Lots of spoilers ahead for this commentary on the third episode of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., now available to watch on the ABC website.
What I loved about Buffy the Vampire Slayer, what I loved about parts of Angel, and especially what I loved about Cabin in the Woods is the concept that one can’t judge something on appearances alone. Sure, this truck driver is a hick; Agent Mack is also a trained S.H.I.E.L.D. agent and his expertise in transportation is valuable. Major plus points for this continued bit of world-building.
Another thing I loved was that despite Quinn’s grandstanding, he’s not really evil, just opportunistic.
I thought the mentor/bonding moments between Ward and Skye were nice. I can see them becoming friends.
I wish they hadn’t revealed Skye’s duplicity to the audience so soon. Also, since Quinn was able to escape, now Rising Tide has to know that she’s on the fence with them now.
Coulson continues to get the best scenes, to hammer out the best “What moral quandary are we in this week?” dialogue; Clark Gregg delivers it with the proper amount of gravitas, no pun intended.
Now that Agent May is back in the saddle again, can we please have some hot “I’m a better fighter than you” action between her and Ward?
Can next week’s episode please be the “character-establishing” episode for either Fitz or Simmons?
I am totally not surprised that Dr. Hall is trapped in the ball of gooey gravity.
I think the show’s starting to grow on me. Here’s to next week.
Care for a spoilery place to talk about the second episode of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., now available to watch on the ABC website? Click on through!
The only thing that kept me from yelling at Coulson for letting the Peruvians on the plane is the fact that a) they are part of the official government, even if their leader wasn’t smart and didn’t bring a helmet into a zone with known rebel activity and b) Coulson’s way of trusting competent people to do things competently usually works for him. Note: I said “usually.”
Halfway through this episode during Skye and Ward’s talk in the lounge area of the Bus, I realized during his speech about being “the whole solution” that Ward is the Captain America-analogue, the ideal soldier—or in this case Agent—who always gets the job done perfectly. And Coulson’s reference to Skye being a consultant in the same way that Tony Stark is means that she’s supposed to be the Stark-analogue: brilliant, unpredictable, irreverent. I’m not sure how to feel about that. Part of me feels like that’s a trick that a fanfic writer would use to get someone interested in their “original characters.” Heck, most of me feels that.
I’m not sure I liked the way the camera movements or the edits foreshadowed that the Peruvians were going to do a heel-face from the instant they got onto the Bus. I noticed it as soon as they did the close-up onto the locking mechanism on the weapons case. Same with the foreshadowing of how important the flying investigation drones were. It all seems so obvious.
As lovely as it was to see Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury doing a cameo, I think it was a wasted effort because of how much it was a throwaway scene. Cobie Smulders’ cameo in the pilot episode? It did much to move the plot and felt less contrived.
I’m still trying to get a handle on Fitz and Simmons. She’s definitely the alpha between the two of them, and I kinda like that.
If Ward is Captain America-ish, then Agent Melinda May is very Zoe Washburn. You could hear it in her voice just before she drove the SUV into the lab. I don’t know why I feel better about this character-trait lifting than I do the Ward/Captain America fusion.
Thanks to a confluence of events, I finally finished playing the original Mass Effect as both a male and female Commander Shepard in July… which means it’s podcast time! After a bit of juggling and some technical difficulties, I sat down to check in with co-editor Jill Pullara, and writers Jonathan Cherlin and Lowell Greenblatt on how their summer has been going, to do a review of an indie game called Resonance, and to answer a very important question which we asked previously: Does the gender of your Commander Shepard really have an influence on how you play the game? Show notes after the jump.
My modus operandi regarding gigantic geek blockbuster movies is to maybe see a trailer or two and then completely attempt to avoid any sneak peeks, exclusives, or interviews. This is a technique that has mostly served me well ever since I was pleasantly overjoyed by the awesome that was the 2000 X-Men movie. So, it came as a complete surprise to me that indeed, a lot of the scenes in both Iron Man and Iron Man 2 were improvised. As for Don Cheadle being uncomfortable with it, you couldn’t tell from the interview he gave to MTV News (third video down). Then again, he’s an actor; he could have just been polite for the cameras.
Just in case you missed it, Lowell’s review of The Amazing Spider-Man can be found here.
For those of you who might not remember, Sliding Doors was a movie which came out in 1998 starring Gwyneth Paltrow where a single event in her life (whether or not she catches a train in London) has two different effects on the rest of her life. Both of these universes are shown on the screen happening at the same time. In contrast, the Buffy episode in question is called “Normal Again.”
