Life in a Game: Taking video game humor to the next level

If you play a lot of video games (or enjoy watching other people play them), like to laugh, and don't mind the occasional bit of crude humor, then there's really no reason for you to miss out on Life in a Game. Unless, of course, you don't have access to the Internet, in which case, HOW ARE YOU READING THIS BLOG, HMM? Eh, nevermind; that's not important anyhow.

Life in a Game started out as a single entry in an amateur film contest... but now it's a full-blown video series. Life in a Game is your typical "guy gets sucked into a video game" story, except it's far funnier than, say, Tron, and way more accurate to the video game source material than Captain N ever was. Evidently, Captain N was created before research was invented.

...But I digress.

There's no need to explain the finer details of the plot--if you're going to watch Life in a Game, "funny" and "guy gets sucked into a video game" are all the convincing you need. Regardless, I'll mention that the main character is just an average guy (coincidentally named Guy) who becomes hunted by a string of assassins, gets involved with some amusingly useless and antagonistic allies, and ultimately ends up on a quest to defeat these assassins and find out why it seems as though his life is one big video game.

If you somehow need a little more coaxing to watch it, maybe this'll work: Life in a Game parodies and borrows characters from a huge range of games: Super Mario Bros., Sonic the Hedgehog, Final Fantasy, Chrono Trigger, Mega Man, Resident Evil, Castlevania, StarFox, Metroid, Dance Dance Revolution, Half-Life, The Legend of Zelda, the adventure game genre as a whole, even PaRappa the Rapper... and that's just scratching the surface.

Needless to say, you'll have the fullest appreciation of Life in a Game if you're well-versed in video games, but you don't have to be a big-time video game guru to enjoy the series. There's pop culture and anime references in there as well, and the humor frequently comes from fantastic one-liners, ridiculous situations, and silly banter between characters.

Beyond the regular episodes, LiaG features a few bonus videos, such as a mock "behind the scenes" interview with the main character and a fake ending to the series that was done as an April Fools' joke. Including these bonus videos, I count 21 installments of Life in a Game in one form or another; considering that each video is anywhere from about 2 minutes to 20 minutes long (the episodes keep getting longer as the series progresses), there's more than enough entertainment here to keep you occupied a while.

Though you can find the videos in various places around the Internet, I'd recommend watching them on either ScrewAttack.com or lifeinagame.com. Or, to start off, you can watch the very first video, Episode 1-1, right here: