Critics That You Simply Can't Listen to Anymore

[Unknown Warrior]

Yahtzee is quickly approaching this for me. If only because I'm getting rather tired as shit of Valve fanboys and he's one as big as they come ("Oh gee, Steam is just so good." "Oh gee, Valve singlehandedly popularised the 4-payer co-op genre" "Oh gee, I wish this developer was more like Valve").
Jim Sterling is starting to lose it too, regularly regurgitating the same critique he made just a few weeks earlier.
On the other hand, Erik Kain and other crew at Forbes have slipped up from time to time but are still A-material in my book. As are the guys from Videogamer.com.

Those are pretty much the only critics I pay attention to.

 

[Lovely Mixture]

Erik Kain and other crew at Forbes have slipped up from time to time but are still A-material in my book. As are the guys from Videogamer.com.

Those are pretty much the only critics I pay attention to.

It also helps that Erik seems to be a laid back person.

 

[balladbird]

Spoony definitely went through a rough patch and was in a downward slope, but he definitely seems to be getting better with himself.

Spoony definitely hit rock bottom for a while. Seems like his life was spiraling due to a variety of circumstances, and he was taking it out on anyone who came near him. Caught his recent fifth installment in his FFXIII review last week and was blown away, though. Some of his best work in years, and a return to form. if his output from now on is like that, I'll probably start watching him again. XD


On topic... eh, not really. Generally I know what I'm getting into within a few viewings, and I'm not harshly critical so long as I'm entertained.

 

[josemlopes]

I still watch and enjoy Arin Hanson of Game Grumps... but I hardly respect his views on game design anymore, at least when held up against his Sequelitis series. I don't know if that was a fluke, or that it's just hard as hell to talk or critique while playing games (not that he does this often anyway).

Yeah, I think his problem is that he thinks all modern games are made for the dumbest people out there so he thinks that he doesnt need tutorials when clearly he does as everyone else when presented with new mechanics. What you get is a guy that doesnt put any sort of effort into learning about new mechanics in new games as he does with older games and then complains that the game is poorly designed. For most of the videos its like he is high on something with a really short attention span, barely noticing key features that are all over the place.

 

[Fireaxe]

The thing with Yahtzee is that if you take him as being almost a parody of games reviewing instead of a serious reviewer he's way more fun to listen to. He speaks highly of games he considers great, absolutely pisses on games he thinks are bad, and everything in between he basically over exaggerates every quibble he has without discussing the positives because he hasn't identified a way to make praise funny.

 

[Savagezion]

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.

I do not believe that what you are describing is a solid foundation. You seem to be denying that any critic can ever learn more about himself or his preferred medium through experience and exposure to new things; that the only good critic is one who neither changes nor grows and is therefore completely stagnant. I think that is a completely unrealistic standard to hold to.

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.

But a movie's religious and political point of view are part of the movie. I mean, at the end of the day, a movie is a dude (in the case of an auteur, at least, but more likely is a bunch of dudes) saying, "Here is ninety minutes of me talking about something I want to talk about." Why should a critic not be allowed to discuss what the creators wanted to talk about?

I don't like raunch comedies, typical action movies, or romantic comedies. I think all 3 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. I absolutely love Clash of the Titans (original) but its a bad movie. I love Waterworld, but it's a bad movie. I like Green Lantern but its a mediocre movie at best. I don't hold back on my criticisms of these movies despite that I love them. I don't like The Hangover at all and actually kind of resent it but it's a good movie.

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. How well did they construct their idea they wanted to display? How solid did they make it? Did they just expect you to believe whatever ridiculous notion they threw at you when they were trying to be realistic? Did they over explain and complicate one aspect when the entire rest of the movie is tongue in cheek? Or for that matter is there any scene that goes completely against the entire message being sent in every other scene of the movie? (Ex. The previously accurate bad guys suddenly can't hit the broad side of a barn while the hero can suddenly snipe with a shotgun from the hip in a movie that has focused on evading and acknowledging these kinds of tropes)

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.

