What happened to the caricatures of staff on reviews

I very vividly remember a cartoon drawing of Jeff on the Syndicate review with like rainbows shooting out of his eyes. I seem to remember these for each of the review writing staff members and the cartoon's expression was related to the rating the game received. I pulled up the Syndicate review and I didn't see it. When did these things disappear and do they still exist somewhere?

They axed them a long time ago (last site redesign?) because they are soulless and hate joy.

Oh yea! I really liked those! Forgot all about them.

Or because Alex, who does most of the reviews, only had one cartoon version of himself? Anyway, we've seen enough live footage of Jeff to know how he looks when he thinks a game is terrible.

Jeff didn't like the way they represented the scores and removed them.

It's been like 3 years or more now.

A big reason Jeff gave was that the portraits could paint reviews and their scores in a way that wasn't always intended. I also think they didn't want to have to keep making them for new staff or have a split where some staff had them and others didn't.

A huge bummer, it was something that when first coming to the site really helped establish that this was a place with great personality. I always really loved the review portraits. I was super disappointed when it was revealed they were going away. Imagine how awesome Dan Ryckert's review portraits could be. :P

Thinking about it now, you know what could be a cool replacement in future that could potentially take less effort? Using photos as review portraits. I just had an awesome image pop into my head of a 5 Star Dan Review accompanied by a picture of Dan all hyped up in his Ribera Steakhouse Jacket and American Flag pants doing a Hulk Hogan pose or something. :P

Pretty sure they were removed a while ago during the last redesign.

@meatball: With a Solid Snake Bandana

Thanks for the info guys. Glad to know I am not living in some fever dream where Jeff just has rainbows shooting from his eyes when he likes things.

@meatball: Dan's 5 Star reviews could just have this playing on loop in the background. After all, multimedia IS the future.

@meteora3255: I have copies of all of their cartoon review faces if you want them.

• Jeff
• Ryan
• Brad
• Vinny
• Alex
• Drew

@damodar: Man that song NEVER gets old to me. I used to watch wcw and wwf (e) during the late 90s - 2002ish and all the moments with the hulk and this song and his old matches. AHHHHH!! too bad wrassling got to contemporary and threw out the gimmicky characters :/

on topic: yes those cartoons were the best part of the reviews sometimes!

@truthtellah: I would very much like them, just because outside of Jeff's 5 star face I can't remember the others.

@meteora3255: Here you go, the staff's 1-5 star faces:

I can't see Vinny's without thinking of that horrible "cunt" remix. Come to think of it, that whole video features these damn things.

Hey, I'm just quoting it here. What, did I go too far?

I kinda like that Drew only had one face. The one face Drew makes when playing games

@truthtellah: Is Drew basically Doug Funny?

Also, did Vinny ever write 5 reviews?

Drew is Doug Funny. Confirmed.

And Vinny did write a 5 star review 5 years ago. Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time.

Communism happened.

that alex one is unofficial right? still love it.

@ripelivejam: I think so, though I have a vague memory of it being used, so I don't really know.

I think these were indeed done away with after the move from Whiskey to CBS. That required a really quick reworking of the site for some legal reasons (the other company that bought part of Whiskey got a fair amount of the tech) and in the interest of getting it up and running quickly some things, like quests and bounties, had to go by the wayside. Still want to bring it all back but it's always a matter of resources.

@truthtellah said:

I meant "Did Vinny write enough reviews to even use the full range of his review score pictures?"

uhhhhh...

I have no idea. That's actually a good question. A number of these were never used. I think only all of Jeff's ever got used.

@truthtellah: Also, didn't Kessler have a rather cherubic picture for his reviews? Also Dave had his picture where he is in chain mail and a helmet.

@bisonhero:

I'm pretty sure Vinny never gave a 1 star review because when the got rid of the images people where sad they never had a chance to see it. Little did we know that the image had been used in the I Love Mondays intro for years.

Edit: As far as I remember from that time, all of the other pictures got used at some point.

Not sure. I don't seem to remember them having their own images, but perhaps you're right.

@truthtellah: Sadly I can't find the Dave picture anywhere. Google and Internet Archive have failed me. I'm sure some users on the site have it somewhere (which is how I got this one of Kessler because somebody made a thread about it years ago and surprisingly the picture in that thread is preserved better than the snapshots of the old site on Internet Archive).

@bisonhero: Oh my god I forgot about that cherub Kessler picture, that was amazing. Dave definitely had one that I think he said was inspired by a character in Ultima.

The only review picture I remember them using of Alex was him looking like Commando which I think was also his Screened picture.

Edit: This is the picture of Alex I was talking about.

@bisonhero:

The chainmail and helmet picture was kinda used with all "none staff" reviews back in the day (expect Kessler). I remember Drew's Dirt 2 review using that image as well.

@bisonhero: I see! Yeah, I didn't remember that crazy Cherub Kessler. Crazy.

I found Dave's picture, I think this was related to quests?

O don't even get my hopes up of quests coming back. I will be on this site for days completing them again if they ever come back. If you bring them back, I'm holding a party... a sad one man party... for a feature on a video game website... I'm a sad lonely man.

I'm not sure you could do a cartoon caricature of Dan if they brought them back, the man is a cartoon caricature given human form.

@truthtellah: I can't tell if I like Vinny going Super Saiyan or Drews' fantastic expressions more.

For a personality driven site, it still makes no sense to me that they removed something that added a lot of personality.

They often misrepresented the tone of the review and confused people. It happened the most on games getting three stars, since you occasionally end up with a "positive game with significant flaws" three-star game or a "bad game that has a couple of bright spots" sort of three-star game. Also the original artist went and got a real job, making it hard for us to get new images that fit the style of the old ones. The combination of misrepresentation and logistics made them kind of a hassle.

@jeff: Alright, I can buy that. That line of thinking is consistent with how you recently said that the Metacritic colors for reviews is perfect for the site. I suppose in an ideal world you would have dozens of unique images to choose from, so that there would always be something to accurately portray the tone of the review. I still think that visual aid gives a lot of expression and says more than 1-5 stars colored gold.