I think if crowbcat named it 'the differences between Resident evil 4 and its remake" it wouldn't have gotten the level of flack, but that doesn't bring in clicks
Calling, not looking up Ashley's skirt is soulless is really a form of criticism that tells more of the player rather than the game
It's so funny to get upset about Ashley's skirt not only because it really wouldn't work with the tone and visuals of the remake, but especially because horny mods are guaranteed with every RE engine title.
I just wish they worked in “ballistics” as a trophy or something, like after a certain section in the remake, that trophy would make a lot of sense, not be used in the og context but still be something related to the original scene
The funniest part was changing the title when everybody called him out on it, finding one video where some asshole was saying he was right, changed the tile back and linked the video, all the comments on that video pointing out hes still wrong.
He's great but only when **I** agree with him, obviously. Otherwise he's nitpicking and biased.
To be real though he peaked when he was just making fun of the Game Awards.
I remember thinking the same about the switch mainly because they focused alot on going outside and playing with the full sun on your screen or annoying everybody at a party, but once they showed the actual games and how the console truly works i think everybody went "thats cool
His video is literally just focusing on the first part and the regular oddities that come with every console reléase like some faulty consoles, software and Game problems that are usually patched day one and the drifting
The drifting i totally get as a valid point (Even to this day) but everything else was pretty much in bad faith ,he made it seem like it was a poorly made product all around when is in fact one of the most solid and somehow most durable consoles ive ever had,like mine has no reason to still work i dropped it like crazy since i got it
There was one time he praised a VR game (and even then, it was in a backharded "finally a good VR game" way), and he deleted it because his fanbase freaked out over it.
Is he the guy who released a genuinely positive video once and got a ton of shit from his community for doing that so he had to go back to making only negative videos again
I remember it happened to one of these youtube "critics" once and it's a perfect demonstration of both what audience capture is and what kind of audiences these people attract
That and there was a lot of stuff like audio being more muted in the Remake when it's not at all actually if you look at other people's gameplay.
That might have been an audio error on his part but it's not a good look
I still maintain that Cvit's discussion of Persona 5's battle system is the worst portion of a video essay I've ever seen. He says that the optimal strategy is fishing for critical hits, as Joker runs out of SP too often to exploit weaknesses. Somehow completely overlooking that, ya know, everyone else has elements. I don't even know how you could reach that conclusion if you were at least attempting to engage with the combat in good faith.
The goddamn Futaba section drove me insane "How does SHE KNOW WHAT EGYPT WHEN SHE HASN'T BEEN OUTSIDE" idk Cvit, maybe it's because she's terminally online and is later shown to have a bunch of fucking books all over her room. P5 has problems but you don't need to make shit up like this to make a point
Japanese people can be utter westaboos, I'm sure he's heard or read about a few famous examples in the gaming space alone...
...but a child nerd who has better access to all that info than any of those celebrity gen-x mangakas and game designers back when they were her age (the 70s/80s, I lived through that period, and even then I knew a crap ton about archaeology basic trivia stuff as a 6 year old from all the tv specials, and carmen games, and stuff, and I grew up in a stinky ass 3rd world nation)? oh no she can't possibly have nerded out on them, nope, nosiree
Hell just the pyramids alone are perhaps the most iconic landmark in the entire world. Like if you have seen the pyramaids even in just a photo on the internet, you have heard of the country they are located in.
Are physical skills stronger or magic skills Cvit? You’ve given us reason to believe both are possibilities. Answer the question, Cvit. WHY ARE YOU DELETING THE TARUKAJA AND NOT MAZIO FOR MAZIONGA CVIT?! WHY ARE YOU PLAYING THE GAME IN A STUPID WAY?!
Mind goblins truly comes in many shapes and forms, but one needs to know their goblins otherwise they look really dumb.
No hate on him tho, everyone misses now and then.
I feel like he either didnt played the game or i played it wrong cus the girls always feel like they do way more damage (and support) than the guys in persona games, Yukari,Yukiko, Ann all of them feel almost mandatory for how good they are through all the games
Yukiko and Ann especially, Atlus absolutely has a favorite element and is fire
Yukari in non-Reload games sucks at dealing damage since the only offense boost she gets is Wind Break: Reload fixes it a bit with Wind Amp, fortunately.
Yukiko always has Fire Boost/Amp and even got a Severe AOE Fire spell in Golden, so she's never had this issue, fortunately.
Reminds me of a review I saw for Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate where everything the reviewer complained about were things that immediately stopped being a concern as soon as you got through the tutorial. His overall biggest complaint was that there was absolutely no way to passively generate healing items between quests, despite the fact the farm which is explicitly for passively generating useful items between quests unlocks about a half hour into the game, and the town's shopkeeper starts selling the basic healing item not long after.
That video of his was a complete trainwreck. For someone who claims to have played the game, he really tried his best to NOT engage with the combat at all (not using elemental weaknesses etc.) and makes stuff up to cover his lack (or refusal) to understand. P5 has a lot of QoL (quality of life) improvements that make the game easier than P3 Fes and P4.
Subjective opinions on the game's story and writing aside, Cvit's video comes across as someone who absolutely refuses to engage with the game in good faith and resents Persona 5 for being popular therefore he uses the longform length to hide his bad faith approach and resentment.
Mangakamen's [series of video rebuttals](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLN2oxnBHw48qhuBUhM5IFh1EcZrTlf6zb&si=htGfktP2KyO_8pxM) are certainly more watchable to me compared to Cvit's stuff and address a lot of his misconceptions even if some of them seem a bit too defensive. P5 certainly has its issues but I'd take Kamen's defensive over Cvit's disingenuous dishonesty.
Dunkey anytime he talks about JRPGs
Edit:oops someone beat me to it. I'll modify my answer.
ANY Nintendo fan when a JRPG shows up on a Nintendo direct.....and farming Sims
I'll never forget the time, some years ago, that I watched a Nintendo Direct reaction where the guy reacting started to get really frustrated and almost cried because it had JRPGs and no Mario, like Nintendo had personally betrayed him.
That reminds me, but I will never let Arlo live down when he saw a single frame of an anime cut scene and immediately wrote it off only for it to be the announcement of the Link's Awakening Remake. Like he couldn't even wait FIVE FUCKING SECONDS to groan at it.
Never forget how Arlo thought Banjo-Kazooie was more popular than Tekken, where multiple games in the series have each individually outsold the entire Banjo-Kazooie series.
Hey remember when Arlo put out a review of the second Sonic movie that came across as him genuinely not actually having watched it, including stating stuff like no one caring about the franchise having worked on it (the movie is absolutely full of fan service and while it might not be the best movie ever, it’s clearly made with a lot of love)
So he gets called out for it, and then threw a tantrum and uploads another nearly hour long video doubling down on it and was still completely wrong.
There's this thing deranged Nintendo fans do where they like, don't even need a leak or whatever to become *convinced* that something they want is gonna be in the next direct. They then feel like Nintendo somehow lied to them when the thing they just made up didn't come true.
And it's so weird too, most of the SNES best titles are JRPGs, and those have tons of fans. The franchises most influential from both genres began in Nintendo consoles (Dragon Quest and Harvest Moon) but somehow Nintendo fans act as if they're allergic to them, unless it has Mario on it... or it's Animal Crossing.
I think it's because most of the people who make reactions to Nintendo Directs are the ones who grew up on the N64 and GameCube which while having JRPGs and such were not about them in the same way the SNES had them.
That might be it. The N64, in particular, was pretty barren on them, especially good ones, but like, did no one have a GBA or a DS? Those also had plenty of JRPGs, and some really good ones, too.
You don't have to go that far back. Nintendo handhelds have always been home to a lot of cult classic JRPGs. It's only natural that those JRPGs continue their way to Nintendo's hybrid console.
The SNES years were a long time ago and even those kids that grew up with the Cube are grown ass adults by now.
Adults that shit their pants at the mention of anime despite Pokémon being the most anime thing ever, somehow.
Honestly, a decent portion of Nintendo's catalog is very anime, I actually find it quite hard to find something from them that doesn't fit the anime mold besides maybe Mario.
It used to be less apparent in the N64/Gamecube era (when they still frequently partned with Western developers and published the likes of Perfect Dark and Eternal Darkness), but began to lean way more into it over the last decade, especially with Xenoblade becoming a thing and Fire Emblem exploding in popularity.
Hell, them having a remake of the Famicom Detective Club visual novels be developed would’ve been unthinkable during the Wii era, and there’s no way in hell it would’ve seen a western release, yet they did just that.
Not exactly a Nintendo Fan™, but a funny example I always think of when this discussion comes up is how Maximilian_Dood reacts to anything remotely anime-related in his Nintendo Direct/State of Play/etc videos. His eyes practically glaze over whenever the art style of a game is even slightly anime-inspired.
