Eh, I still like the Critic and Doug Walker in general, though I can see why people are saying it's getting tired. Sometimes that's how I feel towards Linkara, tbh. That's one of the nice things about these online reviewers, plenty of options.
I mean, I still like Walker, and it's impossible to ignore his achievement as a businessman and a sort of next-generation Rich Kyanka.
Linkara's at his best when he's reviewing something someone gives a single damn about, like Countdown or The Ultimates 3 (or--it need not be relatively recent, just in some manner important or high-profile, especially if it's
unexpectedly awful--e.g., The Dark Knight Strikes Again). I mean, it's entertaining enough to hear his reviews of Archie vs. The Micronauts or whatever, I suppose, but they're of marginal relevance.
Also, he's at his worst when he does those endless sketches. I guess some people must like them, or he enjoys them, or both, and God bless if that's the case, but to me they're too often either unfunny in principle, or unfunny in execution. (This is the key difference between Walker and Louvhaug and a few others on one hand, and Brad Jones and Antweiler on the other--the latter know how to write and perform short, funny sketches, whereas the former just throw fathomless wackiness in the general direction of the camera, and take it on faith that laughs will thereby occur. In complete fairness, on occasion laughs do, but it always seems completely accidental.)
Yet, as noted, there seems to be no pressure to stop, so the sketch monster will presumably persevere and thrive, till Linkara productions are 5% comic review, 95% of him running around in a Starfleet uniform yelling things at a process shot.
The thing is, now I feel bad for critiquing a thoroughly decent human being who has given me something along the lines of ten to twenty hours of free and mostly quality entertainment.
Thanks for those. I've not been avoiding Spoony out of any dislike, just not given him much of a chance - don't wanna get sucked in, you might say.
As Kegg explained below (above? whatever), if you ever have a few hours to kill on unadulterated, high-test hilarity, the FMV Hell Let's Plays are insanely good. Phantasmagoria is probably the best, but Ripper is great as well.
For a smaller bite, I could not recommend more strongly the riff of the Game Crazy training video. The training video itself is almost certainly the most offensive workplace learning tool ever devised. You will likely have difficulty in believing that it is real, and not some sort of parody itself.
Kegg said:
I'd unhesistatingly say that Antwiler's Let's Play of Phantasmagoria - which, as it's a FMV Hell title, amounts to him cracking wise about poorly written and acted 'movie' segments - is one of the best things he's done.
Oh, yeah. I suspect it must have been exhausting to do those: not only did he have to watch this garbage over and over, edit, etc., but he had to play effectively-broken games to get there.
Were you able to see the After Last Season riff for the six or so hours it was up before TSE got (predictably) hit with a C+D? (Or get the iRiff, or otherwise?) Great riff, worse film than Attack of the Eye Creatures, worse than Manos, worse than Monster A-Go-Go. I'd rather watch the straight versions of those in a marathon, than watch an untampered-with version of After Last Season.
There were parts of Kickassia that i really liked; mostly seeing all of TGWTG staff in one place and playing off each other.
Well, yeah. It's not 100% bad. Brad Jones single-handedly saves any scene he's featured in, and he has the only line I remember, "Yeah, I'm not talking to you anymore." Yes, it's all in the delivery.
Spoony is mostly good, with some caveats.
Easily the best joke in the whole thing, is 2D Lee becoming 3D and being constantly awed by the dimension we inhabit, and every scene with him is consequently charming and hilarious.
Strangely, Kevin "President" Baugh wound up acquitting himself rather well, generally funnier than much of the quasi-professional comic talent.
Altogether makes for about a watchable tenth, though.
Little moments. I was really disappointed with Lindsay's part though; even aside from the Palin impersonation taking up almost the entire thing, she was hardly in it (though I understand the behind-the-scenes reason). Definitely didn't even approach the Team Brawl though.
It's a bit of a shame. I mean, the premise is inherently kinda funny. It just went off the rails, and so quickly. It goes back to what I was saying about Linkara. It needed less slapstick--it's not even that I don't like slapstick, it's just
most of these guys aren't good at slapstick. They're good at snark.
The other major problem, and it might have been unavoidable, was the size of the cast. At some point, someone--presumably Walker--needed to make a decision that not everybody needed have a line every two minutes, or have a camera pointed at them in every scene. Unfortunately, since this was pretty much a "fun project," no one was willing to make that decision.
It also hurt that there wasn't the budget to really fuck up Kevin Baugh's house, but I don't hold that against it.
)... You might have (or might have not) heard about our former prime minister (2003-2009) being arrested under serous corruption charges (the guy publicly cries "we're broke", then spends nearly a million of tax payers' dollars on a bullet proof BMW 
