The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly about Game Reviewing

I’ve been reviewing games online starting in text form as long as I remember back during the livejournal days (remember that platform?) and been reading them as a kid ever since Game Players Magazine, Nintendo Power, EGM, etc.

I started watching game reviews in video format since the G4 days and online with The Angry Video Game Nerd, Classic Game Room, Angry Joe, and many other reviewers from the mid 2000’s till now.

When I started my YouTube channel in 2011, I initially wanted to stay away from reviewing games as I felt my peers did it better and I wanted to focus more on gaming skits. However, views for the skits weren’t exactly gangbusters as gaming related sketches weren’t really at the forefront of YouTube anymore in the early 2010’s.

In 2014, my old crew and I did our first episode of “Awesome Video Game Memories” which was our gaming retrospective/review show in order to bring in new viewers focusing on the TMNT Arcade Game. While the views weren’t great at first, the show started picking up and became the most viewed series on the channel and eventually our flagship show.

I did the show for 10 years before ending it in 2024 with over 200+ episodes.

Over the course of 10 years, I’ve experienced The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly parts of game reviewing and I’m going to share them with all of you in this entry.

Even back when gaming magazines were the main format of game reviewing, there was already thousands of games available to review. Nowadays, we have access to hundreds of thousands of games spanning across several decades from the Magnavox Odyssey to the PlayStation 5 (at the time of this writing) to review.

You technically have a near unlimited amount of games to choose from from any console and genre imaginable. This means you will literally never run out of material to review.

As the old motto of Classic Game Room goes:

“BANISHED from Earth, Classic Game Room Broadcasts from the Intergalactic Space Arcade on it’s never ending mission… to review EVERYTHING.”

Back then, we were reading game reviews in magazines and eventually watching them on TV on channels like G4 in the pre-YouTube era.

Now with the advent of the internet and technology, people have been able to review games on their own with various options like websites, blogging platforms, social media, videos, and way more. Gaming magazines had special video capture software that was only limited to them and gaming companies in order to capture screencaps and videos from games.

In today’s age, we have elgato and similar capture devices that can easily capture any footage or screencaps of the consoles and PC/Macs with OBS that can capture anything on your screen. In fact, most modern consoles have the capability to capture footage and screenshots built into them already. Just press your capture button on your Nintendo Switch 2 for a screencap, or hold the capture button for a quick video, upload them to your phone, and you already have instant material for your reviews. If you need longer footage, then you can easily use a capture device to record long gameplay sessions for specific footage.

You will have to turn off HDCP if you plan to use a capture device with the Xbox and PlayStation, disabling your capabilities to play Blu-Ray movies, but it’s a small price to pay for footage capture.

As for older consoles, emulators have gotten to the point where they can nearly play everything perfect from the earliest consoles to the PS3/Xbox 360 (at the time of this writing) which are easy to capture with OBS.

If you’re a big enough influencer or if you hustle alot, you can get free digital copies or even physical copies of games to review. I’ve gotten everything from smaller indie games to big triple-A releases for free and I’m still under 10k subscribers at the time of this writing.

Bigger influencers even get free swag, toys, and even consoles like the PS5 sent completely free to them in exchange for video and social media coverage. I’ve also gotten lots of free swag from companies like shirts, figures, toys and more which you can see in the background of several of my videos.

I’ve gotten games from SNK, Square-Enix, Konami, and alot of other companies just for simply having a decent subscriber count, sending out emails, or meeting reps at conventions like E3 and more. I was magically placed on Sega’s and Kojima Productions influencer mailing lists when I didn’t even apply to them and still receive offers to this day.

One of the best packages I got was when I did a review for Bubble Bobble 4 Friends for Square-Enix and Inin Games. Inin Games was so impressed with my review that they sent me a huge package for Wonder Boy: Asha in Monster World which I also graciously reviewed.

