T V & GAMES
ONES TO WATCH ith October upon us it’s again the time of year when a whole host of new shows are desperately paraded in front of us viewers in an attempt to build a fan base to secure a second season. But having spent my fresher’s week trawling through the unmitigated trash that is the ‘fall line-up’ I’ve emerged, relatively unscathed with a couple of recommendations for the next time you decide that rather than braving the rain for the library, you just want to sit in bed, curl up with a laptop and watch something escapist. Up first we have The Playboy Club, which recently premiered to a lukewarm reaction stateside. The series centres on the employees (or ‘bunnies’ as they are known) of the first Playboy club in Chicago and is just about well made enough to hold your interest (Hugh
Hefner’s narration is a highlight). It’s no Mad Men, but it’ll do till that comes back on the air. Elsewhere we have American Horror Story that airs on the 5th of October. Although from the makers of Glee, the show aspires to be a modern day Hitchcock-ian drama with special attention placed on cinematographic spookery. It doesn’t actually make you soil yourself with fear, instead, it leaves you with a lingering unnerved feeling that’s kid of hard to shake. The family drama aspect is also quite interesting, with a cheating husband longing for forgiveness a wife who suffered a late term miscarriage and a teenage daughter with obvious mental health issues and self harm tendencies. This could be one people talk about this year. Then there is Terra Nova, that stars Trinity graduate Jason O’Meara and Avatar’s Stephen Lang. Coming nearly 20 years after Jurassic
Park, Steven Spielberg has decided to bankroll this sci-fi drama that revolves around a rift in the space time-continuum that allows humans abandon their smog-filled future world and travel back to the Cretaceous period. Although it sounds a bit manic, it’s definitely worth a look. Finally we have Boss. This drama follows Kelsey Grammer headlining his first dramatic series as Tom Kane, Chicago Mayor, who controls everything in his city and will do anything to get the job done. But when he becomes suddenly afflicted with a degenerate brain disorder it soon becomes clear that it is not power that drives Tom Kane but the fear of losing it. Grammer seems desperate to leave Fraiser behind him and Boss seems like the perfect opportunity- he gives it his all and it’s worth watching for his sheer performance alone. Emma Jayne Corcoran
This year Defiant Development unveiled Warco, a first person shooter that breaks the typical mould of the genre and arms the player with nothing more than a video camera. It’s a novel concept; playing as a war journalist, your task is to capture footage of combat across various locales and situations, with bigger risks resulting in better footage. The project is the result of a collaboration between journalist Tony Maniaty and filmmaker Robert Connolly and has received widespread critical acclaim. Warco succeeds not only as a timely examination of exploitative war journalism, but as an extremely strong gameplay experience of its own and is set to bring a renewed sense of creativity and originality to an industry badly in need of new ideas. It’s not just design that’s benefited from
innovation; developers are also rethinking how they publicise their titles. One example of this is Punchdrunk Theatre Company, specialists in immersive theatre for over ten years, and their latest project ...And Darkness Descended; a collaboration with Sony to deliver a terrifying interactive experience taking place beneath the Waterloo Station arches in London. Drawing from the subject matter of Sony’s shooter Resistance 3, participants are taken through a series of heart-pounding scares with the goal of delivering a message. As a marketing tool, it’s an effective gimmick, and although Resistance 3 may not quite live up to the expectations of immersion and emotion implied by the piece, it’s refreshing to see Sony taking risks in promoting their games. Neil Fitzpatrick
WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR
A
s lucrative as the business of gaming has become, it’s often hard to find examples of true innovation in the industry today. Developers pump out annual sequels and consumers can’t get enough, despite the only major change to each installment being the number at the end of the game’s title. If innovation really is the catalyst to growth, the gaming industry should have slowed to a crawl years ago. So why hasn’t it? The truth is that innovation is alive and well in the gaming industry, hidden though it is beneath a layer of samey, repetitive releases. By collaborating with figures from outside the industry, studios are taking risks and challenging conventions like never before.
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