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

[HorridHenry]

I can't believe Yahtzee is still around. As a kid I kind of loved his punchy, no nonsense observational humor. At the time there was some passion and it was just refreshing to hear someone talk in an honest and articulate way about stuff who loved the medium.

Maybe its too much of hearing Josh shitting on england but i can't really take it these days. it hasn't really evolved. now you've got jim sterling trying to do the same shit and its rancid. i hate it

As far as Indie games go most are going to be shit because any idiot can churn one out. But ultimately you're going to occasionally get some/cool/weird out there shit because instead of corporate jews doing safe picks you've got a million monkeys working at a million typewriters. For every night in the woods you'll get an outer wilds

 

[Nikes_JustDoIt]

With Yahtzee on a surprisingly consistent one video a week schedule (which let's face it, is amazing, as so many e-celebs get burned out and spiral into depression), most of the stuff is going to be phoned in.

I mean he does other things like same game making and making novels to help prevent burn out. As well , he says the games are becoming longer so he doesn't have to the time to finish them before the review deadline and to him they are mostly bland hence the phoning it in.
The thing he is the only thing that keeping Escapist a float , so they ringing him through ads on his ZP and extra punctuations.

 

[Xarpho's Return]

I can't believe Yahtzee is still around. As a kid I kind of loved his punchy, no nonsense observational humor. At the time there was some passion and it was just refreshing to hear someone talk in an honest and articulate way about stuff who loved the medium.

Maybe its too much of hearing Josh shitting on england but i can't really take it these days. it hasn't really evolved. now you've got jim sterling trying to do the same shit and its rancid. i hate it

As far as Indie games go most are going to be shit because any idiot can churn one out. But ultimately you're going to occasionally get some/cool/weird out there shit because instead of corporate jews doing safe picks you've got a million monkeys working at a million typewriters. For every night in the woods you'll get an outer wilds

I've never watched Jim, and for all the weaknesses of Yahtz, he seems to have a pretty stable family life with a wife and a kid; he's not playing dress-up and screaming about transphobia.

Plus Yahtzee's videos still hold true to the old YouTube formula of under 10 minutes. Jim's tend to average 25 minutes, which is STILL less than 2+ hours spergfests.

 

[Aaron Costello]

"Japanese developers don't like it when westerns use the term JRPG"
"But I like it"

"I'm not a fan of Jrpgs" Then why do you keep playing them???

I don't get the point of this video... But I dont want to save the world!!! What an odd thing to be mad about lol Also complaining about the writing in jrpgs, and then basically saying that the writing in GTA is better, is the most western games journalist thing ever.
People like Yahtzee, are what Yoshi P was talking about, when he was talking about western games journalists and the term JRPG.

 

[Terror Sandwich]

"I only finished 4 JRPGS: EarthBound, Paper Mario 2, Persona 4 and Persona 5."
Didn't he just review Chrono Trigger?
It's a 23h game, it's the easiest fucking jprgs to complete, and he still didn't even bother to finish.

 

[Pissmaster]

"I only finished 4 JRPGS: EarthBound, Paper Mario 2, Persona 4 and Persona 5."
Didn't he just review Chrono Trigger?
It's a 23h game, it's the easiest fucking jprgs to complete, and he still didn't even bother to finish.

He gave Yakuza: Like a Dragon 3rd place in his 2020 roundup, but he didn't complete it?

He's also talked about Final Fantasy VI being good, but he didn't complete that either?

 

[Xarpho's Return]

"I only finished 4 JRPGS: EarthBound, Paper Mario 2, Persona 4 and Persona 5."
Didn't he just review Chrono Trigger?
It's a 23h game, it's the easiest fucking jprgs to complete, and he still didn't even bother to finish.

According to him, he did finish I Am Setsuna back in 2016.

...so I said to myself, maybe I'll just play up to the end of the snowy area with the repetitive sad piano music and see how I feel, but the joke was on me because turns out that was the whole game.

You know what, I almost felt bad about complaining that the entire game is one big ice level

I have not played I Am Setsuna so I have no idea if the "whole game is just an ice level", so either one of two things happened:
1) He keeps piss-poor records of what he actually did and games he beat.
2) He did not actually beat I Am Setsuna.

 

[Prince Vegeta]

Because western RPGs are never about saving the world.

 

[ShitLurker]

It's a combination of forcing himself to consume a genre he despises due to his job and him being an artsy fag that wants artsy fartsy narratives.

I won't deny that waaaaaaaaaaaay to many JRPGs do indeed devolve into killing god with the power of friendship, but they regularly manage to make characters likeable. Making a character "deep" means nothing if I think they are cunts that deserve every bad thing that happens to them.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

It's a combination of forcing himself to consume a genre he despises due to his job and him being an artsy fag that wants artsy fartsy narratives.

I won't deny that waaaaaaaaaaaay to many JRPGs do indeed devolve into killing god with the power of friendship, but they regularly manage to make characters likeable. Making a character "deep" means nothing if I think they are cunts that deserve every bad thing that happens to them.

The issue with the argument is that 90% of modern video games become some kind of saving the world and/or fighting a god (whether literal or near equivalent), it's not really unique to JRPGs and the insistence it happens is a meme that originates from people still hanging on about games from the fucking SNES era. Which is a constant issue in video game culture that still think of SNES as retro despite more time has passed from now to the PS2 era than the 2000 internet culture and the NES era. Also characters being deep is also a thing that is done really badly in most games, where it becomes more of a backstory than a character than existed before the events of the game and evolves during it.

In general the stubbornness not to give JRPGs a chance and already come into them knowing you'll quit in the middle is incredibly immature, and I have 100% assurance that JRPGs that Yahtzee likes he classifies as some other genre to make himself feel better.