Objectiveness is bullshit. There I said it. If I was religious I wouldn't like Bioshock Infinite very much. It doesn't matter if it looks pretty or if it's wonderfully directed. It would be directly insulting me and my religion.

If you were a religious fanatic maybe. I AM religious and am able to not hold media to my beliefs. There is a reason it is called fiction. As well as there is a reason I call them MY beliefs.

If I was conservative I wouldn't like Jon Stewart very much. He constantly insults my political party. It doesn't how well written or how well done the interviews are.

I am liberal and don't like Rush Limbaugh at all really, but the man makes some good points at times. Additionally, he constructs them really good sometimes. Me and him may not see eye to eye on most things and he likes to degrade members of my side as idiots which makes him an ass. However, that ass can sometimes raise valid points.

These are personal tastes, opinions that are conceived that are able to change, depending on how you view the world. That's it. That's the secret.

That's why you don't base a review of media on things like that. That's the secret.

Movies have to appeal to me, they have to either make me enjoy it or feel the emotion that it wants me to feel with it. And political/religious/personal views are damn well a part of it. If I LOVE Fps's and a revolutionary FPS comes out that changes the format in a brand new way. I would scream praise to the fucking rooftops. But you would know to take it with a grain of salt, because I love FPS's. Also views change, best example of that in my personal life would be Nintendo. If you asked me what my opinion of Nintendo was 9 months ago, I would tell you that Nintendo could go fuck itself, because I was all "hardcore" and "mature". But over the past 9 months that has changed after playing more Nintendo games and learning more about gaming history. Critiques NO MATTER WHO FUCKING TELLS YOU, are banners for your personal taste, and should be used as a reference point, NEVER fact. That is why this game journalism is so awesome, because we get to have all these different opinions, from all these different people, with different different backgrounds, and different taste. I would personally never want to be a game journalist if I thought for a second that it was going to be a copy/paste is this mechanic good or not type BS. That's not interesting. That's looking at fact-sheet and it's robotic. Anyone can tell you that COD has great gameplay. But I personally don't like that we can only use 2 guns and the game progression is not enough in single player. But those are my personal taste, non being fact and we shouldn't treat it like that. So instead of turning this thing that I love so dear into sheets of paper in a RPG that levels up when you get Ken Levine into your party. Let it be more like Roger Eberts work. I want more discussion, more talks, more critical thinking in our critiques and our reviews, and make this industry more human when the place is made out of robots.

Sorry, but reviewing media is mostly about the media and what it is trying to express and how well it does that. It is not about standing on some media as a soapbox and spouting off your personal opinions. That's what consumers do, not critics. Now, as a reviewer there is nothing wrong with throwing your opinions out there but you should NOT fault the media for not being of your opinion. Your opinion should just be set to the side in the review. You can say you didn't like something or even hated it and still give it a glowing review. I think inFamous is shit, but it is a good game. Ditto with Minecraft. I think Tropico 2 is great but it is a horrible game. Ditto with Evoland. I fucking love the new X-com but it is mediocre at best. Turn based strategy is my favorite genre too. By allowing arbitrary opinions to influence reviews it actively discourages critical thinking in them. Otherwise, " Skyrim - 2/10 I dislike Skyrim because it has a talking dog" is a critical thinking review. If you really want to expand on something, make a separate opinion piece that is not connected to your review of the game. DO your review, THEN make a whole other video or post about how you hated the talking dog and it ruined it for you. But by keeping these things separate you are now actively using critical thinking.

 

[gargantual]

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.

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.

 

[The Wykydtron]

I generally steer away from anyone who:
a) Sells the games they're reviewing - for obvious reasons.
b) Gives a review that is 90+% good about almost everything they review - I think they're either being paid or lazy.
c) They're in good with all the gaming companies and are constantly doing interviews with them - Bias.

