This is an archive of my blogs from 1UP.com, which I'm told will delete old blogs once a certain limit is reached. I couldn't bear the thought of my ickle blog babies being destroyed, so here they are - for all eternity, MWAHAHA!
Expect to see the life and times of an Englishman's experiences in Japan and gaming. Plus anything else I like. Me hopey you likee! (^_^)
So it's been quite a while, but here's a little response to Shaolin Steele's stupid signs/product names in Germany. They're not particularly rude, but I find them amusing:
Here's a classic; a well known brand of men's toiletries here in Japan.
This isn't Japanese, but I saw it in a Japanese pet store and it's funny, so it must be included!
Here's something on an apron I saw in a shop window. I'm not sure if this is supposed to get you excited for apples or for some "juicy time" with the wearer...
And to finish up, here's some general lunacy and mauling of the English language in an optician's:
Next time, I'll up some mad Super Mario pics as well as some other mad crap I came across recently. Happy Halloween!
Oh, please yourselves, to quote Frankie Howerd. (^_^)
Yeah, I haven't blogged in ages, because of the usual stuff, yadda, yadda.
Well, Halo 3, a.k.a. known as the Second Coming has happened. Millions have seen the ending. Billions of hours have probably been spent by people splatting Spartan or Covenant with the Gravity Hammer in multiplayer. Hell, even Japan got a virtually simultaneous release! And yet... there's something wrong with this picture... oh yeah, I'm still waiting for me copy of Halo 3 to arrive! I doubt it's the fault of Play-Asia, as they sent my order out on the day of release. Maybe something got futzed while my game was in the post. Could be, what with the privatisation of the Japanese Postal service happening this week! Who knows? I just want to join in on the Halo fun with everybody else. Guess I'll just have to make do with Devil May Cry 2 from my Pile O' Shame till it arrives...
If you're reading this Alexandra, hopefully I'll see you on Waitlo 3 soon! (^o^)
I can't be the first person who's wanted to race around in a craft like those from the awesome wipEout series. I wonder, though, can this video be for real?
It seems as though a company is looking to sell something that's getting closer to making that dream a reality. Although it's far from wipEout or even what the developer of this flying car is eventually aiming for, I think even at the much slower speeds this car flies at, it sure would be awesome to zoom around in.
Also, who cribbed from who? The guys at Koei Canada who made Fatal Inertia:
or the boffins behind the flying car mentioned above:
I've been pretty engrossed in other stuff like the recent Transformers movie hype and even more so in all things Harry Potter, so I'd collected quite a few unplayed demos from Xbox Live. 20GB being the gaming equivalent of having a shot glass to drink a pint of Ye Olde English Best, I decided last weekend it was time to play some of these damn demos and get them off my 360's hard drive!
First up on the chopping block was Project Sylpheed. It's been out in the shops here forever, but only recently released in the States. So now Japan gets the demo, too. Huh. Well that makes sense... And people wonder why 360 does so great in Japan (^_^).
I never bothered with Sylpheed when it came out here last winter because it looked like just another anime style cheap cash-in like all those simple 1 on 1 fighters or mecha games that BandaiNamco have been churning out the factory since the Dawn of Tiiiiiime. It's actually a fairly decent, sped up version of Colony Wars with an attractive coat of anime paint. The controls are complicated, but practice makes you less of a Monkian. I probably would buy it were not for Sylpheed handing me my ass back all the time. It takes a lot of practice and retries to figure out what weapon does what, and you can't carry all of them at once, so restarting the mission is required till you can try them all out. It's also hard to tell who the smeg is who in the melee. It's great that Squenix have created these massive space battles, but more needs to be done to make it easier to distinguish targets from friendlies. Maybe I'll pick it up if it's half price. Come to think of it, it probably already is considering how popular 360 is here in Japan!
Do you want to delete this content?
Yes <----
No.
Oh hell yeah!
Next up... Stranglehold, a.k.a. Hard Criscoed a.k.a Charlie Chan and the Creosote Factory. Screw Gears of War (actually, screw GoW anyway, it's not bad, but it is vastly overrated), this sets a new level for just sheer background detail. In this Hong Kong backstreets demo level, there is a megafuckton of shootable objects, market stalls, neon kanji shop signs and scaffolding. The hero, modelled on Chow Yun Fat, is a detailed 3D character but with textures that appear to have been roughly sewn on, similar to (but not quite as obvious as) a patchwork quilt. Probably it's just an odd side effect of the pits and grooves they put on him to make him look worn and dirty. And what's with the graphics engine making him appear to be covered in creosote?!
