Breaking Bad: Season 2

Wow, it's been a while since my last post on season one. Possibly over a year ago? Anyways, when I finally got back into this show, I was now watching it with Kelsi, which meant I had to restart the whole thing from the beginning. Normally, this would be a pain, but... fuck it. This show is great with Walter White possibly being the most fascinating/complex character on television - or maybe out of any medium for that matter. It was a blast working my way back from the series pilot to the end of season two. Hopefully I won't lose my stride and can keep powering through. (No promises.)

As for how season two shaped up, no complaints; all praises. Walt and Jesse's empire is expanding, which, of couse, has its inherent challenges. You've got the Walt's double-lives, Hank tip-toeing around Walt's operation, and a baby's on the way. Then working with an onslaught of new characters to mix things up (Odenkirk as Saul the lawyer or Gus, the druglord-fastfood operator) gives the show is complexity and thrilling suspense I've come to be addicted to. I think the best episode of the season is (forgive me, but I forget the episode name - nor do I care to look it up) the one where Walt and Jesse go on their big meth cooking trip and get stranded in the middle-of-nowhere. Not only was chalked full of suspense, but you get one of those rare moments where Walt uses his wits to get out of a jam - got to say, I wish you saw more of Walt's genius shine through; it's one of his last admiral qualities. Being the controversial character he is - an anti-hero, if you will - I cherish the moments where I can actually like him. But that quickly gets trumped by the time Walt continues on with his lies upon lies upon lies. 

I feel as though most everyone but me is up to date on this show, so spoilers shouldn't be a problem. The ending to the season is crazy. Skyler has left Walt. Jesse's in complete depression after that Don't Trust the B--- girl bites the dust. (Oh, I also have to agree with the praise Stan mentioned in my season one post for Aaron Paul's performance as Jesse this season. Outstanding.) Basically, the whole show is left in such disarray that I cannot even begin to imagine where the show could be headed in the third season. 

Only one way to figure that out...

The Darkness

#3 from Trev. I told you I'd get through these games! The Darkness was a title I had very little interest in, but FPSes tend to be the easiest loggings so I had no reservations about giving this a shot. And I'm glad I did! While The Darkness is hardly a classic, it was a fun shooter that did enough different from its brethren to keep me interested for its 8 hours or so- mainly two things: a major emphasis on story, and some actual interesting powers in addition to the tried and true FPS mechanics. I mean, not since Half-Life 2 have I seen a non-RPG FPS go to such great lengths to actually be "about" something rather than just running from one place to the next and kill everyone in your way. Protagonist Jackie Estacado travels back and forth through the seediest streets of New York chasing and being chased by members of his Uncle's mafia, seeking vengeance for his dead girlfriend, but there's a bizarre fantasy subplot in which Jackie comes to term with "the Darkness"- a sort of dark spirit that takes over his body whether he wants it or not that gives him superpowers but is also driving him nuts. The Darkness gives Jackie the series' iconic dueling-anaconda limbs as you can see on the box. Gameplay involves basic FPS controls in addition to using the snake-like appendages which can shoot out black holes, slide into small crevices, and devour the hearts of the enemies unfortunate enough to run into Jackie Estacado on a darkness-bender. It all came together well enough for me to enjoy, and I'll probably check out the sequel which came out earlier this year for completion's sake, but there's probably no need to go out of your way to play this one.

11/22/63

My third and probably final Stephen King book of the year, 11/22/63 was a concept that sounded a little too stupid to work properly- basically a modern day English teacher discovers a way to time travel, and uses his knowledge of the past to try to stop the Kennedy assassination. Try not to roll your eyes. Fortunately this is Stephen King, a schlock writer for sure but a guy whose books I can't seem to get enough of lately, so I ended up predictably being a fan of this one. Just like 2009's Under the Dome had a plot that seemed easy to poke holes in at first, only for these would-be plot holes to be completely addressed in the book, 11/22/63 took a story that could have been flubbed badly by other authors and made it a great read. It easn't perfect- while some might find the story a little bloated as there's a heavy focus on the protagonist adjusting to life in the 50's and 60's and not much action, I actually found these to be my favorite parts and instead never really got quite into the "we've got to save Kennedy!" angle. Something about the time-traveling fish out of water making money from gambling and trying to eke out a normal life while hiding the fact that he won't be born for another decade really interested me, and I (as well as the main character) kept thinking that he should just let history unfold as it should and enjoy his newfound happiness in the past. Although I suppose if there's a significant moment in history that could have easily been changed by a single person, the Kennedy assassination is a big one. Anyway even though I have It in my backlog, I'll probably hold off from King for now and try to make a dent in some of my harder to digest books. My video game backlog has been flying by, but I should probably start hacking away at my booklog a bit more.

