World of Warcraft Patch 4.2 – Rage of the Firelands

I've had a little bit of time to appreciate the material presented in the new content patch for World of Warcraft, and I think I'm ready to discuss a little bit about it. The release of a patch like this presents more content, new bosses, many of them are what would be a pricey bit of DLC or even a whole new expansion if released as part of many single-player or other non-MMO games. The story, for those who pay attention to it (as I do) is advanced with new cutscenes and quests, and a new Tier of raid content is introduced. The Tier 12 Raid picks up where the quests in Mount Hyjal left off, with Ragnaros the Firelord gathering his strength for another assault on Azeroth, and the war to enter the Firelands themselves to stop his return.

This patch brings back a lot of concepts not seen since the Vanilla WoW raid Molten Core, which also had Ragnaros as a final boss, and of course, flame and lava as the theme. Beyond those mostly cosmetic differences, this new content reminds me most of the Burning Crusade patch that introduced the Sunwell raid instance and the Isle that contained it. Both are lore-heavy, feature a new zone with an ongoing military conflict that is advanced through daily quests, and a wide-open raid instance that feels less confining than the traditional “Dungeon Rooms” of most raids. The patch also brings difficulty modifications (“nerfs”) to older raid content to enhance accessibility for more casual players, and introduces a new Legendary Weapon, a staff designed for DPS casters.

I like the new content overall, but currently I have mixed feelings about the environment that is currently present in WoW, and some of the burden of my lessened interest in certain aspects of the game falls at the feet of this patch. I feel that some elements were designed precisely as they should be for where Cataclysm is in its lifecycle as an expansion, but other aspects of this patch in particular feel somehow like

The Good:

The quests and raid encounters are rich with lore, tying into the Cataclysm plot well without having Deathwing turn up to cackle and twirl his evil mustache the way Arthas seemed to in every content patch in Wrath. The daily quests are combined with the phasing mechanic, which means the more you work personally on contributing to the war against the firelands, the more progress you will see. NPCs from many other quests and raids turn up to aid in the fight, I've seen Hemet Nesingwary, Argent Confessor Paletress and even Mankrik fighting alongside heroes in the war, it is nice to see these characters as people and citizens in a living world, rather than mannequins who stand around waiting to hand out quests or be killed in their own personal areas.

Fans of this guy will find a lot to love about 4.2.

The rewards for completing dailies and earning reputation are good, and the crafted items are some of the best I've seen in any patch since WoW launched. This means that good gear is attainable, but reasonable levels of effort are required, as even the crafted gear requires items that drop from raid bosses. The availability of epic gear is structured nicely for this stage of the game, with returning or new players able to play catch-up, but without it being so trivially easy that people who played since launch have grounds for serious complaint. (This, of course, won't stop many of them, but such is life.)

The Bad:

I personally enjoy raid encounters that ramp the difficulty up a bit, but some of the balancing between 10man and 25man raid bosses seems “off.” In certain encounters, the 10-man version is challenging but killable after a few night's practice, but the 25 man version seems insurmountably frustrating, with a single mistake by one raider to end the encounter with a wipe. This may be by design on its own, but it has some potentially unintended consequences.

What do you think he's been doing since Molten Core? Leveling up, same as you.

New raid gear can be obtained by killing bosses, earning reputation with the new faction, and using valor points. A side effect of 10-man raids being so much easier than 25-man raids is that if you are in a guild that wants to raid 25s, capping your valor points weekly is a brutal grind through old content. You might get a few hundred here and there for a boss kill, but you'll be spending many, many hours in heroic dungeons to rack up a few more valor points so that the week doesn't feel wasted. Personally, that grind sometimes makes it so I'd rather do something else, anything other than logging on to WoW.

The Ugly:

Players have developed some really bad habits since Wrath of the Lich King was released, and echoes of some of the development calls made in the name of greater content accessibility are still being felt. I'm all for WoW no longer only being playable at a certain level by elitist players and 95% of the subscriber base being locked out of content forever is a BAD THING. That said, when things are made easier, there is a certain class of player that isn't used to things being hard, and when presented with a challenge, they whine.

So you say the Legendary Staff of Dragons is actually powered by Noob Tears and Butthurt?

Nowhere else is the “whiner” factor more apparent than in any discussion regarding the new Legendary Item. Legendary Weapons aren't supposed to be something that eventually everyone in a guild gets. With a heroic amount of effort an cooperation, top guilds can expect to have one or two of these items in their entire raiding roster. New players (or those who learned the worst possible lessons from Wrath) aren't used to being challenged for the best gear. They only need to wait long enough, and it'll practically jump into their inventories. This isn't the case for the staff Dragonwrath, which is desired by every Mage, Warlock, Shadow Priest, Elemental Shaman and Boomkin Druid in the game.

