We all like James Rolfe a lot, but every once in a while, he puts out something that makes us all wonder: What was he thinking? Here's a collection of the AVGN's biggest shitloads of fuck.
Keep in mind:
- Sign your entries
- One moment per series to a troper, if multiple entries for the same series are signed to the same troper the more recent one will be cut.
- Moments only, no "just everything he said," or "This entire work," entries.
- No contesting entries. This is subjective, the entry is their opinion.
- No natter. As above, anything contesting an entry will be cut, and anything that's just contributing more can be made its own entry.
- Explain why it's a
Dethroning Moment of Suck. - No ALLCAPS, no bold, and no italics unless it's the title of a work. We are not yelling the DMoSs out loud.
- Please no He Panned It, Now He Sucks!. Someone having a different opinion than you is not nearly a good enough justification for something being seen as stupid or offensive.
- Creator's works only. No moments on the author themselves or personal experience with them.
The Angry Video Game Nerd:
- bobdrant: I'm a fan of The Angry Video Game Nerd and I can usually look past whenever he uses toilet humor and just enjoy his reviews. However, that was not the case for his review of various Star Wars games for different systems. Long story short, towards the end of the review, James begins talking about all the Star Wars games he didn't review (mostly because there's so many of them), and, for no reason whatsoever, a buffalo just takes a crap and breaks his window. I consider it to be the DMOS for the AVGN, because, well, it's pretty much the laziest writing I've seen from him. The joke makes no sense, there's no buildup to it, and it has nothing to do with the subject matter he's reviewing. It's like he just randomly threw in over-the-top toilet humor just for the sake of having over-the-top toilet humor. C'mon, James, you're better than this. You're The Angry Video Game Nerd, not the "Random Jokes About Poop Nerd".
- Johnnytherock: The Schwarzenegger Games review in one scene, James flatly delivers three of his catchphrases in succession and takes a swig of Rolling Rock, all in about five seconds. The quality has declined since the old days, and previous reviews had parts that dragged, but this seemed all too perfunctory to be entertaining.
- Fofa: Those weren't the only instances of Critical Research Failure those videos had, though those examples do stick out like a sore thumb. Castlevania 64 doesn't have any music when it actually does (which you can actually hear in the video) and the majority of the games mostly happened inside the castle since the beginning, when he said that the games started doing it after Symphony of the Night.
- Kuuenbu: In his "Super NES vs. Sega Genesis" video, he lets his bias get the better of him and says that, unlike with the SNES controller, you can only press one Genesis gamepad button at a time. Anyone who has ever held a Genesis/Mega Drive controller for 10 seconds knows you can press two (or even three, though it's difficult and counter-intuitive) buttons simultaneously by adjusting the angle of your palm. Given how much he seems to be attempting a fair analysis, this egregious offense makes his self-admitted bias just plain facepalm-inducing. You'd think this would be something so obvious that no one could possibly fall for it, but if James Rolfe could be this ignorant, it wouldn't be that big a stretch to see pre-teen Nintendo fanboys watching that video and saying "You see, you can't press more than one button on Sega like you can on Nintendo! I told you Nintendo is what Genesisn'tnote
- awdur: In his Seaman review, after the Seaman start mating, the Nerd says "I didn't know one of them was female!". The problem is, he does. During the evolutionary proccess of the Seaman, at one point, they will pick a gender and inform the player. The Nerd blatantly ignored an important part of the gameplay just so he could make a joke.
- In his follow-up review of Sonic the Hedgehog (2006),
- Trialman: I wasn't too bothered by the first review, but the follow-up was the real disappointment for me. He continues the game, and he does go a bit more in-depth on some things, but not enough to make me satisfied, personally. The real nadir though, is when he gets to the last story. He briefly mentions the infamous scene where Sonic dies, and then basically goes straight to the even more infamous Elise kissing Sonic scene. He just notes how dumb that moment is, and then stops the review there. He barely even implies that there is a certain Disappointing Last Level between those cutscenes. Considering that infamy of End of The World, you'd think the Nerd would have something to say about it, but the most we got was a throw-away line about collecting the Chaos Emeralds, which was so vague, someone unaware could easily think that they were collected in a cutscene. Quite frankly, the scarred Sonic 06 box seemed to have more effort put into it than the review itself.