I thought this was going to be a stupid Max Payne clone, but it's actually pretty cool. I initially laughed at how Tequila bum slid over every fricking' object at waist height - I'd get confused by the sudden acceleration of ass sliding over tables when I didn't intend to, try to change direction and end up repeatedly sliding the opposite way and back again! Could have used that as "looped" footage for a music video with scratching in it!(^_^)
The ludicrously over the top gunplay was satisfying once the controls are gotten used to. Tequila Time was especially fun, as it recharges quicker than the shoot dodge meter in Max Payne. I soon had the hang of shooting and diving, and it made me feel like God in this game. It'd be great if they made a DLC level (or maybe it's already in the full game as an Easter egg?) of the final hospital duel from the original movie Hard Boiled, but at full speed (you go into slo-mo when you use Tequila Time).
That. Would. Blow. My. Mind.
With white doves flying in the foreground...(^_^)
A definite buy, but I'd rather wait for the limited edition PS3 version which I heard has Hard Boiled included. Unfortunately, that means missing out on Achievements! I also need to be able to actually afford a PS3 first! Babies are expensive...
Delete.
Hmm... Viva Pinata demo... well, I just bought the groovily-packaged Limited Edition Asian version on the cheap from Play Asia last month (haven't played it yet, but it was half price, so I had to get it whilst it was on sale!), so not much need for this demo. But I had a quick look to see what it was like in Japanese (I have a habit of hoarding dual versions of games sometimes so I can compare localisations!). Oh. It autodetected my 360 menu settings and set the demo to English... hmm, nice graphics! And a regional British accent... Don't see that everyday in video games... Delete.
4 more to go... let's try... Stuntman Ignition. When I hear the word "stunt", I often am reminded of something that scarred me for life when I was a child - the bearded cross dressing shenanigans of comedian Kenny Everett as his character Cupid Stunt.
Love that name(^_^). Anyway, Stuntman. I remembered the previous games got mediocre scores, so I ignored them, though the idea of trying to drive the prefect stunt sequence through a movie set sounded like a great idea. This was a fairly good demo, with 2 or 3 stages, one seemingly ripped off from based on the execrable movie Volcano. Or Dante's Peak, take your pick. The car drives like one from Ridge Racer in grip mode, so no 360 spins without trying really hard! It's easy to miss a spot or a skid you have to drive through, so I soon earned "fuck up points", too many of which force a restart. There are also some instant "death" restart points, too, such as landing the car in the lava floes. Whoops! (^_^; Overall, not bad, but not fun enough to make me want to buy it when there's Halo 3, Bioshock and Metroid Prime 3 around! You're outta there! Delete!
So, Blazing Angels 2. Didn't play the first, and I don't think I missed very much by not doing so. The demo was pretty fun, but like Sylpheed, finding targets in the murky countryside, amongst the trees or against the dark blue ocean was sometimes frustrating, especially in the final escort mission of the demo, where you essentially have a time limit (i.e. kill everyone before the flotilla you're escorting gets mullahed). Fun singleplayer for a "free" demo, but multiplayer was boring as hell. Few players over a wide open deathmatch area = falling asleep at the stick! Delete! Now!
And then there were 2... next was Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Liked the movie a lot (even went to see it twice!), despite the disappointingly numerous cuts made from the book (GRRR...). Wow, 1.3GB demo. Must be a pretty long demo, right? Wroooooong. EA, if you're going to make such a humangously(sic) huge demo, please, please, please for the love of (insert religious preference here!) don't put a 5 bloody minute time limit on it. That's just plain asinine. I literally only had enough time to float a couple of school benches around with Wingardium Leviosa, play a quick game of gobstones (but not really get what what I was doing) and walk into the Great Hall before the demo timed out. That's barely enough time to get the controls down, let alone get hooked on the game. I doubt there are many people who haven't already decided if they're going to buy this or not before playing the demo, but 5 minutes for such a large download is ridiculous. I know I'd like to go into the shop having played enough to know I'm buying a game I like, even though I probably would buy this anyway, Harry Potter whore that I am. As it is, despite the good reviews, I think I'll wait to get it 2nd hand or at less than half price to lower the risk. In the meantime, I'd love to replay the demo but for that fucking crass time limit... DELETE!
Last one! Phew! And it is... Beautiful Katamari. I wonder if the Japanese title is pronounced the same or has it been changed to the more common in Japanese "beautifo-". I love the Katamari series' style. Crazy music and characters, quirky, Kubrick-esque graphics... but what's so great about the gameplay? It's kinda fun rolling sundry crap into a huge ball for 3 minutes... but over the course of an entire game? It'll take more than this demo to convince me. Sorry King of All Cosmos, you're a funny, spandex outfit wearing dude, but... delete.
Sweet. 13.6GB free. Nice!
Thanks for reading this far. I know it was a long journey!(^_^)
Don't go breaking my arm... I won't go breaking your arm...
So a French guy, a Korean guy and a Japanese guy walk up to an Arm Spirit arm wrestling machine from Atlus to prove their Muscle Bob Buffpantsness and promptly get their arms broken! No joke! According to a local TV report and this article I found afterwards, Atlus have had to recall their Arm Spirit machines since the accidents happened in three different locations, including my town, Fukuoka. Kinda trumps getting Wii Tennis elbow as a Hardcore Gaming Accident, huh?
