Buffy The Vampire Slayer

First up is Richard Warford, who had a bit of response for me about Chaos Bleeds and the show it spawned from.

Richard writes:

Chaos bleeds - I agree completely, get rid of Sid and you have to have the voices.

As for top 50 shows. 6 months ago I thought Battlestar was tops, but like you I have been revisiting Buffy DVDs, and they’re even better than I remember, so back it goes to no. 1 and the best season -SEASON 5. Worst season - season 6, some stand out episodes but the trio (nemiseseses) not really in the Mayor/Glory category! Also, too continuously depressing, even season 7 has some uplifting episodes.

So, between this e-mail and talking to friends, it does seem that Sid and the voices were the main sticking points against Chaos Bleeds being anything more than mediocre. Sid being so awful is kind of a cringe-worthy point for me, because it was obvious the game-makers were attempting to do something novel. It just didn’t work, and it hurt the game. The voices are another point, and I find it interesting that imdb.com actually said that Sarah Michelle Gellar declined the invitation to reprise her role as Buffy for the game. I’m thinking the career move of "totally divorce myself from the popular character I played for seven years" didn’t exactly work out as planned, now did it?

However, I’ve got to say that I disagree about Season 5 being any better than Season 6. It just doesn’t have any episodes (except for The Body and The Gift) that really stand out in my mind as important to the series as a whole. The season just seemed a bit rushed, as if everything had to build towards the end very quickly. This might have a lot to do with the fact that this was the final season of Buffy on the WB, and it wasn’t known until much later that it’d be picked up by UPN.

Next up is Justin, who called me on forgetting a very important bit of gaming history from the last generation...and talks more about Buffy.

Justin writes,

Dear Mr. Scott,

although I did enjoy your piece on your experience of last gen, it did seem to be lacking the presence of the Sega Dreamcast. Possibly you never bought it, regardless I still believe a mention should have been made.

I enjoyed your rebuttal on Buffy and agree with the original criticism and your comments on the quality of the show. There are some moments during the show where you would just shake your head at how idiotic it could be (Season 4 especially), but even then... you’d get a blinding ray of sunshine in that storm. My favorite episode is Season 7’s ’Conversations With Dead People’, which paints such a vivid picture that the gang was headed for a bumpy road unlike that they have ever seen. I was so stoked at the possibilities that could occur, but was ultimately disappointed in the end. Still I can watch the episode consistently and still get goose-bumps when The First issues the warning to Willow in the library.

Regardless, keep up the good work.

Justin

I’d completely forgotten the Dreamcast was a part of the previous generation of consoles, as I owned it at the same time as an N64 and a Playstation. However, I was remiss in breaking down the system like I did last time, so I’ll attempt to do so.

The Sega Dreamcast: Before Its Time

I purchased a Dreamcast some time after it came out, somewhat skeptical about the system. After all, I’d heard bad things about the launch and I’d seen too many people take a bad plunge on the Saturn. However, Sonic was just too much of a draw for me, so I jumped in the deep end. I purchased Sonic, Power Stone, and...Toy Commander (I think). All three games were awesome graphically, and Sonic and Power Stone were just very unique for the time.

However, Dreamcast never got the chance it deserved. The PS2 and X-Box devoured its market with slicker presentations and DVD players, and piracy was simply too easy for the system. Games were quite nearly downloadable for the system, and so long as you had a program to boot the games you never really had to pay for anything. It’s a shame, because the Dreamcast really had a number of games that blew away the competition in the early years. I still hold that Powerstone 2 is the best party fighter of all time, blowing away all of the Super Smash Bros games (so far). If nothing else, it was a good system for Sega to go out on - definitely the best they’d ever produced.

As far as the Buffy episode in question...Conversations with Dead People is one of my personal favorite episodes of Buffy, falling somewhere below The Zeppo and Once More with Feeling, but above Grave and Passions. It was a bit of a throw away episodes (the First’s warning aside) in a filler-free season, but it took a closer look at Buffy’s psychology than any episode before that (which is an odd thing, as everyone from Anya to Xander had an examination episode before the main character).

Thanks for the feedback, folks, and I’ll certainly print and respond to anything you send me. Next week, I swear...we’re back to the system!