Zero Punctuation: The Last of Us

Astro

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runujhkj said:
Wait. Yahtzee, a man whose legacy depends on him disliking popular games, blew a popular game's faults out of proportion? Let me get my fainting couch. I never understood why people need to defend their favorite games from this guy. I've played Last of Us four or five times now, and I still got a pretty good laugh out of this video. Who cares? It's not even a question of "but then people won't buy it as much" anymore, because the game's already sold better than Bioshock Infinite did across both consoles, and it's a PS3 exclusive.

Live and let live, people. Unless you're the type of person who's just now saying "Well, now that I know Yahtzee doesn't like it, I can safely disregard it." That kind of person is an idiot. So you've seen all the universal acclaim this game has gotten and, despite the fact that it came from all kinds of sources (if you don't like IGN or Gamespot, why not look at Edge, which has only given a perfect score 10 or so times in its entire existence?), you decided that the only thing that mattered was the 4-minute humorous opinion of a snarky British man? You're an idiot.
I like Yahtzee's analyses, so it's disappointing to so him totally shrug something off because of he's a knee-jerk reactionary. It won't affect my perception of the game, but it will affect my likelihood to read and watch interesting material about the game written by Yahtzee.
 

TurkeyProphet

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runujhkj said:
Wait. Yahtzee, a man whose legacy depends on him disliking popular games, blew a popular game's faults out of proportion? Let me get my fainting couch. I never understood why people need to defend their favorite games from this guy. I've played Last of Us four or five times now, and I still got a pretty good laugh out of this video. Who cares? It's not even a question of "but then people won't buy it as much" anymore, because the game's already sold better than Bioshock Infinite did across both consoles, and it's a PS3 exclusive.

Live and let live, people. Unless you're the type of person who's just now saying "Well, now that I know Yahtzee doesn't like it, I can safely disregard it." That kind of person is an idiot. So you've seen all the universal acclaim this game has gotten and, despite the fact that it came from all kinds of sources (if you don't like IGN or Gamespot, why not look at Edge, which has only given a perfect score 10 or so times in its entire existence?), you decided that the only thing that mattered was the 4-minute humorous opinion of a snarky British man? You're an idiot.
Well what is the point of a comment section of a review if not to agree or disagree with the points raised in the review? I also don't think it's a case of Yahtzee shitting on anything popular. He liked Bioshock Ifinite and that had much much bigger flaws than this and in general his comments on games seem a bit more fair and a bit more relevant. This isn't another mindless CoD game. It has good writing, a great game world and uses the videogame medium to tell the story very well. He just ignored all that to laugh at some minor issues with the gameplay and then said he didn't get the ending as though he were 11 years old.
 

Astro

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wyldefire said:
Typical Yahtzee review of a Naughty Dog game. Lot's of superficial critiques and asides, little discussion about the core game, bile for bile's sake since he finds giving positive reviews of well reviewed games boring.

And then in several months he'll off handedly mention something about the game that was "revelatory" like he did with Uncharted 2. Because it is a fantastic game.

It is strange that he didn't grasp the meaning of the ending the ending though. Seems like just about everyone but him understood why Joel made the choice he did at the end, and thematically he's not all that different than the protagonist of Spec Ops: The Line, which was Yahtzee's GOTY last year.



But whatever, cue the fanboys, who had already made up their mind to hate this game because it's a Sony exclusive or because it's just cool to hate on AAA games, storming comment sections using this as "proof" that The Last of Us is bad or overrated.
It was kind of annoying to see him treat the Uncharted series so flippantly, even though I don't like it equally as much as him, but superficial critiques are more valid for a superficial game. The Last of Us wasn't anywhere near as superficial as Uncharted was though, so it's a shame to see him treating them as though they're basically the same game.

When did Yahtzee mention Uncharted 2 was special out of curiosity?
 

Mister K

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Eternal_Lament said:
I've mentioned this before on other forums, but I think the friendly AI "safety" is determined by difficulty. I played it on normal and found that, yeah, enemies would never notice Ellie or my other allies, but my friends that played it on hard said he opposite, that enemies would not only notice, but sometimes the friendly AI would jump out and fire, breaking stealth, if they felt it was necessary.
Hmm, I wouldn't be surprised if what your friends say is actually the truth, for I too had encountered such situations. And, since AI is in, um, lower grades of intelligence, I stopped playing this game after about 20 times Ellie was noticed by a zombie (yes, those are zombies, pop-culture).

Currently watching a Lets Play of it, for the story sake.
 

runujhkj

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TurkeyProphet said:
runujhkj said:
Wait. Yahtzee, a man whose legacy depends on him disliking popular games, blew a popular game's faults out of proportion? Let me get my fainting couch. I never understood why people need to defend their favorite games from this guy. I've played Last of Us four or five times now, and I still got a pretty good laugh out of this video. Who cares? It's not even a question of "but then people won't buy it as much" anymore, because the game's already sold better than Bioshock Infinite did across both consoles, and it's a PS3 exclusive.

