Lost in Space
Pacific Drive | Fully Ramblomatic
Atop the ever-expanding mass of isekai fantasy RPGs and isekai visual novels, we must now add what I can only describe as an isekai "post-dad" game.
In Pacific Drive, you play a character who decides, one lovely afternoon, to drive through a radioactive exclusion zone and gets transported to a post-apocalyptic world wherein he is possessed by his car and has to drive around a lot, maintain said car, loot buildings, pack shopping, and occasionally flee from dimensional aberrations and collapsing realities while listening to character dramas on the radio.
Yahtzee likes it, despite finding it a bit thin in some places.
Edited by Fighteer on Mar 13th 2024 at 12:44:53 PM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Somebody get this freaking duck away from me!
So was there not a FR this week?
meow
No, Yahtzee's been filming Adventure Is Nigh.
jamie-b-good.tumblr.com
Redmess
Oh,t hat was it? I was wondering.
Isekai sure is popular lately, yeah.
Optimism is a duty.
Yahtzee is also at a convention this week so he may not have had the time to make a full video in addition to everything else.
Edited by Adannor on Mar 23rd 2024 at 5:32:26 PM
Lost in Space
Between AiN and GDC, the Second Wind crew has been busy.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Lost in Space
From the Second Wind Discord, Fully Ramblomatic will resume on April 3. This week we should start getting GDC videos to make up for it.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Lost in Space
Yahtzee Showcased Starstruck Vagabond at GDC 2024 | Fully Ramblomatic
As a "jaded veteran" of the games reporting scene, Yahtzee had the opportunity to experience GDC from the opposite perspective this year: a developer showing off their product. He came away from it with a pile of tips for improving Starstruck Vagabond's tutorial and a renewed appreciation for how bad games journalists are at playing game demos at game conventions.
Best thumbnail in a long time.
Edited by Fighteer on Mar 27th 2024 at 12:19:44 PM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Team Rocket Boss.
My, I still remember when Consuming Shadow was still an upcoming product.
I'll teach you a lesson about just how cruel the world can be. That's my job, as an adult.
Lost in Space
Why Truly Original Games Are So Rare | Semi-Ramblomatic
Yahtzee uses Balatro as an example of a truly original game mechanic and laments the fact that so many of them have adopted nearly identical formulas.
We also learn that Yahtzee, like me, plays the Spelling Bee game in the New York Times app. Relatable.
Edited by Fighteer on Mar 28th 2024 at 2:19:24 PM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Lost in Space
Alone in the Dark | Fully Ramblomatic
AKA "Stop pestering me to review Dragon's Dogma II or Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. I'll get to them!"
This is, what, the third game with that title? Do they not realize that future librarians will be cursing their souls? Alone in the Dark (2024) is a "reimagining" of the original, and I never played any of them so I have no personal stakes in this one. Yahtzee finds it to be uninspired, lacking much in the way of scariness. He also can't stand a main character who acts like a prat while wearing a trilby. Yahtzee wears a fedora.
Edited by Fighteer on Apr 3rd 2024 at 4:32:45 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
... oh wow. I had no idea that Rebirth was the second in the FFVII remake saga. The titles are so Re-generic that I just thought people were talking about the original again because time is a flat circle.
Found a Youtube Channel with political stances you want to share? Hop on over to this page and add them.
Lost in Space
Yahtzee and JM8's GDC 2024 Adventure!
This isn't a FR episode, but it involves Yahtzee, so away we go! Blimey, those are some amazin' British accents at the start. JM8 is another Second Wind content creator, by the way.
Edited by Fighteer on Apr 8th 2024 at 5:59:45 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Lost in Space
Dragon's Dogma 2 | Fully Ramblomatic
Ah, here we go. Bets on Yahtzee taking the piss out of the microtransactions debacle? Edit: In fact, he deliberately skirts it. Fair enough.
His first major complaint is about the single save slot. Yeah, that would probably piss me off a bit too.
His second major complaint is that the pawns continue their habit of repeating the blindingly obvious at a rate that could be used in a clinical setting to induce murder fantasies.
