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Web Video / ExoParadigmGamer

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Grrrr-retings and welcome to another fantastic episode of TV Tropes!
ExoParadigmGamer is a video game reviewer and occasional LetsPlayer, best known for the review series Remake or Rebreak, in which he compares classic video games with subsequent significant re-releases to see how well they improve on the original experience.

Exo rates on the following scale, in ascending order:

  1. Rebreak: Fails to resurrect the same quality standard as the original due to incompetent design, technical failures, etc.
  2. Reprisenote : Not as good as the original, but a relatively competent recreation that is still playable enough. Alternatively, a Reprise may fail to address the original's salient issues or neglect to add anything substantial.
  3. Remaster: An improvement overall, but not necessarily worth playing if you already own the original. Typically adds some new content or fixes salient issues with the original. This score was introduced in 2019, with Exo acknowledging that some of his earlier Remake scores likely would fall under this in hindsight.
  4. Remake: A strong re-release that fixes salient issues, updates the visuals/music, and maybe adds new content. However, there may be a few blemishes left untouched or other neglected opportunities to improve.
  5. Replace: A remake/port that changes, fixes, and adds so much that it renders the original virtually obsolete.

In 2019, Exo began another review series, Xross Platform, which compares cross-platform ports within the same console generation.

    Games reviewed on Remake or Rebreak 

    Games reviewed on Xross Platform 

    Other games reviewed in standalone videos 

Exo's videos discuss or provide examples of the following tropes:

