The Medium (Zero Punctuation)
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- Опубліковано 16 жов 2024
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This week on Zero Punctuation, Yahtzee reviews The Medium.
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To be fair, I ALSO felt like shooting myself in the head when I went to my highschool reunion.
I'm going to click the Wish app ad at the bottom of the screen. Then probably buy some anime T-shirts of various, unknowable, quality, from presumably the Chinese. Hope that, um, you know, trickles down on yourselves. The idea of suddenly *paying* for UA-cam goes against every sensibility. May you be awash in warm trickle from the wish thing instead. Namaste. 🙏.
Could you mention to Yahtzee that I love Risk of Rain 2 and would like to see what he thinks of it?
Now with twice the dry heaving!
I would if i could watch videos on your website but apparently that stopped working a few weeks ago. Not a great sell for your premium service...
As Waldorf and Statler said, "It's the Medium because it wasn't rare, and it certainly wasn't well done."
Oof
D’ohohohohoho!
I lit a psychic on fire once[by accident, you understand..], my medium was well done.
I might actually play the walking sim where you play as a bloober team dev walking over to a whiteboard and brainstorming, could be fun
Talk about a fantasy game. There has to be SOME realism in games, and I guarantee that has never happened.
Sounds more engaging than whatever this was trying to do.
@@SapphireDragon357 well just have to use our imagination
I would not be terribly surprised to see someone like Supergiant come up with something like that and have it be brilliant.
The story would start with someone looking at the whiteboard markers in Half-Life Alyx and going, “I wonder if I could find a way to carry a whole game with that.”
Obviously, the main character was ready to shoot herself because it suddenly dawned on her that she’d just starred in a Bloober Team game.
I'm not in a Bloober Team game, am I? _You're legally required to tell me if I am._ 🥺
She heard the rumors that those dipshits might get to make an actual silent hill game.
Bloober team: The studio that is 99% artists and 1% disinterested cleaning lady who is their best resource for gameplay ideas.
I was in a Bloober Team game. Funny as hell, it was the most horrible thing I could think of.
@@CerpinTxt87 "The truth split my skull open like a bullet to the brain, Lack of gameplay beyond walking, boring main characters whose name i could never remember, half decent atmosphere and art design which fails to distract me from its flaws, I was in a team bloober game. Funny as hell, it was the most horrible thing I could think of."
The part that really bothers me about the ending is the (unintended I really fucking hope) message it sends when you take the thematic elements into account.
Since the big evil monster is a manifestation of Marianne's sister's trauma, it not being able to be fought and only being able to stop it by either killing the sister or Marianne herself feels like the game is saying "You can't stop trauma or live with it, the only option is for people dealing with it to die". Which, you know, not exactly a good message to send, even if you didn't intend it and just didn't think too hard about what your game is saying.
Yikes.
Also matching pfp pog.
Not the first time for Bloober team either, Blair Witch has the same message. Come to think of it so does Layers of Fear even, I don't think they've made a single game where someone heals or moves on or even just continues fucking living
@Bailey Kerr - Vtuber Playlists I saw the in water ending from silent hill 2 and decided team silent and got the message that horror games have to end with you killing yourself to be emotionally meaningful.
I... I have to help my partner with their sa trauma if I ever heard/experienced that idea from someone they would end up with traumas they would struggle to live with
Just imagine the giant wiggly monster and the girl that it comes from, sitting there, staring at a corpse, confused out of their minds in a desperate attempt to try and parse what this was supposed to accomplish.
“So, uh... you wanna go get some lunch?”
“I’d love to!”
I am ashamed I laughed at the "who wears clothes of a size somewhere between small and large"
Don’t be ashamed. I had to play the joke back to figure it out because I’d nearly forgotten the name of the game by that point.
I didn't get that until I read this comment
@@r.pizzamonkey7379 me nether! hahahahha
I, for one, am not ashamed to have laughed at that joke.
I didn't get it at first, too! I was "wait, is there something wrong with her clothes?" and then after reading this comment "aaahh!" 😂
"More ghosts than a bargain bin at the Call of Duty shop"
Perfection.
