Ripcord Gogger

Happy New Year and INSTANT GAME REVIEW

2011-01-03T12:39:00.000-08:00

Hope you enjoyed the holidays, everyone. Now to business.....

Final Fantasy XIII = Play Lost Odyssey instead

This has been Luis H. Garcia's INSTANT GAME REVIEW. Enjoy!

INSTANT GAME REVIEW!

2010-11-30T23:09:00.000-08:00

Epic Mickey = Everything Kingdom Heartburn wishes it was

You know? AN ACTUAL GAME!

This has been Luis H. Garcia's INSTANT GAME REVIEW. Enjoy!

INSTANT GAME REVIEW!

2010-11-13T00:09:00.001-08:00

I'm back! And here to do this and that
And other stuff I can't say in public
'Cause I'll get in trouble for it!
Ugh! Ugh! YEAAAAAAAAAAAH!

Anyway...

Quantum Theory = Gears of War: JAPUNEEZ VERZHUN

VANQUISH = Gears of War: JAPUNEEZ VERZHUN + God Hand

This has been Luis H. Garcia's INSTANT GAME REVIEW. Enjoy!

Arnold, please.

2010-10-09T13:08:00.000-07:00

Predators (2010)

When I first heard about the new Predator-based movie (Predators, 2010), I was mildly amused. However I was not amused at any point in time during the movie, and especially not after it was over. Here's why:

- The movie tries too hard to become a remake of the original
- The whole concept of hunting became a bit of a joke. What next, Predator safari?
- Not a single memorable character, least of all Lawrence Fishburne

Going into a little detail / rant about Predators (2010), I felt having 3 Predators this time around was a bit of an overkill for 9 non-Arnold Schwarzenegger characters. In the 1987 original, just 1 Predator alone was a hell of a handful for 7 top tier soldiers, but in Predators (2010) we have a team of 10 WIMPS faced with THREE Predators.

I personally thought t references drawn to the original movie were hilariously bad.

- A girl character who talks about how "this year it gets hot"
- Topher Grace wearing glasses / Hawkins wearing glasses
- Lawrence Fishburne whispering "Over here!" / Mac whispering "Over here!"
- Falling off a waterfall

Arnold Brody - the Predator killer - obviously

My biggest gripe with Predators was that the whole movie was taking place on an alien planet! So like, despite being SO INTERRIGENTO, the Predator boys have nothing better do in life but put together a jungle set neatly replicating the original. Seriously, do they have such great set designers on their planet? Also why didn't they replicate the city from Predator 2? Because IIRC that's where their space-ship landed the last time around.

And why didn't they use their favorite catch-phrase "You're one ugly mother%%%%%%" on Adrien Brody at least even once?

Number of shocks - 1 (Danny Trejo)
Number of twists - 1 (I actually watched it to the end)
Story - 4/10
Replay value - LOL/10
Better than Aliens vs Predator? - Yes/10

THE WORLD'S BEST ROB LIEFELD COSPLAY

2010-10-01T14:44:00.000-07:00

This is the 190th post

2010-09-24T22:42:00.000-07:00

and to celebrate this obviously-amazing milestone, here's an attempt to keep this blog up with the times: a review of a game I love and hate, Tekken 6. This is the first time I review a game that's not years and years old that everybody has already played.

[Note: I actually started writing this review like a year ago, so I really AM late, haha. By now, everyone has their own opinion of Tekken 6. This is practically a retro Sega Genesis review. I honestly wrote this review all the way up to its last couple paragraphs, but then I just let it sit. For absolutely no reason, I couldn’t finish it. However, none of what is said in this review is out of date, and I hope it’s informative. I thought I had interesting things to say…]

Tekken 6 is the latest game in NAMCOs line of 3D fighters. I'm not sure where to start with this game, so I guess I'll start with the least important stuff and work my way up to the most important.

The story is about how Jin takes over the Tekken Zaibatsu or something and is starting World War 3. Heihachi Mishima, his grand dad, isn't thrilled about this and wants to kill his grandson. Heihachi's son and Jin's dad, Kayuza, is out to kill them both, too. Heihachi's OTHER bastard son, Lars, wants to kill every man in his family too, but then he suffers Anime Amnesia and goes on a journey with a robot girl. This chick named Zafinia knows about this Ancient Egyptian Dragon that will be revived by World War 3 and WHAT THE POOP, maybe in the sequel Kayuza will graft the arm of Jin's clone onto himself and then the arm will possess Kayuza, and Jin will suffer from premature aging due to nanotechnology. Why not? The plot is about as impenetrable and silly as it comes, hence the un-subtle allusion to MGS.

The graphics are really nice. The stages are pretty detailed and have a bunch of subtle things going on in them. For example, the snowy valley level makes permanent dents where ever your character walks and/or is beaten down, and the ocean-side Noh Theatre stage has the tide flood over the floor slightly, cause the wooden stage to get very wet. The stages are really colorful too, which is a nice break from all the recent GREYBROWN games. However, it's still a next-gen video game, so you will get some problems like this:

There's so much damn bloom in the lake level, your eyes will fall out! That pic doesn't even do it justice. There is something wrong when a level is so bright with bloom effects that I have to squint. Just looking at the pic gives me a head ache. Even if attractive young ladies are fighting in the shallow water.

Tangentially related, the character models are very detailed. Some of character border on angelic perfection. The moves animate very smoothly, and the stronger ones have all kinds of cool hit sparks and effects, such as a hard hit to the stomach into a wall will cause the screen to shake slightly. All motion capture for the animations seem to have been done by professional dancers, which causes your characters to look impossibly cool, even Bob.

Super Mario never looked so awesome.

Speaking of the motion capture and professional dancers, a friend of mine told me a funny story about that. He was in a dance club in Mexico, and not having any idea how to dance at all, he improvised and imitated the ten-strings and special moves of Tekken 6 characters. Not only did it work, people thought he was a pro dancer. I think that says something about Tekken.

The single player modes range from "meh" to "this SKNs" to "this is pretty fun." The arcade mode is pretty standard and boring: fight like 8 computers with a bonus stage boss in there, then the real boss, and then you see the ending. Except you only get to see the intro and ending if you're playing on the RPG Mode's arcade mode, and NOT the under the section of the main menu clearly labeled "OFFLINE > ARCADE." That would make too much sense!

Speaking of the RPG Mode, by that I mean the "SCENARIO CAMPAIGN." This is where you see a pretty cool opening where Lars and his Halo Spartans go and tear stuff up at a laboratory. That was cool to watch. Then Lars catches his Anime Amnesia I mention and nothing is cool for the rest of the RPG Mode. After you sit through all that, you can play as whichever character you want (but have to unlock the rest to use in this mode, you pick 1 and have to unlock everyone else) and run around beating up people as if you were playing Final Fight. You have access to all your moves and you can also pick up items like crow bars, machine guns, flame throwers and such to beat up guys with.

At times the Scenario Campaign is nice, mindless beat em up fun with awkward controls (that happens when you try to turn Tekken into Final Fight), but at other times incredibly frustrating and just bogus. However, it's also by far the fastest way to get money to buy costumes with. My recommendation: skip all the cutscenes (except the first one), play through a few levels for money, and never touch it again until you need more money. It's not worth playing to the end. The Tekken engine just wasn’t made to be Final Fight and Namco should be ashamed for trying.

I think the worst part of Scenario Campaign is that it highlights the WRONG new characters. There are six new Tekken fights in Tekekn 6, and 4 of them are really, really awesome. Bob (Mario), Miguel (Luigi), Leo Kliesen (Ash Ketchum) and Zafina (Rose) are all incredible new characters and are too cool to handle. Meanwhile, the new amesiac superhero bastard Mishima son Lars and his pink-haired robot chick anime companion Allysa, they hog up the entire spotlight in the RPG mode and it's stupid. They srsly just stuffed an anime right into Tekken.

What DOES make the RPG Mode fun and bearable is Co-Op. Playing just about any game with a bud or two would make it fun. If nothing else, you can collectively make fun of how SKN a game is. The problem here is that there is no OFFLINE Co-Op mode, just an online one. WTF?

There are also a lot of item drops that give you stat bonuses, instead of leveling up. So you can max out your character with various articles of clothing, but if you want to have optimal equipment at any given time, expect to have your character look incredibly goofy.

Your character will end up looking MUCH weirder than this pic. Too weird to handle.

Speaking of the costumes, you can buy (or pick up in the RPG Mode) many different articles of clothing in various colors. You can deck out any character in the game pretty much however you'd want to, and this is actually very well executed. There are a crap load of options for pants, rings, hair styles (you get to mix and match the base of the hair, the cut, and the bangs on each side), shirts, jackets, hats, ribbons, glasses, and bunches of trivial things. You'll be able to make some really cool and interesting costumes for the characters. I have only two complaints: 1) Not every character can wear every article of clothing. For example, some characters can wear bowler hats and some can't. No reason for restrictions like that, they just can't. 2) Rather than use the extra buttons for your custom outfits, it always replaces one of the your character's default costumes. For example, I made an awesome Pirate Leo outfit, but it replaces her Tuxedo outfit completely, which I also like. Again, there is no discernible reason for these restrictions, unless Namco thinks that their games needs a minimum quota of Stupid.

As for online play:

When the game it was released, it was awful. Virtually unplayable.

When a patch came out on Thanksgiving Day, it was EXCELLENT. Up there with GGPO, HD Remix and BlazBlue. The only problem was, and it's a big one, is random disconnect once in a while. And it was definitely not due to rage-quitting, players would just randomly disconnect after playing for an hour or so and would have to start a new room and reinvite everyone. Was still awesome net-play while it was working.

Recently, a third patch was released that allowed for online co-op (and nobody cared about online co-op in an awful RPG mode). The online play has been slightly worse since then, but no longer randomly D/Cs.

Overall, it has a pretty decent online setup. Nothing too big to complain about, and miles better than Street Fighter IV's [Vanilla at the time of this writing] atrocious netplay, but I still sometimes miss juggles and moves due of lag.

The training mode, if you're into those as much as I am, is pretty great. You can set the training dummy to a bunch of different blocking modes and wake up actions so that you can learn how to counter each. You can have each of your moves and strings played by the computer with the button timing on display. You can set the computer to do various moves out of their move list and have them mix them up at random. This helps you practice reacting to various throws and strings. You can even have it show the "Hit Analysis," which really means that the character will light up whenever they are not capable of making an input or action. This will help you understand the games various mechanics, input windows, and also how big of a frame advantage or disadvantage various strings leave you and your opponent, and the gaps in the strings. The only shortcoming in the training mode is there's no "display hitbox" mode like in HD Remix, and it doesn't have the extensive frame data provided in-game like Virtua Fighter 4: EVO did. But that's something would only bother a tech-head whose obsessed with the software, like myself. That aside, it's still an excellent training mode that delivers everything you need.

This is the part I've been avoiding talking about for this entire blog post: the multiplayer gameplay, obviously the most important part of any fitan game.

There are 40 different characters, and they're all very different, even the Ryu/Ken clones. Every character has at least a hundred moves to mess with, including different kinds of throws and counter-moves. Needless to say, this is a very nuanced game.

My fighter, the debatably-gendered Leo Kliesen. She's so androgynous, she might as well be in an SNK game. The rest of the cast is less ambiguous, but there are also three robots (one is made of wood), a boxing kangaroo, a bear and whatever Yoshimitsu is.

I guess I'll start with the very basics. You have your basic movements: stepping, side stepping, back and front dashes, and jumping. All these movements (except jumping) can be canceled into lots of other actions. So you can rapidly, say, back dash, cancel into crouch guard, stand guard, back dash, over and over again. (Not as good as it sounds though, not the ultimate defense technique.) A front dash can quickly be canceled into a move or a block. It's a pretty nice feature.

There are four hit levels: High (can be ducked under), mid (cannot be blocked while standing), special mid (can be blocked from either stance), or low (which must be blocked low or hopped over). While it might seem like there's no point in using highs and special mids, those have the advantage of generally being the fastest moves in the game, and you can chain after them for a mixup. Crouching is generally the least safe blocking state because there are lots of mids, however.

The fastest a move can come out is in 10 frames. Usually, every character's jab moves are there 10f moves. All but two characters have a 10-frame jab, IIRC. This makes frame advantage and disadvantage very important, as it determines whether or not it's possible to beat out your fastest move after certain strings. If you are at a +3 frame advantage and do a jab ASAP, your opponent can’t possible beat out your move with one of their own. However, jabbing is such an obvious thing to do that they could simply crouch it and counter, but then they’d be wide open for a launcher, etc.

Throws count as unblockable highs, so they can be ducked under. You also have a pretty big window to tech them. But the neat thing about this game is that, if you get caught by a throw, you have to pay close attention to which arm they led the throw with. If they used the right or left arm to throw, you have to tech accordingly with its respective punch button. If they lead with neither arm, then you have to press both punch buttons to tech. This means that if you just guess when trying to throw tech, you only have a 1 in 3 chance of getting it, so you have to pay close attention. Another interesting thing about throws in this game is that, in addition to have their own animations, each throw has its own animation when teched. So both characters go through an elaborate feat of gymnastics whenever a throw is broken and they reposition. Breaking at throw actually leaves you at a frame advantage, but many clever players bait a throw break in order to gain a positional advantage. You might have been with your back to the wall before you tried to throw, but after he broke it, he's at the wall, giving you the change to do half your health with a wall combo. Just one mechanic of the game, throwing, is much more than just an unblockable move and attempting one often does not have a clear line between "success" and "failure." There are also a lot of character-exclusive special throws, some that only work in specific match ups, and I believe Marduk has throws that you must tech with a kick, which always throws me off.

Every character has a low parry, which is like is a pretty nice feature where you tap Down-Forward before a low attack hits you, and it'll cause you to catch their leg and flip them onto their backs in a Bound state, letting you combo after words and even start a nice oki game.

About half the cast has other kinds of parries, from just high ones to assorted high and mid counters. This gives the game some nice character-specific tools. Some parries do different stuff depending on which limb they catch and the hit level, and other need to have follow-ups inputted, while other just reposition. One of Leo's mid/high parries, if it catches a punch, will just have Leo pull the character towards herself, trip her opponent up, then have the opponent sent stumbling behind her. And that's it. While it naturally leaves Leo at a frame advantage and can be a nice reposition, what makes it a great parry is that if they hit a wall, they'll run head-first into while stumbling. This causes enough stun for you to be able to do a huge –damage wall combo. If the same parry catches a mid or high kick, Leo will do a cool under-leg pin.

However, these parries aren't over-powered at all, if you were thinking Dead or Alive. Not only must you guess the hit level correctly, the general rules go that you cannot parry the following (with some exceptions): running attacks, elbows, knees, launchers or jumping attacks. This makes the parry a very interesting mechanic due to some of the heavy risk it entails, when blocking is much safer, but at the same time, parries cover the majority of moves used.

You also have a lot of wake-up options (for those you who don't know, wake up is where you're getting up after being knocked down). I remember someone telling me there was like 25 of them. I do know you can roll in four different direction immediately following a knock-down, and another four entirely different rolls should you delay the get-up. You can also do a get-up spin kick, which are a bit risky but sometimes pay off to do. You can either do a low or mid one, and you can combo afterwards if they counter-hit. There's also the "Chinese Get-Up," which is where you use back to spring back up while kicking your feet. It does a light hit and gets you up, and I think it's safe on block. After rolling backwards, you can spring forward using your legs for a tackle-leap, or push off the ground with your arms for a legs-first leap at your opponent. Both hurt and actually both are safe on block, but are at risk of being counter-hit or getting juggled during the roll. They also have deceptively tiny hitboxes. You can choose to sideroll, generally the safest option, but still not get up at all if you want to delay your okime. This often throws your opponent off. You can also just stand up by pressing UP when you hit the ground, but that makes too much sense.

The side rolls to quick get up or just holding up are the safest means to get up, but they can still be beaten out by well timed attacks or ones that track the side rolls.

Due to every wake up option being fairly easy to beat, despite there being 20-some of them, the game is very much in the favor of the attacker. Once a combo ends, the rush down begins. Like it should be: recent fighters have left a bad taste in my mouth with all the turtling.

There's also a neat sub-system where, after running at your opponent from a bit of distance away, you will do tackle grab. After tackling them down to the ground, you'll pin them and can attempt three strikes starting with either hand, and then do another set of three punches to the face before getting thrown off. The person on bottom can attempt to tech and kick you off early by guessing which hand you are going to use, and parrying with the opposite. It doesn't come into play that often, but is interesting when it does.

To cover what's left of the game mechanics, juggles and bounding. Certain moves launch, and with a certain combination of moves after that, you can keep them in the air. Not much more to it, most given combinations of moves after a launch won't work, so you'll probably have to go online to learn which strings to do after a launch. You can also hit someone out of their jump (unlikely to happen given how often you jump in Tekken) to start a similar combo. Fortunately, every character’s move list comes with at least 8 Sample combos, and you can watch the computer do them and learn the combo follow-ups. However, these Sample combos are often quite bad, and the game will NEVER show you how to wall combo. For an example, the game never showed me how to do my Leo BnBs, I had to use the Internet.

Finally, there's Bounding. A Bound move is one that slams someone out of the air onto the floor. This will leave them paralyzed on the floor, feet up in the air for a second, and let you combo them further. This is usually just for one more chain and that's it, and there can only be one Bound per comob. If you use any Bound moves after that, they'll just spike them to the ground for an oki guessing game, which is good also.

All of these mechanics I was rambling about, with at least 100 moves per character, add up to an incredibly fast-paced, stylish and intricate game.

Let me repeat all of the above words in:

Tekken 6 is a very stylish and intricate game. It is fun to play, and it is complicated.

For all the belly-aching I might done about the game's mediocre features, that is honestly the nicest thing I can say about a fighting game. At the end of the day, you keep playing fighting games not for online play and single player campaigns and other stuff; it's the multiplayer game you bought. I might think the single-player is really bland, and at times frustrating, and that there should be more costume slots, and a few other belly aches. But let me repeat that Tekken 6 is a very cool and intricate fighting game.

Early on, I was planning on making this review less general: I was going to only review the games’ core mechanics and multiplayer. But honestly, the meta-game is too complicated for me to tell anyone about with any clarity. There are at least 100 moves per character, lots of universal mechanics, character specific-features, lots of strings with various frame advantages and disadvantage, very careful spacing and unintuitive mixups. The game has too many interacting parts for me to get my head around.

There’s a final inherent problem with Tekken: some people just don’t LIKE it. I understand completely. I will ask you a couple basic questions:

Do you get a tiny rush of pleasure when you press a 4-button combination quickly, and as visual feedback, your avatar performs the exact combination of strikes you wanted? Does it please you that it was a 10-frame high, another high, a mid and then a low? Do you like it when you suddenly jab someone in the stomach, and then side step their move when they try to hit you back? Do you like carefully transitioning between stances? Do you enjoy the mechanical exercise of hitting with a series of big moves on a helpless airborne guy?

If “yes”, then you probably will like Tekken 6. However, I shouldn’t leave you with the incredibly cowardly opinion of “if you like Tekken you will like Tekken 6.” Instead I’ll give an anecdote.

I hated Tekken. Something about the way that game moved didn’t sit right with me. It didn’t gel with me. That wasn’t at all the case with Tekken 6. I knew I had to play it after I happened to watch a match. I didn’t regret a moment of time invested into the game. I hope you will feel the same, because I had an fun time that everyone else should be able to have. Just don't touch the single-player, it stinks.

Redundant Evil 5 (PS3)

2010-07-22T05:17:00.000-07:00

- "Chris is back."
- "Wesker is alive."
- "Jill is blond."
- "Irving is gay."

These could be used interchangeably as tag lines for Resident Evil 5, the latest game in the RE series. Let's have a look at what this game has to offer to the gamer who by now is no stranger to survival horror.

First of all this game isn't really a survival horror. Except you need to SURVIVAL the 8-10 hours of tedious gameplay to get to the HORRORible ending. I doubt that's what CAPCOM had in mind when they came up with the whole "survival horror" gag in the first place back in the late 90s.

Once upon a time Chris visited the African country "Kijuju", which by the way has no connection with Kijuju's Bizarre Adventure. The reason Chris is there has to do with news of a serious bio-hazard type outbreak that he needs to investigate.

Upon arriving in Kijuju Chris meets up with Sheva Al-omar who is working for the same agency as Chris. The duo takes to the streets of Kijuju in Chris' bulging biceps and Sheva's tight jeans.

Everywhere they go Chris and Sheva can only see a bunch of angry, unfriendly looking taxpayers giving them the eyeball. Because that's what bio-hazard outbreaks do to people, I guess.

The plot thickens when Chris and Sheva step into a butcher shop and find a bloody table, a dead animal carcass and a butcher knife. I mean, what kind of butcher does that in a butcher shop? (See also: it smells bad.)

They meet up with a stranger wearing a turban. His name is Reynard, the only Reynard in the whole world who'll be caught wearing a turban. He is also carrying 4 new outfits for them inside his turban, but will only give 2 outfits at a time, and that also depends on if you've already completed the game once or not, and how terribly you played. (If I were Chris, I'd know where to use the butcher knife right about now.)

The moment they load their weapons Reynard makes a break for it. That's the last we ever see of him in the entire game. He doesn't even text Sheva to ask what she's doing this weekend. Personally, I didn't even know his name was Reynard or that he even had a name until I googled "really gay RE5 character".

Suddenly the dangerous-looking people become zombies and storm the butcher shop. For some reason, I feel this has to be Gaynard's doing. Probably ran into his Kijujuan ex boyfriend, but anyway, this is where the game really begins.

