Here’s the lowdown on some anime that I’m currently watching and some that I forgot about the other day. Well, technically it’s my Birthday as of now, so I’m going to make this short. Enjoy, and remember there’s huge spoilers here.

Afro Samurai: Just finished it, and it’s amazing. For the record there are a few parts that need to be skipped over (I just cut them out of mine), so be warned. However, I strongly recommend this anime to anyone, as long as you don’t mind extreme, exaggerated violence. This anime makes the Gladiator movie look like a Disney movie. You’ll see heads getting cut in half, limbs flying everywhere, and weapons just going right through bodies. However, the excellent talents of Sam Jackson and Ron Pearlman (two of my favorites) make this one even better. The story is great, the action awesome and well-thought out and the voice acting is just amazing. Grab your copy today.

Blassreiter: Although I’m not a big fan of the religious and demon elements, Blassreiter is one of the best anime I’ve watched so far. We’ve got zombies, motorcycles, mecha, and some great character design. If you can get around the occasional fan service, the show really sticks out. I’m about half way through the show and I really love it.

Macross F: Great show, sublime ending (minus the “I’ll take the sky” part), amazing characters, and okay plot. The only part that really got me was when Michel died. I remember my stomach jerking and getting some dust in my eye right then. I probably won’t rewatch it, but I’m very anxiously awaiting the movie.

Transformers G1: I’m taking it slow for now, but I’m really enjoying the old-school anime. I find myself constantly telling Clarita “Well, in the original Transformers….”. But she doesn’t really care.

That’s it for now. Tomorrow I’ll be talking about some of the TV shows I’m watching.

Path of the Furon is the game I’m talking about. The newest game in the “Destroy all Humans” series takes place in the 70’s, and is coming to the XBox 360, PS3 and Wireless platforms. As you control Crypto, you’ll fight new enemies, including a new very dangerous enemy: Crypto’s own species. So as we fight the humans (obviously), the aliens, we’ll also have acess to certain powers learned from the Kung-Fu Master.

So head on over to CryptoEnhance and enter the contest there for a chance to win a freaking 32″ HDTV or a $50 GameStop certificate! And, since you’re there, you might as well check out the trailers and free downloads including wallpapers and AIM icons.

But that’s not all! If you get the game, then take your Proof of Purchase to your local (participating) GameStop and exchange it for a BobbleHead! Get over there before supplies run out.

After yet another long absence from posting, I’m back, hopefully for a little longer this time. In the two months I’ve been gone, I’ve watched a lot of anime, so I thought I would start with that. So without further… rambling, here we go (don’t forget the spoilers).

Ar Tonelico: It’s a Fantasy/Steampunk anime that is basically a promo for the game of the same name. The main character lives in the highest part of a mysterious tower, and due to his recklessness, falls down to the lower levels where he meets the female part of the main cast. It’s a great concept, and the magic and signing mixed is great and somewhat old-school. The main problem is in the length: it’s only 24 minutes. So basically we have a world and relationships that should be cultured over multiple episode that are slammed together in the short amount of time. My ruling? If you’re not going to or haven’t seen the game, don’t watch the anime, it’s missing a real story, character development, and much more - when seen on its own.

Mospeada: Mospeada is a somewhat odd anime. Not the characters, not the mecha, but the plot line, but the actual episodes themselves. Aside from the last two, the episodes are small, self contained stories. So, besides the characters and some overlying plot elements, each episode starts and ends its own story. It’s a great idea, but don’t get me wrong, there is a plot, it’s just rather simple: the main characters join up and have to make it to the “Reflex Point” where they will fight the final battle. Mospeada has some great battle scenes, awesome character design and development, but a pretty bad ending. I don’t really like the whole “the bad guys are really good, it just depends on how you treat them/look at them.” But, if you like Macross, you’ll love Mospeada, just don’t go looking for a great bloody ending.