This game is titled Medium and the quality is medium.
"It's like poetry. It rhymes." - George Lucas
Giving it number 3 spot on the bland list would just put the cherry on top. Blooper Team might have to fight Ubisoft for it though.
Perfect opportunity to rhyme it with tedium, dagnabit
Weird seeing Kurt Cobain's corpse with an intact skull.
A sentence which makes absolute perfect sense, yet I never expected to read.
That's dark.
Yeah, that Gorilla Glue is some crazy shit I tells ya.
Yahtzee's search for a horror game better than Silent Hill is like when a guy sleeps with THOUSANDS of other women in a desperate attempt to recreate that special feeling one had with the first ever perfect girlfriend they had the misfortune of breaking up with
Apologies for being pedantic but "misfortune" is I am sure what you meant.
@@xi9314 You just mispelled "though", "The", "grammar" and "strict". If they were really as bad as you say, you would be already in grammar jail.
You just scripted the perfect Cinderella porn parody
@@Horvath_Gabor O nough, heed bettur wotch out four the grammer polize.
@@1randomdude4 That's a pretty tall order, Disney's version not withstanding.
Welcome to the Blandest list once again Blooper Team. It's like they're going for a winning streak
Well, they're very consistent in their performance
Not a winning streak... but not a losing streak.
Just an average streak.
@@Guru_1092 A bland streak?
@@Guru_1092 A "Cough cough" streak...
More like a ”cant really be bothered” streak.
When you go through the scary neither word, you're actually playing Medium's Mean Mode.
As jokes go, that was average.
From the high and low ends of the spectrum combined, it's quite divisive.
I like the range of jokes on display here
If you want these jokes to stop, give me a Sin
@@SnivyTries well that was quite the tangent!
I nearly choked on my breakfast burrito when he mentioned Darkseed, it was like somebody opened a door somewhere in the depths of my brain, held shut by decades of neglect and cobwebs.
What's he gonna mention next, The Journeyman Project?
Holy shit. I absolutely adored the journeyman project!!!!
( Oddly it was also the first time I encountered anything regarding buddhism which later lead to a focus on mental health/balance and self care. Trippy. )
maybe Yahtzee killed Rita.
This game had SO much going for it! I was excited about the 3rd person camera and all the Silent Hill nods. The other-world art style was also super cool - based on Beksinski's paintings, it's definitely a new kind of hellscape depiction. Even the cold war Poland setting is something we haven't seen much in games. And yet, it is all undone by being just another Bloober Team game. At least this one dialed back the "turn around and shit is different!" dead horse. Oh, and that "ending" can go straight to hell - utterly undeserved and completely out of nowhere regardless of who got shot.
That ending was a Coward's way out in my opinion.
"YOU decide how the story ends, so I don't have to take a stance"...
Thus pissing off 99% of the people watching it instead of only 50%
Bloober can do a mood and visual allusions better than anyone but they can't write a story for shit
@@HonkeyKongLive So in other words for their next game they should Collab and just do the environment and atmosphere stuff, while someone else does the story? I mean it could work with the right pairing, right?
A camera angle excited you? I feel many people just use words without thinking what they mean these days. Like you were at dinner with people and just had to go on about the third person camera? On more than one occasion? Or did you merely notice the camera and think good like everything else? Why even make immersive games anymore games industry all you need is a third person camera angle to generate excitement apparently.
I love the fact that Yahtzee is so devoted to Silent Hill 2. I find kinship in his weird obsession with that 20 year old masterpiece of atmospheric horror.
It would only be weird if videogames had progressed in that twenty years, which they haven't, really.
I thought that everyone who played and finished it is devoted.
I guess it really isnt that weird
I think I'm a little younger than him because I feel this way about RE4... Currently playing RE7 and I may feel the same about that. Especially Jack's Evil Dead reference!
Because nothing has really touched it yet
And that's pretty sad
I've watched enough RedLetterMedia to know 'cut to black then gun shot' is the single worst possible ending any kind of story can have.
But in The Order it was "Gunshot - Fade to black". Totally different!
