Mach #58 – It kinda defeats the purpose. July 3, 2009
Posted by Mach in Mach's Rants.3 comments
So I’m here in Little Egg Harbor, NJ with my family to spend a part of 4th of July weekend with them since we can’t stick around longer since I have work Saturday morning. We ended up getting to my aunt’s place around 8 AM after leaving just briefly after 7 AM to avoid traffic on the way. After a pretty uneventful afternoon of swimming, we ended up having lunch and I decided to take a nap because we weren’t doing anything… I probably doze off around 2 PM, and wake up around 7 PM. I continue to ask both my aunt and my mom if we’re doing anything else today before it’s too late because I suffered this problem last time.
What’s the problem? No one makes the first move to actually fucking do anything. I believe it was last years 4th of July weekend. We end up staying at the house doing almost ABSOLUTELY nothing. The rest of my family is here as well, so my cousins are chilling with me as well. Most of us end up napping because the parents aren’t making a god damn move. It’s like 8 PM when we finally do something and we question why we did nothing earlier that day even though we were all complaining we weren’t doing a damn thing. What’s their reason?
You were sleeping.
ERK~ It kinda defeats the purpose, doesn’t it? We’re sleeping becuase we’re bored out of our fucking minds and you don’t wake us up to do something because we’re sleeping.
Well, the same thing happened to me this year, AGAIN. I fall asleep, and my 2nd cousins are here with me as well (nephew and niece by Filipino standards). We’re all bored out of our fucking minds. What’s the reasoning why we’re still at the house doing nothing? “Eric, you were sleeping.”
FUCKING WAKE ME UP THEN.
Ugh, I swear, if we have this problem next year, I’m gonna flip a shit.
I suppose I should actually get into some gaming related news on my part, huh? Almost done with Final Fantasy I. One more crystal remains and then it would mark my first official 
in a Final Fantasy game… Ever. Playing a little bit of Ghostbusters and Saints Row 2 for the 360.
Also, my Wii broke. God dammit.
Dinner is waiting for me, so I guess I should wrap this up. Apologies if I haven’t updated as much lately. I don’t have the same kind of ranting powers I used to. I also apologize to Arc for kinda putting weight on him to update when I don’t even update all that often myself… So I suppose I should get the incentive to post from the other ranters, huh?
Here’s a question for you then: What do you plan to accomplish this summer in terms of gaming?
I’ll update that as soon as possible. I definitely have some goals for this summer.
Until then, later~
Arc #007-The Filler Arc R2: Persona Alteration July 1, 2009
Posted by Arc in Arc's Rants.1 comment so far
Hmmm…let me get shallow in the beginning of this post. No, this isn’t about any of the Persona games so don’t get your hopes up.
Recently…I’ve been seeing myself as the person I really am. Idiotic, lazy, unproductive, disloyal, etc. Crap load more of personality traits society view as bad. Now those are coming up as I am alone. When am I alone? More than I want to. All I do is stay home or work. Shitty lifestyle. completely voluntary though.
Thing is though. I view myself as pathetic. I mean…I don’t have a single thing to my name other than an alias and non existing reputation where it matters. There’s nothing really interesting about me. My only hobbies right now are watching animu, reading manga and playing vidya. Barley any passable hobbies to make conversation with. Things I’d let people be oblivious to. Only shit I’ve done in my life that has to do with education is that I finished high school. Nothing to be proud of since it’s forced on us. I would go on but it’d be moot. You get the point. So, what do I want to be? (more…)
A.R.C.:K-ON! June 26, 2009
Posted by Arc in Animu Review Corner.3 comments
First off, let me just say that K-On! isn’t for everybody. There are those that are very…expressive of their opinions so I’ll go with their terminology. K-On is considered moeblob. Ranks in there with moe shows like Lucky Star, Potemayo and various others. Lot of internet people play tough guy and give off this attitude that says “I only watch/play mature anime/video games for mature audiences such as myself” or some other shit head excuse. But people have their likes and dislikes, some more forward about it than others but oh well. I just ignore idiots who are still stuck having a one cell brain. To simply put it, Watch the shows you enjoy. It’s cool that other people’s opinion can have an effect on yours but don’t mirror their thoughts. Only peer pressured 13 year olds are incapable of thinking for themselves.
Alright, so that’s enough side tracking. Like I said, K-On isn’t for everyone but I enjoyed it enough to mention it in a paragraph every week in my Filler Arc posts. Now that the show over, it’s time for a wise and intelligent review. [/troll]
It’s a show about 4 girls being in a light music club. Not much to it, right?
K-On! Started out as a 4koma(4 Panel comic strip) manga back in May 2007. Written and illustrated by Kakifly and it falls under the demographic of Seinen (Surprisingly enough). Genres are Comedy and Music. Although I’d recommend it be put under Slice of Life genre.