For the next hour of your life (more like maybe 15 hours) you spend your time shooting zombies. Except they're not really zombies? but more like real-time people. Here are some of the popular non-zombie type zombies you will shoot at in the game:

- Farmer zombie: these are the kind of farmers who like to run directly into your face from a long way away, then stop and dodge left or right, and then swing a rake at you. The best way to get rid of this zombie is to kill it.

- Flower zombie: some of these zombie people like to grow man-eating flowers inside their heads, so if you blow away their brain ball, out comes the man-eating flower. At times you have to shoot the flower in the knee.

- Dynamite zombie: another non-zombie zombie throws dynamite sticks at you, and that's after it's been set alight. You can kill it by shooting at the dynamite he's holding up, which will make him an instant zombie noodle snack. The hard part is to find out where he is, because this zombie is the Tim Lincecum of all zombies and throws dynamite from a mile away. In fact, he stands so far away, you'd think he's a part of the background scenery.

- Kijuju Chainsaw Massacre zombie: this guy is skinnier than he looks and carries a tiny key-chain with him that's connected to a crocodile chainsaw. His task is basically to show you the Game Over screen many times by splicing your neck in two neatly foldable pieces, and that always comes in pretty handy if you need to pick up the bar of soap from the ground in the shower without having to bend over.

- Twin voodoo doctor zombie: these oversized World Heroes rejects always come in twos.

- Zombie pooch: the zombie dogs in this game are plain ugly and downright disgusting.

Maybe in RE6?

Wesker is alive and still wearing his sunglasses. We see him working alongside two other devious characters - Excella in an unreal evening dress, and a Most Idiotic Looking Faggot (MILF) in a cloak.

Turns out MILF is Jill ;-( Chris and Sheva release Jill from Wesker's birth control device and she is free to call in sick for the rest of the day - or rest of the game. If you have the new RE5 GOLD EDITION, you can play as Jill as well as Excella.

[SPOILER] If you got RE5 GOLD EDITION just to play Jill and Excella, then this is the closest you will ever come to a female in your life.

The smoldering hot Excella transforms into a smelly, gooey blob of filth. But she makes up for it by becoming the most fun boss in the whole game. By the way, none of the other bosses is any fun at all. Especially Wesker, despite his 6 incarnations.

Chris and Sheva ruin Wesker's plan of world domination after they defeat Blob Excella. Chris also makes like RE1 and shoots Wesker with a Rocket Launcher From Heaven. But just as their escape plane is about to lift off, Wesker makes like the Queen Alien from ALIENS and hitches a ride.

In the most ridiculous last boss fight ever, Chris and Sheva drive Chris' standard army knife into Wesker's heart. There, wasn't that obvious? And you'd think you'd need a Magnum with Elvis Rounds to get rid of him.

Controls - Not so great, and in fact RE4 controls were better / 10

Sound - I personally don't prefer the whole jungle safari stuff, so, no thanks / 10

Graphics - Very awesome / 1,000

Replay - I only wanted to totally check out Sheva in her new outfit for like 2 minutes / 10

Overall - One of the more instantly forgettable Resident Evil games

Mashy / July 2010

Another Taffy Video

2010-05-25T11:54:00.000-07:00

INSTANT GAME REVIEW Fighting Edition

2010-05-01T22:12:00.000-07:00

Because you already can't get enough of them....

2010-04-15T15:10:00.001-07:00

More to come soon.

INSTANT GAME REVIEW......NOW ON VIDEO!

2010-04-15T14:51:00.000-07:00

G*y Ritchie

2010-04-05T08:24:00.000-07:00

"The first rule to being a rocknrolla is being a rocknrolla and a rocknrolla rocknrolls while rockinrolling the rollnrocks and you dawg we herd u liek rocknrollan."

-Gerard Butler as himself

"The first rule to being a rocknrolla is being a rocknrolla and a rocknrolla rocknrolls while rockinrolling the rollnrocks and you dawg we herd u liek rocknrollan."
-Gerard Butler as himself

I watched RocknRolla this weekend. Why? I dunno. This movie didn't suck but it wasn't good...it wasn't even meh. I felt like I wasted 2 hours of my life hearing people say RocknRolla over and over again.

First thing is first when talking about a plot heavy film like this, the description. This is your typical Guy Ritchie film, frantic and full of character jumping, awkward cuts, cool camera angles and a bunch of hip cool guys and gals doing crimes and trying to get one over the other. The story revolves around Lenny Cole, an old school crime boss in the UK who calls all the shots on the London real estate market. Lenny's second in command-Archy tells the viewer all about Lenny Cole and his methods via narration. A wealthy Russian real estate tycoon and crime boss by the name of Uri Omovich goes to Lenny for help on a major new deal, for a large fee, Lenny agrees to assist Uri's endeavors. Uri agrees to pay Lenny, and as a show of faith, he insists that Lenny borrow lucky painting as a sort of retainer that their deal doesn't go tits up. Uri asks Stella, his accountant to transfer the money to Lenny. Things begin to go awry when a group of London thieves known as The Wild Bunch intercepts the payment.

To make matters worse, Uri's lucky painting that was loaned to Lenny has mysteriously been stolen, and the number one suspect is Lenny's estranged stepson, crack-addicted rock star Johnny Quid, who is presumed dead. As Lenny desperately tries to locate the painting, Uri calls in sadistic henchmen to recover his money. This spirals into a bunch of plot points about Johnny Quid who stole the painting without any tangible motive (I guess he stole it to f*** with Lenny) and shoehorned relationship between Stella and Gerard Butler's character One Two. The Wild Bunch become involved in the madness of the Russians attempts to recover the money that The Wild Bunch stole and the location of the painting.

The character focus shifts from One Two being something of a protagonist to Archy and then finally Johnny Quid. There isn't a concrete protagonist or antagonist for a fair amount of time and I suppose that's what makes this film "charming".

Moving onto the direction of the film. This film is not charming and it's yet another attempt of Guy Ritchie to make the same movie except of considerably lower quality. The only degree of branching out Mr. Ritchie has ever done is Sherlock Holmes and that's of suspect quality itself. RocknRolla has some legitimately funny moments and cool scenes however it's just churned out with the same standard formula of most of the other Guy Ritchie films.

BUILD A GUY RITCHIE MOVIE

THE GUY-ACTING NARRATOR
A GIRL-OH SO SEXY
THE CAUSE- MONEY, PAINTING, BUILDING, POWER, ETC.
ADD 1 RAT RACE FOR SAID CAUSE
THE NONDESCRIPT-A NOBODY WHO BECOMES A SOMEBODY OR A SOMEBODY WHO BECOMES A NOBODY WHO BECOMES A DIFFERENT KIND OF SOMEBODY.
ANOTHER GIRL-SHE'S UP TO SOMETHING OR SO YOU THINK
RAG TAG BUNCH- 2 WHITE GUYS AND A BLACK GUY
THE ANTAGONIST- AN OLDER MAN WITH SOME SORT OF PRESTIGE
THE RIVAL- A RIVAL TO THE ANTAGONIST WHO IS TRYING TO BUILD PRESTIGE OR HAS PRESTIGE BUT WANTS MORE.
THE ENFORCER- THE LEADER OF THE BAD GUY MOOKS OR THE HEAD MOOK WHO WORKS FOR THE OLDER MAN. HE AND LEADER OF RAG TAG GET IN RUMBLE, HE THEN RETURNS LATER IN THE FILM TO EXACT SOME SORT OF REVENGE ONLY TO BE MET WITH DEATH.
THE TWIST-THE GIRL WAS CONTROLLING EVERYTHING FROM THE SHADOWS ALL ALONG.
THE SECOND TWIST- THE FRIEND OF THE RAG TAG IS THE SON OF THE RIVAL.
TIME SKIP
QUIRKY END CREDITS.
ALWAYS AN UNEXPECTED GAY GUY eg. THE ROCK IN SNATCH OR HANDSOME BOB IN THIS.

THE REAL ANTAGONIST-EITHER THE FRIEND OF THE LEADER OF THE RAG TAG OR A MOOK THAT WOULDN'T BE EXPECTED.

That's a fresh idea the first time however the second and the third time, is pushing it. RocknRolla follows the Guy Ritchie rules to the letter but doesn't have that charm. When he made Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels it had that charm. It's the same argument with No More Heroes and NMH2: Desperate Struggle. The first occurrence of genius is inspired, the second occurrence is manufactured. By following this formula or an elaborated version of said formula, YOU CAN DELIVER A BALLS TO THE WALLS ACTION COMEDY THAT WILL KEEP YOU BEGGING FOR MORE, F*** YEAH! This movie has way to much energy to be comprehendible but not enough to be engaging. RocknRolla tries to push the envelope but it's already been pushed off of a cliff and is currently falling to its doom.

And Gerard Butler kept his clothes on this entire movie which was unexpected.

This movie wasn't good and wasn't bad and will or will not get a sequel. Indecisive!!

World Emos: A Commentary

2010-04-02T22:30:00.000-07:00

This review was originally going to be about Metal Gear Solid 4, but I realized that would make me get all serious and sentimental because I take that game very seriously. If marrying a video game would be legal or even possible, I'd probably have proposed to the game the very first time I set my eyes on it.

So the good news is, I'm still young, handsome and available. Except, I'm not really that young anymore.Nor am I the most photogenic person in the history of photography. And I've to go play MGS4 later tonight because it's the weekend.

Hellooooo Ladies

WORLD HEROES: THE CHOMBOE REVIEW
by Badmash and Lordy

Graphics by Crayola

B: I can't forget watching this game at the arcade when I saw it for the very first time. "It's a new edition of Street Fighter II" I thought, because M.Bison had extendable ligaments and could shoot missles. I personally thought that was a pretty awesome upgrade to Bison.

L: You know, back when there was a huge crowd around the Street Fighter II machine at the arcade (remember those?) I was always eager to try new fighting games. Any fighting game that came out, I was there. I didn't have much money to spend, so I'd wait until nobody was around to play each game maybe a couple of times against the computer and watch people with more quarters play each other. I gave World Zeroes waaaaaaay more than the benefit of the doubt. And I still thought it was terrible.

B: Is that because the difficulty level in World Homos was way beyond stupid? The SNES version gave my thumb a heart attack because - my fault - I was trying to do a Dragon Punch. And little did I know the DP motion in that game was D, DF, D, B, U, 360, F, D/F.

So if I have to ask you - what is that one thing that really made you go spend 2 quarters on World Emos - what would that be?

L: Ummm, what was it that made me spend my 2 quarters on WH? A) The fact that I was fighting game crazy at the time and B) the fact that the machine was ALWAYS open. That's it. Honestly. I'd rather play a game called World Emos, although come to think of it the Iori team vs the New Faces team in KOF 98 comes close enough.

Man, you're right about the controls in that game being awful. I was a pro at SNES SFII, but I couldn't do ANYTHING in World Heroes. That's why I just picked Dragon all the time. Wanna know Dragon's awesome re-dizzy combo? Mash on the punch button. Seriously. He does this kind of hundred hand slap move. You knock your opponent down in the corner, stand on top of your opponent and hammer on the punch button until the round is over. That just goes to show you how poorly the game is put together. (SNES onlay) Mashing on one button gets you an infinite chomboe.

The worst thing about the controls though IMO was the fact that the weak punch and the strong punch were mapped to the SAME BUTTON. Tapping the button gave you a jab and pressing it longer gave you a strong punch. Yuck. Unplayable.

B: Oh my GAWD, why did you even have to bring that up. I'm so upset now, I won't even talk about how awesome the Death Match mode was - because it was like 0.00007% awesome.

I'd happily forgotten all about those sucky controls.

Good God.

That's it, Topic over.

L: Hey! I didn't even get to talk about the music. It's possibly the most irritating thing about the game. It's just really simple synthesizer stuff, but it's super loud and completely tuneless. Or rather, it does have a tune, but it seems to have been scientifically composed in order to annoy. Imagine somebody took about 5 different alarm clocks with different sounding buzzers and got Carrot Top to play a polka on them. So not only do you have to struggle with these horrible controls, and play these characters that look like slightly melted dollar store action figures, you have this nauseating noise drilling through your eardrums the whole time.

Alarm clock polka. That's right. LIKE IT.

Kick-Ass/Law Abiding Citizen: Double Feature Movie Review

2010-04-02T11:29:00.000-07:00

Kick-Ass

I'm not going to spoil Kick-Ass for anyone because it's a good movie. This is where I talk about how much like the characters, the action, it's slight whimsy at trying to make a morality, which ends up being diced up by visceral over-the-top violence in a single sentence, with me casually adding that the actress who played Hit Girl is going to be someone to look at in the future because she had some of the best lines, and spoke them with great delivery (her name is Chloe Moretz, btw).

Kick-Ass premise is that the main protagonist, a normal teenager called Dave, asks a question why nobody has tried to be a superhero? (Believe me, they are around and very Real - they call themselves Reals *woosh*) So he tries to make himself into a superhero. The only thing he had was good intentions. He's not particularly athletic, doesn't know any genuine combat techniques, he isn't really that confident around people, but had a goal to try to help people out and not get his ass kicked, and stuck to it (not like most teenagers, amirite?). It goes on from there... it funny, but it's turns into a bit of a pop-culture movie and deconstructs and reconstructs comics and film. The violence is OTT, juxtapositioned by most of it being committed by a 10 year old girl. The Japanese would love this film. If it was a horror movie and she was in a school girl outfit.

Oh wait, that does happen...

The film gets the balance just about right between the characters; lots of people think it's focused on Hit Girl when it isn't, it isn't too long (or the appearance as it was enjoyable from beginning to end), from what I'm told by those who have been reading the comics, it's very faithful even though the comic hasn't finished yet, so this film may have it's own ending or a potential continuation (I would like to see what happens in the comic to be honest). The comedy is balanced out throughout the film, even the minor characters have charm, also Nicolas Cage is in another good movie. Stick it on the list against the bad ones.

There are negatives I could say, it's a bit rushed in places, friend who has read the comics says the lapse of time is a bit messed up (it shows a bit as the training part is very brief), but it does a bit of good foreshadowing to pad out characters that are introduced later. Ending is a bit of a cut off. It sort of just ends. Remember when I said a whimsical attempt at telling a morality? It just forgot at the end. But it still gets two film critic thumbs, and a balisong.

Law Abiding Citizen

Spoilers A-hoy!

This film isn't bad per-se, I like to say I liked it because there aren't that many good Gerard Bulter films, and it does starts off pretty well with a good solid premise. But for the purpose of this review, I will rip the *&^% out of it.

Jaime Foxx annoyed me. He's a better actor than this. Gerard Bulter annoyed me. He's is... seriously needing a new agent. He shoul definitely stop it with the bloody romantic comedies. His qualities as an actor are usually dubious unless he becomes half naked, and for some reason he strips completely naked prior his arrest in this film. He appears to frequently half to fully naked in films he appears in (wasn't he asked to be in the Caligula remake?).

The story of this film is that a law abiding citizen's (the main protagonist) house is trespassed by robbers (posh way of saying home invasion) who beat the crap out of him, rape his wife in front of him, and end up killing his wife and child. He survives. One of the criminals does a deal to testify against the other so he will be blamed for the murders and be put on death row while he get released early from prison - even though it was him that committed the heinous crimes. He does this deal with Foxx's character, Nick (from this point you'd just think Nick the Dick because he doesn't ask for Butler's permission, he just tells him). It starts as abasis of a revenge/vigilante film, but there is the twist. Butler's character, Clyde, wants revenge on everyone including the justice system. He sabotages the lethal injection so the guy on death row dies a painful death. He horribly tortures the released criminal from prison who killed his family. From this point he becomes the antagonist. Nick the prosecutor becomes the protagonist but you don't really like him enough because it's Nick the Dick.

When I start thinking about this film from now onwards it's pretty depressing because I thought this film was really good up until this point, although Jaime Foxx should have been a little more approachable. He skipped his daughter's piano recital to watch a criminal be lethally injected with drugs that causes pain anyways. It's just the small part of human nature that if you can't see any visible distress, it's ok even if they are dying... when you see distress it leads to pathos even if it's a criminal. "It was like something out of a horror film." quips the news reporter(? not sure). No, you're not the one strapped to the table put on death row for a crime you did not commit.

And after this scene is the part where Clyde gets to torture the bad guy, yeah, that was something out of a horror film. Anyways, from here it gets sucky because Clyde wants to be in prison so he can kill people from there and not have anyone suspect him because he previously dug his way into prison so he can get out kill someone, go back in again, and do that crappy half smile/sneer in Jaime Foxx's face that only Gerard Butler knows how to do. "I came off as the better actor in this film." sneers/smiles Gerard kindly/menacing to Jaime.

The crappy twist is that Clyde is some black-ops "brain". He's super smart and super rich so he can do crap like construct remote controlled turrets that have anti-tank rockets, kill people while doing a *&^%, and dig his way into prison. You mean nobody has ever tried that? Why are everyone in this film so surprised that anyone would want to do that? And isn't it ridiculously hard? That's some sick engineering feat.

Anyways, here's a trailer of the film:

It becomes more garbage. If I was being in it's defensive, I would say it got confused trying to make the point about Clyde making a stand himself, that the only way to stop him is to kill him and not do a deal with him, as you shouldn't make deals with criminals. If they do something wrong, they should be punished. You could throw in a debate about "what about rehabilitation?" in there, but the film couldn't focus on one thing so no... as he tries to make Nick do deals with him, things hit the fan. And it only to the point where Clyde constructs a bomb to blow up the city hall with all the justice peeps there. I'm going out of sync in the film but this is where they find the tunnel, surprise Clyde, try to make a deal with him, he says, "No dice" (I wish), activates the bomb, and finds the bomb under his bed. Nick could have shot him, but it was more cost effective to blown a large hole in the side of the prison where prisoners could escape. There is so much bollocks in this it makes me cry. The tunnel leads to a industrial estate, but it has Jaime's character outside of the prison wall, walking really slowly... while you see huge a huge explosive ripping out a good chunk of the side wall. I hate it when Hollywood does crap like this. Just to make a visual pastiche with Butler's room slowly enveloping in flames and him doing that half smile/sneer, I don't know if he's pissed or not because he finally got the point or maybe not because he talked like he was upset but he's super smart so... ARFGHGHGHDFGHDHJDHJ

Balls on chin ending. Nick goes to his daughter's piano recital. Facial expression doesn't change. Still think he's a dick.

Genuinely it could have been a good movie, but there is so much suckage in there it comes of as really annoying and pointless when it forgot it originally had a point to make. I enjoyed it though watching with friends. We predicted everything that happened, and shouting at the screen, "WHERE ARE DA POLIZE?!?!" repeatedly. They kept far away, sensibly enough...

It gets a thumb down and an index finger in the nostril.

------------

Now as post post thing (proof read crap) I believe I've stumbled onto how these films are related. I (like to) believe Kick-Ass has come under more scrutiny than Law Abiding Citizen for taking crap into your own hands. Any far right ultra conservative practicing journalists that wishes to criticise Kick-Ass for glorifying vigilante-ism and violence, Law Abiding Citizen tells you the only way to get justice is to go out there and torture someone horribly and kill everyone else that they spoke to for they possibly may have wronged you by inadvertently being their friend. I think it's because they don't like children swearing or some *&^% like that. It's not like a school play of Scarface or something... Kick-Ass is more about doing the right thing than anything else. For that, we should endeavour to do try to not do the right thing as humans we aren't obligated to have a moral duty because we aren't the police.

My next article would be me indirectly talking about Mass Effect in some cultural philosophical way, or a scathing review of some part-time fighting game I hate, like Condemned.

New VF5 Final Showdown vid. Check it!

2010-03-31T15:12:00.000-07:00

GOTCHA!

The Worst of 2009

2010-03-31T05:42:00.000-07:00

Man, someone else write an article already! I'm keeping this sucker alive. I'm sure Badmash is planning on firing my black ass for being far too pretentious the last couple of articles so I'm gonna take a page from his book.

2009 was the year that gave us greats like Uncharted 2: Among Thieves and Black Dynamite But here are some of my worst experiences of the 2009. Discuss.

1. Best Worst Game: Bionic Commando(360/PS3) Swinging is fun and it has Mr. Steve Blum in ti but they really screwed up on some fundamentals. For one, the shooting sequences tend to be junk food garbage. The good folks at Grin also made Nathan Spencer a whiny bitch. "5 YEERS OF MY LIFE, JOE! YOU SAT BEHIND A DESK!!" This is not the Rad I grew up with. Needs moar sunglasses! Could have been awesome, ended up boring.

2. Worst song of 2009: Poker Face, Lady Gaga is an attention whore.

3. Worst movie on Blu-Ray of 2009: The Spirit, someone give Frank Miller his medicine. Why did I buy this you ask? Never forget, that's why.

4.Best Worst Comic Ever: All-Star Batman and Robin, Frank...medication but meh, Jim Lee is a damn fine artist.

5. Worst comic I read: Megatokyo Vol.5 WHINY PANDERING FRED-CHAN!

6. Least enjoyable movie experience at someone elses home: Push

7. Biggest gripe of 2009: My classes at the college, doin' nothin'

8. Most boring cartoon of 2009: Up...YEAH I SAID IT!

9. Worst TNA moment: Booker T in general

10. Worst DISSIDIA FINAL FANTASY moment: The entire thing

Press X 2 GAEM

2010-03-30T08:47:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone, greetings from the Slipstream! Tokaro here to give you my rundown on a little game called Heavy Rain.

Heavy Rain is a game by David Cage of Quantic Dream who made a title called Farenheit or Indigo Prophecy over here.

Quantic Dream is a French developer that specializes in ruining what could make a game beyond the pale. I say thing because of SPOLERS Indigo Prophecy's famous lol mayan robots ending turning potential Game of the Year into Shame of the Year. Now, Heavy Rain is seriously lacking mayan robots but don't worry, it sucks too.

Why does it suck, Tokaro!? Because of some severe gameplay flaws and plot holes. Let me elaberate. Heavy Rain is composed of nothing but Quick Time Events, creating an action packed cinematic feel to the game. You make a mistake and it's all over, you can die and there are multiple endings and...and...it's really lame. First of all, despite the production values of this vide game, they didn't get Native English speaking VA's for the English dialogue, given this is a story driven video game, bad voice acting has a really negative effect on how things play out.

The main gameplay flaws are:

1. When you open a door, you don't do it frame by frame, inching your arm by holding the analog stick forward looks sluggish and takes you out of the game.

2. There are plenty of moments where you are pressing triangle, square, L1, R1, O and SIXAXISing at the same time. I found some of these moments to be downright infuriating given I was juggling the controller to try and get through electrical wires.

3. Walking. Although this is meant to be a down to Earth video game, nobody walks this slowly consistently. I don't expect there to be some kind of roadie run function or anything but I wouldn't mind if the neutral walk was a bit more brisk.

4. The game has points of no action and high action and no in between. You do a mission, get into a fight and have a lot of fun and then you go home and iron your shirt or drink some orange juice. There is no balance between the high-octane moments and the incredibly mundane events. Your only incentive to slog through the mundane events is to GET TO the events where you fight in a junkyard or are beating up some thug who's trying to kill you. The hurdles to get to the enjoyment part of the game are absolutely staggering.

Heavy Rain is that kind of game that every beret wearing, cheese scarfing art**** gamer will put on a pedestal and revere as a brilliant representation of what games should be. Games should not be pre-programmed cutscenes with a sequence of QTE's flashing and mundane activities. Games are meant to be fun and although Heavy Rain had moments of enjoyment in it, they were sandwiched in between absolutely boring moments that made me contemplate death. I do not blame the folks at Quantic Dream for experimenting with the video game formula but to the video game journalists, get off of Heavy Rain's nuts all ready! If this was a movie, it would be turned down in a second. There are glaring plot holes that are never regarded, when they were brought up only 1 hour previous to the next plot point.

SPOILERS MAKE MADISON CRY

Ethan Mars was in a coma during the Origami Killings, why is he the prime suspect?
Scott Shelby's mother discloses his identity as the Origami Killer to Madison Paige and she is shocked. Why is she shocked? She never met him, she doesn't know who he is?
You can read thoughts in this game, so explain this...why wasn't one of Scott Shelby's thoughts "I'm the F*&^ING ORIGAMI KILLER!!" you can't supress thoughts past the concious and the unconcious. It would constantly be in his mind unless he has a split personality like Edward Norton in Fight Club (which he doesn't) or if his identity is between the ego and the id to bring in Freudian theories (which also doesn't make sense because he reveals his indentity to Ethan and Norman during the last sequence)
Given Shelby is the origami killer, why don't you have the option to let the suicidal mom die in the bathroom? He says that he was pretending to be a detectiveso he could bury evidence that connect him to the killings. I understand that they were trying to hide his indentity but it goes against his own statements later on in the game.
Why does Madison come on to you!? I mean, it's not even with due cause. She's patching you up for the first time then suddenly, sucking face.
Norman Jayden is from the future because that kind of virtual construct tech could not exist within the FBI 1 year in the future. The game was trying to be down to earth and then suddenly bam VIRTUAL CONSTRCT! LET'S LIVE ON MARS!!
Also, there aren't a lot of black people in PHILIDELPHIA!! A city nearly dominated by the African-American population.

This game is a beautiful mess, like a car crash or something. It gets a lot wrong and looks very nice while it's doing it. The visuals are high tier despite some uncanny valley problems where people look lifeless. The music is outstanding but the voice work is not. I played it in french so I could get as far away from NAHMAN JAYDEN and his Boston accent. I enjoyed some parts of Heavy Rain but all and all, it blew. Heavy Rain will forever be regarded as a work of art among the video game journalism crews who had the wool pulled over their eyes.

Get Dragon's Lair instead. It's cheaper and probably longer too.

Those Who Resist The World: A more professional review of FF XIII

2010-03-26T07:21:00.000-07:00

"What would you do...for a Klondike Bar?"

Final Fantasy XIII is the most recent addition to the Final Fantasy franchise. The game is a tour de force, an absolute visual thrill ride and has stunning music but the game itself if flawed and falls short in some important areas. The biggest complaint that I and the internet in general have is that the game is libnear for a solid 15 hours, arguably 20. 20 hours is a lot of time to put into a glorified tutorial of the actual game. That is nearly half of your usual JRPG’s length. Yes folks, 20 hours of NOTHING featuring corridors is a tad much to sit back and endure. I beat Mass Effect 2 in the time that it took to get to the enjoyable part of Final Fantasy XIII. The game doesn’t trust you with the mechanics for an interminable amount of time then, suddenly it doesn’t and the game shoots up in quality. (Did I mention 20 hours?)
My patience had drawn very thin at that point, I played for a bit longer then I gave up. I however am a fickle person as I had shown in my previous review. This time I want to argue the good and the bad of FF XIII rather than ramble on about my ambivalence towards the modern JRPG.
Gameplay
FF XIII is a noble effort and shows how much effort was put into the game, it’s a real labour of love but it could use a bit more work on the mechanics. FF XIII is very simplified compared to its PS1 and PS2 predecessors. The Auto-Battle system, less options, less stats available to buff, the list goes on. Now, this can be viewed as good or bad. It allows for new players to become well versed with a more understandable battle system that allows for very satisfying and aesthetically appealing battle sequences. The ATB system returns, but works differently from pervious titles. Users are able to chain large numbers of commands together in order to achieve attack bonuses. The battle system retains the core, such as HP, Strength and Magic without having to deal with agility, dexterity, intelligence, etc. However, this streamlined system is lacking the room for opportunity to strategize outside of the games own predetermined confines. You don’t have any stat buff items like Triple Stars from FFX or any buffs for dexterity and the like. I found that choices in battle were limited and that Paradigm Shifts would basically play the game for you. I like the freedom to make my own choices, to come up with my own strategies, I know who to buff or heal and when to. The player should have that freedom rather than having CPUs do everything to Ramirez like proportions. That’s why Persona 3’s battle system is inferior to Persona 4 IMO; you don’t get the option to control party members, only the leader. Everyone plays JRPG’s differently, it’s a shame Square-Enix doesn’t want them to.
The leveling system for the game is called the Crystarium system which and is very similar to Final Fantasy X’s sphere grid. Instead of gaining experience points after winning a battle, characters gain Crystogen Points (CP) which can then be spent in order to unlock abilities and increase core attributes like HP, Magic and Physical Strength. Beats grinding I guess. This game has a solid battle system and with some tweaks it could be one of the best in JRPG history.
Visuals
As I stated above, Final Fantasy XIII is a beautiful game. When you break out of Cocoon onto the surface, I was reminded of that scene from The Matrix Revolutions when Trinity and Neo break through the smog of the machine world and see the clouds and the sun. I’m sorry I just compared this to The Matrix Revolutions given how awful that movie was. It’s good to see a video game that is willing to relish in color in this generation dominated by brown and bloom. XIII’s colorful characters shine bright in this setting as well. Despite their ridiculous Nomura fashion, they’re quite awesome looking. FFXII contains a wide variety of monsters including the long awaited return of FF VIII’s Giant Cactuar later on in the game. This game is absolutely beautiful on the PS3 and ...uh...it looks nice on the 360. Please insert disk 17. Final Fantasy XIII did what every other Final Fantasy did, look fantastic.

Story
I found the storytelling to be a bit weak at the beginning and solid as is progressed on. The characters are a mixed bag, some captivating and some aggravating. I’m copy pasting my thoughts on Lighting from the original article.
Lighting: Our protagonist, Lightning is the former sergeant of the Guardian Corps. She is on a quest to protect her sister, Serah.She is basically Cloud Strife, or at least the Advent Children iteration of him given they made him a total angsty puss. FFXIII's director, Yoshinori Kitase says that Lightning was not designed to be a female Cloud Strife and their only similarity is that they are both soldiers and she's more fragile than Cloud. I contest this by saying that Lightning doesn’t everything within her power to not be seen as fragile and comes off as a cold, aloof, bitch. She has a total disconnect with the rest of the cast and is written to be more brooding than Cloud Strife and Squall Leonheart combined. She eventually breaks out of her shell and is basically Terra.
Snow Villers is the leader of a resistance front called NORA, and is looking for his Serah, Lightining’s sis and his waifu to be.
Hope Estheim is Shinki Ikari.
Oerba Dia Vanille who is incredibly upbeat and in tune with nature and AERIS!!! Lots of spoilers about her that I won’t put here.
Sahz Katsroy is a father looking for his son who has been branded a L’Cie and taken away by the Sanctum and does sweet gun kata. Sahz is tyhe best part of this game and embodies everything awesome about Final Fantasy XIII. Sahz Katsroy is the only likable and rational person in the entire game, bar none. He should have been the protagonist, without a doubt. We've had female protagonists, where's the BLACK PROTAGONIST!? SAY IT LOUD, I'M BLACK AND I'M PROUD!! Sahz is the mediator in a lot of high tension situations, trying to level everyone's flaring personalities and getting them back on track without being a hardass like Lightning is. He also happens to be voice by Reno Wilson aka The Black Baron MOTHERF&^%ERS!!! TIME FOR A SANCTUM CHALLENGE!
Oerba Yun Fang is awesome and uses Bahamut!
The story is this: Cocoon, Lightining looking for Serah, Serah gets chrystalized at the beginning, Snow rages, Shaz looking for son, Hope misses his mom, Vanille and Fang are lesbians, the Sanctum is evil, Jihl is hot, Cid Raines, the summons are cool, fal’Cie Anima is a prick, the game is boring until Gran Pulse is the main consensus.
The story does a decent job of evoking emotion during the cutscenes, they’re put together well enough and the writing staff definetly knew how to build a sense of remorse for the exploits of the JRPG heroes. I look at FF XIII as a clever parody of JRPG’s in general. The charcters are met with futility and their quest isn’t their own. They could basically disband at anytime and it gives you a feel for how one would fee in a life or death situation in a eworld that has branded you a monster. It’s like XMen except with less Cable! The voice acting could be better; Snow seemed a bit too charged for a man who’d been though the ringer so to speak. Barret fills the revolutionary role to a tee, it’s a battle w have to fight, we don’t relish in it. Reno Wilson and Paula Tiso are the two voices that stand out among the crowd. Also Lightining is voiced by Liara, it’s a shame she didn’t say by the goddess more...

Sound
Best Soundtrack EVER.

This game has a lot of goods but it has some jarring flaws and couldn’t keep me that interested. Still beats Heavy Rain but at least Heavy Rain doesn’t take 20 hours to start, it takes 6 hours to end lolololol bad game reaction commands JASON JASON!! But that’s another story. Final Fantasy XIII is a slow to start, decent jrpg that I didn’t care for. I was very hard on it the first time but that’s because I have absolute contempt for Square-Enix. P.S. Leona Lewis sucks.

Rating: 7.5 PSICOM Mooks out of 10

I WILL PROTECT THIS WORLD also eating crow...

2010-03-24T07:12:00.000-07:00

Some people found my review of FF XIII...well bad and after re-reading it, it's pretty weak. I went on more of a anti-Square-Enix rant than I did write a review. I still don't like XIII or anything but I think I could have done it more justice than what I wrote about it. ColbatReign is right to a degree but I believe in a lot of the things I said about the game. I think Final Fantasy XIII is a C+ game and people want it to be an A+ game so they give it that very ranking.

But anyway, TATSUNOKO vs. CAPCOM: Ultimate All-Stars!!

Tatsunoko vs. Capcom, the game that no one thought would come out here was released late January for the Nintendo Wii. You pit the heroes like Ken the Eagle of Gatchaman of anime giant, Tatsunoko Ltd. against some of Capcom's finest such as Ryu and Viewtiful Joe in traditional Vs. style combat.

Gameplay

The combat is similar...ok exactly like Marvel vs. Capcom except with a couple less infinites and a bit of a polish. New features are implemented in combat such as the Barouque technique. Baroque allows you to recharge meter by sacrificing some of your health. The old Advancing Guard feature returns in this game as well. The game is a 4 button fighter- it used Light, Mid, Heavy and Partner. You have your basic super techniques as well as Lv.3 supers, that are much stronger but are aren't as safe. Also, Ryu is top tier and that is awesome. Given it is on the Wii, it uses the Nintendo Wi-Fi feature to initiate laggy online combat! Actually, the online is pretty decent for the Wii. I've come to the realization that people online hate Tekkaman Blade. TvC doesn't try to innovate on the Vs. combat, it is already a standard in the fighting games community. Capcom knows that players like big combos and crazy flashy effects and deliver.

Visuals

This is one of the prettiest games on the Nintendo Wii by far; I like the shininess of it all. The game looks like it has a very slick polish but also retains that cel-shaded anime feel. It's very faithful to it's source material. TvC is developed by the good folks at Eighting who are responsible for the Naruto: Clash of Ninja games. They've kept that authentic Tatsunoko look and did the Capcom characters justice. The backgrounds aren't that lively, the Gesshelshaft being the only one that has some actual stuff going on while you're fighting. I think the Vs. series sort of lost that sense of action in the bg. Like in Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter, you had backgrounds like the mall where full on riots were going on and you could see some Marvel and Capcom characters chilling out but meh. It is a solid looking game.

Sound

I like a few of the seiyuus but I'm not going to lie, I don't dig most of them. Also, they took out all of the Capcom tracks like Theme of Roll. That is MY JAM, SON! I think the placeholder tracks are solid and all but I would have preferred the original music. Alex's voice is awful. Downright bad! I don't know if it's just the having nostalgia for the 3s voice but man, so bad. YUU CAN'T ES KAPE! Nice try, Hiroki Yasumoto. It could use some work.

Overall

Tatsunoko vs. Capcom is a very fun game that I've sunk tons of time into. It is a pretty polished game but the game could use some tier balancing. I wouldn't say it's going to be the best fighting game of the year or anything but it is definitely a buy.

Score: 8.5/10

PULSE FAL'CIE L'CIE L'CIE L'CIE:My thoughts on Final Fantasy XIII

2010-03-23T07:53:00.000-07:00

Would you save a world that doesn't want you in it?

Is anyone having problems with trophies on the PS3 because I have been. I'm off line quite a bit so I have to update my profile with my current progress and have that reflect my level, I'm not a trophy whore or anything but a few of them haven't been updating. Mainly FF XIII, Demon's Souls, Fight Night Round 4 doesn't register and Yakuza 3. If anyone is having the same problem on the old Gogger with their PEE ESS THREE, please contact me.

Now, this review is going to be a bit more professional than my usual fair. I've gone through about 4 drafts attempting to formulate my thoughts on Final Fantasy XIII and I've reached a conclusion. Final Fantasy XIII is the weakest entry in the series from a storytelling standpoint. I've been railing against XIII for about 3 years now, so my opinion may be a tad jaded but I gave it a fair shake. I put time into it, which was apparently insignificant given the obscene length of the game even against it's predecessors. 60+ hours in a video game is a bit of an undertaking, especially as a student but I'm a hardcore gamer. I won't let this casual generation of regenerating health and Revenge Meters get to me. I also realized I haven't written reviews for Bayonetta, NMH2 or Mass Effect 2 yet. I'll get on that!

Now anyway, back to FF XIII. From all of the professional publications that I've read, they aren't willing to give FF XIII the rating it deserves, a 6. Why? Because it prints money and game journalism is comprised of folks trying to line their pockets. Now what's really interesting about the game reviewing world is that almost every review I have read comes of absolutely negative and yet is given a 9 or an A- in the case of the once glorious 1Up that has slowly become a cesspool of corruption. Reviewers are willing to cast aside the one thing they have, opinions for capital. That's why the online reviewing is the last bastion for the gamer; they can get the truth because most of the reviewers aren't bound by money.

Sorry to come off a little heavy handed but as a veteran FF gamer, I'm outraged at how the industry works. If they smeared some of Nomura and Kitase's crap on the inside of the case and wrote FINAL FANTASHII SURTEEN, and then shipped it...they would have sold 1 Million copies anyway. FF is a brand, it's an institution all it's own, it prints money. So the good folks at Square-Enix who haven't made a good game since Romancing SaGa (and FFIVDS but that's just a remake) in my opinion, can slap together a mediocre game like Final Fantasy XIII.

The game is beautiful, the production values are through the roof but it falls short in a few departments. For one, the game doesn't trust you with the mechanics for a solid 20 hours. You play a tutorial for about 20 hours, learning the basics. Hey Square-Enix, I know it's a new battle system and all but you trusted me with FF XII's mess of a combat system. I think this is related to how games are very much pandered to a casual audience now. Having to unlock very hard, having your life regen, check points, etc. They made a JRPG on rails, essentially.

Now, I got goose bumps when the opening FMV played. I was really pumped in fact, but then everything began to get less than engaging. The battle system is solid but once you unlock the Paradigm Shift and begin to build stats, it becomes a matter of when do I shift to medic, when do I shift to commando or saboteur then back to medic while mashing X with Lightning. I've written some Faqs and have found exploits in most of the FF games that I could work to my advantage but the one thing that set them apart was that, I was in absolute control. I understand that you can choose options and auto-battle can be turned off but in that case, why have it on?

Also the basis for the battle system, this is rich. Based off of the fight scenes from Final Fantasy VII Advent Children, the game moves characters around the screen as the fight on and on. Lightning does some flips, Sahz does some gun kata, Vanille runs around like a school girl and the enemy will attack in between your ATB charging. If you enjoy the fight scenes in Advent Children, you must be a fan of motion blur and The Matrix Revolutions. My gripe with how the battle system is presented is that despite having movement with every action, you are still technically "static" in between turns. It's simulated Real-Time, stuff is going on in between attacks but the battles are still governed by an ATB bar. I enjoy the original ATB system but XIII is like a hybrid of X and Crisis Core's battle system. Crisis Core was real time however everything still had a cool down period. I think that XIII's battle system is unique and interesting but it has some flaws that make their presence known.

Now we move on to the story. The plot of Final Fantasy XIII takes place in a world known as Pulse and revolves around the story of the fal'Cie mechanical beings with godlike power created by a being called the Maker. Each fal'Cie has crystals residing inside them People who are marked by the fal'Cie are called l'Cie. Each l'Cie has a Focus, a goal the fal'Cie wants him or her to fulfill within a certain amount of time; however, the fal'Cie do not explicitly say what the goal is: l'Cie learn what their Focus is by interpreting visions that are given to them. L'Cie may also gain the ability to summon an Eidolon, monsters who fight with the l'Cie. However, if a l'Cie dies before completing his or her Focus, fails to tame his or her Eidolon, or fails to complete his or her Focus within a set period of time, he or she becomes a monster known as a Cie'th .If a l'Cie does complete his or her Focus, the reward is not much better: permanent transformation into a crystal. For this reason, being chosen as a l'Cie is seen as a curse. Can you tell that I copy pasted that from Wikipedia? I was really subtle. Our protagonist, Lightning is the former sergeant of the Guardian Corps. She is on a quest to protect her sister, Serah.

She is basically Cloud Strife, or at least the Advent Children iteration of him given they made him a total angsty puss. FFXIII's director, Yoshinori Kitase says that Lightning was not designed to be a female Cloud Strife and their only similarity is that they are both soldiers and she's more fragile than Cloud. I contest this by saying that Lightning doesn everything within her power to not be seen as fragile and comes of as a cold, aloof, bitch. She has a total disconnect with the rest of the cast and is written to be more brooding than Cloud Strife and Squall Leonheart combined. Cloud Strife is an incredibly confused and fragile protagonist, given he doesn’t have a real understanding of who he is and has taken on Zack Fair's life as his own.

He faces real adversity and in fact brought some it on himself when he took on Zack's burdensome memories of Sephiroth and the "destruction" of Nibelhelm. But the difference between Cloud Strife and Lightning is this, Cloud mans the F$&* up! He casts his problems aside to protect the people close to him and save the world from immanent catastrophe. Tetsuya Nomura turned Cloud Strife into a parody of what he was in that original game I loved so much as a 10 year old, a emo angsty buttercup who clutches his hand to his dick and says "Aerith, Sephiroth,Aerith, Sephiroth,Aerith, Sephiroth, SEPHIROTH, AERITH!"

Off of that tangent, the supporting cast is just as weak. Snow Villers is a wannabe Kamina who wants to stick it in Serah's Chrystal Chronicle, he also happens to be braindead. Hope aka Shinji Ikari is the token confused teenager who's all like "MY MAWM IS DED, I'll brood about it for 15 hours of gameplay then finally confront Snow who was only partially responsible." Someone on GameFAQs argued that "Would you want to confront someone after your mom died!?" in which I said "No, I would be crying like a baby for about 3 days rather than puting my head between my legs and going "THIS IS ALL YOOOOOUR FAULT, SNOW" without actually saying it. I would be very depressed for a very long time and then I would move on with my life, trying to cherish the memory of my mother. If you're willing to bring up a hypothetical question about one's parent dying to defend a video game, then you're a very unhealthy individual.

Guy 1: I don't care for Heavy Rain.

Guy 2: WHAT IF YOUR SON GOT KIDNAPPED AND YOU WERE SENT A MESSAGE TO CUT OFF YOUR FINGER!?!!? HMMMMMMMMM!?

Guy 1: I would call the police and be very worried about my son's well-being.

