It seems I’ve been reviewing things a lot lately. Actually, both Cas and I have. I may have found something that actually motivates me to post here. Granted, I have an abundance of time to waste away each day, but beyond that writing about something focused seems to produce more goods than typing about all the asinine nonsense I do in a day. For that stuff, just follow me on Twitter.

About a month or so ago I decided to use my Netflix subscription for its primary purpose; deliver unto me a television show I haven’t watched but also don’t want to buy. To this end, the service is magnificent. I chose True Blood, as the hype and gossip about show had reached my ears, and weighed heavily enough on my soul to succumb to its temptations.

The show (for those of you unaware) follows the life of a young girl named Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin). Yeah, I had problems with the name to begin with too. Still do actually. Maybe it’s a Southern thing, and I just don’t get it. I don’t know. Sookie can apparently hear the thoughts of others which seems to keep her disturbed on a daily basis. I imagine it doesn’t help that she lives in the deep South and works at a small bar/restaurant in the middle of no where. I would probably be distraught too.

One day, a Vampire comes into the bar where she works and they immediately connect. She seems to be drawn to him simply because of the fact she can’t hear his thoughts, later explained due to Vampires being technically dead. Her involvement with a Vampire becomes the talk of the town and eventually leads to trouble and suspicion once a series of unexplained murders begins to plague this small community.

The background story of the show, however, is around the recent “outing” of Vampires. These dark creatures of the night have decided collectively to come out of hiding, or “out of the coffin” as the show describes – one of many puns present – and integrate themselves into human society. This theme extends all the way to the Vampires having activists and politicians seeking out the equality and civil rights of all Vampires. I don’t think I’ve seen such a blatant gay parable since The X-Men.

At first glance (mind you I am maybe midway through season one), the show is filled with hollow stereotypes and acting equivalent to a high school play. It’s possible the acting is fine but comes off as cheap and unpleasant due to the thick Southern accent all the characters are required to have. Not living in the South myself, I have a difficult time recognizing that drawl as actual English. Not to bash the actors completely, I do find myself drawn to certain characters making the best with the script they have. For instance, Stephen Moyer as Bill Compton (Vampire, pictured above) does a great job portraying a nosferatu.

The main storyline is solid enough to make for a good series. Making a show about Vampires in this post-Twilight world should be incredibly easy and lucrative, as I’m sure it is. The one thing the show seems to do quite well is be almost alarmingly sexual. The amount of people having sex with one another in this small southern town is astounding. Maybe I’m just a prude. Although, due to the series making its home on HBO, there isn’t much they can’t show. Naked men and women, abound. Including an openly homosexual African American cook who seems to be prostituting the entire town – as well as drug dealing stereotypically enough.

I may be writing this review prematurely, as I haven’t given the first season a full shake. And, historically, the first season of most shows are comparatively unwatchable when lined up to their subsequent iterations. The Simpsons comes to mind. With that said, I’m giving the show a lot of leeway and ultimately I feel the series does have something to offer. It’s a unique perspective on an old legend set in an atypical location. The show’s creators even add a little flavor of their own to the Vampire mythos. If you like Vampires, and hyper-sexuality, I say give True Blood a viewing, you definitely won’t be disappointed in those regards.

Peace.

As of recent, I have found myself growing tired of my current gaming experience. Most specifically, my couple year commitment to World of Warcraft. I started playing back in college and have continued playing off and on since. It is a game that definitely deserves its title as King. While it is plagued by a preponderance of underage, immature neanderthals, it does deliver in every other capacity; a beautiful lush environment, character-types and races with endless backstory and mythos, and a fluid, easy to understand combat system.

But, with that said, I feel that at minimum for me, the fantasy-genre MMO has taken its course. Every developer and their brother have been pumping out fantasy MMOs in the vain hope they can overthrow WoW’s substantial reign, resulting in a saturated market. I guess to say it plainly, I think I’m dwarfed out. I’ve had my fill of elves and magic. I’m looking for something different.

As my last post may have indicated, there was something else for a while. Matrix Online provided an alternative to the fantasy tedium, but it too had issues of its own. There is a potential light at the end of my MMO tunnel. I’m very excited for both Champions Online and Star Trek Online. But, those are still out on the horizon and won’t be available until early Fall (or early next year in the case of STO). So, I find myself trying to fill the gap in the interim. You could probably say at this point, “Uh, do you have to play an MMO?” and my answer is “Yes, yes I do. I don’t have a job or a girlfriend. I’m practically required by law to play an MMO”.

I have stumbled upon one that may satiate me until Champions is released early September. It’s EVE Online. You may be aware of it, as its popularity isn’t non-existent. Actually, I’ve even played it once before and quickly discarded it but have recently revisited EVE and gave it another shake.

