Newest Skins

All Skins

Total: 162

.hack	(18)
Asian Kung-Fu Generation	(2)
Bleach	(12)
Code Geass	(2)
Cowboy Bebop	(1)
D. Gray-man	(4)
Digimon	(7)
Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children	(4)
Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core	(1)
Final Fantasy XII	(4)
Fruits Basket	(1)
Full Moon wo Sagashite	(4)
Fullmetal Alchemist	(10)
Gankutsuou	(2)
Get Backers	(8)
Inuyasha	(2)
Kingdom Hearts	(13)
Kyou Kara Maoh	(1)
Legend of Zelda	(2)
Megaman	(2)
Naruto	(4)
Okami	(5)
One Piece	(2)
Other	(3)
Ouran Koukou Host Club	(4)
Phoenix Wright	(1)
Pokemon	(10)
Princess Tutu	(1)
Reboot	(1)
Resident Evil 4	(1)
Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure	(1)
Samurai Champloo	(5)
Shakugan no Shana	(3)
Sonic the Hedgehog	(6)
Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu	(5)
The World Ends With You	(1)
Tsukihime	(1)
Wolf's Rain	(3)
Xenosaga	(4)
xxxHolic	(1)

Welcome to SpaceCatSamba.com, my personal domain. If it's your first time here, click here for a more detailed introduction. Otherwise, the main menu's up top, the skin menu's on the right - enjoy your stay :)

Category: Opinion

Chrome, Spore, iPhone?

09/13/08 05:39:24 pm

Google released a new browser last week, called Chrome. Gave it a shot, and while it's certainly the fastest browser I've seen yet, it holds no real enticement for power users due to its lack of customization and extensibility. And while Google promises that add-ons are forthcoming, I can't see them being too pleased with a potential AdBlock for Chrome. Not that their displeasure will prevent the release of such things, but a nice part of Mozilla's approach is that you can find nearly any available add-on on their centralized site, and that top-recommended extensions - such as AdBlock - are brought to the forefront for your consumption. I can't see Google mimicking a distribution center like that without some restrictions. Still, if you want a very fast browser and don't care about add-ons and such, Chrome might be a good choice for you.

I have been playing Spore, which has sparked a great deal of controversy over its DRM restrictions, while failing to impress some anticipating reviewers. I for one enjoy the game, not so much for the gameplay which is indeed pretty simplistic (so far - I've heard the Space stage gets a bit tougher), but for the fun of taking your single-celled organism and designing iteration after iteration up into a full-blown creature of your own imagination. It's like building that monster out of play-dough when you were a kid, but then having it come to life. If you don't find fun in that sort of thing, then no, you probably wouldn't enjoy Spore. As for the DRM, I agree that it's ridiculous, but I love the logic leap that people make when they say, "well the DRM is awful, so I'm telling everyone to pirate it instead." While I won't say that such a sentiment is right, it's true: this generation can and will pirate something - music, movies, games - if it doesn't like the restrictions placed upon it by its owner(s). That's not going to change, and I think publishers would do themselves a favor to wise up and realize that things like DRM are only hurting their legitimate customers.

Finally, I got an iPhone. Well, not so much "got," as "was provided with." My cell phone is currently a courtesy of my employer, and up until now I was sporting another smartphone, the Treo 755p. It had so many weird problems I don't know where to begin listing 'em. Worst of all, it would often reboot upon receiving an incoming call. It would tell me I had "insufficient memory" when as far as I could tell, more than half the memory was free. It once erased everything on the expansion miniSD card I put into it. And as something of a finale, when I was gathering up my contact info to transfer to the new phone, I noticed it had - for no known reason - assigned my special ringtone for personal contacts to just about everyone on my contact list. In short, it was a device I could force into working, but never really enticed me to want to work with it.

Others in the office seemed to feel similarly only meagerly satisfied with their phones, so when they found out the new iPhone 3G supports MS Exchange (an essential), the switch was quickly approved. While I'm not an Apple fan (this is, in fact, the first Apple product I have ever owned), I must admit this thing is leaps and bounds over my previous smartphone in almost every way. I love how the browser is a real browser, rather than the poor excuse for one that most phones have which will ruin the page layout and can't handle Javascript or any other web technology more advanced than HTML. The touch screen in general is just a good idea too... I love scrolling with my finger, zooming in and out with double-clicks, and just pushing stuff to use it rather than having to navigate there with directional keys as I once did. There are some gripes as well - why no video camera? why no copy and paste? - but overall it's probably the best thing you can get for the money in smartphones.

