Friday, July 29, 2005

Lay Miz-err-ah-bluh.

Comment Commentary

James- I wouldn't say it has great graphics, though.. The environments are very nice, but the character models are very lifeless. It was an early game this generation, so it wouldn't be right to compare it to games like Resident Evil 4 or Metroid Prime 2, but it's still far from "pretty" in my eyes.

Shin- It's too bad I have to take it back to Blockbuster tomorrow. If I read spoiler sites and the script on GameFAQs, will you feel better?

Andy- Yeah, I would be kind of worried if someone named "satan" was trying to sell me something.

Tony- I hope that the Too Human trilogy is going to focus on gameplay as well as epic story. Thinking that kind of thing, though, makes me wonder why I'm so interested in playing Killer 7.

Godel- I've been meaning to fix that. Thanks for reminding me.

Ethan- "Lacking in retrospect"? Wow, are you that out of it, man? You need sleep.

--

I'm getting tired of waking up at one or two in the afternoon. It seems incredibly lazy, and unhealthy, I think. Plus, you've already wasted half of your day when you do that. When I think about how my friends are all getting up and being active (one has actually been getting up at six every morning to go out running for a while in hopes of joining track), and compare it to my sleeping in, I feel stupid.

Not that it's really sleepy. I could get up any time, but I don't. I just stay in bed for some reason.

I got a little more productive today, though. I woke up, ate a healthy breakfast of fruits and yogurts, learned a bunch of new songs for the guitar-ness (Mostly songs from Modest Mouse's The Moon & Antarctica), and did that until my fingers hurt. It sort of sucks because I ran out of picks, so I have to use my fingers for individual string-plucking, and it either comes out muted or hurting my fingernails.

After that, I fixed up some old pictures in Photoshop for my mom. Mostly little scratches and stuff, but it's fun anyway. Especially considering how the smudge tool was my only friend, and how I had to add a bunch of noise to match the grain of the picture before moving on.

Then my brother demanded to play The Sims 2, so I got off and read about 50 pages of Ender's Game. Like I said, so much better than To Kill a Mockingbird. I'm about a third of the way through it in two sittings, which is a lot faster than I did with Mockingbird.

But that might just be because the chapters are so much longer in Ender's Game. And I'm a slave to the chapter markers.
Comments (4) | Permalink

Wednesday, July 27, 2005

Underwhelmed.

Comment Commentary

Shin- Hoorah.

satan665- What should I call you instead of "satan665"? To be honest, I'm tired of typing that and feel like using a shorter name. :P

--

I keep forgetting to mention I rented Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem the other day. Between the power outage and generally being out of the house, I haven't had much oppurtunity to play it.. I'm in the Ellia part right now, and to be honest I'm rather unimpressed.

The atmosphere is great, the story's intriguing, but the gameplay is just so dull. The puzzles have been trivial, the fighting is just blah, and I can't find much motivation to play it.

Of course, I'm basing this off of an hour or two of playing, but I guess I was expecting a lot more from this game, and so far, I haven't found it. I'll keep at it, but until then, I'm sorry for shitting on one of your favorite games this generation, Shin. :P
Comments (6) | Permalink

Tuesday, July 26, 2005

Doot doot.

Comment Commentary

Des- That's what the henchies are for. ~_^

Solo- When there is no power I sleep. The thing is, I slept for 11 hours right before this one happened.

Shin- Bastard.

satan665- How many are there in all?

Godel- I remember that! I was in Pittsburgh at the time.. We weren't affected, but I remember Conan that night. They had a song called "Screw you Canada." I still remember the words.

'It was the day of ,
The day that the lights went out
They say they don't know who did it,
But I know it's Canada's fault.
Screw you Canadaaaaa,
Screw you Canadaaaa,
Screw you Canada.'

Ethan- All our ice cream was soupy by the time the power came back on. I cried.

DDG- She must not understand the south, then.

--

My mom and brother are going to Pittsburgh soon. They'll be gone for a little over a week..

