This is another episode in the Gamers series and I thought this was a solid one. As usual the production value is solid, on a low budget and used well though this budget is used more on our modern setting, we do see the fantasy setting but only as a small portion this time where we only see a small room of a castle and everyone in medieval costume.
The concept in this one is about the characters in RPG fantasy being reality and our reality is the game their playing. Yeah, I know it's a trippy but I think brilliant concept, fantasy playing reality wrap your head around that one. Things like this really helped keep this series fresh and just makes me wonder what the next one will be. Personally after seeing this makes me hope they'll do a little parody on the RPG video game "Earthbound".
What makes the funny is how it puts all the principles and conventions of RPGs and applies them to our modern day world. I really like how they turn those things cleverly around and upside down.
The fantasy characters all play typical/stereotypical real world character archetypes much as we play are common archetypes in RPG. A real world version of a wizard is a hippie and a barbarian is a hockey player. However the big difference is each of the characters are practically useless throughout the game (well mainly the hippie) despite having functions which do little good, while the characters we play in RPGs are useful simply because the game is set in the fantasy realm which makes it exciting because things always happen. Which is why in a way the game their playing seems more like a real world simulation computer game which I'll admit makes this even more trippy.
Even some of the situations and how they interacting and apply the conventions are really funny, and makes a lot of sense the characters might react certain ways to the reality were familiar with because their all from a different time and place, how would they know what a car really is, no different from how we wouldn't know the next monster were encountering.
My favorite situation is when there all crossing the street and it's pretty much a version of a battle. It's probably the daftest battle scene I've ever seen, since it's not really a battle and no one really dies since the party is holding up traffic. Everything the party does to the cars you can easily guess does no good, from the hippie just delivering idle lines sort of a version of spells and the hockey play simply tries to kill the car by hitting it with his hockey stick which of course turned out to be nothing more then a pathetic attempt at vandalism.
I also really like the dialog, it was really strange but funny at the same time talking in a sort of old English like tone in our modern world.
The only problems I have are the characters come of at times a bit too idiotic. I know that these are fantasy character interacting and playing in the real world but still, having a hard time to open a single door really.
I really didn't like how they dealt with a certain situation with the dog at the end, I felt that was a joke that fell flat and really hurt the episode for me.
However the real problem for me is the fact that this isn't really that exciting. It might have been more exciting if these characters got to explore and do more in the real world but due to time constraints and budget it couldn't be helped. But then again this was just part of a set up for a joke in the end, which was really funny I thought yeah I rather be doing that then playing this game.
Overall it was solid, I don't feel this was quite their best but I appreciate that they were trying to do something different and for the most part they succeeded. Hopefully the next episode will be even better.
Rating: 3 stars
