WCG Ultimate Gamer: S2E3 Sing-Along Guide

Episode 1: Coming Out Swinging
Episode 2: Making Waves
Episode 3: On Thin Ice
Episode 4: Blind Sided
Episode 5: In the Crosshairs
Episode 6: Climbing the Walls
Episode 7: The Gauntlet
Episode 8: The Grand Finale

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Episode 3: On Thin Ice

Let’s continue! What wacky adventures will the gamer universe find themselves in this week?

2:57 – Way to go, Justin! That was the worst fist-bump ever.

3:56 – Iron Man Award goes to the cameraman. He stood there all night and waited for someone to fuck with Jake.

4:12-4:24 – He’s single, ladies!
4:34 – College Film Class Protip: When you’re selling the drama of a man destroying a fifteen-dollar blanket, cut to slow-motion. Watch that water soak into the sheets. Uh. Yeah. Uh huh.
4:42 – Jake: “You’re messing with the dude who just proved himself to have power, okay?” This reminds me of that movie where the dude with the mustache took over Germany.

5:58 – Hannah: “The game is NHL10.” Wow. The contestants are more apathetic about the sports game than the Nintendo Wii Deathmatch. Then again, it’s hockey. My friend once took me to a hockey game. He’s not my friend anymore.

6:47 – Justin Wong looks like he would rather be anyplace but here. Seriously. He gave up two months of Street Fighter practice for this.

6:48 – Hannah: “So let’s see how good your aim is in a game I like to call…Human Hockey Puck.” Wow, Hannah. What an original name. If this woman had her hands on boxing, we’d be calling Floyd Mayweather the pound-for-pound champion of Traumatic Brain Injury Through Fists.
7:16 – Sebastian: “Black folks, we don’t do stuff like that.” Yo, check this out: Black guys do human hockey puck like this.

8:42 – Justin: “Kat is a very good teammate for me because she’s really good at shooting games, but I’m really good with like, strategic map stuff.” Woah. I’m the champion of “Video Games Have Practical Real-World Application” and even I think you’re nuts. But let’s not be hasty here. Kat can prove me wrong.

9:08 – Justin: “Eh, that kinda sucked.”

10:41 – Yaz: “I was definitely pissed that [Ryan and Jake were] high-fiving when we’re doing bad.” Always enjoyed this phenomenon: Victory through nothing. Football player drops a catch? No one’s fault but his? Celebrate. ‘Cause your Jedi mind tricks caused that man to break his leg and fall short of the end zone.

12:07 – There’s more than one round? Aw, crap!

12:11 – Caesar: “I really don’t know what it’s like being last.” Anyone checked this show’s television ratings?

(Fast-forwarding…)

14:52 – Jake and Ryan win a copy of the “not-yet-released NHL 2011.” This should come off very well on repeated viewings. The game was released five days after this episode’s original airing.

15:21 – Yaz: “If I need to, I’ll go in Elimination. I’ll lose the [Isolation Chamber™] on purpose.” Here we go again. Maybe it’s because I play strategy games and view the “strategy” in Yaz’s potential decision to be laughable. But in my America, tanking games is not an option. Ever.

Keeping count? The Real-Life Challenge™ lasted over ten minutes. We are fifteen minutes into the show. A video game reality television show. No video-game-related events have occurred. It’s like the World Cyber Games is using Vince McMahon’s brand of “professional wrestling” as the primary reference material.

16:07-16:44 – This show is a microchosm of American celebrity. Build them up, tear them down. You see: The World Cyber Games wants me to believe they whittled through thousands and ended up with the best twelve. And now? Whoops! A.J. is a fucking slacker. Whoops! Sebastian is a cocky nobody. We’re supposed to believe the World Cyber Games simply got it wrong on draft night. The reality? These twelve are good at what they do. Burying them does not change that.

17:38 – Yaz: “The whole time I’m practicing with [Sebastian], he’s so good…at every game. No…you won’t be in this position so many times if you’re so good.” Wow. The first entertaining drama in the short and embarrassing history of this show.

20:43 – We get it. You’re going to throw the Isolation Challenge™. In a culture whose roots are “get the highest score possible”, this will go over very well with your target audience.

21:26 – “You need to score one goal in the least amount of time possible.” Thank God we’re not playing FIFA.
21:30 – “You have a maximum time of four minutes.” Wow. This doesn’t sound like a crap shoot. I’m sure a sports game aficionado will ramble about the effort in scoring a single goal. But I once went to a boxing match and a hockey game broke out, so your argument is invalid.

