Judging by the Cover is a weekly Web Video series by Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw of Zero Punctuation fame, hosted on The Escapist. Started in 2015, each episode consists of Yahtzee astutely reviewing the cover or promotional art of any video game or film that catches his attention, then critiques them as if he were an art critic based on the first impressions that may or may not spring to mind. Dry, absurd, and occasionally nonsensical hilarity ensues.
The series first began in July 2015, becoming a weekly series concurrent to Zero Punctuation, with its final episode being released on September 2017. The show can be found on the Escapist website
, as well as split between the "The Escapist Live" (formerly "Escapist Plays") for the first 10 episodes, and the main "The Escapist" YouTube channels for the rest. A full official playlist can be found here.
Tropes featured include:
- Alternative Character Interpretation: Just like in Yahtzee's other big media review show, this is a major source of humor found throughout the series, arguably to an even bigger degree as it's based on trying to extrapolate details about plot and character from still publicity images. In the very first episode, he concluded that the protagonist of Bloodborne was "a Victorian goth carpenter" who builds weapons from chair legs and nails, and strongly suspected them to be the all-consuming shadow mentioned on the back of the box. He's also claimed that the Robot Masters (and God himself) are trying to fist Megaman, ICO has a "three-foot todger", and the cover of "Hitman: Agent At" depicts the invasion of the Mirror Universe.
- And I Must Scream: In Yoshi's Woolly World, Yahtzee decides that Yoshi must be a victim of this, as his eyes convey the terrified pleading of an intelligence trapped in a body no longer its own.Yahtzee: "For God's sake!" they seem to say, "I just tore someone's nose off! No! Please don't go to the back of the box, you have to stop me before I kill again!"
- Animate Inanimate Object: Touched upon regarding Yoshi's Woolly World. Yahtzee is fully aware of the whole deliberate arts-and-crafts aesthetic of all the characters, but he does question the yarn ball Yoshi is holding on the cover and wonders what real-world object it's supposed to correspond to. Based on its juxtaposition right next to the wool ball representing Yoshi's nose, Yahtzee concludes it may be another Yoshi's torn-off nose.
- April Fools' Day: On April 1st, 2016, Yahtzee did an episode on The White Album by The Beatles. The choice of album art would already be weird enough, but he proceeds to give it his usual analysis anyway... and then things get really, really weird.
- Bait-and-Switch: During his look at Mega Man, he starts off with the original Japanese cover art as part of a comparison to the international versions, noting to the audience off the bat that he knows what they're going with it when he says that. After going through said cover art, he moves onto the notoriously bad... European cover art, spending the rest of the episode on that version. He only briefly addresses the vastly more infamous US artwork in The Stinger.
- Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: On the cover for Yoshi's Woolly World, Yahtzee wonders what the red ball of wool that Yoshi holds next to his nose is supposed to represent... A bowling ball? A balloon? A prolapsed ovarian cyst?
- Catchphrase: He begins every video with "Hello, and welcome to Judging by the Cover, where we'll be judging... (subject of the video)... by the cover," sometimes with mild deviation.
- Christmas Episode: He's done a couple Christmas-themed episodes, not covering any video game or film artwork, but classical-era paintings depicting the Nativity of Jesus, first of Adoration of the Shepherds by Charles Le Brun in 2015, then The Adoration of the Kings by Jan Gossaert in 2016.
- Comically Missing the Point: One of Yahtzee's general trends is that in his approach to reviewing the cover art on its own, he'll elect to ignore any context he had going in and make assumptions on the characters or actions involved solely based on how they're presented. As a result, he ends up frequently being led into odd interpretations of what the product is about. Just for one instance, he interprets the Mirrored Confrontation Shot of Captain America: Civil War's poster as depicting "a fierce nose-comparing contest".
- Damned by Faint Praise:
- Discussed during his critique of the poster for Fantastic Four (2015), along with Polish the Turd.
