Zero Punctuation: Scribblenauts

[Flying-Emu]

Oh' that's kind of unfair, I've told you that my opinion is that Yahtzee is right. And I didn't assume that he is always correct, I just said that he is, in fact, a professional at that which means that you could at least respect his opinion. To answer your question, I've never played Scribblenauts due to me not having a DS but I did watch gameplay videos and they looked pretty average. I know I can't form and educated opinion like that but it's not your opinion I dislike but your rather unfair accusations of Yahtzee because he dared to review something you've happened to like.

I apologize, I assumed that you were one of his many followers that take his word as Gospel. We have a lot of those on this site.

I think the issue you're having with Yahtzee is that you're having a hard time to grasp the fact that he criticises games. It's his job, he gets paid for it; it's not idiocy. Yes, it is entertaining to watch him pick apart various mainstream games; why else would you, along with presumably hundreds of thousands of other dedicated viewers, watch his videos? If you watch his videos to complain about how he doesn't mention some of the positive aspects of the game, that would be idiocy.

No, I haven't played the game. I don't doubt that the amount of freedom you have in the game isn't what the game is advertised to be; but neither does Yahtzee. He complained about the controls stating that it would have been better to just move the guy with the analog (left; right; up; down) buttons. I agree with that. I've never been a fan of point and click games (with the exception of Diablo 2) either.

Again, I just wanted to stress that it's probably true that Yahtzee criticises games for a living. If you wanted to read a reviewer talk about all the positive aspects of the game (although I can't really imagine why unless you have your own doubts about the game), then go read one of the reviews which praise the games; they're all over the internet.

And I think the issue that you're having with this is that you seem to completely be misunderstanding everything I say. I don't have a problem with Yahtzee criticizing a game. That's his job, that's what he does, it's in the job title. I'm not an idiot, do not patronize me. The problem that I have with Yahtzee is in his style; it does not lend itself to an accurate representation of the game's merits versus its flaws.

I acknowledge Scribblenaut's flaws, I am not trying to defend it. I'm sick of people simply taking his word as the indefatigable truth, quoting him a verbatim, and assuming that because he is a paid reviewer, he is right. His methods are sloppy, his criticisms are quite often questionable, and he hardly makes a mention of the well done qualities of the games which leads to his rabid followers tearing apart anyone who happens to like the game. A good reviewer balances his discussion of the good and bad of a game to the best of his abilities; that is, unless the game is absolutely horrible. It's a literary technique; the more you talk about the bad, the worse the game will seem. That's why, in this thread, hundreds of people are saying how horrible Scribblenauts is...

Even though they haven't fucking played it.

So I suppose half of my "beef" is with Yahtzee, and the other half with his idiotic fanbase.

 

[McMarbles]

You have to wonder, how did all these people manage to pick out anything before Yahtzee started telling them how to think?

 

[chalkin]

And I think the issue that you're having with this is that you seem to completely be misunderstanding everything I say. I don't have a problem with Yahtzee criticizing a game. That's his job, that's what he does, it's in the job title. I'm not an idiot, do not patronize me. The problem that I have with Yahtzee is in his style; it does not lend itself to an accurate representation of the game's merits versus its flaws.

I acknowledge Scribblenaut's flaws, I am not trying to defend it. I'm sick of people simply taking his word as the indefatigable truth, quoting him a verbatim, and assuming that because he is a paid reviewer, he is right. His methods are sloppy, his criticisms are quite often questionable, and he hardly makes a mention of the well done qualities of the games which leads to his rabid followers tearing apart anyone who happens to like the game. A good reviewer balances his discussion of the good and bad of a game to the best of his abilities; that is, unless the game is absolutely horrible. It's a literary technique; the more you talk about the bad, the worse the game will seem. That's why, in this thread, hundreds of people are saying how horrible Scribblenauts is...

Even though they haven't fucking played it.

So I suppose half of my "beef" is with Yahtzee, and the other half with his idiotic fanbase.

I think your "beef" would be entirely with his idiotic fanbase who takes what he says into 100% concurrence. You mentioned that his methods are sloppy and that his his criticisms are quite questionable, but you never really stated why this is so. It doesn't help to just call someone an idiot of a reviewer and assume that it speaks for all the disagreements that you may have with aspects of the review.

