John Zeitler

Today was simultaneously busy and relaxing. I knocked off two short story-mode clears this morning while waiting for a couple of phone calls, and handled a few minor little housekeeping things. Key among them, or at the very least key among them for our purposes, was finally getting around to modding my SNES to enable import games to be played without trouble. For those of you keeping score, this meant using the diagonal cutters to cut out two itty-bitty tabs on the machine. That’s it. The reason I did this was because I now own a copy of Seiken Densetsu 3 that I wanted to give a quick run through, with the ultimate result being that it works and I still have no idea what’s going on. But at least I’ll be able to snag a translated version somewhere and give that a play through without feeling guilty or violating my personal ethics. (This code of ethics is the same thing preventing me from really going through Mother 3, honestly, until I can grab a physical cartridge.)

On the recommendation of Kat and Andrew during the con, I’ve also started watching through Gakuen Alice. The short description of this series is “What if the Japanese had come up with the idea for X-Men, but decided not to play it in the slightest bit seriously?” Overall I’m really digging it, but I wish it would start coming to some semblance of a plot soon. It’s got some undercurrents that are showing through here and there but the characters aren’t strong enough after five episodes to really hold up that sort of minimalistic storytelling. Though I will admit that Hotaru’s “Idiot Gun” and “Idiot Cannon” are hilarious and I hope they’re not just one-episode gags.

Even though this year I spent the least amount of time at the convention out of any that I’ve attended, I still think it was a) worth the registration and b) a good time. I’m probably going to register next year as well, particularly because the location we’ve staked out makes travel between the con and the room a lot easier, and therefore ducking out for loot drops or quick breaks becomes a much more appealing option. I’ve also always come back from cons feeling exhausted but really, really happy. This year is no exception, on either front.

Catch you folks tomorrow.

I’m back from Otakon, and while it was a very fun experience, it was truncated due to the jackass who set off the fire alarm during the middle of Saturday– as in, the time when the con is usually in full swing. Oh, and it probably completely disrupted one of the highlights to the con (the Hetalia premiere).

I’m also ridiculously exhausted right now, so I’ll spare you the details until later. But let’s just say that it’s a good thing I don’t eat meat anymore or else Fail Pig would have been bacon. Oh wait– he was, AND IT STILL DIDN’T HELP ARGH

This week has seen a few game announcements of note, and a few anime announcements. Only natural, because Comic-Con International is going on over on the West Coast. Among the anime announcements have been Tales of the Abyss, which is good as I’ve been meaning to find an excuse to play the game (or in this case, not play the game– 13 hours of anime versus 40+ hours of game for the same story is not a difficult decision to make). But the real gem has been one and a half game announcements.

Capcom shed a little more light on the enigmatic Mega Man Universe, which had been revealed in a rather well-done teaser trailer a week or so ago. According to the revelations, Universe is meant to let each player play as their idealized version of Mega Man– a tricky feat given that good ol’ Rock has been incarnated in many varied forms in his twenty-three year history. (Wow, can you believe it’s almost time for the silver anniversary of Mega Man?!) Capcom seems to be going all-out with this one, even including the godawful version of Mega Man from the US box cover. This is fanservice of the highest degree, and quite frankly, I couldn’t be happier about it.

Except that, in almost the same breath, rumors of a for-real announcement of Mega Man Legends 3 were rekindled after the question was met with the Capcom rep throwing foam Mega Buster arms into the crowd and simply saying, “Thank you.” And as much as I want to believe in the rumors, I have to retain more than a modicum of disbelief.

There’s this thing I don’t do. It’s called ‘tempting fate’. It’s because of this other thing that I have, called ‘historically rotten luck’. And the reason I don’t do it in this case specifically is because of a thing I like to call ‘I really really want MM Legends 3 to come out and will do unspeakable things to anything that jinxes that chance, myself included and in particular’.

I picked up a pair of noise-cancelling headphones this evening owing to three facts. The first is that my previous pair of earbuds had broken (cord snapped right out of the left bud) one morning a few weeks ago, and I needed a replacement pair. The second is that I had a sizeable rewards voucher for Best Buy sitting on my account.

The third is that, while trying to save some money and the rewards certificate, I had bought a pair of cheap stopgap earbuds at a 7-11 downtown the morning that the originals had broken. And that, today, I discovered that they were practically worthless when sitting next to someone who had quite a bit to say about my choice of commute entertainment: an anime. It matters comparatively little which one, because I am firmly of the belief that this woman would have just as gleefully excoriated me for watching SuperBook. I was not, in her words, reading the Bible, therefore I was sinning. She actually said that.

This comes literally eight hours after I had felt, for a little while, that geekery was becoming acceptable in public after seeing a forty-year-old man quietly reading a Batman graphic novel three rows ahead of me this morning.

