False advertising

Nothing new is coming out, good thing I picked this crap up then. I might have been bored this week. Make no mistake, this game sucks, but I said I'd pick it up for $20, so I picked it up for $20. I wonder which one I'll end up playing more, this or Tomb Raider Underworld. After the demos of each, Tomb Raider is ahead by the 20 minutes it took to complete the demo, and the two I spent in the intro stage to the actual game. Beast Rider so far has about a minute to it's credit. I quit the demo after the opening movie. Maybe I should get drunk before starting this, that could help. But I'd need cheap booze, anything that costs over $10 is a waste on this. Decisions, decisions.

Second thought: Well this surprised the hell out of me. I wasn't immediately offended by this game when I started it up, unlike the demo. Maybe it was the cool title screen. The game is by no means a master piece, but then again, neither were any of the Golden Axe games. It has a little too many buttons to be an arcadey title, but it has enough random violence to make it an entertaining button masher. Not bad for $20. Also, maybe I've been playing a little too many PS2 games lately, but this one looks great. Screen tearing and frame dropping are present, but when standing still and panning around the areas, it does impress.

Use it or loose it

Another empty week. Looks like it's time to hit up eBay again. Next week is the official date for Muramasa The Demon Blade. Maybe I should get my Wii back one of these days, so I can actually play these games I keep buying. Meh, no rush I suppose.

Kingdom under metal

This looks like "classic" Kingdom Under Fire (as in Crusaders, not KUF 1, which was an RTS). Where's the MMO crap? Did they ditch it and built a cookie-cutter sequel on the 360 (PC)? I'll pick it up now if that's the case, but that actually is a little disappointing. I loathe MMO's, but I'd prefer something different. Circle Of Doom was a step in the right direction. Diversity is something a franchise should shoot for, and this one in particular has been known for. I think they should go back to vanilla RTS. That would be ballsy.

Real robots final attack

I've had Super Robot Wars W for a while. I picked it up 'cause it had Tekkaman Blade and Detonator Orgun in it. I'm not a big fan of Gundam and Mazinger and the like, so I never felt the need to dabble with this franchise. After playing it for a bit I was super impressed with the presentation. The field graphics and menus are as generic as they come, and look like they haven't changed since the series' Famicom origins. The attack animations though were spectacular. It boarders on animation using sprite graphics, something the PC Engine, and Neo Geo pioneered decades ago, but could never utilize fully. I guess the DS can, and boy do the devs run with it. It's worth it alone to pick up any of the games in the franchise to see the craziness reproduced with pixels. (Now I'm one of the nerds whining about not getting Original Generations on PS2.)

The problem I had with W is that, like most of the games in the series, it's only in Japanese. While perfectly playable by trial and error alone, I didn't want to waste too much time on it. (Hell, I just wanted to see a Voltekka.) I decided to pick up one of the two SRW games to get an English localization, to learn the ropes before giving W a serious shot. That game would be Super Robot Taisen Original Generation for GBA. (Why the "Taisen?" There's a perfectly equivalent word in the English language that can be used here.) The only other one to get localized was its sequel, Original Generation 2, also for GBA. The only SRW games in America are GBA carts. An unfortunate side effect, since they were only brought over due to the lack of any licensed anime mecha, and instead feature original Banpresto designs (read: knock-off's). But still, "sigh." Whatever, the games never pushed the hardware to its limits anyway, as long as the framebuffer had enough space for the crazy attack animations, that's all that's needed.

I'm not so sure if this was a good idea, now. The game's story is split up into two halves, which feature different characters up until the end, when they combine. That's fine and good, but if your characters are annoying little kids, the fun factor drops significantly. The kid I initially picked is an annoying cliche "hot head," never follows orders, doesn't co-operate with this team mates, gets killed easily in his first encounter. It's mind numbingly boring. I've seen this one a few times already Banpresto. After 10+ years you couldn't think of anything better? I'll give the other guy a shot, and hope I can stomach his plot. This is one of the rare cases when the English localization gets in the way.

