Zero Punctuation: Top 5 of 2011

[Niccolo]

Skyrim FREEZES? I thought Bethesda was over "New Vegas" levels of glitchiness! I thought that Skyrim's worst bugs were along the lines of "hovering ground ladies" or spinning horsemen (as seen in a Youtube video).

Has anyone else had serious glitches with Skyrim? I'm starting to doubt whether I should get it if it's going to crash on me.

It's nowhere near New Vegas level of glitchiness. Obsidian (The guys properly in charge of making NV) shat themselves badly on that one.

Skyrim bugs out a little every now and then and every now and then makes a concerted effort to up and die... but honestly? I've only had it happen to me maybe once every six or eight hours, maximum. Normally I can play for an entire day without seeing a single issue (except for something odd like my companion runs like the legions of Hell are on his heels, only to return a minute later).

 

[jawakiller]

He enjoys multiplayer that tends towards cooperation rather than free-for-alls.

I can totally see how MW3 is a free for all with teams but BF3 is definitely a team based game.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: there's no such thing as an invalid opinion, only opinions that you disagree with.

Moving on.

Now, I'm not going to lie: I've never played Call of Duty, Team Fortress 2, or Battlefield for any extended period of time. The last multiplayer shooter I spent any decent amount of time playing was Tribes 2. But I honestly can't blame Yahtzee for assuming that Battlefield's multiplayer would be exactly like Call of Duty's. All of the advertisements made the whole affair seem like one of those ripoff DVDs you see in the checkout aisle of the supermarket with names like "Transmorphers", intended to deceive clueless grandmothers into buying the wrong gift for little Johnny. They really seemed to be trying to cater to Call of Duty's fanbase.

And remember, Yahtzee never claimed to be reviewing the multiplayer aspect of CoD or Battlefield anyway, he was only criticizing their single player components.

And this would be akin to only trying the training simulator in TF2. If you really want to see if a shooter is well created, you have to play with other people. Period. You can't play one part of the game (a part that the genre is weak on, no less) and expect skyrim. Skyrim only had one section to focus on so yes, you only have to play the single player. All the effort involved in that game went straight into the single player experience.

Which is why I think he shouldn't review multiplayer based shooters. He doesn't review them "right." Sure it's funny but if you only played the blacksmithing portion of Skyrim... You're not gonna like the game (unless you're easily entertained). Should they be cheaper? Absolutely but I'm a broke college student, I think everything should be cheaper.

And your whole attitude towards a biased opinion is strange. If you hate a particular genre (he hates most military fps) you can't accurately review it. Like I said, I can't stand most Japanese games, any review I made would be very negative. And it wouldn't help anybody. So, there is invalid opinions, not because they are different but because they have an extremely biased approach.

You said he probably didn't play the multiplayer because he thought it would be the same s CoD? That's why he shouldn't review these games, any self respecting reviewer would play both not assume they would be the same.

And Battlefield 1942 came out a year before the original Call of Duty. So saying they're a wannabe is a bit cruel.

 

[Jezzascmezza]

This was one of the best ZP videos in a long time; the "titles" that accompanied each number were all hilarious.
If only the video was just a bit longer; Yahtzee literally only said a couple of sentences for some of the games...

 

[IncredibleKoosh]

I'll never understand why the people who do not like Call of Duty (and similar games) feel the need to ram that opinion down everyone's throats.

And I'll never understand why fans of those games take any criticism of them so personally.

 

[Phoenixlight]

You really need to give people more time to read some of the text in that video, pausing it every few seconds is really annoying.

 

[FamoFunk]

Agree so, so much with Portal 2 being GoTY. Completely blows the others out of the water.

 

[A1]

Every year there's that one game that I DON'T regret buying. In 2011, that game was portal 2. Good choice.

Skyrim FREEZES? I thought Bethesda was over "New Vegas" levels of glitchiness! I thought that Skyrim's worst bugs were along the lines of "hovering ground ladies" or spinning horsemen (as seen in a Youtube video).

Has anyone else had serious glitches with Skyrim? I'm starting to doubt whether I should get it if it's going to crash on me.

If you're on the PC, wait for the modders to fix it.

If you have a 360, play it for 10 mins at a time so it doesn't melt.

If you have a ps3, avoid it like the plague.

