Speaking strictly off the cards, the world is pretty off center with its usual self lately. Okay okay, so there's a gigantic global financial brouhaha, the environment's going down the gurgler, all sorts of strife everywhere, and now everyone's worrying about SOMALIA... AGAIN. But, when I take a step back, I realise how good the smaller stuff ,all the stuff that is primary in contact to my life, doesn't seem to be going too bad.. so yeah, life is comparatively decent providing you aren't heavily commercializing your life or livelihood, and if you don't hold your breath for Humanity to reverse a literal civilisation or more's worth of ingrained tendencies.
I like to keep it positive, despite knowing well and truly that history repeats.
So what have I been up to?
In short- Kickin' it, keepin it real. Pretty crazy, fo sho etc.
Phew, glad I got THAT out, enough black people impersonating for me.
Nah, I be skankin with my fellow rude boys. Life's been pretty average for at least a a couple of months now, which is a great change from the insanity I was suffering end-of-July.With that kinda shit outta the way, I'm able to get back to focusing on the stuff I want to - my sketching, my 3d modelling, and improving my technique with both. I must say that thanks to incredibly long bus trips I am at least making some breakthrough with that. Unfortunately, creativity does have a tendency to dry up RIGHT as you need it, which is something I'm just going to have to prepare for.
Meat and Cookies over, let's have a look at shit that's happening this week.
First off , A lot of those games I mentioned a few weeks ago in here are almost ALL out, almost ALL of them seem to be of some description pretty decent (there are a few mixed bags coming up).
One game I don't think I mentioned at the time, which after release and launch seems to be a lot more promising than the small amount of information and media for it before release, is Tomb Raider Underworld. The game looks pretty gorgeous, they're really toned Lara Croft into a bloody well toned and much more pleasing main character. Same goes for pretty much ALL the visuals in that game, and if the soundtrack the ingame videos are anything to go by, it's going to be a BLOODY NICE game to just sit and play.
For all those recovering WoW-fags (I have NO apologies for calling ANYONE who plays that miserable excuse for a gaming experience) who managed to just wean yourself off your electronic heroin, I have some bad news- Blizzard just made CRACK AND REESE FOR BREAKFAST with the launch of the Wrath of the Lich King Expansion . The expansion isn't meant for everyone, it's a pack which at it's heart is designed for longtime Blizzard pushers who've got their level 70s and suddenly found out "shit, the game has an end. bugger." Not anymore, with a new continent, new classes, new mounts, new graphics, and most of all, another reason to re-open accounts with Blizzard after you quit 3 years ago after they nerfed the pallies or what the fuck ever. If you're on the WoW-steroids, by all means, go get your next fix. IF you're not, STAY THE FUCK OUT, I promise you I will start giving money to people if they swear on their life they will never play that game. Someday.
Oh, the new Need For Speed game. I feel I should mention it.. being a ..game... and all, and I know certain people do enjoy fast cars that handle pseudo-realistically. Need for Speed: Underground is looking, as all previous holders in the franchise have, shiny and awesome. There is an Aston Martin Vanquish in it, and that's enough of a draw card for me to at least look at the back of the box when it comes out in the next month.
Now, a bit more meat,I've managed to play myself a few dozen hours of the CODWAW Multiplayer Beta. I suppose what some of you want to know about the New call of Duty Game (World at War) - is it any good in multiplayer? As you've all no doubt guessed, the return to World War 2 means you'd be assuming that a lot of that modern-day cutting edge tech that you got to hoist around in COD4 is gone, right? Wrong, sorta.
The good -
The game's mechanics are much more inline with COD4's brilliantly slick setup (the XP system, attachments, unlocks, achievements, the whole lot). These mechanisms have been expanded on and tweaked to fit WW2. 65 Levels to gain, with 3 levels of Prestige mode ( a feature that was dumped from the PC version of COD4).
Some of the attachment unlocks are pretty clever. For example, Bayonets, Bipods, Sniper Scopes and Flash Hiders. For all of you Bolt-action fans, you'll be damn pleased that there are 6 of them, and by default come without scopes. Some of the new perks are pretty cool, and the replacements for UAV, Airstrikes and Helicopters are pretty clever. Dogs instead of Helo in my books is always a nice trade off. The game overall is quite balanced.And it sounds and looks nice.
