Anchor

10'

Me: "I'm so behind in all my subjects.. I need to hardcore and catch up"

Friend: "Sounds like every year."

09'

Me:" Man I'm sooo tired.. I can't even do any work"

Friend: " No you're just lazy. It's the same every time"

Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney.

My god. This game. I am going to make a bold statement here, and say that the HUGE OMGWTFBOMB moment in this game IS BETTER THAN THE LAST HALF HOUR OF SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION. That is insane, considering that Shawshank is my favourite movie of all time. Let's begin.

Phoenix Wright is a Japanese text adventure game for the DS. You play as a noobie defence attorney, Phoenix Wright, who takes 5 different cases all with the odds stacked against him. The localisation effort for this game is very solid, and many jokes retain their humor... And what amazing humor it is. For example, one of my favourite parts of the game is in the 3rd case, when you discover a character who talks in 1337 5p33k. I loled soooo hard, especially since he is the only character which directly references nerd culture. He says stuff that you expect people on the internet to say, and his character design really reflects this dialogue.

Needless to say, this game absolutely lives off it's humor and story.

The gameplay in PW comes in 2 parts: Crime investigation and Courtroom.

In the investigation sequences you play phoenix in first person view and visit different story specific locations via a menu. At each location, you have the option of examining the area by touching peculiar items with the stylus, Moving to a different adjacent area, or Talking and Presenting evidence to people, if they are present. The crime investigation part is overshadowed by the more fleshed out and fun Courtroom segment, but some clever dialogue and fitting music really adds to the environmental effect of each location. The purpose of this part of the game is to gather information for your incoming courtroom section.

Now, the courtroom is where PW really shines. As a rookie, Phoenix is constantly doubting himself and his thoughts are shown in blue text, and are often funny to read. Progress in the courtroom is accomplished through the cross-examination of witness testimonies. As a defence lawyer in an incredibly imbalanced justice system, you cannot call your own witnesses, and your client is still guilty unless you can prove that someone else did it.. Yes, you must find the real culprit to reach NOT GUILTY. You try to find contradictions with your known facts in each testimony by presenting relevant evidence at appropriate statements, which pressures the witness into slipping up further, or providing information that they had not disclosed previously. But be careful, you only have 5 "lives" each day you are in court, so if you make an irrelevant claim, you lose a life. Should you lose all 5 lives, it's instant game over. This may seem harsh, but it works well, as you can save at any time, and rewards those who genuinely know what they're doing, while Loling in the face of noob guessers. This isn't without flaw however, because around 3 or 4 times in the whole game, there are sections where you seem to be stuck; Cannot progress with investigation, or you cannot seem to find which evidence should be presented at which statement in the testimony. These flaws mar an otherwise greatly paced game. There are also sections which you can immediately spot the flaw in the testimony, and quickly choose the piece of evidence you think proves a contradiction, only to find that you are a step ahead of yourself, and a totally unrelated piece of evidence is the correct answer, and consequently, the only way to progress.

What would have made this game an even greater masterpiece is the possibility of a dynamic trial, where you can present more than just 1 thing at any certain time, which leads to multiple possibilities of updated testimonies, and better use of evidence. Another way to make it even more free form is making the collection of every single piece of evidence no longer mandatory, and allow the player to play the trial anyway, and even allow them to lose without game over, as long as future events are effected.

Overall, fucking fantastic game. If you haven't played this already, do it now. The first 2 cases are pretty much tutorials, but after that.. oh man, you won't be able to put it down..

Mega Man Star Force 3: Black Ace

This is the 2nd Battle Network/ Star force / Donkey Punch Mega man game that I've finished.. And this is probably more completed than MMBN2 which I reviewed earlier. It is the first of the Star Force games for the DS which I have played, and it is mostly the same as the Battle Network series. The main changes are that Mega man only moves left and right in the last row of the grid; as opposed to a full 9 squares in Battle Network. The battle system gains a lock on function, which allows you to use short range battle cards such as swords on enemies which do not come into the row in front of you. A Customizer also exists, similar to the one in MMBN3, except using the value of "Link Power" which can be gained from doing side quests, or linking with other people in real life.

The story, as always, is crap and shouldn't really be paid attention.

