All Eyes Out For You

Pop Culture Rundown

Ah, the weather is changing (or trying to change here in Texas), and the new season brings loads of entertainment for our viewing and gaming pleasure...

Sons Of Anarchy (FX, Tuesday)
Yes, it's overly violent and pretty silly.  But I loves me some motorcycles.  This season promises a gang war with white supremecists (wow, Henry Rollins is a REALLY believable neo-Nazi) and possibly an expansion into the porn business.  Seriously, what's not to love?

Dollhouse (Fox, Friday)
Was there a more underrated and underestimated show last season?  It was hard to get into, but as the season wore on and the threads became more apparent, there was no denying that Joss Whedon was still on his game.  I imagine this will be a make-or-break season for the series, so here's hoping other viewers catch on.

Halo: ODST (Xbox, out today)
Shameless franchise milking?  You betcha.  Probably not worth the fully loaded price (the campaign is said to be relatively short), but seriously, it's HALO.  Like you're not going to buy it.

WET (Xbox & PS3, out now)
Eliza Dushku voices this hyper-violent grindhouse tribute, and though it has plenty of flaws, it does what it does exceptionally well and with a high amount of style.  Fantastic music, too.  Think Kill Bill if you actually got to see The Bride in action during her assassin days.

UPDATE:  I suppose it goes without saying that the Video Game Industrial Complex has a whole lot invested in franchises, probably none as much as Halo.  I'm gonna make a snap judgment about ODST after only a couple of hours of play: meh.  It undoubtedly has a different feel - quieter, stealthier - than the other Halo games, but it's disappointing to find almost nothing new here.  When you end up on the outskirts of New Mombassa in your Warthog, I'm sure it's supposed to feel like the original Halo all over again.  But it's tough to recapture that magic, which after all, is now about a decade old, an eternity in video game years.

Contrast the near-universal acclaim of Halo: ODST with the mixed reviews for WET, one of the best actioners I've played in a long while.  WET also dares to to be an original property with a lot of cinematic style, and if the gameplay isn't perfect, it's at least a total blast.  I'm not really comparing the two titles - they couldn't be more different, in fact - but there needs to be a bit more balance in the video game press.

Speaking of franchises, playing Halo: ODST really made me want to dust off Gears Of War, the real gold standard for Xbox exclusive titles at the moment.  There will be a ton of anticipation for next fall's Halo: Reach (supposedly the last Halo title for Bungie), but what I'll really be hoping for is GoW3.

Anyway, Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 comes out on November 10, and we can all put away our Halo games for a long time after that.

Alt-country coming to Rock Band

How cool is this?  On Feb. 24, Rock Band will release an "alt-country" track pack featuring Steve Earle, Lucinda Williams, Old 97's, Neko Case and Drive-By Truckers.  The DBT song will be "3 Dimes Down" from their most recent album.

I think my dream album for Rock Band is Southern Rock Opera by DBT, but let's call this a good first step.

HAPPY NEW YEAR! Annual Geek Alert

This is my traditional time of year for catching up on my geek passions, while waiting for the annual new music drought to end.  Xbox games received as gifts coupled with too much free time usually find me dorking out with some of the usual suspects...

• Battlestar Galactica webisodes
  Only about two more weeks before the final 10 episodes get rolling, but you can feed you frack with some five-minute shorts on the SciFi Channel's website.  Bonus geek points:  you can listen to the webisodes with commentary from Jane Espenson.  The first half of Season 4 will be released on DVD this week.

• Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (Xbox 360)
  I wasn't very impressed by the demo version of this game, but the real deal is pretty fun and happens to have one of the best storylines of any Star Wars product in recent memory.  Fans will be pleased to know the events in the game take place much closer to Ep. IV than Ep. III.  Bonus geek points:  you can download an extra chapter ($10) and two "character packs" ($5 each) that allow you to play the game as different geektastical Star Wars characters.

• Buffy The Vampire Slayer: Season 8
  The ongoing revival of Buffy in Dark Horse Comics just completed it's coolest story arc yet, with the meeting of Buffy and future slayer Fray.  Fray is one of my all-time favorite graphic novels, and the return of Karl Moline for the arc was a real treat.

• The X-Files
  Received Seasons 1 & 2 on DVD as gifts.  Nice!

• Jeffrey Overstreet's Auralia's Colors and Cyndere's Midnight
  I'm on a mission to complete these first two installments of Overstreet's fantasy trilogy (with the third on the way in 2009).  I'm restarting Auralia, but his natural prose makes re-reading the first half a pleasure.  These books have been very positively reviewed, and I feel like a loser for not finishing them earlier.  Plenty more info over at Jeffrey's site.

