At long last, the Cup returns to Pittsburgh

I'm officially Twittering

These days, who isn't? You can find me right here.

The "Lost" finale was a little meh

Am I the only one in the entire universe who was underwhelmed by last night's Lost season-ender? This was the last season (not series) finale of Lost ever! Their final chance to leave our jaws dropped, shocked at what we'd just seen, dying to know what's coming next! Instead, they gave us a fade to white that made me do little more than shrug. No big reveal. No scintillating tease as to what's coming next.

Plus, I'm not buying the Jacob reveal. All the crazy, scary stuff that happened in the cabin -- that was just Ben knowingly talking to an empty chair, followed by a little unexplained mayhem? Kind of lame.

The twist with Locke was nice, but the payoff sucked because the character now posing as Locke is someone we never knew existed until the beginning of the same exact episode. Again, I was less than thrilled.

The scene with Rose and Bernard was all kinds of wonderful, though.

Who wants to hear me on the radio?

Internet radio that is!

If you're reading this right now, you possibly already know that I run a fantasy baseball blog called Fantasy Hurler.

Because of that site, I got invited to talk fantasy baseball on the FantasyPros911 Internet radio show on Sunday. The show was originally broadcast live last night, but you can listen to it now by clicking right here and streaming it on your PC. There's also a link there to get it through iTunes. Or, if you go to this page and find the 3/22 show under On Demand Episodes, you can directly download the show in MP3 form.

So you're interested at all in baseball or what I'm up to these days, check it out. Oh, and if I sound nervous (and I'm pretty sure I do), remember to cut me some slack. It's been a good long while since I've done any type of radio.

Neil Patrick Harris has a great sense of humor

Screw Tina Fey as Sarah Palin. THIS is the funniest thing I've seen on SNL all season ...

Fantasy Hurler 2.0 launches

For the last two years I've run a fantasy baseball blog called Fantasy Hurler, something I've done for fun. When I started, I just figured that I talk so much about fantasy baseball as it is, I might as well write about it, too. I brought some other writers on, and last summer, somewhat surprisingly, the thing started picking up a little bit of steam. We had regular readers, a tiny trickle of advertising revenue. And now this year, an opportunity came along to relaunch the site with a whole new look, as part of a new sports blog network called Bloguin. So, to get to the point, Fantasy Hurler 2.0 launched this week, and I thought anyone stopping by here might be interested in checking out it out now. Our new and permanent address:

www.fantasyhurler.com

The new version of the site's still in its infancy. Nobody's using the forum yet. I need to get my other writers posting again. And readership won't start rising again until leagues open in February. But I'm gearing up for the new season and hopefully things will be hoppin' at the site soon. Consider this my invite to stop by the site at anytime and see what we're up to.

Another nice "Batman Unauthorized" review

This one from The Christian Manifesto, of all places. From their review:

Robert Brian Taylor’s “Keeping It Real In Gotham” is the first essay in the title and all other titles really hinge on this one. Here, Taylor talks about the difficulties of transferring Batman from the printed page to the big screen.

Gems are shiny and good, right?

World Famous Comics reviewed Batman Unauthorized this summer and was nice enough to label my essay, which does indeed take "the comics and movies to task for epically stupid developments," as one of the book's gems. As a whole, they give the book a three out of five on the Tony scale. (When you click on the link, you'll need to scroll down a bit to read the review.)

Still writing about baseball

Fantasy Baseball Generals has been running an excellent series of articles detailing the top five fantasy stories from every Major League team this season. They asked yours truly to contribute Pittsburgh's top five, which you can read in all its glory RIGHT HERE.

Remember, if you're interested in baseball and, for some reason, find yourself caring about what I'm up to, you can always visit Fantasy Hurler, the fantasy-baseball blog I've run for two seasons now.

Groucho Reviews likes Batman Unauthorized

I found this comprehensive and very favorable review of Batman Unauthorized today. Groucho Reviews calls it "essential reading on the modern myth of Batman, its meaning, and its enduring hold on the American imagination," as well as name drops yours truly. Can't beat that.

