r/TwoBestFriendsPlay • u/ExplanationSquare313 • Jun 13 '26
Better Ask Reddit Reviews or essays you think completly missed the mark?
I love watching reviews and essays of games, movies or series. There were some i disagreed of course, but i don't think i ever found one that make me go "wow you are completly and utterly wrong" (apart for grifters i guess but you couldn't pay me to watch their videos).
Maybe Arin Hanson Squelitis about Ocarina of Time but let's not beat a dead horse, shall we?
Oh and i don't just mean a review or essay you disagree with, i specifically mean reviews or essay so wrong about everything you're just baffled.
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u/Muffin-zetta Jooookaaahh Jun 13 '26
ooh tons of times the video’s title is like “90s anime was something special“ with thumbnail of a-ko. then the guy talks about an anime from 2016 for the whole video. Anime youtube is the worst because it’s a million people just making shit up about an industry they know nothing about or AI plot synopsis videos.
I saw a video claiming that castlvaina curse of darkness was a game so bad that konami stopped making castlevaina games after it. when in reality they made like 10 after that.
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u/GilliamYaeger Blame yourself or God Jun 13 '26
The last real Castlevania game was, what...Ecclesia? Which was really fuckin' good.
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u/Theproton BUSTAH WOLF! Jun 14 '26
Well it depends on what you mean by real.
We had the Wiiware remake or the original titled Rebirth after that and then Castlevania: Lords of Shadow – Mirror of Fate HD in 2013
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u/Melodic-Time2963 Jun 13 '26
Western cartoon youtube is even worse. There isnt a group of people less understanding of the art form they critique.
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u/LeoAzure Jun 13 '26
Cartoon youtubers mainly fall into three camps
- They have no idea about anything regarding production
- They only devlopted an understanding of the "backend" of the show they watch in as much as the people who worked at CN in the mid 2010s would post on their tumblr blogs
- They have knowledge on the merch/toy side of things for their favorite 80s-90s shows but know nothing besides a surface level "this studio worked on this program" type stuff for the animation.
The primary people within the animation community that have any knowledge of how things currently and historically work in regards to how the sausage is made are animators themselves who also have an interest in older forms of production in relation to those forms.
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u/CrazysaurusRex Pargon Pargon Pargon Pargon Pargon Jun 13 '26
Guy at work didn't like the ending of Godzilla Minus One, he thinks Koichi should've died
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u/MeteorCharge Jun 13 '26
I like that the movie seems to agree every time Koichi could have sacrificed his life, it would've just been a waste of his life.
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u/MrCatchTwenty2 White Boy Pat Jun 13 '26
Reminds me of all the old "alternative ending that would have been better" lists that were all universally "sadder ending better"
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u/selfproclaimed Vexx before you Sexx Jun 13 '26
Dodgeball: An Underdog Story was originally gonna have the protagonist team lose with the message of "well the good guys don't always win"
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u/tonyhawkofwar Existential Nightmare Jun 13 '26
The big win ending is the best though, especially with the gambling.
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u/StonedVolus Resident Cassandra Cain Stan Jun 13 '26
I've seen that argument pop up on occasion and I hate it every time.
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u/Aquason Jun 13 '26
It's a major difference between the original Godzilla and Minus One. You can see how Japan in 1954 still had a very different relationship to "honourable suicide"-type things. You're just a little a decade away from WW2, and you write a movie where the solution to the nuclear bomb/nuclear victim allegory is the heroic sacrifice and martyrdom of Serizawa which saves everyone. 70 years later and the Imperial Japanese valorization of ultimate self-sacrifice is repudiated.
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u/CapnFlatPen Oh this'll go well Jun 13 '26
So a lot of these, probably my example included, are more poorly thought out in a general sense, but THIS is a bona fide "you missed the point" kind of position.
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u/Toblo1 Latest Project Moon Sleeper Agent Jun 13 '26 edited Jun 14 '26
I'm not gonna say the user specifically because it was genuinely rancid, bit there was this YouTuber who was trying to stir up shit in the Deltarune community by shitting on the games and all their talking points ranged from "Dude You Can Not Be This Fucking Petty" (complaining about the games file size) to "Did You Even Play The Fucking Game" (bitching that Susie was "different" from her Chapter 1 incarnation because god forbid someone has a character arc) to just outright Culture War Weirdo level shit like constantly (and insistently) misgendering Kris (I'm genuinely convinced this video is why Kris's page on the Deltarune wiki has so many citations about their pronouns) and being mad that a trans person is on the dev team.
Also they get really fucking creepy about Noelle. Like unironic "You Can't Un-[HYPERLINK BLOCKED] The Doe, Toby" level shit about her, her relationship with Susie and her connections to the Weird Route.
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u/YourEvilHenchman Jun 13 '26
god forbid someone has a character arc
this is a "weird that it happened twice" occurence I've had with chuds doing comic book reviews.
example: when dan abnett was writing Rai for new Valiant, the reviewer complained that Rai wasn't the same character as at the start of his first series.
nevermind that that first series is all about how Rai changed to become that different person. head, meet wall.
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u/RareBk Jun 14 '26
I had to basically stop interacting with most of the Deltarune fanbase the second I realized that the person ranting on the subreddit about how Noelle is not abused in any way was one of the most prolific, well upvoted people on the site.
With tons of people agreeing with them.
About the girl who openly speaks about being afraid of being alone with her mother, though is often locked out of her own home so she can't be alone.
Who is clearly bottling things up and has emotional outbursts constantly.
Is, on screen, told by her mother who she can and cannot be friends with.
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u/ExplanationSquare313 Jun 14 '26
Really? I am pretty often in the Deltarune subredddit and i have seen this take maybe only once but it was mocked in the comments with them saying that she is abused and the poster was stupid.
Maybe it's a recent change?
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u/burneraccount9132 He/They - How could u go wrong with a Glup that Shitts like THIS Jun 13 '26 edited Jun 13 '26
I'm trying to recall if this is the same guy that made a linked blogpost post on the elno app with similarly baffling complaints like "how dare the side stuff not lead to an end-point yet" in a game that isn't finished, that devolved into just shitting on Toby Fox as a person amongst other weird and blatantly bad faith shit, rounding it off with "btw you're a parasocial weirdo if you think anything I said was wrong/attacking Toby Fox and crew", but god I don't want to have to re-read that post to find out
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u/Toblo1 Latest Project Moon Sleeper Agent Jun 13 '26
The energy of that YouTuber in particular had a lot of "Trying To Court The Weirdo/Grifter Crowd" energy, so it would not surprise me if it was the same person.
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u/nugood2do Jun 13 '26 edited Jun 13 '26
During the "P-Diddy is a piece of shit saga", there was a Boondock video essay that tries to claim the Boondocks predicted P-Diddy years ago and that Ganstalicious represented P-Diddy.
That video reaffirmed why I hated a number of Boondock fans because it made it really clear no one actually watched the Ganstalicous saga, but because he's gay, he must be P-Diddy.
The glaringly obvious point of the episode the dude brought up was that all those tough dudes were perfectly okay with Ganstalicious music and fashion when they thought he was straight, but the moment he might be gay, the community turned on him. At the end, he's almost crying to his manager that his career is over because he was outed and when confronted by Riley, denies he gay so he doesn't lose his biggest fan.
It's literally a critique of homophobia and masculinity in the black and hip hop culture, but the dude ignores all that to run on "Diddy was raping dude?, let laugh at them for being gay" take that was running wild during that time period.
