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That’s It? (a.k.a Let’s Whine About Commuting)

August 29, 2010

A little while ago, an old friend of mine gave me a pretty good ideal for a blog post that I’ve been too lazy to actually write about all this time. Perhaps it will materialize in the coming months, if I’m ever up for it, but not now. The last couple of posts have easily passed the tl;dr threshold for most people I imagine, so it’s time for a break.

If there’s one thing I learned from the job I’m at now, it’s that you just can’t win if you’re a road commuter in the Chicagoland area. Every year, the Triple Threat Awesome Team of road hazards conspire to find new and interesting ways to annoyingly make you sit idly in your car and curse under your breath for long periods of time. Of course it starts in the winter, and once the snow and ice hits the ground, it’s pretty much LOL to not leaving way early or actually driving at a decent speed. Okay, that only lasts 3-4 months, but wait! Once the roads clear up for good, the whole rest of the year the city kicks into action, with road construction. Lots of road construction. Thus, the highways turn into orange drum canned obstacle courses, and each day is a new surprise as to whether you’ll actually get to/from work on time or not, likely turning that 30 min commute into a 2hr one at worse. At least with the construction you can still actually drive on the roads in most cases, so that’s where the third power comes in, mainly during the summer: Flooding. Flooding is perhaps the worse because it completely disables any option of traveling through the affected road. You’re basically boned, and have to come up with some alternate route which is usually roundabout and time consuming. All and all, the road commute does a pretty stand up job of zapping up some of what little free time you have left when you’re not working.

Other than that, it’s summer. It’s hot. Stuff happens at work. Stuff happens at not work. I’m playing video games. There are too many to play. Blah blah blah the usual…….

This didn’t quite turn out as brief as I thought it would. Looks like the alternate title may be more appropriate. Meh, I’ll keep both and let you decide.

Lifestyle - 2 Comments

Stop All the Downloadin’: Media Center Edition

May 25, 2010

I think it’s been about two years now since I canceled my cable subscription. Initially, it came as part of a package deal when I moved into my apartment. Though I was lukewarm about it, and only really cared about getting access to the Internet, I gave Cable TV a chance to prove its usefulness to me. Over the year or so I had it, I realized how little time I spend channel surfing nowadays from the fact that I only actually watched it roughly five times total, and eventually I cut it loose. Since then, and even before, I’ve relied on my Internet connection to stream or download whatever TV shows/movies I’m interested in watching. My usual routine is to visit Hulu and other streaming sites sometime during the weekend and marathon the latest episodes of the TV shows I watch for the week. I also do the “queue up movies/shows to watch later on Netfilx every now and then” thing that many are very familiar with. What I love the most about this approach is that I’m not tied down by any TV schedule. I can basically watch this stuff on my own time without have to be concerned with being home *day*days @ *time*o’clock Central or trying to tape it on my DVR box or whatever hoping I don’t make a stupid time mistake or having to regularly clean the old stuff to deal with space issues. My activities aren’t regulated by the schedule, but rather, the schedule is regulated by my activities; the one caveat being that videos on streaming sites tend to expire, but I usually get to what I want to watch well before that happens.

In the beginning, I originally just set it up so that one of the outputs on my desktop PC video card would be wired to my TV and split the sound card audio so that it would output to my PC and TV speakers, which worked out fine for a while. Eventually, I decided that I should probably buy a dedicated media box so I could free up that second video card output I was using for a possible dual monitor setup later and out of consideration for future living setups where my computer may not be so conveniently close to my TV. Due to these justifications, it was never an urgent purchase, but rather something that would be bought if I came across an extra little pile of money, which happened to be a couple months back. Also, considering all the video game consoles I have sitting under my TV stand, I could have streamed videos with one of those and used PlayOn or something, but I reasoned that having a dedicated PC would be the best since I wouldn’t really have to worry about compatibility for supported formats and I could run other programs on it, like possibly some low level computer games for example.

