R-R-Random!? #2,don’t buy me a coffin yet.

Yes,I still liiiiiiive.But there’s no excuse for my lazyness,really:wish i could say stuff like “well,i didn’t post anything for 2 months because i was so focused into developing the ultimate cure for cancer” BUT it’s just not possible.The only partial excuse that i can find is that i have started writing a novel.I would have liked to join the NaNoWriMo challenge but 1) it was too late 2) i don’t have much apart from the majority of the characters and the setting right now.Still,i had these things floating in my mind since sometime ago so i finally decided to write ‘em down.They may be awful ( and a good bunch of them probably are) but hey,it’s not like i’m aiming to be the next Tolkien.

Now that my university has entered easy modo after the usual November-ish boatload of stuff ,my amount of free time has increased however,which means that i’ll post more often.Hopefully.I swear,i can do it dammit.

Now that my pathetic excuses and propositions are out of the way,we can finally talk business:let’s start with some animu.Umineko for example,though sadly there’s not much to say apart from “WTF am i watching” right now.

Ushiromiya Kinzo,after having marathoned 24 episodes.

My main issues with this adaptation? To put it simply:Awful pacing,low budget,subpar action scenes,randomly cuts epic parts or just leaves them out,forgets to describe what actually is going on the screen. Therefore,i can hardly suggest this series to anyone.If you can,play the SN.If you cannot,forget about this and move on,there’s plenty of anime out there that is surely more worthy your time.

Moving on,at least Darker Than Black 2 is awesome.

Some may argue that it’s inferior to the first season both in terms of pacing and soundtrack,but it’s nonetheless a good watch.Hopefully,this week Hei will kick some ass while wearing his old Batman coat and Suou will shoot things without having to go through her magical shoujo sequence everytime she pulls out that rifle of hers.

Last but least,Needless is going to end this week.

I suggest watching this if you want a Gurren Lagann-esque show (on a MUCH smaller scale) with plenty of  fanservice and funny moments:just be careful to switch your brain off before starting it.

Speaking of vidya,i can proudly announce that i’m now the owner of a 250GB PS3 Slim (which won’t be touched until Christmas because 1) it’s supposedly a gift 2) i would totally forget about everything else i’m playing at the moment and it wouldn’t be a good thing in the slightest).Suggestions about games are welcomed,the only one i have for it right now is Valkryria Chronicles and i’m up for pretty much anything as long as it’s not a 2D fighting game.Was thinking about Uncharted 2 or Assassin’s Creed 2 but there’s still time for taking a decision.

About what i’m playing right now,i’m focusing on beating Tales of Symphonia:Dawn of the New World on Wii this week.

The plot is laughable at times,and you can probably find this game on a dictionary under the word “Rehashing”given that that 90% of the locations are the same old ToS ones with a few changes and less blur,but it’s still a fun game to play.The battle system is the usual Tales of thing,there are plenty of different monsters that you can get in your party and the skits are nothing short of awesome,best ones i have seen in the series.

Another important thing is that i have recently discovered the Phoenix Wright series *insert HOLD IT! or OBJECTION! here*and i love it.

On Trials and Tribulations right now,for those that have played it i’m currently stuck on cross-examining Mr Kudo for the 2nd time.Randomly presenting evidence has NOT won me any points with the judge and has led me to resetting the game way too many times:hopefully i can beat this before Christmas.

I have also started playing Atelier Annie,which is not a bad game at all.

Characters are well-drawn,there’s plenty of voice acting and being a little girl that must synthetize lots of different things is actually pretty fun.Haven’t found anything blatantly wrong with it yet,still…the sheer number of cutscenes can get really annoying:go the shop,cutscene starts.Go to the library,cutscene starts.Get back to your workshop,and another cutscene STARTS.

Started playing this once,and after being cutscene’d 5 times in 5 different places i simply switched off the game and watched TV.It’s not that bad usually though and that’s why i keep going.

Well,that’s all folks! See you before Christmas for sure.

Press R To Review – Super Paper Mario

Super Paper Mario has a strange position among the other games in the Paper Mario series.  It’s only game in out of the three that’s not an RPG.  Unlike the original Paper Mario and The Thousand-Year Door, Super Paper Mario is a straight-up platformer.  Sure you can gain health and strength upgrades through points (experience), but I wouldn’t call them RPG-like since those are the only things that resemble an RPG.  You have no control over your upgrades and you can’t upgrade accessories like badges in the first two games.   Super Paper Mario has gotten a lot of criticism from people for not being an RPG.  It’s a bit unfair when trying to play the game for what it is.  It’s unfortunate,  because Super Paper Mario is a decent game on its own.   Note the emphasis on decent instead of great.   It’s easily my least favorite game in the series.

Let’s start off with the story.  In light of a recent kidnapping of Peach, Mario and Luigi go to King Bowser’s Castle to retrieve her, only to find out that Bowser was not responsible for it.  Of course, it had to be someone else.  It is revealed that the kidnapper is Count Bleck, a sorcerer who wields an ancient, prophetic tome called the Dark Prognosticus.  In addition to Princess Peach, he kidnaps Luigi and Bowser, and brainwashes Bowser’s Koopa and Goomba army.  He then employs the hypnotic powers of his right-hand woman, Nastasia, and forces the marriage of Princess Peach and Bowser in order to, as the Dark Prognosticus fortells, unleash the destructive power known as the Chaos Heart.  Count Bleck uses the power of the Chaos Heart to open an inter-dimensional rift known as “The Void”, will eventually grow large enough to engulf the entire universe.  It’s the type of evil plot that would make Exdeath from Final Fantasy V happy.  Mario meets a butterfly-like Pixl named Tippi, and a wizard named Merlon, who have come in search of Mario.  They inform him that he matches the description of the Hero, described in another prophetical tome called the Light Prognosticus, which is able to halt the impeding doom of The Void.  (Isn’t that covenient?)  To banish the Chaos Heart and reverse the destruction, the Hero requires the eight Pure Hearts, artifacts created from genuine love.  Mario and Tippi set off in order to collect the Pure Hearts and stop Count Bleck’s plan.

