Razorfist Thread

Yet another new mythos video:

Use to be a fan of the guy, kinda started to tune out when the political quips became more and more frequent. Completely stopped watching when political videos became the norm. I probably agree with him on some political issues, but I absolutely hate his approach to the issues. When I've seen him on the drunken peasants, the dude seemed to squirm when someone was giving an opinion that didn't jive with his. Plus, the guy seems to relish ideas like "Obama was born in Kenya" or "Climate change is a hoax."

The recent Trump videos have been eye-rolling. His election 2016 videos where he blamed Joe Arpaio being defeated as "California influenced." It's almost as if California is some evil empire that has concocted some grand conspiracy to instill liberals in Arizona (where he lives). Like dude, maybe the voters were sick of his shit.

Hmm... You Americans set up that electoral college system - how it's been abused to put that arrant fool of a real estate developer into that position is down to you. The rest of the planet has to deal with the consequences.

On the Mythos episode earlier, I'm not surprised it's about yet another Metal band screwed up by their record companies. It seems to be a common thread for a lot of good bands in any genre, but Metal ones seem to get it more than others.

Yeah, I really do try to keep in mind that not all conservatives are tin-foil hat wearing crazy people Alex Jones style (I actually just recently read a lovely post by a rational conservative on another forum I go to, that was really refreshing and encouraging) but man he doesn't make it easy. The only real upside I can think of he doesn't have the bible-thumping angle (like a friend of mine does, he's basically Christian Razor)

So, full disclosure, I'm in Canada, not the US, but I still follow the politics and do find this whole thing to be a circus and I'm sure Canada will be affected somehow. And yes, it sucks that the election got so messed up, but hopefully by the next four years they'll end up with something more promising.

On the topic of his actual game reviews, he reviewed the sequel to the stealth game Styx: Master of Shadows. Having just watched it, I can take the opportunities to pick apart a few thins in his review (and past ones) that kind of irk me:

1. So I get that he's a hardcore stealth fan, having bashed the Metal Gear franchise many times, saying "Stealth games need competent stealth", "stealth games do not have a stealth mode" and decrying reviews of the first Styx game having under powered attacks in a stealth game [empasis his]. That last one sticks out as odd to me, since if a game has a mechanic, and that mechanic is handled poorly, then I'd say it's fair to criticize it. Anyway, I get that the stealth games I enjoy (Metal Gear), he hates and all the ones he loves I probably wouldn't want to play for very long [Splinter Cell, for example] That being said. With this review, he praises the game, saying he's not pressured into playing guns blazing instead of maximum stealth, since trying the game more aggressively apparently involved equally as much strategy and carefulness as going full stealth. Still, that's where I kinda cry foul. He calls that a positive, but that sounds like a negative to me. If I play the game, and I'm not enjoying the stealth, and I want to be more aggressive and the game still forces stealth on me, that sounds like I'm being punished for choosing a tactic the game presents as an option. And yeah, it's a stealth game, I know I sound insane here, but why have that option if you're going to force the player to be "stealthy"? It sounds like it's just the same problem he had with Dishonored, but flipped in the direction Razor likes.

Now mind you, I played one of the Splinter Cell, and my reaction was pretty much this: After much trial and error, I was doing everything right, being very careful, learning from my mistakes...and I STILL get an automatic mission fail because the game decided my character was about a millimeter in the wrong direction. And that was with a walkthrough open! And being seen means instant failure even though the character you're playing as should be 100% capable of killing the dude who spotted me before he sends reinforcements [something, BTW, he criticized Call of Duty and/or Battlefield for) I'm sure hardcore stealth fans will reply "Git Gud" but guess what? If the game is going to be that prohibitively difficult, AND have no plot (which Razor feels is just the right amount of plot) then my incentive to play anymore is slim to none.

2. He claims reviews docked the game several points for a single flaw (the main characters one-liners)...while showing a screenshot of a review listing multiple, very specific, very separate negatives. So I guess those don't count in his eyes? Which brings me to #3...

3. The main character's one liners. If he's the main character, he's constantly spouting one-liners that Razor says are rarely even vaguely chuckle-worthy, and which the review he showed claimed don't fit the tone of the rest of the game (which I can totally believe)...isn't a pretty relevant negative? If your main character you're controlling won't shut up and he's unpleasant to listen to, I'd say that's gonna sour the experience a fair deal. Now mind you, he plays a few examples of the "better material" that he thought was funny....and I thought those sucked too. Now, I admit, comedy is subjective, but just saying "Ha ha, Skimrim has shortcomings and it's fun to tear down a popular game like it" and "Ha Ha, the haystacks in Assassin's Creed are unrealistic" in the most blunt, uncreative way doesn't seem remotely witty to me. I honestly think he only finds those funny because they're insulting games he doesn't like. If the character just said "The Witcher is a plagiarism of Elric" with no actual joke attached, I'd assume he'd have included a clip of that. If that was the best material, then yeah, I'd say it's fair for reviews to bring that up as a negative. It reminds me a lot of,him praising the Christian Bale joke in Duke Nukem Forever.

edited 9th Apr '17 6:26:54 AM by MainManJ

He unfavourably compared Dishonored 2, and by extension the whole Dishonored franchise, to the Styx game, and having played the first one, I have to say I agree. You get punished far worse in both Dishonored games if you use the lethal tools and abilities that the progammers give you, rather than being a pacifist than it seems you do in Styx 2. I've read about the endings for the High Chaos routes in both Dishonored games and sod that noise, as they say over here.

