Geek Rant Topic 18: The Internet Reviewer

When all Else Fails returns and I, Mousa the 14, have come to talk about something a bit recent I'm sure many of you are intimate with and if not, come and learn.

So on the internet we have this budding "career" that's been going on for a few years now. I've brought up previously the network of internet reviewers known as that guy with the glasses.com, and well that's what this is about.

Somehow, at some point once upon a time a man named James Rolfe made a review series called The Angry Video Game Nerd where he took on the persona of a foul-mouthed and bitter nerd reviewing very old video games. Somehow from there things just exploded and in a few years from his introduction, internet reviewers were everywhere. Not that they weren't there before, obviously people must've been doing written reviews of anything everywhere. Mr. Rolfe's show was however not only informative, but entertaining and comedic and even had skits and the like, and it was in video format to boot. This is especially notable because he came out around year before YouTube, so I imagine with the onset of YouTube, word of the man got around.

With the combination of someone doing it first and YouTube being a free platform for nigh everyone, almost every geek with an opinion and a camera wanted to do a show like Mr. Rolfe did. Why? Maybe they want to be heard, maybe they want to be entertaining, maybe it's for fun, maybe it's for the money, either way, the wave was coming and could not be stopped.

This whole internet reviewing thing is an interesting format, primarily becuase of how varied it is whch has been both good and bad. ou see, there seems to be two different sorts of reviews and the overlap between the two can be so muddled that the lack of distinction has caused anger, fconfusion, o frustration among the audience.

Reviews can be defined as Informative or Entertainment and while reviews are really meant to be both, usually it's pretty obvious where it's leaning towards. For example, Yahtzee, The Escapist's video game reviewer leans heavily on the entertainment side, using absurdly odd and hilarious metaphors and snappy visuals to describe his feelings about a video game, but what he presents is an extreme exaggeration of his opinion or simply accentuating the negative. Usually the games he reviews are not as horrid and he admits this to be true, he just tends to point out and emphasize nitpicked issues that bother him and could potentially other others. And sometimes he's simply pointing something out to make a good joke.

On the flipside we have gents such as Bennett the Sage on Blistered Thumbs or MovieBob on The Escapist, a video game reviewer and a movie reviewer respectively. Both take calmer, slower, more analytic approaches, especially Sage whose reviews are usually highly informative and tell exactly what is the good and bad about a game. However some of the times, reviews like these can be boring or dull, but if you want information you look to these. However, MovieBob tends to throw in a bit more entertainment value into his movie reviews, but make no mistake, it's clear they tend highly on the informative and analytic side

Sadly, a lot of geeks are not very smart and they can have trouble seeing when things are meant to be taken seriously or not. Despite the fact Yahtzee's reviews are not the full picture, many will take his word as gospel and assuming that because he says a game is bad, it must be bad. If they had half a brain they would notice that despite the fact his review of say Red Dead Redemption seemed to the flowing in negatives, he loved the game and had it in one of his top five of the year.

This is especially glaring for the reviewing conglomerate known as That Guy With The Glasses.com that seems to be confused about what it's trying to be.

That Guy With The Glasses.com is a website that gathers internet reviewers under a singular Channel Awesome, founded by Doug Walker and his friends, better known as The Nostalgia Critic, a loud, angry, bitter, Daffy Duck-esque character that reviews all of the bad movies of the 90s and 80s. This site has reviewers of almost every niche, usually repeating so if you don't like one movie reviewer, they have another, or if you want an anime reviewer, they have more than 4 to choose from.

The problem is that the site heavily combines, meshes and stirs around, as well as blurs, frappes, and smudges the line between Informative and Entertaining to the point that you don't know what to expect anymore; some opinions could the facetious and completely in character, or only partly in character, or be totally informative. It's very jarring for some, especially of you are incapable of telling the difference between a character and someone's actual opinion or the difference between a legitimate problem or something used for a joke. This is even more of a concern when you realize you have no idea what the goal of the site is; reviewing or entertaining?

