Spring Break.

Wouldn't you know it! It's snowing outside decently for the first time in years, and I have to go to Florida where it's 80F outside. It's kind of bitter sweet...Universal Studios > 2 inches of snow, I guess. Maybe I'll get a chance to get my Internets on once I'm there, but who knows...? I'll let y'all know how Islands of Adventure is. See y'all next Sunday.

Music Update...again

Oh my goodness gracious, it's been like...forever since I've posted. I blame Guitar Hero 3, college music auditions, and my general indolence. Guess I'll give you a little look into my last couple of iTunes purchases: Brimful of Asha by Cornershop, Time is Running Out by Muse, Bidibodi Bidibu by Bubbles, Hard to Explain by The Strokes, Granite, and Fasten Your Seatbelt by Pendulum. I know I'm weird, you ain't gotta tell me. Each one of these songs is pretty different from the other.

While the original Brimful of Asha is by Cornershop, I bought the Norman Cook remix by Fatboy Slim, so it's got that repetitive near-techno feel to it. Muse is what most people would call an "Emo" band...I'm not gunna lie, I get that vibe at times too. However, Knights of Cydonia got me interested in them, so the song I bought was in their iTunes top 5 popular list. It's a good song -Times is Running Out that is- but I just like the middle really... the first 40 seconds makes me want to skip the song, although the rest is fine. iTunes recommended most of the other ones to me, and I can't complain. Ever since reading Financial Peace by Dave Ramsey, I've become paranoid of all salesmen and marketing attempts, but iTunes has been making some great recommendations lately. The Strokes were introduced to me by a friend...Hard to Explain has a really odd video. Helicopter on GH3 is pretty good, and a very fair representation of them as a whole.

I don't think anyone really cares that we're playing a boring arrangement of William Tell Overture in band class, but this is a music update...so yeah. Also, we are all required to participate in "Solo and Ensemble" in our area. I really do hate playing solos...I'm a low brass man, leave me in my little box of on/offbeat thumps. My fellow baritone player will be attempting something absurdly hard. Good luck, mate...lemme know when you can move your fingers again. I ain't got a clue what I'll be doin'...probably something lame out of a method book, but at least I'll be able to play it.

Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles

Ever played those shooter games at the arcade? They're all over the place, so go slap a quarter in an Area 51 game lying around abandoned in some movie theatre. I've been playin' these kind of arcade games since I could hold the plastic pistols, so it ain't that hard to learn. Umbrella Chronicles is that same kind of rail-shooter. Rail-shooters are first-person-shooters in which you don't have to move your character. You just point and shoot the baddies as you trail along. Sound easy? If you have the reflexes and aim to do it, sure.

Now, I've been playing this game using the Zapper (a plastic gun-shaped carrier for the Wiimote and Nun chuck) for a "more interactive experience." I had to take the nun chuck out of the Zapper so I could shake it like a dog more easily. This Resident Evil takes the random button mashing sessions of RE:4 to a new extreme: you must actually push the correct buttons only. This is where those cat-like reflexes come in handy, because you've got about 2 seconds to push only the correct buttons several times in rapid-succession, or you will take heavy damage or even an instant death. The manual doesn't expound upon how exactly to press these buttons, so I'll tell you right now, rapidly hit the button it commands; don't just push it once.

The storyline isn't anything new, because it's all a big report by Wesker about all the plots of the previous games. It's like a giant playable flashback. It's pretty fun, and it sheds some light on some confusing plot details, so I don't have to go and play all those previous games (RE:4 was my first). The game's release was supposed to calm the Wii owners down who got all bent out of shape when RE:5 was not announced available for the Wii (I'm included there). The game was also delayed due to some controversy about shooting Africans in Africa...No one got pissed at shooting Spaniards in Spain in RE:4, but I guess no one cares about them.

Rating: B

Yu-Gi-Oh!: The Abridged Series

After nearly four months of waiting, a new Yu-Gi-Oh! Abridged Series has surfaced. For those of you who haven't a clue what it is that I'm talking about, I'll take you back to three years ago. A lowly YouTube user named LittleKuriboh creates a little 5 minute spoof of the anime Yu-Gi-Oh! He takes an episode, splices it all up into a shortened flowing comedy, and does all the voices himself. It was probably the funniest and most easily quoted thing I watched all sophomore year. While I had watched quite a bit of the actual Yu-Gi-Oh! cartoon and read the manga that took place before the anime, it isn't required that you really know anything about it to enjoy the Abridged Series. Most of the references are quite nerd-based, so don't expect to get all the jokes unless you are a hardcore Nintendo and YTMND fan. While these videos were removed from YouTube because of supposed "usage violations," LittleKuriboh has them all posted on the Abridged Series' website.