Macross 7: And it’s multiple spinoffs. I might have been negative about the first two, but be prepared for a slew of negativeness about 7. In a nutshell: it sucks. Now, for the long explanation we have a problem. The character design is great (Gamlin is one of my favorite charaters in all anime, plus he’s Takehito Koyasu), the plot is actually really good, and the mechas (the few that there are) are very well designed. What was the problem, then? The show could have easily been a short OVA or even a movie, but yet it was stretched over 50 episodes. 50 painful episodes. Let’s take the final story arc in account. They finally get to the enemy home planet, then they go back home for a few episodes, and they decide to go for one last run at the home planet: totally unnecessary, and slightly ridiculous. Another example. How many episodes did we have to hear Basara signing to Sivil in the freaking forest. Wake her freaking up and get it over with! I know that someone with a little skill in video editing could cut the 50 eps down to 2 hours, and we wouldn’t miss a beat. The saving grace? Fire Bomber is really awesome. My Soul For You? Oh yeah. Also, the movie sucked, the OVA was crap (let’s sing to whales…), but the special Encore was pretty good. So, yeah avoid this crap.

Uchuu no Senshi (Starship Troopers): Simply amazing anime. I just read the book, and it’s nothing like the Roughnecks or the movie, or even the anime… But, who would watch a show that played like the book? To be honest, I really loved the book, it’s classic, just a little heavy. I’m tired, so sufice to say, the show is awesome, and really deserves a watch-a-year. The best non-Mecha I’ve seen so far.

Patlabor: Now this is what I’m talking about. If you don’t mind silly animes, then you’ll love Patlabor. It’s short enough to get into if you don’t want to watch the show, but long enough to get it’s point across. The show is an interesting twist on the mainstream anime in the genre, as we’re dealing with the Police now, not the young pilot that accidentally gets control of the robot. I watched the OVA, but I plan to soon watch the TV show, I just hope they focus a little more on the training aspect of the characters. My only beef: The should have switched 5&6 with 7, as the show gets a sort of Conpiracy/all-out-war feeling in 5&6, and it’s completely lost in 7. But, if you agree with my, you can totally do it, you won’t lose anything, or notice anything out of place.

Tomorrow we’ll have some anime I’m currently watching and some more I might have forgotten.

Just a note: I’ve currently watched 9.76 days worth of anime… For those not so skilled in math that’s around 224 hours of anime. Yes, I have no life whatsoever.

This time around we’ve got some junk about my site and my programming. I’m really focusing on Python, trying to learn it really well, and hopefully, it’ll help me get a decent job some day. As for Mahita, it doesn’t really help me do anything, I just really enjoy sharing very insignificant stuff with a very small group of people. So, without further… never mind, just read.

Tag Cloud: As I posted a while back, I made my own little tag cloud to cover up the fact that the old one didn’t work like it was supposed to. The only real problem is that it looks like crap. I’m planning on making one more like the official one, but I just haven’t gotten around to it. I’m planning on making a small Python script that scrapes the categories and number of posts on my blog (most likely from my dashboard) and makes a nice little list of tuples. It’ll then calculate the amount of increase in font neccessary for each one and print out the correspoding HTML. Now that I have a little more free time, I’m going to work on this. The hardest part is thinking up the formula…

Banner: Back in January of 2007 I got my current banner (which is still awesome). But, it was my original plan to cahnge the baby out every year. I desperately need one now, and I’m in the process of thnking whether I want Gundam, Macross, Mospeada, or Digimon. I’m leaning towards Macross or Mospeada; I guess I’ll let fate decide as I look for a nice render.

DigiFind: As I stated in an earlier post, I found a new love in the newest Digimon game, Digimon World Championship. One of the main goals is to collect all 200+ Digimon. However, this is harder than it sounds as some you have to evolve these monsters, and the requirements vary from type to type. So, borrowing the info from the Evolutions Guide from the GF board (Thanks so much BitZero!!) I threw together this program. You simply enter in any Digimon’s name and it compiles a list (a wx TreeCtrl) of all the Digimon’s possible descendants. It works like a charm, and if I can get some permission from BitZero, I’ll be posting the source and the binary in the future.

