As is tradition, it’s time to count down what I think are the worst Irate Gamer moments/videos of the year. This has been a strange year, with Bores flip-flopping on multiple ideas and an overall lack of activity.
His ego stroking was still there, but not as bad as last year. Some people believe he’s actually improving, I don’t see how but okay.
Then again, some people believe I’ve been doing this since 2007, even though my posts date back to 2009. Reading comprehension is hard you guys!
And now, the IG Tally!
Regular Irate Gamer Show: Two (Silver Surfer and X-Men)
His inane storyline continues to trudge along at astonishing speed. It amuses me that he claims this will be his “movie”, showing me he has no clue how movies work.
IG Neo: Eight (Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure, Ninja Gaiden 3, Sonic Generations, Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes, Transformers: Fall of Cybertron, Dead or Alive 5, Resident Evil 6, Skylanders: Giants)
As per usual, Neo reviews take the top spot in actual content. Even with eight videos, this was by far his laziest year. At least I take some satisfaction knowing one of those videos can never be posted to his YouTube account, but more on that later.
I Rate the 80s: Four (Bud Bowl, Colorforms, TMNT Comics, Documentary thing)
So much for this being his regular thing now. Hindsight is a bitch. At least he extended beyond toys and food this year with … commercials (from the 90s) and a comic book series.
History of Video Games: One (Fairchild Channel F)
What’s the point? We all know Chris will never finish this stupid thing. What the hell is wrong with him?
Movies: Three (Michael Bay Rant, Men in Black 3, Hunger Games)
What’s this? Bores actually did movie reviews this year? That’s surprising. Though, he didn’t do a Summer Movies list this year, how strange. Really though, only one of those videos can be called a review, the other two were rants. One just reiterating the same stuff about Michael Bay we’ve all heard, and the other showing Bores has next to no idea what he’s talking about when it comes to movie-making.
E3: Twenty-Two
Less than last year, but still just as pointless. I feel sorry for any of the dumb kids that use IG’s E3 coverage for actual news, instead of the multitude of other sources out there. This number includes the late Family Guy: Back to the Multiverse interview he did.
Sketches: Four (Lakitu, Boos, E-Begging Spoof, Real Real Gaming)
This year saw an increase in sketch videos. All of them terrible.
I remember last year, Bores said he was planning to do more sketches with his other characters. All we got from that was Ronnie singing and that Aflac thing. Another unfulfilled promise, he should be a politician.
Other: Nineteen
These are the videos that don’t fit in any of the categories. These include trailers, contests, updates, his 300th video, the many, many, MANY Skylanders videos that weren’t reviews, his History of Video Games revisions, and that Up Up Ubi “review” that felt more like an update.
Much less than last year, thanks to Bores cutting back on contests and superfluous videos like “trailer reviews”.
Total: 63
Because there wasn’t as much activity as last year, I’ve only selected 11 moments.
11. Haunted Investigators returns… WHY?!
I have to wonder what Bores was thinking when he decided to revive this boring garbage. Did he really think people were so invested in him and his friends walking around abandoned buildings with equipment that detects cell phone signals hoping to find fucking ghosts? “Most popular ghost hunting channel on YouTube” You’re the only one, and people are not going to the channel to watch you fumble with a defective camera while blaming “spirits” on it.
He even said in his 200th video that the ghost hunting thing failed! I imagine Bores thought of the old phrase “at first you don’t succeed, try try again”. I don’t think that applies here though.
What really gets me is that he plans to put this on DVD & Blu-Ray, AND put it on Netflix. Try reaching out for the Asylum, they could advertise it as “Paranormal Activity if the people weren’t actors and they actually took this shit seriously”
10. “I’ll just recycle a four year old video, nobody will notice!”
I Rate the 80s wasn’t as horrid as it was last year, thanks in part to less videos. Of course, they were still bad videos, now on a pointless DVD.
