Still trying to get my #1 article straight.

 

As far as I can tell, absolutely no one else thinks my choice is the game of the year. I'm not trying to be contrarian, I'm not trying to stand out from all the other blog spot sites that average upwards of 4 bounces a day. It's honestly my favorite game I've played this year and I just hope my defense makes sense to people willing to give my ramblings a chance.

It's taken a solid week and a half already. This has been fun...

#2 The Last of Us

You saw this one coming huh? Well too bad, it's the best game Naughty Dog's ever made, and one of the bravest AAA games period. Just think, how many games have you played that were a bald faced tragedy? Except a couple of silent hills and other horror titles, most story games have essentially "happy" endings. And while I wouldn't call the ending of The Last of Us "sad" it uh... it is something.

It's the little things that endear me the most to TLU. Ellie's jokes and guitar riffs. Joel's reminiscence on super models, coffee shops, and sexy werewolf movies. Like precious few games before it, TLU is deadly serious about being a character piece. It commits from the first cut scene until the last one 14 some-odd hours later. It certainly doesn't hurt that the game itself is a refreshingly intense stealth/survival mash up, either.

It's not the best I've played, it sure as hell doesn't have to be. But the quality of the game play mixed with the master class of acting and story telling, creates an experience critics will cite for at least 15 more years. What I mean is; if TLU was a movie, even if you hate apocalypse fiction, you'd still have to admit it was a pretty good movie. But like Gone Home, the act of playing through the game (searching for ammo, frantically slapping together a nail board, knifing a fungus zombie in the neck) builds a kind of connection to Joel and Ellie only interactivity can provide.

It becomes powerful stuff. Even when I met new characters and cynically pointed out that they were "gonna die" with a half chewed twizzler sticking out of my mouth, I still stood up and yelled when they finally bit it. That's the sign of great art. When you know what's coming, but you get taken for a ride anyway.

Just like I know Luke's never going to eat all those eggs, and just like I know Ralston's never gonna get through the last nerve on his arm, I know I'm going to love The Last of Us for as long as I love video games.

#3 Gone Home

Gone Home should be a lot of things. It should be that thing that game critics prop up because it's in vogue and I should probably resent it for that. I know all the cool critics are talking about Gone Home and Papers Please, but you know what? They should be. They are both great experiments in what the interactive experience is capable of. If you read my work, seeing this game on my list should be no surprise as I'm quite the obvious little feminist.

But what's personally surprising to me is why I haven't put this game further up the list, and there's a couple reasons for that, but I'd like to talk about what GH means to me first. I'm proud something like this exists. The processes of rooting through your childhood home, trying to find what your sister has been up too while you've been away, adds something a novelization of the story couldn't. That fact alone opens a Pandora's box of possibility. But the fact the story is good on it's own, helps shout down it's more ignorant critics.

I don't want to break down the story, not enough people have played it yet. But following the breadcrumb trail of your sister's first love is a standout experience in a year with some notable interactive stories.

But why isn't this #1 for me? Well... as much as I loved GH, it's the equivalent of a short film. Don't think I'm holding it's length against it, far from it. But there's a reason short films don't win Oscars, because there's some major indie trappings that rubbed me the wrong way. Namely, the actor that plays your sister, Sam.

She's good... but inert. Often the visual clues of the environment seemed at odds with the performance I was listening to. There were several foreboding references to suicide (that Ophelia poster, for one) and other things that should have really brought Sam down. But all I seemed to hear from her was a tone that always sounded like "Dear diary, I'm in love!"

If she was able to shift gears a little I would have definitely put this up higher. But here we are, with a great game, instead of a masterpiece. Not a lick of shame in that. Bravo, Fullbright Co. And godspeed.

GAME OF THE YEAR 2013: #4 GTA V

You know you're getting older when you don't finish every game you buy. There's at least 7 games in my Steam profile I've barely clocked 20 minutes into. I'm only 3 missions away from finishing Assasin's Creed 4 but...  good lord I couldn't be bothered. That being said, I finished GTA V. No small feat for a guy that couldn't do the same for IV. It was great. I find all the praise heaped upon it fair, a solid journey from start to meandering finish. I loved every second I spent with it.

Unfortunately, absence made my heart grow far less fonder. The more time I tried to give a damn about gold medals, spaceship parts, and starting a whole new game; the less and less I started to want to play it. The blinding sheen of one of the most meticulously constructed games ever made began to wear off  for me, I didn't like what I was beginning to see.

Again, unfortunately everything negative heaped upon it was fair as well. The story was a mess, the female characters both sparse and spectacularly one dimensional, and the basic mechanics of fast traveling were purposefully restricted to cab calling alone. Collectively I spent hours waiting for cabs in GTA V, but that's not even close to the reason the bloom fell so dramatically off the rose for me.

