We’re going to do something a bit different on tonight’s Showcase. I’m going to show you a pilot and then review it because it’s a good example of something I talk about a lot on this site. A show, movie, or whatever story can be good, but there can still be a reason you don’t like it. Something about it just doesn’t connect with you. You can see the quality and effort. They clearly wanted to make something good, and people rally behind it. And yet for you it doesn’t work. You don’t hate it, it’s not an insult, it’s not you wondering what people see in it. You know what they saw and understand it, and yet it doesn’t work for you, possibly for the same reasons others like it.
That’s me and Gameoverse.
With The Amazing Digital Circus coming to an end, Glitch needs a new series to rally audiences. No TV or streaming animation studio or distributor survived on one show. That’s another show everybody praises but just isn’t for me. I’ve never been interested in watching it. I’ve watched Film Theory episodes about it just for curiosity, but I just wasn’t interested in watching a comedic version of I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream. At least that’s what it looks like to me as an outsider. I only have so much time and my tastes are fully formed. It’s rare that something outside my usual interests works for me, but it has happened. So I watched the Gameoverse pilot an open minded try…and while I see the quality it just wasn’t for me. Why?
Well, let’s watch the pilot first so everyone has seen the same thing. Created by Ross O’Donovan of the Game Grumps, I’ve seen this show compared to Reboot, the Mainframe Entertainment series that on occasion had the heroes going into game worlds as the opponent characters, trying to stop the user from winning in order to keep part of their city of Mainframe (where the animation studio got its name, or maybe in honor of it) from being nullified in the area where a “game cube” fell into and around that section of the city.
This show has a similar premise, but from the pilot it appears to be the main plot instead of an occasional one. Kit is the survivor of such a place. She was her game world’s hero, and she won…so the planet blew up. Now she and her friends, including fellow survivor Kaboodle (a robot backpack), travel to other worlds to stop those heroes from beating the final boss and game overing their world (see what they did there?) However, a group called the Syntax wants the hero to win and the world destroyed…to save their worlds. No, it doesn’t make complete sense, but that’s the mystery surrounding this pilot. Enjoy…and I’ll explain why I didn’t.
Yes, I’m going against the grain. You must be new here. I’m no hipster. I don’t care if something is cool or rejected. I enjoy what I enjoy and I have no problem doing so. I have nothing against the show. It actually looks like a good show.
Let’s start with the animation. Glitch’s other recent pilot, Knights Of Guinevere, showed that Glitch wasn’t just going to do 3D animated work. 2D animation, whether done on paper or with a computer, was used on both projects and done well, especially on a YouTube budget. The character models work, there’s attention to game detail in the “overworld” map on Flappers’ world and other aspects of the world of Gameoverse, and the colors are bright and fun, but can be dark when it needs to be. It’s not overly cutesy even when the world has the potential. There’s balance to handle the fun and serious moments of the story.
We’re focused more on Kit in this pilot, and she’s a great character. Down to her code, she’s a hero, and if can’t save a world by stopping the villain she’ll save as many…people?…as she can. She also has PTSD because she blames herself for her world and most of her friends deleting even though she didn’t know that would happen. Enemies invaded her world and she defended it. This is demonstrated well from her personality to her visions of her old world seen in the village of Flappers’ world. She’s a great character and Erica Lindbeck does a great job giving her life. And you know I love a good suit-up transformation.
I also have no fault with the villain characters. While understanding that the villains believe that helping the villain win and destroying the game world will have beneficial rewards for the gameoverse down the line..for reasons not explained in the pilot…they’re funny and still a decent threat. Well, maybe not Crab Girl. That was just unnecessary. Somebody in the comments caught that Fold represents game manuals–though I would actually say he’s closer to a strategy guide, and Miss Information, already a cute pun, was connected to the help screens in a game, more of those clever references. Fold was also probably the paper that helped Kit and Kaboodle (I just got it) defeat the enemies.
So why isn’t this working for me? I’m seeing a pattern from Glitch after Knights Of Guinnevere, and there’s a reason I didn’t do a Saturday Night Showcase on it despite being decently received. There’s a darkness to their works that just isn’t what I want. In Knights we see the main character’s dreams shattered and things are not what they seem, which is also on display here. Beating the endboss is bad. Basically, the villain must continue to torture the heroes and their NPC friends or something worse happens. The villains need the “Float” (possibly game data) to complete their task. And yet, Warwick offing Snappers like that is proof they are the baddies. It might turn out they’re surviving villains just as Kit, Kaboodle, Gobbles, and now Flappers are surviving heroes.
Compare this to Reboot as others have. In that show, stopping the User from winning the games keeps one sector from being damaged and the locals turned into creatures called “nulls”. It’s still pretty dark, and still requires the heroes of the show to stop the heroes of the game, but the User isn’t really a character, he or she (the idea that Bob wanted to find out about the User was never followed up on) is a plot device, just a faceless threat that probably doesn’t know what’s happening inside their computer because Tron is just a movie with tie-in games to them. If the User wins it’s bad for the heroes but if Bob and company win, the User just shoves off until the next game. There’s no consequence for losing, while in the world of Gameoverse the villains get to continue making lives miserable for the heroes but if the hero achieves final victory the “game” is no longer “replayable” and everything goes boom. The hero destroyed the world by saving it. I’m not fond of that premise. It’s a darker way of taking the idea of the player winning the game being a bad thing for the digital beings inside it.
There’s also a forced element to the danger. Tell the hero that a final defeat of the boss ends the world and they’ll just chase off the villains like some tie-in TV show, needing to come back for the next episode, right? No, apparently doing that freezes the world and causes…I’m not sure what it causes. Did the knowledge allow the Syntax to find them or something else? Apparently the world reboots after awhile sans reveal but somehow that also ends the universe. Why? Is it another of the mysteries? It’s just one that feels like an unnecessary barrier to our show’s heroes having to stop the game’s heroes and protect the game world. I’m the type who would rather go the Captain N route: have the heroes help protect a game world. Maybe we don’t get the final victory. There are things like sequels and DLC in our world, though we don’t know what if any connection the gameoverse has to our world, where it was easy to figure out in Reboot. Do they have a finished idea as to why and how all of this is happening?
Reboot already subverted the same inside-the-game concept that Captain N: The Game Master embraced, but they did in a way that was fun, and episodes were mostly about Bob trying to keep the viruses from conquering or destroying Mainframe. The idea of fighting in the cubes was either an obstacle to the events of the main story to heighten the action and tension or a fun look at various game worlds, that last part being the only thing Gameoverse shares. There’s some good quality stuff, and if this pilot does well enough it may get a full series and decent fanbase if they don’t mess it up somehow. Feel free to enjoy it. It’s just a bit too far into dark subversion and potential deconstruction for me.
Unless I hear something that causes me to give it another try, I may skip this one. Not everything is for everybody and there’s nothing wrong with that. I have other options, and I don’t insist this show is “gatekeeping” me or needs to be reworked for meeeeeeeeeeee. It is what it is, it’ll find a target audience, and hopefully they’ll be happy. It’s not altering something I enjoy because the “games” are all original, inspired by other types of games. Kit & Kaboodle could easily be a Ratchet & Crank clone, but not the actual game, like how Watchmen wasn’t the Charlton characters and that was to its benefit. It’s a good story and they should be proud of what they made. Ultimately it didn’t work for me personally, but as a critic I have nothing bad to say about Gameoverse outside of the Crab Girl gross-out humor. That I didn’t need.
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