Battle Moon Wars Act 4

Well, after one day, the C74 games are starting to emerge from the depths. The new Touhou game has been met by a growing horde of fanboys and girls, as has that "Magical Battle Arena" (there's a Kinomoto Sakura look-alike!)...

But the game I was looking forward to most was Battle Moon Wars Act 4. Technically, it's an expansion pack on top of the original Act, one that requires the other two expansions... >_>;; But let's not get into technicalities.

On the same day it went on sale at Comiket, a patch was released on WERK's support page. Not really something that inspires much confidence in their work, but as most of us were wondering if they'd even have anything ready for Comiket... Ah well.

Regardless, a lot of characters make their debut in this act, many of which are going to appear as playable characters (*cheers*). Aozaki Aoko and Bazett Fraga McRemitz are the ones I most want to test, but I'll have to wait until the game gets here. ;_;

Anyhoo, we all look forward to Aroduc's translation. :3

Olympics Fever

Well, opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics of 2008 was last night, and can I say the commentary was almost always at inappropriate times? They talked during the good music and didn't talk when there was er... auditory entertainment that wasn't exactly something the Western culture has much of.

Anyway, the loli at the start was most obviously a Nikki Webster, Mark II. Young female? Check. In a dress? Check. Singing a song? Check. Hanging by wires later? Check. Not much of an improvement on the original, but hey, Webster wasn't that bad at the Sydney Olympics.

The whole printing press thing was very impressive. Australia had this performance where all these little brats had those giant sunshades you put in cars, and they waved them around like it was supposed to look like the ocean. It looked nothing like an ocean. With this one, it was well choreographed and looked so well done I can understand why they had everyone poke their head out at the end - even though you could see their legs down the bottom when they lifted the boxes to their 'maximum' height, a lot of people still thought it was machine run!

And talking about 'maximum' height - not all the performers were the same height. They may have been roughly similar, but man, that must've taken some training to ensure nobody lifted just a bit too much! XD

The song with the British lady was awful. Absolutely awful. Ugly guy and far too extreme for the woman.

What the hell was with the loli with the piano guy? She's grinning like mad at the start, and when we cut to her later, she's slumped over and looks bored as anything.

Regardless, the Opening Ceremony was quite a good watch (SMILE! BE HAPPY! :) :) :) :) SMILE FOR THE CAMERAS!! :) :) :) )... and then came the entrance of the athletes and their groupies.

It. Took. So. Long.

I feel so sorry for all the cheerleaders... what was funny was at the start, they were jumping and waving their arms above their heads. By the time the first fifty or so countries had passed, all were just moving from side to side and clapping their hands, sometimes waving. The ones that were furthest from the entrance barely moved more than clapping! Anyway, the ones closest to the entrance had the most television coverage... and I suppose that's why the organisers put the best looking ones there? Those were also the ones that kept moving the most, but there was a particular lazy one that was sort of doing it half-heartedly... XD

The formation of most teams was horrid, particularly that of the larger groups. You could see that the front two rows were about the width of the track, but then it tapered off at the back to gather at the edge of the track. In the case of the USA, practically all of them shoved off to the edge of the track, extending the length of their procession and slowing down to a snail's crawl as all of them fought to be caught on camera...
Many other countries exhibited this camera whore behaviour, but America was the most obvious, what with having such a large group and because almost all of them were engaging in this behaviour.

Australia came in 3rd last, as there are 15 strokes in the first character of the Chinese version of the name (the last country has 16), and it was rather odd to not see them in the official Australian colours of green and gold. Rudd, when did we become Finland?

And finally, China came in, with a shota at the forehead and a long block of athletes that did not break formation.

Anyway. Somebody upload the ceremony in HD already. Preferably with subtitles.

Think your name sucks? Think again.

Some of us really despise the names we were given. Some of us would do well to realise there are people out there that have far worse names. A New Zealand judge had a girl become a ward of the court so that her name could be changed (this was during a custody battle for the girl), as her name was originally 'Talula Does the Hula from Hawaii'. Serious.
Other such amusing tragic names include 'Sex Fruit' (wth), 'Number 16 Bus Shelter' (um...) and 'Violence'. *cough*

Srsly.

Why so serious?

I saw Batman: The Dark Knight today... major impressions are that the actor for Bruce Wayne isn't 'masculine' enough, Ledger was alright as the Joker (sufficiently loopy), and there were just too many homoerotic subtexts.

