Heroes is bullshit
I saw the latest episode of Heroes yesterday. I was not impressed. I would describe the episode as being complete fucking bullshit. I made a list of all the reasons this episode was bullshit. Here are those reasons for your enjoyment.1. Matt Parkman.
So I guess Matt has developed multiple personality disorder since last week or something, since he seemed to completely forget all about how the government kidnapped, tortured and killed the love of his life. He has instead become a pacifist bitch afraid of conflict, trying to save his marriage and reconnect with his estranged wife. I wouldn't mind that so much, but at the end of the episode he makes ANOTHER FUCKING U-TURN and decides he should go and fight after all. Bullshit. And while I'm on the subject of Matt being a prick and forgetting all about the people he loves, what the fuck happened to little Molly Walker? Y'know, the girl he practically adopted?
2. Hiro and Ando.
I like Hiro. I also like Ando. I really want to like them together but the writers are making it so fucking hard with all the bullshit they keep pulling with their characters. Hiro as an aspiring hero and Ando his faithful sidekick? I liked that. Then we had a role reversal with Hiro trying to be a hero without his powers while Ando tried to come to terms with his. I liked that too. Then baby Matt gave Hiro his powers back and I was looking forward to Hiro and Ando struggling over who gets to be the alpha hero. But at the end of this episode, Ando has powers and Hiro has a nosebleed. Bullshit. Also bullshit was how Hiro only just worked out that he could touch someone and they wouldn't freeze when he stopped time, despite the fact that he's been grabbing people to teleport them since the beginning of the first fucking season, but that's easier to accept because Hiro is fucking retarded.
3. The Extended Petrelli Family.
At the end of the last episode, Angela, Nathan, Peter, Claire and Noah decide that they're going to work together as a family. Approximately three minutes later, Nathan flies off to Washington on his own to save the President, because he started it and he has to finish it. What the fuck? What was the fucking point of dragging everyone out to Coyote Sands for '1961' if they're going to undermine it in the very next fucking episode? Bullshit.
4. Sylar.
There was a time when Sylar was an emotionless killer who showed no remorse, no fear, no mercy. He was a relentless engine of destruction and I loved him. Then the writers turned him into some kind of creepy stalker and had him manipulating the fuck out of Maya for some reason. And then the parental issues started and Sylar quickly stopped being a badass and started to turn into Peter Petrelli with stubble. We now come to the point where Sylar is self-harming, obsessing about losing his identity and shifting into the form of his own dead mother in order to carry on a conversation - with himself. And what the fuck was Sylar helping Micah escape for?! Not killing him, OK, it's a stretch but sure, I can accept that. Acting as a decoy to help the kid get away? Bullshit. Someone needs to track down the mouth-breathing faggot who thought making Sylar more human was a good idea and kick the shit out of him until he admits that he made a tragic error.
5. Everyone Gets Captured.
Nathan gets shot in the back. Danko says the agents are getting ready to move. We then see a montage where everyone gets captured. Despite being on the run for practically the entire fucking volume, everyone gets captured in the space of thirty seconds. Without even any dialogue. Mohinder Suresh is a dude who has super strength and super stamina and has managed to continue fighting (or at least running away) with multiple darts in him before, but he drops like a fucking stone. Bullshit. Angela, Claire and Noah get captured without any kind of fight whatsoever. She didn't see that coming? Bullshit. That's a full episode's worth of action there that we were screwed out of. We should have had a car chase, we should've seen Mohinder throwing agents through walls, we should've seen the command center directing the troops. Instead we saw Sylar turn into an old hag and carve up his own arm. Bullshit. The only people to evade capture are Matt who has agents crawling around his home and might be captured anyway, Hiro and Ando who are pretty much useless, Micah who is thirteen years old and Peter fucking Petrelli who flew off after his brother Nathan like a little bitch. Again. Bullshit.
Each and every time Heroes looks like it's going to start getting good again, we get an episode that just shits all over everything. It's so frustrating and I honestly can't understand why I still watch it.
The rythym game blues
Continuing the theme of "shit I missed while I was in Azeroth", does anyone remember Audiosurf? I wrote it off as a glorified iTunes visualizer or screensaver when it first came out, but no! There's a proper game in there and it's pretty fun. It's one of those really simple but addictive games that has a kind of hidden depth to it. While I was playing it though, I couldn't help but feel that I'd played it before. The block collecting felt really familiar and I spent ages trying to remember out what it reminded me of. Turns out it was a game called Klax on the C64 which I played to death waaaaay back. Loaded it up on an emulator after I remembered what it was... that game did not age well. Audiosurf looks like it'll age better, it'll always be different because the music you have to play it with is always going to change. I tried some dance, some pop, some heavy rock and even a bit of classical. In the end I was having the most fun rocking out to songs with slow build ups leading to epic guitar solos - Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody and Meat Loaf's Bat Out Of Hell were awesome. Right Here, Right Now by Fatboy Slim was pretty sweet for the same reason, a slow build which breaks into a more intense beat.Playing Audiosurf got me thinking about other rhythm and music games. The genre as a whole has always been pretty interesting to me, but I never really got into Dance Dance Revolution or it's various competitors. Probably something to do with me not having a PlayStation, being cursed with two left feet and really not wanting to be shown up by some hyperactive thirteen year old in the arcades. None of that managed to stop me from messing around in my own home with Stepmania though, and I did manage to steal and hook up a PSX dance mat to my PC once. The resulting performance left a lot to be desired. Now that I think about it, I have Dancing Stage: Mario Mix for the Gamecube somewhere with a dance mat... that might be fun to play with if my enforced exile from the world of the internet continues. Wonder if I still have that CD full of DDR MP3s and step files?
The other big names - Rock Band and Guitar Hero - have a cost of entry that's far too high. Donkey Konga is an alternative, but far too simplistic (though DK Jungle Beat is a laugh). Singstar-style games are completely out, my singing voice is terrible. Thing is, all of these games have the same problem - they're not generated by music you plug in, they're games based around the music the developers include. Audiosurf can be a completely different game depending on the music you choose, which is completely awesome. The only other game I can think of that's actually generated by the music you plug in to it is Vib-Ribbon on the PlayStation.
Also, just for the record, most songs by Steps are bastard hard.
Old games
So in between trying to find a job (not going well, thanks global economy!), I've been digging through my collection of old games for something to play. PC games really are bug-ridden pieces of horse shit, aren't they? I decided I'd give an RPG a try, so I installed Grandia II. Unfortunately, the video locks up every 30 seconds. I cut my losses and tried to play through the giant Skittles advert, Darkened Skye, but none of the in-game cut scenes will play. For a game which boasts about how they got the voice of Jasmine from the Aladdin cartoons to voice their heroine, for none of her dialogue to actually work is baffling. I am still baffled now. I dug deeper into my collection and found that Dead to Rights and Dungeon Siege won't install, Midnight Club 2 installs, but won't run, while Urban Chaos installs, runs and then crashes at random.Eventually I just gave up and started to play through The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker again. Lovely game. Came out around 2003 and still works perfectly on my Wii. Didn't need a patch either.