Yooka-Laylee reviews are coming out and thoughts are ...mixed

Phoenixmgs_v1legacy

Muse of Fate
Sep 1, 2010
4,691
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marioandsonic said:
it DEFINITELY does not deserve a 2/10
IN. YOUR. OPINION.

Someone else obviously feels differently. There is no such thing as a game is at worst 5/10 or some bullshit like that. Gamers and reviewers are both the problem with reviews. I really don't understand why people feel there's any kind of objectivity that goes into game reviews when there is no such attempt to review art in any other mediums in such a way. Even objective aspects of games are very subjective. A game may objectively have framerate issues but the amount it affects a game can vary greatly from person to person. Thus every aspect of a game is subjective. I hated everything about Max Payne 3 so I'd give it a 1/10; the game would've actually been better if it was unplayable due to technical issues because then I would've played less of it, that's how reprehensible I found the game. But I guess my opinion is wrong because no game DESERVES a 1/10 unless it's some sorta asset flipped Steam garbage or something.
 

EternallyBored

Terminally Apathetic
Jun 17, 2013
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Ezekiel said:
I'd still score Mario 64 and BK exactly the same if they came out today. Because, while game have made advances in some areas, 3D platformers overall have stagnated and even regressed. Games don't age.
Really? 3d platformers have not advanced at all since Mario 64? the age of dual stick controllers has changed nothing? Ratchet and Clank and Jak and Daxter have the same camera issues as Banjo-Kazooie?

N64 era graphics change nothing compared to the graphics of today? None of the gameplay, combat systems and stories, even of 3d platformers has changed in any meaningful way?

I suppose you have the right to your opinion, don't think your going to find a ton of support for this one, its a very niche opinion, guess youve got something in common with Jim Sterling on this one.

Games still age though, you thinking 3d platformers have stagnated doesn't change all my other points. Games age and the things that were once considered good are no longer considered so, you failed to actually argue why games don't change except some useless point about how you think 3d platforming has stagnated.
 

EternallyBored

Terminally Apathetic
Jun 17, 2013
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Ezekiel said:
EternallyBored said:
Ezekiel said:
I'd still score Mario 64 and BK exactly the same if they came out today. Because, while game have made advances in some areas, 3D platformers overall have stagnated and even regressed. Games don't age.
Really? 3d platformers have not advanced at all since Mario 64? the age of dual stick controllers has changed nothing? Ratchet and Clank and Jak and Daxter have the same camera issues as Banjo-Kazooie?

N64 era graphics change nothing compared to the graphics of today? None of the gameplay, combat systems and stories, even of 3d platformers has changed in any meaningful way?

I suppose you have the right to your opinion, don't think your going to find a ton of support for this one, its a very niche opinion, guess youve got something in common with Jim Sterling on this one.

Games still age though, you thinking 3d platformers have stagnated doesn't change all my other points. Games age and the things that were once considered good are no longer considered so, you failed to actually argue why games don't change except some useless point about how you think 3d platforming has stagnated.
Because the level design, controls, music and characters are timeless, and there's a lot of content to discover. I don't even think the games are that good, but I still prefer them over almost any modern platformer, including Mario Galaxy. Looking at only the limitations doesn't do a game justice. Every game has limitations and almost no game can completely conform to one's wishes.

Scoring a game 2/10 because it's not modernized, whatever the hell that means in this context, is stupid.

Wow, our join dates are two days apart.
You still haven't argued that games don't age, only that you think the mechanics of a pair of games you don't seem to like very much are apparently timeless for some reason. Timelessness still doesn't mean that a game hasn't aged in any way though or that if you released an identical property today it would garner or deserve the same score. Ocarina of time is considered timeless in some ways but without nostalgia, if released today ,instead of the 90,s, alongside the likes of Breath of the Wild it would not garner the same 9 or 10 reviews and the high sales of its original release, its timeless portions ar do not change the fact that the game is dated by today's standards, especially its camera controls, single stick cameras in 3D games are flat out objectively inferior to its dual stick successors.

