Amusingly bad reviews

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BIL
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Re: Amusingly bad reviews

Post by BIL »

Ed Oscuro wrote:Target: Earth: D-

Mangia: D+

yep, a game where you have four joystick inputs, two of them to throw pasta to the cat or dog, is better than Target: Earth, or so the letter grade suggests
Assault Suit Leynos: tearing nub asshole apart like birthday presents since 1990. :cool:

(Mangia? Mangina?)

edit: Dear God, that site is one-stop amusingly bad reviews mega-mart.
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Re: Amusingly bad reviews

Post by Hagane »

Surprisingly, the Cannon Spike review is pretty decent, except for the hilarious fact that the icon in the upper right says "great cooperative play" and the review itself says "The two-player coop is a nice option, but it's pretty chaotic so I'd recommend playing solo.".
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Re: Amusingly bad reviews

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In the PS2 reviews, he gives Contra: Shattered Soldier a D- while Neo Contra gets an A-. Hmm.
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Skykid
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Re: Amusingly bad reviews

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Some of his reviews are accurately scored, but none are particularly stellar in terms of prose, which begs the question why he puts the copyright as a footnote to each one? Not incredibly likely to be stolen and profited from.

(Just read the Shattered. S, lol. Lrn2play.)

Weird trend I noticed in browsing, the guy hates bosses. He slags off SS and Gradius V for too many bosses, but praises Jak and Daxter for its "innovative" lack of boss encounters. :idea:

Edit: and he's ragged on Fantavision. That's it, burn him.
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TransatlanticFoe
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Re: Amusingly bad reviews

Post by TransatlanticFoe »

Spectacular fails throughout at the understanding of hitboxes (or forgiving collision detection, as refered to in reviews), tate mode and bosses/midbosses having lots of health for some inexplicable reason. There's a lot of non-sensical ramblings too, including a discussion on why SMS homebrew title Digger Chan doesn't star an obviously oriental character. WAT.
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BIL
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Re: Amusingly bad reviews

Post by BIL »

LMAO

Ah, bless. email sent!
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Special World
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Re: Amusingly bad reviews

Post by Special World »

Skykid wrote:Some of his reviews are accurately scored, but none are particularly stellar in terms of prose, which begs the question why he puts the copyright as a footnote to each one? Not incredibly likely to be stolen and profited from.

(Just read the Shattered. S, lol. Lrn2play.)

Weird trend I noticed in browsing, the guy hates bosses. He slags off SS and Gradius V for too many bosses, but praises Jak and Daxter for its "innovative" lack of boss encounters. :idea:

Edit: and he's ragged on Fantavision. That's it, burn him.
tbh I hate bosses as well. Gradius V has excellent bosses, though.
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Re: Amusingly bad reviews

Post by Ed Oscuro »

I have known about that site for many years (probably since before I even came here) but I guess I should have unleashed it earlier! :lol:
BIL wrote:LMAO

Ah, bless. email sent!
LOLZ
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Re: Amusingly bad reviews

Post by BareKnuckleRoo »

what the fuck
Dodonpachi Resurrection
Grade: C+

Dodonpachi Resurrection is a psychotic game, so make sure you know what you're getting yourself into. If this game were your girlfriend, you would definitely need to break up with it.

try: Berzerk (Vectrex),
Dodonpachi (Saturn),
just fucking wow, quite possibly a contender for the worst Cave review ever, I like how he thinks 300 hits is a high combo, lol

Anyone else having trouble highlighting text by clicking and dragging? That site seems to be the first I've seen preventing me from doing so, makes copying text a pain.
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Re: Amusingly bad reviews

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He's kind of cute, like a mischievous casual gaming puppy alternately terrified and fascinated by an irritable lobster. His Ranger X review is essentially one long howl of "WTF IS GOIN ONNN" and he gives Silent Hill 2 a positive review, yet like most of its detractors he wasn't good enough at basic map-reading to make it past the first building ("mainly set in an apartment complex").
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Re: Amusingly bad reviews

Post by Jeneki »

Ultimate Shooting Collection on Wii has some hilarious reviews on Amazon from people who don't understand the title.
If you are looking for a "shooting game" like Links Crossbow training you will be very disappointed. this is essentially a video game along the lines of Galaga. However the graphics are very 1980s and working the game with the Wii controller is difficult.
This game was ok, however, it did not work with the rifle or gun attachments for the Wii.
You just hold a button and bullets shoot from a plane.
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Re: Amusingly bad reviews

