I tried Yahtzee, really I did but the Escapists player is intolerable and repeatedly bugged out at approximately the 90 second mark despite refreshes and complete relogs.
Thanks. Enthusiast Gaming (our parent company) has the big EGLX convention coming up in October, but I'm really hoping to have all the video issues sorted out by the end of the year at the latest. Sorry for the inconvenience, bugging me as much as it is you guys. Left over issues that I inherited when I became EIC that I've been waiting to have fixed for months now. - Nick
Why do horror film characters have to be unlikable? Isn't a tragic story all the more horrifying if at least most of the characters are people who DON'T deserve a rusty machete through the intestines?
True. But while these characters are like, "Eff the rules, we'll do what we like" -- I don't think they're SUPPOSED to be unlikable. (With one exception.) The writers tried to give us "relatable young people" and really screwed it up.
If you're watching a slasher movie, you're not buying the movie for the characters; you're buying it for the villain. You want the slasher to mostly succeed, otherwise it'll be a real short and boring movie most of the time. However, if you care too much about the characters, you won't want to see them die. When the slasher kills enough of them, you begin to resent the slasher. When that happens you stop watching the franchise, because you know the slasher is going to "win"; or at least "lose but not really" for a sequel. That's why slashers like Freddy, Chucky, and the Leprechaun got more and more silly as their franchises went on. They stopped trying to be horror and just settled for entertaining. At that point you're not watching the slasher to be scared by them, you're watching them punish horrible people by sticking rusty machetes through their intestines. By that stage, the slasher becomes the "good" guy, by delivering evil unto evil. Of course there's still going to be a couple characters who are innocent, but those are the ones who usually survive. Or they get killed to remind you that the slasher is still technically a villain; gotta keep that street cred. Plenty of horror movies skip right to that last phase, by making most of the characters as cunty as they possibly can. Others get there over multiple films.
I feel like I'd be more invested if a few characters were likeable. At least in a game, not sure about movies. That way, you have the dual, more interesting goal of trying to kill everyone you hate while _also_ keeping these two or three people alive.
super best friends did the pass-the-controller-to-such-and-such thing for their lp's of Detroit:Become Human. it was funny to watch one of them get the other character's killed.
To be fair, Supermassive practically *did* nail it with Until Dawn. It's just that that seemed to have given them such a super massive ego boost that they thought this fart of a game was also going to be solid gold. It isn't. Not by a long shot.
Supermassive's supply of talent is matched only by their gloriously outsized hubris reserve! ...Wait, I was thinking of SuperGIANT. Mostly just pissed at them over the Epic Store treason with Hades. Which I wouldn't really buy until it goes on a decent-percentage sale, anyway, so fair dos, I suppose.
I enjoyed it a lot, specially the Shared Story mode, there's something unique about having 2 different perspective to the story and having the actions of one player affect the actions of the other in unseen ways. Kind of like life. I really dig this concept.
Just a note, re: your point at 3:50. There is actually a situation where failing a skill check gets you a good ending. If you got Connie off the boat to go for help, he comes back at the end to try and rescue you. But if you succeed at getting the ship part that the pirates stole, you’re able to get away, so Connie shows up after you’ve escaped and enters the Man of Medan ship alone, and is never seen again. I think it’s worth acknowledging that a game can be bad in a lot of ways while still be ultimately enjoyable. Is it perfect? Definitely not. But I still had fun with it, even though it has a lot of room for improvement. I kinda feel the same way Jim Sterling does about the game: it’s not for everyone and has some glaring problems, but I’m still glad I played it.
Yeah, I love local multiplayer. It seems anything but party/racing games seem to get multiplayer horridly wrong. There are exceptions but that's my opinion.
I think the point was that the modes were less multiplayer than advertised. You can make any game multiplayer by passing the controller, don't need an interactive movie to do that. Detroit Become Human is a popular one, where 1 person takes control of one of the three characters. And that game actually had likable characters
3:39 : that joke sent a wave of pride, then a wave of disbelief, then of befuddlement knowing that i landed in the Venn diagram that the joke covered. good show
@@junjiexie They sell just fine, just look at the big budget console exclusives which are nearly all linear moviegames (Tlou, God of War, Uncharted etc.) The problem is good writing is difficult and hit-or-miss. A generic co-op shooter takes time and money to develop too, but the end result is predictable. When modern games cost so much to develop it's easy to see why publishers don't want to hinge their success on the writing. A mediocre shooter designed to be played with friends (pro tip: everything is fun with friends) is much less likely to totally fail as long as it's technically solid than a game relying on its story.
This is the first time I've seen a Zero punctuation on YouTubr after a long time but when did they start doing the credits gag here again? It was normally only present on the website.
