Re: theme music. No, I don't think I'll ever get used to it. In my mind the musical accompaniment is something like the theme tune to Shaun of the Dead ('The Blue Wrath' by I, Monster if you're curious) and other jaunty weirdness of that sort. Like others, I am a little surprised The Escapist hasn't turned 'make an intro for Zeropunctuation' into a contest yet. Seems like the sort of thing this place'd jump all over.

Anyway, the review: I haven't seen a reviewer admit to just refusing to play for a long time (since OMM I think, fittingly). It's always gladdening to see it since it probably happens a lot more than people like to admit. It should be an element in a rating more important than the review score. Instead of 8/10 at the end of an article they say "played it to the end" "played it twice" or whatever.

The music is too loud relative to the volume of your voice. This is not a TV commercial. You don't need to blow our eardrums to make us pay attention. You have our attention, that's why we clicked to watch you. Turn down the volume please.

I don't have too much of a problem with the intro, but I liked the snippets of ripped-off music better.

Althought I disagree with you on the most part - I've never had any problems with the game except the occasional murderous section - this was still as funny as shit, and still made me giggle like a school girl :( :P

One of the best parts about your reviews is that even though you might have to suffer through a crappy game, chances are that you provide more fun to your audience by ripping on them for four minutes than the crappy games themselves could ever deliver...collectively!

The music is god awful.

So I don't get it: Is Yahtzee gay or not?
Not that there's anything wrong with that:)

I hate the new intro

I hate the adverts at the end that make the video look longer than it is

Go back to the old format

Best review I've seen in a long time. Lots of good points, well made, and with enough humor to keep me laughing. I was excited about Alone in the Dark, but it doesn't surprise me that a game who's main feature was a McGuyver-style inventory system would cock up everything else about the game. Glad I saw this review, Yahtzee.

Muzz:
I haven't seen a reviewer admit to just refusing to play for a long time (since OMM I think, fittingly). It's always gladdening to see it since it probably happens a lot more than people like to admit. It should be an element in a rating more important than the review score. Instead of 8/10 at the end of an article they say "played it to the end" "played it twice" or whatever.

I agree 100%. It's starting to become more commonly known that many "professional" reviewers don't even play the whole game, and yet they give the damn thing an 8/10. I understand that reviewers have a lot of games to play and little time to play them, which makes them a lot like me, the consumer. That's why I'm all the more interested to see which games the reviewer actually takes the time to play. If it's a good enough game for the reviewer to spend his time on, then it just might be good enough for me to spend my time on. And if the reviewer can't even bring himself to play the game through to the end, then he better not be giving it any more than a 5/10 because obviously the other half was shit.

Best review in a long time, I think. Very funny and damn spot on. There were a bunch of memorable moments with Terry'n'Gonad, the dog for dinner, CockUp Peninsula, etc. I really enjoyed this one.

RE:Intro music
I'm still not used to it, but it's not very long etc so I can deal. I'll miss the hilarious music choices though. Also, was that two ads at the end of the vid? Lame.

EDIT: When I said intro I meant the music. The spinny graphics and all are pretty decent. I can't help but fell that with some of the "fair use" music would have been better than the RAWKIN GEE-TAR though.

The music is growing on me but can you not make it quite so loud?

EDIT: I also think the opening sequence is pretentious. No problem with the music but don't like the intro.

This one was actually funny, though maybe a bit too easy because all the faults are glaringly obvious. Still, finding creative ways to insult said faults is pretty entertaining. Personally, I lost my taste for the game right near the beginning, with everything becoming shaky when I took a faceful of falling debris without even batting an eyelash. The killer moment that broke the game down into a massive joke though was when you're first forced to fight that girl after she'd been turned into a monster. Being knocked into the kitchen area, after some minor amount of running around, what do I find? A katana.

A katana.

Sitting in rubble, next to a fire, in an apparent kitchen in a building in New York.

Yeah.

I don't see how he can say 'i'm going to join other reviewers in saying this game is crap' then say 'actually its ok, made better if it was polished'

Get a grip. Did someone replace the captain of the Yahtzee brainship for a week?

no afrophysics. HE HAS ALWAYS BEEN GOOD! NO RETURN TO FORM! and he voice is the same you dimlow!!! good review sir yahtzee, STILL!!! on form.

On the mark as always. Good show, although I'm pained to see that Alone in the Dark isn't as good as it looked. Oh well, still going to buy it anyway, but you can say "I told you so" when shit hit's the fan.

Wait a second...so he goes to other reviews and then tries hard to write the opposite?

Well if that's the case Alone in the Dark must have been HORRIBLE.

Nice, very funny! Yahtzee is like my bread and butter. He has convinced me that I should figure out some way to play Alone in the Dark just to see the fire physics.

windfish:
It's not to make more money - it's to avoid breaking two copyrights every Wednesday. And plus, the new music is perfectly fine. There is probably a way to still use the old songs and not break copyrights, but it probably involves a lot of paperwork, which is in a way MORE professional and boring. So this way we stay legal, we get some kickin' metal intro every week, and Zero Punctuation doesn't get shut down by Michael Jackson or whoever the hell owns all of the Classic Rock recordings these days.

