In responce to the scores thing-
Does every single game on earth follow a strict order? E.G Tutorial. Intro. Boss. Level. Level. Boss. Level. Level. Boss- NO IT FRICKEN DOESN'T SO WHY SHOULD REVIEWS?

I especially loved the "FOUR. FOR FOURK YOU." comment.

Oh wait, here's a few things I HATE to see from people like.. Me.

FIRST COMMENT- I know everyone hates these but, Mods can delete posts can't they? Why don't you?

ZOMGOMGROFLMAOURTEHBESTEVERANDILUFU. This does not help at all and just distracts me. It also looks like another horrible case of people sucking up to important people because they think they give a crap. Admittedly, Ben isn't really important, but then, neither are the spice girls and they probably have a whole house labelled "Fanmail".
EDIT: People saying they liked it and why is different.

USUKCUZILIKTHATGAME: Ben has covered this really. Basically, if you can't take the fact that some people have different opinions then leave me the fuck alone. If I told you I didn't like cherries and you did, would you throttle me? No. So shut up.

Think of games as food and reviewers as really picky eaters. Especially Ben.

I believe the accepted spelling is "Fourck".

Kaos Incarnate:
The World Ends With You is a completely new game on a Nintendo system, true it was developed by Square-enix and Jupiter, but still it shows that Nintendo are looking for things that are different.

I didn't realize Final Fantasy and Beat Mania where new games.

DeLukas:

Kaos Incarnate:
The World Ends With You is a completely new game on a Nintendo system, true it was developed by Square-enix and Jupiter, but still it shows that Nintendo are looking for things that are different.

I didn't realize Final Fantasy and Beat Mania where new games.

The World Ends With You hass almost been out a month but I still consider that new to be honest. Since when did I mention Final Fantasy? And I have no idea what Beat Mania is.

Mauller:
Indigo_Dingo: "Anyway, at this point, I'm less criticizing him for giving Brawl a bad review but more for just this relatively shameless self-congratulation by presenting all people who oppose his viewpoint as idiots."

Couldn't it also be said that this was his response to all of those people who feel that he's an idiot for opposing their point of view? I'm sure that he got thousands of emails in regards to it. He's well within is right to explain his point of view.

Yes, but as he picked the real bottom of the barrel stuff and presented it as indicative of the rest, it lacks that sort of credibility.

It's quite amusing reading this useless debate. What did I just say? It's not useless if the debate amuses me. Silly me. (yes, I see you coming, nitpicky and idiotic SSBB defenders)
An example:

Indigo_Dingo:
Its rather like Mike Tyson beating up Steven Hawking and claiming to be the greatest boxer in the world.

Stupid analogy.

After the Chains of Olympus review, I'm glad Yahtzee came up with this, mainly because the Chains of Olympus review just didn't have the same feel to it as this or any of his other reviews. So for that Yahtzee, I thank you for putting out something like the mailbag showdown. I can only wonder if and how you'll take on Grand Theft Auto 4.

VeryOblivious:
It's quite amusing reading this useless debate. What did I just say? It's not useless if the debate amuses me. Silly me. (yes, I see you coming, nitpicky and idiotic SSBB defenders)
An example:

Indigo_Dingo:
Its rather like Mike Tyson beating up Steven Hawking and claiming to be the greatest boxer in the world.

Stupid analogy.

Yeah, but I can't come up with a good analogy now. And anyway, you get the point.

Yahtzee rips on games that I like too, but the fun in it is that all the flaws he points out are there. People play the games saying "well it isnt THAT bad" and "this flaw doesnt TOTALLY ruin the experiance" where as Yahtzee will straight off say what bothers him and have a good laugh about it. That's what makes a good critic, someone who will always strive for Perfection!

Xenon Pretzel:
In responce to the scores thing-
Does every single game on earth follow a strict order? E.G Tutorial. Intro. Boss. Level. Level. Boss. Level. Level. Boss- NO IT FRICKEN DOESN'T SO WHY SHOULD REVIEWS?

I don't really get your analogy, but I will offer something of an explanation. When I'm trying to decide if I want to buy a game, I'll check out gamerankings.com . If a game is generally well received, then I'm more interested in seeing what the dissenting reviewers had to say. Having a score (be it numerical or alphabetical) makes these reviews easier to pick out of the crowd rather than having to read through every review

Editing out my stupid.