Repeating this from above, one of the bad things about game reviewing in today’s age is that there are too many games to choose from. Do you want to review a Mega Man game? Final Fantasy? Castlevania? some random indie game?

Having way too many choices will definitely make you indecisive.

I remember putting down a massive list of games I wanted to review in an excel spreadsheet only to realize I would keep adding more and more to it. Making it unfeasible to play and review EVERY single game.

Even back before the advent of the internet, gaming magazines and outlets had extremely limited time to review games and get their magazines printed. Games were still coming out a rapid pace that the most popular games had to take precedence rather than alot of the smaller titles that came out.

I’m sure most gaming magazines were focused on reviewing Mega Man X2 rather than The Fortress of Dr. Radiaki in 1995.

I actually have more bad things to say about reviewing, but I will definitely get to them in The Ugly section.

One of the biggest hurdles I had in game reviewing was that there were way too many games to choose from and barely time to review them all. The average game takes about 8 or so hours to complete and since I had a day job, my only time to play games, write the scripts, film the footage, and edit reviews was on nights, weekends, holidays, and days off. Barely giving me time for other things.

I confess I spent my holidays and days off filming and editing reviews when I could have spent that time relaxing or doing more leisurely things. I live with a roommate, so I would always have to wait for my roommate to leave for work before I would film since I would go crazy and loud with my reviews, especially filming skits and on my green screen so I wouldn’t annoy my roommate.

Reviewing older NES, SNES, Genesis, Arcade, etc games were always easy since I would come up with a review script based on my own memories and would replay and capture them. However, newer games, especially open world and RPGs were always the most difficult to fit into my schedule since these were usually 30-40+ hour plus games. I also confess I would play most games on easy mode to capture the footage easier.

I do regret that I wasn’t able to review every game I wanted to since there were just too many games I wanted to review and not enough time to review them all.

Your chances of getting more views with Crimson Desert on the PS5 are far better than doing a review of Combat on the Atari 2600.

Or is it vice versa?

Most of my Mega Man reviews have done far better than more recent releases like Days Gone and Detroit Become Human on the PS4.

My Mega Man X8 review at 5000+ views at the time of this writing.

My Days Gone review only at 400+ views at the time of this writing.

My Ultima Exodus for the NES review at 13k+ views at the time of this writing.

I usually got better views and more comments with older games rather than reviewing the newer games at the time. However, some reviewers like Angry Joe get better views with newer games, so YMMV (Your Mileage May Vary).

If you plan to grow your channel and get more views and subscribers, you need to figure out which games will perform better for you whether they’re older or newer games. My channel didn’t grow to the heights it should have gotten as I would just go all over the place with newer and older games, never being consistent.

I honestly would have gotten more views and subscribers if I stuck to older games, but I would also feel passionate about newer games and getting out my thoughts on them.

One full time youtuber once said that when you have to choose between your passion game review project or the newer game that will get the views, you have to choose the newer game that will get the views 99.9% of the time to sustain your views and the audience.

Game reviewing has now literally become an assembly line for most reviewers as they have to play one game, review it, and then move on to the next. Rinse and repeat.

Back when YouTube was new from 2005-2008, all games were easy low hanging fruit. You could review Super Mario Bros. or Mega Man 2 and still get several thousand views.

20+ years later, pretty much almost every single game ever made has been reviewed at some point. Even obscure Intellivision and Atari titles. Nowadays a review of Super Mario Bros. or Mega Man 2 will get lost in the shuffle of hundreds and thousands of reviews already done by more established YouTubers.

You will also never get a review out earlier than most established outlets like IGN, Gamespot, Polygon, Kotaku, and more as bigger media outlets and influencers usually get the games way earlier than most of us normal people. I get tons of early access review codes for steam games all the time which I’ve stopped accepting due to my hectic schedule.

Full time YouTubers who get game codes days, weeks, or even months in advance will always get their reviews out faster. There have been times I got game codes in advance, but I would only have time to play during the weekends or after my work hours, putting me at a massive disadvantage in comparison to already established full time YouTubers.

