This guy are sick.

Damned Texas weather. Hot, cold. Hot, cold. Sunny, rainy, sunny, rainy. This constant switching of the extremes lately has put me under the weather, I think. My head is throbbing and my throat is raspy as hell. I was planning on writing some reviews, but I think I'll have to go put that on hold for awhile as it's hard to concentrate on writing when you have to run to the bathroom to puke every 30 minutes.

I "Saw" enough.

Well, it looks like they've reached the point to where Saw freakin' six is in theaters. Well, ladies and gentlemen, like any proper horror franchise, this series has no idea when to quit. In any case, believe it or not, there was one point in which I actually used to like these films. After I caught Saw III in theaters, I wrote this up. From October 31, 2006.....

I lied. I went and saw a horror movie last night. Yeah, yeah, I remember all that crap I went on about how I refused to watch anymore horror movies earlier in the year after viewing the trifecta of suck known as The Fog, When A Stranger Calls and last but not least The Hills Have Eyes; however, bear in mind that I said I refused to watch any shitty horror movies. I didn't say I wouldn't mind taking a trip to the local theater to catch up on the good stuff. Or at least stuff that seemed good anyway. Like Saw III.

Yes, somehow, someway, I've managed to find enjoyment out of not one, not two, but three indulgent gore fests, not only liking them but considering owning the films as well. See, while Saw III went even more over the top with the gore and blood, the film still had the great writing and suspenseful surprises to let me over look that part of the film. Saw III was not only a good movie in its own right, it actually wrapped up everything in the first two films in a nice neat package and choosing to end the film in such a way that seemed to give a hearty "screw you" to anyone who thought about making a Saw "4" and I thank them for that. Saw III even attempted to offer insight into why Jigsaw does what he does, something that was touched upon in the second film, but never fully explained. In this way, they've taken a generic bad guy character who seemed to be completely devoid of personality in the first film and by the end of the third film made him an almost sympathetic character as you understand fully the motiviating factors for his actions.

A lot of people when mentioning the Saw movies just talk about all of the blood and gore of the film. But you see, what separates the Saw films from other violent piles of crap like Hostel or Rest Stop is that rather than be the focal point of the film, the blood and gore is simply a backdrop for a well fleshed out story that slowly reveals itself piece by piece over the course of three films.

But let's not kid ourselves here, Saw III was violent as hell. Way over the top and at many times unnecessarily so, you can almost hear the director in the background saying "we gotta make this more brutal than the other two". I guess I can't fault the movie makers that much, though. I mean, given its target audience. 90% of the people going to see that film see no difference between Saw or any of that other violent horror crap, anyways. If the film didn't have buckets of blood people would hate it. Good writing and paying careful attention to the first two movies be damned, he smushed his foot wit teh ston tablet, HUR HUR HUR. Yeah, dood! I SAW it! LOL.

But whatever, I'll enjoy this as a victory for horror movies. Hooray for the best line of horror films to come out in over a decade. Let us all rejoice.

At least until Hostel 2.

Yeah.......scratch that crap. Some goofballs decided to pen a lame script for a sequel and the original creators couldn't help but say, "Show me the money!" This series has transformed into everything that is utterly wrong with horror films these days. And much like I figured, any possible way to try to continue this plot would only end in disaster, yet somehow they've managed to crank out three more sequels to this thing. The plot hasn't just been stretched thin, it's been ripped to shreds and left for dead. But I'm sure some folks are gonna die in some more ever increasingly asinine of ways. Ways so ridiculous it begins to border on the comical. Yes, the deaths have become so over the top they almost make you laugh as this series wallows gleefully in its excesses, completely and utterly ignorant of the hole it continues to dig for itself. Oh well, as long as somebody's neck gets twisted right? Hell, James Wan, the original director and later producer, doesn't even have anything to do with this nonsense anymore. In fact, I think he's directing the movie adaptation of Castlevania. That'll be....interesting. Anyway, I implore all of you. Don't go see this movie. For my sake. I'm sick of seeing saw.

Transformers Revenge of the Fallen Review

Dude #1: “When do we get to see Megan Fox?”

Dude #2: “I dunno. The movie just started.” “Hey, why are those green and pink robots talking black?”

Dude #1: “I dunno. But more importantly, where is Megan Fox?”

“Oh wait, there she is on a….bike…..humina…..humina….humina.”

