Epic Fail

When you head out into the independence fun you've planned for yourself today, please keep in mind that BBQs are a sacred long-standing tradition in the American culture. So, before you head to the store to do your BBQ shopping this morning, take a look at our epic fail list and adjust accordingly, disregarding your normal dietary habits. You'll thank us.



PROPANE GRILLS
If you're going to barbecue, you need a real fire. And here's a news flash: Propane doesn't count. If you want a real fire, you use wood or charcoal. When I'm going to cook meat to savory perfection, I want something on fire in my pit, not some invisible gas.

Also, part of the fun at a barbecue is hanging around chatting while the fire's getting ready. All that time goes bye-bye when you cheat by using propane. So, Hank Hill and all you propane men out there: FAIL!
-Jon Hunt

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In honor of July 4th, and its celebration of all things American, please enjoy the below list of people and things that totally fail at Jingoism. That’s right, folks, it’s Epic Fail: Patriots!

The 18-1 2007-2008 New England Patriots: Never was there a group of Patriots who failed as spectacularly as the 2008 New England Patriots. Pretty much crowned the first ever 19-0 professional football team, writers were already planning the Pats’ place in the pantheon of greatest teams ever. It was a mortal lock. A done deal. All they had to do was dispatch the New York Giants, a team they’d already handled during the regular season. A team that many thought was weak, and lucky just to be there. Of course, as they say, that’s why you play the game. When it was all said and done, the Patriots were a statistical footnote to the game of football, the Giants were the World Champions, and, for one glorious day, the residents of 21st Century New England, who have become a bizarro version of themselves from the 20th Century, were forced into stunned silence. The quietest Monday of all.
--Michael D'Alonzo

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It's hard for a YouTube video to be a failure. The bar is really low: Throw a funny wig on yourself and speed up the audio, and the youtube masses will think you're a comedy genius. Rant about the connection between George W. Bush and the outer-space lizard conspiracy and you'll be hailed as a political commentator of the highest order.

But some youtube videos are worse than bad. They manage to transcend the poor lighting, non-existent editing, self-aggrandizement and tedium of the standard youtube offering to become epic fails. Below, please find our choices for Epic Fail: Youtube Videos.

 jam with jake and tom awesome beatbox duo

Beatboxing is really hard. It's also really easy to tell who blows at it right when they start. Not only is this video about 3 minutes and 57 seconds too long, it's also atonal, arhythmic, and a waste of air. Putting awesome in the title just makes it hurt so much more.
--Ty Colfax

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Every few years, someone comes along with a product or idea that is touted as so fantastic, so wide-ranging, so innovative, it will change everything--the very fabric of society will be rent by this product/idea! Luckily for us, most of these ideas and technologies fizzle and go nowhere. For every Gasoline Engine there are 500 Cold Fusion Generators. So with this in mind we bring you G4’s Epic Fail: World-Changing Technologies:

 
The Segway - Some of you may not be old enough to remember when the Segway was released, but if you can you recall the largest over-hype campaign in the history of the world. Let me paint a picture for you. Unveiled at the end of 2001, the hype machine started sometime in the previous summer. I was 21 years old, in college, things like cell phones are expanding exponentially, and technology is amazing us almost every day.

Before its release, the Segway was just called "It", and they wouldn't release any information about it. At all. All they told the world is that it would revolutionize the way human beings travel for the rest of time, or something equally as grandiose. Of course, our minds were reeling. We were thinking personal mag-lev technology that can use the Earth's magnetic poles, cars that ran on perpetual energy systems, portal technology; the tension built for months! And guess what?!?!?! We got an electric scooter. Seriously, it made me want to firebomb New Hampshire. 
--Patrick Roche-Sowa

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This week's Epic Fail list looks at the most epically fail-filled fanboys in the gaming world. We've all wasted enough bandwidth talking about the "console wars," though, so we're sticking to fans of specific games or series. Get it?

Prepare to be insulted, The Internet; here's our list of Epic Fail: Fanboys:

Metal Gear Solid Fanboys: In commemoration of the release of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, I felt obligated to include Metal Gear fanboys on this list. I've spoken with several around the office in the past few weeks, all salivating at the thought of getting their hands on Kojima's latest long winded stealth "experience", and I have few words to share with them now:

1) Contrary to what many of you have said, this game is not cool because it's like a movie. It's not a movie, it's a videogame. I know it can sometimes be hard to remember when you haven't picked up your controller in 20 minutes.

2) The story does not make sense. If you insist that it does make sense, then I insist you are really Kojima in disguise and that you are crazy.

