Slouching Toward Maturity

Review: Heavy Rain (PS3)

2010-03-02T15:24:00.000-08:00

Developer: Quantic Dream

Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment International

Release Date: February 23, 2010

Heavy Rain is being portrayed by most of the gaming media (and media more broadly) as a seismic shift in game design, something totally unlike everything we've played before, an interactive movie that is the very prow of the Good Ship Progress. Some are even implying that Heavy Rain will drag the general public kicking and screaming toward accepting the notion that video games are every bit as legitimate an art form as film.

And pretty much every bit of that is total and utter bullshit.

First of all, Heavy Rain is nothing like a fundamental shift in how gameplay is approached. Not only did Quantic Dream use virtually the same gameplay system in its 2005 title Indigo Prophecy, but also Quick Time Events (QTEs) date back to Dragon's Lair. Yeah, the 80s. So really, this game is about as innovative as saying this whole "World Wide Web" thing might just take off.

To be fair, Heavy Rain does integrate the PS3's Sixaxis wireless control capability. But that's not really anything "innovative" -- Call of Duty 3 was a PS3 launch game that also tried to capitalize upon Sixaxis. It did so terribly, mind you, but it did try. And Heavy Rain executes motion control slightly better, though the overall game's controls are still a tad too vague and imprecise for what Quantic Dream is asking of the player.

But the real point of Heavy Rain, if you listen to David Cage -- the game's writer/driector/creator/producer -- is twofold: first, it's meant to be an interactive movie, not a "game" in the traditional sense. Second, that fact, coupled with the QTE structure, is supposed to allow Heavy Rain to create a level of immersion the likes of which has never been achieved by a game before.

If David Cage were actually a filmmaker (as he so obviously burns to be), he would be irredeemably terrible. Heavy Rain's story is at best a bland, poorly-structured ripoff of any number of mainstream thriller and horror titles. From the setting to the characters to the dialog, everything feels like I'm watching a kid standing around in his father's suit:. However, this on its own wouldn't be sufficient for me to condemn Heavy Rain so thoroughly: what really does Heavy Rain's story in is how smart David Cage thinks he is. The whole game is meant to be a sort-of whodunit: WHO IS THE ORIGAMI KILLER ZOMG!!! IT MIGHT BE ME! IT MIGHT BE YOU! IT MIGHT BE THAT BUM FROM TWENTY MINUTES AGO!

Except Cage completely ignores the basic tenets of any decent mystery/thriller story, and in so doing removes any possibility of actually caring about what happens. Instead of delivering upon what it promises, Heavy Rain veers off into a contrived set of stupid plot lines and a third-act deus ex machina so massive that I was actually blown away. And not in a good way. Indeed, that same device (and indeed the whole approach to telling Heavy Rain's story) creates and is supported by a series of plot holes so massive that they actually make me chuckle every time I think of them. The story's issues are not helped by the fact that the characters are two-dimensional at best, and I cared about quite literally none of them.

Worse, all of these flaws are exacerbated by a not-so-subtle attitude of near-masturbatory arrogance on David Cage's part, one that pervades every nook and cranny of Heavy Rain: "oh, aren't I smart? See, I can make it in Hollywood any time I want!"

That said, let's move on to Quantic Dream's claims of immersion, and I can report that Heavy Rain actually is immersive... sort of. The problem once again falls in large part upon Cage's arrogance. He is so busy trying to gain acceptance as a filmmaker that he resorts to literally every cheap hook to drawn in the audience, such as the "I get killed, but it's only a dream" and "camera-cut faux-character-death" to name just two. Do they work? Kinda, especially since it was revealed in advance that any of the four main characters you play as can die.

But it doesn't leave a great taste in my mouth, especially since I discovered that there are only a few points in which you actually have any serious input on the game's progression. Past that, you can basically screw up every input the game throws at you and still get a pretty good ending.

What's more, even in the few times that Heavy Rain actually succeeded in creating a sense of immersion in the game's world, I was strangely aware that it was artificial. When I was feeding an infant a bottle, I wanted to get it just right... but that wasn't because I actually cared about the kid. When I had to find one character's missing child, I wanted to find him... but not because it was important to me. When these precious few moments of "immersion" occurred, I knew on a level that's difficult to describe that this was all fake. I knew I wasn't really immersed, but instead experiencing a temporary, bootleg version of actual immersion. And at best, the few instances in which I was dragged into the game world were a product of the (serviceable, if unoriginal) soundtrack and my own occasional-anal-retentiveness.

To provide a counterpoint here, it is possible that Heavy Rain would have been a better game had it not been hyped so completely and relentlessly, but I want to note that I didn't actually pay a great deal of attention to this game's marketing -- I already knew I was picking it up, for reasons I'll get into later.

Put simply, Quantic Dream's vain, half-assed efforts at drawing the player into the story made Heavy Rain an exercise in detachment, cynicism and blessed shortness, rather than a meaningful pursuit that was over too quickly.

Heavy Rain does do something different, at least insofar as the game isn't a standard action/RPG/shooter title, and deserves some credit for that. Indeed, that's the whole reason why I bought this game new, instead of waiting three days for it to appear used on store shelves. That said, I can't think of a single type of person that I'd recommend this game to. For almost everything Heavy Rain tries to do or (more rarely) succeeds in doing, there are any number of different games that do it better. Ultimately, Heavy Rain is little more than an over-budgeted, over-priced vanity exercise, a vaguely-interesting notion thoroughly ruined by its creator/writer/director. Which is actually quite sad, because there are a few moments in playing Heavy Rain that I got glimpses of what might have been, and those just amplified my frustration at the rest of this trainwreck.

In one sentence: Heavy Rain is the dictionary definition of hubris.

(Nerd's Note: A lot of this echoes what Anthony Burch and Jim Sterling have been saying on Destructoid for the last couple weeks, though they've definitely said it better than I; it's worth reading their musings on this game [even Sterling's blatant trolling following his review]. Anthony Burch's discussion of Heavy Rain in the context of Roger Ebert's quote about video games is also worth investigating.)

Review: Tatsunoko vs. Capcom (Wii)

2010-03-02T14:59:00.000-08:00

Developer: Capcom

Publisher: Capcom
Release Date: January 26, 2010

It’s hard to believe that I’m reviewing Tatsunoko vs. Capcom, since I never actually thought this game would be localized for the American market. This was A) because Tatsunoko isn’t necessarily a well-known among Americans (especially the more mainstream audience the Wii targets) and B) because of licensing issues. But I’ll get to that later.

The Capcom Versus series is a hardcore 2D fighting franchise that pits fan-favorite Capcom characters from Street Fighter, Darkstalkers, and any number of other Capcom series (including Megaman) against favorite characters from other universes, such as SNK (King of Fighters) and Marvel. Yeah, that’s right; in Marvel vs. Capcom 2 (the last title in the series released in the US) you could pick a team with Gambit, Resident Evil’s Jill Valentine, and the Servbots from Mega Man Legends. The rosters were always huge, odd, and a ton of fun. As for the mechanics, they were what you’d expect from a stubbornly 2D fighting series that appealed to hardcore gamers: fucking ridiculous.

Incidentally, I have never met anybody who could actually execute those mechanics. Like all franchises of this genre, there are two tiers of player: the people who know everything about how to play these games, and the rest of us (who sucked).

But I’ve always made it a point to pick up every title I can in the Capcom Versus series, because even if I do suck at them they’re still a blast to play. Particularly over a few drinks with some friends.

Tatsunoko vs. Capcom is a different sort of beast, however. Yes, drawing characters from the Marvel and SNK universes is an obscure move, but they were always treated as fairly obscure titles: fairly limited-run games on consoles known for attracting hardcore gamers. For example, Marvel vs. Capcom 2 would never have been ported to the Gamecube. The PS2 was the optimal choice for that title, and its cult status means that copies of it still go for truly obscene sums on eBay (i.e. above the original list price), despite it being available as a downloadable game on the PlayStation Network for something like $10.

As for Tatsunoko: a lot of the awesome old-school anime I grew up with, such as Gatchaman (AKA Battle of the Planets/G-force), Macross (Robotech) and Speed Racer were all the product of Tatsunoko. But herein lies the rub: all of these different shows were brought to the US at different times, and by different localization studios. So when this game was released in Japan, a lot of American fans despaired: in order to release Tatsunoko vs. Capcom here Capcom would have to negotiate with each of them to secure licensing rights. And while Capcom was pushing Wii development very heavily at the time, the consensus was that the company was focused on casual games for the platform: i.e. ones with a broader appeal than to the demographics of Otacon and the San Diego Comic Con. The fact was that all the different cultural and legal junk just made it easier for Capcom to keep in Japan, so I treated any noises I heard about a US release as bunk.

Then I actually got confirmation that it was coming to the US, and immediately halted plans to sell my Wii. I even bought it on release day, along with Mass Effect 2.

So, all that background out of the way, how is the actual game?

