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Jonathan Blow plays Breath of the Wild

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I'm about an hour in so far. Have not played BotW, but he does seem pretty negative, and most of his criticisms do seem really nitpicky. Don't know if I'll manage the whole thing.
 

Wamb0wneD

Member
I mean you're not discussing the subject either. You're spending your time undermining people and their credibility rather than what people are saying.

To be fair most people in this thread are being great at discussing the potential high and low points of this game. Most are doing Zelda fans proud.

Oh ffs. I pointed out multiple times how there are lots of people in here discussing the actual contents of the stream and gave examples. And not a single person arguing in favour of Blow can do that.

They prefer shitting on the Zelda fanbase instead because that's the only way they can discredit the criticism of the vids content so what exactly am i supposed to respond to that if i want to engage in a discussion?

Here some higlights out of one post from someone on the earlier pages:

"is this designed by nambla"
"he looks 12 and the lines are accenting his butt and crotch"
"it's fine, he's a thousand year old elf"

he's spent like 10 minutes just dicking around in the little area outside the first cave - hasn't even gone down the hill to the old man
sings: the legend of the barrel smasher. breath of yo momma
"dark souls this is not"

boko haram club
"alright boko haram, no female genital mutilation"
"you are apparently inherintly evil, that's what this game has taught me""
"why is his boko club bigger than my boko club but then it gets small"

tries to shoot bow without any arrows
"i guess i don't have that much range, what kind of weaksauce is that"

he used a savestate

"ah, lemons"

he doesn't know how to drop weapons

"I DIDNT GET THAT CHEST AHHHHHHHHHHHH"
"I DONT WANT TO TALK TO THE GUY I DIDNT GET THAT CHEST"
he was skipping through the old man convo so he's not going to know to teleport to the tower

"can i teleport to a pin, that would be ridiculous"

he climbs down the tower without even talking to the old man

gets owned by a guardian
"yeah this game is totally 98 out of 100"

he doesn't know how to switch from bow to sword

he's skipping the cutscenes
main quest: destroy ganon"

i just shot jelly, why didn't i get the arrow back"

He found the flower puzzle and thought it was lemons and left

"Boy they sure did make a big map full of nothing"

"Lizal Minelli spear"

Those are actual things that happened in the vid and get adressed here. Multiple times in fact. Not a single person arguing in Blow's favour has adressed any of this, nor anything else in the vid. Not a single example of legit criticism from them. It's because they can't so the only thing they fall back to is: "It's his opinion" and "lul Zelda fans".
Now please tell me whose reductionist attitude and console war bait is hindering the discussion in this thread.

Go through every post I made in this thread if you want to and then compare it to the two posts he made. He didn't even answer anyone once. Give me a break.
 
I know that, it just seems like some people try do adopt this feature too early and force it in every situation. Watching them then fail doing so many times in lengthy videos is just very frustrating.

That's fair but in the case of ENB he clearly already knows that is what he should be practicing rather than using lock-on which is honestly just a crutch in those games most of the time. So, why not begin practicing it right off the bat?
 

Lutherian

Member
DarkSidePhil

A YTer. He's not very good at playing video games, or it's just an act, it's hard to tell. He lacks a large amount of awareness when playing just about any kind of game and he complains and whines non-stop blaming the games for not explaining anything (even if the game does explain to him exactly what to do).

He's so bad at games, there are memes of him.

EDIT: there's one famous MGS let's play he did that should be out there. The game recommends using a silencer on his gun and he kept passing by it in the menus over and over again. He also didn't know how to equip it though it told him on screen.

Argh. Exactly everything I hate with Let's Players (the only one I can watch and enjoy is ProJared, especially his offline Let's Plays).

Thanks too for the answer.
 

jts

...hate me...
It's a decent game, but it's certainly not my GOTY material.

The world feels dead. There's so little going on.
The dialogue is the usual terrible style that just doesn't translate well, in my view. See also games like Nier, Gravity Rush, Persona etc. The dialogue in these types of game really grates.
The button mapping is nuts. Every sinew of my being tells me to push a particular button to jump and they've mapped it to sprint.
The horse controls are terrible.

The puzzle shrines are fun though, if a little simple and it is undeniably very pretty. A decent game to keep my Switch occupied but I'll need a lot more to feel that my purchase is justified.
You can swap the sprint and jump buttons.

edit: damn beaten by seconds when quoting an half an hour ago post :p
 

v1oz

Member
I can't really take Blow's opinions too seriously on Zelda. Especially when Braid has a few pretty bad puzzles which don't stand up to any real logical scrutiny and come across as if they were designed mostly out of convenience to pad out the adventure.

