This Fall’s Lineup

So, I know it’s been awhile, but it’s getting to be time for me to put my thoughts down on the shows that have been on for the past two months (wow, that’s a lot of procrastinating). Anyways, I’m just going to go by day of the week, starting with Monday. Not just because that’s the start of the work week, but also because there’s nothing on on Sundays, since I don’t watch The Simpsons or anything by Seth MacFarlane (okay, I watch them, but I don’t watch them, watch them).

So, Mondays. Here we go.

Fox was kind enough to front load the week with House and Lie to Me. With House, I don’t know, it’s not doing that much for me this season. I mean, I like having the old team back together, but it mainly serves to remind me why they felt the pressure to get a new team in the first place. Cameron is boring now and she’s been boring for a long time. Maybe she should have gotten AIDS. Maybe that’s a terrible thing for me to say. Hmm, on second thought, definitely that’s a terrible thing for me to say. Obviously, Hugh Laurie remains ridiculously awesome. And I enjoyed the two hour premiere in the mental hospital. I thought it was an interesting look at House as someone who is being forced to recognize that he really is broken. Realizing that he’s actually not God, just like everyone’s been trying to tell him for the last however many seasons. The problem, though, is that we all still want him to actually be God, which kind of throws everything through a loop. Really, though, there just hasn’t been that much excitement. And, no, Chase killing James Earl Jones does not count as exciting. Admittedly, the presence of James Earl Jones does count as exciting, but that doesn’t count.

Lie to Me is pretty much the same as ever. Tim Roth is awesome (I love the way Lightman walks, he looks like such a misanthropic freak). His daughter continues to annoy me. So, no complaints, but it’s hardly breaking any ground.

Let’s see, I do watch two of the four comedies that CBS puts out. That would be How I Met Your Mother and Big Bang Theory. The former has been stuck in a rut for awhile, but Dr. Horrible makes everything at least awesome. I think my favorite thing about it remains the way they continue to play with the idea of telling stories. In a weird way, this is the only sitcom where I think it’s okay for the characters to constantly have witty lines and comebacks, because that’s the way they remember it (which means it’s not necessarily the way it actually happened, just to be clear). I like how whenever two different people tell the same story, everything is slightly different. I think it’s cool. In a weird way, I hope that the final episode of the show is something like How I Met Your Father and we get to hear things from that perspective as well.

Then there’s Big Bang Theory. I cannot understand why this show has some of the best ratings of the season. I mean, the highest praise I can give it is something along the lines of: it doesn’t totally suck. It’s watchable. For the most part, at least. Seriously, that’s the nicest thing I can say about it. It’s definitely better than Two and a Half Men, but that’s what is commonly called a “back-handed compliment”. That show is terrible (and it has like the 3rd highest ratings of the season, so maybe it’s not surprising that Big Bang Theory is doing so well).

Anyways, why do I watch it? Because it’s kind of an interesting perspective on how cool Hollywood-types think nerds are. It’s interesting because they typically get the activities right (with the exception of Klingon Boggle, that’s above and beyond), but they don’t know how nerds participate in those activities. They get excited about the wrong parts of the things they do. Here’s an example: in one show they’re playing Rock Band and all trying to look totally into it and pretending they’re rock stars. But, that’s not how these nerds would actually play Rock Band. They would be standing there, essentially motionless, and getting near perfect scores, totally focused. When the song ended, they would all give a bunch of crap to the one guy who got a 98%. Okay, one more example, in another episode, they’re playing some CCG and they get excited when they win (which intuitively makes sense), but again, that’s not what would really get them excited. They’d be totally into the crazy, non-intuitive strategy they’d come up with that allowed them to win. In the show, the nerdiest character is always counting cards and knows what’s in his opponents hand, but the way he would actually win would be by using two or three cards together in a way that the rules barely allow and completely destroying his opponent in a way that no one else present even fully understands. That’s how nerds play those games.

Alright, that was another digression. Anyways, that’s the main reason I watch it. I guess I have to give it credit that the only two jokes it knows are occasionally funny. The first joke is that the most ridiculously socially inept one is ridiculously socially inept and at least two of them think the fact that they’re not quite as incapable of interacting with people as him makes them cooler than him, but any normal people they interact with can’t actually tell the difference. The second joke is, um, that Penny’s hot, maybe, okay, fine there is no second joke. Everything even remotely funny is contained in that first one.

And lastly, ABC has Castle. Or, more accurately, 43 minutes of Nathan Fillion filled goodness. Aside from the previous episode in which he dressed up as one Malcolm Reynolds, the season hasn’t been quite as much fun as last season. He doesn’t get to be cutely annoying as often. But he’s still hilarious, of course. That can never change. Nor would we want it to. So, I still love it. Also, his daughter doesn’t annoy me, and it’s not just because she’s a really cute redhead (dammit, just looked up her age, scratch that), it’s because she doesn’t get in the way of Nathan Fillion being awesome, as opposed to the daughter in Lie to Me, who is constantly interfering with Tim Roth being awesome.

Alright, Tuesdays.

Oh, yeah, Tuesdays are totally empty until V next week. I really hope that it’s both a) watchable and b) watched, so that there will be something to actually watch on Tuesdays. My main concern is that they clearly spent a lot of time and effort making sure that Morena Baccarin is not ridiculously hot. Okay, fine, all they did was cut her hair, but seriously, who made that decision? Is he or she still working? If so, why? Really a terrible call. But, they kind of made up for it by bringing in Joel Gretsch, because he’s cool. On a random, pointless digression, he was in that random sci-fi action bomb Push. When I finally got around to seeing it on Blu-ray, I actually kind of liked it, to my surprise. I mean, it was clearly pretty bad, but it had some real positives. For example, Dakota Fanning was not relentlessly annoying. See: real positive, right there. In all seriousness, I liked the world and the rules it was creating, even though it kept getting tripped up by it’s own stupidity. And I must admit that I was surprised that Dakota Fanning never got around to telling Chris Evans that she’s his sister (okay, I don’t actually know that, but come on, she has to be, and no I didn’t spoil anything). Sorry about that, back to TV.

Ye olde Wednesday. I admit I sorta gave Modern Family a change. I think I lasted for almost a full minute before stopping it. So, yeah, sorry, I hear it’s funny. Otherwise, it’s just Glee, which has a tough time walking the thin line between making fun of its cliches and just being one of those cliches. In fact, I’m not even sure they’re batting .500 on that one, to be honest. Wow, that was a strange set of mixed metaphors right there, my apologies. Of course I still watch it, for the times when they get it right (like this one ballad where, out of nowhere, there’s all these sparkly-things floating behind the girl, just to make it that much more dramatic). For the most part, though, I think this show peaked at its pilot. Which is too bad.

Okay, Thursdays.

