"this is how a lioness feels when the alpha male eats one of her cubs and we don't know where we stand right now and he's not going to get any of my *Zebra* tonight that's for fucking certain"

*=he spoke in his South African accent

"which might be a good unicycle but I don't know how to FUCKING ride one"

"Brutal legend is throwing all the pieces into a bucket and hurling it at a dog's face! Its still entertaining in its own way but not architectureal sound and the dog wouldn't appreciate it either"

LOL at Yathzee getting his ass bite by a German Shepard

Wait is he saying this game is bad? good? or meh?

Yahtzee u cur go back to making a stand! no fun when you sit on the fence :P

I thought that this game was a good waste of time. I did not like the RTS aspect of it. If it was more combat and less RTS, then I would like it more.

I do not know about your friend, but that is what all RTS were made around. Gather your mates and throw them at the enemies. Even in good RTS you tend to throw enemies until either they die or you do.

Nice reveiw and all, but I liked him better before he sold out. :P

I haven't played this one yet, but I was planning just to rent it. Looks like I made the right choice. Review Borderlands next week, Yahtzee! *Crosses fingers*

Jaqen Hghar:

A bit sad to see that people worship Yahtzees words, which in turn makes them pass over great games which he didn't like. These "reviews" are fun and all, but hardly proper reviews.

Exactly! It gets annoying when I see people saying "Well Yahtzee didn't like the game, so I don't have to play it now". It's sad how people can't form opinions for themselves anymore and actually try the damn games. For some reason I feel like playing Lemmings now.

malestrithe:
I do not know about your friend, but that is what all RTS were made around. Gather your mates and throw them at the enemies. Even in good RTS you tend to throw enemies until either they die or you do.

Negative. A good RTS places far more emphasis on the "S" as opposed to the "R" and the "T." If all you do is gather as many troops as possible and throw them at the enemy in a game like say, Warcraft 3, then I can guarantee you lose every match against another player.

Good review. Thanks for the heads up about this game.

This game is something my gamer's intuition told me to stay the fork away from. Too much at once -> no focus -> no depth in virtually 95% of the games which attempt it. Judging from the review, this indeed appears to be the case here.

best review of late, good work on the umlauts

Yahtzee Croshaw:
Brutal Legend

This week, Zero Punctuation reviews Brutal Legend.

Watch Video

A: while i feel you make some vailid points i must say that you might have tried reading the manuel? (to learn what a motor forge looks like for example)

B: have you ever even played a total war game? much less reveiwed one? i doubt it cause if you had you'd find them decent if not exactly fadt paced and actiony

C: I thought you liked sandbox games? sure there's a lot more of them but surely the great yattze isn't getting sick of his sandboxes? what about some nice linier games?

D: i agree with you on the scavenger hunt thing though

my point though can be summed up as follows: REVEIW A FUCKING TOTAL WAR GAME, MAKE YOUR MIND UP ABOUT SANDBOXES DO YOU LIKE THEM OR NOT, AND READ THE MANUAL!

hmm i like this game but he does point out some things that i didnt like about it but i like the free romming car aspect but he has his opnion and i have mine =D

Ziren:

Abedeus:

Darrkon Fearlock:
Not to try and destroy Yahtzee's point with the RTS thing, but after the game came out Tim Schafer came out and said not to play it like an RTS and to play it more like a hack and slash with RTS elements. Like you should be down there a fair bit with your guys, you just need to replenish them every once in a while.

You know that you failed if you have to explain how to play your game to GAMERS. Because people playing games 10+ years (or 15+, what the hell) are usually considered gamers.

Did you know that some of the best chess players in the world do extremely bad at fairy chess? It's because they're too familiar with concepts they already know and unable to adapt to something different. And that's exactly the problem that your sort of "gamers" has with Brütal Legend.

Awesome, don't care. Probably because those chess players don't find out half-way through that their chess became cards and they are playing poker.

Some of you might not "get" the game, the same way I can't "get" Starcraft or any sports game ever made, but you should at least try it out if you can borrow it from a friend before you pass your judgement.

...Sports game? Oh.

Seems this game isn't all it was hyped up to be. I guess I'll wait for it to drop in price before shelling out for it.

Anyone else annoyed by the HA in the intro?

