Me Pipes Are All Blogged Up!

When was the last time I blogged? It's been a good few months, hasn't it? I guess I was kinda blogged out. I felt that to have a decent blog you have to keep churning out material 2 or 3 times a week at least. That takes a lot of time if you write like me, looking for photos and other stuff to make every blog entry just so. Other things in my life were taking up my time, and I wasn't even getting any time to just play video games. So I took some time off. But now I'm back, though I'll post at a more relaxed pace. That should keep you guys on your toes!

A few things have happened since I last blogged; you know, little things such as the birth of my fantastically cute son!

He's a noisy bast, but he brings my wife and I so much joy. When he greets me with a big smile, it melts my butch, macho man heart. Awwww. But more on my baby son some other time.

In October, I was whinging on about Waitlo 3.

I've only just now gotten to play through the campaign on Normal. Initially, I got the Asian version (because I have a JP Xbox 360) a couple of days after launch day from Play Asia, thinking it would be in English like Halo 2 was. Well, you would, wouldn't you? It turns out Microsoft decided to turn things on their head, initially only releasing a Chinese language Asian version. After a month of waiting, umming and ahhing by Play Asia, they finally gave me most of my money back on credit (they took $5 for shipping - which is supposed to be free!) which I used to get an American version. M$ didn't region lock the US version for once - who knew??!! I guess when you import you're going to get burned sometimes.

So I got my US version in late October/early November. I'm not a Bungie über-fan, but I like the Halo series a lot. I've read the first 3 books, played Halo CE on Legendary co-op a few times through with friends. I enjoyed Halo 2, although I was disappointed by some of the stages and that ending. But the Halo universe still excites me, so I eagerly put my Halo 3 disc into my 360. The initial cinematic of a fire in the sky over a jungle... and freeze. My 360 crashed! I rebooted my 360 and... RRoD! Arrrrgggghh! So Halo 3 killed my 360. I thought my trusty launch day 360 had avoided all the Red Ring of Death bollocks, but I guess RRoDs are just like death: they catch up to us all eventually. And just when Microsoft had built up some cachet with me (I'm a Mac user specifically because my friends and brother continually seem to have problems with their Windows PCs), too.

Anyway, luckily, Microsoft saw it my way and got my machine repaired. It came back in a week and half, which, fair dos, is pretty fast. Powered it up, everything looked fine, except... my controllers wouldn't sync with the damn machine! After a reboot, I tried again, still nothing, then after a few seconds - RRoD! GODDDDAAMMMIIIT! Even after a repair the machine wouldn't work - and I hadn't even put Halo 3 in yet. So back to M$ my 360 went. In the meantime, I was getting pretty pissed with not being able to play Halo 3. I'd anticipated it since that cliffhanger ending 3 years before just as much as everyone else, so why was this happening to me? Desperate to make sure I could play my frickin' game, I sent my game disc (which was a little scratched) to America for a replacement on the advice of Microsoft's Japanese and American support lines, just in case the disc was the problem. Because of the whole different territories thang, I figured it was a long shot, but god-smegging-damnit, they owed me a free replacement after all this.

My 360 came back around Christmas Day, and I gingerly switched it on, fearing the worst again. Da-daaaa! It worked! It fucking worked! But it didn't get much play time because I was busy playing with my good as new 2nd hand PS3 that I'd just bought Uncharted on Crushing for the win, by the way!). After I beat Uncharted, I started on Onechanbara vorteX, which had been on my Pile O' Shame for months. But, last Thursday, after 2 - 3 months of waiting, my replacement Halo 3 disc arrived! WA-HOO-HOO-00T! It had been so long that I thought M$ had decided to fuck me over again and just kept the disc. So thanks for the free replacement, Microsoft. Though if your machines and discs had worked in the first place, I wouldn't have needed to send off for a replacement... *grumble, grumble, whinge, mutter...*

So after all that, how the fuck is it, Uncle Nerfherder?


It's really good! Playing it was like putting on your old favourite sweatshirt. Comfortable, great to wear, but not a lot's changed. But it was really fun. I played it on Normal, fearing Legendary on single player. Yeah, I pussied out, so what? *stares you out* Halo CE on Normal when I first got it was a pretty stiff challenge for me, so I thought it would be cool this time, too. But I rattled through the game in only a few hours. I think I only played it 3 times for 2-3 hours each and I beat it on Normal. I didn't exactly feel that it was short, more that I just blew through everything really quickly. Guess I should've gone with Legendary. So I guess it's easy, rather than short. But the fact that I dropped Onechanabara so easily for this and just kept on playing should tell you that playing Halo 3, even for a short breeze through on Normal, is pretty damn fun. Just the drum rumble as the Bungie logo appears makes you feel, "This game is quality."

