X-Play



The summer season of TV is almost over, and the fall season is gearing up. Imagine my excitement. Other than The Amazing Race and The Casino (which had a certain train wreck quality I enjoyed.) the networks haven’t had much to offer recently. I’ve looked through the upcoming schedule, and I see only one show I may watch, and that’s Lost (Wednesdays at 8 on ABC).

Luckily there’s still cable. These days I’ve started recording old episodes of X-Play on TechTV. X-Play is a show that reviews video games, along with occasional journalistic pieces or skits on video game related topics. The show is hosted by the spastic Final Fantasy hater Adam Sessler and the cute ‘n’ perky Morgan Webb. Morgan Webb, and her seemingly unending wardrobe of hip hugger jeans, wonderbras and tight t-shirts, is the major attraction of the show. This may give the impression that nerds are easily entertained by anyone with a nice rack and pretty face.

That is unfair and completely untrue.

A pretty face isn’t really necessary.




The work ethic of Morgan’s underwire aside, the other reason to watch X-Play is that it really is quite funny, especially on those fairly rare occasions where they give a game a very bad review. On one episode they reviewed a 3rd-person shooter called Drake of the 99 Dragons by saying that the main character’s convulsive attempts to auto-aim "resemble psycho semaphore” and then finished the review by putting a coat of paint on the wall and watching it dry rather than play the game any more. For her part Morgan seems to be unusually annoyed by stupid enemy AI and pointless cheesecake ("In a dark future the only hope is... a reject from a shampoo commercial!").

Actually I just thought of one more reason to watch X-Play. Someday Morgan will be pushed too far by someone asking her "Do you really play video games?" for the 58, 774th time and she will gut the guy on live TV. And maybe she'll do so in the form of Mortal Kombat finishing move, so she'll never have to answer that question again.

Posted: Tue - August 31, 2004 at      

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