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Total: 186

.hack	(18)
Asian Kung-Fu Generation	(2)
Bleach	(12)
Castle Crashers	(1)
Code Geass	(2)
Cowboy Bebop	(1)
D. Gray-man	(5)
Death Note	(1)
Digimon	(7)
Fallout 3	(1)
Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children	(4)
Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core	(1)
Final Fantasy X	(2)
Final Fantasy XII	(4)
Fruits Basket	(1)
Full Moon wo Sagashite	(5)
Fullmetal Alchemist	(10)
Gankutsuou	(2)
Get Backers	(8)
Hetalia: Axis Powers	(5)
Inuyasha	(2)
Kingdom Hearts	(14)
Kyou Kara Maoh	(1)
Legend of Zelda	(3)
Megaman	(5)
Naruto	(4)
Okami	(5)
One Piece	(2)
Other	(3)
Ouran Koukou Host Club	(4)
Phoenix Wright	(1)
Pokemon	(10)
Princess Tutu	(1)
Reboot	(1)
Resident Evil 4	(1)
Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure	(1)
Romeo X Juliet	(1)
Samurai Champloo	(5)
Shakugan no Shana	(3)
Sonic the Hedgehog	(6)
Soul Eater	(2)
Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu	(6)
The World Ends With You	(1)
Tsukihime	(1)
Vocaloid	(1)
Wolf's Rain	(3)
Xenosaga	(5)
xxxHolic	(1)
Zero no Tsukaima	(1)

Welcome to SpaceCatSamba.com, my personal domain. If it's your first time here, click here for a more detailed introduction. Otherwise, the main menu's up top, the skin menu's on the right - enjoy your stay :)

Category: Games

Our New Friend PS3

12/17/09 07:29:30 pm

Since I last made an appearance, I have watched the first 3 seasons of Heroes, cooked a Thanksgiving turkey (breast), penned a healthy stack of wedding thank you cards, and played several games on our shiny new slim PS3. I'm currently on inFAMOUS, in which half my time seems to be spent happily running around town collecting items and doing side missions (what? there's a story?). Before that came Batman: Arkham Asylum, a truly great game in so many respects, and Ratchett and Clank: Tools of Destruction, of which I'm looking forward to playing the sequel as well.

Got one new Kingdom Hearts skin posted; it really has been awhile - had to check my work a couple of times to be sure I wasn't forgetting anything. And there are a couple of requested skins I'm working on as well.

The Summer Progress

09/12/09 10:02:21 am

As is becoming a summer tradition since coming to San Diego, the fiance and I went out to Comic Con in July. Not as many panels of interest to us this year, so most of our time was spent in the expo, exploring the sights, getting free stuff, playing games on display, havin' a good time. We got to check out Scribblenauts, the release of which we're looking forward to next week, and Behemoth's Game 3. We caught a glimpse of Leonard Nimoy, and there's this one exhibit that I always enjoy...

I assume they give artists a blank sculpture of a popular character (one year it was Darth Vader heads), and have them design it however they want. This year's guinea pig is Stitch! It's fun seeing what they come up with, whether it be cute, silly, impressively detailed or downright creepy.

Sooo, what about the site? Well today I've added 8 skins by a new contributor, katoh! :) You'll find them under Megaman, Hetalia: Axis Powers and Volcaloid. As for myself, there are a few skins I'd like to make, but I'm still kind of busy with some little things... like moving, and a wedding. :] Some time after those, then maybe I'll get back to being productive.

Castle Crashers Vector Art

03/24/09 08:02:31 pm

No Castle Crashers wallpapers yet, but here's the AI [and a transparent PNG] file with the art I used for the skins: scs-castle-crashers.zip. There are a few cute animal orbs in there too. :) Files are provided as-is and may be used for whatever, but not for commercial purposes. If you're using the art somewhere on the web, I'd love a link back.

Mirror's Edge

03/01/09 04:00:02 pm

I find it funny that the 360 is taking the majority of my gaming time lately; I'd never so much as touched one before, but nowadays Nintendo is pretty stagnant (with its one-hit franchise wonders gracing us just every now and again), and Sony is all but off the map for me, save for a rare few PSP titles.

So, Mirror's Edge. It gets immediate credit simply for being unique, in both concept and artistic style. You play as a "runner," a member of an underground courier organization... sort of, because you won't actually be delivering anything, and your preferred turf is in fact rooftops. The story is a little too simple and doesn't hold together well in some parts. Like the would-be courier business, ideas in the game feel half-baked, like they changed course in development many times without looking back. Combat, for instance, can be a sticky situation. You have no gun of your own by default, so in most cases you'll want to run from hostiles (it's what you do best, after all), but in others you've no choice but to fight your way through. The game does not make this easy - it advises taking out enemies one-by-one, but the enemies act pretty smartly, utilizing cover and generally moving in groups. You will also often find yourself searching for the proper path through an area while being fired upon by guards, snipers and, often enough, helicopters.

Controls can be an obstacle in and of themselves, as much of the leaping requires proper collision detection, and there are a million ways to mess that up - lose momentum, jump just a little too early, not close enough to the wall to trigger the wall-run, get disoriented when doing the jump-turn-jump sequence, etc. It's also not always clear how far or how high you can actually go, so you'll have to just go and see what happens.

Overall, I was definitely having enough fun to see it through to the end (though it wasn't very long in the first place), it just got terribly frustrating at times, and never succeeded in drawing me in from a narrative perspective. The game's final message during the credits seems to suggest that nothing much has changed as a result of your little adventure - a small server hiccup and then it's back to business as usual for the totalitarian city. Oh well, it was a nice little romp anyway, right?

Jeanne 4 Dead

02/15/09 05:04:22 pm

Finished up the aforementioned Castle Crashers skin. I will probably also be making some wallpapers with the same art, since they're vectors and well-suited for such use.

Recently finished up the PSP SRPG Jeanne D'Arc. The gameplay is deep, entertaining and always a challenge too. The only other games I've played of this genre are the Final Fantasy Tactics titles, and a regular "flaw" in those is that battles tend to become routinely easy at some point; you can bash your way through without much thought to strategy. Jeanne, on the other hand, more consistently requires consideration, and a false step could really cost you. There's a nice variety of job classes without being overbearing, though there's not much chance to customize your units, so you'll want to fight with those who have the best stats as opposed to character preferences. That turned out alright though, as the story and characters are rather mediocre anyway; which was surprising to me, as RPGs often focus on those things. Despite that, this was definitely a good game overall.

