Daemon reviews The Unlucky Elite

Even though I never played Halo 2's multiplayer all that much, I was still sad when I saw that its multiplayer was being closed down. Why? Because to me it was the final nail in the coffin of what was, in my opinion, the 'Golden Age' of machinima: the Halo 2 era.

The first machinima I ever watched was episode 66 of Red vs Blue. The first series I saw that made me convinced that machinima was something to be interested in was The Heretic. Many of my favorite machinimas, like Opus Machinima and Be Human, date back from that glorious period. And one of the people who was part of that golden age was Kokobear, alias Jamies98 (though technically they're both aliases. Guy must be a secret agent or something).

The guy has made some fantastic stuff in his time. Space Dementia, Melody, Brothers in Arms...all of them inspired and amazing on pretty much every level. Amidst all this was a series of videos called The Unlucky Elite. It was well-made and the humor was great, feeding off from the same idea fountain as such great series as Tom and Jerry (to say nothing of Bugs Bunny or the Roadrunner cartoons). It's the same basic premise: Party A tries to kill Party B. Part A fails in increasingly hilarious ways while employing increasingly elaborate traps. Repeat.

It's a comedy style that works well (as evidenced by the longevity of the aformentioned cartoon shows) and Jamies98 uses it well here. The gags were inspired and unpredictable (one of the main problems with most comedy machinimas is that you can telegraph their punchlines coming from miles away) and it moved at a brisk pace.

Since this is a prequel to the series it's set in Halo PC. You could argue that Halo Reach would have also worked, what with it taking place before Halo 1 and all, but then we wouldn't have had the opportunity for all the amazing gags we see.

Halo PC is, in my opinion, a very underrated engine. Even if the game itself is more then a decade old, the options it offers to film makers is pretty robust. Plus, the relative low resolution of the graphics means that otherwise cheesy effects like the bullets and birds look perfectly fine, instead of looking like deleted scenes from Birdemic.

While I'll never quite understand how exactly Queen's 'Under Pressure' fits in to this kind of video, I can't deny that it works really well. Then again there is that universal law that says Queen can make anything awesome (see also: Highlander, Flash Gordon).

When describing the overall success of The Unlucky Elite many people are quick to assume that it's just because of the physical comedy. That's true, but it's more then that. It's physical comedy done with proper pacing and stellar production values. It's good because it's good, and there's really not much else to it.

I'm just glad to see that people from that bygone era of machinima are still alive and kicking. Now we just need Khan to explode back onto the scene and I might be able to convince myself that machinima doesn't suck anymore.

But I wouldn't get my hopes up for that.