Y, Wii U?

To start of, I've been a skeptic of the Wii U since it was announced.  I don't consider myself a Nintendo-hater, but I have not owned a Nintendo console since the Nintendo 64 my brothers and I got for Christmas in 1996.  I purchased a Playstation 2 on launch day.  I now play my games on the PC and the X-Box 360.  I love video games, though I have no particular loyalty to any particular platform.  I like them all for different reasons.

Nintendo is unquestionably the master of first-party software support for their systems.  Their catalog of characters and their consistently high quality offerings go back nearly three decades.  For a long time, Nintendo was synonymous with video games.  If you were playing games, you were playing Nintendo.  Now, that's hardly the case.

Financially, the Wii was a smashing success.  The console was hard to find more than a year after it was released, and Nintendo made a profit on every one they sold.  The problem is that the success, in hindsight, was built on a bubble.  That bubble was the non-gamer community that saw the Wii as a toy or the Wii Sports machine.  These are not the people that are going to buy more games and drive long term profitability.  

In addition, because of the unusual control scheme and the fact that the Wii was so under-powered compared to its contemporaries, the X-Box 360 and the Playstation 3, third party developers found it difficult to simply port their across all three systems.  Most simply chose to develop for the 360 and the Playstation.  Once the Wii hit market saturation, there were no software sales to drive continued profitability.

  

These are the problems that the Wii U was supposed to fix.  It is supposed to meet or exceed the 360 and Playstation in terms of the hardware power.  The availability of more standard type controls, along with the hardware power, was supposed to allow for the multi-platform games that would re-attract the hardcore gamers who came to see their Wii as nothing more than a machine for first party Nintendo offerings.  

The problem is that it will likely soon be behind, as Sony and Microsoft are heavily rumored to be introducing new consoles next year.  The Wii U, in terms of hardware, is probably 3-5 years too late.  The Wii U is not going to get the third party support that is needed to attract gamers to use a console as their primary gaming platform.  Most will continue to turn to Microsoft or Sony to fill their console needs.

That's not to say the Wii U doesn't have its place.  To be sure, there are some unique things that it can do with its tablet game pad, and anybody who thinks Nintendo's first party games are going to disappoint probably has not been paying attention for the last couple of decades.  On the other hand, anybody expecting the Wii U to be their primary console is going to be disappointed.  Either another console or a gaming PC an important counter-part to the Wii U for the traditional gamer.

What remains troubling is Nintendo's apparent inability to get with the times.  By all accounts I've read or heard, including Giantbomb, Polygon, Shacknews and various Reddit threads, Nintendo still does not understand how to implement a proper online structure.  Confusion about friends list functionality and the lack of account migration and general cloud support of any kind are causes of concern.  The OS is apparently huge and ridiculously slow.  These are basic things that Microsoft, Sony and Steam have taught the modern gamer to expect to work well, and they are ways that Nintendo has apparently failed.  It can be fixed, but they had the road map to follow and they didn't.

It's obvious from the reaction I've seen on Reddit and other forums that people want to like the Wii U, but most of the reactions I've seen come in one of two forms.  A large portion of people sound like they're are trying to justify their purchase, both to others and to themselves.  Others are perfectly willing to accept the likelihood that they may never get any significant third party software support, but Nintendo's own offerings make the system worth it to them.

To be fair, the game pad and the Miiverse seem to be resounding successes, and could be things that other's would do well to copy, assuming they have staying power.  It remains to be seen what the future holds for the Wii U, but my money is on it being a Mario machine.  There's nothing wrong with that, as long as you know what you're getting before you fork over the dough.

So They're Making More Star Wars Movies...

I'm sad to say that more Star Wars films are in the works.  The most sad thing is that this is a sad thing.  Star Wars is something that people love, but love is built on the back of movies that are 30 years old.  Nothing with the Star Wars name has been able to live up to the legacy that was created with the original trilogy, and there's no reason to expect that will change.

Sure, there have been some bright spots.  There have been some video games that have been positive parts of the Star Wars legacy.  The X-Wing, Tie Fighter, Battlefront and Knights of the Old Republic games have done well.  The bright spot, unquestionably, are the books that comprise the Thrawn Trilogy, written by Timothy Zahn.  Quite frankly, Zahn's Thrawn trilogy is the best writing in Star Wars... Anywhere.

The movies were magical because of the world(s) that Lucas created and the broad story he created.  Let's face facts, Lucas is and was a horrible director and writer of dialogue.  It's no coincidence that the best two Star Wars movies were the two he didn't direct.  Lucas only recently admitted that Empire director Irvin Kershner was right to keep Harrison Ford's famous ad lib response to Leia's profession of love.

Disney, the new owners of LucasFilm, would do well to pay whatever they need to in order to get Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford back together and adapt Zahn's works if they really are making new Star Wars movies.  That assumes they want them to be good.  If they want to settle for the same garbage Lucas churned out with Episodes I, II and II, by all means let Lucas run the show.

In Defense of "TDKR" (Spoilers)

Those of us who care have had a good opportunity to digest "The Dark Knight Rises."  So, I think it's time for some reflections.  I was listening to an episode of the "Games, Dammit" podcast.  In this episode, the 1up.com/IGN.com writers were discussing the movie rather than their normal topic of video games.  Overall, they were pretty down on the movie.  Their criticisms were much the same as many of the other criticisms I've heard about the movie.  Cheesy lines, nonsensical plot points, and sub-par fight scenes are typical criticisms of the movie.  I would argue that in these respects, "Rises" is not all that different than "The Dark Knight."

