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Web Video / Third Rate Gamer

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SUPORT DA SHOW LOL
"Didn't they test this game before they released it?"

The Third Rate Gamer is a Stylistic Suck satire of the infamous Irate Gamer, by FFL2and3rocks (real name unknown).

Similarly to other Irate Gamer parodies such as the Save State Gamer and The Irritated Gamer, the Third Rate Gamer does intentionally poorly-written and acted reviews of various games, usually with deliberate references to some of Chris Bores' well-known memes and mistakes.

The first episode, a review of Final Fantasy 3, was released in 2007, and has garnered enough positive feedback from fans to spawn 17 more in total. The last episode (and last video on the channel) was released in 2011, with the show seemingly cancelled due to "lack of motivation" by the creator. Longtime fans eagerly await an eventual comeback episode, if such a thing ever happens.

     Games "Reviewed" 

This series contains examples of:

  • Accentuate the Negative: Parodied. He will very often nitpick minor details that have little to do with the game.
  • Acting for Two:invoked Lampshaded in the Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers review:
    *opens door* "Oh hey, it's that guy who's never going to appear on screen at the same time as me."
    • Also his Cousin Timmy (a parody of Irate Gamer's Cousin Joey character), who is obviously just TRG in a hat while slightly bending over.
  • Adaptation Displacement: invoked Enforced, exaggerated and parodied, due to the Irate Gamer frequently getting the facts about a game's source material wrong. For example: In the Super Mario review, the Third Rate Gamer thinks that the Super Mario Bros. (1993) film is the original and the game is just a cheap licensed cash-in.
  • Ambiguously Gay: Ocasionally does things like referring to muscular guys as "sexy" and Evil Rate Gamer lured him out of the room with promise of nude photos of the Angry Video Game Nerd in the basement.
  • Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: "Syphilis, Hepatitis and Bores."
  • Bad "Bad Acting": Played for Laughs. His idea of "looking irate" equals "puffing your cheeks full of air".
    "Well, fine! I don't need you, I'll just do this review by my... *looks at script* self!"
  • Big-Lipped Alligator Moment:invoked Quite intentional, to parody the Irate Gamer's tendency to shoehorn random characters in his reviews.
    • Lampshaded in his Cool Spot review, parodying a quote from the Irate Gamer's review of the Kool-Aid games:
    Third Rate Gamer: Why do I keep putting these interruptions into my show?!
    • Again parodied in his Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers review:
      Wilson: And here's a tip: when you make a joke in your review, make sure it actually makes sense somehow.
      (a large pile of bananas suddenly lands on him)
  • Blatant Lies:
    • In his Kirby's Adventure review, he denies stealing from the AVGN by claiming that he doesn't watch him, and "proves" this to Billy by showing footage that he's not subscribed to the AVGN's channel (read: him showing footage of him already being subscribed, and then scrolling the cursor to the "Unsubscribe" button on his channel and clicking it, which he apparently forgot to edit out).
    • He does a slight commercial break later in the review advertising a card game. We then cut to an actor who is not very enthusiastic about his opinion, and the bottom of the screen has a caption saying "NOT A PAID ACTOR".
    • At the end of the Legend of Zelda review, he tells his fans to buy his DVD, which "is not rushed at all". The cover art is a terrible drawing in crayon, and the lines on the sheet of paper are clearly visible.
    • He claims that his Simon's Quest review is original, but he uses footage from AVGN's review with the original sound still running in the background.
    • In his The Lion King review, he tells the audience to see how slow Simba is running "in this unedited footage", said as he then abruptly slows down the footage.
  • *Bleep*-dammit!: Parodied in the Yoshi's Island "review". Certain words like "shit" and "fuck" are partially bleeped out, usually in a way that makes it really obvious what the swear was. However, words like "dickwaffles" and "crap" are kept.
  • Buffy Speak: "In the old commercials, he (Cool Spot) would walk around and stuff."
  • Button Mashing: Parodied. In the reaction shots, he's always mashing buttons, even when it makes no sense for the game he's playing. On top of that, he almost always uses a controller for a different system - or not a controller at all, such as a pair of headphones and the DS case.
  • By "No", I Mean "Yes":
    • In his Castlevania review:
      "Don't get me wrong; this game... I don't hate Castlevania II, but... don't send any hate mail, guys, just don't. Because... I really do hate Castlevania II, but I'm just gonna say that I don't, because that'll make it seem like I don't hate it, so I won't get as much hate mail."
    • In his Daze Before Christmas review:
      "Ooh, I know what you're thinking: "How dare you make fun of Santa Claus!?" But I'm not! This game is awesome, but it's a piece of shit."
