I HAZ A PS3!!!!~!

The world is coming to an end, for I have a PS3. First gen, 60GB, full backwards compatible to boot.

Having barely scratched the surface of available xbox360 games, or even simply completing half of the ones that I own. I somehow found myself on Craigslist buying myself a PS3 so that I could finally get back to playing my PS2 games.

I’ll invite anyone who has a PS3 to friend, since I’m pretty much the only person I know who both has a PS3 and has it hooked up to the internet, but the only online game I own currently is Fat Princess. I’ll also own Wipeout HD relatively soon, but probably not until November when I feel I can finally spend more money of video games.

Of course the FIRST (and only retail) PS3 game that I had to buy was Valkyria Chronicles. I’ve been planning on getting a PS3 just for this game since AGES ago, it just so happened to finally be the right time I guess.
Though, I never watched the anime, I saw snips of the first ep that they were turning it into an abomination that no fan of the game would accept so I never watched it.

I have beaten Flower,  it was actually the first game that I bought. It’s been an amazing game, and all that I have left is to find all those trophies, which should be fun. I love showing people the grass in this game, it really is a great game to show off the processing power of the PS3.

Anyways, I’m pretty happy with it so far, though getting it to play happy with my router was a huge pain. It also required a redesign of my entertainment center, but it’s all been worth it.  And now I can finally go back to being a PS3 fanboy…….. ahhh shitz, they’ve ruined it.

My thoughts on Anime Expo: Part2 (Announcments)

Now I’ve never been to E3 or the TGS, but I follow them and others like it every year. Waiting for those few game announcements that can actually put me on the edge of my seat in excitement. The rest of my time is spent looking at the new information, videos and screenshots of games that I already know about but still aren’t out. Sometimes, incases of Fallout3, the initial announcements pass me by without any desire to know more, and then half a year later I see a developer walkthrough and realize that the game is going to be EPIC.

This is something that I can’t do at Anime Expo, or any other anime convention.  I mean there are a lot of announcements every year about all the new shows, manga, and more that are licensed for release state side. But I’ve already watched any of the shows that I care about. Really the closest thing I can call exciting news that I found at this years Anime Expo was that there is a company called MangaGamer and they’ll be releasing the Shuffle! and Higurashi VNs.

MangaGamer is a company based in Europe(can’t remember where), and they provide translated Japanese visual novels for download. The digital games are still on the pricey side, but that’s reasonably understandable considering how small of audience it pulls with western gamers, and how expensive the games originally are in japan. But what really sets them apart from the deceased Hirameki International Group, Inc. is localization of games like Da Capo and Shuffle! AKA Eroge.

I just didn’t see them coming at all. But in my opinion MangaGamer owned this show, no other announcement was able to knock me off my feet like this one. They even had multiple industry guests from Circus and OVERDRIVE. A booth offering all sorts of 18+ goodies. And did I mention that they are bringing over both Shuffle! and Higurashi?

Other than that, I really can’t think of any exciting news. I mean sure there were plenty of new titles coming over, but nothing can top MangaGamer’s news.

For a more complete post on how awesome MangaGamer was at AnimeExpo09 check this blog post out.  Shuffle! already has a date set for August 15th with Higurashi PT1 planned for Sep.

GTA IV Game of the Year?

Back near the end of 08 and beginning of 09 there was the yearly awards given out for amazing games. At the time Fallout3 was pretty much the only Game of the Year nominee that I had played. I really rooted for the game, it was an amazing experience and anything that I can clock 70+ hours into must be worthy of the award. To my dismay though, GTA IV took home at least half of the GoTY awards, and with sites like GameTrailers, it took home almost every award it got nominated for.

Plans for the Future

So the idea struck me, much like a 102 degree fever dream at 1 am, I should try going back to the basics. By which I mean, simply reviewing an anime show here and there. My schooling is currently on break, and I have a lull in my work schedule, so outside of watching the anime and playing my new copy of GTA4, I’m thinking I’ll have plenty of time to do it.

