YMMV / X-Play

• Adaptation Displacement: Not very many people are aware of the two shows that came before X-Play were GameSpot TV (1998-2001; ZDTV and TechTV) and Extended Play (2001-2003; TechTV), let alone the fact that X-Play started out as a TechTV show in San Francisco for over a year from 2003 to 2004. Thus, most people are only familiar with the G4 episodes in Los Angeles.
• Award Snub: The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword in the "Deathmatch: Best of 2011" awards. Skyward Sword wasn't nominated for the show's Game of the Year award in 2011. This upset a lot of fans of the series, and they went on to make their voices heard in the "Video Game Deathmatch" which would be voted on by the fans. It went on to win the entire tournament, beating Assassin's Creed: Revelations in the final round. Adam Sessler and Blair Herter went on to say at the end of the video announcing the winner that Skyward Sword only won because of angry Nintendo fanboys who were upset that they didn't nominate it for a Game of the Year award.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: 1000th episode surprise guest Rip Taylor.
• Broken Base: Just about anytime they reviewed a JRPG or video game based off of an anime. Reviews were littered with jokes at the expense of the clichés. They did give Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne a 5 out of 5 and name it their Game of the Year, however.
• Condemned by History: In The New '20s, it seems that social media users and other game journalists now view the show as a symbol of everything wrong with 2000's gaming culture: between the humor that tried too hard to come off as edgy, the constant Fan Hater moments, and the bashing of Japanese media that crossed the line into straight-up racism (including Yellowface), it's now becoming harder and harder to admit to ever being a fan. The failed revival and the various controversies that spawned (see Overshadowed by Controversy below) did not help matters.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: When the show used to have sketches, the breakout characters were Canadian Guy, Screaming Intern, Ratty, Johnny X-Treme, Roger The Stan Lee Experience, and Shirtless Intern.
  • No love for the Drunk Link character? Not even for the other interns themselves?
  • Or Crazy "I'm going to make me a woman suit!" Adam?
  • Or the Merchant?
  • Or Splinter Cell: Special Agent Bob and Secret Agent Steve.
• Fan Nickname: The first three G4 episodes have been referred to by some fans as The Transitional Trilogy due to the budget and the new set used for the rest of the episodes not being built yet.
• Fandom Rivalry: With Judgement Day, another review show that ran on G4. Both sides would argue which show is funnier or has a better review format and they can be pretty heated.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • The show did April Fools' episodes that involved format changes, and other things that fans in general would fear, like the time Adam and Morgan did the show from the Tech Live newsdesk, or the time Adam "left" to host a show called Meet the Sess, and Morgan tried to go through a few replacements. In 2008, the show did eventually change formats, much to the fandom's dismay, Adam would abruptly leave in 2012, and the show would die shortly afterward.
  • The shows seeming dislike of the JRPG genre is extremely difficult to look at as anything funny or entertaining like it tried to present due to many Japanese developers speaking up years later about how uncomfortable the negative stigma placed on the term JRPG became, and how that stigma played a role in many of the design choices made by Japanese developers in response to the negativity. The fact the show was one of the loudest sources of said opinion makes it worse.
• He Panned It, Now He Sucks!:
  • Just imagine the state of Adam's inbox after he did the segment entitled: "Your Childhood Sucks: Final Fantasy VII." The primary reason it was scorned by viewers was because they chose ludicrous and superficial reason to trash the game, like the graphics and music (despite being made in 1997), the random battles (even though it's a JRPG, and if they hate the frequent encounters, they could get Materia to reduce it), and the translation (while a fair judgment, is not the game itself's fault). Then Adam went full Fan Hater by threatening to assault anybody that said they cried when Aerith died. A lot of it boiled down to It's Popular, Now It Sucks! and it's clear they just wanted to piss off Final Fantasy fans. There's probably a reason they haven't done another segment like that since...
    • Before, they got trashed for giving Crisis Core a 2 out of 5. Like Final Fantasy VII above, it was mostly due to their superficial reasons. Particularly, they complain about the game being too easy, and then complain about dying and having to sit through an unskippable cutscene. Another problem was the the review only showed footage from the early parts of the game, leading some to speculate they didn't even finish it. There were even some accusations of Xenophobia when Adam kept taking pot shots at Japan, saying that stupid dialogue is completely acceptable to them. Adding fuel to the fire was when they mocked the viewers that criticized them in an April Fools episode where they "re-reviewed" the game, leading some to accuse them of being unable to take criticism, despite being critics themselves.
