The Comic-Con 2008 Post
...now with less to say than the 2006 Comic-Con posts and not indexed by time...
Whether it comes from convention-goer fatigue or the fact that I was only there for one and one-third days this time, I'm almost thinking that this was not a very impressive event this year. Highlights of Saturday (since all that really happened for me on Friday was getting Lego Street Fighter figures after volunteering with the blood drive) include:
- Actually playing a match of Street Fighter IV long enough to find that Chun-Li's projectile attack is now a back->forward move instead of a 180 degree motion - after losing round 1 and blocking like hell against a Sagat player for the first half of round 2. Along with that change, the last hit of her multiple-kick super combo apparently has a backflip added on to it, though that may have only been at the highest gauge level.
- Watching other people play the new Ghostbusters game, Crysis Warhead, the Warhammer MMO, and some other things I don't remember yet.
- Playing the next Castlevaina game on DS (which I found to be better than Castlevania Judgment), Megaman 9, Soul Calibur IV (the only thing really gathering crowds at Namco's booth), and the new Bionic Commando.
- Wondering whether or not to buy a few things and in the end leaving almost empty-handed:
- The Revoltech Yotsuba figure (at page bottom on the right) - declined since I wanted the sold-out Danboard figure (at page bottom on the left) more.
- Something of Yuki Nagato - declined since the only thing I found that wasn't in the "mystery prize" category was $30 and the booth didn't take debit.
- The Mythbusters panel, where the hosts answered a few questions and showed some clips of next season's stuff and of "sobering up myths" (including a slow-mo slap to the face and very bad results from running on a treadmill while drunk).
- The Masquerade, while slightly different than the last time I saw it, was still entertaining enough with "Nintendont's Brawl: The Musical" among other things. I only wish we could've seen the remains of the costume that spontaneously combusted or at least been told what it was...
Labels: announcements, posted in windows, videogames
Tales of The Last Hope...XIII
Why, oh why did I not take E3 into account back when I was feeling buyer's remorse over that XBox 360 purchase? Even though I couldn't have predicted
Final Fantasy 13 no longer being a PlayStation 3 exclusive (or wouldn't have been willing to believe it), the fact that tri-Ace was already working on
Infinite Undiscovery (hopefully the game will be better than the title) could've been a good clue that
Star Ocean: The Last Hope would also be on XBox 360 - and maybe even another Valkyrie Profile in a few years - had I been clear minded enough to see it.
Though such news was uplifting for me, a roommate that just bought a PS3 mainly for FF13 was a bit disappointed, though at least
Versus 13 wasn't also announced for the 360. I should've told him not to feel so bummed unless Kingdom Hearts 3 (and you just
know there'll be one once the DS and PSP games are released) also loses PS3 exclusivity...or never gets it to begin with.
Though the demos for Tales of Vesperia and Too Human are now available for download, I'll either have to wait a few days or upgrade my Live account to gold status since silver members don't always get first access to new stuff. I'd rather wait since buying a gold membership that's not going to be used often isn't very appealing. Hell, the $8 toward a 1-month membership will be better spent on ToV as soon as 1)It's released and I have the money for it, 2)It gets good enough reviews, and 3)I'm sure it won't get in the way of my current Tales of the Abyss playthrough of about 15 hours.
Labels: posted in windows, videogames
April Is For Fools
Ah...the wonders of having a
hacked PSP...well, that's what I could be saying, except that would require having taken advantage of the hacking by doing something like playing
Cave Story, or trying my hand at
homebrew coding myself. Instead all I have to show for it is a barely-played copy of Lumines ordered on eBay and a recently-completed copy of
Crisis Core that has left me slightly disappointed for several reasons of my own making:
Too damned short and easy (solution: replay on hard mode and do more than the first mission offered)
Not enough Aerith Cissnei (solution: same as above until her DMW percentage is 100%)
Subtle 'stabs' at political allegory (solution: laugh it off as a result of all the media hype about the election/nomination/scandal-of-the-week)With that said, what kind of fool would need to
hurt someone for a copy of Grand Theft Auto IV? Let me get it out of the way now and say that I won't be surprised at all if someone out there actually gets around to blaming the game itself for the violence that someone would resort to in order to get the game. I should be glad that such a thing hasn't happened at my place of work yet...as far as I know.
