Tag: yahtzee

Second Wind and Fully Ramblomatic

So the dust has settled a bit, and now Nick Calendra, Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw and a number of other people from The Escapist’s video production department have left that company and started Second Wind, fully creator-owned. And Yahtzee has made his first episode of the replacement for the 16-year-old Zero Punctuation, using the name of his blog, Fully Ramblomatic. The episode covers Alan Wake II, and it’s exactly what you’d expect it to be: profane, insightful and full of obscure references, like using the head of H.P. Lovecraft as part of the “lake of mysterious occult wank” that Alan Wake has lept into.

It’s all still Ben Yahtzee, which isn’t entirely to my tastes, but other than a couple of missteps through the years he’s generally been a good egg, or so I’ve been given to understand. I’m on board with things that increases the viability of creator-controlled media at least, so I wish them well.

What’s Yahtzee Up To?

Yahtzee is Ben Croshaw, the guy who has been making The Escapist’s Zero Punctuation for going on 16 years now. He’s the last vestive of the version of The Escapist before they went in on Gamergate, which it seems like he managed to weather by staying in his lane. While his videos aren’t the pass-around fodder that they used to, it’s kind of comforting sometimes that he’s still around, offering his highly opinionated and profane takes on video game-related things.

Croshaw’s videos cover a very mainstream-populist, triple-A beat that does not often intersect with ours, and frankly often puts me at odds with his opinions. But once in a while he covers a topic that sort of intersects with one of our remits or Retro, Indie or Niche. That’s what we present here today: three times in recent memory that he covered something we generally care about.

Metroid Prime Remastered (generally dismissive)

Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope (unexpectedly positive)

Sonic Frontiers (says there’s a couple of good ideas that it then ruined)