Zero Punctuation
From Encyclopedia Dramatica
Zero Punctuation is a weekly feature on the Escapist Magazine, where videogame reviewer and self-proclaimed professional troll Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw reviews 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 good 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.
[edit] Backstory
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.
Yahtzee got his start at professional reviewing 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 guy 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.
tl;dr: His site contains everything one would expect from a lifelong computer dork.
[edit] Advancements in the Field of Trolling
Yahtzee is particularly famous for giving spectacularly hateful reviews to popular, overrated 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 critism 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 1000 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 publically 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.
[edit] MGS4
Though, eventually, most of the internet was content to calm down, stop being crybabies, and let the Brawl drama die. However, next in line for the bawfest were legions of PS3 fanboys, as Yahtzee reviewed Metal gear Solid 4 in June. Yet again, by refusing to be drawn into the absurd hype surrounding what many see as the PS3's one "OMG MUST-HAVE TITLE," Yahtzee metaphorically pissed on the game and put Hideo Kojima in his place. It's unlikely that Kojima or the truly hardcore fanboys noticed or cared, though, as they were most likely too busy jerking each other off with their heads up their own asses.
[edit] 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 that Tim Buckley and his shit comic, CTRL+ALT+Delete, do, in fact, suck 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.
[edit] Fail
While Croshaw maintains an internet tough guy vibe and crests the wave of his video reviews, all other projects have ended in fail. He maintains a cancerous gland of a website openly devoted to aping the style of Seanbaby. Since Croshaw's efforts invaribly fall flat, this is a poor imitation of a turd. More damningly, Croshaw's archives contain an intept Final Fantasy sprite comic, revealing his frothing and deserved hatred of jRPGS and webcomics to little more than the rampant self-loathingof a man in the gutter of society. Croshaw is a typical PC gaming fuckstain, attempting to suck the cum out of every overrated piece of Valve shit that comes his way, and playing a steady diet of western RPG, proving that he is a LARPer and pedophile. Croshaw inserts himself into everything he does as a fedora-wearing man of extreme competency, which puts him on more or less the same level as David Gonterman or Penny Arcade.
Like all men who have never so much as smelt a vagina, Croshaw refers to women as "chicks".
[edit] External Links
- Zero Punctuation at The Escapist
- Escapist Magazine Main Page
- Yahtzee's personal site
- Yahtzee speaks at the Game Developers Choice Awards
- Yahtzee joins some other wallaby-fuckers for a podcast
- The second podcast
 |
Zero Punctuation is part of a series on Gaming. |
|
