Not sure if anyone noticed, but I did George Lucas this video a bit and made some little alterations that I wanted to fix or improve from my earlier vids :)
Nice reviews always been a fan of AVGN and being reminded of the past videos is fun and comparing what made a good video kind of reminds of when series go on for long enough to remind you why you prefer the older episodes. Good stuff you can tell you have a strong appreciation for the series. Rewatching the older episodes again has really made myself appreciate his older content and the impact and entertainment he has made. Nice compilation.
That's funny Keith Apicary is perfect guest for a slapstick episode or any other episode but he couldn't used his potential. Same for Gilbert Gottfried, so much potential but completely wasted. RIP Gottfried.
Yea, well Keith is also a tough sell if you're a nerd fan who is completely unfamiliar with him - and that's the risk of all guests to be honest. Something about being in that really small room, too, threw me off.
All we need is a proper explanation why James is so goddamn lethargic these days. Because he doesn't write episodes anymore, he doesn't film them, he doesn't edit them, his voice acting is audibly sleepy, so what does he actally DO? And don't get me started on his family, most people have families and normal 8-hours jobs, but Cinemassacre is supposed to be his day-job.
I've just been wanting to rank AVGN episodes for a long time. Over 200 can't all be good. Pretty amazing to me James was even able to milk as much as he did.
A lot of the issues are the screenwave people. It's not that they're characters in thr AVGN universe, it's that they were writing episodes and clearly are inept at writing.
I don't know, James wrote the AVGN movie. I think James can write when it's tight and focused but when he has too much of a leash he can write some things that go off rails too. Also, when he saw the script for Jurassic Park Trespasser, he should have torn it to shreds, but didn't. Still think he's put out a ton of amazing stuff though, so I am looking forward to the day where I can review the very top episodes!
God, how little energy James had in the Life of Black Tiger, why tf did he not react to Gilbert's jokes He hsd more energy into the fucking Hudson Hawk episode than with a legendary comedian😂
Honestly, I could be wrong, but I bet he had fun doing it and a lot more fun than his experience doing SNL, which he apparently hated as far as I know.
Black Tiger is my least favorite episode, but I gotta say i think it's weird how episodes like "Lester the unlikely", "Dragons lair" and "MC Kids" always gets a pass when it comes to the worst AVGN episodes.
@@SuperAnthony3 i can see McKids being considered a classic since it was at the start of his career, but in my opinion, it along with the others mentioned they all feel kind of "uninspired".
I think McKids might be my least favorite of those listed. Dragon's Lair I always remembered liking each time I watched it. "Lester the unlikely" is an interesting one for me - I remember very much not liking it the first time I saw it, then enjoying it in future viewings. I'm gonna have to rewatch it again to recall exactly why. My guess is that I probably didn't think James added much insights but then I later just enjoyed it for the sake of how poorly designed that game was.
I've noticed the drop in quality of later AVGN episodes. The formula is becoming a little stale. For the Kingdom Hearts plot point episode, it should be noted that AVGN shouldn't try to mimic Gaming Sins. What I want to see in AVGN are obscure and horrible games that are a nightmare to play such as "Medal of Honor Underground" (GBA) and "Airborne Hero D-Day Frontline 1944" (PC).
I think grouping the episodes like this is a lot better of a watch than the individual format to be honest. There's a lot of momentum as the rankings continue here instead of waiting for days-weeks between!
Yea, I mean doing the short ones allows me to focus, improve and get things out quicker to people who want them and then I can keep bundling them up later. It makes it a lot more manageable for me this way too. So my strategy was always that the individual ones don't have to prevent me from sending out the longer ones later.
I agree with you on most part, but the 'swimming in the septic tank' wish made me laugh out loud. It's nonsense, but it's the kind of vile, petty wish the Nerd would wish for.
Well, I felt like a difference between my favorite and lesser favorite AVGNs had to do with character motivation. I know, for instance, why he'd be frustrated by spending money on an NES cart that is supposed to pack 52 games into one, but they're all terrible - While the line "swimming in a septic tank" can be funny on it's own, I'm not sure why The Nerd got upset with the genie at all
This was great! I actually like the Gilbert Gottfried episode... I just wished they would have done away with the stupid skits and just had them sitting and talking, sort of like the Troma episode.
