• Wednesday, June 09th, 2010
So I’ve been gaming a bit more than usual once again. I finished Red Dead Redemption the other day. For those that don’t know, it’s an open world game set in the old west around the border between the USA and Mexico in the early 1900s. You play a man named John Marsden and it’s up to you if you want to be a law abiding gunslinger or or as an outlaw. At the end of the day it doesn’t make much difference which you choose. The game’s made by Rockstar who are famous for the Grand Theft Auto series of games, and it really shows. Personally I found it a lot more enjoyable than the most recent Grand Theft Auto, GTA IV, but like that game it’s still a world made up of largely unlikable characters with the story held together by missions relying on very muddy and glitchy gameplay. My tolerance for this formula has been rapidly depleting in recent years.
I literally could ramble on for thousands of words about Red Dead Redemption’s myriad problems and glitches or the vast number missed opportunities, but when it comes down to it the game still manages to hold it’s own while remaining fun. This is something GTA IV didn’t manage for me. Fun is why many of us play games after all and I’m not about to waste time on something I don’t enjoy. I happily played this game to it’s end and I think that stands for something. I’d be more harsh on it if it wasn’t for it’s powerful ending which to me redeems where they took the story. I really have to give Rockstar credit here. Still they can’t manage to wield the emotional clout of another game I’ve been playing, Fragile Dreams: ~Farewell Ruins of the Moon~, but that’s a topic for a future post.
I kind of feel like I haven’t been watching much anime lately, but it doesn’t entirely ring true when I say it. I’ve still managed to get through a few random series with friends as well as Funimation’s Blu-ray of Evangelion 1.11 that I imported a while back. Very impressed with that I must say. Of course 1.11 is already old hat and the next movie in this new Evangelion series, 2.22, is the new hotness of the fansub world. Watching it in any format but Blu-ray though doesn’t appeal. Blu-ray revels in content like this and I’m prepared to wait for the full experience. While waiting though it’s probably best I keep away from places like CDJapan and Amazon JP. I swear they’re trying to bankrupt me with Blu-ray boxset announcements. I’ve had to draw the line at The Legend of the Galactic Heroes Blu-rays which I’d love to own being one of the best series I’ve ever seen, but four box sets at 50500yen each (NZ$833 at todays exchange rate) is far too rich for my blood.
• Friday, April 02nd, 2010
Well Dragon Age Origins: Awakening was a little disappointing. I still enjoyed it, but it didn’t build on any of the aspects I liked best in the original game. Instead there was a heavy focus on being a “Grey Warden”. In a way I’m not surprised in that this seems to be how Bioware rolls these days. Both Dragon Age and Mass Effect like to lock characters into belonging to a faction, and honestly I don’t see the need for this. In Mass Effect 2 the way they forced your character to change allegiance between such factions came across really awkward and implausible. In ME2 it could have been done better and made to work, but even then I don’t see why it’d be worth the effort. Where’s the payoff?
DAO: Awakening thankfully didn’t try any major changes like ME2, but also had problems related to factions. The big one to me is that they didn’t establish why the player (or the player’s character) should even care about the order of the Grey Wardens. So warden membership is low within the region? Who cares. The story already established there were plenty of other wardens elsewhere in the world. Why would a character who’s had little freedom in their life (mages and elves being two such groups within the game) want to sign up with another organization that’s going to order them around and keep track of what they do? Even if they were forced to sign up which is how it came across for certain “origins” in the original game, what would be their motivation for sticking around once the danger had passed and the compulsion had gone? None of this is considered by the game as the player is forced to go through the motions and be led by the nose to the predictable ending.
It’s hard to take Bioware’s disparagement of the linearity of their competitor’s games seriously when they can’t manage to do better themselves. Ironically Bioware’s own much maligned Jade Empire managed a tad better in this regard. It was still a very linear game, but at least it didn’t force you to sign on with club of crazies down the road, take on their goals as your own and defend them to the death.
