A Legend is Born as a Legacy Dies: Looking Back on Smallville

"And so the final episode of Smallville comes to a close as the small boy from a dying world who crash-landed in Kansas embraces his destiny and becomes the man the world needs him to be."

Wow, been awhile, but I can't let the series finale of one of the longest running shows, a show I grew up with, go by without saying something about it.



 Smallville was my, as well as many others I'm sure, first introduction into not only the Superman mythology, but the entire DC Universe, as well.  I started watching the show when I was 12 years old.  It was already well into it's third season, but I caught up through re-runs and syndication.  Smallville started in a time when the DCU was waning in popularity.  Marvel had just entered the movie making business and found huge success with the first Spider-man film.  After that there was an onslaught of superhero movies and animated series from the Marvel universe.

Looking back on the first couple of seasons, Smallville seems like the typical teen melodrama except the main character had superpowers.  Despite soup opera nature of the earlier seasons, there was still an amazing story buried beneath it all.  The tragic tale of the doomed friendship between Clark Kent and Lex Luthor, destined to be mortal enemies, Clark finding new powers as he grows older, learning how to control them, and use them for good, and Clark eventually learning about his origins and his greater purpose in the world.

Halfway through its run Smallville switched its focus.  It was no longer a superhero teen drama and started becoming its own miniature version of the DCU.  At this point the show already left Smallville and was mostly centered in Metropolis.  This was when they expanded the Smallville story and started adding many other superheroes to the mix.  Now Clark was no longer the only one trying to figure out this whole hero thing.  It really helped add to the sense that this was really the DC Universe and not just Smallville.

For whatever reason, when it comes to movie adaptations (except Batman) DC can never get their act together these days.  This is what made Smallville so great for a lot of hardcore DC fans.  It was like this persistent DC Universe on TV, loaded with cameos from some of the more obscure DC characters.  Green Arrow, Impulse, Booster Gold, Dr. Fate, Hawkman, the list goes on.  Smallville was the only place to see live action versions of these characters, since many are so out of the mainstream movie adaptations are simply out of the question.  When are we ever going to get a Green Arrow movie, let alone a good one? As someone who rarely reads comics I only know the Marvel Universe from all their movies and I only know DCU, in all honesty, because of Smallville.



Any show that goes on for ten years will obviously have its share of bad episodes, and unfortunately in Smallville's case, the bad outweigh the good.  Looking back, so many seasons were filled with pointless and uninteresting story arcs and poor character development.  Lex Luthor marrying Lana Lang, Clark visiting Krypton through some time portal, Jimmy Olsen dying, but him not being the real Jimmy Olsen so it's okay, Doomsday (infamous as the only creature to ever kill Superman) taken out in a fight lasting only one minute, numerous terrible movie parodies like Saw, the Matrix, and James Bond.  Smallville has had a lot of rough spots, yet I and so many others stuck with the show throughout its run.  Why?  Because when the show is good, it can be some of the best Superhero action seen on the small screen.  Episodes like "Justice," the one always mentioned, focusing on the exploits of the soon-to-be Justice League, "Justice Society" where Clark meets the remaining members of the Justice Society and gets a glimpse at Check Mate and the Suicide Squad, meeting the Legion of Superheroes, stopping BrainIAC when he possessed Chloe.  The list doesn't end there.  Wrapped up in the bad seasons there are still a lot of great moments worth revisiting; the death of his adopted father Johnathan Kent, meeting his real father Jor-El for the first time, the creation of the Fortress of Solitude, the introduction of Lois Lane, time traveling to the future and seeing his destiny first hand, going to the Phantom Zone (several times), meeting the then Major Zod, stopping a nuclear bomb.  These are the reasons I tuned in every week.



And now Smallville has come to a close, but its impact on the DCU will live on.  Many characters introduced on Smallville, like Chloe Sullivan, have found their way into the comics.  Many people now know about the smaller DC characters who are rising in popularity.  A lot of people I'm sure will be upset with the lack of action we got to see Clark actually do in the Superman suit, but I felt satisfied.  Smallville was never about Clark Kent as Superman, it was his journey to become him. We got to see Clark save the day one last time as the man we all knew he would one day become.  That's good enough for me.  I've stuck with Smallville for close to its entire run, through all of the good and A LOT of the bad.  I'm glad the show has finally given us closure, but I have to say I'm going to miss it.


Peace.

Greatest Game of All Time: Complete

As I've said before my PS3 is currently broken and from the looks of it I probably won't get it fixed until the end of the semester.  As soon as I start up my summer job I'll be able to pay for the repairs.  Until then, my PSP and PS2 have been getting quite a bit more of my attention recently.  I've been playing through Final Fantasy IX, my favorite FF game, but that's is a story for another blog post.