The deal is, I guess they're sort of playing missionary to all of my messed up family members on the east coast. My bipolar manic-depressive aunt, my very sickly giving-up-on-life grandmother, my other bipolar manic-depressive aunt, her crazy teenage-mother child whose semi-husband was recently murdered.. Etc. I really didn't feel like throwing myself into the middle of all of that, my mom understood, so now I'm preparing for what will basically be living alone for a week or so.

Not that it's really "alone"- my dad is staying, too, but given his work schedule I'll remain unchecked and unfed for about 70% of the day. Of course, it won't be all that different from how it is now.. I stay out of everyone's way most of the time anyway. I'll just be eating a lot more Easymac.

I probably won't be able to go anywhere. No ride, of course, and none of my friends bother to give me one most of the time. And the odds of people coming here are.. Low.

But, bottom line:

CRAZY FUN FUN SEX PARTY AT SEN'S HOUSE. BE THERE OR BE STD-FREE.
Comments (2) | Permalink

Monday, July 25, 2005

Neighborhood #3

Comment Commentary

Mimmi- But.. But I want it now..!

--

Power was out today. I died several times.

I actually decided to get on Guild Wars for the first time in weeks. I felt bad for abandoning my Guildmates (not that I did much in the first place), so I got back on and attempted progressing.

But then the electricity mysteriously cut out. I restarted twice because of this, but eventually I gave up and tried to go upstairs and make a dent in To Kill a Mockingbird. Then, as I started, thunder began booming, and lightning flashed. The lights dimmed, and finally went away for good.

It was as if God himself came down from the heavens and commanded that I not do anything constructive. So I played Meteos for a bit, reread Xbox 360 articles in EGM, and used my iPod sparingly (as in no backlight and volume at the bare minimum).

Then I was bored. So bored that I played Jenga with my brother, and then I took a nap, hoping to wake up to the glorious, cold, lifeless glow of technology.

But it was not to be. I woke up around nine, the power was still out. My brother was harrassing my mom, and my dad was still at work. I came downstairs, and by candlelight finished To Kill a Mockingbird. I must say that the book grew on me as I got farther into it, but I would still consider it rather forgettable. After that I read the first three chapters of Ender's Game, which I'm already enjoying much more than Mockingbird, and then I took a bath.

When I came out from the bathroom, lights were on, my brother was cheering, and all was right with the world again.

It's sad how meaningless my life becomes without electricity. I worry.
Comments (7) | Permalink

Friday, July 22, 2005

Oh-em-eff-jee.

Comment Commentary

Mimmi- Let the record state that I <3 oatmeal cookies, but not chocolate chip.

Shin- It's not the cookie. It's the principle behind the cookie.

Solo- Yeah, it's not as bad when you have in-ear phones withou the plastic cramping your style.. Though I must say, I find it hard to sleep unless I'm on my side, and it's not nice to have an earbud get shoved even farther into your skull than necessary, especially when you're trying to sleep.

satan665- I have 1.1 books to read.. After that, if I actually read and don't goof off, I think I'm going to go on a Potter binge. Books five and six, back to back.

Mimmi- ..Shin, you bastard, look what you did. You went and angered my cookie supplier.

--

I've been thinking about it a lot for about a week now, and I think that I might as well come out and say it now:

I want an Xbox 360. Badly. As the release date draws nearer, more and more screenshots and movies of games are released, and several games have caught my eye.. At least, as far as launch-or-close-to-it games go.

Then it has the hard drive, and all of those media options.. Not at all necessary, but it's nice to have. Since the hard drive comes with every console, developers are most likely going to put out downloadable content more, right? That was the case with Xbox this generation.. Since it came with the hard drive, developers didn't worry so much about making something that only a handful of people would get. Playstation 2's hard drive was hardly used.. To my knowledge. Knowing my recent track record with game information lately, I'm probably dishing out Bizarro-world info here.

But I guess the big one is the whole Live thing. I know a hell of a lot of people who have Live right now, and it would be nice to play games with them more often. Random get-togethers don't quench my thirst for multiplayer gaming.

But at the same time, I can't help but think I'm just caught up in all of the hype.. You know, getting an itchy trigger finger, making a decision I might regret later on.

