The Irate Gamer/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
/wiki/The Irate Gamercreator

Strap yourselves in...

  • 8.8: Most of the games he reviewed less than favorably (Contra, Ghosts and Goblins, the SNES Aladdin, Zombies Ate My Neighbors, Super Mario Bros. 2, Sonic Unleashed,) are very much considered to be classics or at least decent.
  • Arc Fatigue:
    • His E3 2010 and 2011 videos started a week after the expo ended, and went on for an entire month. Most of it was released in July, when many other sites already had plenty of good coverage. What makes this worse is that most of the games he previewed were already on retail shelves at the time.
    • One could argue his "Shadow Overlord" story arc is this, considering his slow and sporadic release schedule.
  • Author's Saving Throw:
    • Attempted this with his Tekken 6 review. In the original version, he never talked about the main game, just the Scenario Campaign mode. In the YouTube upload, he added a part where he reviewed the Arcade mode thing and said it was good. It backfired when he forgot to remove the scene where he said it sucked. Or he didn't forget. He gives an arguably flimsy justification (that he prefers games like Mortal Kombat) possibly so he didn't need to edit it out.
    • The IG did a revisit of the TMNT games and this time around puts more focus on the game with adding his own take far less similar to the first season episode which sheared alot of resemblence with the AVGN. He also goes into more details about the sequel games by focusing more on the gameplay and much less on the graphics unlike in the original.
  • Non Sequitur Scene: Very prevalent in his reviews.
    • IG going into the world of Donkey Kong at the end of his review of the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for the NES.
    • IG shooting the dog from Duck Hunt at the end of the Jaws review.
    • Most of Satan's appearances qualify as BLAM, notably in the Odyssey Light Rifle video where he offered a light rifle for his soul (only to get turned down since he already had one).
    • The scene with the zombie in the Zombies Ate My Neighbors review. He tried to get rid of it using a Proton Pack, failed, then said he's "gonna need a bigger gun." Afterward, the actual review starts but the zombie is never seen again. In that same video, he listed off the ways of dying. When he gets to electrocution, for no explanation whatsoever, he gets hit with electricity.
    • Eggplant Wizard's appearance in the Tetris review. He appeared out of nowhere, gave IG Dr. Mario, and was never mentioned again.
      • You're supposed to assume he's a hallucination, since at that point Chris was freaking out like a drug addict.
    • The two separate Galaga sprites randomly appearing in the Contra review attacking Chris. They only appeared twice and were never mentioned again.
    • Two from the second part of his Robocop review: The Hamburglar popping up in the bonus game and Megatron appearing at another point.
    • The ending to the Madballs video. He gets beaten up by the Madballs and suddenly he's in the music video for "Take On Me" by A-Ha. Errrr what?
    • The first part of his Robocop review starts with him watching a television show starting Ronnie the Skeleton before he complains he's already seen it and starts the review, then later on interrupts it to reminisce about his college days. Neither are commented upon or mentioned again.
  • Blatant Lies: "I've been playing these games for 20 years, I know all the ins and outs of these games..."
  • Cliché Storm: Many of the ideas he uses are incredibly dated and have little variation in their use. The novel he planned also looked to be using common cliches.
  • Complete Monster: Despite being the protagonist, the eponymous Irate Gamer is absolutely despicable. He murders the Kool-Aid man on Christmas for being himself, destroys a harmless alien mothership, blows up Ubisoft's building and everyone inside for petty reasons and shows absolutely no remorse for anything.
  • Creator's Pet:
    • Ronnie the Skeleton is considered annoying. Fans hated him from his first appearance onward, he had a gag that was too long even by normal standards yet Bores just can't resist shoving him in wherever possible.
    • IG does this with Ronnie the Skeleton by having this already hated character do things like host a Christmas Special and save his life.
    • A Real Life example with IG's partner site GotGame. They ignore all criticism towards him, use childish arguments instead of addressing the criticism (such as "you don't have videos so you can't say anything") and delete all negative criticism from their site.
