I-n-j-i-n

That's great to hear. The $15 still sounds irksome, but I did spend equivalent amount on Castlevania:SoTN and Puzzle Quest.

But why the heck wouldn't the USA team try to psyche up? They lost two of the Gold-medal allstars in the Hamm brothers and they did squeak by with a few heroic attempts and eventually got Bronze. With all the talent they've lost, you'd think they would have no chance but they hung in there. Isn't that because simply throwing someone alone isn't equatable to a Judo technique? Also, they keep grappling that gi suit, so they tend to get tangled a lot.

I'm sorta happy now because I found a way to exploit Amy. I know I shouldn't be angry, but Astaroth players keeps giving me headaches with the long range throws. Also, even in ranked modes, some games, typically with total newbies at least turns into a non-spam affair. Like maybe 1 out of 5 matches. And it really was a strange day a few days ago with all the trashtalkers. Tonight there weren't any, thank god. But it's really weird when you get killed by a low ranked player and they just have to rub it in the fact that you're level 40+. Because we know all high level players can't ever lose and if they ever do, they're total scrubs. /blatant sarcasm.

No, he was endorsing Obama. But he was cursing and doing all sorts of low brow type of humor. Not something that would go well for something meant for a more family oriented rally.

Disappointing that the typical Chinese teams are getting high ranks and the US just *had* to lose both its Hamm brothers.

2D games can be broken too, but you normally don't have to worry about people wailing on you when you're on the floor, unable to do anything because *some* people love throwing out automatic mix-up moves with Amy or Xianghua. I can understand the need to balance the speed/power/range ratios, but if someone is good enough, the speed is all that really matters in this game. Good thing I still actually win about 70% of online matches, but against really good spammers, there's really nothing to do but spam or be spammed. Also, 2D game characters usually have very similar kind of timing and attack frames compared to 3D games (which is why Virtua Fighter is considered to be very well balanced, because they take into account the frames of animation a lot better). With all the exotic moves in Soul Calibur, the potential for abuse is in a lot of moves. Especially the fast, annoying ones with auto-parries (again with Amy). Oh, and the 8-way run almost doesn't matter since most characters are too quick to connect the next attack horizontally anyway. I wonder how the 2D scene for Street Fighter 4 will be. Maybe the unranked battles will have people having fun and ranked will have people spamming all the time.

Mac basically did R-rated comedy for an audience that was supposed to be family friendly. It basically was a genuine mistake on his part. Should've seen that coming when you're endorsing a candidate and politics will start creeping in. I never was a real fan of Bernie Mac, but I thought he had a pretty good, awkward presence in the movies he was in. Too bad most of the movies were either fluff or just shit.

Some truly great Xianghua players are annoying, but now it's hip to use Amy and abuse her quickness and auto mixups. I actually think she might be broken because most characters simply do not have the quickness to counter her moves. Some of her typical attacks like the quick thrusts can be easy to see, but most of her low attacks aren't. Basically higher level online games devolve into who can spam the most and abuse their most abusable moves. Makes sense, but that means the actual game of fighting goes out the window.

That swimming relay race was crazy. It literally came down to the length of a hand. Nice touch for the second black swimmer ever on the US team to win too. Nice touch from the broadcast showing the French team talking crap about the US team beforehand. I think most up-for-the-medal competitions are pretty good. Most of them do come pretty close in the end. I hope they do a better job of announcing which events have the medal on the line at the end of a specific competition.

I think the balance is pretty shot anyway. Lizardman feels almost too powerful once you get the timing of blocks perfect (when there's little lag and I'm able to guard impact, there's little from stopping Lizardman. And so with many similarly powerful and speedy characters). Also, Cervantes has too many abusable moves, it's almost comical. Every other move of his has very easy ring-out potential, auto mix-ups, incredibly fast unblockable moves, etc. Not to mention all the cheap spammers love using him to boot. Also, Talim and Xianghua in the hands of pros (as in.. level 80s and 90s. I've fought several..) are almost unbeatable due to the extraordinary number of safe moves. In some skill levels, some characters are incredibly broken.

