Orphan Black, Season 1 Review: Rich Girl, Smart Girl, Crazy Girl, Thief.

Sometimes its hard to articulate what you like about something. Ask me why I think Breaking Bad's so great and I just shut down, I mean where do you even start with a question like that? But sometimes a show makes it easy. Sometimes when someone asks me "What the hell are you watching?" I can pause, point to the screen and say that woman is playing three roles in a single frame. Tatiana Maslany is a once in a generation kind of actor. Even if the light sci-fi caper plot of Orphan Black turns you off, I promise you (like, totally pinky swear) her performance of all three principle characters will keep you in your seat.

I've been burned by interesting up start BBC shows before. I wanted to wade through more of Misfits than I did (its still pretty good) and Being Human was just...kinda lame. But Orphan Black is different, and I'm not talking about it being on BBC America. I can see the version of this show that's mediocre quite clearly. At a glance, it's absolutely nothing special, aside from spearheading the ethical quandaries of the future of genetic research.

On paper it looks like the half baked progeny of one of Abram's disciples. Like Alcatraz. Seriously, I loved that show only for the drinking game I made up for it. A shot of gin every time Sam Neill looks like he wants to kill either himself or his co stars*. Orphan Black could have turned into something like that. A soulless procedural that may have had a spark of originality at some point, but assumed audiences wouldn't have time to care about it's characters and never bothered to develop them.

But OB knows what it's working with, it knows Maslany is dynamite, it knows it has to put it's characters first and it's conspiracy second, and it knows it has to pay off cliffhangers eventually. OB succeeds in spite of it's occasionally trite plotting  because you come to care about Sarah and her..."sisters." If you can make it through the rough patches you are gonna be in for such a treat, man you don't even know. But I guess I could tell you.

Sarah Manning is not an anti-hero, she's actually just plain awful. A product of the foster care system, she's a mother who hasn't seen her daughter in over a year, and her latest scheme to see her again involves stealing cocaine from her drug dealer boyfriend (Micheal Mando, who does a spectacular job with a character that goes absolutely nowhere...and he was Vaas). But just before she goes through with her plan, she sees a woman in a suit taking off her shoes and putting her purse down on the train platform next to her. She looks exactly like Sarah, and gives her one hell of a look before throwing herself onto the tracks.

Of all the train stations in all the world...

She runs to her foster brother Felix to tell him what she saw. Together they conspire to figure out who she was, to get into her apartment, and to empty her bank account. Things get exponentially more complicated when she's forced to pretend to be a homicide detective and begins to see just how many of "her" there are.

I could go on to ruin the differences between the other Sarahs and how easily I forgot the same actor plays them all, but I think that's best left un-discussed. The good news is how spoiler proof this show can be as the twists themselves aren't ever as impactful as the character's reactions to them are. In fact, my favorite parts are in the down time between earth shattering revelations, where the Sarahs are off stewing in their respective lives. Its here the show's character building skill is strongest and it's humor shines though. This can be a damn funny show, in fact, the finale has the funniest murder I've ever seen.

The real question is, where can you find this if you don't have BBC America? So glad you asked. I dipped my toe into Amazon instant because I really wasn't sure about it. But I would have saved 3 bucks if I had jumped in with both feet. So please, check it out if you have another free weekend, its less than the price of two movies. Think about it, get on board before Maslany inevitably drowns in her collection of Emmys and Oscars.


But before you go, check out it's jaunty opening theme:

So JAUNTY!!!

*To be fair, the flashbacks to the prison's last year were stupidly good. $50 says that's what the original pitch was about.

Freshly STEAMed: Bully Review. "That's why it works, Jimmy, because we're all bastards.”

Let me ask you a question.

What if Ennio Morricone scored a brat pack movie?

That's pretty rad isn't it?