FireFox Add-Ons: I’ve always been interested in Add-Ons, and since my RSLF didn’t really work out, I’m planning to trying to convert the idea into an Add-On. The basic idea is to search a text for any RS, MU, FU, etc. URLs, and add them to a list in the sidebar from which the user can then open them up in tabs. This saves us the hassle of having to drag the links to the tabbar (or whatever it’s called) when the people are too lazy to make <a> tags. I know there’s probably a similar addon out, or one that makes URLs into <a>’s, but I still want to get into addon designing. More on this if I ever even get around to it.

Well, that’s it for this month, tune in tomorrow for a Gundam 00 Review, and Friday for a Castlevania: DoS review.

Although I promised this post for Saturday, it’s coming today, and I really doubt anyone really cares. Anyways, anime has become a big part of my life recently, as most of my free time is spent watching it, and most of my free DL time is spent getting it. Here are some of the shows I’m watching, plan to watch, and have recently finished, but not gotten around to reviewing. And, even though I shouldn’t have to say so, watch out for spoilers.

Gundam 00: Although the show isn’t “over”, I’ve finished the first season, and am anxiously awaiting the second. At the end of the first we have the death of Allelujah, the assumed deaths of Setsuna, Graham and Lockon, and the seemingly fake death of Tieria. I watched the end sequence a couple of times, and assume that’s Tieria and Lousie on the elevator, and Graham walking down the hall in an iron Char-mask. I’m not sure about this, but in a few minutes I’m going to look up the (I think they’re real) PVs for the second season. I’m really excited about this.

Macross 7: Haven’t watched it in a couple of days, not sure why. I just got to the part where the story starts to actually be cool and not suck. the whole Spiritia and singing thing is coming together, and hopefully soon the story will stop being so repetetive.

Gundam Wing: I watched most of the show (maybe half) a while back when it was on CN in a Spanish dub. I really, really loved it. I watched it back then for the action, but this time around I’m seeing a little bit of a story emerging, and even if it’s very exaggerated and unrealistic, I really enjoy the show. I can also see some of the bases for Gundam 00 here.

Digimon Adventure: Like Wing, I only watched Digimon in Spanish, but I never caught the show from the first season. I saw Adventure 02 and Tamers, and I really loved them; and I was very much in love with both World 1 and 2 for the PS1 (even if I basically sucked at both). So, to get back to the roots of the Digimon experience, I’m watching the original show in the original language. I like it a lot better than before, and I’m hoping the fansub groups will finish at least the first two seasons for me

MOSPEADA: Son of a motherless goat! This anime looks really great. I’ll be posting some pics of one of the collectable actions figures I’m picking up for Christmas, it’s so cool. I love the bikes, and the whole idea of them. I wanted more Macross, and here it is with a twist.

X-Men: Not anime, but still similar. I’m trying to get me some of the original X-men cartoons, as I think I really like them. I’ll post more about this when I get them.

That’s it for anime for now. Tomorrow I’ll be going over site improvements and some Python crap, along with my first finished program! Stay tuned! Not literally, of course, just wait for the post or the RSS feed or something… Geez.

Each month I plan on reviewing the stuff I’m spending time with, including games, anime and my site. This helps me out to not only push myself to work on the last area, but it also gives me three free posts a month Anyways, here we go.

Digimon World Championship (DS): This game supposedly returns to the “roots” of Digimon. Some supposed this to mean World for PS1, and in part they were right. However, we have more of a return to the roots of the Digimon as in the V-Pets. Basically, you’ll train your Digimon all day then do some fights that you have no control in. Don’t get me wrong: I love the V-Pets and I had the first three that came out. I love this game, but you just have to take your time and don’t feel pressured, otherwise you’ll constantly get killed. Also, if you happen to pick up the game, print out the Evolution FAQ found on the GameFAQs board, it’ll really help you out. In fact, I even wrote up a quick and dirty Python script to help me out in this area (more on this Sunday).

