A few days after the whole debacle with the PlayStation Network, I purchased a video game. Not just any game, but one of the most hotly anticipated games of the year. No, not Mortal Kombat (though the demo was pretty entertaining even if I could never get the X-ray moves to work right), but Portal 2.
The original Portal was more or less a short, little distraction (and I use that term loosely, as none of Valve's games are throwaways) introduced in The Orange Box as an extra game to entice buyers. Looking at the history of the game (they hired designers specifically for Portal), it's difficult to understand that decision. But hey, can't complain about the results. The first Portal was given all kinds of love in the gaming community, so a sequel had to be close behind.
And in terms of Valve development time, it was. I mean, three and a half years to get a sequel out is akin to Infinity Ward/Treyarch getting a new Call of Duty game out every twelve months. That almost seems like they rushed it out (not really true, since I think the gap between the two Left 4 Dead games was much shorter than this).
So how is Portal 2? Delightful. I didn't even play much of the single player (Kelly did that), but even as a spectator I was constantly entertained. The dialogue among Chell and GLaDOS and Wheatley was amazing (yes, Chell never speaks, but that doesn't stop her from being part of the conversation). There are so many little details and connections (I found blue paint in one of the test chambers during co-op and didn't stop laughing for twenty minutes) that upon completion, I wanted to go through it again.
I don't think I can be more indepth than any of the game review sites, but I will say this: buy it. And buy the PS3 version, you get the PC version with it. Assuming the PSN is still around, of course.
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Up, Up, and Away!
Smallville premiered when I was a Sophomore in high school. I remember being excited to see a teen Clark Kent in a weekly series (outside of the old Superboy show, which I'm not old enough to remember, anyway). The first episode came and went and I was hooked. Each week, Clark did battle with a new villain (in the "creature/villain of the week" format) while balancing his personal life (the on-again off-again relationships with both Lana and Lex. Lex was a bromance, not a romance) with his newfound abilities.
I remember thinking how cool some of the special effects were, even if they were cheesy. In a time when most shows and movies were following the Matrix's bullettime example of making everything really slow to show how fast the character was moving (I still don't get it. I mean, he's going really, REALLY slow. Still better than the really fast Agent Smith, I suppose), Smallville took it in a different direction. Clark moved at regular speed (with blurs abound) and the environment around him would either freeze or be in slow motion. Now that's fast. The other effect I always cheered on was when someone would hit Clark with something, anything, and it would shatter on the Man of Steel. Didn't matter what it was, golf club, baseball bat, arrow, bullet, pretty sure there was a car engine in there somewhere, it always shattered the same, awesome way.
The show did suffer from a lack of direction at times and the fact that the CW/WB gave that show a budget of $1.25 didn't hlep. The show picked up after Millar and Gough left after the 7th season and the new showrunners truly embraced the source material. While I credit Millar and Gough for selling the WB on Smallville, the show had started getting long in the tooth (how many seasons of Lana and Clark pining for each other did we need. And the whole fake marriage thing with Lex? That was just creepy. Plus, Gough and Millar were partly responsible for Spider-Man 2, which had some incredibly awkward Clark/Lana-esque moments in it) and I feel the fresh blood really breathed new life into a tired series.
Smallville started out slow and small when it came to branching out into the greater DCU (of characters, it does not, despite what some people think, have any bearing on actual DC comic continuity. Some of the first characters to be featured on Smallville were a certain trickster from the 5th Dimension (though in the show he was a foreign exchange student) and Bart Allen (to this day I cannot figure out why they went with Bart instead of Barry or Wally). Mxyzptlk is a prime example of how the show attempted to stay grounded with its reinvisioning of Superman's early years. Instead of being an impish old demigod from a dimension far different than our own, he was a shifty exchange student with a penchant for fixing high school football games.
