...and I feel fine.
Yeah, that REM song.
Anyway, the Mayan calendar reaches the end of a cycle today and just to prove how little it matters, here I am making this post. Because if you have a brain inside your head you'll realize that the world isn't going to end just because the calendar of an ancient civilization reaches the end of a cycle. After all, Lavos didn't erupt out of the earth and destroy everything in 1999, and computers didn't spontaneously crash in 2000, so why should this be any different?
See? It's a normal day just like any other. Nothing to be alarmed abouh7gu9ehtgiukzxv yhawzy hvg7a9gh79poegh3g9PGHHO:HHOIho;aheortghasuophu;g***NO CARRIER
Friday, December 21, 2012
Monday, December 17, 2012
Street Fighter x Mega Man
So, for Mega Man's 25th anniversary, we get a fan-made game. Oooooooookay.
Music
The music cuts out at random for a few seconds before coming back in. This continues to happen throughout all of the game that I played. What I've heard of the music is quite good, though, so it's a shame it's so buggy.
Controls
It absolutely will not recognize an Xbox 360 controller. I can't get mine to work at all. It also doesn't respond to its keyboard controls, except for Enter (Start), F4 (change screen size), and Escape (Exit). To even be able to play the game I had to plug my PlayStation 2 controller in via the USB adapter I have that's collecting dust because I got the Xbox 360 Wireless Controller for Windows a while back. Even once you find a controller it will recognize, the default bindings are weird and I had to move them around.
Gameplay/Difficulty
Well, mixed feelings here. The early Mega Man games are part of what defined "Nintendo Hard". This game is done in the style of those, so we can expect it to be hard, but... it just feels brutal. Two of the stages I played (Chun-Li and Blanka) had infinite spawns of enemies over most of the stage, making it just tedious to have to jump or avoid them the entire way through, because it's not worth your time to kill them since they just keep coming.
The stages themselves are fairly short. Honestly, I think Mega Man 1 and Mega Man 2 (both of which I've beaten) had longer stages.
This game also incorporates the charged Mega Buster from some of the later Mega Man games, whereas I was playing it with the earlier ones that lacked it in mind. It was a complete fluke that I discovered a mid-level charged shot. Charged shots help with the crazy amount of health most enemies have, but the charge time hurts a lot. It almost defeats the point when you have to stop and wait for your next charged shot to charge up before you can keep moving.
Played a little, beaten some bosses, and then have other stuff to do? Like, you know, hanging out with friends, eating food, sleeping, etc.? Too bad, there's no save system and no password system. This hurts the game a lot, especially considering it has a Boss Rush mode that can only be started by beating the game. If you play this game, you basically can't have a life or do anything else because you have to leave it running all the time since there's no other way to resume where you left off.
Every Mega Man game has its boss order. You know the deal: beat one boss, get their weapon, and another boss is weak to that weapon. Coming into the game with no knowledge of this, it's trial and error to figure it out. However, trying to beat some of the bosses can be very aggrivating as I encountered projectile reflection abilities on two of the bosses. Despite this, Chun-Li was a fairly easy first boss to kill, so that's one possible entry into the boss order. Because of the game's shortcomings, though, I haven't yet found the boss that's weak to her weapon (Lightning Kick). Also because of the game's shortcomings, it's very unlikely that I ever will.
Overall
Making a Mega Man game where the bosses are Street Fighter characters seemed like an interesting idea. It just wasn't done well. I know, the game's free, but if you subscribe to the "you can't complain about something that's free" rhetoric, well, you're stupid. Gamers have basic expectations about core game functionality, and when a game fails to provide certain things like a save or password feature, music that doesn't cut out constantly, and working controls, there's something wrong with the game.
Music
The music cuts out at random for a few seconds before coming back in. This continues to happen throughout all of the game that I played. What I've heard of the music is quite good, though, so it's a shame it's so buggy.