The proliferation of the classes who might desire the item and the difficulty in obtaining even one for a whole guild is something that I am sure will create a lot of tension in many raiding guilds, and people will be kicked out of or quit guilds over it. This is the sort of weapon that characters will wait 5+ years to even be included in the game, and knowing they'll never get one upsets many, many people. (Hell, I'm 2^nd in line for one in my guild and I might never see it completed.)

Miscellany, and Overall:

The art style of the new items is cool, consistent with the theme, and overall the content feels very well put together, but the complaining that tiny spoonfuls of content are being stretched out over progressively longer periods of real time gains strength with every new patch, and cut features. I think that by the end of this expansion, people will be pleased with the way content was stretched out over the lifecycle of the product, for for now, we hear a new 5-man has been cancelled and we're disappointed and angry. We complain that encounters are too hard, but we called the game a “joke” back in Wrath for being too easy.

I like what I see in the Firelands, I just wish the grind of it all didn't feed the whiny, complainy voice inside me that wants to agree with all the gamers whose complaints I find annoying.  Sometimes, when faced with running another random dungeon, I'd just rather go play something else, and I wish that weren't so.  

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Blog Gadgets

Preview - Torchwood: Miracle Day – From the BBC to Starz!

Tonight, we'll see a few things that don't happen very often occur at the same time. With existing science-fiction TV series not pulling the ratings of crimes against nature like The Jersey Shore or Real Housewives of Orange County, many of them are becoming one season wonders, and we see fewer pilots getting greenlit each season. I'm just glad to see a new sci-fi show like Torchwood beginning, as it is more fun to celebrate a new show's birth than it is to mourn one's passing. To be fair, Torchwood isn't really “new,” though. The Doctor Who spinoff has already had three seasons and a built-in fanbase. The second thing you don't see very often is a BBC hit series come over to the states without getting a “remake,” as though we spoke different languages and couldn't understand British TV. The move from the BBC to over here in the States filled my heart with dread when I heard Torchwood was going to Fox. Thankfully, the deal with the butchers at Fox fell through, and Starz! is carrying the, erm... torch.

“Unexpected events,” and “things that don't happen very often” are central to the set-up for Miracle Day. I personally find the whole concept intriguing. One day, not a single person dies. And then the next day, and the next. That is to say, NO ONE DIES, not even those grievously injured, executed by the state, etc. Exploring the initial celebration concerning the sudden abolition of death itself, and then the problems a lack of death creates is a topic worthy of many a late-night conversation. I can see how the problems would mount quickly in a world where no one ever dies could turn it into a nightmare.

Apparently I'm not alone in this forward sort of thinking, because the Torchwood Organization is called up out of the ashes in order to investigate the event, disrupting a few lives in the process. Returning to the show are all three of the previous series regulars, Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman,) the immortal omnisexual con-man, Gwen Cooper (Eve Myles) and her husband Rhys Williams (Kai Owen.) Gwen and Rhys settled down in order to raise their child and enjoy a quiet life in the country and Jack has left Earth after seeing Torchwood and almost everyone he loved destroyed. The three of them called back together makes things complicated, as Jack still has unresolved feelings for Gwen, and despite her love for her husband and child, the feelings are somewhat mutual.

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The shift in focus from the UK to the USA also means different government agencies are involved in Torchwood's operations, and the CIA adds a man of their own to the team, Harvard-educated Rex Matheson (Mekhi Phifer.) Other supporting cast will include some recurring characters from the first three series, and a new stable of characters based in the US. Guest stars already planned for the current season include Wayne Knight, Dichen Lachman (of Dollhouse fame,) C. Thomas Howell and Ernie Hudson. Another notable name who will play a major role in the series is Bill Pullman, who will play a murderer turned celebrity as the first man executed by the state who didn't die.

The decision to not make the production of Miracle Day a “series reboot,” but rather a continuation of the previous show is a bold one, that I applaud. I fear that fans will turn their noses up at the show, and I can guarantee that whether reasonable or not, we'll hear the criticism “Too American,” whatever that means. I love science fiction, whatever country it is written and produced in, and so long as this series isn't done with mindless and meaningless explosions, I won't care that more of it was shot in Los Angeles than Wales. After all, there's a lot more to US studio productions outside of reality TV and Michael Bay Blockbusters. Russell T. Davies left creative direction of Doctor Who to devote his talents to Miracle Day, and he wisely wrote only the season premiere and finale. I've long felt that he is a better executive producer than writer of individual episodes.

I can only hope what they are looking at offscreen isn't Wayne Knight at
the beach, though in that case, the rocket launcher is appropriate.

