Maybe On Earth. Maybe In The Future.

elektro_static @ 2009-12-30T00:09:00

2009-12-30T00:10:11Z

Do I really need to tell you how much I want to see an English translation of this game?

elektro_static @ 2009-12-29T17:33:00

2009-12-29T17:33:46Z

New phone gets!

If people could give me their phone numbers to make sure I've got everyone's that'd be nice. Not sure how many are saved to my sim card and how many are on my old phone. Comments will be screened, so act now to be spammed with Bartypix whenever I'm bored.

Probably often.

2009 Challenge: December - Game 01

2009-12-28T23:38:27Z

Persona 4

PS2

94 hours 52 minutes

Welcome to Inaba
Proudly Twinned With Silent Hill

Let's be honest, Persona 3 is a hell of a hard act to follow. Great gameplay, a fantastic story, and an ending that could make a sufferer of Bell's Balsy weep like a Japanophile being told their Holy Land ain't all its cracked up to be. To those unfamiliar with the series it belonged to (which was just about everyone at the time) it came out of nowhere, grabbed everyone's attention and became everyone's new favourite series. Critical acclaim, the endless appreciation of fans everywhere... yeah, a hard act to follow by anyone's estimation.

Persona 4 opens in much the same way the last game did: new student transfers to a new town and school, wackiness occurs. Yeah, it's a cliche, but it's a classic, and it works, so we'll let it slide. Our hero (who, for the sake of this review, we'll refer to as Jotaro Tenryu) quickly makes new friends, who tell him about a local urban legend. It's said that if you try watching a TV that's been switched off on a rainy night, you can see something: another reality, your true love, whatever, the reports vary depending on who you ask. So, bored one night, Jotaro tries it out. And finds that he can not only see something, but he can also physically enter the TV itself. The group, disbelieving at first, start to wonder if it has anything to do with the recent spate of murders in the formerly quiet town. And then, one of them goes missing, soon appearing on the Midnight Channel.

Persona 3, while a fantastic game, was not a game without its problems, primarily in the realm of combat. Having your teammates act for themselves, while a nice idea, often proved more trouble than it was worth. While you still have the option of letting them do their own thing, most people will head straight for direct control and never look back. The damage types have been pared down as well, presumably to make things less confusing: now, there's only one type of physical damage, as opposed to three, and the main character can only equip swords, rather than whatever the hell he wants.

Outside of battle, the music has been given a major overhaul. Fans of the original will be pleased to find that themes no longer restart from scratch every time you enter a new area, praise be to Philemon. The world map theme also changes depending on the weather, so you're not stuck listening to the same piece of music for months on end, another welcome change. The main battle theme, Reach Out To The Truth, isn't quite as catchy as Mass Destruction, but it does the job well.

The dungeons have been given a major overhaul as well. Now, every dungeon not only has a distinct look, it has its own music too! Each area ties in to the person lying at the heart of it. So a shut-in game-freak's dungeon is styled after an 8-bit RPG, the girl missing her deceased mother has hers looking like a storybook version of Heaven, the guy struggling with his sexuality has a ~~very suggestive~~ screamingly gay bathhouse, and so on. An infinite upgrade from the atrociously bland dungeon(s) of the last game.

So then, The Big Question: is it a better game than Persona 3? In sheer gameplay terms, yes. Developers, take note: when designing a sequel, this is how things should be done. All the rough edges have been smoothed off, virtually every problem I had has been fixed or improved, and the whole thing has been tuned to perfection. This is everything I had hoped for in the last game, and it's a testament to Atlus that they've delivered in spades. Outside of the gameplay, however...

It's ironic in a way. P3 had a great story, but the gameplay was lacking. And now, here comes its sequel with the exact opposite problems. They've managed to avoid the trap of having identical characters, thankfully. Yosuke is kinda similar to Junpei, in that they're both your buddy and co-pilot for the game, but in terms of personality, they're fairly different. Same goes for Yukiko, who outwardly resembles Mitsuru from the last game, though she's a lot friendlier than Mitsuru ever was. The problem comes with their social links. Every party member has them, and raising them gives them extra abilities in combat, such as being able to knock you out of harm's way when low on health, or being able to stand up again after taking a fatal wound in battle. Fair enough, except this is the only way to unlock their ultimate Persona. Honestly, I preferred it when it was part of the story. Seeing Akihiko's determination to live up to his friend's memory, or Junpei laying the smackdown on Strega with his upgrade gave you a real feeling of pride in your characters. Here, it feels more arbitrary. "Oh, well done, you've maxed me out, have a cookie and a Suzuka Gongen."