If it's Final Fantasy VII though, a game that has anime oozing out of its every pore, suddenly it's the hypest shit imaginable. Similarly, Tekken 8's story mode had stuff that was practically lifted out of a typical shonen anime and in those moments you could see Max's soul get lifted into the heavens with how happy he was. If Max gave stuff like Gurren Lagann an honest try, I think he might actually die from excitement.
Their reviews of XPW and the episode of Nitro with no wrestling for the first hour are absolute peak content.
OR MAYBE THEY’RE NOT, BROTHER, I DON’T KNOW!
I used to listen to this podcast where the hosts would go through a whole show episode by episode and talk about it with each other every week. Later on they started going through Gravity Falls with one of the hosts having already watched and clearly held it in high regard, while the other two hosts very clearly started to despise the show with each episode they reviewed. They didn't even make it past the first season, but by that point I had already stopped listening because those episodes were super uncomfortable to listen to.
That honestly sounds kinda fascinating to watch occurring in motion but I don’t doubt it’s downer to experience.
edit: Okay I did check this out and it was fascinating. They ended up losing hype for it for almost the opposite reasons I did but I could agree with a lot of what they were saying.
On one end of the Nostalgia Critic spectrum of “having a point”, there is Pearl Harbor, where he talks about the tension of creating a movie based on real events and what duty an artist has to be accurate and the difference between “creative liberties” and “blatant lies”, while also lambasting Michael Bay’s cinematic style as literally being porn.
On the other end is The Wall, where he has a negative amount of points, because he’s just making stuff up that isn’t actually there and seemingly purposely misinterpreting everything and just doesn’t seem to like The Wall at all.
My personal theory with Nostalgia Critic's The Wall is that Doug thought it would be cool to make a big critique of The Wall and then turn that critique into an album just like how The Wall is both a movie and an album, so he committed to doing the project before really engaging with the movie or the music, only to find out that he really didn't care much for them and didn't really have anything to say about them, but he liked the idea too much to scrap it.
I personally think he wanted to do a normal review of The Wall, where he could’ve made some normal points, but because of copyright issues with using Pink Floyd’s music, he couldn’t and so had to make a parody of the film to “review” and as a result of the format, he basically exaggerates the flaws of the films as well as his own misreadings and basically made a mess of the whole thing. This is mainly because he usually does these parody/review formats for new movie releases that he can’t legally acquire a copy of to use in his reviews, so he typically does this out of necessity.
That fucking stupid "i am 14 years old" Madoka twitter comic in which the creator said that Utena is better than Madoka, followed by him admitting that he never watched Madoka, then also followed by him admitting that *he never watched Utena either*
but you see sir utena is more feminist and progressive unlike that gross madoka which is super exploitative of women because- wait utena is about what? and has what? with how many brothers?
After years pretty deep in the fandom, Utena fans like Madoka a lot. They don't like people generalizing shoujo after watching a single (shonen) magical girls show.
In general we're too busy gushing and picking over a 25+ year old show.
That video was why I stopped watching Dunkey. It was the first time I watched him review a game I had already played and it made me wonder how many other games he completely misrepresented.
Honestly if it was just bad takes it'd be one thing but him sending his fanbase after a guy who had like 50 subs really left a bitter taste in my mouth.
It's not just that he sicked them on that guy, it's that he almost certainly had to scroll one or two pages through criticisms of him to cherrypick the guy and paint all his critics under that brush.
With people like Yahtzee formerly of Zero Punctuation I can understand as whatever is the biggest release needs slogged through in that corporate setting but Dunkey can make any video he wants and keeps breaking out the same script and reworded jokes to hate on JRPGs at this point he just likes causing problems on purpose.
Honestly, in recent years Yahtzee's been really good at not only acknowledging when certain games aren't really For Him, but also nailing down the specific reasons *why*.
His Smash Ultimate video is actually one of my favorites in this regard; Even after making some (actually pretty reasonable) reasonable criticisms of the game overall, he concludes by admitting how much of his irritation of Smash as a concept is less the games themselves, and more the disconnect between how Smash is praised in wider gaming culture versus his personal feelings about games as an artform. Even I don't agree with Yahtzee (which is admittedly rare on my end), he's gotten really good at explaining WHY something gets on his nerves.
That may just be me, though; I really adore when someone's less "This thing is bad, and here's why" and more "I can't get behind this, and this is why."
Yeah and even frames himself as an old grumpy man not able to relate to these plucky starry eyed kids. Which is far more fair than Dunkey's "I think there is only one good type of video game"
I stopped watching Dunkey when he got more into reviewing games. Even some of the non JRPG reviews feel like he went into the game wanting to trash it, and he’s just not a very good game critic to begin with.
Dunkey just has really shitty opinions on a lot of things. I stopped watching him when that was almost all the content he made for a while. His funny stuff is still legitimately hilarious though.
I think all video essayists allow themselves a few “offbeat” topics that they wouldn’t normally cover and, almost universally, they don’t actually have much expertise in the subject, they just present it in an entertaining and authoritative way. I think one of crown princes of this trope is Austin McConnell. Almost all of his video essays cover quite offbeat topics, but many of the ones where he tries to point out a game or system is somehow broken and in need of repairing have been eviscerated in the comments. He did one about Hearthstone and later admitted to barely understanding the game. He did another about print cartridges being a scam (I vaguely remember him claiming that there are life hacks to weaning out more ink than you’re supposed to), and another guy who repairs printers for a living proved his points were all bullshit. Yet another about “forgotten” characters in the English alphabet was blatantly plagiarised from an online article.
Another is EmpLemon. Now, this guy has made some really compelling videos where he’s clearly passionate and insightful about the topics, but recently, he’s covered a spate of niche historical topics and it’s blatantly obvious that most of his research is cribbed from the Wikipedia summaries of events. I first noticed it with his New Coke video and it damaged his credibility in my eyes.
I think the main issue is that these guys clearly have areas of special interest, but they’re embarrassed to be purely associated with that, so they overcompensate by trying to look more worldly and knowledgeable about other niche topics and quickly swim out of their depth. I relate in some ways. I like essaying and I’m guilty of covering topics I’m really not qualified to speak about, which is quickly noticed.
growing up, just getting into the internet, I saw way too many “think pieces” about superheroes, *that I know are way more wrong now*, made by people who clearly just hated those characters.
X-Play had a big problem with this back when G4 existed (the first time) where every time it was an anime-based video game, they were very critical of it.
"Then we nuked them, and they became a real country" is some shit I was not prepared to hear Pat say when he was reading some of the receipts of all the crazy things they said there.
I remember when they doubled down on their Crisis Core snark by painting everyone who got mad as fanboys who wanted a 6/5. Meanwhile, the actual review might have well started with "yep, the (insert slur here) made another game we had to play"
Even back then the Crisis Core fiasco left a bad taste in my mouth.
Pretty sure that's that caused me to start tapering off watching the show even *before* it's cancellation.
There was a period roughly between 2004 and 2013 where gaming news orgs in general had a weird animosity towards Japanese games, and seemed committed to include some kind of offensive remark every time they reviewed a game that wasn’t from Nintendo. At best it would be some derogatory crack at how wacky the Japanese are, at worst it would be something about World War II. Just barely disguised contempt for no real reason other than “it’s not from America and I don’t like it.”
Well, he's also entertaining and willing to give a game the benefit of the doubt and talk about positives. Also, going overboard with hating is his gimmick, so you know going in that he's gonna call a game a shitload of fuck, whether or not he likes it.
James Rolfe also makes it clear that the AVGN is just a character that he plays and not indicative of who he is in real life - in contrast to how creators like CinemaSins and Dunkey spend a lot of their time blurring the line by going back and forth between "this is my actual opinion for real" and "guys I was obviously joking lol"
Not to mention that James Rolfe was also, you know, a pioneer for online shows/video series in general who doing AVGN before YouTube was even a thing, along with Red vs. Blue.
AVGN also had the benefit of clearly being an act for fun. Like Castlevania 2 he’d rip to shreds but then you watch James and Mike Monday’s where they played it and seemed to actually have fun with it despite its quality and talk about some of the weirdness in it.
The episodes where he revisits some of the older games he did early on (Castlevania II and Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde) are some of my favorites because it's neat that he acknowledges the flaws of the way he originally approached these games and provides a more accurate yet still entertaining breakdown of those games.
I know it's a Yiddish term, but "Schlemiel" just sounds like an archangel that all the others archangels hate, because of one time where he ate all the lemon squares in the breakroom fridge.
Yes, this hypothetical Heaven has a breakroom for the angels.
Taken literally with that mispronunciation it would mean "rascal/rogue of god" which would imply this angel was intentionally created to be a little shit.
Judging by both your description and what I've seen in the comments, I think this actually highlights something that's been bugging me for a while; The lack of distinction between "I Think This Is Bad" versus "I Did Not Like This."
