For those who are not in the know, there is a new 'reality' show on Sci Fi that premiered last night. For those further not in the know, it is a show that pits some of the best professional and not so professional gamers in a weekly challenge based show to let them prove they are the Ultimate Gamer. It mixes in real world versions of games, paint ball for FPS, actual Car racing for racing games, real guitar for Rock Band. You get the gist. They all get scored on both the real world and gaming challenges and then the worst score gets pitted against someone else chosen by the one with the best score. Looser goes home. Now that you are caught up, here's what I have to say about last nights show.
While it has been poorly received by the gaming community for the most part, it was actually a decent show, for a 'reality' show. Granted part of it is because the participants are people I've either met or know as a force in the gaming scene, so I'm a little pulled in by that. Take a look at the cast and you will most likely know a few faces there. But that's not what this is all about.
Last night was all about rocking out with Rock Band 2 and answering, albeit minor, the question if Rock Band players can actually shred on a real guitar. Which of course was a little more shocking than I was expecting. I'll admit I was expecting much worse, like all bands to do as poorly as Pandora Rox, the band that performed the worst, but the other two, Pirates vs. Ninjas and Napalm in the Morning, did really well for having a short time to learn the cords and everything for the Donnas' song New Kid in School. Apparently so did the Donnas who were the judges for the performances. Napalm in the Morning even got the compliment that they couldn't even hear any flaws in the instruments. Which goes to show you that there is something to playing the game and being able to hop into a real guitar.
I will say that the actual portions that showed the practice time and performances of the gaming part of the challenge was extremely short and not cut together all that well. In fact they kept showing the screens of people doing very poorly on Rock Band. Even when it was someone playing that is one of the higher ranked players for the game. Which of course would not have been all that much of a bother except they made it a fact to mention that many times during the show so there was no real display of how good some of these people are. But it would seem that time was more of a factor for the edits here.
Also something that seemed crazy edited out, and I actually prefer it a little bit, is all of the crazy in house drama. There was little to be seen between personal interactions, at least those forced to get ratings, of the members of the cast. Yes there were little things like alliances and a short thing on some history between a few people, but nothing really all that dramatic like in many other shows. But this could all be just to tease for when more of the cast is let to go home. We'll just see in future episodes I guess.
As for the ending to this premiere, of course one went home after an interesting way to start the elimination portion of the game. Prod1gy X, scored the lowest out of both challenges, and KosherHamm, chosen by the highest scorer sWooZie, were pitted in a rock off challenge against each other. In the end Prod1gy X pwned the hell out of KosherHamm having triple the score in the end. Which came as no real surprise as it is one of his strong areas. The bigger surprise was the fact that he scored the lowest in the actual challenges. But then again, he did say that he wasn't really trying all that hard when it came to the team challenges. Looks like he might just be looking to survive by winning the one on one games.
I will say that I kind of wish that StarSlay3r would have been chosen to go into the challenge. Not because I wanted to see her be put up for elimination, but to see her go to town on the game. Something that wasn't really shown in the way it was edited. But we can't always get what we want in this world can we.
In conclusion, good luck to the rest of the contestants and to end this out, a small bio from their website of the player that got Rocked Off in a way only Tenacious D could have done.
As a football coach, JD is a role model for the kids that he coaches. Everything is about winning for JD. He will only settle for the best out of others and for himself (he lettered in six different sports in high school). JD’s strategy in WCG ULTIMATE GAMER is to intimidate the other gamers to throw them off their game, and then “dominate the house with my skills.” If he wins, JD will pay off his debts and travel the world.
Interesting Fact: JD lettered in six different sports in high school.
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