There has been much hype and speculation as to what the 100th episode of the Angry Video Game Nerd is going to be about. Most people thought it would be E.T. Others thought it would be ROB. Personally, I was hoping he would do something totally unexpected and come up with something special. When the episode came out, I sat down and watched it. I hated it. I hated it to a point where I had prepared a script for a future video log. Cooler heads prevailed and so the script was posted on a blog somewhere.
This is my summary of the review after another few viewings… and I still don’t like this episode. I think it’s a pretty pisspoor review and one of the most abysmally produced episodes. If James Rolfe were to shit into a bag and plaster it on the Internet, you’d get this monstrosity.
A little word of warning before we begin; the following overview/commentary is vulgar at times and considerably scathing. My intent is not to cause offence to anyone within the Cinemassacre camp or anyone who might actually like the episode, but to give a very blunt review and commentary regarding my viewing and observations of this 100th episode. This is not a review of the overall AVGN franchise and the direction it has gone, nor is it an attempt to instigate any kind of stupid flame war or hate thread; this is a review of the 100th AVGN and that alone. I may go off on tangent at times, but only as it relates to the 100th episode alone.
Hey, if you like the episode and thought it was the greatest thing ever, then more power to you. It means that absolutely nothing I say here will change your outlook on the product whatsoever and therefore… I honestly don’t know why you’re still reading this. Nothing I say is going to change your mind and it should be only fair to warn you that nothing you say will make me change mine.
And if you feel you absolutely MUST comment, I only ask that you keep it clean and intelligible.
Are we cool on that? Then let’s get on with it.
The Nerd opens up the 100th episode bitching about being surrounded by shitty games and goes into some melodramatic monologue about being sick and tired of it all. It’s a nice little scene that details the plight of the Nerd and would have been a touching if it hadn’t been done several times before. The most recent being the recent Christmas episode where the Nerd plays the role of the Grinch.
Following the monologue are several quick shots of the various shitty games in his collection, notable ones including;
Library of Intellivision games (I doubt every Intellivision game is shitty)
Mortal Kombat (not a shity game)
Dragon’s Lair (not a shitty game)
Road Rash (wait, I thought that was good…)
Missile Command (not a shitty game)
Moon Patrol (not a shitty game)
Ghengis Khan (I heard that one was actually pretty good)s
Contra (looks like ViB was right – I mean, not a shitty game)
Dragon Warrior I (not a shitty game)
Dragon Warrior III (not a shitty game)
The old Coleco LED portable games (the Pac-Man one was awesome, can’t speak for the others)
Colecovision Super Action Controller Set (why do they suck?)
Vectrex (FUCK YOU! Vectrex is awesome!)
Oh wait, he doesn’t like them. Still, it implies that these things suck. Hence, I stick with my original comment, FUCK YOU! Vectrex is awesome!
Oh, by the way, this was the FIRST facepalm of this episode. Many more to come.
Nerd flicks his pen to one of the game boxes and pulls out Gyromite, which is the game his pen supposedly landed on, but if you look at the footage, his pen landed on one of the Nintendo 64 cartridges. You couldn’t have done another take where you actually hit a NES box? Really? And the sad thing is that if this oversight was found on an Irate Gamer video or NC17Productions video or Gamedude video, people would nitpick it to death… but AVGN? People will overlook that because, hey, it’s not supposed to be taken seriously.
Meanwhile, we get to pick out more notable shitty games such as;
Metroid (not a shitty game)
Mega Man 5 (not a shitty game)
Ghosts & Goblins (IG fanboys will have a field day with that one – but not a shitty game)
Shadowgate (not a shitty game)
Romance Of The Three Kingdoms II (not a shitty game)
The Guardian Legend (not a shitty game)
Am I missing any other ones? Possibly… but those are the only ones that come to mind.
The Nerd helpfully notes that Gyromite was one of the initial launch titles for the NES, along with Duck Hunt, Super Mario Bros… you know, all the classics. Yeah, I doubt that people are clamoring for a return of Mach Rider any time soon, but let’s roll with it. Seems rather harmless so far outside of the Vectrex snub and multitude of non-shitty games being inserted as shitty games.
Pops the gamepak into the Nintoster (a customized NES compacted into a toaster – nifty little bugger, actually) and notes the different title. What’s the big deal? I never made a big deal out of the different title. It’s a rare practice, sure, but the title has little bearing on the actual gameplay, so who cares?
