(For those who are familiar with Ben ‘Yahtzee’ Croshaw: Read the following bit in his voice and it’ll make a lot more sense. Thanks – Ed.)
Hearing that Yahtzee makes games is like finding out that Godzilla likes to dabble in architecture. You’d think that being one of the most gleefully sadistic reviewers in the business would cause him to shy away from the production end of things and stick to the easier and safer practice of administering verbal sodomy to anyone foolish enough to allow their game to fall into his hands. The Escapist already buys him videogames and then pays him money to play them and make little videos about how much they suck. I’m not sure what he hopes to accomplish by making a game using stone-age graphics and then giving it away for free. The only thing he’s doing is giving his future prey some rhetorical ammunition. The next time he accuses Peter Molyneux of defecating in a box and putting it on the shelf in EB Games, Peter will be able to respond by pointing out that at least his game had more than 256 colors.
Croshaw’s “latest” effort – not that I’m aware of what his previous efforts might be – is Art of Theft, a sort of stealth / RPG / platformer / oldschool / puzzler / adventure game… thing, centered around taking things without asking. If it sounds like I don’t know what genre to put it in it’s because I have no flaming idea in the world what genre to put it in, a problem that Yahtzee himself apparently suffered from when he wrote the damn thing.
The game is mission-based. You must sneak around each level while evading guards, picking locks, disabling security cameras, and filling your pockets with the most prized natural resource: Rich People’s Money. You earn points based on how well you performed during the job, and can use those points to “buy” upgrades to your abilities, which seems like a cynical attempt to trick people into thinking they’re playing some sort of character-building RPG. Even more annoying is that it seems to have worked. There is a story here, which unfolds in text and noir-style images at the end of each mission like some sort of 8-bit version of Max Payne.
The game is available for the low price of $0.00 Australian, which I think works out to something like $-20.00 American. You can’t go wrong with a price tag like that, even if the game does have fewer colors than a KKK rally and the pixels are jagged enough to put your eye out. You see, this isn’t just a re-textured version of a successful game. This is something that actually tries to be new and interesting even while looking old and stale. It’s a nice trick if you can pull it off, and even if you can’t you can always go back to making little animations of flying turds to illustrate how awful it is that The Escapist is paying you money to play Super Paper Mario.
Not that I’m jealous or anything.
* Trilby turns out to be the name of a kind of hat in other parts of the world. Not that I would know. In America all we have are baseball caps. Which we all wear backwards. To cover up our mullets.
The Biggest Game Ever
Just how big IS No Man's Sky? What if you made a map of all of its landmass? How big would it be?
In Defense of Crunch
Crunch-mode game development isn't good, but sometimes it happens for good reasons.
Overthinking Zombies
Let's ruin everyone's fun by listing all the ways in which zombies can't work, couldn't happen, and don't make sense.
Game at the Bottom
Why spend millions on visuals that are just a distraction from the REAL game of hotbar-watching?
Please Help I Can’t Stop Playing Cities: Skylines
What makes this borderline indie title so much better than the AAA juggernauts that came before?
Hrm, seemingly no one else commented quite yet. *shrugs*
I’m not entirely certain Shawn, but I do believe that Art of Theft is a game he developed a couple of years ago by himself, as opposed to a shameless commercial stunt to show the developers he casts aspersions “how it’s done”. :)
Regardless though, I did/do enjoy Yahtzee’s reviews. The foundation of his reviews, at least that’s how I interpreted it, was blunt honesty. As opposed to all of the ass kissing that is going on in the journalist branch of “reviewing”. (The number of 100/100 scores that Super Mario Galaxy got still makes me feel oddly befuddled..)
Regardless, I think by joining the Escapist his reviews have become “subtly” re-defined, to focus on profanity and sarcasm as opposed to just honestly pointing out that some games just aren’t as good as hypes make them out to be.
Personally I admire his balls. Of course he tends to savage stupid gameplay – rather then bad graphics. Actually from memmory he tends not to do graphics. Of course if the game is intersting and new in any way – then well – that’s another poke in the eye for people who just produce the same game with better graphics. After all – if he can do it – then the people with 20 million should do better….
I enjoy his reviews of games I’ve never even played….. I must go re listen to some.
I tried the game, just 1 question though, how do you choose to close the game when it’s running? I tried escape, then chosing quit, but it just kept bringing me back to his hideout. :(
some masterfull secret I’m missing?
