Fully Ramblomatic

Fully Ramblomatichfdf is a series of video game reviews created by Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw, thematically similar to, but legally distinct from, his previous review series Zero Punctuation.

Alan Wake 2

 * Alan's game takes a more Silent Hill-y approach where we systematically explore an abandoned hotel or dog grooming salon, looking for the locked doors and the keys to open the locked doors like a janitor on his first day whose supervisor isn't answering their phone, with the added twist of Alan's power to rewrite the story to alter certain rooms and open up new doorways. It gives a rather effectively creepy feel of being trapped in a surreal, introspective world with a sense of reality as reliable and permanent as a career in corporate tech journalism.
 * I won't spoil anything, but if you're wondering why Alan Wake American Nightmare is no longer canon, it's because it had a satisfying ending that tied up all the loose ends that might have kept the DLC and sequel train a-rolling indefinitely, and you can be fucking well certain Alan Wake 2 is determined not to repeat that mistake.
 * [after thanks for the support received following the launch of Second Wind] Don't worry; I'm not going to have an impassioned talk like this every week.  I think next time we'll go back to the smash cutting to the overly loud credits music right after the final gag.  It's just 'cause this is the first.  Don't want anyone to think I'm getting sincere all of a sudden.  And furthermore:  Bum balls wankity-wank, labia flatulent gush.

RoboCop: Rogue City

 * But the cultural vogue is constantly adapting, and that's presumably why, with RoboCop: Rogue City, developers Teyon are pioneering a new interesting counterpoint to the "movement shooter." Namely, the plod-around-like-you've-got-tea-trays-strapped-to-each-foot-and-two-pounds-of-rapidly-cooling-shit-threatening-to-leak-out-the-legs-of-your-underpants...-shooter.  Or, to use its original name, Gears of War.
 * It is very cute. I want to pinch RoboCop's little cheek and jiggle it 'til it makes a sound like a metal mixing bowl being cleaned with a chamois leather.  Because it's totes adorbs the way RoboCop: Rogue City thinks it's a real game.  It's trying so gosh-darned hard with its accurately modeled likenesses of the original actors that animate so awkwardly, you can practically hear the squeaking of gears as their mouths flap up and down.

The Talos Principle II

 * In Talos Principle 1, we were an AI in a virtual world going through a process to develop our sentience which, for reasons I wasn't entirely clear on, involved solving a hundred million line-of-sight laser reflecting puzzles... "Do you want us to explain it to you, Yahtz!?"  That's okay, Talos Principle 1...  "It's no trouble!  We wrote like nine hundred in-universe text logs explaining the philosophical link between sentience and filling the backs of cereal boxes!"  I'm sure you did, Talos Principle 1.  I don't have time to read them now; could you pop them in my novelty inbox that's designed to look like a dustbin?
 * Did I already mention the entire vacuum-cleaner-seducing city of inteliigent robots you can entirely optionally explore before you even get to the puzzle-y bit -- full of jaw-dropping architecture and deep conversations and a memorial to cats for some reason. And even while you're slogging away at the puzzle coal face, you continue to get a larger sense of the world you're part of because you're plugged in to in-universe social media -- full of bored, hyper-intelligent beings with nothing to do all day but watch what you're doing through your eyes and argue about the implications.  It's like streaming, except the audience consists entirely of Greek philosophers rather than incoherent shit-pipes who keep donating small amounts of money to make you say the phrase "willy-fiddlers" over and over again.

Persona 5 Tactica and American Arcadia

 * I think it was during the third kingdom that my boredom with the combat reached critical mass, and I decided it probably wouldn't make a splash in the scandal press if I were to just kick it in the head and watch the rest of the cutscenes on YouTube. After which, I discovered I'd successfully predicted all the reveals and twists in the plot, including that at the very end it would turn out that the mastermind was a hitherto unintroduced corrupted faux benevolent god, and we defeat them with the power of friendship.  But not that I have the power of prophecy.  It was primarily my profiency in Persona pattern perception.
 * American Arcadia is a fairly short narrative indie game in which protagonist Trevor Hills -- nebbish middle-manager and boring twat -- discovers that his entire life is a reality TV show being watched by the people outside the thinly-disguised Disney World resort in which he dwells, and is forced to go on the run when he learns the powers that be are about to disappear him for not being interesting enough to watch. Certainly hits close to home for someone who makes a living on YouTube.

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora

 * ...Last I checked, James Cameron's Avatar: The Last Smurfbender is a fucking red-hot piece of pop-culture IP. The last Avatar movie did gangbusters in theaters.  Apparently.  I mean, I didn't see it, and I've never met anyone who has, or is enthusiastic about Avatar, or even gives it much thought at all, unless they're watching Dances With Wolves on a TV with dodgy color correction.  Which makes me suspicious.  Maybe there's an unknown subsection of humanity living among us -- presumably dwelling underground and subsisting on rats and stray dogs -- who emerge from the sewer drains at night to watch Avatar movies and send phone votes in to America's Next Top Model.  Or maybe James Cameron is buying up millions of empty theater seats to pad his numbers when he's not buggering off to the bottom of the ocean to scrape bits of dead billionaire off the Titanic.
 * Yeah, Avatar's nothing if not as subtle as an attention-starved Alsatian in a prison riot. "Eww, humans are huge, greedy, land-stealing bastards, and the Navi are perfect and peace-loving and noble and one with nature..."  Now look here, James Camera-Head.  It's very easy to be one with nature when nature is as weirdly fucking obliging as it seems to be on Pandora.  It's easy to be nice when you live in the garden at the start of Wonka's chocolate factory, and there's food everywhere, and there's a fucking naturally-occurring free Internet anyone can connect to with the ethernet cable stuck up their bum.  And you can literally fling yourself off a fucking cliff and count on the pterodactyl Uber service to catch you before you hit the ground.  I think the Navi need to check their planet privilege.

Best, Worst, and Blandest of 2023

 * I'm still one of those deviants who likes horror games in months other than October, and it would be remiss of me not to award the one game that actually scared the piss out of my jaded ass (please don't ask what piss was doing in my ass). Amnesia: The Bunker achieves this with its innovative approach to organic recursive gameplay.  Threating my protagonist with death or injury is one thing, but threatening to erase my last hour of progress?  Truly traumatizing for anyone who works with regular deadlines.
 * Boy, the conversation around Hogwarts Legacy really helped me appreciate new perspectives and expand my world view. Now I know how the mute function works on Twitter.

Games of 2023 I Didn't Review

 * With the year behind us, I can now at least be arsed to do a roundup of quickie reviews, 'cause there's nothing quite like an arse roundup when you're in the mood for a quickie... Huh.  That made sense when I got up this morning...
 * [On Sanabi:] Pixel art-y, 2D platform-y affair, best summarized as Katana-Zero-meets-Celeste-meets-a-grappling-hook, followed-by-a-whirlwind-romance-and-joyful-marriage-to-a-grappling-hook. But the plot's straight out of the grim middle-aged, murder-man, haunted-by-lost-loved-one, finds-second-chance-at-redemption-while-escorting-innocent-child, hairy-dad playbook.  But I can't hold that against it because, hey!  Grappling hoooook!  One of those would have certainly improved The Last of Us, if it had been used to tether the main characters to a speeding bus.
 * [On Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III:] Didn't play it; never will.  See, I played the Modern Warfare I remake, but when Modern Warfare II came around, I thought to myself, "You know what?  This does not spark joy."  And I wish I could bottle the sensation of realizing that I could just not play Modern Warfare games anymore.  I'd make a fucking fortune.