You don't have to like Yahtzee's style of reviewing, but most people do like it because it's a change of pace. I watch Yahtzee's reviews to humour myself and to potentially be enlightened on any negative and seldom positive comments that Yahtzee gives to a game. I don't let that be the deciding factor on whether I purchase a game or not, but pretty much everything that Yahtzee has said in all of his reviews so far have been true. Sure, some are based on his personal gaming preferences, but you're supposed to figure that out for yourself.

I'm not trying to patronise you; patronising someone else would be apparent in your first post. I simply stated that if you didn't like Yahtzee's style (which is quite unique) then perhaps you shouldn't keep watching his videos. If you're someone who watches his videos only to complain about his style, then that would be idiocy.

While we're on the topic of Yahtzee's style of reviewing games, let me rephrase myself back there. As you may have noticed by now, his style of reviewing consists of largely pointing out all the flaws - from major ones to minor ones - of a game (and nothing else, really). If you feel a the need to hear the positive comments regarding aspects of the game as well, then there are tons of other reviews out there for that purpose. Yahtzee's style of reviewing can best be summarised as: point out every flaw of a game within the timespace of circa 6 minutes. If you do have a problem with that, then the best advice that I can give you is to not watch his videos. You might see this as me trying to patronise you again; don't. It makes sense if you think about it. There really is no point telling Yahtzee how to do his job; he's the one getting paid for it.

 

[chalkin]

I think the issue you're having with Yahtzee is that you're having a hard time to grasp the fact that he criticises games. It's his job, he gets paid for it; it's not idiocy. Yes, it is entertaining to watch him pick apart various mainstream games; why else would you, along with presumably hundreds of thousands of other dedicated viewers, watch his videos? If you watch his videos to complain about how he doesn't mention some of the positive aspects of the game, that would be idiocy.

hey, don't discourage discussion like that. do you really believe that there wouldn't be plenty of people that complain. I love complaining, and the complainers have plenty to say because they're not agreeing with the base topic

I mean, you don't want only the "sheepy" people to post do you? because in the end, without the complainers there's no discussion right? just nods of approval, bleh, people can be much more interesting than that


also, just to be on topic

I still don't like the physics at some points, completely random things can happen which leads to the repeated restarting of levels

I'm not discouraging people disagreeing with Yahtzee, but someone declaring a vendetta against him due to his style of reviewing and watched his videos for the sole purpose of picking out straws in his reviews would be unhealthy.

 

[jjofearth]

I swear that i thought of this game, this exact game, when i was six.

 

[giggyman]

I love this game, regardless of what yahtzee says about it.

Summoning a dingo and a baby never gets old

 

[Mythbhavd]

I actually laughed watching this video. Well done.

 

[Vanguard_Ex]

You have to wonder, how did all these people manage to pick out anything before Yahtzee started telling them how to think?

Too true man, too true.

Also, I fucking love Scribblenauts...just throwin' it out there.

 

[Phenakist]

*Regrets not watching this before buying the game*

So yeah... it's another game for the over-hype and not worth the bother bin.

 

[tkioz]

I dunno, just couldn't feel this weeks review, seemed a bit phoned in.

 

[noncon]

I think, more than anything, my main problem with Scribblenauts is that when I tried to be creative it punished me. Put chlorine in the water to kill the piranha? Doesn't work. Use a fishing rod to pull it out so it'll drown in the air? Doesn't work and it'll bite you to death. Try to take out the stack of bottles with a dinosaur, you lose because the chick dies. Use a flood to quench the parched man's thirst, you lose. Retaliate at the snowball kids with a tank, you lose. Then, when I complain because a game built around "creativity" punishes me for it, people bitched that I played the game wrong. Seriously?

 

[Chrissyluky]

I think, more than anything, my main problem with Scribblenauts is that when I tried to be creative it punished me. Put chlorine in the water to kill the piranha? Doesn't work. Use a fishing rod to pull it out so it'll drown in the air? Doesn't work and it'll bite you to death. Try to take out the stack of bottles with a dinosaur, you lose because the chick dies. Use a flood to quench the parched man's thirst, you lose. Retaliate at the snowball kids with a tank, you lose. Then, when I complain because a game built around "creativity" punishes me for it, people bitched that I played the game wrong. Seriously?

ive never played the game but yes it does seem to have alot of issues from what ive been hearing/seeing.