Ideally reviews give you overview, analysis, opinions, and perspective on a given program without spoiling anything or giving away the plot. They are merely meant to say if something is worth your while or not. However, a lot of comedic reviews take a page out of the book of the show Mystery Science Theatre 3000 (A geeky show I'm unfamiliar with but notably inspired near all of them.) where instead of doing a proper review, they critique a program bit by bit throughout it's entirety, spoilers and all, mostly so they can have a gag about parts of the program in general. If you wanted a review to know whether or not you want to see or play something, these types are not what you're looking for because you are learning about plot and character elements you may want to find out for yourself. Pretty much every movie reviewer on the website uses this style which is definitely a lot of fun, but might turn people off if they wanted to look for a normal review that happened to be entertaining.

The video game reviews primarily on the other hand seem to be entirely like normal reviews unless explicitly stated otherwise; they inform and entertain, but primarily inform. One of the better synthesizers of these two elements would be Angry Joe of TGWTG.com and it's spin-off video game review site Blistered Thumbs . This is probably because it's harder to spoil a video game when they are longer and you want to inform the viewer of the gameplay and other such elements. So with serious and entertainment reviewers all in the same place, how do you distinguish? One obviously should use their brains but as previously mentioned, people are not exactly insightful enough to distinguish between the two.

This isn't just TGWTG.com though, this can be for reviewers everywhere who have attempted to take up a fictional persona and bare their opinions to the world. Whose the entertainment? Whose the real reviewer? At this point the lines will become so blurred that the term "review" may come to lose all meaning.

Characters can seem to diminish the actual opinions of the person makings the review. Furthermore, playing characters while reviewing makes it easy for the reviewers to hide behind the character when something goes sour with the audience. I love character which is why I know there needs to be proper distinguishing between being entertainment and being informative.

Many also note that entertainment reviewers have this tendency of injecting plots and memes that can take away form the actual review. I agree that the reviewers are free to have their review and their skit shows, but some would prefer having them separate, primarily when they have little to nothing to do with one another.

There is also an issue of quality control that I may elaborate in other installments, but many of you are probably aware of Sturgeon's Law. If you'ere not, the short version is that 90% of everything is crap and the internet is the biggest evidence of that. There's a reason why the internet is known as a cesspool to the informed and uninformed (for different reasons.). The Internet is nigh free, a wild frontier, a wild wild West where there virtually is no law, and no executives. You can come out why whatever content you want regardless of quality or content or being worthwhile. Part of why TGWTG.com exists is to the pick out that remaining good 10% and bring them all to one place. I mean imagine how many Angry "Insert Medium here" Nerds there were that came and went? Or the utterly sickeningly large amount of That Guy With The Glasses knock offs to appear and die in an instant. I cannot even begin to imagine the grotesque number of That "Gender-specific noun" in the "Article of clothing" people there are and simply disappeared into the ether.

I love the internet reviewing scene, it's a wonderful and free creative outlet for many that allows them to be able to creatively express their feelings for something they love or hate, if they can't draw or write or make music or other such things (Unlike the magnificent me) . But right now, the whole "medium", if you can call it that, is a bit of a mess. Hopefully things will stabilize in a few years, or some form of "selling out" comes by. Either way, I can't wait to see how things turn out.

Now if you will excuse me, I have a show to make. To boldly go where no podcast has ever gone before!

-Good Bye, Good Luck, and Imagination Is Your Greatest Power.

Mousa The 14

Geek Rant Topic 14: The Gamer Chick

When All Else Fails, you call Mousa the 14, that one ranting geek.

When people are misinterpreting feminism they misinterpret hard. Just a quick thing I wanted go over. Especially in webcomics, there is the idea that your typically sausage-fest cast you need to have a female character. Besides the usual cliches, you have the hyper component woman who is better than the guys at their particular interest and tend to be some sort of "Strong Female Character". Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.