Right after "it turned it out was all a dream", you mean.
I'm gonna say 'It was all a dream' beats it. But by _milimeters._
3:21 I have no idea how good a Luigi's Mansion taking place in Silent Hill would be.
For one it would fit the theme of moving further away from a mansion belonging to Luigi, for one.
Bloober: "We've decided to make a new game, that's heavily based on Silent Hill."
Gamers: "Hey, that's not a bad idea! Which franchise title will you be focusing on?"
Bloober: "Shattered Memories!"
Gamers: "So close, but yet so far."
Don't compare this to shattered memories. That game actually has a good story. By far the best of the western silent hills.
@@anenemystand5582 Honestly, if Shattered Memories had nothing to do with Silent Hill, it probably would have been reviewed better. But they just had to go for name recognition, which meant higher expectations that the game didn't ultimately meet.
And for sure, it's got one of the better stories for Western developed Silent Hill games; but that's not a high enough bar to clear to be considered a compliment.
@TheKrossRoads no it's just legitimately good. And it doesn't commit the sin that sh3 and 4 do which is latch on to the cult of silent hill over embracing the more personal fear of silent hill 2. I believe it's story stands up there with the Japanese games. And it was probably one of the few games to actually use the motion controls of the wii in an interesting way even if ultimately the gimmickiness of the wii ages it
@@anenemystand5582 I can agree that the story in Silent Hill 3 was a mess, but the story in Silent Hill 4 was actually really good, probably the best after Silent Hill 2, and it’s only tangentially related to Silent Hill’s cult, since the main antagonist isn’t the cult itself but an undead serial killer who was abused and brainwashed by the cult.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who immediately thinks of dark seed when games clearly demarcate between the real world and the scary other world. In the original silent hill games the boundaries were much blurrier if existent at all. To me that is much more frightening, because at no point are you safe. Loved Darkseed though, Mike Dawson's narration kills me every time.
I groaned at the reveal of Blooper Team being behind this. That just killed any potential of this being a good game.
Well at least those hacks and thieves stole a good game this time, so the game itself isn't terrible. But there's definitely still not a single original idea in the whole thing, pretty much Bloober's signature.
Wow, I completely forgot about The Medium between watching this video on the escapist's site last week and now.
The medium. Title is truly fitting.
I can't believe it's not Silent Hill .
Oh, wait. I can.
Nice
But is it butter though?
It's easy for me to imagine a better world where the Silent Hill series died many games earlier; it's hard for me to imagine what's going through the head of a Silent Hill fan who thinks the series would be better off it it _weren't_ dead forever
"The third person fixed camera adds to the sense of detachment that Survival Horror benefits from".
Whoops. Seems like Bloober Team didn't get that memo before their ill-advised Silent Hill 2 remake.
wonder if they'll redo the apartment complexes to make the corridors wider to accommodate the camera or just make James take up half of the screen
Yes, Akira Yamaoka made music for a World of Tanks halloween event. And it was amazing!
... The music yes. Not so much the WoT part. The event was fun but they only "fix" what aint broke in that game. HE gone. Crews getting removed. OP p2w everything
@@TheDiner50 Blitz or PC? I still have to pay to retrain entire crews on PC.
"I'm quite the troublemaker"
The Medium, where Bloober continues to show how they really don’t understand and seemingly don’t care about trauma and the people who experience it by implying that the only way people can escape trauma is by dying, with a game that’s just wrapped up in a bland package.
"schrodinger's protagonist" really got me laughing
2:44 My inner Retsupurae fan has just hit a nostalgia overload.
*Mother's head explodes*
"I waited 6 hours for this!"
Oh, how I lost it that day.
@@DPCP-h9u I just think about ring toss "hey ya missed pal!"
Same here lol
The more I learn about this game, the more it seems like Yahtzee was shockingly kind to it.
So basically you’re telling me it’s Silent Hill as explored by Danny Phantom
It could hardly be worse than a bare majority of Silent Hill games, proving that Yahtzee's correct: the only valid position for a Silent Hill fan is to support the death of the series, and the ideal hypothetical situation for that fan is time traveling back to kill it many years before it died
Danny Phantom as a horror game would be an amazing premise for a horror game actually.
