Poll: Top 10 most overrated games I?ve ever played *WALL OF TEXT AHOY!*

[weker]

nobody liked doom 3
the rest of your list is you just expecting too much

Loads of people adore Doom 3...

OT: Your list was fine tho I don't agree with any of it.
It kinda felt like you went through as many top rated games as you could, and tried to find faults with them.

Also a large portion of your complaints seem due to you being bad at the games.

 

[Tryzon]

Seriously mate this isn't a book store, keep things on forums simple if you want anyone to read it.

But I can't comment on this because of the same reason most user reviews can't be commented on, a lot of very loaded opinions in there and someone behind it spoiling for a fight, this is no way to start a discussion of any sort.

I spoil for no fights, but I don't pull any punches, either. If I hate something, I'll say that, but I also make it clear that I just hate it and it's not simply BAD. I'm getting the horrible impression nobody here has read any of my multiple contributions to the review forum, where I make rambling but much more in-depth and positive analyses instead of these more spread-out generalisations. These are NOT intended as reviews, which is precisely why they're not in the review section.

 

[Treblaine]

What an utterly spurious complaint. Was Ben Hur a bad film because it was a remake? Was the same for The Man Who Knew Too Much?

System Shock and BioShock were made by the same people. They are perfectly entitled to tell a variation on a similar story/theme.

"the original release didn't let you turn off the accursed Vita-Chambers"

What a bitchy complaint, the Vita-chambers patch was very soon and there is a SIMPLE solution. If you do die and spawn from a vita-chamber... then load from a save game. YES you CAN complete the game through relentless attrition, but that would be really really dumb. You can play through Hitman just running in with a gun and shooting everyone but again, that would be dumb. How about you stop being dumb.

And now the bitching that you are given TOO MANY OPTIONS! Oh the awfulness of too much flexibility, that you can experiment a bit with all the options presented to you and aren't forced to travel down an extremely narrow path.

Again, if you just want to be an idiot and simply spam electro-bolt over and over then that is your problem. Spamming electro bolt is only easier for you because you can't comprehend more complex combinations of attacks.

Consider how swarm is a homing attack, how fire can cause enemies to retreat to water, how electro can stun multiple enemies in water, how telekinesis can throw explosives and weights.

You niggles are spurious and entirely based on your personal inability to use the options given to you.

First off, as I said in the piece, I DID enjoy BioShock, but only to the extent that I could while also taking note of all the questionable design decisions. Thanks for actually taking the time to systemetically respond to my individual points, but I still feel the need to clear some things up here.

Someone else has already pointed out that System Shock and BioShock were NOT, in fact, made by the exact same people, though I grant you a fair number of them. I'm supportive of remakes/re-releases/re-imaginings that bring things to a new audience, but what annoys me is that System Shock went by with barely a flicker on the commercial radar while BioShock swooned in with its big marketing budget and helped itself to whatever awards it fancied. THAT'S what I hate. Also, I freaking love the Eighties Scarface but don't care about the original, since Mafia gangsters and all that doesn't interest me. Just thought I'd throw that out there.

Yeah, the vita-chambers thing is a bit of a shaky point, but it was more a demonstration of the kind of bad design decisions I saw the game as being filled with. My fault if that isn't totally clear, but that was my intention.

I didn't complain that there were "too many options". Indeed, I said the variety of powers at your disposal was "generally an extremely good thing". Being able to push a guy into a pool and then zap him to death is deeply, deeply awesome, but I still say they went a bit mad with some of the abilities. My far bigger problem, though, is how overpowered you can very easily become as the game nears its end; the game gets easier rather than harder, especially because of that chameleon power, which makes stealth ten times easier. The whole game just feels like a watered-down RPG, is my issue. Some more focus would suit me grand.

And I still do argue that simply zapping a guy and then thwacking him is often just as effective as coming up with a complex series of attacks but far less effort. Seems a bit pointless to me.

But yes. I hope that's made my intentions clearer. Thanks for your time.

OK, I need to clear you up here, you seem to keep calling System Shock 2 as "System Shock". System shock 2 most definitely had the same writer and director as BioShock, Ken Levine in Irrational Studios.