Though beyond nostalgia the controls of Mario 64 and Banjo are something I would hardly call timeless, the n64 controller is just inferior to modern controllers, I still have my old n64 and it's not nearly as easy to use after getting used to the later PS and Xbox controllers dual stick is just better in every way that matters. The music is iconic, well for Mario, Banjo has like one or two tracks that I would say haven't aged horribly, but I would say Mario Galaxy's soundtrack is flat out better from many standpoints, at a fidelity level it's objectively better, at a composition level it's more subjective but there are many galaxy tracks that I would say are flat out better than anything in Mario64.

As for Jim's score, not sure why you are bringing it up, I don't care about what you think of Jim's score, you think YL failing to modernize over Banjo doesn't justify a 2/10, that's fine, that doesn't mean games don't age though, that's what I am arguing, how badly games age, or how that would/should effect scores is up for debate and interpretation, the games themselves still age though, and it effects scores from reviewers, and reception by the public.

huh you're right that's neat, I totally didn't notice that. [\spoiler]
 
Feb 26, 2014
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Joccaren said:
My English professor once told me that i should never write the words "In my opinion" while writing my paper. Why? Because it's my damn paper. I don't need to let the reader know it's my opinion because that's already heavily implied, what with my name being on the top of the page. Never say, "This is bad in my opinion", just say "This is bad". The fact that it's your opinion is already obvious. So obvious that someone somewhere is definitely going to remind you that it's just your opinion. It's actually happening quite a bit in this thread.
[hr]
Anyway, I think it's time for the return of the 100% Objective Review! Useful to everyone and no one!

I'm honestly not sure what people expected his rating to be. He did not enjoy the game. He thinks it's trash. Should such a reviewer be obligated by some objective force to give the game a higher score than the review suggests it deserves?
 

Phoenixmgs_v1legacy

Muse of Fate
Sep 1, 2010
4,691
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Ezekiel said:
The camera system always had problems, but they're largely remedied by Z-targeting, which reviewers appreciated.

The lock-on system still works just fine today. The years haven't somehow made the camera worse.
A game that relies on a lock-on system has aged because lock-on systems WERE THE BEST and now they are not. That's basically what the definition of aging is. Being able to actually aim a bow and arrow is much much better than just locking on. Souls combat has never felt great IMO because of its reliance on archaic lock-on mechanics. It's like how 3rd-person shooters used to suck because devs didn't understand aiming sensitivities and lock-on was required for functionality. Sure, old games are still plenty functional but staying functional doesn't mean they didn't age either. Metal Gear Solid aged much better than Syphon Filter or Winback because MGS isn't really a 3rd-person shooter and it slowly evolved into one as those mechanics became developed whereas the other games were 3rd-person shooters before the mechanics were tuned and properly developed.
 

EternallyBored

Terminally Apathetic
Jun 17, 2013
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Ezekiel said:
Ocarina of Time's controls are just different from what people are used to today. The camera system always had problems, but they're largely remedied by Z-targeting, which reviewers appreciated.
Why did you quote a bunch of reviews from 1998? What people thought of something at its time of release has absolutely nothing to do with how things age, things people liked long ago can age horribly and be disliked in the present, or they can age well and be generally well regarded even decades after their release. People liking it back then is irrelevant, people liked 8 Track and said it was cutting edge in the 80's, but the technology aged and nobody fucking says that anymore, just like people are going to ***** if Nintendo tried to go back to the N64 controller, it worked for the time, but we now have stuff that works even better, so the old stuff aged and is no longer the standard anymore.

Somehow I don't think those same reviewers would say the same things if a game identical to Ocarina was released today, because they would have better things to compare it to, and some of the systems have not aged as well as others, the game would not hold up as well compared to the likes of other games that have since come out.

I hope you didn't spend a lot of time looking those old reviews up, because yeah they are completely irrelevant to my argument, not even sure what point you were trying to make there.



The game has a lot more positives going for it than negatives.

