I registered just to say, you know, we use the word "genius" today with abandon, but for you, the word falls short. By a lot. A LOT. Mega-props from across the seas to a guy who is so damn incredible he needs a new f-ing word to describe how awesome he is.
Zero Punctuation: The Witcher
- Thread starter Yahtzee Croshaw
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This is a game, not food. The same with movies, books, CDs, theatre... Whoever said that you could give an honest review of any of these forms of entertainment without experiencing the entire product is a fool. Does anybody remember Jedi Knight 2: Jedi Outcast? That starts out EXTREMELY SLOW. I'ts around the 4th stage or so that you get you're hands on a lightsabre and some force powers, afterwards the game truely shines. Now think of a review of that game where the reviewer didn't have the patience to get past the first 4 stages... Missinformation is a dull affair indeed.Vitalix said:
hey, to all the mmorpg fans out there i bet the witcher is a good game. the problem is that most sane people don't have the time, pacience or interest to devote their life to a video game.
Starting slow is not the problem...the clunky controls and menus and needlessly dragged out areas of gameplay design that make the game feel like work are what keeps this game around a 5-7.laikenf said:
I'll second that. Not because I agree with everything said, just because he makes truly amazing reviews that express his personal beliefs. Not the beliefs of the people paying him.justdan said:
Yahtzee, I'm a big fan of your work and I can't possibly blame you that you didn't get what The Witcher was all about. Your "first impression" was hilarious and for the most part coincides with my first impreesion of the game being a wacky ***** to handle.
However, a while back when you talked about the games-R-art hippies vs. the consoletards with the attention span of a fruit fly, I was left with the impression that you leaned towards ascribing yourself the former group, because you said you liked the game in question for what it tried to achieve rather than being put off by its shortcomings.
That's why I don't get this "review". The Witcher, however unorthodox, is one of the most rewarding games I've played in ages, but it doesn't give up the prize easily. It requires quite an effort on the player's part, and, granted, you have better things to do with your time than dig up diamonds in a digital pile of shit, the honest thing to do would be to give it a closer (or at least a lenghtier) look. The way it stands it's just unprofessional on your part. Or maybe you did find some of its redeeming qualities and have explicitly chosen not to mention them? Now that would be plain crass.
Of course, everyone's entitled to an opinion, it's just that yours matters to a lot of people.
The Painkiller bit on the other hand was pure genius!
However, a while back when you talked about the games-R-art hippies vs. the consoletards with the attention span of a fruit fly, I was left with the impression that you leaned towards ascribing yourself the former group, because you said you liked the game in question for what it tried to achieve rather than being put off by its shortcomings.
That's why I don't get this "review". The Witcher, however unorthodox, is one of the most rewarding games I've played in ages, but it doesn't give up the prize easily. It requires quite an effort on the player's part, and, granted, you have better things to do with your time than dig up diamonds in a digital pile of shit, the honest thing to do would be to give it a closer (or at least a lenghtier) look. The way it stands it's just unprofessional on your part. Or maybe you did find some of its redeeming qualities and have explicitly chosen not to mention them? Now that would be plain crass.
Of course, everyone's entitled to an opinion, it's just that yours matters to a lot of people.
The Painkiller bit on the other hand was pure genius!
>Not because I agree with everything said, just because he makes truly amazing reviews that express his
>personal beliefs.Not the beliefs of the people paying him.
Are you sure? He said in one of his first reviews - "I learned from my Psychonauts review that nobody likes me when I'm being nice to a game".
When the monkey gallery jumps and shrieks with approval (I count myself there the more mean he is and that turns into more page hits for The Escapist, don't you think he would feel a little pressure to continue looking for bad things in all games rather than good? And isn't that also selling out a little bit, though it is giving the viewers exactly what they want rather than the publishers?
>personal beliefs.Not the beliefs of the people paying him.
Are you sure? He said in one of his first reviews - "I learned from my Psychonauts review that nobody likes me when I'm being nice to a game".