In fact, I'm not exactly sure there's a specific reason I can point to, except I could tell you sitting through the cut scenes a second time around became torturous. Playing missions again became painfully tedious. Having the chance to really pick at core of each central character's motivation just killed it for me. At the end of the day, they make no goddamned sense. Though a fine acting job was done by all, it must be said.

There's something deeply hollow about the game for me now. I'll never forget how entranced I was at the start, but I've moved on. It's a similar feeling I have for Tomb Raider, it's actually the reason Tomb Raider isn't #5. I would have covered too much of the same territory. I loved both games to pieces at first... but I'd need a gun to my head to plow through them a second time.

But for all my pissing and moaning, this is the best GTA in ten years and one of the best of the generation. I begrudge not a single GOTY throw it's way.

Still figuring out my game of the year

This is a pretty political year for the goty. Is GTA V a undisputed masterpiece, or a janky by-the-numbers affair propped up by good acting? Is The Last of Us the greatest story ever told in a video game, or does it borrow too heavily from apocalypse fiction to be held under that much scrutiny? And what of Bioshock Infinite? The tide turned so harshly against that game after all the perfect reviews, I've nary seen it on top five lists, let alone best of the year.

I'm thinking long and hard on this one. There won't be any "just because" rationality from me. I'm gonna try to narrow down what I appreciate the most out of these. So I'll count down my top four to try to get you in my head space, to let you understand why these games show up where they do and why I enjoyed them personally.

I have a pretty good feeling what my #1 is gonna be. And I have a feeling y'all aren't gonna be happy with it. So gear up.

IMDB is down! I repeat, IMDB is down!

Update: aaaaaaaand it's back.

As of right now, not a single film's page at the internet movie data base is accessible and I've got the trivia addict shakes already. How else am I going to prove that Stephen Tobolowsky has been in every single film ever made, thus proving the existence of 4th dimensional beings?! Am I going to have to make a web of newspaper clippings and yarn like a crazy person?! That's just silly.

So for the foreseeable future, you're not going to be able to figure out who that guy was in that thing, and trust me when I say I feel for you. But, you can keep refreshing the page to see how many cute 500 error pages they have.



Spoiler alert: There are many.

A Tale of Two Roguelikes

The 2013 winter sale is at it's end, and what a sale it's been. I've got several brand new games half off, hand delivered to my hard drive and I still have a tank full of gas, no less. A damn good deal from where I'm sitting. But when it comes to Steam's achingly addictive blow out sales, I tend to learn something new about my gaming habits every year. Two years ago it was that if it's under ten bucks, there's a 25% I'll open it once and never touch it again. Last year it was that I love Civ V... but I will never rise above normal difficulty. Ever. This year I've come to realize that I will never not love Roguelikes.

It started with The Binding of Isaac and Dredmor, both wonderful games, and both played into living death by yours truly. Both absolutely worth your time, and both well under five bucks. I'll give you two to three weeks to savor and appreciate both their intricacies and difficulty. Ready?!!

GO!

And while I'm making demands, buy me this dredmor T. I'd never actually wear it in public, but I just love it so much.

So first things first, these games are not easy. That is the last thing a roguelike wants to be. They are obtuse, they are randomly generated, but most importantly, death is permanent.You lose focus in those games for a second and boom! Go back to start, do not collect $200. All your tangible progress is gone. That's the bitter medicine I've slowly grown to love. Though Isaac and Dredmor no longer slake my thirst, so I've been chasing the proverbial dragon all over "teh internetz" to find the next big thing in perma-death. It's taken longer than I thought.

Rogue Legacy didn't really work for me, though it's premise was brilliant. Every time you die, you choose between three of your children to take your place, all with random classes and traits. But once the appeal of playing as color blind mages and 2-dimensional rogues wore off, my pedestrian knowledge of genetics became my worst enemy. I mean, why can't I choose dominant traits? It was too random for me to sink my teeth into it and I lost interest. Spelunky simply bored me, I don't know why, but I haven't touched it in months.Which brings me to my most recant additions to my roguelike gallery, Eldritch and Delver.

I've heard of horrible geometries, but this is ridiculous!

Eldritch is an homage to the work of H.P. Lovecracft in interactive form. Unlike the other games I've mentioned, this is really more stealth based. Once you work your way into the real meat of the game, you'll spend most of it running for your life. It's fantastic. The sub-playstation era graphics become endearing after a short while and the sound design sets the mood perfectly. From the bored and halfhearted chants of Cthulhu's faithful, to the adorable "glug, glug, glugging" of innsmouth's hopping fish men, Eldritch has a decent sense of humor about itself. But wait until you get to the living statues that slam you into a wall when your back is turned. You'll learn to fear your enemies soon enough. I've already had a blast with his thing and I haven't even seen the new game+ modifiers. Which I'm assured is where the game really begins. Eldritch came to beat your face into your keyboard, I say it succeeds, but you just better hope that flying eyeball didn't see you yet.

