PS4 , Xbox One (, Wii U) Next Gen Consoles?

So here is the deal though, with the revealing of the Xbox One this week there is this huge conversation about how shitty Microsoft's next console is and many many other things. There is just so much to talk about this all, that I finally decided to write about it.

To start this up, what trend can be witnest by looking at the console specs we have to this moment?
Both PS4 and Xbox One changed their processor architecture to x86! Which is pretty much a step closer to normal PC's. The thing is, cause both console's had an different architecture in there latest incarnation (Xbox 360, PS3), old games won't work on the new ones. This is reasonable but why not emulate them? I mean Moores Law(look it up) is still working this shouldn't be a matter of power or capability for the consoles. So I guess it's a matter of money then. This is the first point that really pisses me off.

Well yeah after everything we heard so far, the PS4 might have the advantage technical wise. A slightly better processor, probably more shader units and as far as I know only one OS. Microsoft ,like in the latest years, bet's their money on virtualization. So when your Xbox One is running their are running 2 virtualized OS's, one for gaming and one for App's, TV and such b-s. Some people said that even the fact that both consoles have the same amount of RAM (8GB) build in, Sony wins because they using GDDR5  instead of Microsoft's approach with DDR3. This is more complicated than it look's, because GDDR5 is mostly used for graphical RAM and because the PS4 is sharing the memory for both graphic and processing I don't know what kind of result this brings. Maybe this makes the PS4 stronger on the graphic side, add the more shader units, but results in some disadvantages for the CPU. I'm not sure, time will tell.

On the other hand this concept of 2 running OS's, which also share the 8 GB of Ram, isn't quite what I expected from an gaming console, Xbox One(duh!). If we step aside from the technical informations we got so far, there is one point where Sony and Microsoft really differ and that was the targeted marked. Of course Sony didn't know what Microsoft was about to show but in comparison, Sony looks like they are more about creating a good game experience than MS. Microsoft talked way to much about the TV features, which I guess won't work around the globe ('murica), the Kinect 2.0 and pre rendered yearly EA games. I just have to mention Call of Duty here. Come on! Only because the game sell's itself already doesn't mean you don't have to put any effort in it! I say that because the "new" and "better" engine they use just sucks if you compare it to Battlefield 3, wich is already quite old. But yeah different Topic, maybe later.

I really like the Kinect idea. It's a new way to interact with software. There won't be any progress without things like Kinect, Google Glas or Oculus Rift! So don't hate, Google is even building an self driving car for heavens sake. But as soon as I heard that you don't have to chose wether you want to use this feature, it started to get creepy. I mean Kinect will exactly know what you are doing and when you watch which show. Even if MS's manager would swear to their life that they won't use the data they gather I certainly won't believer them. So in order for me to buy this console this is an issue they have to fix first. Then there is the problem how often you have to be online with your console. As it turns out you have to be online at least once a day and developer are allowed to make their games only work while online, so they can push some processes into the cloud. Well played MS, instead of being the bad guy and always require an connection you push this choice to the developer, but still why do you have to online once a day? I beg to the great console god (totally a thing!) it's not because you want to collect data.

This are all things which getting hugely discussed right now, now my question is: Should this things really matter for a console?

I play games on PC and consoles for years now but in the latest few I found myself playing all the "hardcore" games on my beloved PC and all the lighter and fun games on my consoles. Because the graphic and controls on the PC are way better, in my opinion, than on consoles. So games like Far Cry 3, Crysis 3, Call of Duty, Battelfield 3 (you can like both, you know?) and so on, are just more beautiful and precise. So what really matters, of course not the most but you know, is the power behind the consoles! And we need to define why someone should buy himself an console. I mean the differences between PC and consoles are blurring.