Now we get a minute of the Nerd playing stupid, fiddling with the controls, not knowing what to do, and making ridiculous faces to feign anger. Look, I’m sorry, but for all the complaints lobbied at Bores for making puffy angry faces that seem fake, it amazes me that people are willing to give Rolfe a free pass when he makes puffy, stretchy angry faces that seem fake. It’s not even along the lines of “comedic anger.” It’s just being stupid. If you really want to see someone pull off the anger thing really well, look up Armake21’s reviews on YouTube. That guy pulled it off nicely, with just enough inflection and emotion to make it seem real and yet does it in a way that it’s genuinely funny. Not even the older Angry Nintendo Nerd videos matched Armake’s balance of anger and comedy and yet those videos had Rolfe pull off the anger bit better than he does now. But back to the 100th episode debacle.
So after that wonderful bit of “acting” or something – and my second FACEPALM – the Nerd plugs in the second controller and figures out that it’s a kind of co-op gameplay. He then wonders who is he going to get to play with? We all know it’s going to be the robot – is this kind of playing stupid really necessary? Besides that, if he was looking for someone to play the game with, couldn’t he ask his fucking guitar guy? Isn’t he usually living behind that fucking couch – as established prior AVGN videos? Again, for all of the bitching about Bores’ lack of attention in continuity, I’m baffled as to why Rolfe gets a free pass when he has continuity issues. And since Rolfe is the film buff (and a very knowledgeable one, at that), this sort of thing shouldn’t have been overlooked.
So, of course the robot shows up… and it talks in this typical robot voice. I’d be surprised if the robot acted in a typical robot fashion, but of course, that’s not going to be the case, because when the Nerd offers a controller, the robot responds, “I do not have thumbs, you moron.”
FACEPALM NUMBER THREE… and this one’s a double.
This is where Bores scored a point in my summary of his video – the robot never talked. If it did, it would have been a generic caricature that acts the same way as his other guest caricatures, swearing and acting like a complete idiot. In this video, the robot is portrayed as a generic caricature that acts the same way as AVGN’s other guest caricatures, swearing and acting like a complete idiot. This is the problem with guest characters in “reviews” and why I generally can’t stand them; they always act like the “reviewer” in question and are almost always indistinguishable from each other outside of the costumes they wear. There are few occasions where the guest character would work, but those are far few and between.
ROB then helpfully points out that the needed accessories are located in the bottom drawer, front-right corner, 9.1 cm. The Nerd pulls out the accessory and places it in front of ROB, not even bothering to insert the device into the unit’s assigned slots. This would suggest a foreshadow of a cheap joke where all the pieces are acquired and the robot chew out the Nerd for not inserting the accessories into the slot, but fortunately, that isn’t the case. I actually feared he would do something like that because it’s hard not to see what’s coming.
ROB then points out that he needs gyros… gyros being PLURAL. The Nerd questions the robot’s need for a gyro… gyro being SINGULAR… me thinks that the Nerd has hearing problems or can’t decipher the letter S. So in a joke that even my late grandmother (god bless her) could see coming ten light-years away, the Nerd goes to the kitchen, cooks up a gyro sandwich, and presents it to ROB, only for the robot to call him an idiot and point out that the needed gyros are also in that magic drawer. People found this one funny and I honestly don’t know why. My reaction was another magical, absolutely delicious FACEPALM… the fourth one in the first five minutes of this 100th episode. That is absolutely amazing. Just wonderful.
On top of that, he didn’t cook that sandwich, did he? And we never hear of it again. Just… whatever. Moving on.
So the Nerd pulls out the gyros (spinning tops, as he describes them) and points that you’d need a D-Battery for the Gyro Spinner. And also, you’d need four double-A batteries for the robot… this is something I missed on first viewing but noticed when re-watching the video for the sake of this post; if the Nerd needed to add in batteries for the robot to function, how is it that the robot was speaking and moving around and asking for sandwiches WHEN IT HAD NO BATTERIES INSTALLED? A bit of a detail oversight and since I didn’t catch it or paid enough attention to notice it, I should probably let this slide… but I ought to mention it now because it’ll be important later on AND it’ll explain why I’m not letting it slide. Not facepalm worthy, though. So let’s keep going.
So the Nerd assembles ROB with the needed parts and we’re ready to play, ending the play-out sequences with AFFIRMATIVE, MY AAASSSSSS!!!!
He really needs to stop doing that… it’s just sad.
