Shmee.Me

June 7, 2013

HBO Go

Thanks to a Comcast promotion I now have access to HBO, but even better I have access to HBO Go. It allows me to stream pretty much all of HBOs content on my Xbox in Hi-Def. Which means I get to watch Game of Thrones Season 3, and I couldn’t be happier.

The one thing I wish now that I have it, is that you didn’t need cable TV to get it because I would probably pay just to have HBO Go, and not have cable TV, and I think this is costing them a ton of subscribers, so if you are out there HBO, you need to allow everyone to sign up for this service and you could be rolling in piles of money! What Netflix has shown is that people want this sort of thing more than they want cable. The time for live scripted TV is drawing to a close, and would rather be at the forefront of change instead of missing it and trying to catch up.

June 6, 2013June 6, 2013

Defend Against Zombies in State of Decay!

State of Decay came out on Xbox 360 yesterday, and it is developed by Undead Labs and published by Microsoft Studios. Since the game just came out, this is more of an initial impressions instead of a review, but the impressions are great!

For those of you that don’t know State of Decay is a zombie survival game. You have to find food, water, medicine, and other supplies, and rescue people with the skills you need to say fix cars, cook food, or provided medical services. You take houses and fortify them so you can survive the zombies at your door.

The game is completely open world, and you save who you want, and you may not want to save them all because some people have draw backs like bad attitudes that ruin moral, or diseases that will eat up your medicine, but if they have a skill you want it may be worth it, but when people die they die for good, including your character.

This game is a ton of fun. Doing quests and looking for more resources keeps you engaged, I started playing this game and quickly lost a couple hours, and it has that ‘I just need to do this one last thing’ addictiveness that is wonderful in a game like this.

There are some drawbacks. The graphics are not the greatest, and the combat is a little wooden, and I think they made the draw distances just a little to far out, so the game can lag a little when you are driving in places with a lot houses and stuff going on, but the game is so addictive those are just minor things.

This game feels like you are playing The Walking Dead, and the stakes are just as high, so if that sounds like fun to you, and it is, then this game is for you. Though I know some of you may want to wait for the PC version with the mod kit, but who wants to wait when you can play it now.

June 5, 2013June 5, 2013

Shmee Investigates What’s Up With Prey 2

In 2011 Andy, Ryan Fadden, and I were at PAX Prime in Seattle, because where else would we be, and we decided to get in the The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim line, but we quickly got out of due to the fact it was three hours long, but as fate would have it that put us front of the Prey 2 booth. A game none of us had any interest in, but that would change as soon as the guy started the demo. We were floored, and it was my game of show for PAX that year. Two years have past and it looks like the game is in trouble.

The first Prey was about a Native American named Tony that is captured by aliens, and then tries to save his girlfriend, and along the way he has to use his Native American super powers to help him survive. The game was a straight up shooter that was only notable for its questionable architecture, and use of portals, yes like from the game Portal, but before Portal came out. You shouldn’t play it. It is not good. This is why we didn’t care about the sequel, but they changed everything for the sequel. It was about U.S. Marshal Killian Samuels and he was also captured by the same aliens, but he escapes and becomes a bounty hunter on an alien planet in a cool Blade Runner like city. It had free running and an open multi-tiered level design. It was really sweet looking.

Last year the publisher Bethesda announced that Prey 2 would not come out that year because it was not ready yet. That is not too strange it happens all the time, but then this year they announced the game was pretty much just a demo and that they were taking the game away from its developer Human Head studios.

This was a shock to me because they had a demo in 2011, and I saw it. It was great, so to have nothing a year and a half later sounded questionable, and developers from Human Head are saying that Bethesda is lying, and they had a near complete game. Bethesda is just mad because they offered to buy out Human Head but they refused so Bethesda pulled their funding, and then finally gave the game to their studio Arkane, and gave the game a new release date of 2016.

I find this story hard to believe as well because that would mean Bethesda is willing to throw away tens of millions of dollars to spite an independent developer, and most companies don’t like to waste that kind of money based on spite. Especially ones in the tumultuous video game industry.

I think the truth is between those two stories. I think Human Head was behind in development, so Bethesda got antsy and asked to buy them so they wouldn’t loose the talent working on the game, but they could bring the quality control in house, and when Human Head refused then Bethesda pulled the plug and moved the game to a new studio, and one that was in house so they could monitor the quality personally.

