Visions of Shadow and Light

This sucks. I was seriously looking forward to Battlefield 2142, and if this blog post is correct I won't be able to buy it.

It is bad enough for them to include product placement and commercials in a game for which I pay a ton of money. Which is, btw, to say that if they gave the game away I wouldn't complain about some ads (Though I still might not play the game if the ads were too annoying. It is worth noting that I don't watch television shows unless it is on Tivo or DVD - or I'm trapped in a hotel room and am using the TV as background noise.)

But for me to spend a huge amount of money to buy a game that is going to advertise and spy on me is entirely unacceptable.

And that sucks, because otherwise this looked like a rocking good game that I was planning to buy tomorrow...


Update: it maybe isn't quite as bad as it originally sounded. According to this article, they are not collecting cookies or browser history, just your IP address. Since every web site you ever visit records your IP address, this is pretty much a non-issue.

It still bothers me that I'm paying a huge amount of money just so they can advertise to me, and I think the price of the game should be reduced due to this. The model should be more like magazines, or newspapers, where the subscription price covers the cost of delivery, and advertising covers the cost of the actual content.

Rarely does network television come up with anything worth watching - even with the power of Tivo... The only network show I've watched in a very long time is Smallville, and that's a love-hate relationship that will come to an end soon if they don't sh*t or get off the pot (preferably by killing off the Lana character).

But I can now say that I'm hooked on an NBC show: Heroes (wikipedia).

(Though at the end of each episode thus far I've said (and I quote) "I sure hope they don't fuck this up." because I fully expect NBC to totally ruin this show. But not so far, and thus hope remains)

I'm a huge fan of JMS - creator of Babylon 5 - and absolutely loved the Rising Stars comic series he authored. And I love Astro City.

Heroes, thus far, has the darkness and gritty realism (if you can use that term with comic fiction) of both those comic series, but created entirely for the small screen. Unlike attempts to translate existing comic properties to television, Heroes appears created for the medium. Coupled with good production values and decent special effects, the result is very compelling.

I'm not ready to say it is up there with Babylon 5 or the new Battlestar Galactica, but it is (thus far) better than the best Smallville has had to offer in its 5+ seasons.