Vista, Comic Con, jQuery

08/02/08 04:48:02 pm

I might've made this post last weekend, but my draft of it was sitting in an unsaved window when Vista decided to reboot itself in the middle of the night for updates. It's a new computer, so I hadn't turned that setting off yet, but it's always been something I hate about Windows - don't turn off my computer without my say-so.

On that note though, having had this computer for about a month now, I don't see what all the negative fuss about Vista is for. I can't name anything specific to complain about, and certain tasks are easier than they were in XP. I can understand that perhaps people were hoping for some innovation from Microsoft (...wait, really?), and this "Midori" project sounds interesting (if anything ever comes of it), but it seems like if you were fine with XP, you should be fine with Vista; it's just another iteration in Windows.

Anyway, on to whatever my original topic was... Ah yes, Comic Con. It came to town last weekend, as it does every year around that time, and it feels like the internet has descended upon San Diego. All the niche-popularity webcomic authors, media companies hawking sci-fi entertainment, anime product retailers passing out cat ears, and dorks dressed up as MySpace.com (true story) flood into our little downtown enclave... which isn't so little, really, but feels moreso when there are an additional 125,000 people in town.

Myself and Rirath attended the con on Sunday morning, browsed the expo floor for a few hours, and saw John Cho and Kal Penn (of Harold and Kumar fame) on a panel, where they were quite amusing. Neil Patrick Harris was supposed to be there too, but apparently skipped town to go direct a play in London, boo :P

Commentators are starting to wonder whether the "comic" is going out of "Comic Con," to which I must say, "you're only just starting to think that?" Last year was the first time I went, but it had the same feeling as this year, where the TV, movie and video game attractions seem bigger, louder and better than the comparatively plain comic book booths. Personally I can't say I'm opposed to this though; digital media is of greater interest to me. If the comic guys pull out of Comic Con, I'm sure they'll be missed... but not by everyone.

In other news, I'm working on some website development (...for this site, I mean), so I may not be updating with much content for awhile... but hang in there. I've adopted, and am really enjoying writing in jQuery. Javascript is such a cumbersome language that I'm usually reluctant to use, but jQuery makes it make sense. Why put up with some convoluted method of DOM selection in plain JS, when jQ makes use of the CSS selectors we already know? It's intuitive, which JS never has been for me before.

Crisis Core Wrap Up

07/13/08 05:40:00 pm

Crisis Core has been an interesting little game. The battle experience is not exactly a highlight - combat tends toward button mashing, and the DMW roulette is an odd feature offering you no control and an over-abundance of power ups. Special attack animations are unskippable, and often pop up at unnecessary times - like when a single plain hit would've ended the battle instead. Missions - sidequests with item rewards - are repetitive and tedious, but offer some worthwhile prizes and are good for playing with limited time on your hands. Materia Fusion is a decent idea, but you'll likely need a guide to get anything cool out of it. And I don't think I know any game where receiving email from other characters doesn't get annoying.

The story and new characters feel largely unnecessary too. Since the game's a prequel, we know who to pay attention to, and all others are pretty much throw-aways. The main antagonist - Genesis - is particularly annoying in that nearly every line of his dialogue is a recitation of lines from a hackneyed play that you will hear about over and over and over again. Unless they're going to retcon the whole series (and I suppose they could), I just couldn't care about these new characters who I knew had no relevance to the series beyond this one game.

So what makes Crisis Core worth playing then? The best parts of this game are where it overlaps with its original; namely, it's characters - Zack, Aeris, Sephiroth and Cloud - and events, like the Nibelheim incident and all that follows it. As if it's not bad enough that you already know Zack is doomed, the ending is so well done - with both FMVs and battles as story telling - as to make the event more poignant than ever before. I think it may have cemented Zack as the most tragic character of the series (yes, even more so than Aeris). That's really what makes Crisis Core worth the effort.

Happy 4th Ramblings

07/04/08 07:39:14 pm

Happy 4th of July, to those of you who celebrate it. Nothing to post today but some random thoughts from the last few days.

Bookstores. On two separate visits, we've noticed a certain breed of person... Usually it's a teenager, usually reading a manga, usually while seated smack in the middle of a narrow aisle between bookshelves. While we spend awhile finding the book we want, this person remains stationary, even while other customers attempt to go around him (this person is also usually male). I suppose the responsibility of dealing with this person falls upon the bookstore staff, but it's awfully rude all the same.

Gaming. I've just started up Final Fantasy VII Crisis Core, which is the first game I've played on a PSP actually. While the visuals are lovely, the battle system feels flawed, at best. There's not much challenge - you can mash X to beat most enemies - and the roulette-like DMW thing dampens the difficulty even further by bestowing numerous power-ups and special attacks throughout the battles. It also feels odd that you have absolutely no control over the DMW wheels - they just spin and stop whenever they please. The game's story and dialogue also feel rather silly, what with everyone quoting poetry or proverbs and sprouting random wings. And how weird is it to see Sephiroth acting normal? Still fun though, and Zack is a likeable lead.