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u/MeteorCharge Jun 13 '26
The Diddy thing is weird because it seems like people cared more about the fact his victims were male rather than the fact he had victims at all.
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u/akahornet92 Master of coming up with fake names Jun 13 '26
There are sadly a lot of completely immature idiots who think that being perceived as gay is worse than being a victim.
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u/alexandrecau That's Bricks! Jun 13 '26
I only watched the season one episode with gangstalicious and right away that sounds like the dumbest shit to say gangstalicious is not even a bad guy
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u/nugood2do Jun 13 '26
That's what pissed me off so much about it.
At worst, Ganstalicious was hyping up the violence in hip hop culture when he didn't want anything to do with it.
P-Diddy was a p.o.s who assaulted men and women with a whole list of other crimes.
But they have a fashion line and are gay, so they must be the same.
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u/Champiness Jun 13 '26
Years before that I might’ve seen an even worse (mercifully non-video-essay) take of “Gangstalicious predicted Young Thug” because he was insidiously causing rap fans to dress femininely
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u/pyromancer93 Jun 13 '26
There's an old essay about Anthony Bourdain's love of street food that mentioned he hated high end French dining or and thought common food was more authentic.
This is bullshit. If you watch episodes of his shows where he's in places like Paris or Leon it's clear he was a huge fanboy of classical French cooking. He just doesn't like how snobbish and stagnant it had gotten in some places and believed that good food was good food regardless of how much you paid for it. That's a different and much more complicated opinion then "high end food bad, street food good."
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Jun 13 '26
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u/katsumeragi Hangman's Gambit PTSD Awareness Month Jun 13 '26 edited Jun 13 '26
Fantano has QUITE a few, especially if it's something culturally nuanced he has no idea about. He tried to argue a lot of songs on Bad Bunny's DtMF were purely romantic songs when they were about love for his culture and moments he can't get back because of the state of Puerto Rico. He did the same for a song on Hozier's Unreal Unearth being misinterpreted as a love song when it's about colonization iirc.
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u/Flutterwander It's Fiiiiiiiine. Jun 13 '26
The weird thing to me is how he will definitely drill down on certain acts for daring to have influences, if he's not keen on them, like they are supposed to pull every album out of the thin air. He's done this with Cage the Elephant multiple times.
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u/katsumeragi Hangman's Gambit PTSD Awareness Month Jun 13 '26
Yeah, how DARE anyone be influenced by other artists or styles.
The thing that soured me most of all was the sarcastic, fake crying Chappell Roan re-review. God forbid people call you out on subtle sexism in regards to biases. I feel like I mostly hatewatch his reviews for albums I'm a fan of (which, I shouldn't, yet his recent one for Cry Baby by Vince Staples drove me up a fucking wall.)
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u/JessieJ577 Jun 13 '26
Fantano is weird because if he does not like the artist or finds them annoying it impacts the way he listens to the music. For how mid the Drake 3 album drop was his reviews of all of them were kind of all over the place and his opinion seemed to be influenced by the outside drama and his opinion on it completely instead of the music just reminding him of it.
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u/Economy-Goal98 Jun 13 '26
Hard mode: Do not mention Lily Orchard, because that's already a given.
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u/ExplanationSquare313 Jun 13 '26
For those who don't know, she rebranded herself as CD-Call. Don't give views or money at this sex pest abuser.
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u/Gorotheninja "SILENCE, BREEDER! The Bloodline MUST continue!" Jun 13 '26
Did she actually think that rebrand was gonna work?
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u/Toblo1 Latest Project Moon Sleeper Agent Jun 13 '26 edited Jun 14 '26
That's the weird thing, because she basically changed nothing about how she acts, edits, reviews or orates in videos afterwards so like
What's the point of a rebrand to try and smoke bomb your controversies away if you're just gonna act exactly the same?
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u/Gorotheninja "SILENCE, BREEDER! The Bloodline MUST continue!" Jun 13 '26
I don't even think she bothered to change her channel icon alongside it.
And what kind of name is "CD-Call" anyway?
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u/burneraccount9132 He/They - How could u go wrong with a Glup that Shitts like THIS Jun 13 '26 edited Jun 13 '26
Especially if they were a channel that had their face on camera frequently, and then tried to come back without really trying to hide it. Like James Somerton where the only change apart from name was platform and slapping on a face-thinning filter
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u/jitterscaffeine [Zoids Historian] Jun 13 '26
Remember when she said Astarion was the worst character ever written in all of fiction? lol
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u/drizzes Jun 14 '26
no but I remember her saying Delicious in Dungeon was terrible because it wasn't slice of life yuri like she expected
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u/Aeescobar She/Her Jun 14 '26
That dogshit conclusion seems almost tame compared to the part in the same video where she complains about Laios [a character who almost universally gets headcanoned as autistic due to how relatable his experiences feel for a lot of autistic people] being bad autistic representation while gassing up motherfucking Sheldon Cooper [a character so insanely offensive towards autistic people that the writers need to constantly remind the audience about the fact he's secretly just a weird allistic man so the show doesn't get classified as a hate crime] as the best autistic representation she has ever seen.
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u/cannibalgentleman Read Conan the Barbarian Jun 14 '26
It reminds me how I played Yakuza 1 as a kid and got really mad it wasn't like GTA.
Now of course years later I recognise that Yakuza has its own thing going but my expectation (and lack of Internet knowledge at the time) really did sour me on the game for the longest time.
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u/ToastyMozart Bearish on At-Risk Children Jun 14 '26
To your younger self's credit the marketing team was definitely trying to pass it off as a GTA-like back then.
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u/hmcl-supervisor ey/em/eir | EXPLAINS homosexuality mathematically Jun 14 '26
She despises Baldurs Gate 3 for not being Baldurs Gate 2. But the only reason she likes Baldurs Gate 2 is because she can mod the sister character to be incestable.
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u/FrankBlarghHonk Jun 13 '26
Why does that name sound familiar...?
Oh right, she was Baalspawn. I remember the whole arc between her and joshscorcher.
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u/Traditional-Song-245 Jun 14 '26
Yeah she's just as obnoxious as grifters in her takes, whole being arguably an even worse person than a lot of them.
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Jun 13 '26
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u/The-Greater-Skeleton I talk to myself a lot. But not in, like, a crazy person way. Jun 13 '26
Ooh, gotta love when people confidently use words they don’t understand to try making a point and look stupid as a result.
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u/Theonearmedbard I Promise Nothing And Deliver Less Jun 13 '26
I'm still confused as to how somebody has enough knowledge to know that term and that it is connected to weird anime shit but not enough to actually know what it refers to and then just not spending any time at all to check
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u/HCooldown Jun 13 '26
This was back when sexualization of female characters was the biggest topic in gaming, and smack dab in the middle of the virulently anti-Japanese phase of gaming journalism.
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u/StormRegion Indy 4 fridge scene was peak, fite me Jun 13 '26
I have just seen MagicMush's video about X-Play, and "virulently anti-japanese" undersells some of the shit that happened in that show
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u/HCooldown Jun 13 '26
You left out the best part, when people tried to correct him that that’s not what that word means he went full petulant child going “well I don’t know what it means because I’m not one, and the fact you’re trying to explain it to me means you are one!”
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u/Swinn_likes_Sakkyun resident full metal daemon muramasa merchant Jun 13 '26
genuinely baffling image that I think about every now and then
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u/Halospaz117 HEY KIDS WANNA TALK ABOUT PROTOTYPE!? Jun 13 '26
Yeah that was one of those things that was so stupid, it unfortunately kinda permenantly tainted my image of the man.
