Game Over

damn. finally a cg series with great animation, great writing, and great voice acting (cant even tell its lucy liu!!). the last bunch of cg animation has been crap , things like Max Steel, Starship Troopers:Roughnecks, only Reboot had amazing cg. now its over, cancelled. 6 episodes made, 5 aired, good work upn. worse than the handling of THE TICK!

ah well, pack up and try again, the tick was great, (made by the same guys that did game over), i'm sure they can do it again! dont let all these neilson people get to you.

i dont understand why upn moved it from wednesdays to fridays. its not the way to keep viewers. thats how tv stations screwed the schedule on futurama, family guy, the tick, and countless other shows.

from neilsen's website "For our national ratings estimates, we use a sample of more than 5,000 households, containing over 13,000 people who have agreed to participate." so 13000 people decide what 220million people get to watch (and even more when you think how much us tv goes overseas). good work. according to neilsen, Game Over had 2 million viewers.

The series premiered last night, mostly to chilly reviews, but that should really come as no surprise. All of the subtleties would have been completely lost on the majority of television critics, who are well into their forties or older, and probably haven't played a video game since the first wave of Arcade Games hit the market, twenty-five or so years ago. Ironically, these are the same critics who laud and applaud The Simpsons for fast-as-lightning sight gags, and subversive humor. I'm sure that the series' target audience (gamers 15- 35) did enjoy it, and that demographic alone can probably sustain the show, but it will be a shame if that's the case. It's about time a show tackled the stereotypes of the games played by kids and teens (and adults -great Vice City gag last night!), and perhaps this will make certain adults aware of the content of the games that they blindly buy for their children, regardless of the age recommendation on the box. While it isn't necessary to have played any of the games being addressed, it certainly helps, and the obvious targets are plentiful; The buxom female action hero, and overly hip skater games took a punch last night, as well as DOA Volleyball, Pokemon, and the portrayal of Asians in VG media; and this was only the pilot. The opportunity to tackle current events hasn't even been addressed -can you image a CG Kobe Bryant pantomiming that ridiculous apology on the sidelines of an animated basketball game, while a young lady polishes a HUGE diamond ring, which happens to be the prize that Mom Smashenburn is seeking? Or a ski-masked #32 stabbing players in an animated football game, only to be arrested by a platoon of SOCom Navy Seals wearing George W. Bush masks as the real George W plays cheerleader at the John Madden Superbowl (I won't even go into the half-time show!)? And these aren't even my below-the-belt suggestions! (Producers take notice: I've got dozens of these gems -call me!) Celebrity cameos alone could be huge.

Marcy Carsey has previously helmed some amazing, groundbreaking shows, and this is a show where the possibilities are truly endless. That said, I was somewhat surprised by the level of violence (Thomas in the pet store for instance), and the language seemed a tad inappropriate for the time slot, but it does reflect the games portrayed, and I'm all for pushing the envelope if it's done cleverly.

Network UPN; Genre: Animated Comedy; Rating: TV-PG (language, mild adult situations and mild animated violence); Available: DVD; Perspective: Contemporary (star range: 1 - 4);

Season Reviewed: Complete Series (6 episodes)

With CGI animation exploding on the big screen and the geniuses at Pixar turning it into a high art, it is only a natural progression that this style find it's way to the small screen. The footnote in the TV history books next to UPN's "Game Over" will be that it was the first primetime "adult" CGI animated series. Luckily too, because that is the only thing noteworthy about the show. Warning: this review will have a lot of references to other works. Try to keep count.

Created by David Sacks, "Game" actually has an odd, convoluted premise that is stripped down to a single line uttered by a narrator in the show's intro just to make sense of it. Have you ever wondered what happens to the video game characters when the game ends? This is the other side, where apparently all manner of species live together in human cities and have their daily routines interrupted by the adventures you might see in a video game. Really trying to think about the logistical reality of the world (or why there is a zombie in the school) will give you a bit of a headache, but the point is that this is where the Smashenburn family lives.

