I love all the world-changing technology that gets overlooked by the characters in this episode. One company's VR setup somehow creates all the following: * True AI - sentient, sapient and able to learn * A teleporter that can convert people into digital information and back again * Virtually unlimited data storage (see: teleporter) * Virtually unlimited energy storage (see again: teleporter) Any one of those innovations would revolutionize human society while also making the developer successful and wealthy beyond measure. These guys create all four in one go. Their accomplishments never go anywhere and are never heard of again.
Gotta love when fiction does that. Like in The Prestige where they have a machine that can copy and duplicate any matter essentially out of thin air. Instead of using it for, oh I dunno, food production or some other world changing purpose it's used for a magic trick involving teleportation, that has the horrendous consequence of the magician continuously committing suicide to hide the fact he's actually being duplicated not teleported😐
@@kari_sims In all fairness if true AI ever was invented it'd probably be in a videogame and most likely by accident. AI in videogames is after all designed to be not only smart but also able to emulate "living" behaviour as much as possible aka sentience (not that current technology is anywhere close to doing that, and even if it was then there's the whole other can of worms regarding proving it's actually sentient and not just a simulation). Neural networks and the like don't really have that demand, they just need to be intelligent. And there is a difference between sentience and intelligence. Like many animals are sentient but not very intelligent, so can computers be intelligent but lack sentience. However in this X-Files episode they seemed to have intentionally created the AI when designing the videogame, and that I find a tad unlikely. Not that they could create the AI beforehand but that they decided to still go: "yup, still only going to utilise it in this rather lackluster VR FPS game!"😕
@@Khenfu_Cake Not really, videogame AI is mostly about "appearing" intelligent rather than actual intelligence. It's designed to just be competent at a few particular tasks, all of which have to be programmed by a developer, rather than having any actual learning capacity. It's mostly just an elaborate puppet show.
@@cameronstone4495 You are correct. I should have worded that differently. Obviously true AI doesn't exist no matter how much all the doomsday sayers think it does. If anything; the danger with "AI" we have atm is the belief that it is smarter than it actually is, so we end up relying way too much on algorithms to perform crucial tasks in our society which they simply aren't smart enough to handle.
+wangus Agreed! It was so hilarious! And so were some of the other things mentioned by Allison, like Skinner in bubble bath! I laughed my ass off at that scene (once again) when I rewatched x-files to prepare for the new miniseries. And as mentioned in the video even the First Person Shooter is really entertaining in how much it fails to portray its subject matter with any kind of accuracy! These episodes truly are comedic gold. Some intentionally while others not so much. But either way it's entertaining!
My thoughts exactly. It has a genuinely scary opening and Scully constantly trying to avoid the in-universe camera is hilarious. Plus an off-screen cameo by Freddy Kruger! Easily one of my top-3 favorite X-Files episodes.
I believe one big motivation for this episode was the overwhelming success of the Matrix. It was released in March of 99, this episode was just shy of year later in Feb 2000. I remember seeing this episode when it first aired. Numerous shows & movies around that time were riding the cyberpunk ride that the Matrix started.
Xfios co name, kids next door the cell, The Simpsons hell, even some episodes of scooby doo, what's new scooby doo were influenced by The Matrix. It was just a product of its time was a stupid. Yes, but at the same flip, was it fun to watch motor and scolley kick a** in the virtual world absolutely. And I like how this woman will. Young lady understands that it was men for good stupid entertainment, Now if it was meant to be like super super super serious guys, then I can understand people getting mad
A developer shipping a broken game and making no attempt ti fix it yet expecting consumers to cough up the dough? That kind of shady business practice would never happen in reality.
The writer was William Gibson, one of the most prolific science fiction authors of all time. He's considered a pioneer of the cyberpunk subgenre and is even credited for coining terms such as "cyberspace" and "netsurfing". Chew on that for a second😐
@@Khenfu_Cake Kind of mind boggling that it was written by Gibson and yet displays, if anything, a negative understanding of how computers and programming work.
@@frankm.2850 Indeed. I'm not sure what happened here either. Perhaps the script was heavily edited by studio folk because they thought it would make more sense to your average viewer?? I dunno 😐
+Punkster Daddy's Safe Space My personal fav is the CSI New York episode where they investigate and then run after a suspect in Second Life. That was the most stupid thing I've ever seen. And then there was the Tony Hawks pro skater murder on CSI Miami and the "2 people hack faster on one keyboard" thing on Navy CIS (to be fair though, CIS doesn't get any shit right except its stereotypes and patriotism).
+MwieZorro Oh I don't know, I remember seeing an episode of CSI, not sure which version where one of the cast went around solving a murder... Her own!? Yep that was a point where I thought, they have ran out of ideas, they now have one of the cast appearing as a ghost to solve her own murder, in a show once praised for it's dedication to forensic science. I think she was resurrected by the end... Of course. >_< Not video game related, I know but still stupid enough to be worthy of mentioning. Oh and yes I remember the Second Life one too, I had actually forgotten about that one. So much stupid, it's glorious.
+Punkster Daddy's Safe Space Hey, hey, hey! I think we are forgetting the absolute pinnacle of cop procedural gamers are evil episodes ever made. That being the NCIS episode were two avid mmo players who were stationed on the same battleship, on which they played the afforementioned mmo, might I add, met to duel with actual swords, with one deciding to blow up the captain in order to, and I quote, "win the game."
09:33 - Wait WHAT?!? In what universe would a death linked directly to a video game make the investors go "Oh yeah! This is gonna make us a heap of money"? I know logic flew straight out the window in this episode, but really?
This was the view people had of counter/sub-culture groups in those days, that they were all nihilist ass holes with no empathy that got off on the misery of others. The sort of people who go on drunken tours of killing fields and get into arguments comparing serial killer body counts while wearing Charles Manson t-shirts. Kind of like every character in every slasher/horror film made around the same 90s-2000s period. "This shit killed people? Take my money"
probably in the same sense as when The Exorcist or Passion of the Christ was in theaters and they were "so shocking" people died in the movie theaters. and people were curious and flooded the theaters
She simply wasn't paying attention to the episode and misrepresented that part. In a previous scene, the investors were going to back out when they heard about the game having killed a player, but once the FBI, through Scully's autopsy, couldn't determine a cause of death that proved a connection to the game, they decided to change their minds. And it makes perfect sense too, because, once it's been proven that the hardware he was wearing couldn't have possibly put a hole in that guy's chest, why would the investors believe that the game had anything to do with it? Imagine if the same thing had happened to someone beta testing the oculus rift to realize how absurd that would be.
Well, to me it still seemed like a scary show until I got around to finally watching it when I got netflix back in high school because when I was a child I watched the episode with Tooms and yeah a guy who can stretch into any tiny gap and wants to eat your liver... pretty much scared the actual shit out of 6 year old me.
I was in 6th grade when the episode with the green bugs that come out in the dark and kill people first aired, and the following Monday was when the 6th grade class went to Woodleaf, which was a week-long field trip to a school camp to learn about nature and ecology ... in the middle of the forest. One of the classes was a night hike through the forest (which had a very similar ecology to that episode) and I was looking up constantly looking for little green glowing bugs the entire time.
