| Resonance of Fate |
[16 Nov 2009|03:55pm] |
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The title almost sounds like it should be a Castlevania game.. Anyway, check out this 6 and a half minute trailer of an RPG coming out early next year for 360 and PS3. There are so many RPGs out these days that it's hard to keep track of what's actually good. This one looks promising, and the combat seems to involve a ludicrous amount of sidewards diving before shooting. It does look awesome though.
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| ANIF'09 |
[03 Oct 2009|11:48am] |
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Two weeks ago I went to Sydney for the weekend to see A Night In Fantasia 2009, which is a performance by the Eminence Symphony Orchestra where they play music from videogames and anime. I've been wanting to go to an event like this ever since I was in highschool, and it was finally something I could do!
( Our trip )
The trip itself was super fun and I'll definitely do it again next year if Eminence decide to do ANIF'10 (they skipped ANIF'08 last year do to the Drums of War recordings for Blizzard).
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| I need a bigger vocabulary |
[14 Sep 2009|11:07pm] |
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Scribblenauts just came out. It lets you type almost anything and it will appear in the game. I don't actually know what the goal of the game is, but apparently there are over 22,000 nouns you can type into this game. Watch that clip if you ever wandered whether Cthulhu would beat God armed with a shotgun riding a skateboard..
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| "I hope it's not THE END for me" - Snake |
[21 Aug 2009|07:29pm] |
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With the announcement of the PS3 Slim, I suddenly feel like I need to have one. I was originally happy to hold off because Final Fantasy 13 had been announced on the Xbox 360, and aside from Heavy Rain and Metal Gear Solid 4, there wasn't really anything exclusive to PS3 that even remotely interested me. Anyway, discovering that almost everyone who plays Street Fighter IV owns a PS3, I feel as though I don't want to be the only one left out, not to mention that I'm also a consumer whore. So in an attempt to justify by purchase, I decided to finally finish Metal Gear Solid 3. I picked up this game on release day, because I loved the MGS1 and 2. Unfortunately the original release had a huge camera issue that was apparently fixed in a subsequent release. I gave up playing through it in frustration because I couldn't see past a few meters from Snake and once the alarm went off, it would take forever for the guards to calm down before I could blindly ran into another sentry and repeated the whole process of hiding inside a box again.
Since I didn't have the updated version of the game, I thought I might as well play through the game in ultra easy mode just so I could see the story. Thankfully the game gave me an 'EZ Gun' which made me almost invisible and also knocked people out in one shot. This seemed alright, and I ran through a majority of the game until I met the boss 'The End'. The game so far seemed a bit slapstick, but wasn't anything crazy retarded like Metal Gear Solid 2 which went insane immediately after you took control of Raiden. That thought went out the window as soon as I saw this guy. In every scene you see The End leading up to this boss fight, he is literally sitting in a wheel chair fast asleep with a parrot on his shoulder. Ok, I didn't really think much of it at the time, but you find out later that he's a master sniper. When you enter the scene, you're in a dense jungle that consists of 3 massive maps. He's literally dead on the floor, and resurrects himself for the fight. Ok, I could handle that too. Then Snake says that it's a battle of endurance and that he'd outlast a guy 100 years old. Then you get a phonecall from Eva telling you the old man will last longer because he's PHOTOSYNTHETIC. Ok, part tree anyone? Then you're told he has almost supernatural camoflage and can also regulate his body tempurate so your infrared goggles won't work!
I spent ages running around randomly through all three maps trying to find the stupid old man, and he wasn't shooting at all, so I thought the game was bugged. Eventually Snake started to starve so I decided to give up finding the old man and went to hunt a goat to eat (yes seriously). While I was getting ready to shoot the goat, I heard the old man snoring. Yes, he was even more bored than I was of this fight and had gone to sleep instead of trying to shoot me in the head. Then while I was trying to shoot the goat, he woke up, he shot me, then threw a flash grenade and ran off while I was blinded. Yes. Best fight ever.
I'm told that if you saved your game and waited a month before playing again, he'd starve to death. But I wasn't willing to wait one month for this. I'm sure if I had the newer version of the game with a better camera, this would've been entertaining (maybe), but for me it was like running through a forest while staring at your feet. Let's hope Metal Gear Solid 4 is better.
I did manage to kill him in the end, and he turned into a log. I am not kidding.
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| Tomenasannaa! |
[18 Aug 2009|07:40pm] |
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Yet another game to add to the growing list of weird/retarded games coming out on the Wii for only the Japanese market. The game only involves pressing one button (every button on the wiimote does the same thing) and I guess you just press it at the right time so your salaryman will get to the finish line faster, where he will then break out on the dance floor!
I also noticed the title is written in katakana. I wonder what the title is even meant to mean, and what language it's supposed to have come from?
