The laziest professional video game review I've ever read

Anything from run & guns to modern RPGs, what else do you play?
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Sengoku Strider
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Re: The laziest professional video game review I've ever rea

Post by Sengoku Strider »

BareKnuckleRoo wrote:I feel like I'm having a stroke reading it.

No mention of throws or weapon combinations, no mention of the double jump attack or slides... this person was outright bad that the game, and attempted to compensate for it in the review with "humour". They also apparently didn't pay attention to the game and think Black's stage is the sixth level.

How did people get jobs as videogame reviewers if they were so fundamentally bad at them? Is there no quality assurance for this kind of thing? BIL posted this in the From thread and it blows my mind that someone who presumably has to be literate enough to write the reviews doesn't get their job qualifications questioned because of this.
Part of it is that like others mentioned, 90s & early 2000s British magazines were a giant snark competition; nobody cares about a mediocre album or game, but the reader might at least get a laugh out of the put-downs. Also I think most of the people writing these magazines were 19 year olds being paid in bagfulls of dodgy ZX Spectrum tapes.

But I initially thought the line in the title about the hospital might be serious, the guy seemed concussed. He says you get 5 lives. There are no lives in Gunstar Heroes, just a number representing your health. Even on easy.

He says the trope of collecting coloured gems is ripping off Dungeon Master. Like, of all the comparisons what??

He credits the kidnapped girl trope to Wonder Boy. Aside from that one being as old as human storytelling, he credited it to a game that was already drawing most of its inspiration from Super Mario Bros. Which took that setup from Donkey Kong. Which was just based on Popeye.

Also Double Dragon invented having a brother.

He says you choose between shooting in 4 directions or 8. No you don't.

"You'll only find yourself standing around shooting things" "The first four levels are almost identical"

In the first four levels:

One has you sliding down a pyramid
One has you driving a jet car on the ceiling
One opens with you chasing an airship
One is the Dice Palace

Like, what game was this guy playing?
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BIL
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I'LL FUCK U TIL U ROVE ME M8EY ;3 ;3 ;3

Post by BIL »

Unironically, 9/11 and the subsequent US/UK carnival of horrors did a lot to sap the wind of those matey sales. Similar phenomenon with middleschool upchuck ala Nine Inch Nails, who were now suddenly veddy veddy grown up, and wanted you to think about the petroleum that made this CD, which paid for the H, which Trent hoovered up and almost died thinking it was Charlie, maaan. Now "m8s" were getting their legs blown off in Basra, driving lightly-armoured jeeps in circles *cough* I mean "fighting terror," while random Brazilian sprinting for his train was getting his head exploded into dogfood by your m8s and mine, the Plainclothes Terror Squad; altogether dinting the cheeky cheery chappy aesfettic.

There's an interesting parallel with England, London in particular, being regarded as a safehaven for Jihadis-in-exile, in the matey-mid/late-90s, until the big banana went off in lower Manhattan. And suddenly Jimmy Bond and Johnny Rambo weren't best m8s with the valiant Mujahideen any more. 3; And Sony were attempting to trademark "Shock & Awe," oof, fucking hell m8! :shock:

Not coincidentally, the archly un-m8ey Nintendo had started regaining a badly N64-lost foothold around this time, with new Marios, Zeldas, and Metroids warmly-received in a way that'd have been dreadfully un-matey, under a decade earlier. Nostalgia for more innocent, less snark-poisoned times was the impression I had, back then, living between the US and the UK. Sega were now a publisher of boutique hardcore ala OverWorks/SmileBit/FromSoft, and Sony had yet to lose their aura of globe-spanning invincibility post-WipeOut and Tomb Raider, international hits native to our own Liverpool and Derby. And Microsoft was trying very, very hard with Halo, and some other less remembered things. And of course, DMA Design had blown the bloody doors off with GTA3, and would only go from strength to strength with VC and SA. All very tryhard, prestige, and overall - not very m8ey at all, m8s! 3; Now nobody gives one rat fuck about your stay in hospital; cool story, m8!

It seemed to retreat to the expressly-produced "Lad's Mags" full of pancaked-up slappers with their big fake tits out, most of which had their own dedicated VG pages for the lads just wanting a quick bash at GTA3 before hitting the sack at 4am. Some of those broads did quite well out of it, I hear, bless 'em. Especially Imogen Thomas, for turning ROVABLE GIGGSY into a nationwide figure of disgust. Image Another stiff nail in Cool Britannia, phwoaar.