Also from the “How to Insult Your Audience” Files: They are playing twenty-minute periods in the Isolation Challenge™ Oh. The clock is running faster. So “twenty-minutes” plays out in four. That’s confusing. But hey, can’t clear that up. Our target audience is gamers. They drink Mountain Dew and play Halo. They’re too stupid to figure it out.

23:20 – Faye: “I wish I actually scored a goal.”
23:24 – Rachel: “I didn’t get that goal I wanted.”
Huhuh, women can’t play sports. Girls are dumb. Huhuh.

25:18 – Oh my God, Yaz! You finished last! Joel: “Yaz, what happened, man?”
Yaz: “I took a dive on purpose.” God dammit so much.
25:30 – Joel: “That’s either incredibly brave or incredibly stupid.” It’s completely fucking stupid. Do you actually know what this says about this organization? If you can weasel your way through the politics, you can become a world-class gamer. Really. If there’s one thing gamers don’t enjoy, it’s being bossed around. We cramp ourselves in front of the computer for a reason. The internet doesn’t yell at us for saying stupid things. Unless it’s Blizzard and I’m posting on their forums.

28:40 – Yaz, to Sebastian: “To be completely honest with you…I was gonna ask Jake to pick you.” Oh. Wow. This is breakup mode. So much for the entertainment value. Awkward. Uh…who wants ginger snaps?

30:22 – Jake chooses Sebastian for elimination. Shocking. The show has gone sentient. World Cyber Games: Ultimate Gamer™ realizes it is a horror show. And it knows the black guy must die.
30:44 – Yaz: “It’s just moreso…who deserves to be here.” Says the guy who is in last place and up for elimination.

33:18 – Yaz: “It’s like you [Sebastian] lie every time when you say you’re good at it when you’re not.” Ever seen an “Oh snap!” moment where you felt really bad for everybody involved? This isn’t drama. This is feelings getting hurt. Why y’all gotta hate, son?

35:34 – THE SAMSUNG AD PLACEMENT DETECTION ROBOT HAS DETECTED SAMSUNG AD PLACEMENT.

34:49 – Yaz, with the most ambiguous statement of the series: “Right now, my nerves are about at a seven. I would like them to be about a five or four.”

35:54 – THE SAMSUNG AD PLACEMENT DETECTION ROBOT HAS DETECTED SAMSUNG AD PLACEMENT.

36:47 – Hannah: “You essentially threw the challenge so you could be here tonight.” Yes. Rub it in. The motto of the World Cyber Games: “We. Are. Threw the challenge so you could be here tonight.”

37:12 – Hannah: “This is like your second home now.”
Sebastian: “This is where I live at. Every one of these people in here is my family.” Mentioned it last season, but in professional wrestling, we call that a “cheap pop”. Sebastian just needs to praise the accolades of the local football team. And Yaz? He can’t wait to get out of “this dump”. Since this show is filmed in Los Angeles, it would be an accurate statement.

37:51 – Joel: “Tonight, our players are competing head-to-head for the Stanley Cup. Yaz has chosen the Vancouver Canucks, they’re in the blue jerseys. Sebastian has chosen the Boston Bruins, in the black and yellow jerseys.” You chose a sports game to appeal to mainstream audiences. And then you have to tell them what colors each team is. Hockey has fallen on hard times.

39:14 – Want to make sports commentary even worse? Throw the duties to somebody who hosts a video game show on G4. Ask him to be the lone commentator. Have him say that “Both players clearly in it to win it.” Are they? Really? Maybe Yaz can throw this game and get moved up to a better television show?

40:20 – Congratulations. You hit the side of the goal, Sebastian. That is not cause for celebration. It reminds me of those street basketball mixtapes where the ball-handler makes a nasty move and embarrasses the opponent. The game stops and fans run onto the court. And no points were actually scored.

41:12 – “The score is tied after the third period zero-and-zero, that means we have to go to a shootout.” Oh, so I guess “playing for the Stanley Cup” was just a premise, since the NHL settles tie playoff games with extra periods. Shootouts apply to regular season games. I haven’t watched hockey in eight years and even I know this.

Conclusion: Sebastian is toast. Yaz lives on. Hockey will always suck. Last season’s sports-themed episode was totally forgettable. Same deal this round. That’s probably what happens when you take a sports-themed episode and surround it with video game players and producer incompetence.

Who survives the next week? Guess you’ll have to watch and find out!

…

Wait. Watch this show? What do you have to say about that, Jake?

You silly, dawg. You silly.

Continue to Episode 4: Blind Sided.