By this aging logic of comparing games, I should trash everything, as I have my own notions of how games should be designed, which developers are not adhering to. I should trash all games simply for using the flawed, outdated DualShock controller, which hasn't changed in twenty years, and for still using stereo instead of binaural recording. One game doesn't make another worse. What's objectively good now will always be good.
By this paragraph I can surmise you don't actually understand the logic behind it at all. Something aging doesn't mean its automatically trash and loses all its value. Just because Mario 64 aged and the single stick controls did not age well, and dual stick controllers were adopted by even Nintendo as the winner of design does not suddenly make Mario 64 garbage that must be disposed of. Likewise, I can still tolerate the graphics of FF7, and the nostalgia partially drives this, but it is a style of graphics that has not aged well, and while people can hold the old entries fondly, there are aspects that do not hold up well they have aged over time. If Square-enix today tried to sell me an FF game for full price that had FF7's graphics, weird translation issues and low quality sound recording, that would not be acceptable as many of those aspects have not aged well.

Your second part I addressed in a previous post, did you not understand the lines about things aging well and poorly? I thought it would be pretty clear why things can be old and still used or well regarded while other things are not.

We don't ditch the dual stick design despite being 20 years old because it aged well, its the design that won while the N64 controller design lost and aged poorly, we have made improvements over the years, and additions, but the basic two stick design has endured for a reason. Like how 8 tracks, CDs, and floppy discs aren't used any more. Those devices were once objectively good, they are now no longer useful or good, something that is good does not necessarily always remain good, with entertainment subjectivity and nostalgia can make those lines fuzzy or debatable, but there are many things that were once considered "good" that would fail miserably if they were created today. We can appreciate a work's history and impact while still acknowledging that the work has aged and that many of the things it once did are no longer considered as highly today, for various reasons, some I outlined in one of my posts above.
 

JamesStone

If it ain't broken, get to work
Jun 9, 2010
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Yoshi178 said:
EternallyBored said:
Yoshi178 said:
Bilious Green said:
MCerberus said:
Yoshi178 said:
like that idiot Jim even matters.

like that idiot Jim even matters

Johnny Novgorod said:
Holy fuck, Sterling is on a roll.

Lisker84 said:
To be fair, Jim Sterling seems to hate just about everything.
He gave Nier: Automata a 9/10 like a week ago.
And Horizon Zero Dawn a 9.5/10 before that.
That's like straight out of his front page. I don't even follow the guy.
thats cause Jims a Sony Fanboy
found the Zelda fanboy
He's still asshurt that Jim gave BotW 7/10. The drop from 98 to 97 still burns.
He gave Nier: Automata a 9/10 like a .- Console exclusive to PS4
And Horizon Zero Dawn a 9.5/10 before that. - PS4 exclusive

and oh look, he gave Persona 5 an 8.5/10 also a PS4 exclusive.




excuse me for coming to the conclusion that Jim is a Playslave.
This is pathetic, jim is not a PlayStation fanboy, or at least he's not slagging off Nintendo to assist PlayStation.

First off, Jim didn't review Persona 5 Laura Kate Dale did.

Next, Jim gave Pok?mon sun and moon an 8.5 he gave the last Kirby game a 9 and he raves constantly about Hyrule Warriors it was one of his games of the year when it came out.

Jim isn't hating on Nintendo or fanboying Sony, Jim just fucking hates stamina and durability systems and has ranted about them in the past in videos. That's why BOTW bothered him so much and it's something I know myself and other people either agree with totally or at least partially on, BOTW's stamina system and rain storms making me wait around for them to end significantly damaged my enjoyment of it's open world, along with the games difficulty dropping off a cliff to become brain dead easy after a few hours, I can see why he rated the game as merely "good" I would go higher, but I find his score in line with mechanics he has expressed extreme dislike with in the past.

You can criticize plenty of things about his review, there are things I disagree with him on in it, but just calling him a Sony fanboy is easily demonstrably wrong.
this thread is about Yooka Laylee. not BOTW. why are you acting like i'm calling him a Sony fanboy just because of the Zelda review?
How does that expression goes? "Talk shit, get hit?"

If you say things that aren't true, or at least provide no proof, evidence or reason behind your claims, you can expect people to call you out on it. It's a public forum. Just as you have the right to your opinion, no matter how stupid it is (and it is plenty stupid) people have the right to call out its stupidity.
 