EVE Online takes place 21,000 years into the future. They don’t fuck around with a couple measly hundred years or even a thousand. It tells the story of how humankind used up the resources on Earth and started moving out further into the Milky Way. Eventually even the Milky Way was mostly depleted. Then, a collapsing wormhole was discovered which took any ship through it to another star system dubbed “New Eden”. In an effort to stop the wormhole from closing, a device was created to stabilize it, but unfortunately the wormhole collapsed and destroyed the device with it, leaving all on the other side trapped.

EVE as a game is incredibly different from almost any MMO I’ve played. Not only does it mainly consist of space travel – piloting a little ship from star system to star system – but also, what I found fascinating is you don’t actually gain levels. A little off-putting for any avid RPG fan. Instead, you have a set of skills (more of which can be procured through missions or purchased) that you can upgrade, shaping the way your character develops or more specifically your ship.

Your ship really is the primary focus as your avatar (as of this point) can’t get out and walk around, although that is in development. The interesting, and potentially frightening, thing about the skills upgrading is it’s done in real-time. Unlike your typical MMO, you don’t simply gain a level and get new skills. You pick which skills you desire and put them in a queue for upgrading. Depending on the skill and the level, it will take anywhere from 10 mins to (I’ve read) 2 months to upgrade. Yeah, like 2 real months.

While at first this time commitment seems outrageous, it is real time, meaning your upgrades continue to do so even when you are not logged in and playing. I can see how this game mechanic might be troubling to some, but for me it allows for a much more leisurely and casual play, especially if I can’t or don’t want to continue on until a certain upgrade has finished.

Other than that, the game seems centralized around the community and player-base, allowing for players to shape much of how the game plays out. Also, graphically the game is quite exquisite. The level of detail is very granular considering how much of the playable area is the open dead expanse of space. So far, my experience with the game has been good. It’s an enjoyable distraction for a couple hours at a time.

As of this point, I don’t have a huge wealth of knowledge about the finer details of EVE. And I am currently using a 14-day free trial which might possibly restrict some of the achievements I can attain, but I find EVE to be a welcomed distraction from the popular cookie cutter fantasy MMOs available. I plan on continuing to play it, at least until my trial is up, while I eagerly await the release of Champions Online, which I’m sure I’ll write about once I’ve created my super hero and have begun saving the world, or just flying around like a dick in tights. Either way, good times.

Peace.

…has an end. And that end has come for The Matrix Online. For those not familiar with it, MxO is a massively multiplayer online role playing game based inside of the world of the Matrix created by the Wachowski brothers. The game began its closed beta phase back in June of 2004 and was eventually released to the public on March 22nd, 2005. As of May 28th, 2009 it was announced that The Matrix Online would be closing its doors forever and pulling the plug on the simulation effective July 31st, 2009.

As you might expect, when I heard about MxO I was immediately interested in the game. Unfortunately at the time I was in college and didn’t have the funds required to purchase a new computer to handle the graphical requirements. So, I did the next best thing, I joined the online community and watched the events of the Matrix unfold through those playing it and the developers posting about Live Events and other things happening within the simulation. I felt a bit like Link, unable to jack-in himself and having to watch my fellow red pills through the encrypted monitors of the Matrix feed at my operator’s station.

Eventually I was able to jack in. And what I was met with was an incredibly rich environment and experience. The graphics were beautiful and the navigation through Mega City was seamless. No loading zones, just wide-open expanse to search through and tumble a little farther down the rabbit hole. There were several districts, ranging from Richland, Westview, the International district and Downtown. Traveling in-between zones did require a load of sorts, but it was quick and painless. The city is also connected through a network of Hard Lines for easy travel. Once a Hard Line is discovered, it can be used to upload information, change your load out, transport yourself from one Hard Line to another and much more.

The game had a few short comings. The quests or “missions” in the Matrix Online were very repetitive. Having only a few mission options to choose from, forced red pills to run through the same scenarios over and over. There was reprieve from this tedium with storyline specific missions that would be released once a week to supplement the overarching narrative. But, sadly, they did not provide enough to make leveling less painful.

Also, there was really no end-game content to speak of. Once you hit the level cap of 50 (which was never raised or changed in the 4-5 years of the game’s operation), there wasn’t a lot for an accomplished player to do. Attempts were made to change this dynamic, but personally, I felt they fell far short of what other games were providing.

What I think MxO did provide was more of an integrated social experience. The majority of the most popular activities while jacked in were dance parties, hanging out by a Hard Line and conversing with other red pills (friends and enemies), and Live Events. This type of play is something I have never felt in other MMOs. While a game like WoW delivers in content 100x over, due to their immense size, a small collection of players getting to know each other and actually making a huge impact on the virtual world they are apart of really isn’t possible.

Since the end of the Matrix was announced until the simulation goes dark forever, the game is essentially free. Any and all accounts have been given access to the game without payment. Also, as of yesterday, any character not at the level cap was pushed up to 50 and all characters were given 4 billion info (the game’s internal monetary system). I will be interested to see what the developer’s have in store for their one last hurrah. I anticipate chaos of an incredible magnitude.

