Deutsche VersionYahtzee's Pentagon
My guess is that there’ll be at most one reader who agrees with the headline, while everybody else needs some context. Now, once upon a time, in a small country known as Australia, there lived a certain Ben ‘Yahtzee’ Croshaw, who was and is mostly known for his cynical, amusing and not-safe-for-work (you’ve been warned) video game reviews. They’re called “Zero Punctuation”, and as you’d expect he hardly ever pauses while mocking a game. A good example to get started would be the following video (4:37 minutes), mainly because it explains the heading of this article (Note that some RSS readers don’t play videos, just go the main site then).
Now Yahtzee and Two Other Guys™ have joined forces to create [Gamedamage.net][gamedamage], a TV show about video games. I guess they and in particular the other two would mind being called, well, the other two, but as internet personas go, Yahtzee is the big one in this triangle. Anyway, you can watch the pilot episode there, although I think the following will make just as much sense if you don’t (the pilot is kind of long).
Now, can this new show live up to the expectations raised by Zero Punctuation? Short answer: No. Long answer: See the video above.
I’d say that at least they tried, but to be honest, I’m not even certain of that. Jokes like “World of Warcraft now has x subscribers” - “Exactly three of whom have girlfriends” - “I’m one of them” - “Subscriber or girlfriend?” stay predictable and always a level below what is funny. In a similar vein, the reviews of new video games could also use more depth, since they mainly say “This game is good” or, well, the opposite, without any context to justify this. At one point it is even literally said that they would have liked to back up their opinion with an anecdote but nothing interesting happened in the game. Which is a real possibility, but what part of that is supposed to be interesting for viewers like me?
The other segments are features about certain topics by the protagonists and short sketches. Yahtzee tells us that traditional Point-and-Click adventure games are dead, but not really, they only got replaced by action adventure games which are the same but only with good gameplay and the world is a nice place to live in. I’m pretty certain this is what the phrase “So yeah” was invented for. The other guy tells us that physics are great if they are an integral part of the game world but not if they are just added in for a few puzzles and fancy guns, which is not incorrect, but hardly revolutionary either. Whether the third guy has said anything has escaped my recollection, but I can guarantee that he didn’t say anything memorable, obviously.
Finally, the sketches are sub-par as well, which shouldn’t come as a surprise after all this. Jokes about Duke Nukem Forever being late (for those who don’t know about it, the game once was announced for a 1998 release; it’s current release date is “When it’s done”) have officially stopped being funny in 2003, when the game was presented with Wired’s Vaporware Lifetime Achievement Award at the very latest. Jokes about annoying telephone systems probably never were. The high point of the entire show is a guy in a Halo costume running through some city centre, and no, that’s not better than it sounds.
Currently, the show is looking for sponsors to start for real. I’m not sure whether I should wish for them to continue so they can get their act together, or to vote for “Bury it! Fast! Deep!”. I can only see potential in it because I know Yahtzee can be funny, and the other two were apparently awesome enough to be let near him. Is that enough? Because what they have right now absolutely isn’t.
Written on December 17th, 2008 at 08:04 pm
