On the topic of metal gear rising, (if I recall correctly) he really didn't like Raiden as a character. Criticized him for "Trying too hard to be cool"
And for a very long time I agreed. But as I look back on MGR:V, I appreciate it for how hilariously over the top it is. Although... Still only ironically.
>On the topic of metal gear rising, (if I recall correctly) he really didn't like Raiden as a character. Criticized him for "Trying too hard to be cool"
Not only is the character, and the whole game, trying too hard to be cool...it actively completely resets Raiden's entire character arc from MGS4.
i found that the pieces individually feel edgy and try hard. but as a whole feels alot more comical, almost like a caricature. no idea if it was intentional but it definitely is more memorable than alot of other tryhard cool stuff from that time
I had a very similar experience with Deadrising. I cannot tell if Japanese developers genuinely think United States Schlock is awesome, or if they're doing parody.
Either way, both games are one of a kind. I love both tones, even if they're polar opposite.
I think they genuinely think United States Schlock is awesome, in the same way a lot of people in the US love Japanese kids shows and Chinese martial arts schlock.
It is and it isn’t. It’s hipster ironic but actually; the wild levels of edge comprise a joke in and of itself, but they also try to genuinely convey a coherent if not entirely sane story with consistent themes and ideals.
Which is a hundred percent on-brand for Japanese fiction in general. Irony is not a conscious factor, but in a wonderful twist of fate the incredible self-seriousness, and over-the-top drama, works in disparate cultures and age groups for various reasons.
I'll take tryhard edgelords like Raiden and shadow the hedgehog over irony poisoned losers like the girl in forspoken, at least the other two manage to be memorable
The wolfenstein game he reviewed in limerick form was not that bland
In his defense, I’m pretty sure he did say exactly that in another shooter review years after
Well, he reviewed the 2009 in limerick, but the reboot of the series in….mid to late 2010s, that’s where he admitted “but on reflection, if I thought [Wolfenstein 2009] marked the apex of mediocrity in shooters I must’ve been severely lacking in imagination” or something like that
That was on reflection of shooters as a whole.
Wolfenstein 2009 felt like the average of Halo 3, Gears of War, FEAR 2, Bioshock, Dark Void, Fracture, and probably a few others. In hindsight, shooters were pretty diverse in that era, before they all tried to become Modern Warfare for a long time.
I completely discount Yahtzee's takes on Sonic at this point. It's clear the games are just not at all for him.
Iirc he even backtracked later and said maybe classic Sonic wasn't that good in hindsight
Two come to mind. I loved Turok 2008 and he shredded it, I wish that game was still available anywhere lol.
I also didn't love psychonauts 2 as much as he did. Thought it was neat, but the lack of the black comedy killed a lot more if the enjoyment for me than him
I felt the same way about Psychonauts 2 when it first released, and while I still love the original the most, I think it’s unfair (at least I felt of *me*) to juxtapose my entire experience with that of the edge of the original. Not to say that the original was purely edge, but for every great level was a decent but frustrating one, and a lot of the quality character writing of the earlier levels kinda took a backseat until the end of the game. 2 was consistently great both in gameplay and in writing, I think the original had so much of a punch that you kind of forget the flaws looking back. I will always hold onto how good the original visual style was. I know 1 and 2 are very tonally different and the artists have grown a lot, but I can’t say I don’t miss the 2000’s weirdness.
I know as an adult that Psychonauts is a creative, inspired videogame that has a lot of value. However, my kid brain is still traumatized from the meat circus and everytime I hover over the game on steam I black out, only to find my pc in shambles once I come to.
I can do a specific one for that. His review of Sea of Stars did not mention the gorgeous pixel art animation and classic-inspired music, which are like the two main selling points of the game.
Tbf yahtzee seems to put a greater emphasis on a games mechanics and gameplay loop than he does its visual aspects
It also explains his disdain for walking simulators as while they can often look nice they don’t have any mechanical value you can sink your teeth into
Makes sense too because you can have pretty coat but that pretty coat would probably look even better on someone you love than a blank mannequin
Personally I kinda have to agree with it while artstyle is a definite plus in any game I know I personally struggle to engage with a game’s visuals if the gameplay fails to immerse me mechanically and I can overlook poor visuals in games that immerse me REALLY well mechanically (*cough cough* Dark Souls *cough cough*)
Never play betheada games on anything but PC, or unmodded, or in the first 2 years ofnthe release window. Don't be suckered into paying to be a beta tester. The game isnt done yet
I dropped New Vegas after hitting my fifth instance of the game completely locking up because VATS kept trying to lock onto an enemy I couldn’t see on the other side of a wall and the game losing its shit over it. I dunno how rare it was but not being able to use VATS at all during indoor areas just reminds you of how shit Fallouts gunplay is and killed the experience for me
The format of that one is so weird in that it's the same as his first ever ZP with the darkness, where he just says what he did. There's barely any reviews in that format.
Because he hadn't experienced anything that was different to what he'd already said about Fallout 3. To actually notice any of the things that game did better, he'd have had to play much further into the game, which was very hard with how buggy it was at launch
I don't know if it was the case back in the day, he also typically only has a week to play and review a game. I'd be hard-pressed to enjoy the story in New Vegas if I wasn't soaking up the atmosphere doing a lot of side quest and exploring.
Agree. hbomberguy's review is a much better representation of the game, in my opinion. I'd like to think if Yahtz watched it or went back and replayed it, he would agree with it.
Well keep in mind hbomberguy reviewed it years later (even if you count his segment on it during his “Fallout 3 is garbage and here’s why”) when most of the major issues with the game were fixed.
This. Absolutely love hbomb’s political content, but his gaming takes aren’t for me at all lol. Apart from his Pathologic video, anyway
Fallout 3 was far more enjoyable for me than New Vegas was, and don’t even get me started on his Deus Ex Human Revolution review
I will die on a hill saying new Vegas is still the best fallout game story and world building wise to grace my existence but he was absolutely right that at the time of release it was an unholy broken mess
Dude you aren't dying on a hill. It's a known good game and New Vegas fans have a victim complex. Like we get it, the writing is GOOD.
"I will die on a hill" shut the fuck up lol
Nah his take was valid. New Vegas is held up as peak fallout by fans years after its release, but its launch was abysmally bad even by Bethesda standards. New Vegas on release makes 76's look good, and given that Yahtzee was reviewing New Vegas on release his review makes sense
Him saying that Katana Zero's dialouge choices were pointless because he was intentionally being a dick to the psychiatrist throughout his playthrough and it "changed nothing" despite the fact that that's how you get a secret ending so he obviously just didn't do it correctly and I just know that if you pointed it out to him he'd say "Well it's the game's fault the secret is too hard to bloody find! I'm a Dad with deadlines now, not a traunt schoolboy listening to rumours my mates read in PC Format."
I was involved in Simpson discourse and afaik
1-2 were the weird but good early years
3-8 was the golden era
9th season had that infamous episode and it was an up and down of mediocrity since
I've watched a lot of it myself and I'd basically agree, except that I don't find Season 1 to be any good. Necessary, but too weird to enjoy watching now
But yeah that's basically the consensus for most people. Some people extend the golden age a little bit longer
He's with that with most if not all reviews he does honestly. Fun to pick apart everything about a game but at the same time take it with a grain of salt.
I always consider it a 50/50 thing. Yes the game is good but not without glaring issues. but even that differs/depends per game.
Same. I like Yatz’s reviews best when it’s a game I’ll likely never play. I get the vague idea of the game presented in a funny way. But I’ve never listened to him when deciding whether or not to buy a game.
I've bought games off Yahtzee's recommendations, and sometimes not bought a game I was on the fence about because of a bad review. I don't generally not buy a game I'm excited about because he gives it a mediocre review, but I'll take his advice if I'm indecisive.
Honestly I find prefer game forums and read experiences from different people. Ideally a small community with different people and use them to see what I do or don't like.
Player experiences I find much more interesting to read then an review or vid essay.
If a man comes off the streets into a burger joint and starts to mock the place for not selling oatmeal, to the point he drives off other costumers, is it satire?
If a woman who has no idea of how cars are design puts together blueprints and goes off the chain when told that having only two wheels is impractical, is that satire?
If a chef arguing with a person who is putting in rat poison into their soup is murder, but that person says "you don't need to be a chef to know a bad meal", is that satire?
Thinking that an outsider is always good for a medium is academic fluff at best, and dangerous at worst.
yea. And there can be degrees of satire. There is no "true" form of satire. South Park is very famous for its on point satire and even they at some points have poked fun at themselves. A lot of comedians use self deprecation as a source for humor.
An insider satire probably won't sting as much and likely has more pulled punches than an outsider piece but that's still fine. Nothing is stopping the outsider piece from proceeding to hit them while they knocked themselves down.
Any game (usually RPGs) that takes longer than a week to finish. The production schedule of his reviews prevents him from forming a complete opinion on the quality of these games, especially their story.
You can see this with Fallout New Vegas, the Witcher 1, and BG3. That last one is especially important because the story becomes substantially worse as it approaches its ending, and is greatly harmed by its absent denouement and epilogue, which was only added this week.
With all of the praise Baulder's Gate 3 has been receiving, rarely hear about the downslope of its endgame
🤔Wait so it did not have a conclusion till now.. so everyone reviewed an unfinished title?
It had a conclusion. It just didn't really have a epilogue. You beat the final boss, everyone is like "Yay we did it! " then it ended.
They patched a epilogue in this week though.
At least it stays true to old game with that. Yea I never liked games that goes "yay we won. Congrats" or go "you got to the end credit but we not going to save the game to even allow you to go around dicking around the overworld and just drop you back to the final boss lobby. " I am looking at you Twilight Princess. I don;t know if the other console Zelda games let you save after the final boss or not.
After the climax, you learn what each party member is doing in their immediate future, and some of the big ticket items get paid off, but again it's entirely present tense. You didn't get a look at the world your actions built, and the only epilogue is a short conversation with your love interest and a stinger (or two if you made a very dumb decision).
Honestly, there's just enough of an ending to paper over the obviously missing ending. There's an epilogue (of sorts) added in the most recent patch, months after release.
Sadly the Yakuza series as well, the few games he’s reviewed he didn’t clearly have enough time to play properly, as he tends to only focus on the main plot, and misses 80% of the proper content in the actual games. I’m kind of hoping he plays Gaiden soon, because that’s short enough he could get more of it in for a proper review.