  • Critical Backlash: Once considered one of the worst web reviewer shows of all time, courtesy of being called an AVGN ripoff and misinformed in terms of research. Newer audiences, however, don't see the huge fuzz about this show and usually consider it to be So Average Its Okay at worst, and even older detractors don't hate it as much as they used to, with dlaabaoaqu for example removing every single video he did on the Irate Gamer. Even Chris himself has gained more fans over the years, thanks to the fact that his videos had improved with time.
  • Critical Research Failure: A common theme in his videos.
  • Designated Hero: From murdering the Kool-Aid Man to blowing up Ubisoft for petty reasons, the Irate Gamer does more horrible actions than his "evil" counterpart.
  • Designated Villain: The Evil Gamer and Shadow Overlord, though the Evil Gamer in particular. The worst he does is threaten the Irate Gamer, who is hardly innocent himself.
  • Dude, Not Funny:
    • Tony in the Robocop review shows more sociopathic tendencies, including beating up Freshmen in High School, as well as pounding his neighbor. Some of these jokes struck a nerve with people. In the same video, a lot of people were bothered by his breezy use of the word "retard".
    • His reaction to not being able to get into Ubisoft's E3 section was blowing up their headquarters.
  • Ensemble Darkhorse:
    • The Sage is a popular character even to non-fans of the show. One reason people like him is because his acting's slightly better than Bores and he even acknowledges Bores' mistakes.
    • Tony to some. Several fans of the show have been known to quote his saying "bang a lang" in the comments. When his new design was shown, several fans stated that they preferred the old one.
  • Fan Dumb: Some fans go as far to insist the Angry Video Game Nerd rips him off... and apparently Bores himself ALSO thinks this. The primary "justification" for this is that AVGN did Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom after Bores. Both reviews are significantly different. Never mind the fact that Bores's first review, Back to The Future, came after the AVGN's review..
  • Growing the Beard: Zigzagged.
  • Heartwarming in Hindsight:
  • He Panned It, Now He Sucks: He gets this a lot, but the most notorious example would be his Aladdin review.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight:
    • One review from the "Third Rate Gamer" was of the game Cool Spot, parodying IG's abuse of auxiliary characters that have no relevance to the review by having a Spot sprite appear at random times. Bores later reviewed that exact game, and the exact same thing happened.
    • In his Q-bert review, he states that if he doesn't post a video a month, Youtube would fire him. He's gone for many months on end now not doing reviews.
  • Internet Backdraft: You wonder why the main page was locked?
  • Jerkass: In an E3 video about Sonic Colors, he told a Sega representative "Sonic Unleashed sucked so this better be an improvement". Dude, don't say those things in front of the representatives.
  • Mary Sue: The Irate Gamer.
  • Mean Character, Nice Actor: Averted oh so hard. Not only is he a huge jerk on his show, but he's also an even more unpleasant person in real life.
    • This incident where he fed a troll by claiming he was better than him because he makes money and that everyone that criticized him is worthless scum. When he was caught, he claimed that wasn't him who sent the messages. Wow.
  • Memetic Mutation:
  • Moral Event Horizon: The Irate Gamer himself may have a few opportunities, such as murdering Kool-Aid Man for doing what he does on Christmas.
  • Narm: GET DAH FUCK OFF MAH PROPERTY!
  • Never Live It Down:
    • People will make sure he NEVER forgets that he ripped-off the AVGN. Even when he does something different.
    • Verbally abusing a random Youtuber. Even after he attempted to shift the blame to a Troll, it's still blindingly obvious that it was him who did it.
    • Nobody's willing to cut him any slack for a bad release schedule, "reviewing" a game in a manner that's incredibly lazy, or generally making the humor take more prominence over the actual material in the review, whether the humor makes sense or not.
  • Padding: Lots of it. He stated in an interview with a French gaming website that he tries to make fun of the games "at least 10 times".
    • One of his favorite tactics is to name and show every single enemy in a game, even if there's nothing especially outlandish about them.
    • If he isn't listing enemies, he'll do a montage, even for games that don't require one. Including Tetris, Dr. Mario, Q Bert, and Cool Spot.
    • There's also his use of side-characters, even if they have nothing to do with the game.
    • One of his worst instances was during his Contra episode, where he speculates what the story is and cuts to some imaginary situation at the Pentagon, then attempts to show an 8-bit rendition.
