Zero Punctuation: XBLA Double Bill

[skoomaeater]

By commenting on how retro games are (usually) of inferior quality to newer games hasn't Yahtzee given a reason for nintendo re-releasing mario and suck ilk over and over again?

Sure, I resent the fact that the Wii could have so many inventive titles on it and instead we get super home improvement mario or some other rubbish, but it also stands to reason that those who enjoyed mario will enjoy a better looking version with gameplay elements tweaked.

Of course, a direct port of a game that doesn't attempt to correct any of the inevitable flaws from the first should be persecuted and destroyed.

 

[skoomaeater]

Meh. Yahtzee, you seriously need a vacation, man. I hate to say it, but ZP is going downhill for the last few episodes. I didn't even smile at this one.

It's not about quoting Yahtzee to death, or getting used to his jokes. Hell, I was watching the series from the very first episodes, and it was awesome until a few weeks earlier. ZP had it's ups and downs, but this one is different. It's getting shallow and repetitive, with Yahtzee doing nothing but playing Captain Obvious and hating at the wrong direction. That Hitler "joke" wasn't funny at all, for example. Forced, bumpy and semi-boring, ZP is running out of juice fast.

You need a refill, Yahtzee, go have a brake for a few weeks, seriously. Yeah, we will miss the show for the time being, but it will be all for the better, and we'll get some good 'ol ZP power when you get back.

I think you are perhaps missing the point. Yahtzee is reviewing games - not producing a comedy series. While his general rantings are amusing he is first and foremost reviewing the game. I personally like to watch ZP to pick up on the stuff that IGN and the like miss out in their rantings about normal mapping, polygons and vertexes.

 

[yruluis]

Wow. Zero Punctuation has been going down hill and this video isn't helping one bit.

 

[yruluis]

Or! He's running out of material. His earlier videos were funny but they aren't anymore plain and simple.

 

[144_v1legacy]

wow no, maybe I'll give you Sunshine over Mario 64 (and definitely galaxy over it)

but Twilight Princess over Ocarina of Time?...that's just ever so slightly categorically incorrect. there's an equation that proves it and everything

it goes along the lines of:

Ocarina = better than Twilight Princess. Simple. It had you as a bloody wolf for half the game and borrowed pretty much everything from Ocarina of time. eegads

rant over

funny chat today yahtzee, always hilarious calling children c*nts because they ARE

And if I bothered to, every single quote like this as well, so nothing personal, quoted guy:

I am prone to replay 1-player games. Take, for instance, Civilization, or Pokemon, or final fantasy n<14. If I felt like replaying any given Zelda game, they would be, in this order, TP, WW, OoT, LttP, PH (I haven't played/don't care about the others). Similarly, for Mario, they would be Galaxy, then Sunshine, then 64.
Why?
Good question. The answer lies in the point Yahtzee made and everyone who then whined about it missed: part of what made those games great was that they were the first to do what was in the later games. That's how time works. But if I wanted the Ocarina of Time experience, I'd play Twilight Princess, which does everything Oot does with better graphics and controls, more freedom in combat, and has the added wolf sections which, if I don't like them, do not actually take a long time. You HAD to be a wolf for about...5 extended periods of time or so. And all you had to do was collect little bugs, which I thought was fun, but for those who didn't, it shouldn't matter, because every single temple was still done in human form.
Similarly with Sunshine - the gameplay was cleaner than it was in 64, and all they did was tack on the water pistol, which, if you didn't like it, was often entirely unnecessary for more than half of the game. If that sounds familiar, you may have read the previous paragraph.
What I'm saying is that most games with sequels do not take anything out of the old game, but rather, just add more in. The experience is there, but so are some others being tried out to see how people like it.

In the case of sonic going 3d, it's understandable that people don't like the sequels because the actual intended gameplay is substantially different, not just the old stuff with better graphics and some new elements installed (which is what I hope Sonic Unleashed will be, though it may suck regardless).

So feel free to tell me why I'm wrong, but I probably won't care, because I do understand the hypnotic power Pokemon red and Mario 64 have over me, in that I think they're more amazing than I should think by today's standards.

 

[OuroborosChoked]

So Yahtzee's main complaints about Bionic Commando: Rearmed are:
1. It's too hard.
2. The gameplay mechanics are too difficult to get used to.

Wow. AND he's never played the original... which was even more difficult than Rearmed by leagues. Also, I get the feeling that he never finished the game. I'm assuming this from the quote, "Strangely for a 2D platformer, you can't jump (at least from the start)." To me, that does not say, "I finished the game". That says, "I didn't even try".

I've been suspicious about his gaming credentials for some time now, but always just chalked it up to my imagination. Yahtzee, thank you for clearing up my doubts. You are indeed a pussy. Smug superiority only gets you somewhere when you're right. When you just can't hack it though, everyone notices.

 

[the_importer]

I'm starting to question Yahtzee's actual gaming abilities. It would seem that he sucks at everything where he can't re-spawn.

 

[144_v1legacy]

By commenting on how retro games are (usually) of inferior quality to newer games hasn't Yahtzee given a reason for nintendo re-releasing mario and suck ilk over and over again?

And yes. yes it does. Which makes me a little happy. You are entirely right and I agree with you wholeheartedly, except for the second post after the one I quoted (sort of), as I do expect Yahtzee to be a funny video game reviewer, because the only game reviewer I've ever truly trusted is myself. Though I found this one funny, possibly because I wasn't so shocked by his statements with regard to my earlier post.



And now my fingers hurt from typing.