Unfortunately that wasn’t the only issue with Awakening. It definitely felt like it was made by a different team than the original game. The pacing was overly fast and the characterization felt quite inconsistent and shoddy. The set pieces and plot twists came across as having been decided rather arbitrarily. One especially damning point is that the two “Blood taint” skills you could obtain in the previously released Soldier’s Peak DLC actually break when you import an old character into Awakening. In game it looks like they should work, but the skill dialog shows an error message instead of the category name and when you try to use them from the command bar they do nothing but trigger some buggy character animation. It’s not just me that sees this problem, Bioware say the two are simply incompatible. I certainly expected third-party mods wouldn’t work, but having such a visible problem with Bioware’s own official DLC really smacks of a lack of care and effort.
It’s a shame really as some of the core ideas and new characters really had a lot of potential. A few of the new elements work quite well. Having to make executive decisions as the region’s Arl being a case in point. Some of the environments were more dynamic and varied too. I certainly don’t mean to make this expansion sound terrible because it isn’t, but with a little more polish and a bit more thought it could have been substantially better than it is. I hate to see such wasted potential.
• Thursday, March 18th, 2010
So the news has been doing the rounds that Hamilton’s ITM 400 V8 race hasn’t been doing so well financially. Ticket sales are slow even compared to last year. A year which apparently didn’t make a profit and certainly didn’t bring into the region anywhere near the business that had been promised. Supposedly the council took out a $7,950,000 loan in the first year to help fund the initial setup. Now that may not look like a lot of money in this day and age, but it’s worth keeping in mind that this loan lasts for 25 years and is accruing approximately $500,000 in interest annually. In other words over the 25 years the interest alone will add up to $12,500,000, and that’s without even contemplating repayment of the principal itself. That’s another $300,000 every year. Nice one guys. The race organizers are now busy trying to scare people into buying tickets with the threat of us potentially losing the race in coming years. Well cry me a river. Or that’s what I would say if it wasn’t the rate-payers who are going to be left holding the bill for this mess.
But enough about that. I managed to hurt my right hand/wrist/arm recently and have been doing my best to let it recover. Don’t really know what the cause was, but there were a few things I’ve done lately that could have led to me pulling something. At it’s worst it felt like that moment just after someone has punched you really hard in your shoulder, only it felt like that 24-hours a day. Thankfully it’s much better now and seems to be on the mend so I’m just going to keep going easy on it for a while.
I haven’t been playing many games lately. Partly due to the sore arm, but I’d also finished Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth about two weeks back. Now I’m mostly waiting for the Dragon Age Origins: Awakening expansion (why do we get this three days later than the rest of the world?). I was planning to buy Yakuza 3, but it seems when it came to the western localisation SEGA decided to phone it in and cut significant content from the game. Elements of the dialog don’t even make sense any more with the cuts. It’s a shame as with Yakuza 3, and Yakuza 4 just released in Japan, the series looks to be finally getting beyond the “low budget Shenmue” vibe that it’s carried since it’s inception. I can’t say I’m too surprised though with SEGA once again making it clear they are their own worst enemy, but it would be nice if they at least tried to do right by their customers. On the whole it’s a big month for games, but I have no interest in Final Fantasy XIII and only a passing interest in God of War 3, so it’s looking rather quiet for me. Gives me a chance to catch up with highly recommended items on the back-burner like Batman: Arkham Asylum.
• Thursday, February 18th, 2010
Well the latter part of 2009 and the start of 2010 just blew past me. I did my usual trick of having a half written post or two lying around, but they aren’t significant enough for me to feel the need to poach anything. I’m not one to buy into the idea of years being “lucky” or “unlucky”, but quite a few of my family and friends seem to have been having a hard time at the start of the year in various ways. Broken limbs, infectious diseases, expensive stuff breaking or just general bad times. Certainly hope that doesn’t last.