What I expect from the new series is something a little more like a science-fiction thriller than what we're used to in the vein of Torchwood, further distinguishing it from Doctor Who. Instead of lots of rubber monsters and spaceships, if the trailers match the reality, I sort of think we'll see something like a higher-energy sort of X-Files. Maybe something like Men In Black, if it had been written by John Grisham. The focus on the emotional impact of weirdness that has affected the entire world, and how it affects individual characters and changes how they live, sort of the way the best episodes of Flash Forward worked (when they worked.) Maybe my expectations won't live up to the reality, but if the series is anything like the one I imagine, I think I'm going to like it.

Luckily, I happen to have Starz! as part of my cable package, so even if I don't watch it when it first premieres tonight, I'll likely be able to catch the series premiere within a day or so. When I've watched an episode or two and have a more informed opinion, I'll put up a review, either as part of an article here, or over at the Tumblr.

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Civilization: I don't quit playing, I go into remission.

This week in PC gaming, two things happened in two days for me. As a result of the Steam Summer Sale and the generosity of a good friend, I received a copy of Civilization V on Tuesday. Yesterday, Sid Meier's CivWorld for Facebook went into Open Beta. Playing so much Civ in two different forms in the last few days got me to thinking about my history with the franchise. I've now played every PC civilization title in the “main series” (excluding Call to power or any ports of console/moblie versions) and have played several board games based on the concept. They are always intensely addictive, and I never really stop playing a title entirely until the sequel comes out.

The pharaoh pictured is actually buried beneath all the work that piled
up for him while he was playing Civ. 

The original Sid Meier's Civilization was published by Microprose in 1991to immediate critical and commercial success. Starting as a group of nomads with the bare minimum to found a small stone age settlement and protect it, the turn based strategy game challenges the player to “build an empire that will stand the test of time.” Cities are founded, buildings within them created and the population is managed as military units explore and possibly go to war with other fledgling empires. Scientists labor at technological advances from basics like pottery and the wheel, through ages of time to building electronics, tanks and even nuclear weapons. Special bonuses are given for the civilization to first create “Wonders of the World,” projects of great cultural and historical significance such as the Great Wall and the Pyramids. Victory can be achieved through military conquest or technological supremacy by sending a successful colony ship into space.

As sequels to the game were released over the years, refinements and additions to gameplay and graphics improved things in many ways. “Great people,” individuals born with the ability to impact history in some way were added. The concept of culture as a tangible and trackable statistic used for slightly different things in different incarnations of the game was incorporated. New victory conditions, special powers for each of the cultures you may select at the beginning of the game and changes concerning politics, diplomacy and trade developed from sequel to sequel.

If your neighbors bug you, blow them up.

Civilization V made some significant changes in the gameplay of the series with a cleaner interface, a move from square tiles to hexagons, and a different approach to combat and diplomacy. For the military-minded civilization player, the largest change is the elimination of the “stack o' doom” where piles of units could be stacked up in the same location. Deployment is more strategic and combat more dynamic with a limit of one unit per hex and ranged units able to fire over close combat units in support. On the diplomacy side, city-states have been added, single city nations who are not working towards a victory condition and with whom trade, war and negotiation is possible. Each opponent is working toward their own victory condition, and if you are ahead, it may be difficult to convince one of the other great empires to work with you. They don't want to lose any more than you do.

It is also worth mentioning that multiplayer support is better than ever, with the addition of single-computer hotseat play to internet and LAN gaming options. Community mod support is in the main game's interface, making it easier than ever to explore and use content created by fans of the game and pick and choose what you want to add to your experience. Downloadable content options include official “Cradle of Civilization” map packs and civilization expansions, adding more options to the already fairly robust set of features in the base game. Overall, between the gameplay changes, graphical updates and features both new and refined from previous games impressed me a lot, and I'm sure I'll disappear into this one for some time to come.

On to CivWorld on Facebook, a social game that made a whole lot of promises, and I believe that it delivered on quite a few of them, but it is not without its flaws... and one of them may be the game's Achilles' Heel. A lot of gamers have strong feelings about social media casual games. I neither love nor hate them as much as a lot of folks who have written about them, I can take or leave them, and see potential in the genre. Most social games are individual affairs with limited cooperation or competition with friends on the social network, and no real overarching goal aside from “get farther/do more.” That's not inherently bad, as the same can be said about a lot of other gaming, including many rpgs. CivWorld is collaborative and competitive with each player running a city, joining a civilization and contributing to their nations success or failure against other civilizations made of other players.

The elements of building up cities, collecting resources and armies and reasearching new technologies are all present. Culture, great people and wonders of the world are rolled up together in a single system where culture contributes to the birth of great people and great people collaborate on Wonders for their civilization. Cooperating with many other players to win “era goals” as time goes on is legitimately fun. Minigames exist to get a little extra science, culture or gold, and gold coins can be used to purchase extra production, food to increase population and military units, among other things. There's a good balance between “sit and play all the time” and “log in now and then for a few minutes: in terms of contributions.

