Most critics take years to reach the level of trust and endearment they need to develop a large fan base. This convention was shattered when Ben Croshaw's release his review series, Zero Punctuation. The series has achieved notoriety essentially over-night and Croshaw has the following to say about his newly found fans: "Fans are clingy complaining dipshits who will never-ever be grateful for any concession you make. Incidentally, why not buy a Zero Punctuation t-shirt?" Corshaw has become famous for this sort of rapid-fire humor, much of it backed up by witty and profane observations. Croshaw or “Yahtzee”, as he is better known by his fans is a critic and amateur game developer, as well as the originator of the popular series Zero Punctuation.
Zero Punctuation began its life humbly-enough as a simple YouTube upload. Croshaw had posted up the video as new content for his website. The video was a review of “the Darkness” for PlayStation and Croshaw decided that he would try a new approach this time. Rather than simply film himself talking, he began using common tools like Windows Movie Maker and Photoshop to create an animation, which would run with his audio as the narration. The cartoon imagery was placed on yellow background and used to illustrate what is being said in the narration or to provide an ironic counterpoint to it. The videos are typically no more than five minutes in length. Once the Darkness review was finished, he moved straight to Fable: The Lost Chapters. Within a month of releasing the Fable review, several organizations approached Ben with offers for him to produce exclusively for their network.
Croshaw's typical review consists of pointing out the flaws in large commercial games that he says 'mainstream' critics don't bring up. Things like a blatantly cliché storyline or plots with holes so large you could drive a truck through them. Although the reviews are not universally negative, the vast majority certainly are. Corshaw shuns certain die-hard staples of the gaming industry like fighting games or the corporate mascot reinventions like Mario or Sonic the Hedgehog. Being an amateur game developer himself, Corshaw continually preaches his disdain for certain game mechanics such as timed-events; it is partially this level of interest, which has earned him notoriety among hard-core gamers.
Many gamers also know Corshaw's history as a game developer and now gaming-insider. Corshaw recently admitted that Duke Nukem Forever's developer, 3D Realms, had approached him to write a script for the upcoming game. Two of the lead developers, Brian Hook and Jay Brushwood pushed for Corsaw's involvement in reinventing the game, but the lead designer claimed it wasn't the right fit for the Duke Nukem fans. It is difficult to speculate on events, which did not occur, but while the Duke Nukem release bombed in sales and received mediocre fanfare at best, Zero Punctuation has continued a dramatic rise in popularity. Most of his videos achieve a half million hits on YouTube, and even more for The Escapist.
So can you rely on Zero Punctuation for all your game reviewing needs? To put it frankly, no. Corsak is far too hard on games and it seems that some of this negativity is generated primarily to sell the jokes. Almost all games receive negative reviews, so even that game you spent a hundred hours devoted on will certainly be torn apart. While he may hint occasionally that he is being nit-picky with certain titles, it is so brief that no one notices and after that it is straight to the funny insulting bit. While I enjoy the series just as much as any other gamer, it is for the entertainment value and not for the game reviews themselves.
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