sub_divided | Entries tagged with games:all

Nobuta wo Produce 01: ( Read more... )

Finished Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner: Raidou Kunozoha vs the Souless Army: ( Read more... )

Gonna give up on The Lions of Al-Rassan for now. I dunno, it's not horrible, but I'm also not really enjoying it, and there more books on my "to read" pile than there are hours in a day.

Loveless latest chapters: Bringing suspense back. RUN AWAY, RITSUKA, RUN AWAY. ...Actually I was talking about the latest chapters with Chrissie ( and I think )

EDIT Linkblogging:

1. I mentioned

amei's Raidou porn and forgot to mention

wredwrat's High School AU doujinshi! Check it out, it's awesome.

2.

harumi linked to a very cool Mononoke fanvid here (download here). The show isn't really my thing since it's too, uh, flat. (Seriously, the fact that you can't make spatial sense out of the scenery upsets me.) Also the visuals and storytelling are both really complicated and so in order for the audience to follow the story, the plot has to be simple, and I'm more of a "simple storytelling, complicated plot" person. But the video really is extremely cool.

3. Translation of the first volume of Kyou Kara Maou by the same person who's been translating the Mirage of Blaze novels. Dude, these are hilarious.

Not dead. Also, not unhappy. ^^; Just busy. (Okay, so I'm not that busy.)

Saw Gone Baby Gone -- you know, that Ben Affleck movie about the missing kid -- with

sesame_seed and

emblem's boyfriend last Friday. Overall I liked it and think it's worth seeing. Casey Affleck (Ben's younger brother) doesn't "act" but he does look very pretty staring intently into the camera, and the script doesn't call for much emotion from him anyway. (That's what his "better half" is for.) The writing is generally not spectacular -- there were plot holes and the speeches were almost uniformly awful -- but the authentic local color dialog was very good. The movie does a very very good job of portraying a certain neighborhood in Boston, and succeeds at being thought-provoking.

In short: frequently bad but sometimes good writing, consistently good direction, great setting: obvious strengths that make up for obvious weaknesses. 7/10. (But is anything else out now better than this?) Also, it was the best thing ever to see this movie with people who were willing to discuss it in excruciating detail afterward.

Speaking of awesome people,

sesame_seed flies back to Taiwan tomorrow (technically, today). ;____; Chrissy! I'll miss you.

***

On the other hand I've been gaming. I'm about halfway through Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner: Raido Kuzunoha vs. the Soulless Army right now. This is an AU set in "Taisho 20" where you play as Raido Kuzunoha (a title, not a name) the 14th, a high-school-uniform-wearing "devil summoner" who is pimped out by his awesome mysterious clan to work for Narumi, a layabout who runs a private detective agency in late-twenties Tokyo. It's sort of like noir thriller meets supernatural horror meets military conspiracy. What really amuses me, though, is that despite Raidou being an absolute badass (steely gaze, mystical powers, Jotaro Kujo's fashion sense, plus he runs with his cape swirling behind him in a very badass way), absolutely everyone gets to order him around. XD; First his clan on the training level, then the talking cat assigned to follow him around and make sure he doesn't get into trouble, then Narumi, then Narumi's clients, and finally, random NPCs whose capricious whims must be fulfilled in order for the plot to advance.

Raidou Kuzonoha: errand boy. XD

Other things I really like about this game are the world map (it's a street map of olde Tokyo -- the levels are city wards); the jazzy soundtrack and cinematic timing; the mad scientist who randomly lives under the convenience store and fuses your demons together at no charge; and that whenever you get stuck, you can always go visit the head of the local yakuza, who can be found at the local public bath. Naked. (Well, okay, not totally naked -- he has a small towel, and Raido's hat stays on.)

Haven't played any of the other Megaten games, so don't spoil me! The only reason I'm playing this one is it was on sale for ten dollars, and

amei drew a hell of a lot of porn for it. XD;

Next up: Samurai Legend Musashi. And I'm thinking about picking up the second Prince of Persia game. (Speaking of videogames,

canis_m have you seen this? That article is old, it's not a rumor, Atlus is definitely porting the game over. ^_^ I have no idea what the game play is like but it's a puzzle game and it's freaking gorgeous: I'm sold XD. (Demo here, in Japanese.))

