Nazulu said:
Big like: real time strategy games can't compete with the snake riding experience in Shadow of the Colossus. To me that's just crap. There is still a lot of room for improvement and it goes against my motto, "anything is possible with art".
Is that actually what he claimed, though? Below is a quote from the
Extra Punctuation article "On RTS Games" [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/extra-punctuation/7938-On-RTS-Games], where he states rather plainly not that there's anything wrong with the RTS genre, but that they're just not to his taste:
Yahtzee said:
I'm not saying [Starcraft 2]'s bad or an unnecessary sequel, although it could well be both of those things. I'm saying my opinion on StarCraft 2, or indeed any real time strategy game, is about as much use as Roger Ebert's opinion on gaming as a whole. Or Ug the caveman's opinion on the diesel engine. I don't play them. I've never been able to get into them. They're just not my cup of tea. Okay?
Anyway, I don't often disagree with Yahtzee, because our taste in games happens to be very similar. I never cared much for most real-time strategy games either, along with the majority of fighters or JRPGs. As a general rule, I'll agree with just about any criticism he makes, but those criticisms will always mean less to me than they do to him, and thus if Yahtzee dislikes or is indifferent toward a game, I will never dislike or be bored by it as much as him (consequently, if he
does outright like a game, I know it's a game I should play). I agree with just about every flaw he's found in the
Pokemon,
Halo, or
Super Smash Bros. games, but the enjoyable aspects of those games are able to override the flaws to me, and therefore I still like them, so Yahtzee's dislike doesn't bother me (the same goes for his views on multiplayer). [sub]Although I do agree with the OP's example of his claim that all fighting games can be reliably mastered simply by mindless button-mashing.[/sub]
The only game which I outright disagree with him about is
Dark Souls. I don't own it yet, and only played an hour or two at a friend's house, but the impressions that I got during that time combined with the sentiments the people on these forums have expressed about it leave me with little doubt that I'll love it once I finally do buy it. I only played up until I defeated the Taurus Demon, which is coincidentally the point at which Yahtzee seemingly stopped playing, judging by his article about it [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/extra-punctuation/9361-Death-Mechanics-and-Dark-Souls.2]. He called the experience irritating (and later uncomfortable, once the repeated cycle of death "broke" him), but I was having a blast with the fantastic combat and dark fantasy aesthetic, and readily welcomed my acceptance of the "punishing-but-fair" way the game worked. He said it was lacking in flow, but I found its flow to be unique and thrilling. I wholeheartedly agree that being unable to pause the game is BS (online players or no), but otherwise
Dark Souls is me and Yahtzee's sole major diverging point.
