Electronic Entertainment Expo 2013

For those of you who play video games, E3 needs no introduction. Just in case I have branched out of my normal circle of friends and reached other people, E3 is the big video game news expo they hold every summer. All the big companies hold press releases to reveal their new consoles, tech, and games. Although I'm not per se an avid gamer, I do love playing video games and even more-so being up to date on the news. So let's start with Microsoft.

Microsoft had the first press segment of the day. I tuned in to the last half hour or so as I forgot it was today. Let me start by saying that a few weeks ago they held a press release for the Xbox One. Rough thoughts on that is the name sucks. They kept mentioning it's an "All-in-one system" as you can watch tv and browse internet and much more on it. Hence Xbox One. This sounds like they are taking a massive step back from their Xbox 360... Why not call it the Xbox AIO (All-In-One) or just Xbox IO. Not only is it a cool sounding name, but it doesn't sound like the prototype or like it's competing with the PSOne from soon to be three generations ago... They are also running into issues with trying to kill any purchasing fo used games or borrowing games and such. It's a mess and they aren't selling themselves very well at the moment. Anyways, I wasn't impressed with their presentation much. I do think the game Titanfall looks pretty sweet. It's a bit of Halo meets Mirror's Edge (2 games I rather enjoyed.) They teased Halo 4. Which was announced like 2 years ago so it wasn't very exciting. And apart from that, nothing really sticks out in my memory.

EA came next. They announced a 3rd person shooter version of Plants Vs. Zombies called Garden Warfare. While I have no interest in this game or franchise at all, they have done well in making this concept stick and even better at parodying the Call of Duty franchise with their naming of this one. The big news was they announced a new Star Wars: Battlefront ggame running on the new Frostbite 3 engine. Other than that, hardly anything happened. They showed some Need For Speed footage as well as some behind the scenes stuff for the Need for Speed movie that apparently is in production. Does anybody care? Thought not. They announced Dragon Age: Inquisition which looks sweet. I'll probably watch Devon play it as that's one of her top game series'. They also announced Mirror's Edge 2. I'm sort of excited. I will probably buy it for 20 bucks or so once the price drops as I did the first. That's all that impressed me from EA.

Onto Ubisoft. This Press conference started with Jerry Cantrell introducing Rocksmith (Cantrell being the lead singer/guitarist of Alice In Chains and Rocksmith being guitar hero but actually learning to play guitar. They also announced South Park: The Stick of Truth which looks like a South Park video game, a very excellent looking Tom Clancy's The Division, and the intriguing Watch Dogs. This game looks like Grand Theft Auto if GTA had a brilliant protagonist who can hack into anything. If you haven't seen the trailer or gameplay yet, here you go: 

Trailer:

Gameplay:

While I'm not generally a fan of the GTA open world style games, I will definitely be checking this one out. Ubisoft showed trailers for Splinter Cell Blacklist that looks cool and the Rabbids Invasion

interactive television series. This means you an interact with your Xbox One whilst watching the show.

Speaking of GTA, they announced that there will be a GTA V PS3 Bundle. Again, not a big fan so I'm out. We also got a Beyond: Two Souls trailer starring Ellen Page and Willem Dafoe. It looks intriguing but not overwhelmingly so as it's mostly just a teaser. There were new trailers fo Gran Turismo 6, The Last of Us, and Batman: Arkham Origins. All of these look beautiful, but Arkham Origins looks incredible. Onto games for the PS4. They announced mny games so I'll just touch on a few: I'll start by saying that their stance on Independant games is brilliant. They are allowing game creators to upload their own games to the store. Final Fantasy XV is coming out. Which is big, but I've not played or really cared about these games. inFamous: Second Son looks to be a sweet spin off game. Mad Max game teaser? okay. Assassins Creed: Pirates? Looks freaking sweet! Kingdom Hearts III: Well they own Star Wars and Marvel now... so Loki and Darth Vader teaming up? One of the biggest announcements was the 12 minutes of gameplay for Destiny. Bungie, the team behind Halo, created this exclusive for Playstation and it looks a lot like Halo in a lighter universe. We will also be getting a game called The Order: 1886, or as I am calling it: Resident Evil 1886. Looks interesting. Worth a shot.

Now onto the system war. Xbox One was announced with several new features. Including a need to connect to the internet every 24 hours to verify the game is genuine, A surcharge for used games in order to register them properly, and the one that most people missed: Xbox One won't work without the Kinect device plugged in. Also the camera will allegedly always be on. Not just when you're playing, always. This is just nuts f it is in fact true. That being said, the Xbox does have some good features. Namely the voice control aspect as well as the picture-in-picture thing. They also have the SmartGlass, which I believe is an app used to make in-game purchases and for multiplayer aspects a la WiiU. Most people focused on the bad things like the insane DRM.
So when Sony had their conference they just mentioned that there was no DRM or anything like that. They merely talked about how their games could easily be traded or loaned out as nearly all previous games have been. They also announced Redbox Instant and Flixster coming to PS4 as well as Sony Pictures producing exclusive PSN content. They did announce that a PSN subscription is required for online play now, which was one of the biggest bonuses PS3 had over Xbox 360.
Of course, a lot of this comes down to price. So when Xbox One was announced to release at $499 Sony got the last laugh by announcing a $399 release price. They learned from last time that having your system be extremely more expensive doesn't sell systems. Anyways, I think Sony and the PS4 are winning E3 so far, but to be transparent, I am a Playstation fan. I may be a bit biased. But that's just me. What do you guys think?