Shopping around, I was looking at getting a Mac Mini, and almost pulled the trigger if it weren’t for the intervention of the Acer Aspire Revo 3610. This baby looks very similar to a Nintendo Wii, just a bit shorter, longer and thinner. Looking at the specs, the magic behind the box is that while the CPU is a bit on the weak side (though it is a dual core at least), it’s fitted with a Nvidia ION internal graphics processor that gives it enough juice to handle playing HD quality content smoothly where it would otherwise start chugging. I went ahead and got one because it seemed to be able to do everything I wanted it to do as far as HTPC capability for roughly half the cost of a low tier Mac Mini; it even comes with a wireless keyboard and mouse (they seem cheap, but they work). It came preinstalled with Windows 7 Home Edition and lots of bloatware, which was annoying, but a minor hurdle to jump. So, since I decided to keep the OS, I spent a few hours cleaning it up and reading Paul J. Roberts’s blog, which has some pretty detailed and insightful posts about the setup and performance of the Aspire Revo when used as a media center. Eventually, I settled on installing Hulu Desktop for Hulu stuff, Boxee for any other internet streaming (when it works, Chrome when it doesn’t), and XBMC for local videos on the network drive. Just to note, Boxee is powered by XBMC so you could use it for local files too, but it dumbs down XBMC’s features some and I’m pretty sure it has support for less formats, so I just decided to use it along with the straight up version of XBMC.

As I alluded to earlier, as long as the GPU is doing the work, there won’t really be any problems with video playback on the machine. As many Internet steaming sites use Flash, the latest beta of Flash 10.1 is being advertised to take advantage of GPU rendering (on Windows only last time I checked), so you need that to have smooth playback. The first few beta versions were still kinda choppy for me, but things have gotten much better with the later release candidate versions and thus web streaming/Hulu Desktop has been pretty solid. Boxee however, is still hit or miss depending on the site, but that seems to be more of an issue on Boxee’s end. As far as local files, everything I throw at XBMC works like a champ and the XBMC interface itself in particular is pretty awesome. I even started throwing some emulator stuff on the box as a secondary thing (MAME + 360 Fightstick Tournament Edition = Win). The only concerns I have with the box itself is that it doesn’t have a disc drive of any sort, so if you want to read from disks or have Blu-Ray functionality, you have to either have start ripping or go buy an external disc drive. Not a huge deal, and for me, the PS3 already makes the Blu-Ray situation a non issue anyway. Also, I heard that the wireless Internet capabilities were a little finicky, but I haven’t test that in person for now since I have it directly hooked to my router.

There are a few drawbacks to the Internet TV setup I suppose. If you’re the type that likes to randomly browse through active channels and happen across that one episode of the show or movie you like watching “when it’s on”, a random show on the Discovery/History/Fine Living/DIY/etc. channel type of guy, then you probably won’t like the more selective nature of TV via Internet. Sports and similar live programs are slowly becoming more accessible over the Internet, but in my opinion still do not quite match the live broadcasting offered on cable and broadcast channels. I’m also not sure how well the ideal would take in a family setting, especially for children who are less specific about the content they want and would be less willing or capable of putting up with some minor tech fuss to get it (and the same can be said for many adults). Frankly, depending on your situation, your mileage may vary. For me, I’m pretty happy with the way things have been working out and haven’t felt the absence of cable at all. A somewhat strange shift since I grew up in a house where the TV was always running and set to a random cable channel and there was someone at least passively watching at any given moment.

Lifestyle,Media,Tech - 0 Comments

Nintendo Hard vs. Easier than Easy

January 16, 2010

I’ve been wanting to post about this topic for a while now, I just wasn’t sure if I could articulate it well enough. Oh well, here goes.

