"Zero Punctuation" and "Dev Diary" by Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw - The only thing worth watching on The Escapist

[Strangolapreti]

It is.
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Holy shit, its fucking real.
No wonder why yathzee is sucking the dick of the company behidn this game.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

It is.
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It's massive double think to both blame it on being stereotypical while also unrealistic. Though it's par the course for leftists.

I wouldn't say that, but "sequel that expands on mechanics or builds off the setting the first one = good, sequel that's overly complicated or has character forget everything they learned last time = bad" should immediately be obvious to anyone with half a brain. It's not at all profound and not a worthwhile video to watch, but most of his other videos are just some of the worst takes imaginable, showing someone completely inept at video games, a certifiable retard, and a pompous ass, often all three.

The "sequel that expands on mechanics or builds off the setting the first one = good" is not even that correct, some of the best sequels are a massive departure from the originals in terms of mechanics and story writing. Especially during the early years of gaming when technology advanced.

Doing the same shit without rocking the boat is another reason why modern gaming is so shit, and encapsulates Yahtzee's mindset and game development history.

 

[The tired cat]

https://youtube.com/watch?v=qAoVu8JScEM
One of his Top 5's already.

So, basically getting over, but somehow even more pretentious.

 

[Xarpho's Return]

Pretty sure the absolute worst video he ever made was the one where he explained why he didn't like Silksong.
He got skill issued at an enemy gauntlet, then he gets skill issued by the second last boss of the game, rage quits and googles the ending so he can say it wasn't worth it.

I've discussed in other post in this thread that were games that were retroactively admitted to not being finished or so poorly written that there was no way that he didn't watch a good portion of the game on YouTube. And this goes back a long way. One example I would have is Hotline Miami 2, which was released back in 2015. It's clear he played Hotline Miami 1, not just because it's relatively short but he singles out the "Trauma" level which happens 60%-75% of the way in. But with Hotline Miami 2 almost all of his complaints deal with the first few levels, and the issues of the game he should find complaints about, like the levels playing as The Soldier, who cannot change weapons and has to find ammo if he runs out, or Evan Wright, who (generally) will be non-lethal and empties every firearm he comes across. If he had a problem with the first few levels, he'd DEFINITELY have a problem with later ones.

Yet he still talks about the multiple characters and the issues with the storyline, so either he either sustained some major head injury that caused him to forget 80% of the game, or he watched it on YouTube. That's just ONE game that I happen to be familiar with. There were a few other games where he explicitly or implicitly admitted to watching, but I suspect a great number of the video games he's reviewed over the last 10 years (that weren't short, indie affairs) were mostly viewed on YouTube.

Extra Punctuation has always been shit. One of the first videos of EP from almost exactly four years ago had him glazing early mobile games and then complaining about the knock-offs on the system (without complaining about the lack of quality control). I bet that around 2009-2011 when these games really started taking off and the "portable handhelds are dead" articles were appearing in the usual rags he probably screeched about it. (Here's the point in this thread that is discussed).

The "sequel that expands on mechanics or builds off the setting the first one = good" is not even that correct, some of the best sequels are a massive departure from the originals in terms of mechanics and story writing. Especially during the early years of gaming when technology advanced.

Doing the same shit without rocking the boat is another reason why modern gaming is so shit, and encapsulates Yahtzee's mindset and game development history.

That did show most from games of the 1990s which curiously weren't covered, but the same sort of thing does sort of apply there as well.

- SimCity 2000. Massive technological leap from the original SimCity but everything from SimCity is still there (same code base). Some things have been tweaked (notably rail needing stations) and imported cities would need a lot of investment to work properly (water, rebuilding everything with roads again, schools, hospitals) but on a lot of mechanical level it's the same game. However, he hates SimCity and in a video released not more than six months ago called SimCity 3000 "dry and boring" and then went on to say how great Papers, Please was again. ("Fuck this guy", I remember thinking).

- Super Mario Bros. 3. Same bing bing wahoo but with better graphics, a world map, distinct level themes and gimmicks, and new power-ups. Very similar to Super Mario World, which was released within the next year or two, and arguments are still had over which one was the better game.

- The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask. He liked it because it took the established setting from Ocarina of Time and went in a new, different direction, as it was building off the setting. Even Ocarina of Time is based off the framework that A Link to the Past established, which was based on the original. Playing A Link to the Past allows you to see how it's built off the original while also providing a template of what Ocarina of Time had, and a result, dungeons both have puzzles (light all the torches before they go out, shoot the eye, weigh down the switch) and the "here's a room full of enemies" dead ends that the original had.