Yes, I am still among the living

So, uh, yeah. I haven't blogged here forever. For anyone who's been stopping by, sorry 'bout that. I have been doing a fair amount of writing, but it's all been over at Fantasy Hurler and Three Rivers Poker, or me tooling around on various fiction projects that aren't worth talking about yet. Plus, there have been vacations, my summer job working for Major League Baseball, figuring out how to communicate with a two-year-old, etc., etc.

It's too bad I haven't taken the time to write because there have been things to talk about. Anyone who's seen The Dark Knight and Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog knows we were treated to two supreme entertainments this summer. I've decided that Joss Whedon and Chris Nolan should be crowned kings of Hollywood, with free rein to write/film/produce whatever they want. (Actually, thanks to TDK's box office, Nolan might actually have that power now.)

I've also read good stuff (Batman: The Long Halloween) and played good stuff (Civilization: Revolution). Hell, I even finally finished Y: The Last Man, tackling the final 10 issues over a two-day stretch last week. (Standing O for you, Mr. Vaughn.) Obviously, I've been playing lot of catch-up since my TV column was axed. That's the one good thing to come from it -- I no longer have to waste time subjecting myself to the Swingtowns and Wipeouts of the world just to have something to write about every week. In fact, I'm only watching three shows this summer: Season four of Weeds (started out sucky, has gotten a whole lot better), season one of Secret Diary of a Call Girl (started out sucky, has gotten a whole lot better) and season two of Burn Notice (is never sucky, always rocks).

So there, at long last ... that's what I've been up to recently. I'll try not to let too much time pass before blogging here again.

You've got to be kidding me

My Xbox 360 crapped out on me for the second time in four months today. I was playing some GTA IV, when the game went out and my system flashed a quick message about cleaning the disc and trying again. I ignored it, figuring that some dust must have glommed onto the disc, and turned the 360 off. A few hours later, I fired it back up to play again, except this time, it wouldn't acknowledge that GTA IV was even in the machine. So I tried another game ... which also didn't work. I stuck a DVD in ... which too didn't register. A bit of research showed that my 360 suffers from the "open tray" error, named as such because my Xbox tells me I have an open tray even though I damn well know there's a disc sitting in it.

So I called Microsoft customer service to see what they could do about it. They broke the news that they could fix the console but it would cost me $99 because the three-month extended warrenty I got after having my console fixed for the Red Ring of Death expired on Saturday. Are you fucking kidding me?

So now I'm back to having no Xbox 360. It's unplugged, sitting on my kitchen table, while I decide whether I want to pay to fix the cheap, sloppily made, hurried-to-market piece of shit. I guess I'll have to, considering the money I have invested in games for the thing. Next generation, though, I'll seriously consider avoiding Microsoft altogether. It's just not worth the hassle when your machine eventually breaks ... and then breaks again.

Addicted to the Electone on YouTube

When I was a kid I took piano lessons for several years -- learned how to read sheet music, played in a few recitals, all that jazz. But in high school, I switched to guitar, which I thought was the "cooler" instrument and the one that hung from the neck of my musical heroes, including Tom Petty and Bruce Springsteen. I've played the six-string recreationally ever since, though recently I've gotten the urge to tackle piano again. The big problem there is I don't think I can fit one in my house, so I've been considering buying a keyboard. Something cheap, I figure. Doesn't need to be a professional model. Just something to fool around with.

Then I accidentally discovered the Yahama Electone while screwing around on YouTube the other day, and I've decided I must have one. Never mind that I couldn't possibly play it with the skill that the folks in the videos below display. (Or, let's face it, 1/20th of said skill.) But just the fact that these people can do these things with an Electone makes me want to have one in my living room. Sadly it seems Yahoo doesn't sell them in America; they can only be imported. Which also likely means they're expensive as hell. (I haven't researched cost yet 'cause I want to let the dream live a little longer.)

Anyway, check these out. And, yes, the fact that I'm a film-music junkie is helping to feed my Electone addiction.

TAYLOR ON TV: Signing Off

I’ve endured many unfortunate cancellations during the five years I’ve written this column – Angel, Deadwood, Veronica Mars and Invasion, to name a few. Unfortunately, I’m now facing one I won’t be able to get past – my own.

