Oh, I Still Have a Blogspot.

I used to write all sorts of stuff on here. It was pretty nice.  Maybe I'll try that again?

I wonder how many frustrated people came here for a Mass Effect 3 review and just got my ancient Mass Effect review.  And now Andromeda is coming out!  Mmmm, Andromeda.  Really looking forward to it.

  Though really I'm mostly looking for news on Death Stranding.  It looks fascinating!

BECK

No, not Beck Hansen.... Or Glenn Beck. BECK: Mongolian Chop Squad!!! The story of some kid who, through a series of chance encounters, becomes a member of a legendary band called Beck (Mongolian Chop Squad is the American release name). It's a story of a group of people, nay friends or perhaps comrades who pull together to create a legendary sound that draws in people against the odds and in the face of the music industry. The day-to-day reality of high school and a part-time job contrast with the fast times on stage and vivid studio practices, or even pouring out his soul on the guitar in his room while his mother tells him to turn the volume down (Which he does, cause he's a good kid). The characters that bring him to his destination are varied and unexpected: The rapping ramen shop worker, the bassist who bounces from band to band, the eccentric ex-pro swimmer who teaches him guitar, and of course a laid back Japanese guy from America who lives at a fishing hole and has a mis-matched mutt of a dog named "Beck". The English dub isn't bad, and they even do a good job with the songs, but one of the big points throughout the story is that some characters speak Japanese and others speak English. So when everyone is speaking English and one guy say's "Ah, I don't speak English." in English.... It kinda breaks the mood. But, all the same, I really appreciate the work the English dub workers put into adapting the songs and near the end there's a slide show scene where the English flows really well for an American audience. Ah, and of course there's Maho, probably one of my favorite love interests in a show even when she does do stupid stuff, which I guess just makes her more realistic.

If you like rock, and you like stories about bands there's no reason not to see Beck. If you just generally like music and good slice-of-life stories make sure to check it out.

On a seperate note, it's ridiculously hard to get you hands on tracks from the show legitimately. Fortunately they're mostly on YouTube, but only for so long, and the OST is ridiculously expensive. The opening is pretty ridiculous, but at the same time it really captures that "Going for it" spirit. The rest of the songs are also generally good, but this is for sure my favorite song from the show: Full Moon Sways, gently in the breeze of one fine day. Full Moon Sways, smiling in my arms for all those years.

New Post 2: Electric Boogaloo

Sorry, I don't have an actual Electric Boogaloo for you, but I do have a couple of amazing videos from the force that brought Obama Girl.

First, from the original Barely Political is the news (Most notably Joe Biden and the congressman with the Sir Taxalot presentation) auto-tuned T-Pain style: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvV4sSaWYgo Yes, you could say They're on the News.

Secondly is from the offshoot for non-political projects and creators of the wonderful "WoW Intervention" and "YouTube Comment Fight" BarelyDigital brings a new and greater wonder "Left 4 Dead Beatles". They really do some of the best "You're either going to get this or you won't" humor around.

Well that was fun, so now to knock off one of the topics I want to talk about, and that's this game: "Muramasa the Demon Blade". It really looks cool and is a continuation of a series of games that I've been wanting to pick up called the "Princess Blade" series. According to an interview I read, this game was at one time conceived to be titled "Ninja Princess" to keep the theme, but as production continued they changed focus and developed the background and story of a second male character. So it's still in the same series of "Odin Sphere" with it's side-scrolling action/RPG-ness, but like Final Fantasy it has reinvented its gameplay in this new universe. Muramasa is set in Edo period Japan and features hand-drawn backgrounds and characters inspired by art of the periods and classic Japanese myths and plays. For example, there is a fishing mini-game which takes place in a setting which is essentially a full motion version of Hokusai's "Big Wave" which is very impressive if you're a fan of the painting. Another interesting note, despite being on the Wii the game utilizes 0 motion control. For awhile they tried to work it in but people kept saying things like "This isn't accurate enough" or "I didn't mean to do that!". The last try for motion control was a set of eating mini-games where they would have you hold the Wii-mote and nunchuk like chopticks to eat the food, however it was quickly pointed out that these items were far too large to be used as chopsticks. So instead we have a side-scrolling action/RPG in the genetic line of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night and Super Metroid (though with a little more RPG than either of those) with the most casual controller which you could even play with your arms crossed leaning back in a chair if you wanted. A final interesting note for people interested in challenging games: They created an unlockable "Death mode" which none of the production staff could actually beat, but apparently one of the testers did and so they said "Ah, so it can be beaten." which was good for them since apparently there's a law in Japan against releasing unbeatable games.

