(In response to the Iliad strip e-mail...)
I don't know if I'm the only one, but I've been watching quite a lot of G4
and I have to admit, it's better than the channel it replaced.
The best of Tech TV (minus CFH at least) is still there. X-Play,
Screensavers, Fresh Gear and The Tech Of.
G4 has added quite a few decent shows to the mix...along with some that are
as weak as the Iliad strip indicates.
Icons is the best in my opinion. It's an excellent hour-long series that
runs down the careers of some of the greatest videogame personalities,
creators, companies, consoles and series, a la Titans of Tech or Headliners
and Legends. Good stuff man. Not comical or low-browed at all. Mature
documentary style with interviews from around the industry etc. So far I've
seen them do Gameboy (with extensive stuff about the guy behind the system),
Sonic and his creator Yuji Naka, EA (which was great), and some other
developer. Can't wait to see them do Hideo Kojima or the man himself Shigeru
Miyamoto. Miyamoto go HADDA be a two or three-parter.
Judgement Day is basically a more mature X-Play with two guys who debate
their views of the game, as well as peripherals. Cynically humorous,
sometimes edgy, probably better than X-Play.
The Pulse is a decent weekly hour-long videogame News show with two
relatively entertaining hosts. Always informative, sometimes amusing.
Definitely worth a watch, even if you may have already read plenty of the
news online by the time it airs.
Sweat (Sweat!) is all about sports games. Looks okay, but I'm not really
into sports games. Plenty athlete interviews. Looks like it fills a niche
well.
Cheats is here and there. It's better for the younger folk I guess. It's all
about Cheats, tips and strategy guides. I watch it because it has some of
the best and longest gameplay clips of all of the shows. The host is very
annoying. Very annoying.
Cinematheque is basically Euro TV. Clips and trailers from games old, new,
and upcoming. No hosts. Just clips and trailers. There was a clip of a PC
game from the mid-nineties, which should tell you how far back it goes.
Decent stuff to sit back and chill with.
Arena is basically a multiplayer competitive show that pits teams against
each other for prizes. It's okay.
Electric Playground is yet another review show. It's decent.
Then there's Filter, which has good content but a terrible (albeit
good-looking) host. It's basically a VH1 "Top 10 List" type show, with a
particular genre or category (Top Ten Basketball Games, Top Ten Trippiest
Games, Top Ten Best Music), and it has the same style of irreverent
interviews with industry figures and "celebrities" as the VH1 shows.
It straddles the line between pop and gaming.
"Players" crosses that line. It's more or less shit. Interviews with
celebrities who play games, and a bunch of other "reality TV" stuff. I've
never sat through a whole episode...it's annoying and patronising bullshit.
G4TV.Com is probably the show that the strip was referring to. Two
relatively attractive young women with questionable gaming pedigrees
pretending to be gung-ho gamer-girls but just looking stupid. Haven't been
able to sit through a full episode of this either, but it looks like they
just do previews and features.
And that's about the rundown.
No wait...there's a show called Portal that I saw last night for the first
time. It's...WTF? No really...WTMC? Is basically some kinda weird MST3K
kinda parody show that uses character models from games and puts (rarely)
comical voiceovers to them to make some kinda weird dimension-hopping sci-fi
fantasy saga. This is some weird shit. Would probably go good with a
five-piece and two Stag, but as it is now, it belongs in that late-as-hell
timeslot it's on.
Can't believe I remembered all of those shows offhand.
Baego, it would be good to cap some of the episodes of Icons and put them up
on Euro TV. Great stuff for any gamer. That is the type of show we need.
Takin Gaming to the A&E charts.