There really isn't that much new in this game, compared to battle network, except that elements have returned, a-la battle networks 2 and 3 in the form of "Noise forms". Noise is the biggest addition to this game from previous iterations. It is a value which appears in the top right corner of the screen once a certain ability is equipped. To increase this amount, the player must use "normal" (non elemental) battle cards on the enemy. In normal virus battles, the amount of damage overkill turns into the amount of noise gained. In boss battles, half of your normal battlecard damage turns into noise. Noise degenerates over time. Past 50%, your element will appear, and past 200% noise, you are able to "finalize" and turn into either Black Ace, or Red Joker, depending on whichever version of the game you have. Every 50% increment increase from 200% onwards will give you a better deck of battlecards, being capped off at lvl 11 deck at 999% noise.

Not much can be said about this game.. It's more of the same Battle Network that we all know and love, It's just a question of how much more battle network you can take..

The Gameboy Advanced : Mega Man Battle Network 2 Review

I was just thinking... What games did I grow up loving? I sincerely wish I played more games when I was younger, as there are too many negative consequences nowadays.

I'd like to tell everyone about my favourite console -- Handheld and otherwise for my lifetime so far:

The Gameboy Advanced.

I was first introduced to this game with titles such as Dragonball Z ( Can't remember the exact title) and Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire. I loved these games, especially Pokemon, and was amazed that I could play them for free with the Visualboy Emulator.

Then came my second favourite GBA game of ALL TIME : Mega Man Battle Network 2.

As I typed that, I shivered a little.. I wish I could replay that, but I seriously don't have any time...

Ok let's do a quick review. By the way, I haven't played a battle network game since 5 or 6.. The team colonel/protoman ones.

If you've ever played a battle network game, This is pretty much a less noob friendly version with less fancy stuff than newer versions. You are Lan Hikari (I think?) and you control Megaman when you "Jack In" to electronic devices, which is seriously, pretty much anything in the game. Once you jack in, it's a virtual world where you will fight viruses in a real time grid based fight. You use abilities in the form of battle chips, which allows megaman to perform stronger attacks/ status changing moves. Megaman can fight with his gun which does 1 dmg per shot, and can be upgraded to a charged shot of 10X your gun damage, and a maximum of 10 damage for your gun. The combat is a lot about pattern memorisation and timing. Each enemy will have distinct attack and defence abilities, and different terrain is constructed in each random battle. Megaman can only be upgraded with HP bonuses, and gun damage, so the main upgrades in the game are the battle chips. You obtain these from killing enemies, gambling in the chip machine and finding them on random NPCs. More powerful chips are obviously more rare, and Bosses drop their own chip which allows you to summon them to do a signature move, For example Gutsman's Whole screen Shockwave, and Roll's Heal.

Something that totally Shocked me when I first experienced it was the encounter of a boss in a random battle on the net. The bosses you find randomly are much stronger than the version you encountered earlier in scripted story events, and drop a stronger version of the chip you obtained from the weaker version, their attack patterns are different, and the damage they deal is far greater to ensure you are challenged. If you want to get the strongest boss chip possible, it is essential to get a High rank in your fight against the boss, This means taking the least amount of time possible.

Around halfway through the story, Your megaman will take on an elemental attribute which changes his colour permanently. This attribute cannot be turned off and will give you new bonuses and weaknesses. For example, I got woodguts -- The wood element megaman. My charged shot changed into a 120 damage tornado which hit in one square 2 spaces in front of megaman. I gained the ability to heal damage while standing on grass panels, but took double damage from fire based attacks.

By far, the greatest amount of fun to be had in this game is to fight the bosses and to collect powerful battlechips. Call me a noob, call me 9 years old (which I was at the time I played this) but I found the bosses to have a very satisfying difficulty level, which forced me to try defeat the more than once before succeeding. The feeling of finally defeating a boss and watching him slowly explode before he is deleted is one of the best in gaming -- PERIOD.

One very iconic feature on the boss romps is the boss level or dungeon. Each boss will have a series of levels which megaman will have to traverse to get to each boss. This is instigated by real life obstacles stopping Lan from getting to another physical location, therefore he jacks megaman into electronic devices to clear the obstacles ahead. The boss levels are far more challenging than the normal net... The normal enemies have a good chance of deafeating you, and there are timing/platforming and puzzle portions which are truly frustrating, but the sense of elation when you finally clear it is unparalleled.

