Zero Punctuation: The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings

sosolidshoe

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Yahtzee Croshaw said:
The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings

This week, Zero Punctuation reviews The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings.

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Moviebob's turned into a self-worshipping twat.
The LRR guys are putting all their actually-funny material on PATV.
Yahtzee has apparently decided insulting developers humorously is old hat, and has moved on to just being an insulting cock to PC gamers at every possible opportunity.

I think maybe the Escapist's editorial staff need to step up their game a little before the site flushes entirely down the shitter, instead of just bathing enthusiastically in the murky toilet-water.
 

The Rockerfly

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Monstrion said:
The Rockerfly said:
I always thought that gaming was about experience that is highly influenced by me, yet so many people make it seem that they would prefer the game to either
1) tell them everything
2) do everything for them.

Where is the fun in that?

So to conclude, yes, If you cant figure out the combat after several fights, you are either a casual gamer, or you dont have the mental capacity to play the game. Thats just it and no offense meant.
If you can but find that demanding gameplay is not to your liking, that is ok, there is a whole market out for you. But I for one, am very grateful to my Polish neighbors for Witcher 2.

Getting surrounded? Move more. Getting killed in two shots? Pop a protective sign and renew it. Fighting group? Soften them up with bombs. Distract them by hypnotizing one of them. Attack like a true swordsman, hop in, slash, hop out. And so on.

React, learn, adapt. That should be gameplay.
But that is such a primitive black and white view on gaming. Here is your view point in a nutshell

If you aren't automatically good at the game then you should be forced to learn the game mechanics to improve on it

While I don't mind games that give a challenge and I disagree with giving everything out on a plate, you should at least be told in some form of tutorial the basic mechanics and even some basic tactics in a game. You could be told these basic mechanics and as fights got more complex you'd have to get better, smarter and learn to use the basic mechanics in new ways. Look at Batman Arkum Asylum as an example, you are told how to do basic mechanics and you learn how be stealthy at a very basic level and fight at a basic level. However towards the end of the game you will have to get much better and use equipment throughout the game to take enemies more tactically. How many people have ever wanted everything from a game instantly? I've never heard anyone like that but I have heard of bad tutorials players not getting mechanics for long periods of time. I spent 14 levels on Dead Rising 2 without the game once telling me how to roll, that doesn't mean I'm stupid just the game is failing to inform the player on a basic mechanic, very similar to The Witcher 2

Just saying someone is stupid because they don't like your game is the best way to alienate it ever becoming popular and getting any form of development in that game universe as a result and it makes you look like a bit of jerk. Really for the sake of the community, don't do it.
 

Adam28

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Another great review, I wish I had a PC to try out both Witchers though, despite how complicated it sounds, I would still like to try it.

Oh, and thanks for the new avatar....
 

thenamelessloser

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Adam28 said:
Another great review, I wish I had a PC to try out both Witchers though, despite how complicated it sounds, I would still like to try it.

Oh, and thanks for the new avatar....
The first Witcher's gameplay isn't complicated besides the alchemy which one can mostly ignore on easy and normal settings. The story is a bit confusing though, but the general gist is simple enough but if you're new to the Witcher setting and don't look at the journal the story is confusing. The quest journal system generally works well though in it. Blah Dragon Age had more complex combat, inventory, and stats and stuff than Wticher to me. Haven't played the second one so won't say anything complexity wise.
 

gring

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inkbot007 said:
gring said:
And please don't even get me started with the prologue dragon scene, that is the very definition of broken.

LMAO, How is it broken? Because the game doesn't tell you to avoid fire? Duh.

It is easy as hell. Move with your group (or move by yourself through the other side, doesn't matter, you are protected from fire by the wooden structures at this moment). Kill the enemies whatever way you like (I prefer bombs-> lock -> attack). Funny thing is, If you run past them, the structure being attacked by the dragon will burn out and the ceiling will collapse effectively killing your enemies. Are you implying that it is broken because the game acts realistically and you just can't stand under a collapsing burning ceiling and survive?