I am sure there is even more to it then that, and it would great to get truthful account of what is going on, but doubt that will happen. I hope in 2016 the game is as cool as it was promised to be in 2011.

June 4, 2013June 4, 2013

Beasts of the Southern Wild

Beasts of the Southern Wild is film from 2012 directed by Benh Zeitlin. It was nominated for four Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Actress for Quvenzhané Wallis who was the youngest girl ever nominated at nine. This movie could be a little hard to follow at times due to the fact it was filtered through a six-year-old’s mind, but it also gives the movie a unique perspective.

The movie is about a young girl named Hushpuppy (Quvenzhané Wallis) that lives with her alcoholic and neglectful father Wink (Dwight Henry). They live in a Louisiana bayou community called The Bathtub on the other side of the levy. She and her father live off the land and the water, and enjoy the wild life of their community, but it all changes when hurricane Katrina hits, and they have to survive in the flood waters, and the Aurochs (Pig Beasts) in her mind.

This movie is pretty much just about Hushpuppy and Wink, so without the stellar performances of Henry and Wallis this movie would have fallen apart. Wallis in particular is great in this film especially since she was only six at the time. Henry in his first major film role does his job extremely well, and it is a shame he didn’t get a nomination also.

Behn Zeitlin shot this movie completely on 16mm film, so it gives the whole movie a grainy and surrealistic look, and it is a good change of pace from the clarity of today’s HD Digital cameras. It is good see a filmmaker go back to the basics of film making once and a while.

I like this movie a lot, and it is good to see something different every now and again. Wallis just got selected to be the new Annie, so I am sure we will see much more of this delightful young actress in the future.

June 3, 2013June 3, 2013

Community Vs. The Big Bang Theory

There are two sitcoms that are generally considered to be “geeky”, Community and The Big Bang Theory, and they have both done quite a few shows in common from Dungeons and Dragons episodes to Paint Ball and Even Sci-Fi/Comic Book conventions, but they could not be more different, and it all comes down to how they treat their characters.

Community is about a study group at Greendale Community College, and the different fiascos they get in to due to their diverse makeup and the strange social disorder that Abed Nadir has where he compares everything to TV shows and Movies he has seen, so it gives the show a very meta feel.

The Big Bang Theory is about a group of very smart doctor level scientists, an engineer, and a waitress, and how the group with its socially awkward tendencies and disorders cause humorous events.

You would think that due to the fact that one show is about a community college and that the other is about scientists that The Big Bang Theory would be geekier of the two, but that is not the case. Community understands geek culture and sometimes makes jokes that only someone with a knowledge of the subject would understand.

For instance in the season four finally of Community, Abed Nadir goes to the darkest timeline, which is a rip-off of Star Trek’s Mirror Universe, and meets himself, and since he is the most like Spock he finds that he is the same in both universes, just like Spock, but they don’t explain the Star Trek connection. You either get it or you don’t, and they don’t care if you don’t get it. The Big Bang Theory would never do a joke like that. Sure they have had Leonard Nimoy on the show, but the Star Trek jokes they make are basically that the guys like Star Trek, so no knowledge of the show is necessary.

My biggest problem with The Big Bang Theory is that a lot of the jokes are at the main characters’ expense. You are not laughing with Sheldon Cooper, you are laughing at him, and while it is true you do laugh at people in Community, you get the feeling that they are in on the joke, and they make sure that the situations they are in are funnier than the people themselves. With The Big Bang Theory it seems that I am supposed to laugh at the characters because they are nerds, and that they are doing nerdy things, and as a nerd it is a little insulting.

It is nice that when you watch Community and they have a D&D episode that they are making fun of the situations inside the D&D game, and the craziness that the group comes up with. Unlike The Big Theory, which half the joke is that the guys are playing D&D in the first place.

All that being said (or written in this case) The Big Bang Theory is funny and they have a group of great writers that make the show good, but I just get a little nerd rage after I think about the humor afterwards. Community on the other hand is very self referential and doesn’t care if you are having a good time or not, and when they lost Dan Harmon the show’s creator last season, they lost their geeky soul, so it has dropped off a bit, but good news he is back next year!

They are both good shows, but I feel that Community embraces geek culture while The Big Bang Theory makes fun of it, and it is nice to be in on a joke instead of the butt of it, so that is why I am a big fan of Community.