So the countdown is over and Bungie has released a trailer for their next … something. Halo 3 expansion … spin-off … thing.

The trailer, in predictable Bungie fashion, gives us little to work with. A bunch of pods fall from the sky and mess up some Earth town that appears to have already suffered from some unwanted Covenant attention. Text exhorts us to “prepare to drop.” Logos for Bungie and Microsoft Game Studios appear.

This is the announcement that was pulled from E3, right? Bungie’s next game? It’s not the Peter Jackson project, or Halo Wars, or the Microsoft-only project (if that exists), or that Gearbox weirdness from a while back, or another title update for Halo 3, or the Mythic maps we all know are coming. Right?

That last paragraph illustrates the problem in Halo land these days. There are so many projects — real and rumored — coming from so many places run through so much oblique marketing that it’s impossible to keep track of what’s what. It would be refreshingly contrarian if Bungie would just announce something with a plain, white-paper-and-letterhead press release.

And include a Visio flow-chart, too. This shit is confusing.

Unlike last fall when they seemed to be inclined to throw everything at the wall and see what stuck, this season the networks are mostly content to give last year’s writer-struck shows a better shot at gaining an audience. And that lack of effort is apparent in the offerings they have rolled out … because there’s not a lot to get excited about.

Continue reading Newb tube: Your guide to TV's freshman class of shows

The WB, which merged with UPN to become The CW in 2006, has been revived — this time online. Our regular readers and my friends (OK, same thing), know I’m a big fan of a lot of old WB shows and like to reference which obscure WB show various actors have starred or guested on, so imagine my joy that I don’t have to spend money on DVDs to watch some of these guilty pleasures. The site actually launched back in the spring, but made its official debut Wednesday.

TheWB.com features a mix of new shows made for the Web and old favorites, such as Buffy, Angel, Gilmore Girls, Smallville, The O.C. and others (though oddly missing is Charmed). The streaming occasionally stutters, but is good quality overall.

I can’t say any of the new offerings, such as Sorority Forever or A Boy Wearing Makeup appeal to me, but they might to other people in the demo that the WB is trying to hit. And regardless of whether the new shows are any good, it’s nice to be able to view the WB classics online, anytime, for free.

In an attempt to appeal to today’s ADD youth, you can also do video mashups because what the world needs is more Smallville montages on YouTube about Clark and Lana’s doomed love story set to Josh Groban.

On the other hand, you can also set up viewing parties where people can watch the same video simultaneously and online chat at the same time, which is kind of cool and a nice chance to collectively groan at how badly some of the shows have aged.

Now if we can just get some of those not-so-classic WB shows (e.g. Black Sash), I’ll be in guilty pleasure heaven.

Braid is an homage to Super Mario Bros. with the gameplay mechanics of Prince of Persia, plus a storyline that is both compelling, confusing and surprising.

And all that weirdness adds up to a must-buy from Xbox Live Arcade.

The game starts out simply enough. You play as Tim, who bops on baddies and solves puzzles to get through levels and collect puzzle pieces. But Tim can also manipulate time. So dying isn’t a problem, but the time reversal is for more than just avoiding death; it also is used to solve puzzles. And as you move on to different worlds, different manipulations of time come into play and the puzzles get more and more complicated.

The game designer’s official walkthrough says, “Don’t use a walkthrough.” And he’s right. Some of the puzzles are tough, but when you finally figure them out, it’s a joyous revelation. I confess to finally looking up how to get one of the puzzle pieces because I spent quite a lot of time and frustration and finally gave in. But the longer you can resist this urge, the more rewarding the game will be for you.

The story works on multiple levels and truly helps make this a thinking person’s game. It’s short (there’s a time trial that challenges you to finish the whole thing in 45 minutes … good luck with that), but so was Portal and that was still great.

And the score, though it gets darker later in the game, is beautiful, especially in the first level.

All in all, Braid is a treat for the eyes, ears, fingers and brain. And if you stick with it until the end … well, you’re in for quite a ride.

Blockbuster is way family (and also that religion that John Travolta is), as evidenced by its new Wii-focused “Family Gaming Pack.” Spend $50 on games at participating stores and you get a bunch of junk about garbage for free!

If my mom went to the video store and brought home a dry erase board and some noisemakers and suggested the whole family play Carnival Games, we’d have some serious matricide on our hands. And for once, a video game would have actually incited violence.

Buffy fans, watch the above clip from the proposed Buffy: Animated Series at your own peril. As much as I’m enjoying the season eight comics, it doesn’t quite compare to hearing the original actors (and the frighteningly SMG-sounding Giselle Loren) bringing the characters to life.

The animation, which evokes Justice League Unlimited, is nicely stylized, letting Buffy do things even the best stunt double couldn’t pull off in live-action. And several scripts were already completed by Buffy writers such as Jane Espenson, Steve DeKnight and Doug Petrie. But after the show’s network, Fox Kids, died, it was never able to find a new home.

“We had a great animation director, great visuals, six or seven hilarious scripts from our own staff—and nobody wanted it. I was completely baffled. I felt like I was sitting there with bags of money and nobody would take them from me,” creator Joss Whedon told the Hollywood Reporter in 2003.

Although Buffy has managed to come back from the dead in the past, the animated series has seemingly little hope of being re-animated.

Chris Carter really laid it all out there in titling the second X-Files movie I Want to Believe. Six years after the series ended and a decade after the first movie, X-philes want to believe that their beloved heroes are still relevant, and Carter wants to believe this once-dominant franchise still has legs.

But even the most die-hard of fans couldn’t be blamed for not sticking with the last two seasons of the series. With bland new agents, a largely absent Mulder and little payoff in the way of mythology, I lost my faith. In fact, I don’t even remember how the series ended. So does Carter succeed in reinvigorating the franchise with a stand-alone reboot? Allow me to channel my inner Mulder and Scully … [Warning: spoilers ahead]

Continue reading Crisis of faith

The Dark Knight is so doomy and gloomy, so relentlessly bleak and depressing, so very dark, that it’s tough not to leave the theater feeling a bit down. The large number of explosions aside, it’s not what you typically expect from your average comic book movie, even after the weighty gravity of Batman Begins. Why so serious, indeed.

In many ways, it evokes The Empire Strikes Back, the moody sequel that betters its predecessor in nearly every way. The stakes are higher, the action’s bigger, Katie Holmes isn’t in it … But where it really ups the ante is its villain.

Prior to seeing the film, it’s hard not to roll your eyes at the slavish praise heaped upon Heath Ledger’s portrayal of the Joker. Would the acclaim be so universal had the young actor not died earlier this year from an accidental overdose? But after seeing Ledger’s terrifyingly unpredictable performance, it’s clear the actor’s Brokeback Mountain Oscar nomination was no fluke.

Continue reading Joker's wild

Musical superheroes/villains. I can’t sing its praises loudly enough.
(Free until midnight Sunday at this site.)