Unskippable

February 25, 2009 8:02 PM

Unskippableis The Escapist Magazine's new weekly video feature. Those tedious cut scenes from video games like The Bouncer and Dead Rising are much more tolerable when they've been given the MST3K treatment.
posted by CrunchyFrog (32 comments total)

I watched the Dead Rising video. That was the least funny 6 minutes of my life, and I played through the whole game on the 360 so it's not like I'm missing some inside jokes here. Three minutes of Frank's headphones clipping through his hat brim and they couldn't come up with any good jokes about it?
posted by 0xFCAF at 8:17 PM on February 25

this is quite bad
posted by radiosig at 8:20 PM on February 25 [1 favorite]

If you were really depressed? And needed something funny to give you to will to live? Let's just say you should probably have your epitaph picked out before you start watching.
posted by Justinian at 8:20 PM on February 25 [3 favorites]

Wow it's just like an actual episode of MST3K.
posted by turgid dahlia at 8:21 PM on February 25 [1 favorite]

Zzzzzzz....gaaaah Kingdom Hearts!
posted by empath at 8:26 PM on February 25

Okay, the Bouncer one was had me laughing. Didn't watch the others, though. (Oh God, the Bouncer. Why did I ever play that?)
posted by cimbrog at 8:34 PM on February 25

Yeah I watched the bouncer video first and really enjoyed it, and I wasted hours on the Bouncer and my 15(?) year old self fucking loved it!
posted by Del Far at 8:41 PM on February 25

Eternal Sonata was hilarious. The rest, not so much, really.
posted by AdamCSnider at 8:48 PM on February 25 [1 favorite]

I am simple, slow and easily amused...
posted by GratefulDean at 9:08 PM on February 25

i like the concept, if not the execution.

However, this FPP reminded me that I'd not watched this week's Zero Punctuation yet, so I'll call it a win.
posted by EatTheWeak at 9:19 PM on February 25

Those tedious cut scenes from video games like The Bouncer and Dead Rising are much more tolerable when they've been given the MST3K treatment.

Quite the opposite, my good friend. Quite the opposite.
posted by TwelveTwo at 9:31 PM on February 25

I only watched the Bouncer one so far. It started out a little slow but then it had me laughing.
posted by Nattie at 9:46 PM on February 25

Okay, the Dirge of Cerberus one made me cackle when he said, "...why did I take the stairs?" I also liked, "This isn't a phone!"
posted by Nattie at 9:54 PM on February 25

I've never seen an episode of MST3K and if turgid dahlia is right, then I am relieved.

I first heard Monty Python in 1980, introduced to it by my much older cousins.

In 1983 I read the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy (as it was then) several times and loved it.

I studied computing science.

I have been to parties where people have chanted large chunks of Monty Python in chorus. I can no longer watch or listen to any Monty Python without my skin crawling.

When I see the number 42 I feel sick, because I know what is going to follow.

Thanks, geeks, and your geek sub-culture and your geek sub-customs. Thanks for wrecking the funny.

Jokes are not parameterised functions.

Humour is not a series of templates.

Copy and paste makes text editing easier, it does not make your conversation better or you a funnier person.

For the sake of quality and elegance, or even just to increase the information content, keep iteration in your programs and out of your conversation.

This short rant also applies to serious things, like William Carlos William poems.
posted by hifimofo at 11:23 PM on February 25 [19 favorites]

That was reasonably funny, but then I found the Zero Punctuation stuff, which I for some odd reason hadn't even heard of before, and it's amazingly great.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 11:57 PM on February 25

Yahtzee continues to be the only funny thing attached to The Escapist.

...actually, there was one thing they had that was a parody of Resident Evil that was goddamn hysterical, but none of the other things that guy made were any good. Sad.
posted by Pope Guilty at 12:13 AM on February 26

Those tedious cut scenes from video games

And Unskippable makes them even more tedious.

Yahtzee continues to be the only funny thing attached to The Escapist.

