Bias Steamroller: Difference between revisions

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== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==
* [[The Nostalgia Critic (Web Video)|The Nostalgia Critic]] has stated that this trope is the reason why he doesn't do [[Anime]]. He avoids running a Bias Steamroller over it by not reviewing any at all, instead leaving it to other people on his site.
* [[Anime News Network]] has a number of reviewers who hate all things [[Moe]] with a burning passion and think it's killing the industry.
** ANN's review of the [[Saiyuki]] anime was apparently done by a guy who hated it for not being [[Shonen]].
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== [[Fanfic]] ==
* [[The Nostalgia Critic (Web Video)|Nostalgia Critic-like]] fanfiction critic ''The Fic Critic'' (No, not [[The Fan Fic Critic|that]] one, the text based one) has noted that he tends to be biased against fics that [[Ron the Death Eater|act meanly towards certain characters or treats them badly]], especially ones he likes. One noteworthy example was when he went from distainful but amused at the stupidity of ''Web Of Shadows'', a Spider-Man/X-Men Evolution crossover Mary Sue {{spoiler|Parody}} fic, to outright anger and chain swearing after [[The Wesley|Carlie]] [[Mary Sue|Cooper]] called Mary Jane Watson, whom he admitted is one of his, if not the, favourite Spider-Man supporting character, a slutty model who dresses like a street walker. His reaction to her calling Mary Jane this is one of the few times he went from snarky to outright pissed, and ended up giving that chapter a Fuck/10.
 
== [[Film]] ==
* Critic Peter Bradshaw panned [[Peter Jackson]]'s film trilogy of ''[[The Lord of the Rings (Filmfilm)|Lord of the Rings]]'', largely over what he sees as the failures of the fantasy genre rather than any perceived deficiencies in the films themselves.
* Critic Armond White repeatedly trashes of the films of [[Noah Baumbach]], often with personal overtones. In this case the driving force of the [[Bias Steamroller]] seems to be personal: White had previously feuded with film critic Georgia Brown, who was Baumbach's mother. In addition, he has panned every [[Pixar]] movie to come out during his time as a reviewer, often spending half the review complaining about the company itself rather than the film. On the other side of the trope, there seems to be a very short list of directors that Armond will like no matter what: [[Steven Spielberg]], [[Mike Leigh]], [[Wes Anderson]], [[Edgar Wright]], and [[The Coen Brothers]].
** His love for all things Anderson becomes especially interesting when you realize that two of his films that White praised (''[[The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou]]'' and ''[[The Fantastic Mr. Fox]]'') were co-written by Baumbach.
* [http://filmatheist.com/ The Film Atheist] reviewer gives ''[[Ben Hur|Ben-Hur]]'' a near scathing review due to the presence of Christian themes. Not to mention his reviews of ''[[The Chronicles of Narnia]]: [[The Lion, the Witch Andand Thethe Wardrobe]]'' and ''[[The Golden Compass]]''. Two guesses on which one he liked.
* [[The Nostalgia Critic (Web Video)|The Nostalgia Critic]] also admittedly hates ''[[The Flintstones]]'' and his review of the Flintstones live-action adaptation starts off with non-stop bashing of the movie as if it's bad because it's ''[[The Flintstones]]'' and no other reason why.
** He also drives one right over ''[[Doug]]''. This is a totally character reason however, as people confusing him with the main is one of the many reasons why he got so badly bullied at school. Doug the real life person just finds it dull.
** And then there's his problems with [[Matthew Broderick]].
** ''And'' [[Randy Newman]].
* [[The Agony Booth (Website)|The Agony Booth]] has an extreme bias against action films. No matter the quality of the movie, they'll always pan the film, the exception being [[Road House]], but chalk that up to Agony Booth being fanboys of [[RifftraxRiff Trax]]. Even when they give movies a rating of say, 8/10, they'll still pan it, and call it "bad" even though they gave it an above-average rating, [[Fridge Logic|which makes zero sense]].
* While [[Love It or Hate It|its certainly up for debate on this matter]], [[Michael Bay]] has been a victim of this many times. While its true that violent explosions, car chases, and [[Ms. Fanservice]]'s are common in his films, he does work to have plot in the films and Character depth at least. However, as far as some people are concerned, if a film has Michael Bay as director, it's nothing but a stupid lowbrow wet dream.
** Similarly, any film staring [[Shia La BeoufLaBeouf]], besides ''[[Holes]]'', will be hated on the grounds that 'he can't act'. While he's certainly played some annoying characters, he himself isn't nearly as bad an actor as made out, again as seen by Holes.
** And [[Megan Fox]], and [[Live Action Adaptation|films based on a franchise aimed at children]]. Wow, Transformers never had a chance, did it?