So, Fringe, yeah. Ratings kinda dropped when they moved it out of Tuesday. Maybe that’s because it didn’t have any competition on Tuesday. But, my thoughts. I’m sorry to see Agent Francis die. And not just because of his last name, which is clearly ridiculously awesome. I think his character brought a lot to the team as the “real” FBI agent that they coordinate with. I’m guessing that maybe they’re planning to use the random hot FBI agent from the first episode of the season to do his old job, but they haven’t gotten around to actually making that transition yet (otherwise, I have no idea why they introduced her for two episodes and then totally forgot about her, except maybe because they realized they didn’t need another hot FBI agent what with Olivia and Astrid already meeting the required two hot regular female special agents per show). Otherwise, I don’t know how strongly I feel about this show. It’s still fun though. And I’ve enjoyed the multiple, clearly-stated references to the X-Files. I think it’s interesting that they view themselves as taking place in the same universe. I wonder if they’ll do anything with that (I vote for a Skinner cameo, personally). Also, I think it’s extra interesting that during Fringe, the Fox/Fringe logos around the commercial breaks have the black goo in them. I can’t help but wonder, most likely idly, whether that has any significance.

Let’s see, beyond Fringe, there’s Community and FlashForward. Let’s start with Community. This show is awesome. Very hilarious. And I don’t even get most of the 80s teen comedy references (I should really watch The Breakfast Club sometime). I really appreciate just the basic idea of this sitcom. It’s a great eclectic group of people that become friends and support each other in community college. All while telling jokes at a ridiculously fast pace. This is the funniest show on television right now (sorry, The Office can’t win because I cannot handle those episodes when half of it is Michael making an ass of himself, which is, like every episode).

Alright, FlashForward. I guess I like it. It’s better than I thought it would be. I mean, I’m watching it, so that’s something. Admittedly, I keep falling behind, but I’m not lost yet. So, yeah, it’ll be interesting to see how many people’s visions come true on whenever that is. I’m not sure if I’ll keep watching after that point. Of course, that’s like April or something, so I guess they’ve got me for more than a little while. Whatever, moving on, I guess (wow, I didn’t realize how apathetic I was about this show until I tried to write about it).

And, last but not least, Friday.

Let’s see, Friday’s actually been pretty busy, what with: Dollhouse, Psych, White Collar, Sanctuary, Eureka, and Stargate Universe. Yes, I actually watch some cable TV shows as well. I think I’ll skip over Psych and Eureka since they both started long before the fall and finished up in September/early October. Oh, wait, I have to say that Psych needs to come up with more excuses to have Rachel Leigh Cook show up because she is way too hot to only show up occasionally as Shawn’s girlfriend. I have no strong feelings for Eureka, or Warehouse 13 for that matter (except that I think it’s awesome to see Mindy Crenshaw from Nickelodeon’s Drake and Josh still working...and getting hotter and, um, older). And, I think I’ll skip White Collar too, since there’s only been one episode and all I can say for sure is that I think I’ll keep watching it, but I don’t think it’s anything special. And it’s hard to like it too much since it’s starring Bryce Larkin and he was mean to Chuck.

Alright, that narrows it down to just Dollhouse, Sanctuary and Stargate Universe. I think I can do Sanctuary pretty quick: what are they thinking? I have not appreciated a single decision they’ve made so far this season, except, maybe, and I really mean maybe, killing the chick who could turn invisible. I didn’t like her as a love interest for the main guy (since he should be pining unsuccessfully for the hot blonde), but that didn’t mean I wanted her dead. Jeez, what’s with you people? Plus, it’s looking like we’re going to have multiple episodes without the hot blonde because we think she’s dead right now. That’s annoying, because the hot blonde is, um, hot. Also, the random chick they came up with to substitute for her is more than slightly annoying. So, yeah, I’m not happy right now. They really need to undo a lot of the stupid decisions they’ve made.

Hmm, that wasn’t quite as quick as I was expecting it to be. Well, on to Stargate Universe. This is the first Stargate show I’ve watched. I thought the movie was terrible when it came out 15 years ago. That means I was sufficiently young to only barely even be able to recognize when a movie is terrible. But I could still tell. But, well, I thought I’d give this one a chance. They pretty much promised that it wouldn’t really be about Stargates and stuff like that and, so far, that has proven true. Per normal for SyFy (sigh) space shows (*cough* BSG *cough*), I don’t actually like anyone in the show. Anyone. But, I’m still watching it for some reason. Because I like the ship. And they treat it respectfully and so I’ll continue to watch it for the sake of learning about this ship and its history and mission. If I have to tolerate a bunch of annoying, bickering and oftentimes downright stupid people, then so be it.

And we’ll finish this up with Dollhouse. It’s been an interesting season for Dollhouse. Too bad it’s almost certainly the last. Epitaph One was one of the weirdest decisions I’ve ever seen. I mean, it’s really set sometime in, like, season 3 or 4, but Joss was apparently worried he’d never get that far and the ideas were so cool he just had to make it now. At least, that’s the story I’m telling. And it’s certainly interesting. The idea that you can remotely wipe someone and steal their body is downright cool and scary. The idea that someone decided to make Stephen King’s Cell a reality is, well, odd, but we know he just misses the Reavers.

But, because we’ve seen Epitaph One, everything in season two becomes about how we get there. So, things like Topher working on remote wiping as a way to deal with instances when dolls go out of control becomes much more sinister than it necessarily should be. Speaking of Topher, I would just like to give him a gold star as most improved character of the season. Last season, he was just some dude who wished he was Alan Tudyk (and then Alan Tudyk came along and showed us all that no one can be Alan Tudyk except Alan Tudyk). But, now, he’s my favorite character. I loved the episode when Dr. Saunders was torturing him and asking him why he made her hate him. I loved that his response was that he didn’t. He gave her the ability to decide for herself and she chose to hate him. His greatest creation was a fully functioning, independent-thinking being. And she hated him to her core.

Oh, I also like the notes that Echo is keeping inside her sleeping chamber. In summary, Dollhouse has gotten a lot better than it was at the start. Too bad it’s all finishing up. Also, I have to admit that I’m not that excited about Summer Glau showing up (not because I’m not excited to see River again, though). I’m just worried because I don’t really want to watch her be evil. Or if she is going to be evil, I want her to be really hot while being evil. So, I’ll reserve judgement until I find out just how hot she turns out. On a side note, she was very hot in her cameo in The Big Bang Theory. Not that that’s a surprise or anything.

Okay, I’m caught up. And I can look forward to more Chuck (for better or worse, I thought the end of season two provided very nice closure for the show, but apparently other people desperately wanted more). And, more importantly, I can continue patiently waiting for Day One. I know, it’s gone from an exciting post-apocalypse show, to a 13-episode event run, to a four episode mini-series with the possibility of getting picked up for the following season. But, I still have hope, okay. Give me a break alright. Yeah, I don’t have that much hope. Maybe a little more hope than I had for Virtuality. A little.

Well, that is all.

Francis

2 Things From Fox

So, I want to apologize because I’ve been meaning to write this post for over a week. And I’d been meaning to write the first half of this post for over a month, but, well, better late than never right? Right? Well, whatever, it was supposed to be a rhetorical question.

