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Lets Play / John Wolfe
aka: Harshly Critical

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https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/wolfe_2.png
Think critically.
John Wolfe (formerly known as HarshlyCritical) is an American YouTube LetsPlayer who specializes in horror and adventure games. He is known for his diverse choice of games, which range from low-budget indie titles to higher-production games, and his rather sardonic and dry calm approach to horror and jump scares rather than the Suddenly Shouting Ham and Cheese approach many of his contemporaries take. His fans are called "critical viewers".

He has an official website as well as a Facebook page. And, of course, his YouTube channel.

Has announced he will be moving his gaming content over to his second channel.

    open/close all folders 

    Games finished (Non-exhaustive) 

    Permanent Hiatus Let's Plays 

    Other Games 

    Games played on John Twolfe 

His Let's Play videos include instances of:

  • Achievements in Ignorance:
    • During his playthrough of Little Nightmares II, John manages to walk through a collection of untriggered bear traps on his first go without even knowing they were there. When he notices the traps a few minutes later, he expresses astonishment towards how he avoided them without even noticing.
    • When playing Spooky's Jump Scare Mansion, he manages to escape Specimen 2 two times in a row without even realizing it was there, because he went into the game blind and mistook the eerie noises and puddles of green goop as mere ambience and environmental hazards. For bonus points, he was actually complaining that nothing had happened or come after him while being blissfully unaware that Specimen 2 was hot on his tail. He doesn't even see the thing until room 164; it first appeared in room 60.
    • In his first ever playthrough of Until Dawn, a game where he went in absolutely blind and played it in one sitting on-camera, he somehow managed to stumble ass-backward into the best possible ending of a game where the choices you make are permanent and often counter-intuitive.
  • Actually Pretty Funny:
    • In Silence of the Sleep, John is annoyed to find brush script text in the game, then he reads what it says: "Heart is where the food is". It made him laugh and say this trope almost word by word.
    • During Case 2: Animatronics, he is rather frustrated by the game's Fake Difficulty and the game's puzzles, finding the way they are designed to be more irritating than clever. When he tries to solve a rather standard "fix the generator" puzzle, and suffers a High-Voltage Death because you need to turn off the generator first before doing it, he breaks down hard into laughter.
      "What did you think would happen, you frigging idiot?!"
    • He is not having a good time playing The Walking Dead: A New Frontier, as he finds it to have an uninteresting plot and is completely burned out from constantly being chastised by the game for decisions he was forced to make and decisions he didn't even make. However when he fails a QTE and is treated to a surprisingly Looney Tunesque scene of Javi clocking his head on a metal bar and falling to his death, he is in absolute hysterics. He then fails it again on purpose just to see it once more.
  • Angrish: Happens on occasion. Most notably in a Cry of Fear episode when he forgets to save and dies from a single gunshot, forcing him back to an old checkpoint. Heavy frustration ensues.
  • Berserk Button: Harsh's alter ego Justine tends to get "angsty" whenever John forgets a tinderbox in the Amnesia custom stories.
  • "Blind Idiot" Translation: "Your Neighbour Nightmare"
  • Catchphrase: "Think critically."
  • Cringe Comedy: To celebrate his 200,000 Subscriber count, John forced himself to react to his old videos and see how he's improved. He's quickly embarrassed with what he finds.
    John: That's the worst Gregory Peck impression I've heard in my life!
  • Deadpan Snarker:
  • Enmity with an Object: John has this relationship with HQ Residential House, a popular Unity asset that many amateur horror game makers use in their games. John has encountered the house so many times while playing amateur horror games that he practically knows the house like the back of his hand. He has made not one, not two, but three separate compilations of video games that use that asset, and that's not counting all the individual games he's also played that used it.
    This is the story of a house. But not just any house. This is the story of HQ Residential House. A popular asset sold on the Unity Store. According to legend, HQ Residential House is not just any old Unity asset. It's haunted. It is said that once you play a game featuring the house, it will continue to appear in every game from that moment until the day you die...
  • Heterosexual Life-Partners: He played Kingdom Hearts with one of his close friends. The video was a temporary departure from the horror genre.
  • I Hate Past Me: Downplayed. He's extremely ashamed of his early youtube years, to the point of privating his earliest reviews. He's surprised to find some genuinely good observations in his old work, but berates his past self for making questionable tech decisions or overreacting to jumpscares.
  • Instantly Proven Wrong: It happens twice while playing Case 2: Animatronics:
    • The first when he remarks how the animatronics are, despite being killer robots, terrible at finding him. One finds him mid-sentence.
    "You know, for a killer robot he's very bad at finding— Oh god!!!
    • And later when he locks the door to a room he's hiding in. As he's describing that he's safe because he locked the door, an animatronic opens it.
    (Hears animatronic at door) Well, the door's locked so tough lu— WHAT?! No! I locked the door! Fuck!
  • Jumpscare: Though these are few and far between with John it doesn't mean they never happen.
    • In Chapter Two of Visage, While looking for the storage room, he ends up in the small bathroom. Remembering where go, he turns around. This causes him to find a naked Dolores poking her head into the room. He had to stop playing and recover for a little bit.
