Yahtzee Croshaw (Zero Punctuation, Fully Ramblomatic)

What are you guys' problems with Moviebob?

Well, what said. Like I said, it's nothing personal but I dislike his style of "if I don't like it, no one should" or "if I like it, everyone should." Even when I agree with him, it's super irritating.

But other than that I have nothing against him as a person. Okay, he's whiny. NBD, really. Not like I take issue with his personal politics or anything.

Well, the dude does opinion vids. It is expected that his opinion features heavily in it. I like his videos, really. Yeah, sometimes he's beating a dead horse, but he often has some pretty well-researched stuff to share.

Not everything Moviebob does is crap, and I don't mean to imply that (I am fond of his Schlocktober stuff, and when he covers weird comic history it's fun), but his reviews in particular are often aggravating with the aforementioned "My tastes are the best tastes". It goes the other way too. Like, I like Marvel films. Alot, but even I get tired of hearing Moviebob going on about how (according to him) there's not be a single bad Marvel movie and how great the Marvel films are (though he has toned that down finally lately). Add that new habit he's picked up of opening his reviews with a joke that almost never lands, and the often condescending tone he often employ, as well as the habit of beating a dead horse and it's easy to see why he can get aggravating.

Heck sometimes his opinions are just weird, in terms of movie review. His Spiderman Homecoming video is basically "I didn't care of it coz I love the first 2 Sam Raimi Spiderman, and this one isn't one of them and I'm also still mad about those other two films". It talks astoundingly little about the movie he's actually reviewing. Like, you're free to dislike the movie, but tell me how it is on its own?

Edited by Ghilz on Jul 31st 2018 at 2:29:48 PM

Octopath Traveller's review is up.

I'm only watching the Youtube videos. He's just reviewed The Crew 2.

I dunno why, but I always had a feeling I'd be bored mindless by this game, and Yatz's review only confirms it.

It's like GTA 5, but with all the vehicular destruction and guns removed. In other words, "why bother?".

This week on You Tube brings us the review for >OBSERVER_, Bloober Team's (yes, that is their real name) follow up to Layers of Fear, a game Yahtzee reviewed in an indie double-bill with Firewatch back in the day.

In a nutshell: he liked it better than Layers of Fear because it actually has gameplay, however token and occasionally irritating.

Edited by Fighteer on Aug 15th 2018 at 12:27:22 PM

The premise sounds intriguing, but that's about it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=067fxuEVmjw - We Happy Few

Transcription of Russ Pitt's speech (The former, now new, Editor at the escapist).

Apparently all that was left of the Escapist was Volunteer Forum mods, and Yahtzee. They even sold the desks.

Yeah, the only thing the Escapist had going on at this point - apart from Yahtzee - was a slowly-shrinking Twitch channel (people kept leaving because of Defy not paying them).

The head stream guy actually left again after being brought back by the new management because now they're forcing every streamer (probably excluding Yahtzee) to use facecam and and not everyone's comfortable with doing that.

The tidbit about the forums being populated exclusively by misogynistic neckbeard gamer types is rather interesting, yet not terribly surprising. That seems to be the state of maximum entropy of any social space if allowed to evolve unattended.

... Why are they always gamer types? I play games too, and I'm perfectly well adjusted.

Well, it is/was a site primarily devoted to that sort of content. Yahtzee isn't a competitive badminton critic.

There's also a selection effect. Toxic people can drive out anyone who isn't likeminded once they hit critical mass.

I remember poking in the Escapist forums once in a while and they honestly never seemed that toxic... more depressed that the site was basically doing fuck all.

In my opinion it is the complex they got from high school and college.

They saw how jocks seem to rule the roost, and decided to create a setting where they too can wreak their every whim.

This week: Unavowed, a 2D Adventure Game Maker title in an Urban Fantasy setting apparently stolen wholesale from The Dresden Files. That said, Yahtzee liked it for the story and for having puzzles that aren't completely stupid.

Edited to add: I guess there haven't been any interesting AAA releases other than World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth, and I can't imagine Yahtzee going back to the WoW well yet again.

Edited by Fighteer on Sep 5th 2018 at 4:29:41 AM

The DF digs were funny, even though I'm a fan.

Watched a Let's Play of it, and then regretted it because I'm pretty sure I would have enjoyed playing it. It does a lot with the fairly restrictive adventure game setup and has a fairly good plot, decent characters and some honest-to-goodness moral choices that are actually fairly tricky to navigate.

I will say that his complaint about what characters to bring to each mission felt a little off since none of the combinations looked like they'd be locked out significantly (except for Brooklyn, where the let's play I watched looked like they'd taken the combination of characters that lead to the most oblique path to solving everything).

Edited by Sigilbreaker26 on Sep 7th 2018 at 4:33:18 PM

This week: Guacamelee 2 and Not Tonight. We're still on the indie parade.

Apparently there was a previous Guacamelee! title that Yahtzee quite liked but never got around to reviewing. He found the new version to be less of the same. I saw some comments to the effect that his complaint about the game being filled with shallow Mexican stereotypes due to being made by someone who learned about Mexico from daytime television is invalid because the producer is actually Mexican. So does that make the game a self-parody?

As for Not Tonight, it's apparently trying to crowd in on the paperwork simulator genre populated by such notable titles as Papers, Please... and that's it. However, it's also trying to make a political point about Brexit, and in doing so takes the complex morality of that other game and removes most of it. You're working for a completely shitty government so there's no real moral choice involved (unless you actually agree with it, in which case why are you playing this and not some right-wing power-fantasy murder simulator?) and the people whose papers you're checking are less interesting.

Edited by Fighteer on Sep 13th 2018 at 9:47:37 AM

I wouldn't rely on Guacamelee for accurate presentation of the Mexican population. The game doesn't really take itself seriously.

Edited by UltraWanker on Sep 13th 2018 at 1:58:35 PM

Yahtzee does like it, apparently — particularly how the difficulty curves up along with your abilities so it never becomes too hard or too easy.

I think I got Guacamole in one of the Indie Humble Bundles back in the day, but never played it. Maybe I should try it out someday.

A Metroidvania with both combat and platforming becoming more involved and complex as you progress seems like a blast. Too many become far too simple after you unlock the stronger movement abilities that let you bypass large parts of the platforming challenge, and just as many treat combat as a necessary evil.

And for what it's worth, Mexicans Love Speedy Gonzalez might be in effect here.