Jeff can be unpredictable, so I don't know?

He'll almost definitely give it a shot.

The thing I didn't like about the original was the garbage pacing. You spend so much time getting jerked around and not progressing the story or characterization or anything much at all that I finally gave up just halfway through the Mexico section, after the umpteenth person told me to go do something and I did it and then they didn't give Marston the information he was looking for. Or something like that. It's a gorgeous game, has a great atmosphere, has some great voice acting and dialog between characters works really well, but I can't force myself to play it for more than a few hours total anymore. I've tried. Not my thing at all.

I'll second what Justin258 said; Jeff is really hard to predict. Every time I think I've got that guys taste in games figured out, he surprises me.

Hopefully he’ll dislike it *and* write a review with three stars, just so that people will explode with anger.

I don’t know? I finally played through the first one some months ago and while I enjoyed my time with it, it didn’t blow me away. The Mexico part almost made me stop playing it. I did better than at release though, when I stopped playing the crummy PS3 version 3-5 hours in.

Ooh this is a tough one. I'm pretty sure he's going to be okay with it... but not love it. He's going to like some parts, but hate the shooting and story pacing or main character. I'm expecting his opening comment on the game to be an absolutely amazingly sarcastic remark like "Yeah, it's okay" and have everyone else in the room explode with emotions and he's going to just blow them off. It's going to be great lol.

Depends. Jeff generally has little patience for bullshit that gets in the way of the good parts of games and RDR2 seems like it will have a lot of that with all the survival stuff. Also Rockstar games hardly ever have good gameplay so that could be an issue too.

He will play it like it, but then hate it come GOTY discussion. Seems to be what usually happens.

I feel most people can look past an issue, or multiple issues, with an otherwise great game and still think it's great.
I think Jeff is the kind of person that sees anything that he deems an issue and thinks it's a bad game entirely based on that issue/issues.

I don’t think Jeff hates critically acclaimed games, just that his taste as mentioned above can be so incredibly eclectic. Like most people Jeff is severe in judgement when he doesn’t like something and lenient when he does. As an example from the past - I’m with him that Syndicate is a 5 Star game ..except it really isn’t.. I had a blast with it but there were plenty of things that it didn’t do well which I completely glossed over because the positives seem to outweigh the negatives so much more. It’s a hypocritical thing to do but we’re only human after all.

Jeff doesn’t like old school guns and in a game where for the next 50 hours you’ll be doing a whole lot of shooting with old guns that can put a dent on your enjoyment. I also dislike old guns, but I like open world freedom and I’m into the setting so while I’ll bemoan every single WWII shooter for having “guns that aren’t fun to shoot” I’ll happily fire my six shooters in an open world western and have a grand ol’ time.

As for RDR2 I think he’ll enjoy it to a point but I don’t think it will do anything to alleviate his old hangups.

Either way, if Jeff loves it or hates it or anything in between - I’m certain that personally I’ll be having a blast.

Jeff hates old guns and he hates cowboys, so I don't think Red Dead has a chance.

Better question - how many pages of angry comments will there be no matter what Jeff or anyone else’s opinion on RDR2 might be? I’ll say seven.

I'm actually super-curious about this. I don't really care about anyone else's opinion on RDR2 except Jeff's.

Jeff didn’t like RDR so I will be shocked if he likes RDR 2.

It was weird hearing him talk so positively about Bloodborne after talking so much shit about the Souls series, though it seemed like he couldn't be as positive as he wanted to because of how strong his past position was.

Idk, I can see him liking RDR2. Weirder things have happened.

Whenever he really hates on games, I never get the sense that he really gave the games in question a honest-to-god shot. Usually he'll be way more evenhanded with a game he dislikes if he spent some real time with them.

