"Releasing videos on YouTube is kind of like throwing a message in a bottle out into a churning sea of messages in bottles: the chance of you getting noticed and someone being sent out to rescue you is punishingly slim. But every once in a blue moon, someone who owns a big boat made of money finds your message and agrees to let you ride on his big boat made of money if you keep making messages for him. Then the two of you go on adventures with a smart mouthed talking dog and travel to the land of the gumdrop king and I've sort of forgotten where I was going with this. Anyway, the point is, if you enjoyed my Darkness and Fable video reviews, you can now enjoy videos very much like them every week at The Escapist."
Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw, critic and amateur game developer, decided one day to conduct an experiment. He was faced with a demo of The Darkness he wished to review for his website, but wanted to try something new. So he took Photoshop, Windows Movie Maker, a headset mic and his sense of humour, and turned them into a YouTube video. He then turned to Fable: The Lost Chapters.Less than a month later, he was hired by The Escapist, an online magazine, to release one of these video reviews a week. That explains the origin of Zero Punctuation in the driest possible way, but not the popularity of it; the combination of caustic humour, rapid-fire delivery and visual gags made Zero Punctuation an instant success. The result is quite a polarising, Love It or Hate It series.Yahtzee has started doing a weekly follow-up column, called "Extra Punctuation", in order to explain his views and opinions on the game of the week in greater detail, and bring up points he could not turn into jokes.Staring in February 2011, he also did a column called "Extra Consideration" with Bob "Movie Bob" Chipman and James Portnow of Extra Credits (though Portnow was replaced by Jim Sterling of Destructoid fame after he left the Escapist). The column petered out by early September, sadly, but its entire run can still be found here.Previews of the next video were shown on X-Play for a brief period in 2008.Do not confuse with No Periods, Period or No Punctuation Period.
Accentuate the Negative: Yahtzee's style, to the point where he'll occasionally rattle off a four-minute list of a game's flaws and then sum up by saying how much he enjoyed it. ("But having now whinged myself inside-out, I have to say that I find S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky weirdly compelling.") Presumably this means there are some positive qualities, but listing them isn't his department and has claimed "people don't like me being nice to a game".
He stated in his inFamous review that he views his job as tearing the bad and the mediocre games to shreds so that the rare game that could be called great can shine all the brighter.
In his review for Batman: Arkham Asylum Yahtzee says that he's more of a QA man and that anything he doesn't mention in his review is a good part of the game.
As he put it in the same review: "You don't call a sewer technician to redecorate your bathroom, and you don't come to me to hear about how a game is good."
"In fact, I might go so far as to say that H.A.W.X. has sold me on air combat games. But that's not funny, so let's find more things to rip on."
From the Orange Box review: "If I did have to criticise it — and I do" [Cue Escapist logo holding up a contract.]
Portal: "I can't think of any criticism for it" [Cue Escapist logo holding up a contract] and "Absolutely sublime from start to finish and I will jam forks into my eyes if I ever have to use those words to describe anything else, ever again."
From the Clive Barker's Jericho review: "I could go on listing the stupid design decisions...so I will."
Even going back to his BioShock review: "If my Psychonauts review taught me anything it's that no one likes it when I'm being nice to a game..."
Inverted: when he finally got the chance to play Duke Nukem Forever, Yahtzee was actively trying to like it and ignore the faults, but eventually had to relent because he'd been harsh to games for far lesser reasons.
Spoofed in his Gears of War 2 review, where he tries as much as he can to hate it, but lists off some of the stuff it does well that prevents him from hating it. It ends with, "There aren't even any quick-time events! Oh, wait, there is one. A little one. I guess that means I have to hate it."
Retroactively played straight again; he bashed the entire Gears series with the release of Gears of War 3
Alas, Poor Scrappy: In-universe (for lack of a better term) example: Yahtzee said during his "review" for Duke Nukem Forever that the cancellation of the game wasn't the end of the world since it had been overshadowed by other franchises, most notably Half-Life. However, in his Extra Punctuation article, while reflecting on the plans of bringing it out in 2011, Yahtzee admitted that too many FPS have taken the cover-based combat route and he'd like a return to the basics with one guy facing armies all at once.
Alternative Character Interpretation: In-Universe: For a number of games he reviews, his viewpoint tends to cast the protagonist in an extremely negative light.
His first instance of this is reviewing Tomb Raider, where he portrays Lara as an irreverent, iconoclastic kleptomaniac.
Bowser of the Super Mario Bros. games is a charismatic union leader who defies the upper-class bourgeoisies of the Mushroom Kingdom but secretly yearns for their approval.
Jack Slate of Dead To Rights is more murderous sociopath than law enforcement agent.
Kimberly of Call of Juarez the Cartel is an unfeeling sociopathic bitch.
Vincent of Catherine is a bumbling idiot whose friends only pretend to like him.
Analogy Backfire: His reason for suspending judgment on the Kinect. "Pope Urban VIII probably thought he was very clever when he condemned Galileo, but who got the last laugh there? Well, he did when Galileo died alone and in poverty but what I'm saying is I'm basically like the Pope."
"I could talk about how the combat flows, and how the atmosphere is solid, and how the highlights for me were the Scarecrow sections where Batman's perceptions of reality are skewed in favor of a nightmarish introspective delusional glimpse into the darkest recesses of his soul and how jumping on people is cool."
On a signpost in the Witcher review:
SHAME FAILURE IGNOMINY SWINDON
The list of things George Lucas will never do: Definitely end popular moneyspinning franchise, refuse a second helping of pancakes, admit failure, survive in vacuum, shave.
Asexuality: Has self-confessed issues with sex and/or kids, so games that rely on either for appeal get marked down severely.
Nolan North's presence in a game tends to be a sour point for him (especially if he voices the maincharacter). However, he's stated that it's nothing against the man himself, though even cases of Playing Against Type will make him hate the character as long as he knows it's him.
Quick Time Events. Enough so that he named a trope for them. (See: Press X to Not Die)
Be Yourself: Unfortunately, while he does frequently state that the reviews are his subjective opinion and that people should ultimately decide what games they think are good, you'd never be able to tell reading the comments on the Escapist.