Cameos, guest spots, and recurring heroes was also something that improved when the new showrunners took over in season eight. Sure, Gough and Millar managed to work in a couple (like Green Arrow and Black Canary (she showed up in season seven)), but it was an all out nerdfest from eight onward. Everything shifted closer to how it is in the comics while clearly still based in the Smallville universe. The last couple of seasons brought fans Zatanna and the Justice Society. Even Clark matured into the man who would be Super...man.
Everything pointed to a grand finale for such a mainstay on the WB and then CW's schedule (and many viewers' as well), so what happened? Well, Smallville happened. It was always a show of uneven quality. While I enjoyed watching it week to week, there are episodes that stand above the rest, and then there are whole chunks of seasons that I barely watched or remember (I'm looking at you, Veritas journals, et al.)
The finale encompassed everything that the show is and was in two hours. Like just about every season finale before it, Finale (yes, that's the name of the episode) plodded along for the first half until Oliver was revealed as traitor (oops, SPOILERS) and he and Clark had a thirty second fight.
Then it slowed back down again. And Clark had a couple of meaningful conversations with his dad (say what?!), and then his mom, and then Lois (who snuck aboard Air Force One in the second half), all the while Apokalips was bearing down on Earth. We get it. A lot of people helped Clark become the man he is and needs to be. And it's great to have all these heartfelt conversations with those people. But there is a fiery ball of doom heading right for the planet. Didn't it occur to Clark to, I don't know, hurry his ass up? Every time someone talked Clark into taking that next step and he'd rush off, he'd only end up talking to someone else for five minutes.
And who wasn't psyched as heck for Lex's return? Okay, that setup may sound like I'm going to tear into Michael Rosenbaum, but I'm not. Having him around for those couple of minutes really punctuated just how great Lex and Clark's dynamic really was. It was a shame they had to go and erase a decade's worth of character growth like that. Of course, I half-expected him to help dear ol' Tess along a bit quicker after her quip that Clark had saved her first. And without stabbing her.
Meanwhile, daddy Lionel (the evil one from the mirror universe) had taken on the spirit of Darkseid (in exchange for ripping out Lionel's heart to give to Lex) and has gone to confront the Light (Clark) in the Light's (Clark's) barn. What. A. Weak. Fight?
"I hit you!"
"EHH!"
*Five minutes of flashbacks that encompass the WHOLE series!*
"Now I can fly. And I can fly through you!"
"Oh no! Now I'm going to explode into old man dust and birds!"
"Birds?"
"Yes...birds."
"Whatever."
And then he goes to see Jor-El and gets the Superman costume so he can finally deal with the giant flaming ball of death that should have probably already ended all life on Earth. And what the hell is wrong with those people on Air Force One?
"We know firing nukes at this thing won't do a damn thing to it and will kill millions of people. But gosh dangit, let's fire them nukes anyway! Trust us, it's better this way."
That is some pretty poor reasoning.
Finally, Clark gets the suit. And then we never see him with it on. Sure, we get some pretty poor CG of Supes from a distance and then that shot of Clark ripping open his shirt to reveal the 'S' at the end (but his face wasn't even in the shot at that point), but never say, the classic Superman pose, all majestic and heroic.
If Clark could've just pushed Apokalips away, why didn't he do that in the first place. Why did he have to run around town visiting everyone and their mother before finally getting the suit and just nudging the planet away. Oh, it was because he didn't believe in himself? That he hadn't yet truly embraced his destiny? I'm sorry, but that s*** didn't fly in Spider-Man 2 and it certainly doesn't here.
After ten years of the same thing, I shouldn't have been surprised, but I still feel cheated. What? Did Welling just not fit into the Superman Returns costume? Couldn't pay for alterations? Tommy boy didn't want to work out enough to look good in the suit? What was it CW? WHAT? WAS? IT?
In a way, flaws and all, Finale was the perfect finale for the show I spent ten years following. It represents the heights and depths the series was capable of, and, even though I spent most of this post ripping the finale apart, I will miss the show.