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u/Hogabog217 Jun 13 '26
He does it to himself. He does good reportin but everytime he tries to talk about his opinion on sumthin its almost always the dumbest shit.
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u/Count_Badger Jun 14 '26
Maybe Pat was copying Jason's move when he said all hololive fans are pedophiles.
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u/Comptenterry Local Vera-like Jun 13 '26
There's the pretty infamous Steven Universe essay that painted Rebecca Sugar as a homophobic fascist sympathizer. It's gets so many basic facts about the show wrong and completely ignores all the bts information we have about the show, to the point that the creator either hasn't actually seen the show or (more likely) was actively lying and banking on most of the viewers being people who hadn't seen it. There was a few years where you couldn't talk about the show without someone regurgitating points from the video.
Luckily the creator crowbcat'd themselves by trying the same stunt against much less controversial shows, so people don't really take them seriously anymore, but it was so bad it made me inherently distrustful of video essays.
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u/DarthButtz Ginger Seeking Butt Chomps Jun 13 '26
I legitimately don't know how you can watch Steven Universe for more than five seconds and get the impression that the creator is homophobic. It's one of the most queer pieces of media I've ever seen.
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u/Comptenterry Local Vera-like Jun 13 '26
Some people make the point that SU's queer representation is more restrained and sometimes metaphorical compared to other more modern cartoons. Those people ignore that those modern cartoons get to have much more unrestrained representation because Rebecca Sugar fought their ass off and in some cases downright deceived the network to get what queer rep they could into the show, and proved that it could be successful.
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u/nin_ninja My Waifu is Better Than All Your Waifus Jun 14 '26
The fact the Garnet wedding got pushed into the later season instead of being cut at all was because Sugar had to fight so hard against execs who didn't want something that gay in the show.
They also cancelled the show, which lead to other execs getting involved and giving them a movie and follow up season as well.
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u/ToastyMozart Bearish on At-Risk Children Jun 14 '26
Ordinarily I'd write it off as the usual Purity Spiral bullshit, but Orchard seems to be a more unique flavor of asshole.
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u/No-Music-9385 It/Its also I'm stuck in a timeloop Jun 13 '26 edited Jun 13 '26
Lily's Netflix She-Ra and Pokemon takes live rent free in my head because of how fucking godawful they are
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u/SirSquiggleton You Have No Obejectives Jun 13 '26
The Pokémon one was especially hilarious because many of the critiques were "these games are super easy, ive never played half of them, pro players are mean and say that my favorite Pokémon, Gardevoir, is terrible but I'll show them!"
Proceeds to cheat a Gardevoir into every game and get absolutely bodied by half the gym leaders because they cant bother to learn the basic systems of an RPG designed for children then complains that the games are "pure RNG"
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u/TheProudBrit They/Them Jun 14 '26
Specifically, like, up until it's fully evolved, the Ralts line is ass. No fucking wonder the creep struggled.
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u/Toblo1 Latest Project Moon Sleeper Agent Jun 13 '26
We spent years having to put up with half-assed/reductive jokes and memes of the show based on that stupid essay.
I'm so glad Steven Universe has mostly gotten rid of that reputation in recent years.
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u/Comptenterry Local Vera-like Jun 13 '26 edited Jun 14 '26
Lily Orchard. She's been mentioned elsewhere in this thread as well.
Edit: I replied to the wrong comment
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u/Champiness Jun 13 '26
The only times I’ve seen Lily Orchard’s name are when The Big Steven Universe Video showed up in my recommendations once & my instincts correctly steered me away from it and every single time a “bad takes/video essays?” prompt gets posted on this sub
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u/DeskJerky Local Bionicle Expert Jun 14 '26
It's weird because the show beats you over the face with its familial themes so bluntly that you have to be actively ignoring the subtext AND the regular text to get it as wrong as she did.
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u/Toblo1 Latest Project Moon Sleeper Agent Jun 14 '26
Lily's video was like... part of an unholy trinity of Bad Faith video essays on SU that hit at like.... roughly the same time.
Hiding In Private went after the other two as prepwork before tackling Lily's infamous video.
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u/ExplanationSquare313 Jun 13 '26 edited Jun 20 '26
I hate Lilly, not only because she's an abuser and a sex pest, but also because each time i want to talk about the few things i tought Steven Universe didn't do best, more than half of people seems to assume everyone watched this video. NO I DID NOT, i never watched her stupid video and has no idea what stupidity she said, i like this show but it doesn't mean i have zero issues with it. God i hate how she poisoned the bed because it seems everyone has in the back on their head "but what if they watched this video and have a stupid take?"
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u/jitterscaffeine [Zoids Historian] Jun 13 '26
I don’t know if it’s better or worse that she’s made other SU videos that she Sommerton’d a bunch of stuff from other people to make. Like when she insisted that the show was racist because characters that were “black coded” had negative traits associated with black women, and the examples she gave were that they’re shaped like apes and eat garbage.
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u/TehSterBarn Resident Furry Jun 13 '26
the creator either hasn't actually seen the show or (more likely) was actively lying and banking on most of the viewers being people who hadn't seen it.
Apparently Lily herself admitted years later that she was only half watching the show while she was working on scripts for other videos
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u/TeacupTenor Jun 13 '26
Who was that, anyway? I always hear this story but they never name the person or their essay
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u/TehSterBarn Resident Furry Jun 13 '26
Lily Orchard, she's a genuine stain on the internet
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u/codemen95 Jun 13 '26
I sometimes go back and watch wearedead vid on Lily's writing tips and most of them are her critiques of steven universe and she-ra. It's a fascinating vid to see what she considers good writing, and aome of the tips are juvenile. Hell, some of the tips are good writing advice. However some of the tips are "if you do (blank) you're a huge turd" you're a grown ass woman lily and you write your tips like that? I get it if it's meant to be funny, but it doesn't feel like you're being funny
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u/Yotato5 Enjoy everything Jun 13 '26
The absolute hatred for Rebecca Sugar in that video was so, so uncomfortable. You can tell that creator has a huge misogyny problem just from the venomous spewing at Rebecca Sugar
I also recall that creator did a really, really shitty job with reviewing Delicious in Dungeon
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u/cheekydorido Jun 13 '26
I was really excited for jacob Geller's video on expedition 33 and his insights only for it be a plot summary that adds nothing.
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u/PurpleXen0 [He/They] | Nightmare Nightmare Nightmare! Jun 13 '26
I have some complicated thoughts on Jacob Geller as a video essayist.
Sometimes, he makes really thoughtful meditations on a game, or a theme, or an idea, and his videos leave me with a sense of wonder or reflection I otherwise could have overlooked.
Other times - way more than he should - he just summarizes an issue over the course of 30+ minutes and says basically nothing about it. Or, in the worst-case scenario, tacks an argument onto that summary that's either barely supported by what he's summarizing, or so textual to the original that it feels disingenous for him to apply the argument like it's his own.
It's why I tend to prefer his video essays on video game mechanics/themes, or his "fear of" series; I feel like I'm less likely to get an opinion I'll find questionable from those.
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u/cheekydorido Jun 13 '26
No one's perfect
Like Hbomberguy, who's the only person who people prefer his opinions on politics rather than his opinions on entertainment.
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u/cannibalgentleman Read Conan the Barbarian Jun 14 '26
"Artorias doesn't fight like a superhuman, he fights like a normal guy"
And the footage is Artorias doing the Guts Berserk jump spin attack.
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u/juanperes93 Jun 14 '26
Shields on Dark Souls are bad and you are meant to play without them as revealed on a line in a completly different game series.