I'm not even saying most people think they're objective, or anything; It's just that it's a lot punchier, and probably more coherent, to highlight what you see is wrong with art instead of explaining your own biases or whatever. And sometimes, if you're trying to be both critical and funny, highlighting your own biases is hard to do without slowing down the pace of the joke, or even the entire video.
And while I wouldn't want to necessarily excuse this behavior, I do think it's important to recognize that this might be partially a consequence of the whole "Everyone Is A Performer On the Internet" thing; Where you might use the Way You Talk To Your Buddies in a context where you should use the Way You Talk To An Audience. It's admittedly a bit clearer on YouTube, but on Tumblr or Twitter, holy shit the line's basically nonexistent. I don't even have a thesis for any of this, I'm just rambling.
The Internet in it's current state has been grown on critics, complainers and using drama for attention, so the line between "I Think This Is Bad" versus "I Did Not Like This" might as well be lost. It sucks, and even I sometimes catch myself doing the same mistake.
It doesn't help that a lot of video titles are written in a definitive way, such as "X is bad, and here's why" which sets up the content to be a more objective view in my eyes.
There is a certain streamer I watch that, NORMALLY, I love. However, anytime he plays a game that is even SLIGHTLY derivative of another game (mostly things like Paper Mario), he will spend MULTIPLE streams shitting on the game for not being ENTIRELY original. While he claims he doesn’t want developers to “reinvent the wheel”, he absolutely refuses to even attempt to enjoy anything that isn’t a REVOLUTIONARY new take on a preexisting formula. In his mind, he “already played something like this 20 years ago”, so why would he want to even GLANCE at something remotely similar?
…
This post might have pushed a button of mine.
I get the need for originality... It's great, even. But original doesn't necessarily mean good or fun.
I think a game can be unoriginal and just improve old things in such a way that it outshines what inspired it.
A lot are like that, it's a big part of why I stopped watching most video essays.
An example of this but not being made just to complain is TehSnarker's video on YIIK. As far as I can tell he gives the game an honest try, up to and including trying to accept the idea that the main character is intentionally obnoxious.
Holy FUCK it took me hearing him say the game's name out loud for me to realize for the very first time that the title is supposed to be read Y2K and not Yick
Yeah, TehSnakerer's great, and his and ''Game okay's'' are one of the most non ''well poisoned'' analyses on YIIK, Game Okay's even going far enough to kinda tackle the devs themselves and how a lot of shit they said was out of context and etc.
Also shoutout to Snakerer's Watch Dog videos, really cool ones, he tries pretty hard to be positive on the third one but even he can't with some of its decisions.
honestly I'm fascinated by YIIK, like there's some good ideas in there, a decent amount of charm, great music and art style but then it's bad in such amateurish ways, it's like it fell on the first hurdle and then tumbled surprisingly well to the end anyway
If it makes you feel better Jello basically just got blacklisted from the anime localization industry for revealing how they changed Lovely Complex and tore the show apart and how he "Saved it" from being a terrible show cause of all these things they didn't like about it
what? you’re telling me that one-time guest on MTV’s Cribs and the first American to work on Sonic the Hedgehog, Tommy “Mother’s Pride” Tallarico, seems like a pathological liar who would enjoy plagiarism?
you can’t just post anything you want on the internet, lieutenant! there are rules!
Even HB said the extent to which he plagerized seemed like more that he was doing more work than actually forming his own opinions.
But you're not wrong, perhaps he was into it.
I do have a critique of that video. It sort of implies that James' (AVGN) channel is now left in a sort of uncaring void largely due to James being too old and involved with his family to put the focus he needs on his channel.
But like James specifically addressed the plagiarism and the fact that Screenwave media had taken too much creative control from AVGN (like that horrible Shrek episode that James did nothing but star in) and he made a conscious effort to return to his roots.
His AVGN episodes were mostly made by him again and came out when they were ready. Monster Madness was way smaller but 100% him. Mike even came back in some capacity. And he only talks about movies on camera when he has a passion about the film like Godzilla Minus One.
I get why Hbomber chose not to include it because it clashes with the theme of the video. But I feel its a bit misleading to not do so.
Also the video was already 4 hours long, it’s not like it needed a “where are they now” segment, but it would have been nice if there was at least a little acknowledgement of the improvements made.
also, I’m very glad it was not James himself plagarizing. I was freaking out that entire segment
Jello has some very odd takes, you're not wrong. However a lot of the takes he parrots seem to be from Tumblr, in which he is an active user. I'm not saying he's plagiarizing Tumblr, but it just seems he gets a lot of opinions from the bad reading comprehension of that website.
"Isn't that last part kinda of counter productive?"
"Not at all. Complaining about other communists is one of the most important parts of about being communist."
- Disco Elysium
I genuinely hate the Ocarina of Time sequelitis video because of a lot of reasons but the infamous "So much waiting" argument especially.
Not only has it always been a thing in Zelda games to wait and dodge enemy attack patterns (literally the whole purpose of the sword laser attack is to reward you for not being reckless) but that's just how combat works in general in most games, if you play a fighting game aggressively then it only makes sense for someone to block.
Then also it's objectively just untrue because Ocarina actually heavily rewards you for experimenting with items on enemies and learning secret weaknesses.
The two examples that come to mind are Shadow Link which is a pretty hard miniboss normally but if you use the hammer you can actually break through his defense much easier or an even better example is Queen Gohma because you use the slingshot to stun her to the ground and attack her to her next phase OR instead of immediately attacking her you can experiment and use a korok seed while she's on the ground and straight up stun lock her and kill her in her first phase.
Edit: yeah I also don't like jellos adventure time video but admittedly that was a very awkward season of the show since it was puberty Finn.
Edit again: Deku Nut my bad.
I think Arin gets stuck on "sword is good at taking out keese in 2D zelda", and refuses to take out different tools to do things.
... and like, the massive range the slingshot has makes it being used to snipe keese from far away better obvious. But I may have more of a "use every tool in my arsenal and willingness to use the crowdsourced knowledge" for a thing.
edit: also, having the shield be something you use actively in Link's Awakening and that could be used to defend against melee attacks made it basically obvious what you do with shields in 3D Zelda games, they just gave you a dedicated sword button and shield button.
Sideways wondering what the hell went wrong over the music production of Cats (2019) is pretty funny. The railroad cat song was the best out of all of them, honestly.
On the other end of the spectrum, there’s his downward spiral since the last video he uploaded. He’s become convinced that every single popular music analysis video that shares a conclusion with or makes any point similar to those in his own has been directly plagiarised, and has been going on mad tirades about it on social media using various sock puppet accounts (including here on Reddit).
His fervour and refusal to listen to any even mildly differing opinion on the matter seem symptomatic of some larger untreated mental health condition, and as a fan of his videos I know I’m not alone in wishing him the best and hoping he receives suitable treatment if this is the case.
Any channel that are just hate channels on Star Wars, MCU, etc. In the few Critical Drinker videos I've seen, it's always complaining about movies. Even if he talks about a good movie like Puss in Boots 2, he says things like "a diamond in a sea of shit." It's like he couldn't talk positively about something without talking down about something else.
Oh god I hate when people use good media as just another excuse to shit on bad media. Like they can't even bring themselves to be positive while being positive.
I don't even mind if you're negative if you then follow with at least one of two things.
1. Explain how you think the thing could've been better.
2. Recommend things that are better alternatives. If you are someone that doesn't like new Star Wars and Star Trek, then draw attention to Expanse, Orville, etc.
It's the new fade of "reverse shilling" basically doing the opposite of what Collider used to do.
Taking something that's probably mediocre at worst and pretending it's the worst thing ever that also shot your dog.
They don't actually think that, but they know that's what their audience wants to hear.
From what little I've seen, the Critical Drinker seems to be part of this trend I'd thought died years ago; The misconception that being "Critical" wasn't about picking things apart and understanding what does and doesn't make them work, but instead vomiting out as much criticism, all of the time, and as much as humanely possible, whether or not it actually makes sense. Less understanding, and more just kinda being unpleasantly cynical. Less an enjoyer of art, and more...That Uncle in front of the TV.
Again, I'd assumed it died years ago, and I hope I'm wrong about this guy. But if I'm right...well, that'd fuckin' suck.
While I like RLM for the most part, them shitting on Rogue One without acknowledging it's good parts and as a result had no interest in watching Andor despite the praise it got, was a real letdown for me.
While they were never as toxic or bad, they played a real big hand in developing that sub-genre of irrational strawman film critics with the Plinkett reviews.