The main people I read/listen to are usually smaller productions such as Jim, or who I know point out the bad with the good in games.

Still, was School Days really that terrible? I thought it was fuckin' funny.

It was bloody hilarious. People just cracked the shits because it turned the Romance genre on it's head.
It was like the Spec Ops: The Line of anime.

I for one found the main character (Makoto I think his name was?) quite sympathetic and not really such a womanising asshole as everyone likes to make him out to be. He never meant to sleep with every girl in the school, he was a victim of circumstance!*


He made a few bad decisions (let's be honest, women are hard :S) and fell in WAY over his head and the next thing you know he's got like 5 girlfriends and 5 extra sex friends. Oops.

How does one extricate one's self from the absolute mess of a situation once School Days gets anywhere near rolling? I would have no idea. True that the is one simple point at the start where one word from Makoto would have stopped everything bad that happens and left him with Sekai but hey, he's kind of indecisive.

Oh and back on topic, I never touch MovieBob's stuff anymore. He's the type of guy who takes his own opinion as hard fact and fuck you if you disagree in the slightest. Also his game stuff I used to occasionally watch was a little bit off base. I suppose there's a reason he's MovieBob not GameBob.

[sub][sub]* Use this line if you ever get caught cheating on your partner, i'm quite sure it'll get you out of it. Trust me.[/sub][/sub]

To be fair, Makoto also could had actually balled up and taken responsibility for the pregnancy instead of retreating to prevent two deaths and his rapey friend gets no mercy or sympathy from me. I especially hate him since one ending of the original game has him just together with just one girl with no drama or backstabbing.

That's the thing though, there was no evidence apart from Sekai's word that there even was a pregnancy. She could have made it up as a last ditch attempt to win this weird "who is creepily in love with Makoto more" romance war or something. Also I liked the other girl's logic of cutting open her stomach to "check if there's a baby in there" it was a completely insane, scientifically flawed idea but it was fucking hilarious.

Oh and on the Long Live The Queen stuff, he did the usual thing where he picks graphics options to pieces (it's a fucking Visual Novel, what are you hoping for?) but the impression itself was rather good. He explains why some people might like it and others not, he puts his own hatred of anime artstyles aside and the only solid flaw he finds with the game is the interface skills/classes menu being unintuitive. Which I have to agree with and I really like LLTQ.

He liked the old Choose your own Adventure books back in the day too and that's pretty much what LLTQ is. There is no way you could win your first (or second, or third, or fourth) try without reading the wiki. That's the point though, you're supposed to die and laugh at how badly Elodie fucks things up.

Protip: skilling up Divination really early and quickly is really good. It gives you advance warning of pretty much everything and saves your life vs the one skill check later on.

Did you know a single flower wilting in a healthy bouquet is a sign of disaster? Well you do now. Knowing that makes Umineko (brilliant manga read it if you like magical mystery thriller shenanigans, anime falls apart after episode 11, never played the game) even more foreboding. The Legend of the Golden Witch is now my favourite manga thinking about it. That ending yo'.

 

[Izanagi009_v1legacy]

I generally steer away from anyone who:
a) Sells the games they're reviewing - for obvious reasons.
b) Gives a review that is 90+% good about almost everything they review - I think they're either being paid or lazy.
c) They're in good with all the gaming companies and are constantly doing interviews with them - Bias.

The main people I read/listen to are usually smaller productions such as Jim, or who I know point out the bad with the good in games.

Still, was School Days really that terrible? I thought it was fuckin' funny.

It was bloody hilarious. People just cracked the shits because it turned the Romance genre on it's head.
It was like the Spec Ops: The Line of anime.

I for one found the main character (Makoto I think his name was?) quite sympathetic and not really such a womanising asshole as everyone likes to make him out to be. He never meant to sleep with every girl in the school, he was a victim of circumstance!*


He made a few bad decisions (let's be honest, women are hard :S) and fell in WAY over his head and the next thing you know he's got like 5 girlfriends and 5 extra sex friends. Oops.