Yes, fellow couch potatoes, the Herald’s Powers That Be have decided to force Taylor on TV into an early retirement. No hard feelings here. At its inception, this column was really just a happy accident. Back when I worked as editor of the Lake Wylie Pilot, I was out wining and dining with a group of newspaper people that included the then-publisher of the Herald. She overhead me talking passionately about some TV show or other and offered me my own column. How could I say no?

My first Taylor on TV was a massive piece on the series finale of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, still my all-time favorite television show. Between then and now, I watched a whole lot of good stuff that I felt privileged to write about in this very spot: The debut of Lost, and then, after its disappointing second season, its glorious season-three rebirth. Jack Bauer kicking terrorist butt season after season on 24. Shane murdering Lem and betraying Mackey on The Shield. Veronica Mars catching Lilly’s killer.

While writing this column I saw the beautiful beginning of Pushing Daisies and the sad, touching finale of Six Feet Under. I became smitten with that wonderfully snappy Gilmore Girls dialogue and enthralled by the dizzying lunacy of 30 Rock. Like everyone else, I was tuned in when Tony Soprano and family sat down to eat those onion rings.

Would I have seen all of these things if I wasn’t writing this column? Tough to say. But there’s little question that knowing I had to turn in one of these babies every week drove me to search out good TV storytelling in places I might not have otherwise looked. (Places like the USA network, which has me hooked on Burn Notice, and Showtime, where Weeds is a personal fave.)

I want to thank you, the reader, for both your attention and feedback over the last five years. Whether you e-mailed with a question, to thank me for introducing you to your latest TV addiction or even to inform me of just how wrong I got it in a recent column, I appreciated the fact that you took the time to read Taylor on TV and drop me a line.

Of course, just because I’m not writing about TV anymore doesn’t mean I won’t be watching it. The upcoming season looks particularly promising with new shows from Alias creator J.J. Abrams and Buffy guru Joss Whedon coming this fall or shortly thereafter. (And, yes, I find it disturbingly ironic that Joss finally gets a new show on the air and I won’t be here to talk about it. That’s just not fair at all.)

I still believe that the best storytelling in the world is done by TV writers, producers, directors and actors. They get all the benefits of cinema but with a much larger canvas to create on. There’s nothing more satisfying than watching a group of sophisticated characters evolve naturally over the course of many seasons, regardless of whether they change for the better or worse, come together or grow apart. Well, actually, there might be one thing more satisfying -- when you get to not only watch, but to write about it, too.

You guys have been great. Thanks again for reading. Now go find something good on TV to watch.

originally published in the May 9th, 2008 edition of The Herald

TAYLOR ON TV: Don't Jeer the "Reaper"

No word yet on whether the CW will renew Reaper for a second season, but I’m really hoping they do. The horror-comedy hybrid was labeled early on a spiritual successor to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and though the show never lived up to that promise, it’s improved enough in its second half to convince me that the show could really hit its stride in year two. (Much like Buffy did, by the way.)

The biggest reason for Reaper’s recent winning streak is that the writers have cut back on the repetitive demon-of-the-week tales to stress a larger mythology being woven from episode to episode. Last fall, every episode of Reaper was exactly the same: A demon wielding some unique power escapes from hell. The Devil tasks 21-year-old slacker Sam (Brett Harrison), whose soul was sold into servitude by his parents before he was born, with capturing the demon. Sam’s even-bigger-slacker buddies, Sock and Ben, come along for the ride. The good guys win, and the soul is dropped off at the local DMV to be returned to the underworld were it belongs.

But Reaper’s writers have recently pulled back the curtain to reveal more of the interesting universe these characters inhabit. We’ve found out that not all demons are pure evil. In fact, some – like Sam’s gay neighbors Tony and Steve – are pleasant conversationalists, excellent cooks and all-around nice guys. They even attend AA-like meetings to suppress their uglier demonic urges. Additionally, Tony’s leading a resistance to overthrow the Devil – a power play that unfortunately gets Steve killed and catches Sam in the middle. That’s all Sam needs. He’s already got enough problems trying to hold down both a normal job and awesome girlfriend while still working as Satan’s bounty hunter.