TEH EDN

Anyway, Vanille is a super genki girl who really ruins the mood with her positive attitude and bad voice acting. Now I know I argued that you can't be a brooding sourpuss forever but you also can't just smile your way through every situation...that's how you get an ulcer. Fang is incredibly hot and has an awesome accent. She is basically Sir Henry from No More Heroes. She and Vanille are lesbians.

Sahz Katsroy is the only likable and rational person in the entire game, bar none. He should have been the protagonist, without a doubt. We've had female protagonists, where's the BLACK PROTAGONIST!? SAY IT LOUD, I'M BLACK AND I'M PROUD!! Sahz is the mediator in a lot of high tension situations, trying to level everyone's flaring personalities and getting them back on track without being a hardass like Lightning is. He also happens to be voice by Reno Wilson aka The Black Baron MOTHERF&^%ERS!!! TIME FOR A SANCTUM CHALLENGE! It's a shame he boils down to being the comedy relief but this game really needed some comedy.

Although I should make it clear that Sahz is made into a more endearing character as the story progresses, it's a bit too late. His kid is dead or something....

I have this crazy rule that in a story driven title that is about 60 hours long, I have to like the characters to delve deep into it. Sahz is the only one in the group that I like. Being voiced by The Black Baron explains it all in fact. Also he has a frocobo and a frilly racecar mount. Cid Raines is also awesome. Jihl is my waifu.

Another point thing about the mechanics, The Crystarium especially. They're very reminiscent of Final Fantasy X's sphere grid. Leveling core abilities and stats, the stats like Agility, Def, Int, etc have been removed and they only focus on the core abilities of HP, Strength and Magic.

The game has some parts that make it stand out above the crowd but it's a bit of a let down in my opinion. Now standing as the fastest selling FF game with 1 Million in it's first business week it shows that people were hungry for a Square-Enix game, it'd didn't matter if it was a good one.

Final Fantasy XIII gets a 6.5/10 from me. Also Leona Lewis sucks, now I'm just trolling.
.

INSTANT GAME REVIEW Pt. II

2010-03-03T14:42:00.000-08:00

Dante's Inferno = Lucifer's manbits

This has been part II of Luis H. Garcia's INSTANT GAME REVIEW.

Enjoy!

R E 5 4 P S 3

2010-02-24T21:12:00.000-08:00

Quick preview of RESIDENT EVIL 5 after completing mission 1-2:

+ I heard this game got a lot of flak and I used to wonder just how terrible would it be? Now, I'm beginning to agree that Sheva should take damage from my rocket launcher every time she picks up stuff before I do.

+ I sorely miss the tank controls and playing on the D-bag. I mean, D-pad.

+ I'm just going to play MGS4 over the weekend. And complete a few HARD CHALLENGES in SF4 if I feel like killing myself.

+ Why is PS HOME so bland and boring?

+ I want to play some MGS right now :(

More to come after the weekend~

Mash / Jan 2010 in Feb

INSTANT GAME REVIEW

2010-02-23T18:07:00.000-08:00

Dante's Inferno = God of War........IN HELL!

This has been Luis H. Garcia's INSTANT GAME REVIEW.

Enjoy!

Because we want Sega to put GOOD games on consoles again.

2010-02-05T15:14:00.000-08:00

Ode To Balrog

2010-02-05T14:57:00.000-08:00

Balrog is a cool guy. He always wears baby-blue without shame. His hair isn't cut right. He's missing a tooth. And he can type with boxing gloves on.

He's easily the most powerful Street Fighter. You can't beat his punches. He never has to stop swinging. He walks up really fast and headbutts you. You don't ever actually hit him, he just blocks all your blows with his jaw.

He doesn't respect anyone. Sucka goes ahead and jabs you and gives you a gigaton punch. He's bad. He's real bad. He only cares about getting paid. He cries at the loss of his fight money when he loses. There is no escape. He's gonna lay you out with a punch, and then Smokey will be there and he'll get in your grill and be all "DAAAAAAAAAAAYUM, YOU GOT KNOCKED THE [B]****[/B] OUT!" Balrog doesn't give anyone respect, you're just a another elephant for him to lay out.

Not even the laws of physics can stop his punches!

He can do anything with his boxing gloves. He can beat you up, text message, cook and win SBO regular 3-button Genesis pad. He can't even hit you when charging his Turn Around Punch.

And his turn around punch is too good. He pulls some Hajime No Ippon stuff with that. It's like magic, because your health bar just disappears. The Rog just runs through you and gets paid. that stuff doesn't even look like it'd hurt, but it does when BALROG does it.

The one thing he can't do with boxing gloves on is throw you. He has too many muscles in his arms to lift with them like that. So he just makes do with what Zues gave him and headbutts you a bunch. After he makes you lose half your IQ, he just drops you and tries it again.

Balrog has the most rockin'est music around.

He always triple perfects the bonus stages. ALWAYS.

For more of The Rog's musical career, see the following link.

http://www.youtube.com/user/c0dec#g/c/CAE93136BCBC022F

Balrog is unstoppable and he only drinks Gigaton Punch. I only realize that this sounds like a Chuck Norris joke just now, in 20-10 of all things. Ouch. This blog post did not rock like Balrog, so it's done. To make up for how much this post drooled, here's a video of high-level professional tournament Balrog play.

(I pick Balrog cuz he's easy to play.)

Avatar - A Review of a Review

2010-01-29T19:44:00.000-08:00

I've been milling in my mind how I would make my first blog post as I walked home from the cinema, and how would I put my typing talents to good use - and it was decided. I've just come in from seeing Avatar, and thought it would be better typing this out fresh. Time is 3:55am 0-GMT/UTC, it's a cold Friday night/Saturday morning with only a bun layered in peanut butter and my cup of fair trade green tea for company...

Also a bit of background info; this is the seocnd time I've seen - in 2D and 3D. This is going to be roughly in three parts, so I don't go off in my wild digressions or rants (which I'm pretty bad for), also I'm going to say in plain English how good this film is. Yeah, it's pretty bad that I've seen it twice, but friends who wanted to see hadn't and I said it's worth it for the spectacle. Before I start shankin' this film, I'm going to start very reasoned.

*bites into bun*

Part 1 - Summary

Not going to spoil the film for anyone that hasn't seen it in this section. I've been going a bit schizoid about my own opinion and these are them in a sentence:

Positive view of the film: it was pretty good...
Moderate/reasoned view of the film: Horribly derivative story, very cheesy scenes, amazing visuals.
Extreme view of the film: Story is whack, story is whack, story is whack, s... (very sanitized view)

To be honest when I first saw this film I liked it, but it bothered me; I could not decide if this was a good film or not. It was like some kind of ninja mind rape. I found myself laughing at how ridiculous it was at times and thinking to myself, this it's pretty terrible in one scene, then later be impressed by something visually stunning and/or some action happening on screen. It's like I was all childlike and giggly at pretty colours on my first viewing of a TV screen whilst Doom is being played and laughing at the exploding "red footballs" (or meatballs with faces as I used to call them). *bites into bun*

That's pretty much Avatar's appeal, and I had to see it a second time to get it. It ends up still being good even though the plot is too thin, one-dimensional and occasionally laughable that in no way it should be considered as a sci-fi epic even though it's a healthy 162 minutes long. See a Cecil B. DeMille film if you want to watch an epic. I didn't even bother gurding my loins for my second viewing. I brace for no one. But it's still ended up good. It's just that it isn't amazing, which what it should have been. So, my opinion still rests at the positive side of seeing it in the cinema. It's worth it, even just for the last 20 minutes which deserves to be seen on a big screen. It has a good mech fight in it. First digression, I was sort of worried about James Cameron doing Battle Angel Alita, but watching this, I know it won't be as bad as I feared as I reassured my friend before he saw this. To which be completely agrees afterwards, but I'm worried he might get "cute" with the eventual film.

Protip: If you are going to waylay a film just so the technology could catch up with the ideas that you were going to do for a film, the script should be polished during that period. What a sin. And this leads up to the other two parts. The final part asks the question whether or not 3D was worth the wait.

*sips tea*

I'm just going to rip the film apart in the next section.

Part 2 - In It's Defense...

No one should be able to defend this film beyond it's visual merits. I'm not saying the JC can't direct, he just can't write.

When I first saw this film I saw so much wrong with it, it made my head hurt. But seeing it fresh, this will be good....

Spoilers ahoy, me hearties!

In a nutshell, humans go to another planet (not explained how they discovered and got there initially) and discover a material which they call unobtanium, which may have just been called somethingweneedium (doesn't really explain how they initially discover this either, but in group problem solving discussions, we assume they took topographical satellite pictures and using geomorphological techniques is find out where the lolobtainium is - assuming that they knew what to look for, nor do we have any idea what it does, but screw that) which apparently costs 20 million a kg. At this point, I'm getting pretty damn depressed and wondering if I should continue as I'm trying to eat food without crying, tears of laughter and getting bits of bread all over my keyboard. There is the big corporation with the corporate head saying they have deep pocket investments to get the lolobtainium, and the marines that are really mercs that get paid really well just to be overzealous prats, and the Na'vi that happen to be very tame, except when threatened into a corner, and loosing their home to baliffs in mech suits.

There are other places were you can get a summary of the film to be honest.

So now I just list all what is wrong with it, and these will only make sense for people who have seen the film...

First - The Na'vi, a culture that is based on transparency, how could they not see that Jake Sully was a initially working with the marines/being a two timing goit? With that literal brain connection thing which many people think is balls, but I quite liked (but because it didn't explain it AT ALL, whuch puts it in the realm of WTFery), they should have know. It would have worked better if they just knew that he was pretending to be their friend at first, but understood them and became one of the people in the end, so when he finally got the rocks to tell them, the Na'vi leader would just put a hand on his shoulder and say, "I know." And they would have a nice big cry.

They did the opposite.

Second - why didn't they just blitz the hell of the planet from space, and collect the lolobtainium afterwards?

Third - the avatar program was a liability. Initially the corporate bonehead/marines were going for a diplomatic answer with them initially, but if their relationship was in dire straights at the time, there was nothing to really gain from it - no good reason for Jake to be there. But, head marine douchebag talks to Jake Sully way before he even gets to meet a native about him going to get intel in their camp. It was like he could see the future or something...

*opens can of beer*

Ehh, takes far too long to really dig into the film's plot and do it in an entertaining way while drinking stout (it's Murphy's BTW, not Guiness). It's just that it tries to be, or has opportunities to be deep. Slight whimsical attempts at philosophical arguments like not being able to tell the difference between the dream and the reality, "Everything is backwards." Him being crippled and enjoy the moments of feeling his legs. But it wasn't about that. The connection that Na'vi have with the planet and nature is a very literal one.... All the film had to do was 5 minutes on it each bit, and that would be enough to refrain from doing backfist in reflex when someone says the plot was good. My first impression, it really was like Fern Gully with space marines but all the jokes about what this film is has been taken. Apart from the truth, which that it's a broken mess when you start to pick at it.

*sips stout*

There is loads I could talk about. But I'd rather talk about how visually amazing this film. And for that I thank the hundreds and thousands of man and woman hours into creating some really pretty. I thank those people. I also thank the actors that ended up making what is actually a fairly iffy plot with some really terrible lines into something entertaining. For all the hype which I never even bothered with, the fanfair about the use of ground breaking technology, this was meant to be the sci-fi epic that was suppose to make leaps and bounds in cinema. For the wait, for the stalls and the ego tripping JC, you are only allowed to excuse a film so far, which is why I support people who hate this film with a passion, even those with the hint of annoying nerd rage, to the hilt with a quarter twist. If you have time to polish someone else script (because it's so derivative - eh, flopped that joke) and you're waiting on technology, actually bother to do more than a half arsed job to polish a rock.

Part 3 -Visuals and 3D

It wasn't bad in 3D, but I'm 3D sceptic. It was a better film in 2D in my opinion, but I think my opinion will be voided on this one. It's the best 3D film out there. Some parts were really really good, but I can't take some of the defocus/refocus crap. Makes want to complain about the stupid crash zooms as well. They are fairly annoying in certain FPS shooters. I didn't like it when it was added in STALKER: Clear Sky when you reload, but you get used to it. And you get used to the 3D. And ends up being more of a remarkable feat that finally it's done properly rather than something that will change cinema forever. Even though JC said it's not a computer graphics movie (it is, don't believe that liar) here are some (mis)quotes from my friends that will convince you do see this film.

"It was bloody amazing... how can you not see it in 3D?!?!?! .... Yes, I did watch it stoned."

"It was Pocahontas in space... it's annoying if you're wearing glasses because if it slips it blurs and it's a hassle to refit the glasses over your ears."

"You're right... I wasn't going to see this film, but I'm glad I saw it cinema, but I didn't expect it to be so horribly clichéd..."

"... that marine bloke was amazing... he was on fire like nothing was happening..."

"[really] hated it."

In short, watch it stoned in 3D, ignore the plot, listen to the lines the marine bloke has.

There are a few post post film things (after watching it the second time, now I'm sitting her and eating some proper food) that makes me wonder a bit... this film has some seriously legs. The only reason I saw it really late because it was sold out at the earlier time. No joke. 6 weeks still going strong. I know someone who has seen it 6 times. Yes, someone I know online. They are not my friend either.

The should make a ride with the 3D technology. You know, pretend to be cripple and your rolling around in a wheel chair, then you grow blue legs. This is the reason I shouldn't type things late at night, but it's really hard to sign off now that I'm happy seeing this for the second time. I actually have closure.

*finishes stout*

Time to spellcheck, remove the part where I was swearing like a sailor about the marines and go to bed dreaming of hot naked blue chicks.

Coming soon in 2010

2010-01-26T09:50:00.003-08:00

2010 is upon us.

However, that has nothing to do with what I have to talk about today. Or maybe it does; I don't really know. I just felt like using "2010" in the opening line, but I really want to talk about some low-fi fighting game projects some friends of mine are working on, because I believe they have a lot of promise.

(I also believe in Santa sometimes.)

((Usually near Christmas.))

1. Project Infinite (2008-current) by Missle Launch
Missle "Miss" Launch AKA Madam AKA William Shatner's mom is on a personal mission to make a fighting game that looks like Pong and plays like Kung Fu Master (without buttons).

The game is WIP (Work In Progress) at the moment, but what we know is that the game-screen will have a very funky red lotus design watermarked on the right-hand corner. Throughout the game, right from the word go. Because apparently that's going to be the most original innovation in fighting game history this game has to offer.

Teaser screenshot of in-game action.

I really don't want to spoil a whole lot about the game at the moment because it is currently in the developmental / rumor / myth phase. What we do know at the moment is that script-writing is going to be taken up by the failed.. I mean famed comedian Badmash, who is also the chief character designer and in-game announcer. (I totally made up the announcer part right now Miss, but I totally want to do it.) A rough plot for 3 characters was penned down in 2008.

In terms of game design and programming, Missle is looking for a day job so he can find an excuse to not get any work done on the project.

2. Blood V Mash (2009-current) by Lordy, Badmash
This is a hyperactive chomic-book that is currently in progress. The plot has been more or less finalized and script-writing is underway. We even had a teaser website up and running for it, but it got taken down because we forgot to promote it.

I have to go and edit Episode 5 now.

Mash / Jan 2009.99

Next Gen Gaming (2010)

2010-01-25T10:57:00.000-08:00

There used to be a time when garbage like ATARI 2600 used to be fun - remember?

RIVER RAID - a game as old as Chuck Norris - and just as much fun

I don't remember hearing about my ATARI 2600 crapping out on me in the middle of a game or giving me a red ring of death. In fact, it had a red light of "POWER ON" AFAIK. That's called "doing things right."

Man, the A-2600 had like a huge bunch of different games to choose from. The genre was a little more than "FPS" and "RPG" even with its 1-bit processing capacity. So I guess "going next gen" means playing 15 different FPS games - that are basically all the same BTW, but with different weapons and maps. Because we're talking NEXT GEN here. And leveling up in FINAL ONLINE FANTASY for the rest of my life.

Or maybe I'll watch those little colorful sprites drop down from the top of the screen and I have to press the corresponding button to make some music. Because this is something that the ATARI 2600 has never done before.

How about that game where you go out in the street, force your neighbor out of his car, run down a couple of innocent bystanders and take wild potshots at the boys in blue. But maybe I shouldn't try this at home, so I'll go do it outside and win Game Of The Year prize in real life.

They don't make 'em like they used to anymore.

Mash / 2010

INSTANT GAME REVIEW

2010-01-19T11:44:00.000-08:00

Bayonetta = Devil May Cry with breasts

This has been Luis H. Garcia's INSTANT GAME REVIEW.

Enjoy!

Ava-tard, the not-really-review

2010-01-19T10:31:00.000-08:00

While we wait for WOC's AVATAR review, I thought it would be a good idea to kill 10 minutes on making some custom ring-tones for my cellphone before I call it a day. I don't feel like doing much else tonight because it's been a long day and I want to tire my brains out 100% before going to bed.

..but I just noticed Blogspot doesn't allow me to upload MP3 files. (Or even WAV files, Lordy.)

That's so gay.

Mash / Jan 20X

Merry Heaven's Day!

2009-12-25T16:13:00.000-08:00

INSTANT GAME REVIEW

2009-12-24T13:03:00.000-08:00

Modern Warfare 2 = Red Dawn directed by Micheal Mann

This has been Luis H. Garcia's INSTANT GAME REVIEW! Enjoy!

Oh, and Merry Heaven's Day!

here's my new home:

2009-12-09T19:50:00.000-08:00

hailsnhorns.blogspot.com

please feel free to follow this blog or post whatever's on your mind. anything's fair game as long as it isn't 4chan tasteless.

i'd do the whole myspace/facebook thing, but i'm not 15 years old anymore, and haven't been that age for over seven years.

i did this blog in the past to write about my band, but since we're dormant for the unforeseeable future, i decided to make it my own personal spot for thoughts about pretty much anything.

also, i've been posting on ripcord gogger waayy too much, and i'm pretty sure that the 'mash is sick of my ramblings on his own site.

so with that said, please check out the site and have a good one!

-m

tekken 6 scenario campaign stupidity.

2009-12-07T14:19:00.000-08:00

wow, does this mode eat a ton of ass.

enemies can block, evade and counter attack, yet you can't.

your partner is borderline retarded, and just stands there taking punishment like some sort of sex slave.

it's not even fun to play. it's not even fun to look at for that matter.

now my reaction wasn't exactly as shown above, but i did throw a chair.

2009 and developers still can't get **** right.

and i'm not knocking on the fighting system, and the other modes because they're pretty boss.

but to have a mode like scenario campaign really hurts the integrity of this game in my honest opinion.

*UPDATE*

K, so after spending a good amount of time with this heap (for some reason I have to get through this so I can get to the "real" game.) It's still a load of ass, but there are some perks.

You can beef up your characters with new clothes, and some of these actually enhance your fighting ability. Clothes and accessories are ranked from G to S allowing you to:

- upgrade your defense, attack, drop rate of items.

-increase the value of fight money.

- increase the level of damage while in rage mode.

- increase your maximum health.

- have your health replenish overtime.

- use elemental attacks on enemies (fire, ice, lighting.)

It's all fine and dandy when you know this halfway through the game.

This does have some major drawbacks.

- you can only equip 5 upgrades.

- you can't use the same/similar upgrade. (Ex. You can't equip two health upgrades, or two elemental upgrades, one of the two will be activated unfortunately.)

- when you buy items from the customize shop, some items are given a description and lists what properties it contains, a lot of them, on the other hand, don't which leaves you to run through some of the campaign's levels again.

- boss characters are unlocked through the arena and from there, you can play through their story in a single player arcade setup. Unfortunately each character's story is about 4 matches long.

I think I finally covered everything this mode has to offer.

It's story is full of hokey, regurgitated anime diahrrea with some extra cheese. It's convoluted and kind of pointless. I mean, jin waging worldwide conflict just so that he can get rid of the mishima bloodline?

Why not just fight kazuya and heihachi to the death? Why doesn't jin just off himself if he hates his bloodline?

Bah, whatever. 2 more secret levels for me, and then it's to the pure meat and bones of this game (aka THE GOOD STUFF)

Dear namco:

You suck. Please don't use this campaign for tekken 7's inevitable console release. Thnks. Keep it simple, but still keep it loaded with a ton of modes and options.

Thoughts on Tekken 6 and Prototype.

2009-12-06T21:51:00.001-08:00

I got these today after I got rid of my wii.

I've been messing around with these games a little bit throughout the day, and I can say that I'm pretty pleased with everything so far.

Tekken 6

(Me Likes:)

-huge friggin' rooster. Like, king sized, and they're all unlocked from the start.

- lars alexanderson

- the cool "blur" effect that all next-gen games have for some reason.

- pretty environments. Some destructible ones too.

- lars alexanderson

- solid tekken controls. I.E. Jugglefest 2009.

- lars alexanderson

(What I think sucks)

- the "campaign" mode. It's total garbage, with a super cliched story that isn't really worth the time of day. And if you're a fan of tekken's story, get ready for some more head scratchers. The mechanics are dumbed down and sluggish when compared to it's arcade counterpart.

Why not go the route of normalcy and make individual storylines for each character through the arcade mode? Why should namco insist on making these mundane, half-assed single player modes for the sake of trying something "different"?

Why not make it play like tekken force mode at least? That **** was fun. Hell where's my tekken bowling?

Tekken 5 got something right where it allowed you to play through each charcter's story through the arcade mode, leaving that dumb devil within single player mode up to the players own discression.

I haven't tried any online modes yet because I know I'll get schooled. But i'm sure it'll be a decent experience.