Also, CW and Warner Bros., please consider making at least TV movies in the Smallville universe and get Tom Welling to get in shape.
I remember thinking how cool some of the special effects were, even if they were cheesy. In a time when most shows and movies were following the Matrix's bullettime example of making everything really slow to show how fast the character was moving (I still don't get it. I mean, he's going really, REALLY slow. Still better than the really fast Agent Smith, I suppose), Smallville took it in a different direction. Clark moved at regular speed (with blurs abound) and the environment around him would either freeze or be in slow motion. Now that's fast. The other effect I always cheered on was when someone would hit Clark with something, anything, and it would shatter on the Man of Steel. Didn't matter what it was, golf club, baseball bat, arrow, bullet, pretty sure there was a car engine in there somewhere, it always shattered the same, awesome way.
The show did suffer from a lack of direction at times and the fact that the CW/WB gave that show a budget of $1.25 didn't hlep. The show picked up after Millar and Gough left after the 7th season and the new showrunners truly embraced the source material. While I credit Millar and Gough for selling the WB on Smallville, the show had started getting long in the tooth (how many seasons of Lana and Clark pining for each other did we need. And the whole fake marriage thing with Lex? That was just creepy. Plus, Gough and Millar were partly responsible for Spider-Man 2, which had some incredibly awkward Clark/Lana-esque moments in it) and I feel the fresh blood really breathed new life into a tired series.
Smallville started out slow and small when it came to branching out into the greater DCU (of characters, it does not, despite what some people think, have any bearing on actual DC comic continuity. Some of the first characters to be featured on Smallville were a certain trickster from the 5th Dimension (though in the show he was a foreign exchange student) and Bart Allen (to this day I cannot figure out why they went with Bart instead of Barry or Wally). Mxyzptlk is a prime example of how the show attempted to stay grounded with its reinvisioning of Superman's early years. Instead of being an impish old demigod from a dimension far different than our own, he was a shifty exchange student with a penchant for fixing high school football games.
Cameos, guest spots, and recurring heroes was also something that improved when the new showrunners took over in season eight. Sure, Gough and Millar managed to work in a couple (like Green Arrow and Black Canary (she showed up in season seven)), but it was an all out nerdfest from eight onward. Everything shifted closer to how it is in the comics while clearly still based in the Smallville universe. The last couple of seasons brought fans Zatanna and the Justice Society. Even Clark matured into the man who would be Super...man.
Everything pointed to a grand finale for such a mainstay on the WB and then CW's schedule (and many viewers' as well), so what happened? Well, Smallville happened. It was always a show of uneven quality. While I enjoyed watching it week to week, there are episodes that stand above the rest, and then there are whole chunks of seasons that I barely watched or remember (I'm looking at you, Veritas journals, et al.)
The finale encompassed everything that the show is and was in two hours. Like just about every season finale before it, Finale (yes, that's the name of the episode) plodded along for the first half until Oliver was revealed as traitor (oops, SPOILERS) and he and Clark had a thirty second fight.
Then it slowed back down again. And Clark had a couple of meaningful conversations with his dad (say what?!), and then his mom, and then Lois (who snuck aboard Air Force One in the second half), all the while Apokalips was bearing down on Earth. We get it. A lot of people helped Clark become the man he is and needs to be. And it's great to have all these heartfelt conversations with those people. But there is a fiery ball of doom heading right for the planet. Didn't it occur to Clark to, I don't know, hurry his ass up? Every time someone talked Clark into taking that next step and he'd rush off, he'd only end up talking to someone else for five minutes.
And who wasn't psyched as heck for Lex's return? Okay, that setup may sound like I'm going to tear into Michael Rosenbaum, but I'm not. Having him around for those couple of minutes really punctuated just how great Lex and Clark's dynamic really was. It was a shame they had to go and erase a decade's worth of character growth like that. Of course, I half-expected him to help dear ol' Tess along a bit quicker after her quip that Clark had saved her first. And without stabbing her.
