The Third Rate Gamer is a YouTube-based Stylistic Suck parody of the infamous Irate Gamer, by FFL2and3rocks. One of many parodies, but among the worthwhile 10%.

• Accentuate the Negative: Parodied. He will very often nitpick minor details that have little to do with the game.
• Acting for Two: Lampshaded in the Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers review:

• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: "Syphilis, Hepatitis and Bores."
• Bad Bad Acting: Played for Laughs. His idea of "looking irate" equals "puffing your cheeks full of air"

• Blatant Lies: In the middle of his Kirby's Adventure review, he does a slight commercial break advertising a card game. We then cut to an actor who is not very enthusiastic about his opinion, and the bottom of the screen has a caption saying "NOT A PAID ACTOR".
• Captain Ersatz: Billy is an obvious parody of Irate Gamer's side character Tony. He too is represented by a sprite taken from a browser-based MMORPG (RuneScape rather than Maple Story here).
• Catch Phrase:
  • "Didn't they test this game before they released it?", and many variations.
  • "But after doing some research..." as well.
  • "..which is only available for the (Insert System Here)"
  • "Bang-a-lang!" is Billy's catch phrase, which is Tony's catchphrase from Irate Gamer.
• Captain Obvious: Played for Laughs. He circles very easy to see things, and points out things the viewer can plainly see, like mentioning that each stage is harder than the last.
• Caustic Critic: Being a parody of the Irate Gamer, it's pretty obvious he is going to be one of these.
• Comically Missing the Point: All the time. He always points out things completely irrelevant.
• Continuity Cavalcade: Parodied. At the end of his Chip & Dale review, all of the minor characters from previous episodes appear to watch the ending of the game, including Flashter, Offensive Stereotype, Ryu, Cool Spot, |Wilkins, and others. This is a parody of the time Irate Gamer did the same thing.
• Covers Always Lie: He points this out on the cover of Castlevania, in regards to the sword Simon Belmont doesn't have in the game.
• Media Research Failure: Throughout his entire Little Nemo the Dream Master review, he refers to the game as "Finding Nemo". Based on "Chris and Scottie Road Trip" where Bores is visiting Pixar and lists one of their movies as Little Nemo.
• Critical Research Failure: Played for laughs.
• Department of Redundancy Department:

• Don't Explain the Joke: Even lampshaded at one point

• Episode Title Card: Following along with the Stylistic Suck, all the title cards are hand-drawn in Microsoft Paint, with several bad photo edit-ins, as well as misspelled words.
• The Faceless: The Third Rate Gamer's face is off-screen throughout the first episode.
• Gosh Dang It to Heck: Played for Laughs. In the Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers review, he starts awkwardly shoehorning in G-rated curse words alongside the typical fare, in response to how the Irate Gamer suddenly started to inconsistently tone down the cursing in his videos.

• Hypocritical Humor: Most Egregious in his Home Improvement review:

• Incredibly Lame Pun: "I said Goros, not Gurus!" in a reversal of a lame pun the Irate Gamer made.
• Manipulative Editing:
  • At the beginning of his Chip n' Dale review, he complains there is no two-player mode, but he really just hid the option and said they buried it too deep into the menu.. This was to parody IG's Tekken 6 review.
  • He draws a cross over the Koopas in Super Mario Bros while complaining there was more than one enemy in Yoshi's Island, which had not happened in a Mario game before.
• Pac-Man Fever: Parodied. In every reaction shot, he's constantly button-mashing, regardless if this makes any kind of sense for the game sequence in question. He's almost always using a controller from a completely different system, and sometimes not even a controller at all, like a pair of headphones and the DS case for Final Fantasy III.
• Refuge in Vulgarity: It isn't uncommon for him to throw swearing into the mix.
• Rouge Angles of Satin: If there is ever anything written on-screen, it is guaranteed to be misspelled: "GO SHOV A CAKTAS UP UR ASS", "Double Dragons Princible" etc.
• Running Gag:
  • Usually when showing just a small part of a game, he'll die at the end of the clip before cutting to something else.
  • The footage sometimes shows him picking the lowest difficulty setting before starting.
• Shaped Like Itself: All the time.

• Small Name, Big Ego: Played for Laughs. He parodies how little credit IG gives to other people in his work, and often writes very self-centered things about himself in the credits.
• Soundtrack Dissonance: The show's theme song for the first season is the Dog Ending Theme from Silent Hill 2.
• Stylistic Suck: The special effects, video editing and acting. Occasionally lampshaded.
• Take That:
  • The entire series is one big Take That to the Irate Gamer. Also occasional jabs at Leisuresuitgaming and Game Dude.
  • This even goes as far to have a Take That to one of The Irate Gamer's Take Thats, when he says, "Well, yeah, but these haters are...dumb." (Photoshopped graphic saying "PWNED!")
  • And occasionally, he goes for targets other than video game reviewers.

• They Just Didn't Care: Invoked:

• Too Dumb to Live: He has a bomb just lying around in his house for no reason.
• Unreadably Fast Text: Done at times. For instance, in "Cool Spot", he does an Aside Glance and the text "this is the part where you're supposed to laugh" flashes very briefly.
• Unfortunate Implications: Invoked with the side character "Offensive Stereotype", basically a walking collection of every asian stereotype in existance. A parody of Irate Gamer's Ronnie the Skeleton.
• Viewers are Morons: Played for Laughs, and almost always lampshaded.

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