Heroes – Season Four review and series retrospective

I will admit it; I did not watch Heroes when it originally aired. Back when ‘Genesis’ aired in 2006, I was already being stretched by the long winded mysteries of Lost and the idea of another long serial drama did not excite me regardless of the inclusion of superpowers. I eventually did give the show a chance and fell in love with it. ‘Normal people discovering they had extraordinary powers’ wasn’t a new concept and mainstream audiences had already accepted the live action X-Men movies as a fantastic representation of the subject matter. Heroes took the idea and found a way to make it feel even more grounded in our world; bringing people from different cultures and upbringings together under a common cause. That was season One.

Things never really evolved from there, over the next few seasons the audience dwindled and NBC was forced to pull the plug on Heroes. The fourth season really tried to redeem the show in the eyes of the viewers (going as far as to title the story arc ‘Redemption’) and bring the show back to its first season prime. However a number of issues in the writing and general story direction proved that the show was beyond redemption. The issues that plagued season four were not unique to the season; storylines lost their reins quickly, new characters were rarely introduced and a self-indulgence of series in-jokes kept the show from breaking new ground. With the final season being released on DVD and Blu Ray this month, it felt like the right time to look back at a series that once garnered so much praise, only to collapse under its own weight. So without further adieu, here are my arguments as to why this final season, and the show in general, failed:

Those Pesky Fans: Heroes became a global sensation almost overnight, with a strong following from the internet-browsing, comic-con-frequenting army of geeks. When season two concluded early due to the writer’s strike, fans made their presence known. They hated the slow pace of season two, and Tim Kring acknowledged it and promised a much faster season three. What we got after that was a show that made Lost look like a simple children’s book. Fans responded yet again with even more rage. The writers never stood a chance, they could not please everyone, and the more vocal crowds were far from a true representation of the whole audience.

In an age where feedback from viewership is instantaneous, it can be hard for writers to tell their own story. There are forces from the internet, from the network executives and even from other members of the creative team. Maybe there was no way for the show to evolve without all these opinions influencing it, but one cannot help but wonder just what the show could have accomplished without so many cooks in the kitchen...

Rules Made to be Broken: The first season never really established a set lore for how people acquired their abilities. The book written by Dr. Suresh explained that the powers stemmed from somewhere in the brain, which was why Sylar needed to inspect a person’s brain in order to understand (and replicate) their power. In season three however, the rules were completely scrapped and now abilities were tied to an increase of adrenalin.

This example of not caring about the established rules is not unique. Season two introduced a deus ex machina that could bring people back from the dead. It was farfetched but after a year of laying down the foundation it was believable. Fast forward to season three and every character has forgotten such a feature exists in this world. So when a dead Nathan Petrelli needs to be replaced, they instead use a MIND READER to brainwash Sylar into shape shifting into Nathan. It was a drastic jump that barely worked in the context of the show, and served as little more than a cliff hanger to force NBC to give the show another season. Sometimes science fiction is bogged down by its chronology and lore after decades, such as Star Trek or Stargate. Heroes was already throwing out the rulebook after 3 years, which definitely shows the lack of integrity the writers had to their own lore.

Repetition Repetition: Every season Claire Bennet was hiding her true self from her family while cutting her hand to demonstrate her ability. Every season Mohinder would stick his nose into places where it didn’t belong and get into trouble. Every season Noah Bennet would try to control the lives of everyone around him despite it always failing. Every season – technically, twice in season three – Nathan Petrelli would die. The story beats felt overused by the third season, yet the writers stuck to their guns and continued to drive these once unique plot devices into the ground.

Repetition also came through in the overall plot. The exploding man in New York was a great hook to draw in the audience. Season two introduced a disaster on a much larger scale that killed over 90% of the world’s population – although this idea never fully surfaced due to the writer’s strike cutting the season short. The third season struggled to have its own goal for a while, and even went as far as reusing the exploding man idea all over again. Really there wasn’t enough to distinguish these cataclysmic events from each other, and for a group of people with superpowers there really aren’t many other possible scenarios that would work for the show.

