Critics That You Simply Can't Listen to Anymore

[ChrstmasCarnage]

I don't like Angry Joe's style.

Every so often I check to see what Total Biscuit has done recently but I never subscribe to his channel because if I do I get a lot of videos I don't care about. And he can be kinda arrogant sometimes.

I don't like Moviebob's view on video games but I like his movie reviews even when I don't agree.

I'm listening to Jim Sterling less and less and I feel his arguments are getting repetitive and sloppy. Some of Super Bunnyhop's stuff and even Allosaurus Rex's one video on "Gamer Culture" are more informed then anything on the Jimquisition.

I take Zero Punctuation's reviews with a grain of salt nowadays but I still greatly respect the guy.

 

[RaikuFA]

I can't listen to Totalbiscuit. His sheer hatred towards anyone who considers themselves a fan of something, console people and used games all really rubbed me the wrong way. I know he's gone out of his way to attack people who criticize him for even little things(even his fans do it, I've had his fans try and tell me that it's wrong to disagree with him). And yet even when I rooted for him during the SEGA or Day One incidents he still came off as "It happened to me, it's finally important for everyone to take notice."

I'm also worried that if/when my game gets released he'll bash it because it's not pretentious indie hipster retro bull.

 

[lapan]

Jim Sterling. I'm not into his style of video and he always seemed a bit like he jumps on topics just for their popularity for me.

 

[DanielBrown]

After Angry Joe made his illegal, and seriously retarded, raffle for the Playstation 4 I unsubbed and haven't watched him since. Some guy said he was alerting the Texan authorities about it, or something, so hopefully he'll learn(since he plans to do more like it). Would've stopped watching him soon enough anyway since he hardly produced any reviews anymore and when he did it was so fucking theatrical I couldn't be arsed to watching it.

As someone that gave up on him back in late 2011 (I think the last video was for Fable 3), what did he do that was illegal?

He made a video a few months ago announcing a raffle he had started. He wanted people to pay $5 for a chance to get a PS4. Since the money goes to him, and not some charity, it's illegal according to at least the laws in Texas. That's according to Youtube commentors though. They can't always be trusted, but in this case I assume they're right.
He also only had one PS4 in the pot and wanted people outside of the US to pay for the shipping themselves. Considering that he must've known about how many would participate and the fact that he isn't exactly poor made me quite pissed off. The worst thing, however, was that instead of responding to the critisism he just removed those posts. Eventually he closed the raffle early and made some retarded statement on his site which didn't concern any questions about it being illegal.
His plans for the money was, as I understood it, to send his Angry Army friends on expensive trips around the world to participate in game events. Don't remember how much he made on the raffle, but I saw some claims that it was at least $4000. That would only be 800 participants though. Got a feeling the real number was even higher.

 

[Ruwrak]

Thing about raffles is that it is bound by local laws. In the netherlands for example it is legal since there is no cash prize to be gained.
I can imagine it works the same way elsewhere or the local basketball club would need a gambling license to hold a club raffle for a signed t-shirt for example.

But Im not an expert on US law, i could be mistaken but I think the above sounds logical right?

 

[CloudAtlas]

It's certainly not perfect, nothing is, but scoring systems are never really good. I can tell you now that the gamestar scoring system gave me much more advice than any other stupid 5 stars, 10 points (which are basically the same since there are half stars) and /100 points systems used by other magazines. At least you can see and understand how and why the score is what it is, even if you don't agree with it.

But the scoring system wasn't even my point. The clear seperation of objective description of the game and personal opinion of the reviewer was what is in my opinion clearly superiour to any other kind of review i have seen so far.

Well, I think it's impossible to distinguish that clearly between personal opinion and "objective description", and I'm certainly not the only one, but that's another story. If you prefer those kinds of reviews, good for you, but other people place more weight on other aspects of a game, aspects that you'll see rarely mentioned in GameStar (such as the problematic-ness or the quality of the story), and if you tell them that the kind of reviews they prefer for that reason are 'clearly inferior', they might find that a bit iffy.

 

[CloudAtlas]

OT: Moviebob. I got tired of his hypocrisy, his dishonest reviews and his habit of insulting the intelligence of everyone with a different opinion from him.

Yeah. I stopped watching him last year. Hell, just a couple months ago. And it wasn't just for one thing, he has a history of making me scratch my head and palming my face.

I remember a couple of instances when he attacked the audience of a movie instead of the...y'know, movie he was supposed to be reviewing. Called him out for that. Then he started pushing his political agendas and started going so off-topic that he "ironically" started making references and interludes to that very behavior.

Sadly, I don't think he ever realized that developing basic pattern recognition isn't "clever self-commentary".

