"I must confess, listeners, that Im a little bit biased against Yoshis Island and its present-day derivatives; of all the chapters of what we might as well call the "Original Mario Canon", I like Yoshis Island the least, not just because listening to Baby Mario cry made me want to vaccinate him against continuing to be alive, not just because of the questionable way in which Yoshi would swallow enemies and then poo them out of his implied cloaca, not even because the aiming controls were shit (and still are shit, despite them no longer having the excuse that the controller isnt full of unused buttons and analogue sticks all hankering to muck in like a bunch of guilt-stricken white people at an African house-building project). No, the main reason Yoshis Island sits poorly with me is that it introduced to a hitherto-perfectly straightforward series of platformers the idea that there can be degrees of success. See, in Mario World, you can crawl across the finish line as tiny Mario with shards of tortoise shell lodged in your face, or you can break the tape with the tip of your giant powered-up stiffy, and either counts equally as a win; you can find your own level of success. But Yoshis Island doesnt tick the level off as "properly" done until you find all the invisible secret places and end it with full health, and thus began video gamings dark history of exploiting the "obsessive instinct", something that set the path that led us all the way to our current apocalyptic age of live service loot box labouring; all it took was for one cunt to realize that that sense of fulfilment one gets from the "Level 100% Completed" jingle is something people might conceivably pay extra for, a cunt who will one day be remembered alongside the dude who fucked the monkey that gave us AIDS."
Zero Punctuation is a series of video game reviews created by English comedy writer and video game journalist Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw. From its inception in 2007, episodes were published weekly by internet magazine The Escapist. Episodes typically range from five to six minutes in length. Videos provide caustic humour, rapid-fire delivery, visual gags and critical insight into recently released vide
"You see, while it is true that people enjoy being a dick in games, it stops being fun when the game actually wants you to be a dick. Its less about dickishness itself and more about defying the rules. Thats why its more fun to be a dick in, say, Half Life 2 because the game is desperately trying to make you out as the hero even while youre jumping on someones head throwing broken bottles into peoples eyes."
Zero Punctuation"Ride to Hell is the kind of bad that leaves me with a smile on my face. Its a little retarded child with its head stuck in a cereal box and a massive great dump in its big-boy pants going, "Im a real game now!" Of course you are, Ride to Hell. And thats why I think everyone should buy it, just to fuck with some heads! This could be our Plan 9 from Outer Space! We should have mass screenings of it, get everyone to dress up, put upside down pedal bins on their heads and then beat their wives!"
Zero Punctuation"[on final end credits card:] Remember to spay and neuter your giant cryptofauna."
Zero Punctuation"Theres nothing particularly wrong with Kena: Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, which is probably why the couple of things I do find irksome stand out all the stronger like choking hazards in my morning porridge. And the biggest, most notable fishhook in the oatmeal for me – and I stress this might just be a me thing – is the character design. Theyve gone for a Disney/Pixar inspired look so everyones got that Elsa from Frozen face, with the manipulative doe-eyes so gigantic that if you intend to get lost in them you should probably pack at least twelve days worth of provisions, and the chubby cheeks and tiny noses and slightly unsettlingly realistic hair and constant lopsided condescending expression like theyre expecting the photo for the movie poster to be taken at any moment and the general look like theyve just been through Jeff Goldblums wonky teleporter with a gerbil, who in turn had just gone through Jeff Goldblums wonky teleporter with a balloon animal. This is an art style that suits goofy family musicals about friendship, not the humourless po-faced psychopomp shit going on here. You look at their feet and slowly track upwards and your brain goes "Normal proportions, normal proportions, normal proportions, JESUS FUCKING CHRIST THE GERBIL GOT INTO THE HELIUM CUPBOARD!"