So, what about Delver? For starters it's not technically finished yet. It's part of Steam greenlight, their indie outreach program to give up and comers some spotlight. But For the 2 hours I've already put into it, I've got a really good feeling about it. For one, it perfectly re-captured my nearly 15 year old nostalgia for that cross marketing classic: Chex Quest.

... you look confused.

You see, it wasn't simply a bald faced endorsement for low sugar breakfast cereals and the General Mills corporation, it was also just a damn good Doom clone. There's something about CQ that I'll never let go of, and it's something no other game has reminded me of since. Except Delver for some reason. The 2-D characters in a 3-D environment is big part of it, but the way the combat works and the way the camera moves just feels so... so cozy.

But if there's no fond memories for you there, the looting, leveling, and hack'n'slashing, will do you just fine for $8. There feels like hours of content in here and the 6 run throughs I've done have felt completely different from each other. It certainly feels like a finished product to me.


So there you go, two fine roguelikes suited to my tastes. Happy dungeon crawling.

The Wolf of Wall Street Review: Ludefellas.

Talking about this movie is a struggle for a couple of reasons. One, it feels like there's too much ground to cover for a single review. Two, it seems like when I really think about it, there isn't much to talk about at all.

It's the same Scorsese shtick you've seen before, but different. A entire film's worth of material is covered in it's first 40 minutes alone, yet it seems to repeat itself two more times before the end... but differently. Half of me wants to call it a complete waste of time, half of me wants to call it a masterpiece. It's the most effective piece of manic film making I've ever seen. Except for the first 20 minutes, the entire film is paced like the coke sequence from Goodfellas. Does that sound exhausting? It should, because it is.

But it's a good kind of exhausting. Because it's just so charming, it felt like it was always two steps ahead of me. Say there's a scene with DiCaprio sniffing cocaine out of a hooker's butt hole with a straw (there is). In the back of my head I'm over it "yeah I guess that's kinda funny in a schlocky, desperate kind of way" I think to myself. But Scorsese knows I'm in that head space and adds just a little something that brings the visual punchline together and suddenly I'm laughing the loudest of anyone in the theater.

It's 3 hours of that, over and over. DiCaprio is coning the rich and poor alike with phoney stock bids and eventually sets the tone for the next decade of wall street trading. He uses that capital to land a trophy wife, a mansion on the most valuable real estate in America, and to fund a crippling addiction to a sleeping pill discontinued in the early 80's. He's so rich he was on drugs that didn't exist anymore!

I'd like to think there isn't a shirt that can make me hate someone instantly... but there it is.

This is the Dicaprio show, for sure, but a standing army of bit players get some of the spotlight too. Jonah Hill is the creepy sidekick and he kills it. Some of the more improvised scenes drag with him, but it's crazy how skeevy and adorable he is all at once. Also, Margot Robbie makes the most of her 20 some-odd minutes of screen time by owning every single second of it.

She's got the kind of screen presence you can't teach, and I'm not just talking about the her scalding good looks. On paper her role as the second wife goes from being naive arm candy to half-hearted landscaper. Not a whole hell of a lot for her to work with. But the more I think about her choices, the more I realize she's playing a lot more than she's getting played. Which is kind of awesome. But sadly there's no three dimensional female character within a square mile of this movie, but it's not her fault.

Does this film do justice to the reality of the real wolf's reign of life wrecking selfishness? I can't say, his daughter has some choice words for us viewers, and they're worth reading from what I saw. But what I can say is this is Scorsese's best movie in  well over a decade and it's extended quaalude overdose sequence is worth ten bucks on it's own. It's great, insanely repetitive, and if you give it enough time it'll give you one hell of a contact high.

Is Mob City smart, boring or... hell I don't know, Jay what do you think?

Troy Baker on the Indoor Kids

I'm no stranger to podcasts, which means I'm no stranger to the Nerdist network. The Indoor Kids in particular is one of the more interesting discussions being held on the games industry. Kumail Nanjiani and Emily Gordan are enjoyable enough on their own, but stir in some adorable marital back and forth you can only hear from the couples you know are gonna make it, and it becomes the most entertaining discussion being held on the industry.

They've had some legitimately good episodes before, the Bioshock Infinite double date was hysterical. But sometimes true luminaries from the business drop by, Tom Bissell and Film-Crit-Hulk come to mind, and those always stand out. But after their sit down with the actor Troy Baker (who's so effortlessly charming it makes me physically angry) something tugged at me in the back of my head. Something that said that this is worth remembering.

Some like to wring their hands and say the industry will soon crash just as it did in the 80's.
There may well be a financial culling of the herd. But to suggest our culture will simply abandon gaming as we did back then is absurd and I should probably write a whole 'nuther article about that... moving on.

But with people like Baker and Johnson turning in performances like Joel and Ellie, it's no longer a matter of time before games catch up with the quality and the subtlety of film. I say we're already there.