The bad -
Aperture sights from a technical and historical perspective are a fucking joke. not a single army put those things into wide enough adoption that they even warrant a footnote on the battlefield. But no, they're in, instead of the red-dot sights ( because god forbid that modern technology have one up on WW2).
Of the 3 maps, I could really only claim 1 as decent for playing any sort of game in, and that's fort. The other two maps in the Beta were iffy. Makin has some serious performance issues on one end of it, and has really iffy amounts of cover over far too many routes between places. There are a few nice spots to camp and counter-camp, but it's just so damn indecisive. In short, the layout is CRAP. Roundhouse is worse. Its a sniper heaven, with cover only around the edges, and two spots in the middle. everything else is basically turned over to flat ground to allow the biggest wet blanket for deathmatch ever, the TANKS, to roll around.
Which brings me to tanks- They're really quite an odd inclusion in the multiplayer. They're bloody powerful , bloody slow, in the hands of an idiot they can roll a spawn point faster and more efficiently than just airstriking spawnpoints. On the counter, there are more then enough ways to take them out, and a couple of shots from a Bazooka or Sticky Nades should take one out more than happily.They make good mobile cover though, so they do have that for them. But I still don't see the point of them in the game. in the space needed to allow for them, they could have easily made more cover, and just solidified the damn infantry experience than bother with the damn laggy things.I suppose what I'm saying is that Treyarch's map designers are a bunch of crazy spazzers.
The Ugly- Nothing really. War itself is pretty ugly, and I think even in the MP beta, that comes across well. It's not as visceral in MP as,say, Far Cry 2 is, but hey, nothings perfect. If you yearn for your bolt action rifles again, World at war is your only friend from now until you unlock the Mosin Nagant.
The Verdict- it's good enough, I hope that most of the maps they put in the retail package are at least OF the standard of Fort (the one map I found adequate), and at the worst, being an improved Makin. Everything else is pretty good, some glaring history issues aside. Should be a good shoot.
Coming up next in my Bilbo Bloggins - I Review Far Cry 2 and kick some people in the nuts. Should be a good one, peace out.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Toadie reviews - Code Geass - Lelouch of the Rebellion Season 1 (or How I learned about the Spaghetti people.. oh crap.)
Sometimes there are shows or games that I really don't know what to make of. QED, the harrowing tale of Lelouch vi Brittania and his single-minded quest to overthrow the empire that bears his family name.
As the story goes, the Britannia empire, which is apparently full of power hungry crazies, decides they want to take over the world again (see Colonialism), and successfully does so, annexing the entire of Europe and continental Asia, as well as Japan(not without a fight, but the walking "knightmare frame" mechs they have do kinda of make it one sided). This is where the fun begins. The Area formerly known as Japan is known as Area 11, and all of Japan's former citizens are forced into slum-like housing and conditions, while the new overclass live it up with opulent style and safety (think Dickensian era class struggle difference between the two lots of people).
Lelouch lives an almost double life. Having had his mother killed by his father(at least that's who he suspects planned it), he removed himself from association with his family and all chances to take throne of Britannia as default heir, and escaped to Jap..sorry, Area 11 to plot his revenge. Years later, he and his mentally scarred-so-now-she-keeps-her-eyes-closed younger sister Nunally are living and being taught at the Ashton academy, being looked after by the Ashton family, under the assumed names of Lelouch and Nunally Lamperouge.