Well, if I’m being honest, that depends completely and entirely upon how much of a nerd you are. If you love Tatsunoko, you probably already own this game. If you love the Capcom Versus series, you probably already own this game. If you love either and don’t already own it, you must A) not own a Wii, B) be a moron, or C) be highly offended by something dumb, like maybe your favorite character wasn’t included or Megaman Volnutt’s hair is one pixel out of place and as a result you have to boycott this game while you go do foul things to your Cammy love doll. So all those people might as well just depart now.

For those who remain: this game is absolutely fantastic. Yes, it’s button-mashy unless you play pretty much nothing but 2D fighters. Yes, you may not recognize all the characters unless you are as pathetically devoid of a life as I am (in which case, again, you probably already own this game). And yes, the online component doesn’t work too well since the Wii’s wi-fi is horrible (I have yet to complete a full match online, and my router is an AirPort Extreme less than five feet from my Wii).

But here are the upsides. You get a huge roster of fighters, including two US exclusives. Yes, that’s right, US exclusives. While you lose the party-style minigames for each character that the Japanese got, you gain a much more fully-featured version of the schmup that was a brief minigame in the original. It’s actually so fully-featured it probably could have been released on its own as a PlayStation Network or Xbox LIVE Arcade title.

You also get a proper, hardcore 2D fighter: my biggest complaint with the Wii is that pretty much every game that gets made for it forces the player to use the Wiimote in some bland, unoriginal, played-out way. Yes, you can use any configuration of Wii controllers you want (Wiimote, Wiimote + nunchuck, Classic controller, Gamecube controller), but there's no motion control at all. The very concept of this genre is by nature old-school and retroish, and to not try to attach new tech to it unnecessarily in order to appeal to a broader audience is refreshing.

If you were to cut out all the fanboy drooling and reminiscing, then the above two pages or so would actually be the previous four paragraphs. It would be the shortest review I’ve ever written for anything, except Fantastic Four (“Like getting cockslapped by Stan Lee”). Hell, I can shorten my review for this game even more: Tatsunoko vs. Capcom is a game I absolutely adore, but might have trouble recommending to anybody who doesn’t at least sometimes feel a strong retroish, nostalgic tint to their nerdiness. But to keep a review for this game so short feels like I’m doing it a disservice.

And that’s the thing: this game’s mere existence in the US is an act of love. And all the different tweaks, the possibility of DLC (yeah, for the Wii [!], and I hear it might be Phoenix Wright [!!]), the translations, everything… this is a gigantic work of love by some very dedicated people in Capcom’s US staff. This game just oozes a certain sort of joyous pluck, an odd sort of character that highlights the odd sort of character already present in the Capcom Versus. And as anyone who has ever heard me mention the British auto industry knows, I am a total slut for pluck and character.

Brain Droppings: Mass Effect 2 (Xbox 360)

2010-02-16T16:20:00.000-08:00

[Beware: Here there be spoilers!]

First things first: this is NOT a retraction of my review. Mass Effect 2 is still a jaw-dropping experience, and if you like either shooters or RPGs and own a 360, you should own this game.* Rather, this post is meant to supplement and revisit my previous review, now that I’ve beaten the game once and am working on a second play through. Because, you see, this game got two to three times better after I posted my review. And, unsurprisingly, it’s all down to the suicide mission.

The great thing about the way BioWare released information about Mass Effect 2 is that you knew there was going to be a suicide mission against the Collectors, but that wasn't really a spoiler: Shepard knew that by the end of the first hour of gameplay. And like Shepard, you weren’t exactly sure how this was all going to play out: oh sure, the ship upgrades and loyalty mechanic meant that you probably knew pretty early these were going to be big factors, but BioWare sort of banked on that. After all, I went in with a completely loyal characters, all upgrades done as thoroughly as I could, and so on. I swore up and down I wasn’t going to leave a single character behind.

Two died.

I was heartbroken. Quite possibly as much as I was when I saw Aerith buy it in FFVII. And the two characters weren’t even my favorites of mine.

The difference was that I knew that they died because I’d screwed up. (And if that isn’t a decent, if not somewhat facile, simulation of leadership in combat I don’t know what is.) This wasn’t scripted. I could have saved everyone, had I not made two wrong decisions. I knew what points those decisions were made, but what were the right decisions to make?

So I immediately reloaded and tried the suicide mission again. And two died once more. So I tried a third time. Got it down to just one. Then a fourth. One again. By now I was falling over asleep, but I sure as shit wasn’t giving up until I had every single one of my crew safe as houses. I cared that much.

(I had to resort to using the Internet to sort it out: normally, that isn’t too big a deal for me. I try to do it only when I'm at a loss, but this time it felt like a betrayal. I was that into it. But I digress.)

I got there eventually. What I was missing, in a word, was leadership. Getting your whole crew out alive isn’t just a function of some stats and upgrades, like many games might treat such a scenario. At various points in the mission you’re asked to split up one or more members of your squad, in order for them to do some specific task. Unless you pick the party member that best meets the criteria for that job, chances are that they aren’t living through the mission. Put differently, you as a leader need to know your squad – and their strengths and weaknesses aren’t always made immediately obvious.

But what sticks with me the most almost two weeks after I finished Mass Effect 2 is how I felt on that first playthrough of the suicide mission. Just the sheer tension of it all: “Did I get it right? Oh God, is ___ gonna catch a round?” Yes, at some points that feeling is achieved through clever cuts and the like, but it’s such an immersive experience that I absolutely and completely forgive BioWare the use of a couple cheap tricks of the camera to heighten tension at the climax of this game.

I could go on and say more about this game. A lot more, in fact. But I needn’t bother.

*If you don’t, I will stop satisfying your mom sexually. And who’s she gonna take that out on? You, that’s who. Cogitate on that.

Review: Mass Effect 2 (Xbox 360)

2010-01-28T08:43:00.000-08:00

Developer: BioWare
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Release Date: January 26, 2010

The reality of the game industry today is that software revenues (and thus releases) are dominated by big-budget, franchiseable titles that usually emphasize lots of action and the slickest graphics possible. So when game developers plan sequels there's usually very little desire on their part or their underwriters' to take risks: make the graphics slicker, add some new bells and whistles, but for God's sake don't make much of an effort to respond to criticisms of the first game and make sure it's out by the holidays!

It was into this market that BioWare, which is owned by Electronic Arts, published Mass Effect 2. The original Mass Effect was published back in 2007, and represented BioWare's first serious foray into the action-RPG genre (yes, I don't count Jade Empire). The studio's previous efforts were magnificently crafted RPGs with a real-time turn-based combat system that used the Dungeons and Dragons rule set. (Yes, that was even true of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.) So Mass Effect was a big departure for them: it was a BioWare RPG, set in a totally new universe, with a third-person squad-based shooter grafted onto the RPG foundations.

Mass Effect's RPG underpinnings were quite good, displaying many of the hallmarks one would expect from a BioWare RPG. You played ___ Shepard, a customizable human space marine: you could select gender, appearence, first name (s/he ways always addressed as "Shepard" in-game), and class. More interestingly, there was a moral mechanic insofar as you could select how you wanted to interact with characters: be nice and gain Paragon points, be a jackass and gain Renegade points. How you approached key moments of the game, and your choices overall, affected your ending and a bunch of other stuff. It was a little too simplistic in that the moral choices weren't that much deeper than what you saw in Lionhead Studios' Fable back in 2004 (or BioWare's earlier Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic), but it still added a nice touch of immersion, as did the romantic subplots and multitude of sidequests.

Likewise, the universe that BioWare created was utterly original: yes, it drew from other sources, but it didn't feel like the Star Wars rip-off many "original" science-fiction universes are. In fact, it was arguably the game's biggest selling point in the face of some major problems.

First off, Mass Effect's combat system was designed with the idea that users would take cover and fight strategically. Except that you never really had to: if you were a soldier, you could just use the plentiful supply of new weapons (combined with the game's unlimited ammunition) to make yourself a tank and shoot your way through. Or if you were a biotic user (think spellcaster) you could overpower your enemies with biotics. Basically, it was an easily exploitable combat system that suffered from a really dumb AI -- the hazard of an RPG team trying to make an action game. And the rest of the game's general lack of polish in some significant areas was fairly obviously the result of the studio's staff focusing too much on how to make a shooter, at the expense of improving upon the mechanics that BioWare built its name on.

These faults were made even more obvious by the fact that Gears of War had come out the previous year and set the standard for this sort of shooting system, making Mass Effect seem like a bad rip-off in comparison. Even worse, both games used the Unreal Engine, but where Gears was gorgeous and smooth, Mass Effect (which admittedly had to render a much bigger game universe) had pretty good graphics and was incredibly buggy. So while Mass Effect was a commercial success, its critical reception was probably the worst BioWare has ever seen. But it was an enjoyable game in an interesting universe, and BioWare went ahead and made a sequel.

At that point, BioWare could simply have done a typical sequel, but they didn't.

Not at all.

Mass Effect 2 retains the few (but significant) strengths of the original game, tosses out everything else, and rebuilds from what is essentially the ground up. The game's universe is kept, it's still powered by the Unreal Engine, and the base mechanics for interacting with characters are still pretty much unchanged.

