Thank you for that edit. A lot of the game's detractors in this thread seem to be under the impression that they can prove the game is impossible to like or enjoy. It's very strange. Personally, while I loved it, I can entirely see why people might not be comfortable with it. This is exacerbated by the fact that a lot of the "wrongs" people keep bringing up as evidence of the game being poor do turn out to be things I actually liked about the game's narrative. Proof positive of people liking different things.nuttshell said:
Zero Punctuation: Top 5 Games of 2013
- Thread starter Yahtzee Croshaw
- Start date
Recommended Videos
I didn't read the entire thread but the few posts I did read, it seems like the discussion is going on like every other BI thread I read 'till now: a few good points and a lot of poor ones, like the post you quoted previously. If "the devs fear of alienating conservatives" is why somebody thinks the story is bad, I don't know, I guess, it's en vogue to not like the game but if you don't understand why people critisize it, you would be better off liking it instead and maybe enjoying another playthrough.Azahul said:
You are the counter hipster.AldUK said:
You did not find it fun. Therefore, it cannot be fun. The people who claims it is are fooling themselves for indie-points. You just know better.
That is the type of snorting elitism that the mythical hipster is so disliked for, isn't it?
Of course, I am the one truly fooling myself for expecting any sort of response, I suppose.
With COD Ghosts though, it was like Spec Ops the Line done straight. It wasn't just depressing, but nationalistically depressing. The same trappings of the Line with more linearity as you can't choose how you want to suffer. That is what bugs me with some of you guys saying how COD is America Fuck Yeah when it is most of the time AMERICA FUCK NOOOOO!!!! since rarely we see the main character coming home alive with medals being handed out and a nice bit of R&R before going back to earn more bank. Instead they died unremembered and failed to accomplish their mission.
I've really enjoyed Ghost's multiplayer, but I haven't played the single-player game. Perhaps it's really terrible? Now I'm unsure if I even want to play the single player bit.
But let's be honest, millions of people don't buy the franchise because the single-player mode is any good. If you like COD's multiplayer FPS style then this is as good as it gets.
Biggest disappointment from my side? That it dropped the local 4-player mode. Something I used all the time. It did up the number of bots and still local 2-player. But COD used to be my easy party game for four friends at any time with the bottom two passing the controller.
However, on a positive, side, the little alien side game they have (Extinction) is a lot more palateable to me than the previous zombie side games.
But let's be honest, millions of people don't buy the franchise because the single-player mode is any good. If you like COD's multiplayer FPS style then this is as good as it gets.
Biggest disappointment from my side? That it dropped the local 4-player mode. Something I used all the time. It did up the number of bots and still local 2-player. But COD used to be my easy party game for four friends at any time with the bottom two passing the controller.
However, on a positive, side, the little alien side game they have (Extinction) is a lot more palateable to me than the previous zombie side games.
Single Player campaign is as depressing as the Line. But then again, Modern Warfare COD has been rather bleak and depressing despite Yahtzee's idea of Jingoism. If it was Jingoism, the soldiers will actually come back with flawless victories. COD has anything but flawless victory.Lightknight said:
That doesn't necessarily sound like a bad thing. Though your comment seems neutral to where I suspect that's your point. That it's a matter of taste in whether or not games need to be flawless wins wrapped up for the player to relish or if they can have failures and shortcomings that force perspective.gyrobot said:
All i am saying is Yahtzee thinks COD Ghosts is America Fuck yeah when so war IW depicts it as anything but fuck yeah. Givdn how horriying the losses are on your side.Lightknight said:
Damnit I thought the days of disliking something popular just to be mysterious were over. Nope, Bioshock doesn't rate anywhere near my top 5. Well, come to think of it it might because it had decent gameplay and nothing came out this year. The story though rates piss-poor in my book. Oh well, I'm sure no one wants to lend me a soap box to extol my displeasure.
I guess just looking at my steam list State of Decay might be my top game for 2013.
I guess just looking at my steam list State of Decay might be my top game for 2013.
