| been a while, again |
[03 Nov 2009|09:32pm] |
Yeah, a month since my last post and time to find an excuse to say something again. Why not manga this time?
So, Berserk is still averaging what? Around nine chapters a year? And several of the last year have been a textless string of splash pages. Guts is perhaps nearly to Elfheim, but then again, he's been heading there for the last nine or so years. (He sets off for Elfheim around the middle of Vol 22, and the chapter itself probably dates to around late 2000?)
For anyone who stopped reading Black Lagoon because of the El Baile De La Muerte storyline, that arc finally ended. What was probably supposed to be some epic event bringing many characters and plotlines into one big story devolved into never-ending suck. Even the writer apparently realized it was spiraling into nowhere, as the series was put on hiatus, then restarted with most of the characters and plotlines silently dropped. That was a very good idea, as the story wrapped up fairly quickly once it was jumped to outside the city and with only the key characters present. Plus Roberta was put back into her maid outfit and the modified rifle, originally played up as important before being forgotten entirely, returns to play a key part in the battle.
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| Ginchiyo |
[05 Oct 2009|07:40pm] |
I always felt Tachibana Ginchiyo was something of an aberration for Koei. Most of Koei's female characters suffer a combination of short range, low damage, weird attacks, and girlish outfits. When a female character turned out to be powerful, it seemed more accident than intention. Ginchiyo was the exception. Heavily armored, sporting a sword with attacks competitive to the male characters, and just all around pretty darn good in each incarnation.
So, is it just me, or has Koei made her girlish for her Samurai Warriors 3 incarnation?
Ginchiyo - Samurai Warriors 2
Ginchiyo - Samurai Warriors 3
Dark purple replaced by purplish pink? A lot of the armor detail and hard edges are removed, making it look softer? The torso/chest looks more like cloth than armor? The armor skirt replaced with something that looks more like cloth and is made more like an actual skirt?
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| Assorted opinions |
[03 Oct 2009|11:25pm] |
[DVD] SWAT -- More generic than the average generic cop movie. Best thing I noticed? Bad sign that the most entertainment I had was going to the Special Features, simply because it played the theme song to the old TV show there.
[DVD] Watchmen -- Not bad. Long. No giant squid, but including it would have likely have made the movie even longer. Hard movie to recommend, but that is due to the source material itself.
[DVD] Coraline -- Nice. Lots of strange departures from the book. With all the departures and relocating from England to America, it felt strange keeping the idea of shopping for a school uniform.
[Xbox Live Arcade] The Warriors -- Supports four players. Don't try it with four players. Playable characters all look alike. Hard to keep track of where you are and what is happening. Combat is kind of boring. Animation looks stiff.
[Xbox Indie Games] Streets of Fury -- Supports four players. Unlike Warriors, you can keep track of where you are with four players, even when playing identical guys. Looks like Pit Fighter was turned into a side-scrolling brawler. More entertaining than it looks. Fun enough with three or four people. Seems more fun than the more expensive Warriors game.
[Wii] Valhalla Knights: Eldar Saga -- Entertaining so far. Character models look like a PSP game. Color palette consists of brown and shadows. Kind of Monster Hunter without visions of grandeur, considering two of the first field monsters are immobile life-size mushrooms and life-size leeches.
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| Nintendo update bricks Wiis? |
[02 Oct 2009|01:50am] |
So, Nintendo has released the 4.2 system update for the Wii. People have looked at the details of the update and the only thing it does (despite Nintendo's PR claims of improving performance) is to attempt to disable homebrew exploits and some piracy methods.
Oh, it does do one other thing. It risks bricking your Wii.
When the guys at hackmii.com were working on their HackMii installer, they tested Nintendo's code to update the boot2 firmware. They found Nintendo's code to be buggy, resulting in potentially incorrect ECC data being written for the updated boot2, which could brick a system.
Guess what Nintendo has decided to do for the first time? If your Wii has boot2v2 or boot2v3, the 4.2 update forces an update to boot2v4. And guess what the result is? People are posting about Wiis getting bricked.
Oh, for extra fun? The anti-homebrew part of the update:
1) Failed to address one of the currently known exploits to get code onto a Wii
2) Deleted existing homebrew programs by noticing their IDs, meaning said programs only needed an ID change to avoid deletion.
So even if you update your Wii regularly (and people who pirate games use other methods update methods anyway, if they update at all,) you were probably stopped from running homebrew code for roughly one night.
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| Muramasa - Shigurui difficulty |
[17 Sep 2009|11:54pm] |
Got Kisuke's 3rd ending to finish the game. Better than Momohime's 3rd, at least.
