Yahtzee Croshaw (Zero Punctuation, Fully Ramblomatic)

So Blair Witch is a franchise now? Dream big, guys.

Gears 5.

Top 5 Bland list is getting a lot of really strong contenders this year:

It feels like the momentum the Gears of War and Halo series gave the Xbox has kinda fizzled out. Don't hear about them nearly as much as I once used to.

Gears 5, War 6, Liverpool nil.

Boring people blandly doing bland things until we all die of boredom. Glad I never started playing this franchise! (Lack of an Xbox notwithstanding.)

I played through the first one. It was an okay timesink during a point in my life when I could waste time.

I like the idea of chainsaw bayonets. Though they were way cooler than they were effective in gameplay.

No other opinions on the series at all.

Halo & Gears were the Killer Apps of the original Xbox & 360 that alone effectively sustained both of the consoles life-cycles.

The problem is that Microsoft hasn’t managed to create a Next-Gen successor for the Xbox One, instead choosing to rely on franchises that are effectively getting more old & tired with each installment.

Both Halo & Gears were never meant to continue past 3, their grand finale.

Edited by slimcoder on Oct 2nd 2019 at 11:31:40 AM

Well there's the upcoming Halo Infinite.

...yeah.

And I can’t think of any other upcoming Triple-A Xbox only game besides of course the next Halo.

Point proven sadly enough.

Edited by slimcoder on Oct 2nd 2019 at 11:42:57 AM

x3 Something that I, personally, never understood, 'cause these things were already boring even back then.

I've tried playing them never got past a couple of hours in each because I always ended up falling asleep.

Gotta admit the soundtrack is nice, though.

Edited by HailMuffins on Oct 2nd 2019 at 3:45:13 PM

They were new, people liked them, it was the start of the multiplayer era, like what can I say? You thought they were boring, alright over millions of people think the opposite. They were both trend setters of their era.

I actually have fond memories of Gears 3, starting it on the 3rd installment cause I got a free copy while buying a 360 Gears skinned console.

Pretty emotional too though of course it was intended to be the grand finale so it had to have some finality to it.

Edited by slimcoder on Oct 2nd 2019 at 11:54:45 AM

To each their own, I suppose, though I'll hold to my belief that both franchises 'caused more damage to their respective genre than they ever helped.

I mean, says a lot that a lot of modern FP Ses are well-received by shedding away almost everything Halo introduced. The new Doom is a good exemple, as is Overwatch.

Well it is better to try something new than to keep copying others.

Halo & Gears are fine by themselves, when the industry tried copying them is when the problems started.

I actually have a newfound respect for Halo franchise despite some ups and downs. I do dislike it set trends or inspired stuff in FPS games. Like... sigh Regenerating Health.

I hate that. So. Very. Much. First game did have that Static Health Regenerating Shields which I'm more ok with.

So yeah apart from things many FPS developers tried to ape from, and Call Of Duty as well, it's fine. I enjoyed the first one as a kid on PC (I never owned an Xbox).

Edited by Dhiruxide on Oct 2nd 2019 at 9:08:17 PM

Cover-based TPS have fallen out of favor somewhat, but they were pretty big for a while. Hell, I sank hundreds of hours into the Mass Effect 3 multiplayer and the Uncharted series continues being one of Playstation's biggest faces. It's just that those had more to set them apart than just "hug chest-high wall, shoot bad guys, repeat".

Halo had several things going for it when it was new, none of them are particularly impressive today, but back then they were groundbreaking.

Chasing trends rarely, if ever, results in anything good, so that's not terribly surprising. That being said, these games probably keep a lot more of Halo's influence than you realize. Creative Affinity worked on both Doom (2016) and Halo, for instance.

It's one thing to chase trends, it's quite another to ignore good ideas just for the sake of "doing something different". That's how you wind up with Anthem.

Like, every 3D, third-person game that uses lock-on targeting can thank Ocarina of Time. That doesn't suddenly become untrue just because that game isn't super impressive by today's standards.

Edited by Primis on Oct 2nd 2019 at 12:22:26 PM

Creative Affinity only worked on Doom '16's multiplayer (I had to correct that, sorry). id handled the singleplayer but the Halo influence point still stands, you instantly chuck grenades just like in Halo for example.

Which Terminator: Future Shock and Skynet did first in 1995 and 1996.

I like to pretend they (Creative Affinity) don't exist and applaud id's decision to forgo traditional deathmatch mode for Battlemode in DOOM Eternal.

There's nothing inherently wrong with third-person, cover-based shooting as a core game mechanic. You just need something else besides endless rooms full of bad guys to murder.

Like a good story, or characters I give two shits about.

To pick a totally random example, the FPS mechanics in Half-Life and Half-Life 2 are impressive, but they aren't so mind-bogglingly amazing that I'd sell the games on that alone. Well, the Gravity Gun is a mechanic unmatched in pure fun by any game before or since, but otherwise it's fairly standard. Why I like them so much, and replay them to this very day, is the way the story is integrated so seamlessly into the gameplay and how genuinely we care about the world and the characters in it.

The way Yahtzee describes Gears 5's story, the main characters who waddle around behind you the whole game get picked off with the precision of a metronome and about as much drama, save for a bit of angst that is mysteriously absent when thousands of people are dying off-screen. The fact that he doesn't even mention their names once during the review says all that needs to be said about how important they are.

Edited by Fighteer on Oct 2nd 2019 at 3:41:08 PM

Half-Life 2 succeeds more at that (the characters and story) than the original which is... quite Narmy these days with dialogue, same looking characters and ridiculous deaths and stupid AI. Gameplay's good imo but MP 5 sucks. Like the bullet spread, accuracy and rate of fire is substandard. Op 4 kind of...fixed it? When I compared it to Half-Life, it's better.

Weapons are fun and exotic but enemy movement is stiff and wonky, the AI not great and too exploitable. I swear, in my experience playing Op 4 over 50 times, I learned to barely waste ammo and take cheap potshots and exploit everything.

Half-Life 2 has more fun with physics and environmental weapons. Ravenholm is a good example of what you can do with environment alone to kill enemies. It always tried to spice up everything in addition to good gunplay.

Edited by Dhiruxide on Oct 3rd 2019 at 4:33:41 PM

Oh, I agree. The first Half-Life is better thought of as a transformative game in the FPS genre, showing how you can integrate story into gameplay and build a living world. Half-Life 2 is where the mechanics and storytelling got amped up to a pure pitch.

I've never actually played either Half Life game, but I suspect that if I did, I would constantly think of them as Team Fortress Classic and Portal in the back of my mind.

Next week gonna be Astra Chain and a very brief mention of Fire Emblem.

Well, technically, this week. He has a lot of ads this time. Oddly, the opening ad has already expired.

Damn you, exclusives. Astral Chain looks pretty fun. I'm also curious about Yahtzee's take on Anime Titty Souls Code Vein.

Who do you think he'd create on Code Vein, Thinderella or Lady Hitler?

Lady Thintler.