Dexter season 1 thoughts.

Summary from IMDB.

“During the day, Dexter Morgan is a jovial employee in the Miami Metropolitan Police Department’s crime lab, but his meticulously crafted life masks his true nature. In reality Dexter is a disciplined and murderous psychopath (a self-admitted “monster”), and he slakes his blood lust at night by carefully killing the serial killers he tracks down during the day. Based on the novels (Darkly Dreaming Dexter, Dearly Devoted Dexter and Dexter in the Dark) by Jeff Lindsay.”

I went through a few stages while watching this show. It is a show so dark that at first I rejected it because I thought that was too good to be true, and I figured it was. When I finally got around to watching it, I found it wasn’t exactly as dark as I thought it was, but still very much there. Once I started watching it I still wanted badly to dislike it, but I just couldn’t, I fell in love with the dark humor and compelling story around episode 5.

This is easily the best of what I would call a cop drama, although it is completely different than CSI or the like, in my mind it is still in the same category. I can not even stomach watching those other shows that really only offer a bite sized chunk of life with no over arching story and mostly ludicrous plot lines in individual episodes. I suppose that the overarching story in Dexter makes it more of a drama akin to Lost or Heroes, but its still basically a cop drama deep down.

Once I finally decided that I loved the show, I couldn’t get enough, Kellie and I watched the entire season in 2 nights, one night consisting of watching 7 hours straight. While the season was finishing up I was unsure whether or not I wanted the series to continue. Part of me wished that it would fully wrap up and be a one season show, but another wished for more of this greatness. Here is to hoping that season 2 will be just as good as season 1. I am now looking into reading the books by Jeff Lindsay, and if this good of a show can come from them, they should be really good.

Vanguard Pre-order.

Picked up my pre-order for myself and Kellie for two collector’s editions of Vanguard. With the Fileplanet news that the open beta will start in early January my excitement was so peaked I decided I could not wait any longer. The station sign up is sort of annoying because of the fact that the same station name is used for every SOE game, (EQ, EQ2, SWG etc) so almost all of them are taken, and I no longer remember my old Everquest password and the e-mail I used is no longer available, so I had to spend 20 minutes coming up with a new one that wasn’t atrocious.

On this disc is the Beta itself which one can only stare at the login screen for now, frothing mindlessly in anticipation over the prospect of how soon this game will be released. I jumped on the Vanguard bandwagon way later than I am sure the majority of people have been, (September of 2006) as the game has been in development for over 4 years. Thinking about waiting just these few months until release has been hell, I couldn’t even imagine waiting for years, anyone out there that has, you are very brave.

Another great feature on this disc is the director’s cut video, which is actually quite impressive and is much better than the rest of the videos going around. I haven’t spent every waking moment searching for information about this game, but I have definitely done some research and there was a lot of new info to be learned from this video, I’ve already watched it three times, (I’m not obsessed).

Gitaroo-man Thoughts

I know I am way behind the times on this game, but I was not lucky enough to be able to purchase this game with any sort of relative ease as it has become quite rare. Luckily enough Kellie and I happened to find both this and Rez at a Gamestop while Christmas shopping and she picked them both up for me.

First, a bias. I love beat games, I paid full price for Space Channel 5 on the Dreamcast and didn’t feel ripped off. Hell, I even re-bought it on Playstation 2 when the special edition came out and replayed it. Parappa the Rappa was way too easy, and I don’t have the controller support for many non-standard controller based beat games like Beatmania or Guitar Hero. I was a huge fan of Dance Dance Revolution games, until it was destroyed by the American juggernaut pop market and I couldn’t stomach dancing to that crap. That said, Gitaroo-man is my favorite beat game, easily.

Anyone thats played Parappa or Space Channel 5 knows the tedious efforts of just hitting one button over and over in a beat. Either you have the rhythm and it’s extremely easy, or you don’t and you’ll probably never get it. Something that has always come natural to me, a game with just one button to press at a time like Parappa just blows by and feels so shallow. Dance Dance Revolution at least had the added difficulty of the whole dance pad thing, so while that could be considered moderately the same as Parappa, just doesn’t feel the same. Gitaroo-man is different, with the analog controlling the pitch, along with pressing and holding the buttons in rhythm, the game gets amazingly difficult at times. While it isn’t too hard to not recommend, it isn’t exactly an easy game, which is good because there are only 10 stages, each about 3-5 minutes.

I wish I could have been into this game when it first came out and had some point of reference to its popularity, but as far as I know, it’s probably going to fade into obscurity, which is very unfortunate. It was given a port to the PSP, but I feel the control scheme just doesn’t make for a game made for PSP, the analog nub just doesn’t do the analog stick justice, and its definitely needed for some of the more difficult stages when precision controls are absolutely necessary.

I hate giving scores to a game as I feel it makes things way too biased and it is just an opinion so I will just say its an awesome game, one of my absolute favorite games on Playstation 2, and easily my favorite beat game, trumping even Dance Dance Revolution.

Wii Opera internet channel

Pros: Extremely fast, works with more sites than I thought it would, moderatly intuitive controls, works great with mouse-based flash games.