What's strange was that the day before, news about Bernie Mac was "don't worry, it's only Pneumonia, media is making too big a fuss about it" and now this. Talk about ironic. And sad.

Bullshit. There's basically half the population paying at least a moderate attention to the Olympics and those who don't. I tend to equate non-sports appreciators as mostly blobs of meat, so there's my assessment. As for other opening ceremony antics, I thought it was a nice touch for them to have the firework foot-prints lead up to the stadium. It was done so well, it looked like CG for the good first minute or so. And that 500 feet long LCD display on the stadium too. It really couldn't get more modern than that. I feel sorry for the London Olympics 4 years later. They can't possibly match this.

I agree with Cynical. It's not me who is saying the Lizard roll is broken. It's those who get stuck in it or get ring-outed in less than 5 seconds. It does have some technique to it and every characters have their own strings of cheese (except maybe Rock and Setsuka for the most part). If the enemy doesn't do a particular good job of pressure Astaroth that is. I tend to go 50/50 with very good Astaroth players with my Lizardman. Lizardman has plenty of other normal, non-stance moves to make up for it. And of course, characters like Xianghua can just abuse Astaroth as long as she's in range. I need to get the timing to block some of Astaroth's ring out attacks though. They come unexpectedly fast. Somehow it's not too hard to fight him with Seung Mina for some reason. I've seen some REALLY good and REALLY cheap Apprentice users online. They always do the spark-launcher and the air juggle. There is no way to get out of it if you don't block and it comes out so fast, sometimes the lag cancels the speed of the blocks. Extremely annoying when someone knows how to abuse Apprentice's moves. Not too many people are all that good with him, but those who are, they are incredibly annoying to deal with.

I loved how the crowd basically gasped when the final torchbearer flew up some hundred feet. Maybe Ang Lee really was involved with the project. WIRES!

Or you know.. Guard then attack with a fast one. Or the fast revival attack or quick-guard and Ukemi and other techniques. I think spammers are mostly pretty easy. People think my Lizardman rolling is spamming but they don't know how to block it. Their fault. But some spammers like the typical Rapahel/Amy spammers are a pain in the ass because everything they do is quick on recovery. And I think I just fought against one of the best online players on the 360 and his rank was around 66. He parried a ton of moves, did a lot of unexpected unblockable attack combos and went back to back with me on a lot of dangerous moves (with my best Lizardman, no less). I'm just happy I was able to deal 30% damage on the player for each of the rounds. I don't know if I want to play the very best players like that again. Too deflating. It's like a minor leaguer facing a major leaguer.

It made me remember the embarrassing Salt Lake City 'ho-down' in comparison. I almost hung my head over that.

The only time in which you can watch world class handball and other quirky sports. Good thing most of them will be online without the over the top commentary.

Yeah, it's as if I'm the only GOOD Lizardman in the entire online world, which should be false. But out of maybe 350 matches now, nobody even scratched the depth to which I was able to use Lizzy. Voldo's stance is really good too, but a bit involving and you can't really spam it too much before the opponent learns to back away. The thing with the roll&slash from the crawl is that you do it so fast, even if they anticipate it, they're already getting tossed out of the ring or their health goes down to around 20% before they can retaliate. Also, Lizardman's normal moves have so much buffs and stuns and come out quick, you should have no problems beating enemies normally as long as you can keep everything within his relatively stubby reach. The crazy thing was that for the first 25 or so times I used Lizardman, I usually got beaten. Very badly. Perfects here, easy ring outs there. Then I discovered the Lizard crawl and I probably beat 95% of opponents with Lizardman, and if they get caught in my rolling attack, that probability is actually even higher.

I'm sorry, but you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about in regard to his roll. Just lock on B+K as your right shoulder button, low sweep with 1K (Hold that K so you automatically go into stance after you sweep enemies, whom almost NEVER block low, so it should be safe), then just mash B+K shoulder button. 90% of the times, they won't be able to do anything. And you can mix it up with an A-slash and keep at it until enemies go out of the ring. It's so abusable, it's insane. I'd say about 95% of players I did that against couldn't do anything but eat insane amount of continuous damage or go out the ring. It's so cheap, I feel sorry for them. I might almost say that the Lizard stance might be the strongest stance in the whole game. Even beyond Yoshimitsu's helicopter and whatever stances Yun Seung and Maxi uses. The continuous 20-win streaks I get online is proof that the Lizard stance works. Against anyone.

