"Zero Punctuation" and "Dev Diary" by Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw - The only thing worth watching on The Escapist

[Wendy Carter]

There doesn't seem to be a "Zero Punctuation" thread here, so I took the liberty of starting one, hope you do not mind.

For those unaware, "Zero Punctuation" is a series of videos hosted by Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw, in which he reviews and criticizes video games and, occasionally, other video game-related topics, like video game history.

Yahtzee's career started over a decade ago, in the year of 2007, when he made reviews of 2 games - "The Darkness" and "Fable: The Lost Chapters".

Spoiler: The humble beginnings

After said videos, he was picked up by The Escapist Magazine and has been doing videos for them to this very day. As such, his videos can be found on their their website or YouTube channel (link to ZP playlist).

Zero Punctuation's biggest defining feature is the fact that Yahtzee edits the videos to remove every single pause and instance of him inhaling, creating an illusion that he speaks without stopping. Another thing that separates him from many other game critics is that he doesn't give the games he reviews a score. Yahtzee is more of a "game critic" rather than a "game reviewer", because he mostly points out things that could've been improved in some way. He also creates a contrast to MovieBlob of the same site, which makes him look even better than he already is.

Yahtzee has also written books "Mogworld", "Jam", "Will Save the Galaxy for Food" and "Differently Morphous" - novels satirizing various video games tropes and cliches, along with real-life issues.

Various links: Yahtzee's personal blog
Yahtzee's Twitter
Yahtzee's personal YouTube channel
"Extra Punctuation" column (thanks to @Wallace for reminding me)
"Zero Punctuation" Wikia (episode transcriptions)
"Zero Punctuation" on The Escapist website
"Zero Punctuation" playlist on YouTube

Post your favourite episodes and quotes!

Edit: Updated thread title.

 

[Chocolate Guy]

This is one of my favorites because not only is it really funny to see Yatzhee tear this game a new one, his rant about what the video games industry and Valve have become at the end seems genuinely plaintive and heartfelt.

"What happened to you? What happened to us? To the people we were supposed to become?
I dunno know but it's probably safe to blame John Romero."

 

[Wallace]

I'm still surprised Yahtzee hasn't gone off on his own by now. He must realize that the Escapist needs him more than he needs them.

Anyway, here's two of my favorite moments that cap off his reviews:

Yahtzee also wrote a follow-up column to Hatred here.

 

[UE 558]

Not a fan and I don’t agree with some of his opinions, but I can see the appeal. I think it’s more to do with me being more gravitated by childish shit like Cr1tikal

 

[LinuxVoid]

At least he PLAYS the games he reviews.
Him "ironically" sucking on the indie shtick and dragging on and on and on about the big bad gaming companies was quite annoying, seeing that he sounded more depressed by the episode when talking about that.
Also, Alex wins hands down!

 

[The tired cat]

Eh, not really a fan of the guy or his fans for that matter. Not only does he contradict his opinions on certain games, combined with him constantly pushing the idea of how he knows what stuff is good (minus when he talks about really, REALLY bad games). But his fans are by far another story of annoyance, since they constantly love to either parrot the guy or assume that watching and agreeing with his views makes 'em video game experts who have seen the world for what it really is, and the last part is not a joke.

 

[dreamworks face]

Zero Punctuation was an early victim of Jewtube. You'll note in his early videos, every single game review starts with a different intro song, and then Jewtube's content detection algorithm came along and he had to change the intro song to the same boring crap every single review. This made the reviews about 50% less watchable for me.

 

[Cishet Nerdscum]

I really enjoyed the lets play series he did with aussie friend gabe where theyd play all of his own homebrew games and talk about how they suck

 

[Duncan Hills Coffee]

My username is literally a Yahtzee joke. That should tell you everything about my opinion towards him.

I don't watch him that much anymore, but only because YouTube starts recommending MovieBlob videos when I watch too much ZP.

 

[Jeanne d'Arc]

Love this episode because it's such a great primer on Gamecube era Capcom and it's got a shit-ton of Yahtzee's humor in it.

Yahtzee's one of the most consistent content creators on the internet- he was making posts on his blog talking about bullshit on the SA fourms WEEKLY as early as 2002. You can tell he's passionate about what he does, and I admire that greatly.

 

[UE 558]

My username is literally a Yahtzee joke. That should tell you everything about my opinion towards him.

I don't watch him that much anymore, but only because YouTube starts recommending MovieBlob videos when I watch too much ZP.

Just watch them in incognito mode

 

[Overcast]

Used to watch his stuff every week and enjoyed what he had to offer.

While I don't necessarily agree with him all the time, his videos are pretty entertaining and I appreciate the occasional positive review he puts out every now and again.

 

[BrunoMattei]

I can't believe the guy is still around and doing video reviews.

 

[Wendy Carter]

I'm still surprised Yahtzee hasn't gone off on his own by now. He must realize that the Escapist needs him more than he needs them.

Anyway, here's two of my favorite moments that cap off his reviews:

Yahtzee also wrote a follow-up column to Hatred here.

Oh yeah, something I wanted to mention but then completely forgot - he also used to write a column called "Extra Punctuation" where he gave a more in-depth opinion on various topics that are usually connected to the game he reviewed at the time. Thank you for reminding me!