Hers were quite nice, if I recall, as far as fake milkers go. Still, nahh m8. Allah weeps at such barbarism. Image

I didn't see it around much in the games mags I collected for the remainder of the decade. Granted, I might have simply outgrown the shittier stuff. There was that Straight Outta Blighty C&VG Xbox Ninja Gaiden howler. But then, they were dead that same year (2004).

Anyway, rubber it up m8s. Image Now you're hitting your mid-forties and beyond, the last thing you want is for the missus to find out you've gone halves on a bastard, and take half your "dosh!" :shock:
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Re: The laziest professional video game review I've ever rea

Post by Blinge »

honestly I feel an "eat the rich" classwar thing when I think of games journalists.
I hate the fact that people can get paid for this bilge.

(shmupsfarmers excluded of course)
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Re: The laziest professional video game review I've ever rea

Post by BIL »

Blinge wrote:honestly I feel an "eat the rich" classwar thing when I think of games journalists.
I hate the fact that people can get paid for this bilge.

(shmupsfarmers excluded of course)
Word. Middle-class AF m8.

I feel bad invoking the veddy English class system, as a mere visiting observer, but yo. It is what it is. Only some comfortably well-off twat underwritten by The Bank
Of Mum And Dad could get away with settling for that shit. I'm related to several! The lads were too busy in the trades, and the toffs didn't give one rat fuck for anything. Journalism as a whole = fallback for boomerspawn. VIDYA journalism? Avin a larf m888888

And fair play to the ones whose hearts were and are in it. I will always maintain - those fin-de-siecle EDGE reviews of DDP DOJ, Ikaruga, and Psyvariar 2, plus their boutique special issues on the FC, MD, SFC and PCE? And the Saturn and MVS? Legit. I cannot abide by frauds. I kill a fraud for fun! Image These dudes are ok. I will have no harm done to them! Image

Mr. Mega Gunstar and co, though? Die fucking screaming in a chip pan blaze m8. The really humiliating kind, where they went "omfg fire!" and rather than putting a lid on it, neatly starving the blaze of vital oxygen, instead threw a glass of water on it, turning a minor conflagration into a thermonuclear kitchen holocaust. BOOM! (don't throw water on a chip pan fire lads, it'll take your fookin face off m8 3;)

Neither use nor fucking ornament, as me ol granddad might've said whilst machinegunning a truckload of screaming unarmed krauts. Image
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Re: The laziest professional video game review I've ever rea

Post by Blinge »

https://www.vg247.com/armored-core-6-fr ... cool-again

comments seem to think this was a meme.. but judging by the other stuff i don't think so.

2 cool 4 school. :roll:

also.. Siobahn? my arse.
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Re: The laziest professional video game review I've ever rea

Post by Sengoku Strider »

These SEGA PRO guys, they're on another level. Getting four different guys to lie that they'd played the game in the same PROview takes teamwork and serious commitment to not doing anything. They didn't even use any math in summing up the PROscore at the end.
Spoiler
Image
There are 5 screenshots on this page. One is of the title screen, one is of the character creation screen, one is of the pause menu. The other two are of battles right out the starting gate.

He didn't even bother to create names for the characters.

He used up more space reviewing Dungeons & Dragons nerds than anything unique to the game. This is truly a gold medal performance.

EDIT: That PROtip!
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BIL
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Re: The laziest professional video game review I've ever rea

Post by BIL »

On the subject of Falsificare ala Anglo: you know the EGM Shen Long April Fool's? The one where the contest announcement was printed literally directly underneath the fictional cheat? (the balls on those pricks! clever COONTS!)

At least a couple UK magazines actually stole that wholesale from them, before the ruse was revealed. My favourite one actually ported it to the SNES version, which was then absolutely exploding up the charts over here, with the author cautioning that it'd be a brutal fight but, if you could manage it, then you, too, would enjoy a "MEGA SATISFYING ENDING"

I'm sure they were all at it, in fact I'm pretty sure at least one US rag did it too, but it's the inventing a fucking fictional ending that kills me. Straight from the playground where buddy's uncle at Nintendo was duking him protos of Mario XVIII to wash his car on the weekends, into the glossy paperstock of the paid bullshitter gigs.

