(Untitled)

[metame]

For the interest of several readers I present a link to the Zero Punctuation review for House of the Dead: Overkill for the WiiI enjoy the reviews this guy does (it's about the extent of my videogame news "reading") - not so much because he reviews things, as he rips them into tiny pieces entertainingly. He clearly quite likes this game (yay!)-

Comments

[bateleur]

Add Yahtzee to the long list of people who missed the point with the scoring system and the weapons...

[onebyone]

It's fairly common for Yahtzee to disagree with game designers as to what the objective of the game is: I think his attitude to scoring systems is not totally unlike my attitude share options schemes.

Also, he doesn't play each game for very long, and seems to feel slightly guilty when he reviews games he hasn't finished. So if the scoring system is not the fastest route to the exit, that could explain why he missed it.

[bateleur]

I think his attitude to scoring systems is not totally unlike my attitude share options schemes.

That's fine except that he doesn't then get to complain that the game is too easy.

[onebyone]

Am I right in guessing that the scoring system leads to an open-ended "high score" model, as opposed to a narrative "try to complete the game" model?

If so, then he gets to complain that it's too easy to complete the narrative, if he feels that completing the narrative should be a challenge but wasn't.

Obviously one can respond, "well go away and play another kind of game instead, if you don't like this one". But then that's rather the point of a complaint in a game review - obviously the games designers like it the way it is, the issue is whether the reviewer does.

[jiggery_pokery]

Mmmm-mmm-mmm-mmm. It's all a bit Victor Lewis-Smith, isn't it? Not that that's necessarily a bad thing, of course; I haven't seen someone "be" VLS in the field of game reviews yet. The VLS "pay attention" gimmick probably doesn't work quite so well when you've got a replay slider underneath as it does when you have to go to the effort of using a steam-powered video recorder in order to get a second chance at following the script.

[al_fruitbat]

I am SO HAPPY :-)

Even his main complaint about my game is mild. OK, so we didn't make a game hard enough for the hardcore. We still made a game he enjoyed!

[sesquipedality]

I think the only thing he's liked more is Psychonauts. Well done.

[al_fruitbat]

Um, no he absolutely loved Portal.

[sesquipedality]

Still, good company to be in.