This was originally planned to be a deeper look into the Tomodachi Life video he did, but I really do think that everything there is to say about that has already been said. He jumped on a bandwagon that I'm told had no real reason to exist anyway. There are several other videos he released that had questionable timing, most notably the E.T. video. Generally, I wouldn't mind something like this. I know lots of online reviewers like to generate hits by talking about things that have been trending lately. Todd in the Shadows made an excellent video on the history of that Guardian of the Galaxies theme song, for example... but the way Yahtzee does it bugs me.
He doesn't say anything we already know. He tells us he likes Dark Souls because it was challenging, but it feels like he said this because that's what his fans wanted him to say. I know he didn't even finish Dark Souls II when he made the video for that... he was clearly fishing for hits from the Souls fanbase before they lose interest. I'm not a fan of Yahtzee's humor, but even his jokes in these videos tend to have a feeling of 'been there, done that...' Jokes about Quelaag being topless, the difficulty, and other things that were circling around Souls fans at the time. He didn't even finish Dark Souls II, if I remember correctly, and still said it was excellent, despite everyone and their mothers immediately pronouncing that particular game a disappointment.
He's a sell out, plain and simple. He just tells his audience what he thinks they want to hear, with nary an original thought to back up his claims.
But like I said, there's not really what I want to talk about today.
I've actually managed to find an example of the go to defense for Yahtzee fanboys.
"Glanced over the post to see what was mentioned about Yahtzee (since I don't know about this Sarkeeisian thing) and that article is a big crock.
Yahtzee is, certainly, all about criticizing games. Even games which are relatively good will be insulted repeatedly by him.
What the writer of that article fails to understand, though, is that his critiques are still entirely valid. Other critiques may mention good and bad parts of video games, whereas Yahtzee will point out the bad and put more of an emphasis on it. If you want to know if the game is good or not based on his critique, you have to discern on your own whether the bad really bothers you.
Basically, rather than telling you what to play, Yahtzee is telling you what is bad about the games and you can make the decision on your own. Also, he doesn't hate every game he plays, he often says "this game was ok... but". He's basically saying that the game is good, but even good games have their flaws and, in his usual style, goes about pointing out and sometimes exaggerating those flaws for comedic value.
I'm positive that Yahtzee enjoys playing many of the games he reviews... if he really hated them all as much as his videos suggest, he would have quit a long time ago."
It's an opinion! You can't criticize an opinion! - basically what he's saying.
Yeah... I hear this sort of thing all the time whenever discussion turns to Yahtzee's worth as a critic, and I have to admit that's it beginning to seriously annoy me.
My primary problem with this, of course, is this idea that Yahtzee is looking out for you, the consumer, by telling you exactly what HE sees wrong with the game. Except he doesn't do that!
Yahtzee has a tendency to focus on really superficial things that don't really matter much in the
grand scheme of things. He often makes baseless complaints that are either needlessly exaggerated, or even completely fabricated. Remember when he dismissed Kid Icarus: Uprising at E3 2010 because 'it was a rehash?' Yeah... he makes that sort of rash, meaningless judgement all the time, making it impossible to refer to him as an insightful critic.
Like I said before, Yahtzee just says whatever he thinks people want to hear. This extends to everything he does, from how he tries to downplay Nintendo's successes in his articles (I'm thinking of his dismissal of ALBW, specifically... absolutely disgraceful!) from how he pans games for doing what he's been saying they should for years, HE PUT ASSASSIN'S CREED IV ON A GOTY LIST, among a whole host of other things.
Yahtzee's fans love him because he's predictable. He has no real original ideas of his own. He's a slave to their whims, and they know this.
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