Website. Hopefully some site improvements will be coming along soon, if I can spare some time to work on them. I know the skin menu on the right is a bit broken in Firefox 3 (which only a small percentage of you are using... and I thank you), but I'm probably going to leave it that way for now.

A Few Things

06/14/08 09:19:38 pm

First we'll talk skins, since that's probably what most of you here are interested in. The skin seen below is in progress... and the balance slider has it in for me. I can't seem to find any functionality in Winamp's MAKI language that'll let me control the pan value... so I can't have it mimic the volume slider and update the animated layer frame as it goes... If anyone knows better, let me know. Otherwise I'll probably have to redo that area (put something different there, or change the slider design).

Second, most of my day at work yesterday was wasted when we had to clean up the database after an SQL injection attack inserted a few thousand lines linking to a malicious Javascript file. Apparently hundreds of sites running MSSQL were hit around the same time. Ugh.

Finally, a bit of anime. I haven't been watching much lately for two key reasons. One is that I have simply chosen to spend my limited free time on other activities (most prominently, more gaming), but the other is that there hasn't been much to trumpet in recent series, it seems. But lately we've been starved for some short, enjoyable video content to watch with meals or while relaxing. So we picked out two to try: Soul Eater and Baccano.

Soul Eater, with 51 supposed episodes, may be pushing the envelope on my tolerance for long series (I know I've watched hundreds of One Piece, Inuyasha and Naruto episodes, but if anything they prove my point: 50 episodes is the approximate maximum for consistently decent quality, I think), but it has been enjoyable thus far. The characters and plot are kinda cookie-cutter: students at shinigami academy - including the archetypical bookworm, headstrong boy, loudmouth, pushover, and perfectionist - must fight together as partners against various evil things and collect souls to become the big cheese. *shrug* Nothing really to complain about, just nothing stellar about it either, I guess.

Baccano, however, I am crazy for. The gore level was a bit higher than my usual taste, but the show's about mafia guys, assassins and otherwise shady characters... so it's not out of place. The story is told non-chronologically, mostly jumping around between a few years in the 1930s, and focusing on suspenseful incidents that intertwine its characters. This manner of presentation allows for numerous cliff-hangers - once you start watching, it's hard to turn it off. The characters are the main driving force of the story though, and I found myself endeared to and interested in all of them (even if they seriously creeped me out at times as well). The music is also catchy - try the opening for a taste.

And that's all for now. Hopefully the aforementioned skin will be done within a day or so...

Gaming: The World Ends With You

06/07/08 07:01:23 pm

Rirath and I recently signed up for GameFly, so I may be musing about random games more often. Today's entry is about the Nintendo DS JRPG, The World Ends With You (originally "Subarashii Kono Sekai" in Japanese, but since that translates to "it's a wonderful world," potential copyright issues apparently prevented it from being released under that title in English).

In the game, you play as Neku Sakuraba, a misanthropic teen who finds himself in an alternate reality Shibuya where he must complete daily objectives to stay alive amidst something called a "Reaper's Game." He meets other "players" trapped in the game, as well as enemies called Noise, and the reapers themselves.

The World Ends With You sets itself apart from so many DS games with its style and depth. Derived from their urban setting, characters and enemies sport trendy fashions or graffiti-like tattoos. The music throughout the game is lyrical, and likewise adds to the atmosphere by sticking mostly to pop and rap, as well as interchanging between English and Japanese language versions of the songs.

The battle system is refreshingly unique, as you fight enemies with a partner on both of the DS' screens at once - on the bottom screen with your stylus, and the top screen with the D-pad. This is certainly not without its flaws though, as it's somewhat difficult to divide your attention between the two. Fortunately they've accounted for this in two ways, the first of which is that your partner will always have an attack that consists of simply pressing the same button several times, and also that you can choose to ignore your partner and s/he'll be auto-controlled instead.

The abilities you wield in battles are decided by pins - you can wear between one and six pins, each one with a power that's activated by a stylus motion (or a shout into your DS' mic). There are hundreds of pins to choose from, though there's a quite smaller range of stylus actions between them; this can get annoying if you pick two or more pins with the same or similar activation methods and end up using the wrong attack.

Trends will also affect your battles - both pins and clothing are associated with brands, and the more popular the brand in a given area, the more powerful the items of that brand will be. While this adds another layer of depth, I found myself ignoring it more often than not. The areas you move between are too small to be concerned with changing all your pins and clothes every few minutes. You can also influence which brand is popular by wearing that brand's items, but locking oneself into a single brand seems more hindering than beneficial.

