You Can Do It...

So mere hours after last week's post I decided to meander over to the gym after my glorious half day of work where I promptly threw my back out. I've been couch-ridden almost since then, today being my first day back to the land of the living. This has afforded me two things: dozens of uninterrupted hours of Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen while my loved one is at work, and about as much time for personal reflection because these moments were not what I'd call entirely eventful. As such, here are some stray thoughts from the past few days. Enjoy them with your favorite cola beverage.

It seems as though I'm a minority here, but I hate, hate, Kanye West's appearances on Saturday Night Live. Part of it is probably the sentimentalist in me that demands that nobody mess with such a revered stage (and yes, haters, it is a revered stage), but Yeezy's hijacking of the environment has always come off as the worst kind of pretentious, making him look like more of an asshole than he probably already is. I'm not knocking his music --in fact, I like it a lot-- but, dammit, these performances make Val Kilmer's god complex look the opening to the Mary Tyler Moore Show. Observe last year's desecration:

 

That new Star Trek flick certainly is the cat's pajamas, no? Fun performances by the whole cast and a twist that just about anybody that's even heard of Trek saw coming made for a pretty relaxed experience, and that's counting some pretty thrilling action sequences. I guess my beef with it is that it relied a little too heavy on old lore to really "get it," and the absence of that is what made the 2009 reboot so darn snappy. But hey, if this is the way things are going, I'll hop on that train.

Dude. House of Cards. I mean, right? That Kevin Spacey sure can deliver fascinatingly cruel dialog. I'm only about five episodes in, but I'm already praying to that Netflix higher power that more's on the way. Now that we're rapping about it, Hemlock Grove wasn't bad, either. But it lacked one crucial ingredient: Verbal Kint telling me that he "loves [his wife] like sharks love blood." Spec. Tacular.

Tomorrow, a new album by The National will explode upon my ear drums. I'm pretty jazzed about this.

Ok, so Dragon's Dogma. I was putting off playing it until the price dropped, and then the announcement last year that a rerelease was coming gave me no more excuses, especially after all of the positive word of mouth that it was something of a flawed gem. Color me surprised, but I was good and smitten with it, and can soundly agree with that praise. Technical mess that it was, I had plenty of opportunity over the last few days to bum rush through the game twice (the second time is pretty short with NG+) and enjoyed the exploring and the boss combat, even though the rest of it was kind of mediocre upon recollection. Some of the larger battles were totally bogus, though. The Ur-Dragon fight (the original game's super-boss), was completely unwinnable in a straight melee throwdown, which is downright crappy design. When you have to bail out of the fight so you can reclass to a long-range character you know that someone didn't think this whole thing through.

The expansion stuff, though, was chock full of what I like to call Total Bullshit. Now, the level designs were great, and even a little inspired until the whole thing started to repeat. The Dark Souls influence was worn proudly on the sleeve here, and that alone is the key to my heart. What's baloney, though, was the arbitrary and asinine spike in difficulty when boss monsters would just randomly appear, forcing you to run like and idiot through the environments so you don't get wiped out. For a location that was obviously built to be explored thoroughly, I found this to be a cheap way to artificial inflate the difficulty of the game for high-level players. I made it through the end of the Dark Arisen stuff this morning, and I was satisfied with it, but in no way does it demand my patience for a second trip through, even though Doc Brown and his sidekick Shaniqua can probably put up with this mess much better than their first go 'round. Since I wound up with a platinum trophy in this game as a silver lining to a weekend of freakish pain, I'm guessing that DD:DA will begin it's long, glorious life as a dust collector starting this very evening. Still, if this is the direction Capcom is taking with the (hopefully) upcoming Deep Down, I'd be a liar if I wasn't down, too.