Never Say Die: Reusing those once iconic moments was always easy for Tim Kring and his group of writers – after all, the main cast rarely faced death. In 2006 we saw Isaac Mendez die at the hands of Sylar despite all of Hiro’s efforts to save him. DL and Nikki met tragic ends in second season, but after that it became obvious that the shows head runners were too scared to let go of anymore cast members. Despite dying continuously, Nathan returned every season (how did he ever survive being shot at the end of season 2?) Even the introduction of Tracy in season three was a very weak cop out to keep Ali Larter on the credit roll. Once upon a time, Tim Kring envisioned Heroes with a different cast every season, but after discovering how popular the first season cast was, they became untouchable. If anything, the show became victim to its own popularity.

The worst part about this is the fact that most of the main cast could have very easily died in season four without hurting the story in anyway. Matt Parkman could have died when he was shot, and Sylar could have somehow regained his memories through some other deus ex machina act. Mohinder could have died at the hands of Samuel, with no real change to the story. Hiro could have fought for his honour in the limbo-court room and left the living world with his pride, and the people at the carnival could have just run away faster. But because someone believed this show could receive a fifth season, the characters had to stay alive just so they could repeat their same character growth points for a fifth time.

Useless characters: Most of the main Heroes cast were not envisioned to be sustainable for more than one or two seasons. The build up of HRG’s true name at the end of season one felt rewarding when we finally heard Jack Coleman say to Peter ‘call me Noah’. After that episode the character lost a lot of his mysterious appeal; his name was the final frontier the audience needed to reach. Watching his character fumble around with nothing to do in season four shows just how unsustainable he really was.

Characters like Tracy and Mohinder existed in season four only for the sake of reminded the audience that they were once important roles in earlier stories. Yet they were treated more importantly than many of the new cast, like Jeremy. Remember Jeremy? The teen that could control the flow of life and death? Of course you don’t remember him because the writing staff didn’t care about him and killed him off faster than a Red Shirt on Star Trek. At least poor Jeremy got a closing point to his story, while season two regular Monica was simply forgotten and never mentioned again (it’s okay though, she never got a chance to interact with any of the main cast).

Romantic Issues: Season Two’s love stories weren’t entirely flash hot. Peter and Caitlin proved to be unpopular to viewers. Claire and the West was a little too Clark Kent for some people. And the Hiro/Yaeko/Kensei triangle was too cute for people to swallow. Tim Kring even apologized for the romance driven stories of season two, going as far as saying ''In retrospect, I don't think romance is a natural fit for us.''

But that was not the end of the Heroes love stories. Seasons three and four continued different romance stories, with far worse results. Maya and Mohinder were weaker than anything the series had seen yet. Sylar being in a relationship with Elle took what was once a strong villain and transformed him into an idol for girls to daydream over as if he was a teen idol. And the less said about Noah and Lauren, the better. In short, Tim Kring is a hypocrite and should not be allowed to bring men and women together for the sake of romance ever again.

With so many criticisms to make of the show, it’s hard to believe over 14 million people in the US were watching the show and giving it nothing but praise. The truth is that this show was a cultural phenomenon on the levels of other character driven sci fi shows like Lost and Battlestar Galactica. Honestly, I still love Heroes. I consider season one to be some of the most exciting television to ever be made, with an interesting mythology and some memorable set piece moments (after all, who will ever forget ‘Save the cheerleader, save the world?) If season two had been allowed to continue as it was originally envisioned, we may have seen something even more spectacular.

In the bonus content of the season two DVD, Tim Kring talks about what would have happened if the season had not been cut short at 11 episodes. Without giving away too many details, the creative team had big ideas that would have led to the slow season introduction paying off in a big way. The new characters that were introduced would have had proper time to be intertwined with the established characters and grow. There would have been a cataclysmic event bigger than anything the show ever saw in all of its seasons. If anything, the writer’s strike was a fatal blow that Heroes never recovered from. The long break gave everyone too much time to forget what made the show a hit originally.