They say patch 1.4 will "address" it which means that they can't "fix" it.

I'm guessing they didn't send Yhatzee the ps3 copy...
Oh yea, he's a reviewer.

Can't fix what is fundamentally a hardware issue. Unless they send someone in your house to shove more RAM into your PS3 it is quite likely that there won't be any massive improvement.

All of the versions of the game have been experiencing bugs and glitches. And the PS3 actually has the same total amount of RAM as the Xbox 360, it's just divided into two halves whereas in the 360 it's bunched together and shared. The PS3's RAM is also faster and more efficient than that of the Xbox 360.

The problem isn't the hardware or RAM. It's the game itself.

 

[Xanadu84]

On the other hand he predictably pulled out the kneejerk, cliche criticism of 2 well designed games that don't match his tastes, and pulled out the ""theres too many military shooters"argument on the game that has been doing this since forever, and the game that started the trend.

How can it be kneejerk if he's been doing it forever?

Also, he liked MW 1.

So modern warfare 1 was good in his eyes.

And MW3 has stayed very similar to MW1.

So why is one good, one bad?

Yahtzee is essentially criticizing modern warfare for being so good it was copied. Imagine if at work, you cleaned a table that desperately needed cleaning. Only afterwards, all your co workers re cleaned the table, and then YOU got fired for doing unneccisary work. MW3 did what it set out to do very well. And this kneejerk blame of modern warfare for being to popular and profitable is nonsense, because it shoots at a big popular target, granting the attacker a little Indies cred all while ignoring any attempt at actual understanding.

 

[RagnarokHybrid]

That was a close one. I seriously thought he was going to slap Skyward Sword, one of my personal games of the year, up on his list of bottom 5 for the year, considering the thrashing he gave it.

Maybe I should try Driver: San Francisco...

I think he thought it was just "bottom 5" with relation to other Zelda titles. He probably doesn't even think about it on its own.

Portal 2 for the win. Amen to that.

 

[Primus1985]

*Sigh* I not surprised Skyrim got pushed back to 5th(He must be playing the PC or Ps3 version my 360 version has almost no bugs), what I am surprised by is what pushed it back.

Bastion? Portal2? Holy crapsticks, I guess Yahtzee is turning into a big reviewer snob. Bastion is ok but nothing about it deserves the heaps of praise and awards the industry keeps piling on. Portal 2, christ give me a break, I guess Im the only one that has never thought that much about Portal. A short, frustrating game that is very bland and easily forgotten. Portal 2, with all its new scenery and junk is hardly any better.


Im kinda shocked Batman: Arkham City isnt on the Top 5 list somewhere, I mean for me B:AC and Skyrim are the only contenders for best game of 2011 hands down.

 

[cefm]

It was perhaps inevitable and predictable that Bowel Movement 3 and Modern Woman 3 would take the "worst game of the year" prize from Yahtzee.

Neither one are by any means bad games from the technical standpoint in that they don't break much and have decent graphics and gameplay (those are the standard pit-falls of truly badly MADE games in that they are essentially un-playable).

But they represent a larger failure of the game manufacturing community to have the imagination and daring to make truly good games or the game buying community to prove itself worthy of deserving truly good games, it is always worth highlighting that two of the biggest selling titles of the year actually represent a massive leap backwards into stagnation rather than any significant progress in the making of or playing of games.

Plus, Yahtzee doesn't like shooters.

 

[A1]

*Sigh* I not surprised Skyrim got pushed back to 5th(He must be playing the PC or Ps3 version my 360 version has almost no bugs), what I am surprised by is what pushed it back.

Bastion? Portal2? Holy crapsticks, I guess Yahtzee is turning into a big reviewer snob. Bastion is ok but nothing about it deserves the heaps of praise and awards the industry keeps piling on. Portal 2, christ give me a break, I guess Im the only one that has never thought that much about Portal. A short, frustrating game that is very bland and easily forgotten. Portal 2, with all its new scenery and junk is hardly any better.


Im kinda shocked Batman: Arkham City isnt on the Top 5 list somewhere, I mean for me B:AC and Skyrim are the only contenders for best game of 2011 hands down.

