Crowbcat Discussion Thread

[Done]

This won't be a long OP, because I am sure we know who crowbcat is, having been cited multiple times in this sub.

Now if you don't onow who crowbcat is, then you need to watch some of his videos:

This one is my personal favorite of his, you don't have to have any knowledge about gaming in order to find this funny, the timing of the edits alone makes you laugh, not to mention the absolute idiocy of whoever made those sweepstakes:

This is a just-uploaded re-do of his Todd Howard video, with some minor Fallout 76 stuff added in:

Now I hear No Man's Sky is getting better, but that doesn't make this video lose any of its comedic genius:

TL;DR: crowbcat is a genius and we should circlejerk about it here.

EDIT: Well, turns out things were more nuanced than I thought they were, people posted some more informative things about the negative aspects of Crowbcat's content and his fanbase:

Unfortunately my opinion will be a major bummer to this thread, but Crowbcat's channel really took a dive after the entire VR debacle, while his old videos from 2015 to late 2017 were great (informative and funny), nowadays you can't not feel that Crowbcat's channel progress is being restrained by his own toxic viewers, also really doesn't help that his most popular vids were Switch brick compilation and Top 10 swatted streamers.

The Sprint Vector video was a black mark for him, though. He deleted it so quickly I only knew about it through the comments on the video after that.

You mean this one?

The comments point out the same thing @Sparky Lurker did. Some of them talked about how his channel is being held back by his audience of edgy kids who want to see the gaming industry burn, while others called him a sellout and said he was shilling for a shovelware VR game.

I wasn't going to comment, but since @Sparky Lurker and @Oddjob OTP did, I might as well.

I don't like Corwbcat's videos. Some are great. I liked the Ubisoft downgrades video, but most of the time it's cherry picked nonsense that's quoted ad nauseam as an instant argument winner when they are far from that. His Far Cry 5 video came out just after I finished a playthrough of Far Cry 2, and while comparisons like fire spreading or bullet holes in windows might be genuine downgrades. What he doesn't show is Far Cry 2 crashing all the time, or enemy camps respawning once they are outside of the draw distance, or enemies being able to spot you from 20 miles away through the jungle in the dark, or how all the characters talk like they're late for an appointment, or how friendly AI is completely useless, or any of the many other issues that Far Cry 2 has. I don't know if Far Cry 5 fixes those issues as I've not played it, but leaving that stuff out was dishonest imo.

Maybe I'm a-logging, but I don't like those types of videos. The reason I think it's a problem is what happened with Dead Rising 4. The devs added things like bodies flinching when shot to appease Crowbcat's fans instead of actually fixing a game that was by all accounts dreadful. The graphics are bad, the performance is bad, the story is bad, and the game is full of bugs and glitches, but none of that matters as long as the spray bottle doesn't break windows according to crowbcat and his fans.



There's a YouTube series called "We Broke" that is basically the same thing. Hours of throwing physics objects at walls and trying to break the AI, edited into a 6 minute video of every glitch and unrealistic reaction, followed by a victory lap of how broken the game was.

And I get it. AAA games these days often are often broken and sometimes it's easy to want to throw in the towel, go full Rorschach and want the whole industry to burn down. But at least be honest about it.

 

[Draza]

His cringe complication of MineCon, E3, and the game awards are brilliant. I think his 343 v Bungie video is my favorite showing how good gaming was back in the past compared to today.

 

[Sparky Lurker]

Unfortunately my opinion will be a major bummer to this thread, but Crowbcat's channel really took a dive after the entire VR debacle, while his old videos from 2015 to late 2017 were great (informative and funny), nowadays you can't not feel that Crowbcat's channel progress is being restrained by his own toxic viewers, also really doesn't help that his most popular vids were Switch brick compilation and Top 10 swatted streamers.

 

[CIA Nigger]

IMO, Crowbcat's videos are so good because he puts everything aside in favor of a simple video format showing developers in their own words and in the case of flops, actual YouTube videos with reactions. Case in point, the BioShock Infinite video, cobbled together from interviews and previews of the game showing the vast amount of cut content that wasn't in the final disappointing game.

The Bungie video was another good example of this, showing Bungie era Halo development promo videos next to 343 era Halo videos. It pictures a development team having fun riding the wave of having a successful hit finally versus a corporate manufactured sequel to a famed franchise that's now dying out and the differences between each teams philosophy. For example, the Bungie developers talk about making a fun game a lot while 343 is talking about how pretty they want their game to look, and they're edited side by side as well.

It's a shame he deletes so many of his videos (which IIRC is due to copyright reasons) because there's some deleted gems:

And of course there's the VR video:

 

[c-no]

His video on Far Cry 2 vs Far Cry 5 was one of the first I saw besides his video on the Ouya. It showed some differences between the two, such as Far Cry 2 letting you shoot through a thin wall and hitting an enemy. Meanwhile Far Cry 5 pretty much leaves a thin sheet wall as strong as a cement wall against bullets.

There's also a video he did that covered both Hunt Down the Freeman and Kingdom Come: Deliverance, the latter game seeming to attracted a special kind of autism (from first glance, it's blind fanboys and those that think the game is bad because of trailers from years ago.)

And his Ouya video is one that should really have some special mention.

 

[BlueSpark]

In the same vein, I really like this guy:

 

[RJ MacReady]

Nothing will ever top the Battleborn video for me. I still come back and watch it from time to time.

The Sprint Vector video was a black mark for him, though. He deleted it so quickly I only knew about it through the comments on the video after that.

 

[Billy_Sama]

Love his videos, been long time since he posted any new videos

 

[CIA Nigger]

The Sprint Vector video was a black mark for him, though. He deleted it so quickly I only knew about it through the comments on the video after that.

You mean this one?

The comments point out the same thing @Sparky Lurker did. Some of them talked about how his channel is being held back by his audience of edgy kids who want to see the gaming industry burn, while others called him a sellout and said he was shilling for a shovelware VR game.

 

[d12]

Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies.....

Seriously though, his Todd video is like in my top ten YT vids.

 

[Oddjob OTP]

I'm fairly over the guy. I mean some of his stuff was great but I just realized (pretty much when he was trying to argue that GTA 5 was in some meaningful way a downgrade of GTA 4) that he was just really good at editing clips of low hanging fruit together. He probably would make a damn good propagandist. I don't disagree with most of his videos except the exceptional GTA one but I don't really find his stuff impressive enough that I understand the dick riding he gets for it.

 

[LibertyPrime]

Dies for 3 months ... bethesda releases something so bad it resurrects him.

 

[Judge Dredd]

I wasn't going to comment, but since @Sparky Lurker and @Oddjob OTP did, I might as well.

I don't like Corwbcat's videos. Some are great. I liked the Ubisoft downgrades video, but most of the time it's cherry picked nonsense that's quoted ad nauseam as an instant argument winner when they are far from that. His Far Cry 5 video came out just after I finished a playthrough of Far Cry 2, and while comparisons like fire spreading or bullet holes in windows might be genuine downgrades. What he doesn't show is Far Cry 2 crashing all the time, or enemy camps respawning once they are outside of the draw distance, or enemies being able to spot you from 20 miles away through the jungle in the dark, or how all the characters talk like they're late for an appointment, or how friendly AI is completely useless, or any of the many other issues that Far Cry 2 has. I don't know if Far Cry 5 fixes those issues as I've not played it, but leaving that stuff out was dishonest imo.

Maybe I'm a-logging, but I don't like those types of videos. The reason I think it's a problem is what happened with Dead Rising 4. The devs added things like bodies flinching when shot to appease Crowbcat's fans instead of actually fixing a game that was by all accounts dreadful. The graphics are bad, the performance is bad, the story is bad, and the game is full of bugs and glitches, but none of that matters as long as the spray bottle doesn't break windows according to crowbcat and his fans.

he was just really good at editing clips of low hanging fruit together.

There's a YouTube series called "We Broke" that is basically the same thing. Hours of throwing physics objects at walls and trying to break the AI, edited into a 6 minute video of every glitch and unrealistic reaction, followed by a victory lap of how broken the game was.

And I get it. AAA games these days often are often broken and sometimes it's easy to want to throw in the towel, go full Rorschach and want the whole industry to burn down. But at least be honest about it.

 

[Done]

New I wasn't going to comment, but since @Sparky Lurker and @Oddjob OTP did, I might as well.

I don't like Corwbcat's videos. Some are great. I liked the Ubisoft downgrades video, but most of the time it's cherry picked nonsense that's quoted ad nauseam as an instant argument winner when they are far from that. His Far Cry 5 video came out just after I finished a playthrough of Far Cry 2, and while comparisons like fire spreading or bullet holes in windows might be genuine downgrades. What he doesn't show is Far Cry 2 crashing all the time, or enemy camps respawning once they are outside of the draw distance, or enemies being able to spot you from 20 miles away through the jungle in the dark, or how all the characters talk like they're late for an appointment, or how friendly AI is completely useless, or any of the many other issues that Far Cry 2 has. I don't know if Far Cry 5 fixes those issues as I've not played it, but leaving that stuff out was dishonest imo.