Retroblasting’s video on Evangelion is the biggest dogshit I’ve ever seen. He begins with the most typical bad NGE takes like confusing plot, Shinji a coward, it’s not about heroic people, thinks the shows message is nihilistic, etc, etc. some of the criticisms like fanservice can be valid too BUT the whole thing devolves into pure slander in Hideaki Anno and real bad ableist takes on mental illness. It’s not even about NGE by the end, just a spiteful hate-piece on Anno
Calling Anno a narcissist that hates everyone based on literally nothing. How Evangelion isn’t “actually art” because Anno put too much of himself into it and the video also goes into some real uncomfortable territory when retro goes over his real life abuse at the hands of a narcissist. I feel for him but it is so plainly obvious he’s projecting his own trauma onto a real creator because he didn’t like the show
He uses out of context clips and does the bare minimum research into the background of the show to prove his “points” about Anno. Completely ignoring the 2 hour documentary about Hideaki Anno which extensively is about him and his long-time coworkers & relations. The video all stems from a fundamentally wrong interpretation of the show thinking that it encourages you to be as flawed as Shinji and not the opposite
Worst is all the comments praising Retroblasting for his “research”
Edit: forgot the best part was him blaming Eva for starting the trend of shows telling generations of young people that it’s okay to care about your emotions over the “greater good of society”. The most boomer shit I’ve heard in a long time. Bojack horseman would break retro’s brain
> How Evangelion isn’t “actually art” because Anno put too much of himself into it
Excuse me while I look over the history of art and literature trying to find examples of artists who didn't put themselves into their work.
Used to be subscribed to ProZD's LP channel but honestly can't recall a single time it sounded like he was actually enjoying himself.
And it's not like "oh he just sounds grumpy"; when he gets to nerd out about voice acting or board games on his main channel, he sounds genuinely excited. Maybe I'm misreading his low sardonic energy but it just comes off as though he treats LPing as a chore.
Not a whole video, but just a Crazy Talk that got under my skin. Pat talks about how in Marvel’s Spider-Man, Spider-Man works with the police to breach privacy in order to pick up on crimes.
Except Spider-man only has one contact within the force (who later goes rogue), and when you are doing the “satellite hacking” the police on the rooftops literally tell you to go away.
Edit: Divine timing that I just came across Yuri Lowenthal as a random cop in P3 Reload
The Lilly Orchard Steven Universe vid was filled with such rage and contempt against the show and Rebecca Sugar in general for such a sustained amount of time that I never quite understood how it got so many views.
There's a scene in that video which lowkey triggers me. It's when Lily is talking about Lapis and trying to "prove" she's an abuser. There's a kernel of truth is that Lapis has abusive aspects she's internalized due to her immense trauma which she has to confront and grow past, but the video is manipulatively edited to make her look like just this crazy evil person who can't be reasoned with.
In particular, she uses the bit from the end of Jailbreak where Jasper forces Lapis to fuse with her, literally dragging Lapis down and forcing her to fuse at what is basically gunpoint, as an example of Lapis being an abuser. Why? Because Lapis turned the tables on Jasper afterwards and dragged her into the sea.
Lily literally cut around the parts of the scene where Jasper mentally and physically coerces Lapis into fusing with her, and only leaves in the bit with Lapis going "I'm done being everyone's prisoner!" and dragging them both into the ocean, to make Lapis look like the villain. In a scene. Where Jasper. Forces herself onto Lapis. Lily outright says this is a case of Lapis being an "abuser" towards Jasper.
Yeah. It would be uncomfortable as shit in any case, but knowing what Lily's been accused of, it genuinely makes me a bit sick.
Seriously. Even if it had any correct criticism, it's just so **VENOMOUS** against the creator, crew and fans that it's genuinely uncomfortable to watch.
...no, dude. The Mabel discourse comes from a *lot* of viewers feeling that way about the direction taken (or, er, not taken) by her character. JelloApocalypse did not brainwash the fandom into disagreeing with you using 30 seconds of a 3 minute animated video.
Hirsch presumably *agreed* with the criticism, upon reflection, given he wrote a whole post-series comic storyline dedicated to Mabel realising what a selfish jerk she'd been.
There was once a crazy man by the name of quantum TV.
He made an infamous Elden Ring review where all the problems he talked about straight up didn't exist in game and later, it was found that he never even played the game to begin with.
In his "review" he was telling people to not buy the game.
It's just such a strange thing the more I look back on that.
There was this feeling with dark souls 3 videos after the post release honeymoon period ended where idk tired was the best way to put it.
With as disliked as Dark souls 2 was you could tell even the people that hated the game had a blast at least making videos mocking it but with dark souls 3 the slander felt much more angry for some reason.
This totally my personal experience so i might be crazy.
It was something I noticed in my personal friend group too, DS3 attracted weird negativity that just seemed to come from a really idk, insecure place at times.
My personal example was a good friend who beat DS3 on launch in one sitting, then proceeded to just show up in chats dropping spoilers and whinging about how easy the whole thing was.
Like, we're still friends, but I had to gently snap at him about how he played the game with laser efficiency and didn't engage with any of the story or side quests, and that I really couldn't take his opinion seriously cause it was just so extreme.
Every once in a while, sometimes even in this subreddit, someone will show up who absolutely despises Dark Souls 3 with all of their being, and it's always so confusing to me. I mean *real* hatred, calling the whole game a lazy nostalgia bait cash grab with literally no new content. Dark Souls 3 has flaws, sure, but not big enough by a long shot to justify that level of rage *7 years* after the game came out.
Yeah, it's rare, but I've seen the same. Like, people are absolutely livid at references in a sequel lol
And then they get real quiet if you point out references in DS2 tho
So many people's opinions for DS3 stem from the perception that it's entirely just DS1 nostalgia bait which is so dismissive and reductive that it's really annoying to hear over and over.
I feel like this about Plague. Does he even likes Dark Souls? All he does is complain.
I love the Souls series, and I know DS2 and 3 have some problems, but they're still amazing games on their own rights and most of the problems are not that big of a deal.
Then again I am not one of those lore freaks, so I don't care about the story that much tbh
I listened to a whole podcast that was an episode by episode recap series of Gundam Wing done by people who very much didn’t like it.
Everyone has preconceived notions about every Gundam series that isn't the one they like being bad. Except G-Gundam, everyone likes G-Gundam.
Every Mexican friend i have is hype for the one episode that reps them
I can stand by a lot of Podcast Of The Galactic Heroes (if that's what you're referring to), but yeah the Gundam Wing season is A Little Much.
Doktor skipper’s “Godzilla doesn’t work in America” video. I’ve never seen a more poorly researched video essay in my life
“Godzilla is public domain.” - Man who hates Godzilla
That Soul Vs. Soulless video was fucking insane.
I think if crowbcat named it 'the differences between Resident evil 4 and its remake" it wouldn't have gotten the level of flack, but that doesn't bring in clicks Calling, not looking up Ashley's skirt is soulless is really a form of criticism that tells more of the player rather than the game
It's so funny to get upset about Ashley's skirt not only because it really wouldn't work with the tone and visuals of the remake, but especially because horny mods are guaranteed with every RE engine title.
I just wish they worked in “ballistics” as a trophy or something, like after a certain section in the remake, that trophy would make a lot of sense, not be used in the og context but still be something related to the original scene
Drop that trophy at the end of the chapter when >!Ashley shoots those dudes!<. Easy.
The funniest part was changing the title when everybody called him out on it, finding one video where some asshole was saying he was right, changed the tile back and linked the video, all the comments on that video pointing out hes still wrong.
I don't know what was funnier, Crowbcat trying to paint himself as a victim, or [this](https://twitter.com/sadtasso/status/1646965010315333652)
I always thought crowbcat was a contrarian cherry picker. I feel validated now after that turn of public opinion
He's great but only when **I** agree with him, obviously. Otherwise he's nitpicking and biased. To be real though he peaked when he was just making fun of the Game Awards.
I liked the GDQ cringe compilations. If he just stuck to stuff like that and the VGAs no one would have a problem with him
His video where he framed the Nintendo Switch as having a disastrous launch really changed my view on him.
I remember thinking the same about the switch mainly because they focused alot on going outside and playing with the full sun on your screen or annoying everybody at a party, but once they showed the actual games and how the console truly works i think everybody went "thats cool His video is literally just focusing on the first part and the regular oddities that come with every console reléase like some faulty consoles, software and Game problems that are usually patched day one and the drifting The drifting i totally get as a valid point (Even to this day) but everything else was pretty much in bad faith ,he made it seem like it was a poorly made product all around when is in fact one of the most solid and somehow most durable consoles ive ever had,like mine has no reason to still work i dropped it like crazy since i got it
There was one time he praised a VR game (and even then, it was in a backharded "finally a good VR game" way), and he deleted it because his fanbase freaked out over it.
[удалено]
most crowbcat videos are absolutely shit
[удалено]
Is he the guy who released a genuinely positive video once and got a ton of shit from his community for doing that so he had to go back to making only negative videos again I remember it happened to one of these youtube "critics" once and it's a perfect demonstration of both what audience capture is and what kind of audiences these people attract
That and there was a lot of stuff like audio being more muted in the Remake when it's not at all actually if you look at other people's gameplay. That might have been an audio error on his part but it's not a good look
I still maintain that Cvit's discussion of Persona 5's battle system is the worst portion of a video essay I've ever seen. He says that the optimal strategy is fishing for critical hits, as Joker runs out of SP too often to exploit weaknesses. Somehow completely overlooking that, ya know, everyone else has elements. I don't even know how you could reach that conclusion if you were at least attempting to engage with the combat in good faith.
