“Comics Archetype Times Tables” by Creebobby/Jacob Borshard (via TVTropes)

Or, as I like to call them, the Punnett Squares of Awesome™. Once upon a time, I played a cute pop culture reference-laden browser RPG called Kingdom of Loathing, in which you could get a Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot familiar. What these tables do is neatly organize such fantastic archetypal crossovers: anything from mummy pin-ups to unicorn pirates, vampire Lincoln to alien platypi. Sadly, these tables don’t have a ninja pirate to reach across the aisle, but thanks to Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw (of AGS and ZP fame) we all know that it’s a matchup that would never work. Click each image for its glorious fullsize version, and also check out Creebobby’s other artstuffs!

I was searching through the internet for video game reviews, as examples of how to and not to review games, and for making a decision on what games I should go to Gamestop, Slackers or the local Game Trader to buy, when I came a upon a quirky review known as Zero Punctuation.

Zero Punctuation is a weekly, animated video review of video games animated and narrated by Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw, for the online video game publication, The Escapist. The Escapist covers video games, gamers, the gaming industry and gaming culture.

Croshaw is a British video game journalist currently living in Australia, and his reviews reflect this nature. Zero Punctuation is written in, what I consider to be, a refreshingly overly critical manner for games felt to be hyped upon or given too much slack by big budget reviewers.

This is especially true of his reviews for games which are put out to continue a long-lived franchise, like ones featuring Mario, Sonic, Master Chief or Solid Snake, and do not change or improve their gameplay mechanics greatly or have not addressed problems that were prevalent in previous iterations.

By contrast, Zero Punctuation is animated in the style of Flash animation, with a narration style from which the title gets its name: literally with zero punctuation. At times the review is so fast-spoken, that I have to watch it a second or third time just to catch all the words.

The animations act out the narrative, often to hilarious ends, like when describing how utterly repetitive and lame the electrical attacks of the game inFamous are to the gory claws, fists and tentacle attacks of Prototype, the onscreen avatar representing the hero of inFamous is impaled in a slapstick manner by the hero of Prototype.

The animation is all done in a minimalistic style, similar to how the cartoons are done in the Lindenwood Legacy, interspaced with video clips from the game being reviewed and sometimes with live action from Croshaw.

What I found most refreshing about Zero Punctuation was that while the reviews may seem overly critical, they make you realize that even though you may own ten or twenty games (fifty for me), only three or four (eight here) of those are ones you that hold precious memories spent with friends or for some reason keep you coming back to play on a consistent basis.

You may own five sports games and four first person shooters, including Halo 3 and Madden 2010, but Zero Punctuation makes you realize that the Duke Nukem 3D that you co-oped on with three of your buddies over Xbox Live Arcade was so much more worth the money.

I apologize to my those who actually check this site cause I’ve been  behind on these posts.  Hell today’s post was suppose to be up yesterday, but I’ve been playing a little game called “I need to do my damned homework before I flunk out of college”… anyways enjoy yesterday’s/today’s post…

Its a Wednesday (was a Wednesday) and these days are my favorite days.  For those who are regular views or the internet extrrrravaganza that is Zero Punctuation will also share this sentiment.  For those who don’t know ZP or the fast-talking video game destroyer Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw, it’s time to enlighten you.  Zero Punctuation is a video review series created Ben Croshaw and is featured on The Escapist Magazine website, which is a video game oriented site with forums for those who are regular visitors.  Yahtzee, who’s avatar is shown on the right, is a British-born, currently Australian based writer and gamer who not only contributes to the online world with his hilarious view on reviewing games, but also designs freeware games and writes for PC Gamer, another well known gamer magazine.

Of course, as the skeptics that gamers tend to be, here is proof that Zero Punctuation is worth a visit every Wednesday… is what I would be saying if I could get the video to embed into this blog.  Anyways, here a shiny link to the video I was TRYING to get in here.  I’ll also include a link to both Zero Punctuation here and a link to Yahtzee’s web page Fully Ramblomatic.com

I’m still looking for new suggestions of reviews people would like to see up so drop a comment or if you know me in person, drop a comment because I’ll forget otherwise…

Click here to see Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw go off on your favorite game

While you wait for me to grind out some more game reviews, please click on the above link to check this dude out.