Then there's the music. It starts off strong, sunny day theme Your Affection quickly becoming one of my favourite pieces of music in the game. The first couple of dungeon themes are also good, the music for Yukiko's Castle being a standout piece. But as it progresses, the music becomes more and more lackluster. The last couple of dungeons are quiet, sedate pieces when you should be gearing up for a major no-holds barred fight. The final boss theme aims for symphonic fierceness and falls waaay shy of the mark, landing squarely in hum-drum mediocrity. The call back to the battle theme is nice, but not what I was looking for. Honestly, this is probably the first final boss theme I've encountered in a Megaten game that's outright sucked. 'Disappointing' is not the word.

On a related note, the cast has fewer duds in it than P3 did. The voice actresses for Fuuka and Ken were almost universally derided, but here, even the worst voice is tolerable. Kanji is probably the best on offer here, never once dipping below good, and his actor's delivery of lines is, on occasion, perfect, turning mere funny lines into outright hilarious ones. On the other hand, Naoto's is a poor choice. Massive spoilers that really aren't: Naoto's bag is that she's a girl pretending to be a boy. It works perfectly in the Japanese version, since her VA is known for playing gruff teenage boys like Edward Elric in Fullmetal Alchemist with the twist being that, for once, she's playing a girl. In the Western version, the second she opens her mouth, the illusion is shattered and you spend the next 20 hours wondering if your team is functionally retarded for not noticing that she's quite clearly a girl. The battle quotes are hilariously poor as well. They must've been recorded at the start, before most of the cast grew into their roles, because they're badly delivered ("Let us attack with all our strength" and "It's quite tenacious" being primary offenders) or just plain hilarious - Chie, dear, I love you to bits, but your wimpy little battlecry is abysmal. Seriously, stop it. And maybe it's more of a problem of translation, but they leave in all the honorifics like '-san' or 'senpai', and use them liberally, then have your cousin call you 'big bro' instead of 'onii-chan'. It's baffling why they'd do that, and it's jarring to boot.

And finally, we have the story. For the first 8/10ths of the story, it's fairly good. Great in places. Seeing your character actually get involved with events, rather than just standing there as things unfold around him is much more satisfying. You really feel like you have a part to play beyond pressing the X button to make the conversation move on. Some of the shenanigans you get up to are outright hilarious, such as the disastrous school festival and the camping trip, and draw you in more than the events in the last game. However, it's when you get to the end that things start to unravel.

Persona 3 was an epic story in the old sense of the word. You started out fighting monsters with friends and, before you knew it, you were locked in battle with an eldrich force that existed solely to obliterate all of mankind. You were rarely in any doubt as to what was at stake, and when the time came at the end, you knew damn well what would happen if you failed and were ready to give all as a result. Brilliant. Here, things start small with a serial killer offing people in the town when the fog rolls in. But Persona 4 never ups the ante much. When the fog covers the town permanently towards the end, you're expecting something big to come out of it, but it never really does. You're told there will be dire consequences, but, crucially, you're never shown what they are. And when you go to uncover the true mastermind at the end, it feels like an afterthought. One of the party outright states that you're doing this to give your character a good sendoff. Never mind that you've got a literal god taunting you (who's barely mentioned throughout the game, by the way), forget that a whole bunch of people have died as a result of all this, as long as Senpai gets a glorious final battle, everything else is just gravy. Tell me, did someone replace the cast with Klingons while I wasn't looking? What the hell, guys?! And the final bosses themselves are just so boring! Sure the final final boss looks great, but come on, we went through a fight last time where we battled our way through the Major Arcana of the tarot, then fought the god of death and her harbinger to a standstill! "Big spiky disco ball" and "Silent Hill reject" is a major step back by anyone's standards.

It's frustrating, really. For everything Persona 4 fixes or polishes, it creates another gaping flaw. When it should be increasing the pressure, it steps back and eases off on you. And when it should be telling you to gear up for a titanic struggle, it idly tosses a boss with no real difficulty behind it and tells you to busy yourself. I can understand why they'd want to scale things down after the last game - after all, when you've tangled with the embodiment of mankind's despair, how exactly do you top that - but that doesn't mean they can't make the current threat appear every bit as real as the last one. Just because the scope is reduced, that doesn't mean the danger should be too. Ironically, Persona 4 falls into exactly the same category as Devil May Cry 4: both are games that are great in their own right, both have the bad luck of being follow-ups to leaders in their field, both are kept from greatness by major problems. If we could meld Persona 3's storyline with Persona 4's gameplay, (and maybe DDS' or Maken Shao's OSTs, since I'm bored with the J-Pop by now) I have little doubt you'd have one of the single finest RPGs of all time. I still haven't lost faith in the series, not by a long shot, and it'll take more than a lousy final 5th of a game to do that. Still, here's hoping the inevitable Persona 5 will finally bring to fruition everything the games have promised thus far.