The fuck satisfaction would you get from any ending involving Ryu, anyway? He's one boring square-ass dude, by design. The most satisfying thing he could do is take a steaming piss all over a beaten Sagat's face in front of a roaring crowd, causing the latter - a proud man just regaining his lost center - to undergo a total psychotic break and become NBA Freeman. Just imagine, grows his hair back and everything and starts just scratching motherfuckers. "But Ryu would never do that! That's awful! That's something Yamazaki would do in a Real Bout OVA!" Yes I know, that's what I'm saying. 3:

Oh well. My dream ending is Ryu and his old master shake hands and go their separate ways, then Ryu trips over that angry praying dude's broken statue and fucks his ACL up, retiring from all subsequent tournaments to be replaced by RYU JR, a child soldier Ken adopted from Somalia, whose Super Combo is the dreaded Just Shoot The Cunt. It looks like the Shun Goku Satsu, but it's just a silhouette of JR chucking a flashbang and magdumping the opponent before anyone realises what's happened. Flash forward to decades later, when an elderly Ryu finally realises in horror that what he assumed to be the legendary Ansatsuken no Somaliland was just a big joke at his expense, and says "NAWWWWWW" 3; 3; 3;
Last edited by BIL on Wed May 31, 2023 8:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The laziest professional video game review I've ever rea

Post by Rastan78 »

Blinge wrote:https://www.vg247.com/armored-core-6-fr ... cool-again

comments seem to think this was a meme.. but judging by the other stuff i don't think so.

2 cool 4 school. :roll:

also.. Siobahn? my arse.
Wow that could be the most desperate overreach at trying to seem cool I've ever seen. Like the commenters I'd rather live in a world where this was just a clever troll, however unlikely.
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Re: The laziest professional video game review I've ever rea

Post by BareKnuckleRoo »

Sengoku Strider wrote:These SEGA PRO guys, they're on another level. Getting four different guys to lie that they'd played the game in the same PROview takes teamwork and serious commitment to not doing anything.
To play devil's advocate, at least one seems to be familiar with the PC version and mostly takes issue at the controls, which suck on a gamepad, a complaint I've heard about the game elsewhere. Apparently it was possible to get a mouse to play the game, which made it far better, and the music includes Yuzo Koshiro of Streets of Rage fame, so the OST is a pretty rad. It seems the reviewers are taking more issue at the fact that it's inferior to the PC based versions, which might not be that unfair (I don't know, I haven't played it).

Honestly I've never been fond of this style of dungeon crawler where you have to micromanage a multi-limbed octopus of party members in real-time. I prefer dungeon crawlers with turn based combat over this.

The SNES version actually gets the same complaints: https://thekingofgrabs.com/2023/01/02/e ... -nintendo/

"As great as the original Eye of the Beholder is, conversions like this arguably demonstrate that it should never have been ported to consoles in the first place. That said: if the developers had allowed foot movement with a gamepad in port one and mouse movement in port two, it might have been a solution to the control issues. But that isn’t supported, so we’ll never know. If you want to play Eye of the Beholder, go for either the PC or Amiga originals instead. You’ll find them more enjoyable and less frustrating."
There are 5 screenshots on this page. One is of the title screen, one is of the character creation screen, one is of the pause menu. The other two are of battles right out the starting gate.

He didn't even bother to create names for the characters.
This is pretty unfortunate though. You'd at least put in some degree of effort if you're getting paid to publish a review even if it's not necessarily a game you're enthusiastic about. I'm also confused by the # of players being 1-4 given the game box clearly indicates that it's a single player game.
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Re: The laziest professional video game review I've ever rea

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Blinge wrote:honestly I feel an "eat the rich" classwar thing when I think of games journalists.
That's really funny given how poorly paid a job reviewing games is. Very few people on the planet can make an actual living from doing that, even fewer if you go back to before YouTube exploded.
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Post by Sima Tuna »

At least they make up for their low pay by doing as shit a job as possible.
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Post by BryanM »

It kind of reminds me of watching Mike Stoklasa's "asshole" persona, flipping back and forth between their real selves.

Carl Diggler style complaining about his divorce, etc.
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Wow this thread had a lot of action. Those crappy shmup speed run reviews are comedy. Going to have to read more later but
BryanM wrote: It's very much a "everyone who drives slower than me is a nuisance, everyone who drives faster than me is a maniac" thingy.

There's nothing of less value than someone trying to put a number on entertainment. Freakin' entertainment, like it was some objective feat of engineering like a car engine or something. "How's this sunset?" "2/10, no fireworks." "How's petting this duck?" "7/10, it keeps biting me for some reason." "How's this soup?" "4/10. Too much water."