The funny thing is that most gaming companies will set embargoes and rules on what can and cannot be discussed in a review. I remember when I got a few review codes from Square-Enix for some of the Dragon Quest games, I was told there were certain things I wasn’t allowed to talk about until the embargo date had passed. It still took me some time to finish those games, so I wasn’t able to get my reviews out before the embargo dates anyways.

It’s also funny when a game or device gets released and most likely the embargo dates pass, my YouTube subscription feed would be filled with reviews of the same game or device by different channels. I remember when the Analog Mini came out, my entire feed was filled with reviews of it, but I only watched one of them.

This just doesn’t apply to game reviews, but to pretty much every creative endeavor: You will get your share of haters and people who disagree with you. Not everyone will always agree with your opinion.

While most of the the feedback I’ve gotten has been positive, I’ve gotten a decent amount of hate comments as well. I’ve been called a fraud, a “sh*tyt reviewer” (yes, that was the real spelling), my teeth were black, I look like I grew up next to a radiation plant, and every insult you can think of.

You’ll be hard pressed to find any YouTuber who hasn’t been insulted or made fun of in this line of work and sadly, it comes with the territory. The internet lets people be anonymous so you may never find out who they are and they can be a cruel as they want without the consequences they would suffer in real life.

Not all, but some people just want you to parrot their thoughts in your own voice and when you don’t do that, they turn on you.

I was attacked on reddit over a decade ago over my Mega Man 7 review and I got a flood of hate comments where I quickly deleted and banned the users. I have to admit it did take it’s toll mentally on me and also took a ton of time to clean up.

There are also people who really hate it when you put skits or anything that isn’t talking head footage in a video. I’m someone who prefers skits (when they’re done well) and the review provides context for the skits. I even got one person who claimed they liked my reviews when I was talking over the game footage but didn’t like it when I appeared on screen. Weird.

I’ve been making content on the internet since 1997 which is nearly 30 years at the time of this writing. Even though I’ve learned to take alot of the insults and criticism in stride better over the years, it still stings. We as humans are designed to adapt to a fight or flight mentality when we get antagonized, so it’s normal to get defensive. Just like the old saying where you can get 9 positive reviews and 1 bad review and you’ll focus far more on that bad review.

Remember that trolls have all the time in the world to dish out insults, but you as a creator don’t have that luxury. Sadly, there’s no one answer on how to deal with haters, so be careful on how you approach them. You don’t want to waste 3 hours a night fighting on social media when you can be doing better things like playing more games to make more content. In all honesty, you just can’t please everyone, so just make the best reviews you can.

The block and mute buttons exist on social media platforms for a reason, so don’t be afraid to use them!

“In war, there are no winners.”

Now for the REALLY ugly side of getting free review copies and let’s begin with this old saying:

“If you’re given something, you must give something back.”

Game companies give out free codes to influencers so they can get coverage back in return in the form of social media posts, videos, and more. No sane game company will ever give you something out of the goodness of their heart, especially if they don’t know you.

I won’t name the company or the games, but when I first started getting free review codes, one certain company kept pestering me EVERY DAY on whether I would deliver content for them.

Contrary to popular belief, generating game codes is not free, especially on the consoles. As a developer myself, I realize the consoles only give a limited amount of free codes before we’re forced to buy more which is why certain game companies limit the amount of codes they can give out. I’m under NDA for the consoles, so I can’t tell you the limit of console codes we can give, but it’s not alot.

I do confess there have been alot of games I’ve gotten for free and never did reviews for due to the lack of time. I feel pretty regretful about those now, but there’s not much I can do nowadays.

There have also been times that I would pre-order certain games in advance and get offered the codes later which I had to reject. In 2020 during the pandemic, I got offered codes from Square-Enix for Final Fantasy VII Remake and Trials of Mana for the PS4. However, I already pre-purchased them and had to sadly decline the codes. I knew if I accepted the codes, I would HAVE to do reviews for both of them in a timely manner and these were long games!