Paper Mario Sticker Star

I have long been a fan of the Paper Mario series so, obviously, I purchased this game on release day. It took me a little over two weeks and 25 hours of game play but I finally finished it. I wasn't sure how the series would translate to a  3DS title but I was pretty happy. The length was good for a DS game, and I still have a bit more to go if I want to be a completionist.

The game play was different from any other game in the series so far but that isn't unusual. The game relied on a turn based fighting system where you use stickers that you find on walls as attacks. The boot sticker for example gives you a stomp attack, the hammer a swing attack. Inside the sticker system there are also levels of sticker such as the shiny sticker and the flashy sticker and the big stickers. Also there are stickers that reveal parts of the level, stickers that open secret doors and many more. To be honest I was impressed how well they worked in this sticker system without being cheesy or annoying.

If you have a 3DS and like puzzle style Mario games and stickers then perhaps this is the game for you.

Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater 3D

I had long assumed that the third title in the Metal Gear Solid series, Snake Eater, was going to be a jarring change from the series I knew- it takes places in the 60s? The main character may or may not actually be Snake? You have to run around in the jungle and periodcially stop to hunt and eat? The thing is, the jarring change in the series actually already happened in Metal Gear Solid's second entry- trading in the original's Arctic setting for an oil rig, playing as Raiden for the most part, and a story that focused on robots where even the Colonel couldn't be trusted? After that bonkers piece of post-modern art, Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater (I played the new 3DS version, more on that later) felt oddly enough like a return to form. You play a character who is the same as the original Snake in every way, despite happening 40 years or so before the first game; a majority of the game involves sneaking around military bases again; and finally, gone is the ridiculously over-the-top plot, replaced with a familiarly over-the-top plot involving the Cold War and nuclear warheads and double-crossing spies. And it is awesome. The new gameplay additions like hunting and gathering food, or repairing wounds rather than itemized health replenishers, felt naturally integrated into the game and never got in the way. Sneaking around as Snake is as fun as ever, as it felt like there was even more emphasis on stealth in Snake Eater than previous installments- I think I ended up with a body count of maybe a dozen or so. The boss fights are stellar too, complete with a sniper mission in "The End" that rivals Sniper Wolf from MGS. This was also the first game I've ever beaten in full 3-D, and while it could have a dizzying effect if I didn't take my eyes off the screen for more than ten minutes at a time, it felt well worth it. The game looks incredible for a handheld and had a few new features thrown in just because- finding random Yoshi dolls to shoot for instance may have been pointless, but I always enjoyed stumbling upon them. Overall this feels like the true sequel (prequel) to Metal Gear Solid after an interesting but very weird stumble in Metal Gear Solid 2, and I'm glad to be back on the bandwagon. I'm sure copies of the fourth game must be super-cheap by now, so I should be finishing the main series of Metal Gear Solid soon.

Parks and Recreation: Season 4

Nothing gold can stay, and to compare this fourth season of Parks and Recreation to the bar set by the previous two - easily two of the best single seasons of a comedy series that I've ever seen - is probably unfair. But it's also only natural, and when this season ended last May, I couldn't help but feel just slightly disappointed by the inevitable dip in quality. It was hard to place exactly what went wrong. Too little direction for too many characters? Character gags going just a bit too far over the top? Character inconsistencies that retroactively cheapen older episodes by rendering them contradictory to these newer ones? I couldn't quite place it, but for whatever reason, Season 4 just didn't live up to Seasons 2 and 3 when all was said and done.

