Zero Punctuation: Overwatch vs Battleborn

[Frankster]

Look at her poses here. Which one sounds out? You have 3 cocky playful poses then one where she is just standing there almost saying "look at my butt." Its not playful, its not cocky, it just is, there is no character to it.

I'm sorry but for me the one standing out is when she is sitting down and has her goggles removed xD

Were it not for this drama around the butt, I would really not see much of a difference between the first pose and other 2 standing ones. I keep hearing how that pose is out of character for her or something, but I guess I'm not squinting hard enough to see it.
Again, out of those 4, the one that stands out is the one where the speedster's sitting down and very much immobile, at least in all the standing ones, whether she shows her butt or not, she is ready to run off in an instant.

Maybe I'm just a pervert who can't jack off to a slightly differently pose..Oh wait I can, quite easily. Never mind it's all good!

 

[The Enquirer]

It's already dropped by 50% since launch.

Where did you hear that? They just published stats recently (as in today) that they grew to ten million players, which surpasses even the open beta numbers.

 

[Steve the Pocket]

Ugh, you made this mistake in your lets drown out also. The reason blizzard changed the character wasn't the complaint, it was that the poster said it was out of character for that character. Which it was, despite how high her pants ride up on her. It wasnt someone saying "sexist" it was someone saying "I don't think she would pose like that."

Welcome to the New Dumb, where everyone who hadn't already pitched their tent in the political correctness camp feels obligated to join the war against it and make themselves look like assholes in the process. (See also: South Park, which got way more criticism early on than it does nowadays but still felt the need to devote the whole last season to lashing out at their critics.) It's funny, looking back at older Zero Punctuation episodes where he gleefully mocked the unabashed sexualization in video games, called Uncharted "a game for white supremacists" because all the enemies you fight are minorities, censored his own video when people complained that one of the jokes came across as mocking transsexuals... If Gamergate had been looking for ammo to lump him in with their shit list of "SJWs who are ruining gaming", there was plenty to go around.

And the mastermind behind turning the Escapist into Gamergate Central and systematically firing everyone who'd ever said a bad word about them... none other than Alexander Macris, the owner and original founder of the site, who had been just as instrumental in bringing them on board in the first place. You really have to wonder if something got into the water in the past few years.

 

[tzimize]

Still don't get the appeal. Said the same thing about TF2, Evolve and that robot game. They seem fun for like the first match, then get repetitive, then in 6 months everything is a ghost town and you spent $70+ on a game no one plays anymore because everyone got burnt out.

I'm feeling myself agreeing to this.

However, I have some 40 hours played on overwatch already...so I kinda feel like I've gotten my moneys worth anyway.

The thing that is interesting about OW is that its quite rock paper scissor. A part of the game is actually switching heroes when needed, makes the matches interesting. Well, most matches.

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

I'm just curious as to what archetype demographic Bastion is supposed to appeal to. Transformers fans?

He appeals to the noo-

And before anyone gets cheeky, no, I don't believe 'noobs' counts as an archetype demographic.

DAMN! >: ( Foiled again!

Anyway, the whole tracer thing is just so goddamn overblown. It was a single pose that was generally weak that was changed IN BETA.

Is it mildly silly, annoying, or whatever? Yeah. Is it worth blowing a gasket over? No! There are WAY bigger fish to fry (didn't the new fire emblem chop out a big chunk of content and replace it with literally nothing, for example?)

 

[marioandsonic]

I wondered if Yahtzee was going to review either one of these games, so I guess it makes sense he would compare the two in the review.

...Wait, he commented about TracerGate? OH GOD YAHTZEE WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!

Quick, everyone into the bunker before the flame war starts!

 

[Dazzle Novak]

I don't understand people defending an inferior pose because it's the artist's "original intent". During beta, the developers received feedback then proceeded to make a more memorable pose (off a pin-up, funny enough) that in no way hides Tracer's Grand Canyon-like ass crack. What's the principle being fought for here? Things shouldn't be improved because it may have been motivated by complaints you've deemed silly?

Ugh, you made this mistake in your lets drown out also. The reason blizzard changed the character wasn't the complaint, it was that the poster said it was out of character for that character. Which it was, despite how high her pants ride up on her. It wasnt someone saying "sexist" it was someone saying "I don't think she would pose like that."