In season one, every episode felt like a piece of a giant puzzle that did not fully reveal itself until the season’s conclusion. Season two was an incomplete picture and suffered harsh response for it. In season three there were too many pieces that didn’t fit together properly, but by the end things had somewhat sorted themselves out thanks to Bryan Fuller’s influence. This final season, while probably the most coherent since the first, lacked the polish the show once had. Every week it felt as if the writers were amazed they had not been cancelled yet and did not know how to continue on their story. Maybe NBC pulling the plug in May was the best thing to happen to the series, there was nowhere the show could go to rebuild its reputation. The final scene of ‘Brave New World’ showed the characters opening up and revealing their powers for the first time in four years, and left the show ending on an open note; the best possible ending for everyone involved.

Stop the presses! Print media has a reason to stay alive/10

As someone who has paraded the 'gaming print media is dead' flag for some time now, it is very refreshing to be proven wrong. As an Aussie, the choices of Hyper and ... well, there aren't exactly a lot of choices for local non-platform specific news outlets. We do have access to the odd US/UK import, but by the time we shell out the monetary equivalent of two cups of coffee, the news is outdated and content mostly irrelevant.

Then BAM! Game Informer has the balls to go all Aussie with the latest news and game announcements while also throwing in relevant features regarding issues that are close to home. And at a price that barely deserves the name of 'price'!? Frankly, there is nothing to complain about while going through every issue cover-to-cover ... until I hit the numerical reviews.

While I have admitted being wrong to print media being irrelevant, I'll fight to the bitter end about my hatred of using a numerical symbol to grade an experience after using several hundred words to do the same thing. Numerical scores serve only to please fanboys who believe 'game x' is infinity times better than 'game y' because a reviewer scored it .2 higher. Actually, that is an understatement. Those numbers also give studio executives a quick justification for their dirty tricks.

Its no secret that publishers and business peoples alike look to review score collecting sites such as Metacritic for a quick evaluation on the success of games. Some publishers even determine the payment for the development team. High aggravated review scores on sites like Metacritic keep investors happy, while anything under, lets say 80%, is deemed insufficient and will see heads roll. Since publishers know the bulk of 'hardcore' game sales take place in the immediate launch window, they will put embargo's on major publications that do not say the game is absolutely perfect.

And here we find gaming publications faced with the dilemma of ethics of reviewing a game honestly but later, or being the first review available to the public just because your review has a 10/10 at the end. Those who think they can fight the system can just look at what happened in GameSpot HQ when longtime reviewer Jeff Gertsman gave latest ad-funded release Kane & Lynch a 6/10. For aspiring reviewers it does not paint an optimistic image for what we can do ...

But alas, in my first issue of Game Informer as a subscriber I see this issue addressed 2 pages in! Editor Chris Stead does not hide the honest fact that numerical scores are set up to serve the non-gamers who have money invested in these projects. It was refreshing to have someone from the journalism field come out and admit it. Along with the issues of sites like Metacritic, Stead also brings up the issue of how individual publications have different standards for reviews.

From his letter response in Game Informer #5

'It doesn't matter that every publication scores their games to their own criteria, much like we do as set out on the Reviews Intro page. Some are highly damning of bugs and mistakes, others will cop such things if the addictive storytelling or innovative gameplay overrides them ...

I urge you where possible to educate yourself on a publication's judging criteria, but understand why scores average around the 6 to 7 realm. Because if you were to start dropping 5s for an average score, and giving 4s to what you would usually give 6s the context and reasoning behind such a thing will not be understood in the broader global market...'

Stead hits the nail on the head right there with the issues around sites like Metacritic. Different publications use different systems to evaluate games for reviewing purposes. But we still see review scores grouped together without proper clarification as to why individual magazines and websites such scores. I know every time I have been involved with reviewing for different publications the standards are never the same. One mans 7/10 is another mans 5. It can be universally understood when a critic says 'game x is fast paced and entertaining, and should not be missed for fans of incredible action'. But in our ADHD obsessed world, 9.2/10 is somehow much easier to understand.

Film review - Zombieland

I'll make a quick note to start things off: I find the term 'zombie' to be politically incorrect and offensive to those who have difficulties staying dead. So I shall try to get through this review without throwing the term around to the point that I will be sued by the corpse of Bill Murray, now let's start reviewing.

It's hard for me to enjoy movies about the non-living. Aside from the fact that we are already a bunch of brain-dead drones (as proven in Shaun of the Dead), the people in these movies all possess that irritating brain pattern of doing obviously stupid things leading to their immediate deaths. Z-land scores points right off the bat by having what are possibly the most intelligent people ever portrayed in an undead survival movie.