BYeth: First of all, it not fanboyism to enjoy someone picking apart fanboys. I enjoy that wither it's Yatzee or some random post I see. Secondly, I don't think anyone's called anyone a stupid person for liking Brawl. But if you're going to like something while dismissing all its faults out of hand, you're a fanboy. I understand you have a sense of nostalgia that's going to make you want to excuse those problems, but you're going to have to accept that not everyone's on board with you. For instance, if you're going to say I should buy a new TV to play this game, well... that's excusing a fault out of hand. You're entitled to your opinion. But, you have to accept that everyone else is as well. You don't think playing single player for half a day to unlock content is bad. Yatzee does. Ok. You don't think including Japanese characters is bad. Yatzee does. Ok. To defend anything by saying your opinion is correct simply because it is your opinion is not acceptable. To defend the game by saying that playing for half a day isn't bad, and Japanese characters are fine is not acceptable. To say "I personally don't have a problem with these things," is.

Letter: "I'm not a Nintendo fanboy,"
Yahtzee: "Yes you are..."

Priceless XD.

Thank you, thank you, Yahtzee. I always look forward to your reviews. To whether I agree or not, it doesn't matter. The review is fun enough.

To all the true Nintendo/Yahtzee fanboys: The worst thing you can do to an artist is tell them everything they make is perfect.

Brawl: Mediocre.

Brawl review: Mediocre.

It's okay to have fun playing a mediocre game, or watching a mediocre review. In fact, the fun can make that game/review perfect... for you, not for everyone.

well yahtzee gets the crap he deserves i knew this was gonna happen, not the fact that he actually made a VID about it but damn i guess that's a bonus! anyway i knew that a ton of ppl were gonna give a shitload of fuck about it cuz brawl really is a damn good game. CANT WAIT TIL HE 'CRITICIZES' GTAIV!!

except for the fact that... well, Brawl isn't MEDIOCRE :\ it's quite good...

Mr.Phuckyou:
except for the fact that... well, Brawl isn't MEDIOCRE :\ it's quite good...

...How are you not banned?!
You're the most idiotic fanboy I've ever seen, your comments are atrocious...LEAVE! NOW!

Quadruple-reported. Learn grammar, stop being a fanboy, and grow up.

I doubt anyone is really reading this at 900+ posts but here goes... I guess it means I am getting old but what really suprised me through all of this is this whole console "fanboy" thing. I guess can understand how someone can be a "fan" of one game or another, and I can even understand defending that game... but how can some kid be a fan of Nintendo? Or Sony, or whatever. Nintendo is a giant impersonal corperation, without any particular philosophy and simply existing to make more money. Kids being fans of that really shows how sad the world has become.

I would make the same critique of the modern games market that I make of much of the modern music industry. It all comes down to money. Big companies put a hell of a lot of money into new releases and those releases have to make that money back... so they play it safe. Rather than creating innovative-but-risky games they take the standard "known-to-work" formulae and re-hash them. A lot of modern music suffers from the same fate... uninspired covers of old favourites are littering the charts. When was the last real anti-establishment "rock-star"... do you remember? I think it must have been Kurt Cobain. I feel really sorry for kids today... how do you rebel these new-rock/metal bands littering MTV? I'm not critizing these bands musically but they are first and formost corperate babies... so sold-out and over-hyped that even your mum likes them.

People say Yahtzee is negative reviewer. I don't think so. He will always say what is fun/good about a game even if not dwelling on it. Bearing in mind the ammount of money these companies often spend to release a game and how much they expet us to pay for them, I believe that its completely reasonable to put them under the critical microscope. Its not that all these games are terrible to play but do you ever stop to think with a little imagination how much more we could be getting from our games...?

Way to go. It's always good to know that someone out there actually has the wit and the balls to shaft those annoying little fan boys all in 3 minutes with such power.

I'm confused as to how a review can be mediocre. In my mind all a review can do is exist or not exist.

Ragdrazi:
I'm confused as to how a review can be mediocre. In my mind all a review can do is exist or not exist.

that's some flawed logic - it's like saying something can't be good or bad, it can only 'exist'.

Ragdrazi:
I'm confused as to how a review can be mediocre. In my mind all a review can do is exist or not exist.

Anything can be rated on quality.

