Samantha Jackson

[Editor's Note: Joel Murphy has started his Groundhog Day partying a day early, so today we bring you a special guest column by Samantha Jackson.]

In a crafted publicity stunt, Canadian game developer Bioware “declared war” against American game developer Blizzard, claiming that the new Bioware MMO, Star Wars: The Old Republic, would topple Blizzard’s industry-dominating juggernaut, World of Warcraft.

Despite the fact that Blizzard is an over-the-hill runway model living in denial of reports of declining interest, they will not be wrenched from their throne by Bioware (“The Booty Call When Bethesda’s On The Rag”). Nobody from the old school of MMORPG development (Sony/Everquest, Runescape) can offer a comparative experience and nothing new (Sony/DC Universe, Bioware) can match their content volume and formulated player-character development.

In ways, Bioware makes a valiant effort – there are a lot of positive things to say about SWTOR:

• The voice acting is superb and culled from a geek’s wet dream. For example, the male bounty hunter player character is voiced by Steve Blum, voice of anime bounty hunter Spike Spiegel of Cowboy Bebop. The male Jedi Knight is David Hayter, familiar as Snake from the Metal Gear Solid series.
• The game rewards are epic; from early levels, you will travel in a vehicle roughly the size of your first real-life apartment. Your cloak and your dagger are gleaned from legendary sources (and don’t need “legendary” in the title).
• The map and transportation systems are the best I’ve ever seen in a video game. You will never feel that you are tediously wandering and will rarely have to wait for a cool-down if you want to quick-travel home.
• The money system is balanced. In the beginning of the game, you receive money hand over fist. As you advance in level, you are expected to prioritize your spending.
• The storytelling is rife with canon. Often, in games with good stories, the stories stand alone and “hint” at the source material, slowly leaking references like Easter Eggs. Most quests in this game relive pre-existing storylines and solve long-standing riddles.
• Space combat is great fun, highly rewarding and reminiscent of StarFox. You can advance several levels in the game just by performing the daily space missions.
• The characters are well-rounded in their performance abilities and an assortment of companions (pets) allows you to craft a party suited to your gaming style. From the early points in the game, you can customize your weapons and armor. Companions have varied abilities, allowing you to favor a defensive class, a damage class or a healing class.
• The game is beautiful. The worlds are sprawling, unique and filled to capacity with things to see and do. There is very little of the “copy-pasted dirt” that we’ve seen in other MMOs. If you need to kill something, it’s right behind you, and then, you’ll move on to a new town. It never gets boring.

My favorite element is that the quests are extraordinarily well-written:

Immediately after starting a campaign (Republic and Empire alike), I wanted to fight for my causes. Whether I wanted to avenge a highly-likable character, or whether I wanted to hunt down the bastard who wronged me, I felt driven with actual purpose to continue the game. It wasn’t about levels or gear; I wanted the levels and gear for the story.

The drama is more intense than a season finale of Grey’s Anatomy, and it never lets up. I’ve dabbled in all eight classes, and every class makes you feel like revenge, redemption or fortune is just around the corner. Also, though the main stories are compelling, the side-quests are equally interesting. You’ll discover that an officer’s wife is treasonous and decide their fate. You’ll hunt down two Jedis who fled the Academy to realize their love. You’ll interact with a score of wholly believable characters fighting, for good or evil, with great conviction. The player is always made to feel like a critical component in an epic tale.

That said, the game is not without epic flaws:

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By Brian Shea

[Editor's Note: With apologies to Ned Bitters, today we bring you a special guest column by Brian Shea.]

Just a few hours after R.E.M. broke up last week, I saw the most important question of the day posted on a friend’s Facebook wall: “Who is more overrated: R.E.M. or U2?”

Before we analyze the answer, let’s take a good look at the question. The author asked who is more “overrated,” meaning that we intend to examine something completely colored by personal perception. There is no right or wrong answer, except for the fact that the right answer is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, U2.

Like I said, this relies completely on a personal feeling. You cannot measure music objectively no matter how much you try. Except when you try and determine which of these two bands is better.

As an R.E.M. fan, I completely acknowledge the band’s shortcomings. Michael Stipe, between the times he is obfuscating the meaning of his lyrics or texting photos of his junk, continues to write the same three or four songs over and over again. And no one can ever forgive them for half the songs on “Around the Sun.”

Those things still come nowhere close to the pact with the devil that U2 made somewhere back in the early 1990s. Sure, “Bad Day” is just the early draft of “It’s the End of the World,” which was re-tooled when R.E.M. needed to fill out a greatest hits album, but at least the men from Georgia don’t need to drink of the blood of a virginal goat once a week to fulfill their pact with Satan.

