To the people who know me--online or in that magical place known as IRL--it's no secret that I'm a huge fan of the television show Mystery Science Theater 3000; hell, for the past twelve years, my online nickname has been "bobservo." So obviously, I enjoy when the recorded mocking of entertainment, generally known as MSTing, is done well. But even with all of the countless awful video game cut scenes in existence, it's rare to see the MST3K format applied to such a deserving medium. It's true that the actual MST3K crew took video games down a peg for a Playstation Underground disc back in 1997, and 1UP unleashed their greatest wits on the worst of gaming with their Broken Pixels series, but the former was a one-time thing and the latter was a little too unscripted for my tastes. What to do?
The Escapist, home of the inimitable Yahtzee, has attempted to solve this MST3K fan's problem with Unskippable, a new series that gives video game cut scenes the MST3K treatment. And for their first installment, they couldn't have picked a more deserving game: Eternal Sonata, a JRPG with cut scenes so embarrassing that I often had to leave the room for fear that my brain would take its own life. The Unskippable crew's efforts aren't perfect with this installment, but this is definitely a series worth keeping an eye on--both in the future and right now. Give it a watch and remember that I played through this entire game.
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