- Bobg: My dethroning moment for him is when he gets to the part where Sonic and Silver use their Chaos Emeralds to go back in time to prevent Elise's death. He asks why they don't use their Chaos Emeralds to go back in time and kill Eggman when he was a baby. Yeah, because that's totally something the heroes would do. Forget the fact that he would be a helpless infant at the time, murder is still murder. Are Sonic or any of his friends murderers? No.
- Teleport Ted: In the Star Wars: Masters of Teräs Käsi episode, the skit about the Lightsabers' Gameplay and Story Segregation - which depicts Darth Vader as helpless if his Lightsaber doesn't work, even though he has Mind over Matter and Super-Strength too. Given James's fanboy moments, you'd think he would've avoided such a Critical Research Failure. Thankfully, the rest of the episode is fine; but still...
- multibrawlr: The portrayal of the Nerd in Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie as a worshipped deity of sorts — a fan excitedly buys a game because the Nerd spat on it — was likely Played for Laughs, but to me personally got old and felt excessively self-congratulatory.
- Gaucelm: I feel like the Nerd has been getting increasingly stale over the years and it's obvious James is not as much into it... many of his later episodes felt extremely lukewarm, downright boring to me. But one moment that especially struck me as agressively lazy and creatively bankrupt was the conclusion of his Dirty Harry review; he makes the most predictable and obvious joke you'd make, which is - you guessed it - destroy the game cartridge with a gun while quoting the famous - and itself overly-referenced - "bullets" quote from the first movie. He puts no originality, no twist into it whatsoever. It felt like "This parody is obligatory, I guess". This is the kind of stuff you'd see in a 2007 The Irate Gamer video, not in 2018 AVGN.
- Wii Guy:I was going to give my Dethroning Moment of Suck to Majora's Mask, but I think his review of The Aladdin Deck Enhancer deserves it more for one simple reason: the opening sketch parodying Disney's Aladdin Live Action Remake with a Genie that makes Will Smith's GGI Genie form look impressive by comparison. What does the Disney film have to do with the thing the Nerd is reviewing? Other the name, it has absolutely nothing to do with the Disney version. Now if the Nerd was reviewing the actual Aladdin video games based on the animated film, the sketch would work. But he doesn't at all. Whether you hate the live-action remake or not it at least had to do with the Disney Animated movie and its licenced game unlike the Deck Enhancer. Plus the fact this review came out around the same time the Live Action Remake makes me suspicious that he only reviewed the Aladdin Deck Enhancer just because the recent film was making the Aladdin name relevant to talk about. Seriously, the Nerd parodying the films that that licensed video game is based on is fine but this one? This was in-name only and reviews something Disney had nothing to do with.
- Saberwulf 2018: His Taito Legends review was okay, but there were some moments that peeved me. Such as not being able to cover Operation Wolf due to fear of seizures, and the fact that he called Gekiridan, Gridseeker, RayStorm and Metal Black generic and mediocre. RayStorm especially so. RayStorm was by no means a perfect shooter, and it isn't as good as RayForce, but I think he was being too harsh on it. At least Mike Matei is far more tolerable when it comes to shmups.
- Ecco the Dolphin:
- PR Storm: AVGN had been declining in quality quite a bit lately, but the point where I realized just how bad the show had become was the end of this review. That final bit of him shitting into Ecco's blowhole is just disgusting, especially with the shots of the dolphin (plush) vomiting the Nerd's shit. I know AVGN's done stuff like this before, but the implication that he was shitting into Ecco's respiratory tract was just horrifying. For me, the scene is the most juvenile and painful attempt at humor in the entire show.
