In the latest Zero Punctuation review, Yahtzee mentions that a certain segment of his viewers seem very curious about what games he does like. This is a very predictable demand from any crowd of inflamed fanboys. The defining aspect of a fanboy is that he is emotionally attached to a game in such a way that lambasting the game is taken as a personal insult. When you stomp on the object of their affection their first reaction is going to be to try to do the same in return. This completely misses the entire point of being a critic, and indeed of having an opinion at all.
This is why, despite the normal friendly and jovial tone of this site, I tend to treat fanboys like vermin who must be exterminated. They can have no positive impact on a discussion. It doesn’t matter if they agree or disagree, because they aren’t having the same conversation everyone else is. If you set them off it’ll be profanity and angst.
But in a clever bit of fanboy-baiting, Yahtzee actually showed a list of some of his favorite games during the review:
At the end he promised that anyone who figures it out will win his “utter disgust”. All the same, we can’t let the threat of of disinterested loathing deter us from an amusing little puzzle. The moment I saw the obscured list I felt my puzzle drive kick in. I don’t care about the list in the sense that I care if Yahtzee likes the “right” games, but he’s presented us with a puzzle and (I’ll bet) just enough clues to solve it.
This is an interesting sort of puzzle because it’s a mix of what you know about the critic with your knowledge of videogame titles and box covers. If this was just a list of 5 random games it wouldn’t be very compelling. If there was no image and the problem was just “guess my top 5 games” it likewise wouldn’t be much fun. But here we have both clues and motivation.
My own attempt below the fold:
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Top 5 Games:
A Game”
Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.
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