Zero Punctuation
Umm, no? also, doxxing is banned.
Zero Punctuation is a weekly feature on a shit website called Escapist Magazine, where videogame reviewer and fan-proclaimed professional troll Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw does a poor man's Charlie Brooker impression and talks like he had 10 cans of Red Bull as he tears into the parade of shitty games currently comprising today's market for the amusement of the masses and the enragement of fanboys around the world. Actually, it's more like a drunk discussion with a friend about that new game he just got, rather than the format most review sites use; focus on the same positives every time, and give a score based on a scale between 9 and 10, or the reviewer gets fired. He does sometimes give games, like Portal, the praise and love they rightfully deserve. Though much more often, he's forced to review a shitty game, and then the segment is more comparable to what the Japanese did to Nanking during WWII. He is also a goon. Croshaw has gained quite a fanbase, although that is only due to the overwhelming number of stupid libs who think that a guy who talks fast and makes half-baked murka-bashing metaphors is an automatic genius and comedic mastermind.
Backstory
—Typical quote from Yahtzee | ||
According to the escapist website, Yahtzee was born on a small, unimportant, tea-obsessed island off the coast of Europe, but currently lives on a slightly larger, unimportant, Vegemite-obsessed island with a bunch of kangaroos and stingrays. Eventually, living in such a nationalistic site made him a critic and inevitably one of the most stuck-up people who would even criticize a hooker if her pussy wasn't to his every little standard.
Yahtzee got his start at professional reviewing after watching a few series of Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe and ripping-off his review format by posting his abusive, fast-paced, rambling reviews to YouTube, just like hundreds of other nerds on the Internets. However, unlike the other losers, Yahtzee's reviews were actually funny. The first games that Yahtzee reviewed in his trademark video format were the PS3 demo of The Darkness and the PC version of Fable. After tearing each of the games several new assholes, Yahtzee became noticed by others on the tubes. Soon after, some troll from The Escapist signed him on to his website so that Yahtzee could continue verbally raping games full-time.
As a freeware game designer, Yahtzee maintains an overly critical, slightly pretentious approach to reviewing, yet still includes enough harsh insults and dick/boob/gay jokes to satisfy the average internet goer. Yahtzee has a personal website called fullyramblomatic.com, where he posts review updates, downloads for his own games (mostly text/story based adventure games), random essays/rants, and other amusing articles on various nerdy topics. Among his nerdy topics include a rant about how proud he is to be a snob, he has expressed his dislike for the "Important" apple-pie obsessed landmass and has denied stereotypes about his people while saying every stereotype about those he hates are 100% true.
His site contains everything one would expect from a lifelong computer dork.
Advancements in the Field of Trolling
Yahtzee is particularly famous for giving spectacularly hateful reviews to various popular games, thus earning him both tremendous amounts of praise and scorn. Some of his notable achievements in stirring up drama include calling Halo 3 mediocre and forcing it to live up to its single-player campaign, playing only a few hours of The Witcher before getting bored and verbally trashing it, and generally throwing heaping amounts of criticism on any game that crosses his path.
However, his most epic win came when he reviewed Super Smash Bros. Brawl in April '08. Naturally, he hated it and gave a hilariously negative review; and seeing as SSBB was probably the most hyped game this side of Duke Nukem Forever, Nintendo fanboys were sent into psychotic rages, unable to accept the fact that anyone could speak badly of their beloved title. The butthurt Brawl fans quickly filled the comment section of the video with over 1,000 comments, roughly 5 times the average amount of comments for a ZP review.
So, two weeks later, Yahtzee responded to his fans. Being the misanthropic asshole that he is, Yahtzee chose to publicly humiliate some of the dipshits that sent him hate mail. Again, the retarded masses went into an uproar, some cursing Yahtzee, but most congratulating him on his successful trolling and deconstruction of Smash Bros Brawl and its fans.
MGS4
Also caused a shitload of nerd rage, nearly on the same level as the Brawl review. He was the only person on the entire Earth to realize how confusing the narrative is Link.