Thank you K-Bo.

Now where was ..... Ah yes:

Hey, webcomic makers,-no, ya know what? Writers in general: YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG!

The name of the game is Equality!

I get what you're trying to do, the whole "Don't make women look bad" by making them look good so you don't look like misogynist chauvinist pigs. You're doin' it wrong.

Positive discrimination is still discrimination, creating a whole other "Us" versus "Them" thing we don't need. You can make your girl who can "Ass-pwn some newbs in Gears of Duty" or whatever but do it in reasonable amounts. Not the flat bitch that can kick butts up down and sideways from New Amsterdam to Constantinople, but perhaps, I dunno, a person, a character, maybe with a personality trait or two doesn't involve being a wish fulfillment love interest, the Minesotta Fats, the wish fulfillment sex object, or the heartless witch that portrays what you think feminism is actually like (misandry or lesbianism optional of course).

Here's a formula: Guys and gals all win and lose just exactly the same, no one is better or worse based on any gender divide, but based on the character's history or skill from their backstory. You know, make them people.

You're not good writers? Then why do your dudes seem to have one half of a dimension more than your gals? Here, use this and this and this, or this, or you know what? Just all of this. I can wait, go on, take a read, find stuff on women, girls, webcomics, learn what you're doing wrong and get back to me and give me your excuse.

Are Men and Women different? Yessiree! Does this mean you have to skimp out on their character because you don't know their perspective? Hell no! You practically invent your own perspective in your story, you can make women just as varied and unique as your dudes are without making them overly competent or under competent. Average never hurt anybody. Sure there will be the idiots in the outer fringes of Feminism for you DARING to give a woman flaws, but you know what? Screw dat! Make characters. I would say it's not that hard, but it actually is. It's not hard for me but for most people who aren't insane and eccentric and out of their minds obsessive like me; try, learn, read a book perhaps, because you most certainly don't get your female characters that are both strong and flawed from video games. Except maybe Chrono Trigger. Or Tales of Symphonia...

Ya know what? Just go pick up a non-Square Enix Japanese RPG and get back to me. I think the country that has more issues with feminism than we do might be on to something.

Try! Try, I say! TRY WITH ALL YOUR MIGHT! I KNOW YOU CAN!

-Good Bye, Good Luck, and Imagination Is Your Greatest Power

Mousa the 14

Geek Rant Topic 06: JRPGs

When All Else Fails, you call Mousa the 14, that one ranting geek.

So uh, yeah, Guess I didn't get the memo. When did JRPGs (Japanese Role Playing Games, for the non-geek visitors.) become a laughingstock in North America? Too busy playing manly army games and 90's comic throwbacks to care about something that uses primary colors with characters that have personalities؟

That was the Irony mark by the way. And was I being mean? Indeed. I'm still seething from my overview of Faux Hardcore gamers.

Now, the list of Faux hardcore gamer requirements are basically why JRPGs are considered a joke, but once upon a time these were the types of video games were loved. In a time before I was born of course, but that's not the point. If I were to bring up a game like Earthbound, Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana, and the Pre-Final Fantasy 7 Final Fantasy games, I would've thought they were talking about a completely different genre of games because a good majority of gamers seem to love those games for their compelling story lines, interesting characters, fun world to explore, gameplay, and whatnot.

Bring up anything post Final Fantasy 7 you're likely to get bombarded with a vitriol matched only by the Tea Party. But why is that? I seriously doubt JRPGs killed their dogs, and if they did we have bigger things to worry about, like finding out where the Allspark is or how to stop Skynet from killing us.

