Archive for the ‘entertainment’ Category

Dead Like Me

Friday, January 8th, 2010

A show about grimm reapers...

I don’t watch TV the way “normal” people do it. It’s mainly because I abhor reality TV. It’s unwatchable. There is not a single reality show out there that I’d consider worth while. You can try to convince me otherwise, but you will fail my friend. If it’s reality based, I’m switching the channel. Of course the problem is that lately switching the channel no longer works for me, because every single network airs the reality trash at one time or another. Even History Channel, has not one, not two but like 7 of them. Each worse than the next.

Someone will doubtlessly say that a reality show is not that much different than a documentary from the “life and work of” category. I beg to differ. Documentaries are usually done about interesting, accomplished people. They have an interesting narrative, a message and an ending. Reality shows on the other hand are almost always feature shallow, loud, uninteresting attention whores (and when I say whore, I mean both genders), have no narrative, no direction, no message and drag on forever (or until the ratings drop). That’s the difference folks.

So I avoid watching TV in general. I tune in for shows that I know and like, and just ignore the idiot box at any other time. When I feel like watching TV I usually switch it to History Channel (when it’s not airing reality crap), Comedy Central, Adult Swim or one of the movie channels. The side effect of my TV watching habits is that I tend to miss good shows when they are on the air. Case in point: I discovered Firefly years after it was canceled, and then half-assedly resurrected as an underwhelming motion picture.

I still watch Lost, but it’s more of a habit these days. Somewhere I have a strongly worded draft of a post about the direction the show has taken, but that’s a discussion for later. I am pleasantly surprised by Dexter which is still going strong after 4 seasons, refusing to be formulaic and finding new and exciting ways to engage the viewers. It’s currently the only show that actually manages to keep me on the edge of my seat. Every time I watch it, I feel uneasy – I actually worry about the main character getting caught. And that’s an accomplishment. Other series that regularly captured my attention this way were Firefly, Farscape and the first season of Heroes (I pretend the show ended there and then).

I recently discovered another show, that while not perfect, makes me actually care about it’s characters. Oh and it makes me smile as well. Dead Like Me is an MGM and Showtime dark comedy about the life of Grimm Reapers who were given a job to help souls cross over to the afterlife. The job comes with some interesting perks. For one, you are virtually immortal. You don’t age, you get Wolverine like healing factor and immunity to most toxins and poisons. The downside is that you are dead. Your fiends and family and friends will no longer recognize you and you will eventually see them grow old and die. Also, your afterlife is put on hold for you until you reap an allotted number of souls. Your last soul is your ticket to paradise, and the person you reaped takes over your soul taking responsibilities.

The main character George is a sarcastic, introverted college dropout who gets killed by a toilet seat that detached itself from the falling MIR space station and fell somewhere in downtown Seattle. Her life ends at a ripe age of 18, and she is recruited to become a Reaper, much against her will. George has a lot of trouble coping with this change. To begin with, she does not very happy about dying so young. Especially since she has spent most of her life trying to avoid new experiences, relationships and social situations – she realizes that she has not really lived at all. She also has trouble adjusting to her new job which is actually quite morbid, depressing and also boring. Not only does she have to bear witness to death and misfortune every day – being a reaper involves surprising amount of paperwork. Oh, and you don’t get paid – so she must get an even more boring office job to afford food and place to sleep.

The show juxtaposes human tragedy, drama and often gruesome death scenes with offbeat, ironic humor and cleverly written dialogs. It is silly one minute and profound the next. You wouldn’t think this combination would actually work, but it does. It’s original and it brings a lot to the plate.

The Reapers themselves form a little dysfunctional family that sort of acts as a surrogate for their true families that they have lost. They are all broken people, learning to cope with their extraordinary circumstance. Each of them is plagued by bouts of depression which is something that comes with the job. Seeing death every day is no picnic, and it does take a toil on the Reapers. Mason turns to drugs and alcohol (in vast quantities due to their Reaper metabolism). Daisy pretends to be perky, happy and silly ditz to hide her inner turmoil. Roxy externalizes her problems channeling them into general verbal and physical hostility. Rube dishes out poignant and very zen-like advice to everyone willing to listen. He relies on his wisdom and experience but it’s not always enough. And there is George who is just hopelessly lost, confused and torn between a desire to live and her duty as a Reaper. She desperately clings to her past life, trying to re-connect with her family. She can’t stand by watching them suffer, but every time she tries to intervene she makes it worse for them. It upsets her both when they suffer and when they don’t – it pains her that they are starting to forget about her. Every time she spies on her loved ones is like sticking a knife into an old wound, but she can’t stop herself.

Dead Like Me has an extraordinary cast of characters and good writing, but it is not devoid of flaws. The first few episodes have excellent pacing, direction and an a story arc. Around episode six the show starts meandering, losing the strong narrative devolving into a more episodic format with a mild application of the proverbial reset reset button at the end of each episode. At the same time, one of the more interesting characters (Betty) leaves the show.

