A week in links (Happy Birthday version)

They grow fast, don’t they

What a weird week.

Currently we're in "birthday" phase — the time of season that springs up randomly with a slew of birthday parties all compacted together.  Right now it's Phong's birthday party, and then I think the week after is Andy's, and then there was Josh's going away party today…I can scarcely keep track.

For me personally, I like doing absolutely zip on my birthday.  Just laze around in the house and play games, watch videos, and drink a beer.  But friends always want to throw something, so I have to throw on clothes and look nice.  And then there's work, which totally destroys any weekend plans.

Nothing beats coming in to work than friends who stumble in and get drunk while you watch on the other side of the counter…

Top 10: Rules of Sushi Etiquette – AskMen.com
I'm going to coin a new word now: sushiquette.  You know, sushi and etiquette…clever yeah?

Waitresses in Ninja Costumes | My Disguises – We Love Costumes

I lol'd, but seriously folks, where's the ninja tricks?  The throwing of stars and the explosion of pepper bombs? 

Tequila balls, the Kabukicho version of jello shots

This actually sounds pretty cool.  Wonder if they'll pick up here in the states.

ドラマ「もやしもん」公式サイト
The Moyashimon live-action show now has a trailer on their website!

Points For Toothbrushing: The Gaming Speech Everyone Is Talking About – Dice 2010 – Kotaku
It's a bit long (23 minutes or so), but it's really engaging and humorous at the same time.  Could this be the wave of the future — achievement points?

実写版「エヴァンゲリオン」、お蔵入りになったわけではなくまだ制作中であることが判明 – GIGAZINE
Live-action Evangelion is STILL A GO.  Did I just see Weta's name on there?  And why is Rei called Ray!

ねぎ入り初音ミクせんべい「みくせん」販売へ－秋葉原で初めて – アキバ経済新聞
Hatsune Miku crackers.  That's all I got…

長らく詳細不明となっていた「涼宮ハルヒの驚愕」、4月30日発売のザ・スニーカー6月号に一部先行掲載 – GIGAZINE
After a three year hiatus, a new novel is on it's way.  Will fans eat it up?  Of course they will, it's freaking SUZUMIYA HARUHI. Stuff sells like hotcakes, man!

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A walkthrough of Namco’s Wonder Tower Arcade Building

Namco Wonder Tower Arcade Building

For those of you whom haven't had the chance to visit a Japanese arcade in (gasp) Japan, this might be pretty cool to check out.  I've personally haven't been to this particular arcade, but compared to the other ones I've been to it's pretty elite. 

I'm actually a bit surprised this guy was able to take footage inside the arcade, seeing how most of the time you're not allowed to unless you have special permission.  Even more so, this guy is pretty ballsy to waltz into the purikura area and not get beat to death by the women there.  I wasn't so lucky when I wandered in by accident…still have nightmares to this day.

I wonder where this is at?  Will have to put on my checklist of things to do in Japan, lol.

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The first eight hours of Heavy Rain

I swear, if I have to yell this kid’s name one more time…

The only background information I have about Heavy Rain stems from two things: the playtest demo they showed at the Leipzig Games Convention and the downloadable demo on PSN.  That's my only frame of reference.

Now that you know about how little I know about this game, I can tell you how the game feels.  I had a really enjoyable time playing this game.  It's got this kind of hook that doesn't really sink in to me with other games.  The characters are sharp, easily recognized — it's not too difficult too imagine any of these people in a TV drama or as your own neighbor.  Well except for Jason.  I've never met a child that stupid.

The quick time events (QTE) weren't as clumsy or as awkward as I thought they might be.  Resident Evil 5 had some pretty simplistic QTEs, but Heavy Rain goes above and beyond that by syncing the button presses in conjunction with what you're actually doing on screen — if the character has to hold something with two hands, you better believe you're gonna be pressing at least two buttons to do the same thing. 

Pretty clever.

I've often compared this game to those choose-your-own-adventure style books.  I have yet to beat the game, but I'm already itching to play through a second time.  Hell I might even play it ten times just to see everything there is to do.  It's possible to cheat the game and reset the game after every event to see every outcome, but you'll be cheating yourself out of a game experience if you do that.  So don't. 

It'll be a waste of $60 bucks if you do that, as you'll effectively be killing the replay value in one sitting.

While Heavy Rain is not without it's shares of pitfalls, it does do several things badly.  Things like:

• Tiny font: Don't play this game on a standard definition TV.  You'll have to squint to read the in-game text.
• Clumsy action commands.  I can't tell you how many times I confused shaking the controller sideways to shaking it up and down. And don't even get me started on just walking forward alone. 
• Triplets: Three siamese triplets work at the police station.  How the hell…
• Clipping: More of a small gripe than anything, but it's fairly weird to see Half Life 2-esque glitches.

The DDR scene

So in conclusion for you TL;DR cats: this game is great.  It's got a catchy story that will hook you in, although the controls are a bit wonky at times that'll rip your hair out.  Play it lots, and don't cheat yourself.  If you do, this game ceases to be anything more than a nice Hollywood-style story with little gameplay outside of QTEs.

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Comments are now Neighborhood only (and some other random updates)

Chatroulette just owned me for an entire evening.

I've been noticing these spam comments that aren't quite spam, yet altogether annoying due to the incomprehensible jibber jabber that gets left on the blog.  It's been a chore filtering out the "real" people from the spambots; so much that I've taken the next step and disabled comment feedback from individuals who aren't in my neighborhood.  Apologies to the people who post in earnest.

Lately it's becoming more ambiguous, so to end my suffering I've just stuffed a lid on top of the whole shebang.

Doubtful that it'll make much of a difference, but hey, it's better than nothing.

