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Zero Punctuation

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There is one error in his review of Airborne tho. The Germans actually built these massive fortresses called flakturms. He's still right about the gasmask wearing machingun carying nazi supersoldiers.

I liked to play Airborne just to play with the scoped rifle, because it had this awesome depth of field thing which made everything look like this:

Silicon%20Valley_09.jpg

more info here

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Hey, coincidance! A Japanese photographer who uses tilt shift came up in my art class on Tuesday. He uses depth of field to make real world scenes look like toys. And yeah, I love to see good depth of field in games too.

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I actually thought that picture was a picture of a miniature landscape. Just couldn't believe those were actual life-size fences. Look more like match-sticks.

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Phantom Hourglass

The humor was less good in this one, probably the worst episode so far.

As for the review, a lot of good points. Luckily I haven't had much of the same experience, given that I only play the game for a few hours a week (still haven't completed it) and I haven't played any zelda game since ocarina of time.

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I still thought it was pretty sweet. Didn't really kill me until "Sometimes I name Link 'I say' because it makes all the characters sound like Foghorn Leghorn" though. Still, pretty top notch as far as I'm concerned.

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Yeah, the foghorn leghorn text was the only thing that made me laugh out loud.

I liked his email tagline as well; "please shut up about flak towers".

Oh, and also the allusion to Okami at the end.

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ohh... seems like I missed out not watching all the credits

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Always check the end credits of zero punctuation. They often have the best bits of humor in them.

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This was the first one I didn't like. Could it be just my mood or lack of interest in the game reviewed or was it somewhat boring for you too?

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wow... this is probably the most negative review so far.

I didn't think it was a boring review, and I sort of liked it (the review, not the game).

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Agreed, but then I wrote this after playing the demo several weeks ago:

Played this last night and it feels flimsy and cheap. The gun play seems really lame and lightweight--each weapon seems to tick and click when fired, instead of emitting a decent bang per round. The enemies shown all seem to be from the Run Straight at the Player Until I Am Dead school of AI stupidity. The only challenge was not walking too quickly and becoming overwhelmed--and by "overwhelmed" I mean having to fight more than two at a time.

Switching between characters added seemingly nothing to the gameplay, and each character's "special" ability seemed clumsy and have practically no tactical merit. Except for the guided sniper shot, which was merely "meh".

I think something's been lost in translation thematically, too: buckets of blood and lots of raw skin and exposed bone do not automatically a horror make. Nothing in the demo frightened me in the slightest (except for what I described earlier). It just made me illicit a series of disgusted groans at how clichéd and pedestrian the whole thing was.

And I nearly threw my controller at the screen when that utterly pointless Quick Time Event showed up. I tried it twice, failed both times, then quit the demo and deleted it in disgust at the apparent cynicism permeating the whole experience.

So, for those still not clear on where I'm coming from, I'm piling my money firmly against the "one of the year's biggest disappointments" side of the fence.

Please excuse me as I now wallow luxuriously in my own smug.

Oh and I guess congratulations to Codemasters for releasing such a fair and accurate demo, too.

:spiraldy:

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Argh. Getting tired or Zero Punctuation now. It really feels like he's beginning to flog a dead horse. Yes, we get it, you can be rude about video games in a very short time, but now it just feels... forced and fake

I can't imagine it will be around for much longer unless he takes a different angle. I remember him saying that he got complaints (as it were) for liking a game too much with his Psychonauts post, so now it feels like he waits until he gets a game he can hate for a particular reason... or forces hate about that game... or forces hate in some weird unrelated way.

Just getting a bit samey now :tdown:

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Oh, I just now saw the Phantom Hourglass review and it was unfairly critical in my estimation. The sailing (which I never really objected to in Wind Waker) is actually much improved, it's a lot more involved and it hardly lasts long. The ocean is small enough that no trek lasts for over two minutes (unless you've been drawing strange routes of course) and I personally enjoy the atmosphere of being out in the open sea very much. It's utterly charming. And if you don't like it there are plenty of shortcuts to take, so I really don't think it's fair to criticize something as optional as spending a lot of time digging up treasure or enjoying the mood.

Yahtzee's completely right about the time-based do-everything-again-and-again key-dragging dungeon, though. That's just really poor game design and a disgrace that nobody in the team came up and said 'wait, this is actually extremely frustrating to the player. Let's pull it out'. I hate it. It's a shame because everything else in the game so far seems to be so very pleasingly laidback and simple, allowing you to focus on just having fun interaction with the world and progressing the story.

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Intruiging speculation: the Phantom Hourglass review was strangely absent from the quick-list to the right of the page. Did he consider it unfair after all, or was it a fluke?

Anyway, nothing wrong with this episode in particular.

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"F.E.A.R. The joy of sewers" sounds interesting....

nah...

I like the ZP Daemon, it should get its own series.

And if you're confused by the reference in the credits

See:

argh... that's terrible... half of it is unintelligible.

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Yeah, that sucked. As well as the irritating, garbled voice (and he has a dig at Yahtzee's accent!) it wasn't all that funny, and way too long. I had to skip to the end. It's made me suddenly realise that Yahtzee really does know what he's doing.

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Yes. Zero Punctuation manages te not ever irritate with the way it's been edited, which can easily happen if you tamper with normally paced speech.

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Zero Punctuation > Some Punctuation.

Besides the guy not having a very clear voice to start with, speeding it up just made it worse. I think he needs to learn to open his mouth or something. Sounded like he was trying to mumble at high speed.

:tdown:

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