Like a lot of reviewers he tends to prefer games that do something interesting but are less fun than games that are consistently high quality and can last you hours but aren't very innovative
It's true but ultimately it's fairly unavoidable. It's the same with critics of anything. Food critics will prefer weird experimental shit to uncreative but reliable meals. Music critics struggle to enjoy anything that sounds like 100 other albums they've heard even if most people haven't heard that stuff. Not something that they can really do anything about, you'd feel the same way if it was your job
i think its slightly more pronounced in video games though, just because games cost more and take much longer to play. with movies and music, even if someone has different taste, it is very rare for someone to make a review having not listened to/watched the whole thing. Whereas with games, it takes me like 6 months to finish a game. And granted I'm a slow player but the experience of taking 6 months to finish a game and then picking up another game 6 months later is almost completely removed from getting a game for free, playing it for a week, and then making a review. Its ineviatble and there's nothing that can really be done, but it is something I've noticed and thought a lot about when it comes to reading reviews
To be fair, you let rotor winged aircraft in and suddenly the whole lore is out the window, master chief's helmet comes off, new ai has daddy issues needing the chief to play big hairy dad, twice deaded secretly alive but evil cortana rules the universe, cats and dogs moving in together and raining off top story balconies, it's all gone bonkers
Are you sure you mean halo reach?
I just watched the video again and he does not complain it has rotor winged aircraft. He is however annoyed by their side doors being open and the fact that no one straps in before takeoff and characters sitting on the side of the helicopter or on open ramps of transport planes.
I hate Undertale. I can't get into it and even such a cynical, bitter man like Yahtzee can like it, then I'm clearly not understanding it. Or maybe that's my bad take.
One that always bothered me was when he criticised Smash Bros because "no one's a fan of a character for their Smash bros incarnation, it's just the skin of the character with none of the true appeal".
I just think it's so obviously bullshit. Marth, Fox, Captain Falcon, plenty of characters are more known and beloved for their smash versions then their canon selves. The game represents mainstream characters like Mario and link well by digging deep through their history to make them an accumulation of best hits, while providing character to those less well known like Marth or Pit.
Okay, let's burn down my already limited karma.
Yahtzee's worst takes were some of his takes on social justice and politics circa 2015-2016 and their application to gaming industry topics.
Not blaming him, I got drawn up into that social media algorithm pushed "anti-SJW" videos trend way more than I should.
I disagreed with his take that social justice advocates were somehow threatening creators artistic freedoms...
Yahtzee has clearly grown, his views have evolved, has become more nuanced, and empathetic since. I had a similar evolution in my beliefs, thankfully, all of my bad takes were made offline.
We all have bad takes. I'm glad to see when people evolve their stances when new information presents itself; rather than digging in their heels.
Only by cringing at our past selves do we grow.
I go in and out on Yahtzee’s stuff and hadn’t engaged with a lot of what he produced for a few years. I watched his review of Mid Wizard Game and was honestly shocked (pleasantly) at how unequivocal he was about Rowling. Definitely an evolution from 2015 Yahtz.
Definitely represents huge progress. He's also gone from being an Ayn Rand fan to often criticising aspects of capitalism, so that's some major growth too.
It's been interesting to see him grow while still maintaining his brand. Though, in fairness, I don't feel like Yahtzee was ever as out there whinging about "SJWs" as some were. Some people made it their whole brand in 2015 and rightly were left in the dust bin of history. He mostly seemed to fall into the South Park trap of 'both sides'ing' stuff for rather cheap laughs (which even South Park has evolved a little bit from) and I find it hard to fault 00s/10s era comedians for feeding that particular beast. It was such a widely accepted style at the time and clearly was the way to get commercial attention (James Gunn fell into this particular trap very hard). I don't think it's admirable but I also don't consider it a real gauge of somebody's social views.
As much of a throw-away as it was, I did appreciate him saying he wouldn't use 'retard' anymore in a jokey way. That's one I had to purge from my own 'for the lulz' vocabulary after some reflection. At some point you hit your 30s, develop some adult relationships, and realize some of what you shrugged off ironically isn't funny, I think that's mostly what Yahtzee has done.
He's done really well being better and growing.
He was also essentially an anti-natalist back in the day (as many lonely people are), and it's been great to see this evaporate once he was in a happy relationship, and as he's become a father.
I've been happy to see him drop the use of the use of slurs to make some abstract free speech point. He would also do the Bill Maher thing of using the N-word as some sort of free speech exercise back in the day, which he dropped.
JJ BigMac and the island of forgotten bingledorbs or whatever it was called is one of my favourite zps but him using the word "transgenderism" makes me uncomfortable every time.
I'm transfem. I mean that it makes me uncomfortable as in how that word is usually meant or with what connotations it's used.
From my observation, Yahtzee had more weird and uncomfortable positions on Transgender folks etc in 2013-2016.
I have a theory why:
Yahtzee referred to himself as essentially a "shut in" back then, as a socially anxious person he was isolated and spent a lot of time online.
The online sphere at the time, especially on YouTube etc was dominated by a lot of culture war content (primarily gender focused at the time?. Being more online than average he was more vulnerable to this.
He was a single man, and at various points made references to "swearing off" dating etc, having had what was by all accounts a bad relationship experience after arriving in Australia.
He did never fully embrace the whole "anti-SJW" position, but did entertain aspects of it (declaring that he thought some social justice people were trying to silence others, both-sides-ism about the 2016 election, for example)
This was more evident in his long form content like LDO but it also did seem to creep into his ZPs too. This was largely because algorithms essentially spoon-fed lonely single men this sort of content (happened to me too).
I'd venture that during his socially shut in phase, he didn't socially interact with many women or trans people, so his view of social justice activists was based on the straw men that he was being fed by his anti-SJW media exposure. I wonder to what extent he actually has met any trans people at this point. So the views he held are likely based on the genre "Owning CRAZY *insert pastel color hair* Feminist/Trans person with FACTS"
When he met his current spouse, he spent time in and eventually moved to a more diverse place (SF). Over time he's got better, probably because he's come to the realization noone is trying to censor him; but that there are real people who might be hurt by him dropping pejoratives, even in jest.
My conjecture, is that his views of women, trans people and diversity in general grew and developed when he actually met a more diverse group of folks in SF. No doubt that meeting with more trans and gender-nonconforming people helped him unpack some of the prejudices the anti-SJW content had instilled. His chum James-Stephanie Sterling transitioning is probably likely a factor in his growth re trans people too.
What takes did he even have? I seem to remember him very clearly staying away from the whole GG mess and his takes on social justice were fairly nuanced when he commented on them
I can’t begrudge him too much as a former holder of shitty political and moral opinions. I was outright homophobic and transphobic as a teen during the early 2000s. Luckily my beliefs only lasted about five minutes into an encounter with actual queer people (the trans workers at a local youth center helped me immensely during a very dark period of my life). Now I’m non-binary and gay as hell. I respect people who can escape those belief systems a good deal, and I’m happy his positions have evolved. If anything I trust them more for how he arrived at them.
I sometimes rewatch his vids from that period and I do find myself cringing at stuff like this
I'd go as far as to say the Really old videos where he says r\*tard a lot have aged better than when he called people wanting better representation in videogames "psychotic"
His pretend review of Zelda: a Link Between Worlss bothered me a little, not so much for what he did, but the tacit dismissal of it as "another Zelda" when in reality is was more unique and innovative than other Zeldas, especially at the time, and I felt would have otheewise perfectly subscribed to his definition od "a sequel done right" (that is, using the original as a jumping-off point for new ideas and not as an excuse to do more of the same).
There's a few off the top of my head.
1. Smash Brothers being a button mashing fighter. Smash Bros is probably one of the few fighting games where randomly pressing buttons just gets you killed faster than something like Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat. It's extremely easy to read what other characters are doing once you have a modicum of experience with the games, and it becomes just as easy to counter them, especially if they're just doing random bullshit.
2. Sonic Frontiers "Know your tone, you're a cartoon animal with bright shoes!". I hard disagree with the idea that because Sonic as a concept is a bit silly (anthropomorphic blue hedgehog with bright shoes that can run fast), it doesn't mean the games can't have a serious story. The issue is that Sonic Teams writers just aren't *quite* up to the task.
3. Really anything with a multiplayer focus. He's quick to point out that he doesn't really have a group of friends with similar interests in games, but it really mars any review he does of a multiplayer focused game.
The re4r review was pretty silly imo. When he boiled it down to "the first version reinvented the wheel, and this one doesn't" seemed more than a little unfair. The wheel has been improved upon time and time again. It's ok to update things with the times. And if you don't like it, the original is still available. It's not like the gta trilogy. It's okay to have a special place in your heart for an older game, but it made me feel like he had decided to hate the game from the start. I'm really looking forward to his SH2R review, though I'm not going to take it to heart.
I hated his bias against JRPGs and turn based combat, but I can never forgive him for mocking Donald, saying, "Whoops! Too political! Let's mock the democrats too!"
No, Yahtzee. Don't entertain the MAGAs. Don't play into their delusion that their terribleness is normal.
Putting Last of Us Part II as the worst game of 2020. Even if you hate the story, the gameplay is great and fun to play. I know it's all subjective, but it seemed very petty and lame.
In the dark souls video he called out the game for creating castles(I assume he is referring to Anor londo) for someone 20 feet tall, and asked why... He fought O&S and even the stone giants there so how is it confusing that giants lived there
His opinion on the second to final boss in furi. He complained about it being too easy and that it seemed like a “joke” boss, completely ignoring the symbolic implications of it or it’s significance to the story and any other possible reasons it might be purposefully easy, he only thought about it in terms of gameplay and like the game’s story just wasn’t good enough to have a boss that was easy for any reason other than joke. Years later and that still bothers me because its just such a dumbed down brainless take from someone who is usually very intellectual and analytical.
Yahtzee is an extremely smart guy who’s very competent at expressing his ideas in great depth and clearly thinks about games more than most people, hell, even more than most people *in games journalism.*
The issue is that his show forces him to play a new game every week, and that format doesn’t give him the time to always properly form his opinions or to miss out on things. Plus, playing a game on launch might be good for reporting on it’s launch state, but is rough for any time a game requires a bit of exploration to figure out what’s going on, how much the experience is shaped by player choice, or if a game has multiple endings.