JamesStone

If it ain't broken, get to work
Jun 9, 2010
888
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Ezekiel said:
EternallyBored said:
Ezekiel said:
Silvanus said:
Joccaren said:
In the case of Jim's reviews, yeah, you kind of can. Sure, if its a game series he loves like Dynasty Warriors, he's going to give a bunch of info. Take the Yooka Laylee review, and of course he's going to score it badly if he doesn't like 90s platformers. MAYBE if it the exact opposite of a 90s platformer, it might contain something interesting. If you know that you hate 90s platformers though, and you know Jim hates 90s platformers, and he's reviewing a 90s platformer... There's not a lot more to know. As shown by his review that contained little substance outside "90s platformers suck, this is one".
No, that wasn't the core of the argument; the core of the argument was that it had not modernised. I might have enjoyed Metal Gear Solid back in the day, and I might enjoy the stealth genre. But if a company released something mechanically identical today it would be entirely reasonable to say it had not modernised, and mark it down. That would not somehow indicate that I disliked the original, or the genre.
That's a weak argument. Games don't age. Banjo-Kazooie's gameplay is still enjoyable today, and the problems that are perceivable now were perceivable two decades ago. I've played YL for maybe an hour and a half and I don't even like it very much, but his score honestly seems absurd. Between this and his gushing 9/10 for NieR: Automata (A good game, but come on.), I can't take his judgements seriously.
Da hell are you talking about? Of course games age, games age in all kinds of ways, what was possible and good 20 years ago is different from today, whether its the culture, the technology, or merely building off what came before, games age and things change, what was once acceptable or even good is no longer considered so.

Like graphics, PS1 early polygon models were considered good once, now if you released a new game with the resolution and low poly models of a game like FF7 you would rightly draw far more criticism and the graphics that once influenced scores and garnered praise as cutting edge and revolutionary would either be ignored as an indie throw back or even hurt scores with the fuzzy textures and atrocious resolutions that look even worse on the HD TVs of today. The graphics in games age, what was once considered good looking or at least acceptable, can now seem mediocre or downright ugly.

Or story, contemporary stories can be very popular, but they quickly lose that popularity the older they become, the jokes become dated, the once topical political points become dated or even embarrassing depending on how those debates turned out. A game in the early 90's could have a saxophone playing president, with a save the rainforest message, and jokes about rewinding VHS tapes and that would have been fine and even funny. You release a game like that today, your references and jokes are going to fly over a lot of peoples head or just not appeal to as wide an audience.

Presentation is another aspect that ages, replacing voices with repetitive sounds was just a fact of life in the era where you couldn't fit a fully voice acted cast on to your cartridge, but nowadays you can't get away with that in any sort of AAA release without being remarked on by reviewers, indies with limited budgets can get away with it, but if Ubisoft put out its next Assassin's creed title with no voice acting, they would rightfully catch some shit for it.

Even controls, games like Mario 64 and Banjo-kazooie had wonky cameras and imprecise controls in part because they were on a system with single analog stick controllers, it was acceptable then, but those games aged and we no longer have systems with weird single stick trident controllers. We cut those games slack because they came first, we had nothing to compare them to, no idea how 3d controls and cameras could be done differently, but they aged, and other games came along that showed that those camera and control issues could be done differently or even improved. In 20 years, the games of the 90's absolutely have aged, some things aged very well: sprite art, handheld games, RPGs, etc. and some have aged exceptionally poorly: early polygon art, single analog sticks, fuzzy resolutions that look awful on HD TVs, etc.

Games age, the problems with Banjo-Kazooie are still present today, but critics, and audiences perceptions and patience for these problems has changed greatly as we know have 20 years of games to compare them too.
I'd still score Mario 64 and BK exactly the same if they came out today. Because, while game have made advances in some areas, 3D platformers overall have stagnated and even regressed. Games don't age.
Like all things made, games age. Some age good, others bad, but games definitely age. 9/10 games for their time would be 4/10 or lower nowadays if they were released exactly the same with better graphics, because when compared to recent releases they'd be underdeveloped, exactly because they allowed the games which followed it to evolve.


