Game Over: coming this March to upn, because it won't last until April. I hope. It's called Game Over, after all. Surely they'd choose a title because it was fitting and not just because they thought it makes them look smart and in-touch for having even thought of it. Which, being improper English and the exact same title as that of a higher profile production coming out on DVD just about the same time, it doesn't.
I remember when no one on television gave a pickle about video games, but now that they're all but indistinguishable from the awful television shows people aren't watching in order to play them, suddenly everyone wants a piece. Well, they can have the whole thing. What's on the menu now, pointless, dull, redundant sports simulators for every day of the year (even if you like them for not having time-outs and delays and such, those are probably the next step), all possible ways for army guys to shoot each other and fall down differently each time, and a garbage truck funeral procession of sickeningly phony artificial [celebrity voiced!] personalities who never ever seem to shut up. Oh, but who has the time to press buttons anymore? One day The Sims allowed us to watch fake computer people be dull, and now Game Over allows us to watch faker computer people pretend to be just regular fake computer people being dull. Aw ban, just through my experience of playing an actual video game my life automatically becomes more exciting than their's. Even me typing this and thinking about that is more exciting.
Ehhh, with Warner Bruthas showing cartoons reading cue cards, disney showing monsters forming labour unions, and upn showing video game people doing tax forms or crocheting socks or whatever, I for one, am fed up with the corporate media trying to take the glamour out of jobs that don't exist.
There's an ad that's like six minutes long on UPN (of all places!) for this show. I notice it come on, am momentarily intrigued by the bright colors, and then quickly revert to ignore mode. About three minutes later, I realize the show I came to see has not resumed, and the same ad that was on before still is. I legitimately fear whatever twunk I was watching has been cancelled mid-show and replaced by this. I mean, this same channel cut out a sizable portion of the same show back in September to premier The Mullets, after all. (which, shock above shock, returns with new episodes directly following the Game Over premier) And... I can't say for certain the same thing isn't happening again with this more general insult, since the other commercial breaks certainly didn't get any shorter. But after a while (quite some while) my show comes back, and I forget about its lethal whore spot. Until next week, when the same feature length asinine clipfest comes on at the same time and lasts just as long. In case I missed it before, I suppose.
Watch as they touch their faces IN 3-D! Ehhh, Upn's lawyers told uPN that if they specify "prime-time" they can claim this show is the first of its kind, and then to just hope no one remembers there's actually been a sheik-load of shows like this in the past few years. Of course, those all aired earlier or later in the day, and isn't that what's really important?
Oh, I get it. I must have seen the “trailer.” Just like in a movie theatre, except there I would not hold the length against it as long it was safely segregated away with all the other trailer trash. For a show that panders to people with no attention spans, it sure does have some long advertisements. This is seriously the longest one I've ever seen that didn't have an in-studio audience or telephone number. Right at the beginning, before I realize it's Rotato size, the race-car driver guy gets punched down and says, with the same comically crossed eyes he has up there on the right (before getting punched), "I hate shopping in Vice City." In context, that line might have had a chance. However, five more minutes, and that's the only reference to any game I've heard of. I'd like to see Mike Haggar get hit by an ICBM, fall down, get up, punch a barrel (which explodes at his punch, but not the ICBM), eat the unharmed cupcake that was under it, and be well again (maybe challenge the NBC medical drama monopoly with this concept). Instead, we get Shaolin monks doing yard work. I don't get it. Don't misunderstand me, that's plenty nutty and zany, but it's not mocking any game I've played or, you know, funny (my suggestion was at least somewhat accurate). This is looking more like an alternate superbbowl ad universe than anything else. Another idea I had, maybe Impossimole comes close to ultimate triumph (I don't know what that would be, since I couldn't get that far), fails, tries again, fails again, and spasms uncontrollably whilst the controller is thrown against a wall several times, instead of the "Argo is brah shopping with her dad! Giggle titter titter!" segment. Undeed, I haven't played any recent games; maybe they befit the sit-com format better than I'd like to think. Still, a parralel universe ought to have retro phases, or at least its fair share of insufferable old (10+ years) people who hate newer video games. Maybe there are goth-like groups who spend their lives re-enacting the medieval age of Crazy Climber and vs. Duck Hunt. It's a start. But even that wouldn't be enough. A special "all minor villains pacing left and right on floating platforms hoping hero walks into them" episode won't be entertaining if that's all it is. Hey, look. An actual unrealistic situation imitated. Some smarmy announcer telling me how weird that is and how pathetic my life is in comparison isn't going to make the difference.
Yeh, in the event you were wondering how a caucasian sub-urban nuclear family could be "far from ordinary," yet another advertisement tells the story.
I hope you didn't actually download and listen to that. Look, I've transcribed it!