Either way, if you keep yourself at the edge of the structure you won't get burned/squashed, you just need to keep an eye out for the dragon, wait for it to move under the bridge and quickly run or roll towards the next structure that is literally 2 yards away. Shall you be engulfed in flames due to your own stupidity, activate QUEN to remove burn status (It also heals you outside of combat) and proceed to kill the rest of the enemies (the dragon is gone at this point) and wait for Triss to open the door. Cutscene, move on with the game.

You people are funny. Tip: Learn to play the game before complaining it is broken.
Yes, because I honestly thought fire was good and healed me!

Nice assumptions there buddy. I love all the bitter people who desperately try to defend this game. Since you didn't read my post properly, I'll explain it again. The game isn't actually HARD, its just in a broken system, so the only thing that's HARD is just figuring out how the developers wanted you to play the game. And they want you to play in an EXACT way, which is an unintuitive one. OOOH scary, I have an opinion different then yours.

So whats broken with the fight? Well, let's see. You're saying the very building that's supposed to give you cover can kill the enemies you're supposed to fight? And how is that not broken? But I didn't even know that, and that's hilarious, because you're proving my point. But that's not where I would die. So you kill the guys, wait for the dragon to stop breathing fire, then you run with your teammates to the next cover spot, right? But even when I run across with my team mates, I get burned by imaginary fire from nowhere, but my teammates run by unscathed. How does that even apply to anything realistic? Again, it doesn't. Even If I didn't run into any flame, even if the dragon is no where NEAR me, even though I'm practically HUMPING my teammates while we run to the next building for cover, every single time I ran to the other building I would get lit on fire. So how is this not broken? Oh and then there's Marigold who keeps throwing fireballs into me, even when I give the enemy plenty of space between me and her. Again: BROKEN, as in DOES NOT WORK PROPERLY.

But you're saying that the edge of the first structure is a safe zone, okay, how am I supposed to know that? Wait, how do YOU know that unless you looked up some guide or video, or died over and over there? You wouldn't, because there's nothing to tell you that without having to die a bunch. Then you say the next structure is 2 yards away? Ok, now I know you're just trolling. It's not exactly a football field distance away, but it isn't 2 yards, stop exaggerating to make yourself look right.

Okay, so you say, use Quen to stop the fire on you. WHERE DOES IT EXPLAIN THAT? The only description I can find is that it prevents combat damage (which of course is really OP for regular fights). It doesn't say, "USE WHEN YOU'RE ON FIRE", so basically, you HAVE to use this spell for this one part, or you die. How is that intuitive or even flexible? Again, it shows that the developers wanted you to play the game in one way, and one way only, and If you cant figure it out, you'll die. It's not challenging, its just HARD to actually understand what the developers intended, that's the only hard part about it. If that kind of gameplay is for you, great, but I feel that its silly to bottleneck gameplay like that.

Btw, in case you were wondering, I did beat it, but that still doesn't mean it isn't a lame and broken fight.

But like I said in my last post, the game isn't hard at all AT ALL because I got the perfectionist achievement literally within my first 20 minutes of gameplay. It's just about learning what the developers intended you to play. Truth is with witcher 1 they fucked up the combat, they had to release a full 5 patches and renaming their game to Enhanced Edition in order to get it even playable, and still its a silly system (click when the light comes on, YAY). They were clueless then, and this is their first stab at making an action combat game with a real combat system. But they overshot it and got so into designing their game that they lost focus on making it approachable (not to casuals but) to people who didn't play the first game for whatever reason (cough*duetoitsucking*cough).

And the funny part is that I was saying how combat was broken and how it was totally unreliable and unresponsive, and all I got was nerd hate, but if you look at the 1.2 patch notes, apparently the developers thought so too.

Also, don't even get me started with the AI. Archers who cant line of sight, enemies who can't follow you for more then 10 feet, etc, its all horrible AI, the worst I've seen in YEARS.
 

HaMSt3rBoT

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In my opinion, this is one of Yahtzee's less professional criticisms, rather rushed, rather agitated. Usually he's much more observant, calculated and clear with his critique style.

I'm currently playing TW2, and enjoying it quite a bit even though as usual I do agree with him on most of the points he makes, regardless of the manner he presented it in.