The shooter-RPG hybrid nature of the game is also kept, though it's hardly recognizeable when compared to the original. Every single one of the original's flaws has been utterly and completely erased. Guns now have finite ammunition, which adds depth to your combat inventory that was previously absent, especially since ammunition is shared between all weapons. Both the enemy AI and your squad's has been improved to the point that, even playing as a soldier, it's hard to make any progress in the game without using the cover system, which has also been overhauled -- so much so that it actually works now. Enemies are more aggressive and really put pressure on you, while it now occasionally behooves you to actually use your squadmates.

The health system has been overhauled for the better, with Shepard's health managed by a Gears of War/Halo 2/ Halo 3/Uncharted/etc.-style recharge system. Whether or not other characters regenerate health depends on their race (humans don't, for example), and shields are still around and still rechargeable, though the new health mechanic definitely makes them more important.

Similarly, the over-reliance on maxed-out skills and amassing as many weapons as possible have also been junked. You now improve skills less often and acquire new versions of weapons very rarely, which balances your character out better. It's offset by the addition of a research and upgrade system that makes sure people who explore every nook and cranny are thoroughly rewarded, and I imagine that this system doesn't punish people who play through quickly as severed as the original did (I'm not a professional journalist and thus didn't get an advance copy to play through a bunch of times).

In other words, Mass Effect 2 copies Gears of War fairly successfully by streamlining the combat, while simultaneously rounding out the sharp edges that the underlying RPG elements created in the first game. And think about that: an RPG, made by an RPG company, has a shooter mechanic that's a great facsimile for that of Grand Theft Auto IV and Gears of War. A pretty robust RPG mechanic underlying a fast-paced, high-octane shooter. That's unreal.

Speaking of Unreal (see what I did there?), the game looks absolutely stunning. Fundamentally, it's the same engine (the system requirements for the PC version are apparently basically the same as those for the original), just tweaked. But those tweaks make a huge difference: it's actually hard to believe that these two games run on the same engine. Plus the whole game runs so much more smoothly than the first, and I have yet to see any bugs save for one small clipping error. The UI is also aesthetically slicker, though that's more of a coat-of-paint improvement.

As for the universe around you, where the first Mass Effect was populated by all manner of different creatures, Mass Effect 2's universe feels inhabited. It's much more immersive, in part because of the visual improvements, but also in other ways. The voice acting is great and incredibly deep -- the voice of the Male Shepard said he had twice as much dialog to record this time around -- and I find myself getting drawn in far more easily. The fact that the God-awful MAKO driving stages have been removed helps, as do the all-new hacking and safe-cracking mechanics. Plus sidequests are more carefully tied to the overall game, and there are cool little offhand news reports that broach how you handled (or didn't handle) sidequests in the original. The Paragon/Renegade morality system gets a little more depth as well, with certain moments allowing you to press a button to perform a Paragon or Renegade action (as opposed to just dialog choices), and moral grey areas are approached with a little more subtlety. At least, I find it easier to be doing the "right" thing consistently but still (however inadvertently) collect some Renegade points. And the decisions you make have a much greater effect on how things turn out than in it original.

The way the story is handled is a little more interesting, as well. The original Mass Effect followed a path a little too much like Knights of the Old Republic: at minimum, you need to go to these different worlds, do something, and then that world will open up some new piece of the puzzle. Then at the end you go to one or two different places, one right after the other. It felt a little like a linear game that had occasional delusions of being non-linear.

Mass Effect 2 is pretty different: you know from the first half-hour or so where you're supposed to end up. You know it's a suicide mission. The question is just when you want to go. There's a minimal number of things you need to do to get ready, but it's not that long before you can go on the final mission -- probably no more than 10 hours if you do very little else. Your job for much of the game is to recruit a team: you can see where each potential team member is, and past that pretty much everything else is up to you. Plus people who didn't play the first shouldn't feel too lost in the game's story and universe: you have plenty of chances to get background info from other characters, and the game's Codex function is still around to explain the inhabitants, objects and politics of the Mass Effect universe as much or as little as you like.

The original Mass Effect simply had characters on your team that you used, or didn't, and occasionally you had to make decisions about their fate based on your stats and how much you liked them. Mass Effect 2 presents a deeper mechanic, however. Basically, there is a trust mechanic that establishes a relationship between Shepard and each member of his team, and that mechanic is meant to become very significant once you're on the suicide mission. Loyalty, which is acheived by doing a special missions for each character, gains you a new color outfit for the character, a new ability, and can come in handy overall.

And there's reason to use different characters: each one's differing abilities and available arsenal are far more pronounced than in the first, creating far more pronounced differences in how you approach fights and interactions. More than that, your actions regarding them have real effects at the game's end. Best of all, the characters are all actually somewhat interesting: many of the characters in the original felt pretty bland, and those that are recruitable in this game are given more depth via their loyalty missions. And the new crew additions are also pretty neat.

But Mass Effect 2's greatest strength is a really obvious one: it's never boring. Mass Effect had exciting "wow" moments, but there've been more of those moments in 13 hours (so far) of Mass Effect 2 than there were in 30+ that I spent on the original Mass Effect. I'm talking about keeping the gameplay fresh and interesting, showing me sights that make me want to see what's on the next floor, the next station. Making me never want to put the controller down.

I realize that this has basically read as one long love letter to Mass Effect 2, and while it's an exceptional game I do have to admit that it's not without its flaws. First, the Paragon/Renegade system still needs some work. I like that there's a greater attempt to integrate it more fully into the game, but it's still a little too black and white. I'm not expecting perfection, and the improvements are quite noticeable, but it feels at times a little too much like a touch-up rather than a deep re-thinkin. Granted, that system needed far less improvement than the combat system and engine (which is where I imagine most of BioWare's time was spent), but I'd like to see a little more tweaking for Mass Effect 3. Also, some character animations are perhaps a little too jerky: for example, even though Shepard has reportedly ten times as many cover animations as in the first, many still look really robotic. And although Mass Effect 2 definitely removes some of the linear constrictions of the first, it doesn't necessarily remove as many as I'd like. But then, RPGs rarely provide the full sandbox experience, so I'm at best nit-picking and at worst complaining about something nobody reasonably should.

Where Mass Effect felt like a great idea that was afraid to take too many risks at one time -- and thus came up short in almost every way -- its sequel dares to make some major revisions, all of which pay off massively, while supplementing that with a multitude of smaller tweaks. Ultimately, where the original felt like an traditional BioWare RPG that had a shooter grafted awkwardly on to it, the sequel feels like a harmonious balance between shooter and RPG in which the approach feels as if it were to make a shooter first and integrate RPG elements wherever possible.

Mass Effect 2 isn't a step forward from its precursor. Nor is it a jump, a leap, or even an extended road trip. It surpasses its predecessor by roughly the distance between the Earth and the Moon. It's the difference between Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines and Deus Ex: both have many of the same ideas at their core, but one is so much better than the other in every conceivable way that it's not even a matter of opinion. It's fact.

Don't let all the comparisons I drew* fool you: Mass Effect 2 isn't just a fantastic sequel and the philosophical model for how a sequel should be approached. It's an epic achievement in its own right.

*I thought those comparisons were necessary to get across just how much better this game is. It's all about context.

Brain Droppings: DLC

2009-08-26T17:55:00.000-07:00

Downlodable Content, or DLC, is one of the hot new trends of the current generation of video game consoles, espoused most visibly by Sony's PlayStation 3 and Microsoft's Xbox 360. The idea behind DLC (at least in its current form) is essentially an Internet microtransaction model for video game content: you pay a relatively small amount to get some new material for a game, such as a few new areas, new costumes, or some such thing. Sometimes even a whole game from an older platform or small-time developer. In theory, it also allows for episodic additions to a game's content, taking a fully-realized story and allowing you to see that much more of a game's world.

DLC in its current formulation is usually best implemented with larger, more open-ended games that have still told a complete story. The best expression of this idea of DLC is Grand Theft Auto IV's Xbox 360 release: Niko Belic's story is complete, but there's still this feeling at the end that Rockstar has left so much to explore in Liberty City. Hence The Lost and the Dammed expansion, which puts you in control of a relatively minor character introduced in the main game's story. It's an entirely new story with a new character, one that adds a bunch of hours to the game's lifespan and gives you a new voice and perspective on Liberty City. Rockstar has, in other words, added on to a game's world while managing to ensure that the core game was a complete experience.

In my mind DLC's modern roots lie with Valve Software. Valve's first Half-Life was a landmark moment in gaming and is the largest-selling first-person shooter of all time according to the Guinness Book of World Records. Yet there was a frustrating five-year gap between Half-Life and its sequel, with hordes of rabid fans practically beating down Valve's doors each time the game was delayed. Attempting to reduce the lag between fixes of the Half-Life drug, Valve announced that Half-Life 2 would receive periodic episodic content updates that continue the story, with the difference akin to that of weekly half-hour TV episodes and blockbuster film sequels every other year. There were a grand total of three episodes released through the company's Steam service -- which lets you download digital copies of a wide variety of games, as well as acting as an online matchmaking service -- and Valve co-founder Gabe Newell has said repeatedly that these three episodes in fact comprise Half-Life 3.