Listen to the episode not just for your own curiosity, but to pay things forward for people like Baker. He more than deserves an hour your time, and I promise it's worth your while.

The Steam Winter Sale is scrumptious!

The best thrice yearly thing in PC gaming is here again, this time with a frostier texture. The Summer, fall, and winter sales consistently outdo themselves. And this one is no exception.

Max Payne for $4.00?

 
Right here.

Tomb Raider for $13.00?

They got that too.



Borderlands 2 GOTY for $15.00?!

Yessiree.


Breath it in guys. Breath in the steam.

The Yellow Sea is a Netflix gem.

I'm always up for a hidden gem. I'm usually never too hyped and almost always surprised. Sometimes the surprise is that I think the movie is actually terrible... but either way, I'm out of my comfort zone.

I've always wanted to dig more into Korean cinema. I goddamn loved  The Good, The Bad, and The Weird, but Thirst left me dry, and some bastard spoiled Oldboy for me. So when I'm not in the mood, 9 times out of ten, I'll stick with American Dad episodes I've seen a million times instead of broadening my horizons.

The Yellow Sea has a fascinating first 30 minutes (that's all I've seen so far, I got an early shift) and I can't wait to finish it. But before I go, I'll say I love how the Chinese/Korean border politics drive the conflict. I'm just along for the culture now. 

Florida tea party Facebook group has co-opted that Bioshock Infinite mural for their banner.

Yep... that mural.

I wish I had something to say about The National Liberty Federation using one of the most satirically racist paintings I've ever seen unironically. But there are no words for this. Except maybe, wow.

...and why.

Here's a devilishly good trailer for House of Cards, season 2.

I really liked the first season of House of Cards. Perfect? no. But taken as an experiment for an entirely new mode of entertainment consumption I found it wildly successful. It kept everything that made the British original unique, while taking advantage of what would make an American setting interesting. So yeah, 2/14/14 is a red letter day for me, and those letters read Netflix.

And I like how the composer fit that spiritual into the main theme, there.



Nice one, Beal!

Fallout 4 IS real. But the teaser was fake... I don't know, I've lost the plot now.

Kotaku's investigative team is saying that Fallout 4 is real and will be set in Massachusetts, as was long thought to be the case.  This comes from leaked documents from a casting call for a Bethesda project called "The Institute" in which the phrase made immortal by Ron Pearlman is found.

So, there! They're totally working on it. Boston's cool, I can get behind that too. I'm just breathing a huge sigh of relief here, it had been far too long for me. It's been over 3 years now, I need a new Fallout yesterday.

But I can wait.

Here's some of the leaked documents:

Ben Whishaw as just been cast as...

The suspenders are a clue...

wait for it...




Freddy Mercury. And it's about damn time, I've been waiting for this biopic (for better or worse) for four years now. Now that Wishaw is surviving member approved, maybe we can finally get somewhere. I love Queen, goddammit. I just love them so much.

And if you don't (no judgement) then you hate life and/or yourself. No judgment.

 Life hater.

TellTale Games is doing Borderlands now too. Seriously.

I did not see that coming. Don't they have enough pokers in the fire already? Between Fables, The Walking Dead, and now Game of Thrones odds are at least one of these is going to be terrible. But at the very least...

...we get a little more Handsome Jack!

Rick and Morty Pilot Review: 100 times.com all day long forever... some things.

Lord knows I'm a fan of Dan Harmon's work, and lord knows I've seen a fair amount of Adult Swim in my day. But given the economic circumstances of late night animation I've felt like too many concessions are made to create anything that rises above "yeah... that was pretty good." Everything that is, except the Venture Bros. But that started in 2003 and we're still months away from anything resembling the second half of it's 5th season. Again, concessions.

So what are we looking at here with Rick and Morty? A middle school kid named Morty and his estranged mad scientist grandfather Rick, dealing with "high concept, sci-fi rigamarole." In essence, an American hitchhiker's guide with a few family sitcom trappings. Rick keeps pulling Morty out of school for some quality adventure time, and his parents are trying to keep him from flunking out. That's about the gist of it, but is it any good?

If the pilot is any indication of what's to come (I've embedded it below) I think I've seen the Lawrence of Arabia of budget animation. It's shocking how fluid everything is, how alive everything feels. Having been subjugated to damn near every season of Aqua Teen Hunger Force and it's maddeningly repetitive character poses in college, this is the best I ever hoped to see from AS. You know, besides the Venture Bros.

But is is funny? Yes! Good lord, it's funny. It scratches my Douglas Adams itch something fierce, while also having some fun side details I didn't see coming. Rick sneaking in alcoholic belches in the middle of lines should have been irritating. In fact, a lot of critics give the show hell for it. But as a guy who tried his damndest at a formative age to master the comic burp, I gotta give Justin Roiland (co-creater of Lemongrab fame) credit for both variety and intensity. My ten year old self is seriously jealous.