So after five minutes and thirty-five seconds of pointlessness, we’re given a brief explanation about how the game function with ROB and much like in the Irate Gamer video, we’re given a demonstration as to the slow pace and functionality of the robot. Much like in the Irate Gamer video, we understand that the thing is slow. We don’t need to sit through the whole process. It takes forever… fine, scene could have benefitted from an edit or two. This is long and drawn out… at the very least, he didn’t mention anything about pressing the wrong button. He just skipped to the part where ROB opens the pipe and Dr. Hector dies. No reaction speech… but considering what’s to come, I almost wish we had a reaction spiel.
Back to discussing the gameplay mechanics, including how to play the game, getting the proper character names in, and basically comparing it in older arcade platformers like Mario Bros or Donkey Kong. He says it could have been a fun game if it were not for the fact that you have to play with the damn robot. All of this wonderful exposition and overview of the game lasts roughly ninety seconds before he pops out the gamepak out of the toaster and asks if ROB would like to play something else.
Look, on the one hand, he managed to describe Gyromite’s play mechanics in significantly less time than Bores did. How to play the game, how it works with the robot, all that. On the other hand, it’s roughly ninety-seconds of explaining this gameplay that is added to a total of roughly a minute’s worth of information in regards to ROB itself. And we’re already seven and a half minutes into this thing.
So now ROB wants to play Stack-Up and we take this time to show off the various blocks (yes, Jimmy, they are blocks.) and accessories needed for ROB to play the game, as well showing the actual assemblage of the pieces. This is good; shows off the bits and pieces of the game. Then we get to the actual game, describes the game, and complains about why he needs to play a video game to control a robot when he could just get a robot that is remote-control operated. Hey, you know what? That actually makes sense in a way, but that’s besides the point. The point was to have a robotic buddy play a video game with you so that
At the nine minute forty-five second mark, we shut off Stack Up and the Nerd asks what ROB would like to play next. He suggests games like Double Dragon II or Bubble Bobble or Contra, but ROB shoots them down… presumably because he saw Contra on the shelf of supposedly shitty games that the Nerd is surrounded and doesn’t want to subject himself to such awfulness. He suggests Gyromite or Stack Up, much to the Nerd’s chagrin. ROB points out that those are the only two games he could play, which is true because those are the only two games that were designed for use with the Robot. When the Nerd argues otherwise, ROB tosses the two games at the Nerd… thus subjecting him to nasty pains on his face and subjecting me to my FIFTH facepalm… and believe me, I wish I could perform a TRIPLE FACEPALM.
What follows is a fairly low-key ninety-second montage of various possible mishaps that occurs with ROB toppling over gyros and blocks, compounded with stretchy fake anger faces from the Nerd accentuated with lousy grunts and bulgy eyes. I wish I could say that I was laughing during this segment, but the truth is I haven’t cracked so much as a SMILE during the past eleven minutes. In fact, out of those eleven minutes, roughly five of them was dedicated what could laughingly be called a review. Yes, the information is fairly accurate. Yes, he got the character names right. Yes, he kept the informative portion devoid of lame skits and kept the bad jokes to a minimum. Even so, you can hardly call what was there a review. It didn’t tell me whether the game was good or bad. It didn’t tell me much of anything that would attain to its quality. He came close with Gyromite, but that’s about it. It wasn’t too informative, it was just base information that I could have looked up online. Nothing deeper than that. It was just a brief skim through the gameplay.
So after that and following a bit where he imitates the robot – not funny, but he tried – he kicks the robot over and plays with himself… uses the button accessory to control the second gamepad while playing normally. A nifty idea, to say the least and he should have ended it there. But then he takes the second controller, cuts it in half with a saw (all the while doing those HIGH-LARIOUS faces again), and attaches it to the first controller with duct tape. Thus creating his own little specialized Gyromite controller. Again, people found this funny. Again, I have to ask why. Again, I wish I was capable of doing a TRIPLE FACEPALM, but I guess I could do the equivalent HEAD DESK.
What I can agree on with some people is that he should have ended it there and it would have been fine. A bit short, but it would have been fine… Sadly, there’s more to come.
So now comes the stupid part and the part that starts to tear my soul away, as the Angry Video Game Nerd makes the final descent from respectable entertainer to embarrassing parody in the span of five minutes.
The Nerd heads over to his NES collection and picks out a game. ROB’s eyes flashes and the Nerd is surprised to find a copy of Stack Up in his hands. He picks out another game and it’s Gyromite. Nerd’s jaw drop, he looks up, and his whole shelf is filled with copies of Gyromite and Stack Up, all the while pretentious dramatic music plays in the background. He turns to ROB and accuses him of the evil deed.
