The Twilight Samurai

The Netflix "Watch Instantly" library is a treasure trove. Sure, there are a lot of garbage SyFy Originals and violence porn like Tokyo Gore Police (yes, that is the name of an actual film). But it's also home to multi-award-winning documentaries and foreign films, which now make up about 95% of my Instant Queue. (The other 5% being Will Farrell comedies.) Based on my interest in Yojimbo and Lust, Caution, Netflix recommended Twilight Samurai, which turned out to be a surprisingly touching film.

DLC

I haven't played any new games lately, I've keeping my plate clear for Portal 2. But, the other night I finally finished the final level of Super Meat Boy, which got me thinking about downloadable games. To me, the most exciting stuff going on in this console generation is in the downloadable arena. In the long run, we'll probably look back one day and say that motion controllers were this generation's biggest contribution to the medium. The Kinect, especially, has a lot of untapped potential-- just take a look at what the warlocks over at KinectHacks are doing. But Microsoft has figured out what to do with the thing yet, and motion controls in general have a long way to go. For the moment, the most innovative and creative stuff is happening on Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network, and....whatever the Wii online service is, I guess.

In a lot of ways, it's a return to the olden days of game development, when a small team (or even just a couple guys in a basement) could craft a good idea into an instant classic. You don't need tons of features and modes, you just need a good central gameplay hook. You don't need hyper-realistic graphics, you just need a unique aesthetic sense. If I ever get a job in the industry, I hope it's in making these smaller, downloadable games. They don't have as much investment money attached to them, so you can afford to take chances and make crazy experiments. And development cycles are much shorter-- as much as I love Halo, I feel kinda bad that the guys at Bungie have been stuck basically making the same game for 10+ years.