Of the three actual episodes, the worst by far was his look at Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comics. His look at the original Mirage Studios series was poorly researched and clear that he didn’t read past issue 5 or 6. But the biggest offense was when he talked about Archie Comics’ Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures, where he recycled a video he made about the same comics back in 2008. Why not spend time doing research on further Mirage Comics, then briefly bring up the Archie ones and post a link to your previous video? Are you that ashamed of anything you made prior to your jump to HD that you pretend it never happened and hope your fans don’t remember as you recycle them?
Or hell, maybe Chris doesn’t remember that he made the 2008 video. He’s said before that he doesn’t remember his past reviews. Either way, it was a lazy review and effort, all so he could do sketches with Kid Bores and Jughead.
9. “Must rush review out, don’t care if I barely played it”
This one is a tie between his reviews of Dead or Alive 5 and Resident Evil 6. Both reviews were posted on the game’s release date, and both were astronomically lazy and rushed. The DOA5 review absolutely reeked of “unscripted”, and we’ve seen Bores can’t do unscripted to save his life. Nothing was said about the gameplay or the multiplayer, instead we get 2 minutes of Bores perving over the women in the game, not even trying to hide it. It was like reading Spoony’s Twitter (at least those women are real).
His RE6 review had some semblance of a script, but it was still bad. Well, more boring than the previous review but the lack of actual points or anything beyond Leon’s campaign shows that he wanted nothing more than to get it out by October 2nd. Hell, some of the footage even looked stolen.
In fact, someone on GotGame called him out on it. Of couse, Bores denies it. The comment is still there. Surprising since anything negative towards Bores tends to get deleted. Can’t have anyone bashing their cash cow.
8. Skylanders Skylanders Skylanders
Back in March, Bores posted a review of Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure, the toy-fueled, money-sucking “reboot” of Spyro the Dragon. Shortly after posting it on YouTube, he made a video about the sequel Skylanders: Giants, going over news that was revealed months ago. He also talked about Giants at E3.
Bores noticed that his Skylanders videos got views, lots and lots of views. More views than his normal content. So Bores only saw one thing, $$$$$$$$.
In the months leading up to Giants’ release, Bores posted a lot of Skylanders videos. All boring, all pointless. It was beyond irritating, the man was obsessed with these things. He even admitted to waiting in line at Toys R Us early in the morning just to get certain figures before they sell out. It’s one thing to wait for the latest tech, but you’re a grown-ass man waiting in line for a KID’S TOY, and you don‘t have kids! Even Jeff Gerstmann wouldn’t do that for his Skylanders.
Even the fans got sick of all the Skylanders videos, the highest rated comments would always be negative.
His Skylanders obsession came to a head when he posted his review of Giants, and not only called “in-depth”, but put more work into the written portion than he has with any other modern game he’s ever reviewed. AND IT WAS STILL TERRIBLE!
Considering how Activision works, I can guarantee there will be a third game next year. To more boring-ass Skylanders videos from Bores! *raises glass then throws it on the ground*
7. The X-Men face their greatest challenge, Mary Sue writing!
The second of two regular Irate Gamer videos released this year. Bores choice of hyping it up was bragging that he was playing 15 characters! Holy shit, that’s nothing to be proud of! To be fair though, the review part was okay. But it’s a game that’s so infamous, so derided, that he really had nothing new to say about it. It’s the type of game that anyone can pick up and realize “this is a pile of crap”.
But the reason it’s on the list is the “storyline” part of it. What a fucking load. As Bores starts playing, he goes over the six playable characters, and all six of them show up in his apartment. Wolverine, Cyclops, Colossus, Nightcrawler, Iceman and Storm. They’re all played by Bores wearing a black turtleneck with X-shaped duct tape on it, various wigs, sunglasses for Cyclops, and visual effects to color his skin. There’s almost no difference between Colossus and Iceman.
Does Bores treat these heroes with respect? No! He’s belligerent, he’s violent, he treats them like servants! Linkara brought up to me that the X-Men are meant to be a Marvel Universe stand-in for minorities, so to see Bores treating them like slaves….. *cough cough*
But they have superpowers, can’t they stop him? Bores cranked the Mary Sue meter to 20 as after he merely swatted Wolverine to his death (I assume death since he disappears for the rest of the video), the rest of the team are reduced to sniveling cowards. If I was doing something like this, I would show respect to the X-Men, apologize to them for having this terrible game to live with.
