DIABLO 3 IMPRESSIONS: ULTIMATE EVIL EDITION

Recently Diablo 3 came to consoles yet again in a bigger and badder way with the ULTIMATE EVIL EDITION, a version of the game that now includes the Reaper of Souls add-on that all us cool PC gamers have been playing for months. Now console gamers can enjoy the fifth and final act of the game’s single player storyline, as well as the madness of the Adventure Mode. Not only that, but those lucky sods with their PS4s and their XBones can rip and tear across Sanctuary as well.

Given that Sam and I have been playing Diablo 3 on the Xbox 360 with a copy rented from Redbox, we haven’t progressed far in the past year. There’s the occasional weekend that comes up when we decide to put our free time to the lazy art of sitting on the couch and mashing buttons, so we haven’t gotten to the point where we can reap (har har) the benefits of the ULTIMATE EVIL EDITION. Neither of us wanted to make a new character (sorry Crusader), and since the game was nice enough to detect the old save file, we’re still dawdling in the desert. For those of you without a frame of reference for where that means we’re at in the game, I’ll help clarify: Not. That. Close.

It was good to get some time in with the ULTIMATE EVIL EDITION, even though the game is identical to what we’ve been playing in months past given our progress in the game. We didn’t reach the end of Act IV to lift up our arms and cry for just one more act. Everything is exactly as it was in the past: we’re still a barbarian and a wizard desperately trying to avoid getting eaten by the minions of hell.

The controls are the same, especially that nifty console-only feature of rolling to evade incoming blasts of eldritch energy that the PC players should be totes jelly of. Menus are still navigated with the weird radial that remains far inferior to the menus navigated via the mouse on the PC, but that doesn’t render the game unplayable. The ULTIMATE EVIL EDITION provides more of the entertainment that Sam and I enjoy together when our weekends overlap, and doesn’t do much more than that except extend the shelf life of its content.

It’s still good fun, so now we ask ourselves: Do we go ahead and save our money for a copy of our own so we longer have to depend on its availability at the local Redbox? Now looms the prospect of finally upgrading to the newest generation of console babies, which means the possibility of losing our progress, especially when it’s the PS4 I’m eyeing and not the Xbox One (sorry Microsoft). Whether or not this will actually happen is still up in the air as the “how” is a puzzle unto itself, but if/when it happens, the adventures of Hogoth the Barbarian and Demena the Wizard will end abruptly. Or just get rebooted if we’re feeling nostalgic.

The Best Taco and Burrito I Ever Had

Dallas is known for many things—Cowboys, Lee Harvey Oswald, and oil—but something that everyone forgot to mention to me was the food. My first meal in Texas was In-N-Out Burger, which also happened to be my first In-N-Out Burger experience. But even that pilgrimage didn’t prepare me for the meal that would change my life forever.

Nestled under the construction of an interstate overpass sits a little gas station called Fuel City. Within Fuel City is a little taco shop that you’ll find listed on Urbanspoon as “Fuel City Tacos.” I figured from its 94% rating that it had to be at least okay, and so we ventured the 2 miles between our very trendy-looking hotel to Fuel City, adorned with a raptor statue and inaccessible swimming pool. There’s seating outside, but most people just take their bounties home. At first glance, the place seems confusing: gas station, car wash, and tacos. But after one bite of their tacos, everything just seems to make sense.

You have five options for your taco: picadillo, chicken fajita, beef fajita, barbacoa, and pastor. Also, you’re not limited to just a taco. You can have a burrito as well. I got the barbacoa burrito and a pastor taco. My total? $6 tops. The tacos are only $1.40 a piece and the burrito’s $4.50. To help you picture the burrito, imagine the last burrito you got from Chipotle. Okay, now half the price and double the quality. This was easily the best burrito I’ve had that I can remember, and at least the best value.

I don’t usually get all the toppings on a burrito, but something in the air told me that it was a good idea. First bite had a spiciness I did not expect, but I welcomed it. It was a hearty burrito, one that I lament that I may never have again unless I return to Dallas. But I have no regrets. Even the spicy pastor taco that did a hatchet job on my stomach was worth the religious experience of eating Fuel City tacos.

Sounds pretty good, right? So good there must be a catch? None. The experience is akin to getting a taco from a food truck, but there is no food truck. Just a building with windows for you to order your tacos. We didn’t even wait that long, maybe five minutes. And we still saw several people coming in and out with nondescript plastic bags toting their culinary treasures. The food won’t break the bank—maybe your stomach. In fact, it’s almost as cheap as Taco Bell and it seems reasonable that the tacos would be made from actual meat.

Fuel City Tacos are the now the standard by which I measure all other tacos, fast food or not. It is a high bar for other restaurants to reach, but don’t think for a second I’ve turned into a taco snob. There may be another taco to usurp this throne, and I welcome the challengers who lay down their gauntlets. Especially if they do so for free.

