Like the title says, I had an impromptu disappearance from the blog for a week or so. I’m not quite sure what happened, but I think I was mistakenly kidnapped and wound up naked with 20,000 smelly NEETs. After a daring escape using Macgyver-like ingenuity with a paper clip, a roll of duct tape and a memo pad, I’ve returned from my unplanned absence…

What? You don’t believe my story? Well fine. I’ve been busy studying for my finals and have pretty much stayed away from the interweb and all its distractions which includes anime, blogging, looking at hentai, etc. I’ve briefly returned to do this little filler post explaining my absence that no one cared about or noticed.

Hm oh yes. I did stray from my studying regimen to buy The Orange Box on sale for $10 and play some Team Fortress 2. I’m not an FPS gamer by any means, but it was frentic and chaotic fun. There’s Portal and Half-Life 2 as well. I’m taking my time with Portal, and HL2 is pretty much a throw-in that won’t get much play time. I’m still a TF2 newbie but if anyone wants to play with me, I’m noirsword on Steam. Be sure to give me your name too so I can add you. This is also my AIM, so if you want to contact me that way to coordinate a match, feel free to do so.

PS: This pretty much translates to free kills while I learn the ropes.

I know when and where I was when it happened. I was sitting in the airport, waiting for my flight home. It was December 17, 2007. I was bored, and I had an internet connection, so to kill the time I decided to take a few minutes to try this game Yamcha had recommended. “Kingdom of Loathing”–what a nonsensical thing to name an online RPG, I thought. Well, I’d give it a spin anyway. I remember thinking as I logged on, hey, if I like this, I might get a couple of months’ worth of entertainment out of it!

Yeah, right.

One year to the day later I found myself sitting in the same airport, playing the same game, and a bit stunned at the year-long journey into a bizarre blend of pop-culture, gaming satire and surprisingly deep gameplay I’d undertaken–and am still undertaking!

The dreaded sabre-toothed lime, both feared enemy and loyal citrus-based familiar.

The Quick-and-Dirty

- www.kingdomofloathing.com
- It’s a browser based mostly single-player RPG with a wacky sense of humor and parody
- It’s free (donations get you limited-edition in-game swag)
- Other draws: surprisingly deep amounts of content, new content rolling out constantly, low commitment for an M?PRPG, active fanbase that maintains a comprehensive Wiki, collection of Greasemonkey scripts, and variety of botting programs/supplemental interfaces.

I hate the cliche that something only takes seconds to learn, but a lifetime to master. Kingdom of Loathing doesn’t really fit either of those–it takes about half an hour to learn the basics (thanks to the guiding influences of the punningly named Toot Oriole, the first in a long line of groaners), and it takes a couple of months to learn how to efficiently manage your daily adventuring. Veterans of RPGs, of the MMO persuasion or otherwise, will find that there’s a lot of stuff here similar to what they know–monsters drop items, you go on quests throughout the kingdom, and equipping yourself properly is half the battle.

There’s a lot that’s familiar, but tweaked enough that wizened gamers will smirk at it. Each day in KoL gives you forty adventures (turns) to play with, consuming one per adventure (fights, etc.) and one for some other select activities (such as resting at your campsite). You get more from food and booze, the latter of which comes in a variety of blush-inducing names (calling a drink a Sex on the Beach has nothing on some of KoL’s brews). Your equipment slots are fairly stock–weapon, off-hand, hat, pants (shirts are not just optional but actually unavailable until you get a skill to equip them), and accessories. Of course, considering the image of your character clad in a grass skirt and a mullet wig while wielding a balloon sword in one hand and an hors d’oeuvres tray in the other stretches the imagination (and bends it to breaking when you consider you’re probably a crudely rendered stick figure anyway). You also get a little familiar to accompany you, but again, the paradigm has undergone a proverbial shift–you journey with sabre-toothed limes, spooky pirate skeletons, and levitating potatos in tow, each with their own assistive abilities and equipment.

This sassy pirate has sassed his last frass...Whack! Bonk! Zap! Splat!

And then there’s the stuff that’s simply ridiculous. Perhaps your disbelief finally breaks down when you find yourself fighting ninja snowmen, or using ball polish and rigging shampoo to appease a pirate crew. Perhaps it’s when you’re ordered to start a war between the frat boys and the hippies–and you have to choose a side (or, if you want a challenge, mutual destruction!). Perhaps it’s fighting your way, arm in arm with fellow clannies, through the game’s multiplayer dungeon. But what kind of dungeon crawl would KoL offer if it didn’t include carving your way through a sewer system filled with malevolent, surprisingly powerful hobos?

The real complexity, and fun, comes from the game’s sort-of-circular nature. You complete the quests, hit level 13, fight the Naughty Sorceress (the final boss, sort of), free King Ralph from his imprism-ment (that’s imprisoned in a prism) and ascend to a higher plane of existence. Where, it turns out…there’s nothing to do. So, you get reincarnated, retaining one of the skills you acquired in your previous life along with all your familiars, and your possessions (safely kept in Hangk’s Ancestral Mini-Storage) and go back to a time when the Sorceress still struck terror into the hearts of adventurers everywhere and the Kingdom still needed saving.

I suppose part of the appeal comes from wanting to better yourself each time you play through, with each run allowing you to play with a twist. Hardcore restricts you from using any gear or items from previous ascensions and limits your skills to only those retained with another hardcore ascension. Teetotaler, boozetefarian, and oxygenarian acensions prohibit the drinking of booze, eating of food, and consumption of both, respectively. For the particularly masochistic, a Bad Moon ascension requires a hardcore lead-in, which has its own restrictions, but then puts you into a particularly nasty ascension where awful things happen to you and you begin with absolutely nothing–gear, familiars, and skills, hardcore or otherwise.

There are in-game holidays, yearly Christmas-like celebrations with elaborate plots for players to explore, and the development team is continually rolling out new-content and expanding old vectors. Ambitious players will find loads of optional side quests and hard-to-reach areas to aspire to. There’s a small player-versus-player element that the devteam has promised will be getting an expansion in the future, and a healthy in-game economy, driven by player-run stores in a searchable market.

Perhaps the most important aspect for me in reviewing and recommending KoL is that it’s tons easier to play now than it was a year ago. A combat bar has been introduced that allows you to map frequently used functions (attacks, items, skills) to numbers on your keyboard, and players have to click less and less with the introduction of powerful new chat macros. For those who wish to automate the playing process further, KoL has an active fan community that’s developed everything from a truly serious Wiki, Greasemonkey scripts, and even sophisticated Java-based botting programs (KoLMafia is my own pick for when I need to farm or don’t have much time to play).

Another thing about Kingdom of Loathing is that it’s free, as in beer. But to support the staff that develops KoL from concept to coding, the game offers an “Item of the Month” that can be purchased for the in-game cost of one Mr. Accessory. A Mr. A, which is a powerful item in its own right, can be bought through the Mall, for in-game currency (meat, not something boring like gold or gil), or from KoL’s parent company, Asymmetric, for a PayPal donation of $10 USD. You can get the IoTMs, which are often powerful familiars or tomes that enable summoning of useful combat items, without ever having to pay a cent, but be prepared to do a lot of farming and market speculation. I personally never thought I’d pay to play an online game, but I find myself sending these guys a bit of cash month after month, and logging in daily besides.

So, asking ourselves the question that this feature poses–will you enjoy this? Well, if you’d like a twist on the old RPG formula, laden with bizarre humor, gratuitous pop culture references and not an insignificant amount of puns, you should enjoy KoL. If you’re looking for a more classically-designed MMORPG, this probably isn’t your grail–the game’s multiplayer aspects are still in its infancy. But KoL has a special something that captured my attention, and held it fast–fifteen months and counting!

Next week for You Might Like It I plan to tackle a game that’s well known among the freeware games community, for being single-handedly made from start to finish, having tight controls and a compelling story, and introducing a brave little toaster known as Balrog…see you next friday for Cave Story!

Another school semester has come to an end, and I’ve gained a short respite from the drudgery of essays and tests. Instead of catching up on animu like I planned to though, something else has occupied my attention. That something would be the sheer gaming ecstasy known as Valkyria Chronicles. It has utterly consumed me. I’ve pushed aside everything on my watchlist to play this incredible game, including Clannad which I so dearly love and religiously watch. Sorry Clannad, I’ll get around to you… Eventually. At any rate, let’s talk about Valkyria for a bit.