You see, Betty was intriguing because she was the only “well adjusted” Reaper of the group. She was the only person who managed to find joy in her work. She loved helping people to cross over, loved to listen to their stories. She had her demons like everyone, but she somehow found a balance that worked for her. Then she leaves and and is replaced by a flanderized version of herself. Daisy is the same character archetype: attractive, confident, perky, fashionable. But she has none of Betty’s depth of character and remains a vapid, shallow comic relief character until the second season when she finally manages to develop a personality and come to her own.

Dead Like Me also features a textbook case of Excecutive Meddling. In the Pilot episode you can see a clear foreshadowing of an interesting plot development. George sees her father share a strangely long hug with one of his concerned male students who came to her wake. There are hints dropped throughout the first few episodes that the father might be gay, and that he might be having an affair with said student. But then he turns out to be fucking a female student instead. Bryan Fuller, the show’s creator then promptly abandons the project citing creative differences. In a later interview he confirms that yes, one of the reasons why he left was that he was forced to rewrite that particular piece.

The series reaches all time low in episode 12 which is a recap-clip show. You know, it’s an episode where you show clips from previous episodes. It has virtually no plot, other than some contrived excuse which would allow characters to set up flashback sequences one after another. In modern TV, a clip show is a shark jumping moment for a decent series. It shows that the studio either ran out of cash, ideas or network funding. Dead Like me had no business having a clip show after airing only 11 episodes, but they did it anyway with predictable results.

Fortunately the show eventually picks itself up. Season 2 brings back overall story arcs (though not as strong as at the begging) and finally fleshes out Daisy making her into an actual human being. The quality is not consistent and I noticed that the writes tend to be a bit lax about the rules of their own universe as well as character development when it serves the plot, or helps them to set up a joke. For example in most episodes Reapers are required to babysit a recently deceased soul until it crosses over. Abandoning a reaped soul is a big deal and Reapers get in trouble for doing this… Unless of course it’s one of these episodes where they just up and or run off from the scene for dramatic effect. Similarly George is sometimes shown crawling out of her shell, making friends, or hanging out with a boy at the end of one episode, only to be lonely, miserable and antisocial at the begging of the next one.

Despite abundance of flaws, I like it. Let me put it this way: It’s not the best show I’ve seen. It’s not even the best show I’ve seen this year. But It makes me smile. I genuinely enjoy watching it and I guess that’s all that counts. Sometimes the characters do things for the plot sake, sometimes executive meddling screws up story lines, some episodes are complete shit. But overall, I’d say that it’s well worth watching. There is enough there to keep me interested. It’s an entertaining mix of good ideas, well written (though sometimes inconsistent) characters and clever plot lines .

To put it plainly it is somewhat different from the generic sitcom pulp we see on TV these days. It stands out and it has it’s own unique brand of humor and it’s own rhythm. This originality can probably be attributed almost entirely to Bryan Fuller. Trust me, you will notice his departure as it coincides with a visible shift in storytelling and characterization. Still, the central themes, characters are there giving it enough momentum to remain quirky and interesting to the very end.

If you’re interested, I have good news for you. The whole series is available on Hulu. This means that you can legaly watch it for free, from the comfort of your computer screen. Unless of course you live in one of the regions that Hulu decided to block, in which case – you can probably watch it on IMDB.

Word of warning though: if you start watching this series you might develop a schoolboy crush on Ellen Muth.

Precursors: somone just made the game that I dreamt up.

Thursday, January 7th, 2010

Hey, guys – remember that time when I was fantasizing about a game that would be a hybrid of Elite/Frontier and Fallout 3? You know, a game that would combine trading, spaceship simulation, FPS combat and RPG elements – a little dream game of mine that I never expected to actually be made. If not, please go read the original post about it and then come back here. Seriously, I’ll wait.

Ok, now that you read my previous post, check this one. Someone actually made a game that is a bit like that. Here is a trailer and some game play footage:

This game is called Precursors and it seems to be developed by a small independent Russian company. According to their official website (which looks really shitty, BTW – but alas, good programmers tend to be shitty web developers and vice versa) and Wikipedia entry the game was released in Russia on December 4th of last year. I don’t know if or when it will be released in US or even if there is an English language version. And if there is, I really hope they will hired some professionals to do it, because the English section of their website illustrates that they don’t fully grasp all of it’s nuances. It’s readable, but you can see the text was written by non-native speakers.

The website describes the game as:

Freeplay RPG with FPS\Space sim combat and economical component.

Now tell me, isn’t this EXACTLY what I was talking about in my post? I’m excited now. I want to play this game. Someone figure out how I can go about obtaining it. Keep in mind I don’t speak a lick of Russian.