I suck at rhythm action games. But I love 'em to bits! So, like the half-Chinese-half-no-rhythm-honky that I am, I go into a rhythm action game like a lamb to the slaughter! I think my penchant for music games started at uni, around 1997. My friend Shaolinsteele had picked up Parappa the Rapper and, despite its short length, its quirkiness and happy go lucky atmosphere charmed everyone watching, especially me. Soon after, through our Japanese contacts (namely a dorm full of Japanese girls come to learn English and this Earth thing called "kissing" - the Man from Del Monte, he say "YEEEEAAAAH!"), Shaolinsteele and I got our grubby English meathooks on Beatmania and a little gaming gold nugget called Bust A Move (you may know it as Bust A Groove because the Puzzle Bobble series had already inexplicably nicked the Bust A Move name for itself in the West, even though you don't bust moves in Puzzle Bobble. Hmmm...).
Bust A Move (BAM) had a gameplay system that I still don't fully get to this day. That's how much of an unco I am at the rhythm action genre! But I still had fun trying to outdance my rivals on each stage by tapping out the onscreen directions to the correct beat. The beat was flashed in the background of the box that displayed the directions or buttons you had to press.
Get the rhythm right, and you'd school your opponent with your own character's dance moves. Flub it and you'd get served!
The main reasons I have fond memories of this game are the game's sound, the character designs and the fun evenings I had with my friends while playing BAM. The concept of dance-offs, if not the actual execution, was easy to grasp and the characters were varied, running the gamut of cool, cute, anime sexy, funny, kitsch and downright "Huh? WTF?" bizarro.
As for the sound of the game, it was just as varied as the characters, as each song was made to fit the character and stage it went with. Every song was catchy and written to express the personality of each character. I have to admit liking a lot of the genres of music included in BAM, which obviously helped win me over. The attractive graphics, the music, the characters, the whole concept fitting together like bacon and eggs is why I still think about BAM now. I even listen to the soundtrack sometimes, even though it's dated as hell!
So, anyone else have any memories of this game, good or bad? What about it did you love or think sucked? I gots to know!
I'll leave you with some clips from the game, starting with one of my favourite characters, Hiro, because I'm a sucker for 70's disco (^_^):
Hey there fellow Nerfherders, how you coping with the summer heat? Is it as bad as it is here in sweaty ol' Japan? Every day I'm torn between wanting to go out because it's so bright, and staying home because I know I'll be drenched in sweat within 15 minutes because of the humidity! (>_<) Mrs. SoloNerfherder, I assume because she has my Danish in her oven (^_-), is feeling the heat even more. We've got the fans and air conditioner on at full blast and she still says it's hotter than a sauna on the Sun! Managed to finally finish Prey on the 360. It's not very long or difficult, but there were other things taking up my time, as usual (^_^; Luckily, an all nighter on Friday night got me to the end. I'll write something about it soon.
Here's some interesting clips I found trawling gamevideos.com this weekend:
It's always nice when one of your video game series is reduced to so many cardboard-looking sets tuck together:
I can't tell if this is for real and is just crap, or if this is a parody.
My bet is it's for real. Oh dear, big LOLs, etc.
Here's another hilarious vid. Double entendre-tastic!
I'll leave you guys with this one. This amazed me, someone has gotten a NES emulator working on an iPhone already! Looks like it needs some tweaking before it'll play well, though.
Any G.I. Joe fans here? I watched G.I. Joe The Movie, or Action Force as I knew it when I was a kid, a few days ago. I was a bit of a fan as a kid, Transformer mania having died down a little in the UK in the wake of Transformers The Movie bombing and the 3rd season of the TV show losing its way a bit. Nobody liked Rodimus Prime over ol' Oppy, I guess!
I decided to look up the G.I. Joe movie because the hilarious G.I. Joe public service announcement parodies from a couple of years back rekindled my interest in the original series. There were a few connections between the production of Transformers the Movie (which I love and watched again recently), and G.I. Joe the Movie according to the interviews on the TF Movie DVD that I got for my birthday. Having never watched the movie before, I started it up in anticipation. Would the memories of collecting the action figures (Anyone who calls them "dolls" gets a chop from my kung-fu grip hand!), reading the ludicrously complicated Marvel comic or the thrills of watching the A-Team-esque no character deaths cartoon come flooding back?
Firing the movie up, I was welcomed by this bizarre sight - G.I. Joe the musical anyone?
And here's the the equally cheesetabulous UK version - I was surprised how different it is:
So, OK, good for a laugh, but it was a good indicator of the quality of the rest of the movie, i.e. dire. It was sort of fun seeing characters that I used to know when I was a kid, and now I know who the hell Sergeant Slaughter is from having watched WWE over the last few years (it wasn't that big a deal in the UK when I was a kid), it was fun seeing him in his prime, too.