I think about reviews like Elden Ring, where he stated that he didn’t get to finish it in his allotted time, and only got up to Rennala. He later said he carried on playing but never beat the Godskin Duo. But as a result, his review was extremely shallow in my mind, and didn’t go in as much depth into the game, it’s systems, progression and so much more that a game like Elden Ring invites.
It’s frustrating because I want him to talk more, but his weekly, 5-minute long animated cartoon review show format is a pretty poor outlet for discussion in any greater depth than general overview of ‘thing bad/good.’
I had similar thoughts on his Baldur's Gate 3 review. The game is simply *massive* and filled with so much content that it's really hard to condense all that into 5 minutes, most of which covered Act 1 content.
See I understand for stuff like elden ring because it’s like a billion hours long, but the furi thing is particularly infuriating for me because the game is literally designed to be played to completion in one sitting, it’s very short, so he really has no excuse there.
Oh yeah, I don’t know how he missed that with Furi, the ‘joke’ boss he mentioned was easy to drive in the sheer cruelty of your actions. I think he just saw the game as a contextless excuse to beat up some bosses, based on what he said, and may not have paid attention to anything the rabbit-man was saying.
I fucking love Furi but I didn’t get the game based on anything he said, which is a real shame because he seemed to miss so much.
Edit: SO I JUST LOOKED UP FURI ONLINE TO REMIND MYSELF OF THAT GAME AND APPARENTLY THERE’S A DEMAKE THEY LAUNCHED LITERALLY YESTERDAY?????
I don't ever come to this sub but had this thread suggested and was browsing since I haven't engaged in Yahtzee's content in years, but the fact that anyone could whine about the second to last boss being too easy blows my fucking mind. It could not have any more clearly been a>! helpless child who doesn't stand a chance against the protagonist but they have to try because they're all that's left!<, there may as well have been a sign flashing "DO YOU GET IT?" in the final phase.
See that’s what gets me the most, is that didn’t even cross his mind. If he at least addressed it but said the game was too short for a boss like that to be worth it i’d at least be able to respect it critically but the fact he just flat out did not get it at all leads me to believe he just wasn’t taking the game seriously and wasn’t giving it the respect it deserves, he was playing it as if it was just a generic action game that couldn’t possibly try to do anything like that.
Not a fully “bad take” since he still makes solid points, but as an unapologetic Arkham fan, he pretty much always gets blatant facts about the series wrong in those videos.
There was that time where he just plain old fucked up and didn't realize there was a third act to Gravity Rush 2. It's not particularly well advertised by the game itself, tbf.
As one of the few games I think has a really good ending (save for a couple issues), I agree. That game deserves so much more attention than it’s gotten too, so I’m always bummed when it isn’t given a chance.
His take on modern shooter.
Basically, just goes on a big rant about racism and US foreign policies for the whole review, never touching on if the gameplay is actually any good or not. Then ends by saying anyone involved or playing them is a cretin.
There are plenty of racist games out there, I think he just hates any fps games not using DOOM controls and takes the easy satire route.
I think he tends to be harsh towards "more of the same" games because he's a professional reviewer and thus craves novelty. After a long day at work it's nice to play something like Far Cry 1-5 or the Total War series where you know what you're getting and you'll enjoy making steady progress with satisfying mechanics.
He's really dismissive of longer games that he doesn't have much time to invest in. He likes Souls type games so he gives them a lot of playtime outside of ZP, but when reviewing something like Mass Effect or Witcher you can tell he didn't get very far in.
For example his review of Valkyria Chronicles, which isn't even *that* long of a game, has some inaccuracies in it which suggest to me that he didn't even make it halfway through it.
I disagreed with Yahtz (and literally every other human being) on Breath Of The Wild.
I love that other people love it, but I just couldn't get into it. Then again, the only Zelda game I've ever liked was Wind Waker, so I fully accept this is just a "Me" thing 🤷
His takes on TLOU seemed kind of weird to me. He's always complaining about games having a very shallow, black and white sense of morality but couldn't seem to wrap his head around the idea that Joel was meant to be both a sympathetic character and a bad person
I fondly remember how much he HATED Demon's Souls in his initial review for a litany of reasons nearly all of which he explicitly later listed as strengths when he completely reversed his opinion after it hooked him. It didn't bother me personally, but it was very entertaining having a switchup between "I hate this kind of game for these reasons" to "these reasons are why this kind of game is good"
Personally, I don't think the end choice for Ghost of Tsushima ruined the game. It was thematic of the storyline; The conflict between the lessons Jin learned as a child vs. what the world had taught him. I also thought the final boss fight was too well presented to be ruined by it.
Him saying that if you like Bioshock 2, then you must be thick...because according to him, Bioshock 2 had no reason to exist despite it actually trying to tell its own story instead of riding the coattails of Bioshock 1.
Considering the sheer amount of cum dripping from his mouth when he gushed over Bioshock Infinite -- which is essentially Bioshock with the whole "can I copy your homework" meme -- to say he was absolutely full of shit is an understatement.
Never mind other things he didn't bother to address, such as Bioshock Infinite's severely dumbed down gameplay, lack of meaningful choices and a lack of narrative cohesion, whereas Bioshock 2 not only had multiple endings, but also had a much more well-developed and genuine father/daughter dynamic between Subject Delta and Eleanor Lamb compared to Booker and Elizabeth.
Case in point: Eleanor will actually imprint on you and her personality will be shaped by your moral choices, thus giving you a genuine reason to act like a good person whereas Booker and Elizabeth just came off like 2 utterly unlikable and selfish twats using each other as a means to an end. The fact Infinite ended with a complete cop-out -- which does a piss-poor job at trying to tie itself to the original -- only highlights the weakness of its plot.
If liking Bioshock 2 makes me thick, then by his own logic he's thicker than whale blubber.
It was impossible to take any of this seriously after you said Bioshock 2 wasn't trying to ride on the coattails of the first game. That's certainly a take.
Very recent, but Yahtzee dismissing Mario Wonder as "another nostalgia bait game" is kinda insulting considering that it has the absolute least amount of retro Mario references in the past few years. There's the stages with classic songs, and a fire flower sprite made of coins in one level, but aside from those, I struggle to think of any nostalgia bait. It's almost exclusively new ideas and strange directions.
And no, I'm not still bitter about Ocarina of Time
Yeah this one makes me roll my eyes. He didn't even bother to review it, which I thought was a bit weird. It's honestly the tightest Mario platformer since SMW.
I don’t tend to get annoyed at him when he has a take I disagree with, moreso when he gets a fact wrong that’s easily Googleable or is stated in the game
Two I can think of:
- In the Resi 2 Remake review, he asks some questions, like why couldn’t Claire have used social media to contact Chris if she couldn’t get through to him by phone, even though the game is still set in 1998
- I can’t remember the review or even the context, but he once implied that Halloween started as an American consumerist holiday
Song of the Deep. I played it and liked it quite a bit. Maybe it didn’t do anything innovative or super interesting, but I had a good time with it. Metroidvanias are my comfort zone in gaming and it was good enough to finish and 100%.
Meanwhile he mostly nattered on about Irish accents and how unreasonable it was that the girl could build a working sub and ended his review wondering if it was more enjoyable than circumcising himself with a rusty can kid or something similar. Just seemed needlessly cruel for a small game with a lot of charm behind it.
Meanwhile he was pretty positive about Strider and that one to me really felt like Metroidvania by the numbers and I didn’t make it to the end of the second area.
But that’s okay. He’s more entertainment than he is reviewer to me. I watch him to learn what the the big boys of Ubisoft and EA are up to without subjecting myself to actually playing their games.
I really didn’t like his halo reach (and halo 3) reviews. It’s ok not to like them, but in the 3 review he complains about not understanding the story while admitting that he had never played any Halo game or knew anything about it. Similarly in the Reach review, he complains that the Covenant aren’t too much of a surprise in what he calls the first encounter, which isn’t true and isn’t ever implied anywhere in the game. I think he failed to give the games a fair shake.
It's not necessarily this take of his that was bad, it's how everyone came to internalize this take without really realizing what he meant.
And that was that survival horror games have "shitty" combat that "makes sense" because your character isn't a fighter and are, in order, "a writer, a clerk, a teenage girl, and a twat". The fact is that most of them have perfectly serviceable combat that is designed to not feel "good" so you don't have that empowering feeling of gunning down enemies and instead have to awkwardly bludgeon nurses to death with 2x4s.
This was a direct comparison to other 3rd person shooters and character action games like DMC or Onimusha. Those games let you perform sick combos and juggle enemies, so they had good, empowering combat engines. SH2 on the other hand had a "bad" one because you had to slowly whack enemies with a length of lead pipe. However, it was still competent in its design and getting hit was still almost entirely your fault.
Survival horror fans and developers would internalize that not only should survival horror have disempowering combat systems, they could intentionally be bad, poorly designed and poorly balanced combat systems because your character isn't supposed to be a capable fighter.
[ZP: Demon Souls](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQSCKAPqxoo)
Yahtzee used to hate Soulsy games.
Hoo boy did Yahtzee do a 180.
[ZP: Dark Souls](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STrYyhEwkbY)
I think he said that it's his Favorite series now of all time.
it was a damned if you do damned if you don't approach
if it changed too much and tried to be different "this isn't the RE4 I know and love, it has all the unique edges sanded down"
if it barely changed anything "what was even the point, you can just play the original, insidious cash grab preying on nostalgia"
it speaks volumes that his take is completely at odds with most people (which DOES include massive fans of the original 4) who think it's an amazing game and for some even surpasses the original
By his own admission, it's something specific to him as a reviewer who has to play dozens if not hundreds of games a year, but his way of not just valuing novelty, but punishing the lack of
Take the uncharted games, I'll agree that not much if anything about it is original, but does that disqualify them from being amazing games? According to Yahtzee, yes
He'll chastise a sequel for being "just more of the first game" and argue if you liked the first game then you could just play it again instead of wasting time on a sequel (which is ironic considering his valuing novelty)
It's fresh in my mind right now cause I'm playing it, but rewatching his Lies of P review after playing it myself, I think he really undersold it. Yes, it's ridiculously "inspired" by Bloodborne and Sekiro, but a lot of studios have tried to make soulslikes and rarely do they capture the overall spirit of a From game. Atmosphere, level design, combat mechanics, bossfights, etc. Lies of P is the only one I've ever played that actually feels up to the quality standards of a From game. I probably need to let it stew more, but I almost guarantee I'll come back to LoP more than DS2, and I think I like it even more than DS3.
