Zero Punctuation: Super Smash Bros. Brawl

[DewMan001]

I hate the end song. So many terrible memories.

 

[Joined to vote Valve]

Well guys, every one of you dropped the ball here. I am sure (ish) that Yahtzee reads through the comments... but there is no chance in hell he will this time. Valid points have been made, fair criticisms, etc., but they will go unnoticed because there is no way he will wade through all this. Good job, guys.

 

[Emperor_Z]

The control scheme? What controls? You could change out the big rubber condom on your remote and bounce the thing on the ground and affect roughly the same response from your characters.

This quote has inspired me to make a Youtube video of just Wario's rolling on the ground laughing victory pose so I'll have a proper response to comments as stupid as that one.

Go right ahead. I'm glad to inspire the younger generation. Especially when I'm right. Hyperbole aside, I could play this game with my feet and feel like I had just about as much control of my character as I do with my hands. The problem with putting eight billion different characters in a game and mapping every single thing they do to basically two buttons is that what those characters actually do when you push the buttons is kind of a guessing game. Some of the characters handle so differently from some of the others that I might as well hold the thing upside down. Most importantly, I don't feel like I'm in control of the game even when I'm doing it right, which is an error in both the control scheme and the presentation. It's workable, in that it gets the job done of letting you do......well, something on the screen, and if you keep at it long enough you can kind of guess what sorts of things are going to happen (sometimes), but guessing shouldn't be a part of the equation.

So, it works, but it's much less than anything I feel comfortable with. Kind of my point. Also relevant - if I shoved the controls down my pants and danced like Napoleon Dynamite, I'd probably have about a thirty percent chance of beating a randomly selected opponent using them "the right way" (and who's to say my way is wrong when it FEELS so right?). A thirty percent chance of success when operating the controls blind and in the grips of passion does not imply to me a terrific correlation between my intentions and the events on the screen. It kind of makes me think that any similarity between my vision of events and the way things actually play out is little more than coincidental at best. That's not good controls.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=9aPENiXp_Gw
Skip to 3:08

If you honestly think you could beat me, a fairly mediocre player, even once out of 100 tries, just by smashing buttons at random, then you are truly delusional.

Either you're the worst player in existance, or you're just making crap up. There is no guesswork to what move you'll perform in Smash Bros. I'm leaning toward the latter, judging by the way you made up a random statistic and continued to use it for an entire paragraph.

 

[Sylocat]

Also relevant - if I shoved the controls down my pants and danced like Napoleon Dynamite, I'd probably have about a thirty percent chance of beating a randomly selected opponent using them "the right way" (and who's to say my way is wrong when it FEELS so right?).

I DEFINITELY want a Youtube video of that.

 

[Bryy]

b) Stopped with the quickness from beginning to end.

Comic timing is a negative? Really?

 

[Abbadiel]

Hmm... As other people stated before, this is an usual fenomenom in the escapist. Altough, it obviously became more pronounced, because of 2 facts:

a) Yahtzee is becoming popular (which is apparently, tiring him a lot)
b) Yahtzee is reviewing games with a wider Fanbase

Now, a*b = Big clusterfuck, where there are fanboys defending the game just bashed and ZP-fanboys that protect the review no matter what.
Now, I've noticed a general thought pattern in here. Every people that posts here fails to get inside their heads the fact that Yahtzee's oppinion (and, actually, anyone else's oppinion) is just a reflection of the writer's likes.

So let me state this:

- YAHTZEE IS NOT A GOD

Everyone acts like his words are made with gold and must be followed strictly. Other people think it's unfair and try to fight it.

Which is pointless, because of the fact that everyone has a different opinion.
Oh and by the way, I always liked original Smash Bros. and I was actually considering buying a Wii just to play it. Do you think I would care if he considered the game chaotic fights retarded? That's why I liked Smash Bros. in the first place!