Controls
It absolutely will not recognize an Xbox 360 controller. I can't get mine to work at all. It also doesn't respond to its keyboard controls, except for Enter (Start), F4 (change screen size), and Escape (Exit). To even be able to play the game I had to plug my PlayStation 2 controller in via the USB adapter I have that's collecting dust because I got the Xbox 360 Wireless Controller for Windows a while back. Even once you find a controller it will recognize, the default bindings are weird and I had to move them around.
Gameplay/Difficulty
Well, mixed feelings here. The early Mega Man games are part of what defined "Nintendo Hard". This game is done in the style of those, so we can expect it to be hard, but... it just feels brutal. Two of the stages I played (Chun-Li and Blanka) had infinite spawns of enemies over most of the stage, making it just tedious to have to jump or avoid them the entire way through, because it's not worth your time to kill them since they just keep coming.
The stages themselves are fairly short. Honestly, I think Mega Man 1 and Mega Man 2 (both of which I've beaten) had longer stages.
This game also incorporates the charged Mega Buster from some of the later Mega Man games, whereas I was playing it with the earlier ones that lacked it in mind. It was a complete fluke that I discovered a mid-level charged shot. Charged shots help with the crazy amount of health most enemies have, but the charge time hurts a lot. It almost defeats the point when you have to stop and wait for your next charged shot to charge up before you can keep moving.
Played a little, beaten some bosses, and then have other stuff to do? Like, you know, hanging out with friends, eating food, sleeping, etc.? Too bad, there's no save system and no password system. This hurts the game a lot, especially considering it has a Boss Rush mode that can only be started by beating the game. If you play this game, you basically can't have a life or do anything else because you have to leave it running all the time since there's no other way to resume where you left off.
Every Mega Man game has its boss order. You know the deal: beat one boss, get their weapon, and another boss is weak to that weapon. Coming into the game with no knowledge of this, it's trial and error to figure it out. However, trying to beat some of the bosses can be very aggrivating as I encountered projectile reflection abilities on two of the bosses. Despite this, Chun-Li was a fairly easy first boss to kill, so that's one possible entry into the boss order. Because of the game's shortcomings, though, I haven't yet found the boss that's weak to her weapon (Lightning Kick). Also because of the game's shortcomings, it's very unlikely that I ever will.
Overall
Making a Mega Man game where the bosses are Street Fighter characters seemed like an interesting idea. It just wasn't done well. I know, the game's free, but if you subscribe to the "you can't complain about something that's free" rhetoric, well, you're stupid. Gamers have basic expectations about core game functionality, and when a game fails to provide certain things like a save or password feature, music that doesn't cut out constantly, and working controls, there's something wrong with the game.
Sunday, December 9, 2012
Boring ass-anime movies
You know what I'm talking about. Yes, you fucking know exactly what the fuck I'm talking about. You'll be discussing anime movies with someone and sure enough, up it comes. A boring movie. Yet, you're not allowed to say it's boring because it's somehow a work of fucking genius. Haven't heard of any of these movies? Well, there's a reason why. It's because they suck. If you have, you know what I'm talking about. Titles such as '5 Centimeters Per Second' and 'Momo e no Tegami'.
I have seen both, and neither was very enjoyable. 5 Centimeters per second had two distinct parts to me: the first being a really long train ride for a guy to meet up with his long distance girlfriend and not do anything that one might expect to do when meeting up with one's long distance girlfriend, i.e. get dinner together, go see a movie, and if the correct cards are played, get laid; and then the rest of the movie which didn't seem to have any relation to the first part. It's been a while, thankfully, so I can't really go any more in-depth than that.
Momo e no Tegami I was subjected to last night, and it was just boring. As I described it to a friend (and on Twitter), it was 75% boring, 15% sad, and 10% comedy. Basically for every nine minutes of utter drivel, there's one enjoyable minute. Momo is angsty the entire time, and she mopes about until what little semblance of plot the movie has kicks in. Then afterwards she seems to be happy. The problem is, you have to sit through the majority of the movie to get to the small bit of plot.