Anyway, I'm getting the game later today so in my next entry I'll have at least a prelimenary report on it.

(Update 2016:  Hey, uh, Muramasa Demon Blade was really cool.  I recommend it if you can get it.)

Disney Princess vs. Marvel Heroines Extreme Beach Volleyball... Might already be taken.

Ah, my first new blog post in over 6 months and there is a fresh geyser of a story to post about, namely "Disney Buys Marvel". I believe the price tag was something like $4,000,000,000. Now while all the die hard comics fans wither into dust, allow me to point out some of the wonderful crossovers I've come across. The first and most prevalent (Which I even thought of myself when I first heard this) is Marvel characters, most notably Spider-Man, in Kingdom Hearts. Now, obviously people aren't taking into account the fact that Square-Enix would have to sign off on it too, and really I'm not sure to what extent Disney can just toss around Marvel characters. BUT if you were wondering what other worlds Disney could possibly put in the next Kingdom Hearts, you now have an answer. At Kotaku we have Disney-Marvel Team Ups We'd Like to See which has a number of amusing pictures devoted to the subject (Most prominently a Wolverine style Micky Mouse), though my personal favorite is in the comment box below the article"Disney Princess and Marvel Heroines Beach Volleyball" Just ask Tecmo to make it and you'll have a gold mine. I also greatly enjoyed Penny-Arcade's reaction, who at first were going to do basically what the rest of the internet is doing and just do character mash-ups (Including the aforementioned Spider-Man wielding a Keyblade alla Kingdom Hearts). So instead they crafted This Gem of a comic about the difficulties of having two characters called "Beast" on your roster. Technically one is "The Beast", but still, you see the joke potential. There's even Intelligent Thought on the matter. Of course to really experience the reality of the situation all you need to do is go Here.

But don't worry, just because I was on an indeterminate hiatus before doesn't mean I'm going to suddenly stop using this again. Now Facebook has a Blog Tracker app, so people can actually know when you post something new through Facebook. Also I have a lot of new stuff I want to write about, so hopefully there should be a pretty quick update period for a while.

I'll leave you with a nigh inevitable scenario: Disney/Marvel Vs. Capcom

There She Is!!

Ah, one of my favorite internet created things has finally concluded.

A good while ago, maybe 2004, a Flash video appeared on Newgrounds called "There She Is!!" Curious why such a simply titled video was receiving such attention, I clicked on it and was treated to a wonderfully animated (And you know some of the crap that passes for animation with Flash) musical story about about a would be couple portrayed as a cat-person and a rabbit-person in a society where such a relationship is stricly forbidden (Like pre-1960's America inter-racial couples). Its a story of forbidden love, the cat-man's initial reluctantce based on societies rules and the rabbit-woman's dauntless enthusiasm in pursuing him, all set to an upbeat song. There are no words to the story, so don't worry about the fact that it was made in South Korea. Actions and universal symbols very effectively tell this story.

Anyhow, its 5 parts and I love it. I really think there's no reason not to see it. The site is SamBakZa and if you click on Amalloc (The blue profile) the five episode boxes should come up.

Enjoy it!

We made it

So, they were some good points to 2008: My brother got married, the first black president was elected (something previously delegated to 24 and bad sci-fi movies), Late Oct and Early Nov were AWESOME for gaming (Fable 2, Gears of War 2, Fallout 3, Mirror's Edge and Spore came out! And thats just part of it!), and political comedy had its best year ever. However, besides that the year sucked. Lets face it, the year long campaigns were preposterous circus acts eventually ending with (Surprise) the candidates early declared to be some of the least likely to succeed. I'm not even going to talk about it anymore, it doesn't deserve another word of attention. Then, the cherry on top, our wonderful economic crisis that everyone should have seen coming but didn't because everyone was shoving it under the rug. At the end of the year I'm not sure if I'm more glad that its a problem that affects more than our economy... Or not. I guess at least gas prices are down right? However long that lasts.