Kyoto Animation, who have done Lucky Star, Kanon and CLANNAD plus many others, has made it into an anime which ran from April 3, 2009 to June 26. Spanning over 12 episodes and an extra. (more…)
Len #26 – Such a misfortune.. oh wells, I got me a PEE-ESS-TREE. June 25, 2009
Posted by Len in Len's Rants.7 comments
Curse my laziness. It holds me back from playing games and updating. I now lack excuses, unfortunately. I barely watch enough anime to pull what Arc does each week.
Listen well, folks. Lack of motivation gets you no where in life. I quit my job. Why, you ask? I basically just had enough. Every person who has heard this so far has called me an idiot and whatever else, but shit, it’s my life. I don’t care. I’m going back to college to major in English and Education. DO YOU SEE WHERE I’M GOING WITH THIS?
Eeeh. I need to be passionate about something and so far, that’s where my admiration and interests direct me towards. Good luck, Tenksy-pie.
Anyway, my birthday was last week Tuesday, the 16th. I’m 24 now, yay. Yesterday, I took a visit to the beautiful Roosevelt Field Mall in Long Island and blew $240 on clothes. From Hot Topic, Spencer’s, Hollister, and American Eagle. OH MY. Who said AAR shirts weren’t sexy?
After that, I went back to Queens and got myself a PlayStation 3. Oh yay. Honestly, I don’t even know WHY I got it, I just felt the need to have one. The fact that Tales of Vesperia is coming out for the PS3 with loads more content really grinded my gears(HAVE YOU SEEN THE ABYSS COSTUMES FOR YURI, ESTELLE, AND FLYNN. Oh myyy.) and not only that, fighters feel so much better on the PS3 controller than the 360’s. I really hate the 360’s controller. Love the PS3’s. It’s the PS2’s.. only lighter and wireless. Rechargeable, too. What more could I ask for? And I don’t care what people say, I think the six-axis feature is fucking sexy.
But still.. if I had to choose getting a multi-platform game.. I’d probably purchase it on the 360. Unless it was somehow out of stock and the PS3 had it. Unless it was a fighter, I need my fighters to be on the PS3. LOVE-LOVE the controller, afterall. Hah, I’m going to GameStop on Friday to reserve a copy of BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger.. Limited Edition. BY THE CREATORS OF GUILTY GEAR, MY MOST FAVORITEST FIGHTING GAME IN THE WHOLE UNIVERSE!? FUCK YEAH!
So it lacks characters, I don’t care. It looks beautiful, honestly. And damn, I can’t wait for it. I’m definitely getting BlazBlue for the PS3.
Anyway, I’ll still purchase games for my 360 <3.. probably for achievements or something. I don’t really care about trophies.
Speaking of which, Heavenly Sword seems to lack them. I actually borrowed it from my friend, considering I have a tighter budget now.. so I really didn’t purchase a game with my PS3. And I already blew about $700 on shit yesterday, so I didn’t bother to get one. My first game purchase for the PS3 will be BlazBlue.
Oh, before I forget, I got the 80 GB Ps3. It’s not backwards compatible, apparently. And if that’s the case, why the hell do they still leave that “Internal Memory Card” crap there? I mean, it’s not like I can play my PS2 games on it, so what’s the sense of it even existing on my console? Sheesh, seeing it there makes me wish I bought a BC console a year(?) or so back. Oh well, I always have my modded PS2.
Anyway, Heavenly Sword felt pretty lame at first.. but then I got hooked. It’s basically a button masher.. kind of similar to God of War when you’re playing as Nariko, the red-head main character. But when you’re playing as Kai.. it’s a whole different ball game. You can shoot arrows with her.. that’s it. But when you shoot them, you can engage in a movement called the “Aftertouch” which lets you control the direction your arrow is going. It zooms in on it and it goes in slow(but not too slow) motion. You control the direction it goes by holding onto L1 and Square and moving around your controller with the six-axis feature. God, I loved it. I failed a few times with this one mission, but it was really fun for me.
As for normal gameplay, it’s a plus. Nothing I get bored of easily, and I heard the game was quite short, so I’ll probably be occupied for a little while longer. After that, dunno what I’m gonna do with my shiny, new PS3. 
Wait for BlazBlue, I suppose. <3
Hmm, in other gaman’ news.. I finally got a certain character back in Chrono Trigger, so I can basically fight Lavos now.. I tried, I died. Time to grind in the Black Omen, m i rite?
Star Ocean beckons me, but god, I don’t have the patience for it. I have no idea why.
Final Fantasy VII is sitting there.. in my PSOne.. waiting to be turned on again.
Anyway, I’m bored. And still awake. I have to wake up in 4 hours to go to my friend’s house and marathon “scary” movies. Buh-bye.