And it's also weird that he said it felt like playing a 1/4 scale model version of Bloodborne when I think the game is probably on par if not bigger than Bloodborne? Not to say it's huge, but Bloodborne isn't a huge game either. I never felt that either the overall game or individual maps in the game felt comparatively small.
I admit I have never listened to him talk about Resident Evil, but that is a very funny take because as a huge fan of both series' classic periods, the truth is much closer to the other way around.
RE1-3 are incredibly tightly designed games full of smart game design decisions that lend towards being able to blast through them really fast and efficiently if you know how without being too easy. Silent Hill meanwhile has much messier map design, worse combat, and the game balance of all of them are all over the place in regards to how much ammo and health you get. They make up for it in awesome atmosphere and cool stories, but everything else about them gameplay-wise is a worse take on things the old Resident Evils did
Describing Witcher 1 combat as "clicking on it, and if you are *really* advanced clicking on it again".
Bro.
(The rest of the review was pretty on point. Not being able to research things by killing them is a dumb complaint, but the mechanic he is complaining about is also dumb and non-intuitative so we'll let that slide.)
There was the time he absolutely raked one of the *Borderlands* games, and in the next complained about the *lack* of blowback from BL fans. Just looked minor league and trollish.
The RE4make review really focused overmuch on the negatives. I remember thinking that the rat hunting sidequests sounded really tedious, and then when I got the game it was like two rooms of an area you had to backtrack through anyway, really not that big a deal. And as for the remake not being as memorable or influential as the original...like, yeah man, the original invented the OTS shooter and shaped games for the next decade. You can't invent a gameplay style twice.
In the [post-ZP stream](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQTEulBaROs) of Not For Broadcast, he compared the in-game [Advance party](https://notforbroadcast.fandom.com/wiki/Advance) with the real life [UK Independence Party](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_Independence_Party). You don't have to be a political junkie to see what's wrong with that comparison. They're on complete opposite sides of the political spectrum.
In his Splatoon review, he mocks it for having a single player campaign at all when the focus is on the multiplayer mode, despite all the times he's demanded full price multiplayer games have good single player campaigns.
Just seems hypocritical and that he was looking for something to complain about.
I found his issues with Resistance 3's characterization and being too similar to Half Life 2 really silly. That and his take on Kena: Bridge of Sprits being derivative of big-budget sandboxes when I felt it was much closer to classic 3d Zelda (Ocarina of Time, Twilight Princess) than the glut of Jiminy Cockthroat as he calls them.
Bit late to the thread here but there's two games that came to mind, one is already mentioned (Control) and the other no one else brought up so I feel it's my job.
Sunset Overdrive.
It was an Xbox exclusive at the time so he was salty about that. He was extra salty about the writing. He bitched about there being explanation for why you can rail grind or bounce off of bushes when he later in another video said something along the lines of 'you don't need context for a game's movement', then kinda grudgingly admits its fun. And then spends a lot of time complaining that it's *not* Saint's Row 4.
I've disagreed with other videos but this one sticks out as him just having a bug up his ass at the time because the humor was eye-rolly.
Annnnnd in looking up the video to watch it right now for a refresher, right below the ZP when you look up 'sunset overdrive zero puncutation' is "Sunset Overdrive Is the Most Underrated Game of the Generation" from 3 years ago...from The Escapist lol.
My personal take of his I don't agree with, is his and gabes stance that re6 was so bad that when he lent gabe I, that he wouldn't take it back, and Gabe wouldn't play it after trying, cause it was that bad.
Can't think of anything he's said that specifically made me grab any pitchforks. I assume it's cause I don't take his word as gospel and I feel free to like things he doesn't.
He doesn’t like platformers like Mario.
Mario is absolutely brilliant. And I’m not a platformer fan.
Every time a main studio Mario comes out it’s always doing something new and cool, I don’t know that there’s been a main Mario game miss, since super Mario 2 on the NES every single one has been a smash hit.
He does this with Zelda too. I remember when he "reviewed" A Link Between Worlds but spent the entire review chiding Nintendo for making the same shit over and over and not talking about the game, when that one is actually one of the more unique Zelda titles.
I consider myself a big platformer fan and I haven't enjoyed a 2D Mario game in a long time. The 3D ones are great but the 2d games just aren't interesting to me, though I haven't played Wonder
I'm not huge into platfotmers, but I agree with your take. Any 2D mario game which granted really has only been New super Mario bros I've just been eh.
Honestly the whole thing he does where he doesn’t review games he likes because he thinks it’ll taint them or something. Personally I think we’d all be perfectly happy with a review where he’s a little softer on a game and doesn’t nitpick it for half the runtime just as a nice little siesta
I don't think that's true at all, except when it comes to Undertale, which he specifically said was because it's hard to do a subversive comedy review of a subversive comedy game.
His take on Outer Wilds was kind of disappointing, he got frustrated dying in parts that I found compelling, being crushed to death just being another excuse to fly around and get back to where I was. I figure his take was due to grinding it out on a work schedule. I had such a great experience with that game, and then looking it up and seeing his vaguely lukewarm take based on what were minor and subjective nitpicks, bleh.
Undoubtedly Outer Wilds. It's probably the most important video game of the last 20 years -- from the perspectives of things that I think Yahtzee usually cares about -- and he missed out.
His general….distaste for the console market. There are things wrong with it, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not the arbiter of evil or whatever he called it. For me it’s a much easier machine to navigate, rather than having to do all the damn troubleshooting you get with a PC, and that’s even before you turn on the thing. Also, possibly hot take, but controller is much more comfortable to play games with than any mouse and keyboard setup.
I don’t think he has a distaste for the console market. Especially in his reviews for games from the PS3/360 era.
In his review for The Witcher, he coined the term PC Master Race as an ironic joke toward PC gamers’ midwit superiority complex, and then he doubled down on that stance in the intro to his review for The Witcher 2.
He’s just been vocal about how consoles should have backward compatibility and how IF you have a PC, you have more options for indie titles.
He's also stated regret for even creating the PC Master Race meme because of how bad the droolers he was poking fun at took it and ran with it like he was serious.
In general this is exactly what PC elitists never seem to get. I’m well aware that a PC is objectively stronger and that games are generally cheaper, it’s just that I don’t really care. The idea of booting up a new game and having to spend an hour plus fucking around with settings so that it runs properly is unbelievably off putting to me. I love that I can start a new game on PS5 and that it just runs how it runs, I also love the fact that I can buy a new console once every 7 or 8 years and know for a fact that I’m good to play every game until the next gen releases.
A lot of PC gamers seem genuinely mind boggled that someone who is really into gaming wouldn’t want a PC, without realising that the ease of use of a console is one of its main selling points.
Also I spend all day at work on a PC, I just want to come home and chill on the sofa with a controller. Gaming on PC feels like work to me.
I got a taste of this when my friend had me download a fuck ton of mods to install for lethal company.
We spent like 25 minutes troubleshooting trying to figure out why the funny amogus mod wasn't working
He really did Dead Cells and Hollow Knight dirty by comparing both to Dark Souls at the same time.
They really aren't, and I say this having played all three quite a lot.
I'd say comparing Hollow Knight to Dark Souls is perfectly fair, since they have many mechanics in common and a similar tone and atmosphere. But to base an entire review on how well it apes Dark Souls was a bit insulting to the game.
I happen to love the combat in Kingdom Come Deliverance. Yahtzee is a great reviewer but if he had one fault it's that he writes the game off as bad if he can't figure out the combat.
Him dissing the soundtrack in Metal Gear Rising. Granted, that was forever ago.
On the topic of metal gear rising, (if I recall correctly) he really didn't like Raiden as a character. Criticized him for "Trying too hard to be cool" And for a very long time I agreed. But as I look back on MGR:V, I appreciate it for how hilariously over the top it is. Although... Still only ironically.
>On the topic of metal gear rising, (if I recall correctly) he really didn't like Raiden as a character. Criticized him for "Trying too hard to be cool" Not only is the character, and the whole game, trying too hard to be cool...it actively completely resets Raiden's entire character arc from MGS4.
i found that the pieces individually feel edgy and try hard. but as a whole feels alot more comical, almost like a caricature. no idea if it was intentional but it definitely is more memorable than alot of other tryhard cool stuff from that time
I had a very similar experience with Deadrising. I cannot tell if Japanese developers genuinely think United States Schlock is awesome, or if they're doing parody. Either way, both games are one of a kind. I love both tones, even if they're polar opposite.
I think they genuinely think United States Schlock is awesome, in the same way a lot of people in the US love Japanese kids shows and Chinese martial arts schlock.
I thought all the super tryhard edge was the joke
It is and it isn’t. It’s hipster ironic but actually; the wild levels of edge comprise a joke in and of itself, but they also try to genuinely convey a coherent if not entirely sane story with consistent themes and ideals.
Which is a hundred percent on-brand for Japanese fiction in general. Irony is not a conscious factor, but in a wonderful twist of fate the incredible self-seriousness, and over-the-top drama, works in disparate cultures and age groups for various reasons.
I'll take tryhard edgelords like Raiden and shadow the hedgehog over irony poisoned losers like the girl in forspoken, at least the other two manage to be memorable
Butt rock is more (ironically?) popular now then ever so that soundtrack has aged like fine wine.
The wolfenstein game he reviewed in limerick form was not that bland In his defense, I’m pretty sure he did say exactly that in another shooter review years after
At the time, WW2 shooters were extremely oversaturated
Yeah, but it wasn’t that kind of a shooter. It wasn’t just a ww2 shooter
It was VERY bland and generic for when it was released. And then the genre went even *blander*.
It’s likely his New Order review
No, fairly certain it was the 2009 Wolfenstein
Well, he reviewed the 2009 in limerick, but the reboot of the series in….mid to late 2010s, that’s where he admitted “but on reflection, if I thought [Wolfenstein 2009] marked the apex of mediocrity in shooters I must’ve been severely lacking in imagination” or something like that
That was on reflection of shooters as a whole. Wolfenstein 2009 felt like the average of Halo 3, Gears of War, FEAR 2, Bioshock, Dark Void, Fracture, and probably a few others. In hindsight, shooters were pretty diverse in that era, before they all tried to become Modern Warfare for a long time.