In my gaming time lately I’ve been playing Bioshock 2. Finished it last night and I was impressed with what they’ve done. I finished Mass Effect 2 fairly recently as well and it was good, although not as good as it could have been. It improved on the first game in numerous regards, but fell down in some other key areas. The dialog was rather shoddy for a Bioware game which was made all the more obvious given it was released so soon after Dragon Age: Origins. ME2 definitely wasn’t the 10/10 title many of the reviews suggest. Then again it’s by no means the first time professional reviewers threw similar accolades at flawed games (e.g. Grand Theft Auto 4). I’ve got plenty more to continue on with time permitting. Got a copy of Ace Attorney Investigations for the DS on the way, Heavy Rain is due late February, Dragon Age: Awakening in March, Persona 3 Portable in June. Bound to be others I’m forgetting.
There’s not a lot of interest in the current anime season. So far certainly nothing I can imagine wanting to pick up on Blu-ray. I’m sort of casually watching a few things to see if they go anywhere, but odds alone would suggest most won’t. Fine by me really as it’ll be nice to have a couple of months of smaller CD Japan orders. Well once the current series I’m picking up are done with anyway.
I was going to write some more personal stuff here, but the words aren’t flowing and persevering with it would probably doom this draft to oblivion so I think I’ll let it pass for the time being.
• Wednesday, September 02nd, 2009
I’ve really been feeling tired the last few days. The last month or so has been crazy busy and even thought it’s eased up now I’m still feeling really drained. Plans are looking a bit more relaxed for the next 2-3 weeks though so I think I’ll just take it easy as much as possible. Probably could do with a bit more sleep too. *looks at clock*
Been a bit preoccupied to fit in too many side activities although in my spare time I’ve been up to the usual shenanigans. Any gaming time has been spent playing BlazBlue on PS3 and Mana Khemia on PSP. I want to get back on to Persona 4, but that’s not a game casually when you have 15 minutes to spare. Anime-wise I’ve had a lot on the go although in it hasn’t required much time investment as I haven’t let myself fall behind. Umineko no Naku Koro ni, Bakemonogatari and Saki have been the favs, but even some of the seemingly B-grade shows such as Princess Lover and Fight Ippatsu! Juuden-chan have turned out much more entertaining than expected. I’m still importing discs directly from Japan for shows I like and it’s getting to the point where almost everything is getting a Blu-ray release. They’re all coming out region free so I’m happily grabbing them. The last disc of a few shows came out in August though and many from the next season don’t start until October so I’m going to enjoy a nice cheap September.
My Japanese language study has been going fairly well. I’m not making giant leaps or anything, but I’m pretty much constantly picking up new things and getting more proficient at the things I already knew. I’m am occasionally surprising myself too like how I recently found myself five minutes into an anime episode before I realised I didn’t have any subs turned on. Also been doing a little Manga translation on the side for practise. Incredibly slow going and there’s no way I’d put any deadlines on myself , but it’s all helping with the learning.
Installed the new MacOS X 10.6 (aka Snow Leopard) on my laptop. I may talk about it more later, but on the whole it’s about efficiency and speed. Everything feels substantially quicker. Most of the changes are under the hood and there’s some cool new technologies hiding in there.
• Thursday, February 19th, 2009
Wow, this year is just flying by. Been planning to post here for a while, but it just kept getting pushed off. My summer holiday was the longest I’d had in a few years really with me being off nearly four weeks. I managed to fit a lot in, but there’s always things we never get around to at such times.
I recently (i.e. January) bought another car which honestly has taken quite a load off my shoulders. The old one was fast becoming a money sink and it was clear big repair bills were on the horizon. It’s a shame in a way because the motor was still in great order, but the body was coming close to falling off it. It’s so nice not having to worry about the car again for the near future.
I didn’t really get in much gaming over the holidays, but I did finally complete Persona 3 FES, Fallout 3 and Disgaea 2 since my last post. Thoroughly enjoyed all three and I’m looking forward to their next iterations. I already have Disgaea 3 sitting on the shelf and the local release of Persona 4 isn’t too far away. The only game I’ve really played in the last two weeks has been Mass Effect. Picked the Xbox 360 version up for $40 which I was quite happy with.
