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[Desdichado]

"Hey this game wiped my hard drive/eats my save file, causes all my characters o stand and cry" "Oh, it's in alpha/beta". No, no, no, no, no. From what I hear, the man has made 30 million dollars on this thing. Tarn's never charged me for a thing, I don't mind calling dwarf fortress unfinished. Notch has made more than many of us will ever see in our entire lives- hiding behind an "oh it's beta" stops working when you're charging people for things that doesn't hold up well from a moral stand point.

Tarn gets money, Notch gets money... No one can eat code and live inside a compiler. I dig your argument that if something is publicly available and thousands of people are spending money on it, then it's not really an alpha, but then that applies to both games. The difference between pay and donation is not that different in a pragmatic view. There's still a large-scale cash flow going on.

[jokermatt999]

Not really.

The ZP guy hates everything, and has only negative stuff to say about the few things he claims to like.  It's neither fun nor interesting to watch once you've seen a couple.

Wouldn't be much of a review, just complaints.

He doesn't hate every game, but his reviews do focus pretty much solely on the nitpicks/negatives on purpose. If you read some of the articles he writes for Extra Punctuation, he goes more into the positives there. I can see how his shtick is annoying some people though, and I can't fault you for that. Personally, I find him helpful as a supplemental review to the generally positive game reviews you see, and I do enjoy the way he words things.

He won't review it because everything he has to say about it has already been said in his minecraft review, DF is a game that makes you work for your reward and is a very complex sandbox/simulator/thingy with a strong fanbase. It's graphics are nil, it's interface is as simple as the cockpit of a helicopter, and it relies on third party programs to make itself playable to anyone sane. (I'm looking at you, DT)

Just insert jokes about learning how to speak Japanese in the time it takes to learn DF into your head, and how the official manual would be a novel in itself and BAM! Yahtzee review.

This is so spot on his style, I read it in his voice. Well done.

And yeah, I don't think DF is very reviewable. In the span of time most reviewers play for, they'd still be butting their heads against the interface, and probably not get to a lot of the content. You can play for months and not get to some things, so it'd be pretty much hopeless for a reviewer.

[Nasikabatrachus]

It would be interesting to see Yahtzee review it, since he's a game designer and DF is very interesting from that standpoint. Probably his written pieces would be better for that, though: a spiel about a 9 year old game in alpha would probably just be confusing to most of the people who watch his videos. He's written about his own game development before, so it would make sense for him to do it in an article.

"Hey this game wiped my hard drive/eats my save file, causes all my characters o stand and cry" "Oh, it's in alpha/beta". No, no, no, no, no. From what I hear, the man has made 30 million dollars on this thing. Tarn's never charged me for a thing, I don't mind calling dwarf fortress unfinished. Notch has made more than many of us will ever see in our entire lives- hiding behind an "oh it's beta" stops working when you're charging people for things that doesn't hold up well from a moral stand point.

It does when you know the state it's in when you buy it. Would you rather he bring development to a crawl, which is what making every release stable would require? The fact that lots of people have bought it entails no additional obligation on Notch's part: they all bought it under the exact same terms. That Notch is now rich and that Notch is charging for access to the beta are irrelevant.

[Asehujiko]

Edit: wrong tab.

[ililiilliillliii]

I would absolutely love a Yahztee review of DF.  Overall I think he's an intelligent person and produces intelligent reviews, but in order to give them comic value he always has to dig on the negative aspects.  DF has tons of negative aspects that he can probably make some pretty funny jokes about, but in the end he'll have to admit that it's one of the deepest, most rewarding games out there once you get past them. 

[nenjin]

It might be funny to hear Yahtzee regurgitate all the DF community joke we already know in his own style (nobles, fire, parenting, blah blah blah), but that would be the only reason. Yahtzee would probably have a stroke before he even got half way through talking about the game.

I watch ZP when I want to hear him hate on something. I've got thumbs and more than two brain cells to rub together, so if I want actual information or some real analysis I get it from somewhere else.

[MasterMorality]

Someone asked this in the escapist forums and I said DF, but then I thought about his experience with Monster Hunter - a game which needs a while to get to grips with too (ie, the entire first bunch of quests), and thought that unless he had a significan't amount of time, at least a month, he'd never be able to review it properly.

[Koji]

If he wants to do it, he will do it, regardless of what anyone thinks.

His reviews generally tend toward favorable when a game is non-generic and well-executed. He is not a fan of competitive multiplayer, and the vast majority of games coming out over the past five years are first person shooters. If he did a review he would probably point out DF's flaws and nod to its more successful aspects. Any review right now by anybody is going to focus on the game's clunky UI--something even Toady has acknowledged. I think a lot of reviewers know about the game and are holding off until they have a more complete product to consider.