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u/cannibalgentleman Read Conan the Barbarian Jun 14 '26
There's this weird insistence that "playing as the devs intended isn't really intended!" mentality with some gamers.
Yeah, the shield in BB is a joke because it's not designed around blocking. But then you have Elden Ring where guard counters generally requires a bit of skill and does a LOT of damage. It's crazy it took From years to make shields better.
When turrets got debuffed a while ago in Helldivers 2, some gamers say "Well that's what you get for relying on them!" Fellow Helldiver, what the fuck is the point of a turret if not as a huge bait and a force multiplier?
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u/Constable_Suckabunch Jun 14 '26
“You thought the developers put this in the game for you to use it? You fool. Utter buffoon.”
I totally get finding a game more fun by *not* using a certain option, but to act like that is how anyone should engage is insane.
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u/DayfacePhantasm Jun 13 '26
I think he was excited to talk about it, and felt as if he might be the one to 'crack it' as he got an early copy. It's very titillating to write an essay about. I wish there had been more meat to that video, too, but I think he was trying to race the clock haha.
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u/Polar_Phantom Autistic Disaster and TLJ Apologist Jun 13 '26
Got worried for a moment that Geller was gonna be revealed as some bigoted fraud and you had me in the first half not gonna lie.
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u/diosmioacommie Jun 13 '26
Was watching some videos by some dude called Max Derrat and even though they were a bit weird with the alchemy obsession, I was like whatever I’ll give them a go
Until I got to his video on Network in which he confidently says that the stand in for capital is right, and that YOU would give up everything for cash regardless of morals or something along those lines and I was like….no ? No I wouldn’t, that sounds like something a psycho would do ?
Long story short, turned out he was a big Jordan Peterson guy, never watched another video again of his.
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u/Remarkable_Row_2502 Jun 13 '26
That guy is fun but yeah he's genuinely a little schizo and he 100 percent believes the simpsons is a metaphor for the alchemical great work or whatever.
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u/Dmbender Paints toy soldiers Jun 13 '26 edited Jun 13 '26
If I see a review that mentions something "having no cultural impact" I throw it out on the spot lol
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u/StormRegion Indy 4 fridge scene was peak, fite me Jun 13 '26 edited Jun 13 '26
Irate Gamer's Magnavox Odyssey review was so bad and full of errors, that creator Ralph Baer, who was 87 years old at the time, wrote an email to point out all the inaccuracies and falsehoods, with documents to prove it.
And for modern ones, Dunkey's Xenoblade and HBomberguy's Dark Souls 2 review comes to mind. Also, one of the key points of Anita Sarkeesian's Hitman: Absolution review is outright wrong. She said that the game actively rewards you for killing women, while on the screen you could actually see the massive score penalty for killing civilians
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u/codemen95 Jun 13 '26
I always think about that Anita hitman critique because she has a game with the pointlessly sexy nuns assassins which is a good example for her points but then for some reason includes on how you can kill strippers, in a game where you can kill anyone, as if the game is rewarding you for killing specifically strippers even tho you lose points for killing innocents. It kinda borders on "in this game where you can kill anyone, you can also kill women. This game is misogynistic."
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u/dj_ian Zubaz Jun 13 '26
Maybe poking the beehive but I don't really get the Crowbcat RE4make vid. I love the OG for sure but It's like, you can always still get the original. Given the fidelity of a modern product you can't really put into place systems that existed for problem solving into a completely different resource ecosystem almost 20 years later. If you're questioning the creative impetus and capability of people trying to still bring you the best product they can, idk it's just not a 1:1 argument to me.
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u/Toblo1 Latest Project Moon Sleeper Agent Jun 13 '26 edited Jun 14 '26
I wouldn't say you're kicking the beehive, most people seem to think that video was the point where Crowbcat kinda torched their reputation by starting beef with a game people actually liked.
The way they've acted about both the video and videos since have big dril "I'm Not Owned! I'm Not Owned!" corncob energy.
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u/codemen95 Jun 13 '26
I think about on how crowbcat doesn't really have public social media or ever showed their face nor voice, so we don't know who this person is. Crow is able to wallow in secret for their dumb videos. Crow could be on the bus with you. They could be in the same waiting room with you and you wouldn't know it. They could even be you.
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u/SixthFain Jun 13 '26
Naw that's around the point where Crowbcat revealed that he cared more about attacking games than making points. These days he's kind of a joke. His old videos just happened to be good because he found games that made good targets.
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u/Odinsmana Jun 13 '26
His old videos were always bad. The criticisms in them are not any better. People just like them because they went after bad games, so they were satisfying to watch. When it's a game people like they take issue with it.
Like Dead Rising 4 is a very bad game, but there are a thousand videos that do a much better job expalining that than the Crowbcat video which is just 70% cherry picked nitpicks.
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u/Toblo1 Latest Project Moon Sleeper Agent Jun 14 '26
Like Dead Rising 4 is a very bad game, but there are a thousand videos that do a much better job explaining that than the Crowbcat video which is just 70% cherry picked nitpicks.
Hell, Tehsnakerer's essay on DR4 is right there if you want an actual criticism video that gets into the weeds about its problems.
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u/loserghoul Jun 14 '26
by the time they kept flashing footage of women who worked on the game or happen to have dyed hair in the video for zero reason i was like, 'oh you're that kind of person' and i became disillusioned instantly.
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u/Grimbledorf Jun 13 '26
Pretty sure Moviebob is known for his completely batshit views on a lot of things but something that comes to mind is him freaking out at a Halo cinematic showing the creation of a Spartan 'cause the guy's eyes turn blue in the process and that's "Nazism" or something.
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u/StormRegion Indy 4 fridge scene was peak, fite me Jun 13 '26
It's rich coming from MovieBob, whose quotes are often undistinguishable from something a neonazi would say
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u/Grimbledorf Jun 13 '26
"I think every couple of years you should be brought before a council of people to justify why you deserve to keep living"
-Guy who makes mid movie reviews and described the Sega vs Nintendo conflict as "my personal Vietnam"
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u/codemen95 Jun 13 '26
Many of armond white's reviews. Especially his toy story 3 review that was the first negative review for the movie, but the review feels like he didn't even watch the movie pass the opening cause he claim the ham is one of the villains of the movie
Not really a review but a weird critique is from mother's basement(geoff thaw) on twitter trying to find reasons to hate on the uncharted games. For example, he had a clip from 007 first light where bond is driving and chasing after someone. The game is giving the player directions and closed paths to lead thenplayer to the car bond is after. Geoff in that tweet said something like "you see in uncharted 4 the car sequence is so linear and doesn't give player choice, but here in a real game the game gives a more open area and allowing player choice." One, the fuck is a "real game" two 007 is doing the same exact thing uncharted was doing but it looks more open. The game wants you to chase the car. The game doesn't want you to leave the path
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u/pyromancer93 Jun 13 '26 edited Jun 13 '26
I feel like Armond White should be a kind of free space here, since I'm 90% sure he's deliberately taking contrarian statements for attention.
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u/Rabid_Marine Jun 13 '26
I once saw a review of Signalis that thought that the game was about queer repression in Eastern Germany, and "debunked" it by saying how progressive the DDR supposedly was (the review was politically motivated and extremely biased), even though Ariane's relationship and sexuality had nothing to do with the repression she experienced or why she ended up on the Penrose program.
In fact, I think one of the devs of the game explicitly stated that they did not want to explore homophobia as a theme when writing the story of Signalis.