To put it bluntly, do you believe games evolve? If yes, you cannot believe games do not age. Well, you can, but you'd be objectively wrong. It's your right to be completely and totally wrong, but you're still wrong regardless.
 

bluegate

Elite Member
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Dec 28, 2010
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marioandsonic said:
I've been playing this game for a couple hours now.

I really do feel like this game is being overly hated. I don't think a masterpiece, and it's a step below the original Banjo-Kazooie games IMO, but it's no Mighty No.9-level failure like some people are saying it is., and it DEFINITELY does not deserve a 2/10.
Funny you should say that as Mighty No.9 as a game was fairly solid but got a disproportionate amount of flak for trivial matters, just like what you are saying is happening to Yooka-Laylee.
 

CaitSeith

Formely Gone Gonzo
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Jun 30, 2014
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bluegate said:
marioandsonic said:
I've been playing this game for a couple hours now.

I really do feel like this game is being overly hated. I don't think a masterpiece, and it's a step below the original Banjo-Kazooie games IMO, but it's no Mighty No.9-level failure like some people are saying it is., and it DEFINITELY does not deserve a 2/10.
Funny you should say that as Mighty No.9 as a game was fairly solid but got a disproportionate amount of flak for trivial matters, just like what you are saying is happening to Yooka-Laylee.
As I always say: one person's nickpick is another person's deal-breaker.
 

Joccaren

Elite Member
Mar 29, 2011
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Silvanus said:
No, that wasn't the core of the argument; the core of the argument was that it had not modernised. I might have enjoyed Metal Gear Solid back in the day, and I might enjoy the stealth genre. But if a company released something mechanically identical today it would be entirely reasonable to say it had not modernised, and mark it down. That would not somehow indicate that I disliked the original, or the genre.
When you're statement is essentially "This is a perfect 90s platformer, but that's not a good thing" - I think its fair to say you don't like 90s platformers. MAYBE you did in the past, but you don't anymore.

As for modernisation, what modernisation are we talking about? Honestly up until the last couple years 4X games and RTS barely modernised past the late 90s, yet were still seen as pretty good. Outside of the camera, not much from a 90s 3D platformer needs 'modernising'. In fact, modernisation is exactly what Yooka-Laylee was funded to avoid; we've got Banjo Kazooie Nuts & Bolts, the modern take on the series. It was not as well loved as the originals, for good reason. Needlessly changing things to be more 'modern' without considering your target audience is just stupid, and is one of the biggest complaints people have about the games industry in general; Thief games that go from being stealth to being action adventure because its more modern, X-Com originally going to re-release as a TPS because its more modern, the Total War series going with new 'modern' mechanics for their games, which are basically all round seen as stupid ideas.
Honestly, at this point more games and genres are seeing success by de-modernising and going back to their roots, where they initially found success. Why? Because it captures the core of why people loved the franchise, rather than trying to be a new hip mass appeal product that appeals to noone in particular.

Or, how about Assassin's Creed. Every game modernises and adds in some new mechanic that is almost always universally hated and seen as a useless waste of time. Should Yooka Laylee have done this? Honestly, it should have been docked more points had it lost focus of its core gameplay in order to try and bring some new stuff to the formula that didn't really fit.

And again, Jim has not at any point given any example of a good modern take, or improvement. All he's said is that its a 90s platformer, they're not good.
Honestly this just screams a weak attempt to justify not liking a genre, rather than some actual problem that needs addressing. Nothing NEEDS to modernise to be good. It just needs to be well executed.

None of those statements "imply objectivity". They are value judgements. One does not need to specifically state that a statement is an opinion if it is blindingly obvious.
Define blindingly obvious, because there are several statements in that review that are definitely intended as statements of fact, and they are written in the exact same style as these 'value judgements' you talk about. The difference isn't exactly so blinding, unless you perfectly agree with Jim and allow your own self-confirmation bias to make them so. A good writer would present the two differently so that it IS blindingly obvious which is which. Funnily enough, that's what my complaint is.