The game has its downsides too, of course. Gameplay is very linear, to the point where I occasionally felt rushed by the story when I would've liked to wander around a bit. Long chunks of dialog with no option skip will also bog you down sometimes. It's hard to organize your pins and it gets more cumbersome to find the one you want as your collection grows; why couldn't there have been some sorting options (by brand, by level, by effect, etc.)? Also, there's no map. Okay, technically there is, but it only shows you the fashion trends for each area, not the names of the areas... making it useless as a map.

Overall it's an entertaining and fun game though. ... Expect a skin of it.

Thoughts on Mario Kart Wii

05/11/08 06:03:17 pm

Yes I know, I haven't updated in over a month. I'm [slowly] working on a piece of art in Illustrator, at which I'm still something of a newb... but I quite like the style of art you can make with it, so I'm tryin'. There's still a Shakugan no Shana skin pending, and possibly a new Okami one too. I've also gotten a lot of Google searches for "Smash Bros Brawl skin," so I might give that a shot as well. In the meantime, let's talk about...

Mario Kart Wii

It's not bad, but it's not terribly impressive either. First off, the Wii Wheel? If you've any interest in precision control, you'll dump it. This was somewhat surprising to me, since the Wiimote controls in certain levels of Mario Galaxy were markedly sensitive. But, oh well, it's a gimmick.

Moving on to gameplay... Having gotten the game with Rirath, we tried out the multiplayer modes first. From the start, about half of the total tracks are missing, and must be unlocked through single player mode only. This was kind of disappointing - not that the content had to be unlocked, but that there's no means of unlocking it through multiplayer. The concept of "Cups" is somewhat borked in multiplayer, since you can pick and choose tracks and the order you want to play them in; it's really just four separate races in an arbitrary grouping. Battle mode has suffered most from retooling: you can no longer play one-on-one, but must play in teams with CPUs, and when you lose your balloons, you simply respawn with a new set, as the game keeps a running tally of cumulative hits for each team. I've read the argument that this was done to facilitate a better WiFi battle experience, and maybe so, but why must the offline battles follow the same rules?

The game's AI has also been improved, which at times is frustratingly merciless, like when you get bombarded by numerous items in succession. In fact, items in general feel a bit broken - if you're in back, you can always count on a star or a bullet bill to propel you to the front, and if you're in first, it's only a matter of time before a blue shell is upon you. As such, the first two laps of the race are essentially meaningless - you can be in last place going into the final lap and easily score 1st with items. It's more to your detriment to hold onto first position, as you'll simply get pounded down again and again.

So those are the highlights of what's broken in the game, how about what's good? The visuals and music are both laudable, and it's fun to see some of the series' previous tracks renewed in Wii-goodness. The new tracks are well-designed too. The addition of bikes provides more depth when choosing your vehicle, with varied abilities like drifting, drafting and tricks under consideration. I've yet to try the online play, but people say that's fun too. :P

All in all, it's a good game, but not a great game. Which is a shame after seeing such wonderful first-party franchise titles like Brawl and Mario Galaxy.

Smash Tactics

03/23/08 08:27:16 pm

Ah, Smash Bros Brawl... we've been waiting for you for months, and what do you give us? ... A pretty great game, actually. I'm typically not one for fighting games, but I like the Smash series for its combination of beloved characters, relatively simple attack execution, fun battle items, and knock outs that are based on getting flung from the ring rather than having your life meter emptied. Brawl builds on its predecessor's already strong foundation with updated graphics, more items, more characters and more ways to play.

My first move was to play through the adventure mode, "The Subspace Emissary," since you can unlock all of the "secret" characters in it (a preferable method to doing things like Target Smash or completing some number of Brawls in the triple digits). If Brawl is your first venture into Smash, it's also a conducive way to find a character you like, since you'll have to use nearly all of them to get through it. It becomes frustrating at the end however, when you must re-fight every boss while traversing a maze of enemies that continually respawn. The final boss also seems to have a one-hit kill attack that can't be dodged(?). I consider the whole adventure mode as an extra though, and a good one for what it's worth.

The real content is of course, the Brawls! Having a full group of four to fight with is great, and Nintendo's finally starting to grasp the idea that we like digital networking - so if you can't gather a crowd in person, now you can go online. It's a shame however, that the big N must always bend over backward to ensure a sterile environment; while playing with strangers, there's no chat, no nicknames, no taunts, no options to add someone to your buddy list, nothing of an interactive nature. Surely we can't have any of that, lest some poor child be exposed to heinous four letter words or unwanted pictures of human anatomy! [/sarcasm] That's a whole 'nother topic, really... If you're a fellow online Brawl player and you'd like to exchange friend codes, send an email.