Started a new game just to see what Shigurui difficulty was. It's a one-hit kill mode, capping your life bar at 1 HP. And while you can switch freely between Muso and Shura difficulties, Shigurui removes that option (which is why you have to start a new game to switch to it.)
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| Muramasa, Oboro Muramasa |
[17 Sep 2009|10:42pm] |
Beat the bosses for the second time with both characters in Muramasa: The Demon Blade, which gave me the last sword needed to forge all the way to the Oboro Muramasa.
Wow, what a disappointment. Yes, it has the highest attack in the game, but the special is just... "Disturbance" is just a bunch of other lackluster specials combined into one chaotic, ugly, and arguably underpowered package. Sure, it hits full screen, but it tends to miss enemies and you can't even use it in the air.
I also beat one the end bosses on Shura difficulty so that I could unlock the next difficulty level, though I'll probably never play the game under it.
Now to just finish the game a third time with both characters to get their final endings. I wonder if it will be the second version boss again, the first, or a new boss? (EDIT: Only Kisuke left now. Preferred Momohime's 1st ending to her 3rd one. Yukinojyo is a jerk.)
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| Muramasa: The Demon Blade |
[05 Sep 2009|09:25pm] |
Started playing Muramasa today. Looks pretty like Odin Sphere.
I'm not sure what to think of the combat. Despite Muramasa having more options inside battle, the combat itself feels more shallow. Muramasa characters are larger than Odin Sphere characters, meaning you have less screen space in battle. Much more limiting is that, rather than Odin Sphere's free run of the entire stage, Muramasa locks battles to a screen-width. While it may be an illusion caused by the size difference and lack of free scrolling, the Muramasa characters feel more agile. Their attacks certainly seem more agile, but Momohime can also cross the width of the screen with a single air dash attack.
If anything, the characters feel too agile and too large for the confines of battle.
EDIT: Okay, not all battles are locked to the same screen size. That goes rather a way to improving things.
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| Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog |
[15 Aug 2009|04:12pm] |
[DVD] Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog
When I talk about things here, I tend to come off as negative, even of things I like. So here's a review that should buck that trend.
Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog is a short (40 minute) musical starring Nathan Fillion, Neal Patrick Harris, and Felicia Day. Quite entertaining, it is available for low price in DVD form and for free viewing through Hulu, so if you haven't seen it, you don't have much of an excuse to not be watching it right now. If you have seen it, you can watch it again.
If you do pony up the minor sum for the DVD, you get the bonus commentary track musical "Commentary! The Musical". Yes, the DVD features two commentary tracks, one real and the other consisting of fourteen songs that vaguely relate to the kinds of things you'd find on a commentary track. You can learn the story of the writer's strike in "Strike," thrill to Nathan Fillion comparing himself to Neil Patrick Harris in "Better than Neil," and give a few minutes attention to the actress who played Groupie #2 when she pays director Joss Whedon ten dollars to sing the solo "$10 Solo".
Okay, you can probably find the entirety of Commentary! The Musical for free on places like YouTube, but if you like the show enough to listen to it, then why not throw a few dollars towards the people who created it? (The DVD also contains a three part "Making of" featurette, and also subtitles in many languages. But not Wiccan subtitles. The Wiccan subtitles option is just there to offer one of the DVD Easter egg clues.)
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| [DVD] Kiss of the Dragon |
[07 Aug 2009|01:30am] |
[DVD] Kiss of the Dragon (imdb entry)
According to the opening credits, this movie is based on a story by Jet Li. If so, then Jet Li should stick to action rather than creating stories. Action movies tend to play loosely with details like logic and common sense, but this may be one of the stupidest movies I've ever seen.
( Spoilers for this stupid movie behind the cut... )
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| [books] Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series |
[14 Jul 2009|08:00pm] |
[books] Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series by Laurell K. Hamilton
The Anita Blake books are often described as "vampire (and werewolf) porn". If you have never read the books, then this is both more and less true than you probably believe. It is best to describe the series in eras.
Books 1-9 are the police/vampire hunter era. Hamilton has created a world mostly like our own, except the supernatural is real. Vampires have recently been legally declared "alive" in America, and St. Louis has embraced vampire culture in an effort to boost tourism. The main character, Anita Blake, juggles three jobs: raising the dead, legal executioner for rogue vampires, and consulting with the police on supernatural crimes. The books focus on the crimes as well as the supernatural differences of the book's world. Anita's personal life has her boyfriend troubles as well as her growth towards becoming an emotionless killer.
Books 10-12 are "Anita Does St. Louis". Hamilton effectively says "Screw this world creation and crime work, I wanna write hardcore porn." ( Cut for space... )
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| The Replacement Killers |
[02 Jul 2009|10:43pm] |
[DVD] The Replacement Killers
For a movie with so much gunfire, The Replacement Killers is rather boring. I cannot explain why, but it never even grabbed, much less held, my attention. I found myself stopping repeatedly to do more exciting things, like washing dishes.