It’s not often that a game utterly drains my time like this. The usual suspects are Mario and Zelda when those are released, plus it’s been a long time since a JRPG has stirred something inside me. I believe the last JRPG I played that I loved this much was Final Fantasy Tactics back in 2002. Over the years I became jaded to the JRPG genre as it interested me less and less with each new game released. Nippon Ichi can release sequels that are essentially the same as their predecessors in every way and no one cares (CoughDisgaeaCough). Final Fantasy is not something I particularly love either besides the aforementioned Tactics and FFVI.

That brings me to Valkyria Chronicles. I absolutely love everything about this game. Great presentation with watercolor visuals and a story that unfolds like chapters in a history book (in a good way). The story opens in a fictional 1930′s Europe as an empire that bears more than a passing resemblance to WWII Germany invades a peaceful, neutral country called Gallia. A young man named Welkin Gunther is drawn into the conflict and soon joins the local militia to repel the invasion.

The gameplay is stellar with turn based strategy that lets you manuever units and fight from a third person perspective. It really sucks you into the battlefield as you scramble for cover behind sandbags or dive into the safety of a trench in a hail of gunfire. Turn based RPGs are usually far from frantic but Valkyria dares to challenge that standard. The centerpiece of the gameplay is getting to drive the tank, and the thing is a beast on the battlefield. Of course the tanks are toned down for the sake of gameplay, and it’s odd that enemy infantry can take a tank shell to the chest and live albeit with low HP.

The cast is fleshed out and convincing in portraying their motivations for fighting. The main characters grow over time and their personalities are dynamic and interesting. The villains are… Villainy. They do villain stuff well and you’ll love to hate them. Even the generic units are lively and have plenty to say, although their role in the story is non existant.

Valkyria is the best game Sega has produced in a long time and almost makes me forget about the recent Sonic games and the travesty we call Shining Tears. The only downside I can think of is that the story can be a bit preachy and formulaic. I expect JRPGs centering on war to be varying amounts of preachy. After all, the publishers would get bombarded if they featured a story that condones war. At least Valkyria handles these matters tactfully without ever being too forced. Formulaic isn’t necessarily bad though as the story is told well.

I just wanted to briefly talk about the game but it turned into a mini review. If you have a PS3 and haven’t played Valkyria Chronicles yet, do yourself a favor and get it or I’ll Bright Slap you into tomorrow.

PS: A Valkyria Chronicles anime is slated for Spring 2009. It’s earned a place on my watchlist and should also earn a place on yours.

I haven’t done much in a while, but I don’t need to explain myself to you Blog readers!

So, games. I’ve been recently playing Dead Space, Fallout 3, and Red Alert 3. Might not cover them all, but I’ll cover Dead Space that’s for sure. I will cover, the Plot, the Gameplay, Presentation, and Miscellaneous stuff.

Occasionally, they will be waiting right behind the door.

Some have the courtesy of just waiting for you to kill them though.

Plot

Simple story. Undead space zombies. The player character, Issac Clarke, is no special forces dude who’s had a history with zombies. Nope. He’s just a regular space repairman dude. The game takes place mostly on the USG Ishimura, the largest and oldest planet cracker in the fleet. These are basically giant mining ships that take large parts of a planet and mine them until the entire planet is used up. Obviously there’s a lot of processes in this and they try to make sure that whatever planet is grinded up will no have an adverse effect on the rest of the solar system. The premise is that the Ishimura sends a distress call and the USG Kellion, a small shuttle, is dispatched. To add some personal motivation in it, Isaac had a relationship with a medical officer named Nicole previously, and she happens to be stationed on the Ishimura now. Go go obligatory romance. Now, it’s not that bad because there’s no passionate kiss scene or anything. It’s just in the background and pops up now and then. The plot isn’t really original but whatever. It works, it’s solid, and there’s nothing annoying or rage-inducing about it. 7/10

You want spoilers? Well too bad.