Also if you're obsessive, there's this big wall of stuff to get for completing certain challenges... but I know I'm not going to do 'em all... nope...

At other times - portable times - I've been playing Final Fantasy Tactics Advance as well (seriously, name too long). I played Tactics back in the day and enjoyed it, but it was certainly flawed in a few places - sloppy translation of the story, places where you could get stuck in unbeatable battles with no means of reset, the annoyance of wait time between selecting and actually casting a spell, and former guest units who would then join your team permanently and ludicrously overpower those units you'd sunk hours into training. Tactics Advance gets rid of these, and adds more races, new and different jobs, and other improvements. The law system... I don't really care about; it's simple enough to avoid violations if you have a varied team, and then they're somewhat pointless once you can change and revoke them. In any case, it's a fun game, and also quite long for a portable title.

And that's the shpeel about my gaming life - thanks for humoring me. As for skins, there are currently two in the works: Resident Evil 4 and Shakugan no Shana.

RE4 Wrap Up & Apollo Justice

02/26/08 03:38:06 am

When we last left our hero, he had infiltrated the enemy headquarters on ... some island. There are some rather eerie settings here, particularly the run-down hospital where you meet your first regenerator. And those minigun toting commando enemies? Ouch. It took me several attempts to beat Krauser, since I kept trying to shoot him and the time limit would run out. Use the knife? Bah.

On the other hand, I defeated the final boss on my first attempt ("what? All I have to do is shoot the eyeball, then use a context-command? ... Hmm."), after which I was disheartened to die several times on the jet ski escape from the island. I realize I must be simply awful at it, but it felt so out of place to begin with: I just beat the boss... game is over now - gimme a cut scene and some closure, not an opportunity to instantly die 10 more times before you roll credits.

All in all though, I had an unexpectedly great time with this game. I feel a good part of the credit for that must go to the Wii remote controls - for some reason I am near-incapable of simultaneously using one analog stick for movement and one for aiming. The Wii remote makes aiming far more intuitive and comfortable, especially for a n00b (of the genre) like myself. On that note, I can't wait to try out Metroid Prime 3...

But when another Gyakuten Saiban comes to call, nary an objection can be made.

Apollo Justice is the first game in the Ace Attorney / Gyakuten Saiban series to be made for the Nintendo DS rather than being a port of a Gameboy Advance title. However, several of the "new" features actually premiered in the fifth case of the first game - "Rise From the Ashes" - which was added on to the DS version of the title. Fingerprinting, video analysis, 3D evidence inspection and blood detection all return in Apollo Justice, in addition to "perceiving," foot printing, x-ray scanning and sound analysis with a mixing board, to name a few.

While I like these features, I couldn't help but wish for more freedom with them. Why can I only dust for fingerprints when I'm led to do so? Why can't I put any piece of paper in the x-ray scanner, even if it comes out blank? Giving us free reign on the gadgets might have drawn attention away from the stark linearity in the plot, but instead it's reinforced by "only when I say so" access.

And then there's the 3D rendering of evidence... okay, it looks nice, but feels pointless when an examination yields no additional information; this was implemented better in Ashes, where an object was only visible in 3D if a 3D analysis would reveal something special.

However, as usual, Gyakuten Saiban delivers an immersive, intricate story that had me hooked 'til the end. While I liked Trials & Tribulations for its interweaving of stories through three cases, Justice intertwines all of its cases. Since the series dropped most of its regular faces in favor of a new cast, character development was essential, and the game does a satisfying job of bridging the past and present, always revealing things in bits and pieces as you go, of course. Personally I wasn't so enticed by the new breed of smiley, polite prosecutor (it's more fun when they're being smarmy and mean... and cyborg!), but he plays an air guitar in court... how can I not be amused by that?

Moar RE Foar

02/13/08 03:05:44 am

My escapade through Resident Evil 4 Wii Ed continues - I've reached "the island," which follows in the series of simply named locales such as "the village," and "the castle."

Defeating Salazar (or "squeaky voiced midget Napoleon" *link content not suitable for children) took a couple of tries, for a single reason: the one-hit kill. Whatever game it appears in, this really gets on my nerves; I've been fighting this boss for some five minutes, repeatedly dodging flailing tentacles and spider-like creatures, waiting for those few brief moments when I can hit its vulnerable spot, and then it lunges with a many-fanged mouth and a roar that will be your death knell, if you don't run away quickly enough. Worse are the chainsaw-wielding fellows amongst the villagers, or the zealots carrying head-chomping parasites; these guys will show up while you're already occupied fighting off a crowd of enemies, get close to you and then BAM, "You are dead" (I love how the game over screen so flagrantly informs me of this - as if I didn't know that decapitation was fatal).

