Reruns

In just a few days, the first big video game release of 2012's second half will finally arrive (hello, Darksiders 2!). We're still weeks away from new fall television (although most of our favorite shows are cable dramas like Justified and Mad Men, so fall premieres don't mean quite as much), and this year we've cut back on the number of summer shows we watch. So, I've found myself indulging in quite a bit of remedial viewing/watching. Some old favorites, some stuff I've missed, and a few items to refresh my memory in preparation of upcoming sequels.

I'd watched the pilot episode of Aaron Sorkin's latest show, THE NEWSROOM, and hated it like all right-thinking people. The upside, though, was that it made me go back to THE WEST WING... which upon re-watching is as fantastic as ever. All of Sorkin's tics and excesses are so much easier to overlook when wrapped up in liberal fantasy and performed by one of the strongest ensemble casts ever. Don't get me wrong, the way he treats his female characters was obnoxious even back then... but at least Allison Janney and Stockard Channing could be counted on to perform above whatever hangups Sorkin has.

After hearing good things about it for a while, I put LEVERAGE on our Netflix queue and we've started slowly working our way through its first season. I love a good heist story, and so far the show has been a lot of fun. I'm not entirely sold on the cast, though, and it sometimes suffers from the usual cable drama malady of having the most recognizable guest star be the secret villain. Overall, though, we're enjoying it far more than USA's slate of summer shows which seem to have all descended into mediocrity over the last couple of years.

I'd played through BORDERLANDS when it came out originally as a Hunter class character, finishing the main story and then completing a couple of the DLC expansions. I hadn't done a whole lot with the other classes, though, so I returned to my very low-level Soldier and have gotten him up into the 20's. The core gameplay and visual style are still outstanding, even if the flaws in some of the mission design and systems are much more evident now. Still, after reading about some of the changes they've made for BORDERLANDS 2, this little dip into the first game has me very excited about the sequel.

Finally, I picked up a few titles during the Steam Summer Sale. I grabbed some indie gems like MACHINARIUM, TRINE 2, and SPLICE... plus I also bought KNIGHTS OF THE OLD REPUBLIC. I'd played it a bit on the original Xbox, but got bogged down at some point and gave up. So now I'm taking a slow and deliberate approach, trying to enjoy the story and ignore the usual impulse to discover everything in a Bioware game. Plus, I know I won't have a ton of time to devote to it pretty soon.

There's a pale rider approaching, after all.