The dangers of not investing in a military are disastrous one-sided conflicts.

There are a few downsides to launching this sort of game on this sort of platform. Though there are multiple paths to round victories, civilizations with large numbers of players find achieving many of those goals easier. The network stress of so many people playing also sometimes makes unusual and frustrating glitches happen, especially with joining or leaving a civilization. The thing that I like least is the method that in-game currency purchased with real money can be used. Though there is a limit on how much can be spent daily, “CivBucks” can be directly spent to get more resources usable toward victory. A Civ with multiple people willing to do this is at a competitive advantage, and you are also individually ranked in the game, something that CivBucks can affect directly. This leaves kind of a bad taste in my mouth, but I'll continue to play for free for as long as it is fun. At least they didn't commit the Cardinal Sin, in my mind, of requiring a player to spam or recruit friends in order to progress.

Overall, the play with history and strategic empire-building in a turn based environment is something both of the games I started playing this week do fairly well, and I'll stick with both of them for the time being. I remember waiting for Civ IV on launch day, the tragedy of accidentally breaking my play disc for Civ III, and how many times I lost all track of what time it was telling myself “Just a few more turns.” For now, I'm off to look in on my Greek Empire. We just discovered machine guns and the nearby Romans are rattling their sabers... which is appropriate, because that's about all they've discovered in the way of military technology.

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Post #100: Dungeons and Dragons.

Here we are in July, and including bonus posts and guest blogs, we're up to 100 articles published here, and there's a subject I'd been waiting to talk about until the time is right. That time is now. I cover a lot of subjects in the same manner, I give an introduction, a basic history and maybe a little bit of how it relates to me on the end. Not this time. I'm going to presume for the moment that most of the people know just a little bit about D&D, and that I'd be wasting my time doing a full writeup of the most popular geeky activity in the last three-plus decades. If you are still in the dark about it, here's the Wikipedia article... suffice it to say that D&D, or any other tabletop roleplaying game isn't like a board game or video game. Your “piece” is a set of statistics that describes using numbers and game terms, what your character can do and how good he or she is at any given task. From there on out, the Dungeon Master acts as narrator in a fantasy story, and every player is a main character, deciding what their character will do and then sometimes rolling dice to determine success or failure. Good enough.

I didn't even know this was in a world called "Mystara" until over a decade later.

Instead of devoting the rest of this article to a history and further description of what D&D is that many of my readers know and the rest likely won't care about, I want to talk about what D&D is to me. I've been playing Dungeons and Dragons for a frankly ridiculous percentage of my life. I was a precocious and extremely bookish child enrolled in a tiny private school in a bad neighborhood just outside the city limits of Chicago in the early 1980s. The school was small enough that as a K-8 (That is Kindergarten through 8^th grade for the nine years of American pre-High School education) school, the entire building would have fit on a single public school bus. My 8^th grade graduating class consisted of four students and the year before us had two. For this reason, first through fourth grade were in the same room in the building for at least one year. What does this have to do with D&D? I'm getting there.

The year I was unceremoniously skipped directly from Kindergarten to the second grade, bypassing first grade entirely, I met Ron, a fourth grader who was into stuff I thought was cool. We both liked video games, Transformers, and he bullied me a little, but not too much (and to be fair everyone did, I was tiny and brainy with a big mouth.)  I'd already heard of Dungeons and Dragons in books, but I couldn't puzzle out what it was. One day, Ron brought the D&D books to school, and let me look at them. I was instantly captivated. Knights and wizards, crumbling ruins filled with monsters and treasure. I wanted to play. Begged to, even though my teacher yelled at me when she saw me looking at the book. I was barely seven years old, and small for my age. I was told I was too little by the teacher, my parents, even Ron... but I persisted.

Tools of the trade from that first book. I didn't know what this stuff did,
but by God, I meant to find out.

My first Dungeons and Dragons character was a thief named “Thief” (c'mon, I was 7...) due to our incomplete understanding of the rules and a series of bad die rolls, my first level thief singlehandedly dispatched a carrion crawler at the entrance to the sample dungeon in the Red Box GM book, with nothing but his dagger. I'd only managed to get Ron to run a game with me as the only player, but it was a victory. The fact that I was killed several rooms later by a wight in a chimney did not dampen my triumph. I knew what I wanted for my next several Christmas and Birthday gifts. I got my own Red Box from Toys 'R Us, where they'd stuffed it on a bottom shelf out of the way, and it was the only one left not damaged. I read it obsessively, made characters, made dungeons on graph paper and eventually got a copy of the Expert Set.

My first ever kill, and Google tells me that I'm not alone in this.