Or so I thought. After re-watching it over the course of the past few days, I really enjoyed Season 4. You know what the problem was? The season ends with just a few too many episodes about Leslie running for office. It's a weak-on-laughs story arc that just kind of dominates the season a tad too much in its waning episodes. Seriously, in hindsight that's the only reason I was even slightly down on Parks and Rec last May. So, no, the season wasn't quite as good as the previous two, but it also wasn't a horrible train wreck or the clear-cut beginning of an irreversible decline (see: The Office, also in Season 4).

I don't often rummage through submenus on DVD sets for each and every morsel of bonus content, but that's exactly what I did here. I was rewarded with several webisodes of Andy and April's Grand Canyon trip, a legitimately great gag reel, several featurettes, and Ron Swanson chainsawing a bunch of wood. Gotta love it.

Kameo: Elements of Power

Here's the second installment from what is sure to be a long-running series in my backlog, "Games from Trev". This particular one is Kameo: Elements of Power and was one of the few XBox 360 launch titles I had any interest in (another launch title will be a future "Game from Trev"). It's made by Rare, who have given us classics like the Donkey Kong and Perfect Dark series, but they also made shit like Grabbed by the Ghoulies so I wasn't sure what to expect. Kameo was a little bit of a Zelda clone- a third person action/adventure style game where you play as an elf and go into places like the "Water Dungeon" and the "Ice Temple". The only real difference was that instead of acquiring items, you acquire the titular "Elements of Power", which are basically just different monsters protagonist Kameo can transform into and use their abilities- a dragon lets you shoot fire, the ice-man lets you walk on ice, shit like that. Look, I'm having a hard time writing this entry because Kameo was just not an inspired game. It's not a bad game by any stretch, but the best compliment I can give it is that it's consistently decent- I was never really frustrated, but I also never reached a point where I thought "this is a great game." Apparently plans for a sequel were scrapped, so I can now safely forget about this mostly forgettable game.

Wizorb

Slick retro design

brings a lot of flavor to

this great Breakout clone.

The Big Trip Up Yonder

I read this short story very shortly after reading 2BR02B and I realized right away that I may have read these stories in the wrong order. This story was a lot like the aforementioned except that instead of people controlling the living forever problem with strict birth regulation there seems to be no regulation. This story is about a family living in a small apartment waiting for the oldest to die so that they can inherit the will except that he keeps taking his magic serum that allows him to live indefinitely and hoard his money over the rest. I thought 2BR02B was way better.

2BR02B

(Some Spoilers Contained within, if you don't want it spoiled read it first it is really short!)

A while back I was browsing the Amazon market on my Kindle Fire and I stumbled upon the free book section. In there I found two short stories by Kurt Vonnegut 2BR02B and The Big Trip Up Yonder. Since they were free I did not hesitate in downloading both of them. The other day I opened up my Kindle, for what seemed like the first time in forever, and I decided to read the first of the two short stories, 2BR02B (in this case the "0" is pronounced Naught).

This short story tells of a future where aging no longer exists. Everyone in this universe takes a miracle serum and it allows them to live forever. The caveat to this longevity is that nobody is allowed to have children without finding someone who is willing to die so that the net population remains constant. This trade off it appears has become unnecessary because with everyone living so long the population had blown up to unsustainable proportions.

The dilemma in the short story is that there is a man who has decided to have a child and has gone through the appropriate measures, finding someone willing to die so that he can bring his child into the world. Everything seems to be in place until the father to be learns that his wife is having, not one but, three children. I wont spoil any more. Read it it is good.

Halo 4

We're all playing it... just a matter of time before we all post it. I'm guessing we just classified this game as complete after we've finished the campaign mode, regardless of multiplayer. Yes? Well, here's my take on the new storyline.

So the franchise is now in the hands of Microsoft, and oh how it shows. Monetarily, speaking.  For those that have at least started the campaign, you'll notice its stunning opening movie. It looks like Microsoft has dumped a shit ton of money into this guy sprucing up the graphics - which were never dull to begin with - and are turning it into something more of feature film. I mean, after all the talk of this guy being adapted to the big screen (Peter Jackson once attached to it) I think Microsoft sought to give it's audience something a little more to appreciate along those lines. 

