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Egoraptor's Sequelitis
For all the dick jokes and random bullshit that he makes, one can forget that Egoraptor is an adult and is thus capable of expressing his opinions in a mature and non-DICKS DICKS DICKS way.
Even though I disagree with some of his points, I can see where he's coming from. Castlevania 2's biggest mistake was keeping the deliberately clunky controls of Castlevania despite its actiony and fast-paced nature.
There's also his MMX one, which is pretty much him just sperging it out about Mega Man X. He at least backs up his hard-on for the series with good reasons, though.
Comments
I love how he points out his mancrush for AVGN.
He's like the Extra Credit guys, but less preachy lol
He's got great points to make, which is unfortunately hobbled by his overreacting (for the camera, possibly).
I enjoy the humour.
^^ Also, I don't find the Extra Credits guys preachy. In fact, I think they've got very balanced perspectives and take a lot of viewpoints into consideration. Most video game related shows and the like come from a very particular place; Yahtzee always likes games with simple and versatile systems, for instance, and moviebob's views on the game industry economy throw a lot of responsibility on game consumers with nary a mention of the role publishers play. In contrast, Extra Credits are willing to give everyone and everything the benefit of the doubt, speaking about the way games are made, experienced and perceived in a way that no-one else out there really touches. I definitely think EgoRaptor's Sequelitis is one of the best game shows out there -- and so it's a shame there are so few episodes and such distance between them -- but even he doesn't provide the breadth of discussion Extra Credits does, even if his understanding of game design obviously runs pretty deep.
I prefer underreacting as humor over overreacting as humor.
It's a pretty traditional comic technique -- it's all about the alteration of tone and the subversion of expectations. Obviously humour is subjective and I don't want anyone to feel as though they should enjoy different things, but EgoRaptor does objectively good humour in the same way Beethoven does objectively good music, if you get my meaning.
He seems to be taking notes from Red Letter Media (such as being cutoff midsentence for his next point).
Also, I'm not bagging on Extra Credit. I love those guys too. Whenever someone derides vidya games as a stupid hobby, I point them towards their videos.
The video's points are all very interesting, but the way he kept changing his tone of voice made the video actually annoying to watch, without really adding much in the way of humor.
Though I still watched and enjoyed the whole thing.
It's a pretty classic technique, although it relies on new media to work. The principle is in subversion of expectation, which is more difficult to do vocally in stand-up or on film but works wonderfully in context of an edited presentation. Like everything else, humour is based on principles and all of those principles have been with us for time immemorial -- what RLM and EgoRaptor do isn't really new so much as a new application of the principle for a young form of media.
But when you start subverting expectations in the same way periodically over the course of a longer video, it stops being a subversion of expectation.
True, but that's a matter of whether one observes it rather than experiences it, if you get my meaning. If you just go with the experience rather than analysing it, you probably won't be picking up on particular techniques. A fair bit of humour is a lot less funny when you become aware of how it works in terms of principle and remain mindful of this awareness during a comedic performance. There's a kind of Zen in being able to analyse humour and experience humour at once, just like there is for film, games, literature or whatever.
That's true, but repeating the same sort of humor throughout a video does make it easier for it to be lost.
That's an interesting topic to ponder: how exactly are funny things funny to us?
There seem to be a multitude of mechanisms, not just one central mechanism. For example, I think one way YouTube Poop videos amuse me has to do with the mind's tendency to piece together disparate things and to find patterns (even when there are none), but that doesn't seem to be the case with either exaggeration humor or drive-by humor.
The common theme among these mechanisms, though, is, as some of you have said, the subversion of expectation. It may even be a necessary part of humor, but not all subversion of expectation is humorous, so it is not sufficient.
Well, then there's the double subversion, such as
When I was a little kid, I laughed at that because I expected a punchline but got a factual statement instead. And then you get things like the triple subversion. There's a 4chan post which interprets "to get to the other side" as "the chicken committed suicide in order to reach the afterlife" where the source of humour is in how ridiculous the interpretation is, but how legitimate "the other side" is as a phrase for death in other contexts. And, of course, the reverent reaction to that revelation.
One thing I find interesting about humour is that most kids and teenagers go through a "random" phase. I think this is interesting because it clearly demonstrates recognition of the subversion mechanism in humour, but without mastery of its actual implementation. Most of us fail to understand how to use it and move on, but "random" humour is about partitioning what is random in such a way that its absurdity is actually funny (such as in the case of Monty Python) or straddling the line between a legitimate response and randomness (a lot of British stand up).
One curious thing is that irrelevance* humor is that Monty Python actually doesn't really appeal to me all that much. Not at first, at least. It gains some humor value from my thinking about it a bit. It gains more value when it's used as a running joke reference among friends. At least, this is my experience from watching Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
But does irrelevance humor hold no appeal to me? Not exactly. I am a huge fan of Look Around You--at least the first season. I haven't seen much of the second, though it seems to be less funny to me from the little I've seen.
I wonder if this has to do less with my taste in humor and probably more with whether I know what to expect. I've seen lots of educational science shows in my youth, but have seen and read relatively little European fantasy stories/myths. So on a first pass, all I might see of MP&tHG might be several people hopping and one person making noises, and only after some time do I realize that that last person is trying to make a mockery of coconut-based horse noises. On the other hand, a first pass of Look Around You is highly noticeably "off" because I know that the introduction to an educational module is supposed to be illustrative of the topic and all those schoolchildren walking to school have (intentionally) pretty much jack shit to do with sulfur.
It probably also helps I watched LAY on my own computer, and got to rewatch it several times, while MP&tHG was watched on a friend's TV set in their dorm room, so I've had much more detailed exposure to LAY.
That said, maybe there actually is a difference here other than exposure and expectations. Even long after I've figured out the joke, LAY remains funny, but even after figuring out the joke, MT&tHG remains less funny. Why is this the case? Keep in mind that I have seen and am very familiar with the opening sequence of, say, that LAY sulphur module. Yet I still burst out laughing at it.
(* I'm using the term "irrelevance" to mean what people usually call "random". I'm specifying here that the intent is to juxtapose logically disconnected/dissociated items, so it's not just (literally) random.)
...okay, okay, I'm sorry for derailing the thread!
I like his Sequelitis series. Beyond the annoying humor, it's actually a really interesting look at the deeper mechanics and machinations of a game, not just an Angry Nerd ripoff. It goes a lot deeper than most reviews.