Another Apocalyptic Sunday

I'm writing this while watching last week's WWE Raw. Yes, on top of everything else I watch, I also watch professional wrestling. Stop judging me, I've watched this since I was young, I can't get the fish hook out of my cheek.

I love how when John Cena is out on injury, they don't seem to know what to do with the title, they managed for more than a year to keep the belt on CM Punk. Which was fantastic, but Cena got injured a few months ago and they've been playing the vacant WWE title game for a month and a half now, two pay per views without proper finishes. Granted, it's some of the best writing I've seen out of the company, comedy wise, because they have The Big Show involved, and everything that man does is comedic gold.

Moving on from the pro wrestling talk before I lose my entire ten person audience. Lets talk Beyond: Two Souls, and how good that game is.

light spoilers may follow, be warned.

So I spent all of yesterday playing the game, aside from about an hour and a half break for food. The campaign is somewhere close to ten hours. Which is respectable given the style of the game. Quantic Dream has been known to deliver in the story over game play department, and I cannot disagree. It just sucks that nearly every review I've seen for the game was done by someone who things that video games are still all about the game play. I will openly admit that some of the game play elements was wonky, and will take more than one play through to master. This isn't Call of Duty, or God of War where everything will be handed to you. You will mess up in your first play through, you likely won't die. But you will get hit, a lot.

What I find to be the strongest aspect of the game, and what a lot of other people took issue with. was the fragmented linearity of the narrative. You're constantly jumping around to different times in Jodie's life. I love it, others hate it. I'm not sure why they hated it. unless they weren't like me and didn't play the whole game in one sitting and forgot what happened in each of the parts. 

Admittedly it can get confusing, it isn't done like Momento, where you recap everything as you gradually go back in time. You start off at the end, of the game, granted you don't know that, and then jump to some time before that, and then you're a kid, and then you're an adult again, and then a teenager. And this jump happens after every part finishes. Just like Quantic Dream's previous outing, Heavy Rain, there isn't much "action" in the game, it's more of a drama, with action elements. People took issue with the gun controls, and I don't know what exactly their problem with it was. Was it that they couldn't themselves point and shoot and instead only had to hit R1 to kill anyone? Admittedly, I didn't really read the reviews, I read the scores, which were stationary around 6-7, which is much to low.

I will say that I don't disagree that the game is weaker than Heavy Rain, and that is entirely due to the way the story is told. Heavy Rain is easy to understand, the narrative is straight forward, and you're just in it for the ride. Beyond: Two Souls would not work that way. The whole point of the fragmented jumping narrative, is not only to confuse the player, but because important aspects that explain what will happen next occur at different times in the game. The way Beyond is told, benefits it as opposed to hindering it. 

The performances you get from the cast, specifically from the two main cast members, Ellen Page and Willem Dafoe as Jodie Holmes and Nathon Dawkins respectively. As an avid fan of both of theirs, I was well aware that the two of them were capable of some remarkable performances, and the fact that their best work came out of a video game is just remarkable. 

In order to avoid spoilers, I'm not going to discuss just what makes their respective performances so damn brilliant. Because they are both amazing in different ways. If you are reading this, and some of the scores have swayed you away from trying the game out, don't listen to them. Only listen if you are partial to game play over story. But I'm giving the game an 8/10, for the occasional frustration over how the combat works, and a frame rate drop here and there that took me out of the immersion.

In my last post I mentioned that I was going to watch Much Ado About Nothing and The Croods. I have done neither, mainly because of the overhaul I did to the blog's layout, and not getting done with that until like eleven thirty and then watching Once Upon a Time in Wonderland which didn't end until around twelve thirty. So The Walking Dead returns to television tonight, which means I can officially hate the rest of the human population for giving such an average, right down the middle show, the label of "televisions best show." 

I don't know what to think about the show though, to be honest. It was my introduction to The Walking Dead multi-verse. I understand that the show is separate from the comic and game. But this is the only case I can find, where the comic and video game, are actually better than the visual medium adaptation. The show walks the line, of camp and non camp, and i think that is where I take issue. Because narratively the show makes sense, it's easy to follow, and doesn't treat the viewer as stupid. the viewer in most cases is actually more intelligent than the narrative, or at least characters in the narrative, which is how we are clued into who is going to die. That is why the comic and game are so much better, because people aren't inherently idiotic in it. You don't cheer when a member of the group dies in the comic, you're actually upset, depressed even, almost to the point of not continuing the comic, as some people did following the events of issue 100. People cheered, actually cheered and rejoiced, following the death of one certain character in the show (I know because I was one of them).

This was done on my part, prior to having read the comics. Which actually I believe I am an issue behind, I haven't read issue 115 yet, the first issue of the "semi-biweekly" Volume Twenty: All Out War. So, I think I'm going to have to go read that. Be back soon.

Okay, so now I'm all caught up on The Walking Dead comic. I can't get over how good the story actually is among all campiness. That's where the comic succeeds and the show fails. The comic seems to know it's campy, and not meant to be taken as a work of art, while the show doesn't. The show takes itself seriously when it shouldn't and doesn't when it should. We have a game of opposites going on in the show, we are supposed to care about the group, when honestly we only care about Rick, Carl, and Daryl - maybe a little bit Maggie and Glenn too. Daryl more than anyone else, I know for a fact that if Daryl dies, 90% of my "friends" who watch the show, which is like twenty-thirty people will not continue to watch the show - he's basically the only reason they watch it. But the comic manages to get you to sympathize and care about everyone, and does not make any character weak, aside from the throwaways that die quick, before they had a chance to really become characters. The only real emotional death in the show so far has been Lori's, and that was only emotional for the viewers, because we saw how devastated Rick was, it drove him into insanity. I was upset that they killed Merle, but I understood why it had to be done, and it was coupled with a fantastic performance by Norman Reedus, so I accepted it all in the same. 