Another impressive aspect of SRW is the music. W had great tunes that always remind me of Mega Man X's (the 16-bit ones) chiptune rock. The GBA, since it has a weaker sound chip, can't quite rock out like the DS, but the catchyness is still there. Quite a few of the themes are reused from previous games, and are used again in subsequent installments. This series always has an ensemble cast of pilots and robots, and they all bring their theme music with them, to match the licensed characters and themes of the anime shows featured. I'm actually looking to get the OGs soundtrack, since it seems to be the closest to the 16-bitness, but takes advantage of the beefier specs for more bombast, much like the game itself (which happens to be the GBA Original Generation games stuck together on one disc).

2nd: Gave the other guy a try last night. 1,000% improvement. The guy isn't a whinny little bitch, an his supporting cast is funny and educational. I might actually finish this scenario.

As advertised

I got a Google Calendar reminder email yesterday, letting me know that D3's Dream Club is hitting stores today. I did completely forget about that game in the last few weeks, so this actually worked as intended. Too bad that I have no intention anymore of touching that game, not even at a discount price.

Other then that, the only recent game release worth looking into is the PS2 port of Melty Blood Actress Again, which is very much a quality port job. Makes getting burned by Arcana Heart 2 sting that much more. I'll grab it eventually, but I do have quite a few PS2 games piling up already, so this one will have to wait.

I also had Mana Khemia 2 marked down for this past Tuesday, but since I'm no longer in any need of PS2 RPG's, I'm skipping it. Gust looses again. At this rate Atelier Rorona will be my first Gust game, if they're lucky. The spotty releases will continue for the next few months leading up to TGS and the holiday season. I don't see anything happening then either, but maybe a few people will have some surprises.

Yasunori Mitsuda made a shooting game

How can you make this statement suck? Oh, it's for cellphones? And it emulates those olde LCD games? Register based drawing (read: choppy as fuck), and beeps and clicks for sound effects (most likely with no music what so ever) makes this a pretty big disappointment, especially since Mitsuda and the other guy, Sano, were responsible for the great KORG DS-10 synth. I never liked chiptunes, but if there's one person who can make them not suck, it's Mitsuda. Protip: Music needs multiple tracks to be tolerable.

You've never dreamed

Here's a crossover to raise the hairs on the back of your neck, but not in a good way. Japan's MSY Group makers of cheap, plasticy game peripherals, and America's MadCatz, makers of even cheaper plastic peripherals, are teaming up to bring MadCatz's not-as-shitty-as-we-were-expecting official Street Fighter IV peripherals to Japan, sans the SFIV branding. They'll be bringing a vanilla Tournament Stick, which, all jokes aside, has been highly praised by hardcore fighter fans, and the vanilla fighting pad. Something I always expected to see. If Japan gets theirs first on October 22nd, I'm snatching one up day one. The Hori pad is nice, but I still prefer the d-pad to be front and center instead of the analog. (And it looks kinda cool too.)

Asleep at the wheel

Yeah, so I've neglected this space for a while. Circumstances beyond my control and all that. I'll be whipping this place into shape over the next few days. Don't get your hopes up, it's not like I missed anything. Possibly retroactively. I've had a few posts marinating in the queue over the past week, If I can't change their creation dates, they'll go up below this post.

PS: (Almost) all the updates are up. Can you catch 'em all?

PPS: After typing up and proofreading all those words, I decided to take a few of my larger posts and average the word count. The average is 750 according to OpenOffice.org Word Processor. Heh, I bet my teachers wish they could have gotten this out of me about Death Of A Salesman. Suckers.

Front Fantasy 4-2

After finishing off Final Fantasy XII, I was in the mood to continue revisiting Final Fantasies I missed. I'm still not quite ready for FFX, so I decided to give X-2 a try, since if nothing else, I hear it has a great battle system. It's certainly old-school in design, the old ATB system is back with very minor revisions, but in practice it falls a little short.

The ATB system worked on the SNES because it was easy to look at the screen and immediately know what's happening at any one time. The trouble here is that this isn't the SNES, and the devs felt that they needed to add flash to the proceedings, throwing in dynamic camera angles, copious one-liners, and upbeat music. Maybe I'm getting old, but I have trouble keeping up with what's happening during battles with more than one opponent. (I actually had similar problems with FFVII the first time. Had to turn the dynamic camera "off" for a good portion of the game.) I immediately switched the ATB to "wait," but everything still felt too hectic, so I also had to change the speed to "slow." It's getting better, but probably since I'm getting used to mashing the buttons faster.