Live and let live, people. Unless you're the type of person who's just now saying "Well, now that I know Yahtzee doesn't like it, I can safely disregard it." That kind of person is an idiot. So you've seen all the universal acclaim this game has gotten and, despite the fact that it came from all kinds of sources (if you don't like IGN or Gamespot, why not look at Edge, which has only given a perfect score 10 or so times in its entire existence?), you decided that the only thing that mattered was the 4-minute humorous opinion of a snarky British man? You're an idiot.
Well what is the point of a comment section of a review if not to agree or disagree with the points raised in the review?
That implies that this is a review rather than a comedy video. Occasionally he reviews games. This is not one of those. How comprehensive can a "review" be in the span of 5 minutes, when it also has to be comedic as well? Not to mention how much of the video was talking about Uncharted, making it entirely irrelevant.
 

runujhkj

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Mick P. said:
runujhkj said:
Wait. Yahtzee, a man whose legacy depends on him disliking popular games, blew a popular game's faults out of proportion? Let me get my fainting couch. I never understood why people need to defend their favorite games from this guy. I've played Last of Us four or five times now, and I still got a pretty good laugh out of this video. Who cares? It's not even a question of "but then people won't buy it as much" anymore, because the game's already sold better than Bioshock Infinite did across both consoles, and it's a PS3 exclusive.

Live and let live, people. Unless you're the type of person who's just now saying "Well, now that I know Yahtzee doesn't like it, I can safely disregard it." That kind of person is an idiot. So you've seen all the universal acclaim this game has gotten and, despite the fact that it came from all kinds of sources (if you don't like IGN or Gamespot, why not look at Edge, which has only given a perfect score 10 or so times in its entire existence?), you decided that the only thing that mattered was the 4-minute humorous opinion of a snarky British man? You're an idiot.
If you are as equally cynical as Yahtzee about 21st century commercial games and don't have a lot of time to waste on stinker games then his reviews hold a lot of water. Besides. A work of art is only as good as its deepest flaw. Clearly Yahtzee wants to appreciate games as works of art. Not knifing simulators.


EDITED/PS: I am 100% mindmeld with Yahtzee on his general stance, and probably would be on his opinions too if I had to actually play these games. So its not just hyperbole. At least one other person exists with the same psychology and it isn't an act.
If a work of art is only as good as its deepest flaw, then why would Yahtzee only discuss tiny irrelevant "flaws" in this game? "The protagonists aren't good people" isn't a flaw, it's the entire point of the last half of the game.
 

TurkeyProphet

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Mick P. said:
Well you are wrong then. A chimera doesn't mean a mythical creature. These are modern words with modern meanings in modern dictionaries. So if you were writing the game people would be complaining about the awkward characters not speaking in plain English. I'm not trying to be offensive. But its these misconceptions that lead to bad writing.

Unless these plant things don't act like zombies. Were this to happen in a real life scenario, everybody would refer to them as zombies and nothing else. It doesn't mean they come from Haiti because that's where the word zombie actually comes from. It's not even a mythological word. It's a modern word. Probably not even know to the western world until sometime mid 20th century.
No that is the primary meaning of the word "chimera" although it is used in other context. I'm not sure what your point is with that anyway. Zombies have connotations of witchcraft and magic in our modern meaning of the word. People would not start calling sick people "Zombies" unless they were being cynical or humorous. I have no idea why you think they would. I certainly wouldn't call my sick mother a zombie and since the infected weren't actually zombies doing so would add a level of camp that is associated with zombie films and would make it confusing because they aren't zombies but they are being ironically called zombies by he jaded characters.
 

runujhkj

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Mick P. said:
runujhkj said:
Mick P. said:
runujhkj said:
Wait. Yahtzee, a man whose legacy depends on him disliking popular games, blew a popular game's faults out of proportion? Let me get my fainting couch. I never understood why people need to defend their favorite games from this guy. I've played Last of Us four or five times now, and I still got a pretty good laugh out of this video. Who cares? It's not even a question of "but then people won't buy it as much" anymore, because the game's already sold better than Bioshock Infinite did across both consoles, and it's a PS3 exclusive.

Live and let live, people. Unless you're the type of person who's just now saying "Well, now that I know Yahtzee doesn't like it, I can safely disregard it." That kind of person is an idiot. So you've seen all the universal acclaim this game has gotten and, despite the fact that it came from all kinds of sources (if you don't like IGN or Gamespot, why not look at Edge, which has only given a perfect score 10 or so times in its entire existence?), you decided that the only thing that mattered was the 4-minute humorous opinion of a snarky British man? You're an idiot.
If you are as equally cynical as Yahtzee about 21st century commercial games and don't have a lot of time to waste on stinker games then his reviews hold a lot of water. Besides. A work of art is only as good as its deepest flaw. Clearly Yahtzee wants to appreciate games as works of art. Not knifing simulators.