As for “Awake,” you can indeed catch all 13 episodes on Hulu. Originally broadcast on NBC, the star of the show is Jason Isaacs (aka Lucius Malfoy of the Harry Potter films and the voice of Admiral Zhao from “Avatar: The Last Airbender.”) Sadly, the show was doomed with declining ratings after a promising start, despite its being nominated for a “Best Writing in a Drama Series” for the pilot episode.
If you’re a parent, (especially a Dad) this game can be pretty difficult to play at times. In fact I’m curious if people who don’t have kids will end up getting as much out of it. I don’t know if it’s an 89.85%, or a 9.7 out of 10. What I do know is that after a late night playing it, I sneak into my son’s room and hug him before I go to bed.
Of course, your own mileage—especially your own relationship with your father and/or your kids—may vary.
As the rest of this segment referencing “The Commander Shepard Challenge” contains some spoilers for the entire Mass Effect video game series, I humbly leave this video as a reminder of common spoiler etiquette:
Note: This means that under these terms of etiquette, it’s okay to spoil the story behind the first two installments but not the third. However, since I’m still playing ME2, I humbly ask that you not spoil that one for me.
Shortly after we recorded this podcast, the idea of allowing a female character choice in modern first-person shooter games was discussed on The Escapist in a brilliant video called “Let’s End the FPS Sausage-fest” by Jim Sterling. I am so very, very glad that more people are continuing to have this discussion; here’s hoping we can come to a good and sane consensus.
Anita Sarkeesian of Feminist Frequency is the intrepid lady whose Kickstarter campaign to raise money to do a video series deconstructing tropes about women in the video game culture resulted in her being unfairly attacked by some of the same gamers she wished to reach with her series. I remember being very disgusted when I first read about this—and sad because I was too poor to contribute to her campaign—and just skimming through the comments on the news posts on other sites about the story makes me livid all over again.
Possibly a humble-brag, but in the Facebook comments to the Jimquisition video linked above, I did continue to have this discussion; I will also say that it’s not an easy conversation for me to have because of how strongly I feel about it. But I must forge on.
We try not to spoil any of the puzzles in Resonance, but just to warn you, there is definitely a spoiler for one or two things.
Resonance (Actually, a 4.5)
Created by Vince Twelve
Designed by Vince Twelve
Published by Wadjet Eye Games
Starring Edward Bauer, Sarah Elmaleh, Logan Cunningham and Daryl Lathon
Rating: Appropriate for teens and older
From l to r: Ray, Anna, Ed, and Detective Bennet must race against time to save the world... and you can help!
Official Blurb:When a brilliant particle physicist dies unexpectedly, the race is on to secure his terrible new technology before it falls into the wrong hands. The lives of four playable characters become entangled as they fight against the clock to find the dead scientist’s secret vault. The suspicions they harbor, the memories they guard, the connections they share—all will converge as these four ordinary people work together to prevent a potentially cataclysmic disaster.
Pros: Great storytelling and narrative, plot twists, characterization, musical score, level of challenge to player, art design Cons: Puzzles can be unintuitive, differences in opinion on voice acting
Jonathan: Resonance has wonderful art design, music, and mostly solid game design. The game design is spotty in some places, in the sense that either you’re right on the dot of what you’re supposed to be doing, or you have no clue at all. It would have helped if there was something in place that told you that you were close. My favorite parts of the game, the survival-horror geek I am, were playing through Anna’s dreams. Truly disturbing game design, imagery, and sound design. Absolute brilliance, especially considering this is a low-budget game. Overall Resonance does what the title suggests…it resonates with you.
Jill: Resonance is a fantastic throwback to the great adventure games of gaming’s past, with beautiful art deign and retro graphics that are executed so perfectly you’d think it was made in the early ‘90s—which, in this case, is a good thing! Of course, with that comes the aches and pains that every good adventure game: the puzzles can be hard to solve, and hard to find, the solution often being the one thing you didn’t try, or the one person you didn’t think to click on. Some may call it unintuitive, but I call it old school. But the hard (and admittedly sometimes oblique) puzzles are worth it for the narrative presented, with compelling characters you come to care about, and a twist that you may not see coming. The most interesting aspect of the game, for me, is being able to switch between four different player characters, each with their own distinct voice. It would be remiss of me to not mention the music and sound design—beyond just adequate, the sound design and music do exactly what they’re supposed to do: draw you in, understand tone, and heighten the emotion of a scene. I hadn’t been as terrified of my character dying since Clock Tower’s Scissor Man was chasing me through a mansion as I desperately looked for a place to hide. Any fan of old school adventure games will enjoy this game, though gamers unfamiliar with the genre will have some issues with the interface and puzzle-solving. While it’s no King’s Quest VI or Day of the Tentacle, Resonance certainly belongs alongside I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream.
(Actually, a 4.5)