Avatar of Justice

Just think about what the Playstation 3 department at Sony is saying right now. It's probably a little more stern than "snakes." Perhaps they are even calling them "ocelots."

In the immortal words of Dracula "No! This cannot be! AAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!" Well, I just bought a PS3 for FF13 and MGS4. Don't really care as every game I want to play is on both of these consoles. Too bad though, because if a game isn't a PS3 exclusive, they typically don't bother to make it use the Cell processor as well as they would have. Um...Valkyria Chronicles is still a PS3 exclusive? Haha

I can definetly relate to the "people obsessed with certain topics," part. I actually enjoy conversations quite a bit (favorite activity is to go out with a group of friends to dinner and talk for a couple of hours), but I completely lack the ability to talk very long to people who aren't familiar with the video games, books, anime, or movies that I like. It's like I'm speaking a different language because my mental frame of reference is constructed on the ideas I've acquired since I've been capable of consuming those mediums of entertainment and thinking about them. I've had my interests called "narrow", but books are about EVERYTHING. The only reason that is considered narrow is because there aren't a lot of people who probably read quite as much as I do and constantly think about books. It's like you are a nerd if you are really really passionate about something and want to talk about it more than the typical boring ass shit people talk about (kids, wife, house, car, failed relationships, sports team they aren't on, drinking, etc.).

OCR was responsible for me randomly playing Earthbound last summer. The final battle is so crazy, being inspired by some traumatic childhood experience the director had. The Mother 3 translator guys are getting pretty far along with their project. http://mother3.fobby.net/ Really looking forward to this.

I am strangely more excited about Suikoden VI than a CT DS remake.

So is anyone else incredibly pissed that Leouch seems to be becoming a decent human being in Code Geass. Personally, I wish someone would shove Nunnally over a cliff and drive Lelouch over the edge. I miss episode 23 Lelouch that destroyed the Tokyo Settlement and talking about how he simply wanted to destroy things.

Hello anyone in the Roanoke area. I just recently moved up from North Carolina (just graduated from NC State), and accordingly my local gamer friend count has reset to zero (along with any other local friend counts). I noticed that not only was Magfest held in Roanoke once upon a time, but so was some Fusion Gaming Convention where people participated in actual Guilty Gear XX tournaments, something I can't wait to see when I go to my first Magfest in January. Sadly, these two things no longer occur in the area. I'm assuming that since they used to, there must be cool gamer people, particularly cool OCR gamer people hiding in this Valley somewhere. As far as competitive gaming goes, I'm a huge Guilty Gear XX fan, and I have been known to play other 2-D Japanese fighters from time to time, particularly King of Fighters. So uh, let me know if you exist. I also like anime and books.

He does the same shit in the anime thread. I typically ignore his flamebait.

http://www.protomen.com/

Let's see, we have a Wiimote. And we have Castlevania....um, fighting game? How about a game where you whip stuff.

Unholy fucking shit

Yeah, I couldn't care less what this guy has to say. There were about 5 times in Gears of War where I had no clue why I was doing what I was doing. He can come back and talk some more after he makes a game that has a story where I actually have a clue as to what is going as opposed to mission objectives coming out of nowhere for seemingly no reason. http://kotaku.com/5019841/metal-gear-solid-is-what-the-cliffster-is-not-doing-dude The fact that he compared entertainment with Web 2.0 makes him a dumbass. If he was really into Web 2.0, he'd be talking about gamers making their own games, submitting them online, and being modified (like a remix) by other gamers (like Youtube videos). He fails to understand what Web 2.0 (a term I admittedly hate) actually means. If he wanted games to be like Web 2.0 he should be advocating open source games, something he would never do. Yup, passive entertainment is on its way out. No more movies, TV, or books. It's all video games from herein. I sometimes turn to "passive" entertainment because games require more effort. In a book, all I have to do is read. In a video game, I actually have to have skill and make permanent decisions about skills or weapon acquisition.

I mostly just don't understand why they added them in. The original cutscenes worked. Why not just let them look pretty in 3-D without extra crap going on?

