James IMO hit his peak around the Friday 13th/Nightmare on Elm Street/Power Glove trilogy. Then his videos started feeling a little too commercialized. There were a string that were still somewhat funny but were snoozers compared to his earlier reviews of nuggets like Mc Kids, Wally Bear and the No Gang, and Master Chu (all three are classics).
However I feel he really recaptured a lot of that with his Action 52 review.
In all honesty though, most all of the reviews post Action 52 are pretty forgettable.
Two things that to me have brought down the quality of his reviews in recent years are:
1. Several videos depend on some sort of story outside the realm of the game review itself. Without giving anything away, the last 4 or 5 minutes of his R.O.B. the Robot review are utterly pointless, not funny or entertaining, and add nothing other than time to the review video. I understand he's increasingly tried to become more creative, and that his first videos started out as more of a project than a career, but that aspect of it has brought down some of the nostalgic quality the ones from the first two years had. Several videos end with LONG segments about a character or something to do with the game, but have NO game review footage in them at all. Even some of his earlier ones like Friday 13th and Halloween are guilty of this.
2. His videos have increasingly become much more dependent on graphical characters (Mega Death Jesus 5000 or whatever its called), cheesy graphical effects (him sonic booming his t.v.), and other effects to make the videos feel like they have upped in production value. While on the surface this may seem cool to a video game geek, if you think about it a little deeper, you realize it takes away from AVGN's natural appeal that made him famous in the first place. He started out as just an every day guy, doing every day videos, venting real frustration at old crappy games. That. Felt. REAL. Now his videos feel like the internet equivalent of hollywood productions. While a video series and the person making it are inevitably going to become relatively famous with the following he's amassed, by him 'hollywooding' his videos up as a result of his increasing internet fame, he's lost some of his appeal as the everyday gamer like you and me that we could relate to. That's why his early video productions, which focus almost exclusively on the game itself and only contain footage of him, or the game, are the "timeless classics" he makes reference to in his videos.
I don't really see him going back to this style for his videos, but it sure would bring the quality of them up again if he did.