Biting The Hand Humor: "I made this chart to see how many people visit The Escapist on days besides Wednesday..."
B Roll Rebus: Nearly all of the visuals that aren't meant to represent gameplay. His Wikiquote entry even Pot Holes some of them for lack of images.
Bias Steamroller: When he takes out one, it's very strong, to make an understatement.
He refuses to review JRPGs pretty much on principle, and none of his reviews of the few he has played are anywhere near positive. Similar deal with fighter games. He's a bit kinder to Strategy games, but avoids them because he dislikes the genre.
Of late he's had a tendency to hate Nintendo games simply for being Nintendo games. He's self-admittedly rarely been kind to the company but even the shreds of respect he had for them seem to have evaporated.
Even just being a Modern Warfare-style shooter is enough to draw his ire. The only games he's reviewed overwhelmingly positively in the genre are Gears of War 2 (a review which he later regretted, claiming in his review of the game's sequel that he honestly couldn't remember why he'd been so kind to the second game) and the original Modern Warfare.
Sandbox games get a bit of a fair pass from him and tend to get positive reviews. For instance, his Skyrim review barely touched the game, but was mostly about bashing modern shooters.
"Short answer: no. Long answer: nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo."
Bilingual Bonus: When Yahtzee "quotes" a ZP fan extolling Siren Blood Curse to him, said fan starts spouting off about Yahtzee's love of Japanese horror, eventually devolving into random Japanese words: "Watashi wa baka gaijin," which roughly translates to "I'm a stupid foreigner."
The review of Prince of Persia: Forgotten Sands (which totally wasn't made to cash in on a movie) starts with a Take That against Roger Ebert's (then-recent) remark that video games couldn't be art. He then ignores it for the rest of the review until the very end when he yells at Ebert again.
Brain Bleach: In-universe example — it's a favorite reaction by Croshaw.
The No More Heroes review opens with the Stranglers song of the same name. However, the song's abruptly cut off: "No, no, that's a bit too obvious." This isn't mentioned throughout the entire review. Finally, in the credits, the songs used in the video are listed as normal, except that "No More Heroes" has been thoroughly scribbled out.
Another one consisted of a spoiler warning in mid-episode, where Yahtzee told spoiler-sensitive viewers to plug their ears and wait for the credits. The credits mini-comic consisted of a series of famous spoilers from other works. (It was his sled, Keyser Soze = Kevin Spacey, etc.)
Broken Record: "You couldn't get away with releasing a buggy game in the cartridge and cassette days; you'd be trampled under the company Brontosaurus. But I'll tell you the worst part- worst part- worst part- worst part- *system error*...and whistled for a baboon!
Buffy Speak: His metaphors descend into this while reviewing LittleBigPlanet.Lampshaded in the same review — it was very hot that week and he couldn't think of anything better.
The phrase "triple-cunted hooker" makes a number of appearances.
In the Hard Reset review, Yahtzee compares the game to Painkiller by dint of the fact that many who worked on the former were also among the crew of the latter. While praising Painkiller' for its array of creative death distribution implements, the avatar onscreen wields a shotgun that has tits and is on fire — precisely the phrasing Yahtzee used in his review of Painkiller.
In the Super Mario Bros Wii review the credits state that Yahtzee only has two friends. Later in the Nier review we find out that this was referring to the imp and the extremely bored looking man respectively, hence why they are the only recurring characters in his videos.
The "paddling pool full of disembodied breasts" analogy in the Saints Row 2 review returns in an exaggerated form in the Saints Row The Third review.
Cargo Ship: In-universe example: In his Red Faction Guerrilla review, Yahtzee admitted he pretty much proposed to Saints Row 2 in his review of it — complete with picture of him and the game in bride and groom attire, respectively.
In his Silent Hill 2 retro review, he lampshades his fondness for "dropping to my knees and wrapping my lips around old titles from time to time".
Chaotic Neutral: Yahtzee claims to be this alignment in his Spider-Man: Web of Shadows review and encourages his fans to argue on the forum as to whether he is or not. invoked
He has accused the Zelda series of all its entries being the same game. However, he has also shown he actually hasn't played the series that thoroughly. By the time the show started, he only had played two games (The Wind Waker and Twilight Princess, which he claims to like) and yet, he made that accusation right from his first Zelda review (Phantom Hourglass). In other words, he only knew 3 out of 14 games. He also admited in his review of the Nintendo 3DS version of Ocarina of Time that he barely played the original game, and in his Skyward Sword review, he shows those five are the only games in the series he has played and finished. That means he still only knows one third of the series. See It's the Same, Now It Sucks below.
The fact that he always includes Majora's Mask, of all games, inside the "all Zelda games are the same game" statement (via background images), makes it even clearer. If people complain about something in that game is, precisely, They Changed It, Now It Sucks. The Adventure Of Link and Four Swords Adventures, two games that severely change the Zelda formula, have appeared that way too at some point.
Complaining About Things You Haven't Paid For: In this Extra Punctuation blog, Yahtzee announces that there will not be an update next week, and informs anyone who has a problem with this, "Now, you only have a right to complain about this if you are actually paying money to watch and read this stuff. And even then, only because someone appears to be pulling a fast one on you."
Cool and Unusual Punishment: Apparently whoever designed the inventory system for Resident Evil 5 should be sent to a special Hell where he has to pack shopping for old ladies...or just punched in the stomach.
Also says that any developer that holds back stuff for DLC should have their hands cut off, and then put back on after paying 1200 Microsoft points.
He also has a great love for anything that does things differently like Portal and No More Heroes; he complimented Mirror's Edge for trying something new even after tearing the actual gameplay apart, and Assassin's Creed got praise for being original even though it was let down by highly repetitive gameplay. Similarly, he praised Dark Void for being an ambitious failure, and as such, better than "committee-designed sludge". He also liked Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, despite hating Silent Hill spinoffs and saying that the monsters and chase scenes weren't scary and the psych test gimmicks weren't enough, for trying something new. He raves about Shadow of the Colossus for creating, naming and codifying the Colossus Climb, and Ico got a love note from him for making him care about a Cute MuteLove Interest.
"When the bottom falls out of the game criticism market and I have to start prostituting myself to developers, BioWare will be one of my first ports of call, because there are few enough developers in the world who treat writing as an integral part of the game rather than an optional set of colorful tassels to put on the handlebars."