I'm really not sure how this year can be worse because our expectations for the year are already pretty dag low. See, that was the big problem, a lot of people were looking forward to 2008 like "Ah, finally Bush will be gone." and then so much mess happened and so expectations for 2009 are way down. So, when the few bright spots come up like the Star Trek movie being awesome and Watchmen coming out and not being terrible (Those are guarenteed by the way, you can return with your receipt to redeem for time spent at the end of the year if you find the statements untrue). Hopefully I'll get a goodly chunk of writing down. Hopefully I'll have a better idea of what I'm doing in life by then, because right now I'm pretty happy working with music and getting some writing done here and there with the possibility of publishing it someday. I'll really really try and get a cell phone.... Maybe. I also have another story idea that I want to a go on, but the trouble is that I don't know many people who would be interested in the genre, so its difficult to get an outside opinion on the subject.

Ah well, here's to a year of lowered expectations.

No good? Anime resurrection vitality!

So I want to put this post up on Facebook, but its a weird subject and I'm not sure if it would scare people too much. So instead I'm going to put it on here first, the thing nobody reads because I never post on it.

The subject of the post is an anime genre near and dear to my heart: Harem. This anime genre is the sympathetic man's ultimate fantasy: An average, but kind and well intentioned guy is inexplicably (Aside from the course of back story events revealed later and some convenient plot devices) surrounded by a variety of attractive ladies looking to be his one true love. The truly great thing about this genre is that, while naughty things may flit across the minds of the guy (Depending on the show) he would never do any of them because of his general nervousness around women and the fact that he doesn't or can't like any of the girls more than the other because either 1. He's fairly clueless, possibly to an unrealistic level. 2. He's too conscientious and realizes that if he chose one he would crush another. The ladies are representative of every possible type of love interest: Quiet, abrasive, studious, good at cooking, scandalously young, energetic, childhood friend, etc. etc. The possibilities are endless! Usually the show will have one girl who is the obvious choice for the main character, but sometimes its two (Tenchi Muyo anyone?) or in this most recent case 3! By most recent case I am referring to "Shuffle!" a show I've recently been watching on Hulu. Having just gotten through episode 7, its finally past the stage of introducing all of our vital young heroes potential prospects and presenting a case for why the three primary girls are so incredibly ideal while introducing two potential interests on the side whom both present themselves as unrealistic ventures, but deep down, you the viewer know that you could write a wonderful side story about their happy future.

Now, you the reader may be asking, "Okay, so I get the surrounded by women part. But what makes this better than some perverted/ridiculous reality show?" Ah, but I have not mentioned the most important aspects of these stories: Back story and "Our hero the problem solver". The first important aspect is that our hero has some past connection with the girl. Most commonly the hero encountered her at some point in childhood and made a very strong impression by playing with her when other people wouldn't, or by comforting her at a critical point in time. The variety is nearly endless especially since the supernatural or psychosis is often involved. This plays into "Our hero, the problem solver" Men want to rescue the woman they love from a problem, so the reason these shows are so popular with men (Thats right, romance for men) is that our hero is presented with a near endless supply of situations to either make a girl feel better or help her out a jam culminating in an episode in which he handles some deeply rooted problem finding its origins in the past. Now, this isn't always how things progress, for example the series Rumbling Hearts was a very difficult series in which the fellow is torn between a girl he loved and feels responsibility to love, and the woman he loves now. Solving a problem for one girl almost always hurt the other girl so it was an interesting turn in the formula, or maybe I just tend to watch too many of these shows from the same company?

Now you might be saying "Why is this guy interested in these girls at all? Aren't they a huge bother with all their problems?" Perhaps, but usually at least one of them takes care of him in some fashion by cooking for him or giving him a place to live, and really how cold would a guy have to be to turn down the sweet girls when they're so appreciative for his assistance? Plus, like I said, they're all interested in him, so they're all ponying for position in their own way, either by attempting to cook for him (In older shows, a classic plot point would be both girls try to cook for him, and both of them suck.) or some other kindness. The best part is they're adorably innocent, so none of them, except for the one whose characteristic it is to be aggressive, make any sort of perverse suggestions. Ah..... Its such a wonderful fantasy world. There are really so many facets to it.