If you have never heard of Ben Croshaw’s scathing, laugh-out-loud video game reviews, do yourselves a favor and click on the picture above to link to his video gallery.  The man is pure gold.  While I write reviews, he compiles over-the-top flash animations that will make you giddy.

Please check him out.   Croshaw stands among the very few I consider true gifts to all video game reviewers and review readers alike.  Please, use the restroom first–lest you piss yourself.

If Croshaw’s snarky comments and lightning wit are your bag, you can check him out at his personal site as well.  I personally enjoy his tagline of “If Bruce Campbell were a webiste, he’d be this one.”  GOLD.

The “Friday the 13^th” films have always had an odd appeal to me. I mean, they’re obviously poor quality for the most part, laughably written and relying on a series of suspense bits that even a first-time viewer can pick up after ten minutes, but the formula of laughable construction and meat-grinder approach to the terrible actors made it rather endearing. Plus there was always one on when I was home from college, making Jason Voorhees a regular companion on slow nights.

As a series it has pretty much gone to self-parody, transforming Jason into an interstellar cyborg in “Jason X” and pitting him against the now equally absurd Freddy Krueger in “Freddy vs. Jason.” Now though, with “Batman Begins” proving that by tossing all your shitty films into a grinder and starting a franchise over you can actually succeed, the franchise has been rebooted with the eponymous film “Friday the 13th.”

As far as story goes, it’s essentially a hodgepodge of scenes and “narratives” from the first few films. The opening sequence takes the end of the first film where his mother is decapitated after killing the counselors who let him drowned, the second film’s slaughter is packed into the first 15 minutes, and then a completely new story starts with another band of stock actors at a friend’s house who could fit into the third or fourth film easily, right down to the ridiculous haircuts of all the male characters.

To summarize the pointless details of the movie, I’ve decided to adopt the critique system of Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw, the brilliant mind behind Zero Punctuation who also has considerable amount of old horror reviews on his site. I’ll be following the J.A.S.O.N. rules set, seeing just what the film has in comparison to other movies.

Jason: Since this is a reboot there’s none of the scarring and battery that has come upon him in previous films, be it an axe through the head or having a motorboat carve open his throat or drowned in a sea of toxic waste to be left a little deformed child (“Manhattan’s” utterly moronic interpretation). The new version of Jason is something sandwiched between volumes 2 and 3 of the series, resembling a burly scraggly hobo who likes to beat his children on weekends.

He starts out with a bag over his head in the style of volume 2, and after cutting the throat of a delightful pot-smoking hick finds his hockey mask in an attic of junk. The act of reveal and putting it on reminds me of the scene from “Hannibal Rising” when an oily young Hannibal Lecter dons a samurai mask, evoking images of his restraints of “Lambs.” I thought it was a bad idea then, and time hasn’t done much to make it seem like any more than fan service.

Archetypes:

• Angsty McTroubled (one in each act, the second looking for this sister who is the first and held hostage by Jason since she reminds him of his mother),
• Doctor Hilarious (two token minorities who you know will be disliked at first glance),
• Kooky J. Oversexed (one in each act),
• Mackdaddy Suave (one in each act),
• Nerdy von Crapinbed (first act),
• Omen McFuckedinthehead (an old women who looks like the grandmother from Texas Chainsaw Massacre), and
• Senor(ita) Generic (enough that they got killed off regularly and counting them at the start was pointless. Seriously, two or three appeared out of nowhere at one point and I shrugged because I knew they’d be dead soon).

Survivors: Angsty McTroubled (both)

Oddities: Oddly enough (and ironically) there are none. There’s no Jason being struck by lightning and coming back to life, no allegiance with the forces of Hell and no Freddy Krueger waking him up and attacking him in a dream sequence. It’s just a mute psycho willing to hack his way through a bunch of idiots and just happens to keep his mother’s head in an alcove. His living in a series of mining tunnels beneath the camp is a little out there, but you figure the guy has to live somewhere.

N-ding: After being stabbed with a screwdriver, kicked in the face, slashed with a sickle, strangled with a length of chain and having the top of his head nibbled away by a wood chipper, the female Angsty McTroubled drives the machete through his chest and they dump him in the lake. At the very end, he bursts through the pier planks and grabs her in an attempt to pull her down, in an obvious attempt to emulate the early films.