His is pretty much the only opinion on this game I'm actually interested in hearing. His hangups with the first game matched many of my own at the time. I was never able to make it more than about 5 hours in due to having huge issues with many aspects of the gameplay, and finding out that many people hold that game in higher regard than Mass Effect 2 was actually one of the most surprising things I've ever come across. A game can have a fascinating world and story, but if the moment to moment gameplay turns me off I'll never manage to make it through it. Riding horses, the act of shooting and just general gameplay always felt off to me. I've always been kind of bummed about that because everything surrounding that framework seemed like an incredible achievement, but I just couldn't trudge through the way the game felt to me personally. That seemed to be how Jeff fell in a lot of respects at the time as well. If he finds even a bit of enjoyment out of this one while everyone else is singing its praises to the moon and back as I suspect they will I will probably try it, but without that I will likely just hear the story during the game of the year stuff.

I disagree with Jeff on many things, but he's probably right about Witcher III from the hour or so I put into it.

I fully agree with Jeff in regards to the first game, and he likes GTA as I do, but just could not get into RDR, So will be really interesting to see what he has to say about RD2.

I don't care for Westerns much, much I love what Rockstar do with their worlds and storytelling, so I think Jeff will think it's perfectly fine but won't be head over heels like most.

I've come to appreciate Jeff's attitude towards games. You usually know something is special when he talks real positive about a game.

Seven is way too low. Seventeen is more likely. I'm putting it down now that RDR2 is 2018's The Witcher 3, no matter how much praise it gets it still won't be enough for the die-hards and they'll let you know from now until the heat death of the universe.

Everything I've heard about the slow pace of the game and the camp management makes me believe he will be pretty much done with it after maybe like 8 hours. It sounds like it has everything he hates.

Jeff don't give a fuck about atmosphere, or "experience" games. Jeff gives a fuck about mechanics, and if a game don't FEEL good, it's got no chance. The Witcher 3? Movement's weird. Combat isn't as nuanced as a dedicated action game. Fuck that game. Red Dead? If he wants to play a cover shooter he'll play Gears or something. Fuck that game. Resident Evil? Tank controls. Nuff' said.

Unless Red Dead is a world class third person shooter he'll not love it.

What did Jeff dislike about the first game?

I will get annoyed at Jeff being contrarian but ultimately it's not gonna affect my interest in the game whatsoever.

I can't think of an open world game that he's into that doesn't have a fun/irreverent tone. So if this one plays it as serious as they make it sound, I doubt he'll enjoy it. Once you start from that base, he'll identify a number of trivial flaws that take the game down from being "not his thing" to being seriously flawed?

Though it's pretty weird for us to be guessing how much he'll like a game when we don't know how good it is.

Hate is a strong word. I was under the impression that he did not particular like or enjoy his time with the RDR, but that was also due to his distaste for westerns and the setting they take place in. It's not that he hated it, it just didn't play in his wheelhouse.

I don't believe he'll hate RDR2, and I'm sure he can appreciate its strengths and what it does well from a distance, but I'd also be fairly sure that he'll have zero desire to play the game past maybe a handful of hours, if he can even make it past the first couple.

You crazy people. Jeff will hate this.

Uhhh yeah of course. lol without a doubt

Jeff's not alone. Waypoint did a podcast that was almost entirely talking trash about RDR.

@larmer: That's weird considering Austin likes tedious mechanics in games (gun cleaning/maintenance, etc.) It seems like there might be a lot of Far Cry 2ish stuff in this.

Personally that's what i'm afraid of but i'm checking this out despite not loving the original RDR because it's Rockstar's first game made for this gen.

As for Jeff who knows? What's the last open world game he finished? Fallout 4? I dont blame him, they're getting longer and there are more of them. The Wild West isnt one of my favourite settings either.

He will be warm about the game, not wholeheartedly liking it but not dismissing it either (at the very least, he will be impressed for a couple podcasts), for now.

Come GOTY, he will be one of the main proponents of putting it down a couple notches.

It will most likely be like this 'Yeah, Red Dead Redemption 2 is an impressive, incredibly well-made game' with a 'but' somewhere in there that pretty much says that it's just not an experience he's really all that into, leaving some of the other staff gushing about it while he simply listens and chimes in from time to time, perhaps playing devils advocate in his questions (sometimes jokingly, and sometimes not). That's my guess if it comes down to him not really caring for the experience that much. He might like it though, who knows.

Jeff Hates Games. Finally the truth comes out.

