Hilarious Zelda Review [Archive]

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Bond

11-26-2007, 12:02 PM

manasecret

11-26-2007, 03:20 PM

Won't load. Have a link?

Bond

11-26-2007, 03:45 PM

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/zeropunctuation/2608-Zero-Punctuation-Zelda-Phantom-Hourglass

Odd it's not loading.

manasecret

11-26-2007, 04:13 PM

He's funny because he speaks quickly, has a British accent, and pretends to be angry.

As for the rest, it can be said about virtually every other game ma... oh nevermind, this discussion has been played out for years now.

Haha. Here's me laughing.

Swan

11-26-2007, 07:19 PM

Neat. He is very right about the whole timed dungeon that repeats thing. That part pisses me off.

Teehee

Fagballs.....

thatmariolover

11-26-2007, 07:29 PM

That one was good. I liked his Halo 3 review better though.

gekko

11-26-2007, 10:54 PM

Yes, Yahtzee is the greatest. I'll admit I wasn't a big fan until I finally found someone who agreed with me that Bioshock is crap.

The most impressive thing is that he liked Portal. First game ever. Good for him.

Can't wait for the Mario Galaxy review, because let's face it, it sucked.

Edit: Nooo!!!! Yahtzee was just here visiting (Valve, not me)! I can't believe I missed him. It would've been an honor to shake the hand of someone more bitter and cynical than myself.

DarkMaster

11-27-2007, 01:17 AM

It's true, Okami was awesome.

KillerGremlin

11-27-2007, 03:10 AM

ouch...that was brutally honest
oh well, someone has to do it, and IGN sure as hell isn't that someone

Professor S

11-27-2007, 08:52 AM

He strikes me as trying to be the Maddox of videogaming. While parts were funny, they were also just repeats of humorous observances that have been made over and over again.

Plus, his reviews tend to be rediculously negative all the time, which leads me to believe he falls into the "insecure gaming douche" category. Meaning? He needs to crap all over everything to make himself feel superior and then only like the few obscure, artsy games that are acclaimed but no one tends to buy. Once again, helping himself to boost his own meager ego that rests teetering on a skyscraper built of popsickle sticks.

To see about 8 millions reviewers like him, go to the Rottentomatoes.com forum. I swear these are people that are obsessed by and HATE film.

Angrist

11-27-2007, 08:58 AM

He reminded me of Gekko. Even before I read his post.

manasecret

11-27-2007, 11:08 AM

I thought of him trying to be a Maddox-clone as well, though that's an easy comparison. I've tried the overt negativism way of life (listen to Denis Leary stand-up, he's good start for that -- "Life sucks, get a fuckin' helmet"), but it got me nowhere but unhappiness. I prefer to enjoy what I'm doing or playing and not try to find the bad in everything. Sure there is some bad entertainment out there, and there are some bad things about Zelda. But gods if you can't find Zelda fun to play, you are thinking too hard and trying really hard not to make it fun.

Same goes for most of the big games out there that some people like to crap on just to be contrary to popular opinion. Same goes for movies -- over Thanksgiving my brother said he finally saw Knocked Up, and I asked him what he thought of it -- and he says (I quote) "I'm not sure yet. My problem is I can't tell if they were trying to be realistic or surrealistic. I wish they had made up their mind and gone with one or the other." I just sat gaping at him. Thinking too hard. About a comedy. Made by the makers of 40-Year-Old Virgin.... Jesus man, just enjoy the movie.

KillerGremlin

11-28-2007, 12:55 PM

There is a major problem with reviewing games nowadays. And it's that the gaming rating scale is flat out fucked up. It's a sad day when even going to metascore shows you that Halo 2 nets a 95 and Halo 3 nets a 96. Or Wind Waker nets a 93.

If we are falling back on a 1 through 10 scale, 1 being a pile of shit and 10 being the most amazing thing you will ever play, games like Wind Waker and Halo 3 should be getting 7s. 9s and 10s should be reserved for games that are perfect in almost every aspect including ORIGINALITY. Just because Grand Theft Auto: Vice City is a well polished version of GTA: III doesn't mean it should get the same or better score. The point of a review, in my opinion, is to actually be able to collect meaningful information by reading the review and then putting that information together with the score. If a reviewer gave GTA: III a 9.6 and then gave Vice City a 7.5 or an 8.0 and then said, "Vice City expands upon GTA: III in the most impressive ways. Fans of GTA: III will definitely want to pick this up!" you would get a better feel for the game, no? Seriously, I mean look at this shit: http://gonintendo.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/nru7213maariogalaxyvg9.jpg

11/10? Are you kidding me?

