Sundays with Sagat: The Hardcore/Comedy conundrum

[Sundays with Sagat is a video series where a man named Sagat talks to you about videogames. This is serious business.]

In this week’s video diary, Sagat takes on the “hardcore games don’t sell on the Wii” misconception, and the problems developers face in trying to make a game that is both “hardcore” and “hilarious”. Sagat meant to talk about Brütal Legend (a hardcore/comedy game that failed to sell more than a million copies worldwide per console, despite a huge marketing push and years of hype) instead of Wet (a game that is really more silly than funny), but he couldn’t resist saying the word “wet” over and over again. It’s such a gross and amusing sounding word, kind of like like “moist” or “hanky”.

Try and say “wetwetwetwetwetwetwetwetwetwetwetwetwet” to yourself and not to crack a smile. Just try.

Making the viewer feel slightly uncomfortable while making a serious point seems to be how Sagat rolls these days. Every week that we do this, I see more and more of this weird, serious-but-silly, slightly passive-aggressive side to the manly mid-boss. He also doesn’t seem to know how to shut up. Like all the Sundays with Sagat videos, this one was shot in one take, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t edit it down a bit. Sagat easily could have gone on for an hour about this crap. You wouldn’t expect a bald, perpetually shirtless, multiply scared, one-eyed kick boxer to be such a chatterbox, but there you go. That’s who “the real Sagat” is.

Accept no imitations.