I'm not thrilled with this game as much as I thought I would be. The story is a non-issue for me, since I never cared about X. The much touted "mission based" gameplay seems a little forced. It still plays out like a linear RPG with plot locations getting highlighted in not-too-subtle ways. FFXII's notice boards, or Arc the Lad III's Hunter's Guild were much better in this regard. One of the big reasons I stayed away from X was the forced dub. I was ready for the worst here as well, but I've actually been pleasantly surprised more then once. It's still a mixed bag of quality, but there are quite a few lines that are delivered with expert comic timing which make the characters quite charming and believable. It's still not quite a plus, but it's not a minus either.

The few technical caveats are the only things I have a hard time getting used to. After FFXII's free-floating camera, the fixed angles of X-2, along with their awkward transitions get on my nerves. The 4:3 aspect ratio is also an unfortunate throwback to the "old school." After years of HD 16:9 gaming, I've become jaded. I remember being super excited when first hearing about this game, I thought it took everything about FFX and fixed it. It was the first game that made me seriously consider picking up a PS2 during those hard fought console wars. After finally giving it a try, I'm very glad I waited. This was not the savior of the franchise, and was not worth the price of admission at the time (~$70 for the import). It's a neat little game, and at $15 it's just the right fit. It would be very appropriate to give it a PSP port. The game would lend itself to portable gaming very easily. (True widescreen support, plz.)

Front Mission 4 is a bit of a pleasant surprise. I love Front Mission on the surface for having giant robots blasting each other with equally giant guns. FM3 introduced me (and the rest of America) to the neatly convoluted geopolitics of the FM universe. The game's plot became a chess match between super powers using giant robots as pawns. This has been my favorite treatment of the so called "real robots" subgenre of Japanese mecha tradition. While something like Gundam or Armored Core have their politics in the right place, they toe the line between "real" and "super" a little too closely. FM throws all the kiddy stuff to the wind and drops the players into a futuristic struggle for supremacy between shadowy factions and nations. The scope of the plot literally dwarfs the player characters even more so then the robots they ride on, which are reduced to little more then oversized cars. Though underplayed in their prominence, they are by no means an after thought. The customization options available, as well their numbers, and attention to details, down to each individual mecha's manufacturer, are impressive. They are by all means the stars of this show.

This fourth installment is the second game in the series to see release in America, after the PSX's FM3. I've sadly never finished that game due to it being so damn long. I've probably put close to 60 hours into it, and still saw no end in sight. Not to mention the game is split into two individual stories, of which I only played the first. I did put a lot of time into it, and grew to know the characters, politics, and battle mechanics of the game fairly well. The surprise here in FM4 is that I get to throw all that out the window. While the world is largely the same, the story takes place in different regions (4=Europe/South America, 3=Asia), and the battle system has been tweaked. Long range rifles and missiles are very effective weapons, while shotguns are underpowered (at least initially). Hey, look, I get to learn the ropes all over again. This fixing of things that aren't necessarily broken can be a dangerous thing, but in this case I believe it worked quite well. After all, when you buy a new car, it will handle very differently from your old one, why shouldn't it be the same for giant robots?

While the gameplay is a positive change over the prequel, the story seems to be a miss step (so far. I haven't played too much of it yet to know for sure). While the "first" (FM3) game was split into two halves, giving the player the option of starting one or the other at the beginning, and sticking with it, here the story is made up of two halves that play out concurrently, switching every once in a while between the two. This is a much more effective way of taking the player out of the game experience then the pre-rendered cutscenes all the pundits loved to harp on back then. If I'm in Germany stomping around forests one minute, and in Venezuela driving a truck the next, the unceremonious transition kills the mood pretty thoroughly. I can't continue my original path to further the plot, so I'm frustrated, at the same time I'm given these all new characters for whom I don't care at all, giving me no incentive to further their plot. A little "meanwhile..." transition would have helped. If I had not know of this device beforehand I would have probably stopped playing when this transition first happened. Not a good call SE.

