Things the internet did while I was offline – lots of links edition

Michael Leave a comment

Was going to compile these links into a short week in review style thing to make up for my cruel absence, but frankly I couldnt be arsed (and I prefer to leave my blog an empty shrine to apathy), so instead Im going to make one gigantic Facebook update, onwards:

– David House’s notes to the grand jury are a bit special, guy must have balls of steel – http://pastebin.com/q0hTkwFh

Deadpool game announced – the trailer shows fun gameplay, dialogue which is strongly reminiscent of the comic and possibly the worst voice acting in the world – http://youtu.be/6S2MoeCpvP4

Hitmonkey game announced for next year, http://hitmonkeygame.com/, nothing at the website at the moment but theres an announcement banner image floating around. Could be amusing but to be honest Hitmonkey was good as a one off joke, not much mileage in the miniseries

Tekken Tag Tournament 2 continues its relentless drive to include more content than all other fighting games combined – free costume DLC consisting of 150 swimsuits for the entire cast (men, raptors, bears and robots included) has been announced, also this saucy trailer of real ladies dressing up – http://youtu.be/lJZQ6icEMjQ

Trailer for the new Resident Evil animated movie looks cool (and has Ada at the end, sweet), I enjoyed the fan pandering cheese fest that was the first one – http://youtu.be/FmUR6f39dg4

Images of the new model PS3’s leaked, it looks like a toaster fucked a breadbin – http://www.joystiq.com/2012/07/13/rumor-new-ps3-model-photographed/

I was only keeping an eye on Sleeping Dogs (aka True Crime Hong Kong) because Adam kept going on about how good the series was but this “Sleeping Dogs 101” makes it look pretty fucking sweet – http://youtu.be/8QuIovDO6TE (Narrators voice is annoying, could she sound more bored?)

The first game in every new Naughty Dog series is always awesome and The Last of Us doesnt seem set to change that trend – http://youtu.be/krLNvmYF7lM My only fear is that it will ride the standard post-apocalyptic trope of “man is the greatest enemy”, holy shit am I bored of that. Also, when are they coming out with a Rings of Power sequel? I still have it for my MegaDrive

Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner HD Opening Cinematic, this is seven minutes long but looks fucking awesome – the redone animation in tandem with the very well done HD upgrade makes it look great – http://youtu.be/sMK2bUIcgjY Though it does whang of Kojima’s usual (immensely enjoyable) madness

Speaking of Kojima, Metal Gear Solid 5 announcement details either leaked or faked – http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=482692

On the off chance you have been living under a rock for the last week or so, the current new technology darling – the Ouya – http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ouya/ouya-a-new-kind-of-video-game-console

In kickstarter news it seems Penny Arcades (in my eyes) morally questionable Kickstarter has been funded – http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/575109064/penny-arcade-sells-out

A very handy tool for cutting down the size of your overall steam install – http://steamcleaner.tikione.fr/en/

New Borderlands 2 trailer, in case you missed it or were insane and needed more selling on it – http://youtu.be/nicvyhrmTDs

Phantasy Star Online 2 has been announced for an english release in early 2013, that is good because the game is quite enjoyable and has a good free to play implementation. You can try out the Japanese version at the moment – http://bumped.org/psublog/pre-open-beta-starter-guide-for-phantasy-star-online-2/#signin , its almost worth it for the amazingly awesome character creator, it is definitely the best MMO character creator Ive ever used and easily rivals offline character creators from games such as Skyrim etc.

Darksiders II gameplay footage – http://youtu.be/S3vtN1gsXb0 I am really looking forward to this, love Joe Mad’s designwork – even if the fucker never finished Battle Chasers. Each of the four areas in the game is supposed to be as big as the entirety of Darksiders, this games is going to be a monster

Capcom announces Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure HD, a fighting game rented once for the PS1 IIRC and had no fucking idea what was going on. Its a tad pricey (15 of your human euros), which is offputting. I was also largely ignorant of the madness that is JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. But I’ve been delving into it over the last month or so and once you get over the initial weirdness its very addictive http://www.joystiq.com/2012/07/14/capcom-announces-jojos-bizarre-adventure-hd-coming-august-21-2/ Also as I mentioned before CyberConnect are doing a current gen JoJo’s game – http://youtu.be/cr3EKkQCNmI (trailers worth watching just for the pen stuff, rivals the awesome note writing bits from Death Note)

Oh and the ingame announcement trailer for Tekken Tag Tournament 2’s swimsuits has just gone up – http://youtu.be/PBRBN4GSQvc I of course hope it enables me to recreate the greatest Tekken 5 ending – http://youtu.be/PTzZRaqHtFM

Well I think thats more or less everything, now back to college work/fighting the Steam Summer sale

Front Mission 5 – Brief thoughts on emulation and a preliminary Lets Play

Michael 1 Comment

I like giant robots, real or super. I like role-playing games. I like turn based computer games. Unsurprisingly I am a fan of the Front Mission series, a series of turn based strategy rpg’s from Square Enix featuring a world only slightly in advance of our own where mobile armoured frames known as “Wanzers” have become an integral part of armed conflicts. The mecha in the series fall strongly into the “real robot” category, as represented by stuff like VOTOMS, Mobile Police PATLABOR, etc. The series was renowned for its complex storylines dealing with conflict between multiple morally ambiguous political entities and for the depth of its gameplay. Unfortunately the series saw few releases in the west (Front Mission 3 on the PSX, Front Mission 4 on the PS2 and a port of Front Mission for the DS) and the lead developer of the series has since left Square Enix so no new games are likely to be forthcoming. Though there have been a number of fan trasnlastions (some of which are ongoing). Continue reading…