Anyways, there are two new (well new a little while ago, but I think they still count as new) Fox properties that need to be brought up, discussed, and recommended. So that Fox can then cancel them. Or in one case, simply not bother to renew it.

The first one I want to talk about is Glee. Fox has been promoting the show really heavily and one of the songs from it was the top selling single on iTunes for awhile, so it’s actually looking like this is going to last. I have no idea why. Err, let me rephrase that. I love it.

You see, if all you knew about Glee can from those two facts above, you would probably be rather skeptical of this show. I mean, the ads make it clear that it’s supposed to bear more than a passing resemblance to High School Musical. Now, since I think we can all agree that any genius or genius-like properties that might have been in High School Musical were a total fluke, so seeing ads that try to convince us that a show is even remotely like High School Musical should set off tons of warning bells.

But, well, I ignored all those warning bells going off in my head and I watched it. And, let me tell you, this show is the anti-High School Musical. Or you could call it the High School Musical for people old enough to have actually attended high school...and have a sick sense of humor.

This show is sick and evil and subversive. I hope it’s a huge hit. So, here’s my favorite way to compare Glee to its Disney counterpart (I’m getting tired of typing High School Musical). I don’t really remember why Zac Effron’s character signs up to be in the show but I kind of assume it either involved the cute girl whose nude pictures showed up online or him getting detention in theater class. Probably a mixture of both (I feel like there was some choice on his part, though). In Glee, the teacher plants pot in the equivalent character’s locker and threatens to get him thrown off the football team if he doesn’t join the club. That is awesome. It might be more awesome that the teacher got the pot as a free sample from a former-teacher-turned-drug-dealer played by none other than Wallace Shawn (Inconceivable!).

Here’s another example. Jane Lynch is in it. If you know who she is, then that should sell you on just how evil and awesome the show is. She plays the cheerleaders‘ coach. And she is as evil as ever (if you don’t know who she is, then you’ll probably recognize her from The 40-Year Old Virgin or, um, the ads for Role Models). Also, another teacher is played by Jayma Mays, who played Hiro’s crush that could speak a bunch of languages...and was super cute.

Yeah, back to the show, that’s the kind of stuff that happens in this show. The best way I can describe it is that the show hates its characters. It thinks they’re pathetic. All of them. And it celebrates just how pathetic they are as they all join Glee to prove “that they can be good at something”. Yes, that’s why they joined Glee.

In a way, it’s pretty depressing because they know just how pathetic they are (that would be the key difference between this and the Disney property that it’s making fun of). And, I mean, our entertainment comes from watching them face that, day in and day out.

I’m pretty sure watching this show (and understanding this) makes me a bad person. Sometimes, I like being a bad person.

At the same time, though, it almost feels like people could also watch this show and totally not get it. I think that’s what makes it brilliant. I mean, you could watch the rival team doing a show-tunes rendition of “Rehab” by Amy Winehouse, with clapping and dancing, and just think that it’s a fun cover of the song.

You could probably even watch the football player defending his decision to stick with Glee to the other football players by pointing out to them that everyone who lives in this godforsaken town is a loser and that, at best, one or two of them are going to manage to get into a college far enough away to escape the place and just think it’s the typical inspirational speech that this genre is supposed to have.

But man, I don’t know, what if people figure out that this isn’t High School Musical? What if they actually listen to the lyrics or even the words the characters are saying? Yeah, I think we’ll be fine, too.

Okay, next is Virtuality, which aired as a two hour made-for-TV movie, or something. I mean, it’s pretty clearly a pilot, but I’m pretty sure Fox has no intention of taking it to series, because that would be way too awesome for them.

On an unrelated note (okay fine it’s related), I’ve see two different takes on HAL this past 10 days or so. In Moon, starring Sam Rockwell and not related to this post at all, we’ve got Kevin Spacey’s take on HAL. It was certainly interesting. Particularly because he wasn’t evil. Yeah, it blew my mind too. Anyways, in Virtuality, HAL is named Jane and it’s not really clear if she’s evil or just incompetent.

Sorry, the show, movie...err, thing. It’s the next project from everyone’s favorite sci-i genre hero who is not JJ Abrams, Joss Whedon, or Bryan Fuller (does he count as sci-fi, or just fantasy?). If you guessed Ron Moore, then good job.

So, if you watched Battlestar Galactica, you know a couple things about Mr. Moore. You know he likes shaky-cam shots of outer space. You know he does relatively hard sci-fi that’s typically more about people than action. You know he probably takes himself too seriously. You know his stuff might be worth watching. And, well, there you go. You know as much me.

Well, this shows’ driving concept is, probably, better than BSG’s. It’s a team being sent across the galaxy to begin preparations for humanity to leave Earth, which is experiencing cataclysmic climates, or something. What’s important is that they’re saving the world, okay. Anyways, it’s a reality show back home. I think that’s both awesome and incredibly real.

I mean, if a team was going out to save the world, I’m pretty sure I would want to tune in occasionally (okay, yeah, I probably wouldn’t but whatever).

So, not unlike dozens of other sci-fi properties the crew gets to feel the pressure of the world on their shoulders (most recently, I would throw out Danny Boyle’s Sunshine as a genre example). Plus, they get to feel the pressure of being on TV all the time (whoo!).

But, there’s one last piece to the puzzle. They can do virtual reality scenarios (like the holo deck in Star Trek) as a way to escape the space shuttle. Except, there’s something not quite right in the virtual reality.

There’s something that doesn’t seem to like them, something that is hurting them (either mentally or physically). And Jane isn’t helping.

And, well, that might be all we ever get. But, man, it was cool. It was cool because this something’s intention are anything but clear. It’s making them all feel things worse than death, but that’s inspiring them to keep working together and actually go forward. Obviously, there’s better ways to get people moving, but it did get them moving. But is that what it wanted?

I don’t know. I don’t know if I’ll ever find out either. I wish I knew.

That is all.

Francis

E3 Impressions

Well, it’s that time of year again.  That special time of year when I am completely incapable of doing anything remotely like work and simply spend all my time refreshing gaming web sites pages to see if they’ve updated with any content that I care about (the answer: no).  

And, I guess it’s cool that E3 is back to being “kind of a big deal”.  Yeah, since I can’t go I don’t really care either.  But I did check out the live blogs of the various big 3 keynotes.  It’s kind of surreal watching those, though.  I mean, I don’t know who they think they’re talking to, but it certainly isn’t me.  It’s kind of depressing.  It’s extra-depressing since that was my reaction last year as well.

To be honest, I’m only ever going to care about a very small percentage of the gaming news from any E3.  For one, I’m not picking up an Xbox 360 and I’m probably not going to pick up a Wii.  Why? You ask.  The answer is simple.  I honestly don’t have time.  I can’t keep up with all the games that I buy and play for my PS3, what’s the point in buying more consoles?  That’s what it really came down to.  