I know I will be getting a PS3 eventually.. With games like Devil May Cry 4 and Metal Gear Solid 4 on the horizon, it's hard to imagine me not getting my grubby little hands on it. But if the prices are going to be as high as they say at launch, and with this otherwise unimpressive preliminary launch game lineup, I think I can hold off.

(But then comes the complications of harder to find games, like Atlus stuff.. When Shin Megami Tensei 4 or whatever comes out for PS3 and I am left Sony-less, I don't know what I'll do.)

..But all of this next-gen speculation is still a little early. There's still four months to decide whether I'll preorder one or not, and more information will be coming soon (They're supposed to be doing something on Monday, for example)..

It's so sad that this is what I spend my days thinking about.

--

A couple of friends spent the night at my house.. Just left around noon. They did not get any sleep at all (spare half-hour naps once the sun had risen high in the sky), because they were too busy with The Sims 2, Katamari Damacy and Guild Wars to care about sleep.

I, however, have some goddamn common sense and at least took the time out of our busy schedule to get four hours of sleep.

We were going to hook up their Xboxes for the sake of Splinter Cell multiplayer, but that didn't happen since my dad was 100% sure that if we tried to move one TV into another room we would immediately drop it and cost him $450.

But they're gone now, and I'm enjoying some quiet time.

..Well, as quiet as blasting Glassjaw can be.
Comments (1) | Permalink

Thursday, July 21, 2005

AdultFriendFinder ads on myOtaku: The end of days.

Comment Commentary

Shin- Mine still works, so HA.

satan665- Earliest arcade memory: Playing Ms. Pacman in a local children's haircut place that isn't there anymore.

Ethan- Too bad you misspelled it. If it weren't for that I might have listened to your advice. >:O

--

RANDOM THOUGHTS.

I have Adobe Illustrator now, to suit my vectorey needs. It's rather.. Foreign. I'm going to have to play around with it a lot before I'll make anything good in it, I can tell that much.

--

Freaking nobody has Killer 7 for rent around here, and that makes me sad.

--


I read Frank Miller's "To Hell And Back" until 2 in the morning last night. It's Sin City, for sure, and some of the art was nice, but the story was just odd. There was no real "ending" to it, from what I can tell. It left a lot of things unanswered.

Of course, it was two in the morning. I might just not remember the ending.

--

In other random news, Man Faye finally added me to his MySpace friends! I'm so happy I could just cry and cry because I have nothing better to do with my time than worry about things like that.

--

I've been eating a hell of a lot of salad lately. Maybe it's just because we've been eating out more.. But whenever I have the oppurtunity, I've been getting salad (along with my real food, dammit). I must be craving my greens or something.. I normally don't want salad this badly.

--

My Pixies Live CD is supposedly being shipped Friday. I'm hoping that the cover design is good.

--

Outside of random MySpace notifications and the "return receipts" I got from submitting my summerschool homework online, I haven't received an email in a month. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not.

--

I tried typing using the "pecking" technique, or whatever you want to call it, today. You know, where you only type with your index fingers. It didn't work out well. I kept making mistakes.

Oh, teh ierny@

--

I have this really cool idea for a myOtaku theme. But I don't know if I'm ever going to use it, since I can't think of a song that matches it.

--

I asked my friend to spoil the new Harry Potter book for me, since I didn't ever finish the fifth one (300 pages in and no Hogwarts = goodbye). It was an interesting spoiler.. I already knew who dies, but I didn't know who did the killing.

--

My Sin City poster is still sitting in the corner of this room instead of on a wall.

--

I fell asleep with my iPod on the other night, and I woke up with the earbud cords wrapped around my neck. It's not a pleasant feeling to sit up half-consciously and feel something squeeze your throat.

--

I've used my sexy FLCL coffee mug three times, each for milk just because there were no other clean glasses.

--

As I'm writing this, I'm messing around in Illustrator, and I just realized I have no idea what I'm doing. I feel stupid all over again.

--

I have run out of things to say.
Comments (5) | Permalink

Monday, July 18, 2005

1337 jokes are so last year.