Aside from the improved graphics, there's the storyline. In each Halo the campaign's plot has been beefed up more and more. I cannot really recall each game's story precisely - forgive, but it's been a while since I've even played the first one. The last one had something to do with the Covenant using their religious institutions to gain power over the Halo systems (which turned out to be a big weapon systems - I think?). Regardless, I think this demonstrates that the Halo stories were always a bit convoluted. I'm sure there are many out there who would strongly disagree with me seeing as this source material has generated a shit ton of spin-off novels and fan fiction. To each their own. 

Point is, while the game's storyline still lingers in that convoluted, overwhelming world, they manage to reel it back in a bit here while introducing two new features to the plot. First, a villain - The Didact - and a love story between Cortana and Master Chief. I won't ruin these bits for any of you. Let's just say they're interesting (not neccessarily good or bad... just interesting). The love story also brings up a lot of points on whether MC and Cortana are more human than robot (or visa-versa). The last scene in the game shows MC back at headquarters and being stripped of his armor. The screen cuts black just as his helmet comes off. Man? Robot? Man-robot? Or perhaps a chick with a real deep voice? You don't know... for now.

For the gameplay... everything is still the same. Yeah, you got a new series of magnetic weapons, but it's all the same shit. I guess my real disappointment in the gameplay comes down to the very last scene in the film... er, game. Every Halo game has ended with MC riding out on a Warthog, racing the clock, trying to make it of an exploding planet. This one has none of that. Inside, the game goes all Call of Duty where you respond to a couple of quick-time commands (no very interesting or challenging ones mind you) and the game is done. If you're going pull off a cinematic ending, then just make it into a movie sequence. Fuck trying to make it interactive, especially if the effort to do so involves quick-time commands. As you can tell by now, I'm not a fan of them. "Push the joystick up to crawl. Crawl faster!" No tention mounting. No skill needed. Just a waste. Bah...

Now that I've got that blunder out of my system, I have to say Halo 4 is a great addition to the series and it seems that Microsoft will be able to carry the franchise on with some integrity. But, then again, you're all playing this already, so why even bother to critique? You know it's good. I know it's good. What a waste of a post.


Meh... Happy Black Friday you ungrateful bastards. 

Community: Season 2

I hate how I always begin to draft a post, get a sentence into it, then walk away from it all for a  whole week. Going to try and stop that.

Anywho... got through season two - already halfway through season three. I'm in love with this show. And I can't explain how much I enjoyed them bringing back the paintball-theme for the season finale. Going western then Star Wars. A blast! However, I still don't know how to comment on this show other than "it's good!" Most time, I finish some material on my backlist and immediately there are some interesting thoughts that can be constructed. Some insight or questions I can't wait to start throwing out there. On this... I got nothing other than my previous statement. "It's good!"

I guess this show just goes up there as one of those paradoxes in TV Land where good shows fail and bad shows prevail. I mean, maybe there's still I giant audience for this show... they just haven't tuned in yet (similar to me up until maybe a month ago). I don't think it's because the show was poorly marketed or advertised. I knew about it. Known about it since it first came on the air. Hell, I constantly passed by stacks of these free DVDs in the storage closets around my office. Still, I had no interest in watching them. There's just so much crap out there to fill my time, I'm honestly turned off to watching anything new. For fuck sake, I'm still cycling through The Simpsons (seasons 3 - 13) all the time! Maybe throwing on a episode or two every night before bed... yet I won't take the time to dip my toe into some uncharted waters. 

Clearly, this is a wake-up call. 

Although I'm strongly glued to my routines - aka, my nightly Simpsons fix - I'll do my best to venture out and give some other shows a go. Fuck, maybe even a Hulu original series (always been meaning to catch an episode of Misfits - teenagers with lack-luster superpowers). For now, though, I'll be powering through Community, getting all caught up for Season 4 later this winter. 

Nintendo Land

With a new generation on games out there, it's time for BTown to come back to the full glory of the BackBlog. But this time, I'm going to mix my hate of writing with the love of poetry to get: REVIEW HAIKUS!

Not strongest first game;

shows off technology well.

Fun to play with friends.