Flip this.

Paper Mario games aren’t exactly known for the strength of their plots.  They’re better known for the strength of the writing thanks to Nintendo of America’s excellent job on localizing the dialogue for North America.  The dialogue often makes inside jokes and references to other Nintendo games among other stuff.  It’s partly the reason why I enjoy Paper Mario so much.  Still, the story is fairly weak compared to the last two games.  In the first game, you were on a quest to find the seven Star Spirits in order to defeat Bowser, who had become invincible thanks to the power of the Star Rod.  In The Thousand Year Door, you were on a quest to retrieve the seven Crystal Stars and rescue Princess Peach from the X-Nauts, an alien species introduced in the second game.  Sure, both games had similar formulas, but at least the game made them interesting through the cast of characters you met along the way.  The first two Paper Mario games had a mix of both familiar and new characters that were interesting.  Who can forget the Rawk Hawk from The Thousand Year Door?  Sadly, Super Paper Mario doesn’t have an interesting cast of characters.  The supporting characters that join your party and the majority of the villains just aren’t that memorable.   Sure, there is the genius dialogue, but it doesn’t make up for the lack of interesting characters.

Fun fact: I went through the entire game without doing any stylish moves.

If the story is lacking in Super Paper Mario, then the game itself has to be good, right?  It is for the most part.  If you don’t compare Super Paper Mario to the first two games, you will discover that it is a very enjoyable game on its own.  The game is divided into 8 chapters, each with 4 stages.  In between each chapter, you will view cutscenes and get to do a bunch of stuff in Flipside, the overworld and main hub town of this game.  It is there where you can rest at an inn, buy items at stores, talk to the locals, and do other stuff.  The majority of the game takes place in 2D, although you can switch to 3D in order to explore areas and to solve puzzles.  Using the Wiimote like a spotlight, you can highlight and read the descriptions of items and enemies, or spot any hidden objects.   The catch to flipping to 3D is that you can only stay there for so long before you start losing health.  I understand the need to keep people from abusing the flip function, but I find losing health to be annoying.  There are times where I have to wait a bit for my bar to recover before flipping again.  It’s unwelcome when I’m trying to get through an area that involves a lot of flipping.  The same thing applies to when I have to flip to get around certain enemies, regardless of whether they can flip or not as well.  Even though the game was made for the Wii, the game makes very little use of the motion controls.  You hold the Wiimote vertically as if you’re handling an NES controller.  It’s probably a good thing Intelligent Systems set up the controls the way they were.  I don’t see it working any other way.  Pixls, or fairy-like characters, grant you the ability to do special moves like using a hammer, bombs, or turning sideways to get through obstacles.  In addition, you get to control Peach and Bowser in addition to Mario as your main character.  Peach can defend and float with her parasol while Bowser has double the strength of the others and can breathe fire.

Running through stages while really big is always fun.

The game has a lot going for it with the ability to flip from 2D to 3D and back and the ability to play as Bowser and Peach in addition to Mario, but the game suffers from one major flaw.  It’s way too easy.  There was hardly a time where I was on the verge of death and don’t recall getting a single game over.  The Paper Mario series isn’t known for being notoriously difficult.  If that is what you are looking for, you should seek a Shin Megami Tensei game, especially Nocturne.   The first two Paper Mario games weren’t exactly difficult, but they did provide enough challenge to keep me from getting bored, especially near the end of both games.   In Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, I leveled up as I should and did not run into much trouble until I fought the last boss of the game.  I had to upgrade my side characters, stock up on items, and literally everyman the Shadow Queen.  There was none of that in Super Paper Mario.  Like I said before, I could hardly recall a time where I was near death and don’t think I ever got a game over.  I managed to defeat a bunch of bosses just by spamming certain moves over and over with certain characters.  Especially the last boss.  It would have been nice to have some challenge of any sort.

The game looks visually sharp, so I have nothing to complain about here.  The worlds are bright and colorful and with the exception of a few levels, I was able to see where I was going.  If there was one thing I could do to improve this game in the visual department, it would be to take more advantage of the paper style of the game like the first two games, like folding into a paper airplane in The Thousand-Year Door.

The soundtrack is underwhelming for the most part and doesn’t really stand out in my mind.  A lot of the tracks make a throwback to the 8-bit era .  The music isn’t horrible that it causes rugburn to my ears, but it’s nothing spectacular.  Even though I finished the game a little over a day ago, most of the music blurs together and I have trouble telling a lot  apart.  I haven’t played the original Paper Mario in years, yet I can still recall certain tracks.  I couldn’t do that with Super Paper Mario.

I shouldn’t be comparing Super Paper Mario to the first Paper Mario and The Thousand-Year Door, but I can’t help it when the third game in the series shares a number of the same elements as the other two games as far as game structure and recurring themes go.   As long as I didn’t compare Super Paper Mario to the other two games,  I enjoyed it the most.  Just take the game for what it is.  Super Paper Mario is great if you need something that won’t make you rage or aren’t good at platformers in general.

Reach Out to the GAEMS!

It’s been a while, and I just feel like posting right now, despite not knowing what I’m going to be blogging about. Basically, the current school quarter is hell right now, and I just want to get through with it! Finals are next week, and hopefully I’ll be a lot more happy by the end of them! Next quarter should be better, only taking three classes, and one of them is a Japanese film and culture class, so basically, I learn about movies and stuff from Japan, and even get to watch them! It should be fun, I hope.

Anywho, on with the actual reaching out to the GAEMS. In the past couple of months of school that I have not posted on this blog, I basically have gotten a bunch of games and beaten quite a few. Of course the Get-Beat ratio is probably very very very very very very unbalanced, but at least I’m doing better in making some progress! Although I’ll probably never really get even close to beating Bak’laag like Wan-chan and Kyuko-chan are trying to do, I’ll try to at least thin out the amount of games I have to beat. Some really good ones too! I really want to replay some old games that I have beaten before though, but the fact that I have so many new games to just plain start just makes it hard to do so, sadly. Anywho, let’s talk games that I’ve beaten since Mana-Khemia 2!