It saddens me greatly that nobody draws the comparison to the PC game Sacrifice. That is what the "RTS" portion of the game felt like down to the letter, but instead of being useless in combat (aside from spells), you can hit things with your guitar.

Any fan of Sacrifice will feel at home here and will probably realize that there is actually an >intense< level of micromanagement and strategy involved here, as was the case in Sacrifice.

The problem is that most people don't understand this. The idea that it's a watered down zerg fest is only true because that's how you play it. I don't play it like that and it isn't like that.

Fallopian_Faust:
He does occasionally make some good points, but his reviews are rants that usually only focus on the negative aspects of a game for sheer entertainment value.

There's undoubtably an entertainment angle here, but that doesn't mean he has no points to make. The negative is arguably what needs the most attention, and Yahtzee himself said that he felt a critic's function was to help art improve, and you improve by correcting error (this was in a ZP video, but I sadly can't recall which one).

Fallopian_Faust:
I find "professional reviewer" to be an oxymoron as it is. When you get down to it, it's just some schlob's opinion that is no more relevant than anyone else's.

And no LESS relevant, as well.

Gutterpunk:

It was fun to play a sandbox game that wasn't about Being A Guy With A Gun In A World Of Many Guns. I'll take being a Roadie anytime over being a Tough Lone Soldier or yet another Gansta'.

That's one of the reasons I picked BL over Borderlands, though I do appreciate them kickin' out the jambs and allowing players to make whatever fucked up gun they want.

The Absolute best part of this review was when yatzee threw a bucket full of 'Mouse Trap' parts at the dog, Soly Hucking Fhit I giggled blood out of my nose.

Well, at least he made a lot of money from it, so he can use that money and reputation to make a good game that does sell, not one or the other.

Abedeus:

You know that you failed if you have to explain how to play your game to GAMERS. Because people playing games 10+ years (or 15+, what the hell) are usually considered gamers.

I don't know about that, I found it quite refreshing actually. It was nice playing a game that doesn't hold your hand, and required the gamer to figure things out for themselves. It brought back memories of when all games were like that... good times.

I shelled out for the game mainly because I wanted to support Double Fine and if this game doesn't sell at least a piddling amount there's a pretty good chance we won't see Psychonauts 2...

I played this game 1 (one) day and found the rock references all very cool and interesting, but I have to say that I haven't bothered booting it up again since I smelled a hint of RTS in the mix.

I'm not saying RTS suck, it's just they have a tendency to suck a lot of time out of me for what I would deem to be a not particularly satisfactory return. Order units to be built, order units to move where they will kill or be killed, repeat until that which needs killing is killed, repeat for several hours for each map - this is the RTS, minus the obvious focus on applying strategy, but perhaps I omitted that simply because most RTS don't have enough of it.

This review doesn't really deter me from wanting to at least try Brütal Legend.
Especially since the RTS aspects sound a wee bit like Sacrifice (being right smack in the middle of it and all).

I hope he reviews uncharted 2

Anyway his reviews seem to be losing their spark since his voice seems to be a very tiring and "i don't want to be here voice"

at least thats what I think. Go back to the voice of the 2008 era; that very sharp iritated voice I liked.

Darrkon Fearlock:
Not to try and destroy Yahtzee's point with the RTS thing, but after the game came out Tim Schafer came out and said not to play it like an RTS and to play it more like a hack and slash with RTS elements. Like you should be down there a fair bit with your guys, you just need to replenish them every once in a while.

What the hell does "play it like a hack and slash with RTS elements" mean? That's the biggest nonsense I have ever heard. And, if the game designer has to tell me how I am supposed to play, he clearly failed in some regard. Shouldnt the game just be designed to be played a certain way? Or, if it's going to be a true sandbox game, shouldn't it be fun to play in multiple ways?

MR T3D:
nice to see someone not drooling over it, and it seems like a pretty good review
1st to actually wathc it, then post?

lol congratz...

Nice to know Yahtzee also sits in a chair when he is recording(at a point in the video you can hear him reclining or declining as the case may be) I had a feeling for awhile he did this while standing in a small room that resembles a recording studio.

Sadly I have never played Mousetrap, only seen the boxes of it at walmart.. ACtually I have to thank this review, the talk of walk around and find things made me want to go back to Fallout 3.