Castlevania: DoS (DS): I really love AoS, and DoS is everything I wanted in a sequel, and more. I’ve beaten the game twice on easy, once with 100% souls. Right now I’m working on the Julius mode, then Boss Rush mode, and finally one last playthrough on Hard. I don’t know what it is about Castlevania games, but I just love them. After this, I’m going to look into Portrait of Ruin (or Sortrait, as some say and definitely… the new one, can’t remember how to spell the name.

Hitman: Codename 47 (PC): Playing through it again. Find myself not wanting to be stealthy, and instead just kill people… If I find I really like the game, I might check out the sequel, but I doubt it.

The Shouboutai (DS): One of the newer games in the Simple DS series, we have the Shouboutai. And for those of us that don’t speak any Japanese, that’s Firefighter (I guess). We have a third-person game that pits our characters against fires, hazards, etc. All the while trying to save the people trapped. It’s a really good game, I’ve just placed it on the back burner for now until I finish Castlevania.

That’s all I have planned for this month. If I finish DoS, I might go ahead and pick of Portrait, but I want to take a small brake so I won’t get sick of the games. I’ve also tried Gundam 00 (missing something for me), and Bangai-O Spirits (suck at this type of game) for the DS, but decided not to get them.

Tomorrow is Anime.

Story: Without a doubt, V Gundam is the saddest Gundam story to date. And before anything else is said, I think it’s worth a mention to say that a lot of people die, and most of the time for no good reason at all. That aside, I have to say I really loved the storyline. However, some of the story arcs in the middle could have been left out, and the story would still be intact; a lot of the time during said arcs I found myself wondering why the characters were doing what they were doing. There’s not a lot of narrative glue to stick the parts together, and to keep one interested during some of the low parts. But, overall it’s a nice story, with an emphasis on death, and at least during the last arc, a huge emphasis on the beauty of life.

Art: Very good. V Gundam uses a very simple art style to convey the characters and the Mobile Suits; which is both good and bad. Most of the Suits are very similar to each other, and are very rarely any unique. Characters however, look very nice, and some are just too cool for words, while others are just meh. Battles are everything you would expect from a mecha show, and although somewhat exaggerated at times (or almost all of the time), they’re mostly very good. The simple style works here to make the art very nice looking even today.

Sound: Not much to say here. There’s an excellent cast of actors working on the voices, and the mecha sounds are great, but nothing really stands out in this category.

Characters: We’ve got a cast of mostly children and women, with the main villain and one of the main characters being male. The rest of the male cast are either lesser characters or very old men. I can’t quite remember why the cast is like it is, but it brings a fresh look on what might be a stale storyline. It also has the effect of removing almost all romantic involvement between the main characters. There’s a peace-loving-battle-scarred boy, a princess girl, and a group of what seem to be orphaned children. Interaction between them is what really pushes the story along. Without a doubt, Oliver and Captain Gomez were my favorite characters, both of which received little screen time, but both of whom were very central to the story.

Overall: No where near as good as First Gundam, V Gundam is nonetheless a very nice looking, anime featuring a somewhat lacking storyline that’ll get your emotions running if you’re not prepared for it. Definitely recommended if you’ve seen the other UC animes, however, the story is completely separate from the main meta-plot.

My review from MAL.

As you may or may not know, I’ve always hated the fact that the tag/category cloud doesn’t work on my theme. I’ve been screwing around with the CSS to see if I could fix it, but to no avail. So, I thought I would just make my own

I made a new Text/HTML widget and made a simple tag cloud. It’s not the best way to do it, but it’s good for me now. The only problem I can see with it now is the formula used for text size. It’s currently base 12px with an increase of [number of posts]% for each category. It’s not the way that the real widget does it, but it’s a quick fix. I’ll be messing around with this a little more to perfect it, but I’m very content with this for now.

First comic in a long, long time that has made me laugh out loud.

Now making a new avatar…

Edit: Can’t see it You’ll have to Right Click > View Image in Firefox to see the whole thing. Sorry about that.