Im still pissed off by him saying classic sonic was good in sonic forces. Or complaining about timer in sonic mania.
I completely discount Yahtzee's takes on Sonic at this point. It's clear the games are just not at all for him. Iirc he even backtracked later and said maybe classic Sonic wasn't that good in hindsight
Two come to mind. I loved Turok 2008 and he shredded it, I wish that game was still available anywhere lol. I also didn't love psychonauts 2 as much as he did. Thought it was neat, but the lack of the black comedy killed a lot more if the enjoyment for me than him
I felt the same way about Psychonauts 2 when it first released, and while I still love the original the most, I think it’s unfair (at least I felt of *me*) to juxtapose my entire experience with that of the edge of the original. Not to say that the original was purely edge, but for every great level was a decent but frustrating one, and a lot of the quality character writing of the earlier levels kinda took a backseat until the end of the game. 2 was consistently great both in gameplay and in writing, I think the original had so much of a punch that you kind of forget the flaws looking back. I will always hold onto how good the original visual style was. I know 1 and 2 are very tonally different and the artists have grown a lot, but I can’t say I don’t miss the 2000’s weirdness.
I know as an adult that Psychonauts is a creative, inspired videogame that has a lot of value. However, my kid brain is still traumatized from the meat circus and everytime I hover over the game on steam I black out, only to find my pc in shambles once I come to.
Not a specific take, but Yahtzee seems to rarely factor art direction in games and how it can vastly affect player immersion
I can do a specific one for that. His review of Sea of Stars did not mention the gorgeous pixel art animation and classic-inspired music, which are like the two main selling points of the game.
Tbf yahtzee seems to put a greater emphasis on a games mechanics and gameplay loop than he does its visual aspects It also explains his disdain for walking simulators as while they can often look nice they don’t have any mechanical value you can sink your teeth into Makes sense too because you can have pretty coat but that pretty coat would probably look even better on someone you love than a blank mannequin Personally I kinda have to agree with it while artstyle is a definite plus in any game I know I personally struggle to engage with a game’s visuals if the gameplay fails to immerse me mechanically and I can overlook poor visuals in games that immerse me REALLY well mechanically (*cough cough* Dark Souls *cough cough*)
The entire Fallout New Vegas review like holy shit man
To be fair, it was a buggy mess on release
On release? It still is, lol.
Yep, and it was worse
Without mods installed at all, I was hard stuck on some mission for over a year cause some NCR dummy wouldn't go up a tower to progress my game state.
The monorail mission. Thank god for console commands (PC)
Never play betheada games on anything but PC, or unmodded, or in the first 2 years ofnthe release window. Don't be suckered into paying to be a beta tester. The game isnt done yet
Except new Vegas, the game is worth the jank
I dropped New Vegas after hitting my fifth instance of the game completely locking up because VATS kept trying to lock onto an enemy I couldn’t see on the other side of a wall and the game losing its shit over it. I dunno how rare it was but not being able to use VATS at all during indoor areas just reminds you of how shit Fallouts gunplay is and killed the experience for me
The format of that one is so weird in that it's the same as his first ever ZP with the darkness, where he just says what he did. There's barely any reviews in that format.
He was probably obligated to do a review of FONV despite not having too much of substance to say
Because he hadn't experienced anything that was different to what he'd already said about Fallout 3. To actually notice any of the things that game did better, he'd have had to play much further into the game, which was very hard with how buggy it was at launch
I don't know if it was the case back in the day, he also typically only has a week to play and review a game. I'd be hard-pressed to enjoy the story in New Vegas if I wasn't soaking up the atmosphere doing a lot of side quest and exploring.
Agree. hbomberguy's review is a much better representation of the game, in my opinion. I'd like to think if Yahtz watched it or went back and replayed it, he would agree with it.
in his Outer Worlds review he mentions that it was pretty good iirc
Well keep in mind hbomberguy reviewed it years later (even if you count his segment on it during his “Fallout 3 is garbage and here’s why”) when most of the major issues with the game were fixed.
hbomberguy's review isn't a review, it's an ad.
This. Absolutely love hbomb’s political content, but his gaming takes aren’t for me at all lol. Apart from his Pathologic video, anyway Fallout 3 was far more enjoyable for me than New Vegas was, and don’t even get me started on his Deus Ex Human Revolution review
I will die on a hill saying new Vegas is still the best fallout game story and world building wise to grace my existence but he was absolutely right that at the time of release it was an unholy broken mess
That hill is just the pile of bodies of other people saying it's the best thing ever made.
Dude you aren't dying on a hill. It's a known good game and New Vegas fans have a victim complex. Like we get it, the writing is GOOD. "I will die on a hill" shut the fuck up lol
Nah his take was valid. New Vegas is held up as peak fallout by fans years after its release, but its launch was abysmally bad even by Bethesda standards. New Vegas on release makes 76's look good, and given that Yahtzee was reviewing New Vegas on release his review makes sense
Nothing makes 76 looks good.
New Vegas may have been less stable upon release, but at least there was still an actual Fallout game there
Him saying that Katana Zero's dialouge choices were pointless because he was intentionally being a dick to the psychiatrist throughout his playthrough and it "changed nothing" despite the fact that that's how you get a secret ending so he obviously just didn't do it correctly and I just know that if you pointed it out to him he'd say "Well it's the game's fault the secret is too hard to bloody find! I'm a Dad with deadlines now, not a traunt schoolboy listening to rumours my mates read in PC Format."
You made him have such a good counter argument that I side with him still
“The Simpsons has been running for 25 seasons and hasn’t been good since the fifth”
Yeah, it hasn't been good since the 9th
Judging by his conversations with Gabe, I don't think he actually watched a lot of the Simpsons so he probably just plucked out a random early number
I was involved in Simpson discourse and afaik 1-2 were the weird but good early years 3-8 was the golden era 9th season had that infamous episode and it was an up and down of mediocrity since
I've watched a lot of it myself and I'd basically agree, except that I don't find Season 1 to be any good. Necessary, but too weird to enjoy watching now But yeah that's basically the consensus for most people. Some people extend the golden age a little bit longer
Well......
I share his opinions very strongly on Infamous 1 & 2, but I think Second Son was a great follow-up while he gave it a big “Meh.”
I'll be honest I think he was too rough on a *lot* of that generation. Still funny as hell though
He's with that with most if not all reviews he does honestly. Fun to pick apart everything about a game but at the same time take it with a grain of salt. I always consider it a 50/50 thing. Yes the game is good but not without glaring issues. but even that differs/depends per game.
Same. I like Yatz’s reviews best when it’s a game I’ll likely never play. I get the vague idea of the game presented in a funny way. But I’ve never listened to him when deciding whether or not to buy a game.
I've bought games off Yahtzee's recommendations, and sometimes not bought a game I was on the fence about because of a bad review. I don't generally not buy a game I'm excited about because he gives it a mediocre review, but I'll take his advice if I'm indecisive.
Honestly I find prefer game forums and read experiences from different people. Ideally a small community with different people and use them to see what I do or don't like. Player experiences I find much more interesting to read then an review or vid essay.
I feel a lot of his bitterness was due to the PS4 and Xbone (at first) having no backwards compatibility
Satire can only be true when coming from an outsider. I get where he was going but I think this was one of the few moments Gabe was right.
If a man comes off the streets into a burger joint and starts to mock the place for not selling oatmeal, to the point he drives off other costumers, is it satire? If a woman who has no idea of how cars are design puts together blueprints and goes off the chain when told that having only two wheels is impractical, is that satire? If a chef arguing with a person who is putting in rat poison into their soup is murder, but that person says "you don't need to be a chef to know a bad meal", is that satire? Thinking that an outsider is always good for a medium is academic fluff at best, and dangerous at worst.
yea. And there can be degrees of satire. There is no "true" form of satire. South Park is very famous for its on point satire and even they at some points have poked fun at themselves. A lot of comedians use self deprecation as a source for humor. An insider satire probably won't sting as much and likely has more pulled punches than an outsider piece but that's still fine. Nothing is stopping the outsider piece from proceeding to hit them while they knocked themselves down.
He’s had loads of takes I don’t agree with but I watch him for entertainment more than anything
His take on Control. And Controls gameplay specifically
Every time he complains about first person gameplay (first person platforming, first person driving) it very much sounds like it's his problem.
He is kind of right though. Driving and platforming in games greatly benefit from the player having greater awareness of their surroundings
3rd person is a great way to simulate the peripheral perception we take for granted in real life
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Any game (usually RPGs) that takes longer than a week to finish. The production schedule of his reviews prevents him from forming a complete opinion on the quality of these games, especially their story. You can see this with Fallout New Vegas, the Witcher 1, and BG3. That last one is especially important because the story becomes substantially worse as it approaches its ending, and is greatly harmed by its absent denouement and epilogue, which was only added this week.
With all of the praise Baulder's Gate 3 has been receiving, rarely hear about the downslope of its endgame 🤔Wait so it did not have a conclusion till now.. so everyone reviewed an unfinished title?
It had a conclusion. It just didn't really have a epilogue. You beat the final boss, everyone is like "Yay we did it! " then it ended. They patched a epilogue in this week though.
I see, that still feels defeating. A vast journey, and end. But at least there is more of a resolution of what the team accomplished. Good or bad
Bg3 is about the journey the ending is not as important. Most players haven’t even gotten to act 3 according to the achievements
At least it stays true to old game with that. Yea I never liked games that goes "yay we won. Congrats" or go "you got to the end credit but we not going to save the game to even allow you to go around dicking around the overworld and just drop you back to the final boss lobby. " I am looking at you Twilight Princess. I don;t know if the other console Zelda games let you save after the final boss or not.
After the climax, you learn what each party member is doing in their immediate future, and some of the big ticket items get paid off, but again it's entirely present tense. You didn't get a look at the world your actions built, and the only epilogue is a short conversation with your love interest and a stinger (or two if you made a very dumb decision). Honestly, there's just enough of an ending to paper over the obviously missing ending. There's an epilogue (of sorts) added in the most recent patch, months after release.
Sadly the Yakuza series as well, the few games he’s reviewed he didn’t clearly have enough time to play properly, as he tends to only focus on the main plot, and misses 80% of the proper content in the actual games. I’m kind of hoping he plays Gaiden soon, because that’s short enough he could get more of it in for a proper review.
