- On l4d2: I wasn't a fan, or a boycotter. I only played the demo for each game and still I belive l4d2 was a lazy attempt to suck people of their money. Even WoW expansions add more content than this. It may look different but if you have the first one there is no true reason to get the second one. The similarities in the box art say it all IMO.

- On Mario: Super mario 3 on the NES was the only mario game I ever played for more than 20 minutes and I loved it. From what I gathered Yathzee believes making an old school mario game is a step back (guess he didn't like megaman 9 then ...). I'm not sure what to think about this but for the most part this games are targeted to an older nostalgic crowd, like a remake of an old movie. I'm thinking if sonic team went back to simple 2D sidescrolling you would've been kinder to it). Personally I find it rather refreshing in an industry overfilled with brown 3d graphics that we canenjoy something like this, even if I don't intend to get a wii just for this...

(on a side note, Just recently I started replaying my old genesis games and I'm having a blast even if the difficulty is as unforgiving as I remember it)

The tank doesn't stand a chance against Bowser.

Yahtzee your claims of lacking innovation don't really seem to hold water in this case. They're incredibly vague and you don't really explain yourself all that well. It's like you're writing an open invitation for people to jump to thier own conclusions and assert what they think you mean. What exactly IS it that these two games DON'T do that you felt would have significantly improved the experience?

Having played through both games a few times (in single and multi-player) I see innovative gameplay design all over the place, doing things that you couldn't really do with games of the past due to hardware limitations (memory restrictions, rotations, zooming) while presenting a sense of level design, enemy design, and straightforwardness that more than makes up for the sloppiness of most Mario games since the leap to GameCube.

What L4D2 does are both technical (redoing the engine to handle things the original couldn't) as well as design (killing corner camping, effectively injecting fear back into the game) and creating several memorable situations that give the gamer something to come back to that the one-trick pony L4D1 didn't do. Most importantly what these two games did was they made me realize is just how meaningless a large part of the "innovation" of the last 20 years hasn't really mattered much.

What these two games do is present a gaming experience that is an actual "game" and not a wannabe-director trying to cram his screenplay in between gameplay segments. When did every game have to be Metal Gear Fantasy Theft Halo 4? So many games nowadays are just pileups of previous ideas "but with this" thrown ontop of the pile. It's suffocating.

Stories are becoming longer and more the driving force of the "game experience", casting aside their old role as the framing device for an experience that you'll want to come back to. When did games become a "Multimedia Experience", and a more important question is, "Why?"

So many games nowadays are more and more becoming a massive grind, and not just in the World of Warcraft RPG-Quest mechanic sense, but in the sense that you're really only playing to see the next cutscenes. What's happening more and more is games having nothing left beyond that final cutscene to make you want to come back to, games that have no more value to them than a $15 trade-in at GameStop after the credits role.

This isn't why I got into games. I didn't put a quarter in the Donkey Kong machine because I thought it was cool that a monkey jumped ontop of a building, I saw barrels rolling down rafters and wanted to see if i could make it past them and save the little fat man's girlfriend.

When did game design start to matter less than the story? Why do games feel the need to cram a season 1 DVD box set of a tv series that never existed in between a series of scripted gameplay sequences and a badly written novel? When did a game's worth start being decided by how long the first run through takes rather than the staying power of a repeatable experience? Why are largely non-interactive, heavily scripted experiences being so celebrated over the ability to take a game mechanic and twist it into as many fun ways as they can? What Left 4 Dead 2 and New Super Mario Bros Wii do best I think is present a 'game' in it's purest sense. There are no pretensions of trying to be something that it isn't. The only thing that I can say they really do WRONG is having ridiculous titles that are dumb to type.

Also of note, in my circle of pals it was actually Luigi that we kicked to the curb in favor of the Super Toad Bros and their pal Mario.

If we are talking Bowser as in Super Mario 64 Bowser, then the tank would dominate. He could punch Bowser right across the arena into each and every one of the bombs, or just hit him in the head with a piece of concrete. Actually, that goes for any Bowser. Tank wins.

twm1709:
Even WoW expansions add more content than this.

Get out troll.

On another note, while not having played New Super Mario Bros I don't care what anyone says about l4d2 anymore, especially seeing as they tend to say it should just be an expansion, when most expansions these days are costing just as much as actual fucking games. Also too soon? Really? So it's ok for sports games to pump out sequals and it's ok for IW to release a new COD(but uhmygawd it was a sequel to COD 4 not WAW) within a year, but damn Valve to hell when they release a game that is fucking bigger then the one before it.