I was creeped out by it because I thought the theme song was scary, but then I properly saw the show and was disappointed by how it was a lot more goofy and kind of boring to my teenage mind than genuinely scary.
So many other things to note... - Directed by Chris Carter! - Co-Written by the man who brought us 'Johnny Mnemonic.' - Co-Written by a man with only TWO Writing Credits (both for this Show). - The other Episode Written by him featured an Evil A.I., the Internet and The Lone Gunmen. - In spite of all the valid critiques, this Episode won TWO EMMYS!
The "nobody finished level 2" thing....considering the way a lot of low and big budget games ship nowadays, this episode is actually pretty good at predicting the shoddy state a lot of games ship in now. And the money hungry nature of it all. As for a death making investors happy...it's not quite the same, but deaths linked to violent games and movies by the idiot media usually sees the game in question get a boost in popularity. Hatred came out last year, and used controversy to sell a bunch of copies, despite it actually being really cringey and not actually all that violent.
There was actually quite a rash of "negative publicity" stunts that actually made things more popular in the 90s. It was based on the idea that even bad publicity was good. Something like games back then being "so realistic" that it gave people heart attacks.
While some games today are indeed rushed, “we haven’t even confirmed the second level is beatable” seems like it goes a bit beyond rushed and into just plain not knowing what you’re doing at even a most basic level.
Amazing tech wasted on " a stupid game" Thanks, Scully. This is both amazing and nonsensical i.e. perfect for S.7 X-Files. This episode did win an award for visual special effects.
I don't really think her argument was that it was macho-bs because men liked to play it but instead, as Allison pointed out in the review, the next scene shows the sole female character in the game looks like a hyper sexualised parody of a woman.
@P Ciprian Interesting claims, but again you follow people like TL;DR and computing forever, so I will stay suspicious about results of that kind of studies.
@@anodosarcade7355 In season 8 (wasn't 9 as far as I recall since the last season of the TV series was the 8th season) of Charmed there's an episode where they have this rather elaborate scene depicting this extremely over designed yet also silly outdated UI for an email program, like I'm talking animated envelope, at Win95 levels of graphical fidelity, flying onto the screen and apparently opening immediately without any user input (which come to think of it makes the users of this particular email program extremely vulnerable to email distributed malware). They even went as far as showing, no joke, the email being sent via electric currents through the prints and wires inside the computer (the wires didn't even look all that much like the wiring you'd usually find inside a desktop computer) in this CG animation sequence, which probably sucked up at least half of that season's special effects budget. Keep in mind; season 8 first aired in 2005; the year where UA-cam launched (and Facebook had launched only a year prior) and everyone and their great grandmother had been using emails for years beforehand. Yet Charmed still treated possibly one of the oldest forms of online digital communication like it was this strange and rare technological wonder😄
No, they know. They just dont give a damn because realistic portrayal of VR wouldn't allow them to build the entire episode around a virtual killer babe. That's how it works for most soft science fiction. The creators know that they are writing technogobligook, but they dont care bc realistic portrayal of science is not their goal.
bad question ....Roddenberry and most of his first writers didn't have a clue about astrophysics, relativity, orbital mechanics or most tech beyond WWII bombers (he flew), cop motorcycles (he rode on patrol), fast cars (he drove), and chicks he boinked while his wife and kids were asleep at home. He showed the draft script of The Cage to a physicist. The prof then corrected as much as he could to make it seem believable, even to the ignorant public. Telling GR how far different stars were in his script, how fast he'd have to go and that either space or time would have to be warped, while magically synchronizing with Earth time. You got "The Cage" where Rigel was really far out there (like it really is) and Vega was on the way home. You got Time Warp factors (magic carpet but it sounded cool,). You got Phasers because the prof said lasers (which were real in 1964) would never be powerful enough.
I got half way through this episode and was half convinced that I was having a fever dream. I came onto you tube to see if I was completely missing something as I just don’t get it. Looks like I’m not the only one struggling with this episode.
Funny you should mention Baywatch. The killer, Krista Allen was actually on Baywatch as a 'bad girl' lifeguard along with Jason Momoa during the Hawaii seasons. Also Baywatch Nights season 2 was an X Files ripoff with Hasselhoff being the Mulder character.
I remember being excited for this episode as it was advertised as being written by legendary science fiction author William Gibson who had previously written the X-Files episode Killswitch. (And episode that remains my favourite.) I was so let down by the stupidity of this episode. A virtual reality game that actually presents the enemies as holograms - I'm with you. The enemies take you down with shocks in your vest - fine. There's an AI that is killing players with a blade - okay, I guess. The AI can take a person into the program when shut down - no, that makes no sense under what they established.
I was let down by the Stephen King-scripted episode as well. If the spirit of the father was somehow acting the doll to ward off his widow's potential suitors, that would make some sort of sense. But the doll apparently killed the father, and there didn't seem to be any purpose to what the doll was doing as far as I remember.
VonWenk it was just another take on the possessed doll/creepy kid trope. not everything has to have some grand meaning and a lot of the reason that the x files is as amazing as it is is because of the characters and the small moments. The conversations between mulder and scully in that episode are fantastic. I can’t say that about first person shooter or kill switch though because those are definitely my two least favorite episodes of the entire series (besides season eight and nine which i genuinely think no one cared for)
However Killswitch was I think the most one to one dystopian cyberpunk hours of television evvvvver overlaid onto the real world. Just jarring and beautiful.
It requires some suspension of disbelief, but I think it worked on a symbolic level to literalize fears of a prior generation that video games were sucking out the minds of their players. I think the episode was trying to do too much. It was simultaneously trying to jab machismo in geek culture while also taking shots at the unrealistic fears of those who thought video games were causing the rise of mass shootings. In the end it was just too compressed.
You didn't understand the part about the investors. The game included a haptic vest that was believed at first to have malfunctioned, resulting in the death of the player. Once the FBI confirmed that the vest couldn't have possibly had anything to do with it, there was no reason not to go ahead with the game launch. Why would an investor even entertain the possibility that it was really a rogue AI slicing and punching holes into people through VR?
I remember watching X-files during the nineties, at times having nightmares from the really intense episodes. And then I remember this episode, which even to my younger self was one of the suckiest goddamn things ever.
I seem to recall that in the first showing of this episode what saved Scully and Mulder in the end was the introduction of another video game character. I'm pretty sure it was supposed to be Duke Nukem. You never see the 3rd tank destroyed. The Duke did it. I'm guessing whoever owns the copyright to DM wanted too much money for rebroadcast or dvd sales.
I also love how he’s the only one who doesn’t give a fuck in that scene. Mulder: “what’re you doing?” Scully: “uhhhh working. You?” Mulder: “...working.” Skinner: “I’m taking a bath.”
