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Media Consumption 10/17/2015

October 17, 2015 by Belghast

Television Lite Week

This week has been one that has seen me absolutely consumed with Destiny on the PlayStation 4, and as such I have simply not spent much time watching television. I have however watched quite an excessive amount of YouTube videos, namely as I try to find information about Destiny. There is this shift that is happening where certain games with certain audiences… simply do not have information blog posts about them. I’ve gotten spoiled in a world with Dulfy.net and WoWHead.com in that I expect pretty much every game I have to have this quality of resources. Instead for many games lately all I am ever able to find is YouTube videos on a given subject. I am sorry to all the YouTubers out there… but I am of a generation where I feel like a video is the least useful way to disseminate information. I will take a written explanation and some good screenshots any day over a lengthy video walk through. At some point in the near future I hope to take some of these things that I found frustrating and attempt to write some blog posts outlining how to do this thing or that thing in Destiny. Granted that is not to say there are not a lot of really good Destiny YouTube channels… but I would still rather have an informational post.

Destiny Lore

The first time around when the AggroChat crew played Destiny… we joked that it was a game almost entirely devoid of story. That apparently is not the case… they just go to strange lengths to hide it from you. The story of the game is told through a series of grimoire cards, item descriptions, quest text, and hinted at in cinematic scenes. In fact there is actually apparently a TON of information about the characters in the game, their background, how they arrived at the tower… and all sorts of legends from the golden age, the city age, and the now tower age. In my search for information about Destiny I happened to stumble across a really awesome YouTube channel called Myelin Game… which is not to be confused with long time friend Mylin1. The channel is chock full of videos where Myelin digs into the lore of Destiny and connects the dots, weaving all of the known information… and speculated information into a narrative around a certain subject. I linked the Black Garden video since the game does a pretty poor job to explain what the hell it actually is… but I also highly suggest the trilogy of videos talking about thorn, last word, and first curse. I have always guessed there was this rich story somewhere behind Destiny… because the dots connected too neatly at times not to be well planned, but now that I am starting to learn some of the actual story I am loving it. I still feel it is a strange choice to make players dig for this knowledge, rather than letting you experience chunks of it through the story. The Fallen King expansion does a much better job of being more forthcoming with information… and it gives characters that previously did not have much of a personality… plenty of chance to show it off. I’ve spent a lot of time listening to these lore videos while doing other things and I highly recommend them.

Star Wars Minute

Another thing that I stumbled across this week is Star Wars Minute, which is a great YouTube channel that takes segments of the Star Wars universe and condenses them into roughly one minute long narrative explanations. Much like the Destiny Lore, this feels as much podcast as it does YouTube video because the narrative explanation is the important part… and the images going along with it are nice to have but not 100% necessary. I ended up finding this as I started doing some googling related to the Star Wars universe, namely for the upcoming pen and paper game that should have its first session tomorrow. The funny thing about this is how much of the universe I already had a full grasp on but have no clue why. I guess even though I have been a sleeper Star Wars fanboy since the prequels… I was still subconsciously hungry for knowledge about this favorite of universes. Star Wars Minute is great to play in the background as you do something else and they release three new episodes a week, so there is a silly amount of content available already.

Arrow Season 3

Be warned I am going to go into some serious spoilers here, so if you have not watched Arrow Season 3 or if you intend to at a later date… you might want to skip this section. Here is the point at which I get really frustrated with this show. Generally speaking I am all for a television show deviating from the source material to make the universe work better for the TV audience. For example most of the Batman movies have worked really well… and they are essentially a condensed soup version of the batman universe… gathering up all the good bits and trying to weave a story out of them. You have a very limited amount of time on television, and what might work fine to slowly build over the course of several years of a comic run… needs to happen in an under two hour long movie. Television shows have a bit more leverage when it comes to pacing something out, and this is also cool. The thing that apparently pisses me off though… is when you take actions attributed to one character and apply them to a completely different character.

What I mean is that this story line that has played out throughout the season around R’as al Ghul didn’t happen to Green Arrow… ever. Essentially this is a Batman storyline, and all of the events that are playing out happened at one time or another to Batman. This caused me to think about Arrow the television show in a different light and realize that essentially… they have been turning Arrow into Batman this entire time. Maybe it is because Batman has been tagged as a “film” universe and is not available to be done in a Television version that they feel the need to create someone that is Batman-like. Green Arrow was admittedly a comic that I did not really follow. I mean I knew that him calling his sister Speedy when that was the character that would ultimately become Arsenal was wrong… and I knew a few other points seemed less than correct. However I lived in this world of relatively little knowledge about the show so I was able to pretty much ignore any differences… until they started stepping foot into the Batman universe. THAT is a universe I know considerably more about, and after a whole lot of research and the council of Thalen… I pretty much determined that nope… Green Arrow has never really interacted much with R’as al Ghul at all. So I am sitting here two episodes away from the end of the season… questioning if I care to finish watching it.

Walking Dead Season 6 Premiere

Thank god Walking Dead is back. “Fear The” was such a pale imitation of Walking Dead, and I am exceptionally happy that they chose to back up the start of Season Six to the end of the first season of Fear. I do have to say though that it makes me extremely happy that Talking Dead has been pulled in officially for Fear as well, because for me at least that has become so much of that experience. This is one hell of a first episode, and I really liked the way they handled Flashbacks in this episode by making them Black and White. That is always the challenge with a show, how to visually tell the watcher that the events they are seeing are not happening in real time but instead an imagined replay. When you are dealing with older characters and younger characters, it works naturally… but when you are dealing with only a few hours or days passing… it becomes much more challenging. So the choice of black and white gave a nice clear demarcation point between the two time-frames. As to the rest of the episode… Rae sent me a text as the show as going on that simply said “Nosh Pit”.

The premise of the show has to be one of the most Rube Goldberg style plot devices I have seen in awhile. To figure out a way to draw the walkers out of the pit and along a fixed path to get them away from Alexandria. The parallels to herding cattle… was extremely strong in this episode. They even managed to draw them down a chute just like you do cattle for a period of time… and then cleared out the farm supply store just to make sure nothing would spook them and draw their attention away… kinda like you do cattle. The slightest noise can distract cattle and get them to move in a different direction, and that apparently is the case with walkers. The thing is… going into this episode… you knew something was going to go wrong. There were scenes in the Season 6 preview show of Walkers in Alexandria or at least the hint of that happening. This show is really good about misleading us, for example the above poster would seem like we are heading towards some central conflict between Morgan and Rick… and in truth… it seems like Morgan instead manages to back Rick down from the ledge a bit.

As far as the walkers… when they are nearing the clear zone… someone sets off a horn in Alexandria, causing the mega horde to turn that direction. So the question is… who did it. At work the popular theory for awhile has been that Enid is a spy from the Wolves, and that the scenes of her in the car with the walker outside… hint that she set off the horn. My personal theory is it is Father Gabriel once again trying to destroy everything around him. He wanted to go out on the mission to herd the walkers, but Rick shut him down immediately. My theory is he is vindictive, and after being shut down by Andrea as well… he is still on some mission to destroy this community and in the process allow himself to be kill in some sort of twisted act of contrition for letting his parishioners die. In truth it could be the wolves themselves, who have been watching everything happening and see this as their opportunity to let the zombies batter down the defense of Alexandria and allow them to come in after they are done… and loot the resources. If nothing else this episode explained why Alexandria had been left fairly unscathed… because the giant pit of zombies had been drawing in more zombies and keeping them away from the town. It is going to be interesting to see how the next few episodes play out, and who we lose in the process.

Media Consumption 10/10/2015

October 10, 2015 by Belghast

Netflix Binge Time

This week things felt like they were starting to get back to normal. Since last week was so freaking crazy I ended up taking Tuesday off and just hanging out around the house. That meant it was the perfect time to binge watch something on Netflix. Unlike the previous week there have been multiple times that I simply hung out downstairs with the laptop and television, and as such have some shows to talk about. Of note, if anyone has something they suggest I watch feel free and chime in. I am always looking for something interesting, but the caveat is it must be available either through Netflix, Hulu or Amazon Prime streaming. I know iZombie has started back up, and I have the episodes recording to my DVR but am largely waiting on my wife to watch them since she also was able to get into the previous season.

Dark Matter – Season 1

Dark Matter is one of those shows that folks had been suggesting to me for some time now, but I never really got around to watching it. When I first checked to see if the show was streamable somewhere, I was only able to watch like the last five episodes through Hulu. Now the entire series is on Netflix and it seemed like the perfect time to watch it. I can’t think of this show without also comparing it to another SyFy channel show Killjoys. There are moments where you wonder if this is set in the same universe, because they seem extremely similar. Distopic future where corporations control pretty much everything, and folks are forced to carve out their lives on the fringe of society. The twist here is that the crew woke from out of cryosleep only to find that they have all had their memories erased. During the first season we spend a lot of time trying to sort out who they are and what exactly they were doing, and at the same time blending together as a team.

