TV in the New Year

I tend not to watch too much TV, but it seems this year I've been watching more than usual. It was actually Jyoti that pointed it out to me a few weeks ago, and ever since then I've been thinking about what can be cut.

With January mere hours away, and the return of shows now looming on the horizon, I thought I'd give a quick run-down of some shows and make some decisions on what stays and what goes from the DVR list.

V - Everyone I talk to has seen the first episode and that's it. The previews made it look great, and I certainly like to watch some of the actors, but the show just isn't living up to hype and not going anywhere either.

FlashForward - I'd like to like this show. It's got a good cast, the premise is pretty interesting, and it's even playing well with the pre-conceived notions of destiny, fate, determinism... and yet, I just don't care. This was the first show we stopped watching, and I'm not even curious.

House - Still excellent. My staple show, so long as Fox stops moving it around to accommodate Idol.

Heroes - I watch it, but I've never really been a fan of the show. Sylar's by far the most interesting character, Matt and Claire do nothing but whine about wanting to be normal, Peter and Hiro have both been gimped, Bennett doesn't know what the hell he's doing, and Mohinder never should have been given powers... bad move. Hey Claire, you want to be normal? Don't join a fucking circus! Idiot.

Fringe - I've never quite known how I feel about this show. It's interesting, but I'm not sure if it's actually good. I don't know.

Lost - Definitely looking forward to it, hope it's a satisfying ending, and I'll miss it when it's gone.

Leverage - So far, Season 2 hasn't been as good as Season 1. It's still good, just not AS good. I hope it improves. Still good, still funny, but it could be better.

Burn Notice - Awesome show, must watch.

Human Target - Looks interesting, hope it doesn't suck.

What's everyone else watching?

While all of TV has been taking their Winter nap, we've been watching Dexter and Farscape. Now THAT's good stuff. DVDs TO THE RESCUE!

Dante's Inferno, God of War, and Castlevania

I'm someone that plays a lot of game demos. In fact, I probably play more demos than I do actual games. It's because I like to see what's out there, that other people with more time are playing. If it's something I really like, I'll buy the game (when it becomes cheap) and play it (eventually). With that in mind, I played the Dante's Inferno demo over the weekend and wanted to share some strange thoughts I had about that.

Firstly, I'd read the game was a God of War clone, and holy crap, is it ever. I thoroughly enjoy the God of War series, and eagerly await the next title. However, I want to play GOD OF FUCKING WAR, not an attempt to re-skin the game and call it something new.

On a seemingly unrelated note, I have owned an HDTV for nearly a year now. Apparently, I never went in and updated the video settings on the XBox, because when I was poking around this weekend, I noticed it was set to 480i. I quickly changed that, but wanted to test the new video settings to see the difference. I had the trailer from the upcoming Castlevania in my download list, so I sat back and hit play.



The game excites me for two reasons: 1) It's Castlevania and 2) Patrick Stewart is voice acting (as Dracula?! I don't know, but I can hope). Watching the video, it too looks like a God of War clone, and while I still want to play it, I'm now a little scared. 3D Castlevania games have disappointed more than once, but I'm remaining hopeful that all changes this time.

As long as it doesn't take the Dante's Inferno route, and try too hard to be something it's not, I think Castlevania can pull it off. At the very least, try to give us something new. If you can't do that, at least present it to us differently... which applies just as easily to Avatar, but that's a whole other topic.