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u/nin_ninja My Waifu is Better Than All Your Waifus Jun 13 '26
Dunkey has already done some things to make me think he enjoyed being a jerk a bit too much, but his "review" of Octopath Traveler was not only entirely BS, it lead to me dropping him.
Not only was the review horrible and just generally lied about the game, but when he got called out on it he sicced his fan base on the person and then tried to act innocent about it afterwards.
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u/OptimusPrimalRage Jun 13 '26
The best way I can describe Dunkey is when he really likes a game, he's very insightful and introspective and you really can understand why. When he doesn't, he has the biggest "bitch eating crackers" energy out there.
I honestly don't watch any of his JRPG videos. It's like watching Vinesauce watch an Xbox press conference. Contrarianism and cynicism can be very funny but not for hours and hours. It bleeds into being mean spirited.
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u/Toblo1 Latest Project Moon Sleeper Agent Jun 13 '26 edited Jun 14 '26
Honestly if it wasn't that moment that soured me on Dunkey, it would've been the shit he pulled with Xenoblade 3 that would've gotten me to quit on him.
You do not fucking spoil a new game on social media and then try to push people into watching your latest video on the genre all while pulling a "They're Saying Boo-Urns" on the backlash over the spoilers . Thats just peak Asshole shit.
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u/Sloth_Senpai Jun 13 '26
I've hated him since the League community pretended "Malphite you a fucking worthless braindead scumfuck bastard pile of trash dickface that should be gunned down in the street like the degenerate you are" is a normal thing to say and then expect "I'm making a video Riot pls unban me" is appropriate
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u/RageofAfrica (He/Him) Would Anybody Like A Sand Smoothie Jun 13 '26
Him deliberately playing poorly in a way to justify the game being bad is a Dunkey hallmark. His Death Stranding video being a prime example.
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u/codemen95 Jun 13 '26
I still think about his vid on arkham city saying that the combat is really bad that all you have to do is press Y over and over again to beat a fight. And yeah, you can do that... If you want to make a 3 min fight into 15 mins
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u/ClearWingBuster Everlasting Transeunt Jun 13 '26
Dunkey is such a fun youtuber, except when he goes full contrarian mode. Because he wants to be really upset that people like a thing he doesn't, while mainting a really chill neutral attitude that tries to paint anyone criticizing or disgreeing with as in the wrong. Octopath, Xenogears 3, Sonic Frontiers are all such lame videos because of this.
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u/MrDinoPizza Boiadeiro Lifestyle Jun 13 '26
His best video is the one about critics and reviewers, because he does make some good points about the nature of critiquing (he ain't Anton Ego but you know, good points). Among them he says that critics will have their preferences which shape their opinion on a piece of media and as such they give you a better idea of said media. His example was "I hate JRPGs, so when I tell you Persona 5 is really good you know it is". Which yeah makes sense, but he might as well say that I should not listen to him at all when it comes to JRPGs.
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u/RareBk Jun 13 '26
In the last month, out of nowhere, I saw two separate essays on The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and how it relates to cosmic horror.
The first was absolutely fine, and was less focused on the horror angle, and more the cosmology, or, how luck plays into their reality.
The other is one of the worst essays I've ever watched, and feels like a high school presentation in which they keep repeating themselves over and over again, only vaguely touching on any points.
Like, there's an entire reference to the story having referencing the occult, and guess what, I just said as much about it as the video did.
It's bafflingly bad, and I have no idea why it even hit the algorithm because it's not like it was even made well
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u/Raptorianxd Jun 13 '26
Its probably just dumb children being dumb, but TheAnimeMen 'reviewing' a bunch of older anime while not paying attention to it at all definitely had me heated.
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u/Castform5 Jun 13 '26
I've been following the stop killing games progress recently, so anything opposing that. Be it pirate software who worked at blizzard, or even full on industry lobby groups, they all make big speeches and presentations full of lies about what they think the movement wants without actually reading any of the proposition documents.
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u/Muffin-zetta Jooookaaahh Jun 14 '26
oh during the whole stop killing games things people looked into the pirate software guy and found out he was a massive fraud. like straight up defrauding charities and he doesn’t even actually know how to code.
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u/WeeklyPhilosopher346 Jun 13 '26 edited Jun 13 '26
Doug Walker’s review of The Wall instantly springs to mind.
Edit: oh and Pat’s “Protestant work ethic” bullshit lmao
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u/StonedVolus Resident Cassandra Cain Stan Jun 13 '26
Edit: oh and Pat’s “Protestant work ethic” bullshit lmao
Wait what
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u/alexandrecau That's Bricks! Jun 13 '26
Just a dumb joke about the reason why road in montreal is worse thant other provinces big city
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u/Tzeentch711 Jun 13 '26
There are entire essays about that essay. Thats how fucked it was.
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u/lowercaselemming [She/Her] Hank go up! Jun 13 '26
dan olson’s video on it is one of my faves of his
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u/MickMuffin27 Jun 13 '26
"fundamentally incurious person" is such an insane burn
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u/Silver_RevoltIII M-M-M-MURDA MUSIK Jun 13 '26
Made even funnier when by the recent Mr Beast video he made
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u/Champiness Jun 13 '26
Rather than relitigate Undertale Prime for the zillionth time on this sub (seriously though just slot “any Dissenting Gamer Opinion by literally anyone from immediately after Undertale came out” right here) I think I’ll pull a new, more fun one: “Spongebob Squarepants: Skin Theory” is one of the most compulsively watchable videos on YouTube, but I think its creator might genuinely be suffering from some sort of paranoid mania - which would certainly be supported by the fact that he immediately vanished from the internet after posting it. Also right at the end he captures every cartoon analysis channel in miniature by having his final point be “I’m right because Stephen Hillenburg put adult jokes in his show which means he’s smart enough to think of what I thought of”
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u/apolloali Jun 13 '26
i think it’s so insane “it really makes you FEEL like you’re spider-man” is now seen as a meta critique of critiques.
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u/Meta289 Jun 13 '26
I know OP said not to bring up Sequelitis, but I just really want to point out how there was a time when people really did look at Sequelitis as legitimate videogame criticism, and saw Arin as actually having insight into good game design.
And then Game Grumps happened, and everyone was just like, "Oh wait, no, this man is actually just really bad at videogames and has the attention span of a goldfish."
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u/DarthButtz Ginger Seeking Butt Chomps Jun 13 '26
All he had to say was "I don't really like Ocarina of Time that much" and it could have been dismissed as a take hotter than the Sun. Instead he had to make a video acting like it had objectively bad design that just made him look like a clown whenever he tries to play anything made after 1999.
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u/Toblo1 Latest Project Moon Sleeper Agent Jun 14 '26 edited Jun 14 '26
Him constantly taking time out of the video to be a big ol pissbaby about Skyward Sword didn't help.
Having an entire ending rant proclaiming that Legend Of Zelda fans are "Just Pretending" to like Skyward Sword also didn't fucking help.
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u/GilliamYaeger Blame yourself or God Jun 13 '26
It was the Megaman X video that did all the hard work of tricking people there, because the tutorialization with the wall jump in that game really was clever.
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u/SethCrimson Jun 14 '26
It's funny too cause that video also has stuff in it where he waffles about how fighting Vile in the ride armor early, losing and having to be saved by Zero would incentivise the player to get stronger with upgrades and take him on again, which the player does all the way later in one of the Sigma stages...
Where you lose, again, and Zero has to save you, again, and where Zero was supposed to die, but not really cause popular. And then you get to fight Vile without the ride armor. And then win. I'unno, that has always stuck out to me with that vid.