The 10+ point dipshits do irritate the fuck out of me on an extra level, too. Way to have numbers that never get used and don't mean anything. Damn icycalm for making it impossible for me to ignore this. It's another of those "the entire world is insane" kind of things.

The only value of rando opinions is to get the "vibe" of what a certain community likes. Like take MAL reviews. There'll be like this show literally called "Step On Me While Making A Disgusted Face" or whatever. And the MAL score will be like a 4.2/10 or whatever. BUT. On an objective engineering level, the show itself is actually 100% perfect. It provides exactly what the title promises: not one thing less, and not one thing more. An absolute masterpiece. As clear a 10 out of 10 as anything in this world could possibly be.

Don't like it? Watch something else you shitweasel! You don't watch Fist of the North Star if you don't want to see some exploding heads! Or Time of Eve if you don't want to see people drinking coffee with robots, talking about their feelings!

So TLDR: entertainment isn't like an engineering checklist of requirements or a grade like in school. It's a matter of alignment. The time spent dicking around in anonymous rando reviews checking to see if the reviewer actually aligns with yourself could have been better spent making up your own damn mind with your own damn eyes and thoughts.
Based Bryan. Just play/watch what you like/want.

Everything on MAL is a 7 as well. I mostly try to ignore it but the number just sits there and stares at you while you use it to look up general information. Anidb tends to be better. The number is small, and makes so little sense it's easier to not care.
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Re: The laziest professional video game review I've ever rea

Post by BIL »

Sumez wrote:
Blinge wrote:honestly I feel an "eat the rich" classwar thing when I think of games journalists.
That's really funny given how poorly paid a job reviewing games is. Very few people on the planet can make an actual living from doing that, even fewer if you go back to before YouTube exploded.
That's his point. :wink: There's a reason a lot of these "journalists" sound suspiciously like disinterested tossers on a lark.
Sima Tuna wrote:At least they make up for their low pay by doing as shit a job as possible.
:lol:
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Steamflogger Boss wrote:Everything on MAL is a 7 as well. I mostly try to ignore it but the number just sits there and stares at you while you use it to look up general information.
Steins;Gate always stays at 9! It appeals to internet nerds burnt out on the scene, I guess. It helps that it isn't especially sexual or violent either: those things automatically sloughs off people as they're pretty exclusionary. As is humor - people's senses of humor are all over the place. Dedicated comedies never come close to the Star Wars special FX-fests.

A protip for those haunted by numbers: uBlock Origin and other plug-ins can block such nonsense. It's made using reddit actually almost possible, without having these numbers screaming at me, telling me how I should feel about things and myself. ffs, a number shouldn't have that kind of power over people, and that social engineering website stuff's straight up evil.

Do you remember the old days, when there'd be a dance or a song and it was just that, and you didn't have a panel of three authority figures, including the mandatory angry british guy, to tell you what to think of it?
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Air Master Burst wrote:Maybe GunValkyrie? That control scheme is a doozy to wrap your mind around at first, but handles like a dream once you get it down (at least until your sticks break from excessive clicking). There were some reviewers who actually took the time to learn it and absolutely loved it. Most reviewers never really figured out the controls and either knocked the score for it or dismissed it outright.

Come to think of it, that basically describes P.N. 03, too.
Both these games kicked ass.
BryanM wrote: It did reinforce a kind of culture. Such as when they'd have those filler articles about games we'd never get. "The Japanese are weird, dudes. Instead of murder simulators where you explode nazi demons all day, they have these creepy sicko games! And in some of them... you talk to girls! Ew!"

The shoot'em up was especially suited to a limited timespan. Everything has its moment in the sun. Westerns. MMO's.

Can you even conceptually think of what a pure shm'up with a $100 million budget would even look like? As pure game as a game can be, I just don't think they're built to scale like that.
Yeah there really isn't a need for a massive budget shmup. It's fine as a lower budget genre.

I've actually read a fair number of those old gaming magazines over the last year or so. It's a fascinating look back in time. By the time I really got into gaming the N64 was a nice budget option so that's what we bought. By the time I delved deeper, Japanese genres were a bit more accepted. Then of course we had that bounce back period of "Japanese games r da suck" in the PS360 era. That was very weird.