Turns out, Lelouch is somewhat of a master tactician. During his lunch breaks, he and his lap-dog best friend Rival escape on a sidecar to dual some of the best minds in the empire at Chess. On the return from one of these chess getaways, Lelouch gets caught up in a vehicle hijack by some Nippon liberation front type people (they get bumper shunted by a semi trailer that's been nicked from a Brittanian research facility), Lelouch gets all messed up in their escape, is accidentally targeted as being one of them. While on the lamb in this small crisis he discovers two things - firstly, his childhood friend Suzaku (who is the son of the former Prime Minister of Japan), and secondly, that what the terrorists stole, wasn't in fact the Poison Gas WMD they thought it was (or rather its hard to explain what it really IS). Instead, it's a Green-haired girl (later revealed to be named C.C (pronounced Shizu)) that has the power to give special almost magical powers (called Geass). Suzaku gets shot for disobeying an order to shoot Lelouch( he gets better), and Lelouch and CC escape, to find the true face of Britannia, mass-murdering shock troops willing to destroy entire cities to suppress an opposing view or to cover up things they don't want seen. He binds a contract with CC and she gives him a Geass power, the power to unwaveringly command people he makes eye contact with. From this point, Lelouch begins his anti-Britannia campaign, starting with the ordered suicide of the squad which caught him.
He takes on another alter-ego as Zero, leader of the Black Knights, a highly organised force of people who want the destruction of the Britannia empire. Of course, this is intermixed with his high school life and on more than one occasion through the season he has hi jinx which almost spell his true identity being revealed.
TL;DR - Lelouch becomes Osama bin Laden, only more successful.
The show is highly schizophrenic in it's direction. First it plays the high school card, then it plays the Byronic hero card, the LOYALTY card, the FAMILY Card, Jesus it plays almost a new card every episode, it's that mind-numbingly complex. The show has so many bloody characters too, 4 real primary ones, and about 20 secondary, and maybe another 30 supporting. The fact they try to give them all a fair dose of airtime doesn't help it. You know what? Thank bloody god the main story arc is rigid enough to keep it mostly in order, or this would be a real mess. To Sunrise's credit, largely they pull off most of the stuff they pull works enough to not be something to bitch about, if at times it really does seem quite off the wall.
The Characterising is a pretty large part of everything in CG, and for the most part the characters are all individual. Lelouch is a Byronic anti-hero with a heart of ice, who I found I really didn't like much. Suzaku is full of love, Gottwald is full of LOYALTY, and Euphemia is full of innocence. the characters get their motif across fairly transparently, and you don't need to wonder too hard about if they're hiding something.
Now to get into the technicals of the show.
The character art is HIGHLY stylised, with most character proportions easily defined as Noodle people. That isn't to say it's bad, but they are quite narrow and thin, with LONG arms. The animation is pretty good, with a fair few scenes with quite high frame counts (inversely, there are a few where they did just did a 2-frame talking heads thing).
Colour is vibrant, and I'm especially liking the royal purple color + crests and laurels they've given as the livery for the Britannia empire. It works, and isn't too far off the real world's British royal family livery.
Visuals overall are pretty good, but nothing that really breaks away from the norm.
To the audio side of things, it's a bit of a mixed bag. Some of the effects are pretty nice and well mixed, but some of it (like some of the gunshots) seem really piss weak by comparison. The soundtrack's not bad though, and however the first intro ( Colors by Flow) was so out of context and catchy that it became one of 3 big memes that came out of the entire Code Geass. JIBUN WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
The voice casting was somewhat more optimistically done, and by and large, it's all good with Jun Fukuyama as Lelouch, a few other names as other characters, and NORIO WAKAMOTO as the Emperor of Britannia.
If you are all about mechs, terrorism, Pizza Hut or deep,broad and complex stories, CG is for you. If you're not too keen on any of that, I recommend a return to normalcy and to pretty much go do something else.
As the story goes, the Britannia empire, which is apparently full of power hungry crazies, decides they want to take over the world again (see Colonialism), and successfully does so, annexing the entire of Europe and continental Asia, as well as Japan(not without a fight, but the walking "knightmare frame" mechs they have do kinda of make it one sided). This is where the fun begins. The Area formerly known as Japan is known as Area 11, and all of Japan's former citizens are forced into slum-like housing and conditions, while the new overclass live it up with opulent style and safety (think Dickensian era class struggle difference between the two lots of people).
Lelouch lives an almost double life. Having had his mother killed by his father(at least that's who he suspects planned it), he removed himself from association with his family and all chances to take throne of Britannia as default heir, and escaped to Jap..sorry, Area 11 to plot his revenge. Years later, he and his mentally scarred-so-now-she-keeps-her-eyes-closed younger sister Nunally are living and being taught at the Ashton academy, being looked after by the Ashton family, under the assumed names of Lelouch and Nunally Lamperouge.
