This week on Fully Ramblomatic, Yahtzee reviewed Selaco. Support us on Patreon: / secondwindgroup Second Wind Merch Store: sharkrobot.com/collections/se...
He said GZ Doom as "Gee Zee Doom" instead of "Gee Zed Doom". He's fully acclimated to being an American now. Full Brit Yahtzee would be turning in his grave right round if he heard that.
I'm an American living in Australia. Let me tell you the first time I naturally tossed out "sanga" instead of "sandwich" my whole friggin' brain brought everything to a screeching halt to assess how the hell it happened. It sure didnt take long for me to pick up on some of these words. I'm a bit more stubborn on the whole "thongs" VS "flip flops" exchange, for some reason.
Inconsistent art being the result of a lot of artists hopping in and on a small project is actually the best reason nowadays. At least it's not like that cause they didn't care and just used image generation leading to inconsistent art.
Yea, that's not much of a thing in the Doom community. We tend to not care for AI-generated slop very much, especially because of the old map generator SLIGE.
@@trainee5471 It's a random map generator that spews out garbage. It works... _mostly fine_ as a baseline for mapping, but for a while plenty of hacks in the community made entire 32-map wads generated by SLIGE (or its later version, OBLIGE) and tried to pass it off as original work.
@@trainee5471 SLIGE was the first level generator for Doom that manged to dish out decent playable levels with enough tweaking. So users started uploading a truckload of SLIGE generated wads to Doomworld archive, which inevitebly led to DoomWorld banning all SLIGE uploads (luckily it left a signature on its maps). Years wen on, SLIGE evolved into OBLIGE, then OBHACK then OBADDON then OBSIDIAN which is currently the best level generator which can provide really good levels (with some tweaking). It still leaves a signature and wads made with it are still banned on DoomWorld.
Ring Racers is the more recent project of Kart Krew and it's amazing. It incorporates aspects from F Zero as well and is possibly one of the deepest Kart Racers that exists. It has 200 stages which is a bit much but it takes a long time to unlock things and the levels get increasingly more complex to the point that I now understand old complaints about motion sickness in Doom.
I kind of want a game that has all those text logs but if you don’t read them, the main character is exactly as clueless as what they’re doing as the player is.
Think it might run into the same player-optimization as "Skill points from "reading" random books" in elder scrolls games. Players just end up opening and closing every book they find even if they don't want to read them.
This happens in 'Until Dawn'. If the player doesn't find certain notes, the character playing that section doesn't understand what happened in the sub plot, and they just fumble their words when they meet another character and try to tell them. One example is the story of the trapped miners in the sanitorium section. You can blaze past every note, and Mike will just go, "yeah something bad happened in that place, I dunno". You can actually miss the main explanation of the plot because of this design choice.
@@Brawph There's ways to mitigate that. one particular ingenious way was that in outer wilds, not reading any of the lore made figuring out what you had to do practically impossible. you NEEDED to read what the documents were about to get an inkling of what you could do to solve the greater mystery. Same thing with Obra dinn. Some people might be speedrunning in that way, sure. but that doesn't mean those games cannot function simply because that specific kind of player exists, right? We have a lot of people play undertale grinding for EXP just like any other RPG that turned out to be a trap. but few people criticize the game for that.
Pretty sure the reason the there isn't much story context is because in the current build they haven't actually patched in character dialogue yet, Early Access, unfinished and all that. Also surprised he didn't mention FEAR at any point, since that is what the whole "entire scene getting filled with dust and particles effects every second" and "almost exclusively fighting flank-happy humanoid soldiers" aspects of the combat are trying to evoke, for better or worse. I for one have never been a big DOOM guy, but really loved FEAR and I'd recommend Selco for mostly the same reasons.
Given how hard the devs are working to make a game like this in the DOOM engine. I think it's safe to say that they share the philosophy that the story should "be there" but not get in the way of the game. So, it's very possible that the story will remain text logs for anyone who actually cares. But I do agree that a game should be able to tell its story diegetically.