This is hands down, the best AS pilot in history. It ain't perfect and it may not blow your hair back. But it's got a good budget, confidence, a solid story line, and a sexual dream sequence that had me in stitches. If you can't find something to like about Rick and Morty I will honestly be surprised. Or you just don't like Adult Swim and you take pleasure in stomping on other's positivity.

In which case, WHY?! I just wanted you to think I was cool...

Here's the stupid video, you jerk. I never liked you anyway.

Bioshock Infinite, Burial at Sea Review: A Little Moth to the Flame.

It's that time of year again, where you look back on what you've played and wonder which was the best. It's a short list this year and Infinite is definitely on it, so I picked it up again to see if I still had such strong feelings for it.

Normally when I hear a dlc pack is kind of a ripoff I stay as far away from it as I can. But damn it if Colombia didn't suck me back in again, and damn it if I didn't want to see what Irrational has been up to for the last 7 months. So I sprung for the season pass which netted me the "clash in the clouds" combat arcade mode, some exclusive equipment for the main campaign and of course "Burial at Sea."

Full disclosure, I've been a rabid fan of Rapture since '07. Seeing Ken Levine take another crack at it with a brand new engine and a stronger focus on character all set before the 1959 civil war sounded spectacular. But in my heart I knew I couldn't really go home again. There's no way they could really bottle that exact magic again. As much love as I have for Bioshock 2, as well as it's dlc, neither  developer truly nailed what came before.

A week ago, the notion of a nearly 3 hour experience for $15 would make me bristle. Artistically I knew it's possible for something that short to be worth that much, but I had to see it to believe it. And quite frankly, if I didn't bet on Bioshock I knew I'd regret it eventually. So here I stand before you, a true believer. In short?

I went home again.

We all saw the noir opening re-introducing Booker and Elizabeth as citizens of Rapture rather than fugitives of Colombia. It was pretty cute the way it mocked the private eye trope of lighting a feme fatal's cigarette with incinerate, but how soon would it be until that shtick wore thin? I'm all for a new and shinier version of what is, to me at least, the most perfect possible criticism of objectivisim. But seriously, why were we here again? Why are characters from an alternate reality a good century in the past doing here? Is there truly anything left to say about either them, or Rapture in general?

I didn't get answers to those questions. For the next four and a half hours, BAS slowly made me understand I was merely asking the wrong questions. From first stepping out of Booker's new office it hit me, that feeling only video games can hit me with. A need to drink in all the atmosphere around me as meticulously as possible.

A lot of games let me down in that regard, even Infinite itself at times. But BAS passed in flying colors. If a room doesn't have something for you to loot, it has something interesting to show you. Every inch of this chapter is dripping, positively drowning, in detail and fan service. Burial at Sea is something everyone can play, but it's custom built for the Rapture faithful. The required reading is only the original, in case you were wondering. Precious little of 2k Marin's crack at the franchise is present except for the Hop-up Cola boxes and a screening of the Cohen art film "The Black Dream." I could write a whole dang article on the deafening silence that is Ken Levin's opinion on Bioshock 2, but that's not important right now, and as long as we're talking about Sander Cohen...

I would have paid $60 for more of that magnificent bastard.

There is a spectacular Cohen cameo capping off the first 3rd of BAS that just made me weak in the knees. T. Ryder Smith's performance is one of my all time favorites and his ten extra minutes in the spotlight was more than enough for me. The whole thing could have ended right there, and I would tried to be upset about it. I would have certainly written a negative review. But deep down, I would have been satisfied. But that's where the chapter starts to get violent!

Things have swung back in the direction of survival horror, and it's surprising how intense the last couple thirds of chapter one get in such a short amount of time. It feels like a demo for a full game, that's how detailed everything is. There's so many new splicers, a new microwave gun, a spectacular jingle for bucking bronco, and almost 20 audio diaries. Again, my name tag might as well say "corporate shill." But I had a f%$king great time guys, hand to god.

Yes, you can totally run through it in under 2 hours. You shouldn't. If you're a rusher, this is not for you, it's that simple. Everyone else? The folks who like eavesdropping, staring at art in a gallery, digging through trash cans, and setting up traps? This chapter gets put on the shelf that houses the most exemplary dlc I've ever played. I'd like to be more objective and take off my moldy rabbit mask...

...but I can't.

This Thanksgiving, I give thanks for Gary Oldman.

Happy Religious Freedom Feast Day!

I think I just heard the audio track of the Fallout 4 Teaser! ...I think.

UPDATE: This guy says he made it up. Thanks PoopF%&r!

Take this with a grain of salt. If it's a fake, it's the best I've ever seen.

I can't FUGG'IN WAIT!!!!

Yes, that did warrant four exclamation points. It's Fallout, man.

Hangar 6 R&D Review: Yep, I still love The Bureau.