Screenshots of this game were all very underwhelming. I actually never had any interest to pick this up, despite my love for FM. Actually looking at it in real life is a much different story. The graphics, while very subtle, are very detailed. The environments are all full of little things that give the proceedings a sense of scale (cars, fences, traffic cones, etc.). Unfortunately, unlike in FM3, the environments look like they aren't destructible. (Also, the game lacks the option to eject pilots. While it's an unimportant detail, it could do nothing but add to the realism). For a game that plays out largely through menus, it's important for them to be readable and if not exciting, at least tolerable to look at. FM always had very minimalistic menus, and a drab color scheme (mostly grays, browns, greens and their assorted combinations). FM4 very much sticks to tradition, but the whole thing is very pleasant to look at thanks to the high refresh rate. It feels as if the menus are rendered at 60fps, making them clear and sharp, while the rest of the graphics are 30, and use that "motion blur" frame blending effect that PS2 needed to combat aliasing. Thankfully they turn that off during battles, so it's clear what's going on. Always a plus in a tactical RPG.

Audio is good enough. The voice acting isn't anything to write home about. No one makes it shine, and no one fucks it up either. The characters seem to be pretty generic as well. That may or may not change, I can't tell since I've never played a FM game to the end. The music is good, but not spectacular. Military/techno themes suitable to the action on screen. The sound effects seem a little watered down. When I see a robot blast another one with machine guns, I expect the sound they make to have more of an "oomph" then a M-16. I'll chalk this one up to the Japanese lack of a collective hardon for firearms. (Let Skywalker Sound do the effects for FM6.)

Not a bad score for $27. I'm begining to think this whole "wait on it" approach to gaming is a good idea.

Nanobroken

The first of what will become many posts detailing some of the crap I picked up over the past weeks. Before you go asking "why," my answer is because "it was less then $2." I always wanted to try this game out (and OZ). I did pop it in for a few minutes, and it didn't exactly set my thumbs on fire. It may be pretty cool at later levels, but at the beginning the standard enemies take way too much time to kill, using the small set of attacks initially available. I can literally see the potential for expansion here (the menu shows the combo upgrade path, with blanks for possible future attacks), but it's pretty boring and repetitive at first. (Konami May Cry.) It does look slick at 60fps, but the character models and environments are pretty plain. The "red oil" all over the place is pretty fun to see. I'll pop it in at assorted times if I have a few minutes to kill, but it's definitely not something I'll invest any serious time into. I already have a few of those games on the way.

It really is now

If digital distribution is the future, the future is now. Sony is beefing up their PSN game store with as many PSP games as they can before the release of the UMD-less PSP Go. SNK decided to jump in with the only PSP games they have, Metal Slug Complete, and Arcade Classics Vol. 1. Without the artwork, what's the point? And what the hell happened to Roukuban Shoubu?

Presented by Cave

Speaking of large amounts of money, if you still have any left by November 26th, you may consider spending it on Cave's Mushihime-sama Futari Ver.1.5. The regular edition will be ¥7,149, and the limited, ¥9,669. The LE will come with a "Double Arrange Soundtrack" album, featuring remixes of music from the first Mushihime-sama game, as well as the sequel, Furari. That's a pretty good deal, even if you're not an arcade game fan; One game and two AST's for ~$96. And just so you don't go thinking Cave is going to slack off after they finish up Mushihime, they've announced plans to bring home the formerly arcade-only ESP Galuda II at an undisclosed future date, also for 360. Both games will feature graphical enhancements similar to the one featured in Deathsmiles. Finally, shooting games can benefit from home consoles powerful enough to enhance the originals. Not even the Dreamcast could achieve that.

Agarest again

About the only thing we can count on (as usual) is spending $60 on a PS2 game this week. That's the regular edition of Melty Blood Actress Again, the LE will set you back $79.99. After a few weeks of picking up games I passed on the first time around, for an average of $10 per game, I'm not so enthusiastic about those prices. Especially after getting quite burned by Arcana Heart 2. I'll be carefully researching this one before pulling the trigger. Other then that, nobody actually knows anything about anything. The publisher's website has the original date of August 21st as the release date of Agarest Generations Of War, a press release I found has a "September" date, while NCSX has a more precise, and distant date of October 16th. Amazon.co.uk doesn't even have a listing for it. All is normal on the Western front.