He makes 2d adventure games of the old school:
http://www.fullyramblomatic.com/games.htm
It’s odd, but I don’t find anything particularly offensive about Yahtzee’s cuss-heavy, nasty-sounding reviews. Somehow he manages to convey the impression (at least to me) that this is basically a pose on his part: he doesn’t really hate games and developers, he’s just adopting this style of review. And since I get that impression, I’m able to enjoy the reviews as performances, rather than feeling like they are truly nasty attacks on games and those who make them.
I’m never heard of the guy before, but Dave’s description still sounds right (I’ve seen the same pose in other things before, and it worked like that).
“You can't go wrong with a price tag like that, even if the game does have fewer colors than a KKK rally and the pixels are jagged enough to put your eye out.”
That was actually a fairly enjoyable little dig… I think you’ve been listening to that guy too much (not that this is a complaint, mind you).
Trilby is the type of hat the character is wearing.
The AU$ was about 93c – $1 US a couple of weeks ago :P
Man, I love listening to Zero Punctuation – you do a passable Yahtzee, and I had a good chuckle reading this post.
Reckon I’ll try the game, now.
I downloaded and enjoyed 5 Days a Stranger and 7 Days a Skeptic quite some time ago, so I’ll most probably give this one a play and see how we go. Should be fun.
Actually, while the game plays quite different, it reminds me of two games The Sting! and the precedessor Clue! which were both slightly similiar in idea, of a bit different gameplay. Clue has comparable graphics, even. It’s like an arcade version of those, or something.
As for the reviews, they have always “read” to me like typical American Style(tm) drivel, oh sorry meant “show”.
I’ve played the whole 5DAS series and a few of his other games. I played art of theft when it came out. I like it, but its a little unfair in its difficulty sometimes.
heres a “some punctuation” video review of it, made by some american kid who thinks he’s wittier than he actually is. Its still amusing, and he makes a few good points (and a few bad ones.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XSpPIBvjN4
His reviews are the kind of reviews that disappeared when Charlie Brooker decided to stop reviewing games for PC Zone and decided to started to sell out to the Man and make Nathan Barley jokes.
I missed that — it was part of my childhood. Granted, a childhood full jokes that involved shit, piss, vomit and dismembered dog testicles, but, you know, a childhood.
Croshaw’s output is primarily in Adventure Gaming Studio. Yeah, they’re crude as hell and the gameplay elements occasionally piss me off, but considering the fact that they’re the byproducts of a one-man team and I spent nothing for ’em, I’m not complaining too much.
Well played, I was wondering if you had half gone insane until I remembered zero punctuation’s style.
My problem with the art of theft is that I refuse to allow myself to progress until I trilby all previous levels and I can’t seem to trilby that damn company prison level argh.
Look vaguely like an old Taito arcade game, Elevator Action. Which I enjoyed, so I may just have to give this a go…
Shamus, that’s a very credible Yahtzee impression. Read in his Zero Punctuation voice, with his speed, sneer, and timing it’s uncanny. And you reminded me that I haven’t seen a new episode of Zero Punctuation in several weeks. Time to go visit…
When I need a fix of game reviews laden with foul language and humor, I check out the Angry Video Game Nerd (formerly the Angry Nintendo Nerd, but he’s since branched out) on youtube, or gametrailers or somesuch.
He reviews all of the really bad old games that we played as kids. Games like Ghostbusters, Top Gun, Back to the Future, etc…
Warning, the videos contain excessive profanity, hence no linky. Just search for angry nintendo/video game nerd on youtube, and you’ll find what you seek.
He was a game designer before he was a reviewer – he likes to use the Adventure Game Studio software for new and innovative things. In fact, Art of Theft was made using the Adventure Game Studio, which just goes to show what a warped mind he has. I’d recommend his games.
His response to critics is generally to ask them to forward their address so he can refund all the money they spent on his game. (Also so he can burn their house down.)
That -20 USD joke sucks. Currently, the USD is ridiculously low, so I think you own the australian guys some money…
“That -20 USD joke sucks. Currently, the USD is ridiculously low, so I think you own the australian guys some money…”
I could explain the joke to you, or I could delete your comment, but it’s sort of funny to leave your comment here the way it is so that other people can point and laugh at you. It’s like a bonus joke.
Deoxy: “I think you've been listening to that guy too much”
That doesn’t make sense, there’s no such thing as too much of Zero Punctuation ;)
kiwishoepolish: “…(Also so he can burn their house down.)”
