What's your take on long-form video game analyses by people like Joseph Anderson, Noah Caldwell-Gervais, and Game Soup...

What's your take on long-form video game analyses by people like Joseph Anderson, Noah Caldwell-Gervais, and Game Soup? I think they're all self-fellating shit that do nothing more than review a game under some pseudo-intellectual veil. And all the people who do these videos have really entry-level taste in games, too.

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Joseph Anderson has valid points on plot and setting in games but his opinions on gameplay are shit for the most part.

isn't noah the one who whined about postal 2 and conflated it with the experience of having his cat stolen?

He also whined about Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines having skimpy female clothes (despite them making sense for the setting) and openly defended Depression Quest.

>Joseph Anderson
>Noah Caldwell-Gervais
Both give valid points while reviewing and both are good to listen to while walking a dog.

The biggest downside of their videos is length. Those videos are so long I forgot about 80% of their content.

Ross' game dungeon is way more entertaining while still being informative.

I agree.
Eh, he often shows lack of understanding. In his FO4 review he was saying how "the Railroad shouldn't exist. Period." Because no humans would help synths as long as other humans aren't safe.

Not only does that show a complete lack of understanding of the Fallout setting in general, but also thats not how humans work. Like, not at all. There's no combined effort to focus on one problem at a time. If that'd be the case, the world wouldn't have any problems anymore. Its always indiviudals focusing on what they deem worth their effort and time and empathy.

Anyway, I'm not surprised this (self published) "writer" has to review virtual toys to feed his family.

I agree with him, Boston is a complete war zone and the hate for synths runs deep, it's like expecting there to be a gay rights group in Syria.

>Noah Caldwell-Gervais

This guy is such a pretentious hipster

What did he mean by this?

I only watch JA. I like that he takes reviewing seriously, always finishing all of game's content before talking about it.

But sometimes he's either creating strawmans or just plainly talking shit. I watched his DS videos recently, and lot of his criticism was "this particular moment in a game is not fair" style. I get it, he wants to point out faults in the game, but sometimes it's just him not enjoying the game. In Factorio video he says he didn't felt need to use trains, and then criticizes game for being too slow.

Even if they exist, they cannot possibly do as much as they have done. Smuggle some synths through the wasteland to fucking DC. Fucking really?

>sometimes it's just him not enjoying the game
Isn't it one of the points of the review? To show which aspects of the game you enjoyed and which ones you didn't.

For me, reviews should show games faults and strenghts. These can overlap with what you enjoy or not.

For example in his DD review he shits a lot on game for being grindy, which is correct, but fails to acknowledge that some people enjoy grind.
In his Darks Souls review, he pitches idea that the game is "hard, but fair" and uses this metric for entire game. But that fucking wrong, DS is nowhere near "fair", it's not supposed to be and people are don't expect it to be fair. So most of his points are based on incorrect assumption.

>B-but how could I see the red dragon! The game isn't fair!

He's barely makes reviews, I dunno where this comes from. You can call these critiques, I call these rants. He pretty much established that he liked F4 in the beginning of the video yet he didn't elaborate on that at all during the 3 hour video. His videos are rants. Produced well, but rants. I don't understand why people think guys like him are the ultimate truth upholders, it's just their opinions. I also don't understand why some people bash him for a very subjective and controversial opinion, as if there is a scale of how right or wrong he can be.

>DS is nowhere near "fair", it's not supposed to be and people are don't expect it to be fair.
DS is perfectly fair for the most part. If you die it is because you have fucked up.

Just to elaborate a little more: reviews are mainly produced for a very specific task of evaluating the game as a whole through different elements and elements of these elements, like story, sound and music, gameplay, progression (as an element of gameplay) etc. In the end, this score should give a reader or viewed a representation of what he can expect from a game he hasn't played yet. His videos are not really about that, in most cases he just focuses on very specific cases and tells people why or why not these don't work, based on information he gathered from within the game itself or from developers. If you haven't played the game already, watching his videos will bring absolutely no meaning to you, they are irrelevant. I think he doesn't quite understand that one yet himself, so he sometimes puts "review" in his videos while they are really not. Slowbeef described LPs as "director's commentary, except made by some jackass who was not involved with the creation of the movie at all and decided to just comment on what he thought watching the movie would be like". So are these "game analyses" videos are nothing more, than a jackass producing a game's postmortem, instead of a dev, just based on his perceptions and opinions.

he talk about small little details at the end of his fo4 review and mention that the combat and control are so good compared to past games that he was awed by it at first and didnt realise how tedious the game was.
Beside, he call his "review" "critique". It's meant to be more on the negative.

>Noah Caldwell-Gervais

Him rambling on about how some people might not find it funny if they were to steal a car in a game, while they had theirs stolen in real life just made him look like a self-centered, petty cock-gobbler.

DS for the most part is completely fair tho and Fuck no, gamers expect it to be fair.

That's not being fair.

Being fair means both you and your opponent is treated equally. Think of chess.

DS gives your opponents an edge, but in return gives you right tools to fight them. But some enemies are stronger, and some weaker. In same sense, some situations are more dangerous then others.

I enjoy most of the content JA puts out

though in general I think videogame 'analysis' videos were a mistake, people saw the attention Matthewsomethingis got and suddenly everyone and their mother is an expert on video games even though most of them are too afraid to go against popular opinion

>And all the people who do these videos have really entry-level taste in games, too.
This is my main problem. I actually do like the format a lot but generally they don't talk about the games I care about beyond Dark Souls.