Rirath and I also rented Left 4 Dead for a weekend. I'm not particularly good at FPS games, and knowing this one was co-op, I figured I'd be dying and sitting out a lot. However, the game has a great balance between individual ability and teamwork; playing well will obviously benefit you, but there are still traps you can't escape without the aid of a teammate. If you do get killed, you'll respawn after a few minutes with reduced health, so you're not sitting out the whole rest of the round. The dynamic seeding of enemies is also pretty cool, so that the levels will never play the same way twice. Even so, it seems a bit cheap that you only get four campaign maps. Hence the rental - it's certainly a fun game, but a bit pricey if you're only playing it once through.

XBLA Games

01/25/09 02:13:05 pm

I don't own an XBox, and as such, have not played many of its titles. But since I've been able to use Rirath's, I've tried out a few that have succeeded in charming me.

One of those is the "indie" game, Braid. It's hard to call it "indie" when you read that $180,000 was sunk into it, but nevertheless, it delivers a fresh and different experience from the mainstream. A combination of platforming and puzzle solving set against beautiful landscapes and music, Braid offers you 6 worlds with different time-bending mechanics that you must utilize to obtain puzzle pieces and save Tim's princess. The gameplay is consistently fun and challenging; puzzles will often have a fiendishly simple solution once you grasp it. Oddly, the story is both a high and a low point of the game for me. If it had made sense within the context of the game itself, it would've been a mysterious and chilling revelation. Instead, obscurity seems to be flaunted for the sake of "artfulness," and I was left not-quite-satisfied by the end, having to Google for others' interpretations for a full explanation. Overall though, it's a great little title despite its flaws.

Castle Crashers has been a worthy venture as well. It's a side-scrolling beat-'em-up with colorful art and a sense of humor. The game blends in some RPG elements as well, such as attribute-enhancing weapons, character stat customization and leveling up. The number of characters you can play with definitely gives this game replay value, if you enjoy it. As mentioned in a previous post, I plan on making some skins of these characters. :3

Aside from games, it seems like my Comment Spam post ended up becoming a magnet for more sophisticated spam attacks. I had to redevelop my filter system somewhat, and that has been getting the lion's share of my website-related attention. Alright mighty spam bots, I am humbled... so leave me alone. :P

Guest Skins

01/19/09 10:52:31 pm

A short post to announce some new skins by guest author, Rirath. :] Skins will now have an author tag next to them to indicate who made 'em. As for myself, I intend to make some Castle Crashers skins in the near future.

More on Spore

09/26/08 02:00:45 am

Let me introduce Cadee, the pinnacle of evolution in my Spore-iverse.

Cadee After a relatively easy progression from the cell stage through the tribal stage, I found myself in some trouble at the civilization stage. The green nation petitioned me, "help us go to war with the blue nation," and because the blue nation was safely far away, I agreed. Unfortunately, declaring war on the blue nation was tantamount to declaring war on its ally, the orange nation, who was right next door to me at the time. Whoops. While struggling to defend my little city against the orange guys, and take a city or two for ourselves in the process, the mighty red nation gobbled up all the other nations in the blink of an eye. Generous bribes and compliments to the reds then became the order of the day.

So there I am with two cities under my control, while the red nation controls the rest of the whole darn planet. Huh. Well, we were on quite cordial terms, so it was easy to allow my cities to sit around and generate a lot of money while nobody came attacking. But war was inevitable when the goal of the civ stage is "conquer the planet," so when enough funding had accumulated, it was off to attack the neighboring cities. For such a fleeting moment, I had control of 4 cities, and this unlocks ... aircraft! But my funds had dwindled and the reds were quickly decimating my territories. It seemed like the end, when suddenly, their thirst for vengeance was quelled (or something), and the reds retreated, leaving me one small, land-locked city to keep. Little did they know, this single act of non-aggression would be their eventual undoing.

Spore War

For now we had aircraft! Far more efficient in city-capturing, if only we could afford them... No matter; with the reds appeased, it was again a simple matter of waiting for the cash to roll in. Once a surplus was built up, it was all downhill for the reds from there - we went from one city to six in no time. And then this little icon lit up at the bottom of the screen... "I..C... B... M?" As Rirath called it, I had found the "'win the game' button" - one press (and $36k) later, the globe was mine.

And now... to space!

Okami for Wii: Lame

09/14/08 05:27:56 pm

Rented the Wii version of Okami from GameFly, thinking I'd give it another shot despite my bland impressions of the Japanese PS2 version the last time around. Well, after a few hours of trying to play it, I'm sending it back. The Wii controls are just awful; brush techniques take forever to get it right, and fighting requires very deliberate Wiimote swings for consecutive hits. The graphics appear to be a bit more saturated than the PS2 version, but also more blurry, and in a couple of places there was noticeable lag.

In short, avoid this cheap port of the game; stick with the trusty old PS2 version.

Chrome, Spore, iPhone?

09/13/08 05:39:24 pm

Google released a new browser last week, called Chrome. Gave it a shot, and while it's certainly the fastest browser I've seen yet, it holds no real enticement for power users due to its lack of customization and extensibility. And while Google promises that add-ons are forthcoming, I can't see them being too pleased with a potential AdBlock for Chrome. Not that their displeasure will prevent the release of such things, but a nice part of Mozilla's approach is that you can find nearly any available add-on on their centralized site, and that top-recommended extensions - such as AdBlock - are brought to the forefront for your consumption. I can't see Google mimicking a distribution center like that without some restrictions. Still, if you want a very fast browser and don't care about add-ons and such, Chrome might be a good choice for you.

I have been playing Spore, which has sparked a great deal of controversy over its DRM restrictions, while failing to impress some anticipating reviewers. I for one enjoy the game, not so much for the gameplay which is indeed pretty simplistic (so far - I've heard the Space stage gets a bit tougher), but for the fun of taking your single-celled organism and designing iteration after iteration up into a full-blown creature of your own imagination. It's like building that monster out of play-dough when you were a kid, but then having it come to life. If you don't find fun in that sort of thing, then no, you probably wouldn't enjoy Spore. As for the DRM, I agree that it's ridiculous, but I love the logic leap that people make when they say, "well the DRM is awful, so I'm telling everyone to pirate it instead." While I won't say that such a sentiment is right, it's true: this generation can and will pirate something - music, movies, games - if it doesn't like the restrictions placed upon it by its owner(s). That's not going to change, and I think publishers would do themselves a favor to wise up and realize that things like DRM are only hurting their legitimate customers.