Facing the inevitable upfront costs associated with my new car and with the way the currency performing poorly lately (especially against the yen) I’ve been cutting back on expenses a bit. While I’m quite pleased with the results, the areas I’ve been focusing on may seem a little backwards. I mean with DVDs for example rather than cutting back on the more costly Japanese R2 discs I’ve instead cut back on local R4 discs and American R1 discs. Sure I’m getting screwed on the prices, but at the end of the day I’m still spending less money overall and getting a quality product. I’m a big believer in quality over quantity.
Most of the anime series I’d been collecting on DVD through last year have recently had their last volumes released so I’ve moved on to some of the newer shows. Ga-Rei -Zero-, Akane-iro Ni Somaru Saka and Maria+Holic being the main ones all of which I’ve been enjoying a lot. I’m still not finished my code for adding subtitles to these discs, but I have a fully working proof of concept and it’s progressing nicely.
I also recently switched ISPs. I had been with ihug (now Vodafone) for 11 years, and have always had good dealings with them, but since the Vodafone buyout it’s like they’ve just stopped trying to compete any more. I’ve now switched to Orcon and while I have to admit I’m not 100% happy with their service either (the connection is noticeably slower) I’m happy to put up with because for the amount of bandwitdth I use they are a whopping NZ$70 a month cheaper than Vodafone. With numbers like that I’d have to be stupid not to switch even if it means a bit less speed.
Current Music: Jóhann Jóhannsson - Melodia (Guidelines for a Space Propulsion Device based on Heim\'s Quantum Theory) - Fordlândia
• Sunday, November 30th, 2008
This is the first Sunday I’ve been able to spend entirely at home it in the last two months or so and it makes a nice change. Managed to tie up a few loose ends with various things I’ve been doing in a relaxed fashion. I’m so looking forward to my Christmas holidays and actually having the chance to make some proper progress on the various projects I have going as well as catching up with some well needed rest.
Anime-wise I had been slipping a bit behind with the admittedly excessive amount of shows I’d been watching recently. Managed to catch back up on Akane-Iro ni Somaru Saka and Toradora in the last few days. The more I see of the latter the more the internet hate for the show seems unjustified. Also started watching Astro Fighter Sunred which amuses me in many of the same ways the reecently finished Detroit Metal City did. Hoping to catch back up with Ga-Rei Zero tonight.
Not had any time for gaming in the last few days although Eternal Poison for the PS2 has arrived along with what I have to say is the best artbook I’ve yet seen included with a game. The Christmas game release lists have been especially poor this year. The only release I care about in the next month is Persona 4 and I don’t intend to start that until after finishing Persona 3 FES properly. In other Shin Megami Tensei related gaming news I applied to beta test for the upcoming Shin Megami Tensei MMORPG a while back. Hope I get accepted in. No word yet on an english port of Devil Summoner: Raid? Kuzunoha vs. King Abaddon (another Shin Megami Tensei spin-off) yet either. I have no idea how well the first game did, but I thoroughly enjoyed it personally.
Also had the latest Sunn 0))) live album, Domkirke, arrive a few days back. It’s an album that I suspect won’t appeal to many but may prove of interest to the adventurous. The genre of Sunn 0)))’s music is typically referred to as “drone doom” or “drone metal”. Heavy with plenty of guiter, but little in the way of traditional beat or rhythm.
With Domkirke Sunn 0))) were invited to perform in the 12-th century Norwegian Domkirke cathedral and added the cathedral’s pipe organ into their sound. I’d describe it, but it’s easier to quote the cathedral curator Nicholas Mollerhaug.
Our idea behind this concert was to commission a piece of music from Sunn O))) referring to the gothic Gregorian hymns of the late Middle Ages. Hymns that flourished at Bergen Cathedral in its earliest years: the age of the Great Famine and the Black Plague. The Gregorian hymns of this time reflected the despair, the terrors and darkness of the world. Musically the hymns consisted of long slow lines of unison melodies. The unisonity, the dark mood and the slow melodic development are also elements that can be traced back to Sunn O)))’s musical universe.
The album was only released on 180 gram vinyl across two LPs so needless to say my turntable has been getting a workout lately. These are the heaviest and most well made LPs I’ve yet seen. The same can be said of the cardboard sleeve.
Oh, and Malcolm. I don’t know if you read my blog or not, but you need to write that Oblivion review on your blog that you keep talking about.
Current Music: Amaral - Kamikaze - Gato Negro Dragon Rojo
• Wednesday, November 26th, 2008
I mentioned car problems in my last post and these have thankfully been resolved. My car while not entirely on it’s last legs is at the point it’s going to start costing money more regularly. Due to this I’m actively planning to replace it early next year. I’d do it now, but the thought of adding car shopping into the inevitably hectic December schedule really isn’t appealing. At least in January I’ll have some time off to dedicate to the task.
No idea what kind of car I’ll end up with yet. I’m not someone who dislikes cars per-se. You might even say I’m somewhat enthusiastic about them, and there’s certainly many exotic and expensive ones I’ve love to drive. That said the running and maintenance costs extinguish my enthusiasm for anything outside of the square in ways akin to putting out a lit match with a high pressure water blaster. So I’ll probably end up with something boring that will ideally be good at the banal a-to-b malarkey while remaining reasonably cheap to maintain.
Valkyria Chronicles for PS3 arrived a week or so back now and any time I’ve had spare for gaming has been spend in that direction. I’m really impressed by what they’ve done with this game. When I first saw video of the game running in trailers many months ago I thought it looked promising (especially artistically), but there was little sign of any gameplay and I was skeptical. It also was being put out by SEGA and even the most die-hard SEGA fans would have to admit the company has put out little worth playing since they killed the Dreamcast.
No, each time I saw more about Valkyria Chronicles the more I could see it was something I wanted to play…no HAD to play. At that point buying it was not an option, it was a necessity. This contrasts with my experience of Mirror’s Edge where each new bit of information served to put me progessively more off the game, but I digress.Valkyria Chronicles is not without it’s flaws, but those that are there pale compared to the rest of the experience. I think I’d go as far as saying it’s the best 2008 game I’ve played so far. Still a few weeks for something to edge it out though. *is optimistic*
As a final note I have to take an obligatory swipe at the Linux Clustering and Global File System suites. You wouldn’t think when you’re spending tens of thousands on severs and SANs full of more hard drives than you’d feasibly count on your fingers that you’d have any trouble sharing a few files between cluster nodes. Why is the documentaton for these tools so bad and why is the diagnostic output so archaic? We’re not talking your garden-variety open source here where they could accuse people of not being willing to pay. RedHat want to charge thousands of dollars for the priveledge of even enabling these features. Not impressed.
Current Music: Get Wild -DX Remix- - Nami Tamaki - Get Wild (single)
• Tuesday, November 18th, 2008
The last few days haven’t been especially great for me. To some degree it’s just too much to do but so little time. I also have had some unexpected costs rear their head (car, etc) which have clawed back all of the cash I mentioned was happily accumulating in my last post. I can’t complain too much, but my financial sixth-sense is telling me to minimize costs now lest the Christmas season require significant money micro-management.
Gaming-wise I’m mostly killing time until my copy of Valkyria Chronicles for the PS3 shows up. I didn’t want to miss out on the download-able content and it was substantially cheaper so I ordered from overseas, but the downside of course is that this leaves me waiting now. I’m still playing Persona 3 FES. I could have finished it ages back, but I’ve been trying to play it in the right way to max all the social links. Not far to go at this point, and it’s a special game to hold my interest for so long. After that I’ve still got Persona 3 FES’ bonus “The Answer” arc to play. Fallout 3 can sit on the shelf until it has a patch or two under it’s belt. I’ve also got the enhanced edition patches for the Witcher now so should finish that sometime. This should all work out well as there’s no games on the November or December release lists that interest me.