Cons: Terribly intrusive tool bar takes up almost 20% of the screen, so its impossible to view movies full screen which gets annoying, almost no normal browser functionality besides a basic fowards, backwards and address bar.

Before this goes live I’d like a few things to be done with this. First off, allow the user to get rid of that atrocious tool bar when they don’t want it, make a button on the d-pad get rid of that. Also the scrolling arrows need to go when the user is not using the B button to scroll, when reading text or watching a 80% full screen video they still get in the way.

Overall its a lot better than I thought it would be, when I first heard about it, it was stated that flash wouldn’t even be in until the final version, so I’m glad that although no Flash 8, this is decent enough to be a passable application. Well, the fact that I really don’t need any of these functions on my browser to begin with, thats another story.

World of Warcraft Woes

Does this look familiar to you? If it doesn’t you’ve probably never played WoW for more than a month. This was taken after the priest in a Sunken Temple group allowed Kellie to die. The sad thing is that this is not even uncommon. Please, WoW players just don’t move on to another MMO, please leave any new game I might go to alone. Please, think of my and many others’ sanity.

Cheapass Gamer – CAGCast

“Podcasts” are a beautiful thing when done correctly, although I feel I could probably never do anything as entertaining as a podcast for myself, I feel its fun to be judgmental when another person or group can’t do it good enough to amuse me. I’ve tried to listen or watch to nearly every single video game site podcast, netcast, vidcast, video reviews, whatever it may be and I couldn’t get through a single one of them. Listening to extremely stupid jokes or someones bastardization of the facts they are reading off a cue card is just not what the glory of podcasts are all about.

The Cheapass Gamer CAGCast as its called does exactly what i want it to. A show that is actually real, although there is an outline, there is no script and love it or hate it (I love it) it shows. There is an extreme lack of character in all these other podcasts, when you aren’t passionate about what you do, I don’t think you can have character. When two guys who generally love video games get together and talk, I feel like I’m just chatting with my friends and thats how it should be. The only thing that I’d change to make this podcast perfect instead of great would be a slightly differing opinion of the hosts (they both scoff at Japanese RPGS, which is my favorite genre of game), but otherwise I’m extremely satisfied.

I listened to every single podcast these guys have put out in a year in just over 2 weeks, and when I caught up to the current, I was still frothing for more, and now I await eagerly for the next installment.

I was afraid writing in here would be a waste of time because its only for myself, but it really does relieve stress.

The decline of World of Warcraft.

I haven’t been able to really discuss this with anyone and writing it out for nobody is as good as trying to get a good discussion out on the WoW Forums. When I started playing the game in October of 2005 I felt that it was one of the greatest things known to man. My absolute favorite part of the game was the rested experience, something that to my knowledge had never been done before. When the initial shock of complete sexiness of the game wore off I had already switched servers once. In Everquest the idea of switching servers was almost impossible, the only way to do it was to transfer your character completely naked and with absolutely no gear and no money, and it cost fifty dollars! But I didn’t have to spend money to change this first time, although my character was level 26, this took me less than 2 weeks to obtain, on my very first character with both a part time job and part time school, and a full time girlfriend. While at first I thought this was incredible, I could solo to 60 in a few months and have all the fun I want so soon? Wrong. See, the major problem is that because it is so easy for anyone to pick up and play (which is part of their charm) the hardcore people that make up for the bulk of players that actually stay playing the game for years, are left in the dust.

See Everquest which after 7 years and countless expansions STILL has players that are dedicated to the game, the reason for this is their tailoring to those hardcore people. The people that are being tailored to now by WoW will end up getting bored and jump to the next new hot thing the second it comes out. The numbers for WoW are great, it looks like they are doing incredible things with their numbers, but as soon as something else comes out, I can see the bulk of those people just flocking away to it. The reason that the hardcore people still play right now is that there is nothing else better.

But why are the hardcore players left in the dust? Because its so damn easy to level up the skill level of the average WoW player is now almost non-existent. In Everquest, when you invited a person to a group, you didn’t have to worry if the player was good, if they got to 60/65 they knew how to play their class (unless they were Ebayed, and those characters were found out QUICK and blacklisted because you couldn’t just buy a character and pick up and play so easily like you can with WoW). In WoW, it actually becomes rare for someone that actually knows how to play to be invited into your group. This continues into an extremely asinine and inane support of mediocrity.

Simply playing well equates to “Zomg ur so good at healz” (the vocabulary of the average 12 year old WoW player could and probably will be a rant for another day). What happened to a group saving measure, taking a huge risk with a big payoff, or generally being damn awesome turn into a near impossibility? When every good player, the ones who’ve put in the hours of gaming, who really know what they are doing and how to play, all left the game long ago, in search for better venues to portray their skill, and have a lot more fun and be much more rewarded for it. As for hyping such a game, I feel I know one answer.

Enter Vanguard, goodbye having to rely on WoW, and hello to a reentry to a genre that I thought I’d never play again after WoW. I’ll save my discussions on Vanguard for another day.

Hmmm…

I’ve recently become pretty obsessed with reading blogs, and as such I decided to start this up for a purpose. I want to document my own interests over a period, mostly for myself but I might give this to Kellie if she can stand to be bored to death by it. So I’m just going to write down and link to things that I’m interested in at the time.