Finally, I got an iPhone. Well, not so much "got," as "was provided with." My cell phone is currently a courtesy of my employer, and up until now I was sporting another smartphone, the Treo 755p. It had so many weird problems I don't know where to begin listing 'em. Worst of all, it would often reboot upon receiving an incoming call. It would tell me I had "insufficient memory" when as far as I could tell, more than half the memory was free. It once erased everything on the expansion miniSD card I put into it. And as something of a finale, when I was gathering up my contact info to transfer to the new phone, I noticed it had - for no known reason - assigned my special ringtone for personal contacts to just about everyone on my contact list. In short, it was a device I could force into working, but never really enticed me to want to work with it.

Others in the office seemed to feel similarly only meagerly satisfied with their phones, so when they found out the new iPhone 3G supports MS Exchange (an essential), the switch was quickly approved. While I'm not an Apple fan (this is, in fact, the first Apple product I have ever owned), I must admit this thing is leaps and bounds over my previous smartphone in almost every way. I love how the browser is a real browser, rather than the poor excuse for one that most phones have which will ruin the page layout and can't handle Javascript or any other web technology more advanced than HTML. The touch screen in general is just a good idea too... I love scrolling with my finger, zooming in and out with double-clicks, and just pushing stuff to use it rather than having to navigate there with directional keys as I once did. There are some gripes as well - why no video camera? why no copy and paste? - but overall it's probably the best thing you can get for the money in smartphones.

Vista, Comic Con, jQuery

08/02/08 04:48:02 pm

I might've made this post last weekend, but my draft of it was sitting in an unsaved window when Vista decided to reboot itself in the middle of the night for updates. It's a new computer, so I hadn't turned that setting off yet, but it's always been something I hate about Windows - don't turn off my computer without my say-so.

On that note though, having had this computer for about a month now, I don't see what all the negative fuss about Vista is for. I can't name anything specific to complain about, and certain tasks are easier than they were in XP. I can understand that perhaps people were hoping for some innovation from Microsoft (...wait, really?), and this "Midori" project sounds interesting (if anything ever comes of it), but it seems like if you were fine with XP, you should be fine with Vista; it's just another iteration in Windows.

Anyway, on to whatever my original topic was... Ah yes, Comic Con. It came to town last weekend, as it does every year around that time, and it feels like the internet has descended upon San Diego. All the niche-popularity webcomic authors, media companies hawking sci-fi entertainment, anime product retailers passing out cat ears, and dorks dressed up as MySpace.com (true story) flood into our little downtown enclave... which isn't so little, really, but feels moreso when there are an additional 125,000 people in town.

Myself and Rirath attended the con on Sunday morning, browsed the expo floor for a few hours, and saw John Cho and Kal Penn (of Harold and Kumar fame) on a panel, where they were quite amusing. Neil Patrick Harris was supposed to be there too, but apparently skipped town to go direct a play in London, boo :P

Commentators are starting to wonder whether the "comic" is going out of "Comic Con," to which I must say, "you're only just starting to think that?" Last year was the first time I went, but it had the same feeling as this year, where the TV, movie and video game attractions seem bigger, louder and better than the comparatively plain comic book booths. Personally I can't say I'm opposed to this though; digital media is of greater interest to me. If the comic guys pull out of Comic Con, I'm sure they'll be missed... but not by everyone.

In other news, I'm working on some website development (...for this site, I mean), so I may not be updating with much content for awhile... but hang in there. I've adopted, and am really enjoying writing in jQuery. Javascript is such a cumbersome language that I'm usually reluctant to use, but jQuery makes it make sense. Why put up with some convoluted method of DOM selection in plain JS, when jQ makes use of the CSS selectors we already know? It's intuitive, which JS never has been for me before.

Crisis Core Wrap Up

07/13/08 05:40:00 pm

Crisis Core has been an interesting little game. The battle experience is not exactly a highlight - combat tends toward button mashing, and the DMW roulette is an odd feature offering you no control and an over-abundance of power ups. Special attack animations are unskippable, and often pop up at unnecessary times - like when a single plain hit would've ended the battle instead. Missions - sidequests with item rewards - are repetitive and tedious, but offer some worthwhile prizes and are good for playing with limited time on your hands. Materia Fusion is a decent idea, but you'll likely need a guide to get anything cool out of it. And I don't think I know any game where receiving email from other characters doesn't get annoying.

The story and new characters feel largely unnecessary too. Since the game's a prequel, we know who to pay attention to, and all others are pretty much throw-aways. The main antagonist - Genesis - is particularly annoying in that nearly every line of his dialogue is a recitation of lines from a hackneyed play that you will hear about over and over and over again. Unless they're going to retcon the whole series (and I suppose they could), I just couldn't care about these new characters who I knew had no relevance to the series beyond this one game.

So what makes Crisis Core worth playing then? The best parts of this game are where it overlaps with its original; namely, it's characters - Zack, Aeris, Sephiroth and Cloud - and events, like the Nibelheim incident and all that follows it. As if it's not bad enough that you already know Zack is doomed, the ending is so well done - with both FMVs and battles as story telling - as to make the event more poignant than ever before. I think it may have cemented Zack as the most tragic character of the series (yes, even more so than Aeris). That's really what makes Crisis Core worth the effort.

Happy 4th Ramblings

07/04/08 07:39:14 pm

Happy 4th of July, to those of you who celebrate it. Nothing to post today but some random thoughts from the last few days.

Bookstores. On two separate visits, we've noticed a certain breed of person... Usually it's a teenager, usually reading a manga, usually while seated smack in the middle of a narrow aisle between bookshelves. While we spend awhile finding the book we want, this person remains stationary, even while other customers attempt to go around him (this person is also usually male). I suppose the responsibility of dealing with this person falls upon the bookstore staff, but it's awfully rude all the same.

Gaming. I've just started up Final Fantasy VII Crisis Core, which is the first game I've played on a PSP actually. While the visuals are lovely, the battle system feels flawed, at best. There's not much challenge - you can mash X to beat most enemies - and the roulette-like DMW thing dampens the difficulty even further by bestowing numerous power-ups and special attacks throughout the battles. It also feels odd that you have absolutely no control over the DMW wheels - they just spin and stop whenever they please. The game's story and dialogue also feel rather silly, what with everyone quoting poetry or proverbs and sprouting random wings. And how weird is it to see Sephiroth acting normal? Still fun though, and Zack is a likeable lead.

