Am I the only one who noticed that the Female black character didn't have her chest censored? Or did I overlook that in the comments?

It bugged me for some reason. Usually he censors it with a black bar or something.

Lazy and dull?

This is a game where you can piledrive helicopters into people. It's a game where you can summon a robot Cthulhu to come and destroy your enemies. How the fuck can any game like that be dull?

Problem here is Yahtzee got two wrong assumptions, and ran with both of them.

1) 'It's a sequel to Madworld'. No it isn't. Just as it isn't a sequel to Bayonetta, despite having Bayonetta in it. It's a Platinum games that uses some of their established characters to round out its roster and provide it with a bit of fan appeal.

'The single player is worth a danm'. Anyone who knows anything about this game knows that the real draw is the multiplayer. They've taken a brawler, tried to combine it with online deathmatch a la COD, and by the response so far have managed a pretty good attempt of it. Who cares if the single player isn't as good? People are buying this game to piledrive helicopters into each other.

Seriously though. Yahtzee compains about how all games are becoming brown, gritty and predictable, then the minute a legitimately colourful, insane, creative game comes along, he calls it 'dull'. Kind of makes wonder why developers even bother...

It's awesome and it's $30, buy it! I know it's more overseas, but state-side it's an absolute steal at what they're selling it at.

j-e-f-f-e-r-s:
Lazy and dull?

This is a game where you can piledrive helicopters into people. It's a game where you can summon a robot Cthulhu to come and destroy your enemies. How the fuck can any game like that be dull?

Problem here is Yahtzee got two wrong assumptions, and ran with both of them.

1) 'It's a sequel to Madworld'. No it isn't. Just as it isn't a sequel to Bayonetta, despite having Bayonetta in it. It's a Platinum games that uses some of their established characters to round out its roster and provide it with a bit of fan appeal.

'The single player is worth a danm'. Anyone who knows anything about this game knows that the real draw is the multiplayer. They've taken a brawler, tried to combine it with online deathmatch a la COD, and by the response so far have managed a pretty good attempt of it. Who cares if the single player isn't as good? People are buying this game to piledrive helicopters into each other.

Seriously though. Yahtzee compains about how all games are becoming brown, gritty and predictable, then the minute a legitimately colourful, insane, creative game comes along, he calls it 'dull'. Kind of makes wonder why developers even bother...

Well said.

I don't even think the story mode is that bad. Certainly no more bland than any other game where the multiplayer is the selling point.

j-e-f-f-e-r-s:
Lazy and dull?

This is a game where you can piledrive helicopters into people. It's a game where you can summon a robot Cthulhu to come and destroy your enemies. How the fuck can any game like that be dull?

Problem here is Yahtzee got two wrong assumptions, and ran with both of them.

1) 'It's a sequel to Madworld'. No it isn't. Just as it isn't a sequel to Bayonetta, despite having Bayonetta in it. It's a Platinum games that uses some of their established characters to round out its roster and provide it with a bit of fan appeal.

'The single player is worth a danm'. Anyone who knows anything about this game knows that the real draw is the multiplayer. They've taken a brawler, tried to combine it with online deathmatch a la COD, and by the response so far have managed a pretty good attempt of it. Who cares if the single player isn't as good? People are buying this game to piledrive helicopters into each other.

Seriously though. Yahtzee compains about how all games are becoming brown, gritty and predictable, then the minute a legitimately colourful, insane, creative game comes along, he calls it 'dull'. Kind of makes wonder why developers even bother...

Pretty much what I thought.

Seems like Yahtzee picked an easy target this time around. A game with an obvious focus on multiplayer, and the result is another predictable ZP episode. Too bad. I was hoping to hear what he thought about DmC (perhaps he needs more time)

Either way, I can't comprehend how someone who spends an awful lot of air-time complaining about the gritty/brown stagnation of videogames, and then calls a game where you piledrive helicopters into people while being attacked by a kraken who is being bombarded by a carpet bombing "Lazy and dull".

I'm in a bit of a SEGA surge at the moment, I might track down MadWorld and this game just for the Hell of it.

Also, the thing about Steve Blum is that he's actually got quite a range. Yeah he's got that "one voice" that everyone recognizes, but then he also voices the childish Guilmon from Digimon Tamers, and the Donald Duck-esque Yakky Doodle in Harvey Birdman: Attorney of Law.