It's a violation of good faith in gaming. You enter the game with [or progressively acquire] an understanding of the rules that bind you and, supposedly, the enemies as well; you cannot take down your foes in a single hit, but nor can they do it to you, so you have a sense of fairness in the game. A one-hit kill is a violation of this would-be mutual understanding, and thusly feels like cheating. Of course, games try to compensate for this by making killer attacks slow or inaccurate, providing a margin of safety through successful reaction or sheer good fortune. I suppose out of those two, I'd prefer the former, which at least has something to do with my ability in the game, rather than the latter where there's nothing but a coin flip between success and epic fail. Still it doesn't make it any less frustrating when a challenge you would've won is usurped by a tiny mistake that will cost you everything. If I were emo, perhaps I'd muse, "such is life" (...but I'm not... I like bunnies).

I understand though, that the "survival horror" genre is apparently not supposed to be like this in the first place. I'm told that RE4 is an anomaly in that it gives you the means to fight back against the hordes, whereas you'd normally need to turn tail and run for the hills, I suppose. But what fun would that be? As mentioned in my previous post about the game, this isn't my typical gaming fare; it's the first I've played in the genre, really. Because I like it, there's a decent chance I'll give its predecessors a shot at some point, but if a zombie is trying to eat my sweet sweet brains and all I can do is ~~run~~ walk slowly backwards while still facing forward, it doesn't sound like a fun time.

At the very least, Rirath has predestined that I will play Umbrella Chronicles on co-op, however.

Super Mario Galaxy @ TG

12/07/07 04:45:57 am

My thoughts on Super Mario Galaxy over at TwiddleGeek.com.

iPhones & Hype

06/29/07 08:19:46 pm

Ya know, I don't understand the appeal of Apple products. Today's the release of their latest "must have" gadget, the iPhone, so there's a lot of buzz floating around. Don't get me wrong, the iPhone in particular looks pretty snazzy, but there are at least two reasons I wouldn't buy one even if given the chance.

First and foremost is the price. This isn't just the iPhone, but seemingly all Apple merchandise that is shamelessly overpriced. You can always find the same thing - or something better - for much cheaper by another manufacturer - this will be true of the iPhone as well, in due time.

Secondly, early adoption of hardware is generally not beneficial. The first generation has a tendency to not only be rife with bugs, but to have less features than future models which will arrive sooner than you realize. When everyone has one, no one is going to remember or care that you got it first.

And finally... something that always baffles me about hyped product releases: who are these people who will wait in line for a week to purchase something that will soon after become an easily obtainable commodity? I can understand waiting a day, perhaps two... but a week? All I can imagine is that they must have no job, no family, no responsibilities... no life, really.

So, that's my little take on all that. Now begins the real wait: for a better, cheaper iPhone copycat.

Re:CoM Wrap Up

04/17/07 10:38:19 pm

A few words (hmm, actually it turned out to be a lot of words...) after having finished up the Re:CoM disc of KHIIFM+. In general, the game exceeded my expectations for it by lasting a good 30 hours (though people more skilled at the card battling system could probably go considerably faster ^^;), providing fun, if a bit flawed gameplay, and, in my opinion, deeper supporting characters than those found in KHII.

Maybe it's just me, but I didn't find myself very enthralled by [most of] the Organization members in KHII; they're standard villainry, not a whole lot more. Re:CoM, on the other hand, reveals more character in them through in-fighting, manipulation, varying loyalties and the like. Riku also gets far more character development in this title than any of the others, which also fostered a greater liking of him. And of course, if you'd never played the original CoM (as I have not), the connection of story between KH and KHII is far more clear now. ^^;

The gameplay of Riku's story was, however, a bit shallow. In total, his story took me about 6 hours, and that's being generous. Losing in battle was a rare event, limited to incidents of personal inattention (or stupidity), basically. It was also frustrating not being able to edit my deck - I would never intentionally suffer the shame of having such low-numeral cards in my deck - and not being able to heal unless you had a Mickey card with a high-enough number not to be broken; though, presumably as compensation, it was fun having nearly every black card available, and especially helpful not having to charge to reload.

As for specifics on Sora's side, I thought the last couple of battles were not very difficult; what trumps in this game is speed - if the boss isn't fast, it isn't that hard. At least that was the case for me anyway, so I typically had the most trouble with Riku and Larxene. Marluxia, on the other hand, only got tricky when he started throwing down stock techniques at a-mile-a-minute (...and when he scattered my cards around the battlefield T_T "An edge got bented!").