 

[DGenius]

I am gonna go out on a limb and disagree with yahtzee. At least when it comes to bionic commando:rearmed. Say what you will about lives system but I actually like the fact that when you die you restart your mission. And the grappling hook is the best part of the game, and not complicated at all. Keep holding forward while swinging to swing forward, press down to get down. And considering thats it's been revamped it's a whole lot better. Usually I agree wholeheartedly with Yahtzee but this one game I cant.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

I would have thought he'd have taken this opportunity to bitchslap Lucasarts back to the stone age with The Force unleashed.

He has next week to do that...

And seriously, it takes no effort to do that.

 

[Tattaglia]

Like you said, ZP jumped the shark with the new intro sequence. I'm really sorry, but it did.
The only thing I laughed at was the imp dressed in the mother's clothes, only because I remember the first appearance of the imp in The Darkness Demo review waaaay back on YouTube.

 

[Playbahnosh]

Meh. Yahtzee, you seriously need a vacation, man. I hate to say it, but ZP is going downhill for the last few episodes. I didn't even smile at this one.

It's not about quoting Yahtzee to death, or getting used to his jokes. Hell, I was watching the series from the very first episodes, and it was awesome until a few weeks earlier. ZP had it's ups and downs, but this one is different. It's getting shallow and repetitive, with Yahtzee doing nothing but playing Captain Obvious and hating at the wrong direction. That Hitler "joke" wasn't funny at all, for example. Forced, bumpy and semi-boring, ZP is running out of juice fast.

You need a refill, Yahtzee, go have a brake for a few weeks, seriously. Yeah, we will miss the show for the time being, but it will be all for the better, and we'll get some good 'ol ZP power when you get back.

I think you are perhaps missing the point. Yahtzee is reviewing games - not producing a comedy series. While his general rantings are amusing he is first and foremost reviewing the game. I personally like to watch ZP to pick up on the stuff that IGN and the like miss out in their rantings about normal mapping, polygons and vertexes.

Yahtzee doesn't "review" games he just rants about them to score cheap laughs and to recieve his paycheck. If he's intentionally tyring to creat drama with his reviews for "lulz" {I hate that "word"} than the man has stoop to a new low to becoming a troll and I never thought I would've say that considering how much of a fan I was for Yahtzee.

@somerandomguy
No. Yahtzee is not a generic sell-out comedian. He used to be really original, amusing and funny. Just go watch his earlier reviews, like Resident Evil 4, Bioshock, or Witcher. It's solid gold! Also...

@skoomaeater
Again, no. Yahtzee is not reviewing games as "objectively showcasing a game to the audience", he is hating on them in a humorous way, and as such, he is creating comedy. Yahtzee is first and foremost and entertainer, not a hard-hat journalist. Go read some PC Word or Chip Magazine, that is reviewing and journalism. ZP? ZP is the awesome....or it used to be anyway. :/

Looks like it's Yahtzee himself who started missing the point...

 

[OuroborosChoked]

Why I essentially disagree with Yahtzee's blanket statement that retro games are bad: There are several games from the past which have never been done better since. The FPS/RTS gameplay of Battlezone, the all-encompassing space adventures of Frontier: Elite II, and my personal favourite example, the perfectly balanced, ostensibly simple but secretly strategic Spacewar!, where they managed to make a better multiplayer experience with a computer the power of which we could find in our modern digital watches than many games do today.

You are missing his point. He is trying to point out that we hold classic games up on a pedestal simply because they were something we played in the past. Rather then really taking an objective approach to them. Not all classic games are bad, just like how not all new games are good. A poor design choice shouldn't be overlooked just because the game happens to be "classic". It's also perfectly fine to enjoy a game regardless.

Why I agree with Yahtzee's statement: Yes, it is an incorrect attitude to hold classic games up on a pedestal. That's precisely why I analyse and review old games, and I even went as far as to dig up a forty-seven year old game in order to give it a proper review (originally intended as a review that people couldn't ignore due to the audacity of the idea).

But I wasn't reviewing that game from the standpoint of nostalgia. I'm nineteen years old. Spacewar! was made almost thirty years before I was born. What nostalgia could exist there?

Exactly! Exactly! Gaming is gaming no matter when a particular title was released. Having better graphics doesn't make a game automatically good and having poor graphics doesn't automatically make the game obsolete. To get Socratic here, all games are shadows of that elusive form of gameplay. Some are better at it than others... but age does not matter one whit. This is the reason people play classic games: the gameplay is solid and stands the test of time. Ever wonder why there's no State of Emergency (PS2) subculture out there? The game blew and will be forgotten, except as an exceptionally horrible game like ET.

Personally, I never owned the original Bionic Commando and I never finished it until I started playing Rearmed. I gotta say... good gameplay is good gameplay no matter what it looks like. Both games are awesome... and that's not nostalgia speaking.

 

[144_v1legacy]

I peronally found Twilight Princess to be more linear and repetive compared to Ocarina of Time's varied and non linear gameplaye. Same thing with Super Mario 64 with Sunshine except Sunshine seemed very unpolished. I don't think a game establishing what was new back then has nothing to do what someone likes more.

In what way was OoT not linear? First was the tree temple, then you went to the castle, then you went to the next temple, got the next stone thingy, went to the next temple, and so on.

And as unpolished as you may think sunshine was (whatever you mean by unpolished), there were plenty of ways in which 64 would seem even less polished, possibly owing to that "64" part.

 

[OuroborosChoked]

Like you said, ZP jumped the shark with the new intro sequence. I'm really sorry, but it did.
The only thing I laughed at was the imp dressed in the mother's clothes, only because I remember the first appearance of the imp in The Darkness Demo review waaaay back on YouTube.

Glad I'm not the only one who hates the intro/outro sequences. I always mute 'em. That generic rock crap is irritating as hell. I miss the music clips that were, in and of themselves, comments on the games.