Richard's Online Journal
Gameswipe
“Hello, I’m Charlie Brooker, and you’re watching Wipewipe, a show all about the shows of Charlie Brooker. And macram? for some reason.”
I’ll be honest, I’m a bit confused. I enjoyed the show, I like Charlie Brooker as much as the next cynic, but I’m not entirely sure who this special was aimed at. If you’re a gamer, you knew most of it already. If you’re not, Brooker’s mocking style (which is absolutely perfect if you’re a fan of the kind of thing being mocked, as with Screenwipe, Yahtzee, Noah Antwiler’s fantastic videos, and even stuff I don’t like much, like The Angry Video Game Nerd) isn’t exactly going to bring you round or teach you anything other than that you’re probably right about games being silly.
Why Games World instead of Time Commanders? Why GTA instead of Monkey Island? I’m not saying it shouldn’t have been cutting, that’s Brooker’s thing, but why wasn’t it cutting the idiots it kept showing clips of instead of reinforcing their prejudice through game choices? Why actively try to turn off the audience you presumably want to stick around for the full show by confirming their prejudices?
(In particular, I’m still trying to work out the logic behind spending much of the show complaining about TV only ever focusing on the negative, more violent games, then faking up a joke Wii title as a counterpoint instead of just… I don’t know… bringing out a copy of Animal Crossing. As it is, the message just became “We got nothing, sorry. Here’s some more boobs and explosions. Bullet to the cock!”)
The gags and guests were fun, but I’d rather have heard Graham Linehan rave about Left 4 Dead some more from a writer’s perspective than complain about Grand Theft Auto (even though I agree completely), or have had Dara O’Briain do a self-deprecating comedy bit instead of a rant. Again, it’d have been fine if it was actively for gamers, but it seemed seriously misplaced next to ‘let’s explain what Wolfenstein is’ level stuff.
If Gameswipe goes to a full series — and I’d really like to see Brooker do one, especially given the amazingly good stuff he did for PC Zone back in the day — I really hope it bites the bullet and just aims itself at gamers who want to watch a show about games. Bringing out Rab and Ryan from Consolevania, then stepping back to explain what generic genres are about? That’s like mixing matter and antimatter, only without exploding and blowing up the universe, for which I for one am frankly grateful.
Randomly, that CyberZone thing? It was even worse than the short clip on the show made it look. Unfortunately, it was so bad, even the interweb doesn’t have much of a record of it, but that’s okay. Just the intro bit says it all…
Terrifyingly (and yes, I know I’ve linked this before), this isn’t just not the worst game related TV show ever made, it’s not even the worst one fronted by Craig Charles. But the other is so bad, I can’t even bring myself to embed it. Click if you dare…
Remembering Knightmare
“I’m watching you. And I am awesome.”
Growing up as a gamer in the 80s and 90s wasn’t much fun. The games were fine, at least by the standards of the time, but the idea that you could play them without being a fat, bespectacled, largely introverted geek was pretty much alien to the wider world. What? So I’m single, wear glasses, need to lose a few pounds and write about computers and videogames for a living. Your point, please? Sob…
Plumbers Don’t Wear Ties
Sorry for the lack of posts of late. Too busy. Too much to do. Too many games to play. Games… completely unlike Plumbers Don’t Wear Ties. Any PC Gamer reader will know this one by reputation — a truly foul piece of gaming from back in the days when little movies in computer games seemed like The Future. It was a running joke in the magazine for over a decade… in fact, I’m sure it was referenced only a couple of months back, quite possibly by me. But why mention it now? Why invoke its dark name in 2008?
Because someone’s made a fully functional YouTube version. The pain begins… now!
Don’t be fooled by the angry, somewhat bipolar FMV lady in her bra — so-called adult game or not, PDWT is as objectively erotic as an Ayn Rand striptease. The bit above is the only bit of movie in the whole game, and even in the uncensored version, all you got later on was a shot of a guy’s bottom and half a nipple. The rest is simply a photostory with truly scary narration created by… I don’t know. I really don’t. Just remember, whoever they were, whatever pit in Hades they crawled out of, they actually wanted to sell this game to actual humans. For human currency. They’d have been better off gift-wrapping their own faeces and calling it Chocolate Surprise.
Brr. Plumbers Don’t Wear Ties. Quite possibly the worst game in the history of all time. And yes, that includes ET. And Big Rigs. And Max Payne.
The Crystal Mess
I don’t normally stick random images and webjunk up on the site, but I’ll make an exception for this one. If you were of TV viewing age during the 90s — or alternatively were a police officer involved in some accident who woke up in 1991* — you watched The Crystal Maze, by order. Or by hiding from your parents, as the case may be. The British version of the atrocious Fort Boyard, it was great, and if you disagree, leave, Satan.
However, what made it fun wasn’t seeing contestants complete great tests of skill. No. It was seeing some of the dumbest people in the history of the world struggling with such basic concepts as ‘reading instructions’, ‘pulling levers’, or ‘walking’. The stupidity of Crystal Maze contestants was legendary, as seen in this spoof, and this all too real clip.
Darwin Awards without the death, that’s what it was.
But what I hadn’t seen was this; a compilation from behind-the-scenes, complete with producers and engineers’ commentary as the teams struggle towards failure. You may have. But I hadn’t. And since I’m in a sharing mood, I share. Thank goodness they were such gentlemen (and ladies) to the poor unfortunates in their charge.
The sound’s a bit quiet, but you can’t argue with the sentiment.
Randomly, there’s a behind the scenes diary of how the show actually worked over here, but I’d recommend not reading it. Like Knightmare — the wonderful, tacky, glorious Knightmare — it’s more fun to pretend it’s an alternate world of discovery and adventure than accept the mattress of lies and deception that all television actually is.
Except for Interceptor, of course. That one was totally convincing.
(* I’m looking forward to the fifth season of the Life on Mars epic, in which a cop from 2011 wakes up two weeks earlier in 2011, mildly confused but basically untroubled.)