In his review for the second game he spends almost the whole review talking about the changes in gameplay, then mentions casually how the writing and characters have gotten better, but because it's BioWare they don't get any points for it.
Considering his positive mentions of Serious Sam and his love of Painkiller, along with his positive review of Dead Rising 2, Yahtzee also seems to like games that pit the player against large hordes and give them the freedom to just go wild.
He mentioned a particular fondness for Shaun of the Assassin's Creed series, partly because he reminds him of himself and partly because he often insults DesmondMiles.
He has a thing for large open environments with interesting ways to traverse the world, such as Le Parkour or flight.
Credits Gag: The text next to his name at the end. Also, the opening and closing credits each had a clip from a song whose name and/or content was a pun on the content of the review. For example, Haze, about drug-fueled mercenary super-soldiers, used Afroman's "Because I Got High". This stopped after he got big enough that he had to worry about the RIAA.
Also, the credits themselves have a little minicomic going on, acted out by the little figures he uses in the reviews. The one for Spore had a flying saucer alien abducting Batman, who then beat it up and stole the flying saucer. Additionally, there is generally a caption referring to something earlier in the video.
Cross Over: With the MST3K-esque series Unskippable. Yahtzee appeared in their Star Ocean: The Last Hope riff and Graham Stark of Unskippable appeared in the first section of the Halo Wars review to review X-Blades before running out of things to say and getting kicked out by Yahtzee.
A throwaway gag, mere seconds into the aforementioned Halo Wars review, poked fun at Eternal Sonata, which was Unskippable's premiere episode.
Crying Indian: The Fallout 3 featured a deer crying over the landscape being littered with rubble.
Curse Cut Short: He spends the entirety of his 50 Cent reviews carefully wording his criticisms so that nothing can be misconstrued as racist, then ends with:
"Not that they'd know anything about work, the lazy nig-" [END CREDITS]
Cut His Heart Out with a Spoon: Wonders aloud if Deus Ex Human Revolution's ending is intentionally bad, so players will purchase the DLC. "Anyone who pulls that shit deserves to have their hands cut off. And sold back to them for 500 Microsoft Points."
Dancing MookStinger: One ad shown after the credits is an Imp groovin' to his iPod.
Dare to Be Badass: Well, at least "dare to be different", in his Super Mario Galaxy 2 review. In spite of his bashing of it he does admit in the end it is fun and if people want to play the same games he can't really do anything to stop them, but he does request that those people go out and do one thing they never have before.
Darkness Induced Audience Apathy: In-universe example: A big irk for Yahtzee is games where protagonists are just as (if not more) unlikable than the antagonist, citing WET and Kane and Lynch: Dog Days as a major example.
Department of Redundancy Department: "So you've looked at Penny Arcade seen the massive amount of money, prestige, and money those guys get for nine panels a week, and decided you want in on that." The visuals go a step further: when he says "money", "prestige", and "money" again, ever-increasing piles of cash and swanky clothes appear on the two people meant to represent Gabe and Tycho...and even after he goes on to abandon the verbal redundancy and finish the sentence, another layer of largesse is added.
Speaking of repetition, there is Dead Space, which is repetitive.
"Have I mentioned that I've written a novel that you can preorder from Amazon and Amazon.co.uk? Well, I've written a novel that you can preorder from Amazon and Amazon.co.uk."
The ZP review of Mirror's Edge also suggests this: we only have the plot's say-so that the police chasing you are the bad guys, and as far as we know, the packages could be bombs to blow up someone's grandma.
Did Not Do the Research: More than a few times has Yahtzee made jokes and jabs at something, only for it to be just plain wrong. But Yahtzee sometimes has just a week to play the game and make each review, so this can sometimes be unavoidable for him. Yahtzee has acknowledged his mistakes... sometimes.
Discretion Shot: The statement that a premise has been "stretched wider than a catamite's rectum" is accompanied by a black screen with the text "IMAGE VERY CENSORED".
After Rebecca Mayes' love/hate song that called him out on this he claimed he does hate women but only because he hates everyone.
From the Credits Gag for the Catherine review: "I'm not a mysoginist, I only hate the bitchy ones".
Does This Remind You of Anything?: Subverted/Lampshaded in the video where Yahtzee takes a tour of Washington D.C. He makes a few mentions that certain buildings or monuments remind him of something, but goes on to mention something mundane and non-sexual. He then double subverts it while looking at the Washington Monument:
Yahtzee: It's really long and tall, has those trees at the bottom from this angle. Kinda like, uh...a big cock and balls.
Do Not Call Me Paul: Apparently he hates being called Ben by people on the internet. In one podcast, Yug and Matt of Australian Gamer (his best buds) stated that they don't even call him that in real life. Matt says everyone except his parents calls him Yahtzee.
Ensemble Darkhorse: In-universe example: In his review of Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story, he notes that he's always preferred Luigi to Mario, since he at the least isn't Peach's personal gopher. He also wonders why Tails gets so much more hate than Sonic despite the fact that he's basically Sonic with flight.
Even Evil Has Standards: While Yahtzee isn't too keen on kids, he mentioned in this article that he was disturbed by a comment on his Modern Warfare 3 review by someone expressing a desire for the Big Bad to torture children "HoloCaust style". As an "ironic statement".
Er... thanks for your input, Mr. Poster Man, but I wasn't talking it down for not being extreme enough. Or 'ironic' enough. I doubt emptying an entire lorry full of toddlers into the woodchipper would have improved my opinion any.
Fake Difficulty: Part of the reason he despises motion controls. As he put it, "Motion controls are a system wherein a game can fail you for something that completely wasn't your fault."
Flame War: Happens in the comments section on the majority of the games Yahtzee reviews between people who agree with him and people who don't.
Flat What: A visual example is used by his Author Avatar in his Condemned 2 review, when he describes the unusual means by which you defeat the final boss: shouting at it.
The series itself has started to become one of these. At first it was a simple case of Follow the Leader as imitators sprang up on YouTube, but now that threeseries on the Escapist itself have followed suit, two of which are not review shows, it's safe to say this is a legit genre now.