How I Met Your Mother: Season 7

I watched the seventh season of How I Met Your Mother the same way I watched the first four: on DVD in a few days time well after it had aired on television. And, probably not coincidentally, I enjoyed it a lot more than either the fifth or the sixth season, both of which I watched at least partially live on TV as they unfolded. What I said in my last post about this show - "this show works best when devoured on DVD rather than seen live, twenty minutes a week at a time" - definitely seems to ring true. But then, perhaps I've also just come to accept that this show in its present form is not and could not possibly be the same show that it was in those first couple of seasons. Seven years is the better part of a decade, and for a scripted network TV series it's nearly an eternity. (It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, as a comparison, is also currently airing its eighth season and feeling a bit long in the tooth, and yet due to the shortened cable season format it has only aired about half as many episodes as this one.) But How I Met Your Mother at least seems fully aware that it's gotten well into its twilight years at this point, and whether the final season is the one currently airing or a possible ninth one, it's pretty clear that we're finally getting very close to learning the identity of Ted's future wife. I've heard people complain that the show is just dragging its feet at this point, and that they're only still watching it to find out who the mother is. I want to call bullshit on that, though. If all you care about is who the mother ends up being, why not just read about it after the finale? Anyone still watching this show, either as appointment viewing or with more of an on-and-off open relationship like my own, is doing so because it's still ultimately a pretty entertaining show with mostly endearing characters. Some episodes fall flatter than others, but most are at least willing to get a little experimental with the traditional episodic story-telling format, and for that much I commend the aging sitcom; it may not be as consistently funny as several other shows I watch, but it's still putting in a hell of an effort, especially for a CBS comedy with a laugh track. And in spite of several groan-inducing revelations and plot developments - revisiting the same old love triangles, or introducing yet another stunt-casted guest star for a short arc as someone's short-term significant other, for instance - the overall season was still enjoyable and rarely frustrating the way the last few have been. My only concern at this point is whether or not the uncertain time table - seriously, will there be eight seasons or nine? - will end up complicating the final stretch of episodes and the writers' ability to properly pace out decent closing arcs for all five main characters. After eight (or nine) years of pretty good television, I'd hate to see them botch the landing.

Cain

I was a bit too hard on Saramago in my post about his novel Blindness. I think in hindsight that I was just never able to really embrace the story itself, and used Saramago's run-on-sentence-heavy quotation-mark-less style as a scapegoat for my displeasure. Knowing Sweeney was a big fan of the Portuguese author, and knowing that my tastes and Sweeney's don't usually differ so drastically, I decided to give Saramago another shot. Cain, a quick little story mostly about all the unspeakable horrors wrought by God in the Old Testament, and also the late Saramago's final novel, seemed like a perfect reentry point. And it was. While I still struggled at times to understand, for instance, which characters were speaking which sentences during several scenes of dialogue, I wasn't nearly as lost or confused as I was in Blindness. Perhaps the use of familiar Bible characters and stories helped with the clarity, or maybe Blindness - in which all of the characters are blind - was just going to be hazy regardless of grammatical stylings. Either way, while I really didn't enjoy Blindness, I have to say I was thoroughly entertained and amused by Cain. The premise is pretty simple. In the Bible, after Cain kills his younger brother Abel, God banishes him to spend his life as a "restless wanderer." This is the last time Cain is mentioned in the holy book itself, way back in the fourth chapter of Genesis. Saramago decides to get a little creative and have Cain's "restless wandering" bring him all over the map witnessing all of the vengeful fury and havoc God wreaks on mankind, from the destruction of the Tower of Babel to the utter ruin of Job to the massacre of all the men, women, and children in cities at war with Israel to Abraham being told to murder his own son to prove his love to God. The callous and cruel depiction of God reminded me at least a little bit of Joseph Heller's God Knows, but here it was much more curt, cutting deeper and more sharply while simultaneously being far more blunt. (Mixed metaphors!) The God in God Knows was humanlike, subject to mood swings and imperfect logic; the God in Cain is just kind of a straight up dick. Cain's travels include abrupt shifts in time between eras, which added a very Slaughterhouse-Five-ish feel to the story. This flexible temporal continuity also allows the book to end with Noah's ark, something that happens really early on in the Bible, and unquestionably God's most aggressive act in the Bible, in which the world is flooded and all men, save for Noah and his family, are drowned. Now, it's here at the ending where the book became "pretty good" instead of just an often darkly funny but largely pointless trip through the devastation of the Old Testament; I won't spoil anything specific, but let's just say that up until this point Saramago has not taken any creative liberties to ultimately change or redirect the course of biblical history, and he certainly does so here. At any rate, I'm glad I read another Saramago book and I'll likely read a few more before I'm done. Sween, any recommendations?