    • In his History of Video Games Part 4, there was a section over the game, Steeple Chase. He spent ten seconds covering all the information we need over it (what its about and how to play it). What then followed was a minute long skit (out of an eleven minute video) of a reenactment of the gameplay with the Irate Gamer as the horses.
    • His complaints about Abu in Aladdin. He spent over 90 seconds (in a video that's only 11:35 long) complaining about something that has zero impact on the overall game, the fact Abu follows Aladdin around.
    • The complaints about RoboCop not using his gun.
    • All the E3 videos where he shows an entire trailer. This wouldn't be so bad if he didn't record it using his camcorder. It feels like watching a bad Let's Play.
  • Plagiarism
    • In his History of Video Games series, footage from CNBC's Game On:The Unauthorized History of Video Games was used without providing any credit as seen in this image. The difference between the two images is that the footage was cropped to keep the television's logo from being shown.
    • He copies several of the Nerd's jokes (most notably in the Back to The Future and his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles review) as well as the entire concept of a foul-mouthed man who reviews games from the 80s and 90s with sketch comedy and special effects.
      • "Touch the ceiling, you die, touch the ground, you die, touch the lava, you die!" this line was copied from the Nerd's review of Silver Surfer.
      • In his Predator Review, the way he killed the Predator is performed exactly like the AVGN killing Jason, shot for shot.
      • In the ROB review, he started wearing blue button-down dress shirts and prominently displaying video game posters all over his wall.
      • The Kool-Aid Man constantly bothering him looked like it was taken from the AVGN's Bugs Bunny's Birthday Blowout video.
      • In the original Mission Impossible review, he actually says "What a shitload of fuck!"
      • During his look at Silver Surfer, he uses the AVGN's "You die you die die die die die..." joke in his own way. "Death after death after death after death..."
    • Other video game reviewers also had the problem of the Irate Gamer stealing material.
      • His review of Predator had very VERY similar jokes seen in Armake21 and wizwar100's review of the same game. Notably wizwar's "Fists of Fury" joke. It doesn't help that when he fought the Predator, he shot his head off just like The Nerd did to Jason Voorhees in his Friday the 13 th review.
      • Awesome Video Games also fell victim to his unoriginality. His two part ROB video takes multiple concepts from their five part Gyromite video. Including ROB dancing, ROB "accidentally" crushing Professor Hector, ROB secretly being evil, and a fight with him at the end.
      • The drop-in appearances of Spot in the 7-Up review are timed exactly like the Third Rate Gamer's video (ironic since he did that joke to make fun of the Kool-Aid Man's drop-in appearances).
      • During his solo RoboCop review, he took SWAGshow's PETA joke from the original crossover and reused it without giving him credit.
    • Several jokes were also copied from the The Simpsons and many other sitcoms.
      • In the third Chris & Scottie Road Trip, the two are "in Mexico" and Scottie wants a hot dog, and suddenly a hot dog vendor shows up. Taken from a VERY similar gag on The Simpsons episode Round Springfield where Homer wants a hot dog and suddenly a hot dog vendor shows up.
      • The line "It appears we have a caller, which is funny because this isn't a call-in show" from his Zombies Ate My Neighbors review is taken from a Kent Brockman line in the The Simpsonsepisode "Homer the Vigilante."
      • The Kool-Aid man in one of his reviews is remarkably similar to the way the Kool-Aid man is shown in Family Guy.
      • The concept of the Educational Mario Games episode is lifted right from an episode of Frasier, right down to the intro text that tells the viewers to pay attention.
  • Rooting for the Empire:
    • Subverted. To some, the villains can be just as boring or idiotic as the Irate Gamer himself.
    • At least one video that snarked on the Irate Gamer's History Of Video Games series, while they were somewhat annoyed that Chris doesn't know much about the film he's from, rooted for HAL to kill him.
  • The Scrappy: The Devil, whose existence in the reviews is pretty much entirely pointless, as he doesn't do anything funny, not to mention all he is is pretty much Padding.
    • Pretty much every character is this except for the Sage.
  • Serial Numbers Filed Off: Early in his run he stated he was inspired by The Angry Video Game Nerd. It shows. Badly.