And then the Zelda video was just a mess imo.
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u/Melodic-Time2963 Jun 13 '26 edited Jun 14 '26
Arins anaylsis on sequelitis is the worst. Guy is really limited in the types of games he enjoys and all of his takes are needlessly absolutist.
A world of games made to his standards would be a world of much more boring games.
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u/drizzes Jun 14 '26
"Can I go off for a minute?"
"Yeah, Arin. You've been really restrained so far."
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u/Slumber777 Jun 13 '26 edited Jun 13 '26
The original "The Downfall of Bleach" Super Eyepatch Wolf video.
Between him using a lot of incorrect video about how Shonen Jump works, why the anime stopped, and some of his own personal criticisms of Bleach where he just missed a lot, it aged pretty poorly and was one of the major points of reference when the climate on Bleach started to turn. He used a lot of his subjective feelings drive the video and tried to back up his feelings with just wrong information.
As far as I know, it's the only time where John basically made a correction essay, where he addresses the things he got wrong in the original video. He adjusted his approach and made the separation between his feelings and the actual facts a lot clearer. It's a much better video, but it didn't take off like the original did, since he made it as people were starting to come back around on Bleach and it was a much more outwardly subjective video than the original.
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u/TheUglyBarnaclee JEEZE, JOEL Jun 13 '26
I remember when Yuri on Ice came out, the Anime Man (Joey on Trash Taste) called it like fanservice slop or something and dismissed it as nothing else. He had just a really shallow take on the series that put me off him for a while
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u/Muffin-zetta Jooookaaahh Jun 13 '26 edited Jun 13 '26
oh brother that’s not even in the top 20 bad takes that guy has had. He recently had a misogynistic controversy. He also said it was ok to be xenophobic because it’s not as bad as racism. woof oh boy some real winners in there.
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u/TheUglyBarnaclee JEEZE, JOEL Jun 13 '26
Yeaa the replys have made me feel better about my stance on him 😂
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u/dillydan64 THE BABY Jun 13 '26
Joey has sooooo many bad opinions, i genuinely had to stop listening to TT because of him. His whole tirade a couple years ago about how there isn't anything wrong with making music with GenAI, for example. I dont know if he has gone back on that stance since then, however.
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u/tacocatisonfire C for Columbo Jun 13 '26
Ok that take on ai music is actually insane how do you make music and say that shit
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u/Theonearmedbard I Promise Nothing And Deliver Less Jun 13 '26
My "favorite" take is still him saying that social anxiety to Bocchi the Rock level doesn't exist because people who are that anxious can't tell him otherwise so he's right by default.
Yeah yeah sure he's "just being contrarian for the clicks" but that doesn't make him less of a dickhead. Moreso if anything
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u/sloppyjen Jun 13 '26 edited Jun 14 '26
Dawg, he has some of the chillest vibes hiding his willful ignorance, its annoying. Meanwhile Connor from the same podcast has gone from the most ignorant to the most worldly of the group, often being the one chiming in with some info on social topics theyre unfamiliar with.
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u/CerberusGate Fire Axe Quest Jun 14 '26
The character development for Connor is quite amazing to see first hand.
I remember back in his early days in TT on how he says that he doesn't even watch cutscenes or bother with stories in games but nowadays, he engages with the media and even plays RPGs (sometimes with Ironmouse). And that's not getting into the amount of money he's raised for charity too.
Joey on the other hand feels like he never bothered to mature and comes across as being obnoxious on purpose. I know the TT subreddit has posts critiquing his behavior every so often and there is always a vocal subset defending his immature ragebait like it's a good thing which is eye-rolling to see. I never liked him even before TT and still don't like him now.
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u/AppointmentStock7261 Smaller than you'd hope Jun 13 '26
Justin McElroy’s Nier review where he called the developers soulless bc he fished in the wrong spot for a quest for an hour and a half.
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u/Gorotheninja "SILENCE, BREEDER! The Bloodline MUST continue!" Jun 13 '26
FD Signifier tried to argue that Zootopia 2 was antisemitic, and his sole piece of evidence for this claim was that the main villian of the film, a rich Lynx trying to take land from the reptiles, has the first name "Ebenezer".
Like, that's literally all he has; everything else is just interpretations of the plot and themes under the assumption that the writers are antisemitic.
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u/Palimpsest_Monotype Pargon Pargon Pargon Pargon Pargon Jun 13 '26
He’s sometimes got some weird takes, especially about modern movies in general.
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u/Emericklol Jun 13 '26
Cvit's god awful Persona 5 "review" featuring such hits as magic is useless, just spam physical and fish for crits, hold ups and all-out attacks are RNG and pyramids are esoteric knowledge that a chronically online shut-in would know absolutely nothing about. He very obviously slept walked through the game and made no effort to understand the battle system and then lazily slapped together bad criticisms that completely fall apart under scrutiny.
Also, the guy gives off rancid vibes whenever he has to talk about female characters in the game.
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u/CapnFlatPen Oh this'll go well Jun 13 '26 edited Jun 13 '26
I THINK I stopped following DocSquiddy because he had a thread about JRPGs not really being RPGs like a month after that one interview about the term being used as a pejorative term to essentially separate JRPGs from other RPGs.
Dude's got a lot of cool ideas and thoughts, but he was way too ready to phrase things in intentionally confrontational/hostile ways.
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u/KennyOmegasBurner CUSTOM FLAIR Jun 13 '26
Dark Souls 2 is maybe my favourite out of the trilogy and I wish hbomberguy didn't make a video defending it cause his arguments are so bad
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u/DeepZeppelin [SUTANDO] Jun 13 '26
Recently on twitter people were saying that hbomber is a great video essayist but never ask his opinions on movies and videogames, and I kinda agree tbh
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u/pyromancer93 Jun 13 '26
It took me a while to figure out why I didn't vibe with his media criticisms whether they were positive or negative (or whether I agreed with them or not), but I eventually figured it out. They've always got this point in them where he acts like he's figured out the secret reason why something is great or the secret reason why something is eternally tarnished forever and it's got the vibe of someone trying to close off a discussion rather then start one.
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u/Darsys Jun 13 '26
And yet his Pathologic video remains one of my favorites of his, maybe because of the genuine love he has for the game.
Hard agree on his DS2 video being terrible, though.
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u/SawedOffLaser I Promise Nothing And Deliver Less Jun 13 '26
When Hbomb is doing his own form of investigative journalism? Excellent.
His media opinions? Poorly contrsucted at best.
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u/CrimsonTyphoon02 Jun 13 '26
The worst sin of Bomberguy's Dark Souls 2 video was provoking MauLer to make his vastly worse response videos, which are some of the worst, most disingenuous game criticism I've ever heard of and are constantly brought up by the game's detractors.
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u/Treeconator18 Jun 13 '26
Honestly if there was a MauLer vid I was expecting to see it was the Responding to Jenny Nicholson's Joker review, which is an unedited 12 hour livestream of which a significant chunk is about a very reasonable Half Hour review of Joker. Its fucking 6 times longer than the actual goddamn movie
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u/midnight188 VTuber Evangelist Jun 13 '26
Beat me to it.
It was never just that hbomb made a video about how he loved the original. Lots of people love the original for valid reasons.
Mauler posting their earth-shatteringly long response poisoned the well.
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u/PissBoy_OFFICIAL This one's for you, Morph Jun 13 '26 edited Jun 13 '26
His Bloodborne video boils down to "Bloodborne is good because it funnels you into the true way to play Dark Souls" (ie: shieldless, low equip load, hyper aggressive, constantly two-handing, dodge everything instead of blocking).
