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.

It may have taken FOREVER for Live-eviL to finish it, but it is finally.  I’m still downlaoding it, and will FINALLY be able to finish this thing later today.

Needless is all kinds of awesome and over the top, but the ED is what seals the deal.

I have a feeling that this is going to go down as the best thing to grace my monitor.

The cd came out, snag it here, and have a great year.

The year 1986, location: school festival, event: Live Concert…. FEATURING TOUHOU Cosplayers!!!!!!!!

Oh yeah, and if you can’t recognize her, Jessica is there in the middle dressed as Marisa.  For the first second that it was on, I just thought it would be a Live! Alive!! ripoff. Then I realized that she wasn’t just dressed up as any random witch.

The rest of the episode was only half as entertaining as this concert is. I also desperately want to know if the original VN had this scene in it or not.

Beatrice is shaping up to be a great  character, though I really wonder why furniture is the only things that can see her.

I could go on, but if I really started talking about this show I’d be up all night talking, so for now, I’ll leave it with just this one amazing scene.  (Amazing cause it actually got me to post, even Haruhi and it’s FINALLY ending the endless eight didn’t get me here.  Though BlazBlue and Project Diva got me pretty close, and I’ll probably come back and talk about them when I get further along.)

I imagine what he really means is, “what the hell are they dressed as?”

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.

So, while I sit here dusting my older figures to help keep them all looking about the same, I figure I might as well type something out about what I thought of Anime Expo 09. How can I dust and type at the same time? I guess this dusting project will just take that much longer.

Anyways, Anime Expo has always been “the” anime convention in my eyes. End of my Sophomore year of high school, I had a booming anime club under my belt, a little over a year of trying to watch as much as I could. And I set my eyes on going to Anime Expo, Anahaim, and it was one of the most magical events I can remember. From walking the exhibit hall and ogling the DVDs, Manga, Figures, and everything else a fan could ever want. To spending hours in the viewing rooms, and panels. I came back a stronger fan than I left.

Since then I have been to a number of different conventions, local cons, further away ones like Texas and even all the way up to New Jersey, I’ve tried many shapes and sizes. But I haven’t yet found one that could rival Anime Expo (A-kon being the closest I’ve been to). All this changed when they went to LA however, my wonderful Anime Expo had changed, and I thought I’d never be able to go back.

Well, turns out I did go back, and I’m glad I did. The convention itself has changed, though not as much as I had feared. The experience was no longer Anime Expo, it had lost that magic something which made it special.  But even without the magic, I had an amazing time. Watching hours and hours of anime that I still hadn’t seen. Browsing the exhibit hall ogling the half naked figures I could barely afford. Hearing announcements that I never expected to hear, and truly getting excited over them. The atmosphere from everyone getting together with similar interests, and just the ability to call out to a random Moko, Kyoko, or Yoko and then taking their picture. It’s something that only exists within a convention, and that is something that Anime Expo has definitely not lost.

*Just want to note that the pictures I’m uploading on Anime Expo I took myself, but it was with my new Palm Pre, a phone I have had just over a week now and half the con I was still figuring out the best way to take photos with the thing.*

I went to Anime Expo over July 4th weekend, and I really want to post about that experience. Also thinking of posting some of my photos, and possibly even about what I bought while I was there.

I’ve also been wanting to post about some of the shows I’ve been watching, same with a few videogames.

But today I’ll keep it simple and just tell any readers out there to keep an eye out sort of thing, I probably won’t have anything up tomorrow, but Wed should be a good day for my first Anime Expo post.

PS. I really can’t fathom why there are more hits per day on this blog after months of nothing, than when I was actively writing.

Last month I got a new job, it’s a full time position at a computer help desk. I now find that I only have enough time these days to spend a few hours on entertainment, let alone writing about it.  Which is really sad now that I have such a great income of money.  It’s like I finally have enough to buy what I want, but I don’t have the time to enjoy it like I used to.  The world is a cruel place it seems.

Noteworthy things:

Finally started watching GitS:SAC, it’s a lot better when they aren’t focusing on the Major but the investigations and Laughing Man instead.

Shigofumi is like Jigoku Shoujo except backwards in pretty much every way.

The Kindle2 is pretty awesome, too bad I have no idea what to read on it outside of manga and books that date back 50 years or more.

Mio is Moe

My friends want to dress up for the Star Trek movie, I’m probably going to dissapoint them.

I still haven’t beaten ToS2, and yet keep buying all sorts of new games like ToV, SF IV, and the entire gamecube collection of Resident Evil games. Which I now find that I have no time to play.