  • The Cameo:
  • Captain Ersatz: Billy is an obvious parody of Irate Gamer's side character Tony, complete with a dumb nonsensical catchphrase and being represented by a sprite taken from a browser-based MMORPG (Runescape rather than MapleStory here).
  • Captain Obvious: Played for Laughs. He circles very easy to see things, and points out things the viewer can plainly see, like mentioning that each stage is harder than the last. In particular, the Cool Spot review has him drawing a circle and six arrows around the already quite visible player character, and explaining lots of stuff that should be obvious to anyone with even rudimentary knowledge of gaming, e.g. "you can attack enemies to defeat them" and "if the enemies hit you, you'll take damage, which is a bad thing because taking too much damage makes you lose a life and have to go back". Lampshaded, as he says he adds these explanations because "his viewers have never played a video game before".
  • Catchphrase:
    • "Didn't they test this game before they released it?", and many variations.
    • "But after doing some research..." as well.
    • "..which is only available for the (Insert System Here)"
    • "Some game designer who's laughing his ass off. ."
    • "Bang-a-lang!" is Billy's catch phrase, which is Tony's catchphrase from the Irate Gamer.
    • "(Insert character from game/show)?! What are YOU doing here?!"
    • "Get the fuck off my property!"
  • Caustic Critic: Being a parody of the Irate Gamer, it's pretty obvious he is going to be one of these.
  • Comically Missing the Point: All the time. He always points out things completely irrelevant.
  • Conspicuously Light Patch: He is oblivious to this during the claw machine minigame in Kirby's Adventure by initially choosing to grab a random, faded yellow Kirby rather than the large, pink one.
  • Continuity Cavalcade: Parodied. At the end of his Chip & Dale review, all of the minor characters from previous episodes appear to watch the ending of the game, including Flashter, Offensive Stereotype, Ryu, Cool Spot, Wilkins, and others. This is a parody of the time Irate Gamer did the same thing in his Cool Spot review.
  • Covers Always Lie: He points this out on the cover of Castlevania, in regards to the sword Simon Belmont doesn't have in the game.
  • Counting to Potato:
    • Failing to recognize roman numerals, he interprets the "Act I" screen of Ninja Gaiden as this and says that it should be "Act 1" instead.
    • In Little Nemo: The Dream Master, he asks the viewer a question and gives three choices, which are respectively numbered "A", "2", and "III".
  • Cowboy BeBop at His Computerinvoked:
    • Throughout his entire Little Nemo: The Dream Master review, he refers to the game as "Finding Nemo". Based on "Chris and Scottie Road Trip" where Bores is visiting Pixar and lists one of their movies as Little Nemo.
    • He refers to Super Mario Galaxy 2 as a "movie" in the E3 recap. Even after he explicitly refers to the first one as the "Galaxy game". And how it was supposedly one of his favorite movies.
  • Deadpan Snarker: Some of the Third Rate Gamer's lines are subtly written this way to critique parts of the Irate Gamer's reviews. Just one instance is in his Paperboy review, mocking the Irate Gamer's criticism of having a point system in Ghosts 'n Goblins:
    Third Rate Gamer: Who cares about points? I mean, sure, people may have cared about that twenty years ago when this game came out, and I really should take that into consideration when making this review, but fuck that!
  • Department of Redundancy Department:
    "As you start playing you'll notice this horrendously horrendous music. It's driving me insane! Listen to it too much and it'll drive you to brink of insanity! This music is so bad that I'm about to go insane!
    • In "The Lion King":
      "Well, it's about time to wrap up this E3 review, because E3 is wrapping up, so I gotta wrap up this review, and wrap it up!"
    • "Super Mario Bros 2 is a video game created by Nintendo for the Nintendo NES System System made by Nintendo.''
    • In the same review, we apparently need sixnote  identical reminders that the bomb is going to blow up at any moment now.
    • Even moreso in his Home Improvement review:
      "More enemies?! More dinosaurs?! More redundancy?! More redundancy?!"
    • In his Chip 'N Dale: Rescued Rangers review:
      "Apparently, these people are part of a group that is known by via a name called by the 'Rescue Rangers'."
    • In the Cool Spot review:
      TRG: An MP3 player! Awesome! I wonder if they have any Van Halen songs by Van Halen.
      YouTube Warning: This joke has been removed due to a Van Halen copyright claim by Van Halen.
  • Designated Villain: Invoked and parodied. If the Evil Rate Gamer didn't point out that he's evil at every opportunity we wouldn't know.
  • Dissimile: On two occasions (inverted in both examples, as it's less making a comparison with a lot of exceptions and more making a comparison with only one small element linking the two):
  • Distinction Without a Difference: In a parody of the Irate Gamer's use of the trope when expressing his thoughts about Super Mario Bros. 2:
    "I know what you're thinking — that I'm going to sit here and bash Super Mario 2. But before you start sending your hate mail, just hear me out. Now, I don't hate Mario 2, but when compared to the other Mario games, this one just has "ass" written all over it!"
  • The Ditz: One of TRG's primary traits is his blatant stupidity and inability to put two and two together. Exhibit A from the Home Improvement review:
    TRG: The main goal in the game is to go around the level and collect five crates, but the game doesn't even tell you what's in the crates. Speaking of which, the intro said you're looking for tools, not crates, and now I'm looking for crates? I don't even know what's in them! What about the tools I'm supposed to be looking for? Where are they? They've been replaced with crates for no reason.
  • Don't Explain the Joke: Even lampshaded at one point:
    *talking about Ring King* "Holy shit! It looks like they're getting blowjobs! What do you mean explaining the joke ruins it? Fuck you!"
  • Dull Surprise: Comes with the Stylistic Suck territory.
  • Early-Installment Weirdness: The first two title cards aren't misspelled.
  • Episode Title Card: Following along with the Stylistic Suck, all the title cards are hand-drawn in Microsoft Paint, with several bad photo edit-ins, as well as misspelled words.
  • Ethnic Scrappy: invoked Parodied with "Offensive Stereotype," who's little more than a laughably racist "Chinaman" caricature. This is a parody of Irate Gamer's Ronnie the Skeleton, which many people accuse of being a stereotypical complaining jew.
  • Evil Twin: The Evil Rate Gamer. You can tell he's evil because he's wearing a hat.
  • Exact Words: On a meta level. In the Irate Gamer's Cool Spot review, his evil twin drops by his apartment and says that he's giving pizzas away in exchange for "anyone with an Odyssey" note . TRG took a literal interpretation of this and made fun of it by making his evil twin say he was "giving them away in exchange for people" in his Chip n' Dale review.
  • The Faceless: The Third Rate Gamer's face is off-screen throughout the first episode.
  • Failed a Spot Check: TRG fails to spot the 2-player option in Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers... right next to the 1-player option. He then complains that it's "buried so damn deep in the menu", accompanied by the camera slowly panning from the 1-player option to the 2-player option.
  • Freeze-Frame Bonus:
    • If he's making a Shout-Out, chances are he'll show a picture of something entirely unrelated, but only for a brief second.
    • When saying that his DVD is worth buying since it has over three minutes of bonus features, he shows what the features are and what the length of each is. It only adds up to 2 minutes and 59 seconds.
  • GIS Syndrome: Lampshaded in the Battletoads review, where an image of a castle is labeled "Castle of Google Images".
  • Godwin's Law: At the beginning of one episode, Billy gives TRG some fanart. It's a picture of Adolf Hitler with blonde hair and mustache.
  • Gosh Dang It to Heck!: Played for Laughs. In the Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers review, he starts awkwardly shoehorning in G-rated curse words alongside the typical fare, in response to how the Irate Gamer suddenly started to inconsistently tone down the cursing in his videos.
    "What a bunch of bullshi- uhm... BS."
  • Gretzky Has the Ball: Crosses over with Recognition Failure in the Battletoads review: during a segment where the player must throw balls at a boss, he declares that the player character has worse aim than "Shaquille O'Neal shooting touchdowns"... accompanied by a picture of Tiger Woods.
  • Highly-Visible Ninja: Conversed in his Ninja Gaiden review.
    "And what the hell kind of ninja wears bright blue? I thought ninjas wore black so they can hide in the shadows!"
  • Homoerotic Subtext: The Third Rate Gamer gets really excited upon hearing that there are nude photos of James Rolfe in the basement and immediately runs to check it out (giving Evil Rate Gamer a chance to hijack the show). He's also rather excited at the prospect of getting a "Leisuresuitgaming Valentine's Day Special DVD."
  • Hostile Show Takeover: Done in the Rocket Knight Adventures review, complete with a Special Edition Title (which just consists of his old intro played in reverse with a negative filter and "Evil" sloppily edited over "Third").
    Evil Rate Gamer: "Now I'm going to review a game just like he does but with a few corny evil-jokes thrown in!"
  • Hypocritical Humor: Happens all the time.
    • In his Home Improvement review:
      Third Rate Gamer: Why the fuck would something start with an intro? This intro is just horrible! (cut to his intro)
    • In his Battletoads review:
      Third Rate Gamer: If there's one thing I can't stand, it's stupid one-liners. What a bunch of ass burgers with a side of fries!