EDITED/PS: I am 100% mindmeld with Yahtzee on his general stance, and probably would be on his opinions too if I had to actually play these games. So its not just hyperbole. At least one other person exists with the same psychology and it isn't an act.
If a work of art is only as good as its deepest flaw, then why would Yahtzee only discuss tiny irrelevant "flaws" in this game? "The protagonists aren't good people" isn't a flaw, it's the entire point of the last half of the game.
Just replying to not appear rude. I don't know. If he only brings up petty flaws then maybe that's a backhanded complement. That's up to you. As are flaws. As for why Yahtzee would bring that up. Probably because he had a hard time relating. He felt dehumanized playing the parts. I can't say for sure because I haven't played the game.
Being dehumanized by the characters' actions is a core element of the story. He was dehumanized by playing as Captain Walker, so why is he unable to wrap his mind around a game making him do bad things?
 

Coach Morrison

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Yuuki said:
Wait, if Ellie is of bugger-all use in gameplay and essentially invisible to zombies then why is she even there?

So the devs could stick a female character on the front cover to score an easy win with the "moar female protagonists!" parade?
She will assist you in fights by throwing bricks and bottles at enemies heads and even stabbing enemies if your already going through an execution and the enemy sees you.

Later in the game shes given a gun so i don't get where this useless in gameplay comes from, during my play-through she saved my ass or made things easier multiple times.
 

TurkeyProphet

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runujhkj said:
That implies that this is a review rather than a comedy video. Occasionally he reviews games. This is not one of those. How comprehensive can a "review" be in the span of 5 minutes, when it also has to be comedic as well? Not to mention how much of the video was talking about Uncharted, making it entirely irrelevant.
What difference does it make whether it is a review or not? Were the points he was making meant to be a parody of a review or something? That's about the only way in which we shouldn't take them seriously.
 

A1

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TurkeyProphet said:
This struck me as a fairly lazy review for what is an interesting game. It's pretty easy to complain that zombies are a fad and that the gameplay was generic (which I don't really agree with). A lot of his complaints were also increidbly weak - the stealth pace was pretty good and his comments about the story smacked of someone that didn't really engage with it. It struck me that he didn't play it very sensibly as well - I got instakilled about twice in the game and the reason Ellie couldn't go and hide in the bin during a fight is that the smartest tactic was usually to kill one person and sneak through which would make her hiding at the beginning of the level a pain.

Really what irritated me is that the game employed so many elements that he has championed in his reviews and in Extra Punctuation and he dismissed it for some fairly cheap and uninteresting digs.

Thank you.

I think that Yahtzee was being very unfair to this game. And this is possibly due to a bias against Naughty Dog. For example yes Joel and Ellie may have done a lot of bad things. But It's hard to hold this kind of thing against them because of the world they live in. The characters are living in a horrible messed up world in which doing horrible messed up things is generally a necessity for survival. And almost all (with maybe a few exceptions on Joel's part) of the people that Joel and Ellie kill wouldn't have hesitated to do the same to them.

Furthermore at least one shot he took at the game was flat out wrong. He said Naughty Dog games tend to dehumanize everyone except the leads and indicated that The Last of Us was doing the same. But as I said this was flat out wrong. Several of the characters that Joel and Ellie encounter and interact with are very human (Tess, Bill, Sam, Henry, Tommy, Maria, etc).

And yes I very much share the frustration you express in your last sentence. Yahtzee has established that he doesn't like regenerating health and prefers health meters. The Last of Us dumps regenerating health in favor of health meters yet he gives the game no credit for it. Yahtzee has also stated that he wants humanity in characters. The Last of Us has this in spades yet he gives the game no credit for that either. Disappointing but not entirely surprising given that hypocrisy seems to be a long standing part of Yahtzee's MO.

Yes I get the distinct impression that Yahtzee was especially disinclined to give this game any credit even if it deserves it because it's a Naughty Dog game. The fact that he talks about about Naughty Dog and the Uncharted series directly seems to make this a very strong possibility.
 

Merklyn236

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Another great review Yahtzee, thank you.

Thank you for also calling out the biggest problem with the "zombie apocalypse" setting - that human life you'd think would be treated as something more precious in such a scenario. What was the line that President Roslin had in the BSG movie/series start? "The only way for us to survive is to start having babies." Nah, 6+ Billion people have all been wiped out, humankind is in serious jeapordy of being extinct, and the first thing we need to do is still killing each other because "reasons."

No more zombie games for me thanks.
 

Johnny Novgorod

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Honestly the only thing I got from this review is one big meh. All Yahtzee did was complain about pop culture and make one good criticism about ally AI or lack thereof. I can't remember anything else, and I just saw the video. It's like he talked a lot without there being much meaning to it.
 

Something Amyss

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"You don't bring pepper spray to a murder fight" might be my new favourite ZP line.

Also, "fuck you got mine" is pretty much 80% of gaming.
 

MB202

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I think Pop Culture keeps dodging around the term "zombie" because most people, myself included, are getting sick of zombies being everywhere.