I’ve been watching a lot of anime lately. A lot from the current season in Japan. There are some shows I’m still undecided on, but overall I think I’ve enjoyed what’s come out this year (in terms of the Japanese and US markets) more than I have the last few years. I’m not about to claim it’s all A-grade stuff or that 2008 has been the best year for anime, but it’s certainly had more shows that resonate with my personal tastes…or perhaps even just shows that have been the right thing at the right time for whatever mood I was in at the time.
My enjoyment of this year’s shows has probably been reflected in me having purchased more Japanese Region 2 DVDs this year than in previous years. These DVDs have no English audio track or subtitles of course, but I find some shows the Japanese audio track alone is fine and in others I’m re-burning them myself to insert subtitle tracks. Thanks to my new ability to play/rip Blu-ray discs from any region too I’m going to do some tests to see how easy it’ll be to re-burn a Code Geass R2 Blu-ray with English subtitles. Personal use only of course, I’m not about to start dabbling in the black market selling BD-Rs out of a car boot. I’d hope that subbing on Blu-rays will prove a less painful process than doing so on DVD can be at times.
Current Mood: productive
Current Music: Sunday Afternoon - Rachael Yamagata - Elephants...Teeth Sinking Into Heart
• Monday, June 09th, 2008
I’ve not really been keeping up with comings and goings here lately. Mostly just been distracted or busy with other things, but I do want to get back to more regular posting and commenting. I don’t say that in the sense of it being a chore; I’ve always done so because it was something I wanted to do and there’s no change on that front.
I mentioned in my last post the slow cleanup after the Hamilton 400 street race. I had assumed within 2-3 weeks it would be all cleaned up and all would be well. Last week though the Hamilton City council apparently aiming for new lows in cost cutting and laziness announced in a local paper that they planned to leave most of the concrete barriers along the pit lane in place until next year. The article also mentioned that only one day remained for submissions to be made. I got a submission in on time, but utlimately I can’t comprehend what would make them think this is a good idea. These things are a complete hazard to vehicles and pedestrians alike and while thankfully the metal cages are gone the place looks like it’s in a state of perpetual road works. I think it’s safe to say that none of the councillors live in the area.
I’ve been considering a full update of my gaming PC for a while, but looking around much of what’s available is very old technology at this point. I figured something new must be around the corner that would be incompatible with any parts I buy today. To my surprise it seems AMD’s Fusion platform is still years away, but Intel is bringing out a new “Nehalem” micro architecture in the second half of this year. It’s unfortunate, and the CPU design geek in me doesn’t like Intel’s work, but buying AMD processors currently simply doesn’t make much sense and it looks to stay that way for the time being. Buying AMD only seems a good choice if you want to build a cheap PC (even for basic gaming) or a very low power (under 45 Watt) media PC with a 780g motherboard and 4850e processor. But I digress. So anyway Intel’s Nehalem architecture has an on-chip memory controller (one of the few benefits AMD has left) and as such will introduce a new processor socket (LGA 1366) making it incompatible with everything that came before. Makes me glad I didn’t pick up any of the Intel LGA775 parts today. Of course these new CPUs and motherboards are substantially better in other ways too, but this isn’t a tech blog. ^_^; Suffice to say short of the unexpected I intend to build a system around this platform when it becomes available.
Gaming-wise I’ve mostly been playing Persona 3 FES and the latest MMORPG Age of Conan. I talked in detail regarding the original Persona 3 elsewhere, and the FES variant just enhances it and adds more making a great game even better. Age of Conan is kind of cool too in many ways and is the first game I’ve seen to give World of Warcraft a run for it’s money, but at the same time I’m not feeling the urge to play it much at this point despite levelling four characters of various classes out of the newbie areas. The game seems to have it’s fair share of glitches and some issues around level/class balance, but no doubt they’ll patch those problems. It does suceed though in ways that others of it’s ilk have failed. Graphically it’s a step up from the rest, the mythos of the universe is rich and the narritive works well. Even the voice acting is surprisingly decent. The combat mechanics work well too. Magic-based classes seem to play much as they do in World of Warcraft, but the melee classes have a more varied system and is simply more satisfying and visceral.
Current Music: The Couples - The Long Blondes - \"Couples\"