He also kills Cyclops and Iceman, the former with his still unexplained “Power of Inferno”, the latter is shattered. Worse than The Sentry.
Then there’s his portrayal of Storm, the first female he’s ever portrayed in his five years of videos. Despite only two scenes, she comes off like a total bitch. Part of me thinks that he doesn’t like Storm, considering he said she was terrible in Marvel vs. Capcom 3 (far from the truth), and when she shows up there are crickets chirping (and he still fails at this joke because nobody was applauding beforehand). But part of me also thinks he doesn’t think too highly of women… at least, going by all his pervy comments.
But what about the Evil Gamer? … He’s creating a giant HAL-bot. That’s it. It will probably fight a giant Bores or giant R.O.B. We will see.
6. Ninja Gaiden 3 “It’s easy, so it ROCKS!”
Ugh, Ninja Gaiden 3, what a piece of shit that was. Boring ass game with insultingly easy A.I., severe lack of variety, stupid bosses, lame level design, overabundance of quicktime events, lack of difficulty, lack of violence, and just an overall awful game. They say the Wii U one is better but I haven’t tried it.
However, Bores wants to show that he’s outside of the majority and praises the hell out of Ninja Gaiden 3. Of course, he mentions never playing the first two games, only sullying his opinion on this one.
He even brings up that the game has received negative press, though he makes it clear he didn’t bother to read WHY people hate this game. He mentions that he loves how mindless and relaxing it is, the very thing that fans and critics derided. Meaning Bores loves games only if they’re easy.
At one point, he compares it to Gears of War, despite Gears being a third-person shooter and Ninja Gaiden being an action/hack and slash title. Why the odd comparison? Well, he also mentions God of War in the same sentence, his ignorant ass probably thinks Gears of War is exactly the same. Even though it’s not. Showing that he continues to have no idea what he’s talking about.
What’s interesting is that in the beginning, he mentions that Tecmo themselves sent him the game. I actually believe that, they knew the game was a pile of shit, so they sent it to someone dumb enough not to see its flaws. Once they got their praise, they sent him DOA5, knowing they have a patsy willing to praise anything they do.
I’ve heard that the Wii U version of NG3 retains the difficulty from the first two games, something tells me Bores would hate this updated version.
5. History revisions take priority
I’ve gone on numerous rants about the abysmal pacing of “History of Video Games”. Fans don’t appreciate when they wait 14 months for the next installment, and all they get is 5 minutes about a failed console.
What they also don’t like is even further delays for the next part because Bores’ ego refuses to allow the existence of the SD videos. He must upgrade it to HD and be “consistent”. People don’t want this, and the views reflect that.
Not only are these revisions pointless, they’re somehow worse than the originals. Sure, they’re shorter, but he doesn’t fix the mistakes he made last time, and writing is once again thrown to the wayside for more SPECHUL EFFECTZ SPARKLY.
And why does he revise this stuff? Besides his ego? Because he thinks he can sell this on DVD. Never mind that he can probably get sued for false advertising as this barely scratches the surface of video game history. He can add a “Part 1” all he wants, it doesn’t change the fact that at this pace, he will NEVER finish it. Doesn’t help when he stops going forward and prefers to revisit his past work. What’s next? He’s going to stop his storyline and go back to previous videos and re-edit them to fit this “continuity”? Fuck that noise.
4. “Nintendo is kiddy, Me am manly gamer”
This… came out of nowhere.
Of the 30 something episodes of the regular IG show, only 3 cover games that aren’t on Nintendo consoles (E.T. Kool-Aid Man, and He-Man), giving the impression that he’s a big fan of Nintendo.
When IG Neo started out, he did nothing but games on Nintendo consoles (not counting The Simpsons game, he looked at the PS2 version of that). This changed when he looked at Resident Evil 5, and changed even further when he revealed himself to be a Sony fanboy. The last game on a Nintendo console he reviewed was Mario Sports Mix back in August 2011, and that was in the Video Game Roundup so it was barely a review.
