Zero Punctuation: Super Smash Bros. Brawl

[Titanium Dragon]

This review was terrible, but not because of your opinion of the game. As you yourself pointed out, there was no real point in your reviewing the game as we all already know whether or not we want to purchase it.

No, the real crime here was the lack of funny. I watch Zero Punctuation because it is hilarious, and while I may not always agree with you on everything in general I don't really care because of the high entertainment value. This week you fell down.

Sure, making fun of people who enjoy playing fighting games a lot and becoming good at them is swell and all, but there really isn't enough to make fun of. A lot of this week was simply you insulting the people who asked you to review the game and, while perhaps somewhat justified, it lead to a very uninteresting, boring video. Swearing and dropping giant letters on people is funny and all, but it isn't THAT funny, and that really was all this video had going for it.

You had some great gags - the repetitiveness meaning you should be able to unlock Bill Murray, and the recurring gag where you killed your multiplayer friends and ate their flesh (though it got a bit old after a while, around the time of THAT guy gag I suppose). And while repitition can be good, in this case, like in SSBB's case, it just didn't pay off and lead to an overall lamer experience. And the Gametraders Rubina thing at the beginning just got obnoxious.

I think you spent too much time rawring about how angry you were at having to review the game, and not enough time actually reviewing/insulting the game and coming up with funny gags. So in the future, don't take requests which you're going to resent if it is going to lead to a video as poor as this week's.

 

[Gutterpunk]

WTF does Yaztee need to go to whatever game trader to get any game? (I forgot the name even if I've been told it in a most demonic tone of voice)

Damn, I would've sent him my copy to keep if he asked. I bought it the same day as No More Heroes, and guess which of the two I played (and wouldn't send to Australia for free)?

 

[the_importer]

I've been following a few of these discussions and it has struck me that whenever someone disagrees with Yatzee's review, some people tend to belittle him as not understanding the game, shouldn't review games in genres he doesn't like or is just plain wrong.

If Roger Ebert were to tell the world that he doesn't like comedies and then reviewed a comedy and giving that last one a bad score, how do you think people would react? Hollywood would be all over him.

You'll never be called for jury duty if you have a known connection (especially a grudge) with the defendant >_>

I hate FPS, hate them with a passion. I don't see how people can find amusement out of shooting each other or CPU AIs during an entire game. Weapon upgrades or not, it's pretty repetitive and it's technically a really old game that predates video games themselves, people use to call it "Hit the Cans on the Fence". So if I were to review The Orange Box after stating that I hate FPS, what would Yatzee and the rest of you say to me?

 

[LackingSaint]

Although I can't completely support Yahtzee in all of the things he said, it did takes some bollocks to risk losing a portion his fanbase by making a non-positive review, and I think, it mostly worked out for him.

 

[milocade]

Soo Much Anger

and probably well deserved.

I like Nintendo but they do need to start exploring new lines. Hopefully they will watch your review and catch the long waited hint to MAKE SOMETHING ELSE!!!

 

[reflex_sight]

Wow, 234 comments on the day of posting the vid. Yahtzee's really gained fame (and what sounds like another new mic) since the early reviews.
Oh and I reckon it'd be a good idea to delay the next video for a GTA IV review.

 

[Gutterpunk]

This review was terrible, but not because of your opinion of the game. As you yourself pointed out, there was no real point in your reviewing the game as we all already know whether or not we want to purchase it.

No, the real crime here was the lack of funny. I watch Zero Punctuation because it is hilarious, and while I may not always agree with you on everything in general I don't really care because of the high entertainment value. This week you fell down.

Sure, making fun of people who enjoy playing fighting games a lot and becoming good at them is swell and all, but there really isn't enough to make fun of. A lot of this week was simply you insulting the people who asked you to review the game and, while perhaps somewhat justified, it lead to a very uninteresting, boring video. Swearing and dropping giant letters on people is funny and all, but it isn't THAT funny, and that really was all this video had going for it.