Maybe I'm a-logging, but I don't like those types of videos. The reason I think it's a problem is what happened with Dead Rising 4. The devs added things like bodies flinching when shot to appease Crowbcat's fans instead of actually fixing a game that was by all accounts dreadful. The graphics are bad, the performance is bad, the story is bad, and the game is full of bugs and glitches, but none of that matters as long as the spray bottle doesn't break windows according to crowbcat and his fans.

Yours, @Sparky Lurker and @Oddjob OTP 's posts are all very valid criticisms, I'll probably adjust the thread title and OP when I get home to make things a bit more balanced and open up discussion.

I think crowbcat's content works best when the game/event/person he's focusing on is genuinely terrible/messy/dishonest, respectively. Mafia III and No Man's Sky are both examples of this. But when he hits a game where not many bugs exist, his content becomes very nitpicky and honestly boring.

And IMO, no, you're not a-logging at all, you're critiquing content with a neutral mindset with minimal autism.

 

[Miller]

His cringe complication of MineCon, E3, and the game awards are brilliant. I think his 343 v Bungie video is my favorite showing how good gaming was back in the past compared to today.

I wonder if he could do the same thing with old Bungie vs Bungo.

 

[ducktales4gameboy]

You mean this one?

The comments point out the same thing @Sparky Lurker did. Some of them talked about how his channel is being held back by his audience of edgy kids who want to see the gaming industry burn, while others called him a sellout and said he was shilling for a shovelware VR game.

I think this one loses a bit of context if you’re not familiar with how awful most VR games are and missed out on the drama around its release.

So a vast majority of the VR content out there involves the player either not moving, teleporting from place to place or being in some sort of vehicle since humans are weird and tend to want to vomit uncontrollably if their VR presence moves without their body moving at the same time (having a cockpit mitigates this for whatever reason).

Sprint Vector was one of the first games to figure out that if you’re putting physical effort into moving you basically won’t get motion sick even if the effort isn’t coming from your legs, so they made parkour mariokart with rollerblades and realistic rollerblade arm movements. Just the fact that it was something different with a high skill cap that didn’t make people vomit was enough to get it a ton of attention. Pretty much everyone who was sick of shooting galleries gave it a response similar to the one in the video due to it heralding the coming of the age of non-shit VR games.

Of course this didn’t happen because gamers are lazy fucks and there was a hilarious amount of butthurt when the game came out and people realized that you had to actually move your body to play it. IIRC something like 60% of the sv playerbase doesn’t have the steam trophy for beating the first course since the game is genuinely hard and requires physical effort/coordination.

 

[BlueSpark]

His cringe complication of MineCon, E3, and the game awards are brilliant. I think his 343 v Bungie video is my favorite showing how good gaming was back in the past compared to today.

Holy shit.

 

[vertexwindi]

(pretty much when he was trying to argue that GTA 5 was in some meaningful way a downgrade of GTA 4)

It is though, the AI and physics in 5 are downgraded to hell.

 

[The Cunting Death]

My favorite was the one he made where he showed /v/'s reaction to GTA V getting a PC port. It shows how much of a shithole /v/ was and still is

 

[Judge Dredd]

I think this one loses a bit of context if you’re not familiar with how awful most VR games are and missed out on the drama around its release.

So a vast majority of the VR content out there involves the player either not moving, teleporting from place to place or being in some sort of vehicle since humans are weird and tend to want to vomit uncontrollably if their VR presence moves without their body moving at the same time (having a cockpit mitigates this for whatever reason).

Sprint Vector was one of the first games to figure out that if you’re putting physical effort into moving you basically won’t get motion sick even if the effort isn’t coming from your legs, so they made parkour mariokart with rollerblades and realistic rollerblade arm movements. Just the fact that it was something different with a high skill cap that didn’t make people vomit was enough to get it a ton of attention. Pretty much everyone who was sick of shooting galleries gave it a response similar to the one in the video due to it heralding the coming of the age of non-shit VR games.

Of course this didn’t happen because gamers are lazy fucks and there was a hilarious amount of butthurt when the game came out and people realized that you had to actually move your body to play it. IIRC something like 60% of the sv playerbase doesn’t have the steam trophy for beating the first course since the game is genuinely hard and requires physical effort/coordination.

fftopic: I never understood the complaint that because some people get motion sick then VR games should not have free movement. It reminds me of people getting motion sick playing Doom, or people getting freaked out by Oblivion for the "uncanny valley". Maybe VR is different, but I think people would get used to it after a while.