***

On the other hand, I've been working, and on the third, invisible hand, I've been reading:

Ursula le Guin, Tombs of Atuan & The Farthest Shore
John le Carre, The Looking-Glass War
Naomi Mitchison, Travel Light
Naomi Novik, Empire of Ivory
Jane Emerson, City of Diamond

And right now I'm about five chapters into Guy Gavriel Kay's The Lions of Al-Rassan. ^^; Feel free to ask about any of these, by the way -- I have notes for all of them, just haven't gotten around to typing them up.

I haven't had a computer for the last three weeks, but really that's only an excuse. Must resume status as a productive member of ~~society~~ the internet!

Re computer: The power adapter for my laptop went out and since then I've been waiting, first for a new AC/DC adapter, then for a second AC/DC adapter, then for a box to put my laptop in and send off to HQ and fix the problems caused by the first (faulty) adapter. Right now I'm waiting for my laptop to come back.

In the meantime I've been...reading? ^^; And avoiding responsibilities. I met

harumi! We talked for hours and hours. ^_^v I'm meeting her in about another hour and a half so this entry might be cut short.

...And I've been playing FFXII. (Aha! The truth comes out!). Fun game, far too long. I'm at something crazy like 80 hours and still no end in sight.

( FFXII, totally disorganized )

Off to dinner! And then: swing dancing!

( Short Fanfiction: Link and Skelleton Knight, a Bond Between Men )

I tried to keep it short so that lame description would not overwhelm the equally lame punchline, but with a punchline that lame there's only so much you can do. Lame, lame, lame, lame. (Has anyone ever written anything for these games that wasn't lame? Besides Becky, I mean.)

( Man vs Dragon, An Epic Battle )

Put that way, the fight sounds like it could be exciting, but when you actually play it's:

Point, Z-target, B, Z-target, B, Z-target, B, Z-target, B, Z-target, B, Z-target, B. Point, Z-target, B, Z-target, B, Z-target, B, Z-target, B, Z-target, B. Point, Z-target, B. A! A A A!

Repeat.

Most boring boss battle ever.

( Miscellaneous Other Things )

I need to stop trying to fit Ivalice into some kind of real-world historical context. REPEAT AFTER ME: FFXII IS AN UNHOLY MELD OF CLASSICAL EMPIRES, 18TH CENTURY POLITICS AND 20TH CENTURY MORALITY. Also Dalmasca is not East Central Europe, wtf Subdee. Just because it's ~~your area of interest~~ a contested area full of crazed nationalists plus a Golden Age no one outside the region has heard of doesn't mean you have to drag others down into your madness.

~~Although if Archadia is the Byzantine Empire and Rozaria is the Holy Roman Empire then the countries in the middle would obviously be~~ NO.

No, I haven't started playing. I watched the cutscenes.

( Reposted comments - I'd link, but the entries are friendslocked. )

And to think I had a policy against reposting comments. XD;

( WHAT I THINK SHOULD HAPPEN NEXT: )

In other news, edited versions of non-YA readinglists from this entry finally posted to

reading_mix:
The Psychology of Science and One and One is Three (formerly known as Looping Stories).

So apparently...the fifth case was an extra added to DS version of Phoenix Wright? So much for social commentary. ORZ In the future I'll keep the judgmentalism confined to my own country.

Bookblogging!

Robertson Davies, The Manticore
Sequel to Fifth Business. I liked Fifth Business but Manticore is extremely forgettable. In fact I picked it up today thinking I'd finish it, having forgotten that I already had. XD; Re-tells the events of Fifth Business from a different perspective. I think I forgot it because although Percy's son idolizes his father -- the villain in the first book -- the author invites you to read between the lines, and the picture of Percy you get is the exactly same picture of a successful-but-shallow, morally bankrupt industrialist. Also the same: the thing were Davies replaces religion with psychology. -_-; there's nothing new going on. On the other hand I did like the son a lot. Together with the first book, The Manticore seems to prove that all good, right-thinking people are self-loathing, though, which is a bit of a drag.

Abe Ignacio, The Forbidden Book
For school. Noniction. This is a collection of political cartoons from the first few years of the Philippine-American War (1898-1902). It's a very pretty book, nice typesetting, very well-designed, and the pictures are gorgeous even when they're really, really racist. -_-; What's funny is that the really right-wing magazines end up printing pictures that almost seem to be against the cause, because they aren't trying to convince the readership that US imperial goals in the Philippines are justified, it's assumed. And some of the most racist pictures are from Life, which apparently used to be this extremely liberal humor magazine started by veterans of the Harvard Lampoon. Anyway, great book, recommended to anyone who likes political cartoons.