Well as it turns out, the red headed stepchild of the grand theft auto games is exactly that. Pretty rad. I first played Bully years and years ago and had a great time with it on my ol' PS2. I had thought I finally had an idea of what everyone saw in Rockstar games. I was never super into GTA III (arguably the most influential game ever made) but Bully got me on board. I played San Andreas next and loved it to bits, though as soon as I had heard the last from Tenpenny and James Woods I was done. The progression in both of those games were amazing. Just when you thought San Andreas was winding up, boom: AIRPLANES. Just when you thought you'd be stuck at Bullworth Academy for 14-some hours, crrrreeeeeek: the front gates open and the surrounding town is yours for the taking.

 Years went by, GTA IV finally skulked its way back to the PC and I thought I could bottle that same magic again. For a while I did...but after its riveting first act, things took a turn. The plot stopped developing, the characters I enjoyed had vanished from the story. I no longer cared about some guy Niko came to America to kill because he obviously didn't care anymore. He'd hem and haw at the revolving door of random Italian mafiosos to help him find that guy, but then he'd let it go because he jus' wants de money. Over and over again with the money.  

To paraphrase a recently deceased film critic, I hated that game. I hated, hated, hated that game. GTA IV exacerbated the issues I had with both earlier games to almost comical degrees. It wanted to be taken more seriously as a narrative. So I tried to take it more seriously too. The story began to become the game people had turned GTA into: just a bunch of fun, unconnected, random things. If the game was going to let the plot go, if it was just going to be a daisy chain of short stories, I could respect that. But the finale comes out of nowhere and throws the cadaver of the first act back on the stage after it was left to rot for 15 hours and expected me to give a damn. No. San Andreas had Samuel Jackson dropping by at regular intervals, but for some reason IV's villain had more important sh*t to do than to be part of his own story. He'd seriously call you on your cell phone every 5 hours begging you not to forget he existed. That's. Crap. Storytelling.

"You done buddy? You want some cheese with that whine?"

Sigh...sorry. That's been on my chest for a while now. I'm just frustrated. I'm frustrated at how much people care about IV when contrasted with how little people even remember Bully. Because after jumping in to it for the first time in nearly 8 years its amazing how much fun I had. It's remarkable how much fun it is. I'd like to go on the record and say it's the most fun game Rockstar has made to date. Red Dead was a fantastic game to be sure, I'd say it's their best game, but it's nowhere near as fun or as focused as Bully. That's another rarity for them, focus. See, you're on the clock in Bully. You have classes to attend and curfews to mind. That sounds like the antithesis of what makes a good RS game, but bear with me.

It makes the moment to moment game play that much more compelling. You have so many objectives pulling you in so many directions, you always have to have a plan. Do you want to build your character with the buffs you get from passing classes? Do you want to buy some new clothes or hairdos? Do you want to train your CQC with the homeless Korean vet who lives near the shop class?  Or do you want to dig deeper into the resident sociopath's plan to eventually puppeteer every clique on campus? Time's a'wasting, make up your mind.

"If I had some black lipstick and eyeliner...Rockstar already made that game?! Damn."

Even for an 8 year old game that was given a bare bones face lift for a port 6 years ago... it could look better. In fact, the steam guide has a link to a replacement exe. file that lets the game run in 60 frames per second. You're really gonna want that. The fact the port crew couldn't bother to put that in themselves is embarrassing. But the core experience does eventually shine through...but it will take a while to get a keyboard set up that works for you.

The trails and tribulations of Jimmy Hopkins will eventually hold your interest. Jimmy himself slowly evolves into a much more rounded and likable person than he seems at first blush. The central villain has a standout performance, though this game also suffers from a previously mentioned RS game affliction: D.V.D. (disappearing villain syndrome). But you won't care, the deep roster of cliques and characters isn't as bothersome as it was in GTA IV because you will see those characters all the time. The students on campus aren't the faceless droves of Liberty City, they are all people with names and personalities. They're broad and hammy personalities, but still, the effort is noticed and deeply appreciated. If you join the year book club, you can snap pictures of them and build what is essentially a trading card collection. How cool is that?

"I'm thinking about starting a conflict, a conflict with caramel."