These episodes used to come out weekly, but he rarely keeps on track. I was beginning to think that he would stop making episodes after his fiancee became ill (he proposed on YouTube actually) so it's been quite a while since his last video. I'm glad he hasn't forgotten about his loyal fans. Now, if only some of my manga that haven't come out in 4 months would be released...

Game Reviews

A friend of mine told me about a game reviewer who works for The Escapist magazine. His name is Yahtzee and he delivers his reviews and impressions of recent games at lightning fast British/Australian speeds. His program is called Zero Punctuation and always manages to make me laugh. Every Wednesday, like today, he comes out with a new review with a video to go along with it. It's rather profane, but if you don't mind that, I'd say it's hilarious. Because I'm not exactly "in the loop" I haven't a clue what new games are coming out unless I've been waiting for the game for months. Therefore, I stay a bit informed on what the game companies are doing while delaying Super Smash Bros. Brawl....again. His latest is a review on "The Witcher," so by all means, check it out.

For making fun of older games, I would recommend another reviewer named "PlayItBogart" up on the YouTube. He covers those terrible games from the late 80s and early 90s on the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo. Once again, he is a little vulgar, but it's not quite as often as Yahtzee.

While it may be a conflict of interest to direct you to other peoples' reviews, I don't get paid, and they make me laugh, so by all means.

Cinquain

I can't stand it. I just had too much fun thinking of what to write for my cinquain for English class. A cinquain is a strict, word-limiting poem describing a noun. The first line is the item, the second line is two adjectives describing it, the third line is three gerunds or present participles (-ing words) that describe the item's actions, the forth is a short four word phrase pertaining to the item, and the fifth line is one alternate word for the item that sums it up. Here's mine.

Wii
Interactive Childish
Annoying Gaming Flailing
Do a Barrel Roll
Nintendo

****Update**** 1/18/08
My teacher seemed quite a bit disappointed with my poem. Her response was "...Okay...and I really liked the Wii." I think she misunderstood my position. I love the Wii. I'd choose it over the Xbox 360 any day of the week, even Tuesday. What I was getting at was just the fact that you don't normally see anyone over 30 flailing his or her arms like a lunatic, and then calling that having a good time. I dunno, maybe it only seems immature to me. I don't have a problem doing it, but I'm pretty sure most of the adult world would see it as "childish" like I said. I think my teacher sees the words "childish" and "annoying" as much worse than they actually are. I'm just sayin'...maybe less arm flailing and more sword slashing would be nice, eh Nintendo?
*****Fin****

For my English teacher, if you have found this online through some sort of plagiarism checker, I will identify this as mine. Just ask me.

Diablo

I know I'm about a decade too late to talk about this 1998 Blizzard game, but I got to playing it again a few days ago, so here we go. I played the game as a kid when it came out, so I have almost as much reverence for it as I do for Dungeon Keeper (the bestest game ev4r). There are several games that I played as a kid that I never really beat without cheating because of my pathetic attention span. Diablo would be one of those. But now, since I'm much more mature and ....what was I talking about?

So, the game is about an adventurer that just gets back from some trip. It's a good thing he/she has returned too, because there are evil critters roamin' free across the church at the edge of town. It's a darned shame too, because the entire town feels that you should go do something about it. Apparently, a group of the townspeople have already tried, but didn't hardly make it past level 2 of the Labyrinth under the church. It's a good thing you are seen as completely capable of doing what half the town (including the weapons smith) couldn't do entirely by yourself. Hey, why not?

You find out through a series of inconspicuously placed tomes (which are lit up like the Eiffel Tower on New Year's in dark tunnels and caves) that the cause of all these critters breaking loose in the church and its labyrinth is some disgruntled employee from hell getting into a fight about rent with his two brothers. I guess the church seemed like a good place to chill for a bit. While this demon fled from his brothers, who got trapped in some soul stones by some other warriors...that didn't care enough to go get this demon, Diablo decided to possess the King's son and restore himself to his former glory in Hell. Another darned shame, because you are questing to post an eviction notice on his door. Way to ruin a guy's day, eh?

So anyways, the game play is pretty straight forward, you get to pick one of three classes at the beginning. I like to think of the different classes as difficulty levels instead of types of characters. The rogue is the easiest to be: just a matter of pointing and clicking the enemies. She's an archer, so you are rarely in any danger from anything. The medium character is the warrior: he's a big guy who thinks that getting up in a monster's face will scare them into not attacking. He can take a beating though, which is good because beating are all over the place. Finally, the sorcerer is your standard magic user in any game: squishy. Being the mage-haters that Blizzard is, he's terrible. Health and armor are completely unnecessary when you can't even survive long enough to cast one of your spells. I usually pick the warrior, because magic and I rarely get along...unless it involves some kind of immolation spell.

