Zero Punctuation: Lego City Undercover

Aardvaarkman

I am the one who eats ants!
Jul 14, 2011
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GodzillaGuy92 said:
Because video games are their own art form.
Toymaking is also its own art form. And many video games don't contain any real artistic content

You wouldn't refer to a film or novel as a toy, nor would you even refer to a board game or trading card game as a toy.
Actually, I would refer to many examples of those things as toys. I certainly wouldn't refer to a film like "Shallow Hal" as art. It's nothing more than a cheap diversion. And a pulpy romance novel or Star Wars fan fiction is barely art.

A toy is something you play with; a video game is something you play (i.e. experience).
How is playing with a toy not an experience? And how is a video game not something you play with?
 

Stalydan

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Mar 18, 2011
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The Gentleman said:
DVS BSTrD said:
Other than the Last of Us there really isn't much coming out this year to get excited about it there?
Well, there's Splintercell: Arkham Asylum Blacklist, Shadowrun Returns, and a handful of other games whose names escape me now...

Okay, it's all downhill from now...
Watch Dogs?

Why do I feel as if everyone is forgetting about Watch Dogs except for me?
 

TheSchaef

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Well, he stopped pissing all over the Wii U long enough to talk about the game for a minute or two, so I guess that's something.
 

GodzillaGuy92

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Aardvaarkman said:
GodzillaGuy92 said:
Because video games are their own art form.
Toymaking is also its own art form.
I already said as much in a different post. That's also why I said video games are "their own art form" rather than saying something like "video games are art, unlike toys."

Aardvaarkman said:
And many video games don't contain any real artistic content

[...]

I certainly wouldn't refer to a film like "Shallow Hal" as art. It's nothing more than a cheap diversion. And a pulpy romance novel or Star Wars fan fiction is barely art.
Art is something created for the primary purpose of inducing an emotional reaction. In other words, art is diversion, even though it is fully capable of being something more substantial than that. Shallow Hal, cheap romance novels, or Star Wars fanfiction may not succeed in having an emotional effect on you, but they're still art because there will always be someone out there who is legitimately affected by those works. They aren't somehow "less" artistic because of their nature; their nature merely makes them bad. That's why Roger Ebert was wrong to claim that video games are not art. He made the mistake of thinking that, because he personally had no appreciation for games (regardless of what they have to offer to people of different inclinations), it invalidates their artistic status. I may not like rap music, but plenty of others do, so I'm not about to claim that it doesn't have artistic merit or doesn't qualify as music.

Aardvaarkman said:
How is playing with a toy not an experience? And how is a video game not something you play with?
Again, reading my other posts would come in useful. Playing with a toy is an experience, but you typically don't experience the toy itself, whereas you do experience a video game in the same way that you experience a film or novel. You usually don't play with a game (video- or otherwise), you simply play it, because what a game offers is a directed experience dictated by its rules or mechanics. With a toy, it's up to you to create your own experience with it. That doesn't make them erroneous, it just makes them different.

I'm not trying to say that the comparison between toys and video games is simply invalid; the two are quite similar in what they have to offer the person engaging with them. But to claim that toys are a giant blanket which video games fall under, as opposed to the two being kindred but separate entities, is simply incorrect.
 

The Comfy Chair

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ToastiestZombie said:
The Comfy Chair said:
Warachia said:
BiH-Kira said:
How Yahtzee reviews a game on a Nintendo console:
1/3 of the episode is wasted on bashing Nintendo as a company
1/3 on bashing the Nintendo console
1/6 on bashing Nintendo fans
1/6 of proving that he didn't play the game for longer than 20 minutes
Every fucking time.
And how exactly do you know he didn't get to the end? I can think of several videos off the top of my head in the last few weeks where he brings up the ending/final boss for a specific reason.

