Zero Punctuation: Age of Conan

[Vitalix]

Perhaps Yahtzee is busy enjoying his newfound fame and pursuing other projects. Perhaps producing one video a week is too much work. Perhaps he's feeling the pressure to pour verbal acid over every game he reviews. This latest video furthers Yahtzee's growing trend towards humor over content. He's still really funny, quite insightful, and blows away other video reviews out there. It just seemed he missed some core issues with the game and spent too much time on fringes.

For example, he does not like dialogue from quest characters because it takes too long to get the quest. Yahtzee has always been big into story. An MMORPG tries to inject story and Yahtzee complains that he can't get through it fast enough. Besides, you can whip through story in AoC. Just keep pressing the '1' choice and you'll get the quest in under five seconds. Why he's spending precious video time on this (beyond it being funny) is not clear.

There are key issues he did not sufficiently discuss. The game is plagued with bugs. Some features such as spellweaving are ineffectual. He did not talk about the new weapon interaction positively or negatively.

I'd rather one review done well every two weeks that one review every seven days that is not Yahtzee's best. In any event, Yahtzee's second-best-quickie reviews are still darn good and superior to most other gaming resources out there.

So well done. Sort of.

 

[ElArabDeMagnifico]

Pretty good but...it seemed like he actually had fun with this lol. I was expecting another "Witcher" but I guess he's more patient now.

-and damnit I guess I'm going to need that music grown on me.

 

[Zangado]

I have never played this game, also I have a hard time to even try and get the motivation to test it after reading some of the forum posts made by the teens who play it (or perverted young/middle aged/older people)
How do they get so upset when a character all of a sudden puts on a top and is not naked anymore or when they reduced the size of the female anatomy ... that was a real nerf.

Good video, also the music is starting to grow on me.

 

[Vortigar]

Heroic One:
Three races, twelve classes...
Have you ever played an rpg with a character creation screen?

 

[pingnak]

I really like that there's an 'Age Of Conan' ad slapped up behind this review.

I personally loathe MMORPGs. A good RTS game is OK, but a game chock full of random nerdy griefing human garbage all able to 'interact' with you with a make-believe sword at will can never be much fun.

Basically the MMORPG 'fan base' (and a lot of the online gaming community in general) is composed of a whole bunch of people just like this one...
http://www.google.com/search?q=halo+kid

If you haven't seen this video yet, the cringe factor is palpable. Be warned.

 

[disposable157]

Can't help but feel Vitalix is right... Yahtzee was never briliant at the whole review thing- usually preferring to skip lightly over most criticisms and focus on one or two. This one felt far more like a blog entry than anything else- a bit like Living in Oblivion. Yes, it was funny but it also felt tired. Maybe he's been having too many late nights.

 

[yourkie1921]

Yahtzee has always been big into story. An MMORPG tries to inject story and Yahtzee complains that he can't get through it fast enough.

Yahtzee does not feel a story in which characters are just standing around town picking their nose is a good story, also, I doubt he even gives a damn about the story. My views are pretty close to him and when I played Guild Wars I payed no attention to the story, but while playing elder scrolls I payed attention to the story and was actually immersed in the story (not the actual game though). Also, Alone in the Dark was better.

 

[Lightzy]

the new intro is killing me. really.

It's like, at first it was just really annoying. Now its like 10 years of marriage to someone you've grown to despise. grating on everyones nerves.

 

[Sid Meier]

Good fine professional review but either im just too tired today but I didn't find it as funny as I usual do, I was smiling. I liked it, just didn't laugh out loud.

 

[Artinam]

Very nice review, really liked how he depicted some of the major issues with the game. I more or less agree that the game needs to be refined more (patched up).

 

[Muphin_Mann]

YES!

My only problem with WoW was that i had to be a nudist Warlock. Now i can be a nudist Necromancer?! Im going to buy this and make one in every skincolor available for each gender!

Actualy, i think the skincolors represent different races each with their own classes, but i can stil make one in each gender.

 

[Sid Meier]

So far I have counted the following "sins" in Age of Conan.

- Foul language.
- Gore. Bloodspatter is everywhere.
- More gore. Fataliaties are meticulously modeled variations on how to end someone's life hard, brutally, and - in some cases - extremely messilly.
- Unrination. Yes, NPC's can be seen taking a piss.
- Prostitution, and plenty of it.
- Slavery.
- Alcohol.
- Drug use/drug addiction.
- Human sacrifice.
- Homosexuality, male and female.

So no... the Big Nerd is not here.

/S

Where do I sign up?

 

[Sid Meier]

After this i'm really waiting for a good smackdown of EVE from Yahtzee. Or a loving. I don't know... Would be interesting to see nonetheless.

