Update: Finally got into the beta, and it sucked. BORING as dirt.

So, it’s been nearly two weeks, and generally speaking I have been enjoying my PS3 quite a bit. I finished Metal Gear Solid 4 last night (more on that later), I’ve played a fair amount of God of War Collection (including the very nice looking demo of God of War 3), and I’ve tinkered a little with Little Big Planet. And of course, I’ve downloaded some demos from Playstation Network, AKA PSN, thinking it would be awfully fun to play some potential purchases.

The problem is, PSN sucks. It sucks a LOT. For all those fans who decry Xbox Live and its yearly fees, citing the free PSN as the holy grail, let me tell you something: You get what you pay for, and PSN is the proof in that pudding. Let me give you some examples of why this is so. I decided to try out the demo of Dante’s Inferno, which weighs in at about 1GB, and I thought at the same time that it would be fun to try out both the PS3 and 360 versions. So I fired up my PS3 and kicked off the download, and watched as the progress bar slowly crept to 1%. “Well,” I thought, “This is boring. I might as well start the 360 download too.” And so I did. One hour later, I was playing the 360 version-and the PS3 version was at 30%. 5 hours later and the PS3 version finished downloading at last. “Woohoo!” I thought: “Now I can try it out, too!” And then the install screen popped up. The Install Screen, people. On a CONSOLE. Luckily the install only took about 5 minutes, but still: On Xbox 360, you never, EVER install demos. Once the download is finished, you’re ready to play.

So today, they released the public beta of MAG: Massive Action Game. I’ve been a little excited about this. I’m not typically an FPS fan, but this one seemed like something special, what with its 256 player online doolabob and huge levels, and so I eagerly signed into the Playstation Store and found my download. “Hooray!” I thought, “it’s only 289MB!”

Three hours later, it finally finished. Three.Fucking.Hours.

I know what you’re gonna say: “But Jason, it’s your internet connection, it’s too slow for the awesome size of 289MB!” And to you I say “Ha! In your dreams, buddy! I’m on a 10Mb Fiber connection! I can stream HD movies from Netflix and hulu and rarely have so much as a blink!” But here’s the fun part: So I go to launch the MAG demo, and what do I find? After going through the tedious 5 minute install process, it pops up a screen to ask if it’s OK to download another 1.8GB before I can play the demo. That’s about as lovely as it can get, isn’t it? So that’s where I am.

Waiting on PS3 to download. Can’t do anything else with the system while that happens.

Good thing my 360 still works. Moral of the story? You get what you pay for, and you need look no further than the free PlayStation network to see that in action.

So, for Christmas this year (my favorite Consumerist holiday; go Commercialism!) I was fortunate enough to receive a brand new PS3 Slim console, with a 120GB hard drive. I’d been looking forward to it for a month (we actually got it on Black Friday, but figured since it was an expensivish item close to the holidays we’d make it a gift), so I was excited when, late on Christmas Eve, I finally got permission to open it up. The experience was cool at first (is opening up a new gadget ever not fun?), but quickly took a dive into frustration before it finally emerged to become cool again. Here are my thoughts:

Little Big Planet is awesome. Blows away almost every other game this gen, especially the “realistic” garbage! BRILLIANT art design!

Metal Gear Solid 4 looks pretty good, but certainly no better than games like Modern Warfare 2 or Gears of War 2. This is one of those games that was supposed to be a “360 can’t do this” example but, ummm…it’s not. Controls sucked at first, but I got used to them after an hour or so and then it became fun. The Cinematography and voice acting are phenomenal.

God of War Collection kicks ass. Looks very nice. Clearly still just an upscaled PS2 game, but the filtering and other enhancements make it passable, like a first gen PS3 or 360 title almost. Still a great game!

PS3 itself-is not a consumer friendly product at all. Out of the box I had to manually enable Optical audio out (connecting an HDMI cable automatically disables all other audio output. Why? Silly!), then find out which codecs my Onkyo 6.1 receiver supported and manually enable those before it would work. The download of the firmware update was fast (5 minutes) but the install was ridiculously long (literally, 30+ minutes. WTF?). Software updates to games are unbelievably slow. 2 hours to update MGS4 so I could play it, 20 minutes to update LBP. Mind you, I’m on a 10MB Fiber connection, and the downloads were speedy enough, it’s the installation process that’s slow, which is systemic. Four other friends have told me that’s the way theirs are as well. Why is it so mind numbingly slow?