Well first of wall what do we have t compare them to? If there's a "J" in front of the RPG then J is obviously a qualifier to point out this is similar to but not likea set standard. Here's a poorly researched history lesson for you:

Video Game RPGs are mostly based around the Dungeons and Dragons. The DnD style of game was a complex story telling adventure that featured you and yoru friends exploring a new world as a different person as they fought monsters, explored towns, saved princesses all while upgrading their skills and weapons and maintaining an inventory as well as your health. Video Game RPGs are simplified versions of these because Video Games by definition are limited and therefore cannot provide much the depth, creativity, or numerous elements involved in your standard Dungeons and Dragons game or it's numerous counterparts.

Sacrifices had to be made and one can easily see what sort of Video Game RPG you're playing based on which sacrifices were made.

JRPGs are heavy on story and characters and because of that the decisions you make have little impact on how the story plays out except for a few changes in character development or a different ending when you beat the game. This meant a lot of gameplay was marginalized. You are basically watching an anime and a movie and your job is to move characters from A to B, make sure they don't die in non-plot related things, occasionally do some side quests that involve talking to certain people or delivering things, and fight on a usually non-necessary basis. A majority of JRPGs would make solid TV series or Movies rather than actual games where interactivity and decision making is key. In terms of actual figthing JRPGs basically are numbers game where you have to equio your characters with high ranking weapons and have them use high powered attacks, and maintain their health bar over 75%. All this in turn-based combat.

The numbers from the origin RPGs are there but the fun of actually being a person in the story is not. It's more like you're following some guy and his friends.

In Breif, and I quote someone else: "An angsty teenager with god awful hair struggling with groundless and poorly defined emotional problems through chapters of text boxes. "

Contrast with the common Western RPGs which take a more free-range open sandbox sort of style and has more emphasis on free range combat stuff a la Legend of Zelda or Assassin's Creed. but you tend to get a simpler story and you have a bigger opportunity to do far more sidequests. You can actually choose what class of character you want to be and what skills you can upgrade. Games with karma meters or dialogue selections allow for there to be slightly more effects on what you do, though usually not as much as people would like. The kicker is that usually the main story is nothing to look at and you find yourself eventually getting bored once the exploration becomes repetitive and you realize what you do doesn't have as much of an impact as you like.

In breif, and I quote someone else: "three hours of beating wolves to death in the rain in order to grab a handful of low-grade magical crap that you'll only sell a few minutes later. "

The false dichotomy here is basically choosing between more story and more choice. And more obviously the non-anime fan western audience want more choice.

However that's far deeper than what people actually complain about in terms of JRPG flaws.

Ignoring all the failings that involve appeal ling to the Faux Hardcore gamer, allow me to enumerate a lot of the commonly mentioned "problems" with JRPGs.

1) The Main protagonist is usually same broody emotional and emo or stereotypical energetic and excitable male anime protagonist.
1a) That is usually portrayed in an overly handsome/cutesy anime style
1b) And he wields a sword 99.99% of the time
1c) and has an annoying voice
2) The combat is turn based which is boring and lacks innovation.
3) Nothing you do actually matters
4) The art is 99.99% of the time going to be done in the typical Japanese animation style or as many call it, an anime style.
5) They lack replay value
6) The plots are usually cliche
7) No customization for anything.
9) Numbers are imperative in order to beat enemies rather than skills.
9a) Level grinding is imperative so you Can be stronger than the next boss
9b) No skill needed, just buy the next strongest weapons and armour
10) And It's not really roleplaying if you're going through someone else's story, limited to their personal skills with no variation, and it's their personality that drives the plot and not yours.

If there's more I remember, I'll add them but that's the basic outline ad they are frankly valid arguments. But it's hard to see why JRPGs were liked once upon a time.

Chrono Trigger still had the skill limitations and numbers crunching and you were playing as a set of established characters. But then The protagonist had a blank slate personality, what decisions you made in the game affected a great deal of the story, and the combat style was more of a faux-turn based one.

Earthbound has many of the similar failings Chrono Trigger had but it was open world, the writing was clever and the story was well done, and you had a lot of freedom in what you could do.