elektro_static @ 2009-12-28T13:02:00

2009-12-28T13:03:13Z

Practical and sexy.

elektro_static @ 2009-12-27T22:16:00

2009-12-27T22:16:46Z

The thing that never fails to weird me out about the post-Xmas, pre-New Years stretch is how no day feels like it should. I keep forgetting it's Sunday. Feels more mid-week. Especially since someone had left their bin out (from last Tuesdays). For once, it wasn't the neighbours, which was surprising, but I saw them fleeing in a car last Monday or Tuesday, so they might have fucked off for a while. Not that I can remotely blame them. I sure hope nothing... untoward has happened to them.

What?

Did Toph and Mai ever fight, or even interact in Avatar? It just occurs to me that I thon't think the two were even ever onscreen together at any point. No idea why it stood out to me at all.

elektro_static @ 2009-12-26T22:59:00

2009-12-26T22:59:29Z

So, Christmas, as expected, was practically non-existent. Spent the day marathoning the first two seasons of The Venture Bros. One of the most wonderfully quotable shows I've ever seen. If you haven't gotten around to watching it yourself, do it, you really won't regret it at all. I think I've gone through more TV shows in the last 2 weeks than I have in the last year. Well, if you include individual seasons at least. It's kinda weird.

This morning I wandered out to the Boxing Day sales to try my luck and, once again, was left wanting. Wound up getting a load of cheap DVDs (In Bruges, Stardust, No Country For Old Men, Blades Of Glory, 300, Princess Bride - two disc edition to replace the one disc one I lost somewhere - and the Star Wars trilogy. The good ones). Most of them were £3 each, and almost all were ones I'd intended on buying/seeing at some point, so good deal all round.

Also found copies of Global Defence Force and Dynasty Warriors 4 for pennies, though DW4 refuses to load the save screen, so I'm going to have to return it. Which is fine, since I have to go out for food anyway. Sainsbury's barely had anything in today, so a trip was mandatory before long.

And as an added bonus, I think I saw the sun today. Or it might have been swamp gas0 or a weather baloon. It's been so long, my memory's hazy.

elektro_static @ 2009-12-25T14:12:00

2009-12-25T14:12:48Z

On the last day of Antivent I got from OOC
One Twister Remix and a buttload of mp3s!

elektro_static @ 2009-12-24T16:59:00

2009-12-24T16:59:16Z

My DVD shelves are shiny and festive, apparently

Now watch as you all go blind trying to work out what DVDs I've got up on my shelves.

elektro_static @ 2009-12-24T12:25:00

2009-12-24T12:25:31Z

The penultimate day of Antivent, and today we've got one of the very best pieces of music on the list.

You'll want to hear this one, trust me.

And stick around for tomorrow's post. You'll like it, trust me.

elektro_static @ 2009-12-23T19:33:00

2009-12-23T19:34:03Z

Antivent Day 23: In which we persue Lu Bu and it pays off for once.

elektro_static @ 2009-12-23T00:02:00

2009-12-23T00:02:53Z

On the other hand, this is pretty much the best thing ever.

elektro_static @ 2009-12-22T20:21:00

2009-12-22T20:22:04Z

Antivent Day 22: Redemption from Guilty Gear XX #Reload EX Plus Alpha Championchip Edition Strikers. 2010 Edition.

Turbo.

"You keep using that word! I don't think it means what you think it does."

2009-12-21T20:56:35Z

From a conversation had earlier with someone who shall remain nameless:

"So you helped out a homeless guy, huh? Wow, never figured you for one of those 'noblesse negligee' types."

"...what?"

"You know, noblesse negligee: the whole 'if you can help someone less fortunate, then you should, because it;s the right thing to do'."

*sigh*

"That's 'noblesse oblige' - 'the obligation of the noble'. What you basically said was 'the underwear of the noble'. And I don't think anyone, no matter how hard up they are, wants my boxers."

elektro_static @ 2009-12-21T19:40:00

2009-12-21T19:40:31Z

Antivent Day 21: If it ain't Baroque, don't fix it!

elektro_static @ 2009-12-21T14:48:00

2009-12-21T14:48:22Z

There's a homeless guy who sells the Big Issue outside the local shopping centre here. I always try and buy a copy off him whenever I can, but even if I can't, I always nod and say hello because, fuck, it's the decent thing to do, y'know? I hate it when people just ignore them or tell them to get a job or whatever. Then again, I was homeless myself for about a year or so, so maybe I'm biased or whatever.