Oh, and for the record? It was Shakugan no Shana, and I was incredibly lucky that my stop came long before any of the clothes-changing scenes came. I would have hated to have to explain to the paramedics that my minding of my own damn business caused some nutbar lady to have an aneurysm.

I’d said, at the beginning of this year, that I was going to do writeups on the games I finish after their completion, and I slacked off from this due to the whole “no-commercialism” thing in February. Tomorrow you’ll see my thoughts on Split/Second, which– if any game this year merits the label– may just be a contender for the top ten for 2010.

Oh, and just for the record? Baccano!? Awesome. You should watch it. Really.

Most of what I’m doing here in between fielding calls is either working with my hands or otherwise leaving my main computer idle, so I’m taking advantage of that by ripping some DVDs to watch on the bus rides from here on out. In truth, I should have been doing that weeks ago, but you take what you can get, really. In my case, I’m probably going to be dumping the files to my bigger external drive once I’m done with them and only putting what I need at the moment on the phone. (My iTunes setup has everything on a 400GB drive that I honestly thought, when I bought it, would be “too massive to fill”. I was half-right: I’m still only about 50% full on it, but it doesn’t have too much video on it. The bigger drive is a 1TB bit bucket.)

I did mention I could do that while I slept, right? ‘Cause I can, and will…

So, Deathsmiles. Let’s set aside the whole “Aksys is populated entirely by highly motivated perverts” thing for a moment and look at the gameplay first. DS presents itself as a fairly straightforward danmaku shooter, which is to say that you’re going to find the screen filled with about seventeen zillion lethal bullets by around the third stage. However, like most bullet-hell shooters these days, the game provides unlimited credits, so seeing the endings is mostly a matter of patience, and the skill comes in gaining score; an antiquated notion, to be sure, but I’ve always liked having personal challenges like that. While nominally a side-scrolling shooter along the lines of Gradius or R-Type, DS switches things up a bit by allowing you to shoot either left or right (but only one at a time– they’re mapped to different buttons) and by scrolling the screen vertically or in a zig-zag pattern. The game doesn’t feel cheap or unfair– most bullet patterns have an obvious or non-obvious path, and when they intersect the character’s hitbox– her heart– can usually take a light grazing. The scoring system is based on collecting items dropped from certain fallen foes, and by using the familiar (an option-like firing drone) to convert certain types of bullets into those scoring targets. Once that count reaches a maximum of 1000, shooting down foes provides massively-valued targets which also deal in a multiplier. Taking damage will force you to sacrifice a percentage of your count, while getting shot down yourself will reset it all to zero. The enemies are fairly varied as well, and the bosses are sufficiently big and menacing, and with suitably ridiculous attack patterns to evade. Overall if you decide to go through it with all five characters you’re looking at maybe eight to ten hours tops (there’s achievements for choosing either option during the ending).

As for the characters… I’ll be honest, I’m not all that into EGL. I do find that, when it’s executed well, it’s quite visually appealing (after all, I am a male and I am breathing, so of course I’m going to get a little excitable around well-dressed ladies). Obviously the youth thing (and that, y’know, they’re not real) makes it more of an aesthetic attraction and strictly platonic, but it’s not exactly a secret that the character designs are not made with that sort of thing in mind. There’s a very, very fine line between coquettish and co– er, ahem, deceptively provocative, and the girls of Deathsmiles are all over the map in that regard. I don’t want to turn this into a discussion on whether or not the phenomenon of moe is inherently good or bad (it’s all art to me, and the merit of art is all in how one reacts to the emotions it stirs), but from playing through the story mode, it’s sort of obvious that these girls could be dressed in pretty much anything and the plot could remain unchanged. Ultimately the EGL thing is just another facet of the game’s aesthetic, and while it’s fairly well-executed here (sometimes), it’s mostly just window-dressing and completely unrelated to the fantastic gameplay.

But there is no way in hell that I will put that faceplate on my 360.

I’ve got a little bit to talk about, but the first thing of any real interest is that I’ve got to get a new suitcase. See, the last time I needed a big suitcase, around the size needed to check, was back in 2008. After I got home, I put it into the storage unit at my apartment, whereupon it was promptly stolen. So yeah, when I took my trip last year I thought, “Oh, I can make do with a duffel bag!” and almost broke my back hauling it around. Thus, hardshell case that is NOT going into storage kthx. I’ve found a couple likely candidates and will be picking it up this weekend.

Tomorrow I’ll give my thoughts on Deathsmiles.

So it’s time for me to start making preparations for a few big events… one later this week, and one closer to the end of next month.

This is going to be one busy summer, boys and girls.