Amazing review.. as always! ;P Really hope you do more manic episodes about TV-shows! :D I really enjoyed your Charmed reviews and the podcasts you did on Supernatural:)
I remember thinking the COPS parody episode was the best, funniest, most amazing thing ever when I was a kid. I used to get to stay up past my bedtime to watch these episodes come out (they were on right after Who's Line is it, Anyway (now I finally get those Geppetto jokes!!)) Long rambling story short, thanks for all the laughs, Allison :)
+Ben Davis die hard's good day to die more or whatever the fuck the 4th one was called is still the stupidest version of "how daz internets werk??" viruses that turn computers into bombs, VIRUSES THAT TURN COMPUTERS INTO BOMBS, PEOPLE!
I feel like the best of the X-files was from season 1 to season 7, and(IMHO) after that the show took a bit of a nosedive in quality. But even the weird(even by X-files standards) episodes like this one, X-cops, are just so good, so fun and so entertaining that I can always find immense amounts of enjoyment in them. I think it also helps that Gillian and David are capable of playing their roles with such seriousness that despite how crazy this all is, it still works. Well... except for the moments of Mulder's levity, which are always a delight. Also, any episode with The Lone Gunmen is always an automatic win.
Legend has it that this episode was based on the true story of Battle Toads play testing. there were no survivors of that so we'll never no the real truth but it makes you think.
15:20 In the 1990s the Pentagon was easy to get into. Granted they have heavily restrict areas. They had a fucking mall and a Metro station in it, people.
Wow. I remember turning off this episode after Donkeylips died in the intro. If I knew it was going to get "Mulder Gets Downloaded" dumb, I woulda' kept watching ironically.
I love that now that video games and computers have become more mainstream day by day, this episode becomes obviously more stupid at an exponential rate. But I get the impression that many non-gamers still have this level of ignorance when it comes to video games and I become frightened.
Great lookback and reassessment. I get that some people out there appreciate and enjoy the more light hearted approach seasons 6&7 took. But having watched all the seasons back to back again recently, I cant help but feel more than ever that that approach is what sent the show not just Jumping, but sailing at stratospheric heights over the Shark. The "Fight the Future" movie did such a good and serious job in delivering a payoff to what the Alien Arc was building up to. It ends with Scully being rescued from a UFO previously embedded in the South Pole. Awesome. But season 6 and 7 completly fail to even mention this, and low and behold,Scully is STILL a sceptic! It turned Scully into a parody of herself. You cant have such a huge scene like a UFO actually been featured and Scully's rescue from it being utterly ignored and Scully refusing to believe it all. Nonsense. Then, the show piles on too many comedy based, all out paranormal stories that Scully's science had no weight whatsoever. These kind of episodes here are more suited to Buffy, Charmed,etc. Too many episodes like this in s6&7 dumbed down the show. Yeah, its funny in places but its just bad. That said, the nadir of the show was still to come: Later in the season we got "Fight Club". That, is without a doubt the worst episode of the show ever!
OMG this had me cackling, and I especially love those quintessentially 90's teenie tiny sunglasses on Mulder that I'm assuming someone at some point fooled everyone into thinking looked cool
I was SO excited when I saw this was up for Manic Episodes. I'm a lifelong X-Files fan and I remember being absolutely baffled when this episode aired. I hate to be 'that guy' but, X-Cops is another one I'd love to hear your review on. Or just more X-Files in general, tbh.
What makes it worse is that the episode was written by two established novelists whose work suggests that they know better. For fuck's sake, one of them coined the term "cyberpunk". How could this have gone so wrong?
You know why the Lone Gunmen were there. Because they were the series nerds and only nerds in the 90's played video games. Way before being a nerd got hijacked by cool kids.
Today's nightmare fact is that this episode was written by William Gibson [author of 'Neuromancer'] and Tom Maddox [author and coiner of the term Intrusion Countermeasure Electronics, or ICE], who together wrote the (relatively) better fifth-season episode "Kill Switch." I mean, I don't exactly go to Gibson for reasonable gender analysis (not his strong suit), but...but what the hell?
You got to like how First Person Shooter apparently runs on NES Karate Kid logic according to AVGN where instead of just making several good levels they'll just make a few and make them hard as hell. Not sure if they said that this game only had two levels but if that's the case that's even dumber.
Not just a TV series making a bad episode about a VR gimmick. It's a 90s TV series making a bad episode about a VR gimmick with 90s estimation of future technology. And they clearly have a dev build, so why not enter some cheats and just win
Huh, I just watched this right after another game named after a genre, made on extreme crunch, and could possibly kill you (if you're epileptic) got released. Weird that.
This was actually the first X-Files episode I've watched as a 11-year old, so even if's awful, I still love it for the nostalgia. I remember I had a really frightning nightmare after watching it lol, good times. I also loved that episode about Dana following the cops on their routine, totally awesome.
+Ibun West Boy do you know how to pick 'em or what! You should really check out some other episodes to see what it can offer. Like literally any other episode but this! Well, maybe avoid seasons 8-9. Probably best to stick anything before that except this, lol
1:20 Notice how the big dude folds the stock on his G36 for no reason. It was already unfolded as it should have been! He must have watched 'On Deadly Ground' and identified with Billy Bob Thornton's expendable henchman character who asks his buddy whether he should have the stock of his Swedish K in or out. Of course, it should be out (unfolded). Leaving it in the storage position will drastically decrease combat effectiveness. 1:40 Ackchyually, those might be codpieces. 🙃 2:21 So many rookie moves all in one scene! Reloading "wrong-handed" (using the shootin' hand instead of the support hand) with the muzzle facing up. Folding the stock into its storage position when it was already unfolded as it should be. It's like they were asking for it. Darwin awards all around. 3:22 This is right up Langley's alley. Also, one of my LAN party buddies from 15 years ago was the spitting image of Frohike. Similar personality too. Frohike was always muh fave. Fun fact: Langley's mind later became a VR cyberspace A.I. construct thing. 4:58 Gumby and Pokey references?! Really?! 😅 10:32 Fun fact: High heels were originally a men's fashion item and were invented by a poncy French king. Naturally, they were exclusive to the oppressor class. Like that's any surprise. 11:24 And of course, we've gotta have the helmet with the chinstrap unfastened. Because if you leave rifle stocks folded, you also have to leave helmet chinstraps unfastened just to be consistently incompetent. Btw, doing either of those will get you chewed out by a gunny or a CO IRL. Just ask Skinner (though I doubt he ever did either of those things since he was always the diligent type). 11:31 Did you ever play that holographic arcade game with the time-traveling cowboy? 12:18 Someone could turn that into a S.T.A.L.K.E.R. reference if they were so inclined. 12:53 That keyboard! I used to have one just like it!
