Yannis T. Vatis

This one slipped under my radar somehow and now my hype for this season’s TV offerings has sky-rocketed. The Ninja Turtles are back on Nickelodeon this time in full CGi animation ready to kick the Foot Clan’s butt. Hopefully we’ll get to see some other favourite baddies make a comeback. 

An interesting change they have made will be in the weapons some of the turtles will carry. Donatello this time will be sporting a Naginata as an alternative to his Bo while Mikey will be also making use of the popular ninja weapon Kurasigama alongside his classic Nunchakus. This might mean that they will be going in a darker direction, which might be more faithful to the comic book version of the show.

I’m liking the rap style of the new theme song. It nods heavily towards the classic opening that we’ve all come to love. I will be watching the first episode after it airs and I will let you all know what I thought. So what are your thoughts on the Turtles being revived? Are you as excited as I am? Let me know in the comments or on Twitter @shinnkun.

Revolution, a new sci-fi TV series created by Eric Kripke, had its pilot aired last Monday evening so viewers are finally able to get a first glimpse of what life would be like without electricity. As I have stated in a past posting, it all feels a little Lost-y to me as there is a grand meta mystery overshadowing the story. As a pilot it felt entertaining, though, and the mystery doesn’t seem to be so much in the forefront. That could change of course but hopefully this show won’t go the way of The Event.

Spoilers ahead!

The pilot begins at present time Earth where people are going about their daily lives as all humans do nowadays. All except one man, Ben Matheson (Tim Guinee), who seems to have stumbled onto some information that will completely shatter the world as he knows it. Before he is able to relay the information properly to his brother, US Marine sergeant Miles Matheson (Billy Burke), their line gets cut off as does all electrical power across the planet. Cars stop running, airplanes fall out of the sky and chaos obviously ensues. Flash forward 15 years later and the world has completely changed. People who have been dependant on electricity all their lives are forced to leave the big cities and establish small settlements in places where they can farm and hunt for their food. Governments are toppled aside making way room for militias and warlords to gain power and control over the people.

Ben and his two children, Charlie (Tracy Spiridakos) and Danny (Graham Rogers), live in one of these settlements. Ben, who’s widowed after his wife passed away sometime during the blackout, is the keeper of the secret behind the lights going out; a secret he refrains for disclosing to his children or his new romantic companion, Maggie (Anna Lise Phillips). Their lives seem to be going the same way as any broken family who’s living in a crisis situation. The children are unruly, they disapprove of their father’s new girlfriend and carry crossbows for some playtime in the woods. It’s all fine and dandy until captain Tom Neville, former insurance adjuster, (Giancarlo Esposito) arrives on horseback with his goons of the Monroe Militia to come and take Ben with him to see the general. Before he is faced with him, though, Ben secretly passes a flash drive with his sacred information to his friend and once-upon-a-time Google exec Aaron (Zak Orth).

And this is where everything starts to fall apart when Danny – who’s prone to asthma attacks – points a crossbow at Tom in order to protect his dad. Soon enough a short crossfire begins, Danny gets captured and Ben lies on the dirt dying. He tasks Charlie with finding his brother, Miles, who is most likely in Chicago. So she, Maggie and Aaron set off to find Miles and then save Danny from the clutches of this general Monroe. On the way they run into a few rough situations and meet Nate (J.D. Pardo), who later proves to be a member of the militia intending on spying on them.

After finding Miles, Charlie unsuccessfully tries to convince him to help save her brother from the militia. Speaking of the devil Nate returns with a bunch of his friends to apprehend them. Miles shows off his badass sword fighting skills tearing apart the members of the militia one by one. In the midst of the battle Charlie for some reason gets rescued by Nate who then runs off just as mysteriously. After the dust settles, Miles finally agrees to go with his niece and companions to rescue Danny, who meanwhile manages to escape and get recaptured by Tom after being found by Grace (Maria Howell), who lives on her own. The episode closes with her being revealed as a possessor of a similar flash drive to Ben’s and having a computer that is still functional, which she uses to communicate through text with someone else.

What I Liked

The show definitely has a lot of potential to be something I look forward to every week. I enjoyed the premise as a whole mainly because it’s a possibility both in and outside the realm of reality. Cities were covered in plants, people were growing vegetables in broken down cars, bars brewed their own alcohol and leaders rode on horseback. The world building aspect of the show seems very interesting and carries a lot of potential for some entertaining scenarios.

