YMMV / Steam Train

• Arc Fatigue: Despite only being four episodes, their Civilization V: Brave New World series is three hours long. That, combined with the hosts' general ignorance of the game, makes it hard for some fans to sit through it all.
• Base-Breaking Character: Fans are unsure whether or not Ross's attitude of being The Load during Fortune Street is charming and silly, or annoying and whiny.
• Best Known for the Fanservice: The Go Go Nippon! series was best known for being one of the few, if any videos on the channel to get flagged for explicit content.
• Broken Base:
  • The show was revealed on the exact same day JonTron left Game Grumps, thus causing the base to shatter even further. RubberRoss confirmed that the timing of Steam Train's beginning was terrible and the show had nothing to do with Jon's departure.
  • One of the most unpopular aspects of the original show is the duo's general inability to Read the Freaking Manual and instead whine about not understanding the controls. This carried over to Steam Train, making certain episodes very frustrating to watch for people familiar with what is being played. The They Bleed Pixels series, for instance, has Arin and Ross complain at the inclusion of a forced tutorial, and then again when they fail to perform certain tasks because they didn't pay proper attention.
  • The Eryi's Action series. Some don't like Ross's uncharacteristic grumpiness, some don't like Arin's attitude, some think they should play a "better" Platform Hell game, and others think it's fine and hilarious as usual.
  • After the 1st Year Anniversary, the format changed slightly, specifically changing the cast much more frequently, even to the point of not having Ross on some episodes. The more vocal commentators on Youtube complain loudly about the new direction, from the games that are played (they're trying a bunch of new games) to the people on the show.
  • Ross urging Barry to rush through the later parts of the Waterfall section of Undertale has had the effect of only annoying viewers. This caused fans to feel that having Ross present on the playthrough, after he already played through half of the game with his wife Holly, is ruining things for Barry, as Ross, being too impatient to let Barry explore, is causing Barry to miss out on things like an event at Napstablook's house or finding Temmie Village (though they did later backtrack to the village). Fortunately, this was the last episode where Ross had played ahead, and so there was substantially less backseat driving, and far more genuine reactions from both, for the remainder of the game.
  • Another Undertale related breaker is their misunderstandings of several plot points and events occurring right in front of them. Two of the most glaring moments occur during the Photoshop Flowey fight. One is them mistaking the Human SOULs as being the souls of the monsters they encountered in their adventure, and the second is mistaking Flowey's repeated Save Scumming to kill them over and over as them loading their own file to survive. For some, these are funny Comically Missing the Point moments. For others it's irritation and proof that Barry and Ross aren't paying attention to what's right in front of them.
  • Whether or not if it was a good idea to let Ross take the reigns on playing SOMA. Ross doesn't really like playing horror games since they scare him easily, so as a result he tends to purposely delay progressing in order to avoid scary moments in the game. Some prefer to have Ross playing for his genuine moments of being scared, other however feel Barry should have played the game since he would be less likely to hold up progression.
  • Every single time a new one-off or video series temporarily takes over for a popular series there are always a bunch of "get back to playing the game I want!" comments (most notably when Sakura Spirit took over for a bit when Five Nights at Freddy's had just become a new series, and then during the Undertale playthrough there were three episodes of Flywrench and Scream Train took over for one week in order to concentrate on horror games).
• Crosses the Line Twice:
  • Making dicks in video games when available is generally seen as very boring, low-brow humor. However, the creatures created in the Spore Creature Creator are generally seen as hilarious due to Ross's high enthusiasm for them and the fact that he tends to come up with a new creative design each episode, each one usually more horrifying than the last.
  • The end of the episode for the Graveyard. The old woman in the game dies, and shortly after the group decides to ask Barry to put links to various other things, including 360 no-scope and cat videos, around the woman's body.
  • While playing The Oregon Trail, Dan recounts his first ever experience playing the game where he named the party after members of his family. He accidentally drowned his mother while fording a river and then excused himself to go to the bathroom where he cried for ten minutes straight.
• Growing the Beard:
  • The first episode of Hotline Miami was derided by a huge portion of the Game Grumps fandom for a variety of different reasons, ranging from the over-abundance of silly voices to a total lack of skill with the game despite playing the tutorial to resentful feelings toward Dan for being on both shows on the channel. Just a day later, the first episode of Castle Crashers debuted to a much better, largely positive, although still average reception. Many fans have pointed out that their chemistry is developing in much the same way that Jon and Arin's did in the first few episodes of its parent show. "Castle Crashers 2" is the first episode to receive a generally very positive reception, with many noting that, while they still didn't find it quite as funny as Game Grumps, they still found it very funny and entertaining.
  • Steam Rolled — special episodes focusing on four-player multiplayer games where Barry and Suzy participate in addition to Arin, Dan and Ross — was a well-received variation on the usual format, and helped cement the show's place within the channel. And it even caused Barry to become an Ensemble Dark Horse.
• Ho Yay: Barry and Ross' Sims 4 playthrough takes this to whole new levels with Sim Arin and Sim Danny.