And, within the PS3 game list, I’m only really interested in playing single player PS3 games, particularly in the platformer, survival-horror, and RPG genre.  So, when Microsoft tells me that they’re working on this camera peripheral that can recognize my face and track my movements, I don’t really care.  I’m not going to be moving around when I’m playing games.  I don’t even want to be (let alone buying a 360 for that).  Same with Sony’s little contraption thing.  I just don’t care.  

But, there are some things I do care about.  Like that footage of The Last Guardian.  It’s hard to explain how good that video makes me feel, but it makes me feel good.  All warm and fuzzy inside, and maybe a little choked up.  That’s what Team Ico specializes.  Magic.  Similarly, but on a totally different note, Heavy Rain is coming along.  The ridiculously terrible camera controls in Indigo Prophecy tore me away from that game, but it doesn’t stop me from being very excited for their next game.  

Of course, it’s also good to see that I can keep looking forward to White Knight Chronicles.  And I was happy to hear that the main character in Assassin’s Creed can swim (I don’t know if it’s good a thing for a sequel that its most exciting piece of news is that the developers got rid of a stupidly annoying aspect of the original).  

On the flip side, each time I see something for Dante’s Inferno, it makes me less excited for that game.  I really, really hope that the game has long load times where it forces you to read the poem.  That would be awesome.  Or maybe a journal where he’s slowly recording the poem.  Except, the game doesn’t seem to feature Virgil.  Unless, the player is Virgil, guiding Dante through Hell.  That could work.  Okay, I admit it, less excited for this game is still rather excited.  

And I want to know why I didn’t get to read all sorts of stuff about Beyond Good and Evil 2.  

And, on an unrelated note, I have a question.  What can Square-Enix possibly show us from Final Fantasy XIII that would actually matter?  I mean, a couple years ago they showed me the title graphic.  At that point, I was pretty much sold.  They can show me all the confusing pieces of the CG movies they want, I mean, it doesn’t mean anything to me.  I’m already buying it the moment it comes out.  

Let’s see, other reactions... I guess I don’t really have very strong feelings about God of War III.  It’s a little depressing that the typical comments are something along the lines of:  it’s crazy gory, like you won’t even believe.  I mean, how is that a recommendation?  I wasn’t playing God of War for the gore.  But maybe all the cool kids were.  

And then there’s The Beatles: Rock Band.  Obviously, I’m excited.  Vocal harmonies will be tough.  Really tough.  But obviously worth every second.  And the idea of full album downloads makes me giddy.  I can keep on dreaming of that special day when I can play through the entirety of Sergeant Pepper’s.  That will be a good day.  

Sigh...

But, yeah, I guess that’s the stuff I care about.  I’m looking forward to hearing how that Metroid game comes out, of course (and for that matter, I might even consider checking out Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2, even though the first was already stupidly ridiculously hard).

So, yeah, that’s E3 for you.  Overall, I think it went alright.  All things considered.  And, well, maybe I’ll even consider playing an MMO when FF XIV comes you.  Stranger things have happened.

Dollhouse

Okay, so we're two episodes into Joss Whedon's new project. Now, before I saw anything except commercials this is what I was thinking: "Okay, it doesn't look very good, but it's Joss Whedon's new baby and so I should give it a chance...". Then I saw the first episode and I found another reason to give it a chance. It has Helo from Battlestar Galactica. Oh, and Badger get's to play a cop, that's cool too (I think he actually fits as annoying cop better than a gutter prince anyways).

Otherwise, there's just not very much to like about the show. And that's my reaction after the second episode, which was a fair bit better than the first. At the moment, my main problem is the cast, I think. Now, I'll be honest. When I was watching/obsessing over Firefly, it was not because of the girls. I had not yet fallen in love with River, Inara is hot but unattainable, even in my imagination, Zoe is married and kinda scary, and, okay fine, I did have a moderate crush on Kaillie. So, I'm not holding my ambivalence about Eliza Dushku against the show (read as: I don't really think she's hot).

No, my problem is with the guys of the show. For example, Firefly had Alan Tudyk playing Wash. Dollhouse has some dude with messy, uncut blonde hair playing Topher, the tech geek. They have similar jobs: when something goes wrong, they tell people that everything's gone wrong, usually in a humorous, Whedon-esque way. When Alan Tudyk does this, it's funny. Not so much with the other guy. In fact, I'm already at the point that whenever he says anything, I imagine how Alan Tudyk would deliver it, and then I like it. If I didn't do this, then I don't think I would realize that this show actually does contain the sarcastic comic relief that Joss fills his scripts with.

On the other hand, I do like Helo's character, who doesn't really have an equivalent in Firefly. Which is okay, by the way, I don't need Firefly 2.0 (that is a blatant lie, in case you couldn't tell, but please bear with me). If the show lasts a while, I think his character could be fun. I'm curious to see him meet Echo. I'm also curious to see him interact with his neighbor, who seems to be a variation on Peter Parker's neighbor in Spiderman 2 (don't ask me why that makes me like her, just trust me that it's a good thing and go watch Spiderman 2 sometime to remind yourself why you like it, because, trust me you do). My immediate concern with his character is that I can't see that much future for him in the show, unless he gets recruited by the Dollhouse (which would be interesting too, now that I think about it). But, yeah, I like him and so I have to give him credit for that.

Then there's Alpha. Alpha is someone that Firefly actually needed, so I like that he exists here. The big evil corporation/government just doesn't work as well as the crazy dude who can cut a person up with surgical precision in 8 seconds (of course, Firefly had a culture of people like that, but they were only relevant as this Western's savages and in the big screen adaptation). And I like that he has a plan for Echo and that he's clearly trying to pull her consciousness out (we all know that hunter dude didn't know just what was in the poisoned water). He's a good bad guy and I look forward to looking for his finger print on everything that goes wrong.

And, lastly, there's her handler. In most ways, he's the typical cliched newcomer character getting acquainted with this world for the benefit of viewers everywhere. This means he doesn't have to actually be a main character, although it currently seems like he is (although I wouldn't mind Helo taking his job someday, just throwing that out there). Personally, I'm withholding judgement. I feel like we're going to keep getting background on him and maybe he will get a story of his own.

But, compare them to the guys of Firefly.

For one, Firefly had Nathan Fillion playing Malcolm Reynolds. Not only does this show not have Nathan Fillion playing Mal, it doesn't have Nathan Fillion playing anyone, nor does it have anyone playing a character even remotely as awesome as Mal. Mal and his relationship with Serenity was the core of Firefly. That was established in the opening theme for goodness sake. The core of Dollhouse is some variation on the question: What makes a person unique and can it be given to or taken from us? And, I feel like this show is already suffering from the lack of a real core. It already feels directionless and it's only just started. With Firefly, there was a very clear direction for the show: Mal's desire to believe that he's free.