I’m not saying that the four members of U2 have to do that. I think it’s restricted to just Bono and the Edge because the other two guys – who I think have legally changed their names to “The Other Guys in U2 … Really” – are tied up in a basement somewhere in order to keep this pact secret.

(Sidebar: Shouldn’t we restrict taking guys in their 50s who use nicknames seriously to professional wrestling and porn stars? Just a thought.)

Anyways, the answer to the question truly boiled down to one very simple distinction for me. One band has a memorable catalog pocked by a few big misses in an attempt to explore different musical interests.

The other had a really cool stage for their last tour.

As I discussed the question at hand with some people online, I had to keep returning to that fact. Sure, U2 sold out a shitload of concerts last year and has a huge international profile, but when I talked to people who went to see their concert in Baltimore last year, that seemed to be the constant refrain.

“The stage was amazing.”

You can talk all you want about the necessity to build a big stage for a stadium show, but no one forced U2 to play stadiums. You can say the demand is there for that kind of crowd, but does the demand come from the spectacle or the music? You can say that the money earned on the tour “proves” that U2 is a better band, but declaring musical ability based on concert success is a slippery slope.

So basically you have two bands, one of which has released nine new albums since 1991; the other which has released six. One has remained close to its grass roots along the way, choosing to tour when it makes sense; the other has never met a corporate tie-in it doesn’t love. Both of them have maintained the ability to produce a chart-topping album, particularly in Europe.

Deciding which one is overrated really comes down to – as I said in the beginning – personal preference. And if you prefer a bunch of guys who drove album sales through an iPod commercial over a bunch of buys whose only real corporate tie-in came from a Chris Elliot television show, I don’t know what to say except I hope you know that virginal goats die for your choice every week.

Brian Shea used to write for HoboTrashcan, but like Gladys Knight, he left us Pips behind to write for his own site, Regular Guy Column.

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By Brian Shea

[Editor's Note: Joel Murphy is busy putting the lime in the coconut and drinking them both up, so this week we bring you a special guest column by former HoboTrashcan writer Brian Shea.]

Like many of you, I can’t believe the financial situation we find ourselves in right now. The decision-makers have totally screwed this up, and it will take generations to undo this completely capricious decision.

I am talking, of course, of the decision to split Netflix into separate plans for those who use the streaming service and those who like to get DVDs in the mail.

If you live under a rock or don’t equate how you get your digital media with the most basic of human rights, you might have missed the news. Each plan now costs $7.99 per month. Previously, you could get streaming and a basic DVD plan for $9.99. Those outraged point out that customers interested in both the streaming and DVD plans will see a price hike of 60 percent. SIXTY PERCENT!!!!

Or, in layman’s terms, about six bucks.

I did not know that six dollars a month – roughly 1.50 a week, somewhere around 20 cents a day – defined the line between responsible pricing for space-age media delivery and thoughtless corporate skull fucking.

Without a doubt, the reaction from some Netflix customers (I saw one post on their blog that only 10 people would retain the service after this outrage) falls into the category which comedian Louis CK defined as “Everything’s great, nobody’s happy.”

In case you haven’t noticed, Netflix allows you to sit in front of your television and use a wireless controller to send signals to a box (in my case, a Wii), which sends signals to a computer, which contacts another computer, which sends a digital file of what you want to see to your television so you can watch it. And you can pause it to take a leak or get a beer whenever you want.

Netflix also lets you get a DVD in the mail, watch it, ship it back (without having to pay postage) and then get a new DVD in a day or two based on the list you input into a computer one night when you had a few beers and took your pants off and you have no idea how all these sexually-themed indie movies ended up on your list.

And people are pissed that it costs $16 to get each of these services? Sixteen dollars to see as many movies and TV shows as you want either on your computer or your gaming system or your Roku box, as well as on DVDs you get in the mail? This is an outrage how?
I don’t think Netflix has a completely perfect service. They really need to beef up the offerings on the streaming package (I don’t need DVDs in the mail so have always opted for this deal). I can understand that a lot of political and business reasons explain why I can’t get the most recent movies or certain TV shows (like the current ABC Wednesday night comedy block).

But that doesn’t mean I stomp my feet and hold my breath and start online petitions and scream that I am being “forced” to cancel my subscription when, in truth, we have lots of choices out there. We don’t have to use “Netfux” as some genius dubbed the company. Go use Blockbuster or Hulu Plus or whoever if you’re pissed off. The rest of us don’t really care. You have every right to dislike this decision, but treating it as an abhorrent violation of your human rights just makes you look like a tool.