So far my two favorite characters are “Five” aka the hacker stowaway girl, and the Android…. that they sadly just keep calling Android. I am hoping in season two they finally give her a name, because I like the character and actor playing her. If you are a fan of Lost Girl it is the same actor that played the Fae Doctor on that show, and sometimes love interest of the succubus title character. What is awesome is that obviously there is some malfunction with the Android as she is starting to develop emotions, which makes the experience very “Data” like. As far as the hacker… I knew she looked familiar and it finally hit me. She is the little girl that played Alessa in the Silent Hill movie, and I IMDB’d to confirm it. There are moments where the show gives me very Cowboy Bebop vibe to it, as they wander around space looking for jobs to pull…. so you know they can eat and have fuel. All we need now is a genetically modified Corgi.

Arrow – Season 3

Also showing up on Netflix is season 3 of Arrow, which I somehow completely missed arriving until last night. While playing SWTOR I binged my way through about half of the season and plan on trying to finish it up today. So far I am liking it, but I am not super keen on some of the events that have transpired. There is a lot of this season that just feels like it is set up material for future events. I feel like I also really need to watch Flash after this to help piece together some of the parts that are missing when ONLY watching this season. The cross over episode felt a bit odd, because I am assuming it started with Flash. Also the lengthy set up for Atom has been interesting but a little contrived. I am also not super sure what is going on with the character of Felicity this season, she seems to be shifting personalities a lot. I am largely cool with Laurel taking the mantle of Black Canary as well. The problem with the DC universe is that I only really know a shallow version of it that tends to be very Batman-centric.

Growing up I was a Marvel kid, and the only comics I really delved into were the Batman and Green Lantern universes… other than Superfriends that is. Marvel always felt like the universe of gritty anti-heroes and that was the sort of thing I thought was cool. DC however tended to have much more detailed story arcs, and they obviously did a far better job of licensing their properties than Marvel since we have the ability to see all of these cross overs. Obviously the whole handing Cupid over to Suicide Squad bit… is going to end up biting them in the ass. I am hoping as the season goes on we see more of the Suicide Squad, especially as this season and season four probably really need to set up for the Suicide Squad movie, seeing as that is not a part of the DC universe that most people know anything about. Well that is other than Harly Quinn… at this point everyone knows and loves Harly Quinn. Looking forward to finishing the season today, as I continued to work my way through the Bounty Hunter storyline.

Fear The Walking Dead – Season Finale

The funny thing about Fear the Walking Dead is how the episode finale had two vastly different effects on me and my wife. Up until this point in the season she had been watching the episodes with me, and it seemed like maybe she was almost getting into the show. Whereas honestly I was bored and kept waiting for the inevitable other shoe to fall, because having been a long time walking dead watcher… you knew the bad stuff was coming eventually. Finally in this episode everything starts to go wrong, and this is the point at which my wife completely loses interest. It seems like she is fine with a world where people have to sort out how to survive, but not so much in a world where they are constantly being chased by the dead. Daniel still rises from this episode as my favorite character, namely the only one who is truly prepared to exist in this world. The only problem there is he takes what is a bad situation and makes it even worse by letting loose the first horde.

In earlier episodes we find that they were using a stadium as a shelter, much like they did in Katrina with the super dome. Something goes wrong and people start turning, and the military is unable to sort out who is living and who is dead and just ends up chaining the entire contents in essentially assuring that all two thousand plus people end up as zombies. So when Daniel turns them lose to use them to attack the military compounds, it gives us a hint and maybe HOW the hordes form. Maybe they get started when zombies finally break out of places they have been pinned up in and keep wandering together because they don’t exactly have free will. Which makes you wonder… where exactly did the mega horde near Alexandria come from? The big thing I wanted from Fear the Walking Dead, was more insight into WHY the world fell to hell and that seems to be something that was not on the menu. Largely I am disappointed in the show, and the lack of Talking Dead after it was a problem for me. Talking Dead essentially played the role of having someone to talk about the show with, in a strange way. I am hoping when Season Two comes around they will do a “Talking Fear” show or something like that. In any case this week we get the return of the real Walking Dead show so in the meantime I am pretty amped for that since experiencing the watered down version.