I booted The Bureau up again the other day out of curiosity, afraid I'd finally see the cracks so many professional and trusted critics wrote it up for. But to my pleasant surprise, I found myself sucked in yet again. Eager to shell out a modest sum for whatever DLC they had on hand. I still think it's more sharply written and plays better than almost anyone I've talked to about it. But I do concede it's far, far, away from anything approaching greatness. It's hobbled scope, conspicuously absent base building, and over recycled talking animations are real issues.

But I have so much fun with it! And the only substantial DLC we'll ever get from the late 2k Marin is an absolute steal for $5. It's a 3-4 hour campaign set a few days before the initial Groom Range invasion staring Agent Dasliva as he volunteers to assist in 11 waves of surprisingly violent psychological tests being run on the Bureau's first captive "sleepwalker."

Naturally I expected some fun waves of combat with truncated and unsatisfying story beats to set up the main game. Wrong again! Beginning with a well staged walk-and-talk with Dr. Dresner and slowly escalating to; well... where it ends, a decent yarn is spun as well as a half credible explanation for how you can fight the outsiders before they actually show up.

 So yes, I still love The Bureau, and Hangar 6 is a solid prologue.


As well as a bitter-sweet goodbye.

Sherlock Season 3 Trailer. Has it been 2 years already?

After a very long (very BBC) hiatus, Sherlock will once again return to our respective airwaves. Wonderful. It's a very good show, a real drag on repeat viewings, but absolutely captivating the first time around.

... well that wasn't much was it? What about Orphan Black?

Come on! That could have been a teaser for the first season. Well at least I got a air date that time, Sherlock.

TellTale Games takes a seat on the Game of Thrones... throne.

Is Tell Tale Games the best interactive storyteller in the business? I'd like to think so, and so do the folks that hold the keys the justifiably popular Game of Thrones IP. Like it or not, this is what the team behind The Walking Dead will be working on now as well.

I haven't gotten around to their "Fables" yet, but I like to wait until the majority of episodic content is released before I go all in. I hate being an early investor in matters not related to The Neverhood and I'm personally just keeping time until their second season of The Walking Dead sets in.

Can they handle it? Absolutely. Will they handle it... well I can't see the future can I?

I can't stand how Bob Dylan just blew my mind.

I am not the world's biggest Dylan fan. My feelings towards him are the same I have for the Ramones. I respect the hell out of him... but I'm not gonna spend too much time listening to his work. That being said, this new video for his almost 50 year old song "Like a Rolling Stone" is incredible. It's like a Warhol masterpiece for the internet age. Ambitious, broadly appealing, yet so deceptively simple I'm kicking myself for not thinking it up first.

So bravo team Dylan, this is one of the greatest music videos I've ever seen.

Britney Murphy's Death may have actually been Murder.

I don't like to rumor monger, nor give into baseless scandal, but this is turning into a fascinating little mystery. I'm not here to pass judgment, but if the new medical evidence revealed by the Huffington Post is to be believed, Murphy's hair contained a "high level set" of heavy metals. To an M.E. that's a sign that points clearly to a case of poisoning. That could be an accident... but the plot thickens.

Britney's husband (Simon Monjack) also died of pneumonia after allegedly suffering from similar symptoms associated with metal poisoning five months later. That could have been a coincidence. Murphy's mother had sworn up and down a "toxic mold" found in their home was responsible. Speaking of Sharon Murphy, according to TMZ (and for the love of Christ, take all this with the absolute grainiest of salt) she had been sleeping in her son in law's bed after Britney's death and had purchased medication prescribed to "Sharon Monjack"

Going by Moscow rules here, I believe we can call this enemy action. But this is all speculation at this point. Sure the juicy noir narrative is floating in front of our faces, but please don't go buying into it just yet. Murphy's father has done some great work trying to get to the bottom of her daughter's death, and I'm sure this is far from the last we'll hear about this case. But just because the mother looks really suspicious doesn't mean jack. Not yet, so stay tuned... or bookmarked, or just refresh Huff-Po. I'm  going to draw all my evidence from them anyway.

Bethesda might, MIGHT, be teasing Fallout 4.

It doesn't matter though, I'm bouncing off the walls. So what if the only evidence is a teaser countdown site with an ominous morse code beep backing up a suspiciously fallouty type face. I don't care, I'll take the baseless rumor mongering because it's been over 3 damn years since I've heard anything at all about my favorite franchise.

Sure Erik Todd Dellums tweeted the possibility of the return of his DJ persona ThreeDog a while back, but that might also be a Fallout film project. A project that is also so up in the air the only thing confirming it is a character actor's twitter account.

For the record I am absolutely pro "more ThreeDog."

Grump! Fallout is too strong a brand to abandon, but I get the sneaking suspicion Bethesda is getting really sick of it. But maybe I'm panicking for no reason, (I tend to do that) seeing as they have a brand new MMO to promote. They probably don't want to become their own competition by advertising two products at the same time.

