(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.

[bateleur]

That too would be fair, but IIRC his complaint was "It's too easy to complete. Of course, there is a 'hard' mode... but it's not actually hard."

All of this viewpoint is fair except the last bit. (He goes on to talk about automatic weapons, thus proving he's missed the point.)

[onebyone]

I don't deny he's missed the point, I just don't think that necessarily renders his criticism unfair.

I may be reading way too much into what he says, but I think he thinks that the game should not just include things which are difficult to do, but that achieving those things should result in a payoff he considers worthwhile (progressing through a sequence of novel situations to a conclusion, a.k.a. "completing the game". Twice including Director's Cut.) So he says don't tell someone they've completed the game if they haven't done everything they're supposed to (in this case, complete the game whilst racking up obscene high-scoresAnd while it's all very disappointing for the game designer if someone says your game is lacking because the thing about it that you thought would be challenging, is not in fact fun for that person because they don't care to achieve the goals you set, it's not an illegitimate complaint

[onebyone]

So he says don't tell someone they've completed the game

No, I tell a lie. He doesn't say that at all, he just says it's too easy to complete the game. *I* say that if you wanted to design a game that avoids him making this complaint, you'd have to make "completing the game", as he perceives completion, contingent on those high-scores.

[onebyone]

All that said, I'd be astonished if he doesn't consider this a worthwhile objective:

"Kill 50+ mutants with your Wii remote held sideways in one level to get an odd bonus of $1337."