Gay Option: In his Dragon Age II review he mentioned having hooked up with Anders, more or less because Snarky!Hawke annoyed him and came off as gay to him anyway, though he later detailed that roleplaying played a major part of it and ultimately did develop a genuine fondness for Anders, even forgiving him for blowing up the Chantry and naming his Tepig after him.
Gratuitous German: Yahtzee apparently studied German and it frequently comes up in series.
Genre Savvy: Seeing an enemy with a bull's head in Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands, he correctly anticipates it to be a Bullfight Boss. He also claims "powers of clairvoyance" that mean he predict how the opening cutscene of Singularity will play out.
He is also aware of tropes, and knows that Tropes Are Not Bad. He may or may not be aware of this site, but at the very least he understands the principles of this wiki.
He referenced it on his Twitter, so he at least knows of its existance.
Gosh Darn It to Heck!: Whenever he swears in the narration, the animation will replace it with something far more innocuous.
Sometimes inverted—he'll say something (relatively) tactful in the narration, and the animation will unleash what he REALLY thinks.
For instance, in his Assassin's Creed review, he remarks; "This video review was created by a not particularly multi-cultural person, but who really loves religious extremists a big huggy bunch," where the text displayed reads "...not particularly multi-cultural person who invites religious extremists to suck out his farts and die."
Grammar Nazi: In his "Mailbag Showdown" video, while reading out some of the more obnoxious examples of hate mail he received, he corrected them onscreen in the manner of a primary school teacher, coupled with letter grades, giant question marks and "SEE ME" at the bottom. Also, his "Split Stroke Second Colon Velocity" review.
"On the whole though it's just not as good as tonguing another man's balls. [Both figures stop playing and stare at the fourth wall] I mean... as it used to be. [Beat] I'm not gay."
Also seems to link back a few times to Does Not Like Women; he'll make a joke about not being able to get laid, comfort himself with the excuse that women are terrible anyway, and then cap off the joke with "But I'm still not gay." Perhaps the gentleman doth protest too much? *
In the same review, he compares pushing the buttons on the fret bar to fingering a female lover. Yes, he had mentioned that he was heterosexual.
Tried "Tiddles" in Deus Ex but was slapped down by the game's system of using "JC Denton" as a "codename.
"The moment you put in your own name it goes "Wrong! Your name is JC Denton.""
He Panned It, Now He Sucks: In-Universe, Yahtzee derides people like this and those who complain that his review ruined their enjoyment of the game, stating that if a person's opinion of a game ruins someone's fun, then maybe they weren't having as much fun as they first thought they were.
By this point, complaining about his reviews is often considered pointless.
Hilarious in Hindsight: In-universe example: Very minor, but his quip about how playing as a Big Daddy in Bio Shock 2 is like a sequel to Half-Life where you play as a Gun Turret is much funnier now that one of Portal 2's co-operative play characters is a robot created from a modified Gun Turret.
His sarcastic Duke Nukem Forever "review" was voted the #1 fan-favorite... just before the game was Un Cancelled at PAX 2010.
Hurricane of Euphemisms: Yahtzee makes a concerted effort to get through his review of Tomb Raider Anniversary without referencing a certain part of the female anatomy. He almost makes it.
"Fans are clingy complaining dipshits who will never ever be grateful for any concession you make. The moment you shut out their shrill, tremulous voices the happier you will be for it. Incidentally, why not buy a Zero Punctuationt-shirt?"
For a while before the 100th Episode special, The Escapist used this little stinger at the end of allZero Punctuation shorts to, guess what, advertise Zero Punctuation-related merchandise.
In his Duke Nukem Forever review he rants about how people should be sacked for not doing their jobs, and the picture shows him being dragged out of his office with a sign saying "job: review games that actually exist"
In his Minecraft review, he calls out Americans for being uninformed about current events in countries outside the US, only to turn around and say he wasn't aware of the flooding in his own city because he doesn't keep up with current events.
End Credits for his Left 4 Dead review: "There is a special circle in Hell 4 people who replace numbers for letters".
He accuses the protagonist of Fable 3 of bestiality due to the weird way he interacts with his dog, when in his review of Fable 2 he complains that if the game was truly open-ended he should be able to marry any NPC he wants, including his dog.
"Ess-Tee-Ay-Ell-Kay-Ee-Ar: Clear Sky is set in the area surrounding an alternative post-disaster Chernobyl, where presumably the station ran on fairy dust before the meltdown and released a cloud of magic instead of boring old radiation..."
"All you really need to know is that there is a gun that shoots shurikens and lightning. I wish I could make something like that up. It shoots shurikens and lightning! It could only possibly more awesome if it had tits and was on fire!"
In the Red Faction: Guerilla review, he says in the end that game could have went pretty well if it really was based off sneaky guerilla warfare, as opposed to its focus on smashing stuff "... which is less guerilla and more chimpanzee." Followed by the credits gag "Spent ten years thinking up that last pun."
In his review of Monster Hunter Tri "You play an adventurer-type showing up at the prerequisite village of immobile retards in a time when dinosaurs ruled the earth to try to be a hunter of monsters. A Monster Hunter Try, if you will."
Not to mention his credits pun in Alien vs. Predator: "Alias vs Editor".
"You want a review score? How about FOUR, as in FOUR-K YOU!"
Irony: Now at the bottom of every Zero Punctuation video there are ads linking you to various online retailers prompting you to buy the game that Yahtzee just finished eviscerating due to scripts and other coding used on the site to bring up ads on whatever product keywords are on the web page.
One should always support the independents, at least until they start making money, the soulless sellout fucks.
Admittedly, averted by his Gears of War 2 review, in which he admits that things are often mainstream because they're good (Or because Will Smith is in it).
Pretty much his opinion on anything Nintendo if it's not a joke about casual gaming.
Yahtzee frequently accuses the Mario and Zelda series of churning out near-identical sequels, even though fans are lucky to get two games per console. Particularly noticeable in his Skyward Sword review, when he describes the series as 'essentially releasing the same game with graphical changes and gameplay tweaks' while the games shown include Oddball in the SeriesMajora's Mask.
It's Up to You: He notes that early missions in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky have a tendency to solve themselves, which is a good attempt to avert this, but a bit bizarre to play.
