I'm sure that just about every dreamer on our board here has either seen X-Play, or at least heard of it at one point or another.

For those of you who are somehow in the dark on what X-Play is, it's the craptacular misadventures of Adam Sessler and Morgan Webb... Two people who have somehow been qualified to not only review games, but share their thoughts with us via cable television.

For the most part the show has moments of decency... But it seems that just about all of the time that the reviews are either one sided, don't actually delve into what the game is about, or make any good points as to the positives and negatives of gameplay. Adam and Morgan just seem to ramble on and have some little funny skits in their reviews, but it just seems like filler to me instead of what we should actually be getting.

Most of their reviews, being on a 5 point scale, also seem to be very vague. I can't remember the last time I didn't go through an episode hearing Adam shout out " 3 out of 5 " over and over again... And it seems that's the score that they're pretty much liable to give to any game, reguardless of how good it is.

The only positive thing I can think of is there previews... Most of the time they're no nonsense and actually tell you what the game is about! What a novel idea.

Anyway, I think the show isn't too much of a help to gamers. I don't mind watching it if I'm stoned because they say some pretty goofy stuff and sometimes the little skits can be funny... But for the most part I think they REALLY need to concentrate on how they review games and give the gamers out there a real reason to religiously watch the show.

I dunno, what do you guys think?

I pretty much agree with you about this one. I never really take their word for it on reviews. Like you said, they seem to just be there to be funny and don't seem to have any idea what they are talking about when reviewing games. I do like to hear what they think about the games, so it might give me a little push in the direction of buying a good one or a push in the other direction. I wouldn't watch a review of a game from them and just go out and buy it thats for sure. I need to do a bit of research before I pick up a game, and they don't seem to be much help there.

I think it varies review to review. They do tell the high and low points of the games, most of the time, unless it's an absurd game that is crap from the start. I think the reason a lot of games get 3 out of 5 is because most games today are average. Very rarely do you see a game that's not high profile that is worthy of a 5 out of 5. One reason I stopped gaming for a while is because most games aren't worth it to me right now.

What you have to understand about X-Play, though, is most of the time, Adam and Morgan don't write the reviews. They have writers and they're the personalities. This isn't the case all of the time, though, as they've both been in this business for a while now. If you were to have a conversation with them on the street, I'm sure they'd know what they're talking about. Morgan isn't just the "girl" of the show, because she knows her stuff. Her blog/Myspace can attest to that. Not to mention she used to work for TECH TV which wasn't about having "models" as much as G4 always was.

I think the quality of the shows have gone down since the new year started and I had a topic about the channel in general a few weeks back. I don't think a set change was required for X-Play as their new set looks pretty boring.

The skits are pretty funny for the most part, and tend to be related to the reviews, so I have no problem with them. I like the show, as it's one of the only ones worth watching on G4, now. I used to watch Attack of the Show more, but not anymore, 'cause it kind of blows now. Kevin is the only redeeming thing about it. I'll stick with Adam and Morgan a little longer, though.

What's ridiculous is ****ing Filter. That show sucks pretty bad now.

I always thought that scaling a game from 1 to 5 tends to be really vague since they always give it at exact 2, 3 or 4 unlike compared to a 10 scale rating.

On some occasion they are fair in their reviews like the MC:ToB which they gave a 2, or was it 3, and they pointed issues that I think hurt the game badly. While their review on ToL was quite funny like giving Senel the Videogame groping award but I can somewhat disagree with their rating. ^^;; Use decimals plzzzzzz......!!111oneone

Meh, the show is focused on entertainment, not cold hard gaming reviews, despite the show being about game reviews. It's about having fun, and the fun of the game industry more then it ever really was about deciding which games are better than others.

If you really want a cold hard review show that talks explicitly about the pros and cons of each game and leave the funny out of it, I'd imagine you'd have a pretty boring show for most except die-hard game fans.
Personally, I prefer a rating out of 100%, not something as simple as out of 5 or even out of 10. The old format for PC Powerplay (Australian PC game review magazine) did a 100% score with 80%+ being a distinction award and 90%+ being high distinction.

But anyway, the reviews, the skits, the parodies, the satire, the personalities, the voice-over guy, the repetitive game sounds and intern characters are all there for entertainment first, actual reviews second. It is TV, after all.

I still enjoy it, although I think the game industry has taken a slide and it's affected the formatting of the show in a bad way.

When G4 bought Tech TV, we lost X-play in Australia for about a year or longer until an action sports channel bought the rights to air it again after a pretty big fan campaign for it (Back by popular demand!).

i only watch X-Play because usually there's nothing on to watch...

i never took their reveiws to heart. some scores i completely disagree with...
DQVIII got a 5/5- and it was total crap.
WA: ACF got a 3/5- and they couldn't stop with Brokeback Mt. jokes.

Alter Code F was definitely better than the nap-tastic DQ8.

X-Play is better than Judgement Day, despite the fact that Judgement Day is supposed to be the more serious of the two, this Tommy character that they have on the show makes it suck all together as he isn't even funny.

But meh, like someone said before, it's very variable. Some reviews are more vauge than the actual scores. You hear them blabber on and on, and it looks like the game will get a 2 or a 3, it gets a 4. The one thing Judgement Day got right was to put the little recap of "Pros and Cons" at the end of every review, and if X-Play had that, it'd be a bit better that you'd still know what the game is all about if you didn't wanna watch some of their stupid jokes.

Although I did like that one Breakfast Club parody they did and reviewed compilations of old games that people played in the late 80s and early 90s.

I have to agree with Dart on this one. I think that the show is more for comedy than actual game reviews. You've gotta admit, though, it can get pretty funny. They do go in depth with games that score a 5 out of 5, though. Their review of Halo was fantastic. And they do get the point through sometimes. In their review of RPG Maker III, they were the ones that brought me to the realization that nobody wanted to play my game, and I didn't even want to play my game, which I didn't get through buying and playing the first two. Also, their pre-view of Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga got me to play the game, which got me to buy Nocturne and DDS2 as well. Since this happened, I can't say that they are all that bad.

My problem with it being so focused on the entertainment factor is that it's not entertaining enough to me to really have that being the main focus point of the show. They either need to get some new writers and concentrate more on keeping us entertained ( Make it two chick reviewers instead of one, have them wear skimpy clothing... That's entertainment. ) or really place their focus on the games themselves and get a little more in depth with their reviews. There's been several reviews I've seen where they hardly make ANY comment on the game whatsoever, say stupid crap for 5 minutes, and then the game gets a magical 3/5 leaving me to wonder how it received that score.

It's about having fun, and the fun of the game industry more then it ever really was about deciding which games are better than others.



Yeah, you know my problem with that is that I'd imagine that most people who watch G4 are avid gamers... So how would it be boring to know the details of games with some decent reviews and previews?




You know there's not much of a variable from 100% and a 10 point scale. EGM works with a 10 point scale allowing half points as well to give the reader a better idea about the game. Unless of course you feel that say, the extra 2 percent on a 77% really tell you all that much more about a game as opposed to a 7.5/10.

Tommy Tallarico has been doing video game music for almost a decade, maybe longer now, and has been involved in a lot of projects that have been making the game industry worth working in now. He does a lot for the medium. But yeah, he's lame on that show. I'm pretty sure it got cancelled, though. G4 has gone the way of the sell-out, bringing in idiots instead of people that care.