  • 100% Completion: Exo has described himself as a semi-completionist who enjoys the Collectathon Platformer genre, as well as hunting for collectibles such as Star Coins in modern Mario games and Red Star Rings in modern Sonic. As such, he will often criticize a game that doesn't adequately reward you for putting in a frustrating amount of effort to complete it (such as the Chaos Emeralds in the first two Sonic games) or make it convenient to keep track of collectibles (such as the Dragon Coins in Super Mario World or the scoring system in Yoshi's Island), and will praise a remake for addressing such problems (such as Super Mario Advance 2 adding a status screen to keep track of exits and Dragon Coins). Exo has also made it clear with games like Sonic Unleashed that if the process of getting 100% is especially or tedious or grueling, it can taint his enjoyment of the entire game.
  • Aborted Arc: In his earlier years, Exo promised reviews of many games that have yet to come be it out of technical difficulties or losing interest.
    • Exo stated in his 2014 review of Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus he planned to review every "Sly Cooper" game... He's yet to review a single game in the series since.
    • Likewise, Exo has yet to review Jak 3 or re-review Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy.
    • When introducing the Donkey Kong marathon, he stated Donkey Kong 64 would be reviewed "someday, but not today". Six years later and we still have yet to see it. Likewise, he alluded to the possibility of reviewing the Game Boy Color version of DKC1 and the two Retro Studios developed games.
    • Exo planned to review Luigi's Mansion Dark Moon after the first game but felt too burned out to continue.
    • Exo stated he wished to review the entire Ratchet and Clank series but has yet to progress past the PS2 era.
  • All There in the Manual: During his criticism of Ripto in the Spyro 2 review, he points out that while the manual may claim that Ripto is directly responsible for the problems in the game's various levels, the game itself never mentions him outside of the Hub Worlds, despite numerous opportunities to do so in dialogue.
    "I'm not playing the manual, I'm playing the game. And in the game, there is no concrete evidence to connect Ripto to what's happening in stages. Again, this isn't the NES era of offloading story into the manual anymore. This is a game with full voice acting, animated cutscenes and pages of dialogue. If Ripto is responsible for these things, either show him doing them, or just say so!"
  • April Fools' Day: His 2015 review of Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) consists of an animation of 16-bit Sonic accompanied by the words "no way" looped for minutes.
  • Call-Back: In his Sonic reviews, he brings up several times how Robotnik's name was abruptly changed back to his Japanese name Eggman. When he reviews Super Mario 64 he begins his summary of the story with "One day, Princess Toadstool, now going by her original Japanese name Dr. Eggman, I mean Princess Peach..."
  • Camera Screw: invoked Brought up in the Mario 64 review, in which he gives credit to the DS version (as well as Star Road, despite his other complaints about it) for fixing it.
  • Catchphrase: "Greetings, Gentles and Ladiesmen..."
  • Caustic Critic: Averted. Even with games he doesn't particularly enjoy (ie. games that earn a "Re-Break" score in his ROR segments), he always tries to find some positive aspects. In fact, in his "Sonic Genesis" ROR, he even outright criticizes people in the gaming press who horribly exaggerate a game's badness for the sake of entertainment.
  • Clip Show: "Everything that Sucks About Classic Sonic Special Stages", a compilation of his special stage rants from the previous Sonic reviews.
  • Continuing is Painful: He Ragequit Sonic Genesis due to a problem the port has created due to its abuse of Fake Difficulty due to the bad porting job: if you don't begin Labyrinth Zone with a decent stock of extra lives and continues, it's almost impossible to get through it.
  • Determinator: He had quite a ball of a time when it came to Glover on PC for his video of said game. He tried just about every fix when it came to running the game on modern computers, and even said "any sane person would have given up" when that didn't work...and then he proceeded to buy a retro PC off eBay. And when the game wouldn't work with the graphics card already in it outside of software rendering (which he didn't want to settle for since it looks significantly worse than intended), he then proceeded to hunt down a Voodoo graphics card. Then and only then did the game finally work as he had intended... and of course the version turned out underwhelming at best when all was said and done.
  • Early-Installment Weirdness:
    • Exo's earlier videos were much shorter ranging from about 15-30 minutes. These days, 40 minutes is likely to be the MINIMUM amount of time he'll spend on a game
    • In earlier videos, Exo stated that the process of 100% had little impact on his opinion of a game when these days, he's the opposite.
    • Previously, Remake and Rebreak were the only two potential ratings. In 2014, he added the "Re-Meh" and "Replace" ratings, and in 2020, he overhauled the rating system to have five ratings.
    • In early videos, Exo was willing to emulate games for review. Following his opinion on Kirby's Adventure being warped by poor emulation, Exo has made using authentic hardware a top priority.
    • In earlier years, Exo was more abrasive and willing to attack opinions he disagreed with (some more respectfully than others). In recent years, he's mellowed down and acknowledged that these attacks were very unprofessional.
  • Enjoy the Story, Skip the Game: Invoked in his review of Conker's Bad Fur Day. He considers the gameplay mediocre at best, suffering from Gameplay Roulette, and that the story is the only reason it developed a cult following. He also points out that the story itself relies so much on shock humor that it's not going to be as effective on a second playthrough.
  • Fake Difficulty:
    • In the first two Sonic the Hedgehog reviews, Exo heavily criticizes the poor enemy placement and unpredictable instant-kill stage hazards, not helped by the limited continues and lack of a save system, two issues that had already been fixed in contemporary Mario games.