I was nostalgically going through my old PS2 games, specifically the Ratchet & Clank and Kingdom Hearts series, until I found my copy of Shadow of the Colossus.  I bought this game about two years ago used because of all the praise it gets, but I never had the chance to finish it.  I really enjoyed what I did play.   The world was beautiful for what the PS2 could do graphically back in the day.  The shear size of the colossi when one is first revealed to you makes it seem impossible you could ever hurt it and the sense of accomplishment you get when the creature finally falls to the ground dead is an amazing feeling. That said, I did burn out on it eventually.  The game has a great opening and (now that I've beaten it) ending, but the lack of narrative in between makes the game seem like it's dragging.





I only had two colossi left to defeat, so instead of starting a new game I decided to continue where I left off years ago.  It took me a while to get back into the controls.  I don't think they really hold up anymore.  Response time seems slow and the climbing mechanic has been improved in games like Uncharted and Assassin's Creed since then, but the game is still good by today's standards.  Luckily the second to last colossus seemed fairly easy.  The last one took me close to an hour just to figure out what to do, although it was probably the most satisfying boss fight in the game.

Without spoiling it, I have to say the ending is probably one of the most profound game endings I have ever seen.  While the twist was somewhat obvious it was sad to see the culmination of all your work almost be for nothing.  Another thing I love about the ending is the interactivity of it.  It isn't just a cut-scene like you see in a lot of games, the player is still controlling the character while everything is playing out.  The ending to Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood had a similar feeling to me.  It gives you the idea that you can still control what will happen and perhaps prevent something terrible from occurring even though it's inevitable in both cases.  Interactive cut-scenes aren't anything new, but I feel they aren't always done right.  Some of the best game narratives are done with no cut-scenes at all, like Half-Life and Bioshock.



So that is what I've been playing lately.  After completing Shadow I can see why so many people consider it one of the greatest games ever made, but I can also understand why some fell out of the experience.  I would agree more with the former myself.  I think I may still purchase the ICO Collection when it's released even though I already own Shadow.  I've never played ICO and would love to go through SOTC again before Last Guardian comes out.  Plus I am somewhat of a trophy-whore.


Peace. 

Audiosurf: How Music Games Should Have Been

About a month ago Activision announced that they wouldn't be releasing a Guitar Hero game this year and that the franchise has been put on hold for the foreseeable future.  This came right after the news that MTV decided to sell off Harmonix, the creators of Rock Band, for a mere $50.  Both of these announcements pretty much declared that the music game genre was dead.

I didn't really get into either Guitar Hero or Rock Band.  I played at my friend's house and enjoyed them enough, but I never bought them myself and was really confused by all the hype surrounding these games.  I'd rather learn to play a real guitar than a plastic, fake one.  I came to the conclusion that these games simply weren't for me, so I never really payed attention to any kind of music game, until I found Audiosurf.

If you never heard of Audiosurf here's a quick run-down:  You control a ship traveling along a track hitting notes in the rhythm of the music playing.  Sounds like the typical Rock Band/GH setup, except that the track changes with the song.  The track fluctuates with the beat, causing the ship to jump to it, and changes based on the speed on the music.  If the song is slow it'll crawl uphill to match it and when it picks up the ship will fly downhill at breakneck speed.  The color of everything as well as objects in the environment also change depending on what's being played.

Much more exciting than watching notes continuously fall down a screen, but the real kicker is that this program will work for any MP3 file you insert into it.

Any MP3 file on your computer can be put into the game and it will analyze and build a course based on that song track.  It doesn't rely on the developer to create and release tracks.  The code works so that any song can be played on it.  Rock Band might have over a thousand songs available for it in some form, but Audiosurf's track list is literally infinite.

The program itself is pretty amazing.  As a soon-to-be computer programmer I'm fascinated by its ability to analyze a song, find the tempo, and build a game level based on that.  I am not one bit musically inclined so a person who has any sort of musical ability can easily impress me.

There are some downsides to this game, however.  While every song works with the game not every song is fun to play.  There's some great techno songs that I thought would be insane to play in Audiosurf, and then turn out to be totally lame.  You have to find songs that fit well.  That's something games like Rock Band have over Audiosurf.  The developers picked the songs and balanced them accordingly.  Not every song in Rock Band or Guitar Hero is terrifically fun to play, but at least the majority of them are.

Another reason why this kind of game will never catch on is that it kills the DLC market.  That was Rock Band's bread and butter.  I'm sure they made more money selling DLC packs than they did the actual game.  Publishers want money and allowing a music game with an infinite song list will seriously cut into their profits, so unfortunately I don't see them adopting this tactic anytime soon.