Mario and Zelda games are always masterclasses in game design for their respective console generations. In terms of the meat and potatoes of game design and gameplay mechanics no one in this industry even comes close.


Complaining about shitty puzzles in Zelda games when they have NEVER been good to begin with is kinda like complaining that the shooting bits in SMG is not up to par compared to your usual fps.
Even more so when the puzzles presented are of much higher quality than pretty much everything they threw at us since OoT MQ.
Puzzles aren't the meat of Zelda and never were, if you want real good puzzles go play stuff like Layton.
I actually care little about if he thought the game was good or not.
The content of the criticism is more interesting than the existence of the criticism.

Lol lay off the crack
 

valkyre

Member
Oh ffs. I pointed out multiple times how there are lots of people in here discussing the actual contents of the stream and gave examples. And not a single person arguing in favour of Blow can do that.

They prefer shitting on the Zelda fanbase instead because that's the only way they can discredit the criticism of the vids content so what exactly am i supposed to respond to that if i want to engage in a discussion?

Here some higlights out of one post from someone on the earlier pages:

"is this designed by nambla"
"he looks 12 and the lines are accenting his butt and crotch"
"it's fine, he's a thousand year old elf"

he's spent like 10 minutes just dicking around in the little area outside the first cave - hasn't even gone down the hill to the old man
sings: the legend of the barrel smasher. breath of yo momma
"dark souls this is not"

boko haram club
"alright boko haram, no female genital mutilation"
"you are apparently inherintly evil, that's what this game has taught me""
"why is his boko club bigger than my boko club but then it gets small"

tries to shoot bow without any arrows
"i guess i don't have that much range, what kind of weaksauce is that"

he used a savestate

"ah, lemons"

he doesn't know how to drop weapons

"I DIDNT GET THAT CHEST AHHHHHHHHHHHH"
"I DONT WANT TO TALK TO THE GUY I DIDNT GET THAT CHEST"
he was skipping through the old man convo so he's not going to know to teleport to the tower

"can i teleport to a pin, that would be ridiculous"

he climbs down the tower without even talking to the old man

gets owned by a guardian
"yeah this game is totally 98 out of 100"

he doesn't know how to switch from bow to sword

he's skipping the cutscenes
main quest: destroy ganon"

i just shot jelly, why didn't i get the arrow back"

He found the flower puzzle and thought it was lemons and left

"Boy they sure did make a big map full of nothing"

"Lizal Minelli spear"

Those are actual things that happened in the vid and get adressed here. Multiple times in fact. Not a single person arguing in Blow's favour has adressed any of this, nor anything else in the vid. Not a single example of legit criticism from them. It's because they can't so the only thing they fall back to is: "It's his opinion" and "lul Zelda fans".
Now please tell me whose reductionist attitude and console war bait is hindering the discussion in this thread.

Go through every post I made in this thread if you want to and then compare it to the two posts he made. He didn't even answer anyone once. Give me a break.

This.

Like I said I never played Zelda, so whenever I watch someone play I listen to what they say and basis what I see I make my own conclusions as well.

But this guy played the game in a way that was obviously biased from the get go, and generally complained about completely unfounded things.

If you do not care to invest yourself in this game and your only goal is petty comments from the first 10 moments of the game (and some of these comments are seriously immature imo coming from an established developer) and trashing it altogether, then I wont take you seriously. Whoever you are.

This wasnt constructive or even legit criticism on his part it was pure ranting. He didnt even make sense at times.

And sorry but I have to point this out, Jonathan Blow is kinda eccentric, if I take into consideration various comments he frequently makes about pretty much every videogame out there being offensive to him because it features some form of violence... I find his stance pretty arrogant at times, he gives you the impression that he considers himself doing art with Braid (which he actually does indeed) while other devs are "insulting" the medium by trying to tell stories through it...or by featuring violence... or the "adventure games are bad".... I mean come the fuck on... get off your pedestal for a moment.
 
I can see Blow not liking, it has issues, I'm enjoying but I just wish it had more meaty side content, the side stuff is just not great at all.
 

Deft Beck

Member
My favorite part of this is the completely blank and unconfigured Switch home screen at the start, implying he probably only bought the console and game to Analyze it.
 