So JRPGs aren't necessarily a problem, it's that as games become bigger and more expensive to make it becomes more difficult to combine the best of both wolds to create something fun and interesting.

There is another factor I didn't mention that could be a cause of all this: Following the Leader. You see, Final Fantasy 7 introduced something new for it's time with a complex and fascinating protagonist with a deep and interesting plot even though it was wrought with all the things on the list many claim to hate about JRPGs. Well guess what, after the super success of FF7, many tired to follow in suit and thus nigh every JRPG we see these days is what one might call a rehash of Final Fantasy 7. Everything was starting too like trite and cliche after the original and now what we have left is a big ball of rage.

What can be done? Not sure, it seems like it's hard to break trends when you have budgets. We can only hope something new and creative comes our way like Okami, The World Ends With You, or the Tales of Symphonia/Phantasia battle system used for more RPGs.

Wait...

-Good Bye, Good Luck, and Imagination Is Your Greatest Power.
Mousa the 14

Geek Rant Topic 01: Shadow The Hedgehog

Rather than go out of my way with introductions, I figured I'd go straight to the writing. When all else fails, you hear the call of That One Ranting Geek, me. They call me Mousa the 14. Not the 14th, the 14. Occupation: Jack of All Trades Geek and Geek Culture Commentator and I'm here to talk to you about Shadow the friggin' Hedgehog. Or rather, I'm going to type, and you're going to reply either intelligently or in a troll-like manner. Naturally I'd prefer the former.

Oh, and just so you can light your flames and ready your pitchforks early, I hate Shadow the Hedgehog and I hated his spin-off game.

Now that we have that out of the way, it's time for me to explain everything right and wrong with Shadow the effing Hedgehog.

IN THE BEGINNING

We had Sonic Adventure 2: Battle. Sounds awesome enough, a cool looking sequel to Sonic Adventure, only this time Sonic had to deal with a black furred impersonator. And in the end, Shadow makes a Heroic Sacrifice and the world is saved from his revenge plot. He was an awesome character to start out with. Tall, dark, and broody usually aren't my style, but I found his development and backstory to be fascinating and his character acted appropriately given the life he's had. And he went off with a bang, with a perfectly reasonable redemption equals death and they all lived happily ever after.

The ending of that game was powerful, it was basically the first time the main cast had lost a close ally, and possible friend. I can see why people initially liked Shadow at first. He was cool, not as arrogant as Sonic, but had an awesome story and did awesome things. He deserved to be remembered that way forever.

Cue Sonic Heroes and Shadow the Hedgehog and all that goes down the toilet. SEGA doesn't take care of it's children. It couldn't let sleeping dogs lie. You see, this is my problem with corporate executives, they milk the cash cow for all it's worth instead of just little the plot go according to plan. This is why Dragonball Z lasted past the Freiza Saga and why One Piece is on chapter five hundred and something (Not that that's a bad thing necessarily).

It's also your fault but I'll get back to that later.

Anyhow, Sonic Heroes revealed Shadow to be alive somehow but in some sort of stasis or whatever, thus cheapening his heroic sacrifice and the moment everyone shared at the end of Sonic Adventure 2: Battle. And he conveniently had amnesia. I'd have amnesia too if I fell to Earth from outer space. The head trauma would be unbearable.

Shadow the Hedgehog reveals that Shadow is the byproduct of his creator making a deal with the Space Devil (as stupid as it sounds, you know it's true), and like all devils, twists his deals so Gerald Robotnik (Shadow's maker) regrets his decision and needs to make amends. However after losing his daughter, Gerald decides to do the space devil's work for him (Strange, that.). And so Shadow has had to stop 2 mistakes that were a result of his creator. The idea itself isn't so bad it's horrible, just so okay it's adequate. I think the problem was execution.

