Yahtzee Deconstructs the E3 Trailer Park

With all the E3 wrap-up and deconstruction flying around Yahtzee has once again done a stellar job of summarizing and unmasking the standard bullshit in his own Zero Punctuation-style review of the E3 "trailer park". Labeling this year as "sequel boulevard" and questioning the lack of any meaningful amount of gameplay footage, this year was almost a universal disappointment. There are rumblings of some improvements next year, perhaps returning things to some small measure of their previous glory, but only time will tell.

More humorous is...

[Bruiser80]

Escapist Magazine's parody of a Yahtzee fan :-)

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/de-rez/152-Yahtzees-Biggest-Fan [escapistmagazine.com]

Re:

[cmonkey_1973]

Jesus, the De-Rez guys are so eye-piercingly bad at comic timing. First two minutes are watching someone watching Yahtzee's videos and then putting a hat on. There. 2 minutes of your life saved.

In fact, the rest is a sequence of mistimed and lukewarm overreaction gags. Now go watch something good instead. Enrich your life. You're free!

In general, an amusing fellow

[metamechanical]

You can find the rest of his reviews here [escapistmagazine.com].

I would specifically recommend Smash Bros. Brawl. Hilarious.

Funny, but even more entertaining is....

[Channard]

... the the follow-up video [escapistmagazine.com] where he replies to critics of the Super Smash Brothers review.

Whoa

[Huntr]

Not knowing who Yahtzee is and only knowing the dice game by the same name made this article title really, really weird.

Re:Whoa

[netsavior]

Not knowing who Yahtzee is

Welcome to the internet!

Laugh..

[elemnt14]

..for all of his reviews are extremely entertaining, if not informitave. He is unbiased in most of his comments, taking the good with bad in most respects.

Unbiased?

[VickiM]

Well...maybe if you hate RPGs and would pimp out your mom for a FPS with eyecandy and a plot.

Despite us having very different interests in games, I still enjoy his reviews. They're funny and frank, even if I disagree on which are the best genres.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

He doesn't hate RPGs. He just hates games with mindless repetitive games consisting of mashing the "Fight" button over and over again where your actions make absolutely no difference to the outcome of the game.

Just because most RPGs happen to match that doesn't mean he hates them. He actually likes a few RPGs that don't follow the same tired pattern of "mash Fight during the battles and watch cutscenes over which you have no influence."

Re:

[MBraynard]

Then what was Oblivion?

Re:

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

What's the last FPS with a good plot you can think of?

And I mean a GOOD plot, not "zomg alien demons on mars." Or "kill Koreans for 30 minutes followed by insane alien bullcrap."

Re:

[pdusen]

Ok, now try one with replay value.

Re:

[Khuffie]

BioShock?

Re:

[pdusen]

Buzz! I'm sorry, wrong answer.

Re:

[Joe Jay Bee]

Half-Life.

Yes, I know, "aliens", but fuck, I don't care.

Re:

[niteice]

Portal.

Come to think of it, with Half-Life already being mentioned in this thread, Valve really does have a monopoly on GOOD game design.

Re:

[antime]

I just wish I could turn that new "theme music" into a stick and shove it up his ass.

Re:

[neokushan]

No, because that would stab the English language in the face.

Hilarity and advertising collide..

[Channard]

.. or at least they did a couple of weeks ago, when Yahtzee did a none too flattering review of Age of Conan. All the while, there was Gamespot style background on the site, promoting.... Age of Conan! Still, he's not been sacked yet, so it looks like folks at The Escapist are a notch above the scumfucks at Gamespot.

Re:

[YukonTech]

He brings more traffic to their site than all their other resources combined. Of course they won't fire him.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

That, and he didn't attach a number to his criticism. Companies are naturally more afraid of numbers than words.

Re:

[Xtravar]

It'll happen when he ports his Art of Theft [escapistmagazine.com] game to Facebook and makes money off of it!

I manually edited the save files because it was too hard for me. :(

Re:

[jandrese]

Well, he already dropped the fair use openings and closings, so it may be only a matter of time.

Re:

[Uncle Ira]

How were those fair use? It's not as if he was making copies of his own CDs to listen to in his car, he was using copyrighted recordings for commercial puroposes.

As much as I can't stand the new theme music, I do respect him for using original content instead of recycling someone else's work.

E3 is superfluous

[christ, jesus H]

E3 is simply no longer necessary. The video game (ops sorry the electronic entertainment) industry is mainly an industry of marketing. That is where most of the money goes, that's were most of the focus goes (anyone who actually works in this industry knows that to be true). It's no secret that if you spend it on marketing, you will make it in sales, to a very large degree regardless of the quality your product reflects (it's a model copied from the Movie industry). To that end an entire sub-industry has em

Re:

[christ, jesus H]

Yeah I know, I just dont see whats that interesting about another jaded "last angry man" blogger (it makes me sleepy). The web has been chock full o' em' for better then a decade now? The slow death of E3 however, thats something interesting to talk about so I took a chance . . .

Am I the only one

[k_187]

That actually liked this E3? I don't care about the pomp and circumstance. I want to know what's coming out and maybe see a video and/or screenshot or two. I think the bigger problem is that there wasn't much worth showing this year.

Re:

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

Can you name a game you weren't excited about before E3 that you ARE excited about now?

The games I've got pre-ordered were announced a while back, and there hasn't really been any step-up in information being released about them for E3.

Re:

[k_187]

Is that E3's fault or rather the fact that there wasn't anything to show? Saying the format is broken doesn't mean much if there was nothing to show in the first place.

Re:

[Uncle Ira]

It's a result of E3 being scheduled two months later in the year- mid July is too late to debut a preview command for a holiday release, so there's no point in waiting for E3 to announce your product anymore. Announcements trickled out on their own in the months prior to E3 instead.

So it is E3's fault for having their conference in July this year.

Re:

[notrandomly]

So the problem was with the timing rather than the format?

Re:

[Knara]

E3 this year was the equivalent to hitting "Reload" on Kotaku every 15 minutes, at any other time of the year.

The whole point of E3 was the spectacle. Remove that, and there's no point.

What about...

[ch0ad]

LittleBigPlanet and Mirrors Edge? Seems he has conveniently brushed over these non sequential titles.

Also, he complains that the games industry is too corporate, but is the film/tv industry any different? You always have to wade through the sea of commercial crap to reach the idyllic island of media that is actually worth watching/playing/whatever.

Re:

[deek]

Well, to be fair, he does mention Mirror's Edge. It's there, right at the end, in the rolling credits. He says Mirror's Edge looks pretty sweet.

But you're right, no mention of LBP. I think we can safely assume that no news means good news. So far, I like everything I've heard about it. I'll be a first day buyer.