I didn't actually get to play D&D again for years, and until High School, D&D always started with me begging my little brother, my Dad and neighborhood kids to try it, with me getting frustrated and them getting bored and stopping without even being willing to sit through a full session. I didn't care. I kept getting the books, making dungeons, reading about monsters and spells. Even in High School we only got a handful of sessions off, but by then I had myself a little collection and was set when I got to college. College opened my eyes, as I had willing and capable other players, I didn't have to beg anyone to play, and I didn't have to DM the group if I didn't want to. Those were some great years.

Post-college I joined a few different campaigns, and ran more than a few of my own, though by then I was better known for running Shadowrun or Call of Cthulhu. I did a tour of the classic modules during years playing 2^nd Edition AD&D, going through the Giants Series, Slavers Series, Temple of Elemental Evil, Castle Ravenloft, Through the Looking Glass, and even Tomb of Horrors. Years went by and I learned about acting as my character and actually roleplaying in Classic RPGA events where completion of the adventure was sometimes secondary to just acting like the character you were handed. In tournament play at Gen Con, in 1994 I was on the Winning Team for the NASCRAG event Nexus II: The Weather Stone, youngest person on the team, but I was used to that by now. Three years later I was on the 2^nd place team in the D&D Open Tournament, using the “Cutters” scenario at Gen Con 1997... I remember the adventure was set in Planescape.

Still have this on the wall by my computer, and still have the shirt and tiny
cut sapphire from the NASCRAG tourney.

I'd had years of experience as a DM, player of home games, convention tournaments and I even played a bit of Living City. Everything changed when I got a set of playtest rulebooks for Third Edition. I was in the vanguard pushing local gamers to embrace D&D3e before it even came out. By then, I was manager of a local hobby shop and when the books came out we sold tons of them, and I was running games on both days every weekend. With my boss' blessing at the hobby shop, I founded the Ides of March game convention to bring gamers together to play Warhammer, Magic: the Gathering, and most of all, D&D. (More on that convention is a tale for another day.) My convention attendance was up to seven or more cons per year, and I eventually met my wife while playing.

It's funny. When 3^rd edition (and later 3.5) came out, I prided myself on being open to change, and I mocked the people who hung onto earlier editions from behind my counter to my friends and customers as the “Gaming Amish.” After all, I'd played since 1983, I knew all the editions and had adjusted with the times... progress, you know? After the hobby shop had closed, my convention was a risk I couldn't afford to take financially anymore and my con attendance was back down to one or two per year, I got a look at Fourth Edition D&D and... I hated it. I wanted to like it, but all the old sacred cows were slaughtered and what was left might have been a decent fantasy roleplaying game, but to me, it just wasn't D&D anymore. Times changed, and this time, they left me behind. I was one of the Gaming Amish.

The last edition of D&D I really played.

I've since tried 4^th edition, and I still don't care for it. I still do an awful lot of tabletop roleplaying, but despite all those decades of it being the other pillar (besides video games) of my hobby and entertainment life, I haven't played actual D&D in years except that once to give 4e a real shot. This may seem or sound kind of sad, but I really don't feel that way. Since I started blogging, I've come into contact with all sorts of people who game in their own way, some play D&D Old-school, and I learned that OSR (Old School Rules) is a hobby all its own. I'm playing the new Arcanis RPG which has its roots in D&D, I run a lot of Savage Worlds, and may try Pathfinder Society as I've heard it is a lot like D&D 3.5... From age seven to, well... I'll be thirty-five come a week from Friday, I've been a D&D player for 28 years (80% of my whole life,) and I don't think I'll ever see myself any differently.

After all, somewhere out there, there's a crumbling ruin... a carrion crawler guards the doors to the forgotten keep where ancient treasure still lies, guarded by worse things in the darkness. There has to be a roguish young man in leathers and a black cloak with adventuing tools in his pack and a dagger at his belt, ready to pilfer those forbidden riches... He just won't be named: “Thief.”

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Never Had a Chance: The Lost Room and Persons Unknown.

There are few things that grate on the TV geek's nerves more than a show with potential that gets really good, poses some interesting questions using elements we enjoy, and then tepid ratings and network mismanagement leads to no possibility of a second season. I've talked about one of the ultimate examples of this in our culture before, but I want to shine a spotlight on a couple of lesser-known shows with the same tragic fate. I'm glad that I got to see the one season that aired of both of these, and technically, they are both “miniseries”, but there was clearly more story to tell in sequels that will never come.

