After watching this video, i decided to go back to it.
6 hours later (excluding the time i was forced to go make everyone dinner) and i can say i played it solidly (single player)
things he should have mentioned :
Cartoony graphics that really do relay the vibe of the game.
Atmosphere and immersion - even if you are shooting the same few characters over and over (serious sam proved this isn't a fault) I felt drawn to the next encounter, and the firefights were always gritty - especially against the crimson lance.
BUT
Big bosses were usually easy, fighting against several smaller bosses was bloody impossible (this one time i suddenly found myself up against two badass bruisers, both with rocket launchers, one boss bandit, with a rocket launcher, and two huge rocket firing gun turrets, which all jumped out at me (i'm not sure how the gun turrets can jump out at me but they managed it. being lilith i phasewalked when i got hit by a couple rockets, took cover beside the wall, but rockets were exploding everywhere and i ran out of health behind cover with no enemies in my line of sight. which leads me to
"second wind" as a death mechanic. sure they needed to put in something that allows you to bypass being rescued by a friend, but this mechanic makes absolutely no sense. if you lose all your health by standing too close to some ammo crates that you don't expect to blow up, with no enemies in sight, you are a goner, but if there's a whole bunch of them around, you are fine.
Just having guns with different statistics doesn't make it a RPG, it's a shooter, and one that has less character traits to choose from then torchlight, which he bashed for not being customisable enough.
Though i'm still going to go back and play it some more, and the fact that you still level up the second time you play it does add point to replaying it, which is more then can be said for most games. I do get the feeling he hasn't played it in a while though.
Has yahtzee Lost friends since he reviewed L4D? i think he is just making excuses, and if he ever needs to find people to play with he should try getting a few people off the escapist to play with him.