I enjoy playing the game, but the storage system is a little lame. There's no rotating items, and your strength has nothing to do with your storage amount. Ultimately, throwing down useful items in town is the best space saver. Just come back to town (via portal) whenever you have a full inventory of magical items that need to be identified by the town elder...who knows everything. Money is scarce in the beginning of the game, but towards the end you have to actually work hard to spend it all. The best part of the game is certainly the ending, however. While I won't spoil how it ends (Diablo 2 does that just fine), I will tell you that this is the first and best example of a game that has a special feature and reward for beating it: you restart the game with all your current stats and equipment. While you might think it is completely lame to have to play the entire game all the way through again, I think it's the funniest thing to run through a level with hordes of skeletons and demons throwing themselves upon you and missing or doing no damage with each hit. You give early bosses a funny look and they practically explode. Because of this game's early exposure to me, I refer to all games that take the retroactive-stat-restart as having "Diablo Syndrome." Thank you, Diablo, for your contribution to my identification of good replay values.

Rating: B

The Wikipedia Game

While it may seem that all I do is play video games and watch anime, I would like to inform you that I also do many other more active things such as breathing, eating, and sleeping. However, my sleeping has been rather lousy as of late, and that takes up a lot of my time, so I decided to Wiki (the action of using wikipedia.org to inform one's self of an area, event, or item with little effort) some methods of falling asleep more quickly. Whenever I use Wikipedia, I can rarely just look at one article. This recognition of my low attention span has now become "The Wikipedia Game."

Step 1: Become curious about something. That's right, you can't start unless you have something you want to know about. Even if it's something that you've looked up already, there are different paths to take this time around. I guarantee it.

Step 2: Satisfy that curiosity with a single, direct article from Wikipedia. It's not hard to get your answers from the great Wiki, so place your faith upon its digital pages, and you will be rewarded with a wealth of knowledge (if you can't find your answer, it doesn't matter. Even if your attention span is better than mine, you'll probably get sidetracked with something way more interesting than the answer to your question anyways).

Step 3: Click on the most interesting link to another Wikipedia article on the site. Whether you choose to finish the current article you're on or not, you need to continue the chain. I would advise sticking slightly to topic at first, but as you get better at the game, click on some entirely unrelated links. *Warning* Do not leave the sanctity of Wikipedia by clicking on the "External Links" section. It's a nasty world out there on the Internets, and I wouldn't want any one of my beloved (four) readers getting viruses that stop them from reading my amazing posts.

Step 4: Get bored. All good things must come to an end. Whether it's your mom calling for dinner, or you are just too tired to continue on, eventually you will stop this easter egg hunt for knowledge. This is where the fun begins (for those of you who just don't like learning).

Step 5: Climb your chain. With me, it's usually 10-15 articles I go through before finishing up. Write down the last one and work your way back to the Wikipedia homepage, writing down all the articles you read along the way.

Step 6: Bask in some glory. Stare at that piece of paper and think about all you learned and read today. Doesn't that just make you feel like someone who is smarter than you are? The best part about it is: you are that smarter person now!

So, as an example, my Wikipedia Game score sheet looks like this: Sleep - Sleep Apnea - Dream - Lucid Dream - Near Death Experience - Out of body experience - meditation - Bahá'í Faith - Monasticism - Christian Monasticism - Heremetic Life - Recluse - Hikikomori - Dysthymia

As you can see, this is quite a list and kept me occupied a good 2 hours. Less expensive and more informative than a video game, yet it's usually only information that won't even show up on Jeopardy. I wouldn't advise this game for parties, but it's fun to try and do the same thing with conversations with people, and it shows them that's you're listening. Go on, give it a whirl!

Music Update

Lately, I've been doing very little except school and video games. Thank Christmas for that. One of the more time consuming games I received would be Guitar Hero 3: Legends of Rock. It's been on the "Games I'm Currently Playing" list for a bit (I keep that fairly updated), yet I haven't reviewed it. The reason for that is that I can't really give it rating. The review would be nearly identical to my DDR review...except with more fingers, and less jittering of the feets. Like all skill-based games, the only real way to beat it is to complete every song perfectly, or to just put down the controller (it doesn't make you a quitter, it makes you sane).