Dude #2: “Humina….humina….humina.” *drool*

Dude #1: “Woah, check it out dude. That toaster totally turned into a robot and blew up his house. That was awesome, hur.”

Dude #2: “Why are the robots after him?”

Dude #1: “Because they put some thingy in his brain I guess that makes him smart.”

Dude #2: “Pinky and the Brain? Dude, that cartoon was kewl…hee hee.”

Dude #1: “Not Pinky and the Brain, dumbass. Thingy IN his brain.”

Dude #2: “Megan Foxxx……Wait, he’s leavin’ her. He’s goin’ to college. DOES THAT MEAN SHE’S NOT IN TEH MOVIE ANYMORE?! NOO.”

Dude #1: “Dude, this sucks.”

Dude #2: “Yeah, it sucks balls, dude.”

Dude #1: “Wow, the chicks in this college are pretty hot though.” “Man, I wish my college had chicks this hot.” “Hey look the mom just smoked some pot ‘n’ she didn’t know *snrk*.”

Dude #2: “Hur. Hur. That’s awesome.”

Dude #1: “Where’s Megan?”

Dude #2: “I dunno, but that hot blonde is totally tryin’ to do ‘im.”

Dude #1: “Why?”

Dude #2: “I dunno. HOLY CRAP she’s actually the chick from Terminator 3. I didn’t know that was comin’! AWESOME.”

Dude #1: “Why are those robots fighting? I can’t tell who’s who.”

Dude #2: “Um, the guys with the blue eyes are the good guys and the guys with the red eyes are the bad guys.”

Dude #1: “But why are they fighting?”

Dude #2: “I dunno. Look Megan Fox is back. Yesssss…”

Dude #1: “Check it out, that little robot is humping her leg ‘n’ shit.”

Dude #2: “I wanna be that robot, hee hee.” “That’s awesome.”

Dude #1: “Hee hee, that old robot farted.”

Dude #2: “Hee hee.”

Dude #1: “Hur hur.”

Dude #2: “Look, they’re fighting again.” “Look, its military dudes, they look cool.”

Dude #1: “Here come the JORDANIANS!”

Dude #2: “Hee hee, that big one has a set of balls.”

Dude #1: “That’s AWESOME. OhmygodMeganisrunning.”

Dude #2: “Oh God……I can’t take anymore…….she’s running in SLOW MOTION this is so hot….”

Dude #1: “HAWT…”

Dude #2: “Why are the robots fighting again?”

Dude #1: I dunno. Oh man he got to kiss Megan Fox…..

Dude #1 and 2: AWESOME!!!!!!

For the Wii little children.

Apparently some new style Wii controllers are going to be available soon in Japan.






I guess it's safe to say at this point Nintendo has pretty much abandoned any ideas about trying to hook older gamers and shed their "kiddie" image. Hell, this goes beyond "kiddie" image and into the realm of toddlers. Not to bash the Wii or anything, I'd actually own one if the games weren't absolute poop.

Final Fantasy XII, one more time.....

So, what game have I decided to play now that I've tossed in the towel in Demon's Souls? Actually, I've gone back to Final Fantasy XII. I figured I'd give it one more go around before FF XIII releases. But this time, I'm gonna do everything dammit. I will hunt every last mark, even Yiazmat and unearth every secret the game has to offer. I owe it to this game. And honestly, I have to say, after 10 hrs of play already, the game has aged quite gracefully, unlike well, just about every last Final Fantasy game since the SNES games. I couldn't stand to play FF VII through X-2 for any longer than 5 hrs before just giving up and quitting and lord knows I've tried. Anyway, I'll probably write up a big long article about exactly why FF XII rules, why FF games haven't aged well and why FF XIII looks to be a cosmic disappointment, but right now football is on. Bye!

I am teh weaksauce.

When I stated that I was tossing in the towel on Demon's Souls, I didn't necessarily mean that I didn't like the game. I do. And I likely won't get rid of it, if only because it's an Atlus game and I already paid for the special edition version and if I ever wanted to go back and play it I'd probably have to pay a hefty price online for it. Besides, the game is fantastic. It's just, well, I'm getting too old for this shit.

