After watching a soda review and a few minutes of a let’s play Kaiserreich, here are my thoughts off the seat of my pants:
(1.)—sound. agree with the others immediately on cutting the sound with the logo. From a design perspective, I’d cut out the colored font and simplify the logo. If you want an intro, I’d have it be relevant to the channel content and animated, maybe the hawk picks up the helmet? Some channels have intros that are too long, so I’d keep it under ten seconds.
(2.)—commentary. ABC. Always. Be. Closing! I mean, commenting. It’s like radio, “once the red light is on, just start talking,” said David Letterman when he was interviewed on Tom Snyder. The click sounds for the game, they can be muted.
(3.)—sound balance. The gameplay sounds are louder than your voice. If you can separate the audio tracks and voice, I’d tune the game sounds down to about half or a third of the volume of your voice.
(4.)—who’s your audience? Cola fans? Game fans? I think focus is lacking a bit, and I’d say that if you want to do more of the cola reviews, I‘d agree with
@Birdjaguar in adding more commentary and video. If you go for more video, check the lighting because the one I saw was pretty dark.
(5.)—perhaps most importantly, who are you doing it for? Are you doing it for you, or to try and monetize? There’s not much money in cola unless you’re selling it, and 20-year-old games aren’t going to be big pulls unless you go for the real classics and not the esoterica of Paradox. I say that as a Darkest Hour player myself because my old computer is… old. If you want to make money, I think you’d have to find something that is either (a.) more relevant to today’s game players and/or (b.) build the brand around you and being interesting.