Website. Hopefully some site improvements will be coming along soon, if I can spare some time to work on them. I know the skin menu on the right is a bit broken in Firefox 3 (which only a small percentage of you are using... and I thank you), but I'm probably going to leave it that way for now.

Gaming: The World Ends With You

06/07/08 07:01:23 pm

Rirath and I recently signed up for GameFly, so I may be musing about random games more often. Today's entry is about the Nintendo DS JRPG, The World Ends With You (originally "Subarashii Kono Sekai" in Japanese, but since that translates to "it's a wonderful world," potential copyright issues apparently prevented it from being released under that title in English).

In the game, you play as Neku Sakuraba, a misanthropic teen who finds himself in an alternate reality Shibuya where he must complete daily objectives to stay alive amidst something called a "Reaper's Game." He meets other "players" trapped in the game, as well as enemies called Noise, and the reapers themselves.

The World Ends With You sets itself apart from so many DS games with its style and depth. Derived from their urban setting, characters and enemies sport trendy fashions or graffiti-like tattoos. The music throughout the game is lyrical, and likewise adds to the atmosphere by sticking mostly to pop and rap, as well as interchanging between English and Japanese language versions of the songs.

The battle system is refreshingly unique, as you fight enemies with a partner on both of the DS' screens at once - on the bottom screen with your stylus, and the top screen with the D-pad. This is certainly not without its flaws though, as it's somewhat difficult to divide your attention between the two. Fortunately they've accounted for this in two ways, the first of which is that your partner will always have an attack that consists of simply pressing the same button several times, and also that you can choose to ignore your partner and s/he'll be auto-controlled instead.

The abilities you wield in battles are decided by pins - you can wear between one and six pins, each one with a power that's activated by a stylus motion (or a shout into your DS' mic). There are hundreds of pins to choose from, though there's a quite smaller range of stylus actions between them; this can get annoying if you pick two or more pins with the same or similar activation methods and end up using the wrong attack.

Trends will also affect your battles - both pins and clothing are associated with brands, and the more popular the brand in a given area, the more powerful the items of that brand will be. While this adds another layer of depth, I found myself ignoring it more often than not. The areas you move between are too small to be concerned with changing all your pins and clothes every few minutes. You can also influence which brand is popular by wearing that brand's items, but locking oneself into a single brand seems more hindering than beneficial.

The game has its downsides too, of course. Gameplay is very linear, to the point where I occasionally felt rushed by the story when I would've liked to wander around a bit. Long chunks of dialog with no option skip will also bog you down sometimes. It's hard to organize your pins and it gets more cumbersome to find the one you want as your collection grows; why couldn't there have been some sorting options (by brand, by level, by effect, etc.)? Also, there's no map. Okay, technically there is, but it only shows you the fashion trends for each area, not the names of the areas... making it useless as a map.

Overall it's an entertaining and fun game though. ... Expect a skin of it.

Thoughts on Mario Kart Wii

05/11/08 06:03:17 pm

Yes I know, I haven't updated in over a month. I'm [slowly] working on a piece of art in Illustrator, at which I'm still something of a newb... but I quite like the style of art you can make with it, so I'm tryin'. There's still a Shakugan no Shana skin pending, and possibly a new Okami one too. I've also gotten a lot of Google searches for "Smash Bros Brawl skin," so I might give that a shot as well. In the meantime, let's talk about...

Mario Kart Wii

It's not bad, but it's not terribly impressive either. First off, the Wii Wheel? If you've any interest in precision control, you'll dump it. This was somewhat surprising to me, since the Wiimote controls in certain levels of Mario Galaxy were markedly sensitive. But, oh well, it's a gimmick.

Moving on to gameplay... Having gotten the game with Rirath, we tried out the multiplayer modes first. From the start, about half of the total tracks are missing, and must be unlocked through single player mode only. This was kind of disappointing - not that the content had to be unlocked, but that there's no means of unlocking it through multiplayer. The concept of "Cups" is somewhat borked in multiplayer, since you can pick and choose tracks and the order you want to play them in; it's really just four separate races in an arbitrary grouping. Battle mode has suffered most from retooling: you can no longer play one-on-one, but must play in teams with CPUs, and when you lose your balloons, you simply respawn with a new set, as the game keeps a running tally of cumulative hits for each team. I've read the argument that this was done to facilitate a better WiFi battle experience, and maybe so, but why must the offline battles follow the same rules?

The game's AI has also been improved, which at times is frustratingly merciless, like when you get bombarded by numerous items in succession. In fact, items in general feel a bit broken - if you're in back, you can always count on a star or a bullet bill to propel you to the front, and if you're in first, it's only a matter of time before a blue shell is upon you. As such, the first two laps of the race are essentially meaningless - you can be in last place going into the final lap and easily score 1st with items. It's more to your detriment to hold onto first position, as you'll simply get pounded down again and again.

So those are the highlights of what's broken in the game, how about what's good? The visuals and music are both laudable, and it's fun to see some of the series' previous tracks renewed in Wii-goodness. The new tracks are well-designed too. The addition of bikes provides more depth when choosing your vehicle, with varied abilities like drifting, drafting and tricks under consideration. I've yet to try the online play, but people say that's fun too. :P

All in all, it's a good game, but not a great game. Which is a shame after seeing such wonderful first-party franchise titles like Brawl and Mario Galaxy.

Smash Tactics

03/23/08 08:27:16 pm

Ah, Smash Bros Brawl... we've been waiting for you for months, and what do you give us? ... A pretty great game, actually. I'm typically not one for fighting games, but I like the Smash series for its combination of beloved characters, relatively simple attack execution, fun battle items, and knock outs that are based on getting flung from the ring rather than having your life meter emptied. Brawl builds on its predecessor's already strong foundation with updated graphics, more items, more characters and more ways to play.

My first move was to play through the adventure mode, "The Subspace Emissary," since you can unlock all of the "secret" characters in it (a preferable method to doing things like Target Smash or completing some number of Brawls in the triple digits). If Brawl is your first venture into Smash, it's also a conducive way to find a character you like, since you'll have to use nearly all of them to get through it. It becomes frustrating at the end however, when you must re-fight every boss while traversing a maze of enemies that continually respawn. The final boss also seems to have a one-hit kill attack that can't be dodged(?). I consider the whole adventure mode as an extra though, and a good one for what it's worth.

