Zero Punctuation: E.T. - "The Worst Game Ever"

[MonkeyPunch]

I actually really liked this episode.
Something a bit different yet still very ZP and still very entertaining.

 

[wetfart]

I still have my E.T. cartridge.

I remember playing it as a kid and having NO clue what I was supposed to be doing. I'd play for a bit, get bored or frustrated and put something else into the atari. Like pitfall or joust.

 

[red255]

And Rei Ayanami is clearly (clearly) the better embodiment of the word "waifu". Between her and Asuka, there's no debate. (Disclaimer: I have never watched Evangelion, but I have read the F*ckin' Otaku review [https://web.archive.org/web/20101120143240/http://catsonmars.com/otaku/articles/eva.php] of it.)

The fact that some people actually discuss which seriously emotionally fucked up 14-year-old would make the best wife proves that our culture is doomed.

Not sure Rei counts as emotionally fucked up, she was apparently a clone of his mother with a soul of Something else put inside.

the disturbing part is its his mother. and the whole clone thing since theres apparently a whole pile of spares.

Asuka's got issues sure, but rei lacks a personality to have issues, and if she starts to develop issues just decant a new one.

still I don't think people discuss EVA for waifus. Rebuild made Eva dead to most neckbeards.

 

[CrazyGirl17]

That's odd, me and some friends were talking about this game earlier. Someone even mentioned the game being a "symptom not the cause" of the Game Crash.

Anyway, good review with some funny moments, and I'd like to see this game history bit again.

 

[Logience]

And Rei Ayanami is clearly (clearly) the better embodiment of the word "waifu". Between her and Asuka, there's no debate. (Disclaimer: I have never watched Evangelion, but I have read the F*ckin' Otaku review [https://web.archive.org/web/20101120143240/http://catsonmars.com/otaku/articles/eva.php] of it.)

The fact that some people actually discuss which seriously emotionally fucked up 14-year-old would make the best wife proves that our culture is doomed.

*debates about which emotionally fucked up 14-year-old is more fucked up*.

Why is this necessary?

 

[144_v1legacy]

And Rei Ayanami is clearly (clearly) the better embodiment of the word "waifu". Between her and Asuka, there's no debate. (Disclaimer: I have never watched Evangelion, but I have read the F*ckin' Otaku review [https://web.archive.org/web/20101120143240/http://catsonmars.com/otaku/articles/eva.php] of it.)

The fact that some people actually discuss which seriously emotionally fucked up 14-year-old would make the best wife proves that our culture is doomed.

*debates about which emotionally fucked up 14-year-old is more fucked up*.

Why is this necessary?

I think the bigger question is, why aren't you more interested in teen anime marriage?

 

[Jorpho]

I was really expecting a lot more people to be upset with seeing this topic dealt with again for the umpteenth time.

Maybe next week we can hear the tale about how Doki Doki Panic became Super Mario Bros 2! I'm sure no one's heard that one before either.

 

[Ten Foot Bunny]

E.T. wasn't THAT bad of a game when compared to everything else that was out at the time. It wasn't anything special, but certainly not "Worst Game of All Time!!" material. What other games didn't have, though, was a big movie attached to it and the accompanying raised expectations. E.T. didn't suffer because it was worse than its peers, it simply had the name recognition that other average-to-mediocre titles of its time lacked.

As others in this thread mentioned, plenty of horrible third-party titles played an equally large role in the crash. Then you had Pac Man... ugh. I was only five years old at the time, but I played the shit out of E.T. while my copy of Pac Man gathered dust. And I loved Pac Man in the arcades!

 

[Grach]

Half Life did NOT cause that at all. Half Life plays absolutely nothing like Counter Strike, just because Counter Strike was a mod for Half Life didn't mean Half Life even remotely inspired the game.

Although Yahtzee DID say that Half-life's attemts at realistic (at the time) enviroments fueled and inspired modern boring shootfests.

 

[The Dead Singer]

So this new feature is basically just the Jimquisition but less good. All it does is highlight just how irrelevant, pandering and obvious Yahtzee's become compared to Jim, as well as being simply not as funny.

Why is Yahtzee the only reviewer who seems to have a problem with this so-called 'drought'. Other reviewers are finding games to review, so can he. The Wolf Among Us is the obvious choice, not to mention Divinity. I know he said it was boring during his Extra Punctuation, that shouldn't matter. If it's boring, that's the angle for the review.

Because he doesn't want to play it? Yahtzee's work is first and foremost entertain, not go all out and review every single game that is new just because of relevancy. I really don't think he gives a shit about being relevant and neither do I nor do a lot of his viewers, they just like seeing hearing him talk because it's entertaining, sometimes informative and hilarious (He's admittedly not as laugh-out-loud hilarious as he was some years ago, when it seemed like everything he said was enough to make your gut hurt from laughter on its own, but he's entertaining in his own way).

Of course he's not as relevant as Jim (though he's vastly more popular than Jim has ever been and considering the sheer amount of people who subscribed to the Youtube channel of the escapist exclusively for Yahtzee (and have no qualms repeatedly stating it, if you read the comments) that's kind of arguable), Jim talks about current issues and things that are going on - Yahtzee just talks about games, and only occassionally talks about other things.

I also fail to see how this is pandering considering I don't think there's a single person on the planet who asked for this, but whatever.

 

[Zombie Badger]

Not sure Rei counts as emotionally fucked up, she was apparently a clone of his mother with a soul of Something else put inside.

the disturbing part is its his mother. and the whole clone thing since theres apparently a whole pile of spares.