But anyway
Air Master Burst wrote:
BareKnuckleRoo wrote: How did people get jobs as videogame reviewers if they were so fundamentally bad at them? Is there no quality assurance for this kind of thing?
Probably nepotism, and also it was 1993 and basically nobody over the age of like 15 gave a shit about non-sports console gaming.
Something like that. Outside of featured reviews especially, these things had to be down and dirty and typically crammed multiple on a page so those short ones tended to be more surface level.
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BryanM wrote:In retrospect, the only magazines I really liked as a kid were Nintendo Power, Game Players, and Next Generation. Nintendo Power was a clean compact ad for upcoming games, very few opinions and more about showing off a game's content, and even had an RPG corner when I was really into them. Game Players had this humor schtick that made it fun to read - they had their own made up lore. Where each writer was kind of playing a character, with their own feuds and bugbears. And Next Generation was more into the technical aspect of actually making games.

There really was quite a bit of humility in Game Players I found endearing. It's a pity EGM with its cramp paragraphs by four different people, with a giant fuck off number pasted over it, so it was impossible to read the useless text, was far more successful.
I need to read more Nintendo Power still. Gamepro mostly sucked. Never heard of Game Players.
BryanM wrote:
Steamflogger Boss wrote:Everything on MAL is a 7 as well. I mostly try to ignore it but the number just sits there and stares at you while you use it to look up general information.
Steins;Gate always stays at 9! It appeals to internet nerds burnt out on the scene, I guess. It helps that it isn't especially sexual or violent either: those things automatically sloughs off people as they're pretty exclusionary. As is humor - people's senses of humor are all over the place. Dedicated comedies never come close to the Star Wars special FX-fests.

A protip for those haunted by numbers: uBlock Origin and other plug-ins can block such nonsense. It's made using reddit actually almost possible, without having these numbers screaming at me, telling me how I should feel about things and myself. ffs, a number shouldn't have that kind of power over people, and that social engineering website stuff's straight up evil.

Do you remember the old days, when there'd be a dance or a song and it was just that, and you didn't have a panel of three authority figures, including the mandatory angry british guy, to tell you what to think of it?
Yeah there are always exceptions. Stuff mostly settles around 6-8 I'd say. I actually didn't care all that much for SG. It was OKAY. Lately I've been just flipping my brain off and have been watching Ultimate Muscle and Princess Nine.

The element blocker thing is awesome. I use that all the time.
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11/10 It's OK. - IGN
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Re: The laziest professional video game review I've ever rea

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BareKnuckleRoo wrote:To play devil's advocate, at least one seems to be familiar with the PC version and mostly takes issue at the controls, which suck on a gamepad, a complaint I've heard about the game elsewhere. Apparently it was possible to get a mouse to play the game, which made it far better, and the music includes Yuzo Koshiro of Streets of Rage fame, so the OST is a pretty rad. It seems the reviewers are taking more issue at the fact that it's inferior to the PC based versions, which might not be that unfair (I don't know, I haven't played it).

Honestly I've never been fond of this style of dungeon crawler where you have to micromanage a multi-limbed octopus of party members in real-time. I prefer dungeon crawlers with turn based combat over this.

The SNES version actually gets the same complaints: https://thekingofgrabs.com/2023/01/02/e ... -nintendo/

"As great as the original Eye of the Beholder is, conversions like this arguably demonstrate that it should never have been ported to consoles in the first place. That said: if the developers had allowed foot movement with a gamepad in port one and mouse movement in port two, it might have been a solution to the control issues. But that isn’t supported, so we’ll never know. If you want to play Eye of the Beholder, go for either the PC or Amiga originals instead. You’ll find them more enjoyable and less frustrating."
Nah, I think they're just straight up lying about having played it for more than 5 minutes. That 18% is a massive outlier for the Sega CD port:

Image

And that's even with the Japanese mags that didn't give anything above a 7 (of the 270 MD games Hippon Super reviewed in its lifespan, only 16 of them scored 8 or higher).

I'd bet the disc came in for review near to closing the issue, they threw it at this reviewer who, feeling well chuffed at having just had his first legal pint the weekend before, was like "I dunno, lol nerds?" and then the editor just wrote in three opinions echoing his non-take. The key to spotting a made-up review is how much of their allotted word count they burn on things that aren't core to the game, on elements that show up in the first 10 minutes, and how much time they spend complaining about what the game isn't, rather than what it is, to try & hide the fact. Break down what he wrote:

Paragraph 1: This game is 2 years old, and is just a straight port! (It isn't, that wouldn't even be bad anyway, but he didn't check)

Paragraph 2: Vague explanation of the game's premise as discernible from the back of the box, complains about dpad controls he learned of 2 minutes in.