Douglas Adams was probably the greatest writer of words EVER(currently reading Salmon of Doubt on my Kindle2).

Pokemon Tournament happens locally on the 23rd, I’ll hopefully get around to actually opening my copy of Platinum and transferring my Diamond Pokemon over before then.

I’ve been hearing that Sekirei is as if Pokemon were big breasted girls from space. I still have no interest in watching it.

Oh, and this is probably going to be my last post for a couple months, possibly even until sometime late 2010……. nah, I’ll write something else much like this before then and I’ll probably throw up a picture of Haruhi S2. Please let there be a Season2 before 2010.

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.

I had played about 5 hours of GTA III back in the day and found it less than amazing. Vice and Andreas came and left, there was plenty of buzz about them but I never actually got around to playing them. GTA IV eventually came out, I didn’t yet have a 360 or PS3 so I paid it no thought. Eventually I saw other people play it, specifically assassination missions. I was pretty impressed by the visuals and the little game play I saw, but it just didn’t register at the time.

About three weeks ago the Lost and Dammed DLC came out, and the reviews said it was great, so on a whim I went to eBay and there I found a buy now option at a great deal. Last week I got it in the mail and less than a week later I’ve already beaten the story of GTA IV.  It was simply AMAZING.

First, the game itself exemplifies what games are capable of this generation. Vast and highly detailed world, cars, people, even the weather, all of it looks the best I’ve ever seen it in a game. Cars take realistic damage when hit or something else hits them. You can even watch as your tire deflates after being hit by a bullet and then get torn apart. Animations, especially character animations, are some of the best I’ve seen.  The only animation that I didn’t like would have been some of the flame animations, especially candles, which looked like it was just 4-5 flat pictures changing every couple frames.

While the graphics in the game are pretty amazing, they aren’t perfect. During my run on the 360 I noticed one rather annoying flaw. Every time the lighting changed, the game seemed to have to reload everything, usually resulting in severe pop-ins. So anytime I go from inside to outside, or a tunnel, or some other instance I’m not remembering, everything will go dark for a second and then reload with a different lighting effect. (I even had one instance where I entered a tunnel and suddenly everything but the cars disappeared until the world reloaded itself.)  There was also a slight pop-in issue when traveling really fast, but I’m a bit more forgiving on that one.    Also note, I was playing this game after having installed it, which usually fixes these types of problems in other games as well as decrease load times.

The world that this game paints has got to be one of my favorite things. It’s consistently perverted and full of tongue in cheek social commentary, which I felt brought this world to life like few others.  From the radio station’s talk shows, and news reports, to the billboards and local chatter, everything is contributing to painting the world with a different coat of paint. I also loved the billboard ads for the Pisswasser, marketing GENIUS right there. Something else that really helped set the environment is that after most story events you could actually hear news reports about it on the radio, again bringing a sense of life and growth to the game.

Controls are well done, I think they did a pretty good job of mapping everything to the controller. There are a couple context sensitive buttons, like trying to jump onto a ledge is the same as jump over, so there were a few times that while trying to climb on top of a railing, I instead jumped over it to my death.  The cars are hit and miss, I can see that they were trying to go with real driving physics, so a car acts just as it would if you tried to make a turn going at 90 in real life. But making turns at any speed higher than what the local traffic is doing(which I think is 20) is a huge pain. They have an e-brake to help with turning, but using the thing would more often send me in a tail spin than around the corner.   This becomes even more annoying whenever your performing a chase or race type of mission. The AI seems to know exactly when to brake, how much, and just feels like the route it’s taking is already mapped…. oh wait, it is.

Driving annoyance #1, chase missions. It took me about half the game(somewhere around the 20 hour mark) to realize that whenever you are chasing someone, they are literally on tracks until a certain point. Cars and such spawn in specific points during these missions, and you’ll find that the car or bike or whatever it is that you’ll be chasing is 100% invulnerable.  You can pump 100 rounds into someone you’re chasing, even when they are on a bike and everything is just absorbed or deflected or something. It isn’t until you reach the end of their track that you can take them out in 3-5 shots. This proved even more annoying when you are supposed to kill the person, but can only do so after a certain point, a point that you might fail to reach and thus have to restart the entire mission from the beginning. One mission after failing a few times, I decided to just race ahead of the guy, since I already knew his route, and set up a trap. I even launched an RPG at his car, and it went THROUGH his car.

