Critics That You Simply Can't Listen to Anymore

[Varrdy]

I can't remember his name but I've seen him on The Escapist and also on the Penny Arcade news, which is where he was rude, patronising and arrogant towards the Retake Mass Effect movement. I can deal with dissenting voices and reasoned arguments but his attitude was so unbearably superior and disdainful I actually screamed "FUCK YOU!" at my monitor...and I got spittle on it as a result. Yes I am blaming him for that.

 

[TheDoctor455]

Any review from, say, IGN. They're there to inform, not to give their personal opinion.

Not that I want to actually get into this since nobody ever changes their views on the internet, but reviews are for both. Mostly because a review is about a person's experience with a piece of entertainment or item, and as such will be colored by their personal tastes and preferences regardless of technical prowess or quality.

But hey, don't let me stop this thread from being derailed into another flame war about how all reviews that aren't "objective" are shit...

OT: MovieBob, specifically on superhero films. I still watch his videos and respect his opinions, don't get me wrong, but his entire tirade against every superhero film that hasn't been from Marvel lately has just made me not care in the slightest about both the Marvel Cineverse and his reviews of superhero films. The fact that he's preemptively hating everything unrelated to The Avengers just cements my position.

Also, "quality" by its very definition is entirely subjective.

All anyone can reasonably do is find a reviewer or critic that they generally agree with, and use them as a rough idea of whether or not they'll enjoy this or that film, game, book, or whatever.

Better yet, find a few different reviewers/critics like that.

Thing is, I agree with Jim Sterling. It is flat-out ridiculous that anyone should receive a huge amount of flak for giving their honest opinion about a game, especially if it was an honest, positive review.

 

[The Crispy Tiger]

snip

I don't care if his opinion doesn't agree with mine, don't care if I am speaking against an entire crowd ... Christ, I am primarily a console gamer on the escapist, that is like being a black guy at a KKK meeting. It's not his opinion that I find shit, it's him I think is shit.

His video looked like it was done by a very immature and unskilled person. Compare it to angry Joe, has a green screen and puts effort in ... from what I remember of Jim's stuff he MS painted dicks and stuff on screen while he stood behind a podium of sorts.

I also remember not being particularly engaged or entertained, which means I don't think he is doing his job very well ... if you make videos, you kind of want to do one or both of those things, no?

Yahtzee has a style, yellow background, black imps, uses that emotionless face guy, talks very quickly etc. Maybe Jim isn't a direct rip off of Yahtzee but it sure does feel like it.

Umm...
Yeah...
As someone who is a vlogger (In other words, I don't know how to edit) Effort is not what you put into backgrounds and greenscreen and not all that futile shit. It's the opinion and what that person's insight has to share. To dismiss him because he has what you view as an "immature" sense of humor is fine, I guess. But I find him to be insightful with an opinion that I tend to agree with, and I don't give a damn about production value.

 

[putowtin]

Movie Bob........

But hear me out before grabbing the ban hammer (as you do when someone says something bad about someone who works for the escapist)
Not for his movie reviews but for his willingness to poke fun at fans for defending something that they love, but expects sympathy when someone badly adapts one of his beloved comic books


Double standards Bro

 

[The Crispy Tiger]

Moviebob and Yahtzee both. Yahtzee I just got tired of but still give a crap what he has to say from time to time as he makes some really good evaluations and comparisons from time to time. (Mostly in Extra Punctuation - I watch Zero Punctuation maybe one or twice a year if that anymore)

Moviebob on the otherhand I just see as a overzealous fanboy trying to push his agendas and political views in his messages. I have always disagreed with at least half his views but I originally just chalked it up to differing opinions. However, a few years back he started doing that thing where he uses his "humanity giving him the right to change his mind" as a disclaimer (read: excuse) to have to take any responsibility for his criticisms. Sorry, but I do expect critics to be able to stand by their words. It's kind of their ONLY job. That was a red flag but the big moment I quit caring what Moviebob has to say was after Green Lantern came out and he had bashed it - which I didn't care much about despite seeing some flaws in his numbered list of reason why it was not just a bad superhero movie but also a bad movie in general. However, then The Dark Knight Rises came out and was chock full of every single one of the criticisms he threw at Green Lantern and he praised it with a glowing review.