Good for you, but I could have sworn he said Dishonored clearly expects you to play as "Hobo Skeletor" aka the version of the character that slings death spells all over the place.

Responding to some earlier posts I apparently missed or for some reason neglected to respond to:

Doesn't remotely surprise me. I know that in the comments sections he proves he can't handle the criticism, even going so far as to block people.

Oh absolutely. A certain someone who will go unnamed for obvious reasons made a extensive rebuttal to that video and pointed out how transparently corrupt Arpaio was, among other scathing "nailed em" moments such as other cities such as Detroit being way more impoverished than Arizona and other border states.

The other part that just floored me was the "little girl with a tortilla" speech. It was like "see, I pronounced 'tortilla' with a accent. That proves I'm in touch with the Hispanic people."

Just watched his video about that X-Men comic with the radical Islam easter eggs in it. Once again pretty much 5 straight minutes of "no seriously guys, I'm not racist or antisemitic". Look, I'm not going to begin to defend the actual messages the dude put in the comic. But calling him Al Queda? Umm, no. That's disingenuous, as in the thing he bitches about other people doing. And reality check: saying "fuck this group of people" = not equal to being a fucking terrorist who kills people for their views. It's not the same thing.

No better time to bring this up, cuz I knew it would come up in the video "Well, of course this artist sucks, he's a minority from a different country". An opinion espoused in his Nightwing review, and I wanna say his Shadow Comic coverage. It doesn't get much more racist than "all Marvel and DC's Hispanic artists suck!" The funny thing is, I seem to recall I've read comics by Syaf, and if not, I've at least seen his art, and I'd say he's a pretty good artist. Then again, art is subjective and I imagine I wouldn't agree on Razor about artists anymore than writers. (for example, I loves me some Mark Waid, regardless of whether he's outspoken online) But I have to cry foul on Razor's assessment of affirmative-action favoritism on Marvel's part, among other sentiments expressed:

1. Syaf's been working for the big two for years. Something he demonstrates by showing a page from Batgirl...except he was on Batgirl several years ago, as in 2011. Headline grabbing ploy? I'd say Batgirl circa the start of the New 52 is not equivalent to the a highly promoted X-Men relaunch (you know, at the precise moment Marvel stopped treating the X-Men like absolute shit)

2. So,I see him cherry picking from the Quaran there...except Linkara debunked that shit in his Holy Terror review by pointing out that the Quaran says to kill the Infidel "in self defense" and to otherwise to welcoming and generous because Allah detests violence. He says he doesn't watch Linkara (even though he responded to one of his criticisms...poorly. But I have no doubt over 9000 other people have brought that up. And he has the gall to chastise others for lying his ass off.

3. "Marvel wouldn't put up with any of that shit if he were white or a Christian." Horseshit. I love how he presents himself as a comics connoisseur but doesn't know this shit. He plays the "Stan and Jack were Jewish card". Oh you mean the thing I (and others) brought up in regards to Hydra Cap? Marvel's big event right now is literally about Captain America being a Nazi and taking over the world, yet Nick Spencer remains employed, even after defending a white supremacist. And for the record, I love the shit out of some Nick Spencer, his Cap run very much included, but I'll at least bring that shit up. Furthermore, is he not aware that professional comics, like professional wrestling and the video game industry, is this magical place where you can do whatever bullshit you want and get away with it scott free? Is he unaware of the existence of Dan Slott? Furthermore, in his eyes it's unacceptable what Syaf did, but Frank Miller makes a comic entirely about torturing and murdering terrorists while making casually bigoted comments about them and presenting no middle ground? Fuck, 24 and Homeland present more of a middle ground than Holy Terror did, and that's saying a fair deal.

And that's just the X-Men video. I haven't even watched his Syria video yet. I can't imagine what nonsense is in there.

[Edited] Watched the Syria. I love how he claims this will be the "Anti-Trump" video his detractors were waiting for and spends more than half the fucking video defending and complimenting Trump.

