Critics That You Simply Can't Listen to Anymore

[Crazy Zaul]

lol I knew this thread would bring out all the TB haters.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

To be fair, it makes sense that people who hold strong views aren't going to actively seek out opposing views in their entertainment. I mean, I'm a liberal, feminist, gay rights activist and I have no problem admitting that I look for entertainers who share my views on such things and avoid overtly conservative media. Makes sense the same would be true for people on the other side of the political spectrum. In fact, I'd say avoiding people you know you disagree with is probably more positive than staying and flaming in the comments.

As for the differing opinion thing, depends on the context I suppose, but it can be a valid reason for ignoring a critic. I found that my opinions on films often didn't match MovieBob's, so I don't feel there's much point in me watching his reviews since I use reviews to decide which films to see. I know which reviewers tend to share my tastes and watch/read them instead.

1. Fair enough, but I think you can be conservative without howling about "liberal agendas", railing at feminists, or blaming a perspective on "white guilt".

2. I also seek out reviewers who are likely to echo my taste, those are the ones I trust to point me towards things I'm likely to enjoy. My issue isn't people gravitating to reviewers they prefer, that's the whole point of the exercise. It's the "lost all respect for X" that I find chortle-worthy. I can disagree with someone's preferences without losing all respect for them in the process.

 

[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.

 

[Something Amyss]

TotalBiscuit's playthroughs ar a slog and when he talks on gaming news he comes off as completely and shamelessly pro-big business unless it directly affects him. The latter part is super annoying.

I don't follow MovieBob/Game Overthinker's movie/game content. I watch The Big Picture, routinely, but overall, I avoid his other content. Actually, he sometimes comes off as the reason behind Jim's latest video: he seems to really hate it when someone likes something he doesn't.

And Angry Joe. Guy comes off as plastic most of the time. That's worse because he tries to do these "entertainment" skits.

I've been getting fairly tired of Yahtzee. I've only really been watching ZP for the last few years out of habit, but the spiteful smugness permeating from his recent videos and articles is starting to get rather sickening.

But Yahtzee hates smugness!

...I watch Zero Punctuation for entertainment only, and read less and less of Extra Punctuation, but I can definitely see why someone would be put off.

 

[CloudAtlas]

Let me tell you about the reviews from a german gaming magazine, which in my opinion are the best reviews i have yet to see.
While they differ a bit for small titles for most bigger titles the reviews are always structured like this:
In the main article itself they talk only about the game. They describe it's features, some story (without spoilers of course) and go into detail about the game mechanics.
Then they have always some extra texts from the people that reviewed it, with bigger AAA there will be multiple people involved in the review, were they can give their personal opinion about the game, if they liked it and what they liked/disliked about the game. In some cases, for example Dragon Age 2, they even had an entire page were 2 of them discussed the game, one of them liked it, one of them didn't.
And then they score it depedend on ten categories, which each give the game up to 10 possible points, always with little details explaining the score that category got. 6 of those categories are fixed and always the same for every game, like graphics quality and 4 are always dependand on the genre of the game. Those then get added and form a score x/100. No game ever got 100 points, since no game is perfect. I think the highest was warcraft 3 with 95 points.

Being German myself I know of which magazine you're talking about, GameStar, and honestly, their attempt to somehow calculate an objective score based on certain predefined metrics is ridiculous. The weighing of the categories is arbitrary, the categories themselves are to some extent arbitrary, and the experience you have with a game is just not equal to the sum of its parts anyway.
There's definitely a place for the more "technical" game reviews, many people obviously care more about mechanics, graphics and such than they do about story, narrative, message and so on, but their attempt at objectivity is just pretentious.

 

[MrBaskerville]

MovieBob has been skirting that line a bit more recently, since he voted Spring Breakers one of the best films of last year (it was incredibly boring), and Man of Steel the worst. I've been screwed over by his recommendations so many times in the past I only watch him because he's another critic to give some perspective to whether I should see a film or not. I never go see a film based on his recommendation alone anymore. He lets his rampant fanboyism seep into his reviews more and more, like when he never seems to discuss the Man of Steel we got, but the Man of Steel he would have wanted and seems to revere anything to do with his childhood nostalgia (G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra was a pile of diarrhea) with unrelenting loyalty.

I watch Anime Abandon occasionally, not so much to find out whether the anime Sage reviews are any good, but just to see what all sorts of crazy fuckery anime history has to offer. But Bennett sometimes really goes to complete nonsense territory, like in his Fist of the North Star review, when he compared it to Hamlet and went on a whole tangent about how male anime protagonists rarely conform to the norm. Yeah, the WESTERN norm, you idiot. And it sort of comes with the art style that not every male protagonist is a musclebound hunk when everyone else is slender and slim as well.


Mark Kermode, on the other hand, there's a critic! Ignoring his baffling love of the Twilight series he offers intelligent, funny, and insightful reviews. And he's not afraid to admit to being wrong about films or that he doesn't like certain films just because they don't get to him personally.

I agree on Kermode, he's one of the few i consistently watch and he always manages to get my psyched for the upcoming movie year. And who doesn't enjoy a bit of Danny Dyer bashing once in a while?