Looking back at Batman & Robin, it did have some pretty good moments especially in its cheesiness. And yes, the governator's lines are a cult classic now. CHILL. Also, as bad as the take on Batman was under Schumacher (I still blame the producers who wanted to make Batman a kid-friendly type of movie. People blaming Schumacher are sort of misguided IMO), I still rather like some of the gadgetry and the ridiculously overpowered Batmobile that makes the Tank-Batmobile looks slow, and basically like a normal tank.

I find a pattern like that now too. People disconnecting because they lose so badly and almost embarrassingly. I made fools out of everyone with either Yoshimitsu or Seung Mina for the first 100 or so matches. The recent 100 consisted me of beating almost everyone with Lizardman and just abusing his lizard roll. It seems like I'm the only person online abusing Lizardman and abusing his roll well. And now I'm getting the hate-messages, mic messages saying I'm cheap and even a few disconnects. Good thing most people just bit the bullet because Lizardman is just that good. I used to think Lizardman was horrible, but not anymore. He almost might be broken in his crawl stance.

Maybe that's why the console was a $200 leftover.. Really, you can't take chances on resale like that.

I've seen tons of critical impacts though lately a lot of them happen for me since my Seung Mina tends to be block-then-retaliate heavy. I actually win 90% of matches with her. And really, I don't think you can compare her to the insanely fast Kilik, whom my current winning rate is basically 100% with lots of perfects (Yes, I think Kilik is beyond broken. Quite easily the top tier if you ask me. Out of 300 odd online matches or so, the biggest struggle usually came from Kilik). And today, finally I was finished off in a finishing move by a desperate Sophitia player (who is almost impossible to fight online. Like with Rock or Setsuka). Sadly, I had the Sophitia player near death and all figured out. Except my guard broke and then the finisher by Sophitia. I will try to do some finishers in the future for the sake of the achievements and for the experience of actually doing it. I wiffed on about a hundred finisher chances and I keep forgetting the left bumper button. I'll have to keep that in mind in future games. As for ranked games, I jumped from a dismal 15% winning rate to around 60%. And I still consider myself middle tier except I can understand the mind-game idea now. I do that instinctively in most games that doesn't involve extreme spamming by my enemy. Especially Seung Mina, I know how to make absolute fools of enemies now. Including her incredibly deceptive 4B+K.

There's always a few good/great matches, then an annoying idiot spammer, then maybe a good match, then a spammer, etc etc. Being a spammer isn't supposed to make you so powerful in most fighting games, but it works in Soul Calibur. Other than that, I think the game is good. Sometimes great if matched with the right opponent. Also, nobody plays as Rock or Setsuka and other characters. The game already fell into a niche of spam characters for rank-boosters. Oh, and I'm not happy that I spent money to replace the boring, droll music in SC4 into SC1 soundtrack. But at least the music is great now. Aside from the aforementioned godly-spammers, it's almost trance-like to constantly play online battles. It's really nothing like playing against computers since you always play some sort of a mindgame with others. I sometimes like doing backing-away moves. Those never really worked against computer opponents. But humans bite the bait so easily. Especially with someone like Yoshimitsu, it's fun seppuku-ing yourself and the enemies and trying to get energy back. More people should play fun characters like Yoshi instead of Amy/Raphael.

GI works only when the connection is really good and the opponent doesn't spam 24/7 with extremely fast characters like Amy. I think mashing buttons unexpectedly works really good online, though I just take my losses and play technically anyway. PS- Is it just me, or is the online play just insanely addicting? I spent 3 hours on a long 60 game session and it felt like I only spent an hour. I think I need to stop playing this game for a while. All the new costumes, downloadable content, mastering characters.. I never really felt like this for any fighting game, ever.