It Was His Sled: invokedLampshaded; before pointing out the flaws of Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X. 's plot, he says to stop paying attention until the "generic rock music" of the credits if you want to avoid spoilers. In the credits his avatar and a single imp hand out a series of this type of spoilers (they even start with THAT sled).
Jumped the Shark: invokedLampshaded in the end credits of his LEGO Indy review, the first time the new, original opening and closing song was used, rather than two licensed songs:
"Now this is all looking a lot more professional, isn't it, although I'm certain some of you pricks are already putting this down as my shark jumping moment."
"I started playing Peggle in the afternoon, and emerged some time later to find the authorities had declared me legally dead."
[After flooding prevented him from leaving his apartment and thus getting a new game to review:] "My third thought was, 'Oh, goody! That means I can go back inside and keep playing Minecraft!"
"A good sandbox is one where you can mess about for hours after making the hollow promise to yourself that you'll stop any minute now, and inFamous 2 certainly has that."
Land Down Under: Yahtzee was born in Britain but moved to Australia, and often makes jokes about it.
The Last of These Is Not Like the Others: Deus Ex: Human Revolution has breathtaking visuals, the impish appeal of stealth, rewarding exploration, but most importantly, you can pick up every vending machine in the building and pack them in the office of your least favorite co-worker.
"...Catherine, a Japanese game centrally about the difficulties of relationships, such as unexpected pregnancy, the impetus of commitment, and being chased up an infinite staircase by a giant, monstrous girlfriend trying to eat you with her butt. Did I mention it's Japanese?"
Same could be said regarding RTS games. After his experience with Halo Wars, Yathzee has apparently decided to never touch the genre again.
Explained further in "On RTS", in which he explains he's not good at RTS and he doesn't like the impersonal disconnect one gets between story characters and units and the player.
The Mean Brit: Though currently living in Australia.
Mean Character, Nice Actor: Debatable. Some who claim to have met Yahtzee IRL have report that he is capable of being quite unpleasant towards others. The same persons have however also noted that this characteristic is reasonably outweighed by the fact that he is also fairly shy and quiet. He claims he's only a jackass when provoked... which is often.
Tycho at Penny Arcade speculates that Yahtzee is quiet in person in order to save up all his hate and rage to bellow it out really quickly in his weekly reviews.
"I'm not to proud to admit that I was welling up at inFamous 2's good ending, a little bit. Well, not much at all really. It most more like stoically nodding my head while doing squat-thrusts and grunting."
"It's like wrestling an excitable dog in a paddling pool full of disembodied breasts. *beat* Don't think too much about that simile, I certainly didn't."
Especially when it's a hot summer day and his AC isn't working. "Really good like...something...good that's...made out of chocolate..."
ThisExtra Punctuation takes the metaphor of "too many cooks spoil the broth" and keeps stretching it until he reckons "I think this is already the best metaphor I've ever written."
Milestone Celebration: Spoofed with his 100th episode, where he decides to review... exactly the same game he would've reviewed otherwise (Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood).
More Dakka: His review of Spore shows the civilization stage as imps strafing other imps cities from the air, with the caption "Dakka Dakka" under the war planes.
Motor Mouth: "Zero Punctuation" comes from how he has a tendency to ramble on and on so quickly that his speech has almost no pauses, and thus there is zero punctuation. More or less.
He has said he edits out the pauses, but definitely does not speed up his voice.
Mugging the Monster: In his Fallout: New Vegas review, he mentions that it occured to him that it might be a good idea to stop stealing things. After getting attacked by bandits and taking their stuff, he mentions it is not stealing because they attacked him, which makes it his by the international law of "Go Fuck Yourselves."
Mythology Gag: During his Final Fantasy XIII review, Yahtzee separates each hour he played the game with a brief break showing a black screen with the unit of time and then which unit he's on (Hour 1, Hour 2, Hour 3, etc.). He used a similar mechanism with three of the games in the Chzo Mythos.
Nerdgasm: Has made a few references to getting erections at really good games.
Newly Popular Updating: Expect any game he reviews to have a new quote entry at the top of its page by the end of the day, appropriate or otherwise.
Nice Hat: "Yahtzee is a British-born, currently Australian-based writer and gamer with a sweet hat and a chip on his shoulder." The hat originally appeared in his own games, The Chzo Mythos, worn by the character of Trilby. The hat itself is known as a Trilby hat, and it tends to get him more attentionthan he really wants.
Yahtzee apparently has a long-standing fear of theme park mascots, which he's previously let known in his old blog, that he conquered playing Epic Mickey. This was not helped during a trip to Disneyland, especially with the parade.
Nintendo Hard: Yahtzee prides himself on as having been playing video games since early childhood and frequently recalls how hard they were back then. He routinely mocks prospective critics who complain about the difficulty level in games these days. That said, games with ridiculously impossible sequences, he blasts with both barrels.
No Fourth Wall: Technically doesn't qualify as there's no suspension of disbelief, but a review still pushed back the boundaries when Yahtzee addressed the viewer as "Adrian", and noted that while that's not particularly likely to be any given viewer's name, "it was worth it to freak out all the Adrians in the world."
"If you've been paying attention, you'll notice that all these games are sequels. And if you haven't... * claps twice* OI!"
"Stop watching my reviews, Dad!"
The Super Mario Galaxy 2 review has the distinction of genuinely breaking the fourth wall, as Yahtzee suggest pausing the video, while his avatar points to the pause button on the video player.
"I shouldn't have to talk about the core gameplay, I consider that an insult to you and me. My review of Mario Galaxy 1 hasn't gone anywhere, why not pause this video, pour yourself a glass of wine and go and enjoy that. I'll just wait here slapping myself in the face until you return. * cut to black, slapping sounds and Yahtzee groaning, then cut back, Yahtzee now with a bruised face* Finished? Right, well, Mario Galaxy 2 is more of that."
Noodle Incident: The end of the Fallout: New Vegas video says "I hope the war in Las Vegas destroyed that ice machine I threw up in".
"Now I've never invaded Europe, except for that one time..."
Not Himself: Wait, what's this? Resistance 3 has no regenerating health? A sum of weapons greater than 2? No chest-high walls? "..erm.....Sony?.......Are you feeling all right?"