L4D2 does what a sequel does,adds new content without changing the overall feel too much. Can people tell me how Halo 3 isn't an expansion to Halo 2?I mean it's got new characters,new weapons, new enemies,new maps, different plot,same story, same as l4d2.

Get over it people, what constitutes whether a game is a fucking expansion or not is ENTIRELY SUBJECTIVE, not fucking fact. You can't say, it r fact x game is better then y game. And you can't say it r fact x game is an expansion and not a sequel.

PS. If anyone still thinks certain sequels should be expansions, tell me a sequel you think isn't an expansion and ill use faulty logic to prove it r an expansion.

Edit:Also neither tank Nor Bowser would survive, Bowser would fire one molecule of fire on the tank, and in the next 90 seconds the tank will have beaten,pummeled,eaten and shat out bowser before dieing himself. This is unless of course:There's water nearby in which tank would win, there's enough obstacles and ledges that the tank can't catch up to Bowser in time.

jackelbeaver:
*snip*

That was the most beautiful thing I have ever read

Mr.Lucifer:
Just a sequel doesn't do much new doesn't it isn't good.

Wat

Just a sequel doesn't do much new doesn't it isn't good.

My thoughts exactly! Where the heck is Half Life 2 Episode 3? It's been several years since Episode 2!

I disagree that New Super Mario Smash Brothers has no reason to exist.

I agree that 4 player co-op is a useless gimmick and therefore i don't play with anymore then 2 but it's definitely an awesome game, yes it would of been nice to have something new but who cares when the game play is so good?

I watched a video on youtube the other day about top 10 games that need to be recreated and released again and Mario 3 was on the list, so yes there was a demand for the game to be created.

I'm from the old school gaming crowd and was banging out Mario 3 back when i was 7, and compared to most games these days which are all the fucking same, New Mario Smash Brothers is a more than welcome game to my collection (and just for peoples information the game is just as hard and just as long as its predecessors! :P).

Yahtzee, i found the changing between games a little distracting. I think it was about 3 minutes into the video and I found I couldn't remember anything that had happened in the video... Any particular reason you did a twosome?(hehe)saving up for something special next week perhaps?

slowpoke999:

jackelbeaver:
*snip*

That was the most beautiful thing I have ever read

thanks bro!

Tank...

haha HL3 tells valve "daddy i'm hungry" classic.

seriously tho when is it coming out? waiting on this game is like giving a drug dealer your money and then waiting for them to produce the drugs. sure they might give you some herbal LFD2 to tide you over but what you really want is your heroin, your delicious, scrumptious half-life heroin. c'mon valve i've hurtin real bad and you got the goods.

slowpoke999:

jackelbeaver:
*snip*

That was the most beautiful thing I have ever read

Agreed. I'd also like to point out that, given the inclusion of Yoshi and a few other things (like the checkpoint that will give you a free mushroom if you're still in small mode), NSMB Wii is more of a combined remake of Super Mario World and Super Mario 3, with the addition of simultaneous co-op, and really that part is the big qualifier here seeing as how neither SMW or SM3 had that.

This is a no brainer.

Bowser breathes fire and throws fireballs. The Tank dies after thirty seconds of touching a flame.

Bowser is invulnerable when tucked inside his shell, and he can stay in as long as he wants. King Koopa wins.

jackelbeaver:

slowpoke999:

jackelbeaver:
*snip*

That was the most beautiful thing I have ever read

thanks bro!

Welcome to our world, beware of trolls.

AceDiamond:

slowpoke999:

jackelbeaver:
*snip*

That was the most beautiful thing I have ever read

Agreed. I'd also like to point out that, given the inclusion of Yoshi and a few other things (like the checkpoint that will give you a free mushroom if you're still in small mode), NSMB Wii is more of a combined remake of Super Mario World and Super Mario 3, with the addition of simultaneous co-op, and really that part is the big qualifier here seeing as how neither SMW or SM3 had that.

Adding onto this sentiment, it also has several aspects of yoshi's island and SMB2 in there as well. I'd go as far as to say that if YI is SMB5, NSMBWii is SMB6.

The Youth Counselor:

jackelbeaver:

slowpoke999:

jackelbeaver:
*snip*

That was the most beautiful thing I have ever read

thanks bro!

Welcome to our world, beware of trolls.

sure thing bro!

The usual excellent murdering of games I really have no intention of playing...lets me feel smugly superior!

Can't help but notice most of the time, the retards posting the first comments are on xbox live, hmm...