So far it seems like more of the same – young adults are idiots, Jason kills them, dies and then comes back. What makes this installment actually (gasp) enjoyable are two things, the first being the lack of the mentioned oddities. Self-parody and over-the-top storylines are removed, and the bits taken from early movies are the bits that actually seem to add something to it. Teenagers are at the camp, Jason needs to kill them, that’s all there is to it.

The second thing that makes this film so enjoyable is the fact that for the first time in ages Jason seems to be having fun. There’s something almost sadistic about his behavior here – he fires an arrow into someone’s head while they’re driving a boat, lets a woman think she’s safely hidden under a pier and then drives a machete through her head, throws an axe into someone’s back and lets him scream for a couple minutes before flipping him over and slamming him into the ground so hard the blade goes through his chest, and even lights a woman on fire in a sleeping bag to cook her alive. He seems to finally realize his targets are massive pricks, and he – and by extension the audience – enjoys torturing them all the more.

I have no choice but to admit it: “Friday the 13th” is entertaining. It’s a return to form, or as much form as the series has ever had. It has some annoying points – depriving us of a “Fargo”-style wood-chipper scene, and taunting us with a circular saw that’s always on screen but never used, but it’s a film that actually seems to understand its core material and audience. We want to see the people we hated in high school killed, ideally while they’re having the sex we never had in high school, and we want it to be done by someone who is doing it just because.

Oh, and one other thing that the film did to earn points: Nerdy von Crapinbed found himself bitching about how there was no Heineken, while Mackdaddy Suave said all they needed was Pabst Blue Ribbon. Yes, there was a “Blue Velvet” reference in a Jason movie. Honestly, I’ll score it high regardless of other factors just for doing that.

Over at Zero Punctuation, the violently funny Ben Croshaw has just punctured a series of deft critical holes in yet another game – this time Tomb Raider: Underworld falls into his firing line.

…the highlight is certainly a little joke about Miss Croft soiling herself (I am, that childish…).

It’s been over a year since Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw was plucked from YouTube obscurity to host Escapist Magazine’s Zero Punctuation video series, and the acid-tongued Brit with the surreal, machine gun patter remains the undisputed star of game reviews, with regular appearances on G4 TV, at the Game Developers Conference, and more. But does his massive fan base buy the games he loves (which are few), and skip the titles he hates (nearly all of them)?

Depends on who you ask. Here’s a case study on the relation between an online video celebrity and the consumer behavior of his fans:

Croshaw recently gave a rare rave to indie art game darling Braid, available on Xbox Live’s download service. (Conquering its mind-bending challenges, he memorably noted, is “a more satisfying feeling than teabagging a hundred noobs in any deathmatch shooter you care to name.”) But did his fans follow his advice with their dollars?

“I don’t see any real case for Zero Punctuation increasing sales by a lot,” Braid designer Jonathan Blow told me, after checking his game’s Xbox Live purchase stats. Looking at the period when Croshaw’s review went online, he added, “There definitely isn’t a visible sales spike or anything like that.”

That isn’t the full story, however. Last May, Croshaw effusively praised Painkiller, a somewhat obscure, hyperviolent first-person shooter from 2004; a pull-quote from the review (“All you really need to know is there is a gun that shoots shurikens and lightning”) showed up as an ad on Steam, the game download service, generating big gamer acclaim. On Amazon, sales of the old game immediately jumped 7,400 percent.

Yahtzee’s impact in this case was so notable, Escapist publisher Alexander Macris even cites it in the company’s marketing brochure, to demonstrate the site’s reach and influence. “As I’m sure you know,” he told me, “media companies are always fighting to prove audience engagement and relevance.” As to the comparative lack of consumer engagement after his Braid review, Macris speculates that the game “was already a breakthrough hit by the time Yahtzee reviewed it, while Painkiller was a lesser-known title that was given a new look based on his review.”

Maybe. My personal guess is that Croshaw’s audience is overwhelmingly comprised of gamers who enjoy the vulgar smack talk in his reviews, which are almost always of hardcore titles from established genres, but no matter what he says, are less interested in experimental games without the usual rock ‘em sock ‘em conventions. That would be a sad irony, given Yahtzee’s passionate advocacy of games as an art form. But then, that’s generally the challenge of online video stardom — once your fans decide why they like you, it’s difficult to stray outside their expectations.

Image credits: www.escapistmagazine.com. Amazon screengrab courtesy of Escapist.