Closing imaginativeness

100 hours later I finally saw the closing credits of Final Fantsy XII. Good game. It certainly won't go knocking any of my current favs off of their places in the order of things, but it certainly earns a place of its own. Much, like Final Fantasy VIII before it, it rocks the FF boat a little too much, but winds up being a very good game by itself in the end, if not a very good Final Fantasy. The credits roll after the last boss is defeated, but that is not the end of the game. FFXII has always been described as a single-player MMO, and it certainly is built like one. There are notice boards in various cities where quests to kill certain monsters are posted. Each completed quest gives the player a few gil and some items. Making them more worthwhile then the actual story events even. I still have quite a few of those to go, and most of my time in the game has been spent completing these, or similar story-related, quests. Every game since Arc The Lad II should have a hunters guild, if only to have something to do other then the main story quest. In fact, the story of the game is almost an afterthought. Probably stemming from the fact the original producer quit half-way through over creative differences, and the game had to be patched up by someone else. Most of the enjoyment in FFXII can be extracted from roaming the varied and vast landscape and killing hordes of critters along the way. The Gambit battle system is an ingenious innovation, turning the battle system into a logic puzzle of sorts. If you don't like logic, this isn't the game for you. If you ever had any interest in ArtDink's Carnage Heart, check it out. FFXII rekindled my interest in Final Fantasy games that FFX destroyed. I was actually originally looking forward to XIII, but couldn't wait any longer so I picked up XII. After the demo, and learning more about the production process, XIII is sounding more and more like the game that will kill off my interest yet again. I only hope VersusXIII is more of a complete product.

Oh hai

Wutz goin on in here? If this site appeared offline for the past 48 hours, it's because it _was_ offline for the past 48 hours. I forgot to renew my domain name registration, and since I used a now defunct email address to register it in the first place, I never got a reminder. I was lucky that I even remembered I registered it sometime in August, otherwise I'd have spent days wracking my brains trying to figure out why the site doesn't work. Webadmin-of-the-year right here.

Hazy bell

Through a process that can only be categorised as international fraud, I've gotten access to the BETTA FLASH download-only tracks from their online storefront. (Suck it, iTunes DRM. WAV 4 life.) The first single, "feng wu," is described as a Thunder Force VI image song, whatever the hell that means. It's a very pretty, slow paced, melodic piece. Not the intro song. The second single is a couple of remixes using the Korg DS-10 cart. I think that thing is becoming a Japanese musical genre in and of itself. Anyway, the first song is a remix of "feng wu," which rocks quite a bit more then the original, frankly. The Korg synth track is faster and edgier then the original melody, in addition to Cyua's beautiful vocals. Win. The second track is a remix of a song called "Zhonglong," which just so happens to be the godlike TF intro. This one rocks quite a bit more then the original too, but it's still made up of win. Worth the $3 for the mp3 by itself.

For an organization advertising on myspace, you'd think this Vibirth online store would be friendlier to foreigners using their service. They sure love our money, though. Visa is the universal currency. What's the point of collecting all that damn information, if you're not going to bother using it? Or maybe SNK's corporate HQ will start getting unsolicited junk mail with a gaijin's name all over it. Oops. For the money I've thrown your way over the years Kawasaki, you owe me at least that much.

Out to lunch

Still nothing this week. Next week there will be at least one game that is marginally interesting. Japan will get Melty Blood Actress Again, the revision/sequel to Act Cadenza. I hope we don't get screwed with another Arcana Heart 2-like hack-job. My calendar also tells me that Agarest Senki is due to get an English localization. This is true, since Aksys Games has announced the title for digital distribution through PSN, but before that happened news of a retail release in Europe came about. Next Friday is the alleged date for that disc. I haven't heard anything about the game since that time, so I take this whole thing with even more salt then one should treat Agarest Senki to begin with.