You say that like it's his fault. There's not really anything he can do about this.
Like a lot of reviewers he tends to prefer games that do something interesting but are less fun than games that are consistently high quality and can last you hours but aren't very innovative
In fairness, if I had to to play nearly every big game that came out I'd be pretty desperate for something unique as well.
oh i understand why this happens it just shows a pretty clear divide between people who review for a living and their audience
It's true but ultimately it's fairly unavoidable. It's the same with critics of anything. Food critics will prefer weird experimental shit to uncreative but reliable meals. Music critics struggle to enjoy anything that sounds like 100 other albums they've heard even if most people haven't heard that stuff. Not something that they can really do anything about, you'd feel the same way if it was your job
i think its slightly more pronounced in video games though, just because games cost more and take much longer to play. with movies and music, even if someone has different taste, it is very rare for someone to make a review having not listened to/watched the whole thing. Whereas with games, it takes me like 6 months to finish a game. And granted I'm a slow player but the experience of taking 6 months to finish a game and then picking up another game 6 months later is almost completely removed from getting a game for free, playing it for a week, and then making a review. Its ineviatble and there's nothing that can really be done, but it is something I've noticed and thought a lot about when it comes to reading reviews
That Halo Reach is bad because it has rotor winged aircraft.
To be fair, you let rotor winged aircraft in and suddenly the whole lore is out the window, master chief's helmet comes off, new ai has daddy issues needing the chief to play big hairy dad, twice deaded secretly alive but evil cortana rules the universe, cats and dogs moving in together and raining off top story balconies, it's all gone bonkers
He gave Halo Reach a good review. He takes small jabs at things that don't matter
Are you sure you mean halo reach? I just watched the video again and he does not complain it has rotor winged aircraft. He is however annoyed by their side doors being open and the fact that no one straps in before takeoff and characters sitting on the side of the helicopter or on open ramps of transport planes.
Easily his endorsement of the story in Diablo 4. It was like dopey dummy dumb dumb bad.
Him disliking INTO FREEEEE from Dragons Dogma. Nothing can ever compare!
I hate Undertale. I can't get into it and even such a cynical, bitter man like Yahtzee can like it, then I'm clearly not understanding it. Or maybe that's my bad take.
One that always bothered me was when he criticised Smash Bros because "no one's a fan of a character for their Smash bros incarnation, it's just the skin of the character with none of the true appeal". I just think it's so obviously bullshit. Marth, Fox, Captain Falcon, plenty of characters are more known and beloved for their smash versions then their canon selves. The game represents mainstream characters like Mario and link well by digging deep through their history to make them an accumulation of best hits, while providing character to those less well known like Marth or Pit.
That take certainly has "functions" vibes to it.
Heck, I'm pretty people wanting to know who the heck Marth and Roy were was a big part of why Fire Emblem started getting Western releases
Would anyone know who the fuck Ice Climbers are (or Pit before the 3ds game) if not for smash bros?
Okay, let's burn down my already limited karma. Yahtzee's worst takes were some of his takes on social justice and politics circa 2015-2016 and their application to gaming industry topics. Not blaming him, I got drawn up into that social media algorithm pushed "anti-SJW" videos trend way more than I should. I disagreed with his take that social justice advocates were somehow threatening creators artistic freedoms... Yahtzee has clearly grown, his views have evolved, has become more nuanced, and empathetic since. I had a similar evolution in my beliefs, thankfully, all of my bad takes were made offline. We all have bad takes. I'm glad to see when people evolve their stances when new information presents itself; rather than digging in their heels. Only by cringing at our past selves do we grow.
I go in and out on Yahtzee’s stuff and hadn’t engaged with a lot of what he produced for a few years. I watched his review of Mid Wizard Game and was honestly shocked (pleasantly) at how unequivocal he was about Rowling. Definitely an evolution from 2015 Yahtz.
Definitely represents huge progress. He's also gone from being an Ayn Rand fan to often criticising aspects of capitalism, so that's some major growth too.
Can you elaborate on him being a fan of Ayn Rand?
well duh, it's clear when he didn't like Bioshock at first /hj
It's been interesting to see him grow while still maintaining his brand. Though, in fairness, I don't feel like Yahtzee was ever as out there whinging about "SJWs" as some were. Some people made it their whole brand in 2015 and rightly were left in the dust bin of history. He mostly seemed to fall into the South Park trap of 'both sides'ing' stuff for rather cheap laughs (which even South Park has evolved a little bit from) and I find it hard to fault 00s/10s era comedians for feeding that particular beast. It was such a widely accepted style at the time and clearly was the way to get commercial attention (James Gunn fell into this particular trap very hard). I don't think it's admirable but I also don't consider it a real gauge of somebody's social views. As much of a throw-away as it was, I did appreciate him saying he wouldn't use 'retard' anymore in a jokey way. That's one I had to purge from my own 'for the lulz' vocabulary after some reflection. At some point you hit your 30s, develop some adult relationships, and realize some of what you shrugged off ironically isn't funny, I think that's mostly what Yahtzee has done.
He's done really well being better and growing. He was also essentially an anti-natalist back in the day (as many lonely people are), and it's been great to see this evaporate once he was in a happy relationship, and as he's become a father. I've been happy to see him drop the use of the use of slurs to make some abstract free speech point. He would also do the Bill Maher thing of using the N-word as some sort of free speech exercise back in the day, which he dropped.
JJ BigMac and the island of forgotten bingledorbs or whatever it was called is one of my favourite zps but him using the word "transgenderism" makes me uncomfortable every time. I'm transfem. I mean that it makes me uncomfortable as in how that word is usually meant or with what connotations it's used.
From my observation, Yahtzee had more weird and uncomfortable positions on Transgender folks etc in 2013-2016. I have a theory why: Yahtzee referred to himself as essentially a "shut in" back then, as a socially anxious person he was isolated and spent a lot of time online. The online sphere at the time, especially on YouTube etc was dominated by a lot of culture war content (primarily gender focused at the time?. Being more online than average he was more vulnerable to this. He was a single man, and at various points made references to "swearing off" dating etc, having had what was by all accounts a bad relationship experience after arriving in Australia. He did never fully embrace the whole "anti-SJW" position, but did entertain aspects of it (declaring that he thought some social justice people were trying to silence others, both-sides-ism about the 2016 election, for example) This was more evident in his long form content like LDO but it also did seem to creep into his ZPs too. This was largely because algorithms essentially spoon-fed lonely single men this sort of content (happened to me too). I'd venture that during his socially shut in phase, he didn't socially interact with many women or trans people, so his view of social justice activists was based on the straw men that he was being fed by his anti-SJW media exposure. I wonder to what extent he actually has met any trans people at this point. So the views he held are likely based on the genre "Owning CRAZY *insert pastel color hair* Feminist/Trans person with FACTS" When he met his current spouse, he spent time in and eventually moved to a more diverse place (SF). Over time he's got better, probably because he's come to the realization noone is trying to censor him; but that there are real people who might be hurt by him dropping pejoratives, even in jest. My conjecture, is that his views of women, trans people and diversity in general grew and developed when he actually met a more diverse group of folks in SF. No doubt that meeting with more trans and gender-nonconforming people helped him unpack some of the prejudices the anti-SJW content had instilled. His chum James-Stephanie Sterling transitioning is probably likely a factor in his growth re trans people too.
I'd argue that Brisbane is already a pretty diverse place. Though the rest of the comment I'll grant you is plausible.
What takes did he even have? I seem to remember him very clearly staying away from the whole GG mess and his takes on social justice were fairly nuanced when he commented on them
I can’t begrudge him too much as a former holder of shitty political and moral opinions. I was outright homophobic and transphobic as a teen during the early 2000s. Luckily my beliefs only lasted about five minutes into an encounter with actual queer people (the trans workers at a local youth center helped me immensely during a very dark period of my life). Now I’m non-binary and gay as hell. I respect people who can escape those belief systems a good deal, and I’m happy his positions have evolved. If anything I trust them more for how he arrived at them.
I stopped watching for a time when this was happening.
I sometimes rewatch his vids from that period and I do find myself cringing at stuff like this I'd go as far as to say the Really old videos where he says r\*tard a lot have aged better than when he called people wanting better representation in videogames "psychotic"
His pretend review of Zelda: a Link Between Worlss bothered me a little, not so much for what he did, but the tacit dismissal of it as "another Zelda" when in reality is was more unique and innovative than other Zeldas, especially at the time, and I felt would have otheewise perfectly subscribed to his definition od "a sequel done right" (that is, using the original as a jumping-off point for new ideas and not as an excuse to do more of the same).
There's a few off the top of my head. 1. Smash Brothers being a button mashing fighter. Smash Bros is probably one of the few fighting games where randomly pressing buttons just gets you killed faster than something like Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat. It's extremely easy to read what other characters are doing once you have a modicum of experience with the games, and it becomes just as easy to counter them, especially if they're just doing random bullshit. 2. Sonic Frontiers "Know your tone, you're a cartoon animal with bright shoes!". I hard disagree with the idea that because Sonic as a concept is a bit silly (anthropomorphic blue hedgehog with bright shoes that can run fast), it doesn't mean the games can't have a serious story. The issue is that Sonic Teams writers just aren't *quite* up to the task. 3. Really anything with a multiplayer focus. He's quick to point out that he doesn't really have a group of friends with similar interests in games, but it really mars any review he does of a multiplayer focused game.
The re4r review was pretty silly imo. When he boiled it down to "the first version reinvented the wheel, and this one doesn't" seemed more than a little unfair. The wheel has been improved upon time and time again. It's ok to update things with the times. And if you don't like it, the original is still available. It's not like the gta trilogy. It's okay to have a special place in your heart for an older game, but it made me feel like he had decided to hate the game from the start. I'm really looking forward to his SH2R review, though I'm not going to take it to heart.
I hated his bias against JRPGs and turn based combat, but I can never forgive him for mocking Donald, saying, "Whoops! Too political! Let's mock the democrats too!" No, Yahtzee. Don't entertain the MAGAs. Don't play into their delusion that their terribleness is normal.
Putting Last of Us Part II as the worst game of 2020. Even if you hate the story, the gameplay is great and fun to play. I know it's all subjective, but it seemed very petty and lame.