The 'rules' used by one of the main protagonists are pretty much what viewers have learned after years of watching people get caught off-guard and losing brains. Their continuous pop-ups during the movie put a smile on the viewers face, which will probably stay on there thanks to the constant humor.

Yes, Z-land is quite funny at times. While it is nowhere near the level of English wit features in Shaun of the Dead, Z-land relies on a more American type of humor – meaning in-your-face pop culture name drops a la Family Guy. If you can stomach these kind of laughs, then Z-land is one great roller coaster of fun.

If past movies in the genre have annoyed you, or you've grown tired of the same formula, Z-land is a must see. On your way to the cinema, be sure to remember rule #3 – wear seatbelts.

Broken Taboo + Nobody Miniviews

Yes I know the Platinum rerelease art is disgusting and ruins any style that boxart would otherwise posess, but for $15 it is hard to complain for something that will be this awesome. Of course I wont get much chance to play until after my rerun through Assassins Creed (for research purposes) but considering how long it will take to download all the new updates, I'll still be waiting for them to finish in 2011.

On the topic of reviews, since no one is calling shots on me at the moment and I've been looking for an alternative to just giving games random numbers out of 5 I will be introducing Miniviews starting this weekend.

One thing that I feel many reviewers overlook is the first impression that games give players. Like a publisher digging through a slush pile of writers, if a game fails to capture its audience early on, there is little incentive to pursue further. The idea is to avoid analysing gameplay mechanics and leaving a number at the end to rate my experience. And like a good piece of writing should, it wont go on for longer than it needs to (250-350 words is more than enough for this) This doesn't mean no more traditional reviews, but until I find a format that I feel suits my writing it is gonna be this kind of stuff instead.

Look forward to the experiment!

Cheers

Review - Ratchet And Clank: Quest For Booty

What do you get when you take a popular game series, and strip it down to its bare essentials? The ignorant answer would be Ratchet & Clank: Quest For Booty. But upon closer inspection of this 'episodic' sequel, Insomniac have instead put more focus on the often light platforming side of the series. To calm down the overly excited fans for the upcoming 2009 sequel to Tools Of Destruction, the budget bit of entertainment just might do the job.

Taking off the heels of the 2007 release, Quest For Booty continues Ratchets journey to track down his friend Clank. The absence of the robotic companion takes away quite a bit from the series strengths, not only in gameplay functions but also in the humour often found in this series writing. Along with the laughs, the weapons from the last game have returned in a more limited form. With so many past elements removed, it is hard for the new kinetic wrench to stand out in the frequent platforming sections.

One thing that has not changed in the game is the high level of presentation. Despite less epic environments, the visuals still pack the same punch that were first used in 2007. And even with weaker writing the voice acting still manages a solid performance from all round. For its short length, Quest For Booty is pleasing to look at and listen too.

So in the end there mechanics are stripped down, the laughs are weak unless you have some sort of pirate fetish and the whole thing comes to an immediate halt after 3-4 hours with no closure in order to get people in line for the upcoming release in 2009. If not for the budget release at retail it would be hard to recommend to fans of the series. But for $30, hardened Ratchet fans won't mind jumping in and setting sail on a semi-grand adventure.

Presentation – 4/5

Gameplay – 3/5

Value – 2/5

Overall – 3/5

Reviewed by Steven Janjic

Review - Dead Space

With so many games using elements of horror to appeal to hardcore gamers, how does the survival horror genre stand out from the competition? If you ask EA Redwood, the answer is to take the genre into space, and rip everyones legs off. Dead Space borrows elements from various films and games to deliver a somewhat unique experience, but at times still comes across as little more than a marketing tool for dismembering limbs.

With the crew from a mining ship going MIA, players take the role of generic gaming mute Isaac Clarke while he follows orders to repair the ship, uncover the truth about what the heck is going on, and possibly find his missing love squeeze. The story remains solid thanks to an abundance of passive voice messages and being able to walk around during cutscenes. However the religious overtones and alien technology feel cliche at best, and the story does little to deliver true feelings of horror.