Ahahah, awesome. A song from The Proclaimers that people don't know.

oh, and I elohel'd at the mailbag concept. Hope to see this again in the somewhat distant future. I'd hold off until you review Spore.

PS Kudos on the John DeFoe quadrilogy, just finished it recently, and must say you are one talented bastard, Yahtzee. /orf-torpic

Making the jokes in the first part a bit more blatant. Guess they were too subtle? Whatever, it was late.

oh, and

If you're going to reply to this post, at least read the whole post, so there won't be any misunderstanding.

In an earlier post, someone summarized the points Yahtzee made in his SSBB review.

Let's see which ones actually hold water.

1. This game suffers from a problem common to all fighters. It can quickly descend into a fight that is no more challenging than hitting buttons over and over with no attempt at strategy. It's not a programming fault, but it's still there.

I play the game all the time, if you're not using strategy or skill, you're dead.

In a skillful match with experienced players, that kind of thing is mandatory.

Kind of like checkers or chess. It can descend into mindless moving of pieces over and over with no attempt at strategy, if you're bad at it.

Holds no water.

2. The characters are too small and the camera zooms out too far.

Only if you have bad eyesight or a bad TV.

If one of these are true, then it holds water.

joke. Different people have different preferences, obviously. :P

GET SOME FREAKING GLASSES, YAHTZEE! >:O

Until one of these are proven, I'll say it holds no water.

I play with my friends all the time, one of them has terrible eyesight. He has never complained about this. Hm. :/

Still a joke. Who am I to say someone has bad eyesight, over the internet no less?

3. The particle effects are distracting and obscure the action.

I've never heard anyone say that before. Does Yahtzee have bad eyesight?

HAW HAW HAW, YAHTZEE SCREW U AND UR BAD EYESIGHT! BECAUSE I CAN TELL FROM HERE, RIGHT? WITHOUT KNOWING HIM IN PERSON? HAW HAW HAW!

If Yahtzee has bad eyesight, then this holds water.

Until this is proven, I'll say it holds no water.
Again my friend with bad eyesight has never mentioned this.

donmai, joke.

4. For a first time play, it is disappointing to have to unlock characters that have been hyped by the company for the new game.

THAT was bad, yes. Holds water.

5. Some of the characters aren't that well known outside of Japan. Since this is a world-wide release, it should feature the more mainstream characters so that people can relate to the game better.

... no. How is that even a complaint? I could maybe agree with him if the game really was all about the characters, but the fact is, the game would still be fun with or without Snake.

Definite no.

6. The single player is good and a lot of hard work was put into it, but they make you go through it twice which becomes boring and repetitive to the point that you feel like you're stuck in "Groundhog Day."

I never even completed single player adventure. This is a legitimate complaint. yes.

7. This game was disappointing because there is nothing new and interesting about it. It's the same old game repackaged and resold. Nintendo needs to develop some new concepts.

New doesn't mean good. Sometimes a simple update is a good thing.

no.

So, 5 out of 7 complaints were there just because Yahtzee wanted to troll SSBB players.

HINK HINK! YAHTZEE'S BAD EYESIGHT MAKES FOR DEFINITE FAIL!
LET'S GO TO THE MALL, DOUG!

I'll say 3 out of 7 if his eyesight really is that bad.

real one! Again, how the crap am I supposed to tell if his eyesight is that bad?

:P In that case, Yahtzee should wear glasses while playing.

Here's the real part.

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V

He insulted a lot of SSBB fans angrily calling them things like "fanboys".

So yeah, I can see why SSBB fans are upset.

I always thought Yahtzee's reviews were jokes and not supposed to be taken as legitimate reviews, but this video makes it seem like otherwise.

In that case, then if Yahtzee didn't want the hate mail, then he should have picked more legitimate complaints about the game to bring up in his review. Things like:

1. It's too easy to fly away in this one.

2. Tripping is stupid.

3. The online sucks.

4. Most of the levels suck and hold annoying elements that take away from gameplay and use of skill.

5. The single player is very short.

6. Pit is a cheap character.

If he brought up actual design flaws like these, I probably would've agreed with him.

Note, just for the heck of it: I was commenting on how the flaws brought up in the video were more personal, making it hard to understand why he didn't like the game.

SSBB is a popular game because of the multiplayer experience, the fact that characters need mastering and use of strategy.