I can come out of a movie theatre after just watching a movie and can on the spot tell how I will view that movie for the rest of my life. I am no critic... well, everyone is a critic but I mean professionally. Nor do I want to be. However, I expect critics to at least be able to do that or their opinion is worthless. That is why Roger Ebert is who he is, he stands by what he says because he isn't just spouting off whatever random thought pops in his head where he may change his mind tomorrow because he is human. He has principals and specific standards he holds all movies to. Recently I saw Moviebob put Pacific Rim as his best movie of 2013... yeah, that speaks for itself. I ain't saying you can't like the movie but that is clearly pushing an agenda. Why not just come out with a "Bob's Top 10 favorite movies?" I know a top 10 generally doesn't matter, but it does if you actually want people to see you as a critic. And Moviebob no doubt wants people to see him that way considering he loves to announce he is part of an official critics club.

EH, just gonna post this video here for fun in case anyone hasn't seen it. I love this episode. It's amazingly accurate.

As someone is a former movie critic and would like to get out of skill to be that or get into game journalism. I can say that the idea of having one opinion and one opinion only is utter bullshit. I have NEVER been able to hold a constant opinion about a film until I thought and talked about it more and the way I see it since my political, personal, and hell even religious point of views are prone to change then naturally so will my opinion on said film. That's just the bottom line. You can't knock someone for not being you, that's just not fair...

 

[Milanezi]

Movie Bob, for all good reviews he releases there are tons and tons that simply driven by his own emotions/expectations: he loved The Avengers (and so did I), but he treats it like a divine Godfather/Gone With the Wind. Every time he needs to criticize something he compares it to the Transformers movie, still he enjoyed the hell out of G.I.Joe, the difference is clear, Transformers simply didn't meet his expectations of seeing robots that looked more "cartoonish", what I'm saying is that, when it comes "geek movies" specially, he really goes into nerd-rage mode and lets that cloud his judgement, to make matters worse, in those occasion he also seems to act like and almighty god of criticism. He's pretty cool at the "big picture" show though, since he mostly drops the criticism and goes right at a sort of "my opinion/information on a given subject" thing that's usually very well thought.

 

[The Crispy Tiger]

I don't take that much notice of critics. I make my own mind up.
But I do watch and read some.

Yahtzees annoyed me a few times.
I like his reviews, he's the most honest reviwer about.

But sometimes he's got things wrong and I don't like his reviews. Like the NIER and Kingdoms Of Amalur: Reckoning zero punctuations.
He did'nt try at all with KoA:R. And got things wrong, when they're very clearly spelled out from the start. NIER, he did'nt try with that review.

I'm not criticising him, moderaters. He's good. But I don't always agree with him.

Jim Sterlings annoyed me a few times. But, as his videos are pure opinion pieces, then there's bound to be times you don't agree with him.

I used to like Total Biscuit, but he annoyed me.

Angry Joe is a bit of a sychophant. He can be good. But I lost all respect for him when he wrote a sickeningly sychopahntic review of Skyrim. It went beyond liking it, into blatant lies.
Heyitsablackguy summed his sickening review up perfectly. Heyitsablackguys a very smart man.
I still watch his stuff, but I lost respect for him.

Movie Bobs not always good. And he annoys me sometimes.
He goes too far in the 'white knight', 'white guilt' stuff.

His hiding his naturel accent is silly, INMO. We ar'nt talking a broad yorkshire accent with local words, here. Or a broad glaswegian or cockney accent. It's boston. The only people who ar'nt going understand him are people who don't speak english.

White guilt? As a black guy I don't want to even get into this conversation knowing full well the consequences of my actions, but I did have to ask why this would tick you off? As I far as I know he's only made three videos on this subject including two skin deeps and the Django video. So it would be weird that this would annoy you...

 

[omega 616]

As someone who is a vlogger (In other words, I don't know how to edit) Effort is not what you put into backgrounds and greenscreen and not all that futile shit. It's the opinion and what that person's insight has to share. To dismiss him because he has what you view as an "immature" sense of humor is fine, I guess. But I find him to be insightful with an opinion that I tend to agree with, and I don't give a damn about production value.

Which is why I don't watch vloggers, some person staring at me telling me stuff is just weird and half hearted to me. It's not just the immature humor, Yahtzee has an immature sense of humor ("triple cunted hooker") but when you start drawing dicks in MS paint and attempt that "futile shit" but it looks awful, doesn't add anything and probably actually hinders your point, then why bother?

From what I've seen of him I just don't like him as a person. Just one of those things, I didn't like Susan Ardent but the rest of this site loves her ... just don't like either of there personalities or in Jim's case his content. "it's just my opinion".