There have been many many many times that I was also rejected for games. I was rejected by Square-Enix for Avengers and the remakes of Legend of Mana and Saga Frontier Remastered. I highly doubt this was related to me rejecting Final Fantasy VII Remake and Trials of Mana months earlier, but it did hurt my ego a bit.

Luckily, they eventually gave me codes for Bubble Bobble 4 Friends, Dragon Quest Treasures, Dragon Quest Dai Infinity Strash, and a few more games. In fact, I ended up rejecting Final Fantasy XVI and Dragon Quest Monsters from them since I was just so busy and I preordered the physical games in advance.

The last game I was offered from Square-Enix was Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles, but I turned it down since I wanted a physical copy and didn’t want the burden of reviewing it. Sadly, my contact who gave me codes at Square-Enix was let go from the company in their massive layoffs, but I’ll always be grateful for the codes they gave me and being able to say I’ve actually worked with them several times.

I also tried to become a Nintendo Brand Ambassador around 2017-2018 to get free Nintendo games and swag, but was told I needed 10k+ subscribers and the majority of my videos needed to be Nintendo focused. However, I did watch alot of YouTube videos of the horror stories of influencers being dropped from the Nintendo Brand Ambassador Program in droves. Years later, I went the developer route with Nintendo instead.

I also heard that if you wanted to get free games from Sony like Ghost of Tsushima and Spider-Man, you needed to have over a million subscribers. There was no guarantee you would get any games since even Angry Joe (who has over 3 million subscribers) wasn’t able to get free codes from them while other smaller influencers did.

I honestly stopped applying for codes around 2023 after reviewing Dragon Quest Dai: Infinity Strash since I was getting too busy with game development. I still received offers like Iron Meat (which I reviewed) and Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles (which I turned down). I haven’t received any code offers since I kinda stopped replying to emails about game codes and am just glad now to support the games with my own money (and not have the stress of reviewing them).

There will be many people who will get mad if you review something that someone else reviewed because they had “Review Dibs”. For example, people were getting mad at other reviewers for reviewing games that the Angry Video Game Nerd already reviewed.

Over a decade ago, people got mad at me for making a video on Plumbers Don’t Wear Ties years after the AVGN reviewed it. My old Totally Tubular Tim character was someone who made mock reviews of bad games, making them look good which was the complete opposite of AVGN. So, it was pretty obvious that the detractors didn’t even watch my video and just bashed it based on the thumbnail.

I’ve seen this in reviewers comments over the years and it sickens me to think that people are so fixated on just one person reviewing games while others can’t. Even the popular reviewers themselves don’t care much for this and any piece of media is free to review.

While reviews are lucrative form of content to produce since they’re based on already existing media and are easier to produce than an original skit, it’s incredibly easy to burn out on doing them.

When my Awesome Video Game Memories show was raking in the views and became our flagship show, I was producing reviews at a sickening pace. I would use my holidays and days off to film reviews, even doing as many as 5-7 in a day. Believe it or not! I filmed all of my Resident Evil 1-3 and Code Veronica reviews all in one afternoon one after the other.

One of the biggest issues was only playing through most games once and not being able to explore most of them since I was producing reviews like an assembly line. I would do one game and move onto the next, not even bothering with extra content or secrets. I confess I even used a trainer for the PC version of the Resident Evil 2 Remake for infinite ammo and life to get the footage easier and even played most games on easy mode for easier footage recording.

Back then, I was good enough to just improv reviews without a script as it felt like I was really talking to the audience instead of reading from a script.

However, by 2020, my improv skills weren’t as good anymore and I would go for long periods of time while recording drawing a blank while trying to come up with things to say, making me waste space on my SD card. It got so bad to the point where I finally had to script things and just improv small parts on camera here and there.