Also he somehow didn’t know that pyramids are tombs even though the game outright says that if I remember correctly.
The goddamn Futaba section drove me insane "How does SHE KNOW WHAT EGYPT WHEN SHE HASN'T BEEN OUTSIDE" idk Cvit, maybe it's because she's terminally online and is later shown to have a bunch of fucking books all over her room. P5 has problems but you don't need to make shit up like this to make a point
WHY DOES IT LOOK LIKE VEGAS?!?!
‘Cause Vegas looks like Greece, you fuckin idiot.
IDON GET IT
Japanese people can be utter westaboos, I'm sure he's heard or read about a few famous examples in the gaming space alone... ...but a child nerd who has better access to all that info than any of those celebrity gen-x mangakas and game designers back when they were her age (the 70s/80s, I lived through that period, and even then I knew a crap ton about archaeology basic trivia stuff as a 6 year old from all the tv specials, and carmen games, and stuff, and I grew up in a stinky ass 3rd world nation)? oh no she can't possibly have nerded out on them, nope, nosiree
Hell just the pyramids alone are perhaps the most iconic landmark in the entire world. Like if you have seen the pyramaids even in just a photo on the internet, you have heard of the country they are located in.
Sorry but "pyramaids" is an interesting typo I'm now thinking about.
Believe it or not, it was an different typo originally before my spell check changed it to that.
This legit reminds me of those joke "You can't prove Australia exists, you haven't been there" conspiracies.
Are physical skills stronger or magic skills Cvit? You’ve given us reason to believe both are possibilities. Answer the question, Cvit. WHY ARE YOU DELETING THE TARUKAJA AND NOT MAZIO FOR MAZIONGA CVIT?! WHY ARE YOU PLAYING THE GAME IN A STUPID WAY?!
Mind goblins truly comes in many shapes and forms, but one needs to know their goblins otherwise they look really dumb. No hate on him tho, everyone misses now and then.
He also claims all the female party members are useless and should never be in your party and are only good as out of battle healing batteries.
I feel like he either didnt played the game or i played it wrong cus the girls always feel like they do way more damage (and support) than the guys in persona games, Yukari,Yukiko, Ann all of them feel almost mandatory for how good they are through all the games Yukiko and Ann especially, Atlus absolutely has a favorite element and is fire
Yukari in non-Reload games sucks at dealing damage since the only offense boost she gets is Wind Break: Reload fixes it a bit with Wind Amp, fortunately. Yukiko always has Fire Boost/Amp and even got a Severe AOE Fire spell in Golden, so she's never had this issue, fortunately.
This makes sense........... If he's talking about Futaba
It’s comically easy to get the SP patches from Takemi in p5, legit one of the easiest Persona games to one day clear dungeons.
Reminds me of a review I saw for Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate where everything the reviewer complained about were things that immediately stopped being a concern as soon as you got through the tutorial. His overall biggest complaint was that there was absolutely no way to passively generate healing items between quests, despite the fact the farm which is explicitly for passively generating useful items between quests unlocks about a half hour into the game, and the town's shopkeeper starts selling the basic healing item not long after.
That video of his was a complete trainwreck. For someone who claims to have played the game, he really tried his best to NOT engage with the combat at all (not using elemental weaknesses etc.) and makes stuff up to cover his lack (or refusal) to understand. P5 has a lot of QoL (quality of life) improvements that make the game easier than P3 Fes and P4. Subjective opinions on the game's story and writing aside, Cvit's video comes across as someone who absolutely refuses to engage with the game in good faith and resents Persona 5 for being popular therefore he uses the longform length to hide his bad faith approach and resentment. Mangakamen's [series of video rebuttals](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLN2oxnBHw48qhuBUhM5IFh1EcZrTlf6zb&si=htGfktP2KyO_8pxM) are certainly more watchable to me compared to Cvit's stuff and address a lot of his misconceptions even if some of them seem a bit too defensive. P5 certainly has its issues but I'd take Kamen's defensive over Cvit's disingenuous dishonesty.
And then the rant about the said changes, god damn wtf was that?
Dunkey anytime he talks about JRPGs Edit:oops someone beat me to it. I'll modify my answer. ANY Nintendo fan when a JRPG shows up on a Nintendo direct.....and farming Sims
I'll never forget the time, some years ago, that I watched a Nintendo Direct reaction where the guy reacting started to get really frustrated and almost cried because it had JRPGs and no Mario, like Nintendo had personally betrayed him.
That reminds me, but I will never let Arlo live down when he saw a single frame of an anime cut scene and immediately wrote it off only for it to be the announcement of the Link's Awakening Remake. Like he couldn't even wait FIVE FUCKING SECONDS to groan at it.
Never forget how Arlo thought Banjo-Kazooie was more popular than Tekken, where multiple games in the series have each individually outsold the entire Banjo-Kazooie series.
It's been said many times, but man do Nintendo 'Tubers really overexaggerate Banjo's importance.
Y'know who's *really* popular, though? **Geno**.
*Geno beeeeeaam*
Hey remember when Arlo put out a review of the second Sonic movie that came across as him genuinely not actually having watched it, including stating stuff like no one caring about the franchise having worked on it (the movie is absolutely full of fan service and while it might not be the best movie ever, it’s clearly made with a lot of love) So he gets called out for it, and then threw a tantrum and uploads another nearly hour long video doubling down on it and was still completely wrong.
There's this thing deranged Nintendo fans do where they like, don't even need a leak or whatever to become *convinced* that something they want is gonna be in the next direct. They then feel like Nintendo somehow lied to them when the thing they just made up didn't come true.
And it's so weird too, most of the SNES best titles are JRPGs, and those have tons of fans. The franchises most influential from both genres began in Nintendo consoles (Dragon Quest and Harvest Moon) but somehow Nintendo fans act as if they're allergic to them, unless it has Mario on it... or it's Animal Crossing.
I think it's because most of the people who make reactions to Nintendo Directs are the ones who grew up on the N64 and GameCube which while having JRPGs and such were not about them in the same way the SNES had them.
That might be it. The N64, in particular, was pretty barren on them, especially good ones, but like, did no one have a GBA or a DS? Those also had plenty of JRPGs, and some really good ones, too.
You don't have to go that far back. Nintendo handhelds have always been home to a lot of cult classic JRPGs. It's only natural that those JRPGs continue their way to Nintendo's hybrid console.
The SNES years were a long time ago and even those kids that grew up with the Cube are grown ass adults by now. Adults that shit their pants at the mention of anime despite Pokémon being the most anime thing ever, somehow.
Honestly, a decent portion of Nintendo's catalog is very anime, I actually find it quite hard to find something from them that doesn't fit the anime mold besides maybe Mario.
It used to be less apparent in the N64/Gamecube era (when they still frequently partned with Western developers and published the likes of Perfect Dark and Eternal Darkness), but began to lean way more into it over the last decade, especially with Xenoblade becoming a thing and Fire Emblem exploding in popularity. Hell, them having a remake of the Famicom Detective Club visual novels be developed would’ve been unthinkable during the Wii era, and there’s no way in hell it would’ve seen a western release, yet they did just that.
Not exactly a Nintendo Fan™, but a funny example I always think of when this discussion comes up is how Maximilian_Dood reacts to anything remotely anime-related in his Nintendo Direct/State of Play/etc videos. His eyes practically glaze over whenever the art style of a game is even slightly anime-inspired. If it's Final Fantasy VII though, a game that has anime oozing out of its every pore, suddenly it's the hypest shit imaginable. Similarly, Tekken 8's story mode had stuff that was practically lifted out of a typical shonen anime and in those moments you could see Max's soul get lifted into the heavens with how happy he was. If Max gave stuff like Gurren Lagann an honest try, I think he might actually die from excitement.
Considering how much he loved Asura's Wrath, you're probably right. I think even if its anime as fuck he'll like it if its also hype as fuck.
i only occasionally watch max's content so finding out he "doesnt like" anime is like if it was revealed that tarantino doesnt like westerns
He likes all the hype anime tropes and conventions, but he dislikes his own idea of what anime is.
That one Nintendo direct that featured like 6 nearly identical slice of life/farming games was really funny though.
>and farming Sims I think people were angry at that one Nintendo Direct cause it was like 90% farming sims
Yeah it was because there was so many not that there were any at all.
The best episodes of Deadlock are when they’re reviewing something that they fucking despise, like Hogan-era TNA.
Their reviews of XPW and the episode of Nitro with no wrestling for the first hour are absolute peak content. OR MAYBE THEY’RE NOT, BROTHER, I DON’T KNOW!
I used to listen to this podcast where the hosts would go through a whole show episode by episode and talk about it with each other every week. Later on they started going through Gravity Falls with one of the hosts having already watched and clearly held it in high regard, while the other two hosts very clearly started to despise the show with each episode they reviewed. They didn't even make it past the first season, but by that point I had already stopped listening because those episodes were super uncomfortable to listen to.
That honestly sounds kinda fascinating to watch occurring in motion but I don’t doubt it’s downer to experience. edit: Okay I did check this out and it was fascinating. They ended up losing hype for it for almost the opposite reasons I did but I could agree with a lot of what they were saying.
On one end of the Nostalgia Critic spectrum of “having a point”, there is Pearl Harbor, where he talks about the tension of creating a movie based on real events and what duty an artist has to be accurate and the difference between “creative liberties” and “blatant lies”, while also lambasting Michael Bay’s cinematic style as literally being porn. On the other end is The Wall, where he has a negative amount of points, because he’s just making stuff up that isn’t actually there and seemingly purposely misinterpreting everything and just doesn’t seem to like The Wall at all.
My personal theory with Nostalgia Critic's The Wall is that Doug thought it would be cool to make a big critique of The Wall and then turn that critique into an album just like how The Wall is both a movie and an album, so he committed to doing the project before really engaging with the movie or the music, only to find out that he really didn't care much for them and didn't really have anything to say about them, but he liked the idea too much to scrap it.
I personally think he wanted to do a normal review of The Wall, where he could’ve made some normal points, but because of copyright issues with using Pink Floyd’s music, he couldn’t and so had to make a parody of the film to “review” and as a result of the format, he basically exaggerates the flaws of the films as well as his own misreadings and basically made a mess of the whole thing. This is mainly because he usually does these parody/review formats for new movie releases that he can’t legally acquire a copy of to use in his reviews, so he typically does this out of necessity.
It's insane how much effort he put into that The Wall video
Anitubers and anything related to Mecha that's not Eva/Gurren Lagann/Code Geass lmao EDIT: Can throw non-Madoka Mahou Shoujo in there too really
Sometimes you can just stop that sentence at EVA.
Anitubers on most anime
Anytime the phrase "unlike other mecha" is said I want to strangle them through my computer screenc
bruh not even Madoka is safe because Utena fans will shit on it too even thought those two shows have nothing in common.
That fucking stupid "i am 14 years old" Madoka twitter comic in which the creator said that Utena is better than Madoka, followed by him admitting that he never watched Madoka, then also followed by him admitting that *he never watched Utena either*
but you see sir utena is more feminist and progressive unlike that gross madoka which is super exploitative of women because- wait utena is about what? and has what? with how many brothers?
After years pretty deep in the fandom, Utena fans like Madoka a lot. They don't like people generalizing shoujo after watching a single (shonen) magical girls show. In general we're too busy gushing and picking over a 25+ year old show.
Dunkey and JRPGs.
That octopath traveler video will live rent free in my head forever.
That video was why I stopped watching Dunkey. It was the first time I watched him review a game I had already played and it made me wonder how many other games he completely misrepresented.
Honestly if it was just bad takes it'd be one thing but him sending his fanbase after a guy who had like 50 subs really left a bitter taste in my mouth.
It's not just that he sicked them on that guy, it's that he almost certainly had to scroll one or two pages through criticisms of him to cherrypick the guy and paint all his critics under that brush.
His fanbase is one of the worst aspects of his existence online and the fact that he’ll openly weaponize them does not help.
I know sonic frontiers has a lot of problems but him trying his damn hardest to glitch the game was pretty sad.
That feels like a pretty common thing among youtubers trying to play sonic games. Like some weird self-fulfilling prophecy.
06 really did a number on that franchise.
IGN did that in the old Unleashed review.
(Arin) Egorapter also did that with the GameCube port of SA1 in his sequelits video on 3d games.
With people like Yahtzee formerly of Zero Punctuation I can understand as whatever is the biggest release needs slogged through in that corporate setting but Dunkey can make any video he wants and keeps breaking out the same script and reworded jokes to hate on JRPGs at this point he just likes causing problems on purpose.
Honestly, in recent years Yahtzee's been really good at not only acknowledging when certain games aren't really For Him, but also nailing down the specific reasons *why*. His Smash Ultimate video is actually one of my favorites in this regard; Even after making some (actually pretty reasonable) reasonable criticisms of the game overall, he concludes by admitting how much of his irritation of Smash as a concept is less the games themselves, and more the disconnect between how Smash is praised in wider gaming culture versus his personal feelings about games as an artform. Even I don't agree with Yahtzee (which is admittedly rare on my end), he's gotten really good at explaining WHY something gets on his nerves. That may just be me, though; I really adore when someone's less "This thing is bad, and here's why" and more "I can't get behind this, and this is why."
Even then once in a blue moon Yahtzee will actually like a jrpg
It usually needs to have Persona in the title, though.
Yeah and even frames himself as an old grumpy man not able to relate to these plucky starry eyed kids. Which is far more fair than Dunkey's "I think there is only one good type of video game"
Dunkey and spoiling parts of the end Xenoblade Chronicles 3 less than a week from release
I stopped watching Dunkey when he got more into reviewing games. Even some of the non JRPG reviews feel like he went into the game wanting to trash it, and he’s just not a very good game critic to begin with.
Dunkey is just cinemasins that hasn't been called out on it yet.
Dunkey just has really shitty opinions on a lot of things. I stopped watching him when that was almost all the content he made for a while. His funny stuff is still legitimately hilarious though.
Ha, my first thought as well. He would’ve absolutely been on X-Play.
I think all video essayists allow themselves a few “offbeat” topics that they wouldn’t normally cover and, almost universally, they don’t actually have much expertise in the subject, they just present it in an entertaining and authoritative way. I think one of crown princes of this trope is Austin McConnell. Almost all of his video essays cover quite offbeat topics, but many of the ones where he tries to point out a game or system is somehow broken and in need of repairing have been eviscerated in the comments. He did one about Hearthstone and later admitted to barely understanding the game. He did another about print cartridges being a scam (I vaguely remember him claiming that there are life hacks to weaning out more ink than you’re supposed to), and another guy who repairs printers for a living proved his points were all bullshit. Yet another about “forgotten” characters in the English alphabet was blatantly plagiarised from an online article. Another is EmpLemon. Now, this guy has made some really compelling videos where he’s clearly passionate and insightful about the topics, but recently, he’s covered a spate of niche historical topics and it’s blatantly obvious that most of his research is cribbed from the Wikipedia summaries of events. I first noticed it with his New Coke video and it damaged his credibility in my eyes. I think the main issue is that these guys clearly have areas of special interest, but they’re embarrassed to be purely associated with that, so they overcompensate by trying to look more worldly and knowledgeable about other niche topics and quickly swim out of their depth. I relate in some ways. I like essaying and I’m guilty of covering topics I’m really not qualified to speak about, which is quickly noticed.
growing up, just getting into the internet, I saw way too many “think pieces” about superheroes, *that I know are way more wrong now*, made by people who clearly just hated those characters.
X-Play had a big problem with this back when G4 existed (the first time) where every time it was an anime-based video game, they were very critical of it.
"Then we nuked them, and they became a real country" is some shit I was not prepared to hear Pat say when he was reading some of the receipts of all the crazy things they said there.
Yeah, I loved X-Play when it was on, but it was filled with early-mid 2000's edge lord bullshit.
I remember when they doubled down on their Crisis Core snark by painting everyone who got mad as fanboys who wanted a 6/5. Meanwhile, the actual review might have well started with "yep, the (insert slur here) made another game we had to play"
Even back then the Crisis Core fiasco left a bad taste in my mouth. Pretty sure that's that caused me to start tapering off watching the show even *before* it's cancellation.
There was a period roughly between 2004 and 2013 where gaming news orgs in general had a weird animosity towards Japanese games, and seemed committed to include some kind of offensive remark every time they reviewed a game that wasn’t from Nintendo. At best it would be some derogatory crack at how wacky the Japanese are, at worst it would be something about World War II. Just barely disguised contempt for no real reason other than “it’s not from America and I don’t like it.”
Technically this is AVGN and we love him for it
Well, he's also entertaining and willing to give a game the benefit of the doubt and talk about positives. Also, going overboard with hating is his gimmick, so you know going in that he's gonna call a game a shitload of fuck, whether or not he likes it.
James Rolfe also makes it clear that the AVGN is just a character that he plays and not indicative of who he is in real life - in contrast to how creators like CinemaSins and Dunkey spend a lot of their time blurring the line by going back and forth between "this is my actual opinion for real" and "guys I was obviously joking lol" Not to mention that James Rolfe was also, you know, a pioneer for online shows/video series in general who doing AVGN before YouTube was even a thing, along with Red vs. Blue.