Vox is a great site.  It's simple, easy to use, and a great way to connect to other people (as well as an excellent tool for keeping up with interesting writers).  But the blogging format is just too glitchy for me, so I'm looking up other blogging platforms and keeping my options open.  It's a pain when I accidentally click on an image inside the editing page, only to lose all the work put into it.

The bold and the italics button don't appear to be functioning properly — I remember once upon a time I was able to highlight a word and embolden / italicize with a single click, but now it's skips to random parts of the editing window and requires a second button press to get it working.  It's a small gripe I know, but it's still something that irks me.  This didn't happen before.

Sigh.

A close friend linked me to his blog page.  He's dipping his hand into web blogging to get a feel for it, me thinks.  I don't know what his focus is, but I always find his writing style to be humorous.  It's not exactly incomprehensible word fu, but it's got a little charm in it.  You can check it out here: his website is called Multifarious Clutter (you better send me a paycheck, Hoang, lol).

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Thought this was really cool, so I’m showin’ it to you!

The making of Old Spice’s commercial: The Man Your Man Could Smell Like

I didn't catch this commercial during the super bowl a few weeks back, but luckily reddit came to the rescue and upvoted this really incredible segment with the two men responsible for the clever ad.  Leo Laporte interviewed Craig Allen and Eric Kallman on the entire creative process — right down to the CGI bits.  It's a bit on the long side, but definitely worth checking out!

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A week in links (Current Code version)

MELTY BLOOD Actress Again Current Code

The new version of Melty Blood: Actress Again finally got debuted at the AOU show over the weekend, and it's looking good.  Not too terribly different from the console version, except for a few graphical changes and the inclusion of console-exclusive characters (like Ryougi Shiki, for example).  The super bar looks something reminiscent of Alpha 3, and whenever heat is activated a cool "heatwave" effect turns on. 

King of Fighters XIII was supposed to be announced too, according to Oichi over at versuscity.net, but unfortunately nothing came out.  I'm pretty eager to hear / see what SNK Playmore has in store, after the abomination of game the previous one was…

【PS3】バレンタインも休まず活動、『Home』アイマス親衛隊！ : はちま起稿
This is hands down, the most weirdest thing I've ever seen.  I can't even fathom the amount of effort this took (lol).

Microsoft unveils Windows Phone 7 Series hotness
This is seriously hawt!

The World's Greatest Second Life Troll – Second Life – Kotaku
Ralph pls go.  No.

Please Rob Me
Please.  (note to self: never ever twitter about leaving the house before a vacation)

Official explanation of controversial Assassin's Creed 2 DRM
I don't like what's going on here…

Integrating translation into Google Goggles – Google Translate Blog
Was going to blog this later (and still will), because this is pretty damn awesome.  Although at the same time, I'm a little worried with the amount of headway google is making in just about everything — however that doesn't deny the fact that this is app is going to be pretty big!

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OMG, 8-Bit Megaman in 3D is awesome!

There's an alpha version but not much else!  Credit goes out to the guys on bitmob who linked this — it's freaking amazing!  A Megaman FPS in the world of Doom is better than nothing, if you ask me!  Maybe Capcom will pick this up and turn it into a real next-gen port?  I'll cross my fingers every night until it happens (lol)

Source: bitmob
Official link and extra goodies can be found here

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2010 AMV Awards Winners Announced

Every once in a while I'll check up on animemusicvideos.org to see what the latest winners are, and this year's batch is pretty good.  Not quite as good as the years before it (in my personal opinion), but still quite good nonetheless.  Hey, it's not like I could do any better!  Just sayin'…

I personally admire a lot of Nostromo's work; it's artsy-fartsy with really catchy music that captures that other-worldly vibe in it.  I like the amount of research they put into finding those breathtaking clips for the videos too — I'd rather vote for a video that was made with the source in mind, and not so much videos that plug in their own artwork from something like CS4 or whatever. 

Takes away from the spirit of an AMV, I think.  But perhaps you should compare them instead, instead of listening to an old curmudgeon talk about it.

2009 Video of the Year: Nostromo – "Auriga"

Nostromo – Auriga

2010 Video of the Year: Qwaqa – "Ian Fleming's Property of a Lady"

qwaqa – Ian Fleming’s Property of a Lady

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Hajime no Ippo fans, eat your hearts out

Dudley’s Ultra Combo I

Dudley’s Ultra Combo II

Any real fan of Hajime no Ippo would notice these moves as a direct homage to the boxing fan straight away!  And lol at the second one — is he really spinning in circles right there?  What the eff!!

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Dante on ramen in Japan

Electronic Arts has a plan in Japan

So Electronic Arts, the guys porting over Dante's Inferno overseas to Japan has this wonderful plan.  I can see it how it all happened…

Executive A: "Hey guys, we need some kind of promotion gimmick to sell our game to Japan!"

Executive B: "Whoa, yeah, good idea dood!"

Executive A: "What kind of things do you think about when you think Japan?"

Executive C: "Pokemon?"

Executive A: "We can't use that!  Idiot!  We need something that ain't copyrighted!"

Executive B: "How about a bar with drinks and food themed after it?"

Executive A: "Hell no, Squenix already stole that idea!  We need something new and Japanesey!"

Executive D: "Hey doods, is it lunchtime yet?  I'm itchin' for some ramen yo!"

Executive A: "Smith, that's BRILLIANT!!!1"

With their genius plan laid out before them, EA traveled to the land of the rising sun with one goal in mind: ramen.  And guess who the lucky recipient was?  A Mongolian restaurant called Tanmen Nakamoto.

Why this particular ramen store?  Well dear friends, the answer is because this particular store's ramen special reminded EA of the seven layers of hell.  That's why.

What say you, Dante?

Hellz yeah I’d eat that

Thanks Dante.  Nice tan you got there by the way!

lols

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