Good Game Featuring the Game Grumps: First Impressions

When Game Grumps announced they were doing a live action show produced by Dan Harmon I was skeptical. But the trailer looked good so I’ve been looking forward to it. With the first episode publicly available I took a look.

Good Game starts off simple enough: Ryland is a slacker who plays video games all day. His friend Alex ropes him into starting an e-sports team for a chance of winning a million dollars. Together they assemble a ragtag team and enter a local tournament to get noticed.

“Rushed” is the word that comes to my head. It is funny, more than that it’s both a celebration and indictment of video gaming culture, where talent and artistic merit are so easily mixed with the craze and lazy. The problem is that they rush to put everyone in place. It would take too long to have an episode dedicated to recruiting each character. However it is almost has bad to cram them all into a fifteen minute segment. Character development takes time, and for whatever reason they decided to compact it into the smallest time frame possible. This makes it hard to connect with the characters and leaves me overall dissatisfied.

If the first half of the episode is rushed than the second half feels about right. There is a reveal, and the team comes together to challenge the big team in town.  The episode ends on a positive note which leaves me wanting more.

I am not going to say this episode was well written. It’s full of pacing issues and a degree of randomness. All this speaks to a lack of focus and maybe a rush to put something out. But it was funny. Danny Avidan’s deliveries in particular are masterful. Some of the gags are really good. A lot of the video game jokes ring true; not necessarily in a mean or critical way but just poking fun at something we all love.

I fear Good Game will go into unnecessary drama between the characters. It could also go too far into critique without staying funny. It needs to slow down and address one issue at a time. Compressing important events never works out well. If it can avoid the pit falls however this show could easily be a 7 or an 8 in terms of quality. In my mind it’s a show worth keeping an eye on.

-Gedaemon