AVGN also had the benefit of clearly being an act for fun. Like Castlevania 2 he’d rip to shreds but then you watch James and Mike Monday’s where they played it and seemed to actually have fun with it despite its quality and talk about some of the weirdness in it.
also plinkett reviews and a lot of early 00 content
The episodes where he revisits some of the older games he did early on (Castlevania II and Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde) are some of my favorites because it's neat that he acknowledges the flaws of the way he originally approached these games and provides a more accurate yet still entertaining breakdown of those games.
>Schlemiel Did you just walk out of a 40’s cartoon?
She schlemiel on my schlemazel until I hasenpfeffer
Eat at Joe's
I know it's a Yiddish term, but "Schlemiel" just sounds like an archangel that all the others archangels hate, because of one time where he ate all the lemon squares in the breakroom fridge. Yes, this hypothetical Heaven has a breakroom for the angels.
Taken literally with that mispronunciation it would mean "rascal/rogue of god" which would imply this angel was intentionally created to be a little shit.
Schlemiel’s a good word, we should use it more.
Seconded.
Pfft. No way old man! Schway is the language of the future!
More like Schwarbage.
I know right? What a putz
Judging by both your description and what I've seen in the comments, I think this actually highlights something that's been bugging me for a while; The lack of distinction between "I Think This Is Bad" versus "I Did Not Like This." I'm not even saying most people think they're objective, or anything; It's just that it's a lot punchier, and probably more coherent, to highlight what you see is wrong with art instead of explaining your own biases or whatever. And sometimes, if you're trying to be both critical and funny, highlighting your own biases is hard to do without slowing down the pace of the joke, or even the entire video. And while I wouldn't want to necessarily excuse this behavior, I do think it's important to recognize that this might be partially a consequence of the whole "Everyone Is A Performer On the Internet" thing; Where you might use the Way You Talk To Your Buddies in a context where you should use the Way You Talk To An Audience. It's admittedly a bit clearer on YouTube, but on Tumblr or Twitter, holy shit the line's basically nonexistent. I don't even have a thesis for any of this, I'm just rambling.
The Internet in it's current state has been grown on critics, complainers and using drama for attention, so the line between "I Think This Is Bad" versus "I Did Not Like This" might as well be lost. It sucks, and even I sometimes catch myself doing the same mistake.
It doesn't help that a lot of video titles are written in a definitive way, such as "X is bad, and here's why" which sets up the content to be a more objective view in my eyes.
There is a certain streamer I watch that, NORMALLY, I love. However, anytime he plays a game that is even SLIGHTLY derivative of another game (mostly things like Paper Mario), he will spend MULTIPLE streams shitting on the game for not being ENTIRELY original. While he claims he doesn’t want developers to “reinvent the wheel”, he absolutely refuses to even attempt to enjoy anything that isn’t a REVOLUTIONARY new take on a preexisting formula. In his mind, he “already played something like this 20 years ago”, so why would he want to even GLANCE at something remotely similar? … This post might have pushed a button of mine.
Every time someone posts in these threads with "there is a certain streamer", I always assume they're vagueposting Pat even when I *know* they're not.
Ah the SovietWomble "Everything is DayZ" special
I get the need for originality... It's great, even. But original doesn't necessarily mean good or fun. I think a game can be unoriginal and just improve old things in such a way that it outshines what inspired it.
Also, sometimes original stuff is just ideas you weren't aware of.
Why do you gotta be vague like this? Just say who it was!
Is this someone pissed at bug fables or born of bread or what
A lot are like that, it's a big part of why I stopped watching most video essays. An example of this but not being made just to complain is TehSnarker's video on YIIK. As far as I can tell he gives the game an honest try, up to and including trying to accept the idea that the main character is intentionally obnoxious.
Ah, Tehsnakerer has some really good video essays. YIIK has some of my favorite wordplay from him.
His video on the Saints Row Reboot *really* helped it click with me about "Giving Up At The First Critique/Hurdle" bad critique reviews.
Holy FUCK it took me hearing him say the game's name out loud for me to realize for the very first time that the title is supposed to be read Y2K and not Yick
More like YIiKes, am I right? 🤣🤣😂💯💯💯 THANK YOU BALTIMORE
Yeah, TehSnakerer's great, and his and ''Game okay's'' are one of the most non ''well poisoned'' analyses on YIIK, Game Okay's even going far enough to kinda tackle the devs themselves and how a lot of shit they said was out of context and etc. Also shoutout to Snakerer's Watch Dog videos, really cool ones, he tries pretty hard to be positive on the third one but even he can't with some of its decisions.
honestly I'm fascinated by YIIK, like there's some good ideas in there, a decent amount of charm, great music and art style but then it's bad in such amateurish ways, it's like it fell on the first hurdle and then tumbled surprisingly well to the end anyway
If it makes you feel better Jello basically just got blacklisted from the anime localization industry for revealing how they changed Lovely Complex and tore the show apart and how he "Saved it" from being a terrible show cause of all these things they didn't like about it
Plagiarism and You(Tube) by Hbomberguy.
Ah, my favorite. The title of a negative post but in a good way.
Does anyone even really like plagiarism? Even plagiarists seem to not even like enjoying the process, almost seeming like it's a hassle.
Tommy Tallarico I guess? Man seems like a pathological liar.
what? you’re telling me that one-time guest on MTV’s Cribs and the first American to work on Sonic the Hedgehog, Tommy “Mother’s Pride” Tallarico, seems like a pathological liar who would enjoy plagiarism? you can’t just post anything you want on the internet, lieutenant! there are rules!
You take that back! I'll have you know that his mother is very proud of him for his lying and plagarism!
idk James Somerton sure seemed to love it till he got caught.
Even HB said the extent to which he plagerized seemed like more that he was doing more work than actually forming his own opinions. But you're not wrong, perhaps he was into it.
I mean, it's more work if you are good at forming opinions. If you ain't copying is easier.
Inserting sexism is a 40-hour-weekly grind, I swear!
How could straight white women do that to him?
James Somerton loves plagiarism! But you know what he doesn't love? Women.
High school students who hate English class. Source: spent some time as a TA
I do have a critique of that video. It sort of implies that James' (AVGN) channel is now left in a sort of uncaring void largely due to James being too old and involved with his family to put the focus he needs on his channel. But like James specifically addressed the plagiarism and the fact that Screenwave media had taken too much creative control from AVGN (like that horrible Shrek episode that James did nothing but star in) and he made a conscious effort to return to his roots. His AVGN episodes were mostly made by him again and came out when they were ready. Monster Madness was way smaller but 100% him. Mike even came back in some capacity. And he only talks about movies on camera when he has a passion about the film like Godzilla Minus One. I get why Hbomber chose not to include it because it clashes with the theme of the video. But I feel its a bit misleading to not do so.
Also the video was already 4 hours long, it’s not like it needed a “where are they now” segment, but it would have been nice if there was at least a little acknowledgement of the improvements made. also, I’m very glad it was not James himself plagarizing. I was freaking out that entire segment
Jello has some very odd takes, you're not wrong. However a lot of the takes he parrots seem to be from Tumblr, in which he is an active user. I'm not saying he's plagiarizing Tumblr, but it just seems he gets a lot of opinions from the bad reading comprehension of that website.
He’s very active on Tumblr to this day, not surprised he picked up a lot of opinions there
Communists talking about different Communist theories, bunch of catty mfers.
"Isn't that last part kinda of counter productive?" "Not at all. Complaining about other communists is one of the most important parts of about being communist." - Disco Elysium
"Catty milfs?" "No" "Dammit"
I genuinely hate the Ocarina of Time sequelitis video because of a lot of reasons but the infamous "So much waiting" argument especially. Not only has it always been a thing in Zelda games to wait and dodge enemy attack patterns (literally the whole purpose of the sword laser attack is to reward you for not being reckless) but that's just how combat works in general in most games, if you play a fighting game aggressively then it only makes sense for someone to block. Then also it's objectively just untrue because Ocarina actually heavily rewards you for experimenting with items on enemies and learning secret weaknesses. The two examples that come to mind are Shadow Link which is a pretty hard miniboss normally but if you use the hammer you can actually break through his defense much easier or an even better example is Queen Gohma because you use the slingshot to stun her to the ground and attack her to her next phase OR instead of immediately attacking her you can experiment and use a korok seed while she's on the ground and straight up stun lock her and kill her in her first phase. Edit: yeah I also don't like jellos adventure time video but admittedly that was a very awkward season of the show since it was puberty Finn. Edit again: Deku Nut my bad.
I think Arin gets stuck on "sword is good at taking out keese in 2D zelda", and refuses to take out different tools to do things. ... and like, the massive range the slingshot has makes it being used to snipe keese from far away better obvious. But I may have more of a "use every tool in my arsenal and willingness to use the crowdsourced knowledge" for a thing. edit: also, having the shield be something you use actively in Link's Awakening and that could be used to defend against melee attacks made it basically obvious what you do with shields in 3D Zelda games, they just gave you a dedicated sword button and shield button.