I just can’t seem to find time for the damn thing. I didn’t care much for Oblivion. But I liked it’s ideas and thought they would transfer well when mixed with Fallout.

The problem is I don’t know if the game’s any good or not because I’ve only played it a bit. I’ve been swamped with work and the little game time I do have is somehow being swept up in Fable 2 and my Nintendo DS.

On an different note:

{there is a longer one on the OXM disc but this is all I could find. Sweet song, it’s called Endless Possibilities)

Sonic Unleashed is looking freaking amazing. I just saw a gameplay video(well, 98% gameplay) and it looked good. The graphics looked nice the speed was finely toned and overall this thing held promise. Though I fear the Night Wolf sections may bring the game down. The Night Wolf scenes occur when day turns to night and Sonic changes into a wolverine. After seeing gameplay video of this I could hear the words “clunky” and “boring” already. I could also see the game being great but being brought down to good just because of those night wolf levels.

The last great Sonic games were Sonic: Rush Adventure and Sonic: The Dark Brotherhood. Both were on the DS and both were great fun. But Sonic needs a CONSOLE game that could easily triumph those puny DS games. Hopefully this is it.

While many Sonic games have sucked we must know this:Sonic is the awesomest videogame character ever.

I mean c’mon. He’s awesome!

The games may have sucked but the character didn’t(okay maybe a litttle bit but not much!). So, Sonic needs his cred rebuilt this time. Good luck Sonic! And may God help us all.

Oh! New Zero Punctuation Today!(Dead Space)

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/333-Dead-Space

New Penny Arcade Today!

http://penny-arcade.com/

-DataKeeper

I somehow bumped into a video (aha, it was Kotaku) that detailed the many issues and Hell-like practices of our friendly neighborhood Gamestop on Youtube, to the style of Zero Punctuation.

Watch it here. Do it. it’s important. It’s also NSFW because of language (and the mutilation of stick figures, if anyone around you is offended by that), so get some headphones.

It’s a 9-part video series that goes on and on about Gamestop and how evil it is in everything it does. It even has a very thoughtful, well-thought-out conclusion.

I’ve hated Gamestop for a while now, but it’s usually been from the developer standpoint (which he mentions), where game creators actually get marginal money from sold games by Gamestop because the store relies so heavily on their pawnshop philosophy of buying and selling used games and that money never actually makes it back to the developer. Game devs only make money off the first “new” sale–not only that, but we make the tiniest revenue, with store fees, packing and shipping fees and publisher fees subtracted. In the end, game devs might make something like (this is not a fact) maybe five dollars off every new game sold. Imagine that when facts and figures are reported, we get numbers like “one million copies sold”. Most titles don’t ever get up to one million, and who knows how many of those millions are returns and sales of used copies, which means that in our model that that’s not actually five million dollars of revenue. And then subtract the cost of making the game.

Gamestop sucks on many, many levels, and I plan on probably never shopping there again if I can. I have SPORE reserved at an EB Games so when I get back to the States in a week, I may be making my final purchase. But then again, because Gamestop only holds on to your game for forty eight hours, and sometimes not even that long, my copy of SPORE might be gone already. In which case I will cancel my reservation and get my five bloody dollars back. I hope.

Watch the videos. Watch them. You, as a game consumer (because you are playing games if you are reading my blog, even if you’re a developer) need to be aware of how much money you are spending and saving off your purchases, especially when gas gets this high and every penny saved is earned. I know you’re going to keep buying games, even used games, so watching this video is an incredibly informative experience that teaches you what to do, what not to do, and where you should buy depending on what kind of game consumer you are. Whatever you do, do not shop at Gamestop anymore. And keep informed. Unless, of course, you enjoy being ripped off.

(I have to add: He makes a point about direct download and how it ideally will gradually take down Gamestop and how foolish it is to wait until then, to which I wanted to add as well: you also can’t forget the fact that people enjoy having hard, physical copies of their software, the same way they like getting sculpted World of Warcraft figurines of their level 70s. This means that there will probably always be a physical market for Gamestop to exist in. So it’s up to US, the consumers, to bring it down. Food for thought.)