For a more thorough recap go here to check it out.

Fall 2013 Television News

So it's the big week! All the networks are releasing which shows they are renewing an which are being cancelled. I thought I'd consolidate what news I could. I gathered it from a super convenient list over at the Chicago Tribune. Click the link to see the full list as I will be picking and choosing which I will be mentioning.

First off over at NBC we have Chicago Fire, Community, Grimm, Law and Order: SVU, Parks and Rec, the Voice, and SNL being renewed. No huge surprises here as these are all fairly big shows, apart from Grimm which is slowly growing a cult following. On the other hand, they canceled 30 Rock, Animal Practice, Guys With Kids, The Office, and Smash. So far I watched none of these shows apart from an occasional SNL. Grimm is really the only one I'm interested in, although I would like to give Chicago Fire a try. Series that NBC has picked up from pilots are: About a Boy, Believe, The Blacklist, Camp, Chicago PD, Crisis, Dracula, The Family Guide, Ironside, Michael J. Fox Show, Night Shift, Sean Saves the World, Undateable, Welcome to the Family, and American Dream Builders.
Out of these, The Blacklist looks to be a very interesting twist on a procedural, but I'm not sure I'll watch. Dracula, The Chicago Fire spinoff: Chicago PD, and remake of Ironside from the 60s all seem okay. All around I'm not excited about anything over at NBC, especially since they passed on The Sixth Gun pilot...

Over at ABC we have Castle, Grey's Anatomy, The Middle, Modern Family, Nashville, Once Upon a Time, and Suburgatory. I enjoy all of these except Grey's which isn't my cup of tea, and Once which tanked after season one when they wrapped up the plot that made the show interesting. I have yet to watch past episode 2 or 3 of Nashville, but it was pretty great up til then. The weirdest renewal is The Neighbors which I watched the pilot of and it had nothing to bring me back to episode 2. Canceled shows include Body of Proof, Don't Trust the B----, Happy Endings, Last Resort, Malibu Country, and Zero Hour. Of these I have watched Malibu Country since I know the prop master and Zero Hour which totally didn't hold up to the awesome sounding premise. Malibu was funny, but it didn't seem to have an audience it aimed for so not a big surprise here. The others I've had no interest in except Happy Endings which looks quite hilarious.
ABC has decided to pick up the pilots for Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Mind Games, Mixology, Once Upon a Time in Wonderland, and Trophy Wife. Obviously excited for SHIELD. We are in planning stages for a podcast on that, stay tuned!! Mind Games looks interesting, as does Mixology. I will probably check out the pilots for these in the fall. Once Upon a Time fell flat for me so a spinoff really doesn't appeal to me either.

CBS has renewed 2 Broke Girls, Big Bang Theory, CSI, Elementary, Hawaii Five-O, HIMYM, Mentalist, Mike and Molly, both NCIS shows, and Two and a Half Men. Can't make it through an episode of 2 Broke Girls, the jokes don't work for me and it's really obvious the actors are new to the multi camera experience as the pauses for laughter are painful. Big Bang got stale for me a few seasons ago, but I hear this season is great, HIMYM is supposedly going into its last season, which should have happened a year or 2 ago. The rest of these I don't watch but I see their appeal.
CBS has cancelled CSI: New York, Golden Boy, Partners, Rules of Engagement, and Vegas. I must say, I watched some episodes of Partners and found it to be pretty funny and had it had a stronger female lead, could have gone on much further. Shows from pilots are Crazy Ones (Sarah Michelle Gellar and Robin Williams? Okay!), Hostages, Intelligence, Mom, The Millers, Reckless, and We are Men. I've heard nothing about any of these.

Fox has renewed American Dad, Bob's Burgers, Family Guy, The Following, Glee, New Girl, Raising  Hope, and The Simpsons. I don't really care at all...
They cancelled Fringe which is bittersweet. I loved the show, but took it in a direction I wasn't a huge fan of. They also Cancelled Ben and Kate, The Mob Doctor, and Touch. None of which ever appealed to me and I was always ponderous over calling a show focused on a kid Touch. Just seemed weird.
They are picking up series from pilots: Almost Human (J.J. Abrams sci fi cop show a la Aasimov), Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Dads, Enlisted, Gang Related, Murder Police, Rake, Sleepy Hollow, Surviving Jack, and Us and Them. None of these but the Abrams show sound very intriguing.

CW of course has renewed Arrow which means another season of the Rogue Arrow Podcast!! They also renewed Beauty and the Beast, The Carrie Diaries, Hart of Dixie, Nikita, Supernatural and Vampire Diaries. None of which really surprise me as they hit a huge TV watching Market with the teenage girl population. They cancelled 90210, Cult, Emily Owens MD, and Gossip Girl. Again. No stake in any of these. They picked up The 100 (After Earth with 100 juvenile lawbreakers instead of Will Smith and Son), The Originals (Vampire Diaries Spinoff), Star-Crossed (Vampire Diaries, but aliens!!!), Reign (Period piece about 15-year-old Mary, Queen of Scots), and the Tomorrow People (Kids with superpowers.) Meh.

So there's clearly a trend for spinoffs this year. It's annoying for shows like Chicago Fire and Once Upon a Time with only 1 or 2 seasons behind them. I'd rather see something new and different than to start a spinoff before they can really grow a big following... Just me. Anyways, what shows are you guys excited for? Really it boils down to SHIELD, Crazy Ones, Almost Human, and more Arrow for me!!