Turns out, Lelouch is somewhat of a master tactician. During his lunch breaks, he and his lap-dog best friend Rival escape on a sidecar to dual some of the best minds in the empire at Chess. On the return from one of these chess getaways, Lelouch gets caught up in a vehicle hijack by some Nippon liberation front type people (they get bumper shunted by a semi trailer that's been nicked from a Brittanian research facility), Lelouch gets all messed up in their escape, is accidentally targeted as being one of them. While on the lamb in this small crisis he discovers two things - firstly, his childhood friend Suzaku (who is the son of the former Prime Minister of Japan), and secondly, that what the terrorists stole, wasn't in fact the Poison Gas WMD they thought it was (or rather its hard to explain what it really IS). Instead, it's a Green-haired girl (later revealed to be named C.C (pronounced Shizu)) that has the power to give special almost magical powers (called Geass). Suzaku gets shot for disobeying an order to shoot Lelouch( he gets better), and Lelouch and CC escape, to find the true face of Britannia, mass-murdering shock troops willing to destroy entire cities to suppress an opposing view or to cover up things they don't want seen. He binds a contract with CC and she gives him a Geass power, the power to unwaveringly command people he makes eye contact with. From this point, Lelouch begins his anti-Britannia campaign, starting with the ordered suicide of the squad which caught him.
He takes on another alter-ego as Zero, leader of the Black Knights, a highly organised force of people who want the destruction of the Britannia empire. Of course, this is intermixed with his high school life and on more than one occasion through the season he has hi jinx which almost spell his true identity being revealed.
TL;DR - Lelouch becomes Osama bin Laden, only more successful.
The show is highly schizophrenic in it's direction. First it plays the high school card, then it plays the Byronic hero card, the LOYALTY card, the FAMILY Card, Jesus it plays almost a new card every episode, it's that mind-numbingly complex. The show has so many bloody characters too, 4 real primary ones, and about 20 secondary, and maybe another 30 supporting. The fact they try to give them all a fair dose of airtime doesn't help it. You know what? Thank bloody god the main story arc is rigid enough to keep it mostly in order, or this would be a real mess. To Sunrise's credit, largely they pull off most of the stuff they pull works enough to not be something to bitch about, if at times it really does seem quite off the wall.
The Characterising is a pretty large part of everything in CG, and for the most part the characters are all individual. Lelouch is a Byronic anti-hero with a heart of ice, who I found I really didn't like much. Suzaku is full of love, Gottwald is full of LOYALTY, and Euphemia is full of innocence. the characters get their motif across fairly transparently, and you don't need to wonder too hard about if they're hiding something.
Now to get into the technicals of the show.
The character art is HIGHLY stylised, with most character proportions easily defined as Noodle people. That isn't to say it's bad, but they are quite narrow and thin, with LONG arms. The animation is pretty good, with a fair few scenes with quite high frame counts (inversely, there are a few where they did just did a 2-frame talking heads thing).
Colour is vibrant, and I'm especially liking the royal purple color + crests and laurels they've given as the livery for the Britannia empire. It works, and isn't too far off the real world's British royal family livery.
Visuals overall are pretty good, but nothing that really breaks away from the norm.
To the audio side of things, it's a bit of a mixed bag. Some of the effects are pretty nice and well mixed, but some of it (like some of the gunshots) seem really piss weak by comparison. The soundtrack's not bad though, and however the first intro ( Colors by Flow) was so out of context and catchy that it became one of 3 big memes that came out of the entire Code Geass. JIBUN WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
The voice casting was somewhat more optimistically done, and by and large, it's all good with Jun Fukuyama as Lelouch, a few other names as other characters, and NORIO WAKAMOTO as the Emperor of Britannia.
If you are all about mechs, terrorism, Pizza Hut or deep,broad and complex stories, CG is for you. If you're not too keen on any of that, I recommend a return to normalcy and to pretty much go do something else.
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