However, the game has gotten me in touch with many rock classics, both older and recent. One of the newest songs I purchased on ye ol' iTunes is "Knights of Cydonia" because it is my favorite song to play (I'm only starting Hard, so don't go telling me that it's impossible on Expert). I have a tradition of buying music on iTunes: as soon as it's done downloading, I turn my speakers up to 11 and hit the deck. Can you blame me? Anyways, the song I bought today that triggered this post is "A Night on Bald Mountain." Brilliant piece of work, and it's played by everyone and their grandmother on Halloween. I just like the bombastic parts because I am a low brass player myself. I find that in all the techno, metal, alternative, jazz, and classical music I buy (country and rap can bite me), I enjoy blasting the classical the most. There's just something exhilarating about listening to "Mars" loud enough to bother the neighbors (your neighbors). I love every second of the hearing I lose later in life from this too. Anyways, just thought I'd share with you a fun pastime of mine.

Playing trumpet parts on a euphonium now, I don't get the loud, long, eruption of violence from my horn that I've grown to love. However, technically, my sound is getting more precise, and my high range has never been better. I do miss blasting notes though, and that's the main reason I bought "A Night on Bald Mountain."

F.E.A.R.

Ever been scared of a little girl? No? Apparently you've never played little game called First Encounter Assault Recon (or met my sister). My purchase of F.E.A.R. was a response to my playing Dementium (I reviewed it earlier). It was pretty much the same game with a more confusing, yet less pointless, story. It had more action, less locked doors, and was actually pretty terrifying.

Your name is "F.E.A.R. Point Man" in all the mission descriptions, so there's no need to get personally attached to your character: you never see his face anyway. Here's the storyline: there's a crazy psychic that can control hundreds of clone soldiers, and he's gotten loose. Your mission is to go fetch him. I'm not going to spoil anything, so you don't have to worry about that. While trying to capture him, you learn many secrets about the corporation that had the mysterious "Project Origin" commissioned. You also get the heck frightened out of you by a little creepy girl that enjoys projecting ghoulish images and nightmares into your head. This becomes one of the more annoying points, but I'll get to that in the gameplay.

F.E.A.R. runs like a standard FPS in that you get guns and you shoot people. The arsenal provided at the beginning is pretty boring: a pistol and a sub-machine gun. You can hold up to three weapons or two pistols and two other weapons. The other weapons would be your standard for most games: shotgun, assault rifle, sniper rifle, rocket launcher, and some non-conventional weapons like an auto-cannon, a nail driver, and the particle weapon. There are also a few types of grenades such as frags, motion activated, and remote detonation. The key feature that separates this game from all the other PC FPS games out there is the SloMo feature. The game explains the SloMo as your having amazing reflexes, and they ain't kidding. The world moves 1/5 speed and you move twice as fast. This means you can run out into the middle of a squad of soldiers, take aim with your dual pistols, and shoot and kick people to your heart's content without heavy fear of people completely destroying you. However, sometimes you will enter points in the game where you can't activate your Reflex Mode. These are the nightmare sequences that the little girl, Alma, sends you in order to thwart your efforts. They generally involve disturbing images of gore or frightening flashbacks. Nothing to worry about though...but it does suck to get startled when you weren't expecting one. The music definitely is what scared me the most. When you don't know when your flashlight is going to go out (leaving me alone in my room with the lights off and creepy music blaring into my headphones) and the music goes minor on you, be prepared to fight off some freaky ghost things.

For a game with such great battle mechanics, I really hated the physics engine sometimes. When I'd drop some poor fool, his body would keep making the collapsing noise every time he twitched on the ground due to some kind of tension. It's really hard to get scared at all the blood and creepy images flashing about when there's a dead guy doing the milkshake dance at you. All in all, it's a fantastic game with excellent graphics, decent story, excellent gun fights, and truly terrifying, Kafkaesque (that's my favorite word) sequences. There are a few expansion packs...they aren't really worth it, but it you feel like I just didn't want to comment on them...go get them. Project Origin is the upcoming sequel; I can't wait.

Rating: B+

Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance

Well. The polls are closed, and we had a 33% increase in voter turnout (thank you, mystery 4th person). That means this blog is slowly growing into something slightly less puny than before. Yay. Berserker was a clear W1NN4R here and we can all see why. Who doesn't love a guy who charges into battle with nothing but an axe, a bad attitude, and a 15% bonus to critical hits? Ranger and Warrior were a close second. The sword and bow combo of a horsed ranger is quite something to behold, but the size of the axe-toting, bow-blitzing warrior is nothing to sneeze at. Well that's all for that poll. Good to know that the reading population is enlarged (or some one just voted again from a different computer...). The next poll should be interesting.

So, a little while back, I got through Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance. It's an excellent addition to the Fire Emblem family, but the real reason I finished it was my wanting improved stats in the sequel, Radiant Dawn. I received Radiant Dawn for Christmas and haven't played it yet. I'm waiting for a Zapper so I can beat Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles first. That way, I'll only have Guitar Hero 3 and DDR: Hottest Party to get in my way.

