Zero Punctuation: Halo 3

[dadxer [deprecated]]

That's fine. I really don't care about single player, which is why I think that Bioshock is not worth $60, and has no replay value. If Halo 3 didn't have 4-player online co-op, I probably wouldn't have gone through it.

Also, anyone who doesn't care about multiplayer, has no friends. Being able to play with friends online is by far the best thing that's ever happened to gaming.

Not to say that SOME of his points aren't valid. And even the points that aren't valid, and are solely bawsed on opinion, are presented pretty hilariously. But a game like Halo has so many different aspects to it, and can appeal to so many different people with it's various game types, where as Bioshock, while having an extremely good and compelling campaign mode, is going to be played once, MAYBE twice, and then collect dust.

 

[Mr. Positive [deprecated]]

It's pretty interesting that people believe they've found their knight in shining armor to side with. As if a lemming crowd with pitchforks and boomsticks are raiding the microsoft HQ as one. But if you seriously expected a non negatory review from said attention whore then you are perpetually retarded. Yahtzee has one goal in mind, to please his fans, and he does this best by bashing the popular games that are released. Let's face it, people love to hate, it's in our genetics. Yahtzee is just catering to that sect of individuals and in essence is the only true reviewer that forgoes both sides of the coin: negative and positive aspects of a game. In this case, much like Bioshock, he's only focusing on impossible standards that simply cannot be captured by today's technological states on a console. But let's be frank, people love the console, not necessarily for the games, but for the comfort. Regardless, yahtzee's reviews are merely a one trick pony that come off as more of a joke than a substantial reflective retrospection of a game. Lastly, not to use the obligatory 'he didn't get it' cliche, but well, Yatzee doesn't understand the plot whatsoever, so how can he get excited about Halo 3?
As well, Yahtzee seems to be entrenched in the oft used hype argument. But, hype can only go so far in explaining the popularity of something. Hype can get people lined up to grab a game the day it comes out, hype can put butts in movie theater seats, hype can get people out to buy a CD they've only heard one single off of.
What hype can't do, for the most part, is account for any actual tangible enjoyment that people can experience from one of these forms of entertainment, and the subsequent rave reviews and eventual longevity of popularity that arise from that enjoyment.
In other words, hype can explain why millions of people go out and buy a game... it has a much harder time explaining who so damn many of them love the game after playing it, and eagerly run out to snatch up its sequels and spin-offs, and tell everyone they know about how much they love it.
This is because hype dissapears the moment you sit down to play. The fact that you saw a lot of commercials or read a lot of positive reviews for a game isn't going to mean **** to any but the absolute most brain dead conformist if you don't actually enjoy the game. And while I have an occasionally pretty dim view of the capacity for large groups of people to exercise independent thought, it seems to me that suggesting that the millions of people who enjoy the Halo series have all been "brainwashed" into doing so, especially given the large number of intelligent and rational and otherwise free-thinking Halo fans I have encountered over the years, is so lazy and facile and over simplistic and indicative of an inability to articulate any meaningful argument on the subject that it's barely worth responding to.
Not to mention that when someone casually dismisses Halo's popularity as nothing but hype, the simultaneous implication that they are one of the elite few who can see through Microsoft's juggernaut brainwashing machine is pretty hubristic.

 

[Russ Pitts]

it's barely worth responding to.

Thank heavens for that narrow margin of worth

 

[Zone 117]

Here is what my friend said about the review on another forum:

The only valid point he made was the Marine AI.
Let's debunk some off the top of my head:
Bloom: It has errors, they are not frequent, and it is not overpowering unless you take the time to sit there, zooming on on something sitting directly under a light, in which case, you're an idiot.
Difficulty: It's based on environment. He's criticizing the game for having a variety of environments in which you fight. Some are easier to fight in, others are much more difficult.
Single Player vs. Multiplayer: More play multiplayer than those who play only campaign. Statistics are significant here, and he presents none, because such statistics contradict his own point. He's playing on ignorance.
Microsoft: He treats the game as if Microsoft made it. We'll have to excuse the complete idiocy here, as it is apparent he spent no more time caring about the factual information than he did about checking his own logic.
Been done before: No. Few of the new features have been done before, and those which have have not been done significantly better. On top of that, he fails to provide any examples. "Hey, this sucks, but I can't tell you why."
BioShock: He criticized BioShock way more than he criticized Halo 3. How do I stated logical fallacies?

 

[Mr. Positive [deprecated]]

it's barely worth responding to.