Heh. In fact, he seems to have left a message particularly for Shamus in the credits of this one:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/zeropunctuation/2675-Zero-Punctuation-F-E-A-R-Perseus-Mandate
Except that seems to have been posted two days ago, so either someone else did the same thing (not hard to imagine), Shamus had this posted elsewhere before it showed up here, or this Yahtzee bloke has a browser that can read web pages from the future (only slightly more hard to imagine).
Hmm. Long URL link seems to have mangled the formatting of my previous post. Sorry ’bout that, chief.
I’ll bet that message is aimed at someone who most likely made a YouTube video. As flattering as it might be to have an mad Austrailian Englishman attempt to burn down my home, I’m certain that message isn’t aimed at me.
I was contemplating making such a movie from this post, but there’s really no point if someone else has beat me to it.
I have to imagine the little floating-head graphics, though, and the mix-and-match titles.
This has already been linked, but to clear up the confusion, this is the guys house that Yahtzee wants to burn down:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XSpPIBvjN4
I doubt Shamus intentionally ripped this guy off, but this blog entry is too similar, while remaining inferior in it’s form, to this video to be entertaining for me.
T-Boy:
Charlie Brooker reviews TV shows for the Guardian now.
[Shamus] You’d be hard pressed to explain that $Aus gag in a way that made it funny to me, what with the $US being worth slightly less that the joke-in-its-own-country $Cannuck right now (Actual joke I heard on Canadian TV a couple of years ago: The Bad News – our national debt has soared to 6 billion dollars*. The Good News – it’s all in Canadian money).
Steve.
* And wouldn’t a mere 6 billion be nice right now?
It’s not a joke on AUS currency. It’s a joke on conversion. Games tend to be $10 or $20 “cheaper” in USD, so an idiot conversion would just take the AUS number and SUBTRACT 20 instead of multiplying by 0.8 or (these days) 0.9.
This leads to a negative number, which I tought would be absurd enough to amuse anyone, but apparently some people are so personally enamoured of their favorite currency that jokes about exchange are taken as some sort of personal insult or support of some arbitrary fiscal policy.
For crying out loud, I made jokes about canine molestation, excrement, and sodomy, and everyone gets bent out of shape over… currency conversion? Do I need to use some sort of red highlighted text to let everyone know which parts are supposed to offend you? Because you guys are doing it all wrong.
THIS IS A NOTICE To the ankle-biting idiots:
If you don’t like the free ice cream i’ve got here, feel free to check out the rest of the internet. This is a rotten place to insult me, as your comments won’t live very long.
“This doesn’t make me laugh” is ok.
“Your jokes are stupid” is not.
I’m not your mum, and I’m too busy to babysit you. Go start your own blog.
NOTE: I deleted the offending comments. If your comment is here we’re still cool.
This doesn’t make me laugh.
No, in fact it makes diet coke come out of my nose. Which is to say it started to make me laugh and then, out of sheer spite, chose instead to make me curse, cough splutter and cry (just a little bit). So, while I would like to go start my own blog I can’t right now as my eyes are still watering from the effects of an acidic and carbonated liquid in my sinuses.
;P
Maybe some people (like me) didn’t get the joke because they’re not used to thinking of you as the sort of idiot that would make that sort of conversion error. There is also the fact that everyone is used to jokes that ARE based on the exchange rates and so assumed that this was one as well and that you just haven’t been keeping up on international exchange rates, which few people do. If the latter case had been true, then why wouldn’t you want people updating you on the situation that you joke (apparently) plays off of?
You have to bear in mind also that, like Yahtzee’s reviews, comments are going to be disproportionately negative because presumably it’s the negative parts that authors need and, if they’re intent on improving themselves, want to hear. After all, you probably already know about the good parts of your post and if you did know about the bad parts you wouldn’t have posted them in the first place. I don’t claim to speak for everyone here but when I post a comment that talks about one bad part of one of your posts you can generally be assured that I thought everything else about it was absolutely tits.
I must likewise imagine that the majority of the “ankle-biting idiots” around here actually are fans of yours, since they do take the time to regularly read your stuff, and just post the criticisms they do because they’d like to see you become even more awesome.
Well, he’s said in another post he has had a problem with a lot of flame-type posts, and he’s said he deletes said posts. I expect authors of these deleted posts are the “ankle-biting idiots” referenced.
And the joke about game prices was a bit obscure in context, but still makes perfect sense. I got to listen to a friend in Canada try to pre-order a game recently, and her choices were to either pay $10-$20 more for it than we pay in the US (taking exchange rate into account, yes), or to pay $10-$20 more in shipping than I would to order from a US store.
