That Got Their Attention
I recently complained here about the problems we’ve been having with our Comcast service, both Internet and TV related. The gist of it is this: The underground line from the drop box to our home had degraded to the point where our service was being partially or completely interrupted. Almost three weeks ago I finally got a technician to identify the problem and schedule a line replacement, but I had been waiting for the work to be done ever since. Permits had to be pulled, utilities flagged, etc.
After some time went by, I started calling Comcast to see if they could tell me when the repairs would be happening. After all, when the line gets replaced, my Internet is going down. Since I telecommute, this could mean that I’d need to pack up and go work elsewhere for the day, and I wanted to be prepared. Each time I’d call in, they’d tell me that the job was scheduled for sometime in the next few days. So I’d copy my work files to a portable hard drive and get ready to leave on a moment’s notice. But when those days went by with no results, I’d call again, and they’d give me another date which was magically a few more days away. Meanwhile, my wife Apple and I were starting to miss our shows because we were getting no digital or HD channels whatsoever (and the analogs were so snowy as to be unwatchable).
Then, this week, yet another Comcast problem arose. We got our latest bill, and found we were once again getting mis-charged for our TiVo HD. The billing for the TiVo and its two CableCARDs has always been unnecessarily complicated in this area, requiring that manual discount codes and other crap be applied to our bill to make the charges come out right. But this month those credits were gone, and we saw we were being billed two HDTV service fees — one for each CableCARD — despite the fact that both cards are in a single box.
This has happened before, and fixing it is never fun. I have to call Comcast’s customer service number and try to explain the whole situation until they work whatever magic is necessary to sort it out. I never know exactly what steps they take to fix it, which is maddening because I can’t give them guidance on how to do it right. Which I’d love to do, because they often fix it wrong (by simply removing one of my CableCARDs from the account, thereby deleting all service access on one of the TiVo’s two tuners), screwing up the level of service I get on my other standard-def TV, and a host of other possible outcomes. But I’ve always managed to — eventually — get things sorted.
Not this time. Despite calling in on several occasions and talking to different people each time, Comcast’s support folks continually assured me that their billing me two HDTV service charges was correct. One guy even said that his notes on TiVo customers indicated that this was how the account should be set up, and that he was required to bill me for HDTV service on each CableCARD because I was getting all the HD channels on each tuner.
Return To The Knife Planet
Shonen Knife ticket and concert flyers
You may recall the first time I took a trip to Shonen Knife Planet back in 2007 (if not, the URL in the preceding text will helpfully take you back to that time). Last night I booked a return trip, as Shonen Knife came back to town in support of their latest record, Super Group (which I also reviewed here not too long ago). This time was their first time playing Detroit with their new bassist, Ritsuko (indeed, it was mentioned during the show that this is Ritsuko’s first time in America), and thus — I believe — the first time founding member Atsuko has not played on a U.S. tour.
Shonen Knife once again played at the Magic Stick in Detroit, and once again I went with good old Forster. If you don’t know what the Magic Stick is like (or didn’t read my previous SK concert post), envision this: the ground floor is a bowling alley (the “Garden Bowl”). In a corner by the front entrance there’s a counter that sells pizza (dubbed “Sgt. Pepperoni’s”). Directly in front of the front entrance is a stairway leading up to the second floor, which is a large single space (with a fairly low ceiling); in the back is a bar, and directly opposite that on the far side of the room is a stage maybe two to three feet off the floor. Along one wall is an upraised platform with a bunch of pool tables lining it, and the other wall has a narrow upraised platform that seems to serve no real purpose. That second floor pool hall? That’s the Magic Stick — that’s where the concert took place. To say it’s an intimate setting is a bit of an understatement.
Shonen Knife Concert Poster
Anyway, Forster arrived at my house directly from work, and we were both hungry. The last time I saw him (when he brought me a monitor to replace my now-dead flatscreen), he had told me he had a major hankering for White Castle — so of course, we hit up Noodles & Company. This time, though, his Crave® (the word “Crave” is now apparently a registered trademark of White Castle) would not be denied. So we grabbed a sack (it’s sad that we could smell White Castle from the road before we arrived), ate, and were on our way.