Actually, I didn't find it shocking at all that Arkham City isn't there. It's not that Yahtzee didn't like it or didn't think it was good. The problem is that Yahtzee most likely found it to be too similar to it's predecessor Arkham Asylum. That's pretty much how Yahtzee rolls. Even if a game is good if it's essentially just following it's predecessors lead then it's the predecessor that really deserves the credit. And Arkham Asylum was a 2010 game so it's not eligible for a 2011 list. Or at least Yahtzee's view is something like that anyway.

 

[grey_side]

There's this comment I've wanted to make since the MW3/B3 review. It's about lines like this:

Let me just say that if realism is a make or break factor for you in a game about shooting enough foreigners to be classified as a medium sized natural disaster, then you're exactly the kind of gamer that the rest of us disassociate ourselves from when the mainstream media find out about you.

And this:

Modern Borefare and Twattlefield not only show that people should stop making realistic shooters but also make a convincing case that people should stop existing generally.

I won't say anything for or against MW3 or BF3, since I played neither, but hating gameplay itself because it's shifted towards the realistic end of the scale (and to the point of accusing those who like it of being freaks compared to "the rest of us") is beyond my understanding. How does Yahtzee not get that people might just find realism fun? It's another kind of design approach. It's enormously entertaining if done right.

Now, I played no CoD since 2 and only a little of BF2 and 2142, so I wouldn't know what the series got to, but I do play Arma 2 and although it's indeed about "shooting foreigners" it's the realism that makes it as entertaining as it is. The open spaces, the need to think and make every bullet count, and so forth. It's the point of the game, and if one finds that kind of gameplay entertaining does it make him some kind of FPS heretic? Yes, I liked Painkiller very much. Am I not allowed to like games on the opposite end of the design philosophy? Besides, I like the STALKER games too, and those are pretty high on realism as well. Does a game need zombies and a post-apocalyptic setting to make realism acceptable?

Let me put it another way. Let's say you like arcade flying simulations but aren't worth a damn at IL-2. Do you go on and say that those who like IL-2, a game about shooting foreigners in aeroplanes, are "exactly the kind of gamers that the rest of us disassociate ourselves from when the mainstream media find out about them"?

 

[Amaror]

He didn't like Bulletstorm, Killzone 3, Brink, DNF, Red Faction, Dead Island, Resistance 3, Hard Reset, Rage, BF3, MW3, Gears 3.
Games he did like this year? Crysis 2, Fear 3 (sort of), Portal 2, Serious Sam 3.

He did like Resistance 3 and Hard Reset, watch the reviews again.

 

[Samus Aran but a man]

Portal 2 is by far the best game of the year. Great list, Mr Yahtzee sir

 

[Breno]

surprised to see no batman......seing as it won one already and this years one was "better" also infamous is amazing! i played trough it twice in 2 days maybe because it comes at good time of the year anyway i know yatzee is'nt really a professional reviewer or hes a differant reviewer but hating a game just cause it populer? seems to hipstir hes hating gaming commuity as a whole and by the way he loved cod 4....just saying

 

[icaritos]

Every year there's that one game that I DON'T regret buying. In 2011, that game was portal 2. Good choice.

Skyrim FREEZES? I thought Bethesda was over "New Vegas" levels of glitchiness! I thought that Skyrim's worst bugs were along the lines of "hovering ground ladies" or spinning horsemen (as seen in a Youtube video).

Has anyone else had serious glitches with Skyrim? I'm starting to doubt whether I should get it if it's going to crash on me.

If you're on the PC, wait for the modders to fix it.

If you have a 360, play it for 10 mins at a time so it doesn't melt.

If you have a ps3, avoid it like the plague.

They say patch 1.4 will "address" it which means that they can't "fix" it.

I'm guessing they didn't send Yhatzee the ps3 copy...
Oh yea, he's a reviewer.

Can't fix what is fundamentally a hardware issue. Unless they send someone in your house to shove more RAM into your PS3 it is quite likely that there won't be any massive improvement.

All of the versions of the game have been experiencing bugs and glitches. And the PS3 actually has the same total amount of RAM as the Xbox 360, it's just divided into two halves whereas in the 360 it's bunched together and shared. The PS3's RAM is also faster and more efficient than that of the Xbox 360.

The problem isn't the hardware or RAM. It's the game itself.