I'm surprised you didn't comment on how degraded the animation quality was vs Until Dawn. I watched some Let's Play videos of Until Dawn and thought "wow, they really put some effort into these animations". When I watched Let's Play's for Medan however, one of the first thoughts I had was "wow, these animations look like they were done by the same team that did Mass Effect: Andromeda". Also after watching Corridor Crew, it was quick to see that the mouth's were over-animated, and the eye's had zero animation. This just looked really wrong.
pro tip for anyone who hasn't played it but intends to: do not choose for Conrad to escape on the pirate's boat near the beginning - it will make the game boring.
I wouldn't say that stories are inherently single player, because there are things like D&D, where it is a multi player story experience. But that is because you shape the story together as a group, having to depend on each other, and each person feels some kind of personal investment in their characters, and video games have pulled this off in the past. (See Divinity 2: Original Sin) But take out character creation, player freedom and combat from a D&D game and you are left with... nothing.
Yahtzee, you handsome beast, no wonder you didn't like it! Man of Medan is for people who have friends... and want to save some money on their Christmas shopping list this year! I was shocked when I saw that my second favorite handsome British videogame youtuber with a fancy hat actually liked this. Thank God the first one didn't.
I really enjoyed the movie night mode, I thought it was neat. The other criticisms are spot on though, especially the cheap jump scares. It just didn't feel like the game respected me, my time, or even it's own promise of being a horror story for the following reasons; jump scares aren't scary they are startling, quick time events out of nowhere felt more a rude interruption to see if the player had maintained consciousness than a game play element, privileged grave robbers who are personally unsympathetic lead me to cheer when they died. I hope some one takes a stab at the multiplayer horror story format again but this time with less premature congratulations and more horror. I don't want to see what should be an impactful character death and only think "one down, four more to go".
Dude, have you changed your sound recording setup? It sounds juuust a bit like you're in an empty room; not quite an echo, but like your voice is not as warm or something. 🔊
Are we just gonna ignore the fact that Yahtzee mispronounces the game's name throughout the entire video? Sure he makes up silly names for games sometimes but I don't think he was aware that he was saying it wrong this time.
I actually hate the idea that the protagonists in a horror story have to be unlikeable. Back during the original "The Haunting," people actually tried to make likeable characters in horror films to be killed by the (let's say, Monster), because the thought of a character you've come to like meeting a horrible fate induces fear, and thus HORROR!
I very much agree. I guess it was borne out of the trend of horror franchises, and that the only thing that’d be carried over from instalment to instalment was the big nasty monster, as the BNM is often the USP of the horror franchise in question. So why bother making likeable characters when everyone has turned up to see the BNM and knows everyone else is just going to end up as fodder? Of course, this does not make for a good film, as evidenced by the fact that most horror franchises stop being good after the first film.
I mean, it depends on what the movie is going for, I guess. I think catharsis-via-watching-bad-people-die is a pretty solid formula, if a little lowbrow. But having a likable cast is definitely better for straight-up horror. Or most formats.
From my perspective, a lot of that culture, for lack of a better term, grew around the "Slasher" movie craze where the main focus was on the monster and everything else was either pushed aside or tweaked so that they wouldn't draw attention away from the monster. That's honestly the reason why I hate it when "Slasher" films are in the same category as horror movies when they are in no way scary. Out of all the slasher monsters, the only one who instilled any fear in me was Chuckie and that's only because I have a puppet phobia! (Please note that I am in no way an expert and haven't fully watched any horror movie cause I'm a baby & prefer psychological horror)
Nicolas Warren Good point, well made. In terms of ‘Slasher’ being a distinct genre, I’d argue it’s a sub-genre of horror, which is more of an all-encompassing umbrella term. I mean, ‘Psycho’, ‘Eraserhead’ and ‘The Exorcist’ are all classified as horror films, but they’re horrific in very distinct ways.
@@BenCol Fair point with the sub-genres. I guess I'd just like distinctions between horror movies that are scary and horror movies that just want to use the aesthetic. Like if I walked into this conversation and said Nightmare before Christmas was my favorite horror movie, I'd get weird looks but I wouldn't technically be wrong. The film just uses its horror elements in a different manner than other movies. It shows off the fun and whimsy that spooky stuff can have instead of trying to scare you (which it still can but you'd probably have to be young and/or unsettled by stop-motion).
After the Empire finally fell, he had to find something else to do with his time, and while narrating over the deaths of pathetic douchebags doesn't have the punch of raping all of India, it's a hobby.
3:39 As the only person to get a character killed in my movie night playthrough, I feel this. Missed a single QTE and it was over. Had to sit and watch everyone else play the last half of the game.