Anyone remember the anime on old school adult swim, i think it was called mushi shi. Something like that. It was about a dude who investigated crazy paranormal events. Each episode was seperate, but great. Id like a silent hill inspired game like that. Seperate locations and events, and different ways to finish them. I think that could be something great.
Great Anime and agree could be done as a game
I was kinda curious about Medium, then I discovered that it included chase sequences and no combat, and I decided it wouldn't be for me.
After seeing the ending on a let's play I know I made the right choice.
Could be my processor or maybe a damaged stick or RAM or my Power Supply overheating, but the game crashed my computer twice during the same cutscene regardless of how long I'd been playing for, so I refunded it. Sounds like I saved myself some money.
The Medium : An example of a Developer showing self awareness in giving their game a title reflecting the audience's probable reaction.
Or,
The Medium, it certainly was.
Ya mean, "Medium rare"? 🙄😇😁
@@Deathbrecht ; )
Yahtzee’s similes and one liners never cease to entertain me.
Interestingly, another really good horror game that I think was severely hurt by shoe-horning in long combat segments in "the other world" is Deadly Premonition. It seemed to me like it was all set up for tense "avoid and hide from the monsters" scenes with combat being the fail condition that you wanted to avoid, but then combat became the primary way of dealing with it because it was more effective and you had weapons well-suited to it. Plus multiple boss fights you couldn't avoid nor overcome with anything but combat.
Love that Yahtzee brought back the little endcard joke story things, really missed those.
Wait this game doesnt have Patricia Arquette in it?
That is a very good question. Why didn't they?
Difficulty and the whole choice to run or try to kill the monsters are the most effective ways for video games to get you tense. When you know what you need to do, or the game is too easy, you feel safe. Trying to figure out if you should waste some bullets or run because you missed the last checkpoint is scary af.
I think it's important to note the origins of the art style, namely the Polish artist Zdzislaw Beksinski. Look him up, he's one of my favorite painters of all time.
I remember that name from when people mentioned Darkwood was inspired by that art style.
His art is amazing but so unbelievably disturbing at the same time. You can instantly tell there was lots of pain in the guy's life-no happy man would make something like this.
"More ghosts than the bargain bin at the call of duty shop" now THAT'S a great one
"astral leaf bower"
"jiggly flaps"
- Yahtzee, 2021
So this game is better played by watching a walk-through of it on UA-cam - got it
Yeah, there are a handful of engaging puzzles and some things that benefit from playing yourself but not really enough to justify the full price, especially when the game is only about 8-10 hours long.
This dev pretty much should just make movies.
The game is best played by feeding it through a paper shredder.
I mean, obviously not, watching a walk through of a piece of interactive media is incomparable to actually playing it.
@GiRayne I think you can say how a game feels, at least somewhat, from watching a walkthrough. Sure it's not the same experience, but especially for games like this it's gonna be pretty similar. There's really not a whole lot of difference between watching a character walk through a spooky swimming pool and watching a character walk through a spooky swimming pool while holding the stick to the right.
2:13 That is the worst joke I've ever laughed out loud at. Bravo.
“All I want is interesting new horror games that benefit from Silent Hill’s influence.” In that case, I may have just the game for you. Omori is an RPG Maker game that is sort of like a cross between Silent Hill and Earthbound. People are calling it the next Undertale.
despite being a turnbased rpg he may really like it because its a very different horror game. The horror elements are actually sparse but effective and while someof it can be blatant in its symbolism, the deeper, more important stuff isn't
@@sarafontanini7051 Yeah. With the amount of spoilers about the game, I wouldn’t be surprised if Yahtzee pulled an Undertale and made a 5-second review as part of the end of year Top 5s.
For a game that claims to be inspired by Silent Hill, it feels more like it's inspired by Siren: Blood Curse, that game that also had the split screen real/horror vibe, right down to the epilepsy vision. Honestly, the game comes off like it's name: not great, not awful, just Medium. But then, the game also gave me a headache trying to figure out both screens at once, and I don't really enjoy that.