The complexity is appreciated. Reaper has never had a problem with the “comedy” half of its genre. (Tyler Labine remains a hoot as the overenthusiastic Sock.) But for the “horror” half to work, the show must present Sam with tougher moral decisions than how best to kill that week’s escaped demon. Lucky then that Ray Wise’s Lucifer is slowly turning from just sleazy to downright sinister. When Sam promises the Devil a favor in return for his girlfriend’s protection, the Devil doesn’t take long to call it in by asking Sam to betray the people who trust him.

The next hurdle for Reaper writers to jump is to get a grip on their show’s wonky continuity. When we first met Steve and Tony, we saw them sandblasting their demon horns down so they can pass as human. But later we learned they can just morph from demon to human form and back. And while the contract that gives Sam’s eternal soul to the Devil was made out to be ironclad in early episodes, a group of genial demons recently revealed that they could break Sam’s contract with a quick and simple sacrifice. (Sam, of course, refused, but still …)

Maybe the writers just need a little more time to effectively lay out all the rules of the Reaper universe. (Or, more likely, to figure out for themselves what exactly those rules are.) It’s unlikely that Reaper will ever take a leap into Buffy-sized greatness, but this strange yet amusing little show deserves better than to be forgotten after a single season. We’ll soon find out if the CW agrees.

originally published in the May 2nd, 2008 edition of The Herald

Some unhappy news

On Friday I got word that the Herald is discontinuing Taylor on TV, the column I've written for that newspaper for about a half decade now. It seems I fell victim to the dreaded budget cuts. Those who know the industry may wonder how I lasted this long.

Still, the axe swung without warning, and I'm obviously depressed by the news. (As I'm not working on any other commissioned piece right now, this is the first time in a long, long time that I'm not actively writing something that I know I'll be paid for ... and that's a shitty feeling.)

I will be penning a farewell column to my readers that will run in the Herald next Friday and be reprinted here shortly thereafter. In the meantime, let me thank the folks who have regularly read my column right here at this blog. I know there are a few of you out there. I truly appreciate the attention and feedback you gave. I didn't make much money writing this column, but that didn't really matter since I had so much fun doing it. Hopefully, you enjoyed reading it.

Of course, just because no one's paying me to write at the moment doesn't mean I won't be writing. Hopefully, I can put this new free time to good use. I'll continue to update this blog, so always feel free to swing by and see what I'm up to. Before long, perhaps I'll have better news to share.

TAYLOR ON TV: The problem with "Earl"

NBC’s lone weekly bright spot – its Thursday-night comedy lineup – is beginning to noticeably dim. The Office isn’t quite as sharp as it once was, and Scrubs will reportedly jump to ABC next fall for its final season. But right now the bigger problem is the collapse of My Name is Earl, which I called one of TV’s best comedies when in first debuted in 2005.

Back then, Earl proved unique amongst TV sitcoms with its jokes (of both the ridiculous and sly varieties) and colorful supporting cast all orbiting Earl’s quest for karmic forgiveness, which served as the show’s linchpin. Recently, however, Earl himself has been pushed to the side of his own series, which has, if not jumped the shark, then at least run off the rails.

Season three opened where season two left off – with Earl in prison for a crime he did not commit. Most shows would have made their lead a free man again by the end of the first half hour, but Earl’s writers took a chance by leaving him behind bars for a whopping 10 episodes – which turned out to be about five too many. (The characters in Earl work better when they’re at each other’s throats, not separated by prison walls.)

The writers’ strike hit when Earl was finally sprung from the slammer, and fans must have been looking forward to new episodes that would feature the gang all back together. But in the first post-strike episode, Earl was hit by a car and left in a coma, and three episodes later (including an hour-long), he’s still unresponsive.