I wish Lego would branch out and do more things that work with their lego characters, for example, imagine NeverDead with lego characters, casually popping your arms on and off, throwing your head down narrow passages so you can collect things, and it would be an E rated game.
Because people who are Nintendo fans need to tell themselves Yahtzee has a massive bias. Something he himself has brought up many a time.

The problem is, Nintendo fans, is that Nintendo's consoles have done very little for core gaming in many years. That's why he, and most 'core' gamers, don't give much of a rats ass about Nintendo consoles. Handheld? sure, the DS is definitely best overall handheld (woo, now i'm going to be attacked by Sony fanboys too!). Consoles? lol, nope.
His retort to that was "B... but I liked Paper Mario!". Liking one game from a franchise doesn't mean you don't have a bias over a whole company. LCU wasn't even developed by Nintendo, yet he feels like it's perfectly fine to spend a lot of time in his video bashing Nintendo and Nintendo fans. How would you like it if for every PC exclusive he reviewed he spent two minutes talking about how he thinks all PC owners are neckbeard losers? This whole site has an anti-Nintendo bias, for example just today the news of a brand new Zelda game wasn't posted even though it was pretty big news, when the news of an internet retailer supposedly leaking GT6 gets posted. You wouldn't see other Lego games Yahtzee has reviewed called "last resorts" and much worse because they're not on Nintendo consoles.
You may need to look at some of his older PC gaming videos from around the times PC games were on the decline :p Obviously nowadays he doesn't do it because, well, PC is basically the last great hope for gaming in the form of the indie scene, and even yahtzee himself (a self procliamed 'console man' in the past) has recently declared the love for what PC special in terms of the more open nature of it.

So, you see, i don't think he or anyone here honestly has a bias against Nintendo, they just don't really care about what Nintendo are doing. Nintendo haven't pushed boundaries in core gaming in a long time. When they do something like bioshock: infinite or the walking dead with their own games, providing something genuinely trying to do something not seen before with the medium, then you can complain about 'bias'.

If they release a good game, people say it's good. If they release the same game over and over again, people get bored. The reason why people stopped raving about nintendo en masse a few years ago is because there's nothing to rave about any more. They've done nothing to further the core gaming medium. Not with hardware, not with games.

Also, Nintendo don't need defending, they're a big company, who can take care of themselves, right until the point they go bankrupt. Going around complaining about people having a bias against a company which has done nothing for core gaming in ages on a core gaming site is like complaining about people into rock music not appreciating dubstep. There may be some crossover, but they're different interests. Nintendo isn't a 'core' gaming company any more for the most part, and neither are their consoles.

Sad, but, true. Now, unleash all the vitriol you want, i really, honestly, don't care.
 

The Comfy Chair

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head desk tricycle said:
The Comfy Chair said:
Because people who are Nintendo fans need to tell themselves Yahtzee has a massive bias. Something he himself has brought up many a time.

The problem is, Nintendo fans, is that Nintendo's consoles have done very little for core gaming in many years. That's why he, and most 'core' gamers, don't give much of a rats ass about Nintendo consoles. Handheld? sure, the DS is definitely best overall handheld (woo, now i'm going to be attacked by Sony fanboys too!). Consoles? lol, nope.
You're saying Yahtzee doesn't have a bias, and that he only dislikes Nintendo consoles because they've done very little for core gaming, but that's actually the definition of a bias. It just means that he presents his own view at the expense of others.
A bias would be not liking a game because of the platform IF the platform is on par with the others. That's not been the case. The Wii U wouldn't have made LCU any better overall, but being able to play it without the tea tray running out of juice would have made it a bit less frustrating i'd wager. Can you use the 'normal' control pad with LCU without the tea tray?
 

ToastiestZombie

Don't worry. Be happy!
Mar 21, 2011
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The Comfy Chair said:
You may need to look at some of his older PC gaming videos from around the times PC games were on the decline :p Obviously nowadays he doesn't do it because, well, PC is basically the last great hope for gaming in the form of the indie scene, and even yahtzee himself (a self procliamed 'console man' in the past) has recently declared the love for what PC special in terms of the more open nature of it.
That isn't proof that Yahtzee doesn't have an Anti-Nintendo bias, it's pretty much just proof Yahtzee loves indie games.

