Random Nattering - TV & Gaming

[niko]

 

TV:
I've been checking out some TV previews for the 2010-11 season, and the new Hawaii Five-O (Youtube) actually looks pretty entertaining.  Love the snark, and the cast seems like they could have pretty good chemistry.

I do *really* wish that they hadn't bothered to keep the character names, though.  There's no reason they couldn't have simply had this be a modern Five-O unit, with perhaps a few shout-outs in the pilot to McGarrett as someone whose shoes the new guy has to fill.  Giving the same name to completely different characters with a completely different dynamic is a needless distraction.  It's going to be quite a struggle for me to get over my instinctual gut-punch of negativity every time they refer to these people with someone else's name.

(Why, yes, I am a bit too invested in Hawaii Five-O, why do you ask?  :) )

I also *LOVE* the trailer for Undercovers (Youtube) .  The leads are adorable, it has that snarky thing going for it again, and *woot!* Gerald McRaney!  Also a geeky sidekick, which is always fun.   ( "Excellent use of sarcasm, sir."  LOL! )



Gaming:
I've been enjoying an online thing called Echo Bazaar lately.  I'm not sure I can really call it a "game", but it plays like kind of a cross between a collectible card game, an MMORPG, and a Choose Your Own Adventure.  You have a set number of turns per day.  On each turn, you basically play a "card" that represents a story event in your character's life.  Each event effects one of your stats, either basic stats like "Dangerous", "Persuasive", etc. or story-driven stats like "Having Recurring Dreams" that sort of track a mini-story-arc... the first time you have a dream, the stat appears on your player description, and each recurring dream you have boosts that stat higher and higher until it gets high enough to trigger some other event.  (Which probably sounds really confusing. :) )

From an interactive-fiction and/or roleplaying perspective, it's pretty neat experience, as your sense of your character is formed both from the randomness of how the cards fall as well as choices you make during certain events that can go more than one way.

The setting also has this fantastic gothic/steampunk/Victorian sort of style that keeps me coming back just out of a desire to explore the world.   The way different events appear as stats increase gives pretty good incentive for working to boost that "Dangerous" stat just ONE more notch.

The only down-side is that it hooks into Twitter for some events.  So far, there hasn't been anything that *required* Twitter interaction, but there are definite benefits if you do.  I'm kinda glad I *don't* twitter, because I'd feel sort of bad spamming my "friends list" with game tweets if I did, but I'm tempted to create a second account for myself, just to give my main account someone to interact with in-game and reap the rewards that way.