4:31 *An Inherent Issue with Branching Narrative* I think this is less an inherent issue and more an issue with the execution. It also depends on whether the characters are allowed to grow or change during the story. But a branching story can have a solid philosophical stance, it will just manifest itself in different ways depending on the player's choices. Though considering previous comments, like the ones in the ego reviews, I'm wondering if that character is allowed a happy ending because the player has the option to *NOT* play him as a sex pest, and that's just not registering with Yahtzee?
The last time I found the story and the cinematics to be engaging in a cinematic game, was back in Asura's Wrath. Sure a story about an angry dad punching blokes in order to get his daughter back, isn't ground breaking story telling, but the characters were fun and the events so over the top they reached the stars. Too bad the gameplay got in the way.
@@Linosek279 Max's hype and rage vid on it was glorious. Also loved Cryaotic's full playthrough, and he adored that game so much that he was righteously ANGRY at the end that it wasn't developed to it's full potential.
"Although I am unusually good at QuickTime events, I learned how to react quickly during my time as chief skirting board cleaner at the hospital for compulsive buggerers" Is now my new favourite "Yahtzee's over descriptive sentence"
I immediately loved the idea. Bruce Campbell doing a parody of such movies in a game format to show how the idea is one that should die now? That sounds like it'd be a cult classic. Not a money maker, but a cult classic.
@Zack Smith Neither of which are storytelling games. Sure, they *have* a story. Some may even play the games exclusively for said story (more common with Dark Souls than with side-scrolling action games). But, the story isn't the focus of the game. Dark Souls is a third-person action RPG with a focus on challenge and using iteration to build player skill. Side-scrolling action games are just that: 2D side-scrolling punch-ups. Both are built on the solid foundation of their respective primary gameplay loops. Not so with "story" games. These games exist for one reason only: to tell their story. Their primary loops tend to be either absolute trash or flatly underwhelming so, if someone isn't interested in the story, they have no reason to play the game. But, plenty of people play Dark Souls and side-scrolling action games without giving a toss about the story. The story is a nice bonus, but it's ultimately ancillary to the game itself. TLDR: Dark Souls and Side-Scrolling action games are not "storytelling" games of the type referenced by the original commenter.
Yeah, that kinda undermines the inherent ability of multiplayer games to CREATE emergent stories from friends playing together. Not saying it's impossible though. Maybe some other team can make a good one someday, learning from the mistakes of this one.
After having watched Until Dawn LPs god knows how many times since it first came out and having just finished watching Markiplier play through Man of Medan shortlu before this was uploaded. I can confidently state that for all its awkward and weird character behavioural moments. Until Dawn is a much better game then Man Of Medan For example, i actually liked and sympathised with the brother in Until Dawn and wished he ACTUALLY survived, while with MoM i couldnt give a single toss to any of them at all.
oh yeah totally. i was annoyed with the singleplayer bit. but fortunately, i saw someone play the game on their first try multiplayer. and it seemed a lot more fun to them compared to someone playing singleplayer. they even developed more interest in their characters. since well they had to basically protect them from the others at times :D
@@-Big_Big I watched another video (GamongSins I think) and he said that you miss large chunks of the story doing Single Player where why certain things happen and characters end up make no sense
@@Pallysilverstar yup its annoying but they made it practically impossible for a singleplayer to play all roles, since a lot of them are at the same time and the jumping back and forth would be horrible.
@@-Big_Big Multiplayer on a game like this was a dumb idea. When I did my playthrough of Until Dawn I never thought it could be improved by multiplayer. Having a different person control each character would be fun, especially if none had played it and they were only in the room when their character was.
I actually really like it me and a friend played through it (twice as of writing) and admittedly I haven't seen the single player through so I don't have anything critical to say of that
My disappointment comes from the root cause of what's happening in the sequel. **Spoiler warning** I like the first one because it had a supernatural reason with the wendigos. But with this one it turns out to be chemical warfare in the form of a gas that causes you to hallucinate. That just seems so dull in comparison.
Tabletop roleplaying games require an active host, however; someone who can not only guide the players but adapt and react as they make unexpected choices that might alter their paths toward a goal or destination. This is hard to replicate in a video game... for now, at least.