[metime00]

It's quite possible he already knows about it, I know the extra credits guys do so it's not that unbelievable. All he would have to do then is 3-5 minutes of rant. He might even forget about most of his gaming pet peeves and say he likes it anyway, that would be funny and unexpected!

You also have to be a little nuts to play this game. Bonus to insanity if you play the default graphics and use no third party mods.

Muahahahahaha! I never even tried playing with any of these things.

And on the subject of ZP's relevance: It's not meant to be a full review, it's him nitpicking or complaining about faults. They're sometimes small, sometimes glaring, but he points out problems that most reviewers don't mention. I think that for every positive review for a game, they should link the reader to the ZP review at the end, because that allows you to see the negative and positive sides of the game. He touches on bad things that other reviewers don't.

[Metroid]

I don't think DF is really a reviewable game. You have to be a hardcore player to know anything about the game in the first place, not to mention the ten thousand foot cliff face of a learning curve.

You also have to be a little nuts to play this game. Bonus to insanity if you play the default graphics and use no third party mods.

I've been playing for a couple years now and have yet to master the various industries. My dwarfs live off of plump helmets and its derivatives, and never have good clothes. I'm just now getting the hang of the military.

[Cespinarve]

"Hey this game wiped my hard drive/eats my save file, causes all my characters o stand and cry" "Oh, it's in alpha/beta". No, no, no, no, no. From what I hear, the man has made 30 million dollars on this thing. Tarn's never charged me for a thing, I don't mind calling dwarf fortress unfinished. Notch has made more than many of us will ever see in our entire lives- hiding behind an "oh it's beta" stops working when you're charging people for things that doesn't hold up well from a moral stand point.

Tarn gets money, Notch gets money... No one can eat code and live inside a compiler. I dig your argument that if something is publicly available and thousands of people are spending money on it, then it's not really an alpha, but then that applies to both games. The difference between pay and donation is not that different in a pragmatic view. There's still a large-scale cash flow going on.

I agree that it applies to both games. If Tarn drops dead tomorrow, god forbid, I'm much happier with DF as it is now than Minecraft. Tarn's a better coder, he diligently works to fix bugs, and I'm confident of his ability to exist without an "alpha/beta" liability shield for when things don't work right.

[Tharwen]

The thing is that most of the issues that he usually complains about are present throughout the whole of Dwarf Fortress. By the time he'd got through his list of complaints, there wouldn't be anything left that he hadn't spoken about.

Also, there isn't really much to say about it. "Dwarf Fortress has an interface that makes people several miles away vomit in disgust and it regularly makes you lose randomly and uncontrollably for no justifiable reason".

There. I just summarised any review of the game ever.

Entirely irrelevant, I thin Tarn is a much more motivated coder than Notch.

Well, Notch has posted several times that he finds coding really boring, so yes.

Also, as far as I can tell, he's been deferring most of the recent work on Minecraft to one of his employees.

[Cespinarve]

The thing is that most of the issues that he usually complains about are present throughout the whole of Dwarf Fortress. By the time he'd got through his list of complaints, there wouldn't be anything left that he hadn't spoken about.

Also, there isn't really much to say about it. "Dwarf Fortress has an interface that makes people several miles away vomit in disgust and it regularly makes you lose randomly and uncontrollably for no justifiable reason".

There. I just summarised any review of the game ever.

Entirely irrelevant, I thin Tarn is a much more motivated coder than Notch.

Well, Notch has posted several times that he finds coding really boring, so yes.

Also, as far as I can tell, he's been deferring most of the recent work on Minecraft to one of his employees.

Yeah, Jens was the competent one, so Notch took him off Minecraft to works on Scrolls, which is a cross between Magic: the Gathering and Yu-Gi-Oh on your computer, i.e. another bloody computer-based card game that no one gives a crap about.

[Cruxador]

The thing is that most of the issues that he usually complains about are present throughout the whole of Dwarf Fortress. By the time he'd got through his list of complaints, there wouldn't be anything left that he hadn't spoken about.

Also, there isn't really much to say about it. "Dwarf Fortress has an interface that makes people several miles away vomit in disgust and it regularly makes you lose randomly and uncontrollably for no justifiable reason".

There. I just summarised any review of the game ever.

Entirely irrelevant, I thin Tarn is a much more motivated coder than Notch.

Well, Notch has posted several times that he finds coding really boring, so yes.

Also, as far as I can tell, he's been deferring most of the recent work on Minecraft to one of his employees.

Yeah, Jens was the competent one, so Notch took him off Minecraft to works on Scrolls, which is a cross between Magic: the Gathering and Yu-Gi-Oh on your computer, i.e. another bloody computer-based card game that no one gives a crap about.

I'm cautiously optimistic about Scrolls, actually.

[BronzeElemental]

I honestly have no idea what people see in minecraft, it's total rubbish in comparison to DF. If that's your kinda thing then go for it but I'll stick with wrestling undead badgers one handed thank you very much.