Thank heavens for that narrow margin of worth

All that work and this is all you shallow ginger pube twats can muster? Ugh. I want to be flamed like a tranny hooker!

 

[Joe]

All that work and this is all you shallow ginger pube twats can muster? Ugh. I want to be flamed like a tranny hooker!

 

[Nobodyimportant]

I'm ashamed to be a Halo fan when others (Like Mr.Positive) give us a bad name by acting immature on these forums.(I know Mr.Positive didn't directly say he is a Halo fan, but from the point of view of his original post and bias in that post suggest that he is).

I have played all three Halo games, and after watching Yahtzee's review on Halo 3 I have to agree with him. Compaired to PC FPS's, Halo is just an average game but on the console its somehow viewed as supereb due to the fact that there are few other FPS on the 360 that are relatively good (you could say Gears of War, but its more of a TPS).

 

[LeroyPutty [deprecated]]

These are the funniest vids I've ever seen. I came home from work and showed them all to my wife and we died laughing. Thanks you and please make more

 

[logpepsam]

Not you best review but still definately worth watching so keep up the good work...
Any chance you are willing to tell us what you had planned on reviewing until escapist asked you to review halo 3?

And to the above poster with the jeremy clarkson books... AWESOME!!!!

In america we don't get Top Gear so hooray for the internet to let me watch the upcoming season of immature grown ups doing the things i wish i could do to cars...

 

[Kadayi]

Fun review. If a game is being sold on the SP experience it should be assessed on that alone. The MP experience depends more on the quality of your teammates/opposition than any other factors, so really shouldn't come into it. If it features co-op one could argue that the smoothness/seamlessness of the experience should be adjudged, but again it really stands on how good the SP experience is that is of main importance (if your teammates are fucktards ..generally your screwed).

 

[Shingro]

I've been enjoying Zero Punctuation for a long while and I just thought I'd chime in with my 2 cents before Yatzee gets overwhelmed with negetive feedback (the complainers are always louder then the others)

I'm a total Bioshock fanboy, played all the previous games, following the dev team's work, logs, E3 etc etc.

So Yatzee's review of it stung at first. However in the end I had to agree with almost all points. If you take a similar look at Halo 3 you'll probably find it's the same too.

What I'm trying to say is I trust Yatzee's reviews more then most gaming sites. He's not making special effort not to piss off company A or demographic B or to spin it up so he doesn't bring down the metacritic average. He's just a guy playing games and he calls it like he sees it. (in a hilarious way nonetheless)

Remember a review is actually permitted to be limited in scope, he told people straight that (to parapharase) "I've been told the multiplayer is great, however I don't care about multiplayer" so the review doesn't consider the game as an all encompasing whole, it's just a normal guy's opinion and I value that more then I value someone whose continuing job relies on keeping good ties with said companies so they can continue to land exclusives/preview code/etc.

Everyone seems to be taking this as some sort of massive end-all declaration of the worth of the game. An all encompassing thing that requires graphs and charts with projected fun per hour rates. Bah! Do your friends break those out when they suggest a game to you? No! they just say "Hey, I enjoyed these parts, I didn't enjoy these parts" and honestly those are the best reviews in my opinion

Remember yatzee, for every random guy in here complaining on how techinically the bloom isn't overwhelming on a by average per texture ratio when viewed in resolution X9beta, there's thousands of people who check in every week to get some laughs and then go on their merry way. Stay the course man, your reviews are awesome the way you do it, don't buckle! =)

 

[Russ Pitts]

Any chance you are willing to tell us what you had planned on reviewing until escapist asked you to review halo 3?

There's an excellent chance you'll find out next week.

 

[ccesarano]

Ok,I'm gonna ask one question then shut up. Is anyone going to answer the "perfect game" question I posed in my first post on this thread? (page 4,second post from the top) I'd like to hear some ideas on that.

Only because you asked so nicely.

Simple answer is that the idea of a "perfect game" is ridiculous. The worst people out there are those that create something and are fine with it. See thousands of online comics out there that are complete trash, yet the artist tries to pimp it out like it is amazing. Those that create something, step back and nit pick what they did. At the same time, however, they should be able to recognize the good things.

Maybe I can also put it in this perspective. I play a lot of games, and I can even nitpick many of them. However, I can even enjoy the simple games despite their many flaws (see Stranglehold and Prey). Even the games I'm an absolute fanatic about, such as Gears of War, Halo and Metroid, have glaring flaws. However, a game like Bioshock is probably the closest I've ever come to calling perfect after playing it. Even so, there were many flaws I was able to point out, and so it's obviously not a perfect package. Nonetheless, the sheer level of enjoyment, all of the content put in there, and the game achieving pretty much all of its goals came close.