I REMEMBER this episode when it came out. I watched it. I remember thinking how stupid it was. Now, all this time later... it's even stupider than I remember. It IS sexist... towards everybody. It insults the males, it insults the females... the female programmer is apparently okay with murdering (male) customers, the company owner doesn't seem to realize that he's not only going to be sued for wrongful deaths, but also arrested and put on trial for said deaths (alongside the female programmer). Even the heads of Electronic Arts aren't THAT stupid. Though to be honest, the fact that everyone now understands how bad and stupid it was actually indicates how far average people have progressed in terms of understanding the technology around them. It made me think of how, in 2016, a certain politician attempted to defend her illegal activity by pretending to be a grandmother who doesn't understand how computers work. And the general response was, "This is no longer the 1980s, and nobody believes that computers become self aware if you zap them with lightning bolts. Grandmothers in the 21st century are computer literate; they send each other .jpgs of their grandchildren as e-mail attachments."
What the fuck was the 90's deal with virtual reality? it's like magnets to the ICP, hell chris carter made another series based on this episode's fucking premise and it bombed after 1 episode i grew up in the 90's and i STILL never understood where this dumbas interpitation of VR came from but EVERYONE was following it with this exact formula and this bizare fad was pre-matrix(something else the walchowski's ripped off)
+ColeVecsion Considering VR is an actual thing now. Though not to the point TV shows portrayed it. I think they actually had a good reason to have a infatuation with it.
+everett von scott Well, kind of. But why then? It's not like VR was something we were close to achieving back in the 90's. Hell, now 20 some years later we are still far away from the type of advanced VR often depicted in even the more grounded sci-fi. And it's not like one or two shows did this VR thing, no, it was a huge fad and countless shows, comics, etc. loved exploring it without even doing any research as to what VR could realistically achieve at its best.
+ColeVecsion Story wise it was like having magic. Want a Chicago Detective to fight a dragon? VR. Alien invasion that's not a 'it' was all a dream' VR. Normal guy is really not in a normal world, VR. Long time characters so OOC it hurts? VR. Three karate kids fighting an interdimensional invasion no one else can see because it's a digital war ground VR.
Alright, my first viewing of you and ur stuff. Very cool. Love the snark and insight. Gonna sub after this vid. Hiii sorry I'm years late to the party.
Also that crying after the whole 'she's input herself into the game, we have to download her' legit had me in stitches, had to rewind like 30 seconds cause I was swept up in laughter.
"No one's ever beaten level 2."
Valve immediately puts it on the front page of Steam!
It is immediately advertised all over Facebook!
I love all the world-changing technology that gets overlooked by the characters in this episode. One company's VR setup somehow creates all the following:
* True AI - sentient, sapient and able to learn
* A teleporter that can convert people into digital information and back again
* Virtually unlimited data storage (see: teleporter)
* Virtually unlimited energy storage (see again: teleporter)
Any one of those innovations would revolutionize human society while also making the developer successful and wealthy beyond measure. These guys create all four in one go. Their accomplishments never go anywhere and are never heard of again.
lmao just like scully says, wasted on a stupid game
Gotta love when fiction does that. Like in The Prestige where they have a machine that can copy and duplicate any matter essentially out of thin air. Instead of using it for, oh I dunno, food production or some other world changing purpose it's used for a magic trick involving teleportation, that has the horrendous consequence of the magician continuously committing suicide to hide the fact he's actually being duplicated not teleported😐
@@kari_sims In all fairness if true AI ever was invented it'd probably be in a videogame and most likely by accident. AI in videogames is after all designed to be not only smart but also able to emulate "living" behaviour as much as possible aka sentience (not that current technology is anywhere close to doing that, and even if it was then there's the whole other can of worms regarding proving it's actually sentient and not just a simulation). Neural networks and the like don't really have that demand, they just need to be intelligent. And there is a difference between sentience and intelligence. Like many animals are sentient but not very intelligent, so can computers be intelligent but lack sentience.
However in this X-Files episode they seemed to have intentionally created the AI when designing the videogame, and that I find a tad unlikely. Not that they could create the AI beforehand but that they decided to still go: "yup, still only going to utilise it in this rather lackluster VR FPS game!"😕
@@Khenfu_Cake Not really, videogame AI is mostly about "appearing" intelligent rather than actual intelligence. It's designed to just be competent at a few particular tasks, all of which have to be programmed by a developer, rather than having any actual learning capacity. It's mostly just an elaborate puppet show.
@@cameronstone4495 You are correct. I should have worded that differently. Obviously true AI doesn't exist no matter how much all the doomsday sayers think it does. If anything; the danger with "AI" we have atm is the belief that it is smarter than it actually is, so we end up relying way too much on algorithms to perform crucial tasks in our society which they simply aren't smart enough to handle.
that Cops episode was awesome, though
+wangus Agreed! It was so hilarious! And so were some of the other things mentioned by Allison, like Skinner in bubble bath! I laughed my ass off at that scene (once again) when I rewatched x-files to prepare for the new miniseries. And as mentioned in the video even the First Person Shooter is really entertaining in how much it fails to portray its subject matter with any kind of accuracy! These episodes truly are comedic gold. Some intentionally while others not so much. But either way it's entertaining!
Yes it was. I feel the influx of humor in season 6 and 7 were a good thing.
My thoughts exactly. It has a genuinely scary opening and Scully constantly trying to avoid the in-universe camera is hilarious. Plus an off-screen cameo by Freddy Kruger! Easily one of my top-3 favorite X-Files episodes.
@@CERTAIND00M I thought it was a real episode of cops and they actually found a monster in real life
I believe one big motivation for this episode was the overwhelming success of the Matrix. It was released in March of 99, this episode was just shy of year later in Feb 2000. I remember seeing this episode when it first aired. Numerous shows & movies around that time were riding the cyberpunk ride that the Matrix started.
"the body can't live without the mind"
This. If you weren't alive when the matrix came out, it's hard to express just how influential it was.
I always knew it wa a Matrix spoof. Even back then.
“Do ‘The Matrix’ on a TV budget, and a single episode’s production time? Sure, what could go wrong!? It’ll be a masterpiece!”
Xfios co name, kids next door the cell, The Simpsons hell, even some episodes of scooby doo, what's new scooby doo were influenced by The Matrix. It was just a product of its time was a stupid. Yes, but at the same flip, was it fun to watch motor and scolley kick a** in the virtual world absolutely. And I like how this woman will. Young lady understands that it was men for good stupid entertainment, Now if it was meant to be like super super super serious guys, then I can understand people getting mad
A developer shipping a broken game and making no attempt ti fix it yet expecting consumers to cough up the dough? That kind of shady business practice would never happen in reality.
Can we pleeeeeeeease get more Manic Episodes of the X-Files?! This was great.
Agreed. I love the X-Files with a passion, but there are some real stinkers worthy of this treatment sprinkled throughout the show.
"She's input herself into the game, we have to download her" Watching this was cathartic for me as a programmer, thank you!
This episode was straight up insane, written by someone who had never, ever, been within a mile of a computer.
The writer was William Gibson, one of the most prolific science fiction authors of all time. He's considered a pioneer of the cyberpunk subgenre and is even credited for coining terms such as "cyberspace" and "netsurfing".
Chew on that for a second😐
Nekhet Ya can’t win em all.
@@Khenfu_Cake Kind of mind boggling that it was written by Gibson and yet displays, if anything, a negative understanding of how computers and programming work.