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| AVCon '09 |
[28 Jul 2009|09:11pm] |
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AVCon'09 was the first year for the convention to be held at the Convention Centre, rather than at the uni. There was always something cheap about having it at the uni, so I was looking forward to it this year. I went with the guys last year and the anime they had on show was terrible and the entire event was boring, so I was feeling a bit reserved this year.
( I had an awesome time!! )
Anyway, they said that this year's AVCon was a hell of a lot bigger than they had expected and next year will be even bigger! I can't wait to play in the tournaments again! I was originally upset that they weren't showing any decent anime, but instead it gave me a chance to enjoy the other side of the con and in the end, have a much better time! I also made some new friends to play Street Fighter IV against!
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| Monkey Island! |
[25 Jul 2009|11:00pm] |
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When I heard that they were releasing a new series for Monkey Island (Monkey Island Tales) I was super excited, but not as super excited as when I heard they were doing a remake of the original Secret of Monkey Island! There were screenshots released, and I was immediately dissapointed because Threepwood looked odd, and his movement was very rigid and lifeless. What I actually forgot was that my memory was filling in the blanks and the original was actually really badly animated (the rereleased game features a button that lets you switch between the original and new art any time you want to). Anyway, here's 2 comparison shots. The original art looks terrible, whereas the new art seems reminiscent of Disney. I quite like it.
Original:
Special Edition:
Also, today was AVCon09 (Anime/Videogames Convention). I wasn't excited about it because I normally only go to the AVCon to watch anime screenings, which this year was sorely lacking. I did take part in the Street Fighter IV tournament though, but I'll write about it tomorrow once I get all my photos together. Needless to say it was a totally awesome experience, especially when people I don't even know, walk up to me and ask if I was that E.Honda guy.
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| Movies and stuff |
[18 Jul 2009|09:19pm] |
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It has been a while since I last posted things so here goes:
20th Century Boys - I said a while ago that I'd watch the movie and comment on what I thought compared to the manga. My concluding thoughts are: don't watch it. I actually got bored while watching the movie and had to stop. They decided to do a different angle, starting at the middle and then having one of the characters talk about what happened at the beginning. This completely ruins the suspense because you already know what happens! Also, in the manga, it is very easy to tell who is who when they do flashbacks, whereas in the movie, they have to use different actors, which made it a lot harder to recognise people. Another problem is that some things only work in manga, and seem ridiculous when done live action. There were bits in the manga when I thought 'gee, this is creepy and messed up', whereas when I saw it in the movie, it just made me cringe because it was embarrassingly bad. It was all round pretty average. Just read the manga.
Agatha Christie's Great Detectives Poirot and Marple - I've always had a huge love for mystery and detective shows. After watching Detective Academy Q, I've been starving for more. I stumbled across this one, and thought it'd be alright (no, the Agatha Christie episode of Dr Who did not influence my opinion, haha). Basically they used her books as a basis for the mysteries, and then created an original character who follows Poriot and is related to Marple, allowing them to skip between the two characters, letting them solve various mysteries. The art is a classic style and the music is orchestral. I strongly recommend this one if you like older anime, but done modern, if that makes any sense at all.
AVCon - The Adelaide Anime/Videogames Convention is coming up. Last year's convention was extremely boring, but I was hopeful this year will be better. Unfortunately I had a look at the schedule and I am pretty certain this year will be even worse than last year! Oh well I have to go because I feel that once I stop going, I'm officially embracing the fact that I am old.
Harry Potter - Wow. I wasn't expecting to like this movie, and I'm easily one of the last people who should be liking it. I've read the entire series, and I actually found a majority of the characters to be annoying. I hate how everyone is so fickle and one moment they love Harry and then the next minute they want to crucify him. Someone told me it's realistic, and if that's the case, I have to conclude that I hate all of humanity. It's odd that Hogwarts is portrayed as such an awesome school to go to, but it's actually full of annoying a-holes. Anyway, a friend told me that the movie contained very little magic, and focused more on highschool life/romance than the story. When I heard that, I thought I was guaranteed to actually hate this movie. Instead the script writers threw out most of the important scenes, and the conflicts were reduced to 10 minute scenes at most, so nothing had enough time to get annoying (eg Ron winning Quiddich for the team and then becoming arrogant, and also the lovers quarrel between Hermoine and Ron). Overall it reminded me of a weird shoujo drama, making it acceptable in my books. My only gripe is that they didn't bother doing the flashbacks involving Harry's dad being a jerk, and also that the major plotline of trying to beat Voldemort was reduced to a minor side story. But still, shoujo drama! Now that I think about it, I probably liked it because it wasn't faithful to the original source material. It also probably didn't help that I pictured all the deatheaters as fumbling clowns in dresses when I read the books.
EDIT - "The stately halls of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft are reduced to a series of bolt holes in which students make out between classes; it's like Beverley Hills 90210 on broomsticks."