My favorite part of the episode was the fight scene with the swords and muskets in Mile’s bar/home. It was over-the-top, creative and downright fun to watch. TV has lacked this sort of action for awhile so this brings me hope that we can get some more of the same down the road, even if it is in small doses.

I’m okay with the characters for now. I don’t particularly care that much about them, except for Tom. I’m curious to see how a once insurance adjuster becomes an evil militia captain, if we get a chance to see his past. The acting was at a decent standard and the lines did not carry much cheese either.

What I Didn’t Like

Ever since Lost and it’s disappointing, in my opinion, ending I have grown skeptical of meta shows. Revolution so far has not made it clear if the mystery is as much in our faces as it was in Lost and The Event so I’ll have to wait and see before I make a final judgment on this aspect.

There were a couple of non-sensical moments that made me cringe slightly. More specifically, when Miles reveals that Nate is a member of Monroe’s militia by showing the scarred mark on his arm. If you are going to be a spy why have a mark in such an obvious place? Just because the electricity went out doesn’t mean people lost their brain power. Maybe general Monroe needed to Google a “How to run a Militia” tutorial. Also, Miles’s refusal to help his own family felt shoehorned as well. I know that you don’t really know your niece but you really would send her off to find her brother by herself?

Greek Geek’s Verdict

Revolution so far has sold me on watching it a few more times. It’s got the potential to be a fun action sci-fi show with some intriguing mysteries. If they keep them to a controlled minimum and provide enough information to keep me up wanting more while at the same time delivering on some entertaining action sequences, I think this can make for a fun show for me to look forward to every week.

I got from my wife a very special gift for my birthday over ten days ago: center stage tickets to Video Games Live! Greatest.Wife.Ever am I right? This was actually the second time I was treated to attend this amazing show. The first time it was literally a trip down memory lane. A full orchestra filled the stadium with the epic sounds that accompanied my digital adventures as I made virtual plumbers hop, blue hedgehogs run and pointy eared elves slay weird looking baddies. It was truly a remarkable experience that I will never forget. I urge anyone who has a deep love for video games to check out VGL if they ever get a chance.

This year’s show in Beijing was a real treat as well because the setlist was focused exclusively on one of the most successful games in history: World of Warcraft. China is home to a great deal of WoW fans so it was no surprise that the venue was full of people. There was a lot of Alliance versus Horde banter going on throughout the show too. From the moment the lights first dimmed we were taken on a familiar journey across mountains and planes we had all traversed many a time. The videos recorded from the game often featured real player characters, who were either fighting, dancing or just giving a wave, on occasion; a reminder of how the world is occupied by real people.

Emotions skyrocketed when the orchestra paid tribute to two legendary figures of Azeroth, Arthas and Sylvanas.The setlist merely contained a couple of scores from the Cataclysm expansion – a fact which may or may not be seen as an admittance of failure from Blizzard’s part. The final pieces were drawn from the upcoming expansion, Mists of Pandaria, including the awesome trailer. The voice acting was in Chinese but the cool part, as my wife explained, was that they used the ancient form of the language. Then the band stood up, gave us a bow and the conductor – Blizzard composer Russel Brower – left the stage…but we wanted more. So Russel took the stage once more and they played us a piece from Diablo and a piece from Starcraft. Martin Leung who played the Mario theme on the piano blindfolded was a member of the crew as well. Aside from playing a piece from Warcraft II, he also demonstrated for us on stage what he did on YouTube. He went non-stop for nearly 10 minutes!

Epic is all I have to say. Thanks, honey!

Oh boy! Just when you thought star video game creator Hideo Kojima was over with the Metal Gear franchise – what with the conclusion of MGS 4 being sort of…final – he turns all that over its head once more. He presented a 14 minute long trailer for Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes, which will apparently be open world and will also serve as a prologue to MGS 5 (yes, there will be yet ANOTHER after this one). The story will be following the original Snake, also known as Big Boss, and will more than likely take place during the timeline between Metal Gear 2 and Metal Gear Solid 1.

MGS games are some of my absolute favorites so naturally I am excited for these latest installments, aside from Metal Gear Rising which is also looking like it’s going to be amazing. By the way this is not the rumored by Kojima himself Project Ogre so refrain from asking him lest he bite your head off.