That doesn’t mean Jason Lee gets a few weeks off from work. Earl still shows up in flashbacks and has been living a dream life (literally) inside his own head where he’s married to new crush Billie (Alyssa Milano) and everyone behaves as if they’re in a classic TV comedy. (Earl’s coma-dream even has its own opening credits and laugh track.) At best, the old-fashioned sitcom device could have mildly amused for one half-hour episode, but the writers thought it wise to stretch it for 90 minutes over two weeks. Terrible decision, especially considering Billie’s a new character we’ve barely gotten to know in the non-coma Earl world. And that’s not the only time the Earl brain trust has stretched a gimmick too far. One episode spoofing COPS was fine, thank you. The second? Overkill (and slightly painful to watch).

Earl’s writers have dropped the ball in other areas, too. One of the best twists the show had taken recently was the role reversal undergone by Randy and Catalina. Whereas Randy had always pined hopelessly for Catalina, it was revealed last season that, after a surprising sexual encounter, Catalina now yearns for Randy. But as soon as the twist came, the entire plotline was dropped. Disappointingly, Randy and Catalina have barely shared a scene together this year.

Can Earl recover? Maybe. The cast remains strong, and each episode still features a handful of great exchanges between its characters. I particular liked this bit from a recent flashback episode.

Earl walks up to Crabman and, under his breath, says, “We need something.”

Crabman immediately responds, “You need weed.”

Earl: “How’d you know?”

Crabman: “It’s usually what’s going on when a bunch of white people walk right up to me and start whispering.”

Ah, that Crabman. Wise beyond his years and still Earl’s secret weapon. Right now, the show could use more of him, less gimmicks … and more of the group dynamic (with Earl at the center) that made it so irresistible in the first place.

originally published in the April 25th, 2008 edition of The Herald

TAYLOR ON TV: "The Riches" live and let lie

The tagline for FOX’s House is “Everybody Lies,” but the two-word slogan would make a better fit with sister network FX’s The Riches, now in the middle of a ridiculously good second season that cements it as TV’s most underrated series.

“[Lying] eats up your soul and it destroys you and it destroys everyone around who you love,” said a tear-streaked Dahlia Malloy in a recent episode. And Dahlia (Minnie Driver) would know, as season two has her family of gypsy con artists still assuming the life of the Riches, a wealthy, upstanding family apparently living the American dream behind the fences of a posh gated community. Appearances can be deceiving though, and Dahlia and her husband Wayne (Eddie Izzard) are struggling to keep their con going until Wayne, who fakes being a lawyer by day, cashes in on $13 million from a shady New Orleans real-estate deal.

As the Riches, they’re fighting homeowners’ association rent-a-cops and a nosy private investigator. As the Malloys, they must contend with Dale, Dahlia’s sociopathic cousin who has discovered their secret and wants in on the action, and the rest of their Irish Traveller clan who are none too happy that the Malloys abandoned them for a better life.

But most of all, they battle themselves, as the lies they tell to the world and each other build up around them like bricks forming a prison cell. Dale killed a man who was onto the Malloys’ secret and Wayne helped to cover it up, a fact he’s not sharing with the rest of his family. Meanwhile, in an attempt to atone for her sins, and without telling her husband, Dahlia turned herself into the police for parole violation and was forced into a crummy job at a fish market. They refuse to abandon their long con because, at its end, they know they’ll have the money to leave all these nasty untruths behind. But, ironically, they need to tell bigger and bolder lies to keep up the charade.

It also doesn’t help that the Riches are slowly turning into the people they started out only pretending to be. For daughter Di Di, that’s not such a bad thing. She likes attending a real school and making normal friends. But it’s torture for Cael, who hates what his family has become and misses the freedom that’s inherent to the Traveller lifestyle. And Wayne is learning that working as a corporate lawyer requires just as much lying, or perhaps even more so, as being a con artist. When he discovers that his get-rich-quick real-estate deal takes advantage of thousands of New Orleans residents left poor and homeless after Hurricane Katrina, he begins to wonder if the $13 million is even worth all the harm that could be done.