Harry Potter's hormones spell trouble in Half-Blood Prince
Also, once again The Spill does an accurate review (also hilarious).
EDIT 2 - Haha oh wow. I didn't see Order of the Phoenix, so this was the first movie I'd seen with Luna Lovegood in it. When I read the book I assumed she was a pasty, skinny and weird looking girl, not someone that looks like Evanna Lynch. Then I was surprised when she started talking and spoke exactly how Luna should've spoken. I thought that she did a brilliant job pulling it off, until I just saw an interview with her and she speaks like that normally. It's like she was born to play that role!
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| Chaddar monk |
[10 Jul 2009|06:53pm] |
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Darths and Droids
Easily the best thing to ever happen to Starwars. I can confidently say I enjoyed that more than watching the actual prequel movies. Basically some folks did a whole bunch of screenshots of the movies and turned it into a comic about some guys playing D&D in a Starwars setting. Complete hilarity!
I also noticed in the archives that you can pick different languages, including Dutch, Spanish, Pirate and Zero Wing.
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| Indestructible! |
[09 Jul 2009|12:17pm] |
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Before Street Fighter IV came out for the Xbo360 and PS3, Capcom released a series of 'aftermath' videos, showing what happened to various characters after the story of Super Street Fighter 2. They also announced that an anime movie would be released together with Street Fighter 4. I got really excited because all the aftermath videos were awesome.. I got the guys to come over and we loaded up the anime movie, and it was terrible. None of the scenes from the aftermath clips made it into the movie, and for some reason the animation quality was really low as well. Capcom are still releasing aftermath clips though, so maybe they'll put it all together into an epic series later.
Chun-Li, Guile and Cammy (I really like this one)
Crimson Viper + what happened at the end of SF2
Ryu and Akuma
With this much effort, it really doesn't make sense that they didn't release it in any form, not even as extra unlockable videos in the game itself.
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| I think I'm officially old.. |
[29 Jun 2009|11:16pm] |
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I was talking to my 6 year old nephew today about what shows he liked on TV, and he said he loved Ben 10. I've never even watched it before. So instead, I pulled out my Pokemon tv series collection (Season 1) and made him sit down and watch a bit of it. He didn't seem all that interested though. I ended up downloading the first episode of Ben 10 instead and watched it for myself. It's surprisingly not bad. I expected something a lot more annoying, but I'd say it's aimed at an older age group than Pokemon was. Considering how completely awesome Avatar: The Last Airbender was, I'm willing to give this one a chance.. Although I wonder how long that'll last.
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| Going back to the classic gameplay |
[28 Jun 2009|04:02pm] |
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This is the trailer for a new game coming out called Trine. It looks amazing! The gameplay is sort of reminiscent of the Lost Vikings by Blizzard years ago on the SNES. You control 3 characters and need to switch between them to solve puzzles. The best part about this game though, is that it supports 3 player co-op! Yay for co-op! I'm also loving the music. There are a lot of creative games coming out nowadays with really good music. Braid is an example.
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[28 Jun 2009|12:41am] |
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I saw Transformers 2 tonight. Ughh... I think I can understand how the Trekkies that got upset about the recent Star Trek movie feel. See this movie if you wanna see all your favourite transformers sodomized by Michael Bale.
Don't get me wrong though, I accepted that it wasn't going to follow the original storyline. Heck, I loved the first movie. But this one was total trash.. The story made no sense! Oh well, that hype train crashed and burnt badly.
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| Goodbye Tenchi |
[19 Jun 2009|08:01pm] |
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About 2 weeks ago my dog (Tenchi) was diagnosed with Cushings Syndrome, meaning she had an over active adrenal gland that was pumping too much cortisone into her blood. We started her on a medication called Lysodren that would essentially kill off parts of the adrenal gland and we would adjust the dose until we got to a maintenance dose with the right amount of cortisone in her blood. Things were going well and she did start to look quite a bit better, but then suddenly last night she was puffing. I was considering taking her to the emergency ward, but then thought that since they didn't have her blood background, it wouldn't be that useful compared to going to the regular vet. I did keep an eye on her and she did settle into sleeping.
This morning my mum was knocking on my door and said she had passed away. I was torn and didn't know what to do. I was immediately hit with the burning guilt that I should've taken her to the hospital last night. After calming down, I found my voice and called the vet and organised an appointment to get them to have a look at her. The vet showed me the blood tests that we did only 3 days previously, and said that it wasn't the medication doing it (which is what I was afraid of originally, thinking I was somehow neglegent with my dosing) but because her cortisone levels were still at a point that was causing stress on her body, namely her heart. It seems she passed away in her sleep, peacefully and without pain. When my mum had found her in the morning, she was sleeping in her favourite position (corner of the room, on her left side), so at least we knew she wasn't in pain and squirming around until it happened. I also asked the vet about whether they could've saved her that night and she said based on what happened (the heart just stopped beating), she said not likely, so that gave me a measure of peace.