Then he wrote his love letter to Anita Sarkeesian about two months ago. Were it not for the obvious correlation between "Anita Sarkeesian" "Easy traffic" here on the internet, it would have been a hilariously awkward article lacking in any sense of authority.

That was the last straw and the point I just stopped watching. If he wants to engage his audience with a politically charged agenda and support people whose agendas are highly questionable (if not reprehensible) then fine.
But I have no interest in that, and I'm not going to be a part of it. It's not even entertaining to me, just...tiring.

What "reprehensible agendas" does MovieBob support?
___

After reading the whole thread... Ugh.

At the end of the day, a fair share of you people just can't accept if someone has a different opinion from yours. It's as simple as that. Even if this difference is as little as placing more weight on certain aspects of a game than you do. It's neither intelligent nor very mature.

 

[Amaror]

Well, I think it's impossible to distinguish that clearly between personal opinion and "objective description", and I'm certainly not the only one, but that's another story. If you prefer those kinds of reviews, good for you, but other people place more weight on other aspects of a game, aspects that you'll see rarely mentioned in GameStar (such as the problematic-ness or the quality of the story), and if you tell them that the kind of reviews they prefer for that reason are 'clearly inferior', they might find that a bit iffy.

That's why it says "in my Opinion"

 

[Jimothy Sterling]

Personally can't enjoy Jim Sterling anymore. He ripped of Yahtzee by being born in Britain. I can't stand that.

 

[The Crispy Tiger]

Personally can't enjoy Jim Sterling anymore. He ripped of Yahtzee by being born in Britain. I can't stand that.

It must be hard reading this Jim, you've been said to:

Be A Tool
Repeating Yourself
Sloppy
An Unlikable Person
Be Jumping On Bandwagons

And the list goes on and on...

I just wanted to say something. I LOVE YOU, JIM DON'T LEAVE THIS POST. THIS IS A PLACE FOR YOU ON MY HEART! ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IT MOVE IN!

 

[The Feast]

Personally can't enjoy Jim Sterling anymore. He ripped of Yahtzee by being born in Britain. I can't stand that.

Cater to make a Jimquisition about this issue, Mr.Sterling? Funny that it resembles the issue from the last Jimquistion though.

 

[Evonisia]

Yahtzee. I still watch his videos and read XP on it's weekly basis, but if he carries on down this road of vile PC Supremacy I'm just going to stop. I do not have the spine that the Wii player base have to watch his videos when all you hear from him is bashing "x" and claiming that "y" is the greatest gift God has ever given to the world. Granted, he's always been like that (the aforementioned Wii) but if he's just going to be a two note character (PC supremacy and fuck all console games for being on console), then fuck it.

I don't think he does that. He often points out the flaws and bad behaviour of pc freaks. He's leery of it, many times.
He equally points out the flaws of consoles and pcs.
If he's ripping up console games, it's probabely because the game in question is bad.
Sometimes he rips up good games, but mostly he's right.
I've never seen him bother what the game runs on. I don't think he cares.

If the xbone, ps4, and WiiU suck, then he can't do anything but do his job, and rip them up and say it.
Actually, he's almost always tending to point out that wiiU is still a games machine. The other ar'nt.

He was being anti pc freakfan when he said the 'pc master race', thing. But of course, the retardly stupid cretins who are pc freakfans, they're so stupid they use it in completely the oppposite way.

I think he's gone to pc gaming because the current consoles, baring the wii, suck.
Something we're all going to be forced to do, if the consoles get any worse.
All gamers with any sense are going to get forced onto the wiiU or pc. PS4 and xbone are no good.

Aww it's not that bad. I see the strengths in all platforms. With console, controller flexibility and steady performance rate, and I am nowhere near the budget for a high performance gaming pc. I haven't been for years. I once worked at a cybercafe where obviously the boss was die hard PC gamer. Seeing him never put down God of War when it first came out was a priceless moment in history. I can still appreciate the level of democratization one can have in PC. Even though some setups and decompiles are a headache. But then theres all those kewl mods skins and customizations. So I think we need people showing us what its like on each side of the wall. Expanding our knowledge, and then you can discard the rest of their opinions based on your personal prefs. Remember its first an foremost about you having your fun.

Oh I don't mean to say that I hate his opinion or that it counters mine, just that Yahtzee is doing the exact same thing he was doing in 2008-2010 when he was just bashing the Wii. It's all stuff we've heard before, and what's more it's all stuff we've heard before on the show, too. The Wii bashing got old fast and I can imagine his bashing of the new consoles (and even the old ones now as of the 'Knack' video) will get old and very boring to listen to.

I only take issue because unlike the Wii which was one of three consoles, he hates all the new consoles and a lot more games will be on them than there were on the Wii.