What I mean is, I just don't have the patience for extremely difficult games that I once had. I remember as a kid going through and actually beating all of the Ninja Gaiden games on NES because I actually had things like time and patience to do those things. Nowadays I get probably like 1 to 2 hours tops of gaming in a day because I attend college and work about 20-30 hrs a week. I don't feel like spending that time going through and doing the same thing over and over until I clear it. Because then it just begins to feel like work. Its time to stop playing when you're loading up the game and just going through the motions. And no, the game isn't perfect by any means at all. The targeting system is a little wonky; sometimes you can't exactly target which specific enemy you want, particularly if there are a lot present and in a game where a split second could mean the difference between life and death that's pretty important. The lack of music starts to get to you after awhile also, especially after you've gone through the same area for 50 times and worst of all, while you can reclaim any lost souls you have when you die, if you die in a boss battle you have to enter the boss arena to reclaim it, but of course you have to beat the boss all over again....which, if you're unprepared for the boss you may as well kiss those hard earned souls goodbye.

Oh well, I'll probably return to it at some point later but for the moment at least I'm done.

In Memoriam: Captain Lou Albano

Ah. Yet another wrestling personality passes away. At least this time it's due to old age rather than drugs/injuries/tragedy as is the norm for wrestler deaths these days.

Besides, anyone awesome enough to dress up in a Mario suit and dance behind a blue screen backdrop and insist that we all "Do the Mario" is more than enough to warrant a mention here.


EDIT: That's it. I'm throwing in the towel. I succumb to your power o' Demon's Souls. I give up. I'm gonna go play something else. It's all fun and games 'till an angry flame monster rapes the shit out of you and you lose over 10,000 soul points you'll never get back.

Katamari Forever Review

Um....you roll a little ball around.































And it picks shit up.
































And then it gets bigger.


































And then you pick even more shit up.


































And it's fun.


































So go buy it. Whee!

YOU DIED

......That's a message I've been seeing a lot lately in the past week, thanks to Demon's Souls. Don't get me wrong, I still keep coming back for more, because like I said, it's perversely fun and truly rewarding when you actually get ahead in the game.

It just takes a lot of deaths and a lot of broken controllers time and effort to get there. That being said, I was planning to review this game, but I don't think that review is coming anytime soon because I like to beat, or at least, you know, get far in any game I plan to review but good God I don't think that this game is going to allow me to progress anytime soon. I've had the game for about a week but only have managed to get as far as Armor Spider. (Which ain't far, no sir.)

Of course, when I'm not embarrassing myself with pathetic attempt after pathetic attempt to clear Demon's Souls, Katamari Forever has been soaking up my time also. It's amazing how fun rolling a stupid ball around and picking up a bunch of shit can be.

I thought Resident Evil was extinct? My hopes and dreams have now been utterly crushed.

Oh my God, imagine my chagrin to wake up in the morning and read this news. Yup, Paul Anderson is out to make more videogamers cry with yet another Resident Evil movie. They only get worse and worse with each subsequent film and make amazingly less sense than the next as they constantly stray further and further away from any type of plot resembling the videogame. The synopsis for this one sounds absolutely horrible and makes the videogame Resident Evil 4 plot seem like Shakespeare by comparison.

Shin Megami Tensei: Persona Review

You know, I’ll be honest. I’m very torn about my feelings when it comes to Persona. On one hand what you have is an excellent redesigned port of an older game that addressed many of the issues that plagued it previously. But on the other hand, the game itself just had a few nagging flaws already to begin with that keep it from being fantastic.

Like many games in the Persona series, this game has an excellent, stylish presentation. Many changes were made to give the game an updated feel and it all works. The new opening video is marvelous and captures the feel of the story perfectly. Other new fully animated FMVs, with voice acting exclusively for the English version as well, and of course, the translation has been completely overhauled, in order to present a more authentic version to the English audience. To continue this update, the music has been entirely redone in the style of some of the more contemporary Persona games. It’s all personal opinion really, but for the most part the new music works and tends to get catchy after awhile, even if you have absolutely no clue what they’re singing. It just gets indoctrinated into your brain after awhile and eventually you start to enjoy it. Of course, this a problem in other Persona games as well, but the biggest problem with the soundtrack is that many of the same tracks often repeat way too many times and your growing affection for the music may quickly turn into seething hatred for the music depending on how long your play session is. 2 to 3 hours nonstop of listening to the battle theme tends to have you reaching for the volume button irregardless of how catchy it becomes. But really that’s a minor issue, even if you hate the music there’s plenty more put into this re-release to enjoy that makes it all worthwhile. But unfortunately, the visuals for the most part have remained largely untouched. It’s initially jarring to see how the graphics have aged to a degree, particularly when witnessing the stiff, wooden, battle animations, but really, the graphics overall haven’t aged that badly and while the graphics have remained largely untouched, the menus have been given a brand new look and are easier to navigate and the absolutely atrocious world map from the original game has been mercifully redesigned. Instead of a hideous 3D map, the developers wisely opted for a panned out 2D map and a simple press of the square button will tell you each location in the immediate area. Game progression is handled much more smoothly this go around. Load times have been shortened. An option to shorten battle animations has been added. Walking speed has been greatly increased and holding down the circle button lets you move even faster. All of this helps create a more enjoyable gameplay experience from the original.