However, I wouldn't say if you fix those flaws then that's my perfect game. I mean, I do favor shooter games, but...I dunno. A perfect game just sounds boring, because that means nothing else will ever measure up and there's no more room for improvement. Once you have a perfect game, what more is there to look forward to?

Flaws mean that games can still get better, and that's why I'm glad to nitpick.

Compaired to PC FPS's, Halo is just an average game but on the console its somehow viewed as supereb due to the fact that there are few other FPS on the 360 that are relatively good

Erm, with few exceptions, just about every major and minor FPS is being released both on PC and Xbox 360. If you, in fact, mean past games, well, some of the major ones such as Half-Life 1, Half-Life 2 and Deus Ex are also on console.

Seriously, I see no reason why consoles should be considered inferior in any way to PC's. Maybe for a game such as MechWarrior, given that a control pad just wouldn't be suitable. However, that doesn't mean my console is inferior, as there are plenty of excellent, fantastic games I've played on console that PC gamers haven't. Ever played Final Fantasy Tactics? It's like Square made that game by accident, because it's too good for them. The gameplay is phenomenal and still stands head and shoulders above other tactical JRPG's, the level of character class customization is awesome, creating unique teams from player to player, and the story is on the level with a lot of classic literature and some of the other best stories ever told(again, too good for Square). Yet it's a console game, which is treated as if it's the stupid man's gaming platform.

Are you guys seriously that closed-minded? Or, to risk being offensive, do you seriously need to justify your high costs of computer upgrades that badly in order to keep up with the latest and greatest? I may have missed out on some great PC titles, but at least I got plenty of great console ones plenty of you guys have missed out on as well.

 

[Can Not [deprecated]]

Really, it sounds more like you're bad at gaming than you're reviewing a bad game.

 

[logpepsam]

Assuming they don't make him review something else like Metroid then yea i will find out in a week....

But maybe if i ask REALLY NICELY he'll tell me early.... heheh

 

[Sentios]

The bit about the friendly AI was quite funny to me. Not funny as in 'hah hah' funny, more like a 'I've been there' funny. Then again I'm sure most of us have been there and worse. It's one thing to have completely useless back-up going into a fight but going into a fight only to be shot 16 times in the back by 'friendly fire' really sucks the big one if ya know what I mean. Even worse is when such dumb-fuggery happens while playing a game in which you have to protect one of those retarded sacks of code.

 

[CuddlyCombine]

Really, it sounds more like you're bad at gaming than you're reviewing a bad game.

Yes, because he definitely stated that the reason for his discontent lay in his inability to play games. Look at his complaints;

- the story is quite confusing to someone who hasn't played any of the other games.
- the graphics, while good, are way too bright sometimes.
- the AI acts like a cow in a supermarket trolley.
- it is massively overhyped.
- the single player campaign is short.

There may be one or two more, but as you can see those are all clearly are based on player skill.

/sarcasm

 

[Matthew Alexander]

Great review, hell, I'm one of the wankers who put forth the 1/10th k-bar for the Legendary Edition of Halo 3 with all the crap, waffles and tarts I could ever want and I still agree with everything you said. Not to say I regret my purchase, I love crap, waffles and tarts, even the single player campaign is keeping me busy until the blasted Half Life (HL) Orange box comes out and I kick myself for spending money on HL2, and HL2 Episode 1 when Valve is going to package them all with HL2 Episode 2... Wankers.

 

[Jejoma122]

I actually enjoyed the game quite a bit. Of course, it's no where near being the best game out there, but I don't understand why people that play PC games have this complex about console gamers.

 

[whandall]

I am absolutely fascinated by the number of people who are unhappy with the fact that these reviews are biased. Biased review? Isn't the whole point of a review to show a preference of some kind? Granted, when reading a review you need to have some idea of the preferences of the reviewer, or their evaluation won't be useful to you. However, this review makes it very clear that Yahtzee is not into multiplayer games, and he is essentially coming at the game de novo, without a long history of playing halo. What do you want from the man? If you're really into the multiplayer experience....maybe you should read a review by someone who actually cares about it. If you are a halo fanatic, and not trying to determine whether or not you should buy the game........why are you worked up about the review? Its not as if sales are going to take a dramatic dive.