I finally got to beat the second Ace Attorney game just days after beating Mana-Khemia! Not sure how I started playing that again out of the blue, but when I did, I just got hooked again! And I do agree with everyone that the last case was well worth getting through. It even brought me to tears~! Ahh, the wonderful friendship between Phoenix and Maya. It’s such a great thing!

A typical boss fight in Muramasa: The Demon Blade

I also DID end up beating Muramasa: The Demon Blade, as I had mentioned before. On the 22nd no less! Which is/was the day of BEAT for me. I’ll get into more details about that later I guess. The criteria for Muramasa’s beat was beating both Momohime and Kisuke’s stories. Some people just marked it as beat after beating one of them, but I felt that wasn’t right. I still have to get two more endings for both characters though, so I might go for the Complete eventually. Also, about the quality of the game, it’s a whole lot of fun! It’s not as RPG-y as Odin Sphere for sure, however it still was great slashing through all those ninjas and demons as Momohime and Kisuke, with the great variety of katanas. My favorite parts of the game has to be the boss fights though, like in Odin Sphere, they’re quite fun and difficult. Also, the fact that my favorite seiyuu, Sawashiro Miyuki voices Momohime is always a plus. The only flaw I found was in the localization, in which Ignition opted to only translate the JIST of the dialogue. I feel like there should be a whole lot more to the characters than what I read in the translations, especially since they kept the Japanese voices in, it seems like they omitted a lot of little details in the conversations they had. Knowing the little Japanese that I know, I did catch a few things that weren’t put down in the text that was said. So I was quite disappointed with that. I’m sure the original script was just as beautiful and deep as Odin Sphere’s. If only Atlus had done the job again… Heck, I think XSEED would have done a better job if only they hadn’t given the game to Ignition. They did the same with Arc Rise Fantasia, and now I’m afraid for the life of that game’s translation too. ;_; If anyone has played Nostalgia, please let me know of the translation quality!

I also FINALLY ended up beating Arcade mode in BlazBlue with ALL the characters. I need to get through the story mode still though, at least before Continuum Shift comes out here. With fighting games, it’s hard to distinguish when the game is beat. So, I guess I’ll just make my own judgments depending on the games themselves. If I feel like I can be good enough to beat Arcade mode with all characters, then that will be the beat, however, with games like SNK vs. Capcom 2, I think beating it once will be enough to be honest. The system is much too advanced for my RPG-mind. And I never plan on playing it very competitively anyway, or with friends, and if it’s with friends, it’s only for fun in the first place. *nods* Speaking of BlazBlue, I recently made a Noel lovebar!

No hat

358/2 Days Boxart

I also beat Kingdom Hearts: RE:Chain of Memories as well as 358/2 Days. RE:Chain became quite tedious to go through after a while, and Reverse/Rebirth was a pain because some of the decks that Riku gets just plain SUCK. (Stupid Wonderland Deck. ) It’s a good game nontheless, and the surprise boss that wasn’t in the original made me squeal like a fangirl! *ahem* Also, 358/2 Days was such a blast to play through, I just couldn’t stop playing it! The story was kind of lacking, but I still enjoyed it. Xion is pretty awesome too, in my opinion. I know a lot of people don’t like her and consider her a filler, but she was still pretty likable in my eyes. It’s a great game, and those that love Kingdom Hearts will most likely love it as well. Besides, Roxas > Sora. The game very much made me want to play Kingdom Hearts 2 again, and it seems a lot of other Backloggers felt the same way. I remember Noi and Noxie having it on their Now Playing lists after they beat Days. I would have too, if I actually had it with me at the time. XD

The last game I beat was Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time. I was in just a couple of hours away from beating it before starting it up again. I had no idea I was so close to the end, so it surprised me at how quickly I beat it! I mostly beat it to justify my purchase of Bowser’s Inside Story though, which I heard was ridiculously awesome, so I’ll get to it eventually. I can’t say much about Partners in Time because I can’t remember most of it, but the last stretch of it was pretty fun! I did like the game, and the writing was good as always for the Mario RPGs! I’m sure I’ll enjoy Bowser’s Inside Story quite a bit too, and hopefully I won’t stop in the middle of it and not play for 4 years and forget everything about it before coming back to it like I did with Partners in Time.

I got quite a few games over the past three months or so. Honestly, I really really shouldn’t have gotten so many. Who knows when I’m going to play all of them? I need to be stronger and actually RESIST buying games, especially the ones I don’t even plan to buy! Anywho, games I got since my last post: Tales of Vesperia (PS3), Metal Gear Solid: Essential Collection (PS, PS2), Persona (PSP), Disgaea 3 (PS3), Uncharted (PS3), Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days (DS), Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne (PS2), Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo’s Dungeon (Wii), Demon’s Souls (PS3, The Deluxe Edition), Banjo-Kazooie (XBLA), Shadow Complex (XBLA), Little King’s Story (Wii), Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of the Sky (DS), Tales of Innocence (DS), Romancing SaGa (PS2), Devil Survivor (DS), Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story (DS), Uncharted 2 (PS3), Atelier Annie (DS), Stella Deus (PS2), Left 4 Dead 2 (360), New Super Mario Bros. Wii (Wii), Metroid Prime Trilogy (Wii), Devil May Cry: 5th Anniversary Collection (PS2), A Boy and his Blob (Wii), Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles (Wii), and most recently, Pokemon Rumble (WW). Yeah, that’s a lot. And I STILL WANT MORE. Like RE1 and 2 for PSN among others. Also have Spirit Tracks and Crystal Bearers coming in next month, as well as AR TONELICO III(!!!!!!!!!!!!!) in January.  Bak’laag would be proud… I don’t know if that’s something I want or not though. Orpheon-sama is probably shaking his head as he’s reading this list going, “Oh Rar, you disappoint me.” too.  ;_; I’m sorry Orpheon-sama!

Speaking of Ar tonelico III… Once it was announced, I preordered as soon as I could have, and I REALLY REALLY want to get the Hymmnos Concerts and everything else~ *_*

I was too lazy to search for a screenshot, so I'm just using one of my sigs.