Once inside the game, Dead Space tries its hardest to convince you it is a legit survival horror. The flickering lights and blood splattered walls do make for more atmosphere than a spaceship should have, and while the monsters are more hyperactive than a child on red cordial, the designs are definitely creepy. And while the sound design gives away 90% of the scares, the lack of sounds in the outer space portions really show an attention to detail. Problems arise with Isaac and his limb breaking boot though. Controlling Isaac makes any elements of fear disappear as he is casually able to beat the creepy crawlies to death with their own legs.

Fear issues aside, the core design of the exploration gunplay is solid. While over the shoulder cameras are nothing new for the genre, ingame inventory management and menus are a rare treat. In terms of control, Dead Space plays like a textbook example of functional mechanics to reach from point A to point B over 12 linear chapters. The dismemberment feature is impressive at first, but within the first hour you can't help but feel the game is riding on this feature by reminding you about it almost half a dozen times.

There are games that can taunt innovation and be considered the greatest thing since sliced bread. Dead Space is nowhere near that. Dead Space is a gamers game, it has plenty of sexy sexy violence and a functional (if derivative) design philosophy. Like an enjoyable summer blockbuster movie, Dead Space would be best taken in with a bucket of popcorn if it were possible to have a third alien arm feed you while playing.

Presentation - 4/5

Gameplay – 5/5

Value – 3/5

Overall – 4/5

Reviewed by Steven Janjic

Yea yea, no excuses. I'm just lazy

Whew, this has been a good month+ long nap. Now with a reason to get out of bed again I've run out of excuses for not doing any productive writing, sooooooooo ummm. Yea if Anthony gives a damn I'll get started on some of those holiday reviews I never got around to writing (list after this ranting), tomorrow, or sometime this week, I'll get around to uploading the censorship piece featured in the orientation issue of The Box.

Classwork is still going to be pushing my writing of the video games of course, but as to 'how' it will be pushing it (especially in Small Press Publishing) the final outcomes are still nowhere near set in stone. I would love to try some type of print distribution, of course the power of the internet makes stuff like news and reviews pointless, meaning I might have to use more than the usual 3 brain cells. The Non-Fiction genre essays are still going ahead, but as to formats and details included, and even length, I'm still undecided. Really feels out of place in my class through since 90% of the class are writing memoirs/biographies. Also yet to be determined is my choice of workplace for practical placement, so stay tuned!

Reviews to look forward to

AC/DC Rock Band track pack

De Blob

Dead Space

John Woo Presents Stranglehold

Mirror's Edge

Ratchet Quest For Booty

Valkyria Chronicles

Yakuza 2

Also, when is someone going to kill that Stephen Conroy so the threat of Australia going all totalitarianism will vanish with his stupid clean feed stratagy. If its a hiding spot for the corpse that is holding up the situation, feel free to use my backyard, its a small price to pay for the good of the nation lol.

Cheers

PS. In case this filter does go through, heres a list of debateable areas of interest that will get this blog banned in Australia.

-Abortion would have killed Beethoven if it were available to his family, so I am happily anti-abortion.

-Anorexia suffers need help and should seek advice from counsilers. Or just talking to friends who can knock some sense into ya (avoid friends who are also suffering from Anorexia, otherwise this goes nowhere fast)

-Breast/Boob/Tit cancer is responsible for 'x' number of deaths a year, give to whatever charities to help support research/cures

-Even I wont touch the subject of euthenasia with a 10 foot pole (but mentioning it will help get this page blacklisted by ACMA)

-Free Tibet

-Chairman Mao was  NOT right, get over yourself!

-Kevin Rudd wants to change his last name to Zedong

-If all goes shit, Hugo Weaving will save us by blowing up Parliament House

Me 0: big bad world 1

Not in the mood for witty comments today, in the middle of one of those 'teen angtsy' moments the youth of today claim makes them extremely suidical and depressed. Frankly, all its done for me is keep my away from the junk food I normally eat when I'm sad so it seems to have bettered me.