Old Shame: Yahtzee has admitted at least twice he used to watch Pokemon when he was a kid. While some people might not consider this shameful, he certainly does.
Waggle: invoked One of his key issues with Nintendo consoles, because how shoehorned-in it seems.
Pet the Dog: In an Extra Punctuation, although he couldn't sympathize with gamers who cried at Aerith's death in FFVII, he said that the emotions they felt were real and no one could call them fake or wrong.
Since Batman: Arkham Asylum had none of these, Yahtzee instead used "Press X to KICK ASS."
H.A.W.X.: "Press X To Make The World Safe For Democracy."
Silent Hill Origins: "Press X to Nurby Durby Durr" (This particular "Press X" gag is repeated in other videos)
Grand Theft Auto IV: "Press X to exaggerate financial standings" (In reference to the game's over-reliance on realism — "What next, the Write-a-letter-to-your-mum mini game?")
The hilarious thing is, at one point you do have the option of having Niko write an email to his mother.
50 Cent: Blood On The Sand: "The prerequisite quick-time experiences..." [caption: "Press X To Brutalise This Poor Fellow"] "... are thankfully not mandatory." ["Or Don't, Whatever's Cool."]
Mass Effect 2: "Press X To Not Care" ("You can't just spend the whole game knocking back Singapore Slings on a beach all day")
He actually explains a couple of the reasons why licensed games tend to do poorly while reviewingPrince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands, released to promote the Sands of Time movie, citing that most of them put too much focus on the story or license (as opposed to gameplay) or get rushed enough to where notable issues don't get fixed (both of which, he says, are evidently the case with the 2010 Prince of Persia games). He still finds the game enjoyable despite having the look and feel of a licensed game.
Promoted Fanboy: A college kid by the name of Daniel Floyd created a video heavily inspired by Yahtzee's show. A few months later, he was hired by The Escapist and now does a show called Extra Credits.
Rapid-Fire Comedy: One of its defining features, helped by Yahtzee's Motor Mouth and the blink-and-you-miss-it speed at which many visual gags flash by.
If the developers [of Heavenly Sword] thought I would consider buying the full game just to find out what "twing-twang" is then mission fucking accomplished I suppose, but I'm going to be very disappointed if it doesn't turn out to be a cutesy euphemism for lesbian cunnilingus, yeah I went there.
Ret Gone: The final product of Duke Nukem Forever was apparently such a transcendental work of awesomeness that it collapsed reality and ended up being cancelled before completion in the new timeline. Now the new version will likely fail to live up to the "original".
Also the caption "Oh no everyone can see my bum," first appearing in his review of Mercenaries 2, where Soul Calibur's Ivy bent over and had the caption above her. Then a box did it in the same review. Then a few reviews later, a male figure did it. Eventually lampshaded when a figure bends over with the caption "Oh no everyone can etc."
And in Velvet Assassin a "German" soldier is bent over saying the above caption. In German.
And in Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood a cowboy imp says it in a Western accent while bending over on top of a piano.
A different lampshade was hung in his Heavy Rain review when the female lead said "Oh no everyone can see my callback".
The real Duke Nukem Forever review had Duke saying, "Oh good everyone can see my bum."
Makes a comeback in the "Assassin's Creed Revelations" review, where one of the many prostitutes Ezio has recruited in the past makes a statement concerning "bums and the seeing thereof."
Nose-picking is mentioned frequently when talking about mundane actions on the part of either the player or NPCs.
Yahtzee references making a supervillainsandbox game called "Mankind Has Yet To Recognize My Genius, The Game" at least twice.
Also, the image of that red-haired guy. For those who don't know, he's one of Thomas Ruff's "Expressionless Faces" found in one of Yahtzee's Google Image searches. This◊ guy is apparently what Yahtzee sees the huddled, unwashed masses look like.
According to his IAM on Reddit, "He just makes me laugh. I've seen Ruff's other expressionless faces and all of them have some hint of emotion, like surprise or a little smile, but Mr. Expressionless has nothing. He's hollow. Dead in the eyes. And that's why I love him."
The, erhem, prostitute with triple the normal number of a certain orifice seems to be one, too.
Every time Hitler makes an appearance he's accompanied with a caption saying ACH.
"People always say to me: Yahtzee, you (description indicating manliness...)"
Lampshaded at one point with "Yahtzee, you ordinary person!"
As an example, regarding multiplayer Modern Warfare 2: "...lying in long grass watching each other's backs, not gay."
Subverted with Driver: San Francisco, which he adores. "So I guess I am gay!"
In his review of Driver: San Francisco, SERVE AND PROTECT is used sarcastically on the cop protagonist's ability to possess drivers to crash into one another.
Rattling off a list of numbered sequels and turning it into a football score, i.e., (Half-Life 2, Silent Hill 2, Thief 2, Spiderman 2, (Arsenal: 3)). (A generic British joke, possibly first coined by Spike Milligan in William McGonagall Meets George Gershwin.)
[Dead To Rights: Retribution] isn't technically a sequel since the plot starts out the same as the first game, so perhaps a better name would've been Dead To Rights: Remake. Or perhaps Dead To Rights: Revisionism. Let's just hope it doesn't end up Dead To Rights: Retarded. That would be Dead To Rights: Regrettable.
In a similar fashion, Yahtzee took Red Dead Redemption and complained that the game is neither red nor dead. He then went to call the game throughout the review by several alternate names, namely Brown Alive Redemption, Blue Poo Atonement, Green Spleen Submarine, and then Purple Monkey Dishwater.
Sarcasm Mode: The entire Duke Nukem Foreverreview. Let's start from the fact that he's reviewing a game that (at the time) was canceled and work from there. The part that qualifies this as this trope is the bit at the end where he points out there is no actual game, as the lawyers told him to do.
SchrödingersCat: In his "Console Rundown", he compares his Xbox360 to a Schrodinger's Console, constantly swinging between a broken and unbroken state.
Self-Deprecation: While his Zero Punctuation persona is obviously an arrogant Caustic Critic, Yahtzee is known for making blunt, humourous digs at himself from time to time, such as acknowledging the nerdiness inherent in reviewing video games for a living and mocking his own abilities in the practice of social and sexual intercourse (or lack thereof).