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BIL wrote:He's kind of cute, like a mischievous casual gaming puppy alternately terrified and fascinated by an irritable lobster. His Ranger X review is essentially one long howl of "WTF IS GOIN ONNN"
Seems to be a common theme - both his DDP DFK and Akai Katana reviews imply that you need to be Japanese (or in AK's case, on drugs too) to understand the game mechanics. Oh, and you have 'unlimited continues' in Akai Katana (basically, he sucks and likely just credit feeds shmups).
and he gives Silent Hill 2 a positive review, then I realise like many of its detractors he wasn't good enough at basic map reading to make it past the first building ("mainly set in an apartment complex").
The apartment takes up like 10% of the gametime. How can you claim it's 'mainly set' there?!

I love this part of the Gradius V review:
Occasionally a "friendly" ship will join the cause and fight by your side, but since it looks exactly like your ship, it tends to confuse matters, particularly in the two-player simultaneous mode.
"Occasionally" is really in only two stages, for a fraction of the stage's game time. How the hell can you confuse it with your own ship when the two levels your time travelling counterpart appears in are walled off? You'd have to ram yourself into the wall and move to the bottom (or later, top) of the screen to move into the area the other ship is in.

Non-shmup-wise he gives an F (lower than countless other games) to The Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle, which is actually a surprisingly fun puzzle game with a focus on evading enemies rather than defeating them. Looking through and seeing the number of awful games he gives higher ratings to is just... wow.
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Re: Amusingly bad reviews

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BareknuckleRoo wrote:The apartment takes up like 10% of the gametime. How can you claim it's 'mainly set' there?!
Because if you suck, it takes far longer than it should (i.e., that's all you'll probably ever see, if you're as bad as he sounds) :lol:
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Re: Amusingly bad reviews

Post by Ed Oscuro »

BIL wrote:He's kind of cute, like a mischievous casual gaming puppy alternately terrified and fascinated by an irritable lobster. His Ranger X review is essentially one long howl of "WTF IS GOIN ONNN" and he gives Silent Hill 2 a positive review, yet like most of its detractors he wasn't good enough at basic map-reading to make it past the first building ("mainly set in an apartment complex").
sometimes i press one button and one thing happens GAH GET BACK HERE HOVERBIKE
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Re: Amusingly bad reviews

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trap15 wrote:(i.e., that's all you'll probably ever see, if you're as bad as he sounds) :lol:
None of the riddles should be that bad, unless you're on a hard difficulty mode. Silent Hill 3's Hard Riddle mode can really get you stuck early on at the very first puzzle door like 10 minutes into the game with a Shakespeare related puzzle. You can brute force it if you have to, but you really shouldn't play/review these games without being willing to actually go through them...

This really is the worst review site I've ever seen. Most of the reviews are substance-less soundbytes with little detail with respect to the gameplay itself...
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Re: Amusingly bad reviews

Post by trap15 »

It's not the riddles, just navigating around can get you lost if you aren't really paying attention or don't have any navigation skills at all.
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<S.Yagawa> I like the challenge of "doing the impossible" with older hardware, and pushing it as far as it can go.
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Re: Amusingly bad reviews

Post by BIL »

Yeah, I get the impression he wasn't using the map. The first game can own newbies with its open streets fetch quest early on, too, if you're not paying attention to your bearings. OG Silent Hills will truly give those who disrepect the maps an authentic "lost in a large unfamiliar building / urban environment with nobody to ask for directions" experience!
Ed Oscuro wrote:sometimes i press one button and one thing happens GAH GET BACK HERE HOVERBIKE
I'm seriously imagining him thinking the "alarm clock" explosion sound effect when you blow up a gun emplacement in the first stage is a warning that you're damaging friendly units. :lol:
BareknuckleRoo wrote:This really is the worst review site I've ever seen. Most of the reviews are substance-less soundbytes with little detail with respect to the gameplay itself...
For the perfect complementary audiovisual experience, watch these "strategy videos" and learn the names of all of Ninja Gaiden's stages and powerups! He should include links to them, they're made for each other.

(VG critic likes NG, but not how it doesn't save your score when you get a Game Over, and the story is a little derivative :[ )
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Re: Amusingly bad reviews

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More Video Game Critic "highlights."

Cyber-Lip:
Hey - check it out - a game you can play on your lunch break! Yeah, you can probably beat this one in a half-hour, thanks to the unlimited continues that let you pick up immediately where you died.
*groan*

Andro Dunos:
Often mistaken for a performance-enhancing drug for baseball players
I mean...what?