System Shock 2 was NOT ignored, I REMEMBER, it got a lot of attention back in 1999 and for a PC game it was quite successful. But it was not the huge success that Bioshock was for important reasons: it wasn't all that good. See the devil is in the detail, design decisions like guns dissolving after 10 shots and much less enemy variety... these are far worse than the brief inability to switch off Vita-chambers. A patch to fix the gun dissolving was years in the coming and very buggy.

You aren't overpowered, especially if you play at the difficulty setting suitable for your skill level. You can very easily get yourself killed by a lapse in judgement, especially how the enemy health increases a whole order of magnitude. Realise if you set it on easy the enemies only do 17% of normal damage! You didn't ever play on easy did you? If normal was too hard, try HARD mode where enemies have 55% more health and do 50% more damage from normal.

"And I still do argue that simply zapping a guy and then thwacking him is often just as effective as coming up with a complex series of attacks but far less effort."

Hey, I read your meandering critique, you could do with reading mine how the other plasmids offer other functions. Like how Swarm are homing attacks if the enemy retreats behind cover and could be anywhere you can launch a swarm and it'll stun them. Many enemies have very high resistance to electro-bolt, as it is a function of their health. Incinerate is great as it deals damage and forces them to disengage which is great for groups where you can't easily zap one then attack another.

Also, if you played the game on 360/PS3 I understand why you are disappointed. The console version jsut does not work.

PC version is much easier to exploit your tactical repertoire and respond to the challenge of enemies accuracy and damage of higher difficulty without it getting too hard. Just the right challenge.

I made frequent use of zap-n-thwack but I was not foolish enough to use it all the time due to shortage of eve (that I'm saving for major fights) and I have such a surplus of other ammunition. Also swarm is great for Houdini splicers as it reveals wherever they disappear to. Enrage is far more effective in groups as while one zap dives you a brief opportunity to score a quick kill, as hitting one splicer not only takes one splicer out the fight but also draws other splicers away from the fight.
Incinerate is great for oils slicks against groups. Ice-blast is WAY more effective on security cameras/devices. Target Dummy is also good for when you are surrounded by enemies and need something to lure them away from you and reveal their position.

In fact if I stumbled upon a lone splicer I'd try to snipe one with a single headshot, or sneak up on them and whack em. That's not easy.

 

[drummond13]

Why do people put so much time and effort into writing about games they didn't like? Why is so much energy on this site channeled in such a negative direction?

There's a lot of great games out there, including some on this list that you apparently have major problems with. If you don't like them, hey, that's totally cool. I love BioShock and Half Life 2 and could write my own wall of text on exactly why they're amazing games, but there's no game that's going to please absolutely everybody. Still, the time it took you to write all this out could have been better spent elsewhere. Doing almost anything else.

 

[josemlopes]

I only read Black and tiny bits of the others but I still want to say this.

It has a lot to do with tastes, those games were not your cup of tea.

And Black was never an amazing game (that magazine said that but the rest of the world didnt), its just a good game with awesome visuals when it was released.

 

[Tryzon]

OT: Your list was fine tho I don't agree with any of it.
It kinda felt like you went through as many top rated games as you could, and tried to find faults with them.

That's unfortunate, but pretty much unavoidable when you set out to do a list of things you see as overrated. It wouldn't be overrated if nobody liked it, eh? Thanks for being reasonable, all the same.

Tryzon, please take what this person said into consideration. You would be a complete fool to shrug off a comment like this. Think about what made him say this and what you can make better.

Also, he IS correct on the issue of your use of ten dollar words. It is one of the biggest mistakes for young writers.

http://www.artofblog.com/ten-dollar-copy-words/

Not familiar with the phrase "ten dollar words", but very familiar with the concept. I wasn't aware I was writing a piece filled with such flowery language. I don't partake in purple prose as a general rule, but I did just notice that I said "partake" in this sentence. That may be some of what you're getting at.

I'm much more concerned that people see this, a piece awkwardly cobbled together over many moons, and assume all my writing is like that. How typical that nobody read some of those proper reviews that I put proper, concerted effort into, and yet everyone reads this less impressive thing? Shameful.

Thanks for your kind criticism, of course.

 

[KelsieKatt]

And I've felt no desire to replay MGS4 since the first time, and certainly wouldn't watch all the cutscenes again if I did. Not on your life. I acknowledge that anyone who can write a story that labyrinthine and then tie all every single loose end clearly has some skill and perseverance, but I can't call the story good in the sense of being engaging. It almost felt like some peculiar MGS Christmas special, with every single character who was either definitely not dead or had unfinished business popping in for their ten minutes of closure and then running off again or getting killed. I just think it would benefit so much from simplification instead of going for the Spider-Man 3 approach of chucking everything in.