The only reason I am not avoiding spoilers here , is because it's The [Fucking] Walking Dead, if you haven't seen it yet, you don't care about spoilers.

The show however has somehow managed to completely destroy Andrea's character. She's a fucking bad ass, how did you manage to do that with the source material you were given. She's hardened and tough, she isn't sympathetic, and she isn't stupid and clueless. She's the second in command for Pete's sake (He returns, and no, I will not let this stupid bit die - it's all I have).

But you done fucked it up and made one of the most beloved characters in the comics into one of the most hated characters in the show. So much so, that as previously mentioned when she bit the dust at the end of season three, people actually rejoiced in the streets. Maybe not to that extent. But I want to do something with you now, to show you that not only was her death a good thing for the fans, but to show you that they didn't handle it well. I hate doing this because it spoils something that happens at the end of Breaking Bad, in its second to last episode.

Actually, no, don't watch these clips if you don't want spoilers it's that simple. My analysis of the two clips will be spoiler free, if you've seen Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead all the way through, feel free to watch the clips. But if you haven't yet and care about spoilers. Don't. You've been warned.

I apologize for the poor quality both in the visuals and audio of the walking dead clip, but seriously, it is impossible to find a good quality clip of the actual scene, and that's the best I found on like the first four pages of YouTube. What I find hilarious is that the person watching it, either has a cold, or is actually crying.

Now if you watched both clips you'll notice two things, both involve the death's of characters in the show, that directly impact the main cast. One was done in the penultimate episode, and the other in the season finale. The latter should have been done in the penultimate as well. Putting her death after the confrontation, adds nothing to the emotion, it just serves to kill off a character and nothing else. I'm certain there will be some added repercussions in the early episodes of season three, but I don't see it being brought up any more past episode five. The first clip shows us how to properly kill off a character. Even a small character, such as the one who died, can have a great impact on the narrative and the coming events of the show. Andrea's death in The Walking Dead, does nothing to the narrative of the show, or has done nothing, other than getting rid of a pay check. Sure, it may have made some of the more emotionally vulnerable members of the viewership tear up, but God is that clip hammy. 

She's giving this big speech the entire time, why is she giving this "holier than thou" speech? All it does is make me wish she would have died off screen for two reasons. One, Andrea's character in the show, was making stupid mistake after stupid mistake. She has been living in the world of zombies and messed up people for about a year - Yes, the three seasons of the walking dead are only stem about the course of a year. She knows how to act in it, or should. That is evidenced by her character's source material - again when you are given gold to write a character with, use it, don't shit on it (though that would technically be using it I guess). 

The first clip shows, that no speech is needed to show that the persons death is important and sad or ennobling. The character dies in order to motivate one of the other characters involved in the scene, that was the real purpose of the scene. A motivational tool of the writing staff. Andrea's death in TWD served absolutely no purpose but to shut up the people, like me, that hated the way her character was being handled by the writers. that's it, her death has done nothing else for the show, no emotional impact, no character development out of it (yet, there's still a possibility that some will come), it's just there because the writing staff decided to get rid of her.

When killing off a main character, you have to do it right. Granted, this is really the only character death in TWD that I take issue with. Lori's was handled perfectly, along with Shane's and Dale's. Merle's was by far handled the best out of any death in the show. We don't actually see his human death, just his zombie death, and we see the effect that it had on Daryl in the following episode. Perhaps I'd be more appreciative of Andrea's death if it were actually done in the penultimate episode, and given a chance to show how the characters react to it in season three. But all they really do is cry about it for a minute or so, then go back to the prison with all the people from Woodbury, that are no doubt all going to die by episode three. It's like they aren't even trying to surprise us with these traumatic events, it's so obvious it's ridiculous.

Lets talk Pokemon now.

So, I got Pokemon X on Saturday, I haven't played it much. But I chose Fennekin, the fire starter, for my first play through. 

Yes Dean, he is cute. So, I need to apologize to my suite mate, who had a heated conversation with me over the secondary types of the three starters. I was wrong and you were right, it is in fact fire/psychic, water/dark, and grass/fighting. I still stand by my point that Froakie's final form looks more like a fighting type than Chespin's, Chespin doesn't even look like it should evolve into a part fighting type at all. Unless Serebii is wrong as well, but for some reason I doubt that. So, when I get to choose my orig. 151 starter, I think I'm gonna go with Squirtle, at least for this first play through. But there is a water type that looks a lot like a blue Krabby that I want, so I may actually go for Charmander like everyone else.

The differences in this game versus the previous installations of Pokemon is amazing. YOU CAN MOVE DIAGONALLY GUYS.

Anywho, I am getting hungry and that's all I really have to say on Pokemon X as I am not that far into it to really have an opinion on the game, Fennekin hasn't even evolved yet, one level away, but still. So, in conclusion enjoy the following video, I'm going to get food and actually watch Much Ado About Nothing now.