I think we can forgive Spoony for being...ah, a bit grumpy, overall?
I'm not trying to say that his game review was entirely honest of even fair, but he's had a shitter of a month or so...
I suppose that explains the sudden change of approach in the Ultima reviews, at least.
It's worth mentioning that Spoony has posted a follow up in the video description where he explains that he was just relating his experience with the game and even admits that he was unfair to it.
Thank you! It's one thing to not like a game, which is fine, but his complaints are about as valid as saying Thief sucks because you get penalized for swinging your sword at guards.
Yeah, I know that Spoony admitted he was being unfair, but I found that scant comfort. After all, if he knew he was being unfair, why didn't he start being FAIR instead? It feels rather strange to argue against an opponent who even admits he's being unfair; it's hard to disagree with someone who doesn't seem to agree with themselves. Yes, he also admitted that he was just recounting his experience with the game, but that raises a few questions in itself. Why did Spoony's 'experience' involve needlessly torturing himself for four hours and blaming the game? His 'experience' wasn't informative or even fun to watch, so why focus on it? To put it crudely, Spoony's experience with the game was dumb!
Part of what confused me was the sudden change of approach in the Ultima reviews. The previous ones all featured Spoony's personal experience of the game to some extent, but also showed you the game and tried to represent them reasonably fairly.
It's funny how 'relating his experience' and unfairness, dishonesty and not having to gather much footage overlap, isn't it?
I'll admit the review amused me for a while. I liked the joke about the steel axe being unable to penetrate the flesh of the Headless, but Spoony took things way beyond 'funny' into a crude parody of his normal style. This review was the sort of thing someone wanting to make fun of Spoony's reviews would make.
One final thought: I'm surprised at the number of people defending the review on Spoony's site. Perhaps they want to defend Spoony after a tough month. (Personally, I maintain a distinction between attacking the review and attacking Spoony. I wish Spoony all the best, but I'm merciless to his videos.) It makes me wonder what Spoony would have to do to make a 'bad' review. If a review can be unfair, untruthful and uninformative and still be passed off as just Spoony's style, what would it take for Spoony to make a 'bad' review? I hope we never have to find out.
"If a review can be unfair, untruthful and uninformative and still be passed off as just Spoony's style, what would it take for Spoony to make a 'bad' review? I hope we never have to find out."
How about "unfunny"? Spoony isn't trying to offer you consumerist advice in the traditional sense of a game review. He is doing it as a joke, therefore I think some lee way can be given. Note that I, on record, think the opposite about Yatzhee, who does offer consumer advice and isn't just making comedy videos (despite the criticisms of unfairness and partiality aimed at him by some).
Book me today! I also review weddings, funerals and bar mitzvahs.
Your mileage may vary, I suppose, but I thought it wasn't funny either. You may think I just don't like Spoony's style, but I always have up until now. To my mind, Spoony crossed the all-important line between exaggerations into outright lies, and I don't find lies funny. Good jokes always have at least some basis in truth, boring though that sounds. Why didn't I find it funny? I suppose I can analyse the reasons.
- Spoony simply did not have to attack that Headless for four hours. He was complaining about something that was purely voluntary on his part. (Compare that to complaining about Seymour's hair in FFX. You don't get to choose the hair, so it makes sense.) Nobody has the right to complain about the forseeable results of their own choices, and I find it hard to be amused by something so blatanty self-serving.
- Spoony's self-torturing felt bitter. It's all too obvious that the review was motivated by anger from events in real life, not the game. What can I say? That kind of bitterness simply isn't very funny.
- Spoony was obviously desperate for something to complain about. I can see why; UUW 2 is an awesome game. Calling the review 'unfair' is too generous, and it's hard to be amused by something with so little basis in fact. Good jokes make fun of things that are actually there, they shouldn't have to create something to complain about.
- The time he spent showing us the Headless would have been better spent showing us more of the game. Whatever happened to 'I'm trying to inform the good people here about the awesome Ultima series'? What frustrated me was that Spoony could have made a good video. He could have showed more of the game's world and made fun of more things in it. The Headless scenario got stale once he'd hit it a few times.