• Hype Backlash: Arin and Suzy did a playthrough of Presentable Liberty after Markiplier told them that the game changed his life. At the end, they agreed that it was So Okay, It's Average. A huge part of the problem was that Steam Train's format is completely unsuited toward playing that game. Just about the entire point of Presentable Liberty was the sense of isolation and helplessness the game builds in the player, which doesn't come across so well when you spend the entire game joking around with your husband/wife, who's sitting right next to you. It doesn't help that Arin, probably the worst person in the entire Steam Train cast to be playing a game like this, was at the controls; case and point, he spent the entire time focusing on the deliberately shoddy minigames, at times outright ignoring the incoming letters to play them.
• Memetic Mutation: "God dammit, Ross" has caught on as a joke both inside and outside the show; it is often used to reinforce Ross's Butt-Monkey status. By the time of The Stanley Parable, it has become such a big part of the show that the demo version they were sent includes the actual narrator saying the line as part of specially recorded audio.
• Nausea Fuel: In the thumbnails for their I Am Bread play-through, the slice of bread becomes more green and moldy with each episode.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • Doubling as Paranoia Fuel, during a Skyrim episode, Barry's omniscience is discussed. He reacts by superimposing an eye and some really creepy music onto the screen as Ross and Danny continue commentating, oblivious.
  • Their creatures in Spore. Giant penis monsters that reach borderline Eldritch Abomination levels of nope running around mauling and cock-voring everything in their path. It's even In-Universe too as Arin and Danny keep getting increasingly frightened or disgusted by Ross' increasingly phallic and depraved creations.
  • Go to the 0:51 mark in episode 1 of the Five Nights at Freddy's 3 playthrough. You'll see a very quick flash of Woody from Toy Story without eyes, or with Black Eyes of Evil. Sweet dreams.
  • Sonic Dreams Collection. JESUS...
• Nightmare Retardant: Their playthroughs of Outlast and Five Nights at Freddy's. Not anything to do with the games themselves, but more the fact that the group's sense of humor turns many of the more horrifying moments into hilarity.
• Replacement Scrappy:
  • The South Park: The Stick of Truth series, for replacing the unexpectedly popular Go! Go! Nippon! series. The fact that the game is considered bad for Let's Plays and Ross continually spoiling jokes, later plot points, and a complete inability to upgrade or gather friends doesn't help.
  • Arin received a lot of flack for effectively replacing Danny as the main co-host in 2014, January to May only having 17 episodes out of 150+ where Arin doesn't appear. Danny came back a little starting in June, but shortly afterwards he left Steam Train to have time to work on his music, and Arin went back to becoming the default cohost with these complaints becoming more common. At some point, Barry seemed to become Ross's default co-host to generally warmer reception.
• Rescued Fromthe Scrappy Heap: Go! Go! Nippon! had a cold start due to the first episode being reminisce of Hot Line Miami with Arin and Ross reading text with funny voices. Not even a minute into the second episode Arin suggests changing gears and aside from the finale the funny voices are abandoned and Arin tells stories about Japan, Ross jokes about Splatta-Doo Specials and some near nudity here and there. The series ended up being one of the more memorable ones.
• The Scrappy:
  • The Duke Nukem II playthrough. Nintendo Hard + Arin and Ross's usual level of competence = A very boring, repetitive, and frustrating time for both the fans and Arin and Ross.
  • The Dark Souls 2 playthrough. It would be one thing if they were just playing poorly, but Ross is admittedly drunk and seems to be intentionally playing badly and overly hamming it up. It was so bad that Ross, in the comments of the first video in the subreddit, pre-emptively apologized for how badly they were playing in this series. However, some believe that the apology makes it worse, as Ross apologized before the series showed them playing badly. This suggests that they knew that the series was terrible, but decided to upload it anyway for whatever reason.
• So Bad, It's Good: Their opinion of the ''Barbie: Life In The Dreamhouse" game, with Ross getting very involved in the minigames.
• So Okay, It's Average: What fans initially thought of Steam Train during its early days, with fans still very upset at the sudden changes. This ends up being Subverted however, as fans grew more attached to Ross and Danny and accept them as much as they did for Game Grumps.
• Special Effects Failure: One of the biggest complaints about "Hotline Miami" was that the recording equipment, for whatever reason, was apparently causing the game to run at half speed.
• Tear Jerker: During their Undertale-playthrough, Papyrus easily became Ross's favorite character. It's not exactly a surprise that Ross became incredibly upset during the Genocide Run, where one of the pre-requisites for beating it is to murder Papyrus as he spares you and tells you he believes you can be better. When the prompt comes up, Ross gets up and leaves the room, comes back while saying "I don't want to do it" over and over, and has to audibly hold back tears at several points. When Barry delivers the killing blow, he screams, and then screams again when Papyrus turns to dust. The episode ends in silence, and the next one opens like that as well, with Ross still audibly extremely upset.
  Barry: You doin' alright?
  Ross: (muffled, hands over his face) No.
  Barry: Wanna talk about it?
  Ross: No.
• Win Back the Crowd: "Castle Crashers #1" received a great reception in comparison to "Hotline Miami #1", to the point where "Castle Crashers #2-4" preceded "Space Quest IV #1", and where "Space Quest IV #4" and "Castle Crashers #7" preceded "Hotline Miami #2".