One more thing! I am near the end of Persona 4, reaching out to the truth! After months of Orpheon-sama begging me to play it, I’m finally nearing the end! It seems I won’t be able to max out six of the Social Links though, sadly. Those being Fortune, Temperance, Death, Hanged Man, Hermit, and Tower. *sigh* Oh well, there’s always a second playthrough! I’m going to try to get the True Ending! However, I’m going to consider getting the good ending as beat first, because well… Everyone else has anyway. Oh SMT, how cruel thou can be with thine enemies. Stupid Shadows costing me some hours of gameplay by killing me in the middle of grinding. T_T Oh well, it’s all the more gratifying when you blast through the dungeon I guess! Persona 4 is great fun, the characters are quite lovable, and the story’s philosophies on the way people think aren’t too far off from the truth. It’s quite interesting to think about actually, that’s probably why I like the Persona games though, they have very deep and compelling stories behind them.

Err… Yeah. I think that’ll be it for now. I kind of want to talk about my themes too, but I’m not sure if I should, or am allowed to or not. So yeah. XD

Well, thanks for reading everyone!

Shoot Outside of the Screen

This is going to be a somewhat unusual post, because unlike my previous ones, I’m not reviewing anything here. I’m introducing a new category to my portion of the blog, one dealing with whatever miscellaneous items I decide to put in. Kind of a long winded intro to a post that’s fairly simple by comparison, but oh well.

As the title might have clued some arcade-loving readers in, this post is about rail shooters, and my thoughts on them. I’m an avid fan of rail shooters. Absolutely love them and cannot get enough of them (not necessarily in one sitting. A lot of them tend to exacerbate carpal tunnel, after all). The title stems from one of my favorite video game series of all time, The House of the Dead (where the announcer prompts you to perform said action in order to reload. In the arcade ones anyway, on consoles you get a button for it. No idea what the Wii one is since I don’t have a Wii yet. Digression over). This post isn’t really about a specific game or series, though.

Light gun games evolved over decades of putting cabinets in arcades, getting player feedback, and refining. Something too easy would be removed, something too hard would be fixed. This went on for a while, but it’s come to a stop. Why? The advent of “next gen” graphics. Said graphics have utterly killed the rail shooter scene for the most part, and there are hardly any new properties being released in arcades as a result. The most recent this blogger can think of that’s arcade-specific is The House of the Dead 4 Special or maybe Time Crisis 4, though the latter received a port to the PlayStation 3. I mention that port for a very specific reason: it failed commercially, due to the utterly ridiculous peripheral released with it, the GunCon3. I own the game and GC3 and can safely say it’s a hassle to set up and the calibration of the gun is virtually impossible due to the small LED reading lights required for minute portions of the game being extremely fickle. Couple that with the second weakest entry in the series I’ve played, and you have yourself a bit of a problem.

Rail shooters are by their nature usually very difficult or of only average difficulty (it’s a rare one that is legitimately easy), and as such once the game is cleared, there’s generally nothing else to do. The player was guided by the hand through the game, and unless it offers branching paths like some The House of the Dead games do, there’s little else to explore in the game. Short length and lack of replayability serve to make developers shy away from this sort of game, especially considering arcades are hardly frequented as they used to be and consoles are much harder to develop for than they used to be, what with how complex games are nowadays.

The one saving grace for rail shooters is the Wii. It gets a lot of flak for having a seemingly endless stream of rail shooters intermixed in the hardcore games it gets, with titles like Ghost Squad, The House of the Dead: Overkill, and Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles (and soon Darkside Chronicles!) standing out in particular. People I know don’t seem to like the Wii because of this, they want more games like Super Mario Galaxy or Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Hardcore games? Well, sure, but the debate between hardcore and casual is something else entirely. My problem is people seem to want the genre to die and then turn around and hypocritically claim they wish arcades weren’t losing so much business, etc.

The rail shooter is a dying breed, and gamers are the only ones who can keep it alive. If you never liked a rail shooter, I’m not asking you to. If you do like rail shooters, I ask you to support them, in arcades if you have them nearby. All that’s left are games that have been released already and are just having cabinets shuffled around by this point. BlazBlue, a single game, single handedly rekindled the interest in fighting games for many people. Let’s work toward a similarly influential rail shooter.

Welcome to the fold, Raven.

It’s been a while since my last post, but school has been rather hectic; nonetheless I apologize. For those who have taken a good look at my backlog, they’ll notice quite a few Armored Core games. In fact, they’ll notice every single Armored Core game released in the US is in the backlog! Why is this being brought up? Well, naturally, the subject of today’s post is Armored Core 3 Portable. AC3P was released to Japanese audiences in late June 2009, and was very popular among the AC fans over there, being one of the premier titles of the series. Many were expecting no US release (including myself) and were surprised to find it available in the US, albeit exclusively as a downloadable game via the PlayStation Network, at the pretty low price of 14.99 USD (the Japanese release on UMD retails for the equivalent of $45).

Armored Core 3 was originally released in 1998, so one might consider this release pretty terrible if you went off that alone, but the game was and is still quite amazing. The basic premise of Armored Core games is to custom build your own giant mecha (the titular “Armored Core”) and to pilot it in a variety of single player missions following a usually bare-bones story, engaging in AC vs. AC Arena matches, and going head to head with other players. AC3 stands out as one of the better plotted games in the series, but if one compared it to virtually any story-driven game, AC3 looks like crap; these games are not really meant for story, but it can certainly be compelling. I myself have written much on the stories of the AC games, and there is much room for fanfiction considering the variety of characters and complete lack of actual people in the game (literally, no human ever appears).

The gameplay of every AC tends to vary slightly, but AC3 unlike a lot of the other games is pretty balanced, allowing for many different part combinations to be used in your AC: there’s no shortage of parts, considering ACs are composed of as many as fourteen separate parts and there’s minimum half a dozen parts in any given category (there are some parts, like the CGP-ROZ generator, that are simply the best, but these tend to be rare and often are the internals, which nobody likes worrying about as much as they have no visual effect on your death robot). Not much has changed in terms of gameplay from the original release of AC3: there are new parts, eleven in total, some of which are new such as the CHD-GLITCH head, and others which are remakes of parts from previous AC games, such as the MLR-ZMX hover legs (from AC2 and its immediate sequel, Another Age). There is also additionally a new Arena opponent from the Dengeki Hobby Magazine novelization of Armored Core, but unfortunately he is laughably easy to defeat (he does net you quite a bit of money, though!).

Controls and graphics are some of the biggest gripes people might potentially have with the game, but surprisingly, they work wonderfully. There is some mild input lag, but nothing serious (I was able to easily complete the entire game in less than a week, only ever being annoyed at the controls once), and initially the placement of buttons is a little suspect (triangle and circle serve to raise/lower view, when it was originally the L2/R2, and the D-pad received weapon switch, core functions, extension functions, and left arm functions/item activation). The button combo eventually makes total sense and one can use it quite easily, although it can sometimes be awkward to use a laser blade with D-pad down when your thumb normally is on the analog stick to control your AC, but it does work.

As for graphics, I was expecting some good stuff since the previous Armored Core PSP game, Formula Front (which, by the way, did get a US release on UMD) used the Nexus era graphical engine, which is in turn an enhanced version of the AC3 engine. AC3 does not disappoint and has staggeringly well detailed environments, at the sacrifice of resolution and antialiasing (things aren’t too bad, but occasionally things will be jaggy, perhaps about as often as it happens in Crisis Core). Texture resolution is additionally toned down, but considering those can be toned down without any real change in gameplay except for one mission where the resolution is a bit clearer, it’s no big deal. There is slowdown occasionally, but it takes a good bit happening onscreen; I only encountered slowdown in two missions, one featuring a total of 3 ACs and an MT with heavy particle effects, and the second featuring 2 ACs and a handful of smaller enemies, but extremely detailed water processing plants. I expected to see slowdown elsewhere but was pleasantly surprised I did not.

The AC games have always had great sound, but AC3 and Silent Line (the immediate sequel) are by far my favorites of the series in terms of music, featuring a very organic set of synthetic sounds, giving the regular rhythms of what would alone seem mechanical a more lifelike and pleasing sound, perfectly tuned for lighthearted or thematically dark moments. Sound effects are of course well done. The game also has a staggering amount of voice acting (all mission briefings and all dialogue in-mission is voiced, mail and Arena information are the only narrative elements not voiced), and incidentally it is identical to the PS2 release. FROM Software, the company behind the AC series, bought the old translation and voice work from Agetec, the original AC localization company.

Overall, AC3P is a great port of a great game, and at the current price it’s an excellent buy. Additionally, Silent Line Portable (JP: November 2009) and Last Raven Portable (JP: March 2010) have been announced for some time, and FROM bought the translations to those as well, so one can expect to see them stateside as well. I’ll be sure to buy and review them when the time comes. Till then, Raven.

I Have These Games To Play

Remember how I posted that rant about my week from hell?  I ended up going to the hospital that night.  A combination of stress, lack of sleep, and not eating enough was what did me in.  Not a good night at all.  I decided to go to sleep after finishing my blog that night, but I went to the bathroom before going to bed.  I sat on the toilet and soon before I knew it, I passed out and landed on the floor.  I don’t know exactly how long I was out for, but I guess it was about half an hour.  The scary thing was that I was the only one awake on my floor at the time.  So I woke up in a cold sweat and sat in the bathroom stall for about 10 minutes before crawling out of the bathroom.  I tried to walk back to my room, which wasn’t very far away from the bathroom, but I couldn’t make it.  I woke someone up with my shouting while I was out and got him to call public safety.  I then had two options: I could sleep off the rest of the night and go to the health center the next day or go to the hospital right away.  I decided to go the hospital.  I ended up staying in the emergency room from 3:30 am to 11:30 am.  Thankfully, they didn’t find anything wrong with me.

If there was one thing I got out of it, it was that I really need to look out for myself more often and change some of my habits.  I now eat 3 times a day, try to go to bed earlier than I used to, and do my homework so it doesn’t pile up at the last minute.  This means I have to cut back on some of my gaming time, though.  Also, I’m no longer writing match descriptions for the Anime and RPG Tournament Leagues on Foxkei because I don’t have the time to do it and I really need to take it easy for the rest of this year.  Thank you to Scion_of_Life for taking over for me.

When I do get the time to play video games, I have this little problem:  I have nothing to play but RPGs.  I burned through most of my other games during this summer, September, and a good part of last month.  I’m actually busy with homework this year compared to last year, so I don’t always have the time to play RPGs.

I was talking with a friend at lunch on Sunday and I was telling her about my problem of having nothing to play but RPGs.  She suggested that maybe it wasn’t a bad thing after all because I can pace myself and set aside certain hours to play through them.  I never thought of it that way before.  Usually, when I get advice about gaming in college, it’s to stay away from RPGs as much as possible.  I see where people are coming from when they say that, but I love my RPGs too much to not play them.  With games like Viewtiful Joe or even The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, I would play them for as long as I could and not stop until I was ready to give out.  With Viewtiful Joe, this wasn’t a problem since I beat the game in 5 hours on Kids Mode, but Wind Waker was another story.  Near the end of the game, I decided to do a no sleep until clear.  Problem was, I had to get enough Rupees to buy the Triforce Maps needed to get the Triforce Pieces.  Even with the assistance of a guide from Gamefaqs, it was very time consuming.  By the time I got to Ganon’s Tower, it was 5 am.  At that point, I had two options: go to bed or stay up and beat the game.  Mind you, I was up all of Saturday night and was on a roll, so I went with the second option.  I stormed Ganon’s Tower, fought all the bosses, and made my way up to fight Ganondorf.  The fight was fairly easy and I dealt the final blow.  It was now 7:30 am.  There went my Saturday night and my normal sleep schedule for most of next week.  I would feel like crap for the next few days, but it was worth it to beat Wind Waker about 7 days after finishing Twilight Princess on the Wii.

I wouldn’t do that anymore because I’m trying to improve my sleeping habits.  Right now, I’ve been focusing all my attention on Tales of Symphonia.  I’ve been pretty good about putting time aside from that game since it’s very easy to find places to save.  It also helps that there are plot synopses to remind me where I last left off.  Why can’t more RPGs have that feature?  I try to get in at least an hour a day during the weekdays given that I can get my homework done in time and have nothing else to do and give myself a lot of time during the weekends to make progress.  So far, it’s been going great and I hope to move on to Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door once I finish Symphonia.

For those of you in school, how do you handle playing RPGs?

The Week From Hell

I’m in the middle of the week from hell.  Things have been really rough for me and I’m ready to snap.  I could have gone on a massive rant of sorts on Twitter, but nobody wants to see a Twitter flood.  I might as well rant about my life on a blog post.  That’s what the Masters of Unlocking is here for me to do.

So, where do I start?  I’m currently a junior at Lafayette College.  I major in History, which means that my workload is fairly easy compared to some other people.  I have time to play a lot of video games whenever I’m not studying or doing other things.  I can also put aside time to watch anime since I no longer go to anime club, but gaming takes priority for me.  I usually give myself enough time to study for tests and get my homework done.  I pulled one all-nighter and did a few no sleep until :B: so far this semester.  Sure, I have to deal with psychology and the lab, but it’s more time-consuming than tough.

Things seemed to be working fine for me until this weekend.  I had this thing called Fall Break the week before last week where I didn’t have class on Monday and Tuesday.  Most people went home to spend time with family and do other stuff.  Seeing how Florida is home for me and I’m currently in Pennsylvania, there was no point in me flying all the way back home for so little time if it wasn’t a holiday or something like that.  Thanksgiving is a whole different story.  I could have spent the time to get caught up with a lot of homework and stuff, but I didn’t.  I spent most of break chilling out and playing video games.  It’s something I do best.  I could have seen a movie or two, but I used part of my time off to get my car fixed.  You see, my 2004 Honda Civic was having car problems.  I had trouble accelerating and struggled to drive up hills.  I thought I was having engine problems, so I brought it over to a car repair place.  They told me that I was having transmission problems, so I took my car to a Honda dealer.  It turned out that a bunch of animals got in my car this summer and chewed on the wires.  My car now runs like normal.

Last weekend was when things went to hell for me.  My parents came up to visit me this weekend, which meant I wouldn’t have time to do a lot of other things that needed to be done.  I didn’t get any homework done on Friday.  I don’t blame myself for not getting anything done that day, but still.  I should have spent a good amount of time on Saturday getting that work done, but the FFVI marathon stream distracted me and prevented me from being productive that day.  I had a great time at the stream and talking on Skype, but it would screw me over for the rest of the week.  The stream was worth it, though.

So I actually started doing work around 1 pm on Sunday.  Shit, I had a lot to do this time around.  Let’s see, I had some reading I had to do, write a 3-5 page paper that was due on Monday, study for a Japanese and Psychology test for Monday, and get psych lab stuff ready for Tuesday.  I did the reading that afternoon, the paper that evening, and stayed up late studying for two tests I should have prepared for far longer than I started.  I only got 2 hours of sleep last night because I decided to have a coffee specialty drink at 8 pm to help me get through my work

I manage to wake up the next morning.  I take my first test at 9 am.  I finish it.  I go to my next class at 10 am.  I take another test.  I finish it.  I go to my last class of the day at 11 am.  I manage to stay awake during that time.  I got to see my parents one last time before I had to drive them to the airport to drop them off.   I spend the rest of the afternoon working on some stuff for Psych lab.  I tried to get some other homework done, but my body gave out on me by 7 pm.  So much for getting other work done.

I wake up around 8:30 am today.  I feel like crap, so I stay in my room and start up Symphonia, which was the only free time I would actually have for today.  I walk over to my history class at 11 am, the first class I have for today.  After that, I grabbed a quick lunch and made my way over to psych lab around 1 pm.  It wasn’t too bad, but it was time consuming.  I usually get out at 3 pm, but with the way things were this week, I got out around 4 pm.  I didn’t have much time to do a lot of homework while my body was still functioning.  I tried to get a lot of stuff done, but again, my body gave out after 7 pm and I lost the motivation to do anything.  I studied for a geography quiz and thought I was done, but no, I have a pretty big assignment I have to do for Japanese for tomorrow.

I lost myself.

I could have snapped and let out a blood-curling yell, but I got a hold of myself and counted to 10.  I lost any motivation I had left to do anything.  I should have called it a night and gone to bed right away, but I made this blog post.  I knew I would lose important hours of sleep, but if I don’t write this now, I’ll never write it.  Part of me tells me that it was my fault that I brought this all on myself, but another part of me says that it couldn’t be helped.  To think that it’s only Wednesday.  I’m hoping Thursday and Friday don’t bite me in the ass.  It’s the last thing I need right now.

Maybe my sleeping and sleeping habits have something to do with this.  I usually go to bed around 12 to 2 am and wake up around 8 to 10 am.  I usually get something to eat right before class by grabbing some snacks (banana, muffin, cereal bar, etc.) and a bottle of orange juice.  I would eat at a dining hall or at the food court, but the food isn’t good enough to be worth waking up for.  I eat lunch at 12:15 and eat dinner around 5:30 pm.  I’m really picky about the food at the places where I usually eat, so I don’t eat as much as I should.  Usually, I’ll have pasta and a sandwich for lunch or dinner if I don’t like anything else I see.  This is sometimes followed by dessert, usually ice cream.  I eat much better on the weekends, though, and generally eat more food.

It is now 1:40 am.  I’m now going to bed.

I hope my life goes back to normal by the end of this week.

On Anime Club

This blog post should have been a really long rant about my college’s anime club.  I would have gone on and on about how I don’t like the lineup and why I no longer go to club.  People I talked to on AIM, MSN, and Twitter never heard the end of it from me.  I was in the middle of writing a lengthy post so I could organize all my thoughts in one place without having to tell the same story over and over, but I ended up writing way too much for my own good.  Why write something that will hit 2,000 words when I could say everything in a few paragraphs?