Compared to Transformers the Movie, G.I.Joe the Movie felt like no one really cared about its production; the animation and art aren't nearly as detailed as TF the Movie, the music is just carried over from the original TV show, not to mention the musical cues ripped off from the TF TV series, and sound effects from Star Wars!(^_^)
The story veers away from the military cartoony fiction of the old series and comics. I remember how the comics would have footnotes in the panels telling the reader the names of the weapons the characters had and what they could do, for instance. The movie goes into weird science fiction/fantasy territory. In a major retcon for the series, it turns out the bad guys, Cobra, a terrorist army who've been trying to take over the world from episode one, are in fact borne from a secret race of weird looking creatures that had all but died out and still remained hidden somewhere in the Himalayas, as you do. Kinda strange how they had this guy:
voice this guy:
They also had Don Johnson play a crass, womanising officer called Lieutenant Falcon, but he's crap (^_^). One cool video game connection is Michael Bell, who played mainstay hero Duke in G.I. Joe. Video game fans will know his characters Raziel from the Legacy of Kain series, as well as The Fear from Metal Gear Solid 3.
Always-screaming Cobra Commander is often good for a laugh because he's so cowardly. But in the movie, he gets turned into a friggin' snake! OK... (^_^; Seeing this scene made me realise I actually had seen this movie once as a boy. For some reason seeing Cobra Commander getting turned into a snake scared the brown sauce out of me and I couldn't bear to watch it again! I guess playing Biohazard and Dead Rising has toughened me up since then (^_^;
G.I. Joe the Movie was a nice trip down Memory Boulevard, but ultimately, it's a pretty bad movie. They even brought Duke back from death in the movie with some hastily redubbed dialogue (something about that he'd come out of a coma) so that the producers didn't have to face the backlash they did when they killed off Optimus Prime in the TF movie! Crazy (>_<)!
I've never played any of the G.I. Joe video games that were made, mainly for the NES, but I would like to check out this one from the arcades which seems to play like the into-the-screen stages on Contra and S.P.Y.: Special Project Y:
Looks pretty cool, huh? Well, it's almost 4:30 in the a.m., so that's enough random G.I. Joe-ness for now! Anyone else got some 80s cartoon skeletons in their closets? (^_^)
Wednesday 8 August 2007
This blog looks familiar... hmm... (^_^).
Glad you're back blogging, even though I've read most of it already in your e-mails to me. Love the work you did on the Carmen Sandiego pic, by the way. I see you even managed to alter the shadow to match her/your new head!
That Mario vid was pretty funny. I want to see an XMugen mod that plays and looks like that!
Oh yeah, and I just noticed this next to your blog:
Just found these vids over at gamevideos! They're pretty funny, especially the 3rd one!
And if you're in London and would like to see some art, go see my friend's exhibition! It starts tomorrow and goes on to the weekend. Details here. It would be great if you could go support her. Tell your friends now!(^_^)
Aaaanyway, I pwned Lara Croft's big comeback game, Tomb Raider Legend last week. Thanks to therealpidge05, who got it for my birthday a little early! Me love you long time, baby!
I've always had a couple of reasons for being interested in the TR games, and I played a little of the 1st one and the 4th one way back, but this is the first one I've bothered to to play till the end. It came out spring last year, so I'm definitely LTTP, but who cares? I really enjoyed it. It's not very long, which made a refreshing change from Blue Dragon and Final Fantasy V Advance that I'd played just before.
It's also pretty easy, but enjoyably so. Very little hair-tearing, and I was able to play through the game a few times to get all the achievements. 360 Achievement Whores, this game is for you (^_-). So yeah, the achievements are kinda hollow, as probably everyone has spanked Lara's arse game by now (^_^).
The graphics aren't Gears of War quality, but I like them, there's good use of light and shadow, and the music sounds good enough to draw me into the action. In fact the whole game from the intro when you first load up strives successfully to create a Bond With Breasts action movie atmosphere. There's even a few nods to the movies, too, such as the layout of Lara's mansion resembling the one from the 1st movie (haven't seen the 2nd one) and a few of the movie's outfits appearing in the long list of unlockable costumes.
The highest recommendation I can give Tomb Raider Legend is simply that I didn't want to put the controller down, and now I'm really looking forward to a hopefully decent version of Tomb Raider Anniversary coming to 360, in whatever form it takes. Seeing as you can probably pick this game up for half price or less now, go check it out!
Since I finished TR Legend, I've started playing Prey, another denizen of the 360 bargain bucket from last year. So far, I don't like it nearly as much ol' Lara's game. But you never know, maybe it'll get better.
Oh yeah, I finally broke the 50K point barrier on 1UP! Yay me! So now my rank is... "Shadow Mage"? WTF? I was hoping I'd rank up from Genome Soldier to Revolver Ocelot! Or at least that guy peeing off the side of a building in MGS 2...
I just checked out a new video game show called Destroy The Humanoid. It seems to cover just retro stuff, with a British angle. So that means less NES, and more Spectrum. But you should check it out, it's got a good sense of humour, though the Space Invaders gag got old after the nth time it was repeated.