Path of Radiance was quite a bit different from the previous Fire Emblem games (other than being on the TV screen instead of a Gameboy) in that it had time in a base that you could use to assign skills, award bonus experience, talk to people, and listen to support conversations - which are based on chapters spent together, not turns adjacent to each other as usual. I found the improved graphics refreshing...for about the first 10 battles, then it just became annoying until I got to see everyone's critical hits. I didn't mind the Laguz characters that you fought, but I never used any of the ones that I got myself. I just can't get attached to a tiger-thing like I do with the beorcs, except for Reyson of course. My favorite character throughout the whole thing is tight between Keiran and Nephenee. They both always did exactly what I wanted them to, which was usually standing in a crowd of enemies alone and clearing the area (or at least getting damaged and letting Wrath and Resolve take effect). That's saying something, considering I usually hate Paladins in the FE series. The Halberdier a fun addition to the classes, but far underpowered compared to the bonuses that Berserkers, Snipers, and Swordsmasters get with their single weapon mastery. All in all, if you like Advanced Wars or the other Fire Emblem games, you'll be satisfied with this one.

Rating: B

Dementium: The Ward

Another gift I received for Christmas was Dementium, a FPS/mystery game for the Nintendo DS. Brain Age ² was the other DS game I got, so I decided to get Dementium over with to get on with my Sudoku and Brain Aging skills. I was impressed with the N64 -like graphics, and the sound effects and music were great. It turned out to be rather addicting and kinda fun. However, the entire game was a little repetitive, and it just became a chore to get all the way through it...rather than a fulfilling, joyous experience.

You start out with a nifty cut scene of being thrust in a wheelchair down a hall with all kinds of disturbing images like zombies, giant critters, and creepy little girls. You awaken in your room, with the lights off, and it's dark and stormy outside. You find a legal pad on the floor with "Why did you do it?" written on it, and there is a newspaper with a story of a man killing his wife outside the room. Lovely. You find that your name is listed as "John Doe" on the outside of your room and there is a woman's room (empty) next door with "Jane Doe" on the room. Sounds like you killed your wife, and they put you in the hospital for psychotherapy, but the game is young and there is much to discover. Very quickly, you get your most useful weapon: the flashlight (queue the Zelda item-acquiring music)! Now, this does no damage to any enemy, but you can only see about 4 feet in front of you without it. However, you can only use the flashlight if you aren't holding a weapon. Apparently, you only have one working hand. You then get the first real weapon: the nightstick! You can beat those zombies pretty good with this bad boy, but you almost always take damage (which is shown and heard through your heart rate) before you can kill one. Good thing this is a hospital, and there is medicine in just about every supply closet throughout the game.

You eventually get a 9mm, a shotgun, a revolver, and the electric bone saw, as you progress through the game (don't worry about me spoiling it for you, I played it so you don't have to). There are maps spread about all the floors and wings of the hospital and you'll need them all, or you'll be wandering in circles for hours, and the monsters respawn...your ammo and medicine don't. The game's favorite thing to say? "It is locked." I'd say about 80% of all doors say that when you try to open them. And there ain't a way to open a locked door; you gotta go around. You go through the 16 chapters of the game across 9 floors of the east and west wings of the facility. When you die...you go back to the beginning of the chapter. When you die at the end of a chapter frequently, that feature gets very frustrating. I found that going through the chapter to learn which direction to go, dying somewhere around the end, screaming and pulverizing your DS, then running through the chapter without fighting anything (except the bosses), is the best method of playing. The bosses are as follows: An abomination ripoff from WarCraft III (fat pink thing with a cleaver for a hand), a Gatling gunner in a wheelchair, possessed walls that spit out worms, and the final boss is a guy in a black trenchcoat/wetsuit with magic white gloves.

Here's the real spoilers: you didn't really kill your wife, leaving a creepy girl running about the hospital laughing and crying at you as the evidence in the entire game leads you to believe, you weren't even doing anything throughout this game. You beat the final boss, a cut scene pops up (they look pretty good actually), and you wake up in a nice, clean, lighted ward room. Your unmaimed wife and pretty little daughter await you right outside the door. Yay! It was all a dream. Then it fades out and it turns out that the Black Trenchwetcoatsuit man is operating on you with a large cleaver and saying that the first stage is a success. The following credits are actually the best part of the game. All the jobs that they listed the people doing were hilarious. That's my story, and I'm stickin' to it.