CaitSeith said:
Joccaren said:
Because reviewers went purely by their enjoyment of the game, rather than trying to have a review that was actually informative to people.
Isn't the purpose of the game to be enjoyable for the player? That's the kind of information I'd rather get from a review before buying a game, as opposite to using just my biases as a guideline and read afterwards if the reviews were right.

Sounds like you're confusing objective with informative and useful.
No, people keep thinking I'm saying reviews need to be 100% objective {I'm not}, when I'm saying they need to include more informative and useful information, which almost always has some level of objective design base, rather than just opinions. Opinions naturally still play a part, but having detailed information on what the design faults of a game are actually gives you useful information to tell whether what was a 2/10 for one review is a 10/10 for you or not, outside of random guesswork based on how well you normally match to a reviewer's opinions.

If a reviewer simply reviews a work based purely on their enjoyment, its not very informative to their readers. Sure, you know if they enjoyed it, but you'll usually have very little idea on whether you will, unless that reviewer has near identical tastes to you - and even then they'll usually differ in some key aspects. If they make their opinion apparent, but use it as framing to talk about the game as a whole, and where it falls apart and why - you get useful information that helps you decide whether the game is right for you or not. Purely opinion reviews are as bad as 'purely objective' reviews. You need to put some of both in to get a good review.

Pseudonym said:
This doesn't follow. The written text might be quite useful or just interesting or enjoyable to read. It is only really the score which is useless. And, as far as I'm concerned the score was nearly useless anyway. It is, at best, a way to summarise how good the reviewer thought the game was. If you want to know anything insightful about the game you'll need to read the attached review.
Being simply enjoyable to read doesn't a good review make; it makes just an entertainment piece, like someone going on TV and insulting the crap out of Guardians of the Galaxy whether they liked it or not just for laughs. Sure, it might be funny, but its generally not what someone goes to a review for.

And my complaint is that the text itself also isn't useful. Reviewer's often aren't literate enough to actually elaborate on the problems of a game, and instead just post whether they enjoyed it or not - which is summarised by an established useless number at the end. More literate reviewers means more informative reviews, which means we can just ignore the number.

Its the difference for me between Jim's BotW review and Yooka Laylee. I don't agree with him on either, and I don't think he really followed his own posted standards for either review, but with BotW he justified his criticisms far better than with Yooka Laylee. Still not exactly well, but enough for me to go "Yeah, Ok, your opinion and I can respect that", rather than "Why did you even review this?"

Captain Marvelous said:
Joccaren said:
My English professor once told me that i should never write the words "In my opinion" while writing my paper. Why? Because it's my damn paper. I don't need to let the reader know it's my opinion because that's already heavily implied, what with my name being on the top of the page. Never say, "This is bad in my opinion", just say "This is bad". The fact that it's your opinion is already obvious. So obvious that someone somewhere is definitely going to remind you that it's just your opinion. It's actually happening quite a bit in this thread.
Your English professor should also have told you that it depends strongly on what you're writing as to whether you'd do that, as different pieces have different requirements of formality, tone, tense and various other bits and bobs. When writing a piece that contains both objective statements and subjective judgements, one should differentiate clearly between the two.
One shouldn't say "In my opinion" too often because it gets repetitive and is rather lacking in imagination, alongside breaking the flow of a sentence, but rather than saying "This IS bad" when you are merely stating your opinion and not a fact in a piece containing both, writing "This FEELS bad" helps differentiate the two by using plainly subjective language, rather than objective.

