joudama scribbling

I hereby officially take back everything I said about the battles in FF13 being easy. After FINALLY getting through all the tutorials--I hope--it's decided it's time to play for realz. The turning point is when you do a boss battle to get a summons, and then it's, apparently, ON.

I have been dead-Zacked so many times tonight, OMFG. XD;;;;

I'm about an hour or two in, and so far?

Preeeeetty.

The broken battle system has YAY been fixed~, which fills me with glee. The battles, so far, are also stupidly easy. I'm sure I'll be eating my words soon enough, but so far, no challenge.

There is also a LOT of reading, and I mean a lot--it throws you into the story in medias res, and it unlocks the backstory as "chapters" as you go, and so you have to stop and read to really understand what's going on. I don't mind this at all, since you can choose when to read anything...or rather, I wouldn't, if the font wasn't so bloody small. Eyestrain, here I come. *death*

Also, Vanille is a fucking freak, OMFG. I'm not sure if she needs ritalin or Jesus or what, but she clearly needs something.

ETA - OMFG, Lightning just decked Snow, and it was awesome. Homegirl laid him out flat on his back with that punch. >XDDDD

AHAHAHA, I HAVE FINAL FANTASY 13.

:DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD

BRB, disappearing off the face of the planet.

A TV program on FF13 aired a few days ago.

A battle! With my girl Yun Fang as the party leader, and her summons and driving mode! :D



If you want to watch the whole show, here's the first part, and you can go from there:



...I am picking this up RIGHT. AFTER. WORK tomorrow. :DDDD

Guess what guess what guess what?

Zack is going to be in Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep (Japanese only, sorry, but you can scroll down to see the screencaps of Zack--pic 7 & 8) He's going to show up at the Colosseum level, and he, of course, asks about going out on a date.

:DDDDDD

Less than a week, less than a week...

Sazh's Brunhilde summons/boss fight:


...I kinda refuse to believe Squeenix is setting up Vanille/Sazh pairing, but lord, if everything I've seen so far from trailers doesn't point to that. XD;;;

Battle system/Shiva summons:


The making of Snow's CGI (Japanese only; also, the event motion director is hot):

Yeah, so, new pics of the new Cid.

Hellooooooooooo, nurse.

Between Cid and Yun Fang, my PS3 is going to overheat. XD

Squeenix just put out the last FF13 trailer. I'd embed, but they're being "no embed!" jerks, so here's a link to the FF13 website, and you can watch it there.

...Yun Fang is going in my party at all times once I have her as a member. Because she is awesome.

You can also see the new Cid, and OMFG HAAAAWT. *drool* (trust me, watch the trailer; the screencaps do nothing.)

ETA!

I love the internet.

So Not A Gamer's Game Review: Okami
 
I am slow and late, I admit this.  Everyone else on the planet played this years ago.  And I actually started to play it years ago, well before there was an English version, and my Japanese back then was sufficiently crap that I ran screaming.  But in honor of Okamiden coming out, and it Chibi-Amaterasu being the cutest thing EVER, I decided to pull out Okami and play it (never mind the PS3 version of Tales of Desperia sitting sad and alone in my PS3.  That's next on the list To Play, followed by finishing FF7.  And no, I've never played it.  Shush.  I'll still be playing FF13 long before you suckers. >XD )
 
Also, as a warning...yeah, I played it in Japanese.  And a lot of the names are different--the names of people, places, and animals were really truncated in the English version.  I'm using the Japanese names, just because that's how I think of the characters.
 
( The long of it. )
 
( The short of it. )
 

BEHOLD!

MY GLORIOUS FINAL FANTASY 13 PREORDER!!!

:DDDDDDD



December 18th, that bad boy is MIIIIIIIIINE.

:DDDDDDD

I started playing Fragile--yeah, yeah, I know, nearly everyone was "Kingdom Hearts!" or "Shadow of the Colossus!", but I started watching some trailers of Fragile, and that, coupled with the fact that, as slow as I play (and the time off that WILL happen for FF13), by the time I finish, "Fragile" should be coming out in the US (the release date is sometime in February next year), and an idea of if it's good or not will help y'all decide if it's something you want to get. And I should take advantage of the fact that I get games before y'all do. :D

I've been playing for an hour now, and DDDDD: Not because the game is bad--god, no--but because it's so sad. It opens sad--the main character, Seto, talking about him having to bury the man he called "grandpa" who had taken care of him, but whose real name he didn't know, and just kept on with the stomping on your heart. The things killing me the most are the little things Seto just doesn't know--he saw a broken TV, and his reaction was, "What's this weird box? And it looks like a mirror, but it's broken" and him not understanding the katakana English loanwords the little personal GPS system he found was using...and him not knowing what a shinai was--he was like, "It looks like a stick, but is made of bamboo!" and the GPS/companion thing had to tell him what it was called.

The game takes place after the end of the world as we know it. And seeing it--all the collapsed and destroyed buildings that long ago had been taken over by wilderness, the flooded streets with lily pads and rusted cars--is just so sad.

So so far, this game is very good and very immersive. And very, very sad. I kept going "...DDDD: Waaah~! DDDD: " at it. In the good way. There are ghosts and supernatural things, so it's got horror/survival horror elements, but it's more psychological than anything. It's survival horror lite, but in the good, introspective way. It seems like a good introduction to the genre for me.