Casper (3DO):
Okay, I was terribly harsh in my initial review of this game, but as I often say to my wife, "I can explain!"
He's actually married? I can only imagine what his wife has to put up with. He doesn't seem to know that tate modes exist, either.

Galactic Attack:
In many ways, Galactic Attack's visuals and gameplay are so conventional that you'll feel as if you've played it before. Ported directly from the arcade, the screen is narrow with black bars on each side.
My question is, what happens when an enemy leaves the screen before my locked-on missile can strike it? Does it escape or is it destroyed off screen?
Truly a mystery for the ages. Maybe he should try looking at the score counter when that happens?

The massive number of sports game reviews is the strangest part of the site.
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Re: Amusingly bad reviews

Post by Ed Oscuro »

*presses the buttons more*

whao, am I actually controlling this thing?!

Video Game Critic would have been the boss of alllllll the games in the arcade if only he had more quarters. But back to the systems that get all the deference from VGC: Atari 8-bitters!

Ballblazer
If you weren't video gaming in the early 1980's, it's probably hard to grasp just how mind-blowing Ballblazer was in its time.
If you won't even attempt to explain what's so captivating about the game, why are you bothering to write up the review? Failed attempt at snobbery or wasting valuable web space (this guy was writing Twitter messages before it was fashionable, so I'll give him that) on trying to refute the obvious criticism of this, er, review.

The same problem applies in various degrees to at least the two reviews immediately after. Battlezone is castigated for failing to live up to the frame rates of the original arcade game and for having a raster display, so VGA's nostalgia is working against him here. Yeah I'm sure we can't tell how disappointing an eight-bitter on a TV couldn't perfectly duplicate Battlezone, but let's stick to the game in front of us, please. Then we have Blue Max, advertised by a few lines and bushes drawn exclusively with tools found in MS Paint.

Further down the page, note that Centipede has a "chicks dig this" award logo.
I'm surprised "Conan" (hero of Getsu Fuuma Den in bell bottoms, possibly) doesn't have a "chicks dig this" award logo either. Speaking of which, here's B- material from VGC:
Conan does possess one major flaw however, and that would be the heinous slowdown that occurs in later screens (notable screen five). When too many objects are moving at once, the action becomes painfully slow, and even old school junkies will find it hard to tolerate.
But I could stare at those fuchsia bricks alllllll day long.
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Re: Amusingly bad reviews

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For what it's worth, I'm enjoying the site immensely. For all the wrong reasons of course, but it's entertaining nonetheless.
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Re: Amusingly bad reviews

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Ed Oscuro wrote:Further down the page, note that Centipede has a "chicks dig this" award logo.
Click on the logo, the list of "Chicks dig this" is absurdly hilarious, and includes only 51 games, several of which are inane and flat out terrible while the list itself features almost no variety; Centipede, Frogger and Millipede get mentioned multiple times across various console versions, and there's 5 Guitar Hero games. What exactly makes him think girls are obsessed about these specifically...?
Ed Oscuro wrote: Ballblazer
One hell of a terrible reviewer wrote:If you like this game, try: Resident Evil Survivor (Playstation)
?????
Last edited by BareKnuckleRoo on Thu Apr 18, 2013 3:31 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Amusingly bad reviews

Post by BIL »

I wasn't even kidding about the email earlier. When it comes to the hardcore gaming I can't help but love this particular kind of earnest, manic bumbling. No pretense of knowing WTF he's on about like IGN or HG101, just "AIEEE! SOMEBODY SWITCH OFF THIS CRAZY THING!"
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Re: Amusingly bad reviews

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Curious where he got the idea that the average girl would be interested in the Streets of Rage series. I'm guessing it's because he sees Blaze as a "strong woman" in some silly backwards way, despite her having only a shred of character development and a panty-flashing jump kick.
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Re: Amusingly bad reviews

Post by BareKnuckleRoo »

ohhhh, you douche did you seriously give Demon's Crest a C
Navigating through the graveyards and castles of the early stages is no problem, but too many advanced stages are covered with thorns that are hard to avoid. The controls are touchy, so trying to navigate spiked labyrinths is frustrating.
These aren't Megaman spikes he's bitching about, the thorns that occasionally pop up only cause a bit of damage if you happen to touch them. The controls? Well it happens to be one of the best controlling platformers ever (literally the only tricky thing to do is reliably headbutt stuff in midair, and even that just requires a bit of training), so if you touch spikes, especially in this game, frankly it's your own damn fault.

just carry some health potions if your fetish is walking into spiky things, shit
Pretas wrote:Curious where he got the idea that the average girl would be interested in the Streets of Rage series. I'm guessing it's because he sees Blaze as a "strong woman" in some silly backwards way, despite her having only a shred of character development and a panty-flashing jump kick.
She is the best character in the first game by a landslide, though, and a solid character in the third game. It's true though, she'd likely have limited to no appeal due to being blatantly dressed for eye candy, particularly in the second game.

this gets a better rating than DDP DFK, wat, seriously it's not that good

I swear he's pulling the alphabetical ratings out of his ass for some of these.