But in this review he doesn't even seem to bother making the effort to pay attention, or to bloody well invest the trivial amount of time to figure out what he needs to do, as if he's just woken up after an anaesthetics overload and hooked up to a morphine-drip...
Are you just starting to reject new designs, Yahtzee, or do you really want to have everything to be the same generic spoon-fed system?

And I certainly don't mind him PC bashing, as he is irrefutably fond of his phrase "dumbed-down console-tards", though this time it seems he has a some wrathful animosity towards PC gaming and picking sides.
But the thing that irks me the most... Come on... Really...

Not able to skip cutscenes? Seriously? I thought we were well past the phase of "Not reading what's on the bloody screen" by now! I work part-time at an internet/gaming café, and I get so enraged at the mentally-disordered cretins not using their boundless powers of literacy to attempt the comprehension of the complicated instructions hovering above their cursors telling them to "Press E to open"!

And judging by his vastly expansive vocabulary, I seriously doubt this is an issue, so what's amiss?
 

Adam28

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thenamelessloser said:
Adam28 said:
Another great review, I wish I had a PC to try out both Witchers though, despite how complicated it sounds, I would still like to try it.

Oh, and thanks for the new avatar....
The first Witcher's gameplay isn't complicated besides the alchemy which one can mostly ignore on easy and normal settings. The story is a bit confusing though, but the general gist is simple enough but if you're new to the Witcher setting and don't look at the journal the story is confusing. The quest journal system generally works well though in it. Blah Dragon Age had more complex combat, inventory, and stats and stuff than Wticher to me. Haven't played the second one so won't say anything complexity wise.
Ok, thanks. I was just basing my opinion on Yatzhee's review on the first Witcher. Suppose I should obviously be getting opinions on the game elsewhere from other sources.
 

thenamelessloser

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Adam28 said:
thenamelessloser said:
Adam28 said:
Another great review, I wish I had a PC to try out both Witchers though, despite how complicated it sounds, I would still like to try it.

Oh, and thanks for the new avatar....
The first Witcher's gameplay isn't complicated besides the alchemy which one can mostly ignore on easy and normal settings. The story is a bit confusing though, but the general gist is simple enough but if you're new to the Witcher setting and don't look at the journal the story is confusing. The quest journal system generally works well though in it. Blah Dragon Age had more complex combat, inventory, and stats and stuff than Wticher to me. Haven't played the second one so won't say anything complexity wise.
Ok, thanks. I was just basing my opinion on Yatzhee's review on the first Witcher. Suppose I should obviously be getting opinions on the game elsewhere from other sources.
The biggest problems I remember Yahtzee having with the first witcher from when I watched a video a long time ago were loading times I think and how it feels too much like an MMORPG. The Enhanced Edition fixes much of the loading time problems. The game at times sad to say does feel too much like an MMORPG sometimes. Probably the biggest fault. Some of the side quests are just looking for monster parts which even though can be done while doing other things they at times do feel a bit too much like an MMORPG. There is also quite a bit of backtracking which gets sort of annoying. Also, there is quite a bit of fetch quests which can be boring to some but I don't mind them. If you ever get a decent pc just try the demo I think.
 

Ixal

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So he spends the first third of the video attacking PC gamers for being arrogant and then rips the game because of what can be summarized as
1. I can't press buttons and
2. I don't read manuals.

This review is rather bad as it is neither informative nor funny.
It contains much wrong informations "I can't skip the cutscene" and the jokes boil down to "PC gamers are arrogant", "I don't read manuals" and "I don't care about the setting and background".

Considering this and his previous RPG reviews I would like Yahtzee to stick with generic shooter/action/whatever games on consoles. At least he knows how to make fun of them.

Kahunaburger said:
LiquidGrape said:
But honestly, I don't think I have seen quite so much rage over a ZP episode before.
What gives?
Witcher fans and Bioware fans, IMHO. There's sort of this silly ongoing argument over which game is the Once And Future Pseudo-Medieval Fantasy RPG.
Not really. As a Witcher fan I would have nothing about Yathzee making fun of the problems and silly bits in the game. But instead he goes "This game is bad because I can't play it as I don't invest any time and effort into it, har, har har".

For people who can play the game (its not really that hard even), this is not funny. We just shake our heads as we have no clue what this is about and are sad because the game gets away so bad not because of its faults, but because of Yahtzee ignorance.
 