I'm glad that Yahtzee brings up tone, because when you're trying to tell a story in a game, tone is very important and is also something that can get easily ignored in a video game. I feel like Anarchy Reigns falls into the same trap that Bulletstorm does - super serious during it's cutscenes, but all smug and smarm during gameplay. Now that's not to say that a game can't ride the line, it's just that I personally feel like both games do a bad job of that.

Remember the opening for Prototype 2? I thought it was setting the tone for a really emotional story. Instead, we got whatever the hell Prototype 2 was.

Eh the meat of this game is the crazy online Multiplayer not it' so so SP content, which is actually better than taken at fist glace, It's like doing a review on Skyrim and only mentioning the character creation tools.

Review is cool for a laugh though not what I'd call a critical review to sway anyones buying decisions

Anyone else have a small heart attack when it suddenly went white background there for like ten seconds?

Colourful, bland Madworld sounds like a copy of Streets of Rage.

Thistly Jungle Bumwipe is going to be your new t shirt isn't it?
...Cause I want one...

Hilarious review, Yahtzee! It really got me going when you said "Llllllladieeeeees!" Strange SEGA couldn't just be honest about it being a sequel to Madworld.
And I couldn't tell if you were dissing Steve Blum, but he's the best there is at what he does, and what he does is sound gravelly and grumpy as his "tough-guy" voice. And I get that inconsistent tone is just stupid and whiplash-inducing if not done well.

captcha: labour of love
I think Madworld was, "of a sort", but not this one.

Hmm... I heard "race" and "hedgehog" very close to eachother...
I also heard "Sega" somewhere in the video.

Now why am I thinking I missed the word "blue" somewhere?

Loved the last outro line, choked on my food because of it, damn you Yahtzee! :P

Well I guess this is rather a decent game for those who enjoy beat 'em ups since it has some crazy characters with different combos. Hell, I would buy it if I had an Xbox just to play as Bayonetta.

Were there no Australian multiplayer servers to play on?

j-e-f-f-e-r-s:
Lazy and dull?

This is a game where you can piledrive helicopters into people. It's a game where you can summon a robot Cthulhu to come and destroy your enemies. How the fuck can any game like that be dull?

Problem here is Yahtzee got two wrong assumptions, and ran with both of them.

1) 'It's a sequel to Madworld'. No it isn't. Just as it isn't a sequel to Bayonetta, despite having Bayonetta in it. It's a Platinum games that uses some of their established characters to round out its roster and provide it with a bit of fan appeal.

'The single player is worth a danm'. Anyone who knows anything about this game knows that the real draw is the multiplayer. They've taken a brawler, tried to combine it with online deathmatch a la COD, and by the response so far have managed a pretty good attempt of it. Who cares if the single player isn't as good? People are buying this game to piledrive helicopters into each other.

Seriously though. Yahtzee compains about how all games are becoming brown, gritty and predictable, then the minute a legitimately colourful, insane, creative game comes along, he calls it 'dull'. Kind of makes wonder why developers even bother...

Sort of my thoughts as well. This game's more like SSB or other such games in that regard, the story is tacked on mostly to appeal to the people who INSIST there has to be one, but the focus is on its absurdly silly multiplayer and how hilarious it can be to play with friends.

Yahtzee is an anti-social loner who has professed that a game must be able to stand on its single player to be considered "worth it" to him. Anarchy Reigns never had even the slightest chance of a positive review from him. It's why I place more credit in Two Best Friends's "review" of the game than in Yahtzee's.

And he doesn't have much of a good record with "colorful and playful" anyways. He hates most Nintendo games, he gave a bad review to Lollipop Chainsaw, and so on. He likes to complain about brown and grey taking over but he's incapable of having fun with all of the "colorful", "quirky" and/or purposely mindless fun games out there that provide the sort of experience he's always bitching no one makes any more. He keeps saying he "doesn't hate everything" but it's growing increasingly hard to find things he can just honestly enjoy, he's gotta take deep stabs even at the stuff he claims to "like". Heck, even in his top 5 games of 2012 video, he spends part of the run time bitching about the "major" flaws in the games that he considers the five best of the entire year. If he's truly a banana, then I'd say he's gotten more than a bit too browned for my tastes. >_>

People, it's not a $60 game where the single player NEEDS to be justifiably long to help rationalize that price tag. It's $30, so you're basically paying for the multiplayer and the rest is just icing. There's no reason not to get this game if you own a console.