So, you see, i don't think he or anyone here honestly has a bias against Nintendo, they just don't really care about what Nintendo are doing. Nintendo haven't pushed boundaries in core gaming in a long time. When they do something like bioshock: infinite or the walking dead with their own games, providing something genuinely trying to do something not seen before with the medium, then you can complain about 'bias'.
No sorry, TWD and Bioshock Infinite aren't genuinely trying to do something we've not seen before. I loved TWD and I liked Infinite, but they both have generic gameplay or barely any gameplay at all (. The only new thing they tried is making a good story, and even that isn't something that hasn't been seen before. And anyway, Nintendo HAVE done stuff we haven't seen before, but because they use Mario and aren't story-driven they're ignored. What other 3D platforming games have been set in space with gravity mechanics before SMG, what other Just look at their consoles, no matter what you think about them you can't deny that the ideas for DS, Wii, 3DS and Wii U weren't ever really thought of before they came out. Also, saying Nintendo needs to make a game like Infinite or TWD is like telling Pixar to make a live-action film, Nintendo don't make adult, story-driven games, and when they do they're childish and funny. We've come to an age where people don't want new gameplay ideas or fun new things (those are gimmicks!), they want serious adult drama instead, even if the gameplay is mediocre.

And I do think people here have a Nintendo bias, and Yahtzee definitely does. If he didn't he wouldn't have spent half of this review bashing the Wii U instead of, you know, bashing the game. Even Super Mario Galaxy, one of Nintendo's actual newest ideas and best games last-gen was hated by him because it had Mario and he jumped about. Yahtzee, to me, just seems like the kind of gamer who just doesn't like Nintendo because he feels their games are too childish for him, with the only Nintendo games he liked being the ones with story and RPG elements. Not saying a bias is bad, but you can't deny that Yahtzee has a massive Nintendo hate bias.
 

ToastiestZombie

Don't worry. Be happy!
Mar 21, 2011
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The Comfy Chair said:
head desk tricycle said:
The Comfy Chair said:
Because people who are Nintendo fans need to tell themselves Yahtzee has a massive bias. Something he himself has brought up many a time.

The problem is, Nintendo fans, is that Nintendo's consoles have done very little for core gaming in many years. That's why he, and most 'core' gamers, don't give much of a rats ass about Nintendo consoles. Handheld? sure, the DS is definitely best overall handheld (woo, now i'm going to be attacked by Sony fanboys too!). Consoles? lol, nope.
You're saying Yahtzee doesn't have a bias, and that he only dislikes Nintendo consoles because they've done very little for core gaming, but that's actually the definition of a bias. It just means that he presents his own view at the expense of others.
A bias would be not liking a game because of the platform IF the platform is on par with the others. That's not been the case. The Wii U wouldn't have made LCU any better overall, but being able to play it without the tea tray running out of juice would have made it a bit less frustrating i'd wager. Can you use the 'normal' control pad with LCU without the tea tray?
"The tea tray"
Jesus christ it's not that big, and it's actually comfy to hold. Have you ever actually held one, or are you just assuming things because of things you've seen on the internet.
 

Tireseas_v1legacy

Plop plop plop
Sep 28, 2009
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Stalydan said:
The Gentleman said:
DVS BSTrD said:
Other than the Last of Us there really isn't much coming out this year to get excited about it there?
Well, there's Splintercell: Arkham Asylum Blacklist, Shadowrun Returns, and a handful of other games whose names escape me now...

Okay, it's all downhill from now...
Watch Dogs?

Why do I feel as if everyone is forgetting about Watch Dogs except for me?
I remember it now. It is being released this year, right?
 