@@johnnydarling8021 Nah it definitely will have fully voiced characters. I've checked and the devs have stated that the first major content update will add full voice acting to the player character as well as other more direct story elements to the currently released episode.
Idk reflections are hard, can't get away with cubemaps. Raytracing solves but only for 5% of users, pip tanks frame rate, you basically have to do rtt which is annoying and it still looks weird and isn't "real"
@@echo5827 I guess there's technical reasons and stuff but dammit if Duke Nukem 3D could do it... It just feels wrong that modern games somehow can't. I thought this was the fucking future??
I actually take this as Yahtzee liking the game. If he admitted it was enough to stand on its own as a full game and complained it’s splitting itself, that sounds like an endorsement to me
@@SebastianMikulec don't disagree but even good games can have some real shit things, it's not really shitting on the game to call out the shitty parts of a decent game. The difference I think is mostly other reviewers only tend to cover the good and ignore the bad if they like the game, and only the bad if they don't, there's no in-between, everything is 10/10 or 0/10 unplayable.
@@SebastianMikulec He's actually talked about people holding this opinion in the past, back during ZP. He didnt agree with it & neither do I. To me, it just seems like he wanted more of what was an already acceptable game.
Doom modders have the same energy as artists who make ridiculously detailed portrait in MS Paint, or bands making music with DIY instruments. They're tying to push some unwieldy tool to the absolute limits. Constraint breeds creativity.
You know, every time I think I've become desensitized to all the possible Yahtzee-isms he's come up with, the man then comes up with phrases like "a spectacular feat of cranium bumhole intersection" that makes me burst out laughing.
After reaching Dawn's underground survival bunker I had this sudden thought that maybe WE were meant to be the terrorists, that Dawn being in the hospital was all part of some elaborate plant to have her behind enemy lines when an attack happened and the brutal authoritarian government (who may or may not be alien conquerors) started dumping its clone/mutant soldiers into the city. Then you'd find out Selaco was some kind of Truman Show-style prison where a population of humans were being studied/held captive and fed lies about Earth's destruction in order to hide the truth that Earth was either fine or that it had been attacked by aliens and destroyed, and Dawn was one of a handful of freedom fighters trying to liberate its people and expose the truth or something. I mean, there are hints at it. The video games within the game that you can play allude to asteroids being flung at earth by alien starships and even the burger flipping game has some not-so-subtle hints about some vast alien conglomerate capturing worlds and building megastructures simply to chase the illusion of perpetual profit growth. I mean stop me if I'm wrong but there's a lot of subtext about what's actually going on that I wouldn't be surprised if any or most of these ideas is revealed to be the truth. Or yeah, the story might just be "clone soldiers go wrong, go kill bang happy shooty" and really, if that's it, then fine. Game's still decent even if the bad guys skew into the annoying and the whole metroid-vania "fast travel back to areas you've already explored" bit is only for completionists looking for all the secrets and you spend hours wandering big empty corridors so devoid of anything interesting that they all blur together without the constant pressure of enemy combatants to take your mind off it.
You blow up the cloning facility because as a member of Aces you know what is happening down there and how badly it's fucked up. If the aliens release those plants and infected clones into the greater Selaco you are going to have a lot of trouble even if they manage to repeal the invasion. The reason i can infer all that is that the mission objective is called "Preventive Measures". Dawn was also part of the Earth Exodus mission and even seems sad that the possibility of a second one is very low.
I really doubt Nexxtic put that much thought into it. Whenever the plot is brought up, he just says "it's aliens" with no explanation why they look human, or speak English
@@MentalParadoxThe game is intended to be more story focused in final release so I think he put in the thought. He just isn’t going to obviously spoiler a major part of the plot if it’s there.
@@patricianpenguinIt's a bad, poorly researched video that includes disinformation and a misunderstanding of the game's development and you yahtzee fanboys are glazing him for it.