Bully is a wonderful game that makes a lousy first impression. The character models are ancient and the script and compressed sound is hard to listen to sometimes, yet I'll admit the animation holds up surprisingly well. Once you get in a groove, pass a few classes, make a favorite outfit, and nail the wonkier control prompts, Bully will have you eating out of it's palm. This is an aging gem that deserves to be remembered as well as learned from. This is old school Rockstar at its very finest.


The scholarship edition (which is what I picked up) is available on the 360 and Wii. But Steam has it for a paltry $15... and would you look at that, they stuck the whole soundtrack in the root folder. Those guys are the best. 

Oh! And just in case you were curious, this is what starts playing when you punch a nerd:

The Great Kickstarter Swindle: Tim Schafer is NOT scaming you.

Would you give money to this man?

So one of the greatest Kickstarter success stories is hitting the rocks. Double Fine's "Broken Age" is scraping the bottom of its budget after biting off more than it could chew as a company. Instead of releasing the whole game as promised less from a year from now, its releasing the first half this January on Steam with the second half to follow as a free update in the future. 

Now I didn't back Broken Age, but if I was someone who dropped $500 bucks on the sucker, I'd be worried. Any deviation from the plan could be another limb in a financial game of hangman. I understand how it could feel that way, but that's not what's happening. This is not Duke Nukem Forever, this is a tiny bump in the road.

You know how when
the first time a game appears at E3 there is hardly ever a release date stamped on the end of the trailer? This is why. Things change, no one can see the future, not even Tim (or Majesco, zing!). The original plan was for a game that cost $400,000...they got 3.3 million. To me, this set back looks like a studio that wanted to put every dollar they had up on the screen and went just a bit too far. When they did, they turned around and apologized immediately. They did not have to do that.

So half of the game needs to go on Steam to fund the rest. Its certainly not ideal, but again, its miles away from a death kneel. Project delays are endemic to all investments, the vast majority of which the press isn't even aware of. So yeah, this sucks. But remember, you weren't buying the game. You were buying the possibility of a game. That's why you gave money to Kickstarter, not to Steam. That's what being a patron is all about, there's a reason not everyone does it. There's always that chance it falls to pieces.

So at the end of the day, isn't Shafer's over ambition what we love most about him in the first place? Give it time people, I have a feeling it'll be worth the wait.

Breaking Bad's ending is over a month away...

If you put a gun to my head and asked me what the greatest TV show ever made was...I'd say Breaking Bad. There's no way around it for me. That's not true every day, some days it might be Parks and Rec, others The Wire. When I'm drunk? Community or American Dad. Seriously. But given some careful reflection, after asking myself what has consistently surprised me, what have I re-watched more than any other, what I will defend to the death as the greatest thriller of all time?

It be dis:

 

I'm done selling this show to family and friends, if they don't want to watch it, they ain't gonna watch it. People get surprisingly touchy when you ask them if they've seen this show. Presumably because BB pushers are just a little bit insufferable and I get that. If I had a friend that kept telling me the "good news" about the Sopranos I'd never watch that show out of spite. But guys...the hype is real, Scorsese wishes he had made something as jaw droppingly brilliant as this show's 4th season. Whether you like it or not, critics will be citing this sucker for the next ten years at least, even if the finale disappoints.

So if you've never tasted some fresh ABQ blue sky... have a hit.

Mad Men, Season 6 Review: Don in Flames.

One of the most frustrating aspects of Mad Men's long lived and well deserved cultural relevance is how many misinterpret the entire point of the character of Don. Don isn't a tragic hero, he's a tragic monster. A developmentally arrested child who lives in constant fear of both commitment and malaise. Dana Gould (a great comedian with an awesome podcast) went on the record saying he doesn't like watching Mad Men because, and I'm paraphrasing here, "I knew Don Draper in the 80's. You don't want to see that." That's what season 6 is all about, this is the fall of Don, and it's stupendously hard to watch.

His luck was bound to run out sooner or later, but I never figured his worst enemy would wind up being himself. He's been known to skip work before, but this year he seems to spend half his day having an affair with a woman living a single floor above his wife. Speaking of, Megan Draper finally gets the soap opera role of her dreams only to have Don throw one of his classic double-speak smoulder-tantrums once she gets her first love scene. Come on Don, she was playing a french maid for Christ's sake.

