Dollhouse, Champions Companion and musings.
The Dollhouse Main Characters
So I am about two episodes behind on Dollhouse, just finished “Jane Doe part 1.” All I can say is *wow.* I… well, after thinking you have the true heart of the characters, they really went and flipped the whole thing on its ear. I have always maintained (in silence, since I have no one to discuss it with locally) that Boyd is the true hero of the series; and with this episode he may have unleashed the most dangerous monster possible. No spoilers here, but I am intrigued to watch the canceled show finish up. Wheadon has promised there will be an ending, so that makes me a happy camper. If you haven’t checked out the show yet, and are into the Matrix/sci-fi (I refuse to say SyFy), then you owe it to yourself to check it out. The first four or five episodes of season 1 are LAGBORING, but the whole series changes on that sixth episode and never looks back.
Champions? Yeah, there's an app for that…
Cryptic has released a new iPhone app called “Champions Companion,” and it’s pretty dang slick. The app does what you would expect it to, and a little more. It is broken into six sections: My Characters, My Friends, CHAMPedia, Streams, Mail and News.
My Characters
My Characters shows you nice, half-screen images of your characters, but the true beauty is when you pick one, you can set poses and change how they look, and it actually works, unlike the Cryptic website half the time! You can check out what the character is carrying in their inventory, view their information, super group, bio ad check the character blog.
Strike a pose…
My Friends lets you see all your friends, and whether they are online; even allows you to see incoming friend requests and to add/remove friends.
The CHAMPedia allows you to look up characters, missions, powers and supergroups (yes, that’s right, you can look up all the mission texts and power descriptions directly from your phone).
Streams allows you to see forum activity (balth posted on the forums:topic) and allows you to post a blog.
Mail actually lets you check your mail (and reply, delete and compose!) for the Champions Online servers.
News pretty much streams the News RSS feed from the champions-online.com website to let you know what’s going on with the game.
Interface: Really well-designed. I honestly must say I was a bit surprised… as a designer I like to follow the ‘3-click’ rule. You shouldn’t have to click more than thrice to get anywhere in a site. And although there is a bit more digging (especially in the characters section), that’s mainly due to the plethora of information you have at your disposal. Really well done.
Speed: Pretty doggone speedy. You do have to login/send/receive for most of the info, but I found it to be responsive.
Value for Price: The App is free, and you get a whole-lot of value for it.
Overall rating: 10 out of 10 superheroes. They knocked it out of the park, and it sends goosebumps down my spine thinking what similar thing they will release for Star Trek: Online.
Funny thing, I have always held a sneaking suspicion that Boyde was actually the/a villian of the story. Of course he is also the ground, that person that the audience is supposed to most closely relate to. The list of characters is so flawed though, the ideas of good guy and bad guy kinda fall apart. I still think Alpha will end up being their salvation.