Would love to see him do a video on the firing of Comey after all his "Muh Russia" comments.

edited 17th May '17 9:00:59 AM by MainManJ

No, he specifically said that if you do play as Hobo Skeletor, the games; designers jump all over you at their endings by way of shitting all over you for being EVULLLL!!!!!!! !!!!!!! !!!!!!! (I think that's enough exclamation marks there.)

And like I said, I don't watch his political videos. They're not for me, serve my interests or matter to me in any way whatsoever. I watch his game reviews, his Shadow stuff, his take downs of the plagiarizing bastards behind the Witch- oops I meant low rent Elric of Melniboné rip-off games that have became wildly popular because giant polygonal bewbs (in both male and female form, gotta give the games' graphic designers props for that at least), and especially his Music and Metal Mythos series.

I wish he'd spend more time doing that kind of thing and less political ranting against those that don't like Trump or whatever, but I don't pay him money on his Patreon page (if he has one) to make him dance to my tune.

No idea who's still interest at this stage but the man's brought out a new Music Mythos. This time it's about "The Ramones".

Big dark hair and sunglasses...yeah, I can see why this band would come up at some point.

"How else would you describe damage plan (Aside from a convenient way to rid the world of Douchebag Darrel)" 10:00

HOOOOLY SHIT! Freeze-Frame Bonus or not, that is all kinds of not cool.

Ehhh Elric and the Witcher is a whole different ball game. For one, blame Sapirowski for that (The author) and two, CDPR have done a pretty good job at making the character notably different. The world isn't as fantastical, he has no demon sword. He's an albino mutant, yeah... but I don't think the blame gets apportioned well there.

Similarly I'm stuck in the Brexit weirdness, but watch this sort of punditry with a bit of goggle-eyes. He is happy to dish out critiques, but doesn't riposte well, nor actually do well founded responses beyond hyperbole and ad hominem attacks.

It's disappointing as when I started watching him, I echoed a lot of his views around certain gaming trends and series. But he flat out ignores positive traits in franchises or entertainment in order to maintain his viewpoint -e.g Deus Ex, Metal gear etc.

He doesn't do the actual scholarly thing of altering one's view when presented with new data. And that is disappointing because he's clearly bright and articulate. But I wonder how much of it is going along with the crowd of fans and supporters in an echo chamber (Which is something all sides of a debate HAVE to beware of - see: Jeremy Corbyn's fandom over here, assuming they're winning via retweets...)

Regarding the Witcher thing, even Moorcock himself has dropped any copyright cases he had against the author, afaik. No real point in forcing a wedge between the two when both parties are cool with it.

He may have dropped them but he more than likely did so because he knew the Polish government would do dick all in terms of protecting his copyrights - I mean, it's not like there was a blatant state-sanctioned breach of the Berne Convention or anything trivial like that.

Or he dropped it because he realised how flimsy his claim actually was. Any similarities between Eldric and Geralt were superficial at best.

edited 29th Jun '17 5:15:09 AM by DrunkenNordmann

Aye, right. We're going to have to disagree on that subject because as far as I'm concerned the Polish government and their pet money tree of an author don't have a leg to stand on.

The polish government doesn't give two shits about Sapkowski. Though I am curious as to how many people accusing the Witcher of plagiarism has read/played both it and the Elric Saga.

The Polish government doesn't care about Sapkowski? Really? They care about the tax revenue his plagiarism brings them from the sales of the books, and any revenues made from the games, make no mistake about that. Which would come to a crashing halt if a plagiarism case made it through litigation. And yeah, I've read most of the Elric books in dead tree format, from the chronological first, to the last, and played large chunks of all three Witcher games.

"Agree to disagree" usually implies you don't want to keep the discussion going. So why are we still going on about it?

edited 30th Jun '17 8:07:08 PM by DrunkenNordmann

Bumping because he's seemed to have found himself in a pickle

Maybe if it weren't for him making politically incorrect jokes or being toxic when it comes to politics, this sort of thing wouldn't happen. Then again, You Tube's complicated.

Making political incorrect jokes or posting conservative talking points should get all of your videos (regardless of content) automatically demonetised?

Well, it also happens to people that don't do that most of the time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-US1W5JbDs

edited 17th Aug '17 11:09:57 AM by SassyPaddy

I didn't say it doesn't. It's wrong either way, You Tube is heavy-handed and often downright incompetent.

Amen, brother.

Or sister, one doesn't like to assume.

Anyway, newest content ones by the Razor (as stated above I give zero shits about his political views or the videos that are attached to them) are:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDmUHJH9n18 - remastered version of his first Rageaholic Cinema review - "Cobra", starring Sylvester Stallone and Brigitte Nielsen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRn_qEghhDI&t=119s - "Max Max", starting his month of Max Max movies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4dj9KHf13s - "Max Max - Road Warrior" AKA "Mad Max, Fuck, We Finally Got a Budget to Make These! YEEHAW!!!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3sAVvIutR8 - Razör's 5 Anticipated Games of 2017, in which he sounds and looks happy that he's going to get some games he wants to play. Kind of cute, actually.