Now you're probably worrying "Hey, you don't live with some warped sense of reality do you?" Ha ha, no no, I realized that the romantic situations that occur in these shows are utter fantasy many moons ago. That doesn't mean they don't have some good pointers though! Plus they're almost always entertaining, especially the ones from Kadokawa! (Shuffle, Air, Clannad, and my favorite Kanon). And, what was it my Philosophy professor talked on once, something like an emotional purging or something? Given my generally stoic nature I'm better able to release strong emotions into these scenarios due to the fact that interesting stuff very rarely occurs in my own life. If I released strong emotions into my everyday life, that could get messy! Oh, and I forgot to mention the whole Moe thing (pronounced Mo-ae) which is kind of a heavily nuanced thing. It literally means something like "To burn" and its basically some character that you support very passionately, generally based on some characteristic such as personality or attire. When they fall down you cry "Get up!" when they're downtrodden you cry "Don't give up!" and you cheer for their happiness! This is the purest aspect of Moe as I understand it.

Ah, now some of the ladies might be saying "Hmmm, I don't know about this ideal fantasy woman thing...." Oh ho, you think there aren't similar programs for women? Perhaps not so abundant, but I assure you they exist, and, at least in America, the women are far worse than the men. (Little known fact, females could very possibly outnumber males in the anime fan community) And don't try to BS me that women don't fantasize about the ideal man, I've met too many Jane Austen fans.

So, now this little writing is through. Will I post it on Facebook? Maybe, maybe not, I'll probably let it sit here for a while and see what happens. Maybe I'll come back and edit some thing, add some pictures. (Sure would help if I had my own frakking computer....)

Bye-nee!

A week of confusion.

So, apparently this whole $700 Billion problem started last Thursday, and while its certainly not resolved yet, at least today on C-SPAN they clarified what exactly this whole mess is about, and then tonight the president gave a brief clarification in a format that people might actually watch. As one of the representatives explained it to Paulson "There are a small group of people inside the beltway and on Wall Street who understand what is going on. When you throw a $700,000,000,000 figure out to the general public without explaining yourself, thats when you get 85% opposition." I'm paraphrasing of course, but that was the gist of it and I thought "Yes, finally they'll clarify this nonsense!" And they did, sort of. I had to watch and read some more stuff, but it seems like (In case you don't know) all those nasty foreclosures and bad loans and other real estate garbage we've been dealing with for the past year finally reached a breaking point with companies like AIG and Lehman Brothers and Fannie Mae, etc. being the "First Dominoes" if you will. Its like one of those cool displays where 1 tips 2, which tips 3, and soon you've got this giant cool looking V in the middle of your lair. From my understanding, the government wants to buy a good chunk of the foreclosures and such (Thus giving these dying companies that glutted on real estate some money) and then sell them back later for more money. In theory it seems like a good idea, but there's no guarentee it will work, and if this fails we really will be screwed. If we don't do it, tthen it seems like a whole bunch of companies and banks will go under which will also hurt a lot of people.

So the way I see it, and I could be wrong as I'm no expert, is that we're definitely going to have problems if we don't do it, we'll definitely still have relatively lesser problems even if we do (Thats the great thing, it won't really fix the problem, oi) but there's a possibility that the money and strings attatched oversight of that money won't fix the problem. Or we could use a quicksand analogy: We could stay in the quicksand and hope we touch bottom, or we could grab this thing that looks like a vine, but might be a snake and either way we'd have to move around in the quicksand which is going to sink us faster before we can even try to grab it.

To modify a familiar phrase: "Damned if we do maybe damned if we don't."

Excuse me, Unlce Sam?

You want HOW much money to help these fools keep London Bridge from falling down? Uncle Sam, would you like to explain to me and 300,000,000 of my dear fellow Americans why we should keep London Bridge up? Because you haven't done a very good job of that. It seems to us like you and your friends are the only people that really use it. I certainly don't understand why we should be spending $700,000,000,000 to build a giant golden support beam that you say your friends aren't going to steal bits and pieces of a few months down the road because you'll watch it, but don't you have other more important problems to look at Uncle Sam? Aren't there some disaster victims in the south, some kids failing school and a myriad of other problems you need to watch but haven't really been doing a good job of? Oh, and isn't their that scuffle going on in a far away land that we need to watch, and couldn't this money support that since apparently we're supporting it anyway? Thinking on it, couldn't we basically buy enough food to feed everyone in the US, heck the world for a week or longer? Or couldn't we pay tuition costs for just about every student in the US? Couldn't we do a lot of things that make sense to those of us who don't walk up on London Bridge? Oh, sorry, that tastes a little like Socialism doesn't it? I thought it was just a "bailout" for more people or some sort of super-sized "stimulus package". My mistake.