I don't hate them, I just don't like them ... not calling them anything, I just avoid them.

 

[The Crispy Tiger]

Movie Bob, for all good reviews he releases there are tons and tons that simply driven by his own emotions/expectations: he loved The Avengers (and so did I), but he treats it like a divine Godfather/Gone With the Wind. Every time he needs to criticize something he compares it to the Transformers movie, still he enjoyed the hell out of G.I.Joe, the difference is clear, Transformers simply didn't meet his expectations of seeing robots that looked more "cartoonish", what I'm saying is that, when it comes "geek movies" specially, he really goes into nerd-rage mode and lets that cloud his judgement, to make matters worse, in those occasion he also seems to act like and almighty god of criticism. He's pretty cool at the "big picture" show though, since he mostly drops the criticism and goes right at a sort of "my opinion/information on a given subject" thing that's usually very well thought.

This is kinda of a cop out, therefore I'm not going to dismiss the backlash that will come from this statement. But as someone that is a fan, short for fanatic, I would imagine it be customary to have such a deep love for anything be able to cloud your judgement sometimes...

 

[The Crispy Tiger]

As someone who is a vlogger (In other words, I don't know how to edit) Effort is not what you put into backgrounds and greenscreen and not all that futile shit. It's the opinion and what that person's insight has to share. To dismiss him because he has what you view as an "immature" sense of humor is fine, I guess. But I find him to be insightful with an opinion that I tend to agree with, and I don't give a damn about production value.

Which is why I don't watch vloggers, some person staring at me telling me stuff is just weird and half hearted to me. It's not just the immature humor, Yahtzee has an immature sense of humor ("triple cunted hooker") but when you start drawing dicks in MS paint and attempt that "futile shit" but it looks awful, doesn't add anything and probably actually hinders your point, then why bother?

From what I've seen of him I just don't like him as a person. Just one of those things, I didn't like Susan Ardent but the rest of this site loves her ... just don't like either of there personalities or in Jim's case his content. "it's just my opinion".

I don't hate them, I just don't like them ... not calling them anything, I just avoid them.

One. Thanks for dissing my channel.
Two. Production Value DOESN'T matter. I really believe someone's opinion trumps all of that.
Three. If you don't like someone on the basis that they're show is half assed, well shit, I can't fight you on it. I can only explain to you why I disagree. It's you who has to take my words and decide what to do with it...

 

[Verlander]

This thread totally reads like "MovieBob likes women and other races, he is awful!"

Since when did the Escapist turn into X Box Live?

 

[Savagezion]

As someone is a former movie critic and would like to get out of skill to be that or get into game journalism. I can say that the idea of having one opinion and one opinion only is utter bullshit. I have NEVER been able to hold a constant opinion about a film until I thought and talked about it more and the way I see it since my political, personal, and hell even religious point of views are prone to change then naturally so will my opinion on said film. That's just the bottom line. You can't knock someone for not being you, that's just not fair...

No, sorry but it isn't bullshit. I have a set of standards that while they may be subjective to my viewpoint they are reliant on a very real foundation. If you can't do that, it makes you a crappy critic. A critic is only good because you are getting a solid perspective on a movie or whatever is being reviewed that is actually based on something other than your mood. Something more grounded. If you have no ground, then your "review" is npt worth anything because what you like on friday you may dislike on monday... so why do I care what you have to say? It's flaky.

Screw the religious and political point of view. Those don't matter in a review. Those are yours and should be left out of judging a movie as a movie. One thing matters and that is your view on how a movie, game, etc. was made. How the writing was crafted and delivered, how the scenes were displayed, how the pacing was delivered, etc. By doing that your opinion will not change. Seeing it the first time as a "movie" and not a "bannor to fly in front of people as to describe who you are at the moment" is what a review is all about. If you add in all that other nonsense you aren't reviewing or critiquing anything. You are just throwing out arbitrary opinions. I don't listen to critics who can't stand by their own words expressing their perspective on a movie because if they won't, why should I? They have no integrity.

 

[Savagezion]

This thread totally reads like "MovieBob likes women and other races, he is awful!"

Since when did the Escapist turn into X Box Live?

More like Movie Bob pushes a leftist viewpoint way too hard. (To which I agree as a leftist myself.)