While I'm here, here's one of my latest photos with Japlish. It's not rude or anything, but it makes me smile (^_^).
It's a bit blurry, but if you look carefully, you might just see that the Ku Klux Klan have started exporting coffee pots to Japan...
Sorry for the lack of updates. I'll be back soon with a few decent things to post, such as a translation of a Famitsu staffer's opinions on GTA.
It's gonna be a lot harder to update my blog from now on because I won't be able to do it during free time at work anymore. Bloody work servers and their evil new goofing off internet filters! A curse on thee, I-Filter! Especially as I can't even check my Gmail thanks to this new filter evil spawn of the Interwebs Devil himself!. Seriously lamerific.
Well back soon. Anyone catch E3? What did y'all think of it?
As you may have noticed from my 1UP page, I like Transformers. Have done since I was in primary school in the 80s. I was the sad Transformers guru/otaku who knew all the profiles of all the Transformers and everyone else consulted to know what their Transformers could do when we played at school. A sort of Transformers DM, if you will. So otaku, but hey, I was a kid, ya know? Do you remember tech specs, those little pieces on each character's personality on the back of every box? Here's a reminder (^_^):
I've since forgotten all that incredibly useful knowledge now and I'm not such a hardcore fan and collector as I was back in the day. But I'm still one of those guys who gets excited when I hear the line, "Megatron must be stopped, no matter the cost." You've got The Touch. You've got The Powwweerrrr... YEAH! (^_^)
Actually, therealpidge05 just sent me a copy of the new edition of Transformers The Movie (as opposed to the new movie which is just called Transformers) on DVD for my upcoming birthday (Thank you very much, by the way!), complete with awesome lenticular cover. Shame it's separate from the case and therefore falls on the floor all the time, but it's still great.
Here's what the cover looks like... which transforms (narf!) into this one...
I think the movie has been hitting cinemas in the US recently, but Japan has to wait till mid August to get their giant robo on. I'm not too optimistic about the movie because I've been disappointed a zillion times before by hyped up movies. And this take on the TF universe doesn't look very faithful to the original - how could it be, considering the original movie bombed big time at the box office? And with a mega$bucks budget comes mega$bucks risk, so the producers have to fuck up my childhood memories adapt the concept for a wider audience. I get that. But that's what makes me not so optimistic about the upcoming movie. I hope it'll be good. But Megatron. *sigh* Meggy, Meggy, Meggy. You will always be a Walther P-38 to me...
Speaking of ol' Megs, I read on White Fang's blog that there's a remade version of Megatron (Masterpiece Megatron)! I have a Masterpiece Optimus from a couple of years back, and wondered at the time why there was no equivalent version of Megs. About bloody time! Shame the US version has to have a smeggy orange barrel tip added because of US gun laws, but that's what you get when people rob 7-11s with a Megatron in gun mode. How anyone could fall for that is beyond me, but there you go...
Masterpiece Megatron. He pwns Starscream's whiny arse, and you know it!
Would love to hear some comments on the new movie from anyone, positive or otherwise. But no spoilers please! Any spoilers and I'll go Hulk Smash! on your ass (^_^).
While shopping in a local game shop here in sweat-just-dropped-from-my-balls-it's-so-humid Japan last weekend, I found this:
Gotta love that Japlish. I know I do. Hours of fun entertainment looking for stuff like that (^o^)
In the same shop I also saw a display for an upcoming series of DS software. Maybe you've heard of the Oryori Navi series on DS here, which is basically a series of cookbooks on your DS. In the same style, I give you:
Bartender DS!
Not just one, not two, but three different "games" for your DS. Bartender DS is for cocktails, you've got Sommelier DS for wines, and Sakashou DS for shouchu, a kind of sake.
Don't believe me? Well lookee here...
I certainly won't be buying them, but I'm sure you've got your preorder in for the shochu one already, right Shaolinsteele? (^_^)
Well, I guess I've left it a bit long to tell you guys whether my baby is going to be a little Mario or Peach.
Let's just say... he's gonna be wearing the red cap and blue dungarees(^_^) Yep, it's gonna be a boy! WEEEHAHH! Not that I minded either way, of course. I'll take him to do all sorts of manly things like camping, hunting, fishing... on the TV with a Wiimote in hand (^_^;
Haven't had a lot of time recently to blog because I've been tired from work and I've had to spend a lot of time rearranging my cable jungle here at Nerfbuster Video (that's what therealpidge likes to call my apartment 'cos there's so much gamer and DVD awesomeness here!) to accomodate the baby's stuff that my wife's sister just sent us. We got 4 boxes of all kinds of like new 2nd hand baby stuff. Which'll save us a Jeffing fuckton of money. Also finally went wireless and got an Airport card and Extreme Base Station in the last week. It's great to have my Wii and PSP finally online over Wi-Fi! There's a ton of videos and other downloadables from the official PSP sites, which is great. I didn' t expect that from Sony at all. Messing about swapping Miis with therealpidge, Everybody Votes (Or Minna de Touhyou as it's known here) and all that other online Wii fun-osity has been great, too. I'll pop up my Wii Number later so anyone willing can swap Miis with me. The weirder the better! (^o^)
Have to say though, I've been having a lot of problems getting my DS online. DS having only WEP security sucks my big sweaty balls big time. I don't want to leave my network on WEP all the time as WEP ain't worth a damn, according to the Feds. I've tried some workarounds on my Mac, but couldn't get them to work. Temporarily switching down to WEP or trying to use one of these workarounds (if they actually worked on my DS) only ends up fudging up the rest of my network that's set to WPA. So, boo, Nintendo, boo. And while we're spreading hate around, a big raspberry goes to Buffalo and your frigging Linktheater that only uses WEP, too! :p PLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLPPPPPPPP!!!!