If there's a somewhat cool part about Man of Medan, it would be how in the multiplayer mode the players can see two different things despite being in the same scene (though if you're in a vc with the other dude the trick is easily found really early)
4:55 Honestly, even the jump scares weren't getting me... That's not me saying, "I'm so macho" it's me saying the scares sucked. It's actually something you'd see from a cheap haunted house tour. Here is a list of some of the jumpscares we get: 1. A Latex mask falling out of a locker 2. A coffin full of blood and a hand jumps out at you and does nothing else 3. Bathroom and locker doors close 4. A toilet fills up with blood 5. A corpse (In a well lit room) turns its head to look at you and... Does... Nothing else................ 6. Sometimes a persons face will become really dry and boney and they will scream at you Do these all sound cheap, lazy, tacky, and boring? Well that's cuz they are and didn't frighten me. As for the atmosphere? Not scary to be honest. I was more worried about the psycho pirates coming after me with guns and heavy objects to bash my head in. - So it's not even a scary game... Horrible characters who you don't want to see live (but probably will live), bad writing, boring gameplay, and it's not scary. This game has no selling points... Therefore I am not buying it.
There were a few really good bits that weren't so much jumpscares as they were 'blink and you'll miss it' spooks. Like the guy in the back of the room during the theater hallucination, or the random flickers of the sailor lady while exploring the ship. And the repeating hallway bit was decent too.
I love ZP but I gotta admit i don't ever laugh out loud at the jokes but the line about learning to react quickly working as the skirting board cleaner at the hospital for compulsive buggers had me actually cackling.
@@oligb1469 Yep but not only have you got to learn the difference between There, Their and They're. You also gotta learn the difference between To, Two and Too
@@rickyyoung Is it an american thing? Because in all my 27 years of life I have never seen "They're" used in any piece of literature I have seen, also that last part kinda uncalled for.
The game is terrible, but what's even worse is that it's somehow even more terrible than Until Dawn. What are these people even doing? Did someone leave the team? Budgets cuts despite Until Dawn being popular? I guess we can't know for now.
weird how in a horror game you have to TRY to kill the characters. They must have realised this at the very and and said, "Hurry! Put a rat in his chest! Make the other person look like a monster! Now hive them a knife!"
Wow they called it the Dark Pictures Anthology? When Universal Studios started their Dark Cinematic UNiverse that didn't make it past movie 1 (the new Mummy movie that made all kinds of no sense.) Bit like calling your new ship Titanic isn't it?
The only type of branching storytelling I like is the one found in games with just text. Basically the "choose your own adventure" books from ones childhood minus the sweet pictures but hey, human imagination is pretty OP so who needs them. Unlike these "interactive movie" games their stories don't get interrupted by annoying "gameplay" that is just tacked onto the story, so there is no walking from A to B and no "press X to not die as fast". They're ALL about the story instead of being about the story and then some irrelevant extras on top. I really don't get why putting lame gameplay into a (potentially) great story seems like a good idea to some developers. Sure, they COULD try to make the gameplay way more interesting but then again that would eat up a lot of money and ressources just to make a minor part of the game (the actual gameplay) more fun so why even bother having that in there at all if everyone just comes for the story anyway? The developers seem to make it way harder on themselves than there is any need to.
Ehhhhhhhh - I remember that once we had an Halloween event with my chumps where we played Until Dawn and everyone rolled who will they play as - I was playing as that blond girl that you could strip if you know what that other, bear face looking guy, should do. Ofc that character was played by a dense soldier block who is not into video games. With his briliant moves my character was killed at the start of the game and I was drinking booze and being bored as hell through the night :( So screw this! ]:
Well, considering Until Dawn is one of my all-time favorite games (I've played through it at least 30 times), and the plot of this one sounds reminiscent of several horror movies I really like, this might be just the game for me, right? RIGHT???!!!!!!!
Not really. While UD had truly terrifying monsters, the psychiatrist was a truly interesting and mysterious character, and the plot mixed supernatural and natural elements to keep things interesting, you'll find Man of Medan to be just... inferior, in all regards.
Such a shame. At least it's not a direct sequel to Until Dawn, so I can still have fun with that game's branching paths without some but not all of them being canon.
I ended up playing this with two friends and we were upset at how engaged we were at it. We started thinking this was just another schlock filled horror movie with qte's and ended it realizing that we somehow cared for the unlikable shitstains, and Brad, in our care.
Admittedly it has it has its flaws, but overall I thought it was rather good. I especially liked the development team used inspiration from the real ghost ship the SS Orang Medan.
Yeah, Man of Medan just didn't cut it for me. I felt nothing for any of the characters, and went through it purely to see how they would die. At least with Until Dawn I found myself actually giving a shit about a few of them, and called it a win when they, at least, survived.
I really don't get the hate for this game. I loved it. Just wish the game I PRE ORDERED actually came with the PRE ORDER bonus so I can get all the achievements.
Zero Punctuation is getting better as Yahtzee challenges himself more and more. Ten years of watching dick jokes and shitty video games getting trashed many of these episodes are insightful about the role of story in games. I appreciate this show so much.
