Up late talking games & writing? You're...

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TV: I don't watch a whole heck of a lot of TV, but I do have a few favorite shows that I like to catch with the wife. A new favorite this season has been Warehouse 13 on the ridiculously-renamed SyFy channel. (Seriously, guys…)
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I'm not going to sit here and say that it's high drama, but the show is like Cheetos-- you know it's not really good for you, but it’s kind of tasty if you don't eat too many. Plus, both things turn your fingers orange.
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If you haven't caught it, the show is about a pair of government agents and their handler who go all over the country searching for magically-endowed artifacts that are harmful to the populace at large. Things like Edgar Allan Poe's pen, or a samurai sword that renders its wielder invisible.
Every episode is definitely a little goofy, but I really like how the writers have done a good job of keeping a central plot line moving forward despite having different events every week. It's not too heavy and confusing, but there’s more than just ‘haunted gadget of the week’ every time I tune in.
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Besides the nice tone to the writing, the actors turn in some good performances. Main characters Pete and Myka started off a little stiff but developed nice chemistry as the season went on, and their handler Artie is a strong anchor with a strangely pleasant blend of obstreperous eccentricity.
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The finale of season one ran recently, so if you tune into SyFy or program your DVR, you'll be able to catch up on the entire series. It's not going to win any emmys, but the wife and I will be tuning in again next season.
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In the meantime, I'm excited that Sanctuary’s back on the air now… it’s another supernatural-themed SyFy series swimming in the B-lanes, but I actually missed it. More on that one later.
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Games: I've talked about Weapon of Choice (XBLA) several times here at the blog and also at GameCritics, and it's definitely a title that I greatly enjoyed.
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If for some bizarre reason you still haven't played this nifty little title yet, the good people over at Mommy’s Best Games drop me a line to announce that it's been recently reduced to a dirt-cheap 240 MS points ($3). The developers are practically giving it away here, folks. Snag yourself a copy and get to shootin’ already.
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Games: Speaking of downloads, I finally got around to DL’ing my first title direct-to-PSP. Considering how smoothly it went, I'd have to say that Sony was completely smoking drugs when they decided to come up with the Go. Although I performed the process on one of the original UMD-compatible models, if it's even remotely analogous, then their new DL-only handheld is sunk before it's even started.
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I hadn't been online with my PSP in quite some time, so the initial step in the process was to update my firmware. The first part was to simply download the update, but then I had to actually launch it and install. Drag.
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Following that, I located the game that I wanted to get and began the download. To my utter surprise, the estimated time of download was something on the order of 115 minutes! To be fair, after a little while the estimate was reduced to 82 minutes, but still.
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I left the PSP running while I went to go play something else, and when I came back to check, the connection had timed out and all of the progress had been lost. Time wasted. Totally frustrated by this point, I had to restart the download process and let it keep running. It was taking so long, actually had to stay up later than I wanted to make sure that it completed. Tired and bleary-eyed, my game was downloaded to my PSP's memory card nearly 3 hours after I began.
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Wasn't this whole “get rid of hard-copy” thing supposed to have some benefits to it? It certainly wasn't any cheaper, and I could have driven to a store, picked up the game off the shelf, had a hot dog, driven home, and actually have been playing the game in less time and less hassle than it took to get through the download.
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Brilliant system there, Sony. For the time being (and until all this crap gets a hell of a lot smoother and faster) I'm fine to stick with hard copies for anything bigger than an Arcade title.
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