HEAD DESK NUMBER TWO? CHECK!
So apparently ROB has the ability to transform every single game into the only two games he is capable of playing… funny that ROB didn’t show this ability when he was the subject of Irate Gamer’s videos… and I, for one, am thankful. If people say it’s because Bores lacked the creative foresight to think something like this up, then I am thankful for that because it just tells me that even Bores couldn’t come up with something this insipidly stupid if he tried.
The Nerd attempts to stop him, but ROB shows off another insipidly stupid superpower that grants him the ability to control all the cables and uses this ability to tie the Nerd up… but not before making his TV shoot a fireball to knock him down. Meanwhile, a two-in-one combo occurs; Facepalm No. 6 cancelled into HeadDesk No. 3. This combo is particularly effective if you want to surprise your opponent with another wave of stupid. If timed correctly, you can do up to 49% damage… wait, what was I talking about again?
So once the Nerd is all tied up, ROB jumps up and proceeds to start punching him in brutal fashion, eventually causing large globs of blood to spit out of the Nerd’s mouth. Part of me wishes I were that room right now punching him out for letting his creative juices run out of control like that, turning a rather below-average episode into pure shit in under a minute. Before he could finish off the Nerd, ROB jumps onto the handrail of his couch and turns the rest of his gaming collection into boxes of Gyromite and Stack-Up. I’m amazed he didn’t already do this the first time rather than waste five tedious seconds doing it again.
ROB then proceeds to explain his grand plan of replacing every inferior game with Stack Up and Gyromite. No more annoying music, no more long passwords, no more useless weapons, ROB intends to eliminate all the bad games in order to prevent another video game crash like the one that occurred in 1983/84. I have to question that plan, actually. Wouldn’t it be more efficient if ROB were to replace the games with new games that he and ONLY he could play rather than the same two games he is limited to playing? Eventually, people are going to get bored playing the same two games and will want to do something else instead… like play outdoors. As a result, there will be a decline in interest and the market will just crash again.
The Nerd attacks ROB with a Mario doll that fell on the ground, but ROB retaliates by knocking the doll away and blasting it to pieces. It should be that during ROB’s moment of distraction, the Nerd attempts to get the batteries. So that’s his weak point, right? But ROB crushes his fingers, and eventually uses his insipidly stupid superpowers to electrocute the Nerd while blasting him with lasers (oh God, this is reaching Kickassia levels of absurdity… that’s not a good thing… also FacePalm No. 7) until he stops moving and introduce another insipidly stupid HEAD-DESK inducing superpower by jumping into the TV and growing to Godzilla-like sizes, threatening the rest of a city that seems to have been placed there for the sake of the episode… wasn’t his house in a suburb? Or in fucking space?
Continuity? What’s that?
Setting aside the snark for a bit, Rolfe’s visual effects work is rather alright by low-budget standards and is somewhat of a step up over Bores’ effects – that’s something I can appreciate out of Rolfe’s work. He has that creative energy and that genuine love for what he does and it shows in the videos to varying degrees. However, there are times where you have to reel that creative energy in and say “Is this really necessary and does this really contribute anything?” This is one of those times, as the excessive nature of the whole scene makes it really hard to sit through.
Also another thing to consider is that by this point, the running time of this one video has already surpassed the total runtime of the Irate Gamer’s two-part video. The two parts clock a total running time of roughly fifteen minutes and the eventual anticlimactic battle between Evil ROB and Irate lasts less than a minute. It isn’t dragged out, it isn’t necessarily exciting, but it is over rather quickly given the extremely predictable outcome. It’s part of the reason why I find his ROB review more watchable than the Nerd’s 100th episode.
So while ROB is continuing his onslaught, AVGN reflects on the possibility of life without shitty games. No more Karate Kid, no more Fester’s Quest, no more Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde… all of it to be gone and forgotten. Obviously, since he was complaining about these shitty games early in the video, he would be happy that there would be only two games. Mind you, they’re not great games, but they’re certainly not shitty… so you’d think that the Nerd would be happy.
His response? “Fuck that.”
My response? FacePalm No. 8 cancelled into HeadDesk No. 5.
The Nerd dons his NES Accessories power suit from the SMB3 review a couple years back and apparently he also has the insipidly stupid superpower of touching a TV and growing to massive size… which induces another HEADDESK… and he can also fly… I’ve long since given up at this point.
