All is Fair in Love and War… And Video Games

Video games can be tough. Video games can make you so frustrated that you may have found yourself punching a wall, or breaking a controller at one time or another. But still, the challenge is precisely why we keep coming back to it. That is the fun. And yet, there are people out there who decry fundamental and essential gameplay at the slightest difficulty or inconvenience they may pose. Particularly in multilayer games, difference in notion of what is fair can quickly turn a joyous activity amongst friends into bitter warfare.

The Grapevine: Robocop (updated)

Just want to update people on the Robocop remake that I wrote about a little while ago.  It seems they just started filming and so here is what the new Robocop will look like:

Behind the scene of the Robocop remake

It seems like that concept art was pretty spot on.  I like the helmet, it looks like a modernize version of the old Robocop helmet except now it is glossier.  I’m not really into the suit though.  I think they will use CG to make the suit look shiny and high tech so I guess I should hold off until I see it in its final form.  However, it does look more like armor than a robotic body because his right hand still has flesh, what is up with that?

The Grapevine: Transformers 4

So rumor has it that the next Transformers movie will revolve around a new cast of robot characters.  The reason is because while Transformers: Dark of the Moondid well at the box office, the toys didn’t sell as well as Hasbro has hoped.  Maybe it was because they used mostly the same characters throughout the three movies or maybe because the last two movies were heavily criticize, but Hasbro hope that with this new cast they can sell more toys.  Transformers 4 is slated for June 2014.

Can we have this Optimus Prime now?

For more information head over to here.

Now the people who know me knows that I am a fan of the original Transformers cartoon series.  I am probably harsher on the Transformers movie than the common people, but I have to say I did enjoy the first Transformers movie.  The last two movies, not so much.  I remember I was really excited when I heard they were doing a Transformers movie back in 2007.  I was finally going to see giant robots fighting each other on the big screen.  Not to mention they were characters that I know and love.  Now every time I hear them announcing another Transformers movie I can only say, “Here we go again.”

The Transformers get less and less like their original characters with each passing movie that they aren’t really the lovable characters anymore.  Not to mention the bizarre and stereotypical robots and plot holes.  I don’t know who these new Transformers are going to be, but I hope they can be true to the original characters this time around.

The Grapevine: G4

So word is going around that says that G4 is going to focus less on geek culture and more on the “modern” man.  Just in case people don’t know, G4 is a cable channel that focuses on technology, gaming, and pop culture in general.  However NBCUniversal has decided to remodel the whole channel to something along the line of Gentlemen Quarterly, a magazine with a focus on fashion, style, and culture for men.

Now I have not watched G4 in years, but I was there when G4 merged with TechTV and dissolved almost all of its programming.  I used to love watching TechTV especially shows like Anime Unleashed, Robot Wars, The Screen Savers, and X-Play.  It truly was a channel for techies and nerd culture.  For example, The Screen Savers was a show where they would take calls and mails from people and then give advices for their electronic problems.  The advices were pretty good and since this is when the internet was still young you could get information that wasn’t available yet on the net.

The only show that survived the merger was X-Play, however eventually over time it wasn’t the show I remember anymore when it was on TechTV.  Even Adam Sessler parted ways with X-Play.  The channel stop being about nerdy stuff and more about pop culture and nothing is a better example of that than the number one show on G4, Attack of the Show.  AOTS is a live variety program where the hosts just talk about daily news, do skits, and watch videos around the net.  Occasionally they do talk about games and technology, but the point of the show is to entertain the audience with jokes and antics.

So with this change I guess the techy channel is no more.  This new channel seems like it will be a cross between MTV and Spike TV, the pop culture aspect of MTV with the targeted audience of Spike TV.  Goodbye TechTV, how I will miss you.

If It Has The Word Fantasy It Must Be Nerdy

Sports have long been considered a manly thing – except for figure skating, nothing that majestic can be considered manly. The stereotypical high school jock walks around like an ape, with an animalistic instinct to hunt down nerds and feed their ego by giving atomic wedgies or the rarely seen in the wild swirly. These people are not sports fans. Yes, they enjoy playing sports, and come Sunday they’ll be sitting in front of a big screen TV with chips and Coors Light – official sponsor of the NFL (but not of this blog) – and when the Quarterback on their favorite team throws an interception they’ll call him a gay slur in lieu of providing any actual insight as to why the Quarterback made a bad throw, because they don’t know that the Quarterback should have thrown it to the back shoulder, and that he has a tendency to not look off the safety. They just know sports are manly, and that big hits and slam dunks and amazing catches happen. But they are no more sports fans than Adam West is a comic book fan – I have no idea if Adam West is a comic book fan, I only know he fits the example I am trying to make.

Ladies and gentlemen, I have never scored a game winning touchdown, or slammed dunked the leather pumpkin – as Liz Lemon would call it – or banged a cheerleader, but I am a sports fan. I may be better than average at playing sports, but only because the average is surprisingly bad, but I am among the best at watching sports: football, basketball, not baseball, soccer, tennis, golf, again not baseball, gymnastics, women’s softball, one last time not baseball, little league baseball, I will watch any sport (except baseball).

A true sports fan is a nerd. Sports is all about numbers, and judging by the top people in every math class I’ve ever been in nerds love numbers – also I noticed a complete coincidence that they happen to be Asian, again, coincidence. In football every yard matters, in basketball every point matters, in baseball the percentage of times you’ve got on base matters, in soccer 1 is an amazingly high number.

The League is a great show on FX that uses Fantasy Football as a jumping off point for Comedy

With the invention of fantasy sports the numbers have never been more important, and sports nerds are becoming more and more popular. In short fantasy sports would be the cool version of Dungeons and Dragons if Dungeons and Dragons wasn’t already the cool version of Dungeons and Dragons – okay, it’s not really considered cool, but think are cool those nerds playing it must really be if their egos are fine playing such a “lame” game.

In less short, fantasy sports are generally when a person and a group of friends, or in my case random strangers on the internet, get together and draft players of a particular sport, in my case professional football, which happens to be starting on Wednesday. The goal is to draft the best players as one can at certain positions. One does this not only by evaluating how the players did in the past – or in short their character traits – but what their future is. How old is he (or she…probably not), is he on a new team, or have a new coach, who else is playing at his position, is he going to get kicked off the team for headbutting his wife? All important variables. Wait a minute, variables? But that’s a nerd word – it is, you never hear, “I might hook up with Stacy tonight, but there are some variables in play,” but you do hear, “I want to join your party and raid Lord Dragatron’s master castle in Dungeon Divers 4 (not a real game) tonight, but some variables might arise…plus my asthma’s acting up.”

Nerds may never love watching sports as much as jocks will, but I guarantee you that jocks will never appreciate the numbers of sports as much as nerds do. If you’re somewhat into sports but don’t enjoy watching entire games then playing fantasy sports are a great way to learn a little bit more about sports. You don’t have to know a great deal in order to play them either. All the players are usually pre-ranked, so if you pick the players that are highest ranked at whatever position you need you’ll do fine. Then as the season goes you just pay attention to see how those players do and you’ll develop a general understanding and appreciation of sports. Plus the next time you hang out with your jock friends – I’m not sure why you have jock friends, but maybe you do – you can say, “Did you see that amazing Calvin Johnson catch Sunday?” And your jock friends will say, “Shut up and go calibrate my computer nerd.” And then you say, “Watch it jerkwad, or I’ll go Ndamukong Suh on your ass.” And then you’ll have the quiet dignity of knowing you won their respect…as your using brown paper towels to dry the toilet water out of your hair.