The story however isn't very good. All it does is give premise for Lan to go to different parts of the "Real World" and then battle and clear levels in the Cyber world with Megaman.

The Music is something I cannot comment on.. it has been 6 Years Since I have played this game, and I can't remember the music at all. I write all of this from memory, and I believe I've done it justice -- The memory is very good :D

This is an action RPG, and the story is far from amazing, but the wonderful battle system and gameplay more than make up for it. I have incredibly fond memories of this game and if you have time, I urge everyone to try it out. But be warned... I think I clocked in around 50 hours or so on my game file... I think I might be reviewing Golden Sun the Lost Age next --Probably my number 1 favourite GBA game EVER!! Thanks for putting up with this and reading.. if you could be bothered, I salute you <3>

Cultural night, UBW, among others ~~

Hmm. I had actually thought of something to write before going to Cultural night, but I forgot.

I told people that I came late because I was "busy"

Truth of the matter is, I needed to dry my pants (LOONG STORY involving hurting testicles and the dark colours wash)

So yeah... CULTURAL NIGHT WAS COOL~~

I came in at 7.30 halfway through the Lankan skit.. which was way funnier than the indian thing (sorry to say :3), which was followed by some LEET korean drumming O=('.'Q), and finally the indian skit thingy

UNF -- I missed the asian part :(:( yeah mega fail on my part, but pants said no :(

Ohkaay next. My Px200s are getting worse and worse.. the jack is fucking fragile as hell and i'm getting annoyed at it. When it breaks completely, I will revert back to my Mx460 earbuds and just buy like 3 or 4 pairs of koss ksc75 when I go to LA... and then probably some new ones as well.

On a side note, Today I found out that Waking the Fallen is my new favourite Avenged Sevenfold album :D. I thought the overall quality of City of Evil was good, but this just tops that. Sad to see that a band like A7X has gotten so much worse since 03.

Now : update on FSN.

So, I've gone through the FATE story, and not around 3, 4 hours into Unlimited Blade Works. I can easily see why many people seem to like this story the most. First of all, the pacing is far better than in Fate, because 10 to 15 minute explanations are eliminated. Also, because the very mediocre anime followed 80% of Fate, Almost all of UBW is unspoiled for me, which further increases my interest. One thing that the anime did well for me in my opinion is that it made me love archer! In the anime, Archer has 1 proper fight scene, and that lasts around 5 or so minutes in that episode. Never again does he fight. BUT::: those 5 mins are AMAZING~~, So as I play I'm anticipating what kind of guy archer turns out to be.. And I'm specifically avoiding any and all spoilers. I ESPECIALLY don't want to know his true name yet!!

Another side note : I'm on Black Cat chapter 5... and anticipating To-love-Ru chap 161.. should come out tomorrow *I hope*

Leaving with this:

"I can see just fine, with you in my life,
(and)there by my side as it starts to fade
I know this can't be right, stuck in a dream
a nightmare full of sorrow"

Whoever Tells me what song that is from gets candy and cool points.

Bai ~

Strange moe..

Some people already know this... but I have really really, REALLY weird things as objects of my infatuation. K-ON can fuck off. No, Not even Mio is cute to me. Yeah that's not a typo. *flamewar

Mikuru Asahina.. also a no. Nagato.. Even Bigger no. Only the scarily tsundere Haruhi is worthy of my proness!

But that's not all.. okokok

To be honest, the only character/person/thing that I have gone completely fangirl over is this:

Yeah. That's him. When I first saw him I went OMFG HE'S SOOO COOOL~~~~~

The Manga is To-Love-Ru... Not usually my type of manga, but it's hilarious!

It's a Comedy/Ecchi/Harem/Romance IMO. Don't you dare watch the anime. It sucks compared to the GG manga. Yeah that is all. BUT OMFG YUU KOTEGAWA <3<3<3

I've been told the artist is the same guy who did black cat, so there ya go.

The Longest Way - Beard walk

I've just finished watching this very enlightening video -- exposed to me via best of youtube.

I recommend that everyone watch it.

It's about a guy whose goal was to walk from Beijing to Germany.. and his godlike beard which he has cultivated on his face over the long journey.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ky6vgQfU24#movie_player

Enjoy! :D