Life of Black Tiger with Gilbert Gottfried (PS4) - Angry Video Game Nerd (AVGN)
The Nerd: You know, for 15 years, I've been warning you not to play shitty games, and all this time, I've been so focused on taking you back to the past, I kinda forgot about the present. So, let's play something recent for a change. (holds up a PS4 controller) PlayStation 4. Yeah, let's go all the way. Let's try out Life of Black Tiger. It was originally a mobile game for the iPhone and Android, eventually ported to the PS4 in 2017. They say it's bad, but this is a current generation console. I think by now, game developers would learn from their mistakes, so... how bad could it be? It starts off with a weird stock acoustic guitar loop.
(The acoustic guitar music loop plays.)
The Nerd: Sounds like the intro to a massage therapist's website... from 1997. (yawns) I could just doze off...
(The acoustic guitar loop fades out and a heavy metal riff plays, waking the Nerd up.)
The Nerd: All of a sudden, it switches to this heavy metal riff! Then you get the storyline for this emo black tiger. His parents left him, he's all alone, so he hates everything. It's quite a serious and sad plot to start a game with. What happened to the frame rate? It's giving me a headache! These characters look so ass. Is that Belle from Beauty and the Beast? "Animal called as human is what I dislike the most. They smell bad." For real? This is for real?
The game itself plays worse than you can imagine. Controlling the camera is reversed, meaning it's the complete opposite of how you control any other modern game. The controls are a baffling mess, and the tiger moves slower than shit advancing through a sloth's anus. I'm holding the run button, too! Without it, you can barely even crawl. This... is an action game. In what situation, in an action game, would you need to move that slow? Attacking. Now that's a whole other story. That's when the shit factor rapidly accelerates, at the rate of thawing a frozen dog turd on a frying pan. It starts to smell real quick. And if you think that's sadistic, look at what I'm playing right now! To attack, you have to hold down the circle button and hope for the best. Every time you kill a person, they make the same yell.
Then you chase down a defenseless woman, and just fucking MAUL her! Damn! This tiger is full of serious angst and rage! Wait a minute. What just happened? I went from a frozen wasteland to a forest, and now I'm hunting goats? How far is this tiger travelling? At the speed he runs, it probably took an eternity!
After the goats, you have to hunt a pack of silly wolves, You just slap them a bunch of times, and they get launched into oblivion! Daaamn! Look at 'em go! Unnngh! Motherfuckers! Now I'm just running around sniffing wolf blood? What kind of objective is that? You stand around the glowing orbs, then it shoots off fireworks... and that's the level. Why was this a level? Not to mention, the lack of music only adds to the atmosphere of boredom and monotony. The next thing, the tiger's head is up an animal's butt, and now they're floating on top of me!
Well, I didn't know they still made shit like this. How did this happen? This is the most modern game I've ever played on the show, and it sinks to the furthest depths on the Shit Scale!
The Nerd: When ranking terrible games, there's usually a certain level of playability. Even though I maintain Jekyll and Hyde is the worst game I've ever played, there's still that unholy category that lies underneath; games that can't even be called games. So Life of Black Tiger... is one of the worst... things I've tried to play, and... it's PlayStation 4! How did this happen?! I know it was originally on the mobile phone, but still, they sold it on the PlayStation Store! Who made this?! So it's a company called 1Games. I wish it were 0Games.
But no ordinary game designer could have created anything so vile and putrid. Something like this requires some high-level excremental expertise. This could only be the work of one person. A person by the name of Fred Fucks.
(A montage of the Nerd saying Fred Fucks is shown. First in the Dracula episode...)
The Nerd: Fred Fucks!
The Nerd: [...] Fred Fucks!
The Nerd: [...] was Fred Fucks!
(...then Schwarzenegger Games...)
The Nerd: [...] Fred Fucks.
(...then The Town With No Name...)
The Nerd: For Fred Fucks' sake!
The Nerd: And at the heart of it all, the final boss, my archnemesis: Fred Fucks!
(cut back to the Life of Black Tiger review)
The Nerd: And I think it's about time I find him, and tell him to knock this shit off!
(A parody of the Indiana Jones flight scene is shown, accompanied by the overworld theme from Hydlide. The Nerd arrives in a tropical forest in the middle of Asia. A wooden sign is hanging from a string with "1Games" burned into it. The Nerd appears wearing a a safari hat.)
The Nerd: Well, this must be the place. According to my research, Fred Fucks is hiding out specifically in Asia! This must be it.
(Fred Fucks himself, portrayed by Gilbert Gottfried, rises out of a bush, pointing an old rifle at the Nerd.)
Fred Fucks: Who the fuck goes there?! Who the fuck are you?! Answer me, tough guy! Or I'll blast a hole in you so big, I could stick my cock in it! And I don't wanna brag, but--
The Nerd: Hey hey man, it's cool! It's cool! I'm just looking for a game designer.
Fred Fucks: Game designer...you seek Fred Fucks.
The Nerd: You know him?
Fred Fucks: Know him? I can take you to him!
(He begins to walk off. The Nerd follows.)
The Nerd: Oh, boy! It stinks!
Fred Fucks: It's tiger urine! I soak my clothes in it. It keeps the other animals away.
The Nerd: Couldn't you just spray it on the ground?
Fred Fucks: ...okay, you got me! I like the smell and the feel of tiger urine on my clothes! And it makes a great fabric softener! I make a lot of the stuff around here.
The Nerd: What's that?
(He's pointing to a "computer" - a monitor sat atop a pile of shit with a typewriter and a coconut connected with lots of wires, and with bamboo sticks and other wires jutting out of it. And for the cherry on top, the monitor reads "Powered by Unity")
Fred Fucks: That's my company computer.
The Nerd: Uhm, is it made out of coconuts and bamboo?
Fred Fucks: And hyena feces! Lots and lots of hyena feces! It makes Unity run like a son of a bitch!
The Nerd: What company has such a shitty computer?
Fred Fucks: It's called 1Games...because it's 1 guy making games all by himself.
The Nerd: You're Fred Fucks! Well, I gotta ask you...what were you thinking?! Life of Black Tiger? That game's horrible!
Fred Fucks: Well, I'd like to see how good a game you could make out of a computer made of jungle foliage and animal droppings! Come, pull up a chair and we'll finish it together.
The Nerd: Okay, well...how are we gonna play it?
Fred Fucks: You know, I actually got my own PS4 Poo.
The Nerd: Don't you mean PS4 Pro?
Fred Fucks: No, PS4 Poo! See?
(Nerd looks and sees a rough facsimile of a PS4 Pro made out of poo. Complete with flies buzzing.)
The Nerd: ...okay.
Fred Fucks: "It's full of smell with blood of wolves today and the smell is stronger than a few days ago. I can't bear with it. Let's kill every wolves found."
The Nerd: The fuck, dude? That sentence! It was all over the place!
Fred Fucks: Oh, I'm sorry! I'm just a guy who built a computer in the jungle without electricity or internet! I'm not educated enough for the guy who talks about buffalo shit in his basement!
The Nerd: I guess that's a good point. Anyway, I have to kill 13 wolves, which isn't hard or anything, just takes forever, and the tiger moves like he's running in a dream.
Fred Fucks: I like to spread the gameplay experience as much as I can, so I can get the most out of the 10 dollars that you saps pay for this shit!
The Nerd: What the hell? G-get the wolf off i-- sticky wolf! I can't get it off!
Fred Fucks: You grab the wolf, Nerd. It's part of the game!
The Nerd: Holy shit, this is a normal thing in the game?! I thought it was a glitch! Everything else is so shitty I just assumed the models got stuck together or something.
Fred Fucks: You might wanna be a bit nicer about the game, considering the fact that I'm the one with the motherfucking rifle!
The Nerd: Finally, that level's over, and even though I played it for under four minutes, it still felt like an eternity.
Fred Fucks: The gameplay is so riveting that time stands still when you play it.
The Nerd: "A boss of the wolves and his subordinates came to me to revenge for the killed colleagues. I'll never step back"? "Survive till the fixed time"? What, were you fucking stoned when you wrote this?!
Fred Fucks: Yes.
The Nerd: Thought so...so all you do is run away from a pack of wolves that move completely in unison. You only have to survive for three minutes, but man, is it the longest damn three minutes of your life. Killing the wolves doesn't even matter because they just respawn endlessly. What's the point of that level? Why not just kill the wolves? It just seems padded for no reason.
