oni23:
i agree so much with the "UND PRECICELY VON application" thing. Its a good thing they stopped doing one trillion cubic meter inventories.

UND PRECICELY VON!
Amen mate the adventure games where you had to go through everything in your extensive arsenal every time you encountered something you could do SOMETHING with was enough to drive me up the wall back in the day.
Especially when you had say, a guard blocking your path and you thought the gun would be the correct choice but you find the answer was the rubber wallabies was indeed what was needed to get the guard to leave his post.
Times like that you just sat there dumbfounded going "Huuuh??? that worked!?!".

Great review Yhatzee, keep em coming.

laikenf:

How can you say that the only reason to have a wii is Brawl. Haw about MP3: Corruption, No More Heroes, Super Mario Galaxy, Zack & Wiki, among others. I don't even like SSB Brawl (never been a fan of the series) that's why to me it is kind of annoying when people give credit to the wii BECAUSE of SSB Brawl ONLY, when other games (like the ones I mentioned) use the wii hardware in a more convincing way.

Maybe it's my own ignoarance of the system.
Previously I had never heard of Zach & Wiki.
No More Heroes I've just heard rumors about but haven't seen.
Super Mario galaxy I found uninteresting.

Its just, IMHO, I would rather play A LOT of the Current Wii titles with the old GCN controllers. The few times, IMHO, that I've enjoyed using the Wii Remote is in Wii Play and Wii Sports, but then those games are best used at a party when your guests become board with Beer Pong and Flip Cup.

I miss the wonderful days of Grim Fandango, such a wonderful game that was.

Crooked Knight:
Decent adventure games are remarkably not-quite-dead of late. I blame the Phoenix Wright series.

Both made (or published, at least) by Capcom, I note.

And apparently with similar downsides.

I was kind of hoping that the annoying "you failed to grasp our illogic, repeat the last 15 minutes!" was limited to Capcom's Ace Attorney series, I'm rather sad to learn it's apparently par for course. There's nothing more annoying than being sure you know the answer, only to learn that the game disagrees and as punishment for not figuring out whatever the developers were thinking you get to slowly wade through pages of text yet again. (Especially when you knew the right answer, but guessed the wrong item.)

I do wonder to what extent it's a translation issue, if the logic would make more sense to a Japanese audience. But it's still annoying and makes the games far more annoying than they really need to be.

Seriously, why not let me be retarded and poke everything? What harm comes from allowing me to just try everything until I hit on the correct solution? Why the extreme punishment for being slightly wrong?

It is a crime against humanity that you don't have Rock Band in Australia yet.

For starters, the whole puzzle where you put the paper under the door and poke the key out has been used numerous times in gaming and certainly long before Alone in the dark 2. Heck I remember using this solution in a text based adventure game back in the Zork era.

Roberta Williams and her King's Quest series, essentially wrote the beginning of the book for the adventure games genre. While not always perfect, King's Quest was a ground-breaking(for its time) title that had some great games in the series. KQ6 was easily one of the best adventure games i ever played. The use of Roberta Williams specifically when mentioning bad adventure games is laughable and in my opinion grossly inaccurate. Wonder what would happened if we turned a critical eye to Yahtzee's games and reviewed them.

transcipt anyone??? T^T I guess I have to write one D:
*now to decipher some of yahtzee's accents that "disagree" with me*

(yahtzee would have come up with a better similie D:)

Thats the funniest review in ages thanks yahtzee.
You give us all a reason to live one week longer!

Interesting, if a little full of poo and dildos and dongs and, worst of all, sandpaper.
Why was the Amiga Wasteland so small, though? I had an Amiga and the world revolves around me, of course, so that area should have been bigger. Apparently, you didn't get the memo? :-P

j/k - great review, as always

I don't mind when the characters squeak and act eccentric like that, but it is rather embarrassing when other people are around and wonder what the hell you're playing.

WHy is Yahtzee eliminating his old reviews from this website?

OK gamers.....Ill make this simple.....

Wii = Trix.....its for kids

XBOX = PC....Build a PC and run the games better

PS3 = FTW....Nuff Said

Lol wank and Ziki :)
Anyways though if you hate adventure games then why are your games of the Chzo mythos pretty much that. Theyre all great and amazing but you just said you didnt care for those types of games.