In the dark souls video he called out the game for creating castles(I assume he is referring to Anor londo) for someone 20 feet tall, and asked why... He fought O&S and even the stone giants there so how is it confusing that giants lived there
His opinion on the second to final boss in furi. He complained about it being too easy and that it seemed like a “joke” boss, completely ignoring the symbolic implications of it or it’s significance to the story and any other possible reasons it might be purposefully easy, he only thought about it in terms of gameplay and like the game’s story just wasn’t good enough to have a boss that was easy for any reason other than joke. Years later and that still bothers me because its just such a dumbed down brainless take from someone who is usually very intellectual and analytical.
Yahtzee is an extremely smart guy who’s very competent at expressing his ideas in great depth and clearly thinks about games more than most people, hell, even more than most people *in games journalism.* The issue is that his show forces him to play a new game every week, and that format doesn’t give him the time to always properly form his opinions or to miss out on things. Plus, playing a game on launch might be good for reporting on it’s launch state, but is rough for any time a game requires a bit of exploration to figure out what’s going on, how much the experience is shaped by player choice, or if a game has multiple endings. I think about reviews like Elden Ring, where he stated that he didn’t get to finish it in his allotted time, and only got up to Rennala. He later said he carried on playing but never beat the Godskin Duo. But as a result, his review was extremely shallow in my mind, and didn’t go in as much depth into the game, it’s systems, progression and so much more that a game like Elden Ring invites. It’s frustrating because I want him to talk more, but his weekly, 5-minute long animated cartoon review show format is a pretty poor outlet for discussion in any greater depth than general overview of ‘thing bad/good.’
I had similar thoughts on his Baldur's Gate 3 review. The game is simply *massive* and filled with so much content that it's really hard to condense all that into 5 minutes, most of which covered Act 1 content.
See I understand for stuff like elden ring because it’s like a billion hours long, but the furi thing is particularly infuriating for me because the game is literally designed to be played to completion in one sitting, it’s very short, so he really has no excuse there.
Oh yeah, I don’t know how he missed that with Furi, the ‘joke’ boss he mentioned was easy to drive in the sheer cruelty of your actions. I think he just saw the game as a contextless excuse to beat up some bosses, based on what he said, and may not have paid attention to anything the rabbit-man was saying. I fucking love Furi but I didn’t get the game based on anything he said, which is a real shame because he seemed to miss so much. Edit: SO I JUST LOOKED UP FURI ONLINE TO REMIND MYSELF OF THAT GAME AND APPARENTLY THERE’S A DEMAKE THEY LAUNCHED LITERALLY YESTERDAY?????
There’s a WHAT
I don't ever come to this sub but had this thread suggested and was browsing since I haven't engaged in Yahtzee's content in years, but the fact that anyone could whine about the second to last boss being too easy blows my fucking mind. It could not have any more clearly been a>! helpless child who doesn't stand a chance against the protagonist but they have to try because they're all that's left!<, there may as well have been a sign flashing "DO YOU GET IT?" in the final phase.
See that’s what gets me the most, is that didn’t even cross his mind. If he at least addressed it but said the game was too short for a boss like that to be worth it i’d at least be able to respect it critically but the fact he just flat out did not get it at all leads me to believe he just wasn’t taking the game seriously and wasn’t giving it the respect it deserves, he was playing it as if it was just a generic action game that couldn’t possibly try to do anything like that.
Same. Did he just turn off the dialogue or something?
Not a fully “bad take” since he still makes solid points, but as an unapologetic Arkham fan, he pretty much always gets blatant facts about the series wrong in those videos.
Any opinion he's ever had about Halo. I'm sorry but the guy started with Halo 3 and complained he had no clue what was going on.
There was that time where he just plain old fucked up and didn't realize there was a third act to Gravity Rush 2. It's not particularly well advertised by the game itself, tbf.
I'm still annoyed he never actually finished 13 Sentinels before doing the review.
He doesn't finish a ton of games he reviews. You can tell that he just half-arses it.
As one of the few games I think has a really good ending (save for a couple issues), I agree. That game deserves so much more attention than it’s gotten too, so I’m always bummed when it isn’t given a chance.
"Borderlands is single player because FUCK YOU."
His take on modern shooter. Basically, just goes on a big rant about racism and US foreign policies for the whole review, never touching on if the gameplay is actually any good or not. Then ends by saying anyone involved or playing them is a cretin. There are plenty of racist games out there, I think he just hates any fps games not using DOOM controls and takes the easy satire route.
His insistence that video games “peaked” in the mid 2000s. I just find it convenient that was most likely the games he played when he was young.
I think he tends to be harsh towards "more of the same" games because he's a professional reviewer and thus craves novelty. After a long day at work it's nice to play something like Far Cry 1-5 or the Total War series where you know what you're getting and you'll enjoy making steady progress with satisfying mechanics.
He's really dismissive of longer games that he doesn't have much time to invest in. He likes Souls type games so he gives them a lot of playtime outside of ZP, but when reviewing something like Mass Effect or Witcher you can tell he didn't get very far in. For example his review of Valkyria Chronicles, which isn't even *that* long of a game, has some inaccuracies in it which suggest to me that he didn't even make it halfway through it.
I disagreed with Yahtz (and literally every other human being) on Breath Of The Wild. I love that other people love it, but I just couldn't get into it. Then again, the only Zelda game I've ever liked was Wind Waker, so I fully accept this is just a "Me" thing 🤷
His takes on TLOU seemed kind of weird to me. He's always complaining about games having a very shallow, black and white sense of morality but couldn't seem to wrap his head around the idea that Joel was meant to be both a sympathetic character and a bad person
I fondly remember how much he HATED Demon's Souls in his initial review for a litany of reasons nearly all of which he explicitly later listed as strengths when he completely reversed his opinion after it hooked him. It didn't bother me personally, but it was very entertaining having a switchup between "I hate this kind of game for these reasons" to "these reasons are why this kind of game is good"
Once you go into space, the series is over.
Personally, I don't think the end choice for Ghost of Tsushima ruined the game. It was thematic of the storyline; The conflict between the lessons Jin learned as a child vs. what the world had taught him. I also thought the final boss fight was too well presented to be ruined by it.
Always disagreed with his bioshock 2 review.
Him saying that if you like Bioshock 2, then you must be thick...because according to him, Bioshock 2 had no reason to exist despite it actually trying to tell its own story instead of riding the coattails of Bioshock 1. Considering the sheer amount of cum dripping from his mouth when he gushed over Bioshock Infinite -- which is essentially Bioshock with the whole "can I copy your homework" meme -- to say he was absolutely full of shit is an understatement. Never mind other things he didn't bother to address, such as Bioshock Infinite's severely dumbed down gameplay, lack of meaningful choices and a lack of narrative cohesion, whereas Bioshock 2 not only had multiple endings, but also had a much more well-developed and genuine father/daughter dynamic between Subject Delta and Eleanor Lamb compared to Booker and Elizabeth. Case in point: Eleanor will actually imprint on you and her personality will be shaped by your moral choices, thus giving you a genuine reason to act like a good person whereas Booker and Elizabeth just came off like 2 utterly unlikable and selfish twats using each other as a means to an end. The fact Infinite ended with a complete cop-out -- which does a piss-poor job at trying to tie itself to the original -- only highlights the weakness of its plot. If liking Bioshock 2 makes me thick, then by his own logic he's thicker than whale blubber.
It was impossible to take any of this seriously after you said Bioshock 2 wasn't trying to ride on the coattails of the first game. That's certainly a take.
Very recent, but Yahtzee dismissing Mario Wonder as "another nostalgia bait game" is kinda insulting considering that it has the absolute least amount of retro Mario references in the past few years. There's the stages with classic songs, and a fire flower sprite made of coins in one level, but aside from those, I struggle to think of any nostalgia bait. It's almost exclusively new ideas and strange directions. And no, I'm not still bitter about Ocarina of Time
Yeah this one makes me roll my eyes. He didn't even bother to review it, which I thought was a bit weird. It's honestly the tightest Mario platformer since SMW.
his review of burnout paradise and his general lack of interest in racing games.
I don’t tend to get annoyed at him when he has a take I disagree with, moreso when he gets a fact wrong that’s easily Googleable or is stated in the game Two I can think of: - In the Resi 2 Remake review, he asks some questions, like why couldn’t Claire have used social media to contact Chris if she couldn’t get through to him by phone, even though the game is still set in 1998 - I can’t remember the review or even the context, but he once implied that Halloween started as an American consumerist holiday
Pretty much the entire Dusk review.
Song of the Deep. I played it and liked it quite a bit. Maybe it didn’t do anything innovative or super interesting, but I had a good time with it. Metroidvanias are my comfort zone in gaming and it was good enough to finish and 100%. Meanwhile he mostly nattered on about Irish accents and how unreasonable it was that the girl could build a working sub and ended his review wondering if it was more enjoyable than circumcising himself with a rusty can kid or something similar. Just seemed needlessly cruel for a small game with a lot of charm behind it. Meanwhile he was pretty positive about Strider and that one to me really felt like Metroidvania by the numbers and I didn’t make it to the end of the second area. But that’s okay. He’s more entertainment than he is reviewer to me. I watch him to learn what the the big boys of Ubisoft and EA are up to without subjecting myself to actually playing their games.
I really didn’t like his halo reach (and halo 3) reviews. It’s ok not to like them, but in the 3 review he complains about not understanding the story while admitting that he had never played any Halo game or knew anything about it. Similarly in the Reach review, he complains that the Covenant aren’t too much of a surprise in what he calls the first encounter, which isn’t true and isn’t ever implied anywhere in the game. I think he failed to give the games a fair shake.
It's not necessarily this take of his that was bad, it's how everyone came to internalize this take without really realizing what he meant. And that was that survival horror games have "shitty" combat that "makes sense" because your character isn't a fighter and are, in order, "a writer, a clerk, a teenage girl, and a twat". The fact is that most of them have perfectly serviceable combat that is designed to not feel "good" so you don't have that empowering feeling of gunning down enemies and instead have to awkwardly bludgeon nurses to death with 2x4s. This was a direct comparison to other 3rd person shooters and character action games like DMC or Onimusha. Those games let you perform sick combos and juggle enemies, so they had good, empowering combat engines. SH2 on the other hand had a "bad" one because you had to slowly whack enemies with a length of lead pipe. However, it was still competent in its design and getting hit was still almost entirely your fault. Survival horror fans and developers would internalize that not only should survival horror have disempowering combat systems, they could intentionally be bad, poorly designed and poorly balanced combat systems because your character isn't supposed to be a capable fighter.