The reality is that we’re not defined by how we get our media now matter how much the loudest screamers want us to believe that. The Netflix streaming option fits exactly what my wife, daughter and I want so we supplement things with trips to a local Redbox for the newer movies we really, really want to see on DVD.

That’s what happened the other night when my wife spent the afternoon re-watching Downton Abbey on Netflix and I rented The Social Network for a buck to entertain us in the evening. I managed to pull it off without screaming and yelling about how Netflix was “forcing” me to swipe my credit card at the Redbox.

I’m sorry to break this to you, kiddies, but no one is screwing you. You can still get an assload of movies (and TV shows) in multiple formats for less than two tickets to the movies. I don’t think companies can just raise rates without any reaction from customers, but if you stop and think, really think, about what you can get for $16, you might not be searching for which symbols to insert after the letter ‘f’ to show how you are winning the outrage contest that all Internet commenter are eternally competing in.

Brian Shea used to write for HoboTrashcan, but like Gladys Knight, he left us Pips behind to write for his own site, Regular Guy Column.

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Nicole Alexandria

[Editor's Note: Joel Murphy is searching for the meaning of life, so today we bring you another special guest column by confessed hipster Nicole Alexandria.]

The first line of my internet dating profile says: “I’m kind of a cunt.”

As I’ve learned over the years, dating is more or less the most ridiculous thing ever, and it seemed appropriate to start off just as absurd. I go on to state how periodically I sit at work and research how difficult it would be to steal a boat and run an illegal riverboat gambling operation. I’d name the boat the “Mint Julep” and have burlesque shows once a month. And how I spend a lot of time thinking how it sucks that now that I’m old enough to afford it, I’m too old to go to space camp. And how I’m usually pretty good at out drinking people.

I get at least 10 messages a day.

Dating is so much more defined in your late twenties then it ever was in the 10+ or so years I’ve been dating. There are two distinct types of daters the older you get: those who are ready to settle down, and those who are not. Dating has far less to do with you and who you are then it does with preconceived notions of what the other person wants. Who you are as a person really has no bearing on anything unless it matches the other person’s agenda.

Those who are ready to settle have a very distinct list of criteria. Whether it be an adequate career, lack of baggage, huge wallets or child bearing hips, much more then I can ever remember you will be judge based on a specific set of questions on the very first date. What kind of job you have and what music you like seem to be the most predominate basis of how people judge you are. To be a contrarian, instead of copying and pasting my iTunes playlist, I listed about 50 books in mine because I’d rather be judged on liking Rushdie’s Satanic Verses over periodically enjoying a Black Eyed Peas song while jogging.

Playing into this theory, often when I am on a first date and it becomes apparent that I am being critiqued on my answered to cookie cutter questions, I start asking a list of my own. Typically I start with what type of liquor do you like. I’ve discovered that much like how you can judge people irrationally on their like of Dave Matthews Band, you can do the same with alcohol preferences. Usually I don’t get along with vodka drinkers as I find their love of flavoring to be amateurish, which is an indication of their character as a whole. Those who can bear a stomach full of whiskey or gin is more my cup of tea. Tequila drinkers are obviously crazy and need to be avoided at all costs. Is there any real merit to my hypothesis? Absolutely not. It’s completely stupid and childish. But so is labeling me on my love of indie movies, or that my favorite color is green, or my super liberal day job of social worker.

The other type of dater isn’t ready to settle down. Which is fine and perfectly dandy. Except at this age they are seasoned enough to know to hide that fact from you. It kills me every time. You go out and talk for hours. You both have a great time. The chemistry is seemingly great. And you never hear from them again …

Time for the giant loophole!

At any age, if you are deemed attractive enough, you could basically have nothing in common with someone and the other person will disregard everything they thought they wanted for the love of tits (or ass if it’s their preference). You can do crazy things like say you’re kind of a cunt and still average about 10 messages a day on a stupid dating website.

(I wouldn’t ever write anywhere that I was attractive because in all honesty I think I’m somewhere in the middle, but if you want to appraise for yourself, check the archives of this site’s Just Friends section. I’m there twice.)

The same great lists of criteria people have will be disregarded as magically those judgmental people think they can change you. One of my more less than pleasant dates in recent history was with a starch republican with whom I spent two hours arguing over politics after he voiced his concerns with dating a liberal. It started with me more or less defending my day job as a social worker, which more times than not depends on that pesky thing where people pay their taxes. Although I attempted to change the subject several times, he continued until I conceded out of boredom in his attack of my ideals as it was very clear we had nothing in common. He misunderstood my surrender, and was surprised that I never returned his calls or text messages.