Oh, and I also started FF:Gaiden, and thank god because it is bouncy and light and happy and cute. I'm going to need it after playing Fragile for a while.

And after I finish Fragile (and FF13), I'm going to play Shadow of the Colossus. :D

ETA - OH MY GOD, HE DIDN'T KNOW WHAT AN ORIGAMI CRANE WAS. He was so surprised by it and the word for it the GPS companion told him.

This game is gonna make me cry at this rate, it's that sad. ;_;

I went game shopping! I walked to the station from work (which is why no Wii Fit Challenge~ today--I walked an hour. And yesterday I got home at 10 thanks the JR West being failtastic and was so dead I made dinner, ate, and then went to bed) because a game I really wanted came out today!

Two big games came out today--FF:Gaiden (Four Soldiers of Light) for DS and Bayonetta for 360/PS3

First game store I went to? Sold out. *sob*

Got to the station and headed straight to Nara to hit my other game store. I got there and they had two copies left of the game I wanted. Needless to say, I grabbed one right then and there.

So what game did I by?

*preens* Final Fantasy!

(What, did you honestly think I'd get Bayonetta? Her tiny head makes me want to slap her designer, and I have zero interest in her much-praised ass physics. I'm glad the game is finally out so some of the damned hype can end. It needs to come out in the US so my game-related sites can STFU about Microcephaly Woman.)

So I have the new game, but I'm not busting it out until I finish Okami, which I should this weekend--I just got the final brush stroke and just have to get out of the bloody shrine. Then I can be done with the Game That Never Ends...well, once I fight all the dang bosses again. -_- And then, it is adorable, old-school FF for me~

New FF13 screenshots!

If that one line makes it into the localization, the fic writers will all go nuts. Especially since I can already totally see this character saying it. :p

I am so going to have to learn how to use Gimp so I can make icons again...

The newest KH: Birth By Sleep trailer.



STIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIITCH~~~!!! :DDDDD

RAGE QUIT IN FIVE...FOUR...THREE...

ASDFGHJKL;

Whoever designed the fishing game in Okami, then made it mandatory? Needs to die. Benkei has to catch his damned fish, and I can't proceed otherwise, and RAAAAAEG.

I can kill bosses super quick, end most of my fights with a high godhood, but this damned fishing game? Is about to make me fling my controller into the TV and toss Okami into the trash.

asdfghjkl;: I'm not even kidding when I saw I'm about to rage quit, and by "rage quit" I mean completely quit the game and play Tales of Vesperia instead.

Worst Game Job Ever: Shinra Soldier.

>XDDDDDD I LOL'd. It is SO TRUE. >XDDDDD

Oooh, look, a video game based on Salome!

That looks kinda cool, yo. :D

I should not be anywhere near as gleefully amused I am by the fact that I have just gained Amaterasu's power of peeing on her enemies in Okami. Really, I should not be going, "AHAHAHAHA, I CAN PEE ON MY ENEMIES AHAHAHAHAAHAHAHA~!"

This game is awesome.

I have a Wii~! It is shiny and black...and fucking heavy.

Well, OK, it was the Wii and the Wii Fit Balance Board that was heavy. Fucking hell. *death*

I just got back--I went into Kyoto to go to the giant Bic Camera, since I have a Bic point card and because I figured if I went to Kyoto, that's an hour of chill reading time on the train, then I can coo at all the gadgets (I am currently lusting after a trilingual dictionary, namely because it does Chinese<->English, so I wouldn't have to go through Japanese like I do now), then go to the yumtastic matcha tea dessert place. So I headed into Kyoto instead of going to Nara.

Things didn't quite work out the way I planned; I ended up falling asleep in my book on the train ( ^^;; ) and made the mistake of buying the Wii before getting food. This was a mistake because OMFG heeeeavy. x_X (Also, dude. If I'm buying a Japanese Wii, talking to you in Japanese, and pulling out a point card, chances are I live here, and the "this can only be used in Japan, is that OK?" is kind of unnecessary, but hey, whatev. I said that was fine and gave him my point card). I was like, "Oh jesus, how am I gonna get this home and not die?" I ended up going to Saebo Burger because I wanted the meat, and then was so stuffed (those things are huuuuge--there is a reason why they offer half-sizes) I decided there was no way I could fit dessert in, and lugged my giant bag o' Nintendo to the station, and got on the train just as it was about to pull out (GO ME!), and decided to spend the trip back level grinding Persona 1 (can I just say how much I hate those damned toilet demons that will one-hit kill everyone in your party if they back-attack you? Fuckers. I've leveled up enough so that I can kill them most of the time, but a back attack means Dead Zack time.)

My Wii is still in the bag because oh god, my hands feel like death. I'm going to clean my living room area so I have room to actually use my Wii, then go, "Oh, hey, Okami," and game.

My health is finally back to what it was before SIlver Week, so I'm going to start walking to work this week. I've got until mid-December to lose weight so I don't have to hear shit from my family, so. I already started changing my eating habits--more fruits and veggies, eating small snacks like nuts when I get hungry, walking ten minutes out to the mall near work to buy a salad for lunch--so now to start adding in exercise.

...I'm glad I'll be playing it in Japanese. The translation is really good, though--props to the translator.