Makai

Member
Oh ffs. I pointed out multiple times how there are lots of people in here discussing the actual contents of the stream and gave examples. And not a single person arguing in favour of Blow can do that.

They prefer shitting on the Zelda fanbase instead because that's the only way they can discredit the criticism of the vids content so what exactly am i supposed to respond to that if i want to engage in a discussion?

Here some higlights out of one post from someone on the earlier pages:
I wrote that summary and I can. But what is supposed to be addressed? He's supposedly playing the best game of the last 20 years and he's having a very bad experience. Like...that's it - his subjective experience insults someone's favorite game, so they character assassinate him - "he's a jerk and he's bad at puzzle games."

I don't even know why someone would be offended by his general critiques.
- game autokills him when he passes an invisible boundary.
- just wants to get the chest in the shrine but he has to sit through two loading screens and a dialogue
- worthless collectable "lemons" everywhere unlike past Zelda games which had a small number of qualitatively valuable items (e.g. hookshot).
- puzzles are supposedly brilliant but are just intro-grade (realization that this claim might come from people who have not played serious puzzle games)
- game ruining feeling of discovering a secret by announcing "yay you did it!" with secret music tune no matter how trivial the puzzle.
- heavy reliance on menuing (e.g. weapon pocket full, eating food)
- loses egg he dropped on the ground because cooking makes no sense
- Link looks buff but is clearly out of shape
- text dialogue in a AAA game

That and more in the first three hours so he just says "screw this." Back to compiler programming.
 

kitsuneyo

Member
I wrote that summary and I can. But what is supposed to be addressed? He's supposedly playing the best game of the last 20 years and he's having a very bad experience. Like...that's it - his subjective experience insults someone's favorite game, so they character assassinate him - "he's a jerk and he's bad at puzzle games."

I watched a bit of it and the issue I have is he doesn't seem willing to properly engage with the game, but he is willing to mock the work of his peers. Poor form.
 

Wamb0wneD

Member
I wrote that summary and I can. But what is supposed to be addressed? He's supposedly playing the best game of the last 20 years and he's having a very bad experience. Like...that's it - his subjective experience insults someone's favorite game, so they character assassinate him - "he's a jerk and he's bad at puzzle games."

I don't even know why someone would be offended by his general critiques.
- game autokills him when he passes an invisible boundary.
- just wants to get the chest in the shrine but he has to sit through two loading screens and a dialogue
- worthless collectable "lemons" everywhere unlike past Zelda games which had a small number of qualitatively valuable items (e.g. hookshot).
- puzzles are supposedly brilliant but are just intro-grade (realization that this claim might come from people who have not played serious puzzle games)
- game ruining feeling of discovering a secret by announcing "yay you did it!" with secret music tune no matter how trivial the puzzle.
- heavy reliance on menuing (e.g. weapon pocket full, eating food)
- loses egg he dropped on the ground because cooking makes no sense
- Link looks buff but is clearly out of shape
- text dialogue in a AAA game

That and more in the first three hours so he just says "screw this." Back to compiler programming.

You answered your question yourself. That's how you adress the contents of his criticism. In that way you can also state where you agree or diasgree with him and engage in a proper discussion.
Noone in this thread did that so far. It was either: "It's his opinion man!" "Zelda fans can't take criticism, so childish!" or "LOL member Zelda fans derailing Horizon threads?!" and acting like all that people in here critizised was Blow as a person.

There were some people arguing the weak and strong points of the game and used their own experience as reference, but when it comes to Blow's stream, you know..the topic of the thread, all that people resorted to was reductionism and console war bait.

I watched a bit of it and the issue I have is he doesn't seem willing to properly engage with the game, but he is willing to mock the work of his peers. Poor form.
But if you say that you are a Zelda fanboy who can't handle a negative opinion!!!
 

Despera

Banned
Umm... why did he spend that much time talking about Link's attire and physique? Can't say I'm surprised though lol

Dude's very nit-picky and clearly can't admit that this type of game isn't his cup of tea, but I guess we wouldn't have the brilliance that's Braid and The Witness if he weren't this way.
 

SomTervo

Member
Oh ffs. I pointed out multiple times how there are lots of people in here discussing the actual contents of the stream and gave examples. And not a single person arguing in favour of Blow can do that.