Kill'd

I accidentally discovered that July 24th was the release of these two movies. Yoroi, a zombie/samurai movie from Ryuhei Kitamura and Tak Sakaguchi, and Kill, a short film compilation produced by Mamoru Oshii. How can I pass up a combination like that? I'm very glad I didn't, because both movies are fantastic. The Asian cinema scene has been stagnant lately, pretty much since Ryuhei Kitamura left for Hollywood. A few people had tried to keep the flame of over-the-top action movies burning, but stuff like Death Trance failed to live up its predecessors, despite including identical ingredients. Because of this, I wasn't filled with confidence in these two. Would they squander the opportunity? Would they try to include unnecessary concepts for the sake of being avant-garde? Would they shy away from base violence in order to lure a more high-brow audience? The answer can be found quite easily within the first few moments of either movie. This is katana battle action, bloody and pure.

I watched Yoroi first, since I was at least mildly expecting something entertaining. I mean, there are zombies in it, that already scores it points. What I never expected was Versus Remake. The original Ryhei Kitamura Versus is a masterpiece of action cinema. Mainly because it rips off Kitamura's 80's action movie influences wholesale, something he's quite candid about during the commentary track. Even before his departure to Hollywood, it was clear that Versus 2 would never be made. Kitamura produced five movies in three years after Versus, each with bigger, badder budgets and action scenes, but yielding diminishing returns. Capping off his Japanese career with the final Godzilla film, Final Wars, he left for Hollywood, where he worked with Clive Barker to put out Midnight Meat Train, a competent, but bare-bones horror picture years later. He simply burned out. The Japanese action genre languished without his presence. His accomplices tried to keep the flame burning, including Versus star Tak Sakaguchi , who had transitioned to a more active role behind the camera, as action choreographer starting with Final Wars, and director of Samurai School. He is also the director here, which is why I didn't expect anything mind-blowing. Well, boy was my mind blown. The movie starts of with a short monologue buy a guy walking through a forest at night, seemingly running from something. After he says his peace, we see a closeup of his head being ripped from his shoulders, and carried off by a stumbling figure while gallons of blood spurt from his neck. Yeah, this is going to be good. The very next scene is of a family taking a drive through the country. They turn onto a side road, where the action begins with a bang. Literally, when the distracted driver of the van hits a guy, who is taking aim at the van with his hand gun, while standing in the middle of the road. He then proceeds to get back up on his feet, and takes aim again. The impact and recovery are one scene, no cuts in between. Tony Jaa would be proud. The guy in the road gets gunned down by another mysterious stranger from behind, who proceeds to get into the family's van, with his accomplice, a pink haired moll, and orders to father at gunpoint to drive further up the mountain. And we're on our way. Gangsters with guns kidnapping innocent bystanders, going up a mountain, where have I seen this before? The similarities with Versus become only too apparent when the bumbling cops show up. Oh, and the zombies too, but we knew about them already. Some scenes were simply recreated 100% from Versus, with a little bit of Heat After Dark's setting thrown in. The fog machine was put into overdrive, and colors were very muted. Every scene is either gray, brown, or blue. Combining two of my favorite Kitamura movies, how can I not love this? I won't go into more detail about the plot because unlike Versus, Yoroi actually has a thoughtful story, which isn't simply made up as the filming went along. There is less Devil May Cry-like stuff in here. No flipping through the air while mowing zombies down with machine guns, or slashing shambling corpses into ribbons. This one tends more towards the horror side then the action side. There is plenty of it to go around too. Guns, swords, explosions, it's all here, but in measured quantities, and employed in a sensible manner. If you're a criminal from the city standing in the woods, and you see a zombie what do you do? Gun him down, then run when he gets back up, is the answer this film gave.Yoroi is the proof I needed that Ryuhei Kitamura left Japanese film making in capable hands.

If over-the-top action missing from Yoroi is what you're after, then Kill is your movie. The collection is made up of four separate, and quite different movies:

• Kilico - by Takanori Tsujimoto; A girl-with-sword VS yakuza flick. The bad guy reminds me of Thunder Ryu from No More Heroes. Fairly short and simple, save for the twist at the end.
  