And although Half-Life 2 may not be the earliest roots of DLC, it's quite probable that the game's contemporaries are more significant. Half-Life 2 was a decent implementation of DLC insofar as all Valve did was develop a third Half-Life game and cut it into thirds, then release each part on Steam. Without the need to develop a new engine (as was the case for Half-Life 2), Valve's development time for the expansion episodes was cut down drastically.

Ritual Entertainment took a similar approach with its 2006 sequel to the 1998 game SiN. The game was intended to be released as a series of episodes -- titled, inventively, SiN Episodes -- and was the first game developed by a major publisher that was intended to be both released entirely episodically and sold online (via Steam, though at least the first episode was released on hard copy). However, only the first two episodes were produced, as Ritual was sold to MumboJumbo and all development on future episodes has ceased. This really isn't that much of a loss: while I enjoyed the first installment of SiN Episodes, I never really got the sense that I was playing something that really gelled as an episodic release. Indeed, SiN Episodes can really be chalked up as a failure for DLC, since the lack of continuing releases means that the game just stops on a cliffhanger. And I hate midseason cancellations that don't let writers at least attempt to wrap up plot lines.

Then there's Sam and Max Save the World, another episodic game released via Steam in 2006-7. This is, among the three early attempts at DLC stories (at least on PC), by far the best execution. There were a fair number of episodes, a whole story got told, and the development time was faster than on Half-Life 2 and SiN's episodes. Furthermore, what I played of the games left me with the distinct impression that I was actually following interactive episodes, rather than just periodic installments of a larger experience -- i.e., actually watching TV episodes as they air instead of watching a few scenes of a movie at a time.

But Half-Life 2's episodes, SiN Episodes and Sam and Max Save the World aren't really DLC: or rather, they represent a conception of DLC that seems to have been largely erased, but for a few notable exceptions that are almost entirely confined to PC and Wii. Fundamentally, they aren't additions to full games, but are instead portions of a full game. And as I've said, DLC is now seen as the former, not the latter -- or at least are seen that way by Microsoft and Sony, who are the two most visible distributors of DLC for games. Interestingly, the Wii's Virtual Console operates much like Microsoft's Xbox LIVE Marketplace and Sony's PlayStation Network insofar as all three publish full games -- generally priced around $10 -- that you can download to your console's hard-drive and play as you please.

However, the Wii tends to focus much more on having a wide variety of games from past consoles than the other two major consoles. There are a lot of different reasons for why this might be (such as liscensing), but there are two good reasons that fit particularly well with Nintendo's objectives for the Wii. First, retro(ish) games of the NES and SNES eras cash in on the nostalgia of the first generation of people who grew up playing video games, especially those who never did so in any hardcore manner: i.e. a significant chunk of the much-coveted, but massively-overhyped "casual gamer" market that Nintendo is courting so heavily with the Wii. These people are in their 20s and 30s, have disposable income, and want to play things that are easy to pick up and are a lot of fun -- the typical stereotype of games prior to the PlayStation era. (It's also worth noting that the Virtual Console games have an auto-resume feature, so even if you turn the console off you can come right back to where you were in a game whenever you feel like it). Of course, the reality is much more complicated than this (I could write a whole series on casual gamers alone), but as a thumbnail sketch that'll do nicely. Second, the Wii has little online play to speak of, instead emphasizing local co-op, whereas Microsoft and Sony are the exact opposite. Console games from before the current generation were almost entirely about local multiplayer or an exclusively single-player experience, so these games mesh nicely with the Wii's strengths.

Yet DLC, especially in the Microsoft/Sony conception, is often misused. The most ridiculous example by far is ludicrous horse armor expansion for Oblivion, which is exactly what it sounds like -- armor for your horse. And it cost 500 Microsoft Points, or $6.25. This is the sort of thing that should have been packaged with the original game, released for free, or just not included at all. More broadly, DLC is too often being used as a way to make more money on a game by making the consumer pay extra for parts of the game that should have been included in the original title, rather than a true expansion upon an already-complete title.

It is in essence a sign that gaming has entered what I consider to be the second stage of its life: programmers and artists are having increasingly less reign over how a game is presented, while business people are gaining ground. To be fair, the struggle between art and commerce is basically as old as art, but to see it encroaching upon interactive entertainment perhaps makes the point a little closer to home than one might expect.

And yes, game companies do need to make money to keep making games, and many also have shareholders to answer to. But DLC, especially as Sony and Microsoft have (generally) presented it, too often has the reek of Excel spreadsheets and a boardroom speaking of profit margins about it. And in the long run, if enough people wise up, this may actually hurt companies.

Review: Hung

2009-08-26T17:51:00.001-07:00

Hung is HBO's latest offering, a half-hour dark comedy starring Thomas Jane as Ray Drecker, a desperate has-been who ends up as a gigolo. The show goes to great lengths to emphasize Ray's desperation: he's the coach of a losing high-school basketball team and his ex-wife (ably played by Anne Heche) left him for another man. Worse, the parents his house left him has burned down, saddling him with a massive home repair bill that he can't afford (due to a lack of insurance) and forcing his kids to move in with his ex-wife and her new husband.

Long story short, he realizes that his only real talent is his, erm... endowment. And through a variety of strange circumstances he ends up as a gigolo, being pimped out by Tanya Skagle, an Earth Mother-y one-night stand of his. Hijinx ensue.

The funny thing is that, with one exception, the cast is actually pretty good. It's nice to see Jane Adams get a solid leading role, and she's more than passable as Tanya. Her character is melodramatic and feels like a hopeless failure, and Adams conveys that sensibility quite well. Anne Heche (whom I was surprised to learn was still working) is more than serviceable as a parent desperate to get her adolescent kids to like her, even though it's very clear they prefer being with their father. The kids are well cast, as well: though they're the product of a former Prom King and Queen, they're most certainly neither. But Charlie Saxton and Sianoa Smit-McPhee do quite well as the kids: like all adolescent siblings, they aren't supposed to get along, but they're also supposed to love each other despite their differences. And it all comes across quite well.

But then you get to Thomas Jane, and he's rubbish. Oh sure, he looks the part of Ray Drecker perfectly, but the man's abilities are subpar. (Let's put it this way: he was Frank Castle in the first Punisher film, which is almost certainly the worst movie I've ever seen.) He has roughly the same acting abilities as a piece of cheese, and the character he plays is whiny, boring and uninteresting.

As this suggests, the quality of the writing has a noticeable effect on the show as a whole. The dialogue and character interaction are executed well, though the overall story is predictable and not sufficiently engaging. Ray Drecker's voice-overs are whiny, boring, and predictable as well, which further complicates the viewer's ability to engage with the protagonist. And if you can't engage with the main character in a story, you probably aren't going to like the story as a whole.

The brightest part, oddly enough, is the setting. Picking Detroit for a show about a man's desperation to get by as everything falls apart around him is fitting; indeed, Drecker's attitude often seems to take on qualities not unlike the refrains we hear coming from Detroit itself. Sadly, however, the writers are a bit too proud of this link -- Drecker's opening voice-over takes this bit and beats you over the head with it. With a baseball bat. On the Death Star.

I want to like Hung, because it's not a bad concept and it definitely shows signs of promise. But based on the first six episodes I have to say that there's really not enough to like to justify watching it. Unless you like Thomas Jane's somewhat-vacant, somewhat-whiny gaze combined with self-pitying voice-overs. Perhaps it will pull a Dollhouse and improve dramatically in the later episodes of the first season, or perhaps even in the second since it's just been renewed. However, I get the sense that there really isn't as much raw material to work with as there is with Dollhouse. What a shame.

Review: Royal Pains

2009-06-17T01:05:00.000-07:00

Royal Pains is USA Network's latest summer TV offering, and I am quite certain it will be a license for USA to print money. That does not necessarily mean, however, that it's good. The premise is, as one reviewer put it, Burn Notice, M.D.: Hank Lawson, a massively talented up-and-coming doctor in New York, does the right thing, killing a billionaire hospital donor in the process. He loses his house, fiancee, and is piled up with debt until his brother swoops him off to a Memorial Day weekend in the Hamptons -- to those of you who are fortunate enough to not know, Memorial Day is essentially when the Hamptons hangs out the "Open for NetJets" sign. In any case, Doctor saves life, accidentally ends up being a concierge doctor, and ends up with adoration and a love interest. Yay. He may no longer be a respected doctor in the formal medical world, but as an on-call doctor for the Hamptons he's doing quite well.

It's nice to see perennial guest-star Mark Feuerstein get a leading role, and he's actually a pretty good actor. But his character isn't the most original thing on Earth -- indeed, Hank is almost exactly like Burn Notice's Michael Westen, but nowhere near as compelling. Family problems, disgraced from his job, surrounded by the super-rich, noble in spite of everything around him yadda yadda yadda. Where Michael Westen's use of household materials to create spy equipment is only sometimes absurd, Hank Lawson's use of household materials as medical equipment seems absurd almost every time. Admittedly, Royal Pains does seem quasi-aware of its own propensity in this capacity: in the pilot, for example, he gives a girl a list of items he needs to save her boyfriend's life and she responds by asking him if he's MacGuyver.