A total different case here is the Wii U. Come on almost everyone grew up playing games like Zelda OoT, Goldeneye, Donkey Kong, Mario, Mario Kart and such, we were all little Nintendo fanboy's some time ago. But lately I only see hate for Nintendo. Yeah the Wii U isn't as strong as she probably could have been, but that doesn't matter. It's strong enough for what it does and that's not real life first or third person shooters! The graphic from Mario, Zelda or Super Smash Bros games is just beautiful.
Add the great amount of controlling abilities and the backwards compatibility and i'm set. And thats the reason why i recently bought myself an Wii U, it's just fun sitting on the couch (with friends) and playing casual.

But in the end everyone has is own opinions and I could talk about this topic for hours, so I will stopp right here and maybe will write again about this topic as new information surfaces.
           

Arrow in the quiver (Arrow S01 review p1)

Let's talk about last seasons new start and complete success the CW's Arrow. So after Smallville, a show about the early years of Clark Kent and how he became the man of steel, we get an show about the story of Green Arrow.

First off I love comics since so many years but always was more a Marvel guy. For a few this is probably blasphemy but I just never could identify with the all perfect Superman with practically limitless powers who could disguise himself just by putting on glasses or the all loved batman, who just happens to have every nice gadget in his utility belt and has a thing for young boys in costumes, at DC. But I still have a knowledge of the DC universe specially since the new 52, which brought us so awesome books like Batman, Aquaman(never thought I would say his name in an good context) or Wonder Woman. Really everyone who has no clue what I'm talking about should look those books up.

But even after the relaunch of the DC universe as we knew it, the Green Arrow book still couldn't win me over yet. Now just so that nobody is confused Green Arrow is the guy with bow and arrow(duh!), completely dressed in green, like Robin Hood,Peter Pan or the mention of honor Link.  I say this because of last years big,big and great Avengers movie. In this film there is this archer who is kind of Marvels version of green arrow, called Hawkeye. I really don't know who was there first and I don't care, they have different origin stories and every comic fan need to buy the ongoing Hawkeye book, which is the book I always looking the most forward to. The art, the Storytelling, Clint Barton und Kate Bishop (Young Avenger's Hawkeye), this book is as goods as it gets.

So now to the real deal, the reason why we are here, Arrow. Our main character/huntsman is Oliver Queen, a billionaires son, playboy and as irresponsible as it gets (Bruce Wayne anybody?). He lives in another fictional city of the DC universe, like Gotham City or Metropoles, Starling City.  The story starts off with Oliver, his father and Oliver's girlfriend's sister going on a boat trip on the Queen owned yacht Queens Gambit (yeah awesome name right). Wait what? Yeah you I said, he took his girlfriends sister on the boat trip and not just for the view I guess. So this is the guy we should be rooting for?, this is a question I found myself asking numerous times through out the season. It's actually a reason I like him, his character isn't black nor white and after the hell he is been through some things he does got more understandable.

Speaking of hell, here it comes. A big storm is coming and the Queens Gambit is right in there. Additionally some essential part on board breaks which is leading to the sinking of the Queen's Gambit. And with it the poor girl, which apparently never heard of the Chick-Code or even the Sister-Code(ok i made that one up). The only survivors are Oliver, his dad and one no-name crew member in an tiny rescue boat. They floating on open waters for days with almost no water or food. When the group agreed to share their water things get out of hand. Mr.Queen gets all cryptical tells his son that he himself had failed his city that Oliver had to survive and right his wrongs then shot the no-name and finally himself in the head. Important to mention Oliver found a small little empty mysterious book (lots of adjectives) in his dad's pocket, this is getting more important later on. This point would probably be the end of every real life story but this is a comic book / Tv show so after some time Oliver stranded on an not really civilized island. Side note: Are there still lonely not civilized islands out there?, and I'm certainly not meaning the comedic boy-band.

I have to mention there are two main stories which are running through this show. One begins five years in the past with Oliver's arrival on the island and the other one is the narrative here and now, when a guy in a green hood is running through the woods of the same lonely island, looking at a ship at the coast then shooting an arrow to ignite a signal fire. This hood guy is of course an hugely trained up and unshaven Oliver Queen. And so the real story begins with Oliver Queens comeback to Starling City after 5 years on that island. If anyone screams: "Batman Begins" right now, you are right. The similarities are quite obvious but not only for the story, the whole tone of the show is almost openly lend on the image Christopher Nolan created with his Batman Saga. As a fan of the Nolan trilogy and the "realistic" scenario, for super hero movie standards, he built, I won't complain.