Did not expect Bioshock to be his number one. Of the games I played this year that actually came out this year, it was probably my favorite though. I also was surprised to see Beyond Two Souls on the worst list. Don't get me wrong, I didn't think it was great (though I did really enjoy it), but I didn't think it was particularly bad either. I've never quite understood why David Cage games get so much more hate than Telltale games. I felt Beyond Two Souls had considerably more interaction than The Walking Dead, and found it more entertaining. And that's from someone who hates QTE
Well to be honest, he isn't a fan of American's nationalism. Even though Ghosts is as far from that. Showing a desperate struggle by the US against a large threatRobfromtheGulag said:
HOLY SHIZ! Someone other than myself mentioned it on this forum. Same as you, I'm bewildered by how few people know of it. Especially Yahtzee since its made by the same guys who worked on Hard Reset & Painkiller. I got a feeling they took notes from Yahtzee's review of Hard Reset.Adam Jensen said:
Hah, don't feel too bad, that's par for the course for most of us. I have yet to play half of what I've bought.Johnny Novgorod said:
On the other hand, I must be one of those weirdos who only liked Bioshock Infinite a reasonable amount. I found it a fun enough and competent game.
However, I am not in the camp of people who still thinks about the game, or found it some profound entry that remolds the landscape of videogaming.
Perhaps I feel this way b/c the buildup to its release raised a different series of expectations in me. Either way, still a competent game. And on the bright side, perhaps both DLC's will be out by the time to get to play it.
I was not thinking of Metal Gear until now, but now am interested. Ride to Hell: Retribution was a new one for me as I only hear extremely bad things about. I also have to get to Bioshock infinite, but caps I can only get to 5-10 games a month, tiny games.
Alright before I go into a general response here I'll give you the ending in a nutshell in the spoiler space belowcanadamus_prime said:
SPOILER WARNING (in case it doesn't work)
The basic "gist" of "Bioshock: Infinite" is that there are limitless numbers of worlds where the conflict involving Columbia is raging, leading to things where it destroys the US or whatever. Succeeding or failing in any given world is more or less irrelevant since the problems continue in all the other worlds. Thus the struggle through the entire game is meaningless and the only real "solution" is to effectively kill off Booker during the crucial moment that potentially turns him into Comstock, ending the entire conflict. Of course doing this in ONE reality wouldn't matter so you basically have all Elizabeths everywhere in all realities everywhere strangling all Bookers everywhere. The Booker you play (where this realization is reached) heroically sacrifices himself towards that end, though I suppose the same couldn't be said for the other realities. It should be noted that as a result of this Elizabeth herself will arguably die, at least as we know her, or at least create one hell of a paradox (which the game seems to float around).
Of course there is *some* question as to whether this worked or not as at the very end we have a sort of flashback scene showing an altered timeline where Booker hears Anna (Elizabeth) crying, apparently surprised, leading one to believe she re-appeared after he supposedly sold her. Booker and Elizabeth thus apparently live on in at least one timeline. It remains to be seen if "Burial At Sea" will eventually resolve or further explain the ramifications
inherent in the "extra scene". At any rate that's the basics.
As I said from pretty much day #1 it was a cop out ending, they basically wanted to do something "profound" so they decided to go with a trippy "everything you did arguably does not matter" reality warper, which might have been cool if variations on it hadn't been done so many times before. I consider it a very, very, bad ending attached to an otherwise decent game.
Of course there is *some* question as to whether this worked or not as at the very end we have a sort of flashback scene showing an altered timeline where Booker hears Anna (Elizabeth) crying, apparently surprised, leading one to believe she re-appeared after he supposedly sold her. Booker and Elizabeth thus apparently live on in at least one timeline. It remains to be seen if "Burial At Sea" will eventually resolve or further explain the ramifications
inherent in the "extra scene". At any rate that's the basics.
As I said from pretty much day #1 it was a cop out ending, they basically wanted to do something "profound" so they decided to go with a trippy "everything you did arguably does not matter" reality warper, which might have been cool if variations on it hadn't been done so many times before. I consider it a very, very, bad ending attached to an otherwise decent game.