Call of Duty 4
Thought of as another episode of him trolling the viewers because he gave it a positive review for being a fresh and innovative take on the First Person Shooter Genre, but that's impossible because the game is mediocre, overrated and filled with 13 year old boys. In the end, it turns out he was serious. He did state that he never played the multiplayer of a game, so that might not have raped the experience like it did to the rest of us and gives us a wide picture of his social life.
Webcomics
Then, one week later, he went on to turn the condescension and rage towards the gaming webcomic community, known more commonly as the internet's nerdy, unwanted, failed abortion. The main point of the review wasn't so much to review anything as it was to point out to all the world his eerie obsession with Tim Buckley and his shit comic, CTRL ALT Delete, which by the way sucks dog shit. Not that this is going to affect CAD's ratings at all, as pretty much everyone else on the internet has been proclaiming this shit to anyone who would listen for ages. Anyway, after the webcomics review, he is now loved by all once again and all is right with the world. The review in question.
So what is our egotistic maniac, Tim Buckley saying about this? Nothing for now. He has however, been watching his Wikipedia article like a hawk (see user Thrindel), and will be more than willing to flash Wikipedia's rule book in your face if you edit it. No doubt that Tim is very butthurt about this, and a lulz-filled reply is due sooner or later.
- NO U: Comic Genesis has an archive of Yahtzee's very own comic "Yahtzee Takes On the World." 642 updates at last count. Turns out it's almost as wordy and unfunny as CAD itself, making his review nothing more than a jealous rant (He even apologizes for offending people in this strip)... not that it makes it less true or anything, though, because CTRL+ALT+Delete is still gayer than a bag of dicks. However; Where it is unlikely that Buckley would ever admit that the shit he is busily clogging the intertubes with, is an affront to people with just a little sense of taste, Yahtzee has officially disowned all of his webcomics as utter embarrassments, and is current trying hard to forget they ever existed. Be a good sport and help him to remember.
inFAMOUS VS. Prototype
Last thursday Yahtzee did a review of the supervillain sandbox game Prototype, which came out about a day after another supervillain sandbox game, inFAMOUS. In the review he compared the two games, and he concluded that they are both equally shitty. But fuck equality right? Well, Yahtzee came to the same conclusion, and decided that the winner between the two would be whichever design team could send him the best picture of the other game's main character in a bra. Little did he know that both teams would accept the challenge, let alone care. Well it turns that they did. Sucker Punch put their best team of photoshoppers to work and returned with the image to the right. Radical, however, kicked things up a notch with a fucking painting, which can be seen to the left. In the end, victory was decided by which hero put the best set of knockers on display, and inFAMOUS pulled ahead to win the gold. The real winner, however, is Yahtzee, who, as a result of this troll, won a grand total of eleven (11) internets. In addition, The Escapist won one (1) honorary internet for featuring the article on their front page. It's still a shitty site, though.
How to troll Yahtzee fans
The Escapist forums, comprised of Atheists, Jews, Elitists, and Leftards, is already ripe trolling territory. But easiest to troll of all are the Yahtzee Fantards. Try these for the maximum for the maximum Lulz.
- Despite the amount of praise that he gets from his fans, he hates every single one of them from the bottom of his heart, having openly stated this numerous times. Reminding fans of this will cause them to become AnHero.
- Say that Yahtzee is an ungrateful, nit-picky bitch who only flames Triple-A US games to make up for the fact he's a shitty developer and hates America.
- State that random images and a British accent repeated Over 9000 times does not make funny.
GameDamage
Last Thursday, Yahtzee decided that the internets were simply too small a media to contain his nonexistent talents and so Mr. Crowshaw's next venture is a car crash of a TV pilot by the name of GameDamage.
A show that is just as bad as if it consisted of the Taliban flying Princess Diana's funeral procession escorted by a bus full of blind orphans into the World Trade Center on 9/11. Alternatively, imagine having an tramp with a set of pliers and a piece of cardboard attempt to remove a golf bag, with rackets, from your rectum by way of eyes and ears while demanding that you suck his smelly hasn't-been-washed-since-he-lost-his-job-in-1962 penis by way of payment. You then, may just, be arriving in the general vicinity of the suburbs of the forest of failure and incongruous horror that is, GameDamage.