Among the many things the gaming media tends to ramble and discuss upon, one of the subjects that pops up occasionally is the alleged observation that today’s typical video game has become a lot easier than those of the past, out of necessity due to the tastes of the modern gamer. I’m sure you can find articles and forum posts about this with some quick Google searching, but from my observations, the majority seem to imply a common stance: that challenge in a video game is seen as a negative and that something needs to be done to degrade or buffer the difficult aspects of a game to in order to make it fun. Hence, your average big-budget, mainstream, moneymaking title made for a wide audience is likely to include a myriad of incremental checkpoints, instant saving and continuing at each checkpoint upon failure with no loss of anything (and in some cases freebies get handed out upon restart),  and some form of hint or tutorial snippets that basically tell you flat out exactly how to beat the game. This practice of rewarding without really challenging allows the player to experience everything the game has to offer with the least amount of stress; getting to the end of the game is basically guaranteed, and the only thing that really matters is putting in the time it takes to get from point A to point B in an X hr game.

I can understand why this has become the accepted practice in an ideally designed video game. Speaking from the context of a 20-something year old, when my fellow gamers and I were kids, one thing we generally had in abundance was free time, but conversely due to our incomes being reliant solely on our parents/guardians or our low-wage, part time job in our teen years, we had the ability to obtain a limited amount of what was out there in the gaming world. This often meant having one console per cycle and having a handful of games that would have to carry you for long stretches until you could conjure up enough savings to purchase another game. In result, even if a game was seemingly impossible, it was more likely to be tolerated since you really didn’t know when you would be getting your next game and you had time on your hands to replay it over and over until you mastered it as much as you could.

Now that we’ve all become adults, many of us have full time jobs and the means to purchase the necessary hardware along with the quantity of games that would be unimaginable to our kid selves. However, though the volume of video games obtained have increased, the responsibilities that come with being an adult, be they work and/or family related, continue to eat away at our once abundant free time. Thus within these parameters, the grown up gamer who was once tolerant of difficulty, has become impatient with it and more likely to be easily frustrated. The ultimate goal is to utilize the limited free time to get through the current game as quickly and painlessly as possible in order to move on to the next game in a desperate attempt to stay current with the often rapid fire new releases. A difficult game that takes more skill than usual to beat will disrupt this cycle, and so they have since become frowned upon by the masses.

The problem I have with this mentality is that when you put in the mechanisms to make games easier to beat, you lose the sense of accomplishment that comes from beating a video game that was more prominent in the older days. This sense of accomplishment is one of the reasons I became so attracted to video games in the first place, and its something that I still look for when I play games today. It’s why I still gravitate towards the arcade style games and harder titles that have mostly become niche now. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against playing the more casual, toned down stuff, but it always seems like there’s this feeling missing when I play them. For instance, a couple of months ago I played through Uncharted 2, one of the big games of the moment at that time. Like several games of this nature, I basically played by going from checkpoint to checkpoint as recklessly and haphazardly as possible, not really caring about how well I was doing. Because you’ll immediately come back to life at the last checkpoint (which were frequent, almost like save states) with no penalty whatsoever, all the threats the game has to offer become non-threats. I had this detached, indifferent feeling every time Nathan Drake and his buddies were in a tense, dangerous situation or a harrowing, life or death, quick-time event cut scene, softening the thrill and suspense they were meant to ignite. Nothing’s on the line so why does it matter? Even if you up the difficulty setting, little changes. The enemies are harder to kill, but the lack of consequence for screwing up remains.

Even though games like Uncharted may have some entertainment value at the time I’m playing them, later on, when I look back on all the games I’ve played, those are the ones that are likely to become largely forgettable experiences. Like the movies that you may enjoy watching at the time, but have not the slightest inkling of ever wanting to watch again. Instead, I tend to think more fondly of the games that challenge me. Games that encourage, or even outright force me to develop my skill at completing them if I want to reap the rewards it has to offer and doesn’t hold my hand through the process. Where despite the sting of setback and penalty being aggravating, the failure to succeed is merely your own fault and the game won’t feel bad for you because of it. When you eventually develop the skill to overcome a particularly troublesome obstacle, the sense of triumph is much more fulfilling then some brute force grind through sequences with minimal risk and skill involved.