Just came back from seeing Die Hard 4.0, or Live Free or Die Hard as it's called in the US. It was pretty good, especially the first 2/3 of the movie.
*YARRR!! There be SPOILERS AHEAD!*
Kinda peters out at the end, though, with a simple hostage anti-climax which has the one time in the movie John McClane/Bruce Willis says his, "Yippee Ki-Ay, Motherfucker!" catchphrase, only it's muffled by a gunshot when he gets to the fucker part. Kinda lame, but whatever, it didn't spoil the movie. The F-35 jet scene was ridiculous, though. You expect to suspend disbelief and let certain things slide in action movies - you know, like how computer hacking high security systems takes only a few seconds, people ignoring near lethal/lethal injuries to get up and kick more ass, etc. - but that F-35 fighter jet vs a semi truck was stupid. I couldn't stop wryly smiling at the ridicularseity of it all! (^_^)
Here's a clip. It looks cooler here than it did at the cinema! (^_^;
And now for something fairly different...
Not much has been going on this week, until today, where I went with my wife to the maternity clinic and found out what sex our baby is going to be. I was surprised by how Big Jeff Mahoolah our baby was on the ultrasound! But that's not surprising, seeing as my wife's ballooned in the last week or two! (^_^;
Also beat Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance twice this week, once with the main hero Juste, and again with the "secret" Maxim character. Compared to the other 'vanias I've played (which is only a few - the original, some Dracula X and Dawn of Sorrow), in fact, by any gaming standard, this game is a cakewalk. I had a good time playing it, but I doubt it's high on the list of best Castlevanias ever. And the music sucks.
Maxim's mode has to have been an afterthought (it's only playable after you finish the game once with the hero, Juste) - his sprite look soooo much worse than Juste's it 's not funny. The speed boost Maxim gets over Juste is appreciated, but his mode is rather simple in comparison.
Also checked out the Boss Rush Mode using Juste, Maxim and... Simon Belmont from the original Castlevania! No wonder I was shite at the first Castlevania when I was a kid - Simon controls like a sack of King Edwards! Come to think of it, he looks like a sack of spuds, too!
Here's a vid if you've not seen this fairly decent Castlevania:
There doesn't seem to be as much hype for Blue Dragon as there was last year. Maybe it's because Xbox 360 has got a lot of other, arguably bigger games in the West, that are much more anticipated and being released around the same time as BD in America. Bioshock, or The Darkness for example. But for once, Japan got a highly anticipated game first. That doesn't happen often here, especially in the pitifully small Japanese 360 market. Which is nice (^_^).
I've always thought Blue Dragon is a weird fit for the 360 market, especially here in Japan. Apart from the Chrono Trigger nostalgics (some of the key people on BD worked on Chrono), it's pretty obvious this game is aimed at kids, what with it's simplistic anime style and ease of difficulty. Which is strange because Xbox 360 is still pretty expensive and it's marketing is aimed more at the hardcore and fans of Apple iPods and iMacs, i.e. adults with disposable income. Not many kids can afford a 360, especially when here they've already got a Wii and/or a DS! It's not that kids don't want BD. I've spoken to plenty of kids (I'm an English teaching assistant) at school who want to play BD, who have BD shitajiki, watch the show and read the Shonen Jump manga. They just plain can't afford it! Doh!(>_<)
So what is Blue Dragon? It's an RPG, groomed to be Microsoft's Great White Hope in Japan. With the Chrono Trigger "dream team" of Hironobu Sakaguchi producing, Akira Toriyama on character designs and Nobuo Uematsu on the er, wheels of steel, Blue Dragon stars Shu, a teenage boy who hates to lose and his friends in their fight to prevent a psychopathic California Raisin called Nene from destroying the world. Because he's a dick.