Of course I won't talk about every single of the 24 episodes, specially when in the middle of the season there are many case of the week episodes, but I have to talk about a few special characters and storylines that appear through out the season. I will talk about those things in part 2 because it probably would be useful to establish the status quo first.

Thea, Diggle, Oliver, Tommy, Laurel

 Oliver Queen comes back to Starling City what happens? Of course the whole media goes nuts, that's practically a given. But the first thing Mr Queen has to do is getting checked up by Doctors, which are telling his mother, Moira Queen, about the many scars and wounds Oliver collected over the time of is island visit and to be carefully about his mental state, cause the long holiday probably changed Oliver. Well, back home at the Queen villa we come to know Oliver's little sister Thea Queen and Walter Steele, the former best friend of Oliver's Dad and new husband of Moira. All are so happy to have Oliver back, but it's almost impossible not to notice the change Oliver went through in those years. It just feels like he has problems talking to his once so well known family. But the family has other problems as well, like Thea rebelling against their parents and living the young careless playboy(girl) life Oliver once embraced. Also Moira isn't the only thing Walter took over from his best friend, he is now also some sort of CEO of Queen Industry. Eventually Oliver had to be reminded who he once was, so his former best friend Tommy Merlin enters the scene. The two were like brothers and lived a very simular life, only that Tommy is still living it. Obviously he wants to celebrate and so the two of them drove to the city. Where the were kidnapped ,in not even 2 freaking seconds, to question Oliver about his long timed vacation. This is were the show starts to show off what Oli is capable of. He freed himself, fought and hunted down the attackers, while Tommy still captured and blindfolded was made believe a mysterious third person rescued them. The Family and the Police thinks this was just a normal kidnapping, because in the glades, a very poor and dirty part of the city, things like this just happen. But why should they question Oliver about the island then?

Well Oliver sure learned a lot on the island and he uses this abilities for his own agenda. Means he searches one of his dad's old industry buildings and trains like a crazy. He even throws a basket of tennis balls in the air and shoots them with arrows, pinning them right into the wall for god's sake. After that he dresses up into his green hood and goes out to fight some evil gang members or drugdealers or whatever. Unfortunately it's not that simple, the little book old Mr Queen left has a long list of powerful people who failed the city big way, so the Hood, thats what the police calls him through the whole season, finds them, gives them a change to quit and finally get rid of them. And thats another grey area for this show. Oliver doesn't seem like he has issues killing bad people either with arrows or with his fists, he really has way more problems playing his old self in front of other people.

But Olivers life isn't complicated enough so there are several other key players in his life. After the abduction Moira hired a personal bodyguard. John Diggle is his name, he served in Afghanistan and honestly seems like a good man, which is I guess why he has a hard time with Oliver at the start. You remember the girl on the Queen's Gambit? good. She was Laurel Lance's sister, seriously DC enough with the L's (Lana Lang, Louise Lane). So Laurel must have been Oliver's girl friend back then. In those 5 years of time skip Laurel became an city attorney, but when they first meet again she is still just mad at him for taking away his sister, which in my opinion is more than satisfied. At last there is Quentin Lance, Laurel's father and Police Detective. He hated the Queen's from the beginning, so after they are kind of responsible for his daughters death and his wife couldn't take the loss and left, his work is all he has to life for and of course his still living daughter.

Yeah that's it. The status quo of the show. Oliver Queen at day playboy, at night crossing names of his fathers bad guy list and shooting arrows into people. The next time I will talk more about the characters and how their stories develop to the big season final.
   



