Blog O’ Obscurity

Like I said in a previous post, I have a tendency to hear about some great show half-way through the season and then end up catching all the episodes online. Last year I watched the first two and a half seasons of Lost online because I’d heard so many good things. This summer I watched the first season of Heroes online. Monday I caught the first episode of the second season of Heroes, and I was kind of disappointed.

Spoilers below if you don’t like reading those type of things.

Some of these ongoing dramatic shows like Heroes and Lost sometimes seem to suffer from a kind of soap opera syndrome. People do a lot of talking and a few episodes go by and you realize that nothing has actually happened. Lost sometimes falls into this in the middle of the season, and I got that feeling from the first new episode of Heroes. At the finale last season a lot of stuff happened, but the premiere seemed to undo most of it. Half of the people that died are now back alive somewhere. Also, the new people that were introduced managed to go through the entire premiere without actually doing anything. Maybe it’s just because there are so many characters now, when last year the characters were introduced slowly and were each able to accomplish something almost every episode. Or maybe the writer’s are running out of ideas and just want to drag this thing out.

I got hooked last year with ‘Dexter‘ and can’t wait for the new season to start on Sunday. That series has half the episodes of other popular series, but things stay interesting because it doesn’t have a sprawling cast and something happens every week.

Still looking forward to “A Song of Ice and Fire” series on HBO if it ever gets made.

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Dean Koontz’s ‘Cold Fire‘ centers on the incredible talents of Jim Ironheart. Somehow Jim can tell when someone is going to die. He seems to have no control over this power. He just gets feelings that he needs to be in certain places at certain times to save some stranger from death. A reporter named Holly Thorn soon begins to suspect his involvement in multiple cases. Each one involves a mysterious stranger saving someone from certain death. Jim has never been too clear on what guides him to saving certain people. He just believes that it’s a higher power. Holly begins to suspect that something else is guiding Jim. What is certain is that there is another power, separate from the benevolent force guiding Jim to save others. This other power is dangerous and wants to prevent Jim and Holly from discovering the truth.

‘Cold Fire‘, like Stephen King’s ‘Blaze’, is told from a limited perspective, but unlike King’s work, this novel suffers from the limitation. Not only are Jim and Holly the only perspectives used, they’re almost the only characters in the entire book. I was very disappointed to see a promising premise devolve into cheap psychology. The idea of a man who is forced to travel the world because a voice in his head demands that he save people’s lives is an very interesting one. That got me hooked. The evolution of an interesting idea into a pedestrian one was very disappointing, especially with the lengthy explanation of every detail that composed the conclusion of the story.

So, for future reference, if you’re going to take a cool idea and start explaining it, make sure that your explanation is cool too.

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I just finished reading (I guess ‘listening’ would be a more appropriate term, since they were audiobooks) ‘Blaze: A Novel‘ by Stephen King and Dean Koontz’s ‘Cold Fire’. Both books are fairly representative of each author’s work, but both also seem to be told from a fairly unique perspective.

King’s novel was released as one of the “Bachman” books that had been sitting in a shorter format, forgotten for decades before King rediscovered, rewrote, and published it. The novel is told almost exclusively from the perspective of Blaze, a hulking man with a dented forehead that has left with a somewhat diminished mental capacity. Blaze and his partner, George, are in the process of planning the ‘one, last, big score’. In this case the crime they are planning is the kidnapping and ransom of the infant grandchild of local millionaires. George is smarter, older, and more pessimistic than Blaze, but as the story unfolds, we also discover that he’s dead. The question as to whether George exists solely in Blaze’s head or in a supernatural form that guides Blaze’s crimes is constantly raised throughout the book.

The interesting perspective that this book takes is that there is essentially only one character. George is around and constantly talks with Blaze, but he’s not physically there. If this story is ever filmed, Blaze would be the only character that you see for most of the running time. Regardless, the story never suffers from this limitation. It occasionally moves through flashbacks, and these detours let us see more and more of Blaze’s tragic life. The end seems inevitable but is never strained like some of King’s other works. King sometimes seems to get a great idea for a story, but writes himself into a corner. His endings sometimes bare the scars of these literary cul-de-sacs as he struggles to wrap things up at the end. Books like ‘It’, ‘Salem’s Lot’, ‘The Shining’, and ‘Blaze‘ show King at his best throughout the entire novel. However, books like ‘The Stand’, ‘The Dark Tower’, and others leave me thinking that I liked the setup but wished the ending had been different. Kind of like a joke with a great setup, but a punchline that’s just not funny. In any case this is one of Stephen King’s stronger novels, exploring the tragedy of one man’s life.