The action scenes are weak, there isn't much consistency in character skills, and the story takes something of a jump to set up the end piece. ( Probably some spoilers, certainly some complaining... )
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| [manga] Eyeshield 21 |
[13 Jun 2009|08:18pm] |
So Eyeshield 21 has finally ended with chapter 333? Can't say I'm too upset to see it go. It was an entertaining series, but it became something of a mess with its last tournament arc.
( Cut for spoilers )
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| Review: Flightplan |
[10 Jun 2009|10:10pm] |
[DVD] Flightplan
Flightplan is the Jodie Foster airplane movie from a few years ago.
A paraphrase of my brother's description: "Interesting at the start, but becomes stupid."
My description: "If you know anything about this movie, then don't bother to watch it. Just remembering the trailers is enough to make the plot obvious within the first minutes. Honestly, even if you don't know anything about it, you probably shouldn't bother anyway."
I had a longer version of this post, but I deleted it. The movie just isn't worth it. To be blunt, if you've watched many movies or read many stories, the plot is extremely predictable. It relies on some extreme conveniences, and the writing thinks it is more subtle than it actually is. And is mostly just bad. If you wonder about the plot, just ask someone to tell you what happens. Even if you can watch it for free, don't waste your time.
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| Greg Land's art == Toothpaste commercial? |
[07 Jun 2009|08:30pm] |
It isn't difficult to knock Greg Land's comic book art. He is infamous for the "orgasm mouth." There are countless examples online of his shameless copying and swiping of images. His recycling is extensive enough that he fails to establish physical identities for his female characters, so that the only difference between his Jean Grey and Black Canary is hair color, and teenage Pixie looks like an adult because he can only draw one age for women.
I have a different complaint of Land which has only grown over the months. An open mouth can make an image of a face more dynamic, but Land takes this to extremes. He has an obsession for drawing people with their teeth showing. One or two people out of ten is one thing, but Land reverses those numbers.
Take the cover of Uncanny X-Men #510. The image is a large battle between ten characters. Eight have their faces visible, of which only one (Spiral) has her mouth closed. For bonus points, there is even a dragon's head in the background, its mouth wide open as well of course.
( Behind the cut, teeth/open mouths on a page by page basis. )
It sounds silly, but the results on pages range from annoying to borderline insane.
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| Reaper |
[26 May 2009|09:03pm] |
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If your show only managed a second season by being a mid-season replacement on a somewhat desperate network, then maybe you shouldn't assume that you'll get a third season while writing your second season finale.
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| WTF? Mature returns alive in King of Fighters? |
[09 May 2009|05:53pm] |
Mature has been added to KOF XII?! Considered dead since the end of KOF'96, she's only appeared in dream matches since.
Okay, KOF XII is a non-story dream match. But the reason it *is* a non-story game is that SNK has completely recreated all the artwork, and they simply wouldn't have the time to do the characters that they desired for the next chapter of the Ash storyline. So even though XII is a dream match, it doesn't make sense for them to use characters that would not be seen again in future games.
She now sports a modified version of her original outfit from her role as Rugal's secretary, rather than the long dress used when she became an official fighter. And an eyepatch. So, does this mean she is returning for real? And what of Vice? Did she also survive?
SNK Playmore has added a character entries for Elisabeth and Mature
Game Watch Impress has high quality screens and character art
Edit: Replaced Famitsu link to small images with Game Watch link to much better versions
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[02 Apr 2009|09:04pm] |
Heh, the title for tonight's episode of Supernatural is "The Monster at the End of This Book". That was the title of an old kid's book starring Grover that I used to own.
Nice bit of fun when Dean asks what "slash" means, when looking at internet pairings.
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| The Cat in the Hat |
[20 Dec 2008|10:15pm] |
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ABC is showing the live-action The Cat in the Hat. Wow, it is terrible. The Cat has no personality. The acting is bad across the board. Even the people with actual talent are bad in this movie, and the rest are worse. It is everything that people feared live-action Grinch would have been.
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[18 Dec 2008|07:17pm] |
I don't generally do memes, but I haven't posted in a while and it is about games, so:
Taken from ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) the_gel
1) What was your FIRST video game console?
Played: Atari 2600, or maybe one of those Pong knock-offs
Owned: NES (co-owned with my brother, actually)
2) Name a few games you played on said console.
Atari 2600: Breakout, Chopper Command, Stampede, Haunted House
NES: A lot. Pointless to name even a few.
( Pretty long post with 30 questions, so lj-cut for space concerns )
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