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March 28, 2024, 10:17:41 AM

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VideoGaiden, eh?

Started by lazarou, December 31, 2015, 05:56:28 PM

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Obel

I think this is series 4. I seem to recall it had three prior seasons on BBC Scotland.

I'm comfortable saying this is the best video game review series I've ever seen. It's fantastic, such a great style to it. I love Rab's board game reviews too. I bought Coup on the strength of his review and played it last night for the first time, it's absolutely fantastic.

<3<3<3

Bazooka

I like it but it is far too short to make the reviews worthwhile, whilst cramming it in with the other elements of the programme.

Shay Chaise

I expect I'm their target audience. Thirty something, takes games quite seriously as an artform, passionate about it, craves stimulating discussion, enjoys reasonably subtle humour, penchant for the poetic and philosophical, mixture of high and low register and tone.

I don't know why it leaves me so cold then. Maybe because it feels quite studied, almost ticks the boxes too readily. Ah, here's the wistful bit. Here's the surreal humour. Here's the impassioned defence for gaming. I'd prefer less hyperbole and a bit more discussion between the two instead of a series of artful vignettes.

Neil

Started watching these today as they popped up on the Xbox dashboard, and initially felt the same as Shay.

They definitely laid some eggs; they are way too intense and cringey at times, and the kettle sequence in episode 2 made me want to vomit. However, they had something, and I ended up watching the five available episodes, back to back, and really got into them. I'd heard a lot of positive stuff about VG and Consolevania (mostly from Kelvin), and this has convinced me to go back and check them out.

So yeah, they went up their own arses a bit too ferociously in the first episode, but they definitely won me over as the series progressed. Must dig out that great Rab Florence parody of people like PewDiePie now, loved that.


Oh, should probably mention that I'm predisposed to hate a lot of video game critiques, which I know is weird given how seriously I've taken comedy reviews in the past. I've just always found a lot of video game journalists to be absolute tossers, particularly when they had that fucking movement some years back where they tried to bring some kind of gonzo journalism in and rebrand it "New Games Journalism", or whatever, and they all started crafting these shit narratives around their game-playing, and you just wanted to hear if the actual game was any fucking good or not, and to find Kieron Gillen and punch him in his stupid balls.

lazarou

#34
You might get a chuckle out of this old bit of theirs then.

Neil

THANK YOU. That's fucking beautiful.

I was actually thinking about my boy-hood admiration for Jaz Rignall as I wrote the above.

Definitely going through all their old stuff now, and really looking forward to the last episode of this current series.

Kelvin

Quote from: Neil on April 06, 2016, 06:39:44 PM
I'd heard a lot of positive stuff about VG and Consolevania (mostly from Kelvin), and this has convinced me to go back and check them out.

I've never been a fan of videogaiden. It's like Consolevania with all the energy sucked out. As you say, though, I was a massive fan of Consolevania; specifically series 2. If you do go back, I'd be tempted to skip series 1, as it was really rough around the edges. It was series 2 where it became something really special; great sketches, memorable reviews, smart commentary. Series 3 was really good, too. 

lazarou

Series 1 does have its moments, but yeah, it's very patchy and the production is all over the place. Proabbly best to revisit after the others if you're coming in fresh.

Bhazor

The best thing about Consolevania was always the daft bits between the reviews. Rabs reviews were always pretty dull and wank hat, which has continued into this new series of Videogaiden. Ryan was a bit better, even his gushing reviews had funny moments. But its the wierd sketches and links that made the show. So when Videogaiden became much more review focused it always felt they were missing the point. Then theres the idea that Rab quit because he didn't want to "batter shit games" anymore and it really felt like they misunderstood why people liked the show.

I will say the Videogaiden Christmas special is probably their single best episode and it does bring back the manicness of the early Consolevania stuff. Just the opening song cracks me up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocCVfCCrrs0&nohtml5=False

Osmium

TV episode on BBC 2 Scotland now, it's good to see the boys on proper telly.



Kelvin


Rev

Banging.  I did think the other day that if the BBC were picking up VideoGaiden again we'd have probably heard something by around now, so that'll be a no.  As good as that series turned out, it was tethered a bit to providing reviews and proper 'content' and such, so let's hope that this turns out to be properly peculiar.

Bhazor

Hope they remember to be funny this time. Or at least cut down Rab's wank hat reviews.

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

I like the reviews, wankhat and all. I think I bought more games based on their recommendation than anything else since Digitizer ended.

A thought just occurred. Will they be distributing it on Youtube? If so, they presumably won't be able to use music like they used to. That'd be a shame.

Penfold

Unless i'm reading the Patreon page wrong it'll only be available to backers so not sure how they will distribute it. A few places use unlisted youtube links but that's not very secure so they might use another service.

Rev

It won't just be available to backers, that'd be madness.  Backers appear to get early access to the episodes, through some sort of other channel than the standard one.