Plus Firefly had Shepherd Book. Who doesn't like a wise, world-weary priest that can kick some major ass? Even Simon as the obnoxious, uptight prick was cool. And of course there was Jayne as the stupid muscle, but oh, so much more. I guess his counterpart is the head of security guy that I recognize as the annoying brother in Journeyman (and I hold that against him, by the way).

So, in summary, none of the guys provide a rock upon which to build the TV show. But, technically that should be okay, since Eliza Dushku is the star. Except, at this point, she's almost the hardest character to build the show upon. Unless she's going to start pulling her pasts forward a lot (which would mean essentially breaking the basic concept of the show relatively early on), then Eliza doesn't have a regular character on the show. She has a new role every week. Her character arcs are necessarily one episode long, because she starts back at the blank slate (Tabula Rasa if you prefer) next week.

To put it in perspective, this means that Echo essentially cannot be much more complicated than Homer Simpson without breaking the framework of the show. Or, maybe another way to think of this would be if you imagined Firefly's main character was River and it all took place prior to when Simon helped her escape from the evil dungeon place (and none of the other characters are around, except for a bored, drugged Alan Tudyk manning the controls prior to quitting his day job and taking up piloting for fun and profit).

So, Joss is either going to break the show and let her continue carrying stuff forward, or he's not going to build the show upon Echo. I'll let him choose. I don't know what the right answer is, but he's already made the decision and I'll just have to wait and find out what it is.

Okay, so is there anything in particular that I like about the show? Well, I actually kind of like that core question, but I don't really like that it seems as though Joss feels like he has to break the framework of the show in order to explore that core question. The whole idea of the show is that you can program people to be anything you want them to be. I'd like to see someone pay a lot of money and find out that their perfect person is really just like the person they left. Or, even better, that their perfect person just left them (no refunds baby, you should have known). I think it'd be cool to have scenes of the tech guy at work, pulling memories and experiences to build the person who's perfect for the task at hand.

In short, I want to see Joss play with this idea of programming people. I'm fine with him slowly working towards that programming sneaking into the default personality (or even the experiences they're supposed to have forgotten), but that shouldn't be the core exploration strategy. Right now, we're supposed to believe that it's a glitch, albeit, a glitch that's already happened once and is slowly starting to happen again.

So, yeah, I'm not going to give up on the show, it does have Joss and Helo and Badger, which I guess is good enough for now. And it still has hope, that's for sure. And, thankfully, episode two wasn't quite as ridiculously full of red of episode one, I certainly appreciate that.

That is all.

Francis

Variety of Random Topics

Okay, I kind of put off posting for a while, so now I've just got a wide variety of things that I sort of had a lot to say about, but by this point I've forgotten most of it, so once everything gets added together, it will probably be pretty decently long.

Let's see, I think I want to start with...Chuck. And Jordana Brewster. Well, I guess mainly Jordana Brewster. So, the dear Ms. Brewster is playing Chuck's long mysterious ex-girlfriend. Now, we've been dying to meet Jill Roberts since, oh, um, 5 minutes into the first episode or so. We've wanted to meet her, primarily so that Chuck can finally get over her, but also we just want to meet her. Okay, then when we found out that she was to be played by Jordana Brewster, then we really wanted to meet her. We will also stop using the royal "we" at this point, because we all know just how annoying it is, don't we?

Anyways, last week she finally appeared. Now, I had mixed feelings, but I wasn't about to hold that against her. Most of my problems arose from the fact that Jill apparently got a Ph.D. in Biochemistry after ditching Chuck and, well, putting glasses on Jordana Brewster...isn't quite enough to make her look even remotely intelligent.

I mean, it's not like she looks incapable of being intelligent, but she just doesn't feel right in that role. I first met her in The Faculty, where she's playing the bitchy prom queen-type girl. I think she also had a major role in The Fast and the Furious. She's not meant to be playing smart. Olivia Wilde can sort of pull it off in House because, well, I've never really thought doctors were all that smart anyways, so I don't hold them to very high standards (it's part of being a chemical engineer, you become an asshole and lose respect for stuff that seems easy compared to the problems you had to solve). But, a Ph.D. in biochemistry, that's a little different.

But, aside from, I was unsure about how I felt about the way they were treating her character. Not surprisingly, Chuck pretty much forgets about Sarah as soon as he sees Jill (remember, he's not over her). And of course Sarah gets jealous and all that's fine. But, I just wasn't sure what they were actually doing with her character. I mean, she's still kind of into Chuck, then finds out that he's still a nobody and loses some but not all interest in him.

Then, and he's where I really got more than kind of frustrated, he informs her that he's actually a spy. I mean, seriously? She's the first person from his real life that gets to find out he's a spy? That's just...not right. She doesn't even earn it. He's basically just letting her know to impress her (right after talking about how cool it felt to have a girl be interested in him who doesn't know he's a spy...which hasn't happened since, like, midway through season 1 with Rachel Bilson...man I'm bringing up two different O.C. alums in the same post...freaky).

So, I came out of it feeling like if they actually wanted to keep her around and have us like her, then they would let her figure out that Chuck is a spy (since she's all super smart and stuff). And her figuring it out would give her the benefit of the doubt (in other words, if she was awesome enough to figure out Chuck's secret on her own, then we, as the audience, not as royalty, would pretty much be willing to forgive her for breaking his heart, all those years ago). But, they took that option away from her, so she doesn't really have a good way to earn our trust and respect, so she's probably going to be gone quick.

Then we had this week's episode, where they were kind enough to inform us that, yes, she is an evil bitch and we're not supposed to like her, even if she is being played by Ms. Jordana Brewster. Of course, the way they decided to do this was completely irrational and makes no sense at all, but that's okay. We're used to it in this show (and Heroes managed to botch up at least as much stuff last week in their flashback episode, so the standards had been lowered pretty significantly, but I'm not talking about Heroes right now as I sit, very tentatively optimistic for the upcoming episodes, I'm talking about Chuck). They decided that she's a spy for the bad guys.

Yeah, I know. Really freaking stupid decision. They end the episode by informing us that she's a government agent, who's actually a spy for Fulcrum (the bad guys). Obviously, this makes no sense. It doesn't make sense because if she worked for the government (which they informed us she did) then they would have informed her that bad guys were making a move on her boss and, furthermore, they would have alerted Casey and Sarah to work with Jill. But, no one told anyone that she's a government agent.

Even more ridiculous: Chuck didn't flash on her! Oh my God, people, are you that incompetent?!? I swear, it's like you wrote last week's episode, filmed it and completed it and then while working on the very next episode, decided this would be a cool idea. You completely ignored everything that had just happened. I mean, when Heroes screws up, at least they're continuous with the previous week's episode. You're not even close.

What's worse is that last week's episode could have worked just as well with everyone knowing that Jill was a government agent. I bet it would have been better even. Casey and Sarah would be working with Jill to protect/interrogate her boss and they would be trying to keep Chuck secret since he's the Intersect and all. Of course, Chuck would be chomping at the bit to see her and say hi and be all "Hey, I'm the Intersect. Have sex with me." And, yeah, it would work fine (but, then I guess the twist in this episode wouldn't be a surprise, but that's alright since the way it is now, it's a twist where the audience just goes WTF?).