 
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== [[Music]] ==
* One of the most notorious examples of a bias steamroller in music criticism is Lester Bangs. A huge fan of free jazz and punk-related rock, if a musician was a virtuoso yet engaged in a genre that was outside of Bangs' tastes (including [[Progressive Rock]], [[Led Zeppelin (Music)|Led Zeppelin]]-styled hard rock) he would trash him/her with very little, if any, justification (at one point, comparing Keith Emerson of [[Emerson Lake and Palmer]] to a trained seal).
* Christian Clemmensen of Filmtracks towards anything done by a young composer, done in a non-traditional style or done by [[Hans Zimmer]]. He also hates the Oscars and composers like [[Vangelis]] (whom Clemmensen claimed was a one-hit wonder, a major [[Critical Research Failure]] on his part) whom he claims are undeserving Oscar winners.
* Piero Scaruffi's reviews are rather infamous for his seemingly biased (and mostly negative) opinion towards many popular musicians, most notably [[The Beatles]], [[Elvis Presley]], [[Radiohead]] and [[David Bowie]].
* [[Todd in Thethe Shadows]] hates [[Chris Brown]] with the burning fury of a thousand suns, so much so that his review of turn up the music only has about 30 seconds of him reviewing the song itself, the rest of the review being taken up by a long rant against him.
** In the same video, though, he admits that he does like a few of Chris Brown's songs, and ''wants'' to get past the main reason he hates him (the whole abuse debacle with Rihanna,) but that Chris Brown's [[Small Name, Big Ego|massive ego]] and refusal to truely learn anything from his mistakes won't let him.
** He's also heavily biased against the "White guy with acoustic guitar" genre.
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* [[Game FAQs]] reviewers: It's not uncommon to find reviews that merely "This game sucks because it's an [[RPG]]", "This game sucks because it's an [[FPS]]", "This game rules because it's a point and click adventure game", "This game sucks and has shitty graphics", "This game sucks because it's a [[Nintendo]] game", or whatever steamroller that particular poster like to drive.
** Or not to mention, people going in-depth with one bad experience and accentuating that entirely; even if they were blatantly doing something wrong.
* [[Zero Punctuation (Web Animation)|Yahtzee]] is very up front about his bias against JRPGs and the Wii. His ''Wii Sports Resort'' review was clearly made with the "I hate it, everyone knows I'll hate it, let's just go nuts" mentality. He has the same feeling about fighting games - his later reviews of fighting games criticized the genre more than they criticized the games. Oddly, while he also dislike real time strategy games, he expresses that by simply never reviewing them at all.
** Not to mention his hate for "Modern Shooters", constantly bashing [[Insurmountable Waist-Height Fence|"Chest-high walls"]], regenerating health, macho protagonists and grim & gritty settings.
** Although in general its arguable if he belongs here, since by being biased against EVERYTHING (other than Silent Hill 2, Saints Row and that Spiderman game), it arguably stops being a bias and is more of an [[Unpleasable Critic]] type thing.
** He also goes the other way sometimes; for one thing, he's a rabid [[Valve]] fanboy (to the extent that his rampant cynicism will allow). ''[[Portal (Video Gameseries)|Portal]]'' got his only completely positive review ''ever'', and his only significant complaint about the Half-Life series is that [[Development Hell|it takes too long for each game to come out]]. He does criticize Valve games a bit, but always gives more of a "friendly joshing" impression rather than the nuclear explosions of vitriol applied to games by pretty much anyone else.
* Finnish games reviewer and columnist Niko Nirvi once took note of this effect in a column explaining the various ways in which [[Four Point Scale|a review score]] can be affected by outside factors, such as the "Wrong Guy" effect, where the game in question is a sequel to something that the reviewer previously loathed, the Ancestor effect, where the game is made by an established developer, so the score is based entirely on what the reviewer thinks of the developers, or the Genrebonus effect, where the reviewer is a fan of the IP the game is based on ("It's a [[Batman]] game! I love Batman! Have some Bat-points!"). There's also the Critic effect, where the reviewer can't admit to liking anything that isn't independent or artsy, and the exact opposite phenomenon, the Laddie effect.
* GamePro would often disparage an RPG ''because'' it was an RPG or in the case of "politically important" games like ''[[Final Fantasy VIII]]''', heaping a ton of cynicism into their reviews. ("Politically Important" in this case means "The publisher is paying us a lot to advertise in our magazine") This attitude also seeped into their coverage, wherein they would make all sorts of research flaws while making guides and showing other information about games that was blatantly wrong.
** One particularly heinous review for ''Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force'' had the review bashing the related [[Star Trek: Voyager]] television series which had nothing to do with the review, before going on to admit that the game was good despite his bias. One wonders why they didn't have a reviewer who at least had a passing interest in the show review the game based on it.
** Parodied in ''[[Homestuck]]'' by the magazine "Game Bro," whose [http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=001942 review of SBURB], the game at the heart of the plot of the webcomic, was written by someone who didn't even play the game because it isn't a beat-'em-up or skateboarding game.
