Happy Fifth Anniversary Irate Gamer. Somehow You Haven't Changed.

On April 23rd 2007, "filmmaker" Chris Bores created the "Irategamer" account on YouTube. Five days later on April 28th, he uploaded his first video. I consider the first video more of an anniversary than the day he joined, and today his "show" turns five years old.

Yes, five years ago today we were graced with a video of IG at a greenscreen movie theater watching Back to the Future, making obvious statements about the NES game, stealing from someone better than him, playing on a broken ROM despite having a copy of the game, using his first stock explosion effects on the enemies, comparing the Soda Shop stage to completely unrelated games, all culminating in him going back in time, murdering the CEO of LJN, somehow erasing himself from time, and playing Adventures in the Magic Kingdom.
Surely he would have improved after this right? .........

And now, a recap of each year.

2007: This was his busiest year for his regular show, providing 13 retro reviews with a short in a hotel and a censored version of one episode. He had his only television review talking about the Sopranos finale, doing the "smash cut to black ending" joke. He also provided the "prototype" of Irate Gamer Neo, talking about The Simpsons Game. As well as the Breakfast Rants, childish rants about cosmetic changes to cereal ending with him claiming the entirety of the meal is "ruined".

2008: This year he tried spreading out to different mediums. He gave us ten retro reviews with a noticeable change in style (Less AVGN and more Family Guy). He expanded on IG Neo, making it a regular thing as a partner with GottGame. The end of the year gave us Top 5 lists of his "favorite" NES and Nintendo DS games, with some very questionable points. He also attempted a TMZ of gaming, talking about a Scrabble game on DS that had curse words in it. Too bad the only source I could find this story was the DailyMail, a British rag comparable to a tabloid*.
*Correction: The Daily Mail IS a tabloid. That only makes this worse...
He also did movie reviews, starting with a list of 10 summer movies he wants to see, followed by extremely short and generic reviews that ranged from 47 seconds to three minutes. He even tried a comic book review with promises there would be more (nope). There was also some bizarre video about the language of Rice Krispies that I swear he stole from George Carlin.

2009: This is where things really started to slow down. A total of TWO retro reviews this year with the number of Neo and movie reviews far outnumbering it. The latter also showcased his very questionable taste in movies. He also started the poorly paced "History of Video Games", with two installments. Making this the only year that's happened.
He also made a list on the worst video game movies, and somehow didn't include Uwe Boll (telling me he has no clue who he is). He also talked about a portable NES sent to him by a paraphernalia site for geeks, what makes it funny is they no longer sell the model he talked about.
For some ungodly reason, GottGame took IG to his first E3. There he showed he has no skill in interviewing people, making me wonder why SWAGshow even told him to do that. He also brought back the Breakfast Rants after a two year absence, but changed it to "I Rate the 80s" with plans to talk about more than cereal. Despite that claim, he still talked about cereal.

2010: This is where things started to change. Like last year, there were only two retro reviews, but the second one included another change in direction. It began an "epic storyline" involving a cast of characters with IG as the "hero" and a mysterious shadowy villain called... the Shadow Overlord. Despite being an "ongoing" story, this was the only installment. It also started broadcasting in HD, which Chris made damn sure we knew. Seriously, he wouldn't shut up about it.
His Neo reviews started getting much lazier, one video being less than two minutes long and an infamous 3-in-1 video where he barely played the games. He also showed how much of a Sony fanboy he really is. As for History, he only did one installment.
His movie reviews also slowed down, going from eight last year to a measly two. And this is after he went from static images zooming in to actual trailer footage. I guess he was too lazy for that.
He also returned to E3 again, and despite the awful interviews, SWAG gave him a lot more to do. This year also started the contests, where he would give away free stuff in exchange for new subscribers. A very scummy trick. Despite his promise to make I Rate the 80s a regular thing, he only did two videos. Oops.
Near the end of the year, he "reviewed" trailers and even planned to make this a regular thing as well. Just another thing that didn't take off.

2011: Things started taking a strange turn here. He gave us three retro reviews this year, but barely advanced his storyline. Like last year, there was only one History video, the slow pace and subject matter of each episode really showcased the problems with his method.
The movie reviews just outright stopped, other than his annual top ten list. There was a HUGE increase in contests, at one point a weekly occurrence. Telling us how desperate he was for subscribers.
To showcase his "cast" he also started doing sketches that were hard to watch, including one of his nasally Jewish skeleton character singing Deck the Halls. He once again returned to E3, and despite the lack of SWAG he still given a lot of interviews. No idea who thought that was a good idea. He also showed how unprofessional he can be when he couldn't get into Ubisoft's conference.
Out of nowhere, I Rate the 80s came back in a big way with five new episodes. People began thinking this was an improvement, until he showed they can be just as bad (if not worse) than his other stuff.
But the strangest was the massive ego stroking videos. Three videos where he talked about how great he is and how he's getting better. One of them mentioned a certain person he stole from in his early videos, almost like a plea for forgiveness. But as they say, too little too late.
The only thing that stayed consistent was Neo, and that's due to his idea that one hour is good enough to review a game. He also changed his "company" name from Y2B Productions to Irate Entertainment.