The real content is of course, the Brawls! Having a full group of four to fight with is great, and Nintendo's finally starting to grasp the idea that we like digital networking - so if you can't gather a crowd in person, now you can go online. It's a shame however, that the big N must always bend over backward to ensure a sterile environment; while playing with strangers, there's no chat, no nicknames, no taunts, no options to add someone to your buddy list, nothing of an interactive nature. Surely we can't have any of that, lest some poor child be exposed to heinous four letter words or unwanted pictures of human anatomy! [/sarcasm] That's a whole 'nother topic, really... If you're a fellow online Brawl player and you'd like to exchange friend codes, send an email.

Also if you're obsessive, there's this big wall of stuff to get for completing certain challenges... but I know I'm not going to do 'em all... nope...

At other times - portable times - I've been playing Final Fantasy Tactics Advance as well (seriously, name too long). I played Tactics back in the day and enjoyed it, but it was certainly flawed in a few places - sloppy translation of the story, places where you could get stuck in unbeatable battles with no means of reset, the annoyance of wait time between selecting and actually casting a spell, and former guest units who would then join your team permanently and ludicrously overpower those units you'd sunk hours into training. Tactics Advance gets rid of these, and adds more races, new and different jobs, and other improvements. The law system... I don't really care about; it's simple enough to avoid violations if you have a varied team, and then they're somewhat pointless once you can change and revoke them. In any case, it's a fun game, and also quite long for a portable title.

And that's the shpeel about my gaming life - thanks for humoring me. As for skins, there are currently two in the works: Resident Evil 4 and Shakugan no Shana.

RE4 Wrap Up & Apollo Justice

02/26/08 03:38:06 am

When we last left our hero, he had infiltrated the enemy headquarters on ... some island. There are some rather eerie settings here, particularly the run-down hospital where you meet your first regenerator. And those minigun toting commando enemies? Ouch. It took me several attempts to beat Krauser, since I kept trying to shoot him and the time limit would run out. Use the knife? Bah.

On the other hand, I defeated the final boss on my first attempt ("what? All I have to do is shoot the eyeball, then use a context-command? ... Hmm."), after which I was disheartened to die several times on the jet ski escape from the island. I realize I must be simply awful at it, but it felt so out of place to begin with: I just beat the boss... game is over now - gimme a cut scene and some closure, not an opportunity to instantly die 10 more times before you roll credits.

All in all though, I had an unexpectedly great time with this game. I feel a good part of the credit for that must go to the Wii remote controls - for some reason I am near-incapable of simultaneously using one analog stick for movement and one for aiming. The Wii remote makes aiming far more intuitive and comfortable, especially for a n00b (of the genre) like myself. On that note, I can't wait to try out Metroid Prime 3...

But when another Gyakuten Saiban comes to call, nary an objection can be made.

Apollo Justice is the first game in the Ace Attorney / Gyakuten Saiban series to be made for the Nintendo DS rather than being a port of a Gameboy Advance title. However, several of the "new" features actually premiered in the fifth case of the first game - "Rise From the Ashes" - which was added on to the DS version of the title. Fingerprinting, video analysis, 3D evidence inspection and blood detection all return in Apollo Justice, in addition to "perceiving," foot printing, x-ray scanning and sound analysis with a mixing board, to name a few.

While I like these features, I couldn't help but wish for more freedom with them. Why can I only dust for fingerprints when I'm led to do so? Why can't I put any piece of paper in the x-ray scanner, even if it comes out blank? Giving us free reign on the gadgets might have drawn attention away from the stark linearity in the plot, but instead it's reinforced by "only when I say so" access.

And then there's the 3D rendering of evidence... okay, it looks nice, but feels pointless when an examination yields no additional information; this was implemented better in Ashes, where an object was only visible in 3D if a 3D analysis would reveal something special.

However, as usual, Gyakuten Saiban delivers an immersive, intricate story that had me hooked 'til the end. While I liked Trials & Tribulations for its interweaving of stories through three cases, Justice intertwines all of its cases. Since the series dropped most of its regular faces in favor of a new cast, character development was essential, and the game does a satisfying job of bridging the past and present, always revealing things in bits and pieces as you go, of course. Personally I wasn't so enticed by the new breed of smiley, polite prosecutor (it's more fun when they're being smarmy and mean... and cyborg!), but he plays an air guitar in court... how can I not be amused by that?

Moar RE Foar

02/13/08 03:05:44 am

My escapade through Resident Evil 4 Wii Ed continues - I've reached "the island," which follows in the series of simply named locales such as "the village," and "the castle."

Defeating Salazar (or "squeaky voiced midget Napoleon" *link content not suitable for children) took a couple of tries, for a single reason: the one-hit kill. Whatever game it appears in, this really gets on my nerves; I've been fighting this boss for some five minutes, repeatedly dodging flailing tentacles and spider-like creatures, waiting for those few brief moments when I can hit its vulnerable spot, and then it lunges with a many-fanged mouth and a roar that will be your death knell, if you don't run away quickly enough. Worse are the chainsaw-wielding fellows amongst the villagers, or the zealots carrying head-chomping parasites; these guys will show up while you're already occupied fighting off a crowd of enemies, get close to you and then BAM, "You are dead" (I love how the game over screen so flagrantly informs me of this - as if I didn't know that decapitation was fatal).

It's a violation of good faith in gaming. You enter the game with [or progressively acquire] an understanding of the rules that bind you and, supposedly, the enemies as well; you cannot take down your foes in a single hit, but nor can they do it to you, so you have a sense of fairness in the game. A one-hit kill is a violation of this would-be mutual understanding, and thusly feels like cheating. Of course, games try to compensate for this by making killer attacks slow or inaccurate, providing a margin of safety through successful reaction or sheer good fortune. I suppose out of those two, I'd prefer the former, which at least has something to do with my ability in the game, rather than the latter where there's nothing but a coin flip between success and epic fail. Still it doesn't make it any less frustrating when a challenge you would've won is usurped by a tiny mistake that will cost you everything. If I were emo, perhaps I'd muse, "such is life" (...but I'm not... I like bunnies).

I understand though, that the "survival horror" genre is apparently not supposed to be like this in the first place. I'm told that RE4 is an anomaly in that it gives you the means to fight back against the hordes, whereas you'd normally need to turn tail and run for the hills, I suppose. But what fun would that be? As mentioned in my previous post about the game, this isn't my typical gaming fare; it's the first I've played in the genre, really. Because I like it, there's a decent chance I'll give its predecessors a shot at some point, but if a zombie is trying to eat my sweet sweet brains and all I can do is ~~run~~ walk slowly backwards while still facing forward, it doesn't sound like a fun time.