* ''Game Informer'' tends to flat out trash whatever games are considered "casual" merely on basis of not being "Core" games. This was especially blatant in their review of ''[[Farmville]]'', in which they don't find the game bad on its own merits - they find it bad because it's not like ''[[Mass Effect 2]]''. They've admitted in the past that they have a bias steamroller for whatever they believe their readers' biases are.
** Their review of ''Botkai: The Sun Is In Your Hands'' makes one question whether or not they actually ''played'' the game in question; since the bulk of the review was spent ranting about how the window wouldn't charge their sunlight, how the glare off the Game Boy Advance screen was giving them a headache, and said very little about what the game was actually ''about''. You probably wouldn't even know what ''genre'' of game it is by reading the review.
** Their review of ''[[Sonic Generations (Video Game)|Sonic Generations]]'' complained less about flaws in the game itself, but about the fact that SEGA celebrated the history of Sonic past 1994. They admit to enjoying the game, both Classic and Modern, up until the ''[[Sonic 3 and Knuckles (Video Game)|Sonic 3 and Knuckles]]'' part and loathing everything past that. This is particularly baffling when their review for ''[[Sonic the Hedgehog 2006 (Videovideo Gamegame)|Sonic the Hedgehog 2006]]'' was oddly positive (and got a better score) in the face of everyone else tearing it apart.
** They '''loathe''' the ''[[Mario Party]]'' series. They have never given any of the games in the series a rating higher than 4/10, and whenever they preview a new entry they can barely hide their contempt.
* Noah Antwiler, the maker of ''[[The Spoony Experiment (Web Video)|The Spoony Experiment]]'', has admitted that he's biased against the central tropes of the [[JRPG]] genre, and knows that most of his criticism for the ''[[Final Fantasy]]'' series is about things that fans of the series love. However, he considers himself an [[Rule of Funny|entertainer first, and a critic second.]]
** On the related note, his friend at [[That Guy With theThe Glasses]], [[The Angry Joe Show (Web Video)|Angry Joe]], started his review of ''[[The Witcher]] 2'' by accusing every single website that gave it negative review of being just biased against RPGs that are different from ''[[Dragon Age]]''. YMMV if he is right or not.
* [[The Angry Video Game Nerd (Web Video)|The Angry Video Game Nerd]] does indeed have his biases. He often admits them, such as how he doesn't really do adventure games because he "Sucks at them" and doesn't really figure out how to get further in them. (Given [[Guide Dang It|the nature]] of [[Unwinnable|many adventure games]], especially at the timeframe he reviews games from, one can't really blame him too much.) He also ''admits'' this in his ''[[Castlevania]]'' reviews, admitting he found ''[[Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (Video Game)|Symphony of the Night]]'' to be inferior to ''[[Super Castlevania IV]]''. However, he also shows this [[Bias Steamroller]] towards the post ''Super Castlevania IV'' games in many other ways in the forms of some often critical research failures. Among these are confusing the plot of ''[[Aria of Sorrow]]'' with ''[[Dawn of Sorrow]]'' (which is pretty interesting he made this mistake seeing as he's shown ''playing Dawn of Sorrow'') and getting some facts about ''[[Castlevania 64 (VideoNintendo Game64)|Castlevania 64]]'' wrong.<ref> To elaborate, he claims a "Fatal Flaw" of the game blocking his progress from placing the Nitro or Mandragora by the crack is in fact his own inability to realize that the game has an "interact" button. This is rather impressive that he didn't appear to know that; since he managed to get that far. He was trying to use the item from the item menu, which is for items that you use on yourself like food.</ref> He also makes it pretty obvious that he's a fan of Nintendo and has a preference for it in his Console Wars videos as well as his "Pong consoles" videos. Part of the reason is also because that's what he was most familiar with.
* ''[[X -Play]]'' has pretty huge biases against [[RPG|RPGs]], World War II games and [[Dynasty Warriors|Koei's]] [[Samurai Warriors|Warriors]] [[Warriors Orochi|games]]. They also love to accentuate how much they hate doing escort missions, and this often seeps into their reviews where they may often trash World War II [[Games/RPG|RPGs]] on basis of being sick of World War II/not liking [[RPG|RPGs]], and in the case of the latter, severely not doing any bit of research in the game. That is; depending on whether or not it's Adam or Morgan doing the review and not just a writer.
** When ''The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword'' won Game of the Year, the hosts said the only reason ''Skyward Sword'' won was because of angry Nintendo fans, and show an air of contempt.
** Occasionally averted in the case of [[RPG|RPGs]]. They seem to like The Elder Scrolls series, having given [[The Elder Scrolls III|Morrowind]], [[The Elder Scrolls IV|Oblivion]], and [[The Elder Scrolls V|Skyrim]] all 5/5 stars.
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== [[Western Animation]] ==
* [[Cartoon Brew (Blog)|Cartoon Brew]] with [[Motion Capture]], remakes, CGI and pretty much anything [[Nostalgia Filter|made after the 1960s or 1990s]].
 
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