This proved increasingly annoying since any other type of mission you have free rain over how you take the person out. I loved it when they would send me to kill someone who is heavily fortified on top of a building. Instead of fighting my way in and then out, all I had to do was go across the street, get into a good position, then snipe the person. Freedom in a game like this is what it’s all about. There was also one mission that you had to take out the guards  by sniping them from another building. Then you were to move in and take out the 4 bosses one at a time. Well, the first boss I took out while driving a car, took the car up to the second level of the construction site, got out using it as cover, worked my way to the 2nd boss took him out. from there I sniped the third boss, went back to my car and drove around back to the last boss and took him out. Reading about that mission later I found out that the last boss would have normally had a large number of guards and even a helicopter come in to give him reinforcements, and yet I was able to bypass all that. It feels great when you can pull that kind of shit off.

Since I’m practically talking about combat anyways. Sniping is my favorite way to do things, followed by using explosives. Sadly both these things don’t really use the cover system/lock on, that the rest of the game does.  Locking on to an enemy works pretty well, you gain the ability to see the target’s health, and the sight even grays out if there is no way you can hit. You can also shift the aim, so instead of center mass you can aim for a limb or even a head shot, though it’s important to note that it’s very easy to switch targets when trying to do this since it’s tied to the same movement on the controller.  The new cover system also works more often than not, while not being as robust as Gears of War, it serves it’s purpose and is an important skill to master if you want to survive some of the larger shoot outs. One problem I had with the cover system was things like throwing grenades was a dangerous idea. You have to be all the way at the edge, if not even though you’ll be targeting and appear to be ready to go when you throw the grenade Niko might throw it at the wall you are hiding behind, it then lands at your feet, and you go flying, thus having to start the whole mission over again.   The rocket launcher and sniper rifle are unable to lock onto the enemy, so using them from behind cover also poses as an annoyance/dangerous, and the sniper rifle doesn’t even work from cover period.  Blind fire on the other hand works great with most weapons.

Story, is surprisingly good. From my first experience with GTA all I remember is being some random guy who gets introduced to a mob boss or something for work, and as you go on you work for more important people. The story this time around is filled with all kinds of character development, moral/game changing choices, and some surprising twists. There are even random character missions that are side stories centered around the unimportant people that you saw during the story, one of these characters quickly became my favorite in the game.  That said, I think the first half(or chapters 1 and 2) is of a higher quality than the second half of the game. By the second half you are working for so many different people it’s almost confusing, and the whole idea that you have to complete these chapters to unlock each island is just plain annoying and again ruins that freedom.  It makes sense to limit us near the beginning to give us time to understand what is going on and get used to the world we are in, but by the half way point of the game it’s annoying to suddenly get a 6 star wanted level, all because I flew over the locked island.

Another thing that surprised me is the after story, while Fallu0t3 simply ends, this game actually has a bit of an epilogue, and all of the achievements and the percentile are geared around things that aren’t going to die on you during the story. Another thing that surprised me is most missions that you escort someone, there is an in game conversation. But what was really great about this was how there were sometimes multiple conversations that could take place during this time. So even if you failed and had to do the mission a second time, you could still have something different to listen to.

The missions are also all unique enough that throughout the entire story I never stopped being amazed at what I was being sent to do. From a bank heist that would go down in the history books, to chasing a biker through the subway stations, no two missions ever felt too much alike. And with about 70 of these missions in the story mode I think that’s quite a feat.  Side missions on the other hand, like the collect cars and kill that person, while never being stale, don’t have the same flair that the story missions generally have.

Physics are everywhere in this game. From driving to bowling you can feel things move, and it’s an amazing sight to see in a video game. I know we’ve been seeing this for almost a decade now, but every time they polish it up like they did here, it feels new and great. The ragdoll physics didn’t quite fit in with everything else though. I can understand why they did it, but I’ve just never liked how it looks. They also used the force feedback perfectly, from the phone vibrating to the thunder from a lightning storm they used and timed it all very well without ever feeling overused.

Finally the sound, while the soundtrack for music on the radios never really hit my taste like Burnout Paradise and other games, there aren’t many tracks to complain about. Personally, as stated above, I loved simply listening to the talk radios and advertisements. They also have it set up to randomly play the different tracks depending on which station your playing, instead of it being one long track that keeps repeating. Voice acting was top notch, better than most games, and there are hours and hours of it. Even voices like Jacob which is the best example of ebonics I think I’ve ever heard in a video game, as well as foreign languages thrown in for good flavor, I may not understand everything being said but I still enjoyed every second.

It really is a great game, and I’m happy I actually gave it a chance. It deserves many of the awards it received last year, and I can only hope that they keep that strong sense of humor in future games.  Now to go finish the last 30% of the game (pigeon hunting sounds like it’ll be annoying), and maybe even try out the online mode, but I worry I might suck at that after most of the people on there having already been playing for almost a year now.

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.