I've played both as recently as last summer. I prefer the Playstation 1 version for several reasons. 1)The GC version maintains the original MGS level designs, but has the MGS2 guard AI. This makes the game harder in an annoying kind of way. In MGS2 the guard AI was cool because the game had extra places for you to hide. Not so in the Twin Snakes. You are sometimes just fucked. It depends on your playing style. I typically play MGS by often resetting when I get caught. 2)The action cut scenes are more "Matrixy" with lots of bullet time. It's lame. Snake backflips off a missle. It's fucking stupid. 3)The music is not as good. It's more technoy. I prefer the original soundtrack. 4)Campbell's actor didn't do as good a job in the Twin Snakes. He delivers his lines with a lot less emotion and more like robo-Colonel from MGS2. This is probably a matter of opinion (no shit). Considering the storyline of MGS and what's going on back at base, maybe it makes sense for the Colonel to be a little more cold towards Snake. In the Twin Snakes defense, I found the Psycho Mantis sequence more freaky and crazy. The boss music was cool because it integrated his mind-control music, and the pictures laughing at you is pretty creepy. Overall though, if you want MGS 2, go play MGS 2.

I recently went on a Castlevania binge and played through Castlevania I, Castlevania III, Dracula X Chronicles, and Aria of Sorrow. I gotta say, I kind of miss the old linear levels. Which is an odd thing to "miss" considering the first Castlevania I ever played was Symphony of the Night. I liked Castlevania III and Dracula X Chronicles ability to do stage selects rather than constantly moving back and forth between areas after you find some new power up. But, Castlevania almost always has cool stages and good music, so whatever.

I'll keep killing Dracula as long as they keep making games called Castlevania.

Well, Geneon effectively went out of business. Which made me sad as they were my favorite licensing company. ADV has also had to push back some releases and move things around. ADV isn't a public company so we don't really know exactly why, but people assume it is due to money problems due to people not buying anime. The problem is that Japanese anime companies rely on foreign licensors to help them make money off of an anime production. As most of you probably know, the animes that foreigners like often aren't mainstream enough in Japan for anime prouction companies to make a killing off of them. If we stop buying anime and shows don't get licensed, there will most likely be less shows that foreign fans will enjoy produced in the first place. Some recent examples of animes that would have gotten licensed really fast were the anime industry in good health are shows like Romeo x Juliet and Claymore. Claymore is sort of like shonen Berserk in tone and Romeo x Juliet would've almost certainly been licensed by Geneon as it was a Gonzo production that was a similar in idea to Gankutsuou. Romeo x Juliet and Claymore languished for awhile unlicensed until Funimation got them both about 6 months after they finished airing. Another show is El Cazador de La Bruja, a show done by Bee Train that forms a Girls with Guns trilogy along with Madlax and Noir. ADV licensed Madlax and Noir, but has made no announcements with regards to El Cazador. I'm not predicting a collapse of the anime industry or licensing industry, as I think the Death Note's and the Fullmetal Alchemists's will be ok. They'll still get made and still get brought over. But more low key productions like Haibane Renmei will be left unlicensed and might not even make it into production without an expectation of foreign licensers to help make the show profitable. Take Spice and Wolf, a show that hasn't been licensed yet.

I'm happy I'm not the only one who notices phrases like "Even at a time like this!" or "I can't believe I was beaten by that guy!" It just sounds so awkward. I also have always really really despised how fansubbers give us karoke lyrics in romanji, a lyrics translation, and then hiragana and kanji. It's bad enough that they cover up awesome intros (or action in the show), but why in the fuck do they put hiragana and kanji on the screen? I don't know Japanese, that's why I'm watching a sub. Hiragana and kanji are of no use to me whatsoever. For those who care to know the lyrics, they should be satisfied with romanji. And fansubbers refuse to let us not have their stupid karoke text. In soft-subs they still hardsub song lyrics. It's a real shame too when some animes (like Gundam SEED) specifically arrange the show credits AROUND the cool intro footage so that it's unobtrusive, then fansubbers make everything look retarded by putting their names and garbage lyrics all over the place. This is why my current policy on anime is, if it's a show that is out on DVD and I want to watch it, I'd rather rent the DVD's off of Netflix (or buy them) rather than deal with fansubs. I can either get a translation with unobtrusive text, or a dub that sounds natural and that I can quote in conversations with my friends. The reason ugly ass yellow text is used for subtitles is because ugly ass yellow shows up no matter what the background. I always love it with fansubbers use some odd text color that doesn't show up on the background well and hurts my eyes to find. Also, I know that the translation is done by someone who gets paid and had qualifications to get hired for his job. When I start watching a new show with fansubs and no known good group I've used before is subbing it, I have to play a little guessing game as to which group can do a quality translation. I just appreciate how this guy pissed on fansubbers whole attitude that Japanese culture is some sacred bullshit you can't translate into English. While they are simply amateurs, he makes a good point that amateurs of the old fansub days used to not do all this garbage.