AoC was a very strange experience... It was trying to make the gameplay into something it's not, and that wore me out after just a week or 2 of casual (!) play. WoW is simply better at it, it doesn't try to hide it.

There's nothing wrong with EVE-Online aside from a purely technical perspective that mankind hasnt evolved a good enough internet yet to have the 2000+ ship battles to resolve with crashing whole nodes beyond that everything about EVE was deliberately designed to be like it is. EVE is not a game for WoW players who think there shouldn't be any cost to dying and that everyone should be nice to them.

EVE is a harsh social darwinist experiment where the people who smacktalk you can also kill you and steal everything you worked hard for, survival of the fittest or survival of who has the largest gang of people online at the time. The way it is meant to be played if people don't like it they can quit.

 

[SerFroggy]

You know, there were other classes, which had more things put into them.The ranged attacks were pretty innovative, the fighting system was a little more interactive than most MMORPGers, but it is true that every MMORPG is trying to be World of Warcraft.

 

[The9mm]

You know, there were other classes, which had more things put into them.The ranged attacks were pretty innovative, the fighting system was a little more interactive than most MMORPGers, but it is true that every MMORPG is trying to be World of Warcraft.

maybe they are trying to be as sucessful as wow but they are not trying to be like it

 

[Sid Meier]

I would state that while everything WoW has done has been done before it by EQ and lineage WoW refined them into crack cocaine for "everyone". I played WoW on and off enough for it to transform my standards "is this game different from WoW? If so is it different enough to be worth playing?" To my mind only EVE Online succeeds at this, with LoTR Online and DDO but only because of niche reasons, LOTRO lets me play with a musical instrument like in Zelda Orcerina of time and DDO has enough of the Dungeons and Dragons immersion on "hardest" difficulty.

If I had the money and the time I would play them instead of wow but because I don't I play EVE, I'll try out Age of Conan and Warhammer Online but in reality Im only looking forward to Stargate Worlds to suceed where Tabula Rasa failed.

 

[HalHal]

I gotta agree on that in pretty much every RPG and MMORPG games there is a "Create your person in 1001 ways" yet most of it is just usless..


and i couldnt help but feeling when thos "Modern" RPGs laughted Baldurs Gate out. that Buldurs Gate kick all of their arses. And that Super Tech Custumization doesnt make a RPG good

 

[Isaac Dodgson]

I would state that while everything WoW has done has been done before it by EQ and lineage WoW refined them into crack cocaine for "everyone". I played WoW on and off enough for it to transform my standards "is this game different from WoW? If so is it different enough to be worth playing?" To my mind only EVE Online succeeds at this, with LoTR Online and DDO but only because of niche reasons, LOTRO lets me play with a musical instrument like in Zelda Orcerina of time and DDO has enough of the Dungeons and Dragons immersion on "hardest" difficulty.

If I had the money and the time I would play them instead of wow but because I don't I play EVE, I'll try out Age of Conan and Warhammer Online but in reality Im only looking forward to Stargate Worlds to suceed where Tabula Rasa failed.

waaait....you're not Sid Meier (I jest of course)

Um, what was I going to say? Oh yeah!

I'm not really an MMO player, never mind MMORPG, and the only MMO i actually sat down and played (and paid) for was City of Heroes, but that got old fast for me. However I know how addicting WoW can be, as a buddy of mine had an account and had me sit down and play it. the first ten minutes as one of those giant bull animal things i was at level ten and had to be pried away from the machine less I would be stuck there forever

I don't what it is, subliminal influences through the colors and text in the game? the game somehow taking over your mind by harnessing the monitors refresh rate and hypnotizing you somehow, I don't know, but if this sort of power got into the wrong hands... just imagine the ramifications.

 

[ZanderArch]

The new intro/outro are good, but the old ones were better. The music picked specifically for the game worked better than the generic rock style it is now.

The World of Warcraft talk doesn't seem right, the way it was described means pretty much all genres are coping the best one in them.

Good review, wasn't going to get this game anyway. I'm firmly against Pay to Play, and this just polished the tomb stone on it.

PS: Solid Snake's Eye patch was on the wrong side =/

 

[yourkie1921]

So far I have counted the following "sins" in Age of Conan.

- Foul language.
- Gore. Bloodspatter is everywhere.
- More gore. Fataliaties are meticulously modeled variations on how to end someone's life hard, brutally, and - in some cases - extremely messilly.
- Unrination. Yes, NPC's can be seen taking a piss.
- Prostitution, and plenty of it.
- Slavery.
- Alcohol.
- Drug use/drug addiction.
- Human sacrifice.
- Homosexuality, male and female.

Nice!!! Are there any fully naked ladies (and no, I do not consider them naked unless you can see any body part you want with no clothing infront of their sexual areas, they're not nude if they're in a bikini. )