At the very least, Rirath has predestined that I will play Umbrella Chronicles on co-op, however.

And then I got Sick

01/27/08 02:36:24 am

Still no update; I wanted to try for one last weekend, but I came down with the flu and had to spend a lot of time in bed instead.

I've also been using some free time to play Resident Evil 4 Wii Edition. While I'm not usually into either shooters or horror, I've taken at least enough of a liking to play several hours' worth so far. Having [briefly] tried the PS2 version of the game as well, I can certainly say the Wii controls feel a lot better to me than a standard controller. It's not perfect though; one thing I find unintuitive is needing to use the control stick to pan the camera upward while aiming - why doesn't it just go where the Wiimote goes? And how come the rifle doesn't use the Wiimote to aim at all? Why does the number 4 come before the "Resident Evil" on the game box and title screen? And WHY do I keep getting attacked by zombified villagers!? ... Wait, scratch that one.

In other news, I've temporarily removed the links to Exquisite (fruit-candy.net) because the site has apparently been compromised by a trojan. I've visited the site using Firefox however, and have not had trouble (aside from temporary browser-lockup upon loading the first page). So, IE users beware... the rest of you, carry on.

Super Mario Galaxy @ TG

12/07/07 04:45:57 am

My thoughts on Super Mario Galaxy over at TwiddleGeek.com.

New Host

11/19/07 06:51:46 am

I haven't been updating lately because I haven't been able to - I had completely run out of disk space, and the site was down a few times because of it too. But, if you're seeing this update, then you're seeing the site on its new host, where there'll be plenty of space and plenty of bandwidth! Hurrah! So... hopefully there'll be new content... somewhat soon.

There's also this game though, called Super Mario Galaxy... It rocks. I should have a rather more thorough opinion of it posted soon over at TwiddleGeek.com. Also recently completed Phoenix Wright: Trials & Tribulations, if you'd like to know what I thought about it.

You're Gonna Be Jealous

10/28/07 04:20:05 pm

You can all stop playing Pokemon, for I have officially won. I have captured a shiny... BIDOOF! Yes, that's right. Commence groveling.

Aside from that... Having pre-ordered Phoenix Wright 3, it arrived on my doorstep on Friday, and has seen a lot of play time since. Gameplay is, of course, exactly the same as the previous Phoenix Wright, but really, you're not expecting that to change in this series; sequels are for more trials, more characters, more humorous banter, and more fun convoluted case solving. More of the same, I guess - so if you liked previous titles in the series, you'll continue to like them. I'm quite fond of this new prosecutor, Godot, and his coffee mania (where do those cups keep coming from, anyway?...).

Also, because I pre-ordered with Gamestop, I got a bonus Phoenix Wright "plush." I use quotations because I myself would've called it a keychain. Here is the plush, next to my DS for comparison:

Frankly, the description as "plush" made me imagine it would be bigger (I don't think the size was ever mentioned anywhere), but oh well, it's still cute.

This could get ugly...

Comic Con 2007

07/30/07 10:42:33 pm

Despite having lived in San Diego for the last 4 years (of college), this is the first time I've been here during the summer, which meant I had the opportunity to attend Comic Con for the first time this past weekend. Myself and a friend trekked down to the convention center on Sunday morning, braving the crowds and approximately 5,000 Uchiha Itachis. Seriously, is Naruto the only thing you people ever watch?

Anyway, if you want cool SquareEnix figures, apparently the last day of the con is not the day for you (see photo). I didn't end up buying anything, but still got several "sampler" volumes of manga and other fun freebies from various booths. Seeing Lucy Lawless on a panel was surprisingly amusing (who knew Xena was actually quite the comedian). Got to play some games, see "exclusive" (I'll bet someone's already posted a cellphone recording on Youtube) TV show and movie previews, and just generally have a good time amongst a veritable throng of geeks (if you shout, "Hey look it's Dumbledore!" at the Gandalf cosplayers, apparently they get angry... try it, it's fun!).

A good time was had by all; time and location permitting, I'd love to go back again next year.

Pokemon: GTS and Then Some

06/11/07 09:14:24 pm

So I've been playing Pokemon Diamond, and since catching a Ditto (and thusly being able to breed semi-rare Pokemon), I've been avidly using the Global Trading System [GTS]. If you are one of those people on the GTS who is trying to trade your lousy Bidoof for a Palkia, you make me sick. Seriously, 90% of trades, people are asking for a legendary, and half of those are asking for a level 100 legendary in exchange for some lousy, low-level, "I could catch 10 of those in five minutes" Pokemon.

But, as for reasonable trades, I've accepted a handful and have been pleased with them. This is functionality that - technology permitting - should've been in the series a long time ago. The implementation doesn't give the impression that it was well thought out, though. It would be great to have more search options, particularly "people wanting Pokemon x," and multiple trade offers. And some filters would do wonders - "do not show me traders looking for legendaries." I would also be more fond of the other network areas - Underground, Union Room - if they weren't just local. I for one do not know anyone within local network range who is playing the game.

Overall, it's been a fun game though. I skipped a generation (the third one, to be precise) with Pokemon, and it seems to have helped "refresh" the series for me a bit. Despite the painstakingly similar plot line in every installment, the battle system has contrastingly matured quite a bit since its beginnings.

Coming Soon: Real Updates

06/02/07 06:19:44 pm

So, yeah, I've been on a bit of a hiatus primarily due to school. But by Monday, whether I like it or not, the majority of my remaining schoolwork will be done. In the meantime I've taken some time out to spontaneously craft the skin seen on the right. It might look done, it's not. But look for it to be the next one uploaded.

Twilight Princess - Where's the Beef?

05/25/07 07:41:45 pm

So I'm perhaps about halfway through The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess on my newly obtained Wii. While I'm certainly enjoying it, the one flaw seems to be a marked lack of difficulty in boss battles. Temples are still appropriately puzzle-filled (though I for one did not find the water temple to be as hard as it was rumored to be), but once you reach the boss, it's already over.

That's my only significant gripe though. Hyrule looks beautiful in spite of the Wii's (or the GameCube's) lesser processing power amongst the other next gen'ers, interesting new characters add to the game's appeal, and the Wii controls inevitably make for a fresh experience. In general though, the Wii-mote would be better if its movements were more "in sync" with in-game motions. For instance, if I sling the Wii-mote downward, I'd expect Link's sword to do the same, rather than it being swung sideways. There doesn't seem to be much correlation other than "Wii-mote shaking makes sword move." This problem is apparent in other titles I've tried as well. Maybe it'll improve with time though; it's a good idea, the Wii-mote, it just needs a little work.