Since Michigan is newly flush with federal stimulus money, the state government and MDOT have decided to start a billion road construction projects at the same time, and at the absolute worst time of year — right before winter. As such, we weren’t sure if any of the normal ways would be choked with traffic, but we truly lucked out — traffic was really light. In fact, for a while it seemed as we were in an alternate dimension of some sort, since not only was traffic light, but the few cars on the road with us were all traveling 55-60 MPH (on stretches of highway that usually have people going 90). The traffic was so much in our favor, in fact, that we arrived just before 7:30 — doors were listed at 8.
(It also helped that we didn’t take the wrong exit off of the freeway this time.)
Charted!
Last week I succumbed to the powerful marketing pressure being exerted upon me by Toys ‘R’ Us. Now, this might sound a bit strange coming from a 29-year-old dude. After all, “getting my Toys ‘R’ Us fix” hasn’t been part of my list of things to do since sometime in the mid 1980s. But, much as the toy retailer sold NES and Sega Master System games back in those days, today they stock Xbox, Playstation and Wii games, and last week they offered a buy-2-get-1-free sale on the whole lot of them.
I attempted to resist, but in the end, I failed. My failure resulted in three shiny new game boxes landing on my shelf: Halo 3: ODST, Brutal Legend, and the subject of today’s post: Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, a PS3 exclusive.
Let it be known right now that Uncharted 2 is, I believe, the best game the PS3 has to offer. Before last week, I would have told you that Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune — the first game in the series — held that title. This only proves that developer Naughty Dog has not only learned from the success of that original game, but they’ve taken it to the next level with the sequel. For those of you who (like me) grew up on Indiana Jones, and can only shake your head at George Lucas’ wayward wanderings since, trust me when I say that Nathan Drake is your new Indy.
Nathan Drake, star of the Uncharted series
The Uncharted series is a third-person action and adventure game hybrid. It mixes one part Tomb Raider (the exploration and climbing puzzles), one part Gears of War (the shooting and cover mechanic) and one part Indy-style cinematic awesomeness. The result is one of the most epic games ever made, a moniker that can be applied to both Uncharted games with no hesitation.
In the game, you play the role of Nathan Drake, an adventurous young descendant of Sir Francis Drake who trawls the globe looking for the answers to some of history’s greatest conundrums (as well as great personal fortune, which has so far eluded him). In Uncharted 2, Drake gets involved with a group of adventurer/pirates who think they’ve uncovered a clue to the location of the mythical kingdom of Shambhala, and at the same time, unlocked the mystery of Marco Polo’s lost fleet. But nothing in Drake’s world is ever as easy at it seems, and before long he’s chasing an entire army of seriously evil terrorists who also seek the city and its hidden treasures. It’s like a summer blockbuster, except with twice the scriptwriting prowess, five times the length and 100% more interactivity.
Visually, so far as I can tell, there has never been a more impressive looking video game. Ever. Naughty Dog claims to have taken the Playstation 3 to its limits with this game, and given the number of jaw-dropping moments wherein I simply couldn’t believe what I was seeing, I don’t have any trouble believing them. You can stand atop a skyscaper in Nepal and swear you’re looking at actual video footage of the landscape and mountainous terrain between you and horizon. The rain, water, snow and ice effects are all hyper-realistic, even affecting the characters in the appropriate ways — packed snow clings to their pant legs, wind buffets their hair, water soaks their clothing and makes it stick to their skin.
The gameplay is richly varied and never gets old. In between the climbing, jumping and exploring, and the shooting, ducking and fisticuffs, there are numerous set pieces where you outrun enemy vehicles, shoot at pursuing trucks with mortars, climb to safety from the wreckage of a derailed train and so on. You’re never quite sure what will happen from one moment to the next, and I simply lost count of the “HOLY SHIT!” moments. From start to finish, the game is an epic masterpiece. The “2″ in the title could be short for “Twice as good as the first Uncharted“, and it would be no lie.
The personalities of the characters — not just Drake, but the supporting cast as well — comes through better than in nearly any other game you can name, with excellent scriptwriting, frequent banter and funny comments throughout. Drake, somehow, managed to be thinking the exact same things that were going through my own mind during many of the game’s sequences, and proceeded to blurt them out before I could. He even uses a lot of the same expressions that I do. It’s kind of weird.
The game’s musical score, too, is fit for a big-budget Hollywood movie. Composed by Greg Edmonson, who is also responsible for the unique Western-fusion music of the Firefly TV series, the score is brilliantly done, classy and evokes just the right emotions at exactly the appropriate times. In a display of marketing smarts, they’ve already made the soundtrack available on iTunes, so people (like me) who can’t get enough of the music can go get their fix.