Needless to say, in his recent podcast with ScrewAttack, Yahtzee said the show is dead in the water, after no company in the civilized world wanted to go anywhere near it.
Fursupporter?
You would think than any self-respecting goon would be careful to come near furries, let alone befriend one. However, as the picture show, Yahtzee have added infamous furfag and sick fuck (excuse the redundancy) Cid Silverwing as a friend on his Escapist profile. Of course, chances are that Yahtzee knows nothing about Cid Silverwing or his online escapades and have befriend him out of pure duty without a second thought. Not that it in any way excuses handing Cid more fuel for his ego.
Further evidence of his lack of fur-liking comes from his latest written article of Extra Punctuation, where he responds to a message from one of his watchers, asking him if he believes if Too Human was worse than Sonic Unleashed. He responded as follows:
— Yahtzee on proving his innocence | ||
Croshaw's So-Called Body of Work
- Rob Blank Series - Shitty space adventure starring Yahtzee's homosexual self-insert(s). Like the bulk of Yahtzee's output, they're adventure games, since any retard can make one of those.
- The Trials of Odysseus Kent - Monkey Island but with an edgelord main character.
- 5 Days a Stranger - Mansion Murder Mystery starring Yahtzee's Mary Sue self-insert (again). Welding-mask chainsaw killers.
- 7 Days a Skeptic - Welding-mask chainsaw killers IN SPACE!!1! With a twist at the end that has been done At least 100 times. He just wanted to go into space.
- Adventures in the Galaxy of Fantabulous Wonderment - Another shitty space adventure starring a random schlub, but this time it's not an adventure game (kinda), instead it's some weird hybrid of an RPG, a space sim, and an adventure game. By far the most original thing Yahtzee's ever done. Had a sequel planned called Escape from the Dimension of Insidulous Cruelitude.
- 1213- 2D Platformer. Standard "I'm not insane?" storyline, above-average graphics. Stars a downie with an Oedipus Complex.
- Trilby's Notes - Faceless mannequin kills chicks in Bahamas. Druids save the day. Retcons a bunch of stuff because Yahtzee's a hack.
- 6 Days a Sacrifice - WTF series finale starring a person who can walk perfectly with a broken neck. And have buttsecks. With a broken neck. Chainsaws triumphant.
- Trilby: The Art Of Theft - 2D Platformer. Takes the Chzo Mythos main character and turns him into a 1213 clone.
- Poacher - Metroidvania starring some old guy and a ghost. First game Yahtzee made in Game Maker. Art is worse than the average Newgrounds flash game.
- The Consuming Shadow - Dungeon crawler where a random schlub fights Cthulu and pals. Procedurally generated so Yahtzee would have to do the minimum amount of work possible.
- NEW - Judging by the cover - Another attempt to make a critique web series without needing to do any in depth analysis on the media that he is criticizing.
He has also opened two bars in Australia, both of which failed catastrophically due to the entire premise being that you pay for over priced beers to drink while playing mediocre video games with complete strangers, on mostly broken controllers in a crowded room with the music too loud. After realizing that neckbeards really don't like going outside, normal people just play video games to pass rainy days, and most decent games are one player, he continued focusing on his online works.
Gallery
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Yahtzee went all WTF when he saw this. -
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Yahtzee has succumbed to the Furry epidemic! -
Yahtzee's system of choice is the Commodore 64. -
Yahtzee is known to let people jack off in his face. -
One of Yahtzee's many enemies. -
Yahtzee has a strange obsession with those black imps. -
The man himself (he's in the hat, obviously). -
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Videos
Previous Video | Next Video
See Also
External Links
- Zero Punctuation at The Escapist
- Escapist Magazine Main Page(WARNING: This site is full of trolls and lulz!)
- Yahtzee's personal site
- Yahtzee speaks at the Game Developers Choice Awards
- Yahtzee joins some other wallaby-fuckers for a podcast
- The second podcast
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Zero Punctuation is part of a series on Visit the Gaming Portal for complete coverage. |
