Annie Felis

It's probably not a coincidence. He's probably been waiting for that album with a lot of other people. It's nice to see that he's made a lot of videos in the past month or so. I like his cat's performance in this one in particular.

It's kind of hard for me to get excited over something I don't have the time to do much anymore. I was excited for consoles and the games on them back when I was in college, because despite having a job and classes I didn't have much else to do and had a lot more free time. When I was newly-married and didn't need to work anymore and spent most of my time gaming, I was even more excited for what games were coming out on PS2 and Gamecube, and how PC gaming was gaining speed. By the time the PS3 came out, I was still a bit enthusiastic, but by then I felt I had been running on a gaming treadmill since 2000. Despite all the graphical upgrades, it was more of the same. Games had not changed much, at least the types of games I played. Sandbox games were still sandboxy, and Pokemon was still the same game it was back in high school. JRPGs were the same trope-laden railroad. FPS games on consoles were still less enjoyable than on PC. I don't care about anything Rockstar makes anymore. I quit Pokemon. FF12 was my last Final Fantasy game, unless you count the Chocobo's Dungeon for Wii, and I've pretty much given up on playing FPS games due to the shithead communities populating their servers. I got old. These things aren't new to me anymore, and while it's fun to go back and play Symphony of the Night or Shadow Hearts for the nostalgia I can't say I'm that excited for anything new coming out. The last thing I actually got excited for was Ni no Kuni, and the game was a bit of a disappointment for me. At this point, it doesn't matter to me what comes out on PS4 or Wii-U. Once enough mildly interesting titles accumulate for these consoles, I'll buy them and probably put in a few hours here and there. If not enough interesting material comes out, then nothing of value is lost and I won't bother. Besides, I have a little kid. What I can play is severly limited, especially since he's super-sensitive to what's happening in a story. I mean he cried when DeLoco burned the forest in Skies of Arcadia (and so I stopped playing). I don't think he could handle something emotionally-laden like The Last of Us or Tomb Raider. I usually spend my gaming time playing things he likes to watch, like Mario 64 or World of Warcraft, and I let him mash buttons and keys in those games a little just so he can participate. Once you have kids, you're not the same kind of gamer.

So scanning through the thread (and missing out on an awesome discussion on why Other M has shitty writing), I saw that somebody had pointed out that a lot of LPers playing horror games tend to go over the top with their reactions. That's partially why I don't like a lot of LPers, just because they force their commentary instead of acting naturally. So a question is...do you know of any videos where people are reacting normally? Not forcing it, not hamming it up, just saying the kinds of things that they would say to friends in the room? I mean videos like this, which is not so much a LP than a clip from a longplay somebody made while chatting with his buddies on Skype. Natural freakouts are a hell of a lot more hilarious than the forced ones.

That guy has more in his forum topic than the entire FF9 art book, which is kind of sad on Square's part. Anyway that's an awesome topic, and a lot easier to navigate than the gallery of the 3D artist who did most of the FF9 backgrounds (he has a clunky flash site). Did you look at the topics he did for Metroid? The guy did some big-time digging for some wonderful material that we normally wouldn't see. /offtopic Back to what Brandon was saying about HD remasters...what about porting the Playstation Final Fantasies to smartphones and tablets? I mean yeah, there is emulation out there, but right now SE's offerings for mobile are kind of missing the right audience, which is sad because they're out there. I think if they said "hey we have Final Fantasy VIII with bonus material" they might get more of their usual customers and fewer idiots complaining "the voice over was left in asian". Smartphone and tablet gamers aren't all casual gamers looking for something to do on their lunch break, so it'd be nice to see a developer like Square-Enix targeting those people. I mean hey, they have Chrono Trigger up there.

They didn't do paintings for backgrounds in FF7/8/9, they rendered them in 3D and then made a static image of it. So technically it's a big background image, but it's not painted. And yeah, I don't trust them with any HD remakes for the older games after the FF7 "HD" re-release for PC. Making the field of view wider doesn't matter when all you're seeing is more outdated polygonal crap at once.

Go to where the titles are that you want to buy. That's it. All the bells and whistles that console developers add mean jack squat if they don't have the right publishers making games for their system, AAA or otherwise. Sony is looking like it's offering the best options (and easier access to indie games so a bigger scope of games), but if the games you're looking forward to are on Wii-U or Xbox One then go that way.

But what about a year after launch? Two years? After the whole Linux fiasco and Sony essentially making you sign a "never sue us" agreement whenever you logged in to the PSN, I can't say I trust them fully.

Let's see if Sony can keep their promises this time.

The question is, are you going to already start out with cards based on the hours you've already put into games, and the achievements you've already gotten? If they go that route and people get a lot of cards for all that TF2 they played two years ago, it may be worth it. If you have to sit around and re-earn all that crap to get cards, it isn't worth it for most people.

I don't know, it seems a lot like achievements that you can play around with. It's for the gamers who have a lot of time to pour into Steam games. I'm sure that there will be a lot of people who will play it, but not everybody is going to have the time to build a good deck.

This weekend Civilization V is free to play for all Steam users as part of the promo for the expansion. If you decide to get it, the core game will be 75% until June 11 (so about $7.50). No such deal on the expansion, though.

Agreed. Very often the actors are just doing what they're told to do, but not always. Yuna's rushed or stuttering lines are a result of her actress trying to mash english lines into japanese mouth movements with that a priority over acting and realism, but a director could have told her to knock that crap off and change up some lines to make them more natural. Whoever directed her in X-2 had a better clue.