Meanwhile, daddy Lionel (the evil one from the mirror universe) had taken on the spirit of Darkseid (in exchange for ripping out Lionel's heart to give to Lex) and has gone to confront the Light (Clark) in the Light's (Clark's) barn. What. A. Weak. Fight?
"I hit you!"
"EHH!"
*Five minutes of flashbacks that encompass the WHOLE series!*
"Now I can fly. And I can fly through you!"
"Oh no! Now I'm going to explode into old man dust and birds!"
"Birds?"
"Yes...birds."
"Whatever."
And then he goes to see Jor-El and gets the Superman costume so he can finally deal with the giant flaming ball of death that should have probably already ended all life on Earth. And what the hell is wrong with those people on Air Force One?
"We know firing nukes at this thing won't do a damn thing to it and will kill millions of people. But gosh dangit, let's fire them nukes anyway! Trust us, it's better this way."
That is some pretty poor reasoning.
Finally, Clark gets the suit. And then we never see him with it on. Sure, we get some pretty poor CG of Supes from a distance and then that shot of Clark ripping open his shirt to reveal the 'S' at the end (but his face wasn't even in the shot at that point), but never say, the classic Superman pose, all majestic and heroic.
If Clark could've just pushed Apokalips away, why didn't he do that in the first place. Why did he have to run around town visiting everyone and their mother before finally getting the suit and just nudging the planet away. Oh, it was because he didn't believe in himself? That he hadn't yet truly embraced his destiny? I'm sorry, but that s*** didn't fly in Spider-Man 2 and it certainly doesn't here.
After ten years of the same thing, I shouldn't have been surprised, but I still feel cheated. What? Did Welling just not fit into the Superman Returns costume? Couldn't pay for alterations? Tommy boy didn't want to work out enough to look good in the suit? What was it CW? WHAT? WAS? IT?
In a way, flaws and all, Finale was the perfect finale for the show I spent ten years following. It represents the heights and depths the series was capable of, and, even though I spent most of this post ripping the finale apart, I will miss the show.
Also, CW and Warner Bros., please consider making at least TV movies in the Smallville universe and get Tom Welling to get in shape.
Monday, May 2, 2011
The PSN Malfunction
It's now Monday, May 2nd. The PlayStation Network has been down since April 20th. Over the past twelve days and some odd hours (it was taken offline some time that Wednesday evening), some details have surfaced over what happened. It was determined that there was an external attack (hackers hacking) on Sony's online networking platforms (the PlayStation Network, their Qriocity music store, and recently, the Sony Online Entertainment...thing. Are they still calling it portal or hub?) There were some *ahem* liberties taken with the sparse information Sony has given the public and many conclusions were jumped to. This one I saw repeatedly: "Sony should burn because it in no way protected customer information at all and I'm going to sue them."
At the time, there was no evidence that the good folks at PlayStation hadn't protected customer's private information. From what Sony has said (and big companies never, ever mislead the public. Ever.), credit card data was/is encrypted and it does not appear that it was pulled in the "external attack." Then there came the reports that Sony's list of "77 million user's" credit card data was being sold off in chunks. Well, the problem with that statement (and the reason it's in quotes) is that only about 10 million users had active credit cards attached to their profiles. Also, on average, well over 25,000 people in the US alone are victims of identy theft daily. So the couple of people (and not saying it isn't related, but it could be a freaky coincidence) that have come forward with fraudulent charges being made around the time of the "external attack" very well could've had their credit card info nabbed in some other way.
And let's be real, if not for the credit card thing, what's on someone's profile that isn't, say, on Facebook or on one of a dozen data aggregate sites (once I found out that my cell number and home address was on these sites, I had it removed. It's a bit time consuming, but relatively easy.)?