We said our goodbyes to Tenchi at the vet and she was taken away to be cremated. I still feel a vast emptiness inside me.. I don't know about other pet owners, but she was pretty much like a little sister to me and it's easily the worst feeling I've ever experienced to find her this morning. I always knew that she would eventually die, nothing is forever, but I always pushed it away assuming it would be later.
EDIT - Yes, my sister named her after a very old anime, and we originally thought she was a boy when we got her as a tiny baby.
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| The post-manga blues |
[16 Jun 2009|09:38pm] |
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I've finished 20th Century Boys, and also the 21st Century Boys manga as well (which is actually just a direct continuation). I'm in awe at the story telling in this manga. Every scene had a purpose, even some events that happened while the characters were talking about other things. It all came together in the end. Although I have to say that towards the last few chapters, things did get a bit too outrageous. All things considered though, this series was utterly amazing. Take my advice, don't see the movie until you've read all the volumes (24 of them I think?). I'll probably watch the movie this weekend and judge it for myself, but I really don't think a movie is enough time to cover everything in this manga, and you really need everything to appreciate this one.
Also, I noticed on the back of the last volume, the artist thanks the readers for being faithful for eight years. I read it in 4 days. I think I would have gone insane waiting in anticipation for the next chapter..
Gee.. Given the lengthiness of that manga, I really grew attached to all the characters. What do I read now?
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| Awesome manga! |
[14 Jun 2009|09:16pm] |
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For the past two days I haven't been able to tear myself away from reading 20th Century Boys. I originally avoided reading it simply because of the title. I don't really know what I expected, but I assumed it would be lame. Instead, I am surprised by a psychological mystery thriller that I can't stop reading. The description I read on the net basically said it was a story which shows the actions of the past and the consequences in the future. That does kind of describe the basic premise behind the story, but it is so much more, oh so much more. Everyone has to read it. Seriously. I can't actually say what it's about without ruining most of the enjoyment in discovering what is going on, so yeah, check it out people!
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| Modding |
[13 Jun 2009|07:00pm] |
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So for the last few days, I've been hit with random dizzy spells, and just when I thought I was better, I managed to finish a whole day of work before going home and nearly falling over after walking through the door. Anyway, a package arrived and inside were my Sanwa arcade buttons, and I thought 'whatever' and got up despite my tiredness and modded my badly made arcade stick into a much awesomer stick (note this is not the Street Fighter 4 Tournament Edition Fightstick I bought, but a much crappier one I bought a year earlier). Now my Hori EX2 Fightstick has the same buttons as the Tournament Fightstick, making it infinitely better. I also threw a new picture over it to make it look better too. The picture turned out a little dark, but it's still nice.
Not bad eh? The job wasn't anything too difficult, just a bunch of desoldering and soldering.. I also needed to file the holes to make them slightly bigger. I also didn't use sticky lami-label paper, so I had to poke holes in my picture and put the screws through them (which wrinkled the artwork a bit). The instructions are here incase you happen to own a Hori EX2.
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| I'd like you to meet a boy called Milo |
[07 Jun 2009|01:57pm] |
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I'm very skeptical about this. This is being brought out by the same group that did Fable 1 and 2. When Fable 1 came out for the original Xbox, they said it would have over 80 hours of gameplay and would feature a fully living world. So why did I finish the game in only 5 hours? Then Fable 2 came out and they raved about how lifelike the dog was and again, another fully living game. The dog just followed me and very often walked through walls for no reason, and don't get me started on how the interaction with the towns folk involved just scrolling through my emotes list while they applauded. Anyway, this could be possible, but I don't think it is just yet. Well, one can hope I guess.
EDIT - Ok, now this seems blatantly not possible.. The bit where the boy holds up his skateboard and says 'scan' screams of false advertising. I like the facial recognition though, that is cool. 2:20 looks like something you'd expect to see in a sci-fi series.
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| "Have the sewer rats stopped eating me yet?" |
[25 May 2009|08:41pm] |
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Yay for fun Youtube videos of Dungeons & Dragons. Last night I was hunting for videos of other people's games so I could see how their Dungeon Masters spoke. Of course most of them involved bad camera work, incessant giggling and really really bad jokes. In the end I found a few gag clips which actually were more informative than the real videos. This one made me laugh.
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| Gamer |
[22 May 2009|11:29pm] |
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I only just found out about this movie. It's about playing deathmatch, only you control a real person who is on death row. Gee.. Doesn't that sound a bit familiar? Oh yeah Deathrace had the same story (except that instead of basing it on Unreal Tournament, they based it on Mario Kart). Deathrace was awful, but I had a hilarious time watching it, so maybe I will like this movie too.
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