The Ryse video and (more recently) the Knack video are perfect examples of what I've talking about. About a third (if not more so) of the episode is spent bashing the consoles rather than the game.

 

[someonehairy-ish]

A review without any personal opinion in there would just be a bland list of features and mechanics and maybe a plot synopsis...

 

[Orbi16]

Personally, there was never a critic I ever took fully seriously. Likewise, I've never stopped fully believing what critic's have had to say. I've just had moments where they've done something that didn't sit well with me, but there was never a moment where it was so powerful that I never watched them again (Unless it's Matthewmatosis and his Beyond Dumb-derdome Infinite "Critique"). With Yahtzee it was his Sonic Generations video. With Jim it was his recent worst games list. (He dislikes Kens Rage 2 for drifting toward a more Dynasty Warriors formula, while at the same time he pretty much loves the Dynasty Warriors games... double standards much?). With ProJared (remember him?) it was his ALBW Extended Thoughts video, it was his remark that all 3D Zelda games put an increased emphasis on combat like it's a bad thing, which to me, spits in the face of the hard working devs and the effort they put into the games. You get it by now I guess.

And then there's times that I haven't exactly disagreed with them on anything but the content they produce just doesn't interest me much anymore. I'll just summarize with the Game Grumps, the Nostalgia Critic and espeecially the AVGN cos explaining them would take forever.

 

[Savagezion]

Hmm...

I still disagree. If we're talking hypothetical reality here, then let's assume that Activision greeenlighted a game where you

1. Eat Children
2. Rape Women
3. Do Racist and Ugly Things along the lines of lynching to black people
4. Every other disgusting horrifying and awful thought that has ever been created

Assume all of that was in one game. Am I supposed to seriously, in my review of the game, go "The Graphics are beautiful, It controls AMAZINGLY, and Characters each have interesting arcs." Then go back in another video and explain why this game is a disgrace to humanity that should burned down to the ground. No, I'm not.

I know you meant that as rhetorical but... yeah, you are. If the game looks great, controls great, and is well written. The game could be beautifully crafted and you can say so. You can also add in that you find it a shame that such talent was spent on making a game that you personally find offensive. You can say it is a game that has a subject material so terrible that it ruined the game for you. Yet, you still must give credit where credit is due and say that they made a well crafted game on material you disagree with.

I have the DUTY to tell the public that this game's view of people and what it allows you to do is DISGUSTING. It doesn't matter how it looks, it doesn't matter how it plays, and in this hypothetical reality, it doesn't even matter what the point of it all was...

By all likeliness anyone watching that review is going to know about that game and what is in the game before your review. Most people look up reviews when they are thinking about buying something but want to see a review first. Here you are basically saying that you would knowingly withhold information from your audience to help force your views onto them. If they want to see a review of this game, they are probably aware of what is in it and they want to know about how the actual game is. So you'll either be preaching to the choir to half of your audience or having it fall on deaf ears who plan to buy it despite the controversial material. However, since your review contains no actual review but is just an opinion piece where Crispy Tiger goes on a tangent and forgets he is reviewing something, there is no value to be had. Time to keep looking for an actual review for those who want one. If they wanted a rambling on why racism is bad google can provide tons.

It does matter what it looks like and how it plays to other people. Who I assume is who you make reviews for unless you wanting to do reviews is more of a masturbatory labor. Which would make sense considering you will forego a review in favor of pushing your views on others.

Oh, and the point of it matters. What if it is akin to American History X?

I can apply your logic to another situation but in real life. The film Grindhouse made by Quentin Tarantino. I haven't seen the film, but it sounds right up my alley! But I would never know this because in an "objective" review, you would essentially HAVE to dismiss this film for it's awful visuals, bad editing, and crappy acting, even if all of that was that intentional. It works on Comedy and most other genres. I just want to hear an opinion about a film, to have a basis, and this would include your personal taste to see if this somewhat aligns to mine. That's critics jobs, reference points.

Finally, you really need to toss out that objectivity line of thought. That sentence is the first time I have used the word. I ain't talking about objectivity, I am talking about being able to separate your political, religious, and personal views from your actual views on game design. Moviebob can't do that and you admit you can't in this post. Being able to weigh aspects of the film or game independent of your feelings and emotions. Being able to give credit where it is due. Alternatively, in the case of loving something - giving credit where there is none to be had or making flaws out to be dismissive.

I don't like raunch comedies, typical action movies, or romantic comedies. I think all three genres are fantastically stupid in their approach to story telling and I don't like them. However, I have a list a mile long of each I think are good movies: not that I like them, but that they are good movies.

Uh...okay. I don't understand the relevance of this, though.

I can separate my feelings from a review.