Even if you manage to get past seeing Royal Pains as just a bootleg Burn Notice, the show still doesn't shine. The writing lacks the crispness that many TV shows have showed of late and the characters aren't terribly compelling. There's no sense of struggle or of conflict within or between any of the characters, and I felt absolutely no sense of suspense whatsoever when watching the first three episodes.

But I am fairly sure that it will be fantastically popular. Even though people don't trust doctors and it's now fashionable to hate the rich, medical shows are still virtually-guaranteed TV hits and people are still curious to see (often over-the-top interpretations of) how the super-wealthy live. Royal Pains checks both boxes, and spends more time checking those boxes than, say, crafting decent characters. That's what will make it popular, but also what makes it weak. And USA is a top-tier cable network now, so there's a large potential audience for it to draw upon.

As it is now, Royal Pains isn't a good show, in part because it sometimes seems to not buy its own premise fully. And if that's the case, how can it expect the viewers to buy the premise? Nonetheless, it is an amusing show, a decent sort of Summer TV distraction, and you can argue that Burn Notice wasn't much more than that in its first season (though Burn Notice was still better written and more compelling in its debut season). Maybe it will improve in the future, and I hope it does: despite the fact that it may seem otherwise, I believe there are glimmers of promise for it... those just need to be brought out and polished.

Seven years ago Royal Pains would have ruled the Summer TV season. But seven years ago Summer TV, with the exception of The Shield, was pretty much rubbish. Now it's a very, very different story, and Royal Pains has a lot of work ahead of itself to get up to the standards set by shows like Burn Notice and Rescue Me. But as a way to kill the occasional 42-minute span, there are worse things to watch on Hulu. It's just that there are a lot of better things to watch, both on air and on Hulu.

Brain Droppings: an Idea of How to Make Top Gear US Viable

2009-06-16T23:04:00.000-07:00

Some time ago a pilot was made for a US version of the British motoring show Top Gear, featuring Adam Corolla (car nut and TV/radio personality), Tanner Foust (American drift star), and some other guy I can't be bothered to remember (it's 2:09 AM, sue me). The pilot was shot for NBC, which wanted to air it as a mid-season replacement, but the Peacock network passed on it, presumably because if NBC put it on someone might actually watch something on their network. The network did allow the pilot to be shopped around, but to no avail, and the idea was eventually canned.

Why on Earth was the idea of a car program in the most car-crazy nation canned? I don't know. But I do have a few ideas on how it might be made to work. (Please bear in mind that I, like the entire planet except a few people, never saw the pilot of Top Gear US, though I did read a few forum posts from people claiming to have been in the audience.)

First, one has to bear in mind that at its core Top Gear is a talk and variety show along the lines of The Tonight Show, only with cars instead of ostensible social and political satire. Both try to engage with their audiences through humor, and there is a pretty fair reliance on interview segments.

Second, the temptation is going to be to have Top Gear US' co-hosts be big enough names to draw a crowd. That won't mean squat if the hosts don't have the kind of chemistry that Top Gear GB's co-presenters have. A good portion of the enjoyment I get from watching Top Gear is watching three guys "cocking about and arguing," to quote Clarkson. It isn't just about reviewing cars; it's about three guys who love cars sharing their passion for the subject... and insulting each other's tastes while engaging in ludicrous challenges. Incidentally, Colin Fleming wrote a really great article on this chemistry for Slate, which should sell all but the most foolish non-believers on the premise of the show.

I grant you, this is TV: egos abound. But Top Gear is supposed to be three guys who are charming and funny first and foremost, and celebrities second. Finding people who are both (e.g. Seinfeld, Leno) would be preferable, but if you make it funny I believe they will come. And they should be able to share the spotlight... or at least pretend they can on camera.

So let's move on to the 300 ib gorilla and his cousin the elephant over there in the corner of the room: sponsors. Automakers are the biggest advertisers on TV, even in the current environment, and a show about cars would be a logical fit for advertising dollars. But what makes you actually listen to what the presenters on Top Gear GB say is that it's a BBC program, so the lack of ad money means that the only bias the presenters have toward cars is their own, and even then they sometimes eat their words. And yes, NBC did say for the Top Gear US pilot that the hosts could say what they wanted about cars, but if the show had actually gotten off the ground that probably would have started to change in the editing room. And the Stig means that cars make laps at top speed, regardless of who makes the cars... we hope. Plus he makes for an excellent fourth cast member.

Excluding sponsors via ad revenue makes this a very difficult show to be profitable, but there's an obvious choice: HBO, Showtime, or other subscriber networks. This works well since they make money off of DVD sales and subscriptions more than ad sales, and a typical season for one of their shows is only 13 episodes or so, which fits with the rough length of a Top Gear series (though I admit they generally have two series per year).

Speaking of seasons, where to shoot? The obvious choice is California, of course, but obvious is boring. Also, it's hard to get those long freeway glamour shots on the Top Gear car vs. train/plane/Robocop-on-a-unicorn challenges when the cars are stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic for all day. And the advantage of having a 13-episode season that films and airs during the spring/summer/early fall is that you can get beautiful shots of the northeast without having to deal with winter. Or you can go for the other obvious choices that are Texas and Florida, though I would argue having actual seasons happening around the cars might make for nice scenery when camera crews are setting up those near-pornographic shots of all the exotica.

As for costs, I must concede that I doubt this would be a budget show to film. Top Gear GB's first few series were pretty narrowly budgeted, and while they were fun the show didn't really hit its stride until its fifth series. This doesn't mean a limitless budget is in order, however: manufacturers will readily supply press cars for most vehicles. As for the hyper-exoctica that's already been sold out, look more for Top Gear's strategy when they wanted to test an Enzo: beg, beg, beg, beg and do some heavily tongue-in-cheek promoting (if you watch the clip this actually makes sense in the context of what I've written previously in this piece). The camera work will have to be top-notch though, and that won't be cheap. Neither for that matter, will some of their challenges (though not all, of course).

But hey, this can't be as ludicrous as what they were spending on salaries for The Sopranos by the time it went off the air. And this would be much, much more fun.

Used Review: 2006 Subaru Impreza WRX

2009-06-14T13:03:00.000-07:00

Every once in a great while, I drive a car that makes me wonder why on Earth people buy anything else. These aren't necessarily the most refined cars, or have the best interior quality, or cost a lot, but represent such massive overall value that I can't help but be amazed. The sixth- and seventh-generation Honda Accord are pretty much the standard for this, in my mind.

Still, though the Accord is an exceptional all-rounder, what is one to do when they've had kids and need something practical, but also want to thrash about like a greasy-haired eighteen-year-old? Simple: you buy the 2002-2007 Subaru Impreza WRX.

The GD-chassis WRX became an instant hit upon its release (2002 in the US, 2001 in the rest of the world), with American buff books hailing it as a leap forward in performance motoring for the masses. And they have a bit of a point: I can only think of a few four-door cars and wagons that can do 0-60 in 5.5 seconds, and that number grows even smaller when you consider how (relatively) cheap to buy and run WRXs are.

Its EJ205 engine is rev-happy in the extreme -- like all of Subaru's turbocharged boxers it doesn't really get going in power and torque until about 3000 RPM. But then oh man does it ever go. It doesn't make the most pleasant noise in the world, but it's a purposeful little growl and if nothing else it makes the machine so much fun to drive that you don't even care all that much about the noise.

Yet Subaru's symmetrical all-wheel drive system means that you never really feel out of control. For instance, I drove the particular WRX on review here from Baltimore to New York at night in pouring rain, but did 85 mph the whole way without ever feeling at all unsafe. Indeed, I have taken this particular WRX out at night on curvy, rainy roads and truly thrashed the thing, yet I have only ever felt it even begin to give up any grip just once. And even that was under massive duress on a road soaked with rain and coated with wet leaves.

But while those older Accords don't perform like sports cars, they have a really quite nice interior. The WRX performs much better, but that performance does seem to come at the expense of interior quality and comfort. The plastics are typical Subaru: fairly hard, but durable and easy to clean. More worryingly, the shifter is actually somewhat sharp, and the action is perhaps a tad too vague. In addition, the manual transmission only has five forward gears (the six was reserved for the STi), so on highways the engine can be both noisy and inefficient. There was supposedly an automatic, but if you're trying to find an automatic on a car like this you're missing the point entirely. The stereo is decent -- it comes stock with a six-disc changer, but the sound quality is perhaps not so good. Yet it's a fairly standard double-DIN unit, so it's swappable. The seats, however, are a joy: comfortable yet supportive bucket seats. I can't speak for the rear seats, which are more standard, but in the wagon they do fold down to allow enough room for a large Ikea flat-pack bookcase. In all, the WRX's interior betrays its economy car roots, with the notable exception of the seats. Those, however, are not fitted to the Impreza's base model, the 2.5 RS.

