"SOMA feels like a decent, melancholy sci-fi mystery story living next door to a sci-fi horror B movie whose dog keeps escaping and jumping in our swimming pool (what a little bastard), and you can really feel the game struggling to mesh the two, right up until the end when it blows a little raspberry and gives up trying. On the way to the final area, to conclude the Simon story, a new character literally appears from nowhere, pops his head around the door, and says: "Sorry to interrupt, player, but before you tie up the main plot, could we borrow you for five minutes to tie up the shitty monster plot as well?" So you follow him into a little room, press one button labeled, "Resolve Shitty Monster Plot," and then get on with what you were doing. Im only slightly exaggerating! So I suppose if Antoine de Saint-Exupéry were here, hed ask, "Would SOMA be improved if they took out the monster stealthing altogether and got by with exploration, puzzles, and environmental hazards? Also, didnt I die in 1944?" Well, Id say so, Antoine, but if they took out the scary monsters, what else are the streamers and Lets Players supposed to obnoxiously overreact to? "AAAHHH! ITS SO EXISTENTIAL!""
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"In the life of the mass-order, the culture of the generality tends to conform to the demands of the average human being. Spirituality decays through being diffused among the masses when knowledge is impoverished in every possible way by rationalisation until it becomes accessible to the crude understanding of all."
"I say this to you because we Spaniards are a forgetful people, because we are used to living for the moment, because we do not look back, because we do not know how to see the chain of heroes, because we do not contemplate the sum of sacrifices."
Francisco Franco"Sharon Tate was my best friend. Once, we were roommates. She introduced me to my husband. She was the godmother to my baby daughter who is named for her. In the six years time that I knew her, she never said an unkind word about anyone."
"Long time to see. (VS: Tapion)"
"Most mathematicians prove what they can, von Neumann proves what he wants." Once in a discussion about the rapid growth of mathematics in modern times, von Neumann was heard to remark that whereas thirty years ago a mathematician could grasp all of mathematics, that is impossible today. Someone asked him: "What percentage of all mathematics might a person aspire to understand today?" Von Neumann went into one of his five-second thinking trances, and said: "About 28 percent."
John von Neumann"Children must be free to think in all directions irrespective of the peculiar ideas of parents who often seal their childrens minds with preconceived prejudices and false concepts of past generations. Unless we are very careful, very careful indeed, and very conscientious, there is still great danger that our children may turn out to be the same kind of people we are."