Awesome as usual. Can't wait for the next video responce to all the hate mail Yahtzee's gonna get for bashing the new Mario game.... The one from SSBB is still hilarious after 5 times I've watched it.

hilarious . I agree l4d 2 has the same feel as l4d but that's what makes the game fun.

Enough of the bitching over Episode 3.

If ValVe kicks it out,then will they shut up?

The first 2 episodes weren't that "OMG!!AW3SOM33!!!" so whats the BFD about them?

I knew he was gonna do a 2 part review,i just didn't know it would include new super Mario bros, i thought it would be l4d2 and borderlands,seeing as that's also a 4 player co-op game. I don't think he'll review Borderlands, it's been what a month now since that games come out?There's really no point

Bowzer Vs. Tank:
Sure yes, Bowzer can spit fire at the tank and light him on fire. But he's too slow to escape the tank.. And he'll be pumbled into a nice can of turtle salad before what's left of the Tank's eye brows have fallen off. And there is only but a single hair left.

OK, (first time posting)

While i think that the video, is pretty funny, i denifitely don't agree with pretty much all he said.

1) i haven't played L4D2 so im not going to talk about it

2) regarding NSMBW, i do think the bashing was excesive, and didn't review the game for what it is, instead of what is not.

It strikes me as odd for yahtzee to concentrate on "innovation" rather than "fun" or gameplay, heck, he didn't talk much about the single player mode, like if it didn't exist

and the question WHY this game exists?

1) because there a huge number of people who likes that gameplay, old school 2d mario, there are people out there who started in the nes eras and just didn't like much the 3d marios (i do recognize their aports to gaming, mainly 64 and now galaxy), and what do i base this opinion?, on the best source of all: game reviews?, nope, game sales? absolutely

how many sales have the new super mario in ds?: it should be around 20 millions now, 20 MILLIONS of copies sold!!, heck, and all those are the "casuals", i don't think so, there still people (like me) that have played since the nes and love old school gaming, just pure gaming, pure fun.
no cinematics, no stupid unskippable story, no BS, just gaming, and that's something that appeals to me and to the wii sports crowd, a simple game to play but hard to master (even for old ones, this is no walk in the park), without being a party game or mini-game compilation.

How many copies sold the most innovative mario game in recent history, galaxy: 8 millions, and the game bombed in japan, japanise don't like much 3d marios, yet they love 2d, why?, because 3d are puzzle oriented and somehow slower, the 2d ones are precise, you know in 5 seconds what the goal is, and the only thing preventing you to reach it are your skill, and the nsmbw has excellent level design in spades. whya you seen the sales from dec. 3 to dec. 6 for nsmbw?: almost 1 million ONLY in japan, where console games don't sell very well.

is really innovation what gamers want?, maybe is if with good GAMEPLAY and got good CONTENT, everything else beside that is widowdressing, and is fresh to see these games focusing on that when almost all of blockbuster titles overprice budgets with things you want to skip, after 3 seconds. and why the hate how many console 2d marios, no, 2d plataformers have been playing lately?, little big plantet? and control wise-leveldesing wise, nsmbw wins hands down, if u dont belive me play one after the other. have i been complaining about hte flood of fps lately?, why the hate on a game with no oversaturated genre 2d console games?, come on.

at the end why nsmbw exists?: because
1) it got a big market that wants it
2) it sells like crazy and nintendo loves it's profit (remember it doesn't matter if your game is OMG! awesome if it doesn't sale enough to cover costs is no good)
3) it appeals to old arcade/nes type of players (Like me) and to "casuals" as well if not check out the youtube videos of granpas and kids playing the damn game and havinf FUN.

Sorry for the long post (and the bad english, is not my 1st lang.) i just needed to say that, even though the video was funny (a bit unfair btw).

I'm going to go with Tank, Bowser (Koopa) used them in SM3 so I say tank

Not bad. He has done mcuh funnier ones, but this one was alright.

Bowser'd win. He's got a castle and everything. All tanks have is lame "let me rip up fifty feet of roadway to fling at you" powers.

...on second thought, that is pretty scary, after all.

MB202:

jdnoth:
Theory: Nintendo is spiting Yahtzee by overtly making the same mistakes over and over again.
Mario is dead in every shape and form; but if Nintendo made a third Golden Sun game I might actually buy a Nintendo console again. Or at least not end friendships when I find out a mate owns a Wii.

Also, did Yahtzee just get through a review of a Wii exclusive, without ripping on the Wii once?

