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24 Hours with G4 80

Posted by Zonk from the oh-the-humanity dept.
Nathan Smart writes "A writer for satire site The Game Rag watches 24 hours of G4TV and lives to tell about it." From the article: "'Cheat' had to evolve into a broader format, which coincidentally no longer involves actual cheating, and became a show about walkthroughs and tips. So right off the bat there's an immediate problem, and it ties back into that internet-thing I said earlier. There is nothing, seriously nothing, you can get from this show that you couldn't find with a simple trip to your local neighborhood Gamefaqs.com. Nothing. And Strike two is the disgustingly cheerful host, Kristin Holt. My assumption is that G4 wanted to hire some attractive women, as that falls under the category of 'things nerds like to look at', but Miss Holt, in my professional opinion, has NEVER SEEN A VIDEO GAME IN HER LIFE." He's already posted the second part of his outing, and G4 has a response to his project on their website.
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24 Hours with G4 More

24 Hours with G4

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  • Pics (Score:5, Funny)

    by mobby_6kl ( 668092 ) on Wednesday July 26, 2006 @11:40AM (#15784601)
    Be careful when searching the net for pics, or you may end up with this [k12.ok.us] on your monitor.

    • Re:Pics (Score:5, Insightful)

      by AKAImBatman ( 238306 ) * <akaimbatman@gmaYEATSil.com minus poet> on Wednesday July 26, 2006 @12:29PM (#15785008) Homepage Journal
      Be careful when searching the net for pics, or you may end up with this on your monitor.

      Oh my God. It's a normal looking woman. Run for the hills. The disgust is palpable. I can't believe that anyone would allow photos of real women on the Internet. They must all be super-models that are so skinny they only look right in the warping of a camera lense. Viva la myspace.

      *rolls eyes*

      What I get a kick out of, is that the "reviewer" (and I use the term loosely) chose to give Ms. Holt a poor score while letting Ms. Webb completely off the hook. Apparently, he has no problem sacrificing journalistic integrity in favor of broadcasting his fantasies about Ms. Webb in the slight hope that she might one day fullfill them. (Which is pretty pathetic when you think about it.)

      The truth is that Ms. Webb and Mr. Sessler are painful to watch on the screen. All their jokes are delivered exactly as if they were reading from a script (which they are), they constantly look back and forth between each other and the camera (that's a very distracting movement, and should be minimized), they need to get their damn hands out of their pockets so that they don't look like pretzels, and they really need to loosen up and act more natural. Would it kill them to adlib a bit? Perhaps jump off into unscripted side conversations? Or does G4 believe them to be so void of any intelligence that they can't loosen the leash for even a second?

      X-Play could be a decent show. Too bad it's hosts are strangling the life out of it.

      • Re:Pics (Score:3, Informative)

        by Turn-X Alphonse ( 789240 )
        Not to insult you but she really isn't very good looking. She's slightly below average IMO

        As for your rant on stick figure women, well everyone has a weight their body is comftable at, some people it's over weight, some it's under. If you stick to that your body will run at it's best, where as if you fight against it (stick figures) you'll end up very ill and suffer from it.

        Give it time and natural selection will nuke the shallow stick girls.
      • X-Play was actually a pretty good show before G4 took over.
        • A lot of TechTV shows were good before G4 took over. Those that are left, that is.

          Of course, I have to admit, I rather like the new Call for Help.
      • Thank you.

        Their "camaraderie" is hackneyed, forced, trite, and just awful. It's like they want the witty sarcasm of 'The Daily Show' and the fun delivery of Alton Brown and decided that they didn't have to actually hire talented actors, but could make up for it with scripting every nuance.

        As a lifelong gamer, X-Play annoys the hell out of me. This is best we can offer? Really?!

        At least there's Gamespot. They're on a thin line, but they do waver slightly more towards the "not sucking" end of the spectrum.