    • In his The Lion King review, he criticizes The Angry Video Game Nerd, saying all he talks about is shitting on things. Directly after that:
      Third Rate Gamer: Anyway, Mufasa (actually a grown-up Simba) has three forms of attack. He can claw at the enemies, jump on the enemies, and shit on the enemies. (feces land on in-game enemies)
    • And in his Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers review, upon encountering his "evil" self:
    Third Rate Gamer: And what's up with that fake mustache? It looks ridiculous!
    • In the Cool Spot review:
    On-screen text: FIND CAGE!
    TRG: "Find cage"? Shouldn't this say, "find the cage"? This is some of the most worstest, most stupidest piece of not-good grammars I ever saw!
  • I Am Not Shazam:invoked Upon seeing the title screen of The Legend of Zelda:
    Third Rate Gamer: Wait, "Zelda"? I thought his name was Link! And now it's Zelda? What's this bullshit? So much for consistency...
  • Impossible Item Drop: Conversed in his Battletoads review:
    "And when you kill this bird, it drops a sword. Why would a bird be carrying around a sword? And where was it keeping it anyway? [...] Are they shoving these things up their asses?"
  • Immediate Self-Contradiction: In his Super Mario Bros./Super Mario Bros. 2 review, when introducing Doki Doki Panic, he says that he found rare footage of the game "that you won't find anywhere else".
    Third Rate Gamer: So don't steal it from me! (places a watermark on the video)
  • In-Universe Factoid Failure: Whenever he does the standard reviewer retrospective introduction, you can count on him to get at least two or three things comically wrong about whatever he's talking about.
    • In Kirby's Adventure, he complains about Kirby having a sword on the introduction movie for the "Vegetable Valley" level, leading to him complaining about them not testing the game. Later on, he is also annoyed at how the game supposedly doesn't have a power-up feature in general. Guess which two aspects of the game he then discusses a few minutes later?
    • The same thing happens in his Yoshi's Island review, where he criticizes the game's lack of power-ups before mentioning the helicopter power-up a couple minutes later:
      Third Rate Gamer: What pisses me off more is the lack of power-ups. There are no power-ups in this game! No mushrooms, no fire flowers, no stars, no baboon tails. Just Yoshi walking around.
      (later in the review)
      Third Rate Gamer: And yeah, I know I said there are no power-ups in this game, so to make myself look good, I'll just delete any comments that point out that mistake.
    • He believes that The Lion King (1994) is a Pixar film from the 1970's. In the same review, he claims that the game was never ported to any other system, complains about the use of "I Just Can't Wait to be King" as the background music for level 2 ("Do you remember this music anywhere from the movie?!"), and complains that you don't get any continues (said as he is showing footage of the continue screen).
  • It's Hard, So It Sucks!:invoked Parodied in-universe. TRG will often hate a game because of its perceived difficulty, even when it isn't even that hard and the problem clearly is his own incompetence and stupidity.
    • Lampshaded by Billy in the Cool Spot review:
      Billy: I don't like this game. It sucks because I keep dying on purpose.
    • In the Lion King review:
      Third Rate Gamer: I'm playing on the easy setting, and it's still too hard! Couldn't they've made the easy setting a little bit more easier-ish?
    • In the Chip and Dale: Rescue Rangers review:
      invokedThird Rate Gamer: It's way too hard! Wasn't this supposed to be a children's game? They should've made it easier, so I could complain about the game being too easy.
    • When he reviews Simon's Quest, he says "this game is hard, and therefore it sucks".
  • Jump Scare: During his review of The Lion King, while in the cave level and commenting that anything can appear during that time, a crudely-photoshopped image of the Game Dude makes a "cameo".
  • The Ken Burns Effect: He has a tendency to do exaggerated zoom-ins of still frames, usually zooming in so far that the content is no longer recognizable. Lampshaded in the Lion King review description: "I hope you like looking at pictures that zoom in slowly!"
  • Know-Nothing Know-It-All: His general character. He'll happily launch into tirades about a game's history while getting every single fact wrong, and whenever he shows footage of himself playing a game, he's doing horribly.
  • Lame Comeback: TRG's comeback to his haters is "Well, yeah, but these haters are...dumb". Then he slaps on a photoshopped graphic saying "PWNED!"
  • Left It In:
    • In his review of Legend of Zelda, Billy tries to convince Third Rate Gamer that he is supposed to go through the cave at the beginning. When the latter eventually finds out that that is the case, he decides to create an "edited version of this review with that part taken out so no one will notice."
    • At the beginning of his review of Paperboy.
      TRG: Oh...I didn't realize the camera was on during my bad acting.