I absolutely agree about that. That's pretty much the reason I started watching him, because the found the criticisms discussions in his game reviews pretty well thought out. Nowadays I'm finding a lot more of his reviews are getting more petty. In fact I'll touch on that in a bit when I discuss one of his recent game reviews.

That's true. He complained for years that Gametrailers banned him from their site and his audience had to take his word for it. Years later the original video that got him banned was reuploaded by Razor for all to see, and guess what it was? A video he, by his own admission made to intentionally violate Gametrailers' rules. That's firmly in "what did you think would happen?" territory.

Time for an inconvenient truth: Youtube is a business, just like Twitter, Facebook, Starbucks and whatever else. You know those signs at a cafe that say "We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone?" That's what this is. You might not like that, but them's the breaks. It's their house and their rules. And if you don't behave by their rules, they show you the door. I think some people get it into their head that they're "entitled" to use of these services. Everything I make an account with, be it email, gaming related, Netflix, Youtube, ect., there's a Terms of Use. And that TOS means they can terminate your account and deny you access at any time, for largely any reason (many TOS outright say that). I'm aware of that whenever I sign those things. If Razor thinks he's being treated unfairly (and puts aside his "well this is 1 extra excuse to rail against PC culture" mentality) he should take a look at Youtube's TOS page and think to himself "What promise did I make when I signed this that I haven't been keeping?"

On the topic of his video game-related output, I had some comments I wanted to make about his Mass Effect: Andromeda review (spoiler: none of them are positive)

So, it's pretty well know among people aware of the series that Andromeda wasn't received very well by the fanbase. So I had no expectation Razor'd like it. I kinda have my doubts EA/Bioware will ever made a ME game he'd like ever again. In any case, I had two points by him I wanted to respond to:

1. He complains about playing as a girl in the game, making a point to mention that he can enjoy games starring a female protagonist such as adventure game series Dreamfall. Except A) If I'm not mistaken you HAVE to play as a female in Dreamfall, whereas all Mass Effect games, and all the Dragon Age games as well, give you the option of playing as a woman. And B) He never complained about that in any prior Bioware review (though he did in his Call of Duty: Black Ops III review,) In fact, in his Resident Evil Revelations review he pointed out that a lot of people playing the original RE played as Jill because having that option was a novelty back then (and it was; the first RE I played was RE 2 and I chose Claire in my first playthrough for the same reason) Apparently his desire to be cruel towards anyone who would value inclusivity these days was that important that he had to bring it up this time.

2. At one point he complains that the game has, as he phrases it, the worst voice acting of any piece of entertainment in any medium. I'm not going to bother reading too much into this piece of hyperbole because that's pointless (ironic considering he preemptively dismisses any accusations of hyperbole), but there is one part I wanted to zero in on. Surprise! Bigotry is involved. While he makes a point to complain about the voice acting for minor NPC's in a game that probably features hundreds of characters and unnamed extras in it, he makes a point to complain about the Salarian character Ambassador Tann. Salarians, traditionally, have high pitched voices and a hyperactive, excited way of speaking (as established by ME 2 party member Mordin Solus). In Andromeda (and possibly the previous games, I can't remember) some NP Cs of a certain race subvert the typical way that race talks. To give an example from the ME Trilogy, some Quarians, such as party member Tali, spoke with a Middle-Eastern accent and were played by actresses of Middle Eastern descent. One however, was voiced by Claudia Black, and thus had a British accent. So with that established, we have Tann, who instead of sounding like Dr. Phlox from Star Trek Enterprise on a sugar binge, instead has a Middle-Eastern accent because he is in fact voiced by Pakistani-American actor Kumail Nanjiani. And that's a problem, fucking why? And you know he's not just saying the voice acting sucks or the voice doesn't work because he phrases it as "whatever the fuck this is supposed to be" and IMMEDIATELY cuts to footage of Nanjiani in the recording booth saying one of the character's lines, followed by a clip of the character in the game saying a different line. And he didn't do that for any of the other NP Cs he complained about (he did show B-roll of the male and female player character actors, without audio of them, I assume because he has an irrational hatred of women with dyed hair) Then again, he complained in two different videos about two different Batman games that the Penguin, (whose real name Oswald Cobblepot and whose family had a rivalry with Alfred's family in the source material, btw) had a British accent. Literally asked "Since when is Penguin British?" And he actually brought up the actor from Batman: The Animated Series as a more preferable voice for the character, and that version of Penguin also had a British accent!! Some people, man. I don't know.

Also on the topic of that Batman video: Is Telltale Batman really any more of a "cash grab" than anything else with the Batman title, character or brand?

edited 21st Aug '17 5:31:27 AM by MainManJ