How does one extricate one's self from the absolute mess of a situation once School Days gets anywhere near rolling? I would have no idea. True that the is one simple point at the start where one word from Makoto would have stopped everything bad that happens and left him with Sekai but hey, he's kind of indecisive.

Oh and back on topic, I never touch MovieBob's stuff anymore. He's the type of guy who takes his own opinion as hard fact and fuck you if you disagree in the slightest. Also his game stuff I used to occasionally watch was a little bit off base. I suppose there's a reason he's MovieBob not GameBob.

[sub][sub]* Use this line if you ever get caught cheating on your partner, i'm quite sure it'll get you out of it. Trust me.[/sub][/sub]

To be fair, Makoto also could had actually balled up and taken responsibility for the pregnancy instead of retreating to prevent two deaths and his rapey friend gets no mercy or sympathy from me. I especially hate him since one ending of the original game has him just together with just one girl with no drama or backstabbing.

That's the thing though, there was no evidence apart from Sekai's word that there even was a pregnancy. She could have made it up as a last ditch attempt to win this weird "who is creepily in love with Makoto more" romance war or something. Also I liked the other girl's logic of cutting open her stomach to "check if there's a baby in there" it was a completely insane, scientifically flawed idea but it was fucking hilarious.

Oh and on the Long Live The Queen stuff, he did the usual thing where he picks graphics options to pieces (it's a fucking Visual Novel, what are you hoping for?) but the impression itself was rather good. He explains why some people might like it and others not, he puts his own hatred of anime artstyles aside and the only solid flaw he finds with the game is the interface skills/classes menu being unintuitive. Which I have to agree with and I really like LLTQ.

He liked the old Choose your own Adventure books back in the day too and that's pretty much what LLTQ is. There is no way you could win your first (or second, or third, or fourth) try without reading the wiki. That's the point though, you're supposed to die and laugh at how badly Elodie fucks things up.

Protip: skilling up Divination really early and quickly is really good. It gives you advance warning of pretty much everything and saves your life vs the one skill check later on.

Did you know a single flower wilting in a healthy bouquet is a sign of disaster? Well you do now. Knowing that makes Umineko (brilliant manga read it if you like magical mystery thriller shenanigans, anime falls apart after episode 11, never played the game) even more foreboding. The Legend of the Golden Witch is now my favorite manga thinking about it. That ending yo'.

Fair enough, TB is not a reviewer of Japanese style works like visual novels and so he would fall back on the graphics options since he is a PC guy. As for Long Live the Queen, I like the concept but I prefer either more action or more impact due to actions but I can understand the appeal of LLTQ. My question is why TB liked Persona 4 if he doesn't like anime stuff

As for School Days, how about we call the characters what they are: Crazy but disturbingly grounded. The girls are disturbingly attached to Makoto but they probably started with pure emotional romance while Makoto is both a guy with some characteristics that make him likable while still acting like how some would, take total advantage. The visual novel even outside of the infamous endings are still based on backstabbing or betrayal just like some extreme cases would go

 

[Elvis Starburst]

I don't quite understand how everyone can get so worked up because of someone else's opinions/words/ideas...

I mean, seriously, (I may as well just point to a handful of Jimquisition episodes as they're close to the same as to what I'm about to say)

And it gets largely off-topic, but somewhat related... I've already written it out, so I'm not deleting it.... >.>

Spoiler

Why the hell do people get pissed off with a review that doesn't have their exact opinions on paper? I just don't understand it... People rage about games that got bad scores saying the game was great and other games with good scores that you called crap... Hell, you can say the same thing about movie reviews and the like (Since many people in THIS thread mentioned Moviebob)

Yahtzee said it himself in his SSBB review... Why do you care what I say if you're going to buy, play, and like a game before he says anything about it? That's what the reviews are paid to do! If in their subjective opinion they don't like a game, they have every right to! Like you have every right to disagree with them...
Is it alright to yell and scream at them because you had a different opinion?

