I had planned to release my Dusty Diamond review on the night of Friday the 22nd, which just so happened to be Good Friday. I had the day off work, so I was able to spend all day working on it. By the end of the day, it wasn’t done. In fact, I ended up spending almost the entire Easter weekend working on editing the video finally to upload it Sunday night with almost no sleep all weekend. By the end of it I found myself not entirely happy with what I’d come up with, but not willing to have nothing to show for all the work I put into it.
It was the “For Dummies” definition of trying too hard.
Now, I do kind of have a similar attitude when I spent a lot of time or effort on any review. Penguin Adventure took a lot out of me and when I was done I felt so drained I couldn’t really feel the humour in it, but it still came out as something I was pleased with. So when I had this feeling like this review was not up-to-par, I at first chalked it up to the same post-editing malaise I always have.
Then I received the following comment:
I have to be honest, I hated this episode. I dislike it when any reviewer throws in pointless cameos and necessary, unrelated plot into a review show. When I watch a review, I want a review, not a show where someone plays multiple characters and other people pop into the video despite not actually being with the reviewer in person.
I'm sorry but if this is the direction the show is going to take, I'd rather not watch it anymore.
If you’re a fan of the show, your first impulse may be to thumb it down and call this guy a hater. But really, he summed up a lot of what I felt. I had to thank him for finally putting my feelings into words.
I started out with a decent idea: I wanted to parody the over-reliance of cameos in online reviews. You can see that at the beginning where Joe comes in and I start openly criticizing the entire concept. But somewhere in the review, the line got extremely blurred and I ended up becoming what I was parodying. I have no idea how it happened but yikes.
Now, if you liked the review, that’s great. I don’t think what I put out was total garbage and I don’t think less of anyone who legitimately enjoyed it. If it made someone laugh, all the effort was worth it. I’m just saying, oh man did I go overboard with the gimmicks.
There’s a lot of ironic and pseudo-ironic parallels in this review.
First, I tried to parallel the crossover nature of the game with a bunch of goofy crossovers.
Second, the concept of having people cameo in my review just to refuse to cameo is pretty meta.
But now as I’ve finished and view the aftermath, I see that the whole review is just like Dr. Beefstupid’s clones. It was an experiment, gone horribly awry.
I will not be resorting to this particular brand of gimmick on Weird Video Games again. Thank you to those who gave your honest opinion, and a huge thank you to those who will continue to watch, regardless of your particular feelings about it.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to finish my small emotional breakdown (going three days on less than ten hours sleep will do that), take a deep breath, and continue onto my future videos.