[giant snip]

Those are actual things that happened in the vid and get adressed here. Multiple times in fact. Not a single person arguing in Blow's favour has adressed any of this, nor anything else in the vid. Not a single example of legit criticism from them. It's because they can't so the only thing they fall back to is: "It's his opinion" and "lul Zelda fans".
Now please tell me whose reductionist attitude and console war bait is hindering the discussion in this thread.

Go through every post I made in this thread if you want to and then compare it to the two posts he made. He didn't even answer anyone once. Give me a break.

Thanks for the post. You are right, he was being very unfair on the game.

I'm a big Blow fan, too.

I wrote that summary and I can. But what is supposed to be addressed? He's supposedly playing the best game of the last 20 years and he's having a very bad experience. Like...that's it - his subjective experience insults someone's favorite game, so they character assassinate him - "he's a jerk and he's bad at puzzle games."

I don't even know why someone would be offended by his general critiques.
- game autokills him when he passes an invisible boundary.
- just wants to get the chest in the shrine but he has to sit through two loading screens and a dialogue
- worthless collectable "lemons" everywhere unlike past Zelda games which had a small number of qualitatively valuable items (e.g. hookshot).
- puzzles are supposedly brilliant but are just intro-grade (realization that this claim might come from people who have not played serious puzzle games)
- game ruining feeling of discovering a secret by announcing "yay you did it!" with secret music tune no matter how trivial the puzzle.
- heavy reliance on menuing (e.g. weapon pocket full, eating food)
- loses egg he dropped on the ground because cooking makes no sense
- Link looks buff but is clearly out of shape
- text dialogue in a AAA game

That and more in the first three hours so he just says "screw this." Back to compiler programming.

Of course his opinion is 100% valid and I'd never complain because of that, but if you're going to nitpick any game on a second-by-second basis, you're not going to have a good time, and he clearly went into the game ready to do just that.

Like if I verbally commented every moment there was something in The Witness that bored or frustrated me, a stream of me playing The Witness would probably look very similar. Constant nitpicky and over-detailed comparisons and complaints about everything.

But I went into the game looking to meet it on its own terms and enjoy it, so that never happened.
 

DeanBDean

Member
What's funny to me about this thread is that it reminds me a lot of Super Bunny Hop's review of The Witness

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDxxwFLs0d8

Especially if you skip to 4:04, you'll see that George apparently is utterly, utterly horrible at puzzle games or games that try to teach the player through the environment. So a lot of the thread about this video revolved around whether George's terribleness at the game led to terrible criticism.

I don't think you have to be good at a game to offer a critical opinion, but I do think that you should go in with an open mind. I don't really think Super Bunny Hop did that with the Witness, and I don't think Blow did with Breath of the Wild, even if some of their criticisms are valid.
 

ReyVGM

Member
To everyone complaining that I asked my friend to leave for playing BotW like an asshole on purpose, he also says the Dark Souls series is bad. Now let's see all you Dark Souls lovers defend him.
 
To everyone complaining that I asked my friend to leave for playing BotW like an asshole on purpose, he also says the Dark Souls series is bad. Now let's see all you Dark Souls lovers defend him.

I love Dark Souls, I still wouldn't ask someone to leave my house if they didn't.
 

ReyVGM

Member
I thought he told him to leave because he was an ass, but I'm open to change my stance if circumstances about the removal from the house is changed after closer inspection.

Yes, I told him to leave because was an ass. He was purposely playing the game the most idiotic way possible because he hates any game that's popular and he probably did it to piss me off. He's a good player, so I know it was on purpose.

I didn't ask him to leave because I wanted to play, as the previous poster assumed out of nowhere.
 
I wrote that summary and I can. But what is supposed to be addressed? He's supposedly playing the best game of the last 20 years and he's having a very bad experience. Like...that's it - his subjective experience insults someone's favorite game, so they character assassinate him - "he's a jerk and he's bad at puzzle games."

I don't even know why someone would be offended by his general critiques.
- game autokills him when he passes an invisible boundary.
- just wants to get the chest in the shrine but he has to sit through two loading screens and a dialogue
- worthless collectable "lemons" everywhere unlike past Zelda games which had a small number of qualitatively valuable items (e.g. hookshot).
- puzzles are supposedly brilliant but are just intro-grade (realization that this claim might come from people who have not played serious puzzle games)
- game ruining feeling of discovering a secret by announcing "yay you did it!" with secret music tune no matter how trivial the puzzle.
- heavy reliance on menuing (e.g. weapon pocket full, eating food)
- loses egg he dropped on the ground because cooking makes no sense
- Link looks buff but is clearly out of shape
- text dialogue in a AAA game

That and more in the first three hours so he just says "screw this." Back to compiler programming.