@@frankm.2850 Indeed. I'm not sure what happened here either. Perhaps the script was heavily edited by studio folk because they thought it would make more sense to your average viewer?? I dunno 😐
@@Khenfu_Cake Studio exec interference would make more sense.
However "techno" representation in Hollywood and tv in the 90's was bad.
This episode of The X Files still portrayed Gamers better than that awful Law and Order shite from last year.
+Punkster Daddy's Safe Space That was last year? I thought it was 2 years ago.
+Punkster Daddy's Safe Space "what happened"
"....he leveled up...."
+Punkster Daddy's Safe Space My personal fav is the CSI New York episode where they investigate and then run after a suspect in Second Life. That was the most stupid thing I've ever seen. And then there was the Tony Hawks pro skater murder on CSI Miami and the "2 people hack faster on one keyboard" thing on Navy CIS (to be fair though, CIS doesn't get any shit right except its stereotypes and patriotism).
+MwieZorro
Oh I don't know, I remember seeing an episode of CSI, not sure which version where one of the cast went around solving a murder... Her own!?
Yep that was a point where I thought, they have ran out of ideas, they now have one of the cast appearing as a ghost to solve her own murder, in a show once praised for it's dedication to forensic science.
I think she was resurrected by the end... Of course. >_<
Not video game related, I know but still stupid enough to be worthy of mentioning.
Oh and yes I remember the Second Life one too, I had actually forgotten about that one. So much stupid, it's glorious.
+Punkster Daddy's Safe Space Hey, hey, hey! I think we are forgetting the absolute pinnacle of cop procedural gamers are evil episodes ever made. That being the NCIS episode were two avid mmo players who were stationed on the same battleship, on which they played the afforementioned mmo, might I add, met to duel with actual swords, with one deciding to blow up the captain in order to, and I quote, "win the game."
Fox goes to the most logical place you could think of when you pull a sword from a stone.
The Wild West.
+Joshua Pelfrey look it's a rushed game they had levels that link both but it was cut since the company want to make pachinko machine
I understood that reference. #FuckKonami
9:40 "we're gonna be countin' Franklins"
This game is gonna make us *hundreds* of dollars
09:33 - Wait WHAT?!? In what universe would a death linked directly to a video game make the investors go "Oh yeah! This is gonna make us a heap of money"? I know logic flew straight out the window in this episode, but really?
+Gasoline85 there is no business like suicide business
This was the view people had of counter/sub-culture groups in those days, that they were all nihilist ass holes with no empathy that got off on the misery of others. The sort of people who go on drunken tours of killing fields and get into arguments comparing serial killer body counts while wearing Charles Manson t-shirts. Kind of like every character in every slasher/horror film made around the same 90s-2000s period. "This shit killed people? Take my money"
probably in the same sense as when The Exorcist or Passion of the Christ was in theaters and they were "so shocking" people died in the movie theaters. and people were curious and flooded the theaters
She simply wasn't paying attention to the episode and misrepresented that part. In a previous scene, the investors were going to back out when they heard about the game having killed a player, but once the FBI, through Scully's autopsy, couldn't determine a cause of death that proved a connection to the game, they decided to change their minds.
And it makes perfect sense too, because, once it's been proven that the hardware he was wearing couldn't have possibly put a hole in that guy's chest, why would the investors believe that the game had anything to do with it? Imagine if the same thing had happened to someone beta testing the oculus rift to realize how absurd that would be.
I can't be the only one who thinks Scully looked fit in all that gear at the end.
When I was younger, I used to be so afraid of watching the X-Files, being a huge coward. This one put everything into perspective
Well, to me it still seemed like a scary show until I got around to finally watching it when I got netflix back in high school because when I was a child I watched the episode with Tooms and yeah a guy who can stretch into any tiny gap and wants to eat your liver... pretty much scared the actual shit out of 6 year old me.
The first half of the series had some terrifying episodes. Nothing like this.
I was in 6th grade when the episode with the green bugs that come out in the dark and kill people first aired, and the following Monday was when the 6th grade class went to Woodleaf, which was a week-long field trip to a school camp to learn about nature and ecology ... in the middle of the forest. One of the classes was a night hike through the forest (which had a very similar ecology to that episode) and I was looking up constantly looking for little green glowing bugs the entire time.
I was creeped out by it because I thought the theme song was scary, but then I properly saw the show and was disappointed by how it was a lot more goofy and kind of boring to my teenage mind than genuinely scary.
There were legit creepy X Files episodes early on especially
Most games in the Wild West involve fighting with a medieval two-handed sword.
🤣🤣 the Zoolander shot though 😂😂
Except for the violence and scantily clad women, this script seems more suited for the old Ninja Turtles cartoon than the X-Files.
With the violence and scantily clad women, it’s more suited for the Ninja Turtles comics.
Mulder's look around 6:40 is probably the best thing in this episode. And in general he's probably the only real fun thing in it.
Mulder was always ahead of his time and Skully is stuck in the past.
So many other things to note...
- Directed by Chris Carter!
- Co-Written by the man who brought us 'Johnny Mnemonic.'
- Co-Written by a man with only TWO Writing Credits (both for this Show).
- The other Episode Written by him featured an Evil A.I., the Internet and The Lone Gunmen.
- In spite of all the valid critiques, this Episode won TWO EMMYS!
The "nobody finished level 2" thing....considering the way a lot of low and big budget games ship nowadays, this episode is actually pretty good at predicting the shoddy state a lot of games ship in now. And the money hungry nature of it all.
As for a death making investors happy...it's not quite the same, but deaths linked to violent games and movies by the idiot media usually sees the game in question get a boost in popularity. Hatred came out last year, and used controversy to sell a bunch of copies, despite it actually being really cringey and not actually all that violent.
There was actually quite a rash of "negative publicity" stunts that actually made things more popular in the 90s. It was based on the idea that even bad publicity was good. Something like games back then being "so realistic" that it gave people heart attacks.
Investors aren't interested in games that kill's it's customers: no repeat business. Plus lawsuits.
While some games today are indeed rushed, “we haven’t even confirmed the second level is beatable” seems like it goes a bit beyond rushed and into just plain not knowing what you’re doing at even a most basic level.
Amazing tech wasted on " a stupid game" Thanks, Scully. This is both amazing and nonsensical i.e. perfect for S.7 X-Files. This episode did win an award for visual special effects.
Skully basically argued that girls don't like first-person shooters. She was absolutely being sexist, but not in the way the writers thought.
You can't know that.
Well she talked about games in general, not just FPS games. I doubt this episode would even know what a FPS is.
I don't really think her argument was that it was macho-bs because men liked to play it but instead, as Allison pointed out in the review, the next scene shows the sole female character in the game looks like a hyper sexualised parody of a woman.
It is more of a guy thing but some girls do play so.......
@P Ciprian Interesting claims, but again you follow people like TL;DR and computing forever, so I will stay suspicious about results of that kind of studies.
