Quad News Time SMASH!

Lets see, it seems like I had 4 things to write about, what were they...

Well, to start out with I finished the show Speed Grapher. At first I just thought it was an interesting look at the dark underside of the perverse corruption of the rich and powerful, but by the end I realized that it was about that AND being free from the corrupting effects of greed and money. Its kind of unfortunate that some of the monsters they threw in felt forced and unnecessary, but then it was the anime version, maybe the manga had better backstory for them. Anyway, very good.

Item number 2 is that I ordered and received my wonderful Nana Best DVD/CD collection that might be the best collectible for a fan of the anime version of Nana. The best part of my order is that I thought it was JUST the CD, but then I found out there was a DVD with. Whoa, it was really a great surprise, especially since I'm still not sure when the show is coming stateside.

While we're on anime, Anime Expo '08 was this past weekend. I didn't go, but I was reading some of the stuff associated with it through ANN. The most intersting item is definitely this: Fansubs - The Death of Anime?. Its an hour long panel discussion about the problems caused by illegal distribution and subsequent subtitling and then redistribution of anime. One of the most interesting statements was this: "We're seeing anime fandom and convention attendence steadily increase... And yet DVD sales are 20% lower than last year." The analysis of the problem is also interesting, something like "This wasn't a problem back when fansubbed material was hard to come by, like when you had to know a guy who knew a guy with a VHS tape. Nowadays you can say 'Hey man, go home a watch the new Naruto. Just click here and here and make sure you've got bitTorrent.' In other words, we've got a generation of anime fans who think anime is free." And thus why fansubs all over the net is a problem. But, until anime companies are bringing subtitled anime fresh from Japan to the states within a few days of broadcast through legitimate channels and in equivalent formats... Well, the fan who wants to keep up with the Jono-san's is going to have to keep tapping illegetimate sources. So right now people like Funimation, ANN, Bandai, etc. are focusing on educating their largely high school and economically ignorant fan-base on the fact that, yes, anime costs money to make, and if you don't pay for it then its going to stop being made.

My final note... Oh right I saw The Orphanage (El Orfanato) which was produced by "Pan's Labyrinth" del Toro. Its very good for a horror movie. Why? Because its doesn't rely on a lot of blood and gore. Its not incredibly scary really, to me anyway, but I think most people would enjoy it even if the ending is a little strange... Touching, but strange. I also saw Wall-E this weekend. As to expect with Pixar, very good. I liked that the auto-pilot resembled the HAL 9000 and the repeated revelations that they have a pool on the ship. My only complaint really is that its hard to understand the robot speech at times, but generally you don't miss anything too important.

Well, while writing this I composed two other posts on other forums, so I'm done with the internet for tonight.

Get outta here Uwe Boll!

Time for a real story! I had kind of suspected the it from some rumors a few days earlier, most revolving around a new enty screen to Blizzard's main site, but now Diablo 3 has officially been announced as of Saturday! It is 100% teh awesome. If it was coming out this year, the same year as Spore, the PC might overload from having two such awesome games debuting at the same time after such a long stretch of having nothing worthwhile except some strategy games and Crysis. Here, watch this gameplay video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQMBIRipp5A

Isn't it awesome?! And, if for some reason you didn't watch the second one, they show that the bosses you can fight are HUGE (One guy gets his head bitten off!) and you can do 4 player co-op alla Gaunlet Legends. Seriously, it looks like they're playing Gauntlet Legends, but with Diablo 3 characters and abilities. How awesome is that? Oh, plus destructable terrain. See that loose wall next to the zombies? BAM! RumbleCrumbleCrashSplat! 15 zombies dead. Enemies crash through banisters and railings on bridges and ledges. Heck, the fact that enemies go flying at all is an improvement on Diablo 2, though its fairly standard for games now so I guess to be expected. Also, they're keeping the old 3/4 isometric view, which is a VERY good idea. Free Roaming camera works in some games, but Diablo wouldn't be the same if you had to manage a camera.

There's no realease date yet, but that's hardly surprising. As a final treat, watch this cinematic clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgbUSsblCSQ

Holy Warped Reality!