Media Consumption 10/3/2015

October 3, 2015 by Belghast

Week of PS4

This week was pretty much the week of me intending to play other games… and then never quite getting off of my PS4 in time to actually do that. As a result I spent most of my time upstairs in my office with my chair turned to the side pointing at the television that runs my consoles. Also as a result I did not really watch any television other than last Sunday night, which means that portion of my usual media consumption was pretty scant. However that said I did watch a bunch of really interesting things on the Internets own television station… aka YouTube. As a result this episode of Media Consumption is largely going to focus on things I found interesting on YouTube.

Tommy Westphall Theory

So firstly I have to give a major shout out to the PBS Idea Channel for creating videos that are almost always thought provoking or at least makes me want to discuss whatever it is they are talking about with my friends. This week however they posted a video that quite literally blew my mind. Tiny fireworks went off followed by lots of mental pain… as I attempted to reorient myself to accept the notion that what they were saying could be real. They delved into this idea called the Tommy Westphall Universe Hypothesis, where essentially over four hundred different seemingly unrelated televisions shows… all occur in the same universe. To make things even stranger the suggestion is that this entire universe exists in the mind of one autistic boy named Tommy Westphall that appeared on Saint Elsewhere. If this sounds interesting then by all means watch the video and prepare to make mind explodey noises.

Ahoy – Nuclear Fruit Series

The problem with the internet is that things change regularly… and there is little to no way to track down what things previously were called. There is this great channel that is currently called Ahoy, but I cannot for the life of me remember what the original name was. Essentially it is a channel that does these awesome videos that explore video game concepts with amazing narration and artful two dimensional graphics. I first was made aware of the channel through the Brief History of Graphics series where they delve into computer games and explore the various eras and the graphical changes that came into play as part of them. There is also a really great series called Iconic Arms where they delve into the ubiquitous guns that we use in shooter games, and the origins of them… usually delving into the maker and the real world conflicts they were actually used in. Today however I am here to talk about their latest five part series called Nuclear Fruit, where they delve into our fascination with nuclear warfare and the games that were inspired by it. As of writing this there are only four parts available but the next part should arrive this coming week if they follow the standard schedule. If you look in this playlist the video appears to be available but just flagged to “private”.

Cool Ghosts – The Taken King: Does it Fix Destiny?

If for some reason you missed this yesterday, I am a really huge fan of this video. It does an excellent job of highlighting the things that felt wrong with Destiny Year One and the way many of those have been improved in Year Two. Yesterday I also went into my own reasons for why I think the game is in a much better state, but still the video is well worth watching. Matt Lees the guy who appears in the video makes absolutely brilliant videos, the problem being they are somewhat sporadic. My hope is that his new “Cool Ghosts” initiative where he collaborates with another friend will serve to be a fertile ground for new content. In the mean time we can always just re-watch his crowing achievements of the PS4 and Xbox One reveals.

Fear the Walking Dead

There is a huge part of me that is excited for this weeks Fear the Walking Dead… because it means this season is over and we can return to the normal Walking Dead television show. In all fairness I have to say last weeks episode had things finally starting to get interesting. From this point out… I am going to delve into a ton of spoilers and if you have not been watching this show you might just want to stop reading this sub section. We found out a bunch of stuff that does not bode well for the characters. I have a feeling that there is no way that they are getting out of tomorrows episode without at least losing one of the characters. Essentially the crazy old man… aka Daniel Salazar… aka the only person who has the survival instincts necessary to survive the undead apocalypse… has kidnapped the soldier that his daughter Ofelia is sweet on. Then he proceeds to do what so many fathers have wished they could do to the guys dating their daughters… slowly peels away his skin in a cruel torture ritual. The thing is… as horrible as this act is… it is quite literally the only way he was able to get him to spill the beans about operation Cobalt. This is apparently a planned execution of all of the civilians when they abandon the Los Angeles Basin. As we go into this weeks episode it is essentially the day these events are supposed to play out. That said it seems like most of the soldiers who would have been involved in said plan… got nommed on in an overrun hospital. So here we go… things are finally going to get crazy… because I am tired of this suburban living under armed guard phase of the show. Let the bodies hit the floor! It is seriously time to weed out some of the characters.

Media Consumption 9/26/2015

September 26, 2015 by Belghast

The Second Week

There is a distinct reason why I decided to call this new feature “media” consumption rather than television or movies, namely because there are some weeks that go by that I don’t really watch much television. For example unless having cartoon network going on in the background counts, I have not really watched any purposeful television since last Sunday. I did however watch a lot of stuff online and listen to a lot of music, as such this week is going to be a bit of a pivot as I talk about some of those things. As I am starting to pull out of my hibernation state a bit, I am by nature spending less time parked in front of the television.