I tell her it’s the Canada Tax, and it’s a fee to cover all the extra u’s they use in words up there. It makes as much sense as any other reason game companies might give.
NOTE: I deleted the offending comments. If your comment is here we're still cool. I always forget to mention this, and then reasonable people with negative comments wonder if they pissed me off.
There’s a pretty big difference between the critics and the ankle-biters. You’d see the difference if I let them stand. I’m pretty happy with how civil and smart the comments are here compared to other places, but the only way to keep it that way is to run off the idiots and jerks every once in a while.
Hey, Shamus, why don’t you do a post where you compare ankle-biting comments to those you let stand? I mean, sure, offensiveness is obvious, but I want to see examples of the stuff you cull.
Ben
As I was reading Shamus’s post, I glazed over all the scatalogical humor and then said to myself “I bet some Aussies will bitch about the exchange rate crack.”
After I scrolled down a bit, I realized I have the ability to divine the behaviour of total strangers living over the equator and accross the international date line. Who knew? Now if I could only use this ability to generate some cash. But with my luck, it would be in aussie dollars ;)
Kidding. Irregular Webcomic is one of my favorites!
Truth be told, I didn’t think much of Art of Theft, but that’s due to the fact that I don’t like stealth games in general. I’d recommend Galaxy of Fantabulous Wonderment, or the Chzo mythos(from which the character of Trilby originated).
As it is, Yahtzee has been a game developer for far longer then he was a critic. After the Arthur Yahtzee games from ages ago, he’s mostly stuck to the Adventure Game Studio engine. As an interesting exercise to see how far he’s come, I sugest you compare Art of Theft with the first Rob Blanc game. He takes Shamus’ belief that developers should stick to the same hardware/engine etc and get to know it rather then bringing in the latest bling mapping to the extreme.
[shamus]It's not a joke on AUS currency. It's a joke on conversion. Games tend to be $10 or $20 “cheaper” in USD, so an idiot conversion would just take the AUS number and SUBTRACT 20 instead of multiplying by 0.8 or (these days) 0.9.[/shamus]
I went looking for Crysis recently — off the shelf here in Tasmania it costs AU$110. Off ebgames.com, for the US, the same product cost US$49.99 (at current conversion rates, ~AU$56). Of course they don’t actually ship to Australia (no American site I found would), so I had to go through a company in Hong Kong and finally got it for AU$59.95.
Still, I didn’t get the joke at first. So it must be stupid! ;)
Damn overpriced Aussie games!!!
Another problem about being Aussie, our games are more expensive even when converted to U.S Dollars and shipping has been accounted before, even online on places like Steam.
Huh, I did not exspect to start a flame war with the -20 USD comment. I should have explicitly stated that you should have written:
“It’s 0 AUS$, so that would only cost us about 20 USD at the moment due to poor exchange rates.”
THAT would have been funny in a self-ironic kind of way, because it is current and correct, but still amusing. But if you use the really-not-current-currency-(see a trend?)-exchange-rates you just come over as someone living in the 90s / being very patriotic (and the rest of the world hates americans for that a lot, me included, and again, that kills the joke) or C: just not funny.
Why I bother? “Games tend to be x $ ‘cheaper’ in USD.” No, not at the moment. Actually, their pricelabel significantly drops when converted to Euros.
I cannot really explain much further why this bothers me, but this “minor” detail makes that joke a lot worse.
And yes, the article itself was very good, it could have used a couple more (somewhere around a bazillion) swear words though to really fit the theme.
Oh, and I wanted to add: I have my own blog, which has at least 10 readers! Per MONTH!
in the vein of troubling facts about reviewers, are you going to comment on the Jeff Gerstmann situation?
Yahtzee wins at life. He’s British, lives in Australia, laugh-out-loud funny and has a sweet hat. Oh, and his name is Ben.
Ben, Australia, unfortunately without wit, British upbringing or a sweet hat.
I know you were trying to do a ZP impersonation, but if doing so, try to be a little less wildly inaccurate about your claims of fact. Yahtzee has made many games, some long before he became famous for ZP or worked for the escapist. I could point out about a hundred other inaccuricies, but that’s the one that jumped out at me.
Quoting K:
Why I bother? “Games tend to be x $ “˜cheaper' in USD.” No, not at the moment. Actually, their pricelabel significantly drops when converted to Euros.
Maybe when converted to Euros, but the comment was about AU$. Here (Perth, Western Australia), PC games all range from $80-$110 (where they fall in this range seems arbitrary, from all I can tell). This is the benchmark, so I never realised that this was expensive compared to the rest of the world. Sure, I knew they were a bit more then in the States but I always thought that was due to the exchange rate. I never really noticed that even after the exchange rate they’re still overpriced relative to the rest of the globe. So not only are they often released late here (in the case of NWN2: Mask of the Betrayer and The Witcher, it was about a month overdue for no given reason), but they also jack up the price? What a bloody pain in the ass.
Of course, this does help explain how small gaming websites (such as Penny Arcade in their first year or so) managed to play so many games. I could never understand how they could afford it.
I’m running the game under Wine on Linux. Is there sound to it?
Those whining about the incorrectly percieved “insult” to AU – you know I was mimicing the writing style of a guy known for dumping on the French and calling Americans “Cheesburger-sucking Yanks”.
Get a sense of perspective.
Chilango: You want me to… fact-check a pardoy of a satirist?
Oh yeah. I’ll get right on that.
Wow, Shamus. I love to read your comments section – they remind me of exactly why I don’t want a blog.
>41 Viktor:
>December 1st, 2007 at 1:56 am
in the vein of troubling facts about reviewers, are you
>going to comment on the Jeff Gerstmann situation?
I’ve been wondering about your perspective on that situation, too.
eh. It bothered me, and started to make the thing annoying instead of funny. Probably my personal pet peeve, but there it is. I mean, just for prespective, I can’t think of any inaccurate claims of fact ZP has made. He has, of course, made about a 1000 opinionated claims which we can (and I sometimes do) disagree with. But insofar as his work is funny, its because a) He performs the crucial satirical function of picking on strong, over-bloated egoes, instead of tiny little freeware releases (picking on the helpless makes one look like a bully, ergo, not funny) b)Making his reviews something than can be discussed and argued over instead of simply something one can say “No, you got this wildly wrong.”
Of course, all my comments are posited in the idea that you were trying to be *funny*. If you weren’t, then carry on, nothing to see here. :)
“Here (Perth, Western Australia), PC games all range from $80-$110 (where they fall in this range seems arbitrary, from all I can tell).”
Say what now? In NZ, PC game prices tend to be NZ$50-NZ$100, and we have weaker currency than you. How does that work? (And yes, I’m talking about new releases.)
(We also tend to have either free or flat-rate shipping anywhere in the country; possibly because it’s smaller.)
Chilango – A sense of humor is not necessary for survival, but it will certainly make your life and the lives of others much easier.
@Miral:
I have no idea. I didn’t even realise that they were overpriced until reading this. I’ve always paid that much for a new release PC game, so I’ve never had any reason to question it. It’s like I thought everybody could dislocate their thumbs until somebody made a big deal about me doing it.
Shamus:
I did not read your disclaimer in italics and parentheses, it just seemed super skimmable so I didn’t stop scrolling till I got to the article. That may be the root of people’s problems identifying it as a parody.
I thought it was just another blog post, and thought it was interestingly written. Had no idea you were copying someone’s style, even though I’ve watched all the Escapist videos. You should write like that more often.
For some unfathomable reason he put one of these in his own game. However, since he's savaged this gameplay mechanic to death, he's already thoroughly explored all the ways in which to describe how stupid it is. Thus it's impossible for anyone to criticize this aspect of his game without resorting to plagiarism. Well played, Croshaw.
This was hilarious.
I just felt like pointing out that I think the “God of War style Simon Says button matching sequence” and the boss battle at the end were put in to annoying people into asking game developers not to put those into games (boss battles are obviously alright in combat games, but in games such as this, you shouldn’t really have a boss), or just to show people that they are really annoying and unnessecary.
Well, actually, Yahtzee started making games BEFORE making any of the Zero Punctuation videos.
Damn you, after you told me to read that in Yahtzee’s voice I am now automatically reading everything in his voice. D:
I’m Aussie and I dont give a rats arse what you say about us. I’ll probably just laugh and return the insult with interest, as thats how most people do things here.
The only Aussies who would (get upset) are the uptight wowsers, you get them in every country.
In america they are the church lobby groups etc.
Damn, I’ve been hoping to right a review if Yahtzee ever decides to finish up Fun Space Game: The Game or whatever project he’ll think of next, but you seem to have come up with everything I wanted to say about Art of Theft. You even took the two EXACT arguments I was going to make (Yahtzee pre-empting everyone on criticizing QTE’s, and the security guards with Metal Gear Solid Syndrome).
Damn you, Shamus. Damn you for being so damn good at making me laugh.