 

[Milanezi]

Movie Bob, for all good reviews he releases there are tons and tons that simply driven by his own emotions/expectations: he loved The Avengers (and so did I), but he treats it like a divine Godfather/Gone With the Wind. Every time he needs to criticize something he compares it to the Transformers movie, still he enjoyed the hell out of G.I.Joe, the difference is clear, Transformers simply didn't meet his expectations of seeing robots that looked more "cartoonish", what I'm saying is that, when it comes "geek movies" specially, he really goes into nerd-rage mode and lets that cloud his judgement, to make matters worse, in those occasion he also seems to act like and almighty god of criticism. He's pretty cool at the "big picture" show though, since he mostly drops the criticism and goes right at a sort of "my opinion/information on a given subject" thing that's usually very well thought.

This is kinda of a cop out, therefore I'm not going to dismiss the backlash that will come from this statement. But as someone that is a fan, short for fanatic, I would imagine it be customary to have such a deep love for anything be able to cloud your judgement sometimes...

Look, I'll agree with you as far as "clouding judgements" go. But me, I'm no critic, so I can have my judgement all messed up when I defend something beyond reason, Bob can also do that, sure, but not during a review, that creates double standards where a movie with no game/comics background, like "The Watch" gets a decent and balanced criticism and movies that have a "past origin" (Transformers, Batman, Watchmen) get a highly unbalanced review for better or worse; I remeber this guy here in The Escapist who said he was "too much of a fan" to allow himself to do a review of Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition, exactly for the reasons you mentioned, he might praise the game too much even if it didn't deliver the goods, so he sorta just expressed his feelings as feelings and let a colleague do the review per se. Let's put it this way, if a Voltron movie comes out (and let's imagine he's into Voltron, I have no idea) and the movie sucks, it has an awful story, bad effects, horrible acting, but the damn robot looks just like the one from the old cartoons, he'll say it's the movie of the year...

I'm actually amazed that more people here are claiming to dislike Bob in different levels, mostly it seems that it's his double standards and holier-than-thou attitude, keeping everyone aware that he's a member of the guild etc...

A lot of folks disliking Yahtzee as well... But I never took his reviews seriously, it's more of a comedy show really, he does point facts about the games, but he only focus on the bad side of things, still, I don't know, in my opinion he's just having fun lol

 

[sanquin]

I mean, I don't particularly care what the internet at large has to say about Dragon Age II or Mass Effect 3; They're not abhorrently terrible games that deserve to be down in the depths with Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing, Bubsy 3D, Superman 64, and Ride to Hell: Retribution, and my opinion about them isn't factually incorrect because I happened to enjoy them despite their flaws.

Funny you mention DA2. Dungeons were copy-pasted, the area's you could go to were limited, everything felt dumbed down, the story was quite a bit less interesting than DA1, and the graphics weren't exactly better and often even worse than DA1. The combat was less tedious, and they did improve on quite a few things as well. But the reviews I've seen just completely skipped over those bad points and generally gave it a high score. With those bad points I'd say it shouldn't have more than an 'okay' score of 6 or maybe 7. Not 8+.

 

[Eamar]

This thread totally reads like "MovieBob likes women and other races, he is awful!"

Since when did the Escapist turn into X Box Live?

I'm one of those criticising Bob, and I'm a feminist and generally very "leftist" socially.

I don't think I've seen anyone here criticising him for those reasons, it's more his tone or his movie reviews people take issue with. You can agree with his politics without liking his videos.

 

[sanquin]

NOPE. Once you go into this territory you get into a very gray area of some things are just going to be opinion. That's it. In this world, people have forgotten what reviews are for. They are reference points. They are not meant to express your opinion and show what you want to be said. Because ultimatley what we end up fighting over was whether DMC had a good story mode or not. Let's just enjoy and talk about them without being too thicke to realize this someone's opinion. Like IGN's reviews of the COD series. They are obviously picking people who like the COD series so they can identify with the COD fans. Now if a COD fan came back and said Ghosts was shit (Like our Jim Sterling did)then that would be some noteworthy shit. Either way, I disagree with you. Respectfully disagree, but disagree nonetheless.

Well, we can agree on one thing. Fighting over whether a game is bad or good won't solve anything. Imo disagreeing is fine, and you should discuss it all you want with reviewers or anyone else. But when things start to happen like name-calling and threats, discussion should just be stopped.

 

[Nymi]

MovieBob. He's the only critic I actively go out of my way not to listen to now, whether it's a movie or game review. Not that I really watch or read reviews at all, anymore. Usually go with word of mouth more, and my own gut feeling.