Anyway, I think it's time for the return of the 100% Objective Review! Useful to everyone and no one!
-snip-

I'm honestly not sure what people expected his rating to be. He did not enjoy the game. He thinks it's trash. Should such a reviewer be obligated by some objective force to give the game a higher score than the review suggests it deserves?
Going by Jim's standards, a 4 would probably have fit his score for it were he looking at it from the perspective of anyone outside of just himself - which his scores descriptions imply he does.
This would also be in line with his general review scores in comparison to most publications, whereby he's usually only slightly lower - and most reviews for YL lie between a 6 and 8, because it is in no way a terrible experience, its just something that has been designed for an audience Jim is obviously not a part of. As I've said in this thread before, if IGN or someone went up and reviewed Dynasty Warriors a 2/10 for not being Starcraft, he'd have a field day laughing at them - and does with Metacritic user reviews that at times aren't even offensive or bad, just state that they didn't enjoy the game - mocking them for not giving a more objective take on a game that he thought was worth more, or for missing the point of one of his favourite series and scoring it poorly because of that.
If its ok for him to do that, I think its ok for us to do the same right back at him when he does the same. Being a critic does not make you immune to criticism, funnily enough.

Phoenixmgs said:
A game that relies on a lock-on system has aged because lock-on systems WERE THE BEST and now they are not. That's basically what the definition of aging is. Being able to actually aim a bow and arrow is much much better than just locking on. Souls combat has never felt great IMO because of its reliance on archaic lock-on mechanics. It's like how 3rd-person shooters used to suck because devs didn't understand aiming sensitivities and lock-on was required for functionality. Sure, old games are still plenty functional but staying functional doesn't mean they didn't age either. Metal Gear Solid aged much better than Syphon Filter or Winback because MGS isn't really a 3rd-person shooter and it slowly evolved into one as those mechanics became developed whereas the other games were 3rd-person shooters before the mechanics were tuned and properly developed.
This still vastly depends on the style of game. There's a reason BotW still uses a Lock on Camera, with fine aiming for critical shots. It fits the style of play better. Simplistic mechanics and easy aiming aren't always bad, it depends on the game they're in service to. OoT would not have in any way been improved by removing Z targeting and adding a second analogue stick for controls. Hell, it would probably have been made worse. Having two analogue sticks and Z targeting is an improvement, allowing greater camera control, but lock on targeting does have its uses, even in today's games. It all depends on where the focus of the experience is.

EternallyBored said:
Like graphics, PS1 early polygon models were considered good once, now if you released a new game with the resolution and low poly models of a game like FF7 you would rightly draw far more criticism and the graphics that once influenced scores and garnered praise as cutting edge and revolutionary would either be ignored as an indie throw back or even hurt scores with the fuzzy textures and atrocious resolutions that look even worse on the HD TVs of today. The graphics in games age, what was once considered good looking or at least acceptable, can now seem mediocre or downright ugly.
Greatly depends on the art style. The original Wind Waker still looks beautiful, even if the HD update does look better, because of its careful artistic choices and stylised graphics. A lot of games are in a similar boat, having stylised designs that don't become worse with age because they were chosen for that precise reason. While for some games this is true, it isn't always, and in the case of YL its not a problem.

Or story, contemporary stories can be very popular, but they quickly lose that popularity the older they become, the jokes become dated, the once topical political points become dated or even embarrassing depending on how those debates turned out. A game in the early 90's could have a saxophone playing president, with a save the rainforest message, and jokes about rewinding VHS tapes and that would have been fine and even funny. You release a game like that today, your references and jokes are going to fly over a lot of peoples head or just not appeal to as wide an audience.
Some of this is also timeless, however. Honestly, a saxophone playing president could still be quite funny, depending on the context its presented in. A good exposure of certain political points can also be timeless; presenting a fair and nuanced message of 'save the rainforest' reasonably fairly, and in a not on-the-nose way could still hold up in today's climate where calls to save rainforests do still come out from time to time. For example, 1984, while several decades after its release, still holds up today, even in a different political climate, and has held up all these years. So have various other stories with political messages, because of how they present their stories and messages. Hell, "A Christmas Carol" is still showed every damn year on TV, and that is a 100% pure political message telling the rich to stop being so stingy and start giving to the poor, written hundreds of years ago. Good writing is good writing. Bad writing may temporarily pass as acceptable then get seen as the embarrassment it is by those who were fooled the first time around, but good writing does tend to last.
And again, not a problem YL has as it approaches modern topical problems and has modern based jokes.