Or text. I'm not too sure.

While many hero-villain relationships are almost always spun into being 'something more', the script for this movie seemed to want to remind the viewers that such a practice abounds amongst 'fans' that continue on to write fanfiction... most of which doesn't do the original source material any justice and/or fails as a tribute.

Anyway. It's ok. I think I'll enjoy 'The Forbidden Kingdom' far more, but that may be my HK blood speaking.

Speaking of Hong Kong, why did all the Chinese people speak Mandarin? They were in HONG KONG, for goodness' sake! They should have been speaking Cantonese. Maybe they couldn't hire any Cantonese speaking actors (no actresses, as these were thugs) that would put up with not being able to show their 'awesome kung-fu'. And be beaten up by Bruce Wayne in a completely embarrassingly easy manner.

Or something. Maybe they 'had' to speak Mandarin because that's the official language of China and HK is (and has been for over a decade) part of China. But seriously, Cantonese is the language of Hong Kong - not Mandarin, not English, not German, no. Perhaps the script writers wanted something 'easily understandable' by the Western masses, as Mandarin is the dialect of choice for those wanting to learn Chinese... But that didn't stop them using Cantonese in 'The Departed'.

Anyway, the references to having one's mouth widened with a knife and drinking alcohol with a gaping hole in the side of one's face certainly reminds me of Pan's Labyrinth. Which is interesting, considering Hell Boy II is made by the same group... or something like that.

BTW, with burns that bad? He wouldn't have been in excrutiating pain... all the nerve endings would have been burned.

PS: Lancelot is a better Dark Knight. :)

Dial Before You Dig

Some of you may have seen on the news that Optus services in QLD and northern NSW had gone down for several hours today... due to someone digging to lay down a desalination pipe near Gold Coast. AFAIK, one shouldn't be ploughing fields laced with fibre... Whoopsy~

The unfortunate thing is that we had already been brought down to using the backup, as the main pipe was suffering from a hardware problem. So all those redundancy plans certainly did nothing to prevent Queensland from being cut off from the rest of the world.

Services affected included internet, landline and mobile phones, not only for Optus but also other companies that used Optus infrastructure, such as iiNet internet, 3 mobile and Virgin mobile.

Anyhoo, internet's back up - somebody should tell those Gold Coasters that just because they're so close to the border, they shouldn't act as if they left half their brain across the border at home...

The Music Charts - Episode 1

After acquiring my provisional driver's license, my parents have made me drive them everywhere. At least, when I'm driving, I choose the radio station!

And thus we were listening to the radio - something I don't do very often - and I'm brought (sort-of) up to speed with the charts in the country at this moment.

Thankfully, I'd turned down the volume, or my mother would have been going "CHANGE THE CHANNEL NOW" when Katy Perry's song 'I Kissed a Girl' turned up.

Amused at this song, I was even more amused at all the people who commented on the music video/lyric pages/etc. that they 'loved this song' and that you shouldn't forget that 'im [sic] straight, btw'.

Really. So insecure in their own sexuality that they had to blatantly swing their heterosexuality around, despite the fact that the song is - essentially - one for heterosexual females that are very happy with their boyfriends, thankyou very much, they're just so drunk they're experimenting.

These are also probably the same people who get angry when homosexuals/bisexuals/pansexuals/anyone not like them 'rubs in' whatever makes them different... after all, they're so insecure they're afraid that if someone were to make even one positive argument about 'the other side', that they would 'fall' to the 'dark side'. *cough*

Anyhoo, heterosexual girls, this song's for you. Er... drunk heterosexual girls. *cough*

Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy

This story begins with a lot of rambling about the situation before actually playing the game, so if you want to jump to the bit where I actually talk about the game... search for 'So I actually start the game'. You'll be missing the 'amusing' problems I experienced before I could actually play the game...

So like, around four or so years ago, I was in the post office for reasons I do not entirely remember anymore... and in one of their little 'bins', was around six or so copies of this game. Curious - or maybe I really was that bored - I picked up one of them and was astounded at the price.

Four dollars.

Yes, a copy of a PC game released just the year before (and I'm not too sure on when I bought the game either - I could've bought it in 2003 for all I know... I've just had this game for years), was selling for a measly four dollars.

Now, this wasn't some terrible game (garnered scores around the average of 8.1 out of 10 on several reputable review sites), so I wasn't -and still am not - sure as to why it was on sale. Really, I wonder why the post office would have them anyway, so perhaps it was just a bid to get rid of items they weren't supposed to have in stock in the first place.