Great review as always and thanks for giving me a thing to look forward to every wednesday
PS: For anyone who cares theres a ZP theme for the PS3

Ace review.

Regarding Phoenix Wright: It only seems like they're milking it because they were released before on GBA (doubtless with a lot more time between instalments) and now they're just porting them to DS in rapid succession. Number 4 is the first new one. Since it's not yet available in English I haven't played this one, but the first three are excellent without exception.

I was kind of hoping that the annoying "you failed to grasp our illogic, repeat the last 15 minutes!" was limited to Capcom's Ace Attorney series

You do realize you can save the game at any time? (Phoenix Wright, that is)

As for Roberta Williams... I loved the King's Quest series. They have some serious design flaws (dead ends, unfair deaths and the like) and the quality of the storytelling varies but as a whole it's still a great series, 6 being the highpoint.

Grim Fandango is an Awesome game so I glad it got it's props, as for the game Zack and Wiki It doesn't look like it'd interest me despite everything else, looks too cartooney while Grim Fandango and Escape from Monkey Island have a bit more style.

"OK gamers.....Ill make this simple.....

Wii = Trix.....its for kids

XBOX = PC....Build a PC and run the games better

PS3 = FTW....Nuff Said"

In Response to this:

Wii= Fun no matter the age if you find the right games
XBox 360= Pwns the Ps3 in all ways, hell even Wii's sell more than Ps3's
PS3= Build a PC that's better for the same price, Horrible start off with little game support, I have nothing against the ps3 though if you want to waste your money on it, otherwise I'll stick to PC gaming which blows all at out of the water.

Finally a transcript :D

I fixed all my errors... so stop commenting about it :P

"Long ago in the mists of time, when main characters didn't need to have biceps bigger then their faces, and when bump mapping was just something cartographers did to their wives, there lived adventure games. This shy thoughtful tribe was known for its great story telling tradition and ruled the great PC gaming plains for many years before mysteriously dying out around the onset of the Quake era. Some blame the aggressive expansion of neighboring first person shooter tribes. But personally I think it's more to do with the fact that most of them were shit.

Most of your average adventure game experience was spent carting a truckload of miscellaneous knick knacks around, patiently rubbing them all one by one against everything else in the hope of hoping on to the train of logic unique to the game's designer. For every decent adventure game, like Monkey Island or Grim Fandango, there were five excess baggage fests driven by moon logic. Funnily enough all designed by Roberta Williams. So the genre popped its unintuitive clogs.

Not that adventure game fans have ever been able to accept that. Attempts are constantly made to revive the genre by jumping on its gas bloated stomach. But this rarely causes more then a feeble squirt of pungent fluids from one of the less wholesome orifices. Now it's Capcom's turn to take a whole-hearted two-footed bounce on that poor defiled body with Zack and Wiki, an adventure game for the Wii, featuring Western style point and click controls and adventurery puzzles. But that's where the internationalism ends. If you find the Japanese offensive, then you'll find this game offensively Japanese. The main characters are a brash youth with no voice and stupid hair and his aggressively cute monkey friend, voiced by some painfully shrill harpy thing. And the antagonist is a hot angry girl in a mini skirt. Now all it needs to do is dispense used panties and oppress the Chinese.

Another thing this game doesn't have in common with nineties western adventures is a connecting story line or indeed much of a story at all. Wack and Ziki uses a mission based format, breaking the adventure game play into manageable bite sized chunks, Plunking down a couple of obstacles between you and a treasure chest, and leaning back folding its arms, waiting to see what you do next. And this is the point where the game shines, because the point where you figure out that your supposed to put the key in the door or perturb the angry sloth with the freighting large dildo creates the same smug cock "oh look at me, I didn't have to consult GameFAQs" good feeling that I've always liked about adventure games. And the fact that there are only a handful of inventory items that you use repeatedly rather then a billion, each with one "UND PRECISELY VON" application, removes one of the major things I don't like about adventure games.