Paragraph 3: Brief mention of the stats listed in the character creator. He doesn't really know what the stats do, or if they get used, still complains they don't.

Paragraph 4: Complains that this isn't a freeform game that lets you do anything, something we don't even have now. Is still not saying much about what the game is, or how it compares to the rest of its genre (which the writer has already conveniently dismissed anyway).

Paragraph 5: "If you discount the voice & music I think they added, they added nothing, and that's inexcusable."

As a veteran of multiple childhood book reports for which I did not read the book, game recognizes game.
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Re: The laziest professional video game review I've ever rea

Post by BareKnuckleRoo »

Sengoku Strider wrote:Nah, I think they're just straight up lying about having played it for more than 5 minutes. That 18% is a massive outlier for the Sega CD port:
Fair enough! I'm certainly not that familiar with it to know how well the ports were regarded. How the hell do their scores work, anyway? Even if they're weighting some categories like gameplay higher than others, there's no way their score somehow averages down that low, it's absurd.
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Re: The laziest professional video game review I've ever rea

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Sengoku Strider wrote:feeling well chuffed at having just had his first legal pint the weekend before
:lol:

Spot-on m8, MASSIVE Image
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Re: The laziest professional video game review I've ever rea

Post by Steven »

It's really interesting to look at review scores for Bubsy and Bubsy II. Many reviewers seemed to really like both of them at the time. I'm not really sure why anyone liked Bubsy II, but I do remember renting the Genesis versions both of them and finishing at least one of them, which I am pretty sure was II, and was disappointed at how short it was. I don't remember if I thought either was bad at the time, but I was also extremely young then, so who knows.
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Ah, I just watched a video on how hard they were pushing Bubsy. I remember at the time the marketing department was everywhere, they desperately wanted to force this guy into being the next Mario or Sonic. (I think others like Spyro were much more organic about that.) "Desperation" is a perfect way to describe it; it was getting off-putting how pushy they were being.

Maybe the company flattered the reviewers with personal attention, made them feel like "part of the team"... but the ad copy ALWAYS gets you a better review and preferential treatment. The bobcat funded entire years worth of budgets for these magazines. He was going to be getting a "this game is great" no matter what.

If it had failed, the company would have gone under. But it worked out okay.

Then Bubsy 3d came out and well. Hailed as an visionary artistic work, I imagine most kids were baffled why they were visiting a museum in the first level.
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Re: The laziest professional video game review I've ever rea

Post by BareKnuckleRoo »

BryanM wrote:"Desperation" is a perfect way to describe it; it was getting off-putting how pushy they were being.
I think they were also underestimating how much kids could smell that desperation. Bubsy was trying very hard to be hip, and edgy (much like the Crash Bandicoot and Gex commercials I seem to remember). The thing is, I don't think kids really thought Mario or Sonic were cool. They were fun, but not necessarily cool as in you'd want to talk about them or emulate their behavior sort of thing.

Bubsy was trying way to hard to compete with something that didn't even exist. Mario and Sonic were, primarily, beloved because the games were fun, and not so much because of the characters themselves. The same goes for other popular series like Zelda, Mega Man, etc.
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BrianC
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Re: The laziest professional video game review I've ever rea

Post by BrianC »

BryanM wrote: Then Bubsy 3d came out and well. Hailed as an visionary artistic work, I imagine most kids were baffled why they were visiting a museum in the first level.
That's a parody game, not the actual Bubsy 3D. The actual game doesn't start in a museum.

Accolade definitely went overboard with promoting Bubsy. Even made a cartoon pilot. They originally hired Rob Paulsen from the popular TMNT cartoon to do the voice. Bubsy 3D has a different voice actor and manages to make the character more annoying. They also had that odd promotion for Nerf in Bubsy II, which was ported to Gameboy for some reason.