 

[PeriodicTrouble]

I mean he does other things like same game making and making novels to help prevent burn out. As well , he says the games are becoming longer so he doesn't have to the time to finish them before the review deadline and to him they are mostly bland hence the phoning it in.
The thing he is the only thing that keeping Escapist a float , so they ringing him through ads on his ZP and extra punctuations.

Why doesn't he get more shit for not finishing the games he reviews? YMS got quite a bit of shit for reviewing movies he didn't finish watching so it's only fair that Yahtzee get criticism for not bothering to beat games he's reviewing. Just assuming it's bland so I don't need to bother playing the rest of it could massively backfire on him depending on the game like it did with CGR Undertow with Spec Ops: The Line.

 

[Xarpho's Return]

"Japanese developers don't like it when westerns use the term JRPG"
"But I like it"

"I'm not a fan of Jrpgs" Then why do you keep playing them???

I don't get the point of this video... But I dont want to save the world!!! What an odd thing to be mad about lol Also complaining about the writing in jrpgs, and then basically saying that the writing in GTA is better, is the most western games journalist thing ever.
People like Yahtzee, are what Yoshi P was talking about, when he was talking about western games journalists and the term JRPG.

I watched the video, and I was struck by the phrasing of "personally completed" (emphasis mine), which briefly made me think "maybe he has 'interns' who do it for free" but then admits to watching endings on YouTube, which makes me think that maybe he really DIDN'T complete I Am Setsuna after all, and knowing that, he probably didn't finish a bunch of other games either...and then knowing that he's not nearly as well-versed as vidya as he pretends to be...and thus his opinion has no more worth than any take on /v/ written by someone who is neither a child or a complete retard.

However flawed the original analysis is, it all gets undermined by praising Rockstar games. He said himself that Grand Theft Auto V had lousy characters with terrible writing:

But my major beef is that none of these characters are likable, and it's not because they, you know, kill people and shit; lord knows I can't throw stones in that department, at least not 'til I've cleared the basement out. They're just poorly-written and inconsistent, which may reflect the fact that their dialogue was being written by enough people to choke a Sarlacc.

Combined with the west coast/games journalist adoration for "story-driven" indie games that don't have much actual gameplay and even shittier, less likable characters (see Night in the Woods), all these Extra Punctuation videos prove is that Yahtzee is a hack and his taste in games is atrocious.

 

[Spitz]

Honestly the most I've laughed at anything from them in a long time. Are these niggas for real with this shit!? The cringe is palpable.

Any more debasement and they might as well send Amy out to one corner to turn tricks and send KC out to the other corner to sell drugs. I know what you're thinking, "naw, man, they'd get Marty to suck the dicks, he's the best at it." Marty only does it for free. If he did it for money, it'd suck the enjoyment out of it.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

Honestly the most I've laughed at anything from them in a long time. Are these niggas for real with this shit!? The cringe is palpable.

Any more debasement and they might as well send Amy out to one corner to turn tricks and send KC out to the other corner to sell drugs. I know what you're thinking, "naw, man, they'd get Marty to suck the dicks, he's the best at it." Marty only does it for free. If he did it for money, it'd suck the enjoyment out of it.

Holy shit, I though Team Four Star jumped on the D&D bandwagon late. The bald guy looks like a literal wojak, there's a jewess playing a fat? big titted furry (probably a tranny), a faggot and a nigger.

 

[Spitz]

Holy shit, I though Team Four Star jumped on the D&D bandwagon late. The bald guy looks like a literal wojak, there's a jewess playing a fat? big titted furry (probably a tranny), a faggot and a nigger.

This is one of their bigger draws in terms of views after the fact, which baffles the hell out of me. I tried to watch it all the way through to see how bad it's gotten, but I couldn't take it. I scrolled through the video haphazardly and ended up at that hilarious-for-all-the-wrong-reasons ad break.

 

[Aaron Costello]

Yahtzee """"Reviewed"""" Baldurs Gate 3 if anyone is interested

 

[Radola Gajda]

How dare you rename my precious health bar. This blasphemy can not be forgiven.
Is he autistic? Blasphemous is not first nor last game that did it. And it has minimal effect on player experience. So I dont get why he focuses on it so much.

 

[BetterFuckChuck]

"Japanese developers don't like it when westerns use the term JRPG"
"But I like it"

"I'm not a fan of Jrpgs" Then why do you keep playing them???

I don't get the point of this video... But I dont want to save the world!!! What an odd thing to be mad about lol Also complaining about the writing in jrpgs, and then basically saying that the writing in GTA is better, is the most western games journalist thing ever.
People like Yahtzee, are what Yoshi P was talking about, when he was talking about western games journalists and the term JRPG.

let me guess: not enough trannies and depression and meta narratives like muh undertale

 

[Aaron Costello]

How dare you rename my precious health bar. This blasphemy can not be forgiven.
Is he autistic? Blasphemous is not first nor last game that did it. And it has minimal effect on player experience. So I dont get why he focuses on it so much.

i dont get the mortal kombat complaint at the start. it's overly violent?? imo it's more tame than mk11 also Yahtzee basically saying 'oh video games, what happened to fun??' idk Mortal Kombat is pretty fun...?

 

[Wodanaz]

i dont get the mortal kombat complaint at the start. it's overly violent?? imo it's more tame than mk11 also Yahtzee basically saying 'oh video games, what happened to fun??' idk Mortal Kombat is pretty fun...?

Surely you must realize it's at least a bit funny to say "I don't get it, this highly detailed gore simulator is less grotesque than the previous highly detailed gore simulator". I just looked up some gameplay and saw a centaur demon pierce some guy's skull with his tail, then detonate the guy's entire body with an explosion of red mist. He's comparing that game to the brightly lit campy swashbuckling game.