  • Mad Libs Catchphrase: Parodied when TRG literally says, "what a cussword load of another cussword".
  • Major Injury Underreaction: As he's being viciously attacked by the Scar sprite at the end of his Lion King review, all he says in a slightly annoyed voice is, "Hey, stop it! That's my spleen, buddy!"
  • Malaproper: TRG says Chip n' Dale: Rescue Rangers doesn't have a 2-player mode, so if you want to play with a friend, you're "up paddle creek without shit."
  • Manipulative Editing:
    • At the beginning of his Chip n' Dale review, he complains there is no two-player mode, but he really just painted over the option and claimed that they buried it too deep into the menu. This was to parody IG's Tekken 6 review.
    • He draws a cross over the Koopas in Super Mario Bros. while complaining there was more than one enemy in Yoshi's Island, which had not happened in a Mario game before.
    • In his The Lion King review, he tells the audience to see how slow Simba is running "in this unedited footage", said as he then abruptly slows down the footage.
    • In his Super Mario Bros. 2 review, he slows down the footage and complains about how slow the star is. Unlike when the Irate Gamer did the same, the Third Rate Gamer didn't even bother to mute the slowed-down music.
    • His Daze Before Christmas short review has a death montage to show how hard the game is, and it's the exact same death scene repeated several times.
  • Merchandise-Driven: Parodied endlessly, as he tries to order fans to buy his poorly-made products, such as in his Ninja Gaiden review, where he begs everyone again to buy his DVD.
    • In his Kirby's Adventure review, during a "commercial break", he tries to sell something called a Crad Game.
    • Also, midway through the Paperboy review, a random shameless plug is thrown in for fans to "buy my t-shirt", which is nothing more than his show's logo sloppily MS Painted onto the back of the shirt he's currently wearing.
  • Narrow Parody:invoked Averted, as many jokes are based on really obscure aspects of both the Irate Gamer and Chris Bores himself, such as old comments by him and leaked private messages. One joke is even directed at an archived Geocities page made by Chris Bores long before the Irate Gamer days about his (supposedly) upcoming novel. Also, how many people did he expect to get the "Leisuresuitgaming Valentine's Day Special DVD"-joke?
  • Negative Continuity: Played for laughs and lampshaded in the Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers review:
    Third Rate Gamer: "Cool Spot!? What are you doing here?"
    Billy: "Hey, I thought you killed him in your Cool Spot review."
    Third Rate Gamer: "Who's gonna notice?"
    • Played for Laughs again in the same review with Wilson, parodying a name change The Irate Gamer did to an already existing character (that he had appear on his show, no less).
      Third Rate Gamer: Wilson?! What are you doing here?!
      "Wilkins": It's "Wilkins", dipshit. Haven't you ever seen my show?
    • Lampshaded in the Super Mario Bros. review. Third Rate Gamer tells Offensive Stereotype to go away in the second timeline, while inviting him in in the first timeline. The latter then eventually appears in the second timeline to save him from the bomb, causing Billy to call out the Third Rate Gamer on it.
      Billy: He left in this timeline! It's the other timeline where he stays so he can save your life before your house explodes!
      Third Rate Gamer: This video's confusing! I should have been paying more attention.
  • No Ending: In his Yoshi's Island review, he parodies The Sopranos' use of the trope in its final episode.
    Third Rate Gamer: This game is dumber than that last episode of The Sopranos where they— (cuts to black)
  • No Problem with Licensed Games:invoked Apparently his opinion on them, according to his The Lion King review:
    Third Rate Gamer: As a film director myself, I know that it's really easy to turn a movie into a video game.
  • Not So Stoic: A variation. Although his attempts to act angry fall straight into Bad "Bad Acting", the Running Gag in the Lion King video of his hesitance to say the word "girlfriend" in reference to Nala has him sound genuinely stressed.
  • Off with His Head!: This happened to him at the end of his Ninja Gaiden review, where the Ryu sprite comes across the screen, "chops" TRG's head off—really poorly, BTW—and the screen displays technicolor strobe lights with the Ninja Gaiden failure music and its "Game Over" screen.
  • Once an Episode: Starting in season 2, every episode begins with the intro of TRG'S sprite running across "epic" video games (and a YouTube page featuring an AVGN video) as well as including background music for infamous video games, including M.U.S.C.L.E., McKids and Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure.
  • Only Sane Man: Billy is quick to point out the Third Rate Gamer's idiocy.
  • Orphaned Series: There most likely won't be more episodes now that the Irate Gamer's popularity and infamy have fallen, and the creator doesn't have the motivation to make more.
  • Overly Long Gag: After whining about the graphics in Yoshi's Island, he spends more than a minute in real time trying to draw something better in crayon. He fails.
