One Old, One New

Inspired by watching all that Red Vs. Blue the other day, I decided to dig out my PC copy of Halo and install it on my latest Windows box. Runs pretty well, and I was surprised to find that there were still on-line games being played. My current favorite are the servers that run “Team Race” which prompts you to get into one of the game vehicles and race around checkpoints with all the other players, trying not to get blown up by the other team. (The best iterations of these are the games where more racing than fighting takes place… the fighting is still fun, but the game’s scoring is predicated on how many “laps” each team accumulates. When it’s more fighting than racing, it tends to bog down in fighting until someone can struggle free and end the round.)

Anyway, it’s a lot of fun, and I don’t even need an XBox or a Live account to play! Although, as with Halo 2, Halo 3 is tempting me. The obstacle, of course, being the ~$600 I’d need for the console, the Live account, and the game.

As far as new stuff goes, we watched a couple episodes of Burn Notice the other day, the pilot and the first regular episode where, wisely, Gabrielle Anwar dropped her on-again, off-again Irish accent from the pilot. I can’t help but think that was one of the network’s notes: “Nice, but… the hot chick, could she sound less like a Leprechaun?” That said, I like Natasha McElhone’s Irish accent in Ronin, but Anwar’s was just painful in the pilot.

Aside from that, Burn Notice seems like a really good show. Pretty funny, some nice action, and Bruce Campbell back on TV in a regular role. I watched some of the bonus material today from Brisco County Jr. and yet again I have to say that that show really should have gone on for another season, at least. My hate for Fox’s lack of patience really knows no bounds. Here’s hoping USA exercises more with Burn Notice, though it seems that they and the other cable channels seem to be more forgiving, especially with their summer fluff–like Monk, Eureka, The Closer, Psych and so forth.

Incidentally, we were sort of worried in the pilot that Bruce’s role would be limited to this occasional contact thing, but later in the episode and in the first regular ep, it seemed that he was going to be developed along with Anwar as co-sidekicks to Jeffrey Donovan’s hero. Hopefully that keeps up, because he really helps make the show.