Holy fuck, I need to vomit with raaaage, aaaaaaaaa

"Nosferatu tries to mimic the gameplay of a Castlevania title, but lacks style and seems generic in comparison."

have you never fucking played prince of persia, I mean jesus, it plays nothing like castlevania, it's a vampire-styled game with prince of persia style platforming, how many of those exist, oh wait, like ONE, this one, and it's pretty neat, oh god, my brain
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Re: Amusingly bad reviews

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Demon's Crest review wrote:Upon hearing the howl of a ghost, I actually looked around to make sure there wasn't someone else in the room with me!
I love this clown. :lol:
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Re: Amusingly bad reviews

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I have a very tough time believing that he's actually played such a wide variety of games from over 40 different systems, including a huge number of annual updates of sports titles, long enough to form a conclusive opinion on each one. I strongly suspect that the bulk of these reviews are pieced together from videos, general info and other people's impressions. I can't imagine to what end, since he isn't making any ad revenue off the site. Let's not forget this man claims to be married.

And yes, Madden NFL '97 is seriously rated higher than Dodonpachi. It seems incredibly unusual to find someone with an interest in niche import retrogaming who also holds a serious taste for mainstream sports games.
Last edited by Pretas on Thu Apr 18, 2013 4:04 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Amusingly bad reviews

Post by Ed Oscuro »

That site has been around for more than ten years for sure. He's had time. Hell, I could probably have a tidy little number of reviews up if I posted my impressions / ramblings somewhere, although I have been sensible enough not to.
BareknuckleRoo wrote:Click on the logo, the list of "Chicks dig this" is absurdly hilarious, and includes only 51 games
VGC is to girls as Area 51 is to my lack of a security badge?

Strange, alien, unfathomable, and possibly a bit creepy.
Centipede, Frogger and Millipede get mentioned multiple times across various console versions, and there's 5 Guitar Hero games. What exactly makes him think girls are obsessed about these specifically...?
sexism

EDIT: Thanks to RetroRealities crew member Cernex, here is a Spaceship, which you control. This VGC Break! has been brought to you by RetroRealities.
Last edited by Ed Oscuro on Thu Apr 18, 2013 4:10 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Amusingly bad reviews

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Honestly, his site seems to be more of a content farm than an actually competent review site. While they tend to be few, there are some reviewers on say GameFAQs that post very in-depth, detailed reviews for games that otherwise don't get much attention or only smaller reviews at best. Instead of ensuring all his reviews are high quality, he aims for each one to have a similar review length (unrealistic considering some games require a lot more to explain scoring, etc, if you really want a competent review or a detailed explanation of a game's flaws) and I suspect he keeps a very diverse game & console list mostly to try and get as many site visitors as possible. He doesn't seem to care much about the review quality as long as the reviews keep getting pumped out.
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Re: Amusingly bad reviews

Post by Ed Oscuro »

but this predates content farms and all that newfangled web 2.0...er, web 1.5 stuff. it's just a vanity page as far as I can sell. Never heard about him cracking down on people for using his reviews...and even the random spam generation bots know better than to use it for material

basically he likes his atari
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Re: Amusingly bad reviews

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Ed Oscuro wrote:Hell, I could probably have a tidy little number of reviews up if I posted my impressions / ramblings somewhere, although I have been sensible enough not to.
I was going to say, assuming he owns/owned everything he reviews, I do respect that. Some good imports in there, and lots of crummy sports games too! The snarling legalese and SUPER COPY-PROOF text are a bit silly but it's obviously just this guy's bumbling labour of love.

edit: I might start up my own site when I retire. I'll call it COLONEL WILLIAM "BIG WILLY" RIZER'S GOOD-TIME REVIEW SHACK, strict wordlimit of 250 words per game. It'll have icons like "RAIZING TAKEOFF SEQUENCE" and "TAITO HOMING LASERS."
Last edited by BIL on Thu Apr 18, 2013 5:14 am, edited 1 time in total.
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