Then came E3 2012, coming out of the Nintendo press conference, Bores decided to change his stance on Nintendo to that of an angry forum fanboy, basically “Nintendo is Kiddy”.
Claiming that he’s happy Nintendo is going the “adult route” while citing ZombiU and Batman Arkham City, never mind that they’re third party games and Nintendo has had “adult” third party games for years now. He goes on to claim that Nintendo needs an “adult” franchise to get Call of Duty money, showing once again that he has no clue how business works. Besides, Nintendo is not going out of business anytime soon.
Then in his Top 5 Worst of E3, he continues whining about Nintendo not “appealing to adults” when he brings up Nintendo Land (which is quite fun by the way). Going on about “Gritty Zelda” and showing he has no idea why people hated Metroid Other M, thinking they made it “for kids” or something. They say “ignorance is bliss”, but it can also be infuriating.
What I don’t get it is how he goes on to put New Super Mario Bros. U in his Top 5 Best of E3, and claim he’s “all about the Mario”. So Mario is the only one that’s “allowed” to be for everyone? Even though the gameplay in Zelda and Metroid are far more complex than “run and jump”? You’re mixing the messages.
Also, this is really hypocritical of Bores to claim, given how he’s overly obsessed with Skylanders. Explain how Skylanders, a game meant for kids, is better than Nintendo franchises, games that are meant for everybody.
Looking back though, Bores seems really insecure about liking things meant for “kids”, going by his comments on WALL-E and Toy Story 3. I’ll let this C.S. Lewis quote sum things up: http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/84171-critics-who-treat-adult-as-a-term-of-approval-instead
3. Sonic Generations stolen footage
It’s clear that Bores barely gives a shit when making his Neo reviews, we’d be lucky to see a game that he actually manages to beat, let alone get far in. Most of the time, he plays for only an hour or a couple levels, nothing more.
This time though, Chris didn’t even bother to play the game at all. Instead, he watched a playthrough on YouTube, and proceeded to use that playthrough to make it look like he played the game.
All the footage in his Sonic Generations review was stolen from YouTube user Cyberman65, who uses a watermark in the corner of his videos to prevent such a thing from happening. Bores probably hoped people were too stupid not to notice it, or he probably didn’t care. Either way, he got caught, and boy did it not look good for him.
GotGame went into damage control mode, adding a disclaimer under the video that included a link to Cyberman65’s first Sonic Generations video (not his channel, just that video). However, Bores was not reprimanded for this. Unless it happened behind the scenes, but nothing official was stated. Can’t make their single source of income look bad.
Cyberman65 himself responded, saying he was very upset and never gave Bores permission to use it. LadyBuggin777 had her own damage control, saying Bores and CM65 were friends. Even though that’s a blatant lie.
Either way, the fact he didn’t even use his own footage tells us that he didn’t bother to play the game. One can tell from his complaint about being unable to skip cutscenes (which is false, you can skip cutscenes).
It makes me wonder how many other Neo videos have stolen footage. I suspected his Arkham City video had it, but I couldn’t really prove it.
This wasn’t even the first time that Bores has stolen footage. In History of Video Games Part 3, he took footage from a CNBC documentary about the same subject, but that time he actually hid CNBC’s watermark. What makes Cyberman65 any different?
This would have been second place, but for once Bores was smart and he didn’t upload this to YouTube. If he did, he would have been flagged soooo hard, especially since Cyberman65 is also a YouTube partner.
2. Silver Surfer Stupidity
Here we go, the worst regular IG episode of the year. Not saying much when there was only two.
This beats out X-Men for having an awful story and an awful review.
The review part had inaccurate info about the controls, petty complaints (like the lack of a save feature despite only playing for a minute and getting game over without making progress), and really just regurgitated the same things other reviewers have said, right down to similar dialogue (“death after death after death”). He also called it a Mega Man rip-off (even though the only similarity is the ability to select your stage) just so he could do an awful joke of a Mega Man sprite waving his fist to the game. Look, the humor should come from the game, not from made-up complaints or Family Guy cutaways. It’s sad how much of Family Guy’s influence has on his show.