So I'm still playing through Chrono Cross. I've finally gotten over obsessing about field advantage and just try to hit enemies with the opposite element, which actually works rather well. Well, except for stupid enemies like that Sun of a Gun (Actual name of enemy... Actually shaped like a sun) that have monstrous defense. But at least I got the "Holy Light" element from it, which totally killed a later boss.

As for whats happening in the story (Since I'm guessing pretty much everyone has either played this game or will never play it by this point) my character (Serge) has just switched bodies with the villain Lynx (Actually looks like a humanoid Lynx in a dark elaborate outfit). So now, returning to my original world, pretty much no one believes that I'm Serge (Surprise surprise). Though one aspect I do like is that the one person who believes you after a fair conversation is the main character's mother, I thought that was a nice touch. And after we convinced the village chief he decides to accompany us to a nearby town so we might actually be able to get something done. The story got a lot more interesting once the charcter switched bodies, before that it was a pretty standard "Lets get that bad guy!" adventure. Now they're throwing out all these questions about the nature of identity "How do you know you are you and that you are not really Lynx?" Its interesting fo' sho.

The Right Stuf!

No, thats not a typo. I just finally decided to check out the best place to buy all things anime www.rightstuf.com . Seriously okay? I got 4 DVDs + a soundtrack CD (-Shipping) for the price that it would cost to buy 1 Anime DVD (+Tax) at Barnes & Noble or FYE or pretty much anywhere except Best Buy and anime speciality stores. I mean, with shipping costs the total was $40. $40! That comes out to $8 an item! Its hard to find quality DVDs for that price at a used DVD/CD store, and this is unopened product! Sure I have to wait maybe 2 weeks for it to get here, but I'm playing through "Chrono Cross" and "The World Ends With You" so its not like I can't wait. And its not like the DVDs I got were some ancient series that no one likes, the rather recent and well liked "Speed Grapher". So yeah, I was satisfied with that.

Speaking of Chrono Cross, thats my latest project in my "Play old RPGs" series. Firstly, the awesome opening can be viewed here for those of you unfortunate enough to have never heard of the game: Opening . Getting to it, as usual, there's more than I remember right off the bat, like just how many non-essential characters there are, and just how very non-essential many of them are... Its kind of sad. Like I'm really not sure why some of these people are joining my character's party. Like this exorcist priest type guy (Who is dressed like a Mexican wrestler) was sort of like "Hmmm, you are a spirit who is dead in this world. That interests me so I'll follow your group." Back tracking note, in Chrono Cross you travel between two parallel worlds with the split point being the main character's death ten years ago. Hence why he is a "spirit who is dead in this world". Its interesting. The other thing is the variety of accents, and how they aren't entirely complete. I think this one character is supposed to be Australian accented... But I'm not sure because there are British acents that are similar. Some of them just have strange phrases that they work in to sentences, like the giant living Voodoo doll (who joins you so this guy will stop wasting his life worshipping him) who puts "Boogie" and the suffix "-oogie" in strange places. And then there's the doctor who talks like a surfer dude, unfortunately even during serious conversations... And of course this is all text that you have to read and try to figure out how these people sound (Well, you could be boring and not I suppose, but like I said, boring). I'm still trying to re-adjust my mind to the gameplay. I keep trying to get myself elemental field advantage, which is accomplished by casting a successive series of spells of the same element. This gives characters you control of that element an attack advantage, makes enemies of the opposite element weaker, and strengthens any spell of that element. However, I keep on forgetting to cast more powerful spells in favor of elemental advantage, which ends up hurting me more than helping I think. It also didn't help that I had two characters with opposite elemental alignments in party which meant that field advantage for one made the other really weak. Since one of them was my main character... Well, Mojo moved on to other things. The story is at least as good as the early parts of Final Fantasy 9 so far, so I'm hoping it stays good.

