Christmas Break

Well I was too busy playing with all my new toys to write recently, but alot has happened in the last week or so.

For Christmas I got Hellsing and Rozen Maiden manga, Valkyria Chronicles and Left 4 Dead (pc).

Left 4 Dead is pretty awesome, played it non-stop for a whole day or so.  Played through all the campaigns, and then did Versus quite a bit.  Pretty fun.  Boomer makes funny noises.  I can’t seem to get the tongue to stick when I play as Smoker, I donno, probably just suck at it.

I think this kid was in one of my tech classes

I would say that The Witch is hot and I’d tap that, but she’s just a little too teary.  If she was laughing she would instantly be promoted to “tappable.”

Damn right I'm going to hit that

Valkyria Chronicles… I didn’t quite know what to think at first.  It has a very interesting art style, but it’s pretty fun game.  Story heavy though, so if you like run and gun this might not be for you.

I was rather disappointed, even though the game case makes it clear, but the chick at the top of the cover is a bad guy girl.  The very first time you see her in game is in a meeting with the big bads of the story, but it was pretty clear before.  All the ‘good guys’ have pretty normal hair and eye color but on the cover she has red eyes and blue hair (silverish in game) as well as being centered and the main focus of the cover.  But since she’s not the main character, obvious bad girl.  Which is kinda sad, I mean, red eyes ==  awesome.

Brown hair, Brown eyes. Red hair, hazleish eyes. Silver hair, red eyes. Guess who the bad guy is.

Hellsing is pretty awesome, read it all, left wanting more.  Luckly just a few days ago, DemonRin finished his Hellsing OVA 5 subs, so I had more to watch.  Honestly, if you like blood, vampires, awesome or cool, you should go watch Hellsing.  Not the TV series, that sucked.  Look for Hellsing Ultimate or Hellsing OVAs.  So far there are 5 50ish minute episodes.

kukuku

Haven’t started Rozen Maiden manga yet, but the anime was pretty good so we’ll see how awesome the manga is.

Non-Christmas related stuffs:

Well the fall anime season is pretty much over.  All the quarter year anime have finished.  So I watched one, Chaos;Head.   Holycrap freaking awesome.  It’s kinda like Paranoia Agent + Mai HiME.  Well, if Paranoia Agent had paranoia in it, it would be at least.  Paranoia Agent sucked, Chaos;Head is awesome.  You should watch it.

If you are God, and the delusion becomes reality...

The story of an Otaku semi-hikikomori.  He spends his time playing MMOs and watching anime.  To maximize his time in game, he’s created his minimum attendance chart, showing the least amount of time he has to spend at school in order to graduate.  However, his calm life gets interrupted when he sees one of the ‘new gen’ crimes.

That’s all the preview you get from me.  I highly recomend Chaos;Head.  And yes, the semicolon is intentional.

Red Alert 3 and Outlaw Star

Well, that Tuesday/Thursday plan fell apart pretty quickly.. ah well, I’ll just talk about both RA3 and Outlaw Star

What a guy

Red Alert 3 came out at the same time Fallout 3 did, so it’s been pretty overshadowed..  But it’s not by any means a bad game.  As far as the game goes, it plays much like the older games.  Campaign mode adds a co-commander that helps out a bit.  Co op with a friend is interesting, unfortunately it cannot be done over LAN yet..

A main difference between this game and the other RTS games is it’s focus on micro management.  Especially with the Japanese faction.

The women of Red Alert 3

Single player was ok, the co-commander is both helpful and annoying depending on how you use him.  Cut scenes were full of women and Tim Curry, so can’t complain too much.  The overall storyline is about the same as the others in Red Alert.  Faction has power, tries to take over the world.  Nothing we haven’t seen before.

I’ve been playing LAN skirmishes with/against a friend of mine.  We’re having quite a bit of fun with it.  Definately a fun multiplayer game, if you’ve got friends who enjoy RTS games this might be one to look into.

Anyway, on to Outlaw Star

The Crew of the Outlaw Star

Pretty good show, seemed like alot of the episodes didn’t flow very well.. but I enjoyed it.

It had a good cast of characters with many funny parts but also a good mix of serious business.  The serious business was mostly in the form of “can androids dream of electric sheep” revolving around Melfina.

I'd tap that

All in all, good show, I’d recomend it again.

Fallout 3 and Blogging

Well it’s been like half a year since my last post, but I think I’m going to try to post on a regular basis, maybe every tuesday an thursday or something.  The content will probably vary, but it’ll mostly deal with anime, games, and sometimes tech news or just stuff I find interesting.  Today will fall under the games category.

A review for the recently released game: Fallout 3

I got the game on it’s release date about a week or so ago.  I was a little worried at first, every time I’ve tried to play Oblivion I get bored of the game after I get so far.  Despite starting that game many times, I’ve yet to finish it, or even get further in the main quest line than bringing the prince to the castle thingy.  Don’t get me wrong, I’ve spent many hours having fun on Oblivion, becoming leader of the Dark Brotherhood, the Grey Fox, exploring, it’s just I always get bored, and since Fallout 3 is by the same group that brought us Oblivion I was a little worried I’d never finish it.

That turned out to not being a problem, since I got it, I have pretty much not stopped playing.  I put about 30 hours in before I finished the main quest line and yet I reloaded an older save and I’m still going, simply exploring and finding all the little things.  I feel Bethesda has really improved since Oblivion.  The faces while still aren’t that great looking are much better than Oblivion, which is one of my problems.  Also the scaled leveling system has improved.  In unmodded Oblivion, if you’ve never played it, everyone and everything would level up with you so the difficulty was always the same.  The simple bandits you see right out of the tutorial would be wearing the best armor when you were higher level.  However, in Fallout, the lowly raiders will never be in Power Armor.  A couple of them (maybe a single raider in a group of them) will find a Laser pistol lying around, but when you’re level 20 with your plasma rifle and Power Armor, you won’t find them much problem.

Up ’til now, I’ve been comparing the game to Oblivion, rather than the previous Fallout games.  But as Bethesda created this game with the Oblivion engine, it’s an excellent comparison game.  But this game definitely fits under the Fallout title.  Just emerging from the Vault and seeing the real world can be awesome and depressing at the same time, at a level the previous Fallout games were unable to reach, not because they failed at post apocalyptic setting, but because of technological limitations of the time.  Fallout and Fallout 2 definitely had more emphasis on stats than Fallout 3, but I’m not the kind of person to freak out about that.  I’m not playing the game for stats, I’m playing the game for Post-apocalyptic atmosphere, and Fallout 3 definitely hits that nail on the head.

Washington DC

Of course, some people are still whining that it’s just Oblivion with guns.  But I say it’s much more than that.  Overall more engaging and just all around fun than Oblivion, however you’d have to play it for yourself to see.  Weather or not you had fun with Oblivion or if you liked the old Fallout games, this is definately a game worth the $50 (USD) they’re asking for.

Shishkabob -- One of my favorites

Yeah, that’s my review.  Didn’t mention anything about graphics, sound, or any of that other stuff normal reviews mention.  Oh well.  I plan on saying something about Red Alert 3, Dead Space and Outlaw Star sometime in the near future as well.  Until then, Later!

~

Aelphais