But then of course Zim and Spacky breaks the cardinal sin by making it possible to die, not just a result of insistently clicking on a grizzly bear six times, often without warning, as a consequence of simple curiosity or in some in some cases just letting your mind wander for a few seconds too long. And if you do die, you have to go buggering right back to the start of the mission. Meaning you'll have to repeat all the spastic wiimote flailing you've had to do to get to where you were.

Which links me neatly to my next paragraph. Once again the Wii proves its self some kind of patron deity of gimmicky pointless bullshit. Every time you use a tool or item you have to make an equivalent gesture with the wiimote, but half the time the movement of the onscreen tool bears only rudimentary similarities to the gesture you're expected to make. The one that sticks out in my mind is when I was expected to turn a big horizontal wheel, and none movements that seemed obvious cause the damn thing to budge an inch. So I ended up randomly waving the wiimote around like it was an uppity bat trying to find out through trial and error which of the many possible movements the game was thinking of.

I would say that I would prefer the game to not showcase the Wii's exotic abilities, but I'm pretty sure that was the whole idea. Come to think of it, Wank and Sticky is a game with a lot of needless attachments, like the fact that you can buy hints (totally useless while the internet still exists). Or the practice of awarding points based on how quickly you solve puzzles (which I frequently took personally). But if you complain about unnecessary additions you're just being a tosser. It's like complaining about, say, a perfectly good hotdog because the vender is the Boston Strangler. You can still enjoy the hotdog and just try not to make eye contact. And overall I enjoyed Zack and Wiki. It's fun, and original, and has a lot of charm, as long as you can tolerate a slightly childish tone. Which on reflection, you probably could if you're an average Wii owner because statistically your eight years old.

Oh yes, and some people might find the characters pseudo verbal grunts and squeaks a bit annoying after the first few hundred times. I didn't, but my roommate said it was like have his ear canals raped by a man wearing a sandpaper condom. Not in those exact words obviously..."

FireFox170:
Grim Fandango is an Awesome game so I glad it got it's props, as for the game Zack and Wiki It doesn't look like it'd interest me despite everything else, looks too cartooney while Grim Fandango and Escape from Monkey Island have a bit more style.

"OK gamers.....Ill make this simple.....

Wii = Trix.....its for kids

XBOX = PC....Build a PC and run the games better

PS3 = FTW....Nuff Said"

In Response to this:

Wii= Fun no matter the age if you find the right games
XBox 360= Pwns the Ps3 in all ways, hell even Wii's sell more than Ps3's
PS3= Build a PC that's better for the same price, Horrible start off with little game support, I have nothing against the ps3 though if you want to waste your money on it, otherwise I'll stick to PC gaming which blows all at out of the water.

Some of us can't afford the parts or are too stupid to build an uber gaming PC.

