I'm a long-time follower of fungo and his crew. Their videos are always well produced. It must take ages to plan & edit them, so hats off. The humour doesn't bother me and I also think it's somehwat necessary in my opinion, because taking such trivial things like videogames too seriously would be just... wrong.
That being said, I REALLY dislike the condescending attitude and the one-sidedness of all their "the real silent hill experience" videos. I can't stand the way they belittle people who disagree with them. This makes them more dubious and questionable than the ones they criticise. (one of the reasons I disliked the new Senna documentary, they made Alain Prost look like Hitler even though Senna himself was no saint)
Don't get me wrong! Almost all the points they made are legit and there is really no excuse for how the final product turned out, but I think they could be a little bit more diplomatic about their criticism. It's not like Konami & everyone involved did that on purpose. The fandom (for lack of a better term) is what destroys their videos. This always happens when people take their hobbies way too seriously. It comes off as if they are projecting really hard, and they do to some degree. Like saying the clunky controls and bad combat are intentional to make the character more believable. Really? I doubt that this was the case. Japanese games always had clunky, counter-intuitive controls. In fact, they still have to some degree. Go play Yakuza Dead Souls, MGS4 or RE5 with the standard Japanese controller layout. There are better gameplay mechanics to make the main character more vulnerable than making the controls deliberately clunky. I don't know why the fans defend this so much. The game was released back in 2001, even most western games used tank-controls back then. Developers didn't know better. I don't even think they are that bad to be honest.
The story-telling is fantastic in SH 2 & 3, but the story and the writing itself is rather subpar at best. It has this Japanese thing going on with
being convoluted just for the sake of being convoluted. Some statments from Team Silent made it obvious that not even the people who created the game understand the story completely. I'm not saying it was an afterthought but definitely lacking polish compared to the brillant rest. Which is a real shame because the mature, complex themes were and still are unique in gaming.
But hey, it's not Hideo Kojima bad!
http://youtu.be/PSJVSNhqa-s
http://youtu.be/7kNrIn8H32c
Kojima confused about the mgs storyline.
I think the clunky controls and weird voice acting (wasn't weird to me... maybe because I'm not a native English speaker) are 'lucky accidents' which just happen to fit the game perfectly.
back on-topic,
I'll never understand the people who put some much energy into disliking/hating things. Maybe because I'm quite indifferent to trivial things like entertainment media even though I'm quite passionate about games, movies & music. (almost an oxymoron) If I dislike something, all I do is shrug and be like "okaaay" and move on.
All the humour in the world doesn't help when you act like an arse.
Antisocialfatman's SH2 review is spot on!
http://youtu.be/N2BeUejtoBY