The thing is, many games today seem to polarize at one extreme or the other. The more casual ones tend to go for the overly accommodating game mechanics, and the games with punishing difficulty are usually marketed to specific, niche audiences. In the future, I would like to see more games that try to balance these aspects. Of the few recent ones that come to mind in which this is attempted, I liked the way that New Super Mario Bros implemented its hand holding feature, where if you have enough trouble getting through a stage and lose a substantial amount of lives, the subtle solution block shows up that you can hit and it will beat the stage for you. It helps out the people less skilled at old-school Mario platforming who want to enjoy the game, but it doesn’t feel as intrusive about it for people who don’t need it. Bayonetta is interesting in the fact that it really does try to appeal to all groups. The main story mode has the typical checkpoint to checkpoint type game play of a mainstream title, but encourages skill based game play in regards to scoring and getting unlockables (though mostly averted since you can get most of the same unlockables through relativity mindless currency farming, or even cheat codes). Of course, you can’t really clumsily button mash your way through the game and expect to win, but even if that becomes intolerable, you can lower the game’s difficulty setting and become a master of Bayonetta’s myriad of moves and combos by pressing ONE BUTTON. I also suppose you can do it the upcoming Mega Man 10 way and put in an entirely distinct easy mode where the stage design is purposely rearranged to accommodate the less skilled, while leaving the core challenging platforming the series is known for as is in the default mode.

Of course, I’m sure there are many viewpoints I didn’t touch upon here, so (if anyone’s still reading) I’d love to hear some thoughts. “Are games easy/hard enough?” “What do you consider too hard?” etc.

Games - 1 Comments

Ultamate New Year’s (Repost)

January 14, 2010

(Note: Originally this was posted on the 1st, but had to dig up it from the cache. For some reason, database shenanigans recently happened and I had to restore a backup copy).

Posting more on the blog you haven’t updated in months is the new New Year’s resolution that you probably won’t keep. So suck it people suddenly at the gym today.

With that said, I do need a topic to actually talk about so here we go. There was a Final Fantasy Concert in Chicago earlier in December, and for the heck of it, I decided to go to see what it was like. Really, should have wrote about this while it was still fresh in my mind, but meh… Anyway, the concert took place at the Rosemont Theatre in the suburbs, which is not too far from my apartment, and was pretty nice considering I ordered the crappy balcony seats and still had a pretty good view of the stage. In case you’re wondering, there weren’t that many people there in cosplay, but I did spot a Yuna in the front row and a Rydia (or at least I think that was Rydia…) after the show. Also, Nobuo Uematsu, the main FF series composer was in the audience in this funky ninja-esque outfit, so it was cool to vaguely make him out from the top row.

As for the music itself, I suppose this would be the case due to their popularity, but most of the music choices came from later Final Fantasies; FF7 and onward. It’s not that the compositions in themselves were particularly bad, it’s just that I generally prefer the music from the earlier FF games, the Super Nintendo era in particular, so I couldn’t get into the musical choices as much. There was a lot of music from FF8 and FF11, which happen to be the two Final Fantasies I’m least interested in, but if you like them and FF7 and FF10 (and one song from FF12 since Uematsu didn’t really compose for that one), there plenty to enjoy here, and the crowd was getting into it. There were a few songs played from the SNES era however, “Dancing Mad” from FF6, “The Theme of Love” from FF4, and “Terra’s Theme” from FF6. That was cool, but none of the three are my among my favorite tracks.

I think the best track they did composition wise was J.E.N.O.V.A from FF7, which they mentioned was a first for the concert. Another general highlight was the world debut of a track from the upcoming FF14 even though FF13 isn’t even out yet. I have to say, the track they chose was a bit underwhelming because it was over before it even got started. At the very end, Uematsu came on stage and joined the orchestra and The Black Mages: Chicago Edition in doing everyone’s favorite last boss theme, “One Winged Angel” from FF7. The kicker is that they did it once, and then right afterwards they did it again. They even got the crowd to chant “Sepiroth” at the appropriate parts, but otherwise, it was the more or less the same song you’ve heard a hundred times already.