Gameplay

Gameplay is similar to Resident Evil 4 but improved. It’s third-person and controls are very smooth. As usual, the Japanese do something good and the Westerners make it more user-friendly/less a pain in the ass. You have to hold a button to aim; for PC that’s RMB. You have two melee attacks, LMB for punching/thrashing, and Space for stomping. Former is good for pushing them away sometimes, while the latter is for breaking boxes or using stasis and stomping them. You have a wide variety of guns that have secondary functions, and no gun is quite the same. Furthermore, while you can certainly just kill things the old fashioned way, the game and enemy design favors cutting off their limbs. Aside from requiring fewer shots, it also disables them and takes a chunk off their HP. Stasis is used as a tool in puzzles occasionally, and has lots of use in comat. It effectively slows down the enemies you use it on, and has a slight area of effect which is really good. You also have Kinesis, which is mostly used for puzzles though you can crab explosive cans, which are not quite as common as they are in most games, and throw them at people. Less explosive objects can be used but aren’t nearly as strong. There are quick-time events in the game, but they are less a case of PRESS DIS BUTAN and more regular gameplay with a slight quirk. For instance, you are grabbed by a tentacle at one point in the game. How do you get free? Well, you take out your gun and shoot at the weak spot. Except, you are down on the ground or dangling so aiming is tricky. It really captures the feel of it, since you wouldn’t have an easy time aiming your weapon in those scenarios. The enemies are very good for zombies. They come in many flavors, and the AI is rather good. For example, most of the enemies and use the vents to get around. Furthermore, playing on normal or above generally has them duck into a vent if you have a clear shot at them and they’re rather far. After a few seconds, they’ll generally pop out of a vent behind you. This can be abused as they cannot go through doors and will go through the vents to get at you if you’re in another room, and the room only has one vent.

Puzzles are rather nice. They range from simplistic (Stick this energy block in the energy receptacle to open the door) to somewhat less obvious (Destroy four energy tethers, two of them are outside but you can’t quite see them unless you look at the computer display). It’s not really frustrating unless you are unable to stop and ponder why you keep dying. Zero-gravity sections play a large part in puzzles as well as a few combat sections. While functionally the same, leaping to another wall opens up a large amount of possibilities.

Anyway, superb all around. 9/10

Presentation

Excellent. Awesome. Spectacular. First off, the interface. It’s all ingame. Aside from the ESC menu and Save Terminals, everything is in real time. This means you can be attacked while browing your inventory or using the shop. The game doesn’t do this to you a lot, but it means you can’t just start using your menu with a bunch of enemies beside you. Of course, the game has hotkeys. Weapons are 1-4, Q uses your weakest healing item (I’m rather surprised they got this right the first time, rather than 2-3 games down the line.), etc. Not everything has a quick-key function, but you can assign them in the PC version. Anyway, less about gameplay. The interface has a very well polished look and is basically a projected hologram. Your HP is measured by a spinal meter, and stasis by a half-circle beside it. The visuals and audio are both superb. The former captures the atmosphere of a grimy, dirty industrial ship yet has its pristine stereotypical sci-fi sections such as the Medical Deck, the Bridge, or the Crew Deck, albeit splattered in blood and other things. Effects are good, and enemies are well detailed and have a very distinct look to each of them. The audio is likewise excellent, from setting the atmosphere and mood to the sound of weapons and enemies. The music changes when enemies attack, but it doesn’t take away from the surprise of it due to the good AI. There’s nothing special about it, it’s just good. Perhaps the best thing is just the setting and story. Rather than the usually ultra-clean sterile science fiction ship, the Ishimura is an industrial ship. It’s noisy, dirty, and uncomfortable. People wear functional clothing, from simply having functional looks to the life monitor mounted along the spine. It’s got a real feel to it despite being a space zombies game. 10/10

Miscellaneous

Not much else to mention here really. The game is rather linear, and you do revisit places, but the reason given makes sense and the place is not the same as before. A bunch of body bags in an earlier chapter are later found to be empty, organic growths cut off access to certain parts, etc. Dead Space is a port of console games but this is probably the best port I’ve ever played. You can alt-tab out of it easily, it plays smoothly with no problems, and it doesn’t even need very good computer specs to run at high or max settings. There are four bosses, one of which you will encounter twice.