This is something I can also agree with. While I'm not a big story person when it comes to video games, the storyline in MGS4 was absolutely awful. Although, I disagree with the idea that it was tied together well. Overall, I felt a lot of concepts were tossed aside with rather half-assed reasoning behind it and it wasn't a particularly fitting end.

As it is, some parts were just entirely bland and unimaginative on their own. Most notably being the bosses which were just random crazy women who died in some generic sob story that you get informed of only immediately after defeating them and never again. Which was quite disappointing after the previous games which had teams of people with important backstories working together and their own goals, etc. All that stuff was important in the first 3 games, but in this one it was just slapped together as a lazy excuse to justify rehashing boss concepts and gameplay from the first game.

The whole Raiden sequence was also utterly ridiculous with the fake-out death crap getting really old. The worst insult was when they go through an entire dramatic thing with him getting run over by a gigantic ship and his life being replayed to dramatic music, only for them to casually toss it aside in the next Act with an abrupt comment of "Oh, Raiden's fine. I've got him in the back healing up. No biggie." -_- Seriously, if they're going to kill someone off in such a dramatic manner, they should stick to it or come up with a very good reason to save him.

Another thing I really hated was how Ocelot was completely written out in the 4th game as a character. Who happens to be one of the few characters I generally liked a lot in the series and he's completely tossed aside in this one in favor of a rehash of Liquid from the first game. Granted, yes, they pulled the whole thing at the end with them saying that he was pretending to be Liquid in order to stop the Patriot program and he was a hero and blah blah blah... but eh, I don't know, it came across as a rather stupid justification for it (didn't help that the explanation came so late and was so short) and hell, I liked Ocelot a lot better as an Anti-Hero/Villain.

Outside of that, there were some parts that were just painfully cheesy in a facepalm kind of way... Namely Meryl proposing to the pants-shitter in a gun fight, and Raiden re-uniting with his family who needs to re-teach him how to love. >_< Ugh...

I can't say I was surprised by it exactly... considering that Hideo Kojima didn't really want to make a 4th game in the first place, but did anyway because the fans really wanted it, but still.. I just like to pretend it didn't happen to some degree. Lol

I still enjoyed some of the gameplay, but it varied a bit from chapter to chapter. Act 2 in particular was excellent and I had the most fun with that entire part by far. Where as some of the other parts like Act 3 and 5 were just tedious as all hell... I'd also say that MGS4 has the best overall controls of any entry, but unfortunately the levels themselves just weren't very good or were mediocre.

 

[Tryzon]

What an utterly spurious complaint. Was Ben Hur a bad film because it was a remake? Was the same for The Man Who Knew Too Much?

System Shock and BioShock were made by the same people. They are perfectly entitled to tell a variation on a similar story/theme.

"the original release didn't let you turn off the accursed Vita-Chambers"

What a bitchy complaint, the Vita-chambers patch was very soon and there is a SIMPLE solution. If you do die and spawn from a vita-chamber... then load from a save game. YES you CAN complete the game through relentless attrition, but that would be really really dumb. You can play through Hitman just running in with a gun and shooting everyone but again, that would be dumb. How about you stop being dumb.

And now the bitching that you are given TOO MANY OPTIONS! Oh the awfulness of too much flexibility, that you can experiment a bit with all the options presented to you and aren't forced to travel down an extremely narrow path.

Again, if you just want to be an idiot and simply spam electro-bolt over and over then that is your problem. Spamming electro bolt is only easier for you because you can't comprehend more complex combinations of attacks.

Consider how swarm is a homing attack, how fire can cause enemies to retreat to water, how electro can stun multiple enemies in water, how telekinesis can throw explosives and weights.

You niggles are spurious and entirely based on your personal inability to use the options given to you.

First off, as I said in the piece, I DID enjoy BioShock, but only to the extent that I could while also taking note of all the questionable design decisions. Thanks for actually taking the time to systemetically respond to my individual points, but I still feel the need to clear some things up here.

