Hilarious Zelda Review

manasecret · 11-26-2007, 03:20 PM

Won't load. Have a link?

Bond · 11-26-2007, 03:45 PM

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/arti...ntom-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/upl...ogalaxyvg9.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.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Professor S

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.

Yoda9864 · 11-28-2007, 01:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by KillerGremlin

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/upl...ogalaxyvg9.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.