Anyway, I went down, got shopping, then as I was leaving, went to grab a copy of him. Problem was, this was the Xmas issue, which was £2 and I only had the regular price, £1.50 on me. So I said to the guy to just take it, no harm, no foul, right? Well, no, since he insisted I take a copy anyway. I said no, it was fine, just take it, it's cool. But he kept insisting that I take one.

"Look, mate, you've always been good to me over the years. You're probably my best customer. Just take it and say no more, eh?"

That... actually stopped me. It's one thing to be remembered, especially amongst a crowd of people walking in and out a shopping centre, but to be told something like that... 'humbling' isn't the word. Hell, I'm not entirely sure what the word is. Or if there even is one.

I shook his hand, wished him a good one, then got in a taxi to come home, thinking about what he'd said. If this were anyone else, there'd probably be an admission of how this kickstarted my Christmas Spirit. Not here, where we keep vats of boiling oil specifically to dump on little urchin boys who learned English from Dick Van Dyke. But sometimes, it's weird and maybe a little heartening to see the impact you've had on someone else, however small. I always try and do the decent thing where other people are concerned. It's not often, but it's nice when that decency is returned.

Fuck, this is getting too serious, isn't it. Fine, new t-shirt gets!

elektro_static @ 2009-12-20T23:15:00

2009-12-20T23:15:39Z

epicureal did it and I'm bored, bite me.

Name a fandom, and I'll give you the scoop on at least three of my unpopular opinions related to that fandom.

I'll try to keep my responses more varied than 'the fandom itself and the people in it', but I can't promise anything. And it'll probably be more 'what I don't like about whatever you suggested', because taking potshots at fandoms is a fish/barrel/shotgun thing for me.

No, icysarcasm, you can't suggest Twilight. Again.

elektro_static @ 2009-12-20T22:06:00

2009-12-20T22:06:03Z

Antivent Day 20, where the beatdowns are apocalyptic and the chihuahuas are poisonous.

elektro_static @ 2009-12-20T21:07:00

2009-12-20T21:07:08Z

And that's Persona 4 finished once and for all. Expect a review in the next couple of days.

TOTALLY NOT A REVIEW OF DEXTER, REALLY!

2009-12-19T23:38:24Z

Well, that's Dexter finished now. Not going to do a review of it, since, well, there's nothing much I could say about it, and I only cover stuff I can say something interesting about (which is why I tend to cover lesser-known or obscure stuff, rather than more obvious targets). Still, a couple of thoughts, kept handily below an LJ-cut for anyone who doesn't want spoiled (though only real outright spoilers for the first two seasons, so you can join in icysarcasm.

First off, the first season is still the best. The reveal of the killer was just a little obvious (wait, so it was the oddly creepy guy with the amputee fixation who looked like Richard Ramirez? Never saw that one coming) but everything else was great. Solid stuff, can't fault it, and Rita dressed as Lara Croft was funny (even if my inner nerd wanted to point out she didn't wear a bikini top). Debs, Doakes and Matsuka are probably the best secondary characters here.

Second season, still good and any scene where Dexter just manages to slip the net is, once again, fantastic. However, I did not like Lilah's sudden switch. I've probably said it before, but her sudden flip into Little Miss Yandere (why isn't she one of the Little Misses?) came across as forced, simply because the season needed a more obvious antagonist than Doakes and Lundy. I thought she was going to be a repeat of the therapist he dealt with before, going to meetings, becoming a sponsor, then letting her charges down and getting them to overdose/commit suicide. But it didn't go that way and I was intrigued to see where they were going with it. Then she set her house on fire, tried to have him killed and blew up Doakes all in the name of Twue Wuv. Sorry, calling bullshit on that due to overwhelming lack of foreshadowing. Yes, we know she'd been a meth user and her attitudes to other people's property were somewhat... cavalier, but for her to outright flip like that, I had to check to see I hadn't missed an episode or there weren't a few scenes missing. She was kooky, not homicidal.

And then there's Doakes himself. Any other show and he'd be the hero. Really, he's only the bad guy because we're seeing everything from Dexter's perspective. If the show were called Doakes, Dex would clearly be shown to be everything James says he is. Hell, even in the show, he's still arguably the hero, just that everything conspires against him, one after another. His death leaves a huge vacuum in the series, one that they try to fill with Joseph Quinn, but even when they do try to pit him against Dexter (which, barring one or two confrontations, goes absolutely nowhere) he's still no substitute for the man.

