Yahtzee Croshaw (Zero Punctuation, Fully Ramblomatic)

Last week's ZP review of Tunic is now available for non-members.

First, this technically counts as reviewing Kirby and the Forgotten Land, but Yahtzee has decided that he has nothing interesting to say about this sort of thing when it's clearly meant for kids and not for him. He could swear at it and make jokes about Kirby's appearance but who would benefit?

Tunic is a retro-style hack-and-slasher with Soulslike elements, so it fills out at least a quarter of the indie Bingo card right out of the gate. Despite that, Yahtzee is into it. The mechanic wherein you collect pieces of the game's manual while playing the game and have to figure them out from the images alone is worth an interest spike all by itself.

He doesn't particularly like how the difficulty curve spikes at the boss fights and he's not a fan of the inventory system, which doesn't pause the game while you use it. But he does recommend it, overall.

This week: Weird West, which we will talk about next week.

Edited by Fighteer on Apr 20th 2022 at 12:18:35 PM

In this week’s video he mentions people who don’t realize when he’s being facetious, particularly bringing attention to jokes he’s made on the show about women. I remember a few pages earlier in this thread that came up, and apparently people thought those weren’t just more jokes? His whole schtick is off-color jokes, but for some reason people were assuming that when he says something like women being out to steal his happiness or whatever he’s being serious?

I Was Just Joking as a defense for grossly offensive behavior only goes so far. A lot of Yahtzee's humor, especially in his olden days, was off-color enough to be really problematic if looked at in isolation. I can laugh at it because I've watched enough to know that he's not actually homophobic or misogynistic, but also because I'm not in one of the groups of people he was hitting with those jokes.

Edited by Fighteer on Apr 20th 2022 at 4:07:45 AM

I'm gonna keep an eye out for Tunic, seems like the sort of game my wife would love.

Zelda-esque games seem to be a trend on indie games in the last couple years, Tunic certainly feels like one of the more high-quality ones.

First, this technically counts as reviewing Kirby and the Forgotten Land, but Yahtzee has decided that he has nothing interesting to say about this sort of thing when it's clearly meant for kids and not for him. He could swear at it and make jokes about Kirby's appearance but who would benefit?

I take issue with this! First, some of the shit the game wants you to do is actually pretty difficult. Most of the worst is optional, but the area bosses are pretty brutal. Second... the game is really good. Genuinely the most fun I've had in some time. I've played games meant for kids and kids alone, and they are not like that

I think it still has enough quirks and foibles there's potential for a fun review there, but if Yahtzee can't see past the character designs, that's his loss

His whole schtick is off-color jokes, but for some reason people were assuming that when he says something like women being out to steal his happiness or whatever he’s being serious?

For the misogyny in particular, his early output beyond just ZP showed some questionable attitudes towards women and romance. It was never really a huge problem, but, uh, noticeable

Zelda-esque games seem to be a trend on indie games in the last couple years, Tunic certainly feels like one of the more high-quality ones.

By all accounts, it has much more to do with Dark Souls than Zelda

...I wish there were more Zelda-likes out there

Adventure Games Never Died, They Just Stopped Being Good | Extra Punctuation

The fact they are akin to reading a book that forces you to do a crossword puzzle to unlock every chapter is a big reason I never got into Point-and-Click Adventure games.

Along with stupid puzzles with no hints forcing you to look up the solution in a guide

Tbh that video plus having played the Sierra games back in the day leave me with the impression that there never really was a big swathe of good games in the genre at all, merely a few good standouts. We played it because it was all there was, because that's what could be done with the limits of hardware, not because the games were good.

I played a few adventure games back in the day, but what turned me off on the genre as a whole was the seemingly arbitrary and illogical nature of most of the puzzles, plus the trial-and-error of the gameplay itself. One of my favorite such games was The Dig, which is ironic because apparently it was a terrible game. Nobody told me, and I ended up liking it, so I guess I'm just an idiot.

I was really happy that I could actually read the first line of Japanese (You committed a mistake) in the Tunic review. The last two and a half years of studying Japanese finally turned out to be good for something! The second line (He is an egg with dubious motives) was more challenging, and I had to look up most of the words.

Edited by storyyeller on Apr 23rd 2022 at 1:12:01 PM

This week on ZP: Weird West

Oh, he liked this one. The bit about hating women... is Yahtzee reading this thread?

Remember, this video went up a week ago and was made the week before that. I'm fairly sure we discussed the women thing in response to it, not prior to it. Although it wouldn't totally surprise me if Yahtzee reads this thread, since he has mentioned TV Tropes in the past.

I doubt he cares enough to read the forums.

He mostly reads quotes and the funny page because, according to the man himself, he is pretty bad at judging how his own jokes land.

Sounds like some weird, janky fun.

But, yes, I have to imagine it's a serious struggle to watch Yahtzee if you can't tell when he's being facetious.

This week’s subject is a game that came out a few years ago, which Yahtzee is reviewing now because the release schedule is rearing its ugly head: 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, another “weeb shit” game.

The TV Tropes page says that the Switch version just came out, so that's probably why he's reviewing it now.

I've heard a lot of praise for that game's story (and a small controversy over the localization). Always meant to give it a go eventually.

Last week's ZP review, on 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim is now available for everyone.

Oh, my. Teenagers getting in Giant Mecha to kill God with The Power of Friendship might be in the running for the Most Overused Anime Idea Ever, next to Loser Inexplicably Attracts Harem, and the fact that they have to take their clothes off to operate said mecha is about the only part of this thing that Yahtzee unironically enjoyed.

Unfortunately, he couldn't finish it because the combat system was too boring to make up for the implied nudity, which really says something about the standards of these developers... or more properly the standards of their audience.

Coming up: Teardown.

Edited by Fighteer on May 4th 2022 at 8:12:05 AM

TL;DR: Just off Early Access, design document was basically just the words “It is a physics puzzler”, has some interesting elements.

Presumably works that pull this are all going for a mid-story twist where it turns out that no, you're not in present day Tokyo, you're somewhere completely fantastical. I know that SMT V did this, too. Are there other high-profile examples of this trope in action?

We agreed not to talk about the current week reviews until everyone can watch them. The website doesn't count.

It's not Tokyo, but The Big O does something similar.