@@emilybarclay8831 Something something indie games aren't allowed to be critiqued something something you're not allowed to make jokes about this dev team.
Considering how much Doom is in this games DNA, I think it's safe to say that along with the base shotgun we'll likely get a Super Shotgun somewhere down the line
The problem with full-auto shotguns in FPS games is they can be _very_ hard to balance - they tend to be overpowered as hell, and any attempt to reign it in ends up making the gun feel impotent, awkward, or frustrating.
I bet that modding project that got cancelled due to nap time in the ending gag was the Duke Nukem 3D mod Yahtzee made before his Zero Punctuation days. It was about someone escaping from an Asylum.
Ahh yes Selaco i remember this from a Civvie11 video. Not sure what his sewer count was up to at the time. It pleases me that boomer shooters get some love.
Yahtzee mentioning GoW regarding the “female sized” armor reminded me of that very GoW 4 review which has one of my favorite Yahtzee bits “it was like a Meerkat trying to infiltrate the gorilla sanctuary”.
I suspect the fact that it was built on GZDoom just innately made him compare/lump it in with the modern trend of 90's throwback boomer shooters. I did find that comparison less apt when he mentioned the inclination to move slower and more cautiously after repeated ambushes, but he didn't seem to get that epiphany. Personally I haven't played it yet in order to know how strong the FEAR influence actually is.
I agree. ...As long as the resolution, palette, and total frames of animation aren't too low. (Add in total viewing angles not being too low as well if they're sprites in a FPS.) Quality sprites will never be unwelcome. On the other hand, I am definitely tired of low-budget and/or minimalist sprites, really old sprites limited by their really old hardware, modern sprites built to look like really old sprites made for really old hardware, and sprites made by rendering 3d models. So more accurately, I'll never get tired of high effort, not particularly retro, hand-drawn sprites. Which means that in practice, I'm unfortunately usually pretty tired of sprites.
Pretty sure Yahtzee is fine with sprites overall. He's just tired of them being used in 3D "boomer shooters", and even then I can see him having less issue if it wasn't yet another _Doom_ clone/mod.
@@DuckoftheDraw Sigh. "2.5D" is still above the standard 2D that sprites originated from, so it's effectively 3D or at least not 2D. I have no opinion otherwise one way or the other becaue I personally *really* don't care.
@@Alloveck Your reply perplexes me a bit. I don't quite understand, do you just mean bad sprite work or do you mean retro games in general? Because I love the latter myself so I'd disagree there. But overall bad sprites that doesn't appeal to me, yeah sure I can understand that.
There's something to be said for setting-based story telling in a dadshooter. It SHOULD be barebones. One almost wants a stray sprite or wall texture to give you pause. You end up sitting in front of it like a fellow at an impressionist art gallery trying to fit the thing into context. And when you do, if it's good, it makes the whole thing better.
Geez, based off Xitter, I thought Yahtzee commited a war crime against an indie dev. I watched some game play, and then Yahtzee's review and thought yeah, I'd play it.
@@CartRay-gf2tp As if he'd pushed them off a cliff. People were incredibly defensive, which is funny, considering how relatively kid he was in this review
It's just the dev. Nexxtic has a track record of going on rants whenever someone criticizes or disagrees with their perspective. People that have known them for years know this and knew it wouldn't take long to do something exactly like that once someone reviewed the game. Funny how they recently told some of the 3DR staff not to engage in negative reviews as if offering sagely advice and yet here we are just a couple months later. It's really unfair on the rest of the team but hey, what can you do when the lead is a manchild?
@@docdoom1987 Specifically I was thinking GmanLives Xitter post. There was some weird hate from people for Yahtzee and this video, specifically about Yahtzee joking the artists not responding to emails because their mom told them to get a real job. I didn't even see what the lead dev posted, he'd already deleted his angy post and apologized.