Fred Fucks: I tried to make it true to life. You know, not everything in life is solved with conflict. Sometimes, you just gotta run like hell from your problems.
The Nerd: Words of wisdom from Fred Fucks. The enemy life meter is the slowest I've ever seen in any game, period. (arrow points to it) Ho-ly shit. It's so slow, you can't even see it moving! It's one single pixel! On a high-def screen! Killing the boss wolf is such a pain. The female tiger doesn't help unfortunately. Half the time her attacks miss. Not to mention, your attacks barely do any damage. Why is this tiger so weak?
Fred Fucks: You might say that tiger's a real pussy! ...cat...you see what I did there?
(The Nerd nods, but Fucks still takes his rifle out and points it at him)
Fred Fucks: I SAID YOU SEE WHAT I DID THERE!
The Nerd: (nervous laughter) It's very funny, very funny.
Fred Fucks: (over-the-top laugh)
The Nerd: I gotta say, I love slapping a group of wolves at the same time and watching them fly. It's oddly satisfying and really funny. Yeah! Smack 'em around! Mmm! UGGH, YEAH! After killing the wolf boss, it's yet another filler level. This time, you just walk around with the female tiger until she stops. Again, unnecessary. The next bunch of levels are just you slaughtering half the wildlife in this forest just to impress the female tiger. You have to bring her a rhino, which you just pick up and drag. How can the tiger pick up a rhino like it's nothing but can't kill a wolf in under an hour? This level has you murdering the shit out of poor bunnies! When you hit them, they fly like a missile. That's not nice! Look at that! They fly like 50 feet!
Fred Fucks: "I'm happy to get a sweet time with the female tiger. Today, she told me to hunt giraffes. Let's hunt giraffes for her."
The Nerd: So she told the black tiger to hunt giraffes? Why are these tigers so sadistic? You don't even eat the animals you hunt. You're just killing! All to impress a girl tiger.
Fred Fucks: What? You never went on a murder spree, rampaging and taking the lives of all you see just to impress a sweetie?
(The Nerd thinks, then shakes his head)
The Nerd: Eventually, after killing most of the forest, the female tiger gets pregnant, and it's the black tiger's "best day".
Fred Fucks: In the original alpha build, I had a full-on tiger sex scene. Oh, it was hot! It was tigers fucking and sucking constantly! One tiger fucking the other tiger, and the other tiger turns around and sucks that tiger! But the rating board put an end to it.
The Nerd: Ugh, I don't even wanna imagine that!...huh...oh wait...hmm.
Fred Fucks: See?
The Nerd: One thing I will say, the baby tiger in this game is fucking adorable! Just look at that thing. Isn't that cute? Man, forget Pikachu or Kirby. This baby tiger makes those losers look like a piece of shit! Other than that, the game goes on and on and on. It's a chore. You ever paint a house or ripped down wallpaper? That's this game. Eventually, I find myself doing anything I can to shake up the boring gameplay. Stacking animals is probably the most fun thing you can do. Here, I got a group of elephants to merge into a fucked-up monstrosity. Look at that! It's all tusks and skin! That's some goddamn nightmare fuel. Here, I got a stack of buffalo! Playing this game, I'd rather have a stack of buffalo take a diarrhea dump in my ear. Like when you pour champagne into a stack of glasses, except that it's stacked buffalo spraying liquid anus juice.
Fred Fucks: Trust me. I've had that happen to me more times than I'd like to remember. You ever have an ear infection? You know, you can't hear, and, uh, it hurts when you chew, and your balance is off...but I digress.
The Nerd: Eventually, the game really takes a dark turn. The forest begins to die, and you have to resort to scavenging decomposing corpses to live, but eat the wrong one and you're dead.
Fred Fucks: That's what happens when you eat bear ass! Trust me, I've seen a lot of my friends die young tossing bear salad.
The Nerd: Actually, spoiler alert: the forest is dying because the humans have poisoned the animals in an attempt to kill the black tiger. Remember those people we killed in the first level? Well, it's coming back to bite the tiger in the ass. These humans are no joke. They burn the forest, kill the female tiger, and steal the baby! That's some fucked-up shit right there!
Fred Fucks: I didn't pull any punches with this. This is my magnum opus! And it's not the first time I've used "magnum" today.
The Nerd: I get it!