Although it did grow on me a bit, I still never felt great about the card-and-real-time fighting thing. As explained in an earlier post, the two forms just don't mesh all that well. Still, the fact that I kept on playing through to the end, means an A for effort for Re:CoM. For those of you hoping the game will be released in English... good luck with that (or if you start studying Japanese now, you'll might obtain effective comprehension in time for Kingdom Hearts IX!).

Just for fun, I wanted to add a video of a cut scene along with this post... but couldn't achieve an acceptable balance between file size and quality :/ And video editing (or the attempt to do so) on my computer makes it choke on its tongue. So, instead, you get a single frame from that video.

And I'll work on my video production skillz.

Final Mix

03/31/07 12:32:47 am

So I try out Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix Plus, the first disc, and am surprised to be hearing "Sanctuary" rather than "Passion," and English dialogue once the game's started. "Hm, maybe this isn't the right game... No, the subtitles and all the other text is in Japanese..." I suppose most Japanese players would not have played the English version, and thus the English voice track would be considered an "extra" in that context. Incidentally, I haven't played the English version either, but I don't really want to. ^^; If that's all that's different about it (and different colored Heartless and Nobodies), I can't say I'm terribly interested.

Though, the main draw of the game, in my eyes, was Re: Chain of Memories. Off I went to disc two. After getting past the title screen, I was immediately struck by the appearance of reduced visual quality - compared to the first disc I'd just seen, this one looked notably fuzzy. No points for a snazzy opening - it was just scenes of the first KH with credits and "Hikari" overlaid. So my feeling so far is an ominous, "sloppily tacked on?" On we go to actual gameplay, where things seem alright, but... I never played CoM, but it seems like that card-based battling system never earned many fans... and it still won't, I think. Still, I will be playing this rather than the KHII disc.

We'll see how things pan out.

TV, Anime, Quantum Mechanics

03/14/07 05:22:06 pm

So I ran out of unwatched episodes of Arrested Development on the DVDs my brother lent me. I am very out-of-touch with shows on TV; I don't have cable, but even when I did there wasn't much I wanted to watch anyhow. So when I watch such a show, it's usually something my brother recommended and/or lent me episodes of.

Anyway, Arrested Development - character-driven, cleverly written comedy. Unfortunately Fox has a penchant for canceling shows prematurely, so this one's already over. But if you've never seen it, give the reruns a shot.

It's been nice having something I actually want to watch... anime seems to be losing my attention lately. There just doesn't seem to be anything too special out there at the moment (and if you want to argue otherwise, you're free to leave comments).

The most recent anime I really liked were Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu (seriously, three u's) and Ouran High School Host Club. Both character-driven, both comedic but with a dramatic undertone, and Haruhi in particular was quite unique in its plot, narrative structure, and cast of characters. I think Hataraki Man deserves a mention for trying something different as well, but for the most part it fails the "enjoyment" test - I think the stake out episode was the only memorable one for me (all hail Nakai Kazuya). Wait, that reminds me - Noein was exceptional as well: ya got your mix of thought-provoking sci-fi, drama, action, Nakai Kazuya, and an interesting "gritty" looking animation style. Hey wait, weren't Noein and Haruhi somewhat of the same idea in different tellings? Someone's trying - consciously or not - to collapse parallel worlds to keep the one they like? There you have it, unique shows canceling each other out! I shall call it, The Theory of Unique Collapsability, and if I put it in a box with Schrodinger's Cat, it'll save both his lives!

A Little Discourse - ASP

03/13/07 09:54:57 pm

I have to use ASP for the site I work on (the site I am employed to work on, that is - not this one, of course). This was not my choice; in fact, this was the first time I'd ever used it. Though I am glad for the chance to have learned it on the job (perhaps the best way that I learn code: through analyzing, modifying and eventually wholly taking over a complex working example), I must say... I dislike it.

I think my main gripe is that it doesn't follow normal syntax structures. It tries to be "user friendly" with a more "human readable" syntax (or that seems to be the rationale, anyway). I, personally, have never known a code writer who complained of their choice language being syntactically hard to grasp, whereas conversely I've heard nothing but displeasure over languages that try to pull this sort of "easy to follow" nonsense. But maybe I've only known more-experienced coders? Is this sort of things supposed to be good for beginners? ... Wait a minute, why would a beginner start with ASP?

Which brings me to my next point - if you search for ASP-related questions, you're likely to turn up few [useful] results, or a lot of results for ASP.NET instead. It's not hard to understand why you can easily find so much more help on a language like PHP: people use it! *ahem* This is not to say, "no one uses ASP," but whereas PHP often comes standard on any decent hosting package, encouraging its increased usage, ASP tends to be a pricey add-on that only businesses want for no inherent reason. Yeah, that may be a bit too far for me to speak, as a n00b of the language. But bringing it back around to my point - your typical web scripting beginner is going to use what's at hand, and that is not likely to be ASP.