Coincidentally....

So I realize that I usually change the picture every time I talk about a new media item and therefore I should have put up a picture about Spore. BUT Fallout 3 is coming out in like... 3 weeks and I think it would great if I just left the picture from a month ago up there until it came out because it should be just that good. Of course it won't be because the gameplay demos always show just a snapshot and you don't ever get to the point with them where you're wishing they would skip dialogue because you've heard the same person 4 times, but it was from 4 different people (If you take my meaning) or when you get tired raiding the same cave or ancient shrine that looks like its made up of remarkably similar pieces to the last cave or ancient temple you came through, just in different order. Oh yeah, there's that same gate. Oh the same glowing pedastel in the center of the room. Oh, more wraiths, didn't see that coming. What I'm referring to are some of the problems with the generally remarkable game "Elder Scroll IV: Oblivion". This is a great game, BUT when you play it for well over 100 hours like I did you stop talking to average citizens because they all have the same talking points, you stop exploring caves because they all have mediocre equipment strapped to skeletons guarded by giant rats and trolls, and you only go into the ancient temples because they have those shiny artifacts that the one elf looking guy wants and getting them all earns you an achievement.

I guess what I'm getting at is, I hope they got this sort of feedback from other people and were able to take the past nearly 3 years to change it so that I'm not hearing the exact same person in 5 towns across a post-apocalyptic ex-metropolis. The game will definitely be good for the short term, the first play through I reckon will resemble how I felt on my first two play throughs of Mass Effect (On the third one you start to see where your decisions do and don't matter, and that a lot more really don't) but we'll see how the long term gameplay holds out... At least until Fable 2 comes out 2 weeks after.

Argh...

Man I hate not having my own computer, its so inconvenient when you can't just download and upload whatever you want. Had I previously mentioned that my laptop died? Well, not died, but entered a state that using it was far more trouble than it was worth. So thats why whoever reads this thing has not been blessed with a new post in quite some time.

I got Spore, and its really quite excellent. Unfortunately I have to run it on a pretty old computer and so not only do I have to run it at minimum graphics settings (Which actually don't look to bad) but in the space mode things have a tendency to slow to a crawl or stop at really bad times. Yeah, being in the middle of a space battle where fast clicking is key and then suddenly your computer starts running 1 frame per 2 seconds.... Yeah, thats a problem. Especially when you're surrounded by 5 tiny agile ships that are constantly shooting you up! The only other gripes I have are minor: The tribal and civilization phase don't matter very much and are really only useful for obtaining some powers for the space stage, and the frequency that your own and other planets whine to you about being attacked gets old pretty quick, especially when you're in the middle of terraforming or something. Of course the true star of the game is the creature creator in which you can create a nigh infinite number of creatures. There are also several building and vehicle creators, but I don't find these as interesting as yet, because usually you're so busy playing the game to get your creature through to the space age that you don't feel like taking out the time to design 3 different buildings and 2 or 3 different vehicles. But in the future, after I've effectively conquered the space age, I may return and simply create some vehicles and buildings for fun.

But I definitely recommend it, though if you doubt its greatness you can always download the free creature creator demo at www.spore.com.

A dream?

Was it a dream? Or was it a terrible truth? No, I think it was a dream.

Anyway, I had a dream about some weird sort of cross over episode of Bleach and DBZ where Goku was attacking the Soul Society for some reason. I think maybe they had captured someone, or it could simply be because in my dream they were actually a group of bandits. Anyway, Goku was caught off guard and his powers were largely taken away along with his memories and made manifest into this weird man-wolf creature that was somehow more incompetent than Goku, but utterly loyal to this one member of the Soul Society. Goku meanwhile was put in with some of the lowly banditry, and it seemed like Goku still held some innate inkling that he was greater than he seemed, or at the very least he didn't act like the other bandits he was with. Then a scene opens on an underground store room and one of the higher up people is coming to check on the supply of "SPAM" or "Stuff Processed as Meat". Before he shows up though we cut to a scene of bandits in the store room counting food stuffs: "Er, we got some Bacon" "Thats SPAM" "And some Ribs" "SPAM" etc. etc. but off to the side Goku has found a pile of fresh produce and cold cuts and is making himself a sandwhich. And he's like "Hey guys, why are we eating that gross meat stuff? I'm making a great sandwhich right here!" And they're all like "What?! Hey, you can't do that!" And I guess they didn't get much water because next he was like "You know, once I was on an airplane, and this guy asked me something." All the bandits stop and ask "Eh, what was it?" Goku stands up and starts to break into a musical number like "Heeee asked me is I'd like some Waaater-" At which point the higher up bandit shows up and grabs Goku telling him to shut up. The bandit then takes Goku's sandwhich, takes a quick look around and leaves. And unfortunately my dream ended then but I'm guessing it then would have gone to some shot of the real guy in charge, who would be ironically short but unclichedly cool, and he would be thinking something like "Hmmm, looks like driving the Goku-ness out of him will be harder than I though...."