Silent Hill 2: Multiple endings that play off your choices
Medium: *"DONT STOP, BELIEEEEVING"*
I hope someone actually gets this
Close, but closer would be "DON'T STOP--"
The end credits visual gag got me good, I did _not_ expect that!
Ah yes, the 5th Beatle: Akira Y'Moka.
Okay, that shadow skull hand monster is genuinely disturbing. Well done Yahtz!
Jack from RLM is also part of The Escapist? Heck, small world!
When I mishear "parties unknown" as "partisan gnomes", I reckon I'm having a good day 😂
Konami must have seen this video and completely misunderstood the point Yhatzee was making
I shudder at the thought of what horrors lurk at Skegness Butlins O_O
As a person who grew up in West Yorkshire, and would frequently be dragged to Skegness on holiday as a child, I really appreciated that "Skegness Butlins" joke. Very very niche, thank you Yahatz.
Compared to other games in the genre, i still liked it. And it's art was beautifully done. Also, liked the split screen mechanic, although yes, the puzzles could have been a lot harder and the sense of dread was just lacking after the first hour or so.
I love the fact that for the last what 15 years of doing this, he has allways had the 2 end credit lines and final anamation lol.
Comment for the algorithm. Behold my engagement.
No Yahtzee, it's a Blooper Team game. There should be some secret ending where you have to get deliberately abused by a specific type of ghost that was an ex of your past so when you kill the villains, your ex comes alive so you can kill them again (or some overly melodramatic nonsense like that)
I want to play a game by Blooper Team. It sounds like it would be more fun.
Oh spec ops the line, one of my favourite reviews yahtzee has ever done and one of the few games I remember actually feel something at the end... Can't remember the last time that happened in a game
Disco elysium and outer wilds are quite cliche games to bring up for great stories but give those a try if you haven't. OW has probably my favourite game ending and it's on game pass so that's cool. DE builds up its characters more than anything else I've ever played (probably because the game is 95% text lol) and I really felt like I was missing something when i finished it
@@jes3788 I bought the outer worlds and got as far as the tutorial bit and just turned it off and have never played it since.
I have been playing Subnautica, and it's a game that is fantastic to watch people play, but is very slow...
I think I got old, and shooting people in the face lots and lots just lost its appeal... I guess I will just play fishing simulators and make up my own plots.
Thank you for the suggestions! I will give them a go
@@shaderax_storm6165 @Shaderax_Storm I think you've confused the outer worlds and outer wilds there, a lot of people do lol. Outer wilds is also a space game but there's no combat, it's a mystery game. Always been meaning to give subnautica a go though, seems like something I might like
Man, I'd LOVE an upscaled Darkseed for consoles and PC. That was one of my favorite games on my Amiga.
"Wash hands of whole affair/Ski trip" seems more like one example than two, lol
The ending gag where the dead body pickpockets her really made me laugh, that was unexpected.
"that's why Disney can sell haunted zyklon b canisters with C3PO on the front of them " gawd damn!
Please explain, that just flew over me. T_T
It was a cyanide based pesticide used in combat. Notably, WW2
Er,well, is a cyanide based pesticide
@@My_Naginta ahhh. Thanks :)
I've got to be honest I wasn't expecting much from what is essentially a Zdzisław Beksiński painting simulator.
What if it's a twist ending, where everything in the game was all a dream?
Still would've been bad. "Twist endings" like that tell people that the entire plot was actually much less interesting than they thought. They also say to me that directors who use those endings have no imagination.
Damn that intro riff still hit different
"This is not a very good biscuit." - Mary Berry
"Random document pickups"
Don't you mean...
🎶Random documents and audio logs🎶
Boy I just watched this, good to know people out there still remember dark seed, played that one as a child and was so weird to play (coming from monkey island to dark seed was the weird part)
“More ghosts than the bargain bin at the call of duty shop.” 😂😂😂
I think the end was something like the maw/monster needed a medium strong enough to eat to gain their strength to escape. And Marianne was what it was looking for.