Imagine if Nintendo addressed all of Blow's criticism with the next Zelda game.

I don't think my heart could take it. Such a game would be too good to exist.
 

Budi

Member
To everyone complaining that I asked my friend to leave for playing BotW like an asshole on purpose, he also says the Dark Souls series is bad. Now let's see all you Dark Souls lovers defend him.

Sounds like a swell guy, should invite him over to play some Witcher 3!

And yeah it's really childish to tell/ask your friend to leave because he doesn't like the same game. Just turn off the game and play something else you both can enjoy.
 

ReyVGM

Member
I love Dark Souls, I still wouldn't ask someone to leave my house if they didn't.

First of all let me say that I didn't "kick out" my friend as others pointed out. I didn't yell at him to leave, or suddenly turned off the console and told him to leave in midst of a nerd rage.

My friend spent TEN MINUTES trying to break weapons just to see how long they lasted. After he broke all weapons (and after complaining about other stuff), he decided to stop playing on his own. Since he only came to test out the game (not to hang out), then I asked him to leave in a normal polite manner. He didn't leave thinking I kicked him out or anything, and he wasn't even going to stay anyway since he only came for that specific purpose. Plus, he knew what he did.

Trust me, if you had someone that expressed interest in the latest Soulsborne game (or any new popular game you love) and you let him try it and he acts like an arsehole, you would be looking for ways to place some distance between you two for a moment.
 

Budi

Member
First of all let me say that I didn't "kick out" my friend as others pointed out. I didn't yell at him to leave, or suddenly turned off the console and told him to leave in midst of a nerd rage.

My friend spent TEN MINUTES trying to break weapons just to see how long they lasted. After he broke all weapons (and after complaining about other stuff), he decided to stop playing on his own. Since he only came to test out the game (not to hang out), then I asked him to leave in a normal polite manner. He didn't leave thinking I kicked him out or anything, and he wasn't even going to stay anyway since he only came for that specific purpose. Plus, he knew what he did.

Trust me, if you had someone that expressed interest in the latest Soulsborne game (or any new popular game you love) and you let him try it and he acts like an arsehole, you would be looking for ways to place some distance between you two for a moment.
How exactly "could you leave now please?" Or did you make up an excuse that you need to prepare dinner, study, go to sleep? And you say that he knew that he pissed you off, so how didn't he know you asked him politely to leave because of that. Since that's still true right? If he enjoyed the game, you would had let him stay longer?

And hell no, I "debate" with friends about movies, music and games all the time. Never have I wanted to see my friends less because they didn't happen to like something.
 
First of all let me say that I didn't "kick out" my friend as others pointed out. I didn't yell at him to leave, or suddenly turned off the console and told him to leave in midst of a nerd rage.

My friend spent TEN MINUTES trying to break weapons just to see how long they lasted. After he broke all weapons (and after complaining about other stuff), he decided to stop playing on his own. Since he only came to test out the game (not to hang out), then I asked him to leave in a normal polite manner. He didn't leave thinking I kicked him out or anything, and he wasn't even going to stay anyway since he only came for that specific purpose. Plus, he knew what he did.

Trust me, if you had someone that expressed interest in the latest Soulsborne game (or any new popular game you love) and you let him try it and he acts like an arsehole, you would be looking for ways to place some distance between you two for a moment.

I still wouldn't ask my friend to leave, nor would I get frustrated because they're not playing the game the way I would play it. Like, the fact that you say he was acting like an arsehole for breaking weapons is just an attitude I'll never understand.
 

DeanBDean

Member
He dropped it because he didn't know how to cook ingredients - something that's definitely not explained or obvious.

It seemed pretty obvious to me. It's odd to me that Blow would criticize that, when the Witness has things like this...

The-Witness_20160209115104-700x394.jpg


It's definitely not obvious how to solve this puzzle. You have to play around with them and figure out the mechanics. This was a criticism of The Witness that I also didn't understand, that things "weren't explained." It's an odd criticism coming from Blow, but that's fine if he doesn't think it was implemented well. I don't know if he's being intentionally obtuse to make some point, but I can understand someone drawing that conclusion.
 
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