Zero Punctuation is dead. Yahtzee has gone and killed his master work. He has:
a) Thrown in a bunch of rubbish screen and vocal editing and
b) Stopped with the quickness from beginning to end.
Well, now I've only got my old friend Homestar Runner to entertain me. Sorry Yahtzee, you hopeless f***wit, but you've destroyed it. You once had something brilliant and now you gone and destroyed it. You might as well quit now and go and get some terrible office job somewhere.

Well I hope you're wrong. I thought the same from the Burnout review (the most boring of all of his reviews, in my opinion) but then his reviews were starting to "perk up" again.
I can only hope that this is a momentary downfall [/Zpfanboy]



87% sure nobody cared what I just wrote up there.

 

[stompy]

Yahtzee has gone and killed his master work.

You've never played any of Yahtze's games, have you?

- A procrastinator

 

[miller483]

And the fanboys/trolls are STILL going at it!?


This giant shitstorm is REALLY making me excited for the GTA IV review... =)

 

[lethalsilicong5]

i love ssbb and i'm in the top 5 in my college but this is a great review and i totally understand how this game is just stupid with it's mechanics and particle effects

 

[stompy]

And the fanboys/trolls are STILL going at it!?

Here's my answer:
<quote=m_jim>Do you guys think we can hit 1000 posts on this topic? I think we can!! Let's keep bickering everyone. Quickly, someone say something about my mother, then I'll mention that Mario is almost as overrated as Halo and that Shadow of the Colossus is not art.

- A procrastinator

 

[Silent Legend]

As much as I enjoy the game, I'll admit I definitely noticed the face that several levels are more zoomed out then they ever needed to be. Remember Hyrule Castle? In the old one it showed you just what you needed. Now it seems that there's some point to revealing all of the parts of the map that you probably have no intention of using. I thought they had the "Fixed Camera" mode for this, why is it that way practically all the time?

Scrolling up, I saw a quote:

DarkEvilWorm:
Zero Punctuation is dead. Yahtzee has gone and killed his master work. He has:
a) Thrown in a bunch of rubbish screen and vocal editing and
b) Stopped with the quickness from beginning to end.
Well, now I've only got my old friend Homestar Runner to entertain me. Sorry Yahtzee, you hopeless f***wit, but you've destroyed it. You once had something brilliant and now you gone and destroyed it. You might as well quit now and go and get some terrible office job somewhere.

Normally I don't really give a crap about what people have said above me, especially off the first page, but this caught my eye. I'm sorry, but I have to defend Yahtzee. Yes his review is called Zero Punctuation because he used to ramble as though commas and periods don't exist, and yes he's slowed down, but that's not the point is it? The point is to watch him be as blasphemous as possible, and use language and cite things that we won't understand without looking up (not that we can spell half of it), the whole while making several valid points that hopefully even the most dedicated fanboys will have to agree with. I like to have a slight amount of sophistication, or at least intelligence in my entertainment, even if it's to justify the amount of cursing involved.

Pfft. Besides, Homestar Runner is so middle school.

*Signs off before the backlash.*

 

[Heroic One]

Well, that wasn't suprising. Croshaw + Multiplayer =

 

[Titanium Dragon]

Although I don't appreciate the rip on Soul Caliber in there...

The SSB games are by far and away the most accessible of fighting games. I doubt you're going to enjoy ANY fighting game if you don't find a SSB game at least mildly entertaining. Soul Calibur is far less accessible than SSB, and Yahtzee doesn't like fighting games, so what'd you expect?

Unlockable characters are a staple of the SSB series (see the first few games if you don't know) so I wouldn't see why anybody would complain about that in the first place (lots of fighting games have these; not all but a good portion).

Just because it is a trope doesn't mean it doesn't suck. Yahtzee has pointed out on MANY occaisions that accepted as normal things in video games often suck, and the Escapist has an entire article about it. This is a good example of something which someone thought was a good idea, but is actually a really, really horrible one.

I think this was a totally valid point.