Very few games deserve to be in the 9 or 10 range: Ocarina of Time, Half-Life, Super Mario 64, Pikmin.

Now, the counter-argument might be something like, "well what if the sequel improves upon the gameplay so much that it actually makes a better game" and that point is valid but in all honesty most sequels make minor tweaks. Tweaks I say!

The solution is getting rid of the number score. Make readers read! There was a review called "The Honest Halo 2 Review" or something to that extent that came out a few weeks after Halo 2 did, and it basically summed up all the pros and cons of Halo 2 in an honest well-written way.

Even if Yahtzee tries too hard to be critical or to be funny, he makes some valid points. Wouldn't it be nice if IGN, just once, wrote a review for Zelda that just said, "This is like every other Zelda game only with new puzzles and slight derivations. If you are a Zelda fan you will love it!" And then, instead of giving the game a 9.5 or something they give it a 7 or an 8. And bam, everyone is happy. I'd still buy it, I'm a sucker for Zelda. And I'd feel better too, because when they do give a game a 10, you know it's going to be real real good.

only like the few obscure, artsy games that are acclaimed but no one tends to buy

I don't know if Portal is considered one of those games, but I highly urge you to check it out. It is quite possibly the best single player game to come out this year. It can be short if you only want to beat it once, but there are time-based goals and portal-based goals that add a huge level of depth to the game, and there is lots of competition to see how fast people can beat the level. No joke, if your computer is up to snuff to play Half-Life 2, PLEASE check out portal. :p

Yoda9864

11-28-2007, 01:11 PM

There is a major problem with reviewing games nowadays. And it's that the gaming rating scale is flat out fucked up. It's a sad day when even going to metascore shows you that Halo 2 nets a 95 and Halo 3 nets a 96. Or Wind Waker nets a 93.

If we are falling back on a 1 through 10 scale, 1 being a pile of shit and 10 being the most amazing thing you will ever play, games like Wind Waker and Halo 3 should be getting 7s. 9s and 10s should be reserved for games that are perfect in almost every aspect including ORIGINALITY. Just because Grand Theft Auto: Vice City is a well polished version of GTA: III doesn't mean it should get the same or better score. The point of a review, in my opinion, is to actually be able to collect meaningful information by reading the review and then putting that information together with the score. If a reviewer gave GTA: III a 9.6 and then gave Vice City a 7.5 or an 8.0 and then said, "Vice City expands upon GTA: III in the most impressive ways. Fans of GTA: III will definitely want to pick this up!" you would get a better feel for the game, no? Seriously, I mean look at this shit: http://gonintendo.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/nru7213maariogalaxyvg9.jpg

11/10? Are you kidding me?

Very few games deserve to be in the 9 or 10 range: Ocarina of Time, Half-Life, Super Mario 64, Pikmin.

Now, the counter-argument might be something like, "well what if the sequel improves upon the gameplay so much that it actually makes a better game" and that point is valid but in all honesty most sequels make minor tweaks. Tweaks I say!

The solution is getting rid of the number score. Make readers read! There was a review called "The Honest Halo 2 Review" or something to that extent that came out a few weeks after Halo 2 did, and it basically summed up all the pros and cons of Halo 2 in an honest well-written way.

Even if Yahtzee tries too hard to be critical or to be funny, he makes some valid points. Wouldn't it be nice if IGN, just once, wrote a review for Zelda that just said, "This is like every other Zelda game only with new puzzles and slight derivations. If you are a Zelda fan you will love it!" And then, instead of giving the game a 9.5 or something they give it a 7 or an 8. And bam, everyone is happy. I'd still buy it, I'm a sucker for Zelda. And I'd feel better too, because when they do give a game a 10, you know it's going to be real real good.
While I agree with you that the ratings scale is somewhat broken now, I don't agree with your "unoriginal sequel" scoring. If the first game was great, why would an equally good sequel score lower? If anything, the sequel should get only a slightly lower score (i.e.-9.5 down to a 9.0) and it should be noted in the written review that it's the same as the original.

At one point I agreed with you that reviews should not have a number rating. But then one of my magazines started doing that (can't remember which one), and after a month or two, I really started wanting to know how the game compared to other games and found myself reading other sources of reviews more.

BTW, I thought Wind Waker was a great game. I really liked the new art design and thought it was a good fit for the Zelda universe. I think that it deserves a low 90 score.