What kind of fool would
act outraged over some
tame photos of
Hannah Montana Miley Cyrus? I'm more unnerved over whatever face she's supposed to be making in that first photo. Looks like a 'gimme yo copy of Grand Theft Auto IV before I stab yo bitch azz' face to me - if a famous teenybopper girl can make that kind of face, that is. If the other eye were open, it could even be a 'you have done well to make it this far mister
Zack Fair, but now you must DIE!' face.
What kind of fool would expect
Queen's "Keep Yourself Alive" to sound anything near similar to the
multiple versions of "Keep Yourself Alive" from the Guilty Gear series solely on the logic that if
Sol-Badguy is the fusion of the game's creator and Freddie Mercury, then his theme tune would also be a mixture of original music with the original - and then be in for quite the shock at how...retro-sounding 70's rock sounds? Well, that would be me, and let's face it - robbing people over a game that 'promotes' robbery and freaking out over a teenage actress' bare shoulder/upper back/upper torso are far more foolish.
Labels: annoyances, posted in windows, videogames
Crisis Bore
The good news: I've gotten my copy of
Crisis Core - Final Fantasy VII for $32 the weekend it came out. Not bad considering how I missed out on the releases of King of Fighters XI, Devil May Cry 4, and some other games upon the week they were released.
The bad news: Said copy of Crisis Core is sitting in a bag, unopened for two reasons; 1) An anticipated financial rough spot in the next week, which will result in me getting a refund if it happens, and 2) The game's firmware requirements (3.90 if I'm correct) - meaning either I can upgrade my PSP firmware from the official 3.30 to the official 3.90, locking the system out of any custom firmwares, or wait until I get a copy of Lumines from eBay,
attempt to downgrade my PSP and get the latest working custom firmware, all while ever-so-slightly risking the PSP becoming bricked and thus unplayable.
The worse news: No blog layout change since whenever it was first announced, and another election-year month of crazy news items, easily summarizable in a format reminiscent of Harry Potter book titles:
*
Eliot Spitzer and the Over-Priced Prostitute: Just as some "family values" people have managed to support anti-gay policies only to get caught up in the behavior they denounce, he goes after the same kind of people that he eventually became connected to. Of course, I doubt we'll hear of how straight guys are just hopelessly addicted to sexual sin and that it defines them entirely, or that the next time some openly gay person in public office gets in trouble that we'll see their
partner standing behind them, but it would be something new for my cynical mind.
*
Barack Obama and the Loud-Mouthed Preacher: Honestly, I don't see why Obama should have to distance himself so much because his pastor says some things similar to what
other pastors have said, and why this is supposed to be all so discrediting. If we're going to discredit Obama over his past, there's
other areas that would make more sense.
*The Iraq War and the 4,000 Dead Soldiers: I still remember back before the war how some around me believed that the war would be so quick and effortless, only to be given the false positive that was "Mission Accomplished" leading to this. It's not the body count that gets me here so much as the rock and the hard place that this country is between upon either withdrawing or sending in more troops and extending the time we spend over there. The icing on this cake of insanity is undoubtedly the way Cheney and his ilk were speaking out against messing around in Iraq some 10 years ago...we all know now just how much they really believed that.
*
Brett Favre and the Questioned Manhood: Here's a guy who has had one long career with some accomplishments and moments of greatness who lets his guard down at the wrong time (while he was still in the camera sights) and he gets attacked for being a woman - by a woman. It wasn't funny when the press did it to Hillary, and it's not funny here. I'm just glad Favre was a retiring athlete and not a political contender, or this would be the beginning of the attacks and not the end (just look at
how they treat Obama). What a way to send mixed signals that our men are supposed to be more than uncaring, unemotional brutes, then punish them for stepping out of said uncaring, unemotional appearance...[/sarcasm]
I have to conclude that you know the news - or rather what makes the news - is uninspiring and bad when you don't look forward to it as much as the plot (or in the case of Advent Children, the
fight scenes) of yet another
spinoff in a cash-cow franchise.