While I liked the Crash Bandicoot games, I wasn't a fan of the Crash character. However, I thought Neo Cortex was awesome, mainly due to Clancy Brown's voice (though he didn't voice him in the first PS1 game).
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Re: The laziest professional video game review I've ever rea

Post by Steven »

BareKnuckleRoo wrote:
BryanM wrote:"Desperation" is a perfect way to describe it; it was getting off-putting how pushy they were being.
I think they were also underestimating how much kids could smell that desperation. Bubsy was trying very hard to be hip, and edgy (much like the Crash Bandicoot and Gex commercials I seem to remember). The thing is, I don't think kids really thought Mario or Sonic were cool. They were fun, but not necessarily cool as in you'd want to talk about them or emulate their behavior sort of thing.

Bubsy was trying way to hard to compete with something that didn't even exist. Mario and Sonic were, primarily, beloved because the games were fun, and not so much because of the characters themselves. The same goes for other popular series like Zelda, Mega Man, etc.
Bubsy was trying way too hard to be cool. Sonic was kind of cool, at least in Japan. In the USA a lot of his art made him look like he was trying a little bit too hard to be cool, but it still wasn't too much, I think. Terry Bogard always was and still is cool and he didn't have to try at all. Terry is just fucking cool. Bubsy was trying way too hard and ended up being kind of annoying and stuff. Better than Awesome Possum, but that doesn't really say much.

Crash, though... oh man, the Japanese Crash commercials got fucking weird and it was awesome: https://youtu.be/RS3rpyTqoUs

The best part is that for Crash 4 they brought back the weirdness and the Crash Bandicoot dance and everything it's just as good as it was then: https://youtu.be/yryizIsnE2E
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Re: The laziest professional video game review I've ever rea

Post by Air Master Burst »

Steven wrote:Bubsy was trying way too hard to be cool. Sonic was kind of cool, at least in Japan. In the USA a lot of his art made him look like he was trying a little bit too hard to be cool, but it still wasn't too much, I think.
Sonic was just about the dopest thing on the planet if you were an american grade-schooler in 1993. Or really anyone else, as evidenced by the following historical document:

Image

Notice Pac is in the zone while bitch-ass Suge has the "WHY I ALWAYS GOTTA BE TAILS?" look on his face..
King's Field IV is the best Souls game.
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Re: The laziest professional video game review I've ever rea

Post by BIL »

And even Gary Busey is sporting a proxy technoboner! :shock:
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Re: The laziest professional video game review I've ever rea

Post by BareKnuckleRoo »

Because I've really gotten into Omega Fighter recently, I was poking around the Wikipedia page and saw it had some reviews listed!

INSTANT REGRET x10

Your Sinclair Magazine
Your Sinclair magazine wrote:Well, it's cheap (20p a shot) which is just about all I can say for it. Ho hum. Basically, what we've got here is Galaxians. Updated, with a pretty Earth background graphic, but Galaxians nonetheless. And that's it. What, you want more? Well, okay, it's a vertically scrolling shoot-'em-up with some pretty simply designed sprites coming down the screen at you in waves, and your equally simple spaceship moving up the screen towards them. You shoot at them and they, um, shoot at you. Other levels take you inside giant alien ships and the like, but it's all a bit samey (even the weapon power-ups you get just deliver more of the same) and not very interesting. Your ship does a neat Catherine wheel-shaped explosion when it dies though.

...does anyone really want to see another lacklustre variation on this theme? I think we've all moved on a bit, don't you?
Image

I mean, I'm not going to argue UPL had the best spritework out there in 1989 by any means, and the music and SFX certainly aren't like the best fidelity necessarily, but they're quite serviceable and the ship diagram, the gameover screen, and the animation of ship parts shearing off as you destroy them are pretty enjoyable. More importantly, the gameplay in Omega Fighter is absolutely top notch, and the close range kill score system is a lot of fun.

There's also this one by Computer + Video Games Magazine which is quite positive (79%), but the details are off (claiming that a star station's been invaded and you're supposed to rescue it as opposed to fighting off a giant enemy ship / fleet of ships). It also claims it offers much that hasn't been seen before, which sadly ignores the fact that few if any games at this time had robust scoring systems or special abilities like time slowdown. Ah well, shmups were always a niche genre I guess...

There was also a very short and sweet review in another magazine that was mostly positive that did actually mention the autofire but apparently arcade reviewers couldn't fully appreciate this enough to mention it. ;w;
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Re: The laziest professional video game review I've ever rea

Post by BIL »

^ Always brightens my day, that angry little dude. :cool: I keep this fellow as my work PC wallpaper for the same reason.

Super Helpful! :3
Spoiler
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That Omega Fighter non-critique, and the Gunstar one preceding it, got me thinking about STGs and mainstream acclaim (as you guys discussed recently ITT); specifically, why it's probably never gonna happen. At least not with any STG our community would regard as praiseworthy.