That being said, Skyrim was great and everything, but I couldn't be bothered to give two flying sh*ts about TES at the best of times. I can't help but feel like my true love is being held hostage by their pet IP.

XCOM Enemy Within Impressions: "Solid Copy, Big Sky."

Bah da bam bam ba daaaaah.

So... my day off just disappeared in a puff of smoke. Wanna know why, or more importantly, how? Well, the new XCOM expansion came out today. An expansion so massive it's the size of the main game. Actually, it is the main game; tuned up, tricked out, and packing a brand new story thread. Not only are you facing a global invasion of the martian persuasion, but now you have a more... human threat on your hands. Well, more human than the other guys anyway. But I'm getting ahead of myself, I've never actually blogged about what I thought about this game before, so why don't I get that out of the way first.

Enemy Unknown was a Firaxis game through and through. Meaning it was so mercilessly addictive I'd put it down for months out of fear of what it would do to my social life. I really liked it, but there were some nagging aspects that kept me from letting it in all the way. To my heart, I mean.

Did that sound sexual? It wasn't supposed to sound sexual...

 Things like a shallow pool of maps, repetitive enemies, and having to move your troops by hand outside of combat ground my gears sumthin' fierce. But Enemy Within has been a long time coming; after getting about halfway through the game and finding myself in my first run in with the gene splicing terrorist cell "Exalt" I'm over the moon. There's tons of new maps, oodles of troop upgrades, and several new in-mission objects to spice up your everyday abduction sites.

Is $30 a little much? Yes. Are you essentially buying the same game all over again? Technically. Will you care about any of that 2 hours in? Not a chance in hell.

I got sick of fighting aliens. I was tired of fighting robots. But robot aliens?! I'm... listening.

Spiderman is a fireman... your argument is invalid.

Happy Weekend Everybody!

The Long, Sad, Death Throes of Blockbuster Finally End.

There was a time, long before I was even born, when VHS tapes cost almost $100 a piece. In that world, a rental store made almost too much sense. For 20 years Blockbuster dominated, with lesser franchises like Hollywood video nipping at it's heels. That all changed with the advent of the great red menace: NETFLIX.

I love Netflix so, so, much. I've been a constant subscriber for over 4 years now. That's over $400 dollars at least. Though my story is hardly unique because all of the 300 remaining (really?! that many were left?) stores will close this year.

They tried, lord how they tried. They grabbed onto the mail side of Netflix just as Netflix realized the real future was in streaming. So we all knew that was never going to be enough and saw the end coming miles away. They filed for bankruptcy in 2010. Now, three years later, it's finally shutting down the vital organs. I honestly can't believe it hobbled on for so long.

But now I can't help but feel for Netflix's mortality. After Starz picked up all it's toys and went home, I've feared $8 a month will someday only buy you a shallow collection of entertainment, instead of the still pretty monolithic selection ol' Netty has now. But we'll cross that bridge when we get to it. Rest in peace Blcokbuster, I always said $7 2-night rentals were bullsh*t. Now who's laughing?

Me! I'm laughing, by myself, in front of my computer... worth it.

*Update: I called them death "throws"... I hang my head in shame.

Bob's Burgers Returns! Seaplane Review.

After a baseball break that went on far too long (go Red Socks or... whatever) I've finally got my Bob back. It's no secret this is my new TV crush, it's been that way for quite some time. It's just been so consistently good for so long I want to shout my love from the rooftops. Baring that, this little blogspot should do the trick.

So what happened on Sunday? Will Forte guest starred as "Up Skirt Kurt" a seaplane instructor with less than admirable intentions for bored married women. After Bob refuses to spice up date night, Linda chooses to learn how to fly by herself and runs afoul of Kurt's master plan: a fake plane crash on "quickie-kiss-it" island.

One of the best things about Bob's Burgers is how each family member is strong enough to stand on their own, but somehow manage to be even better together. So having Linda being blissfully unaware of Kurt's advances is just as much fun as seeing Bob and the kids making a mad dash for aviation's make out point. That and Tina's musical fantasy about an Island all about kissing made me rewind at least three times. There was just really funny stuff from everyone this week.

From Gene's obsession with bread sticks to Louise commenting of Bob's belief that there has to be a boat for hire somewhere "This guy thinks every where's Key west!" to  Louise also commenting on Linda's infedelity "Don't get pregnant, I want to be the baby!" Not to mention some hearty Kevin Kline cameos as Mr. Fischoeder to bring it all home. This wasn't as brilliantly well structured as the Halloween special Fortnight (which was fantastic), or as heartfelt as some of the Tina centric episodes can be. But it was a rock solid episode nonetheless. Bob's Burgers continues to be the best show on fox by a mile these days. I honestly can't recommend it enough.