3) Kojima is crazy. He's not a "unique storyteller with a bizarre sense of humor". He's crazy. That is all.

Having shared that, enjoy your "interactive movie" and let me know if you come across any fun videogames in the future.
--Jonathan Hunt

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The recent blow-up concerning reviewer non-disclosure agreement and Konami’s Metal Gear Solid 4 is a minor blip on the radar of videogame marketing and publicity’s often inexplicable relationship to the gaming press. But it got us thinking: What are the absolute lowlights in videogame marketing, publicity and advertising? Below please find our Epic Fail list of Gaming publicity, marketing and advertising.

The Daikatana Incident (a.k.a. John Romero’s Big Mouth)

During Daikatana’s development, well before the game was set to be released, a magazine ad was released to promote John Romero’s game. These were the days when magazines were the primary form of gaming news and pre-release hype to this level wasn’t yet standard operating procedure. John wanted everyone to know that he was going to make you his bitch and invited you to “suck it down.”

The game took 3 more years to release and was a definite turd. Suck what down, Mr. Romero?
--Brian Leahy

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Since the 1950s, TV has been taking good shows and creating epically fail shows from their cast members and/or concepts. We're not sure why.

 While occasionally, spinoffs result in something great like The Jeffersons, you usually get something epically crappy like Friends spinoff Joey. In "honor" of TV's historic lack of creativity, please enjoy these epically fail spin-offs of all time.

The Lone Gunmen: First things first, while a good number of X-Files fans (including myself) enjoyed this short-lived show very much, it still must be relegated to the halls of Epic Faildom for the fact that it couldn't even survive a single season. This quirky, and quite dark, X-Files spinoff starred the three-man team of conspiracy nuts tracking down distinctly non-alien baddies committing terrible atrocities. The series has had somewhat of a resurgence thanks to the plot of their pilot episode and some rather imaginative 9/11 conspiracy nuts. Still, as a series spinning off one of the top-rated dramas at the time, The Lone Gunmen managed only 3 and a half months which, of course, equals EPIC FAIL.
--Jonathan Hunt

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This week's Epic Fail lists the most epically failure-riffic First Person Shooters ever. It was inspired by the release of Haze, a much hoped-for PlayStation 3 exclusive that came out earlier this week and has failed to live up to fans' dreams. Such is life, and such are our Epic Fail First-Person Shooters.

Haze: This PlayStation 3 game isn't horrible, it's just totally generic, and was totally over-hyped. It's derivative and just, well, boring. So are most FPS that aren't Halo of course, but everyone just expected so much more from the team that brought us Goldeneye, especially when coupled with the interesting NECTAR idea. Such a good idea! Such "blah" implementation! Such a failure! Sorry, PlayStation 3 owners: This is not the game you were waiting for.
--Stephen Johnson

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Today's Epic Fail list is a variation on a theme; we're taking a look at things that everyone thought would be epic failures, but turned out to be huge successes, in other words, games, movies and TV shows that manages to succeed in spite of impossible odds.

Crackdown: Originally known as "the game you have to buy for the Halo 3 beta", Crackdown very quickly came into it's own. The day it was launched millions of Halo and Microsoft fanboys rushed stores to get their copy for a Halo 3 beta code. However, the beta wasn't open on day one, so people actually had to PLAY Crackdown to entertain themselves.

They soon discovered that not only is Crackdown fun, but it is a great game. Nothing complicated or high concept, just free-roaming, super-powered, non-stop destruction. It was a thing of beauty. The addition of hop in/out co-op made things even sweeter, and with future downloadable content like new characters, weapons, vehicles, and mini-games, Crackdown quickly moved from a game that everyone wrote off before they had even seen it to a must own for anyone with an Xbox 360. 
--Patrick Roche-Sowa

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Today's Epic Fail list is a departure: The following list of songs fail by being too catchy.

Songwriters aim for a certain amount of hookyness for their tunes, but some have the misfortune of over shooting the mark to the extent that they create monstrous melodies that, once heard, will never leave you head, even though you hate them.

We've collected the most egregious examples below, in no particular order, but feel free to add your own in our comment section. Behold: Epic Fail: Songs That Get Stuck In Your Head!

