Yippee Ki-Ay Muthagunshot!

John McClane just jumped the shark the F-35.

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:

"No way I'm gonna lose!" A Review of Blue Dragon (Japanese Version)

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.


You whaaaaaaat???!!!


Look at the bazooms on that booth babe!

Legali$e

Hey there Nerfherder fans,

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:



The streets of Neo-Fukuoka are about to ASPLODE!

Game Videos of the Week

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:

'Ello, Poppet! It's My PotC3 Review Spectacular!

Hey, there fellow Nerfherders,

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?

Wha? *Nine* pieces of eight!!?? How droll.

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: