Zero Punctuation: Transformers: War for Cybertron
- Thread starter Yahtzee Croshaw
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It was the 80's most people wouldn't understand and Prime dying was major as a kid. But Apollo Creed in Rocky 4 was worse. And as far as it being a cash grab to sell toys yeah it was... But at least we had better Cartoons in the 80's then the kids did in the 90's or even today. I watch some of the crap today and scratch my freaking head.
I don't understand how Yahtzee can go into a two-minute diatribe about exactly why Transformers fans are stupid mindless drones who can't see past their own nostalgia when he himself admits that he didn't know anything about Transformers. How can you be in any position to say what a franchise is and why fans are fools, when you admit you barely know anything about it? Very poor argument, and it comes across less like an actual point and more like unwarranted bitching about people liking something and you can't understand why, therefore you simply ascribe it to nostalgia and leave it at that.
Transformers has persisted since the '80s - contrary to popular perception, there hasn't been a time when Transformers has "gone away" like so many other '80s franchises - because there is something in the property that resonates. Not being able to understand what that is does not mean it's nostalgia and nothing else. If it was purely about selling toys, then it would've just gone the way of Dino-Riders, MASK and The Visionaries. Clearly there was something else at work here.
Transformers fiction started off as a way To Sell Toys to children. The series had rudimentary characters, but they were identifiable and memorable. It's a kid's show, after all. That doesn't mean it had to stay that way: with the G1 Marvel Comics and Beast Wars, Transformers started to add breadth and depth to their characters. They started to actually explain why they Transform, why they look humanoid despite being alien, why their vehicle modes have compartments that seem to serve no purpose save to hold human-sized beings, why the robots are at war in the first place. Sometimes the bad guys won, sometimes a Transformer would switch sides, sometimes the good guys would do bad things while the bad guys do good things, there would be lengthy character and story arcs, hi-SF concepts, musings on the nature of good and evil. Sure, it isn't Bester or Asimov, but it's better SF than most of the kid's SF that was around at the time.
I also find it kind of weird for Yahtzee to support the idea of humans in Transformers, since the Transformers are apparently impossible to relate to - this, despite most Transformers fans finding the robots the best thing about it, and the human characters largely superfluous and redundant. I find that sort of thinking really rather unimaginative, personally: by that logic, one would have to have a human character to "relate to" in any *franchise* that features non-humans as the primary characters. Kind of like how they had a white American male as the protagonist in Avatar: it's lazy and insulting, to assume the audience has no way of relating to anything that isn't just like them.
Also, Prime dying was a big thing. Name a kid's tv show of the '80s where the heroic main character - among many others - died ten minutes into the film. Not that many, right? This was a time when you couldn't actually use the word "death" or "kill" in kid's shows, and the Transformers film had the face of the entire franchise die - and he didn't come back at the end. Sure he came back *later* but that's like diminishing the death of Spock in Star Trek II because we have the benefit of hindsight.
The game sounds mostly like an exercise in fanservice for the TV show audience and some of the comic fans, and I think it does a disservice to the good Transformers fiction to simply go for the lowest common denominator. If WfC did a bad job of giving Yahtzee to care about Transformers, then that's a terrible shame, since there's a lot in the Transformers mythos worth ruminating over beyond Giant Robots Blowing Shit Up.
Transformers has persisted since the '80s - contrary to popular perception, there hasn't been a time when Transformers has "gone away" like so many other '80s franchises - because there is something in the property that resonates. Not being able to understand what that is does not mean it's nostalgia and nothing else. If it was purely about selling toys, then it would've just gone the way of Dino-Riders, MASK and The Visionaries. Clearly there was something else at work here.
Transformers fiction started off as a way To Sell Toys to children. The series had rudimentary characters, but they were identifiable and memorable. It's a kid's show, after all. That doesn't mean it had to stay that way: with the G1 Marvel Comics and Beast Wars, Transformers started to add breadth and depth to their characters. They started to actually explain why they Transform, why they look humanoid despite being alien, why their vehicle modes have compartments that seem to serve no purpose save to hold human-sized beings, why the robots are at war in the first place. Sometimes the bad guys won, sometimes a Transformer would switch sides, sometimes the good guys would do bad things while the bad guys do good things, there would be lengthy character and story arcs, hi-SF concepts, musings on the nature of good and evil. Sure, it isn't Bester or Asimov, but it's better SF than most of the kid's SF that was around at the time.
I also find it kind of weird for Yahtzee to support the idea of humans in Transformers, since the Transformers are apparently impossible to relate to - this, despite most Transformers fans finding the robots the best thing about it, and the human characters largely superfluous and redundant. I find that sort of thinking really rather unimaginative, personally: by that logic, one would have to have a human character to "relate to" in any *franchise* that features non-humans as the primary characters. Kind of like how they had a white American male as the protagonist in Avatar: it's lazy and insulting, to assume the audience has no way of relating to anything that isn't just like them.
Also, Prime dying was a big thing. Name a kid's tv show of the '80s where the heroic main character - among many others - died ten minutes into the film. Not that many, right? This was a time when you couldn't actually use the word "death" or "kill" in kid's shows, and the Transformers film had the face of the entire franchise die - and he didn't come back at the end. Sure he came back *later* but that's like diminishing the death of Spock in Star Trek II because we have the benefit of hindsight.