  • Pac Man Fever: Parodied. In every reaction shot, he's constantly Button Mashing, regardless if this makes any kind of sense for the game sequence in question. He's almost always using a controller from a completely different system, and sometimes not even a controller at all, like a pair of headphones and the DS case for Final Fantasy III.
  • Plot Hole: Poked fun at in his Chip n' Dale review; Cool Spot shows up the way he usually did in TRG's review of said game, but Billy quickly calls him out on this since Cool Spot was supposed to be dead. TRG responds with "Who's going to notice?" This is a stab at the same plot hole with Kool-Aid Man in IG's review of Cool Spot.
  • Poe's Law: There is a worrying amount of people who fail to realize he's a parody, if the YouTube comments are anything to go by.
  • Porky Pig Pronunciation:
    • In the Cool Spot review, he complains about the number of enemies and tries to say that he thought he was playing Cool Spot, not Super Smash Bros. Melee. After three failed attempts to say "Melee", he gives up and uses Brawl instead. This is a Take That! to IG's Brawl review in which he mispronounces "Melee" - he says "mee-lay", while it should be "may-lay" - the American pronunciation and the one used by the announcer in the game.
    • In the Legend of Zelda review, he tries to say "Lucario". It doesn't go well:
      L... Luo... Lu-sa-sari-ka-kar... Luh-cheerio
    • Downplayed in the Yoshi's Island review. He can't figure out how to say "adaptation", so he settles for "adaption". Although the former is the recommended form, the latter isn't wrong.
  • Recognition Failure: All the time. In the review of Little Nemo: The Dream Master, he comments about the title character wearing pajamas and ponders if he's "sleeping over at Michael Jackson's house", he shows a picture of Jesse Jackson instead. Similar jokes include in the Battletoads review where his character crashes into a wall and asks, "who do they think I am, Sonny Bono?" and shows a picture of Cheech Marin and the Street Fighter II review where he comments on the design of the level and asks if Ray Charles did it and shows a picture of Bill Cosby...just because he was wearing sunglasses in the picture.
  • Running Gag:
    • He tends to confuse Super Mario Bros. with other games, such as Super Mario RPG, Luigi's Mansion, Mario Kart 64, and Smash Bros.: Double Dash.
    • Usually when showing just a small part of a game, he'll die at the end of the clip before cutting to something else.
    • The footage sometimes shows him picking the lowest difficulty setting before starting. If there isn't a difficulty selection, he will grumble about how he can't pick the easiest difficulty.
    • In almost every episode, he'll get attacked by a character from the game he's reviewing.
    • In quite a few reviews, it's obvious he's using a cheating device as he will get hit, but receive no damage. Played for Laughs, of course.
      Third Rate Gamer: And don't ask why I'm not losing any lives when I die.
    • When words or an image are placed on top of something, a fart sound is often used.
    • When he shows an image, he almost always zooms in on it for no reason. As the description for his The Lion King review puts it, "I hope you like looking at pictures that zoom in slowly!"
    • He calls minor details that coincidentally happen to be in other games "direct rip-offs".
    • "...which is only available on the [console]", usually with him showing a version of the game released on a different console than what he says.
    • The Irate Gamer considered it a con in his Aladdin review that the game didn't unlock extra characters after you beat it. Naturally, the Third Rate Gamer turns it into a gag where he demands to know why he can't play as Jafar, regardless of game.
  • Saying Sound Effects Out Loud: He imitates radar circles with a "woo-woo-woo" in his Chip n' Dale review.
  • Self-Deprecation:
    • After the "Evil" Rate Gamer "takes over" the show in the Rocket Knight Adventures review:
      Evil Rate Gamer: "At last! The crappy review show is finally mine!"
    • At the end of the Home Improvement review, he says, "I can't take it any more! This review sucks!"
    • In the dual Super Mario Bros. / Super Mario Bros. 2 review, he mentions that the review will suck no matter which game he picks.
  • Sequel Displacement: Invoked, exaggerated, and parodied in his Street Fighter II review, where he claims that there is no Street Fighter.
  • Serious Business: He'll criticize the smallest of details, no matter how trivial.
    "And I'm serious. Dead. Fucking. Serious."
  • Shaped Like Itself: All the time.
    "When you think of one of the most bestest Pixar films of the 1970s, chances are The Lion King is probably on your top 5 list."
  • Side View: Lampshaded in his review of Chip and Dale: Rescue Rangers, where he says that every game should be a side-scroller. Keep in mind that in his earlier Kirby's Adventure review, he complains about the latter game being a side-scroller and said that it should be a puzzle game instead.
