Delayed Input 304 Post-Show Assessment

This was a weird episode. In a way it's the result of the episodes it wasn't. 

For probably too long I was trying to make the whole thing about everything Nick All-Star Brawl did wrong to get the reviews that it did. Imagine a half serious, half sarcastic look at what the game needed if it wanted better scores. As I dug more into that it started looking pointless, like I was recapping 100 reviews I wasn't to going read. It felt like I was going out of my way to bury a low-budget kids game that's actually pretty good. There was even a point where I started talking about Metroid Dread, a proud outlier that doesn't have most of the mandatory attributes of well-reviewed games. At that point I just said to myself "bro, this is the all-around saltiest script you've ever written."

Feeling the need for a breather, I drove to my sister's house because I knew I'd have to print out the comment at some point anyway. On the way over it popped into mind that it would be fun if I just took the L. The idea of a down-on-his-luck YouTuber desperate to get something right is very funny to me. 

In the end I'm not sure I played that character as hard as I could have, but I think the ep still kind of works as a fun way to talk about some interesting things going on despite the obvious, boring bullet points. The dodge rolls bit was actually from an episode I bailed on--"The Must-Have Game Mechanics of the Fall Season," played out like a fashion segment. That idea frankly ran out of steam really fast, but you know, with Delayed Input dead ideas are never really dead.

QUESTIONS FROM YOU!

You reference writing script and of course there is structure etc, but where does script stop for you? I get w improv the pre-planning of an idea you can freely follow once you *are* performing. Or are you meticulously drilling lines to camera until you get one that's the right level of 'off-handed'?
I think a lot of the off-handedness is simply that I've been trash at memorizing lines my entire life, so recalling what I wrote in the script can often come off as spur-of-the-moment thought.
I drill lines for sure but it's mostly about finding one I think is funny. Sometimes I get it right on the first try, but other times I'm really struggling to find the right read. I think I have like 15 takes of "previously on Delayed Input."
As an example of unscripted stuff, I never wrote out the Call of Duty bonus bit this week.  I pulled up the tweets and articles, did one rehearsal, and then just recorded half off the cuff, which is why it ends with me laughing at my own lazy impression.

Really not sure what next week's episode is going to be like (I was kind of hoping Gotham Knights & Suicide Squad would present a little more to talk about) but I actually feel that this week's journey may have cracked open a door for more semi-meta episodes, where maybe I'm playing a more cartoonish version of myself. Next week will be the first episode edited on my fully operational new PC. There probably won't be much of a perceptible change for anything on your end, but one thing I'm particularly excited about is that I now have the horsepower to include one good joke in Delayed Input.