P.S.- My apologies to anyone who finds this post by search and thinks I'm bashing the game just by looking at the title...
Labels: announcements, politics, posted in windows, videogames
THIS...IS...SPARDA!
If I were the kind of person who sees a lot of movies, I might be more distressed over the whole death-of-Heath-Ledger thing. Going by
some responses on the internet, he was such a good actor that actually did other films besides
teh ghey cowboy movie Brokeback Mountain. The only other thing I remember about him was about his part as the Joker in the next Batman film.
Since I'm not a moviegoing person these days, there's another hot issue on my mind now - the upcoming
Devil May Cry 4. Playing the demo over the past few days has been a nice calming way to spend time before and after going to class. Hopefully the full game will be as good as Devil May Cry 3 and nowhere near as bad as the second...
Another thing that I somehow missed until a few days ago was something called "Meet The Spartans". Sure, I could have seen the trailer on YouTube - and maybe that'll come later - but I was too lazy (or too busy trying to find recently posted King of Fighters XI/Neo Geo Battle Coliseum/Guilty Gear XX Accent Core matches).
Labels: posted in windows, videogames
Happy Christmas And A Merry New Year
So I went out and bought an Xbox 360 Pro at $350 for a personal Christmas gift, though I wanted a Wii but either a)couldn't find one at the normal $250 price or b)would have been forced to pay $500 for the system plus extra controller, 3 games of my choice (of which the two I wanted weren't available), and some other accessory. The original plan was to get the $399 PS3...until I found out it has no backwards compatibility (so much for the backlog of games on my list such as Valkyrie Profile 2, Tales of the Abyss (or Legendia), and Xenosaga III). I should be much happier than before with a current-gen console, but then again, there's this thing they call "buyer's remorse" that must be affecting me.
Right now, the only things I can think of looking forward to in early 2008 are Devil May Cry 4, Grand Theft Auto 4, and how long it will take before any New Year's resolutions I make are kicked to the curb and left to die in the cold.
The list of things that happened for me this year includes but is not limited to: my PS2 dying after 5 years, getting a temporary job during NBA All-Star weekend and missing a chance to see Kobe Bryant, getting a non-temporary job 3 weeks after that, having a new car after 6 months of going without one, missing out on San Diego Comic-Con 2007 and Evo 2007, laughing my ass off at the media coverage of some fool named Larry Craig and all of the other idiots who profess "family values" only to get caught up in "teh gay !!11", moving back to San Diego to go back to school, and thankfully not having to evacuate during the whole Southern California Wildfire thing.
Here's to hoping that things turn out great in 2008 - or that at least life won't absolutely suck...
Labels: posted in windows, videogames
Not Much To Talk About
You know, there should have been a post for last month, but I just couldn't get around to it, especially once those
Southern California Wildfires struck. At one point, I had half of my stuff packed into my car and was staying up all night ready to pack the other half if one of the fires had gotten any closer to the house. Even though the fire didn't come any closer, I still had my stuff in the car, and if I wasn't sleeping for a few hours at a time, I was slacking around when I should have been studying for a test or typing up a research paper. Not only was there no post for October, but no layout change either, and at this point, I'm even contemplating deleting this blog no later than the end of January if I can't make anything about it entertaining on a regular basis to the few visitors that drop by here, some of which are still searching for 'sixteen volts blog'.
In anticipation of some of the newer anime out this season, I recently finished
Nanoha StrikerS [while good, it doesn't beat season two, even with the battles against Cyb
organization XIII...I mean, the "
Numbers"],
Kanon (2006) [much better than the original from 2002, with happier endings all around], and
Ouran High School Host Club [way too cliche of an ending for me, and something of a chore to watch past one episode or another] to get some of the old stuff out of the way.
My PSP and DS have been somewhat neglected compared to World of Warcraft, though I have been getting back into
Phantom Hourglass (why I assumed I would need bombs to get into the second dungeon instead of just picking up the rocks on the way, I don't know, but it did keep me stuck for a while) and regularly playing
Tekken: Dark Resurrection (which doesn't help much if I still lose against nearly every human player).
One last thing to note here is that this is the first post in linux - specifically,
Ubuntu 7.10 - since the change from 'old' Blogger to 'new' Blogger almost a year ago. Though I did set up my system to dual boot with the master boot record on a floppy disk, this was replaced by installing a second hard drive.
Labels: anime, announcements, posted in linux, videogames
This Isn't Going The Way I Expected...
Once again, I'm posting at the end of the month and it's the only post of the month. Once again, I've promised some kind of layout change that I didn't deliver on. It's not that I like blogging this way, but between work and play (and now school), I just can't seem to keep a focus on making newer, better postings. Sad, I know...
Before going back to school, I was mildly excited about taking new courses toward my major, and had thought I'd be able to keep up in class. Apparently, that's not the case here. I knew work would get in the way a little, but adding to that, being out of school for a year has made me forget a few things here and there. Falling asleep while trying to read out of the textbook doesn't help much either...
In gaming,
Halo 3 has broken some records, not that I'm surprised in the least, oh no...(earlier this year, I saw a blue sportscar in Las Vegas with the license plate "HALO 3"). I wanted to buy
Jeanne D' Arc since I've been waiting for it once word got out that
Level 5 was behind it, but decided not to for now since I don't play my PSP much (and wasn't sure whether to get the newer 2000 model). One of the bigger pieces of news for me out of this year's Tokyo Game Show was news on the three new Kingdom Hearts games - one I'll most likely never play (
for mobile phones), another with a weird name (
for DS), and yet another with blatantly recycled character designs (
for PSP). I'm still playing World of Warcraft, now with a Draenei Hunter in addition to the Blood Elf Mage created several months back. As for Growlanser: Heritage of War, I never did get that, and the lack of easy-to-find review scores doesn't give me enough of an idea of whether it's worth buying or not.
In case you've ever wondered why "posted in windows" is a post label, it's because I'm planning on installing Linux to the same hard drive as Windows Vista. Success with Ubuntu almost came earlier this week, except that I didn't want the master boot record overwritten, so I tried to have it installed elsewhere, only to fail. Eventually the job will be done right, if the boot record has to be written on a floppy disk or a distribution other than Ubuntu has to be used.
Labels: announcements, posted in windows, videogames
It's All A Buch Of Hype
Not that I care much about the state of politics as it is now, but if there's anything that might 'cure' me of my cynicism, some guy that goes by the name of
Ron Paul could do it - besides, one of my coworkers claims to be one of his grassroots supporters. As far as Hillary, Romney, and the others go, I'm more than a little bored with the way their campaigns are going. By now, I'm no longer surprised that few political figures go public on the need to curb illegal immigration, and I'm not surprised that certain Republican
sex-baiting loudmouths can't even live by their own example. I'd have more respect for them if they did something more constructive, like raise hell over Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (the way they did over Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire)...without reading too much into that title.
If I was the type of person who went to the movies these days, I'd feel a bit bummed about not going to see Transformers or The Simpsons Movie. Actually, now that I think about it, I feel a little icky not remembering the original 80's
Transformers in addition to ignoring the newer Transformers Armada series. Besides, while the reviews I've seen for Transformers are mixed, those for The Simpsons Movie lean more toward the positive. Maybe missing out on Transformers wasn't so bad after all...
In yet another change from this time last year, I did not go to San Diego Comic Con due to personal problems...personal problems that wouldn't allow for a two-way road trip totaling 11 hours, starting and ending in Las Vegas. Thus there will be no report of my activities there this year...because there were none to speak of.