   





       

Second Sons (GoT S3E08)

First off I won't ever talk about the differences of the show and the books, ever. This has a simple reason, I don't know the books and even if I would there is now way to film this show exactly after them, so just no. My addiction to Game of Thrones started quite late, a few weeks before the second season began to air. To be honest I struggled through the first two or three episodes because there were so many names, history, relations and story. But after the rough start I started to really enjoy the show and I'm hooked ever since. So now to the Episode at hand: Second Sons.


As I mentioned in my earlier entry, this episode was f-ing awesome (yeah I bought that line for 99 cents). So what happened? Long story short: Tyrion got married, the Khaleesi got some Second Sons and Gendry got sucked.





Let's start with the women with oh so many names, Daenerys. Last week the city of Yunkai told the mother of Dragon's some stories about powerful friends and this week those friends arrived as an group of sale swords: the Second Sons (episodes title duh). Even with bigger numbers Daenerys Stormborn tries to convince the Second Sons to fight for the (her) winning team. And she really tried, even for me, in front of my television, it was hard not to get upset about the way the first commander talked to her. Yeah i forgot to mention that the Second Sons arrived with their 3 (2 + one Lieutenant or something like that) commanders to talk with the last Targaryen. As so often in Game of Thrones men, especially not highborn men, show upfront what they think of women. In this case the main commander, which didn't seem to take any seriousness out of Daeny's (thats what i call her) words. The second commander wasn't quite as let's call it "entertaining", as his boss and stayed more in the background. And then there was the other guy which just seems to be different than his more animalistic counterparts, I don't know, I just knew he will becoming more important later, btw his name is Daario. In the end the first meeting wasn't as successful as the women that freed the unsullied had hoped as she told her protectors to kill the rude mouthed commander first.


Back in the camp of the Second Sons, the commanders gave the "fun" girl of the pervy commander 3 coins to determine which one of them had to kill my beloved Deany. Right, Daario got the killing coin, a few moments ago he told us he would fight for beauty and the thrill and now this! The whole coins stuff just looked not so random to me as it probably should have but I can life with that, after all this is Game of Thrones.


And the next thing we see is an ,oh so naked, Deany in the bathtub getting taught how to speak proper Dothraki by her new bff/ ex-slave translator. Of course then Daario appeared, but what kind of gentlemen would he be if he didn't brought some sort of present for our dear Deany? And a present it was, when she stood up from the bathtub, of course I mean when Daario threw the heads of the other commander right in front of her feet. So yeah to sum it up it seems like Deany is now also the leader of the second sons.


Speaking of nudity, the red priestess arrived back at Stannis's castle (I can't recall the name so google it) with her new found king blooded sacrifice Genry. Ok at this point I have to say for me there are almost no characters in GoT that i would call pure evil but for an few exceptions. And in my book every lady that gives birth to some kind of shadow assassin because it's the will of some god of light is such an exception. So I knew this isn't going to end well for poor Genry but he really made it all way to easy for this red haired extremist. All it took was some wine and taking off clothes and he was sold, till she tied him to the bed and placed some leeches on his ,yeah you know where.


Then it got crowded in the bedroom when Stannis and the newly freed Davos entered. Stannis then took the leeches and threw them into the fire while saying 3 names: Joffrey Baratheon (hell yeah), Balon Greyjoy (yeah why not) and Robb Stark (say what?). Ok I see that Robb is an enemy of the crown but he only wants payback for his father's death, which only happened because good old Ned saw Stannis as rightful king in the first place. So yeah this better isn't some killing curse then.

Before I forget, there were two small other things that happened. Really really small ones so here the quick sum up: The Hound is taking Arya to her mother and brother to her uncle's wedding. Sam killed an WhiteWalker with the dragonglass dagger but then let the dagger laying on the ground and ran away. Sam really not the brightest mind there is, now is he?

And finally there was the wedding in King's Landing, which was just completely amazing. 