When the monkey gallery jumps and shrieks with approval (I count myself there
the more mean he is and that turns into more page hits for The Escapist, don't you think he would feel a little pressure to continue looking for bad things in all games rather than good? And isn't that also selling out a little bit, though it is giving the viewers exactly what they want rather than the publishers?Yahtzee obviously didn't like the game, couldn't get into it and thusly found it a huge waste of his time. It seems like everyone here either appreciates his humour (myself included) or is being unkind and denigrating about the review. Where did it say you had to agree with his reviews? If you want say, "Hey, I thought the witcher was damn fun!" go ahead, don't whine that his review was bad because you enjoyed the game, it's a matter of preference. His review illustrated some of the points that made it unenjoyable for him, but you might think it doesn't sound too bad.
Hell, I love JRPGs which Yahtzee's stated he hates, (although he agrees with me that Earthbound rocks). Am I mad he trashed the entire genre I love? No, so what? You need to learn to treat each review as a single individual's opinion, you can let it influence you to buy a game or not, but realize that you don't have to agree to be entertained by it. I still believe these to be serious reviews and no less professional than any other, but they're also enjoyable just as entertainment pieces regardless.
And when you ***** about him being mean to everything, well yes, he can be. He can also treat a game well, like Portal for instance. Hell, if he had been doing these back when Silent Hill 2 came out I'd bet that he'd give it a pretty good review, although I can imagine him pointing out the fact that James steers like a drunken cow most of the time. We actually learn more about whether or not we'd like a game by listing it's negative points. I've read reviews calling something stellar, but upon buying the game I find the controls suck and the combat is frustrating, and I sit there wishing I'd been warned. Yahtzee is telling me all the things he found frustrating in a game, and I can gauge by these points whether or not it's something I'd still want to give a go.
So it has some slogging through hordes of monsters to collect pointless artifacts? Okay, sure, I can handle that, after all I play a lot of JRPGs. Are the controls overly complex and make the learning difficulty of a game spike wildly into the heavens? No thanks, I'll try something else. I find these reviews endlessly entertaining, and they give me cautions about why I might not like a game, but I can pick and choose whether or not those points will detract from the experience for me.
So cut him some slack. Don't expect to always agree with him, and when you don't just shrug it off and at least try to laugh. And if you can't....well, I suggest you pulling your head out of your ass first, it might help.
Hell, I love JRPGs which Yahtzee's stated he hates, (although he agrees with me that Earthbound rocks). Am I mad he trashed the entire genre I love? No, so what? You need to learn to treat each review as a single individual's opinion, you can let it influence you to buy a game or not, but realize that you don't have to agree to be entertained by it. I still believe these to be serious reviews and no less professional than any other, but they're also enjoyable just as entertainment pieces regardless.
And when you ***** about him being mean to everything, well yes, he can be. He can also treat a game well, like Portal for instance. Hell, if he had been doing these back when Silent Hill 2 came out I'd bet that he'd give it a pretty good review, although I can imagine him pointing out the fact that James steers like a drunken cow most of the time. We actually learn more about whether or not we'd like a game by listing it's negative points. I've read reviews calling something stellar, but upon buying the game I find the controls suck and the combat is frustrating, and I sit there wishing I'd been warned. Yahtzee is telling me all the things he found frustrating in a game, and I can gauge by these points whether or not it's something I'd still want to give a go.
So it has some slogging through hordes of monsters to collect pointless artifacts? Okay, sure, I can handle that, after all I play a lot of JRPGs. Are the controls overly complex and make the learning difficulty of a game spike wildly into the heavens? No thanks, I'll try something else. I find these reviews endlessly entertaining, and they give me cautions about why I might not like a game, but I can pick and choose whether or not those points will detract from the experience for me.
So cut him some slack. Don't expect to always agree with him, and when you don't just shrug it off and at least try to laugh. And if you can't....well, I suggest you pulling your head out of your ass first, it might help.
