The Not Quite Best Games of 2011

[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.