  • Skewed Priorities:
    • TRG will sometimes spend a disproportionate amount of time complaining about a game's graphics, even when they were good for their time and his standards were impossible to meet back then. On the flip side, he's also willing to give good grades solely based on the graphics. Case in point: Ace Attorney, which got a 10/10 even though "the graphics are nice" was the only nice thing he had to say about it.
    • TRG will often nitpick tiny flaws that are unlikely to interfere with anyone's enjoyment of a game, while he ignores the big picture.
  • Small Name, Big Ego: Played for Laughs.
    • He parodies how little credit IG gives to other people in his work, and often writes very self-centered things about himself in the credits.
    • He also thinks the "Coolness Meter" in Cool Spot should start at 100% for him, because he's "The fucking Third Rate Gamer!" Played for Laughs, of course.
  • Soundtrack Dissonance: The show's theme song for the first season is the Dog Ending Theme from Silent Hill 2.
    • Then there is the beginning of the Cool Spot review, which features the first couple of chords from the Family Matters theme song!
  • So Unfunny, It's Funny: Constantly invoked.
  • Special Effect Failure: Invoked. He never tries to make the special effects look real.
    • In the Yoshi's Island review, the AVGN's shirt (taken from a shot which itself is badly lit) is poorly superimposed onto him throughout the entire video.
    • When TRG dies in an explosion that leaves his house unharmed, the newspaper says, "Third Rate Gamer killed by lame special effect".
    • In the Little Nemo review, he shows obvious clip art of a kid on a bike (with his face plastered over it) that still has a white background moving in an obviously-fake manner over another picture of a house.
    • At the end of the Home Improvement review, a dinosaur spits fire on TRG's computer. A stock explosion appears when it hits, and then some obvious fire GIFs are placed on the TV, which is still playing the computer just fine. You can even tell that the "game" playing on his TV is really just footage copied from the Irate Gamer's review of the game, as evident when the footage on the computer cuts to his room.
  • Special Guest:
  • Split Timelines Plot: The Super Mario Bros./Super Mario Bros. 2 review parodies the Irate Gamer's Mario Is Missing!/Mario's Time Machine review by copying its structure. After choosing one of the games to play, the Third Rate Gamer lights the other on fire and throws it across the room, lighting a Cartoon Bomb that is inexplicably in his room. The only other divergence is whether Offensive Stereotype stays or leaves; however, the video manages to mix up the timelines, leading to him suddenly appearing in the timeline where the Third Rate Gamer sent him away to get rid of the bomb.
    Billy: What the hell is wrong with you?
    TRG: What are you talking about?
    Billy: He left in this timeline! It's the other timeline where he stays so he can save your life before your house explodes!
    TRG: [directly to camera] This video is confusing... I should have been paying more attention.
  • Spoiled by the Format:invoked
    • At one point in his Nintendo DS review, he is conspicuously a lot farther away from the camera, parodying the Irate Gamer's misuse of the camera position to spoil the running gag of things falling from the sky in his Tetris review:
      Third Rate Gamer: These games suck so much, it makes me wish that a Thwomp from Super Mario Bros. would fall out of the sky in this room and crush me! Of course, you've probably already noticed that I'm further back away from the camera and there's a lot of empty space above me so the joke is pretty much dead, but I'm gonna do it anyway. (gets flattened by a Thwomp)
    • Similarly in his Chip n' Dale: Rescue Rangers review, this time parodying the end of the Irate Gamer's Kirby's Epic Yarn review:
      Third Rate Gamer: And why am I on one edge of the screen? (Chip magically appears to his left)
  • Spoofed with Their Own Words: Quite a few of his gags are just directly quoting the Irate Gamer, sometimes with some added context. A good example is his Lion King review, where he directly borrows the line "you touch the lava, you die!", with the only change being his demand to know why the game would kill you if you touch lava.
  • Stalker with a Crush: The Third Rate Gamer acts like this towards both the Angry Video Game Nerd and the Irate Gamer, talking about how much he hates them yet still being completely obsessed with them, casually mentioning that he sends them nude photos.
  • Stylistic Suck:
    • Something visible from the very start: the horrible, horrible camera. It is probably the worst camera that's been used for the entirety of Irate Gamer parodies.
    • The special effects, video editing and acting. Occasionally lampshaded.
    • If there is ever anything written on-screen, it is guaranteed to be misspelled: "GO SHOV A CAKTAS UP UR ASS", "Double Dragons Princible" etc.
  • Take That!:
    • The entire series is one big Take That to the Irate Gamer. Also occasional jabs at Leisuresuitgaming and Game Dude, two other infamous YouTube reviewers.