The upgrade system is robust and requires multiple playthroughs to upgrade everything as there are not enough power nodes to upgrade it in one playthrough. With weapons, you upgrade the damage, ammo capacity, speed, reload speed, and special abilities such as Mine for the Line Gun or Charge Time for the Contact Gun. You can upgrade the range of your Kinesis, which isn’t a big deal. Your stasis can be upgraded to make it last longer and give you more uses of it. Your RIG, or rather your suit, can be upgraded to give you more Air and more HP. Additionally, you can buy higher level suits, which expand your inventory and the amount of armor it has. Power nodes can also be used to open certain doors. The rooms beyond usually carry a large amount of ammo and items, occasionally a schematic you can add to the store for new items, and vendor trash.

Difficulty varies. Easy is, well, easy. You never really fear death as you have more than enough money to keep yourself fully stocked. Normal is also rather easy, just less so. Hard is where it gets challenging, as enemies are slightly tougher than Normal and you will expend more ammo to take them down. Impossible goes even further, as limbs take 2-3 shots to take off, and enemies are even more aggressive than before. Impossible is unlocked after one playthrough of any difficulty. Furthermore, you can load a cleared game and restart with everything you had, though you cannot change the difficulty.

Afterthoughts

The game is not revolutionary, it’s evolutionary. That’s not a problem. I’d much rather have a derivative game that’s fun and well-polished than a game that takes the genre to new places but plays poorly and has bugs up the ass.

Final Rating: A-

What, did you expect an average of the scores?

The wonderful world of Chroma City has been conquered, overrun by terrible baddies called Inkys. They suck the color out of everything in favor of monochromatic boredom and enslave the inhabitants called Raydians. Your character, de Blob, was out of town when the attack occurred and now he and a small crew of “Color Revolutionaries” who evaded capture are now charged with bringing color back to Chroma City and to drive the Inkys out of town.

Simple kiddie fare as far as the story goes but much like the PS2 cult hit, Katamari Damacy, the magic is in the execution. As de Blob, you go around smashing the bots that steal color (called simply Paintbots) and suck the paint into yourself at which point you go around and slam yourself into anything you can find. Walls, buildings, bridges, fences, boats, signs, trees, whatever. If it needs color, you provide it. You bounce around from area to area bringing life back to the city and if you do a good enough job, you’ll be rewarded with the city coming back to life, the citizens freed and happy, and the Inkys quite upset.

The game is basically visual candy as you smear paint over everything leaving grey buildings a vibrant mess of color while paint trails and splats follow you along as you roll to your next piece of art. The simple characters are widely expressive as you and your pals grin and grimace their way to victory and your fellow townspeople are incredibly dull and depressing locked in their metal prison, moping around until they get some color smacked into them and proceed to hop, cheer, and dance around like multi-colored jumping beans. The Inkys themselves are comedic, yet threatening in their authoritarian attempt at stopping you from completing your guerrilla mission of mercy.

The music is just as impressive as the visuals as at the beginning of each level you set de Blob’s “mood” (their way of picking a song for the level) and as you start to color the land, the dull, quiet lifelessness of the world begins to disappear and the game’s music slowly starts to build until your TV’s speakers blast with joy and happiness as the inhabitants of Chroma City engage in a perpetual block party of freedom. While you paint, your colors will give accents to the music when you hit things. Some colors will tweak the horns, some will play up the guitar, and brown gives a nice turntable “scratching” effect.

Another good aspect of the game is the challenge. It’s exactly as easy or as hard as you make it. The main levels can be done in a fairly simple matter as you complete your objective but there are many other side challenges to complete and awards to win if you so choose via missions from your fellow Revolutionaries whether you be ordered to free famous landmarks by the leader of the group, Prof. or mix it up and bash some Inkys hand to hand via a challenge from the group’s strongman, Bif. Each completed challenge raises your color level and brings the city closer to life. Between challenges you can roll around carefree and do things your own way, sometimes even completing challenges before you get orders. You don’t HAVE to paint every single thing but who in their right mind wouldn’t WANT to? That’s the job, right? Of course when you decide to dilly-dally, time management can become an issue as you don’t have all day before the Inkys catch up with your group and haul you all away to some dark drab dungeon somewhere. And beyond that, after clearing a level you get access to a few side challenge levels which are short but a bit tougher than the average. Not necessary to complete the game but a little extra challenge for those who choose to accept it never hurt anyone. Much.