Bull crap. The PC version of the game has been one of the least buggy ones of all elder scroll games, with less bugs per time played than read dead redemption. Even then the bugs are not game breaking and tend to be either graphical or NPC behavioural glitches. The only version suffering from game halting bugs are the 360 and PS3, and the 360 less so because it has 500mb of potential RAM rather than 256.

Don't talk out your ass, I have the PC version and my 2 other room-mates have the 360 version.

 

[Kanatatsu]

I'll never understand why the people who do not like Call of Duty (and similar games) feel the need to ram that opinion down everyone's throats.

And I'll never understand why fans of those games take any criticism of them so personally.

I'm not a fan of those games. I'm just tired of seeing the nonsense.

Calling MW3 the worst game of the year (that he's reviewed) is totally idiotic hyperbole.

Just let the millions of people who love that type of game enjoy themselves without trying to be the turd in their punchbowl because YOU don't happen to share their taste in games.

 

[Niccolo]

And this would be akin to only trying the training simulator in TF2. If you really want to see if a shooter is well created, you have to play with other people. Period. You can't play one part of the game (a part that the genre is weak on, no less) and expect skyrim. Skyrim only had one section to focus on so yes, you only have to play the single player. All the effort involved in that game went straight into the single player experience.

Which is why I think he shouldn't review multiplayer based shooters. He doesn't review them "right." Sure it's funny but if you only played the blacksmithing portion of Skyrim... You're not gonna like the game (unless you're easily entertained). Should they be cheaper? Absolutely but I'm a broke college student, I think everything should be cheaper.

I would LOVE Yahtzee to stop reviewing the CoD and BF games - but you msut remember; while he does have a certain amount of leeway and can ultimately say yay or nay to reviewing a game, there are some that he can't refuse to review without the jackasses who make up the reason he hates multiplayer igniting this entire website with whining rants about his unprofessional methods. For all he says he doesn't bow to fan pressure, I am quite sure that that is not always the case.

Really, the man's going to be called unprofessional no matter what he does - may as well get a few laughs from the rest of us, hm?

 

[A1]

Every year there's that one game that I DON'T regret buying. In 2011, that game was portal 2. Good choice.

Skyrim FREEZES? I thought Bethesda was over "New Vegas" levels of glitchiness! I thought that Skyrim's worst bugs were along the lines of "hovering ground ladies" or spinning horsemen (as seen in a Youtube video).

Has anyone else had serious glitches with Skyrim? I'm starting to doubt whether I should get it if it's going to crash on me.

If you're on the PC, wait for the modders to fix it.

If you have a 360, play it for 10 mins at a time so it doesn't melt.

If you have a ps3, avoid it like the plague.

They say patch 1.4 will "address" it which means that they can't "fix" it.

I'm guessing they didn't send Yhatzee the ps3 copy...
Oh yea, he's a reviewer.

Can't fix what is fundamentally a hardware issue. Unless they send someone in your house to shove more RAM into your PS3 it is quite likely that there won't be any massive improvement.

All of the versions of the game have been experiencing bugs and glitches. And the PS3 actually has the same total amount of RAM as the Xbox 360, it's just divided into two halves whereas in the 360 it's bunched together and shared. The PS3's RAM is also faster and more efficient than that of the Xbox 360.

The problem isn't the hardware or RAM. It's the game itself.

Bull crap. The PC version of the game has been one of the least buggy ones of all elder scroll games, with less bugs per time played than read dead redemption. Even then the bugs are not game breaking and tend to be either graphical or NPC behavioural glitches. The only version suffering from game halting bugs are the 360 and PS3, and the 360 less so because it has 500mb of potential RAM rather than 256.

Don't talk out your ass, I have the PC version and my 2 other room-mates have the 360 version.

As I said, all the versions have bugs and glitches. Although the console versions more so. And the PS3 has 512 mb of RAM split in two 256 RAM modules. And the PS3's RAM is much more fast and efficient than that of the Xbox 360. The RAM isn't the problem.

Bethesda has a reputation for releasing their games in buggy states. And the PS3 has been known to be harder to develop for in general than the 360 and this has been largely due to developers not really having known how to use it's hardware and features properly. Hence the PS3 getting a number of inferior ports early in it's life cycle. And to some extent you still see some of that going on today. So when taking all this into account it's not all that surprising that the PS3 version of a multi-platform game has once again gotten the short end of the stick.