Asuka's got issues sure, but rei lacks a personality to have issues, and if she starts to develop issues just decant a new one.

still I don't think people discuss EVA for waifus. Rebuild made Eva dead to most neckbeards.

Emotionally dead is still emotionally fucked-up.

 

[Iceklimber]

Fate Testarossa would make a good Waifu
http://cdn.myanimelist.net/images/characters/13/72711.jpg

 

[Aiddon_v1legacy]

Yes, but it was also incredibly monopolistic. It was pretty much designed that competition was nigh impossible to arise, as it prevented multi-platform games and prevented the devs from making games for another console some games for multiple years after signing the licencing contract.

Well if they didn't want that to happen then they shouldn't have crashed their damned industry. SOMEBODY had to police the nitwits as 3rd parties proved that if left to their own devices they were incapable of acting like professionals. Ya don't want a probation officer then don't get drunk and piss on a police cruiser.

The drought IS bad though, try to think of something new that's actually worthwhile outside of more indie shit that you can start and finish in a single lunch break. And the current consoles deserve whatever criticism they get - They're a joke without a punchline.

I wouldn't even really say it's the consoles that are really the problem so much as the 3rd parties who kept kicking and screaming until they got them. They kept saying "oh, we NEED new hardware so we can deliver bigger and better experiences so we can REALLY revolutionize the industry." And so far they haven't.

Every time they've been trying to sell their next title as the "ONE." Y'know, the game that'll convince everyone to get on board with the next gen. But it's not happening. Titanfall didn't do it. Dead Rising 3, nope. Ryse, uh-uh. Killzone: Shadowfall, pffft. Infamous: Second Son, LORD NO. Then it was Watch Dogs turn and that failed too. So far every attempt to sell the new gen has fallen flat and we wonder if the new consoles were released not because of devs truly needing new power to give us exciting new ideas, but because they realized they could no longer distract the public with spectacle and thus the thought of them having to use actual SKILL was a terrifying prospect. So, the hardware is fine, it's just that the people who tried to push it have shown that they're not using it correctly.

It was literally a case of solving a poor economy with a dictator ship

No it wasn't. It was just someone putting proper policing into things. 3rd parties even back then were not some starving artists, they were big boys who fucked up and fucked up BIG TIME. If they didn't want to be policed then they shouldn't have wrecked their own industry. They lost any and all privileges. It was a "dictatorship" is the same way a probation officer is the dictator to his charges.

 

[Auron225]

I enjoyed that jingle Great episode but I keep singing that jingle now!

 

[Szierra]

I actually kind of respect the guys who made E.T. They bashed out that game in basically a couple of weeks, whereas most games took a couple of months. For the record, that'd be like a big-name developer cranking out an entirely new game in about six months compared to the 2-3 year dev cycles of your average big-name triple-A releases.

You mean Battleship Kappa

 

[DarkhoIlow]

Well this is something that I never expected Yahtzee to reference: Neon Genesis Evangelion's Asuka and Ayanami and anime.

This is a great idea to go back and do videos about old games..wonder what you got for us next!

 

[rembrandtqeinstein]

ET wasn't a bad game for its time. From what I remember it was the first one with a contiguous 2 dimensional map system (pitfall had a contiguous 1 dimensional map system but you almost never made it around the loop). And if you think about it ET was the first "open world" game where you could complete the objectives in any order.

And the pit thing you could avoid falling back into the pits if you held the button until your sprite was 100% off of the pit area.

Also I'm old....

 

[A3sir]

Huh. So Activision was formed by developers escaping greedy corporate douchebags. Interesting.

 

[Aiddon_v1legacy]

Your a Nintendo fanboy if you think the "You cant make any non-nintendo games for a certain amount of years just to be allowed to make a game on the system" was anything but Dictatorship. Probation is a terrible comparison. It was plain extremely anti-competitive practices.

Really? "Fanboy?" I didn't realize we were in high school. Furthermore, there was another problem that caused the crash: too many platforms. It became a goddamned clusterfuck with all the consoles on the market, many of which were just plain terrible. Yet another reason Nintendo had to play hardass. Hardware developers also proved to not be trustworthy with that. And hell, those practices still happen; SEGA, Sony, and MS are all guilty of it to certain degrees. Not as strict as Nintendo, but they engage in them nonetheless. And again, we must once again remember the context: 3rd parties had proven they couldn't be trusted thus Nintendo was forced to play hardass. These weren't innocent victims, these were culprits being given just punishment and they were lucky to only be given that.

 

[harryhenry]

Every time they've been trying to sell their next title as the "ONE." Y'know, the game that'll convince everyone to get on board with the next gen. But it's not happening. Titanfall didn't do it. Dead Rising 3, nope. Ryse, uh-uh. Killzone: Shadowfall, pffft. Infamous: Second Son, LORD NO. Then it was Watch Dogs turn and that failed too. So far every attempt to sell the new gen has fallen flat and we wonder if the new consoles were released not because of devs truly needing new power to give us exciting new ideas, but because they realized they could no longer distract the public with spectacle and thus the thought of them having to use actual SKILL was a terrifying prospect. So, the hardware is fine, it's just that the people who tried to push it have shown that they're not using it correctly.

When you say those games "Failed", in what way did they fail? Aside from Ryse, which actually did fail, all of those games were well received, and (From what I can tell) sold well. Do you mean failed in terms of the reception from "REAL gamers" or something like that?