Overall, it was nice experience for a one time thing, but I doubt I would go back again. Especially since I heard that largely do most of the same songs for every concert.

Rating: 7/10

P.S. – There’s an actual, professional review and tracklisting here.

Games,Lifestyle,Media - 0 Comments

Go! College Awesome Team Squad!

February 11, 2009

(9:49 AM) scubabean7: i think John and I have too much fun with Twitter
(9:49 AM) Paul Brownlee: y?
(9:50 AM) scubabean7: check out our twitter icons
(9:50 AM) Paul Brownlee: oh i saw bean is a butt
(9:50 AM) Paul Brownlee: but john is a good guy just refreshed
(9:50 AM) scubabean7: lol
(9:51 AM) scubabean7: it was my re-butt-al
(9:51 AM) Paul Brownlee: but you guys always loved abusing things on the internet
(9:51 AM) scubabean7: what else is it for?
(9:52 AM) Paul Brownlee: well moreso than anyone else in the college awesome team squad
(9:52 AM) scubabean7: i like my mouse handwriting
(9:53 AM) scubabean7: CATS?
(9:53 AM) Paul Brownlee: haha
(9:53 AM) Paul Brownlee: thats pretty awesome actually
(9:54 AM) Paul Brownlee: im finding that way funnier than it should be
(9:54 AM) scubabean7: lol
(9:55 AM) scubabean7: wait, which one, CATS or my handwriting?
(9:56 AM) Paul Brownlee: CATS
(9:56 AM) scubabean7: ah
(9:57 AM) scubabean7: indeed it is
(9:57 AM) Paul Brownlee: im still chuckling
(9:57 AM) scubabean7: tweet it
(9:57 AM) scubabean7: like everything else in life, you must tweet is
(9:57 AM) scubabean7: *it
(9:57 AM) Paul Brownlee: alright
(9:59 AM) Paul Brownlee: i dunno
(9:59 AM) Paul Brownlee: i think it would be better to just post the chat log for context
(10:00 AM) scubabean7: lol
(10:00 AM) Paul Brownlee: but twitter doesnt really facilate that
(10:00 AM) scubabean7: oh wells

Random - 1 Comments

Full Extent Of The Jam

October 13, 2008

I was fortunate enough to get the day off today, so I thought I’d update real quick in between all the laying on my ass catching up on TV.

The Little Big Planet Beta ended yesterday, and thanks to Bean’s talent at being The Beta Whisper and somehow finding multiple codes, I was lucky enough to get in. My initial impression of LBP is that looks pretty amazing and seems to have an adequate amount of fun and charm to it. There were already some really cool user created levels made, so I can only imagine how it will be when the full game comes out. Despite this however, I’m a little concerned that the game may not last more than a week or two. I worry that the actual platforming aspect of the game will eventually get bland, as you don’t do much besides collect water bubbles for points and collect stickers and whatnot. I don’t see myself putting in the time to mess with the stage creation stuff that much in order to appreciate it fully, and I have doubts that other people’s stages alone could carry the game. With these feelings in mind, I’ve decided to give it the benefit of the doubt and go ahead with the purchase of the game, hoping that my fears will be unfounded. And thus upon its release mid next week, the time of the year my bank account hates the most will begin, the fall gaming season.

In other news, after resisting it for a while, I was convinced through heated debate to get a Twitter account. Unfortunately, that has made me even less inclined to post new entries here, so it would probably be good to keep up with Twitter for more frequent updates of my boring, uneventful life. I posted a link on the side at the eStalking Directory.