Someone else has already pointed out that System Shock and BioShock were NOT, in fact, made by the exact same people, though I grant you a fair number of them. I'm supportive of remakes/re-releases/re-imaginings that bring things to a new audience, but what annoys me is that System Shock went by with barely a flicker on the commercial radar while BioShock swooned in with its big marketing budget and helped itself to whatever awards it fancied. THAT'S what I hate. Also, I freaking love the Eighties Scarface but don't care about the original, since Mafia gangsters and all that doesn't interest me. Just thought I'd throw that out there.

Yeah, the vita-chambers thing is a bit of a shaky point, but it was more a demonstration of the kind of bad design decisions I saw the game as being filled with. My fault if that isn't totally clear, but that was my intention.

I didn't complain that there were "too many options". Indeed, I said the variety of powers at your disposal was "generally an extremely good thing". Being able to push a guy into a pool and then zap him to death is deeply, deeply awesome, but I still say they went a bit mad with some of the abilities. My far bigger problem, though, is how overpowered you can very easily become as the game nears its end; the game gets easier rather than harder, especially because of that chameleon power, which makes stealth ten times easier. The whole game just feels like a watered-down RPG, is my issue. Some more focus would suit me grand.

And I still do argue that simply zapping a guy and then thwacking him is often just as effective as coming up with a complex series of attacks but far less effort. Seems a bit pointless to me.

But yes. I hope that's made my intentions clearer. Thanks for your time.

OK, I need to clear you up here, you seem to keep calling System Shock 2 as "System Shock". System shock 2 most definitely had the same writer and director as BioShock, Ken Levine in Irrational Studios.

System Shock 2 was NOT ignored, I REMEMBER, it got a lot of attention back in 1999 and for a PC game it was quite successful. But it was not the huge success that Bioshock was for important reasons: it wasn't all that good. See the devil is in the detail, design decisions like guns dissolving after 10 shots and much less enemy variety... these are far worse than the brief inability to switch off Vita-chambers. A patch to fix the gun dissolving was years in the coming and very buggy.

You aren't overpowered, especially if you play at the difficulty setting suitable for your skill level. You can very easily get yourself killed by a lapse in judgement, especially how the enemy health increases a whole order of magnitude. Realise if you set it on easy the enemies only do 17% of normal damage! You didn't ever play on easy did you? If normal was too hard, try HARD mode where enemies have 55% more health and do 50% more damage from normal.

"And I still do argue that simply zapping a guy and then thwacking him is often just as effective as coming up with a complex series of attacks but far less effort."

Hey, I read your meandering critique, you could do with reading mine how the other plasmids offer other functions. Like how Swarm are homing attacks if the enemy retreats behind cover and could be anywhere you can launch a swarm and it'll stun them. Many enemies have very high resistance to electro-bolt, as it is a function of their health. Incinerate is great as it deals damage and forces them to disengage which is great for groups where you can't easily zap one then attack another.

Also, if you played the game on 360/PS3 I understand why you are disappointed. The console version jsut does not work.

PC version is much easier to exploit your tactical repertoire and respond to the challenge of enemies accuracy and damage of higher difficulty without it getting too hard. Just the right challenge.

I made frequent use of zap-n-thwack but I was not foolish enough to use it all the time due to shortage of eve (that I'm saving for major fights) and I have such a surplus of other ammunition. Also swarm is great for Houdini splicers as it reveals wherever they disappear to. Enrage is far more effective in groups as while one zap dives you a brief opportunity to score a quick kill, as hitting one splicer not only takes one splicer out the fight but also draws other splicers away from the fight.
Incinerate is great for oils slicks against groups. Ice-blast is WAY more effective on security cameras/devices. Target Dummy is also good for when you are surrounded by enemies and need something to lure them away from you and reveal their position.

In fact if I stumbled upon a lone splicer I'd try to snipe one with a single headshot, or sneak up on them and whack em. That's not easy.

Hmm. I didn't consider some of these things. I did of course admit to not playing System Shock, but yes. I also did refer to BioShock on console, so maybe that ties into some of my problems with it. I dunno. I just think the game could've so easily been astounding with a bit more focus. I also found it dragged on after a certain point, but yes. So many comments to respond to, so little time.

Thanks again.

 

[Tryzon]

Why do people put so much time and effort into writing about games they didn't like? Why is so much energy on this site channeled in such a negative direction?

