anything (Disaster Movie made a lot of money) and because the critics give 10/5 stars doesnt mean shit either (mainly because they can get pay to say its good like when Roger Ebert gave 3.5/5 stars to Revenge of the Sith and high rating to Avatar) Hell, even if all the planet says that you are not sitting on a chair and the correct term for that furniture is "apple" they still will be wrong because there are no absolutes in the universe (or i could use the example of the people beliving that the Earth was flat and was the center of the universe.....and killing everyone who says otherwise)
Yathzee hates those games because they represent the masses that dont want anything to change. They just want to have an excuse to do nothing and are happy with the bare minimum because it what they know and anything different is too risky and may alienate them from the rest. It think that Yathzee fells the same for the Mario Franchise, thanks to his last game Super Mario 3D Land that its so anemic and uncaring yet it still gets praised and only when you make a MASSIVE effort like Rayman Origins and Super Meat Boy you get at LEAST some attention.

Nice try, but you're still not getting it. If I knew how to post images I'd post that .gif of the diagram with the head and the "point" going over it and... it's hard to explain but it's funny is what I'm saying.

 

[DioWallachia]

Nice try, but you're still not getting it. If I knew how to post images I'd post that .gif of the diagram with the head and the "point" going over it and... it's hard to explain but it's funny is what I'm saying.

Another one using the "nice try" card.

Ok tell me what is it?? because for my point of view you took the comment of Yathzee out of context and assumed that he was stupid enough to just hate something is popular BECAUSE its popular and not because it popular for the wrong reasons (Once again, using the Avatar example, it was released in December where it had ZERO competition from other movies so it manages to get even MORE money aside from scaming people into believing that they are going to see a good story rather than a bunch of convenient perfect blue aliens vs bastardly humans without any dept or redeeming qualities because writing makes my head hurts)

 

[Gabriel O'Brien]

I can understand why you put the Two Shooters at the top of your hate list. They're both shitty single-player games.

I can also understand why people accuse you of an anti-shooter bias because of it. You don't have an anti-shooter bias, you have an anti-multiplayer bias. You make no effort to hide it, it's something that's well-known to your regulars, and it's entirely your prerogative, so it's not the problem per se.

The problem is that Battlefield 3 (I can't speak for MW3 as I haven't played it for more than a few minutes on my step-son's XBox) is a superb multiplayer FPS that encourages fantastic teamwork, allows genuine tactical freedom and is hilarious fun if you want it to be, especially if you have a whole bunch of friends to play it with.

I've barely played an FPS online since I got a life about 8 years ago, but I've put almost 100 hours into BF3. It really is that good a multiplayer game.

So the problem, and you should really understand this without me or anyone else having to spell it out for you, is that you've judged a game with a 90% focus on multiplayer on its single-player experience. Perhaps if you'd given the award to the "BF3 and MW3 Single Player Campaigns" instead of the games as a whole, people would understand.

Consciously or not, you've deliberately courted controversy with this one. I don't buy your ignorance one bit

P.S. I really enjoyed Dead Island for the same reasons: in co-op with friends it was hilarious!

I am a former player of both of the predecessors of MW3 and BF3 and I have played on multiplayer and single player on both of the games. I see no difference between any of their previous work and the new games that they released the multiplayer and single player are the same... I guess familiar sells but me personally seeing as how I used to be addicted to Modern Warfare series and Battlefield they need to change it up a bit. I shouldn't be able to hop on from a year break from Black Ops and play the new game that is newly released and beat people who play everyday just because it's the same game... What I think Mr. Croshaw is trying to say is samey re-releases are his most hated genre i.e. anything nintendo releases or halo or anything that has a 3 at the end of it. And for the most part he is right, he sets aside his preferences and at least tries these games and gives them a chance instead of remaining "ignorant" like you think... should probably look that word up. I see none of this changing if people like you continue to support these games religiously and without questioning their methods yourself like a human being with reason and deduce that they are just using you to make money... nothing more, and I don't support game companies that do that period.

 

[jaketaz]

People are probably accusing Yahtzee of being biased against certain things because he is biased against certain things, and he's probably biased against certain things because those certain things have demonstrated a pattern of being shit.

 

[Abbo]

I agree with the implanted sunglasses in deus ex, it degraded the game a small bit for me.
It actually ruined some otherwise nice cut scenes for me because i kept thinking "marketing gimmick"
Sunglasses can be cool but implanted sunglasses look stupid without mentioning a very viable reason.

 

[Markunator]

I never read the comments on the worst game of the year because I guessed there would probably be a shit-storm about them. (Also I called in advance that Yahtzee's worst game of the year would be either MW3 or BF3) Gold star for me.

I guess though one reason why people are "upset" about the fact is that Yahtzee just refuses to acknowledge the multiplayer aspect of those games which is arguably the bigger portion of those titles. Some people will buy those games exclusively for the multiplayer.
So I guess some people feel hard done by, because Yahtzee never really reviewed those games in their entirety and his view of them is ill-informed because he plain refuses to play or acknowledge the existence of 70% of the game.

Heck, BF3 didn't have a single player until this most recent iteration. It used to be Multiplayer only, with the option to practice offline against bots.
So I understand where a lot of people are coming from I guess. It's like saying WoW is crap because the singleplayer just doesn't do much. At all.

On the other hand based on previous statements I doubt Yahtzee would like those games more if he did play the multiplayer anyway.

Though I wonder why so many people are so intent on having some "random" dude like the game they like...

The reason he never reviews multiplayer is because everyone's experience online is different, based on who you are playing with, and no two people will have the same experience.

Person 1 may get a team the works together well, some opponents who work together well, and have a jolly good time all around.