The GD WRX is such an exceptional all-rounder: quick, safe, reliable, fun, well-built... the list goes on. There are certainly a few downsides to the car, but as a reasonnably-priced all-around performance car/family car for sale in the United States, I can think of only a few cars that really come close to this wonderful machine. And to be able to get such a Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde vehicle as a wagon... well, that's just magnificent.

Brain Droppings: Could Toyota + Lotus Be Decent Math?

2009-06-05T10:52:00.000-07:00

Evo magazine reports that the 2012 Esprit redux from Lotus could have the 500 hp V10 engine out of the (supposedly) upcoming Lexus LF-A, which is once again in development after a hiatus. Why-oh-why, you ask, does this rumor merit a mention by me? Because it makes absolute sense. Consider this: the Elise is powered by a Toyota four-cylinder, the new Evora is powered by a Toyota-sourced V6, and consistency is a beautiful thing. Plus it is rumored that if and when the LF-A is released it will cost in the neighborhood of a Lamborghini, so licensing the engine could certainly help Toyota recover some of the costs related to its production. Of course, the V10 will almost certainly be a top-spec option on the Esprit, with some form of V8 also available... probably also sourced from Toyota.

And if you're prone to overthinking things like I am, this begs the question if Toyota have designs on Lotus, and if so would it be a bad thing? Toyota would certainly benefit from such an acquisition: they are a massive car company with absolutely nothing like a real sports car, especially at a lowish price point. The closest thing it has is the Lexus IS-F, which misses its mark (i.e. it is by all accounts inferior to the BMW M3, plus it costs more and looks worse). Indeed, even throwing all the money it does at F1, Toyota is somehow unable to be truly competitive, year after year. And the rear-drive sportscar currently under development with Subaru -- codename 086A (much to the glee of Toyota freaks everywhere) -- will be sold as a Subaru outside of the Japanese domestic market.

By buying Lotus, Toyota would be buying a company that only knows how to make sports cars. They could do a quick-and-dirty sports car platform development using the Elise, a la the Tesla. If Toyota cut down the hybrid system out of the Prius, maybe stretched the Elise platform a bit (or use the Europa, like Dodge is for its EV sports car), they have a quick and dirty and relatively cheap hybrid sports car to compete with the upcoming offerings from VW/Audi group. A green sports car would fit with Toyota's image while also filling a void in the range. In addition, Proton (which owns Lotus) is trying to expand even in the face of heavy losses, and Toyota certainly has the money to pay pretty much whatever Proton could want. Plus, Lotus Engineering could help tune the LF-A, since a Lexus sports car that is rumored to cost around as much as a Ferrari had best steer damn well.

Would the deal be as good for Lotus as it would be for Toyota? Perhaps, perhaps not. By all accounts Proton is more or less letting Lotus be, so the best case scenario is that a regime change would continue that. The worst case is that Toytoa does something dumb, like try to absorb the company. Though the latter scenario is stupid, it is not out of the question: to my knowledge Toyota has never pursued growth by buying another company, which means that if they do try it Toyota could mess it up royally. Or they could nail it.

I don't want to say which side of a potential deal I'd support, mostly because I'm not entirely sure. I just want to have the notion out there in the ether.

Review: Jack of All Trades

2009-05-31T05:17:00.000-07:00

There's a laundry list of reasons why one should accept USA Network's excellent dramedy Burn Notice as a legitimately good show, one of which is the fact that it generally doesn't take itself seriously. This lets the program deliver something that you enjoy, and in fact take seriously, while not having to put up with any arrogance on the show's part. This quasi-meta quality is embodied most noticeably in the casting of Bruce Campbell as Sam, Michael Westen's wisecracking, boozy ex-SEAL friend. Campbell is actually a very good actor, and he lends everything he does a winking-at-the-camera quality that prevents the stuff he's in from becoming ponderous. So on those rare occasions when Burn Notice is in danger of realizing just how good it is as a legitimate drama (most notably in both season finales thus far), there's always Bruce Campbell to steer it away. (That may sound like a backhanded compliment, but I assure you that I am legitimately praising Campbell's work.)

I mention this because it should give the viewer an idea of what Jack of All Trades is all about. It's a show starring (and produced by) Bruce Campbell and executive produced in part by Sam Raimi, uber-campy director of the Evil Dead and Spider-man movies. From this alone, we can gather that it goes to great lengths to make fun of itself. Indeed, it's so campy that you can't help but like it, particularly because it is in large part a vehicle for the one-liners that Campbell is so famous for: Campbell makes his first entrance by punching down a door and saying "sorry, I was gonna knock, but my fist had other ideas." Incidentally, another executive producer of the show was Alex Kurtzman, who has helped write any number of legitimately good TV shows and films, including J.J. Abrams' reboot of Star Trek.

Jack of All Trades was a half-hour live-action show that debuted as half of the short-lived Back2Back Action Hour on WB's Saturday night TV block, way back when I was in middle school. This was back when Xena and Hercules were successful on-air Saturday night shows. The other half-hour program in the block was called Cleopatra 2525, and all I remember about it is: A) it was rubbish, B) it was about a girl from our time who somehow ended up fighting in some sort of ultra-low-budget resistance in the year 2525, and C) it is the first time I ever recall seeing Gina Torres, who went on to play Zoe in Firefly/Serenity.

As you can imagine, the plot of Jack of All Trades was utterly ludicrous. Campbell plays Jack Stiles, an American secret agent in the year 1801 who is sent by President Jefferson to Palu Palu, a French-administered island in the West Indes. He is teamed up with Emilia Rothschild, a British secret agent played by Angela Dotchin, in order to disrupt the French rule. They are, of course, love interests, though Stiles is immature, boozy, and a womanizer. But when push comes to shove and rebellion needs to be fomented, Stiles ducks off-screen and becomes the Daring Dragoon, hero of the people, enemy to the incompetent Governor Croque. Emilia assists by running a wealthy import/export company and by inventing all sorts of crazy things such as (I kid you not) a submarine, a bulletproof cloak, love potion, and so on. As this suggests, it is a historical fantasy in the extreme, so much so that it is absolutely impossible for any person to take this seriously.

And therein lies the charm. Jack of All Trades goes so far out on a limb that it figures it may as well jump off. The show uses its historical setting to go absolutely nuts with history. For example, one recurring character is Napoleon, played by Verne Troyer. You may know him as Mini-me from the Austin Powers movies. Yes, a midget plays Napoleon. He's power-mad, horny, and comes up with increasingly ludicrous plots to take over the world, including building the Statue of Liberty as a Trojan Horse. Other guest characters include Blackbeard, Lewis and Clark (who have no sense of direction), Ben Franklin (who is a useless drunk) and King George III. Clearly, historical accuracy is not something that is aimed for here, which is fine: everything is done with a tongue-in-cheek attitude that always makes the show amusing, though not necessarily hilarious.

Past that, there's really not much more to say about Jack of All Trades. It was shot in New Zealand, so the outdoor scenes are quite lovely, and every plotline is always resolved neatly in twenty-two minutes. The writing vascillates between "quite good" and "reaching for the low-hanging fruit," but is still superior to most other half-hour shows. The action scenes are decent enough, considering this and Cleopatra 2525 were the first attempts at making live-action half-hour action shows since the 1970s, though I'd have to say that Jack of All Trades is more accurately described as a comedy.

So then, if you're a Bruce Campbell fan this is required viewing. If you're looking for something amusing to kill half an hour every now and again, this is definitely worth a Netflix or a torrent. But if you are not a diehard Campbell fan, you should definitely try it before you buy the complete series DVD set (all 28 episodes). Still, a very fun show that is equally happy to let you laugh at it as it is to let you laugh with it.

Review: Super Robot Taisen OG Saga Endless Frontier (DS)

2009-05-25T07:44:00.000-07:00

The Super Robot Taisen series is one of those uniquely Japanese series that've been around forever in Japan, but are virtually unknown Stateside. In fact, besides this title, I can only think of two other Super Robot Taisen titles to be released in this market, both of which were GBA titles released a couple months after the DS hit streets in the US.

The point of the series is much like Namco vs. Capcom, another Japan-only title: an independent series with some original characters, but with prominent characters from other series making cameos or acting as playable characters. In this case it's Reiji and Xiaomu, the main characters from Namco vs. Capcom, and KOS-MOS from Namco-Bandai's Xenosaga. Reiji and Xaiomu haven't appeared in any games to be released in the US, but KOS-MOS was in the Xenosaga trilogy, itself a prequel to Xenogears (my favorite-ever videogame, incidentally).

Previous Super Robot Taisen titles have been standard 2-D strategy games with heavy JRPG elements, but this breaks with that tradition. Instead, it is a sort of hybrid between your everyday turn-based JRPG and rhythm games. When you attack, you launch your opponent into the air and try to keep him in the air with subsequent attacks. The more hits, the better, and if you have a teammate on your side you can tag him or her in when you're done. It's a difficult system to explain, but remarkably intuitive to use. More importantly, it is an absolute blast to play -- I've played for about 16 hours so far and I haven't even started to grow bored with it.