Presentation is another aspect that ages, replacing voices with repetitive sounds was just a fact of life in the era where you couldn't fit a fully voice acted cast on to your cartridge, but nowadays you can't get away with that in any sort of AAA release without being remarked on by reviewers, indies with limited budgets can get away with it, but if Ubisoft put out its next Assassin's creed title with no voice acting, they would rightfully catch some shit for it.
This is messing up style with objective fact. It is still perfectly fine to use grunts and repetitive sounds in certain games. Hell, even BotW, which contains some voice acting, does it for the majority of voice interactions [Though not in the same way YL does]. Sure, Assassin's Creed wouldn't get away with it, but Assassin's Creed has a completely different artistic style and direction, and doing that style of voice clashes with that art style and direction. Its like criticising Michael Bay's explosions as obsolete because if they were featured in "La La Land" they'd be out of place and panned by critics. At least pick the same stylistic approaches for your criticism, rather than two completely different ones.
A game like Yooka Laylee, honestly, would have been TERRIBLE with actual voice acting. It would not at all have fit the style of the game, and funnily enough there are more styles that can exist in the modern world than "Quasi-realistic with voice acting", and not just because we let indie devs slide for having a low budget.
In fact, in a stroke of irony, the voice acting in BotW is generally criticised as its pretty poor and often doesn't really add to the experience, more taking away from it. Some like it, some don't. It ain't some universal modern tool we all have to use because its better than non-voice sounds though. Hell, the Sims doesn't use true voice acting, and that's still modernising its stuff to ill effect.
Put simply, you're confusing the need for cohesive presentation with a need to be realistic and modern. The former is a real need, the latter is the problem with the games industry people funded YL to avoid.

Even controls, games like Mario 64 and Banjo-kazooie had wonky cameras and imprecise controls in part because they were on a system with single analog stick controllers, it was acceptable then, but those games aged and we no longer have systems with weird single stick trident controllers. We cut those games slack because they came first, we had nothing to compare them to, no idea how 3d controls and cameras could be done differently, but they aged, and other games came along that showed that those camera and control issues could be done differently or even improved. In 20 years, the games of the 90's absolutely have aged, some things aged very well: sprite art, handheld games, RPGs, etc. and some have aged exceptionally poorly: early polygon art, single analog sticks, fuzzy resolutions that look awful on HD TVs, etc.
This I can largely agree with though. Camera and controls have been made more intuitive, and are something that people learn from other games that good designers build on in their own to afford the player a greater understanding of the game, and less tutorial time needed. YL has some problems here, but that's largely it.

Games age, the problems with Banjo-Kazooie are still present today, but critics, and audiences perceptions and patience for these problems has changed greatly as we know have 20 years of games to compare them too.
Honestly, this is the same attitude that led to the death of most RTS, of games like Xcom, of Survival Horror, of 3D platformers, Space Sims, and various other genres. "They were great back then, but people have changed and we won't enjoy them now". That is continually proven wrong by crowd funding where people are honestly clamouring for the older experiences as they had qualities that 'modern' games lack, as they become so homogenised in the pursuit of what is 'modern' and 'popular'. A game doesn't need to be 'modern'. It needs to be well designed. A well executed masterpiece outside its time still holds up amazingly well. Its why people still love Shakespeare, even if many of us also hate it. What matters isn't the age or modernness of a game's mechanics and such, but of how competently it has been designed and put together.

YL definitely has its flaws, however they don't stem from some nebulous "Being old" disease. The stem from less than perfect execution of older ideas - ideas which are still fun and can still hold up just fine these days. Games can age, of course, but not quite to the extent many seem to think. Older games still hold strong appeal, and often minimal work put into 'modernising' them is all that's required.
 

Phoenixmgs_v1legacy

Muse of Fate
Sep 1, 2010
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Joccaren said:
OoT would not have in any way been improved by removing Z targeting and adding a second analogue stick for controls. Hell, it would probably have been made worse.
Just no. Only one analog stick sucks for 3D games unless there's a fixed camera. If a 2nd analog stick makes 3D controls worse, then obviously there would be games without camera control on the right stick? But there ain't.