His quality of work tapers off to an enormous degree, not that he's not the crack shot idea man he always was, but he's too proud now. He wrests defeat from the jaws of his agency's victory several times with long and painful diatribes to client's faces. "Don, what in the holy f**k, is wrong with you?!" was yelled at the screen several times, by me, during my weekend long binge watch. I probably shouldn't have done that in retrospect. If I had kept up week to week I may have forgiven him for his lighter crimes. But stringing it all together paints an awful portrait of a terminally selfish man that, like a bloody car wreck, is impossible to look away from. But as bad as Don's year was, someone else's was even worse:

It's the motion of the ocean, Pete.

Ol' Petey really took it on the jaw this year, and I probably should have enjoyed his well deserved misery more than I did, but there is a point where a man's torture (justified or not) goes too far and you finally feel sorry for the little creep. I suppose that was the entire point this season too. There are no heroes or villains in Mad Men. Don is not the dashing, blameless, rogue and Pete is not the social climbing brown noser. They are men, and men can be two things. With Trudy finally kicking him out of the house and his mother's mind caving in, Pete had his hands full. He never apologized to his wife or truly went out of his way to help his mother...because he's friggin' PETE, but what happens to him wouldn't be fair to any of us.

Now, I did loose the plot somewhere at the end of a caper involving a live in nurse and in that regard I need to say that the character of Bob Benson is limp and unrealized. He's supposed to be mysterious and possibly dangerous but he just winds up being kind of annoying. Esspecially after his disappointing "SECRET" is exposed. Immediately after it was reveled who he was I heard Bert Cooper in the back of my head muttering "so what?" ...Wait! maybe that was the plan the whole time. Damn Wiener, nice one.

"I wonder what happened to my cartoonishly awful mother?"

So as the Don and Pete boats sank, the tide turned for Peggy, well, financially anyway. Romantically this season was a war zone, but I'm not going to spoil it's ups and downs. I'll just say there's a scene in an ambulance, a type of scene I can't name, but its the best scene of its kind ever made. I laughed off my chair.

Peggy's new start at another agency lets her spread her wings while also coming to grips with the reality of authority. In other words, understanding that it isn't personal when people say they don't like their boss. Soon circumstances force her to once again deal with the now toxic presence of Don in her professional life, as well as her new boss, Kevin Rham's Ted Chaough. Ted's the real get this season as the best of the new blood. You finally see a different head of creative for another firm and it's fascinating to see him contrasted with Don. Ted has his faults, but is a much better man than Don will ever hope to be...and Don knows it.

"What do I have to do for more screen time? Just...tell me."

As for the rest of the cast, they have their moments, but its really hard to keep them all straight, much less follow their arcs. Joan strives to be an actual partner instead of a glorified secretary, Rodger bungees between triumphs and set backs with snagging a General Motors account and then being slowly shut out of his daughter's (and grand son's) life. Cosgrove on amphetamine is a sight to behold and Stan's new lumber jack beard is a character in of itself. Betty suddenly dyed her hair, it was weird, the writers said "screw it", and she's now blonde and skinny again (spoiler). Still, Betty does get what I think is the best  line of the season while describing Don and Megan's relationship, keep a look out for it. 

Overall I'd say this season was the best in quite a while, I felt 5 spun it wheels a bit too much and it seems like the whole series is winding to a close now, which is exactly what I wanted. Things started making more sense as chickens came home to roost and characters were held accountable for their faults, instead of them being either forgiven or forgotten to squeeze in one more season. The relationship between Don and Sally reaches a fantastic boiling point as Kiernan Shipka continues to improve dramatically (literally) with every season. She's gonna stick the adult actor landing I just know it.

I was almost done with Mad Men after last year. When this season rolled around I didn't bat an eyelash. I mean...Game of Thrones, man. It's really good. But in absence of white walkers and red weddings I came back and I'm truly sorry I doubted. I'll admit I was less enamored by Mathew Wiener pimp slapping The Walking Dead and Breaking Bad a while back and it's taken some time for me to forgive him. I still have no idea where that money went, a bigger cast probably, but it did not go to waste in my eyes. This was a great season of TV with the amphetamine episode being my new personal favorite. I'm happy with the fact it ends next year, its ready. Better yet, it knows its ready.