I'm also embarking on a project this week to size down my DVD collection by ditching many of the amaray cases in favor of CD/DVD storage binders.  Not every last title (gotta keep those Criterions), but I'm on a 2009 mission to free up shelf space.  CD jewel boxes, you're next!

Gears of War... 2!

Just in case you've been paying attention to, I dunno, the world or something, you might have forgotten that Gears of War 2 comes out this Friday for Xbox 360.  I'll be on vacation this weekend, but I'll see you on Xbox Live when I get back!

Metallica coming to Guitar Hero III

It pains me to think of giving Metallica my money, but I may just have to this Friday when their new release Death Magnetic will be released as a full album of downloadable content for Guitar Hero III (the content will also be playable in the upcoming GH: World Tour release).  It will cost about 18 dollars, and though that is pretty steep for an "album," I imagine I'll get a lot more mileage out of it by way of Guitar Hero than I would otherwise.

If anyone doubts that games like GH and Rock Band are a great alternative revenue stream for the music industry, they need to wake up.  Why on earth would I otherwise buy a Metallica album?  Heck, I might even dust off some of my Metallica CD's.  Major bonus points for releasing this content on the release date.  I wonder how many people will actually hear Death Magnetic first on GH, rather than through as an audio release.

On a related note, I've been on the fence about whether to consider Rock Band 2 over GH: World Tour, considering my investment in Guitar Hero (two wireless guitars and counting).  Rock Band has just been a heckuva lot more progressive on the downloadable content front.  But I just noticed that the package for Rock Band 2 will come with a WIRED guitar.  Once again, they've missed that boat.  The wireless guitar was what sent me to GH in the first place.  Looks like Guitar Hero wins that round again.  The new drums for GH: World Tour are rumored to be very nice as well.

Geek Alert: Mass Effect (Xbox 360)

Yes, I am a nerd.  Have I ever mentioned that?  On this blog, I usually try to restrict it to music-related nerdliness, but I thought I might run down some of the Xbox 360 titles I've recently played.  And hey, if you by some wildly outside chance you happen to be an Xbox'er, please send me your gamertag (I'm "DKHtown" btw).

But before I discuss some online titles, I thought I'd quickly look at Mass Effect, BioWare's first RPG entry on the Xbox 360.  If you don't know what "RPG" stands for, you probably don't want to know.  It's the videogame evolution of Dungeons & Dragons from my formative years.  I'm not a huge RPG fan, but BioWare roped me in on the original Xbox with their Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic titles (I also played their title Jade Empire).  RPG's are conversational and - hopefully - cinematic, and BioWare throws in a fair amount of standard fighting and shooting in for good measure.

But in Mass Effect, as in most good RPG's, the battles take a back seat.  I love the KotoR games, but this game is a giant technical leap forward.  For instance, in the old BioWare games, your responses to other characters were strictly onscreen textual (no talking).  Now your response choices are brief, but your onscreen character responds with an actual spoken answer that is much more involved that the simple, one-line choice you make (but reflects your choice).  As such, Mass Effect is infinitely more immersive than any RPG I've ever played.  You also get to design your own lead character in a ton of detail.  You can be male or female for starters, and obviously your character gets an entirely different voice performance depending on this choice.  Facial appearance can be customized down to an absurd level of detail.  And of course, you get to select from several main character traits.  For instance, I chose to be a "Colonial" (raised on an outworld colony), "Sole Survivor" (the lone survivor of a brutal alien attack), and a "Soldier" (weapons proficiency over special powers).  I was going for a Malcolm Reynolds/Cara Thrace-type character.  My character design is probably pretty obvious, but so far I've been impressed by how well my dialogue responses reflect this design.  Bored yet?

I'm really not that far into the game at this point, but the heavy RPG facets of the game are just fantastic.  It is literally like being inside a film.  The exploring/fighting aspects, naturally, don't break any new ground and are adequate, if not fantastic.  There are a number of annoying control and graphical issues, but Mass Effect is by far the best-looking RPG I've ever seen or played.  And if you're playing an RPG for the fighting mechanics, you're playing the wrong type of game.  If you're an RPG fan or a sci-fi nerd (guilty on both counts), Mass Effect is right up your alley.  More than a handful of gaming publications gave it Game Of The Year kudos as well.  It's also worth noting that the character voices are top-notch, with a mix of BioWare veterans and even a few recognizable actors (Seth Green).