Destiny is more a collection of cool scenes than anything. For instance, probably one of my favorite scenes out of both series is where Kira and Athrun fight again in Destiny and Kira just rips the Savior apart. Or where the Freedom gets taken down by Shinn. That being said it's very obvious that they had no idea where they were going for most of the story. Which is a real shame, because the conflict between Durdandal and the good guys had the potential to actually say something interesting with its themes of whether it is better to live in a peaceful world managed by a tyrant or a chaotic world that is free. Probably one of the reasons I consistently like Gundam is the 50 episodes long. You can actually have things like multiple plot threads and stuff with that amount of time.

Did anybody else here watch Gundam 00? I thought the first season had a pretty amazing ending. It's nice that they actually planned for the season gap (unlike Code Geass). Time gaps rocks, especially one as long as 4 years. Here's for hoping Saji Crossroads is the new main character.

I was a little surprised about the cursing (and Spritle flippin' the bird), but not pissed. I thought there was just enough Spritle to make the kiddies giggle, but not enough to make adults angry. Apparently some people can't tolerate that kind of thing at all though.

I finally got around to seeing Speed Racer tonight. I would've went and saw it opening night but my college graduation conflicted with that. Anywho, I enjoyed the crap out of the movie. Reviews said it was campy, but I didn't find it excessively so. There were a few plot twists that I didn't quite suspect either, whereas I had expected an entirely predictable plot. Visually, the movie was neat. The car races were awesome to watch, although the rest of the world looked really childish due to the super bright colors. When they said they were trying to make it cartoony, they weren't kidding. I enjoyed more of what the people wore than the cars however. The movie was over two hours long, and I felt it was well paced. There was enough time to have not only 5 races (if you count the rally sequence as 2 separate races), but there was also plenty of characters doing stuff off the track. I think this was the best part of the movie. There were enough races spread out so that I wasn't bored, and enough stuff happening outside of the races so that I felt like I had seen more than just a plot that was only an excuse for races. I also enjoyed how they played around with time in a few sequences (Speed racing his brother's "ghost" comes to mind). I was never a fan of the original show. I'm a little too young to have seen it airing, but I honestly enjoyed Speed Racer more than Iron Man, mainly because I only enjoyed the half of Iron Man where he made the suit (found the action sequences to be a little stale), whereas I enjoyed all of Speed Racer. If you want some adult fun Iron Man is definitely the way the go, whereas I think everyone can enjoy Speed Racer. It's fun for the kids, but not really childish enough to piss an adult off. So, did anybody else see it?

Because I'm watching something that is really really awesome and serious (i.e. Code Geass) and *bam* boobies undermine it (plus all the schoolkid garbage). Fanservice annoys me because I know that there is usually no artistic reason for it to tell the story, and I at least like the illusion that they are telling the story the way they want because of their artistic vision, not to pander. I don't want the creators of a show to try to guess what I want or the other fans want in the show. I want them to put what they want. And if they personally enjoy hyper-sexualizing every important female in the show, well, they're dumb. For example, if Code Geass had a character who was supposed to be a real femme fatale and chose to make her figure, well outrageous, that would make a little more sense. But....Shirley in episode 5 of the new season just had ridiculous breasts.

I wish Code Geass had less fanservice. I find its schoolgirls with enormous firm boobs disconcerting rather than sexy. I mean, part of the reason I like the show is Karen, but its because of Karen's background and character not the cheap ass shots and tight-fitting outfits. Episode 5 of the new season was just ridiculous. Viletta in a bikini in the festival. *sigh*. I wish Lelouch would just kill all his school friends or something. My one complaint against the show would thus be gone. There are plenty of successful serious anime. Just look at how long Gundam has been around. Gundam is typically only humorous by accident.

I'm looking for an authentic SNES controller and ebay seems to be a place full of bootlegs and 3rd party controllers. Does anyone know of a reputable place on the web to buy a legitimate 1st party SNES controller? Preferably you've actually got one from this place.