Fronzel:

Fallopian_Faust:
He does occasionally make some good points, but his reviews are rants that usually only focus on the negative aspects of a game for sheer entertainment value.

There's undoubtably an entertainment angle here, but that doesn't mean he has no points to make. The negative is arguably what needs the most attention, and Yahtzee himself said that he felt a critic's function was to help art improve, and you improve by correcting error (this was in a ZP video, but I sadly can't recall which one).

Fallopian_Faust:
I find "professional reviewer" to be an oxymoron as it is. When you get down to it, it's just some schlob's opinion that is no more relevant than anyone else's.

And no LESS relevant, as well.

He does more blasting than helpful critiquing, which is fine from an entertainment standpoint.

The relevance we're talking about varies depending on how much someone cares about another's opinion. I think just spending 5 bucks down at blockbuster and experiencing the game for yourself and coming to your own conclusion is better than any review can hope to be.

I'm a bit hesitant to buy that one now. Sounds like he gave it a pretty fair review though, I was expecting him to just dismiss it as an RTS.

Wow. Just wow, Yahtzee. Way to make Tim Schaeffer feel even worse after Psychonauts did poorly in sales.

The relevance we're talking about varies depending on how much someone cares about another's opinion. I think just spending 5 bucks down at blockbuster and experiencing the game for yourself and coming to your own conclusion is better than any review can hope to be.

Tell that to the hundreds of Yahtzee fanboys that take everything he says to be the absolute truth. Just last week I gave hell to an asshole on GameTrailers using Yahtzee's jokes as legitimate claims to why a game THAT'S NOT EVEN RELEASED automatically sucks.

well this review puts everyhing in perspective and explains what i was feeling after beating brutal legend.
Right after beating deviculous in the duel it dawned on me that that was the only real boss fight in the game(excluding the worm-thing), and that every encounter with a powerful character was an RTS battle.
I really wish there were a better story, and now im hopig for some DLC that i would gladly pay at least $20 for an actual hack-n-slash campagin with boss fights like pyschonauts,which i never played, but now i defintly think i should

Great review all around. The metaphors were some of your best, and that Tyler Durden remark was the cherry on top.

I hope im not sounding like the kid with long hair and no plans for the future but I throughly enjoyed Brutal legend. while the RTS bits surprised me greatly I was definatley not put off by them, I mean sure the RTS bits were a bit long and arduous but It still felt like It was just another day of me, a few headbangers and Metal music blaring as I ran over demons and glam-ers alike. I definatley understand the critism, after all a few times the plot seemed to forget where it was going, and it took me the second time through to find the "sites of legend" that actually flat out tell you why the world is so buggered up... but I enjoyed it, it was funny, the actors seemed into it, Jack black especially, and this may be a minor thing, but am I the only person tired of the main character weapon always being "the sword of deus ex machina"? having an Axe was a nice, if a bit nit pickicky, change. Good review though

I'm kind of glad Yahtzee didn't like it, I hated the RTS in it.

Best game I've played in a while anyway, guess peoples opinions differ (Who would have known!).

Anyway, I'm not an RTS player at all, and I absolutely loved the stage battles. There is minimal tactics involved, so I would say it's by definition a "RTS-extra light" mixed with some squad based hack and slash. The avatar is your absolutely strongest weapon, and if you don't utilize him, but focus on the RTS element, you WILL lose.

Oh, and to anyone who still hates a game just because Jack Black stars in it: Grow up, seriously.

I liked Brütal Legend. I don't understand why everyone is all "Oh, Yahtzee is awesome because he is the only one with the guts to stick it to the man" just because he gave a game bad criticism when everyone gave it praise. He just voiced his opinion like everyone else, why are people acting like he is the only critic that isn't bribed by game-companies?

There is much I can say in Brütal Legends defense and there is much I can agree with Yahtzee on. Personally I don't think this short review was detailed enough to be the reason why you would decide not to buy it. If I want to know if a game is worth buying or not I read a lot of reviews (ignoring the score that is set on them) and take in what people thought about the game. Yahtzee is more about the lulz. He is one of the best critics in the world, I'll give him that. In short: Yahtzee could use another minute or two on his reviews, if only so that he could bash the game in more detail.