      • Re:Pics (Score:3, Insightful)

        by drsquare ( 530038 )
        Oh my God. It's a normal looking woman.
        No, it's an unhealthily overweight woman. If being obese is considered normal and acceptable, then society really is going down the shitter. What happened to the days when people looked after their appearance and ate healthily, and exercised now and again?

        • Re:Pics (Score:3, Insightful)

          by AKAImBatman ( 238306 ) *

          No, it's an unhealthily overweight woman.

          Apparently you think that "Mildly Obese" is the same thing as "unhealthily overweight". You must be one of those people who was highly offended by the Dove Soap advertisements [blogspot.com]? I'm sure you would have just died trying to find a woman skinny enough for your tastes a hundred years ago. Never mind that they were naturally bulkier than the unnaturally skinny women you apparently so covet. Medical science (read: the mob-rule) has decided that bucking nature is again the b

          • Apparently you think that "Mildly Obese" is the same thing as "unhealthily overweight".

            That's not a few pounds overweight, that's pretty seriously overweight. There's no excuse for having a double chin, it's sick.

            I'm sure you would have just died trying to find a woman skinny enough for your tastes a hundred years ago.

            People were much skinnier back then. Less food and harder work, not donuts and office jobs, but gruel and the workhouse.

            I just love that rant about anorexia, as if it's somehow acceptable to b

      • OK, the over/under on the first end-around slam on Morgan Webb was five posts. If you had the under, you win! Collect your prize at the G4-would-die-if-you'd-just-shut-up-about-them cashier window!

  • duh (Score:3, Insightful)

    by voice_of_all_reason ( 926702 ) on Wednesday July 26, 2006 @11:42AM (#15784621)
    There is nothing, seriously nothing, you can get from this show that you couldn't find with a simple trip to your local neighborhood Gamefaqs.com

    What kind of blindingly obvious claim is this? "You can get more information from a website with thousands of users contributing information over 10 years in realtime compared to a half-hour television show." Lol, duh?

    Both have their uses. I still subscribe to game mags, for example, because they provide a general overview of what's out/coming soon pretty pictures to boot. Once a buy a game, I head over to gamefaqs for in-depth strategy.
    • Once a buy a game, I head over to gamefaqs for in-depth strategy.
      The fun for me is figuring out the strategy myself. If I get really stuck, or if I'm at the point where I've learned almost all I'll learn by myself, then I head over to gamefaqs.

      Otherwise, it's just like doing yesterday's crossword with today's paper (and therefore yesterday's completed puzzle) in hand.
      • I see your point, but it all depends on the game, really. I just got into Diablo 2, and the skill/stat points are a one-time award. It's very possible to back yourself into a corner at the higher difficulties because you made poor choices early on, so this is the type of thing that I like to heavily research before starting. Final Fantasy has also grown notorious for including missable/screwup-able quests that I like to ask about before diving in.

        Otherwise, I tend to subscribe to the "beat it once and al
        • In DII I usually leave about 15-25 points unspent as I level up, to use in an emergency if I find some nice piece of equipment I want to use and suddenly need more points in Dex instead of Str (or whatever DII calls 'em, I forget.)

          Wake of fire trapsassin with bowazon sidekick, save all skill tree points for wake of fire and supporting, get to Pindleskin, crank through a hundred times, go to nightmare, crank through to Pindle again, you're level 60, nothing can touch you, you have gold claws that you don't u
        • I've grown to somewhat hate games where you can get into a no-win situation. Resident Evil Code Veronica did this to me. It was my first RE game. I didn't know you should skip the zombies when possible or use the knife. I'd shoot and kill them. Might as well get rid of them right? If there's a bunch of them? That warrants a grenade or a shotgun shot.

          About halfway through this game I realized that not much extra ammo was showing up; I literally could not progress any further because there were areas
    • Seriously.... does any one watch this channel still? I was forced to watch G4 once they took over TechTV, and I watched it for a while after. I'll admit that I liked shows like Icon & Cinematech. About a year ago I couldn't stand it anymore.... what it's turned out to be is a rip off of Spike TV. Comcast, I bet (and hope) is losing money hand over fist with this channel.
      • I'll admit that I liked shows like... Cinematech.