And then we get to season 3, and I'm noticing a pattern here. Season one, Dexter kills people, Rita gets completely the wrong idea about something, Deb falls for the wrong man before being pivotal to solving the case, Angel is unlucky in love and Laguerta hits on anything male (that isn't Matsuka, thank God). Season two, Dexter kills people, Rita gets completely the wrong idea about something, Deb falls for the wrong man before being pivotal to solving the case, Angel is unlucky in love and Laguerta hits on anything male (that isn't Matsuka, thank God). Season three... well, you get the point. As early as the second season, it falls into a routine. You could take this as a big old meta-thingy about rituals, those being a speciality of serial killers like Dexter, but it makes things waaaay too easy to work out in advance. Granted, season 4 shows us the killer right in the first 5 minutes of the season, and we're left with no doubt who he is. And, give them their due, the end of the season shakes things up so much that, for once, I have no idea how they're going to progress with the show. Though if season five has Deb falling for the wrong man again, I'm going to have to choke a bitch. Possibly several in quick succession. Again, its still a good show, but it's getting formulaic to a fault now and that's not a good sign.

It's probably the best crime drama on TV since Oz, and from me, that's high praise indeed. I'm not going to drop it if the next season doesn't shape up, but something has to change. The writing's still top-notch, and the focus has moved somewhat from Dexter stalking his prey to a 'nemesis of the season' format, almost. Most of the killings in the last two seasons are pretty incidental if you think about it. I really do want to see it move from the slot it's found itself in, and it's likely to happen now, though not in the way any of us expected. Definitely make sure you catch the first season though, you will not be disappointed.

elektro_static @ 2009-12-19T18:35:00

2009-12-19T18:35:09Z

Dunno why, but I've been watching a lot of speedruns and the like of games recently. I spent a large chunk of the morning watching a guy who'd hacked the various Touhou games to difficulty levels they were never supposed to reach. Watching the screen is like watching a lava lamp filled with glowing bubbling death. Kinda pretty in a way. Or another guy who's hacked Kingdom Hearts 2 to have multiple copies of bosses onscreen at the same time. Watching that is sickening.

Of course, if you're less hack-inclined, there's this guy here who's playing Dante Must Die mode (the hardest setting) from scratch without buying any upgrades or moves or levelling any of the styles. While getting S and SS ranks each and every time. That's frankly sickening, since he makes it look so easy, while most of us had a hard time taking on Cerberus the first time. Or the guy who tries to complete Majora's mask without resetting the clock more than once. And then there's that guy we've all seen playing the already-hard Ikaruga, controlling both ships with a single hand each.

Personally, I prefer watching genuine high-level play rather than glitches. Speedruns of FPSes generally suck, since they consist of the screen flying about all over the place, glitching through walls, then the stage ending 27 seconds later. Not much fun. Then again, they're not really built for this kind of thing. You can't really show off in Call of Duty the same way you can in, say, Ninja Gaiden.

This should probably have been an OOC article, huh.

elektro_static @ 2009-12-19T10:16:00

2009-12-19T10:16:50Z

Antivent Day 19. Secret of Mana. That is all.

elektro_static @ 2009-12-18T20:01:00

2009-12-18T20:01:57Z

Man, that sucks. Just found out that Dan O'Bannon died yesterday. He was responsible for writing Alien (which I reviewed ages ago) and Total Recall, amongst others. Him, Patrick McGoohan, Ricardo Montalban... I need to watch the last few Alien films, Wrath of Khan and marathon The Prisoner between Xmas and New Years.

Damnit, now I'm depressed.

elektro_static @ 2009-12-18T18:25:00

2009-12-18T18:25:24Z

I think this last book of the year may be one of the weirder ones. Yes, weirder than the one with the secret king of the world and the reinvented ocarina. Yes, even weirder than the one with the Godzilla Bukakke.

I'd also like the record to state that i started reading this one before the recent death of any celebrities. Especially anyone whose name rhymes with 'Coy Bisney'.

Cough cough.

(this is why I don't do 'proper' Xmas-themed things)

2009-12-18T18:14:49Z

I only post these things because you are wicked and must be punished.

elektro_static @ 2009-12-18T12:30:00

2009-12-18T12:30:28Z

Antivent Day 18: In which we heap praise on an obscure game, just for a relaxing change of pace.