Audiosurf is really the only music game I've played regularly and the only one whose "business model" (or lack thereof) I support.  If you've never played this game I would highly recommend it, especially if you enjoy music games.  It's only $10 on Steam right now and doesn't really require any sort of powerful PC to run.  My laptop handles it just fine. Music games aren't dead, per say.  They are just now finally getting the opportunity to evolve with the changing market.

Peace.

I Want to Be a Non-Conformist, Just Like Everyone Else

I joined Myspace long after it was the hot, new thing.  By that time a lot of people had already moved on to Facebook.  I thought MySpace was shit when I first checked it out.  I could talk with my friends a lot easier on AIM without having to go to my friend’s page, reading their oh-so-contrived and unoriginal status, clicking on chat or sending a PM.  I liked AIM so much more but unfortunately nobody used AIM anymore and if I wanted to keep in touch with my friends online MySpace was the only option.  As time went on I started getting used to the site.  I could individualize my page with fancy-shmancy backdrops and wallpapers, insert a music player that played my current favorite song ever (it changed almost daily back then) and some hilarious YouTube videos because, hey, they’re hilarious.

Not four months later I started to notice fewer and fewer people were getting online regularly.  What could be better than a site that lets me create my own virtual representation of my individuality (oh, My Space, get it)?  Well that website was, of course, Facebook, the NEW, new thing.  I went to the site, saw all my friend’s lame looking, plain white profile pages, or “walls” as they were now called, and thought, “Jeez, this site sucks.”  So what do I do?  Create an account, of course.

 And so commenced the typing in of all my personal information, adding all my favorite music, movies, and activities, “re-friending” all my friends, and putting some seemingly clever (at the time) post about “conforming with the crowd” and joining a site I currently disliked.  

Now instead of just accepting the new “preferred” format of social networking I looked for alternatives.  At the time a new smaller site was rising in power and was seen as the next big thing.  Instead of being late to the party, as was the case with MySpace and Facebook, I decided to get in on the ground floor of this soon-to-be-revolution and around the same time I joined Facebook I also created a Twitter account.

Twitter was like no social media I had experienced.  Back then it was just bare-bones and extremely hard to actually have any sort of relevant conversation with people; no lists, no @reply page, no real point to any of it.  I quickly realized there was nothing really relevant about Twitter at all.  No one I knew was on Twitter, so the only people I followed were celebrities, comedians, and game journalists, and the only people following me were random strangers who I had no interest in and spammers.  This quickly led me to the conclusion I came to after joining every other website…“this place sucks.”

After joining the IGN blogs and becoming engulfed in the ‘Internet culture’ I now find myself in my Twitter followers started growing and people (for some odd reason) became interested in what I had to say in 140 characters or less.  I still feel Twitter was created for the egotistical who want people to believe their lives are more interesting than they are, but that can be said for almost all social media networks, really.

After joining the IGN blogs I thought the same thing, at first.  I wrote one or two (fairly short and uninteresting) blog posts that got zero comments and less than 10 views.  I stopped blogging for almost a year before I decided to give the site another go.  I began commenting and reaching out to others in the community and sure enough people started taking notice of my blogs.  And now just about a year after I started posting regularly the site is shutting down.

These days there is no main networking site everyone has to use.  Twitter acts more as a hub that collects certain information and links you to other sites, like tumblr, Deviant Art, YouTube, or various blogs to view the material.  There are so many options out there and so many ways to stay connected with everyone it’s insane.  There’s really no need to follow the crowd these days, yet everyone always does.

I’ve come to realize it isn’t really the format that the social network forms around; it’s the people in the network that matters.  Why did I move on to several sites that I disliked?  Because everyone I wanted to talk to was there and no longer using the old method.  Why would I keep up a blog if no one were to read it?  Yes, there is the pleasure of writing for my own sake and I do agree and understand that statement, but we wouldn’t go through the effort of posting if we truly didn’t care if no one reads.  Writers have opinions and they want to be heard and have their thoughts out there included with the bigger picture.  Everyone has their two cents to add, but without an audience you’re only really talking to yourself.  

The community is the most important aspect and because of this we are somewhat forced to follow the crowd.  When My IGN took over the old blogs became a wasteland.  Most people made the transition, but several stayed at the old site refusing to abandon it.  The old blogs were broken, out-dated, and nearly devoid of any newcomers to bring new life into the community, so why would anyone stay there instead of moving to the far superior blogging system; because they didn’t like the community.  

In a lot of ways Facebook is better than MySpace. I realize that now that I use it on a daily basis.  I miss some of the individuality MySpace offered which is what led me to blog and why I rarely post status updates or photos to Facebook anymore, but I never returned to MySpace.  It’s not because it’s “so 2005” even though that’s true.  It is because the community has moved on and if I want to survive in this fast-moving internet world I now live in I must follow the crowd even if I’d prefer not to.

Man, when did I start sounding like and old person?