- Johnnyd 2: While I do agree that the AVGN Ecco review was what caused me to lose faith in the Nerd, but for a different reason. The Nerd outright rage quits the game only a couple of levels in. Yes, I know the game is difficult and hasn't aged well. But it has passwords! So the Nerd could easily have skipped that labyrinth level and seen the rest of the game. The worst part is that given his reaction to the trippy time warp at the beginning, him getting to the later parts of the games, the alien-related parts, in particular, he could've written in an amazing reaction to that! But no! He pussies out and chooses to shit on (and into) Ecco instead without playing it all the way through. The only Hope Spot in all of this is that he mentions looking at the other Ecco games separately down the line near the beginning of the video. I hope that when/if AVGN does revisit Ecco, he looks at the rest of the OG Ecco in addition to the rest of the series.
- Kreutz: To me the reason why the ending of that Review sucks is because, on top of skipping the Nightmare Fuel that is The Vortex Queen, it doesn't feel like Ecco deserves to be treated like that. It worked with Bugs Bunny because the character was annoying and it was staged like the punchline of a slapstick routine, but with Ecco not only is it implied that he dies, but his bloodshot eyes and screams of pain make it a lot more horrific than funny. It also feels a lot more lazy in the production, like instead of James filming himself trashing around a guy in a costume, we get him punching and pretending to shit on a plushie, with stock digital shit effects instead of his trademark practical fake shit made with chocolate and nuts. The whole thing is and feels like a filler episode made to please the YouTube algorithm despite a few good jokes here and there, when it could been something as memorable or surreal as his Seaman review. I don't expect every episode of modern AVGN to be as incredibly ambitious as his review of The Immortal, but that doesn't excuse mediocrity, especially knowing that James is capable of so much more.
Other Cinemassacre productions:
- 'Minecraft with Gadget':
- Midna: Since I can't just say "all of the video", I'll just point to Gadget's "I love building brown bricks with Minecrap" spiel. It would have been mildly amusing, if infantile, if it was only said once... but then he just keeps saying it over and over for almost half a minute. One gets the impression that Matei thought the scene was comedy gold and wanted to milk it for all it was worth.
- Senor Cornholio: Agreed on this video; it was so bad that it makes you wonder of this is seriously the same guy who plays most of the characters in the Nerd's videos. But I wish to put a different moment from the video: Gadget looks at a user's hard work and calls it "stealing" and when Mike tries to argue against it, Gadget kills him and is implied to steal his i-pad. This isn't funny, it's just jerkish. But yeah, the Minecrap thing was pretty bad too.
- PutYaGunsOn: The sexual jokes in Mike Matei's review of Elmo in Grouchland all sound like something written by an attention-starved 14-year-old. The fact that he actually went out of his way to draw a cartoon picture of Cookie Monster walking in on Gordon and Susan having sex purely for the sake of a cheap contrived gag is the cherry on top of all of this.
- 'Top Ten Reasons Blu-Rays Suck'
- ninboy91: I don't mind that Rolfe prefers digital and streaming for movies, but his video still had me cringe. Some of his reasons come off as either bizarre nitpicks to just plain wrong information about the Blu-Ray medium itself. Bizarre being his criticisms about the Blu-Ray cases, but just fixating on special edition releases and ignoring the regular cases. And what he got wrong was the fact that Blu-Ray players always need to be online when he mentioned the updates, never mind the fact that cheaper non-online Blu-Ray players exist. Of course, it's worth noting that his Blu-Ray experiences are all based on using the PlayStation 3.
- supernintendo128: Definitely agree. Even though I'm subscribed to multiple streaming services, I still like to own my favorite films and TV shows on Blu-Ray or UHD Blu-Ray whenever possible. I'm not going to tell James how he should feel about Blu-Ray, but many of his points were either also problems with DVDs to an extent that he even complained about in the past (oversized or otherwise annoying packaging, unskippable trailers), are issues with his Blu-Ray setup (i.e. his PS3) rather than the format itself (DRM that requires an internet connection, the Stop button being sandwiched between the Play and Pause buttons), or just flat out nitpicky filler (he calls Blu-Ray a dumb name and cites that the disc isn't blue, for one thing yes it is, and another thing "Blu-Ray" refers to the blue laser inside the machine). He also has rose-tinted glasses for the DVD menus of old and calls Blu-Ray menus "uncreative" when Blu-Ray menus are smoother to operate and James was complaining about DVD menus a few years ago.