Eh, not really a fan of the guy or his fans for that matter. Not only does he contradict his opinions on certain games, combined with him constantly pushing the idea of how he knows what stuff is good (minus when he talks about really, REALLY bad games). But his fans are by far another story of annoyance, since they constantly love to either parrot the guy or assume that watching and agreeing with his views makes 'em video game experts who have seen the world for what it really is, and the last part is not a joke.

I'm kind of guilty of this. Yahtzee has a pretty good way of putting things into words and using funny comparisons to complement them, so they're somewhat easy to remember. Our opinions on some things seem to be similiar, such as general dislike of Nintendo, but I'm not going to be repating everything he says. Alice: Madness Returns is one of my personal favourite games for various reasons, and he tore it apart quite a bit. It didn't change my opinion on the game, but his input as someone who has a bit more expertise is interesting to see. And staying consistently funny nowadays seems to be a hard feat for some reason, so that alone demands respect.

 

[The tired cat]

I can't believe the guy is still around and doing video reviews.

Honestly, I think it's mostly because he either doesn't wanna go the Jim Sterling route and be solely dependent on Patreon or he kinda realizes that ZP is his biggest source of income. He didn't really win much trying to run a business (two gaming bars both of which folded), he has some books behind his back but they aren't super big and mostly popular among his fans and his games are interesting but I doubt they'd sell much on steam.

 

[Clop]

I played Yahtzee's p'n'c games, 5 Days A Stranger and 7 Days A Skeptic, they were pretty fun. I'd recommend them to fans of horror and adventure games.

Weird seeing a couple instances of moon logic in his games though, but he seems pretty aware of the fact.

 

[Takodachi]

My favourite thing about Yahtzee is that he keeps his politics FAR away from his game content.

 

[cecograph]

I played Yahtzee's p'n'c games, 5 Days A Stranger and 7 Days A Skeptic, they were pretty fun. I'd recommend them to fans of horror and adventure games.

I have fond memories of the Chzo mythos. I really lost touch with mainstream gaming back in the early 2000s, and the indie-scene wouldn't kick off in force until the 2010s. So in the interim, Yahtzee's games were a really refreshing call back to a genre I loved as a kid, and they were pretty solid horror compared to the fare we got in the 90s. Some stuff in the games is genuinely unsettling weird.

Also check out the Judging by the Cover series.

 

[Noel Edmonds]

Not a fan of the guy's hyper-condescending persona, and disagree with a lot of his opinions (about video games and beyond), but I respect that he actually reviews games from the perspective of a consumer, and isn't afraid of calling companies out when they fuck their audience over. Every now and then, I catch up on some of the videos and get a few yuks out of them, if little else.

If you haven't seen his Let's Drown Out series on Youtube, I'd recommend it. Yahtzee and his fat friend crack wise about gaming, pop culture, and argue at great lengths with one another for about an hour per episode in a Let's Play format. It's quite entertaining! (LDO also brings up Yahtzee's potential lolcow eligibility, but I'll let you decide that for yourself.) The show has been over for a few years now, so you shouldn't have trouble following each episode.

I read through Mogworld and most of Jam as a teenager. Both are cute and occasionally funny, but nothing stunning or exceptional - I can see why he's never really "made it" as a professional print author.

 

[AsbestosFlaygon]

From the little I've seen of him I'm not a fan, don't particularly like his opinions and never liked his humor. Seems like he'd have the same problems I have with Jim Sterling, except that he seems to be much less of a hypocrite and a slime ball than Jim is. He isn't as funny as comedic channels like Dunkey or Vinesauce, nor as good at analysis as channels like Super Bunnyhop and Matthewmatosis, he's just in a dull middle ground for me which I'm deeply disinterested in.

This is one of my favorites because not only is it really funny to see Yatzhee tear this game a new one, his rant about what the video games industry and Valve have become at the end seems genuinely plaintive and heartfelt.

"What happened to you? What happened to us? To the people we were supposed to become?
I dunno know but it's probably safe to blame John Romero."

The opening bugs me, I don't see why he's acting like they've been on their ass all this time when as a hardware company they're still fairly active, and the mess with Valve's software teams have been known about since around 2016. Also him treating Hunt Down the Freeman like the community was desperate for a new Half Life game so bought it out of desperation doesn't sound right. From what I remember HDTF wasn't really known outside of Valve circles, and in those circles was being mocked and ridiculed years before its actual release, it only became widely known due to it being a complete mockable mess.

Personally I felt that his spiel at the end feels very forced just to complain about the industry, HDTF's not a game that I'd say really has sort of ties to trends of the industry at large, it's just a bad game. Also like I stated earlier the only reason it became known was because it was mocked, nobody would've ever seriously chosen to buy it over A Hat in Time, or anything else for that matter. It reminds me of how Jim treats asset flips as if they're some big crutch on the industry, not realizing that he's going after insanely low hanging fruit which no one would pay attention to if he wasn't mocking them. As for the criticisms of the game itself I guess it's alright for a short summary, but they're also criticisms you'll hear from anyone else that's reviewed it. I think that best sums up my thoughts, on the whole I guess it's fine for a comedic video that goes over the basics, but it's nothing more then that.