Why absolutely no one in the gaming community is surprised about Healthcare.gov

I don't like getting political, there's nothing I hate reading more than a partisan political sermon. But I'm not going to talk about politics. I'm not even gonna talk about health care. I'm going to talk about reasonable expectations for internet access and problem solving in this country. Both parties in America have collectively face-palmed over Healthcare.gov's inability to function. The tone I hear is one of complete surprise at something the pundit community seems to believe is almost unprecedented.

A website not working?! I understand how most folks can go through their professional lives and never feel the brunt of a really nasty connectivity issue. But here in Vidja Gameland, it happens all the goddamn time. Simcity is the most recent fiasco I can think of, and even in the long and storied history of video game launch disasters, it was really sumthin' special. EA had underestimated their sever load (how many people that it can support online at a time) by what seemed to be several million. The game literally didn't work for weeks.

Amazon pulled it from their proverbial shelves and critics (who had played it before release on private servers) updated their reviews to inform the public. Russ Pitts from Polygon had a particularly heavy conscience:

"Given this currently horrendous state of both accessibility and playability, and acknowledging the fact that even the drastic changes EA has made to the game in its attempts to address them haven't worked, it is hard to continue to recommend SimCity. The experience currently on offer is now significantly altered from what was reviewed, and there is simply no guarantee that the existing server issues will go away, nor what further changes may be made to the game in order to address them". - Russ Pitts, Polygon Features Editor and SimCity reviewer

Fans demanded an offline mode until the issues were fixed. But the developer assured the public that because of the way the game's artificial intelligence worked, an offline mode simply wasn't possible. It wasn't long before the game's more industrious fans discovered that not only did the game not appear to have any significant artificial intelligence at all (citizens only would work at the closest job and live in the closest home and a bunch of other embarrassing stuff), but eventually modded a perfectly functional (but very illegal) offline mode all by themselves.

It was plainly clear that the only motivation for the online connection came from upstairs. EA wanted an always-online Simcity no matter the cost. The funny thing was, Simcity was still a pretty big hit that didn't wind up costing them much at all.

That was barely six months ago, and a game that was reasonably anticipated, but not necessarily a blockbuster. But let's wind the clock back bit to summer 2012, and talk about a game that had fans clamouring for over 12 years...

How well did it launch? Well, you could make the argument that for hundreds of thousands of it's customers, it never launched at all. The problem went on for at least two more weeks. Customers couldn't reliably use their product because the demand was too great. So why does this happen? Why can't websites and online games just be "better?" To accurately answer that question I'd need a whole semester of an eerily specific telecommunications class, but here's the issue as I understand it.

Renting servers is expensive and you never want more server space than you need. But no one can see the future and you can never truly know how much you'll really need. "So just buy enough servers to feed the demand." Good point disembodied straw man! But what if you break the bank on enough servers and the demand goes into a freefall? Then you're only doubly screwed.

The whole point I'm driving at here is that the American government doesn't necessarily suck at running a website. Or at the very least, some of the most powerful entertainment companies in America and Canada (whose profit margins are almost entirely based around connecting to the internet) screw up just as spectacularly. This may be a humongous embarrassment to the Obama administration, but he's got so many more important things to do and even other more important scandals to worry about. The best and the brightest of the private sector don't seem to be any more competent.

Why Steam users are exeptionally smug today.

It seems like Steam is snowballing into quite the console competitor. Not really though, Sony and Microsoft could take Newell with both hands tied behind their backs GTA V sold 39 million copies without a PC version at all, but the number of active users under Valve's belt is staggering. There are 65 million of us now, at least 30% of which joined in the last year.

This whole "Steam Machine" business may have a better shot than I dared hope. And this is all coming from a guy who couldn't wipe it off his hard drive fast enough. A guy who only saw Steam as the epileptic gatekeeper that would only let him play New Vegas between the hours 1:00 and 6:00 AM. Fast forward 3 years later and I've saved at least, at least, $300 dollars off of Steam sales alone. I'm not logging off anytime soon.

Hey! So Mike Rowe was in this crappy 90's video game...

Everyone's favorite blue collar emcee and opera singer (seriously) went through some pretty lean years... come to think of it, he may be there again. But either way, we need to talk about "Radio Active." In that, I'm gonna let Rowe talk about Radio Active:

"And so it came to pass that I auditioned for and won the coveted the role of Bobby Arpeggio," Rowe wrote on Facebook, "the central figure in what the producers called 'the first truly interactive gaming experience designed exclusively for the personal computer — the music trivia adventure called Radio Active!" (I called it 'Name That Tune,' but whatever.) I packed a bag, flew to San Francisco, and slipped into the wardrobe that was waiting for me. A week later I had a check in my pocket, and was off to the next gig."
 
What prompted all this? A fan showed him a screen grab of him in the game and got him to open up about it a little.

Don't look directly at it. You actually need one of those mirror boxes they make for solar eclipses.

"When I saw this image, mixed in with all the other kind expressions of support, it made me laugh out loud, and reminded me that when a man can't deny his past (or his outfit), he might as well embrace it."

Thanks Polygon!