Comment Commentary

DDG- Me too. At least I got out of it with an excuse.

Mimmi- These cookies wouldn't have any.. Illegal substances in them, would the?

Ethan- Come on, those guys weren't that bad. Unless their whole conversation in the manga section of Borders was some sort of sarcasm that went over my head.

Tony- Once again, random message board people have failed me. I really need to stop listening to them..

Shin- And that is the story of how the Nintendo Heretic came to be.

satan665- To me, it screams "Pokeballs in Super Smash Bros." But I'm just optimistic, I guess.

--

More of the same today.. According to a FAQ that I very briefly visited, I'm almost done with God of War. Four more "chapters," or whatever you want to call them.

It's been fun, but I'm glad I only rented it. It's way too short.

--

There isn't much to talk about today, so I guess I'll just throw out a rant about my early days as a gamer.

I've talked about my NES before on myOtaku, I'm sure. I got it from my cousin when he got a Super Nintendo and figured he didn't need the old one anymore.. It's still in my garage, covered in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle stickers, right next to a pile of crappy sports game (and Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda). One time we pulled it out and tried playing it, but the damn thing doesn't read the cartridges right.

But I don't consider that my first console. For my seventh birthday, I think it was, my parents got me a Super Nintendo packaged with Kirby Super Star. After my dad hooked it up, I started it up and began Wispy Woods (or whatever the "basic" Kirby game is called).

Ah, I remember it well. I moved the little pink guy forward, and found a challenge: A little hill that was not passable by mere walking. Oh, no, this was a special hill. It required you to jump and float over it.

And the concept of tapping the A button rhythmically was somehow beyond the capacity of my puny little seven-year-old mind. Needless to say, I got rather frustrated, and in a heated moment of anger I swore that I would never play video games again.

..

Haha.

HA HA HA.

I went on to simply buy whatever I could find for the cheapest after that. I was a crappy gamer, actually. Half of my library consists of shitty Looney Toons games that I got for $15. I did manage to get some gems, though. Link to the Past, Megaman X, Super Mario RPG.. No Super Metroid, though. Sadness.

Things got marginally better by Nintendo 64 rolled around. I got one of those discount deals they had at Costco.. It came with Star Wars Episode I racer and Rogue Squadron, which was cool. But there's not much to say after that.

I'd better find something interesting to do with my time soon, or else you'll have to be exposed to more shit like this.
Comments (3) | Permalink

Sunday, July 17, 2005

My H-Scroll.. It is.. DESTROYED.

God damn those really wide ads.

Comment Commentary

satan665- There's no denying that you brutally beat the shit out of things in God of War (more grotesquely than in DMC), but outside of the "special moves," it's just rather dull to fight. I have my extendo-blade thingers up to Level 3 now, and I have three magic skills, but somehow there just seems to be more attack variety in Dante's Awakening.. Probably because there's only one real weapon, while there's five or six in DMC3.

It's still fun though. I find that some of the special moves are getting tiresome, though.

Shin- Then you'd better not LOOK IN A MIRROR.

Ooooh, burn!!1

--

So yeah, I wasted my entire day on God of War. I have no idea how far I am into the game; I hear it's short, but I must have racked up five or six hours today. I won't go on with any more impressions or anything, since I said most of what I had prepared in the comments above.

--

Most of you that read this were around when we had that Daily Posting Contest going on around myOtaku. And those of you who read my mO at the time might remember why I dropped out: I skipped one night because I was at a friend's going-away party.

Well, she's back in town now, and after Ethan and I spent hours alone in the mall we went over to her aunt and uncle's house, where she's been staying.

Someone else we know showed up, and some who were expected to didn't. In the end, after catching up with each other, we popped in Pulp Fiction on DVD.

One of the coolest things about this person is that she's a Quentin Tarantino junkie. She has bits and pieces of dialogue memorized, posters, etc. Awesomeness.

Technically, this was the first time I saw any of Pulp Fiction uncut. The only way I've had access to it up to this point was Bravo, and they always run the melon-farmer version.

As opposed to motherfucker.

We only got up to the Watch segment, though. Sadness.