Joking aside I think the premise here is overblown. I think sometimes for some games there is this incredible hype train and when somebody looks at it with a more critical eye people react badly at times. Even When the criticism isn't even that bad. I mean, Look at the ridiculous 8.8 fiasco

The thing is his critiques for game like fallout and the witcher are VERY valid and well articulated. One thing I really like about Jeff is that I often get to hear that aspect of games which can really help before a purchase.

This is a weird question.
I would hope he has some criticisms considering he's partially a game critic.

They critiqued it, with good reason, which I consider to be different from "talking trash."

My money's somewhere in the middle. Seven is probably a little too low since any Rockstar release is a big deal. But Seventeen might be a little high since it's not a first-party game and/or it doesn't have cartoon boobs in it. I'll say twelve pages. And I'll go with a prop bet that sets the over/under on five comments that find a way to use any review score it gets to talk shit about Dan.

I'd be shocked it Jeff felt anything more then meh about this game. He disliked the first and that game was pretty fantastic.

It's not that he hates critically acclaimed games, it's that he sees past hype and superficial things that most others praise. He's been in the industry so long that I think he just appreciates innovation, new ideas, and risk taking more than just improving an old formula. I believe he'll think the game is alright but in the end is just another one of those, unless there's something extremely special about it.

This topic reminds me...Jeff really likes the Metal Gear Solid franchise right?

@geirr: Critique just means detailed analysis, doesn’t necessarily mean negativity. They were very negative about RDR.

It's basically a 3D Law of the West/Westerado, maybe he'll like it.

Jeff seems to like a more streamlined experience with a lot of exuberant moments packed into hours than a long drawn out procedural type open world sandbox. And in my opinion his sensibilities are tuned to more urban and analogue abstraction than digitized perfection that also has pitfalls in suspension of disbelief. But I will take a guess and he, just like GTA4, will consider this a five star game. But if any considerable amount of content is sequestered in multiplayer and gated with DLCs, forget about it.

If it's the same horse controls as the first one, then yes he'll not like it.

I'm not a fan either, though I still enjoyed RDR, but after 50+ hours, you get tired of hitting one button again and again and again just to ride on a horse. I get folks who like it (perhaps it adds "realism?"), but come on... isn't your thumb getting tired after a while? I honestly wish they'd make the horse control like AC or MGS.

I'm not sure over-hyped is really a thing here. Over anticipated may be better phrase. Really no one is talking about game yet. I assume there is an embargo date that will hit later this week and than everyone opinions will drop. Currently I think its hard to call game over hyped cause I haven't heard people saying this greatest game ever, yet. Its been years since gta and even longer since first red dead, so people, including me are excited.

I voted he'll love it. lets just call it positive thinking. I don't recall what he disliked so much about first game? foolishly long skinning animations?

If it plays better than the first (second) game then he'll probably be more on board for this one. Better shooting mechanics would go a long way to making the duller parts of the game more manageable.

It sounds like it's got weapon degradation, finicky inventory management and other survival sim type systems going on, I'd say no chance Jeff takes to it.

Jeff doesn't like story in games unless it's cyberpunk- or space-based, and he specifically has said he doesn't like shooty games set before World War II because the guns suck, so the odds are pretty bad that he'll love it.

I'm sure he'll be able to appreciate it being an incredibly well polished game and he might find some parts of it he's really into, but the odds are pretty bad that he'll actually like it enough to finish it, I bet.

Jeff might play it for like 10 hours and enjoy parts of it, but then he'll take a week off and forget what he was doing and never finish it.

He didn't like RDR1 or Breath of the Wild; he's going to despise this. Everything the previews have talked about have seemed like Jeff Kryptonite: character maintenance, horse maintenance, weapon degradation, inventory management, camp management, long involved animations to do anything and everything, "realistic" hunting, etc. etc. etc. Chances are he'll probably be pretty justified, too...I'm as excited for this game as I've ever been excited for a game in my life, and even I'm questioning whether this design approach will shape up into something actually fun.

pretty much this

I am still amazed how Jeff gave Horizon Zero Dawn 5 stars and still managed to throw it under the bus in the GOTY talks.

He is a wild one, unpredictable, keeps you on your toes.