I kinda like Unforgotten Realms. But, only because I'm a recovering RPG nerd.
posted by Netzapper at 12:30 AM on February 26

Wow it's just like an actual episode of MST3K.
posted by turgid dahlia at 8:21 PM on February 25

To be fair, you ARE talking about the original KTMA eps, which weren't funny at all.
posted by cerulgalactus at 1:34 AM on February 26

To speak on behalf of the MST3K-liking party:

Making jokes at the expense of movies, or trailers, well is not as easy as it might seem. The Brains then, and both the RiffTrax and Cinematic Titanic guys now, went/go through each movie several times, and compile thousands of jokes on each. Only the best ones make it onto the show/file/DVD. And it's not just anything that can be profitably mocked. Plain badness isn't enough; a strong whiff of the bizarre is needed.

AdamCSnider's right though, the Eternal Sonata one was great, probably because JRPGs tend to be so strange. Tales of Symphonia would be gold for this kind of treatment.
posted by JHarris at 1:38 AM on February 26 [2 favorites]

I bought The Bouncer (for £2) because the guy on the front was pretty. I'm glad I now know I'll never have to get round to actually playing it.
posted by Drexen at 3:37 AM on February 26

MetaFilter: This short rant also applies to serious things
posted by DU at 4:35 AM on February 26 [2 favorites]

The unskippable ads in the videos are part of the joke, right?

Right?
posted by sidereal at 4:45 AM on February 26

Every week I crack a beer and settle in to watch the latest Zero Punctuation, Unskippable, and Unforgotten Realms.

I also really enjoy the Doomsday Arcade series. There's just something so nostalgic and joyous about two nerds running around their neighborhood making silly video-game related videos. It makes me wish I was ten years younger with a lot more time on my hands.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 5:11 AM on February 26 [1 favorite]

Copy and paste makes text editing easier, it does not make your conversation better or you a funnier person.

For the sake of quality and elegance, or even just to increase the information content, keep iteration in your programs and out of your conversation.

To that, I say....

The cake is a lie!

ROFL! ROFL! ROFL!
posted by Dr-Baa at 5:27 AM on February 26

It can be uneven, sure, but this exchange from The Getaway made me laugh:

(The mobster villain is threatening the main character, whose kid is being held hostage)

"You don't do what I tell you, the kid dies. You don't do it when I tell you, the kid dies. You don't do it where I tell you, the kid dies. You talk to anyone, you're late, or you let me down, the kid dies! Do you get my drift?"

"What if I kill my kid?"

"The kid di--......touché."

posted by Mr. Bad Example at 5:55 AM on February 26

Freeman's Mind does this much better.
posted by EarBucket at 6:59 AM on February 26 [4 favorites]

I've been trying to create a project just like this for quite a while, and it's nowhere as easy as you'd think to not only find the right "bad" clips to use, but also come up with quality humorous comments that aren't completely in-jokey or bland. I'd love to see someone actually do it right someday, whether I'm the person behind it or not.
posted by Servo5678 at 8:36 AM on February 26

Honestly, I liked the Dead Rising one a lot. My major complaint with the series is that it's recorded so abominably. It's an old old old saying among video and audio editors (just to be clear, this is an old, but still very true saying):

No matter how great your picture looks, if it sounds like shit, the audience will immediately hate it.

I've paraphrased, if you can't tell. This is why quality audio equipment is so expensive, why audio engineering and recording is so increidbly difficult to do, and why so many animations made outside of big budget studios rely entirely on mute characters. If you record it badly, you might as well have not even bothered to make the piece at all.

I hope, for these guys' sakes, that they improve their audio recording capability. Hell, my macbook internal microphone recorded through garageband sounds better than this.
posted by shmegegge at 9:17 AM on February 26

So the general consensus is that Unskippable is, in fact, skippable?

Good to know.
posted by owtytrof at 9:57 AM on February 26

Freeman's Mind does this much better.

I was just about to say this, although I think the charm wore off for me there around episode five.
posted by absalom at 11:58 AM on February 26

Freeman's Mind was funny, so thanks for that.
posted by jcruelty at 12:11 PM on February 26

...and Unforgotten Realms.

It is worth mentioning that the first episode of Unforgotten Realms is fantastic (although the sound is terrible).

It's creator, Robert Moran also made machinima classics Time Gnomes, Jimmy: The WOW Story, and my personal favorite Pepitoz: The WOW Story.
posted by dagosto at 12:16 PM on February 26