Silverookami
I like RPGs and I find the witcher average....hell most JRPGs are grind whores now a days theres lil fun to be had its all about power grinding for one thing or another and strategy in combat is mindless button whacking..or in FF12s case let it play with itself wat the hell happened to FF the equipment ,spells and items were once upon a time the best in RPGs and now its MMO style water torture....uuhgggg
I like RPGs and I find the witcher average....hell most JRPGs are grind whores now a days theres lil fun to be had its all about power grinding for one thing or another and strategy in combat is mindless button whacking..or in FF12s case let it play with itself wat the hell happened to FF the equipment ,spells and items were once upon a time the best in RPGs and now its MMO style water torture....uuhgggg
Silverookami
I don't think people object to him reviewing or the game, but he hardly delved into it and it's not really enough to put the disclaimer 'first impressions' on the review and think that gives a license to rip into it at length. The disappointment for those of us who have played the game through is that in our eyes he's missing a treat, because the game delivers the very sort of game play experiences he was bemoaning weren't in Fable, or Mass Effect (choices...that actually matter). Sure, The Witcher isn't perfect, but the picture painted is more than unfair, and the fact is that lots of people are going to be put off of buying the game, simply because the guy dismissed it so thoroughly. It's unfair to the developers and unfair to the viewers.
I don't think people object to him reviewing or the game, but he hardly delved into it and it's not really enough to put the disclaimer 'first impressions' on the review and think that gives a license to rip into it at length. The disappointment for those of us who have played the game through is that in our eyes he's missing a treat, because the game delivers the very sort of game play experiences he was bemoaning weren't in Fable, or Mass Effect (choices...that actually matter). Sure, The Witcher isn't perfect, but the picture painted is more than unfair, and the fact is that lots of people are going to be put off of buying the game, simply because the guy dismissed it so thoroughly. It's unfair to the developers and unfair to the viewers.
It is perfectly fair to the devs who failed to help or encourage Yahtzee to get the treat in the first couple of hours, never mind in the first 30 minutes.Kadayi said:
The Offspring aren't emo, you twit, they're post-grunge/punk revival. Emo is horrors like Fall Out Boy and Rites of Spring.Chis said:
On a side note, I'd like to say it's ridiculous to write a character who looks like Kain from Blood Omen and wears a Cenobite leather dress as a stud.
For the most part, I'm enjoying The Witcher, but come on. It has its flaws. The dialogue is often outright bizarre, the voice acting is awful and the protagonist (who ISN'T Elric - just some other lanky white-haired brooding antihero nicknamed White Wolf) earns sexy trading cards by sleeping with anything that moves. It's an enjoyable RPG, but sometimes it crosses the line into unintentional comedy.
Okay, I can admit that nowadays a lot of the JRPGs are more about cashing in and grinding through 40 hours of game play, but I still find them preferable to their American counterparts, I can handle playing through slogging battles because I find the backstories and characters more interesting than the traditional heroes in American games who tend to be super soldier buff men, bland impersonal dumbasses, or women with a surplus of boobs and loose morals, which being a chick myself I find hardly appealing. (although I can admit JRPs find giving women huge boobies just as fascinating.)ZippyDSMlee said:
None of this changes the fact that I still love JRPGs, although I think they probably climaxed back with Earthbound.
Just chiming in to say that Witcher is in fact one of the best PC RPG's ever made. If you like games such as Baldur's Gate 2, Planescape:Torment, KOTOR and so forth, chances are you'd like this.
The controls and UI aren't bad at all actually, if only in that there are too many alchemy components for too few inventory slots.
Best part are the story and how your decisions in the game will shape it.. that's pretty special, or at least feels like it.
The controls and UI aren't bad at all actually, if only in that there are too many alchemy components for too few inventory slots.
Best part are the story and how your decisions in the game will shape it.. that's pretty special, or at least feels like it.