BadHat

Whoa, I'm following new anime for once and felt compelled to post about it! I'm enjoying the heck out of Zankyou no Terror. It seems a little aimless at times, and Lisa is pretty useless as a character, but I like the show's style so much it almost doesn't bother me. Yoko Kanno's score is fucking goooooood, like damn, it'd probably carry the show by itself if it didn't have anything else going for it. Thankfully the animation is also lovely. I really, really like this show's use of colour. Everything is very vivid and "on purpose" where a lot of newer anime I've seen have very bland, samey colour palettes. Anyway, definitely a fan of this one. I grabbed Samurai Champloo just to have some more Watanabe goodness to watch in-between episodes, and I'm definitely checking out Kids on the Slope after that. On the other hand, I've been watching Aldnoah.Zero because of Gen Urobuchi's involvement, but boy does this show suck. Paper thin characterization, motivations are all over the place and seldom inspire sympathy, story feels completely consequence-free despite killing off characters at the drop of a hat. The whole thing just feels completely overwrought and undeserving of how far up its own ass it is (which makes the composer of Attack on Titan a perfect fit!). BUT WHY CAN'T I STOP WATCHING. I swear this always happens to me. I've put down fantastic anime before because I didn't have the patience to stay with them, but whenever I start watching something that's as disposable and uninspired as this I cannot look away. I guess they have the same appeal to me as really bad, popcorn-y movies. I just thrive on watching them and mentally eviscerating every scene, or something. Ugh. I wish I could feel this way about other shows, I'm still only halfway through Mushishi after watching on and off for months, because I feel completely uninspired to watch it despite loving the shit out of it.

Despite looking perhaps a little too familiar, this looks pretty okay. Only thing which gives me pause for thought is that it's being developed by City Interactive, whose most notable games might be the Sniper: Ghost Warrior series. Regardless, this looks at least a few cuts above those games, budget-wise, so maybe it'll be not totally bad. If nothing else, I think it's cool that the impact of Dark Souls has been felt enough that it actually has some imitators now. Well, imitator.

Been playing this in chunks for about a week and really enjoying myself. The difficulty of the later levels is in a pretty comfortable spot between legitimately challenging and outright frustrating. So, I just got to the end of the Enchantress' gate (second to last stage I guess). Went into the fight with black knight, was doing a drop attack on him as he was flying upwards and... I popped back to the checkpoint screen. He's still stuck flying around on the boss screen and now I'm stuck on this one. I guess they only made the invisible wall so high? :|

Keep dreaming that my teeth are falling out. I do not like these dreams.

A few members of Magma formed a really heavy, groovy fusion band called One Shot. Pretty great stuff.

Someone just introduced me to these guys. If you like heavily jazz-inspired electronic music, or just groovy shit in general, check this out.

FF14 is a pretty good looking game.

Saw that too, and it reminded me of this song I'd heard in an anime, which I guess is also an Utsu-P track! Neat. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YDnwMDv2uI

Yeah, it was a donation request. Just watched that ZZT run, that was pretty hilarious.

I gave up on trying to keep track of what constituted trolling when I got into a big ol' internet fight with someone who was convinced that he was being trolled because someone said something he didn't agree with. Intent didn't even enter into it, he just heard something he didn't like and went full Godwin mode on the word troll. It was one of those "why do I give a shit" epiphanies.

I was watching live when it happened. Chibi was being loud and obnoxious through the entire previous run, the runner seemed pretty aggravated but was probably too nice to say anything. I get the impression he wasn't invited onto the couch (don't they get to choose who sits with them?) and didn't know Caveman, and he was just constantly commenting on everything even though it was very apparent that his commentary wasn't appreciated. I honestly thought he was being pretty grating well before things got awkward. I mean Caveman certainly could have handled things more tactfully, but you can't expect people to always be on form when they're doing something mentally taxing for hours on end in front of an audience of thousands, possibly on little sleep if their run is scheduled as early as his was. Non-runners need to respect that the show isn't about them, unless the runner is actually engaging with them or arranged for them to commentate beforehand, having some random asshole constantly joking around while you're trying to focus is aggravating as hell. It's not unprecedented either, here's an example of Cosmo getting fed up with people talking, albeit with a bit more tact. Anyway, none of this matters as this was clearly the best awkward moment from the stream so far. (Does anyone else get the impression that they need to move the desk closer to the couch? Seems like the runners can't hear shit all the announcer is saying a lot of the time.)

Too bad none of this is going to matter to the Aussie player base. I don't understand what their objection to just adding in a server browser is (especially as these are the same people who dropped the fat turd that was Modern Warfare 2 PC). Wasn't that finally becoming common again in big budget games? But hey nah please keep charging us extra for the same game in the same currency, because that's not a fucking slap in the face or anything.