Finally, I watched Pan's Labyrinth and Silent Hill last night. I hadn't watched Pan's Labyrinth from the beginning before, and I liked it SO much more now that I've seen the beginning because I didn't realize that they had set up the fairy tale aspect from the beginning. Before I came in on the part near where the guy's face gets smashed in, so I thought it was just a story of a girl escaping horrible circumstances through a fairy tale. The beginning TOTALLY changes things. Speaking of beginnings, Silent Hill's first 10 minutes sucks. Its so bad. I always end up liking it by the end because it gets better as it goes (By which I mean, more Silent Hill-y), but I've decided that you should start watching the movie from the gas station scene before they get to Silent Hill (I'd say later, but then you don't know who Sean Bean's character is so much). The parts before that, especially the opening scene, feel like they were added for the stupid audience member who needs to be told verbally why they're going to Silent Hill in the first place. Actually, something I was thinking while watching was "This is such a fan movie, I'm not sure why someone who hadn't played the games would watch this." I mean, its kind of like the Final Fantasy VII movie: There is something there for the non-fan, but its for the fans. The non-fans will be treated to the wonderful monsters and awesome world transitions from the games, but they won's pick up on the music from the game, the copied camera shots and other general references. Though I do want to show someone the movie fresh, from the gas station scene and see if the opening scenes are even necessary, because they feel like something a studio executive told them to add.

Well, I've spent enough time on this post. Off to Chrono Cross.

You stand before the final dimension...

Okay, thats another Final Fantasy down, lets keep things a rollin' here. In other words, I just finished Final Fantasy IX and will thusly either move on to 10 or maybe slip to the side and try Chrono Trigger instead... Hmmm.... Well, either way I'm watching Battlestar Galactica Season 3 first since I'll burn through that in like.... tomorrow. I am a hardcore marathonner my friend, just not the running kind. I spent all day Sunday burning through extra stuff on Final Fantasy IX, I'll spend.... Well, maybe not Wednesday. Thursday is gonna be all abouts the BSG, basically whatever is left over from Wednesday.

Anyway, getting back to the subject at hand: I beat Final Fantasy IX and am coming to the conclusion that I'm really liking all these games. I mean, for a time I had it held in my mind that Final Fantasy was generally a notch above most everything else, but after just playing through 8 and 9 again.... Just so good. I'm starting to come to the conclusion that I'm going to have to start making note of the games' flaws because comparing high points is too difficult. Which one has a better story? Psh, very difficult. I can tell you that VII is my favorite, but thats because I love the characters and world its set in. VIII is a hands down romance set against a saving-the-world backdrop, and I thouroughly enjoyed it. IX I finally understood this time through, there was so much I had forgotten or just not understood the first time through... Though the ultimate final boss, while very impressive, is rather random. Hey, one difference between Stephen King and Final Fantasy? Final Fantasy knows how to do an ending to a long tale right (Which I hear Mr. King doesn't)... Though VII's coulda been longer. Seriously, so much of my satisfaction with IX came out in this ending part. Sure my Zidane, Garnet, Freya, Amarant party was flippin' sweet at that point, and the battles were truly epic, but the story aspects and philosophy concepts they throw at you in the end... Its good but maybe a little over the top. Final scene? Perfect ending. And, of course, Crystal theme at the end. Interesting note, near the end there's a tripped out version of the Crystal theme playing. Weird eh? Well, not really considering the last area I guess.... But thats beside the point. My one great complaint against IX is its ability system which, at times would require that you equip inferior equipment for a long period of level grinding, just to gain one ability. Did you always need that ability? No, but you'd be kicking yourself later for not getting it. Oh, and then some of these abilities you have to equip. So even if you spend all that time learning them, you don't really get to use them unless you have the crystal points to equip it. *Sigh* Oh well. You get a high enough level and it doesn't matter so much, but its still something that I'm glad has yet to be repeated.

I think I will do Chrono Trigger next just because I'm afraid that 10 will some how betray my memory of it, and I know that Chrono Trigger is good... And I have an early save file of it that I found so I can skip the parts that I've played 10 times before in my previous efforts to replay it. And I've been enjoying giving my little PSOne a work out since the PS2 has been somewhat iffy as of late.

Well, they're going to start tiling my room tomorrow so I guess I better sleep or something.