Also, yeah I think having Snake and Fox in it is pretty cool. I couldn't care less about the other characters.

Maybe a bit overrated, but a good game nonetheless. Any game where the gameplay is so fine tuned that the characters take skill and mastery to use properly to a professional level is a fun game, but in SSBB's case, It's only that fun if you're playing on Final Destination against a skilled friend.

I never even play single Player.

So yeah, I can see why Yahtzee didn't like SSBB. He was probably playing on Ness and Luke's stage against his friends, and I'm pretty sure it's safe to assume Yahtzee and his friends don't know the first thing about playing SSBB skillfully. ***(Now that I think about it, a lot of the stages' cameras are kind of far away from the characters. On Ness's level, it's hard to tell what I'm doing.)*** On Single Player, I'm not a fan of SubSpace Emissionary. It just wasn't that great, especially the great maze. I bored myself to death on that part. Yahtzee himself went through story mode twice! I probably wouldn't like SSBB as much if I went through all of that.

That's all I have to say about it.

Yahtzee's at fault for using complaints that a lot of us can't relate to, yet so are the Nintendo fans for not realizing SSBB's not perfect.

Simon_TR:

Ragdrazi:
I'm confused as to how a review can be mediocre. In my mind all a review can do is exist or not exist.

Anything can be rated on quality.

The quality of the writing yeah. The presentation. Seemed fine on those counts.

Too long. Neko. Too much. All of it's been responded to. See my above response about the difference between giving an opinion and making a statement of fact.

I will say this though:

"Also, he insulted a lot of SSBB fans angrily calling them things like 'fanboys'.

So yeah, I can see why SSBB fans are upset."

See, the problem there is a lot of SSBB fans insulted him. You notice they also went after his friends a little bit as well. That's how a fanboy behaves.

So yeah, you can see why we have this from him.

I'm just finding it funny that people are freaking out about being called fanboys. You could say I'm a fanboy for Nintendo, but I'm also a fanboy for video games in general. I wonder why people are so upsoet about that word...

ElArabDeMagnifico:

Ragdrazi:
I'm confused as to how a review can be mediocre. In my mind all a review can do is exist or not exist.

that's some flawed logic - it's like saying something can't be good or bad, it can only 'exist'.

Things can't inherently be good or bad. The can only exist. This is the way reality is. Someone can come along and say, this is bad, that is good. It doesn't actually make them good or bad. It just means some human has attached the word good or bad to a thing. In reality that attachment means precisely squat.

... sorry, new board to me.

Is there some kind of delete post thing here... sorry.

Ragdrazi:

ElArabDeMagnifico:

Ragdrazi:
I'm confused as to how a review can be mediocre. In my mind all a review can do is exist or not exist.

that's some flawed logic - it's like saying something can't be good or bad, it can only 'exist'.

Things can't inherently be good or bad. The can only exist. This is the way reality is. Someone can come along and say, this is bad, that is good. It doesn't actually make them good or bad. It just means some human has attached the word good or bad to a thing. In reality that attachment means precisely squat.

He is right you know, when a perception of something changes depending on the viewer than that object being percieved has no real identity.

If someone thinks this post makes sense while an other person may think that it makes no sense then it neither makes sense or does not make sense.

Honestly though guys, the way you act in here is giving the rest of the Website a bad name. Just let it drop, ignore what he said about Nintendo, just relax, take some deep breaths and settle the fuck down.

The same can be said to you Yahtzee defenders as well because chances are if he gives Gears of War 2 or MGS4 a bad review you will take the place of the Nintendo fans.

Ragdrazi:
Too long. Neko. Too much. All of it's been responded to. See my above response about the difference between giving an opinion and making a statement of fact.

I will say this though:

"Also, he insulted a lot of SSBB fans angrily calling them things like 'fanboys'.

So yeah, I can see why SSBB fans are upset."

See, the problem there is a lot of SSBB fans insulted him. You notice they also went after his friends a little bit as well. That's how a fanboy behaves.

So yeah, you can see why we have this from him.

It goes both ways, but I was talking about the actual SSBB review and not this angry fanmail video, because you know, Yahtzee threw the first few insults in his SSBB review.

Also, I don't see your post. I do see the whole good and bad not existing post. It doesn't make much sense, but that's another discussion for another time.