--

I think I've given up on importing Electroplankton. I don't think it has enough "meat" to it to keep my fifty bucks justified.

Instead, I've become hellbent on importing Jump Super Stars when it comes out.

Just in case you were too lazy to click the link, Jump Super Stars is a DS fighter game developed by Nintendo starring a myriad of characters from a variety of Shonen Jump manga. IGN says that there are about 150 characters from at least twenty-seven different series in the game.. Of course, not all of these are full-fledged fighters. One of the cool things is the "manga decks"- each character has a card with one of three abilities- Battle, Support or Help- and you organize your set of cards on the bottom screen like a page out of a manga. You then activate the cards in-battle, affecting the battle in various ways.

In case my ramblings are impossible to understand, there's a trailer here.. And then there's this one, which explains the gameplay.

Though it's not in English, of course.

The fighting itself plays like Super Smash Bros, which is another huge reason that I'm excited. Super Smash Bros gameplay + a huge selection of Jump characters - Viz's attempts at localization ("Ninja Centerfold!") = I HUNGER.

So.. Yeah. I need $50. o_O

EDIT: Oh God, Lik Sang, I love you.

(Some game called "White Men Can't Jump. Also in French and German.)
Comments (6) | Permalink

Saturday, July 16, 2005

Let's roll.

Comment Commentary

Mimmi- Would you really make cookies at an in-person meeting?

'Cause that would be pimp.

satan665- Eh, it'll be feasible eventually. I just think it's cool that it can automatically switch to, say, a Japanese keyboard setup. Different character sets.. I find that cool.

Shin- Glad to see you like them. I found their video for Clara Bow. Check it out here, if you're interested.

--

Ah, it's over. It's finally over.

We spent the last day watching really dumb videos about diseases and stuff. One of them was really gratuitous in showing infected genitalia. They've done that before, but this time around it was just plain nauseating.

After that we watched a partial cartoon addressing the serious issues of herpes through Tom and Jerry spoofs. Then a shitty AIDS video from the early nineties starring a younger Peter Jennings.

They were the longest hours of my life. The last two tapes seemed to take up the entire day. We then had a "finals" test, which was basically "Which is the right behavior?"

A real question from our test, directly cut-and-pasted from our school website:

"What is the legal age to smoke marijuana in the United State of America?
z. Not legal
a. 16
b. 18
c. 21"

And people were worrying about studying. I laughed at them.

We were going to see Willy Wonka and then do the midnight Harry Potter thing today, but that didn't come through. I didn't really plan on getting the book- it was just an excuse to hang out with friends in Barnes until one in the morning.

Instead, I couldn't get in touch with anybody, and Ethan and I just walked around for a couple of hours instead. It was pretty boring. I had some damn good chicken mcnuggets, though.

We also went over to Blockbuster in hopes of renting Killer 7.. But they didn't even have a display box for it, so I picked up God of War instead. I've only played a little bit of it, but I have enough for first impressions.

The cinematics are definitly the highlight.. Doing the whole counter-move with the hydras is badass. There is no other way to describe it.

As for the gameplay itself.. The variety of moves is nice, and there is also a lot of variety in the scenarios, but I kind of enjoy Devil May Cry 3's battle system more.

Maybe it's just because I only have one weapon and spell so far, but things seem a lot more fluid and un-clunky in DMC3.

Still rocks, though. I'm glad I rented it.
Comments (2) | Permalink

Friday, July 15, 2005

Another two sentence update: Many apologies.

Comment Commentary

Shin- I keep telling myself, "one more day, one more day, one more day."

--

I just found this keyboard. The idea is really awesome. Anyone willing to guess how long until this technology becomes mandatory for Windows?

--

My brother bought Alien Homind for PS2 the other day. He's been a good little gamer lately, between Katamari Damacy, Ocarina of Time and now this.

I began replaying Katamari today, actually, and was getting "MOVED TO TEARS"-sized rankings for all of the levels, which is funny because I absolutely trounced my previous scores. They were all mediocre-to-bad.

But, I still have an essay to do. Good night people.
Comments (3) | Permalink