Mr Yhatzee has stirred a bloody hornets nest with this one. Standard rule of thumb, if you want to get a big thread going, say something that will really infuriate some whilst leaving everyone else jumping for joy.

Looking at the thread though, it is overwhelmingly people who are saying "YAY YOU BASHED ON ALL THE SSBB LOVERS", little realizing that they were as bad or worse than the SSBB lovers themselves by making the posts. Then there are a smattering of other people saying it was funny/saying it was not very funny/saying SSBB wasn't that bad in equal measure.

I do believe there is skill required to win and that you're just suppose to have fun with it and not take it seriously. My friends take it way too seriously, look up tier listings and I STILL kick their ass. It's all about skill! Randomness such as items make it more fun, believe me. Ok so they don't hold items in tournaments and only play the Final Destination stage because they can't have any "arbitration." Guess what, the trip event is arbitrary and by their logic this game shouldn't even be admissible in video game tournaments!

Tier lists are totally pointless to the average player; they're only helpful for determining how healthy a game is. Choosing a top tier character won't make you a better player, which is really what helps you beat your friends anyway.

This review was the most hilarious of all.

Do you know what's even even more hilarious than that?

Tasting sweet fanboy tears such as yourself.

You enjoy tasting your own tears?

Thing is, I don't care if he doesn't like the game. You do. Therefore, you are a fanboy. Therefore, you are what you claim to hate. I suggest you read through the Something Positive archives, I'm pretty sure he has suggestions for people like you.

My complaint about the review was that I did not find it funny. He basically spent all his time swearing and ranting but not actually being funny. Yes, the Groundhog's Day reference was funny, as were some other points, but a lot of it just wasn't very humorous. Anyone who thinks that just yelling a lot, ranting, and swearing automatically makes something funny is retarded, and I think he knows it as well as I do and misjudged the line (or simply didn't care in this case). These are all great additions TO humor, but in and of themselves simply lack the shock value anymore to be funny to a large segment of the population.

I don't comment on his videos normally, because I enjoy them; I only commented on this one because I didn't. I really enjoy Zero Punctuation typically, and its something of an annoyance when something which comes out once a week and makes me normally laugh with glee simply falls flat. Yes, I can be doing other things with my time, but I'd prefer to have my high-fun entertainment.

A review really shouldn't alter your liking of a game. The point of a review is to advise those who have not already played it.

Indeed.

Personally I'm growing bored of the argument here. Yahtzee said it best: The people who already love Brawl aren't going to change their mind after seeing the review. People here are just arguing in favor or against the video based on their subjective views, instead of the facts presented.

I am not "arguing against the video"; I'm saying it wasn't amusing to me because he didn't put in enough funny. He sacrificed humor for vitriol, and it showed and the review suffered for it. Its like the game designers who sacrifice fun for commenting on X; you aren't complaining for the commentary but because they sacrificed something else which was more worthwhile for it.

1. The single player campaign is long - frankly, too long

I disagree. The game is primarily a multiplayer game; who is going to play the single player campaign? The guy who enjoys fighting games and doesn't have any friends. That is who the campaign is for (as well as the nintendo fanboys), and to that group, longer is better.

2. The "fighting" kind of sucks a whole lot for a fighting game, to the point that it lacks any kind of obvious control. His point about the camera being zoomed out and the action obscured could only have been made clearer if he'd said what I'm (probably not everybody else) all thinking - you never feel like you're really in control of your character, or having much influence on what's happening on the screen.

He didn't complain about the control. He did complain about the visuals, which may or may not be a valid complaint. I agree on the camera angles sucking sometimes, though.

And saying "you never feel in control of your character" actually says "you suck at this game", because plenty of people DO feel they have control over their characters. However, he never SAID that he did not feel he was in control of his character.

He did complain about button mashing, but people who don't play fighter games, and don't want to learn how to (which is understandable), will resort to it and not have much fun. Shock and surprise! It is like someone not learning how to aim in FPSs because they find them insipid.