Welcome to the New Dumb, where everyone who hadn't already pitched their tent in the political correctness camp feels obligated to join the war against it and make themselves look like assholes in the process. (See also: South Park, which got way more criticism early on than it does nowadays but still felt the need to devote the whole last season to lashing out at their critics.) It's funny, looking back at older Zero Punctuation episodes where he gleefully mocked the unabashed sexualization in video games, called Uncharted "a game for white supremacists" because all the enemies you fight are minorities, censored his own video when people complained that one of the jokes came across as mocking transsexuals... If Gamergate had been looking for ammo to lump him in with their shit list of "SJWs who are ruining gaming", there was plenty to go around.

And the mastermind behind turning the Escapist into Gamergate Central and systematically firing everyone who'd ever said a bad word about them... none other than Alexander Macris, the owner and original founder of the site, who had been just as instrumental in bringing them on board in the first place. You really have to wonder if something got into the water in the past few years.

This.

Seriously, for all the self-aggrandizing, self-professed posturing over rationality and thick-skinnedness, the "anti-SJW" wave merely appears to be "Haters gonna hate" and "You do you, boo!" personified writ-large. Albeit, with a deficit of irony, self-awareness, or empathy.

As a writer, my stance has always been that releasing one's work to the public renders it equally susceptible to both praise and criticism. Political correctness aside, how many great works are disparaged for "dumb" reasons beyond offense? The "overrated" card, for example?

 

[Thanatos2k]

It's already dropped by 50% since launch.

Where did you hear that? They just published stats recently (as in today) that they grew to ten million players, which surpasses even the open beta numbers.

Number of players is meaningless. Active players is the real number. Blizzard is famous for reporting the former and not the latter.

 

[Worgen]

Are you so jaded that you cant jack off to a slightly different pose? Cause that's what it sounds like your fighting for.

Calm your justice boner, insulting people left and right isn't exactly a good way to make a point.

Justice boner...




I FUCKEN love that, from now on that is what I'm calling my hard on.

 

[Worgen]

Look at her poses here. Which one sounds out? You have 3 cocky playful poses then one where she is just standing there almost saying "look at my butt." Its not playful, its not cocky, it just is, there is no character to it.

I'm sorry but for me the one standing out is when she is sitting down and has her goggles removed xD

Were it not for this drama around the butt, I would really not see much of a difference between the first pose and other 2 standing ones. I keep hearing how that pose is out of character for her or something, but I guess I'm not squinting hard enough to see it.
Again, out of those 4, the one that stands out is the one where the speedster's sitting down and very much immobile, at least in all the standing ones, whether she shows her butt or not, she is ready to run off in an instant.

Maybe I'm just a pervert who can't jack off to a slightly differently pose..Oh wait I can, quite easily. Never mind it's all good!

I think all the characters have a sit down pose, but it still works since its playful.

 

[Dabbs3352]

So who here started cringing six ways from Sunday when he started to talk about how several characters are pandering to demographics? For fuck's sake, the whole game has the vibe of a slightly darker 80s cartoon yet everyone's hammering it for pandering to some invisible "social justice warriors".

Zarya's face is LITERALLY based on a Blizzard employee, hence the pink hair and being incredibly Russian rather than a shallow attempt at drawing in the tumblr crowd. Mei's not even "chubby" for one, she's wearing a thick winter coat. I just... Yahtzee dropped the ball on this one. I can forgive that because multiplayer isn't his thing.

 

[RobfromtheGulag]

I'm glad Yahtzee constantly mentions his disfavor for multiplayer game so I don't sound like the only solitary loser on the gaming forums. Godforbid you ask a younger gamer if a game like LoL or Call of Duty has a single player mode, you'll get laughed out of the park.

 

[hentropy]

I love how this game pisses off people on both sides of the "I'm very serious about gender politics" spectrum, and you have a gajillion people who are playing it and having fun with it, it's probably made a ton of money already, proving truly how small the group of screaming malcontents truly is.