And even if that were so, is it a good idea for beginners to learn with what will become "bad habits" if they go on to any other language? Admittedly, after weeks of nothing but ASP, I'll turn back to PHP and write an if statement with a single = sign, or end a line without a proper ; delimiter. Oh the shame, the shame of it all!

Alright, I'm done here. Hooray for Asian Kung Fu Generation! Oh, and an aside, some new skin site links added recently: Shadows of Deception has a Clover skin that I've had for the longest time and was surprised to so suddenly find its owner. INERTiA is pretty small so far, but has good stuff - particularly some Death Note skins, which can't be found here ^^; (maybe later...)

New Kingdom Hearts Skin! ... Ha, Made You Look

01/21/07 01:05:58 am

New Zelda skin up; gradually getting better at and more comfortable with making Modern skins. Also added a new page - the site's Top and Bottom (that is, Most and Least Popular) Skins - from which we can conclude, Kingdom Hearts and Ed Elric are ridiculously popular, and Reboot is not. Shame on you all. :P The link to said page is in the left-hand column.

On a random note, .hack//GU vol 3's villain has taken on a markedly FFX Seymour air... This displeases me. Also not pleased by the fact that the game thus far can be described simply as "quest, tournament round, repeat." But what can I say, it's the third in a series of three - gotta see the end.

Merry [Post] Christmas

12/27/06 12:51:05 am

With the busier part of Winter break over (the part where you run around buying gifts and decorating, that is), it's time to get back to my recreational activities. As usual, I have a number of half or semi-done skins lying around. Here're the ones I'm letting you see.

The top two are based on Asian Kung-Fu Generation CD case art (I like Ajikan and the art's neat, that's why... and seriously, what's cooler than a chimp with a telescope?), bottom left is a requested Takuto, bottom right is Twilight Princess [which is super early in development here; wanted to use the image, but it just wasn't working out on a classic... so it ended up Modern].

And now, a short and pointless rant about flash drives and similar portable USB devices. I got one such device for Christmas, and it's the second one I own now that has its strap loop on the USB cap rather than on the device itself. I find this rather foolish - if I'm going to attach this thing to a strap and carry it around, if by chance it comes apart, I'm not gonna be too thrilled that, although I've lost my flash drive, thank goodness I still have its cap.

Yeah, pointless rant like I said, but I'm a designer - I notice these things. :P

In other news, the site is running out of available disc space on its host's server. But I was already looking to migrate hosts anyway. It's just a matter of when I'll be able to get it done... But, updates should continue regularly; if I run out of space, I'll compensate.

Plug & Sunday Soapbox

09/17/06 07:04:31 pm

Plug for a friend's new site - TwiddleGeek.com, an anime n' gaming blog. Give it a visit why don't ya? There's a lot more updatin' going on there than here ^^;

And, in the spirit of game discussion... or.. just cause I want to... A word on the soon-to-be-released in North America PS2 game, Okami. I tried it out because it was getting rave reviews, and looked like something I might enjoy. Well... I will say that, as far as visuals and music go, Okami is a delight. In fact, you can probably get all the best aspects of this game simply by watching someone play it (assuming you're not watching it over a poor webcam feed).

The gameplay, however, leaves me wanting. There's really no challenge to be had in this game; enemies are easily smacked to death by button-mashing. The fudewaza ["brush techniques"] can be amusing - paint your enemy black to cripple his accuracy, or if that flying creature's out of reach, use the "cut" stroke to slash his wings off - but they get old as they're rather unnecessary on the whole [in minor battles anyway, which seem to comprise most of the battles you'll be encountering...?].

My other main complaint is tooooo muuuuch dialoooogue. It's kind of ironic that, while some character is blabbering away, the camera will cut back to Ama-kou, who has fallen asleep, and this is supposed to be a joke. Well, it is funny, and Okami offers some amusing character interaction, if you're willing to sit through the over-long exposition for it. Also, who in their right mind thinks that those Banjo Kazooie style animal murmurs instead of actual voiced dialogue are a good thing? Please no more ^^;

So, essentially, I'd say Okami is a rental; worth playing for awhile, but underneath all the visual hoo-ha is a game that gets dull too soon. You can play it until .hack//GU comes out.

Edit: Eh, maybe that's too harsh. ^^; It's just hard not to expect a lot from a game that gets upper 90s on nearly all of its reviews. It is a very good game, it just has some persistent annoyances ("Issun, can you keep your yap shut for more than 5 minutes?"), and I still retain that there's little challenging about it ("And here we draw another circle..."). At present, I like it better than FFXII; how's that?

Older Posts