The storyline part… oh god. Bores hyped the fuck out this, changing the layout to his site and Facebook page to be about the PIXEL DEMON! Anyone asking about it just got the answer “PIXEL DEMON”. Real creative stuff.
So what was the Pixel Demon? A green toad looking thing that wasn’t even made of pixels and got beaten by a single Bob-omb. … Fucking weak.
The villain’s backstory is right out of terrible creepypasta, the Pixel Demon was locked away in Silver Surfer because the game was “too hard” so he couldn’t be released. Just… all of the stupid!
Then there’s everything before that awful ending sequence. The stupid news scene with… ugh, Johnny Newscaster. Plus, the return of the Genie, now played by Bores, with a horribly flimsy excuse for why he’s no longer played by Brad Harp. Fucking fuck god damn it. He really couldn’t have called him up for a weekend to do some filming?
And yet, I know Bores can do worse. Far, far worse. Like Aladdin, or Zombies Ate My Neighbors, or RoboCop.
1. The E-Begging “Spoof”
This shouldn’t come as a surprise. This video actually made me angry. *sighs*
James Rolfe got in hot water when he had a fundraiser for his movie, of course these critics were just a vocal minority, and many of their points lacked logic. Then James posted a video showing support for a Cheetahmen II Kickstarter that many saw as a scam. Instead of blaming Greg Pabich, the man behind the Kickstarter, everything went towards James. Most people clearly didn’t know the facts, like thinking James was getting the money even though he wasn’t, and none of the blame went to The Game Chasers and Pat the NES Punk, both equally guilty of appearing in the video. Why should James get all the hate?
One would think that with all this controversy, Bores would ignore and get back to being a lazy ass like he usually is. … He did not.
What he did instead was a two and a half minute video called “Ebegging: The Spoof’, which poorly mocked “e-beggers” and clearly attacked James. No hint of subtly at all, but what do you expect?
The video was nothing but hypocrisy. This is the man that frequently has contests to give away stuff, and the key to winning is to subscribe. Being a subscriber somewhat guarantees him a view, and views = money. It’s still a terrible practice, especially when most of the prizes are his worthless DVDs and t-shirts. Multiple times he’s clarified “you have to be subscribed” and got upset at people entering that weren’t subscribed. Doesn’t that seem suspicious to anyone?
He mentions that his fans don’t think his shit doesn’t stink, a reference to someone with an over-inflated ego. He shouldn’t make that joke considering his coliseum sized ego.
As for the attack? He ended the video saying “If you don’t donate, cartoon cheetahs I MEAN pixel demons will come out of the TV and attack you”. Not even trying to hide it, also showing his whole “I don’t watch AVGN” claim is a big fat lie.
After a few hours, he added an update calling out James and Mike for disabling comments and ratings. Go fuck yourself Chris, you disabled comments and ratings all the damn time, that’s the last thing you should call someone out for you piece of shit.
I get the feeling this wasn’t his idea, it was his mom’s. She’s extremely anti-AVGN, praising videos calling him out, becoming friends with Asalieri and many other anti-AVGN critics, as well as anti-IG critics to troll shield herself, saying a lot of the shit that Bores said in his video. I know she reads this blog, and she probably tells Chris “that Nazi retard BatDan just keeps comparing you to AVGN”, even though I barely do that, but my Facebook informant has told me that when someone asks about me, Chris says that’s all I do. Then he proceeds to claim his early videos were parodies. Really? Is that why you claimed you put your blood, sweat, and tears in that Angel & Devil effect in Temple of Doom? Is that why you claimed the TMNT video was really difficult because you played five games instead of one? People that parody retcon are shitheads, like Tommy Wiseau.
Chris may have won people over that day, but that victory was short-lived as I don’t see him doing any more drama videos.
So, those were my Worst IG Moments of 2012. Will 2013 mark the end of the Irate Gamer? Will Chris realize that his only real fan is his mom? Will he realize that his mom is actually driving away people? Will he actually get good? Probably none of these.
See you all in 2013.