Overall, it's Tekken with a new coat of paint, online capabilities and a huge roster. It's got the same mechanics tekken nuts are bound to love. I happen to enjoy the tekken series, so this tickles my fancy on many levels. What it gets right, it passes with flying colors, what it got wrong, fails miserably.

I noticed some topics on board 208 regarding the roster, and seriously, this is the largest roster to date, I could give two ****'s if kunimitsu, michelle chang, tiger, and forrest law are missing.

The newer characters are pretty damn fun to use. Zafina, leo, lars and miguel are my definite favorites.

I give the game an 8.5.

tl;dr

You'll love the game if you're a tekken fan.

You'll hate the game if you're not a tekken fan.

And if you're a fighting game fan looking for something to hold you off until ssfiv comes out, look no further than tekken 6.

Personally, I think it's pretty great, though not as great as tekken 3, tag tournament, or 5DR but great in it's own merit.

(Prototype)

A sandbox game where you take control of a dude named alex mercer. This guy is infected with a virus that gives him the ability to do pretty much everything. Ever.

(What I liked:)

- it's a sandbox game

- alex mercer's troubled personality. Even though the guy's a one man wrecking crew, he's also personally conflicted at the same time.

- alex mercer has a billion and one abilities, and leveling up is about as frequent as bathroom breaks with someone with a weak bladder. You're treated to all of mercer's abilities in the very beginning of the game, but it's pretty much foreshadowing of what's to come, so it backtracks to when the infection was first spread. But no worries since you will gain these abilities back pretty quickly early on in the game.

- satisfying, gratuitous, selfless violence on EVERYONE you see. Slicing a bunch of pedestrians (male and female) to hunks of meat, throwing them around and into vehicles, the river, helicopters, violent consumation sequences. It's strangley satifying, and it really gives the player a sense of empowerment, like you're totally un****withable.

Soldiers are common fodder for you to plow through, but you need to watch out for hunters and other otherworldly beings that you cross, because that's the real threat to you.

It's also incredibly satifying to take out an entire squad of police and military personel with absolute no regard for anything around you.

(What I didn't like:)

- the visuals are kinda piss poor for a 360 game.

-There's a lot of pop-up.

-Windows look like they're painted on buildings.

- new york city at times looks dull and lifeless, but when there's utter chaos amok, it's a total warzone.

- the way the developer's mapped nyc is highly questionable. I know the city enough to know that the manhattan/ brooklyn bridges are not like 20 blocks away from the empire state building. At least make an accurate map of nyc, instead of just pasting landmarks where they don't belong.

- product placement galore. And I hate it. I only expect it out of sports games, but why this? You'll see endless gamestop, game crazy, and dc comics advertisements along with fake advertisements throughout the city. It's totally wierd and out of place.

- voice acting is kinda decent, sometimes it get's hammy, and tons of forced swearing in an embarassing attempt to make the game "edgy".

Besides the negatives, there's a ton of fun to be had in this game. What it get's right the game pays off in spades, rewarding the player with a truly unstoppable force of a character. Powering up and leveling up are frequent, as you gain a ton of evolution points (the game's currency) for pretty much anything. The mission structure is good to okay, in a sense where it varies, but not so much, but not like assassin's creed 1 or brutal legend's secondary missions.

I give this game an 8.

tl;dr

You like carnage? Check this one out. Great game, visuals are sorely lacking, and usually visuals don't concern me too much, but c'mon it's freaking 2009, this game has no excuse for looking like a nice ps2 game on 480p.

My KOFXII review

2009-12-03T22:02:00.001-08:00

I've been wanting to do this for a REALLY long time.

For four years, SNKP has been developing this game, or were they lying because honestly, this game looks and feels like it didn't take four years to make.

SNKP was shooting maaad retarded ****, making boisterous claims that they were opting the make the "ultimate 2-D game."

I thought," well, it's about damn time they rebuild the game from the ground up. Maybe they can make something halfway decent.
"

The last KOF game I played was KOFXI and in all honesty, I really enjoyed that game. It played pretty well, controls were smooth and ultra-responsive, the roster was huge and great. New characters like oswald were a blast to use, the systems used for the game were far more deep than SNK has ever used.

All in all, it was the last great KOF game in my eyes, and I only REALLY liked two or three of them.

I feel that in terms of gameplay, the KOF series was definitely moving in the right direction. Taking cues from MvC2 and implementing it into KOF was a pretty fresh thing to do.

Now, consider the options that SNKP were working with while developing KOFXII, they could've easily expanded on the systems it's predecessor used, maybe add some new gameplay element, while tweaking the foundations set by XI, while adding a shiny, new coat of that fresh HD paint the series so desperately needed since 1997.

Did SNK deliver? No.

Is it ultimate? No.

does it suck? Totally.

And sucking is an SNK institution.

Here's what I liked:

- the fact that I was able to trade it back in along with blazblue to get brutal legend.

- character sprites look fine, some look really weird and the overmuscular look to most of the male characters seem kinda forced.

What I didn't like: (jesus, where to start...)

- the price tag.

- the fighting system that takes 12 steps back twelves years to KOF94 territory. I'm almost convinced that the fighting system used in this game was purely a test engine to examine the fluidity of the character sprites.

- character movesets are abysmal. In a series of games where a lot of characters get a ton of moves at their arsenal, characters like elizabeth get like, 4 command dodges, and 1 command move.

Iori get's the worst moves in the entire KOF saga. And this puzzles me because wasn't KOFXII supposed to end the ASH saga? Why give Iori a moveset when this entry isn't series canon? Why call it a "dream match" when only 4 characters from the ash saga make an appearance with 22 characters in all? Why call it a dream match in the first place? Why not call it a beta? A 60 dollar beta? What kind of crack was SNKP smoking when such boisterous claims were made? Why is water wet?

This game is broken beyond any kind of repair. And to think, someone on board 208 claimed that this game was worth a full 60 dollars. Man, cocaine's a hell of a drug.

- there's only five stages.

- no story mode.

- the arcade mode is a time attack.

- broken online mode in which SNKP/Ignition are still attempting to fix. It's unbearable, unplayable, unbelievably choppy, and laggy. Tons of input lag as well. And this is after...2 or 3 updates.

- characters react to hits in extremely odd fashion.

- only one DM per character. Not even LDMs.

- this game was 60 bucks at launch.

- it's an incomplete mess. Raiden v. Elizabeth matches are an ordeal due to the handcuffs glitch that was never #*?!ing fixed.

I close this review with this:

You're pretty much asking for an expensive coaster that you can actually insert into your 360/PS3 and watch diarreah in HD, in all of it's jagged glory. You will get your 60 dollars worth in about 1 playthrough the arcade mode.

What SNK should've done was to spend another 50 years on the game, maybe then it would've had potential, but for a company in shambles as SNKP is, it really shouldn't come as a shock when they release yet another steaming pile of garbage to a bunch of people hoping to capitalize on the fighting game revival (thanks SFIV) only to crash and burn hard.

SNKP released this game to turn heads, to hopefully gain new fans thing is, they forgot that nobody buys their games, nor does the public (US public) care for that matter.

Games like SFIV, blazblue, and tekken 6 justify their 60 dollar price tags because they offer a complete and satisfying experience. They seemed to have gotten everything right in terms of pleasing the consumer/ fighting gamer.

For SNKP not to follow such important criteria just makes me want to climb a clock tower and go on a shooting rampage.

tl;dr

In short. This game blows. It sucks. It spits. It gargles. It chokes. It's a complete mess of a game. This title proves that the developers were more concerned with visuals rather than a visceral experience.

And to be quite honest, the visuals are a mixed bag.

You'll like it if you've never played a fighting game in your life.

You'll hate it if you've played countless fighting games in your life....or any video game for that matter

3/10

I give it a 3 because at least the controls aren't sluggish like classic KOF games.

and in a shameful attempt to please fans...whoever they are, SNK decided to release ASTs for download on XBL. Really?? I hope it fixes the GAMEPLAY and adds like, 100 new features to the game....

Seriously. FK SKN.

i sold a bunch of fighting games to get brutal legend...

2009-12-02T13:14:00.001-08:00

this was like, a month ago i believe. i was growing tired of the games i had, and i really enjoyed brutal legend so it was pretty much a win/win deal.

i got rid of blazblue (limited edition version), KOFXII, and some wii-ner games that i barely even look at.

my reasons for getting rid of blazblue:

1.) it's not aesthetically pleasing to me.
2.) i'd much rather prefer the technicality of a GG game.
3.) blazblue's kinda light in terms of movesets imo.
4.) jin's throw chain.
5.) people picking the same three people online (ragna, nu, jin, SOMETIMES tager)

if you're a total anime nerd, you'll probably orgasm all over this game. but for me, the fun lasted for about a week, and has gathered dust ever since....until i traded it in at gamestop.

my reasons for getting rid of KOFXII:

1.) it sucks
2.) it's garbage.
3.) **** plays better than this.
4.) it was a birthday present, and usually i don't throw away gifts, but man, someone really had it in for me i guess...

5.) it's garbage.

i got rid of the wii stuff because let's face it, wii has more shovelware than it does PLAYABLE games. in a way, i kinda regret buying that system, after the novelty of BARWLL, MARIO GALAXY, and TVC wore down. but madworld and no more heroes is pretty dope.

small brutal legend review:

jack black looks like a cross between glenn danzig (late 80's era) and....jack black.

it's a game dedicated to those who love everything and anything metal. you have three major factions: true metal dudes (ironheade), hair metal dudes (lionwhyte), and the goth/black metal undead crew.

all the cliches are alive and well in this game, and if you were into this kinda stuff growing up, you'll develop that warm, fuzzy feeling in your gut.

(what i loved:)

- the story, it starts with eddie riggs doing what he does best, roadie-ing for the worst "metal" band in the world. after the stage piece knocks eddie out, his blood touches his skull belt buckle, and transports him into a world of metal. he pretty much becomes "the chosen one" the savior that will bring this world of heavy metal album covers to peace and tranquility.

- the voice acting's top notch, and jack black's lines are pretty hilarious. and it's sort of a different side to jack black. he seems more mellow this time around, and if you've seen any of his films, you'll notice the difference too.

- though i'm not a fan of ozzy osbourne (i think he's pretty overrated, and in terms of metal, i'm more of a slayer guy.) he makes an appearance as "the god of metal". and unlike his MTV counterpart, you can ACTUALLY understand the words coming out of his mouth. his lines are actually quite funny.

- lemmy killmeister (the killmaster) vocalist and bassist of motorhead also voices a crucial character, he's the ring leader of a group of bikers who heal your troops when you begin the stage battles. really chill character, pretty funny lines as well. he's recreated in the game fairly well, albeit more cartoonish, in all of his huge-welts-on-his-face glory.

- the art direction is cartoonish, and inspired by heavy metal album covers. that's pretty badass, and it really works well with this game.

- guitar solos that SHRED. you're given a variety of solos to use in the game. you have the face melter which does what it says. you have a solo that summons wild animals, you have a solo that strengthens your units' fighting ability, you have solos that build merch booths which supplies your stage with fans (and funds) to use bigger and better troops, and upgrade your stage. you also have guitar solos that raise relics giving you a place to upgrade your car and abilities.

(what i didn't like:)

- the length of the game is really short. it'll take you like less then ten hours to complete.

- the secondary missions suffer from assassin's creed 1 syndrome.

- the goth/black metal hordes are ridiculous to vanquish. and at times too much for the player to handle, this is also partially due to the fact that this game has some really flawed real time strategy elements. they also destroy your merch booths quicker than any enemy faction in the game.

- the currency system sucks because you don't get enough currency. i'm nearly finished with the game and i need a ton more upgrades to really plow through this game. and doing secondary missions at such a crucial point in the game's story seems redundant and out of the way.

- real time strategy elements. i don't know worth a damn of real time strategy. i'm not a strategerist (this was intended). i believe this element could've been done away with. maybe the concept had sounded good on paper, but it kinda falls flat on it's ass. i don't like having to rally troops and watch them brutallize everything in sight. it's kind of a cop-out because this game just screams "you're an awesome heavy metal dude, kill everyone, take no prisoners, drown them in their own blood!" you do that to an extent, otherwise, the major fights are all RTS based messes. the controls for the RTS sequences are convoluted and pretty damn confusing. since every button is mapped to something, in order to command a certain number of troops, you need to highlight them first, and then hold two buttons, maybe three to actually use them. but the AI is flawed too, in a sense that THEY DON'T @$#%ING DO ANYTHING YOU TELL THEM TO.

when you're just screwing around in the RTS sequences, you'll win by mistake, but when you actually try (two dark ophelia fights) they won't do a damn thing right.

i'd give it an 7.5, based solely on it's charm, and it's love to the metal genre, but the RTS elements could've been replaced with something way more fun. but if metal's not your thing, and you hate all things jack black, stay away from it.

but if you like all of this kinda stuff, give it a try. it's a good game. it's funny, it's incredibly charming and endearing, but it's like 10 blocks away from being great. i happen to dig that classic metal stuff, and jack black (his tropic thunder performance was amazing imo...that whole movie was amazing.) but i despise RTS and really wanted a game that i can crank slayer and just maul demons for like 15 hours.

tl;dr

game's good if you're a metal/rts fan.

you won't like the length, or mission variety.

game totally sucks if you're not into this stuff.

Beating up on Balrog isn't a hate crime.

2009-12-01T11:51:00.001-08:00

Wow, the year's almost over. Good riddance. It's been a pretty tumultuous year for myself, and I'm sure a few others.

If 2009 was a person, I'd kick it in the balls, repeating my attack until the poor beast becomes sterile.

Hopefully 2010 brings us all much joy and tranquility.

Time for a review:

I've been taking a break from the fighting game arena to play more lengthy, involving action games.

Before I wasted all my time on assassin's creed II, I was on the verge of completing a few other games.

We'll start with the force unleashed.

I'm a huge star wars fan, I even sat through the prequel trilogy in all of it's overproduced, underacted glory. They're not particularly great films, though episode III deserves some kind of merit, since it was the most enjoyable out of the three.

once I heard about the force unleashed, and how it's supposed to bridge the gap between revenge of the sith and a new hope, I was instantly intrigued. Let's backtrack to late 2008 when it came out. I enjoyed the demo immensely, and had contemplated many times on picking it up.

Finally, over a year later I decided to grab a copy for 12 bucks.

that feeling of wonder and nostalgia washed over me, thinking to myself, "wow, this game is canon to the series? Color me excited."

Then we get to the vader part. It was depressingly disappointing. You can't do much with vader when compared to starkiller. You'd think vader would be given the abilities to do pretty much anything a sith can do. But no, all you can do is use your light saber, jump once, not even a double jump, force lighting and force grip.

I was in shock at how amazing the voice acting was. The voice acting in this game beasts the acting in the entire prequel trilogy.

The story is engaging, and unfortunately, is the only thing that keeps me playing this mess of a game.

The first couple of levels are okay. It doesn't start getting retarded til' you reach the junk planet.

By then, you're starkiller, you may have leveled up a few times before you reached this part of the game. By this time I started sperlunking my controller without a bungie chord or parachute, I invented new curse words, and pretty much argued with the screen like a bouncer at a punk show.

You'll die more times before you reach a checkpoint. There are a ton of unfair deaths, imperial soldiers and guards seem to have the upper-hand on a supposedly indestructible warrior of the force.

You'd think that with all these powers, you'd be able to plow through these guys. Not even with decked out upgrades would you be able to succeed this feat because they're always gonna throw you some wacky AT-AT walker that uses magnets to mimic your force powers.

Royal Guards take you out like a flyswatter, storm troopers and the like actually have ability. I remember in the films, these were just common banter for jedi to plow through. Not in this game.

There are also really ugly camera and pop up issues.

The platforming is dumb because I couldn't figure out how to get to the other side without dying 100 times, then finding out that I needed an air dash upgrade.

What. The. *#@+!!!!???

And here's the worst part in the entire game:

That stupid #*@+ing star destroyer sequence where you have to spend like, an hour and a half trying to force it down with your force powers while hordes and hordes of tie fighters try to take you out.

Not only that, the sequence was flawed because it'll signal you when all the tie fighters have been destroyed. But sometimes it'll signal you while there's still a random tie fighter flying around and you can do anything because your too busy taking down the star destroyer. And you'll probably end up dying, or canceling the sequence only prolonging the agony.

There are also plotholes in the game and in order to access them you need to buy the missions (ex. starkiller talks about his involvement in the jedi trails before he reaches the death star.)... I guess "digital molecular matter" was all these developers were thinking about, and even that's half assed. You mean I can take down a tree with force powers but I can't slice a random stone? I can't split a small shrub in half?

This game does more wrong than it does right.

It's an okay game for it's current price tag and story, but other than that, developers thought they'd bitch out on the actual GAMEPLAY and focus on "digital molecular matter" and running the game on three different physics engines.

I'm getting a migraine just thinking about it.

tl;dr

Game sucks, story's good, you have to pay to play plotholes in the story when it should've BEEN added to the game already.

This game easily deserves a 5 maybe less, but if you're a sentimental star wars fan it gets a 6.

my thoughts on assassin's creed (1&2)

2009-11-30T14:30:00.000-08:00

seriously. this year's been nothing but a bag of DEE EYE SEE KAYS for me and i've been pretty much abstaining from any kind of communication as much as possible.

on to lighter news, a review if you will.

my thoughts on assassin's creed II:

i finished it last night after playing it nonstop this entire thanksgiving break especially since i have nothing to do nowadays. overall, it's quite good. no, scratch that, it's really !#@#%ing amazing, especially after the awesome/okayness of the original assassin's creed.

backtrack to late 2008. i always wanted to try out assassin's creed, i dig it's free-running mechanics a whole lot, so a friend of mine let me borrow it. i played it like, once. and it gathered dust upon my shelf til' early '09.

fast foward about...6-7 months, and assassin's creed II is about to get released. after watching a ton of trailers for it on TV, i grew intrigued, read the previews and did some research. i remember coming across a line from a preview that pretty much stated i had to play the first game to "get" the second game.

prior to this, i remember my experience with AC1, about less than an hours worth from some time ago. so i hop on ebay and order me a copy of AC1. super cheap, came to my house quickly, who cares about that.

assassin's creed 1 in my honest opinion had something going for it. pretty accurate representations of crusades era middle east with lush environments and hugely scaled cities. the controls were simple yet contained a ton of commands at your disposal. i really dug that, fight's were nearly perfectly choreographed, but enemy AI sucked a ton of balls, which almost made sneaking around kind of pointless.

but if you do decide to be a pacifist, the game is truly rewarding, it makes you feel like you're the most sneaky, agile killer ever. i really dug that as well. the free-running mechanics harkened back to another franchise ubisoft is most famous for, and that's the prince of persia sands of time trilogy. though this time, it doesn't feel as floaty as said games. the physics of it, the feel of it in general just seemed like the next logical step for the developers, catering more towards realism than total fantasy. and after playing PoP 08, i found myself playing AC more.

what i didn't like:

in order for you to carry out assassination missions, you need to gather some information about your target. and that's understandable, but to do the same missions over and over again, was ridiculous. this pretty much cripples the game's replay factor. at times i had to force myself to get through the game.

but other than that, i think that's all i can say about AC1 it's a good game, it has it's wow moments, and the themes, visuals and gameplay are pretty spectacular, but the mission structures and repetitiveness really slow this game down.

8/10

this game is longer than it should have been, there were times where i was convinced i was through (rushing through it partially because i already had a copy of ACII and was dying to play it, but forced myself to finish the first game beforehand.)

Assassin's Creed II:

wow, this game was boss. it improved on everything AC1 in every possible aspect. unlike altair, you actually grow to love the new protagonist, ezio. the game starts when he's 17 years of age, and ends when he's 40.

unlike altair who is already a skilled assassin, ezio needs to work his way up the ranks of an assassin, and doesn't become a member of the assassin's guild til' about 20 hours into the game (depending on how much time you spend with it.)

the mission structure is incredibly varied, which span from beating up cheating husbands, free running races, assassination contracts, courier missions, timed killings, finding treasures, collecting assassin's emblems, raiding templar temples, finding glyphs and solving it's cryptic messages, catching thieves and robbing messengers. there's so much to be done in this game it's ridiculous.

the story moves at a smooth pace, and spans around the next 20 something years of ezio's life. the moves you have at your arsenal look breathtaking if you time your kills right. you can assassinate while hiding in a haystack, you can assassinate while hanging off a ledge, you also wield dual wristblades and you can pretty much kill two birds with one stone.

my favorite weapon was definitely the wrist-gun, specifically when i hired courtesans to keep me from being spotted, and took out a target without anyone noticing.

my favorite part in the game by far, were the assassin's temples which are located in some of italy's most famous architectural hotspots. and there are basically free-running puzzles, in vein of the prince of persia series. but it's done so much better in ACII. you collect six assassin's emblems in order to gain altair's armor.

this game does so much justice, that it's hard to really nitpick imo.

but if i had to nitpick, i don't like having to constantly switch weaponry. for example, you use RB to access a weapon wheel, and it would be normal for you to keep the weapon you've chosen right? no, instead if you switch to another weapon, and you try to switch back to the weapon you've just selected, it'll be brought back to it's default, causing you to go back into the wheel and selecting whatever weapon you used before.

other than that, there's a ton of fun to be had in this game.

depending on how much you like open world games, and your tendancy to explore everything outside of the main story, it's easily a 40 hour game.

it has this whole religious / da vinci code conspiracy going on, which is pretty amazing for a video game to tread those kinds of waters in terms of story.

so if you liked AC1 but wanted more out of it, check out ACII.

after i finished the game, i was kinda bummed cuz i was so immeresed in the story, it was getting really good and then it abruptly ends, at least leaving it open for ACIII.