On the other hand, something truly new and different like Railroad Tycoon II wouldn't be the best example since despite it being a major change from Sid Meier's Railroad Tycoon (MicroProse, 1990) it wasn't really the same game as it was a completely different title, with a different developer and having sold the name to said developer. It would've been a spiritual successor had MicroProse not sold it. Besides, the original Railroad Tycoon was basically an adaptation of an Avalon Hill board game, which anecdotally Avalon Hill wasn't happy with but weren't going to let it happen again, so any sequels to Railroad Tycoon would've had to been redesigned to avoid Avalon Hill's wrath or pay licensing fees. (Hasbro wouldn't have been nearly as forgiving).

Problem is, you can't have big technological advances like SimCity 2000 or Super Mario World or Grand Theft Auto III anymore and when it comes to modern video games, pointless to talk about. He's right in that a lot of the story-based sequels aren't good if they discard the personal growth aspect of the original, and most of the sequels to other games aren't so much technological advancements but a new way to sponge money from players (Paradox games especially).

 

[Strangolapreti]

Extra Punctuation has always been shit.

True, but I find it a new low for him to need a second video in order to explain how he didn't liked getting skill issued by an indie game known for its difficulty like the little bitch he is.
It reminded me of the fat troon jim sterling needing to make an episode of jimquisition about why adding difficulty modifiers to hard games like dark souls is a good idea for the 67th time,
It reeks of pathetic especially after he glazes the game for half the video, its like frogmire's review of the same game, but replace the spineless grifter with a washed out moron.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

Problem is, you can't have big technological advances like SimCity 2000 or Super Mario World or Grand Theft Auto III anymore and when it comes to modern video games, pointless to talk about. He's right in that a lot of the story-based sequels aren't good if they discard the personal growth aspect of the original, and most of the sequels to other games aren't so much technological advancements but a new way to sponge money from players (Paradox games especially).

You can still play with genres and conventions, Witcher 3 dropped the act structure to an open world. Red Dead 2 made the game more of a slow burn. Issue is that the most successful sequels have birthed their own genres so that the changes they made sound obvious in retrospective.

 

[Strangolapreti]

So, basically getting over, but somehow even more pretentious.

I always thought Getting over it was less pretentious and more making a mockery out of you for playing it because it knew you'd still play it because of le hard meme game.

You don't exactly play it because of some deep symbolism or lesbian negroid representation like cairn, you are a stupid piece of sbit and you enjoyed watching favourite youtuber getting (mad) over it.
The pseudo-intellectual commentary is there only to rub salt upon your wound and poke fun your dumb cunt of a face and the hole you punched on the wall.

You can still play with genres and conventions, Witcher 3 dropped the act structure to an open world. Red Dead 2 made the game more of a slow burn. Issue is that the most successful sequels have birthed their own genres so that the changes they made sound obvious in retrospective.

You don't need to re-invent the wheel completely, sometimes all it takes is to execute things better than the original or propose slight variation of the formula.

Like the Zelda Oracle games, not too much a variation from Link awakening's structure, it still has better dungeons, bosses and the time travel/season change mechanic.

 

[Xarpho's Return]

Like the Zelda Oracle games, not too much a variation from Link awakening's structure, it still has better dungeons, bosses and the time travel/season change mechanic.

Problem with something like that is that you could argue that despite improving a lot on it, it introduces too many other things like Maple, the rings, the seeds, and other things that distract from a good, solid game. It's kind of like how Yoot Tower should be a big improvement on SimTower (even if it wasn't buggy/poorly documented) with things like having more diverse visitors (diverse in that "different types of people have different needs", not "more browns and gays"), different tenants have different functions, new maps with new settings, and so on, but isn't. Everything is a lot more fiddly (pick movies to appeal to different groups, not just "blockbusters" and "classics"), restaurants and shops are highly specific rather than just the fun of being picked semi-randomly, and the closest to an all-inclusive SimTower experience the Tokyo scenario is much harder than the original was, especially as it expects more (hope you enjoy placing restrooms everywhere). The classic SimTower just feels BETTER in most every way as a result.

 

[Another Random]

Bug Fables: The Everlasting Sapling is good. Why did Yahtzee hate it?

Because it didn't look as good as the latest Paper Mario.

I'm serious.