Waltz with Bashir

Amazon.com recommended this for me after I purchased Persepolis a couple of months ago. And why not? Both movies are foreign language films that took place in war-torn parts of the Middle East in the 1980s, and both were animated with a graphic novel art style. The Internet seemed to be abuzz with acclaim for this one, so I ended up biting on Amazon's bait and buying Waltz with Bashir a little while back. Boy, am I glad I did. Waltz with Bashir is unlike anything else I've ever seen, and of course I mean that in a good way. The film is a semi-autobiographical documentary of sorts; filmmaker Ari Folman was part of the Israeli army that invaded Lebanon in 1982 and twenty years later, he's struggling to remember any details of the war itself or a gruesome massacre that he partially witnessed. So he goes off and interviews several of his old brothers-in-arms and through their accounts of the war he is able to fill in the gaps enough to recreate a pretty robust picture of what the war was like. These testimonials form the bulk of what is essentially a documentary film rendered entirely through Adobe Flash animation.

For a film that depicted a subject as gruesome as modern urban warfare, I have to say, this was stunningly beautiful. The animation was smooth and fluid and the comic book-style line drawings were sharp, crisp, and detailed. To provide an idea, here's a clip from about midway through the movie, depicting a montage of the initial invasion set to an original song made specifically for the film which, frankly, I absolutely love:

The film is quick but powerful, and beautiful but haunting. Its final minute or two consists simply of real life footage of the aftermath of the massacre, and this very real imagery of wailing mothers and piles of corpses serves to drive the point home that although what you've just seen was an animated feature, the events depicted in it were all too real.

Infamous 2

In my post a year and a half ago on the original Infamous game, I offered plenty of praise but lamented that the game seemed to lack its own identity. It combined GTA sandbox elements, a BioShock-like morality system and an ability leveling system much like those in many other Western RPGs, and a fluid movement and combat system that rivaled Prince of Persia's gameplay in terms of pure fun. I want to amend my stance on both that game and this one and just give both games two huge thumbs up and a hearty recommendation. Sometimes it can be tough to make a snap judgment on a game, and only in the many months that followed my completion of Infamous did it really sink in just how complete and excellent the game was. The fact that it had combined so many elements of so many other great games, while managing to tell one of the better stories I can ever remember seeing in a video game? Huge fucking kudos from me.

For better or for worse, Infamous 2 hasn't really changed much, gameplay-wise, from its predecessor. It takes place in a New Orleans-like city called "New Marais" (rather than the NYC-like city in the first game, "Empire City") and picks up more or less right where the first game left off. That first game ends with a pretty substantial dangling jump-off point for a sequel, and to give the development team credit, this game doesn't try to beat around the bush or sidestep its way to the point; there's an enormous and horribly destructive creature making its way don the cost to New Marais, and you've got to collect five or six "blast cores" in order to super-charge your electric powers to the point where you can take on "the Beast." A small array of other characters exist to help or hinder your progress, including your old pal Zeke from the first game. Zeke makes a surprising turn in the final third of the game as a source of emotional depth, but I'll say no more out of respect for spoilers and such.

Actually, I will say a little more. It seems like the general idea these days in gaming is that if an original game is good enough to yield a sequel, the sequel will also end up leading into a sequel of its own, because who doesn't love a good trilogy? But the way Infamous 2 ends, I mean, I have no idea how they'd make an Infamous 3. I say this particularly because there are two possible endings - depending on whether you've been good or evil while playing the game - and they are drastically different. Like, in the first Infamous, whether you were a dick or an angel, the game's endpoint was the same. Here? Not by a long shot. For what it's worth, I went hardcore evil in the first game, but decided to change my tone in the second. This little redemption arc was actually observed by NPCs commenting on my actions; my save data from Infamous still existed on my PS3, and therefore my reputation preceded me into New Marais, which I thought was a pretty cool touch.