Tokipedia's Last Days

2009-11-17T12:30:00.000-08:00

Due to shenanigans and words from an anonymous whistleblower, I will be shutting down Tokipedia once and for all. I honestly believe that the joke was once kinda funny then it began to decline in both quality and respect, Tokipedia represents all of the vulgarity that was not permissable on the GameFaqs message board and I don't really want that as my claim to fame. However, Tokipedia stemed a union where we could write up silly articles about Frydo and Makoto being the Chuck Norris of Third Strike and of course, SKN sucking. A certain someone posted a fair bit of hate speech on one of the pages and that made me think, is this what I'm promoting? Is this what I'm permitting?

Tokipedia was a website without boundries, no censoring, no nothing unlike the other FGB media like Mashymania. Tokipedia was arguably the red light district for the FGB and that's kind of icky.

But let us remember the good times, our fond memories of Roy Bromwell being the love child of Kenshiro and Jack Bauer. Let us remember Alex's days in the American Task Force along with Captain America and Stan Smith of TV's American Dad in their base, the Statue of Liberty. Let us remember Makoto.....

Let us remember $29.99.....

Let us remember....Oscar Wilde.

Tokipedia RIP 2007-2009

"Fresh"

-Oscar Wilde

BORE-DURR-LANDZ!!

2009-11-17T09:12:00.000-08:00

Well, I've been playing Borderlands as of recent and it's great! I've poured all of my free time into shooting raiders and grinding dem levels. Borderlands is a immersive experience and by immersive I mean you can waste a load of time and it's like Diablo with guns and stuff, everyone except Cliff Blezinski figured that out day one of announcement.

Gameplay:
Alot of people make parallels to Fallout 3 when I beg to differ. Unlike Fallout 3, Borderlands has some real staying power and replayability, Fallout 3 on the other hand collects dust given how disappointing the DLC was. You fight Mad Max styled raiders on the post-apocalyptic wasteland planet, Pandora. You build different skills and perks and come across a multitude of all kinds of guns. Not the promised 67 Bazillion but a hell of a lot more than most FPS's let alone FPSRPG's like Fallout or Deus Ex. You can party with up to 4 compadres and blast some goons. The enemies are interesting however the constant same respawning and SKAG F*@!ING GULLY get a tad stale. This game is best played with a bunch of pals and under various influences. 9.5/10

Visuals and Sound:
The visuals are very neat, they've got this stylized cel shade thing going on to cover up the hideous texture popping ways of Unreal Engine 3. Now don't get me wrong, UE3 has lead to some breathtaking visuals in games like Mass Effect, Lost Odyssey and Batman:Arkham Asylum but the engine has to be used properly to have it shine. We all remember the Mass Effect texture pops during conversations or integral parts of the game and titles like The Last Remnant haven't handled the engine well. It all depends on who's in control, I think Borderlands has a neat style but the visuals aren't spectacular.

Titles like Prince of Persia, Naruto UNS and Valkyria Chronicles have set the bar really high when it comes to cel shading. The sound is lacking in terms of aesthetics, I like the western 'Firefly' tone to some of the music but the fact is, there isn't much music. Sometimes you're wandering the desert with a guitar's twang in the background and nothing else, I think that's to get across the feeling of lonliness after the heat of battle but I...wouldn't mind custom soundtracks...just sayin'. The voicework is corny and over the top...so it's perfect! 8/10

Style:
Games these days lack a significant sense of style, this game doesn't try and trail blaze, in fact it mimics the trail blazers. Borderlands is basically a parody of every single post apocalyptic film and video game ever made as well as a hell of a lot of movie references. Hideo Kojima school of thought is that if you like a movie alot, force it on everyone else and you'll either get yawns and sighs or admiration. I admire what this game does, when I had to take on 'Mad Mel' and I found out one of the guns had the tagline "Your move, creep!" I knew I was in love.You don't always have to remake the wheel, sometimes you just have to give people the wheel and put a little spin on it e.g the RPG elements, the art direction, etc. I'm a sucker for cool visual effects and references to RoboCop. 10/10

Overall:
Overall, I love this game and I'm gald they're making DLC for it. I will be playing Borderlands for a long, long time. Hopefully it doesn't go all Oblivion/Fallout on me and stop being interesting. If Gearbox wants to, they have a chance to make Borderlands a big ass thing in gaming history and it is definetely a contender for GOTY 2009.

Overall Rating 9.5/10

INSTANT GENDER REVIEW Pt. 2

2009-11-12T07:58:00.000-08:00

Men & Women = Dogs & Cats

This has been Luis H. Garcia's INSTANT GENDER REVIEW. Enjoy!

So I'm playing Fatal Frame II Turbo HD Remix: The Director's Cut

2009-11-10T14:37:00.000-08:00

It's a good game so far. I'm on Chapter 6.

It's like, it's not horrifying like Silent Hill 3 was for me, but at the same time it's kind of spooky and neato. You expect ghosts to jump out at you and put static on your screen whenever you enter a new room, and you're rarely dissapointed.

At one part, I looked out a window and then a little ghost boy jumped out at me from the other side and was like "Sup." I jumped a little, but then I just said "sup" back and took a picture.

Oh yeah, I should tell you what this game is about:

Mio and her twin sister Mayu are trapped in a village because they can't step over dead leaves and twigs that block their path. The village is full of ghosts that want to kill them in a ritual sacrifice. You have to lead Mayu around most of the game, Ico-style, and try to prevent ghosts from killing either of you. It's not annoying like an escort mission where the AI keeps getting itself killed.

You fight the ghosts by taking pictures of them. No joke. The closer the deformed, cross-hatched, sometimes bloody ghosts are to you when you snap a picture, the more damage you do. This isn't like RE or SH where it's better to run away from monsters, cuz the ghosts can go through walls and floors and will chase you around until you exorcise them. You also get experience points for taking better pictures that you can use to level up your camera. It's less silly than it sounds.

It's a spooky game that suceeds at what it tries to do: be a fun adventure game with ghosts.

However, the game has one awful flaw: I keep getting stuck in the game because I didn't press A Button in PRECISELY the right place. I end up wondering what I'm supposed to do next until I check GameFAQs and realize that I didn't press A button on EXACTL Y the correct angle of this one table in the room I came to a dead-end in. It's p frustrating. Be sure to ALWAYS be mashing A Button while walking around haunted houses.

The original game is a PS2 game, while the Director's Cut is an Xbox original game. However, it's fully back-wards compatible with the 360, and it hasn't given me a single problem so far. Most other people agree that it's one of the few XBox games you can play on the 360 without a single glitch.

The twins are totally incestuous for each other.

I highly recommend this game if you are better at mashing A Button at every corner of every room than I am.

Very Bad Games

2009-11-09T05:29:00.001-08:00

Do you remember how back in the day, you would be ready to set EVERYTHING aside just to get the best ending for your favorite games? Well, here is why that magic doesn't happen any more for games like...

1. DEAD SPACE EXTRACTION (Wii)
This game is awesome because you can only kill bad guys by shooting them in the knees and elbows. And it doesn't matter whether you're packing a handgun or an atom bomb.

2. MURAMASA THE DEMON BLADE (Wii)
Colorfully animated 2D graphics always win over minor elements like gameplay.

So what the hell is this game doing at the bottom of my collection?

3. SOUL CALIBUR LEGENDS (Wii)
If you swing your hand left, Ivy will swing her whip to the left. If you swing your hand to the right, Ivy will swing her whip to the right.

And if you...

...well, no. I'm afraid that's all she does.

4. THE CONDUIT (Wii)
This game has got some outstanding reviews from everyone who's played it. So if I tell you that it's a piece of repetitive crap, this will mean that I haven't played it, even if the in-game timer reads "4 hours". (P.S. It's a piece of repetitive crap.)

5. PRINCE OF PERSIA - THE TWO THRONES (PS2)
I'm sure this game is one of the best of the series, but games like this just don't cut it for me. Actually, I'm not really complaining about the game - just only the characters, the gameplay, and the entire concept.

6. VALKYRIE PROFILE 2 SILMERIA (PS2)
Every time I see this game, I want to pick it up and play it. I remember it had very nice graphics and a serene overall theme to it, but the gameplay could have been better. And it could have been made by anyone other than Square-Enix.

7. KILLER 7 (PS2)
If I start playing this outright weird game, my family will sign me up for rehab.

8. CASTLEVANIA: CURSE OF DARKNESS (PS2)
My brother has played this game inside out, and I always used to watch him play this back in the day. But ever since, I haven't really bothered to play it myself. That could be because it blows.

9. MEGAMAN 9 (Wii)
I hate jumping over pits only to get hit by a bird and fall straight down. %%%%ing Capcom.

10. PERSONA 4 (PS2)
OMG why is this game collecting dust! *picks up and starts playing*

Mash / Nov'09

G.I.*JOE (2009)

2009-11-09T04:50:00.000-08:00

Summary: I watched it twice
G.I.*Joe is a fun movie. It's not amazing, it's not Oscar material, it's not even intelligent. It's pure mindless fun, and it gets full marks for not wasting 4 hours of my life.

Then again, I've been a mindless G.I.*Joe fanboy for as long as I remember, so my opinion may not count. At the same time I'm also a Spider-Man and Transformers fan, but I can tell you a secret - their last two movies were terrible.

Public reception: Empty hall
It wasn't very heartening to sit in a barely-there crowd for both times that I went to the local Cineplex to watch G.I.*Joe - The Rise of Cobra. Then again, what was I expecting? Summer vacations are over and kids are in school or in detention. And 90% of the rest don't even know what G.I.*Joe is because it has nothing to do with Miley Cyrus.

It was a relief however to not stand in an endless queue only to get a ticket for a movie that may turn out to be garbage. I remember gate-crashing for Transformers 2 not too long ago, and that movie was the worst thing I've ever seen in my life. I got the tix for Joe in less than a minute. (What queue?)

My favorite review of Transformers 2

Performances: LOL, except Ray Park
The characters who made the movie worth watching were Storm Shadow, the Baroness, Snake Eyes and General Hawk. Everyone else was simply reading off their lines from the script. I've seen emoticons show more emotion than Duke / Channing Tatum.

The most over-the-top performances were by "Commander" and the President. Doctor Mindbender almost made the list with his impression of a gay hobo.

Storm Shadow and the Baroness made every scene they were in worth watching. You can simply fast forward the entire movie and just watch their parts because they're that much fun. And Snake Eyes - nuff said.

G.I.*Joe >
Star Trek
Trashformers 2 Revenge of the Failure
Hitman
Max Payne
James Bond 007 Quantum of Nonsense

Final Score: 70%

Samsung Corby - cellphone review

2009-11-08T21:34:00.000-08:00

It so happened that last week I had a really good exam after the longest time and decided to celebrate by blowing money away on a new cellphone. (And also because my (old) cellphone would keep re-starting at random and I doubt its warranty would cover that.)

The Samsung S3650 AKA Corby was priced at PKR 14K (around US$175) as of 1 November 2009 - not cheap by any means, but I'd heard it would be $190 and was prepared to cry a little.

It's your standard 2G slim touch-screen cell-phone that has all the works, minus WiFi. For nubs, this means it has 80mb internal memory, Bluetooth wireless, USB capability, a 2MP camera, a Media Player that plays wav, mp3, mp4, wmv, midi and standard cellphone format media files (video + audio). Plus you can send / receive emails, and there's a separate Samsung web-browser v.1.0. It also has a bunch of shortcut buttons that take you straight to Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, YouTube, ImageBucket and other popular "community websites", as well as a Google Toolbar.

Oh, and before I forget - it has a straight out touch-screen, so you're not going to fold open or slide up / down any keypad. Everything is on-screen and will need to be touched. No stylus included and no stylus necessary, really, because the touch-screen is very responsive. (I haven't been able to locate the screen calibration options so far, but haven't had the need to reconfigure anything anyway.)

There is no way that you can prop the Corby like this without invoking the warranty.

In terms of appearance, and as you can tell from the promo pic above, it has a black front face. This is fixed and can't be changed, unless you have an airspray can and some paint handy. The cover on the reverse side is interchangeable, and you have 3 different covers boxed in to begin with. I got the yellow flavor which came with 1 yellow, 1 festive yellow (which was the same thing but with a fancy little spiral design printed on it) and 1 black back cover.

It's slim, but healthier than Naomi Campbell.

I guess the only drawback with the Corby is that you don't get a virtual QWERTY keyboard on-screen. You only have the standard numbered keypad, which means if you're going to text, you're going to have to hit the on-screen "2" key three times to enter "C". It's not something for which you'd want to hold a grudge against Samsung, but just to let you know, this is what you get.

The sound-quality / reception is good. (I haven't tried the speaker-phone option yet.) The phone isn't heavy and won't give you a bicep workout if you're making a long call. I haven't challenged Samsung's claim of the 4-hour talk-time, but I'll take their word for it. I'm re-charging it right now after 3 days of random use.

The package is very nicely done - a box within a box. I mean, I actually felt I'd bought something worth $175, so that's a good thing. 1 green mushroom goes to Samsung on the packaging design and quality.

Here is what you get -> 1 phone handset, 3 back covers, 1 battery, 1 charger, 1 really neat earphone / mic set, 2gb micro SD card, and a manual plus warranty card.

I'm no expert on cellphones and don't want to be one, but this phone is better than anything I've used so far. Let's be real now - it's an iPhone wannabe, and a really nice one.

Final score 88%

DOCTOR MINDBENDER TAUGHT ME EVERYTHING HE KNEW!!!!!

2009-10-26T15:25:00.000-07:00

Warning------Half of this is going to be me shamelessly promoting tokaro.deviantart.com and the other half will be me talking about Uncharted 2

Hey folks! Tokaro here!! I was going to review GI Joeseph: The Rise of Cobra in the last 10 min. of the movie but Mr. Badmash is doing that so I'll just talk about stuff and junk.

I've been busy with school so I haven't uploaded too many sketches up on my dA account, I will most likely shift the focus to tracing over pictures of Sonic the Hedgehog and Inuyasha so I can get a million views like most folks, that's what kids are into these days!!!

Anyway, UNCHARTED 2 100/1!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!ZOMGZOHIDABJKDABNKA!~

It's pretty good but it's not jesus, I'm liking it alot but I haven't had the time to finally beat it, co-op is really fun. My PSN is Tokaro, hit me up!!

Vanguard Princess is the glitchiest game I've ever played.

Expect more later.

OH YEAH!!! THIS!!!

INSTANT GENDER REVIEW

2009-10-25T21:11:00.000-07:00

Women are crazy = Men are stupid

This has been Luis H. Garcia's INSTANT GENDER REVIEW. Enjoy!

I've been upto some Stuff

2009-10-24T02:54:00.000-07:00

This includes, among other things, preparing for my MBA exam on Marketing Management, which is taking up most of my time.

Which reminds me, I should get back to studying for it now and write some other time blogs no one will read.

P.S. Next time:

+ G.I.*JOE movie review
+ Dead Silence (Wii) review
+ UP cartoon review
+ FILL MOLAR DENTIST BROTHERHOOD anime review
+ Shatter Hand (NES) vintage guitar cover video
+ News on Brand New Motion Comic Book Project

Mash / Oct 09

INSTANT GAME REVIEW

2009-10-20T11:47:00.000-07:00

I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MBIES 1N IT!!!1 = Best one dollar game ever.

This has been Luis H. Garcia's INSTANT GAME REVIEW. Enjoy!

P.S. It's better than L4D.

Tribute to my first INSTANT GAME REVIEW

2009-10-06T10:43:00.000-07:00

RE4 = RE5 WITH HISPANIC PEOPLE

This has been Luis H. Garcia's INSTANT GAME REVIEW. Enjoy!

INSTANT GAME REVIEW

2009-10-06T10:36:00.000-07:00

Brutal Legend = Better than Dragonforce

This has been Luis H. Garcia's INSTANT GAME REVIEW. Enjoy!

V.R Fighter Vs. Taken 2

2009-09-29T21:05:00.000-07:00

INSTANT GAME REVIEW

2009-09-27T11:09:00.001-07:00

Streets of Fury = Best game ever made by French people

This has been Luis H. Garcia's INSTANT GAME REVIEW. Enjoy!

INSTANT GAME REVIEW

2009-09-18T19:40:00.000-07:00

Contra Rebirth = Lance Bean in drag

This has been Luis H. Garcia's INSTANT GAME REVIEW. Enjoy!

And for the 136th post, I am going to

2009-09-18T14:43:00.000-07:00

review a six-year-old video game that you all probably used to think was awesome, and have since gotten over it over the years. But it's new TO ME and I still think that this game is awesome and ground breaking and revolutionary.

This game is Silent Hill 3. It's a Konami game made in 2003.

Whoever is responsible for this game is a sick, sick person. All the monsters are just awful and you see some of the most horrifying things. I don't want to spoil the game for you, but it's just disgusting and you have no idea when stuff is going to jump out at you.

The worst part is that most of the game is calm for the most part. It just gives you threatening atmosphere, but not much is going on. It's pretending to be an interesting adventure game with some creepy monsters to chase after or that you can beat to death with a lead pipe if you so please. But it's only fooling you. When you're all relaxed after a couple hours of unlocking doors and getting further into the level and not getting into any trouble, some AH GAWD WHAT IS THAT STUFF Freudian imagery is standing right there as if nothing is the matter. It might chase after you too.

And I was afraid to play the game at all whenever Heather was forced to go into the Otherworld. Everything turns to gore. And I feel like I'm going to mess myself whenever I enter a room.

It's a thoroughly icky game and I highly recommend it.

But be warned that the bosses fights are ass. They're all very easy and repetitive. Totally kills the suspense. I wish I could just surgically remove the boss fights from the game and it would be perfect to me.

I also bought another ancient PS2 game, Killer 7. So far it's pretty awesome. There are invisible zombie suicide bombers that are always laughing maniacally, they're called Heaven Smiles. You play as a guy in a wheel chair with 7 other personalities, named Harman Smith. He's a complete bad ass. He has a big ol sniper gun that blows people through walls.

His first personality is Daren Smith. He's a black guy in a white tuxedo, and what he does for a living is raise the dead. Whenever another of your personalities die, Daren can go and get their head (which has been conviently stuffed into a paper bag by the police, I guess), and then you get to warp back to the last save point and mash X button to bring them back to life, Frankenstien-style. If Daren dies you lose.

Then there's Dan Smith. It's his job to shoot things with a magnum and be arrogant.

KAEDE Smith is weird. She uses a handgun with a sniper scope on it that shoots rapid fire, so she can kill the zombie terrorists from far away. She wears a white dress that cuts short, but it's always blood stained, and she's always bear foot. She slits her wrists to suck up blood or spray her blood all over stuff to despell curses and barriers.

Kevin Smith is the guy without a shirt who never talks. He throws knives at zombies and can turn invisible like they do. Unfortunately, he has nothing to do with one of my favorite movie directors. : - (

Coyote Smith is the lock picker. He also jumps really high. He looks like the guy from GTA Vice City. He also holds his gun upside down for some reason.

Con is the teenage ninja kid who is always wearing a bandanna. He's really fast and uses dual pistols. That's all there is to really know, he's good if you're trying to speed run, but he can't take hits IMO.

Then there's MASK de Smith. Suda51 must have some obsession with MASKED LUCHADORE WRESTLERS, cuz he is easily the most awesome personality. He's simply a dude wear a red Luchadore mask that's always wearing a cap and a white tuxedo. He fights with wrestling moves and two hand-held grenade launchers. No joke. In one cutscene, someone tries to shoot MASK de Smith in the face, and MASK de Smith just headbutts the bullet and crushes it. Doesn't leave a scratch on him.

It's a very strange game. You spend most of the levels shooting explosive laughing zombies and talking to ghosts. The ghosts talk in radio gibberish but it's subtitled. They're all pretty quirky and funny characters, and so far I encounter about 4 reoccurring ghosts. There's your servant ghost who wears red scuba gear and has his eyes sewn shut. He is always advising and worrying about you. Then there's Travis, an old guy in a black wife beater who constantly waxes philosophical. There's the Japanese guy whose always bloody and warning you about how the next monster killed him and giving vague hints. Then there's the disembodied girl's head that talks to you in more radio gibberish like the other ghosts, but her subtitles always have her tell you a morbid story with lots of emoticons. ( ; . ; )

I don't like calling it a video game though. It's more like a collection of interesting puzzles and awesome cutscenes, and you hold down X button to move forward (not seriously), can only turn down hallways, and stop to shoot invisible zombie suicide bombers.

But it's very fun so far and you should play it. I found the PS2 version for five american dollars.

INSTANT GAME REVIEW

2009-09-11T22:43:00.001-07:00

Beatles Rock Band = Rock Band with Beatles music and terrible off key harmonies.

This has been Luis H. Garcia's INSTANT GAME REVIEW.

Enjoy!

SUPER MACHO MAN

2009-09-11T09:28:00.000-07:00

Yeah, so it's been awhile since I posted on the Ripcord Gogger, school and other engagements have kept me away from my secret love.

So here are some reviews!