By 2021, I was massively burning out after doing my Dragon Quest X reviews and several sponsored reviews from SNK, making me sick of doing reviews. I came to the decision to stop my long review show in 2024 so I could have a proper ending rather than just end things abruptly. As great as it was to have a near infinite amount of games to review, it was already incredibly daunting to even review the current batch of games I already have.

If I was already having this much trouble doing reviews with a full time job, I can’t imagine the hectic schedule that full time YouTubers have doing reviews. This is why most reviews nowadays are fast talking head videos with no jokes or skits (and sometimes no personality) just to get them out faster.

Over the years, YouTube has become a more content driven platform than a personality based platform meaning people just wanna see content rather than influencers making jokes and doing skits.

It got to the point where I was getting tired of reviews since it felt like “Same jokes, different game” and I had a formula for doing them. After many years of doing the same thing, it does get tiring. Luckily since I wasn’t doing YouTube full time, I had every opportunity to walk away and pivot towards my true passion: Game Development.

One of my goals was to be on the Mount Rushmore of gaming reviewers next to AVGN, Irate Gamer, Classic Game Room, and more. Sadly, I never accomplished that goal, but I am proud of the work I did over the span of a decade and wouldn’t trade it for anything.

Back in 2007, while I was a massive fan of the AVGN, I couldn’t get enough of the angry reviewer genre. I understood that James couldn’t post AVGN videos all the time, so I began watching other channels like Armake21 (RIP), Screwattack, Happy Video Game Nerd (now Stop Skeletons from Fighting) and many more.

However, The Irate Gamer was the one who stood out the most since Chris Bores had the filmmaking and technical skill that was the closest to James Rolfe. Even though the Irate Gamer took a few lines from AVGN episodes, I still enjoyed watching Irate Gamer while waiting for new AVGNs.

Even as far back as 2007, I wanted to see a dream team up between the AVGN and Irate Gamer. However, the rabid fanbase of the AVGN constantly accused Irate Gamer of ripping off AVGN which made both Irate Gamer and AVGN ignore each other for the longest time.

As much as the rabid AVGN fans were hating on Irate Gamer, it was easy to tell they loved hate watching every Irate Gamer episode, making him more popular. I didn’t really care much for the fictional war the rabid fans started since I enjoyed Irate Gamer and his cast of wacky characters providing more funny angry reviews.

In 2014, Chris Bores made a serious video finally opening up about his experience with the fanbase and the AVGN and his side of the story. There are always 2 sides to every story and it was good to hear Chris’ view.

Mine and many other fan’s dreams came true in 2020 when Irate Gamer and AVGN finally teamed up for the Irate Gamer Dick Tracy episode which was hilarious and well done. Chris and James made amends behind the scenes and finally gave us the crossover we were waiting for since 2007. I’ve really been enjoying all of the post 2020 Irate Gamer episodes ever since then, even though Chris is posting them sporadically.

Hopefully they’ll team up again and meet each other in real life for another hilarious episode.

Even though I stopped my long form review show “Awesome Video Game Memories” in 2024, am I still reviewing games?

I’ll say sometimes, so yes.

I started a smaller show called “Awesome Games We Playin’" where I do quick non spoiler game reviews without all the on camera footage and skits. I only make episodes sporadically, but it’s my newer outlet to talk about games I feel passionate about in a quicker fashion.

I also do smaller text reviews on my BlueSky and minimap. I prefer minimap over the other game collection sites and apps since it syncs with my Steam, Switch, and PlayStation accounts, making it easier to keep track of my games and trophies. I also only update minimap sporadically whenever I finish a game which I’m doing at a snail’s pace nowadays.

I’ve mostly moved on from reviewing games for over a decade to now actually making games. I still do smaller game reviews from time to time as I’ll always love talking about games as I’m still a fan first and a creator second.

The only thing I can really say about game reviewing is:

The world doesn’t need another Mega Man 2 review, but make one anyways.

Best of luck in your game reviewing ventures!