• Kodomo-Zamurai - by Kenta Kukasaku; A very traditional samurai story. Told by gradeschoolers. Think school play, with swords. It also simulates silent era movies, by being filmed in monochrome and featuring narration instead of dialog. The longest and most story-heavy of the shorts. The kids all do a great job acting and fighting, making this on of the standout films of the compilation.
• Zan-Gun - by Minoru Tahara; Evil sword spirit possesses soldiers from different eras who do battle with gunblades. The most predictable of the shorts, and also the most direct. Guy picks up sword, other guy picks up other sword. Fight!
• Assault Girl 2 - by Mamoru Oshii; Imagine a Mamoru Oshii samurai film. Yeah, it's gonna be weird. Assault Girl 2 doesn't disappoint. Right around the shot of the sheep you realize that this is an Oshii project. There is an actual duel between two women, but only one of them has a sword. The title Assault Girl 2 would lead one to believe that there was an Assault Girl 1. One would be technically correct, but the release of this short actually precedes it. The disc contains a trailer for the sci-fi epic Assault Girls which is "coming soon." More girls, more guns, more dragons. I'm there day one.

One thing that I found very enjoyable while watching these movies was the music. The Yoroi soundtrack is particularly excellent. I'll have to keep an eye on the OST CD, since I missed out on the original Versus OST.

Six is a crowd

I knew about the new character added to Mamonoro last week, but I never knew they'd add more. Today G.Rev put up the second new character, Luchino Narukami, who looks like some sort of boy detective. I wonder how many more of these there will be? I don't see anything worth spending my money on yet, but who knows what they can come up with. Between them, G.Rev and Gulti don't have an extensive IP catalog. Maybe Namco will license out the Idolm@ster girls, I don't know how lucrative the DLC market is on the PSP or DS, and with the suspension of L4U add-ons, they'll need a new revenue stream.

Another one bites the dust

Not yet, but I don't see him walking away from this one. Even if the original Japanese IP holders don't press the issue, this guy is charged with stealing from a very American company, and they will go for the jugular over this. It makes me smile to see indictments like this, since these operations make America look like a second China to Japanese companies, so much so that they often have a cynical predisposition to them. With more cases like this, and NeoGeo Freak, hopefully there will be justice for Mitchell one day too.

Kill hookers on the subway

I don't follow iPhone gaming by itself, so if this is old I had no way of knowing. I just noticed Gangstar on Game Watch. I hate Grand Theft Auto clones because they always fail at "getting it," so I'm not interested in this game by itself at all, but I'm sure as hell impressed by the tech. I can't play it for myself, but just the screenshots are impressive. If Gameloft managed to squeeze a GTAIII-like experience into this thing, then we may actually be looking at the future of gaming here.

Music Brainz

Here we have the BETTA FLASH mini album, and a collection of songs by Meiko Kaji. I've been a BETTA FLASH fan ever since watching the opening movie to Thunder Force VI (which still doesn't have an OST released). The songs on this album are pretty different from the TFVI track, but they all contain the parts that make BETTA FLASH special, Tamayo Kawamoto's compositions, and Cyua's vocals. The six tracks on here are all very different from each other as well, some are minimalistic and up beat, some are bombastic and discordant, some are fast, some are slow. It's a nice showcase of what the group is all about. Bonus entertainment points for the English vocals. I can't tell where the English ends and the Japanese begins sometimes (or if it's really English). It looks like they've released a few more songs since last time I checked. A single called 'Feng Wu' ("Dancing Pheonix"(?)) which the description makes out to be the TF theme, but the samples don't really convince me. It seems to be available only through digital download. There's also a remix single of a couple BETTA FLASH tracks using the Korg DS-10 software. This one looks like it was released on physical media (most likely a CD-R). Should have been a DS cart. That I want to hear. All their stuff is available on iTunes, which is region locked, not to mention DRM-laden, so forget that. I'll have to get my hands on the actual discs (C'mon CDJapan), or steal 'em. Alternatively, their label can join eMusic.