This episode was made in 2000! *2000*!! It's like the 'email' debacle in season 9 of Charmed! And... is that Quinn from 'UnREAL'?
Charmed email debacle?
Bro, you can't just leave us hanging like that!
@@anodosarcade7355 In season 8 (wasn't 9 as far as I recall since the last season of the TV series was the 8th season) of Charmed there's an episode where they have this rather elaborate scene depicting this extremely over designed yet also silly outdated UI for an email program, like I'm talking animated envelope, at Win95 levels of graphical fidelity, flying onto the screen and apparently opening immediately without any user input (which come to think of it makes the users of this particular email program extremely vulnerable to email distributed malware).
They even went as far as showing, no joke, the email being sent via electric currents through the prints and wires inside the computer (the wires didn't even look all that much like the wiring you'd usually find inside a desktop computer) in this CG animation sequence, which probably sucked up at least half of that season's special effects budget.
Keep in mind; season 8 first aired in 2005; the year where UA-cam launched (and Facebook had launched only a year prior) and everyone and their great grandmother had been using emails for years beforehand. Yet Charmed still treated possibly one of the oldest forms of online digital communication like it was this strange and rare technological wonder😄
By this point I’m beginning to think writers don’t know how Virtual Reality works. Especially in the 90’s.
No, they know. They just dont give a damn because realistic portrayal of VR wouldn't allow them to build the entire episode around a virtual killer babe.
That's how it works for most soft science fiction. The creators know that they are writing technogobligook, but they dont care bc realistic portrayal of science is not their goal.
bad question ....Roddenberry and most of his first writers didn't have a clue about astrophysics, relativity, orbital mechanics or most tech beyond WWII bombers (he flew), cop motorcycles (he rode on patrol), fast cars (he drove), and chicks he boinked while his wife and kids were asleep at home.
He showed the draft script of The Cage to a physicist. The prof then corrected as much as he could to make it seem believable, even to the ignorant public. Telling GR how far different stars were in his script, how fast he'd have to go and that either space or time would have to be warped, while magically synchronizing with Earth time.
You got "The Cage" where Rigel was really far out there (like it really is) and Vega was on the way home. You got Time Warp factors (magic carpet but it sounded cool,). You got Phasers because the prof said lasers (which were real in 1964) would never be powerful enough.
2:17 what do you mean wondering? Holodeck safety protocols just failed again.
Wait a minute, this isn't star trek TNG!
Hollywood AD was so hilarious that it's the only episode where Skinner smiled.
I got half way through this episode and was half convinced that I was having a fever dream. I came onto you tube to see if I was completely missing something as I just don’t get it.
Looks like I’m not the only one struggling with this episode.
"no one has ever beaten level 2"
This sounds like a lot of the old NES games I used to play
It's pretty sad that an episode of Baywatch makes more sense than this.
I could totally see this as an episode of Baywatch, and it would be better.
I would TOTALLY watch an episode where Mitch has to rescue Hobie from VR villains. "My VIRTUAL save!"
It doesn't, this X-Files episode is underrated and makes complete sense if you actually have a functioning brain.
And is more progressive.
Funny you should mention Baywatch. The killer, Krista Allen was actually on Baywatch as a 'bad girl' lifeguard along with Jason Momoa during the Hawaii seasons. Also Baywatch Nights season 2 was an X Files ripoff with Hasselhoff being the Mulder character.
I remember being excited for this episode as it was advertised as being written by legendary science fiction author William Gibson who had previously written the X-Files episode Killswitch. (And episode that remains my favourite.) I was so let down by the stupidity of this episode.
A virtual reality game that actually presents the enemies as holograms - I'm with you. The enemies take you down with shocks in your vest - fine. There's an AI that is killing players with a blade - okay, I guess. The AI can take a person into the program when shut down - no, that makes no sense under what they established.
I was let down by the Stephen King-scripted episode as well. If the spirit of the father was somehow acting the doll to ward off his widow's potential suitors, that would make some sort of sense. But the doll apparently killed the father, and there didn't seem to be any purpose to what the doll was doing as far as I remember.
VonWenk it was just another take on the possessed doll/creepy kid trope. not everything has to have some grand meaning and a lot of the reason that the x files is as amazing as it is is because of the characters and the small moments. The conversations between mulder and scully in that episode are fantastic. I can’t say that about first person shooter or kill switch though because those are definitely my two least favorite episodes of the entire series (besides season eight and nine which i genuinely think no one cared for)
However Killswitch was I think the most one to one dystopian cyberpunk hours of television evvvvver overlaid onto the real world. Just jarring and beautiful.
It requires some suspension of disbelief, but I think it worked on a symbolic level to literalize fears of a prior generation that video games were sucking out the minds of their players. I think the episode was trying to do too much. It was simultaneously trying to jab machismo in geek culture while also taking shots at the unrealistic fears of those who thought video games were causing the rise of mass shootings. In the end it was just too compressed.
@@JeddieMPB season 8 is amazing, stop circlejerking
What confuses me is the fact Mulder is suddenly some kind of horndog gamer bro on his off hours.
Is he ever shown like this in the rest of the show?
I can't recall him ever being portrayed as a "gamer bro" type, but he was always a horndog.
I believe he was alluded to being a porn aficionado as a callback to his red shoe diary days.
@@Ideo7Z there was a hint that he'd die from auto erotic asphyxiation
@@dreamlandnightmare not much of a horndog given all he did was watch p0rn
He was a voyeur and watched a lot of pornography. This episode matches his personality perfectly.
Actually you CAN delete a person. But, they only will stay in recycling bin. I learned it from Sliders season 4, episode about Chandler's hotel.
Actually an infant does believe you can delete a person. Well until he or she learns object permanence :)
Check out Dexter Douglas
Nerd, computer ace
Got turned into the Freakazoid
And got zapped to cyberspace!
I'm pretty sure this was the episode that made me lose faith in X-Files as a series.
Sounds like they need to download more RAM.
You didn't understand the part about the investors. The game included a haptic vest that was believed at first to have malfunctioned, resulting in the death of the player. Once the FBI confirmed that the vest couldn't have possibly had anything to do with it, there was no reason not to go ahead with the game launch. Why would an investor even entertain the possibility that it was really a rogue AI slicing and punching holes into people through VR?
Well Allison, I think this episode defeated Sexism. Anyone of any gender can agree this episode is a stinker.
Maybe this is the mutually assured destruction of sexism. Once people realize how bad things can get, they do reconsider.
virtual reality even flummoxed the Star Trek Next generation crew with a virtual game taking over everyone's minds.
Late night cries at Carl Sagan tapes. :D
I remember watching X-files during the nineties, at times having nightmares from the really intense episodes. And then I remember this episode, which even to my younger self was one of the suckiest goddamn things ever.
One of my favorite episodes of X-Files ever!!! :D
yes
I love this episode. I know it's bad, but I love it, such a guilty pleasure :)
Ug, I forgot about his episode. The X-Files went downhill around the 6th season. When the show moved from Canada to California, something went wrong.