But what makes Bug Fables fail to hit that engagement button is that it's just not that visually appealing. Here's a good time to bring up Hollow Knight again, because Hollow Knight somehow managed to give its characters a sense of emotion and visual personality, despite them all being insects with black, empty eyes instead of relatable human expressions and harsh, chitinous bodies instead of hilarious slogan t-shirts. I think Hollow Knight managed it with animation, because Bug Fables doesn't have very much; that's another subtle thing Paper Mario was full of: little organic movements. Even when standing still, Mario's feet would pulsate like they were about to give birth to a brood of spiderlings; Bug Fables' characters are generally static paper cutouts, and the onus is on us to determine which bit of their simplified insectile face is the mouth and whether or not it's giving us a friendly smile.

He's complaining that the game went for a Paper Mario [64] over the sequels when it came to what the characters would look like.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

Because it didn't look as good as the latest Paper Mario.

I'm serious.


He's complaining that the game went for a Paper Mario [64] over the sequels when it came to what the characters would look like.

It's such massive hypocrisy of the person supposedly in favour of POCs and indie games, that he compares a game made by tiny devs situated in Panama to games with budgets in the millions.

For him and the whole "Indie" scene, indie games are only considered that when made by affluent western devs belonging to the same fuck circles.

 

[George Lucas]

Super Mario Bros. 3. Same bing bing wahoo but with better graphics, a world map, distinct level themes and gimmicks, and new power-ups. Very similar to Super Mario World, which was released within the next year or two, and arguments are still had over which one was the better game.

SMB1/2, SMB3, and SMW were all made on completely different engines, which was common practice for Japanese companies at the time. SMB2 only happened because SMB was so popular and people begged Nintendo for more levels.

 

[Xarpho's Return]

It's such massive hypocrisy of the person supposedly in favour of POCs and indie games, that he compares a game made by tiny devs situated in Panama to games with budgets in the millions.

For him and the whole "Indie" scene, indie games are only considered that when made by affluent western devs belonging to the same fuck circles.

I remember that review, but knowing nothing about Bug Fables I remember thinking "Then just go play Paper Mario again, dingus". The specific criticism was not having animations in the same way Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door did, a game that he himself covered a few years earlier.

But yeah you're right, for people like him there's this weird relationship with indie games and it always is the same thing. They'll cry about some AAA title and then suck off an indie game that maybe runs for 2-3 hours, and these "indie" games are usually the ones that are shared within that circle unless they happen to get REALLY big and can't be ignored (and even then I'm not 100% sure this to be the case, he sure didn't cover Balatro, not even as a "Games I Didn't Review" mention (he did do Pizza Tower but didn't get very far into it because he got stressed out just "two or three levels" in.

The root problem is that indie games as a definition has just gotten too blurred to determine what is and isn't one, but that's for another thread...

 

[funwithshemales69]

It's such massive hypocrisy of the person supposedly in favour of POCs and indie games, that he compares a game made by tiny devs situated in Panama to games with budgets in the millions.

There is a lot of stuff like that, all the hypocritical racism shiet. Remember the whole asian racism phase of western media journalism, we still have it from time to time with the vice hitpieces on Japan and Korea and stuff.

Methinks yahtzees progressivism is performative, much like most people caught up in the industry. From the beginning of zp he has had pretty strict standards and only cared about gameplay. So this comparison makes sense from that angle. You just have to do the whole "I love niggers and fags" song and dance at times to have a job. It's like white minstrelsy of a sort.

 

[Strangolapreti]

SMB1/2, SMB3, and SMW were all made on completely different engines, which was common practice for Japanese companies at the time. SMB2 only happened because SMB was so popular and people begged Nintendo for more levels.

Nowaday everyone shits on SMB2j for being too hard and not different enough from the original.
Genuinely hate this discourse because the game contained some pretty creative level design for the time and forced you to explore the surrounding and think unconventionally.

Methinks yahtzees progressivism is performative, much like most people caught up in the industry. From the beginning of zp he has had pretty strict standards and only cared about gameplay. So this comparison makes sense from that angle. You just have to do the whole "I love niggers and fags" song and dance at times to have a job. It's like white minstrelsy of a sort.

I'll never forget when he sucked tranny amhole and swallowed the mixture of pus and shit by calling Rowling a cunty terf as introduction for The wizard game.