As much as I love beating, shooting, and sawing zombies, worms, acid-spitting-thingies, floating heads, and guys in wheelchairs, this was definitely not the best game ever. The puzzles were annoying, and running away was more effective than killing anything. I'm just glad it was short enough to hold my interest long enough to beat it. Well, with all the getting lost, dying, and cursing the skies involved, it took 2 days or 15 hours to beat. Although, the actual successful playing time was about 4 hours. But who's counting?

Rating: C+

Dance Dance Revolution

So, one of my Christmas presents was DDR: Hottest Party for the Wii. Normally, I don't enjoy exerting any form of physical effort (with exception of the fingers) for video games, but the Wii in general forces you to move at least your arms to some extent. So, I figured that moving your feet would be just one level above that.

Now, for those of you who don't know what DDR is, it's a giant cross pad with up, down, left, and right: just like any ol' D-pad on a controller. However, your fingers don't do anything but sit on your hands for this game. You push the buttons with your feet. There's usually a heavily beat oriented song playing and arrows moving up through some clear arrows at the top that signal where and when to stomp. Go to an arcade and you'll see what I mean.

Anyways, a friend of mine was playing the game for PS2, and it looked mind-boggling the way his feet were all over that board. Therefore, I decided that it would be cool if I could at least do something like that...only maybe to a lesser degree. Finally a DDR (other than that Gamecube Mario version, seriously...no one likes Mario, Nintendo) came out for the Wii. Although, being the Wii and all with the fancy controllers and such, there are hand movements as well as the footwork. This just makes it more complex. I'm not very good at it as of now, but I'm getting better. Hopefully, I'll keep interest (this game has to beat Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles and Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn to do so) long enough to get good at it. It's certainly good exercise.

So, DDR: Hottest Party probably isn't the best one of the bunch, but it's fun and certainly has the DDR feel to it, although the arcade version looks like the controller pad isn't lame. It's not a game that you just play through, beat, and be done with it. It's as hard or as easy as you want it to be, so you can take it at your own pace. I can't say it's an entirely serious game, and it might be a bit girly; but don't let that stop you from getting it if you're bored and have lots of open space and privacy in front of a TV.

Rating: B

Manga on Hiatus

So...I was in the bookstore again (I seem to be in there a lot) and was hoping for some suitable gifts for friends. I found some good stuff. Mission accomplished, post over, right? Of course not. Being the manga-lover that I am, and hoping that at least one of the graphic novels I buy has been placed somewhere on the shelves, I took a peek through the "Manga/Anime" section (someone should tell the manager that there is a difference between the two). For the third month in a row: nothing. Now, most of them come out bimonthly, and they weren't put up two months ago, or last month, and now not this month. What's wrong with this picture? So I do a little research (I typed it in wikipedia). My results were annoying.

Turns out that the bookstore is just really lousy at putting anything up when they are supposed to. This used to be great because they would put things up weeks before they were due out. But now, they've either stopped ordering new stuff or have mountains of manga in the back (I drool at that thought). Knowing that this place doesn't have the largest storage space, I'm pretty sure they don't have that much in the small closet they keep overstock in. Anyways, a few manga in particular have caught my attention in the past weeks: Ragnarök by Myung-Jin Lee and Beet the Vandel Buster by Riku Sanjo and Koji Inada.

I haven't seen a new Ragnarök in years. It just occurred to me that maybe something is wrong with the writer. Feeling almost concerned (for the wellbeing of my reading pleasure, not for the artist) I looked it up. "Status: Hiatus." Eh? I whipped out my dictionary and was quickly disappointed. Hiatus means that the writer has taken a break and probably has no intention of finishing. But....I like that manga....(sniff) why would they take it away? Turns out, Ms. Lee is helpin' the wonderful folks at Gravity make the Ragnarök Online games...wouldn't you know that I played it. Worldwide, it's actually got more players than World of Warcraft. So, I guess I can't get too angry about that; I'm sure it pays better.

Beet the Vandel Buster was one of the first manga I got because I read the preview in Shonen Jump's magazine (the first one I bought because of previews was Bleach actually). That means that I've been collecting the graphic novels since they came out. It's also one of the two manga that I've started buying from the beginning and haven't given up waiting and read them online (Claymore is the other). I kinda got annoyed when it was set to come out one month and never showed up. Six months later, it finally appeared; however, the "Next Issue" was set for six months later. Ouch. So, every six months I bought a new one. Until finally, four months after the previous one, a new one came out. There's no "Next Issue" section in it. "Status: Hiatus."