Other than that, Super Robot Taisen plays like a standard JRPG. There's magic, items, shops, a world map, and so on and so forth. You dungeon crawl, fight bosses, and do all the stereotypical JRPG stuff. Which is fine by me; my love for JRPGs of all shapes and sizes is quite well-known.Graphically, Super Robot Taisen isn't anything to write home about. Indeed, they are just unsophisticated enough to suggest to me that this was originally a GBA game, a notion that is supported by the complete absence of touch screen support. The world map/dungeon exploration graphics are simple in the extreme, though there is much more detail in the battle screens, which are reminiscent of higher-end graphics from the SNES era.

While I'm talking about the graphics I'll broach the subject of the, erm, well-endowed nature of the game's numerous females. It's anime-styled, so this shouldn't come as too much of a surprise. They do take it to a ludicrous degree, however: busty main characters, busty non-player characters, even busty shopkeepers.

But unlike with Tecmo games, you don't really feel creepy about the whole thing. The Dead or Alive series is technically great, but you always do feel somewhat skeevy when you sit down to play it. Super Robot Taisen isn't anything close to the technical achievement that the Dead or Alive games are, nor is the gameplay as deep. However, the localization staff did a great job with the translation -- the comical proportions of many of the women in Super Robot Taisen are generally a source of jokes instead of perversity. In fact, the localization work is so good that if I were still as deeply into anime as I were in high school, I'm sure I'd find the game to be fall-down hilarious. But I'm not, so I don't; it doesn't mean that I don't respect the effort, however.

Yet the excellent translation doesn't really make the story serviceable. Indeed, even though the story seems relatively straightforward, there are so many different characters, factions and worlds that it just becomes a mess of terminology. For example, there are no less than three different terms for one object in the game, all used with varying degrees of frequency. This is not uncommon for these very cultish Japanese games that depend on the gamer being at least somewhat familiar with other games in the series, even if those games have unrelated stories. The problem is that us Americans rarely get many (if any) of those titles.

Ultimately, Super Robot Taisen is not a great game. It's not even the greatest game I'm playing right now. It'll be lucky to acheive low-end cult status for even a year or two, let alone to be remembered in the US by anything other than a few incredibly hardcore portable gaming fanatics in five years or so. If you can accept that it'll never win any game of the year awards and just embrace it for what it is, you'll find yourself an incredibly fun little way to kill some time on train rides and the like. Just don't take it seriously. But then, I doubt you'll be able to.

Review: 2005 Lotus Elise

2009-04-21T08:53:00.000-07:00

Whether or not you think the Elise is pretty (I think it's gorgeous), it's unmistakable, and it looks like it costs four or five times what it does. Given that, I was expecting to be the subject of a fair number of dirty looks when I rented one for three days in south Florida. Quite the opposite: I couldn't stop at a gas station, pharmacy, or anywhere else without getting people running up to ask what it was, admiring it and taking cell phone photos. Valets at my grandmother's country club fought each other for the keys, even though they drive much more expensive exotica on a daily basis. Nobody had ever seen a Lotus around, and the few people who knew what it was were pretty much all highly complementary. Even though it's exotic looking, it manages to look extraordinarily friendly. When I go for a drive in a mid-90s BMW, I get glares, but when I went out in the Elise, I got smiles and admiring glances

The Elise is powered by Toyota's 1.8 liter 2ZZ-GE engine, which was used in the final-generation Celica GT-S, among other cars. Lotus adds new cams and an ECU that boosts the engine's power to 190 bhp and the redline to an impressive 8500 rpm. According to Lotus, this can get the rollerskate-cum-automobile to 60 mph from a standstill in just 4.9 seconds. It's worth noting that when it was designing the 2ZZ-GE, Toyota farmed the actual work out to Yamaha, with the objective to essentially design a motorcycle engine for a car. Such an engine is certainly in keeping with the Chapman vision, so that probably explains why Lotus picked it.

Some reviewers have said that this high-revving engine creates a noted lack of torque in the Elise, but I never found that to be the case. Sure, it's not the torque monster my 540i is (it only generates 133 ft-ibs of torque) and most of the torque comes at the high end of the rev range, but the fact that the car weighs only 1984 pounds with fluids compensates for this very well. I certainly never had any problems with passing cars at the lower end of the rev range (i.e. 3000 - 4500 rpm), even during a short jaunt on I-95.

The Elise's unusual powerplant means that it even sounds different from other cars. When it pulls away from a dead stop it immediately jumps to 3000 rpm and goes off with the eager surge and yapping of a dog chasing a tennis ball. Sure, it doesn't sound like a Ferrari or a Lamborghini, but it grew on me, and people definitely hear it coming. But as the revs grow, that little Terrier develops an underlying bass note that's not unpleasant. Then you hit about 6200 rpm -- just when most engines are hitting the top end of their rev range -- the economy cam smoothly switches over to the power cam, and the sound quickly turns to a very satisfying shriek. By the time you hit the redline, it sounds like a flight of banshees going to war with Godzilla directly behind you.

Yet like all of Hethel's products the real test of the Elise lies in its handling, which I'm happy to report is nothing short of sublime. Naturally, the Elise has very sensitive, delicate, precise handling, which makes it an exercise in pure joy to chuck through any kind of corner. But paradoxically, there's so much traction from the gigantic tires that come with the Sport Package equipped on my rental that I never really felt out of control. I will concede that I didn't have time or insurance to take this on the track or to an autocross circuit, but even from what I felt I am confident saying that as sports car handling goes I couldn't think of better. And yet the steering had just enough play to make cruising around the highways and interstates of south Florida quite relaxing. That is, I didn't feel like I was in a twitchy sports car until I wanted to feel like I was in a twitchy sports car. Lotus didn't include power steering on the Elise, but it actually isn't hard to drive at low speed, and I even parallel parked it with very little trouble.

Of course, any suspension that provides such sharp handling in a car with so little fancy electronics and kit means that you'd expect the ride to be quite hard. Which it is. But it isn't as uncivilized as one might think. Every time I went over a speed bump, I was expecting to feel like I'd been stabbed, but it wasn't really jarring at all, provided you actually went over it at 25 or 20 mph. And though I certainly felt every little bump and change in the pavement, I never found myself tired or sore after four or five hours of driving.

Similarly, the clutch is light enough to not be exhausting in dense traffic, and the shift action is magnificent -- I never missed a gear once, and each one somehow managed to feel both delicate and solid. The pedals are closely arranged and I was in wide shoes, but I never pressed the wrong pedal. It helps that the gas pedal is a tiny sliver, while the clutch and brake are more standard in shape, though all are diminutive.

However, the Elise also has some touches that make it not wholly impractical. You cannot start the ignition without the doors being unlocked using the key fob, which means you don't have to worry about theft. It's very low slung, but you need not worry about potholes and such, since the suspension is so stiff. The mirrors are slightly convex and thus provide excellent visibility, which is good because the Elise's shape means that you cannot see to the driver's side rear. The radiator is up front for better weight distribution, and the shape of the car pulls cool air into the rear-mounted engine as it goes along. But if you're stuck in traffic for too long and the engine gets too hot, a little fan comes on to blow air on to the radiator and keep the engine from overheating.

There's even better news when it comes to the really mundane stuff. Despite its small opening, the boot is actually pretty spacious – I managed to get two grocery bags, the targa top and a pretty full messenger bag in it, with room to spare. Because the engine is only a four cylinder and it hauls around so little mass, you get 21 mpg in the city and 27 on the highway with a 10-gallon fuel tank. As for reliability, just remember that it's fundamentally a Toyota engine, and it's only a four-cylinder. I've done a fair amount of searching on the Interwebs, and I've heard literally no horror stories at all. Indeed, the Elise I rented had about 14,000 miles on it, and the company has another Elise with 30,000 miles on it, both of which were bought with about 10,000 miles on the road. When I asked him, the owner of the company said that they have had no problems with either car: they just change the oil every 3000 miles with full synthetic. (Lotus themselves dictate oil changes at every year or 7500 miles.) Granted, I imagine that when something does go wrong it won't be cheap to repair, but there's really not all that much to go wrong. And then there's the price: in the current environment and given the massive depreciation that English cars suffer, I am seeing Elises with only 10,000 or 15,000 miles going for about $25,000 and I'd bet you can get an even better deal if you're willing to haggle.

Yet aside from an engine, transmission, and body, what else do you get? Well even the base model that I drove is actually pretty well equipped for a glorified go-kart: you get two airbags, a stereo, carpet, small sun visors (sans vanity mirrors), a cargo net and small storage space behind the seats that has room for a small handbag or somesuch thing, and air conditioning/heating that works very well. The stock stereo is apparently absolute crap, but it's a standard single DIN unit so it can be swapped out easily. The targa top comes on and off quickly and easily, but if you're going to drive this in the winter or in heavy rain you'll want to order the optional insulated hardtop that fastens to the targa. The seats are basically racing buckets with a little better padding, and you can slide them forward but not adjust height or angle. There's also a really neat lumbar support function (available only on 2005 models) that works using a little hand pump like you get on a blood pressure cuff. You even get an electrical socket for a radar detector and a cupholder, though it's poorly shaped and awkwardly positioned.