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I’ve been spending the week trying to catch as many series premiers as I can. I’m tired of hearing about a show being great after half a season and having to watch the episodes online to catch up. This way, at least I’ve seen the first of everything to get the idea. Take ‘Chuck’ for example. How to describe this one… not really comedy, definetly not drama - more like action packed humorous series. I think this one will have to improve for me to watch any more because it definitely had its funny moments but the action was a bit forced. My wife and I watched NCIS on Tuesday. It’s never been a great show, but it’s kind of fun. We had totally different reactions to the episode though because I had seen last year’s lead-up and she had not. So on the reveal that Tony’s girlfriend’s father was the director’s arch-nemesis, I was shocked, while she had no reaction at all.

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Call me a geek, but I do find the D&D motivational poster spoofs very funny. I made a poster that combined the nine D&D alignments for my brother.

Lawful good - Superman
Lawful neutral - Judge Dredd
Lawful evil - Emporer Palpatine
Neutral good - Batman
True neutral - Ash
Neutral evil - Darth Vader
Chaotic good - Minsk
Chaotic neutral - Jack Torrance
Chaotic evil - Norman Bates

Now, you may disagree with the alignment of one or a few of those characters, and you may think of better examples of the alignments. However, if you recognize the reference of all nine of those characters, you truly are a geek and a master of obscurity.

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So I’m sitting in a “Computer Training Center” trying to stay busy while everyone around me learns more about the computer systems and programs. On the walls around me are a series of those ridiculous inspirational posters.

‘Persevere’ shows a runner ‘persevering’ up a hill with a quote about going the extra mile.

‘Goals’ is combined with a foggy photo of the Golden Gate bridge with some blurb about goals being bridges. Sublte.

‘Risk’ shows a schooner sailing around icebergs, ‘Courage,’ a windsurfer under a giant wave, and ‘Success’ is compared with a canoe.

Really? A canoe? How exactly is success a canoe.

My guess is the development team for these posters had the following conversation:

“We still need a photo for ‘Success’?
“What about the canoe photo?”
“I don’t know.”
“It’s a great photo. There’s a lake and a sunset and a canoe.”
“Yeah, it is a great photo. Nobody’s disputing that it’s a great photo, but how is it ‘Success’?
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s a successful canoe. Let’s just wrap this up and go home.”
“Fine.”

That’s what I call inspirational.

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So, returning to more obscure things than football. Back in the days of the past century, my brother had a Super Nintendo, and the greatest game created for that ancient system was Uniracers. “What?” you say. “Never heard of it,” you exclaim. Please, let me explain.

Uniracers is a side-scrolling racing game with unicycles. Not with people riding unicycles, no, the unicycles themselves would race. The strange unicycle anatomy consisted of a seat-shaped head. The wheel spun on its own to move the creature about, and the rest of the frame made up the body.

The unicycles would race across a two-dimensional track with loops and turns and jumps. Performing tricks with your unicycle gave you a boost of speed with more complex performances of daredevilry giving extra acceleration and velocity. The more complex tricks also gave you some bit of 80’s slang. “Awesome” “Tubular” “Wicked” If you couldn’t get your wheel down in time to hit the track and landed on your head (seat) instead, you lost all of your momentum. The desperate push for more speed led to riskier manuevers. The only downside of the game was the eventual overuse of the L and R buttons. To this day they barely work.

The game moves with amazing speed considering that it’s running on a Super Nintendo. This isn’t your standard car race game where the road scrolls by underneath you. This has more of the feel of Sonic the Hedgehog with the camera struggling to keep up with the sudden changes of direction and bursts of acceleration.

I really hope that somebody decides to update this game for today’s slightly more robust systems. Combining this game with the Wii’s motion sensitive controller would lead to an incredible experience. I’d be first in line to buy it.