On Modern Warfare 2: "The single-player mode is as short as fuck, and let me tell you, when I'm around fucks are legendarily short." [The animation shows two pairs of eyes in the darkness, with the speech "Sorry."]
"As a highly respected and successful game critic—SHUT UP I AM!"
"I played Final Fantasy XIII because I am an unbiased critic—SHUT UP I AM!"
A Freeze Frame Bonus example from the Silent Hill Origins review. It shows all the different Invader Zim fanfiction writer pictures, and the one with the lowest bar is his picture.
Discussed during one review in which he says that one of the targets that Americans like to hate on the most is ... 'Other Americans'.
"A nerd, after all, is someone who obsesses over something, like the cultural impact of gaming, or people who criticise same in silly internet videos."
Sequelphobic: Yahtzee is not inherently against the idea of sequels, but he's extremely critical of most due to their alleged lack of innovation. Franchises that go in new directions are preferred, and several of his liked games (Half-Life 2, Silent Hill 2, Thief 2, Spiderman 2, (Arsenal: 3)) are all sequels.
In the Extra Punctuation entry for his '''Splosion Man''/''Tales of Monkey Island'' review, he stated his belief that a sequel should be done by people who played the first game and didn't like it, rather than fans of the first game. He reasons that the former would change it and evolve it (at the expense of fans of the original), as opposed to fans who would only advance the parts of the game they liked (which could include unimportant/bad mechanics or strictly throwaway gags).
"I do have a guilty enjoyment for Alone in the Dark and Mirror's Edge. They’re wracked with issues, but I find games that try to do something new and fall apart far more compelling than the merely mediocre games that don’t have an original thought in their heads."
He starts his review of Brütal Legend by professing his adoration for Tim Schafer, including stating that if he had a doomsday machine he'd reduce the entire population of the world to himself, Tim Schafer, and one woman if she promised to wear a Tim Schafer mask.
Shoehorned First Letter: "BFE stands for Before First Encounter - not, as I had first believed, Big Fucking Egun..."
Some of them are subtle; for instance, the PC in Red Steel 2, who wears a bright red cowboy hat and trenchcoat is greeted by "Are you that vampire guy?"
He has referenced Back to the Future several times, usually when talking about Time Travel.
Almost all instances mentioning time travel have a picture of the TARDIS, as well.
Yahtzee is a fan of Eddie Izzard, phrases like "small yappy dog", "running, jumping, climbing" and "buttocks for a hat" have all been used in Izzard's sketches. Confirmed on one of the podcasts for Austrailian Gamer, when Matt calls him out on saying that everyone in Britain has a country manor.
One of the dungeons in Nier takes the form of a text adventure game, illustrated with "This dungeon has been replaced by a series of twisty text screens, all alike."
He's recycled one or two of Seanbaby's jokes, but they may be more flat ripoffs than shout outs because the ones Yahtzee borrowed aren't particularly well-known.
"[Singularity] rips off the cutesy, '50's style ads from BioShock, which Bioshock ripped off from Fallout. It's like a magnificent Human Centipede stretching back through gaming history."
In one of his Extra Punctuation articles he offhandedly refers to a generic supervillain minion as "Longshoreman X." A reference to Dead To Rights and almost certainly Slowbeef's Let's Play of the game.
Spoof Aesop: The lesson of Catherine seems to be "men are all directionless tidal waves, and women are all dikes built in the path of their raging flood."
Stealth Insult: His Modern Warfare review features "Killing in the Name Of" by Rage Against the Machine playing over the end credits, which becomes hilarious when you consider that he has spent most of the review telling people who suggest things to him to get fucked. He doesn't play the song long enough for the joke to become apparent, but anyone who's listened to it knows that towards the end the singer just keeps repeating "Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me" over and over again.
Story to Gameplay Ratio: Yahtzee's a bit hard to pin down on this one, but the important things are that the amount of story must fit the game and that Story And Gameplay Segregation must not intrude. Silent Hill 2 is his definitive example of getting the balance right.
Stout Strength: An odd example, he refers to any large muscular character as fat even if they have an impossibly fit and overmuscled build.
Sturgeon's Law: Applied frequently, with an even more negative twist: "Everything is shit until proven otherwise", a.k.a. "the Guantanamo Bay approach".
"Experience has taught me that while declaring a game shitty because of the first few hours is perfectly valid and completely professional, you should never assume that a good game will stay good."
He handily applies this trope to user-made content as well, during the LittleBigPlanet review.
"I feel there's a fundamental difference of philosophy between me and the developers of LittleBigPlanet: they believe every single person is an extra-special god-child with a bud of creativity aching to burst out into a single perfect flower; and I believe every single person is a tosser, and any flowers that pop up are going to be buried under garbage, fiery penises and countless reproductions of levels from Super Mario Bros."
In the review for Batman: Arkham City, Bruce Wayne is represented with a man wearing a t-shirt saying "Not Batman".
Take That: Various games — not just whatever he's reviewing. He's made recurring insults against Halo, its fans, Nintendo's fondness for its own franchises, Americans, Gamespot after the Kane and Lynchdebacle, and Japanese RPGs. Not to mention two of his videos, which were extended Take Thats aimed at, respectively, bad gaming Web Comics in general (and one in particular), and Duke Nukem Forever (dedicated to insulting 3D Realms, their investors, and the fans disappointed by the game's demise).
Yahtzee's review of Wii Sports Resort was a Take That to the fans who stop watching his videos because he pans the Nintendo Wii. He later lampshades the Internet Backdraft that will inevitably occur by bidding his Wii-owning fans a fond farewell. Yahtzee has a longstanding animus toward all things Wii (and some other things about Nintendo), and while he has praised a small handful of Wii games, he gladly indulges in that animus.
An absolutely huge on at the start of his Borderlands review: tearing into people that demand he review a certain game, despite his highly critical approach, only to then be shocked and complain when he criticises it.
He also makes constant Take That's to Australian censorship laws, Australian region release dates and people behind them.
His Prince of Persia: Forgotten Sands review starts with one against Roger Ebert... which he then revisits and SLAMS IN THE VIEWER'S FACE at the end of the review.