NO!

If you don't agree with it, then write your own opinion and make your own review... Join the countless legion of other people trying to break into the industry doing the exact same thing! It's not about you jumping on this person's back because they've had the same opinion as you before, so therefore they must have the same one now!
Hell, Jim Sterling likes the Dynasty Warriors games... A series that has bee criticized for years for making absolutely no progress in gameplay since the early 2000's... Once 3D movement was a staple all they really have done is put in more characters, bigger maps and fancier graphics...

If only the internet could get over itself and fucking LEARN that not everyone will be on your side... You have every right to dispute their opinion, that's fine... A well-reasoned discussion is great in that regard... But flat-out abusing them FOR their opinion is just utter cowardice...

Wow, that got off topic... I really need to stop doing that...



OT: Are there and critics I can't listen to anymore?
No... There are only 3 weekly 'review' columns that I follow (Jim, Yahtzee and Moviebob's "big picture") And All three, while mostly viewed (by me) as entertainment, are yet to annoy me to any significant degree...

Sounds about right for me as well in terms of what I follow. Though I do follow people like Angry Joe and yes, like many people hate, even The Gaming Brit. These days I see the score of pretty much any place and read many reviews of the same game to see how others felt towards it, and see what faults each can come up with that others missed (Or ignored). And everything in your Spoiler tag... Yes, I agree

 

[The Crispy Tiger]

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.

I do not believe that what you are describing is a solid foundation. You seem to be denying that any critic can ever learn more about himself or his preferred medium through experience and exposure to new things; that the only good critic is one who neither changes nor grows and is therefore completely stagnant. I think that is a completely unrealistic standard to hold to.

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.

But a movie's religious and political point of view are part of the movie. I mean, at the end of the day, a movie is a dude (in the case of an auteur, at least, but more likely is a bunch of dudes) saying, "Here is ninety minutes of me talking about something I want to talk about." Why should a critic not be allowed to discuss what the creators wanted to talk about?

I don't like raunch comedies, typical action movies, or romantic comedies. I think all 3 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. I absolutely love Clash of the Titans (original) but its a bad movie. I love Waterworld, but it's a bad movie. I like Green Lantern but its a mediocre movie at best. I don't hold back on my criticisms of these movies despite that I love them. I don't like The Hangover at all and actually kind of resent it but it's a good movie.

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. How well did they construct their idea they wanted to display? How solid did they make it? Did they just expect you to believe whatever ridiculous notion they threw at you when they were trying to be realistic? Did they over explain and complicate one aspect when the entire rest of the movie is tongue in cheek? Or for that matter is there any scene that goes completely against the entire message being sent in every other scene of the movie? (Ex. The previously accurate bad guys suddenly can't hit the broad side of a barn while the hero can suddenly snipe with a shotgun from the hip in a movie that has focused on evading and acknowledging these kinds of tropes)

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.

Objectiveness is bullshit. There I said it. If I was religious I wouldn't like Bioshock Infinite very much. It doesn't matter if it looks pretty or if it's wonderfully directed. It would be directly insulting me and my religion.

If you were a religious fanatic maybe. I AM religious and am able to not hold media to my beliefs. There is a reason it is called fiction. As well as there is a reason I call them MY beliefs.

If I was conservative I wouldn't like Jon Stewart very much. He constantly insults my political party. It doesn't how well written or how well done the interviews are.

I am liberal and don't like Rush Limbaugh at all really, but the man makes some good points at times. Additionally, he constructs them really good sometimes. Me and him may not see eye to eye on most things and he likes to degrade members of my side as idiots which makes him an ass. However, that ass can sometimes raise valid points.

These are personal tastes, opinions that are conceived that are able to change, depending on how you view the world. That's it. That's the secret.