To be fair, while I get your point, I don't think getting all up-in-arms about the Nerd as a character is the real issue: The Nerd has always had a way firmer separation from James Rolfe then most reviewer personas, that's one of his reasons tends to age better then guys like Doug Walker, but even the old chronologically confused videos are...Barely in character, it's basically just James talking. I get the problem IE James openly admitting he didn't engage with the main subject of the video, how it makes you as a viewer painfully aware that "Oh, James has cowriters and isn't the only one manning this ship", but I think that's a bjt off. Alot, hot take,it would have been better of they had just had James play the original Kingdom Hearts, and do an AVGN on it. It's an RPG that is, at thus point, over 20 years old, it has a bunch of strange and dated mechanics to riff on, it could work.
This issue to me isn't that "James" didn't engage with the material, though I do think that manifests in a worse product, the issue is that it's not coherent because the "character" didn't watch the material, in the case of Kingdom Hearts and then goes on tangents about the IP.
And it finally arrived. All the AVGN episodes that deserved the grade of F-. Episodes that drag for the sake of drag. When I review a game, I use my time wisely and try to make the content work.
AVGN under screenwave went full quantity over quality. Thankfully recent ones have been decent and its back to only a few a year instead of almost twice a month
That Jurassic Park episode was so painful to get through. That's the most Screenwave written episode I've seen. Well any episode that involves a RU-vidr is definitely screenwave.
One thing that I notice in all of these videos is how disinterested James sounds in them in comparison to the old AVGN videos. You could tell that James had been playing this character for so long that he wasn't as passionate about it as he was when he started.
Seriously I hate the Vegas stakes episode so much I hade to do my own version of avgn Vegas stakes episode by recutting and re editing the video with no god awful fear and loathing and keep the avgn reviewing 2 Las Vegas games and that’s it, my own fan cut of avgn Vegas stakes is so much better than The Final Cut we got
Yeah, that's the kind of video I was hoping for this series, a long video talking about every episode that you put in F-. Great stuff, keep going with the small ones and then the long ones
Yea, I'm glad you get it! The small ones allow me to focus and make things feel manageable while getting content out to current and new fans, while then bungling these big ones allow people to binge in a way many want.
Also I think that Shit's Kitchen was created for a Hell's Kitchen game episode, but it was cancelled for some reason. So they shoveled it in another episode, because they were so proud of this skit.
Unpopular opinion: the Life of Black Tiger episode is actually pretty good, especially due to the fact they were able to get Gilbert Gottfried to play Fred Fuchs in one of his last acting roles before he passed away in 2022.
I think that's fair, I don't know that re-ranking is ever in the cards. That said, I think each episode serves a purpose. Hudson Hawk for me was one of the biggest examples of trying recreate the magic of AVGN by almost being a parody of other episodes. From that standpoint, it's why I ranked it pretty low. The other ones, like Jurassic Park were like, so bad it's good.
Oh yea, he did that on James and Mike Mondays (better I think) and then in two separated parts, it was odd. I need to rewatch it! A delay with making episodes is going back and watching 2nd, 3rd, and 4th viewings - that's a bit one for me.
All these recent AVGN episode are patently ridiculous, and are not good enough to be called a return to form; that ship has already long sailed. The reality of the situation James has found himself in is that the damage has already been well and truly done; goodwill has been washed away by years of rushed episodes and creative changes.
Well, honestly, I would also add James squeezed a lot out of that lemon. I mean 214 episodes from a simply joke and premise 20 years ago? Not sure where he could possibly even go from here.
32:28 I actually forgot about that part when I first watched that review. I don't do reaction videos as much as I used to because the RU-vid shorts I upload or what actually got my channel to where it is now, but when I do reaction videos one of the top series I do reactions to is AVGN and even on the episode of AVGN when he was doing that review of I think it was called Green Dog it was at tropical game on the Sega Genesis, he did that joke where he shouts "Happy birthday, fuck you!" And then he laughs after that. In my own reaction I pointed that out and even somebody commented about how great it was that I totally called him out. I mean what is with James like not remembering what he's done before? I've noticed that he like literally does not remember what he has done in the past and proceeds to actually do the things that he makes fun of
Interesting, how do you like shorts? I've spoken to folks with reservations about shorts, in terms of their perception of the "quality" of the viewers and subscribers, as in, how invested they are in the channel. For me, I like to use shorts to show off parts of videos that others didn't get a chance to see - got a lot of views for some of my mario content.