Installing demos after download is lame and varies wildly. Fairytale Fights took about 30 seconds, Ghostbusters about 5 MINUTES. Why do these need to be “installed” at all?

DVD playback is gorgeous. Easily the best upscaling dvd player I’ve ever seen, not even a question. It’s dvd upscaling playback capability pisses all over the 360’s, and to my surprise even passed up my dedicated DVD player’s upscaling. Nice indeed. I haven’t played or bought any bluray movies, but I don’t really care, either, as I don’t think most movies are worth paying double or more. The only way I’d buy the bluray version over the DVD version is if they were the same exact price, maybe a dollar more. With the upscaling, though, I don’t think I’ll have a need in most cases anyway. Visual Effects heavy epics might be an exception on occasion, but again, only if the cost is comparable to the cost of a DVD.

Audio output is phenomenal-easily better than 360’s, especially on DVD’s. Star Trek sounds and looks better than ever when played on the PS3.

The lack of an IR port for the universal remotes is lame, as the selection of Bluetooth capable remotes is simply awful. The dedicated PS3 dvd remote is garbage, useful for absolutely nothing but the PS3, as it has no IR port for compatibility with other devices, making it essentially useless. I’ll just keep using the controller, I guess, but in my view, Sony really missed the boat on either a)putting an IR port on the PS3 itself, or b) adding IR capability to the official remote so you could use it as a universal. Remotes that only control one device are so…1980’s.

I love the design of the slim. It’s sexy, relatively small (compared to the phat) and has a nice finish instead of that “ghetto fabulous” gloss crap on the old model. I’m still not sold on the controller, because even though it’s dual shock 3 it still feels a little too light and flimsy compared to the solid heft of a 360 controller. It’s also not nearly as ergonomic or comfortable, but then, we’ve been dealing with the exact same controller shape since 1995. Sigh.

All in all, I really like the system. The games, of course, look about the same as 360 games, but the audio is better on movies (and I’m using an optical connector on both). It doesn’t do streaming as well as the 360 does (for some reason the PS3 stutters video from Hulu, streamed via PlayOn media server, while the 360 does not, from the same server. Errors in the server event log indicate that PS3 doesn’t handle the DLNA implementation correctly, which is probably why. Hopefully it gets fixed in a firmware update).

I love that I can stream stuff from the PS3 to the PSP, I just wish the PSP had a more reliable battery. Even my double capacity battery only lasts about 3 hours with wifi enabled. So far the functionality of streaming to PSP from a remote location over the internet is spotty-sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, which is a bit of a drag, but to be expected.

Anyway, I’m glad to add the system and a few games to my library. So far I have MGS4, LBP, Warhawk and GoW Collection. I plan to snag Motorstorm next week, since gamestop has it for $9.99 used, and it seems like a nice HD Excite Truck type game, so hopefully I’ll enjoy it.

This month has been really exciting on Dollhouse, as the plot races along at full bore toward what will undoubtedly be an epic conclusion. In the leadup to the series finale-which I have to say, we really should be grateful to Fox for letting the season run its course in spite of the awful ratings-things have gotten really exciting. The entire season has been really good, but in the most recent six episodes especially, the development of characters and plot has reached the proverbial “fever pitch”. The evolution of Echo into-dare I say it-a REAL character-has been both gripping and surprising in many ways. Similarly, the development of Victor and Sierra-about whom I couldn’t have given less of a damn for most of season one-have rapidly become my favorites.

Wha I’ve been especially impressed by is the quality of performances we’ve seen from Enver Gjokaj (sic?)-Victor-in particular. That guy is frickin’ AMAZING, easily slipping between various personalities with complete believability. His spot-on portrayal of the Topher Brink character was beyond brilliance-it was as if the actual actor (I forget his name, and since I’m writing from my iPhone I won’t bother with the research) had somehow slipped into Victor’s skin. I truly hope to see him in another series soon.

