I know Freyja Westdal doesn't have as demanding a role as Hugo Myatt - she's not onscreen at all, so she can read most of her lines directly from a script - but I do think she's just as good at responding immediately in character when the team say something unexpected. David Learner is great at improvising too, but then we already knew that! The other characters are... not exactly of Knightmare standard.
I can't understand why there is SO much scripted talking and SO little gameplay in this programme. It was tedious enough how Knightmare Series 1 had exactly the same intro and outro for every episode, and that was with an intro that took up less than 40 seconds and an outro of about 50 seconds. In The Satellite Game, the outro is just under 40 seconds - not too bad - but the intro takes more than THREE MINUTES each time, not including the recap of their earlier adventures! Why on earth didn't they cut it down a bit? And then Coco has to give these long, unnecessarily detailed speeches about everything, like whenever there's a Killerdroid and she spends the best part of a minute listing all of its weapon specifications, when all they actually need to know is that it's capable of destroying Lari.
Then on the rare occasion that the team actually has to do something... it's pretty much impossible to figure out what they're supposed to do, thanks to the rubbish graphics and lack of useful information provided! The team that died in the latest uploads had absolutely no chance in that final game. It wasn't clear what anything in the room was supposed to be, what their actual task was, or how they could achieve it. They tried every apparent option, but kept being told they were wasting time - I certainly had no idea what they were doing wrong! They weren't given any kind of meaningful clue until they were just about to run out of time and get destroyed. A very harsh death if you ask me! (They had the same problem in most of the previous games, too - constantly having to ask what the various shapes in front of them are, and being nagged to repeat actions because they can't tell that they haven't done enough to complete a task.)
Also, sometimes it's not clear if they were even meant to do anything at all - on several occasions they get screamed at to take action, but it seems probable that Lari was always going to get blown up so the team would have to control him for a while. (A bit like when Chris turns into a goblin - we'll never know if the team chose the wrong spell or if that outcome was intended and inevitable!) Not to mention the utterly pointless chase sequence at the start of the next quest, where they spend almost 2 minutes desperately trying to outrun a missile, only to find it wasn't a threat (or indeed anything relevant to their quest) after all...!!
There are brief moments, like when Lari navigates the kitchen worktops and appliances, when I think I would have been quite enthralled if I'd seen this as a child. I also like it when they show different views of the same environment (e.g. using the mine scan to guide Lari safely through the minefield). Some good ideas, just buried underneath all the waffle and poor design! This is very similar to the Cyberzone viewing experience, except that Craig Charles gave that show a great deal more energy than this one has. The contestants on TSG look understandably bored out of their minds...
If anyone missed it, Weaver's Week did a review of the first episode a couple of years ago:
http://www.ukgameshows.com/ukgs/Weaver%27s_Week_2014-02-02#The_Satellite_Game