Ultimately, I’m going to miss the game. I made some really good friends (and enemies) while playing MxO and spent many a night watching my avatar dancing away in some club while I tuned into the game’s player-run radio stations and chatted with faction-mates. The Matrix Online delivered an amazingly deep and rich story line that continued from the moment the movies ended – from the search for the Ones’ remains to Morpheus being assassinated – allowing fans to continue to not only watch the narrative of the movies unfold but become apart of that story.

To end this post, here are some images from my character, Sotirios, Commander of Unus Somnium of the EPN faction. I’m gonna miss you, you bald stud.

#End Transmission#
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Twitter is one of those “hot items” everyone seems to be talking about (apparently including me). If you’re unfamiliar with it, I’m shocked. You have an amazing ability to block out all facets and mediums of news and information, because every fucker everywhere loves talking about Twitter.

I don’t have anything against Twitter, per se. In fact, if the left side of our site is any indication, I love it and use it at every waking moment during my day. I’m trying to remember the exact moment I decided to use the service in the first place. I believe I expressed to myself a desire to be more in tune with the thoughts of Wil Wheaton (I wish in some way I was making this up). But, honestly, I signed up because he was using it and it seemed at minimum like some way to break up the tedium of my typical day.

I would say there are both good and bad things about Twitter. Which can be said for any and all social networking tools. On the positive side, they allows us to keep in touch with those people we may otherwise never remain in contact with. Now you might say, if a friend is worth keeping or having, you would find other ways. Well I say to you “shut up. I’m lazy and can only commit to 140 characters of correspondence at a time”. Also, it permits the meeting (and I use that term loosely) of new friends or what I like to call e-cquaintances, a group of people we would more than likely never meet in our life.

On the negative, it’s another push in a direction a lot of people inherently feel is wrong in terms of close, social relationships. It assuages the need to get together with friends or give an old acquaintance a call. I’m not entirely sure if this is detrimental to society or not. I think it wholly depends on your definition of what you consider a “friend”.

Mainly, however, it seems to have extinguished some level of conversation with friends you do normally hang out with (in the real world). Telling everyone who “follows” you (creepy term by the way) exactly what you’re doing or how you’re feeling eliminates that topic for discussion later. And I assume if you’re like me and every other human being on the planet, that’s the only shit we have to talk about.

Personally, I like Twitter. I’ve tried to place exactly where my affection lies and it’s difficult to ascertain. For starters, Twitter is extremely simple. Much easier than writing an entire blog post *cough cough*. It enforces brevity and for the most part keeps the author’s mind focused. Also, it allows for people such as myself to keep up with the day-to-day dealings of celebrities or quasi-celebrities. Now while normally I couldn’t give two shits about what John Mayer is doing today, Twitter opens a portal to see that these people we hold up as entertainment icons, do the same shit that I do. They just get paid a hell of a lot more. That’s comforting in some way (minus the money part).

All-in-all, Twitter is just the newest in a long line of socially questionable services that both bring us all closer together and paradoxically pushes us all farther apart. Now to make this post complete, I need to tweet about the blog post I just wrote on Twitter.

Peace.

Another series that I’ve been getting into is Canaan, which has thus far been overly formulaic in plot, but visually tantalizing. The main character is (surprise, surprise) a teenaged female assassin of the highest caliber who is pitted single handedly against an entire network of terrorists. A bizarre addition to the story is that this character somehow utilizes her synesthesia to improve her marksmanship and awareness; I’ll suspend my logical indignation for now to see where they go with this device.

The characters haven’t quite endeared themselves to me yet, and I’m not sure I really care too much about the background story of the Snakes (terrorist group). In fact, I may be completely misunderstanding many of the intended plot points, but it is at this point irrelevant. I will keep watching simply for the visual splendor that is the world of Canaan.

Finally, I’ve been watching Bakemonogatari; another of the visually appealing while not necessarily inventive series to come out this summer season. The plot, from what I’ve read, revolves around the main character (who is, of course, a horny teenaged male surrounded by supple and abundant female anatomy) meeting new vixens every so often and helping them overcome the difficulties of being anomalies.

This series has a very avant-garde feel to the style, blending live action, photography, animation, textual symbolism, and all sorts of various artistic representations of people and objects. It goes beyond the fourth wall in a very tongue-in-cheek manner, yet somehow remains believable in the context of the show, and gives the viewer a hyperactive exposure to flashes of images, words, and even conversations that can seem to be more of a quick draw competition than discourse.

Both of these series look very promising, and I hope they make up for what is proving to be a major disappointment with Suzumiya. All in all, the summer season has given me a renewed faith in the possibility of being surprised visually. Now, if only I could get some shows with great characters… Mushishi, where are you when I need you?

–Casimir