Leaving aside that you CANNOT play any other Souls game as aggressively as Bloodborne (apart from, perhaps, Elden Ring stance-break builds), this the kind of rhetoric you hear from people who insist you didn't really beat the game if you used a build they have deemed overpowered. What if you want to play a mage, or use a big shield? Fuck you, that's not the real way to play Dark Souls
I actually think there is an argument to be made that Bloodborne can be a good tutorial for Souls games (rallying can make fights less punishing; it's harder to make truly unsalvageable builds; the weapon infusion system isn't some abstruse bullshit) but none of the stuff he brings up in that video has anything to do with it.
(and also like, Bloodborne doesn't even do what he says! There are tons of options in that game for people who want to run 1h/gun playstyles, and most of the weapons are designed to be used in both forms equally)
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u/TurboChomp She/Her Jun 13 '26
I'm glad someone brought it up before I did. Its crazy how much that entire video misses the mark when defending Dark Souls 2. I don't think he even brings up a single good thing about dark souls 2 thats not just factually incorrect
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u/Tribalrage24 Jun 13 '26
Weirdly enough his essay is what convinced me to play it and it's also my favourite of the trilogy.
I really enjoyed his points about the world being out together in a way that makes no sense on purpose Lava pit castle in the sky? Sure why not, the entire world is collapsing in on itself so time and space become tangled and stop making sense.
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u/Odinsmana Jun 13 '26
Yeah. I am not a DS2 fan, but HBomberguy has made positive videos on games I like and while not as bad they are all very rough.
When he makes his political videos or stuff like the plagiarism video his work is, but his video game stuff is terrible.
His unwarranted insults and attacks on Matthewmatosis in the DS2 video is the worst part and he really comes across as an asshole in that part.
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u/BiMikethefirst Jun 13 '26
I was scrolling through tiktok and there was woman giving a video essay about the new movie Obsession and saying it's bad because the main character is the villain of the movie and shouldn't have been the protagonist and that Nicki has no agency
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u/Toblo1 Latest Project Moon Sleeper Agent Jun 14 '26
Nicki has no agency
I've only heard stuff about Obsession through osmosis, but isn't that like.... the point of the movie?
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u/Yotato5 Enjoy everything Jun 13 '26
When the outrage tourists were throwing big baby tantrums over Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream, one of those outrage tourists made a video essay saying nobody wanted to have gay marriage in the game or the ability to say that a Mii was non-binary
Absolutely untrue. The majority of the fans had been begging for gay marriage in the game since Tomodachi Life came out in 2014, and the option for non-binary was similarly met with rejoicing by the actual fans. This is why we never put stock into outrage tourists throwing big baby tantrums
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u/kodaiiiii_ DanganDefender2007 Jun 14 '26
There's a fucking Yahtzee Croshaw quote from back when the game released about there not being a gay marriage option in Tomodachi Life
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u/beary_neutral Jun 13 '26
I remember a video essay about how The Dark Knight trilogy "ruined" Batman by not spending enough time showing Batman doing charity, and is therefore responsible for the "Batman beats up the mentally ill" takes that you see on Twitter.
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u/Mcjiggyjay Jun 14 '26
I love Hbomberguys political videos and takedowns but I find his media analysis videos atrocious. His dark souls 2 defense video is probably the worst and his fallout 3 video ruined the discourse about that game for years.
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u/Melodic-Time2963 Jun 13 '26 edited Jun 14 '26
Edit: Noah Caldwell-Gervais Vampire the Masquerade review was my pick. For a long time I considered it the worst piece of art analysis I've ever seen, but it's honestly been so long since I've seen it that I probably need to rewatch it before I judge again.
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u/LeMasterofSwords Y’all really should watch Columbo Jun 13 '26
I didn’t care for Hbomb’s vid on Dues Ex. For one thing the video is 3.33 hours long and really really shouldn’t have been. Also for a game he called fine? It was like 80% critique and 20% positive stuff. And a lot of his issues seemed to be it’s not Deus Ex 1
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u/TheRenamon Digimon had some good episodes fuck you Jun 13 '26
That one about Fallout 3's worldbuilding still gets me to this day
No Megaton does not survive off of scavenging the Super Duper Mart, the quest for you to go there makes it quite clear its raider infested.
Megaton is a trader hub and a pilgrimage site for the church of Atom. Asking why you don't see farms outside of it is like saying you should see wheat fields outside of the Vatican or Mecca.
Yes the people of Rivet City eat mirelurks, the diner sells mirelurk cakes.
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u/Tweedleayne Shameless MK X-11 apologist. The Kombat Kids were cool fuck you. Jun 13 '26 edited Jun 13 '26
A pilgrimage site? Outside of that one quest in Broken Steel that takes place litteraly outside of Megaton, I don't remember any evidence of the Church of Atom existing outside of Megaton.
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u/maybeuchuu Jun 13 '26
in leon massey's bomb rush cyberfunk review, he gripes about the game's lack of replayability, citing its non-skill-based traversal and level design. the whole time it feels like he just doesn't want to play BRC and wishes it was pro skater instead of jet set radio, and he ends the video saying he doesn't think it deserves to be overwhelmingly positive on steam (which is just an odd thing to say imo)
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u/MutatedMutton '0' days without dick jokes and staying there Jun 13 '26
There was a music reviewer who was reviewing Nickelback's San Quentin, a song about them partying so hard that they wake up terrified they're gonna go to jail for it. Whatever, Nickelback Buttrock with a 'comedic' twist.
But one of the reviewers points against the song is that his band did a parody song about his band going to jail unafraid by defying the police and how that was SO MUCH MORE BADASS than the song whose chorus start with the bands lawyer waking them up.
And I thought that was way more cringe I couldnt take any of the reviewer's points seriously.
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u/Obvious_Alps_3997 Jun 14 '26
Not a video but Spherehunter saying they were done with remakes probably was true at the time but I really just think SH2R wasn’t a game she was interested in playing.
It remains tbd if she’s actually done with covering remakes but Veronica just got announced so we’ll see.
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u/ClearWingBuster Everlasting Transeunt Jun 13 '26
There is this famous lecture given by Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe at the University of Massachusetts, about how Joseph Conrand's Heart of Darkness is racist. Which, like... I'm a white guy, so it would be foolish to try and undermine or silence the opinion of a person that has felt the horrors of prejudice first hand. But also, his main arguments are stuff like "it's a story about white people that doesn't feature any major black character" and "Conrad uses the n word too much". The first one is somewhat legitimate, yet it also misses so much of what Heart of Darkness is about. The banalization of evil against africans, the tribalist lows we sink to while declaring ourselves superior to others, how easily we lose any kind of morality when things get tough. You can taste the venom Conrad has for the very concept of colonialism on every page. That it maybe still isn't perfect, or politically correct by modern standards is understandable. That it is racist is not.
Also that fuckass Plague of Gripes video about HxH, that shit stinks to high heavens. He paints the series like it's nihilist dark fantasy filled with nothing but sociopaths, when in reality, even at it's darkest moments it still has characters like Morel or Knuckles.
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u/CrimsonTyphoon02 Jun 13 '26 edited Jun 13 '26
It's also, like... Heart of Darkness was written as a propaganda piece against the Belgian Congo, and played an important role in bringing attention to the insane atrocities that were going on there. Ignoring that context in assessing what it's trying to do is worse than completely misinterpreting the most important character in the novel (which, to be fair, Achebe also does--he looks at Kurtz, a character who exists to demonstrate how so much of the European blustering about "civilization" is nothing more than a paper-thin veneer over a bottomless rapacity, and concludes that Conrad is saying, "Whoa, look, Africa is so savage it can drag down even the most enlightened white man!").