So AVGN and ROB fight, trading laser shots before AVGN gets a shot in that knocks ROB over. AVGN shoots the exposed batteries, which cause them to fly out of the battery slot and causes ROB to explode. The Nerd wins. I’m going to presume that he shot ROB again with lasers between the moment the batteries popped and the moment ROB exploded or that the other laser he shot hit ROB somewhere. Because that would properly explain ROB’s final destruction. Now let’s backtrack; when ROB shows up for the first time, he moves around, he talks, all that… and this is all BEFORE the batteries are even inserted into his slot. So based on this knowledge, removing the batteries from ROB would mean nothing because ROB would still be working even with a source of power. So if he just shot the batteries to pop them out, it would mean nothing because ROB would still be function. So I presume that he kept shooting, knocked the batteries out, and shot some more to finally destroy ROB. Am I thinking too much into this? Probably… but for a reason…
So all the cartridges return to being their old shitty selves. Shitty games including…
Shadowgate (not a shitty game)
Rygar (not a shitty game)
Batman: Return Of The Joker (despite the AVGN review… not a shitty game)
Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest (despite the AVGN review… not a shitty game)
He looks around, happy that he is surrounded by shitty games and we conclude the 100th episode of the Angry Video Game Nerd with EIGHT FACEPALMS and SIX HEADDESKS. In comparison, I only facepalmed a couple times at most and never had the urge to slam my head against a desk when watching the Irate Gamer’s ROB review, which was generally, I thought, a better-structured and dare I say, much more viably-informative review. Yeah, the Irate Gamer – the one everybody likes to call a copycat plagiarist, the guy who stupidly believes that the Sega Genesis came out before the Super Nintendo, the guy who can’t spell the word PRINCIPLE in his Monster Party review, the guy who likes to bitch about the most minute issues within a video game, the guy who thinks Tekken 6 sucks because he couldn’t find the main Arcade Mode, the guy whose History Of Video Games subseries is littered with flaws and mistakes that RALPH FUCKING BAER himself called him out on that, the guy who has inspired a legion worth of parodies and jokes due to the insurmountable number of research fails and inconsistency of his videos… yeah, THAT GUY made a better review of ROB The Trojan Robot than the Fucking Nerd.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; the Angry Video Game Nerd’s supposed review of the Robotic Operating Buddy is the piss-poor equivalent of James Rolfe shitting into a paper bag and plastering it all over the Internet for the world to see. As if there was no possible way the Nerd could have BOMBED worse than when he put out that god-fucking-awful Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle episode, which made the worst NC17Productions offering seem like a fucking masterpiece in comparison, along comes this 100th episode of AVGN, which managed to out-suck KICKASSIA as if that wasn’t already an impossible feat in and of itself.
There’s nothing EPIC about this, there’s nothing CREATIVE about this, there’s nothing INFORMATIVE about ROB in any way, and perhaps most depressing of all, there is absolutely nothing ENTERTAINING about this tripe. This is perhaps the most convoluted mess of a video that practically screams creative bankruptcy. I mean, the EVIL ROBOT? Again?! People bitch about that when The Bores was doing this and then Rolfe comes out and does the SAME FUCKING THING?! And then suddenly, those SAME people think that it’s epic and more creative? Double Standard much?
And did we REALLY need to drag that final battle to eight fucking minutes? Look, everybody knows that AVGN is going to emerge victorious – it’s obvious, we can see it a mile away. For fuck’s sake, there’s more unpredictability coming out of a John Cena main event than there is in an AVGN skit where he’s fighting a guest caricature. There’s no fucking drama, it’s just tired, drawn-out melodramatic horse manure whose only real positive is that it looks pretty… and that alone is already a stretch.
So at the end of the day, for a 100th episode, for a landmark episode that is supposed to be a celebration of all that has come before, whether it’d be through a special episode or just a really great solid entry, James Rolfe has produced an outright horrendous review that is so depressingly awful in many ways that it can almost be considered a parody of what has come before. It’s just horrible. God-fucking-awful.
Fortunately, the follow-up episode of AVGN, where he looks at several Jurassic Park video games as well as a couple other games based on Spielberg films, is the usual low-key episode that is somewhat watchable. Unfortunately, it was the last episode released before James Rolfe went on hiatus to work on the Angry Video Game Nerd motion picture…
And after having witnessed the 100th episode and his version of EPIC… I fear for this movie…
But THAT, my friends, is another rant for another day…
That’s it. I’ve said enough.
Later.
dtm666 