Driver was deservedly nominated for an Emmy for her work on The Riches last season, and she continues to astound this year. Dahlia is on the fringes of a breakdown this season, covering up her old lies with new ones in a hopeless quest for a simpler, guilt-free life, and Driver deftly conveys Dahlia’s emotional despair. Izzard’s job is easier -- he just gets more frazzled the deeper the mess Wayne finds himself in – but he’s still incredibly entertaining in the part and can meet the challenge when a tender moment arises.

The writers’ strike resulted in a shortened second season of The Riches, so the show’s going to be leaving us much too quickly. If you haven’t been watching, do yourself a favor and buy, rent or borrow the DVDs when you get a chance. FX is known for its layered, challenging dramas, and The Riches should only add to that reputation. Whether Wayne and Dahlia can get away with stealing the American dream without losing their souls in the process is not yet known. Hopefully, FX keeps The Riches on the air long enough for them (and us) to find out.

originally published in the April 18th, 2008 edition of The Herald

TAYLOR ON TV: Everything old is new again at NBC

Every May, I write two columns where I break down the network “upfronts,” presentations made to advertisers where the networks unveil their shows coming this fall. NBC, however, decided to get the jump on everyone by announcing their upcoming schedule last week. They’re calling it a new kind of year-round programming, but it’s really just the same staggered schedule that several networks have been using for a few years now. The prestige shows and most promising newcomers premiere in the fall, then another batch of freshman series debut after the holidays, and finally a glut of reality series flood the network during the summer. The end result is less reruns and multiple shows sharing time slots over the course of 12 months.

First, let’s go through what got renewed. Chuck and Life, which were enjoying mildly successful first years before being cut down by the writers’ strike, will be back, along with the midseason replacement Lipstick Jungle. Of course, Heroes, ER and the two Law & Orders (original and SVU) are on the schedule, as well as comedies The Office, My Name is Earl and 30 Rock. (Scrubs is gone, but apparently ABC will be picking it up for another season.) Reality is NBC’s go-to genre these days, so new installments of Celebrity Apprentice (ugh), The Biggest Loser and Deal or No Deal are also coming … and that’s not even counting the summer onslaught, which includes the likes of America’s Got Talent and Last Comic Standing.

Still, there are a fair amount of time slots open for new series, and NBC looks to fill most of them by reinventing, retelling and repurposing stories we’ve already seen before. For starters, the two-hour Knight Rider movie that aired in February will become a full series. In the grand scheme of needless franchise reinventions, the 2008 version of Knight Rider was better than NBC's lame Bionic Woman reboot but nowhere near as good as FOX’s Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles.

There’s also Merlin, yet another trip to Camelot; a new take on Robinson Crusoe, the original island-castaway drama; and Kings, which is a modern-day retelling of the Biblical tale of King David. (Although this one stars Deadwood’s Ian McShane, and any show bringing McShane back to TV in a starring role is worth a look.)

In addition to all the remakes, we’ve got one high-profile spinoff coming. No information has been released about what’s commonly being referred to as The Office II, but the NBC press release confirms that it’s from the producers of the U.S. original and states that it will “follow another comic journey, complete with new faces and new locations, but with the same unique sense of humor.”

It’s hard to judge with NBC being so purposefully vague, but I’ll admit to being initially put off by the concept of another half hour of Office-related shenanigans each week. Before the writers’ strike, The Office seemed like it might be inching past its comedy expiration date, partly due to those ill-advised hour-long episodes. The Office spinoff is scheduled to air after the original next winter – will that conjure up a similar sense of overkill? If anything I’d have preferred the producers focus on reining in the more outlandish plotlines that have turned The Office too silly. Now I’m concerned things will only grow more needlessly zany as the writers try to fill two shows instead of one.

originally published in the April 11th, 2008 edition of The Herald

Making sense of difficulty levels in videogames

Back in simpler times, videogames had one difficulty level -- the one the game offered right out of the box. Character health, enemy health, number of enemies and all the things that determine how hard a game is were balanced to give the gamer a sizable challenge. After all, what fun is a videogame that you can blow through with little to no trouble? It's the challenge games offer that sets them apart from other forms of entertainment. Conversely, if a game proves too difficult, bordering on the impossible, you'd be more apt to chuck your cartridge our a nearby window than actually finish the thing. (Just ask anyone who played the original Ninja Gaiden on the NES.) So a game developer's goal was to make the prospect of finishing their game daunting but not hopeless.