You had some great gags - the repetitiveness meaning you should be able to unlock Bill Murray, and the recurring gag where you killed your multiplayer friends and ate their flesh (though it got a bit old after a while, around the time of THAT guy gag I suppose). And while repitition can be good, in this case, like in SSBB's case, it just didn't pay off and lead to an overall lamer experience. And the Gametraders Rubina thing at the beginning just got obnoxious.

I think you spent too much time rawring about how angry you were at having to review the game, and not enough time actually reviewing/insulting the game and coming up with funny gags. So in the future, don't take requests which you're going to resent if it is going to lead to a video as poor as this week's.

His review was spot on and funny IMHO. Maybe it wasn't for you this time, but I'm not sure who made you think that your opinion mattered, especially seeing as the part where he complain about having to review the game is a direct jab at people trying to tell him how to do his stuff.

 

[LackingSaint]

Oh and I reckon it'd be a good idea to delay the next video for a GTA IV review.

The release game of one game never stopped Yahtzee from reviewing other games on time before.

 

[FuckYouDad]

That was awesome, maybe there's hope for you yet. But you realize that whenever you say you expect your fanbase to send you hate emails for something, they all send annoying love emails instead. So that sentence at the end just fulfilled itself. There's a word for that, but I can't remember. On another note, I don't have any idea why people think you're not a reviewer. When was the definition of a review changed? On ANOTHER note, I have no idea why I'm talking like you'll ever read this. If you haven't given up on the comments yet, you're officially crazy.

The people who doesn't think he is a "real" reviewer are the people who just think it's funny when someone talks really fast and is really angry but throws a huge hissy fit whenever THEIR favorite game is pissed on and talks about how he is just some cynical jerk who only plays games for two hours and would never understand the pure depth of Solitare.

Oh, and you are talking about selffullfilling prophecy.

 

[Titanium Dragon]

Incidentally, all of you praising Yahtzee for "sticking it to this game" are, in fact, as bad or worse than the people who were yelling for Yahtzee to review the thing in the first place. Why? Because you guys are exactly the same as those people, except you want him to heap vitrolic hatred on the game. You want someone who agrees with you and are praising him for knocking on the game, because you want to say "Ha ha someone said SSBB sucks", probably to win some argument with your friends. Grow up.

If that's the sort of person you are then you are that guy; not that guy who is better at games, but that guy who everyone realizes over time somehow became their friend but is a jerk and they really don't want to hang out with him because he is mean, obnoxious, and acts like a twelve year old. Seriously. Nice as it is to feel validated, if your opinions need external validation then they are pretty worthless. Don't be afraid to hold your own opinions, but if you must back them up with what some random online reviewer said then you really do need to get a life.

You should not particularly care that he "stuck it to the game"; as far as I and many other viewers are concerned, the purpose of Zero Punctuation is not so much to review games as to give us five minutes of pure unadulterated joy and laughter per week in the context of a game review. We all love to see Yahtzee insult games; he's quite good at it. But when he starts insulting people he just falls down because it just isn't quite as funny and there really isn't all that much new ground to cover - everyone has said pretty much everything insulting there is to say about gamers, and it really just isn't all that funny anymore because we've seen it done twenty thousand times already.

His review was spot on and funny IMHO. Maybe it wasn't for you this time, but I'm not sure who made you think that your opinion mattered, especially seeing as the part where he complain about having to review the game is a direct jab at people trying to tell him how to do his stuff.

If something requires you to agree with the person for it to be funny, then it isn't actually funny at all.

But more to the point, I'm not telling him what to do but rather stating my opinion - that this week's work was of inferior quality. If you don't ever get useful feedback, if you try something different (which this week seemed like) and don't really know whether or not people liked it, then what's the point of having feedback at all? A hall of mirrors is hardly helpful, and my goal was to let him know that at least one of his viewers felt let down.