Games,Lifestyle - 0 Comments

Excitement About A Robot Boy In Blue Undies

September 20, 2008

As you may probably know already, the U.S. release date of Mega Man 9 was finally confirmed recently. The WiiWare version will come out first on the 22nd, a mere two days from me writing this post. As for the other versions, the Playstation Network version will come out on the 25th, while XBOX Live users get shafted the hardest, having to wait all the way until October 1st to play it. Also, at least Wii version wise, we will get it earlier than Japan will. There it will remain WiiWare exclusive and come out on the 24th. So suck it Japan.

In my case, this means that the Wii will finally awaken from its long slumber soon, after being a neglected dust magnet in standby mode sitting on top of my TV stand all summer. In actuality, since my XBox 360 and to a lesser extent my PS3 have been hogging the spotlight for so long due to not sucking (unlike, admittedly, the Wii), I’ve completely ignored all the stuff that was previous released on WiiWare. Despite my previous feelings of disdain for it, I might still actually buy Star Soldier R, and I have a lingering interest in picking up Alien Crash Returns. Also, even though the Virtual Console had a long spell of sucking hard, it seems like it has gotten good again, with some shumps and whatnot released for it all the while that I would be interested in obtaining. On top of all this, Tastunoko vs. Capcom was announced to be Japanese Wii bound in December, which means I’ll have to look into hacking the Gibson between now and then to get my Wii ready to play it. I’m Debating on if I should bother buying yet another arcade stick for my Wii since I have one for the 360 already, but hey, if people can spend hundreds of dollars on fake musical instruments, then I don’t think having more than one arcade stick is that bad. So in summary, this could perhaps be the start of me actively using my Wii again, and not just to play MM9. My Wii fridge has remained relatively empty since I haven’t been playing it, but I can foresee that becoming a problem like it has for so many other people already.

To go back to the subject at hand, the soundtrack to MM9 was released in advanced and was put up at places like Youtube (Note: the site I was originally going to link to had the soundtrack up for download, but they had to take it down since Capcom of Japan came down on their heads). Giving it a listen, I so far enjoy Concrete Man and Tornado Man (as heard in the E3 trailer) the most. Honorable mentions go to Splash Women, Magma Man, Galaxy Man. Also of note is the Robot Boss theme, which is a departure from typical Mega Man boss themes having a more ominous and darker sound. It may seem off putting and out of place to some, but I kinda like it. Overall, I don’t think it will dethrone the champion of classic series Mega Man music that is MM2 (which, of course, is widely considered to be the pinnacle of Mega Man games), but I do think it is on the high end of Mega Man soundtracks, probably on the level of say MM3. Anyway, if you like plenty of bloops and bleeps in you music, grab it and give it a listen.

Games - 0 Comments

The Dirty South Wasn’t Ready

July 29, 2008

Real quick post, but check the Picasa Web link for pics of the Atlanta trip I took over the past weekend to visit Mike and Andy. At last, you can now fulfill one of your life goals of experiencing the gentleman-like hospitality of the South through the eyes of and remarks of Paul Brownlee

Lifestyle - 2 Comments

Dark Night: The Verdict, And Somtething Else

July 18, 2008

Again, this is another Google Reader note turned blog post, but the Dark Night was good but not quite Iron Man good.  For me, the Joker really stole the show which makes Ledger’s untimely demise all the more tragic. I also experienced the added bonus of trying to spot all the locations they filmed at in Chicag…….Gotham City, since I walked past one of the movie’s shooting sites daily on my way to/from work back in the winter.

I also wanted to blog again to take the opportunity to annouce that I’ve added another link you can go to for you Paul eStalking needs. Take a look at the directory on the right to find the Picasa Web Album I just started for random pictures of whatever. For now, it just has several shitty iphone taken pics like more shots of my apartment and whatnot. I’ll probably add more every now and then and perhaps even buy a real digital camera at some point. I’m open to not that expensive but fairly good suggestions.

