Why your Nintendo Wii sucks

Before I really get into this, you should know that I own a Wii. It’s been sitting in my TV stand cupboard for about 8 months now.

I play my PS3 mostly now. It has similar titles like Call of Duty: World at War, Rock Band, etc… But, once the novelty of that “WiiMote”wears off , you end up with a cheap piece of plastic that you give to your mother because she thinks it’s better than going to Curves! Sure, it’s cheaper, but she’s bound to throw that wiimote through the Fucking TV screen.

The one thing that bugs me about the Wii’s online system are Friend Codes.FriendCodes are these little serial numbers you get on your Nintendo Wii that you exchange with your friends to play gamestogether. Itsoundssimple, but they make it as if they don’t want youplayingonline, because no one’s gonna want to remember some 12 digit long code so you can play fucking Mario Kart! How about a Lobby to jump into where you can meet people online? Or maybe a previously played list of people you can add to later? Abolishing these codes and having a nickname like Sweetguy_69 (the one I use to pick up chicks online) would obviously make more sense. I guess Nintendo doesn’t have any common sense since they didn’t release a working product to begin with.

After thenoveltyof me waving my wiimote around wore off, I bought my PS3 and was thrown back into the world of controller gaming. Using buttons and joysticks was great to get back to. Let’s face it. The Wii is a novelty. Period. If it had better graphics to fall back on, I’d be singing a different tune, but it doesn’t. Even the games on the virtual console are just recycled classics that you can get on yourcomputerwith enough common sense and a torrentclient.

After all this is said and done, there’s no fun with this shitty piece of plastic. Aside from getting drunk and playing bowling or golf with one of your friends, there’s nothing else to do with the Wii. Who sits at home and jerks off a WiiMote alone? No one!

Furthermore, why did they release an addition to their existing product tat [perfectedit? They added this fucking attachment to thebottomof the wiimote to make it more precise? WTF! They should have done this when they released the product! Holy Hell! I can’t wait to see their new Nintendo. Whatever the fuck that is. In the meantime, I’ll be playing a real machine. The PS3.

Where’s the ‘Fuck This Game’ Button? Or why I only played ‘Dead Space’ for 10 minutes.

I know I’m a bit late on Dead Space which was released late last year but I finally got it from my by the mail game rental service GameAccess.ca so earlier I decided to pop it into my PlayStation 3 to give it a shot. Fast forward to me, 10 minutes later, hitting in frustration the eject button and muttering to myself, “I’m not going to fucking deal with this right now.”

It starts off with a “cutscene” that supposed to give you a sense of awe, wonder, and excitement but only made me think, “Ok, get on with it.” This is the first thing I refuse to deal with any more: Unskippable cutscenes. If I, as a player, don’t give a shit about the story then don’t try to force me to give a shit about the story or else I’ll just ending up hating the game more.

Once you get up and running you start getting the standard tutorials; how to walk, how to run, etc. I didn’t play for very long so as you might expect my largest gripe is with the controls. Movement controls are pretty standard except that “Run” is L2+L (Whenever I write two buttons with a plus, it means they are supposed to be pressed at the same time). Oh look, the first deviation from what could be considered normal controls. I’m not saying that I’m against change because if there’s no change then there’s no possibility for improvement. I’m saying that I’m against changing something for the worse. In most games, “Run” is L3 (clicking the L button down) which is really fucking convenient since you’re already touching the L button to move. Why the fuck would they change something so basic to require pressing another button and complicating the controls?

One of the next little tutorial windows that pop up is the one that informs you how to open the map, objectives, and the inventory. It seemed like normal stuff until i saw the command to open the objectives screen: Select+R3. Are you fucking kidding me? Another two-button command to do something that is usually done in one, or you could even put the objectives in another screen (which I believe they are accessible through the inventory). Again, why would they set up the controls like this. Maybe they put all the controller buttons in a bag and picked out a random two for some of their controls, “Ok, how will the players access the objectives: [picks name of first button out of bag] Ooo, Select. [picks name of second button out of bag] Ok, R3. Whatever, we can set the controls as anything as long as we put them in a tutorial at the beginning…What’s that word mean, ‘Intuitive’? Fuck you, Gary, trying to bring logic and sense into this…DON’T QUESTION THE BAG METHOD!”