While it’s great that the PS3 has another exclusive title that can draw fans to its base, I find it personally disappointing that this game isn’t on the Xbox platform for one reason alone: The multiplayer. Unlike the first Uncharted, the second game has full competitive and cooperative multiplayer, with bonuses and trophies for each, and I’ve love to get into a game with my friends. Unfortunately, nobody I know owns a PS3, and playing with strangers (especially cooperatively) is never as much fun.
Still, if you do have a PS3, you’re a fool if you don’t pick up Uncharted 2. In my opinion it’s the best game 2009 has seen so far. I rarely finish video games, but I finished this one in less than a week. And now I can’t stop thinking about going back and playing it again, this time at the highest difficulty (“Crushing”) to see how I fare.
Next week I’ll be back to review Forza 3, so I’ll likely be gushing all over something else. One thing Forza gives me that Uncharted won’t, admittedly, is months worth of replay value. Oh, and did you see the Forza 3 Car of the Day on the 14th? Hello again, old friend!
I haven’t gotten into either ODST or Brutal Legend yet, but if I find either of them particularly compelling, I’ll make a note of it here. I expect ODST to be the typical Halo affair: Highly polished, highly enjoyable, and good for one campaign playthrough ever. I don’t know what I expect from Brutal Legend, except to say I had no interest in the game at all until I played the demo, which was fantastic. But now I hear that the demo is only representative of maybe the first 1-2 hours of gameplay, so I dunno. We’ll see what happens.
Kindred
I was on my way home in my GTO this afternoon, with my windows down despite the near-100 degree temperatures of southwest Florida, when I spotted an interesting vehicular duo up ahead. In the lane to my right was a bright red classic Camaro — about a ’68, probably — with a tremendous loping exhaust note and beefy rear tires. In the lane to my left, meanwhile, was a white ’79 Trans Am with gold decals, brown interior and its T-tops off. Nice!
I was in the middle lane, so I sped up a bit and slotted myself in right between these cars. As luck would have it, we all came to a stop at a red light and I noticed for the first time that the guy in the Trans Am had his young son with him. The boy was maybe around 7 or 8 years old and was busy taking pictures of the old Camaro with a mobile phone. I let the goat hang back a little bit to avoid obstructing his view until he was finished.
When I pulled up alongside, I asked the guy in the Trans Am if it was a ’79. He replied that it was, and said that the Camaro in the other lane was being driven by his wife and that they were on their way home from the car show downtown. The Trans Am was actually his friend’s car, and it was all-original with only 16,000 miles. The thing was, indeed, a work of art — it looked showroom new. I noticed it was equipped with the Oldsmobile 403 motor, if the “6.6 LITRE” decals on the shaker were any indication.
The light turned green, and we all took off. Thanks to the typical poor synchronization of our county traffic system — which I never thought I would find myself thanking — we were caught again at the next light, where Trans Am man further informed me that he and his family were members of the West Coast Muscle Car Club (holy shit — the website even plays “Sharp Dressed Man,” one of my old favorite driving songs!), and he had applications in his trunk if I wanted one. It was going to be kind of hard to get out of the car and get one, which we both quickly realized as the light turned green, so he told me his phone number.
“My name’s Jim,” he said.
Well, well, well.
It was many years ago when another man named Jim and his 8-year-old son went cruising in a ’79 Trans Am, with its T-tops removed and the wind blowing through their hair. I found it fitting, somehow, that next month I’ll be getting some work done on our own classic Trans Am so that those days might once again be relived — sooner rather than later, if luck holds. Things are still up in the air a little; I’ve got plans for the car but only a vague idea of what it will cost, plus the cost of transporting it to Florida is nearly a third of the cash I have on hand. Not to mention that the storage options I have here in Florida could easily become endangered.
But today’s chance encounter with another kindred motor-spirit was like a reminder from some higher power — much like the collapse of Pontiac Motor Division early this year — that I have a job to do, a car to restore and memories to relive, and that I should not let a lot of waffling deter me from that end result. Even more important, getting to know some local guys will bring connections, local experts on car restoration and repair, and will help me feel less like I’m alone down here, surrounded by a swath of rich people with Lexuses (Lexii?) who wouldn’t understand automotive heritage if it ran them over at 50 miles an hour.
I’m absolutely going to make this happen.