        So did I, even though it was really a glorified 30 minutes of video game ads. I was more into the bits that just demoed game play than the canned trailers. I started to tire of it when they reused the music accompanyment to the gameplay demos. The final nail was when they would insert snippets from sex games between them instead of the scrolling list of what they're showing this episode (the latter being TiVo-friendly).

        X-Play is pretty much the only show I
    • The thing is, game mags are good for their format. The good ones have the right mix of articles, previews, interviews, and other content, while maintaining that somwhat exclusive magazine-readership "feel" to it. You get to know the personalities of the writers, and of the zine as a whole.

      I somehow recently clicked my way into getting a free supscription to EGM. Don't ask me how, it was some weird website deal where I filled in a survey with fake info, and as a reward get a magazine addressed to an obvi
    • The first thing I thought of when I read that was "Doesn't that logic apply to the entire Food Network?"

      They seem to be doing okay though.... that said, I still can't get interested in G4. This guy's blog wasn't really any better though, and watching this rag and G4 battle it out through droll observational "wit" and obtuse, boring insults is pretty much as close to a real life pansy slap fight as you can get on the Internet.
    • You can flip through game magazines to the part you want. However, with G4 you're stuck with whatever crappy games they decided to focus on in that episode. And they do cover a lot of crappy games.
  • I miss TechTV.
    • We all do. but pre-suck TechTV; when the end came, we all saw it coming.
    • G4 just doesn't make me feel like going out and smashing one-of-a-kind phonograph cylinders while yelling "sh!t" to everyone like TechTV.
    • Me too!

    • Re:TechTV (Score:5, Informative)

      by zentinal ( 602572 ) on Wednesday July 26, 2006 @12:26PM (#15784983) Homepage

      I too mourned the death of TechTV, but I no longer miss it.

      I now watch DL.TV [dl.tv] and TWIT.TV [www.twit.tv], which gives me about 80% of what I got from TechTV.

      True, it was convenient to have everything gathered on one cable channel (if you ignored all of the useless repeats), but I'd argue that the natural environment for TechTV's content is the web. Plus, now, using a good RSS feed reader, you can roll your own TechTV. Can't you do that with TIVO and Freevo now?

      Now, all we need is for Joshua "Yoshi" DeHerrera [wikipedia.org] to start up a modding video podcast then all will truly be right with the world, with all TechTV goodness gathered on the web, in nicely downloadable / streamable gobbits.

      • Plus, now, using a good RSS feed reader, you can roll your own TechTV. Can't you do that with TIVO and Freevo now?

        This is why G4TV being a bad channel overall doesn't bother me. My Tivo grabs [what I consider] the good show (note the lack of an "s") and I never have to see the rest. If I decide to sample something new (like the awful Star Trek 2.0), I can do so by recording one, watching it later without commercials, and I never have to see it again if it sucks. Meanwhile, Tivo is grabbing the other sho

  • Its a real shame what G4 did to that channel. I learned a lot of my knowledge from the hayday of TechTV with Call for Help and The Screen Savers. Not to say it didn't have entertainment. Did anyone else remember Unscrewed with Martin Sargeant ? It was my favourite channel, now I make sure to skip right past in not to send myself into an emotional fit.

  • Public access feel missing (Score:4, Interesting)

    by 192939495969798999 ( 58312 ) <info AT devinmoore DOT com> on Wednesday July 26, 2006 @11:49AM (#15784673) Homepage Journal
    The G4 channel is missing the hardware/software hacking stuff big time. They need that public-access feel. Forget that hot girl, get some guy with an spf 3000 tan in front of a wall of machines with a hand scanner securty system in his basement. The opening shot where he says 'Not now mom, I'm on the air! So anyways, check this out...' lets you know you're about to see something incredible.
  • This reminds me of the cooking channel for some reason. No matter how much proof I have that the people on the screen are real chefs sometimes I get the impression that they're just some network guy's neice or nephew acting out a script.