 

[obliterate]

I think, more than anything, my main problem with Scribblenauts is that when I tried to be creative it punished me. Put chlorine in the water to kill the piranha? Doesn't work. Use a fishing rod to pull it out so it'll drown in the air? Doesn't work and it'll bite you to death. Try to take out the stack of bottles with a dinosaur, you lose because the chick dies. Use a flood to quench the parched man's thirst, you lose. Retaliate at the snowball kids with a tank, you lose. Then, when I complain because a game built around "creativity" punishes me for it, people bitched that I played the game wrong. Seriously?

ive never played the game but yes it does seem to have alot of issues from what ive been hearing/seeing.

Well yes it has issues but it's kinda of fun spwaning stuff at the beginning...but after 3 stages it gets kinda dull

 

[boholikeu]

Scribblenauts is one of those polarizing games that you'll either love or hate depending on what type of gamer you are. So far most "play to win" types I know seem to despise the game, which makes sense because the wonky controls coupled with the fact that you can solve anything with a Pegasus, rope or a dragon pretty much kill the game for anyone that likes a good challenge. On the other hand, those that like sandboxes and experimentation (IE those that can spend hours on the start screen mode without getting bored) love the game.

I acknowledge Scribblenaut's flaws, I am not trying to defend it. *snip* That's why, in this thread, hundreds of people are saying how horrible Scribblenauts is...

Even though they haven't fucking played it.

So I suppose half of my "beef" is with Yahtzee, and the other half with his idiotic fanbase.

I pretty much agree with you. Yahtzee's videos are definitely entertaining, but they aren't really that great from a review standpoint. He just has too many biases against certain genres/consoles to be taken seriously on every review.

Which brings me to his "yes men". People that agree with every one of his reviews irritate the hell out of me because they share his gaming prejudices but lack the wit that makes it all bearable.

Yahtzee might have good taste in action titles, but for any other type of game I could ask your average Halo fanboy and get the same answer ("It sucks!!!").

 

[Aardvark Soup]

ha knew it
gamespot have been speaking this game up since e3 about how amazing it is and i knew it would be rubbish.

How do you know it's rubbish? Have you played it? Yahtzee finds 98% of every game in existence rubbish, so you can hardly see him as a reliable source.

In my opinion Scribblenauts is a lot of fun. There might be some control issues and the vocabulary isn't as huge as I initially expected (well, it's huge: but there isn't any difference between an immortality pill or a sleeping pill for example). However, some puzzles can be actually pretty hard to solve and make you feel very satisfied if you think of some far-fetched and creative way to solve it.

Of course Yahtzee's review was very entertaining to watch as usual. Just don't take it to seriously.

 

[ace_of_something]

Maybe it is kind of a boring game but I can only hope that they can apply this kind of technology to more 'adventure' type games so puzzles can have more than ONE solution. This would traverse one of the big hurdles from keeping adventure games from hitting mainstream again as something more than 'retro games'.

 

[srpilha]

so, can you really summon the Large Hadron Collider and make black holes?
(like here: http://xkcd.com/637/)

I'm still not sure the concept is really that neat, but the implementation clearly should've been better.

 

[Lotet]

wagon + fishing pole + fried chicken + basketball player = awesome transport

tell me that isn't funny in the least


*gasp* DON'T REPORT ME!

PLEASE!!

 

[Grand_Marquis]

Hah, this is another good review. I just don't think it's all that fair to bash on Scribblenauts as it's a damn good game. Some good points raised but this game is pretty much only limited to your imagination so it shows Yahtzee isn't all that imaginative...

Well I think you haven't fully watched that section as he clearly states that when given too much freedom of choice people OFTEN go blank and can't think of anything.

I went over the concept of choice paralysis in an earlier post. It's a valid argument *in general*, but, as I explained more thoroughly earlier, I don't think it's fair to levy it specifically against this game. If you want me to explain why, find my previous post. I seriously don't feel like re-explaining it.