Zero Punctuation"But, I felt like Id seen enough of Babylons Fall, I was so bored and sick of it already and both of my middle fingers had reflexively extended so far theyd started to mess with the ceiling fan. Fuck you, Babylons Fall. I only reviewed you cos the alternative was Shadow Warrior 3 and that was too short to say much about. "How short is it, Yahtz?" Well, put it like this: it was- *outro music*"
Zero Punctuation"The first problem we ran into was that no one wanted to sing! This is less a problem with World Tour specifically, and more an inherent problem with the original concept, and possibly with the people I hang around with. You see, people who like pretend guitar are introverted nerds who picture themselves as the aloof, crazy-skilled lead guitarist whose hands rattle away at the strings like nervous little crabs while he stares into the middle distance pretending to have forgotten hes holding it. Whereas people who like pretend singing are either screechy center-of-attention types or a normal person who has rendered themselves massively drunk and stumbled upon a jukebox full of 80s power ballads."
Zero Punctuation"What say you? It is useless? Ay, I know But who fights ever hoping for success? I fought for lost cause, and for fruitless quest! You there, who are you! — You are thousands! Ah! I know you now, old enemies of mine! Falsehood! Have at you! Ha! and Compromise! Prejudice, Treachery! … Surrender, I? Parley? No, never! You too, Folly, — you? I know that you will lay me low at last; Let be! Yet I fall fighting, fighting still!"
"Ministers who deal with billions of dollars cannot be paid low salaries without risking a system malfunction. Low salaries will not attract able men who are or can be successful in their professions or business. Low salaries will draw in the hypocrites who sweet talk their way into power in the name of public services, but once in charge will show their true colour, and ruin the country. This has happened in many countries."
"In a Thumbnail Sketch here is [the Multiple Drafts theory of consciousness] so far:There is no single, definitive "stream of consciousness," because there is no central Headquarters, no Cartesian Theatre where "it all comes together" for the perusal of a Central Meaner. Instead of such a single stream (however wide), there are multiple channels in which specialist circuits try, in parallel pandemoniums, to do their various things, creating Multiple Drafts as they go. Most of these fragmentary drafts of "narrative" play short-lived roles in the modulation of current activity but some get promoted to further functional roles, in swift succession, by the activity of a virtual machine in the brain. The seriality of this machine (its "von Neumannesque" character) is not a "hard-wired" design feature, but rather the upshot of a succession of coalitions of these specialists.The basic specialists are part of our animal heritage. They were not developed to perform peculiarly human actions, such as reading and writing, but ducking, predator-avoiding, face-recognizing, grasping, throwing, berry-picking, and other essential tasks. They are often opportunistically enlisted in new roles, for which their talents may more or less suit them. The result is not bedlam only because the trends that are imposed on all this activity are themselves part of the design. Some of this design is innate, and is shared with other animals. But it is augmented, and sometimes even overwhelmed in importance, by microhabits of thought that are developed in the individual, partly idiosyncratic results of self-exploration and partly the predesigned gifts of culture. Thousands of memes, mostly borne by language, but also by wordless "images" and other data structures, take up residence in an individual brain, shaping its tendencies and thereby turning it into a mind."
Daniel Dennett"We recognize that in the reconstruction of most things – national, international, social, political – he is destined to play a commanding part. ... Its looks as if he were fated, despite his reluctance – for he is a modest man and his ambition, whatever it may be, is carefully concealed – to be a Saviour of Society, as well as an Organizer of Victory."
Jan Smuts"I am speechless about the idea of putting music fans in jail for downloading music. It is wrong to illegally download, but the answer cannot be jail. Here in America we create new opportunities out of adversity, not punitive laws, and we should look to new technologies like Apples new Music Store for solutions. This way, innovation continues to be the hallmark of America. It is the fans that drive the success of the music business."
"We foreign journalists in Moscow used to amuse ourselves, as a matter of fact, by competing with one another as to who could wish upon one of these intelligentsia visitors to the USSR the most outrageous fantasy…One story I floated myself, for which I received considerable acclaim, was that the huge queues outside food shops came about because the Soviet workers were so ardent in building Socialism that they just wouldnt rest, and the only way the government could get them to rest for even two or three hours was organizing a queue for them to stand in. I laugh at it all now, but at the time you can imagine what a shock it was to someone like myself, who had been brought up to regard liberal intellectuals as the samurai, the absolute elite, of the human race, to find that they could be taken in by deceptions which a half-witted boy would see through in an instant…I could never henceforth regard the intelligentsia as other than credulous fools who nonetheless became the medias prophetic voices, their heirs and successors remaining so still."
Malcolm Muggeridge