Yahtzee Croshaw (Zero Punctuation, Fully Ramblomatic)

Not really. This seems more like a self-motivation mantra than a desire to save everyone but herself. Bear in mind that I haven't played the games, but from everything I've heard, this version of Lara has an obsessive drive to prove that she's not going to be knocked down by anybody, which causes her to throw herself into absurdly dangerous situations like a moth to a flame.

In turn, the games seem to equate "surviving getting the snot beaten out of her" as Character Development. Like she's "growing" as a person by pushing her internal organs back into place with her own hands and pressing onward.

Edited by Fighteer on Oct 4th 2018 at 12:42:43 PM

Uncharted gets a bad rap.

Tangentially related, but having an oil refinery right next to the ancient central american ruins isn't actually as unusual as Yahtzee implies here. My old archaeology professor went on a few digs in Mexico where local oil companies kicked them out and ruined everything because the millenia-old buried ruins happened to be right next to a juicy source of petrol. And the Mexican government generally sides with the oil guys in those situations because let's face it, it's damn profitable.

Edited by Dirtyblue929 on Oct 4th 2018 at 8:07:00 AM

There is a new website.

Can't say its much of an improvement. Honestly, it looks bland and generic to me.

The mere fact that they didn't even bother to redirect visitors from the old site to the new one is rather telling.

Edited by Redmess on Oct 5th 2018 at 12:19:18 PM

Why is that every time a website decides to do a "redesign", it ends up looking bland as heck?

Do all these people pull their design ideas from the same shitty hat of blandness or what?

It's because they can't afford/don't know how to implement better alternatives

Because usefulness/functionality trumps being creative.

Doubly so as this seems to have been an emergency re-build. Not a lot of time to try out new designs.

Also, the funny implication that their old website wasn't bland.

I will say, I embrace their avoiding the Four-Point Scale

Edited by Ghilz on Oct 5th 2018 at 10:08:21 AM

I'm less interested in blandness than I am in functionality.

The old website had a little more personality than this one, though. It had a proper logo, for one.

Oh hey the site's broken again.

No it isn't, just really clumsy redesign. They just changed the internal link for Zero Punctuation without bothering to redirect. Again.

Next time that happens, go to the main Escapist home page, and try to relocate what you're looking for from there.

Zero Punctuation has finally done an Assassin's Creed: Odyssey review. Enjoy.

I'll wait for it next week with joyful anticipation.

The one that came out today on YT is Star Control: Origins, which seems to be effectively a unauthorized reboot, since it's the exact same story as every other Star Control game. Sounds fun, though, since I did like the original games way back when I was a wee lad, and I even liked The Ur-Quan Masters as a nostalgia trip, although I had to look up a guide to beat it.

I guess the IP owners are really stingy, though.

I really hope Origins fails. It's a bold move creating a nostalgia centered game while you are suing the creators responsible for said nostalgia for dubious reasons and badmouthing them.

Sadly, they'll probably get a lot of sales from people who haven't even heard about the controversy.

Edited by storyyeller on Oct 17th 2018 at 8:57:55 AM

What controversy?

Back in the day, Toys for Bob (aka Paul Reiche III and Fred Ford) created a popular series, specifically, the games Star Control and Star Control 2. Later, their publisher made a followup game Star Control 3, with their permission, but using completely different developers. Star Control 2 became a cult classic, while Star Control 3 is generally considered to be garbage.

After a series of acquisitions, the rights to the name "Star Control" ended up with Atari, while P&F retained the rights to all other IP from the first two games, which is why they renamed Star Control 2 to The Ur-Quan Masters when they released it as open source in 2002.

Anyway, Atari didn't do anything with the Star Control trademark, except that they published a crappy flash game on their website for a couple weeks in 2007 so they could claim they were still using the trademark. When Atari went out of business in 2013, Stardock bought the Star Control trademark from the bankruptcy sale, and decided to release a new game, Star Control: Origins to cash in.

Unfortunately, Stardock apparently believed they were buying the entire IP, not just the name. Paul and Ford found out and cried foul, leading to Stardock suing them, to claim full rights over the series. Meanwhile, Paul and Ford decided to countersue, claiming that Atari's renewal of the trademark was invalid since they weren't actually using it, and thus they should have rights over the name Star Control as well.

In the mean time, Stardock redesigned their game to remove all elements from the original Star Control games, to avoid infringing P&F's IP. Gameplay wise, it's very similar to SC 2, but it is set in a completely new universe and doesn't have any of the same characters, aliens, ships, etc. However, P&F pointed out that the promotional images for Star Control: Origins contain one of the Star Control ships as an easter egg cameo.

To further complicate matters, Paul and Ford say that they are working on their own game, Ghosts of the Precursors, based on the IP, which will be a direct sequel to Star Control 2.

At least, that's my understanding of the case. I haven't dug too deeply into it and I am obviously not a lawyer. But it's hard for Stardock to avoid coming across as jerks here.

Edit: Here's a much better explanation of the issues: http://wiki.uqm.stack.nl/Stardock_Systems_Inc._v._Paul_Reiche_III_and_Robert_Frederick_Ford

Edited by storyyeller on Oct 17th 2018 at 1:26:10 PM

I understand that you feel this is unfair, but I don't think taking it out on an unrelated game really helps matters. If anything, you should boycot Star Control, then.

That what he said? He said he was hoping Star Control Origins would fail.

Oops, then I misread.

After doing more reading on the subject, it sounds like the CEO of Stardock bought the Star Control trademark from Atari on the assumption that Paul and Ford would be eager to help him make a new SC game, but didn't actually ask them first.

When he did ask, they refused, because they wanted to make their own sequel by themselves. After a couple years of trying to get them on board, he just gave up and decided to sue them in an underhanded attempt to steal the IP by force, since the trademark by itself is worth very little.

This is also why the CEO initially said nice things about them, and agreed with them about needing to license the IP, but immediately changed his tune in 2017 when the lawsuits started and started badmouthing them everywhere.

Edited by storyyeller on Oct 18th 2018 at 10:17:58 AM

Wow. What a shit-weasel.

I don't care about Star Control and thus have no dog in this race, but I really hope P&F win this thing.

I mean, I sympathize to the extent that the dude got scammed, but P&F didn't scam him. Atari scammed him. Or possibly didn't depending on how much attention he paid to the negotiation - I mean, I don't exactly trust that a guy who just assumed the original creators would be 100% onboard with working with him is a dedicated contract-reader.

But either way, it's not their fault. If he was suing Atari for selling him the trademark under false pretenses, then I might have more sympathy for him. But not wanting to work for you isn't a crime.

Rich people throw around frivolous lawsuits as a cudgel to get their way and everyone ignores that to whine about "The coffee gave me serious burns" instead. America.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Oct 18th 2018 at 8:26:05 AM

So I haven't watched ZP in forever but I hear the site has cleaned up its act.

I watch on YouTube and keep the Escapist drama at arm's length. However, they've been fixing up the site and rebuilding some of their content creator relationships of late, so there seems to be hope that it will be more than just Zero Punctuation into eternity. Not that I'm watching their other content, mind you, so maybe I'm part of the problem.

I wonder if we should rename this thread to "Zero Punctuation (and the Escapist)", since it's the only place that any of that content gets discussed.

Edited by Fighteer on Oct 22nd 2018 at 11:12:43 AM

Oh wow. Moviebob is back on the site too.

... so yeah, definitely continuing to only watch ZP, then.

You know, if they wanted video content, they could've probably picked up people from Cracked when they fired literally every video producer without warning.