So, lots of questions remain: how will the return of Caroline to her own body affect Echo? Will they-and how will they-bring Rossum down? And perhaps just as importantly, if they do manage to stop Rossum’s nefarious plans, how will they explain that in the context of Epitaph One, set another decade in the future?

On most of these points I have no clue, but on the last one I was struck with an idea while watching the second of last night’s two episodes. The faux future we saw while Echo, Sierra and Victor were trapped in the attic, stuck inside the Dollhouse technology’s creator’s mind, bore an awfully strong resemblance to the future in Epitaph One. Now, this could be simple: after all, one post-apocalyptic future looks pretty much the same as the next-or it could be that Epitaph One’s characters were, in fact, simply current era dolls who’d been sent to the attic. I can’t decide if that would be a cop-out of a development or not. What do you think?

By now, you may have read that Joss Whedon’s most recent show, Doll House, has been cancelled, though with a bit more ceremony and respect than most cancelled shows ever get. Unlike said other shows, Doll House will be allowed to complete its second season as planned, with every single episode airing, in order, as promised. I’ve got to give Fox props for trying-they’ve given the show almost every opportunity to succeed, with the one exception being that it’s been stuck in television’s worst time slot since the day it launched. I can’t help but wonder if perhaps a Sunday night slot might have yielded better results.

The immediate trend I’ve noticed on the topic has been one of blame, and specifically, blame for Fox. I have yet to see many people blame the show’s writers, who I think carry a significant burden of blame, nor the show’s audience, who certainly deserves blame a-plenty. A lot of things happened to conspire against Doll House, not the least of which was DH itself. The concept is, without a doubt, effing brilliant. The problem is that during the first season, the show’s primary characters-the Actives-were completely and utterly unrelatable. From the first episode to the sixth, it was very difficult to care about any of the characters. Yes, there was some good action, and yes, we got to look at some nice boobies in tight or revealing outfits, but those things alone do not make a show interesting. Well, at least not interesting enough to watch religiously.

It wasn’t really until episode six, “Man on the street,” that any characters really became interesting. From that point onward, several of them suddenly became a lot more interesting, not the least of which were Ballard and his beautiful neighbor/Doll, Millie. We got a lot more flavor of the season’s plot and the story’s characters from then on, but the problem was that in order to get to that point you really had to go through the first five hours of the series, which were boring and mediocre. Unfortunately, very few people will actually wait that long for a series to become good; if it can’t grab them from the first or maybe second episode, they’ll tune out and move on, and that’s exactly what they did.

Season 2 has been phenomenal so far. Every single aired episode has been great, and I’ve enjoyed watching it immensely. The characters have finally become rich and full of promise, and the stories told have made me actually give a rat’s ass about the Actives. Unfortunately, this has come too late; before the season began, the viewers were already gone. It’s a shame, of course, but you can’t really blame Fox for that-they were generous to give DH a second chance at all. If I have one wish, it’s that they should have tried the show in another time slot, where I really do think it could have done better. Niche shows in niche timeslots are a recipe for-get this-niche audiences.

Doll House has not been Joss Whedon’s best work, but it really could have been. I can’t blame him, of course-the concept of DH is very difficult, and few writers would be willing to tackle something so sophisticated at all, much less in episodic television. The show, for all its problems, flaws and weaknesses early on, really has been shaping up to be something rather extraordinary, and if the episode descriptions online are even remotely accurate for what’s to come, we should be in for one hell of a ride come December. I wish the show had been as good from episode one as it is in the current season; maybe we’d be looking forward to season 3 if that had been the case.

I love Joss Whedon’s work with a fairly epic passion; I’m always evangelizing his great work in Angel, Buffy and Firefly, and I regret that, like Firefly, we’ll never really see what DH could have become. But with any luck it’ll be a lesson learned, and Mr. Whedon will take it and do something even better for his next project. I’d love it if he got naked and sweaty with a network like Showtime or HBO, where he could really go wild and deliver something completely unhooked, but I guess we’ll just have to wait and see. Whatever happens, he’s got a lifelong fan in me and many others.

Goodbye, Doll House. We barely knew ye!