Ben Croshaw já é uma super-estrela. Alvo exemplar de uma nova ideologia semi-liberal da chamada era do YouTube, leia-se livre circulação de opiniões em vídeo, o outrora conservador jornalista da indústria é dotado de um sentido de humor, no mínimo, peculiar. Natural do Reino Unido, residente na Austrália e assalariado numa publicação online também anglo-saxónica, a Escapist Magazine, o cidadão do mundo assina uma coluna semanal, com o título simbólico de Zero Punctuation, na qual expõe ironias, pontos fracos e fortes de vários jogos com grande recurso à metáfora. Proponho que o leitor atente, além da qualidade editorial e humor inerente, ao ritmo do discurso do artista. Edição básica para a maioria, claro, mas metade do gozo está mesmo aí.

Tiro o chapéu ao senhor Yahtzee – nickname do camarada – e aconselho, de forma descomplexada, uma longa visita á obra do colega de ofício.

Para homens e mulheres de barba rija, sem problemas com linguagem mais forte:

Ele há gente com piada, chiça!

The gaming industry—as well as the journalism industry that covers it—is full of so much sameness, so much toeing the line, that when someone can express an intelligent thought and express it eloquently, I’m impressed. Here are a few of the people who are bastions of sanity in the videogame world.

1. Ken Levine

The creative director at 2K Boston, and the guy behind Bioshock. Bioshock was so fantastic that it kind of reset the bar of what videogames can do. And finally, when some forum-poster is looking for an example of a game that attains true artistry, true emotional depth, they can hold up Bioshock instead of wiping the ten years of dust off Final Fantasy VII. But Levine wasn’t satisfied to just make a great game and sit on his throne and let the accolades pour in; after the release of Bioshock he got very vocal. Not only did he give an interview in which he spoke about the launch problems (even calling the PC authentication system a “clusterfuck”), but he’s been everywhere—the DICE Awards, GDC 08, involved with Bioshock 2, shit he’s probably standing behind you right now—and he’s not shy about sharing his ideas about what makes a good story in a videogame. My favorite part about these comments: he makes crafting an interesting videogame narrative sound easy. Ken Levine should be cloned and distributed to every developer, that way we would have more games like Bioshock and fewer games like Turok.

2. Luc Bernard

From a big name that everybody loves to a little name that a lot of people seem to hate. Perhaps I misspoke when I said that this is a list of people who are bastions of sanity. British indie developer Luc Bernard is clearly insane. What I love about this guy is that he seems like he walked right out of the dark ages of game development: he did most of the development himself, he hand drew all the graphics for his upcoming game Eternity’s Child, and he banged on doors until he found an outlet for his work. Also, he’s developing a videogame about the holocaust that already has people pissed off (it may or may not get a wide release). Luc Bernard is on the shortlist of imaginative game designers, and I’m totally snagging Eternity’s Child when it hits WiiWare. His blog is here.

3. Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw

“Zero Punctuation” is my Wednesday treat. Not only is Ben Croshaw funny and British, but he’s appropriately rough with crap games. I don’t have the time to waste on videogames that aren’t up to my standards, and Croshaw sets his standards so high that he’s one of the only reviewers I trust. Developers should hire this guy and pay him to stand over their shoulders and reject their crappy ideas. The format of his weekly game review videos (“Zero Punctuation”) is innovative and entertaining, but what makes Yahtzee so special is his complete lack of a filter. If you are unfamiliar with “Zero Punctuation,” you should watch a few right now.

When I played Psychonauts, I knew that the writers for that game were some of my favorite people. After playing Portal, I decided that perhaps Valve had some writers who were actually my favorite people, and I just wasn’t aware of that fact at the time I played Psychonauts. Now I’ve discovered that in fact a union of the two above groups exists and I can stop getting all emotional about it and crying in the bathroom at work every half hour. Seriously.

Rock, Paper, Shotgun has an interview with Erik Wolpaw, who is clearly sane in the same way that John Cleese is. When I eventually decide that I have manacled to the evicerating chain of corporate too long and start my own company, you have a standing job offer from me.

P.S. Ben Croshaw, you’re welcome to join too. I hope you two will play nice together in my future nation-state of gaming.

P.P.S.  If you were under the impression that perhaps you, dear reader, were my favorite person, or that I “Like you the best”, you’re wrong.

Yeah, yeah, I’m aware this isn’t really news of note, but having newly discovered this font of hilarity, I thought I’d mention it.  Choice Yahtzee quote:  “I don’t really think that America is populated entirely by assholes and cowboys; I know that some Canadians live there too”.