Mach #57 – Way overdue for an update. June 23, 2009
Posted by Mach in Mach's Rants.2 comments
I suppose I’ve just been a little busy as of lately and just got a little lazy updating. I didn’t mean to just leave Arc here to just hold the fort up, but hell, all the animu he’s watching is way more interesting than what the hell I’ve been doing lately, but I do have a bunch of updates that are long overdue. I still haven’t done my AnimeNEXT review just yet…
But what have I done lately? I actually watched some animu myself! For those of you who have seen my latest Backloggery theme, it’s obviously Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. I ended up blasting several episodes during work since it was rather dead. So far I’ve gotten up to about Episode 18 and pretty much loving every minute of it, but why did I stop at Episode 18? When they switched up to the .mkv format on the set I downloaded, the subs started to get really shitty. So, until I could find some better ones, or if the subbing group that did the first half did the remaining half did, I’d happily download that. Help, Arc?
Obviously, the gaming area has been going fairly well so far. Noi’s Final Fantasy Marathon is finally under way and I’ve been playing Final Fantasy I lately. Haven’t progressed in a little bit, but I’m currently at the Waterfall Caven, horrendously overleveled, and quite lost. I’ll probably be playing this on Wednesday/Thursday’s Stream directly following the Backloggery Live Stream.
Recently in a bit of luck, I ended up finding $20 on the ground when I was outside of the arcade when I was buying some frozen yogurt (with fruity pebbles and kiwi) to keep myself awake. With that $20 I knew exactly where to run to buy games. No, not GameStop, silly… I went to Blockbuster! So why there? Originally, I was going to buy Super Mario Sluggers for the Wii, but when I was browsing around, I just so happened to find a copy of de Blob which was a game that I have been meaning to buy for quite some time now. I flipped a coin. Chose de Blob.
So what else? I’ll be going to Otakon coming up later in July. This year has been just a nice little bumrush of anime conventions I been attending and would be my third one this year so far. I know Kasumi will be there, so I’m looking forward to ACTUALLY chilling with her this convention. Ashe mentioned that she was actually going to be there as well, hopefully on the Saturday that she mentioned, little Backloggery meet up go~!! Honestly, I’m excited for this. But of course, I have to pre-register for it first. 
Anyway, I swear, I’ll have more to update late. New Claw Marks this week also. It’s a song that people will like a whole bunch. I swear.
Also, I’m such a sucker for Golf video games… I really wanna get Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 for the Wii. Oh man, Wii Motion Plus…
Until then, later~
Arc #006-The Filler Arc R2: GuitArc June 22, 2009
Posted by Arc in Arc's Rants.5 comments
Ah, yes. Now I am 1/3 of a poser. All I need are the skills and the image. I can settle for 2/3. The one that counts, of course.
Sad truth is how I’d love to get lessons from an actual guitarists that knows his stuff, I can’t afford it since most of the people I’ve seen charge a chunk of what little my pay check offers me per week so I’ll go the money savers route and rolls with lessons…on youtube. As long as I know what I’m doing, right? 
Fuck.
Arc #005-The Filler Arc R2: The Debt Ridden Butler June 17, 2009
Posted by Arc in Arc's Rants.8 comments
Fucking Crap.
I owed my community college $700 since the last semester I went but never paid it off. So I finally got around to paying it…sorta. My friend lent me his credit card so basically I just transferred over to who I owed but better my friend then having a damaged credit record. But that’s $700 on top of the $300 I still owe him.
Same day, I go check out my car because I heard a noise while driving. Went to my dad’s repair shop and had it test driven. Seemed like I need new breaks, discs and calipers for all four wheels and that amounts to $1,000 in costs.
With a shit 10 buck per hour job that only has 2 work days a week earning pathetically around $150 per week on average doesn’t seem like it’ll help much.
Fuck me.
(more…)
A Review and a Smoke #1: Prototype June 15, 2009
Posted by Spectro in A Review and a Smoke.2 comments
So, I decided I had to review this game. I have way too much to say about it to keep all to myself. First off, I didn’t buy it. I’m slightly glad I didn’t because I don’t think it has a lot of replay value. Anyway, yeah.. I burned the game. 
You start off in a chaotic New York City (a game that takes place in New York? Woah, originality. You’ll immediately notice the sandbox environment, overly badass anti-hero, and uh.. chaos. Well, it’s one of those “oh, here try all the superpowers and then we can take them away because the entire game is a flashback” game. You’re constantly trying to catch up to the present, which you’ll see cutscenes of as you progress through the story. Speaking of story, let me just say this now: This story is stupid. It’s like Resident Evil meets Metal Gear Solid meets Devil May Cry meets Xbox 360’s hidden gem “The Darkness”. At the end of the game, the main character was screaming at some guy I was chasing to kill, and I had no idea who he was. Probably because the story was so gimmicky, unoriginal, and boring. You need to keep reading, though. This game has some great redeeming qualities.