Since its been a friggin long time since my last post I figured its best to let people know I'm not dead and give an update on stuffs, so here goes:

Economical Gamer - still plenty of reviews to come, and now that Anthony is doing a few it wont be the typical 99% my reviews list thats there. I'll still try to get through at least one a week for now and I'm just about done with Madden 09 All-Play + Sonic Rush Adventure reviews. In an attempt to better connect with the masses I've decided to take requests for reviews. Right now the list stands like this with my decisded reviews and requests

Wii

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed

Red Steel

De Blob

PS2

Yakuza 2

Devil May Cry collection (1-3 were released in a bundle in the US so I'll just pretend we also got that)

DS

Sonic Chronicels The Dark Brotherhood

Always open to more requests since it saves me time + effort in trying to decide for myself during the slow periods, and with an extremely sad holiday line up for the PS2 and Wii its gonna get frusterating deciding what to review. Also before I forget there will be a holiday buyers guide written up in the next month or so for the site by yours truly covering what are expected to be the big sellers, and some friendly tips/recommendations for game buyers and givers. Look forward to it!

The Box - this is pretty much going to shits for lack of a better word. There will be no term 4 issue of the magazine and I havent really heard anything back from them in continuing the games stuff. With everyone else who originally jumped on the idea giving up/dropping out/being extremely unreliable its safe to say this was just a one off. Guess that means more time to Eco Gamer and other places.

And thats pretty much all to report on what is a surprisingly sunny day.

Cheers

What about me?

Writers block is the enemy of every professional tosser with ink in their pen and a blank page on their desk. To update this and make it a 21st century comment perhaps it should be 'Writers block is the enemy of every professional crybaby with a livejournal and their fingers hovering over the keyboard'


Now if I was someone important, i.e. a professional analyst, or a renowned critic on a specific subject, then anything I say would be eaten up for breakfast by the reading public. Alas since I am a nobody writing mostly on what is still deemed a 'niche' subject by the televised media the amount of people who will take my words to heart is minimal at best, and non-existent in reality. I've been bugged by this for several months now, but after being knocked back by my own teacher about not following 'standards' in writing I feel the need to bitch about it discuss the matter.

When starting up with reviews for Economical Gamer, the final review scheme was still undecided and open for discussion. Now it doesn't take a famous analyst to figure out that opinions on the current standards of game reviews point towards the entire system needed an update past the number based metacritic scores. Since the site is based off getting your moneys worth with games it seemed like a great chance to create a unique review system (or completely ripoff Kotaku's new setup ,whichever one is easier). Obviously this didn't happen and the site went with a traditional number rating, but hey who am i to complain? I'm still writing reviews and such so it would seem unfair to say the reviews all suck.

Next complaint stems less from the interwebs and instead from my own classroom. Complaints about my writing course almost completely passing up the subject of online writing/publications now withstanding, after almost a year in the course it feels less like 'developing your own writing' and more like 'learn to please the teacher'. Despite been given the OK to take a fictitious satirical view on space travel for a crummy travel piece (which I have no real passion for trying to publish) I still receive a talk about having to not trying to do anything different when writing for an audience. At least thats what I think teacher was trying to say, all I heard was "crush any unique creativity in your writing and stick to the standards you pretentious douche".

So here I am stuck in mundane writing position with nothing to brag about. But what do I have to do in order to make it 'big'? Obviously its either conform to the point where standard writing is referred to as 'doing a Steven .J' or do something so incredibly original that its concept will be stolen and driven into the ground faster than you can say Bullet Time. As a starting point for the latter, feature writing seemed like an easy way to express some ideas that are not typically expressed in gaming journalism. One heavily required point for most of my features that are still in the 'early planning' phase are interviews and comments from various important peoples/peoplettes. Of course after a couple months trying to get in contact with said people I now know that these features are a lost cause, since none of them care to return emails or messages I'm gonna have to face dropping these features and look at different ideas.

Now there are still ways for me to move my writing forward. Obvious methods would be to move past this small blog and create a whole website dedicated to sticking it to conventions and 'the man'. But since Eegra does that with more proficiency then I could ever hope to display by myself I'll leave that to those magnificent bastards. Then theres a more unique conspiracy to write/design my own video game; guaranteed press from any site claiming to give a damn about the 'indi' crowd and a promotion into the somebody crowd. However then reality slaps me in the face and I realize that I know nothing about coding up my own game, and my ideas would be impossible with a budget of $23 sitting in my bank account.

