I'm not particularly a fan of ZP but I watch his reviews, albeit not to judge a game. My biggest gripe with him is that he pans things so frequently and so variably that if he says 'This game is absolutely terrible and only a braindead zombie would enjoy it!' it could mean anything from 'It's pretty good' to 'It's average' to 'It's not very good' to 'It's awful' to 'It's one of the worst games I've ever played'.
I remember reading a lot of reviews like this when I first got into TV Tropes, and thinking "Well, this guy sounds awful".
Turns out his "reviews" are pretty much 4 minutes of him talking shit about whatever new release is making waves. It's like dumb comedy, where you sit down and laugh at the lengths he goes through to say whatever morally reprehensible thing he can come up with. "Edgy", yeah, but I really don't think he's as legitimate of a critic as you seem to think. He really is just doing it for the laughs.
Also - "anti-American xenophobia". No offence buddy, but America really isn't all that. You guys get to call us backwards boomerang-wielding drunks, we get to call you guys rude, cheeseburger-loving jerks.
Mr Mallard: Coming back to this, I think I should explain. I'm not what one would call "patriotic". I recognize my country's flaws and can laugh at them. I love how Hetalia handled it, for instance - America is an insensitive, violent, childish oaf with a nearly pathological need to be the "hero" in the middle of everything, but he never really tries to make things worse - he means well, and nobody could really call him a "villain".
The line is crossed when you're not joking about it. Instead of poking fun at our flaws, Yahtzee takes them and uses them as raw insults against the people themselves. There's a difference between making a "fat American" joke and bursting into a minute-long tirade about how much you hate America for no reason, just as there's a difference between jokingly calling a friend "bitch" and telling the same friend "you hopeless fucking deadbeat, get the hell out of my apartment". There are degrees in play.
Wow from the way this was stated I figured this was like a years old topic but no it's recent. Odd to find someone who misses the point of yahtzee in 2015
He doesn't hate Nintendo. There's plenty of Nintendo games he likes. He just hates how monotonous they get.
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Disappointed.
I was referred to ZP by a friend who told me he was "cynical". I watched him. I gave him a fair chance. I found... well, let's just say I was disappointed.
First off - he's not cynical and he's not funny, even with my black sense of humor. He's more like a terrible version of Ren and Stimpy, a combination of grossout humor and "edginess". He once said that he enjoyed Twilight Princess more than Ocarina of Time, then immediately rubbed it in the "fanboys'" face, as if having that particular opinion somehow entitled him to something special. The rest of his humor is built upon jokes about fetuses, feces, and sex. As for cynicism? The only cynicism he shows is his shameless exploitation of his audience, giving them vitriol in exchange for view count. He even says this in his Psychonauts review.
The actual content of his reviews isn't much better. Even discounting the nigh-constant anti-America xenophobia (let's just... not even touch that), he reviews games based on what he wishes games were like, not on how they are. The second would make him more useful as a reviewer, but no - his brand identity is a guy who speaks quickly about things he hates, so that's what he does. Even his rare positive review has very little content, even taking into account the sheer amount of words per video. Yahtzee is a master of talking without saying anything. He also puts brand favoritism ahead of the actual quality of a game - he would rather die than give Nintendo any positive attention, for instance, and anything in a series almost definitely will get panned unless it's a masterpiece. This is why I think he's not cynical - instead of taking the gaming industry as it is - an industry - he rants about what he wants things to be like. As if he could change it. That - believing that he can change the world - is idealistic. (Also, for all the emphasis he gives on games being art and creators being artists, his belief that sequels should not exist definitely limits the options of creators. No continuations, no spiritual sequels, nothing.)
In any case, maybe you like him - I'm not saying you can't - but don't go to him for a fair review, and definitely don't go to him for any substantial humor.