Here is the JC Zero Punctuation thread

[AArdvark]

Thank you for bumping this thread! I couldn't find this anywhere and lack the memory skills to remember the name of it. Bookmarked now for future generations to enjoy.


THE
JOHNNY
UN- MNEMONIC
AARDVARK

[Worm]

You know it's funny. I really liked ZP and then I think he got screechy about how much games cost him in Australia (long after he was SPONSORED and it was HIS JOB). After that I kind of got tired of his videos. Where he's trying too hard to impart insight than comedy. Like, awesome, I agree with you, BE FUNNIER.

The Fable 3 review is almost all the jokes and tropes that anyone would touch upon in a drunk/pill fueled rant about the game. Though you always run into something like how he thinks Ninja Gaiden 2 was really great because it was a reload-fest and that's what a true hardcore gamer wants, that just makes you question his taste.

[Flack]

I absolutely don't get the mindset that demands a reviewer finish an 80 hour game, when he's able to tell relatively quickly that:

1) The game sucks
2) The game is not the reviewer's cup of tea

I agree with you 100%. I have always thought my job as a reviewer was to (A) give you my impression of the product and (B) help you (the reader) decide if you would like the product. I don't need to play New Super Mario Bros for two weeks to perform that function. It's a 2D platform game with 3D rendered sprites and 4-player functionality. I don't need to beat the game to convey that point to readers.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

The Fable 3 review is almost all the jokes and tropes that anyone would touch upon in a drunk/pill fueled rant about the game. Though you always run into something like how he thinks Ninja Gaiden 2 was really great because it was a reload-fest and that's what a true hardcore gamer wants, that just makes you question his taste.

I think the Fable 3 review did a good job explaining why nobody should take that game seriously, and why it is hard to take the franchise seriously. "Good" and "evil" are childish concepts, but waaaay too complicated for the commercial game industry to handle.

If you murder a man because he was in your way, and then save another man's farm (or whatever it is that specifically happens in Fable) you aren't some complex blend of "good" and "evil," you are a psychopath. It would take years to design a system that didn't quickly result in players being dumped into the psychopath bin.

And OK, Molyneux has had years to refine his good and evil epic. He was interested in it for Black and White. He's now done 3 Fable games. That's four games and 10 years and he seems no closer to getting a complex, yet meaningful system of ethics in his game than when he started.

He was 41 when he released Black and White. He's 51 now. I find myself at 36 and able to see, with a much clearer eye, some problems in the text game I have spent the last 5 years designing. (As well as the problems with plot and antagonist motivations in the ones I created by myself since 1999.) Whatever I generate from years 37 and beyond will be much stronger pieces in that manner, but it took a lot of time reading about design, plot and story structure to get there. I had to let go of the idea that I couldn't gleam anything from a (say) blog post on plot if I wasn't familiar with works from the author.

You shouldn't be able to get to the end of Fable 3 and come to the conclusions that Croshaw did. I mean, for the first Fable, sure, but come on, this is ten years later, and B&W was probably in development for 3 years, so... over 13 years and the end game decisions are still awkward and poorly implemented.

The games are making a ton of cash, so why should anyone bother trying to lay down a proper design that invokes the lessons presumably learned?

[Worm]

However the issue with Fable 3 is that it just strayed too far from the first game, which were fun good/evil romps. It took out RPGs elements and turned your character completely one dimensional. Then toward the end it tried to bring back choices by making neither one desirable.

The exact thing happened to me as happened to ZP. I was going to sit and gain all the money by leaving the system on, but I went a day too far forward and the entire end sequence started. So I quit.

Somehow I think something a guy is getting paid for should be more than just an explanation of his play experience with some THIS IS INSIGHT(tm) BRAND INSIGHT mixed in.

He talks a lot but he doesn't say anything. Saying the shitty last part of the game was only shitty because it used the words good and evil is such a fucking bullshit sophomoric piece of new gaming journalism caca. Plenty of games did good/evil fine. Certainly Jedi Knight 2 wasn't a bad game because it used a good/evil dichotomy, neither was Fable 1.

The videos are fine if you haven't or never will play the game, but once you play the game you kind of realize his inability to produce meaningful critique. I can't remember if it was him not liking Prototype or thinking that Ninja Gaiden II(2008) wasn't shitty, but a secret game for those hardcore enough to enjoy it; but, there was some critical moment where I realized he just didn't have anything intelligent to say.

I guess he's good as a video game cliffnotes, but he's really strayed from properly calling bullshit on things.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

That is a good point. I don't care to play most of these games, because they seem shitty and lack save-anywhere.

I realize that video games are sort of moving past caring about people like me. I'm trying to accept it. **spends another $7 on Steam to be disappointed within 20 minutes**

How much of this is due to having to churn one of these out per week, do you think?

[bruce]

Back when "I Hit It With My Axe" was on the Escapist, there were two reasons to go there.