When I was a teenager I was both a furry and an obsessive roleplayer (embarassing, yet the teenage years are full of doing embarassing things). This is the name of my psychotic lycanthrope character. Once I started posting my art and writings around the internet, I kept it as an author's name since I didn't want to use my real name. Now I'm using it just because I've been using since 1996 or so, even though I really don't care about people knowing my real name.

That's it, topic's over. No discussion can be better than this post.

There should be though. If there are male power fantasies, there should be female power fantasies, and I'm not talking Disney princesses. Hollywood isn't going to entirely stop making "gritty" male fantasy movies, because they sell, because half the population is male. The other half is what we're talking about here, I'm one of them, and I want more things aimed towards my gender without it being shaped to fit the traditional girlfriend/mother/sister/housewife role. Sometimes I just want to watch a movie with a lot of crazy chase scenes and explosions. When I play a game sometime I want to get the biggest gun, the best spell, the strongest skill and then spam the fuck out of it on everything. However I want to view these things with a neutral or shared gender, not make them be male-centric. If I'm playing in some sandbox wonderland, I'd like to play Elder Scrolls where my character's gender is about as relevant as their hair color. Likewise if I'm watching a movie I want women to be in the same kinds of roles as men, and not this sexual dimorphism that is prevelant in movies. There's a reason so many movies fail the Beschel Test. Let there be a movie about a female hero saving her mixed gender buddies, or about a mixed gender crime ring, or let JJ Abrams make blurry action scenes that don't primarily feature men. I'm not discounting what already exists, because characters like Dirty Harry are cool, but we need female equivalents of him. And when we do get female counterparts, they shouldn't be up there in string bikinis and ripped shorts just so the male audiences can drool...not unless there's a lot of shirtless guys with flawless 6-packs for the girls to drool over too.

Nope, I'm the same. I have a bunch of PS3 and even some Wii games I haven't played yet. I haven't gotten a 3DS because I still have some PSP games that I picked up and haven't gotten around to playing yet. Probably the only thing I'll get in the next couple of years is a Wii U.

Maybe solutions come later in the series? I don't know, maybe she's beating the same old drum because it's still a problem. It's just like George Takei keeps advocating for gay rights in the USA because homosexuals are still treated like second-class citizens here. Until a problem is resolved, activists will continue to draw attention to the problem. Either way the one solution is simple: teach our children to be fair. Teach our boys not to be aggressive, not to bully, not to rape, not to assume that they're stronger than girls and that it's okay to be emotional sometimes. Teach our girls to not be pushed around, to be competative, to be assertive and strong, to stand up to guys who bully them. Other solutions are harder, because they involve changing the media and government around us: fix the wage gap. Fix hollywood to stop producing these same tropes, as well as stupid girly movie tropes like "it's okay to cheat on your boyfriend because the guy was hot". Fix the game industry. Fix the comics industry. Make it so that these media outlets cover a broad range of subjects and portrayals of people, and not just this same tired ideal that appeals to what the entertainment industry feels is a safe bet.

She probably wrote and filmed all the episodes at once, or at least a few at once. It's no different than how TV does it, and I don't hear anybody complaining about Mythbusters or Dr. Who "sitting on" episodes.

Holy crap, that's beautiful. I had gotten Dolphin a while ago to play around with Metroid Prime in HD, but never got around to actually configuring it. I really should, considering they have a demo of how Metroid Prime looks on Dolphin. It still looks pretty good, considering it's a game from eleven years ago. You can even see the radioactive haze on the phazon suit. Also look at how pretty Wind Waker looks. To hell with the realistic shading HD release that's due for Wii-U, I want to play the original game on this emulator. I'll bet The Last Story looks damn pretty on Dolphin, too.

Oh man, this one: http://www.redbubble.com/people/ninjaink/works/8331027-lets-pray-for-more-peace-in-space?c=82573-video-games It's a combination of my favorite video game character and my favorite painting by my favorite artist. So awesome. Anyway the two sites linked there seem pretty legit, with lisenced, legal works. I'd buy from them, just because there are a lot of poster sites that sell stolen artwork. It's better off if you don't support the sites that do that.

So I guess their latest thing is porting old PC ports to PC with DRM added?

What. Covenant was the best one in the series. I mean, Yuri Hyuga is one of the best game protagonists ever, and the rest of the cast were amusing as hell. The music was pretty awesome too. What about it did you hate so much?

Every time somebody claims that illegal use of copyrighted material is "fair use" somebody kicks a puppy. Please think of the puppies.

The SNES' sound was better quality, as far as I'm concerned. Either way the better developers went to Nintendo instead of Sega. It's a shame because Sega didn't have crazy censorship rules like Nintendo NA did.

Nah, no offense taken. I understand it does sound horribly entitled, and perhaps it is a bit. I intended it to be more "my dad ignored my suggestions for games" and "my town was a bad place to buy cool games at the time". I still played the hell out of Ecco 2, Aladdin, Primal Rage and Lion King because they were all halfway decent. I even tried to stick with Bart Vs The Space Mutants just so I'd have something to play on my Game Gear, but the game was nearly unbeatable due to the insane platforming skills required with a clunky control system. Once we got a Playstation (and had the internet to research what was good and what was crap), my mom did the shopping for games. She actually wrote down what we wanted and knew that money wouldn't be wasted on a game we'd actually play, unlike my dad who is just clueless about quality in everything (this Christmas he gave everybody cheap $5 gas station t-shirts from a reservation he works near...guy is totally clueless). Once I got my first college job, I used my first paycheck to get one of those compact SNESes that came out 1998, and a friend gave me his copies of FF6 and Secret of Mana. I didn't really miss out on SNES, I just got into it about five years later than most people.