Anyhoo, impulse purchase (lol), went home, discovered old computer was old (no shit) and that I wouldn't be able to play it until I replaced some parts. Or got a new computer. As I was nearing the time when I would be getting a new one anyway, that was all cool - I'd wait it out. It was only four dollars, anyway.

Motherboard on desktop is replaced, machine passes the system requirements... and I install it.
For some reason, it just stops at the splash screen. *rolls eyes*

So I pretty much give up on it, it being such an impulse and cheap buy in the first place. Wasn't as if I'd really, really, really wanted to play the game anyway, it would've just been nice to.

And now to this year. Winter break, I'm looking for things to do (kinda burned off visual novels at the moment, I think I've played too many XD)... and I come across my old discs.

I install on the desktop. Still stalls. Whatever. Try on my laptop.

Voila! Success! Vista! *cough*

Anyhoo~ So I actually start the game. Finally.

After playing the first 'mission' (ahahaha!! of course you won't get a mission briefing - it's not as if they'd plan for the ship taking you to the Jedi Academy to be shot down!), I thought it needed a bit more customisation. So now my character was wielding a lance saber. To be honest, I was surprised the mod would also affect the 'true' length of the blade - giving my character a reach advantage over those filthy Disciples of Ragnos.

On my next run through, I think I'll use the Darth Vader mod. >_>

The 'story' is pretty much you running around on missions, slicing down people that shoot at you (it's only fair to respond in kind) and sometimes people that aren't (because they were going to shoot at you, or perhaps that robot was blocking your way and the AI isn't advanced enough to have it let you through the doorway first). Also, using the missile launcher to blast Dark Jedi off elevated platforms is really cool. Until you get the smarter ones that use Force Push to knock the missile back at you...

There's some interesting missions - I especially liked the one where you're on a bike-speeder most of the time, and you're zooming around through the valleys... The ones that piss me off, however, are the ones that require you to find the place to set a signal so that some idiot in a fighter can fire bombs at it... and then you have to find the next place, figure out how to get up to the roof (!!), set another one... rinse and repeat. And after all that, you're still not done! You have to find explosives to deactivate - or activate, depending on whether or not what's going to be blown up is what you want destoryed or not. Trying to find your way without a navi? Not fun.

Sure, you could argue that there's no way the Jedi could get blueprints of the Imperial Strongholds or the exact design of some "random" tomb where ancient Jedi and Sith were laid to rest. Honestly, it would have been an improvement if a navi would show the map of where you'd been, and where you were relative to it.

And seriously, playing the game on mute is not an option. There are times important instructions are given by voice... which was particularly true for the mutant Rancor mission. Eurgh. I even set twenty cheat-spawned Luke Skywalkers and Kyle Katarns at it... all were killed. :( That's some mutant...

A lot of the missions were pretty fun, but I really dislike how NPCs have some shitty AI. Especially with regards to changing levels in a building... I don't know how many times the lift got stuck because the accompanying NPC was standing in a position that caused it to stall. ~__~ And then, when you're going from one room to another, some of them don't follow you and just stand there at the doorway... so you have to go back, get them to enter the room, then continue on. In the last level, there's like... five Jedi that stand there and don't follow you down the stairs because the AI is just that weird. Their danger sense to heights is also bad... several of them fell to their deaths. <_<

On the other hand, adversary jedi AI was much better. Stormtroopers and officers were real bad, although some did run away - but not far. There were also a few cases of them just surrendering, arms up in the air... The Reborn, Disciples of Ragnos and bosses were a different matter. Much more advanced, and certainly required a lot of jumping and backpedalling to avoid being cut down.

What was interesting was that those Dark Jedi that specialised in using the Force to attack you (e.g., by using Push to knock you down so their accompanying lightsaber-wielding partner could stab you, using Force Choke or Force Drain, etc.), would be killed by a single full-Force-meter Force Lightning blast. While their lightsaber-wielding company would need a few additional slashes with the lightsaber to take them out as well... You'd think the Force wielder would have higher resistance. *rolls eyes*

A rather unique method of 'telling the story', the requisite 'choose between the Dark and the Light side' scene, good customisability of the character (at the time, and further improved by the user made modifications)... quite a good game. I wouldn't mind seeing a similar product made with better graphics... but I doubt there ever will.