Yep... I still love New Vegas.

You like this picture I took!? I do...

New Vegas found me in a rough time of my life. A lot of my old friends had left my school in the fall of 2010 and I was being frozen out of the scant number of cliques I still had connections with. That was all poured onto the sh*t sunday of a nasty breakup over that summer.

I'm sure I'm not alone in calling Fallout 3 Bethesda's best game to date, and I played the ever loving rads out of it. So my expectations were high for NV. I didn't just want it to be good... I needed it to be great. My first article here is literally a gushing love letter to NV. But I've always wondered if I really loved it, or just appreciated how it helped me through what I call the "Siberia" phase of my college years.

The student body could be spectacularly cruel in it's apathy towards anyone that hadn't shown up to several parties in a row... but that's a can of worms for a therapist, not blog readers. So I'm back in New Vegas and I can objectively say; now that I have a job that I love and a sizable gaggle of drinking buddies, I like it on it's own merits.

But seriously, my steam clock has reached Howard Hughes levels of devotion. I mean, look at that thing! Looks pretty crazy, right? Well what if I told you the first 5 months I owned it, I had to crack it? My school's internet was in a constant bandwidth drought (Charter treated Appalachia like a despot, selling crap internet at jacked up prices) and I could only really launch NV at 5 in the morning or 1 in the morning.

So really, I've played it hundreds of more hours than that. I'm not proud or anything, I absolutely never want to do that again. I clearly needed help.

Pickpocket Snuffles?! Buddy, look at me, I would never do that to you. 

 

Snuffles, you know you're my boy.

Did I ever tell you guys about Superego?

As a rule, I can't stand improv comedy. Anyone outside of the brass ring of Greg Proops or Jeff Davis or anyone outside of the Who's Line pantheon just doesn't cut it for me. But last year I ran across the superego podcast which spun me around and left me speechless.

It's like an improvised National Lampoon, but that doesn't do it justice. It's not just the best improv I've ever heard, it's damn near the funniest sketch comedy, period. I've compulsively listened to the last two seasons over and over and I just can't get sick of it. There's things you don't pick up on the first time, running gags years in the making... and Elevator Jim.

I just love them so much. I couldn't keep it to myself anymore.

Buy their sh*t. Do it.

Relaxation With Mudge Claughlin from Random Sample on Vimeo.

Farcry 4's box art reveled.

Is it bad the second I saw him I thought of this?

 

 It is... it's bad. I'm sorry.

But about Farcry 4*...

 It's set in a completely different place with the exact same color pallet... huh. I wonder that since the villain has a hand on another character's head, you play as that guy. Seeing as that's how the box art worked out last time. Maybe you're a put upon citizen of Nepal instead of FC3's insufferable trust fund baby taking up the white man's burden? God I hope so.

It took me over a year to appreciate how maddeningly thrilling 3 was, Let's hope 4 can follow in Uncharted 2's footsteps with style. If you're going to rip off settings why not go with the best?

I'm not being pissy, I honestly think that's a good direction.

Oh and guess what? 9 million copies of 3 have been sold to date! That's 3 million more than borderlands 2! And Farcry was even less of a multi-player game than that! Rumors of the death of the single-player AAA market, it seems, have been greatly exaggerated.

*IGN

What to do... A half assed poem by Alex McCracken.

Dark Souls is over. I have won.
I've traversed Drangleic and praised the sun.
Though boredom now has me in it's sights, and thus,
I shan't make it through a new game +.

 But I hear of something that may break my curse.
A role playing game written wholly in verse.
With it's reviews positive and a cost that's slight,
I have now purchased Child of Light.

It's art is stark and it's tone is striking.
I may yet call it bottled lightning.
But if there's one issue I see time after time,
It's coherent stories sacrificed on the alter of rhyme.

Community is finally canceled. (and I'm glad it's dead.)

#5seasonsandalifetimeofmemories

It's official. Dan Harmon's stalwart sitcom marginally about affordable higher education is finished. But looking back, I was more than impressed it got two seasons. "That's enough." I thought at the time. "That's enough to land gracefully." Imagine how 2010 me would react at the news it would end at season 5! That's amazing partly because it never compromised. It never tried to go broader in reaction to low ratings. It was always funny and it was always unique. I loved it for that, and I'll never forget how much I enjoyed it.

But these are darker times. I haven't blogged much about it because I didn't have nice things to say. I was one of the few that thought the Harmon-less season 4 was just fine (please save your boos until the end.) and that his triumphant restoration to the showrunner throne had far more diminished returns than his departure.

This was not his fault, no one could have made an amazing season 5. The budget was slashed to even ribbon-ier ribbons and Donald Glover bowed out after only five episodes. Episodes he barely featured in until the last. Jeff became a professor at greendale, but aside from adding Jonathan Banks as a new (and vastly improved) Pierce stand-in, nothing was ever mined from that storyline.

Season 5 felt like it was waiting to die the whole time. Like a funeral where nobody knows what to say. Remember when we did dungeons and dragons? That was fun, right? Hey, Duncan's been gone a while. Well he's back... we've only written one storyline that really uses him... f**k what's the point any more? TREASURE MAP! Now go home.

That's the kind of message season 5 left me. Aside from the bright spots of Troy's departure, meowmeowbeenz, and the Dean's fantastic freestyle in his payday bar costume, I was more depressed than entertained.

Do I wish they could make more? Of course. No real bridges were burned creatively, and no episode was out and out "bad." It was just personally disappointing. If that was the end, so be it. At least Harmon got to throw dirt on the grave in person.

NBC Serves up a 3rd course of Hannibal!

I'd like to go in depth on what this means to me. I'd like articulate why fans of film everywhere should be relived that Brian Fuller finally has a show that will last 3 seasons. I'm trying, trying, to come up with an unbiased critique of the show so far for anyone sitting on the fence.

But I can't.

My id is screaming in my ear and I can't help but join in.

"YES! YES! OH GOD I WAS SO SCARED, BUT YES! YES! A THOUSAND TIMES YESSSSSS!

...It's a really good show, guys.

Agents of Shield will return next year.

Get back on the front line soldier! Network Television is WAR.

I've said it once and I'll say it again, I'm a critic whore. If people say something's not worth checking out, I will believe every word I read. But once in a while I stare at the crowd of unimpressed critics aghast.

Agents of Shield was never Shakespeare, but good lord people jumped ship in a hurry. I couldn't blame them at first. Initially it was rough as a dirt road. I rolled my eyes at the sexy Colombian war lord, I winced at Coulson's flying car, and Skye was a Mary Sue for half of the season. But the scripts were witty and the acting was solid. I also had to admit this was the best show about espionage since ALIAS. From an acting stand point alone it positively blew ALIAS out of the damn water.

So that was the metric I gauged it against for the whole season "Is this as unbearable as the first season of ALIAS?" For the most part it was. They settled into a grove 12 episodes in and the fallout of The Winter Soldier kicked things into 3rd gear for the remaining 6. It's a solid show I feel isn't getting the credit it deserves. This is damn good pop fluff, guys. The fancy three flavor kind you get at fancy grocery stores at Christmas. It's not as good as we all hoped it'd be, but I'm absolutely jacked for season 2. I hope some of you will give the second chance I think it richly deserves.

But yeah... Deathlok's costume is FUH. KING. Corny.