After watching the Female Prisoner Scorpion box set, and taking notice of the theme song in the movies, I decided to do some poking around on the 'net. That's when I found this album, which contains it, and 19 other songs by Meiko Kaji. Not willing to shell out the bucks for the actual disc, I tried to find the mp3 of the song. To my surprise I actually found this entire album available. I downloaded it, thinking I would just not listen to the tracks I didn't want. I gave it a listen out of curiosity, and boy am I glad I did. Turns out that song was the weakest of the bunch. I was a Meiko Kaji fan since pretty much the first time I saw her in Female Prisoner Scorpion, but now, thanks to her, I'm an Enka fan too. Horizons = broadened.

Protip: The Femle Prisoner Scorpion theme song is called 'Urami Bushi' ("Grudge Song"), and is also available on the Kill Bill soundtrack album.

Super pillow attack

I stumbled upon Capybara's Pillowfight yesterday in the Android Market. What a surprisingly good game. For something based on girls in their underwear hitting each other with pillows, it has pretty decent depth. Two attacks, high and low, and two defensive moves, block and dodge. That's more moves then Arcana Heart right there. The game is not native to the platform, so some shortcuts had to be taken to get it to control well. The game plays in the upper 3/4th's of the screen, while the lower 1/4th is a picture of a standard cellphone directional button pad that one must tap to control their fighter. Up is the overhead attack, right is the horizontal attack, the two of which can be successively stringed into a combo, knocking the opponent back after the fourth hit. Down is a standing block, and back is a backstep allowing the player to dodge an incoming attack. The center button activates the super attack when the gauge at the bottom of the screen fills up from successful attacks. What more do you need in a fighter, frankly? This game runs fairly well, though still pretty choppy, but the input buffer is pretty forgiving, allowing you to still get out of trouble by "mashing" the block button after an errant attack. It's very playable. The game is set up like a sporting league simulator, and tracks your win-loss record over consecutive seasons, and even has off-season events, like charity matches, that have different rules then a standard match. The graphics are low res, and Game Gear-like, but are animated enough to convey what's going on convincingly. Meeting certain conditions earns you "achievements," if you're into that sort of thing. Multiple outfits and choices of pillows can become available over the span of the game. The girls don't look half bad, either. An impressive effort all around, totally worth the $1.99.

On a related note, the Android Market is a complete mess, literally, with applications scattered all over the place, without any convincing sorting order. It's impossible to search by publisher, or alphabetically, unless you type the name into the search field, and forget about genres. How can I find a hidden gem of a puzzle game if I don't know what it's called? Combined with the default sorting order by popularity (number of downloads, a wholly shoddy indicator of quality), it makes the whole experience a pain for both users, and I'm sure devs and publishers as well. If Android wants to be taken seriously as a platform, they need to whip this thing into shape. Coincidentally, it's the same on the other side of the fence.

Mamoru-kun is subsidized

G.Rev put on their best Bandai Namco impression on Friday, by putting up the first DLC for Mamonoro on XBLM, a new playable character. Nowa looks like some sort of evil nun, sporting a black-and-white outfit, beads, and horns. She also has a bat-like-thing as a familiar, and some cray-ass firing patterns. It's all good so far. The catch? She'll cost you 400 MSP. I don't think I'll be jumping in.

As a side note, DLC seems to be an effective income generating method for all companies, big and small. Idea Factory, for example, has been effectively using it to fund their PS3 games like Agarest Senki and X-Edge. If it can help them put games out on home consoles, instead of the DS, I'm all for it.

Back to the old school

When I first played this game back in the day, I actually realized that it had the power to suck away my life, and decided then and there to stop playing PC games. No time like the present to get sucked back in. Besides, two games for $20 is an automatic must-buy. I ordered Neverwinter Nights Diamond Edition at the same time but for some damn reason it hasn't shipped yet.

Plan C

Nothing to see here. Seriously, it's a blank slate until the 20th. Maybe I should take a vacation.

Getting better

This was included at the bottom of the weekly PSN newsletter. Strikers 1945 Plus is available for download for the PSP. $11.99 is still a little much, but it's nice to see that the few noteworthy, though shovelware-class releases might have a future through digital delivery. Also, it seems someone was asleep at the wheel when filling out the database entry. PSOne? Really? Though, to be honest, I would prefer the PSX port of 1945 for $4.99 instead.