Here we have a bit of a unique AVGN episode. The game being focused on is a well enough known “bad” game for the system, called “Deadly Towers.” This time, however, the video script was a chance for the fans to participate in the production of an episode!
The way it worked was this: As part of the promotion for the upcoming episode, a video was uploaded where James invited fans to send in their comments about Deadly Towers, any additional “generic” bad game commentary they may have had (in AVGN style of course) and lastly a name to identify each contributor under were their comments used.
This ran from July 20th to August 3rd and in that time the email inbox set up for the event received over 6000 emails which at that time was pretty damned impressive. James spent the next couple of weeks taking what he thought were the best comments from the emails and working them into a proper Nerd episode!
The end result, sadly, isn’t that great. I want to say it’s partly because of Deadly Towers itself — the game is so… what’s the word.. “Blah” really, is the only way I can describe it. Everything looks the same, the game play is sub-par and while I understand how the game is supposed to be played and what goes on, its just an absolute chore to actually play.
The episode itself feels disjointed. This of course would be a side effect of the fact that several dozen people’s input had to be blended together into a coherent narrative regarding the game, which is obviously difficult under the best circumstances — here it seemed nearly impossible.
The end result is kind of a complete mess. It starts off strong but falls apart in the first minute and a half or so, getting stranger and stranger as it goes on. There are some genuinely funny moments, like the “sprites from Marble Madness” line, but the rest seems to be attempts from people not quite as talented as James trying to mimic his unique style of profanity.
Eh, the video is what it is in the end — a chance for the fans to have some fun. I’ll say that it is, to me, probably the weakest Nerd episode by far.
Final Rating: 2.0/5
The episode has its funny moments, but is just too disjointed to be really enjoyable. The occasional bit works, but on a whole the episode is just a mess. About the best part is hearing James scream some German towards the end. Otherwise, it’s just an odd little experiment, one that hasn’t been repeated, for good reason.
As an added bonus, here is the original contest entry video. It helps give context to just what the people who wrote in and had their comments used in the video had to work with as far as instruction goes: