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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Continue reading The BMW Museum's kinetic sculpture takes your brain to another dimension

Filed under: Gaming

Filed under: Gaming

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets, Handhelds

You've been fairly vocal about the idea of director J.J. Abrams wanting to reinvent Star Trek. Obviously, it's difficult to work on a beloved franchise and not get some kind of backlash from the die-hard fans. Are you excited or apprehensive about the next phase of Star Trek?

It's something we've all heard before-"Long time fans of the franchise are going to be served and everyone is going to love it. But people who have never watched Star Trek before will also have fun. Even if you hate science fiction you will love this film. This movie is perfect for everyone!" And it just becomes this marketing thing.

But the people working on this next film have a very unique and daunting challenge. Star Trek is a phenomenon that spans generations. It has one of the most passionate, entrenched fan bases in the history of media. The truth is, over the last several years, Star Trek was run into the ground and the franchise was nearly destroyed by the films and the television series that were not being guided by a good hand.

J.J. Abrams is a pretty good filmmaker. Cloverfield and the first season of Lost were great. So you have this guy who's really creative and has a pretty good track record of making science-fiction related programs and you put him in the right seat and say, "Now fly this franchise and recreate it." The pressure that he must be under to deliver something magnificent, and the amount of studio interference must be enduring, has got to be nearly indescribable. So I have a lot of sympathy and understanding based on those things.

Bonnie Burton interviews actor, author, gamer, and geek-er Wil Wheaton in this month's edition of GEEK. Snip:

Geek: (...) I need to know how far you've gotten in Grand Theft Auto IV.

Wil Wheaton: I haven't been playing GTA IV that long since the game came out-maybe five hours so far. My progress meter is at like eight percent or something like that. I've gotten to a point where the story took a rather shocking and unexpected twist. The character that you control in the game is a very conflicted guy with a pretty complicated and dark history. The guy is more real and has more depth to him than any of the other characters I've controlled in GTA. Until last night, I may have played one or two story missions to advance the game, but I really just spend the rest of my time driving around and crashing into cars. I drive cars until they catch on fire. I like to go driving through the parks and hit the pedestrians. I've noticed a couple of things like if you're going really fast and you hit a wall or a tree something like that you'll fly through the front windshield of the car. So I drove really fast down the wrong side of the street on the expressway and hit a car head-on, and the driver shot through the windshield and landed on the hood of my car. That level of detail is just remarkable. But it suddenly felt weird just driving around the city mowing down pedestrians.

Has it started to warp your sense of reality when you're stuck in traffic yet?

I hate driving. I absolutely despise it. I particularly hate driving in Los Angeles. I'll be out somewhere with my wife and point out things, and tell her if this was Grand Theft Auto we wouldn't have to sit here like this. We could just drive over that median.