He'll say when he thinks something is still fun despite its flaws, or compelling enough that he's still playing despite all his complaints.

Half his stated reasons for doing what he does is to make developers not do "shit" (his words, "most games are shit") and raise the bar to something good (his version, at any rate, which may or may not be desirable).

Examples of games he liked: Infamous, Minecraft, and DA:O (most of his complaints around DA:O were the way it was presented, as a dark fantasy, when it was nothing but a Tolkien-esque fantasy setting with no real twists or original ideas; still fun, just not groundbreaking as far as the setting goes).

If I were a game dev I would think I'd have mixed feelings about having my game reviewed by him, because he's going to expose my flaws, however, like a book editor, brutal honesty can really help the quality of work (it would be better if the criticism came early enough to help the current work, instead of just the sequel).

Was that what you meant when you mentioned 'why he does what he does', as in why he tears everything apart ?

That's not what i was getting at in my other post, i just thought it was funny him complaining about DA2's 'combat on crystal meth' when you consider that he made a career out ot talking as fast as he does, doing complete justice to the 'zero punctuation' title ;)

Yes, that's what I was getting at. But the crystal meth comment is funny too, when you look at it in that context:)

I'm sure he could broaden his audience if he took it down a peg or two, but that would probably mean having to come up with a different title, like, 'barely any punctuation' or something like that ;)

Regarding Yahtzee, I never seemed to find any trouble with working out whether he liked a game or not. He seemed to like DAO, ME and ME2, seemed pretty clear to me, yet I seem to hear people saying that he bashed DAO? Am I missing something here?

Well yes, he does bash it, but it's the same way someone who nitpicks their favourite show I thought, I remember having a book by a Star Trek fan whose enjoyment came from taking apart the show, whether for technical cock-ups or continuity errors etc. The guy apparently had several VCRs (this was before DVD) and would freeze frame through episodes to find mistakes and the like, such as Tasha Yar being seen to operate the transporter after she had died etc.

Best review so far. The single biggest problem with the game is calling it a sequel to DA:O which it clearly isn't. It's a reboot with all the baggage a reboot comes with.

Yeah, he is spot on. No real choice, no real feeling of Hawke being your character, repeated content and lackluster content... he hit all the notes, and perfectly.

I really hope Bioware are reading these types of articles and reviews and taking them to heart.

Yeah, that and the fact that it's a rushed game that has lazyness and sloppyness written all over it. Had they call it something else and it would still be a mediocre game, but i agree that the widespread disappointment, and the flak Bioware is getting, would be alot less significant right now.

Actually i read a conspiracy theory posted somewhere about how this game wasn't meant to be DA2 at all, but an action game meant to kickstart a new action IP that didn't pan out and that investment was then 'salvaged' by having the DA name slapped on it. Makes no sense but it would surely explain alot ;)

I'm back in DAO and Jesus, even the unispiring Tamlen in the universally acclaimed as the 'weaker' of the 6 Origins comes across as more deep, alive and believable that any character in DA2, and let's not forget that he's kinda the designated red shirt who gets whacked 5 or 10 minutes into the game ;)

The ammount of dialogues and info you can get from just about any npc, companion or allie in DAO it's mind blowing when compared to DA2. I'm willing to bet you can squeeze as much from Alistair just on Ostagar when The (soon to be) Warden meets him than from any single companion in DA2 from start to finish.

If you play Origins as a sequel to DA2 then everything is better ;)

Oh yes, definitely.

Combat that actually feels like combat, the level of detail in the menus, codex, etc, being able to tell where stats come from at a glance, the variety of loot with detailed descriptions, characters who make it so damn easy to either love them or hate their guts, the mind blowing ammount of lore, backround personnal info and general fluff, the level of epicness, the sense that there is an actuall plot brewing, DAO it's a different beast all togheter. Seriously, even though it's old news and i've seen it like 20 times before, i got a nerdgasm from the battle of Ostagar cutscene ;)

Same here it was a wonderfully put together sequence. I would also add Howe, Branka and Zathrian to that. Encounters that actually meant something. Meredith? someone I killed like the other 5 million random people I killed.

Those are all memorable, like many other key players and even some of the secondary npc's. A pitty that there's so much 'memorable' in DAO and so little of it in DA2.

Sometimes i don't know if i should be utterly pissed at Bioware for DA2 or extremely grateful for DAO since it's unlikely we'll ever get another RPG similar in scope to DAO again.

I don't blame BioWare or EA there is clearly only one person to blame. Mike Laidlaw has spent the last few months telling us how shit DA:O was. DA2 is exactly the game he wanted to make.

I don't blame EA either, from what i gather it seems none of this was really 'enforced' and that Bioware actually wanted to move in this direction. There's no way to actually know for sure, but there are a few crumbs here and there that seem to point to that conclusion.

Laidlaw, i sure can understand the company man standing by his product, but for the life of me i don't see why on earth he chose to do so by completely trashing his previous, and incredibly sucessful, product. There's something up with that guy, i'm just not sure what. It sure will be interesting to find out what he has to say about DA2, say, one year from now.