District 9- HOLY ZEN this movie rocked harder than Dinosaur Hitler vs. Kenshiro and Golgo 13!! I mean, ask yourself...why would Wikus have sex with a FOOKING CREATURE!? Also african warlord gets his head asploded with a electro-prong. This movie has the Tokaro Seal of Approval stamped on it about 30 times over. 10/10

GI Joseph The Rise of the Mummy-........No comment. They played Boom Boom Pow at the end credits so that pretty much sums up the experience. 4/10

Mass Effect- I'm sure I've reviewed this before but I recently beat it again, Mass Effect was an amazing game with some slight issues THE MAKO *ahem* that would cause some jarring issues, it was a gripping experience and I cried with tears of joy when Captain Anderson laid out Ambassador Udina with one pawnch. Very moving in the manliest of ways. Also I was gunning to get it on with Liara however Ashley aka RACIST McHILLBILLIE came on to me and raped me in the Normandy bathroom. 9/10

Batman Arkham Asylum- A very fun game with great stealth puzzles, cool challenge rooms, great dialogue and voice work and incredibly lame repetitive and uncreative boss fights. 7.5/10

Obese Dutchess- It's ok, pretty fun, feed the lady some CAKE! 7/10

Katamari Forever demo- ............OBHJKFVAJIDBHAKHDALBHDLABHDLABLDBAKXB

It's Kirr or be Kirred.

so

2009-09-04T18:58:00.001-07:00

I bought this notebook at the flea market a while ago but my scanner was broken. I got a new one, so here it is.

See it's a nice little Kung Fu Panda datebook, how neat. Wait, what's that?

Oh my, this is no good. A "surprise" indeed.

This is what the inside pages look like:

Yeah, I don't have any fucking idea either.

INSTANT GAME REVIEW

2009-09-03T06:59:00.000-07:00

DYSENTERY: FINAL FANTASY = GLORIFIED CRAPPY FAN FICTION

This has been Luis H. Garcia's INSTANT GAME REVIEW.

Enjoy!

A pair of INSTANT GAME REVIEWS

2009-08-22T16:34:00.000-07:00

SPLOSION MAN = Best Micheal Bay film ever.

Shadow Complex = Best Super Metroid ripoff ever.

The No Can Do It - Wii (2009)

2009-08-08T23:02:00.000-07:00

I recall that The Conduit (2009) had some mega-hype surrounding its release. Being the world's least interested FPS follower, I didn't really take that into any consideration and was going to pick this game up because all I wanted was to pretend I'm playing an ALIENS game.

This game is supposed to have a deep storyline - I'm assuming this because I can't stand the way they show the in-game story, which is by way of two secretive guys trying to communicate over walkie-talkies for the game's entire duration. Which can become pretty boring real fast. (AKA by the end of the stage 1.)

The story is apparently how there is a conspiracy that the US government is being controlled by aliens from another planet - or maybe it's an evil scientist who has created a mind-controlling gas and is making everyone do his bidding while he takes over the world. Something like that. Or maybe it's totally different, I dunno. Like I said, I skipped over the story entirely - which is pretty ironic because apparently Sega has put a lot behind the story. So much that they forgot to work on the gameplay.

Speaking of gameplay - it is a load of crap. The buttons are all messed up and in the wrong places. Where the hell is the PAUSE menu, I keep forgetting - OH MAYBE BECAUSE THERE ISN'T %%%%ING ONE!? This game easily makes me want to truly hate the Wii-mote because I'm pressing the + button to get to the menu but the stupid BALLZ keeps coming up. (Read on, you'll find out.)

The screen tends to get 'stuck' a whole lot while you're turning from side to side. I know I'm terrible when it comes to playing FPSs but this isn't exactly the first FPS I'm playing, and there have been times where within seconds I've been KO'd by hordes of evil aliens - who happen to look like mutated descendants of Kermit The Frog and make cute whimpering sounds (Pikmin) when you waste them.

The bad guys come at you in sets of the same kind. In the 4 levels that I've played so far, they comprise of feds dressed in suits and packing a handgun. There are soldiers who are dressed up like this is supposed to be HALO. Then there is an alien being who looks exactly like the Megan Fox humping Decepticon from TRASHFORMERS 2. A jet black being that resembles a hedgehog. And killer bees with red protective armor. We sure haven't seen those before. Pretty serious business guys, please keep this game away from small kids 'cause they'll get scared.

You carry this little ball called the ASS with you that throws out some mystical light with which you're able to pick up ancient alien scribbling that's posted in invisible ink at random places throughout the levels. So basically this game is not just about blowing away aliens and random mind-controlled agents - in this game you have to look around for alien hints otherwise you can't clear the level. It sounds pretty interesting but too bad it's really a piece of %%%%

Press the + button to reveal your ball.

There are random in-game puzzles that you have to locate using your one ball. All puzzles apparently are based on turning around 3 rings until you get a combination that will do something sweet. I'm guessing this because so far I haven't been able to complete a single puzzle - not even the very first one - because they are all totally non-intuitive and even if there are any on-screen instructions, they are all in FINE PRINT so you can't read anything until you glue your TV to your forehead.

You get to use a number of weapons throughout the game, but here's the catch - for each level, you get pre-set weapons and can't carry over any weapon into the next level. Plus you can only cycle through 2 weapons at a time. On the flipside, you get to use cool alien weapons. And by cool I mean gay. For example, there is a gun that looks a reverse cockroach, and you're shooting pellets out of its butt. And when you shoot aliens with it, they make cute coo-ing sounds, making you feel really bad for killing it. I mean wtf.

I cannot begin to explain how much is wrong with this game, but here's a hint: it blows.

Score: Madonna / Weird Al Yankovic

I Like Taffy Remix

2009-07-18T12:36:00.000-07:00

TRASHFORMERS 2 (2009)

2009-07-17T21:31:00.000-07:00

I guess there can be worse ways to blow 150 minutes of your life, but my winner so far has been having to watch the latest Transformers movie. A lot of people have been saying that the director Michael Bay is more like Michael Gay for having made this movie - but I beg to differ. I think he has done a great job of proving that movies today are retarded.

Let's start off by comparing this to the original Transformers cartoons of the 80s. (Q.) How true is the movie to the classic cartoons? (A.) It isn't. Except Optimus Prime has the same voice actor. I'm sure that counts for something.

Another thing that reminds us of the cartoons is where in one scene, Optimus even transforms into a trailer truck - but that's an off-screen transformation scene and we only hear some sound-effects but don't see the transformation sequence. This is probably because the producers spent more money on filming scenes of a couple of dogs making out. No, I'm not talking about Shia and Megan.

Instead of complaining about how much this movie sucks, I'm just going to ask you to avoid it. Unless you're an r-tard, in which case you should totally watch it 10 times and tell everyone how awesome it is and how you're going to watch it again. But wake up: this is as close as you'll ever get to Megan Fox.

Score: A for Absolutely F'ing Gay

Mash - July '09

Turkish fighting game featuring Cüneyt Arkın: Star of Turkish Star Wars

2009-07-05T16:07:00.000-07:00

This is Violence Fight-levels of awesome.

New comics for MISSLE LUNCH, vol.1

2009-07-04T22:03:00.000-07:00

More to come next weekend! -Mash

Obligitory "I'm on youtube now" post.

2009-06-18T16:51:00.001-07:00

Stay tuned.

INSTANT GAME REVIEW

2009-06-12T14:14:00.000-07:00

Class of Heroes = Wizardry JAPUNEEZ VERZHUN

This has been Luis H. Garcia's instant game review.

Enjoy!

RE $0.00 (Disc 1 review)

2009-05-29T02:53:00.001-07:00

Resident Evil 0 is a Gamecube exclusive RE game, which means all you N-GAGE owners can cry for the rest of your lives.

The game's engine works along the lines of the canceled version of Resident Evil 4 AKA classic RE games, i.e. you move your character along rendered still backgrounds. Only this time, the still backgrounds sometimes scroll a little bit.

We start off with the apparently timid STARS paramedic Rebecca Chambers chasing an escaped convict and winding up on a runaway train plagued by zombies, Orochi dogs, nasty mutated leeches, and a 30ft hi-fi Scorpion with a wicked sting and Dolby surround sound.

Rebecca is the girl with short hair and military gear
and Billy is the guy with long hair, tight jeans and a tank-top.
Which means the character designer could've been drunk. (Or a retard.)

Sooner or later, Rebecca and the convict known as Billy "The Kid" together de-rail the train. You get to play both characters throughout the game and can switch between them by pressing one of the 57 buttons on the Gamecube controller.

The Gamecube controller is quite friendly for 8-fingered aliens
(and even looks like one)

This makes for pretty interesting puzzles - like for instance, leave Billy in one room and send Becky into another. Push a switch or something that puts Billy into major trouble and makes you feel like a dope, so you have to switch over to Billy and get him out of there. Sometimes you have to do stuff together, except make out.

On the over-all, this game is classic Resident Evil material. And by classic I mean dope. And by dope I mean awesome. And by awesome I mean "Not Made By SKN."

Find a Gamecube and play this game if you can, it's very good~

My score: 49 Gamecube controller buttons / XBIX controller

Short XBL download review imo

2009-05-28T14:05:00.000-07:00

I downloaded Rez HD from BrickBox Live Arcade.

This game fries my brain. It's worse than drugs.

inFamous: The Game: The Demo: The Review

2009-05-22T22:02:00.001-07:00

It's like Crackdown with lightning bolts and Sly Cooper jumps.

Pants

2009-05-22T10:58:00.000-07:00

Mentlegen.

2009-05-22T08:42:00.001-07:00

I didn't end up seeing TERMINATOR BEGINS(AND ENDS AT THE SAME TIME LAWL) because I heard it was bad, I also didn't play the game because I heard it was WORSE!

Check it!

2009-05-20T18:44:00.000-07:00

Nostalgia Warp

2009-05-20T08:13:00.000-07:00

The original title of this article was going to be 'Spirit Evolution'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUSzqnjakGM

Hey everyone, my 360 broke! YAY! Yeah it finally happened to me, E69 bros. Now I can't play GoW2, the only reason I got a 360 for $199.99 US . What have I been doing with my time, you ask? Why playing SF IV and browsing the /v/ obviously.

But other than that I was watching an episode of the old Robocop cartoon with my buddy yesterday on a 1990's nostalgia bender. Turns out the Robocop cartoon is awful, didn't see that coming!! I bring you the heartwarming tale of Alex Murphy and a police lieutenant scorned. It really ranks up there with SF USA in bad.

I would give my soul to get with these dancing asian girlies. MY SOUL!!

So anyway onto reviews of stuff.

Star Trek 9/10- Holy JESUS this movie was good! I thought it was going to be garbaggio! However it was lacking in Ricardo Moltobaln and saving endangered whales. I STABBETH THEE!!

Killing Floor 7/10- Pretty good, Left 4 Dead but taking itself too seriously.

Samurai Showdown Anthology7/10- I think I reviewed this already but it's ok. It's worth getting for VI alone but V and III man.

Zeno Clash- 6.5/10- Either Dark Messiah done wrong or Mirror's Edge done right. A pretty neat game overall.

Meet The Spy 10/10-Hilarious, watch this immediately.

Other than that I haven't played much, waiting for InFAMOUS and X Edge, gonna send my 360 away. Nice job, Microsoft....nice job.

Also Mai is flat in the KOF movie, let's just say what I had to say to Shadowchief would get me banned from this blog.

Gonna go see TERMINATOR SALIVATING and maybe not go see Quentin Tarintino Presents Kill Hitler Vol 8

Tokaro:OH MAI GOD! HAVE THEY NOT PLAYED KOF BEFORE!?
Badmash: Lol, no one has!

INSTANT GAME REVIEW

2009-05-16T14:00:00.000-07:00

Tatsunoko vs. Capcom = HE WHO JABS FIRST, WINS.

This has been Luis H. Garcia's instant game review. Enjoy!

NOT-SO-INSTANT GAME REVIEW

2009-05-14T15:21:00.000-07:00

Million Knights Vermillion = IT'S A TRAP!

Now here's what it actually looks like....

This has been Luis H. Garcia's not-so-instant game review. Enjoy!

Will.I.Am vs The Jumping Wolf-Man

2009-05-06T07:56:00.000-07:00

So I saw Australian Actors Origins: HUGH JERKMAN yesterday and I was pleasantly surprised....pleasantly surprised WITH THE LEVEL OF SUCK!!!! I mean jeez, they should have just called the movie, lets ruin all of the Wolverine, X-Factor and Deadpool comics you ever read and make Emma Frost a teenager and NOT EVIL and then pull a Battle Arena Toshinden and use the old "I know all of your techniques" gimmick at the end.

Sure is NOT DEADPOOL in here!!

Yeah, Deadpool was a massive disappointment to say the least. For one, he came off as basically sword wielding Will Ferrel in his demeanor and yet they didn't give the viewer enough time with this new and awful Deadpool to get used to him or even like him. He was in the movie for a good 10-20 minutes, disappears then reappears as the main baddie in the final fight scene. Also, Deadpool doesn't have Baraka arms, why didn't they just forge adamantium katanas!? That would have been ok, even sort of neat! But NOOOO! We made him a multi-power using douchebag with a stitched up mouth and Baraka claws.

Look comics are make believe and all but I mean come on, at least respect someone elses character enough to not butcher them to an insane degree. I know it's an adaptation and all and these kids today (like the double collared frat boys sitting in front of me during this movie) can't expend too much time trying to get the story but jeez! JEEZ! Deadpool isn't complicated!

Guy has cancer, guy gets surgery, healing factor regresses cancer, guy breaks fourth wall alot. The End.

But no, nonono, that's too much. Lets make him Ryan Reynolds instead.

I hated Ryan Reynolds in Blade 3 and I really hated him in this but at least he wasn't a vulgar ****head in this movie.

Hugh Jackman the Movie 2/10, I should have called this I get mad at how bad Deadpool is The Review.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/film/news/e3i605e3e8798d54f48f94931da65c7b144

Hot off the Presses

2009-05-05T09:25:00.001-07:00

Hey everyone, it's me! That guy! Dr. Sub-Zero 2! How's it hanging folks? For me, not so bueno but y'know it could be worse. I could be dead or playing COUGH 2001 or something.

So I've got some news, reviews and lots of boos that I want to get off of my chest.

First of all, dear fighting games community especially DAREALMASTA. I do not like SNK (yeah I spelt it right), I don't. Folks I know IRL say the big T has been negatively influenced by The Mash and such whn in fact that is not the case. I find the majority of SKN games mediocre all around and not that fun minus the few exceptions such as KOF 2003 (yeah that's right, I like 2003 more than XI and 98 when in fact it is total garbage.)

I tried getting into 98 UM and it has become apparent that driving a nail into my wang via hammer would be less painful than fighting Krauser. I've become more and more distant with the current SKN games. They aren't that fun. I will most likely buy KOF XII to see if it's anything spectacular but as I said above I think 98 UM sucks and it's the best one without a shadow of a doubt. Also, with the growing interest in KOF XII stateside, I've come to the conclusion that SKN is like the video game equivalent to Studio GAINAX. When they hit the nail on the head with any sort of effect, they will wh*** it out for years to come. Hence products like the KOF shump, KOF MMO, KOF Movie, KOF date sim, Pachinko and so on. The same is done for a show like Neon Genesis Evangelion. When it became super popular back in the 90's they churned out the eroge games and such and are still making products to this day. SKN finally gets a chance to do the same outside of China and Mexico

However the difference between SKN and GAINAX is that GAINAX churns out spectacular work on a regular basis. SKN has made about 3-5 good games.

The King of Fighters 98
The King of Fighters XI
Garou: MOTW
Last Blade 2
Metal Slug 3 (7 is arguable)

I compare them to GAINAX what with them being piss poor and wh***ing merchandise like no one can. SKN, please remain humble. Fatgoon is gone and he was half of the ego of the company, please do not start developing your own because you guys traced some 3d models and called them sprites. Get me a Wacom tablet and I can do that too. Apparently so can Arc Sys.

KOF 2002 UM looks like a broken OTG fest. I mean Nameless for example, he has like 6 moves that lift off the ground, one of them being a 40 hit DM. And why is this folks? Because broken is popular! Everyone likes MvC2 right!? No. Not everyone likes MvC2, SKN. In fact it's a garbage game with the worst community of all time. Black dudes yelling "AW S*** SON, DAT CABLE GOT YOO ON LOCKDAWN! AAWWW BAYBAY!!"

Do you want KOF to become that? Well SKN, it never will because NO ONE LIKES KOF! If it wasn't for Mexico, you guys would be bankrupt (again.), you don't have the wide variety of games that a powerhouse like Capcom does (and don't get me wrong, Capcom is a shady company who churn out half assed crap all the time). You have to get Ignition to localize games like 98 UM a year after release! When is KOF XII slated, June 2012!?

But hey! The grafikz! They're bootyful! No, they aren't. They are totally disproportionate and the animations are incredibly slow. Apparently the frames are going to be sped up but that may cause as many issues as keeping them sluggish, you have to draw multiple frames to make up for the speed difference. Also, from what this reporter has heard, SKN doesn't draw frames because when Terry does Burn Knuckle he just poofs out of existence like The Flash and decks them in the face rather than the fly forward animation that we're used to and at least makes more sense than the Hungry Wolf using the Speed Force!!

He just appears in your face!!

But anyway, on with other stuff.

DW Gundam 2 -Quattro Bajeena is a CHAR! Best DW game since 5 Empires.Very addictive but if you don't like DW you won't like this. 7/10

Wolverine aka Australian Actors Origins: Hugh Jackman- The cutscenes are what the movie should have been! The game is just lousy beat-em up though. 4/10

WarioWare Inc.-Yeah it took me about this long to play it. Pretty fun, pretty stupid. Jimmy is amazing. 6/10

N+- If you played N-Game, this is the upgrade on crack! 8/10

Disgaea 2 Portable- Not as good as Disgaea 3, not as funny as Disgaea 1, not as good as FFT but Adell has a tie and Rozalin is hot. 7/10

Sonic Chronicles The Dark Brotherhood- I wish this was just a re-skin of Mass Effect. It's probably the best Sonic related game that has come out for about 5 years. It's a good RPG, give it a shot. 8.5/10

Prinny- Pretty hard, I didn't expect that what with the 1000 lives thing but yeah, I'm pretty afraid of this game kicking my ass. It's pretty good, pick it up if it isn't sold out. 7/10

Romancing SaGa- Wow, this game is amazilicious! Man if The Last Remnant sucked less and had better art direction and no Johnny Yong Bosch and no load times and fun and a good battle system and more charcters and PS2 graphics. I don't know what I was getting at but this game was an amazing find! 10/10

Tenchu 2 Stealth Assasins- Back when Tenchu was good. 8/10

Final Fantasy VII- This is not the greatest game ever made GameFaqs, sorry. It's a good game but IX is better and that's just out of the PSX ones. 7.5/10

MadWorld- Made me want a Wii. And that's pretty tough! Look Pimpin'/10

Megaman Powered Up- SO HARD! OH MAN!! WHAT!? SO HAAAAARD!!! GOD DAAAAAAAMN! One of the best MM games. 9/10

So yeah those are my reviews and I'm gonna see Hugh Jackman The Movie tonight with some chums, it should be

And for the 110th blog post, a bunch of informal reviews!

2009-05-02T07:22:00.000-07:00

I did a few things in the past few weaks. I'm going to review them all:

Dragonball Evolution

One of the best movies I've ever watched. It is so bad in all the best ways. This almost as corny as the original Street Fighter movie. Watch it and laugh. My favorite parts are Goku's off the wall facial expressions when he's powering up or getting pissed.

Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li

This movie is so bad in all the worst ways. Avoid this movie like the plague, even if Kristin Kruek or whoever is incredibly hot and so is that Asian girl who plays Rose. Just watch the first movie again, because it was Tuesday IMO.

Dynasty Warrior Gundam (1 and 2)

I have mixed feelings on these games. It's pretty much a big Gundam fanservice game with some decent combat. It's just that I hate some of the spotlighted character and LOVE some of the others. Namely, I really hate Gundam Wing's protagonist Heero Yuyii and his Mary Sue ness. But I absolutely love Domon Kashuu, the protagionist of G Gundam, and all of his shouting. "This hand of mine is burning red! It's roar tells me to grasp victoryyyyy! ERRRRUPTTTING BURNINNNNNG FINGAAAAAAH!"

Don't expect for this to be a Giant Robo game. It's exactly what it says in the title: a Dynasty Warrior game with Gundams. And that's not a bad thing at all. You pilot one of your favorite Gundam heroes, and fight in a battle full of generic mobile suit peons, with the other famous Gundam pilots as the bosses.

The combat is pretty decent. The first game, you get a sequence of normal attacks that can be comboed into one power attack. This power attack can then be canceled into a dash, allowing you to follow up the power attack with a dash attack sequence. Any move and hit stun can be canceled into super (just press B button). The second game allows you to cancel the dash attacks into another dash, allowing you to combo as much as you like (as long as you have boost meter). However, since this game is about killing hundreds of enemies, you won't be worrying much about comboing on unit until you get into a boss fight.

I love this game pretty much just for the two playable G Gundam characters, Domon Kashuu and Master Asia.

Phanstary Online Episode 1

I've been through the Forest level a million times now and I'm still can't stop playing. WTF.

Street Fighter IV tournaments

Pretty fun. I lost to a Sagat player and an El Fuetre player.

The almighty ALLULAR has something to say.

2009-04-24T08:55:00.001-07:00

I love the descendents... Anyways, who wants some over opinionated reviews?

Having plastic is awesome, and it makes life so much easier. I should have BEEN had that shizzle SON. My lazy, hispanic ass finally took a break from siesta napping, and finally took some GODDAMN initiative.

I've been slowly drifting away from current gen gaming, getting lost in retro gamings super awesome fog.

Games in review:

Tobal No.1 : this is a squaresoft fightn gaem. It's not half bad for a 12 year old game either. Having akira toriyama designed the game... Makes it even better to me. It's like an easier, more fluent virtua fighter, with less moves. But whatever, it's the first of a two game series. It's nostalgic as hell, and it's pretty fun. Moving at 60 fps is definitely impressive for it's time.