Moreover, those who aren’t ready to settle will still be not ready to settle. But if you use my past three relationships as a guide, if deemed attractive/awesome enough they’ll stick around for several months just until things are about to get serious and then flee. A weird side effect of this is they also try to keep you as a friend. In a mind boggling way it’s flattering. It’s like being deemed worthy and important enough to be kept around by a wild stallion, but it’s just not ultimately in the capacity you want.

So in conclusion, dating is the suck. It doesn’t get better with age. All you can hope for is maybe finding the right one someday to take you away from all this mess.

But when you break it all down, I’m not terribly surprised I’m still single.

After all, I am kind of a cunt.

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Nicole Alexandria

[Editor's Note: Joel Murphy if off again acting "like a boss," so today we bring you another special guest column by confessed hipster Nicole Alexandria.]

I have always been fascinated with people watching even from an early age.

I was the kid in grade school who at recess would sit alone reading a book in the corner secretly watching people, seeing how they act towards each other. It wasn’t because I was the awkward ugly kid as much as I never really could stand the way people interact. Once a month one of the most popular girls in school would see me sitting there alone and ask me if I wanted to hang out with her. I would always turn her down, because I couldn’t understand why she was always flocked with girls who worshiped her.

Reality television for all its ridiculous, disheartening or even soul crushing merits, allows you to socially analyze individuals, families or other groups on a grand scale that you might not otherwise come near in a natural setting. I would even go as far as stating reality television is the closest society will ever get to a human form of a zoo. You take a sect of human, place it in a cage that somewhat resembles its normal habitat and put it on display as people watch and observe hoping to see a grand fight for survival or scandalous mating ritual.

If you turn on your television you can pretty much find any sub-sect of American culture represented. On any particular day of the week you can see what it’s like to be married as midgets. Or married to a rap star. Or be a spoiled rich brat who never had to work a day in their life. You can watch as people fight, cry, whine, sleep together or completely fail at life without having a guilty conscious. You can watch drug addicts strive to recover. Or hoarders. Or cops arrest criminals. For a while you could even see people go through extreme surgeries to be more commercially attractive. You can even watch as a seemingly normal marriage with far too many children crumbles before your very eyes on national television. Welcome to the human zoo. Enjoy. Sometimes if you’re lucky, the more odd ones will even do sideshow tricks.

I would argue the greatest example of this one television right now is Sister Wives on TLC. In an unprecedented look of a real polygamist family, you see social and familial structures that haven’t been explored previously due to the legal implications of outing themselves. Actively married to three women already, the male protagonist courts and marries a much younger and skinnier bubbly woman WHILE continuing to sleep with the aging, much more plump and seemingly more rigid previous wives. It’s almost revolutionary. But wait! It gets better. Skinny Wife Number Four moves into a house rent free and is partially supported by Major Bread Winner Wife Number Two and not a single cat fight is hinted at on the horizon. It’s genius. Does welfare know about this? How is this even illegal?

Despite being a ridiculous premise, the family somehow works. They seem totally normal and, even dare I say it, loving. The wives actively support each other. One takes care of the others children while at work and another does food shopping. The children (which could easily populate their own football team) grow up together in a loving environment as opposed to the bitter separation of several broken homes. They all seem relatively well-adjusted, which is uncommon in the reality TV world. The male patriarch, who seemingly always has a smile on his face (at least on camera) – arguably because when one wife has a headache there are three other options to choose from – seems like a loving and doting father who cares for each of this children immensely. Each is fed, clothed, clean and happy. It almost forces you to say, “Well shit, who am I to judge?”

It’s also surprising, to anyone not from a small area in Utah, how common polygamous marriages actually are. It’s easy for an American to look at countries where polygamy is common place as different or inferior, but this is on mainland soil. These are Americans. Just like you. Who if you saw on the street would seem like normal and rational people. All of the woman who entered the marriage were also from polygamous families themselves. Each grew up with the idea that multiple wives were an asset and not a creepy loophole for their husband to sleep around. The third wife even went as far as saying in one episode that she wouldn’t want to be married to a man alone. That statement must make anyone interested in psychology salivate.

I wouldn’t enter a polygamous marriage myself, but then again, I’d never spray my skin orange and sleep with as many women as I could on national television either. But as long as I’m not off doing more important things, I’ll watch.

Why not. Welcome to the monkey house.

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