Gamesmaster

It has enough of the flavour of the original to be passable. C-list celebs you've never heard of (I only know who Snoochie is because she's currently holed up in a Welsh castle on I'm A Celeb) getting pasted at a game they clearly haven't played much by a kid (Big Boy Barry's son no less!). The Gamesmaster character has some very dry snarky lines ("I prefer mayonaise"). Trevor McDonald even sounds like he has some clue what he's talking about but I guess that's the result of hiring a newsreader. Nice to see the return of the Golden Joystick trophies (they're either 3D printed or the production team have been scouring car boot sales across the country). The underlying naffness of the original is there too.
The game hints section from the old series has gone but that always felt like filler anyway. I could do without being told about adaptive game music or what FPS is an acronym for. The VR segment was OK and Beat Saber is available on other platforms but if it starts being all Quest exclusive games it'll get grating. The problem with video game reviews on TV shows is that they're nearly always out of date by broadcast - despite what was said about racing games being an under-served genre there are plenty of racing games out at the moment - that Hot Wheels game was only just released and is huge. The show doesn't have the frenetic energy of the original. It's not exactly Pipe & Slippers Master but it could do with tighter editing and not being a whole hour. There's a daytime TV feel to some of the presenting.

I haven't seen this, and probably won't get to, but I feel that I would miss Diamond's snarky off centre humour from this new one. But I do like Trevor McD, would see it for that presence as I can imagine him being pretty great as GM.

Isn't Quest the wireless VR though, maybe it's a tech production reason why they used it?

The series is sponsored by Oculus Meta Quest. It's a lot more blatant on YouTube, but there's been a steady rise in content where a channel is sponsored by Company X and "oh look we just happen to have a 10 minute segment about how great this particular product by Company X is". There are stricter regulations for broadcast TV but it's still something I find myself noticing.
Using a wireless VR headset meant they were able to shoot the gameplay segments on a greenscreen and show the Beat Saber players in the game from a third person perspective. But the guy they had on specifically because he could beat a particular level at Expert+ was only shown playing that level for about 15 seconds. As I said, the show could use a bit of editing.

oh here's the BeatSaber segment
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hraT57bE1Fk

and if to underline the increasing pointlessness of watching TV - the clip above is an extended verion of the segment that was broadcast. Sam Tuff's dad wasn't interviewed in the programme.

in virtual reality a ninja chops relentless flying blocks with perfect accuracy

in actual reality an overweight man baby waves his arms about whilst his dad looks on bewildered

I almost couldn't be arsed to watch the second episode of this, but I just skimmed through it on the E4 YT channel. The challengers are rando content creators I've scarcely heard of consistently getting creamed at games I've scarcely heard of. The exception being the guy who won a Golden Joystick on the original series in 1994 who came back and won again. That was top quality. Surprisingly this reboot almost seems to be at it's best when it's referencing it's past iteration. Also I'm surprised to find myself wanting to see more of the co-presenters - I thought they'd be irritating but that's not the case. What was irritating was the extended OLED Switch segment, I suspect the reason why there was a notice about the show containing product promotion in the YT edit. In summary this show is diverting entertainment but it could use some editing, particularly in the challenge sections. The original was much more rack 'em up ship 'em out but in the new show there's a lot of pre-game chat that doesn't add anything.

So three episodes and done then, seemingly by design.

terrible idea: a retro version set in 1979 with a CGI recreation of Reginald Bosenquet as the Gamesmaster

this all suffered from being mostly the kind of games i have no interest in - realistic FPSs and fighting.

and fifa

but i guess that only leaves platformer time trials like the mario one. (and shmups, did they have any shmups?)

bring back Go 8-Bit, that was more my style

I don't like football videogames or even football, but I think the FIFA challenge came close to being interesting because it was so hard and it was also explained why it was so hard, and the challenger was someone who plays the game as an e-sport professionally at the top level. But then he failed to beat the challenge and despite the commentary it just looked like someone getting beaten at a videogame.

I mean maybe it was entertaining for anyone who plays a lot of FIFA, but for me it felt no different to watching someone's grandad get rinsed at Sensible Soccer.

Having two fighting game challenges in one episode didn't help either. What is this, NeoGeoMaster? Again, if you're a fighting game afficionado then Street Fighter and Tekken might be completely different to each other, but as someone who doesn't care much about fighters either it was a bit repetitive.