A few final scattered thoughts:

• As I said, the story both here and in the first game was excellent. This one felt a lot weaker for the majority of the game, but in the proverbial eleventh hour it rapidly grew into something far greater than it had been up until then, giving emotional depth and deeper characterization where it was needed. I can't currently say which game had the better story; the first game's was better for longer, but the second game's ending was, well, pretty beautiful. No final decision on this one yet.
• I want to underline how much fun this game was to play. Not only did I end up doing the vast majority of all available side missions - something I rarely have the time and effort to do here in the age of backlog-clearing - but I also found myself just slightly disappointed when the final mission rolled around. "Aww, already?" isn't a sentiment I usually feel when games end, but this one - despite taking me a solid twelve or fifteen hours to beat - elicited that very reaction.
• I'll let one of my favorite game reviewers, "Yahtzee," sum it up: "A bad sandbox is one where you speed disinterestedly from plot mission to plot mission like the London Underground, but a good sandbox makes you go, 'Well, there's the next story mission, but, ooh, collectibles! Ooh, random encounters! Ooh, an intact thing!' A good sandbox is one where you can mess around for hours after making the hollow promise to yourself you'll stop any minute now." Took the words right out of my mouth; that's exactly how I felt while playing Infamous 2.
• Again, I'm really not sure if there'll be an Infamous 3. There is, however, a DLC game on PlayStation Network that takes place during Infamous 2, in which Cole has been bitten by a vampire and has to, well, take on vampires, I guess. Seems a bit silly and weak, and almost like it undercuts the tone of the rest of the series, but if I've still got an itch to play some Infamous a year from now, I'm sure it could see some playing time.

Trauma Center: Under the Knife

My longest-tenured video game in my backloggery, Trauma Center: Under the Knife had been waiting for years to be beaten. I never thought playing the game would be a hassle or anything- something about the anime-flavored simulation covering a job that doesn't get used much in games seemed to be on the same wavelength as Phoenix Wright, and I was looking forward to finally getting around to this. While Phoenix is incredibly story-heavy while remaining mostly light-hearted, Trauma Center was serious as a heart attack and survives on the strength of its gameplay alone. Sure, there's a story running along here as you follow new surgeon Derek Stiles on his way to becoming a master surgeon, but it's all just sugarcoating the core of the gameplay- lots and lots of difficult surgeries. You have ten different tools to cut your patient open, drain infected areas, suture wounds, patch them up, whatever. Trauma Center feels perfectly suited for the DS as you can quickly tap away with the utmost precision- I can't imagine trying to complete some of these surgeries on a Wii as Stan did, because later levels must have taken me a dozen attempts to beat. It also makes for a good "pick-up and play" style game that works so well on the DS, as no single segment takes more than ten minutes to beat- unless of course, you have to retry multiple times. I am slightly interested in the sequel to this game, but after that the third game in the series is Wii-only, so we'll see if I stick around to play the whole series.

Jailbird

With my quest through Vonnegut's fourteen novels dwindled all the way down to two, I recently began to read Jailbird, the only novel of his not yet to have received a post on this blog by someone or other. I was apprehensive going in; the back cover summary made reference to the story being about a fictional Nixon administration nobody who was convicted in the Watergate cover-up. I don't know why - likely because I was born fifteen years later, I'd guess - but I've just never been able to get passionate one way or the other about Nixon and Watergate, and reflections on the saga just kind of bore me. But this was a book written in 1979, so I suppose the issue was still contemporary when Vonnegut chose to pen his ninth novel. My fears for my prospects of enjoying the book were not assuaged by a forty-page prologue from the author himself, describing events both real and fictional to come out of the 20th century labor movements that the story would at some point visit. But once the narrative began to flow a bit, and the flawed protagonist began to recount his life story from a prison cell, Jailbird began to creep up from the bottom of my ranked list of Vonnegut's novels. In his formulaic but effective way, Vonnegut painted a picture of a flawed man whose life turned out the way it did largely because of chance and fate rather than any actions, positive or negative, taken by the man himself. The book takes a few twists and turns before arriving at a melancholy conclusion, not unlike Mother Night, and wound up being a fairly entertaining read. The main character, Walter F. Starbuck, is one of Vonnegut's most sympathetic characters, and although the plot winds on and off of certain topics, most of the individual chapters were either funny, moving, or touching in some way. The emotional climax of the book came when Vonnegut broke from the main story itself simply to revisit the tragic fates of Sacco and Vanzetti, revisiting their executions via electric chair in that special stark, poetic way that only Vonnegut can. This book was a bit of a pleasant surprise for me, but I really shouldn't have been that surprised that I enjoyed it; Vonnegut is one of my favorite authors - perhaps my absolute favorite - of all time, and he gave himself an "A" for the effort in retrospect when grading his own bibliography late in his career. At any rate, I'm down to just one more Vonnegut novel. I've been saving it for last, because it was the first Vonnegut novel posted to the blog at all, way back in August of 2009 by Sween: Galápagos.

