4 out of 5

Writer: Charlie Brooker, Matt Lees

While Brooker’s between-bits commentary is as obvious as ever, the man remains a source of good ideas and intentions brought to television.  ‘How Video Games…’ is a surprisingly balanced doc that, although taking the structure of a top ten list – it’s actually 25 games that changed the world – thanks to moving through its picks chronologically and touching on the surrounding history, justifies its stance without seeming like a strictly fanboy project; shown to clueless parents or non-gamers, there’s enough sobering info to keep it relevant.  It is recommended to watch something like this right now, as it’s to date, mentioning games just released and touching on the X Box One and PS4, and while all of the lead up to this will make sense at any point, it definitely increased the feeling of the doc being informed.  Watched some years from now, seeing an indie game like ‘Papers Please’ might cause a shrug, but that the scope included something along those lines kept me erring on the side of trusting in the presentation.

It’s fairly straight forward otherwise.  Brooker introduces a trope or cultural movement that was reflected in / perhaps started by a game or games, and then whatever best highlights that topic will be the feature of a brief blurb.  There are three blessed decisions that other list-structured docs could deal with mirroring: firstly, that each title gets approximately equal screen time.  So an outside-of-the-UK unknown game like ‘Manic Miner’ is explained with the same level of detail as something like Super Mario Bros.  Which can’t be too much detail, of course, for the sake of brevity, but that’s where the second smart decision comes into play – fairness and depth.  As mentioned, this isn’t strictly for fanboys.  So there’s some light analysis of the advancements and failings of the offerings, as well as making sure – sort of like ‘Understanding Comics’ for video games – to do more than just say that the game was popular, also giving actual reasons (gasp) that it might be considered a world-changer on whatever level, whether it was a conceptual advancement or cementing a place in the public consciousness.  Lastly, I mentioned ‘Manic Miner’ and ‘Papers Please’; lists tend to either be the easy examples or scavenging the fringes for cool credit or a mix of both.  Had this doc been made in the US, I doubt it would’ve included some of the games mentioned.  But having (to me) an outsider’s perspective added an amazing dimension to things, not only because it covered apparently revered games of which I’d never heard, but also because it approaches things like Starcraft from a world perspective instead of simply a US one.

Documentaries are always hard-pressed to get 5 stars from me because I’m generally watching something because I’m already interested… and I guess I’d want a doc to really make me think on something – feel something – to push it into awesome territory.  And ‘How Video Games’ suffers from a common doc problem of needing a trump card, so whipping Twitter out as the #1 game – not that I disagree with that concept, that social media has ‘gamerized’ (or whatever that term was) our culture – is treated like something of a ‘WOW’ reveal, and the doc was doing just fine without that effect.  Still, though I rated ‘Indie Game: The Movie’ higher because it works in something of an emotional angle, I felt more engaged as a non-gamer watching this, which is pretty tough to do for something focused on what’s still seen as a niche, Twitter and Candy Crush aside.  And despite my focus on the timeliness, it will be interesting to see how this watches some years from now, when games will certainly have evolved even more.