    • Hilariously, one of the jump scares to get him better than any other came from a truly awful "horror" game that doesn't even manage to be tense or scary at all called "Tall Poppy." The villain quite literally just appears and goes "uagh"... and it actually gets a pretty good jump out of John. When it happens, you almost instantly see the self-loathing wash over John's face.
      John: Wow. That's... a shame. That is a shame. Wow. Tall Poppy, you're gonna ruin my reputation that I've worked so hard to cultivate.
  • Man of a Thousand Voices: John is capable of voicing Justine in a convincing female voice. Some of his RPG Maker playthroughs have him voice each character in a different tone of voice. He was also a voice actor for the indie game Night Blights.
  • Named After Somebody Famous: In the Thursday Multiplayer stream, John revealed his screenname was inspired by the Angry Video Game Nerd.
  • Rage Quit: Averted. John, for the most part, sticks to finishing what he starts. The Afraid of Monsters playthrough was delayed because of frustration but was picked up soon after. Although a few games, such as the Monstrum scenarios, were never truly finished.
  • So Okay, It's Average: invoked This is how he ends up feeling about a lot of low-budget indie games he reviews. Often he'll praise aspects of them that are creative or interesting, which stops the game from being terrible, but isn't nearly enough to make the game good. Ironically, he finds this worse than a work being So Bad, It's Good, invoked as explained when he plays "Fear Of Clowns:"
    Sadly, it's not awful. I would much prefer it to be just terrible and then at least it would be fun to laugh at, but it's like just kind of painfully middle-of-the-road, I suppose, would be the best way to look at it.
  • Stating the Simple Solution: When playing Five Nights at Freddy's, he brings up the oft-mentioned solution of "why not just give the security guard a fursuit so the animatronics ignore him", but he also brings up another such solution for if they want to keep their guards alive: the guard stays in one place and watches cameras via a screen, so why not post the security guard elsewhere?
  • The Stoic / Nerves of Steel: The number one reason he's so popular and unique. It takes a lot to scare him.
  • Taught by Experience: He's played so many horror games that he can predict all the cliches at this point. This is another reason for his popularity, as he can predict jumpscares and other events, making him more Genre Savvy than some others in the LP community.
  • Tempting Fate: He lands a 2-for-1 sale with the Resident Evil series:
    • During Episode 5 of Resident Evil Village, he comments how he's getting cocky due to not experiencing a death, and needs to die soon. He later goes on to die three times in the video courtesy of Salvatore Moreau.
    • During his play of Resident Evil 4 (Remake) he holds high hopes that he won't encounter Novistadors, which he considers to be The Scrappy invoked of the roster of enemies. After beating the segment with the Armaduras he says "What's next, Novistadors? God I hope not!" A Novistador leaps on Leon out of nowhere before John even closes his mouth with the comedic timing of a Saturday-Morning Cartoon.
      John: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! I hate it! I hate Novistadors!
  • They Copied It, So It Sucks!:invoked An oft-mentioned criticism he has of the many low budget games he plays, is when they are just blatantly ripping off other games. He even coined the phrase "Grannylike" after playing, no kidding, several dozen or so games that just completely ripped off Granny. Even when games are utterly terrible, if they're at least original he'll have either some praise or some constructive criticism on how to improve it, while he won't even bother critiquing out-and-out ripoffs since he feels they are nothing more than a cheap cash-grab to leech off of a popular trend.
  • Took a Level in Cynic: As illustrated by his 200,000 Subscriber Special, a frequency of extremely bland, cheap horror games transforms John from an easily impressed, scared player to a more serious Deadpan Snarker.
  • Verbal Tic: When anticipating a Jump Scare, he tells the environment to "Shut it..."
  • Vitriolic Best Buds: Him and Mr. Kravin have collaborated numerous times on some videos. If you keep track of John's social media accounts, you'll see their occasional friendly insults and inside jokes.
  • We Are Experiencing Technical Difficulties:
  • What the Hell, Player?: Discussed when playing The Walking Dead (Telltale). Though he thinks that it is a fantastic game, at one point calling it (at the time) one of the all-time best games he's ever played, he feels the game's Fatal Flaw is the way the player constantly gets brow-beaten by the other characters for every decision they make. Since pretty much every choice is a Morton's Fork, it is inevitable that you'll have to listen to characters lecture Lee for everything he does, while other characters are free to do as they please and it largely passes without mention, to the point it makes most of the cast come off as Unintentionally Unsympathetic.invoked Ironically, this even makes him warm up to Molly (a character deliberately written as obnoxious and mouthy) and Ben (a character largely reviled by most of the fanbaseinvoked) of all characters because at least they are nice to Lee and don't constantly harp on him for every little perceived mistake he's ever made. After being lectured by Christa for the 3rd time over one choice he made, he becomes genuinely angry:
    "WHY-- IS-- EVERYONE-- JUST-- you know, (growls), I'd just like to point out something real quick. I know that this is a game, and everything, so obviously you have to make all the decisions, but Lee has time and time again had to make RIDICULOUSLY difficult decisions!"
'Til next time. Think critically.

Alternative Title(s): Harshly Critical

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