| “ | I'll see you guys on the next AngryJoeShow. | ” |
―AngryJoeShow's outro | ||
Jose Antonio Vargas (born: June 18, 1984), better known online as AngryJoeShow, is an American gamer and a reviewer who has uploaded videos since 2008. Until April 2018, he was also a prominent member of Channel Awesome.
Background[]
Jose Antonio Vargas is a YouTuber better known for his comedic over-the-top reviews of AAA games that started on BlisteredThumbs, the gaming division of ThatGuyWithTheGlasses.com until he decided to go solo on YouTube.
On YouTube, Joe has garnered a ton of popularity for his reviews of Mass Effect 3, Skyrim, Guild Wars 2, Devil May Cry and Destiny. His popularity eventually led to the creation of the Angry Army, Joe's homepage and gaming clan.
Joe has made various cameos on videos from people from ThatGuyWithTheGlasses.com (now called Channel Awesome.com) and even starred in Nostalgia Critic's Man of Steel review.
Joe considers himself neutral in the console wars, many people have pointed out Joe's favoritism for PC gaming since 2014. This is further evidenced by several Angry Rants he has released concerning disastrous PC game launches, such as Battlefield 4 and Arkham Knight. He is in possession of an Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS4, Wii U (via donations), Nintendo Switch, and a PC (ostensibly his preferred platform).
Shows[]
Angry Reviews[]
Joe's most known show wherein he reviews highly anticipated AAA games (and sometimes Indie games) and explains the game's strengths and flaws while doing short sketches through the review with his friend Joe Lopez, known also by his alias 'Other Joe'.
At the end of his review, Joe rates game from a 1-to-10 point scale. 1/10 games usually denote a particularly poor game that is riddled with glitches, stiff controls, flawed game design, and poor story/voice acting, usually labeling such games as an "'Epic Fail"' with a customs seal image. Out of all his reviews, only seven games have ever received a 1/10 (Sonic Free Riders, Mindjack, Ride to Hell Retribution, Star Trek Trexels, Ghostbusters 2016, Power Rangers Mega Battle, and The Lord of the Rings: Gollum).
10/10 on the other hand usually denote flawlessly executed games that he considers legendary. While he notes that these games have flaws, the pros far outweigh them and he considers them must own. Out of all of his reviews, only eight games have ever received a 10/10 (Red Dead Redemption, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Guild Wars 2, The Last of Us, The Witcher 3, Cuphead, Doom: Eternal, Star Wars: Squardrons (specifically the version where a player uses VR and a HOTAS)), Dead Space: Remake and Hogwarts Legacy. Joe has stated that 5/10 usually denotes a relatively average game, the equivalent of a 7/10 for most other video game reviews. Joe also on occasion gives a Badass Seal of Approval to games of high quality that he highly recommends owning, even if they don't receive a full 10/10.
One of his most known traits is how he starts his reviews in which can reign from a comedic sketch with him lampooning a particular aspect of the game he is reviewing. He sometimes ends this opening by stating "You done f*cked it up!", which means the game he is about to review has disappointed him, did not live up to the hype, and/or was mishandled by the developer/publisher.
One other of his traits are his in-universe characters such as Corporate Commander (a parody of Cobra Commander from G.I Joe) and Demon Joe (an Evil "Darkspawn" version of Joe) that appear on specific reviews during Sketches as antagonists that support supposedly distasteful practices in gaming, such as DLC, Microtransactions and broken releases.
In 2014, Joe acquired a PS4 and an Xbox One, reviewing games like 'Killzone: Shadow Fall' and later The Order 1886. Joe later brought a Wii U in January 2015 with money donated by the Nintendo fans so he could review Wii U Exclusives, however, Joe refused to review Nintendo games due to Nintendo's strict copyright policies that didn't allow monetization unless one registered their video(s) on their Nintendo Creators Program which was criticized for not granting video monetization rights on day one and giving YouTubers less money than other groups such as Polaris. However, Joe officially made his first-ever review of a game on a Nintendo platform with his review of the Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild for the Nintendo Switch on March 21st, 2017, which he listed as his #1 Game of 2017 in his Top 10 Best Games of 2017 video. Furthermore, although he didn't do an Angry Review of it, Joe also covered Super Mario Odyssey, listing it as his #2 on the Top 10 Best Games of 2017 video. In his Top 10 Games of 2018 video, Joe has mentioned that he may review more Nintendo games in the future, now that Nintendo has ended their controversial Creators Program.
