I've been watching the early-early ones the past few days, and my God I wanted to punch him. They were just so slow-paced, shouty and the character was just boring and testosterone overload. He's got far more variety and depth now and I love 'im.
It's called Growing the beard.
Definitely agree about RL Doug. In fact, I'd go as far to say he's one of the most humble reviewers I've ever seen. He's always mindful and respectful towards other people's opinions, he doesn't go overboard when bashing something he doesn't like, and his arguments tend to be fairly rational and down to earth. So many reviewers fly off the handle and act like like their opinion is the only acceptable one in existence, it's refreshing to hear someone say "This is why I like/don't like this, if you disagree that's totally fine".
Given the retirement of the Critic's character, here is my postscript:
I could see why, since the character can wear out his welcome even after being polished further like the Critic did in the last couple years. That said, I still am going to miss him, and 2012 definitely did have its particularly good moments such as Patch Adams, Ponyo and the series finale with Scooby Doo. Well, here's to looking forward to Doug's future project.
I now go by Graf Von Tirol.Leave a Comment:
Definitely better over time
I did recall the time I've become a fan of his works back in 2009. Looking back now, it is not just that the quality of the videos have gotten better, but over time he seems to be relying less upon the shouting, cursing and usage of memes and running gags (no doubt he still is using such things in his review, although they're not as frequent as in the past). Sometimes he does still tend to drag some jokes on, but quite a bit of his humor is pretty well-timed and I actually do find myself tuning in every tuesday for a new episode. My personal favorite episode would probably have to be the Langoliers episode, although I do like it when he suffers through cartoon movies such as The Care Bears movies, A Troll In Central Park or the Miramax cut of The Thief And The Cobbler.
Of course, one major hurdle in his later videos was the infamous Lets Play of Bart's Nightmare, that did fall into many traps of amateur LPers and showed that such a genre is not the right fit for a persona such as the Critic's (while it may be meant to be a parody, it's polarizing to say the least and Doug himself even admitted to not liking it even before releasing it).
All in all, he's still not without his flaws, but I do appreciate his newer reviews more than I do his older ones, because at his first videos he's trying to find a persona to stick to, then he stuck with the persona of a pathetic manchild (whereas the RL Doug is interesting to listen to and in fact less inflammatory towards most of the things he reviews (one exception comes to mind), some works of which were guilty pleasures that he grew up with or a few he may find enjoyable, such as Judge Dredd for instance), and then improving the character while not losing this pathetic-manchild characterization.