Shadow the Hedgehog was marketed as a dark and Edgy game, obviously aimed at the hormonal, broody, emotional, and pumped up with too much testosterone teens Shadow was meant to appeal to. They had to do everything in their power to pander such a base by taking away everything that made Shadow part of the Sonic franchise and go with something completely different: A Third person shooter, which includes vehicles.

You may apply your face to your palm at any time now.

Is this truly necessary? Many lovers would say "This is all about the darkness that is Shadow. He needs to have grit to show off his dark and gritty self and his dark and gritty past. Sonic style games are kids stuff." Which means it was completely unnecessary. If there is another argument out there I'd be glad to hear it but this is what I'm going with right now.

I say it is entirely unnecessary, simply because of the mechanics of Shadow the Hedgehog himself. Without the Chaos emerald, he has super speed, strength, and many moves that makes Sonic a competent fighter. When you take into account his mild control of chaos, Shadow can teleport, project spears of energy, move at time-slowing speeds, and a few other abilities. This doesn't even take into account the major augmentation he gets when he has a Chaos emerald or two.

So was the guns and vehicles necessary? God almighty, no! Shadow was bad@$ enough without the nitty gritty extras!

But this sounds like a quip at the game itself rather than the character. Well I'm trying to cover all the bases that conspire against this Hedgehog. In short, while Shadow the Hedgehog was poor, it's not what killed Shadow the Hedgehog as a character or plot device.

It was Sonic Heroes that did it. That gimmicky, glitchy, slightly less than average game brought Shadow back too soon due to popular demand. Or rather, the game brought him back at all. Okay, this is getting complicated so let me start from Sonic Adventure 2: Battle so I can adequately get across what I'm saying here.

If Sonic Adventure 2: Battle had not "killed" Shadow, we could have skipped over Sonic Heroes and had an easy tie in to Shadow the Hedgehog, with Shadow simply trying to learn more about the circumstances of his creation and existence. That's a good flow right there. However, this didn't happen. Instead he "died". Frankly, that would've been an adequate end to his saga right there. Most add-on characters in the Sonic franchise never last one game anyway. Shadow dying the heroic sacrifice meant he could be immortalized as the awesome character the game made him out to be. Meaning we could've skipped over Sonic Heroes and Shadow the Hedgehog, and possibly Sonic Battle (except the only bad thing this game had going for it was Gerald Robotnik-related plot-holes).

Also, Shadow is rather useless as a device in the Sonic mythos. Sonic already has 2 rivals, one villainous and one not. I mean we have Knuckles the Rad Red, who is not as fast as Sonic but makes up for it by being his opposite and focusing on strength. And there's his enemy, Metal Sonic, Eggman's robotic Sonic clone, who is basically Sonic's speed competition. Shadow has no place here when you have Knuckles and Metal Sonic. I mean you have Complete opposite guy, and Evil soulless version of the guy. What's Shadow supposed to be? He's just Sonic with magical powers. That more than trumps Sonic in terms of abilities. He's not a rival, he's metaphor for Sony/Xbox trying to make a Dark and Edgy "HARDCORE" version of Sonic and failing.

And what's his purpose as a character? I mean, sure I guess he's supposed to be doing as Maria wanted him to do by saving the world or making people happy and some such, but isn't that job being taken care of by Sonic and his merry band? Can I hear a "REDUNDENT" from you guys?

So what am I saying? Shadow isn't bad, just poorly handled and would've been a better character if

1) Sonic Heroes didn't bring him back
1a) Shadow didn't die in Sonic Adventure 1, Sonic Heroes was skipped, and Shadow The Hedgehog was a better game.
2)Shadow The Hedgehog was a better game
3)People didn't demand for his return
4)The Executives didn't listen to the fans
5)He was given a greater purpose beyond "Sonic's evil rival"
6)I think I missed one.

And that's all I got, so, yeah.

Like or dislike, I personally think I was rambling nonsense. O h well.

- Good Bye, Good Luck, and Imagination Is Your Greatest Power
Mousa the 14