Eri

The Light of Dawn
Feb 21, 2009
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VinLAURiA said:
... Yeah, I don't even care anymore. Yahtzee played Javert to the Wii for five years and I doubt Wii U will change his mind. I could do without him being even more mean-spirited than his usual self whenever Nintendo systems come up, but hey: they're not his thing. He doesn't like "gimmicks," he doesn't like kiddy stuff, and if he had his way he'd even forgo his controller for a good neural input device. Whatever, different strains. And I don't feel like having all the little Yahtzites swarm and flame me whenever I disagree with his tastes anymore (though at least the Luigi's Mansion reference in this review means he possibly couldn't find enough to complain about for a full review of its own, so that's nice.)

Just one thing, Croshaw, since you brought it up: video games are toys. Wii U is a toy, 360's a toy, PS3's a toy. PS4 is an upcoming toy. Wii was a toy. 3DS and Vita are toys. People spend hundreds on gaming PCs so the PCs can run the digital toys they download onto them through the toy-delivery service Steam. The sooner you finally accept that this is an industry of toys, the better off you'll be. The next great medium? Yes. But it's for your own benefit that you realize where underneath the artistry and emotion you champion, you're ultimately still playing with toys. And there's nothing wrong with playing with toys, so stop trying to fight it.
So then movies are toys and books are as well? And music.
 

xdiesp

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Oct 21, 2007
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All players want is ever more powerful graphics machines to shoot virtual terrorists with.
 

duchaked

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it's weird to think about how old the Matrix really is...still holds up so well lol

speaking of which, I wonder how my old LEGOs are holding up...I seem to recall meaning to bring them out last summer but was too busy to haha
 

xdiesp

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Oct 21, 2007
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I might be some snotty elitist saying this, but vydeagems critics like Yahtzee \ Tycho \ AVGN cuss a little too much to be taken seriously. At least outside of our treehouse for cool kids.
 

miquelfire

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Dec 24, 2008
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You know, I don't know when they started as Lego Pirates of the Caribbean was the last one I bought but I played a recent demo before the Wii U came out, but Lego games had talking characters for a while now it seems.

Kinda makes me glad I haven't bought the licensed Lego games for a while.
 

1rock

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Apr 10, 2013
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Lego was more fun when you could build stuff with it in real life... Lego games was never that entertaining. That said when I saw the new Wii-U I thought.... ?Yes when there finally is a zombie apocalypse I can capture and enslave a few zombies to walk on treadmills to power it up... I will never have to live in a game deprived apocalyptic world again.?

But yes the Wii-U is like that nice to have but basically useless pieces of technology. The design itself is a disaster... However why I will own one and actually buy the new Lego title is not because it is good. No... No updates... No waiting for 40Gb of Game updates on a 25kb connection. You can actually play a game when you want to actually play it. No waiting for hours on end... I don't know if it is going to stay that way... Chances are slim.

BUT!!! This to me is important enough that I would go out and buy one... How sad is that :_(
 

Aardvaarkman

I am the one who eats ants!
Jul 14, 2011
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GodzillaGuy92 said:
Art is something created for the primary purpose of inducing an emotional reaction.
That's one definition. There are many others.

For example, the goal of the Socialist Realist school of art is for further the causes of Socialism or Communism. Other schools of art would say that it is art's job to challenge and disrupt social and cultural conventions. Yet other schools would say that the purpose of art is to create beauty, while others would say it is to challenge the notion of beauty. Still others would say that art serves no purpose.

Shallow Hal, cheap romance novels, or Star Wars fanfiction may not succeed in having an emotional effect on you, but they're still art because there will always be someone out there who is legitimately affected by those works.
Again, under some definitions. Some would say a mere emotional response isn't sufficient to make something art. That definition, in its simplest interpretation would mean that punching someone in the face is art.

That's why Roger Ebert was wrong to claim that video games are not art.
I think it's equally incorrect to claim that all video games are art. Craft, yes, but not necessarily art.