So, yeah, I'm kind of sad that I'm frustrated with Chuck right now. But, really, it's not Chuck, it's me. Clearly, I'm not cool enough to be watching it if things like this bother me. But, I'll keep trying, because I do love it so much.

Let's see, next on the list is, um, Valkyria Chronicles. Sometimes, it makes me sad that I play video games so slow. I've already put a good 15-ish official game time hours into that game, which probably translates into 20-25 real hours. And I think I'm just about halfway through it at this point. But, no, I was too slow to start having impressions that won't just sound like me jumping on the "Valkyria Chronicles is so ridiculously amazing everyone should play it. No, really you should even though you don't own a PS3 or like strategy RPGs, it's just that good" bandwagon. But, well, there's a reason this bandwagon formed and it's not because people like to love PS3 exclusive games (in fact, I think people seem to prefer to either hate or ignore such games).

That bandwagon formed because this game is freaking brilliant. Let's pretend for a moment that it isn't one of the most beautiful games I've ever played. Let's just judge it based upon the gameplay. Okay then, it's the best thing the console RPG genre has ever produced, pretty much hands down. I've been addicted to Fire Emblem. I've been addicted to Disgaea. I've been addicted to Advance Wars and I've played a fair amount of Final Fantasy Tactics. All of them are very good and tons of fun. Gameplay-wise, though, not even close, except maybe Advance Wars, and that's just because it's so ridiculously complicated. Valkyria Chronicles' gameplay is almost simple compared to those other games with far fewer unit types and modifiers. But, the way you interact with it, is so much better. Sega didn't start with Chess and make it more complicated. They started with, maybe Star Ocean and Gears of War, and added a little bit of Chess to it. And it feels so right.

I never want to have to move characters around on a grid again (that is a blatant lie, by the way, I'll be playing more Disgaea in a couple months, I'm sure). That's how cool it felt to actually take control of my characters.

On an only vaguely related note, I think there's a question that some of the reviewers need to ask themselves. This would primarily be the reviewers complaining that there's lots of cut scenes. While playing the game, there's a point where you get the option to spend 50000 gold to access some extra cut scenes of your characters on vacation. Around this time, I had about 80000 gold, so this was a significant portion of my money (which goes towards funding better weapons and armor and stuff). Now, if you see that option and you immediately spend the money before even realizing that this vacation will involve going to the beach and seeing the female characters in needlessly skimpy bikinis, you are the type of person this game was made for. If you think, for even a moment, about the fact that you're going to fall behind in the research category and not be as powerful and get effectively nothing in return, then please, don't review this game. We don't care about your opinion of the cutscenes.

Also, only very vaguely related, I was just hoping that if anybody else populated their entire army solely with cute young girls (yes, there are a couple Japanese schoolgirls, but they're typically more like scouts than heavy lancers, to my ever-so-slight disappointment), they'd let me know, just so I don't feel like the only weird loser doing that. For that matter, people whose Rock Band bands are entirely populated by girls would make me feel better too. Although, for the record, I don't make those characters wear as little clothing as possible. I spend the time to find cool costumes for them that look good without removing significant amounts of clothing. I think that, at worst, that only makes me slightly sexist and possibly vaguely feminist since I'm not objectifying these female characters (who, let's be honest, actually are just objects...err, rather, digital objects but you get the idea) and am instead choosing to interact with the game through those avatars instead of my own gender and I have no idea where I'm going with this at all. Moving on...

Valkyria Chronicles is really awesome. Oh, and did I mention the art style? Gorgeous, really. It achieves its goals admirably. It doesn't feel real, but it feels powerful. Some of the best parts at the beginning show these idyllic, peaceful countrysides in this watercolor/penciled-style suddenly getting destroyed by the bad guys. Those are times when it really, really works.

Lastly, I just have a quick thing to say. So, apparently on MTV there's some stupid game show where people play Rock Band in front of an audience and get judged and if they do well then they win prizes. I'd heard it mentioned here and there, always with lots of negative connotations, but I just watched it and it was so amazing. Like, I was falling off the couch laughing at the bands and the performances were totally fun to watch as well. They do this cool thing where it's like watching people playing Rock Band, except instead of the computer generated performers and audience, it's the actually performers and audience (but you can still see the note charts and stuff like that).

Anyways, I highly recommend it. The host is kind of lame (it's kind of obvious he thinks he got stuck with a crappy gig), but everything else about it is so funny. The best part is when they go behind the scenes and interview the competitors and these people are so cool and funny. I mean, they totally love Rock Band and they're excited to be playing in front of an audience, but they're totally aware this is just for fun. And they're having fun. There were two great quotes from the episode I saw. The first one was a response to why they got into Rock Band. I'm paraphrasing but the band leader explains that they got into it because they totally sucked at real instruments, at which point the drummer pipes in and says "That shit is HARD, man!". Trust me, it was funny. The other quote started with the cliched "Rock Band is not a game...it's an experience". But, then after a couple moments of thinking about what he just said, the guy continues, "but if it was a game, it would be, like, the GREATEST GAME EVER!". Yeah, that's a memorable quote.

Let's see, real quick I can mention that I've tried Guitar Hero: World Tour and it pretty much sucks compared to Rock Band (okay, that's a slight exaggeration...um, changed my mind, no exaggeration at all). The primary problem is that they made the conscious decision to make it a multiplayer game that doesn't play like a multiplayer game. You're not a band when you're playing as a group in this game, you're just a group of people all playing the same song at the same time on different instruments. I mean, I think it even gives everyone separate scores (or at least it feels like it does since they eliminated anything like cooperation from the gameplay). The secondary problem is that they decided to make the rule be that if someone fails out, then everyone fails out (even though everyone else can't really do anything to prevent the person who failed out from failing out). This is frustrating, in case you're curious.

Otherwise, it's all just slightly different design choices that are neither right nor wrong, just different (so, since I'm way too used to Rock Band, they all feel wrong, but I know they're not necessarily wrong). Neither game has come up with just the right way to do vocals, but I think Rock Band is a little closer. On drums, it's nice to activate star power whenever I want, but I miss the drum fills as well. On bass, supposedly the note-less strums grow on you once you get used to the idea a little bit. Hmm, well, I failed at being real quick, but it was still kinda quick.

Well, the only other thing I can think of that might be worth mentioning (read as: really is not worth mentioning, but I'm going to anyway) is that I saw the most recent Hellsing Ultimate DVD and it was just okay. A lot of people rag on the original anime for completely abandoning the story in the manga about halfway through. So, the Hellsing Ultimate DVDs are pretty much just for those fans, since they promise to stick with the manga all the way through. I'm now two DVDs past the halfway mark in the original, and well, I'm still up in the air. Neither one finishes is all that great.