"If you willingly parted money for the Playstation Move, feel free to go nuts, because you probably already have done."
"Will [Symphony of the Night] be one of those old classics that still hold up from a fresh modern perspective — like Super Mario World and Patrick Stewart — or will it be like one of those embarrassing older relatives that survive on nostalgia and self-effacement, like Myst or William Shatner?"
His review of Dead island is absolutely full of it. It starts of with saying that when he makes a zombie apocalypse game, your party will struggle to survive against an avalanche of zombie apocalypse games, that his particular game will be titled Enough with the fucking zombies already, and that civilization would not even be able to handle it if the world ended in any other type of apocalypse.
Take That, Audience!: Constant, constant, constant. There is very rarely a video or an Extra Punctuation column where he doesn't insult the viewers and/or himself.
Commenting in the Dead Island review, notes that while the average gamer acts as if they would take a zombie apocalypse as an opportunity to shine, they would be more likely to talk suicide pacts if the internet went down for more than a week.
Talks Like a Simile: For humorous effect, given the nature of the similes. As an example, one of them involved the voice acting in a game being comparable to being raped in the ear by a man wearing a sandpaper condom. Though technically it wasn't him who said it, it was his roommate. And "Not in those exact words, of course."
Matt maintains he actually described it as like driving a corkscrew into his ears.
"I wonder if the Geneva Convention covers torturing metaphors?"
Testosterone Poisoning: Yahtzee seems quite fond of making jokes about his masculinity, stating that it's one of the reasons why he cares little for the RTS Genre. The subtitle for his Fully Ramblomatic site is "The website for REAL MEN".
"If I threw a seven-foot demon into the air and cut it in half with one swing... I'd be like, fucking hell! Did anyone see that? I'm squirting machismo out of my nipples here! I am a monster truck that walks like a man!"
"...Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go play an FPS before my body finishes absorbing my testicles."
He does however have a poor opinion of games that use this trope unironically.
The Theme Park Version: Most people who claim to share Yahtzee's views exactly have patently never watched a single review and simply parrot over-exaggerated versions of his particularly caustic reviews as though that were his entire opinion on the entire genre.
This Loser Is You: Yahtzee's hatred for this trope is made plain in his Transformers: War for Cybertron review, where he derides Shia LeBeouf's various characters in ways like, "Indiana Jones is over thirty? No one can relate to that!"
This Is Sparta: Darius Mason triumphs by using his magic flashlight the fix Mars' weather inside of five minutes. ..Erm.
"Not to dampen your sense of victory, Darius, mate, but why didn't you do that three years ago right after it broke? You DUMB [dopeslap] BALD [dopeslap] TWAT.
Tickle Torture: The way he illustrates the mentioned the initial torture sesions of Black Ops.
Too Many Cooks Spoil The Soup: He brings this up frequently about the large-name corporations running the big-budget titles, and even brings up how such lack of discipline ruined Dead Space 2.
Branston Pickle, which is typically used as a metaphor for "so unique you have to try it".
Cadbury's Creme Eggs and chip sandwiches show up infrequently.
In one episode he considered combining the two to make a Cadbury's Branston Pickle Egg. Then cut to credits. Then he came back with a report on how it went (not very well).
He also mentions Cornettos several times in his earlier reviews.
Troll: Yahtzee once reflects that he's seen as a "professional troll," which he imagines as a hulking creature lurking under a bridge, handing out business cards.
Twain's Observation on Originality: Numerous reviews allude to this concept. His running metaphor about Branston Pickle (to describe something so original and distinctive that it must be appreciated in spite of its flaws) more or less amounts to this trope.
Twenty Bear Asses: One of his reasons for hating MMORPGs is because most quests are variants of this. A sight gag from his Red Dead Redemption video is him running from a cougar holding a pile of otter noses while the caption "7/8 OTTER NOSES" floats over him.
The actual challenge of the fight is basically 'Go here, then here, then Quick Time Event then win. Then cake.'
Video Game Caring Potential: Usually, Yahtzee is a cruel, heartless bastard, but every once in a while even he admits to liking the characters that he plays or the NPCs he gets saddled with.
"It seems when you place most people in the position of a god and give them responsibility over many tiny lesser beings, then their attitude towards them is usually less about beloved children and more about target practice."
In his "Best of 2010" video, his favorite game of the year was Just Cause 2, because "any criticism I might have given it is drowned out by the terrified scream of an enemy soldier with one leg tied to a Harrier jet."
Viewers Are Geniuses: In Yahtzee's review of Deathspank, how many people got that he picked the town name of Northampton for a visual gag about a mystical place because it's very close to the real life English town of Daventry?
In Mafia II, "fast whores" is illustrated by a female imp zooming across the screen going "NEEEOOOW".
When he says "Give me some credit" (about assuming the everyday details of the character's life), an imp offers him a credit card.
All the way back at his Peggle review, you have the images on the pegs: busts of Simon Pegg.
What Do You Mean It's Not Awesome?: When talking about the wet clothing feature in Uncharted, he talks a bit too much about it, considering it means absolutely nothing in terms of plot or gameplay. He realizes this, of course, stating at the end of his praise "Well, I think its interesting!".
What Is This Thing You Call Love?: By his own admission, he doesn't believe in it, even stating that "true love" is indistinguishable from brain damage.
You Keep Using That Word: During the Mailbag Showdown, after a reader told him, "There wasn't really much of a review here. From a purely objective standpoint, Super Smash Brothers Brawl is actually quite a superb game, as you can tell from reading reviews":
Yahtzee: I think you should look up the word "objective", because I don't think it means what you think it means. It's worth remembering that all reviews are subjective personal opinions and if you personally enjoy the game, then they shouldn't really get to you. Unless of course there's a despicable little niggling doubt in the back of your mind, that maybe you're not having as much fun as you've convinced yourself you're having, which doesn't go away no matter how many times you try to slap it down with the wet flannel of weak excuses...
Lampshaded by Yahtzee himself in one column, where he mentions that he's caught himself using certain words so many times that he's had to step back and wonder what the hell he's actually talking about. Helpfully, he put together a handy little glossary of some of his favorites.
. He then turned to Fable: The Lost Chapters.Less than a month later, he was hired by The Escapist
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