I was pretty active in my school’s anime club during my freshman and sophomore years.  The way the club functioned was that we would choose 5 shows to watch for the rest of the school year.  Every week, we would meet in a classroom and watch all 5 shows on a projector screen.  Half of the shows were comedies and the other half were dramas and action based shows for variety.  The lineup was arranged so that people could come and go as they wished.  This was how the club functioned in the previous two years.  It worked out well and I liked the other  people who went to club because they were polite and not very rude.  We didn’t have problems with people talking nonstop during shows.  Sure, some people would shout out a word or a line, but that was about it.

This year, things were different.  The shows were picked in a strange way unlike the way we picked shows in previous years.  The majority of the club voted on Library Wars, Ergo Proxy, and Axis Powers Hetalia so that they were put in the lineup from the very beginning.  Since we weren’t going to vote on those shows during the first meeting, we didn’t see the first epiosdes of all three shows during that meeting.  That left three remaining slots to fill up.  We had three of six shows to pick from, the six being Rozen Maiden, Kuroshitsuji, Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Champloo, Nabari no Ou, and 07 Ghost.  Voting was set up so that we had these choices:

• Cowboy Bebop vs. Samurai Champloo
• Rozen Maiden vs. Kuroshitsuji
• Nabari no Ou vs. 07 Ghost

Cowboy Bebop was something that everyone in the club has seen at least once, so I didn’t want to see it again.  I went with Samurai Champloo since I’ve never finished that show.  Rozen Maiden was a show I thought I wasn’t going to like, but grew on me after finishing the first episode.  I wish I voted for that instead of Kuroshitsuji, a show I ended up not caring for.  I tried watching Kuroshitsuji this summer, but I stopped after the fourth episode.  The last category was a lose-lose situation for me because neither show interested me.  Nabari no Ou had the potential to be good, but it was meh.  I was glad the club dropped the show because I hear it gets disappointing later on.  I didn’t find 07 Ghost to be much better than Nabari no Ou, so I voted for the show I disliked the least.  The three shows that filled the remaining slots in the lineup were Samurai Champloo, 07 Ghost, and Kuroshitsuji, which joined this year’s lineup with Axis Powers Hetalia, Ergo Proxy, and Library Wars.

Aside from the disappointing lineup, the one thing that’s annoying me about club this year are the new club members.  They are pretty rude and don’t know when to shut up.  I can understand when people make comments during certain parts of an anime, but they should better than to keep talking loudly.  I go to anime club to watch anime, not to hear annoying commentary from people.  A few of my friends had to leave club early for this reason because they made more serious shows like Ergo Proxy unwatchable.

I don’t go to anime club anymore because I’m unhappy with the lineup and can’t stand annoying people who ruin enjoyment of certain shows.  I’ll probably go back to anime club once I catch up on the shows I like so I can watch them with other people, but that’s if some of the annoying people in the club learn to stay quiet more often.  If not, I’ll just watch anime on my own.  It’s as simple as that.

R-R-Random!? #1,it really is.

New blog post from me,this is quite an event.I know i should be more active,but my university gave me a number of books i have to write stuff about and i really don’t feel like writing a lot in my free time too.Anyway,this incredibly useless (or awesome,depending on your POV ) corner is about what i have been watching/playing/doing lately so feel free to either enjoy my ravings or to run away from this as fast as you can.
Starting with anime,Valkyria Chronicles is finally over this week.

I swear,if i wasn’t constantly making fun of this with someone else i would have dropped it by episode 5 or so.Think of something angsty,and this anime has it.Think of some rushed plot point that is poorly conveyed,AND THIS ANIME HAS IT.I think i’ll give it a 6 anyway in the end because it’s decently animated,the story is interesting and i liked a few characters,but had i played the game first i’d have probably given it a solid 4:there are lots of changes from what i know,and i cannot name a single one that improved the story.
Moving on,i have started watching CANAAN again thanks to Arc who gave me some motivation to finish it.I’m only on Ep 6 so far,but things are becoming even better than before thanks to some delicious Liang-Ji insanity.

In the above pic,she is detonating remote-controlled bombs.Planted at an anti-terrorism conference.Gotta love that attitude of hers,i tell you.

Last but not least,Umineko.

This week will feature my favourite moment ever,so i’m anticipating the incoming episode quite a lot: there’s a high chance that DEEN will screw it badly though *cough likeprettymuchanyothereventsofar cough* but i’m keeping my fingers crossed.I was surprised by how good the new OP has turned out so maybe,just maybe, things will turn out just fine.

Vidya-wise,the only relevant news is that i have started playing Devil Survivor.

So far it’s pretty awesome i think,lots of choices to make and routes to end up on.The change from the usual JRPG system turned out well,story is interesting,graphics are fine.It doesn’t help that i’m finding more than half of the female cast to be terribly annoying though,and that the only decent one went ranting to me about her lifelong HUGE problems 10 minutes after meeting her:if this keeps up,i’m seriously considering going for a BRO end.
Also,it’s a SMT game.I love this series but terribly hate it at the same time too every now and then, because of the usual trolling which is even more deadly in a SRPG like this one.What’s the point of planning carefully a team if every member of it gets randomly frozen by a single Mabufu thrown by an enemy 5 levels lower than mine? Subsequent rape,Game Over.Bah.

On a completely unrelated note,i wish i had someone motivating me to play Wild Arms 5 by the way.It’s objectively a good game but i never feel like turning on my PS2 for it and instead get stuck in endless Melty Blood VS matches which incidentally yield no progress at all,for the joy of Bak’laag.

Tha’s about it,i guess.Next news from me will be probably in the Ah-nee-may corner for a quick review about Valkyria Chronicles or Umineko,so see you later.

The Anime and RPG Tournament Leagues

Starting with this post, I will be spotlighting all sorts of stuff and tell people what they’re all about.  Tonight, I’m going to cover the Anime and RPG Tournament Leagues, two character battle tournaments that run side by side that are currently run in a small forum known as Foxkei.  In this post, I will explain what both tournaments are all about, how they work, a bit of history behind the tourneys, and why you should consider participating in both of them.