Also, big thanks to Domcoppinger for cluing me in on this.

The New Super Mario Bros for Wii

Tuesday, January 5th, 2010

I bought my cousin the New Super Mario Bros Wii edition for Christmas and we have been playing it on and off in coop mode since then. If you don’t get which game I’m talking about, it is this one:

It is interesting, because unlike most recent Mario games released by Nintendo, this one has no gimmick. It offers the same classic, 2D platforming fun that was featured in the original with few modern additions. For example, it fully utilizes the Wiimote controller allowing the players to perform actions by shaking and tilting it. It adds just enough innovation to the formula to make it seem new and refreshing. To put it plainly, it is a fun, cute little game.

Also, I hate it. Ok, hate is a strong word – I don’t despise it completely. I can pick up the controller at any time and still have fun playing it with others. For example, I thought the World 1 was a blast. I was able to stumble my way through the levels despite the fact my timing was off, and my aim was poor. I made mistakes, I died in funny ways and it was enjoyable. Then we got to the second world and ended up trying to beat the final castle level around 27 times in a row. And that was still fun, because when you play with someone else you can always joke about “LOL, look how bad we suck at this!”. Still, I was feeling the frustration starting to set in. And this was only world 2. It would only get worse from that point on.

This is precisely why I don’t play games like that on my own. Mario is a textbook example of a DIAS gameplay model. If you mess up, you have to start over. Granted, this incarnation of the series is nowhere near as annoying as the NES original. In TNSMBWii co-op mode both players have to die at the same time in order to be sent back to the beginning of the level. Most levels also feature a halfway flag which acts like a checkpoint. You have unlimited number of continues as well, and you only get send back to the begging of the current world if both players run out of lives at the same time. You can also save your progress at any time – though this is a Rougelike save & quit feature rather than a normal save game. Still, it’s something. All those features (that Mario purists probably sneer at with derision) act as life lines to help out inexperienced players and make the game more fun for everyone. And I still find it fucking hard.

The difficulty on the higher levels is grueling, and punishing to the point that it stops being fun – at least for me. There are other people however, who actually thrive on this sort of challenge. My brother for example excels at this game. When I handed him my controller, he basically beat the whole world on his own. He literally carried my cousin through some of the levels (yeah, in this game you can actually carry the other player and carry them) using her as a mobile fire-flower turret. It was actually a joy to watch them play this game. More fun than actually play it.

Whenever he got sent back to the begging of the level, it just made him more determined to beat it. The more he failed, the more fun he seemed to have. This reminded me the good old days when the two of us were trying to beat the original Mario and Mega Man on the NES. He would play, I would navigate. And by navigate I mean yell out things like “watch out for the guy” or “use that pipe, that’s a shortcut” – as if he didn’t know these things already. I was just not built for this kind of game play.

I noticed that when confronted with a DIAS scenario I tend to get discouraged. The more I repeat the same sequence of the game, the more disinterested I am and the worse I seem to be doing at it. I become frustrated, I stop having fun, and start getting annoyed – at myself, at the game, at everything. After some time, it becomes virtually impossible for me to progress – I just continue making the same mistakes, and I’m actually to stressed out to learn from them. The only way for me to make some progress at that point is to turn off the game, and do something else. Once I rest a bit and unwind, I can go back into the game with a cool head and try to beat it again.

This is precisely why I have never finished any of the GTA games. I would reach a point where I’d have to do a set of difficult missions in order to progress. Yes, all these games are sandboxes, but even in a sandbox you reach a point when all missions available to you are quite challenging. So you pick the easiest one, and hope to do it. I’d attempt that mission 5-6 times each day for a week or so, continue failing in spectacular ways and then just give up and uninstall the game from my computer. I no longer enjoyed it – I was playing the same content over and over again, and all I was getting out of it was frustration.

The DIAS model absolutely kills all enjoyment of a game from me. This of course doesn’t mean I don’t like action games at all, or that I do not enjoy challenge. I just hate playing the same thing over and over again. You see, the staple of DIAS is that it is not about perfecting a single jump, or winning a single boss battle. I don’t mind that. If you save my progress just before the challenging bit, I’d be happy to try it over and over again, until I succeed. But then I expect you to save again, afterward. Once I perfected a given challenge I want a new one. But games like Mario and GTA don’t do that. They tend to stack their challenges one after each other, and if you make a single mistake, you have to go all the way to the begging and repeat all of them.

When I play “normal” video games I tend to “save-creep”. Depending on a game, tend to save every 5-10 minutes or so. I never, ever want to re-play the same sequence unless I actually want it. If I lose more than 20 minutes of progress at any given time, I’m usually upset. That’s just how I roll. That’s the kind of gaming experience I personally enjoy.

How about you? Does DIAS game play energize or frustrate you? Do you enjoy playing ultra-hard platformers or do you get annoyed by them in the end? Let me know in the comments.