if he actually saids its a ok game that must means its a must buy lol

AND

in spanish :P

Desee hace en las nieblas del tiempo, cuando los caracteres principales no necesitaron tener bíceps más grande entonces sus caras, y cuando el traz del topetón era justo algo los cartógrafos hizo a sus esposas. Juegos allí vividos de la aventura. Esta tribu pensativa tímida era sabida para su gran historia que decía la tradición y gobernó los grandes llanos del juego de la PC por muchos años antes misterioso de morir hacia fuera alrededor del inicio de la era del temblor. Algunos culparon la extensión agresiva de las primeras tribus vecinas del tirador de la persona. Pero personalmente pienso que es más a hacer con el hecho de que la mayoría de ellos eran mierda.
La mayoría de su experiencia media del juego de la aventura estuvo pasada carting un camión de destrezas misceláneas del knick alrededor, frotándolas pacientemente todas uno por uno contra todo en la esperanza de esperar encendido al tren de la lógica único al diseñador del juego. Para cada juego decente de la aventura, como la isla del mono o el fandango severo, había cinco exceso de fests del bagaje conducidos por lógica de la luna. Bastante de Funnily diseñado todo por Roberta Williams. El género hizo estallar tan sus estorbos no intuitivos.
Los ventiladores de no ese juego de la aventura han podido siempre aceptar eso. Las tentativas son hechas constantemente de restablecer el género saltando en su estómago hinchado gas. Pero esto causa raramente más entonces un débil arroja a chorros de líquidos acres a partir del uno de los orificios menos sanos. Ahora es vuelta de Capcom para tomar un conjunto hearted dos despedida footed en eso cuerpo profanado pobre con Zack y Wiki, un juego de la aventura para el Wii, ofreciendo controles occidentales del punto y del tecleo del estilo y rompecabezas del inventario. Pero aquí es donde el internacionalismo termina. Si usted encuentra la ofensiva japonesa, después usted encontrará este japonés del juego offensively. Los caracteres principales son una juventud temeraria sin voz y el pelo estúpido y su amigo agresivamente lindo del mono, expresado por una cierta cosa doloroso chillona del harpy. Y el antagonista es una muchacha enojada caliente en una mini falda. Ahora todo lo que necesita hacer debe dispensar las bragas usadas y oprime a chinos.
Otra cosa que este juego no tiene en campo común con los an'os noventa las aventuras occidentales son una línea de la historia que conecta o de hecho mucha de una historia en todos. Wack y Ziki utiliza un formato basado misión, rompiendo el juego del juego de la aventura en pedazos clasificados mordedura manejable. Estableciendo un par de obstáculos entre usted y un pecho del tesoro, e inclinándose detrás doblando sus brazos que esperan para ver lo que usted hace después. Y éste es el punto donde el juego brilla, porque el punto donde usted calcula fuera de ése su supuesto poner la llave en la puerta o perturbar el sloth enojado con el consolador grande de flete crea la misma sensación con aire satisfecho de los hechos del juego del martillo "mirada del oh en mí, yo no tuvo que consultar buena" de que he tenido gusto siempre sobre juegos de la aventura. Y el hecho de que hay solamente un puñado de los artículos del inventario que usted utiliza en varias ocasiones algo entonces mil millones por cada uno con uno "uso de UND EXACTO VON" quita una de las cosas principales que no tengo gusto alrededor de juegos de la aventura.
Pero entonces por supuesto Zim y Spacky rompe el pecado cardinal permitiendo morir, no apenas un resultado insistente de chascar en un oso enorme seis veces, a menudo sin la advertencia, como consecuencia de curiosidad simple o en alguno en algunos casos apenas que dejan su mente vague por algunos segundos demasiado largos. Y si usted muere, usted tiene que ir a maldecir a la derecha de nuevo al comienzo de la misión. Significarle tendrá que repetir todo el wiimote espástico flailing le ha tenido que hacer para conseguir a donde usted estaba.
Qué acoplamientos yo cuidadosamente a mi párrafo siguiente. El Wii prueba de nuevo a su uno mismo una cierta clase de deity el patrón del bullshit insustancial gimmicky. Cada vez que usted utiliza una herramienta o un artículo usted tiene que hacer un gesto equivalente con el wiimote, pero la mitad del tiempo el movimiento del onscreen osos de la herramienta solamente que las semejanzas rudimentarias al su del gesto esperado hacen. El que se pega hacia fuera en mi mente es cuando se esperaba que diera vuelta a una rueda horizontal grande, y ningunos los movimientos que se parecían causa obvia la cosa maldita para bullir una pulgada. Terminé tan encima aleatoriamente de agitar el wiimote alrededor como era un palo del uppity que intentaba descubrir con el ensayo y el error en los cuales en los muchos movimientos posibles el juego pensaba.
Diría que preferiría el juego para no showcase las capacidades exóticas del Wii, pero soy bastante seguro que era la idea entera. Se viene pensar en ella, Wank y Sticky un juego con muchos de accesorios innecesarios, como el hecho de que usted puede comprar indirectas (totalmente inútiles mientras que todavía existe el Internet). O la práctica de conceder los puntos basados en cómo usted soluciona rápidamente los rompecabezas, que tomé con frecuencia personalmente. Pero si usted se queja por adiciones innecesarias, usted es el ser justo un tosser. Es como quejarse por,por ejemplo, un hot dog perfectamente bueno porque el vender es el estrangulador de Boston. Usted puede inmóvil gozar del hot dog y del intento justo para no hacer el contacto visual. Y total gocé de Zack y de Wiki. Es diversión, y original, y tiene muchos de encanto, mientras usted puede tolerar un tono levemente infantil. Cuál en la reflexión, usted podría probablemente si usted es un dueño medio de Wii porque estadístico sus ocho años viejos.
Oh sí, y alguna gente pudieron encontrar los pseudo roncos verbales de los caracteres y chirría un pedacito que molestaba después de los cientos tiempos primeros. No pero mi compañero de cuarto dijo estaba como hace que sus canales de oído sean violados por un hombre que usaba un condón del papel de lija. No en esas palabras exactas obviamente...