Person 2 may get a game full of people lobbing grenades every 2 seconds, or get permanently spawn trapped, or play against a team of raging 12 year olds with the language of a dirty sailor, and have a terrible time.

So which one is the correct multiplayer experience?

Critics have to look at the things that don't change for the average person. The single player campaign doesn't change based on who is playing.

You're making it sound as if though the developer doesn't have any input into the multiplayer experience whatsoever. They do. Practically everything in the multiplayer hinges on whether the developer does a good job or not. They design the maps, they design which weapons and other features that go into the game, etc. So, no, I'm sorry. That's nonsense.

You can't say Arkham Asylum is "in fact" better than Arkham City because that's not a goddamn fact, it's an opinion. Yahtzee's been utterly dismissive of other opinions lately.

He's always been dismissive of other peoples opinions? The whole Anti-Wii thing, for instance.

And yes, he can say that MW3/BF3 is shit, because he only plays the singleplayer. So you people feel that the multiplayer is "70% of the content"? Fine, but he isn't reviewing that content, now is he? So every time he starts a review, imagine a big neon sign flashing before your eyes saying "THIS REVIEW IS BASED SOLELY ON THE SINGLEPLAYER EXPERIENCE OF THE GAME", and then maybe you could stop complaining about it?

The anti-Wii thing is easy to have. I'm an RPG fan and I've always had an anti-Wii thing because Nintendo has been the piss-bucket for RPGs since the N64 era. Leave your dirty handheld RPGs out of this too. I got this big frakkin TV so I could play my video games on it, not so I can get a 3" screen and try to read the tiny text. It's like I have the Dreamcast controller and they are trying to force me to play a game on the memory card. Motion controls and 3D gimmicks don't really matter to an RPG, so nintendo is just a waste when it comes to RPGs. With VERY few exceptions, I've never said 'I regret buying a Xbox 360 rather than a Wii'. As opposed to my desire to get a PS3, which is MUCH stronger.

As for why MW3/BF3 deserves the top of the crap-list, it really comes down to them being cookie-cutter games with nonsense storylines and shit-tastic gameplay. The stories make VERY LITTLE SENSE. In MW3 they gas like every city in Europe, then invade at the same time, and there is something about kidnapping the russian presidents daughter so they can get nukes... REALLY? 'I've got the power to kill tens of millions of people in a single day! Woohoo, I don't think it's enough, I need to be able to kill everyone left without having to deploy my seemingly endless supply of soldiers.' Craptastic! Now I'll get to BF3 and it's glaringly stupid plot to terrorize us with suitcase nukes. First, you find a case with three spaces for the bombs, but only one nuke in the case. Nobody comes to the conclusion that there was only ever one nuke. Nobody wonders why one nuke was left behind (meh, I don't need three nukes, two will do me just fine. Leave the third for the americans to find and worry about. Maybe they will blame the russians for selling nuclear weapons to Iran...). In France they go to stop the first nuke and the bad guys have dozens of guys and large canisters of GAS in the building. Why did they bring gas and men to a city they wanted to nuke? Did they expect somebody to get wind of their operation and try to stop them with three russians? Since everyone in the game except the civilians has a gas mask, why bother with gas? Same thing in New York, lots of guys taking over a train to transport an easily hand-carried nuclear device to the city center. Only reason it goes off in Paris is because the guy slips it on the train on a timer before you could get there and nobody was any the wiser. It's like this villians WANT somebody to try to fight them, and ultimately defeat them. Also the viewpoint of BF3, where you are being interrogated at the end by somebody else about the events of earlier in the game seems to be taken right from COD: Black Ops, except they were ripping off Alpha Protocol, which is at least fifty times better than both of these games combined, and it itself is only a shadow of what Deus Ex Human Revolution turned out to be.

Oh, and a game can't stand without a solid single player experience. Even an MMORPG like World of Warcraft is STILL a solid game if you could play it offline by yourself.

Yes, a game can most definitely stand without a solid single player experience. The Battlefield series did that for six fucking years. From 2002-2008 - no campaign, only multiplayer (and bot matches). While I will admit that BF3's campaign was extremely disappointing, I still love the game because of its multiplayer. You know, that thing that was literally everything the Battlefield franchise had until Bad Company came out in 2008? You seem to think that if the campaign is a letdown, the whole game is completely worthless. That's simply not true, I'm sorry.

 

[Teh Bug]

When I first watched the 2011 video, BF3 and MW3 being top of the crap list made perfect sense to me. one of Yahtzee's older videos said he doesn't like games where the single player is basically a trainer for the multi player content, and the game was designed to stand pretty much on the multi player. I agree with this whole heartedly.

 

[charliesbass]

Funny, The Cartel actually sparked some hatred in me. The lies it framed about the drug cartel happening this minute in Mexico. There were so many little mistakes in that game that were just so blatantly incorrect, it made me angry. The huge lie it framed about sex trafficking, such little respect for those who died and are still dying in Mexico, the lazy design, not bothering to actually research facts about the drug war, the blatantly obvious facts, and the racism. It's propaganda, it teaches you the evils of minorities. Despite the fucking big problems that no one can possibly look past, it's just a bland, torpid, generic shooter. It's boring, it's poorly structured, it's poorly paced, I have a strong hate for the characters, it's shoddily written with frequent spelling mistakes in the subtitles (Techland don't know the difference between 'your' and 'you're'), and to be honest, it's not the worst game I've played (Kane and Lynch 2), or the most racist (Zog's Nightmare), but it comes extremely close. The offensive, and the plain boring games certainly make them come into my top ten worst of all time.