Eh, I loved Drive. Seeing Walter White take Mulder hostage and reenact the movie Speed was a lot of fun.
When I saw Donkey Lips screaming at 1:14 it was a blast from Camp Anawanna's past.
I just noticed it’s hem lol
Michael Ray Bower and David Duchovny also worked together on the movie Evolution (2001) fun movie worth checking out
this scarred me emotionally when i was about 7 years old, for a long time the title music of x-file scared the shit out of me
I seem to recall that in the first showing of this episode what saved Scully and Mulder in the end was the introduction of another video game character. I'm pretty sure it was supposed to be Duke Nukem. You never see the 3rd tank destroyed. The Duke did it. I'm guessing whoever owns the copyright to DM wanted too much money for rebroadcast or dvd sales.
You do not hate on skinner in a bathtub. Men can only dream to be that sexy
I just remember him punching Kricheckt in the guys that one episode where he was topkess and holllyyyyyyy molyyyy
I also love how he’s the only one who doesn’t give a fuck in that scene.
Mulder: “what’re you doing?”
Scully: “uhhhh working. You?”
Mulder: “...working.”
Skinner: “I’m taking a bath.”
Good, I'm glad Manic Episodes returned to cover First Person Shooter, the greatest X-Files episode.
The way you talk and describe things is very funny 👍😅 Your videos are great. I love listening to these (mostly audio for me) 😊
Wild West "Level 2".....all I can think is "We've gotta get back to the future, Scully!"
Two things 90’s television was best at misrepresenting are Virtual Reality and genetic engineering.
I was last in my class at human being school, but even I know more about computers than Langley.
Oh snap, the virtual reality episode with scantily clad women from Mulder's soft porn side job, *"Red Shoe Diaries."*
Allamaraine, count to four,
Allamaraine, then three more
Amazing review.. as always! ;P
Really hope you do more manic episodes about TV-shows! :D
I really enjoyed your Charmed reviews and the podcasts you did on Supernatural:)
I remember thinking the COPS parody episode was the best, funniest, most amazing thing ever when I was a kid. I used to get to stay up past my bedtime to watch these episodes come out (they were on right after Who's Line is it, Anyway (now I finally get those Geppetto jokes!!)) Long rambling story short, thanks for all the laughs, Allison :)
This episode is like watching Hackers. It has not aged well at all.
+Ben Davis
In the new XCOM, I nearly pished myself when a soldier completed a successful hacking job, he/she shouts out "Hack the planet!"
It's older writers who don't understand how video games work. It's amazing.
I think it's aged ok honestly
+Ben Davis
die hard's good day to die more or whatever the fuck the 4th one was called is still the stupidest version of "how daz internets werk??" viruses that turn computers into bombs, VIRUSES THAT TURN COMPUTERS INTO BOMBS, PEOPLE!
ColeVecsion I can forgive that Live Free or Die Hard if only cause It isn't A Good Day To Die Hard.
This is my FAVORITE episode of The X-Files! It's just so insane!
I Am Mythology * so terrible.
You beat level 2 by purchasing Loot Crates! DUH!!
most of X files aged very very well, this one not so much
it didn't even start well
It was actually remarkably ahead of its time
In that it felt like it was written by a feminist with an irrational hatred of gamers in 2015
@@Chud_Bud_Supreme Ikr, I expected to hear the programmer chick say she created Maitreya because boys are stinky
@@MrNoot39449 She was fighting the evil patriarchy!
I feel like the best of the X-files was from season 1 to season 7, and(IMHO) after that the show took a bit of a nosedive in quality. But even the weird(even by X-files standards) episodes like this one, X-cops, are just so good, so fun and so entertaining that I can always find immense amounts of enjoyment in them.
I think it also helps that Gillian and David are capable of playing their roles with such seriousness that despite how crazy this all is, it still works. Well... except for the moments of Mulder's levity, which are always a delight.
Also, any episode with The Lone Gunmen is always an automatic win.
Legend has it that this episode was based on the true story of Battle Toads play testing. there were no survivors of that so we'll never no the real truth but it makes you think.
They we're phoning it in at this point in the series
15:20 In the 1990s the Pentagon was easy to get into. Granted they have heavily restrict areas. They had a fucking mall and a Metro station in it, people.
Wow. I remember turning off this episode after Donkeylips died in the intro. If I knew it was going to get "Mulder Gets Downloaded" dumb, I woulda' kept watching ironically.
I remember when I was a kid this episode made my heart go pitter patter.
I love that now that video games and computers have become more mainstream day by day, this episode becomes obviously more stupid at an exponential rate. But I get the impression that many non-gamers still have this level of ignorance when it comes to video games and I become frightened.
Great lookback and reassessment. I get that some people out there appreciate and enjoy the more light hearted approach seasons 6&7 took. But having watched all the seasons back to back again recently, I cant help but feel more than ever that that approach is what sent the show not just Jumping, but sailing at stratospheric heights over the Shark.
The "Fight the Future" movie did such a good and serious job in delivering a payoff to what the Alien Arc was building up to. It ends with Scully being rescued from a UFO previously embedded in the South Pole. Awesome.
But season 6 and 7 completly fail to even mention this, and low and behold,Scully is STILL a sceptic! It turned Scully into a parody of herself. You cant have such a huge scene like a UFO actually been featured and Scully's rescue from it being utterly ignored and Scully refusing to believe it all. Nonsense.
Then, the show piles on too many comedy based, all out paranormal stories that Scully's science had no weight whatsoever. These kind of episodes here are more suited to Buffy, Charmed,etc. Too many episodes like this in s6&7 dumbed down the show. Yeah, its funny in places but its just bad. That said, the nadir of the show was still to come: Later in the season we got "Fight Club". That, is without a doubt the worst episode of the show ever!
omg, I remember when this aired, I LOVED this episode as a kid. It's so silly and fun; absolutely ridiculous
OMG this had me cackling, and I especially love those quintessentially 90's teenie tiny sunglasses on Mulder that I'm assuming someone at some point fooled everyone into thinking looked cool
I was SO excited when I saw this was up for Manic Episodes. I'm a lifelong X-Files fan and I remember being absolutely baffled when this episode aired. I hate to be 'that guy' but, X-Cops is another one I'd love to hear your review on. Or just more X-Files in general, tbh.
"No one has ever beet level 2."
This episode predicted mobile game ads.
What makes it worse is that the episode was written by two established novelists whose work suggests that they know better. For fuck's sake, one of them coined the term "cyberpunk". How could this have gone so wrong?
Also: Going off Season 8, it's highly unlikely Scully is still the logical sceptic at this point.
This Episode is in THA ZOOONEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
Holy crap Constance Zimmer was in this one, didn't know. I mostly know her from Agents of SHIELD though I had forgotten she was in House of Cards.
"This is basically a TARDIS, it's bigger in the inside"😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂I CAN'T😂😂😂😂😂😂HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAAHAHAH THIS MADE MY FUCKING DAY😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
You know why the Lone Gunmen were there. Because they were the series nerds and only nerds in the 90's played video games. Way before being a nerd got hijacked by cool kids.
