The Video Game Critic

Posted: **June 20th, 2014, 6:37 pm**

Not to mention Youtube dillies around with how you get noticed, or their draconian idea of "Copyright Protection".

Or the fact both Google and ISP's don't always have what's best for independent talented people.

Posted: **June 20th, 2014, 7:11 pm**

[/QUOTE]Anyway, I consider Game Sack to be the best Youtube gaming channel by a huge distance.[/QUOTE]

I recently discovered Game Sack and I couldn't agree more, I like Steve Benway as well apart from his driving game videos go on too long, otherwise a good time.

Posted: **June 20th, 2014, 8:19 pm**

I wasn't originally including websites, but there are a couple I want to mention:

- Hardcore Gaming 101 ( http://www.hardcoregaming101.net ) is an essential site, especially if you have any interest in arcade games or Japanese-only games. The site has a real labor-of-love quality to it, and they will often do long articles that span the entire history of a franchise and analyze in relation to similar games and series. Looking up one game or series might lead you to two or three other games or series that you've never even heard of.

- Action Button Dot Net ( http://www.actionbutton.net/ ) has reviews that are the opposite of this site: long, obtuse, filled with bizarre references and tangents. However, for all their flaws, they also sometimes engage you in ways a typical review won't and make you consider why you like the things you do. Tim Rogers (who now runs his own game company and does freelance writing, sometimes for Kotaku) did some unique reviews for the site, which now appears to be an archive with no new content since September of last year. Definitely not for everyone.

A couple of people mentioned Jontron, who I like quite a bit and follow on Twitter. I also follow Yahtzee from Zero Punctuation (which is past its prime, but still occasionally surprises me) and Two Best Friends Play (who play some unusual games and have great group dynamics in both their videos and podcast). I do follow Cinemamassacre on Twitter, but I'm not much of a AVGN fan. I admire his devotion to both games and film and the idea that he invented a persona and used it to make a career from his interests, but I just don't find him funny...at all. Despite the fact that I've watched over a hundred of his reviews, I've only smiled a handful of times and I may have laughed twice. I've gotten more enjoyment from a single five-minute episode of Zero Punctuation or Broken Pixels than all of his videos put together...and yet I watched an awful lot of them, so they must have something going for them! (I'm also aware that humor is incredibly subjective and I don't begrudge anyone who is a fan of him - I just don't see it personally).

As for Seanbaby, he's a skillful writer with great strength in fashioning colorful and hilarious descriptions and metaphors that seem off-the-wall at first, but have their own twisted logic when you figure them out. Also, unlike the AVGN, there's a real sense of spontaneity when he speaks. AVGN sounds like a politician reading off cue cards on his earlier videos, although he has become somewhat more natural over time. Finally, no one does a crotch joke better.

Edit: The AVGN stuff came off a bit harsher than I intended. While I don't really find him that funny, I'll admit that he has his moments and that he's way better than stuff like PewDiePie (who, although a nice guy, has a truly baffling level of popularity), Markiplier and Tobuscus. As far as his movie and the Kickstarter campaign, I won't get into specifics; I'll just say that I hope the movie turns out to not be terrible and that, provided that he fulfills the rewards that he created for his campaign, he's entitled to as much money as he can make from it.

Posted: **June 20th, 2014, 10:33 pm**

pacguy19- It REALLY pisses me off when people ignorantly accuse James of "e-begging" he dosen't have tons of money lying around despite what some people believe, and initially he was only expecting the Kickstarter to cover a small portion of the film's budget, but the fans were much more generous then he could've possibly anticipated.

So no, he's not an "irresponsable spender", that's just a completely asinine and nonsensical to say when you know absolutely nothing about the man's personal life

Seanbaby's humor just always sounded extremely forced to me, i'd be hard-pressed to name one time where I so much as chuckled at him, to me he's always been massively overrated.

One person I love is Totalbiscuit, he's pretty damn funny and insightful even though there's a few things I disagree with him on.

I never got what the big deal about Zero Punctuation is, some of the reviews were funny, but for the most part they just come across as lazy and half-assed.

Don't think AVGN ever sounded like a "politician" at all(that makes no sense).

Posted: **June 20th, 2014, 11:16 pm**

I lurk on multiple forums; my favorite of which is Neogaf as insiders post there. I also like dedicated forums such as Atari-Age, Neo-Geo.com (for amusement), Sega-16, PC-Engine FX, Assemblergames, Bordersdown.net (formerly NTSC-UK), Freakin' Awesome Network, Pinball Arcade Fans, and here.

I rarely lurk Twitter, but I do check in on recent posts from random people. Also, I don't care too much for game critics or journalists, but I did like Craig Harris and Mark Bozon a lot; I stopped visiting IGN when those two left.