The Last of Us Review: Grave of the Fireflies.

 This isn't gonna be easy.

We never realize how lucky we are until its too late. People assume the most routine and mundane things in life will be there forever because that's how people work. We know its possible to loose everything, but we can't believe it. That kind of thing happens to other people, farmers in the Midwest, the poor in New Orleans, not to me.

Never before has a survival game been more about surviving. Not in the sense of how many nail bombs and bullets you have on hand, but the barbaric acts you'd be reduced to just to make it to the end of another day. This is technically a game, but its also every bit a linear story. Doubters would call it a $60 movie, but they can go sit in a corner and think about how much they hate themselves. This is an experience that you may think you've seen before, but not like this...no.

Not like this.

The Last of Us is the story of Joel. A bitter, fifty-something, smuggler getting by in a walled off quarantine zone in Boston Massachusetts. As the zone begins to rot out from the inside, he strikes up a deal with a political movement known as the Fireflies. They want to unify what's left of the United States and somehow a 14 year old girl is their answer. So off you go into the west, an act that's less of a journey, and more of a death march. Just when you think Joel's soul can't be wrung out any further, something comes along and just kicks him in the gut, most times literally.


My hat must come off for Troy Baker as Joel. He's a sympathetic man with a violent temper who you root for no matter what, even when you probably shouldn't. I was personally worried the similar roles of Bioshock's Booker and Joel would be practically interchangeable, but no. I had to sometimes remind myself that was the same actor. That in itself is amazing to me because I played the ever living heck out of that game and I am particularly good at picking out voices.

I have never had a larger disconnect between the character I wanted to be playing and the character I was actually playing. There is a part of this game where I had only one option to move forward, and it disgusted me. But it was the only thing the character of Joel would do, I did not want to be Joel. I thought about putting down the controller and walking away. I have never been made to feel that way before.

The acting is something to see.

Ashley Johnson as Ellie, she...she makes acting sound way too easy. It's hard to describe Ellie, not because of spoilers, but because her best work as the character is so subtle I can't do it justice in print. And youtube isn't much better. Simply put, you not only believe every syllable that comes out of her mouth, but anticipate them like a bird in a skinner box. "Ellie's talking again!" I'd scream in my head after a particularly nasty encounter, "It's about time she warmed/broke my heart. It's been almost an hour since she did that last." When the video game acting awards go out Johnson is going to sweep them, I would stake my life on her getting a BAFTA. You should run out and play this game solely because of her performance.

As for the actual game play, I'm slightly less god struck, but only slightly. The first ten minutes of the game are unreal. They are the finest I've ever seen in my 23 years, I didn't just try to choke back tears, I failed to. It's the 2 hours after that which bothered me. The tutorial stretch of this game is a nightmare in comparison, its just so painfully dull. There are those little master craftsman touches sprinkled across the quarantine zone that only Naughty Dog could have sprinkled, but too much of that place felt like a re-run of far less interesting games, like Gears of War (there, I said it). But once you finally meet Ellie, things start looking up dramatically.Because it isn't long after that, the clickers make their introduction, and the training wheels come flying off. Naughty Dog throws you in the deep end and you'd better learn to swim.



So you didn't like the tutorial, don't get all huffy-puffy about it.

It isn't too much longer after that, W. Earl Brown makes a meaty cameo. I have a long standing rule that if you give me a Deadwood alum, I will roll over and let you rub my belly. I'll do it man, don't push me! All my issues with the game play vanished after that, the only remaining problem I had was with myself. I would have loved to tear through the campaign as fast as I could, but I just...couldn't. This game takes a lot out of you, and daddy needed some levity. There's a hopelessness to the atmosphere that never lifts and I just can't marinate in it for too long. If you can, go nuts, there's an achievement for every new game + difficulty you beat. Though I don't see me beating hard mode for a good long while.

