Zero Punctuation – Respect

So I was watching ‘X-Play’ to catch myself up on the latest gaming word. Sometimes they do segments on the show where they invite those in the industry and talk about the latest game they’re developing. On these times of the show I couldn’t find any more boring. Why? Because they don’t really do anything to hype up the game, they describe the game’s features in a mono-tone ‘reading the manual’ type a way. Take this ‘Hands on: Starcraft II’ as an example. Is it just me or was this not worth the time recorded,

‘Oooo… The Zerg can dig now, scary. The Queen Zerg *is* a threat, well didn’t see that one coming.’

Anyway, on other occasions they bring in someone of true note like Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw; creator of a ‘Zero Punctuation’- a unique game reviewing video with a style as subtle as blowtorch. At first when I saw the few minutes of his work on x-play I thought:

“Great! Another angry, self-important, brit trying to tell me what’s-what’s! Pass on that.”

Admittedly I did chuckle on what I saw but in the long run I thought he was all mouth, and no substance. As the weeks went on though they kept presenting previews of Zero Punctuation so I figured enough’s enough. I decided to go to their website, ‘The Escapist’, and watch a complete episode for myself. Well I’m sad to say not only is Zero Punctuation is good, it probably the most brutally honest game reviewer I’ve even (sorry ‘X-Play’).

Behind his arrogant, tactless, enema-like analyzation of a game, hides a brilliant understanding of said game. Gives credit where credit is due, but clearly draws attention to where a game fails; such as a game being over hyped in the eyes of the industry or when a current game’s play style have been done before, and sometimes even better, by games in the past (Bioshock ala System Shock). Wrap this underline genius under humor with language I can only describe as Cartman-ese and strangely enough you got yourself a winner. A shame though - I enjoy putting the opinionated smackdown as I see fit, but I can’t in this case because every video I’ve saw so far has been spot on in both humor and reviews.

I maybe tough, but I’m fair.

So congrats Croshaw, you walk out of here still the champ, but now you got my attention so it 's zero tolerance for Zero Punctuation. What you bring to the table, I expect you’ll keep.