This is a fun game. But it helps to remember that this game is not the same experience you’ll get from playing some of the more recent Persona games. This game settles itself in sort of a limbo between the old school dungeon crawling RPGs of yesterday (dungeons are actually in first person in this one) with the more contemporary story driven RPGs of today. Story is secondary to the actual gameplay and you’ll spend most of your time navigating the many of the labyrinths the game offers. That’s not to say that the story isn’t memorable or doesn’t have memorable characters. In fact, one of Persona’s greatest strengths is in the excellent pacing of the game. The plot is revealed in such a fashion that you get just enough information so that you’re able to figure out what your objective is and move forward with little hassle. Never does the game get sidetracked in its plot, dragging the length of the game to an unnecessary level; in fact the game is only about 20 to 30 hours long depending upon your play style and by the end it doesn’t feel like it was too short or too long, but just right.

However, like I previously stated, you’ll be walking around and navigating dungeons in this game. A lot. That’s not particularly a bad thing though. Because where this game shines more than any other area is in its unique battle system. Similar to a chess board almost, you have to place your characters on a grid and their placement on that grid, coupled with their weapon choice is what determines what enemies they can attack. Characters can choose between both weapon and gun attacks, with guns generally providing better range, but sacrificing power over weapons and of course characters can also summon their Personas in battle as well. Each of your characters can keep a stock of up to 3 Personas at a time, with each character having a different affinity for different Personas. In other words, some Personas work better than others depending on who has it “equipped.” Now a staple of any Persona game, players can create new Personas by visiting Igor in the Velvet Room and fusing them together by obtaining various spell cards from the demons you encounter, which brings up the most unique aspect of the battle system, the negotiations. Yes, in order to be successful in Persona, holding conversations and trying to pick out the right answer to please demons so that they’ll relinquish these cards and other items and money is essential. It seems a little confusing at first but really it’s just a matter of mix and matching, and eventually you’ll figure out what to say to which demon after a few encounters. To help you out a meter that displays the demons’ various emotions is displayed and shows your progress with the negotiation. If you find yourself angering it further and further, try having another character negotiate or try a different approach with the same character. It’s this interaction that keeps battles fun and fresh. They can also save your hide if you’re low on health and suddenly get ambushed from behind.

If you feel put off by things like “dungeon-crawler”, and “negotiation” because it sounds like it’s complicated, don’t be. Actually, arguably this game is perhaps the easiest game in the series, provided you do the main storyline. While the inability to attack every enemy on the screen and only those “in range” force you often times to rely on magic, your magic slowly regenerates as you move outside of battle and no matter what spells that particular Persona has learned, it costs the same amount of MP to use no matter what. In fact, your Personas level up based upon how much you use them in combat so there’s absolutely no reason not to use them frequently in combat. If your main character dies, it’s not an instant game over and while exploiting weaknesses is still a part of the strategy, it’s not as absolutely vital to success as it is in P3 or P4. In fact I progressed through the game and very rarely had to use a healing item. Not to imply that this game is a cakewalk or anything. A cheap death is still very possible. There are a lot of nasty status effects in this game that can disable you if you’re not paying attention and your whole party could be quickly wiped out because they continue to neutralize your members and attempting to flee the battle results in failure more than half of the time. Couple this with a very high encounter rate and you could quickly find yourself loading up your last save if you’re not careful. The game isn’t the hardest RPG out there, but it certainly doesn’t allow you to get lazy. Easily the worst aspect of the game is the ridiculous encounter rate. While negotiation with demons helps somewhat it’s still aggravating to take two steps and immediately be thrust into another battle.