    • This even goes as far to have a Take That to one of The Irate Gamer's Take Thats, when he says, "Well, yeah, but these haters are...dumb." (Photoshopped graphic saying "PWNED!")
    • And occasionally, he goes for targets other than video game reviewers.
      "This ninja is the worst ninja in the history of ninjas! I'd rather watch an episode of fuckin' Naruto than play a level of this shitty fake ninja game!"
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Parodied in-universe in the Yoshi's Island "review", where TRG complains a lot about everything in the game that's different from other Mario games, even minor things like the fact that you can jump on Shy Guys to kill them, but you can't pick them up.
    Third Rate Gamer: (whiningly) It's different than every other Mario game! How do they expect me to play something like this? Why couldn't it just be exactly the same as every other game in the series?
  • That Makes Me Feel Angry: Comes along with the Stylistic Suck territory, Played for Laughs.
  • This Is for Emphasis, Bitch!: What the announcer for his commercial for the Crad Game yells at fans to do:
    "Order now! Right now, bitch!"
    • "Your wish is granted, bitch!"
  • Throw It In!: In-universe, it appears that the Third Rate Gamer appears to still be learning the game as he plays it, and leaves in his mistakes. For instance, in his Battletoads review, he complains about not being able to refill your armor in Ghosts 'n Goblins before immediately realizing otherwise. Also, he is originally unaware of the power-ups in Yoshi's Island until minutes later in the review.
  • Toilet Humour: Parodied. These jokes (as well as his other jokes) usually fall under So Unfunny, It's Funny. Example from the Yoshi's Island "review":
    TRG: Shy Guy? More like Crap Guy! (fart noise) (a picture of a turd appears on the Shy Guy)
  • Too Dumb to Live: He has a bomb just lying around in his house for no reason.
  • Took a Level in Dumbass: The already incompetent Third Rate Gamer forgets that the controller has to be plugged in for The Lion King — and it's not hinted that he merely didn't see that the controller wasn't plugged in.
    Third Rate Gamer: Why couldn't they have told me that from the beginning?
  • Trivially Obvious: At the beginning of the E3 2009 recap: "If I had a dime for everyone who's been asking me my thoughts on E3, I'd have some dimes."
  • Tyop on the Cover: His title cards are basically a parody of those Mike Matei does for the Angry Video Game Nerd show. They appear simple MS Paint pictures, and are usually riddled with typos.
  • Unfortunate Implications: Invoked with the side character "Offensive Stereotype", basically a conical-straw-hat-wearing, walking collection of every Asian stereotype in existence. A parody of Irate Gamer's Ambiguously Jewish Ronnie the Skeleton.
    Offensive Stereotype: I have better things to do! Like eat rice, and do math, and drive on wrong side of road.
  • Unreadably Fast Text: Done at times. For instance, in "Cool Spot", he does an Aside Glance and the text "this is the part where you're supposed to laugh" flashes very briefly.
  • Verbal Backspace: Immediately after "reviewing" Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse:
    "There you go, folks. I reviewed not just one, but (holds up two fingers) two game—(hastily corrects himself) three games!"
  • Viewers Are Morons:
    • Played for Laughs, and almost always lampshaded. It is meant to parody how commonly the Irate Gamer would circle every little detail on the screen in a green circle.
    "Hopefully if I circle these words as I read them, it will enhance the video because my fans don't know how to read."
    • His review of Super Mario Bros. 1 and 2, which features two different stories in parallel timelines, has the message "Pay attention now because my fans are morons" at the beginning. (This parodies the warning at the beginning of the Irate Gamer's review of Mario is Missing and Mario's Time Machine, which also featured the same type of parallel timelines storytelling.)
  • Visual Pun: In his review of Super Mario Bros. 1 and 2, TRG says that he'd like to see a video game based on The Catcher in the Rye, and shows a baseball player in a loaf of rye bread.
    Third Rate Gamer: Hey, catcher! Get out of that rye! (Rimshot)
  • Wanton Cruelty to the Common Comma: Parodied. He mispronounces words that the Irate Gamer frequently mispronounces, such as "fustrating" and "emenies", makes grammar mistakes, or uses the wrong word ("predecessor" for "successor"). He's also prone to nitpicking the grammar in a game while making tons of mistakes himself.
  • What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?:invoked Parodied in his Kirby's Adventure review, after a "commercial" for his very own Crad Game:
    Third Rate Gamer: We now return to The Third Rate Gamer Show, only on Nick Jr.!
  • Wingding Eyes: His eyes turn to hearts accompanied by a "ka-ching" noise when he discovers a book saying "Cheat Codes" in Cool Spot. Too bad for him that he can't pick the book up...

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