ExtraDebit:
What'd you expect from a 3D version of an obsolete genre? Remember final fight and street of rage? remember how fun it was? Play it now and see how boring it is.

Streets of Rage 2 was great fun...when I played it last month. In fact, it's more fun now than it was
when I first bought it 20 years ago, since I know the subtleties of the game so much better now.

ExtraDebit:
That's what AR is, a game build around game mechanics which was once fun because people were still enjoying the novelty of controlling pixels on screen. I thought beat'em ups already evolved into fun games like batman AA and sleeping dogs, why the fuck does developers still make boring games like anarchy reigns?

Batman: Arkham Asylum was an amazing game...the first time I played through it. I tried playing through it a second time and I only got about a third of the way through before I quit.

There's something to be said about a game designed around doing one thing really well, the way Streets of Rage 2 and other good beat'em-ups are (along with other arcade genres like fighting games, shtmups and puzzle games). I could only really enjoy Arkham Asylum once (and I DID have a great time), but I've played Streets of Rage 2 more times than I can remember. Hell, I've played the NES Batman game more than I've played AA. Cinematics and scripted sequences can be wonderful, but they usually don't hold up to repetition. Same with most game dialogue.

On another note, Platinum Games are my new favorite game studio. I haven't played Anarchy Reigns, but Bayonetta and Vanquish both kicked ass, and I can't wait for Metal Gear Rising either.

CriticKitten:
Yahtzee is an anti-social loner who has professed that a game must be able to stand on its single player to be considered "worth it" to him. Anarchy Reigns never had even the slightest chance of a positive review from him. It's why I place more credit in Two Best Friends's "review" of the game than in Yahtzee's.

I used to defend Yahtzee's refusal to engage with multiplayer, but it was impossible to do so once I got into fighting games. I'm glad that Yahtzee seems to understand that there are genres he doesn't "get" and he does what he can to stay away from them, but I guess the Madworld connection and lack of other major releases allowed this one to fall through the cracks (also: props for the Two Best Friends reference).

"...an online battle royale, in which the entire battle seemed to be happening half a second in the future because Australian connections to US servers are a thistly jungle bumwipe..."

Oh look, almost 100% of all online gaming experiences summed up for every Aus/NZ gamer ever.

PunkRex:
Jeez, Mr.Blum, talk about type cast. Has he ever played a feminine character?

Oh yeah... who the hell thaught that was a good idea?

Hey Orochimaru isn't all that feminine (once y'get to know him :P), his character is just...scary, and creepy :P

Looksl ike amarchy did indeed reign in the developement process, or there is no other way to explain it.

For Yahtzee, Apathy Reigned.

I figured he wouldn't like enjoy Anarchy Reigns since it's essential a fusion of the fighting game genre with FPS multiplayer sensitivities. I've enjoyed it so far, but I wish Sega had marketed the game better so that there was a bigger influx of new players. Having to play against the super pros who imported the game all the time can get frustrating after a while, especially if you're still figuring out how to play.

Back on topic though, I understand Yatzhee's desire to go into games with as blank a slate as possible, but I think in this case some context would have been helpful. The game is not a sequel to Madworld (although it does a poor job of making that clear) and was built multiplayer first, singleplayer second, meaning the singleplayer is effectively an extended tutorial in preparation for the online battles.

It's hard to feel a lot for Anarchy Reigns; compared to the game they're trying to tie it to, Madworld was admittedly less sensible but more fun. Any game where you can turn someone into a blood smoothie with a giant drill is fine by me. With Anarchy Reigns, it ends up feeling like the engine and controls are looking for considerably more people to mess up in much more graphic ways.

Admittedly, I'd like to see Steve Blum use his Guilmon voice at random while reading lines for one of these growly badass characters, if only for the complete WTF value of such a thing.

Whats the point of it even being a sequel at this point?

gigastar:

And barring shout outs, the game itself contains no reference to Bayonetta.

she is a DLC playable character, got her with my limited edition version. as some have said already, this isn't a sequel to Madworld, just a few of the characters thrown into a new game. also story in fighting games have never been good, only Mortal Kombat 2011 managed to pull a story off well. the best way to describe this is that its this generation's God Hand and Streets of Rage.

and i can totally see them adding Raiden from MGR as he fits the setting.