Those were good days. Recently, the concept of videogame difficulty has gotten ridiculously muddled, especially since many of today's games offer up a variety of difficulty levels before you ever kill your first enemy. Call of Duty 4, one of 2007's best-selling games, gives you the choice of a whopping four difficulty settings (Recruit, Regular, Hardened and Veteran). Mass Effect initially offers three difficulty settings (Casual, Normal, Veteran), while two more (Hardcore, Insanity) can be unlocked.

I recently started playing BioShock, the Xbox 360 sci-fi/horror game that earned a slew of industry accolades at the end of last year. When I started a new game, I was presented with three difficulty levels: Easy, Medium and Hard. In addition, each came with a little description. I chose Medium because, as always, I want a decent challenge, although my guess is that the Hard setting is insanely difficult -- a common occurrence with hardcore difficulty levels in games these days (such as Legendary difficulty in the Halo games or Veteran difficulty in the Call of Duty series).

But that's part of the problem right there: I'm guessing that Medium will give me the challenge I want. I can't know for sure, especially since Easy, Medium and Hard difficulties vary from title to title. BioShock at least gives you the option of changing the difficulty at any point during the game -- a nice touch that many games don't offer. A few months ago, I started playing the Wii's Metroid Prime 3 on Normal difficulty. (Whenever a game offers a Normal or Regular setting I usually pick that one, assuming that's the level of difficulty recommended by the developer.) Unfortunately, it ended up being far too easy for my taste. After about an hour or two of playing, I actually restarted the game using the harder-but-not-nearly-impossible Veteran difficulty.

It turns out that Metroid Prime 3's difficulty settings skew easier than their respective Call of Duty counterparts. (Perhaps because the Wii is a system positioned for younger gamers?) Metroid's Normal difficulty is much easier than Call of Duty 4's Regular difficulty. But how am I to know that beforehand? I guess that's why some developers, like BioShock's 2K Boston, will offer descriptions for each difficulty, which can help but don't totally solve the problem.

Additionally, some games now offer settings independent from difficulty levels that further cloud the issue. For example, I'm choosing to play BioShock with the vita-chambers turned off. Vita-chambers are these regeneration tubes that always revive your character when you're killed in the game. (However, enemies in the game remain however badly injured you left them.) In essence, you could kill every enemy in the game using nothing but a wrench -- the game's weakest weapon -- as long as you had the time to whack away while continually respawning in a nearby vita-chamber. To me, that would take any and all challenge out of the game: A complaint that 2K Boston must have heard loud and clear because while the "turn off vita-chambers" option wasn't initially offered to BioShock players, it was included in a later patch for the game. But now I worry. Since I turned the vita-chambers off, will that make the Medium level too difficult? Since the difficulty levels were set by programmers who took the vita-chambers into consideration, will disabling the chambers warp the entire difficulty system? See why multiple difficulty levels make my head hurt? Don't even get me started on games that automatically adjust the difficulty based on how well you're playing.

The truth is, I understand why many of today's developers offer several ways to play a game. More people play videogames now than at any point in the history of the medium. We've got young players, old players, seasoned players, new players ... and my mom deciding to give the Wii a try. Developers want their games to appeal to as many people as possible, so they offer multiple difficulty levels to make everyone happy. I get that, even if I don't like it.

I also think there's a tendency now for developers to focus more on the story of a game than the challenge it offers, which is a much more dangerous habit. I'm pretty sure BioShock's developers created the vita-chambers because they help the player get through the story without having things like enemies and bosses and dying get in the way. That's when a game stops being a game and starts being an interactive movie. And that just doesn't work for me at all.

Gamers should want that challenge. Again, it's what makes videogames unique. Plus, there's nothing better than that rush you get when you finally take down a particularly nasty boss after 15 attempts. So I'm going to keep wishing for a return to a world without difficulty levels, a world where videogames don't ask you how easy you want things to be right out of the box. Sadly, those days are probably long gone. But a gamer can dream, right?