2012: The year is still young, so who knows what will happen in the next eight months. But so far the output has been astonishingly lazy. We don't even have a new regular IG episode.

Five years of poor research, cliche writing, dreadful acting, and thousands and thousands of haters. Somehow, Chris Bores hasn't learned a damn thing. I'll be here to point out everything wrong.

Boo Video in 90 Seconds. ... I'm Getting Deja Vu

IG uploaded a new video, another "short". After watching it, I think I'm starting to notice something.

The short begins with IG playing Super Mario World and doing a Ghost House level. During his fake controller playing he looks to his right (our left) and sees a Boo. He looks again later and sees two Boos, and after that six Boos. All accompanied with scare chords.
IG throws his controller and looks down to his shelf. He knocks away his oddly placed Ghostbusters NES games and takes out a Ghost Trap. Why does he hide his Ghost Trap like that? Was that his way of telling the audience "Look, I have Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters II on NES!" That's not something to be proud of, those games suck.
He places the trap, takes out a switch (because he's too lazy to add effects to a Proton Pack), does a badly forced evil laugh while he presses it and traps the Boos. Clearly this needed to exist. My guess is he wanted to show off his "cool tornado effect".
He picks up the trap and taunts the Boos inside, and somehow he makes it sound forced. Jeez.
During this I'm just saying "Big Boo will appear. Big Boo will appear" and what do you know Big Boo appears and roars. Since do Boos roar? That was lame.

I'm starting to notice a pattern with these shorts. IG plays an old game, character from game shows up, hi-jinx ensue. Yes, I'm jumping the gun a bit and I should wait for another one before determining this. I'm just merely delivering a hypothesis.

By the way Chris, the "ghosts" have a name. They're Boos. Maybe you should have looked that up before calling them "ghosts" in the title and description.

He says he has the next two IG shorts planned out (*points to pattern above*) and that for regular IG he's in the middle of a "huge story arc". Yes, a story arc so huge that it hasn't gone anywhere after four episodes and it's been six months since the last one. Brilliant! Don't expect it for a while, he said on Facebook he's still "finalizing the script".

A Freight Train of Pointless

Bores has uploaded material since his Ninja Gaiden 3 review. The problem is that it's incredibly pointless and barely worth recapping. Instead I'll just summarize what he talked about in this post.

First was a rant video on the Michael Bay produced Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Late to the party as usual. The video was Bores saying the same stuff almost everyone else has been saying about it, there was little substance here. Part of it felt like a plug for his own videos on TMNT.
Though there is one noteworthy contradiction. While talking about Bayformers, he says he didn't like the first two movies and had no plans to see the third. That's funny, in his Top 10 Summer Movies of 2011, he put it on the list saying "But it's Transformers, I guess I gotta see it". If you had no plans, why did you put it on the list? Did you not have a 10th movie to put there?

The second wasn't a video, but rather an article he made for GotGame. http://gotgame.com/2012/04/05/e3-2012-tradeshow-floor-map-revealed/
Not the real E3 2012 floor map, but a mock-up of what HE thinks will be the floor map. What's the point? Who is this going to benefit? Nobody visits GotGame, and I don't see what a fake map will accomplish. And to GotGame, shame on you. This is your idea of journalism? Even ScrewAttack has more credibility than you!
Also, some of Bores speculative ideas are just awful. Putting the big three all in one room? Crowd control you fool!
This is like a kid that has a map of Disneyland and he's marking all the rides he wants to go on, only this is for a Disneyland that hasn't been built yet and it's made up of only his favorite rides. This is beyond stupid!

The latest was a "preview" of Skylanders Giants. This would have been a tolerable video... had the info he provided been recent. But no, a lot of this info is at least two months old. Plus, half the video was him bragging that he got the newest Skylanders.Who cares?
In the beginning, he mentions he had to wait in line to get them... and illustrates this with a pointless effect of him and a bunch of clones (all in the same shirt) standing in line. Do you really think your fans are that dumb that they don't know what a line is? Was that an attempt a joke? If it was, that's just sad.

It's almost like he's posting pointless, harmless crap on purpose. That way I don't recap it and point out how wrong he is all the time.
Any clues what's next? My informants tell me he said his next regular IG episode (as in the retro review part) is coming "soon". Given his poor sense of timing, soon can mean anything. Keep in mind, his last retro review was in October. I've said it before and I'll say it again, for someone boasting an "epic storyline", this pacing is absolute crap!