‘Daybreakers’ makes vampires badass again; ‘Bored to Death’ brings a new gumshoe to HBO; and ‘Trine’ brings beauty to puzzle-platforming while leaving story in the dark.

For better or worse, we’re in the midst of a vampire renaissance (again). These things come in waves, it would seem, with Buffy and Anne Rice adaptations having their little heyday in the late 90’s, and now a new resurgence of people trying to remake the legend with their own modern spins. Twilight seems laughable — especially coming from Stephanie “I’ve never read Dracula or seen an R-rated movie” Meyer. Their baseball games and sparkling and (on film at least) atrocious emo hair are like garlic and holy water to any self-respecting horror fan. True Blood’s ‘coming out’ premise and its parallels with southern intolerance are intriguing, but the dialogue is written and delivered so cornily it’s hard to sit through on a weekly basis. Both rewrite the traditional rules to varying degrees, which would be acceptable, if only the liberties taken were put to better use.

The recent Swedish film, Let the Right One In, goes the opposite route by sticking to basics, and creating fascination out of characters instead of reinvention — in this case, a 12-year-old girl vampire and her only human friend. More importantly, that film doesn’t rely on weak-sauce ‘vampire integration’ for its setup, not trying to take away the fairly central part of making vampires entertaining, i.e., that they fucking eat people. Sure, the sexualization of vampire-human relationships is canon, but the tragedy is somewhat blunted when they also have to attend to mortal tedium like household chores, social functions or showing up for algebra class; no one’s afraid of Count von Count.

Luckily there are still stories to be told about vampires that don’t involve castrating them in the process. Daybreakers, due in January (trailer below), carves out an interesting take on the modern vampire myth without de-fanging the monster. In this world, most of the humans are now vampires, and those left with good old-fashioned blood pumping through their veins are captured and harvested. Instead of vampires as a metaphor for struggles with abstinence or racism, Daybreakers uses them as a lens to explore diminishing natural resources and even factory farming. Most importantly, they’re still kind of evil, and when a band of still-free humans starts fighting back, one can extrapolate that shit goes down. Ethan Hawke, Sam Neill, and Willem DaFoe turning up in an action-horror film is encouraging, too; maybe this story will be more cerebral, closer to a Gattaca than an Underworld. Lord knows in the face of New Moon, we grown-ups could use a smart vampire story to balance the teen trash that’ll be everywhere this fall. Obviously it’s too soon to judge, but based on a single trailer, at least there’s hope that vampires aren’t relegated to soap opera status for good.

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Ah, the detective show, another genre that has seen better days. How did we go from the bliss of Columbo to three nights a week of CSI, where gruesome death scenarios are an acceptable replacement for a likable hero? No offense to the ladies, but when the best TV gumshoe in recent years is a blond high school girl, you know someone’s dropping the ball. Not that Ms. Mars wasn’t excellent (oh, how excellent she was). But she shouldn’t be alone out there in the field of quality character-driven mysteries, gentleman. She’s making us look bad. All we have going is House, and by most accounts, he’s maybe wearing out his welcome.

Enter Jonathan Ames — he of the entertaining essays, memoirs, radio appearances and so on (his graphic novel The Alcoholic even made our ‘best of’ list for 2008) — trying to take investigation back with the new detective comedy Bored to Death, on HBO in September. The trailer doesn’t show off the level of hard-boiled grit you might hope, with a cast including comic talents such as Jason Schwartzman, Zach Galifianakis, Kristen Wiig, and the comparably easy-to-spell Ted Danson. But hey, at least all those actors are extremely likeable — and it has Parker Posey.

I see this going one of several ways: 1) it’s pretty funny, but not a great P.I. show (after all, Ames is known for his comic misanthropy and hard living, not his intricately constructed plots); 2) it’s pretty funny, but a surprisingly good P.I. show (much needed since the departure of Veronica Mars); 3) it’s a total letdown despite all the talented people involved. Though even if it’s the last one, it couldn’t possibly be as disappointing as Sit Down, Shut Up, so they have that going for them.

For now, of course, it’s hard to say. See the trailer below and keep your fingers crossed.

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It seems like the only big games this season feature super-dudes running around destroying things (Red Faction, Infamous, Prototype, Ghostbusters), or topless dudes punching each other (Fight Night, UFC, Punch Out). So far, I’ve played one and downloaded the demo of another, and that was about enough. Personally, I prefer to mix it up a bit instead of playing the same style games back to back to back.

I’ve since moved on to the classic FFVII, but at the rate I’m playing, that could take all summer. A few nice interludes may be needed along the way. And the perfect place to look for those, of course, is the downloadable scene.

One that caught my eye as a possible break from the RPG grind is a game called Trine, coming this month to PC and PlayStation Network. Based on the available videos, this may be the most beautiful 2-D platformer I’ve ever seen. Such lush backgrounds, such gorgeous animation, and it looks like a lot of fun to play. What’s not to like?

Except one big question left painfully unanswered: what the hell is it about? All we know is that a knight, thief, and wizard are teaming up to continuously travel to the right for some reason. At least Mario had a princess to save; Bionic Commando had Super Joe. How long can you simply Run Right for Godot?

This gets at the biggest problem with puzzle games like this: they throw a fun play mechanic at you and just assume you want to do it over and over as long as possible. With games like Exit or Crush, really fun puzzle-platforming games at first, the completion rate has to be miniscule. I know I never made it through either. Once you’ve got the basic novelty out of the way, there’s no compelling reason to keep going. In this age of beautiful video and voice capabilities, of mature gamers who aren’t just pumping quarters for a quick time-killer, the flimsiest of makeshift narratives isn’t enough to propel players forward anymore. Without at least a little story to project ourselves onto, your beautifully drawn, fluidly animated game isn’t an adventure, it’s a treadmill.

Keep in mind, I haven’t played this game yet. It’s so pretty, I’ll probably still give it a try. But would it kill them to at least give a hint in their trailers at what the point of it all might be?