Zero Punctuation: Hob and Hat in Time
- Thread starter Yahtzee Croshaw
- Start date
Like I said, angst. Oh the horrors of war! Oh the terrors of innocent bystanders! Oh the tragedy of the human condition! Oh all life is sacred!Darth Rosenberg said:
Next week I'll be playing GTA V online running over innocents I can with a bulldozer, then its off to PUPG to snipe people, then off to Shadow of War to enslave entire tribes of Orcs and use them as battle fodder in my personal vendetta!
But I still feel bad about those people killed in that one game that one time
Y'mean social commentary you probably don't agree with?Silentpony said:
I refused to buy or play GTAV because of its misogyny/spitefulness/commodified violence, I don't play PUBG (good for Eurogamer streams, though), and I despise Shadow Of War for glorifying the kind of ego puffing masculinist violence that absolutely contradicts everything Tolkien seemed to care about or stand for. Sooo, yeah.
Aside from all that: must a unique work of art in a given medium change society or the world to be lauded and discussed? Isn't the purpose of art to provoke questions? Questions pop-culture/society isn't asking itself nearly often enough about?
Honestly Spec Ops never pushed any envelopes. It had nothing unique or interesting to say. Everything is said about horror and war and oh my has been done a dozen times over.Darth Rosenberg said:
I mean here's the entirety of Spec Ops summed up in with Conker at the end of Its War!
And that game at least had a drunk scarecrow in it!
Functionally Spec Ops is a fine game, but some classic? Some genre defying majesty that'll make the Top 10s in 20 years? Hardly. Its kinda' relevant now because Call of Duties are still being made, in the same way Monkey's Island was relevant when point/clicks were a thing.
Once the CoD trend gets eaten by a bear Spec Ops will be forgotten. It was a cute little distraction while it lasted, sure, but it's not the ground-breaking epic finger-to-the-eye of modern 'toxic masculinity gunho warfare CHARGE!' society you're making it out to be. Its a standard war-game with a few extra scenes of slow violins and corpses.
I understand why you'd say all this but there's more to Spec Ops than just the horrors of war. It approaches head on the idea of America being the world police. Which I think is still pretty darn relevant considering we're STILL sitting in the Middle East, wasting a ton of money on something that will probably never get solved with more violence. Apparently, we didn't learn this lesson back in Vietnam so now we get to learn it again.Silentpony said:
What's sad is the former is most likely to happen, but the latter is least likely. All the gun nuts and paranoid shitheads are on his side, so there's no way he's getting assassinated.Darth_Payn said:
On topic, I've just gone and wishlisted Hatty Time, so thanks for that Yahtzee!
To each her own I guess. I enjoyed what the game did with its narrative COD or no COD. Music was good to. Too bad there will never be an official release of the game's original music.Silentpony said:
Granted, but did Spec Ops really do more, as in something unique and never done before, about the futility of mid east wars any better than say...Modern Warfare I think 3, with the nuke explosion killing off the main character half way through? I played both and I remember that crawling scene way more than any white phosphorus scenes in Spec Ops.Arnoxthe1 said:
I guess because the idea of killing innocents is played out, even for laughs in like Stubbs the Zombie, but rarely does war actually kill the player's character half way through, forcing more characters on us.
Like if Spec Ops ended with Hero What's his Face dying, and then the next scene is more Spec Ops troops being sent in to the next combat zone by a new not-ghost Colonel, 100% not learning any lessons, that'd mean something. About futility, and hopelessness and inevitability of war, etc...
Something bad happening once is bad. Over and over and then it means something.
The fanboy attitude for criticism to Yahtzee's clever humor, being weighed down by the low hanging fruit is ridiculous. It kinda reminds me of the Mailbag Showdown. Maybe it's still funny in remote parts of the world, but as an American, it's everywhere and worn out. The rich dipshits learned that at the Emmy's and I just don't want Yahtzee to flop like they did.
See, that's the thing, a CoD critique (or even 'war is hell') is a reductive, surface level reading. If that's all it was, then yes, it wouldn't be worth much more than a cursory critique, but actually give it some real thought - and a few playthroughs - and read up on the anecdotes and themes that inspired its curious evolution, and it's much more.Silentpony said:
Methinks the critics and history will see it differently (pretty sure Yahtzee referenced it alongside Dark Souls, no less, just last week). Though I suppose it'll be regarded historically by those who embrace gaming as art and social commentary, of course, as there are folks who can't seem to understand that wacky notion.
I'll PM the rest, as this is decidedly off-topic.
I was briefly interested in Hob when I what I read makes it sound like a Team ICO type game but I wanted to see some of the reviews before deciding.
Has anyone played it and if so, does it scratch that same kind of Itch?
Hatty time looks cute but I haven't decided if I want to grab it yet. I might wishlist it and grab it on sale or something.
Has anyone played it and if so, does it scratch that same kind of Itch?
Hatty time looks cute but I haven't decided if I want to grab it yet. I might wishlist it and grab it on sale or something.
Bloody hell, Yahtz, bob a job was ended in 1992. Are you having a competition with yourself to see how obscure of a joke you can make in the credits?