The music is decent too, kinda catchy...

It's the final fantasy vii demo that came with a free game. For 14 bucks on ebay.

7/10

Mortal Kombat Trilogy: wwooohhwwwhheee, N64 version. It plays better than their current ps2/ps3/xbox live ports. But with the limitations cartridges had, you also get extreme graininess, and midi music. It's good ol' retarded MK gameplay we're all familiar with. The secret KODES could've been better. It's ok overall, it holds senimental value to me because it was one of my 1st N64 games evvveeerrr.

6/10

All six AKI wrestling games: pure )+-?!!ing awesome.

John Rambo/ Judge Dredd

Fixing my PS2 to play tobal: sucks. I hate that laser the ps2 has....

Not so instant game reviews and other stuff too (The other stuff being Dragonball Evolution)

2009-04-20T09:25:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone, Tokaro here and ready to rock. Time to review some stuff! Yeah!

......I don't have anything to REVIEW!! OH MAY GAAAAAAAH! What am I gonna do!? Okokok....what did I do this week! I'll review this WEEK! YEAH!

Dragonball Evolution: F***/10
Good Lordy 99 this movie sucks!! I wasn't expecting much from the antics of white Goku and white Bulma hanging out with Inspector Tequila to fight Spike from Buffy but y'know....I mean at least Speed Racer had.....man, anime movies suck! Well we can always remember good old Live action Guyver featuring Mark Hammil...and the sequel had David Hayter!

PWNisher: Wh*** Zone: WHAT!?/10
Ok....so Frank Castle punches a guy's head into dust! I began to cry with the kind of laughter that only Turkish Cinema and The Spirit bring about. He also shot a guy's face off. They did get the fact that Jigsaw is a total pisser and LBJ is the lamest character ever. EVER. Even World Heroes has better characters. And they have gay Inspector Gadget! This movie is worse than RAMBOWNED when it comes to the most unnecessary gore ever and I love gore. MadWorld is awesome! Seriously, his face SHOT off. And Newman is in this.

New Xbox 360 Bundle
7/10

Halo 3 and Fable II both kinda suck but it's a good sales idea.

Star Ocean 4 on PS3
http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=mm7fhf&s=5
6/10

Sucky game but meh, more JRPG's I guess.

MAHVEL on XBLA and PSN
10/120

PRINGLES ONLAY!!

The Spirit on Blu-Ray
4/10

Just as bad in HD.

That's all I've been up to kiddies. Also New Katamari and Fallout....and MAX PAYNE 3!!!

Life is ok.

My Judgment

2009-04-19T20:28:00.000-07:00

C.VANIA JUDGMENT is by far the worst game I have ever played in my life.

It is the only game that has achieved the status of ONE MILLION PIECES AFTER SNAPPING THE DISC WITH MY BARE UNCLE.

Here is a comparison of the good, the bad and the ugly of this game-

+ Absolutely nothing

- Everything

Final score: Major stinkage / 10

A Fistful of $29.99

2009-04-19T01:17:00.000-07:00

This is the first movie in the Clint Eastwood / Sergio Leone "Dollars" trilogy - three movies originally made in Italy and then re-dubbed in English (only Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, Eli Wallach and a fistful of others were actually talking in English) and released for the US market during the 1960s.

Synopsis
I fell asleep at least three times during this movie, but from what I gather, it was something about two Hispanic gangs going at each other, and Clint playing the role of the guy who'd do spying jobs for both gangs and earn a lil $$$ on the side.

Well, it so happens that things get ugly when Clint pushes one of these gangs too far by letting his emotions get in the way. As a result, this gang now gets angry and wants to nail him. He gets beat to a bloody pulp, but manages to escape and is now on the run.

Long story cut short: the angry gang totally destroys their opponent gang, and Clint comes back from the shadows for retribution / revenge / to open a can of whoop ass.

Best parts
- Close-ups of Clint's beady lil eyes. Gives him an intense X-TREME COWBOY look.
- The awesome 6 on 1 shoot-out. This is where Marty McFly (Back to the Future 3) gives an excellent tribute to Clint Eastwood.
- Clint is a quick-drawing SOB. Bang bang bang! Nothing will ever be cooler than that.
- I was pretty glad this movie finally got over because it was pretty boring.

Score and Recommendation
5/10 - Don't bother watching it unless you're a Clint Eastwood fanboy like me.

Well, you can always search YouTube for the scene where he wants the bad guys to say sorry to his mule. That was the best scene in the entire movie and a classic.

south park n64 review in a few words.

2009-04-18T18:46:00.000-07:00

two versions of this game came out. the N64 version looks better than the PS1 version. it's also PLAYABLE with the BOBBYBIRD master cheat.

blah.

it was stupid cheap though, so i can deal.

F for effort.

INSTANT NON-GAME REVIEW

2009-04-18T01:11:00.001-07:00

DOA BEACH VOLLEYBALL = 3D INTERACTIVE SCREEN SAVER

This has been Luis H. Garcia's instant non-game review.

Enjoy!

holy crap, i feel 11 years old again...

2009-04-16T20:42:00.000-07:00

so i pulled out the old N64, and started playing some old carts that i enjoyed as a kid. i popped in snowboard kids, and decimated the ENTIRRREE game in less than a day. (it's not a hard game btw.)

i'm super OCD, and i pop in carts left and right, and i'm playing flying dragon, some US AKI wrestling games, (all 4 of them if you don't count the 2 japanese releases.) the two goemon games, snowboard kids 2, star wars : shadows of the empire, ssb, and mega man 64.

i'm left with the urge to feel something more. so i go to ebay, and buy almost every game i used to own on the 64, for DIRT cheap, plus some other ones that i always wanted to check out. let's call this the N64 series of reviews, where i start with whatever cart i have in my collection that i think highly about, and will share my thoughts on why i think it's great.

so i went on ebay and ordered the following:

virtual pro wrestling 64
virtual pro wrestling 2
mortal kombat trilogy (for teh lulz, this was one of my first N64 games ever, and i prefer this over the PS1 version)
mischief makers
south park (for teh lulz, got this with LoZ : OoT christmas of 98)
the legend of zelda : OoT
the legend of zelda : makora's mask
Mega Man 64 (i have a JP version that i can't play... i wonder why??)

some accessories as well :

one new controller ($^*$ing purple FTW!!)
expansion pak

so the first game on my list is VPW2.

it's the first game i recieved, and that cart came the land of the rising sun, all the way to my place in jersey in practically no time.

i'll make this informative as possible, i'm still trying to navigate through the menus and whatnot.

this game is absolutely amazing. a wrestling fan's dream, the perfect 3-d wrestling game. 100 wrestlers from different promotions, you have cats like hayabusa, the great muta, big van vader, giant baba, and kenta kobashi. you also got shoot fighters (aka cage fighters) thrown in the mix. this is basically a mixed martial arts/ wrestling sim.

the controls are standard and work perfectly, as does every aki wrestling game ever released on the n64. it's simple, yet complex enough to really pull you in, and it's equally rewarding to the player. it ditches the glitz and glamour of the WWF/WCW games that were released in the US, and focuses on the JP mindset of professional wrestling..treating it as an actual sport, than a sideshow. it almost feels like i'm playing a sports game, but a really awesome one.

it's got arenas based on real japanese locations a prime example of this is the budoukan.

the audio track are mixed, when you're using the licensed wrestlers, you get their themes and everything. but when you use other wrestlers, you get that generic, midi rock crap that aki abuses.

the sound effects are great, from bodies hitting the canvas, to every slap, punch, slam and grunt...it's all there.

it's got an AWESOME season mode, an AWESOME create a mask mode, and an AWESOME edit mode, almost as good as fire pro wrestlings... you can make almost anybody. the movelists are near endless, having moves that never appeared on the US releases.

just $%#^ing play it, if you appreciate wrestling games, and want to play sadly, the best ever 3-d wrestling game in existance, get a 64 off of ebay, or get a hold of an emulator, and enjoy.

100/100

INSTANT GAME REVIEW

2009-04-15T17:40:00.001-07:00

SUPER MARIO GALAXY = SUPER MARIO 64.......IIIIIIIIIIN SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAACCCCCEEEEEEEEE!

This has been Luis H. Garcia's instant game review.

Enjoy!

The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

2009-04-15T00:36:00.000-07:00

After having been through the first half of The Good, The Bad & The Ugly, it was nightmarishly impossible for me to wait for another 12 hours till I finally got to sit through the second half. What a great movie. Not for a second did I feel that it was actually made in 1968, like 10 years before I was even born.

The Good: Clint Eastwood chewing on a thin cigar during extreme close-ups of his beady little eyes.

The Bad: This movie makes 1 million other movies look really bad.

The Ugly: Brokeass Mountain

Score: 10/10 including top-tier OST

Watch it ASAP, guys.

Mash

P.S. Next time -> Wii reviews for Super Mario Galaxy, Red Steel, No More Heroes, and how I wish I had a PS3.

Valkyria Chronicles

2009-04-14T10:16:00.000-07:00

The best game i have played since Dead Space, and Dead Space was REALLY awesome.

NOT-SO-INSTANT GAME REVIEW

2009-04-14T07:51:00.000-07:00

EAT LEAD: THE RETURN OF MATT HAZARD = ROFLRFOLROFLROFLROFLROFL

Yes. It's that funny. Go play it right now!

This has been Luis H. Garcia's not-so-instant game review.

Enjoy!

INSTANT GAME REVIEW

2009-04-08T20:25:00.000-07:00

ARCANA FART 2 = SLOPPY PORT......WITH LOLIS!

This has been Luis H. Garcia's instant game review.

Enjoy!

i've been sick for a few days, and it's giving me a lot of time to kill..

2009-04-08T13:39:00.000-07:00

before i play another show at some seedy drunken bar again.

i've been wasting most of my time, pulling out the ps2 for the 300th time.

there's a reason for this actually, i just got a pack of suh-weet DVD-Rs from J&R music and computer world for like 12 bucks.

anywho, i've been looking around for pirate's booty, (no *** jokes)

i've gotten a few games.. after watching mortal kombat THE LIVE ACTION MOVIE. i was compelled to play some old and newer games from that franchise. i got shaolin monks, and i've been playing it quite a bit, when i played this game in '05 i wasn't really into it. but aside from all the stupidity regarding the story, CG scenes, and voice acting, the game is tons of fun. i'm surprised that i couldn't tell the difference between crap and fun back in '05.

what's amusing to me is that this game takes place in the MK II era, which coincidentally is my favorite MK game ever, and the most memorable of all 9000 games that have been released after it.

it's not a sluggish game, it's pretty fluid and responsive, the over the top violence, and techniques are really satifying. it's pretty deep too, mechanics wise. i'm not through with it, so far i've slaughtered a few characters.

but so far, so good. it's a pretty rad game, even if you're not a fan of the series and look at the game as some cheap ass over the top kung-fu flick (for me black mask comes to mind.) you can't deny the feeling you get when your enemy turns into bloody chunks of meat when a boulder or a barrage of spikey !@$# connects with him. it's co-op which is cool, and it has an unlockable arcade perfect conversion of MK 2. AWESOME!? yes it is.

you may think that i'm praising the MK games, though, they really don't warrant any merit when it comes to it's fighting system, and gameplay decisions, but all that crazy BS the series is known for is what kept me a bit interested in the series. i mean, the last two MK games had friggin' death traps, and that's !@#$@#$%ing awesome.

it's crap like that which makes MK appealing to me IMO.

i got some other stuff to that i haven't got around to trying out, but once i start feeling better, i'll probably forget that i even had all this stuff.

INSTANT GAME REVIEW

2009-04-07T21:01:00.000-07:00

MK vs. DC = BANKRUPTCY

This has been Luis H. Garcia's instant game review.

Enjoy!

so i like to do music.

2009-04-06T22:46:00.000-07:00

myspace.com/panthersvswolves

check it out.

we have a vid from the last show we played which was this past saturday.

it ruled.

i was totally drunk.

quickie reviews:

2009-04-05T20:22:00.001-07:00

just got these within the span of a week.

thought i might share them with you,

first off:

BLACKBERRY CURVE : after a few months without a functional cellular, i finally manned up and bought myself something infinitely better. i'm surprised this thing doesn't make pancakes.

5 john rambos out of 5

Battle Fantasia : got this at some import shop in NYC, popped it in, and to be honest i kinda dig it. the whimsical style may turn off a lot of people, but it's a pretty decent game. i love juggling the crap out of people though. and i noticed that the only people who play this game online are japanese.

B-

Street Fighter IV Fight Pad : oh, mad catz, you slick bastard. this thing improved my street fighter game by 400% it was worth the absurd amount of money i dropped for it. (don't ask how much i spent btw.)

The King of Fighters 2002 Ultimate Match : the mash is gonna love this one... maybe not, anyway i hated KOF '98 Ultimate Match with a passion. this was due to it's incredibly sluggish controls, and the fact that even with snazzy 3-d backgrounds and a more "modern" interface to boot, still made my genesis games look better. but fighting games are about playability amirite? well surprisingly enough, 2k2 UM is overwhelmingly responsive. they gave characters new moves, (terry has a new F, D, DF + P) the backgrounds are easy on the eyes, the amount of characters in this title make the amount of characters in MvC 2 look like you're only selecting 4 1/2.

it's a pretty rad game actually, and i'm enjoying it a bit. oh, they got rid of tetsuo and added this completely new emo shemale called "NAMELESS". plays just like tetsuo in some ways, and in some ways he doesn't. pretty decent actually.

SUNSOFT COLLECTION: i got this thing for waku waku 7. i never played galaxy fight, and i was actually surprised...it's playable, i don't like the fact that it's catered to a more "old-school" crowd. allow me to elaborate, no super meters, no shorts hops, dodging, walls. it's kinda simple, but it doesn't feel TOO awkward.

it's one of the better snk collections out there.

hell i would've gotten this for waku waku 7 alone.

it still rules.

*UCK FERNANDEATH.

So I got done reading Watchmen.

2009-04-04T19:33:00.000-07:00

It's a great mini-series, and I'm onlay 29.99 years late.

Watchmen "decontructs" the super-hero genre by protraying all of the heroes in a very negative-ish light. They're men and women with flaws and vices, even if intentions are good imo. There are not even any villians in Watchmen: The heroes are enough.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Deconstruction

That's Watchmen to superheroes, full stop.

I don't get why everyone loves Rorschach so much. He's bat crap nuts.

But yeah, this series got me back into comic books. I'm going to have to check out Alan Moore's other stuff, like V for Vendetta and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

BTW this blag poast is really just a bait to lure you into TV Tropes.

INSTANT GAME REVIEW

2009-04-01T08:53:00.000-07:00

RE5 = RE4 WITH BLACK PEOPLE

This has been Luis H. Garcia's instant game review.

Enjoy!

Racist Evil 5?

2009-03-23T07:22:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone, it's Tokaro. I've been pre-occupied with some projects as well as Street Fighter IV and Killzone 2. Now, Gamespot recently posted an article concerning racism within recent video game Resident Evil 5. Now as a black male, I look at this game and think one of two things. It's not racist or it's about as racist as the last one.

http://www.gamespot.com/news/blogs/sidebar/909182374/25817098/resident-evil-5-stirs-concerns-of-racism.html

Resident Evil 5 takes place in Africa, thus the infected (Majini) are predominately black. I think gaming journalism needs to get a better grasp of racism. Resident Evil 5 was not created to bring about the destruction of the black race or perpetrate any anti-black discussion or thought. If it was, they could have done it in many, many other ways. You see racism is what one percieves, you look at the situation and you either take it as offense or you do not. This gauges what one would percieve as "racist".

The Africans in Resident Evil 5 are not depicted in a stereotypical way, they have a range of skin types and complexions. The bridge of the nose is realistically pronounced and the facial expression is not that of a guy in blackface.

So I've come to the conclusion that the issue of racism is thrown out by game journalism because of the large playing part of black people in this game, race has become more apparent recently given Barack Obama's induction as the president of the United States. CNN and other Turner channels have shown a variety of "Black in America" type of programs and have not let go of the fact that Barack Obama is a black man.

This sort of recent racial projection has become more and more common post election, also let me give you this. The majority gaming community is comprized of pasty 15-year old foul mouthed caucasian teenagers with a B- to D average due to their lack of awareness and work ethic. Since when have these people been the racial philosphers of our day and age? These people are barely socially aware let alone racially aware. These are the kinds of people who think getting a girlfriend will magically make life wonderful and all your acne will go away and your pecker will grow several extra inches. These people know second-hand rough cut grade school level knowledge about Civil Rights, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and The Black Panthers.

If you asked your average racial avenger from GameFAQs about Eldridge Cleaver, Jim Crow Laws or James Baldwin you'd most likely get a "lolwut?"

If someone utters the word "negro" they'll jump at you thinking it shares the same meaning as the endearing and cold "nigger". This is the very ignorance I'm talking about. Also did Resident Evil 4 get flak for the depiction of the Spanish? Did Far Cry 2? That game is legitimately about the African militia men and the bloody legacy of diamonds and firefights in the African plain. Army of Two depicts the war in Somalia, is Army of Two racist? Basically anything with a black person in it is racist. And jeez Gamespot, you could have called Capcom on something actually tangeble instead of working to extrapolate on an issue that doesn't exist.

Look at Oil Man!

RESIDENT EVIL 5

RACISM

In closing, read a book you ignorant sods. Resident Evil 5 isn't anti-black propaganda that Capcom whipped up. It's just another mediocre third-person "survival horror" shooter.

reviewing a bunch of crap on my day off.. (like i have nothing better to do..)

2009-03-18T13:02:00.000-07:00

k, first thing's first.

video games are ruining my life.. why? besides important stuff that i will eventually buy, i always end up buying something(s) video game related.

i haven't posted on this spot in a while so i've been compulsively spending on crap that i don't need.

in my long absence i managed to pick up the following things:

hori fighting stick ex 2
street fighter iv
resident evil 5
mad world
dead rising : chop til' you drop
hori fighting stick wii
and a x-box live points card for 1600 points (for watchmen : the end is nigh)

first off the fighting stick ex 2,

it's a solid stick all around, i got it around january. the build is hefty, but not overkill. and the buttons are responsive along with the joystick (which clicks, indicating what directions you're moving the stick.)

the layout of the buttons are perfect, japanese style, and easy for me to curve my fingers without hitting the case (damn US style button layouts..)

i mean, it's not a high end stick, but it's a pretty damn good stick, and still the best "standard" stick out there. for a second i was thinking that maybe the madcatz standard fight sticks would actually best the hori, but we eventually found out that it was too good to be true and that madcatz are addicted to bad ideas.

overall i love this stick, and it's a huge step up when you've been playing with a 360 pad for fighting games. 9/10

street fighter iv's review will be short. it's capcoms best first try since street fighter 2. the controls are fluid and responsive, the visuals are gorgeous and hilariously over exaggerated, the new systems are great, especially the addition of focus attacks. the online aspect could've been so much better, especailly in ranked matches. player matches seem to remedy this..

it's the 2-d fighter we've been waiting for on the 360. it gets a 9. it would score higher if there were to be a patch fixing online components in the game. it would be a perfect game if it gets those minor tweaks.

resident evil 5 looks amazing, the controls from re 4 are there and they're a bit more refined. i hate having to watch over a computer generated partner, and why the f@$K are chainsaw weilding maniacs unable to die? like this is ridiculous, this chainsaw dude is as thin as a rail and all of a sudden the $h!#head thinks he's superman!? stupid. it's still a fun game, i'm not an RE fan though. 8.5

madworld is what manhunt would have been if it were good. it's hilarious, campy, cheesy, incredibly violent, and vulgar; the visuals are stylish, a pimp introducing a new deathwatch challenge and getting killed after his monologues is gold. the controls are fluid, making every impossible situation that comes at you, seem like second nature. carnage is bliss.
9.0

dead rising : chop til you drop is wii's version of 360's dead rising, which was released in 06. it uses resident evil 4's engine and it turns out to be a little more forgiving that the 360 version. the visuals are ok, but the character models are pretty damn detailed. the controls are fluid (though i question the swinging aspect of the motion controls...), every weapon is at your disposal, and it's a linear game, meaning you're kinda forced to help civilians, whereas, in the original game, you can choose not to, but you will be rewarded one of many endings (in this case a bad one.)

it's a fun little zombie torture game. for 40 bucks you get the best dawn of the dead game on wii ever.

7.5

hori fighting stick wii:

i bought this for tatsunoko vs. capcom. this stick feels better than the 360 hori stick, and it's 40 bucks. the buttons feel snappy, the stick is the same as the 360 version, it's got some bells and whistles like turbo functions and all that, its kinda wireless (kinda since you still have to plug it to your wii-mote.) it's probably the best stick i have right now. playing TvC on this thing was challanging at first but i got used to it in a few minutes. very responsive in every aspect. it's a great stick, and anyone who needs a great stick for your wii fighting games...all 5 of them.

9.5 (turbo functions are pointless to me...and the eight button layout is ridiculosly uncessary, hori should've opted for a simple 6 button scheme, without turbo functions.)

watchmen : the end is nigh

capitalizing on my current watchmen addiction, i opted to unlock the full game on x-box live. it's not to be taken as a SERIOUS, deep game, more or less a simple arcade beat-em up. for what it does, it does well, it's certainly the best looking downloadable 360 game right now.

the story takes place in the 70's before watchmen were together, specifically, during the crimebusters era. the game is told in a moving graphic novel, narrated by rorschach and nite owl.

i give it a 7, because i personally like beating the living crap out of random thugs in alley ways with rorschach. especially rorschach.

this is only part one of a 6 part game, hopefully they progressively get better.

k, that's it i'm done.