Solomar

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Thank god he didn't get to the part where you play as other characters who can only parry, heh.

I had a lot of fun playing The Witcher 2 even though the beginning was surprisingly, and painfully, difficult on normal. And the first fight Letho.

But I hardly found the interface to be complicated at all. Make potions or bombs, drink potions, rest or check your skill tree. That's even less then the number of spells you have. And seriously, why not just test out every spell to see what they do, vigor doesn't take that long to recharge. One is even called igni, what did you think it would do? Make a puddle of water?

Geralt does take a crazy amount of time to drink potions though.

It's a fun game that has an amazing story and quite a bit of replay value. It's rather sad to see some people won't even try the game now after listening to a single review.

P.s. Iorveth is badass.
 

Continuity

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MelasZepheos said:
Sorry, pet peeve, but I automatically equate anyone who does these faux 'corrections' as pretty much the worst and most annoying kind of poster. You may well be a lovely well rounded gentleman, but that single quote puts you lower than an internet troll in my opinion.
:-/ Hmm, apologies then in that case, it was getting late and it seem like the quickest way to make my point.

MelasZepheos said:
But to respond to the point I think you were trying to make.

If I was to start watching Bimbos BC, or Son of the Mask, or The Room, I would find within the first fifteen minutes that the acting was terrible, the budget nonexistant, the effects awful, the script beyond help, etc. Do I really need to keep watching? The movies are awful, and if a movie is provably awful for several reasons within 15 minutes, then why is continuing to watch the following hour going to prove anything? What is it that watching 99 minutes of The Room proves that watching 15 doesn't? I'll finally know the conclusion of a story I don't care about? I'll have proven I have a great attention span and apparently far too much free time on my hands?
Theres no reason for you to continue watching if you dont want to, but i'm not sure we can really draw a parallel with film. However a critic should certainly continue watching, so that they are fully armed with the facts when they tell us how rubbish it is rather than just making assumptions based on the first 15 minutes.
If you play 5% of a game and feel that that is enough for you to give up on it then be my guest, its your money and your enjoyment after all not mine.


MelasZepheos said:
Just having a good attention span means nothing when it comes to entertainment and hobbies. I have a good enough attention span to write for three hours in an English exam, does that mean that I'd rather write a three hour English exam every day than play Fallout 3 for three hours? Fuck no. During my A Levels I had nine hours of exams in one day, and I finished them all, my attention held and my concentration good enough to get me some good grades. So does my ability to sit through nine hours of near constant writing somehow translate to the exams being the most fun I've ever had in my life? Again, no.
Perhaps "attention span" is the wrong term, maybe staying power? or maybe endurance?... whatever, if someone tells you a game is good after the first 5% and you cant even make it what far to find out for yourself before writing off your £30 investment then something seems wrong to me.

MelasZepheos said:
The problem here is that Yahtzee has been over this point so many times that anything I could say would just be repeating him. The defence of FFXIII 'it gets good twenty hours in' is simply 'leave your hand on a stove for twenty hours and you'll stop feeling the pain as well.' Your ability to endure something does not make it good, or you a superior person for liking it.
Look I ever at ANY POINT, stated or implied that liking the witcher or PC games in general make you better as a person in ANY WAY. So i'd appreciate it if you didn't misrepresent my position. That said there is a difference between working though the beginning of a game that is slow to get started and putting your hand on the stove... I hope you can see what that is without my explaining it.

MelasZepheos said:
Is The Room somehow atranscendant example of neo-noir filmmaking because I watched the whole thing? No, it's still a turgid pile of rancid shit. Is the Witcher 2 the second coming of Christ because you were able to play it all the way through? No. I won't add a qualification here because I have no intention of actually playing this game, but from what I can see it's the sort of game that appelas to a very specific sort of demographic, so actually there was very little point to the last few paragraphs, but if I have taken up even a little amount of your life by making you read this, then apparently I am the next Stephen king because your attention span was apparently great enough to get you through this rant, so my writing must therefore be good, right?
I made no value judgement on the witcher in association with my points on attention span, being able to work though something (game/book/film) does not in any way make the material good... How can it? a game is good or bad whether I play it or not so my attention span is irrelevant.