I don't think this necessarily will be on Youtube, although that's kind of the default option.  The original series never was until people uploaded it after the fact.  Maybe it'll be traditional, and will be a case of downloading something rather than streaming it.

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

I always felt like downloading it added to the anticipation of seeing each new episode. Of course this was back in the murky past, when broadband was rather less broad and videos could take a good few hours to download.

Kelvin

Hope they return to the longer format, rather than the more segmented approach they took for series 3. It's one of the things that made them stand out from the rest of internet comedy, which is now even more heavily focussed on quick sketches or isolated concepts than it was when the original series were made. Series 2 was particularly impressive, in that it even had a series arc.

Penfold

Quote from: Rev on January 28, 2017, 02:23:10 AM
It won't just be available to backers, that'd be madness.  Backers appear to get early access to the episodes, through some sort of other channel than the standard one.

I don't think this necessarily will be on Youtube, although that's kind of the default option.  The original series never was until people uploaded it after the fact.  Maybe it'll be traditional, and will be a case of downloading something rather than streaming it.

www.patreon.com/consolevania

I don't know, the rewards mention exclusive access rather than early access and there's this part at the end of their plans.

QuoteSo - you have a choice! You can choose not to back us, cross your fingers that enough other people do, and wait until the episodes inevitably sneak out onto the internet in some form or other like we're a new HBO series or something.

OR, you can get involved properly! Back us up, become part of the family, get access to the episodes the minute they arrive, see all the behind-the-scenes carry-on, and maybe even get a credit in the show itself! How good would that feel?

So it doesn't sound like they currently plan on releasing it themselves.


Rev

Turns out you were right all along, which seems like a plain weird decision.  If it's only available to backers the audience is more likely to shrink than to grow, isn't it?  Doing a more standard 'first look' kind of thing would probably have drawn the same donations, after all.  Maybe they'll do the whole series this way then release them into the wild when it's over.

As for the thing itself...  it's good stuff, but something's a little off.  I think it's mainly that I never really thought of Consolevania as a 'format' as such, more a show that went wherever their whims took them.  This does feel like they're getting back into, if not a format exactly, then a distinct house style that they feel has to be replicated.  Or maybe it just needs to settle a bit, first episode and all that.

Old Nehamkin

Yeah, it seems like a bizarrely counter-productive strategy that's going to make it very difficult to attract any interest from people who weren't already fans. Like you said, I doubt they would have raised any less money if they'd taken the more standard approach of releasing the episodes for free and giving the backers early access and behind the scenes stuff. In fact I imagine that's what most of the backers assumed was going to be the case anyway.

Quote from: RevMaybe they'll do the whole series this way then release them into the wild when it's over.

Maybe, but you'd think with a topical review show you'd want the episodes to get as much exposure as possible on the week they come out.


Kelvin

Quote from: Shay Chaise on February 19, 2017, 10:40:54 AM
Or just do a podcast.

Presumably they're still doing sketches and stuff, though. A big part of the appeal of Consolevania series 2 and 3 was the sheer energy and variety of it all. A podcast could never capture that same style. Although I haven't seen the new episode, so it's possible that it's changed so much that's no longer true.

Rev

Apart from the addition of Gerry as a reviewer it hasn't changed at all, is the thing.  Reviews still have sketches leading into them, there are links with them standing about with (a new) coathanger mic, it's awash with pop hits and blue-eyed soul, and there are cut-ups of games industry promotional bollocks and various stand-alone sketches.  The only difference, I'd say, is that the pace is slower:  the individual bits and pieces tend to stick around for a lot longer than they would have 'back in the day'.

It's a bit of an example of getting what you want and still not being happy.  You'd expect it to have returned in a very different form but they're making a deliberate effort to make it exactly like series 2, which is both welcome and oddly disappointing.  Mind you, this could be a case of lulling us into a false sense of security.

Bhazor

Well going back to the old days is still better than the self depreciating TV show. Not seen it because I'm a tight bastard who doesn't pay in advance.

FredNurke

Reviving this to say that they've started to put the 2017 series of Consolevania up on Youtube, as well as old episodes and some other stuff: the channel is here. Only episode 4.1 is there at the moment, but more are on their way. Given that the vast majority of the supporters who spoke up were in favour of a shorter gap between limited release and general release, I suspect they might reduce it from the current 12 months to something like 3-6 months.

They also announced in the January episode that they're going to be doing a film about e-sports. I'm just sorry they never did the one about Hovver Bovver they were thinking about.

brat-sampson

Damn, I'm only a few mins into this first episode and am wondering how long it'll even last on Youtube. The graphic Frozen-porn Switch ad's very funny, but man.

Kelvin

Can't wait to watch the first ep of series 4. So glad they put them up on youtube.

As for their earlier stuff, I'll definitely be watching series 2 and 3 again when they upload them. Will skip series 1 as it's really not very good in the main. I'm sure they'll all be taken down with copyright strikes, though. They used music throughout everything.