There's a lot of great games out there, including some on this list that you apparently have major problems with. If you don't like them, hey, that's totally cool. I love BioShock and Half Life 2 and could write my own wall of text on exactly why they're amazing games, but there's no game that's going to please absolutely everybody. Still, the time it took you to write all this out could have been better spent elsewhere. Doing almost anything else.

I DO usually write about games I love, but this one piece filled with hatred just happens to have been the one everybody wants to read. What does that say about us, I wonder? More to the point, I did make very clear that this was an opinion piece, as if that wasn't clear enough from the venom dripping from every orifice. Try finding my Penumbra: Black Plague review on here if you want to see me make love to a game through words ^_^

 

[DracoSuave]

I spoil for no fights, but I don't pull any punches, either.

Your tone in your piece is extremely confrontational, and it repeatedly attempts to insult the reader's intellect.

You are, in fact, spoiling for a fight in your piece.

There are quite a few comments from people antagonistic towards you because of this, not because of any points you've made.

 

[Tryzon]

Snip (what an understatement)

OK I won't pretend I read your entire post, but I did read the sections relating to the games I knew; Bioshock, Half Life 2, Halo 2, Red Dead Redemption, and KOTOR, and let me just say you picked some of my favorite games of all time. That being said you make some good points, but despite these flaws I would still suggest all of these games to anyone who hasn't played them.

To use the terminology of of a table top RPG which I can comment on, you have picked out the dump stat for each of these games. A dump stat is the stat or part of development you take time/money/skill points out of to improve the rest of the game/your stats.

I resisted the impulse to go over each of the games and point out where I disagree with you, because nobody cares. But Let me just say that I don't think any of the flaws, or personal distastes you point out are enough to call any of these games overrated. Are they perfect? No. Has any video game ever been perfect? Hell No. Is perfection even attainable? Also no. You are focusing on the few flaws that the games have, and ignoring the many things they do very well. I agree with you on most of your criticisms, but I don't think the fact that Bioshock was ripped off from Systemshock and that it's easy makes it any less good. Or that fact that KOTOR has a repetitive and antiquated combat system, takes away from the story(which is what makes it so good).

These games are considered good, because something about them stands out, not because they are perfect. Do they live up to the hype? No, nothing EVER lives up to the hype. You eat the meat and spit our the bones, take the good and live with the bad, that is life, perfection is an illusion, and our individual perspectives are broken biased and flawed. Wow, that got really preachy there at the end. Anyway that is my opinion on the matter, not that anyone cares.

Well put. In particular, the phrase "Anyway that is my opinion on the matter, not that anyone cares." could easily sum up the entire of that 10,000 word piece. I'm not sure that's a sign of good writing, but there you are. I did have some niggly points, admittedly, but the majority of the things I complained about were issues I felt greatly undermined the game experience. In the case of BioShock and KotOR, I do say I enjoyed the games overall, but those problems kept me from being in love with them. That's the distinction I think is important here.

 

[Pyramid Head]

I'm sorry, but i'm going to call you out on this one. You have a top ten most overrated list, and no Final Fantasy titles on the list?! Final Fantasy X, a terribly written game with some of the worst characters you'll get outside of Nazis and Republicans, is counted by some to actually be a classic. And forget Halo 2, why wasn't Halo 3 on the list?! That one was put in a far more ridiculous throne than 2 was!
Hand over your keyboard, you're fired from being an angry asshole! Leave it to angry assholes who are also bigger nerds!

 

[Tryzon]

I spoil for no fights, but I don't pull any punches, either.

Your tone in your piece is extremely confrontational, and it repeatedly attempts to insult the reader's intellect.

You are, in fact, spoiling for a fight in your piece.

Ah, yes. I may have been thinking of something else, now that you mention it. My whole outlook is this: if somebody can prove they're reasonable and intelligent, like you have, then I respect their opinion and will not knowingly insult them. For the masses, however, I feel no such urge to be civil. MW3 is the best-selling media product of all time, I hear. Case in point.

 

[synulia]

A long and very pretentious post, funny enough because he calls GTA IV and Red Dead's storyline pretentious pretentious on numerous occasions.

 

[DracoSuave]

"Anyway that is my opinion on the matter, not that anyone cares."

I don't know why you feel the need to remind your readers that you believe they are not intelligent enough to figure out that your opinion piece is your opinion. Nor is that statement a refuge to hide behind in debate.