As much as I'm sure everyone's favorite English-born Australian would like to hit it out of the park every time (and as much as we'd like for him to do so), I felt he didn't this week and thought this was the appropriate venue in which to put forward that opinion.

 

[Metalix Knightmare]

You know, the reason we're not getting Mother 3 is because fans of Mother 2 are either really late or all talk. Mother 2 sold really badly back in the day, like Nintendo was afraid of, even with tons of marketing and even including the official Player's Guide for free.

...
....
.....
ALRIGHT! I ADMIT IT! I was one of the few people in America that actually bought Earthbound when it was released! BUT I SOLD IT AT A GARAGE SALE! Oh lord, I feel so ashamed...

 

[LackingSaint]

Heh, i've only been looking at this topic for a few minutes, but the chaotic battles ensuing here are just off the charts, sometinhg you'd expect when one largely popular thing (ZP) goes against an even larger thing (SSBB). At the end of the day, Yahtzee makes these to entertain, and to be honest, would you really have liked the review better if he talked about hey fun and cute SSBB was? Even though this post won't change a tihng, i'm just saying that we shouldn't argue for the sake of arguing.

And to anyone who says 'there was no point to this review because you either like the game or you dont', please don't argue that. That's the point of a review.

 

[miller483]

I love SSBB, and I LOVE this review! Nice work Yahtzee! I'm "that guy" amongst my circle of friends when it comes to Brawl and almost every other video game lol.

It's funny that the review made fun of fanboys, because it also brought the fact that you have to be a Ninty fan (not fanBOY, necessarily) to enjoy Brawl to it's fullest, into the light.

LMAO at all of the pissed off fanboys though.


EDIT:And yes, I created an account just to say that. ^__^

 

[Gutterpunk]

You should not particularly care that he "stuck it to the game"; as far as I and many other viewers are concerned, the purpose of Zero Punctuation is not so much to review games as to give us five minutes of pure unadulterated joy and laughter per week in the context of a game review. We all love to see Yahtzee insult games; he's quite good at it. But when he starts insulting people he just falls down because it just isn't quite as funny and there really isn't all that much new ground to cover - everyone has said pretty much everything insulting there is to say about gamers, and it really just isn't all that funny anymore because we've seen it done twenty thousand times already.

You completely missed the purpose of Zero Punctuation. See, Yatzee fancy himself a game designer, and he review games from that point of view, unlike more "serious" review sites who review it from the point of view of getting web pages hit to drive the ad money.

Yatzee doesn't care about making his reviews look good, because unlike other reviewer, he had to go to Gametrader Robina to get his copy, he didn't get it as an advance secret special preview version shipped from Nintendo with a shitload of promo swag to go with it. These days every game blogger and their uncles get free copy of future games if they make good reviews of a manufacturer's past game.

Yatzee doesn't insult games, he insults mediocrity and rehashing of old ideas. If you ever look at any pics of his, you'll see that he look just like the gamers he makes fun of.

 

[rebochan]

You know, for all he claims to hate JRPGs, it's strange to see Yahtzee not only knows about Mother 3 but is expressing rage at Nintendo for holding it back in Japan. Either he likes JRPGs more than he's letting on, or he's just on the bandwagon that CULT GAME = GOOD and POPULAR GAME = SHIT. Because Yahtzee, Mother? Has dialogue. You *hate* dialogue.

Seriously, ever since Nintendo is doing well again, all the nerd rage has drained from Sony and over to Nintendo. It's painfully obvious why - nobody in gaming wants to admit they like anything popular anymore. I hate to accuse Yahtzee of this, but the fact that he always takes time out to rag on Nintendo as a company in his Wii-related reviews are making me feel that way.