-
I don't have a lot of time, but to answer a few questions about things like "How "Ghosts" could score so highly despite being panned here" understand that politics enters into it. Yahtzee, and other reviewers that pan "Ghost" do so largely for political reasons. You'll notice they go on endlessly about pro-Americanism, and how it's always the white Americans who are heroes, and how "paranoid" it is to present other nations as an aggressive military threat (even as real world tensions are building) and so on. Very little is generally said about the gameplay, not to mention that such reviews tend to overlook the other 50% of the population (perhaps more) that happens to disagree with the statements being made. I mean even now we have tons of tensions with Mexico and South America, immigration enforcement problems, saber rattling over trying to "re-conquer Texas" (long story, it's so far a fringe thing) and other issues. "Ghost" was pretty much the end of say "Machete" in reverse, where the Mexicans/South Americans "invading" the US are portrayed as being the bad guys, and rather than in an over the top "exploitation" movie it's done with a Tom Clancy/James Bond type flair involving control of a US created super weapon (which vaguely reminds me of "Goldeneye") which is used on the US,
and then used on South America when control of it is regained as a way of ending the war. In short of you lean towards the left wing "peace at any price" movement, and particularly if you combine it with demanding legalization of illegal immigrants as opposed to deportion (and probably cheered for the political aspects of something like "Machete") your going to find "Ghost" a problem since it represents pretty much the opposite of everything you want to believe. The observant will also notice the whole comment about hating Chinese people Yahtzee inserted, but again that comes down to conflicts with China's robber economy, it's military build up, and increasing belligerence which has lead to them recently contesting US territory (Japan's territory is basically US territory given that we largely use Japan as our major foothold into the eastern world). Basically any kind of Pro-American game involving anything remotely connected to the real world tends to get attacked... including by left wingers into the US... and also a lot of the reviewers knocking this kind of stuff (like Yahtzee) aren't American to begin with.
Whether you agree with me on a lot of the specifics, understand it's not about quality or the type of game it is (personally I don't care for FPS shooters) it's entirely about the premise, and honestly most reviews tend to be pretty straightforward about it. Yahtzee seems to be fairly clear on that point in particular. The basic impression I get from assorted reviews is that if you want a decent FPS game and like the "Call Of Duty" gameplay style and formula, this is a decent game, it doesn't do anything radical, but polishes up and inserts some balance revisions into a classic formula. If your politically on the left, or tend to be at least moderately anti-American you'll hate the single player campaign, in part because it's not rehashing the same points made in previous games in terms of left wing War/Nukes are bad. Rather it's balancing the scales by showing things from the other direction for a change.
As far as "Road To Hell: Retribution" goes, I think it fairly deserves the flak it's getting. The problem is that the game fundamentally does not work, it's a broken, clunky, poorly designed mess. When it comes to the content that's probably less of a factor because the target audience seemed to be fans of things like "Sons Of Anarchy" with you stepping into the role of a villain more than a politically correct "lone wolf" you have to expect it to be pretty offensive on a basic level. The trick to something like that is to get you to like the bad guys despite being terrible, terrible, people and want to see them succeed anyway, it's very difficult to do, and they apparently failed here. Case in point for example in "Sons of Anarchy" there was a big thing where one of the "Sons" was temporarily ratting on them because the cops found out one of his grandparents (I think it was) wasn't white. While the sons were not a strictly "Aryan" gang they were "Whites only" and this information could in theory get him killed, or at least exiled as a traitor (and one "traitor" they dealt with had his tats forcibly removed with a blowtorch when he refused to remove them himself, albeit it wasn't the same kind of situation... but you can see why he'd be worried). This was resolved later when it was mentioned by I think Tig (Sergeant At Arms, basically 3rd in command) that it wasn't a big deal because if he was "white enough to list yourself that way on paperwork, your white enough for us" or something to that effect.... the backlash over this story arc/subplot was minimal, and kind of says something about the audience for crime drama when you expect the bad guys to be well... not good. The point here being that I don't think the content of this game was as big a deal as some said, if they had managed to make a good game out of it, it probably would have succeeded for a niche audience.... but they didn't, and really "Deep Silver" should by all accounts be ashamed of the quality of the game itself.
Yeah, ok, however the game skilfully avoids explaining how, not only is there reality shifting, but also time travel involved. And one thing that bugs me is how Booker figures he can solve all his problems by just shifting to another reality where the problem is already solved. Also I'm rather unclear as to how people in one reality would feel the deaths of their counterparts in another reality. That doesn't make sense to me.Therumancer said:
Time travel: Universes could be out of temporal sync with one another. Time travel could be observed as the result of moving to a reality that started its calendar and technological advances sooner or later than others.canadamus_prime said:
Booker: He's not a good person. Booker is violent, angry and he tends to act before thinking, which is why he assumes he can solve all his problems in another reality. And it has a tendency to not work out for him because of it.
Including when he becomes Comstock.
Universe connections: Same way that the coin always comes up heads: That's just how Infinite's multiverse theory works.
It does raise a bit of a plot hole, though:leet_x1337 said:
There's an alternate reality where the Vox killed almost all the Columbia guards. How come all the guards in the universe we start the game in are perfectly healthy until Booker takes care of them?