This post isn’t so much a dig at one person in particular but rather a fully fledged razor sharp rust covered stab of a dagger into the hearts of people who are idiotic enough to make up their minds about titles before reading, playing or watching them.
Case in point; the ‘Yahtzee’ fan boys (or girls). ‘Yahtzee’ (aka Benjamin Croshaw, An independent game developer) became somewhat of an internet sensation the moment he hit ‘The Escapist Magazine’ website and has entertained thousands, if not tens of thousands of people with his argumentative well articulated rants about videogames. Accompanied by videos which are animated by stringing various images together serve to create visual references to subjects, either characters or designers or a varying host of other ‘characters’ such as countries etc.
There is a lot of humour in Yahtzee’s work. There is nothing funnier than hearing someone raging at a game, being genuinely articulate and using swearing and bizarre cultural metaphors to entertain the viewer. However I don’t regard his words on how a game should be played to be equal to that of say a games journalist who writes reviews for magazines, whether they be online or available to buy in the shops. ‘Zero Punctuation’, is the title of his segments for ‘The Escapist’ and refers to Yahtzee breathlessly ranting about a said video game for around four minutes solid without pausing in his speech, which is edited together. Something I have come to the conclusion over as most of his earlier videos have a generic background hiss that every now and again goes silent indicating a cut. These are less obvious now as ‘Yahtzee’ is attracting so many viewers to ‘The Escapist’ that they must have asked him to upgrade his recording hardware by now. The reason I mention this is because I have met people who honestly believe that he does indeed speak for four minutes in a single take without gushing for air and it’s these people I have an issue with.
During one of ‘Yahtzee’s’ early reviews he was being retrospective on some of the titles that needed praise and ‘Psyconauts’ was one of these. The original game was released in 2005 on the original Xbox, the PS2 and PC. It received a fair amount of praise in the reviews placing it in the region of the high eighty to low ninety percentile but due to publishing drama as it where and the game failed to reach a high distribution number as at only 400,000 copies the game was out of print. Now the game is available on STEAM and XBL meaning that it now cannot go out of print and is accessible to two of the largest game playing audiences. STEAM also reported that sales of the game had tripled after Yahtzee’s review, meaning that his word carried weight in the gamers mind and they used his recommendation to buy it.
This is by no means a bad thing. ‘Psyconauts’ was in my mind a fantastic game. It was charming and well written with some brilliant moments in it but it didn’t do so well on the gameplay aspect. Because of this it’s not the game for everyone. It’s going to be almost impossible to please every audience of gamer out there. I’m pretty sure I’m not going to like ‘Sherlock Holmes vs Jack the Ripper’ and I certainly don’t like Halo 3, despite me liking detective shows and first-person shooters. I’m not going to force myself to play either of these titles unless I am drunk or at a house party. Which normally the only point I pick up Halo, to run my friends over in cars while swigging their beer. I feel that people need to wake up and accept that Yahtzee is making these videos for entertainment purposes and will not have the same outlook on the title as a reviewer will have.
I’ve heard stories of people playing ‘Psyconauts’ and having a negative experience with it because they are making an effort to finish a game they quite clearly don’t like from the start. It’s either not their sense of humour or there’s not enough action or whatever. I’ve also heard people say that they won’t buy a game based on his ‘review’ of it. Having watched the video where he describes the faults of this one game I listen and think that they are all valid arguments, if a little lacking in evidence but Yahtzee is out to make an entertaining piece so if something does frustrate him he’s going to make it out to be the ‘big evil’ where he will use his best catchphrases to get the viewers chuckling, but it’s these catchphrases that will stick out in the audiences mind when they pick up the box from their local retailer.
“If Yahtzee says it’s good it must be good.” No. No it doesn’t. Remember you are buying games to entertain YOURSELF and no one else. If you buy a game someone recommends then that’s a great way to broaden your horizon but if you buy a game to go along with the masses of people who think they have to because some internet celeb said so then you don’t deserve a copy of the game. Word to the wise, do a little research if you are intending to spend money on a title.
There are thousands of game reviewers out there not getting paid but feel a need to bring you an objective look at games. Read their reviews, read as many as you can and if you have the time watch some gameplay videos on Youtube or check out the review videos on gametrailers.com. That will give you a clear picture of the game in question including both visuals and gameplay. Don’t be swayed by one entertaining loudmouth do your homework and you won’t be so crushed if the game disappoints you.