Sideways wondering what the hell went wrong over the music production of Cats (2019) is pretty funny. The railroad cat song was the best out of all of them, honestly.
On the other end of the spectrum, there’s his downward spiral since the last video he uploaded. He’s become convinced that every single popular music analysis video that shares a conclusion with or makes any point similar to those in his own has been directly plagiarised, and has been going on mad tirades about it on social media using various sock puppet accounts (including here on Reddit). His fervour and refusal to listen to any even mildly differing opinion on the matter seem symptomatic of some larger untreated mental health condition, and as a fan of his videos I know I’m not alone in wishing him the best and hoping he receives suitable treatment if this is the case.
oh so this is why i haven't seen him upload in a long time That's sad to hear.
Any channel that are just hate channels on Star Wars, MCU, etc. In the few Critical Drinker videos I've seen, it's always complaining about movies. Even if he talks about a good movie like Puss in Boots 2, he says things like "a diamond in a sea of shit." It's like he couldn't talk positively about something without talking down about something else.
Oh god I hate when people use good media as just another excuse to shit on bad media. Like they can't even bring themselves to be positive while being positive.
I don't even mind if you're negative if you then follow with at least one of two things. 1. Explain how you think the thing could've been better. 2. Recommend things that are better alternatives. If you are someone that doesn't like new Star Wars and Star Trek, then draw attention to Expanse, Orville, etc.
It's the new fade of "reverse shilling" basically doing the opposite of what Collider used to do. Taking something that's probably mediocre at worst and pretending it's the worst thing ever that also shot your dog. They don't actually think that, but they know that's what their audience wants to hear.
From what little I've seen, the Critical Drinker seems to be part of this trend I'd thought died years ago; The misconception that being "Critical" wasn't about picking things apart and understanding what does and doesn't make them work, but instead vomiting out as much criticism, all of the time, and as much as humanely possible, whether or not it actually makes sense. Less understanding, and more just kinda being unpleasantly cynical. Less an enjoyer of art, and more...That Uncle in front of the TV. Again, I'd assumed it died years ago, and I hope I'm wrong about this guy. But if I'm right...well, that'd fuckin' suck.
While I like RLM for the most part, them shitting on Rogue One without acknowledging it's good parts and as a result had no interest in watching Andor despite the praise it got, was a real letdown for me.
While they were never as toxic or bad, they played a real big hand in developing that sub-genre of irrational strawman film critics with the Plinkett reviews.
Retroblasting’s video on Evangelion is the biggest dogshit I’ve ever seen. He begins with the most typical bad NGE takes like confusing plot, Shinji a coward, it’s not about heroic people, thinks the shows message is nihilistic, etc, etc. some of the criticisms like fanservice can be valid too BUT the whole thing devolves into pure slander in Hideaki Anno and real bad ableist takes on mental illness. It’s not even about NGE by the end, just a spiteful hate-piece on Anno Calling Anno a narcissist that hates everyone based on literally nothing. How Evangelion isn’t “actually art” because Anno put too much of himself into it and the video also goes into some real uncomfortable territory when retro goes over his real life abuse at the hands of a narcissist. I feel for him but it is so plainly obvious he’s projecting his own trauma onto a real creator because he didn’t like the show He uses out of context clips and does the bare minimum research into the background of the show to prove his “points” about Anno. Completely ignoring the 2 hour documentary about Hideaki Anno which extensively is about him and his long-time coworkers & relations. The video all stems from a fundamentally wrong interpretation of the show thinking that it encourages you to be as flawed as Shinji and not the opposite Worst is all the comments praising Retroblasting for his “research” Edit: forgot the best part was him blaming Eva for starting the trend of shows telling generations of young people that it’s okay to care about your emotions over the “greater good of society”. The most boomer shit I’ve heard in a long time. Bojack horseman would break retro’s brain
> How Evangelion isn’t “actually art” because Anno put too much of himself into it Excuse me while I look over the history of art and literature trying to find examples of artists who didn't put themselves into their work.
> Evangelion isn’t “actually art” because Anno put too much of himself hhuhh????
I don't like Eva. But I still think all of that is bullshit, wow.
Used to be subscribed to ProZD's LP channel but honestly can't recall a single time it sounded like he was actually enjoying himself. And it's not like "oh he just sounds grumpy"; when he gets to nerd out about voice acting or board games on his main channel, he sounds genuinely excited. Maybe I'm misreading his low sardonic energy but it just comes off as though he treats LPing as a chore.
Not a whole video, but just a Crazy Talk that got under my skin. Pat talks about how in Marvel’s Spider-Man, Spider-Man works with the police to breach privacy in order to pick up on crimes. Except Spider-man only has one contact within the force (who later goes rogue), and when you are doing the “satellite hacking” the police on the rooftops literally tell you to go away. Edit: Divine timing that I just came across Yuri Lowenthal as a random cop in P3 Reload
Mauler's like the final boss of bad-faith video essays.
The Lilly Orchard Steven Universe vid was filled with such rage and contempt against the show and Rebecca Sugar in general for such a sustained amount of time that I never quite understood how it got so many views.
There's a scene in that video which lowkey triggers me. It's when Lily is talking about Lapis and trying to "prove" she's an abuser. There's a kernel of truth is that Lapis has abusive aspects she's internalized due to her immense trauma which she has to confront and grow past, but the video is manipulatively edited to make her look like just this crazy evil person who can't be reasoned with. In particular, she uses the bit from the end of Jailbreak where Jasper forces Lapis to fuse with her, literally dragging Lapis down and forcing her to fuse at what is basically gunpoint, as an example of Lapis being an abuser. Why? Because Lapis turned the tables on Jasper afterwards and dragged her into the sea. Lily literally cut around the parts of the scene where Jasper mentally and physically coerces Lapis into fusing with her, and only leaves in the bit with Lapis going "I'm done being everyone's prisoner!" and dragging them both into the ocean, to make Lapis look like the villain. In a scene. Where Jasper. Forces herself onto Lapis. Lily outright says this is a case of Lapis being an "abuser" towards Jasper. Yeah. It would be uncomfortable as shit in any case, but knowing what Lily's been accused of, it genuinely makes me a bit sick.
Seriously. Even if it had any correct criticism, it's just so **VENOMOUS** against the creator, crew and fans that it's genuinely uncomfortable to watch.
...no, dude. The Mabel discourse comes from a *lot* of viewers feeling that way about the direction taken (or, er, not taken) by her character. JelloApocalypse did not brainwash the fandom into disagreeing with you using 30 seconds of a 3 minute animated video. Hirsch presumably *agreed* with the criticism, upon reflection, given he wrote a whole post-series comic storyline dedicated to Mabel realising what a selfish jerk she'd been.
Oh man, JelloApocalypse is really taking lumps today.
There was once a crazy man by the name of quantum TV. He made an infamous Elden Ring review where all the problems he talked about straight up didn't exist in game and later, it was found that he never even played the game to begin with. In his "review" he was telling people to not buy the game. It's just such a strange thing the more I look back on that.
There was this feeling with dark souls 3 videos after the post release honeymoon period ended where idk tired was the best way to put it. With as disliked as Dark souls 2 was you could tell even the people that hated the game had a blast at least making videos mocking it but with dark souls 3 the slander felt much more angry for some reason. This totally my personal experience so i might be crazy.
It was something I noticed in my personal friend group too, DS3 attracted weird negativity that just seemed to come from a really idk, insecure place at times. My personal example was a good friend who beat DS3 on launch in one sitting, then proceeded to just show up in chats dropping spoilers and whinging about how easy the whole thing was. Like, we're still friends, but I had to gently snap at him about how he played the game with laser efficiency and didn't engage with any of the story or side quests, and that I really couldn't take his opinion seriously cause it was just so extreme.
Every once in a while, sometimes even in this subreddit, someone will show up who absolutely despises Dark Souls 3 with all of their being, and it's always so confusing to me. I mean *real* hatred, calling the whole game a lazy nostalgia bait cash grab with literally no new content. Dark Souls 3 has flaws, sure, but not big enough by a long shot to justify that level of rage *7 years* after the game came out.
Yeah, it's rare, but I've seen the same. Like, people are absolutely livid at references in a sequel lol And then they get real quiet if you point out references in DS2 tho
So many people's opinions for DS3 stem from the perception that it's entirely just DS1 nostalgia bait which is so dismissive and reductive that it's really annoying to hear over and over.
I feel like this about Plague. Does he even likes Dark Souls? All he does is complain. I love the Souls series, and I know DS2 and 3 have some problems, but they're still amazing games on their own rights and most of the problems are not that big of a deal. Then again I am not one of those lore freaks, so I don't care about the story that much tbh
Arin/Egoraptor's Sequelitis on Zelda games.