In any case, it's a three-day weekend! Hoorays! Does that mean maybe I'll get something site-related finished? You'll just have to tune in to find out!

Wii All Get By...

05/16/07 09:48:12 pm

...with a little help from our friends. Thanks entirely to a certain someone, I hath obtained the elusive Wii! And right after I had given up on pursuing it too - that was a surprise. ^^; So of course I invested firstly in a copy of Twilight Princess, which is quite fun once you find the right corner to dig in! I don't care if all you GameCube owners played it months ago - I get to play your J-RPGs before you, so it's even (well... I might not be doin' that so much anymore, lacking [and not yet wanting] a PS3). And my other gaming interest of the moment is Phoenix Wright: Justice For All; if you have even a five minute conversation with me, I'm likely to shout "objection!" at you for something or other.

My little console family

As for the site, it's still basically in "unofficial hiatus." Unofficial because I haven't really stopped working on stuff intentionally, but all the same, I probably won't get much done until after graduation in mid-June.

It IS Fun to Touch!

05/04/07 07:39:54 pm

So I had this dilemma, in which I possessed a number of gift cards for Best Buy, that I was planning to use toward a Wii. But I finally came to terms with the fact that, even if I want a Wii, even if I have the money for a Wii, I still can't get a Wii. Unless you're willing to devote a good deal of time and energy to frequently searching high and low, you just can't get your hands on one. So, while I still want one, I decided to give up on my hopes of getting one any time soon... and bought a DS with my gift cards instead. And I'm quite pleased with it ^^ I've already got a list of games I want to play, but if there's one (or more) that you particularly love, leave a comment - recommend it. Actually, I've never owned a GBA either, but since the DS is backwards compatible, you could recommend me some of those as well. :)

Particularly, can someone vouch for Nintendogs? I've heard good things, but I fear it may be too kiddie to hold my attention. See, I've been thinking about wanting a puppy lately, but it's not an appropriate time in my life to get a real puppy... so what's the next best thing? Nintendogs, right? ^^;

I've also still been playing Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix+, but I've gotten up to the "nitty gritty" at the end, where the story is basically finished except for the ending itself, and I'm running around collecting synth materials, fighting bonus bosses, stuff like that. I'll perhaps write up a post about it later; it's just less interesting to write about, since it's about 80% the same as the original Kingdom Hearts II. Most of what's new is boss battles, and a couple of cut scenes, most of which are kind of pointless - Juusan Kikan sits in the basement and pummels you with repetitive plot points - but some are worthwhile (particularly the one with Axel and Roxas after you defeat Roxas... I'm no shipper, but, awww, *sniffle*).

As for skins... to be honest, I just haven't felt like making 'em lately. If I force myself to make 'em, they come out poorly, so I'd rather simply wait until I want to do it again. "On sabbatical," I suppose ;) Also, there's about half-a-quarter left of school before I graduate (!); even if I have sufficient time, it's become difficult to focus on schoolwork, resulting in it taking longer than it should. ^^; So I just need to tromp through a few more weeks... And finally, there's some new stuff I'm working on that's just not ready for distribution yet.

Oh yes, and, after taking a look at my traffic stats for the month of April, looks like hits were up 70% from the previous month :O Gee Golly! (Pardon my French.) So that explains where all the bandwidth went.

Re:CoM Wrap Up

04/17/07 10:38:19 pm

A few words (hmm, actually it turned out to be a lot of words...) after having finished up the Re:CoM disc of KHIIFM+. In general, the game exceeded my expectations for it by lasting a good 30 hours (though people more skilled at the card battling system could probably go considerably faster ^^;), providing fun, if a bit flawed gameplay, and, in my opinion, deeper supporting characters than those found in KHII.

Maybe it's just me, but I didn't find myself very enthralled by [most of] the Organization members in KHII; they're standard villainry, not a whole lot more. Re:CoM, on the other hand, reveals more character in them through in-fighting, manipulation, varying loyalties and the like. Riku also gets far more character development in this title than any of the others, which also fostered a greater liking of him. And of course, if you'd never played the original CoM (as I have not), the connection of story between KH and KHII is far more clear now. ^^;

The gameplay of Riku's story was, however, a bit shallow. In total, his story took me about 6 hours, and that's being generous. Losing in battle was a rare event, limited to incidents of personal inattention (or stupidity), basically. It was also frustrating not being able to edit my deck - I would never intentionally suffer the shame of having such low-numeral cards in my deck - and not being able to heal unless you had a Mickey card with a high-enough number not to be broken; though, presumably as compensation, it was fun having nearly every black card available, and especially helpful not having to charge to reload.

As for specifics on Sora's side, I thought the last couple of battles were not very difficult; what trumps in this game is speed - if the boss isn't fast, it isn't that hard. At least that was the case for me anyway, so I typically had the most trouble with Riku and Larxene. Marluxia, on the other hand, only got tricky when he started throwing down stock techniques at a-mile-a-minute (...and when he scattered my cards around the battlefield T_T "An edge got bented!").

Although it did grow on me a bit, I still never felt great about the card-and-real-time fighting thing. As explained in an earlier post, the two forms just don't mesh all that well. Still, the fact that I kept on playing through to the end, means an A for effort for Re:CoM. For those of you hoping the game will be released in English... good luck with that (or if you start studying Japanese now, you'll might obtain effective comprehension in time for Kingdom Hearts IX!).

Just for fun, I wanted to add a video of a cut scene along with this post... but couldn't achieve an acceptable balance between file size and quality :/ And video editing (or the attempt to do so) on my computer makes it choke on its tongue. So, instead, you get a single frame from that video.

And I'll work on my video production skillz.

More Mix

04/03/07 12:59:09 am

Real time fighting and cards don't mix (unless perhaps you're Gambit). The thing about card games is that you have time to labor over strategy - to look at what you've got in your hand, to carefully pick out what you'll play first, what you'll save for later, what you'll use in a pinch, etc. That's what makes card games fun.

When you take that "thinking time" away by putting a card game in a real time fight, much of said fun is taken away. And what's left of the strategy aspect is not so much strategic as it is being able to tell which of two numbers is greater. Meanwhile, the fun of real time fighting has also been nerfed thanks to the absence of dodge and defense tactics - if you don't have the greater of those two numbers, you pretty much have to sit there and get pummeled. Well, you can still run around I suppose, but I've also found that the camera does not work as well as it did in KH. Particularly during the battles with Jafaar and Hades, I felt pretty disadvantaged by lousy angles and slow correction of them.