With any luck I’ll be able to revive this blog a bit and watch the hits per day trickle away. I have a couple of things in my draft list, I’ll work on getting something out. But just a warning, I have a challenge going with my good friend, AuthorX/AxeltheBard on who can reach a gamerscore of 10,000 first, current scores place him at 9,475, and myself trailing him at 9,140.  Even though he’s pulled ahead, I’ve been catching up and have closed the gap by quite a bit in the last month.  I’ve also got two “new” games to work with on top of going back to my old games to achievement hunt.  Last I checked, my opponent only has a copy of Mass Effect that is in the mail, I believe I have a chance.

My final words for tonight, don’t hold your breath. I’ve said a number of times that I’d be reviving this thing and it’s always been followed with a mild putter, a whimper and silence for almost a month. ^_^ I do have faith that this time will be a bit different however.

If not, you’ll know what to refer to this as.

Final Fantasy XIII NEW TRAILER (1/28)

So there’s been this countdown clock going for a while. People hoped it would lead us to a new trailer, others feared it would just be a global announcement for something we already knew from the Japanese press releases.

PRAISE the lords for it is a new trailer, and it’s a pretty good one at that, featuring plenty of cutscenes and actual in game footage of the battle system. I still have no idea how it’ll work out, but it sure looks awesome.

CHECK IT OUT!

Pic and news were stolen from Kotaku.

.Hack//Link Coming to a PSP near YOU! *Update

Believe it or not, .hack isn’t over yet.

The latest issue of Famitsu has confirmation on the next video game episode long-running, but niche appealing .hack series from CyberConnect. .hack//LINK is making the jump from manga to the PSP in 2009.(Source: Kotaku)

This rates at the top of my Fanboy Scale here, a multiplayer .hack game based on one of the many .hack manga? Tell me where to send the money to make sure this game gets localized. We never got Fragment, we deserve this.

*Update:

Found some magazine scans from the Famitsu article on this game. Loaded them to the blog, just click to see the full size.

Snow Day 23

The friend who introduced me to Touhou recently told me that I’ve surpassed him. Funny how that can happen.

Snow Day 17

Snow Day 10

Megaten, Not Looking Good.

I knew it was a Free to Play game, so I wasn’t expecting anything like WoW. I wasn’t even expecting City of Heroes. But I was expecting it to be able to stand up against FlyFF, and with a name like SMT behind it I thought it would have it in the bag. Sadly I thought wrong.

The game is pretty boring, and not that interesting to look at. The music is ok, but if that’s the only thing that I can think of that didn’t disappoint or annoy me something is wrong. The real killer for me, on this game, was having to constantly hit a button to attack. One of the reason’s I hated flying in FlyFF was much the same reason, where the rest of the game you could set up combos and do all sorts of other stuff to ease the strain when you took flight you had to hit that attack button constantly (unless you went onto the forums where you could find an auto fire method but it SUCKED.)

But this game somehow surpassed FlyFF for annoying combat. What I mean is spells, skills, whatever, all have a charge time. So you have to get within range of the monster. Activate your cast time. and then hit the button AGAIN to attack and if in this time the monster moved out of range you’ll have to chase it down again. Even trying to pull off a basic combo you have to be constantly pressing the attack button.  It’s just too much for me. If it was a Hack and Slash or even like .hack it would be fine, but this is still very much a turn based (read SLOW) attack system.

While I am being harsh on the combat, there is one thing that I did like the idea of, I don’t think it was fully realized, not in my experience at least. They had a whole block and parry system, which is something that I liked the idea. But it ended up feeling a LOT like rock paper scissors…. but the monster your fighting will always be only one of them. Leaving again a lot of pressing the same button over and over again.

The game itself suffers from looking VERY grey. The characters have a severe lack of options for design. And while there are familiar monsters from the SMT universe, I have more fun killing them in the real RPGs I have for the PS2.

It was an idea that I thought might have been fun, but with so many other AAA games, that are actually fun to play, I’m going to have to give up on this one.