Blue Dragon is chock full of JRPG cliches, such as a hero with no parents, teenagers with courage who gain powers to defeat a world-threatening evil, mini games, side quests, etc. It even has a mascot enemy like the Final Fantasy and Dragonquest series in the shape of the "Unchi-kun" which you might call Poop-kun or Poopy Snakes in English. They're cute, fun and kids laugh whenever poo is mentioned (^_^)
A Poop-kun, two of the heroes and a Fat Poop-kun at the back. Wouldn't want to try squeezing that one out...(>_<)
Enemies even drop Gold and Silver poo sometimes, which you can rummage around in for extra cash. The whole schtick of using shadows that fight rather than the actual characters is also unoriginal, having already been done in Okage: Shadow King on the PS2 several years ago.
But it doesn't matter. It's really fun, because it's not too taxing. It's so easy that you don't have to think about things too much. So much so that at the beginning it's a bit boring, but it picks up as you get to know the characters and become involved in the storyline.You can grind in BD while doing something else really easily. Normally that would be to a game's detriment, but here it's fun and it's good for people with limited time, like me. You can probably make it through the game just by running through playing only the battles you have to, but it's easy to max out BD's characters' levels if you try. Even before then, you gain so many skills that you can combine a la Final Fantasy V that you can own whole enemy parties with one charged up attack once you beef up the right jobs classes for your shadows. Skills to regenerate HP and MP, as well as plenty of potions and other things to find that will keep your heroes alive abound in this game. The only time I got a Game Over was in one special event where normal battle conditions go out the window.
Battles are usually fast, with quick cinematic cuts of your shadows taking out enemy parties. Things slow down when you have eight enemies on screen and they all cast exactly the same spell or technique in a row, though. Nice attention to detail for the shadow animations, as they attack in unique ways depending on the shadow and their current class, which is nice. When you lash out with a particularly meaty attack, you really feel it, too.
Many RPGs have mini games and times when normal battle conditions are changed for a special story event and BD is no different. They're quite enjoyable, and I wish there were a few more of the shooting sections because they're quite fun. In fact, there's a lot of under-utilisation. There are all kinds of items and spells to cure status effects, but enemies barely ever do anything except maybe cast sleep or dizzy, so what's the point of them? There's about ten upgrades for the airship shooting sections. But they're unnecessary, even to get some of the achievements. And the idea of pitting enemy parties against each other is great, but doesn't happen very much because opposing enemy parties are rarely near each other.
The presentation is a bit erratic. The graphics are SEGA-style blue skies and happiness, which makes for one cheerful game.
I especially felt really happy watching the ending. But while in some places there's plenty of detail, other areas are sparsely populated with people and objects. Even the main characters look a little too simple. I think in 1080i, which I played this in, if you zoom right in you can make out a lot detail on the shading and textures, but from a distance (which is how you'll play for most of the time) you can't really do that. Sound is equally erratic. Some tunes are kinda rubbish, but stick in your head (like the main battle theme). I absolutely loooove the boss theme, though. It's mega-cheese Japanese-sounding heavy metal (think the Sonic Adventure games), but with the awesome vocals of ex-Deep Purple and Black Sabbath lead singer Ian Gillan! I'm guessing many people will bitch about the game saying "Playable", "Defeated", etc. in a Stephen Hawkins-esque voice. I thought it was stupid at first, too, but I quite like it now. Even my wife keeps saying those voices!
So overall, a fun game. Fun enough for me to clock up over 100 hours on it and max everything out, which I don't do on most games. But I can see a lot of people not liking the childishness and apparent simplicity. Those disenfranchised with JRPG cliches should probably stay away. But I loved it. This is the kind of game that made me want to come to Japan in the first place! Check it out, and roll on Lost Odyssey!
For further details, check out 1up.com's coverage here.
A bit of good news that I forgot to tell you guys. It's a bit old, having happened almost 2 weeks ago, but... I passed my driving test! And in Japanese, too! None of that namby-pamby written exam in English pap for me! W00T!(^o^)
So as a newly licenced driver I have to stick these:
on the front and back of my car for the first year. I just know I'm gonna forget to do that at some point.
But at least I'm now legal and can officially drive on the streets like this now:
Hey-ho, here's some vids I saw this week on 1up's sister site, gamevideos.com, that caught my eye, because they were funny or cool.
Here's Hitler, yes, that Hitler going apeshit over his Xbox Live account:
This is teamawesomerocks really funny and well-produced fake trailer for a sequel to Punch Out:
And finally, the dramatic intro to upcoming PSP remake, Castlevania - Dracula X:
Watch the first couple of minutes in this video and witness the cheesetabulousness of the original intro for the PC Engine. Awesome game, though, and a lovely haunting song on title screen after the intro:
and welcome back to my Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (Pirates 3) review. I'm posting it a lot later than I anticipated because I had to study for my driving test on Monday. Then I decided to catch up on some FFV Advance yesterday. Got to the Library of Ancients if anyone's interested! Then there's that thing people are already calling "work"...(^_^;
*Ahem* So, Pirates 3. First of all, I have to admit finding both Pirates 1, a bit meh and Pirates 2 very disappointing respectively when I first saw them at the cinema. But later, my friend therealpidge's enthusiasm for Pirates 1 rubbed off on me and I came to like the first one a lot. So much so I was pretty excited when I heard they were turning the franchise into a trilogy, filming the next two back to back, The Matrix-style. You know The Matrix. That trilogy of techno-kung fu movies that should have been awesome.
