Yahtzee Croshaw (Zero Punctuation, Fully Ramblomatic)

Cthulhu and Godzilla both come from human ignorance, don't they? It's more of Godzilla ate Cthulhu.

Nowadays if you said to someone humanity was just a speck of cosmic dust they'd go "big deal" whereas a Lovecraft protagonist would go mad.

Godzilla was a metaphor for nuclear weapons. In fact, the first movie was inspired by a nuclear test gone wrong that irradiated a Japanese fishing boat.

As far as insignificance, we ARE insignificant in the scheme of things. Even the whole planet Earth is insignificant in the incomprehensible vastness of space. And we now know the universe is many orders of magnitude bigger than was imagined in Lovecraft's day.

One difference is that there are no more accessible horrors. It's not like you can just voyage into the artic or the unexplored jungles or whatever and stumble on new and horrifying discoveries.

Godzilla has, in more recent years, also been used as a metaphor for climate change. There's a Netflix show called Godzilla: Planet of Monsters that features a much more leafy, planet-based◊ take on the creature, in which he's straight-up humanity's punishment for ecological devastation, rendering the world inhospitable to modern human civilizations and altering the shape of life on the planet Earth forever.

No matter which way you slice it, Godzilla represents the awesome power that man wields irresponsibly.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Nov 29th 2018 at 11:03:02 AM

It is rather telling that, in the aftermath of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nuclear radiation in American media created superheroes (like The Incredible Hulk and Captain Atom), while it created monsters in Japanese media.

The Hulk was more of a monster than a hero in the early days, I believe.

The Hulk is complicated.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAF83RoFY5M - Fallout 76 (Zero Punctuation)

Hmm. He wasn't as mean to it as some other reviewers, which is rare. Rather, he just seems bored with it, like Bethesda put out another inferior creativity toy in the guise of a full-priced game in order to bleed money from players and he can't be arsed to get angry any more. He figures the industry will grow out of it and start writing narrative games again, eventually.

My friend told me about FO76 while he was playing the beta, and the most interesting tidbits had to do with the anti-griefing system: basically, it's extremely hard to gank anyone who isn't PvP-flagged, and attempting to do so makes you wanted and gives other players bonuses for killing you. I find this interesting but not enough to want to play. Still, the fact that they're spending so much time on griefing prevention means nothing if the game itself isn't fun.

Edited by Fighteer on Dec 5th 2018 at 2:13:24 PM

I LOVED base building in 4 but the lack of supply train is gonna dent my fun.

Also, merch has a portable charger fusion core

Me and mine have no desire to even try it. The complete absence of story or NPCs to interact with is a deal-breaker for us.

I'm not big on "live services" in general, so I'm not exactly a lost sale in that regard, but my BFF is all about games you can play with friends online and she's been looking for a new Destiny. But when she heard that Fallout 76 has basically no plot of any kind, she lost interest fast.

The idea, as I understand, is that other players are supposed to be the NPCs for you, and the fandom's just supposed to invent their own story by engaging with each other. Which. Is. Dumb?

'Cause, like, being harassed by some dude who's pissed off that a girl in an online space has a higher level than him isn't much of a replacement for a well-crafted storyline. Or even a mediocre one.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Dec 5th 2018 at 2:26:33 AM

Put another way, Sturgeon's Law applies in the online creativity space as much as it does in other areas. Video game developers employ paid, professional writers; they will always do a better job than xxdickmuncherxx8871.

Edited by Fighteer on Dec 5th 2018 at 5:20:47 AM

I was reading this article about the evils of motion smoothing on HD TVs for movies, and wondered two things: is it really that bad, and does it apply to video games as well?

Review of Darksiders 3 on the new Escapist site nobody is using. I have zero investment in the series but I did find it funny that, at the end of the review Yahtzee gets suspicious, looks up the plot of the first game, and realizes that even the writers can't remember what the story of the first two games was.

There's a third?

The video won't load for me. Guess I'll have to wait for Youtube.

Excuse me, but does anybody know what the hell happened to the Escapist's youtube channel today? All of a sudden they posted upwards of 20 videos, all of them streams from other people in the Escapist, in the span of about an hour or two. Also lost a solid 6000 subscribers for it. Anyone knows what was up with that? Wasn't the Escapist's youtube channel basically a dead corpse from where Yahtzee uploaded his videos?

Edited by TheLovecraftian on Dec 17th 2018 at 6:05:03 PM

I'm guessing they uploaded future videos and forgot to mark them private.

Still the picture of professionalism i see

I went digging and found the answer on their twitter: they were tranferring their stream archive to youtube, and for whatever reason on earth decided that instead of marking the videos to not appear on the sub feed, they just threw twenty-something videos in there all at once. Picture of professionalism indeed.

What concerns me is that this implies all of their streams will now be uploaded there, which is really just The Escapist yet again failing to grasp that the only reason people subscribe to their channel is to watch Yahtzee's videos. This can't end well.

Also, the total count of lost subscribers due to this stunt is 17k. So, y'know, good job.

And the videos have all been quietly removed from the channel. No comment or anything, just gone. What a fuckup.

Edited by TheLovecraftian on Dec 17th 2018 at 9:42:58 AM

What I don't get is why this would result in losing subscribers.

What, 20+ videos simultaneously cluttering your subscription feed all of a sudden? I didn't unsubscribe, but I can understand why people would. Even if most of their subscribers weren't there just for Yahtzee, that's not a really good move.

Edited by TheLovecraftian on Dec 17th 2018 at 9:53:47 AM

I've been thinking about unsubbing ever since i started receiving notifications for non ZP videos

I can't deny that I've taken the idea in consideration.

I wish you could subscribe to a single playlist on a channel. It would make things far easier to deal with.

If you mean the bell thing, you can turn that off.

I have to agree that channels that post more than one video a day tend to be a turnoff for me, too. Especially when each is half an hour long.