As far as YouTube goes, there are way too many I like, but here are my favorite accounts:

Austin Mackert: He does extensive Let's Plays on games (mostly 16-bit era and Saturn-era) and is a fan of pinball.

Game Sack: Awesome, well produced videos on varying topics and despite being quite long, doesn't feel padded out. I used to lurk The-Magicbox forums, where one of the hosts is a top moderator on, and was intrigued by his tastes. My favorite duo!

Spida1a: Not as active or interesting as he used to be, but still an esstential channel for pinball and Turbo-Grafx reviews.

MetalJesusRocks: He is a former Sierra employee that does fun videos on retro and current games.

Cinemassacre: Angry Video Game Nerd's channel, even though he's not as good as he used to be, still entertaining stuff.

Lazy Game Reviews: A PC-game reviewer that occasionally reviews console games. Great stuff!

Yakumo1975: Good reviewer and series called Retro Core. A must see for Saturn fans!

STGWeekly: Archived Twitch livestreams that cover my favorite game genre.

Lord Karnage: Classic Game Room's channel. The host is a very upbeat gamer who has diverse taste in games.

There are many others I haven't mentioned.

Even though it isn't an online show, I'd recommend SA-GCCX. It's a site that's dedicated to the subtitling of the popular Japanese show, Game Center CX. It's a show where a middle-aged guy, named Arino (a popular Japanese comedian) has to play through numerous video games to meet his job quota of 13 hours per episode. Most of the games he plays are NES and SNES software. The DS game, Retro Game Challenge, which I hyped on this forum with an alternate account, is based on this show. The show's producers are accepting of this site and project.

Posted: **June 21st, 2014, 1:21 am**

[QUOTE=Vexer]pacguy19- It REALLY pisses me off when people ignorantly accuse James of "e-begging"

he dosen't have tons of money lying around despite what some people believe, and initially he was only expecting the Kickstarter to cover a small portion of the film's budget, but the fans were much more generous then he could've possibly anticipated.

So no, he's not an "irresponsable spender", that's just a completely asinine and nonsensical to say when you know absolutely nothing about the man's personal life

[/QUOTE]
So you're telling me that with all of James' projects, partnerships, and the obvious money he's making off millions of views per video that he couldn't finance this himself?

James is e-begging, no doubt about it. His content's a one-joke affair and he e-begs. I don't care how much free content he's provided us, he's not entitled to anything.

Also, how do you know he's not an irresponsible spender? Do you know the man personally?

Sounds like you care too much about some random guy on the internet questioning another random guy on the internet. And that's really sad, that's fanboy behavior.

I also find it funny how Zero Punctuation is half-assed but James isn't, apparently. Considering the AVGN formula is just bad games, profanity, screaming and occasionally crapping on a Jaguar CD, yeah that sounds like a lot of work.

Back on topic, I follow a lot of the people already mentioned: Caddicarus, Jontron, Classic Game Room, Game Sack, Lazy Game Reviews, etc. All those guys make watching someone play a game and telling you about it interesting.

Posted: **June 21st, 2014, 5:08 am**

I highly doubt he could've financed it entirely himself no, and you don't personally know him either, so you can't state for an absolute fact that he could've done so or that he is an "irresponsible spender"

He is NOT "e-begging"! I find it funny that you can be this naive and ignorant, there's no way you can prove that he is, you sound exactly like the Irate Gamer.

Sounds like you're the one who cares too much, your post comes off as rather rude and judgemental.

It's way more work then you think it is, unless you've actually done something like this yourself, you really have no room to say whether it's not a lot of work. If you've ever watched the behind-the-scenes videos, you can see that actually quite a bit of work goes into James videos(The Crazy Castle and ROB the Robot episodes both took over 120 hours each to finish)

It all comes down to personal taste, and i'm sorry but I just don't Zero Punctuation funny most of the time, a lot of the time the reviews feel rushed and sloppy to me, and they don't look particularly hard to do(since he dosen't show any gameplay footage), but I don't know the man personally, so really who am I to say his videos don't involve a lot of work.

It's not "fanboy behavior" at all, if you don't like the guy that's fine, but blindly accusing him of e-begging with no real proof at all is just really low and completely uncalled for if you ask me.

Posted: **June 21st, 2014, 11:26 am**

hmmm.... I have several gamers that I follow (although mostly on youtube, not blogs).

The first person I follow is spinda off of Turboviews.com. He has excellent video reviews of a ton of Turbografx/Pc Engine games. His reviews are very interesting to watch, are high quality, and provide a ton of interesting information.

I also follow AVGN. I personally like his videos and they've become more about the games, and less about being angry as the years have gone on.

Happyconsolegamer is pretty interesting and he has some interesting videos. He really has a passion for collecting so I like watching his stuff.