You’re basically a man who turns into these black noodle-y looking things and you eat people. Yep. You can run around extremely fast, run up walls, glide around the city, throw cars at people, have your arms turn into crazy weapons, and eat people. You “consume” them. When you consume somebody, you basically make them a part of yourself. It doesn’t really make sense because all you get is their memories and their looks as a disguise (until you eat someone else, which replaces the previous disguise), but that’s what the game tells me.
The gameplay is pretty great. AI is stupid, and some physics are just plain terrible, but the different powers you have at your disposal make this game shine. It seems like overall, it could of used a lot more polish and a better engine. Although some powers and upgrades seem useless and/or I never bothered to use them, the combat is awesome. It’s not a very easy game. The farther you get, the more they throw harder and harder types of enemies at you.
I’m not really good with reviews, so I won’t make it too long. I’ll just say that this game is great and recommended. I hope you enjoyed my review. I’d like some criticism on my writing/reviewing skills (or lack-thereof).
I’d also like to take this chance to say goodbye for a while. I’m going to officially be on hiatus. I’ve got some things to take care of before I dedicate myself to anything for a while. I’d like to post regularly sometime this summer. Add me on aim, xfire, or whatever and let’s have a chat sometime.
Arc #004-The Filler Arc R2: Late Date June 10, 2009
Posted by Arc in Arc's Rants.7 comments
So…late again. They should have me fired as a main fighter and put my aside as a comatose patient.
Yet…again…nothing new in life. Just less work, chilled for a bit with some old friends and more stay at home; which means more anime or in this case…House. Been staying off Sailor Moon cause there’s this one episode that has this…ancient way of subbing that has the words appear one by one as the person speaks. It’s kinda sickening so I’m avoiding it for now.
Now for the actual new animu. (more…)
Mach #56 – Pump Up the Volume June 3, 2009
Posted by Mach in Mach's Rants.add a comment
*dance dance*
Anyway, been a while since I’ve updated, got myself a bunch of new stuff and, I suppose, I enough to talk about that’s (somewhat) not gaming related. I suppose I should start with that.
Everyone bitches about their job. I’m no different. Remember that arcade job I had back a couple month ago (September of last year)? Yeah, I got it back again due to a friend of mine quitting. I simply took over his spot. So I only work weekends and stuff for a total of 15 hours. Yes, a whopping total of 15 hours. I work 10 AM – 5PM on Saturdays and 11AM – 7 PM on Sundays. Although it’s pretty lax work most of the time, it does tend to get boring. REAL boring. But you can only imagine all the idiots that actually walk in and ask about stupid shit. Therefore, I’m creating a new rant segment of mine: Tales of Arcadia. Hopefully this doesn’t trigger anything for anyone, but I figured it would be a good name for it. I’ll probably summarizing my job experience for the week and anything significant that comes out of it.
Yeah…
So enough about my job. Gamestop had a B2G1 free sale this weekend, and because of it, it’s left me completely broke. Managed to pick up:
- Madworld (Wii)
- Final Fantasy V Advance (GBA)
- Burnout Paradise (360) – FREE!!
- Sonic’s Ultimate Genesis Collection (360)
- Dead Rising (360)
- Ratchet and Clank: Up Your Arsenal (PS2) – FREE!!
So I got myself a nice little haul here. Happy with it for the most part. Madworld is a definite keeper. Been playing it with several of my friends for sheer joy. Final Fantasy V is definitely a keeper for Noi’s Final Fantasy Marathon. Burnout Paradise was a forced decision from Blinkin when I was with him buying games on the first day of the sale. I didn’t exactly know what to pick up, so he tossed this my way. I haven’t regretted it so far as I’m having a lot of fun with it and stuff. So what did he pick up while we were game shopping? Shadow of Destiny for the PS2. :3
As for the second half of the haul, my real goal was to pick up the Ultimate Genesis Collection. That was about it. So why the lackluster selection of games afterwards? Place was closing in 15 minutes when I got there, so they were a bit rushed. I picked up Dead Rising to possibly sell back to my friend. For cheaper, of course, but it was mainly for him. Up Your Arsenal was a whim choice because I was going to pick that one up eventually anyway, but I’m planning to return it due to poor disc condition as well as it being a Greatest Hits box, so we’ll see what happens when you try returning a free game. If I don’t get anything back for it, I’ll hold on to it until I could find a better copy or something.
But how’s that Final Fantasy Marathon going for me? Really fucking slow. Still on Final Fantasy Ion the Dawn of Souls cartridge. Ugh, for ungodly encounter rates.
I’m done. I’m tired. Read some stuff below me.
Until then, later~
