Top Eleven: Favorite Zero Punctuation Reviews

One of my favorite video game "reviewers" has turned seven this week.  While Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw might not be the most "fair" reviewer, his videos are always exceedingly entertaining and when he takes the time to actually point out things that are good, I sit up and pay attention.  It's how I got into Just Cause 2, the Saints Row series, and a few other games I've loved.

So, to celebrate, I'm listing my eleven favorite "reviews" he's done in no particular order.  Caution, the language can be rather coarse.

Zero Punctuation

I've commented before about how much respect and admiration I had for Roger Ebert, and about how it was his influence that taught me to be willing to do more than just pick apart details for the sake of picking them apart, but to use that to be able to recognize the truly excellent examples of media.  If I focus on how the water moves in one game, it's only because I've played Hydrophobia and saw how great water can look. It doesn't stop me from enjoying a game, movie, or book, though, when I notice a detail that I think could be done better.

But there's another kind of critic.  The kind that simply focuses on the negative, that believes that most praise anything deserves is "it's great or it's crap." 

And yet, somehow they can be some of the most insightful critics, sometimes, because they'll always be willing to step back away from the show and look at what's happening behind the scenes or out of the spotlight to find where the stage foundation has mold or the backdrop is just cardboard with sparkles on it and man, this analogy has become really strained.

So yeah, let's just talk about Yahtzee Croshaw and Zero Punctuation.