From Kung-Fu Coolness... to Major Assness (^_^)
So just like The Matrix, I should have realised there would be disappointment, but I didn't, so I went into Pirates 2 hyped up and came out quite disappointed. Why was Jack Sparrow suddenly such a massive dick to everyone, even the good guys? What the hell was he planning? Why were the "good guys" stabbing each other in the back? OK, maybe I'm overstating how bad The Matrix and the Pirates series are. I can happily sit down and watch the great one liners and special FX. But to come down from such high standards... I really feel it.
So this time, I was prepared for meh-ness of the finest summer blockbuster vintage. While it's no Matrix Revolutions, it's not suck-my-blue-balls-dry-baby amazing, either. But seeing as I was prepared for the worst, Pirates 3 was pretty good, actually.
Sparrow, you're coming to the Prom with me whether you like my Fu Manchu 'tache or not!
Of course the movie looked fantastic from beginning to end, although because there's lots more scenes that occur while the characters are sailing across the world, there's not a lot of variety, unlike the first two. I didn't think it was such a big deal. They are pirates after all, and pirates do a lot of sailing, right? (^_^) But my wife thought it was a little boring to look at. While I suppose that's true, I wasn't bothered by the lack of variety, if indeed, there was any.
My main beef is that keeping track of the plot felt like I was just about managing to tread water. Just when I thought I knew what was going on, Jack/Will/Barbossa/Elizabeth's scheming would throw me for a loop and I'd go under the proverbial water for a few seconds... again. Glub-glub!
ZZ Top facial hair was started by 18th Century Singapore pirates... fact
There were lots of fun moments, however. I especially like Jack Sparrow's er... "introspective" moments (I'm trying not to be spoilerific here), and the "nose" bit. The final kerfuffle across a whirlpool was excellent to watch, even though I couldn't make out some of the dialogue over the sound effects and booming music. Will seems to get less to do in this film except marry Liz and you know what at the end. But! Geoffrey Rush's Mad Bastard Acting Method(TM) as Captain Barbossa was hilarious! He stole every moment he was on screen. His confidence steering the Black Pearl off the end of the world was one of my favourite "Yarr! I be a poirate(sic)!" moments, much like when he shouted "Yarrrrr!" and chased after Johnny Depp whilst swinging his cutlass around in Pirates 1(^_^).
Yaaarrrr! You wouldn't happen to be having a Polo on your person, would ye now?
Maybe my opinion of Pirates 3 and especially 2 will improve when I see them at home, where I can absorb everyone's scheming in the comfort of my butt-creviced sofa(^_^). Overall, Pirates 3 was fairly fun to watch. So what did you guys think?
I'll make this short, as it's been a long day and it's 2:30 in the a.m. Just came back from watching Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, or as it's misleadlingly titled here in Japan, "World End". Yeah, that's right, Japan gets the armageddon edit!!(^_^)
It was OK, but not particularly great. I'll probably update this post with a longer review so I can properly rant later. I did have some fun watching POTC3, especially the Big Jeff Mahoolah fight at the end.
And to answer a question my brother asked me recently, here's the secret scene after the looooong credits sequence:
Haven't been feeling too well recently. Just generally run down for some reason and I have this annoying cough/sore throat team-up that I got from shouting at little ickle Japanese kids in class all last week.
It's stupid hot here - well, it's only about 27-29 degrees C, but the humidity in Japan is killer. Time to break out the shorts!
I finally finished Blue Dragon a couple of weekends ago but haven't had the energy to do a proper review or any real blogging for that matter. I'll write something about my opinions on BD soon, though, and finish up a translation from Weekly Famitsu that I've been sitting on for a few weeks.
Haven't had much time or energy after work to play anything really, though I have managed to squeeze a few hours into...
I almost finished the Playstation version of FFV last year, but I lost my save data in a freak gamma ray accident. Don't get my memory card angry. You wouldn't like it when he's angry...
The reason I chose to play the GBA version is because it supposedly has better graphics and a better translation. While I suppose that's true, the graphics don't look that much better. Bizarrely, the graphics in my FFV Advance clock that I use on my mobile phone look much better than the GBA game itself! I don't know about phones in the west, but you gotta love the stuff you can download for phones here in Japan!(^_^)
As for the translation, well, yeah, it is better, but I enjoyed Faris' cheesy-shit pirate-y dialogue from the Playstation version. Made me laugh every time! Faris' dialogue is at times just as nonsensical in the GBA version, though. "Quit your lollygagging", anyone? It's still a fun game, the job system is great, although it feels a little nerfed compared to Blue Dragon's more versatile job system.
Well, that's it for now fellow Nerfherders, come back again soon, y'hear? (^_^)