  • Shallow Parody: The Kool-Aid Man can't seem to speak in full sentences; all he says is "Oh, Yeah!"... Whereas he spoke in full sentences in the commercials and comic books.
  • Special Effect Failure: While we can not expect so much from a Web Video show, he still has some pretty glaring mistakes on his special effects.
    • The holes in his wall in the Kool-Aid review look like black fabric taped to the wall over all his posters. He didn't even iron out the fabric; you could clearly see the wrinkles and a hole in the center.
    • In the Aladdin review, when the snake wraps around him, it goes into his leg.
    • The bar in the Monster Party review; outside it's an obvious Photoshop, inside it's an obvious bluescreen effect.
    • His overused explosion effect. He uses the same explosion every single time, with no variation to it. This put everyone in shock when they saw a new one in his RoboCop review. However, it became the new default.
    • Who knew blood looked so much like grape jelly?
    • When the Kool-Aid man crashes through the wall, he passes through a desk and some other objects, kind of like a ghost.
    • Cousin Joey. He's 6 years old, has the legs of a 27 year old, and if the chair is a good judge, is approximately 2 feet tall.
    • IG attempts a joke about God of War III's sex scenes by placing a censor bar over the TV. He failed to fully cover it and you can clearly see it's just Kratos and Pandora standing next to each other (can cross over into Anatomically-Impossible Sex).
    • When he rips off the Evil Gamer's moustache in the Cool Spot review the Evil Gamer is clearly ripping off his own moustache. The camera tries to hide this but you can tell due to 1. The hand doing the ripping changing from one shot to the other and 2. His shoulder moves.
    • The Jawa action figure in the Odyssey review.
    • Is that picture an actual DVD case?
    • During the remastered Sonic Colors video, when Knuckles spin-dashes across the table and causes it to fall. You can see Chris just knock the table over.
    • The "button" he pressed to "blow up" Ubisoft? It was clearly the camera's lens cap.
    • Whenever something is about to fall on him, it always switches to a wide angle shot, so you know it's coming.
    • The giant Kinnikuman action figure falling on him, it's really cheap looking.
    • Some of his videos (such as the end of Cool Spot, the Robocop reviews) with multiple characters on screen, they sometimes don't actually walk on, just slide on while being bobbed up and down to make it look like they're moving. Sometimes noticeable because their legs don't move.
  • So Bad It's Good: To some, who watch it for the constant research errors, blatant stealing, and bad special effects. Some of his pre-Irate Gamer video are this too, Back to the Past in particular.
    • His facial expressions are a source of much memetic humor.
  • Straw Man Has a Point:
    • Some of those games he reviews really are bad, and he even mentions what Contra Force was like, such as how the ending was a real slap in the face and the gameplay having issues (though he jumbled up a bit there).
    • Regardless on how you feel on the whole "AVGN or Irate Gamer", and yeah Chris Bores does have some ego problems, but Chris is basically right that James Rolfe (well, actually it was Mike Matei) shouldn't have posted a private email on the Screw Attack message boards as a joke.
  • Stuck in Their Shadow: Naturally having done this for nearly 10 years, Chris' review style has improved, and gotten less like James', but people will still compare them until the end of time. Even as late as 2018, there's interesting similarities between the two that keep popping up. Such as the fact that "Ghosts N' Goblins] was apparently [the first NES game for both of them.
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks: Fans have not gravitated well towards Tony's new hand-drawn design.
  • They Copied It, So It Sucks: Uh, yeah, ya think?!? He is quite possibly the UrExample when it comes to Website/YouTube videos. Ten years later, and he still hasn't been able to shake off this image.
  • They Just Didn't Care:
    • In History of Video Games 3, he starts playing Gran Trak 10 in front of a greenscreen, then suddenly he's in a real arcade, and now he's back in front of a greenscreen. This was to hide the fact that he couldn't animate the car turning (since he created the footage).
    • Many of his NEO reviews do this. It's clear in most of them that he only played the first levels of each (sometimes not even going that far).
      • The Simpsons Game: Outright admitted he only reached level 3.
      • Battalion Wars II: The only footage shown is from the first two missions.
