Friday, May 1, 2009

WCG Ultimate Gamer


WCG Ultimate Gamer's season finale just ended recently and I've been reserving my judgement till the end since I was on the fence about it. WCG Ultimate Gamer aired on the Sci Fi channel and ran 8 episodes complete with scenester drama, ridiculous challenges, and dare I say, some pretty hot gamer chicks?


Not all was lost. I actually enjoyed the show aside from the douchebaggery (more about that later). WCG had gamers running through real-life and game challenges at the same time to compete for the ultimate prize, $100,000, the ultimate Samsung package and a chance to be sent to China for the WCG International finals to compete on Team USA? I forget the details but it was probably because I had major product placement shoved down my throat ( again, more on that laters). WCG actually did a lot of things right for a gaming competiton. For one, they did a really good job of actually showing the gameplay between the matches and how they progressed as opposed to just showing "exciting game sequences" and intercutting them with the "gamer reactions". Biggest offender? MLG. The commentary to it wasn't so bad either, I didn't hate the hosts like I thought I would. I guess after seeing so much gaming on TV fail so bad, I expected to really hate the show and to be honest I didn't.



The show had its ups and downs for the group morality. I'm not completely sure if I needed the "drama" to keep me watching. What forced a lot of the gamers to hate or like eachother was the fact that the one who performed best had a choice to send whoever they wanted against the last place loser. So this made a lot of the them nervous, angry, and scared for the most part but overall I still didn't see a real reason to have a system like that in there, unless the producers wanted to push the drama in there to keep the ratings going?



Comin back to that douchebaggery. Trash/shit/smack talkers are annoying as hell and Zofag123, or Jamal, looks like he could use an asswhooping. The dude was making claims that were complete B.S. I actually question as to why a 30 year-old dumbf**k would constantly poke a fight with a 20 year-old about "whos got the skills" or however he tried to spin it. I found myself rooting for Swoozie and Prod1gy since there were tight. The only other downer was the constant ads. They plaayed in the Samsung arena, played bluetooth challenges on Samsung phones, won a Samsung phone to call home with, and played on Samsung TVs. I own one myself but the product placement was annoying after the 3rd episode. They stuck in commercials for the headsets they were using but I care less to even look up what brand it was.


Was it worth putting in the time to watch it? Sure. Would I reccomend it? Sure. The guys and girls on there are professional gamers in their respective fields and it was good to watch. It still doesnt have that "it" factor to really make us feel proud about playing games but its a start. Hopefully they can make some significant changes to the second season and make it passable, instead of just watchable.



Missed out on the season? You can catch all the episodes and extras at Hulu.com.

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