]]> http://mitchfrizzell.com/2008/08/18/giant-robots-with-wilford-brimley-faces/feed/ mitchfrizzell http://mitchfrizzell.com/2008/08/14/mechassault-phantom-war-ds-review/ http://mitchfrizzell.com/2008/08/14/mechassault-phantom-war-ds-review/#comments Thu, 14 Aug 2008 03:29:25 +0000 mitchfrizzell http://mitchfrizzell.wordpress.com/?p=246

Concept: MA Puts you in the shoes of MechWarrior Valen, and pits you against the evil enemy faction AMS. During your campaign against these traitors, you’ll fight mostly in large mecha (with a third-person view), but you have the abilty to leave it at any time. Should you do so, however, one shot and you’re dead. Some missions have you in your Battle Armor (a personal armor, a lot smaller than a mecha), which has very low combat abilities, high jumping capabilities, and the skill of being able to latch onto walls (to scale them) and enemies (to hack them). And some missions (only a few) even force you to fight without any type of armor, and only a “pilot bomb” as armament.

Before each new area, there is normally a short (but sweet) cutscene, and the whole game features a great voice over (No text dialog whatsoever).

Delivery: You control your mech with the d-pad and the camera/aiming recticle with the buttons. As you may or may not know I hate this idea which is common on the PSP. But for some reason I found it very responsive; and unlike most third-person shooters, the level of precision required from your weapons is greatly reduced. This means you’re not going to have to try to position the cursor using the cumbersome buttons interface. However, for all those finickers out there, there is also a touch screen control scheme, a la Metroid. There are three levels of control here, separated by the “radar” circles. Each level provides a verying level of sensitivity. It’s a great concept, but I never could get used to it. It’s a shame, really.

As for the mech, there are a ton of them to try out in the campaign mode. They are pretty varied, both in abilites/weapons and in look. I never really got sick of the mecha levels, but I thought there should have been a “god” mecha unlockable for use in single player game. Where I really found the most enjoyment, however, was in the battle armor levels. I wish there were more, but I really enjoyed them.

Originality: I’ve never played a MechAssault or MechWarrior game before, so i can’t really opine on that (but I’m definitely going to check them out now!). However, there is one aspect that I really, really love about this game that I’ve not seen in a mecha game: the ability to leave your mech at any time. So, in some levels, you start out in your battle armor, then you have to leave it to hack a terminal which grants you access to a Mech which you then enter. (More on this below)

As for DS unique features, we’ve got very few. There’s a radar and some buttons on the touch screen (very similar to Metroid (at least the demo I played, haven’t cracked open my own copy yet)), and most of the action is on the top screen. We only use the touch screen for the hacking puzzles, and if you opt to use the touch screen control scheme.

Difficulty: The game is pretty easy, I flew through it a couple of hours, save a few levels. One has you doing some insane hacking (did it about 20 times before I got it), and the other is the main boss. None of the combat situations gave me any trouble save the last boss (likewise, it took me around 20 times to beat it). So, all in all, it’s a pretty easy game.

This brings us to the main negative point: the length. The game lasts maybe 3 hours. And that’s stretching it. Once you beat it, you have the ability to replay all the campaign levels, and a local multiplayer mode. You unlock some cheats, but nothing spectacular. So, once all is said and done you basically have a very pretty (and possibly expensive) paper weight.

Off Topic Tidbit: All in all I loved the game despite its very short length. However, I can only dream as I see this engine as the base for a future, more realistic 0079 Gundam game. Just imagine it: You’re in a damaged Gundam fighting off Ramba Ral in his Gouf while trying to defend the White Base from the remaining Zakus, tanks and Dopps. You’re almost dead, so you eject and take off in the Core Fighter, using it to destroy some fighters. After landing at White Base, you relaunch in the GunCannon and take out the enemy forces. However, you have to rush back to the White Base, as it is under attack by ground forces, so you get out of your Mobile Suit and fight off the troops in a Syphon Filter style shootout.

Oh man… I can only dream. But Bandai, if you’re out there, I would pay a fortune for this game, so please make it for me… Only dream…