The lunatic in me wants to say that I wish Lotus could have left some of these features out for the U.S. Elise. But ultimately I was thankful for the air conditioning, stereo and other amenities after four hours of driving in 90-degree weather. And I absolutely adore the gauge cluster -- tachometer and speedometer, with everything else in a tiny digital display like a race car. My only real complaint is that there is a shelf where the air conditioning controls are mounted, but there's no glovebox, so your registration will have to go... somewhere. Stamped on your forehead, perhaps. Yet paradoxically, the Elise's flaws actually seem to place even more emphasis on just how much there is to like about it.

All of these different qualities come togeather to create a sort of simplicity in the Lotus that is somehow both elegant and brutal. That in turn imbues the Elise with something that is extraordinarily rare: character. It's like a cute, cuddly, Welsh Corgi that carries Rambo's machine gun; it looks a bit absurd, but it simultaneously manages to be adorable and vaguely menacing. And if nothing else it is absolutely distinctive. Sure, it lacks the thunderous pull of my BMW, but it's also a much less severe, much less arrogant car. It's an eager, happy little car that goes tearing along roads, yapping the whole way. And in doing so it makes you and the people who see it feel happy as well. I found myself wanting to bring it upstairs with me at night and let it curl up at the foot of my bed like a faithful pet.

I have spent the last three days thinking a lot about just how to describe this shoebox on wheels. First off, it is an exceptionally cool car: though its parts are contemporary, ithas the soul of a proper 1960's British sports car. And it is clearly not for everybody: if I were in my mid-30s or older, I would most likely not even think about buying one as a daily driver, or probably at all. Even many twentysomethings wouldn't consider it. And though the exotic looks might attract a potential mate, the go-kartesque ride height and inelegant ledge blocking entrance and egress will probably scare them away almost immediately. Indeed, if you can get in and out of this gracefully, then I have no doubt that you're a 5'5", 75-pound yoga instructor. And if you're the type to ask why on Earth someone would ever own such an oddball car, then you are probably never going to understand the appeal.

To really enjoy the Elise, you have to be single-minded, a little mad, very quirky, willing to focus on driving while driving, and you have to use your heart and your foot to buy a car. Basically, you have to be like me.

The engineers at Lotus strike me as being much like master chefs: they took some ingredients of good quality -- not the best, but good -- and added spices, garnish, and a great deal of know-how to create something that is much, much greater than the sum of its parts. And that to me is what constitues a truly great car.

To be honest, I had been worried that the Elise wouldn't be as good as I thought it would be; I'd seen multiple reviews hailing it as the best pure sports car ever made, and Lotus is my favorite car company. And in a way, I was right: the Elise isn't as good as I'd thought. It's better.

There is a thin line between "want" and "need," one that all but the wealthiest people are aware of. Before last Friday, I wanted an Elise. By the time I had put two miles on the thing, I knew I absolutely had to have one. As a daily driver. Because yes, I am more than a little infected by the same strain of lunacy that must be in the water at Hethel. And I don't care.

If I'm rambling, don't read too much into it. It's only because I'm in love. Just make mine in British Racing Green or Phantom Black, please.

(Thanks to Xotic Dream Cars for renting me such a great car at such a good rate and delivering it to my door. They got the stock wheels painted, which is why they are black in the photos.)

Review: 2009 Volvo C70

2009-04-10T21:35:00.000-07:00

Every time I visit Boca Raton and its surrounding environment I get the impression that I am stranded in the midst of a collection of strip malls that decided they might as well form a government. It's a place that I despise because it seems to embody everything that the rest of the world thinks America is: unsophisticated, gleefully alliterate, and devoid of any sense of history or sincerity. But I go to see my grandmother, whom I love dearly, and I put up with the horrid drivers, the philistines, the senseless development, and all the rest.

In the past I've always gone down during my spring break, when it's starting to get warm in the more civilized climes of the East coast. I've thus missed the only reason why people really spend time in Florida: winter. However, I was fortunate enough to end up in Florida for a few days in February this year, and Hertz was kind enough to give me a free upgrade to a 2009 Volvo C70 with only 40 miles on the odometer. Needless to say, I took it for a long, long drive.

I got the point of Florida on the A-1-A between Boca Raton and Del Ray. It was 75 degrees, I had sunglasses and a t-shirt on, and I was driving along the Florida coast in a convertible. In February. That... that was nice, to say the least, and it didn't hurt that the car I was in was damn good for the scenario.

The C70 is built on Ford's C1 platform, which underpins the second-generation Ford Focus, Mazda3, Mazda5, Volvo S40, and others, which means you get fully-independent suspension. In a compact car like the Focus, this platform creates a nimble, fun little car. But the Volvo is not compact, nor is it lightweight. This should not be a revelation: it's a Volvo, not a Porsche, and it's supposed to be safe and solid and all those other good Sweedish things.

Balancing this out, however, is Volvo's turbocharged 2.5-liter, 227 horsepower five-cylinder engine, which is also available in modified form in the Euro-only Focus ST and Focus RS. It's a peach of an engine, one that I'd argue is even better than the 2.0-liter TFSI VW/Audi engine that's in the GTI (among other cars). It's enough to propel the C70 to 60 mph in a not-wholly-unrespectable 7.6 seconds.

Of course, 227 hp and front-wheel drive generates quite a bit of torque steer, which makes rapid launches a bit difficult. Performance through the corners is also perhaps a bit of a yawn, in large part because this car weighs 3800 pounds, or about 100 pounds more than my E39 BMW 540i. But it's also not the point of this car: it's a GT car, not a sports car. That made it a magnificent car for Boca Raton, where the concept of a curve in a road is as alien as reading a book.

Now for some of the more practical stuff. The Volvo's biggest draw is its folding metal hardtop, which goes from fully raised to totally down in about 30 seconds. That said, you have to hold a switch the entire time, and the system is a little finnicky. And like pretty much all of these folding hardtops, the windshield had to be stretched so far back that the A-pillar can obscure your view in left turns. More annoyingly, the hardtop takes up the ENTIRE trunk when it's deployed -- I bought a few books at Borders, and it was tough to get them in the trunk. But there are some clever storage compartments tucked in the rear seats, and one in front of the dash, and some cool covers for the compartments in the door panel, all of which are quite spacious. The doors are also intelligently designed: they're very long so as to make getting into the rear seats easier, which would be a nightmare in parking lots since they'd open so wide. But Volvo fitted them with a neat double-hinge system that allows the door to open wide without taking up lots of space. (The mechanism is basically the same as what's on the Renault Avantime, which Top Gear attempted to modify in its most recent series.)

The rear seats, however, are a different story. Volvo says on their website that the car has room for four adults, which implies that they believe the backseat offers room for two. My cousin is 6'3" or thereabouts, and even though my dad and I are both only 5'8", he couldn't put his feet on the floor when sitting in the back seat. He had to lie down. Indeed, even my dad couldn't sit normally in the back seat when I was driving, and my seat was all the way forward. And at speed, those two rear seat belts? Flapping in the wind in a very annoying manner -- I had to buckle them in to make it stop.

The C70 costs quite a chunk of change as well, starting at $39,800. It comes standard with a six-disc changer and excellent sound system, bluetooth, and so on, as well as a proper six-speed manual. Our rental was equipped with the Premium Package (full leather seating and a couple other [small] goodies), which is a $1570 option, as well as a 5-speed manomatic transmission that adds $1250 to the price. That transmission is abysmal, and does everything it can to disguise just how good the engine is, so forget about the dammed thing and keep the six speed. And the fact that this car costs more than a 328i, but doesn't have full leather as standard, is irksome to me, though I actually found the interior a nicer place to be than the E92 328xi loaner I got from BMW of Towson when my 540i was in the shop once.

I find myself reminded of a breakup I went through a while back, insofar as I was initially heartbroken to see the Volvo go, and I swore it was a magnificent car. But then I got some distance on it, and thought about it, and realized it wasn't nearly as great as I thought it was. It's at least $5000 too expensive, the full leather and other Premium Package options should be standard, and anybody who gets the automatic should be shot in the face. And for the next generation the engineers should really figure out a way to make the hardtop at least a little bit more compact.

Volvo is currently offering this car with $4500 off list, and I'm sure you can get them to toss in the Premium Package gratis in this environment. And if you do that, then you'd have a great car for a dual-income couple with no kids, or other people that have no real need for people in a rear seat at the same time the top's down. So long as you live in Southern Florida, Texas, or other climes with long, flat roads. The hardtop and Sweedish factor also make it a viable four-season car, which is heartening.

Still, I can't help thinking that the MX-5/Miata is ultimately a better, and much more inexpensive, choice if you're looking for something that does what the C70 does. As a rental for Florida in late winter, the C70's a great car, provided you are willing to deal with strange luggage arrangements. But would I buy one? To keep in my own garage? Paid for with money that I'd earned? No.