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Another week, another creative way to lose. As a long-time Phoenix resident, I always hope that the Cardinals can find a way to win, and it’s alwaysa good feeling when they do manage a win. However, most of the time, wins are rare. It’s not that the Cardinals consistantly get blown out. To the contrary, they’re usually in a game to the end with a good chance to win. What makes the Cardinals the Cardinals is the creative ways they find to lose games.

When the Cardinals played 49ers in the first game of the season, they held a lead late in the game. The defense had held firm for the entire game until the last 3 minutes. Even after this defensive collapse, they still had a chance to win the game. A 49ers receiver fumbled the ball into the endzone and right to the feet of a Cardinals defender. Instead of falling on the ball and winning the game, the defender tried to pick up the ball, missed it, and allowed the 49ers to recover, score a touchdown, and win the game.

The third game against the Ravens started out as a blowout, but the 2nd half heroics of Kurt Warner led the Cardinals back into the game and only trailing by three. Warner led the team back into the redzone, threw a perfect pass into the endzone which was dropped. They settled for a field goal and a tied game. An unnecessary roughness penalty later, and the Ravens get close enough for a game-winning field goal.

Now, I never expected the Cardinals to beat the Ravens, few did. But it is just like the Cardinals to find a way to almost win, then find another way to blow it.

Good thing I’ve been a Cowboys fan for longer than the Cards have been in Arizona. They’re 3-0.

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I have a weakness for board games. My wife finally forced me to pack up half of my board games so we could shut the game closet door. Yes, we have a closet just for board games. It started playing Risk with my dad in 2nd grade. We would play after dinner for three or four days to finish the game. And we always played to the bitter end. Years later our battles evolved into Axis & Allies. Again, we would play until every last Japanese infantry was destroyed in Tokyo. There was no such thing as surrendering.

My brother got me Ticket to Ride a year and a half ago and it was a big success with our family and friends. It finally seemed to be a perfect blend of strategy and fun that didn’t take forever and that I could convince my wife and sister to play too.

This year for his birthday I got him Ticket to Ride - Europe. The basic premise remains the same with a few rule tweaks and a new map. The Europe map seems smaller, but ends up being about the same size as the original US map, with a few more cities that you’ve never heard of. The design is great once again, and the rules easy to follow.

The biggest improvements over the original are the ‘long route’ cards and the stations. The original game started everyone off with three routes. The unlucky player that ended up with three low point cards was usually doomed to finishing in the middle of the pack. Europe separates out ‘long’ from ‘regular’ routes to give each player at least one chance at a high scoring route. Our first time playing still had one lucky player get one long and three regular routes that all basically overlapped, while the rest of us had to carefully choose which routes to keep.

The train stations are the best addition to the game in that they allow everyone to stay in the running until the end. The original game frequently featured some players stuck just one stop away from a city that they had to get to. The train station in the new game allows players to piggyback into a blocked city on someone else’s route. Players that manage to get through the game without needing to use the stations are rewarded with extra points.

 The other additions to the game, tunnels and ferries, were interesting and added some variety to the game, but also made it more difficult to compete in some instances.

I can’t wait to break open the box and play it again.

All aboard!

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I haven’t spent this much time playing console video games since my grade school days playing Final Fantasy (the first one, not VII) and Crystalis (how’s that for obscure). Of course, I’m talking about Guitar Hero (and Guitar Hero II and Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80’s and very soon Guitar Hero III and Rock Band).

This is the rare video game that literally hooks you from the moment you first play it. There are other games that draw you into an elaborate tale or enthrall you with incredible imagery or blow you away with sound design. But Guitar Hero is one of the few games that will hook you from the first time you play, just because it’s fun.

It’s also one of the only games that I can regularly get my wife to play. She loves it. Her friends love to come over and play. It’s all the fun of Dance Dance Revolution without the ‘looking stupid’ part or the Japanese anime music. I’ve now gotten to the point where everyone that stops by the house has to at least try “I Love Rock n Roll.” After that they’re hooked too.

I’m going to predict it now. We’ll see what happens down the road.

The Guitar Hero (and related games; ie. Rock Band) will be the most successful video game franchise in history.

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