    • Re:cooking channel (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      If you're bored with ordinary cooking shows, try watching Alton Brown's "Good Eats". He's like Bill Nye, but for food.
      • Totally agreed. I use his cooking advice on a daily basis, have used his soups, cookies and various techniques to my advantage several times and in general feel as though watching Good Eats has made my life better. For. The. Win.

  • People still watch G4? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 26, 2006 @11:55AM (#15784720)
    I got rid of that channel when they eliminated the rest of the old TechTV programming - I still fail to see the business model behind G4. I probably should've gotten rid of it earlier - it seems the only thing I can remember was how turned off I was on the entire channel. G4 wanted to buy the audience, rather than figure out why, perhaps, that their channel sucked so badly in the first place that it's got very few subscribers. Once the TechTV shows started being infected, well... I can't stand 10 minutes of that channel now, nevermind 24. I think CPAC (Canadian version of C-SPAN) would be more bearable to watch. And G4 Canada was considered the saner channel.

    Programming about games done in a style that attracts teens and younger? Who these days use the 'net for the same content? At least TechTV inspired an older generation of people who still rely on "old media" (TV/radio/newspaper/magazines) just as much as "new media" (Internet - web/blogs/etc).

    • I got rid of that channel when they eliminated the rest of the old TechTV programming

      How do you "get rid of" a basic digital cable channel? Did you just ditch cable altogether because you didn't like G4? What do you have now instead? AFAIK all of the satellite companies also carry G4 with their basic service.

      I *wish* I could get rid of G4, if only to make a statement. As it stands, they have no tangible way of knowing my dissatisfaction. I used to watch TechTV originally but never watch G4 - unfortunat
      • the GP sounds as if he is from Canada, like me, and we don't get it standard on Cable. I had it on my Satellite dish, and when TechTV was switched, I kept G4 for something like 4 months, hated the shit out of it and then got it taken off of my subscribe to list.
  • From what I remember, Comcast bought G4 who in turn bought TechTV. Its just one more reason for me to hate that company.
  • The links on both the article and on G4 are bad...

    Here's the second page: http://www.thegamerag.com/archives/2006/07/feature _my_24_hours_with_g4tv_2.php [thegamerag.com]
  • There is nothing, seriously nothing, you can get from this show that you couldn't find with a simple trip to your local neighborhood Gamefaqs.com.

    So they have started linking to videos of hot girls reading their FAQ's?

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday July 26, 2006 @12:20PM (#15784919)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • There is more than enough content to fill out an entire channel with games content. Look at how many leagues and matchs go on every week with just FPSes. Cover these, infact Game-network in the UK used to cover the major TFC tournaments, I'd happily sit and watch them, it was like a geek's sports channel when they did that.

      We have 30-40 years of history worth listening to. Why can't they do content covering the past? What about old game series like Dizzy? Why not do a documentry based on him and his many ad
    • If you think G4's one of Comcast's worst decisions, then it should be even more evident when you see their Local Spotlight segments. Annoying as Hell, these 30 minute spots are dropped into Headline News broadcasts (seemingly) at random, even in the middle of reports. So if you don't care about CNN's non-news weekends or weekdays, and watch Headline News, you're pretty much screwed (since HN covers most of the news in other time slots). They also killed off most of the more entertaining public access channe
  • "Did anyone else remember Unscrewed with Martin Sargeant ?" my guess is he got caned, as he started to look like Krusty the clown on a meth binge towards the end.
    • "Did anyone else remember Unscrewed with Martin Sargeant ?" my guess is he got caned, as he started to look like Krusty the clown on a meth binge towards the end.
      As opposed to the beginning, when he just looked like Ronald McDonald on dope.
  • I used to watch Tech TV, and loved that they had knowledgable geek/gamer females as hosts. When the change over was made, they have gotten rid of them, and instead just have the typical model/bimbo type as hosts. What the hell? Sure we don't make up the majority of the gamer and geek market, but they definitely lost my viewing. My hubby only watches Attack of the Show and some of the "Midnight Spank" shows.