Greetings, fellow aliens! I just wanted to make a quick announcement involving my post frequency for the next few days. As you’ve probably noticed so far I have yet to come up with a good post schedule for the blog but I try to bring you several posts per week. As of today I have taken up a short-term job assignment so until I can get used to that, I may write less this week. I believe by the weekend I should have things sorted and my mind fully accustomed to the new way of things so you can look forward to the usual frequency come Monday.

In the meantime I’d like to ask for your thoughts and feedback. What have you enjoyed and what have you despised? Is there any content you would like to see in the future? I’ll be receiving your transmissions through the comments section or on Twitter @shinnkun.

Nanu nanu, friends!

The summer season is as good as over and you know what that means: New shows will be premiering within the next couple of months. As far as geek shows go there aren’t a lot of new offerings but with new seasons for Doctor Who, Supernatural, Game of Thrones, Grimm (season 2 has already premiered) and Fringe’s final season I think we will be quite occupied.

Let’s see what’s new on the small screen for us, otherworldly friends.

Revolution

The trailer looked great to me up until the point I saw J.J. Abrams’ name, which made me a tad concerned. I don’t hate everything he touches. In fact I think he does a decent job. But with the way project he is involved with tending to be about looming mysteries and how sometimes they just disappoint me in the end – Lost – I have more than enough reason to be cautious this time around.  Nevertheless, the premise has attracted me.

All across the globe electrical power one day just dies without a warning. Not even batteries are supplying energy anymore. 15 years later governments have crumbled causing people to live through any means they can. Gangs and warlords rule the land now as the entire planet has gone back to the stone ages. Nobody knows what’s going on except for one man and the information he has hidden within his flash drive.

This show has enough potential to be exciting and keeping us hooked in anticipation week after week, gods be good. It could also go the way of the do-do like The Event with its untimely demise. I was really excited to see Breaking Bad’s Gustavo Fring riding on a horse in all his warlord-liness. From the trailer I gather there’s going to be a lot of action going on as heroes and villains alike struggle to find answers or maintain the status quo. The fun begins September 17th 2012.

Arrow

I don’t know much about Oliver Queen and his alter ego, Green Arrow, aside that he is from the DC comic book universe. I even thought this was going to be a different story until they mention his real name. Still, dropping the “green” and just titling it Arrow was probably a good idea, considering how many comic book characters are called Green <insert other word>.

Oliver Queen is the son of a rich businessman who sells his company in New York. During a trip, father and son are found stranded in the ocean, dying of starvation and with no help in sight. As his dying wish, Oliver’s father asks him to become a man who will make a difference in the world and passes down to him a list of names, all corrupted figureheads of New York City. Queen vows to fulfil his father’s wish and thus hones his survival skills before returning to the city as the green hooded avenger known as the Green Arrow.

The fact that Oliver will be played by Stephen Amell instead of Smallville’s Justin Hartley fills me with hope that this will not be a spin off but a show that stands on its own. I’m looking forward to seeing this as it seems to be the most promising of the new geek offerings of the coming season. Pilot airs October 10th 2012.

666 Park Avenue

I love Terry O’Quinn and would watch anything he is in but this show worries me as they may be expecting him to carry the whole thing on his shoulders. Still, there will be ghosts, demons and other supernatural shenanigans going on.

A young couple is given the opportunity to manage an expensive luxury apartment building on Park Avenue. They quickly discover that the building is possessed by demons when strange occurrences begin to rear their ugly heads.

I don’t have a lot of high hopes for this show but I will be checking out its pilot come September 30th 2012.

What do you think of the new season? What are you looking forward to the most? Be sure to let me know in the comments below or on Twitter @shinnkun.

According to Nexon America’s CEO Daniel Kim, consoles need to go free-to-play or risk dying. But wait! Sony’s CEO Jack Tretton says otherwise. I’m sensing a pattern here. Over the past few years the gaming industry has changed in both good and bad ways. On one hand the current console generation brought online play, dedicated data storage and social connectivity as a standard. We’ve had some pretty awesome titles as well. On the other hand we’ve seen the rise of DRM and the frustrations it brings to the consumer, DLC for nickel-and-diming the consumer and HAL – stands for Half-Assed Launches. I needed another acronym – to make the consumer feel that their money was “well spent”. We’ve also seen the rise of social gaming and free-to-play as lucrative business models. This is definitely not the same industry it was up until the generation that brought us the Playstation 2 and the first Xbox.

What I’m trying to say is simple: the industry has not exactly been favoring the consumer neither in free-to-play nor in pay-to-play.