  • It's pretty much guaranteed that any bad review of an anime or manga-based title will get mountains of hate mail regardless of its quality, even as they've repeatedly pointed out The Problem with Licensed Games applies to Japanese products as well.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Early on, Adam and Morgan would bash the hell out of Los Angeles quite often, especially Morgan, who hated the city she grew up in so much, she was quite open about her resentment towards it on this show and her old show The Screen Savers. Fast forward to late 2004, and both Adam and Morgan eventually moved to Los Angeles to continue hosting the program. While Adam moved back to San Francisco in 2012, Morgan has since stayed in Los Angeles.
  • One of Adam's characters was a Rip Taylor look-a-like named Shad Grimgravy. On the 1000th episode in 2010, Rip Taylor actually made an appearance.
  • The first episode produced after moving to Los Angeles was shot in Adam's Apartment in around August 2004. In December 2020, Adam came back to reviewing with a review of the glitch-fest Cyberpunk 2077 in his home.
  • Many Xbox and Microsoft fanboys/fangirls who used to love Xplay now hate the new Xplay, as it is less likely to put Xbox exclusive games on a perfect pedestal and it is far more likely to give PlayStation exclusive games a 5 out of 5.
  • In contrast, the PlayStation fans who nearly universally hated the old Xplay no longer hate the new Xplay, due to it being far more lenient and lax towards PlayStation exclusive games in general.
• Mis-blamed: Many have blamed Frosk's "Reason You Suck" Speech for being primarily, if not solely, responsible for the revived G4 being cancelled after less than a year. Heavy debates on the matter aside, there have been reports that the revived G4 wasn't exactly doing well in numbers even before she made her speech, making it unlikely she was the primary or sole cause of the shutdown.
• One-Scene Wonder: The interns.
• Once Original, Now Overdone: When Extended Play first aired, there was little to nothing like it, and this carried on when the show became X-Play. But with the advent of YouTube and many reviewers coming in its wake, many have come to feel that the show has aged poorly. It's at best seen as a relic of a bygone age, with many reviewers not only having filled the void, but arguably surpassing X-Play in quality.
• Overshadowed by Controversy:
  • Frosk's "Reason You Suck" Speech given to certain members of the audience (namely, the ones sending her and other female staff sexist harassment) would come to overshadow the relaunch of X-Play, and, by extension, the G4 revival itself. Many took issue with her comments, and a months-long online harassment campaign against her ensued that got so bad that even searching for either X-Play or G4 would pull up numerous complaints against Frosk, which ruined G4's search engine optimization. This eventually led to Frosk departing from the network several weeks before the whole channel folded, as well as her leaving the gaming industry for good.
  • Clips from older episodes of X-Play began to circulate across social media early in 2023 showing some very racist language used against Japanese games reviewed on the show, including jaw-dropping bits with Morgan Webb claiming Japan only became civilized after being nuked and later saying “I fear for the day that zany bean-curd-loving race finally rules over us”. Adam Sessler defended these bits on social media, making wild claims that overly-defensive consumers, the alt-right and gamer culture were why he was being attacked, earning widespread condemnation including from Kotaku's Luke Plunkett and Gamespot's Jessica Howards while tarnishing the show's legacy along with Sessler himself.
• Seasonal Rot:
  • Around 2006, give-or-take, many have complained that the show dropped in quality when they became over-reliant on sketches, became more-and-more of fan haters, and started having a bias against Sony and to a lesser extent Nintendo games while praising anything made by Microsoft. This led some to believe that the writers were on Microsoft's payroll.
  • The rot became more evident once G4 got rid of almost all of its original video game and tech based programing save for X-Play and Attack of the Show!. Stuff like Cheat!, which was originally its own show, became a segment on X-Play and the show itself became less focused on reviews and comedy and more on sneak peeks, interviews, E3 buzz, and various other things. It all felt like everything video gaming was cramped into this one show, making it feel cluttered. Once Adam was fired, it completed the rot and practically signaled the show's imminent demise.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: The fandom reaction to the 2008 retool. Of course, making a video game review show into something else entirely would naturally tend to ruffle up some feathers here and there.
• Values Dissonance: The show is basically a time capsule of everything that was wrong with gamer culture in the 2000s. From surprisingly racist comments whenever talking about Japanese developed games/Japanese people in general, to over sexualization and inappropriate comments directed towards female characters (both regarding the games and actual members of the staff), to mocking of the mentally disabled... The show can be a rather extreme cultural whiplash today.

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