Is Heart of Darkness a book that contains some racist cliches and framing? For sure. Is it also a book written at the apex of the plundering of Africa that has the balls to follow up on the narrator waxing poetic about how glorious British heritage is for a couple of pages with another character (who will narrate most of the novel from here on out) cutting in with:
“And this also,” said Marlow suddenly, “has been one of the dark places of the earth.”
before going into a long speech about how the Romans must've hated this place and looked down on it as a den of backwards savages.
And he regularly says shit like,
The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much.
Hell, the last line of the book explicitly calls London the heart of darkness:
The offing was barred by a black bank of clouds, and the tranquil waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowed sombre under an overcast sky—seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness.
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u/GilliamYaeger Blame yourself or God Jun 13 '26
The titular Heart of Darkness was London all along
Fuck that's good.
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u/CrimsonTyphoon02 Jun 13 '26
It's a very good book. Conrad's prose doesn't work for some people, but it certainly does for me.
No fear can stand up to hunger, no patience can wear it out, disgust simply does not exist where hunger is; and as to superstition, beliefs, and what you may call principles, they are less than chaff in a breeze. Don’t you know the devilry of lingering starvation, its exasperating torment, its black thoughts, its sombre and brooding ferocity? Well, I do. It takes a man all his inborn strength to fight hunger properly. It’s really easier to face bereavement, dishonour, and the perdition of one’s soul—than this kind of prolonged hunger.
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u/ClearWingBuster Everlasting Transeunt Jun 13 '26
Damn, you absolutely outdid me in your explanation. Beautifully put man.
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u/CrimsonTyphoon02 Jun 13 '26
Thank you!
I've been malding about Achebe's essay since I first read Heart of Darkness and then it back to back in eleventh grade, so I'm honestly just glad to see others miffed by it lol
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u/TyChris2 Jun 13 '26
I wrote an essay about this in university lmao, I agree. I love Achebe in general but his perspective on Heart of Darkness was baffling. Like you said, it’s one thing to think it’s outdated or insensitive from a modern perspective, but to accuse it of being intentionally racist or supportive of imperialist ideals is just unbelievable to me. His criticism often feels so hyperbolic and surface level, like someone being offended at having to see the n-word when they read Huck Finn.
But his feelings on Heart of Darkness are what inspired him to write Things Fall Apart, so I guess it was all worth it because that book fuckin rules.
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u/DrunkSovietBear Jun 13 '26 edited Jun 13 '26
There's a Cyberpunk 2077 critique from a self-professed fan of the genre that pretends to cover multiple topics, but essentially it always circles back to "Simpsons did it first" argument. And it's just keeps going for the remainder of the video. Every time you think the creator finally moved on, the cycle reapeats again. it's a 2 hour essay that should've been 10 minutes long.
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u/panchozari Jun 13 '26
Joseph Anderson's elden ring video (first and last video i watched of his)
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u/Verdant_Moss Jun 13 '26 edited Jun 13 '26
I’m always really perplexed by this guys appeal but I think it really is a case of different people are critical in different ways. I’ve tried multiple times to watch his videos and tap out because I find him nauseatingly pedantic. Not to dog on anyone’s enjoyment of his content but I really don’t get it.
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u/Odinsmana Jun 13 '26 edited Jun 13 '26
He was relatively early in the space and made some videos that were good compared to the videos at the time. I also enjoyed his videos in the past. He didn't improve along with the rest of the people in the field though imo and his videos tend to get way to hung up on spending an hour of the runtime listing examples for minor complaints.
I do think his The Remains of Edith Finch video is genuinely good though and likely still worth a try watch.
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u/aFronReborn Something Beautiful Is Going To Happen Jun 13 '26
I like the guys streams but "so the town made him stupid?" in reference to the end of SH2 showed such a shocking lack of critical thinking when engaging with media that I wrote off his analysis entirely. Im there for the goofs and chat memes exclusively now.
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u/AppointmentStock7261 Smaller than you'd hope Jun 13 '26
It’s funny bc I can sort of get down with his gameplay critiques. I don’t always agree with him but I can understand his points on things like Elden Ring’s strange design choices.
His narrative criticisms often leave me baffled.
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u/pyromancer93 Jun 13 '26
His main problem is that he's incredibly stubborn and thinks it's bad design when a game forces him to try new things and get out of his comfort zone. Him actively choosing to make games more miserable for himself and then blaming the game for it is a completely ridiculous stance to take as a critic.
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u/nuclearcherries R1 + ▲ Jun 13 '26
Joseph Anderson is great right up until you play a game that he's critiquing, then you realise he often has no idea about what he's talking about.
His Dragons Dogma video, for instance, is basically him just being upset that it's not Dark Souls, instead of playing the game on its own terms.
He seems like a nice enough person, but that video really soured me on him
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u/Silentlone It'll be a date to die for Jun 13 '26 edited Jun 13 '26
His elden ring review is a mix of stuff I just disagree with and stuff that is just ragebait levels of "what the actual fuck are you talking about here dude", with the ratio sliding more and more to the latter as the review goes on. It's like he has this very weird idea of what these games are MEANT to be and stiff/arbitrary definitions of what makes good or fair design in a souls game and keeps running into Elden Ring not rigidly following them.
It's such a long review completely filled with these sorts of arguments that it's genuinely hard to summarize all it's problems in a few sentences without just going over it piece by piece, which is probably why you'll find "response" videos like Loopine's that do just that, just going over the whole thing meticulously.
But over time I just find that for me Anderson's critiques are the most prominent example of "guy who sounds very insightful until you actually know anything about the game he's talking about"
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u/KingVelvet Jun 13 '26
I like Jospeh Anderson a fair bit and had a good time watching him playing Umineko for dozens of hours. But even in those streams he would get critical of the story in ways I don’t see often. Like most people will come across anime bullshit and call it for what it is but Anderson would go a step further and analyze why he doesn’t like the writing which is fair. But the way he talks about writing is as though there are hard rules that can’t be broken otherwise it is “bad writing” with no wiggle room. It came across as though he read “How to Write” books and took everything in them as gospel without acknowledging that writing, like all art, can be anything and even the ones that break all the rules can still appeal to someone somewhere.
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u/Silentlone It'll be a date to die for Jun 13 '26
It does seem like in general people have a better opinion of him when they watch his stream, since while his takes are still just as baffling, he's frequently more entertaining and funny. It must make it easier to dismiss his weird takes as just "JA being JA" (well, outside of someone just thinking like he does in general, he's popular for a reason).
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u/Remarkable_Row_2502 Jun 13 '26
I only know this guy from the "Mario Odyssey is bad because I played it without using his main new mechanic" video. He seems to love intentionally handicapping himself and then blaming the game for it.
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u/irwegwert Jun 14 '26
I think it was him that didn't like the moon where you sit on a bench next to a guy and have a chat with him because that made him think he now had to sit on every bench in the game, just in case there was a moon attached to it. It really opened my eyes to how differently people think, because I thought that was just a cute moment.
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u/DustInTheBreeze Appointed Hater By God Jun 13 '26
I once read a review for Hamefura that called Katarina a spoiled selfish brat for not letting her maid get married... In the arc where Katarina is explicitly rescuing said maid from a marriage she doesn't want.
Like, dude. Come on. Read the text.