MetalJesusRocks is far from the best reviewer on youtube but his videos about Hidden Jems have really made him famous. I pretty much watch only videos related to the Hidden Jems because the rest either seems to be old PC reviews/or just bad reviews in general. Still, his most famous series is (IMO) the best and the only reason I watch him.

ClanoftheGrayWolf is really good as well. His reviews focus more on RPG's but his reviews are very thorough and he always has some very interesting points that he addresses. My biggest complaint with him is that his reviews are spaced out months at a time, which is kind of sad. Ah well...

Posted: **June 21st, 2014, 11:38 am**

Almost every single person has brought up Game Sack. I'm gonna to have to start watching it!

I forgot about mention the Youtube series Hey Ash, Whatcha Playin'? A girl I knew at college recommended it to me a few years ago and I thought it was funny and clever. The brevity of each video (mostly 2-3 minutes) helps a lot. I'll have to catch up on it.

@Vexer
The politician comment about the AVGN was a little muddled. A better way to put it is that he used to remind me of a little boy reading a book report in front of the class: kind of stiff, trying hard to enunciate every word properly as he reads off this wordy script, being a narrator instead of a "shower". Maybe no one else feels that way about him, but it used to bug me.

I'm sure Zero Punctuation is rushed sometimes: Yahtzee has to pump one out every week, plus write a follow-up column, plus collaborate with Jim Sterling on a video, plus whatever else he's working on (designing his own games, writing novels, maintaining his own website). I personally think he needs a break: he still has good videos here and there, but after almost 8 years the format has gotten stale and I don't look forward to it the way I used to. I still think his best videos are far more entertaining than anything the Nerd has done: watch his original "review" of Duke Nukem Forever and find something that James Rolfe has done that is half as witty, or (since anger is supposed to be the AVGN's schtick) find me something as genuinely angry as Yahtzee's takedown of Sonic Unleashed.

I will give James Rolfe credit for having Lloyd Kaufman on his show, though.

Posted: **June 21st, 2014, 12:06 pm**

[QUOTE=Vexer]I highly doubt he could've financed it entirely himself no, and you don't personally know him either, so you can't state for an absolute fact that he could've done so or that he is an "irresponsible spender"

He is NOT "e-begging"! I find it funny that you can be this naive and ignorant, there's no way you can prove that he is, you sound exactly like the Irate Gamer.

Sounds like you're the one who cares too much, your post comes off as rather rude and judgemental.[/QUOTE]
Getting real tired of dealing with you Vexie, after this you all can have your thread back.

Two examples:

Clerks. Brilliant indie comedy film, launched Kevin Smith's career. Do you know how much it was shot for? $27,000. Most of that was spent on licensing songs too. Are you telling me that James can't afford $27,000?
Ashens and the Quest for the Gamechild. Also had a giant Kickstarter funding it, but unlike James' little project it got released for free on YouTube. This AVGN movie's gonna be released in theaters where James could re-coup any losses from financing it himself. Oh wait though, all of that's just gonna be a giant net gain for him because his fans paid for the movie and then paid more to go see the movie.

This post has been moderated.

Reason - calling out a member.

James is by no means a poor man, even if he isn't rich. Calling his detractors "ignorant" and comparing them to the dumpster sludge known as the Irate Gamer for the egregious crime of, um, questioning him, is laughable.

You're getting pissed because someone is questioning James, a man you have never met, probably will never meet for any real length of time, and does not care about you. You owe him nothing and he owes you nothing. You should not be engaging in frantic damage control efforts because someone thinks he's an e-whore.

Let's put it in another light: I like Guitar Hero. The old ones. I'd have to say the second one is probably my favorite game of all time. If someone told me that Guitar Hero is absolute crap, poorly made and with terrible covers, I'd disagree with them, but I wouldn't defend it. I love the games, but defending it because someone doesn't like it is beyond stupid, and again fanboy behavior.

There, I'm done. Have your thread back guys.

The Video Game Critic

What gaming people you follow on the Internet (Twitter/Facebook/Blogs etc.)?

What gaming people you follow on the Internet (Twitter/Facebook/Blogs etc.)?

What gaming people you follow on the Internet (Twitter/Facebook/Blogs etc.)?

What gaming people you follow on the Internet (Twitter/Facebook/Blogs etc.)?

What gaming people you follow on the Internet (Twitter/Facebook/Blogs etc.)?

What gaming people you follow on the Internet (Twitter/Facebook/Blogs etc.)?

What gaming people you follow on the Internet (Twitter/Facebook/Blogs etc.)?

What gaming people you follow on the Internet (Twitter/Facebook/Blogs etc.)?

What gaming people you follow on the Internet (Twitter/Facebook/Blogs etc.)?

What gaming people you follow on the Internet (Twitter/Facebook/Blogs etc.)?

What gaming people you follow on the Internet (Twitter/Facebook/Blogs etc.)?