Gamesmaster

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.