The Lost Room

When I saw this one a few years back, I marveled at how much they were able to pack into the miniseries 6-episode run. Originally aired on the Sci-Fi channel (Not SyFy, which airs professional wrestling and terrible original monster movies,) back in 2006. The plot is centered around Detective Joe Miller (Peter Krause), who gets caught up in a world he never knew existed when his daughter disappears in connection with a series of murders he is working on. When I say “disappears,” I mean that she literally walks through a doorway into a room that wasn't there a second ago, it closes and when it is opened again, both the little girl (Elle Fanning) and the room itself are gone.

Detective Miller has only one lead on the mysterious event, a motel room key that was left in the door his child went through. He discovers that the key is one of a series of objects with unique powers that were originally the personal effects left in a motel room until an “incident” removed the room itself from time and space. The key is one of the more powerful objects, allowing it to be inserted into any pin and tumbler lock on any hinged door, and that door will open into the motel room itself. The holder of the key can enter the room and close the door, upon opening the door the holder of the key can exit the lost room through any door of his choosing with a lock and hinges, so long as he has a clear picture of the destination door. Anything (or as it turns out, person) left behind in the room after the holder of the key exits vanishes, as the room resets perfectly to the state it was in when the door opens.

Combination hideout, getaway and ultimate lockpick. I'd use it for ill.

Miller is swiftly accused of a crime he didn't commit, and enters a subculture concerning the objects and their powers. We meet people who hold other objects (including a bus ticket that teleports you to New Mexico, a pen that microwaves flesh and a comb that stops time,) information dealers who track them or sell the collected lore concerning them and how they work, and individuals and organizations that want to possess them. This supporting cast has some standout stars, including Kevin Pollack, Margaret Cho and Julianna Margulies who at turns aid or hinder Joe Miller's quest to do the impossible: to retrive something lost in the room. Within six episodes, the mythos behind the room, objects and the incident that created them is fully explored and to my tastes, adequately explained. I'd love to see more stories in the world, as though there is closure on the story, the possibility of a sequel was left open.

Persons Unknown

At least they didn't kidnap any fat or especially ugly people...

My wife and I just finished watching the 13-episode run of Persons Unknown, and we liked it a lot. It was plagued by exceptionally poor ratings, an episode that never aired, long breaks in the schedule and a timeslot move, so it really never had a chance. It feels like a cross between LOST and the Agatha Christie book And Then There Were None, with elements of the 1960s run of The Prisoner (a show I'm sure I'll profile someday) for good measure. Seven people are kidnapped from their lives, they never see their captors but they know they are being watched by cameras everywhere. They are held in a hotel in a deserted small town that appears to be trapped in the 1950s, and they all have secrets.

The plot moves at an unusual pace, exploring the characters, their struggle to escape and figure how what has happened to them as unseen people torment them with psychological manipulations while watching on cameras like some sort of twisted reality show. The few other inhabitants of the town either do not speak English (in the case of the men who run the chinese food restaurant, the only source of meals in the town,) or who claim to know little more than the victims do, like the hotel's Night Manager. The characters learn about each other, suspect and betray one another, and we see the outside world's reaction to their disappearance and bit by bit learn a little about the people who took them and why.

Oh, yeah. Can't leave the creepy-ass town. Hope you like chinese...

The initial characters in the hotel are:

• Janet (Daisy Betts), a single mom who wants nothing more than to get back to her daughter.
• Joe (Jason Wiles), a man with a mysterious past who is driven to get out and immediately takes charge.
• Moira (Tina Holmes), a woman with medical knowledge and a background in counselling.
• Graham (Chadwick Boseman), a US Marine Sergeant fresh from Iraq.
• Charlie (Alan Ruck), a wealthy businessman with a wife suffering from cancer.
• Tori (Kate Lang Johnson), a party girl and Ambassador's daughter who inists her father put her there.
• Bill (Sean O'Brien), a selfish and opportunistic used car salesman.

As the season progresses, we learn that most of the characters are not what or who they claim to be or initially seem to be, and eventually one of the hotel's guests “checks out” and is replaced by a new 7^th person. The last arrival is Erika, a female death row inmate played by Kandyse McClure (best known as Dualla on Battlestar Galactica) whose natural hard edges create additional tension in the town. We also follow a subplot with a journalist from San Francisco, where Janet was taken, investigating her kidnapping. We learn more and more about what is really going on and the group's attempts to escape and we get a little bit of closure on some of the series' questions, and then we get an open-ended final moment that some might call a cliffhanger.

It is a real shame that NBC dropped the ball at every step of the process with Persons Unknown. No matter what they did, people didn't turn out to watch it, at one point it was beaten in the ratings by gymnastics. The setup for a possible second series was really interesting to me, and I'd love to have seen where the characters would have gone from the final moment. In the US at least, the thirteen episodes of Persons Unknown can be watched on Netflix streaming as of the publication of this article.

Tomorrow will mark the 100th article posted by this blog, and I've got something I've been saving planned. See you then!

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Chiptunes and Classic Videogame Music - Oh, Say Can You Hear?

Here in the United States, July 4^th is a patriotic holiday, and besides fireworks and parades, the music of the holiday is distinctive and instantly summons some memories. Aside from Christmas and a few cultural festivals, there are few other holidays that do that. I don't usually hear a particular song and think “Halloween” or “Easter”, and if there is an Arbor Day song, I don't know it. Thinking about a particular Independence Day/July 4^th memory and the music associated with it brings me to today's topic. One of the most easily recognizable songs for American Patriotism is, of course, our National Anthem, and being a geek, my clearest memory of the Star Spangled Banner isn't of some sporting event I attended or competed in, and it isn't some formal event where a band or orchestra played a stirring rendition. It is (for good or ill) … this.

One of the greatest and worst moments in early videogaming history. Konami's “interesting” interpretation aside, there have been some really incredible compositions to come out of video games in the last 30 or so years, and chiptune music has been dissected, analyzed, remixed and remastered by literally thousands of aspiring musicians. For those who know a little bit about the geeky, crazy little niche subset of music that includes 8 and 16-bit compositions, there are standouts, and I'd like to talk about a few of the best.

Castlevania (NES) – Composer: Kinuyo Yamashita

The original Castlevania had one of the most remixed, analyzed and familiar songs in video gaming history. If you've ever played the game, I'm sure you recognize it, but you may not know that the song's official name is Vampire Killer, or that it was composed by a woman, which was highly unusual in the videogame industry of the 1980s. So unusual, in fact, that Kinuyo Yamashita was credited under the pseudonym James Banana. I'll also always have fond memories of her soundtrack for the trippy game “Stinger,” which was my first NES game after Super Mario Bros, which shipped with the system.

Legend of Zelda/Super Mario Brothers (NES) – Composer: Koji Kondo

Kondo is well known as a composer for the creation of the two most iconic themes of the 8-bit era of video gaming. In addition to being a composer, he literally wrote the book on overcoming the inherent challenges with sound design on Nintendo's FamiCom system (released abroad as the Nintendo Entertainment System.) In addition to composing the scores for Super Mario Bros and The Legend of Zelda, he returned in some capacity to work on other games in both of those franchises and did a lot of the music and sound for the Star Fox series.

Streets of Rage (Sega Genesis) – Composer: Yuzo Koshiro

Not all of the early great music in videogames first showed up on the NES. Whenever someone says “great music from a video game” I usually first think of Streets of Rage. I discovered these songs before I knew they were from a game, having missed out on the fighting franchise when it first appeared on Sega Genesis. The high energy tunes were inspired by club music the composer heard at the time, and the success of the game has been attributed in no small part due to how memorable the music from each stage is.

Final Fantasy Series (Many Systems) – Composer: Nobuo Uematsu

The “Prelude” composition from the original Final Fantasy game has appeared in most of the games in the most popular JRPG series in videogaming history. It was based on a simple arpeggio found in one of Johann Sebasian Bach's stort pieces, and has evolved over the years from a simple two-voice melody to a fully orchestrated theme that is recognized by millions worldwide. The success of Final Fantasy and its music led to Nobuo Uemastu scoring over 30 other titles, and he, along with several other employees of Squaresoft, formed a band. They named it “The Black Mages.”

I didn't include some of my favorite remixes or any of the post-chiptune music found in games on purpose. I got into Jonathan Coulton based on “Still Alive” from Portal and after hearing Poets of the Fall in Alan Wake, I made sure to listen to all of their stuff. I'll revisit the topic of music from or by artists made famous by video games at a future date, but to hear the themes I've referred to in this article remastered or reimagined, I recommend the amazing music archive OC Remix. The OverClocked Remix site has a hard rock/metal inspired version of Vampire Killers called “CastleMania” that isn't to be missed, and jazz versions of Legend of Zelda and Mario themes as well a thousands of other tracks for download.

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There vill be.... SANDVICH! - Team Fortress 2 Free to Play, one week later.

And... I'm back. Many thanks to Sarah for her Origins articles, since I'd written all the articles posted last week before we left town, it was almost like I was on a 2-week vacation. (Do the unemployed get vacations?) Now, with that behind me, what did I do with the time I had not researching and writing articles, finding appropriate images and trying to ascertain as best I can their copyright status, layout and posting? Did I write the Great American Novel? Nail down that elusive job that'll make me adjust this blog's title? Charity work? Nope, I played a lot of video games. Those who know my love for Steam or who follow me on Tumblr can already guess which one.

Team Photo 2. Immediately after this was taken, everyone put on funny hats and started jumping around.

I don't cover nearly enough shooters, or so I'm told. I've declared my bias against the genre in the past, but it isn't as though I don't play them at all. I think my twitch reflexes aren't up to snuff to be really great at these sorts of things, so there might be a little bit of sour grapes in there somewhere. This might explain why it took over four years and the decision of Valve to make it Free-to-play for me to finally try Team Fortress 2. The game's been called “the most fun you can have online,” and I think I can see why. I'd like to take a few moments to explain TF2 to the people who haven't played it (yes, both of you) and then directly give some tips to others who just started playing from the F2P crowd on how to get started.

Released in 2007 as part of the Orange Box edition for Half Life 2, Valve updated the team-based multiplayer hit Team Fortress Classic with redesigned gameplay, a totally new, cartoony graphical style, enhancements to classes and changes to weapons loadout for each class. Using teamwork to accomplish objectives on levels was mastered by the earlier game, as before TFC, most multiplayer was deathmatch/arena style “kill everyone else” gameplay. Team Fortress features nine different classes, who perform different roles on the team, three are designed to attack on offense, three are defensive, and there are three specialist classes.

Classes? this is a game about HATS!

The classes are Scout, Soldier, Pyro, Demoman, Heavy, Engineer, Medic, Sniper and Spy.

Offense:
The scout is super-fast, has the least health, can double-jump and carries by default a scattergun, a pistol and a baseball bat. Soldiers come equipped with the rocket launcher, (which allows for rocket jumps by blasting at your own feet while timing a jump) shotgun, and entrenching tool. The Gas-mask wearing Pyro has a flamethrower (which can ignite players and detect disguised spies) a shotgun and a fire axe.

Defense:
The demoman (a black scotsman with an eyepatch) has his grenade launcher for indirect fire, a sticky bomb launcher to set a field of remote-detonated mines, and a broken bottle. The Heavy has the most health, moves slowest, and has the devastating minigun, with a shotgun and his fists for backup. Engineers have pistols and shotguns, but their real strength is in building machines; their blueprints allow them to make dispensers to refill life and ammunition, teleporters to allow fast travel around maps, and deadly sentry guns to automatically defend positions.

Specialists:
Medics have a needle gun, a bonesaw and the healing gun which restores life and builds up a “charge” that at 100% makes the medic and his target invulnerable for a short time. Snipers wield sniper rifles, naturally, which can one-shot most classes with a carefully aimed headshot, with a machete and submachine gun for backup. Finally, the Spy has his disguise kit, which allows him to look like a member of the opposing team, stealth watch which allows him to vanish, a revolver, a sapping kit to disarm engineer machines, and a butterfly knife that is a one hit kill in a backstab.

The unsuspecting Wild Engineer, and its natural predator, the Spy.

The combination of playstyles and different abilities across the classes really make this more than just your usual first-person shooter. An engineer or a spy are so different from a scout or soldier that it is almost like you aren't even playing the same game when you switch to certain classes. Different team compositions present strength or weakness depending on the map objectives (capture the briefcase, secure control points, or pushing a cart with a bomb strapped to it down a track that runs into the other team's base) and whether teams are on defense or offense. The game is fast paced, and as you play, different equipment for the various classes unlocks (weapons and cosmetic items like the hats the game's become famous for) both at random intervals and for completing achievements.

Unless you are a crack shot with great twitch reflexes, I recommend starting players learn the ropes by playing the pyro, heavy or medic classes, and maybe get a feel for the engineer and/or spy (though I think spy is a little trickier to learn.) Stick with groups of players and try to play an offense class while attacking, defense while defending while still learning the controls and pace of matches. For me, the toughest classes to play with any sort of skill have been scout and sniper, but I might just be a terrible shot. The community is all over the place, with intolerant, abusive and elitist toolboxes and helpful friendly folks willing to be patient with new players all over the place, sometimes on the same server. Unless you have a thick skin for online abuse, I recommend turning off voice chat in-game while learning.

My screen looks like this when I play the sniper, the instant before I pull the trigger
and the heavy moves 2 feet to the left.

I've had some great moments in the last few days playing TF2 with both strangers and friends. Detonating a cluster of stickybombs right under a scout trying to escape with my team's briefcase in CTF, blowing up a spy disguised as me, masquerading as a soldier and having an enemy medic heal me until I hopped behind him and backstabbed him, and earning hats and new guns along the way. It is also worth mentioning that an upgrade to a premium account (though that pretty much only means crafting and trading once you start to get duplicate items) comes with ANY purchase from the in-game store, and there are a lot of $1.00 items in there. I used a spare dollar from my Steam wallet to get a few spy-themed accessories.

I'm not impossible to find on Steam, if anyone has the inclination to look hard enough. If you add me on Steam, however, put a note in a comment, this blog's facebook page or email somewhere letting me know you came from the blog, so I know to accept. Now, back to earning hats.

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