    "The Sonic Team of the Classic era seems to understand difficulty as the art of surprising the player with bullshit they couldn't possibly predict, and then punishing players for not knowing any better by forcing them to start over from the beginning of the game if they die an arbitrary number of times. To be perfectly frank, that is not my idea of a fun challenge."
    • invoked In his Super Mario 64 review, he defends the controls in both versions as "functional", because the levels are designed around their limitations. He contrasts this with the Game Mod Super Mario Star Road, which suffers from Platform Hell level design that doesn't work with Mario 64's control scheme, as well as Super Mario 64: The Green Stars, which suffers from the Camera Screw issue even more than 64 does.
  • Fake Longevity:
    • In the Super Mario 64 review, one of Exo's biggest complaints for both versions is that the game boots you out of the stage every time you grab a Power Star, even when another is readily available within the same mission. He has less of a problem with Sunshine doing the same thing because of how much the stages change from one mission to the next.
    • In his reviews of Spyro 2 and the Banjo-Kazooie games, he criticizes the game forcing the player to backtrack to earlier stages with new abilities, due to preferring stages that can be completed in one visit. Again, he has less of a problem with Year of the Dragon doing something similar with the playable allies, as each of them unlock substantially large new areas in those earlier stages (in contrast to Spyro 2's first level locking a handful of gems behind the climbing ability, which didn't need to be held back to begin with). and you unlock shortcuts to more quickly and easily access the new content on your second visit.
    • The Game Boy Advance version of Pac-Man World narrowly earned a Rebreak score because of Exo's frustration with having to farm for extra lives after a Game Over. "The absolute worst thing a game can do is waste my time."
    • He makes a similar criticism of the original Metroid regarding its health system, which forces the player to farm for health pickups after dying if they can't find another energy tank.
  • Gameplay and Story Integration: Discussed in his review of Spyro the Dragon (1998). While Gnasty Gnorc isn't the most compelling antagonist in the world, he still serves his purpose well; by collecting gems and freeing dragons, you're directly undoing his actions.
  • Ladies and Germs: He begins his videos with, "Greetings, gentles and ladiesmen."
  • Nostalgia Filter: Brought up several times when he calls out Double Standards in the Sonic fanbase, making the point that the original games were far from perfect and could be a lot more frustrating with regard to Trial-and-Error Gameplay than later games such as Sonic Lost World that weren't so well-received by Classicists.
  • Oh, My Gods!: He uses "Thank Hylia!" and variations in a few videos.
  • Polished Port: Anything he gives the Replace score (such as Ocarina of Time 3D and Another Metroid 2 Remake) and most of his Remake-scores.
  • Porting Disaster: Anything of Re-meh/Reprise or Rebreak status. Sonic Genesis is perhaps his most scathing review, with Pac-Man World on the Game Boy Advance being right behind it.
  • Scrolling Text: Exo's biggest complaint about Ocarina of Time is the slow text speed (not helped by the number of slow-moving cutscenes and Kaepora Gaebora), and the biggest reason why he gives the 3DS remake a Replace score is how much faster it is.
  • Screen Crunch: Brought up in several of his handheld reviews, such as Super Mario Deluxe, Sonic Genesis and the Donkey Kong Land series.
  • Self-Imposed Challenge: Invoked in his Metroid: Zero Mission review, for which he completed a 9% run.
  • Take That!:
    • Several reviews have had him criticizing certain antics from Egoraptor, in particular verbally assaulting a cartoon representation of Skyward Sword in a Sequelitis video, and deliberately triggering glitches in his Sonic Adventure DX Game Grumps videos.
    • After his Klonoa marathon, Moonlight Museum is his go-to example of a bad video game soundtrack.
  • Unexpected Gameplay Change:
    • In the Sonic Adventure reviews, Exo looks at each of the playable characters' playstyles and argues that most of them fit well enough with Sonic's core gameplay: the characters are reasonably fast, there's an emphasis on platforming, the levels have all the familiar Sonic elements (eg, rings, springs and bumpers) and the objectives are straightforward. The only character who completely fails the test is Big the Cat and his fishing sidequest scoring in only one of four categories. In comparison, Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, and Gamma pass the test in flying colors (despite his mixed feelings about Gamma's gameplay with its short stages and its lack of challenge,) while Amy gets a score of 2/4 categories.
    • The Sonic Unleashed video subjects the Werehog to the same test, finding that it fits most of his criteria but ultimately fails due to not being fast enough. However, Exo still defends it as being more fun and enjoyable than Big's fishing.
    • In the Spyro: Year of the Dragon review, Exo gives the playable allies a similar test, assessing their sections on platforming, combat and exploration, and again argues they all fit well enough with Spyro's core gameplay.
  • Villains Act, Heroes React: In several videos, Exo discusses what he calls the "Gruntilda Effect" (adopted from a JonTron video, "Top 10 Boss Battles"), where a game motivates and contextualizes gameplay by building up to a confrontation with a compelling villain the player loves to hate. The effect is named for Gruntilda Winkybunion in the first Banjo-Kazooie, and he cites the Sorceress from Spyro: Year of the Dragon and Ganondorf in Ocarina of Time as great examples. In contrast, villains such as Ripto in Spyro 2, who suffers from Show, Don't Tell regarding what damage he's done to Avalar (most of which isn't even really told to us, at least outside of the manual) and Orcus on His Throne, fail to pull off the effect.
    "Imagine if you were playing Banjo-Kazooie but Gruntilda didn't actually do anything until the last hour, nor had any palpable presence throughout the game. Meanwhile, Brentilda was still there and would show up every hour or so to tell you that Gruntilda is bad but never actually tell you anything about why you should hate her? That's pretty much the plot of Ripto's Rage.

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