The reason why you don't review what the creator wanted to talk about is because that is beside the point. The point of the review is to discuss how well they presented what they wanted to talk about.

You seem to be presenting this as if it's some sort of universal rule of review theory, and I find no evidence to support such a declaration that a review may not or must not ever reference subject matter or personal taste. Do I misunderstand you, or do you have a source for your claim?

I get to be my own source considering you guys are attacking MY views on reviews themselves. I can review a movie or game directly after watching/playing it and it doesn't change because I left my feelings at the moment out of it. If the review is based on your feelings at the moment the entire review is compromised the minute you no longer agree with yourself. If a review uses a film or game as a soapbox then it is subject to change with the wind, thus has no actual worth.

 

[maninahat]

The Nostalgia Critic. Granted, it didn't take long for the shtick to get old, but right now the writing is particularly appalling. And now that unecessarily-angry-apopleptic-critic formula has been copied and done to death, it looks all the worse.

 

[sumanoskae]

I actually agree with this gaming brit, if that is indeed his opinion on the latest Jimquisition. A review is there to give information about a game. What's good and bad about it, or if it's just 'okay'. When only an opinion is given, other people have no right to complain to them about it.

Example:
Jim Sterling's game of the year awards. That was purely his opinion. Even though I disagreed with him on some games, I said nothing about it.

Any review from, say, IGN. They're there to inform, not to give their personal opinion. I have every right to go on there and complain about reviews if my experience is very different from what was described.

But it isn't really possible to deliver an objective judgement regarding a work of art; the reviewer cannot anticipate your intangible and emotional reaction any more than they can control their own.

I can explain why, say, I thought Bioshock: Infinite was pretty good but not the outstanding masterstroke it is often characterized to be, but that explanation will eventually boil down to affected me personally, which is the essence of great works of art; how does the game make you feel?; did you get connected to the characters?; did the story make you think or explore a theme you found engaging? None of these things can exist without the projection and intimacy afforded by individuality. You cannot relate to a character if you are not capable of bias.

To be objective is to be free of passion and bias, but the inspiration of passion and bias is the essence of a great work of art.

 

[Karadalis]

Doug Walker aka. The Nostalgic critic.

Ever since he tried to off the character of NC and try to make channel awesome something... something... and fell flat on his nose with said something leaving him the only choice to ditch his project and bring back the NC.

Since that point the Nostalgic critic really has lost it for me. The jokes arent funny, he relies to much on his friends he now has to jam into every single video. And its just not fun anymore. Fun ofcourse being highly objective, but somehow i feel like hes doing the nostalgic critic bcause hes forced to... not because he wants to but because it brings in the cash.

Linkara...

He used to be interesting back in the day when he was reviewing some of the more obscure and crazy comics out there.. like superman at earths end... double hitler is best hitler...

But he really ruined it with his really bad "story arcs" and all that jazz... look i came to watch your review not your silly fanfiction. And then theres the whole issue of him trying to somehow hamfist his girlfriend onto the site so she can earn money that way too.. and ofcourse him bitching at his viewers for using add blockers. Maybe if there werent like 3 commercial blocks in every video people wouldnt use them...

The only guy i regularly watch on channel awesome anymore is Sage... and mostly because im interested in what crazy batshit anime from the 90s+ he has dug up this time.

As for the escapist...

Well only movie bob for his hollier then thou attitude and blatant insulting of people who dont share the same taste he has... (scott pilgrim was a bust because you ***** where all busy watching the expendables!)

And his love letter to Anita wich didnt had any point nor rhyme or reason....

The rest i have no real problems with. Jim might be a bit preachy at times and i strongly disagree with him on some issues and Yathzee does what hes allways been doing. But i still like to watch both of their segments on the escapist.

Same goes for angry joe.. what i dont understand and what some people have brought up is how someone who buys all his hardware and games from his own money can be a corporate schil? Someone has to explain that to me. I actually like that hes not that professional.. him getting his ass handed to him at the VGAs made him in my eyes atleast that much more relatable because he was not a highly professional corporate trained parrot but simply a gamer guy. Sure his style of review is not for everyone but i just cant see where hes suposed to be a corporate whore...

Spoony... i like alot of the stuff that he brought out. Really like his Ultima series and his counter monkey tales where some of the funniest PnP tales ive ever heard... (squirtgun wars, the "chicago way".. epic) There was alot of private drama going on in the background but honestly... that was no ones business but his own.. his fans had no right to get involved in his private live and he was right to tell them to f*ck off.. sure its rude.. but then again it was rude to try to get involved in his private life in the first place dont you think? Again if you dont like his style thats okay... tastes n all i can understand that but theres not much "wrong" with his reviews otherwise.