It was really great because it seemed like something Goku would have actually done in that situation... Not that any of my readers would know *Oh woe is me*.

Oh, and I leave you with a video that I also posted to Facebook which is probably the funniest thing ever created by The Daily Show: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3JR_Fvpy9o

Gomen!

Sorry its been so long since my last post, but my laptop kind of died and so I don't have my trusty favorites list to remind me to post on here.

A lot has happened since the Dark Knight came out (Seriously, that was last post). Lets see... I started playing Civilization 4, My brother got married, E3 came and went, Tarik got married, Nick Crew came to visit, Maureen got married, Georgia was invaded by Russia a little and there was that Olympics thing.

So, obviously I'm not going to talk about all of them, so of those I will touch on in order of importance...... I started getting back to Civ 4 with the Tutorial- .........

..............

........................................

Okay, so the internet has failed me by not providing me easy access to the kind of comedic image I wanted to post after that *Siiiiiigh* I'll make up for it at the end with an amusing video link.

Anyway, obviously the most important event was my brother's wedding, but I think all the people who read my blog were either there or have already seen the photos on Facebook that I put up and while it was fun I'll just rundown the highlights in Haiku: Aisle Dancing fun::Chocolate Fountain Tasty::Karaoke laugh. There you go.

So then, getting back Civ 4- What? E3? Well, I guess it is slightly more important. I personally think that the most important announcements came from the Microsoft press conference such as: New format for Xbox Live featuring Mii like avatars, the ability to stream Netflix over Xbox Live, AND Final Fantasy XIII will have an Xbox release! Now, at the time I said that that news took away 70% of my incentive to buy a PS3. However I then watched the Sony Press Conference and changed that number to 40% because I was reminded of games like "LittleBig
Planet", other releases related to Final Fantasy XIII and other various games like a network game called "Flower" that looks really interesting. However it still doesn't have anything that would make me want to put down money BEFORE Final Fantasy XIII comes out, or mid-2009 to those who don't follow a Final Fantasy release based calendar system (We're almost in the 2nd year of the 11th era by the canonical calendar which I just made up). Xbox 360 on the other hand has a grand release schedule before this year is over: Fable 2 is the big exclusive gun they're packing this fall (I'd equate it to an AK-47 or the Shotgun Mel Gibson uses in The Road Warrior in terms of potency) with an exclusive coming through Square Enix from a notoriously good company (Amongst those in the know) called Tri-Ace called Infinite Undiscovery. Now, the Square Enix brand name and shiny graphics might get some people, but honestly its exclusivity potency is like sticking a dagger on the tip of the AK-47 (Meaning it might hit a few people, but not enough to make it significant). Now if they had some how gotten console exclusivity of Fallout 3 (Which they may have limited exclusivity of, I forget) that would have been like M16 with grenade launcher attachment (Which might be a gun in the game...). Imagine if you will: Elder Scroll IV type gameplay, but they've had 2 1/2 years to make it better. Add guns, explosions, radiation mutants, the ancestry of a PC RPG legend, and set it in Post-apocalyptic Washington DC. Now, add to that some sweet innovative gameplay elements and some nice n' bloody cinematic kill shots = Fallout 3. Like I said, M16 with a Grenade launcher attachment. So yeah, pretty much all my gaming dollars go towards 360 this fall... Well except for Spore of course.

Hmmm, besides that the Olympics have been good, and I think that Georgia-Russia thing is starting to be resolved before I even got to join the thousands of paranoid bloggers thinking it would bring about WW3.