If you find yourself struggling like I did, know that it's worth it. You may have heard the ending is stupid, but let me tell you those people are stupid. Not only is this the kind of game that saves it's best for last, it gets exponentially better as it goes along. Just make it through Pittsburgh, I promise it gets so much better after that. Not that it wasn't awesome before, it simply becomes more so. 

The emotional depths this game reaches is staggering and that's coming from a guy who called TellTale's: The Walking Dead the best game of last year. I'm not choosing one over the other here, do not think that. I'm not ready to choose yet. But when this game strives for high drama, it hits the bulls eye. When it wants you to see what it takes to truly kill a man, your stomach will turn. When it wants your heart to melt like butter in a skillet...you'll swear you smell bacon. 

This is something  you will share with your friends and family.

This is among the greatest ever made.

                                                 

Take a bow.

 

Borderlands 2: Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep Review.

"A grim-dark world that smells like death an' butts an' stuff."

I've said it  once and I'll say it again, fuggin' nobody does DLC like Gearbox. I've never understood why that is. Even when their DLC doesn't seem up to snuff, it's just because we're comparing it to the amazing standard they've set for themselves. Hammerlock's big game hunt wasn't amazing, but it was still fun, the final boss was brilliant in it's brevity, and you could have Werner Herzog passive aggressively comment on your hunting skill. 

In less than a year they've released a good 30 hours of extra content for Borderlands 2 and that is insane...I never understood what Skyrim's deal was. Wait, yes I did, that must have eaten up a good two DLC packs worth of time. So here we are, the season pass finale in which Tiny Tina plays dungeon master for a game of D&D with the original vault hunters. It was more than worth the wait.

If you never cared for TT's antics, then tough cookies, she's all over the place here. If you couldn't get enough of her adorable 90's hip hop slang (like me) you will cherish the six-ish hours you spend with her in the campaign, and this campaign is a trip. Gearbox went all out making brand new assets and re-skinning everything from the vending machines to the re-spawn checkpoints. They even went as far as to record setting appropriate banter for the previously mentioned vending machines and re-spawn cheackpoints. The checkpoints in particular made me chuckle more than once, "because perma-death runs are for weirdos." Delightful. Oh... and all new enemies. All of them. Did I forget to mention that?

Never before has there been such a radical shift in Pandora's bestiary than here, well actually that's not true. If I had to aline what this feels closest to in terms of their previous efforts I'd say Dragon Keep would be the happy medium between Zombie Island and General Knoxx. For those not in the know, those were easily the best parts of that entire game. Knoxx because this is the funniest and best written dlc episode (excluding the inspired addition of the character Mr. Torgue) and Zombie Island because it's a refreshing departure from BL2's usual setting and nearly all the enemies are melee based.

"That sentence had too many syllables, APOLOGIZE!"

This isn't a one two punch of a couple new monsters and something that shoots guns. There are skeletons, ka-nig-its, orcs, dwarves, and dragons...and mimics (Jesus, the mimics). While all the orcs need in terms of strategy is some fire, the skeletons (which you'll spend most of your time fighting) will throw your head shot method in the toilet. You see, their heads break when their health is halfway gone and panic will ensue.  So overall I'm pleased how differently this chapter plays out. The main quest line is pretty meaty and I like how a lot of the side quests are offered along the same route so you can double up on stuff to do without going too far out of your way.

But the most surprising thing about Dragon Keep is how it manages to keep the main story going. All previous DLC, while chronologically taking place after the end, were sideshows. The way in which the aftermath of the main game's finest hour (Where Angels Fear to Tread) is dealt with was unexpected. The cursory mention of Tina's friendship with Roland is now a central plot point and believe me when I say Tina has a surprisingly compelling prospective on who the real villain of BL2 was.

Cap that off with a touching denouement and Dragon Keep feels like the best stopping point this game has ever had. But they still leave their foot in the door for one LAST hurrah. But I don't care, if I have to wait another 2 and a half years for more Borderlands so be it. Lord knows they deserve a break.

We hold these truths to be self evident, that all dead are created evil.