Lifestyle,Media,Random - 0 Comments

Summer Lull

July 10, 2008

Perhaps the title is an excuse as to why I haven’t been posting lately, but anyway:

The other day at work was interesting as I got to experience my first ever long term power outage as a sysadmin. Now to everyone else working, power outages are not as big of a deal. In fact there kinda cool once you realize you might as well go home since you can’t get any work done, which everyone at my company eventually did. As for me, I was hit with the discomforting thought of “Oh shit, the servers are going down!! Fuck fuck shit shit!!!” and then the panic settled in. The UPSes tried there best to keep our shit running for reasonable amount of time, but considering the huge load they had on them from all our equipment, they didn’t last very long. On top of that, our production servers, which used to be hosted off site, are now sitting on a table in our break room attached to a store bought UPS in an arrangement that would make a worthy DailyWTF post. Those lasted about five minutes, causing the Execs to flip the fuck out even more. Also on top of that, my boss, the only other IT guy in the office/person who knows the system better than me is on vacation this week. And icing on the cake, the power outage only occurred on our floor, of which were the only office occupying it.

So the cause of the electricity problem was eventually discovered to be due to our building being old and shitty, and us drawing way too much power, cause the old shitty electric to finally give up. ComEd (the local electricity monopoly) had to come by and replace some shit, which took hours, and after getting power back up along with everything up and running again, I ending up leaving the office just before midnight. Fun stuff.

To completely change the subject, there were several video games recently announced that I’m excited about, and E3 isn’t even till next week. Consider the following:

Mega Man 9 – Yeah, I know. Yet another Mega Man sequel, yawn. But this one finally returns to the original series at least, which we last heard from in the 90′s with Rockman & Forte. The Internets seem to have mixed feelings about the retro NES 8-bit approach used to create this game, but I see it as a sign that the developers are attempting to get back to the MM2/3 glory days of Megaman and look forward to dusting off my stagnating Wii to see how it turns out.

Tastunoko Vs. Capcom – I’ve been pimping this a bit on Google Reader. I’m a big fan of Gatchaman, and it is through that franchise I discovered who the fuck Tatsunoko was and generally started liking their shows by association. It was a bit of a nice surprise that they would show up in a Capcom fighting game, which stands a good chance of turning out decent. It should be better than Tatsunoko Fight at least.

Persona 4  – I’m still trucking my way through Persona 3 FES, so when I finally finish it in a few months for now, it will be nice to jump back in the saddle and buy P4 within a few months after it comes out in Japan instead of waiting a whole year to get it since that’s usually how long it takes to localize these games. I suspect the hasty localization is due to Atlus wanting to put it out there before the steady decreasing momentum of the PS2 fizzles out.

Thunder Force VI – Finally, its coming out, and it’s for real. For the uninformed, Thunder Force is a cult favorite shmup series of which the last game, Thunder Force V, was released around ’98 or so. Originally TF6 was supposed to come out on the Dreamcast in the early 2000s, but company that developed the franchise, Tecnosoft, was absorbed into a pachinko company as it was being made, and eventually it was abandon. Despite this, there have been several teases that this would maybe actually come out for the past decade, perpetuated by video game soundtracks, fan made imitations and cryptic website messages, thus making it seem like the “Duke Nukem Forever” of scrolling shooters. This has gone on up until now, where it was just announced for release on the PS2 later this year, another last-gen game of interest like Persona 4. Looks like Sega, who collaborated with Tecnosoft a lot in the past is handling the release instead of Tecnosoft themselves, which worries me since as we all know, the Sega of today has weakened dramatically from what it used to be, barring occasional moments of brilliance such as F-Zero GX. On the other hand, speculation has formed that the actual development of the game may have been done by Treasure, and considering how they handled Gradius V, that would be very exciting if true.

So yeah, the size of this post, and the fact that I spent the night writing it on and off, should help make up for the lack of quantity here a bit.

Games,Lifestyle,Tech - 0 Comments