His third major complaint is that the game docks your max health if you load a... if you load a save... in a game with one slot and autosaves... I'm losing the power of speech.
Edited by Fighteer on Apr 10th 2024 at 12:21:26 PM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Disasturbator
> His third major complaint is that the game docks your max health if you load a... if you load a save... in a game with one slot and autosaves... I'm losing the power of speech.
I can only assume this to stop people from save scumming..
New theme music also a box
Lost in Space
It's okay to prevent save-scumming in Roguelikes, or even Soulslikes. Permanent consequences are fine if the game expects you to restart frequently and/or gives you the opportunity to win back the stuff you lost.
But for a persistent-world RPG with autosaves, it's deliberately torturing the player.
Edited by Fighteer on Apr 10th 2024 at 12:31:21 PM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
And this is a new feature. The old game force you to reload the last save if you die and the checkpoint isn't usually too far away.
E.T technically is a Isekai movie
Disasturbator
"foolish player,I control the saving and loading feature!" cackled the mad mage as he erased their saves and all their progress.
New theme music also a box
Lost in Space
The Importance of a Good Monster Introduction | Semi-Ramblomatic
The "monster introduction" is the point when a game flips from whatever it was doing in its intro/setup to "it's time to pop some caps". It is, therefore, an extremely important part of these games. It can be as simple as, "There are monsters now, time to pop some caps," or as fancy as a full-blown cinematic or in-game cutscene.
Yahtzee is officially tired of the version where the gameplay halts so the camera can show us the monster bursting through a wall, flexing its gore-strewn muscles, and roaring at nobody in particular.
Edit: One of my favorite ways to introduce a monster is to catch glimpses of it wrecking other people's shit, which builds up the tension as you know it'll be your turn soon enough.
Edited by Fighteer on Apr 11th 2024 at 12:16:04 PM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Oh, bother.
One of my favorites wasn't quite a monster per se: Ares the God of War from the first, uh, God of War game.
As Kratos, your mission is the "simple" task of killing a god. As you arrive at the ruined city of Athens which Ares and his forces are attacking, you eventually get a glimpse of Ares.
He's a giant, towering over the battlefield. That one shot makes it clear just how huge a task Kratos has been ordered to do, with a good chunk of the game simply being to retrieve the artifact that will grant him the power to kill a god.
Disgusted, but not surprised
Lost in Space
Half-Life 2 is extremely effective at introducing the Combine as a brutal, omnipresent, occupying force. Striders, for example, are seen walking through the streets long before you ever have the opportunity to fight one.
As you slowly build up your arsenal, the game obligingly offers up these previously invincible foes for you to shoot at.
Edited by Fighteer on Apr 12th 2024 at 10:41:02 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Lost in Space
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth | Fully Ramblomatic
Here it is: the one we've all been waiting for. Will Yahtzee finally like a Final Fantasy game? Will the Earth be taken over by genetically altered mantis-men? Stay tuned!
Wait... radio towers and crafting mechanics? Did Ubisoft accidentally trip and spill a pile of Far Cry into its JRPG nostalgia-bait remake? It has Gwent, too, so add CDPR to the drug-fueled boardroom orgy.
Apparently Square Enix thinks, in the diseased pile of zombie brains that occupies its executive suite, that what let the original FFVII down was that there weren't enough minigames.
Edited by Fighteer on Apr 17th 2024 at 12:16:19 PM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Don't most modern rpgs have some kind of crafting system? Without googling, Dragon Quest XI, Persona 5, Lost Odyssey, Witcher III and Ultima VII come to mind.
Edited by harkko on Apr 17th 2024 at 9:58:30 AM
Absolutely no relation to NLK
It's a really good game with a ton of content but there's some good criticisms there. The pacing, open world, overabundance of minigames and erratic tone let it down. I'd also say something about the plot but that's more subjective.
Dopants: He meant what he said and he said what he meant, a Ninety is faithful 100%.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is the game I cite most often when discussing moral choice systems done well.
Most importantly, it's believable that Geralt would be struggling with these questions in-universe. You are roleplaying. In an RPG. Who woulda thunk it?
Edited by Fighteer on Mar 12th 2024 at 10:28:32 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"