I don't know...even if it's copyrighted, does just using like 5-10 seconds of it really count as infringement? I would think it falls under Fair Use...

Ryoshiun:
On the mark as always. Good show, although I'm pained to see that Alone in the Dark isn't as good as it looked. Oh well, still going to buy it anyway, but you can say "I told you so" when shit hit's the fan.

No, rent it, you'll regret paying for that.

EXCELLENT!! Keep it up. I love watching your reviews :)
One thing though: please could bring back the old style review videos with different snippets of music at the beginning and the end?

Lord_Seth:

windfish:
It's not to make more money - it's to avoid breaking two copyrights every Wednesday. And plus, the new music is perfectly fine. There is probably a way to still use the old songs and not break copyrights, but it probably involves a lot of paperwork, which is in a way MORE professional and boring. So this way we stay legal, we get some kickin' metal intro every week, and Zero Punctuation doesn't get shut down by Michael Jackson or whoever the hell owns all of the Classic Rock recordings these days.

I don't know...even if it's copyrighted, does just using like 5-10 seconds of it really count as infringement? I would think it falls under Fair Use...

Indeed, if anything its a free advertisement for the band.

nightfish:
I don't see how he can say 'i'm going to join other reviewers in saying this game is crap' then say 'actually its ok, made better if it was polished'

That's actually the weirdest thing about the game, it's easy to see where it could have been really good but it's all just really really bad.

As awesome as the new music is, I'm not completely convinced it suits the style.
But then again, I hang bang to it every time, so who gives a crap?

This is definitely one of the funniest reviews, and I can only hope Terry and Gonad make a return in the future.

Physics joke inside of the video seems AWFULLY similar to this comic.

http://digitalunrestcomic.com/index.php?date=2008-05-05

lolwut

Lord_Seth:
I don't know...even if it's copyrighted, does just using like 5-10 seconds of it really count as infringement? I would think it falls under Fair Use...

I think there's a portion you can quote without owing anything, but probably shorter than what Yahtzee uses. And "Fair Use" would probably only apply if he were reviewing or discussing the music.

Good ideas and crappy execution still equals crappy game. Yes, new ideas should be encouraged instead of just having the EA model (same game with another box) but the fact Atari threatened game magazines here for their not-so-pleasant reviews kind off kicks the last bit of good will out of the windows.[/quote]

They actually threatened this site?

Wow... Atari scares me...aw well I still love you Konami and Koei!

Excellent review mate, yes, excellent. The past two or three reviews I didn't find to humorous or worth my time, honestly. This review, was fan-fucking-tastic. I played through alone in the dark, for the PC for that matter, and can agree on mostly everything you said.

I really liked the bit about the two developers cocking things up with the damage system. I literally laughed my pants off, great work.

as an adult and someone that really enjoys it usually, i gotta say the music used to be one of the highlights. the new music is shit. seriously shit. it just makes the whole thing see like it takes itself way too seriously. bring back the old music for the love of [whatever you believe in].

Great review.

I really enjoyed the solid criticism.

I really don't understand how people could seriously have any disapointments with this game
ALL the Alone in the Dark games have been mediocre; at beast.

Based on GameRankings:
Alone in the Dark 90%
Alone in the Dark 2 70%
Alone in the Dark 3 70%
Alone in the Dark: TNN69%
Alone in the Dark 200854%

The Alone in the Dark series have always been mediocre.
Awful controls, truly God-awful controls ruin the game, bad design choices and adding the fact that they're just not adding anything new or exciting to the horror-game franchaise just sums up the whole point of Alone in the Dark.

Oh and also the new music rocks. :)

From all sources this game has been rated crap, over-hyped crap...yhatzee confirms these reviews.

My only regret is the minutes I wasted watching those dev. vids.

Very well done. I would agree that the tried to make the game with to many different styles of game play. The whole point of games is to play the game, not skip parts of it.

Just made an account to highlight how stunningly awesome and subtle the TF2 joke was in the start of this video. (The TF2 sniper pisses into jars when he is camping in the "meet the sniper video", and is Australian).

YES! I wish that was fixed, would stop me panicking and muting the headphones before i'm aurally raped by the music.

CyberAkuma:
Great review.

I really enjoyed the solid criticism.

I really don't understand how people could seriously have any disapointments with this game
ALL the Alone in the Dark games have been mediocre; at beast.

Based on GameRankings:
Alone in the Dark 90%
Alone in the Dark 2 70%
Alone in the Dark 3 70%
Alone in the Dark: TNN69%
Alone in the Dark 200854%

The Alone in the Dark series have always been mediocre.
Awful controls, truly God-awful controls ruin the game, bad design choices and adding the fact that they're just not adding anything new or exciting to the horror-game franchaise just sums up the whole point of Alone in the Dark.

Oh and also the new music rocks. :)

How is 90% "mediocre"? I think considering 70% to be mediocre is already stressing the definition, let alone 90%.