Someone rudely accused me of defending big business, and that really isn't me. Rather than pointing fingers at Sony when there wasn't a whole lot of info to go on (there still isn't and we may never know just how beefy or not Sony's security was), I think that the gaming community would've been better served uniting in common desire to see justice served against the person(s) who hacked the system and caused such a lengthy blackout.
The only thing I really need the PSN for right now is to sync my trophies to my user profile so I can switch out hard drives (I purchased a much larger HDD without realizing that 1) the system was down and 2) that it required a connection at all), so the PSN being down isn't a big loss for me.
And I still blame this mess on that shmuck who thought it would be a good idea to release the PS3's root key online and didn't expect any retaliation in return. Yeah, you hacked the unhackable system, opened the floodgate for others to do with the system what they will, and you didn't expect anything bad to happen? Either to you (Sony has been accused of drawing the legal battle out in order to ramp up legal fees) or to your fellow gamers (who were the real victims in all this)? Good job there, guy. (And do you really think for one second this was just about Sony removing the ability to install another OS?)
And to those who say that Sony either should have had better security (still don't know how good it was) or that they deserve this, let me say this: If I were to break into your house, steal your wallet and computer, kick you in dangly bits, and run away, shouldn't I be the one getting the blame? This hypothetical you wouldn't say, "well, I guess the locks weren't good enough. I deserved to have all my stuff stolen and my dangly bits kicked in." No. That wouldn't happen.
To sum it up: I'm not pro-Sony (or big corporations), I'm pro-going after the person who perpetrated the attacks.
At the time, there was no evidence that the good folks at PlayStation hadn't protected customer's private information. From what Sony has said (and big companies never, ever mislead the public. Ever.), credit card data was/is encrypted and it does not appear that it was pulled in the "external attack." Then there came the reports that Sony's list of "77 million user's" credit card data was being sold off in chunks. Well, the problem with that statement (and the reason it's in quotes) is that only about 10 million users had active credit cards attached to their profiles. Also, on average, well over 25,000 people in the US alone are victims of identy theft daily. So the couple of people (and not saying it isn't related, but it could be a freaky coincidence) that have come forward with fraudulent charges being made around the time of the "external attack" very well could've had their credit card info nabbed in some other way.
And let's be real, if not for the credit card thing, what's on someone's profile that isn't, say, on Facebook or on one of a dozen data aggregate sites (once I found out that my cell number and home address was on these sites, I had it removed. It's a bit time consuming, but relatively easy.)?
Someone rudely accused me of defending big business, and that really isn't me. Rather than pointing fingers at Sony when there wasn't a whole lot of info to go on (there still isn't and we may never know just how beefy or not Sony's security was), I think that the gaming community would've been better served uniting in common desire to see justice served against the person(s) who hacked the system and caused such a lengthy blackout.
The only thing I really need the PSN for right now is to sync my trophies to my user profile so I can switch out hard drives (I purchased a much larger HDD without realizing that 1) the system was down and 2) that it required a connection at all), so the PSN being down isn't a big loss for me.
And I still blame this mess on that shmuck who thought it would be a good idea to release the PS3's root key online and didn't expect any retaliation in return. Yeah, you hacked the unhackable system, opened the floodgate for others to do with the system what they will, and you didn't expect anything bad to happen? Either to you (Sony has been accused of drawing the legal battle out in order to ramp up legal fees) or to your fellow gamers (who were the real victims in all this)? Good job there, guy. (And do you really think for one second this was just about Sony removing the ability to install another OS?)
And to those who say that Sony either should have had better security (still don't know how good it was) or that they deserve this, let me say this: If I were to break into your house, steal your wallet and computer, kick you in dangly bits, and run away, shouldn't I be the one getting the blame? This hypothetical you wouldn't say, "well, I guess the locks weren't good enough. I deserved to have all my stuff stolen and my dangly bits kicked in." No. That wouldn't happen.
To sum it up: I'm not pro-Sony (or big corporations), I'm pro-going after the person who perpetrated the attacks.
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