Angry Rant[]
These videos aren't reviews but essentially consist of Joe ranting in rage over an issue that infuriates him, such as a disastrous PC or console game launch or a controversial announcement covering something that Joe has issues with, such as Microsoft's Xbox One announcement, the removal of a campaign from Call of Duty Black Ops IV, or controversial casting decisions in films he's looking forward to.
Angry Movie Reviews[]
One of Joe's other popular shows, where Joe reviews a newly released film with a group of his friends after seeing the film in theaters. This group, which mainly consists of Other Joe, Alex, and (prior to 2020) Delrith, debate over the pros and cons of the film and their separate opinions, and award it a 1-to-10 point scale, similar to Joe's Angry Reviews. To this date, the only films to have ever received a 1/10 from Joe were The Last Airbender and Resident Evil: The Final Chapter. He has given several films a full 10/10 rating (Wreck It Ralph, Avengers: Infinity War, Lego Batman, Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse, John Wick 2). There are two sections of these reviews: the Angry Movie Review where they express their general opinions on the film, and the Spoilers section, where they go over specific plot points of the film that they liked or disliked. They either do both of these sections in one video, or do them separately in two videos.
Although not technically counting as Angry Movie Reviews, Joe has done crossovers with other critics covering films, most notably his crossovers with the Nostalgia Critic covering both Man of Steel and Batman v Superman.
Angry Reviews (TV Shows)[]
More recently, Joe has expanded the Angry Reviews series to also cover television series, adopting the same format as the Angry Movie Reviews series where Joe, Other Joe and Alex review a newly released episode of a television series that they are currently watching, debate over the pros and cons of the episode and their separate opinions, and award it a 1-to-10 point scale. However, for the first time in any of Joe's review series, while reviewing Season 2, Episode 9 of Star Trek: Picard, the episode recieved a 0/10 from Joe.
Top 10s[]
Joe's second most popular show, at the end of the year, Joe makes Top 10 videos about the Best Games of the Year, Worst Games of the Year, the Most Disappointing Games of the Year (discontinued after 2018; but returned in 2021) and the (ironically) controversial Top 10 Controversies of the year, with the Top 10 Controversies returning in 2019 after a five year hiatus.
Top Reasons Why (Discontinued)[]
Joe's third most popular show. In 'Top Reasons Why', Joe discusses some reasons why a game may suck, be good or even excellent in great detail. His most popular video is "10 Reasons We Hate Mass Effect 3's Ending", in which he explained why he thought the game's ending was terrible.
Subscriber milestones[]
- 1 million subscribers: August 24, 2013
- 2 million subscribers: March 15, 2015
- 3 million subscribers: November 30, 2018
Trivia[]
- Joe is an extreme fan of Superman, which is the reason why Joe almost always wears a Superman logo shirt during his reviews.
- In recent years, Joe has also become an outspoken criticizer of the recent trend of including microtransactions and loot boxes in gaming, blasting games that practice the trend in his reviews such as Battlefront II and Shadow of War, and ranking Madden and the other popular sports games as #10 in his Worst Games of 2018.
- Although he didn't grant them a full 10/10, there are some games that Joe has given, as he described, his "highest" 9/10 rating that were extremely close to earning a full rating, such as Zelda: Breath of the Wild and 2018's God of War.
- Joe addresses gaming controversies if they are serious enough outside of his Top 10 Controversies lists, usually through Angry Rants or in the game review itself, such as EA's loot box and microtransactions controversy with Battlefront II.
- Fallout 76 notably became the first game that Joe featured on multiple Top 10 lists, ranking #1 on Most Disappointing Games of 2018, #2 on Worst Games of 2018 and #2 on Worst Games of 2019.
- Joe's favorite strategy franchise is the Total War series, as stated in his Rome 2: Total War Angry Review.
- Before starting his YouTube channel, Joe worked at Party City, Marble Slab, GameStop, McDonald's, and Dell.
- The intro song for many of Joe's videos is an 8-bit remix of "Crossing the Rubicon" by American progressive metalcore band The Human Abstract.