Jose Antonio Vargas (born: June 18, 1984), better known online as Angry Joe, is an American gamer and a reviewer who has uploaded videos since 2008. His YouTube channel is called AngryJoeShow. His YouTube channel has over 2.9 million subscribers and 840 million video views.
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 tons 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.
While 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 diasterous 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 each review, Joe rates games from a 1-to-10 point scale. 1/10 games usually denote a particularly poor games that are riddled with glitches, stiff controls, flawed game design, and poor story/voice acting, usually labeling such games as an "'Epic Fail"' with a custom seal image. Out of all his reviews, only six games have ever recieved a 1/10 (Sonic Free Riders, Mindjack, Ride to Hell Retribution, Star Trek Trexels, Ghostbusters 2016, and Power Rangers Mega Battle)
10/10 on the other hand usually denote flawlessly executed games that he considers legendary. While he notes that these games has flaws, the pros far outweigh them and he considers them must owns. Out of all of his reviews, only six games have ever received a 10/10 (Red Dead Redemption, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Guild Wars 2, The Last of Us, the Witcher 3, and Cuphead.) 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 to own, even if they don't recieve 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 Devil 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.
By 2014, Joe expanded his horizons with his acquisition of an PS4 and an Xbox One, reviewing games like 'Killzone: Shadow Fall' and later 'The Order 1886'. Joe brought an Wii U in January 2015 with money donated by the Nintendo fanbase so he could review Wii U Exclusives, however, Joe had no plans of reviewing Nintendo games due to Nintendo's copyright policies that don't allow monetization unless one registers their video(s) on their Nintendo Creators Program which has been 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 Odessy, listing it as his #2 on the Top 10 Best Games of 2017 video.
Angry Rant
These videos aren't reviews, but essentially consist of Joe ranting in rage over an issue that infurates him, such as a disasterous PC game launch or an controversial announcement covering something that Joe has issues with, such as Microsoft's Xbox One announcement, the removal of campaign from Call of Duty Black Ops IIII, 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 relased film with a group of his friends after seeing the film in theaters. This group, which mainly consists of Other Joe and Delrith, debate over the pros and cons of the film and their sperate opinions, and award it a 1-to-10 point scale, similar to Joe's Angry Reviews. To this date, the only film to have ever recieved a 1/10 from Joe was the 2010 film The Last Airbender. He has given several films a full 10/10 rating (Deadpool, Avengers Infinity War). There are two versions of these reviews: the Angry Movie Review and the Spoilers, where they go over specific plot points of the film that they liked or disliked.
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.
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 and the (ironically) controversial Top 10 Controversies of the year, although the Top 10 Controversies title was discontinued after 2014.
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.
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 critizicer of the recent trend of microtransactions and loot boxes in gaming, blasting games that practice the trend in his reviews such as Battlefront II and Shadow of War.
- 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 earning a full rating, such as Zelda: Breath of the Wild and 2018's God of War.
- Although Joe discontinued his top 10 controversies video list, Joe stilll addresses gaming controversies if they are serious enough, usually though Angry Rants or in the game review itself, such as EA's loot box and microtransactions controversy with Battlefront II.
List Of Subscriber Milestones
- Joe Hit 1 Million Subscribers On August 24, 2013.
- Joe Hit 2 Million Subscribers On March 15, 2015.