Chocolate Rain:

This song is viral, literally and figuratively. It seeps into your brain and never gets out, cycling over and over on a continuous loop of baritone and sadness. What's not so bad about this song getting stuck in your head is that it's not some annoying song you hear on the radio, it's Tay Zonday's original music he put up for free on youtube. However, the downside is that no one knows the lyrics to this marathon of a song, and since there's no chorus you end up singing "Chocolate Rain....dah dum dum dah dum dum dum dah dum dah, Chocolate Rain...dah dah dah soemthing something dah nah nah".
--Patrick Roche-Sowa

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It's almost summertime, and that means weenie roasts, vacations and summer blockbusters! Because we love nothing more than raining on parades, please enjoy TheFeed's list of the most epically fail blockbuster movies of all time.

Cloverfield: From the moment it was first advertised, I was really looking forward to Cloverfield, and the days leading up to the movie were fueled with all kinds of speculation as to what it would be. Then, I saw it. And what it would be, and what it is, is a giant, steaming pile of crap.

You kidding me? You can climb up the side of a leaning skyscraper to pull your girlfriend off of a piece of rebar and then ask her to run while gutted but miraculously unhurt only moments later? A monster can swat you out of the sky in a helicopter, but you won’t die from the fall? Really? I mean, REALLY? Also, you didn’t drop the frackin’ camera when the annihilation of millions of New Yorkers began? You held onto it…why? Because you’re self-absorbed and think that people care about what you think about the end of the world? Oh, and the army is going to have you in their possession, and then just sneak you out the back door of an emergency facility, just as long as you don’t break curfew? Gimme a break.

Cloverfield sucked. Yes, the monster was cool, but that was it, and you have to care about characters to care whether or not they live or die, and I just wanted to watch them die. Quickly. FAIL.
--Michael D'Alonzo

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You can’t swing a dead hooker around the gaming world this week without hitting Grand Theft Auto IV. While the Grand Theft Auto series is among the most important (and most awesomest) series in gaming history, it’s not perfect—nothing is. Little annoyances within GTA’s games' nearly flawless worlds--errors that would be unnoticeable in lesser titles--are epically fail because even a little bit of stink sticks out in a rose garden.

Hence today’s topic: Epic Fail: Grand Theft Auto.

Car Surfing: Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas – This is one of those things that’s passed off as “cool,” when it really should have been passed off as a “glitch.” You know how you can jump onto the roof of a car while it’s still moving, and then the car will continue, as if the driver has no idea that there’s a living person on his/her roof, for as long as the drivers are endlessly, casually driving around the city? You know how, in real life, if there was someone on your car who had tried to pull you and/or hundreds of other people out of their cars on city streets that you’d do anything possible to get him off your car, or at least drive to where cops hang out? Doesn’t that seem lame to you? Yeah, me too.
Probability it's corrected in GTA IV: 90%
--Michael D'Alonzo

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You can't expect Hollywood screenwriters to think of every movie. They gotta come from other sources, and, when the venerable, traditional sources of film's raw material (TV, Novels, Plays, Older Movies) runs out, filmmakers turn to other raw materials.

Below are the most egregious failures in film adaptations in the history of ever. It's personal, not comprehensive, so feel free to add your own in our comments section!

Silent Hill (Based on the videogames)

Step 1: Take a beloved franchise.
Step 2: Take the setting of the game and make everything else up.
Step 3: Throw in Pyramid Head.

This movie is an Epic Fail because it had so much potential. It even had a great start to it, but it’s like the film switched directors half-way through. The ending contained a sequence that basically tried to explain what was going on in a few minutes and I’m not even sure they knew what what going on in this terrible adaptation.
--Brian Leahy

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April Fool's Day is a day to pull pranks. It's a day to get clever and make people think something that just isn't true. It's a day Type B personalities love and Type Aers just can't stand. Many of the gags that happened earlier this week on April 1 were quite amusing. They didn't go too far, they were well-thought out and executed comments on society, or they were just plain harmless leg-pulling. Some of them, however were uninspired, ill-advised, or down right stupid. Here, we present, TheFeed's list of those that disappointed us in a most epic way.


"Kaketaku" - For April Fools, Kotaku did a series of articles about cake under the fake name “Kaketaku”. Now, we love Kotaku, but really? Yes, Portal was great and we all had a laugh at the cake joke, but it’s been done to death already. This joke falls on the side of obvious fake-ness and made many of us roll our eyes. There was no added level of “is it true?” to this one. One article might have worked, but 10 articles about the same joke gets old.
- Brian Leahy

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We all love the guitar, drum and microphone peripherals that came with Rock Band, but the slew of secondary instruments that the makers of the game have released have been a lot less satisfying. Okay, the Rock Band Key-Tar was pretty cool, but did we really need a Rock Band stand-up bass?

Below the cut is a list of the most epic failures in Rock Band extra instruments.

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