And a new G-Police, while they're at it.~

Gave Warhammer 40k Space Marine a good shot after enjoying the demo a while back. It's a really solid game, the combat is good fun for a while, but there's not enough there to keep me coming back. You've seen once orc horde, you've seen em all. Needs more jetpack levels, also. The first one's so good and then they just vanish for ages so you can walk around a bland underground environment.

Damnit, this is the same price as Transistor right now and I actually want it a little bit more. Watching SGDQ has put me on a real old school kick, this looks like it'd scratch that itch in a really big way.

Try signing up for notifications on cheapshark.com instead. It checks pretty much every digital vendor for sales, and you can set a specific price for them to notify you when it goes below.

I think it's pretty progressive of Ubisoft to dedicate time and effort to modelling a male hostage as well as a female one. As a male, I'm fed up with men being shoehorned into protagonist leads in video games (looking at you, AssCreed Unity). Nice to see some equal opportunity damselling for once!Sarcasm aside, does anyone else find it really bizarre when an attempt at portraying a character realistically butts heads with convenient gameplay design? Like when Irrational designed Elizabeth to be as unobtrusive as possible so people wouldn't hate her guts like every other companion character in history. Totally legitimate from a design standpoint, but when taken in context creates all kinds of weird (but probably unintentional) implications. Then you have this hostage character, basically just a glorified flag in gameplay terms, but you're expected to care about her fate because she cries a lot and chokes on dirt. Like that's going to matter after the fiftieth time she goes down and you have to press A on her or whatever. Not trying to make a comment so much as I just find this stuff super weird.

Damn that looks scrummy. Those hard polys on the terrain, man. So uh... how about that Last Guardian, huh?

What's Retro up to these days besides spitting out Donkey Kong games? A Prime game on Wii U would probably sell me on the system... although, would you use the pad and do some crazy stuff with the screen (probably), or just stick with the tried and true wiimote controls?

My Origin thing is BadHatNZ, added both your IDs Bjorn. Are the multiplayer content packs unlocked from the get-go if I have the main game? You mentioned something about new classes but I don't see any.

omg omg omggggggggggggggg Best announcement of show.

Man, I would be so down for that. ME3 MP came out of nowhere but it was such a blast. I didn't even wind up getting the game for myself, but I pretty much maxed out a friend's galactic war points (or whatever the hell that thing was) playing it on his copy. Coop would even be doable in a story setting (somewhat) since they already have a template for mutliplayer dialog in The Old Republic. Four characters, everyone chooses an option, dice roll decides who talks. Wouldn't be the best idea for a serious story with heavy consequences, but it works great if you're just playing with friends and trying to out-dialog one another. Edit: Oh man, it's 70% off on Origin, might have to grab it. Does the standard edition come with all the multiplayer DLC or are those purchased separately? Edit: Never mind, guess all the packs are free. Sold!

Yeah, if I was patient I would have stopped and asked around, but I think after getting the mist heart I just assumed "oh, I guess I gotta kill ancient dragon now." Could've avoided 20+ deaths if I'd just backed up and tried something else. I missed a bunch of NPC dialog though, judging by Vaatividya's excellent lore videos. Like the whole deal with

I don't know if I have a hero but this guy is definitely my idol. I've had a lot of "favourite drummers" for as long as I've been playing, but none have ever exhibited a style that I've been so persistently enamoured by, which has influenced my own playing so much, and encouraged me to improve just by virtue of how he's constantly raising the bar, technically and creatively, every time I hear him, run on sentence.

Finally got around to starting Mushishi, oh man I'm in love with this show already. I can't remember anything that had this tone to it, I watch an ep or two in bed each night and get totally lost in it, then wake up the next morning remembering it like I'd seen it in a pleasant dream. So good. Anyway this made me think of something that's bothered me in the past, and is kind of relevant to the topic of conventions in anime - what's the deal with opening/ending themes? Like, having a title scroll with a theme song is hardly unique to anime, and a credits sequence even less so, but the way they're formatted and presented in anime seems really tied down by convention in many cases. I got thinking about this because the opening to Mushishi is really muted, it's barely animated at all and has a really laid back theme in comparison to most anime OPs (the only other theme I can remember being this modest is Now and Then, Here and There, which... well, I don't dare imagine that show with a typical opening animation). Is this simply a matter of doing what's expected, or is there some other explanation? Edit: Also just because I've had it on constant repeat again lately, the Madoka soundtrack is so good you guys. So good.