A little further in the game you get your first gun and, you guessed it, they fucked up and complicated the gun controls as well. I’m fine with the new standard of L1 to aim and R1 to fire but then I saw the command for reload: L1+X, yup, another two buttons at the same time command. I have to be Aiming to reload? “Oh man, my gun is empty, I have to reload it so I guess I’ll hold it up like I’m going to shoot it first in order to reload instead of just fucking reloading it.” Why the fuck are there two buttons to fucking reload? You know, most games can do it in one. Some games I can even flick the controller to reload; yup, that’d be reloading with no buttons so why the fuck are you making me press two? I’m aware that this is part Sci-fi, part Survival Horror, maybe to make it even scarier they decided to make the controls so complicated you wouldn’t be able to remember when you’re being attacked by monsters how to control the fucking game.

Then comes a part where you get this nifty little stasis device which slows objects and enemies down. This is the part I said fuck it. I picked up the stasis device and it looks at quick glance to just be another weapon so I close the tutorial but then the weapon isn’t in my inventory, and I can’t select it. So of course I try to look for the tutorial again to see what I missed, and yes this was totally my fault but I was already frustrated with the game at this point but I couldn’t find the tutorial. I thought, “Oh, something must’ve bugged, I’ll just quit out of the game and restart and I’ll be at a checkpoint.” I do this and find that there was no checkpoint, the game hadn’t fucking saved and so I click new game thinking, nay hoping, “Well, it’ll probably be able to tell I’ve at least put the game in before, maybe that annoying opening cutscene will be skippable this time.” And yes, of course it wasn’t skippable this time so I said, “I’m not going to fucking deal with this right now” and ejected the game.

I then Googled the problem to see if it was a bug or I missed something and found out that I had missed something. I really should’ve learned from the first few tutorials to read those fuckers carefully because I found out that with my current gun equipped I was supposed to press L1+Square to fire the stasis gun. I should have known, it’s so fucking intuitive that way. Of course, I’d be able to fire something completely different when aiming my current gun. Makes total fucking sense, just like all the other controls.

Full Disclosure: In the process of writing this I did put the game back in just so I could write down the exact controls that pissed me off and I didn’t get much farther in the game: I made it 20 minutes this time before saying fuck this game. I did find out another thing that pissed me off: save stations. If you’re game doesn’t have autosave and/or checkpoints then fuck you. When I want to turn off a game, I don’t want to have to run around to find a fucking save point, I want to quit out of the game and then come back to it later at a relatively close location to where I had been before.

Watch This Show: Legend of the Seeker

I have a few of these TV show recommendation articles in various stages of completeness kicking around but I was inspired to finish up with this one because recently we’ve been getting bits of news on season 2 of this show. As the title suggests the show I am writing about this time ‘round is Legend of the Seeker.

LotS (as the kids are calling it these days) is a fantasy-action-drama about a young man who discovers his destiny is to be a great hero and defeat an evil villain. He’s helped on this quest by a magical sword, and wise old man that he thought was a crazy loner who turns out to be a powerful wizard, and a beautiful woman who has powers of her own. So yeah, generalized it sounds like standard Hero’s Journey stuff but it’s so much more.

Getting more specifically into the premise the young man that discovers his destiny is Richard Cypher who discovers he is destined to be The Seeker of Truth (luckily they just use “Seeker” rather than the full title for most of the season) a warrior that is chosen only in times of great need. That great need is brought upon by Darken Rahl who is a not so nice dude. Which reminds me, if you’re naming your child and you choose “Darken”, you’re kinda forcing them to go into the whole being evil business aren’t you? But I digress. The Seeker of course has help in his quest in the form of a Wizard of the First Order (I guess the most powerful type of wizard) named Zedd and a Confessor (confessors can, with a touch, make a person do anything the confessor wants) named Kahlan.