Dude, the Trespasser episode... My mind completely erased it as self-defense, so I initially mistook it for the Black Tiger one. That episode is a masterpiece in comparison, but only because it has Gilbert Gottfried.
i actually really liked the sega activator episode, but i can understand that some people would have just wanted an nes accesories styled episode. The hudson hawk episode is pretty average in terms of "modern avgn" but i thought it was fine and even had its funny moments. Vegas stakes is far from the worst episode in my opinion. Its honestly one of the better episodes from around that time. I am genuinly suprised that the sega game gear vhs, bad final fight games, and episode 200 arent on here since id consider those to be some of the worst episodes (200 especially since most of it is reused from older episodes.) Every other placement here is fine.
Yea, vegas stakes is definitely a matter of taste. I personally just didn't want to sit through it. Hudson Hawk is the one I question the most in my decisions, but I do think it's a solid example of AVGN doing a parody of AVGN. I only watched the VHS episode once so far, I agree it was pretty bad, I'm not quite sure how low it belongs just yet. F tier? D tier? Episode 200, I can't say I liked it, but there were enough moments I enjoyed that I thought kept it from being F or F- (I thought the LJN sports section was strongest)
I genuinely think that james can make more experimental stuff. Hell, hes already done it.... with Board James. But sadly he stopped making them, I genuinely think board james is probably his best stuff...
He can but I do think they need to be clear, tight and focused. Mr. Bucket and Dream Phone worked but some of the later ones kind came off rails and became incoherent imo.
Shesez from Boundary Break is actually really good at what he does. I would say he carried the Jurassic Park episode, but that is not true. His segment was cool, but so out of place in a low brow comedy show
Let’s se how would you react to flippin’ Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde Part 3 where he actually beat the game. It was pretty disappointing and a little bit unnecessary! Also I heard bad things about the Sega Game Gear VHS episode that SPOILER ALERT: even the user GoldenFox Pictures considered it as the very worst episode after Life of Black Tiger and Action 52 (Which happens to be his most controversial opinion).
I couldn't watch the black tiger episode when it came out. I watched every other avgn episode from start to finish, even the deck enhancer, but black tiger? Nah. Didn't even know how it ends.
Jame just made a new episode that everyone hates and is now the lowest rated episode on imdb. People hate it cuz its boring unfunny and breaks the rules of the show (cant review a game less than ten years old or a mobile game. He dose both in this episode)
He's releasing them very slowly :) jk. As I get toward the end, I can create that very very long video and insert the "newer" episodes he did. Some of his multi part episodes can also get combined into 1 for me in terms of ranking.
I watched almost 10 minutes and could not watch further. Again the 20+ min episode with ExpressVPN and a game I don’t know. I expected an upward trend after the previous video, which I enjoyed. I can imagine it is funny that the nerd uses an iPhone for the first time, but they could capitalize more on it.
Those ExpressVPN ads seem to be getting longer and longer. If I'm being honest, first impressions, I think I prefer this episode over the Goonies one. Goonies felt closer to "let's try to impersonate past nerd episodes" which is why I ranked Hudson Hawk so low. This, for me personally, did get more of a laugh out of me even if all he did was show a weird game without adding too much to it.
Just watched it entirely and indeed it isn't as bad as I initially thought. At least there is acting in it and some old school jokes. Still feels a bit like an outlier. Would have been more fitting reviewing shitty Flash games from Newgrounds.
Sadly, for me personally, while I love the first half of the AVGN catalog, I'm not sure I like much about the second half. As I keep rewatching, I hope to find some gems
@SuperAnthony23MJ him beating the shit out of bugs bunny still makes me laugh because episodes like that are GENUINELY funny and not like he's got a formula down and he will stick to it
Looks like you're going to have to add another video to the f tier which sucks cuz I know you just finished that tier. 😂 Horse Prince is definitely f tier. I haven't watched it nor will I. I can't wait to hear your commentary on it.
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