WarrenD
4601
I went and listened to the his Painkiller review and I stand corrected, I guess the handful of reviews I had listened to were games he just truly didn’t like.
Yeah, the amount of games he actually seems to like are a mere fraction of the amount of games he even somewhat dislikes.
Thing is though, it’s very hard to disagree with the majority of criticisms he levels towards the games he “reviews”. He’s the first place I go to if I’m unsure about picking up a game (well, not including here of course).
I think he’s a classic reviewer. He points out when work is slipshod, rushed, done on the cheap, etc. He praises originality, integrity and coherence. He’s relatively quite forgiving and always willing to give a game a chance.
Basically, he lets you know in an entertaining way whether it’s going to be worth spending your money on a game or not. Even with games he personally doesn’t like, you can tell from a review whether you might like it.
He’s basically an internet version of Charlie Brooker in his days on PCZone.
Zylon
4605
Also System Shock 2, Deus Ex, the Thief games.
He has some serious blind spots though, and makes the occasional truly idiotic crit - I remember the conclusion to his Zelda: Phantom Hourglass review being something to the effect of ‘Zelda needs to be more original, like Okami’. He really wasn’t joking either. I hated The Phantom Hourglass, but Jesus. His love of Silent Hill 2 is annoying too, as that’s a terrible game, despite its mystifyingly good rep.
And you were doing so well.
Also the recent Resistance 3 which everyone has already forgotten about, apparently.
I think you are being a bit overly kind. It is probably fair to say his works are reviews, but ultimately the audience for his reviews is himself (while the comedy is for a much larger audience). He has his own gaming preferences and makes absolutely no apologies for them. He strongly dislikes the Gears of War shooting mold of automatic healing and rushing from cover to cover. He also dislike the entire genre of turn based game play.
How is this different from how Tom (or numerous other reviewers) approaches his review work?
No difference at all. Especially not compared to somebody like Tom who is also very personal in his likes and dislikes - which is one reason I like both, even though I hardly agree (less so with Tom than Yahtzee).
However the Kinect “review” was one of his weaker offerings. He dislikes the concept, he dislikes the genres it’s best suited for and he decides to play core games on Kinect, which it’s ill suited for, only to conclude that it’s crap to plkay those games on. And while Kinect has it’s foibles (definitely made for American McMansions and not for European small houses) I’ve never experienced it to be as hard to use, imprecise or laggy as he claims. But then, I only use it for the light fare it’s best suited for.
I think the point of him playing a core game is that Kinect is being more and more pushed into core game offerings as a viable input choice, when it arguably, anything it adds to the playing experience is more than offset by the introduced frustration of motion controls, where a traditional controller would have more than sufficed.
I’m with him on the automatic healing, which I’ve always regarded as a crutch needed by console shooters to deal with the limitations of the controller. I don’t get his aversion to cover mechanics. They generally make for better games. His main legitimate complaint about Gears specifically is that the game doesn’t make enough of an effort to place the chest-high walls in ways that appear natural. Deus Ex 3 did a much better job of natural-seeming cover.
The aversion to turn based play just makes him seem ADHD.
I’m not sure if that’s a double negative or not, but I’ve long felt Tom was a terrible reviewer, which I can say now that he’s had his hissy fit and isn’t reading the forum anymore. In his day he’s trashed good games like Master of Orion 2 just because he felt they weren’t “original” enough, and talked up really crappy games like Starships Unlimited because they were Indie titles, never mind that they were terrible games. There are personal likes and dislikes, and then there are reviewers with biases that are almost completely unrelated to gameplay.
Wade42
4616
This week, it’s Batman: Arkham City. Recommended, nitpicked, etc.
Another game he liked! That’s like two this year already.
Hey, that was almost a “real” review.
Zylon
4619
God help me for agreeing with it, but yes, Silent Hill 2 is a terrible game. It’s the ultimate “run around in the dark waiting for the next cutscene” simulator, peppered with the worst aspects of Myst. But it’s very pretty and atmospheric and apparently that’s enough for a lot of people.
“Batman doesn’t buy preowned and neither should you.”