Your article has so many technical flaws that it becomes very hard to read. One of those flaws is your condescending attitude disguised as apologism. You have more than a few 'niggly points.' You're essentially calling your potential audience idiots in your opening 'prologue' and that's not a good way to encourage anyone to invest the amount of time it takes to actually form an opinion on your work.

That IS the entire point of this, isn't it? To be read?

 

[KelsieKatt]

I also did refer to BioShock on console, so maybe that ties into some of my problems with it.

I own both versions of BioShock and I have to disagree with this assessment (the other person is telling you.)

The PC version and Console versions are largely the same compared to one another outside of using WASD and the number keys. On top of that, it also has mouse smoothing problems so the aiming never quite feels right, and the retail version was actually missing one of the powers which they had to add back in in a later patch.

Outside of that, the only difference is that by default you use right click to swap between gun and powers, where as on console, the right trigger fires guns and the left trigger fires powers. However, on the PC version, if you decide to map it so that Left is gun, and Right is powers, you have to press the mouse button twice every single time when switching between them as 1 press and hold is not sufficient. (1 press and hold is however sufficient when playing on console.) Note that I'm talking about firing it. On console you can press and hold to fire the opposite hand immediately, on PC, you have to press it once to switch and once to fire.

Overall, unless having number key access to things makes a major difference to you in feeling compelled to use different strategies instead of a radial menu, it probably won't make much of a difference as they're largely the same and both play to the strengths of their particular platform just fine (aside from some issues with the mouse smoothing I mentioned earlier.}

 

[Tryzon]

I'm sorry, but i'm going to call you out on this one. You have a top ten most overrated list, and no Final Fantasy titles on the list?! Final Fantasy X, a terribly written game with some of the worst characters you'll get outside of Nazis and Republicans, is counted by some to actually be a classic. And forget Halo 2, why wasn't Halo 3 on the list?! That one was put in a far more ridiculous throne than 2 was!
Hand over your keyboard, you're fired from being an angry asshole! Leave it to angry assholes who are also bigger nerds!

...I specifically say I haven't played Halo 3 and so can't comment on it. Please read before calling me an angry asshole and in turn becoming at least as angry an asshole. As for Final Fantasy X, I haven't found nearly as many people in love with that as, say, BioShock.

 

[Imbechile]

I was actually going to applaud you, especially for Bioshock(feels like System Shock 2 for retards) and KOTOR(every god-damn Bioware cliche),
but then I saw this:

(modded) Oblivion

Even with mods Oblivion easily is the most overrated game(and one of the biggest pices of AAA shit) ever.

And I totally agree with all the people who call the story brilliant, being well-told, epic, true to the classics

ugh...... The story is really bland. The only thing worth remembering is the twist. The rest is the usual Star Wars"Good vs. Evil"shit.

KOTOR 2, on the other hand has a great story. Too bad Lucasarts are idiots.

 

[Tryzon]

"Anyway that is my opinion on the matter, not that anyone cares."

I don't know why you feel the need to remind your readers that you believe they are not intelligent enough to figure out that your opinion piece is your opinion. Nor is that statement a refuge to hide behind in debate.

Your article has so many technical flaws that it becomes very hard to read. One of those flaws is your condescending attitude disguised as apologism. You have more than a few 'niggly points.' You're essentially calling your potential audience idiots in your opening 'prologue' and that's not a good way to encourage anyone to invest the amount of time it takes to actually form an opinion on your work.

That IS the entire point of this, isn't it? To be read?

I wouldn't assume so little of my audience EXCEPT this very forum has driven me to such measures. Remarkably, things seem to have improved, but previous pieces have had a dozen people calling me an idiot based purely on my differing opinion. I can only assume the situation has improved here in my absence.

I admit this particular piece is inferior. I implore you to search my name on these forums and read, say, my Penumbra review. Positive, FAR shorter and infinitely less acid-filled. Not which gets the comments, see? The internet confuses me sometimes.

 

[Tryzon]

A long and very pretentious post, funny enough because he calls GTA IV and Red Dead's storyline pretentious pretentious on numerous occasions.

I do at some point mention my own hypocrisy, though I think only in the sense of writing a huge long complaint and how Hideo Kojima needs an editor. I could always hide behind the excuse of irony like a know-it-all git, I suppose.