The point i'm making is that it is a good game and many people are judging it purely on their experience of the first 5%. Why dont they get further than the first 5%?? because despite being told it gets better they give up. Conclusion = no staying power. OK there will be a subset of individuals who simply dont like the game but I have little sympathy for them because if they don't like RPG they shouldn't buy RPG, and the witcher is more RPG than many games we get by the name these days.
 

Adam28

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thenamelessloser said:
Alright, I think I'll try the demo on my laptop. Since Yatzhee said he managed to get the second one to work on his laptop at low settings, perhaps the first one should be able to work on mine.
 

jackdaniel0001

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I hope he does a rebuttal like he did for SSBB. Why are people so defensive about this game anyway? Because he didn't figure out how to skip a cut scene? Is that really hard to accept that there are other opinions beside your own?
 

Kahunaburger

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LadyMint said:
I laughed so hard at this review I got the hiccups for a bit.

Y'know, I'm also getting a bit fed up with the "dark" theme of RPGs. What spurred this trend of "every hero has to be a cynical jerk who seems to hate other people but still comes to their rescue?" Maybe this is why I like silent protagonists so much. I can pretend they enjoy their role as a hero, rather than feeling burdened as the only person in the world with the might and magic to stop really bad crap from going down.
Haha, I can't get over how silly it is when people market their RPGs as "dark." Dragon Age isn't "dark" - it's your basic LOTR setting. Witcher isn't "dark" - it's a lived-in fairytale world where people care as much about human rights as they did in the actual middle ages (I.E., not much). The only authentically "dark" RPGs I can think of are all MegaTen games.

Ixal said:
Kahunaburger said:
LiquidGrape said:
But honestly, I don't think I have seen quite so much rage over a ZP episode before.
What gives?
Witcher fans and Bioware fans, IMHO. There's sort of this silly ongoing argument over which game is the Once And Future Pseudo-Medieval Fantasy RPG.
Not really. As a Witcher fan I would have nothing about Yathzee making fun of the problems and silly bits in the game. But instead he goes "This game is bad because I can't play it as I don't invest any time and effort into it, har, har har".

For people who can play the game (its not really that hard even), this is not funny. We just shake our heads as we have no clue what this is about and are sad because the game gets away so bad not because of its faults, but because of Yahtzee ignorance.
I don't think Yahtzee thought it was bad - I think he just didn't like it. He goes so far to say that the stuff he didn't like might be stuff other people like, and so on. And re: the difficulty thing, even if you or I didn't find the game that difficult*, a lot of other people clearly did. High difficulty + no tutorial is a legitimate gripe to have, since it makes the game harder to get into, and games that require players to RTFM are few and far between these days. It's actually a little like Minecraft in that it basically goes "okay, here's a massive and flexible toolkit we don't tell you much about and a bunch of challenges to use it on. Good luck!" Ofc, they fixed the prologue difficulty in 1.2 apparently, so it might very well be a non-issue now.

*Other than Letho, in my case. Seriously, fuck that guy :)
 

remnant_phoenix

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Gametek said:
remnant_phoenix said:
MelasZepheos said:
I actually defend this attitude to reviewing games (not finishing the whole thing) because it perhaps shows better what sort of game you're playing.

A good game will keep you playing to the end.

A bad game will not.
Amidst all the backlash of "He just doesn't have the attention span!" "He's not a PC gamer!" blah blah blah...

I noticed that people seemed to miss that Yahtzee's biggest point on why he stopped playing was, and I quote, "I wasn't having fun!"

Too many people take gaming too seriously. Games should be fun first, everything else second. Certainly people have different standards of what constitutes "fun." Some think unstructured open-world freedom is fun. Some think hardcore skill and strategy is fun. Some think that going round after round of tea-bagging noobs in Call of Duty is fun.

But can you really fault someone for refusing to continue playing a game because they just aren't enjoying it?
That is what he said. So your is an I agree, or what? o_O
Yeah, I agree with him. I just wanted to point out in particular the "I wasn't having fun!" thing, because I think the principle of "games should first and foremost be fun" is overlooked in the industry AND the gaming population.
 