They ARE making a new Golden Sun, for the DS. It will be supposedly released next year. And Mario isn't dead. Not even close, if you ask me. His popularity his high, and unlike Sonic, he doesn't just have nostalgia to back him up, he has awesome gameplay.

The "new" Golden Sun is just a remake of the first, and you are a fanboy.

i think the new mario game would acceptable if it were $20 or something, since it is a little new since you couldnt play snes online but when i found out it was $50 the small place in my heart for mario erupted

Motakikurushi:
Once again, Yahtzee has bestowed some poignant wisdom regarding the worst gaming company in recent history. Never in my life have I heard of a more absolutely retarded concept than 'New Super Mario Bros DS on the Wii', because that's all it is really; repackage a previously released title (which has been released prior New Super Mario Bros Wii about a billion times) and sell it again. How the hell could anybody have bought this? If Darwin's theory of evolution could be applied to Video Games then Nintendo should technically not exist. They become more powerful the more repetitive and unoriginal they are. I heartily look forward to 'New New Super Mario Bros DS' and 'New New Super Mario Bros DS on the Wii'.

Oh, and L4D2 does fall into this hole as well, but I'm willing to forgive Valve because they've actually released something original in the past decade.

Really? So the DS, Nintendogs, Brain Age, the Wii, Wii Sports and Wii Fit don't qualify as 'original'? What does under your definition, because it's different than the one I'm familiar with.

As for the video, some complaints about the two games are valid, but I strongly disagree with the closing rant about how NSMBWii "has no right to exist". What are you trying to say with that statement, Yahtzee? That Mario games shouldn't exist, or that 2d platformers shouldn't exist, or something else entirely? Also, you seem to have taken a 180 from your position that Nintendo "couldn't be bothered" to make Mario and Zelda games anymore, what happened to facilitate that?

jdnoth:

MB202:

jdnoth:
Theory: Nintendo is spiting Yahtzee by overtly making the same mistakes over and over again.
Mario is dead in every shape and form; but if Nintendo made a third Golden Sun game I might actually buy a Nintendo console again. Or at least not end friendships when I find out a mate owns a Wii.

Also, did Yahtzee just get through a review of a Wii exclusive, without ripping on the Wii once?

They ARE making a new Golden Sun, for the DS. It will be supposedly released next year. And Mario isn't dead. Not even close, if you ask me. His popularity his high, and unlike Sonic, he doesn't just have nostalgia to back him up, he has awesome gameplay.

The "new" Golden Sun is just a remake of the first, and you are a fanboy.

Where did you come across this information? Also, being a fanboy has no impact on the validity of his post.

Caradinist:

L4Y Duke:
Uh, isn't it a bit hypocritical for Yahtzee to review Left 4 Dead 2, despite the fact that he seems to hate online multiplayer with an almighty vengeance rivalling that of the various denizens of Mount Olympus? Or New Jersey?

Well, he did review games like EVE Online, which are strictly or intended to be multiplayer only. I think he has no problem reviewing multiplayer only games, just has a problem with weak single player, with competitive multiplayer. Maybe he has an exception for co-op games.

either that or he reviews whatever he gets only, discounting GAME TRADERS ROBINA.

I suppose that's true. I guess he will review multiplayer games so long as they are only multiplayer.

So did you like Left 4 Dead 2 or do you not like Left 4 Dead 2? Tell me, please.

Do I think L4D2 is fun? Yes.

Was it worth the $32 I paid for it? Yes.

Did it not only fracture the L4D community, but also fracture my Steam friends into those who own only L4D and only L4D2? Yes.

When I heard that Valve was releasing L4D2, but heard no mention at all of Half-Life 2: Episode 3, was I annoyed? Yes.

Seriously, enough Left 4 Dead, get back to work on Episode 3.

Wow finally I was waiting for a critic to say holy shit why does this game exist. "New super Mario Brothers" if that isn't the biggest lie Nintendo ever told I don't know what is. I understand how 4 playing co-op is such a new thing when everyone else has been doing it for years. Also what the hell is up with you people addressing your complaints to Yahtzee anyway I'm sure he doesn't read them and even if he did I seriously doubt he gives two shits what you assholes think.

I never post on Yahtzee's reviews despite watching them for a couple of years, but WTF was that? Even when the man has little to say it usually comes across with humour and hubris in equal measure. However for once that was just pure ranting shite, I got no feel for either game. I'm starting to feel ZP has become a parody of itself over the last few months and unless Mr. Crosshaw pulls something funny out of the spite bag soon I'm just gonna go watch my box-set of the Young Ones each week for some outdated yet somewhat relevant laughs each week..