The platforming in the game goes from fairly non-existant to quite tricky as the Inkys devise deadly Ink traps, flaming heat griddles, sharp spikes, and electric panels to stop our hero. Inkys also advance as troops range from silly, easily squashable foot troops to heavy troops with Ink cannons, swift elite soldiers that can only be beaten by certain colors when squished, imposing tanks, and even Ink turret placements. Don’t be fooled. The game may look cute and innocent but can put quite a hurting on you if you’re not careful.

Controls are quite simple as you roll around using the control stick on the Wii Nunchuck and jump via a quick shake of the Wii Remote. Other, more advanced techniques are taught to you as the game progresses via your friends. The game is mostly responsive and definitely a lot more polished than a lot of 3rd party Wii games but sometimes during some tight platforming you might be wishing your jumping wasn’t in the hands of a shaky remote. The camera is also fairly reasonable with a few snags here and there which is pretty par for the course in any 3D platformer.

de Blob is quite simply one of the best 3rd party games available for the Nintendo Wii and any Wii owner wouldn’t be taking too much of a risk giving it a try. Very highly recommended.

The franchise’s style has always favored traditional anime designs and this version looks better. Of course the new generation of gamers are spoiled on CG graphics, so that may give the CG version the edge. Which one would you guys pick?

Dood! Saw this bit of news on Kotaku and 1-up. Disgaea’s popular cannon fodder penguins are finally starring in their own spin-off game, Prinny: Ore ga Shujinko de Iinsuka?.

According to 1-up, “it’s an action game where you control not one, not two, but a 1,000-Prinny squadron on their quest to help an extremely pissed-off Etna recover her stolen sweets[...] So you’ll be going through one Prinny after another in this 2.5D, Metal Slug-like adventure, killing ‘em off like lemmings as you traverse the game’s fantasy-themed, side-scrolling stages”.

The details are still sketchy, but it’s about damn time. The Prinnies will invade Japanese PSPs this November 20th.

Touhou is a phenomenon in the realm of otaku and has rejuvenated the dying shoot ‘em up (shmup) genre. It’s hard to believe that Touhou had such a humble beginning and has been already been around for 12 years. The series has become such a juggernaut that even people that don’t normally play shmup games have dabbled in the depths of bullet hell.

The shmup scene was all but dead when Touhou hit the scene in 1998, and even then the series didn’t truly become a phenomenon until its sixth entry, Embodiment of Scarlet Devil. Touhou really set itself apart with its well known ‘bullet hell’ gameplay and some semblance of a story, but a big part of its success lies in the numerous moe girls featured throughout the series. Classic shmups typically tossed the player into fighter planes and space craft, whereupon you would fight off legions of enemies until you finished the game. However, Touhou places you in the shoes of magical girls that have to traverse through screens riddled with colorful bullets and quirky villains. While the entire cast is female, it’s not just the main heroines and villains that have their fans. Strangely enough even one-shot sub bosses have their own followings for some reason.

This brings me to the point of this article. Would Touhou be popular without relying on moe? How many otaku can honestly say they were fans of the shmup genre before playing Touhou? How many Touhou fans played shmup classics like R-Type, Ikaruga, Rez, and Bangai-O before playing Touhou? My bet is not many. The shmup genre is very niche. Among all the people I personally know, only one of them is a long standing fan of the genre. Touhou would not be where it is now without the moe girls. Sure the gameplay is unique and revolutionized a dying game genre, but it needed something to lure in unwary otaku. A catch.

Moe.

Moe is a powerful thing. It can turn crappy anime into gold. It can make crappy games print money. In the case of Touhou, it’s actually a very good game. I don’t think Touhou would be too popular without relying on moe though. It would be just another niche shmup game series in the vein of Bangai-O and Ikaruga. But Touhou is not just another shmup. Touhou has made the genre trendy and relevant again. And it’s all thanks to moe.