But yeah you're right, for people like him there's this weird relationship with indie games and it always is the same thing. They'll cry about some AAA title and then suck off an indie game that maybe runs for 2-3 hours, and these "indie" games are usually the ones that are shared within that circle unless they happen to get REALLY big and can't be ignored (and even then I'm not 100% sure this to be the case, he sure didn't cover Balatro, not even as a "Games I Didn't Review" mention (he did do Pizza Tower but didn't get very far into it because he got stressed out just "two or three levels" in.

You look at the games he voted for his top/bottom/blandest 5 and its clear that his tastes have devolved overtime.

Honestly, I never heard of balatro either until geoff cuckley nominated it for the gay awards either.
Tha way he covers soulslikes makes him look like he has grown disdain over the genre, which is a fair take, but it doesn't makes him any less of a retard.

 

[funwithshemales69]

Honestly, I never heard of balatro either until geoff cuckley nominated it for the gay awards either.

Balatros a good phone game, it's like pvz but a bit more complex. A lot of indies which are good are generally phone games, what used to be called arcade games back in the day. Nominating it for a award meant for console games is retarded.

 

[Strangolapreti]

Balatros a good phone game, it's like pvz but a bit more complex. A lot of indies which are good are generally phone games, what used to be called arcade games back in the day. Nominating it for a award meant for console games is retarded.

I find it even funnier how sony bought the other half of the gay awards in a desperate attempt to hide the failure of concord to shareholders.

 

[George Lucas]

Nowaday everyone shits on SMB2j for being too hard and not different enough from the original.
Genuinely hate this discourse because the game contained some pretty creative level design for the time and forced you to explore the surrounding and think unconventionally.

Do they? I never noticed that. SMB3 isn’t actually much easier than SMB2 because there are no checkpoints, but the American version has that dumb thing where Fire Mario goes back to Super Mario instead of small Mario. Would love to see how many SMB3 lovers would get tilted playing the Japanese version. American ‘gamers’ (journalists) can be such pussies.

SMW pretty much made all the hard levels optional so that one feels easier even though it has some of craziest levels in an official game.

 

[30+GameOvers]

Do they? I never noticed that. SMB3 isn’t actually much easier than SMB2 because there are no checkpoints, but the American version has that dumb thing where Fire Mario goes back to Super Mario instead of small Mario. Would love to see how many SMB3 lovers would get tilted playing the Japanese version. American ‘gamers’ (journalists) can be such pussies.

I never had a problem with fire mario going back to super mario. There is zero purpose for the latter if you just lose the form the moment you collect the fireflower, at least that way it acts as an extra hit. Level design should evolve around that idea, and it did, the OG SMB levels were much different in comparison so one hit always reverting you to small mario worked too.

 

[George Lucas]

I never had a problem with fire mario going back to super mario. There is zero purpose for the latter if you just lose the form the moment you collect the fireflower, at least that way it acts as an extra hit. Level design should evolve around that idea, and it did, the OG SMB levels were much different in comparison so one hit always reverting you to small mario worked too.

SMB3 was made in Japan dude. It was designed around two-hit deaths. Much of SMB1/2 was designed around one-hit deaths: there aren’t many power ups.

Three-hit death severely fucks up level balance in SMB3. It wasn’t designed for it. This is especially apparent with the item system. In US SMB3 you can use items to give yourself three hits any time. It’s broken.

 

[Xarpho's Return]

Do they? I never noticed that. SMB3 isn’t actually much easier than SMB2 because there are no checkpoints, but the American version has that dumb thing where Fire Mario goes back to Super Mario instead of small Mario. Would love to see how many SMB3 lovers would get tilted playing the Japanese version. American ‘gamers’ (journalists) can be such pussies.

SMW pretty much made all the hard levels optional so that one feels easier even though it has some of craziest levels in an official game.

I've suspected that a lot of people who claim they love SMB3 probably played the All-Stars or Super Mario Advance version with its save features and QoL features.

There's some sort of collective amnesia about how many auto-scrollers and bullshit levels there were in that game and how you could use P-Wings to cheese each and every one of them.

You look at the games he voted for his top/bottom/blandest 5 and its clear that his tastes have devolved overtime.

He's attached himself to the "cozy" game genre, in the early 2010s something like Animal Crossing would've gotten mocked, now he's ingratiated himself to the game and others like it. But you could see it even from the list of games he reviews, the two-for-one reviews used to be whatever popular Steam games were making the rounds, now at least one of them now is going to be some pretentious indie bullshit that only he likes.