Ixal

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remnant_phoenix said:
Gametek said:
remnant_phoenix said:
MelasZepheos said:
I actually defend this attitude to reviewing games (not finishing the whole thing) because it perhaps shows better what sort of game you're playing.

A good game will keep you playing to the end.

A bad game will not.
Amidst all the backlash of "He just doesn't have the attention span!" "He's not a PC gamer!" blah blah blah...

I noticed that people seemed to miss that Yahtzee's biggest point on why he stopped playing was, and I quote, "I wasn't having fun!"

Too many people take gaming too seriously. Games should be fun first, everything else second. Certainly people have different standards of what constitutes "fun." Some think unstructured open-world freedom is fun. Some think hardcore skill and strategy is fun. Some think that going round after round of tea-bagging noobs in Call of Duty is fun.

But can you really fault someone for refusing to continue playing a game because they just aren't enjoying it?
That is what he said. So your is an I agree, or what? o_O
Yeah, I agree with him. I just wanted to point out in particular the "I wasn't having fun!" thing, because I think the principle of "games should first and foremost be fun" is overlooked in the industry AND the gaming population.
When I play Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter 4 without bothering to read up any of the combos and other functions of the game I will also not have fun. But whos fault is that?
Its especially bad as in previous reviews he complained about games holding the players hand too much.

It is also strange that in the first part of the review he jabs at PC gamer "elitists" but then proves them right by not being able to memorize what 5 spells do.
 

duchaked

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something tells me Yahtzee's big desktop gaming computer died in a meltdown or blew up or got a virus and he shotgunned it...and he said "bother it" lol

oh wait, well at least one of those scenarios happened to me in real life lulz
 

TheWulf

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I hope this won't get me banned, but it's something that this review left me wanting to express (and really, it's not negative to Yahtzee in any way).

First of all - thank you, Yahtzee! I'm a PC gamer and an older one at that, so I remember when PC gaming was this silly thing that people did with work machines, an extension of the home computer era of Britain. These days though it seems to have become some circlejerk master race thing which borders on being Imperialist. Occasionally I think that PC gamers could use a good kick to the head to make them realise that they're not better, and really not that different, than anyone else.

I've had trouble fitting in with PC gamers simply because, yes, many of them do fit in with this trope. They're pseudo-intellectuals, and they seem to ascribe to the belief that simply having a PC puts them on a better social rung than someone who doesn't, which in and of itself reminds me of the classism I've seen in the UK (how privately housed people treat council housed people, for example). I just think that it's a facetious extension of that, since it's mostly British people I see propagating this PC master race nonsense (and I'm British, too). This worries me.

So really, yes, a good damn kick to the head is necessary, occasionally, just to point out that PC gaming is not the be all and end all of gaming. And anyone who'd forego an experience like Okami or Ratchet & Clank just because it's on a console is only robbing themselves.

The other thing I'm happy to see ridiculed is the dark fantasy pap we've had to endure. There were some parts of Tolkien's works that fully embodied dark fantasy and did so really well, but what amuses me is that this 'dark fantasy' we're seeing in games isn't really dark at all. It's... how to explain this? It's the cheerirer moments of Tolkien's works, such as the shire, overlaid with a GTA sheen. It's gritty, there's a this essence of "Keepin' it real!", and trying to be nothing more than a medieval fantasy setting where people are dicks.

That's not what dark fantasy is.

And really I think that gaming was better when it wasn't trying to do dark fantasy. The greatest moments of RPG history, for me, weren't particularly dark. Black humour, sure, but not dark. Planescape: Torment, Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magicks Obscura, Anachronox, Fallout 2, and so on. Then there were those entries that were just gloriously strange, like Uru and the earlier Japanese RPGs (Shining Force, Phantasy Star, Skies of Arcadia, et cetera). Those really were memorable.

In fact, I can only really think of one game which might have been genuinely attributable to what dark fantasy actually is, and that's Mask of the Betrayer, an expansion pack for Neverwinter Nights. That was genuinely dark. It had all sorts of ethical conundrums, it dealt with losing yourself, your identity, and whether you'd become a monster just to keep your memories; it dealt with the wall of the faithless, a construction of endless suffering where the souls of those who don't choose a god go to be picked apart; it deals with how a group of witches had taken the realm of dreams as their own and twisted it to their own dark desires to live in, and how that managed to corrupt and harm the spirits who lived there; it dealt with ethnic hatred; it dealt with religion; it dealt with xenophobia versus acceptance; it dealt with love, hatred, jealousy, and it handled all of these topics with a degree of grace and panache that I hadn't seen before and may never see again.