It’s based (possibly loosely from my extensive research) on a series of books that I have yet to read, though they are waiting for me, collectively called the Sword of Truth books. The Sword of Truth is the aforementioned magical sword. Apparently the books are really good but I cannot pass judgement on them until I get much more than 5 pages into the first book. They did however spawn a pretty fucking entertaining TV show.

It makes sense given that it is being made by some of the same people that made two other pretty entertaining shows: Hercules and Xena. I think it’s time for me to confess something to you dear reader. I was a big fan Hercules and Xena back in the day. And not just because Kevin Sorbo was so dreamy. Fun factoid: Michael Hurst who played Hercules’ side kick Iolaus has a role in this series for an episode as well. Oh, and Ted Raimi is also a guest star in it and you should recognize him, amongst other things, as Joxer the Mighty. Again with the digressing. The connection to Hercules/Xena might also give it bonus points as well; what the hell am I saying “might”, it definitely does.

I do have to say though it is an improvement over those shows and that could be because it is adapted from those books. It has good stories week to week and the overall arc of the season is great too. The action is decent too. So, if you’ve read this far and you’re interested in a very entertaining fantasy show then you should really watch Legend of the Seeker.

P.S.: EXTRME GEEK MOMENT

This show brings up an anecdote that will let all of you know how huge of a geek I am. My sister and I were both at different points in the season and were talking about it when my sister said, “Did you know that Darken Rahl [the evil villain in LotS] was Haldir in Lord of the Rings?” Any normal person’s reaction would’ve been along the lines of: “Who’s Haldir again?” or “OK, I care because…?” but as an extreme-geek my reaction was genuinely excited to discover this factoid and my response was, “HOLY SHIT, YOU’RE RIGHT, NO WAY!” Now, I’m not the hugest geek in the world because if I was my reaction would’ve been to respond, in proper Elvish, “Duh!”

My Top 5 Reality Shows

With Big Brother premiering tonight I wanted to write about reality shows in general so here’s my favourites. This list isn’t in any particular order.

Survivor
Going into it’s 19th season this fall I had to put it on this list just for the sheer amount of hours I must have spent watching it but it’s also on this list because without fail every season has something interesting about it. If you don’t know what this show is about then firstly, what the fuck and secondly, it really boils down to pretty people suffering and competing in a pretty place. There’s really not much else to say about it. I would go on with specific examples of why it is amazing but there has been so many seasons now that they all kind of blend together in my memory.

Amazing Race
Probably my favourite series on here, despite me saying I wasn’t going to order this list, The Amazing Race has some hit or miss moments; a certain “family edition” season was atrocious and some teams border on murderous rage inducing. But when its firing on all cylinders it is extremely entertaining. The Amazing Race is about a bunch of two-person teams who travel the world in a race that’s quite…incredible. It’s not only good as a competition show but you can also watch it as a travel show and look at all the weird exotic places the teams go.

Big Brother (U.S. Edition)
The 11th season just premiered recently and is the inspiration for this list. I specify the U.S. edition of this show because the U.K. version has not caught my interest in all but one season. I still say that if the U.K. edition didn’t have an hour long episode every day of the week, if it boiled down the best bits to two or three shows (the U.S. edition has three one hour shows per week when it is on) it would be so much better and I might actually be able to watch it. I watch a lot of TV but dedicating 7 hours per week to one show is a little much even for me. But I digress, Big Brother is about usually 12-ish people locked in a house and compete/strategise against each other all summer until one person is declared winner. There are so many memorable characters and moments from this show and it has the perfect amount of entertaining material; if you’re a casual watcher you can just watch the thrice weekly shows but if you’re insane you can watch 24/7. I’m kind of in between, I listen to a reality TV podcast which analyzes it and sometimes I check in on the forums where people report on the goings on in the house pre-TV show, just to find out who won certain competitions earlier.