Guess all I can do is conform to the masses for a while longer while crying over a livejournal, fingers floating just 3mm over the keyboard letters D U M B A S S (yes there are 2 fingers over the letter 'S')

School's in session, should've learned my lesson...

Nothin' quite like a GTO marathon to stay awake instead of sleeping. Maybe its because I'm sick of constantly sleeping in and running late for morning classes, or that I'm just trying to become an insomniac for attention but I'm finding it pretty easy to stay awake instead of crawling into bed at 1-2am and trying to wake up in 6 hours. Of course by the time the sun starts setting I'm just about beat and ready to crash, but since I don't have morning classes on Tuesday IT'S ALL GOOD!

Anyways, its not like I'm doing anything important on Mondays. Oh sure I go to class and pretend to give a damn about whatever books we are looking at (this week its On The Road) but its just sitting in a chair for 3-4 hours. Not very fun, yet I still show up for every class. Sometimes it would be fun to have a teacher like GTO, but at the same time political correctness would keep this guy locked up forever. Note to self: If I ever become a teacher, make sure to be at least half as awesome as Onizuka!

Anyways, new stuff new stuff....well, I'm buggered! Oh yea, IGN got my hopes up for Madden 09 All-Play being available last week only for EB and GameFAQS to strike me down and tell me to wait a whole extra week. Since I'm not planning to pick up any new games until Force Unleashed, this was supposed to pass the time (and give me something new to review) for the week, but now I'll have to fall back on unpublished reviews. And if that fails, just download a couple small WiiWare games to bitch about. Sometimes it would be nice to have a 360/PS3 just to have some variety since WiiWare hasn't really won me over yet with the exception of Strongbad's Cool Game For Attractive People.

All hope is not lost though peoples! If lady luck is on my side I may be seeing paying holiday work within the next month or two. This of course means $$$ for my own PSP (finally stop borrowing other peoples) and maybe a PS3 if the price is right. Following some new toys, new games to expand my reviewing prowess and make me look more professional and less like a Nintendrone. Gotta look the part this week for the interview so its time for a haircut and to pull out the fancy suit.

Well thats it I guess for this little while. Its just after 3am and Nao is just entering the GTO anime! Why couldn't real life have super hot school nurses like in anime...

Paper or plastic? "This blog is kindda sad"

Never nice to hear bag things about your own creation, but I can see my reader(s) complaints about this place being worthless. Doesn't help that I don't have much to report in trying to avoid this being a current news blog, but since I must conform to please the crazy masses here I go:

The Box - got a bunch of music cd reviews to finish over the next week and a bit. Now without a pair of working headphones I'm denied the possibility to listen to these tunes on the go so now I must sit my ass in front of my computer and listen through the crummy speakers. No idea when (or if) they will be in print form, most likely they will be up on the online version of The Box magazine, which I never pay attention to, sorry Jade. Also going to see advance screening of Pineapple Express this Monday, and luckily I don't have to waste time reviewing it.

Eco Gamer - Yet another review game straight from 2K in the form of Go! Deigo! Go! Safari Adventure has arrived at the door of gaming cheapasses. Wont get a chance to play through this until this weekend, but expect the review to go up sometime in August. In other review news, reviews of My Pokemon Ranch (WiiWare) and Guitar Hero: On Tour (DS) should be next on the list of reviews going up. Seem to be getting positive feedback on last couple of reviews so I must be doing something right, when I figure out what exactly it is then I'll be sure to put it into all my writing.

R18+ Rating Debate - Sadly I got out of bed to watch that Insult to gamers discussion on Australia's lack of an R18+ rating. Unbeknown to me, the poor sucker who was dragged in to ask the question was Joab from Bigpond GameArena whom I have become friends with annoyed and added on Facebook in a bleak attempt to network with these gaming journalist masses. If anyone cares about MY opinion on this issue, I say we wait it out until our generation grows up and become the suited twats of government and we have a new whipping child to cover the asses of neglectful parents everywhere. I personally nominate a revival of the tabletop gaming scene to be blamed for the next decades worth of school shootings, drug overdoses and random suicides.

Guess thats all for now, I'm outta here to go cry in a corner about a single person saying this place is shite!

Cheers