Review: Gods’ Games We Play – Episode 2
By Dustin Cabeal
Usually, I save my reviews for the podcast, that's Let's Anime, but Gods’ Games We Play episode two frustrated and pissed me off so much that not only did I already vent to my co-host Lindsay for at least one-half an hour, but now here I am writing this goddamn review.
The second episode picks up where the first episode left off, which is at the beginning of God's Go hide and seek. In which a giant Titan is smashing a city. We have a group of players, and we are about to explain the rules, even though it seems like the game has already begun when they yelled, “Gods Go Hide and seek.” Instead, one asshole interrupts this little weird floating God turd thing and is like, “statistically this should be a versus God game.” To which the little floating God turd thing goes, “Yeah, no. We’re suddenly bored with doing that.” I mean, you just introduced the concept and the stats for that, but no, we're not going to do that. That's pointless. In fact, we don't even know why we talked about it. We hired someone to say that line just so we could say no. A character and their role on the team was introduced to the story, just for a floating God turd to say, “You’re wrong and now useless to the story.”
The group, mostly led by our main character Fay, starts asking questions like, “What are the rules? How do you win?” This little shitty floating Titan God thing is this like let me give you some abstract ideas. So, they have half the rules. Half the equation to win and then they run from this giant Titan thing. It doesn't take long for the giant Titan thing to just step on someone, but instead of them dying, half of them turn red, but they cheat the story, and you only see the red half. Our main character and the Dragon God figure the shit out and then confront the Titan. Instead of just winning the game and then explaining to us how they won, he allows himself to be smashed, which then reveals his power, which is to never fucking die and nullify all effects. It's a mega cheat. How the hell are you ever supposed to get this guy to lose? But before he's even won, he explains how he's won. I'm like, no asshole. Finish the fucking game. Then tell me how you won. You’re standing on a smashed building, yelling at a giant Titan… finish the game first. They finally do win the game, which I'm like Titan, why are you even letting them compete? They have told you, their plan. Why are you not stopping this? Do you want to lose? You seem to want to lose. And I swear to God, at one point Fay asks, did we win? And the Titans like, no. And then they did win. In the next scene, they're just like adding they won. Okay, sure. Why the fuck do I care at this point I’m just glad this “smart person’s” game is over.
It's also revealed pointlessly that Faye is on a goddamn break or was on a goddamn break before this game. He was on a hot streak, winning three in a row. They need ten to get ultimate wishes, by the way. And he already won three on his own. But they were like, hey, we found this dragon lady frozen in ice for 3,000 years. She wants to play games with you so she can become a God again. Oh, but her cheap power is nothing compared to yours. She smashes stuff, but she's good at games. And then she analyzes the footage of them winning and she's like, we should have gone to this other building instead. I'm like, you already won. The plan worked. What does that analyzation tell me other than you're an idiot and you came up with a different idea to which you could have gone up to the Titan and said, “we're going to win, and this is how we're gonna win.” It added nothing to her character and cheapened their victory because she was like, we could have done better. No, you couldn’t have. You didn't play football, you didn't play basketball, you ran around a city, and you were playing Reversi and there was no fucking way anyone could figure that out because this show is stupid and had to explain it to me before they even won. There was no clue until the characters were explaining the clues. I was like, ohh, that's weird. I didn't see them being half red until you explained it to me. I hate that, analyze mistakes, not things that worked. It worked, there’s no reason to be like, “we could have done better here” because it doesn’t matter anymore.
Overall, I did not like this episode. It wasn't even that bad. It was just the logic behind everything that was so stupid that it was aggravating. It was treating me like I'm an idiot, but it's doing nothing to allow anyone to figure out what's happening. And it wasn't even that good. It's like we're playing three games at once. We're playing tag, we're playing hide and go seek. And we're playing Reversi, and you have to figure that out. Oh, but why would you? Because I used to play battle games. Yeah, so good luck. Especially when we've never apparently built up any sort of situation that you would have been able to pull from before this. But because we found fucking frozen dragon lady, we are switching everything. This guy likes to play games. We're switching everything. Mostly we’re just combing games and ruining all of them at once… but I used to do battle games.
Lastly, the art style was annoying. Everything looked faded. I don't know if that was because they were in the “God Realm,” but it looks shitty and unfinished.
I will probably watch the third episode, but only because it just came out.