The original anime tried to go out in a rather different direction with bigger and scarier and weirder demons appearing. This doesn't really fit with the theme in the manga, but it's not inherently bad. This one, which I assume is following the manga that I haven't read, is just repeating the same theme over and over again. That would be the theme that Alucard is way more sinister and evil and demonic than any of the evil things he gets called in to fight. After the fourth disc of that, I'm kind of starting to understand why the anime wanted to do something different. There's only so many times we can watch the bad guys doing horrible things only to crumple into snivelling creatures at Alucard and the horrors he's capable of. So, we'll have to see. This one was kind of a transition one, so it's possible that the next disc could do some interesting stuff because he'll fighting Nazi vampires that he thought he eliminated, so these are bad guys who actually faced him before and are relishing the thought of facing him again, not because they think they can win, but because they relish the amount of horror and evil this confrontation will bring into the world. Like I said, this could be interesting.

I also like that we get to see more of the crazy priest dude who works for the Catholics. I like him too.

Alright, that is all.

Francis

Scathing Rock Band 2 Review

Okay, so I'll admit right now that I've hardly played through this entire game. I haven't even unlocked a plane in World Tour Mode, so I've only gotten about 55-ish of the 85 total songs on the disc. I've done about half the drum trainer beats and again, a little over half the drum trainer fills as well. I've done, maybe, 10 challenges and I've submitted a score for a competition once as well. And, well, all I can say is that this game is a massive disappointment to me.

Rock Band 2 is a an after thought. I can't imagine that it took them a year to do this game. I'd say they started working on it not long after they announced it in July. I mean, this game's killer feature is that it is easier to navigate its menus and play as a group. That's the killer feature. That's its big improvement over Rock Band 1. The menu system. And it costs 60 dollars. It's probably worth noting that this menu system was already in existence shortly after the first game came out, considering that it's the same menu system they use for the store. So, no, they didn't even have to make this new menu system, because they already had it.

They want to say that the 84 songs on the disc are worth the 60 dollars you're throwing away for this update to the menu system. They want to say that the drum trainer is worth a little something too. They want to say the community of Rock Bands that they're creating with these competitions is worth something. And I'll admit that it's hardly valueless. But it's not worth 60 dollars, either.

The tracklist is nothing special. At all. If the entire tracklist was put online for download, I'd end up buying about 30 of them, at the most. And of those, most of them would only be bought if they were 99 cents (my standards drop pretty fast once that happens). I mean, at this point, I strongly prefer to pick and choose what I'm adding to my collection, over being handed a ton of songs, most of which I don't want to play. I haven't gotten around to exporting my Rock Band 1 songs, but I know there are going to be some eliminations. Faith No More won't be making it across, that's for sure. Neither will the Beastie Boys. Both of them are in Rock Band 2.

Then there's the drum trainer. My problem with the trainer is that it's no different from practice mode on the drums. It's literally the same thing, only less interesting. I'm not going to be any more capable of actually playing the drums after using the trainer than I am now (which, just to be clear, is not very). Its problem is that it still uses the paradigm of notes moving across the screen and timing my hits to that. As long as I can see notes moving in front of me that I should be hitting, I'm not learning anything. I've already trained myself to be good at that. That's not drumming. It should show me a pattern and then ask me to replicate it. Ask me to keep replicating it without seeing any notes coming down. It won't be easy, but that's what would teach me to drum. And it would give me the confidence to actually try to do it, too. As is, it's pretty much valueless. Unless you really like hitting notes at 200 bpm, then I guess it's kind of fun.

Now, the challenges are a decent addition. But they're really a substitution. Harmonix took away the linear play-every-track-in-the-game single player experience and replaced it with a linear play-every-single-track-in-the-game-typically-more-than-once-but-on-different-instruments, experience. Overall, that experience is just okay and a little frustrating. What I liked about the single player mode of Rock Band 1 was that I could just keep picking whichever song I wanted to play and continue to earn money for the store. Now, though, it feels as though that's been relegated to the Quickplay experience, which I don't really like.

Speaking of the store, it's just a joke. Having watched the credits, I know that Harmonix has a huge team of artists. Apparently, the artists all took the last year off. There are almost no new clothes, at all. Literally, the only things they added were new shoes (most of which are still lame, but at least there's more lame options than before) and a section whose name can be paraphrased to "Cheap Clothes You Don't Want to Buy For Your Character". Now, one might want to ask why such a section needs to exist (I mean, isn't that the punk wardrobe, already? Burn!). But, clearly, there's no point in asking. They didn't care. The only real improvement to the Rock Shop is the ability to change angles when you're trying on clothes, so you don't have to pick an outfit and then just sit and wait while the character eventually turns around so you can see how it looks.

My problem with this game is that it isn't Rock Band 2. It's Rock Band 1.2. I mean, part of the problem, of course, is that Rock Band didn't need a sequel. Rock Band isn't about sequels and getting you to keep buying new games. It's a platform. It wants to sell me tracks. And, conveniently for Rock Band, I want to buy tracks. All these improvements they made were meant to help that platform exist. Clearly, now that I've bought Rock Band 2, I will never play Rock Band 1 again, at least on my PS3. But, if Rock Band 2 had never been released, my buying and playing habits wouldn't have changed at all (read as, I would still be playing the game and buying music for it).

To me, this means that Rock Band 2 effectively failed. It's not increasing my usage of the platform.

If Rock Band 2 actually wants to be a sequel, it needs to add something great. But it doesn't. It's a simple, incremental improvement. And I appreciate its existence, because it's an incremental improvement to a platform that I love dearly. But it's not a sequel.

Last year, Harmonix managed to release the ultimate rhythm game, in near perfect form. On their first try. That's amazing. They did so many things right it's just stunning. And they combined all that into an excellent package. A year later, all they could do was release the same thing again. That worries me. The team that made Rock Band 1 is gifted and innovative and dedicated and awesome. The team that tried to pass this off as the sequel to the best and most lasting game since Super Smash Brothers is none of those things. I'm hoping that Rock Band 3 can live up to its heritage, because Guitar Hero is very, very capable of catching up, and I'm too invested in Rock Band to even contemplate making the switch, and I don't want to have to.

That is all.

Francis

Rock Band Post (Finally)

So, I've had Rock Band for a couple months now, but I haven't actually written a post on it yet. I've mentioned it in posts, but I haven't actually written a post dedicated to its pure, unadulterated awesomeness.

There's a couple reasons for this. The main one being that there really isn't much to say besides that it is incredibly, ridiculously awesome. I mean, everything about it is awesome. Playing it is a lot like playing the first Guitar Hero. It is filled with energy and excitement and ideas and you can't help but get swept up with them.

Just the character creation system had me completely consumed for at least the first month. I was literally creating characters and having them play gigs just to provide them with money to fill up their wardrobe and really look like rock stars. I very quickly had a full band of hot girls, slowly testing different looks and styles until each one had finally found just the right look. Of course, since that's happened I haven't touched the system again, but that's okay. This was just another way to get me into the game and the characters, and that's what was really important. And this is another similarity to Guitar Hero 1. Not all of the ideas have been executed to completion just yet. This is the start of something great; a remarkable start, but a start all the same. I would love it if there were additional costumes or hairstyles available for download. I'm also looking forward to them further expanding the creation system and adding more faces or more customizable faces.