 

[Daemongo]

It had it's funny moments, although I'd have to say I personally loved the game. The whole thing seemed more like a rant with jokes tossed in here or there, but it definately lacked something his other reviews had. Most games he reviews you get the sense that even if he didn't like the game, he still loved to make fun of it in a review, but... with this he just seemed pissed.
Pissed that everyone asked him to do it.
Pissed he eventually gave in and played it.
Pissed that he had to play a game he didn't really like.
And pissed that he had to write a review for it afterwords to shut up the previously mentioned "everyone".

If anything, this was just proof that he probably shouldn't do reviews based on endless nagging if he doesn't want to do it.

 

[Titanium Dragon]

You completely missed the purpose of Zero Punctuation. See, Yatzee fancy himself a game designer, and he review games from that point of view, unlike more "serious" review sites who review it from the point of view of getting web pages hit to drive the ad money.

No I didn't. I, too, fancy myself a game designer, and yes, he does from time to time actually address real design concerns, and he can (and does!) shine at that. But that isn't really why I or most people watch these videos.

Some of the things he pointed out about the game are true - a party game should not require you to spend hours unlocking characters like Sonic and Snake (or really, anyone) because that is antitheitical to the purpose of a party game. The camera zoom is another worthy issue to address.

However, if you're going to address a game from a design standpoint you also have to look for what it hit, and he often misses things which games DO hit. I think a large part of the popularity of SSB and Halo is their highly intuitive interfaces; you can pick up a controller and within 10 minutes you know what you do to do what, with no instruction manual necessary. In fact, I have always seen those as the greatest strengths of those series and why they are so popular, and I think on a deep level that IS why they're more popular than the standard fighting games/FPS games.

Moreover, SSBB (and its predecessors) have this nice property where it is difficult to become "that guy" accidentally; simply playing the single player will make you a bit better, but not so much better that you constantly crush your friends who only play it on weekends. What makes you better at SSB games is "gainful practice", which mostly constists of either A) playing against people better than you and really a lot of B) experimenting with what works and doesn't, then learning how to do what does work perfectly. It takes actual effort to become that guy, and that is another strength of the game - if playing it for ten hours in solo mode to unlock Sonic is necessary, then at least once you unlock Sonic you and your friends should still be able to play on relatively equal footing, and this game succeeds at that.

Saying such games are random button mashers is simply wrong - they aren't. But SSB is meant to be a party game, which means that among random people what you do should be fairly obvious, intuitive, and shouldn't bother everyone else, and no obvious strategy should clearly overshadow all others at the casual level that 99% of people who play SSB play it at and just because you've happened to play it twice as much as the next guy shouldn't make it so that you can't play it with them.

 

[FuckYouDad]

[/quote]That would be because he is. Every one of his points can be pointed out as just plain wrong, and we have no idea how he got them.[/quote]

Wait what? He got this game, brought over a few buddies to try it, was not impressed and this means he is wrong? I read your points, but they are all pretty subjective, except for number 3, which is pretty much the point of "having to prepare the game before". I'm not saying you're not entitled to your opinion, but do you have to talk about it like some objective truth he is stupid for not understanding?

 

[TheECP]

Hehe, as funny as this review was and as true as it is, it's still one of the best party games in existence. It's pretty fun.

Too bad I don't own a wii.

 

[GyroCaptain]

The shitstorm is still going on, I see. Personally, I like Brawl, but claiming it's the be-all and end-all of games or saying that it's revolutionary enough to justify moving consoles on a massive scale seems counterproductive. It's great, but aside from some balancing, character lists, reskinning, rebalance... it's still just a prettier SSBM. Given the choice between buying a Wii, classic controller, and SSBB or hunting around for a gamecube and SSBM, I'd have to go for the cheap bastard option because not enough has changed and mooching off friends' copies is enough to keep from mandating your own. I disagreed with quite a few of Yahtzee's remarks, but fighting games ARE fiddly, SSBB IS afflicted somewhat with "that guy"ism, the screen IS too busy, and the characters ARE small. These are all valid points, even if these things don't diminish the fun much for most.