By comparison, to call something like Dragon Age a dark fantasy is a joke. It's more of a 'gritty fantasy,' as I described it. Just the shire meets GTA. It's not particularly impressive and certainly not clever. I'm just waiting for RPGs to stop trying to be 'kewl' so that they can go back to being clever, and then I can enjoy them again. "Be who you are, not what you think you should be to appeal to the masses." has never applied to anything like it applies to the modern RPG.

---

Oh, and Ultima VII really should be on my list of silly RPGs that I loved, too. Anything that has a Unicorn that gives the entire party laughs at the expense of the player by accusing the player of being a virgin, or has a merry little gay fox in a large, bright bow who likes to talk about how pretty he is, or has a farmer who's been labeled as crazy because of claims that a ship had crashed in one of his fields (which it actually had - a ship from the Wing Commander Universe, no less), is okay by me.

I miss RPGs being like that. :|

I know, I know... just getting old.

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And Morrowind should've been on my list of strange RPGs. It wasn't dark but it was magnificent... I'll never forget the first time I looked up and saw my first silt strider, or the strange jellyfish creatures I encountered when scouting the swamps, or tackling the Ministry of Truth floating high above vivec. That game was so amazingly exotic in its visuals, its architecture, and even its people. By comparison Oblivion was something of a let down.
 

remnant_phoenix

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Apr 4, 2011
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Ixal said:
remnant_phoenix said:
Yeah, I agree with him. I just wanted to point out in particular the "I wasn't having fun!" thing, because I think the principle of "games should first and foremost be fun" is overlooked in the industry AND the gaming population.
When I play Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter 4 without bothering to read up any of the combos and other functions of the game I will also not have fun. But whos fault is that?
Its especially bad as in previous reviews he complained about games holding the players hand too much.
You have a good point there, but I'm gonna go ahead and play devil's advocate to see where this goes. Thus, I pose you this question: In a world where there are literally millions of possible gaming experiences to be had, if you give a game a few hours of your time and conclude (for whatever reason) that you're just not having fun and you don't expect that to change, why dedicate any more of your finite existence to playing it? Why not just move on to the next game?
 

Ixal

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Mar 19, 2008
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remnant_phoenix said:
Ixal said:
remnant_phoenix said:
Yeah, I agree with him. I just wanted to point out in particular the "I wasn't having fun!" thing, because I think the principle of "games should first and foremost be fun" is overlooked in the industry AND the gaming population.
When I play Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter 4 without bothering to read up any of the combos and other functions of the game I will also not have fun. But whos fault is that?
Its especially bad as in previous reviews he complained about games holding the players hand too much.
You have a good point there, but I'm gonna go ahead and play devil's advocate to see where this goes. Thus, I pose you this question: In a world where there are literally millions of possible gaming experiences to be had, if you give a game a few hours of your time and conclude (for whatever reason) that you're just not having fun and you don't expect that to change, why dedicate any more of your finite existence to playing it? Why not just move on to the next game?
When you play for entertainment you of course should not play something you don't like (but then, Yaahtzee gets paid to play games, so this doesn't even apply). But in my opinion it was not the games fault Yahtzee did not have fun, but his fault for not bothering to inform himself. Like with not reading the combos (or just which button is punch & kick and which one block) in Street Fighter 4 one fails to have fun mainly because you don't care about the game from the start.

I ask you, is Street Fighter 4 a bad game because there is no tutorial explaining every button and combo? When I go to a Mortal Kombat forum and say "This game is bad because the game does not tell be which button is punch and which one is kick. It also sucks because it doesn't have a tutorial which tells me every single combo for the character I play. And how should I remember what a combo called 'Windy Palm' does" what do you think would happen? Do you really think I would have a point? Or wouldn't the fans who would answer "Dude, MK is a great game, but have to read the manual, learn the combos and test the characters to find the one which suits you first" be correct?