When criticizing these kinds of movies, I've had foul looks and arguments of "you don't need explosions in everything" thrown back at me. Yes, I know that not everything needs to explode. My name isn't Michael Bay. I still expect a movie to be entertaining, which these types of movies utterly fail at. The worst part is, I can't even give any suggestions for improvement, because these types of movies are so far departed from anything decent at all. But then again, trying to improve these types of movies to where they're at the very least passable is like trying to gold-plate an elephant turd. It just distracts the viewer from the bad without actually getting rid of it.
I have seen both, and neither was very enjoyable. 5 Centimeters per second had two distinct parts to me: the first being a really long train ride for a guy to meet up with his long distance girlfriend and not do anything that one might expect to do when meeting up with one's long distance girlfriend, i.e. get dinner together, go see a movie, and if the correct cards are played, get laid; and then the rest of the movie which didn't seem to have any relation to the first part. It's been a while, thankfully, so I can't really go any more in-depth than that.
Momo e no Tegami I was subjected to last night, and it was just boring. As I described it to a friend (and on Twitter), it was 75% boring, 15% sad, and 10% comedy. Basically for every nine minutes of utter drivel, there's one enjoyable minute. Momo is angsty the entire time, and she mopes about until what little semblance of plot the movie has kicks in. Then afterwards she seems to be happy. The problem is, you have to sit through the majority of the movie to get to the small bit of plot.
When criticizing these kinds of movies, I've had foul looks and arguments of "you don't need explosions in everything" thrown back at me. Yes, I know that not everything needs to explode. My name isn't Michael Bay. I still expect a movie to be entertaining, which these types of movies utterly fail at. The worst part is, I can't even give any suggestions for improvement, because these types of movies are so far departed from anything decent at all. But then again, trying to improve these types of movies to where they're at the very least passable is like trying to gold-plate an elephant turd. It just distracts the viewer from the bad without actually getting rid of it.
Tuesday, December 4, 2012
Beck completion followup
I can't say much that I haven't already said, so this post will be short.
Somehow they cobbled together a good ending from the mess of fuck they'd written themselves into. Whatever.
The show itself is pretty terrible, but it does try to highlight that not everything is happy all the time with bands. I know that people have their differences in pretty much everything. Rival bands and trying to undercut one another and all that, yeah, it happens. I like to think that I watch anime to get away from reality, though. Put in just enough reality to keep the series grounded, keep the rest entertaining, and you've got yourself a good show.
The thing is... I like the music in the show. Right now the opening song is stuck in my head. I always air guitarred during showings to one of their songs in particular. The music alone doesn't keep the series afloat, unfortunately.
In the end, I'll just reiterate that I'll just stick to K-On! from now on. It's true that nothing bad ever really happens in K-On!, but... they have setbacks, overcome them, there's comedy, and they play music and do fun stuff even when they're not playing music. That's a formula I can live with.
Somehow they cobbled together a good ending from the mess of fuck they'd written themselves into. Whatever.
The show itself is pretty terrible, but it does try to highlight that not everything is happy all the time with bands. I know that people have their differences in pretty much everything. Rival bands and trying to undercut one another and all that, yeah, it happens. I like to think that I watch anime to get away from reality, though. Put in just enough reality to keep the series grounded, keep the rest entertaining, and you've got yourself a good show.
The thing is... I like the music in the show. Right now the opening song is stuck in my head. I always air guitarred during showings to one of their songs in particular. The music alone doesn't keep the series afloat, unfortunately.
In the end, I'll just reiterate that I'll just stick to K-On! from now on. It's true that nothing bad ever really happens in K-On!, but... they have setbacks, overcome them, there's comedy, and they play music and do fun stuff even when they're not playing music. That's a formula I can live with.
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