I almost feel like repeating my earlier criticism. If a review can be self-serving, bitter, unfair and lazy and still be found funny, what would it take for Spoony to make an 'unfunny' review? I create internet reviews myself; I wish I could create something like that and have people excuse it as a joke.
I think the point of him fighting the Headless was that as the Avatar, there was no logical reason for you not being able to kill it, seeing as you've slaughtered dozens of them without effort in the previous games. Seeing as you're now older and more experienced as before, being outmatched by one is pretty frustrating.
However, if the Labyrinth of Worlds thing is true, I'm much less inclined to be kind to the rest of his review.
About the "changing the style of the Ultima reviews" thing you seem to be so desperately trying to wave around as an excuse: it is my (limited) understanding that Ultima Underworld is a side story to the actual series. As such, it makes sense he wouldn't do it in the same style. If in the review of the next game he goes about things like he did here, then the complaint stands, until then it is completely baseless.
On another note, a pet peeve I have is people saying stuff like "Spoony was obviously desperate for something to complain about. I can see why; UUW 2 is an awesome game." Maybe in your opinion it is, but obviously Spoony doesn't share it. Not to take it out on anyone specific, but you see that in the Headscratchers page too, and it's just annoying! In one of Doug's videos (the end of his "Movies I like that no one else does" one) he says something along the lines that "You can like a movie, or you can hate a movie, but you need to explain why!... No one can take away what a movie meant to you or how it insulted you."
Paraphrasing of course, but that's a quote I've really taken to heart. Spoony's personal experiences of the game (which one would gather from his telling of the origin of the show that he tries to replicate how and why he felt when he first played the game as a kid) were negative, and for the reasons he told. Yours were not. Complaining about it is like complaining that the sun goes away to visit the other side of the globe every night because, damnit, it's your sun and someone might not appreciate it as much as you do! ='C
There comes a time when one must decide: should I set that on fire, or not?Leave a Comment:
Spoony's Ultima Underworld II review is dishonest
Spoony's review of Ultima Underworld II just plain bothered me. Now, I freely admit that I revere that game, so you might think that I'm just sore that a game I actually liked got the trademark Spoony bashing, right? I thought that might be the explanation for my feelings until I remembered the Final Fantasy X review. FFX is another game I revere, but I was perfectly happy to see Spoony lampoon all the various silly things in that game (Seymour's hair, Blitzball being more important than saving the world, that awful 'laughing scene'...) In fact, that was the review that got me watching Spoony in the first place. I clearly don't mind having games I'm fond of bashed, so what's the problem?
Firstly, the UW 2 review simply didn't show much of the game, only the starting level, and Spoony was essentially dishonest in implying that the game was 'based' around the sewer level rather than, say, the freakin' Labyrinth of Worlds in the subtitle. He claims to have played the whole game, but when that doesn't show in the video, who cares? He also spent an inordinate amount of time focusing on 'having' to fight an optional Headless monster that was too tough to be killed by his under-levelled, wrongly-specced character. He supposedly chose to fight the monster for four hours rather than simply run from a fight, and then complained that he didn't enjoy the game. If that's not a desperate attempt to find something to complain about in an awesome game, what is it? You may be thinking, "Well, that's just Spoony's style. He always bashes games." Granted, but this is the first time that Spoony's complaints have ever seemed quite so self-inflicted and dishonest. It was also remarkably uninformative about the actual game, and wasn't that Spoony's reason for creating the Ultima reviews in the first place? This is a game that takes you to eight alternate worlds, and he focuses on the sewers at the start!
I've seen Spoony exaggerate flaws in games before, but this is the first time I've seen him stoop to creating flaws out of whole cloth. After all, you can make any game look bad by voluntarily torturing yourself while playing it! I can only hope that Spoony gets his groove back when he looks at the rest of the Ultima series.