Crowds tend towards the shock of the "new." In electronic gaming, STGs are very nearly as ancient as they come. They too were new at one point, of course! And accordingly lauded, and over-imitated.

I put "new" in some very contemptuous apostrophes because really, when John Q. Journo and his reader Matt J. Mainstream are jizzing/shitting themselves in exalted wonder/frustration at FPV brownman shredder Call of Dillhole XVIII: Uncle Sam's Dillhole Burns For War Once Again, or the rolling open world equine fantasia of Dark Poles On A Horse MCLMVII: Mr. Hands Return From Grave, or even the riveting long, blathering walks of Ambiguously Non-White RugMunchers Plus Alpha: Buy This Game Or You're Literally Hitler - they're ultimately doing very little "new" at all. Still sitting on their doughy asses, gawking at a flat display, fiddling away at a controller like it's 1959.

Even if they're enjoying a particularly KINEMATIC view of screaming Generic Snackbar #343256's tonsils, as they mash [X] to make their Buff & Cool US Marine crank the generator hooked up to his mischievous brown ballbag. Or undertaking a movingly vast, Desert Bus-calibre odyssey to the fabled Shrine Of Wish I Hadn't Done That to forge Mr. Hands' new o-ring. Or negotiating sophisticated moral quandaries unheard of in the realm of interactive entertainment, like Press A To Lez On Shaniqua (Race Fetishist ending) or B To Lez On Chiquita (Black Erasure ending) !

But the shameful atavistic reality is juuust about obscured behind Snackbar corpses whose modeling required PTS counseling, and horse armour dildos made of more polygons than the entire contents of fifty prior-gen AAA titles put together, to say nothing of t0tes modern & ~SoCiAlLy InSiGhTfUr THEMEZ~

STGs aren't ashamed of the ancient past. To an extent, they embrace and extol it. On some level, all the most revered STGs resemble G-G-G-"Galaxians," the despised name our possibly illiterate friend relentlessly fists himself with, in the above non-review.

And that's just not shocking or new at all. Tight, concise, tailored to its medium - pffft! Where's the

[IN-APP ADVERTISEMENT Press X To Order More Dew, Bruh!]

innovation, maaan?

As Tuna recently mentioned in the FromSoft thread... it's reached the point where Miyazaki and co merely - albeit artfully - smuggling in the most ancient principles of oldschool action gaming - You're gonna die, a lot, before you can start doing justice to your badass avatar - is treated as some Shocking and New enigma to be solemnly puzzled out, you know, for the good of the medium. Image From's temerity even became the basis of a wildly successful, now-iconic ad campaign! :shock: These casuals' flabby backsides had become that numbed to the most minor stimulus. Image

All this referring to the world of AAA big budget Doritos n' Dew goonery, of course. There'll always be the occasional throwback darling from the indie/doujin/bedroom etc scenes, especially as game creation continues to become more accessible for filthy plebes, not just the most sainted of corporate ghouls.

I'd like to think it's a recoil reaction. Those ancient principles enduring for good reason, and the sheer tonnage of fluff around aforesaid MAINSTREAM HITZ being so debilitating.
BareKnuckleRoo wrote:I mean, I'm not going to argue UPL had the best spritework out there in 1989 by any means, and the music and SFX certainly aren't like the best fidelity necessarily
Apropos this post, I really dig the "Turbocharged 8bit" aesthetic both Omega Fighter and Ninja-Kun II have going on. While Atomic Robo-Kid and Mutant Night were clearly embracing contemporary hardware with their much bigger, chunkier sprites, OF and NK2 look and play like early 80s games liberated from flicker, slowdown, and ROM limits via that same raw power. All the stuff that'd cause choking slowdown and blinding flicker now runs without a hitch, with tons of fine-brush detailing and parallax layers on top.

Aww FUUUUUUUCK :shock: Oh nm nice landing :3
Spoiler
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^ Not only does LIGHTNING BOY have a cute taiko-drumming telegraph for his attack... you'll never eat an invisible bolt when you encounter ten of him on the same line! No excuses. Image

Some goober journo daydreaming of the FMV CYOAs that would shortly, briefly enjoy the limelight won't be impressed, but needless to say, fuck them. :cool:
Last edited by BIL on Sun Jun 04, 2023 7:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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