 

[Eamar]

snippity snip

All very true, not much I can argue with there.

I was trying to keep the thread a bit more positive, but looking over certain comments again I can see where you're coming from.

 

[Flutterguy]

Nostalgia Critic. Seems like he has gotten tired of doing the show and stopped trying. I still watch him occasionally but just older reviews i likes.

Movie Bob, which isn't his fault, I just stopped watching most movies.

 

[Something Amyss]

1. Fair enough, but I think you can be conservative without howling about "liberal agendas", railing at feminists, or blaming a perspective on "white guilt".

You can, but I imagine it becomes increasingly harder as we see the constructs of this alternative reality where we have conservative media, conservative science, conservative Wikis, etc. It's a world where everything that disagrees with you is because of liberal bias and that has to have an impact. You can see the results everywhere: it's not enough to agree most of the time, someone who isn't completely in lock-step is accused of being a liberal/socialist/extremist, and in politics they get called RINOs (Republican in Name Only) and the like.

There's this increasing creeping paranoia that the left is taking over, which has led to common assaults on anything even to the point of moderacy.

The above are all increasingly common excuses for raging at people who simply disagree with you.

 

[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]

 

[NearLifeExperience]

Angry Joe. I can't think of the last time he actually got, you know, angry. It almost seems as if the gaming industry has tamed him. I used to think of him as a freedom fighter, a man who would stand on the barricades to shout at developers that fuck things up. Fight for the little man. Nowadays he just seems to (dare I say it) be in it for the money, I can't detect any passion or love any longer.

On TotalBiscuit I have mixed feelings. I appreciate his professionalism, and the guy does have a lot of passion for what he does. But I feel as though he stays waaaay too much in his comfort zone, with just way too many of his WTF IS.. videos being about incredibily dull card games. I know he likes those games and is ofcourse entitled to his own choices, but I think it would be better if he took the niche game reviews down a notch. I still take him seriously though, unlike Joe

 

[Something Amyss]

Nostalgia Critic. Seems like he has gotten tired of doing the show and stopped trying. I still watch him occasionally but just older reviews i likes.

Even worse are his biweekly talking points, where he basically talks in a circle and rarely says anything of value.

 

[Something Amyss]

Angry Joe. I can't think of the last time he actually got, you know, angry. It almost seems as if the gaming industry has tamed him.

Ride to Hell, Rome 2, Star Trek.

I rarely watch him and I can think of a few.

 

[The Crispy Tiger]

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 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. And, out of personal taste, I hate puzzle. I like to think of myself as smart, and consistently being shit at something that supposed to test my intelligence doesn't sound fun. 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. 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.

 

[The Crispy Tiger]

Nostalgia Critic. Seems like he has gotten tired of doing the show and stopped trying. I still watch him occasionally but just older reviews i likes.

Even worse are his biweekly talking points, where he basically talks in a circle and rarely says anything of value.

I refute the both of you. The editorials are great discussion points that are fun to watch but more to think about, with my favorite one being about the view on princesses. Also, I feel like there's only been more effort put into the show with the higher production costs and add of cast and obvious crew. You can see it in AI, you can see it in The Last Airbender and Pearl Harbor, you can see it in the newest Nostalgia Critic about the worst Christmas special ever where he ironically goes on a ten minute rant about effort. That's how committed Doug is, and therefore I give him the same commitment back.

 

[The Crispy Tiger]

To be honest, anyone from Gamespot. I mean, alot of the people are good reviewers and obviously know what they are saying and they have good points, but the others are horrible and give games low review scores for the stupid fucking reasons. Case in point, the Last of Us review. But everyone hated that, so I was not the only one.

(COUGH A 8.5 is not a bad review score it's great COUGH)

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Angry Joe. I can't think of the last time he actually got, you know, angry. It almost seems as if the gaming industry has tamed him.

Ride to Hell, Rome 2, Star Trek.

I rarely watch him and I can think of a few.

Battlefield 4.

He's angry all the time. He's always yelling about something. Even when he's happy he's happy in an angry way.

 

[The Crispy Tiger]

There are, admittedly, times where they will omit certain things that may be problems simply because they didn't view it as a problem or because it paled in comparison to how much they enjoyed the rest of the game

That, exactly that, is the problem.
Reviews can and often should somewhat reflect the personal experience of the reviewer, but not in this way. Just because the reviewer doesn't care about some problems or features a game has, doesn't mean he can just ignore them.
Because other people will very well care about those problems or features.
A reviewer has to convey what the game is first. The opinion comes on top of that.
He should not just talk about how he thinks about the game and omit a lot of the game itself, just because it doesn't support his opinion.

Yes, yes he can... For example, say I were to review Grand Theft Auto 5. I enjoyed it's dialogue, but the characters are shit. So I mention it, But I don't take points of the score because of it's bad characters, because it didn't affect me or the fun I was having. I would bring it up in the review to warn people however if they couldn't handle it.

 

[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

This. All of this. I agree with all of this. As a fan of something that he has poked fun at, and I defend it, I feel what you are saying. Thank you for saying this.

Aww thanks! At least if I'm banned I've made one person happy!