The Anime and RPG Tournament Leagues are two character battle tournaments run by fellow Backloggery member SnakeEyez on the small forum Foxkei.  They are character battle tournaments in that people vote based on who would win in a fight.  This is different from a popularity contest like the character battle held on Gamefaqs during the summer.  The Anime and RPG Tournament Leagues are run three times a year: January to March, May to July, and September to November.  Each season starts off with a nomination phase, where anyone can sponsor an anime or RPG character of choice.  There are no restrictions on sponsoring, so nominations are open to everyone.  The nomination phase closes after a month or whenever the roster gets filled up.  Up to 31 characters can be sponsored for either tournament on any givevn season.  After the nomination phase comes the actual tournament.

The tournament phase lasts for about six weeks.  31 characters enter the tournament and fight each other in matches until there is one person left standing.  Characters are randomly put in brackets at the beginning of the season to make the fights more fair.  2 matches are held at a time in both tournaments, four matches lasting 48 hours.  People vote on a character based on who would win a certain match.  You have to write at least 3 sentences explaining why that fighter would win so the vote can count.  If you’re up to it, you can write out a story vote, which has to be more than 500 words.  Your vote will count as 2 votes instead of one.  At the end of the match, whoever has the most votes moves on to the next round.   There are several conditions for winning, only one of which has to be met:

1. The opponent is killed
2. The opponent is knocked out of the arena
3. The opponent can no longer fight
4. The match reaches the 30 minute limit and the match is determined by the fighter with the least amount of damage taken.

Tiebreakers are determined by SnakeEyez.  There are five rounds: 1st round, 2nd round, quarter finals, semi finals, and finals.  A Wild Card Match takes place at the end of the first match.  Basically, the 31st character in the tourney will have to fight a Wild Card character, someone who lost a match sometime during the first round and is randomly chosen to have a second chance at fighting.  Who knows, that one fighter may make it all the way to the finals.  In Anime Tourament Season 2, Lucy (Elfen Lied) lost against Seijuro Hiko in the first round and was picked as a Wild Card Character.  She won the Wild Card match, won round after round, fighting Seijuro once again and defeating him this time, and advanced to the finals, where she lost against Vash the Stampede.  Whoever wins the finals earns the title of champion.

What makes the Anime and RPG Tournament League different from other tournaments?  There are a number of things.  The first and most important one is that once a character wins a tournament, he or she can no longer participate in the League.  Fans will be happy to see their character of choice win a tournament, while those people who would rather not see a certain character constantly participate in the tourneys will be happy not to see their faces again once they become champion.  Such characters include Uchiha Itachi (Naruto) in Anime Tournament Season 7 and Cloud Strife in RPG Tournament Season 4.  If a character participates in a tournament and loses a match, he or she will have to sit out the next season.  This keeps certain characters from dominating the brackets.

As far as characters go, anyone is fair game.  There are only a few things to keep in mind as you pick a character.  First, he or she has not participated in the previous season or is a tournament champion.  Second, the character should not be so powerful that no one has a chance of fighting against him or her.  If anyone has an issue with a certain character, it’s usually decided through a poll.  There are some people who will pick joke characters because they would like to see how he / she / it would do in a tourney, even if that character has no chance of winning. One person sponsored Magikarp for the RPG Tourney and Sukamon (the turd Digimon) last season and the one match that each character was in ended up being one of my favorites.  Just because you sponsor a good character doesn’t mean that he or she will easily win a tournament.  Anything can happen.  There was the one season in the Anime Tournament where Hao Asakura from Shaman King was on a winning spree, taking down Syaoran (Tsubasa Chronicle), Kyosuke (SoulTaker), and Rukia (Bleach) before being defeated by Major Kuseanagi (Ghost in the Shell: SAC).  Then there are some characters who are picked over and over because they’re so popular with people.  Some noteworthy characters include Jessica (Dragon Quest VIII), Major Armstrong (Fullmetal Alchemist), Major Kusanagi, and KOS-MOS (Xenosaga).

If you’re looking to be active in the Tournaments beyond the matches, you can write cutscenes.  These are stories written by different people to help flesh out New Alexandra, the fictional city where the tourneys take place.  These cutscenes explore the characters who currently or previously participated in the tourneys as well as the goings of the city.  There’s an underpaid and overworked person who works at registration desk and has to put up with all the people who want to participate in the tourney.  What do some of these fighters do when they’re not in matches?  That’s why the cutscenes are there.

The Anime and RPG Tournament League have a history spanning five years.  The tourneys trace their origins back to 1up.com, when SnakeEyez set up a club called the Anime Tournament League in late 2004.  It was the first tournament club of its kind on 1up.  With the help of a small but active group of members, the Anime Tournament League experienced a successful first season with Vampire Hunter D as the champion.  The Anime tourney was so successful, an RPG Tournament League was set up by SnakeEyez with the first season running at the beginning of 2005.  Again, it was successful, with Auron winning the finals.  The Anime and RPG Tournaments were run side-by-side for the first time during Season 2 in late 2005.  Both the Anime and RPG Tournament Leagues would go on to become one of the longest and most popular clubs on 1up.  For 10 seasons from late 2004 to early 2009, 1up hosted both tournaments.  This May, the Tournaments were moved to Foxkei, a small forum largely made up of former 1uppers like myself.  Season 11 saw a lot of success on the forum and it looks like the tournaments are there to stay.

Why should you participate in the Anime and RPG Tournament Leagues?  You get to see which characters from the Anime and RPG multiverse would win in a fight and vote on those matches.  You may learn about new anime and RPGs you never heard of before.  Most important, it’s a lot of fun.  Even if you don’t plan on voting on any matches when the tournament phase begins, you can always sponsor a character.  All you have to do is sign up for Foxkei.

Season 12 is underway and is currently in the nomination phase.  You have until the end of this month to sponsor a character of your choice.  Be sure to read the rules and FAQs before you do anything.  Also, check the Season 11 tournament boards to see if a character was picked this past season.

Anime Tournament League

RPG Tournament League

I probably won’t be as active on this blog for the next two months because I’m going to help write match descriptions for some of the characters to inform people who they’re going to vote for.

See you over there.