    Big example: When Attack of the Show had a contest for a co-host. They had to show how geeky,

  • 24 hours with a Mac (Score:3, Funny)

    by falzbro ( 468756 ) on Wednesday July 26, 2006 @12:43PM (#15785133) Homepage
    And I thought this was 24 hours with an older Mac. I would have been more interested in that..

  • G4 Shows (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MrCopilot ( 871878 ) on Wednesday July 26, 2006 @12:56PM (#15785245) Homepage Journal
    Attack of the Show, Sometimes good, sometimes painful. The Feed, now very painful. I miss Sarah, but not her husband

    XPlay, Good Reviews, and subtle comedy that you have to listen carefully for.

    Icons, Reruns that are gaming History related, New ones not so much.

    Everything Else, Change the channel.

    The Demographic they are trying to zero in on, is not one I would like to be associated with. I mean, I like hot chicks as much as the next guy, but damn, there has to be Content OR Nudity. Content would be preferred we already have Nudity channels. What we don't have are Technical Content. Hardware, Software, Internet, and Geek Culture on tv.

    If maybe I hadn't seen every StarTrek and NextGeneration 10 years ago, I might include them as high points.

    • Re:G4 Shows (Score:3, Interesting)

      by British ( 51765 )
      Icons, Reruns that are gaming History related, New ones not so much.

      I noticed that Icons had an episode about THE SUICIDE GIRLS. I mean come on, they are not icons to any extent of the imagination. They are just dang good at marketing what would otherwise be a pay adult site. Why would they have them on the same show that would focus on Sid Meier, Romero, etc is beyond me.

      Nope, I'm glad I got rid of my digital cable service(went back to basic) with horrible offerings like G4, VH-1 Classic(oh boy did that ju
    • Attack of the Show, Sometimes good, sometimes painful.

      I used to think that. Then I tuned in one time, maybe a month or two ago, and saw one of the guys shaving his junk.

      Never again.
  • What they need is to cover some online events in a meaningful way.

    How about they follow an "uber" mmo guild as they run through content for the first time? Just highlight them killing stuff, or their failuers, or thier discoveries.

    TV needs to show us stuff we can't normally see and do. Running at the high end of a game, killing the crap out of people, or being the first one to explore and do things, is things that 80% of us aren't able to do unless we put massive hours in.

    So, cover this stuff. Throw it in t
    • I've got to say I'm with you on this one. The speed runs they occasionally show on Cinematech are pretty cool, but we definitely need more of that.

      Developers invented spectator mode for a reason...and it's not to make that bastard of a show "Arena." Show me great deathmatches. Televise all the tricks the ubergods use to pwn everyone. Hell, show me the hardware they run on and the tweaks they do to get top performance out of their machines. THAT would be cool.

      The idea of following an MMO did sound kinda
  • I have this guilty pleasure watching this show. I don't really know why.

    and Cheaters is just another guilty pleasure. The episode where the dude confronts his girlfriend/wife and his best friend (who she'd been fucking) as they came out of the Planned Parenthood was just priceless. She lost the baby too. Fucking Hilarious!

  • 24? (Score:2)

    by antdude ( 79039 )
    I thought this was about Jack Bauer and the FOX [fox.com]'s 24 [fox.com] TV series. :(

  • The last time I tried to watch G4 was during E3.

    At the biggest event in the gaming industry, the best G4 could come up with was their hosts bringing up random topics and rating them on a scale from "scorching" to "volcanic". After two minutes I decided to get the rest of my information from the internet.

    It makes me wonder how many of the producers actually play video games?

  • The following takes place between GAME and TIME.
  • I did watch it awhile back, I remember there being a show called "The ScreenSavers" which my whole family would watch. Most of the time, it didn't suck.

    I actually got to watch that show go downhill for awhile. It started out doing some relatively techincal stuff, and they understood their medium and their purpose. So you'd get an occasional mention of a download or something you could just find on the Internet, but plenty of other things -- I know they had a Slashdot guy (Taco, I think), they had someone

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