Whale Wars
Whenever I describe this show to people I always boil it down to: Japanese Whalers vs. Hippies. Currently in its second season, this show may put people off due to the issues and politics surrounding it but trust me whatever you believe you can find something worthwhile in it. If you’re on the Japanese side you can laugh at the hippies as the royally fuck up running a ship every single episode (in the second season they finally found a single experienced sailor to join up with their cause, unfortunately they’re hippies so they’re anti-authority and structure so you can guess what happens). If you’re on the Hippies’ side, you can cheer along with them as they pursue the whalers. Despite all that, I was very happy to see this got a second season and look forward to every new episode.

Wipeout
Definitely the stupidest reality show on this list but it makes me laugh, and sometimes cringe. In Wipeout, 24 people are told to run a ludicrous obstacle course with big red balls, automated boxing gloves that usually nail the contestants either in the face or the nads, and lots of mud. Then the three hosts of the show, two in front of green screen and one actually at the course, make fun of the contestants. After several challenges, someone completes the ultimate obstacle course and wins $50,000. I can’t help but thinking this is one of the steps towards the prophetic future of Idiocracy and “Ow, My Balls!” being the most popular TV show but I don’t care, I’ll still watch.

Watch This Show: Harper’s Island

It is unfortunate that my first TV show recommendation is for a show that will never have a second season. However, it is still worth recommendation for its outstanding, and seemingly only, season. Harper’s Island is the story of a group of people that congregate at the titular place to attend a wedding only to find that once they get there a series of brutal murders begins. Don’t worry, I’ll try to keep this article as spoiler free as possible.

Update: Just watched the finale and added a bit at the end of the article reflecting that.

The series starts off as a standard whodunnit murder-mystery but then as the killings ratchet up the more recent, and far superior, episodes shift to what’s essentially a slasher film played out on TV. What’s strange about this show is that the “mystery” was never really a mystery, as the killer is entirely expected. There is a twist however, which I will not reveal, at the end of episode eleven (titled “Gasp” as all the titles of the episodes are sounds related to the main death of the week, for example: Sploosh, Gurgle, and Thwack).  I’ve seen it better described as a horror/drama which I think fits it better and the show would’ve done better had it realised that earlier instead of pushing “mystery” for so long.

The complaint I have about it being kind of predictable so far and slow to start off with is quite telling seeing as I am still recommending it because despite its flaws I am still entertained by the plot, I like the cast, and the deaths are satisfactorily gruesome (for a TV show). I am a fan of horror so I also just might have a soft spot in my heart for psychopath goes on a killing spree stories.  I will say if you start off and want to give up on it early on trust me keep going with it, it gets far better than where it began.

Speaking of the cast I must mentioned a couple standouts. The groom is played by Christopher Gorham

who has for years been that guy in that show that I really liked that was canceled. I guess his streak is alive and well with this show’s cancellation. Though, to be honest, I don’t know how they would do a second season unless they came up with new characters, a new setting, and a new mystery at this point but then again the killer always comes back for more in horror movies why not here. The bride is Katie Cassidy who was great as Ruby in Supernatural which I love and will most definitely be the subject of a future TV recommendation article. She was later replaced as Ruby by an actress that I liked far less. There’s another Supernatural alum here in Jim Beaver who’s also good as the Sheriff.  The probable reason for the casting of the Supernatural people is that both shows are filmed in British Columbia. That just earns the show a couple bonus points in my book (yay for Canada).

I want to write more but I’m constricted by not being able to write spoilers. I might write a full season review or something after Saturday’s series finale.

Post Finale Update: Don’t worry, no spoilers here. I wrote above about predictability and the plot not really being, or needing to be, a mystery. With one twist at the end of the first hour of the finale you can throw at least part of that out the window. I should have expected that twist because it, or something akin to it, has happened in dozens of horror movies. But it was still satisfying and I must say that I really liked the actor or actress when they had to suddenly switch to evil mode. Finally, the deaths in the last episode didn’t really live up to the standard set by the series save one; I won’t give it away but it reminded me of a magic trick from a very popular movie last year.

Anyway, my final thoughts now that the season/series is over: its slow in bits but immensely entertaining and satisfying. I will be buying the DVD when it comes out definitely.