Widening The Wire

So word is that HBO’s masterpiece The Wire is getting remastered and re-aired here in the coming weeks in glorious high-definition. Most of those who’ve seen the show swear by it being one of the most important programs on television, and even though I haven’t finished my way through the series, I have to agree. Its character development and complex storyline makes for some compelling storytelling, and I lament the fact that there will probably not be anything like soon.

You may be asking, “If it’s so good, why haven’t you finished it?” I have a confession to make. I’m not proud of it, and I’m almost positive it makes me a lesser human being for it. I haven’t finished watching The Wire because it’s not in widescreen.

I know. It’s a terrible reason, especially given the show’s quality. But that is the long and short of it. It wouldn’t be as troublesome if I were watching it on a 4:3 aspect ratio TV because then I wouldn’t have those columns of blackness on each side of the screen. Somehow those black bars are enough to bar me from still watching the program.

In a way, the show’s aspect ratio makes it feel like a relic from a past age like black-and-white TV. That wasn’t all that long ago, but given the meteoric rise of technology in the past twenty years, monochrome feels like it’s reserved for the old or artistic. I hate that I have that attitude towards it, but that’s how I see it. And that’s not to say I haven’t watched shows and movies in grayscale. But to be dumped into an era in which you are deeply immersed in Technicolor is to be spoiled, and boy am I spoiled.

Now you can watch syndicated episodes of Seinfeld that are themselves widescreen. Seinfeld is in widescreen. The Wire was not. The fact that this is a true statement is criminal. You can have those ridiculous black bars on either side of Jerry’s apartment. You don’t need all that space to point and laugh at Kramer’s antics. But The Wire needs that wider screen. It needs to be more cinematic because, despite the show’s episodic structure, it is above the form of its medium. The show doesn’t quite have the cinematography that screams, “SHOW MORE OF ME,” but it is a piece of sophisticated programming that raised the bar for other television shows. It’s time that HBO gave The Wire the treatment it deserves, and time that I give it the attention that I need to. 

Late to the Party: Far Cry 3

I’ve been stumbling through Far Cry 3 for the past month or so after picking it up off the ground during a robbery masquerading as a Steam summer sale. First-person shooters have become less my thing recently, so I thought a game in which you don’t just run and gun might make for a comfortable change of pace.

I was incorrect.

Let me be clear: Far Cry 3 is not a bad game. The voice acting’s sprinkled with a liberal dash of meh, but the gunplay is entertaining and the experience system adds a reasonable amount of RPG number crunching to distract you from the fact that your main objective is force-feeding bullets to red-shirted men with strange accents. Good old family-friendly fun.

There are, however, two tiers of leveling. The first tier is that familiar sort of progress in which you do cool things and you get points for it, and then you spend those points to do even cooler things. Simple, elegant, and hard to beat.

The second tier, on the other hand, really wants to emphasize the fact that you’re on a tropical island trying to survive. You don’t have to manage hunger or thirst or any of that finicky crap, but you do have to hunt and skin animals if you want to carry more than one gun, a handful of loot, and $1000. It’s gross, and it’s also hella boring. Hunting in Far Cry 3 is the sort of activity you’d expect in an MMO like World of Warcraft. You go up to the friendly looking gnome and he tells you that, “Hey, guy, I need, like, five wolf pelts. I’d get them myself but I have to stand here and tell some other dope my sob story. Do this for me and get Generic Item of the Mundane.” Since nothing’s ever easy, you have to do it because for whatever stupid reason, you need that item.

Far Cry 3 falls into that very trap, but without the pseudo-social environment of World of Warcraft. You’re not playing Far Cry 3 with anybody—shut up, I know there’s a cooperative option—you’re doing this solo. Man versus the Wilderness. And somehow, it’s really boring. “Killing wild pigs to make a bigger wallet” was a design choice that an actual person came up with and said, “Players will love it.” Or maybe they just said, “Players will tolerate it.” Because it’s this same process that allows you to carry more than one gun.

I spent more time killing goats to make a bigger rucksack just to carry all the junk I pick up than I have fighting pirates which is supposed to be the meat and potatoes of this game. The amount of goats killed would flag my character as a Satanist. Lo and behold, I’ve had to upgrade it a second time within a half hour. And guess what? Now it’s nearly filled to the brim with old syringes, multicolored leaves, single playing cards, and other bits of useless trash that somehow take up an equal amount of volume in my rucksack made of dingoes.

All I ask is for an easy way. The major theme of the game’s “plot” is the walking the path of the warrior, so I get that the game is supposed to be an arduous climb. But why must the fun play second fiddle to the grind? Why can’t I just pay for a new backpack with $500 in blood-soaked cash from my handmade pig wallet? Real RPGs let me do that.