Tales from Oblivion

So...I recently looked at the instruction manual (it was the first time I've done so) for Oblivion. I found a drag command. This means you can move stuff without picking it up and keeping it in your inventory. Several immobile environmental elements are also movable now also. So...the wheels in my head started turning. After I got done admiring the light bulb that came on, I quickly grabbed my axe and introduced it to the town guard. Now...after you commit any kind of felony, the closest guard will run at you like a madman and tell you that you've broken the law. You have three options:

Go to Jail. (Viciousness of the crime is your time)
Resist Arrest. (When you feel the need to tell the guards that they need to be felt more than heard)
Pay Gold. (You pansy, take it like a man)

Looking in my wallet, I noticed that it has just enough in it to clear my assault fines. So, being the reasonable individual that I am, and realizing that my clumsy axe swings must be reprimanded, I quickly responded "Resist Arrest" and didn't miss his head this time. Every citizen in town decided it was in their best interest to stop me...can't disagree with them there. All the guards swarmed like starving wolves to a steak dinner, but I was feelin' lucky. 30 minutes, 15 guards, 10 citizens, and 3 broken weapons later (is it bad that you kill a guard just to get his sword?) the massacre was over. My restoration magics certainly got a workout afterwards. Feeling the need to repair my items, I realized I'd killed the weapons/armor dealer in my fit. Ah well, shouldn't stop what I had planned.

Seeing that I had plenty of materials now, I slowly took a sturdy looking guard and placed him in the middle of town. I followed suit with 3 others until I had a good base. I never had Linkin' Logs as a child...perhaps that's for the best. I proceeded with several layers of of my corpse tower until it was a decent height and then got into position. I decided to make this character very aggressively built, so he has good weapon skills and destruction magics. I selected a wide splash damage fireball and took aim. I tell you, bodies went EVERYWHERE. I can only imagine what was going through the neighbors' minds. Now, there are some pretty good videos on YouTube of other people's similar activities, but it is so much more fun to do it yourself. Anyways, for my entertainment, my bounty was raised to 40,250 moneys. Ouch. You don't wanna know what my infamity was.

Moral of the story: video games aren't killing children's creativity...just giving it a convenient outlet. Now, I've got to get back to gathering money and sneaking around town to pay off my crimes, sigh...

TES IV: Oblivion

Alright, I've been a little bad on what games I've been playing lately. I was craving some boring repetitive fighting and trading, so I've been playing Freelancer for the past month. Solid RPG in space kinda deal with flying a ship around till you're bored of it (when you stop playing, then you truly beat the game). Then I rented Battalion Wars 2 for the Wii...because I hadn't played the Wii since I participated in the "Check Mii Out Channel." Solid game, but it's very short, and I beat it in the time I had it rented, so it's not really worth buying.

Wishing to play something like Freelancer again, with all the freedom to choose whether you want to be good, evil, indifferent, or just plain weird, I thought about The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. I haven't played the game in months, so it's lost the boredom factor that it had after I had completed every quest on 3 different characters (maybe I should buy the official plug-ins). To get you acquainted with the kind of game it is...try to imagine yourself in medieval times. What's the first thing you would do? Odds and a half are...you can do it in the game. If you wanna use magic to send everyone in town into a mad frenzy, there's a spell for that. Wanna bash some skeleton heads? There's a war hammer with your name on it! Want to become a vampire and suck the blood of innocents? Not a problem! Have the erge to stack the corpses of the town guards in a nice pile in front of your mansion? Go for it! Want to become the god king of your own reality? It's actually in the expansion pack, Shivering Isles (I ain't jokin'). Want to string the bodies of live sacrifices to you in the windows of your sanctuary of murder? There's a Vizine for that!

You have near absolute freedom in the game and can kill just about anyone no matter now powerful or influential they are (with exception of main quest characters). Just be prepared to reap the fruits of your actions. You can also go through just about the entire game without killing anyone at all, if you're more of a sneaky sort. And if you don't want to even pick up a single weapon in the game, don't: there's magic that makes people run in fright of you. You can just go treasure hunting if you don't want to raid bandit camps and undead forts. I have never played a computer game quite like this before, and so far it hasn't been duplicated too well either. The only downfall: it's single player. This would be the greatest game ever created (until TES V anyways) if there was some kind of multi-player. Even over a LAN system (MMORPG would be just too crowded and annoying) would be great. Ah, well, maybe next time. If you want some RPG ownage, hook yourself up with this game. It's also out for Xbox 360 and PS3 with purchasable plug-ins that add quests, items, and locations (of course not for Wii), so this increases the availability and reduced the need to nice computers to run them.

Rating: A+

Nintendo Poll

Well, the results are in for my "Which Nintendo character is coolest?" poll are in. There was an amazing 3-way-tie between Fox, Samus, and Link (ever notice he doesn't ever have a last name?). When will Nintendo figure out that no one really likes Mario as much as their heroes that do something other than jump on bad guys' heads? So with an amazing turn out, and the running being within 1 vote to determine the winners, I'm proud to announce that this did little more than tell me that only 2 other people view my blog. Disheartening? Eh, not really. Just waiting for some one to tell all their friends that aren't my friends about it....aaaany minute now....this could take a while.