The game sounds mostly like an exercise in fanservice for the TV show audience and some of the comic fans, and I think it does a disservice to the good Transformers fiction to simply go for the lowest common denominator. If WfC did a bad job of giving Yahtzee to care about Transformers, then that's a terrible shame, since there's a lot in the Transformers mythos worth ruminating over beyond Giant Robots Blowing Shit Up.
is it me or is yahtzee short of breath, ideas and pisazz sounds like another eminem creation here getting fat and lazy no longer able for gettho shouts!
This would be the first time ive said anything about a review, i have no complaints about this, its more the reason they transform on their home planet was explained briefly in the classic (as in 1980s). They transform because originally the autobots used it as a form of disguise sinse they were apparently out matched in frontal combat, or so says the show. but im assuming after the decepticons learned of that it became just a common form of combat, sure it has flaws in the game where you could easily get past or to something by walking, but hey cuts time down and shuts up anyone that would complain that they didnt transform. I personally think the games fun to play every now and again, but hey thats my opinion and this review is yours
I get what he means about the size discrepancy thing. One of the bosses is this giant gun transformer that you spend about half a level flying through. You blow up the thing that allows to stay in its transformed mode, and you then fly out through its mouth. While you're flying out of it's mouth, its teeth are several times larger than you are. So this thing should be really huge right? But when you begin fighting it, it doesn't even look as you could fit inside its mouth anymore. I get that fighting something the size of lower Manhatten would be a pretty impossible task, but that's no excuse for it to suddenly shrink.
I was and am still a fan of the 80's cartoon but in all honesty I rented this game and tried to get into it but it's true, it really is shit
Because you don't have to watch or understand Transformers to find statements like this from those who grew up with it:Taranaich said:
I never got into Transformers as a child, though the toys and the Beast Wars series did grab me. And I only went to see the first live-action Transformers film for the spectacle (only to be disappointed by too much of LaBeouf, Megan Fox's midriff, and the most disbelief-shattering product placement I have ever seen). Still, I can say I've felt this same "shock" when watching things I did grow up with, like Thundercats and the first TMNT series.Celtic_Kerr said:
As I watched the milking-machine bit I smiled like a fool because I knew I was indeed attached to a few myself as a child, and as an adult I can indeed recognize that now.
I'm surprised to hear about all the people who like Beast Wars.
The 80's cartoon itself wasn't all that great, but the movie still holds up, IMO.
As for the game, I totally get why Yahtzee didn't like it, as it was a homage to the movie wrapped in a somewhat confused shell. The Transforming aspect was handled really well, though I didn't like the seperate jet levels all that much; they should have just made a jet character availiable in certain levels so that particular level would play out differently if you were a car or a jet. That would have added to the replay value, I think. The game was way too short, the special abilities in multiplayer are mostly really annoying, and the homogenizing of the weapons was something that didn't jive with me, but the visuals and the writing were absolutely amazing. WtC was too short to make a good buy, but it was a phenominal rental, and I for one enjoyed it immensely, a fiar bit more than I enjoyed Arkham Asylum, to be honest.
The 80's cartoon itself wasn't all that great, but the movie still holds up, IMO.
As for the game, I totally get why Yahtzee didn't like it, as it was a homage to the movie wrapped in a somewhat confused shell. The Transforming aspect was handled really well, though I didn't like the seperate jet levels all that much; they should have just made a jet character availiable in certain levels so that particular level would play out differently if you were a car or a jet. That would have added to the replay value, I think. The game was way too short, the special abilities in multiplayer are mostly really annoying, and the homogenizing of the weapons was something that didn't jive with me, but the visuals and the writing were absolutely amazing. WtC was too short to make a good buy, but it was a phenominal rental, and I for one enjoyed it immensely, a fiar bit more than I enjoyed Arkham Asylum, to be honest.
I love transformers as a child but stopped caring after age 12, but I have a friend in his early 20s and ever since the movies came out he's been fascinated by them. He wasn't even around when they were on TV, hell I was just a pup when the reruns were on. Its really just like back in the 80s its just a gimmick to sell overpriced toys, movies, games and other merchandise to children/adults stuck in childhood.
I just love the "fabulous purple" part. Good episode, the part where you talk about how the game had a chance to make you care about Transformers raises a good point. A similar argument can be made for hundreds of other games with creepy fanbases.
don't have time to read through eleven pages to check if anyone already did, so i'm going to point out the fact that the toy WfC impales in Yahtzee's eye is not a Transformer, though it can transform and was later remade as a G1 Transformer. it's a Valkyrie, a type of advanced jet plane (still piloted by humans) that could either grow legs and arms or go all the way and become a humanoid robot for fighting a race of collosal aliens that decended from the same space-fairing species that apparently humans descended from, from the extremely kickass anime series Super Dimensional Fortress Macross.
well yahtzee, the reason the toys are so popular is because you transform them with your bare hands and ifyou can do that without reading the instructions, or for that matter watching them do it on tv, you get that feeling of,"damb i'm a smartass"