That was just...stupid in the best and worst way possible. I kinda love it o.o
Hope there's other bad episodes to have Manic Episodes cover :)
Today's nightmare fact is that this episode was written by William Gibson [author of 'Neuromancer'] and Tom Maddox [author and coiner of the term Intrusion Countermeasure Electronics, or ICE], who together wrote the (relatively) better fifth-season episode "Kill Switch."
I mean, I don't exactly go to Gibson for reasonable gender analysis (not his strong suit), but...but what the hell?
During this entire episode I could just imagine Mr. Plinkett going "WHAT THE FUCKING FUUUUUCCCCKKK?!!?"
great vid
You got to like how First Person Shooter apparently runs on NES Karate Kid logic according to AVGN where instead of just making several good levels they'll just make a few and make them hard as hell. Not sure if they said that this game only had two levels but if that's the case that's even dumber.
You know what would've been pretty cool? If this episode had turned into a crossover with Reboot.
i know _just_ enough about VRchat (i have teenage sons) to know that this prediction about the utter madness of MMO VR is eerily accurate.
Not just a TV series making a bad episode about a VR gimmick.
It's a 90s TV series making a bad episode about a VR gimmick with 90s estimation of future technology.
And they clearly have a dev build, so why not enter some cheats and just win
I remember my teacher played this episode back in 2008 in our AVR subject and i was mind blown back then
Tbh the full body Joan of arc plate armors sexier than the stripper outfit.
this episode was actually written by William Gibson, by the way
+wangus he also wrote Kill Switch in Season 5 with Tom Maddox who also wrote FPS.
wangus Bullshit.
Actually, it's true. He was credited as one of two writers. Of course, we have no idea how much of it is his work.
... That's why this episode disappointed me so much. This episode was so dumb while Killswitch was my favourite of the series.
What’s funny to me i have probably only seen 5 episodes of this show and this was one of them. Haha.
Huh, I just watched this right after another game named after a genre, made on extreme crunch, and could possibly kill you (if you're epileptic) got released. Weird that.
Technically, it was only a half season where they lost their mind. All of those examples are after Season 7, Episode 11.
This was amazing
The Woman is So Hot by the way...
This was actually the first X-Files episode I've watched as a 11-year old, so even if's awful, I still love it for the nostalgia. I remember I had a really frightning nightmare after watching it lol, good times. I also loved that episode about Dana following the cops on their routine, totally awesome.
As it turns out this is literally the only episode of X-Files I've ever seen.
+Ibun West Boy do you know how to pick 'em or what! You should really check out some other episodes to see what it can offer. Like literally any other episode but this! Well, maybe avoid seasons 8-9. Probably best to stick anything before that except this, lol
The keyboard fight moment makes me lmao.
1:20 Notice how the big dude folds the stock on his G36 for no reason. It was already unfolded as it should have been! He must have watched 'On Deadly Ground' and identified with Billy Bob Thornton's expendable henchman character who asks his buddy whether he should have the stock of his Swedish K in or out. Of course, it should be out (unfolded). Leaving it in the storage position will drastically decrease combat effectiveness.
1:40 Ackchyually, those might be codpieces. 🙃
2:21 So many rookie moves all in one scene! Reloading "wrong-handed" (using the shootin' hand instead of the support hand) with the muzzle facing up. Folding the stock into its storage position when it was already unfolded as it should be. It's like they were asking for it. Darwin awards all around.
3:22 This is right up Langley's alley. Also, one of my LAN party buddies from 15 years ago was the spitting image of Frohike. Similar personality too. Frohike was always muh fave. Fun fact: Langley's mind later became a VR cyberspace A.I. construct thing.
4:58 Gumby and Pokey references?! Really?! 😅
10:32 Fun fact: High heels were originally a men's fashion item and were invented by a poncy French king. Naturally, they were exclusive to the oppressor class. Like that's any surprise.
11:24 And of course, we've gotta have the helmet with the chinstrap unfastened. Because if you leave rifle stocks folded, you also have to leave helmet chinstraps unfastened just to be consistently incompetent. Btw, doing either of those will get you chewed out by a gunny or a CO IRL. Just ask Skinner (though I doubt he ever did either of those things since he was always the diligent type).
11:31 Did you ever play that holographic arcade game with the time-traveling cowboy?
12:18 Someone could turn that into a S.T.A.L.K.E.R. reference if they were so inclined.
12:53 That keyboard! I used to have one just like it!
I REMEMBER this episode when it came out. I watched it. I remember thinking how stupid it was. Now, all this time later... it's even stupider than I remember. It IS sexist... towards everybody. It insults the males, it insults the females... the female programmer is apparently okay with murdering (male) customers, the company owner doesn't seem to realize that he's not only going to be sued for wrongful deaths, but also arrested and put on trial for said deaths (alongside the female programmer). Even the heads of Electronic Arts aren't THAT stupid.
Though to be honest, the fact that everyone now understands how bad and stupid it was actually indicates how far average people have progressed in terms of understanding the technology around them. It made me think of how, in 2016, a certain politician attempted to defend her illegal activity by pretending to be a grandmother who doesn't understand how computers work. And the general response was, "This is no longer the 1980s, and nobody believes that computers become self aware if you zap them with lightning bolts. Grandmothers in the 21st century are computer literate; they send each other .jpgs of their grandchildren as e-mail attachments."
What the fuck was the 90's deal with virtual reality? it's like magnets to the ICP, hell chris carter made another series based on this episode's fucking premise and it bombed after 1 episode
i grew up in the 90's and i STILL never understood where this dumbas interpitation of VR came from but EVERYONE was following it with this exact formula and this bizare fad was pre-matrix(something else the walchowski's ripped off)
+ColeVecsion Considering VR is an actual thing now. Though not to the point TV shows portrayed it. I think they actually had a good reason to have a infatuation with it.
+ColeVecsion We are VR, that's why.
+everett von scott Well, kind of. But why then? It's not like VR was something we were close to achieving back in the 90's. Hell, now 20 some years later we are still far away from the type of advanced VR often depicted in even the more grounded sci-fi. And it's not like one or two shows did this VR thing, no, it was a huge fad and countless shows, comics, etc. loved exploring it without even doing any research as to what VR could realistically achieve at its best.
Just Another Guy
There was a lot of VR around then that's why. It wasn't very good or even close to todays standard. It was all what if.
+ColeVecsion Story wise it was like having magic. Want a Chicago Detective to fight a dragon? VR. Alien invasion that's not a 'it' was all a dream' VR. Normal guy is really not in a normal world, VR. Long time characters so OOC it hurts? VR. Three karate kids fighting an interdimensional invasion no one else can see because it's a digital war ground VR.
Alright, my first viewing of you and ur stuff. Very cool. Love the snark and insight. Gonna sub after this vid. Hiii sorry I'm years late to the party.
Also that crying after the whole 'she's input herself into the game, we have to download her' legit had me in stitches, had to rewind like 30 seconds cause I was swept up in laughter.