Similarly, I think Band World Tour mode still needs some work. It's a really awesome idea and it's way better than slowly accessing a track list, but it's not quite right yet. I like that this mode eliminates the old proglem where there's a single song stopping all of your progress in the game, but it's significantly extending the game time without increasing the total number of songs available to me at all. The inevitable result is that I'll have to play the same songs over and over again, which isn't as much fun as playing new songs. It gets worse because you can't access any of the songs you've downloaded. This means that the entire Band World Tour only really uses less than half the songs I have (except during sets that are random or let me pick the set myself). I love the idea of fans (although at this point they don't actually serve much purpose) and playing bigger gigs earning more fans and money, but there needs to be a way to make it worthwhile to go back to Band World Tour after I've downloaded tons of songs. As it is now, I pretty much only do Band Quickplay because that way I can choose from all my songs and see them sorted by difficulty. Even when I've got a group that I've formed a band with over, we'll still end up switching to Quickplay mode after a little while because it works better to take turns picking the song we want to perform, rather than trying to find whole sets that we all want to play (in the end, we almost always just pick random). I don't know if maybe download packs should add extra gigs in the world or if gigs should often have a random song guaranteed to be either a bonus track or a downloaded song, but something needs to be done.

Drums, of course, have had me addicted for ever since I laid eyes on them. I am incapable of holding a rhythm, but somehow I've managed to learn...when I'm holding the Rock Band drumsticks while sitting front of the Rock Band drum kit and watching the screen. And that is totally awesome. I mean, ridiculously awesome. It's something I never believed I could do. At this point, I've now played drums to the point where I can five star almost any song on Hard and so I'm playing more and more Expert. Get that: Expert. This means that I actually know drum patterns at this point. That is crazy. It reminds me of what it was like to get addicted to Guitar Hero. All over again. Only it feels even better.

I've been surprised how much fun vocals are as well. I am one of those people who can't sing, but likes to think he can, and given some music is typically willing to sing, though typically fairly quietly because I don't really want people to have to listen to me. And, well, Rock Band will let you do that. And, I've actually managed to improve a lot in that area as well. When I started I could actually fail on Easy, and by this point I can survive almost any song on Hard. It'd be nice to someday be good enough to typically get four or five stars on Hard, but surviving is where I'm at now, and I'm proud of that. Yeah, that's right, proud of it. That's pretty awesome too, since there's not very many games where my ability actually gives me pride. I mean, doing the guitar and drums on Expert doesn't make me proud (although I do like showing it off).

But, what I've recently discovered is how truly incredible it feels to sing while playing guitar. Given a mic stand and a guitar, Rock Band completely changes. A wise man I know described this as a transformation from playing the game to performing. He's right. Although I've never been on stage playing an instrument in my life (but he has, os that's why i'm trust him on things like this), and I know I never will, this is what it must feel like to be actually doing it. Performing both instruments at once puts you entirely in the game. When you're performing like that, you're actually singing. When you're performing like that, you honestly can't tell that you're not actually playing a guitar. When you're performing like that, you believe that you're onstage. And it feels so good.

I'm not sure I'll ever be able to do just the guitar again and not feel lame. This is what karoake should be like (and with the help of alcohol, I'm pretty sure it is, but that's not the point).

But, so how do I feel about Rock Band versus Guitar Hero (3 and later)? Or, rather, how about I list all the ways that Rock Band puts Guitar Hero to shame?

But seriously, this game is better in every single way and the upcoming Guitar Hero: World Tour game just reinforces it. Rock Band captured the feel of the crowd and the stadiums and the stage performances way, way better. The things the characters do onstage are amazing to watch, whenever you get the chance. The character designs and art styles are totally cool, which was one of my main complaints about Guitar Hero 3. The writing is actually clever and funny. The song list totally blows Guitar Hero out of the water and is probably the best list since Guitar Hero 1. They got all the little things and the very big things absolutely right.

The downloadable content puts Guitar Hero to shame, every day of the week (well, every Thursday of the week, at least). I mean, think about it. I have 6 Grateful Dead songs on Rock Band. I have them because the guitar parts are amazing, but there is no Grateful Dead on Guitar Hero, and I don't know why. I have Boston's debut album. And, it is amazing. By the end of this month, I'll have The Pixies' Doolittle. Get that: Doolittle. Like, after they get around to releasing Nevermind, my life will be complete. Completely complete. I can barely even imagine how awesome it will be to do Nevermind from start to finish. It gives me shivers just thinking about it. And don't get me started on how awesome it is to have so many songs from The Police and Oasis and The Clash and from stupid (yet, somehow awesome) emo bands like 30 Seconds to Mars and The All-American Rejects and Paramore and Fall Out Boy. I mean, I even have a song from The Monkees, for goodness sake.

How can Guitar Hero compete with that? Well, they can't. So, their plan is to just milk the brand. They're releasing something like 3 different Guitar Hero games in the next 6 months (well, if you count the DS version, which I'm not sure should be counted). If I cared about Aerosmith at all, I might care about their Aerosmith version, but I don't; so, I don't. They've also announced that they'll be doing a similar Metallica dedicated game. Once again, I don't care. And then there's Guitar Hero: World Tour (subtitle: Playing Catch Up with Rock Band). They're adding drums and vocals, of course. And, well, their drums do sound pretty sweet. Otherwise, their feature list is made up entirely of functional improvements that people want to see in Rock Band. The character creation system will have more options than Rock Band. The drums will be quieter. The solo tour mode will be more like Rock Band's Band World Tour mode (while I'm sure the band tour mode will be exactly the same). They're even adding the music creation system that Harmonix said they wished they could get into Rock Band 1.

But, so my question can't help but be, so what are you offering me that Rock Band isn't? Keeping in mind, that I would be very, very surprised if, when I bought Rock Band 2, I wouldn't have access to the 50-some songs I've already downloaded. And the answer is, quite honestly, the name Guitar Hero. And, well, my response is: Guitar Hero 3 left a bad taste in my mouth, so, I think I'll pass. Which is too bad. I would really like it if Activision felt the need to actually differentiate Guitar Hero from Rock Band by doing things in a better or different way, rather than doing things the same way and shooting for feature parity (or, at this point, an incremental improvement over a game that will be about a year old when the new Guitar Hero comes out, so Guitar Hero will actually have to compete with Rock Band 2, which should have all the "features" that Guitar Hero has at an absolute minimum...possibly minus the quieter drum).
What I really want is to see Rock Band keep improving as a platform. A couple songs a week is an amazing start, but I want to see where it goes from there. I want to see singles and songs and whatever hitting Rock Band as often as possible. I know that's what they want as well, and I can't wait for them to get there.

That is all.

Francis