That's why you don't base a review of media on things like that. That's the secret.

Movies have to appeal to me, they have to either make me enjoy it or feel the emotion that it wants me to feel with it. And political/religious/personal views are damn well a part of it. If I LOVE Fps's and a revolutionary FPS comes out that changes the format in a brand new way. I would scream praise to the fucking rooftops. But you would know to take it with a grain of salt, because I love FPS's. Also views change, best example of that in my personal life would be Nintendo. If you asked me what my opinion of Nintendo was 9 months ago, I would tell you that Nintendo could go fuck itself, because I was all "hardcore" and "mature". But over the past 9 months that has changed after playing more Nintendo games and learning more about gaming history. Critiques NO MATTER WHO FUCKING TELLS YOU, are banners for your personal taste, and should be used as a reference point, NEVER fact. That is why this game journalism is so awesome, because we get to have all these different opinions, from all these different people, with different different backgrounds, and different taste. I would personally never want to be a game journalist if I thought for a second that it was going to be a copy/paste is this mechanic good or not type BS. That's not interesting. That's looking at fact-sheet and it's robotic. Anyone can tell you that COD has great gameplay. But I personally don't like that we can only use 2 guns and the game progression is not enough in single player. But those are my personal taste, non being fact and we shouldn't treat it like that. So instead of turning this thing that I love so dear into sheets of paper in a RPG that levels up when you get Ken Levine into your party. Let it be more like Roger Eberts work. I want more discussion, more talks, more critical thinking in our critiques and our reviews, and make this industry more human when the place is made out of robots.

Sorry, but reviewing media is mostly about the media and what it is trying to express and how well it does that. It is not about standing on some media as a soapbox and spouting off your personal opinions. That's what consumers do, not critics. Now, as a reviewer there is nothing wrong with throwing your opinions out there but you should NOT fault the media for not being of your opinion. Your opinion should just be set to the side in the review. You can say you didn't like something or even hated it and still give it a glowing review. I think inFamous is shit, but it is a good game. Ditto with Minecraft. I think Tropico 2 is great but it is a horrible game. Ditto with Evoland. I fucking love the new X-com but it is mediocre at best. Turn based strategy is my favorite genre too. By allowing arbitrary opinions to influence reviews it actively discourages critical thinking in them. Otherwise, " Skyrim - 2/10 I dislike Skyrim because it has a talking dog" is a critical thinking review. If you really want to expand on something, make a separate opinion piece that is not connected to your review of the game. DO your review, THEN make a whole other video or post about how you hated the talking dog and it ruined it for you. But by keeping these things separate you are now actively using critical thinking.

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 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... 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.

 

[Shocksplicer]

Roger Ebert. Of course I'm mad about his gaming comments, but that's not why I stopped listening to him. His film critiques were actually terrible. When I saw him give Prometheus a better score than LotR I was done with him forever.

*cough* He's dead *cough*

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.

 

[TomWiley]

Totalbiscuit has become damn near insufferable lately. It's not necessarily that I don't agree with him, it's just that he sounds like a video-game version of Rush Limbaugh.

His voice and rhetorics are loud, aggressive, sensationalist ,extremely repetitive and stuffed with needless tautologies, not to mention, forced British idioms.

Generally, I just avoid YouTube-personalities that define themselves after some silly gimmick or persona like AngryJoe or The Gaming Brit.

 

[Atmos Duality]

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.

 

[JimB]

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.

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?

 

[CpT_x_Killsteal]

He never meant to sleep with every girl in the school, he was a victim of circumstance!*

[sub][sub]* Use this line if you ever get caught cheating on your partner, i'm quite sure it'll get you out of it. Trust me.[/sub][/sub]

Do I use that line before or after I'm stabbed multiple times in the chest and have my head removed?