Meg Myers – Sorry

It is so rare that a musician comes around that so closely matches my personal tastes as Meg Myers. I’ve seen her described as what would happen if Trent Reznor and Tori Amos had a kid… and honestly I feel like that is probably a fairly apt theory. The funny thing is that when I heard this theory I had no clue about the supposed affair that the two of them had back in the 90s… but a good friend of mine is a historian in all things Trent and filled me in on the details. In reality the music is just damned amazing. “Sorry” is her first full length album, but there have been a few EPs floating around for awhile that are up on Google Music, and they have been in pretty regular rotation since I first found out about her. I feel so strongly about this music that when the album was released on September 18th I purchased it… even though I had access to it freely through my Google Music subscription. This means a lot, because I generally don’t buy music other than video game soundtracks… because I have access to stream pretty much anything I could ever want through Google Music. In fact this is the first album I have purchased since backing the Amanda Palmer kickstarter. It is the first musician in a long time that I feel like I want to wholeheartedly support.

If you have never heard anything by Meg Myers I highly suggest checking out the title track “Sorry”

If you want to pick it up… [Google Play] [iTunes] [Amazon]

Star Wars Phantom Menace Review

After last week going into how disappointed I was about the prequels after watching them again recently, a good friend of mine linked me a really strange youtube review of the series that takes place over the course of seven different videos. Now there is some disturbing comedy woven in between the bits of actual review that I don’t necessarily think is sane and rational, but most of what this person is saying about the movies themselves is exactly what I had been feeling. If you are like me and living in this constant state of disappointment about the movies… it might be a bit cathartic to listen to someone rip them a new one. The amount of time spent delving into just why Phantom Menace was so horrible… is a bit obsessive but I listened to them one night while playing Destiny. I enjoyed myself, but your mileage may vary.

Inon Zur plays Fallout 4 Theme

If you have been around me for very long, one thing you know is that I love video game soundtracks. One that has been on regular rotation for years is the Rift soundtrack composed by Inon Zur, so I am absolutely no stranger to his work. In the above video we have him doing a very passionate rendering of the Fallout 4 theme song. This combines so many things that I love, because you could not be any more excited about Fallout 4 than I am. Hell I even managed to snag one of the pip boy editions. Fallout is one of those game series that I have been passionate about since College and each one just seems to keep getting better. Lately we have been talking New Vegas on the Podcast because Thalen is experiencing it for the very first time. Knowing Inon Zur is the composer for the main score even makes me more excited about what the fourth installment might bring.

iZombie

At this point my wife and I are around eight or nine episodes into the first season. The hope is between today and tomorrow we can catch a few more episodes while she grades. I still need to remember to set the DVR to start recording episodes from this season, since I guess the whole Fall television thing is happening. I know that I can get the five latest episodes through Hulu but I want to make sure not to miss an episode and have to track it down somehow through nefarious means. Have I ever mentioned that I hate the current state of television and how damned hard it is to sort out which medium happens to be streaming which shows? I feel like if you are a television provider and not offering your shows either through Hulu or through Netflix… then you are passively giving me permission to track your stuff down illicitly on the interwebs by not giving me a subscription based option. Anyways hopefully we will sort out the rest of this season and be caught up soon. This is actually a good enough show however for me to watch it on a weekly/semi-weekly basis.

Fear the Walking Dead

I can honestly say that right now at this moment… there is not a single character on Fear the Walking Dead that I actually like. In fact I would be just as happy as not to see them attacked by Zombies and then replaced by a cast of characters that we have yet to even meet. As much as I am enjoying iZombie… I am that much NOT enjoying Fear the Walking Dead. I keep hoping and waiting to see if it gets better, but right now… that is very much not a thing that is happening. In fact in many ways it has gotten worse, and it is my fear that they will drag this shit out until the sixth episode before finally giving us anything interesting. All of the characters are weak and stupid… and I cannot fathom how any of them are going to survive past the end of this season let along the series as a whole. I guess society hasn’t fallen apart enough for folks to start reverting to primal instincts yet, but I am so ready for the heroine addict son to end up as walker fodder. I guess what is annoying about all of this is that so many people seem to be acting like “life as normal” can continue, when we the audience know that their suburban existence is over and that staying there is essentially a death sentence. Maybe this is precisely what Kirkman was going for… making us loathe the characters so that when they ultimately die we will enjoy it? I would be shocked it more than one of that first family actually makes it out of this season. Right now I am betting on the mom, she seems to be starting to go down the path of Carol.