The show (hosted by Adam Sessler and Morgan Webb) used to be a show about great reviews while adding a bit of humor to it. Although they urged you to play games that they rated five stars, the best part of the show was watching them play one-star reviews. They gave great opinions on the games at the time and always had great suggestions for games to watch during the holiday and winter breaks. The show was definitely for people who just wanted a quick rundown of the games they may have wanted to play.
Recently, though, X-Play went through a huge presentation change. They turned from a humorous review show to a news channel for video games. They still made reviews, but most of the show was made up entirely of news stories, exclusive sneak previews, trailers, interviews, and other features related to gaming (such as a presentation for pro-tips from professional gamer T-Squared for popular games at the time, or announcements for gaming contests held by X-Play).
This was a great idea, since there wasn't anyone to compete against for a gaming TV show other than Spike (in fact, it was GTTV except actually on TV, and had episodes a lot more frequently).
The only thing was, as I started to find more and more gaming news outlets on the internet, I lost more and more interest in X-Play and G4 as a whole. Reviews barely ever aired, and when they did, they were always for games that probably were super-popular anyway. The old shows used to review games that had very little fame, but were very well reviewed and it got me interested in games I would have never paid attention to. The reviews were really all that I came for at the time, and once they stopped airing much, I just stopped watching. All I ever watched on the channel was an episode of Ninja Warrior, and maybe Attack of the Show if they were doing a Gadget Pr0n segment.
Now, they finally came out with their 1000th episode. Their humor was drier than usual, but it was nice to watch a couple of seconds of the old episodes they reffered to (even the first one and the first appearance of Morgan Webb on TechTV!). Sadly, it didn't really pump my interest back into the show, but watching it brought some good memories...
I posted this on the blog a LONG time ago, but it's one of the few thing that I've ever laughed hysterically at that was made by them. It definitely helps to go watch their original review, but this was actually a response to complaints that X-Play's original review didn't have scores that were close to the ones other well-respected reviewers gave this game. Enjoy it, and congratulations to Adam and Morgan!
Footnote: You should also see this if you are interested in Adam's response to the complaints. I'm very sad to learn that Adam stopped his Sessler's Soapbox segment only yesterday (January 31st) after about two years in the running. I always liked listening to his opinion and I think G4 is slowly fading from my interest now...