Nnnnnot really. The resource consumption comes from the flashlight's range (and how many linedefs it crosses), not from time spent active. I've spent hours in maps with the DarkDoomZ and Flashlight++ mods' lights turned on, and the time never caused the performance to dip, only scenery detailing does.
This episode had more zippy one-liners than I've seen in ages from Yahtzee! Weird to see him review something in early access though. Still looking forward to the Ultrakill review!
I am a bit curious how is Escapist doing, now that the only reason anyone visited the channel quit half a year ago. Not enough to actually _check,_ but I am curious.
No ending rambling? Bummer (shooter) but anyway, it's still nice that it got a review, let's look forward to an update once it's final chapter is released perhaps?
Can't really tell how much he liked it, but man I am enjoying this game so much so far, my GOTY currently by a mile. I didn't even know it was only Chapter 1 as well, there's already way more content than your average boomer shooter
Prodeus *is* 3D. It's made in Unity and you can even set the enemies to be fully modelled. It uses filters, pixel-art textures and camera trickery to *look* like a sprite-based shooter.
So are the purple-bleeding guys the aliens they referenced in the data logs? Are they a new civilization from the destroyed Earth? I really had no idea who this invading force was and what their goals were. I feel that needs to be fleshed out a bit.
Yes, the devs have stated multiple times they are aliens. From where? Who knows Why are they attacking? Who knows Why are they human? Who knows Why do they speak English? Who knows
I'm going to wait for the game to be more complete, but I'm certainly interested. I too am also very distracted by how each piece of art of the protagonist is clearly done by different pairs of hands. Not to slight the artists that did put in the work before but maybe now that there's some money in the pocket from the Early Access sales, the devs can commission an artist to redo the art in a more unified style?
Mr. Croshaw, I've appreciated your writing abilities since before Mogworld (I still adore that book). I hope this question doesn't come up too much, but have you ever thought about bringing back Trilby and Chzo, maybe even translating them into literature?
Oh boy do I have a book series for you! You should read Yahtzee's DEDA Files series. A certain fedora-festooned hero that's mentioned in the second book, and there's lots more Ancients than just good ol' Chzo now. It's not exactly a sequel to the Chzo Mythos, but there's quite a few bones thrown our way in that regard.
@@lokiswager Thank you for the recommendation! I'll definitely look into it! Dang, I hadn't realized how much I'd lost track of his stuff over the years.
@@lokiswagerhis DEDA files series is legitimately so good. As a Brit who struggles with American humour in novels, Yahtzee’s British writing style was such a breath of fresh air and made the whole thing so much more relatable
@@emilybarclay8831 I was devastated when he said that he's not even working on the third DEDA book yet a few months ago. It's going to be at least another couple years before we get more, which makes me very sad. I'm American but I've been a fan of British Tv shows and books since I was a teen and those books make me feel very cozy + want to visit London in person someday.
00:17 Fun fact: No Frills is a discount brand of grocery stores in Canada. Be very careful about the types of oil purchased there going into your car. 😅
I know the game is made in GZDoom and all, but it very obviously isn't trying to recreate the gameplay of OG Doom. It's very much more in the vein of FEAR (arenas with multiple routes, squads of smart enemies, environments reacting to gunfire, decent movement and melee abilities). It's lacking the bullet time and the horror, sure, but the skeleton is very much there.
The fact Yahtzee was slightly positive in this review (with criticisms) and the dev still complained on Twitter about this being a bad review is very amusing.
This was a wonderfully positive review. Giving constructive criticisms, wanting more, saying the game's got a lot to offer despite being early access... It's clear Yahtzee believes this game can be better and is also anticipating the next segment. 😊 Which might not be immediately apparent if you're not used to his style or ready to hear about smoked birth canals 😅
The original reason for flashlights being turned on or off automatically was for performance. A moving light is taxing on the graphics, so you only allow it in areas where the rest of the geometry is comparativley simple to make up for the performance hit. But why you'd do that in a retro game with 2d graphics running on the wet dreams of early 2000s super computers is baffling.
@@ULTRAOutdoorsman There was a Chex Quest 2 back in the day, distributed from the Chex site as a WAD that required the base game. The lead mapmaker later made Chex Quest 3, a fully-fledged ZDoom game with the aforementioned 2 episodes plus a third.
@@ULTRAOutdoorsman Not seen Chex Quest 3? Chex Quest, Chex Quest 2 - originally distributed via the Chex site as a wad that required the Chex Quest disc - and a new episode. Made by the advergame's orignal map-maker.
There are something like 3 boomer shooters on early access being made in GZDoom (or made to look it) that all have a similar enough sci-fi future cyberpunk-ish "fight in the Corpo building" setting to the point I have a hard time remembering which stuff was from which game I played, and which ones I'm waiting for to release in full. And I'm not even counting Ion Fury among them cuz that's obviously BUILD. But what I remember distinctly from Selaco was that it was fun, with well detailed gritty environments, good weapons animations and movement, and I wanted to know more about the setting. It wasn't quite an Immersive Sim, but it was on its way there, at least for a GZDoom engine game. The best GZDoom project Ive played that apparently came from a similar 3 chapter release schedule, and is actually complete now, is Blade of Agony. A bootleg Wolfenstein that happens to also be a bootleg MoH, CoD, Indiana Jones, Iron Sky, and does a better job with those themes than most of the originals. I can't wait to have like a month of free time to go replay that all the way through.
@@Calvin_Coolage yeah correct I'll fix that. But yes that game was awesome. I went in expecting a quick little experience but it had an insane campaign.
A gzDoom limitation causes the flashlight to automatically switch off. The game lags and all the resources are used up if the light is on for an extended period of time.
As much as I love 90s shooters, I keep hoping for a resurgence of 00s shooters. A time when shooters were actually trying to evolve the genre, before SpunkGargleWeeWee (CoD4) overtook the market.
Dude....the Joan of Ark comment...It's been a long time since someone made a joke that would cause me to not stand next to them at a party for a couple minutes. hahahah
The fact this man tosses the line "more smoke than Joan of Acres birth canal" in a game review shows what a talented writer he is. He didn't save that for a novel nope just a throw away line in a game review. Damn he goes hard.
It almost feels like these sorts of mods/games come out as a way to show off "we can do this" instead of making a compelling case for why we *should* do this. IMO, it's the simplicity of the Doom engine that lends it its uniqueness - not just the simple and easy to read visuals alongside very identifiable enemy designs with (mostly) unique characteristics, but the fact that so many taken-for-granted features in modern shooters aren't present. No tight hitboxes, lightning-fast projectiles, highly advanced enemy AI where a single baddie can pose a threat alone. You add those things into the engine and you're just making a modern shooter that's painted "retro". People see it as a novel feature that you found some way to have enemies react differently depending on where you shoot them in such an "old" engine, but when there's hardly a single shooter out there that doesn't vastly reward you for headshots these days, you're putting in extra effort just to make the game stand out less mechanically. Not to say Selaco is bad, but it's getting an insane amount of constant positive coverage/mentions/attention/praise except in comment sections. It seems fine, even great for what it is, but it's weird to see a game almost intentionally doing everything different from Doom, for better or worse, seemingly just because they can, while making the engine a key selling point.
Just because they can isn't even close to the reason. They wanted a fear like game, they made exactly that. Just to make the game stand out less mechanically? ARE YOU KIDDING? This is a really stupid comment. It deserves the insane praise.
I like how he threw in that little detail that they gave the review code to him. It's like he's preemptively saying "I'm not just bullying first time indies here, they asked for this."
Did Yahtzee never play F.E.A.R.? Because this game with all the overblown filter effects and flank-happy, talking AI is essentially an attempt at bringing that to Doom. And thats a good thing!
