Zero Punctuation: Alone in the Dark
- Thread starter Yahtzee Croshaw
- Start date
ElliottC666: "btw, what happened to the old intros/outros?"
Maybe they began costing money. SABAM, anti-fair use loophole et cetera. Or maybe clever marketeers thought the majority of the target ZP audience actually likes bland metal jingles?
Rock on, air guitar, it's still free to watch, the main part isn't affected by it,
all that.
Maybe they began costing money. SABAM, anti-fair use loophole et cetera. Or maybe clever marketeers thought the majority of the target ZP audience actually likes bland metal jingles?
Rock on, air guitar, it's still free to watch, the main part isn't affected by it,
all that.
I was a tad worried there that Yahtzee was slipping due to the rabid feedback on the last few reviews. This is an okay review; though the nonstop anal jokes are starting to wear very thin, it was good to see more on the plate than just those.
There is only a small wonder, however, on how his review would have faired if he played "Alone in the Dark" on, say, the Wii instead of the Xbox. Perhaps there would have been another broken television, some missing fingers, and a law suit in the works.
There is only a small wonder, however, on how his review would have faired if he played "Alone in the Dark" on, say, the Wii instead of the Xbox. Perhaps there would have been another broken television, some missing fingers, and a law suit in the works.
First let me just say that I really like zero punctuation. Yahtzee is incredibly entertaining, and aside from his disdain for western rpgs I find myself agree with him on almost every review. That being said, I do find the inconsistencies that at starting to crop up bothersome. For example, in this review he complains about the inventory being too small. However, in an earlier review (I believe it was the Drakes Island whatever one) he objected to the fact that the main character seemed to have a jacket that could hold "8 plasma TVs" (I think that was the phrase Yahtzee used). Also, in the bioshock review he talked about how unrealistic it was that everything froze and patiently waited for you to finish hacking, and how that detracted from gameplay, but here Yahtzee says its bad that the game doesn't pause when you make equipment. I'm not one of those guys who notes every consistency error in a movie, but it strikes me that a reviewer ought to have a static notion of what makes a game good.
Also, the new into is fine, but please go back to using music that fits the game (or your review).
Also, the new into is fine, but please go back to using music that fits the game (or your review).
Arguably a small inventory is bad when you're expected to pick up all the random deritus around you to make useful things out of. If they don't tell you explicitly what goes with what to make what you'll have to do a lot of experimentation.sinnombre said:
Good piece. It's disappointing that they've abandoned the whole "investigative horror" element, apparently, though clearly that's the least of their problems. Atari has made some weird decisions since- well, they've always made weird decisions, back to when they were an entirely different company.
Oh come on now, he's not contradicting anything. There's a big difference between being FORCED to enter your inventory screen to make a firebomb in AitD (Because big enemies can ONLY be killed by fire) and choosing to hack a camera in Bioshock. Hacking a camera should be a challenge - it's a way to avoid combat and thus should require some effort to compensate for the effort you don't need to expend on the fighting. Likewise, since it can make your life significantly easier it shouldn't be as simple as walking up and pressing a "Join my team now" button.sinnombre said:
Combining items in AitD is compulsory and a key part of combat - if you're out of molotov cocktails or fire bullets you're often well-and-truely screwed until you find more supplies somewhere, and when you do it's inevitable that you'll have to dick around with the inventory a bit before you can actually use them. If you were being chased by zombies and your only way to fight back was chucking a bottle of fuel at them and shooting it, would you do that as soon as you picked it up, or would you pick up said bottle, place it in your coat, then take five to ten seconds to re-equip said bottle and throw it. Forget actually combining the thing with something, just to equip it you have to deal with this delay.
As to inventory size - different games call for different things, and you're dealing in extremes here. It was the Silent Hill Origins review where he commented on the main character's jacket size, and he was perfectly justified in doing so. The game has a limitted weapon endurance system which presumably was implemented to make you have to be conservative with your weapon usage. Giving the player a ridiculously large inventory defeats that purpose, though, by ensuring that they'll be hard-pressed to actually run out of weapons.
In AitD's case, I didn't particularly feel as though the inventory was too small, but he is correct that by the end of the game you'll have occupied about a third of it with utility items that you either HAVE to have on you or will be bereft without (Lighter, knife, plot item, bullets), and it leaves you with little say in what you carry on the left side of your jacket (which holds the smaller items). But you can't compare what's said about one game's inventory with that of another - you can only compare how well the inventories fit their respective games.
Great review. Always good to give something a good kicking that deserves it. Hmmm can you review Piers Morgan next time please 
In other news, no the music hasn't grown on me yet. Not that my opinion counts for anything, but you asked and I'm a polite Englishman so...
In other news, no the music hasn't grown on me yet. Not that my opinion counts for anything, but you asked and I'm a polite Englishman so...