Appreciate the reference to Dark Seed, I have fond memories of trying to figure that one out.
Something that doesn't ever fail to be underlined by the 3rd person camera in silent hill is a feeling that the darkness is nearly crushing you. Like it's one step away from literally engulfing the character and only barely deems to move away because it can't be assed to squash them.
I really struggle with stationary camera angles. Even the simplest of movements are extremely difficult for me and you can completely forget about me shooting something.
Damn it credits text. With the dog ending being a thing, that is believable and I have no choice but to believe no one else has done the correct contrived sequence of events to find it.
There should be some kind of law that you are not allowed to do a cliffhanger ending if your product is not good enough to get a sequel.
It sounds like the writers and designers were intending on having a combat element, and then the programmers showed up and said, "Hey Um... Just so you know, our engine really can't support combat... So... Have it happen in the cutscenes?"
All the endings made sense in Spec Ops the Line. Thats what made it so damn good.
No combat? Thank you Yahtzee, for once again giving me the important game review news I can actually use. In this case, use to safely avoid this one. No combat means no deal, monsters you can only avoid aren't fun or scary. Just tedious and annoying.
@David Palero I've heard this come up several times over the years in regards to the no-combat debate. Guess I need to buckle down and play it some day to see it if it is indeed the one game that somehow makes an enjoyable experience out of only avoiding the monsters.
03:23 felt so genuine. There was punctuation here.
I'm not sure what's more surprising, the fact I never played Spec Ops the Line, or the fact it's been nearly a decade and it hadn't been spoiled for me until today.
Christ that Zyklon B reference wasnt ready for that lmao
I gotta say, I'm proud of bloober teams progress. I mean they made a game, with game mechanics. Good job. It might not be everything I'd hope for but baby steps
If this game ends up being on the short list for Year's Blandest, the jokes really do write themselves. "What better game to place as third blandest than one whose name literally states that it aspires to be average?"
It's almost daring him to do it, really.
"haunted zyklon-B cannisters" - damn Yahtzee that got dark
On one hand, I'm inclined to say "fuck you" for spoiling the ending of Spec Ops: The Line at the end, but on the other I feel like enough of a tool for not playing it beforehand that I think I deserved it.
If it helps, Spec Ops has multiple endings. Definitely still play it.
Jesus its been almost ten years now, I've seen the game on sale for less than three bucks. At some point, spoilers cease to be spoilers and start being just history.
Next You'll be mad to hear that the cake was a lie, I reckon.
I'm just inclined to say "fuck you" to Spec Ops The Line in general.
@@Sylvine It's still a bit frustrating considering there are only so many hours in a day, and that life gets in the way a lot of the time. I had nothing but a shitty laptop that could barely run Half-Life 2 until a few years ago, and only recently I got a gaming PC, so games from 2010 onwards are still mostly unknown territory for me.
Didn't realise anyone else had ever played Dark Seed, to be honest. I appreciate the reference.
I enjoyed the reference to Bloggo's Pow.
Well the Silent Hill comments aged like wine.
Absolutely
that wine has now aged like milk
Ah, Darkseed. If it was still 2016 I would’ve loved ‘Let’s Drown Out Darkseed’
Just imagine the sheer vastness of the shits and giggles they wouldve had if they had ended GoT with black screen + gunshot at the question of who'd be best to have as next ruler
*Yahtzee references Darkseid*
Yahtzee, did YOU kill Rita?
Thanks Yahtzee; I did not expect to have a sweaty nightmare flashback to playing Dark Seed when I was six years old today. These nightmares are giving me a mean headache.
"Somewhere between small and large." Medium? Oooohhhh I see what you did there Yahtzee.
Blooper are the kings of making mid-tier horror
Holy hell thank you for saving me $40 or whatever. After a few minutes of thinking this game sounded sort of okay, if I can catch it on sale while also being in a walking puzzle mood, that ending would've just straight pissed me off.
Intro: "instead of chasing algorithms or the recent trends"
Videos: usually about the recent popular games
I want the sequel or dlc to this game opening on her having shot the monster with the line "we were overwhelming this*.