But for all of the game’s flaws there’s still plenty of reasons to give the game at least one play through, but really to get the maximum enjoyment from it, multiple play throughs are recommended. In fact, the alternate side-quest, the Snow Queen Quest has been added to this version of the game which was cut out of the original and offers a completely different storyline from the main game. While this is intriguing, I should give a fair warning and say that this is significantly more difficult than the main storyline, although it’s still do-able provided you have the time and patience to complete it. Each story has both a bad and a good ending and which party members you can take along can vary depending upon your responses and choices as you play which makes each play experience different from others.

It’s a little rough around the edges, but overall I enjoyed this revisit to see where the Persona series began. This game won’t set the world on fire or anything but I encourage all fans of the Shin Megami Tensei series to check it out, especially if you’ve never played the original release on PSX. It’s been given a cool new look and feel and while visually it doesn’t really impress by today’s standards the game mechanics still shine and provide two things that are timeless; an intriguing story and plain good ol’ fun.

Demon's Assholes.

Yup, so pretty much as expected Demon's Souls is a completely punishing and utterly unforgiving bastard of a game. But the crazy part? I keep coming for more. That's right, despite having died like 20 times in 2 hours I still continue to take the punishment and press on. This is due to the simple fact that this game managed to achieve what so many other games attempt to do, yet fail at. This game is very hard, because it's just hard. Not yet have I experienced a cheap death out of the innumerable amount of times that I've died. All deaths were due to my erroneous behavior and I have no one to blame but myself. It's all about learning the layout of the levels and making sure you don't make the same dumb mistakes.

I kind of like the whole online interaction thing where you get to leave messages for other players and leave hints and other various tips. Some of those tips have actually saved my hide. So um, to the guy that left that hint in the first stage to attack the box containing the iron balls that roll down the hill and pretty much eliminate 15 possible enemies at once, um, here's my shout out to you. Thanks! Whoever you are.

I'm off to go let Demon's Souls make a bitch out of me some more.

Jack(ass) Thompson at it again...

This guy is such a clown.

Seriously, go away already you attention starved, bottom feeding, media whore.

Facebook doesn't owe this sumamabitch a dime. I wish I could get millions of dollars for everytime someone called me a name.

Only in a Japanese RPG could a fucking basketball do you in.

So, um....yeah. Snow Queen Quest. Much to my chagrin today I made it all the way up to the top of the first tower only to be bested by a group of basketballs and toilet seats right before the boss room. Yup. 2 to 3 hrs or so completely down the drain. Because you see there are no save points once you do a tower and if you get back attacked by a group of enemies due to a spell of bad luck and die because you weren't probably prepared you get hours of work wiped out just like that. Unfortunately such a fate has befallen me today. I likely won't be going back to Persona PSP anytime soon. That Snow Queen Quest is just plain evil man. I like old school RPGs but man, the era of playing for hours with no save points is one I'm glad we aren't re-living in this day and age......

.....That reminds me, Ashley called me and told me that my copy of Demon's Souls will be available for pick up tomorrow. Oh, well. I've got some extra money in the bank I've been saving up for any possible controllers I may throw out of the window in frustration when the first dragon I come across roasts my ass and I lose all of my equipment and items I worked for hours to obtain. I do love wasting my time with frustratingly hard RPGs. I seem to have some sort of sick, twisted obsession with it.

Hurt me MORE Atlus

Persona 1 Complete!

It's pretty much going to be a rainy weekend for me so I won't have much to do, so what did I do? Get ahead on my schoolwork so I'll be extra prepared for anything?

Shyeah, right.

No, I used this little bit of surprising free time that I had to finally finish Persona. Yay. Now I can finally say that I've played and beaten every single game with the name Persona slapped on the box, well....assuming we're not counting Revelations: Persona, the original. 'Cuz this game is pretty much the same as that one. Except better. You know what I mean. I have to say it was pretty fun overall and thankfully the game lived up to my expectations. I didn't think it was going to blow me away but I still found it to be more entertaining than Devil Survivor which admittedly gets pretty boring after awhile. I'll likely give the game another go around as you can get a completely different storyline (albeit harder) with the whole Snow Queen Quest thing. I'll probably put up a review proper of the game shortly since I know the whole world was awaiting with abated breath to know my opinion of it. :P