Wednesday 27 October 2010

The World God Only Knows - Episode 4

With two girls liberated, and goodness knows how many more to go.... The World God Only Knows takes something of a break in what can only really be described as a filler episode.

This instalment sees Keima hard at work as always on conquering a new game, while also demonstrating some impressive feats of multi-tasking, be it answering questions in class or avoiding traffic while continuing to play.  However, even this self-proclaimed god of gaming is powerless in the face of one thing and one thing alone... horrendously buggy games.


However, even with the title he's currently playing getting stuck in a loop after being asked to make a particular decision, Keima refuses to be completely defeated, roping Elsie into noting down every path that he takes in the hope of finding a route which doesn't trigger the buggy loop in question - an epic task for a game that also has broken save game functionality.  If this seems like a lot of effort to go to for a simple game, Keima explains his dedication by expounding on the importance of the two-dimensional heroine who he wants to rescue from her life of being eternally trapped behind that bug - a nice monologue perhaps, but not quite my idea of a well-rounded (or entirely sane) personality.

Although I've described this episode as filler (because it is), I have to confess this was a genuinely funny episode of The World God Only Knows at the same time, if only because watching this ridiculously buggy game being played was often hilarious (and often also painfully close to the truth in comparison to some games that were genuinely released in a similar state), matched perhaps only by the way it was marketed.  The picture would have been completed had they named the developers of the game as something that sounded close to 0verflow... So, considering how many laughs it gave me, I can well and truly let this particular instalment off failing to move the show's plot forward at all, and if anything I've warmed to the series a little more now that I've seen hard evidence that it can boast some impressive moments of humour when called upon.

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