Overall I'm still enjoying it for what it is though. It's not a KH Playstation title of its own - it's an extra. No FMVs (so far anyway), voice acting and cut scenes pretty limited, gameplay is rather repetitive (in addition to the already noted drawbacks), but it moves at a good quick pace.

I also did play a bit more of disc one, and happened upon an extra scene starring the ever-popular Juusan Kikan. Unfortunately there was no voice acting to it, and my Japanese reading ability is not quite at the speed of subtitles yet. And... I neglected to pause it... (since said subtitles are still visible when you pause... hence I could've read it that way). Drat. But that's what back-up save files are for! ^^;

Hm? Skins? Oh, right. There's one of Sasuke, and one of Ravi/Lavi/Labi/Rabi [this is why romanization is just... troublesome, sometimes] among some others in the works. As you can probably tell, I've been ... distracted.

Final Mix

03/31/07 12:32:47 am

So I try out Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix Plus, the first disc, and am surprised to be hearing "Sanctuary" rather than "Passion," and English dialogue once the game's started. "Hm, maybe this isn't the right game... No, the subtitles and all the other text is in Japanese..." I suppose most Japanese players would not have played the English version, and thus the English voice track would be considered an "extra" in that context. Incidentally, I haven't played the English version either, but I don't really want to. ^^; If that's all that's different about it (and different colored Heartless and Nobodies), I can't say I'm terribly interested.

Though, the main draw of the game, in my eyes, was Re: Chain of Memories. Off I went to disc two. After getting past the title screen, I was immediately struck by the appearance of reduced visual quality - compared to the first disc I'd just seen, this one looked notably fuzzy. No points for a snazzy opening - it was just scenes of the first KH with credits and "Hikari" overlaid. So my feeling so far is an ominous, "sloppily tacked on?" On we go to actual gameplay, where things seem alright, but... I never played CoM, but it seems like that card-based battling system never earned many fans... and it still won't, I think. Still, I will be playing this rather than the KHII disc.

We'll see how things pan out.

Non-Committal

02/10/07 02:53:23 pm

Lately I can't seem to get any one skin done because I keep finding new, more alluring images halfway through. Take for instance the two KHII skins shown below - they were going along swell... And then I stumbled into this .hack//GU wallpaper thread (a must-see for GU fans!), and got sidetracked. So now we have two mock ups from there as well. And the four from the previous preview are still where I've left them. Frankly I doubt any of them will be done this weekend [Edit: that I prove myself wrong, is not a good thing].

GU 3 was beaten awhile ago, but that Itami no Mori dungeon is only half done (and will likely remain that way until Spring Break). I started to write something of my thoughts on the series, but it remains unfinished like so many things. Suffice to say, vol 2 and the first part of vol 3 were the low points, but I was quite satisfied by the end. Aina (or "Ina" - I don't care for the way they romanize some of the names: "Youkou" as "Yowkow"?) seemed like something of a throw-away character, but there had to be something driving Ovan. And I'm glad they tied the story more firmly back in to the overall .hack mythos, with Net Slum, Aura and Cubia [and wow did he look cool XD] making appearances.

邪魔する学校

02/03/07 05:39:12 pm

Oh my, is it midterm time already? School's a pain in the butt. Skin production may slow a bit for a few weeks.

For those who are interested in my personal life, I've passed the JET paper application and have been invited for an interview in the latter part of this month. Yays. Are any of you site visitors also JET applicants? Or current or former JETs? Leave a comment, say hi. :)

PS - Since Square-Enix opened their official KHII Final Mix+ site, they've posted a nice wallpaper with many Juusan Kikan ["The Organization"? I didn't play the English version of the game :P] members that's just ripe for skinning...

New Kingdom Hearts Skin! ... Ha, Made You Look

01/21/07 01:05:58 am

New Zelda skin up; gradually getting better at and more comfortable with making Modern skins. Also added a new page - the site's Top and Bottom (that is, Most and Least Popular) Skins - from which we can conclude, Kingdom Hearts and Ed Elric are ridiculously popular, and Reboot is not. Shame on you all. :P The link to said page is in the left-hand column.

On a random note, .hack//GU vol 3's villain has taken on a markedly FFX Seymour air... This displeases me. Also not pleased by the fact that the game thus far can be described simply as "quest, tournament round, repeat." But what can I say, it's the third in a series of three - gotta see the end.

Plug & Sunday Soapbox

09/17/06 07:04:31 pm

Plug for a friend's new site - TwiddleGeek.com, an anime n' gaming blog. Give it a visit why don't ya? There's a lot more updatin' going on there than here ^^;

And, in the spirit of game discussion... or.. just cause I want to... A word on the soon-to-be-released in North America PS2 game, Okami. I tried it out because it was getting rave reviews, and looked like something I might enjoy. Well... I will say that, as far as visuals and music go, Okami is a delight. In fact, you can probably get all the best aspects of this game simply by watching someone play it (assuming you're not watching it over a poor webcam feed).

The gameplay, however, leaves me wanting. There's really no challenge to be had in this game; enemies are easily smacked to death by button-mashing. The fudewaza ["brush techniques"] can be amusing - paint your enemy black to cripple his accuracy, or if that flying creature's out of reach, use the "cut" stroke to slash his wings off - but they get old as they're rather unnecessary on the whole [in minor battles anyway, which seem to comprise most of the battles you'll be encountering...?].

My other main complaint is tooooo muuuuch dialoooogue. It's kind of ironic that, while some character is blabbering away, the camera will cut back to Ama-kou, who has fallen asleep, and this is supposed to be a joke. Well, it is funny, and Okami offers some amusing character interaction, if you're willing to sit through the over-long exposition for it. Also, who in their right mind thinks that those Banjo Kazooie style animal murmurs instead of actual voiced dialogue are a good thing? Please no more ^^;

So, essentially, I'd say Okami is a rental; worth playing for awhile, but underneath all the visual hoo-ha is a game that gets dull too soon. You can play it until .hack//GU comes out.

Edit: Eh, maybe that's too harsh. ^^; It's just hard not to expect a lot from a game that gets upper 90s on nearly all of its reviews. It is a very good game, it just has some persistent annoyances ("Issun, can you keep your yap shut for more than 5 minutes?"), and I still retain that there's little challenging about it ("And here we draw another circle..."). At present, I like it better than FFXII; how's that?

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