Compare some of the nonsensical plot points.  In "Rises," you have the fact that Talia and Bane could have flooded the reactor room as soon as they pulled the core out, leaving the good guys with less of a chance to stop the detonation.  You have the entire stock exchange heist that was used to put the reactor into Talia's hands.  These are ridiculous plot points that require serious suspension of disbelief, without a doubt.  But are they worse than the fact that nobody noticed the cop in the funeral firing squad with the heinous Joker scars? What about the fact that the Joker was able to plan complicated attacks with military precision on seemingly a moment's notice?

Then there's the dialogue.  There are lines such as the exchange between Batman and Catwoman when she first gets into "The Bat," or Batman's line after Catwoman disappears off of the building when he's not looking.  I can see why these might bother some people, I don't think they're any more cringe-worthy than Harvey Dent's "interrogation" of the schizophrenic cop impersonator, or Gordon's lines during the final confrontation with Two-Face.  Admittedly, the off-putting part of these lines was the delivery in my opinion, not the written lines, but I think the point stands.

Then, there's the complaint that the movie wasn't about Batman, but Bane.  I would argue that the movie was about Bane and Bruce Wayne, which is standard for the series.  Batman had frustratingly little screen time, I grant you, but I don't think that thematically alters the course of the series.  "Begins" was very much about Bruce Wayne and his need for Batman.  "The Dark Knight" was about the other side of the Batman coin, Joker.  "Rises" was about Bruce realizing his original goal for becoming Batman, and being able to walk away.  None of these movies were about Batman in the way the movies in the 90s were.  I'm not sure why people expected different in "Rises."

It's clear that "Rises" was a disappointment for many people, especially after "The Dark Knight."  The problem is that people didn't seem to realize, though I've been arguing it for a couple of years now, that "The Dark Knight" a quality action movie that was elevated exponentially by the once-in-a-lifetime performance of Heath Ledger.  Replace Ledger's performance with even an above average movie villain, and most of the complaints people have about "Rises" will be almost immediately noticed in "The Dark Knight."  Had Ledger been able to reprise his role, we might not be talking about these complaints with "Rises," but we'll never know.  To compound things, Ledger's death forced Nolan to tie "Rises" more closely to "Begins" than to "The Dark Knight," which people also seem to be griping about.

I think that "Rises" falls into the same category as "Return of the Jedi."  Both are very good movies and satisfying conclusions to fantastic stories.  Both, however fail to live up to the historical brilliance of their predecessors.  The difference is that if you realize how much of the expectation for "Rises" was based on a historic and unrepeatable performance of one actor, the expectations placed on "Rises" seem even less fair than those placed on "Jedi."  "Rises" was a very good movie, and I'm not going to let the brilliance that was Ledger's Joker cloud my judgment on that.  You shouldn't either.

Media Ratings Madness

America is schizophrenic when it comes to depictions of sex and violence in media.  We tell ourselves that we want to protect children from graphic sex and violence in movies, TV and video games because we're afraid that it will have a negative effect on them.  If we assume that violence and sex in media is something that we should concerned about, Americans should be concerned about the methods we have chosen to make this  happen.

When it comes to movies, we have the MPAA's rating system.  There are two components to this.  First, there is the "G, PG, PG-13, R, NC-17" portion.  This is the actual rating.  Along with that, the MPAA descriptors to inform people why a certain rating was given.  These could include items like "graphic violence" or "strong language".  But, what do these ratings actually mean?  Probably nothing.  The MPAA says on it's website that it's board of parents tries to represent what they think the average American parent's standards.

I think it's pretty clear that they've failed to represent the average American.  While the descriptors may be useful enough, the actual rating are nearly useless.  The head of the MPAA Ratings Board said recently that they do not make "qualitative judgement" about movies.  While she was referring how good or bad a movie is, you can't say that film ratings are anything but qualitative judgments.  So, are the qualitative judgement of a bunch of people whose judgments on such matters we cannot verify.  Would you walk up to a random person on the street and as if the new Batman movie is appropriate for your kids?  That's what you're doing if you rely on the MPAA's ratings.  The MPAA would argue that they use criteria to take some of the subjectivity out of it, but a quick look at the guide for the ratings system will show you that in place of subjectivity, they've inserted arbitrariness.

Video games suffer from from much of the same problem under the ESRB's rating system.  While the descriptors are again helpful, the rating itself is nearly useless.  All one needs to do is compare the Halo games to the Grand Theft Auto games.  One has been all over the news (though, mostly Fox) because of the things you could do: killing policemen, patronizing prostitutes, killing prostitutes, buying, selling and using drugs, driving drunk and the list goes on.  In Halo, faceless space marines defend the world from alien invaders.  Unlike Grand Theft Auto, there's no cursing, no drugs, no alcohol, no blood, the violence is cartoonish rather than graphic, and there is not a prostitute to be found.  The fact that these games are given the same "M" (mature) rating shows you what a joke the system is.

While the discriptors in the movie and game rating systems can be helpful, the actual ratings are arbitrary and inconsistent.  Anybody who wants to know what's really going on in a movie or game would be well served to look beyond what the ESRB and MPAA are providing you, because they're not giving you much.