However, thumbs up to the Nintendo characters that don't suck! I look forward to making them duke it out when Super Smash Bros. Brawl comes out...in February. By the way, new poll is up.

Rurouni Kenshin

Here's one of the few manga series that I started buying from start to finish. Death Note is the only other one that's up to snuff, but it only has 12 volumes, so it's not as impressive. At a whopping 28 volumes, Nobuhiro Watsuki's Rurouni Kenshin has great length and a great story all the way. Taking place in the early Meiji period after a revolution for equality, the story is about a wandering swordsman who fights for those within his sight who are too weak to fight for themselves. Doesn't sound incredibly original, and I suppose it's not, but it is good. Himura Kenshin has vowed never to kill again because of the grief from the lives he had to take during the revolution. However, when enemies constantly threaten him and his friends, promising not to kill can be a real drag.

The story is rather straight forward and easy to understand. There's no heavy symbolism, clever plot twists, or much left to the imagination. The simplicity is part of the charm though: it's funny when it needs to be, it's deep when it needs to be, and it's all action...y when there's nothing left to be. The thing I love most about this is the vast assortment of characters. My personal favorite manga/anime character of all time is Saito Hajime, even though most people see him as a bad guy. I can see why, but I can't change what I like and such, so that's the way it is. Then again...Yukishiro Enishi is also up there on my top 5, so I seem to have a thing for the crazies...

Anyways, the anime that goes along with this story is decent enough, it almost follows the manga, but it's more for younger people than the manga. I seem to recall an episode where Kenshin fights a man while using a parasol in a circus. While I am in full support of turning good manga into good anime, that seems like a step backward. They also skipped an entire story arc probably for the sake of the violence. Unfortunately, it's also the arc where it explains most of Kenshin's past, so there are a few OVAs and Movies that cover the arc loosely. Also, the manga is being re-released (would it be a waste to get them all again?) with new covers in Kanzenban form. I don't know what kind of features are going to be in them, so I can't miss what I've never seen...guess I might skip out on that one.

Rating: A+

Games to Anime

Ah, nothing like a 2 day school week. Gives me a little extra time to do the fun things in life...like go to the orthodontist. Still, wasn't too bad and it's 3 days that I'm not in school, so I can't complain. There's not a terrible amount to do...got some Christmas shopping out of the way, so that worked out nicely. Haven't really been playing any new games or reading any new manga. Tales of Symphonia OVA recently had episode 3 released, if anyone knows anything about that.

Taking games and turning them into an anime sounds like a bad idea. I'll agree with that. Anyone who has played through the game will simply go, "that's not how that happened!" and people that haven't played the games don't care enough to watch them. Pokemon for example: Ash gets himself a Pikachu in the first episode. You would think that 10 seasons later when he sends Pikachu in for a fight, it would give the opponent a look and it would explode. That's because the lovely leveling system that practically defines the game doesn't exist in the show. It makes the gamers wonder why they can't command their pokemon to use more than 4 moves and why Magikarp battles aren't more exciting. Luckly, there aren't many examples of these game-to-anime types, so we gamers aren't too terribly plagued by bad show representations.

The Tales of Symphonia and Phantasia OVAs are fun to watch, but you already know what's going to happen, because you played through the game. Otherwise, you probably wouldn't be watching the show, now would ya? If the OVAs were released before the game, it would be a different matter, and probably even effective advertising. As long as it ain't a crappy anime rip-off of Street Fighter (like most anime end up becoming), then it'll be fun playing out what you saw in the show.

Gaming Update

Alright, I went a week without posting and barely got on my computer. That's because I was beating Professional Mode on RE4, sorry. I'd say it was worth it, because the P.R.L. 412 is AMAZING. All RE4 connoisseurs should definitely get this puppy. There's something fun about taking down Krauser in one hit, and the final boss in two. But...beating Pro mode was definitely a huge frustration. They don't give you a tactical vest, and wouldn't you know it....two hits from just about anything will kill you. When you have no ammo or recovery items, and you just hit the final fight with Krauser...well let's just say the "end of chapter" review for that one was 34 deaths (just use the knife and get him into a corner, works wonders).

Anyways, I'm moving back to Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, until I beat that too. Radiant Dawn is supposed to come out for the Wii, and I don't want to start out with lousy default-stat characters, so I'm working my way through that. I might do a review on that soon too. Christmas time will be full of new games, so I can't wait!