NotExactlyFree-to-Play

I would like to challenge Mr. Kim with an interesting question: What is the definition of free-to-play? The way I see it, each developer defines it in a different way. I found this game once on my iPhone’s app store called Eternity Warriors, a free game. In this game you control a warrior that dual wields axes or swings a gigantic sword to dispatch waves upon waves of baddies. Of course I noticed it has it’s own store for buying gear but I figured I could get through the game without needing to spend real money. I was wrong. I was barely able to get through the first “dungeon”, even though I had accumulated enough money to upgrade some of my gear. I quickly realized that I would need to buy better armor and weapons. I could just spend a lot of time doing the first few waves until I have enough gold but that would just be boring and end up becoming a vicious cycle.

This might have been an extreme example but it’s not an uncommon instance for I have run into several games like this one. The iPhone app store is littered with them. That’s not exactly free when there is an actual barrier to playing the game in the form of dropping some cash for virtual goods. Take Jetpack Joyride for instance. You can actually play that game and enjoy it at its fullest without buying any “bags of gold” from its shop. Now that’s a game that really is free to play. Eternity Warriors should be classified as free-to-acquire  or free-to-get-into-your-device.

Console Gaming Woes

Consoles have not exactly been a pleasant ride this generation either. We have had some great moments and taken some amazing strides in technological innovation. We have also experienced some of the worst consumer treatment because of several steps taken in the wrong direction. I’m talking about things like DRM and DLC and HAL – yeah, I’m sticking to that acronym.

Admittedly, DRM – Digital Rights Management – is not something that is affecting console games quite yet but the problem is large enough to warrant concern. Ubisoft has taken a lot of grief for the way they have implemented DRM on titles such as the PC version of the Assassin’s Creed series. Blizzard’s Diablo III was also criticized for requiring an internet connection even if the player wants to just solo. Software piracy is a problem and it should be countered as best as possible but not to the detriment of the user who chooses to acquire their games legally. I can buy that Diablo III was built with multiplayer in mind but that doesn’t negate the fact that single player exists as well. Internet connections sometimes drop unexpectedly. People travel or find themselves in locales that don’t have Wi-Fi. Being able to play the game in an offline mode of sorts should be a possibility, especially considering server become subject to maintenance schedules.

DLC – DownLoadable Content – is one of those things I feel are a grey area for some developers do it right while others just outright nickel-and-dime the player base. I’ll use two examples from the same company to make the contrast even more striking. Street Fight IV and Street Fighter x Tekken are both games made by Capcom and yet they have radically different approaches to DLC. With the former you buy the game and that is it. You get to play as any of the available characters, which are the core of the game’s design, and are not expected to pay extra. The only DLC that game has is extra costumes for the fighters but that is purely cosmetic and does not affect the game in any way. Unless of course Shirtless Ryu makes you feel manlier thus giving you an adrenaline surge, but I digress. SFxT now is a different story that is layered and twisted so I’ll stick to the most striking: the Gem System. Advertised as being a core aspect of the game, the Gem System was supposed to allow players to customize their characters’ fighting abilities to match their playstyle. Pay attention to the phrase “core aspect” because it is important. Not only were there exclusive Gem packs available to people who pre-ordered or got the special edition of the game, there are also DLC packs that you can pay to add to your collection. In other words, it is possible for one player to have a 10% power boost to their special moves, for instance, and the other to have 20% because they paid extra. Fighting games like SF IV and SFxT are usually bought and played because of their multiplayer element thus making them very competitive. Allowing people to drop coin in order to get an advantage is therefore equal to forcing them because without that extra content they are left behind. I highly recommend looking into the whole SFxT debacle because it’s an interesting case of what developers should not do with DLC.

Now we come to the real problem I’ve been having with the industry for awhile and that is Half-Assed Launches, or HAL if you will. It seems that lately developers have been more interested in making deadlines rather than quality games, all because they have the crutch known as “patching”. SFxT had several bugs that led from characters floating all over the screen, which was funny, to others being overpowered because they could infinitely combo their opponents to death, which is not fun at all. No problem, though, man! We can patch that stuff. Who needs quality control? In some cases they don’t even patch, let alone acknowledge problems, like the Playstation 3 version of Mass Effect 2, which I can testify had several sound sync problems during cutscenes. Not a huge problem of course but still not what I would expect from a big company like Bioware.

The point of this lengthy post is quite simple, my dear friends from another world: the industry seems to have lost its bearings. There’s good reason for it as well. Development costs have gone up. Customer expectations have gone up. Shareholder expectations have gone even more up. I am a big believer of the notion that if the customer is happy they will come back for more. So give us what we deserve. I’m not claiming that in the past we have 100% bug-free games and amazing titles launching ever second. We had a lot of memorable gems that were just fine without extra content and free-to-play-ish nonsense. People will pay for experiences that are worth their money.

How do you feel about this topic, my alien friends? Discuss away in the comments or on Twitter @shinnkun.

What was the first thought that popped into your head the moment Arny stepped in to save John Connor all clad in leather, wearing those shades and shooting that big shotgun of his? Mine was “That is so badass!” Of course I am talking about the hardware he is packing. Imagine how different the Terminator would seem if the choice of weapon for him would have been an M16 or a butcher’s cleaver. Technically not the most tactical of guns out there, the shotgun is an amazing display of power and awesomeness. Guns, swords, phasers and nunchucks are all weapons that make our heroes who they are in our eyes. They define their strength, their personalities and what their capabilities are both as characters and as fighting machines.

When you are creating your avatar in a role playing game you are given a rundown of what kind of weaponry you will be able to wield depending on the class you choose. You would not expect a stealthy backstabbing thief would be swinging a Greatsword of World Smashing; that’s not very stealthy and backstabby now is it? In contrast, a brute force smash-everything warrior will seem much weaker if he walked around with two Dirks of Graceful Filleting hanging from his belt.

Weapons are like our clothing accessories; they enhance the personas that we choose when carrying ourselves out in the world. The Avengers are a good example of how our perception of heroes is defined by their weapons. The magic hammer Mjonir is the perfect weapon for the God of Thunder, Thor. It stands for everything that the character is because it’s a symbol of creation, power and smashing. On top of all that it’s a good conductor of electricity too. What does Captain America stand for? Justice, perseverance and leadership; all characteristics of his trusty shield. Tony Stark is Iron Man because he is a genius who can put together incredible gadgets and has the arrogance of a Greek god. Every single aspect of his suit, from its weapons to the overall coloring and external design just scream “I am the most awesome person in the world and you know it”.

Some titles choose to have certain weapons be commonplace amongst several characters and groups. What changes, though, is how they are used and what purposes they serve for each of these entities. Star Trek’s phasers are very interesting because they have adjustable levels of output. In most cases Commander Riker will order his away team to set their phasers on stun because as a Starfleet officer it is his duty to incapacitate and not kill unless under extreme duress. Other factions, not members of the Federation of Planets, seldom go for the stun button. Lightsabers in Star Wars are much different, though. Firstly, they are wielded by the select few who are attuned to the Force, known as the Jedi and Sith; they are not commonplace. Secondly, all lightsabers have only one setting: Slice to Kill. This is where appearance and purpose play a much more important role in defining their users’ personalities. There’s a reason Obi-Wan Kenobi’s beam is light blue and Darth Vader’s is red. One makes use of the Force for peace, to protect the innocent and to seek enlightenment. The other commands it to destroy, kill and annihilate all that stands in his way. Blue for protection and inner peace, red for anger and blood-thirst.

Even Bruce Lee is better known for his accessory of pain that is the nunchucks; a pair of wooden or metal rods linked together by a short chain. Sure he can take an a whole army with his bare hands – and feet – but the weapon he made famous is what truly define his Kung Fu skills and graceful fighting expertise.

This notion, though, gets turned over its head when you explore titles like Final Fantasy VII and Devil May Cry. Cloud Strife is probably best known for that gargantuan sword he carries. Does it define him as a character, though? He’s stoic and brooding as a personality but you just don’t get that from the hardware he carries over his shoulder. It could, therefore, be what defines his battle persona. He fights for his friends so his Buster Sword symbolizes that barrier that stops harm from coming to them. The all-style-no-substance demon hunter Dante is a powerful force you don’t mess with because of his half-human half-devil origins. So why does he need so many weapons all at once? Because fighting is all about style, baby! If you are not dispatching your foes like a rock star, you are clearly doing it wrong.

Razor-sharp edges, beams of deathly light and impenetrable barricades make our favorite heroes. It is therefore important when creating a character to provide them with a fitting set of accessories of doom or justice – depending on purpose and allegiance. In the world of science fiction and fantasy heroes may rise, villains may fall but hardware is forever.

So, my dear extraterrestrials, what would be your choice of weapon if you were a fictional badass? Tell me in the comments or on Twitter @shinnkun.