Heroes, as I recently discussed here, has made it a habit this season of making me eat my hat. I’ve been shocked to observe that, following a very mediocre intro episode that got the season off to a battered limp, every single episode subsequent has been very good. This week’s was no different. The show caught me off guard on three separate occasions, so if you haven’t seen the episode yet and don’t want to know, you’re hereby advised to avert your eyes.

The first surprise I found involved Blank-Sylar, who quite unexpectedly reverted to the form of Nathan-complete with Nathan abilities and memories intact-who promptly realized he was standing in Freakshow, USA and flew away. Subsequent to Nathan getting his ass shot to death a few episodes back, and the recent news that Adrian Pasdar had been canned from the show without even being told by the producers until he read it in the script, I really didn’t expect to see him back. Of course, I should have accepted by now that Heroes only rarely kills off characters for really-reals, so maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised. In any case, I was.

The next surprise was really a two-fer, and came when the ever-annoying Matt Parkman, whom I believe should have been killed off a long time ago, finally manned up, stopped whining, and acted like a Hero instead of a crybaby. If you’ve seen the episode, you know by now that Parkman manipulated Sylar-now in control of Parkman’s body-to write a murder note on a napkin at a diner, which resulted in his being surrounded by cops. Shockingly, Parkman then forced Sylar to act like he was pulling a gun, which of course lead to his being shot repeatedly, apparently falling to both their deaths. Sylar hit the ground with a soggy thud, and Parkman disappeared. In a perfect world, this is the way these two characters-both long past their usefulness-meet their ignominious ends.

In any case, the episode went off extremely well, and the final few minutes were practically dripping with a sense of foreboding about the future. A major conflict appears to be brewing, and as I realize we’re 8 episodes into the season, I’m actually a little shocked that there’s no sign of it involving some character travelling to the future only to uncover some horrific event that they have to stop. Bravo to Heroes for breaking out of a very weak plot trend!

Unfortunately there’s also some worry that comes from having now watched the trailer for next week’s episode. There are SPOILERS after the jump, so if you don’t want to know and you haven’t seen the trailer, stop here and enjoy life!

So, the sad truth is that the writers-utterly unable to keep a secret or kill off a major cast member with any permanence, apparently, have already revealed the return of both Parkman and Sylar. The trailer for next week’s episode features the two quite prominently, alive and healthy thanks to Peter Petrelli. Evidently the cops in Texas have decided it might be a great idea to rush their would-be-murderer to a hospital in New York City, where Peter works. Evidently, NYC is just a hop, skip and a jump away. From Texas.

While I can’t be too surprised about this move, I am very, very disappointed in the writers. Not only have they ruined, in the space of less than one episode, what was a poetic and shocking death for two of the series’ major mainstays who really have needed to be put down for awhile now, but they’ve put us right back where we were two episodes ago: with Parkman being haunted by Sylar, a plot thread that was stale the moment they introduced it.

Perhaps they have something better planned, but I don’t know and I sure don’t bet on it. Although Heroes is in the middle of enjoying its second best season to date, some of the inherent problems of the series remains. Why it is that the writers are unwilling to permanently end the lives of major characters is beyond me, and utterly disappointing. They really should look to shows like Angel and Buffy the Vampire Slayer for inspiration, both of which were not only better written shows about superheroes, but they both used the deaths of major characters to superb effect.

1. Dexter. Why? Because it’s effing brilliant, that’s why. It is in fact so brilliant that I’m not sure any show in the history of shows has ever been so consistently well written, acted, directed and executed (pun utterly intended). Dexter follows the life of a serial killer who works for the police as a blood spatter analyst, where he carefully watches to see which monstrous criminals manage to evade justice, performs his own investigation to ensure that they’re definitely guilty…and then delivers justice in his own gruesome fashion. What’s amazing about the show, though, is that it’s really an exploration of the importance of Ethics, of having a moral code to guide your actions. Dexter follows “the Code of Harry,” a set of guidelines taught to him by his foster father, a police officer, to ensure that he never harms an innocent person and never gets caught. As each season’s story unfolds, the Code of Harry is tested and at times Dexter either adheres closely to the code or rebels-the latter of which occasionally leads to near disaster-but occasionally reveals a new dimension to the Code and to Dexter’s interpretation of it. Intriguingly, it appears that Dexter is actually becoming more Ethical over time. In any case, a superb show which has, from what I’ve seen, absolutely no equal in today’s television.