It saddens me deeply that some people just take what he says for granted.

NUMERO UNO: The game is in no way or another a sequel to Madworld. It's been told several times that this is just using the characters of madworld. Nothing more nothing less. Jesus, where does it say it's a sequel? Rin Rin died in Madworld, Baron presumably too,so how come they reappear in this one. By the simple fact that it's not a SEQUEL.

Secondly, the game's core is the multiplayer, always has been, not to mention it is Platinum Games first attempt at a MP game, and imho they pulled it off pretty well, if it just wasn't for SEGA lack of a brain the game would have way more players.

In all seriousness, calling the game bland and dull, when you've got a character cast from which each has their own unique weapon instead of a marine squad with all the exact same assault rifle.
I was disappointed that he mentioned noone besides Jack and Leo(and Leo without his equipment,that is)
I mean Come the fuck on. We have:
-A big mean russian who does soviet damgage with FUCKING TESLA GENERATORS INSTALLED IN HIS ARMS
-A maniac walking around with A CANNON IN HIS LEG
-TRANSFORMERS
-A bacon obsessed fat guy who literally turns into KILLER CROC
-Fem-Bruce Lee
-Cyborg Dominatrix
-Bayonetta
-Ninjas
-Robotic bull
Tell me again,how many bland and dull games allow you to piledrive helicopters, fight mutated squids, ride mutants etc.?
sorry i couldnt hear you over the sweet sound of killing players by jamming a spear through their crotch.

And Yahtzee, for the camera being to close, you know what? Thats what the fucking radar is for.

daxterx2005:
Whats the point of it even being a sequel at this point?

It is not a sequel. He said that it is a sequel to Madworld, because three characters from it are in the AR. But, for example, Bayonetta is here too, but it is not Bayonetta 2, however. Think of it as brawler with characters from other IP's. I'd like to mention again, That this game is NOT a sequel to Madworld.

Let us not forget, that mr. Croshaw is: a) human, which means that his opinions are subjective; b) he is a person, that likes good story driven single-player and dismisses games, that have multiplayer as a core.

Single-player has the most generic story, true, but it does not mean that the game is boring.

The_Merchant:

It saddens me deeply that some people just take what he says for granted.

In all seriousness, calling the game bland and dull, when you've got a character cast from which each has their own unique weapon instead of a marine squad with all the exact same assault rifle.
I was disappointed that he mentioned noone besides Jack and Leo(and Leo without his equipment,that is)
I mean Come the fuck on. We have:
-A big mean russian who does soviet damgage with FUCKING TESLA GENERATORS INSTALLED IN HIS ARMS
-A maniac walking around with A CANNON IN HIS LEG
-TRANSFORMERS
-A bacon obsessed fat guy who literally turns into KILLER CROC
-Fem-Bruce Lee
-Cyborg Dominatrix
-Bayonetta
-Ninjas
-Robotic bull
Tell me again,how many bland and dull games allow you to piledrive helicopters, fight mutated squids, ride mutants etc.?
sorry i couldnt hear you over the sweet sound of killing players by jamming a spear through their crotch.

And Yahtzee, for the camera being to close, you know what? Thats what the fucking radar is for.

Thank you, The_Merchant, for saving me some time.

What I mean to say is that the game is: a)fun; b)multiplayer oriented; c) a brawler, a genre, which, along with fighting games, always had problems with storytelling; d) rather cheap (only 30 USD).

The only major problem this game has is lack of local multiplayer, so you can't play with your friends, unless they have this game for the same type of console as you do.

I'd never heard of this, man I'm out of the loop/old.

The "generic grizzled macho emotional spectrum" is very insightful. When I think about it most characters could be put on it. For example:
1. Grayson Hunt (bullet storm) is smug,
2. Alcatraz (Crysis 2) has the silent contempt
3. Tommy Vercetti (GTA VC) is angry all the time.

I don't get this dude. He usually complains about lack of ideas and what not, but says nothing about actual GAME part of Anarchy Reigns, which is, like the rest of games by Platinum, a well polished mechanism with ton of features that are both fun and actually useful.
You may dislike their visual style, but Platinum make best GAMES in business, and if you don't like that, what you want is to just press buttons and have stuff happen on screen, as opposed to using your brain to solve problems.
Anarchy Reigns is out on PSN (and probably XBOX Live), so you (yes, you) better go and buy it.