"Game" is jammed with video game references - some direct, some indirect and some using images so liberally I'm wondering how copy-write wasn't violated. The Smashenburn family is lead by mom Raquael (Lucy Liu) who looks more like "Tomb Raider's" Lara Croft than Angelina Jolie, dad Ripley (Patrick Warburton, typecast again) a NASCAR driver who can't seem to win on the track and strikes out communicating with his family, daughter Alice (Rachael Dratch, "Saturday Night Live") the typical non-conformist, nagging, protester daughter and son Billy (E.G. Daily, "Rugrats"), an airhead who talks exclusively in fads. They also have a cigar-chomping pet (Artie Lange, "Howard Stern") named Turbo who I guess is supposed to be Sega's Sonic the Hedgehog from hell.

I could sit here and hang this on the very real possibility that this show was rushed into production to be that first CGI series and that as a result all the characters are underdeveloped, but that doesn't quite do justice to how repellently annoying all of them (except Raquel) are. Ripley is the whiniest of all the whiny, childish, post-feminist TV dads since Bryan Cranston on "Malcolm in the Middle". Although I am consistently impressed with E.G. Daily, Billy is written in that stereotypical way that people think teenagers talk when they have never actually heard one. And Turbo is the Bender of the piece.

Speaking of, it would be a good contrast to put this up against Matt Groening's excellent "Futurama". Both shows are packed with nerdy in-jokes, but "Futurama's" are nerdier, smarter and more obscure. As "Futurama" showed us the computer and video game world is filled with clichés and annoyances just ripe for satire, but "Game" goes for only the most obvious sight gags. The pilot lifts directly into "Oddworld", a Crash Bandicoot with a milk mustache is prominently displayed, Mario is referenced by all the characters with awe and there are digs at everything else from "Frogger" to "Pong" to "Pitfall", any first person shooter and "Grand Theft Auto". Not word one of this is funny. The most clever bit in the entire series isn't even a video game joke, but a subtle reference to "That 70s Show's" basement circle - and I may even be reading to much into that.

The show's heart lies in it's "Tomb Raider" sequences where the animators get to put Rachael in all sorts of exotic caves and fight hideous monsters in her never-ending quest to find monkey statues made of every known element. These adventurous set-pieces are far and away the highlight of the series. It is also the time when the animators get to take the swooping CGI "camera" out for a lap around the block.

The fundamental problem with "Game" is that it doesn't know that. It puts the action sequences - what the show is good at - on the back burner and focuses almost exclusively on the kind of domestic family drama you can find on any studio audience CBS sitcom. Case in point: "Alice and the Cats" works because (aside from the fact that a B-story involving a Japanime character named Suki is so utterly bizarre) it uses the family dynamic as a catalyst for the action. The other episodes don't work, because they use the action as a catalyst for the family stories. Who cares if father and son end up playing Catch on a trip into the woods.

For what it's worth the show does look good in the animation department. It has a richly detailed landscape, not the mechanical movements of "Reboot" and the bare walls of the later Dreamworks effort "Father of the Pride". And Christopher Tyng's music is kind of cool too, though it borrows heavily from his "Futurama" theme.

"Game Over" was produced by Carsey-Warner productions which was also behind 2000's "God, the Devil & Bob". The two share the same quality of being animated shows produced by sitcom people, not cartoonists. "Game" is a prime example of how often TV shows would rather take a unique premise and squash it into the traditional mold then take a traditional premise and make it unique.

* / 4

I don't think alot of people know comedy if it bit them in the frigging ass I found this show better than reboot. Ever since this show aired it gave me a reason to watch UPN again and if this show gets canceled I will never frigging watch UPN again because I won't have a reason too so I give this show 10 stars in my view. So if anyone agrees with me in any way feel free to post anything you like about the show. I for one couldn't wait for this show to air, If UPN doesn't renew this show then to hell with them and I hope that Cartoon Network picks up the show and they continue making episodes. My fave characters are Rip Smashenburn,Alice Smashenburn, and the rest of the characters as well I got every joke they threw in there I even liked alot of the cameo's of other video game characters either them just walking in the background like the character from Oddworld and the frog from Frogger.

Another attempt to look behind the screen of videos games comes up short against "Reboot".

Granted, it matches Mainframe's animated classic series in the technology, but for all it's attempts, it comes up short with lackluster gags, lame jokes and also ran dialogue. The pilot offers no real difference in this show and a dozen other live TV sitcoms that have failed for being nothing more than copies of other sitcoms. Adding the aspect of digital animation doesn't change the fact that it's nothing new.

Sorry guys, spend your quarters on better writers. In fact, you may want to considering spending less on the technology and more on the writers.