      • Zack and Wiki: Footage is only from the first two levels.
      • Final Fantasy III: A rare subversion to this as he shows the final boss. However, he clearly cheated as all his characters have 9999 HP.
      • Sonic Unleashed: Gave up after the first flying stage because "this isn't what Sonic is about."
      • Resident Evil 5: Only shows the first level. He couldn't even get past it.
      • RoboCop 2: Kept replaying the first stage because he deliberately kills (instead of rescuing) the 5 flashing hostages.
      • Brutal Legend: Admitted he only played it for an hour.
      • Tekken 6: He judged the game on the tacked-on story mode (and had to be told it was a fighting game). In the YouTube version, he claims he didn't know of the arcade mode because they buried it in the menu.
      • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time Reshelled: Never got past the third level going by his complaint about the "changes from the original". Since he believes the SNES is the original version, had he gotten past the third level he would have noted the lack of the Rat King fight, lack of Technodrome stage, and so on (when these things weren't in the original Arcade version).
      • God of War III: Less than two minutes long, tells us little about the game, and only reviewed it as an excuse to make a "God of War has sex in it" joke.
      • Donkey Kong Country Returns: While he gave the game a positive review, it's clear he barely played through the game when he said it was "not too hard". Despite everyone that's played it quickly claiming it's Nintendo Hard.
      • Mortal Kombat 9: Outright said he didn't finish the story mode.
    • His series "Video Game Roundup" is this in spades. Covering four games in two and a half minutes, each game only getting 2 or 3 lines. No detail, no effort, no care, just "here's something I threw together in an hour".
    • He does this twice in his video for the worst movies based off video games. Firstly, while reviewing the Doom film, he admits he didn't really play the game because he got motion sickness. Secondly, while reviewing the Hitman film, he not only says he never played the games, but that "all movies based off video games suck", proving he really has no concept of video games in general.
    • It hasn't changed in if his recent Sonic Generations review is any indication. In HD, his 'gameplay footage' has a watermark that says Cyberman65. Cyberman65 is a Youtuber who has a playthrough of Sonic Generations he made on his channel. That's right, Bores stole another person's gamplay footage for his own video and didn't even bother to remove the watermark.
  • The Unexpected: In 2020, the [trailer] for the Irate Gamer's Dick Tracy review revealed that it was a crossover with WebVideo/TheAngryVideoGameNerd, which very few people saw coming.
  • Unfortunate Implications:
    • In his Mario Is Missing/Mario's Time Machine review, it's said that Ronnie the Jew Skeleton is apparently good at "fixing" gas pipes. In addition, anyone who looks suspicious in Mexico is a Bandito who will steal your wallet. It doesn't help that the country in-game was Egypt, not Mexico.
    • His review of Tekken 6 can come off as xenophobic, as he's criticizing the game for Japanese dialogue and makes that a main criticism.
    • All three videos in the Chris & Scottie Road Trip series are filled with these. Things like the Irish are constantly drunk, Mexicans only eat Taco Bell and have toxic water, everyone in London is a thief, etc.
    • Ronnie the Skeleton hosts a Christmas Special. However, his Ambiguously Jewish attitude creates a few problems.
    • In his top 10 anticipated movies of summer 2008 list, he speculates that in Dragonball Evolution, Ernie Hudson would be playing Mr. Popo. So... yeah.
    • In his 80s video about Kinnikuman he shows what's intended by stock footage of Japan but instead it's stock footage of the Forbidden City in Beijing, China. Crosses over with All Asians Are Alike.
  • Visual Effects of Awesome: The stop motion for every scene that involves ROB the Robot is quite an achievement. It looks fluent without feeling too much like jump cuts, which is quite hard for any average person trying to make it look right, knowing how sometimes the camera angles can change on inconsistent levels.
  • Vindicated By History: Some of Irate Gamer's former haters have since warmed up to him, or at least respect him now. Among these are Aslieri, The Archfriend, Big Al, the late Hellsing920, and even Mike Matei. In general, the hate for the Irate Gamer isn't nearly as prevalent as 10 years or so ago.
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/The_Irate_Gamer/YMMV?oldid=1836312"