Drip Feed

Michael Leave a comment

I’m going to try and start posting daily for a while, even if its just little bits of nothing. So to start myself off I’m going to copy a facebook post “In a way I feel sorry for Bioware, they have just announced that theres going to be an extended ending DLC. But the details they released and the manner in which they announced it clearly indicates that they said they were listening to fan feedback and then promptly ignored that feedback. The fact they couched the new stuff as “expanding on the ending while maintaining their artistic integrity” i.e. explaining the ending to us porles who didnt get their genius doesnt help in the least. Dragon Age 2 was the game that killed “Bioware = pred-order” for me (Jade Empire started it and ME2 edeged it along), but with Mass Effect 3 theyve pretty much guranteed that all future games of theirs are “maybes or try before buy” at best (e.g. I signed up for SWTOR after trialing it for a week)”

I no longer hear the sound of marching, charging feet boy Or How the King of Iron Fist lay down his crown

Michael Leave a comment

I was going to start off with a bit about growing old (in general I dont mind it, though I’m also not super pushed on it). But to be honest I dont think thats entirely the cause of it, it is possibly an element. But only a personal one rather than a generally applicable one. After all, it has a lot more to do with a changing schedules and priorities which are generally unattached to aging. It could possibly be argued that the issue is with people I know growing up, but again thats rather inaccurate (and again changing priorities, schedules and locations are to blame). I suppose I could blame my general refusal to engage in the online element – but again I dont think thats the issue, after all I have no real problem with MMO’s and my objection is based on objective facts (lag is simply unavoidable and changes the game drastically) rather than personal preference. I suppose ultimately I would have to cite “Unreconcilable differences” and leave it at that. What am I babbling about you (justifiably) ask? As the title (somewhat obtusely) implies, I am done with fighting games. Continue reading…

Tears of a (fat) clown

Michael Leave a comment

Well I managed to stick to my diet (roughly) for only about a week before it all went pear shaped (just like my body *zing*, well actually I’m more sausage shaped). That was about a week and a half ago. I could make the usual excuses (Commuting, work, assignment work load, lack of planning). But to be honest I think the actual reason has a lot more to do with motivation and sub-conscious sabotage, like a lot of things in my life I suppose. Anyway, enough whingeing, I’m going to start again Monday morning so hopefully my next post will be a bit more positive.

A week of dieting dangerously Or How I learned to stop worrying and love the broccoli

Michael 2 Comments

The title is a lie, there is sadly no danger involved so those who were hoping to read about my dieing in some extreme food related accident should move along. Alarmist title aside though I am once more embarking on the perenial penance of fat fuckers everywhere – a diet. So if you’ve always wanted to be with but were worried about not having a J,O,B, then I suggest you take your chance now while I’m emotionally vulnerable. Because obviously thin people have no problems with their lives. Moving on, everyone in the world appears to be doing the Slimming World diet. So obviously thats too commercial for me. Or alternately, I had a look at it but I just cant get on board because their documentation fails to properly explain their underlying methodology e.g. while I understand how the A&B choice works I dont understand (becuase its mentioned nowhere) the reasoning behind it. I also took a look at the Hackers Diet. While it does have some interesting material around accurately measuring body weight (which I shall be using) and is painfully straightforward it doesnt look like it would work for me. So my diet shall be a hybrid of Slimming World and Weight Watchers No Count, I may use the “Syns” (why the alternate spelling?) from Slimming World because their product lists are more locally comprehensive. As with my last diet speed and convenience will be the watchwords behind by meal plan. Continue reading…

(Upcoming) Games of 2012 – My anticipation should be yours

Michael Leave a comment

Well its been a year since I posted about my anticipated games of 2011. I still havent managed to figure out how to be excited about things again. Actually its probably worse now. But wangsty whinging aside. I ended up playing most of the games on last years list, even those I thought I wouldnt. Overall there were a lot more pleasant surprises than expected disappointments. Which was nice. Looking forward to 2012 it looks like its going to be a pretty awesome year for gaming. Though I probably wont have a lot of time to play them until I finish up college, which is bad. On the other hand I’ll be unemployed shortly which leaves me with free weekends, which is good. Continue reading…

(Very) Brief Thoughts on the Winter 2011/12 anime season

Michael Leave a comment

Yet another blog entry brought to you by my procrastination in writing my thesis. Thirty new shows, none of which I’ll get a chance to watch till late May or June. Which in one way is a good thing, I wouldnt watch them until they were finished anyway so having a good excuse to wait suits me fine. Some stuff looks decent here and one or two I really want to see. But there’s just something about this season that seems dull. In an odd change I’m looking forward to a ton of the OVA’s and most of the films (yay BERSERK!!). Continue reading…

Thoughts on Windows and Desktop customisation

Michael Leave a comment

Well I finally broke and re-installed Windows (you would think it could handle having all the hardware in the machine bar the hard drives switched but apparently not). As I was making (something) of a fresh start I thought it might be time to update my OS and desktop customisation. For a year or two now I’ve been using a combination of RocketDock (with some plugins), RainMeter and StartKiller for desktop customisation. I’ve also added a few custom registry entries to expand the power of the almighty context menu. The results of all this can be seen in the screen shots below: Continue reading…