My Brain.... HURTSSS...

I'm sorry, but trying to follow that right after waking up, is kinda like trying to follow the logic of a cab driver in NYC. Merrr

I'm going to go curl up in the corner and beat my face against the wall till my brain worky gain gain..

Dammit, I was just finishing my transcript. I was stuck on "popped its unintuitive clogs". I'd post it anyway, but yours is close enough.

I doubt that adventure games are fully dead, its just they've moved. You rarely see them on consoles, as they have become free internet flash based games.

myopiczeal:
Dammit, I was just finishing my transcript. I was stuck on "popped its unintuitive clogs". I'd post it anyway, but yours is close enough.

Without trying to sound ungrateful to cutekitten, I'm waiting your transcript. BTW, that translation is pretty bad.

Remember Twinsen's Odyssey and Grim Fandango.....

best adventure games ever.....

Ninja Dodo:
Number 4 is the first new one. Since it's not yet available in English I haven't played this one, but the first three are excellent without exception.

It's been out in the US for over a month as Apollo Justice Ace Attorney. And if you're interested in continuing the story of Phoenix Wright and the Fey sisters - forget it. The Fey sisters have apparently dropped of the face of the earth, and you're left with new characters that just aren't quite as interesting.

Ninja Dodo:
You do realize you can save the game at any time? (Phoenix Wright, that is)

Yes, but you shouldn't have to. It shouldn't be possible to "die" in court. Screw realism, it's a freaking anime adventure game which feature(d) characters that could channel the dead! I shouldn't have to compulsively save the game every time I'm forced to make a decision in fear that I might accidentally hit the wrong item and be forced to start over. It's not fun, and it's not necessary.

Booorrrriiinnngggg.......

Sry but this review by Yathzee is not that funny.

Yeah, the Spanish guide looks like it was spit through a translator:

"Long ago in the mists of time, when main characters didn't need to have biceps bigger then their faces, and when bump mapping was just something cartographers did to their wives."

"Desee hace en las nieblas del tiempo, cuando los caracteres principales no necesitaron tener bíceps más grande entonces sus caras, y cuando el traz del topetón era justo algo los cartógrafos hizo a sus esposas."

I'm thinking it would be more along the lines of,

"Hasta mucho tiempo,cuando los protagonistos no necesitaban los biceps mas grande que sus caras, y..."

I don't think there's an accurate translation for "in the mists of time." That sounds like the sort of English only expression that I would need to find an equivalent Spanish saying. And the Bump mapping bit... is probably english dependent too.

Also I'm lazy. So screw it.

But yeah, a worth effort, seeing as how mine didn't get further than the first sentence.

This guys reviews are either shitty or really really good, this week a really really good one

I say, if you fuckers can't handle being told something that doesn't fit in to your predisposed and uninformed opinions (like, say, that the Wii actually has good games, while the Xbox 360's supposed core game is overrated), go and shove your head up a martians ass, as thats the only way you're not going to come into contact with any information you don't want to hear. Well, that, or implant yourself in the American Bureaucracy.

Pretty much, yeah. However, It still amazes me how many people can't figure out that I am Aussie from the screen name. A well.

And yeah, it really does come down to what you want. If you just want nonesensically humourous jibberish, there are billions of other sites on the internet that you could look at. But if you want valid points on the gaming industry showed in a hold-no-punches fashion, Zero Punctuation is the thing for you.

My god, I never expected a reference to the two Phantasmagoria games from Sierra - let alone hearing the name "Roberta Williams." Strange designer logic indeed.

However, the first Phantasmagoria had a puzzle where you stick a newspaper under a door and poke out the key from the other side (which, as you mention, is your measure of a good adventure game). Am I perhaps missing the sarcasm or did the rest of Phantasmagoria and the literal porn-star-caliber acting overpower that one shining moment of hope?