Fred Fucks: (giggles gleefully)
The Nerd: (sighs) Eventually, you have to fight the humans to get your child back, which takes a while. I wasn't sure what to do at first because they kept on coming. You have to keep killing them until the game decides it's enough, but eventually, the game will end after you kill enough people. I love this right here. If you kill a group of humans at the same time, the sound clip of them screaming doubles up, and you get a sonic death scream!
(footage of that is shown)
The Nerd: Damn, that could probably blow out your speakers if you got enough kills going on at the same time! After saving your baby, you begin the game again, but this time as the human whose mother you killed at the very beginning of the game. That's an interesting concept, but it's more of the same bullshit. One level has you poisoning the corpses and burning the forest from before. Then you kill the female tiger. It's basically the last few levels told from the perspective of the humans. Here, I have to hunt rabbits again! The last rabbit ended up hopping up the mountain and won't come back down. At first, I thought I was fucked, but then I ended up walking up this hill and reaching the boundary of the whole level. It's like Big Rigs - just a piece of land floating in an endless limbo of three-dimensional garbage. Calling this game "unfinished" would be a compliment. This game is so unfinished, it's almost non-existent. In the thrilling conclusion, you end up killing the black tiger, but didn't the black tiger kill everyone and escape with his son? What the hell is going on?
Fred Fucks: It's an artistic interpretation of jungle life, you uncultured swine! I'M A GODDAMN ARTIST AND THIS IS MY MASTERPIECE! Obviously too artsy-fartsy for your plebeian palate.
The Nerd: Aren't you doused in urine?
Fred Fucks: From head to toe.
The Nerd: So you kill the black tiger and are greeted with the most horrifying end cutscene I've ever seen in a video game.
(close up of the woman's face with a dramatic thud sound)
The Nerd: Oh wow..."My mother is just in front of me. How much I missed her. We won't be parted again." So this was like a near-death hallucination? I guess the tiger killed him and now he's seeing her in the afterlife?
Fred Fucks: I told you this game is really deep. It's rich narrative is filled with sadness, triumph, controversy, betrayal, and existentialism...
The Nerd: No, it's horrible, and I need to warn the public not to play it!
Fred Fucks: Too late for that, Nerd! Now that you've covered it, more people will buy it, and at 10 dollars a pop, times a few million copies...I can buy all the rare and erotic animal feces I want!
The Nerd: "Erotic"? Don't you mean..."exotic"?
Fred Fucks: I know what I said...and now, Nerd, you will join me in showing the world the dark side of the PlayStation Store.
The Nerd: No. I'll never join you!
Fred Fucks: Oh yes you will, and we'll even put out a commercial...and you'll help me film it!
The Nerd: No!
(Fucks pulls out his rifle again)
Fred Fucks: Oh yes you will, and I even have the star performer for it!
The Nerd: Who?
(Nerd looks out, and Rex Viper Rigs (that's his name now) arises from the bushes.)
The Nerd: Ohhh...(facepalms)
The Commercial[]
Rex Viper Rigs: Hey, you fucking kids! Get ready for a rumble in the jungle! Life of Black Tiger!
(tiger roar)
Rex Viper Rigs: You're a mean, badass, edgy-as-fuck tiger! Kill half the wildlife population! Just hear it from Fred Fucks!
Fred Fucks: This ain't just a game, it's a way of life.
Rex Viper Rigs: Life of Black Tiger! Slap the fuck out of crocodiles, chickens, and wolves! Even bunnies!
Fred Fucks: Send those fuckers into the stratosphere!
Rex Viper Rigs: Share your fate with the female tiger! Stack up elephants and fuckin' buffalo!
Fred Fucks: Nothing says romance like "Honey, I'm bringing you a stack of rhinoceroses!" With hard! Core! Tiger! Fucking!
Rex Viper Rigs: Life of Black Tiger! Earn points to play as a flock of chickens, a bunny, or a hunchback beeeaaaar! You need a million-somethin' points, and if that ain't replay value, my name ain't Rex Viper Riiiiiiigs! Life of Black Tiger!
Fred Fucks: Only at Fucholand!
(fade to the Nerd, holding a camera over his shoulder)
The Nerd: Ohhh god...
Trivia[]
- The Rifle that Fred Fucks was using was possibly a replica 1903 Springfield or a Mosin–Nagant
- This is the first appearance of Fred Fucks