Alright, now about Civilization 4, in earliest times of man's- What, we're out of time? B-but, Civ 4! They aren't interested?! -_-.......

Oh well, I found this amusing video. Apparently there's this thing on YouTube about "Starfox Vs. Link" because someone hacked the N64 Zelda game and stuck an Arwing in it that Link destroys with a boomerang. Anyway, this is a Pokemon battle based on that which is somewhat predictable at the beginning but gets better:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B474p34-OxA

The Dark Knight is the Brightest Dawn.

Or, something poetic like that. Basically Dark Knight is frickin' awesome and there is no good reason to not see it. You don't like superhero movies? This doesn't feel like a superhero movie at all, this feels like "What if Batman were real." In the last one, Batman Begins, it had some fantastic elements: Secret Ninja Clans, Fear Gas, the VERY dark city. In this, everything feels like maybe it could happen. And The Joker is amazing. Even if they bring the character back later, everyone will say "Eh, he's not as good as Heath Ledger." And not just because he died, because he's just that good. I mean, I guess if you have some strange aversion to Christian Bale, or if you ascribe to some form of pacifism that extends to viewing acts of violence... Those might be good reasons not to see it. But aside from that I don't see why.



Also, something else VERY exciting: The Watchmen preview! Freaking Awesome. It looks so good. I'm not sure what they're going to do with it.... I mean they pulled off V for Vandetta pretty well, but Watchmen has a lot of back story.... As long as they run it over 2 hours it should be fine.



What else.... OH, the new Terminator movie about the time between the end of Terminator 3 (Thank God it ended) and the time John Conner sends his father back to save his mother from Arnold the Governator in the first movie. It looks pretty good, I'm hoping that it redeems the Terminator series like Batman Begins did the Batman movie idea (Honsetly, Dark Knight is so much more realistic in my opinion, that it makes Batman Begins almost like one of the first two.... Which isn't bad obviously, but by comparison of realness to... Atmosphere? I dunno.)

And there was a preview for "Quantum of Solace" 007 movie. I have no idea what "Quantum of Solace" is, or where you get one (Same place you get a Goldeneye and an Octopussy I guess?) It looks good, though its sort of an actual sequel to the last one which is kind of odd isn't it? For the Bond series? Ah well.

Next weekend the X-Files 2 comes out, and it should be rather good I think. I mean, it has David Duchovney, so thats all you really need to know I think.

Oh, on a final note there was a strange preview for a new "The Day the Earth Stood Still" with Keanu Reeves in it... It looks nothing like the original The Day the Earth Stood Still except that Reeve's plays a similar messenger alien type person and there was a snap look at a robot that looked like the one in the original. I dunno, we'll see I guess.

Last time on.... 24

Oh, wait, I don't watch that show. But I couldn't think of anything else good with 24, so there you go.

Anyway, I'm 24 now, or as of last Friday. I had a party- well, get together really, on Saturday. We ate pizza, played a little Rock Band, watched a couple movies (The Host and Southland Tales specifically). It was fun, but I wish a few more people had come as it was a group of people that I hang out with pretty regularly anyway. Not that there's anything wrong with, but it felt more like a normal movie night or something. Oh well, it doesn't matter. I'll tell you what DOES matter.

THIS is what matters. Yes, thats correct, the topic that might have 4000 comments by the time you read it (As compared to the usual 500-800 for a big story). Reading a scant few comments, it was pretty predictable: The PS3 owners were saying how this wouldn't affect their console at all because they are Playstation, 360 people laughed and jeered at this great blow to the PS3, and Nintendo people just kind of sighed as they sat off to the side with the console that is competing in its own private batttlefield... Against itself. So what is this great blow to Sony? What possible exclusive title did they hold in their posession like the Holy Grail of console sales? What else but Final Fantasy XIII. Yes, in a shocking upset, the Square-Enix rep at this years E3 event turned around as he was heading off stage as though remembering something. A trailer roles of largely new footage, ending with a shot of those few known characters from the new title and the industry shaking announcement that, for the first time ever, Final Fantasy would be released, not just on two consoles, but also in Japan, America AND Europe all on the same day. Sadly this means that 70% of my incentive to buy a PS3 (At its current price tag) is gone. However, as long as PS3 holds exclusives on FFXIII: Versus and Kingdom Hearts 3 they'll still have a pretty good hand... I just won't call until until they've raised the pot by bringing down the console's price.

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.