EarthBound: King of the cult classics

Was this Super Nintendo RPG really so good I named myself after it? Oh yes, yes indeed. Earthbound’s solid fundamentals, unique setting and bizarre sense of humor have kept it fresh a decade later, and if you need any evidence just take a look at the fan community. Loyal legions of Earthbound fans are still alive and kicking after years of letter campaigns, call-ins and other ventures that have tried to bring more of Mother (as it’s known in Japan) to the West.

I picked up my copy of Earthbound new, in a battered case with player’s guide included. The only reason I gave it a chance was having read a bit about it in an older issue of Nintendo Power’s RPG strategy section. I took it home for something like $20, maybe less (I didn’t know at the time that the box was already selling for double that online), popped it in…and was struck by how bizarre it was. The plot opens with a meteor crash. Your first, temporary party, consists of your bat-wielding self, your dog and your near-helpless next door neighbor’s younger brother. You’re investigating the meteor that crashed uphill from your house. Your exploration leads to the revelation, delivered by a space bee from the future, that you’re the chosen one and have to save the world by questing and reuniting a party of heroes. The space bee is promptly smashed to death by your next door neighbor’s obese mother.

What.

From there it’s a whirlwind world tour, where you fight gangs, cops, cavemen, zombies, robots from the future, a cult, your own nightmare, dinosaurs…you get the idea. Earthbound throws everything but the kitchen sink at you. One of the characters in your party is acquired after you eat some psychedelic cake. You encounter strange pencil-shaped monoliths that can only be destroyed with an item called the Pencil Eraser. You have to bail a knockoff of the Blues Brothers out of bankruptcy. Every twist and turn gets weirder and more hilarious. Yet it’s all strangely sentimental too–the game’s not afraid to break the third wall from time to time, and at the halfway point even takes a few minutes out to recap your adventures in a unique “coffee break” sequence. And even strange little mechanics like having to call home and talk to mom or become homesick add that little bit of extra oomph that doesn’t just make EarthBound a weird game, it makes it a great game.

Sure, it has its flaws–I can still remember my endless frustration at the Scalding Coffee Cup enemies hitting everyone in my party for massive damage, or trying to acquire the elusive Sword of Kings by grinding enemies until I was leveled higher than necessary but had the blade in hand. Yet some of its functions–a rolling hit point counter that lets you buy time before fainting, and a built-in auto-battle feature–remain unduplicated. But the journey it takes you on, right down to the back-slapping and hand-shaking finale after the final boss falls makes EarthBound and experience for the ages. And I’ve never regretted having to explain to someone how I got my name.

Sony and Funimation are bringing downloadable anime to a PS3 near you in a big way. As part of yesterday’s press conference at E3, Sony unveiled their new video service that will allow you to purchase/rent movies and other videos on your PS3. The big surprise was the fact that Funimation was casually mentioned alongside several big movie studios during the announcement.

So I logged on today to see what Sony was serving up. Among the many movies and TV shows, there were a dozen anime titles to choose from. While the list of anime is small right now, it’s certainly a step in the right direction for Funimation to make anime more mainstream. I wonder if Bandai will follow suit and make an offer to Sony. Well you probably want to know what’s up for grabs. All shows are $1.99 for purchase with one exception noted below.

Afro Samurai
Astro Boy
Basilisk
Burst Angel
Desert Punk
Gunslinger Girl
Kiddy Grade
Moon Phase
Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles
Samurai 7
Trinity Blood
Xam’d: Lost Memories (Bounen no Xamdou)

Most of the anime titles currently available have been licensed for a good while, but one eluded me… Xam’d: Lost Memories. What a weird name. According to this post at Japanator it’s an exclusive Playstation Network anime created by Bones (Eureka 7, Darker than Black, Fullmetal Alchemist). Xam’d is only available for rental and will cost $2.99 (SD) and $3.99 (HD). Ouch. Sony has a nice deal going on there. Guess I won’t be watching this show, especially since it’s only a rental. If anyone is going to watch Xam’d, tell me how it is.

Sources:
Japanator
Giapet

And if you want more info on Xam’d, check out this post at Giapet.