(just your average average family music) The Smashenburns are just your average family
With a name like that? Who'd have thought to put a Luxembourgian household on televison? Brilliant!
except they battle evil mutants,
You mean more evil and mutated than them?
cook with laser cannons,
From my experience, the more excitement you get from preparing the food, the worse it tastes. I went to a Japanese restaurant once, and some chef guy comes over to our Segregato brand conversation-impossible divided table and he's juggling eggs and twirling a big knife around and pulling shrimp out of his ears and... why ruin the evening? Next time I leave right after the show.
escape fiery crashes,
Big deal, I could do that, given the opportunity. If only more people hated me!
push BMX beyond extreme.
Whoa whoa whoa, slow down there fella. I dare say BMX can't get any more extreme than it already is! What you say is nonsense! Oom, unless there are bandit kings involved, and I doubt that.
Behhh, at last a reference for my time, and it's this one:
Oh, fun!
Even the voice doesn't sound so impressed with this one. I guess in the future Tomagotchi has expanded to artificially recreate every unrewarding household hassle, for people who just don't hate their lives enough.
chase ninjas from the hedges,
I think your series's success is in serious jeopardy when your checklist of wackiness contains elements that have already been not laughed at in McDonald's commercials.
drive a heavily armed minivan,
So what. So did the ninja turtles (I don't suppose the ones in the hedges are turtles?). And I doubt the Smashenburnsenflugens have a great name like Turtle Van to refer to their vehicle as.
and live in a world where off-duty characters ready themselves for yet another day of video game mayhem!
If they ready themselves for "video game mayhem" while "off-duty," why do I always have to waste so much time building levels and buying things? Is that what the mayhem is? They ready themselves to ready themselves?
(music trying too hard to be in contrast again) Other than that, they're just like you and me!
I am rather offended that you'd imply I am like you, announcer guy. Anyho, I hate that the only way to deconstruct something is to place it in a totally typical environment. We wouldn't want to accidentally make them remotely interesting, would we. Following a family living in the disadvantaged Copysoft section of town or making one of the kids a bootleg might distract us from all the unconditional insanity that otherwise might not be so obvious, right?
Game Over, bleh beh beh eep kill me fop fope They're normal, just more animated!
We can't be shown anything abnormal unless it's in a context of the insufferably ababnormal, and even then we need a doy voice-over to tell us how strange it is. If I was going to find it at all strange, it wasn't because some dipe told me so. It's not that subtle. It's not any subtle. Even the word subtle is too subtle. I should spell it suddul. Ha ha, sud-dull. I enjoyed that too much.
Cool!
No.
It would be interesting to see how a "video game world" is portrayed without showing or even acknowledging the existense of a single licenced character oh wait. It wouldn't. No, really, I understand that UPN would need to pay additional money to be permitted to mention a specific stupid gameplay gimmick or get any recognizable fake person to show up (they have more rights than real ones, apparently). That's perfectly underfortunate for upn, isn't it.
I could go on, but first of all, I don't want to, and I'd hate to accidentally throw a good idea out here and risk someone from the show reading it (this is uPn, after all) and prolonging my pain with it.
More on this as it develops, hopefully not.
The patriarch of the family, Your typical video game hero, a... racing-car driver? All the popular race game characters I know of either wear brightly colored over-alls or have animal heads. Not surprisingly, "Ver" here is sorely lacking in sponsors.
If you want any proof this game is based on The Sims and little else, I invite you to tell me what this vacant staring lerp's purpose is. At least the first guy was in uniform; all this one seems dressed to do is attend parent-teacher conferences and embody 1950s gender stereotypes.
A shred of accidental research reveals that she's actually a secret agent! Oooh. In whoever's words a "Lara Croft rip-off." Fine, embody 1990s gender stereotypes then. Elizabeth Cady Stanton is too dead to cry herself to sleep, anyway.
I wish this one was real just so I could kill him. Whether I mean real person or real video game character is not relevant at this time. this one is here to represent the generic, juvenile protaganists of games like Paperboy, Menace Beach or Bart Vs. the Space Mutants: the kind that shouldn't have been made.
Huh? The guerilla mercenary of the family, I guess. I assume this character and a few thousand palette-swapped clones spend a majority of the program running onto the screen from the right, getting shot and blowing up.
Ah, here's an interesting one. A former fast running, robot stomping, shiny object collecting mascot character who's grown old and jaded by the business. Or maybe just a rip-off of Triumph the Insult Comic Dog (who's likely a potential subject for the latest shovelware gameboy advance title as we speak, and... hold on... there, it's probably done now). Either way, I know better than to watch a show with this many Shrec points if it has a beaver on it.
We got sleeze-incarnate Artie Lange as the voice of this ironically named pet creature. I admit I don't know what the character is actually called, but feel free to send me a virus if it's nothing along the lines of "Fluffy" or "Spot." (it's "Turbo." Five days of "free viagra" e-mails and I'll call us even then) I also don't know if Artie Lange's is really the voice I heard, or if it's someone just meant to sound like he does. But I'll tell you, there's a person who talks like Artie Lange, with the same sense of humor as Artie Lange and who could use the work, and that's Artie Lange, so why not? I don't think I've ever typed his name before. I wonder if I ever shall again.
Only through the magic of computers and in an alternate universe would a family as white as the Smashenburns consider recommending anything else on upn.