Yahtzee: I love it when film marketers have to fall back on "from the studio that brought you". The usual starting point in the quality-by-Association Fallacy is "from the director that brought you", followed by "from the producer that brought you", which is desperate in itself, and this is the final resort: a small handful of the guys involved in the creation of an unrelated good thing work in the same building as us, and you never know, maybe we caught some talent off the toilet seats."- Also mentioned in Detective Comics #27, when the blurb talks about "The amazing and unique adventures of the Batman":
Yahtzee: "Unique"'s always a strange word to put in a blurb, isn't it? Because it's textbook damning with fine praise. A bloke who destroys Faberge eggs with sledgehammers could certainly be said to have a "unique" approach to antique restoration, but I doubt his workshop would stay in the black. - Department of Redundancy Department: Yahtzee gets annoyed at multiple parts of the blurb repeating itself while judging Chip's Challenge, in particular the two parts about the levels getting steadily more difficult, and the first and last paragraphs being similar to each other.Yahtzee: Blimey! If this blurb gets any more self-referencial it'll end up more redundant than a Sheffield coal miner!
- Everyone is Jesus in Purgatory: His overanalyzing style spikes up to eleven during his review of The Beatles' White Album, somehow extrapolating the Beatles' name on a white background as a representation of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Then he begins to admire imagery not visible to the viewer and it becomes clear that he's lost his mind.Yahtzee: Obviously the rest of the image is another thing that comes down to personal interpretation. For example...(circles a blank space) ...this haunting collection of nodules reminds me of something I found in the person who I murdered...
- Everything Is Racist: Briefly referenced in his ending joke with regards to the Hitman: Agent 47 poster and its egregiously bad photoshop jobs.Yahtzee: Blimey! You see it everywhere once you start looking for it. Not unlike racism.
- Fantastic Firearms: Upon noticing that one of the imps on the cover of Doo M has a blood-powered Arm Cannon, he concludes that they must be trying to get a look at Doomguy's perfectly normal assault rifle.
- Fartillery: According to Yahtzee's interpretation of one of the covers for Wolfenstein 3-D, BJ Blazkowicz's farts are powerful enough to knock down a nazi stormtrooper, and take out most of the staircase behind him.
- GIS Syndrome: Yahtzee has a pretty good eye when it comes to identifying use of stock assets used in posters, especially if they're managed and photoshopped rather poorly. Within a single poster for Hitman: Agent 47, he notices that the two helicopters are exactly the same but flipped horizontally, there are three instances of the exact same copy-pasted soldier, and the background reflections don't at all line up with anything present in the final composited image.
- I Just Shot Marvin in the Face: in the Doo M episode, the demons are actually trying to get a look at Doomguy's gun, but jog his arm, causing him to shoot one of them in the face by accident, to their (Doomguy and the imp he shot's) mutual annoyance.
- Public Domain Soundtrack: All of his videos (except for one of the Christmas specials) are exclusively scored by a version of Pachelbel's Canon by Kevin MacLeod.
- Sophisticated as Hell: Yahtzee's narration is persistently stoic and intellectual, and unlike the fast tempo of Zero Punctuation, he speaks in a more relaxed, ponderous cadence to allow the thought behind his words to sink in... as well as all the absurd inanity.
- Suspiciously Specific Denial: Yahtzee calls out the trope by name in response to reading the blurb for Prince of Persia, specifically the part where Jafar insists that the princess will marry him of her own free will.
- Swirling Dust: A recurring element found in several posters, especially more modern ones, is a form of this Yahtzee dubs "bombfetti", usually swirling dust, sparks, or other particles to surround characters standing completely still. Yahtzee generally considers this a poor, clichéd use of this trope as it reads as a lazy attempt to emphasize action in scenes where no action properly exists.
- Tinfoil Hat: In "The Adoration of the Kings", Mary wears a tinfoil hat to protect herself from Illuminati thought waves, while one of the visiting magi has a hat with a ring of tinfoil in an attempt to be fashionable.