There's some cheer somewhere in this post though, and that's due to me finding out that
Growlanser: Heritage of War [YouTube video] will actually be getting released in the US. Even though I doubt I'll find any of
Satoshi Urushihara's female character designs as sexy as Growlanser 3's Annette Burns [
worksafe |
not worksafe] (you may have to copy the links and paste the address in a new tab/window to view) this time around, the gameplay looks different enough from that in Growlanser Generations
[YouTube video] to make it worth buying. The fact that it's only going to have one Limited Edition print run also doesn't leave much room for waiting until later. That said, I think I could've slipped a
Peanuts reference in this paragraph somewhere - lemme know if you find out where. :)
Labels: announcements, annoyances, politics, posted in windows, videogames
I Seem To Have Missed A Lot This Month
There's been too much that I've missed out on this month. "Like what?", you ask? We have the Spurs winning the NBA finals 4-0 over the Cavs (I'd have thought they'd win one game), some government plan about a 'gay bomb' (I'd love to see Focus on the Family or some group like them condemn that waste of thought as sinful and immoral), the death of Chris Benoit and his family (haven't watch WWE much since it was WWF, so I don't care as much as when Owen Hart fell and hit his head), Manhunt 2 getting an Adults Only rating (which is equivalent to an outright ban thanks to Nintendo's and Sony's policies), Paris Hilton acting like a damned fool over a 45-day sentence (let's face it...it's not that bad no matter how much she cried), and other assorted brouhaha.
Why didn't I cover any of it? For one, World of Warcraft has been eating up some of my free time. You see, first came the 14-day trial, then purchase of the Burning Crusade during a sale where it was $25, then finding out I needed an active account to play it after I broke the seal on the box, then a call to billing support in which a woman implied rather unclearly that I could use a game card instead of buying the retail version, then a 60-day game card purchase, then failure to activate the account using the card, and finally, purchase of the retail game with success at creating a new account. The past couple of nights has been spent guiding a Blood Elf Mage through the forest, shooting fire and ice at anything that can be attacked.
As if that weren't enough, I've gotten back into programming with the DirectX SDK and SDL.net, where recent experience suggests that the latter will be preferred over the former for the next few weeks.
Finally, there's the anime. Besides Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS, Lucky Star and Hayate no Gotoku are most of I've been watching (on my computer) thanks to a lack of cable TV in the house.
If I weren't so lazy upon coming home from work or waking up on my day off, there'd be more content here. Maybe I ought to dedicate 30 minutes a night to writing a blog topic or something...
Labels: anime, announcements, annoyances, posted in windows, videogames
Like The Last Post, Only For April
I know that not much has been happening here on this blog, and I've been a little too lazy to try to write new posts. I'm sure if I'd put as much energy into writing what I think as I did watching
Nanoha StrikerS (which, as of episode 3, is starting off rather slowly compared to the first two seasons) or playing lots of
ATV Offroad Fury on the PSP (in which the Enduro races are frustrating), there could have been a couple of posts on something or the other. After upgrading my installation of
Ubuntu 6.10 to 7.04, there may also be a few posts made in Linux as well.
Labels: anime, announcements, posted in windows, videogames
A New Post For A New Year
Now that I am back to using a friend's internet service to get a wireless connection on my system, I can post again. It's been back since a couple days before Christmas but sometimes the wireless signal picks up interference or becomes too weak to connect to the internet. Also, I haven't felt like blogging much lately due to playing lots of
Starcraft and looking for
videos of Guilty Gear XX: Accent Core, since it's not likely I'm going to actually find it anywhere soon. Hell, I haven't even found
Guilty Gear XX Slash, and that was 2005's new game...
Oddly enough, I didn't make any New Year's Resolutions, though I do expect this year to be just as full of surprises, excitement, and lunacy as the last.
Labels: announcements, posted in windows, videogames