 

[The Wykydtron]

He never meant to sleep with every girl in the school, he was a victim of circumstance!*

[sub][sub]* Use this line if you ever get caught cheating on your partner, i'm quite sure it'll get you out of it. Trust me.[/sub][/sub]

Do I use that line before or after I'm stabbed multiple times in the chest and have my head removed?

Use it well before the stabbing, skip the decapitation entirely and remember. Never. Admit. Fault. You are the victim here, never forget that.

 

[The Feast]

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.

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 bullcrap.
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.
No one should EVER be ashamed of their own race. You should be proud of your race!

And the using 'I'm human', excuse on changing his opinion on a film.
Once you give a opinion on a film, you should stick to it. When you are a film reviewer.
There's few excuses to change your review. And 'I'm human', is not a excuse.
There's saying you changing your opinion, ok, and doing complete and utter reversals.

Sometimes he does'nt dissect a film enough, if he likes it. He goes soft on some films.
It's his job. Just because you like a film, does not mean you ar'nt obliged to rip it up, since your are a film critic and it's your job.
You're meant to do what yahtzee does. Rip it up, even if it goes overboard.

He will do some borefest one weak, maybe get borderline pretentious. Or do a good review.
Then he get's some crap like pacific rim, and gloss' over it's glaringly huge flaws.
Were previously, he picked apart another film, down to the bones.
Your own tastes and opinions should'nt dictate your review that much. You should point out the flaws, it does'nt matter how much you like it.

His constant pushing of his book was obnoxious. It stopped being funny after a week.

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.

I ignore completely any reviews from IGN, etc.

When you pointed out Angry Joe, I was expecting you to hate Angry Joe for dissing some game. But just because he love Skyrim so much that you annoyed by that fact? That's ridiculous. I also don't get with the racism offensiveness that he gave, and I guess people are so sensitive these days.

Anyway, I do get turned off when he barely even care to play Spec Ops The Line, let alone review it, but I still like him nonetheless.

It was a bullcrap review. Skyrims garbage. He started saying things were there that don't exist in the game. Freedom. No. Choice. No. Good graphics, definately not.
Loads of people went along with the skyrim is great spiel. But his review was fake.
I can respect it if he loves a game so much he overlooks things. He's not a professional, and not bound to the same rules as a paid reviewer.
I am ok if I don't agree with his views. I did'nt like his kingdoms of amalur reckoning review, either. But it did'nt offend me.
But there's loving a game. And towing to company line.
And that was towing to company line.

So, you hate angry joe because he is either a corporate shill or uses his opinions in his reviews, and then you go and use your personal opinions as facts. Yea. Uh-huh.

You can dislike Skyrim's aesthetic, but to say that it didn't have good graphics is a blatant lie, when it was released it was damn fine graphically. And although you dont have complete freedom like in a game like Grand Theft Auto, you have more freedom than say Final Fantasy, and certainly more choice than RPGs from Japan.

Meh! He just gave his own opinion to hate Angry Joe, even though I don't really get it. Skyrim may not be the best Elder Scrolls I ever play, but the game did cater many fans, just look at Skyrim deviantarts (I spend most of my time watching Skyrim fan arts, so I know), they mostly show their enjoyment with the game, as well as how Angry Joe show his enjoyment with the game in his review. And yes the game DO have freedom, only not in the way we think of how freedom should be or wanted. But how can you hate someone with the expression of these:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQfHdasuWtI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvW9WwDLCxg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdpIENG0Y2k

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_QK-lcW8a8

 

[Sanunes]

I think the only reviewer I have ever stopped listening to is Angry Joe and that is because I dislike his presentation, if he ever changes that I will listen to him again.

I will generally take my time and listen or read what is being talked about and not go by the final score. With Greg Tito giving Dragon Age 2 a 5/5 the moment he mentioned that its reused dungeons I knew it wasn't for me even with his making it sounds like a small issue. Its the same with MovieBob too, the points he was making for Pacific Rim I knew it wouldn't be for me even with his praising it.