So James Rolfe recently started a Rex Viper Youtube channel dedicated to his garage band who do covers of popular and game music. It’s an acquired taste for those who enjoy that sort of stuff, but apparently, none of them are Cinemassacre fans, who treated the news like they were struck with measles. Apparently, some of these fans don’t care for Rex Viper and wish Rolfe had put more energy into AVGN instead.
So, lo and behold, the new AVGN episode is up and I give it a watch. It’s him playing through Dragon’s Lair on NES – a game he had covered previously, but never made it past the first screen. So he played more of the game and also, there’s a sideplot about “younger” Nerd also playing the game. “Younger” Nerd is wearing a bad wig… which I suppose is supposed to be bad and, well, congrats, Jimbo. You got a bad wig. It looks bad. And this whole episode was… BAD.
I realize the guy has a family and kids. He’s got other stuff to do. He’s got other interests he’d rather be doing. I get that AVGN is at the point of “contractual obligation” rather than something that he genuinely wants to continue. But this was bad. I don’t remember the last time I’ve seen a genuinely good AVGN episode in the 2020s, let alone the past decade. I mean, the production is fine for what it is… but the jokes are lame, the act is tiresome,
People are accusing Rolfe of suffering a midlife crisis and figured it’d be over when he’s done with this Rex Viper thing… except they’re focused on the wrong thing. AVGN is the midlife crisis that needs to be over and done with. The act is old, his heart isn’t in it, the chances of him making another episode as memorable as the early ones – when that shit was genuinely funny and worthwhile – lie somewhere between “jack shit” and “fuck all,” and honestly, given the gaps between episodes, maybe there comes a point where you just need to put it down… or at least give it a nice extended break.
If James Rolfe wants to do this Rex Viper thing, then let him do it. If you like what it does, by all means, support it. But if not, then move on to something else and find something that you will like. There’s bound to be something out there that isn’t just stale, tired, and uninspired. The angry reviewing phase has come and gone. The people who used to do it have either moved on to something else or evolved to something else. UrinatingTree’s a great example; one of the older stock of angry reviewer-types who was genuinely funny until one day, he decided to do sports stuff and the guy’s killing it. The late Emer Prevost was another one – he did a bunch of game and comic reviews before starting up his Reaction & Review series where he watches a movie, reacts to it, and then reviews it on the fly. I’ll go so far to say that as much as I enjoy some of their older games stuff; I dug their later stuff a bit more… and I say this as a guy who’s not a sportsball fan or anything.
Let the guy do different things that he might actually like. If AVGN dies tomorrow, nothing of value will have been lost because AVGN has sucked for years. Honestly, everything after the movie has been kinda trash.
Meh.
dtm666 