KillerGremlin

11-28-2007, 01:38 PM

...too...much...sailing...

lol, but whatever floats your boat (no pun intended)

I enjoyed Wind Waker, but it didn't absorb me or entice me like Ocarina did. In fact I felt that Majora's Mask was the best possible sequel to Ocarina of Time because instead of remaking Ocarina they went with a completely different story and world and style of gameplay. I thought that Wind Waker was a great game, it had great artwork, great game mechanics, and it was polished. At the same time I thought it was kind of easy and that there was too much collecting. And it did have a lot of parallels to Ocarina. I maintain that Wind Waker was a great game, but if I rated it I would give it a score somewhere between a 7 and an 8.

I had to sit through film hell in my English class, and I read Rick Altman's Film/Genre. He goes into a lot of depth about how critic review works and how there is a constantly changing element because no review is able to avoid time.

Hypothetically, someone 10 years from now might find Wind Waker more refined and thus a better game than Ocarina if they didn't play Ocarina first or if they never read any game reviews. Unfortunately for me I did get to play Ocarina when it came out, and it basically redefined my gaming life at that point. Just like Half-Life did for me on the computer with the FPS genre.

I guess I'm just being a bastard. Fixing the rating system would require some sort of major overhaul that would most likely be a big problem. The internet does provide some honest feedback and a good outlet to vent. I think people just need to take all 11/10 or 9.4/10 reviews with a grain of salt.

I'm just bored, and when I am bored I complain.

Angrist

11-28-2007, 02:43 PM

I found Viewtiful Joe 1 and 2 for the Gamecube on a store website. VJ1 cost €60, VJ2 €15. So I checked reviews. IGN gave VJ1 a 9.5, but VJ2 a 9.0. I read the review of VJ2 and the only complaint was that it looked too much like VJ1. And it had improved in some parts, so guess which game I bought.

Even though I'd like to know if I've 'already played' a game, I don't think it should affect the score too much.
But yeah, I do agree that scores tend to be too high.

BreakABone

11-28-2007, 03:10 PM

I got to say that in general review scales are broken in all industries. It is not just games but all of them.
I mean movies more so because well they use much more limited scales for the most part, thumbs up/thumbs down, 5 stars stuff like that.
But I don't think a game should be marked down because of something that came before it and was "perfect"
If Ocarina was a 10 game and Wind Waker improved on it in every way possible (sans number of dungeons) I don't see why Wind Waker shouldn't be in the 9s. Of course not a 10 because it is building on the foundation of something else (Personally I think Wind Waker is a better game but the style really influences me).

And you also have to take a game for its own merits, I mean would Ocarina of Time review as well today as it did like 10 years ago? I don't think so because of the improvements that have come not only from the Zelda formula but others. There is also a front-ended biase I believe.

Such as Mario 64 which reviews well but in all honesty I believe Super Mario Galaxy trumps the game is every way imagineable but people will argue that Mario 64 should review better because it is the first. And I kind of agree with it, it doesn't have the experience of 11 years but SMG is a much better game for it.

I think makes sense

bobcat

11-28-2007, 04:36 PM

Reviews can't be perfect. What somebody sees through their eyes may not be seen through your own.

It's hard to find consistency with reviews (E.g. Assassins Creed is a mixed bag of worms for reviews), but at least it gives the user a fair indication of what people liked/disliked about it

At that present time if a game is worthy of a 9 or 10, then that's what the reviewer will give it. So long as their reasons are justified but at the end it all matters to the person playing in the end and how that game affects them.

Best thing is to read multiple reviews from different people, then make your own judgements from there. If a game has scored well consistently, you can make a safe assumption that it's a worthy game and you may very well like it.

Angrist

11-28-2007, 06:00 PM

This is how I rate movies on IMDd:
1. I analyze how good it basically is, story/acting/etc.-wise.
2. I reflect my personal preference for the movie
3. I take into account the feeling the movie has left me in.

Like I know Save The Last Dance could really have been better and deserved an unbiased 7, I gave it an extra point because I just like feel-good romantic movies. And even though I realize that Fight Club is a very clever and good movie, I gave it a lower score because it was unnecessarily violent in my opinion.
And sometimes I just get a great feeling from a movie, like Jerry Maguire, so I add another point.

gekko

11-28-2007, 10:39 PM

Interesting you bring it up. A team at my school is working on an artificial intelligence project which has people answer questions about various games they have played.

From that they're developing a system which analyzes the different aspects of the game against the scores that they average from the press, to be able to predict the score games will get by simply answering questions such as "Does it have multiplayer?" and "In seconds, how long do you spend in a menu before beginning the game?"

I like the idea, but without having hundreds of inputs to develop the neural network, I wonder how well it will work out. I think I'd do good on it:

It's Mario- +2
It involves waggle - -10
No classic controller support - -5

Final score: -13 F

:D

bobcat

11-29-2007, 04:51 AM