Community: Season 1

I'm must thank you Stan for introducing me to this gem. After only a week, Kelsi and I have manage to down the first season of Community - and are well on our way to completing the second. This show is great, and it really pains me that it's planned to end after they air the fourth season this spring (at least from what Stan has told me). About a year ago, I read a WIRED article centered around the show's creator, Dan Harmon's, writing techniques. Having not seen the show at the time, the article really had no appeal, but now I have to give him credit for his well-developed, balanced stories and characters. 

As fun as it is to watch, I'm at a loss on how to break down what it is that's so entertaining about it. I suppose, like most sit-coms, it's a combination of the writing and cast's chemistry with one another. I am excited to start revisiting the season with commentary mixed in. It's of no surprise at this point that there's been tension between Chevy Chase and Harmon. 

Check out this video to listen to Chevy's infamous voicemail to Harmon following a conflict that occurred one day on the set... Priceless.

As Stan has already mentioned to me, that cast makes note of how Chevy will leave early  from shooting and be missing from scenes here and there. Just some bickering that I hope will be fun to get into. 

And not to end on a bad note about Chevy, but he - along with the rest of the cast -  are all great. The show is takes the top spot for best prime time sit-coms on TV right now (sorry, but Parks & Recreation and 30 Rock are really losing me). I'm just about finished with the second season. More to follow. 

WWF: The Best of Raw vol. 1 & 2

Oh yeah, that's right. Trev got me this WWF (pre-WWE!) retrospective DVD last year for Secret Santa based solely on the fact that Mankind looks like a maniac on the cover. Well done Trev! On my day off today I finished up the end of disc 1 (which had been partially watched at said Secret Santa event) and the entirety of the second disc to complete the nostalgia trip he intended for me so many months ago. Three storylines dominated the two-disc set, which come as no surprise as they were the three I remember most vividly from pro wrestling in 1998 and 1999- the rise of D-Generation X, the rivalry between The Rock and Mankind, and finally Stone Cold Steve Austin vs. Vince McMahon and the rest of his Corporate Ministry. It was fun reliving some of the memorable moments from these game-changing storylines and discovering some events for the first time- I remember Austin spraying down the Corporation with a beer truck, for instance, but must have completely forgot the time he filled McMahon's car with cement, or the time he got 'thrown off of a bridge' by The Rock. While you could probably catch up on what happened through a series of Youtube clips today, I appreciated the mix of matches, mic segments, and commentary that kept things moving. On the other hand, there were a few additional clips thrown in at random that strain the credibility of the 'Best of Raw' title- did I really need to see the entirety of Mark Henry's first date with Chyna? Or how about a few meaningless minutes of Billy Gunn wrestling the Big Bossman? I was happy however to see Chris Jericho's introduction, which was just as cool a moment as I remember it- he had been hyped up for weeks, with Jericho finally showing up the cheers, and quickly turning the crowd against him by making fun of them all and receiving a verbal beat-down from The Rock. Seriously, The Rock was all over these DVDs. Anyway, it was fun to watch how ridiculous this show could get at times ("It was me, Austin! It was me the whole time!"), so I suppose I'm now ready for Wrestlemania next spring. YES!