Complete waste of time considering they're fucking VIDEO GAMES. What's next? Analysis of lego and how you can extrapolate the dimensions of blocks on to capitalism?

Fucking lmao you have to be a proper gutter feeder to care about a video game that much.

beacuse youtube is still a hoby for them. not work.

oh fuck off with this bullshit, you expect "chess" rules to work in an action rpg and be all that exciting? of course the enemies have unique tools and attacks to fuck you up, that doesn't make it not fair though, you still have your dodge roll and parries, which are more than enough to absolutely destroy anything in the game once you're good enough

it's also telling whenever you finish the game and start a new character a LOT of it is easier because you now know how to deal with all enemies and you've "built up" some skills so to speak

Knowing where something is or what will happen is not a skill

most video game 'critics' talk entirely about narrative or consumerist shit, barely anyone knows anything about analyzing gameplay

By this logic no game without entirely symmetric gameplay is fair.

Joseph and Matthewmatosis are both great reviewers that go into far more depth than most game critics while showing examples... when they actually upload a video after months of nothing.

>Tomb of Giants
>Your vision is limited but enemies see without problems

>New Londo
>Enemies can pass trought walls and you need specific item to damage them

>Anor Londo
>Enemies are placed in very specific strategical positions just to fuck you up

>Blightown
>Enemies are not affected by swamps, but you are

>The catacombs
>Certain enemies are resurrected right after death but you still die normally

>Demon Ruins + Lost Izalith
>Enemies are not damaged or slowed by lava, but you are

Wow, what a "fair" game.

Not true, at all. It's not about being symmetrical, but about being treated equally by game mechanics.
For example Xcom is fair. Explosion of grenade can damage both your soldiers and aliens. In Dark Souls, enemies can shoot through each other.

How is chess fair if white always make the first move? Checkmate chess lovers.

That's why they play multiple games during tournaments.

You think that those are self fellating?
Watch Writing on games and Mark Brown

Are either of them the one that did "Dark Souls and Suicidal Depression?" What the fuck is with these analysts and Dark Souls anyway?

I never got the appeal of his 'supreme gentleman but in a 50's setting' thing.

He has comfy road trips though.

Writing on Games did

>Joseph Anderson's last video was like 2 hours long
>comfy intensifies

>opinions are opinions

Amazing user. Its almost like you dont need to agree 100% with someone to enjoy their content.

They're good. They rather go problem by problem and their overall design, rather than their overall quality but that's fine. I find long form analysis videos, so long as they don't ramble, to be the best.

My fav is this guy
youtube.com/watch?v=Vp4-9G47uF0
>5 hour long video examining every problem in Oblivion

I've been interesting in making my own analytical videos on a few games. Right now I'm working on making an analysis video on Kotor 2 and its implication of the Star Wars canon.

>Tomb of Giants
>Your vision is limited but enemies see without problems
See Skull Lantern, Cast Light or Sunlight Maggot

>New Londo
>Enemies can pass trought walls and you need specific item to damage them
Nothing wrong with that, considering how slow ghosts are. Also item to damage them is available early in the game.

>Anor Londo
>Enemies are placed in very specific strategical positions just to fuck you up
You can literally run past by most of them and they will jump down to their deaths.

>Blightown
>Enemies are not affected by swamps, but you are
Fair point but the only time you really need to cross the swamp is when you want to get to Quelaag and only enemies to fuck you up there are turd giants who a notoriously slow.

>The catacombs
>Certain enemies are resurrected right after death but you still die normally
They are resurrected by necromancers. Necromancers don't respawn. Besides even if you have problem in this area you can use divine weapons

>Demon Ruins + Lost Izalith
>Enemies are not damaged or slowed by lava, but you are
Objectively the worst location in the entire series. Still, there are very few enemies that cause you any trouble on lava.

>Xcom is fair
Xcom is the very definition of unfair by your logic because ai has maphack.

>In Dark Souls, enemies can shoot through each other.
And you can shoot/attack through phantoms you summon.

youtube.com/watch?v=viP4psS3MUQ

This one?

Every time I see that dragon it bugs me. The artist fucked up on the perspective because the way the dragons head is turned. You shouldn't be able to see it's eye on the other side like that it's just not right.

>I think they're all self-fellating shit that do nothing more than review a game under some pseudo-intellectual veil.

Like what you're doing right now?

>And all the people who do these videos have really entry-level taste in games, too.

Wow, people who review and take an in-depth look at games tend to choose games that most people have played or heard about? Astounding.

The reality is you're a faggot. Even if you don't agree with everything those youtubers say, they are among the few people who take objective looks at video gaming and are among the few voices that try to explain WHY modern AAA games so often fail.

I would have liked your post and given it a congratulatory (You) but then you posted this;
>Anyway, I'm not surprised this (self published) "writer" has to review virtual toys to feed his family.

Not only did you edgily deride his writing career, implied self publishing was somehow automatically a bad thing, and then you unironically called video games 'virtual toys'.

I sincerely hope you take a look at yourself and realize just how much of a dumbshit you're being.

His major complaint against the first Mafia game was that it is too hard. The guy is autistic as fuck.

This is a big problem. Most of these "critics" are completely clueless about how you actually make games and what are the limitations of the medium.

Obviously you haven't watched or know anything about the people in OP's post, because all of them talk about gameplay on a deep level and why it either succeeds or fails in the game they are critiquing.