Currently reading:
Benevolent Assimilation, Arthur Miller (nonfiction, for school)
All Shook Up, Glenn Altshuler (nonfiction, for school)
The Dew Breaker, Edwidge Danicat (poetic and heartbreaking short stories about Haitian immigrants in the US)
To Say Nothing of the Dog, Connie Willis (time-traveling Victorians!)

50bookchallenge:
2006 Retrospect
2007 #01-05.
2007 #06-10

Finished after three days of scary obsessiveness. I thought I was getting an amusing game about gay lawyers with tragic backstories and was surprised to learn that what I'd actually gotten was social commentary. ( SPOILERS )

My final thought is that Phoenix Wright is my hero. XD No seriously.

Also, for the record, it's Gumshoe/Edgeworth. "Close working relationship," is that what they're calling it these days? Fandom is really letting me down here XD. Why the insistence on Wright/Edgeworth (or Edgeworth/Wright)?! Shipping these two together is crazy talk in the face of OVERWHELMING CANONICAL SUBTEXT I AM TELLING YOU.

Today's my birthday! The only landmark ages left are all multiples of five XD. Last year I went out drinking with a friend because duh, that's what you do when you're twenty-one! But this year I think I'll just stay home and relax. Steve's coming over in about an hour to cook lamb (though this is actually a coincidence) which should be pretty nice...I haven't seen him in a while and we have a lot to catch up on. I thought about asking a few other people over but the more I thought about it, the more it seemed like a terrible idea. ^^; Practically all my friends here are guys who don't know each other -- I know them on a one-to-one basis.

I got a card from my parents...IN JAPANESE. XD; The front has "birthday" and some polite words on it and I can't read the inside at all. But it doesn't matter, the spirit's there anyway. Though this might be reading too much into it, I think this is my mother's way of saying that she and dad support me no matter what crazy weird stuff I'm into (you should see the clothes they got me for Christmas). Normal parents probably come out and SAY these things but my mother is really, really easily embarrassed.

...Yeah, I get it from her. ^^; The decent thing to do would be to call and tell her straight that I understand what she's trying to say. But...I'll probably end up coding it into the linear notes of the mix CD I give her instead. It's sort of sad but we really do (mis?)communicate in code.

The real news of this post is that along with the card, I got a Nintendo DS and Phoenix Wright. (See, code does work!) I've been playing all morning and I'm on the last day of case three. This game is hilarious but at the same time, so frustrating, omg what do you mean it's not enough to prove that the prosecution's key witness is lying?! Whatever happened to reasonable doubt?! Not to mention all the times when you can figure out what must have happened, but not which buttons to press to get the story to advance ;_;.

More later, shower now. XD cutting it close, here.

Keep those booklist suggestions coming!

The Fountain: wonderful or terrible? MC really liked it but...

("Spanning over one thousand years, and three parallel stories, The Fountain is a story of love, death, spirituality, and the fragility of our existence in this world." Okay, but what's it about? Or should I let the profundity wash over me and not ask too many awkward questions XD. (Reincarnation! Reincarnation is a plus.))

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
My brother stood on line at 4:00am for this, but only because he wanted to. XD Parts of this game are really, really pretty. The animation for human!Link's a bit lacking but wolf!Link totally makes up for it, it is so obvious where the creators' hearts lie. I mean, not only do you turn into a wolf, when you're a wolf you can talk to animals! Including your horse! And all of these friendly woodland creatures show up to help you on your quest! I only played to the end of the Forest Temple but I swear that in that small amount of time I picked up a decently sized entourage.

( Spoilers up to the end of the Forrest Temple )

I also watched my brother play the part just before the water temple!

( Commentary for just before the Water temple, more spoilers )

Finally, FIC!

( Generic Wolf Ficlet, Very Minor Spoilers )

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subdee

criminally lazy

Movie, Games, Books.

Breaking radio silence after nineteen days (a new record!)

Been Playing Twilight Princess

utter pointlessness

FFXII

Small Bookblog

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney

Twenty-two

Belated Twilight Princess

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March 2022

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