Games

Delved back into Touhou after a long withdrawal only to quickly realize that it still kicks my butt. I suppose I just wanted to finish the earlier games before moving on to the newer ones, which will still incidentally kick my butt. I really like these games though, and that’s saying something because top-down shooters have never exactly been my cup of tea.

I’ve also gone further down the dark path with eroge too. It’s nice to play English patched games courtesy of hard working fan translators, but the selection will always be limited to what the translation teams choose. It’s not to say that I’m unappreciative - far from it. There’s a whole wide world of eroge out there just waiting to be played. You have to play a wide variety of eroge; the good, the bad, the popular, and the obscure to truly appreciate what distinguishes the great eroge from the ordinary.

In summary, there are a couple posts in draft mode right now. I do my best thinking while gaming. At least that’s my excuse for now.

Arcana Heart provides half of your daily recommended intake of moe with less calories than the typical moe anime competitor. Examu’s all-girl fighting game brawled its way to North American shores in mid-April courtesy of Atlus USA. Eleven girls, each representing a different facet of moe otaku culture, duke it out in a fighting system highly reminiscent of the Guilty Gear series.

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Getting back on the blogwagon should be interesting. This summer will hopefully afford me as much time for reading and writing as I want it to, so long as I make a point of doing that writing. But enough about me, it’s time to go on the offensive.

I saw this article from GamesRadar and decided to give it a read. Certainly, everyone has an opinion about games they feel don’t deserve accolades, but why vocalize my own when I have columnists on fancy-schmancy gaming news sites to do it for me?

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It’s only a week into May and the days are already so hot. I think I’ll stay inside, watch anime about summer, and live the season vicariously that way. Finals are over for now, so it’s time to kick back and get some R & R. I’ve still got plenty of unfinished posts sitting in the old queue right now, and those will go up eventually. For now I’m just trying to trim down my ever growing anime queue.

The first order of business is to finish up the shows that ended recently. Dragonaut’s ending was corny but passable. My low expectations for the ending were satisfactorily met. Bamboo Blade had a pretty good ending. Curse the production staff for teasing us with that finale leading to the inevitable second season though. Overall Bamboo Blade was an excellent show. Next up is to finally finish Hayate no Gotoku and Shana S2. $5 says I’ll be sick of Rie Kugimiya’s voice when all is said and done. It really doesn’t help to tackle Zero no Tsukaima next…

Been dabbling in game rentals here and there. I was thoroughly unimpressed with Heavenly Sword. While HS was beautiful and visually stunning, it didn’t manage to draw me in. Mario Kart Wii is still more of the same fun but uninspired gameplay. Guess I’ll continue to do the mandatory single player character/track unlocking between anime sessions.

Been playing Digital Devil Saga 2 again recently. I really like the game, but really, leveling to get all the mantras can be so tedious sometimes. When I looked at this picture, I went, “Weaksauce. That’s probably not even a quarter of my count.”

>_>

Yay random oddity.

Watch your family.

I’ve missed quite a few of these due to time constraints and other distractions that will just be conveniently swept under the carpet. We’ll kick things off with anime opinions and move on to other stuff.

Clannad episode 21: Nagisa is love. Nagisa in a Kanon uniform is even better. I don’t see how Nagisa gets so much flack when she is clearly the best girl of the bunch. It’s also official that the show’s run will end at 22 episodes to probably save enough content for a second season or some OVAs. KyoAni could have just went with the standard 24 episodes to extend the Kyou arc, since the TV-only viewers are still left clueless as to the specifics of Kyou’s and Ryou’s past.

Hayate no Gotoku episodes 41-42: The plot is really going nowhere in a hurry. It’s still good for mind-on-autopilot type watching. I really can’t recall what happened in these eps without going back for another watch. Like a crazy party with lots of alcohol, it’s all just a blur.

Zoku Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei episode 4: The second season is simply brilliant. I dare to say that up to episode 4 it’s better than the first season, which was no slouch either. However the lack of new fansubs has left me in despair! AFK has left me in despair! Thanks a bunch.

Now onto the gaming side of things…

Hotel Dusk: This was an absolutely mesmerizing game. It’s a solid film noir mystery novel with lots of twists and turns. The story will keep you guessing until the climax at the end. The main character, Kyle Hyde, is a breath of fresh air in a world of pansy, bishounen protagonists. If you’re in the mood for a game that blends film noir styling with a complex story, look no further than Hotel Dusk. This gets a recommendation.

Phoenix Wright 3: Boring case 4 is boring. I may look at an FAQ to get through this borefest of a case just to proceed with the rest of the game.

SSBB: Yeah yeah. Everyone is talking about Brawl. Blah blah blah. Just trying to learn new characters to mix things up on wifi, all the while continuing to unlock the massive amount of hidden content.

This was my first midnight game acquisition and it was worth it. The Subspace Emissary story is surprisingly deep by SSB standards. I’m currently just going through to unlock all the characters before I venture into the wide world of wi-fi. I’ll edit this post and give out my Friend Code to any and all challengers later.

So in other words, this means that what little time I had for anime has diminished even more. There will be an update with comment soon as I try to get through my ever growing backlog of shows.

Yamcha is greatly disturbed. It was a while back (Sep 2007) that Namco-Bandai announced Duel Love, a game that pretty much looks like the girl’s version of Feel the Magic and Doki Doki Majo Shinpan. Sure the market is there seeing that girls are a huge part of the DS market, but this disturbs me so much that I’ll only give you the links here, here, and here. Proceed with caution. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to scrub my eyes with lots of soap.

Source: Kotaku

China never ceases to make me laugh. First it was Olympic Haruhi and now it’s the prospect of gaming as an Olympic sport. The ancient Greek Olympians must be rolling in their graves by now. Check out this article over at CNN. To make a long story short, a video game competition will apparently be an unofficial part of the 2008 Olympics. China even considers gaming a recognized sport.

If you’ve seen televised video game competitions before, then you already know what a travesty it is. It’s just an awful idea, because gaming as a spectator sport is a joke. Oh goodie, let’s go watch a bunch of geeks play video games! To quote the article, “…video gaming is serious business”. I like games as much as the next guy, but gaming =/= sport. Competitive eating is higher on my list of potential Olympic sports than gaming.

Source: Fortune at CNN