 

[Transdude1996]

I love how this game pisses off people on both sides of the "I'm very serious about gender politics" spectrum, and you have a gajillion people who are playing it and having fun with it, it's probably made a ton of money already, proving truly how small the group of screaming malcontents truly is.

Funny thing is when Blizzard started issuing takedowns of Overwatch SFM porn, the game immediately jumped in the amount of search results it recieved. So, no matter how you look at it, while people are arguing about how it bakes, Blizzard is making off with all the dough (Or however that saying goes).

 

[Sticky]

How the hell did this topic turn into mindless politicization?
Whatever.

Let's talk instead about Battleborn and WHY it has received so much ire. I think it's no surprise to people that Gearbox is, for a lot of people, on par with EA at this point. Gearbox has, several times now, fleeced both its publishers and the users who supported it.

So when Randy Pitchford himself was trying to clarify what the goal of the game was, and it was this:

Who else do you have to blame for no one being interested but yourself, Randy, you dense tosspot? Yes, this is the person I trust with a long-term content-driven project of which I'm expected to pay retail price for.

But maybe I'm just biased. I have a very strict 'No Gearbox' policy in place when it comes to purchasing. Maybe I'm not the best one to be asking about it.

Except, it's very clear that Battleborn doesn't have a single thing that hooks anyone in. The characters look bad, the gameplay looks stale and not very quick, and the main hook of the game appears to be the virtual treadmill of imaginary items.

So is it really any surprise that Blizzard comes along, the people who nailed the virtual treadmill of imaginary items and continues to make gross amounts of profit off it to this day, and completely stomps Gearbox at its own game?

It's probably a moot point anyway, it's already speculated that Battleborn will be Free to play by the end of the year [https://mmos.com/news/battleborn-rumored-to-go-free-to-play]. So if nothing else that will at least get people looking in its general direction.

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

Borderlands 2 didn't do much for me. It's still on my hard drive but I haven't touched it in nearly a year(I got to Sanctuary, did a few missions and then kinda lost interest).

Ironically, I started playing because I really enjoyed Tales from the Borderlands(even without knowing anything other then the fact Handsome Jack is a bit of a dick).

Weirdly, I put off trying Tales from the Borderlands for ages because I assumed nothing good could come from what the shooter series had shown to me. Oh how wrong I was! And agreed H.Jack is certainly a nasty bastard there. Still one of the best telltale experiences to date, alongside the walking dead.

 

[WhiteTigerShiro]

In summation: He hated both games, but he had less notfun with Overwatch.

Also, people blow the pose change out of proportion. It wasn't about hiding her butt (the replacement pose shows it off just as well), it was about the original pose being too boring for the character's personality, with the new pose fitting her much better.

 

[Erttheking]

I love how this game pisses off people on both sides of the "I'm very serious about gender politics" spectrum, and you have a gajillion people who are playing it and having fun with it, it's probably made a ton of money already, proving truly how small the group of screaming malcontents truly is.

I'm not so sure about both sides. The people who get painted with the SJW brush seem to be having a great time playing the game and shipping all the female characters with each other.

 

[GestaltEsper]

In summation: He hated both games, but he had less notfun with Overwatch.

Also, people blow the pose change out of proportion. It wasn't about hiding her butt (the replacement pose shows it off just as well), it was about the original pose being too boring for the character's personality, with the new pose fitting her much better.

How is it anymore boring than the other two standing/hip swaying poses?

 

[hentropy]

I love how this game pisses off people on both sides of the "I'm very serious about gender politics" spectrum, and you have a gajillion people who are playing it and having fun with it, it's probably made a ton of money already, proving truly how small the group of screaming malcontents truly is.

I'm not so sure about both sides. The people who get painted with the SJW brush seem to be having a great time playing the game and shipping all the female characters with each other.

Well since damn near everyone can be painted with the "SJW" brush, that's hardly surprising.

However, I have seen more than a couple of people on the "other side" (even on this forum, not to mention outside of it) who still take issue with the game's female representation because there's too many skin-tight suits or "sexualized" characters and not enough female versions of Roadhog. Which is a position I can at least respect, but considering all the things the game does right when it comes to representation, you can't let the perfect (at least by some perspective) be the enemy of the good.