At the end he straight up admits he's losing interest in the channel
but how often does he try to pick boring and nonsense holes in good-looking stuff like the IOI bond game by saying "it won't appeal to zoomers,"
You could blame it on gaming becoming worse in general, but i think its more with him playing games that doesn't interest him personally.
He can literally try playing good games and it'll all be fine.
Geez, maybe being all gloom and doom every single fucking day is not good for your enjoyment of a hobby?!
Synth first started to lose a lot of legitimacy in my eyes when I found out that he only truly likes retro-style third-person 3D platformers and action games. All the
"GAMING IS DYING!" alarmism and bitching falls flat when you realize he's talking about his hyper-specific millennial tastes. Being that autistic and niche I think disqualifies you from making grand statements about an entire industry.
There's nothing wrong with having preferences, it's fine! The problem comes, and it's incredibly infuriating, when it's paired with an ADHD total lack of self-awareness. He says in the video "no one's making games for people like me anymore", but it doesn't seem like he's actually internalized what that means or what then required from him.
If your tastes are niche, you have to put in effort to find the things you like. The market for 3D platformers is small: it's ridiculous to expect them to have space at the
largest showcases in the industry. Behavior like only caring about the AAA-budget games is what contributes to the problem (ironic, for someone who always talks about "gameplay first" at the beginning of his reviews, he sure wrote off a ton of games during this year's not!E3 due to their graphics or artstyle).
RTS is a dead genre, but its fans don't cry
"GAMING IS DYING!" when 30% of the games announced at the Summer Games Fest aren't competitive RTS's. Money flows to where the money is, and no amount of bitching can change that. For better or for worse, the reason why there are so many roguelikes, deckbuilders, cozygames, and soulslikes is because those genres SELL. Criticize that all you like (and you should!) but it's just silly if the critic doesn't have at least a little breadth of taste. Imagine a horror movie critic reviewing Marvel and Disney, and calling them slop, but his reasoning isn't based on engaging with the movies themselves/evaluating if they achieved their intentions, but just saying that they're "not scary enough". That's what Coby is, and why his critiques can only ever be on the surface level. (He reminds me a ton of the Electric Underground, another reviewer I hate. Electric Underground has the same sort of "I hate modern games because they're not the specific genre I like", but for arcade shoot-em-ups, lol.)
Steampeek is an incredible resource for finding games that fit your niche interests. Any criticisms that "they don't make the games I like anymore" by someone who hasn't tried it out are illegitimate. 10 second search for "Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom" and it returns
30+ babygames perfect for a manchild like Coby. Problem is that putting in the bare minimum of effort to find your fun is antithetical to someone like him, who wants to just be catered to by the largest AAA studios.
Another 10s search on
SteamDB returns
105 3D platformers with over 80% positive rating released in 2024 alone. It's as simple as just filtering for the genres you want, which I guess must be too humiliating/difficult to someone who only browses the homepage. The
Next Fest is going on right now (that's the event where he discovered Yellow Taxi!), but instead of trying out the dozens of 3D platformer demos he's playing MINDSEYE. It's pathological how much he wants to be miserable and upset all the time.
Point is, good games of every single genre are being made. Supply/demand might be too simplistic for other sectors of the economy, but for entertainment it's practically a law of nature. Getting worked up over the fact that 3D platformers or RTS or shmups aren't mainstream anymore is a guaranteed way to be angry and miserable your entire life, because it's essentially getting angry that everyone else doesn't want to buy the same things as you. Right now there are enough good 3D platformers being made where it's
impossible for you to play every single one that comes out. I just don't understand the frustration people feel about genres like this.