2. Heroes. Why? Because I’m a glutton for punishment, or maybe because I’m such an optimist that I’ll endure almost anything for the day when something great happens again. Heroes began, as many folks will remember, brilliantly. In fact, Heroes had what may have been the best freshman season of any science fiction series ever produced; it wove a pretty well thought-out time travel story in with a number of stories about self-discovery. There were too many characters, many of them extraneous, and this periodically distracted from the narrative, but overall it went off with few hitches–until the finale came and underwhelmed audiences everywhere. It was pretty much all downhill from there, at least until original writer Bryan Fuller returned toward the end of season 3, when things got decent again for a time. Unfortunately he left again, and season 4 debuted with a dull, boring, thud. I’d almost written the show off until a few weeks ago, when they managed to do something they haven’t done since the first season: they caught me off guard. What I thought was extremely obvious and obnoxious, turned out to be entirely wrong. I was pleasantly surprised and developed a modicum of hope for the show again, which to my shock has paid off for about four weeks running. Only time will really tell if they can make this one truly great, but it’s looking more and more like the pieces are being moved into position. Here’s hoping it stays better and they clean up some of their dropped plot threads from seasons past.

Speaking of dropped plot threads, that brings me to…

3. Lost. I think I was in love with this series during the first season. It came with an astonishingly good cast, an interesting and unique premise, and an amazing ability to hook the audience into the lives of its characters so intensely that waiting for the following week’s episode could be nearly painful. The second season was also very good, but it began to unravel toward the end as it became apparent the writers had no idea what they were going to do with their phenomenal cast and setup. When third season began…they just went ahead and admitted they had no idea, then promptly took a four month break to fix the show. Unfortunately season 3 ended up being largely a lost cause, though it did steadily improve as they moved from wasting far too much time to introducing plot elements. Season four was “meh”, but five was superb, and at long last we started to get some answers about the-let’s just say it-completely wacky bullshit going on with this time-traveling island. Given the way season five became arguably the best since season one, I have high hopes for the impending final season of Lost. Here’s hoping they don’t disappoint me.

4. Dollhouse. This is a show I desperately wanted to fall in love with from the word “go.” It has an interesting concept, an excellent cast (except for Eliza Dushku; I loved her as Faith in Buffy and Angel, but I just don’t think she has the range to pull off a character like Echo. I hope I’m ultimately proven wrong, but I guess we’ll see) and the pedigree of being a Joss Whedon project, so all things considered, it should be one of the best shows on television. Dollhouse follows a fascinating premise: that an organization exists to cater to the super rich by providing people who have been programmed to perform specific kinds of tasks extremely well, only to have their memories wiped clean after the task is complete. This is pretty brilliant-it provides a fantastic platform to build drama and approach a lot of issues with moral weight. The problem with the premise, at least in the beginning, is that the main cast-the Dolls who inhabit the Dollhouse-are utterly unrelatable. Wiped clean every week, they’re essentially fresh and clean every week, with little to nothing carrying over; at least, that’s how it started.

So far, season 2 has been fantastic. I don’t think we’ve had a single stinker of an episode, and unlike season 1 we’re starting to see each of the main characters begin to retain parts of themselves in some fashion. We’re learning their backstories, and we’re examining the motives and the positions of the people who actually operate the dollhouse itself. All in all, there are massive plot seeds being planted, and for those who’ve seen Whedon’s previous work you know that when this guy plants seeds of this kind, the payoff is huge. So, I do think that beginning with season 2 (well, really with Epitaph One, the unaired season finale of Dollhouse from season 1), DH is one of the best shows going right now. Unfortunately, the first season was botched so badly that most of its viewers have tuned out. Couple last season’s mistakes with a terrible time slot (really, Fox, Fridays at 9? Is ANYBODY even home to watch TV on Friday nights?) and DH’s prospects for a third season aren’t great. It’s a shame, of course-it really could be something fantastic. If you’re not watching, I recommend that you catch up and start following. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