3. The game has unlockable everything falling wholesale out of its sensitive bits, which he construes as horrible. As a tremendously anti-social gamer (also a self-diagnosed Aspy, lest anyone think I'm denigrating his disease) who still kind of enjoys a good fighting game, unlockable stuff is wonderful. I like finding out that something I did reasonably well made more content happen. It's like that feeling you get when you finally finish putting together your PC and it turns out to be more than the sum of blood and frustration you just had to sit through. But he makes a fair point - in a game that is at its best when you know precisely dick about what you're doing in the first place, putting in a bunch of incredibly obscure (I had to look up who Marth was, though I managed to guess all the Earthbound associates) unlockable crap that you don't actually get access to until ten hours in - or approximately two and one half parties' worth of coherent play - is the kind of stupid that's normally reserved for reality programming on basic cable, and the only reason Nintendo can get away with it is that it has such a massive and rabid base of fans dangling from its genitals that they could make the game explode in the console and burn down your house and only expect to hear mild complaints. Unlockable anything in a casual multiplayer game is criminally stupid.

I don't mind unlockable stuff, but he's absolutely right that unlockable characters (and to a lesser degree, levels) is annoying. It is a party game, and the purpose is to have fun with it. There's nothing more complex about playing Sonic than Mario, so why is Sonic locked, especially when a number of people bought the game to beat up one or the other? Exactly.

4. His frustration also proves a point - specifically, that this ridiculous excuse for a game seems to be all anybody is talking about. Well, two weeks ago, but you get the idea. When enough people are discussing something like this, you expect it to be either really good or really bad, and this game is neither. It's a barely tolerable platformer strapped to a fighting game engine more interested in mascots and bright colors than it is with gameplay. That's the formula for below average. This is nothing anybody should be going on about. It is not revolutionary. It is not an affront to God. It's just a thoroughly meh game, and the fact that the gaming community, at least temporarily, was gripped with the sort of rabid obsession over the title that normally leads to restraining orders is incredibly frustrating and annoying to those of us who "don't get it." I can only imagine what it's like when you're a guy who's expected to write one funny review every week and read it over the air with clever and entertaining accompanying animation and you realize that, like it or not, you're going to have to address this.....thing whether you want to or not. It says something about the culture - probably not complimentary - and we deserve to be chastised for it.

This is just dumb. His frustration is pointless, because, let's face it, huge numbers of people really enjoy the game and thus, objectively speaking, it must be good as otherwise people wouldn't be tarding out over it. Really, there is no other way than popularity and influence TO judge a game by. I think this is just sour grapes - if you don't like fighting games, you probably won't like SSBB, but that doesn't make it a bad game.

And the SSB series is, in many people's opinions and probably in terms of sales as well, one of the best if not THE best fighting games around.

Claiming that it is a meh game is to show your complete, total, and utter ignorance of reality - I am not one of those people who praises Halo, but a game does not sell as many copies as Halo did (or as many SYSTEMS as Halo did) if it isn't enjoyable. I have played Halo 2 and I found its highly intuitive control styles to make the game a lot more fun to pick up and play with your friends. I suspect that, along with running around in power armor and presumably something cool in the single player campaign, are what makes the game popular.

SSBB is simply a sequel in a successful francise and it brings back and updates many things people love. Claiming that it sucks is to simply claim that people are cretins. The reality is more complex; people are cretins, after all, but oftentimes things which are genuinely good are in fact genuinely well-regarded. It is like the retards who claim to hate Tolkien yet own the books, watched the movies, and constantly are engrossed in the modern fantasy genre which largely grew out of LotR. You're pretending to be all elitist when the reality is you're just trying to prove how alternative you are. Sorry, but you aren't elite, especially if you cannot accept reality.

The reality is that people like the game for a reason. YOU may not enjoy the game, as a person, but that doesn't make the game bad. It doesn't mean you're a bad person, either, just that you aren't in the target audience. You'll never understand games, though, if you don't understand why games like Halo and SSBB are successful.