I couldn't wait to see what happened next, so the addictive gameplay is there. It's better than Halo 2 to play. There're more sandbox bits, more vehicles to play with (yay Hornets!), huge battles and a general sense that there's more going on in the world than just your fight. But the story suffers. Halo 2 hinted that there was a lot more to Gravemind, Truth, and the Forerunner-Human connection. But it's all very simply laid out for you. Too simply. Truth barely makes an appearance and Gravemind doesn't appear at all. Sorry, a disembodied voice babbling deep-sounding but ultimately meaningless poetry/threats and a couple of tentacles don't count. And what the hell is the point of using 4 levels just to get near to Truth's ship? There could have been a lot more story told there, fun as those levels around Mombasa are.

Truth Lands on Earth... Attack of the FRENCH!!!


After all the depth that had been established with the books, the mystery of the Forerunners and the Covenant in Halo CE, Truth's Machiavellian plotting and revelation that humans are connected to the Forerunners in Halo 2, Halo 3's story felt like a Star Trek two-parter style cop out. The penultimate Cortana rescue level felt like a step down to sub-Doom 3 at times, too. But hey, it's done, the bad guys are dead and we'll probably never know what might have been. It's still a fun game, but I get the feeling that Halo's campaign design has perhaps, since the 2nd game, been waylaid at least in part by an emphasis on multiplayer, which is not something I'm big on.

Random things I like about Halo 3 (SPOILARZ MODE ACTIVATE!):

The sound and art direction. Great music, fantastic surround sound and I love the voice acting. The first marine comment I got was Jonathan Ross in his inimitable tone saying, "Haven't you got something better to do than look at me?" Being a Wossie fan, that gave me a good chuckle. I couldn't recognise any of the other celebrity voices, though. Sorry, Adam Baldwin (^_^)

Wossie in the game:


The vehicles. So many vehicles to use, plenty of battles to use them in, maybe more than the previous two games. The Brute Chopper is awesome. And that's the only time you'll see me say I like choppers in public!


Dah-nah-nah-nah-nah, bad to the bone, da-nah-nah-nah-nah, buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-baaaad...

The weps. Sooooo many weapons in this and most of them are fun to use. And aw yeeeeah, the return of the Assault Rifle of Awesomeness. Thank you Bungie for putting it back in. I never really liked the battle rifle.

Plenty of Sgt. Johnson wisecracking and generally being prominent in the game. Maybe even more than the Arbiter! I liked the Arbiter, but after his role last time, all he does is just shoot bad guys and kill Truth. He deserved better this time around. I think Arbiter's story in the last game and this would have made a nice side campaign that you could say, unlock after you beat the main campaign.

Watching brutes get turned into Flood in real time. Was that in the previous games? I don't remember it, and it surprised the hell out of me when I first saw it here.

And a whole lot more that I've forgotten...

Random stuff I didn't like (still in SPOILARZ MODE!):

Johnson dies! How could you kill that wiseass son of a bitch? He was one of my favourite characters! So much for the Sgt. Johnson spin-off game...

And to a lesser extent, Miranda dies! The Keyes family are one bunch of unlucky people *sniff*

No dual wielding for needlers. They nerfed it too much!

Brute Chieftains with gravity hammers - they're tough bastards, especially when they have an entourage! I died a lot taking out the shield barriers in the "Trident" stage.

How come Truth changes from conniving codger in Halo 2 to religious zealot delusional in this game?

Once you clock how to fight the scarabs, awesome as they are, they're too easy to take down.

If you're now the world's only person to not have played Halo 3, check it out. It's totally worth it. Just play it on Heroic or Legendary. I'm looking forward to replaying it on Legendary, hopefully with online co-op!

Japlish Time!

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!

Till next time, fellow Nerf Herders!

Hanky Lanky Wanky Spanky Skanky Manky Panky!!!!

Hey there, Nerfherders, what's up?

I'm still waiting for my copy of Halo 3 to arrive, but that's a story I'll get into properly soon.

And now Orange Box is out - winter releases are packed too close together. Tis often said, but only because it's true!

Anyway, in response to Shaolinsteele's stupid sign shenanigans recently, here is one of my fave recent stupid pics and the TV advert that goes with it:

inoue mao-meiji Panky
Uploaded by acdticojp

Waiting for Halot (Geddit? Godot, "Halot"?)

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^)

rEal lifE wipEout!

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:

The public demands to know!

Clean Up On Aisle 360!

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!(^_^)

ZOMG! ATLUS breaks 3 guys' arms shocker!!!

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?