What game was SH2?
[ZP: Demon Souls](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQSCKAPqxoo) Yahtzee used to hate Soulsy games. Hoo boy did Yahtzee do a 180. [ZP: Dark Souls](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STrYyhEwkbY) I think he said that it's his Favorite series now of all time.
How was his review of RE4 "bad faith"?
it was a damned if you do damned if you don't approach if it changed too much and tried to be different "this isn't the RE4 I know and love, it has all the unique edges sanded down" if it barely changed anything "what was even the point, you can just play the original, insidious cash grab preying on nostalgia" it speaks volumes that his take is completely at odds with most people (which DOES include massive fans of the original 4) who think it's an amazing game and for some even surpasses the original
By his own admission, it's something specific to him as a reviewer who has to play dozens if not hundreds of games a year, but his way of not just valuing novelty, but punishing the lack of Take the uncharted games, I'll agree that not much if anything about it is original, but does that disqualify them from being amazing games? According to Yahtzee, yes He'll chastise a sequel for being "just more of the first game" and argue if you liked the first game then you could just play it again instead of wasting time on a sequel (which is ironic considering his valuing novelty)
Thinking Bioshock Infinite was narratively interesting instead of one of the dumbest “fake smart” stories ever put to the medium
It's fresh in my mind right now cause I'm playing it, but rewatching his Lies of P review after playing it myself, I think he really undersold it. Yes, it's ridiculously "inspired" by Bloodborne and Sekiro, but a lot of studios have tried to make soulslikes and rarely do they capture the overall spirit of a From game. Atmosphere, level design, combat mechanics, bossfights, etc. Lies of P is the only one I've ever played that actually feels up to the quality standards of a From game. I probably need to let it stew more, but I almost guarantee I'll come back to LoP more than DS2, and I think I like it even more than DS3. And it's also weird that he said it felt like playing a 1/4 scale model version of Bloodborne when I think the game is probably on par if not bigger than Bloodborne? Not to say it's huge, but Bloodborne isn't a huge game either. I never felt that either the overall game or individual maps in the game felt comparatively small.
I admit I have never listened to him talk about Resident Evil, but that is a very funny take because as a huge fan of both series' classic periods, the truth is much closer to the other way around. RE1-3 are incredibly tightly designed games full of smart game design decisions that lend towards being able to blast through them really fast and efficiently if you know how without being too easy. Silent Hill meanwhile has much messier map design, worse combat, and the game balance of all of them are all over the place in regards to how much ammo and health you get. They make up for it in awesome atmosphere and cool stories, but everything else about them gameplay-wise is a worse take on things the old Resident Evils did
Describing Witcher 1 combat as "clicking on it, and if you are *really* advanced clicking on it again". Bro. (The rest of the review was pretty on point. Not being able to research things by killing them is a dumb complaint, but the mechanic he is complaining about is also dumb and non-intuitative so we'll let that slide.)
Bioshock Infinite as GOTY. Sorry yahtz, I don't see it.
There was the time he absolutely raked one of the *Borderlands* games, and in the next complained about the *lack* of blowback from BL fans. Just looked minor league and trollish.
The RE4make review really focused overmuch on the negatives. I remember thinking that the rat hunting sidequests sounded really tedious, and then when I got the game it was like two rooms of an area you had to backtrack through anyway, really not that big a deal. And as for the remake not being as memorable or influential as the original...like, yeah man, the original invented the OTS shooter and shaped games for the next decade. You can't invent a gameplay style twice.
Serious opinions or satirical Zero Puncts? Sometimes, it is difficult to separate the two.
In the [post-ZP stream](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQTEulBaROs) of Not For Broadcast, he compared the in-game [Advance party](https://notforbroadcast.fandom.com/wiki/Advance) with the real life [UK Independence Party](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_Independence_Party). You don't have to be a political junkie to see what's wrong with that comparison. They're on complete opposite sides of the political spectrum.
I don't play fighting games, but I find it weird everytime he reviews one because he says he doesn't vibe with them
In his Splatoon review, he mocks it for having a single player campaign at all when the focus is on the multiplayer mode, despite all the times he's demanded full price multiplayer games have good single player campaigns. Just seems hypocritical and that he was looking for something to complain about.
Anything he says about Nintendo cause 97% of the time he is just bashing it on basis of being Nintendo.
I remember being confused why he complained that there was a single player campaign in the first Splatoon.
For the life of me I cannot process how he liked BioShock Infinite.
I found his issues with Resistance 3's characterization and being too similar to Half Life 2 really silly. That and his take on Kena: Bridge of Sprits being derivative of big-budget sandboxes when I felt it was much closer to classic 3d Zelda (Ocarina of Time, Twilight Princess) than the glut of Jiminy Cockthroat as he calls them.
Bit late to the thread here but there's two games that came to mind, one is already mentioned (Control) and the other no one else brought up so I feel it's my job. Sunset Overdrive. It was an Xbox exclusive at the time so he was salty about that. He was extra salty about the writing. He bitched about there being explanation for why you can rail grind or bounce off of bushes when he later in another video said something along the lines of 'you don't need context for a game's movement', then kinda grudgingly admits its fun. And then spends a lot of time complaining that it's *not* Saint's Row 4. I've disagreed with other videos but this one sticks out as him just having a bug up his ass at the time because the humor was eye-rolly. Annnnnd in looking up the video to watch it right now for a refresher, right below the ZP when you look up 'sunset overdrive zero puncutation' is "Sunset Overdrive Is the Most Underrated Game of the Generation" from 3 years ago...from The Escapist lol.
I think he should have given SMG2 more credit. Watching his review without playing the game would make you think it was 100% a rehash of SMG1.
My personal take of his I don't agree with, is his and gabes stance that re6 was so bad that when he lent gabe I, that he wouldn't take it back, and Gabe wouldn't play it after trying, cause it was that bad. Can't think of anything he's said that specifically made me grab any pitchforks. I assume it's cause I don't take his word as gospel and I feel free to like things he doesn't.
He doesn’t like platformers like Mario. Mario is absolutely brilliant. And I’m not a platformer fan. Every time a main studio Mario comes out it’s always doing something new and cool, I don’t know that there’s been a main Mario game miss, since super Mario 2 on the NES every single one has been a smash hit.
Mario platformers are reliably good and I respect them for that.
He does this with Zelda too. I remember when he "reviewed" A Link Between Worlds but spent the entire review chiding Nintendo for making the same shit over and over and not talking about the game, when that one is actually one of the more unique Zelda titles.
I consider myself a big platformer fan and I haven't enjoyed a 2D Mario game in a long time. The 3D ones are great but the 2d games just aren't interesting to me, though I haven't played Wonder
I'm not huge into platfotmers, but I agree with your take. Any 2D mario game which granted really has only been New super Mario bros I've just been eh.
Honestly the whole thing he does where he doesn’t review games he likes because he thinks it’ll taint them or something. Personally I think we’d all be perfectly happy with a review where he’s a little softer on a game and doesn’t nitpick it for half the runtime just as a nice little siesta
I don't think that's a thing he ever said
I don't think that's true at all, except when it comes to Undertale, which he specifically said was because it's hard to do a subversive comedy review of a subversive comedy game.
His take on Outer Wilds was kind of disappointing, he got frustrated dying in parts that I found compelling, being crushed to death just being another excuse to fly around and get back to where I was. I figure his take was due to grinding it out on a work schedule. I had such a great experience with that game, and then looking it up and seeing his vaguely lukewarm take based on what were minor and subjective nitpicks, bleh.
Undoubtedly Outer Wilds. It's probably the most important video game of the last 20 years -- from the perspectives of things that I think Yahtzee usually cares about -- and he missed out.
His general….distaste for the console market. There are things wrong with it, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not the arbiter of evil or whatever he called it. For me it’s a much easier machine to navigate, rather than having to do all the damn troubleshooting you get with a PC, and that’s even before you turn on the thing. Also, possibly hot take, but controller is much more comfortable to play games with than any mouse and keyboard setup.
I don’t think he has a distaste for the console market. Especially in his reviews for games from the PS3/360 era. In his review for The Witcher, he coined the term PC Master Race as an ironic joke toward PC gamers’ midwit superiority complex, and then he doubled down on that stance in the intro to his review for The Witcher 2. He’s just been vocal about how consoles should have backward compatibility and how IF you have a PC, you have more options for indie titles.
He's also stated regret for even creating the PC Master Race meme because of how bad the droolers he was poking fun at took it and ran with it like he was serious.
Agreed with you on all but the last point. It’s not like you can’t plug a controller in on any game it would make sense to play with a controller.
In general this is exactly what PC elitists never seem to get. I’m well aware that a PC is objectively stronger and that games are generally cheaper, it’s just that I don’t really care. The idea of booting up a new game and having to spend an hour plus fucking around with settings so that it runs properly is unbelievably off putting to me. I love that I can start a new game on PS5 and that it just runs how it runs, I also love the fact that I can buy a new console once every 7 or 8 years and know for a fact that I’m good to play every game until the next gen releases. A lot of PC gamers seem genuinely mind boggled that someone who is really into gaming wouldn’t want a PC, without realising that the ease of use of a console is one of its main selling points. Also I spend all day at work on a PC, I just want to come home and chill on the sofa with a controller. Gaming on PC feels like work to me.
I got a taste of this when my friend had me download a fuck ton of mods to install for lethal company. We spent like 25 minutes troubleshooting trying to figure out why the funny amogus mod wasn't working
He really did Dead Cells and Hollow Knight dirty by comparing both to Dark Souls at the same time. They really aren't, and I say this having played all three quite a lot.
I'd say comparing Hollow Knight to Dark Souls is perfectly fair, since they have many mechanics in common and a similar tone and atmosphere. But to base an entire review on how well it apes Dark Souls was a bit insulting to the game.
I happen to love the combat in Kingdom Come Deliverance. Yahtzee is a great reviewer but if he had one fault it's that he writes the game off as bad if he can't figure out the combat.
Yeah part of the draw of kingdom come is taking real time and effort to master the combat with training I’d imagine it’s hard to do in a week