 

[weirdaljedifan2]

I guess the reason why he doesn't find enjoyment out of SSBB like I do is because he is a PC gamer and the review seemed forced.

 

[Noobiekins]

WOOO, GAME TRADERS ROBINA!!!!
I know that Shop, I do Prefer Game Traders Garden City, Because they have World of Warcraft Cards there, and the store has a nice purple sign out front, while the Robina one is yellow...YELLOW.

Anyway, I have yet to play SSBB, But I fully Intend to get it, regardless of what Yahtze has said about it.

I don't play well with others, so unlocking the content and becoming "That Guy" doesn't really bother me. But I have heard that this one has online play in it, but since I can't get my Bloody Nintendo Wi-Fi to work on this god forsaken computer, that doesn't bother me either.

Oh, and for those who don't know, Yahtze Lives in Brisbane, thats in Australia (I read that somewhere, on a public site) from Brisbane you head south, you reach the Gold Coast (Thats where I Live), one of the Suburbs on the Gold Coast is Robina, Robina has a Big Shopping Complex called Robina Town Center, In there is where the Game Traders that Yahtze has mentioned is Currently located.

Why dose an Imported Version really matter with this game, isn't all (Or most) of the Content the same as the US/Japanese Version? (besides the Japanese version being in another language and the US version spelling Colour with out an U.)

 

[Mr.McNinj4]

Yahtzee got a point about fighting games, they are all the same fuck-tarded button mashing games with diffrent charaters and stages. I mean i went to a friends house and played a little SSBM with him after, then after few rounds running of the edge of the stage over and over i was kicking his geeky little ass around the area. because while he was tring doing cool combo moves is was smashing the A button down OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER!!!!

 

[Bryy]

No, thats nowhere near what he said. What he said was that the fighting between them was somewhat enjoyable, without elaborating that the concept itself is a great draw for anyone who ever played any of Nintendos main franchises.

.... stick to one argument, don't jump midstream.

He said that he liked how you could be Mario beating the crudpuddles out of other Nintendo characters. That is the games concept.

And now you're changing your entire argument to include something that you never said in the first place. What you just said ISN'T EVEN related to "the concept". Non-Nintendo Fans playing the game? How is that part of the games concept? That's part of its marketing.

Or are you now going to tell me that creative design and marketing are the same thing?

 

[ElArabDeMagnifico]

Well, Yahtzee you are a "real" reviewer, but are we supposed to take you seriously? Last time I checked..no.. that may have changed now though.

btw, this one had the best visuals, I laughed more at the visual jokes then yahtzee's jokes.

(Hell, this one has like, 8 T-shirt potential screens, like Mario killing Princess Peach - and THIS ONE

[http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/zeropunctuation])

-OMG ZP IS ADVERTIZING GAM STORZ? OMFG YATZI IZ A SELLOUT!!!

 

[Tair]

Titanium Dragon, thank you for being objective. I agree with you. Some of the faults he said are definately true (especially the cameras). This game is meant for certain people, at certain times.

I personally can't rag on it to much because I love the unlockables, I did indeed know who Marth was AND (brace yourselves) I played the adventure mode for the plot.

*You obtain a buff! Nintendo Fanboyism +6524!*

 

[Jer-oh-me]

Hello, new forumgoer here, but fanatical fan of the reviews.

Well this was expected, it has surprised me to no end how much Yahtzee's opinions and my father's gaming opinions tend to match up, though I think for different reasons this time.

I initially bought the game because I bought into the hype, and I like the Smash Bros. specific character models, some of the best. I was all for defending it while my Dad disagreed, and eventually I came to agree with him, but then he decided to give it a chance, is that wacky or what? I was just short of going to trade it for a copy of Twilight Princess, the chance for which is possibly past.

There are facets of the game I like and ones I do not, and I'm pretty sure the ones I do not outweigh the ones I do.