For the most part, that’s what I’ve got. I’ve watched a little bit of Flash Forward, but so far it hasn’t hooked me. I hear Mad Men is great, and I intend to watch it, if for no other reason than that it has Christina Hendricks, who played in a couple of episodes of Firefly back in the day. That alone should make the show stack up nicely…

I’m just going to admit it right now: I am lazy and forgetful about certain things. One of those things involves giveaways, and this is one that I meant to do waaaaaay back during E3 of this year. Sadly, I suck, and I tucked these snazzy little cards into a backpack pocket and promptly forgot about them. However, you’re in luck: they’re still valid!

So what I’ve got are three copies of Battlefield 1943, which is a digital download. I have two copies for Playstation 3 and one copy for Xbox 360. The way this will work is simple: In the comments, tell us what your three favorite nerdy shows are and a sentence or two about why you watch them. We’ll sift through the comments and choose from those who make their case with the most…I dunno, I want to say “elegance,” but on the other hand, maybe “humor” would be a better criterion. In any case, get commenting and we’ll select the three luck winners on Halloween!

OK, so I admit it: I don’t wear hats because they make me look goofy. And like hats, Heroes is now making me look goofy, and it’s doing it in a very unexpected way: it’s good again. I know, I know-I’ve spent a fair amount of time giving the show shit-which it’s deserved-only to suddenly find myself nibbling at the tasty feathers of crow while the show carefully and meticulously crawls out of the hole it spent the last two seasons digging itself into.

So here’s the recap: in the three episodes since the lackluster season premiere, Heroes has demonstrated once again that it knows how to build a careful narrative in which its characters can demonstrate a little growth, a nugget of exploration, and, as is desperately needed by a show about people with super powers, a surprising glow of humanity. In the time since the now infamously ill-received premiere, every episode has been carefully plotted to bring the show’s core characters back into the foreground while some of its more useless or annoying characters and their shtick remain conspicuously absent.

The ever-annoying Nathan Petrelli appears to finally be permanently dead, Ando has been left behind in Japan while Hiro rejoins the New York division of Heroes, Inc (OK, I made that part up) as he tries to make right some wrongs from his past before his tumor kills him. We’ve only had to tolerate Matt-I’m-such-a-whiny-bitch Parkman for (I think) one episode, and although his “Sylar is in my brain” storyline so far has been a little cliche (and more than a little reminiscent of Battlestar Galactica’s vision of Cylon #6 in Gaius Baltar’s head), it’s been done to surprisingly good effect as the “evil Sylar” has Parkman hard at work systematically destroying his own life. Now if they just kill Parkman, things will get even better in the Heroes-verse.

In any case, it appears that things are finally approaching a turning point as we creep toward the midway of this volume’s 12 episode story arc, “Redemption,” with all of this season’s major cast members showing what can only be described as “impressive growth” (it’s like the stock market, but with super powers!). Luckily our core cast has shrunk significantly, with the ousting of such fan-non-faves as Mohinder and several of the throwaways of the last two seasons.

We’ve watched Peter both embrace his nature as a hero and yet return to a more “mundane” life as an EMT. We’ve watched Hiro continue on his hero path even as he faces the fact of his own impending death. We’ve watched Noah flounder as the older man looking back on his life to see how the choices he’s made have caused more harm than good, particularly to himself and those closest to him. And of course we’ve watched as Nathan’s past came back to bite him in the ass for the last time, causing the face and abilities of Gabriel Gray to re-emerge with a mind and personality so completely blank that even when confronted visually with the physical memories of his past as a monstrous villain, he’s refused to believe or return to that form. At least…so far. I have a feeling that the new villains, now attempting to re-awaken the old Sylar, are going to end up having that bad choice’s consequences demonstrated on their own hides.

Next week will mark the halfway point for this volume’s story arc, and if it holds up this will be the fourth consecutive good episode-something Heroes hasn’t had since the first season. They’re on a roll right now; let’s hope they can keep up the good work and, going into this season’s second act, show us something that will make us keep wanting to come back for more. If we’re very lucky, the end of this volume may just have fans asking once again, “more, please!”