It started of with soon to be sisters in law Cersei and Margaery, this was my personal best scene of the week. When Cersei told Margaery about the Rains of Castamere, while the whole time threatening her implicitly only to then tell her the best line of this episode: "If you ever call me sister again I will have you strangled in you sleep". It gave me the chills to hear the score of the song in the background and how well this scene was played from Cersei's actor, she definitely lost some nerves in sight of her second loveless marriage. This also came to the surface when she cut Loras down with nothing more than: "Nobody cares what your father told you". 

Then there was Joffrey, well Joffrey, what should I say? Else then I didn't thought it would be possible to hate him even more? Well it is! I really respect Joffrey's actor cause in this episode his every move enraged me, it's almost sad that whatever this talented kid plans to do after Game of Thrones he will always be THE BAD GUY for me. His entree this week was kind surprising when he stood beside lady Sansa, giving her away to Tyrion, you know cause he is father of the realm and beheaded her dad and stuff like that. If that wasn't enough he took the small ladder from the altar which would have been very useful for Tyrion cause you know he is an imp. But the one thing where I was screaming in rage at this little brat on my Television was when he told Sansa that he would come to her chambers later to "help" getting a Lannister baby in her and that it doesn't matter if she would like that, his guards would held her down. WTF, I mean come on, how cruel can this kid be? When he then tried to embarrass his uncle Tyrion even more, Tyrion lost it. He threatened the king in front of the the whole wedding. 

After realizing what he just did, Tyrion played even more drunk than he really was and walked his new bride into their chambers. Poor little, or in some cases way too tall, Sansa then started to undressing seemingly ready to fulfill her duty's but was stopped from her new husband. He told the 14 year old girl to only lay with her when she wants him to. So probably never but this should at least make her see some of the much much good that is in Tyrion, she really could have it worse. Also the fact he didn't touched the girl made Shea a little happy I think. 

An all amazing Episode of Game of Thrones, it wan't the most action or the biggest talks but it was the start of the wedding season. With no Jon Snow or Jaime this week but with a great score and more concentrated on few story lines. I'm so pumped up for the next episode that it really hurts to wait 2 weeks for it. This better be good!    

Reason Why?!

So, here I am. After a long time of thinking whether or not to start blogging, I finally got myself to start this account. If anybody will read this, I apologize for my bad english but I'm from Austria (not the island with the kangoroos aka Australia). And I want to make this clear upfront I don't do this for attention or something like that I started this to get my thoughts into written text and better my language knowledge! And maybe there are people that will enjoy what i have to say or just correct my grammer a bit.

Yeah now about this Blog. In this Blog I want to talk about one of the things I enjoy most, TV shows. I know right now is probably the worst time to start this cause most of the shows are hitting summer break but I don't want to talk about the newest shows only. I mean this was such a great season with shows like Arrow(fav of the season), Nikita, Supernatural, Spartacus(most epic ending ever), Vampire Diaries(yeah I'm a guy, who cares!), Person of Interests, NCIS:LA(guilty pleasure), Mad Men(still running) and Game of Thrones(still running) and many more. I see more than enough topics to write about here and of course I also have an eye open for whats next to come. Formost Agents of Shield! Maybe I'm just nerding out cause I love comics since I'm 10 years old and also all of the Cinematic Universe since the first Iron Man, or maybe because Mr.Whedon never disappointed me but yeah we'll have to wait and see. All I can say now is that the trailer looks sick and Coulson lives!

But there are also other shows coming back in the not so soon future like: True Blood, Homeland, Dexter, Sherlock(I don't know when but i hope soon) and the final episodes of Breaking Bad(no words needed). Which are just plain awesome and I'm already looking forward to watch them and then share my thoughts.

And also there are some all time favourites like: Firefly, Veronica Mars, the Wire, Sopranos, Buffy, Deadwood, Twin Peaks, Angle.... and this are just the ones I can think of right now.

So Yeah I'm planning to write about many things here, for today I'm not quite sure what to write about.
Right now I'm thinking about reviewing Arrow's first season cause I really enjoyed it so much, or Shamless(the US version) season 3 because I think this show doesn't get the attention it deserves, or maybe about the last GoT episode which was hands down amazing. We will see.